Chapter 7

He was often tempted in the course of a quarter of an hour to try Mr. Barter with a sudden challenge, and see what would come of it. Surveying his companion with that placid inquiry which Barter felt to be so excessively uncomfortable, he came to have but a poor opinion of his courage. He was one of those men who, even without knowing it, take profound observations of their fellow-creatures. The true observer of human nature is by no means a personage who is always on the strain after insight into character. He is, on the contrary, pretty generally an inward-looking man, who seems to notice little, and takes in his surroundings as the immortal Joey Ladle did his wine. Philip judged Barter to be a nervous man, and supposed him, even when strung to his bent, to have no great tenacity or continuance of courage. He had learned more and more to believe his father’s story, though he had perhaps too carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire to accept it Barter’s every action with the cards offered confirmation of the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing but opportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. So the temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companion in the face, and to ask simply, ‘How about that eight thousand pounds?’ grew more and more upon him, and had to be more and more strenuously resisted. It seemed worth while to resist it To begin with, if young Barter should be innocent, the querist could evidently expect nothing else than to be taken for a madman. To continue, if his name and the likeness to his father had already set the thief upon his guard, and had prepared him for accusation, the question would only reveal his own suspicion, and thereby weaken the chances of discovery.

Philip combated his inward desire, but could not quell it. There seemed a kind of intuition in it, a lurking certainty lay hidden behind all the doubts he saw, and pushed him forward.

By and by young Mr. Barter tripped on the false cut, which he had hitherto executed with a fair amateur dexterity.

‘Excuse me,’ said Phil, as he gathered the spilt cards together. ‘You should make the three separate motions look like one. Do the trick so.’

He performed the trick slowly, looking Barter in the face, and then went through it swiftly.

‘That is how the thing ought to be done, Mr. Barter,’ he said, with a placidity which his companion found singularly disquieting.

And now, that same unhappy want of self-command which had given Steinberg so clear an insight into his young friend’s mind, fell once more upon Barter. He tried to look wondering, he tried to laugh. The result of that frightened contortion of the features was nothing less than ghastly. Unhappily for himself he knew it, and so he grew ghastlier yet, and for the life of him could not tell where to set his eyes.

‘So you’re a sharper in a small way, are you, Mr. Barter?’ Philip inquired suavely.

‘How dare you talk to me like that?’ the detected rascal stammered. ‘You come into a gentleman’s rooms, and lose an odd half-crown or two----’

When he had got as far as this he ventured to look his companion in the face, and seeing there a very marked and readable prophecy of unpleasant things, he backed, and in the act of doing so, tripped, and fell into a chair. The intention in Phil’s mind became simply unconquerable. He cast rapidly about him for an instant, saw all the consequences of failure which might follow if he denounced the trembling wretch at once, and set him on his guard. And yet he could not help doing what he did, and could not restrain the words which rose to his lips. He took Barter by the collar, and lifted him to his feet with an unsuspected strength, and put the question to him quietly.

‘How many of those stolen notes has Steinberg changed for you?’

It was a bold thing to do, it was perhaps a foolish thing to do, and yet it was the game. Barter stared at him speechlessly. His lips moved, but he said nothing. Then his jaw fell as a dead man’s jaw falls, and being released at that instant, he dropped into the chair like a sack.

‘Now the best thing for you to do,’ said Phil, sternly regarding him, ‘will be to make a clean breast of it. I have been tracking you since the second day of our acquaintance.’

Barter groaned, with a tremulous and hollow sound, but made no other answer.

‘How many of those notes are in Steinberg’s hands?’ Phil asked.

The rascal’s wits had begun to work again, if only a little, and he could by this time have answered if he would. But he knew that his own cowardice, if nothing else, had given away the game. After such a confession as his own terror had made, what was the use of bluster or pretence? He could not guess how much was known. He was completely cornered, and must fight or yield. His native instinct at any moment was ready to teach him how much discretion was the better part of valour, and now to fight seemed mere madness. In the very terror of the night which thus suddenly enveloped him he saw one gleam of hope. There was one stroke to be made which might save him, in part at least, from the consequences of his own misdeed.

Philip gave these reflections but little time to grow distinct to Barter’s mind.

