CHAPTER XXI.Mr. Sheringham is DramaticLong after Alec’s not altogether willing departure, Roger sat smoking and thinking. On the whole, he was not sorry to be alone. Alec was proving a somewhat discouraging companion in this business. Evidently his heart was not in it; and for one so situated the ferreting out of facts and the general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that is inevitably attendant on such a task, must be singularly distasteful. Roger could not blame Alec for his undisguised reluctance to see the thing through, but he also could not help thinking somewhat wistfully of the enthusiastic and worshipping prototypes whose mantle Alec was at first supposed to have inherited. Roger felt that he could have welcomed a little enthusiasm and worshipping at the end of this eventful and very strenuous day.He began to try to arrange methodically in his mind the data they had collected. First with regard to the murderer. He had made an effective escape from the house only, in all probability as it seemed, to enter it again by another way. Why? Either because he lived there, or because he wished to communicate with somebody who did. Which of these? Heaven only knew!He tried another line of attack. Which of the minor puzzles still remained unsolved? Chiefly, without doubt, the sudden change of attitude on the part of Mrs. Plant and Jefferson before lunch. But why need they have been apprehensive at all, if the murderer had been able to communicate with them after the crime had been committed? Perhaps the interview had been a hurried one, and he had forgotten to reassure them on some particularly vital point. Yet he had been able to do so in the course of the next morning. This meant that, up till lunch time at any rate, he had still been in the neighbourhood. More than that, actually on the premises, as it seemed. Did this point more definitely to the probability of his being one of the household? It seemed feasible; but who? Jefferson? Possibly, though there were several difficult points to get over if this were the case. The women were obviously out of the question. The butler? Again possibly; but why on earth should the man want to murder his master?Yet the butler was a strange figure, there was no getting away from that. And as far as Roger could judge, there had been no love lost between him and Stanworth. Yes, there was undoubtedly a mystery of some kind connected with that butler. Jefferson’s explanation of why Mr. Stanworth should have employed a prize-fighting butler did not strike one as quite satisfactory.Then why had Mrs. Plant been crying in the library? Roger strove to remember some scenes in which she and Stanworth had been thrown into contact. How had they behaved towards each other? Had they seemed friendly, or the reverse? As far as he could recollect, Stanworth had treated her with the same casual good-fellowship which he showed to everybody; while she—— Yes, now he came to think of it, she had never appeared to be on particularly good terms with him. She had been quiet and reserved when he was in the room. Not that she was really ever anything else but quiet and reserved under any circumstances; but yes, there had been a subtle change in her manner when he was about. Obviously she had disliked him.Clearly there was only one hope for finding the answer to these riddles, and that was to investigate Stanworth’s affairs. In all probability even that would prove futile; but as far as Roger could see there was no other way to try with even a moderate chance of success. And while he was racking his brains out here, Jefferson was sitting in the morning room surrounded by documents which Roger would give anything to see.A sudden idea occurred to him. Why not beard the lion in his den and offer to give Jefferson a hand with his task? In any case, that would form a direct challenge, the answer to which could not fail to be interesting.With Roger to think was, in nine cases out of ten, to leap into precipitate action. Almost before the thought had completed its passage through his mind, he was on his feet and striding eagerly towards the house.Without troubling to knock he burst open the door of the morning room and walked in. Jefferson was seated in front of the table in the centre of the room, surrounded, as Roger’s mind’s eye had seen him, with papers and documents. Lady Stanworth was not present.He glanced up as Roger entered.“Hullo, Sheringham,” he said in some surprise. “Anything I can do for you?”“Well, I was smoking out there in the garden with nothing to do,” Roger remarked with a friendly smile, “when it occurred to me that instead of wasting my time like that I might be giving you a hand here; you said you were up to the eyes in it. Is there anything I can do to help?”“Damned good of you,” Jefferson replied, a little awkwardly, “but I don’t really think there’s anything. I’m trying to tabulate a statement of his financial position. Something like that is sure to be wanted when the will’s proved, or whatever the rigmarole is.”“Well, surely there’s something I can do to help you out, isn’t there?” Roger asked, sitting on a corner of the table. “Add up tremendous columns of figures, or something like that?”Jefferson hesitated and glanced round at the papers in front of him. “Well,” he said slowly.