DEPRIVED of its promised dramatic sensation scene, the trial which came on in the next week was, being mere repetition of what had been heard before, to all but the interested parties, a comparatively tame affair. By tacit consent the case was not mentioned again between Gastineau and Herriard. There were one or two points on which Geoffrey would have liked his mentor’s advice, but he forbore to ask it; and, on the whole, was well content, save for the responsibility of Alexia’s reputation which was in his hands, to take for once the whole burden of a big case on his shoulders.
He was nervous, more nervous than he had ever been before, but that was to be accounted for by other than professional reasons. Victory, he felt, would mean everything to him: yet there were moments when he could almost wish for defeat. It was something, however, to think that if he won, it would be by his own unaided conduct of the case, and somehow he felt that he would not care for Gastineau to have a hand in the victory.
Countess Alexia repeated her denial of all knowledge of how Captain Martindale came by his death with unswerving, convincing straightforwardness: the Duke of Lancashire had his uncomfortable quarter of an hour in the witness-box, but got off with less ridicule than might have been expected, although with a by no means modified conviction that persons of his class should be by law exempt from such appearances, or at least from cross-examination. The truculent and uncompromising Macvee made a fiercely argumentative appeal to common sense on behalf of his clients; Herriard an equally logical and more chivalrously passionate speech for the Countess, who was the real defendant, and at the end of a two days’ trial, after an ominously long deliberation, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty against the peccant editors who were duly mulcted in heavy fines, and one, the worst offender, to a short term of imprisonment.
So the victory was gained; the popular appetite, which was getting rather tired of the food, was satisfied; yet, somehow, there seemed, after all, to be a cloud over it in place of the glorious sunshine there should have been. This feeling was borne uncomfortably in upon Geoffrey Herriard as he went back to his chambers in the Temple. There was joy in his heart: he could still feel in his own the grateful—might he not now think loving?—pressure of Alexia’s hand when he had congratulated her and received for a reward a look that told him his happiness was assured. Yet, underneath all this elation, there lurked the thought that it was an unsatisfactory victory. Doubt, that terrible doubt, that hateful bugbear, had not been, as he had hoped, utterly and finally annihilated. The verdict had seemed half-hearted, as though gained by sympathy against men’s harder judgment. Campion’s testimony was, so to speak, in the air; but it had not been admitted, for there had been no time between his wounding and his death to find a magistrate to take his depositions.
Macvee had rather curled his lip at the lagging verdict. “What you people had better do now,” he had said gruffly to Herriard as they gathered up their briefs, “is to move heaven and earth to find out who did kill Martindale. A pity for all parties Campion came to an untimely end; I should dearly like to have had him in that box.”
“It is just as well for your client’s liberty and pockets you hadn’t,” Herriard had retorted, with a laugh. “The man and his evidence were absolutely genuine.”
“They all are—in the solicitor’s office,” came the cynical reply. “Anyhow, I should have liked to try a touch of the acid—the lingua fortis—eh?”
There are men with whom it is as futile to argue as to reason with a drunkard; men whose logic is a sneer or a shout, whose axioms are adaptable to their line of argument, whose postulates are taken for granted, and whose conclusions consist, fittingly, in having the last word.
Mr. Macvee went off with a self-satisfied nod, strong in the assumption that Campion’s death was a piece of bad luck for him, and, indeed, had lost him his case. Herriard, when he had congratulated and taken leave of Countess Alexia and her brother, left the Courts with his mind full of the situation’s perplexity.
“We must not rest till Martindale’s murderer is found,” he said seriously to Mr. Bowyer, the solicitor, who, with his dapper managing clerk, was waiting for him in the corridor.
Old John Bowyer pursed his lips. He was eminent and highly respectable in his line, and his line was not the hunting down of criminals.
“You think the result inconclusive, Mr. Herriard?” asked Mr. Lee-Barker, the managing clerk, in a tone wherein professional deference to counsel’s opinion hardly suggested that he had not one of his own.
“It must be inconclusive,” Herriard replied emphatically. “We have won our case; so far Countess Alexia’s reputation is cleared—legally. But she can hardly be quite satisfied with that.”
“Quite so,” observed Mr. Bowyer, in his habitual tone of non-committal.
