Part 9

"I was curious, in the first place, to see how far the family ear had been reproduced in her. Then, of course, she might give us very important information, but I was not sanguine that she would. She must have heard of the business the day before, since all Croydon was ringing with it, and she alone could have understood whom the packet was meant for. If she had been willing to help justice she would probably have communicated with the police already. However, it was clearly our duty to see her, so we went. We found that the news of the arrival of the packet--for her illness dated from that time--had such an effect upon her as to bring on brain fever. It was clearer than ever that she understood its full significance, but equally clear that we should have to wait some time for any assistance from her.

"However, we were really independent of her help. Our answers were waiting for us at the police-station, where I had directed Algar to send them. Nothing could be more conclusive. Mrs. Browner's house had been closed for more than three days, and the neighbours were of opinion that she had gone south to see her relatives. It had been ascertained at the shipping offices that Browner had left aboard of the _May Day_, and I calculate that she is due in the Thames to-morrow night. When he arrives he will be met by the obtuse but resolute Lestrade, and I have no doubt that we shall have all our details filled in."

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes was not disappointed in his expectations. Two days later he received a bulky envelope, which contained a short note from the detective, and a type-written document, which covered several pages of foolscap.

"Lestrade has got him all right," said Holmes, glancing up at me. "Perhaps it would interest you to hear what he says."

"My dear Mr. Holmes,--In accordance with the scheme which we had formed in order to test our theories"--"the 'we' is rather fine, Watson, is it not?"--"I went down to the Albert Dock yesterday at 6 p.m., and boarded the ss. _May Day_, belonging to the Liverpool, Dublin, and London Steam Packet Company. On inquiry, I found that there was a steward on board of the name of James Browner, and that he had acted during the voyage in such an extraordinary manner that the captain had been compelled to relieve him of his duties. On descending to his berth, I found him seated upon a chest with his head sunk upon his hands, rocking himself to and fro. He is a big, powerful chap, clean-shaven, and very swarthy--something like Aldridge, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair. He jumped up when he heard my business, and I had my whistle to my lips to call a couple of river police, who were round the corner, but he seemed to have no heart in him, and he held out his hands quietly enough for the darbies. We brought him along to the cells, and his box as well, for we thought there might be something incriminating; but, bar a big sharp knife, such as most sailors have, we got nothing for our trouble. However, we find that we shall want no more evidence, for, on being brought before the inspector at the station, he asked leave to make a statement, which was, of course, taken down, just as he made it, by our shorthand man. We had three copies type-written, one of which I inclose. The affair proves, as I always thought it would, to be an extremely simple one, but I am obliged to you for assisting me in my investigation. With kind regards, yours very truly,--G. LESTRADE."

"Hum! The investigation really was a very simple one," remarked Holmes; "but I don't think it struck him in that light when he first called us in. However, let us see what Jim Browner has to say for himself. This is his statement, as made before Inspector Montgomery at the Shadwell Police Station, and it has the advantage of being verbatim."

"Have I anything to say? Yes, I have a deal to say. I have to make a clean breast of it all. You can hang me, or you can leave me alone. I don't care a plug which you do. I tell you I've not shut an eye in sleep since I did it, and I don't believe I ever will again until I get past all waking. Sometimes it's his face, but most generally it's hers. I'm never without one or the other before me. He looks frowning and black-like, but she has a kind o' surprise upon her face. Aye, the white lamb, she might well be surprised when she read death on a face that had seldom looked anything but love upon her before.

"But it was Sarah's fault, and may the curse of a broken man put a blight on her and set the blood rotting in her veins! It's not that I want to clear myself. I know that I went back to drink, like the beast that I was. But she would have forgiven me; she would have stuck as close to me as a rope to a block if that woman had never darkened our door. For Sarah Cushing loved me--that's the root of the business--she loved me, until all her love turned to poisonous hate when she knew that I thought more of my wife's footmark in the mud than I did of her whole body and soul.

"There were three sisters altogether. The old one was just a good woman, the second was a devil, and the third was an angel. Sarah was thirty-three, and Mary was twenty-nine when I married. We were just as happy as the day was long when we set up house together, and in all Liverpool there was no better woman than my Mary. And then we asked Sarah up for a week, and the week grew into a month, and one thing led to another, until she was just one of ourselves.

"I was blue ribbon at that time, and we were putting a little money by, and all was as bright as a new dollar. My God, whoever would have thought that it could have come to this? Whoever would have dreamed it?

