To introduce the last book by the late Bernard Capes is a sad sort of honour in more ways than one; for not only was his death untimely and unexpected, but he had a mind of that fertile type which must always leave behind it, with the finished life, a sense of unfinished labour. From the first his prose had a strong element of poetry, which an appreciative reader could feel even more, perhaps, when it refined a frankly modern and even melodramatic theme, like that of this mystery story, than whe

( From the late Mr. Bickerdike’s “Apologia” [1] ) Some few years ago, in the month of September, I happened to be kicking my heels in Paris, awaiting the arrival there of my friend Hugo Kennett. We had both been due from the south, I from Vaucluse and Kennett from the Riviera, and the arrangement had been that we should meet together for a week in the capital before returning home. Enfants perdus! Kennett was never anything but unpunctual, and he failed to turn up to time, or anywhere near it, a

( From Mr. Bickerdike’s Manuscript ) It might have been somewhere near the anniversary of my first meeting with the Baron when I came upon him again—in London this time. I had been lunching at Simpson’s in the Strand, and, my meal finished, had gone up into the smoking-room for a coffee and liqueur. This is a famous corner of a famous caravansary, being dedicate, like no other smoking-room I know, to the service of the most ancient and most royal game of chess, many of whose leading professors f

Wildshott , the Hampshire seat of the Kennetts, stands off the Winton-Sarum road, at a distance of some six miles from the former, and some three and a half from the sporting town of Longbridge, on the way to the latter. The house is lonely situated in wild but beautiful country, lying as it does in the trough of the great downs whose summits hereabouts command some of the most spacious views in the County. A mile north-east, footing a gentle incline, shelters the village of Leighway; less than

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) I seemed conscious somehow, at dinner on the night of our arrival, of a feeling of electricity in the domestic atmosphere. Having no clue, such as the later course of events came to supply, to its origin, I diagnosed it, simply and vulgarly, as the vibrations from a family jar, of the sort to which even the most dignified and well-regulated households cannot always rise superior. Sir Calvin himself, exacting and domineering, could never at the best of times be conside

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) We were three guns—Hugo, myself, and a young local landowner, Sir Francis Orsden, of Audley, whom I had met before and liked. He was a good fellow, though considered effeminate by a sporting squirearchy; but that I could never see. Our shooting lay over the lower estate, from which the harvest had lately been carried, and we went out by the main gates, meeting the head gamekeeper, Hanson, with the dogs and a couple of boy beaters, in the road. Our plan was to work the

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) I confess that the man’s communication, coming on the top of my concern for my friend, fairly, in the first moment of it, took me aghast. The state in which I had found Hugh, that disquieting business of the gun, his insistence on sticking to his weapon—it was inevitable that my mind should instinctively leap to some association between these and a catastrophe so seemingly their corollary in its nature and instrumentality. It was odd, but ever since my meeting with th

Jake was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis Orsden—the son of one of whose gamekeepers he was—would never, though a young man of imagination himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit. Yet, when Sir Francis played on the organ in the little church at Leighway, and Jake blew for him, it was

The Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which, five days earlier, had been the living entity known as Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master of the Ceremonies at some important entertainment. The tap overflowed as on an auction day—occasion most popular for bringing together from near and far those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a bankrupt farm stock offers an irresistible

The inquest was over, the provisional verdict delivered, and all that remained for the time being was to put the poor subject of it straightway to rest under the leafless trees in Leighway churchyard. It was done quietly and decently the morning after the inquiry, with some of her fellow-servants attending, and Miss Kennett to represent the family; and so was another blossom untimely fallen, and another moral—a somewhat ghastly one now—furnished for the reproof of the too hilarious Christian. Au

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) On the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened. It became really entertaining. One did not know whether to appear the more scandalised or amused. On the one hand there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that the last word was apparently not said in what had seemed to be a perfectly straightforward affair, on the other one’s sense of fitness had received a severe blow. In short, the impeccable Cleghorn had been arrested, and was detained on suspicion. I saw hi

