THE PIGEON FLIES HOME
A Robbler’s not a man to be lightly discomposed by the mere accident that he happens to have committed a murder. Franz’s first impulse, indeed, as he left that blood-stained room, was to run away helter-skelter from the scene of his hasty crime — to disappear into space — London, the Tyrol, anywhere — without even going back to his hotel at Nice to reclaim his portmanteau. But second thoughts showed him how foolish so precipitate a retreat would be. By adopting it, he would be throwing away many valuable chances which now told in his favour. It was wholly to the good, for example, that he’d happened to give his name all along the line as Karl von Forstemann from Vienna. Even if the authorities found reason to suspect him of having killed this man Holmes, they’d lost much useful time in trying to track down the imaginary Von Forstemann; while he himself might be making his way quietly across the length and breadth of the continent, meanwhile, under his own true name as Franz Lindner of the London Pavilion. Though, to be sure, there was no reason why they should ever suspect him. Hundreds of people flock in and out of Monte Carlo every day; hundreds of people come and go at every hotel, unnoticed. Besides, it wasn’t likely the body’d be discovered till to-morrow morning; and by that time, Gott sei dank, he’d be safe and away across the Italian frontier.
It was early still — only a little past ten. Tremulous and startled by the magnitude of his crime, he strolled about for awhile to cool himself in the Casino gardens. Then a happy thought struck him — he’d go in and play for a bit to avoid suspicion. Hot at heart as he was, but trying his best to look unconcerned, he passed into those huge over-heated rooms once more, and played for half-an-hour with very languid attention. The greater stake now in jeopardy made it difficult for him when he won to remember even to take up his money; he let it lie once or twice on the board till it doubled and trebled itself. But that was all to the good; it suited his book well: people noticed only the more how coolly he was playing. Strange to say, he was winning, too, when he cared so little whether he won or lost — winning pounds at a time on every turn of the tables. It was a master-stroke of policy, and Franz plumed himself not a little on being clever enough to think of it. How could people ever say it was he who killed the man, when he’d spent half the night at play in the gambling rooms of the Casino?
At eleven, he left off, several pounds to the good, and strolled down to the station with well-assumed carelessness. He returned in a carriage with the two jolly young Englishmen. Casually, on the way, he mentioned to them that he was going to leave Nice next morning. At the hotel they broke another bottle of champagne together. Franz sat up, and talked excitedly, and even sang comic songs; he was afraid to go to bed; though still self-possessed, and by no means panic-stricken, he was nervous and agitated.
That night, he never undressed. He lay in his clothes on the bed, and slept by snatches fitfully. In the morning, he rose early, and looked hard for spots of blood as he washed and dressed himself. But he had done his work far too neatly to spatter his clothes. “Coffee, quick, and my bill!” he said to the waiter who answered the bell; “I want to catch an early train at the station for England.” He said England on purpose, though he meant it to be Italy. With a true Tyroler’s instinct, he would strike straight home — by Milan, Verona, and the Brenner, to St Valentin.
At the station, he took a through ticket, first-class, for Genoa. He had to pass Monte Carlo, and he did so with repugnance. Yet he wasn’t much afraid; the Robbler instinct was still strong within him. A couple of fat Frenchmen got into the carriage at Monaco; they were talking of some tragedy that had happened last night at an hotel at La Condamine. Franz pricked up his ears but tried to look unconcerned. “Somebody dead?” he inquired in his Teutonic French, with a show of languid interest.
“Yes; another suicide,” one of the Frenchmen answered, shrugging his shoulders, with a smile. “Que voulez-vous? An Englishman — a fellow called Holmes — or, some say, an American. He stabbed himself last night, after losing heavily. He was stopping at my hotel: he went to bed all well; the servants knocked this morning — got no answer — went in and found the body in a fauteuil, where the malheureux had stabbed himself.”
Franz’s eye gleamed bright. So at first they had put the best interpretation upon it! The mere suspicion of a suicide might give him a start that would enable him to escape. He shrugged his shoulders in return. “A common episode of life as things go at Monte Carlo!” he murmured, philosophically.
