The Stowmarket Mystery, Louis Tracy [best romance novels of all time .txt] 📗

Ooma’s back was towards them. They could hear his voice—a queer, high-pitched, yet strident voice—whilst he questioned a somewhat scared footman as to the whereabouts of his mistress.

The man had evidently perceived the remarkable resemblance borne by this uncanny stranger to the Frazer family. His replies were respectful, but stuttering. He was alarmed by those fierce eyes, more especially because his inability to give satisfactory information seemed to anger the new-comer.

“You are not a child,” they heard Ooma say, with menace in his tone. “You must have heard, from her maid or some other source, where Mrs. Capella has gone to?”

“N—no, sir,” stammered the man. “I really ’aven’t I t—t—thought Mrs. C—Capella was in London. The b—butler says we are all to ’ave a ’oliday next week.”

“Is there no way in which I can find out where your mistress is at this moment? I must see her. My business is important. It cannot wait. It is of the utmost importance to her.”

Brett, straining without like a hound in the leash, could note a slight accentuation in the perfect English spoken by Ooma. There was just a suspicion of the liquid “r” so strongly marked in Jiro’s utterance. What an uncanny thing is heredity! It even alters the shape of the roof of the mouth. The Japanese of English descent could necessarily pronounce English better than the pure-born native.

The servant within seemed to rack his brains for a favourable reply.

“You might ask Mr. Capella, sir,” he said at length, with some degree of returning confidence. “He was expected here by the last train, but missed it in London, I expect. He is sure to come to-night, and he will tell you, if you care to wait.”

“Mr. Capella! Coming by the last train! What is he like?”

“Do you mean in appearance, sir? He is a small, dark-complexioned gentleman, with wavy black hair and a very pale face. He—”

But Ooma turned away from the man, and looked through the window, with the lambent glare of a wild animal in his eyes. He instantly saw the three motionless figures, Brett, Winter, and Robert Hume-Frazer.

They sprang forward. Robert was quickest, and reached the open window first. The Japanese jumped back and made for the door, but it opened in his face, and David entered the room. Behind him was Holden, who made no secret of the fact that he carried a revolver.

Ooma caught the astounded man-servant by the waist, lifted him as though he were a truss of straw, and threw him bodily at Robert Frazer and Winter, bringing both to the ground by this singular weapon.

It was a fatal mistake to attack the readiest means of exit. Had he used his human battering ram against Holden and David he might have escaped. But now he looked into the muzzle of another revolver, and heard Brett’s stern demand:

“Hands up, Ooma! If you move you are a dead man?”

Nevertheless, he did move. He seemed to have the agility as well as the semblance of a carnivorous animal. He bounded sideways towards the wall of the library, picked up the writing-desk, and barricaded himself behind it. In the same second he produced a small, shining article from his waistcoat pocket, and shouted, in a voice now cracked with rage:

“Stand back, all of you. You may shoot me! I will not be arrested!”

Winter, swearing, scrambled from the floor. Robert, too, threw off the yelling servant, and rose to his feet. Alarmed not only by the curious entry made by David Hume and Holden, but also by the racket in the library, other servants were now clamouring at the locked door, for Holden had slipped his left hand behind him and turned the key. Brett similarly closed the window. They were five to one, but the one seemed to defy them.

“That be blowed for a tale!” roared the infuriated detective, whose blood was fired by the manner in which he had been floored. “I arrest you in the King’s name for the murder of Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, and I warn you—”

Robert Hume-Frazer waited for no preliminary explanation of an official character. He wanted to feel that man’s bones crack under his grasp. He had the strong man’s ambition to close with an opponent worthy of his thews and sinews. Without any warning, he made for the Japanese, who seemed to await his oncoming with singular equanimity, though otherwise quivering with baulked hate.

But Brett had seen something that aroused a lightning-like suspicion. Twice had the Japanese looked at a small, shining thing in his hand, as though to make sure it was there. So the barrister was just in time to grasp Robert’s shoulder and hold him back.

“No,” he cried, “you must not touch him. I command it. He cannot escape.”

“Then let me have a go at him first,” growled Frazer, whose face was pale with passion.

“No, no. Leave him to me. Winter, do you hear me? Stand back, I say.”

Brett’s imperative tone brooked no disobedience. Thus, in a segment of a circle, the five enclosed the one against the wall—Ooma barricaded by the table, the others ready to defeat any stratagem he might endeavour to put in force.

“Now listen to me, Ooma,” said the barrister sternly. “You must drop that thing you have in your right hand. You must hold both your hands high above your head. If you move either of them again I will shoot you. If you do not obey me before I count five I will shoot you. One! Two! Three!—”

The Japanese, gasping a horrible sort of sob, three times plunged the instrument he held into his left arm. Then he flung it straight at Robert. One would have thought his vengeance would be directed against Brett, whom he must have credited by this time with his capture.

