CHAPTER XXXIX

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

Mr Joaquin Holmes was making a morning call one of those days on Mrs

Theodore Livingstone—better known to the readers of these pages as

Philippina—at her furnished apartments in Bury Street, Bloomsbury. Of

late, Mr Joaquin Holmes had been down on his luck; and the weather in

London that day was certainly not of a sort to propitiate the nerves of

a man who had been raised on the cloudless skies of Southern Colorado.

Though it was early April, a settled gloom, as of November, brooded

impartially over city and suburbs. Mr Joaquin Holmes was by no means

happy. Society in London had grown tired of his seership; the

Psycho-physical Entertainment at the Assyrian Hall attracted every night

an ever-dwindling audience; Maskelyne and Cooke had learnt to

counterfeit all the best of his tricks; and things in general looked so

black just then for the trade of prophet that the Seer was beginning to

wonder in his own inmost soul whether he wouldn’t be compelled before

long to fall back for a while on his more lucrative but less reputable

alternative profession of gambler and card-sharper. However, being a man

of sentiment, he consoled himself meanwhile by a morning call on Mrs

Theodore Livingstone.

Philippina was looking her very best that afternoon, attired in a

coquettish costume, half _peignoir_, half tea-gown, especially designed

for the reception of such casual visitors. And Mr Joaquin Holmes was one

of Philippina’s most devoted admirers. Florian had introduced him long

ago to the good-natured singer, before her marriage, and the Seer had

ever since been numbered among her most frequent and attentive callers.

He could talk with her in German; for, as befits his trade, he was an

excellent linguist; and Philippina was glad when she could relieve

herself for a while from the constant strain of speaking English by an

occasional return to the free tongue of her Fatherland. Theodore was

out, she said, glibly, with her accustomed volubility; oh yes, he was

out, and he wouldn’t be back, she supposed, till dinner. No fear about

that; the horrid man never came near her now, except at meal times, or

to go down to the theatre. He was off, she had no doubt, with some of

his hateful companions in some billiard-room or something, wasting the

money that ought to go to the support of the household. If it weren’t

for herself, and for some _very_ kind friends, Philippina really didn’t

know what on earth would become of them.

The Seer smiled sweetly. He was an engaging man, and when he flooded

Philippina with the light of his great eyes she thought him really as

nice as anybody on earth, except Herr Andreas. They sat there long, and

chatted in that peculiar vein which Philippina affected when she found

herself alone with one of her male admirers. She was a born flirt,

Philippina, and though she was a matron now, with a distinct tendency to

grow visibly stouter on good English fare, she had still all that

archness and that liveliness of manner which had captivated Florian the

first morning they met her on the hill-top at St Valentin.

As they sat there, exchanging a quiet fire of repartee, with many

_ach’s_ and _so’s_ of very Teutonic playfulness, the lodging-house

servant came up with a note, which Philippina tore open and read through

somewhat eagerly. The Seer noticed that as she read it her colour

deepened—such signs of feeling seldom escaped the eyes of that

observant thought-reader. He noticed also that the envelope, though

directed in English letters, bore evident traces of a German hand in the

twists and twirls of the very peculiar manuscript. He could see from

where he sat an unmistakable curl over the _u_ of Bury Street. A curl

like that could only have been produced by a person accustomed to German

writing.

Philippina crumpled the envelope, and looked vacantly at the fireplace.

The fire wasn’t lighted, for the day, though damp and dark, was by no

means chilly. The Seer noted that glance: so she wanted to burn it,

then! Philippina, unheeding him, poked the envelope through the bars of

the grate with the aid of the tongs, but laid the note itself on the

table by her side, a little uneasily. The Seer, with that native

quickness of perception which had made him into a thought-reader,

divined at once what was passing through her mind; she must destroy that

note before Theodore returned, and she was anxious in her own soul for a

chance of destroying it.

