The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (8 page)

‘But I suppose you are generally asleep when he comes in late?' said the detective, ‘so you can't tell what hour he comes home?'

‘Not as a rule,' assented Mrs Sampson, ‘bein' a 'eavy sleeper, and much disposed for bed, but I 'ave 'eard 'im come in arter twelve, the last time being Thursday week.'

‘Ah!' Mr Gorby drew a long breath, for Thursday week was the night when the murder was committed.

‘Bein' troubled with my 'ead,' said Mrs Sampson, ‘thro' 'avin' been out in the sun all day a-washin', I did not feel so partial to my bed that night, as in general,
so went down to the kitching with the intent of getting a linseed poultice to put at the back of my 'ead, it being calculated to remove pain, as was told to me when a nuss by a doctor in the horspital, 'e now bein' in business for hisself at Geelong with a large family, 'avin' married early. Just as I was leavin' the kitching, I 'eard Mr Fitzgerald a-comin' in, and, turnin' round, looked at the clock, that 'avin' been my custom when my late 'usband came in in the early mornin', I bein' a-preparin' 'is meal—'

‘And the time was?' asked Mr Gorby, breathlessly.

‘Five minutes to two o'clock,' replied Mrs Sampson.

Mr Gorby thought for a moment.

‘Cab was hailed at one o'clock—started for St Kilda at about ten minutes past—reached grammar school, say at twenty-five minutes past—Fitzgerald talks five minutes to cabman, making it half past—say he waited ten minutes for other cab to turn up, makes it twenty minutes to two—it would take another twenty minutes to get to East Melbourne—and five minutes to walk up here—that makes it five minutes past two instead of before—confound it—was your clock in the kitchen right?' he asked, aloud.

‘Well, I think so,' answered Mrs Sampson. ‘It does get a little slow sometimes not 'avin' bin cleaned for some time, which my nevy bein' a watchmaker I allays 'ands it over to 'im.'

‘Of course it was slow on that night,' said Gorby triumphantly, ‘he must have come in at five minutes
past two—which makes it right.'

‘Makes what right,' asked the landlady sharply, ‘and 'ow do you know my clock was ten minutes wrong?'

‘Oh, it was, was it?' asked Gorby eagerly.

‘I'm not denyin' that it wasn't,' replied Mrs Sampson, ‘clocks ain't allays to be relied on more than men an' women—but it won't be anythin' agin 'is insurance will it as in general 'es in afore twelve.'

‘Oh, all that will be quite safe,' answered the detective, delighted at having obtained the required information. ‘Is this Mr Fitzgerald's room?'

‘Yes, it is,' replied the landlady, ‘but 'e furnished it 'imself, bein' of a luxurus turn of mind, not but what 'is taste is good, tho' far be it from me to deny I 'elped 'im to select—but avin' another room of the same to let any friends as you might 'ave in search of a 'ome 'ud be well looked arter, my references bein' very 'igh an' my cookin' tasty—an' if—'

Here a ring at the front door bell called Mrs Sampson away, so with a hurried word to Gorby she crackled downstairs. Left to himself, Mr Gorby arose and looked round the room. It was excellently furnished, and the pictures on the wall were all in good taste. There was a writing table at one end of the room under the window, which was covered with papers.

‘It's no good looking for the papers he took out of Whyte's pocket, I suppose,' said the detective to himself,
as he turned over some letters. ‘As I don't know what they are and couldn't tell them if I saw them—but I'd like to find that missing glove and the bottle that held the chloroform—unless he's done away with them—there doesn't seem any sign of them here, so I'll have a look in his bedroom.'

There was no time to lose as Mrs Sampson might return at any moment, so Mr Gorby walked quickly into the bedroom, which opened off the sitting-room. The first thing that caught the detective's eye was a large photograph of Madge Frettlby in a plush frame, which stood on the dressing-table. It was the same kind as he had already seen in Whyte's album, and he took it up with a laugh.

