Reginald Cruden, Talbot Baines Reed [best black authors txt] 📗

man talked in a pleasant, civil way, in a tone as if he quite supposed Reginald might be pleased to hear the programme arranged on his behalf.

“We’d better go,” said Reginald, moving towards the door.

His face was very white and determined. But there was a tell-tale quiver in his tightly-pressed lips which told that he needed all his courage to help him through the ordeal before him. Till this moment the thought of having to walk through Liverpool in custody had not entered into his calculations, and he recoiled from it with a shiver.

“I needn’t trouble you with these,” said the policeman, taking a pair of handcuffs from his pocket; “not yet, anyhow.”

“Oh no. I’ll come quite quietly.”

“All right. I’ve my mate below. You can walk between. Hulloa!”

This last exclamation was addressed to Master Love, who, having witnessed thus much of the interview in a state of stupefied bewilderment, now recovered his presence of mind sufficiently to make a furious dash at the burly policeman.

“Do you hear? Let him be; let my governor go. He ain’t done nothink to you or nobody. It’s me, I tell yer. I’ve murdered dozens, do you ’ear? and robbed the till, and set the Manshing ’Ouse o’ fire, do you ’ear? You let ’im go. It’s me done it!”

And he accompanied the protest with such a furious kick at the policeman’s leg that that functionary grew very red in the face, and making a grab at the offender, seized him by the collar.

“Don’t hurt him, please,” said Reginald. “He doesn’t mean any harm.”

“Tell you it’s me,” cried the boy, trembling in the grasp of the law, “me and that there Medlock. My gov’nor ain’t done it.”

“Hush, be quiet, Love,” said Reginald. “It’ll do no good to make a noise. It can’t be helped. Good-bye.”

The boy fairly broke down, and began to blubber piteously.

Reginald, unmanned enough as it was, had not the heart to wait longer, and walked hurriedly to the door, followed by the policeman. This movement once more raised the faithful Love to a final effort.

“Let ’im go, do you ’ear?” shouted he, rushing down the stairs after them. “I’ll do for yer if you don’t. Oh, guv’nor, take me too, can’t yer?”

But Reginald could only steel his heart for once, and feign not to hear the appeal.

The other policeman was waiting outside, and between his two custodians he walked, sick at heart, and faltering in courage, longing only to get out of the reach of the curious, critical eyes that turned on him from every side, and beyond the sound of that pitiful whimper of the faithful little friend as it followed him step by step to the very door of the police-station.

At the station Mr Sniff awaited the party with a pleasant smile of welcome.

“That’s right,” said he to Reginald, encouragingly; “much better to come quietly, looks better. Look here, young fellow,” he added, rather more confidentially, “the first question you’ll be asked is whether you’re guilty or not. Take my advice, and make a clean breast of it.”

“I shall say not guilty, which will be the truth.”

Mr Sniff, as the reader has been told, had already come to the same conclusion. Still, it being the rule of his profession always to assume a man to be guilty till he can prove himself innocent, he felt it was no business of his to assist the magistrate in coming to the decision by stating what he thought. All he had to do was to state what he knew, and meanwhile, if the prisoner choose to simplify matters by pleading guilty, well, why shouldn’t he?

“Please yourself about that. Have you made your entries, Jones? The van will be here directly. See you later on,” added he, nodding to Reginald.

Reginald waited there for the van like a man in a dream. People came in and out, spoke, laughed, looked about them, even mentioned his name. But they all seemed part of some curious pageant, of which he himself formed not the least unreal portion. His mind wandered off on a hundred little insignificant topics. Snatches of the Pilgrim’s Progress came into his mind, half-forgotten airs of music crossed his memory, the vision of young Gedge as he last saw him fleeted before his eyes. He tried in vain to collect his thoughts, but they were hopelessly astray, leaving him for the time barely conscious, and wholly uninterested in what was taking place around him.

The van came at last, a vehicle he had often eyed curiously as it rumbled past him in the streets. Little had he ever dreamed of riding one day inside it.

The usual knot of loungers waited at the door of the police-court to see the van disgorge its freight. Sometimes they had been rewarded for their patience by the glimpse of a real murderer, or wife-kicker, or burglar, and sometimes they had had their bit of fun over a “tough customer,” who, if he must travel at her Majesty’s expense, was determined to travel all the way, and insisted on being carried by the arms and legs across the pavement into the tribunal of justice. There was no such fun to be got out of Reginald as he stepped hurriedly from the van, and with downcast eyes entered by the prisoners’ door into the court-house.

A case was already in progress, and he had to wait in a dimly-lit underground lobby for his summons. The constable who had arrested him was still beside him, and other groups, mostly of police, filled up the place. But he heeded none, longing—oh! how intensely—to hear his name called and to know the worst.

Presently there was a bustle near the door, and he knew the case upstairs was at an end.