“The villain of the piece must be unmasked,” chimed in Mr. Lee-Barker pleasantly. He had had the working-up of the case, and was duly pleased with himself, without being in any violent hurry to pursue it farther. Sufficient unto the day, he told himself, is the verdict thereof; at least, when that verdict is favourable.
“Yes,” pursued Herriard earnestly, “he must be found, and without loss of time.”
Mr. Lee-Barker wondered why in the world a counsel of Herriard’s standing and ability should be so keen outside his brief. A smart little man was Mr. Lee-Barker, with an enviable reputation in certain circles in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Surbiton, where he lived; and he believed in smartness as a paying quality, but not in Quixotism or works of supererogation. So he merely smiled, as deprecating zeal without instructions, and glanced at his chief with a suggestion of getting back to the office.
“Quite so,” old Bowyer assented to Herriard’s urgency: “but it is rather a matter for Scotland Yard, is it not, Mr. Herriard?”
“No doubt,” Geoffrey answered. “But they ought to be kept up to the mark.”
“We can scarcely move in the matter in the absence of instructions,” put in Mr. Lee-Barker, tempering his impatience with the deference due to an eminent verdict-gaining counsel.
“No, I suppose not,” Herriard returned, with a touch of impatience. “I will speak to Count von Rohnburg.”
In his chambers Herriard threw off his wig and gown, and sat down to review the position; Alexia’s position, which was now, he told himself with joy, his own. He was impatient to claim his reward; not, indeed, reward, since his victory was its own recompense, but the fulfilment of Alexia’s implied promise, now that the dark cloud was driven away, that she would accept his love. But he could scarcely present himself before her just then; justifiable as his eagerness might be, it would not be decent. So that evening he must not go to Green Street; he must nurse his impatience: there was a busy night in the House of Commons, he would spend the hours there.
And Gastineau? The thought of his friend rose, for the first time during their acquaintance, uncomfortably to his mind. In the ordinary course he would have called at the hidden-away house in Mayfair first of all to report his victory. But to-day he could not bring himself to do it. He was conscious of a feeling, the extent of which he could not measure, which seemed to hold him back. There would be no pleasure, but distaste rather, in going to Gastineau’s that afternoon. Why? His friend was unsympathetic, they were at issue about the case: he had won it practically without Gastineau’s assistance, and he might feel a little awkwardly conscious on that score. The subject had been dropped between them; still, Herriard could hardly ignore the result, and had no wish to proclaim it. Gastineau’s was the acuter mind, the stronger will; he had taught Herriard almost everything by which he had profited, and had imparted—that by force of genius—the knack of success. To the younger man their relations were, and probably would always be, those of master and pupil: the stronger will, the greater determination would always stand over the weaker. It was, perhaps, the sign of a certain weakness in Herriard’s character that he shrank from meeting Gastineau that afternoon. A stronger man would have gone; Herriard kept telling himself that he ought not to make an exception on that of all days; and then he objected that he would not go because Gastineau had practically declared his belief in Alexia’s guilt. It would have been better for him, perhaps, had he gone; however, a certain self-consciousness and resentment kept him away, and thereby he forged a weapon against himself.
In an unsettled state of mind he set himself to gather up and put away the papers connected with the case. Among them was a note he had taken of Campion’s last words, his description of the man he had seen in the hansom. “I could swear,” it ran, “that he was the same man I saw jumping from the window at Vaux House when Captain Martindale was killed. A dark man, with a pale face and piercing eyes, clean-shaven, and with straight black hair worn rather long. He looked like a foreigner.”
So much Campion had told.
That was all. And the great question now remained, who was the man? The description was definite enough; nevertheless the police had come across no such person; they were completely at a loss now, for the suspect, so fully described, had absolutely vanished. Herriard feared that Scotland Yard might, when baffled, relax its efforts; to clear Countess Alexia, rather than to bring the unknown to justice, it was all-important to him that they should not.
He folded the note of Campion’s statement into his pocket-book, and, on his way to the House, called upon the Chief Commissioner, whom he knew, and urged him to keep his men up to the mark in the hunt, and this, the official readily assured him, should be done.
Next day Herriard received an invitation to dine that evening at Green Street; he accepted it with elation, in happy anticipation of the sealing of his betrothal. On his way he called at Gastineau’s.
