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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Shadow of the Wolf," R. Austin Freeman intricately weaves a tale of psychological intrigue and moral ambiguity set against the backdrop of early 20th-century England. Known for his pioneering contributions to the detective genre, Freeman employs a rich narrative style that blends meticulous observation and astute character development, illustrating the dichotomy of human nature through the lens of crime and justice. The novel's tension centers around its complex protagonist, who navigates a web of deception, culminating in a formidable exploration of the darker aspects of the human psyche. R. Austin Freeman, a prominent figure in the development of the detective novel, has utilized his extensive medical knowledge and interest in forensic science to craft stories that transcend mere whodunits. His background as a physician informed the forensic precision seen in his work, allowing him to construct plots that not only engage but also provoke deeper philosophical questions about morality and guilt. Freeman's experiences and observations undoubtedly fueled the narratorial depth observed in "The Shadow of the Wolf. This novel is highly recommended for readers seeking an intellectually stimulating experience that challenges conventional moral boundaries. Freeman's unique blend of psychological depth and intricate plot design makes this a compelling read for enthusiasts of detective fiction and literary critics alike, ensuring that it will leave a lasting impression long after the final page is turned. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Shadow of the Wolf
Table of Contents
Introduction
A human predator moves where evidence is faint and rumor is loud, and The Shadow of the Wolf traces the struggle between disciplined reason and the primitive terrors that gather when a malign presence seems to prowl just beyond the edge of certainty, testing how far clear-eyed inquiry can penetrate the fog of suspicion, how firmly character can withstand the pressure of innuendo, and how patiently the logic of facts can unwind a snarl of appearances in which guilt feels obvious, innocence looks compromised, and truth must be coaxed into daylight by method rather than seized by impulse.
Written by R. Austin Freeman, a British pioneer of forensic detective fiction, The Shadow of the Wolf belongs to the tradition of early twentieth-century crime and mystery writing often associated with the Golden Age. Freeman’s work is distinguished by meticulous attention to evidence, procedure, and the interface between science and the law. This novel reflects that milieu, drawing on the period’s confidence in method while acknowledging the unease that modernity can breed. Readers will recognize the hallmarks of careful plotting and lucid exposition, set within a world where laboratories, legal scrutiny, and everyday social routines provide both the stage and the toolkit for discovery.
Without revealing more than its premise, the novel begins with an unsettling occurrence that hints at deliberate malice concealed behind ordinary surfaces, and an ensuing inquiry that proceeds by small, verifiable steps rather than dramatic leaps. The voice is composed and exact, favoring clarity over flourish, so that tension accumulates through accumulation of detail. The mood is sober, quietly ominous, and intellectually invigorating, inviting the reader to observe closely, weigh alternatives, and test inferences. As clues align and contradictions sharpen, the narrative offers the pleasure of seeing a pattern gradually emerge from fragments, with the titular “shadow” functioning as an emblem of concealed threat.
Freeman uses this setup to explore the friction between appearance and reality, urging attention to how circumstantial impressions can mislead when detached from tested fact. The book considers the ethics of suspicion—how reputations are made vulnerable by suggestive coincidences—and the responsibilities that attach to expertise, especially when technical knowledge influences judgments of guilt and innocence. It also probes the psychology of fear, showing how communities respond when an unseen menace is imagined to be near. The metaphor of the wolf emphasizes predation, stealth, and the primal response to danger, while the methodical investigation insists on patience, proportion, and fidelity to what can be shown.
Stylistically, The Shadow of the Wolf exemplifies Freeman’s belief that detection is a craft built from small certainties. Expect demonstrations, reconstructions, and the careful handling of timelines and physical traces; expect also the fair-play placement of clue and counter-clue, inviting readers to solve alongside the investigators. The narrative privileges procedure over spectacle, yet never loses momentum, because each verification closes one door and opens another. The writing’s cool precision keeps sentiment in check without dulling human interest; habits, gestures, and professional routines become meaningful, and ordinary objects acquire narrative charge as the story translates the material world into a map of motive and opportunity.
For contemporary readers, the novel’s relevance lies in its insistence that clarity is earned, not assumed. In an age preoccupied with misinformation, snap judgments, and the pressure of public narratives, Freeman’s approach models disciplined skepticism and attention to sources. The book prompts questions about trust—of experts, institutions, and one’s own perceptions—and about the costs of being wrong, especially when suspicion hardens into certainty without proof. It also foregrounds the social dimension of evidence, reminding us that facts are discovered in communities, tested against standards, and conveyed through language that can clarify or obscure. The result is both a puzzle and a meditation on responsible knowing.
