CHAPTER XXIXSIR GEORGE IS ARRESTED
Thelong narrative was finished. Three times had Miss Buckley opened the door, intimating by that action that it was time the interview wasconcluded, and each time Mrs. Morrice had signalled to her to withdraw.
It only remained now for the wretched woman to sign the confession admitting her guilt, and clearing Richard Croxton in the eyes of those who held him in regard.
Had Rosabelle been present she would have shed compassionate tears over those passages in which Mrs. Morrice described the mental tortures she had suffered through the machinations of this evil pair.
But Lane was made of sterner stuff. She had been deeply sinned against, it was true, but she had been a great sinner herself. She had been the victim of a tragic set of circumstances which might well have appalled the bravest woman, but in her selfish desire to keep herself afloat, she had chosen the line of least resistance.
Apart from her lapse into actual criminal courses, there were three things he could not forgive her for, her callous abandonment of her child, the son of a felon it is true, but still “flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone”; the equally callous sacrifice of Richard Croxton; her unscrupulous conduct in marrying Morrice, an honourable and upright man, under false pretences. True, that if she had told him the truth about her past he would not have married her, but it was little short of dastardly to involve him in her own unhappy career.
Anticipating that he would have no difficulty in wringing the truth out of her, Lane had brought with him the confession ready written for her to sign. But, before handing it to her, he had a few questions to put upon collateral points.
“Before you embarked upon these robberies, Mrs. Morrice, you had to obtain possession of the two keys and get duplicates made. That was rather a difficult matter, wasn’t it?”
Not so very difficult, he learned. Mr. Morrice was a very careless man in some respects, and he was so confident nobody but himself and Richard was acquainted with the mechanism of the safe, that he was incautious in small details. He frequently left his key lying about in his room when he went up to the City. Richard was not quite so careless, but occasionally he did the same. The moment Mrs. Morrice—ever on the watch—got hold of them, Sir George was ’phoned for to come to the house, and the rest was easy.
“And now tell me about those finger-prints of the man ‘Tubby’ Thomas who was in Dartmoor at the time the robberies were committed. What was the motive of that, and how were they obtained?”
The answer to this question involved a longer explanation. It was done, as Lane had rightly suspected, as a mere act of devilment, for the purpose of making a fool for the moment of any agent of the law who might be called in by Mr. Morrice. It had succeeded temporarily in making a fool of the astute detective himself.
Themodus operandiwas as follows: Young Archie Brookes, to call him by his assumed name, had provided her with a pair of surgical rubber gloves upon which a copy of the expert robber’s finger-prints had been impressed.
How were they obtained? Sir George, who took a great interest in the science of identifying latent finger-prints, had procured those of the notorious “Tubby,” with whom he had maintained some sort of association before his conviction, and had very cleverly reproduced them upon the thin rubber gloves.
“It would appear, then, that your pretended relative by marriage was the friend of crooks; were you aware of this, Mrs. Morrice?”
“By certain things that he let drop now and then, Ihad no doubt that the man was engaged in every kind of villainy and wrong-doing,” was Mrs. Morrice’s answer.
“And now tell me a little about Miss Buckley’s attitude towards him when she found out his real character. You say she was in love with him; did she break off all relations with him, and forbid him the house?”
“It was the dearest wish of her heart to do so,” replied the unhappy woman. “For my sake she forbore, as she feared that if she angered him it might make things worse for me. And, besides, her place was a useful meeting ground when it might have been too risky for him to come to Deanery Street, in such things as handing over money, for instance.”
“I quite understand. And you are positive that, although she knew about the blackmailing and the disposal of your jewellery and the fraud of Archie Brookes, she was ignorant of the robberies?”
“Quite positive. They were very particular about that. I think they were a bit afraid of what she might do, if she had an inkling. She is a strong-minded woman in many respects, and she might have determined to go to Mr. Morrice and tell him the whole truth to save me from becoming an actual criminal.”
There was nothing more to be said. The confession was signed. Lane, punctilious in everything he did, gave her a copy and left the flat. Shortly before dinner-time he went to Deanery Street to communicate the result of his interview to the financier. He found him and Rosabelle together, and was invited to speak before them both, Morrice having no desire to keep anything from his pretty niece in a matter in which her interest was as keen as his own.
Of course, both had guessed that the pseudo Archie Brookes was, in all probability, Mrs. Morrice’s son, and that there was some shameful secret connected withthe relationship. But they were not prepared for the terrible disclosures now made by Lane. It was a great blow to the proud man to learn that the woman who had borne his name and done the honours of his house with such a calm and gracious dignity, was the widow of a convicted felon, that she had involved him in her disgraceful past.
He turned sternly to his niece. “From this day, never let her name be mentioned between us. Let us think of her as one dead to us.”
Presently Lane spoke. “This winds up the mystery so far as I am concerned, Mr. Morrice. I shall pay a formal visit to Mr. Croxton and acquaint him with these results; he must, of course, be made aware of them.”
Morrice nodded. “Of course. I have no wish to hide my disgrace from him.”
“Your reflected disgrace,” said the detective gently. “Well, there is a little thing I wish to mention. I am not at all sure that this scoundrel of a baronet has not got some of those French francs left. They would be awkward things to get rid of in bulk. Depend upon it he is peddling them out as occasion offers. If you would give me the necessary authority to act, I do not think it impossible for me to frighten out of him what he has got left, if any, with the threat of criminal proceedings. Of courseweknow you will not take these, for obvious reasons, but he cannot be sure.”