"I used to be home for the week-ends very often, and sometimes if the ship were held back for cargo I would have a whole week at a time, and in this way I saw a deal of my sister-in-law, Sarah. She was a fine tall woman, black and quick and fierce, with a proud way of carrying her head, and a glint from her eye like the spark from a flint. But when little Mary was there I had never a thought for her, and that I swear as I hope for God's mercy.

"It had seemed to me sometimes that she liked to be alone with me, or to coax me out for a walk with her, but I had never thought anything of that. But one evening my eyes were opened. I had come up from the ship and found my wife out, but Sarah at home. 'Where's Mary?' I asked. 'Oh, she has gone to pay some accounts.' I was impatient and paced up and down the room. 'Can't you be happy for five minutes without Mary, Jim?' says she. 'It's a bad compliment to me that you can't be contented with my society for so short a time.' 'That's all right, my lass," said I, putting out my hand towards her in a kindly way, but she had it in both hers in an instant, and they burned as if they were in a fever. I looked into her eyes and I read it all there. There was no need for her to speak, nor for me either. I frowned and drew my hand away. Then she stood by my side in silence for a bit, and then put up her hand and patted me on the shoulder.

'Steady old Jim!' said she; and, with a kind o' mocking laugh, she ran out of the room.

"Well, from that time Sarah hated me with her whole heart and soul, and she is a woman who can hate, too. I was a fool to let her go on biding with us--a besotted fool--but I never said a word to Mary, for I knew it would grieve her. Things went on much as before, but after a time I began to find that there was a bit of a change in Mary herself. She had always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became queer and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had causeless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife's mind against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could not understand it at the time. Then I broke my blue ribbon and began to drink again, but I think I should not have done it if Mary had been the same as ever. She had some reason to be disgusted with me now, and the gap between us began to be wider and wider. And then this Alec Fairbairn chipped in, and things became a thousand times blacker.

"It was to see Sarah that he came to my house first, but soon it was to see us, for he was a man with winning ways, and he made friends wherever he went. He was a dashing, swaggering chap, smart and curled, who had seen half the world, and could talk of what he had seen. He was good company, I won't deny it, and he had wonderful polite ways with him for a sailor man, so that I think there must have been a time when he knew more of the poop than the forecastle. For a month he was in and out of my house, and never once did it cross my mind that harm might come of his soft, tricky ways. And then at last something made me suspect, and from that day my peace was gone for ever.

"It was only a little thing, too. I had come into the parlour unexpected, and as I walked in at the door I saw a light of welcome on my wife's face. But as she saw who it was it faded again, and she turned away with a look of disappointment. That was enough for me. There was no one but Alec Fairbairn whose step she could have mistaken for mine. If I could have seen him then I should have killed him, for I have always been like a madman when my temper gets loose. Mary saw the devil's light in my eyes, and she ran forward with her hands on my sleeve. 'Don't, Jim, don't!' says she. 'Where's Sarah?' I asked. 'In the kitchen,' says she. 'Sarah,' says I, as I went in, 'this man Fairbairn is never to darken my door again.' 'Why not?' says she. 'Because I order it.' 'Oh!' says she, 'if my friends are not good enough for this house, then I am not good enough for it either.' 'You can do what you like,' says I, 'but if Fairbairn shows his face here again, I'll send you one of his ears for a keepsake." She was frightened by my face, I think, for she never answered a word, and the same evening she left my house.

"Well, I don't know now whether it was pure devilry on the part of this woman, or whether she thought that she could turn me against my wife by encouraging her to misbehave. Anyway, she took a house just two streets off, and let lodgings to sailors. Fairbairn used to stay there, and Mary would go round to have tea with her sister and him. How often she went I don't know, but I followed her one day, and as I broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall, like the cowardly skunk that he was. I swore to my wife that I would kill her if I found her in his company again, and I led her back with me, sobbing and trembling, and as white as a piece of paper. There was no trace of love between us any longer. I could see that she hated me and feared me, and when the thought of it drove me to drink, then she despised me as well.

"Well, Sarah found that she could not make a living in Liverpool, so she went back, as I understand, to live with her sister in Croydon, and things jogged on much the same as ever at home. And then came this last week and all the misery and ruin.

