# The Bartenstein Case/Chapter 14

CHAPTER IV
THE ARTIFICIAL EYE
Millicent went through this part of the performance with due gravity, and in handing back the bag, took a steady look at the woman beside her. But she could see nothing—her companion was so well veiled that nothing of her features was visible; all that could be definitely said was that there was a countenance behind that veiling. As for her figure, it appeared to be that of a middle-aged woman; as for other observable things, Millicent concluded the unknown, from her dress and her voice, to be of the better sort of domestic class.
"You asked me to come here," she said quietly.
"Yes, miss, and frightened I am about it," answered the woman. "I shall be glad to say what I have to say and get away."
"Why are you frightened?" asked Millicent.
"I wonder who wouldn't be, miss!" said the woman. "There's been enough to destroy anyone's nerves."
"Do you mean as regards Mr. Bart———"
​The woman uttered a warning sound.
"Hush, miss, if you please!" she said. "While we're here don't mention no names—we can make ourselves understood without that."
"Be as little mysterious as you can," said Millicent. "You say you will be glad to leave here—then tell me what you have to say as concisely as possible, so that we may both go."
The veiled woman sighed.
"Why, miss," she said, "I'm no great scholar, and perhaps I can't put things as plain as you could, nor as short. And I want to say, miss, straight out, that what I'm here for is to try and save your young gentleman, because many a long year ago his mother saved me. Don't ask me for any names, miss—neither him nor you would know mine, and it isn't necessary—but I've a great debt of gratitude to pay to his family, and now perhaps I can pay it. Because I know, miss, that no child of the lady I'm speaking of could be evil enough to murder anybody; and more than that, I know there was somebody in the dead man's study a good hour after your young gentleman had gone away, if he went when the papers say he did."
Millicent felt a great leaping of the heart. What was she going to hear?
"Please tell me what you know!" she said.
"Well, miss," said the woman, "I'll tell you what I know, but it's on one condition. I shan't tell my name, nor where I live, and you mustn't ​ask me to tell how I know what I do know. You're at liberty to tell the police or anybody else what I tell you, but I shall tell no more. If you ask me how I know the truth of what I'm going to tell, I shan't, because I can't answer—my tongue's tied on that particular. But I assure you of the truth, and if the police have anything. about them, they can work the rest out for themselves."
Millicent considered this somewhat strange and unsatisfactory statement.
"But unless you can prove in the proper way the truth of what you tell me," she said, "how will it benefit Mr———"
"Hush, miss—no names! I'm frightened of the very trees," said the woman. "I tell you I can't and won't tell more! I believe that what I can tell you will put the police on the right track—that must be sufficient."
Millicent sighed.
"It might mean the loss of his—life!" she said. "Just think of that, if you, as you say, owe something to his mother."
"I can't do more," answered the woman stubbornly. "I can give a clue, and the police must follow it up."
"Very well—let me hear," said Millicent.
"Well, miss, then you'll understand that what I tell you is not from gossip or hearsay, but from first hand," said the woman. "When I say such a thing is, you'll understand that it is so of my own knowledge. Well, miss, in the dead man's ​house, whether you know it or no, there's a suite of three rooms that he used as a sort of office, for he did business there as well as in the City. There's a waiting-room, a secretary's room, and his study. In that study there's a staircase that leads to the garden below—it's built in a turret."
"All that," said Millicent a little impatiently, "was described in the papers."
"Quite so, miss," agreed the woman. "Now, the door at the foot of that turret opens into a rose porch, and from that there's a sort of verandah covered with roses runs round the garden to a private entrance near the gardener's house. I think you'll understand me, miss," continued the woman, with meaning, "when I say, without going into further details, that there are one or two places from which, if anyone happens to be looking into the garden, any person leaving the turret by the verandah would be seen."
"I see—I see!" exclaimed Millicent.
"On the night that the affair happened, somebody—never mind names, miss—did happen to be looking," continued the woman. "That somebody saw a figure leave the turret door, go along the verandah, and pass out at the private entrance. But it was too dark to tell for certain whether it was the figure of a man or a woman."
"Or to recognize a face?" asked Millicent.
"Or to recognize a face, miss," answered her ​companion. "Now, that was at exactly ten minutes past one o'clock—an hour after your young gentleman had gone."
Millicent, in spite of her caution, turned to the woman appealingly.
"Oh," she said, "I'm sure it was you who saw all this! Why can't you speak? If it's a question of money———"
"Hush, miss—it's no question of money!" replied the woman, almost defiantly. "I can't, won't, shan't, say more—not if wild horses were set to drag it out of me. The police may do the rest. And I have a clue for them."
"A clue!" exclaimed Millicent. "A sufficient one?"
"I've no doubt that less has sufficed, miss," answered the woman. "Listen—the somebody I've spoken of had occasion to go into that garden early in the morning—to tell the truth, it was to get some roses for a sick woman's fancy, miss—and the somebody found—something."
