Books: Ranson\'s Folly
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Richard Harding Davis >> Ranson\'s Folly
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"Under other circumstances the young man's rudeness, and his
recklessness in dashing so hurriedly through the mist, would have
struck me as peculiar, but everything was so distorted by the fog
that at the moment I did not consider it. The door was still as he
had left it, partly open. I went up the path, and, after much
fumbling, found the knob of the door-bell and gave it a sharp pull.
The bell answered me from a great depth and distance, but no movement
followed from inside the house, and, although I pulled the bell again
and again, I could hear nothing save the dripping of the mist about
me. I was anxious to be on my way, but unless I knew where I was
going there was little chance of my making any speed, and I was
determined that until I learned my bearings I would not venture back
into the fog. So I pushed the door open and stepped into the house.
"I found myself in a long and narrow hall, upon which doors opened
from either side. At the end of the hall was a staircase with a
balustrade which ended in a sweeping curve. The balustrade was
covered with heavy, Persian rugs, and the walls of the hall were also
hung with them. The door on my left was closed, but the one nearer me
on the right was open, and, as I stepped opposite to it, I saw that
it was a sort of reception or waiting-room, and that it was empty.
The door below it was also open, and, with the idea that I would
surely find someone there, I walked on up the hall. I was in evening
dress, and I felt I did not look like a burglar, so I had no great
fear that, should I encounter one of the inmates of the house, he
would shoot me on sight. The second door in the hall opened into a
dining-room. This was also empty. One person had been dining at the
table, but the cloth had not been cleared away, and a flickering
candle showed half-filled wineglasses and the ashes of cigarettes.
The greater part of the room was in complete darkness.
"By this time I had grown conscious of the fact that I was wandering
about in a strange house, and that, apparently, I was alone in it.
The silence of the place began to try my nerves, and in a sudden,
unexplainable panic I started for the open street. But as I turned, I
saw a man sitting on a bench, which the curve of the balustrade had
hidden from me. His eyes were shut, and he was sleeping soundly.
"The moment before I had been bewildered because I could see no one,
but at sight of this man I was much more bewildered.
"He was a very large man, a giant in height, with long, yellow hair,
which hung below his shoulders. He was dressed in a red silk shirt,
that was belted at the waist and hung outside black velvet trousers,
which, in turn, were stuffed into high, black boots. I recognized the
costume at once as that of a Russian servant, but what a Russian
servant in his native livery could be doing in a private house in
Knightsbridge was incomprehensible.
"I advanced and touched the man on the shoulder, and, after an
effort, he awoke, and, on seeing me, sprang to his feet and began
bowing rapidly, and making deprecatory gestures. I had picked up
enough Russian in Petersburg to make out that the man was apologizing
for having fallen asleep, and I also was able to explain to him that
I desired to see his master.
"He nodded vigorously, and said, 'Will the Excellency come this way?
The Princess is here.'
"I distinctly made out the word 'princess,' and I was a good deal
embarrassed. I had thought it would be easy enough to explain my
intrusion to a man, but how a woman would look at it was another
matter, and as I followed him down the hall I was somewhat puzzled.
"As we advanced, he noticed that the front door was standing open,
and with an exclamation of surprise, hastened toward it and closed
it. Then he rapped twice on the door of what was apparently the
drawing-room. There was no reply to his knock, and he tapped again,
and then, timidly, and cringing subserviently, opened the door and
stepped inside. He withdrew himself at once and stared stupidly at
me, shaking his head.
"'She is not there,' he said. He stood for a moment, gazing blankly
through the open door, and then hastened toward the dining-room. The
solitary candle which still burned there seemed to assure him that
the room also was empty. He came back and bowed me toward the
drawing-room. 'She is above,' he said; 'I will inform the Princess of
the Excellency's presence.'
"Before I could stop him, he had turned and was running up the
staircase, leaving me alone at the open door of the drawing-room. I
decided that the adventure had gone quite far enough, and if I had
been able to explain to the Russian that I had lost my way in the
fog, and only wanted to get back into the street again, I would have
left the house on the instant.
