The Evil Shepherd

E >> E. Phillips Oppenheim >> The Evil Shepherd

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

THE EVIL SHEPHERD BY E. PHILIPS OPPENHEIM

CHAPTER I

Francis Ledsam, alert, well-satisfied with himself and the world,
the echo of a little buzz of congratulations still in his ears,
paused on the steps of the modern Temple of Justice to light a
cigarette before calling for a taxi to take him to his club.
Visions of a whisky and soda--his throat was a little parched
--and a rubber of easy-going bridge at his favourite table, were
already before his eyes. A woman who had followed him from the
Court touched him on the shoulder.

"Can I speak to you for a moment, Mr. Ledsam?"

The barrister frowned slightly as he swung around to confront his
questioner. It was such a familiar form of address.

"What do you want?" he asked, a little curtly.

"A few minutes' conversation with you," was the calm reply. "The
matter is important."

The woman's tone and manner, notwithstanding her plain,
inconspicuous clothes, commanded attention. Francis Ledsam was a
little puzzled. Small things meant much to him in life, and he
had been looking forward almost with the zest of a schoolboy to
that hour of relaxation at his club. He was impatient of even a
brief delay, a sentiment which he tried to express in his
response.

"What do you want to speak to me about?" he repeated bluntly. "I
shall be in my rooms in the Temple to-morrow morning, any time
after eleven."

"It is necessary for me to speak to you now," she insisted.
"There is a tea-shop across the way. Please accompany me there."

Ledsam, a little surprised at the coolness of her request,
subjected his accoster to a closer scrutiny. As he did so, his
irritation diminished. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"If you really have business with me," he said, "I will give you
a few minutes."

They crossed the street together, the woman self-possessed,
negative, wholly without the embarrassment of one performing an
unusual action. Her companion felt the awakening of curiosity.
Zealously though she had, to all appearance, endeavoured to
conceal the fact, she was without a doubt personable. Her voice
and manner lacked nothing of refinement. Yet her attraction to
Francis Ledsam, who, although a perfectly normal human being, was
no seeker after promiscuous adventures, did not lie in these
externals. As a barrister whose success at the criminal bar had
been phenomenal, he had attained to a certain knowledge of human
nature. He was able, at any rate, to realise that this woman was
no imposter. He knew that she had vital things to say.

They passed into the tea-shop and found an empty corner. Ledsam
hung up his hat and gave an order. The woman slowly began to
remove her gloves. When she pushed back her veil, her vis-a-vis
received almost a shock. She was quite as good-looking as he had
imagined, but she was far younger--she was indeed little more
than a girl. Her eyes were of a deep shade of hazel brown, her
eyebrows were delicately marked, her features and poise
admirable. Yet her skin was entirely colourless. She was as
pale as one whose eyes have been closed in death. Her lips,
although in no way highly coloured, were like streaks of scarlet
blossom upon a marble image. The contrast between her appearance
and that of her companion was curiously marked. Francis Ledsam
conformed in no way to the accepted physical type of his
profession. He was over six feet in height, broad-shouldered and
powerfully made. His features were cast in a large mould, he was
of fair, almost sandy complexion, even his mouth was more
humourous than incisive. His eyes alone, grey and exceedingly
magnetic, suggested the gifts which without a doubt lay behind
his massive forehead.

"I am anxious to avoid any possible mistake," she began. "Your
name is Francis Ledsam?"

"It is," he admitted.

"You are the very successful criminal barrister," she continued,
"who has just been paid an extravagant fee to defend Oliver
Hilditch."

"I might take exception to the term 'extravagant'," Ledsam
observed drily. "Otherwise, your information appears to be
singularly correct. I do not know whether you have heard the
verdict. If not, you may be interested to know that I succeeded
in obtaining the man's acquittal."

"I know that you did," the woman replied. "I was in the Court
when the verdict was brought in. It has since occurred to me
that I should like you to understand exactly what you have done,
the responsibility you have incurred."

Ledsam raised his eyebrows.

"Responsibility?" he repeated. "What I have done is simple
enough. I have earned a very large fee and won my case."

"You have secured the acquittal of Oliver Hilditch," she
persisted. "He is by this time a free man. Now I am going to
speak to you of that responsibility. I am going to tell you a
little about the man who owes his freedom to your eloquence."

