Part 6

"'Reports of the result of Edward Layton's trial for the murder of his wife have been cabled here and published in the papers. There will, of course, be a new trial. If at or before that new trial you establish Layton's innocence, I hold myself accountable to you for a fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. If you will employ yourself to that end, I have cabled to Messrs. Morgan & Co., bankers, Threadneedle Street, to pay upon your demand the sum of ten thousand dollars, five thousand dollars of which are your retaining fee, the other five thousand being an instalment towards any preliminary expenses you may incur. This sum of ten thousand dollars is independent of the twenty-five thousand mentioned above, and of course your own professional bill of costs will be paid in addition. Messrs. Morgan & Co. are empowered to advance you any further sums that may be necessary for your investigations. Set every engine afoot to obtain the acquittal of Edward Layton spare no expense. If a million dollars is necessary, it is at your command. Send to me by every mail full and detailed accounts of your movements and proceedings; omit nothing, and make your own charge for this and for everything else you perform in the task I ask you as a favor to undertake. Your reply immediately by cable will oblige, and, up to one hundred words, is prepaid. I do not wish Edward Layton to know that I have requested your mediation on his behalf. It is a matter entirely and confidentially between you and me. I write to you by the outgoing mail. Perhaps you may obtain some useful information from a Mr. James Rutland I cannot furnish you with the gentleman's address, but Edward Layton and he were once friends.'"

Dr. Daincourt drew a deep breath.

"Startling indeed," he said. "This Archibald Laing must be the man of whom we have heard as making an immense fortune by speculating at the right moment in the silver-mines. If so, he is good for millions. Do you know anything of him?"

"Not personally," replied the lawyer; "only from report and hearsay. He is an Englishman, and must be an amazingly shrewd fellow; and that he is in earnest is partly proved by this cable, in which no words are spared to make his meaning clear."

While he was speaking to his friend, the lawyer was busily engaged writing upon a blank telegraph form, which was enclosed in the envelope delivered by the messenger.

"What will you do in the matter?" asked Dr. Daincourt.

"Here is my reply," said the lawyer, and he read it aloud:

"_From Mr. Bainbridge, Q.C., Harley Street, London, to Archibald Laing, Box_ 1236, _P. 0., Pittsburg, U. S_.

"'Your cable received. I undertake the commission, and will use every effort to establish Layton's innocence, in which I firmly believe. There is a mystery in the matter, and I will do my best to get at the heart of it. I will write to you as you desire.'"

He touched the bell and the servant appeared.

"Give this to the telegraph boy," he said, "and pay his cab fare to the telegraph office, in order that there shall be no delay."

When the servant had departed, the lawyer rose from his chair and paced the room slowly in deep thought, and it was during the intervals in his reflections that the conversation between him and Dr. Daincourt was carried on.

"Is it not very strange," said the lawyer, "that I am advised in this cable message to seek information from the one juryman who pronounced Layton innocent, and whose address I have not obtained?"

"Yes, it is, indeed," replied Dr. Daincourt, "very strange."

"Of course I shall find him; there will not be the least difficulty in that respect. Tell me, doctor. It was proved at the trial that Mrs. Layton's death was caused by an overdose of morphia, taken in the form of effervescing lozenges. It was established that she was occasionally in the habit of taking one of these lozenges at night to produce sleep, and her maid swore that her mistress never took more than one, being aware of the danger of an overdose. The usual mode of administering these noxious opiates is by placing one in the mouth and allowing it to dissolve; but they will dissolve in water, and the medical evidence proved that at least eight or ten of the poisonous lozenges must have been administered in this way, in one dose, to the unfortunate lady. The glass from which the liquid was drunk was round, not by her bedside, but on the mantle-shelf, which is at some distance from the bed. It is a natural inference, if the unfortunate woman had administered the dose to herself, that the glass would have been found on the table by her bedside. It was not so found, and the maid declares that her mistress was too weak to get out of bed and return to it unaided. These facts, if they be facts, circumstantially prove that the cause of death lay outside the actions of the invalid herself. The maid states that when she left her mistress the bottle containing about a dozen lozenges was on the table by her mistress's bedside, and also a glass, and a decanter of water; and that when she visited her mistress at between six and seven o'clock in the morning there were no lozenges left in the bottle, and the glass from which they were supposed to be taken, dissolved in water, was on the mantle-shelf. Now, in my view, this circumstance is in favor of the prisoner."

