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But the next movement was the most unexpected of
all, for the prince standing in the doorway passed
suddenly from the dignity of a statue to the swiftness
of an acrobat and rent the revolver out of the
detective's hand.
"You dog!" he cried. "So you are the type of
English truth, as I am of Irish tragedy--you who come
to kill me, wading through the blood of your brethren.
If they had fallen in a feud on the hillside, it would be
called murder, and yet your sin might be forgiven
you. But I, who am innocent, I was to be slain with
ceremony. There would belong speeches and patient
judges listening to my vain plea of innocence, noting
down my despair and disregarding it. Yes, that is
what I call assassination. But killing may be no
murder; there is one shot left in this little gun, and I
know where it should go."
Wilson turned quickly on the table, and even as he
turned he twisted in agony, for Michael shot him
through the body where he sat, so that he tumbled
off the table like lumber.
The police rushed to lift him; Sir Walter stood
speechless; and then, with a strange and weary
gesture, Horne Fisher spoke.
"You are indeed a type of the Irish tragedy," he
said. "You were entirely in the right, and you have
put yourself in the wrong."
The prince's face was like marble for a space
then there dawned in his eyes a light not unlike that
of despair. He laughed suddenly and flung the
smoking pistol on the ground.
"I am indeed in the wrong," he said. "I have
committed a crime that may justly bring a curse on
me and my children."
Horne Fisher did not seem entirely satisfied with
this very sudden repentance; he kept his eyes on the
man and only said, in a low voice, "What crime do
you mean?"
"I have helped English justice," replied Prince
Michael. "I have avenged your king's officers; I have
done the work of his hangman. For that truly I
deserve to be hanged."
And he turned to the police with a gesture that did
not so much surrender to them, but rather command
them to arrest him.
This was the story that Horne Fisher told to
Harold March, the journalist, many years after, in a
little, but luxurious, restaurant near Picca
dilly. He had invited March to dinner some time after
the affair he called "The Face in the Target," and the
conversation had naturally turned on that mystery and
afterward on earlier memories of Fisher's life and the
way in which he was led to study such problems as
those of Prince Michael. Horne Fisher was fifteen
years older; his thin hair had faded to frontal baldness,
and his long, thin hands dropped less with affectation
and more with fatigue. And he told the story of the
Irish adventure of his youth, because it recorded the
first occasion on which he had ever come in contact
with crime, or discovered how darkly and how terribly
crime can be entangled with law.
"Hooker Wilson was the first criminal I ever
knew, and he was a policeman," explained Fisher,
twirling his wine glass. "And all my life has been a
mixed-up business of the sort. He was a man of very
real talent, and perhaps genius, and well worth
studying, both as a detective and a criminal. His
white face and red hair were typical of him, for he
was one of those who are cold and yet on fire for
fame; and he could control anger, but not ambition.
He swallowed the snubs of his superiors in that first
quarrel, though he boiled with resentment; but when
he suddenly saw the two heads dark against the
dawn and framed in the two windows, he could not
miss the chance, not only of revenge, but of the
removal of the two obstacles to his promotion. He
was a dead shot and counted on silencing both,
though proof against him would have been hard in
any case. But, as a matter of fact, he had a narrow
escape, in the case of Nolan, who lived just long
enough to say, 'Wilson' and point. We thought he was
summoning help for his comrade, but he was really
denouncing his murderer. After that it was easy to
throw down the ladder above him (for a man up a
ladder cannot see clearly what is below and behind)
and to throw himself on the ground as another victim
of the catastrophe.
"But there was mixed up with his murderous
ambition a real belief, not only in his own talents, but
in his own theories. He did believe in what he called a
fresh eye, and he did want scope for fresh methods.
There was something in his view, but it failed where [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]