It was exactly twenty minutes after their entrance into the
teashop when the woman finished her monologue. She began to draw
on her gloves again. Before them were two untasted cups of tea
and an untouched plate of bread and butter. From a corner of the
room the waitress was watching them curiously.

"Good God!" Francis Ledsam exclaimed at last, suddenly realising
his whereabouts. "Do you mean to affirm solemnly that what you
have been telling me is the truth?"

The woman continued to button her gloves. "It is the truth," she
said.

Ledsam sat up and looked around him. He was a little dazed. He
had almost the feeling of a man recovering from the influence of
some anaesthetic. Before his eyes were still passing visions of
terrible deeds, of naked, ugly passion, of man's unscrupulous
savagery. During those few minutes he had been transported to
New York and Paris, London and Rome. Crimes had been spoken of
which made the murder for which Oliver Hilditch had just been
tried seem like a trifling indiscretion. Hard though his
mentality, sternly matter-of-fact as was his outlook, he was
still unable to fully believe in himself, his surroundings, or in
this woman who had just dropped a veil over her ashen cheeks.
Reason persisted in asserting itself.

"But if you knew all this," he demanded, "why on earth didn't you
come forward and give evidence?"

"Because," she answered calmly, as she rose to her feet, "my
evidence would not have been admissible. I am Oliver Hilditch's
wife."

CHAPTER II

Francis Ledsam arrived at his club, the Sheridan, an hour later
than he had anticipated. He nodded to the veteran hall-porter,
hung up his hat and stick, and climbed the great staircase to the
card-room without any distinct recollection of performing any of
these simple and reasonable actions. In the cardroom he
exchanged a few greetings with friends, accepted without comment
or without the slightest tinge of gratification a little chorus
of chafing congratulations upon his latest triumph, and left the
room without any inclination to play, although there was a vacant
place at his favourite table. From sheer purposelessness he
wandered back again into the hall, and here came his first gleam
of returning sensation. He came face to face with his most
intimate friend, Andrew Wilmore. The latter, who had just hung
up his coat and hat, greeted him with a growl of welcome.

"So you've brought it off again, Francis!"

"Touch and go," the barrister remarked. "I managed to squeak
home."

Wilmore laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder and led the way
towards two easy-chairs in the lounge.

"I tell you what it is, old chap," he confided, "you'll be making
yourself unpopular before long. Another criminal at large,
thanks to that glib tongue and subtle brain of yours. The crooks
of London will present you with a testimonial when you're made a
judge."

"So you think that Oliver Hilditch was guilty, then?" Francis
asked curiously.

"My dear fellow, how do I know or care?" was the indifferent
reply. "I shouldn't have thought that there had been any doubt
about it. You probably know, anyway."

"That's just what I didn't when I got up to make my speech,"
Francis assured his friend emphatically. "The fellow was given
an opportunity of making a clean breast of it, of course--Wensley,
his lawyer, advised him to, in fact--but the story he told me
was precisely the story he told at the inquest."

They were established now in their easy-chairs, and Wilmore
summoned a waiter.

"Two large whiskies and sodas," he ordered. "Francis," he went
on, studying his companion intently, "what's the matter with you?
You don't look as though your few days in the country last week
had done you any good."

Francis glanced around as though to be sure that they were alone.

"I was all right when I came up, Andrew," he muttered. "This
case has upset me."

"Upset you? But why the dickens should it?" the other demanded,
in a puzzled tone. "It was quite an ordinary case, in its way,
and you won it."

"I won it," Francis admitted.

"Your defence was the most ingenious thing I ever heard."

"Mostly suggested, now I come to think of it," the barrister
remarked grimly, "by the prisoner himself."

"But why are you upset about it, anyway?" Wilmore persisted.

Francis rose to his feet, shook himself, and with his elbow
resting upon the mantelpiece leaned down towards his friend. He
could not rid himself altogether of this sense of unreality. He
had the feeling that he had passed through one of the great
crises of his life.

"I'll tell you, Andrew. You're about the only man in the world I
could tell. I've gone crazy."

"I thought you looked as though you'd been seeing spooks,"
Wilmore murmured sympathetically.

"I have seen a spook," Francis rejoined, with almost passionate
seriousness, "a spook who lifted an invisible curtain with
invisible fingers, and pointed to such a drama of horrors as De
Quincey, Poe and Sue combined could never have imagined. Oliver
Hilditch was guilty, Andrew. He murdered the man Jordan--murdered
him in cold blood."

