Various - "Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories"

Henry James - "The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]"

Joseph Triemens - "The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing"

Thomas de Quincey - "The Caesars"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Hand in the Dark

A >> Arthur J. Rees >> The Hand in the Dark




"What d'ye mean by coming to me with such a question? What does Mr.
Musard mean by sending ye here? Does he think I've turned receiver of
stolen property at my time of life? I'm surprised at him."

"My dear Mr. Wendover, Mr. Musard had no such thought in his mind. We
simply come to you for information. Mr. Musard gave me your address as a
reputable dealer of stones who would be likely to know if this necklace
had been offered for sale in Hatton Garden."

"Well, it has not been offered to me. I've handled no pearls for twelve
months."

"Would you know the Heredith necklace if it were offered to you?"

"I would not, and I've already told ye it was not offered to me."

Colwyn was nonplussed and disappointed, but the recollection of
Nepcote's furtive glance and hasty concealment of the diamond merchant's
card on the previous night prompted him to a further effort.

"It is possible the necklace may have been broken up and the stones
offered separately," he said. "The clasp contained a large and valuable
blue diamond."

"I tell ye I know nothing about it. I very rarely buy from private
persons. It's not my way of doing business."

"We have reason to suspect that the necklace was offered for sale by a
young military officer, tall and good looking, with blue eyes and brown
hair, slightly tinged with grey at the temples."

"That description would apply to thousands of young officers. They're a
harum-scarum lot, and dissipation soon turns a man's hair grey. I have
had some of them here, trying to sell family jewels for money to throw
away on painted women. There was one who called some days ago in a
half-intoxicated condition. He clapped me on the back as impudent as you
please, and calling me a thing--a dear old thing, which is one of their
slang phrases--asked me what he could screw out of me for a good
diamond. I sent him and his diamond off with a flea in the ear." Mr.
Wendover's gummy lips curved in a grim smile at the recollection.

"Can you describe him more particularly?" asked Colwyn, with sudden
interest.

"I paid no particular attention to him, and I wouldn't know him again if
he were to walk in the door. It was almost dark when he came, and my
eyes are not young. But he was not the man ye're after. It was days
before the murder."

"Did he give you his name?"

"He did not, and I wouldn't tell ye if he did. What's it to do with the
object of your visit? Ye're a persistent sort of young fellow, but I'm
not going to let ye hold a general fishing inquiry into my business.
There are two kinds of foolish folk in this world. Those who babble of
their affairs to their womenfolk, and those who babble of them to
strangers. I have no womenfolk, thank God! so I cannot talk to the
futile creatures."

"Then I shall not ask you to break the other half of your maxim on my
account," said Colwyn, rising with a smile.

"It would be no good if ye did," responded Mr. Wendover, with a
reciprocatory grin which displayed two yellow fangs like the teeth of a
walrus. "My business conscience is already pricking me for having said
so much. He that holds his own counsel gives away nothing--except that
he holds his counsel. Ye might do worse than lay that to your heart, Mr.
Colwyn, in your walk through life. There's fifty years' experience
behind it. Good-bye to ye, Mr. Colwyn, and ye, young man. I wish ye both
luck in your search, but my advice is, try the pawn-shops." At the
pressure of his thumb on the table the young Jew appeared from the next
room, as if summoned by a magic wand, to let the visitors out.

"That's a queer old bird," said Caldew, as they walked away. "Do you
think he has told us the truth?"

Colwyn did not reply. He was thinking rapidly, and wondering whether by
any possibility he had made a mistake. But once more there flashed into
his mind, like an image projected on a screen, the little scene which he
alone had witnessed at the flat on the previous evening--the fluttering
cards, the quick, unconscious gesture of concealment, and the startled
glance which so plainly reflected the dread of discovery. No! there was
no mistake there, but the explanation lay deeper.

They had reached the angle of the narrow passage which led to the front
outlet of the offices. A small window was fixed at the dark turn of the
long dark corridor to admit light. Colwyn chanced to glance through this
window as he reached it, and his quick eye took in the figure of a man
standing motionless in a narrow alley of the side street below. He was
almost concealed behind an archway, but it was apparent to the detective
that he was watching the corner building. As Colywn looked at him he
slightly changed his position and his face came into view. With a quick
imperative gesture to his companion, Colwyn ran swiftly along the
remainder of the corridor and down the flight of stairs into Hatton
Garden.