‘You're a pretty girl,' he said, apostrophising the picture, ‘but you give your photograph to two young men, both in love with you, and both hot-tempered—the result is that one is dead, and the other won't survive him long—that's what you've done.'

He put it down again, and looking round the room caught sight of a light covert coat hanging behind the door and also a soft hat.

‘Ah,' said the detective, going up to the door, ‘here is the very coat you wore when you killed that poor fellow—I wonder what you have in the pockets,' and he plunged his hand into them in turn. There was an old theatre programme and a pair of brown gloves in one, but in the second pocket Mr Gorby made a discov
ery—none other than that of the missing glove. There it was—a soiled white glove for the right hand, with black bands down the back, and the detective smiled in a gratified manner, as he put it carefully in his pocket.

‘My morning has not been wasted,' he said to himself. ‘I've found out that he came in at a time which corresponds to all his movements after one o'clock on Thursday night, and this is the missing glove, which clearly belonged to Whyte—if I could only get a hold of the chloroform bottle I'd be satisfied.'

But the chloroform bottle was not to be found, though he searched most carefully for it. At last, hearing Mrs Sampson coming up the stairs again, he desisted from his search and came back to the sitting-room.

‘Threw it away, I expect,' he said, as he sat down in his old place, ‘but it doesn't matter. I think I can form a chain of evidence, from what I have discovered, which will be sufficient to convict him, besides I expect when he is arrested he will confess everything, he seems to have such a lot of remorse for what he has done.'

The door opened, and Mrs Sampson crackled into the room in a state of indignation.

‘One of them Chinese 'awkers,' she explained, ‘'e's bin a-tryin' to git the better of me over carrots—as if I didn't know what carrots was—and 'im a-talkin about a shillin' in his gibberish, as if 'e 'adn't been brought up in a place where they don't know what a shillin' is—but I never could abide furreigners ever since a Frenchman
as taught me 'is language made orf with my mother's silver tea pot, unbeknown to 'er, it being set out on the sideboard for company.'

Mr Gorby interrupted these domestic reminiscences of Mrs Sampson's by stating that now she had given him all necessary information, he would take his departure.

‘And I 'opes,' said Mrs Sampson, as she opened the door for him, ‘as I'll have the pleasure of seein' you again should any business on be'alf of Mr Fitzgerald require it.'

‘Oh, I'll see you again,' said Mr Gorby, with heavy jocularity, ‘and in a way you won't like, as you'll be called as a witness,' he added, mentally. ‘Did I understand you to say Mrs Sampson,' he went on, ‘that Mr Fitzgerald would be at home this afternoon?'

‘Oh, yes sir, 'e will,' answered Mrs Sampson, ‘a-drinkin' tea with his young lady, who is Miss Frettlby, and 'as got no 'end of money, not but what I mightn't 'ave 'ad the same 'ad I been born in a higher spear.'

‘You need not tell Mr Fitzgerald I have been here,' said Gorby, closing the gate, ‘I'll probably call and see him myself this afternoon.'

‘What a stout person 'e are,' said Mrs Sampson to herself, as the detective walked away, ‘just like my late father, who was allays fleshy, being a great eater, and fond of 'is glass, but I took arter my mother's family,
they bein' thin-like, and proud of keeping 'emselves so, as the vinegar they drank could testify, not that I indulge in it myself.'

She shut the door and went upstairs to take away the breakfast things, while Gorby was being driven along at a good pace to the police office, in order to get a warrant for Brian's arrest on a charge of wilful murder.

CHAPTER TEN

IN THE QUEEN'S NAME

It was a broiling hot day—one of those cloudless days with the blazing sun beating down on the arid streets and casting deep black shadows. By rights it was a December day, but the clerk of the weather had evidently got a little mixed, and popped it into the middle of August by mistake. The previous week, however, had been a little chilly, and this delightfully hot day had come as a pleasant surprise and a forecast of summer.