"I'm not surprised to hear that," was the somewhat puzzled reply.

"He was guilty, Andrew, not only of the murder of this man, his
partner, but of innumerable other crimes and brutalities,"
Francis went on. "He is a fiend in human form, if ever there was
one, and I have set him loose once more to prey upon Society. I
am morally responsible for his next robbery, his next murder, the
continued purgatory of those forced to associate with him."

"You're dotty, Francis," his friend declared shortly.

"I told you I was crazy," was the desperate reply. "So would you
be if you'd sat opposite that woman for half-an-hour, and heard
her story."

"What woman?" Wilmore demanded, leaning forward in his chair and
gazing at his friend with increasing uneasiness.

"A woman who met me outside the Court and told me the story of
Oliver Hilditch's life."

"A stranger?"

"A complete stranger to me. It transpired that she was his
wife."

Wilmore lit a cigarette.

"Believe her?"

"There are times when one doesn't believe or disbelieve," Francis
answered. "One knows."

Wilmore nodded.

"All the same, you're crazy," he declared. "Even if you did save
the fellow from the gallows, you were only doing your job, doing
your duty to the best of poor ability. You had no reason to
believe him guilty."

"That's just as it happened," Francis pointed out. "I really
didn't care at the time whether he was or not. I had to proceed
on the assumption that he was not, of course, but on the other
hand I should have fought just as hard for him if I had known him
to be guilty."

"And you wouldn't now--to-morrow, say?"

"Never again."

"Because of that woman's story?"

"Because of the woman."

There was a short silence. Then Wilmore asked a very obvious
question.

"What sort of a person was she?"

Francis Ledsam was several moments before he replied. The
question was one which he had been expecting, one which he had
already asked himself many times, yet he was unprepared with any
definite reply.

"I wish I could answer you, Andrew," his friend confessed. "As a
matter of fact, I can't. I can only speak of the impression she
left upon me, and you are about the only person breathing to whom
I could speak of that."

Wilmore nodded sympathetically. He knew that, man of the world
though Francis Ledsam appeared, he was nevertheless a highly
imaginative person, something of an idealist as regards women,
unwilling as a rule to discuss them, keeping them, in a general
way, outside his daily life.

"Go ahead, old fellow," he invited. "You know I understand."

"She left the impression upon me," Francis continued quietly, "of
a woman who had ceased to live. She was young, she was beautiful,
she had all the gifts--culture, poise and breeding--but she had
ceased to live. We sat with a marble table between us, and a
few feet of oil-covered floor. Those few feet, Andrew, were like
an impassable gulf. She spoke from the shores of another world.
I listened and answered, spoke and listened again. And when she
told her story, she went. I can't shake off the effect she had
upon me, Andrew. I feel as though I had taken a step to the
right or to the left over the edge of the world."

Andrew Wilmore studied his friend thoughtfully.

He was full of sympathy and understanding. His one desire at
that moment was not to make a mistake. He decided to leave
unasked the obvious question.

"I know," he said simply. "Are you dining anywhere?"

"I thought of staying on here," was the indifferent reply.

"We won't do anything of the sort," Wilmore insisted. "There's
scarcely a soul in to-night, and the place is too humpy for a man
who's been seeing spooks. Get back to your rooms and change.
I'll wait here."

"What about you?"

"I have some clothes in my locker. Don't be long. And, by-the-bye,
which shall it be--Bohemia or Mayfair? I'll telephone for a table.
London's so infernally full, these days."

Francis hesitated.

"I really don't care," he confessed. "Now I think of it, I shall
be glad to get away from here, though. I don't want any more
congratulations on saving Oliver Hilditch's life. Let's go where
we are least likely to meet any one we know."

"Respectability and a starched shirt-front, then," Wilmore
decided. "We'll go to Claridge's."

