The Englishman of the Rue Caïn

Front matter

BV THE SAME AUTHOR. Crown Svo, cloth extra, 6s. ; or post 8vo, Illustrated boards, 2s. THE PASSENGER FROM SCOTLAND YARD. Opinions of the Press. ' It would seem as if on this side of the Channel we are destined to have a school of " detective fiction." If it at all maintains the level reached in "The Passenger from Scotland Yard," this will be a source of unmixed pleasure to the novel-reader. The pioneers of this class of literature have in Mr. Wood a formidable rival. His book is one of the best-constructed and best-written of this class that has yet been produced. The much-abused words " absorbing " and "exciting" are especially applicable to this c'ever work.'— Morning Post. ' An anxiously elaborate detective story after Gaboriau. . . . The book should be read in the train— if possible, the night mail to Paris.'— Saturday Review. 'Mr. Wood is a clever writer.

Indeed, if this be his first literary venture, he is very much to be congratulated on the success which he has achieved. . ._. Sensation enough and to spare, but all of the most pleasantly stimulating kind ; and we are not ashamed to confess that at times we were aware ofa thrilling sensation which recalled our youth and the days when we read for pleasure and not for business. Therefore the delights in store for the casual reader of Mr. Wood's book may be imagined.' — Whitehall Review. ' A detective story, the author of which is very skilful in suggesting wrong theories for the reader to start upon.' — St. James's Gazette. ' Mr. Wood's clever and exciting tale. . . . The book is an uncommonly favourable specimen of its class; the characters are well drawn, the style is alert, and the ingenuity of the plot is worthy of Gaboriau.

The denouement is spiritedly worked out. Mr. Wood takes great pains with his minor characters, and the results are eminently satisfactory.' — Athenæum. ' Clever and interesting.'— Congregational Review. 'An undeniably clever story. . . . The interest of the story is cleverly maintained, and the adventures of "the Passenger from Scotland Yard," and the group of conspirators in whose movements he manifests such a lively concern, are put through their paces in a sufficiently sensational way to please even a blase reader osthis kind of fiction.'— Leeds Mercury. 'This is a cleverly narrated detective story, on an original plan, and with original and sharply drawn characters. . . . We cordially commend the work as a clever and conscientious sketch or contemporary life, and as a thoroughly entertaining " tale of two cities." '-- Galignani's Messenger. ' A detective story of far more than ordinary interest. ...

Prologue

TO A DRAMA," ETC. EonBon CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1889 [The right 0/ translation is reserved] Io DR. A. LUTAUD EDITOR OF THE 'JOURNAL DE MEDECINE DE PARIS,' PHYSICIAN TO THE ST. LAZARE HOSPITAL, ETC. THE FOLLOWING STOEY IS Peoicafeo AS A SOUVENIR OF A CONVERSATION

Chapter I

It seemed as though all traces had been lost. Entrusted with a mission which he had had some strong personal reasons for accepting, Mr. Herbert — of Gray, Longley, and Gray, solicitors, Budge Row, Cannon Street, E.C. — found himself compelled, on or about the ninth day after his arrival in Paris, to point out by letter to the firm that the investigation of the Garth case would require the special resources of experts. Allan Ridgeway Garth was absolutely undiscoverable. Up to a date easy to establish, wrote Mr. Herbert to his firm, the existence led by Allan Garth in Paris had con tinued to be the dissolute existence of which they knew. On that date he discharged the persons in his service ; relinquished, as if in consequence of a sudden determination, the suite of apartments he had tenanted in the Rue de Monceau ; offered no explanation with regard to his move ments in the future ; and then tranquilly went away.