Approach The Shadow of the Wolf as a slow-burn, highly intelligible thriller that rewards methodical reading: notice the quiet signals, the small asymmetries, the routines whose regularity makes the abnormal stand out. The novel offers not a parade of shocks but a steady tightening of focus, the satisfaction of insight earned by attention. Its atmosphere is urbane rather than lurid, its conflicts moral as much as criminal, and its resolution rests on what can be shown rather than merely felt. In the end, the shadow recedes because understanding grows, leaving a lasting appreciation for craft, restraint, and the humane rigor of reasoned inquiry.
Synopsis
The Shadow of the Wolf opens with a quiet, professional life disrupted by a troubling sign that surfaces in unexpected places. A discreet emblem and whispered phrase, the “shadow of the wolf,” begin to surround a small circle of acquaintances, suggesting a watchful, predatory presence. The narrative sets its tone through ordinary routines unsettled by small anomalies—letters that arrive without explanation, meetings that do not occur, and a sense that someone is orchestrating events from concealment. Freeman introduces the central tension without naming a culprit, establishing an atmosphere of methodical observation in which apparent coincidences gradually align into a discernible pattern.
A puzzling incident provides the catalyst for inquiry. What at first seems accidental—or even self-inflicted—contains details that do not quite harmonize with the surface account. Timelines overlap awkwardly, objects are positioned too neatly, and witness recollections leave crucial gaps. The phrase that titles the book is treated as a hint rather than a confession, its meaning partially veiled. The investigator’s interest is drawn not by dramatic gestures but by these restrained irregularities. From the outset, the question is less about whether something malicious occurred and more about how it could have been arranged without attracting attention.
The investigation begins with the careful recovery of facts: who last saw whom, what could be touched, moved, or forged, and when each action plausibly occurred. Attention falls on practical matters—materials, tools, handwriting, and bodily signs that indicate timing or contamination. Interviews are conducted with restraint, emphasizing routine statements over startling revelations. The narrative foregrounds procedures rather than personalities, showing how a reliable case is built from modest certainties. Early hypotheses are tested and discarded, with the guiding principle that no inference can be stronger than the smallest, best-verified fact on which it rests.
As the inquiry widens, background histories come into view—older disputes, partnerships formed and dissolved, and financial or personal obligations that persist out of sight. The “wolf” metaphor is linked to a prior episode that left a residue of grievance and fear. Documents and past movements are re-examined in the light of present anomalies. Seemingly unrelated items—an altered schedule, a misplaced implement, an unsigned note—gain significance when placed on a single timeline. The narrative maintains uncertainty about intent while clarifying means and opportunity, guiding the reader toward a framework that can accommodate all observed details.
A second, narrower incident escalates the stakes, repeating certain features while introducing fresh contradictions. The resemblance suggests an organizing mind, yet the differences imply adaptation and learning. Surveillance becomes more deliberate, and the circle of potential victims or suspects narrows as alibis are tested against physical constraints. The threat feels nearer, but the identity behind it remains indistinct. Misleading appearances tempt premature conclusions, and the narrative underscores the risk of confirmation bias. What seemed like a personal dispute begins to look systematic, governed by a coherent plan that anticipates ordinary investigative routines and tries to exploit them.
The turning point arrives through a technical insight that reconciles earlier discrepancies. A small, reproducible effect—demonstrated with commonplace apparatus—shows how an action could be masked as something else, and why certain traces appear misplaced. This pivot clarifies the function of items previously treated as incidental and explains the rhythmic recurrence of the “shadow.” A controlled reconstruction is carried out, not to accuse a person, but to validate a mechanism. The emphasis remains on verifiable process: once the method is certain, the group of people capable of employing it contracts, subtly refocusing attention without naming a final culprit.
Legal and procedural stages follow, including formal statements and preliminary hearings that weigh the provisional case. Publicly, the evidence seems to lean toward an obvious suspect whose apparent motive is easy to state. Privately, the investigator withholds final judgment, seeking a definitive trace that can neither be planted nor overlooked. The narrative balances courtroom clarity with laboratory precision, stressing that persuasive argument must rest on facts that survive hostile scrutiny. A return to a key location yields a single, conclusive remnant—small enough to evade casual notice, robust enough to connect method, opportunity, and intent in a single chain.
