David Christie Murray

“ The precious souvenir was in his pocket, snug in its case. In an evil hour he drew it out, tenderly filled it and lit it. He and Leland were riding at a walk, and there seemed no danger, when suddenly his horse shied violently, and with the shock crash went Barndale’s teeth through the delicate amber, and the precious pipe fell to the roadway. Barndale was down in a second, and picked it up in two pieces. The stem was broken within an inch of the marvellous bowl. He lamented over it with a chastened grief which here and there a smoker and an enthusiast will understand. ”

“ It was the face of a Greek of a very severe and commanding type, shadowed in some strange way by a look which made the owner of the face absolutely irritating to Barndale. There are some opposites in nature—human nature—which can only meet to hate each other. These two crossed glances once, and each was displeased with what he saw in the other. The Greek saw a handsome, good-natured, bronzed face, the thoughtful eyes whereof looked at him with an expression of curiosity and analysis. ”

“ What should bring fashion, and wealth, and beauty in one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished—the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk—why should Lilian care to return thus at the fag end of London’s feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian’s especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists on Lilian being present thereat. ”

“ The English party reached London in the middle of July, and made haste out of it—Lilian and her elders to peaceful Suffolk, where they had a house they visited rarely; and her lover and her brother to Thames Ditton, where these two inseparables took a house-boat, aboard which they lived in Bohemian and barbaric ease, like rovers of the deep. Here they fished, and swam, and boated, and grew daily more and more mahogany coloured beneath the glorious summer sun. ”

“ Leland rose and turned. He saw the Greek, and read murder in his face, and dashed himself upon him. But the murderous hand was quick and true. One shot rang out, and Leland, with outcast arms, fell backwards. The Greek, with a hand on the table, looked down upon him. Not a struggle or a groan stirred the prone figure. Demetri threw the revolver through the open window, and heard the splash with which it fell into the water. He drew the stiletto from his bosom, and threw that after it. ”

“ Inspector Webb’s experience of criminals was large; but he had never known a criminal conduct himself after Barn-dale’s fashion, and was convinced of his innocence, and hotly eager to be in pursuit of the Greek. When the cab drew up in the Yard a second cab drew up behind it, and from it emerged two clean-shaven, quiet-looking men in inconspicuous dresses, whom Barndale had seen in King’s Bench Walk as he had gone that afternoon to his chambers. Scarcely had they alighted when a third cab came up, and from it dashed a mahogany-coloured young man with grey hair, and assisted a lady to alight. ”

“ Papa and Mamma Leland are placidly asleep on the saloon deck, beneath the flapping awning. Leland Junior is carrying on a pronounced flirtation with a little Greek girl, and Lilian and Barndale are each enjoying their own charming spiritual discomforts. They say little, but, like the famous parrot, they think the more. ”

“ Barndale does not come, having never, in point of fact, received that special note which Lady Dives had despatched to him. So the ball is a weariness, and Lilian goes back with mamma to the hotel with quite drooping spirits. She makes excuses for the absent Barndale, but fancies all manner of things in her feminine fashion, preferring to believe in fevers and boat accidents and other horrors rather than think that a valet has been lazy or a postman inaccurate.
Papa Leland, who is here to take care of his womankind, has ideas of his own on some matters. ”

“ Thecla Perzio received Barndale with much shyness and embarrassment; and he, seeing that she was a good deal afraid of him, plucked up courage and treated her rather wilfully. He insisted on her going down to his sister at his own house in Surrey and staying there under the old maid’s chaperonage, at least until such time as she should be able to find another suitable companion. The more Thecla found herself overpowered by this masterful son of Anak, the more she felt resigned, and comfortable, and peaceful, and safe. Barndale, like the coward he was, felt his power and took advantage of it. ”

“ They cooked their own steaks, and ate with ravenous appetites, and enjoyed themselves like the two wholesome young giants they were, and grew and waxed in muscle, and appetite, and ruddiness until a city clerk had gone wild with envy, beholding them. Their demands for beer amazed the landlord of the historic ‘Swan,’ and their absorption of steaks left the village butcher in astonishment.
But in the midst of all this a purpose came upon Barndale quite suddenly one day as he lay beneath the awning, intent on doing nothing. He had not always been a wealthy man. ”

“ Papa Leland went by briskly; but Lilian caught sight of her and knew her in a moment, and stayed to speak. The two girls had been too closely engaged with their respective love-makings to form any very close acquaintance with each other; but during a week’s imprisonment on board ship the friendships of women, and especially of young and gentle-hearted women, advance very rapidly. They had parted with a great deal of mutual liking, and met again now with mutual pleasure. In a minute Lilian was seated in the poor little Greek’s big and dreary parlour. ”

“ They reached the bank and walked across the punt into the house-boat. As she entered the door Lilian gave a cry, and dashed at the table; then turned and held up before the doctor’s eyes a meerschaum pipe—the identical Antoletti meerschaum stolen in the Stamboul Bazaar by Demetri Agryopoulo.
‘This is it!’ she gasped. ‘The clue! Oh, it is certain! It is true! Who else could have wished him ill?’
Then she told the doctor the story of the pipe. She told her tale in verbal lightning. Every sentence flashed forth a fact; and in sixty seconds or thereabouts the doctor was a man convinced. ”

“ The Greek went by, and in his after passages looked no more at Barndale, who continued to watch him with an unaccountable, disliking regard. The crowd had completed its circle some half score of times, and Barndale missed his Greek from it. Turning to address Leland, he missed him too. He rose and mingled with the circling procession, and listened to the music of the band, and speculated idly on the people who surrounded him, as lazy and unoccupied men will at times. Suddenly, in the shadow of the projecting orchestra, he caught sight of a figure which he fancied was familiar to him. ”

