Chapter Eleven. What Happened to us

For a moment I own that I was dismayed by this evil-looking woman’s line of attack. If there be one act of grave injustice in England easier to manage than another it is this: to trump up some false charge of lunacy against a sane but unconscious person. If, in addition, you can assert that the alleged maniac is one fleeing from justice, or, worse still, consigned to some living tomb of convicted criminals like Broadmoor, you are pretty sure to get public sympathy and support on your side, for the vast majority of persons fear the insane with a wild, unreasoning kind of panic, and are only too glad to interpose the burly forms of keepers and doctors between themselves and the objects they dread.

Doubtless this wretched creature knew this, for her tones were those of an absolute mistress of herself and of that most perplexing situation. Her attitude, too, suggested a consciousness of triumph, for she just looked at Camille Velasquon with a look of gravity and warning that she must be careful if she wished to have any peace or kindness hereafter, whereas for me she had nothing but hot scorn or an icy contempt.

“Did you say you had other keepers with you?” I queried at length, more anxious to gain time before I showed my real hand than to elicit information.

“Yes; I did. There are two assistant warders. I am the principal.”

“Women, I suppose?”

“Both women!”

“Both women! Where do they come from?”

“From Broadmoor, like myself.” And she turned her head in the direction of the carriage window, as though she were tired of the conversation and desired me for the rest of the time to mind my own business.

Camille Velasquon now plucked me nervously by the arm. “This woman’s story is a tissue of lies,” she whispered. “I am no criminal and no lunatic. Why, I never set foot in England till I got off the ship on to Southampton Dock with you a few minutes ago!”

“Of course you didn’t,” I replied in a low tone, which, luckily, the rattle of the wheels prevented that grim-looking figure in the corner making the true sense. “Don’t you see that this is the plot Don José Casteno warned you against? Indeed, this is why I came down to meet you, to protect you. The trouble is, I don’t know who has put her up to this crowning piece of impudence. If it is just some obscure enemy of Casteno or of the Order of St. Bruno it’s all right, I’ll rescue you; but if it has some diplomatic importance, and behind this creature stands some great personage who is playing some game of European importance, it won’t be so easy as it might seem. Money may have been spent like water, and, at a pinch, they may prove to be really warders sent from Broadmoor with false instructions about you, and a false scent.”

“But you will save me, won’t you?” pleaded the girl, her eyes lustrous with tears. “Don’t leave me near that dreadful creature. We women can read women much more rapidly than men can, even the cleverest; and I am sure she has never occupied any official position at an asylum—she looks more like a murderess herself!”

“Well, I will certainly do my best,” I replied soothingly, turning again and facing Miss Velasquon. England is a queer place, and it is very easy to get a crowd together and to weep to them and to stuff them with a lot of lies. Many wicked people get the better of the innocent by cheap and foolish tricks like those.

I stood up and piloted myself to a position opposite to the stranger. “As you can see,” I began quietly but firmly, moving my head in the direction of my companion, “Miss Velasquon and I are together. Your information has distressed me very much. I was under the impression that my friend was quite a different personage to the one you make out. All the same, I don’t want to do anything that might seem to you unnecessarily hostile. You say you have two other warders with you. Do you mind, now that the train is stopping, inviting them to come into this carriage?”

For the first time the woman’s eyes fell. She could not divine what I was up to. Somehow she felt herself being pushed into a position, but she could not foresee where it would terminate.

“I don’t see the need,” she blurted out at length.

“But the authorities at Broadmoor did. That is why they sent them with you, you know. Believe me, you will incur a very grave responsibility if you don’t let them do their duty now that I have pointed out how extremely important it is that they should. Suppose Miss Velasquon grew dangerous, for instance, and sprang out of the carriage window on to the metals before you could lift a hand to stop her, what would the railway people say, the asylum authorities, the police, the coroner? Why, I should hurry forward to give evidence against you, madam, and you would be convicted of nothing less than manslaughter by neglect.” And to add irritation to my words I broke into a low mocking laugh, while poor Camille Velasquon, who knew I was up to some trick, but couldn’t see what it was, gave way to a fit of tears.

“Yours is a pretty picture,” the woman snapped, and now she looked more evil than ever, “but it’s too melodramatic for my taste. Just get out of this carriage yourself, then I can manage the patient all right. If anything happens it will be your fault, not mine.”

