The two posters that John saw ran as follows: one “A Civil Servant’s Name,” and the other “Our Rotten Detectives.” At the station he saw another one specially issued to the West London paper stalls—“Mystery of Hammerton Chase.” And at Charing Cross there was yet another—“Who ought to be Hanged?”
John had no doubt of what he would find in the paper. He had wondered often at the long quiescence of the Gaunt family. Clearly they had taken their tale to the editor of I Say, and had probably been suitably compensated for their trouble and expense in bringing to the notice of the people’s champion a shameful case of oppression and wrong.
So John walked on to the station with a strange feeling of lightness in the head and pain in his heart. At Hammersmith there was no copy of I Say to be had; at Charing Cross he bought two. The week’s sensation was dealt with in a double-page article by the editor, diabolically clever. It set out at length the sparse facts of “The Hammerton Mystery” as revealed at the inquest, with obsequious references to “the genius of Stephen Byrne, the poet and prophet of Younger England”; and it contained some scathing comments on “the crass ineptitude of our detective organization.” But it attacked no person, it imputed nothing. The sole concern of the editor was that “months have passed and a hideous crime is yet unpunished. This poor girl went forth from her father and mother, and the young man who had promised to share her life; she went out into the world, innocent and fresh, to help her family in the battle of life with the few poor shillings she could earn by menial services in a strange house. It was not her fault that she was attractive to a certain type of man; but that attraction was no doubt her undoing. She took the fancy of some amorous profligate; she resisted his unknightly attentions; she was done to death. Her body was consigned in circumstances of the foulest indignity to a filthy grave in the river ooze.
“We are entitled to ask—What are the police doing? The matter has faded now from the public memory—has it faded from theirs? It is certain that it has not faded in the loyal hearts of the Gaunt family. At the time of the inquest the public were preoccupied with national events of the first importance, and the murder did not excite the attention it deserved. We have only too good reason to believe that our Criminal Investigation mandarins, supine as ever until they are goaded to activity by the spur of popular opinion, are taking advantage of that circumstance to allow this piece of blackguardly wickedness to sink forever into oblivion. We do not intend that it should sink into oblivion, etc. etc.”
But in the tail of the article lay the personal sting, cleverly concealed.
“But there is another aspect of this vile affair which we are compelled to notice. While the family of the murdered girl are nursing silently their broken hearts; while our inspectors and chief inspectors and criminal investigators are enjoying their comfortable salaries, there is a young man in Hammerton, a public servant of high character and irreproachable antecedents, over whom a black cloud of suspicion is hanging in connection with this crime. We cannot pretend that his evidence at the inquest was wholly satisfactory either in substance or in manner; it was shiftily given, and in the mind of any men less incompetent than the local coroner and the local dunderheads who composed the jury, would have raised questions of fundamental importance. But we are confident that John Egerton is innocent; and we say that it is a reproach to the whole system of British justice that he should still be an object of ignorant suspicion owing to the failure of the police-force to hound down the villain responsible for the crime.
“The fair name of a good citizen is at stake. It must be cleared.”
At the office there were whisperings and curious looks; and John’s chiefs conferred in dismay on a position of delicacy that was unexampled in their official experience.
John went home early, with his I Say’s crumpled in his pocket. And there he found the Rev. Peter Tarrant striding about impatiently with a copy open on the table before him. His head moved about like a great bat just under the low roof; his jolly red face was as full of anger as it could ever be.
“Look here, John,” he roared, “what are you going to do about this—this Muck?”
“Nothing.”
In truth he had thought little of what he was going to do; he had been too angry and bewildered and ashamed. Only he had sworn vaguely to himself that whatever happened he would stand by his old determination to keep this business from Margery. And, now that the question was put to him, the best way of doing that was clearly to do nothing. He began to think of reasons for doing nothing.
The Rev. Peter thundered again, “Nothing? But you must—you must do—something.” He stuttered with impotent rage and brought his fist down on I Say with a titanic force, so that the table jumped and the wedgwood plate clattered on the dresser. “You can’t sit down under this sort of thing—you must bring an action—”
“Can’t afford it; it would cost me a thousand if I won—and five thousand if—if I lost.”
“If you lost!” The Rev. Peter looked at him in wonder. John tried to look him straight in the face, but his glance wavered in the shy distress of an innocent man who suspects the beginnings of doubt in a friend’s mind.
“Yes—you know what a Law Court is—anything may happen—and I should never make a good show in the witness box, if I stood there forever.”
“I don’t care—you can’t sit down under it. You’ll lose your job, won’t you—for one thing?”
“No—I don’t know—I