“Of course if there’s anything particularly private in Stanworth’s affairs——!” Roger remarked airily.Jefferson looked up quickly. “Private? There’s nothing particularly private about them. Why should there be?”“Then make use of me by all means, my dear chap. I’m at a loose end, and only too glad to give you a hand.”“Of course if you put it like that, I should be only too pleased,” Jefferson replied, though not without a certain reluctance. “H’m! I was just wondering what would be the best job for you to tackle.”“Oh, anything that comes along, you know.”“Well, look here, I tell you what you might do,” Jefferson said suddenly. “I want a statement made out showing his holdings in the various companies of which he was a director, with the approximate value of the shares, their yield for the last financial year, his director’s fees, and all the rest of it. Manage that, could you?”“Like a shot,” said Roger with great cheerfulness, concealing his disappointment at the comparative unimportance of the task allotted to him. Such details as these could be obtained from any work of reference on the subject; he had hoped for a little insight into something that was rather less public property.Still, half a bun was better than no cake, and he settled down at the opposite side of the table and set to work willingly enough on the data with which Jefferson supplied him. From time to time he tried to peep surreptitiously at some of the documents in which the latter was immersed, but Jefferson was guarding them too jealously and Roger could obtain no clear idea of their contents.An hour later he sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief.“There you are! And a very charming and comprehensive statement, too.”“Thanks very much,” Jefferson said, taking the statement which Roger was holding out to him. “Damned good of you, Sheringham. Saved me a lot of trouble. And you’ve done it in about a quarter of the time I should have taken. Not my sort of line, this game.”“So I should imagine,” Roger observed with studied carelessness. “In fact, it’s always surprised me that you should have taken a job like this secretaryship on at all. I should have put you down as a typical open-air man, if you’ll allow me to say so. The type of Englishman that won our colonies for us, you know.”“No option,” Jefferson said, with a return to his usual curt manner. “Not my choice, I assure you. Had to take what I could jolly well get.”“Rotten, I know,” Roger replied sympathetically, watching the other curiously. In spite of himself and what he felt he knew he could not help a mild liking for this abrupt, taciturn person; a typical soldier of the wordless, unsocial school. It struck Roger at that moment that Jefferson, whom he had been inclined to regard at first as something of a sinister figure, was in reality nothing of the sort. The man was shy, exceedingly shy, and he endeavoured to hide this shyness behind a brusque, almost rude manner; and as always in such a case, this had produced an entirely mistaken first impression of the man himself behind the manner. Jefferson was downright; but it was the downrightness of honesty, Roger felt, not of villainy.Roger began, half unconsciously, to rearrange some of his ideas. If Jefferson was concerned in Stanworth’s death, then it would be because there was a very excellent reason for that death. All the more reason to probe into Stanworth’s affairs.“Going to stay down here long, Jefferson?” he asked, with an obvious yawn.“Not very. Just got to finish off this job I’m on now. You turn in. Must be getting pretty late.”Roger glanced at his watch. “Close on twelve. Right, I think I will, if you’re sure there’s nothing else I can do?”“Nothing, thanks. I shall have a go at it before breakfast myself. Got to get cleared up in here by eleven. Well, good-night, Sheringham, and many thanks.”Roger sought his room in a state of some perplexity. This new conclusion of his with regard to Jefferson was going to make things very much more complicated instead of more simple. He felt a strong sympathy with Jefferson all of a sudden. He was not a clever man; certainly he was not the brains of the conspiracy. What must his feelings be when he knew, as indeed he must know, that Roger was tracking out things that would, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred and with only very ordinary luck, have remained undiscovered for ever? How must he regard the net which he could see spread to catch him, and with him—whom?Roger dragged a chair up to the open window, and sat down with his feet on the sill. He felt he was getting maudlin. This had every appearance of a thoroughly cold-blooded crime, and here he was feeling sorry already for one of its chief participants. Yet it was because Jefferson, as he saw now that the scales had suddenly fallen from his eyes, was such a fine type of man—the tall, thin, small-headed type that is the real pioneer of our race—and because he himself genuinely liked all three members of that suspicious trio, that Roger, without necessarily giving way to maudlin sentiment, was yet unable to stifle his very real regret that everything should point so decisively to their guilt.Still, it was too late to back out now. He owed it to himself, if not even to them, to see the thing through. Roger could sympathise more fully now with Alec’s feelings on the matter. Curious that he should after