Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages | Page 2

woman. Go into the
drawing-room.' Mrs. Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all off with a smile; and the
guest of the evening would feel angry and uncomfortable.
After three years of this cheerful life--for Mrs. Bronckhorst had no women-friends to talk
to--the station was startled by the news that Bronckhorst had instituted proceedings on
the criminal count, against a man called Biel, who certainly had been rather attentive to
Mrs. Bronckhorst whenever she had appeared in public. The utter want of reserve with
which Bronckhorst treated his own dishonour helped us to know that the evidence against
Biel would be entirely circumstantial and native. There were no letters; but Bronckhorst
said openly that he would rack Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel superintending the
manufacture of carpets in the Central Jail. Mrs. Bronckhorst kept entirely to her house,
and let charitable folks say what they pleased. Opinions were divided. Some two-thirds of
the station jumped at once to the conclusion that Biel was guilty; but a dozen men who
knew and liked him held by him. Biel was furious and surprised. He denied the whole
thing, and vowed that he would thrash Bronckhorst within an inch of his life. No jury, we
knew, would convict a man on the criminal count on native evidence in a land where you
can buy a murder-charge, including the corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees; but Biel
did not care to scrape through by the benefit of a doubt. He wanted the whole thing
cleared; but, as he said one night, 'He can prove anything with servants' evidence, and
I've only my bare word.' This was almost a month before the case came on; and beyond
agreeing with Biel, we could do little. All that we could be sure of was that the native
evidence would be bad enough to blast Biel's character for the rest of his service; for
when a native begins perjury he perjures himself thoroughly. He does not boggle over
details.
Some genius at the end of the table whereat the affair was being talked over, said, 'Look
here! I don't believe lawyers are any good. Get a man to wire to Strickland, and beg him
to come down and pull us through.'
Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up the line. He had not long been
married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram a chance of return to the old
detective work that his soul lusted after, and next time he came in and heard our story. He
finished his pipe and said oracularly, 'We must get at the evidence. Oorya bearer,
Mussulman khit and sweeper ayah, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. I am on in this
piece; but I'm afraid I'm getting rusty in my talk.'

He rose and went into Biel's bedroom, where his trunk had been put, and shut the door.
An hour later, we heard him say, 'I hadn't the heart to part with my old make-ups when I
married. Will this do?' There was a loathly fakir salaaming in the doorway.
'Now lend me fifty rupees,' said Strickland, 'and give me your Words of Honour that you
won't tell my wife.'
He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank his health. What he
did only he himself knows. A fakir hung about Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days.
Then a sweeper appeared, and when Biel heard of him, he said that Strickland was an
angel full-fledged. Whether the sweeper made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is
a question which concerns Strickland exclusively.
He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly, 'You spoke the truth, Biel. The
whole business is put up from beginning to end. Jove! It almost astonishes me! That
Bronckhorst beast isn't fit to live.'
There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said, 'How are you going to prove it? You can't
say that you've been trespassing on Bronckhorst's compound in disguise!'
'No,' said Strickland. 'Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever he is, to get up something strong
about "inherent improbabilities" and "discrepancies of evidence". He won't have to speak,
but it will make him happy, I'm going to run this business.'
Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see what would happen. They trusted
Strickland as men trust quiet men. When the case came off the Court was crowded.
Strickland hung about in the veranda of the Court, till he met the Mohammedan
khitmutgar. Then he murmured a fakir's blessing in his ear, and asked him how his
second wife did. The man spun round, and, as he looked into the eyes of 'Estreekin Sahib',
his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was married, he was, as