CHAPTER XVIILANE VISITS RICHARD
Alma Buckley, the friend of Lettice Larchester’s youth, the woman whom Sellars was proposing to interview at the earliest opportunity! Truly, the actors who had first played their parts with the small village of Brinkstone for their stageso many years ago, were apparently still in close connection. Well, Sellars must be apprised of this new development in the situation before he saw the music-hall artist; it would certainly strengthen his hand in case the lady proved obstinate.
Reviewing the position of affairs very carefully after his interview with his old friend MacKenzie, Lane came to the conclusion that the time had arrived when young Croxton ought to be told of what had been discovered so far. He was not quite sure that Morrice ought not also to be put in possession of the facts. But he was going to leave him to the last; it was rather a delicate matter having to tell him in cold blood that his wife, in conjunction with Sir George Clayton-Brookes, the mysterious baronet about whom he had made a very important discovery, was countenancing, from some motive, the rank imposture of young Archie Brookes.
He did not think it politic to be too frank with Rosabelle, sweet and sensible as she was, much as he liked her personally. She was young and inexperienced, romantically and passionately in love, and, he thought, a little inclined to be rash and impulsive. She might find it impossible to keep her own counsel, and blurt out what she knew in quarters where he least wanted anything to be known.
Up to the present he had not seen Richard in the affair, although he was actually employed by him, all the negotiations having been conducted through Rosabelle, owing to a certain sensitiveness on the young man’s part. This was naturally accounted for by the fact of the very damaging evidence against him. He could not help feeling in his heart that, although it was the detective’s business to prove his innocence, he must from the nature of the circumstances start with a very strong presumption of his guilt. Moreover, he might think it a piece of ratheraudacious bluff on the young man’s part, designed to throw dust in the eyes of Morrice, from whom he knew he was quite safe so far as criminal proceedings were concerned.
When therefore Lane walked into the little parlour of the cottage at Petersham the day after the interview at Scotland Yard with MacKenzie, after having apprised Croxton by a telegram that he was coming to see him, the young man received him with a certain embarrassment.
The detective went to the point at once. “I thought it was about time we met, Mr. Croxton,” he began. When Lane had once made up his mind that the time had arrived for abandoning his usual reticence, he did so whole-heartedly. And his manner to-day was perfectly cordial, the more especially as he perceived Richard’s embarrassment, and, of course, was shrewd enough to divine the cause of it.
As briefly as he could, and with admirable lucidity, he narrated to his attentive listener all the things that had come to light since he had taken up the investigation; the brief history of Mrs. Morrice’s life in the little village of Brinkstone where she had made the acquaintance of Archibald Brookes the elder, and no doubt that of the two other brothers, Charles and the present Sir George; her close friendship for a few months with Alma Buckley; the discovery from perfectly reliable evidence that young Archie Brookes was neither Sir George’s nephew nor her own, although it served their purpose to pass him off as such; the admission by Mr. Morrice that he had lost or mislaid the original memorandum containing a full description of the mechanism of the safe; the fact that Archie Brookes had been brought up by the woman Alma Buckley, and had, previously to his adoption by Sir George, been engaged in a humble mercantile occupation.
There were a few things he did not mention, one of them being the fact that Sir George was suspected at Scotland Yard of being engaged in certain criminal enterprises with some leading spirits of the underworld. Also he made no mention of the anonymous letter. For the present he kept all this in reserve.
Needless to say that Richard was much astounded at these revelations, especially at the fact of the imposture of young Archie Brookes, with Mrs. Morrice’s connivance, and the loss of the important memorandum relating to the safe.
“You have not told anything of this to Miss Sheldon,” was his first comment. “Or, if you have done so, it would be under the seal of secrecy, as otherwise she would have taken me into her confidence.”
“No, I have not said a word to Miss Sheldon,” was Lane’s answer. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Croxton, in our profession we are not too prone to make confidantes of women. We respect their good and noble qualities, but we distrust their impulsiveness, their incapacity to keep a secret where secrecy is of vital importance.”
Croxton was bound to agree with this general estimate. Women were by temperament unfitted to be the coadjutors of men in transactions of this special nature.
“Now, I have told you that Mr. Morrice asked me to allow him to be joined in this investigation, and I consented because it did not seem to prejudice your interests in any way, the aim of both being to discover the guilty party. Now, it seems to me that the time has arrived, or will very shortly be approaching, when it will be my painful duty to inform him of his wife’s singular conduct in passing off this young man, brought up by the woman Alma Buckley, as her nephew. Before doing so, there is one contingency which we ought to anticipate, although I consider ita very unlikely one. Is Mr. Morrice himself a party to the deception? Is he already aware of it, and has acquiesced in it from some motive satisfactory to himself? From your close association with him, you must be well acquainted with his character, his habits of thought, his views of what are right and wrong. Do you think it likely that he would from any motives be a consenting party to such a fraud?”
