The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales. Эдгар Аллан По

neatly dove-tailed did not necessarily weaken one another, the fitting so well together of the whole rather making for the truth of the parts. Besides, the case for the prosecution was as far from being all hypothesis as the case for the defense was from excluding hypothesis. The key, the letter, the reluctance to produce the letter, the heated interview with Constant, the misstatement about the prisoner’s destination, the flight to Liverpool, the false tale about searching for a “him,” the denunciations of Constant, all these were facts. On the other hand, there were various lacunae and hypotheses in the case for the defense. Even conceding the somewhat dubious alibi afforded by the prisoner’s presence at Euston at 5:25 a. m., there was no attempt to account for his movements between that and 7:15 a. m. It was as possible that he returned to Bow as that he lingered about Euston. There was nothing in the medical evidence to make his guilt impossible. Nor was there anything inherently impossible in Constant’s yielding to the sudden temptation of a beautiful girl, nor in a working-girl deeming herself deserted, temporarily succumbing to the fascinations of a gentleman and regretting it bitterly afterward. What had become of the girl was a mystery. Hers might have been one of those nameless corpses which the tide swirls up on slimy river banks. The jury must remember, too, that the relation might not have actually passed into dishonor, it might have been just grave enough to smite the girl’s conscience, and to induce her to behave as she had done. It was enough that her letter should have excited the jealousy of the prisoner. There was one other point which he would like to impress on the jury, and which the counsel for the prosecution had not sufficiently insisted upon. This was that the prisoner’s guiltiness was the only plausible solution that had ever been advanced of the Bow Mystery. The medical evidence agreed that Mr. Constant did not die by his own hand. Someone must therefore have murdered him. The number of people who could have had any possible reason or opportunity to murder him was extremely small. The prisoner had both reason and opportunity. By what logicians called the method of exclusion, suspicion would attach to him on even slight evidence. The actual evidence was strong and plausible, and now that Mr. Wimp’s ingenious theory had enabled them to understand how the door could have been apparently locked and bolted from within, the last difficulty and the last argument for suicide had been removed. The prisoner’s guilt was as clear as circumstantial evidence could make it. If they let him go free, the Bow Mystery might henceforward be placed among the archives of unavenged assassinations. Having thus well-nigh hung the prisoner, the judge wound up by insisting on the high probability of the story for the defense, though that, too, was dependent in important details upon the prisoner’s mere private statements to his counsel. The jury, being by this time sufficiently muddled by his impartiality, were dismissed, with the exhortation to allow due weight to every fact and probability in determining their righteous verdict.

      The minutes ran into hours, but the jury did not return. The shadows of night fell across the reeking, fevered court before they announced their verdict—

      “Guilty.”

      The judge put on his black cap.

      The great reception arranged outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped cur.

      CHAPTER XI

      “So you were right,” Denzil could not help saying as he greeted Grodman a week afterward. “I shall not live to tell the story of how you discovered the Bow murderer.”

      “Sit down,” growled Grodman; “perhaps you will after all.” There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had spoken.

      “I sent for you,” Grodman said, “to tell you that on the night Wimp arrested Mortlake I had made preparations for your arrest.”

      Denzil gasped, “What for?”

      “My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame you for not being satisfied with Jane—she is a good servant but a bad mistress—but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the contract with Kitty.”

      “They both know it now well enough, curse ’em,” said the poet.

      “Yes; your secrets are like your situations—you can’t keep them long. My poor poet, I pity you—betwixt the devil and the deep sea.”

      “They’re a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of an arrest for bigamy. Neither loves me.”

      “I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in my house to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant one in Wimp’s house to tell Wimp’s secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then.”

      “Upon my honor you wrong me. Jane brought me here, not I Jane. As for Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as at finding her installed in Wimp’s house.”

      “She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides, she probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane’s. She must do something for a living; you wouldn’t do anything for hers. And so you couldn’t go anywhere without meeting a wife! Ha! ha! ha! Serve you right, my polygamous poet.”

      “But why should you arrest me?”

      “Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best friend you ever had in this cold, prosaic world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my book, smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an important piece of information bearing on a mystery about which I am thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp.”

      “I did-didn’t,” stammered Denzil.

      “Liar! Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested for—your treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was going to make a greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to do, then I forgave you. I let you walk about the earth—and drink—freely. Now it is Wimp who crows—everybody pats him on the back—they call him the mystery man of the Scotland-Yard tribe. Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged, and all through your telling Wimp about Jessie Dymond!”

      “It was you yourself,” said Denzil sullenly. “Everybody was giving it up. But you said ‘Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the last few months of his life.’ Wimp couldn’t miss stumbling on Jessie sooner or later. I’d have throttled Constant, if I had known he’d touched her,” he wound up with irrelevant indignation.

      Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked ad majorem gloriam of Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the Christmas dinner?

      “What’s past is past,” he said gruffly. “But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you go to Portland.”

      “How can I help Tom hanging?”

      “Help the agitation as much as you can. Write letters under all sorts of names to all the papers. Get everybody you know to sign the great petition. Find out where Jessie Dymond is—the girl who holds the proof of Tom Mortlake’s innocence.”

      “You really believe him innocent?”

      “Don’t be satirical, Denzil. Haven’t I taken the chair at all the meetings? Am I not the most copious correspondent of the Press?”

      “I thought it was only to spite Wimp.”

      “Rubbish. It’s to save poor Tom. He no more murdered Arthur Constant than—you did!” He laughed an unpleasant laugh.

      Denzil bade him farewell, frigid with fear.

      Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams. Somehow he had become the leader of the rescue party—suggestions, subscriptions came from all sides. The suggestions were burnt, the subscriptions acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl. Lucy Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds. It was a fine testimony to her faith in her dead lover’s honor.

      The release of the Jury had unloosed “The Greater