Chapter Chapter 5 · THE FAD OF THE FISHERMAN

. THE FAD OF THE FISHERMAN

A thing can sometimes be too extraordinary to be remembered. If it

is clean out of the course of things, and has apparently no causes

and no consequences, subsequent events do not recall it, and it

remains only a subconscious thing, to be stirred by some accident

long after. It drifts apart like a forgotten dream; and it was in

the hour of many dreams, at daybreak and very soon after the end of

dark, that such a strange sight was given to a man sculling a boat

down a river in the West country. The man was awake; indeed, he

considered himself rather wide awake, being the political

journalist, Harold March, on his way to interview various political

celebrities in their country seats. But the thing he saw was so

inconsequent that it might have been imaginary. It simply slipped

past his mind and was lost in later and utterly different events;

nor did he even recover the memory till he had long afterward

discovered the meaning.

Pale mists of morning lay on the fields and the rushes along one

margin of the river; along the other side ran a wall of tawny brick

almost overhanging the water. He had shipped his oars and was

drifting for a moment with the stream, when he turned his head and

saw that the monotony of the long brick wall was broken by a bridge;

rather an elegant eighteenth-century sort of bridge with little

columns of white stone turning gray. There had been floods and the

river still stood very high, with dwarfish trees waist deep in it,

and rather a narrow arc of white dawn gleamed under the curve of the

bridge.

As his own boat went under the dark archway he saw another boat

coming toward him, rowed by a man as solitary as himself. His

posture prevented much being seen of him, but as he neared the

bridge he stood up in the boat and turned round. He was already so

close to the dark entry, however, that his whole figure was black

against the morning light, and March could see nothing of his face

except the end of two long whiskers or mustaches that gave something

sinister to the silhouette, like horns in the wrong place. Even

these details March would never have noticed but for what happened

in the same instant. As the man came under the low bridge he made a

leap at it and hung, with his legs dangling, letting the boat float

away from under him. March had a momentary vision of two black

kicking legs; then of one black kicking leg; and then of nothing

except the eddying stream and the long perspective of the wall. But

whenever he thought of it again, long afterward, when he understood

the story in which it figured, it was always fixed in that one

fantastic shape--as if those wild legs were a grotesque graven

ornament of the bridge itself, in the manner of a gargoyle. At the

moment he merely passed, staring, down the stream. He could see no

flying figure on the bridge, so it must have already fled; but he

was half conscious of some faint significance in the fact that among

the trees round the bridgehead opposite the wall he saw a lamp-post;

and, beside the lamp-post, the broad blue back of an unconscious

policeman.

Even before reaching the shrine of his political pilgrimage he had

many other things to think of besides the odd incident of the

bridge; for the management of a boat by a solitary man was not

always easy even on such a solitary stream. And indeed it was only

by an unforeseen accident that he was solitary. The boat had been

purchased and the whole expedition planned in conjunction with a

friend, who had at the last moment been forced to alter all his

arrangements. Harold March was to have traveled with his friend

Horne Fisher on that inland voyage to Willowood Place, where the

Prime Minister was a guest at the moment. More and more people were

hearing of Harold March, for his striking political articles were

opening to him the doors of larger and larger salons; but he had

never met the Prime Minister yet. Scarcely anybody among the general

public had ever heard of Horne Fisher; but he had known the Prime

Minister all his life. For these reasons, had the two taken the

projected journey together, March might have been slightly disposed

to hasten it and Fisher vaguely content to lengthen it out. For

Fisher was one of those people who are born knowing the Prime

Minister. The knowledge seemed to have no very exhilarant effect,

and in his case bore some resemblance to being born tired. But he

was distinctly annoyed to receive, just as he was doing a little

light packing of fishing tackle and cigars for the journey, a

telegram from Willowood asking him to come down at once by train, as

the Prime Minister had to leave that night. Fisher knew that his

friend the journalist could not possibly start till the next day,

and he liked his friend the journalist, and had looked forward to a

few days on the river. He did not particularly like or dislike the

Prime Minister, but he intensely disliked the alternative of a few

hours in the train. Nevertheless, he accepted Prime Ministers as he

accepted railway trains--as part of a system which he, at least, was

not the revolutionist sent on earth to destroy. So he telephoned to

March, asking him, with many apologetic curses and faint damns, to

take the boat down the river as arranged, that they might meet at

Willowood by the time settled; then he went outside and hailed a

taxicab to take him to the railway station. There he paused at the

bookstall to add to his light luggage a number of cheap murder

stories, which he read with great pleasure, and without any

premonition that he was about to walk into as strange a story in

real life.