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) I was still in this resolved mood, when something happened one night which confirmed my worst suspicions, showing me how faithfully I had weighed and measured the character of the man posing as a benevolent guest in the house, the hospitality of which he was designing all the time, in some mysteriously villainous way, to abuse. On that night I had gone to bed rather late, outstaying, in fact, the entire family and household, whose early country ways my degenerate Lond

Wednesday of the third week following the Inquest was appointed for the magisterial inquiry, and during the interval Sergeant Ridgway was busily occupied, presumably in accumulating and piecing together various evidence. Of what it consisted no one but himself knew, nor did it appear whether or not its trend on the whole was favourable or disastrous to the unhappy prisoner, at the expense possibly of Cleghorn, or possibly to the complete exculpation of that injured man. The detective kept his ow

The Magistrates assembled to hear the case were four in number, two of them being local magnates and personal friends of Sir Calvin, who was accorded a seat on the Bench. They took their places at eleven o’clock, the Court being then crowded to its utmost capacity. The case stood first on the list, and no delay was experienced in opening it. As before, Mr. Fyler appeared for the police, and Mr. Redstall for Sir Calvin. The prisoner was undefended. At the outset of the proceedings a surprise awai

The morning of the inquiry found M. le Baron in Paris, in his old rooms at the Montesquieu. He was in very good spirits, smiling and buoyant, and not at all conscience-smitten over his desertion of his servant in his hour of need. “It will be a not unwholesome lesson for the little fanfaron ,” he thought, “teaching him in the future to keep a guard on his tongue and temper.” He foresaw, be it observed, that certain issue, and felt no anxiety about it. But his face fell somewhat to an added refle

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) Who that was present at that scene could ever forget its anguish and pathos? Its fierce dramatic intensity will remain for all time indelibly seared on my soul. Could I believe in my friend’s guilt? Knowing him, it was impossible: and yet that seemingly incontrovertible evidence as to when the shot was fired? If he had done it, if he had done it, not his own nature but some fiend temporarily in possession of it must have directed his hand. But I would not believe he h

Audrey had been starting for a walk when detained by the interview recorded in the last chapter. She left it burning with indignation and passionate resentment. That this man could call himself a friend of Hughie, and conceive for one moment the possibility of his guilt! He pretended to be his intimate, and did not even know him. How she hated such Laodicean allies! And that he should dare to try to involve her in his doubts and half concessions! It was infamous. It had needed all her sense of t

( From the Bickerdike MS. ) I had a long and interesting interview with Sir Calvin’s lawyers, when I used the occasion to unburden my mind of some of the misgivings which had been disturbing it. I spoke theoretically, of course, and without prejudice, and no doubt considerably impressed my hearers, who were very earnest with me to keep my own counsel in the matter until one of the partners could run down—which he would do in the course of a few days—to examine into all the circumstances of the c

Sergeant Ridgway , turning up punctually to his appointment, was shown into Sir Calvin’s study, where he found, not his former employer, but the Baron Le Sage, seated alone. Characteristically, the detective showed as little surprise at seeing who awaited him as he did embarrassment over his return to a house whose hospitality he had, according to Mr. Bickerdike, so cruelly abused. He could have understood, no doubt, no reason for his feeling any. His commission had been to discover the murderer

Sir Francis Orsden and the Baron Le Sage walked slowly up the kitchen garden together. It was a windless autumn morning, such serene and gracious weather as had prevailed now for some days, and the primroses under the wall were already putting forth a little precocious blossom or two, feeling for the Spring. There was a balm in the air and a softness in the soil which communicated themselves to the human fibre, reawakening it as it were to a sense of new life out of old distress. Such feelings m

Miss Kennett , still in process of qualifying herself for a musician, was at work on Czerny’s fifth exercise, which, like the pons asinorum of an earlier strategist, could present an insuperable problem to an intelligence already painful master of the four preceding. To pick up one note with her was, like the clown with the packages, to drop half a dozen others; to give its proper value to the right hand was to leave the left struggling in a partial paralysis. Still she persevered, lips counting