With the structural proof secured, the confrontation is arranged under controlled conditions, limiting risk while allowing the concealed plan to reveal itself. The symbolic “wolf” is shown to be less a creature than a strategy—an approach that thrives in darkness and ambiguity. A final sequence resolves immediate danger without detailing every step of the solution, keeping the book’s central surprises intact. The narrative affirms that the correct reading of evidence can dispel the terror generated by suggestion. What once seemed uncanny becomes intelligible, and the pattern of calculated incidents is reduced to a comprehensible, verifiable design.
In its conclusion, the book restores ordinary life by allocating consequences in proportion to responsibility. Explanations are offered in plain terms, emphasizing how small, overlooked facts governed the entire course of events. The overarching message is that clear-eyed inquiry, patient testing, and disciplined inference are stronger than fear and rumor. The “shadow” that haunted the narrative proves to be an instrument of concealment, neutralized by steady light rather than force. Freeman’s story thus presents an orderly vindication of reason: once the cause is understood, the menace dissolves, and those nearly overwhelmed by suspicion recover their standing and security.
Historical Context
Set largely in the mid-1920s, the narrative unfolds in interwar Britain, with a strong gravitational pull toward central London’s legal and medical districts and the adjoining residential and commercial quarters fed by the Thames. The milieu is one of crowded streets, telephones and motorcars, electric lighting, and a skyline punctuated by chambers, hospitals, and laboratories. Beyond the metropolis, the story touches provincial and coastal spaces in southern England, where rail links and new roads tightened the country’s web of mobility. Lingering aftershocks of the Great War—bereavement, economic strain, and social reordering—color the atmosphere, while the city’s docks and auction rooms connect domestic crime to global routes of trade.
The period from the 1890s to the 1920s witnessed a decisive consolidation of forensic science in Britain, which profoundly shapes the investigative logic of the novel. Sir Francis Galton’s Finger Prints (1892) systematized dactyloscopy; Sir Edward Henry, working in colonial India, refined classification (1897) and, on returning to London, oversaw the creation of the Metropolitan Police Fingerprint Bureau in 1901. Early landmark cases followed: in 1902 Harry Jackson became one of the first English convicts identified by fingerprints; in 1905 the Stratton brothers were the first in Britain convicted of murder on fingerprint evidence (Deptford). Blood analysis advanced apace: Karl Landsteiner identified the ABO system in 1901, and Paul Uhlenhuth’s precipitin test (1902) distinguished human from animal blood, while the Kastle–Meyer and benzidine tests (developed in the first decade of the century) offered rapid presumptives. Forensic pathology entered public consciousness through Dr. Bernard Spilsbury’s courtroom authority in cases such as the Hawley Harvey Crippen trial (1910), which also showcased modern communications (wireless telegraphy) in transatlantic pursuit, and the “Brides in the Bath” case (1915), where experimental reconstructions persuaded jurors of homicidal method. Meanwhile, Edmond Locard opened one of the earliest police laboratories in Lyon in 1910 and articulated the exchange principle, ideas that diffused into British practice through professional networks and publications. X‑ray imaging (after Röntgen’s 1895 discovery), microphotography, plaster casting of footprints, and standardized chain‑of‑custody routines gradually became routine tools. The novel’s physician‑jurist protagonist operates squarely within this culture: his reliance on trace materials, controlled experiments, and conservative evidentiary claims mirrors the maturing British view that expert testimony must rest on replicable technique rather than intuition, thereby dramatizing how interwar courts weighed scientific certainty against circumstantial narrative.
Legal and policing reforms of the early twentieth century frame the book’s courtroom and procedural scenes. The Criminal Appeal Act 1907 created the Court of Criminal Appeal, altering defense strategy and the stakes of evidentiary precision. The Judges’ Rules (first issued 1912) sought to regularize police questioning and confessions, responding to anxieties about coercion. The Criminal Justice Act 1925, inter alia, curtailed photography in court, signalling a desire to insulate trials from sensationalism. These measures encouraged a culture in which material proof and expert demonstration carried new weight. The novel reflects this regime by staging investigations with scrupulous attention to admissibility, documentation, and the possibility of post‑trial review.