And Richard’s answer was emphatic. Rupert Morrice was one of the whitest men he had ever known, abhorrent of deceit and chicanery in any form, high-minded and honourable to a fault, just a little intolerant perhaps of weakness in others. Even in his business life, his notions of rectitude were considered by those who knew him best almost quixotic, and in private life his code of morality was just as stringent. Even if he loved his wife with a passionate devotion, he would never have tacitly suffered such a thing as this. And everybody knew that while he treated Mrs. Morrice with the utmost respect and consideration, ardent love played no part in their relations. They made no pretence at being other than a very ordinary couple who jogged along placidly enough.
After a little further conversation the interview terminated, leaving the two men mutually pleased with each other. Lane thought that Richard seemed a very straightforward, transparent sort of young fellow with whom it was very difficult to associate a criminal enterprise of such depth and cunning. And Dick recognized in the detective a sound, solid man, with great gifts for his difficult task, neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but holding the just mean between the two extremes.
Lane was impressed by the shrewdness of the young man’s remark when they parted. “If you can find who has got that memorandum, you will discover the actual thief. I don’t believe in Mr. Morrice’stheory of it having passed into the hands of the dustman.”
“Neither do I, Mr. Croxton. Well, good-bye for the present. I think for the moment we will say nothing about these happenings to Miss Sheldon. It is not because I wish to keep her in the dark, for I am sure she is a good and noble girl. But for the moment, except to those actually concerned, secrecy is imperative. A chance word, a chance look, even a gesture might convey a warning where I do not wish it to be conveyed. You understand.”
Yes, Richard thoroughly understood. He hated to keep anything from his beloved Rosabelle, who had stood by him so staunchly in these dark hours. But the detective was right, women cannot control their feelings like men, especially where their deepest emotions are concerned.
Lane had perhaps been more frank in his statement of the facts than illuminating in his deductions from them, if indeed he had suffered himself to draw from them any deductions of a very positive nature. But the young man felt much more cheerful after that visit. He felt quite sure that if the detective had started with suspicions of him, he had dropped them by now, or his manner could not have been so cordial. He was certain that was not assumed.
This keen and patient investigator had certainly made a series of remarkable discoveries, it was almost impossible that nothing would result from them. It was easy to see that he was not a man who would tell you what was passing in his mind till the decisive moment for revelation had come. No doubt, in his own quiet way, he was drawing his net tighter and tighter. Would he draw it so closely at the end that the real criminal could not escape from its meshes? And would he, Richard Croxton, be rehabilitated in the sight of all men? Would the day come whenRupert Morrice would ask his pardon for his unjust suspicions, his harsh treatment, for having branded the son of his old sweetheart as a thief?
On his return from Petersham to his office, Lane found Sellars waiting for him by appointment. To this keen-witted young man he detailed the three fresh incidents that had occurred in so short a space—the conversation between Mrs. Morrice and her supposed nephew, overheard by Rosabelle; the fact that Sir George was under the close observation of Scotland Yard, the further startling fact that Archie Brookes had been brought up in the home of Alma Buckley. He wound up with the information that he had dispatched an anonymous letter to Rupert Morrice, the contents of which he trusted would induce the financier to start a searching investigation on his own account.
“By Jove, that was a fine idea, Lane, and got you out of an awkward situation,” said Sellars in a tone of admiration. “If he finds what, no doubt, we expect him to find, there will be trouble in Deanery Street. For, although I can’t pretend to know very much about him, he strikes me as just the kind of man who could be as hard as nails in certain circumstances.”
“Yes, I should say it was so,” Lane agreed. “Young Croxton, with whom I had a long talk to-day, tells me that he is the soul of honour and rectitude, that he has no toleration of wrong-doing in others, being so exempt from weaknesses himself. He gives me that impression too—the sort of man who would sacrifice his own son if he thought justice demanded it.”
Sellars had no petty jealousy of the other man’s superior powers in the line in which Lane was a master, and he, comparatively speaking, only a promising pupil. But he did occasionally fancy that he couldsee a point which the master, perhaps through carelessness, had overlooked. He thought he saw one now.
“That’s not quite true, is it? He firmly believed in young Croxton’s guilt, believes in it still from what you have told me. But he didn’t prosecute him. Not quite such a hard nut as we think him, perhaps.”
But Lane was not to be worsted in argument by his nimble-minded young pupil. “I didn’t say he was out for revenge, only for justice. He satisfied justice by turning him out of the house and ruining his career. And he did that in spite of the fact that he passionately loved the mother.”
“Yes, I see your point. Perhaps he may shield his wife in the same way, or rather a different way, keep up the appearance of a happy couple in public, and treat her as a stranger in private. Well, the next important move on the board is the meeting with Miss Buckley—that information you have just got ought to give me a point in the game, anyway.”