A Case in Camera
running there is no living with me. The real cure for Westbury would
have been for him to find himself a few times in the wrong.
So, as I left Dadley's shop, I pictured him sitting there at his bedroom
window, his furious eyes fixed on Esdaile's roof, his furious heart
brooding on his rightness, and bearing the whole of the burden of our
collective offense. What a contrast between this just man and our
malefactor away in the country, Charles Valentine Smith
himself--courting, care-free, and in a danger that appeared to be
lessening with every hour that passed! Truly the Princes of this World
seem to have the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, and the Westburys
to be persecuted like the prophets before them! I could understand old
William Dadley feeling sorry for him. At the same time, I had not one
single atom of sorrow for him myself.
For we are not ruled by these municipal virtues. We say we are; it is as
much as our lives are worth to say anything else; but we know better.
Wonderful Case, to bring all this out, to present so dramatically that
single Question--the first man had to answer it and the last man will
have to answer it--without which there is no society nor state nor
government at all! Westbury had the whole weight of intellectual
approval--and nothing whatever else! Unreservedly our whole nefarious
conspiracy was to be condemned--yet something bade us stand
unflinchingly by our friends!... I was wiser than I knew when I wrote
that we all do precisely what we want to do and look for reasons
afterwards. And if it be said that Society cannot be run on these
lines, the answer is that it is our business to see that it is run. We
_have_ to serve God and Mammon though the God be the God of Injustice
and the Mammon the Mammon of Righteousness. We _must_ face both ways,
square law with force. There is _no_ escape from worshiping tradition
even when we break it, from giving revolt our acknowledgment even as we
trample it down. The world has got to go on and we to take sides.
Do you see why I laughed to see the hay our Case had made of the merits
of our respective sides?
I was ruminating thus when a bodily collision brought me with a shock
back to earth again. I had scattered somebody's armful of parcels, a
tissue-paper bag with a couple of eggs in it among them. Instantly I was
in a consternation of apology. Diving, I managed to rescue a small loaf
from rolling from the kerb and to save from a passing foot a packet of
cooked ham. Then, flushed and humbled, I heard a laugh.
"Look here--I don't so much mind your upsetting my grub, but I do mind
being cut," said a voice--Rooke's voice.
IV
What a change for the better! He had shaved, his boots shone, the soft
collar round his neck was a clean one and his gray tie was fastidiously
tied. His face had a brightness again, he was engaged in the pleasant
ordinary task of buying groceries, and Dadley had just told me that he
was framing "paspertoos" for him. Was another of the clouds of the Case
breaking up?... On the spot I decided to lunch with him, and told him
so.
"All right, but the eggs are up to you," he said.
Inside his little den in Jubilee Place the improvement was no less
marked than in his person and demeanor. There was not a spot on his
little red-and-white checked table-cloth, his crockery shone, his bed
was neatly made. He had faced the new situation and had ceased to mope.
In my waistcoat pocket was a ring he had once given to Audrey
Cunningham. Seeing his cheerfulness, I had not the slightest intention
of reopening matters by telling him anything about that ring. If Audrey
dropped rings as casually as he picked up pistols, very well; it was not
my business to mar this cheery new beginning.
"Lightly boiled, or how?" he said, my egg poised in a teaspoon over the
saucepan on the gas-ring.
"Yes--lightly boiled--anything," I replied. "Got any mustard for this
ham?"
That too he had, and he had taken care over the preparation of his jug
of coffee. He was entirely the old Monty again.
I don't know when I have enjoyed a lunch more, not even excepting the
washing-up, which he insisted on doing the moment we had finished. "If
there's one thing I loathe it's coming in to a lot of unwashed things,"
he explained. "Not a ha'porth of trouble once you get the habit."
Then he showed me the work on which he was engaged. That too had energy
and movement again. One small sketch I liked and bought on the spot--a
little thing, neither black-and-white nor color, or both if you like--a
crayon sketch of a couple of infants in the Flower Walk in Kensington
Gardens, one of them with a shining round sixpenny balloon touched with
a whiff of pink, the other with the doleful rag of one that had just
exploded--the slightest, sweetest little bit of treasure-trove of the
eye picked up in an afternoon's stroll.
"But not the copyright," he stipulated with a quick sideways glance at
me. "I might be able to reproduce."
"Right; not the copyright," I agreed. I didn't mention it to him, in
case it shouldn't come off, but I thought I might be able to help him
with reproduction-rights. We have a good many side-shows on the
_Circus_.
Then, in the middle of turning over further sketches, he broke suddenly
into a gesture of remembrance.
"By the way--I knew there was something I wanted to tell you! A funny
sort of thing happened the other day. You remember that police-sergeant
or whatever he was, who came into Esdaile's place that night?"
"He was an Inspector."
"Inspector then. Well, I've seen him. Had a talk with him. Funny sort of
talk too--I've been puzzled about it ever since. I was loafing round
Sloane Square. There's a flower-woman there, interesting type of
head--this sort----" He turned over one of the sketches and on the back
of it his pencil flowed into a few swift assured lines. ("That's rather
like her, by the way," he said in parenthesis, "regular cast-iron
gypsy.")