The Great War (1914–1918) and its aftermath supply critical social background. Britain mobilized over 8 million men; more than 700,000 were killed. Demobilization, the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, and the postwar slump (notably the 1921 unemployment peak) reshaped urban life. Industrial unrest culminated in the General Strike of May 1926, while veterans, disability, and pensions issues permeated households. Women’s expanded public roles—anchored by the Representation of the People Act 1918 and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919—altered workplace and domestic dynamics. The novel mirrors these pressures in motives rooted in debt, displacement, and new gendered freedoms, suggesting how economic precariousness and war‑shaped identities could precipitate criminal risk and investigative misdirection.
The sweeping property and succession reforms of 1925 modernized the legal terrain that often undergirds Freeman’s plots. The Law of Property Act 1925 simplified estates and conveyancing; the Settled Land Act 1925 revised powers over entailed property; the Land Registration Act 1925 expanded title registration; the Trustee Act and Administration of Estates Act 1925 rationalized trusteeship and intestacy. These statutes curtailed archaic complexities around life interests, entails, and equitable estates, while making documentary traces more central. The novel engages with this environment by treating wills, settlements, and the paper (or registered) trail of ownership as sites where crime, mistake, and evidentiary revelation intersect under a newly streamlined, but still intricate, property regime.
Britain’s imperial networks and colonial medicine inform the book through the author’s background and the era’s trade geography. R. Austin Freeman served as a medical officer on the Gold Coast (present‑day Ghana) in the late 1880s, during a period bracketed by the Fourth Anglo‑Ashanti War (1895–1896) and the War of the Golden Stool (1900). The Gold Coast (formally consolidated after 1874) and Ashanti (annexed 1901) fed commodities through the Port of London, reorganized under the Port of London Authority in 1909. Knowledge of tropical diseases and pharmacology—such as physostigmine from the Calabar bean or cardiac glycosides from Strophanthus—shaped contemporary understandings of poison. The novel’s hints of global provenance and specialist toxicology echo these imperial circuits.
Debates over heredity, degeneration, and crime, prominent from the late Victorian period into the interwar years, form another backdrop. Francis Galton coined “eugenics” in 1883; the Eugenics Education Society was founded in London in 1907; the First International Eugenics Congress met in 1912 at the University of London. The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 codified institutional responses to perceived hereditary “feeble‑mindedness.” Criminology oscillated between Lombrosian atavism and environmental accounts. The novel’s very title invokes predation and atavism, but its medico‑legal method resists physiognomic determinism: by privileging laboratory demonstration over appearance or lineage, it interrogates the era’s biological fatalism while acknowledging how such ideas permeated public and juror expectations.
As a social and political critique, the book underscores how class assumptions, press sensationalism, and investigative shortcuts can distort justice in a rapidly modernizing society. It exposes the vulnerability of defendants to reputational prejudice, the temptations of circumstantial inference in an age hungry for decisive narratives, and the risks of conflating heredity with culpability. By dramatizing meticulous expert practice, it argues for procedural safeguards and empirical restraint against the quick verdict. Its treatment of property disputes illuminates inequities embedded in wealth transmission, while allusions to imperial commodities and “exotic” dangers quietly question the moral complacencies of empire and the ways colonial imaginaries skew metropolitan suspicion.
The Shadow of the Wolf
I. — IN WHICH TWO MEN GO FORTH AND ONE ARRIVES
ABOUT half-past eight on a fine, sunny June morning a small yacht crept out of Sennen Cove[1], near the Land's End, and headed for the open sea. On the shelving beach of the Cove two women and a man, evidently visitors (or "foreigners," to use the local term), stood watching her departure with valedictory waving of cap or handkerchief; and the boatman who had put the crew on board, aided by two of his comrades, was hauling his boat up above the tide-mark.
A light northerly breeze filled the yacht's sails and drew her gradually seaward. The figures of her crew dwindled to the size of a doll's, shrank with the increasing distance to the magnitude of insects, and at last, losing all individuality, became mere specks merged in the form of the fabric that bore them. At this point the visitors turned their faces inland and walked away up the beach, and the boatman, having opined that "she be fetchin' a tidy offing[3]," dismissed the yacht from his mind and reverted to the consideration of a heap of netting and some invalid lobster-pots.
On board the receding craft two men sat in the little cockpit. They formed the entire crew, for the Sandhopper was only a ship's lifeboat, timber and decked, of light draught, and, in the matter of spars and canvas, what the art critics would call "reticent."
Both men, despite the fineness of the weather, wore yellow oilskins and sou'wester[2]s, and that was about all they had in common. In other respects they made a curious contrast: the one small, slender, sharp-featured, dark almost to swarthiness, and restless and quick in his movements; the other large, massive, red-faced, blue-eyed, with the rounded outlines suggestive of ponderous strength—a great ox of a man, heavy, stolid, but much less unwieldy than he looked.