"Of course, when I first rang the bell of the house I had no other
expectation than that it would be answered by a parlor-maid who would
direct me on my way. I certainly could not then foresee that I would
disturb a Russian princess in her boudoir, or that I might be thrown
out by her athletic bodyguard. Still, I thought I ought not now to
leave the house without making some apology, and, if the worst should
come, I could show my card. They could hardly believe that a member
of an Embassy had any designs upon the hat-rack.
"The room in which I stood was dimly lighted, but I could see that,
like the hall, it was hung with heavy, Persian rugs. The corners were
filled with palms, and there was the unmistakable odor in the air of
Russian cigarettes, and strange, dry scents that carried me back to
the bazaars of Vladivostock. Near the front windows was a grand
piano, and at the other end of the room a heavily carved screen of
some black wood, picked out with ivory. The screen was overhung with
a canopy of silken draperies, and formed a sort of alcove. In front
of the alcove was spread the white skin of a polar bear, and set on
that was one of those low, Turkish coffee-tables. It held a lighted
spirit-lamp and two gold coffee-cups. I had heard no movement from
above stairs, and it must have been fully three minutes that I stood
waiting, noting these details of the room and wondering at the delay,
and at the strange silence.
"And then, suddenly, as my eye grew more used to the half-light, I
saw, projecting from behind the screen, as though it were stretched
along the back of a divan, the hand of a man and the lower part of
his arm. I was as startled as though I had come across a footprint on
a deserted island. Evidently, the man had been sitting there since I
had come into the room, even since I had entered the house, and he
had heard the servant knocking upon the door. Why he had not declared
himself I could not understand, but I supposed that, possibly, he was
a guest, with no reason to interest himself in the Princess's other
visitors, or, perhaps, for some reason, he did not wish to be
observed. I could see nothing of him except his hand, but I had an
unpleasant feeling that he had been peering at me through the carving
in the screen, and that he still was doing so. I moved my feet
noisily on the floor and said, tentatively, 'I beg your pardon.'
"There was no reply, and the hand did not stir. Apparently, the man
was bent upon ignoring me, but, as all I wished was to apologize for
my intrusion and to leave the house, I walked up to the alcove and
peered around it. Inside the screen was a divan piled with cushions,
and on the end of it nearer me the man was sitting. He was a young
Englishman with light-yellow hair and a deeply bronzed face. He was
seated with his arms stretched out along the back of the divan, and
with his head resting against a cushion. His attitude was one of
complete ease. But his mouth had fallen open, and his eyes were set
with an expression of utter horror. At the first glance, I saw that
he was quite dead.
"For a flash of time I was too startled to act, but in the same flash
I was convinced that the man had met his death from no accident, that
he had not died through any ordinary failure of the laws of nature.
The expression on his face was much too terrible to be
misinterpreted. It spoke as eloquently as words. It told me that
before the end had come he had watched his death approach and
threaten him.
"I was so sure he had been murdered that I instinctively looked on
the floor for the weapon, and, at the same moment, out of concern for
my own safety, quickly behind me; but the silence of the house
continued unbroken.
"I have seen a great number of dead men; I was on the Asiatic Station
during the Japanese-Chinese war. I was in Port Arthur after the
massacre. So a dead man, for the single reason that he is dead, does
not repel me, and, though I knew that there was no hope that this man
was alive, still, for decency's sake, I felt his pulse, and, while I
kept my ears alert for any sound from the floors above me, I pulled
open his shirt and placed my hand upon his heart. My fingers
instantly touched upon the opening of a wound, and as I withdrew them
I found them wet with blood. He was in evening dress, and in the wide
bosom of his shirt I found a narrow slit, so narrow that in the dim
light it was scarcely discernible. The wound was no wider than the
smallest blade of a pocket-knife, but when I stripped the shirt away
from the chest and left it bare, I found that the weapon, narrow as
it was, had been long enough to reach his heart. There is no need to
tell you how I felt as I stood by the body of this boy, for he was
hardly older than a boy, or of the thoughts that came into my head. I
was bitterly sorry for this stranger, bitterly indignant at his
murderer, and, at the same time, selfishly concerned for my own
safety and for the notoriety which I saw was sure to follow. My
instinct was to leave the body where it lay, and to hide myself in
the fog, but I also felt that since a succession of accidents had
made me the only witness to a crime, my duty was to make myself a
good witness and to assist to establish the facts of this murder.