Caldew followed more slowly, puzzled by the other's strange action. When
he reached the doorway Colwyn was nowhere to be seen, so he waited in
the entrance. After the lapse of a few minutes he saw Colwyn returning
from the direction of Clerkenwell.

"He has got away," he said, as he reached Caldew. His voice was a little
breathless, as though with running.

"He? Who?"

Colwyn drew him into the empty entrance hall before he answered:

"Nepcote. He was watching outside. I saw him through the upstairs
window. He either followed us here or has been waiting to see if we
came. I should have foreseen this."

A flicker of unusual agitation on Colwyn's calm face increased Caldew's
mental confusion.

"I don't understand," he stammered. "He--Nepcote--why should he be
watching us?"

"Because he penetrated the truth last night. He knew he was in danger."

"But why should he follow us here?"

"He accidentally dropped some cards from his pocket-book when giving
Merrington an address at his flat last night, and one of them was
Wendover's business card. Merrington did not see it--it would have
conveyed nothing to him if he had--but I did. Nepcote knew that I saw
it, and must have realized that I suspected him. He has been watching my
rooms and followed us here, or he has been hanging around this place to
see if I called on Wendover."

"Even now I do not see the connection. If Wendover told us the truth,
Nepcote has not been to him with the necklace. Then what did it matter
to Nepcote whether you came here or not?"

"Nepcote may have been the man who offered the diamond to Wendover."

"That is impossible. Wendover says that man called some days before the
murder."

"Still, it may have been Nepcote."

"That goes beyond me," said Caldew, with a puzzled look. "What are you
implying?"

"Nothing at present. Every step in this case convinces me that we are
faced with a very deep mystery. It isn't worth while to hazard a guess,
because guessing is always unsatisfactory."

"Perhaps we had better try and get a little more out of Wendover," said
Caldew.

"That would be merely waste of time. He has not got the necklace, and he
is unable to describe the man who offered him the diamond. I believe now
that it was Nepcote, but that doesn't matter, one way or another. It is
far more important to know that he came here to-day to watch for us.
That implies that he had reason to fear investigations about the
necklace. The inference to be drawn is that Nepcote is responsible for
the disappearance of the necklace, and is, therefore, deeply implicated
in the murder."

"Perhaps it was not Nepcote that you saw?" suggested Caldew. He felt
that the remark was a feeble one, but he was bewildered by the sudden
turn of events, and in a frame of mind which clutches at straws.

"Put that doubt out of your mind," said Colwyn. "I saw his face
distinctly. He had disappeared by the time I got down. The alley where
he was standing commanded a view of the entrance of this building. I
ascertained that by standing in the same spot. His flight is another
proof--though that was not needed--of his guilty knowledge and
complicity in this murder. Why should he run away? According to his own
story last night he had nothing to fear. But now, by his own actions, he
has brought the utmost suspicion on himself."

"I suppose it is no use searching about here for him?" remarked Caldew,
glancing gloomily out of the doorway.

"Not in the least. The neighbourhood is a warren of alleys and side
streets from here to Grays Inn Road."

"Then I shall go up to his flat at once," said Caldew. "He has not had
time to go back."

"He will not return to his flat. We have seen the last of him until we
catch him. He has had two warnings, and he is not likely to be guilty of
the folly of waiting to see whether lightning strikes thrice in the same
spot. He will get away for good, this time, if he can. Nevertheless it
is worth while going to the flat. We may pick up some points there."
Colwyn uttered these last words in a lower tone at the sight of two
office girls descending the staircase with much chatter and laughter.

"Let us go then."

They travelled by 'bus from Grays Inn Road as far as Oxford Circus, and
walked along a number of quiet secluded streets--the backwaters of the
West End--in order to reach Sherryman Street from the lower end, which,
with a true sense of the fitness of things, was called Sherryman Street
Approach. If the Approach had not been within a stone's throw of
Sherryman Square it might have been called a slum. It had tenement
houses with swarms of squalid children playing in the open doorways, its
shops offered East End food--mussels and whelks, "two-eyed steaks,"
reeking fish-and-chips, and horsemeat for the cheap foreign element.
There were several public-houses with groups of women outside drinking
and gossiping, all wearing the black shawls which are as emblematic of
the lower class London woman as a chasuble to a priest, or a blue
tattooed upper lip to a high-caste Maori beauty. A costermonger hawked
frozen rabbits from a donkey-cart, with a pallid woman following behind
to drive away the mangy cats which quarrelled in the road for the oozing
blood which dripped from the cart's tail. An Italian woman, swarthy,
squat, and intolerably dirty, ground out the "Marseillaise" from a
barrel-organ with a shivering monkey capering atop, waving a small Union
Jack, and impatiently rattling a tin can for coppers.