The conversation incidental to getting the yacht under way had ceased, and silence had fallen on the occupants of the cockpit. The big man grasped the tiller and looked sulky, which was probably his usual aspect, and the small man watched him furtively. The land was nearly two miles distant when the latter broke the silence with a remark very similar to that of the boatman on the beach.
"You're not going to take the shore on board, Purcell. Where are we supposed to be going to?"
"I am going outside the Longships," was the stolid answer.
"So I see," rejoined the other. "It's hardly the shortest course for Penzance, though."
"I like to keep an offing on this coast," said Purcell; and once more the conversation languished.
Presently the smaller man spoke again, this time in a more cheerful and friendly tone.
"Joan Haygarth has come on wonderfully the last few months; getting quite a fine-looking girl. Don't you think so?"
"Yes," answered Purcell, "and so does Phil Rodney."
"You're right," agreed the other. "But she isn't a patch on her sister, though, and never will be. I was looking at Maggie as we came down the beach this morning and thinking what a handsome girl she is. Don't you agree with me?"
Purcell stooped to look under the boom, and answered without turning his head:
"Yes, she's all right."
"All right!" exclaimed the other. "Is that the way?"
"Look here, Varney," interrupted Purcell, "I don't want to discuss my wife's looks with you or any other man. She'll do for me, or I shouldn't have married her."
A deep coppery flush stole into Varney's cheeks. But he had brought the rather brutal snub on himself, and apparently had the fairness to recognize the fact, for he mumbled an apology and relapsed into silence.
When he next spoke he did so with a manner diffident and uneasy, as though approaching a disagreeable or difficult subject.
"There's a little matter, Dan, that I've been wanting to speak to you about when we got a chance of a private talk." He glanced a little anxiously at his stolid companion, who grunted, and then, without removing his gaze from the horizon ahead, replied: "You've a pretty fair chance now, seeing that we shall be bottled up together for another five or six hours. And it's private enough, unless you bawl loud enough to be heard at the Longships."
It was not a gracious invitation. But that Varney had hardly expected; and if he resented the rebuff he showed no signs of annoyance, for reasons which appeared when he opened his subject.
"What I wanted to say," he resumed, "was this. We're both doing pretty well now on the square. You must be positively piling up the shekels, and I can earn a decent living, which is all I want. Why shouldn't we drop this flash note business?"
Purcell kept his blue eye fixed on the horizon, and appeared to ignore the question; but after an interval, and without moving a muscle, he said gruffly, "Go on," and Varney continued:
"The lay isn't what it was, you know. At first it was all plain sailing. The notes were first-class copies, and not a soul suspected anything until they were presented at the bank. Then the murder was out, and the next little trip that I made was a very different affair. Two or three of the notes were suspected quite soon after I had changed them, and I had to be precious fly, I can tell you, to avoid complications. And now that the second batch has come into the bank, the planting of fresh specimens is no sinecure. There isn't a money changer on the Continent of Europe that isn't keeping his weather eyeball peeled, to say nothing of the detectives that the bank people have sent abroad."
He paused and looked appealingly at his companion. But Purcell, still minding his helm, only growled: "Well?"
"Well, I want to chuck it, Dan. When you've had a run of luck and pocketed your winnings is the time to stop play."
"You've come into some money then, I take it," said Purcell.
"No, I haven't. But I can make a living now by safe and respectable means, and I'm sick of all this scheming and dodging with the gaol everlastingly under my lee."
"The reason I asked," said Purcell, "is that there is a trifle outstanding. You hadn't forgotten that, I suppose?"
"No, I hadn't forgotten it, but I thought that perhaps you might be willing to let me down a bit easily."
The other man pursed up his thick lips, but continued to gaze stonily over the bow.
"Oh, that's what you thought, hey?" he said; and then, after a pause, he continued: "I fancy you must have lost sight of some of the facts when you thought that. Let me just remind you how the case stands. To begin with, you start your career with a little playful forgery and embezzlement; you blue the proceeds, and you are mug enough to be found out. Then I come in. I compound the affair with old Marston for a couple of thousand, and practically clean myself out of every penny I possess, and he consents to regard your temporary absence in the light of a holiday.