From that date, he was lost. ' Allan Ridgeway Garth, formerly of Lancaster Gate, and late of the Rue de Monceau, Paris, is requested to commu nicate with Messrs. Gray, Longley, and Gray, solicitors, Budge Row, Cannon Street, London, E.C.' Such was the for mula which had been drawn up for insertion in the morning newspapers, front page, second column. The contingent reversioner had objected to that measure of publicity, as undesirable, or, at any rate, as premature. Mr. Herbert himself had supported the objection. The contingent rever sioner had proposed this preliminary inquiry ; and, to keep certain private matters away from the public cognisance above all, looking to the social position of the person next interestedunder the will— that is, the contingent reversioner— ot, rather, of his wife— Gray, Longley, and Gray had thought it best to charge some gentleman from their own office with the simple errand, as they conceived it, of ascertaining the whereabouts of Allan Garth in Paris.

Mr. Herbert was well acquainted with the affairs of the late Elliot Burroughes, one of the most litigious clients of the firm, and one of the richest. He had also been in social relations with the parties interested under the will. To Mr. Herbert, therefore, had been readily confided the mission of communicating with the universal legatee. For, the universal legatee of Elliot Lucas Borroughes, whose will had been proved under £650,000, was Allan Garth, supposed to be in Paris, but up to the present undis coverable. The contingent reversioner, the person next interested, was the man who had supplanted him, Ormond- Weir — the man who had twice supplanted him ; who had his exits and his entrances wherever Danae might be posturing in some temple of Thespis ; who knew every capital of Europe quite as intimately as he knew the one mile radius from St. James's Square — none other than the husband of the fashionable beauty ; the reversion would accrue to Hugh Ormond-Weir, whom everyone had heard of, who did not live in San Francisco, and against whom no one had yet whispered anything that was untrue.

Upon the issue of the mission to discover Allan Garth, a sensation drama in real life perhaps depended. It was as a pastime to the serious business of traversing life temperately upon a large independent income that Mr. George Herbert had adopted the profession of the law. He was now very near the completion of his articles with the honoured and long-estabhshed house of Gray, Longley, and Gray, whose youngest partner, C. L. (Coke Littleton), lived at Staines, came every day to the office, and was thrice a grand-parent. Mr. Herbert had for some time after the commencement of his articles viewed the successes of his calling with absolute and undisguised indifference. The zeal of the paid servants had by degrees won him from that attitude of gentlemanly unconcern. He had one day been provoked by opposition into the stubborn espousal of a client's interest : whence, to the zealous legal tutelage of other clients the transition was not difficult.

Mr. Longley joked him sometimes, in the summer, on his forensic lore ; the winter Mr. Longley, who was asthmatic, passed at Torquay. But Mr. Herbert was a sound conveyancer ; and there were no better managing-clerks east of St. Paul's Churchyard than those of the large firm of Gray, Longley, and Gray. The romantic history of Allan Garth had for an instant, at one point, remembered Mr. Herbert, touched, and rather perilously influenced, the current of his own plain life. Garth was his senior by some years. But of the two, the elder — not the younger — had been stricken down : ' Who knows not Circe, Daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, And downward fell . . . . ?' It had been the younger man who, formally smiling upon radiant Circe, had declined the proffered philter and passed on.

For Allan Garth the goblet had been filled up to the brim with gall. His brief romance, with its long, long pre lude, had so brightly opened that the lover's eyes were dazed, and he closed them, and then came the awakening. He had played earnestly a poor part in a painful comedy of love — a farce, even — the farce in which the lady laughs more loudly than the spectators — the broad farce at which there are spectators who can wince and flush, remember, bitterly regret, sigh — perhaps wish, perhaps weep. ' Garth was an idolizer,' soliloquized Mr. George Herbert ; ' he was a dreaming idolizer, and idolizers are foredoomed. Women who can compel other, if reluctant, admirations, will have it so ! Hang it ! why does the man who seeks to win the woman he loves persistently prostrate himself before her ?