A little before sunset he arrived, with his light suitcase in hand,

before the gate of the long riverside gardens of Willowood Place,

one of the smaller seats of Sir Isaac Hook, the master of much

shipping and many newspapers. He entered by the gate giving on the

road, at the opposite side to the river, but there was a mixed

quality in all that watery landscape which perpetually reminded a

traveler that the river was near. White gleams of water would shine

suddenly like swords or spears in the green thickets. And even in

the garden itself, divided into courts and curtained with hedges and

high garden trees, there hung everywhere in the air the music of

water. The first of the green courts which he entered appeared to be

a somewhat neglected croquet lawn, in which was a solitary young man

playing croquet against himself. Yet he was not an enthusiast for

the game, or even for the garden; and his sallow but well-featured

face looked rather sullen than otherwise. He was only one of those

young men who cannot support the burden of consciousness unless they

are doing something, and whose conceptions of doing something are

limited to a game of some kind. He was dark and well dressed in a

light holiday fashion, and Fisher recognized him at once as a young

man named James Bullen, called, for some unknown reason, Bunker. He

was the nephew of Sir Isaac; but, what was much more important at

the moment, he was also the private secretary of the Prime Minister.

"Hullo, Bunker!" observed Horne Fisher. "You're the sort of man I

wanted to see. Has your chief come down yet?"

"He's only staying for dinner," replied Bullen, with his eye on the

yellow ball. "He's got a great speech to-morrow at Birmingham and

he's going straight through to-night. He's motoring himself there;

driving the car, I mean. It's the one thing he's really proud of."

"You mean you're staying here with your uncle, like a good boy?"

replied Fisher. "But what will the Chief do at Birmingham without

the epigrams whispered to him by his brilliant secretary?"

"Don't you start ragging me," said the young man called Bunker.

"I'm only too glad not to go trailing after him. He doesn't know a

thing about maps or money or hotels or anything, and I have to dance

about like a courier. As for my uncle, as I'm supposed to come into

the estate, it's only decent to be here sometimes."

"Very proper," replied the other. "Well, I shall see you later on,"

and, crossing the lawn, he passed out through a gap in the hedge.

He was walking across the lawn toward the landing stage on the

river, and still felt all around him, under the dome of golden

evening, an Old World savor and reverberation in that riverhaunted

garden. The next square of turf which he crossed seemed at first

sight quite deserted, till he saw in the twilight of trees in one

corner of it a hammock and in the hammock a man, reading a newspaper

and swinging one leg over the edge of the net.

Him also he hailed by name, and the man slipped to the ground and

strolled forward. It seemed fated that he should feel something of

the past in the accidents of that place, for the figure might well

have been an early-Victorian ghost revisiting the ghosts of the

croquet hoops and mallets. It was the figure of an elderly man with

long whiskers that looked almost fantastic, and a quaint and careful

cut of collar and cravat. Having been a fashionable dandy forty

years ago, he had managed to preserve the dandyism while ignoring

the fashions. A white top-hat lay beside the Morning Post in the

hammock behind him. This was the Duke of Westmoreland, the relic of

a family really some centuries old; and the antiquity was not

heraldry but history. Nobody knew better than Fisher how rare such

noblemen are in fact, and how numerous in fiction. But whether the

duke owed the general respect he enjoyed to the genuineness of his

pedigree or to the fact that he owned a vast amount of very valuable

property was a point about which Mr. Fisher's opinion might have

been more interesting to discover.

"You were looking so comfortable," said Fisher, "that I thought you

must be one of the servants. I'm looking for somebody to take this

bag of mine; I haven't brought a man down, as I came away in a

hurry."