“Six months,” some one said.

Some one else whistled softly.

“Whew—old Fogey’s in one of his tantrums, then. He’d have only got three at Dark Street.”

Then some one called the name “Reginald,” and the policeman near him said “Coming.” Then, turning to the prisoner, he said,—

“Fogey’s on the bench to-day, and he’s particular. Look alive.”

Reginald found himself being hurried to the door through a lane of officials and others towards the stairs.

“Your turn next, Grinder,” he heard some one say as he passed. “Ten-minutes will do this case.”

To Reginald the stairs seemed interminable. There was a hum of voices above, and a shuffling of feet as of people taking a momentary relaxation in the interval of some performance. Then a loud voice cried, “Silence—order in the court, sit down, gentlemen,” and there fell an unearthly stillness on the place.

“To the right,” said the policeman, coming beside him, and taking his arm as if to direct him.

He was conscious of a score of curious faces turned on him, of some one on the bench folding up a newspaper and adjusting his glasses, of a man at a table throwing aside a quill pen and taking another, of a click of a latch closing behind him, of a row of spikes in front of him. Then he found himself alone.

What followed he scarcely could tell. He was vaguely aware of some one with Mr Sniff’s voice making a statement in which his (Reginald’s) own name occurred, another voice from the bench breaking in every now and then, and yet another voice from the table talking too, accompanied by the squeaking of a pen across paper. Then the constable who had arrested him said something, and after the constable some one else.

Then followed a dialogue in undertone between the bench and the table, and once more Mr Sniff’s voice, and at last the voice from the bench, a gruff, unsympathetic voice, said,—

“Now, sir, what have you got to say for yourself?”

The question roused him. It was intended for him, and he awoke to the consciousness that, after all, he had some interest in what was going on.

He raised his head and said,—

“I’m not guilty.”

“You reserve your defence, then?”

“Tell him yes,” said the policeman.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then. I shall remand you for three days. Bring him up again on Friday.”

And the magistrate took up his newspaper, the clerk at the table laying down his pen; the bustle and shuffling of feet filled the room, and in another moment Reginald was down the staircase, and the voice he had heard before called,—

“Remand three days. Now then, Grinder, up you go—”

In all his conjectures as to what might befall him, the possibility of being actually sent to prison had never entered Reginald’s head. That he would be suspected, arrested, taken to the police-station, and finally brought before a magistrate, he had foreseen. That was bad enough, but he had steeled his resolution to the pitch of going through with it, sure that the clearing of his character would follow any inquiry into the case.

But to be lodged for three days as a common felon in a police cell was a fate he had not once realised, and which, when its full meaning broke upon him, crushed the spirit out of him.

He made no resistance, no protest, no complaint as they hustled him back into the van, and from the van to the cell which was to be his dreary lodging for those three days. He felt degraded, dishonoured, disgraced, and as he sat hour after hour brooding over his lot, his mind, already overwrought, lost its courage and let go its hope.

Suppose he really had done something to be ashamed of? Suppose he had all along had his vague suspicions of the honesty of the Corporation, and yet had continued to serve them? Suppose, with the best of intentions, he had shut his eyes wilfully to what he might and must have seen? Suppose, in fact, his negligence had been criminal? How was he ever to hold up his head again and face the world like an honest man, and say he had defrauded no man?

And then there came up in terrible array that long list of customers to the Corporation whom he had lured and enticed by promises he had never taken the trouble to inquire into to part with their money. And the burden of their loss lay like an incubus on his spirit, till he actually persuaded himself he was guilty.

I need not sadden the reader with dwelling on the misery of those three days. Any one almost could have endured them better than Reginald. He began a letter to Horace, but he tore it up when half-written. He drew up a statement of his own defence, but when fact after fact appeared in array on the paper it seemed more like an indictment than a defence, and he tore it up too.

At length the weary suspense was over, and once more he found himself in the outer air, stepping with almost familiar tread across the pavement into the van, and taking his place among the waiters in the dim lobby at the foot of the police-court stairs.

When at last he stood once more in the dock none of his former bewilderment remained to befriend him. It was all too real this time. When some one spoke of the “prisoner” he knew it meant himself, and when they spoke of fraud he knew they referred to something he had done. Oh, that he could see it all in a dream once more, and wake up to find himself on the other side!

“Now, Mr Sniff, you’ve got something to say?” said the magistrate.

“Yes, your worship,” replied Mr Sniff, not moving to the witness-box, but speaking from his seat. “We don’t propose to continue this case.”

“What? It’s a clear case, isn’t it?” said the magistrate, with the air of a man who is being trifled with.

“No, your worship. There’s not evidence enough to ask you to send the prisoner to trial.”

“Then I’d better sentence him myself.”

“I think not, your worship. Our evidence only went to show that the prisoner was in the employment of the men who started the company. But we have no evidence that he was aware that the concern was