‘How many of those notes?’ he asked slowly, emphasising almost every word by a tap of his knuckles upon the table, ‘have passed into Steinberg’s hands?’

‘All,’ gasped Barter; ‘every one of them!’

‘That will do for the present,’ said Philip, and at that instant there came a loud summons at the door, whereat the miserable Barter started, and clasped his hands in renewed terror. He fancied an officer of justice there, his arrival accurately timed.

Philip, throwing a glance about the room, and assuring himself that there was no means of unobserved exit, answered the summons in person. He had until that moment kept perfect possession of himself except for his obedience to that overmastering intuition, but beholding Mr. Steinberg at the doorway he felt a great leap at his heart, and a sudden dryness in his throat. He examined these phenomena afterwards, and decided in his own mind that they were assignable to fear. He came to the belief which he cherishes until now, that he had to screw up his courage pretty tightly before he could face the idea of confronting the partners in rascality together. But here it may be observed in passing that this kind of self-depreciation is a favourite trick with men of unusual nerve, and is rarely resorted to by any but the most courageous.

Steinberg recognised him by the light of the gas-lamp.

‘Good-evening,’ he said, nodding. ‘Barter’s here, I suppose.’

‘Sir,’ said Phil, with recovered coolness, a certain light of humour dawning in his mind, ‘Mr. Barter is within, and I have no doubt will be very happy to see you.’

Steinberg cast a sidelong glance at him, and entered. Phil closed the door, and followed close upon his heels. Barter, with his pale complexion fallen to the tint of dead ashes, sat huddled in the arm-chair, staring white-eyed like a frightened madman. Steinberg stared back at him in sheer amazement at his looks, and Phil, closing the door, turned the key in the lock and pocketed it.

‘Hillo!’ cried Steinberg, turning swiftly round at the click, ‘what’s this mean?’ He measured Philip with his eye--a very evil and wicked eye it was--and dropped back a step or two.

‘What’s this mean?’ Steinberg asked again, his quick glance darting from one to the other.

‘It means, sir,’ said Phil, with a glad tranquillity, ‘that your fellow-scoundrel, the courageous gentleman in the arm-chair there, is in the act of making his confession.’

Steinberg sent one savage glance at Barter, and then dashed at him, and planting both hands within the collar of his shirt, so banged him to and fro that he would inevitably have done him a mischief of a serious sort but for Phil’s intervention. The method of intervention was less tranquil than Philip’s motion up to this time had been. He tore Steinberg from his grip of the betrayer with a force he had no time to measure, and hurled him across the room. He staggered at the door, and his head coming noisily in contact with it, he slipped down into a sitting posture with an expression suddenly changed from ferocity to a complete vacuity and indifference.

Now Mr. Barter, scared as he had been, and shaken to his centre, had begun to think again, and when he saw that Steinberg’s chance in the enemy’s hands was less than nothing, that fact formed as it were the last necessary plank for the raft of safety he desired to construct. He got up from his place, animated by this great idea, and staggering to the helpless Steinberg, fell down beside him and gripped his hands.

‘Tie him, Mr. Bommaney, tie him!’ gurgled Barter. ‘He’s been the ruin of me, curse him. I should have been an honest man if it hadn’t been for him. It’s him that led me into it, and he’s had every sixpence of the money. I’ve been his tool, his miserable tool. Tie him, Mr. Bommaney, before he comes round again. I’ll hold him for you.’

One may get good advice from the most unexpected quarter, and whencesoever good advice may come it is worth while to follow it. Phil took a dandy scarf from Steinberg’s own neck, and tied him tightly, wrist to wrist Then he helped him to his feet, and set him in a chair.

‘He came here to-night,’ Barter gurgled on, with tears of sincerest penitence, ‘to bleed me again. He’s got my I.O.U. for £82 he cheated me of last week. He’s had every penny of the money. I haven’t had so much as a single farthing of it myself. I’ll swear I haven’t.’

‘That’s your lay, is it?’ said Steinberg, whose scattered wits were coming back to him. ‘You shall answer for this violence in the proper quarter, Bommaney.’

‘I will answer for it in the proper quarter,’ Phil replied. ‘I will trouble you, Mr. Steinberg, to come to the proper quarter now.’

‘You won’t forget,’ said Barter, ‘that I helped to capture him. You’ll speak a word for me, Mr. Bommaney?