To turn from this squalid quarter into Sherryman Street was to pass from
the east to the west end of London at a step. It was as though an
invisible line of demarcation had been drawn between the lower and upper
portion of the street, and held inviolate by the residents of each
portion. There were no public houses or fish-shops in Sherryman Street;
no organ-grinders, costermongers, unclean children, or women in black
shawls. It had quiet, seclusion, clean pavements, polished doorknockers,
and white curtains at the windows of its well-kept houses, which grew in
dignity to the semblance of town mansions at the Square end.

Number 10 showed a blank closed stone exterior to the passer-by, like an
old grey secretive face. As they approached it Colwyn, with a slight
movement of his head, drew his companion's attention to the upper
windows which belonged to Nepcote's flat. The blinds were down.

"It looks as if Nepcote left last night," he said.

The sight of the drawn blinds, like yellow eyelids in the grey face,
awakened some secret irritation in Caldew's breast, and with it the
realization of his powers as an officer of Scotland Yard.

"I shall force a way in and see," he angrily declared.

"Better get a key from the housekeeper," suggested Colwyn. "The women
who look after these bachelor flats always have duplicate keys. But the
front door is ajar. Let us go upstairs first."

They ascended the stairs to the flat, and the first thing they noticed
was a Yale key in the keyhole of the door.

"A sign of mental upset," commented Colwyn. "At such moments people
forget the little things."

They opened the door and entered. The front room was much as Colwyn had
seen it the previous night. The flowers drooped in their bowl; the
chorus girls smirked in their silver settings; the framed racehorses and
their stolid trainers looked woodenly down from the pink walls.

"Nepcote does not seem to have taken anything away with him," remarked
Caldew, looking into the bedroom. "The wardrobe is full of his uniforms,
but the bed has not been occupied."

"Here is the proof that he has fled," said Colwyn, flinging back the lid
of a desk which stood in the sitting-room. It was filled to the brim
with a mass of torn papers.

"Anything compromising?" asked Caldew, eagerly approaching to look at
the litter.

"No; only bills and invitations. Any dangerous letters have been burnt
there." He pointed to the grate, which was heaped with blackened
fragments. "He's made a good job of it too," he added, as he went to the
fireplace and bent over it. "There's not the slightest chance of
deciphering a line. But it would be as well to search his clothes. He
may have forgotten some letters in the pockets."

Caldew took the hint, and disappeared into the inner room, leaving
Colwyn examining the contents of the grate. He returned in a few minutes
to say that he had found nothing in the clothes except a few Treasury
notes and some loose silver in a trousers' pocket.

"That looks as if he had bolted in such a hurry that he forgot to take
his change with him," said Colwyn. "It is another interesting revelation
of his state of mind, because there is very little doubt that he
returned to the flat this morning after leaving it last night."

"How do you arrive at that conclusion?"

"By the burnt letters in the grate. They are still warm. He was in such
a state of fear that he dared not sleep in the flat last night, but he
returned this morning to burn his letters and change into civilian
clothes. Then he rushed away again in such a hurry that he forgot his
money. There is nothing more to be seen here. We had better make a few
inquiries of the housekeeper as we go downstairs."

They walked out, and Caldew locked the door behind him and placed the
key in his pocket. When they reached the entrance hall Colwyn paused
outside the door of the recess where the housekeeper lurked, like an
octopus in a pool. At Colwyn's knock a white face, topped by a white
cap, came into view through the narrow slit in the curtained glass half
of the door, and swam towards them in the interior gloom after the
manner of the head of a materialized ghost in a spirit medium's parlour.
The door opened, and the apparition appeared in the flesh, looking at
them with stony eyes. Caldew undertook the conversation:

"Did Captain Nepcote sleep here last night?" he curtly asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, has he been here this morning?"