"That it might, possibly, be a suicide, and not a murder, did not
disturb me for a moment. The fact that the weapon had disappeared,
and the expression on the boy's face were enough to convince, at
least me, that he had had no hand in his own death. I judged it,
therefore, of the first importance to discover who was in the house,
or, if they had escaped from it, who had been in the house before I
entered it. I had seen one man leave it; but all I could tell of him
was that he was a young man, that he was in evening dress, and that
he had fled in such haste that he had not stopped to close the door
behind him.
"The Russian servant I had found apparently asleep, and, unless he
acted a part with supreme skill, he was a stupid and ignorant boor,
and as innocent of the murder as myself. There was still the Russian
princess whom he had expected to find, or had pretended to expect to
find, in the same room with the murdered man. I judged that she must
now be either upstairs with the servant, or that she had, without his
knowledge, already fled from the house. When I recalled his
apparently genuine surprise at not finding her in the drawing-room,
this latter supposition seemed the more probable. Nevertheless, I
decided that it was my duty to make a search, and after a second
hurried look for the weapon among the cushions of the divan, and upon
the floor, I cautiously crossed the hall and entered the dining-room.
"The single candle was still flickering in the draught, and showed
only the white cloth. The rest of the room was draped in shadows. I
picked up the candle, and, lifting it high above my head, moved
around the corner of the table. Either my nerves were on such a
stretch that no shock could strain them further, or my mind was
inoculated to horrors, for I did not cry out at what I saw nor
retreat from it. Immediately at my feet was the body of a beautiful
woman, lying at full length upon the floor, her arms flung out on
either side of her, and her white face and shoulders gleaming, dully,
in the unsteady light of the candle. Around her throat was a great
chain of diamonds, and the light played upon these and made them
flash and blaze in tiny flames. But the woman who wore them was dead,
and I was so certain as to how she had died that, without an
instant's hesitation, I dropped on my knees beside her and placed my
hands above her heart. My fingers again touched the thin slit of a
wound. I had no doubt in my mind but that this was the Russian
princess, and when I lowered the candle to her face I was assured
that this was so. Her features showed the finest lines of both the
Slav and the Jewess; the eyes were black, the hair blue-black and
wonderfully heavy, and her skin, even in death, was rich in color.
She was a surpassingly beautiful woman.
"I rose and tried to light another candle with the one I held, but I
found that my hand was so unsteady that I could not keep the wicks
together. It was my intention to again search for this strange dagger
which had been used to kill both the English boy and the beautiful
princess, but before I could light the second candle I heard
footsteps descending the stairs, and the Russian servant appeared in
the doorway.
"My face was in darkness, or I am sure that, at the sight of it, he
would have taken alarm, for at that moment I was not sure but that
this man himself was the murderer. His own face was plainly visible
to me in the light from the hall, and I could see that it wore an
expression of dull bewilderment. I stepped quickly toward him and
took a firm hold upon his wrist.
"'She is not there,' he said. 'The Princess has gone. They have all
gone.'
"'Who have gone?' I demanded. 'Who else has been here? '
"'The two Englishmen,' he said.
"'What two Englishmen?' I demanded. 'What are their names?'
"The man now saw by my manner that some question of great moment hung
upon his answer, and he began to protest that he did not know the
names of the visitors and that until that evening he had never seen
them.
"I guessed that it was my tone which frightened him, so I took my
hand off his wrist and spoke less eagerly.
"'How long have they been here?' I asked, 'and when did they go?'
"He pointed behind him toward the drawing-room.
"'One sat there with the Princess,' he said; 'the other came after I
had placed the coffee in the drawing-room. The two Englishmen talked
together, and the Princess returned here to the table. She sat there
in that chair, and I brought her cognac and cigarettes. Then I sat
outside upon the bench. It was a feast-day, and I had been drinking.
Pardon, Excellency, but I fell asleep. When I woke, your Excellency
was standing by me, but the Princess and the two Englishmen had gone.
That is all I know.'
"I believed that the man was telling me the truth. His fright had
passed, and he was now apparently puzzled, but not alarmed.
"'You must remember the names of the Englishmen,' I urged. 'Try to
think. When you announced them to the Princess what name did you
give?'