all have come round in the end to that much-derided point of view of Alec’s!He began to review the personal element in the light of this new revelation. How did it help? If Jefferson was an honest man and would only kill because nothing short of killing would meet some unknown case, then what was most likely to have produced such a state of affairs? What is the mainspring that actuates three quarters of such drastic deeds? Well, the answer to that was obvious enough. A woman.How did that apply in this case? Could Jefferson be in love with some woman, whose happiness or peace had been threatened in some mysterious way by Stanworth himself, and if so, who was the woman? Lady Stanworth? Mrs. Plant? Roger uttered an involuntary exclamation. Mrs. Plant!That, at any rate, would fit in with some of the puzzling facts. The powder on the arm of the couch, for instance, and the wet handkerchief.Roger’s imagination began to ride free. Mrs. Plant was in the library with Stanworth; he was bullying her, or something. Perhaps he was trying to force some course of action upon her which was repugnant to her. In any case, she weeps and implores him. He is adamant. She hides her face against the arm of the couch and goes on weeping. Jefferson enters, sees at a glance what is happening and kills Stanworth in the madness of his passion with as little compunction as one would feel towards a rat. Mrs. Plant looks on in horror; tries to interfere, perhaps, but without effect. As soon as the thing is done she becomes as cool as ice and sets the stage for suicide.Roger jumped to his feet and leaned out over the sill.“It fits!” he murmured excitedly. “It all fits in!”Glancing downwards, he noticed that the morning-room light had been extinguished and made a note of the time. It was past one. He sank back in his chair and began to consider whether the other pieces of the puzzle would slip as neatly into this general scene—the safe incident, the change of attitude, Lady Stanworth, and so on. No, this was not going to be quite so easy.At the end of the hour he was still uncertain. The main outline still seemed convincing enough, but all the details appeared hardly so glib.“I’m getting addled,” he murmured aloud, as he rose from the chair. “Better give this side of it a rest for a little.”He made his way softly out of the room and crept along the passage to Alec’s bedroom.Alec sat abruptly up in bed as the door opened.“That you, Roger?” he demanded.“No, this is Jefferson,” Roger said, hastily shutting the door behind him. “And very nicely you’d have given things away if it had been, Alexander Watson. And you might try and moderate your voice a bit. The sound of a foghorn in the middle of the night is bound to make people wonder. Ready?”Alec got out of bed and put on his dressing-gown.“Right-ho.”As quietly as possible they stole downstairs and into the morning room. Roger drew the thick curtains together carefully before switching on the light.“Now for it!” he breathed excitedly, eyeing the crowded table with eagerness. “That little pile there I’ve already been through, so you needn’t bother about those.”“Already?” Alec asked in surprise.“Yes, in company with my excellent friend, Major Jefferson,” Roger grinned, and proceeded to explain what he had been doing.“You’ve got some cheek,” Alec commented with a smile.“Yes, and I’ve got something more than that,” Roger retorted. “I’ve got a thoroughly sound working idea as to who killed Stanworth and under what circumstances. I can tell you, friend Alec, I’ve been uncommonly busy these last two hours or so.”“You have?” said Alec eagerly. “Tell me.”Roger shook his head. “Not at the moment,” he said, sitting down in Jefferson’s chair. “Let’s get this little job safely done first. Now look here, you go through these miscellaneous documents, will you? I want to study the passbooks first of all. And I’ll tell you one thing I’ve discovered. The income from those various businesses of his didn’t amount to a quarter of what he must have been spending. He cleared just over two thousand out of all five of them last year, and I should say that he’s been living at the rate of at least ten thousand a year. And besides all that, he’s been investing heavily as well. Where does all the extra cash come from? That’s what I want to find out.”Alec began to wade obediently through the sheaf of papers that Roger had indicated, while the latter picked out the passbooks and glanced at them.“Hullo!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Two of these accounts are in his own name, and the other three appear to be in three different names. Jefferson never said anything about that. Now I wonder what the devil that means?”He began to pore over them methodically, and for some time there was silence in the room. Then Roger looked up with a frown.“I don’t understand these at all,” he said slowly. “The dividends are all shown in his own two passbooks, and various checks and so on; but the other three seem to be made up entirely of cash payments, on the credit side at any rate. Listen to this: Feb. 9th, £100; Feb. 17th, £500; Mar. 12th, £200; Mar. 28th, £350; and then April 9th, £1,000. What on earth do you make of that? All in cash, and such nice round sums. Why a thousand pounds in cash?”“Seems funny, certainly,” Alec agreed.Roger picked up another of the books, and flicked the pages through carefully.