"I cannot see that," observed Dr. Daincourt.

"Yet it is very simple," said the lawyer. "Let us suppose, in illustration, that I am this lady's husband. For reasons into which it is not necessary here to enter, I resolve to make away with my wife by administering to her an overdose of these poisonous narcotics, and naturally I resolve that her death shall be accomplished in such a manner as to avert, to some reasonable extent, suspicion from myself. I go into her bedroom at midnight. Our relations, as has been proved, are not of the most amiable kind. We are not in love with each other--quite the reverse--and have been living, from the first day of our marriage, an unhappy life. Indeed, my unhappy life, in relation to the lady, commenced when I was engaged to her. Well, I go into her room at midnight, resolved to bring about her death. She complains that she cannot sleep, and she asks me to give her a morphia lozenge from the bottle. I suggest that it may more readily produce sleep if, instead of allowing it to dissolve slowly in her mouth, she will drink it off at once, dissolved in water. She consents. I take from the table the bottle, the decanter of water, and the glass I empty secretly into the glass the eight or ten or dozen lozenges which the bottle contains; I pour the water from the decanter into the glass, and I tell my wife to drink it off immediately. She does so, and sinks into slumber, overpowered by a sleep from which she will never awake. Perhaps she struggles against the effects of the terrible dose I have administered to her, but her struggles are vain. She lies before me in sure approaching death, and both she and I have escaped from the life which has been a continual source of misery to us. The deed being accomplished, what do I, the murderer, do? There are no evidences of a struggle; there have been no cries to alarm the house; what has been accomplished has been well and skilfully accomplished, and I am the only actual living witness against myself. What then, I repeat, is my course of action? Before I killed her I removed the bottle, the glass, and the decanter from the table by the bedside. I wish it to be understood that she herself, in a fit of delirium, caused her own death. This theory would be utterly destroyed if I allowed the glass from which the poison was taken to be found at some distance from the unfortunate lady's bedside. Very carefully, therefore, I place not only that, but the decanter which contained the water, and the bottle which contained the lozenges, within reach of her living hand. To omit that precaution would be suicidal, and, to my mind, absolutely untenable in rational action under such circumstances. Do you see, now, why the circumstance of the glass being found on the mantle-shelf is a proof of my innocence?"

"Yes," replied Dr. Daincourt, "I recognize the strength of your theory--unless, indeed, you had in your mind the idea that it would be better to throw suspicion upon a third person; say, for the sake of argument, upon the maid."

"That view," said the lawyer, "demolishes itself, for what _I_ would naturally do to divert suspicion from myself, a third person would naturally do to avert suspicion from him or herself."

"True," said Dr. Daincourt; "you seize vital points more readily than I. Have you any theory about the strange lady who accompanied Layton home from Prevost's Restaurant?"

"I have a theory upon the point," replied the lawyer, "which, however, at present is so vague and unsatisfactory that it would be folly to disclose it."

"And the Nine of Hearts," said Dr. Daincourt, "you have not mentioned that lately--have you forgotten it?"

"No," said the lawyer, "it is my firm opinion that round that Nine of Hearts the whole of the mystery revolves."

PART THE THIRD.

THE MYSTERY OF THE NINE OF HEARTS.

"_From Mr. Bainbridge, Q. C., to Archibald Laing, Esq_.

