Kitabı oku: «True Tales of the Weird», sayfa 4
CHAPTER III
THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE
Prominent among the many commonplaces current among men is the one that "truth is stranger than fiction," and the other that Life, in building up her dreams, employs "situations" which the boldest playwright would hesitate to present upon the stage. Yet the lines that Life lays down for her productions are, in the main, closely followed by those who are ranked as among the world's greatest dramatists. She, like them, leads up to a climax by a mass of incidents that may severally be trivial, but combine together with tremendous weight; she follows farce with tragedy, and lightens tragedy with comedy; she brings her heroes in touch with clowns, her lovers with old women and comic countrymen – and in the complexities of her plots mingles them together so bewilderingly that the wonder and interest of the audience are kept vigorously alive until the curtain's fall.
So in this sordid Windsor tragedy she introduces between the first and third acts a second, where the tension is relaxed and the milder interest of Romance appears.
It was not the purpose of the murderer to remain near the scene, or even in the country, of his crime: – he was a shrewd as well as merciless villain, and he turned his face towards Sydney, evidently with the intention of taking a steamer then about to sail for San Francisco, and sinking his identity in the vast areas and amid the swarming millions of the United States.
Nemesis accompanied him, but in the disguise of Cupid. On the coastwise steamer by which he traveled to Sydney was a young woman by the name of Rounsfell, who was returning to her home in the interior of New South Wales from a visit to her brother near the border-line between Victoria and South Australia. She was about eighteen years of age, and from an interview I later had with her I estimated her as an attractive and modest girl, not strikingly intellectual, but of kindly disposition and affectionate nature. To her the fugitive, introducing himself by his latest-assumed name, paid regardful court, and relieved the tedium of the voyage by devoted attentions; and when the boat arrived at Sydney, where she was to remain a few days, he escorted her to one hotel and saw to her satisfactory accommodation, while he himself, with admirable delicacy, took up quarters at another. During her stay he continued his attentions with equal respect and assiduity; his attitude, as she told me afterward, was more like that of an elder brother than a lover – this attitude being confirmed by judicious advice and counsel, and even by moral admonition: – as when he gently chided her for her confessed fondness for dancing, sagely implying that he regarded this form of amusement as one of the most insidious wiles of the Adversary.
It was at Coogee, on the shores of the beautiful harbor of Sydney, that this chaste and improving courtship culminated in his asking her to marry him. He was a man of wealth, he told her, a mining engineer by profession, and with several lucrative positions in Australia at the moment waiting upon his selection. To these practical considerations he added the plea of his devotion. He had "lately lost his wife" (delicate euphemism!) he said, and stirred her sympathies by eloquent and tearful descriptions of the lonely and unsatisfactory life he led in consequence of this bereavement – the hollowness of which life he felt more acutely than ever now that she had crossed his path. She was, as I have said, a tender-hearted girl, and what more natural than that she should willingly incline her ear to words which every woman loves to hear? – the more so when they were uttered by a man whose history indicates him to have inherited all the persuasiveness of the original Serpent in dealings with the sex, and who, as my interview with him in the condemned cell caused me to remark, possessed one of the sweetest and most sympathetic voices I ever heard in human throat.
It would be no discredit to Miss Rounsfell if she had accepted him then and there; but it speaks well for her prudence and self-command that she asked for delay in giving her answer until she could lay the matter before her parents. To this he promptly assented, adding the suggestion that he should accompany her to her home, and give her friends an opportunity to become acquainted with him. This plan was carried out, and the successful conquest of the daughter was completed by the capitulation of the family; the engagement was formally announced, and the joyful contract sealed by the installation upon the hand of the fiancée of the costly diamond ring so lately worn by the woman whose mutilated body was at the moment mouldering under the hearth-stone at Windsor.
The ecstasy of the betrothal inspired a consideration of ways and means to hasten the wedding. The ardent lover pleaded for the celebration of the nuptials without further ado; but his more prudent mistress urged the possession of a home, and definite employment as surety of maintaining it. This point conceded, the question arose as to what particular section of the Colonies seemed to offer the most attractive opportunities. The bride-elect objected to New South Wales as being too near home (she had always been a home-body, and wished to see the world); Victoria, also, was not to her taste for some other feminine but conclusive reason; Western Australia had just begun to come into notice as likely to become one of the world's greatest gold-producers – there, it seemed to her, was the land of promise for a young and experienced mining-engineer.