“ Lilian, coming aboard the boat, could not get speech with Barndale until the steamer was well under way. By then, she had time to think the matter over, and had come to the conclusion that she would say nothing about it. For, womanlike, she was half jealous of the pipe, and she was altogether afraid of two things—first, that Barndale would leave her to go back to Constantinople; and next, that the Greek and he would enter on a deadly quarrel. For she had a general belief that all Orientals were bloodthirsty. ”

“ Over this they bore Leland, and laid him on the cushions which the doctor had arranged upon the gate. Then they carried him into the ‘Swan’ and got him to bed there.
Lilian and her mother, trembling and struggling with their tears, followed the bearers. The crowd which always accompanies disaster, even in a village, made its comments as the melancholy little cortege went along, and Lilian could not fail to overhear. Hodges was there. ”

“ Demetri Agryopoulo was not the man to perplex himself with details until the time came for them to be useful. When that time came he could rely upon himself for invention. And so his plan was simply to take James Leland alone, and then and there to put an end to him. ”

“ She called to him aloud—
‘Go for a doctor. My brother is dying here. Be quick, be quick, be quick!’ she almost screamed as the man stared at her. Understanding at last, the fellow snatched up his sculls and dashed through the water. Lilian flew back to her brother; and while the two women, not knowing what to do further, sat supporting the helpless head together; a man leapt aboard.
‘You called for a doctor, madam,’ he said quietly, ‘I am a surgeon. ”

“ At home he drank mastica as Englishmen drink beer, and brandy was insipid as water to his palate, and had just now almost as little effect upon his head. Demetri Agryopoulo had discovered the one secret of the true dissembler, that he who controls his features controls his mind. A man who can put a smile on his face while torments rack him, can thereby calm the torments. The resolute will which arrests the facial expression of grief or rage, allays the grief or rage. ”

“ He’s at work on an amazing comedy with which he intends to fire the Thames next first of April. He and I are both going to appear in it at Barndale in the Christmas week. Meantime we rehearse a terrific combat nightly. ‘While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaze the wondering rustics gathered round. ‘A genial idiot, Hodges yclept, has persuaded the whole village that a murder is on the carpet, and that Billy and I are at daggers drawn. Don’t tell him this in any of your letters. It’s a great tribute to our acting that even Hodges takes us to be in earnest. ”

“ I first read Tennyson when I was in love, and liked him, and understood him a great deal better than I have been able to do since I came out of Love’s dear bondages. To be in love is a delicious and an altogether admirable thing. ”

“ But then Lilian was not a woman of a logical turn of mind; she was inconsistent and amiable, as good girls always are; and being strongly opposed to marriages of this kind in general, determined to lay herself out, heart and soul, for the prosperity of this particular arrangement. So she kissed Thecla vivaciously, and went to mamma, and persuaded that estimable lady to a visit to Thames Ditton in search of James. ”

“ Now, you shall arrest me since you must, but you shall not tie the hands of justice by preventing me from tracing the criminal. The man who has committed this crime is Demetri Agryopoulo, a Greek, attached to the Persian Embassy at Constantinople. You look like a shrewd and wary man,’ Barndale took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for one hundred pounds. ‘When you have done with me, cash that cheque and spend every penny of it, if need be, in pursuit of that man. When it is gone come to me for more. ”

“ Even now, if you have any taste for live statuary, you shall admire this upright six feet two inches of finely-modelled bone and muscle. If manly good-nature can make a handsome sun-browned face pleasant to you, then shall Barndale’s countenance find favour in your eyes. ”

“ It chanced that as the friends left the bazaar they ran full against their Greek enemy, who raised his hat with well-dissembled rage, and stalked on. The Greek by ill hap passed the stall of the man to whom the precious pipe had been entrusted. Barn-dale had smoked this remarkable pipe that morning in the Greek’s view in the reading-room, and Demetri knew it again at a glance. It lay there on the open stall in its open case. Now Demetri Agryopoulo was not a thief, and would have scorned theft under common circumstances. ”

“ By Christmas time Leland was well and strong again. The chase after the Greek was dismissed from the official mind by this time: and Barndale, being reminded of Inspector Webb by the receipt of the promissory note for five hundred pounds, wrote to that official to offer him a week or two in the country. The inspector came, and brought the marvellous pipe with him. It had been detained until then to be put in evidence in case of the Greek’s arrest and trial.
The inspector heard the comedy, and told Barndale, later on, that he regarded the quarrel scene as a masterpiece of histrionic art. ”

“ But the torpedo goes on and explodes by-and-by, with terrible likelihood of damage.
Barndale came down heavily on Leland, in the latter’s bedroom at the hotel, that night.
‘Well,’ said Jimmy, in sole answer to his friend’s remonstrance and blame; ‘there’s one thing about the matter which may be looked on as a dead certainty. The beggar would have had my blood if it hadn’t been for you, old man. It’s only one more good turn out of a million, Billy, but I shan’t forget it.’
With that he arose and shook Barndale’s hand. ”

“ Then she turned white to the very lips, and tore open the blue serge coat and waistcoat. The white flannel shirt beneath was caked with blood. The two women moaned, but not a finger faltered. They opened the shirt tenderly, and there, on the right breast, saw a dull blue stain with a crimson thread in the middle of it. A gunshot wound looks to unaccustomed eyes altogether too innocent a thing to account for death or even for serious danger. But the cold pallor of the face and body, the limp and helpless limbs betokened something terrible.
‘Take his poor head, mamma,’ cried Lilian ”