"Dear Sir,--Last night I received your cable from Pittsburg, and sent you a message in reply, accepting the commission with which you have been pleased to intrust me. This morning I called upon Messrs. Morgan & Co., Bankers, Threadneedle Street, and learned from them that they were prepared to advance me the ten thousand dollars of which you advised me. I drew upon them for that amount, and received from them a notification that they would honor my further drafts upon them the moment they were drawn. I asked them whether, in the event of my desiring to draw say five thousand pounds, I was at liberty to do so. They said yes, for even a larger amount if I required it. I did not explain to them the reason of my asking the question, but I will do so to you. It has happened, in difficult cases, that information has had to be purchased, and that a bribe more or less tempting has had to be held out to some person or persons to unlock their tongues. I have no reason to suppose that anything of the sort will be necessary in this case, but I wish to feel myself perfectly free in the matter. I am satisfied with your bankers' replies, and I shall spare neither money nor exertion in the endeavor to unravel the mystery which surrounds the death of Mrs. Edward Layton.

"It is scarcely possible you can be aware of it, but it is nevertheless a fact that, apart from my professional position in this matter, I take in it an interest which is purely personal, and that my sympathies are in unison with your own. Were it not that I have had some knowledge of Mr. Layton, and that I esteem him, and were it not that I firmly believe in his innocence, I should, perhaps, have hesitated to engage myself in his case, and you will excuse my saying that your liberal views upon the subject of funds might have failed to impress me. It is, therefore, a matter of congratulation that I enlist myself on Mr. Layton's side as much upon personal as upon professional grounds. The time has been too short for anything yet to be done, but it will be a satisfaction to you to learn that I have a slight clew to work upon. It is very slight, very frail, but it may lead to something important. Your desire for a full and complete recital of my movements shall be complied with, and I propose, to this end, and for the purpose of coherence and explicitness, to forward the particulars to you from time to time, not in the form of letters, but in narrative shape. This mode of giving you information will keep me more strictly to the subject-matter, and will be the means of avoiding digression. After the receipt, therefore, of this letter, what I have to say will go forth under numbered headings, not in my own writing, but in that of a short-hand reporter, whom I shall specially employ. I could not myself undertake such a detailed and circumstantial account as I understand it is your desire to obtain. Besides, it will save time, which may be of great value in the elucidation of this mystery.

"I am, dear sir, faithfully yours,

"HORACE BAINBRIDGE."

I.

What struck me particularly in your cable message was that portion of it in which you made reference to a Mr. James Rutland. It happens, singularly enough, that this Mr. James Rutland was on the jury, and that he was the one juryman who held out in Mr. Layton's favor, and through whose unconquerable determination not to bring him in guilty has arisen the necessity for a new trial. Eleven of the jury were for a conviction, one only for an acquittal--this one, Mr. Rutland.

The first thing to ascertain was his address, which you could not give me. However, we have engines at our hand whereby such small matters are easily arrived at, and on the evening of the day after the arrival of your cable message I was put in possession of the fact that Mr. Rutland lives in Wimpole Street. I drove there immediately, and sent up my card.

"I have called upon you, Mr. Rutland," I said, "with respect to Mr. Edward Layton's case, in the hope that you may be able to give me some information by which he may be benefited."

Mr. Rutland is a gentleman of about sixty years of age. He has a benevolent face, and I judged him, and I think judged him correctly, to be a man of a kindly nature. Looking upon him, there was no indication in his appearance of a dogged disposition, and I lost sight for a moment of the invincible tenacity with which he had adhered to his opinion when he was engaged upon the trial with his fellow-jurymen. However, his conduct during this interview brought it to my mind.

"It is a thousand pities," he said, in response to my opening words, "that Mr. Layton refused to accept professional assistance and advice. I was not the only one upon the jury who failed to understand his reason for so doing."

"It is indeed," I observed, "inexplicable, and I am in hopes that you may be able to throw some light upon it. I have come to you for assistance."

"I can give you no information," was his reply; "I cannot assist you."