“I am not so sure about that,” I retorted blithely. “But am I to understand you decline my suggestion? If so, I can only say you have told me an untruth for some purpose of your own, which it will be my duty to ferret out. I can tell you openly that you have no warders with you.”

“I have.”

“Produce them.”

“I can.”

“Produce them,” I replied, and I made a movement as though I would signal to some porters who were standing near and would call upon them to judge between me and herself.

The ruse succeeded. With a muttered curse the woman placed a small silver whistle to her lips and blew thereon a curious signal, rather low, but very penetrating and distinctive. The next moment she was answered. Two women in the uniform of hospital nurses appeared suddenly at the window, and, obeying a sign from their superior, they sprang into the carriage and took seats, one on one side of, and the other opposite to, Camille Velasquon, who, now fearing that I had muddled everything, began to cry in sober earnest.

Undaunted, I held on to the course I had marked out for myself when I started. Turning to the woman, as the train once again steamed off, I said with ironical politeness: “I must really apologise for the scepticism with which I treated you. I see, now, that you have two assistants from Broadmoor, but why don’t they wear Broadmoor uniforms?”

“They do,” she cried, and then she stopped and bit her lip. All at once she realised she had fallen into the pit I had dug so carelessly in front of her.

“Oh no, indeed, they do not,” I answered sweetly. “The uniforms which these women have on are only worn by nurses at Guy’s Hospital. The fact is, I have been often to Broadmoor myself, and I know the nurses there wear a totally different garb.” And I shot a glance out of the corner of my eyes at the pseudo-nurses themselves. One had flushed crimson, the other had gone deathly white, and was playing nervously with her pocket-handkerchief. They were impostors, I am certain.

The woman in black, however, rose with magnificent impudence to the occasion. “You, sir,” she said, “have been good enough to brand me with falsehood, and I have borne it without a murmur, striving only to prove to you, in the discharge of my duty, that I spoke fairly and truthfully. Now, however, you go too far when you attack my assistants. I repeat they are dressed properly, and I say that your statement that you have been often in our asylum, is so much fudge. Only doctors and police and inspectors from the Home Office go there as a regular rule.”

I waited for a moment before I answered, like a clever actor pauses before he puts in his most effective point.

“You are impetuous, madam,” I said, taking out my snuff-box with studied deliberation and pretending to take a pinch; “very impetuous. You ought to have asked who I was before you branded me, too, as an impostor. As a matter of fact, I do belong to the police. Here is my card.” And I quietly produced a card of Detective-Inspector Naylor’s which I happened to have in my waistcoat pocket.

The effect of my act was almost magical. The woman in front of me started violently and shivered. Then with a great effort she recovered herself and gave me another look of defiance. “I see,” she said, taking the piece of cardboard I handed to her with apparent carelessness. “I suppose you have been sent to look after Miss Velasquon by some friend of hers who does not know her real identity or crimes. It’s a pity, a great pity, for you will have your journey wasted. The patient, of course, is now in our care, and must go with us.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” I returned, although I admit I was startled with the daring and resource which this woman was showing, and which proved that she was up to every trick and turn and corner of those wretched lunacy laws of ours. “Do you mind showing me the authority under which you are acting?”

“Not at all,” she said in her most patronising and offensive tones, and feeling in a reticule that depended from her waist she produced this strange communication:

By Royal Authority.

Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Broadmoor.

To all whom it may concern.

This is to Certify that the Bearer of this warrant, Joan Virtue Hand, is a principal warder in the above Institution, and is now absent on a mission to recover possession of a particularly daring and dangerous inmate, named Camille Velasquon, who has escaped therefrom, although she is a fully certified lunatic and has been incarcerated here in the above Institution on a lawful warrant from His Majesty’s judge sitting at the Central Criminal Court, whereat she was charged with the killing and slaying of two of her sisters, aged five and seven respectively.

All good and law-abiding citizens, and particularly members of the police force, station-masters, porters, sailors, shipmasters, cab proprietors, lodging-house keepers, and hotel managers, are requested to give her every assistance in conveying her patient to the above Institution. And all persons are warned against impeding the said Joan Virtue Hand in the execution of her mission, for by so doing they render themselves liable to the Lunacy Act 1875, c vii s 5, 6, ss 3, and on conviction may be punished by a term of imprisonment not exceeding six calendar months.