"It was in this way. We had gone on the _May Day_ for a round voyage of seven days, but a hogshead got loose and started one of our plates, so that we had to put back into port for twelve hours. I left the ship and came home, thinking what a surprise it would be for my wife, and hoping that maybe she would be glad to see me so soon. The thought was in my head as I turned into my own street, and at that moment a cab passed me, and there she was, sitting by the side of Fairbairn, the two chatting and laughing, with never a thought for me as I stood watching them from the footpath.

"I tell you, and I give you my word on it, that from that moment I was not my own master, and it is all like a dim dream when I look back on it. I had been drinking hard of late, and the two things together fairly turned my brain. There's something throbbing in my head now, like a docker's hammer, but that morning I seemed to have all Niagara whizzing and buzzing in my ears.

"Well, I took to my heels, and I ran after the cab. I had a heavy oak stick in my hand, and I tell you that I saw red from the first; but as I ran I got cunning, too, and hung back a little to see them without being seen. They pulled up soon at the railway station. There was a good crowd round the booking-office, so I got quite close to them without being seen. They took tickets for New Brighton. So did I, but I got in three carriages behind them. When we reached it they walked along the Parade, and I was never more than a hundred yards from them. At last I saw them hire a boat and start for a row, for it was a very hot day, and they thought no doubt that it would be cooler on the water.

"It was just as if they had been given into my hands. There was a bit of a haze, and you could not see more than a few hundred yards. I hired a boat for myself, and I pulled after them. I could see the blurr of their craft, but they were going nearly as fast as I, and they must have been a long mile from the shore before I caught them up. The haze was like a curtain all round us, and there were we three in the middle of it. My God, shall I ever forget their faces when they saw who was in the boat that was closing in upon them? She screamed out. He swore like a madman, and jabbed at me with an oar, for he must have seen death in my eyes. I got past it and got one in with my stick, that crushed his head like an egg. I would have spared her, perhaps, for all my madness, but she threw her arms round him, crying out to him, and calling him 'Alec.' I struck again, and she lay stretched beside him. I was like a wild beast then that had tasted blood. If Sarah had been there, by the Lord, she should have joined them. I pulled out my knife, and--well, there! I've said enough. It gave me a kind of savage joy when I thought how Sarah would feel when she had such signs as these of what her meddling had brought about. Then I tied the bodies into the boat, stove a plank, and stood by until they had sunk. I knew very well that the owner would think that they had lost their bearings in the haze, and had drifted off out to sea. I cleaned myself up, got back to land, and joined my ship without a soul having a suspicion of what had passed. That night I made up the packet for Sarah Cushing, and next day I sent it from Belfast.

"There you have the whole truth of it. You can hang me, or do what you like with me, but you cannot punish me as I have been punished already. I cannot shut my eyes but I see those two faces staring at me--staring at me as they stared when my boat broke through the haze. I killed them quick, but they are killing me slow; and if I have another night of it I shall be either mad or dead before morning. You won't put me alone into a cell, sir? For pity's sake don't, and may you be treated in your day of agony as you treat me now."

* * * * *

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes, solemnly, as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

_Types of English Beauty._

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX. BASSANO, OLD BOND STREET, W.

PECULIAR PLAYING CARDS.

By George Clulow.

'What's on the cards?' A question common enough when the actual knowledge of the moment does not afford a positive answer; a question, too, which has an origin taking us back to the earliest use of playing cards. But to how many of those to whom playing cards as a means of recreation are familiar is it known what _may_ be found on the cards? Yet upon these "bits of painted cardboard" there has been expended a greater amount of ingenuity and of artistic effort than is to be found in any other form of popular amusement. Pope's charming epic, "The Rape of the Lock," gives us, in poetic form, a description of the faces of the cards as known to him and to the card-players of his time:--

"Behold four kings in majesty revered, With hoary whiskers and a forky beard; And four fair queens, whose hands sustain a flower, Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r; Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band, Caps on their heads and halberds in their hand."

It is not our purpose to historically trace the evolution of cards--this is a subject beyond the reach of the present article--but a look farther afield will give us evidence that during the last three centuries there has been a constant adaptation of cards to purposes which take them beyond their intention as the instruments for card playing only. The idea that playing cards had their origin in the later years of Charles VI. of France may be disposed of at once as a popular error, though it is true that the earliest authentic examples which still exist are parts of the two packs of cards which were produced for the amusement of that King, by the hands of Jacques Gringonneur, and of which seventeen are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris.

