CHAPTER XXVIII
WHICH TELLS OF AN UNEXPECTED TURN OF EVENTS
It seems that coroner and jury had not spent quite so much time over luncheon as the more or less interested spectators. When the crowd began to file back again into the seats, the coroner had already examined and dismissed one witness and was questioning another.
The past and present servants of the Grosvenor Square household would all have to pass before the coroner during the course of this long afternoon. It was only two o'clock and already the gas had to be lighted—two incandescent burners just above the coroner's table—hard, uncompromising lights, that threw a sickly green tinge on every face and cast deep black shadows under every eye.
It was this light no doubt that made Luke's face seem positively ghastly to Louisa: it looked almost like a death-mask, so deep and cavernous did the eyes appear, and so hollow the cheeks. He was sitting in his usual attitude, with arms folded, between Mr. Dobson and one of the women in seedy black whose presence here had puzzled every one.
Old Parker, ex-butler to Lord Radclyffe, was giving evidence. He had a tale to tell, how Mr. de Mountford "went on awful" when he—the innocent, well-drilled servant—had thought it his duty to introduce Mr. Philip into his lordship's presence.
"Just think of it, your honour," he exclaimed, "his lordship's rightful heir."
Then he added with calm effrontery:
"Mr. Luke 'e give me the sack then and there! He was that wild!"
Just a paltry, silly, meaningless revenge. The death-mask on Luke's face relaxed for a moment when he looked on the fat creature standing before the jury, vainly trying to look pompous and self-righteous, and only succeeding in being a liar.
The evidence would have been of little worth, but for the corroboration from other servants of the Grosvenor Square household. The present two—man and wife—wastrels and drunkards, counted for nothing: they had only entered Lord Radclyffe's service recently when all visitors had ceased from calling at the inhospitable house, and they had seen little or nothing of Luke; but the others—those whom Philip's arbitrary temper had driven out of the house—they had many a tale to tell of the dead man's arrogance, his contemptuous treatment of his younger kinsman, and the bitter words that often flew between the cousins, when doors closed and eavesdroppers were behind the key-holes.
These witnesses—an ex-housekeeper, a footman, a maid—were trying their best, poor things, to "do the right thing by Mr. Luke," little guessing how ill they succeeded. They had been dragged into this much against their will. As a class they hated the police and its doings, even though the cook might occasionally show a preference for the local guardian of peace and order. As for the detective in plain clothes, the man who wore a peaked cap instead of the familiar helmet, him they hated and feared, especially since he seemed to mean mischief for Mr. Luke.
They gave their evidence unwillingly; every admission had to be dragged out of them, once they realized that the revelations of past quarrels between "the gentlemen" would not be to the detriment of the dead, only perhaps to the undoing of the living.
The hours wore on wearily. The atmosphere now surcharged with the heat from the gas brackets had become intolerably oppressive. Opoponax and white heliotrope waxed faint to the nostrils. Through the badly fitting window frame something of the outward fog had penetrated into the room. It hung about in the air, round the gas that burned yellow and dim through it, and obscured the far corners of the place, throwing a veil over the twelve mutes in uniform overcoats with threadbare velvet collars, over the eager and perspiring journalists whose fountain pens had scraped the paper incessantly for so long.
Hot, tired, and oppressed humanity made its warm breath felt in the close, ill-ventilated room. Smelling-salts would not dispel the unpleasantly mingling odours of damp clothes and muddy boots which rose from the plebeian crowd in the rear.
But nobody stirred; no one would have thought of leaving before the last act of this interesting play. The chief actor was not on the stage for the moment, but his presence was felt. It was magnetic in its appeal to excitement. Every question put by the coroner, every reply given by the witnesses, had, as it were, Luke de Mountford for its aim: every word tended toward him, his undoing, the enmeshing of his denials in the close web of circumstantial evidence.
The man in the shabby clothes, who looked like a beetle, and who had marshalled his companions into the court room early in the day, was called upon by the usher to come forward. His strange, poorly-clad figure detached itself from the groups immediately round him, his long, loose limbs seeming to swing themselves forward.
His four companions—the three women and the other man—were seized apparently with great agitation and whispered eagerly among themselves. No one in the crowd could guess why these people had been called. They seemed so completely out of the picture which had its invisible frame in Grosvenor Square.