“No,” said Morrice, “I shall certainly not take proceedings. I have no desire to wash my dirty linen in public, to show how I have been made a dupe and a fool. There will be plenty of conjecture as it is; let it stop at that. But if you feel keen about this, you have my full permission to do what you think advisable.”
Pretty early the next morning, Lane made his way to Sir George’s flat. He chuckled inwardly as he recalledthat memorable evening when he and Simmons the valet had been surprised there by the so-called Archie Brookes. He remembered how he had been puzzled by the smallness of the baronet’s banking account and the somewhat contradictory statements made by Simmons with regard to his actual financial position. Of course, now it was all quite clear. That banking account was a blind, Sir George had other depositories in which he placed the moneys he made by his nefarious schemes.
Simmons opened the door; Lane saw that the man was in a state of considerable excitement. At the query of: Was his master at home? the valet smiled broadly:
“Come in, Mr. Lane, and welcome. No, Sir George isn’t at home nor likely to be. Something’s up, sir; we always had an idea he was a ‘fishy’ customer, didn’t we?”
The detective went with Simmons into the room where he had conducted his investigations on that memorable evening. It was in a state of confusion; the key of the safe into which he would have so dearly loved to peep on that occasion was in the door. Lane unlocked it and swung it open, to find the safe was empty. The drawers of the writing-table were all unlocked, some of them partly open, and in them nothing of value, only a few old letters and unimportant memoranda. The fireplace was littered with the ashes of burned papers.
“What’s the meaning of it all?” asked Lane with a frown. He had a pretty shrewd premonition that his visit had been paid too late, that there was very small chance of recovering any of his plunder from this wily scoundrel.
It appeared that early the previous morning, young Archie Brookes had called and the two men were closeted together for over a couple of hours. Simmonshad followed his usual tactics of applying his ear to the keyhole, but they were on their guard, and spoke in such low tones that he could not catch a word. After the young man had left, Sir George came out and ordered the valet to fill a good-sized portmanteau with clothes; he had in his hand a bag which, no doubt, contained all the money and everything of portable value in the flat.
He explained briefly that he was going abroad for some months, and had given his solicitors instructions to dispose of the furniture and contents, and sub-let the flat. He handed Simmons a written character and—wonderful to relate—gave him three months’ wages in lieu of notice. A taxi was called, and the chauffeur given instructions to drive to Charing Cross station.
It was pretty evident that Sir George, to use the valet’s graphic expression, had “done a bunk.” Simmons had not noticed the number of the taxi, but even if he had taken this precaution, it was not likely to have given Lane much assistance. A practised campaigner like this well-born rogue would be clever enough to conceal his tracks; he had already his plans cut and dried to evade pursuit.
The valet had come round this morning to clear up things a bit, and after he had done that he was to post his own key to Sir George’s solicitors.
The scoundrel had enjoyed a long start, and by now was clear away. It was not worth while wasting time over him. Mr. Morrice had shown by his manner that he was sick and tired of the whole matter, and wished to shut it out of his recollection. To a wealthy man such as he, the recovery of a portion of the stolen money was a matter of comparative unimportance.
So Lane decided that he would go no further in what might be termed the side-issue of the DeaneryStreet mystery. But second thoughts induced him to look up his old friend MacKenzie at Scotland Yard.
What was the motive of the baronet’s sudden departure? Of course, he would have learned from Mrs. Morrice or Alma Buckley that his game was up in that direction. Did he dread the vengeance of the financier, or were other causes at work?
MacKenzie received him with his accustomed cordiality. “Well, how are you getting on with the case you told me about?”
Lane informed him that it had ended successfully from a professional point of view: he had proved his client’s innocence and found the real criminal. Lane did not proffer the name of that real criminal, nor did MacKenzie ask it. They were confidential with each other up to a point, but a certain etiquette was always preserved.
“I went round to the flat of our friend, Sir George Clayton-Brookes, this morning and learned that he had left in a violent hurry. I was sorry, as I wanted to have a little talk with him. Seems something ‘fishy’ about this sudden flight.”
The keen Scotchman smiled and tapped his broad chest with his finger. “Scotland Yard has got something to do with that. We have been years trying to get him, as I told you, but he was so devilish cunning that we might have gone on for years longer but for a lucky accident. We got one of his gang and the fellow split. We have plenty of evidence against the gentleman now. I suppose he got wind of it before we could get a warrant out. It’s astonishing what a freemasonry there is among these scoundrels. But he won’t escape us now. Clever as he is, we shall have him by the heels before he is much older.”
“Have you found any evidence that involves the young man known as Archie Brookes?” queried Lane.
“No, we can’t find that he has any connectionwith this particular ‘stunt’—I shouldn’t say Sir George was a man to share more than he could help with anybody.”
MacKenzie’s prophecy was fulfilled. Within three weeks from that date the baronet was arrested in Italy, and brought back to England after the observance of the usual formalities.
As he now disappears from these pages, it is only necessary to say that he was put upon his trial, found guilty, and awarded an exemplary sentence.
It was a nine days’ wonder in Clubland and the circles in which he had been a prominent figure; and then other startling events occurred and drove him out of the public mind, and the plausible, well-mannered, smartly-groomed baronet who had led such a chequered existence became a memory.
But much to the relief of Rupert Morrice and his niece, nothing came out at the trial which could in any way connect him with the robberies at Deanery Street. Morrice’s friends and acquaintances were, of course, very grieved at the reflected disgrace cast upon him by the fact that, through his wife, the financier and the criminal were some sort of distant connection.