Joaquin Holmes spotted a mystery—perhaps an intrigue; but, in any case,

a mystery. Now little family affairs of this sort were part and parcel

of his stock-in-trade; there was nothing so useful to him in life as

possession of a secret. And Philippina was indeed an open book; he could

read her as easily as he could read a pack of cards with the tips of his

fingers. The longer he stopped, the more obviously and evidently

Philippina fidgeted; the more she fidgeted, the longer he determined, as

he phrased it to himself with Western frankness, “to stop and see the

fun out.” Philippina grew more and more silent as time went by; the Seer

talked on and on with more unceasing persistence. Meanwhile, the fog

without grew denser and denser. At last, of a sudden, it descended,

pitch dark, with that surprising rapidity we all know so well in our

smoky metropolis. Philippina yawned; she saw there was no help for it.

It was a case for the gas. “Will you ring the bell, Mr Holmes?” she

asked languidly, in German.

The Seer seized his chance, and rose briskly to obey her. As he brushed

past her side, Philippina, in a quiver, put out her hand for her letter.

The room was black as night. She fumbled for it in vain; a cold chill

came over her. “Why, where’s that paper?” she exclaimed, in a tone of

most evident and undisguised dismay. “I wish I had a match. It was lying

here a minute ago.”

Mr Holmes stood calmly in the dark, with his hand upon the bell-handle.

He was in no hurry to ring it. “You’ll have to wait now,” he said, in

his very coolest manner, “till the servant comes up. Unfortunately, I

don’t happen to have a match about me.”

“There are some upon the mantelpiece, perhaps,” Philippina faltered,

unwilling to rise and move away from the table that held that

compromising letter.

“Oh, that’s all right!” the Seer said quietly, in his slow Western

drawl. “Don’t trouble yourself about me. I can see very well in the dark

without one.” Then he began to read aloud, “Du liebste Philippina!”

Philippina made a wild dash across the room in his direction. This was

horrible! He had abstracted it! But the Seer, unabashed, took a step or

two backward with great deliberation. “That’s all right!” he said again,

in a languid tone of the blandest unconcern. “There’s nothing fresh

here; you needn’t trouble yourself. It’s only a little note from a very

old friend, signed, ‘Thy ever affectionate, Andreas Hausberger.’”

Philippina darted once more blindly in the direction of the voice;

Joaquin Holmes heard her coming, and stepped aside noiselessly. He

passed his practised finger-tips again over the lines of the writing.

“Very pretty!” he said, smiling. “Very nice, indeed—for Signora

Casalmonte! Why, I fancied you were her friend. This is charming,

charming! And only to think so prudent a man as our dear friend

Hausberger should have ventured to write such a compromising letter! ‘At

three o’clock to-morrow, at the usual place,’ he says. Dear me, that’s

interesting! So you’ve met him there before! And what a fool the man

must be to go and put it on paper!”

Philippina clasped her hands, and dashed wildly against the sofa. “Oh,

give it back to me!” she cried, really alarmed. “What will Andreas ever

say! How _can_ you be so cruel? And my husband—my husband!”

The American, still wholly undisconcerted by her cries, popped the paper

inside his breast-coat pocket, buttoned it up securely, drew a match-box

from his waistcoat, and lighted the gas with a calm air of triumph.

“Now, don’t be a fool, Philippina,” he said, taking hold of her by those

plump round arms of hers, and pushing her back with conspicuous calmness

into an easy-chair. “Compose yourself! Compose yourself! There’s nothing

new in all this; we all know what _you_ are—Theodore Livingstone, I

suppose, just as well as the rest of us. Why trouble to give yourself

these airs of tragic virtue? To tell you the truth, my dear girl, they

don’t at all become you. Nobody expects miracles from an actress

nowadays—not even her husband. Besides, I’m not going to make money out

of _you_; you’re a very nice girl, and you’ve always been kind to me; so

why should I want to show this letter to Theodore? What’s Theodore to

me, or I to Theodore, that I should bother my head to uphold his

domestic dignity? No, no, my child; that’s not the game. I hold the

letter as a threat over Andreas Hausberger. Hausberger’s rich, don’t you

see, and his wife’s his fortune. What’s more, she hates him, and he

keeps her always precious short of money. She’ll be ready to pay

anything for a letter like this; it’s a handle against _him_; and he,

for his part, well—he’ll make any terms she likes rather than drive her

away from him.”