"At this question he exclaimed, with pleasure, and, beckoning to me,
ran hurriedly down the hall and into the drawing-room. In the corner
furthest from the screen was the piano, and on it was a silver tray.
He picked this up and, smiling with pride at his own intelligence,
pointed at two cards that lay upon it. I took them up and read the
names engraved upon them."
The American paused abruptly, and glanced at the faces about him. "I
read the names," he repeated. He spoke with great reluctance.
"Continue!" cried the baronet, sharply.
"I read the names," said the American with evident distaste, "and the
family name of each was the same. They were the names of two
brothers. One is well known to you. It is that of the African
explorer of whom this gentleman was just speaking. I mean the Earl of
Chetney. The other was the name of his brother. Lord Arthur Chetney."
The men at the table fell back as though a trapdoor had fallen open
at their feet.
"Lord Chetney?" they exclaimed, in chorus. They glanced at each other
and back to the American, with every expression of concern and
disbelief.
"It is impossible!" cried the Baronet. "Why, my dear sir, young
Chetney only arrived from Africa yesterday. It was so stated in the
evening papers."
The jaw of the American set in a resolute square, and he pressed his
lips together.
"You are perfectly right, sir," he said, "Lord Chetney did arrive in
London yesterday morning, and yesterday night I found his dead body."
The youngest member present was the first to recover. He seemed much
less concerned over the identity of the murdered man than at the
interruption of the narrative.
"Oh, please let him go on!" he cried. "What happened then? You say
you found two visiting-cards. How do you know which card was that of
the murdered man?"
The American, before he answered, waited until the chorus of
exclamations had ceased. Then he continued as though he had not been
interrupted.
"The instant I read the names upon the cards," he said, "I ran to the
screen and, kneeling beside the dead man, began a search through his
pockets. My hand at once fell upon a card-case, and I found on all
the cards it contained the title of the Earl of Chetney. His watch
and cigarette-case also bore his name. These evidences, and the fact
of his bronzed skin, and that his cheek-bones were worn with fever,
convinced me that the dead man was the African explorer, and the boy
who had fled past me in the night was Arthur, his younger brother.
"I was so intent upon my search that I had forgotten the servant, and
I was still on my knees when I heard a cry behind me. I turned, and
saw the man gazing down at the body in abject horror.
"Before I could rise, he gave another cry of terror, and, flinging
himself into the hall, raced toward the door to the street. I leaped
after him, shouting to him to halt, but before I could reach the hall
he had torn open the door, and I saw him spring out into the yellow
fog. I cleared the steps in a jump and ran down the garden-walk but
just as the gate clicked in front of me. I had it open on the
instant, and, following the sound of the man's footsteps, I raced
after him across the open street. He, also, could hear me, and he
instantly stopped running, and there was absolute silence. He was so
near that I almost fancied I could hear him panting, and I held my
own breath to listen. But I could distinguish nothing but the
dripping of the mist about us, and from far off the music of the
Hungarian band, which I had heard when I first lost myself.
"All I could see was the square of light from the door I had left
open behind me, and a lamp in the hall beyond it flickering in the
draught. But even as I watched it, the flame of the lamp was blown
violently to and fro, and the door, caught in the same current of
air, closed slowly. I knew if it shut I could not again enter the
house, and I rushed madly toward it. I believe I even shouted out, as
though it were something human which I could compel to obey me, and
then I caught my foot against the curb and smashed into the sidewalk.
When I rose to my feet I was dizzy and half stunned, and though I
thought then that I was moving toward the door, I know now that I
probably turned directly from it; for, as I groped about in the
night, calling frantically for the police, my fingers touched nothing
but the dripping fog, and the iron railings for which I sought seemed
to have melted away. For many minutes I beat the mist with my arms
like one at blind man's buff, turning sharply in circles, cursing
aloud at my stupidity and crying continually for help. At last a
voice answered me from the fog, and I found myself held in the circle
of a policeman's lantern.
"That is the end of my adventure. What I have to tell you now is what
I learned from the police.