The Frenchmen got out and left the train at Mentone. At Ventimiglia, Franz crossed the frontier with a beating heart; so far, at least, no telegram to arrest or detain him. All morning, the train crawled on at a snail’s pace towards Genoa. Franz chafed and grumbled, eating his heart out with impatience. At San Pier d’Arena, the junction-station, he took his portmanteau in his hand, and re-booked for Milan. There he spent that second night in fear and trembling. On his way up to an hotel, he bought a copy of an evening paper — the Corriere della Sera. The same story still — Suicidio a Monte Carlo.
He didn’t sleep much; but he slept — that was ever something. At seven o’clock, he was up, and walked out towards the Cathedral. But that mount of marble, with its thousand spires and its statued pinnacles in the myriad niches, had no power on such a day to arrest his attention; beside the great west door, he was looking for a boy with a morning newspaper. Soon he found one, and tore it open under the arcades of the Piazza. He knew no Italian, but by the aid of his scanty French he could make out the meaning of one sinister paragraph. “It is now believed that the man Holme or Holmes, who was found stabbed in his room at the Hotel des Étrangers, at Monte Carlo, yesterday morning, met his death by foul means, and not, as was at first suspected, by suicide. The doctors who have examined the wound concur in the opinion that it could hardly by any possibility be self-inflicted. Holmes is now known to have been a notorious card-sharper, and it is surmised that he may have been murdered in a fit of revengeful passion by one of his victims, several of whom he is said to have duped during the last few days in the neighbourhood of the Casino. No clue, however, has as yet been obtained to the name or personality of his supposed assailant.”
Murder! they called it murder to stab that cheating rogue! and they took him for a murderer just because he’d revenged himself! When they’d got as far as that, it was probable before long they’d track the deed home to Herr Karl von Forstemann. Franz saw clearly enough now what his next move must be. Herr Karl von Forstemann must disappear as if by magic from this earthly scene, and Franz Lindner of St Valentin, and of the London Pavilion, that honest and simple-minded Tyrolese musician, must at once replace him.
He paid his bill at the hotel, took a cab to the station instead of the omnibus, and caught the through train to Venice direct — throwing the police off his track, if it came to police, by getting out short, portmanteau in hand, at Verona, for the Brenner. All day long, he travelled on by that beautiful mountain line, up the Adige towards Botzen; and, though he was flying for his life, it gave him none the less a genuine thrill of joy when he beheld once more those beloved Tyrolese peaks, and heard the German tongue spoken with a Tyrolese accent. He slept that night at Botzen. There, he felt his foot once more upon his native heath. In the morning, he rose early, and went into a hatter’s, where he bought a Tyrolese hat of the old conical pattern; all fugitive that he was, the ingrained instincts of his youth yet made him turn the blackcock’s feather in it the wrong way forward, Robbler-wise. Vain-glorious still and defiant, nobody would ever have taken him for a runaway criminal. He bought also a pair of stout Tyrolese boots, and introduced a few other little changes in his costume, sufficient to transform him at once from the cosmopolitan snob into the simple Franz Lindner of the old days at St Valentin. Then he took the train north again, right through to Innsbruck, where he slept his third night, more confident than before, and had a chance of reading all in a Vienna paper.
That all was bad enough. No doubt now remained on the minds of the French police that Joaquin Holmes had been really murdered. The hypothesis of suicide broke down at every step. Suspicion pointed most to one or other of three persons whom he was believed to have duped just before the murder. One of these three was being traced by detectives to Marseilles and Paris; the other two, it was believed, had gone on to Italy. In the interests of justice, the police would mention no names at present, but one of these three, they held, must almost certainly be the murderer.
Still, the instinct of his race urged Franz on to St Valentin. He took the afternoon train north as far as Jenbach; then he tramped all the way on foot to his native village. It was late when he arrived, and, tired and hunted down, he went straight to the Wirthshaus. Cousin Fridolin held up his hands in astonishment to see the wanderer. It wasn’t merely surprise that Franz should come back at all, but that he should come back as he went — a genuine Tyroler. All were well in the place: the Herr Vicar and everyone. And Andreas Hausberger and Linnet were here as well — returned home for a holiday.
It was Franz’s turn now to start back in surprise. What, Andreas and Linnet come back to St Valentin! Impossible! You don’t mean it!
But Cousin Fridolin did mean it — with his thumbs in the armholes of his red Tyrolese waistcoat. They’d retired for the night — they were here at the inn; but he’d knock at their door (full of country hospitality as he was, the simple soul!) and tell them to come out and welcome a friend home again.