(Signed) Douglas Llewelyn, Chief Registrar.

Very carefully I read this document through three or four times before I made any comment, any remark, about it at all. I could feel, of course, that the woman was watching me and every second was growing more and more uneasy under the stress of my unexpected recourse to silence. But still I said nothing to her; and at last she could bear it no longer.

“Now, Mr Naylor,” she said, speaking to me in my assumed name, but her voice was shrill with apprehension, “perhaps you will have the goodness to admit that you have been playing a very dangerous game with me and that if I liked I could make it very awkward for you at Scotland Yard for interfering between a warder and an escaped lunatic without proper inquiry or warrant.”

“Humph,” I returned coldly, “I don’t know so much about that.” And before she could have the slightest notion what I was up to I coolly lowered the carriage window, and tearing her authority quickly into three or four pieces I flung the fragments out on to the railway as the train was whirling along at a rate of about twenty miles an hour.

“Man,” she stormed, as soon as she saw what I had done, springing to her feet and grabbing me by the arm, “are you mad?”

“I hope not,” I said courteously. “I try to keep sane, although I admit it is hard sometimes when one meets such odd people.”

“But do you realise what you have done? You have torn up my warrant.”

“I know,” I returned sadly. “But then it was no good, you see. It was a fraud. It had no more to do with Broadmoor than yonder telegraph post. It was designed to mislead people, and so, to save misconception, I destroyed it.” And with a sardonic smile I threw myself back in my seat and folded my arms.

“Oh! you shall pay for this,” she hissed, her features working convulsively. “Dearly, dearly shall you pay for this! This girl shall never escape me—never!” And she shot out a threatening finger in the direction of poor Camille.

“Unfortunately, my dear Mrs Hand,” I said in my most lofty tone, “you have come upon the scene a trifle late for heroics like these. As a matter of fact, you are in the awkward position, not I at all. On the whole you have been precipitate, very precipitate, I regret to observe. Thus you never got to know by what right I met Miss Velasquon. You never inquired, indeed. Even when I handed you my card you did not pause and ask yourself whether you were not going just a trifle too far in your rudeness to me and your interference with my good wishes.”

“Good wishes? Rubbish,” she snapped!

“My good wishes, I repeat,” I said with a good deal of firmness, for was I not about to play my last and most triumphant trump card? “As a matter of fact, those good wishes of mine are very important to you and to these two disguised females whom you drag about with you,” and I casually nodded in the direction of the pseudo-nurses, “for long before any of you appeared on the scene I had arrested Camille Velasquon! She was a prisoner, and you have all rendered yourselves liable to punishment for attempting to get her out of my hands!”

“Oh, that’s impossible,” Joan Hand cried; but there was no conviction in her tones, and her two confederates sprang up and made as though they would slip out of the carriage forthwith.

In an instant I planted myself between them and the door—the only door that remained unlocked. “Excuse me, ladies,” I said; “I cannot permit you to leave me in this unceremonious fashion.”

“Why, we’ve done nothing,” one of them gasped. “We are free.”

“Not at all,” I blithely observed, “you are all three my prisoners. I charge all of you with falsely representing yourselves to be nurses engaged at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, and, whilst doing so, endeavouring to rescue a prisoner lawfully in my custody on the charge of a series of frauds in the Mexican Republic,—a girl whom I am taking to the Extradition Court at Bow Street to await the arrival of the necessary papers; and I warn you all to be careful what you say to me. Any remark you happen to make now I shall use in evidence against you, and if the lot of you don’t get put away for a long term of penal servitude it will be mighty odd to me. You are certainly the wickedest gang of females I have ever struck.”

“And I’ll strike you, you wretch,” screamed the woman Hand, and before I could turn the woman in black caught me a blow on the side of the head that sent me crashing to my seat.

That was the only chance they had, but they took it almost in a flash. Just then the train was drawing into Vauxhall, and like lightning they tore open the door of the carriage and sprang on to the platform, to disappear instantly in a bewildering network of waiting-rooms.

For my own part, I was rather relieved than otherwise at their flight, and I turned to congratulate Camille Velasquon on the skill with which we had managed to outwit them.

But she, too, had disappeared!