It was Saturday morning, and of course all fashionable Melbourne was doing the Block. With regard to its ‘Block', Collins Street corresponds to New York's Broadway, London's Regent Street and Rotten Row,
and to the Boulevards of Paris. It is on the Block that people show off their new dresses, bow to their friends, cut their enemies, and chatter small talk. The same thing no doubt occurred in the Appian Way, the fashionable street of Imperial Rome, when Catullus talked gay nonsense to Lesbia, and Horace received the congratulations of his friends over his new volume of society verses. History repeats itself, and every city is bound by all the laws of civilisation to have one special street, wherein the votaries of fashion can congregate.

Collins Street is not of course such a grand thoroughfare as those above mentioned, but the people who stroll up and down the broad pavement are quite as charmingly dressed and as pleasant as any of the peripatetics of those famous cities. As the sun brings out bright flowers so the seductive influence of the hot weather had brought out all the ladies in gay dresses of innumerable colours, which made the long street look like a restless rainbow. Carriages were bowling smoothly along, their occupants smiling and bowing as they recognised their friends on the sidewalk; lawyers, their legal quibbles finished for the week, were strolling leisurely along, with their black bags in their hands; portly merchants, forgetting Flinders Lane and incoming ships, were walking beside their pretty daughters, and the representatives of swelldom were stalking along in their customary apparel of curly hats, high collars, and masher suits. Altogether it was
a very pleasant and animated scene, and would have delighted the heart of anyone who was not dyspeptic, nor in love—dyspeptic people and lovers (disappointed ones of course) being accustomed to survey the world in a cynical vein.

Madge Frettlby was engaged in that pleasant occupation so dear to every female heart, of shopping. She was in Moubray, Rowan and Hicks turning over ribbons and laces, while the faithful Brian waited for her outside, and amused himself by looking at the human stream which flowed along the pavement. If there is one thing above another which is dreaded by men it is shopping with ladies, for then a few minutes with them becomes hours, and the weary husband, pensively smoking cigarettes outside, while his better half worries the young man at the counter about the last new shade, wonders, ‘What the doose can be keeping Maria,' until that estimable lady makes her appearance, followed by a shopman bending like Atlas under his load of boxes and parcels. Brian disliked shopping quite as much as the rest of his sex, but being a lover, of course it was his duty to be martyrised, though he would not help thinking of his pleasant club, where he could have been reading and smoking with something cool in a glass beside him. After Madge had purchased a dozen articles she did not want, and had interviewed her dressmaker on the momentous subject of a new dress, she remembered that Brian was waiting
for her, and hurried quickly to the door.

‘I haven't been many minutes have I, dear?' she said touching him lightly on the arm.

‘Oh dear no,' answered Brian, looking at his watch, ‘only thirty—a mere nothing, considering a new dress was being discussed.'

‘I thought I had been longer,' said Madge, her brow clearing, ‘but still I am sure you feel a martyr.'

‘Not at all,' replied Fitzgerald, handing her into the carriage, ‘I enjoyed myself very much.'

‘Nonsense,' she laughed, opening her sunshade, while Brian took his seat beside her, ‘that's one of those social stories—which everyone considers themselves bound to tell from a sense of duty. I'm afraid I did keep you waiting—though, after all,' she went on with a true feminine idea as to the flight of time, ‘I was only a few minutes.'

‘And the rest,' said Brian, quizzically looking at her pretty face, so charmingly flushed under her great white hat.

Madge disdained to notice this interruption.

‘James,' she cried to the coachman, ‘drive to the Melbourne Club. Papa will be there, you know,' she said to Brian, ‘and we'll take him off to have afternoon tea with us.'

‘But it's only one o'clock,' said Brian, as the Town Hall clock came in sight. ‘Mrs Sampson won't be ready.'

‘Oh, anything will do,' replied Madge, ‘a cup of tea
and some thin bread and butter, isn't hard to prepare. I don't feel like lunch, and papa eats so little in the middle of the day, and you—'

‘Eat a great deal at all times,' finished Brian with a laugh. Madge went on chattering in her usual lively manner, and Brian listened to her with delight. It was very pleasant, he thought, lying back among the soft cushions of the carriage, with a pretty girl talking so gaily. He felt like Saul must have done when he heard the harp of David, and Madge with her pleasant talk drove away the evil spirit which had been with him for the last three weeks. Suddenly Madge made an observation as they were passing the Burke and Wills monument, which startled him.