He took up his hat, and made a courtly bow. “Good-bye, Philippina,” he

said, smiling; “this’ll never come out at all, as far as regards

yourself and your husband. Hausberger’d pay me well to keep the thing

out of court; but I shan’t take it to _him_; I’ll go and offer it

direct, money down, to the Casalmonte.”

He walked lightly to the door, leaving Philippina petrified. He turned

into the street: the fog began to lift again. He walked briskly on in

the direction of Portland Place. Before he crossed the Regent’s Park, he

had made up his mind to his plan of action. It was no use trying to

blackmail a cool hand like Andreas; he must offer the letter, as he

said, direct to Linnet. He didn’t doubt she would gladly seize on the

pretext for a divorce, or at least a rupture. It would give her a good

excuse for going away from the man whom his observation and instinct had

rightly taught him she despised and detested.

He rang at the door in Avenue Road. By a lucky chance, he found Linnet

in—and alone: her husband, she said, was out; he had gone for the day,

she thought, with a party down to Greenwich.

The Seer didn’t mince matters. With American directness, he went

straight to the root of things. “I’m glad of that,” he said, coolly,

“for I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to see you alone. I’ve got

something against him I want to sell you.”

“Something against him?” Linnet cried, puzzled. “I don’t know what you

mean, Mr Holmes; and why on earth should you think I’d care to buy it?”

“Now, just you look here,” the Seer went on, holding the letter, face

downward, before him and fumbling it with his fingers; “why shouldn’t we

speak straight? What’s the good of going beating about the bush like

this? Let’s talk fair and square. You hate your husband.”

Linnet rose and faced him. She was flushed and angry. “You’ve no right

to say that,” she cried. “I never told you so.”

The Seer smiled sweetly. “I wouldn’t be a thought-reader,” he answered,

with unaffected frankness, “if I needed to be _told_ a thing in order to

know it. But that’s neither here nor there. Don’t let’s quarrel about

these trifles. The real thing’s this. I have a letter in my hand here

that may be of very great use to you, if you want to get away from this

man—as you do—and to marry Mr Deverill.”

Linnet’s face was crimson with shame and indignation. “How dare you say

such a thing, sir!” she cried, trying to move towards the door. “You

_know_ it isn’t true. I never dreamt of marrying him.”

By a quick flank movement, the Seer sprang in front of her and cut off

her retreat. “That won’t do,” he said, sharply. “You can’t deceive me

like that. Remember, I can read your inmost thoughts as readily as I can

read this letter in my hand. I’ll read it to you now. It’s to your

friend Mrs Livingstone.” And, without a passing tremor on that handsome

face or a quiver in his voice, he read out with his fingers the short

compromising note, from “Thou dearest Philippina” down to “Thy ever

affectionate, Andreas Hausberger.”

Linnet faced him, unmoved externally but with a throbbing heart. The

Seer, as he finished it, darted a triumphant glance at her.

“Well?” Linnet said quietly, drawing herself up to her full height.

“Well, what’ll you give me for that, in plain black and white?” the Seer

asked, with a calm tone of unquestioned victory.

“Nothing!” Linnet answered, moving once more towards the door. “It’s

nothing fresh to me. I knew all that, oh, long ago.”

“Knew it? Ah, yes, no doubt,” the Seer answered, with a curl of those

handsome lips. “There’s nothing much in that. Of course we all knew it.

But it’s not enough _knowing_ it. You want it written down in plain

black and white, to put in evidence against him. You see he

acknowledges—”

Linnet cut him short sharply. “To put it in evidence?” she repeated,

staring at him with a bewildered look. “In evidence against whom? What

on earth can you mean? To put in evidence where? I don’t understand

you.”

“Now, don’t let’s waste useful time,” the Seer interposed seriously.