This opinion prevailed, and the fugitive, abandoning any idea he may have had of escaping to America, set out for the new El Dorado; and in a few weeks his fiancée was cheered by a letter giving news of his arrival at Southern Cross – a mining-camp some hundred and fifty miles in the interior – where he had secured the post of manager for a company which owned a rich deposit, and where he was already preparing for her coming. Thus some weeks passed, until another letter came informing her that a house had been secured and fitted up for her, and enclosing sufficient funds for her journey. She replied, fixing the date of her departure from Sydney, and on the day appointed took train for Melbourne, intending to continue thence to Albany by sea.
Arriving at Melbourne the following morning – where by chance she took a room in the same "Coffee Palace" to which her prospective bridegroom had resorted upon his arrival from England – she despatched a note to a young man who was a long-time friend of her family, and when he called in the evening went out with him for a stroll through the city. As they passed the office of The Age newspaper on Collins street, they saw an excited crowd surrounding the bulletin-board, and crossed the roadway to read the announcement that it bore. As her eyes rested upon it, Miss Rounsfell gave a piercing shriek, and fell senseless upon the ground.
The announcement upon the board was this:
"BARON SWANSTON, THE WINDSOR MURDERER, ARRESTED AT SOUTHERN CROSS."
Taken to her hotel and revived with difficulty, she told her sensational story, with which the newspapers of the whole country were filled next day; then, broken and trembling, she returned to her home, there to remain until summoned again to Melbourne to give her testimony at the trial which took place a month later.
Most strangely had it happened that by her unwitting influence the criminal career of Frederick Bailey Deeming had been brought to an end. Had she consented to live, after her anticipated marriage, in New South Wales or Victoria, he might never have been apprehended. In these two colonies – except for the seeming impossibility of the murdered body being discovered – he might have come and gone without suspicion; his only peril being the almost negligible one that some associate of his voyage from England, or one of the very few persons in Melbourne who had seen him with his former wife, might encounter him and inquire as to his changed name and partner: – but the extrication of himself from such an entanglement would have been merely a stimulating mental exercise to Deeming, whose record, as searched after his latest crime was known and the hue-and-cry was on his trail, shows him to have been a most accomplished swindler, and a man of singular address in all forms of deceit.
In these comparatively populous sections, too, the free and wide circulation of newspapers would have brought immediate warning, by announcement of the discovery of the Windsor murder, of the danger he was in, and thus have aided his escape; for it was not until several days after the body was found that its identity was revealed, and many more before any clue was found to Deeming's whereabouts. With railways extending to ports in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, his opportunities for quitting the country quickly and secretly were numerous; and once away before the search for him had even been started, the chance of capturing him would have been poor indeed.
In Western Australia, whither Miss Rounsfell had been innocently instrumental in sending him, the situation was entirely different. No railways connect the colony with the others, and ingress and egress are alike possible only by sea. Moreover, being the latest of the Colonies in which the old English system of penal-transportation was abolished, and still harboring many of the former subjects of that régime, Western Australia at this time maintained through its police a close system of espionage over all who arrived or departed by the few seaports of the district. Thus did the murderer walk into a cul-de-sac; and when the pursuit (by an extraordinarily sagacious piece of deductive work on the part of the Melbourne detectives, which it would interfere with the purpose of this narrative to describe) reached Albany, the officers, armed with warrants for his arrest and learning from the local police records that a man such as they described had "gone up country" and had not returned, had only to endure the tedious desert journey to Frazer's gold-mines at Southern Cross, and apprehend him in the very house he had prepared for his awaited bride.
CHAPTER IV
THE EXPIATION
Run to earth, and captured like a rabbit at the end of its burrow, the murderer was brought to Albany, and shipped to Melbourne by the liner "Ballaarat." As a relief from the general lack of events of interest that marked his return progress, it may be noted that the train on which he traveled from Freemantle to Albany, was stormed at York by an indignant populace, who voiced the sentiment universally pervading all the Colonies against his atrocities by a determined effort to visit a rude, if original, form of justice upon him by tearing him to pieces between two bullock-teams, and were dissuaded with difficulty from this intention by a display of revolvers by his guards. His feelings were outraged also on the steamer, where he expressed himself as much distressed by the light and profane conversation of certain unregenerate marines who were on their way to the Australian station, and strongly rebuked them therefor: – thus illustrating anew the strange contradiction in his nature which was before shown in his reproach of Miss Rounsfell's fondness for dancing. In fact, all who at various times came in contact with him – including and ending with his guardians in the Melbourne jail – remarked upon his scrupulousness of language and nicety of conduct.