"Well," he went on, "her face struck me as rather an interesting
contrast with a lot of silly mimosa she had in her basket--I hate
mimosa; so I was taking peeps at her, not sketching, you understand,
when I heard somebody behind me say, 'Well, Mr. Rooke!' and I turned. I
jumped rather. It was this Inspector fellow, and he'd a funny sort of
expression on his face, not laughing exactly--sort of quizzing--I can't
describe it----
"Then he said something that I thought the most infernal neck.
"'You aren't thinking of adopting a flower-woman's baby this time, are
you, Mr. Rooke?'
"Damned impudence, wasn't it? Fancy the beggar knowing that!"
Monty was ruffling up at the recollection. I could not resist a smile.
"Chelsea knows that exploit of yours as well as it knows the Albert
Bridge, Monty," I assured him. "Go on."
"Well, then he said, 'You'll have to get out of that habit of adopting
things, Mr. Rooke. You never know where it ends.'
"'What do you mean?' I said. He _was_ smiling now, but I felt a bit
uneasy. We did stuff him up a bit that night, you know. He's a dark
horse, that fellow.
"'It doesn't do, Mr. Rooke,' he said. 'Different men take different
views of their duty, and you'll be striking one of the other sort one of
these days!'
"'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Oh yes you do,' says he. 'I'm
dashed if I do,' says I. 'Then you're lucky not to be dashed a good deal
worse,' says he; 'you take my advice, Mr. Rooke, and stop adopting
things, babies or what not. You might burn your fingers. You
might--ahem!--blow 'em off'....
"And he nodded and marched off.
"Now what the devil do you think's his game?"
I know of no more exciting mental pleasure than that of finding your _a
priori_ guesses taking shape and substance in the realm of actual
things. I suppose it is the triumphant cry of your deeper self telling
the other self "I told you so!" Remember how little I knew of Inspector
Webster, yet with what instinctive reserve I had hedged my impression of
him. "A dark horse?" Yes, of quite the darkest kind. I recapitulated the
degrees of his darkness. He had come round to Lennox Street that night,
probably fresh from his talk with this fellow Westbury; he had put a
whole series of questions, but of implications so guarded that in
writing that portion of the story I had to itemize and underline what I
surmised to be their real purport; and he had instituted a search of
Esdaile's premises--twelve hours later! Why twelve hours later? Why not
on the spot, there and then? Why give Philip this law, that as a matter
of fact he had made use of to drop that pistol into the river?
Could it be that he knew his House and Estate Agent better than we
did--knew his vanity, dullness, and the risks of basing a charge on his
unsupported word? No doubt he had questioned Westbury in terms far more
explicit than those he had used to us. Unless Westbury had actually put
his hand inside Rooke's pocket, probably all he could swear to was that
the pocket contained something heavy. Not until late in the same
afternoon had the bullet been found. Suppose Webster had said to
Westbury, "Not so quickly, my friend; you said nothing about a pistol at
the time; it only became a pistol when the bullet was found; we can't go
putting the cart before the horse like that; evidence is evidence; you
can't let half a day pass and then remember things to fit the Case;
_you_ may feel sure of a thing, but could you make a jury sure?" Suppose
he had said something like this? The police too are bound by the
probabilities of conviction. It is no credit to them to fail on a
charge.
And a man who can say, "Was it indeed, sir?" when informed of the
identity of a distinguished King's Counsel who has expressly announced
himself only a few hours before is emphatically not the man to think
that he can make a jacket for a large gooseberry by skinning a
small-sized flint.
V
"Now what was his game, do you think?" Monty asked again.
"He was giving you a piece of wholesome advice," I answered promptly.
"But 'You stop adopting things; you might--ahem!--blow your fingers
off.' He said it like that. I haven't put in the 'ahem.' That was his.
It looks to me as if he knew about that pistol."
"It has very much that look," I agreed blandly.
"But how? I can't understand yet how Esdaile knew, but this Police
Inspector----!"
"'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,'" I
murmured. "You never can tell, Monty."
"Oh, stop burbling. How do you suppose he did know?"
"Let me see. You told Philip it was his keys that made your pocket bulge
so, didn't you?"
"Oh--if you're just going to rot me----"
"I'm not rotting you. I've a feeling that if you'd told Inspector
Webster the same thing he'd have been happy and delighted to believe
you."
"But how does he know _any_thing about what's in my pocket?" said the
bewildered Monty....
Should I tell him? Why not? I had studiously avoided anything that might
have reminded him of Mrs. Cunningham. Pluckily as he had taken himself
in hand, I did not think that that wound was healed. But the episode of
the pistol was another matter. I felt singularly and perhaps not quite
justifiably light-hearted about that. The mists of the Case were
perceptibly thinning. What he had just told me about Inspector Webster
let still a little more sun through them. To all appearances the
Inspector had dismissed Monty with a quite characteristic admonition.
And that being so, it was perhaps his due that I should not leave Monty
altogether unarmed in the event of any contingency with Westbury.
And so I told him how his pocket had been fingered as he had descended
that ladder.
He was furious. "Damned pickpocket!" he broke out. "I should have