Reginald in Russia | Page 8

capture the murderer, and that a dog that had 1/64th
part of otterhound blood in it couldn't technically be considered a
bloodhound. I forget how the matter was ultimately settled, but it
aroused a tremendous amount of acrimonious discussion on both sides
of the Atlantic. My own contribution to the controversy consisted in
pointing out that the whole dispute was beside the mark, as the actual
murderer had not yet been captured; but I soon discovered that on this
point there was not the least divergence of public or expert opinion. I
had looked forward apprehensively to the proving of my identity and
the establishment of my motives as a disagreeable necessity; I speedily
found out that the most disagreeable part of the business was that it
couldn't be done. When I saw in the glass the haggard and hunted
expression which the experiences of the past few weeks had stamped
on my erstwhile placid countenance, I could scarcely feel surprised that
the few friends and relations I possessed refused to recognise me in my
altered guise, and persisted in their obstinate but widely shared belief
that it was I who had been done to death on the highway. To make
matters worse, infinitely worse, an aunt of the really murdered man, an

appalling female of an obviously low order of intelligence, identified
me as her nephew, and gave the authorities a lurid account of my
depraved youth and of her laudable but unavailing efforts to spank me
into a better way. I believe it was even proposed to search me for
fingerprints."
"But," said the Chaplain, "surely your educational attainments--"
"That was just the crucial point," said the condemned; "that was where
my lack of specialisation told so fatally against me. The dead
Salvationist, whose identity I had so lightly and so disastrously adopted,
had possessed a veneer of cheap modern education. It should have been
easy to demonstrate that my learning was on altogether another plane to
his, but in my nervousness I bungled miserably over test after test that
was put to me. The little French I had ever known deserted me; I could
not render a simple phrase about the gooseberry of the gardener into
that language, because I had forgotten the French for gooseberry."
The Chaplain again wriggled uneasily in his seat. "And then," resumed
the condemned, "came the final discomfiture. In our village we had a
modest little debating club, and I remembered having promised, chiefly,
I suppose, to please and impress the doctor's wife, to give a sketchy
kind of lecture on the Balkan Crisis. I had relied on being able to get up
my facts from one or two standard works, and the back-numbers of
certain periodicals. The prosecution had made a careful note of the
circumstance that the man whom I claimed to be--and actually
was--had posed locally as some sort of second-hand authority on
Balkan affairs, and, in the midst of a string of questions on indifferent
topics, the examining counsel asked me with a diabolical suddenness if
I could tell the Court the whereabouts of Novibazar. I felt the question
to be a crucial one; something told me that the answer was St.
Petersburg or Baker Street. I hesitated, looked helplessly round at the
sea of tensely expectant faces, pulled myself together, and chose Baker
Street. And then I knew that everything was lost. The prosecution had
no difficulty in demonstrating that an individual, even moderately
versed in the affairs of the Near East, could never have so
unceremoniously dislocated Novibazar from its accustomed corner of
the map. It was an answer which the Salvation Army captain might
conceivably have made--and I made it. The circumstantial evidence
connecting the Salvationist with the crime was overwhelmingly

convincing, and I had inextricably identified myself with the
Salvationist. And thus it comes to pass that in ten minutes' time I shall
be hanged by the neck until I am dead in expiation of the murder of
myself, which murder never took place, and of which, in any case, I am
innocent."
* * *
When the Chaplain returned to his quarters some fifteen minutes later,
the black flag was floating over the prison tower. Breakfast was waiting
for him in the dining-room, but he first passed into his library, and,
taking up the Times Atlas, consulted a map of the Balkan Peninsula. "A
thing like that," he observed, closing the volume with a snap, "might
happen to any one."

THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP

The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping, particularly
feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women ever really shop?
Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they go forth shopping as
assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but do they shop in the
practical