‘I’ve been that villain’s victim all along. I should never have gone wrong if it hadn’t been for him, and I’ve wanted to send the money back over and over again, but he got it into his own hands and wouldn’t listen to it, and after all I never took the money, Mr. Bommaney--I only found it. It was Steinberg kept it. He said I should be a fool to let it go.’

What sentiments of contempt and rage inspired Mr. Steinberg’s bosom at this juncture must be imagined. He looked them all, but verbally expressed none of them.

‘Get up,’ said Phil, addressing him. Steinberg obeyed. ‘Take a seat in that corner.’ Steinberg obeyed again. ‘Now you--’ to Barter, ‘take a place in that corner, behind the desk.’

‘With pleasure, Mr. Bommaney,’ said Barter, ‘with the very greatest willingness. I desire to make no resistance to the law. I helped to capture the criminal Please remember that, Mr. Bommaney. Pray remember that.’

He took hold of a heavy ruler which happened to be lying on the desk, and deeming that he and the other rascal were about to be left alone together, he showed it shakily to Steinberg, as a hint that he was not without means of protection against a man unarmed and bound.

Phil unlocked the door, inserted the key on the other side, disappeared, and turned the lock anew. The two criminals heard his footstep sounding elate, triumphant, and threatening to their ears as he went along the boarded floor. They listened as the footstep crossed the square boulders of the courtyard, and listened still until their sound melted into the blended noises of the outer street. A minute later the step was heard returning, accompanied by another, solid and terrible. They knew it, and their hearts, low as they were already, sank at it. The door opened and Phil reappeared, followed by a policeman.

‘I give these two in charge,’ the young man said, ‘the one as the thief, the other as the receiver of a bundle of bank-notes of the value of eight thousand pounds, the property of my father, Mr. Philip Bommaney of Coalporter’s Alley.’

‘I’m quite willing to go without resistance,’ said Mr. Barter from behind the table. ‘I assisted in the capture, and I am ready to say anything.’

‘That’s the first true word you’ve spoken,’ Steinberg snarled. ‘You can take this thing off,’ holding out his hands. ‘I’ll go quietly. I can get bail in an hour.’

‘Don’t have it taken off, Mr. Bommaney, not if we’re to travel in the same vehicle. He threatened me while you were away. He said if they gave him fifty years he’d kill me when he came out again. He’ll do it, because I made a clean breast of it, didn’t I, Mr. Bommaney? I made a clean breast of it, officer. I’m ready to--tell everything. He’s ruined me, and now he says he’ll kill me because I’m ready to make a clean breast of it.’

‘I choose to be taken separately, if you please. I myself will pay the fare. I won’t travel with that cackling idiot.’

‘I will go with Mr. Bommaney with pleasure,’ said the penitent. ‘I’ll go with you with pleasure anywhere. I’d rather go with you a great deal.’

It was hardly to be expected that Philip should feel very warmly towards either of his two companions, but of the two he misliked Steinberg the less. And, since it seemed humane and reasonable to choose, he chose Steinberg as his travelling companion. The officer set Steinberg’s hat upon his head, and the quartet set out. The sight of a man with his hands tightly bound with a scarlet muffler gathered a momentary little crowd at the Inn gate; but, a pair of hansoms being summoned, captives and captors were speedily relieved from vulgar observation. The station reached, it turned out that the communicative Mr. Barter, in the exuberance of his heart, had exposed to the officer _en route_ the whereabouts of the lost notes. He declared that to his knowledge they rested in a safe, the position of which he indicated, in Steinberg’s Hatton Garden office. The Inspector before whom the charge was made deemed this intelligence worthy of being acted on at once. The two prisoners were searched, and Mr. Barter was so good as to point out, among Steinberg’s keys, those which were necessary for the purposes of investigation. He even went so far as to offer his assistance as guide; but this was declined with a chilliness singularly at variance with the solicitous warmth of the proposal.

‘I think, sir,’ said the Inspector, with an arctic disrespect which was so frozen as to be almost respectful, ‘that we can manage this without your assistance.’

The Divisional Superintendent, being communicated with by telephone, arrived upon the scene. The matter in hand having been laid before him with curt official brevity, he asked for the keys, called to himself a constable, and was preparing to set out, when Philip begged permission to accompany him.