"At the station-house to which the man guided me I related what you
have just heard. I told them that the house they must at once find
was one set back from the street within a radius of two hundred yards
from the Knightsbridge Barracks, that within fifty yards of it
someone was giving a dance to the music of a Hungarian band, and that
the railings before it were as high as a man's waist and filed to a
point. With that to work upon, twenty men were at once ordered out
into the fog to search for the house, and Inspector Lyle himself was
despatched to the home of Lord Edam, Chetney's father, with a warrant
for Lord Arthur's arrest. I was thanked and dismissed on my own
recognizance.
"This morning, Inspector Lyle called on me, and from him I learned
the police theory of the scene I have just described.
"Apparently, I had wandered very far in the fog, for up to noon to-
day the house had not been found, nor had they been able to arrest
Lord Arthur. He did not return to his father's house last night, and
there is no trace of him; but from what the police knew of the past
lives of the people I found in that lost house, they have evolved a
theory, and their theory is that the murders were committed by Lord
Arthur.
"The infatuation of his elder brother, Lord Chetney, for a Russian
princess, so Inspector Lyle tells me, is well known to everyone.
About two years ago the Princess Zichy, as she calls herself, and he
were constantly together, and Chetney informed his friends that they
were about to be married. The woman was notorious in two continents,
and when Lord Edam heard of his son's infatuation he appealed to the
police for her record.
"It is through his having applied to them that they know so much
concerning her and her relations with the Chetneys. From the police
Lord Edam learned that Madame Zichy had once been a spy in the employ
of the Russian Third Section, but that lately she had been repudiated
by her own government and was living by her wits, by blackmail, and
by her beauty. Lord Edam laid this record before his son, but Chetney
either knew it already or the woman persuaded him not to believe in
it, and the father and son parted in great anger. Two days later the
marquis altered his will, leaving all of his money to the younger
brother, Arthur.
"The title and some of the landed property he could not keep from
Chetney, but he swore if his son saw the woman again that the will
should stand as it was, and he would be left without a penny.
"This was about eighteen months ago, when, apparently, Chetney tired
of the Princess, and suddenly went off to shoot and explore in
Central Africa. No word came from him, except that twice he was
reported as having died of fever in the jungle, and finally two
traders reached the coast who said they had seen his body. This was
accepted by all as conclusive, and young Arthur was recognized as the
heir to the Edam millions. On the strength of this supposition he at
once began to borrow enormous sums from the money-lenders. This is of
great importance, as the police believe it was these debts which
drove him to the murder of his brother. Yesterday, as you know, Lord
Chetney suddenly returned from the grave, and it was the fact that
for two years he had been considered as dead which lent such
importance to his return and which gave rise to those columns of
detail concerning him which appeared in all the afternoon papers.
But, obviously, during his absence he had not tired of the Princess
Zichy, for we know that a few hours after he reached London he sought
her out. His brother, who had also learned of his reappearance
through the papers, probably suspected which would be the house he
would first visit, and followed him there, arriving, so the Russian
servant tells us, while the two were at coffee in the drawing-room.
The Princess, then, we also learn from the servant, withdrew to the
dining-room, leaving the brothers together. What happened one can
only guess.
"Lord Arthur knew now that when it was discovered he was no longer
the heir, the moneylenders would come down upon him. The police
believe that he at once sought out his brother to beg for money to
cover the post-obits, but that, considering the sum he needed was
several hundreds of thousands of pounds, Chetney refused to give it
him. No one knew that Arthur had gone to seek out his brother. They
were alone. It is possible, then, that in a passion of
disappointment, and crazed with the disgrace which he saw before him,
young Arthur made himself the heir beyond further question. The death
of his brother would have availed nothing if the woman remained
alive. It is then possible that he crossed the hall, and, with the
same weapon which made him Lord Edam's heir, destroyed the solitary
witness to the murder. The only other person who could have seen it
was sleeping in a drunken stupor, to which fact undoubtedly he owed
his life. And yet," concluded the Naval Attache, leaning forward and
marking each word with his finger, "Lord Arthur blundered fatally. In
his haste he left the door of the house open, so giving access to the
first passer-by, and he forgot that when he entered it he had handed
his card to the servant. That piece of paper may yet send him to the
gallows. In the meantime, he has disappeared completely, and
somewhere, in one of the millions of streets of this great capital,
in a locked and empty house, lies the body of his brother, and of the
woman his brother loved, undiscovered, unburied; and with their
murder unavenged."
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