"Nor have I, for that matter," replied the duke, with some pride. "I

never do. If there's one animal alive I loathe it's a valet. I

learned to dress myself at an early age and was supposed to do it

decently. I may be in my second childhood, but I've not go so far as

being dressed like a child."

"The Prime Minister hasn't brought a valet; he's brought a secretary

instead," observed Fisher. "Devilish inferior job. Didn't I hear

that Harker was down here?"

"He's over there on the landing stage," replied the duke,

indifferently, and resumed the study of the Morning Post.

Fisher made his way beyond the last green wall of the garden on to a

sort of towing path looking on the river and a wooden island

opposite. There, indeed, he saw a lean, dark figure with a stoop

almost like that of a vulture, a posture well known in the law

courts as that of Sir John Harker, the Attorney-General. His face

was lined with headwork, for alone among the three idlers in the

garden he was a man who had made his own way; and round his bald

brow and hollow temples clung dull red hair, quite flat, like plates

of copper.

"I haven't seen my host yet," said Horne Fisher, in a slightly more

serious tone than he had used to the others, "but I suppose I shall

meet him at dinner."

"You can see him now; but you can't meet him," answered Harker.

He nodded his head toward one end of the island opposite, and,

looking steadily in the same direction, the other guest could see

the dome of a bald head and the top of a fishing rod, both equally

motionless, rising out of the tall undergrowth against the

background of the stream beyond. The fisherman seemed to be seated

against the stump of a tree and facing toward the other bank, so

that his face could not be seen, but the shape of his head was

unmistakable.

"He doesn't like to be disturbed when he's fishing," continued

Harker. "It's a sort of fad of his to eat nothing but fish, and he's

very proud of catching his own. Of course he's all for simplicity,

like so many of these millionaires. He likes to come in saying he's

worked for his daily bread like a laborer."

"Does he explain how he blows all the glass and stuffs all the

upholstery," asked Fisher, "and makes all the silver forks, and

grows all the grapes and peaches, and designs all the patterns on

the carpets? I've always heard he was a busy man."

"I don't think he mentioned it," answered the lawyer. "What is the

meaning of this social satire?"

"Well, I am a trifle tired," said Fisher, "of the Simple Life and

the Strenuous Life as lived by our little set. We're all really

dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being

independent in something. The Prime Minister prides himself on doing

without a chauffeur, but he can't do without a factotum and

Jack-of-all-trades; and poor old Bunker has to play the part of a

universal genius, which God knows he was never meant for. The duke

prides himself on doing without a valet, but, for all that, he must

give a lot of people an infernal lot of trouble to collect such

extraordinary old clothes as he wears. He must have them looked up

in the British Museum or excavated out of the tombs. That white hat

alone must require a sort of expedition fitted out to find it, like

the North Pole. And here we have old Hook pretending to produce his

own fish when he couldn't produce his own fish knives or fish forks

to eat it with. He may be simple about simple things like food, but

you bet he's luxurious about luxurious things, especially little

things. I don't include you; you've worked too hard to enjoy playing

at work."

"I sometimes think," said Harker, "that you conceal a horrid secret

of being useful sometimes. Haven't you come down here to see Number

One before he goes on to Birmingham?"

Horne Fisher answered, in a lower voice: "Yes; and I hope to be

lucky enough to catch him before dinner. He's got to see Sir Isaac

about something just afterward."

"Hullo!" exclaimed Harker. "Sir Isaac's finished his fishing. I

know he prides himself on getting up at sunrise and going in at

sunset."

The old man on the island had indeed risen to his feet, facing round

and showing a bush of gray beard with rather small, sunken features,

but fierce eyebrows and keen, choleric eyes. Carefully carrying his

fishing tackle, he was already making his way back to the mainland

across a bridge of flat stepping-stones a little way down the

shallow stream; then he veered round, coming toward his guests and

civilly saluting them. There were several fish in his basket and he

was in a good temper.

"Yes," he said, acknowledging Fisher's polite expression of

surprise, "I get up before anybody else in the house, I think. The

early bird catches the worm."

"Unfortunately," said Harker, "it is the early fish that catches the

worm."