‘The notes, sir,’ he said, ‘were left in my father’s trust by a dear old friend of his. My father himself was supposed to have made use of them--a thing of which he was incapable. If I can take to him the news that they are found, I can lift a load of undeserved disgrace from the mind of an honourable man.’

‘I shall be pleased to have your company, Mr. Bommaney,’ the Superintendent answered, touched a little by the young man’s earnestness. So the three got into a four-wheeler, and bowled away to Hatton Garden, and there made entry into the chambers lately occupied by Mr. Steinberg. There was no gas here, but the constable’s dark lantern showed the way. It revealed the safe in the position the communicative criminal had assigned to it. It revealed the notes, snugly spread out in one crisp little heap, and arranged with business-like precision in the order of their numbers.

This golden spectacle once seen, Phil dashed into the street, hailed a hansom, and drove pell-mell, exciting the cabman who conducted him by the promise of a double fare, to the residence of old Brown and old Brown’s daughter. There he told the glorious news, a little broken and halting in his speech. Patty threw her arms about him, and cried without concealment or restraint. Old Brown blew his nose with a suspicious frequency, and shook his adopted son-in-law by the hand at frequent intervals.

‘Phil,’ he cried at last, ‘where’s your father? By God, sir, he never had any need to run away from me, because he happened to lose a handful of paltry money. What had he got to do but come and say, “Brown, it’s gone!” He hadn’t trust enough in me to think I’d believe him. Let’s get at him. Where is he?’

The old boy tugged furiously at the bell-pull.

‘Send Brenner round to the stable,’ he said to the servant. ‘Tell him to get the horses to, and bring the carriage round at once. Where’s your father, Phil?’

‘He’s down Poplar way,’ said Phil. ‘Hornett, his old clerk, is living in the same house with him.’

‘We’ll go down, and rouse him up,’ the old boy said, with a moist eye and trembling hand. ‘Phil, my lad,’ he went on, grasping the young fellow’s hand in his own, ‘I’m getting to be an old ‘un. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, because, thank God, I’ve always known how to take my trouble lightly, but I’ve seen a lot of it in my time, and you can take my word for this--there isn’t any trouble in the world that’s hardly so bitter as for an honest man to have to take another for a rogue.’

So it came to pass that Bommaney senior, who after all, perhaps, hardly deserved to be made a hero of, was plenteously bedewed with the tears of three most honourable and high-minded people, and was, set up in their minds as a sort of live statue of undeserved martyrdom. They who learned the tale afterwards mourned his weakness, and supposed him to be the victim of a too sensitive organisation. He lives now with a genuine halo of sanctity about him, and seems in the minds of some to have suffered for the sake of a great principle, quite noble, but not quite definitely defined.

Odd things happen every day in the world, and pass by unregarded. The worship of Bommaney senior’s sensibilities seems a trifle dull when all things are considered, though one has to be glad that an honest son can think of him with pity mixed with admiration. But perhaps the oddest thing of all in connection with this story may be looked for in the shorthand reporter’s notes of the Recorder’s speech at the Old Bailey, when the accusation against Messrs. Barter and Steinberg came to be heard.

‘You, Barter,’ said the learned Recorder, ‘appear to have been drawn into this by the influence of an intelligence stronger and abler than your own. You appear, in a moment of weakness, to have been led away by that stronger intelligence from the paths of rectitude. But you have displayed so clear a sense of the enormity of your conduct, and have, by your complete disclosures of the crime committed by you and your companion, and, by your evidence in Court to-day, shown so complete a repentance for it, that I do not think that it would be politic or just to lay a severe term of imprisonment upon you. Nevertheless, the law of the land must be justified, and I feel a pleasure in believing that in justifying the law I am affording you an opportunity for reflection, for the formation of good resolutions for the future, and for a confirmation of those better desires which I believe--in spite of your association with this criminal enterprise--to animate your mind.’

Now, to my fancy, this has a distinct element of comedy in it; but the learned Recorder resembled some of his unlearned brethren, in respect to the fact that he could not be expected to know everything.

Mr. Barter thrives again, but he is even now awaiting, with the uneasiest sensations, the liberation of the man who betrayed him into crime.