The Man in the Brown Suit
Do you realize what I am? A criminal twice over. A man hunted down.
They know me here as Harry Parker—they think I’ve been away on a
trek up country, but any day they may put two and two together—and
then the blow will fall. You’re so young, Anne, and so beautiful—with
the kind of beauty that sends men mad. All the world’s before
you—love, life, everything. Mine’s behind me—scorched, spoiled,
with a taste of bitter ashes.”
“If you don’t want me——”
“You know I want you. You know that I’d give my soul to pick you
up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, for
ever and ever. And you’re tempting me, Anne. You, with your long
witch’s hair, and your eyes that are golden and brown and green
and never stop laughing even when your mouth is grave. But I’ll
save you from yourself and from me. You shall go to-night. You
shall go to Beira——”
“I’m not going to Beira,” I interrupted.
“You are. You shall go to Beira if I have to take you there myself
and throw you on to the boat. What do you think I’m made of? Do
you think I’ll wake up night after night, fearing they’ve got you?
One can’t go on counting on miracles happening. You must go back
to England, Anne—and—and marry and be happy.”
“With a steady man who’ll give me a good home!”
“Better that than—utter disaster.”
“And what of you?”
His face grew grim and set.
“I’ve got my work ready to hand. Don’t ask what it is. You can
guess, I dare say. But I’ll tell you this—I’ll clear my name, or
die in the attempt, and I’ll choke the life out of the damned
scoundrel who did his best to murder you the other night.”
“We must be fair,” I said. “He didn’t actually push me over.”
“He’d no need to. His plan was cleverer than that. I went up to
the path afterwards. Everything looked all right, but by the marks
on the ground I saw that the stones which outline the path had been
taken up and put down again in a slightly different place. There
are tall bushes growing just over the edge. He’d balanced the
outside stones on them, so that you’d think you were still on the
path when in reality you were stepping into nothingness. God help
him if I lay my hands upon him!”
He paused a minute and then said in a totally different tone:
“We’ve never spoken of these things, Anne, have we? But the time’s
come. I want you to hear the whole story—from the beginning.”
“If it hurts you to go over the past, don’t tell me,” I said in a
low voice.
“But I want you to know. I never thought I should speak of that
part of my life to any one. Funny, isn’t it, the tricks Fate
plays?”
He was silent for a minute or two. The sun had set, and the velvety
darkness of the African night was enveloping us like a mantle.
“Some of it I know,” I said gently.
“What do you know?”
“I know that your real name is Harry Lucas.”
Still he hesitated—not looking at me, but staring straight out in
front of him. I had no clue as to what was passing in his mind,
but at last he jerked his head forward as though acquiescing in
some unspoken decision of his own and began his story.
CHAPTER XXVI
“You are right. My real name is Harry Lucas. My father was a
retired soldier who came out to farm in Rhodesia. He died when I
was in my second year at Cambridge.”
“Were you fond of him?” I asked suddenly.
“I—don’t know.”
Then he flushed and went on with sudden vehemence:
“Why do I say that? I _did_ love my father. We said bitter things
to each other the last time I saw him, and we had many rows over
my wildness and my debts, but I cared for the old man. I know how
much now—when it’s too late,” he continued more quietly. “It was
at Cambridge that I met the other fellow——”
“Young Eardsley?”
“Yes—young Eardsley. His father, as you know, was one of South
Africa’s most prominent men. We drifted together at once, my friend
and I. We had our love of South Africa in common and we both had
a taste for the untrodden places of the world. After he left
Cambridge, Eardsley had a final quarrel with his father. The old
man had paid his debts twice, he refused to do so again. There was
a bitter scene between them. Sir Laurence declared himself at the
end of his patience—he would do no more for his son. He must stand
on his own legs for a while. The result was, as you know, that
those two young men went off to South America together, prospecting
for diamonds. I’m not going into that now, but we had a wonderful
time out there. Hardships in plenty, you understand, but it was a
good life—a hand-to-mouth scramble for existence far from the
beaten track—and, my God! that’s the place to know a friend. There
was a bond forged between us two out there that only death could
have broken. Well, as Colonel Race told you, our efforts were
crowned with success. We found a second Kimberley in the heart of
the British Guiana jungles. I can’t tell you our elation. It wasn’t
so much the actual value in money of the find—you see, Eardsley
was used to money, and he knew that when his father died he would
be a millionaire, and Lucas had always been poor and was used to
it. No, it was the sheer delight of discovery.”
He paused, and then added, almost apologetically:
“You don’t mind my telling it this way, do you? As though I wasn’t
in it at all. It seems like that now when I look back and see those
two boys. I almost forget that one of them was—Harry Rayburn.”
“Tell it any way you like,” I said, and he went on:
“We came to Kimberley—very cock-a-hoop over our find. We brought
a magnificent selection of diamonds with us to submit to the
experts. And then—in the hotel at Kimberley—we met her——”
I stiffened a little, and the hand that rested on the doorpost
clenched itself involuntarily.
