The Mark Of Cain
“I really beg your pardon,” said Barton. “It was automatic, I think; besides, I am extremely interested in tattooing.”
“Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen Johnson. He appears, from what our informant tells us, to have been a most remarkable specimen. He had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by Burmese, by Arabs, and, in a peculiar blue tint and to a particular pattern, by the Dyacks of Borneo. We have here a rough chart, drawn by our informant, of his principal decorations.”
Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet of drawing-paper, on which was rudely outlined the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the breast, thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs.
The guess which made Barton leap up had not been mistaken: he recognized the tattooings he had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields.
This confirmation of what he had conjectured, however, did not draw any exclamation or mark of excitement from Barton, who was now on his guard.
“This is highly interesting,” he said, as he examined the diagram; “and I am sure, Mr. Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognize a claimant with such remarkable peculiarities.”
“No, sir; it is easy enough, and we have been able to dismiss scores of sham Richard Johnsons. But one man presented himself the day before yesterday – a rough sailor fellow, who went straight to the point; asked if the man we wanted had any private marks; said he knew what they were, and showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we could verify the design, corresponded to that drawing.”
“Well,” asked Barton, controlling his excitement by a great effort, “what did you do with him?”
“We said to him that it would be necessary to take the advice of an expert before we could make any movement; and, though he told us things about old Johnson and Linkheaton, which it seemed almost impossible that anyone but the right man could have known, we put him off till we had seen you, and could make an appointment for you to examine the tattooings. They must be dealt with first, before any other identification.”
“I suppose you have made some other necessary inquiries? Did he say why he was so late in answering the advertisement? It has been out for several months.”
“Yes, and that is rather in his favor,” said Mr. Wright. “If he had been an impostor on the lookout he would probably have come to us long ago. But he has just returned from the Cape, where he had been out of the way of newspapers, and he did not see the advertisement till he came across it three or four days ago.”
“Very well,” said Barton. “Make an appointment with the man for any time to-morrow, and I will be with you.”
As he said this he looked very hard and significantly at the younger Mr. Wright.
“Very good, sir; thank you. Shall we say at noon tomorrow?”
“With pleasure,” answered Barton, still with his eye on the younger partner.
He then said good-by, and was joined, as he had hoped, in the outer office by young Wright.
“You had something to say to me?” asked the junior member of the firm.
“Several things,” said Barton, smiling. “And first, would you mind finding out whether the coast is clear – whether any one is watching for me?”
“Watching for you! What do you mean?”
“Just take a look round the square, and tell me whether any suspicious character is about.”
Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, and stood lighting a cigarette on the outer steps.
“Not a soul in sight but lawyers’ clerks,” he reported.
“Very well; just tell your father that, as it is a fine morning, you are taking a turn with me.”
Barton’s friend did as he wished, and presently the pair had some serious conversation.
“I’ll do exactly as you suggest, and explain to my father,” said the young lawyer as they separated.
“Thanks; it is so much easier for you to explain than for a stranger like myself,” said Barton, and strolled westward by way of Co vent Garden.
At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, theatrical costumiers, Barton stopped, went in, was engaged some time with the Messrs. Aminadab, and finally had a cab called for him, and drove home with a pretty bulky parcel.
At five minutes to twelve on the following day, a tall, burly, mahogany-colored mariner, attired, for the occasion, in a frock-coat and hat, appeared in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He seemed to be but ill acquainted with those coasts, and mooned about for some minutes before he reached the door of Messrs. Wright Then he rang, the door was opened, and he was admitted into the presence of the partners.
“I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your letter,” he said with a Northern burr, bowing awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute by touching his forelock.
His eyes wandered round the room, where he saw no one but the partners, with whom he was already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentleman – a gentleman with hay-colored hair, a soft hat, spectacles, and a tow-colored beard. He had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty complexion, and the air of one who smoked too much.
“Good morning, Mr. – h’m – Mr. Johnson,” said old Mr. Wright. “As we told you, sir, we have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry, requested Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect – h’m – the personal marks of which you spoke. Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great authority on these matters – author of ‘Die Tattuirung,’ a very learned work, I am told.”