Luckily there were several other matters to speak of before the awkward subject was touched upon. Herriard could not help noticing that his friend seemed strangely indifferent, giving points of advice and direction almost mechanically; over the whole consultation there was an air of unreality, of insincerity. This Herriard was inclined, somewhat, perhaps, against his acuter judgment, to put down to the other’s state of health. Presently he asked Gastineau if he were suffering.
“Oh, no; not particularly,” was the answer, given with an enigmatical smile, “I am as well as I can ever expect to be.” Then, with a swift change, “Where are you dining to-night?”
“At Green Street, with the von Rohnburgs,” Herriard answered, as casually as he could.
“Ah! So you won your case yesterday.” The penetrating eyes were upon him with their snake-like glitter. Herriard saw, but did not meet them.
“Yes; as you predicted.”
“Did I? Ah, yes. You see you did not lose much by Campion’s disappearance from the scene.”
“I am inclined to think we did,” Herriard replied. “We just got our verdict, and I fancy that was all.”
“H’m!” Gastineau shut his thin lips significantly. “Perhaps it is not to be wondered at. You did not bring me the news after Court yesterday.”
Herriard turned now and faced the question which lay beneath the reproach. “For two reasons,” he replied boldly. “One, I had to hurry off to the House, and was kept there. The Government were in a bad way, and the opportunity had to be made the most of.”
“Quite right,” Gastineau agreed. “And reason number two? Forgive my curiosity, but you mentioned a second.”
“Reason number two,” Herriard answered, with a short laugh, “was that I did not think you took a very devouring interest in the case.”
“Why, my dear fellow? Why should you think that? On the contrary, I have taken great interest in it.”
“I am afraid,” said Herriard, “our interests were not the same.” For an instant Gastineau looked at him searchingly, almost defiantly; then he laughed, as he rejoined, “My dear Geof, interest is an equivocal word. Beyond a professional attraction my only interest is your success and advancement. In this case I happen to hold a different opinion from yours, but surely that need not lessen my interest.”
Herriard put back the thought, still it had risen to his mind that Gastineau’s speech was not quite genuine. The words, graceful enough in themselves, relating to his interest in his pupil’s advancement were glibly and perfunctorily spoken; an insincere formula, like a doctor’s expression of sorrow at a patient’s ill-health.
“Anyhow,” he said, “I was not particularly elated at what might be considered a grudging verdict, and as I had no other news it did not seem very vital to hurry to bring you that.”
“I see,” Gastineau responded coldly, his manner plainly showing he hardly accepted the excuse as valid. “So you are going to dine with the Countess. I hope, my dear boy, you are not really becoming épris in that quarter.”
“I dare say I am,” Herriard replied quietly. “But then I hold a different opinion of her from yours.”
Gastineau lay very still, and his face was white, deadly white. “You will regret it,” he said, just moving his lips, in the absence or repression of all feeling; Herriard could not be sure which.
“I think not; I am sure I shall never regret it,” he returned, with conviction.
“And I,” Gastineau rejoined, in a stronger but still hard, passionless tone, “am as absolutely convinced that you will.”
Herriard took a step toward him, holding out his hand. “I had better say good-night. We do not seem likely to agree on this, and we must not quarrel.”
Gastineau raised a listless hand. “Good-night,” he responded, with a brooding significance. “You will go on your own way, then; but I have warned you.”
A light of vague, horrible suspicion came into Herriard’s eyes.
“Gastineau,” he exclaimed, “do you know any real reason why I—I should take your warning?”
Gastineau had drawn his hand away sharply. “Nothing in the past,” he answered, “nothing for certain, at any rate. My only reason is my absolute certainty that you will repent this step if you take it.”
“Why should I?” Herriard demanded.
“That I cannot tell you. It will appear soon enough.” There seemed almost a threat behind the words.
“I will take my chance of that,” Herriard said, turning to go.
Gastineau’s voice, sharp to peremptoriness, stayed him. “You are going to marry the Countess Alexia?”
“I think so.”
“Think so? You are engaged?”
“Hardly. But I hope to be to-night.” Then to soften the tone of their leave-taking he added, “I am sorry I cannot expect your good wishes.”
Gastineau’s face seemed set hard as a dead man’s. “They could not be genuine,” he replied in a cold, incisive tone. “The best wish would be that this folly may come to nothing. And I think it will.”
Herriard saw the futility of saying more, so, with just a glance at the grey face, cruel in its rigidity, he left him.