“This is just the same sort of thing. Hullo, here’s an entry of £5,000 paid in cash. £5,000 in cash! Now why? What does it mean? Does your pile throw any light on it?”“No, these are only business letters. There doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary here at all.”Roger still held the book mechanically in his hand, but he was staring blankly at the wall.“Nothing but cash,” he murmured softly; “all sorts of sums between £10 and £5,000; each sum a multiple of ten, or some other round figure; no shillings or pence; andcash!That’s what worries me. Why cash? I can’t find a single check marked on the credit side of these three books. And where in the name of goodness did all this cash come from? There’s absolutely nothing to account for it, as far as I can make out. It’s not the proceeds of any sort of business, apparently. Besides, the debit side shows nothing but checks drawn to self. He paid it in as cash and he drew it out himself. Now what on earth does all this mean?”“Don’t ask me,” said Alec helplessly.Roger stared at the wall in silence for a few minutes. Suddenly, his mouth opened, and he whistled softly.“By—Jove!” he exclaimed, transferring his gaze to Alec. “I believe I’ve got it. And doesn’t it simplify things, too? Yes, itmustbe right. It makes everything as clear as daylight. Good lord! Well, I’m damned!”“Out with it, then!”Roger paused impressively. This was the most dramatic moment he had yet encountered, and he was not going to spoil it by any undue precipitation.He smote the table softly with his fist by way of preparation. Then:“Old Stanworth was a professional blackmailer!” he said in vibrant tones.
Long after Alec’s not altogether willing departure, Roger sat smoking and thinking. On the whole, he was not sorry to be alone. Alec was proving a somewhat discouraging companion in this business. Evidently his heart was not in it; and for one so situated the ferreting out of facts and the general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that is inevitably attendant on such a task, must be singularly distasteful. Roger could not blame Alec for his undisguised reluctance to see the thing through, but he also could not help thinking somewhat wistfully of the enthusiastic and worshipping prototypes whose mantle Alec was at first supposed to have inherited. Roger felt that he could have welcomed a little enthusiasm and worshipping at the end of this eventful and very strenuous day.
He began to try to arrange methodically in his mind the data they had collected. First with regard to the murderer. He had made an effective escape from the house only, in all probability as it seemed, to enter it again by another way. Why? Either because he lived there, or because he wished to communicate with somebody who did. Which of these? Heaven only knew!
He tried another line of attack. Which of the minor puzzles still remained unsolved? Chiefly, without doubt, the sudden change of attitude on the part of Mrs. Plant and Jefferson before lunch. But why need they have been apprehensive at all, if the murderer had been able to communicate with them after the crime had been committed? Perhaps the interview had been a hurried one, and he had forgotten to reassure them on some particularly vital point. Yet he had been able to do so in the course of the next morning. This meant that, up till lunch time at any rate, he had still been in the neighbourhood. More than that, actually on the premises, as it seemed. Did this point more definitely to the probability of his being one of the household? It seemed feasible; but who? Jefferson? Possibly, though there were several difficult points to get over if this were the case. The women were obviously out of the question. The butler? Again possibly; but why on earth should the man want to murder his master?
Yet the butler was a strange figure, there was no getting away from that. And as far as Roger could judge, there had been no love lost between him and Stanworth. Yes, there was undoubtedly a mystery of some kind connected with that butler. Jefferson’s explanation of why Mr. Stanworth should have employed a prize-fighting butler did not strike one as quite satisfactory.
Then why had Mrs. Plant been crying in the library? Roger strove to remember some scenes in which she and Stanworth had been thrown into contact. How had they behaved towards each other? Had they seemed friendly, or the reverse? As far as he could recollect, Stanworth had treated her with the same casual good-fellowship which he showed to everybody; while she—— Yes, now he came to think of it, she had never appeared to be on particularly good terms with him. She had been quiet and reserved when he was in the room. Not that she was really ever anything else but quiet and reserved under any circumstances; but yes, there had been a subtle change in her manner when he was about. Obviously she had disliked him.
Clearly there was only one hope for finding the answer to these riddles, and that was to investigate Stanworth’s affairs. In all probability even that would prove futile; but as far as Roger could see there was no other way to try with even a moderate chance of success. And while he was racking his brains out here, Jefferson was sitting in the morning room surrounded by documents which Roger would give anything to see.
