Miss Arnott's Marriage

CHAPTER XX

THE SOLICITOR'S CLERK

Hugh Morice was the first to leave the four crossroads; Miss Arnott stood some time after he had gone, thinking. Life had had for her some queer phases-none queerer than that which confronted her, as she stood thinking by the stile.

That Hugh Morice should have done the thing she knew he had done, was bad enough. That he should have denied it to her face in such explicit terms and coupled with his denial such a monstrous accusation, was inconceivable. He had not gone very far before she told herself that, after all, she had misunderstood him, she must have done. For some minutes she was half disposed to jump into her car, follow him and insist on a clearer explanation. He could not have meant what he had appeared to do, not seriously and in earnest.

But she refrained from putting her idea into execution as she recalled the almost savage fashion in which he had hurled opprobrium at her. He had meant it; he must have meant it, or he would not have spoken to her in such a strain. At the thought she shivered.

Because, if this were the case, if she really had to regard his words as seriously intended, then she would have to rearrange her whole outlook on to life, particularly that portion of it which was pressing so hardly on her now. In her blackest moments she had not credited Hugh Morice with being a scoundrel. He had been guilty of a crime, but she could have forgiven him for that. By what he had done he had separated himself from her for ever and for ever. Still, she could have looked at him across the dividing chasm with something tenderer than pity.

This new attitude he had taken up altered the position altogether. If it meant anything it meant that he had killed Robert Champion for some recondite reason of his own-one with which she had no sort of connection. Obviously, if he had done it for her sake, he would not be so strenuous in denial; still less would he charge her with his crime.

Thus the whole business assumed a different complexion. The inference seemed to be that Hugh Morice and Robert Champion had not been strangers to each other. There had been that between them which induced the one to make away with the other when opportunity offered. The whole thing had been the action of a coward. In imagination the girl could see it all. Hugh Morice coming suddenly on the man he least expected-or desired-to meet; the great rush of his astonishment; the instant consciousness that his enemy was helpless; the sight of the knife; the irresistible, wild temptation; the yielding to it; the immediate after-pangs of conscience-stricken terror; the frantic flight through the moon-lit forest from the place of the shedding of blood.

And this was the man whom, almost without herself being aware of it, she had been making a hero of. This sordid wretch, who, not content with having slain a helpless man for some, probably wholly unworthy, purpose of his own, in his hideous anxiety to save his own miserable skin was willing, nay, eager, to sacrifice her. Possibly his desire to do so was all the greater because he was haunted by the voice of conscience crying out to him that this girl would not only be a continual danger, but that he would never be able to come into her presence without being racked by the knowledge that she knew him-no matter how gallantly he bore himself-to be the thing he really was.

So it was plain to her that here was a new danger sprung up all at once out of the ground, threatening more serious ills than any she had known. If Jim Baker was found guilty of this man's crime, and she moved a finger to save him from his unmerited fate, then it might be that she would find herself in imminent peril of the gallows. For it needed but momentary consideration to enable her to perceive that what he had suggested was true enough, that if they began to accuse each other it would be easier, if he were set on playing the perjurer, to prove her guilt than his. And so quite possibly it might come about that, in order to save Jim Baker, it would be necessary she should hang. And life was yet young in her veins, and, though she had in it such sorry usage, still the world was very fair, and, consciously, in all her life she had never done an evil thing.

And then it was not strange that, there in the sunshine by the roadside, at the bare thought that it was even remotely possible that such a fate might be in store for her, she sat down on the stile, clinging to the rail, trembling from head to foot.

She would have sat there longer had she not been roused by a familiar, unescapable sound-the panting of a motor. Along the road was approaching a motor bicyclist. At sight of her, and of the waiting car, he stopped, raising his cap.

"I beg your pardon, but is there anything wrong with the car?"

She stood up, still feeling that, at anyrate, there was something wrong with the world, or with her.

"No, thank you, the car's all right; I was only resting."

"I beg your pardon once more, but aren't you Miss Arnott of Exham Park?"