"Now why do I do this? Am I a philanthropist? Devil a bit. I'm a man of business. Before I ladle out that two thousand, I make a business contract with you. I happen to possess the means of making and the skill to make a passable imitation of the Bank of England paper; you are a skilled engraver and a plausible scamp. I am to supply you with paper blanks; you are to engrave plates, print the notes, and get them changed. I am to take two-thirds of the proceeds, and, although I have done the most difficult part of the work, I agree to regard my share of the profits as constituting repayment of the loan. Our contract amounts to this: I lend you two thousand without security—with an infernal amount of insecurity, in fact—you 'promise, covenant, and agree,' as the lawyers say, to hand me back ten thousand in instalments, being the products of our joint industry. It is a verbal contract which I have no means of enforcing; but I trust you to keep your word, and up to the present you have kept it. You have paid me a little over four thousand. Now you want to cry off and leave the balance unpaid. Isn't that the position?"
"Not exactly," said Varney. "I'm not crying off the debt; I only want time. Look here, Dan: I'm making about five-fifty a year now. That isn't much, but I'll manage to let you have a hundred a year out of it. What do you say to that?"
Purcell laughed scornfully. "A hundred a year to pay off six thousand! That'll take just sixty years, and as I'm now forty-three, I shall be exactly a hundred and three years of age when the last instalment is paid. I think, Varney, you'll admit that a man of a hundred and three is getting a bit past his prime."
"Well, I'll pay you something down to start. I've saved about eighteen hundred pounds out of the note business. You can have that now, and I'll pay off as much as I can at a time until I'm clear. Remember that if I should happen to get clapped in chokee for twenty years or so you won't get anything. And, I tell you, it's getting a risky business."
"I'm willing to take the risk," said Purcell.
"I dare say you are!" Varney retorted passionately, "because it's my risk. If I am grabbed, it's my racket. You sit out. It's I who passed the notes, and I'm known to be a skilled engraver. That'll be good enough for them. They won't trouble about who made the paper."
"I hope not," said Purcell.
"Of course they wouldn't, and you know I shouldn't give you away."
"Naturally. Why should you? Wouldn't do you any good."
"Well, give me a chance, Dan," Varney pleaded. "This business is getting on my nerves. I want to be quit of it. You've had four thousand; that's a hundred per cent. You haven't done so badly."
"I didn't expect to do badly. I took a big risk. I gambled two thousand for ten."
"Yes, and you got me out of the way while you put the screw on to poor old Haygarth to make his daughter marry you."
It was an indiscreet thing to say, but Purcell's stolid indifference to his danger and distress had ruffled Varney's temper somewhat.
Purcell, however, was unmoved. "I don't know," he said, "what you mean by getting you out of the way. You were never in the way. You were always hankering after Maggie, but I could never see that she wanted you."
"Well, she certainly didn't want you," Varney retorted, "and, for that matter, I don't much think she wants you now."
For the first time Purcell withdrew his eye from the horizon to turn it on his companion. And an evil eye it was, set in the great sensual face, now purple with anger.
"What the devil do you mean?" he exclaimed furiously, "you infernal sallow-faced little whipper snapper! If you mention my wife's name again I'll knock you on the head and pitch you over board."
Varney's face flushed darkly, and for a moment he was inclined to try the wager of battle. But the odds were impossible, and if Varney was not a coward, neither was he a fool. But the discussion was at an end. Nothing was to be hoped for now. Those indiscreet words of provocation had rendered further pleading impossible; and as Varney relapsed into sullen silence, it was with the knowledge that, for weary years to come, he was doomed, at best, to tread the perilous path of crime, or, more probably, to waste the brightest years of his life in a convict prison. For it is a strange fact, and a curious commentary on our current ethical notions, that neither of these rascals even contemplated as a possibility the breach of a merely verbal covenant. A promise had been given. That was enough.[1q] Without a specific release, the terms of that promise must be fulfilled to the letter. How many righteous men—prim lawyers or strait-laced, church-going men of business—would have looked at the matter in the same way?
The silence that settled down on the yacht and the aloofness that encompassed the two men were conducive to reflection. Each of the men ignored the presence of the other. When the course was altered southerly, Purcell slacked out the sheets with his own hand as he put up the helm. He might have been sailing single-handed. And Varney watched him askance, but made no move, sitting hunched up on the locker, nursing a slowly matured hatred and thinking his thoughts.