"May I speak to you in confidence?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "although I have nothing to tell. To any but a gentleman of position I should refuse to enter into conversation upon this lamentable affair; and, indeed, it will be useless for us to converse upon it. As I have already said, I have nothing to tell you."

This iteration of having nothing to say and nothing to tell was to me suspicions, not so much from the words in which the determination was conveyed as from the tone in which they were spoken. It was flurried, anxious, uneasy; a plain indication that Mr. James Rutland could say something if he chose.

"Speaking in confidence," I said, taking no outward notice of his evident reluctance to assist me, "I think I am right in my conjecture that you believe in Mr. Layton's innocence."

"I decline to say anything upon the matter," was his rejoinder to this remark.

"We live in an age of publicity," I observed, without irritation; "it is difficult to keep even one's private affairs to one's self. What used to be hidden from public gaze and knowledge is now exposed and freely discussed by strangers. You are doubtless aware that it is known that there were eleven of the jury who pronounced Mr. Layton guilty, and only one who pronounced him innocent."

"I was not," he said, "and am not aware that it is known."

"It is nevertheless a fact," I said, "and it is also known that you, Mr. Rutland, are the juryman who held out in Mr. Layton's favor."

"These matters should not be revealed," he muttered.

"Perhaps not," I said, "but we must go with the age in which we live. Mr. Layton's case has excited the greatest interest. The singular methods he adopted during so momentous a crisis in his life, and the unusual termination of the judicial inquiry, have intensified that interest, and I have not the slightest doubt that there will be a great deal said and written upon the subject."

"Which should not be said and written," muttered Mr. Rutland.

"Neither have I the slightest doubt," I continued, "that your name will be freely used, and your motives for not waiving your opinion when eleven men were against you freely discussed. We are speaking here, if you will allow me to say so, as friends of the unfortunate man, and I have no hesitation in declaring to you that I myself believe in his innocence."

He interrupted me.

"Then, if you had been on the jury, you would not have yielded to the opinions of eleven, or of eleven hundred men?"

He spoke eagerly, and I saw that it would be a satisfaction to him to obtain support in his view of the case.

"I am not so sure," I said "our private opinion of a man when he is placed before his country charged with a crime has nothing whatever to do with the evidence brought against him. Let us suppose, for instance, that you have been at some time or other, under more fortunate circumstances, acquainted with Mr. Layton."

"Who asserts that?" he cried, much disturbed.

"No person that I am aware of," I replied. "I am merely putting a case, and I will prove to you presently that I have a reason for doing so. Say, I repeat, that under more fortunate circumstances you were acquainted with Mr. Layton, and that you had grown to esteem him. What has that purely personal view to do with your functions as a juryman?"

"Mr. Bainbridge," he said, "I do not wish to be discourteous, but I cannot continue this conversation."

"Nay," I urged, "a gentleman's life and honor are at stake, and I am endeavoring to befriend him. I am not the only one who is interested in him. There are others, thousands of miles away across the seas, who are desirous and anxious to make a sacrifice, if by that sacrifice they can clear the honor of a friend. See, Mr. Rutland, I will place implicit confidence in you. Last night I received a cable from America, from Mr. Archibald Laing."

"Mr. Archibald Laing!" he cried, taken by surprise. "Why, he and Mr. Layton were--"

But he suddenly stopped, as though fearful of committing himself.

"Were once friends," I said, finishing the sentence for him, and, I was certain, finishing it aright. "Yes, I should certainly say so. Read the cable I received." And I handed it to him.

At first he seemed as if he were disinclined, but he could not master his curiosity, and after a slight hesitation he read the message but he handed it back to me without remark.

"Mr. Archibald Laing," I said, "as I dare say you have heard or read, is one of fortune's favorites. He left this country three or four years ago, and settled in America--where, I believe, he has taken out letters of naturalization--and plunged into speculation which has made him a millionaire. No further evidence than his cable message is needed to prove that he is a man of vast means. Why does he ask me to apply to you for information concerning Mr. Layton which I may probably turn to that unhappy gentleman's advantage?"