"But the early man catches the fish," replied the old man, gruffly.

"But from what I hear, Sir Isaac, you are the late man, too,"

interposed Fisher. "You must do with very little sleep."

"I never had much time for sleeping," answered Hook, "and I shall

have to be the late man to-night, anyhow. The Prime Minister wants

to have a talk, he tells me, and, all things considered, I think

we'd better be dressing for dinner."

Dinner passed off that evening without a word of politics and little

enough but ceremonial trifles. The Prime Minister, Lord Merivale,

who was a long, slim man with curly gray hair, was gravely

complimentary to his host about his success as a fisherman and the

skill and patience he displayed; the conversation flowed like the

shallow stream through the stepping-stones.

"It wants patience to wait for them, no doubt," said Sir Isaac, "and

skill to play them, but I'm generally pretty lucky at it."

"Does a big fish ever break the line and get away?" inquired the

politician, with respectful interest.

"Not the sort of line I use," answered Hook, with satisfaction. "I

rather specialize in tackle, as a matter of fact. If he were strong

enough to do that, he'd be strong enough to pull me into the river."

"A great loss to the community," said the Prime Minister, bowing.

Fisher had listened to all these futilities with inward impatience,

waiting for his own opportunity, and when the host rose he sprang to

his feet with an alertness he rarely showed. He managed to catch

Lord Merivale before Sir Isaac bore him off for the final interview.

He had only a few words to say, but he wanted to get them said.

He said, in a low voice as he opened the door for the Premier, "I

have seen Montmirail; he says that unless we protest immediately on

behalf of Denmark, Sweden will certainly seize the ports."

Lord Merivale nodded. "I'm just going to hear what Hook has to say

about it," he said.

"I imagine," said Fisher, with a faint smile, "that there is very

little doubt what he will say about it."

Merivale did not answer, but lounged gracefully toward the library,

whither his host had already preceded him. The rest drifted toward

the billiard room, Fisher merely remarking to the lawyer: "They

won't be long. We know they're practically in agreement."

"Hook entirely supports the Prime Minister," assented Harker.

"Or the Prime Minister entirely supports Hook," said Horne Fisher,

and began idly to knock the balls about on the billiard table.

Horne Fisher came down next morning in a late and leisurely fashion,

as was his reprehensible habit; he had evidently no appetite for

catching worms. But the other guests seemed to have felt a similar

indifference, and they helped themselves to breakfast from the

sideboard at intervals during the hours verging upon lunch. So that

it was not many hours later when the first sensation of that strange

day came upon them. It came in the form of a young man with light

hair and a candid expression, who came sculling down the river and

disembarked at the landing stage. It was, in fact, no other than Mr.

Harold March, whose journey had begun far away up the river in the

earliest hours of that day. He arrived late in the afternoon, having

stopped for tea in a large riverside town, and he had a pink evening

paper sticking out of his pocket. He fell on the riverside garden

like a quiet and well-behaved thunderbolt, but he was a thunderbolt

without knowing it.

The first exchange of salutations and introductions was commonplace

enough, and consisted, indeed, of the inevitable repetition of

excuses for the eccentric seclusion of the host. He had gone fishing

again, of course, and must not be disturbed till the appointed hour,

though he sat within a stone's throw of where they stood.

"You see it's his only hobby," observed Harker, apologetically,

"and, after all, it's his own house; and he's very hospitable in

other ways."

"I'm rather afraid," said Fisher, in a lower voice, "that it's

becoming more of a mania than a hobby. I know how it is when a man

of that age begins to collect things, if it's only collecting those

rotten little river fish. You remember Talbot's uncle with his

toothpicks, and poor old Buzzy and the waste of cigar ashes. Hook

has done a lot of big things in his time--the great deal in the

Swedish timber trade and the Peace Conference at Chicago--but I

doubt whether he cares now for any of those big things as he cares

for those little fish."

"Oh, come, come," protested the Attorney-General. "You'll make Mr.

March think he has come to call on a lunatic. Believe me, Hook only

does it for fun, like any other sport, only he's of the kind that

takes his fun sadly. But I bet if there were big news about timber

or shipping, he would drop his fun and his fish all right."