‘Isn't that the place where Mr Whyte got into the cab?' she asked, looking at the corner near the Scotch Church, where a vagrant of musical tendencies was playing ‘Just Before the Battle, Mother ‘ on a battered old concertina in a most dismal manner.

‘So the papers say,' answered Brian, listlessly, without turning his head.

‘I wonder who the gentleman in the light coat could have been,' said Madge, as she settled herself again.

‘No one seems to know,' he replied evasively.

‘Ah, but they've got a clue,' she said. ‘Do you know, Brian,' she went on, ‘that he was dressed just like you, in a light overcoat and soft hat?'

‘How remarkable,' said Fitzgerald, speaking in a
slightly sarcastic tone, and as calmly as he was able, ‘he was dressed in the same manner as nine out of every ten young fellows in Melbourne.'

Madge looked at him in surprise at the tone in which he spoke, so different from his usual nonchalant way of speaking, and was about to answer when the carriage stopped at the door of the Melbourne Club. Brian, anxious to escape any more remarks about the murder, sprang quickly out, and ran up the steps into the building. He found Mr Frettlby smoking complacently, and reading the
Age
.
As Fitzgerald entered he looked up, and putting down the paper held out his hand, which the other took.

‘Ah! Fitzgerald,' he said; ‘have you left the attractions of Collins Street for the still greater ones of Clubland?'

‘Not I,' answered Brian, ‘I've come to carry you off to afternoon tea with Madge and myself.'

‘I don't mind,' answered Mr Frettlby, rising; ‘but isn't afternoon tea at half past one rather an anomaly?'

‘What's in a name,' said Fitzgerald, absently, as they left the room. ‘What have you been doing all morning?'

‘I've been in here for the last half-hour reading,' answered the other, carelessly.

‘Wool market, I suppose?'

‘No; the hansom cab murder.'

‘Oh, damn that thing,' said Brian, hastily; then,
seeing his companion looking at him in surprise, he apologised. ‘But, indeed,' he went on, ‘I'm nearly worried to death by people asking all about Whyte, as if I knew all about him, whereas I know nothing.'

‘Just as well you didn't,' answered Mr Frettlby, as they descended the steps together; ‘he was not a very desirable companion.'

It was on the tip of Brian's tongue to say ‘And yet you wanted him to marry your daughter,' but he wisely refrained and they reached the carriage in silence.

‘Now then, papa,' said Madge, when they were all settled in the carriage, and it was rolling along smoothly in the direction of East Melbourne, ‘what have you been doing?'

‘Enjoying myself,' answered her father, ‘until you and Brian came, and dragged me out into this blazing sunshine.'

‘Well, Brian has been so good of late,' said Madge, ‘that I had to reward him, so I knew that nothing would please him better than to play host.'

‘Certainly not,' said Brian, rousing himself out of a fit of abstraction, ‘especially when one has such charming visitors.'

Madge laughed at this and made a little grimace.

‘If your tea is only equal to your compliments,' she said, lightly, ‘I'm sure papa will forgive us for dragging him away from his club.'

‘Papa will forgive anything,' murmured Mr
Frettlby, tilting his hat over his eyes, ‘as long as he gets somewhere out of the sun. I can't say I care about playing the parts of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace of a hot Melbourne day.'

‘There now, papa is quite a host in himself,' said Madge mischievously, as the carriage drew up at Mrs Sampson's door.

‘No, you are wrong,' said Brian, as he alighted and helped her out of the carriage, ‘I am the host in myself this time.'

‘If there's one thing I hate above another,' observed Miss Frettlby calmly, ‘it's puns, and especially bad ones.'

Mrs Sampson was very much astonished at the early arrival of her lodger's guests, and expressed her surprise in shrill tones.