"I was but slightly acquainted with Mr. Laing," said Mr. Rutland. "He and I were never friends. I repeat once more that I have nothing to tell you."

I recognized then that I was in the presence of a man who, whether rightly or wrongly, was not to be moved from any decision at which he had arrived, and I understood thoroughly the impossible task set before eleven jurymen to win him over to their convictions.

"Can I urge nothing," I said, "to induce you to speak freely to me

"Nothing," he replied.

I spent quite another quarter of an hour endeavoring to prevail upon him, but in the result I left his house no wiser than I had entered it, except that I was convinced he knew something which he was doggedly concealing from me. I did not think it was anything of very great importance, but it might at least be a clew that I could work upon, and I was both discouraged and annoyed by his determined attitude.

On the following morning, having paved the way to further access to Mr. Edward Layton, I visited the unhappy man in his prison. He was unaffectedly glad to see me, and he took the opportunity of expressing his cordial thanks for the friendliness I had evinced towards him. I felt it necessary to be on my guard with him, and I did not, thus early, make any endeavor to prevail upon him to accept me as his counsel in the new trial which awaited him. There were one or two points upon which I wished to assure myself, and I approached them gradually and cautiously.

"Are you aware," I said, "of the extent of the disagreement among the jury?"

"Well," he replied, "we hear something even within these stone walls. I am told that eleven were against me and one for me."

"Yes," I said, "that is so."

"A bad lookout for me when I am tried again. Mr. Bainbridge," he said, "it is very kind of you to visit me here, and I think you do so with friendly intent."

"Indeed," I said, "it _is_ with friendly intent."

"Is it of any use," he then said, "for me to declare to you that I am innocent of the horrible charge brought against me?"

"I don't know," I said, "whether it is of any use or not, because of the stand you have taken, and seem determined to take."

"Yes," he said, "upon my next trial I shall defend myself, as I did on my last. I will accept no legal assistance whatever. Still, as a matter of interest and curiosity--looking upon myself as if I were somebody else--tell me frankly your own opinion."

"Frankly and honestly," I replied, "I believe you to be an innocent man."

"Thank you," he said, and I saw the tears rising in his eyes.

"Do you happen," I said, presently, "to know the name of the juryman who was in your favor?"

"No," he replied, "I am quite ignorant of the names of the jurymen."

"But they were called over before the trial commenced."

"Yes, that is the usual course, I believe, but I did not hear their names. Indeed, I paid no heed to them. Of what interest would they have been to me? Twelve strangers were twelve strangers; one was no different from the other."

"They were all strangers to you?" I asked, assuming a purposed carelessness of tone.

"Yes, every one of them."

"And you to them?"

"I suppose so. How could it have been otherwise?"

"But when they finally came back into court, and the foreman of the jury stated that they could not agree, you seemed surprised."

"Were you watching me?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Do you not think it natural," I said, in reply, "that every person's eyes at that moment should be turned upon you?"

"Of course," he said, recovering himself--"quite natural. I should have done the same myself had I been in a better place than the dock. Well, I _was_ surprised; I fully anticipated a verdict of guilty."

"And," I continued, "although you may not remember it, you leaned forward and gazed at the jury with an appearance of eagerness."

"I remember that I did so," he said; "it was an impulsive movement on my part."

"Did you recognize any among them whose face was familiar to you?"

"No; to tell you the truth, I could not distinguish their faces, I am so short-sighted."

"But you had your glasses hanging round your neck. Why did you not use them?"

It amazed me to hear him laugh at this question. It was a gentle, kindly laugh, but none the less was I astonished at it.

"You lawyers are so sharp," he said, "that there is scarcely hiding anything from you. Be careful what questions you ask me, or I shall be compelled"--and here his voice grew sad--"to beg of you not to come again."