# The Bartenstein Case/Chapter 24

CHAPTER IV
FOR VENGEANCE
There were rumours all that morning in police and newspaper circles that something extraordinary was about to happen in connection with the Bartenstein case, and there were further hints that the muder at the Hotel Venezia was not wholly unconnected with it. These rumours and hints assumed all manner of shapes and took upon themselves many varieties of colour: the presumed murderer, Lieutenant Lauderdale, was absolutely innocent; the real murderer had been found; the object was the theft of a quantity of diamonds which had been discovered in the criminal's possession; the criminal had been killed in a motor-car catastrophe; no, he had been murdered by an accomplice. So went the rumours, heightened and improved upon for the most part, and the evening newspapers had fine sales long before afternoon was reached.
But definite news flew over London when, a little after twelve o'clock, in pursuance of an arrangement hastily arrived at amongst the authorities, Lieutenant Lauderdale was brought ​up to Bow Street and placed in the dock, only to hear the Solicitor for the Treasury, who had been deputed to prosecute him, announce to the sitting magistrate that, in consequence of information now in the hands of the police, and more especially because of an event which was about to take place, he had to announce that no evidence would be offered against the accused, to whose immediate discharge no opposition was now made. Whereupon Lieutenant Lauderdale—greatly to his own surprise and to that of his solicitor and his friends, all of whom, with the possible exception of his fiancée and her clever cousin, Mr. Ronald Tyndale, were quite in the dark—was released, and hastened to take a seat between Miss Oxenham and Mr. Tyndale, and to become a spectator, of instead of principal actor in, this drama.
That there were possibilities in the succeeding stages, much more prolific of thrills and sensations than those which had gone before, was apparent from the time the curtain went up on the substituted final act. There suddenly appeared in the dock as strange a figure as had ever stepped into it—the figure of a very old, trembling, almost doddering, old man, who gripped the rails, as if unable to keep erect without their aid, and who stared about him from his one eye as if he scarcely comprehended his whereabouts. He was unshaven and unwashed, his clothes hung upon. him as old garments hang on a scarecrow; his silvery hair, dirty and matted, toothless mouth ​and lank jaws, made him an object pitiable to look upon. He was so old, so obviously weak, that the people who stared at him could not bring themselves to believe that so poor and ancient a creature could ever have found the strength to strike a strong man down, as Marcus Bartenstein had surely been stricken down, at one blow.
This old man, who duly answered in a quavering voice to the name of Anthony Berridge, was charged with Marcus Bartenstein's murder. He pleaded "Not guilty", with a slightly stronger voice, in which there was some trace of indignation, and he accompanied the answer with a decided smack of his claw-like hands upon the rail of the dock, and a shake of his head that signified a warm dissent from any such suggestion. After which, at the magistrate's behest, this strange-looking mortal sat down and, supporting his head in his hands, rocked himself to and fro, whether in grief or rage nobody could decide.
There was no evidence put forward on that occasion but that of Inspector Dwayne, who was merely called to prove the arrest of the prisoner, and who said that, from information received, he went that morning to a house in Turntable Alley, off Fleet Street, which was supposed to be empty, but was in reality used as to the upper part of it by the accused, whose property it was. He there found Berridge a prisoner, this being consequent upon another affair in which he had been ​engaged. Having released him, he arrested him on the present charge and warned him.
He showed some surprise, and answered, though warned again, as he was just then very excited and weak because of his recent treatment, "I know Marcus Bartenstein was murdered, and I saw his body a few minutes after the murder, but I didn't do it, though whoever did it only gave him what he richly deserved." Upon searching the accused after arrest, two keys were discovered upon him which had since been found to fit, one, the garden door; the other, the turret entrance door at Mr. Bartenstein's house in Princes Gate; and there was proof, quite apart from the prisoner's own confession, that he left the house by these entrances between half past twelve and one o'clock on the morning of the murder.
And so Anthony Berridge was remanded in due form, and the people who had stared open-mouthed at him, and the artists who had sketched him, and the journalists who had scribbled furiously about him, thinking what splendid copy he made and was going to make, surged out to spread and discuss the news, and to couple it somehow, vaguely, indefinitely, but somehow, with the event of the previous evening in Golden Square, all agreeing that the truth was by no means told in its entirety yet. As for Berridge himself, he was taken to a comfortable waiting-room until he could be removed to Brixton, and he had no sooner been installed in it than he asked for Inspector Dwayne.
​The Inspector, on reaching London from "The Jolly Woodman", had sent a messenger to Dermiston Road, for the accused man's daughter, and she had arrived at Bow Street in time to hear her father charged and remanded. She was conversing with Inspector Dwayne when Berridge's message reached him, and at the detective's request she accompanied him to the waiting-room, where the old man was being detained. They had allowed him to wash and brush himself, and had given him some refreshment, and he now looked much better and more in possession of himself than he had appeared in court. But at the sight of his daughter he scowled and seemed angry.
"What do you come here for?" he demanded surlily. "I did not send for you. I sent for Mr. Dwayne, there. You had best go home. Go home and have things in readiness for me—I shall be home in an hour or two."
"You know you can't go home, Berridge," said Inspector Dwayne. "I sent for your daughter. Be reasonable and polite to her."
The old man rubbed and wrung his claw-like hands; his one eye gleamed maliciously.