"Go on, Jim!" whispered one of the young women, "they can't do nothing to ye."
And the beetle-like creature shambled forward, with arms gangling beside him, a humble, apologetic look on his care-worn face. He might have been any age from thirty to sixty; time and a perpetual struggle for existence had wiped way all traces of actual age. The cheeks were hollow, and eyes, mouth, and moustache had a droop which added to the settled melancholy of the face.
He was obviously very nervous and looked across at his own friends, who strove to encourage him by signs and whispers.
He nearly dropped the Bible when it was handed to him, and no one could really hear the oath which he repeated mechanically at the usher's bidding.
At last he mustered up a sufficient amount of courage to state his name and address.
"James Baker," he said in answer to the coroner's question. "Bricklayer by trade."
"And where do you live?"
"At 147 Clapham Junction Road, sir," replied the man, scarcely above a whisper.
"Speak up, please," admonished the coroner, "the jury can't hear you. You came here, I understand, prepared to make a statement?"
"Yes, sir."
"Of what nature?"
The man shifted his position from one leg to the other. Heavy beads of perspiration stood out on his pallid forehead.
"Go on, Jim; don't be afeeard," came from the body of the court.
"Silence there!" commanded the usher.
"I wished to say, sir," resumed the man, trying to steady his voice, "that the deceased whom I saw lying in the coffin yonder is my own son, Paul Baker, sir."
"Your son!"
"My son, sir," asserted the man somewhat more steadily, "my son, and 'is mother's, as is sitting over there. My son, Paul Baker, as left 'ome two year ago come next Christmas. We all come 'ere, sir, to-day, me and 'is mother and sister an' Smith an' Jane—we all come 'ere to swear to 'im."
"Your son!"
The exclamation once more came from the coroner, but had any one else dared, that exclamation would have been echoed and reëchoed by every mouth in the court room, coupled with emphatic ejaculations of incredulity.
It was as if in a new castle of some grim, sleeping monster a magic wand had touched every somnolent spirit. Smelling salts and scented handkerchiefs were forgotten: the jurymen leaned forward half across the table, oblivious of their own dignity, in their endeavour to obtain a fuller view of this wielder of the magic wand: the beetle-like creature with the sad eyes and pale, hollow cheeks. Even the reporters—accustomed to sensational events—gave up scribbling in order to stare open-mouthed at the shabby figure standing by the table.
At first, of course, the predominant sensation was one of sweeping incredulity. Coroner and jury had met here to-day in this stuffy room in order to conduct an inquiry on the death of Philip de Mountford, heir presumptive to the earldom of Radclyffe. The crowd of fashionable and idle gapers had pushed and jostled in order to hear the ugly story of how wealth and position are fought for and intrigued for even at the cost of crime.
And now to think that the man who lay dead was just a bricklayer's son! It was absolutely incredible. Not till a few moments later did the spectators realize that, if the seedy man at the table spoke truly, then they were witnessing a drama even more poignant than that of the original murder; a drama of deception and of fraud, and a mystery far deeper than that which had originally confronted the sensation mongers.
Strangely enough, incredulity died down, and died down very quickly. A subtle wave filled the murky atmosphere compelling every mind to belief, long before the man's assertions were proved to be correct. The most indifferent became conscious of an overwhelming conviction that the witness was speaking the truth.
This conviction was absolutely paramount in the minds of the chief actors in the play. To them all, to Colonel Harris and to Louisa, to Mr. Dobson and the solicitors, the truth of the statement was never in question. An unerring instinct forced them to believe: and such beliefs are as unconquerable as they are overwhelming. Truth that is an absolute, unquestionable truth finds its way to the mind, when the latter is attuned to subtle or psychic impressions.
And as the truth was borne in upon these people, so did they realize the fulness of its meaning, the deep significance of its portent.
To some of them it seemed as if in a brilliantly illuminated world, all the lights had suddenly been extinguished: to others, as if in a dark and intricate cavern, full of black, impenetrable shadows, dazzling lights had been suddenly switched on.
Louisa, looking across at Luke, saw that to him it meant the latter, and that some of the new, dazzling light had illumined the darkness of his soul.
Something of the tense rigidity of his attitude had gone from him: not the sorrow perhaps, but the blank hopelessness of a misery that flounders in a sea of the unknown.