How is it that the fellows who prostrate them selves the most obstinately, and the most fiercely grovel in the dust, are usually — we all know the case ! — extra lucid when they deal with everything except their own most cherished hopes, and then — purblind ! Don't thev under- 1—2 stand, hang it ! these fellows who are positively capable of supreme devotions — don't they understand what we other fellows — practical fellows, prosaic, jog-trot, wideawake, and rather selfish fellows ; what we know, for the most part, very well, that, more often than she will tell us — more often than she will acknowledge to herself — a woman takes us at our word ? Which may imply instinctive truthfulness on her own part, or merely inexperience, or weakness of character, or flabbiness of intellect : well, let us be chivalrous, and say that it always implies truthfulness, although it's no use denying that you can have all these varieties ; and if we are to be chivalrous, what is chivalry but con cession? ' Well, now, here was Garth, one of the men who cast themselves passionately at the feet of the women they love, glorifying, in the delirium of their adoration, the common dust in which their idols move.

And what happened to him ? Why, what nearly always happens. The idol watched him calmly as he grovelled in the dust, watched him abase himself, took him at his own estimate, and let him lie there. Hang it all ! it's only natural, isn't it ? And a good thing for the community, too, now and then. We get an artist in that sort of fashion, now and then; an artist who might not otherwise have been revealed ; the artist of one key usually, whether you read him in a poem, look at him in a picture, or listen to him in A minor; and sometimes he bores us. ' Deuced hard, in every way, upon the artist who has to be evolved by Woe. Perhaps we cut him persistently until he dies. But give him all we can — gold, silver, and brass ; blue, purple, and scarlet ; fine linen and goats' hair, and ranis' skins dyed red ; oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense ; and onyx, and stones to be set for the ephod and for the breastplate : give him all this, and his tent and covering, his pillars, the hangings of the court, and the hanging for the door of the court : let the wise hearted among us bring him free offerings every morninowe can never bestow upon him the one reward he would have prized.

Above all the homage of the wise and willing hearted he has placed the favour of a single woman. We may never promise him her tenderness or her gratitude. In that matter we are powerless, or worse ; for if we add our voices to his owu we may be investing with dignity and importance a single feminine caprice — the caprice, possibly, of some woman who is notoriously handsome — of a handsome woman who, though not notorious, but on the contrary esteemed, may be, for all we know, both vain and dull.' So meditated Mr. Herbert, as he loitered in the Monceau Park. Within a stone's-throw stood the former residence of Allan Garth, now even a richer man, if he could but be told of it. Garth must have sauntered often through these gardens, thought Mr. Herbert, noting the fresh myosotis beds, the lilac, and the spring verdure.

There was no reflection in the small lake of the crumbling columns at its brink. A tarnished film extended over the surface of the water and concealed its depth. A group of overhanging trees, at one spot, threw a strange gloom across the pool, stagnant under its motionless and sullied veil. A crime could be committed here, but scarcely without prompt de tection. A suicide? Was Allan Garth a man in the least likely to commit suicide ? wondered Mr. Herbert, returning to an hypothesis he had already examined and dismissed. No ; he could not think it. Their acquaintance had been slight, but he had comprehended Allan Garth, he fancied. Recalling the circumstances of their last meeting, he pictured again the gaunt figure and the melancholy face ; the faint swarthy tinge of the complexion ; the brown eyes, full and vivid ; the uncouth tufts of jet-black hair.

How long was it since they had first met? Four years? About four years. And on the very occasion of their first encounter Mr. Herbert had remarked the settled, self-contained despair which other people mocked at when the ungraceful figure of poor Garth could be distinguished in a drawing-room. He was a gentleman, as the phrase goes, by birth and education ; but he had always seemed to stand apart and alone. A great pity for him that he had not been a poor man ; that he had been left an orphan at the age when the character most stands in need of shaping and direction ; that after an odd career of solitary adventure, which might have been traced by the benefits he spread around him as he went every where, Allan Garth should have acquired no deeper know ledge of the sphere to which he was born than that which is derived from merely primitive qualities, faith and trust, for instance, in the ' duel of the sexes '—the qualities which if they displease us we can label bad form, bad style, manque de tenue, raw credulousness, crude folly, sickly boarding school sentimentality, calf-love, et cœtera : those qualities that lend themselves peculiarly to the stigma in a highly civilized state of society.