Very queer thoughts they were, rambling, but yet connected and very vivid. He was following out the train of events that might have happened, pursuing them to their possible consequences. Supposing Purcell had carried out his threat? Well, there would have been a pretty tough struggle, for Varney was no weakling. But a struggle with that solid fifteen stone of flesh could end only in one way. He glanced at the great purple, shiny hand that grasped the knob of the tiller. Not the sort of hand that you would want at your throat! No, there was no doubt; he would have gone overboard.
And what then? Would Purcell have gone back to Sennen Cove, or sailed alone into Penzance? In either case, he would have had to make up some sort of story, and no one could have contradicted him, whether the story was believed or not. But it would have been awkward for Purcell.
Then there was the body: That would have washed up sooner or later, as much of it as the lobsters had left. Well, lobsters don't eat clothes or bones, and a dent in the skull might take some accounting for. Very awkward, this, for Purcell. He would probably have had to clear out—to make a bolt for it, in short.
The mental picture of this great bully fleeing in terror from the vengeance of the law gave Varney appreciable pleasure. Most of his life he had been borne down by the moral and physical weight of this domineering brute. At school Purcell had fagged him; he had even bullied him up at Cambridge; and now he had fastened on for ever like the Old Man of the Sea. And Purcell always got the best of it. When he, Varney, had come back from Italy after that unfortunate little affair, behold! the girl whom they had both wanted (and who had wanted neither of them) had changed from Maggie Haygarth into Maggie Purcell. And so it was even unto this day. Purcell, once a book-keeper in a paper-mill, now a prosperous "financier"—a money-lender, as Varney more than suspected—spent a part of his secret leisure making, in absolute safety, those paper blanks, which he, Varney, must risk his liberty to change into money. Yes, it was quite pleasant to think of Purcell sneaking from town to town, from country to country, with the police at his heels.
But in these days of telegraphs and extradition there isn't much chance for a fugitive. Purcell would have been caught to a certainty, and he would have been hanged; no doubt of it. And, passing lightly over less attractive details, Varney considered luxuriously the circumstances of the execution. What a figure he would have made, that great human ox, turning round and round at the end of a taut rope, like a baron of beef on a colossal roasting-jack! Varney looked gloatingly at his companion, considered his large sullen face, and thought how it would swell and grow purple as the rope tightened round the thick crimson neck.
A disagreeable picture, perhaps, but not to Varney, who saw it through the distorting medium of years of accumulated dislike. Then, too, there was the consideration that in the very moment that those brawny limbs had ceased to twitch Maggie would have been free—would have been a widow. Not that that would have concerned him, Varney: he would have been in some Cornish churchyard, with a dent in his skull. Still, it was a pleasant reflection.
The imagined picture of the execution gave him quite a lengthy entertainment. Then his errant thoughts began to spread out in search of other possibilities. For, after all, it was not an absolute certainty that Purcell could have got him overboard. There was just the chance that he might have gone overboard himself. That would have been a very different affair.
Varney settled himself composedly to consider the new and interesting train of consequences that would thus have been set going. They were more agreeable to contemplate than the others, because they did not include his own demise. The execution scene made no appearance in this version. The salient fact was that his oppressor would have vanished; that the intolerable burden of his servitude would have been lifted for ever; that he would have been free.
The thought of his regained freedom set him dreaming of the future—the future that might have been if he could have been rid of this monstrous parasite; the future that might even have held a place for Maggie—for she would have been free, too. It was all very pleasant to think about, though rather tantalizing. He almost wished he had let Purcell try to put him over.
Of course, some explanation would have to be given, some sort of story told, and people might not have believed him. Well, they could have pleased themselves about that. To be sure, there would have been the body; but if there were no marks of violence, what of it? Besides, it really need never have washed ashore: that could easily have been prevented, and if the body had never been found, who was to say that the man had gone overboard at all?
This, again, was a new view of the case, and it set his thoughts revolving afresh. He found himself roughly sketching out the conditions under which the body might have vanished for ever. It was mere idle speculation to while away a dull hour with an uncongenial companion, and he let his thoughts ramble at large. Now he was away in the imagined future, a future of peace and prosperity and honourable effort; and now his thoughts came back unbidden to fill in some forgotten detail. One moment he was dreamily wondering whether Maggie would ever have listened to him, ever have come to care for him; the next, he was back in the yacht's cabin, where hung from a hook on the bulkhead the revolver that the Rodneys used to practise at floating bottles. It was usually loaded, he knew, but if not, there was a canvas bag full of cartridges in the starboard locker. Again he found himself dreaming of the home that he would have had, a home very different from the cheerless lodgings in which he moped at present; and then his thoughts had flitted back to the yacht's hold, and were busying themselves with the row of half-hundredweights that rested on the on either side of the kelson.