"I don't know." The tone of the second reply was even more
expressionless than the first, if that were possible.

"It's your business to know," said Caldew angrily.

"It is not my business to discuss Captain Nepcote's private affairs with
strangers." The woman turned back into her room without another word,
closing the door behind her.

"D--n her!" muttered Caldew, in intense exasperation.

"These ancient females learn the wisdom of controlling their natural
garrulity when placed in charge of bachelors' flats," said Colwyn with a
laugh. "We will get nothing out of her if we stay here all day, so we
had better go."

"I am going straight back to Scotland Yard," Caldew announced with
sudden decision when they reached the pavement. "I must tell Merrington
all about this morning's work, and the sooner the better. We must have
the flat watched. Perhaps Nepcote may return."

"He will not return," said Colwyn. "He knows that we are after him, and
that the flat will be watched. But it is a good idea not to let him have
too long a start. Come, let us see if we can find a taxi, and I will
drop you at Scotland Yard."

They walked along to Sherryman Square, and esteemed themselves fortunate
in picking up a cruising taxi-cab with a driver sufficiently complaisant
to drive them in the direction they wished to go.




CHAPTER XXII


It was to Merrington's credit as an official that he suppressed his
feelings as a man on hearing Caldew's story, and did everything possible
to retrieve the situation once he was convinced that Nepcote had fled.
Any lingering doubts he may have had were scattered on learning, after
confidential inquiry at Whitehall, that Captain Nepcote had not put in
an appearance at the War Office that day, and had neither requested nor
been granted leave of absence from his duties.

On receipt of this information Merrington turned to his office
telephone, and, receiver in hand, bellowed forth peremptory instructions
which set in motion the far-reaching organization of Scotland Yard for
the capture of a fugitive from justice. Nepcote's description was
circulated to police stations, detectives were told off to keep an eye
on outgoing trains and the docks, and the entrances to the tubes and
underground railways were watched. After enclosing London, Merrington
made a wider cast, and long before nightfall he had flung around England
a net of fine meshes through which no man could wriggle.

But it is difficult even for Scotland Yard to lay quick hands on a
fugitive in the vast city of London, as Merrington well knew. While
waiting for the net to close over his destined captive, he decided in
the new strange turn of the case to investigate the whole of the
circumstances afresh. Inquiries set afoot in London, with the object of
discovering all that could be learnt of Nepcote's career and Violet
Heredith's single life, occupied an important share in Scotland Yard's
renewed investigations into the Heredith murder.

Caldew was sent to Heredith to look for new facts. He returned after a
day's absence with information which might have been obtained before if
chance had not directed suspicion to Hazel Rath: with a story of an
unknown young man who had left the London train to Heredith at Weydene
Junction on the night of the murder. The story, as extracted from an
unintelligent ticket collector, threw no light on the identity of the
stranger beyond a statement that he had worn a long light trench-coat,
beneath which the collector had caught a glimpse of khaki uniform as the
gentleman felt for his ticket at the barrier.

On that slight information Caldew had pursued inquiries across a long
two miles of country between Weydene and the moat-house, and had deemed
himself fortunate in finding a farm labourer who, on his homeward walk
that night, had been passed by a young man in a long coat making rapidly
across the fields in the direction of Heredith. The labourer had stared
after the retreating figure until it disappeared in the darkness, and
had then gone home without thinking any more of the incident. Caldew was
so impressed by the significance of the second appearance of the man in
the trench-coat that he had timed himself in a fast walk over the same
ground from Weydene to the moat-house, and was able to cover the
distance in half an hour. On the basis of these facts, he pointed out to
Merrington that, if Nepcote was the man who left the train at Weydene at
seven o'clock, he had time to walk across the fields and reach the
moat-house by half-past seven, which was ten minutes before the murder
was committed.

Merrington admitted the possibility, but refused to accept the
inference. He was forced by recent events to accept the theory of
Nepcote's implication in the mystery, but he was not prepared to believe
without much more definite proof that he was the murderer. He was still
strong in his belief that Hazel Rath was the person who had killed Mrs.
Heredith, whatever the young man's share in the crime might be. The
discovery about the man in the trench-coat was all very well as far as
it went, and perhaps formed another clue in the puzzling set of
circumstances of the case, but it did not carry them very far, and
certainly did nothing to lessen the weight of evidence against the girl
who was charged with the murder.