A sudden idea occurred to him. Why not beard the lion in his den and offer to give Jefferson a hand with his task? In any case, that would form a direct challenge, the answer to which could not fail to be interesting.
With Roger to think was, in nine cases out of ten, to leap into precipitate action. Almost before the thought had completed its passage through his mind, he was on his feet and striding eagerly towards the house.
Without troubling to knock he burst open the door of the morning room and walked in. Jefferson was seated in front of the table in the centre of the room, surrounded, as Roger’s mind’s eye had seen him, with papers and documents. Lady Stanworth was not present.
He glanced up as Roger entered.
“Hullo, Sheringham,” he said in some surprise. “Anything I can do for you?”
“Well, I was smoking out there in the garden with nothing to do,” Roger remarked with a friendly smile, “when it occurred to me that instead of wasting my time like that I might be giving you a hand here; you said you were up to the eyes in it. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Damned good of you,” Jefferson replied, a little awkwardly, “but I don’t really think there’s anything. I’m trying to tabulate a statement of his financial position. Something like that is sure to be wanted when the will’s proved, or whatever the rigmarole is.”
“Well, surely there’s something I can do to help you out, isn’t there?” Roger asked, sitting on a corner of the table. “Add up tremendous columns of figures, or something like that?”
Jefferson hesitated and glanced round at the papers in front of him. “Well,” he said slowly.
“Of course if there’s anything particularly private in Stanworth’s affairs——!” Roger remarked airily.
Jefferson looked up quickly. “Private? There’s nothing particularly private about them. Why should there be?”
“Then make use of me by all means, my dear chap. I’m at a loose end, and only too glad to give you a hand.”
“Of course if you put it like that, I should be only too pleased,” Jefferson replied, though not without a certain reluctance. “H’m! I was just wondering what would be the best job for you to tackle.”
“Oh, anything that comes along, you know.”
“Well, look here, I tell you what you might do,” Jefferson said suddenly. “I want a statement made out showing his holdings in the various companies of which he was a director, with the approximate value of the shares, their yield for the last financial year, his director’s fees, and all the rest of it. Manage that, could you?”
“Like a shot,” said Roger with great cheerfulness, concealing his disappointment at the comparative unimportance of the task allotted to him. Such details as these could be obtained from any work of reference on the subject; he had hoped for a little insight into something that was rather less public property.
Still, half a bun was better than no cake, and he settled down at the opposite side of the table and set to work willingly enough on the data with which Jefferson supplied him. From time to time he tried to peep surreptitiously at some of the documents in which the latter was immersed, but Jefferson was guarding them too jealously and Roger could obtain no clear idea of their contents.
An hour later he sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief.
“There you are! And a very charming and comprehensive statement, too.”
“Thanks very much,” Jefferson said, taking the statement which Roger was holding out to him. “Damned good of you, Sheringham. Saved me a lot of trouble. And you’ve done it in about a quarter of the time I should have taken. Not my sort of line, this game.”
“So I should imagine,” Roger observed with studied carelessness. “In fact, it’s always surprised me that you should have taken a job like this secretaryship on at all. I should have put you down as a typical open-air man, if you’ll allow me to say so. The type of Englishman that won our colonies for us, you know.”
“No option,” Jefferson said, with a return to his usual curt manner. “Not my choice, I assure you. Had to take what I could jolly well get.”
“Rotten, I know,” Roger replied sympathetically, watching the other curiously. In spite of himself and what he felt he knew he could not help a mild liking for this abrupt, taciturn person; a typical soldier of the wordless, unsocial school. It struck Roger at that moment that Jefferson, whom he had been inclined to regard at first as something of a sinister figure, was in reality nothing of the sort. The man was shy, exceedingly shy, and he endeavoured to hide this shyness behind a brusque, almost rude manner; and as always in such a case, this had produced an entirely mistaken first impression of the man himself behind the manner. Jefferson was downright; but it was the downrightness of honesty, Roger felt, not of villainy.
Roger began, half unconsciously, to rearrange some of his ideas. If Jefferson was concerned in Stanworth’s death, then it would be because there was a very excellent reason for that death. All the more reason to probe into Stanworth’s affairs.
“Going to stay down here long, Jefferson?” he asked, with an obvious yawn.
“Not very. Just got to finish off this job I’m on now. You turn in. Must be getting pretty late.”
