Was He the Man?

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10226, 1 May 1911, Page 2

Was He the Man?

OUR SERIAL.

BY F. L. DACRE, ■■ O Atlthor of "A Phantom of the Past," "Tronholme's Trust," "The Doctor's Secret," "A loveless Marriage," "Sir John's Heiress," etc.

CHAPTER XXTtl.—Continued. "Well,'" said Fenton, when wo were once more seated, "the last act of our tragedy will soon be played out, and played in the Roquette prison, too, as I said it would bo four months ago. And now, friend Gray, you will be j free to honorably woo and win la belle Kathleen for yourself. Indeed, you are a lucky man if you do." Fenton's words, light banter though they were, sent a thrill of joy throupb my'voina, that I had now no reason to be ashamed of. The clouds of doubt were dissipated, Denver's memory was cleared of tho fearful suspicion that had fallen on it, and I was free to woo the woman I so deeply loved. My promise to my dead friend would have been fulfilled in fact, if not in detail, for, despite my still inexplicable change of conviction as to -Denver's identity he would yet be brought to justice mainly through my instrumentality.

There is no; need to recount at any great length the events of the next month. Fitzgerald was brought to trial in Paris within a fortnight of his arrest. As the detail* of the extraordinary story of his marvellous resemblance to Major Denver, and the terrible complications to which it had given rise were emphasised, with all the dramatic effect of a French trial for murder, the case excited an immenso amount of interest on both sides of the Channel. I expected to be called either for or against him, but, to my intense relief, I was not. The prosecution depended on three lines of evidence —anthropometry, which proved' that the prisoner was r, the same man who had been measured | five years before in the prison of St. j Lazare, and was, therefor*?, Fitzger-J aid. This was established by a per- 5 feet chain of circumstantial evidence, forged with wonderful skill by Gaston Morel, and connecting the turf sharper with the murderer of Jules Michel and Mr Moore; and on the testimony of the warder at St. Lazare, and the sentinel of the turret, which again proved, without possibility of doubt, that the prisoner of St. Lazare and! the man on trial were one and the I same person; I

My dread that Kathleen would be called as a .witness and subjected to the horrors of tho French witness stand were speedily dissipated by the welcome news that her aunt had taken her to Egypt.

CHAPTER XXIV. AT THE GUILLOTINE. A month had passed since the examination of Fitzgerald, at Bow Street, had been brought to such an abrupt conclusion by his flight. My health, which had suffered considerably from the anxiety and mental strain induced by the strange experiences through which I had passed since Denver's death, had completely given way. I consulted a medical friend, and he prescribed the usual, and indeed, the only effective —remedy for overstrained nerves—complete change of scene, and, if possible, a sea voyage. . The arrangement of my affairs, and the probate of Denver's will—for now i there was no reason why I should not take possession off his property—detained me in London for nearly three weeks. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's trial had begun and ended, and he was lying under sentence of death by : the time I'''was. able' to leave England. I was not long in resolving that the I object of my travels should be the discovery of my future fate in life. I , would go up the Nile in search of | Kathleen and her aunt, and I wo i!d either bring her back as my proun'se'3 wife, or I woUjld not return to England for many a long year of wandering over seas and distant 1 1 w? But I was not even yet free. The mysterious influence which had compelled me solemnly to swear that Denver's murderer was Denver himself, and had yet, by some strange freak of the occult power which swayed me, enabled mo to supply two essential links in the chain of evidence which had convicted him, was still upon me.. In my state of extreme nervous depression! had no strength'of will to combat it, and I felt myself/..being dragged, as it were,"by an~~invisible hand, towards France. Unutterably horrible though. I knew the -spectacle would be to me, yet I felt that when the last act was played of the tragedy, I should be a- spectator in it.

And so it proved to be. The very eagerness to seek Kathleen on the banks of the Nile helped the power that was drawing m toward the scene of justice and vengeance. The shortest way to Egypt lay across France, and that way I took. But pass Paris I could not. A paper I bought at Calais informed me that Fitzgerald would, on the following morning, pay the penalty of the two murders of which he had been convicted by earthly justice, and of that other murder whose only witness was the eye of Heaven. I had passed a miserable, restless night of broken sleep and horrible dreams, in which Denver and' his double kept exchanging their personalities from time to lime, until I got up and dressed ,to wait for the dawn rather than tempt such treacherous plumber, any. longer. As soon as the day broke L went out, and, {yielding at last to- the influence, bent my steps towards the Paris field of blood. I took up a position as close to the ghastly machine as the barri'-.-s would permit me. The trial having made such a sensation, the execution brought a vast number of spectators to the scene. For nearly two hours I stood ly i the barrier, in a sort of shivering stupor, listening to the hideous :"<ea and pleasantries that were being bandied about from lip to lip. At last a momentary hush id! upon the crowd, and a black-bearded ouvrier, standing near me, took his short, black pipe from his lip?, ati«l. nodding toward the prison gates, pxclaimed, "Ha! Look there! Th«play begins!" I looked up, and saw the groat gates slowly swing back. Then I heard the rumble of wheels, and a cart drove slowly out, and pro?ee Led , toward the scaffold. In it were the executioner and his assistant, the ■ priest, and Denver's double. Even as he sat there, his li.'inds pinioned behind him, his face wluu-' and haggard, and his hair and bwd clipped close to the skin, the murderer's hideous resemblance to my i dearest friend, the man who had : : .cd by his blood-stained hands, appaded me as I stood.gazing at him, my ryes fixed,by some horrible fascination -n hie face. When the cart stopped by the scaffold, he looked up, and glanced nquiringly over the crowd 'at the bar-' riers. At last he found the fa-:e he was lolling for, and his eyes m 4 rm'n-f Do what I would, I could i>ot i<&(le h'» gp.ze. Evidently he had expected me to be there, for when our glances r.tet h»> drew himself, up <<ni ho'jv<«] itward where,l stood. E t'ouß eviin see his . grey lips form thorns Ives into a smile that sent a t'liill «:f horror through my nerves. Even then, at that .fist r&onvjnt-, &vA despite the overwh-i»Mii;ij [ u-.i that had convinced mo that ho w<;k not the man he so fatally resembled, I believe that \ would bare saved him, if I could, so strong was the ' influence that he still wis! 1-..t1 cvr-r me. I noticed that the doom-Hi man injected the kindly offices of ih* i-riat-His end was to fulfill the promise of his life. The executioner' s .i.>us--tant quickly pinioned his legs, and then, for a moment, Fitzgerald sio.-ti for the last time erect on eart.ii. The scoundrel was determined U, die, game. He drew himself up to !vs full height, and looked over the crowd—his last look on earthly things and the faces of his fellow men. Last of all, he looked at me, and smiled, and bowed again. . I Shall joemember that glance upon my deathbed. For a moment all grew dark about me. I heard the pent-up murmurs of the crowd swelling into a roar that sounded far away from me. Then my sight cleared and consciousness returned at the call of the instinct that bade me save myself from being trodden under foot by the now moving throng. .. But what a change had come over | me in that moment of brief unconsciousness-! 1 was not the same man who had stood only a few minutes before, shivering'at the barrier. Whatever the accursed influence had been that had brought me to this place, and had forced me to | watch the doing to death of another being, it had gone now. The falling knife severed the spell ■for ever, and, I was once more a free man. V .•- ■..#;■ ' ; • '■.?' ■'. ' ' , While I walked briskly toward>my hotel, the ghastly scene that I had just ■ witnessed, seemed to recede from me with every step 1 took. It was as though it had been a nightmare vision, rather than the terrible reality it was." (To he Continuedv