"Well, I wonder," said Horne Fisher, looking sleepily at the island

in the river.

"By the way, is there any news of anything?" asked Harker of Harold

March. "I see you've got an evening paper; one of those enterprising

evening papers that come out in the morning."

"The beginning of Lord Merivale's Birmingham speech," replied March,

handing him the paper. "It's only a paragraph, but it seems to me

rather good."

Harker took the paper, flapped and refolded it, and looked at the

"Stop Press" news. It was, as March had said, only a paragraph. But

it was a paragraph that had a peculiar effect on Sir John Harker.

His lowering brows lifted with a flicker and his eyes blinked, and

for a moment his leathery jaw was loosened. He looked in some odd

fashion like a very old man. Then, hardening his voice and handing

the paper to Fisher without a tremor, he simply said:

"Well, here's a chance for the bet. You've got your big news to

disturb the old man's fishing."

Horne Fisher was looking at the paper, and over his more languid and

less expressive features a change also seemed to pass. Even that

little paragraph had two or three large headlines, and his eye

encountered, "Sensational Warning to Sweden," and, "We Shall

Protest."

"What the devil--" he said, and his words softened first to a

whisper and then a whistle.

"We must tell old Hook at once, or he'll never forgive us," said

Harker. "He'll probably want to see Number One instantly, though it

may be too late now. I'm going across to him at once. I bet I'll

make him forget his fish, anyhow." And, turning his back, he made

his way hurriedly along the riverside to the causeway of flat

stones.

March was staring at Fisher, in amazement at the effect his pink

paper had produced.

"What does it all mean?" he cried. "I always supposed we should

protest in defense of the Danish ports, for their sakes and our own.

What is all this botheration about Sir Isaac and the rest of you? Do

you think it bad news?"

"Bad news!" repeated Fisher, with a sort of soft emphasis beyond

expression.

"Is it as bad as all that?" asked his friend, at last.

"As bad as all that?" repeated Fisher. "Why of course it's as good

as it can be. It's great news. It's glorious news! That's where the

devil of it comes in, to knock us all silly. It's admirable. It's

inestimable. It is also quite incredible."

He gazed again at the gray and green colors of the island and the

river, and his rather dreary eye traveled slowly round to the hedges

and the lawns.

"I felt this garden was a sort of dream," he said, "and I suppose I

must be dreaming. But there is grass growing and water moving; and

something impossible has happened."

Even as he spoke the dark figure with a stoop like a vulture

appeared in the gap of the hedge just above him.

"You have won your bet," said Harker, in a harsh and almost croaking

voice. "The old fool cares for nothing but fishing. He cursed me and

told me he would talk no politics."

"I thought it might be so," said Fisher, modestly. "What are you

going to do next?"

"I shall use the old idiot's telephone, anyhow," replied the lawyer.

"I must find out exactly what has happened. I've got to speak for

the Government myself to-morrow." And he hurried away toward the

house.

In the silence that followed, a very bewildering silence so far as

March was concerned, they saw the quaint figure of the Duke of

Westmoreland, with his white hat and whiskers, approaching them

across the garden. Fisher instantly stepped toward him with the pink

paper in his hand, and, with a few words, pointed out the

apocalyptic paragraph. The duke, who had been walking slowly, stood

quite still, and for some seconds he looked like a tailor's dummy

standing and staring outside some antiquated shop. Then March heard

his voice, and it was high and almost hysterical:

"But he must see it; he must be made to understand. It cannot have

been put to him properly." Then, with a certain recovery of fullness

and even pomposity in the voice, "I shall go and tell him myself."

Among the queer incidents of that afternoon, March always remembered

something almost comical about the clear picture of the old

gentleman in his wonderful white hat carefully stepping from stone

to stone across the river, like a figure crossing the traffic in

Piccadilly. Then he disappeared behind the trees of the island, and

March and Fisher turned to meet the Attorney-General, who was coming

out of the house with a visage of grim assurance.