‘Bein' taken by surprise,' she said, with an apologetic cackle, ‘it ain't to be suppose as miraculs can be performed with regard to cookin', the fire havin' gone out, not bein' kept alight on account of the 'eat of the day, which was that 'ot as never was, tho', to be sure, bein' a child in the early days, I remember it were that 'ot as my sister's aunt was in the 'abit of roastin' her jints in the sun.'

After telling this last romance, and leaving her visitors in doubt whether the joints referred to belonged to an animal or to her sister's aunt herself, Mrs Sampson crackled away downstairs to get things ready.

‘What a curious thing that landlady of yours is,
Brian,' said Madge, from the depths of a huge armchair. ‘I believe she's a grasshopper from the Fitzroy Gardens.'

‘Oh, no, she's a woman,' said Mr Frettlby cynically. ‘You can tell that by the length of her tongue.'

‘A popular error, papa,' retorted Madge, sharply. ‘I know plenty of men who talk far more than any woman.'

‘I hope I'll never meet them then,' said Mr Frettlby, ‘for if I did I would be inclined to agree with De Quincey's essay on murder, as one of the fine arts.'

Brian shivered at this, and looked apprehensively at Madge, and saw with relief that she was not paying attention to her father, but was listening intently.

‘There she is,' as a faint rustle at the door announced the arrival of Mrs Sampson and the tea tray. ‘I wonder, Brian, you don't think the house is on fire with that queer noise always going on—she wants oil.'

‘Yes, St Jacob's oil,' laughed Brian, as Mrs Sampson entered and placed her burden on the table.

‘Not 'avin' any cake,' said that lady, ‘thro' not being forewarned as to the time of arrival—tho' it's not ofting I'm taken by surprise—except as to a 'eadache, which, of course, is accidental to every pusson—I ain't got nothin' but bread and butter, the baker and grocer, both bein' all that could be desired, except in the way of worryin' for their money, which they thinks as 'ow I keeps the bank in the 'ouse, like Allading's cave, as I've 'eard tell in the Arabian Nights, me 'avin' gained
it as a prize for English in my early girl'ood, bein' then considered a scholard, an' industrus.'

Mrs Sampson's shrill apologies for the absence of cake having been received, she hopped out of the room, and Madge made the tea. The service was a quaint Chinese one which Brian had picked up in his wanderings, and used for gatherings like these. As he watched her, he could not help thinking how pretty she looked, with her hands moving deftly among the cups and saucers, so bizarre-looking with their sprawling dragons of yellow and green. He half smiled to himself as he thought, ‘If they knew all, I wonder if they would sit with me as cool and unconcerned.' Mr Frettlby, too, as he looked at his daughter, thought of his dead wife, and sighed.

‘Well,' said Madge, as she handed them their tea and helped herself to some thin bread and butter, ‘you two gentlemen are most delightful company—papa is sighing like a furnace, and Brian is staring at me with his eyes like blue china saucers—you ought both to be turned forth to funerals like melancholy.'

‘Why like melancholy?' queried Brian, lazily.

‘I'm afraid, Mr Fitzgerald,' said the young lady, with a smile in her pretty black eyes, ‘that you are not a student of
A Midsummer Night
'
s Dream
.'

‘Very likely not,' answered Brian, ‘midsummer out here is so hot that one gets no sleep, and, consequently, no dreams; depend upon it, if the four lovers whom Puck treated so badly had lived in Australia, they
wouldn't have been able to sleep for the mosquitos.'

‘What nonsense you two young people do talk,' said Mr Frettlby, with an amused smile, as he stirred his tea.

‘
Dulce est desipere in loco
,'
observed Brian gravely, ‘a man who can't carry out that observation is sure not to be up to much.'

‘I don't like Latin,' said Miss Frettlby, shaking her pretty head. ‘I agree with Heine's remark, that if the Romans had had to learn it, they would not have found time to conquer the world.'

‘Which was a much more agreeable task,' said Brian.

‘And more profitable,' finished Mr Frettlby.