The Crime and the Criminal Part 76

Some of them, which bore unmistakable traces of feminine handiwork and taste, he threw, after the portrait, into the fire. He opened a large despatch-box which stood upon a table at one side. From among its varied contents he took all sorts of things--a glove, a knot of ribbon, a menu card, some programmes of dances, a chocolate bonbon, a variety of trivial impedimenta with which one would hardly have thought such a man would have cared to be troubled. Last of all he took out four or five envelopes addressed to himself in what was evidently a woman's hand.

"My love letters!--love letters! I doubt if there was a word of love in one of them, except that which came to me this morning. In our courts.h.i.+p hitherto love letters have scarcely entered. There has been no opportunity. It is another case of what might have been--and yet these are my love letters, for they were written by her hand, and these are my love tokens, because they are tokens of certain pa.s.sages which she has had with me. Nor must they become their spoil. These sort of tales find their way into so many sorts of papers that, for her sake, it is well that I have had time enough to destroy what might tend to show that I ever was engaged--save the mark!--to marry Miss Jardine."

He threw the letters and the various trivialities together into the fire, breaking up the coals to enable them to burn the faster. He stood watching their destruction. When they were entirely consumed he turned away, the finger of his right hand in his waistcoat pocket, apparently feeling for something which was there.

"I think that that is all; now I'm ready."

"That, young man, is just as well, because so am I."

The voice came from behind his back. Mr. Townsend showed no sign of being startled, nor did he evince any anxiety to turn and inquire into the speaker's personality. He stood, for a moment, as if he was endeavouring to recall to his memory the tones of the speaker's voice.

He turned at last, at his leisure, and with a smile--

"Mr. Haines?"

It was Mr. Haines. His sudden appearance was explained by the fact that he had obviously just stepped from behind a pair of curtains which concealed the entrance to an inner room. He still held one of the curtains in his hand. He eyed Mr. Townsend in silence, one hand being in suggestive proximity to the hip pocket in his trousers in which the Westerner is apt to keep his gun.

"Yes, I am Mr. Haines."

"I am glad to have the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Haines. Might I ask you to be good enough to select your own chair?"

Mr. Haines took no notice of Mr. Townsend's gesture of almost exaggerated courtesy. Manner and tone alike were dogged.

"I've been watching you."

"I am gratified to think that any action of mine should have been esteemed worthy your attention."

"The woman said that you weren't in. I said I'd wait. I knew you'd come. She fidgeted. So I stepped behind the curtains. I thought trouble might be saved."

"It was very thoughtful, Mr. Haines, of you, indeed."

Mr. Haines moved away from the curtains. He came farther into the room, his hand still in the neighbourhood of his pistol pocket, his eyes never wandering from Mr. Townsend's face.

"Last night I reckoned with your brother."

"My brother?"

"He says he is your brother. He let it out as I was laying into him.

And he's about your style all over. He calls himself Stewart Trevannion, and he's a thief, but not near such a thief as you."

"Is that so? May I inquire, Mr. Haines, what I have done that you should say I am a thief?"

"You've stole my girl."

"Your girl?" Mr. Townsend raised his eyebrows slightly, but still sufficiently for the movement to be perceptible. "Are you alluding to Mrs. Carruth?"

"Mrs. Carruth? No, young man, I am not alluding, as you call it, to Mrs. Carruth."

"I thought that Mrs. Carruth could hardly be adequately described as a girl."

"Is it sneering at Mrs. Carruth you are?"

Mr. Haines's idiom, on the sudden, became flavoured with, as it were, a reminiscence of Ireland.

"I trust that I never, Mr. Haines, shall be guilty of so heinous a crime as sneering at a lady. I believe that I am merely a.s.serting a fact in venturing to express an opinion that Mrs. Carruth can hardly be adequately described as a girl."

Mr. Townsend's exaggeration of courtesy, suggesting more than it expressed, seemed to be something for which Mr. Haines was unprepared.

He hesitated, as if in doubt; then repeated his previous a.s.sertion.

"You've stole my girl, and I've come to call you to account."

"I am unconscious of having conveyed from you any property of the kind.

Of whom are you speaking as your girl?"

"My Loo."

"Your----" Mr. Townsend obviously started, regaining his self-possession only after a momentary pause. "I am still, Mr. Haines, so unfortunate as to be unable to follow you."

"Whether she was known to you as Louisa Haines, or Louise O'Donnel, or Milly Carroll, she was my girl. You stole her. You killed her. I am here to kill you for it."

There was silence. The two men eyed each other. Mr. Haines with that sullen, dogged look upon his face which it was used to wear; Mr.

Townsend with the natural expression of the man who has just been told a sudden startling, wholly unexpected piece of news. He seemed to find it so startling a piece of news as to be almost incredible.

"Is it possible, Mr. Haines, that the lady whom I knew as Louise O'Donnel was your child?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Remove your hand, Sir!'" _Page_ 339]

"She was: my only child--my one ewe lamb. You took her life. What have you to say why I shouldn't have your life for hers?"

"Only that it is the unexpected happens. I may tell you, twice I have been advised to beware of you. I had no notion what was your cause of quarrel. Now that I do know, I admit its perfect justice."

"Put up your hands."

Mr. Haines flashed a revolver in the air. Mr. Townsend remained unmoved; he simply looked at Mr. Haines and smiled.

"I am afraid that I must decline to obey you, literally, Mr. Haines. We do not do it quite that way this side. To an English taste the method seems a little bizarre. But I will undertake to offer no resistance.

Nor to move. So far as I am concerned, you may shoot. I'm ready."

Mr. Haines moved a step or two forward. He pointed his revolver at Mr.

Townsend's head, pointed it with a hand which did not tremble. There was an interval of silence. They steadfastly regarded each other, neither moving so much as an eyelash.

"You've grit. Which is what your brother'd like to swallow."

"It pleases you to say so. I would not wish to put you to inconvenience, but if you will permit me to advise you you will shoot and waste no time. Time is precious. I happen to know that, if you waste it, others may cheat you of your prey."

Mr. Haines lowered his revolver.

"I reckoned to shoot you on sight. It's not because you've grit I don't. Don't you think it. I've seen men like you before. A few. Some of them with grit enough to dare the devil to do his level worst when he gets them down to h.e.l.l. Grit's just an accident. It don't count with me neither one way nor the other. Young man, I'm going to make you an offer."