Thus introduced, the Professor bowed.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said the sailor-man gruffly, “or any gentleman as really knows what’s what.”
“You have been a great traveller, sir?” said the learned Professor, whose Teutonic accent it is superfluous to reproduce. “You have in many lands travelled? So!”
“Yes, sir; I have seen the world.”
“And you are much tattooed: it is to me very interesting. You have by many races been decorated?”
“Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir!”
“How happy you are to have had such experiences! Now, the Burmese – ah! have you any little Burmese marks?”
“Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder,” replied the seafaring man. “Saving your presence, I’ll strip to the buff.”
“The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir,” this was in reply to young Mr. Wright “The naked body! why, buff! ‘Buff,’ the abstract word, the actual stuff, the very wesen of man unclothed. ‘Buffer,’ the concrete man, in the ‘buff,’ in the flesh; it is sehr intéressant.”
While the learned Professor muttered these metaphysical and philological reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.
“That’s the Burmese style, sir,” he said, pointing to his shoulders and upper arm.
These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down to the elbow-joints.
“Sehr schôn, sehr schôn,” exclaimed the delighted Professor. “It is very hubsch, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we Germans. Ach, it is mournful!” and he sighed. “And now, sir, have you to show me any moko? A little moko would be very instructive.”
“Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just look between my shoulders,” and the seaman turned a broad bare back, whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.
“That is right, that is right,” whispered the Professor. “Moko, schlange, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better moko, on an European man, have I never seen. You observe,” he remarked to the elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed lines – “you observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful.”
“Extremely interesting,” said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist, seemed nervous and uncomfortable.
“Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture,” he added, comparing the sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.
“Are you satisfied now, governor?” asked the sailor.
“One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?”
“Oh, yes; here you are!” and the voyager pointed to his breast.
The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings of irregular form.
“It is, it is,” he cried, “the wasm, the sharat,2 the Semitic tribal mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their cattle! Of old time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr Professor Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls that very mark, my dear sir?”
“Not I,” said the sailor; “I’m no scholar.”
“He says it was – I do not say he is right,” cried the Professor, in a loud voice, pointing a finger at his victim’s breast – “he says it was the mark of cain!”
The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a livid white, and grasped at a bookcase by which he stood.
“What do you mean?” he cried, through his chattering teeth; “what do you mean with your damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain? The mark’s all right! A Hadendowa woman did it in Suakim years ago. Ain’t it on that chart of yours?”
“Certainly, good sir; it is,” answered the Professor. “Why do you so agitate yourself? The proof is complete!” he added, still pointing at the sailor’s breast.
“Then I’ll put on my togs, with your leave: it’s none so warm!” grumbled the man.
He had so far completed his dressing that he was in his waistcoat, and was just looking round for his coat.
“Stop!” said the Professor. “Hold Mr. Johnson’s coat for a moment!”
This was to young Wright, who laid his hands on the garment in question.
“You must be tired, sir,” said the Professor, in a very soft voice. “May I offer you a leedle cigarette?”
He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette-case, and, in a thoroughly English accent, he went on:
“I have waited long to give you back your cigarette-case, which you left at your club, Mr. Thomas Cranley!”
The sailor’s eye fell on it. He dashed the silver box violently to the ground, and trampled on it, then he made one rush at his coat.
“Hold it, hold it!” cried Barton, laying aside his Teutonic accent – “hold it: there’s a revolver in the pocket!”
But there was no need to struggle for the coat.
The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, a crumpled but not unconscious mass, on the floor.
“Call in the police!” said Barton. “They’ll have no difficulty in taking him.”
“This is the man against whom you have the warrant,” he went on, as young Wright opened the door and admitted two policemen. “I charge the Honorable Thomas Cranley with murder!”
The officers lifted the fallen man.
“Let him be,” said Barton. “He has collapsed. Lay him on the floor: he’s better so. He needs a turn of my profession: his heart’s weak. Bring some brandy.”