"Everybody is saying," he said, "that the Prime Minister has made

the greatest speech of his life. Peroration and loud and prolonged

cheers. Corrupt financiers and heroic peasants. We will not desert

Denmark again."

Fisher nodded and turned away toward the towing path, where he saw

the duke returning with a rather dazed expression. In answer to

questions he said, in a husky and confidential voice:

"I really think our poor friend cannot be himself. He refused to

listen; he--ah--suggested that I might frighten the fish."

A keen ear might have detected a murmur from Mr. Fisher on the

subject of a white hat, but Sir John Harker struck it more

decisively:

"Fisher was quite right. I didn't believe it myself, but it's quite

clear that the old fellow is fixed on this fishing notion by now. If

the house caught fire behind him he would hardly move till sunset."

Fisher had continued his stroll toward the higher embanked ground of

the towing path, and he now swept a long and searching gaze, not

toward the island, but toward the distant wooded heights that were

the walls of the valley. An evening sky as clear as that of the

previous day was settling down all over the dim landscape, but

toward the west it was now red rather than gold; there was scarcely

any sound but the monotonous music of the river. Then came the sound

of a half-stifled exclamation from Horne Fisher, and Harold March

looked up at him in wonder.

"You spoke of bad news," said Fisher. "Well, there is really bad

news now. I am afraid this is a bad business."

"What bad news do you mean?" asked his friend, conscious of

something strange and sinister in his voice.

"The sun has set," answered Fisher.

He went on with the air of one conscious of having said something

fatal. "We must get somebody to go across whom he will really listen

to. He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly

always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being

methodical. And he never goes on sitting there after sunset, with

the whole place getting dark. Where's his nephew? I believe he's

really fond of his nephew."

"Look!" cried March, abruptly. "Why, he's been across already.

There he is coming back."

And, looking up the river once more, they saw, dark against the

sunset reflections, the figure of James Bullen stepping hastily and

rather clumsily from stone to stone. Once he slipped on a stone with

a slight splash. When he rejoined the group on the bank his olive

face was unnaturally pale.

The other four men had already gathered on the same spot and almost

simultaneously were calling out to him, "What does he say now?"

"Nothing. He says--nothing."

Fisher looked at the young man steadily for a moment; then he

started from his immobility and, making a motion to March to follow

him, himself strode down to the river crossing. In a few moments

they were on the little beaten track that ran round the wooded

island, to the other side of it where the fisherman sat. Then they

stood and looked at him, without a word.

Sir Isaac Hook was still sitting propped up against the stump of the

tree, and that for the best of reasons. A length of his own

infallible fishing line was twisted and tightened twice round his

throat and then twice round the wooden prop behind him. The leading

investigator ran forward and touched the fisherman's hand, and it

was as cold as a fish.

"The sun has set," said Horne Fisher, in the same terrible tones,

"and he will never see it rise again."

Ten minutes afterward the five men, shaken by such a shock, were

again together in the garden, looking at one another with white but

watchful faces. The lawyer seemed the most alert of the group; he

was articulate if somewhat abrupt.

"We must leave the body as it is and telephone for the police," he

said. "I think my own authority will stretch to examining the

servants and the poor fellow's papers, to see if there is anything

that concerns them. Of course, none of you gentlemen must leave this

place."

Perhaps there was something in his rapid and rigorous legality that

suggested the closing of a net or trap. Anyhow, young Bullen

suddenly broke down, or perhaps blew up, for his voice was like an

explosion in the silent garden.

"I never touched him," he cried. "I swear I had nothing to do with

it!"

"Who said you had?" demanded Harker, with a hard eye. "Why do you

cry out before you're hurt?"

"Because you all look at me like that," cried the young man,

angrily. "Do you think I don't know you're always talking about my

damned debts and expectations?"

Rather to March's surprise, Fisher had drawn away from this first

collision, leading the duke with him to another part of the garden.

When he was out of earshot of the others he said, with a curious

simplicity of manner:

"Westmoreland, I am going straight to the point."

"Well?" said the other, staring at him stolidly.

"You have a motive for killing him," said Fisher.

The duke continued to stare, but he seemed unable to speak.

"I hope you had a motive for killing him," continued Fisher, mildly.