I have gone thus at some length into a description of this monster and his crimes for two reasons: – in the first place because it seemed essential to show the causes of the repulsion and horror which his very name inspired, and thus to place the reader in a position to appreciate the effect upon the popular mind of later incidents which I am about to record; and, in the second place, because the close study which I was able to give alike to the man and his deeds convinced me that his case was one possessing far more interest for the psychologist than even the criminologist.
The ingenious Sir William S. Gilbert, in the song of the sentimental police sergeant in "The Pirates of Penzance," wherein it is recited that voiced a truth which has been marked in the cases of many malefactors. It has been observed of Deeming that, in the intervals of swindling, lying and homicide by which his career is chiefly remembered, he bristled like a copybook with virtuous and noble sentiments – nor is his sincerity to be doubted in their utterance. It is unquestionable that he was a man of singular address and subtlety – not only among men skilled in business affairs and experienced in reading character. He was a clever mechanic, and able to adapt himself quickly and efficiently to any occupation: – as is shown by the fact that although there is nothing in his history to indicate that he had had any previous experience in mine-management, he more than fulfilled all the requirements laid upon him at Southern Cross, increased the output of gold by ingenious inventions, and was esteemed by the company as the most capable manager it had ever had. He had a marked, if imperfectly developed, fondness for music and literature, and although his conversation included many grammatical solecisms, it was effective and often eloquent. His taste in dress, although rather flamboyant in the matter of jewelry, of which he always wore a profusion, was noticeably correct – the frock-coat, light trousers and perfectly-fitting patent-leather shoes which he wore at his trial were evidently from the hands of the best London outfitters, and would have graced (as they doubtless had done) the fashionable afternoon parade which is a feature of Melbourne's Collins Street.
"When the enterprizing burglar isn't burgling,
When the cutthroat isn't occupied with crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,
And listens to the merry village chime" —
The anomaly that is suggested by these established facts regarding him is of minor interest, however, in comparison with more striking contradictions that were remarked after his capture. It was my fortune to have a place near him at the inquest which resulted in his commitment for trial, as well as at the trial itself that duly followed. Popular feeling against him was so intense and violent that the authorities did not dare to land him at the steamboat pier, but smuggled him aboard a tug when the "Ballaarat" entered the harbor, and brought him ashore at the suburb of St. Kilda, whence he was hurried in a closed cab to the Melbourne jail. Brought into the court where the inquest was held, his appearance was so brutal and revolting that a murmur of horror and disgust arose at his entrance which the judge and officers with difficulty quelled.
There was in his deeply-lined and saturnine face no indication of an understanding of his position. His lips were drawn in a sardonic sneer, and his eyes – steely, evil and magnetic – glistened like those of the basilisk as he looked boldly and with a sort of savage bravado at the faces about him. He disdained to pay any attention to the proceedings, and was seemingly deaf to the testimony that was advanced against him by more than thirty witnesses. Yet he evinced a lively, if contemptuous, interest in minor details, and audibly expressed his views regarding them. When the canary that had played so singular a part in his Australian experiences was produced, still in its ornate gilded cage, he cried out: "Hullo! here comes the menagerie! Why don't the band play?" Of a reporter taking notes at a table near him he remarked that "he wrote like a hen," commented upon the weak utterance of a certain witness that "he had no more voice than a consumptive shrimp," and interjected ribald criticisms on the words of the judge that were fairly shocking under the circumstances.
When, at the termination of the proceedings, the judge ordered his commitment for trial, and stated that a rescript would be issued against him for the wilful murder of his wife, Emily Williams, he shouted, in a shrill, cackling, strident sort of voice: "And when you have got it, you can put it in your pipe and smoke it!" – looking about with a demoniac grin as if expecting applause for an effective bit of repartee. As the constables seized him and dragged him to the door, his eyes fell upon a comely young woman standing on the edge of the crowd, who regarded him with horrified amazement. Breaking away from the officers, he danced up to her, chucked her under the chin, and with his leering face close to hers ejaculated: "O, you ducky, ducky!" and disappeared amid the cries of the scandalized lookers-on.
