Page:The Fate of the Artemis.pdf/5

22 seen to rush through the barrier just in time to catch the express up to town. At Waterloo he was lost sight of in the crowd.

"The police were keenly on the alert; no trace of the missing jewels had as yet been found. Then it was that, gradually, the story of the secret plan of Port Arthur reached the ears of the general public. Who first told it and to whom, it is difficult to conjecture, but you know what a way things of that sort have of leaking out.

"The secret of Captain Markham's mission had of necessity been known to several people, and a secret shared by many soon ceases to be one at all; anyway, within a week of the so-called 'Portsmouth outrage,' it began to be loudly whispered that the robbery of Mrs. Markham's jewels was only a mask that covered the deliberate theft of the plans of Port Arthur.

"And then the inevitable happened. Already Captain Markham's strange attitude had been severely commented upon, and now the public, backed by the crowd of amateur detectives who read penny novelettes and form conclusions of their own, had made up its mind that Captain Markham was a party to the theft—that he was either the tool or the accomplice of the mysterious foreigner, and that, in fact, he had been either bribed or terrorised into giving up the plan of Port Arthur to an enemy of the Russian government. The crime was all the more heinous as by this act of treachery a British ship, manned by a British crew, had been sent to certain destruction.

"What rendered the whole case doubly mysterious was that Messrs. Mills and Co. seemed to take the matter with complete indifference. They refused to be interviewed, or to give any information about the Artemis at all, and seemed callously willing to await events.

"The public was furious; the newspapers stormed; everyone felt that the Artemis should be stopped at any cost at her next port of call, and not allowed to continue her perilous journey.

"And yet the days went by; the public read with horror at Lloyd's that the Artemis had called at Malta, at Port Said, at Aden, and was now well on her way to the Far East. Feeling ran so high throughout England that, if the mysterious stranger had been discovered by the police, no protection from them would have saved him from being lynched.

"As for Captain Markham, public opinion reserved its final judgment. A cloud hung over him, of that there was no doubt; many said openly that he had sold the secret plans of Port Arthur, either to the Japanese or to the Nihilists, either through fear or intimidation, if not through greed.

"Then the inevitable climax came: A certain Mr. Carleton constituted himself the spokesman of the general public; he met Captain Markham one day at one of the clubs in London. There were hot words between them. Mr. Carleton did not mince matters; he openly accused Captain Markham of that which public opinion had already whispered, and finally, completely losing his temper, he struck the Captain in the face, calling him every opprobrious name he could think of.

"But for the timely interference of friends there would have been murder committed then and there; as it was, Captain Markham was induced by his own friends to bring a criminal charge of slander and of assault against Mr. Carleton, as the only means of making the whole story public, and possibly vindicating his character."

"A criminal action for slander and assault is always an interesting one," continued the man in the corner after a while, "as it always argues an unusual amount of personal animosity on the part of the plaintiff.

"In this case, of course, public interest was roused to its highest pitch. Practically, though Captain Markham was the prosecutor, he would stand before his fellow citizens after this action, either as an innocent man, or as one of the most dastardly scoundrels this nation has ever known.

"The case for the Captain was briefly stated by his counsel. For the defence Sir Arthur Inglewood on behalf of Mr. Carleton pleaded justification. With wonderful eloquence Sir Arthur related the whole story of the secret plan of Port Arthur confided to the honour of Captain Markham, and which involved the safety of the British ship and the lives of a whole British crew.

"The first witnesses called for the defence were Mrs. Bowden and her daughter, Meggie. Both related the story I have already told you. When they came to the point of having seen the jewel-case open on the table, during that interview between Captain Markham and the mysterious stranger, there was a regular murmur of indignation throughout the whole crowd, so much so, that the judge threatened to clear the court, for Sir Arthur argued