"I must go home!" he said. "I've got things to do at home—things that nobody else can do. I can find bail—oh, to any amount. Ten thousand pounds myself, if need be—I'm a warm man, Mr. Dwayne, poor as I look. And I've friends, plenty of them, who'd stand in five ​thousand apiece—warm men, all of them. I must go home and attend to my affairs."
"It's out of the question, Berridge," said the Inspector. "A man of your experience ought to know that quite well. If you've anything to tell your daughter, tell her now."
"I haven't anything to tell her!" the old man almost screamed. "I wanted to talk to you; you're a man. I didn't do it, Dwayne; I tell you once more I did not do it!"
"Never mind that now," said Inspector Dwayne soothingly. "What's the use? And you know I'm bound to make use of anything you say."
"I know you are—I know you are!" said Berridge, almost choking in his vehemence. "I want you to make use of it, because, although I'd have killed and tortured Bartenstein, if I'd known nobody could have found it out, it wasn't I who killed the scoundrel. I wish I had killed him—I wish I'd been able to cut his black heart into little pieces, and to have thrown 'em one by one to his own pet dog! I'll tell you all about it, and my daughter there can listen, and then perhaps she'll understand a few things."
"If you wish to make a statement———" began the Inspector.
"Get inks, pens, paper, anything you like!" snapped the old man impatiently. "But listen to what I've got to say. I'll tell you all about it—I mean, all I know—I want to. Because I've nothing to keep back, d'ye see, eh? Let's ​begin with—where shall we begin?" he added, tapping his forehead. Miss Berridge laid a hand on the old man's arm.
"Father!" she said. "Is it necessary———"
Berridge shook her off fiercely.
"Go home, I tell you, if you can't keep quiet!" he shouted. "Don't mind her, Mr. Dwayne—I insist on saying what I have to say. Go away!"
"Best humour him, Miss Berridge," said the Inspector, in an aside. "Let him talk. I'll use my own judgment afterwards."
"We'll begin with Marcus Bartenstein," said Berridge, who was moving restlessly about the room with his old-man shuffle. "It's about seven years since I first met Bartenstein—it was just after he came back from South Africa with his pile. He began to collect, and so he got to know me—I sold him many of his most valuable possessions. And found others for him. I made a lot of money out of Bartenstein. Let me take snuff."
He produced an old-fashioned silver snuff-box from his pocket, and after offering it to the Inspector took a hearty pinch.
"Bartenstein had a great faith in my judgment," he continued; "so much so, that he depended almost implicitly upon it. And when he built his mansion at Princes Gate, he gave me keys for the private entrance. I used to visit him a good deal at night, letting myself in and out. And certainly I was there on the night he ​was murdered, and I'll tell you all about that—but first of all I'll tell you about that sword-stick."
He took another pinch of snuff, and, after staring reflectively at his silver box, resumed.
"I am not clear about that sword-stick, Mr. Dwayne," he said. "From what has happened—I refer to my treatment at the hands of those scoundrels!—there seems to have been some conspiracy about it. All I know is, that I bought it from Abrahams, and accidentally discovered the diamonds hidden in it. Of course I took them out. I estimate their value at quite £30,000, and I claim that they are mine. We shall see what the law says, since you tell me you have recovered them. Then I sold the stick to Bartenstein. Yes—but it was not because I sold him the stick that I went to his house on the midnight of his murder. Not at all—a quite different cause, Mr. Dwayne."
He walked once or twice round the room, taking frequent pinches of snuff, and uttering strange sounds. Inspector Dwayne saw that he was greatly excited, and motioned to Miss Berridge to make no interruption.
"The real reason was this," continued the old man, stopping in front of Dwayne and shaking his forefinger in passionate anger. "I had a daughter who was as the apple of my eye—a beautiful girl, with whom a king might have been proud to mate. This other daughter of mine can assure you that upon that child I doted​—I worshipped her. She had all that heart could desire—all! And suddenly, one day three years ago, she disappeared—left me, her father, without a word, a line! It drove me mad—perhaps I am a little mad, just a little."
He was silent for a while, then shook his finger again, and burst out once more.
"But only a little! I sought her all over—I advertised—yet I heard nothing. Nothing at all, until the day that that devil, that wolf, that scoundrel was murdered. That day I happened to be in Bond Street—I saw him come out of some shop or other with her! They saw me—they ignored me—she, my flesh and blood! They refused to know me—they drove away. Then I comprehended, and went more mad than ever, but not quite. I saw now who had robbed me of my ewe-lamb. Once or twice he had come to my house and had seen and coveted her."
"Father—father!" said Miss Berridge, seeing the old man almost inarticulate with rage. "Say no more, Father! We understand."
"Hands off!" cried Berridge. "I tell you I will speak! I went that night to his house to get at the truth—to choke it out of him if need be, for I had the strength of many men. I let myself in—I went up the stairs—I gained his room. The light was full on—he was lying there dead—stretched across the hearth-rug, stabbed—dead! I saw his blood. Before I could have my revenge—mine! Ah, if I could only have tortured him before he died!"
​Then he sank down on a chair, groaning and sobbing, and Inspector Dwayne, leaving his daughter to attend to him, went out. He was more certain than ever now that the old man had killed Bartenstein in a fit of vengeance, and had partly lost his reason.