She looked at the speaker, which hitherto she had avoided doing. He was a young man of four or five and twenty, with a not unpleasing countenance; so far as she knew, a stranger to her.

"I am, but I don't know you."

"That is very possible-I am a person of no importance. My name is Adams-Charles Adams. I am clerk to Mr Parsloe, solicitor, of Winchester. We had a communication from a man who is in Winchester Gaol, waiting his trial for murder, a man named Baker. Possibly you have heard of him."

"Oh yes, I have heard of Jim Baker; he is a gamekeeper on my own estate."

"So he gave me to understand. Mr Parsloe sent me to see him. I did see him, in private. He gave me a note, which he was extremely anxious that I should give into your own hands. I was just coming on to Exham Park on the off-chance of finding you in. Perhaps you won't mind my giving it to you now?"

"By all means. Why not?"

He had taken out of a leather case a piece of folded paper.

"You see it is rather a rough-and-ready affair, but I should like to give you my assurance that I have no idea what it contains."

"I don't suppose it would matter much if you did. Jim Baker is hardly likely to have a communication of a private nature to make to me."

"As to that I know nothing. I can only say that Baker was not satisfied till I had sworn that I would not attempt to even so much as peep at the contents of his note, or let it go out of my hands until it reached yours."

"Really?"

"Really! I never saw a man more desperately in earnest on a point of the kind."

"Jim Baker is a character."

"He certainly is. You will see that the note is written on a piece of rough paper. Where he got it from I don't know, and was careful not to ask; but it looks suspiciously like a fly-leaf which had been torn out of a book. You are possibly aware that in prison, in the ordinary way, they are allowed neither paper, pen nor ink. I fancy you'll find that this is written with a pencil. When I first saw it it had been simply folded, and one end slipped into the other. I happened to have some sealing-wax in my pocket. Baker insisted on my sealing it, in his presence, in three places, as you perceive, so that it was impossible to get at the contents without breaking the seals. I say all this because Baker himself was emphatically of opinion that this note contained matter of an extremely confidential nature, to which I should like you clearly to understand that I have had no sort of access. I may add another fact, of which you are also possibly aware, and that is that the whole transaction was irregular. He had no right to give me the note, and I had no right to convey it out of the prison; but he did the one, and I did the other, and here it is."

Mr Adams handed the lady the scrap of paper, she asking him a question as he did so, -

"To whom did you say that you were clerk?"

"To Mr Parsloe, a well-known and highly-esteemed Winchester solicitor."

"Why did Baker, as you put it, communicate with Mr Parsloe?"

"He wanted us to undertake his defence."

"And are you going to do so?"

Mr Adams smiled.

"As matters are, I am afraid not. Baker appears to be penniless, he is not even able to keep himself while awaiting trial, but is on the ordinary prison fare. It is necessary that a client should not only have his solicitor's sympathy, but also the wherewithal with which to pay his fees."

"Then it is only a question of money. I see. At what address shall I find Mr Parsloe if I wish to do so?"

The gentleman gave the lady a card.

"That is Mr Parsloe's address. You will find my name in the corner as representing him. I may mention that I also am an admitted solicitor."

"It is possible that you will hear from me. In the meantime, thank you very much for taking so much trouble in bringing me this note. Any expenses which may have been incurred I shall be happy to defray."

"At present no expenses have been incurred. I need hardly say that any instructions with which you may honour us will receive our instant and most careful attention."

Again Mr Adams's cap came off. He turned his bicycle round, and presently was speeding back the way he had come. Miss Arnott stood looking after him, the "note" in her hand.

Jim Baker's "note," as the solicitor's clerk had more than hinted, was distinctly unusual as to form. It was represented by an oblong scrap of paper, perhaps two inches long by an inch broad. Nothing was written on the outside; on the exterior there was nothing whatever to show for what destination it was designed. As Mr Adams had said, where one end had been slipped into the other three seals had been affixed. On each seal was a distinct impression of what probably purported to be Mr Adams's own crest; with, under the circumstances, a sufficiently apposite motto-for once in a way in plain English-"Fear Nothing."