Mr. Herbert reddened as his mind went back to certain fervid passages in Allan Garth's romance. He was a man of the world himself, he rather imagined ; and his notions on'; the subject of the virile self-respect were extremely decided, excellent form. ' I tell you what it is,' he would not infrequently say, ' we are always looking in the wrong quarter for the angels and the goddesses. We are always looking for them among the women who were sent into the world to please the eye— to earn selection by the sculptor and the painter, gentlemen who will communicate quite frankly to the outer world their unbridled reverence for the corporeal perfections of the divinity, and who turn the divinity with a light heart into rent and taxes, into trades men's bills, the schooling of the children, the wages of John, Elizabeth, and Mary Ann.

And then, because when we get close to the picture we find it flat, on a dead level nearly always the same, and because when we take the statue by the delicate fingers we discover that the contact sets us thinking, not of the realms above, but of the earth, of the stone-quarry, perhaps, within the earth, or — this case is not unknown — of what there may be under the earth : because of all this, some of us will vehemently deny altogether the angels and the goddesses who do exist for our salvation here below. Why, we live in the midst of them : but they are not, as a rule, to be discerned among the faultless beauties. No ; the latter stray or intrude into their company some times, and will endeavour to simulate their heavenly ways. The faultless beauties do not shine there, though ; they don't shine as goddesses and angels until erroneous Man, afflicted with a rnyopy, invades the cenacle, and straightway spoils everything, puts everything wrong.' For the somewhat oracular train of thought in which, as the reader may have just seen, Mr. Herbert would occa sionally indulge, his biographer must not be held at all answerable.

He judged other people according to his own experiences, just as the reader, too, according to his or her own experiences, has pronounced upon other people likewise, and will pronounce, into the bargain, upon this Mr. Herbert himself, with his oracular pronouncements. A 'fashionable beauty!' Heavens — she was that, now ! — reflected Mr. Herbert, with a tinge of bitterness that Evelyn was no less a personage than that now ; and no more. A grand type of womanhood, they said. From the date of the tableaux vivants at Lord M 's, there was not one portrait which you saw displayed more prominently by photographers than the portraits — the last new — the latest — a profile — three-quarter face — authorized publication — in falling snow — greatly-admired walking dress — on horseback — boating costume — with a lily — in ball-room attire — as Cressida — the magic semblances of Evelyn Ormond-Weir : the woman Allan Garth had lived for, and so vehemently had loved.

Mr. Herbert had perused in the illustrated weekly journal edited by the brilliant Mrs. Carnaby Royster — everyone said she was brilliant, but when they said that, they meant all sorts of things — a detailed and gloating de scription of those private tableaux vivants at Lord M 's. He himself went into some good sets, coteries where the Hon. Carnaby would have been made to feel that none of the people wished to meet with him again ; and yet at the enter tainments of the M. lot, where the Hon. and Mrs. C. Royster were familiars, everybody would have stared at him, turned from him, and wondered how he ' got in.' It must have been prior to the famous tableaux vivants that Allan Garth had quitted England — prior to that occasion — yes — but subsequently to Evelyn's marriage with Hugh Ormond-Weir.

At their last meeting Garth had spoken to him with a sudden impulse as if half tempted into a confidence. They had gone out on the ' terrace ' of an ornate and vulgar villa, new ground to Mr. Herbert ; and as they leant against a high balustrade, in the deep shadow thrown by large-leaved, heavily-flowered odorous creeping plants, and looked back, across a conservatory, into the one section of the ball-room which stood out sharply visible, framed in the surrounding gloom, their talk had been loaded with a covert allusion, and insensibly they had wandered to the past. A voice had reached them from the conservatory, lamenting the great loss of the evening, the great disappointment — the absence of the newest meteor, Mrs, Ormond- Weir. What was it Garth had then so enthusiastically begun : the souvenir he had left unfinished ?