I do not know what the emotions of other attendants on the trial may have been, but I remember my own mental attitude as one of distaste that my duties as a correspondent required my presence. To see one weak human being contending for his life against the organized and tremendous forces of the Law is always a pitiful and moving spectacle; in this case, with recollections of the repulsive incidents of the inquest in mind, one nerved oneself for some scene of desperation and horror. The dock, surrounded by a spiked railing and already guarded by a posse of white-helmeted constables, stood in the centre of the courtroom, its platform, elevated some three feet from the floor, being furnished with a trap-door that communicated with the cells below by a spiral iron staircase, which the prisoner must ascend. The audience watched this trap-door in somewhat that state of hesitating eagerness with which a child awaits the spring of a jack-in-the-box, not knowing what grotesque or terrifying thing may appear: – and when it lifted, and the murderer stepped to his place beneath the thousand-eyed gaze that was fastened upon him, a murmur in which amazement was the dominant note ran through the room.
My own first feeling was that my eyesight was playing me a trick; my second, that by some change of program of which I had not been informed, the trial of Deeming had been postponed. In this frock-coated, well-groomed and gentlemanly person in the dock there was no trace whatever of the ruffian who had been the central figure of the inquest. In age he seemed to have dropped some twenty years; his manner was perfect, showing no trace either of apprehension or bravado: – in short, the impression he conveyed (as I described it in my correspondence at the time) was of a young clergyman of advanced views presenting himself to trial for heresy, rather than of one of the most brutal murderers of his generation. This impression prevailed during the four days his trial lasted; only once or twice could one detect in his eye the former flash of implacableness and ferocity. It was not as if he made an effort to keep himself in control, but rather as if he were a man with two strongly opposed and antagonistic sides to his nature, of which one or the other might manifest itself without any conscious exercise of will.
It was also evident to anyone who could observe him dispassionately that the details of the murder, as they were brought out in the testimony, were all as news to him: – and when, in the address he made to the jury before it retired to consider its verdict, he admitted knowledge of the subsidiary facts brought out (as to his acquaintance with Miss Rounsfell, for example), but swore he was as innocent as he was incapable of the murder of his wife, I, for one, believed him sincere, although I could perceive in the faces about me that I was alone in that opinion. A suggestion that this man might illustrate the phenomenon of "dual personality" and should be subjected to hypnotic suggestion at the hands of qualified experts, rather than have swift condemnation measured out to him, would doubtless have been received with derision by the hard-headed audience that was the real jury in the case; but I felt at the time, and feel now even more strongly, that if Frederick Bailey Deeming had been tried in a country where psychological aberrations have been the subject of study, he would have been committed, not to the hangman, but to a lifelong restraint wherein science might have gained from his extraordinary personality much valuable knowledge.
The man whose life was choked out of him on the gallows three weeks later was the man of the inquest, not the man of the trial – and in this fact is some occasion for satisfaction. He was more subdued, as though he appreciated – as any other animal might do – what the sinister preparations for his ending meant: – but when, as he hung beneath the open trap, the death-cap was lifted from his face, there were plainly to be seen the hard and brutal lines about his mouth, and the wolfish sneer upon his lips, which one could not but feel, with something like a shudder, had distinguished his features in the commission of the atrocities for which at last he had paid such insufficient price as society could exact.
The scaffold of the Melbourne jail is a permanent structure with several traps; and across and above it runs a heavy beam, its ends fixed in the solid masonry of the walls, and the greater part of its length scarred and grooved by the chafing of the ropes which, from time to time, have given despatch to the souls of several hundred murderers. As I looked up at this fearsome tally-stick, I turned to the oldest warder of the jail, a man of nearly seventy years, who had been present at my interview with Deeming a few days before, and who now stood beside me.
"I want to ask you a question," I said, "unless your official position may prevent your answering it."
"What is it, sir?" he inquired.
"You have been for many years a warder here, and must have seen many men under sentence of death."
"Yes," he replied. "I was first here in the bushranging days, and have been here ever since. I fancy I have seen two hundred men depart this life by the route of that gallows."
"Then," said I, "you should be a good judge of the character and mental state of a man who is awaiting a death of that sort. Here is my question: – What is your opinion of Deeming?"
"Mad, sir," replied the warder. "Mad as a March hare."
This verdict might be qualified, but I believe it to be essentially just.