CHAPTER XXI

THE "NOTE"

Miss Arnott displayed somewhat singular unwillingness to break the seals. She watched Mr Adams retreating on his bicycle; not only till the machine itself was out of sight, but the cloud of dust which marked its progress had vanished also. Then she turned the scrap of paper over and over in her fingers, possessed by an instinctive reluctance to learn what it contained. It seemed ridiculous to suppose that Jim Baker could have anything to cause her disturbance, yet she had an eerie feeling that there was something disagreeable inside his "note," something which she would much rather not come into contact with. Had she followed her own inclination she would have shredded it into pieces, and scattered the pieces over the roadway. In some indescribable fashion she was actually afraid of the scrap of paper which she held between her fingers.

It was the sudden realisation that this was so which stung her into action. Afraid of anything Jim Baker might have to say? She? Nonsense! The idea! Could anything be more absurd!

There and then she broke the seals, unfolded the sheet of paper. But when she had got so far again she hesitated. The thing was fresh from a prison; had about it, she fancied, a prison atmosphere, a whiff of something sordid which it had borne with it out of gaol. It was that, she told herself, which she did not relish. Why should she read the scrawl? What interest could it have for her? Better instruct Mr Parsloe, or that eminent practitioner in the conduct of criminal cases with whose name Mr Stacey had furnished her, to undertake Baker's defence, and spare no expense in doing so, and so have done with it. Let her keep her own fingers out of the mire; leave the whole thing to the lawyers; that would be better for everyone concerned. So it would not be necessary for her to spell her way through the man's ill-written scribble.

And then she read Jim Baker's "note."

As Mr Adams had surmised it was written in pencil; apparently with a blunt stump of pencil used by unaccustomed fingers, probably under circumstances in which a skilful writer would have been uneasy. Here and there it seemed that the pencil had refused to write; possibly only by dint of pressure had it been induced to write at all. The letters were blurred and indistinct, ill-formed, irregular, disjoined-in general, mere hieroglyphics. And yet, despite the crabbed writing, the eccentric spelling, the clumsy wording, Jim Baker's "note" made a stronger impression on Miss Arnott than the most eloquent epistle with which she had ever been favoured.

"Miss Arnott I see you done it but I wouldnt say nuthink about it if it wasnt that from what I ear they are going to hang me for what I se you doing and I wont say nuthin about it now if you se I have a loryer and all regular so as to get me out of this were it aint rite I should be sein I saw you they may cutt my tung out before Ill speak unless they make out I dun it so if you dont se I have a loryer and all regular Ill have to speke Jim Baker."

That was Mr Baker's note; unpunctuated, formless, badly put together, ill-spelt, but alive and eloquent in spite of its obvious deficiencies. It was plain why he was so anxious that Mr Adams should not peep at the contents, why he had insisted on the three seals, why he had stipulated on its being given into Miss Arnott's own hands. From his point of view the "note" was a messenger of life and death, with hanging matter in every line.

The lady read it once and again and then again. As she crumpled it up in her hand it seemed to her that the country round about had assumed a different appearance, the cloudless sky had become dimmed, a grey tint had settled upon everything; for her the sunlight had gone out of the world.

Here was Jim Baker calling to her out of his prison cell that he was where she ought to be, because he had seen her do it, warning her, if she did not provide him with a lawyer "and all regular" to get him "out of this," that he would have to speak. What hallucination was this which all at once possessed men's minds? Could it be possible that the hallucination was actually hers? Could what, first Hugh Morice, now Jim Baker, said be true, and that they had seen her do it? What condition could she have been in at the time? Was it conceivable that a person could do such a deed unwittingly? During what part of her sojourn in the wood had she been in her sober senses? When had she ceased to be responsible for her own actions? and how? and why? Which of those awful happenings had been plain material fact and which nightmare imaginings?