Franz seized his arm to prevent him. “Oh no,” he cried; “not that. . . . There are reasons why you mustn’t. . . . Andreas and I had a difference some years ago at Meran; and though we patched it all up again in a way in London, I don’t want to see him now — at least, not till to-morrow.”
As for Cousin Fridolin, standing back and regarding him in surprise, he could hardly understand these fine town-bred manners. If Franz had come back a true Tyroler in dress, he brought with him none the less all the airs and graces of Western civilisation, as understood by the frequenters of the London Pavilion. They sat awhile and talked, while Franz ate the rough supper and drank as much as was good for him of the thin country beer; but Cousin Fridolin noticed that his old rival and companion seemed unaccountably stiff and reserved in his demeanour. Especially did he shirk any obtrusive questions as to whence he had come, and by what route he had got there. As they parted for the night, Franz turned to Cousin Fridolin, who alone in the village had yet seen or spoken with him. “Don’t tell Andreas and Linnet I came here to-night,” he said. “I want them not to know till they meet me as a surprise to-morrow morning.”
Cousin Fridolin, much wondering, promised compliance with his wish. He lighted Franz to his room, and bade him good-night in a very audible whisper. Herr Andreas and his wife had the next rooms to him, he said. Franz nodded a distant assent, and shook his hand somewhat coldly. The terror that had stood over him since he left Monte Carlo grew somehow much deeper, much nearer, much more real, as he found himself once more in these familiar surroundings. He bolted the door with its little wooden button, and sat alone on the bed for some minutes in silence. The solitude appalled him more than ever before; he felt conscious, in some dim way, the hue-and-cry of the police was now well after him.
As he sat there and listened to his own heart beating, while the tallow candle guttered on the table by his side, a low sound from the next room began to attract his attention. It was a stifled sound, with a choking sort of sob in it. Just at first, too preoccupied with his own emotions, Franz hardly noticed it; but at last it obtruded itself upon him by its very unobtrusiveness. Of a sudden, he realised to himself what manner of noise this was. It was the deep suppressed sound of a woman weeping. With her head under the bed-clothes, she was crying, crying, crying silently.
Rising up from his bed, Franz crept over to the door of communication between the two rooms, his mind for the moment distracted by the sound even from his own immediate and pressing danger. For it was borne in upon him at once by what Fridolin Telser had said, that the woman in the next room was none other than Linnet!
Sob, sob, sob, the voice continued, chokingly. Franz could feel rather than hear that the noise was muffled by the intervention of the bed-clothes, and that Linnet, if it was she, was doing the very best she knew to check it. But, in spite of her efforts, the sobs broke out afresh every now and again, spasmodically; she was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart would break — sobbing by herself in the solitude of her bedroom.
All terrified as he was, Franz’s heart stood still at it.
Presently, another door on the far side seemed to open, and a voice was heard saying in low, angry tones, “Won’t you stop that noise? I can’t sleep for hearing you.”
It was Andreas Hausberger’s voice; Franz clenched his hands to hear it. But Linnet seemed to raise her head from the bed-clothes at those words, and speak at last with a great effort to calm herself. “Andreas,” she said, through her sobs, “as the Church bids, I follow you; but I can’t help crying when I think how you treat me. I cry as silently and quietly as I can to myself. If I keep you awake, you must take another room a little farther off from me.”
That was all. She said no more; and Andreas closed the door, as Franz judged, and went back again. But even in his own hour of peril and terror — perhaps all the more keenly because of all that had happened to him — Franz read in those few words the whole story of Linnet’s unhappy marriage. He had suspected it before, of course, but now he knew it. Andreas’s gruff tone of reproof, poor Linnet’s shrinking accent of despairing misery, were more eloquent in his ears than whole hours of deliberate and demonstrative talking. This episode meant much to him. It was for Linnet he had hazarded and encountered everything — it was for Linnet, indirectly, he had risked his own life by stabbing that wretched man away over at Monte Carlo!
His anger burned bright against Andreas Hausberger; Hausberger who had cheated him of his Linnet long ago; Hausberger who was making his Linnet’s life a burden to her! The cold-blooded wretch! How Franz wished it was into him he had plunged that good knife that did swift execution on the dead cheat at Monte Carlo! Ah well, ah well, it was not too late even now! If he couldn’t marry Linnet, he could at least avenge her! He could have wiped out old scores and redressed new wrongs — if it had only been Andreas in place of that other man!