"You see, it's rather a curious situation. If you have a motive for

murdering, you probably didn't murder. But if you hadn't any motive,

why, then perhaps, you did."

"What on earth are you talking about?" demanded the duke, violently.

"It's quite simple," said Fisher. "When you went across he was

either alive or dead. If he was alive, it might be you who killed

him, or why should you have held your tongue about his death? But if

he was dead, and you had a reason for killing him, you might have

held your tongue for fear of being accused." Then after a silence he

added, abstractedly: "Cyprus is a beautiful place, I believe.

Romantic scenery and romantic people. Very intoxicating for a young

man."

The duke suddenly clenched his hands and said, thickly, "Well, I had

a motive."

"Then you're all right," said Fisher, holding out his hand with an

air of huge relief. "I was pretty sure you wouldn't really do it;

you had a fright when you saw it done, as was only natural. Like a

bad dream come true, wasn't it?"

While this curious conversation was passing, Harker had gone into

the house, disregarding the demonstrations of the sulky nephew, and

came back presently with a new air of animation and a sheaf of

papers in his hand.

"I've telephoned for the police," he said, stopping to speak to

Fisher, "but I think I've done most of their work for them. I

believe I've found out the truth. There's a paper here--" He

stopped, for Fisher was looking at him with a singular expression;

and it was Fisher who spoke next:

"Are there any papers that are not there, I wonder? I mean that are

not there now?" After a pause he added: "Let us have the cards on

the table. When you went through his papers in such a hurry, Harker,

weren't you looking for something to--to make sure it shouldn't be

found?"

Harker did not turn a red hair on his hard head, but he looked at

the other out of the corners of his eyes.

"And I suppose," went on Fisher, smoothly, "that is why you, too,

told us lies about having found Hook alive. You knew there was

something to show that you might have killed him, and you didn't

dare tell us he was killed. But, believe me, it's much better to be

honest now."

Harker's haggard face suddenly lit up as if with infernal flames.

"Honest," he cried, "it's not so damned fine of you fellows to be

honest. You're all born with silver spoons in your mouths, and then

you swagger about with everlasting virtue because you haven't got

other people's spoons in your pockets. But I was born in a Pimlico

lodging house and I had to make my spoon, and there'd be plenty to

say I only spoiled a horn or an honest man. And if a struggling man

staggers a bit over the line in his youth, in the lower parts of the

law which are pretty dingy, anyhow, there's always some old vampire

to hang on to him all his life for it."

"Guatemalan Golcondas, wasn't it?" said Fisher, sympathetically.

Harker suddenly shuddered. Then he said, "I believe you must know

everything, like God Almighty."

"I know too much," said Horne Fisher, "and all the wrong things."

The other three men were drawing nearer to them, but before they

came too near, Harker said, in a voice that had recovered all its

firmness:

"Yes, I did destroy a paper, but I really did find a paper, too; and

I believe that it clears us all."

"Very well," said Fisher, in a louder and more cheerful tone; "let

us all have the benefit of it."

"On the very top of Sir Isaac's papers," explained Harker, "there

was a threatening letter from a man named Hugo. It threatens to kill

our unfortunate friend very much in the way that he was actually

killed. It is a wild letter, full of taunts; you can see it for

yourselves; but it makes a particular point of poor Hook's habit of

fishing from the island. Above all, the man professes to be writing

from a boat. And, since we alone went across to him," and he smiled

in a rather ugly fashion, "the crime must have been committed by a

man passing in a boat."

"Why, dear me!" cried the duke, with something almost amounting to

animation. "Why, I remember the man called Hugo quite well! He was a

sort of body servant and bodyguard of Sir Isaac. You see, Sir Isaac

was in some fear of assault. He was--he was not very popular with

several people. Hugo was discharged after some row or other; but I

remember him well. He was a great big Hungarian fellow with great

mustaches that stood out on each side of his face."

A door opened in the darkness of Harold March's memory, or, rather,

oblivion, and showed a shining landscape, like that of a lost dream.

It was rather a waterscape than a landscape, a thing of flooded

meadows and low trees and the dark archway of a bridge. And for one

instant he saw again the man with mustaches like dark horns leap up

on to the bridge and disappear.