No; he singled out a Hume-Frazer for his last attack. The instrument struck a button on Robert’s coat and fell to the floor, where it lay twisted out of shape by the force of the impact.

It was a hypodermic syringe.

Again Ooma uttered that weird cry.

“This is the end,” he said. “You have not beaten me. It is Fate.”

He folded his arms and looked at them. A change came over his face. He was no longer a tiger at bay, but a human being, calm, dignified, almost impressive.

“I arrest you—” began Winter.

“You fool!” laughed the Japanese, with a quiet contempt in his tone; “I shall be dead in twenty minutes. That syringe contained snake poison, the undiluted venom of the karait. Put away your pistols. They are not wanted.”

Quite nonchalantly he leaned back against the bookcase that lined the wall. He turned his eyes to Robert.

“You have the luck of your race,” he said “If that point had reached your skin no human skill could have saved you. As it is, you are spared, and I must go. The same blood flows in our veins, yet you are my enemy. I wish I could once get my fingers round your throat before my strength fails.”

“Come from behind that table and try,” was the quick rejoinder.

Ooma made to accept the challenge, but Brett intervened.

“If you are telling the truth,” he said, “you can spend your brief remaining span of life to better purpose than in a mad combat with one who has done you no harm. Where is Capella?”

“I killed him,” was the cool reply.

The footman, who had slowly regained his senses, uttered a groan of horror. By this time several men, not alone house servants, but gardeners, grooms, and others, had gathered on the lawn.

“Send away that slave,” cried Ooma impatiently, “and tell those others to go to their kennels. This is no place for such.”

Brett knew that the Japanese was in truth about to die. Afterwards Winter and Holden confessed that they thought the pretence of injecting snake poison was a mere ruse to gain time. Robert and David intuitively agreed with the barrister. It was in their breed to know when eternity yawned for one of them. The very calmness of the criminal, his magnificent apathy, his dislike of vulgar witnesses, foreboded a tragedy.

Brett motioned to Holden to open the door, and the footman gladly made his escape. In response to a wave of the barrister’s arm the other servants disappeared from view, though they probably only retreated to a greater distance, and could see well enough all that happened.

“Yes,” continued Ooma, “I killed Capella. It was a mistake. Everything is a mistake. It was foolish on my part to kill Alan Hume-Frazer, even though he was my enemy. I should have let him live, and tortured him by fear. You English dread these scandals worse than death. We Japanese fear neither. For I am a Japanese, and I am proud of it, although my ancestor was David Hume of Glen Tochan, who fought and killed the man who robbed his father.”

“But how and why did you kill Capella?” asked Brett.

“I saw him in the station at London. He followed me. I puzzled him, I suppose. He perceived the likeness between me and my dear cousins. We are like one another, are we not, we Hume-Frazers?”

He laughed mirthlessly, and stared at David and Robert alternately. Winter broke in with a hasty question:

“If he is speaking the truth about the snake poison, shouldn’t we send for a doctor?”

No one had thought of this previously. Brett reproached himself for his forgetfulness. So strange are our civilised notions that we strive to save a man’s life in order to hang him by due process at law.

It was Ooma who answered.

“Doctor!” he cried. “Bring him! Bring the whole College of Surgeons. They can watch me die, and tell you learnedly why the blood curdles and the heart refuses to act, but not all their science can beat the venom of the little karait. It is an Indian snake, more deadly than the cobra, with mightier tooth than the tiger. I meant to use that syringe on the whole cursed brood of Frazers in this country. No one would have known what happened to them. But look you, Fate is too powerful. The karait stored his poison for me only. I killed only one of the race, and him I stabbed with a Ko-Katana of my own house.”

Holden left the room to send a messenger post-haste for the village doctor.

“About Capella?” persisted Brett.

“Ah, Capella. He sought his own death. He looked at me so oddly that I thought him a spy. I was alone in a carriage when, half-way here, he ran along the platform at a small station and joined me. He began to question me. I looked out of the window and saw that we were coming to a viaduct over a stream between deep cliffs, so I took the little man and cracked his neck. Then I flung him over the bridge. It was a mistake. He should have left me alone.”

He described this cold-blooded murder of the unfortunate Italian with the weary air of one who recites a tedious episode. The lids drooped heavily over his eyes.

“I am tired,” he said. “That was a good little snake. He knew his business. He could make the best of poison.”

“Surely,” said the barrister solemnly, “you are not so utterly inhuman that at the very point of death you still maintain the attitude of a disappointed avenger. What wrong had all these people done you to demand your murderous hate?”

Ooma seemed for a moment to rouse himself from lethargy. Once again the black eyes sparkled with their menacing gleam.

“It is you,” he cried, “you, the thinker, who question me. I never gave a thought to you, or I would not now be slowly sinking into death. I might have guessed that a higher intelligence was at work than that which saw the Ko-Katana with its motto, and yet failed to read its story. You ask my motives. Can a man explain heredity? Here”—and he threw a packet of papers on the writing-desk—“are the proofs of my identity. It is