“This is a practical matter. There’s no knowing how soon your husband

may return. I just mean business. I want to hear, straight and short,

what you’ll give for this letter. We all know very well you’ve got

enough already to prove the count of cruelty upon. You’ve only got to

prove the other thing in order to get a regular divorce from him. And

the proof of it’s here, in plain black and white, under his own very

hand, in this letter I’ve read to you. Now, what do you offer? If you

name my figure, it’s yours; if you don’t—well, Philippina’s a very good

friend of mine; here goes—I’ll burn it!”

He held it over the fire, which was burning in the grate, as he looked

hard into her eyes. Linnet drew back a pace or two, and faced him

proudly. “Mr Holmes,” she said, in her very coldest voice, “you entirely

misunderstand. You reckon without your host. You forget I’m a Catholic.

Divorce to me means absolutely nothing. I’m Andreas Hausberger’s wife

before the eye of God, and all the law-courts on earth could never make

me otherwise—could never set me free to be anyone else’s. So your

letter would be absolutely no use at all to me. I knew pretty well, long

since, the main fact it implies; and it mattered very little to me.

Andreas Hausberger is my husband—as such, I obey him, by the law of

God—but he never had my heart; and I never had his. On no ground

whatsoever do I value your document.”

The Seer, in turn, drew back in incredulous amazement. Was she trying to

cheapen him? He interpreted her words after his own psychology. “No; you

don’t mean that,” he said, with an unbelieving air. “You’d get a divorce

if you could, of course, like anyone else; and you’d marry that man

Deverill. Don’t think I’m such a fool as not to know how you feel to

him. But you’re seeming to hang back so as to knock down my price. You

want to get it a bargain. You think you can best me. Now, don’t let’s

lose time haggling. Make me an offer, money down, and I’ll tell you at

once whether or not I’ll entertain it.”

Linnet gazed at him in unspeakable scorn and contempt. “Do you think,”

she said, advancing a step, “I’d bargain with you to buy a wretched

thing like that! If I wanted to leave my husband, I’d leave him

outright, letter or no letter. I stop with him now, of my own free will,

by the Church’s command, and from a sense of duty.”

So far as the Seer was concerned, this strange woman spoke a foreign

language. Duty was a word that didn’t enter into his vocabulary. He

scanned her from head to foot, as one might scan some queer specimen of

an unknown wild species. “You can’t possibly mean _that_,” he cried,

with a discordant little laugh, for he was used to the free Western

notions on these subjects. “Come now, buy it or not!” he went on,

dangling the letter before her face, between finger and thumb. “It’s

going, going, going! Won’t you make me a bid for it?”

He shook it temptingly, held it aloft; it was valuable evidence. As he

did so, the paper slipped all of a sudden from his grasp, and fell

fluttering at Linnet’s feet. Mr Holmes was quick, but Linnet was quicker

still. Before he could stoop to pick it up, she had darted down upon it

and seized it. Then, with lightning haste, she thrust it inside her

dress, in the shelter of her bosom. The baffled Seer seized her

hand—too late to prevent her.

“Give it back to me!” he cried, twisting her wrist as he spoke. “How

dare you take it? That’s a dirty trick to play a man. It’s mine, I say;

give it back to me!”

Though he hurt her wrist and frightened her, Linnet stood her ground

well. She was stronger than he thought—with all the stored-up strength

of her mountain rearing. She pushed him back with a sudden burst of

explosive energy. “You’re wrong,” she cried, indignantly. “It never was

yours,—though I don’t know how you got it. You must have stolen it, no

doubt, or intercepted it by some vile means, and then tried to make

money out of it. I don’t want it myself, but I won’t give it back. It

belongs to Philippina, and I mean to return it to her.”

“That’s a lie!” the Seer answered, catching her hands with a hasty dash,

and trying to force her on her knees. “Damn your tricks; I’ll have it

back again!” And, in the heat of his rage, he tried to unfasten her

dress and snatch it from her bosom.

She tore herself away. The Seer followed her, still struggling. It was a

hand-to-hand grapple. He fought her for it wildly.

At that very moment, before Linnet had time to scream for help, the door

opened suddenly, and—Andreas Hausberger entered.