The words had been few and rapid, the phrase incomplete ; he could not recall them. But he remembered other words : the brusque interruption of his own stumbling references to the sway she exercised, this new meteor of society — the woman they had both known as Evelyn Farrar— the imperious girl whom Garth had known a little child. ' The charm for everyone is this ' — Garth had exclaimed hurriedly — ' that everyone sees in her some single trait that has always quickened his pulse from the very day he has first encountered it, no matter when, no matter where. They call it indescribable, the charm she exercises — in describable because they all yield to it — all, all ! — yes, because the charm is universal, when she chooses that it shall be so, even upon the sodden carcase, even to the empty head, they call it indescribable.

The secret of it ! In her smile, her eyes, her voice ; in her naivete' as she speaks ; in the subdued tones, almost contralto, that set the nerves vibrating when she chooses, as we shiver at some orchestral passage in Italian music ; in the unfathomable eyes, too dark to be blue, but soft or ardent, as she chooses, vacant or soul-full, just as she chooses ; in the smile, yes, by Heaven ! — has she that smile from Heaven for good or for bad? — above all, in the unnerving smile.' Exactly the effect he had himself tried to analyze, com mented Mr. Herbert ; it was unnerving, that unusual smile. As for the soul-full eyes, he had gazed into them with curiosity more than once — with challenge as well as with cool curiosity — but, for his own part, he had sought in vain for ' soul ' — in vain, likewise, for remarkable softness.

We think in contrasts and similitudes. As he turned from the dun, commonplace artificial lake which a momentary disordered imagining had invested with mysterious guilt — the guilt of a silent pool planned by some evil principle in nature, haunted by the facile Naiad of crime tragically alluring and ever placid— as he once more bent his steps in the direction of that house, within a stone's-throw, whence the disappearance of Allan Garth had apparently been final, Mr. Herbert very sadly, in his mind, looked upon this picture and on this — upon the grace seated on the white brow of the black-haired Aphrodite whose name was Evelyn, and then on his faint image of his homely friend. Garth had a smile, too, thought Mr. Herbert, and it was odd how inexpressively he smiled. Not a detail of his physiognomy revealed the spirit within.

Downright ugliness would sometimes prove the luckiest of all possible endowments ; people were so ready to infer tremendous intellectual force from seamed, forbidding features ; and charlatans who happened to be physically repellent might possess a dual advantage over the Merely Beautiful of their immortal order, ugliness being, as the marriageable young French lady objected, ' not ephemeral, like beauty.' But Garth was unredeemed, so far as externals went, even by ugliness. A good masculine ugliness might have fascinated Evelyn Farrar ; well, no — he was simply insignificant. Although, when he lounged in a room, he stood a shade taller than most of those present, the eye never rested on him. Garth had at times a certain smile, too, but it always seemed to stop short, and to fade away too soon.

The happiness that is the sole magician of this world — that, after all, can paint the lily, and can gild refined gold — had been withheld from him ; and when the smile which Mr. Herbert had seen once or twice did promise a transfiguration, too surely and too awk wardly it vanished, as if in despair at the ordeal of lighting up that terribly null countenance. A few days ago, how trivial to him all these matters would have appeared ! But on trivial matters the momentous issues of our lives were continually depending. ' A pity Garth has always been a rich man,' repeated Mr. Herbert; 'if he had been poor enough, he had it in him to make a name.' Yesterday the concierge at the house in the Rue de Monceau had made some incidental reference to the visit of a lady — an English comtesse, perhaps — could not pronounce positively as to the nation, but a person of rank, he should say, and, if English — Sapristi !

The lady was accompanied by a person of the middle age, a Frenchwoman : not her maid, evidently, but not her equal, either : a dame de compagnie, quoi! Well, they had called shortly before the sudden departure of M. Garth. It was one afternoon when he, the concierge, had been left alone in charge of the lodge, his wife having gone to see her invalid aunt, to take her some alleviating presents from M. Garth himself, to whom they had spoken of her sad case, and who was generosity embodied, and rich with that : pas beau, but of a goodness ! M. Garth was perhaps a lord in his own country ? No? Well, that didn't matter. He had a true distinction — the inelegance of the best world, and he looked all the more inelegant from being so tall. On that afternoon, M. Garth having just gone to bed, as the valet came downstairs and told them — oh, he lived ! he led a life ! — what should they see but a telegraph-messenger and a cab reaching the door at the same instant, both the cabman and the telegraph-messenger demanding M. Garth — M. Garth, who never before had received any telegram at that address, and who, as to visitors, resided in Paris in order to be alone.