“Anita Grünberg—that was her name. She was an actress. Quite young
and very beautiful. She was South African born, but her mother was
a Hungarian, I believe. There was some sort of mystery about her,
and that, of course, heightened her attraction for two boys home
from the wilds. She must have had an easy task. We both fell for
her right away, and we both took it hard. It was the first shadow
that had ever come between us—but even then it didn’t weaken our
friendship. Each of us, I honestly believe, was willing to stand
aside for the other to go in and win. But that wasn’t her game.
Sometimes, afterwards, I wondered why it hadn’t been, for Sir
Laurence Eardsley’s only son was quite a _parti._ But the truth of
it was that she was married—to a sorter in De Beers’—though nobody
knew of it. She pretended enormous interests in our discovery, and
we told her all about it and even showed her the diamonds.
Delilah—that’s what she should have been called—and she played her
part well!
“The De Beers robbery was discovered, and like a thunderclap the
police came down upon us. They seized our diamonds. We only laughed
at first—the whole thing was so absurd. And then the diamonds were
produced in court—and without question they were the stones stolen
from De Beers’. Anita Grünberg had disappeared. She had effected
the substitution neatly enough, and our story that these were not
the stones originally in our possession was laughed to scorn.
“Sir Laurence Eardsley had enormous influence. He succeeded in
getting the case dismissed—but it left two young men ruined and
disgraced to face the world with the stigma of thief attached to
their names, and it pretty well broke the old fellow’s heart. He
had one bitter interview with his son in which he heaped upon him
every reproach imaginable. He had done what he could to save the
family name, but from that day on his son was his son no longer.
He cast him off utterly. And the boy, like the proud young fool
that he was, remained silent, disdaining to protest his innocence
in the face of his father’s disbelief. He came out furious from
the interview—his friend was waiting for him. A week later war was
declared. The two friends enlisted together. You know what happened.
The best pal a man ever had was killed, partly through his own mad
recklessness in rushing into unnecessary danger. He died with his
name tarnished. . . .
“I swear to you, Anne, that it was mainly on his account that I
was so bitter against that woman. It had gone deeper with him than
with me. I had been madly in love with her for the moment—I even
think that I frightened her sometimes—but with him it was a quieter
and deeper feeling. She had been the very centre of his universe—and
her betrayal of him tore up the very roots of life. The blow
stunned him and left him paralyzed.”
Harry paused. After a minute or two he went on:
“As you know, I was reported ‘Missing, presumed killed.’ I never
troubled to correct the mistake. I took the name of Parker and came
to this island, which I knew of old. At the beginning of the war,
I had had ambitious hopes of proving my innocence, but now all that
spirit seemed dead. All I felt was, ‘What’s the good?’ My pal was
dead, neither he nor I had any living relations who would care. I
was supposed to be dead too, let it remain at that. I led a peaceful
existence here, neither happy nor unhappy—numbed of all feeling.
I see now, though I did not realize it at the time, that that was
partly the effect of the war.
“And then one day something occurred to wake me right up again. I
was taking a party of people in my boat on a trip up the river,
and I was standing at the landing-stage, helping them in, when one
of the men uttered a startled exclamation. It focused my attention
on him. He was a small, thin man with a beard, and he was staring
at me for all he was worth as though I was a ghost. So powerful
was his emotion that it awakened my curiosity. I made inquiries
about him at the hotel and learned that his name was Carton, that
he came from Kimberley, and that he was a diamond-sorter employed
by De Beers’. In a minute all the old sense of wrong surged over
me again. I left the island and went to Kimberley.
“I could find out little more about him, however. In the end, I
decided that I must force an interview. I took my revolver with
me. In the brief glimpse I had had of him, I had realized that he
was a physical coward. No sooner were we face to face than I
recognized that he was afraid of me. I soon forced him to tell me
all he knew. He had engineered part of the robbery and Anita
Grünberg was his wife. He had once caught sight of both of us when
we were dining with her at the hotel, and, having read that I was
killed, my appearance in the flesh at the Falls had startled him
badly. He and Anita had married quite young, but she had soon
drifted away from him. She had got in with a bad lot, he told
me—and it was then for the first time that I heard of the ‘Colonel.’
Carton himself had never been mixed up in anything except this one
affair—so he solemnly assured me, and I was inclined to believe
him. He was emphatically not of the stuff of which successful
criminals are made.
“I still had the feeling that he was keeping back something. As a
test, I threatened to shoot him there and then, declaring that I
cared very little what became of me now. In a frenzy of terror he
poured out a further story. It seems that Anita Grünberg did not
quite trust the ‘Colonel.’ Whilst pretending to hand over to him
the stones she had taken from the hotel, she kept back some in her
own possession. Carton advised her, with his technical knowledge,
which to keep. If, at any time, these stones were produced, they
were of such colour and quality as to be readily identifiable, and
the experts at De Beers’ would admit at once that these stones had
never passed through their hands. In this way my story of a
substitution would be supported, my name would be cleared, and
suspicion would be diverted to the proper quarter. I gathered that,