“You are in his employment?”
“Yes, sir,” Harris, amazed at such perspicacity, replied. “I am the butler.”
“And you saw him do it?”
“No, sir, but I heard him say he would.”
“When?”
“The night Mr. Loftus was shot.”
“To whom did he say it? To you?”
“To Mrs. Annandale, sir.”
“Oho! How was that?”
“It was after dinner, sir. I was in the dining-room. The second man was with me cleaning up. On the floor under the table he found a necklace. I took it in through the hall to the drawing-room. Mrs. Annandale was there with Mr. Annandale. When I was just at the door I heard him say, ‘I’ll kill Loftus.’ I went in and gave him the necklace.”
“But why?” Mr. Digby interrupted. “What was he going to kill him for? What was the motive?”
“Mr. Loftus had just gone, sir. He had been dining with us. He and several others.”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, when I was in the hall I heard Mrs. Annandale say as how she wanted a divorce.”
“Aha!” exclaimed Mr. Digby. “The plot thickens. Was she in love with Loftus?”
“She was that, sir. Anyone could see it.”
“Then what?”
“Mr. Annandale went upstairs, came down again and went out.”
“Did you attach any importance to his going upstairs?”
“He went to get his pistol, sir.”
“Oho! He had a pistol, had he?”
“Yes, sir. A 32-calibre. I bought it for him myself.”
“That is a very good story,” said Mr. Digby, who was a judge.
VII
Held Without Bail
The theories and clues in the now celebrated case Orr related to Sylvia one after another as they reached him through different channels. To the story of Marie Leroy she listened, her face averted, without a word. The footpad theory she dismissed. It was absurd. But the suicide theory impressed her. Even to her mind it was not logical. Loftus was too cavalier, too supremely indifferent, to make it plausible. On the other hand, it disposed of the whole matter. Moreover, as she put it to Orr, what is suicide but the sinful end of a sinful life? “Who knows,” she asked, “what sudden remorse he may have experienced that last night when he was alone there in the park?”
“Suicide,” Orr had replied, “is assassination driven in. It is the crisis of a preexisting condition, a condition wholly pathological, one which remorse may complicate but which it cannot directly induce. There was nothing whatever the matter with Loftus. He may have been sinful, as you express it, but he was sound. Besides, the man had no more conscience than a tomcat.”
Nevertheless Sylvia clung to the theory. She had no other. Hopelessly she hoped that time would verify it. But she suffered acutely. Orr’s account of Fanny’s attitude frightened her. What frightened her most was the tale that Harris told. The latter she learned from the press.
Meanwhile she had gone to Mrs. Loftus. The old lady had not recognized her, or, rather, had mistaken her for someone else. “My boy is away, Fanny,” she said, her head shaking as she spoke. “He is away. I don’t know where.” She began to whimper.
Sylvia, too, had wept. It was pitiful. The proud, arrogant woman Fate had reduced to a cowering crone.
Meanwhile also Sylvia had tried to see Fanny. But at the hotel where Mrs. Price had been stopping she was informed that both were away. An address was given her to which she wrote. For a time no answer came. Finally from a different address Mrs. Price replied saying that Fanny was ill and asking that their whereabouts be a secret. In spite of the little threat Fanny was not anxious to be subpoenaed.
But that was much later, long after Harris had told the story which Mr. Digby declared to be very good.
This opinion, editorial and offhand though it was, was immediately and officially endorsed. For the story had a double merit. It supplied not merely a clue but a case. A very clear case, too. There was the antecedent threat, the opportunity, the instrument, everything even to the motive which was reasonable enough. The inevitable ensued. Annandale, arrested, was held without bail.
At the news of that Sylvia shuddered. Time touched her. Her eyes ringed themselves with sudden circles. The shuddering passed, but the rings remained. She became whiter, harder, more resolute, divining dimly that somewhere, somehow, there was a duty to be performed. What the duty was to be the press disclosed. Against Annandale was public opinion. There he was convicted instanter. At the injustice, or what seemed to her the injustice, of that she revolted.
But Orr, whom Annandale had immediately retained, dosed her with a platitude. “Public opinion be hanged,” he said. “What is it but the stupidity of one multiplied by the stupidity of all. Vox populi, vox stulti. The majority is always cocksure and dead wrong.”
In spite, though, of general stupidity there were people sufficiently indulgent to accord Annandale the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The reputation of Loftus, which left rather a little to be desired; the coupling of his name with that of Annandale’s wife; the report that for his sake the latter had been preparing to leave her husband; the further report that for the convenience of both Marie Leroy had been shipped abroad; these things reduced the case in the minds of the indulgent to what the French call a crime passionnel, and which, as such, is psychologically and even legally defensible.
But French views are not our views. Besides, admitting their validity, that validity was impaired by the attitude which Annandale assumed. He omitted to admit, and thereby for the time being waived the right to plead, the circumstances advanced in his justification. When charged had he said, “Oh,