"Good heavens!" he cried. "Why, I met the murderer this morning!"

* * *

Horne Fisher and Harold March had their day on the river, after all,

for the little group broke up when the police arrived. They declared

that the coincidence of March's evidence had cleared the whole

company, and clinched the case against the flying Hugo. Whether that

Hungarian fugitive would ever be caught appeared to Horne Fisher to

be highly doubtful; nor can it be pretended that he displayed any

very demoniac detective energy in the matter as he leaned back in

the boat cushions, smoking, and watching the swaying reeds slide

past.

"It was a very good notion to hop up on to the bridge," he said. "An

empty boat means very little; he hasn't been seen to land on either

bank, and he's walked off the bridge without walking on to it, so to

speak. He's got twenty-four hours' start; his mustaches will

disappear, and then he will disappear. I think there is every hope

of his escape."

"Hope?" repeated March, and stopped sculling for an instant.

"Yes, hope," repeated the other. "To begin with, I'm not going to

be exactly consumed with Corsican revenge because somebody has

killed Hook. Perhaps you may guess by this time what Hook was. A

damned blood-sucking blackmailer was that simple, strenuous,

self-made captain of industry. He had secrets against nearly

everybody; one against poor old Westmoreland about an early marriage

in Cyprus that might have put the duchess in a queer position; and

one against Harker about some flutter with his client's money when

he was a young solicitor. That's why they went to pieces when they

found him murdered, of course. They felt as if they'd done it in a

dream. But I admit I have another reason for not wanting our

Hungarian friend actually hanged for the murder."

"And what is that?" asked his friend.

"Only that he didn't commit the murder," answered Fisher.

Harold March laid down the oars and let the boat drift for a moment.

"Do you know, I was half expecting something like that," he said.

"It was quite irrational, but it was hanging about in the

atmosphere, like thunder in the air."

"On the contrary, it's finding Hugo guilty that's irrational,"

replied Fisher. "Don't you see that they're condemning him for the

very reason for which they acquit everybody else? Harker and

Westmoreland were silent because they found him murdered, and knew

there were papers that made them look like the murderers. Well, so

did Hugo find him murdered, and so did Hugo know there was a paper

that would make him look like the murderer. He had written it

himself the day before."

"But in that case," said March, frowning, "at what sort of unearthly

hour in the morning was the murder really committed? It was barely

daylight when I met him at the bridge, and that's some way above the

island."

"The answer is very simple," replied Fisher. "The crime was not

committed in the morning. The crime was not committed on the

island."

March stared at the shining water without replying, but Fisher

resumed like one who had been asked a question:

"Every intelligent murder involves taking advantage of some one

uncommon feature in a common situation. The feature here was the

fancy of old Hook for being the first man up every morning, his

fixed routine as an angler, and his annoyance at being disturbed.

The murderer strangled him in his own house after dinner on the

night before, carried his corpse, with all his fishing tackle,

across the stream in the dead of night, tied him to the tree, and

left him there under the stars. It was a dead man who sat fishing

there all day. Then the murderer went back to the house, or, rather,

to the garage, and went off in his motor car. The murderer drove his

own motor car."

Fisher glanced at his friend's face and went on. "You look

horrified, and the thing is horrible. But other things are horrible,

too. If some obscure man had been hag-ridden by a blackmailer and

had his family life ruined, you wouldn't think the murder of his

persecutor the most inexcusable of murders. Is it any worse when a

whole great nation is set free as well as a family? By this warning

to Sweden we shall probably prevent war and not precipitate it, and

save many thousand lives rather more valuable than the life of that

viper. Oh, I'm not talking sophistry or seriously justifying the

thing, but the slavery that held him and his country was a thousand

times less justifiable. If I'd really been sharp I should have

guessed it from his smooth, deadly smiling at dinner that night. Do

you remember that silly talk about how old Isaac could always play

his fish? In a pretty hellish sense he was a fisher of men."

Harold March took the oars and began to row again.

"I remember," he said, "and about how a big fish might break the

line and get away."