CHAPTER III

The two men occupied a table set against the wall, not far from
the entrance to the restaurant, and throughout the progress of
the earlier part of their meal were able to watch the constant
incoming stream of their fellow-guests. They were, in their way,
an interesting contrast physically, neither of them good-looking
according to ordinary standards, but both with many pleasant
characteristics. Andrew Wilmore, slight and dark, with sallow
cheeks and brown eyes, looked very much what he was--a moderately
successful journalist and writer of stories, a keen golfer, a
bachelor who preferred a pipe to cigars, and lived at Richmond
because he could not find a flat in London which he could afford,
large enough for his somewhat expansive habits. Francis Ledsam
was of a sturdier type, with features perhaps better known to the
world owing to the constant activities of the cartoonist. His
reputation during the last few years had carried him,
notwithstanding his comparative youth--he was only thirty-five
years of age--into the very front ranks of his profession, and
his income was one of which men spoke with bated breath. He came
of a family of landed proprietors, whose younger sons for
generations had drifted always either to the Bar or the Law, and
his name was well known in the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn before
he himself had made it famous. He was a persistent refuser of
invitations, and his acquaintances in the fashionable world were
comparatively few. Yet every now and then he felt a mild
interest in the people whom his companion assiduously pointed out
to him.

"A fashionable restaurant, Francis, is rather like your Law
Courts--it levels people up," the latter remarked. "Louis, the
head-waiter, is the judge, and the position allotted in the room
is the sentence. I wonder who is going to have the little table
next but one to us. Some favoured person, evidently."

Francis glanced in the direction indicated without curiosity.
The table in question was laid for two and was distinguished by a
wonderful cluster of red roses.

"Why is it," the novelist continued speculatively, "that,
whenever we take another man's wife out, we think it necessary to
order red roses?"

"And why is it," Francis queried, a little grimly, "that a dear
fellow like you, Andrew, believes it his duty to talk of trifles
for his pal's sake, when all the time he is thinking of something
else? I know you're dying to talk about the Hilditch case,
aren't you? Well, go ahead."

"I'm only interested in this last development," Wilmore
confessed. "Of course, I read the newspaper reports. To tell
you the truth, for a murder trial it seemed to me to rather lack
colour."

"It was a very simple and straightforward case," Francis said
slowly. "Oliver Hilditch is the principal partner in an American
financial company which has recently opened offices in the West
End. He seems to have arrived in England about two years ago, to
have taken a house in Hill Street, and to have spent a great deal
of money. A month or so ago, his partner from New York arrived
in London, a man named Jordan of whom nothing was known. It has
since transpired, however, that his journey to Europe was
undertaken because he was unable to obtain certain figures
relating to the business, from Hilditch. Oliver Hilditch met him
at Southampton, travelled with him to London and found him a room
at the Savoy. The next day, the whole of the time seems to have
been spent in the office, and it is certain, from the evidence of
the clerk, that some disagreement took place between the two men.
They dined together, however, apparently on good terms, at the
Cafe Royal, and parted in Regent Street soon after ten. At
twelve o'clock, Jordan's body was picked up on the pavement in
Hill Street, within a few paces of Heidrich's door. He had been
stabbed through the heart with some needle-like weapon, and was
quite dead."

"Was there any vital cause of quarrel between them?" Wilmore
enquired.

"Impossible to say," Francis replied. "The financial position of
the company depends entirely upon the value of a large quantity
of speculative bonds, but as there was only one clerk employed,
it was impossible to get at any figures. Hilditch declared that
Jordan had only a small share in the business, from which he had
drawn a considerable income for years, and that he had not the
slightest cause for complaint."

"What were Hilditch's movements that evening?" Wilmore asked.

"Not a soul seems to have seen him after he left Regent Street,"
was the somewhat puzzled answer. "His own story was quite
straightforward and has never been contradicted. He let himself
into his house with a latch-key after his return from the Cafe
Royal, drank a whisky and soda in the library, and went to bed
before half-past eleven. The whole affair--"

Francis broke off abruptly in the middle of his sentence. He sat
with his eyes fixed upon the door, silent and speechless.

"What in Heaven's name is the matter, old fellow?" Wilmore
demanded, gazing at his companion in blank amazement.

The latter pulled himself together with an effort. The sight of
the two new arrivals talking to Louis on the threshold of the
restaurant, seemed for the moment to have drawn every scrap of
colour from his cheeks. Nevertheless, his recovery was almost
instantaneous.

"If you want to know any more," he said calmly, "you had better
go and ask him to tell you the whole story himself. There he
is."

"And the woman with him?" Wilmore exclaimed under his breath.

"His wife!"