For he had once proffered that explanation, deeming it due, no doubt, on account of the seclusion in which he was enveloped, so far as the people of his own world were concerned. Odd, was it not — a man still young, rich, and not naturally inclined to debauch, because anybody could see that wdio had gone through the world a little — to see a man like that forcing himself to live a life like that ! Madame Furet, concierge down the street, had said it was remorse. ' What became of the valet ?' Mr. Herbert had inquired. ' Oh, the first could not stay ; there was no animation for him, and he always required his masters to be gay, and to have confidence in him, trusting to his discretion.' ' Well, where is he ?' ' Aristide? Oh, Aristide is dead. That was the first of the two. He left to be valet de chambre with the Baronne Roc, Rue de la Falaise, and died of a chaud-et-froid, a chill caught on a night they gave a ball.' ' And the other ?' ' The other was Celestin, who liked his liberty, and was much grieved to part with M. Garth.

The place just suited him. Celestin could not have told you more than I am telling you. It was Celestin who was here when that English lady made that visit ; and I remember that he ran downstairs again, to say he was thunderstruck.' ' Who ?' ' Celestin. It was Celestin who was thunderstruck ' 'Ah?' ' Yes. When he handed to his master the card which the English lady gave him, his master turned so white and looked so frightful, and trembled so, that Celestin was trans fixed. " I thought the end had come," said he to me — " I thought I should have to look out for another place to morrow." ' ' Did he read the name on the card ?' ' No, he did not ; which, as my wife told him afterwards, was a strange forgetfulness. There was writing on the card, but not in French. He searched everywhere for the card, subsequently, but never could find it.

Then he listened at the door while they were talking, but, of course, he could not understand. Celestin thought that the illness had come all at once ; we knew that the illness would come, someday. An existence like that ! And never able to sleep ! Celestin dressed him that afternoon ; and, all the while, he did not say a single word to Celestin.' ' Did you remark the demeanour of these ladies — any agitation ' ' The younger — that is, the mistress, of course — was angry when they saw the telegram delivered. They had sent the telegram themselves, it appeared, to announce their visit ; but telegrams— you know what telegrams are: expensive letters that don't hurry themselves — ha ! ha ! ha !' ' And when they went away ?' ' Oh, I did not pay any attention. My wife had come back, and was telling me about her aunt.

All that good wine would have been wasted on her aunt, and so she had brought some home again.' That happened yesterday. Mr. Herbert, who knew his Paris, opened his present visit by dropping a small gold coin into the child's money-box, which stood upon the table of the lodge. The lodge-keeper's wife brought forward the best chair. ' Since yesterday,' said she, ' we have been turning over in our minds the occurrences which monsieur has more par ticularly inquired about. It was a love affair, that's certain; and I always said it was. Madame Furet, down the street, insisted for a long time that it was remorse: "There is a crime in his history," declared Madame Furet, " and he has come here to hide away, and he is tortured by remorse ; and we shall see grave events in this street, mark my words."

But I knew it was a chagrin d' amour, as we say — I knew it before he had been here a couple of days — a chagrin, but a terrible one. You could see that he was for ever and ever turning the knife in the wound. You could see that he was only leading that life because he wanted to forget, and could not. I said that he was right, because otherwise what would have happened ? He had no work for distracting his attention, and I could see the day — if he should cease, out of weariness or horror, living so madly — when this house would have been talked of in the newspapers. We should have had a suicide in this house.' ' Oh, you must be exaggerating,' suggested Mr. Herbert, with a return of his own doubts. ' No exaggeration at all ! We had a case of suicide in the house we kept before we came here : a banker whose wife went off with a baritone singer who left her after three months to marry a rich widow, twice his age, who took theBouffes- Gaulois for him, and made him the manager of it, and lost a great deal of money.