Young Wright went for the spirits, while the frightened old lawyer kept murmuring:
“The Honorable Thomas Cranley was always very unsatisfactory!”
It had been explained to the old gentleman that an impostor would be unmasked, and a criminal arrested; but he had not been informed that the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.
Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time, examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the floor.
CHAPTER XVI. – The Verdict of Fate
Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton’s letter. He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.
Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!
Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a thoroughly human old-fashioned way.
Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley’s trial dragged on. Interest, as usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.
But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.
When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed himself “Not Guilty,” his voice was clear and strong enough, though the pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.
The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a condensed form:
First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast of society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the circumstances of Johnson’s early life, with his history and his home. His plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A celebrated case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved that a most plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing man might be made by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the minute local and personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate Johnson, a sailor whose body was known to have been indelibly marked by the tattooing of various barbarous races, it was necessary that the prisoner should be similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with unusual heartlessness, he had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his body the distinctive marks of Johnson, and then had destroyed him with fiendish ingenuity, in the very act of assuming his personality. The very instrument, it might be said, which stamped Cranley as Johnson, slew Johnson himself, and the process which hallmarked the prisoner as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him with the brand of Cain. The personal marks which seemed to establish the claimant’s case demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical expert brought in to prove his identity, and was recognized by that gentleman, Dr. Barton, who would be called, and who had once already exposed him in a grave social offence – cheating at cards. The same witness had made a post-mortem examination of the body of Richard Johnson, and had then suspected the method by which he had been murdered.
The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor (tbe disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of meeting Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the Hit or Miss tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met him there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve o’clock, telling the landlady that “his friend,” as he called Johnson, had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady, Mrs. Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson – or Shields, as she called him – had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which led to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often took, on leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of Johnson, with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart belonging to the vestry – a cart which, during the night, had remained near a shed on the piece of waste ground adjoining the Hit or Miss. A coroner’s jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had strayed into the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door in the palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down in the cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But evidence derived from a later medical examination would establish the presumption, which would be confirmed by the testimony of an eye-witness, that death had been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a poison which it would be shown he had in his possession – a poison which was not swallowed by the victim, but introduced by means of a puncture into the system. The dead man’s body had then been removed to a place where his decease would be accounted for as the result of cold and exhaustion. A witness would be put in the box who, by an extraordinary circumstance, had been enabled to see the crime committed by the prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at the moment, he did not understand the meaning of what he saw. As the circumstances by which this witness had been enabled to behold what was done at dead of night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not commanded from any neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly peculiar, testimony would be brought to show that the witness really had enjoyed the opportunity of observation which he claimed.
On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson, and claimed Johnson’s property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson, unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed to have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death, according to the medical theory, was caused, the counsel for the prosecution believed that the jury could find no other verdict than that the prisoner had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson on the night of February 7th.
This opened the case for the Crown. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the evidence of all the witnesses who proved, step by step, the statements of the prosecution. First was demonstrated the identity of Shields with Johnson. To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but Johnson’s old crony, the man who drew the chart of his tattoo marks, was at length discovered in Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he collected, the point was satisfactorily made out. It was, of course, most important in another respect, as establishing Margaret’s claims on the Linkheaton estate.
The discovery of the body of Johnson (or Shields) in the snow was proved by our old friends Bill and Tommy.
The prisoner was recognized by Mrs. Gullick as the sailor gentleman who had been with Johnson on the last night of his life. In spite of the difference of dress, and of appearance caused by the absence of beard – for Cranley was now clean shaved – Mrs. Gullick was positive as to his voice and as to his eyebrows, which were peculiarly black and mobile.
Barton, who was called next, and whose evidence excited the keenest interest, identified the prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and Wright, and whom he had known as Cranley. His medical evidence was given at considerable length, and need not be produced in full detail On examining the body of Richard Johnson, his attention had naturally been directed chiefly to the tattooings. He had for some years been deeply interested, as an ethnologist, in the tattooed marks of various races. He had found many curious examples on the body of the dead man. Most of the marks were obviously old; but in a very unusual place, generally left blank – namely, behind and under the right shoulder – he had discovered certain markings of an irregular character, clearly produced by an inexperienced hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had not healed, and were slightly discolored. They could not, from their position, possibly have been produced by the man himself. Microscopic examinations of these marks, in which the coloring matter was brown, not red or blue, as on the rest of the body, showed that this coloring matter was of a character familiar to the witness as a physiologist and scientific traveller. It was the Woorali, or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians of Guiana.