It was a curious mental state, rambling, seemingly incoherent, yet quite purposeful, the attention oscillating between the great general idea and its various component details. He was like a painter roughing the preliminary sketch of a picture, at first carelessly smearing in the general effect, then pausing from time to time to sharpen an edge, to touch in a crisp light, to define the shape of a shadow, but never losing sight of the central motive. And as in the sketch definable shapes begin to grow out of the formless expanse, and a vague suggestion crystallizes into an intelligible composition, so in Varney's mind a process of gradual integration turned a vague and general idea into a clear picture, sharp, vivid, complete.
When Varney had thus brought his mental picture, so to speak, to a finish, its completeness surprised him. It was so simple, so secure. He had actually planned out the scheme of a murder; and behold! there was nothing in it. Anyone could have done it, and no one could have been any the wiser. Here he found himself wondering whether many murders passed undetected. They well might if murders were as easy and as safe as this. A dangerous reflection for an injured and angry man. And at this critical point his meditations were broken in on by Purcell, continuing the conversation as if there had been no pause.
"So you can take it from me, Varney, that I expect you to stick to your bargain. I paid down my money, and I'm going to have my pound of flesh."
"You won't agree to any sort of compromise?"
"No. There are six thousand pounds owing. If you've got the money you can hand it over. If you haven't, you'll have to go on the lay and get it. That's all I've got to say. So now you know."
It was a brutal thing to say, and it was brutally said. But more than that: it was inopportune—or opportune, as you will. For it came as a sort of infernal doxology to the devil's anthem that had been, all unknown, ringing in Varney's soul.
Purcell had spoken without looking round. That was his unpleasant habit. Had he looked at his companion, he might have been startled. A change in Varney's face might have given him pause: a warm flush, a sparkle of the eye, a look of elation, of settled purpose, deadly, inexorable. The look of a man who has made a fateful resolution. But he never looked, and the warning of the uplifted axe passed him by.
It was so simple, so secure! That was the burden of the song that echoed in Varney's brain. So safe! And there abroad were the watchful money-changers waiting for the clever forger to come once too often. There were the detectives lurking in ambush for him. No safety there! Rather the certainty of swift disaster, with the sequel of judge and jury, the clang of an iron door, and thereafter the dreary prison eating up the years of his life.
He glanced over the sea. They had opened the South Coast now, and he could see, afar off, a fleet of black-sailed luggers heading east. They wouldn't be in his way. Nor would the big four-master that was creeping away to the west, for she was hull down already; and other ships there were none. There was one hindrance, though. Dead ahead the Wolf Rock lighthouse[4] rose from the blue water, its red-and-white-ringed tower looking like some gaudily painted toy. The keepers of lonely light houses have a natural habit of watching the passing shipping through their glasses, and it was possible that one of their telescopes might be pointed at the yacht at this very moment. That was a complication.
Suddenly there came down the wind a sharp report like the firing of a gun, quickly followed by a second. Both men recognized the duplicate report and both looked round. It was the explosive signal from the Longships lighthouse; but when they looked there was no lighthouse to be seen, and the dark blue heaving water faded away at the foot of an advancing wall of vapour.
Purcell cursed volubly. A pretty place, this, to be caught in a fog! And then, as his eye lighted on his companion, he demanded angrily: "What the devil are you grinning at?" For Varney, drunk with suppressed excitement, snapped his fingers at rocks and shoals; he was thinking only of the light-keeper's telescope and of the revolver that hung on the bulkhead. He must make some excuse presently to go below and secure that revolver.
But no excuse was necessary. The opportunity came of itself. After a hasty glance at the vanishing land and another at the compass, Purcell put up the helm to jibe the yacht round on to an easterly course. As she came round, the single headsail that she carried in place of jib and foresail shivered for a few seconds and then filled suddenly on the opposite tack. And at this moment the halyard parted with a loud snap, the end of the rope flew through the blocks, and, in an instant, the sail was down and its upper half trailing in the water alongside.
Purcell swore furiously, but kept an eye to business. "Run below, Varney," said he, "and fetch up that coil of new rope out of the starboard locker while I haul the sail on board. And look alive. We don't want to drift down on to the Wolf."