These are the most early forms of playing cards, and are known as "Tarots" (as distinguished from "Numerals," or cards which have the consecutively marked "suit" signs), and which had evidently a purpose outside the ordinary games of playing cards as known to us. The "Tarot" pack consists variously of seventy-two, seventy-seven, or seventy-eight cards, including the "Tarots," which give them their distinctive name. "Tarot" as a game was familiar three centuries ago in England, but is so no longer, although it has a limited use in other parts of Europe still. One of the "Tarot" cards, of the Bibliothèque Nationale, "La Mort," is shown as the first of our illustrations (Fig. 1).

Familiar to those who are conversant with the literature of playing cards will be the Knave of Clubs, shown in Fig. 2, which is one of the fragments of a pack of cards found, in 1841, by Mr. Chatto, in the wastepaper used to form the pasteboard covers of a book. These cards are printed in outline from wood blocks and the colour filled in by stencilling, a method employed in the manufacture of cards down to a very few years ago. The date of these cards may safely be taken as not more recent than 1450, and they are most interesting as being coeval with, if not antecedent to, the most early form of printed book illustration as shown in the "Biblia Pauperum."[B] The archaic drawing of the features, with its disregard of facial perspective, and the wondrous cervical anatomy, do not lessen our admiration of the vigour and "go" shown in this early example of the art of the designer and wood engraver.

It is in interesting relation to the knaves of a pack of cards to note the curious conservatism which has belonged to them during the last four centuries and a half. In a MS. in the British Museum, written in the year 1377, the monkish writer, in a moralization on the life of man, suggests its resemblance to a game of cards; and he gives us a description and the attributes of some of the cards. Of those which we now know as knaves, he says two of them hold their halberds or arms downwards and two of them upwards--a distinction which is retained on many of the playing cards still manufactured.

In Fig. 3 we have one of the cards from a series of "Tarots" of Italian origin, also preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and which may be dated about 1470. These are very beautiful in design, and indicate that they were thought worthy of the employment of the highest artistic talent.

We have an example of a somewhat more modern date in the Knave of Diamonds (Fig. 4), in which the costume and character point to the early part of the sixteenth century as the period of their production. This also is from a fragment discovered in the boards of an old book--a source which may be commended to the watchfulness of the bookbinder, as the bindings of old books are still likely to provide other interesting examples.

Before us are parts of two packs of cards which were discovered in Edinburgh, in 1821, pasted up in a book of household accounts, one of its leaves bearing the date of 1562; and it would be no great stretch of fancy to believe that they were taken to Edinburgh by some follower of Mary Queen of Scots on her return to Scotland a year before this date. These cards are of Flemish make; on one of them is the name "Jehan Henault," who was a card-maker in Antwerp in 1543, and in passing we may remark that at this period there was a considerable trade between London and France in playing cards of Flemish manufacture. Old playing cards may be looked for in most unlikely places; a few years ago two nearly complete packs were found wedged in an old cross-bow, for the purpose of securing the bow where it had worked loose in the head; they were of sixteenth century manufacture, and had doubtless been the means of relieving the tedium of many a weary watch or waiting, in field or fortress, before they found their resting-place of a couple of centuries in the obsolete missive weapon where they were discovered.

We find on many cards some attempts at portraiture. Thus we have in Fig. 5 Clovis as the King of Clubs, but depicted in a costume of the time of Henry IV. of France, the card itself being of that period. This, as well as Fig. 4, is from a pack of fifty-two "Numeral" cards, printed from wood-block and stencilled in colour.

Returning to "Tarots," we have in Fig. 6 (Le Fou) one of the cards designed by Mitelli about 1680, it is said to the order of a member of the Bentivoglio family (parts of whose armorial bearings are to be found on many of the cards), for the "Tarrocchini di Bologna," a special form of the game of Tarot, a series of spirited designs of vigorous and careful drawing, and the most artistically valuable of any of the Tarots with which we are acquainted. In them not only the Tarot series but the ordinary suits display a quaint conception and generally elegant design.

It is curious to note that in the eleven packs or parts of packs of these Bolognese cards which we have met with in various parts of Europe there is not any uniformity of manufacture, but while the designs are the same and evidently produced from the same copper plates, the making of them into cards for the purpose of play bears indication of what might be termed a "domestic" manufacture. For some time the game was interdicted in Bologna, and it is possible that this may have induced a surreptitious production and illicit sale of the cards. Fortunately, the interdict did not prevent the preservation to us of this interesting series.