Asked to explain the nature of this poison to the Court, the witness said that its “principle” (to use the term of the old medical writers) had not yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it ever been compounded by Europeans. He had seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who combined the juice of the Woorali vine with that of certain bulbous plants, with certain insects, and with the poison-fangs of two serpents, boiling the whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally straining off a thick brown paste, which, when perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of their arrows. The poison might be swallowed by a healthy man without fatal results. But if introduced into the system through a wound, the poison would act almost instantaneously, and defy analysis. Its effect was to sever, as it were, the connection between the nerves and the muscles, and the muscles used in respiration being thus gradually paralyzed, death followed within a brief time, proportionate to the size of the victim, man or animal, and the strength of the dose.
Traces of this poison, then, the witness had found in the fresh tattoo marks on Johnson’s body.
The witness now produced the sharp wooden needle, the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm, which he had found among Johnson’s tattooing materials, in the upper chamber of the Hit or Miss. This needle had been, he said, the tip of one of the arrows used for their blowpipes, by the Macoushi of Guiana.
Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette-case, the instrument of his cheating at baccarat, which Cranley had left in the club on the evening of his detection. He showed that the case had contained a small crystal receptacle, intended to hold opium. This crystal had been broken by Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the office of Martin and Wright. But crumbs of the poison – “Woorali,” or “Ourali” – perfectly dry, remained in this réceptacle. It was thus clear that Cranley, himself a great traveller, was possessed of the rare and perilous drug.
The medical evidence having been heard, and confirmed in its general bearing by various experts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe cross-examination, William Winter was called.
There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and partly paralyzed man was borne in on a kind of litter, and accommodated in the witness-box.
“Where were you,” asked the counsel for the prosecution, when the officer had sworn the witness, “at eleven o’clock on the night of February 7th?”
“I was on the roof of the Hit or Miss tavern.”
“On which part of the roof?”
“On the ledge below the dormer window at the back part of the house, facing the waste ground behind the plank fence.”
“Will you tell the Court what you saw while you were in that position?”
Winter’s face was flushed with excitement; but his voice, though thin, was clear as he said:
“There was a light streaming through the dormer window beside which I was lying, and I looked in.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, on which were bottles and glasses, and two men, one seated, the other standing.”
“Would you recognize either man if you saw him?”
“I recognize the man who was seated, in the prisoner at the bar; but at that time he wore a beard.”
“Tell the Court what happened.”
“The men were facing me. One of them – the prisoner – was naked to the waist. His breast was tattooed. The other – the man who stood up – was touching him with a needle, which he applied, again and again, to a saucer on the table.”
“Could you hear what they said?”
“I could; for the catch of the lattice window had not caught, and there was a slight chink open.”
“You listened?”
“I could not help it; the scene was so strange. I heard the man with the needle give a sigh of relief, and say, ‘There, it’s finished, and a pretty job too, though I say it.’ The other said, ‘You have done it beautifully, Dicky; it’s a most interesting art. Now, just out of curiosity, let me tattoo you a bit.’ The other man laughed, and took off his coat and shirt while the other dressed. ‘There’s scarce an inch of me plain,’ he said, ‘but you can try your hand here,’ pointing to the lower part of his shoulder.”
“What happened then?”
“They were both standing up now. I saw the prisoner take out something sharp; his face was deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He began touching him with the sharp object, and kept chaffing all the time. This lasted, I should think, about five minutes, when the face of the man who was being tattooed grew very red. Then he swayed a little, backward and forward, then he stretched out his hands like a blind man, and said, in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralyzed, ‘I’m very cold; I can’t shiver!’ Then he fell down heavily, and his body made one or two convulsive movements. That was all.”