Merrington was forced back on the conclusion that the most important
step towards the solution of the mystery was to lay hold of Nepcote, and
to that end he directed his own efforts and that of the service of the
great organization at his command. As the days went on, he supplemented
his original arrangements for Nepcote's arrest with guileful traps. The
female dragon who guarded masculine reputations at 10, Sherryman Street,
was badgered into cold anger by pretty girls, who sought with tips and
blandishments to glean scraps of information about the missing tenant.
Scented letters in female handwriting, marked "Important," appeared in
the letter racks of Nepcote's West End clubs. Merrington even inserted
an advertisement in the "Personal" column of the _Times_, setting forth
a touching female appeal to Nepcote for a meeting in a sequestered spot.

At the end of three days, with no sign of Nepcote in that period,
Merrington was compelled to make application to the Sussex magistrates
for another adjournment of the police court proceedings, on the ground
that fresh information needed investigation before Scotland Yard could
proceed with the charge against Hazel Rath. An additional week was
granted with reluctance by the chairman of the bench, a Nonconformist
draper with political ambitions, who seized the opportunity to impress
the electors of a constituency he was nursing for the next general
election by making some spirited remarks on the sanctity of British
liberty, which he coupled with a scathing reference to the dilatory
methods of Scotland Yard. He let it be understood that the police must
be prepared at the next hearing to go on with the charge against the
prisoner or withdraw it altogether.

In the face of these awkward alternatives, Merrington pursued the quest
for Nepcote with vigour. The men working immediately under his
instructions were spurred into an excess of energy which brought about
the detention of several young men who could not adequately explain
themselves or their right to liberty in the great city of London. But
none of these captures turned out to be Nepcote. Merrington believed he
was hiding in London, but at the end of five days he still remained
mysteriously at liberty in spite of the constant search for him. He
seemed to have disappeared as completely as though he had passed out of
the world and merged his identity into a chiselled name and a banal
aspiration on a tombstone.

In the angry consciousness of failure, Merrington was not blind to the
fact that he had only his own impetuosity to blame for allowing Nepcote
to slip through his fingers. His mistake was due to his dislike of
private detectives and his unbelief in modern deductive methods of crime
solution. His own system, which is the system of Scotland Yard, was
based on motive and knowledge. If he found a strong motive for a crime
he searched for the person to whom it pointed. If there was no apparent
motive he fell back on his great knowledge of the underworld and its
denizens to fit a criminal to the crime. The system has its measure of
success, as the records of Scotland Yard attest.

Merrington had brought both methods to bear in his handling of the
Heredith case. When his original investigations failed to reveal a
motive for the murder, he determined to return to London to ascertain
what dangerous criminals were at liberty who might have committed the
murder. His own view then was that the murder was the work of an old
hand who had entered the moat-house to commit burglary, and had murdered
Mrs. Heredith to escape identification. The isolation of the moat-house,
the presence of guests with valuable jewels, the time chosen for the
crime, and the scream of the victim, tended to confirm him in this
belief. Caldew's chance discovery about Hazel Rath, and the subsequent
events which arrayed such strong circumstantial evidence against her,
brought the other side of the system uppermost and set Merrington
seeking for a motive which would accord with the presumption of the
girl's guilt. Having found that motive, he was satisfied that he had
done his duty, and he thought very little more about the case.

It was his tenacious adhesion to conservative methods which caused him
to blunder in his treatment of Colwyn's information about the missing
necklace. He rarely acted on impulse. His habitual distrust of humanity
was deep, and to it was wedded a wariness which was the heritage of long
experience. But his obstinate conviction of Hazel Rath's guilt led him
to make a false move in his effort to square the loss of the necklace
with the evidence against the girl. His own poor opinion of human nature
hindered him from seeing, as Colwyn had seen, any inconsequence between
such widely different motives as maddened love and theft; that was one
of those subtle differentiations of human psychology in which his
coarse-grained temperament was at fault. It is probable that
Merrington's dislike of private detectives contributed to obscure his
judgment at a critical moment. He was unable to see that Colwyn, by
reason of his intellect and practical capacity, stood in a class apart
and alone.

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