"Found—what?" asked Millicent, wondering what she was to hear or see.
The veiled woman glanced about her suspiciously. Nobody appeared to be taking any notice either of her or of Miss Oxenham. Inspector Dwayne's commissioners were in deeper and apparently more lover-like conference than ever; a park-keeper was pointing out various features of the landscape to an old gentleman ​whom Millicent, although she had looked a good deal at him, had not recognized as the enterprising Mr. Tyndale; the numerous children were running about amongst the benches. With a hasty movement she opened her handbag and took something out of it which she placed on her lap, keeping the handbag in front of it.
"This, miss," she said.
Millicent, for all her resolute endeavours to keep full control over herself, could not repress a slight start and an exclamation of horror, when she looked down at the object lying on a piece of tissue paper on the woman's lap. It seemed to her that she was gazing at a human eye!
"Hush, miss, hush!" said the woman. "It's not real—it's artificial. Listen, miss: when the—the somebody saw the figure leave the turret door, that somebody noticed that just after doing so, it suddenly stopped and began to search about the ground. But not for long—it soon passed on and disappeared. Where it had stopped was where the somebody next morning found—this. And if the police find the person—man or woman, for you couldn't tell in the gloom which it was—the person, I say, who dropped this, you'll find the true murderer."
Millicent almost groaned with despair.
"Oh!" she said. "How can you think it possible that the police could track anybody by ​that? Amongst all these millions! You must think the police are superhuman."
"Well, miss, my poor father was a detective himself, and he certainly thinks he was," said the woman drily. "I've heard of criminals being traced by a less clue than this, as I said before. You hand this to the man you know at the Yard—I saw you speaking to him this morning—and tell him what you've heard from me, and I'll warrant you he'll make something out of it—trust me! I know some of their ways."
"But it is all so vague, so enigmatic!" said Millicent. "If you would only tell me your name, your address———"
"I shall tell you neither, miss," said the woman resolutely. "Once more, I tell you, no! No—not if you were to offer me a fortune. If it were known in certain quarters that I had been mixed up—at least, not that, but if certain things came out which would come out by my name appearing, I should never know a moment's peace in my life again. In fact, I might as well go and throw myself into the canal down there in the Park at once. Take this thing, miss, and do as I tell you."
She deftly slipped the artificial eye, once more wrapped up in tissue paper, into Millicent's hand, at the same time looking carefully around to see that they were not observed. Millicent took it with repugnance.
"And supposing that all this is of no good?" ​she said, as a last entreaty. "Supposing the police cannot trace the person who lost this—if it really was that person, which is mere supposition on your part—do you mean that, knowing what you could say (for I am sure you are the eye-witness you have spoken of as 'somebody'), that you really will not come forward?"
The woman showed some sign of impatience.
"I have told you," she said, "that I cannot, will not, shall not, say more. Let the police try on what I have told you—keep up some hope till they have tried. You don't know their methods—I do. And"—here she lowered her voice still more—"Dwayne's a sharp fellow, miss, and he's on your side."
Then, without another word, she made a jerk of the head, and rising, walked away. And the little old gentleman, who had been lounging about talking to the children, seeing that she went off in the direction of the Albert Road entrance, moved across the hill-side at an angle which would bring him into the path she had chosen lower down the Park.
Millicent, following out her instruction, showed no recognition of the two guardians whom Inspector Dwayne had sent for her protection. She sat for a little time and then left the hill. Once she saw the veiled woman look around, and Millicent turned away in the other direction. She had given her informant her promise that she would not attempt to follow her, and she did ​not wish her to think that she did not mean to keep it. And so in a few minutes these two who had met under such strange circumstances had drifted apart again.
But the little old gentleman in the old-fashioned clothes and hat kept within touch of the woman until they both came to the entrance in the Albert Road. There she turned to the right, going towards St. John's Wood; he turned to the left, towards the York and Albany. And about fifty yards farther on he came up to a quiet-looking brougham, on the box of which sat a grave-faced coachman, while by the door stood an irreproachable serving-man who was Mr. Tyndale's valet.
"Everything laid out, Fewster?" inquired Mr. Tyndale.
"Everything, sir, is in complete readiness," replied the valet.
"Then get on the box and tell Kelly to drive slowly after that woman ahead of us in black," commanded Mr. Tyndale. "There are no buses along here, so she can't get away before Saint John's Wood Station, unless she gets into a cab. If she does, follow it. Don't pass her, and if she's still walking when you get to the High Street by the church, turn into that for a minute while I slip out."
Then Mr. Tyndale got into the brougham, drew down the blinds and began to tear off his garments with feverish rapidity. Ten minutes later he slipped out again attired in a plain ​tweed suit, a cloth cap, minus his wig and wrinkles, and a minute afterwards, in something of the semblance of his real self, he followed the veiled woman into the Metropolitan railway station.