CHAPTER IV

To reach their table, the one concerning which Francis and his
friend had been speculating, the new arrivals, piloted by Louis,
had to pass within a few feet of the two men. The woman, serene,
coldly beautiful, dressed like a Frenchwoman in unrelieved black,
with extraordinary attention to details, passed them by with a
careless glance and subsided into the chair which Louis was
holding. Her companion, however, as he recognised Francis
hesitated. His expression of somewhat austere gloom was
lightened. A pleasant but tentative smile parted his lips. He
ventured upon a salutation, half a nod, half a more formal bow, a
salutation which Francis instinctively returned. Andrew Wilmore
looked on with curiosity.

"So that is Oliver Hilditch," he murmured.

"That is the man," Francis observed, "of whom last evening half
the people in this restaurant were probably asking themselves
whether or not he was guilty of murder. To-night they will be
wondering what he is going to order for dinner. It is a strange
world."

"Strange indeed," Wilmore assented. "This afternoon he was in
the dock, with his fate in the balance--the condemned cell or a
favoured table at Claridge's. And your meeting! One can imagine
him gripping your hands, with tears in his eyes, his voice broken
with emotion, sobbing out his thanks. And instead you exchange
polite bows. I would not have missed this situation for anything."

"Tradesman!" Francis scoffed. "One can guess already at the plot
of your next novel."

"He has courage," Wilmore declared. "He has also a very
beautiful companion. Were you serious, Francis, when you told me
that that was his wife?"

"She herself was my informant," was the quiet reply.

Wilmore was puzzled.

"But she passed you just now without even a glance of
recognition, and I thought you told me at the club this afternoon
that all your knowledge of his evil ways came from her. Besides,
she looks at least twenty years younger than he does."

Francis, who had been watching his glass filled with champagne,
raised it to his lips and drank its contents steadily to the last
drop.

"I can only tell you what I know, Andrew," he said, as he set
down the empty glass. "The woman who is with him now is the
woman who spoke to me outside the Old Bailey this afternoon. We
went to a tea-shop together. She told me the story of his
career. I have never listened to so horrible a recital in my
life."

"And yet they are here together, dining tete-a-tete, on a night
when it must have needed more than ordinary courage for either of
them to have been seen in public at all," Wilmore pointed out.

"It is as astounding to me as it is to you," Francis confessed.
"From the way she spoke, I should never have dreamed that they
were living together."

"And from his appearance," Wilmore remarked, as he called the
waiter to bring some cigarettes, "I should never have imagined
that he was anything else save a high-principled, well-born,
straightforward sort of chap. I never saw a less criminal type
of face."

They each in turn glanced at the subject of their discussion.
Oliver Hilditch's good-looks had been the subject of many press
comments during the last few days. They were certainly
undeniable. His face was a little lined but his hair was thick
and brown. His features were regular, his forehead high and
thoughtful, his mouth a trifle thin but straight and shapely.
Francis gazed at him like a man entranced. The hours seemed to
have slipped away. He was back in the tea-shop, listening to the
woman who spoke of terrible things. He felt again his shivering
abhorrence of her cold, clearly narrated story. Again he shrank
from the horrors from which with merciless fingers she had
stripped the coverings. He seemed to see once more the agony in
her white face, to hear the eternal pain aching and throbbing in
her monotonous tone. He rose suddenly to his feet.

"Andrew," he begged, "tell the fellow to bring the bill outside.
We'll have our coffee and liqueurs there."

Wilmore acquiesced willingly enough, but even as they turned
towards the door Francis realised what was in store for him.
Oliver Hilditch had risen to his feet. With a courteous little
gesture he intercepted the passer-by. Francis found himself
standing side by side with the man for whose life he had pleaded
that afternoon, within a few feet of the woman whose terrible
story seemed to have poisoned the very atmosphere he breathed,
to have shown him a new horror in life, to have temporarily,
at any rate, undermined every joy and ambition he possessed.

"Mr. Ledsam," Hilditch said, speaking with quiet dignity, "I hope
that you will forgive the liberty I take in speaking to you here.
I looked for you the moment I was free this afternoon, but found
that you had left the Court. I owe you my good name, probably my
life. Thanks are poor things but they must be spoken."

"You owe me nothing at all," Francis replied, in a tone which
even he found harsh. "I had a brief before me and a cause to
plead. It was a chapter out of my daily work."

"That work can be well done or ill," the other reminded him
gently. "In your case, my presence here proves how well it was
done. I wish to present you to my wife, who shares my
gratitude."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17