Roger glanced at his watch. “Close on twelve. Right, I think I will, if you’re sure there’s nothing else I can do?”
“Nothing, thanks. I shall have a go at it before breakfast myself. Got to get cleared up in here by eleven. Well, good-night, Sheringham, and many thanks.”
Roger sought his room in a state of some perplexity. This new conclusion of his with regard to Jefferson was going to make things very much more complicated instead of more simple. He felt a strong sympathy with Jefferson all of a sudden. He was not a clever man; certainly he was not the brains of the conspiracy. What must his feelings be when he knew, as indeed he must know, that Roger was tracking out things that would, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred and with only very ordinary luck, have remained undiscovered for ever? How must he regard the net which he could see spread to catch him, and with him—whom?
Roger dragged a chair up to the open window, and sat down with his feet on the sill. He felt he was getting maudlin. This had every appearance of a thoroughly cold-blooded crime, and here he was feeling sorry already for one of its chief participants. Yet it was because Jefferson, as he saw now that the scales had suddenly fallen from his eyes, was such a fine type of man—the tall, thin, small-headed type that is the real pioneer of our race—and because he himself genuinely liked all three members of that suspicious trio, that Roger, without necessarily giving way to maudlin sentiment, was yet unable to stifle his very real regret that everything should point so decisively to their guilt.
Still, it was too late to back out now. He owed it to himself, if not even to them, to see the thing through. Roger could sympathise more fully now with Alec’s feelings on the matter. Curious that he should after all have come round in the end to that much-derided point of view of Alec’s!
He began to review the personal element in the light of this new revelation. How did it help? If Jefferson was an honest man and would only kill because nothing short of killing would meet some unknown case, then what was most likely to have produced such a state of affairs? What is the mainspring that actuates three quarters of such drastic deeds? Well, the answer to that was obvious enough. A woman.
How did that apply in this case? Could Jefferson be in love with some woman, whose happiness or peace had been threatened in some mysterious way by Stanworth himself, and if so, who was the woman? Lady Stanworth? Mrs. Plant? Roger uttered an involuntary exclamation. Mrs. Plant!
That, at any rate, would fit in with some of the puzzling facts. The powder on the arm of the couch, for instance, and the wet handkerchief.
Roger’s imagination began to ride free. Mrs. Plant was in the library with Stanworth; he was bullying her, or something. Perhaps he was trying to force some course of action upon her which was repugnant to her. In any case, she weeps and implores him. He is adamant. She hides her face against the arm of the couch and goes on weeping. Jefferson enters, sees at a glance what is happening and kills Stanworth in the madness of his passion with as little compunction as one would feel towards a rat. Mrs. Plant looks on in horror; tries to interfere, perhaps, but without effect. As soon as the thing is done she becomes as cool as ice and sets the stage for suicide.
Roger jumped to his feet and leaned out over the sill.
“It fits!” he murmured excitedly. “It all fits in!”
Glancing downwards, he noticed that the morning-room light had been extinguished and made a note of the time. It was past one. He sank back in his chair and began to consider whether the other pieces of the puzzle would slip as neatly into this general scene—the safe incident, the change of attitude, Lady Stanworth, and so on. No, this was not going to be quite so easy.
At the end of the hour he was still uncertain. The main outline still seemed convincing enough, but all the details appeared hardly so glib.
“I’m getting addled,” he murmured aloud, as he rose from the chair. “Better give this side of it a rest for a little.”
He made his way softly out of the room and crept along the passage to Alec’s bedroom.
Alec sat abruptly up in bed as the door opened.
“That you, Roger?” he demanded.
“No, this is Jefferson,” Roger said, hastily shutting the door behind him. “And very nicely you’d have given things away if it had been, Alexander Watson. And you might try and moderate your voice a bit. The sound of a foghorn in the middle of the night is bound to make people wonder. Ready?”
Alec got out of bed and put on his dressing-gown.
“Right-ho.”
As quietly as possible they stole downstairs and into the morning room. Roger drew the thick curtains together carefully before switching on the light.
“Now for it!” he breathed excitedly, eyeing the crowded table with eagerness. “That little pile there I’ve already been through, so you needn’t bother about those.”
“Already?” Alec asked in surprise.
“Yes, in company with my excellent friend, Major Jefferson,” Roger grinned, and proceeded to explain what he had been doing.
“You’ve got some cheek,” Alec commented with a smile.
“Yes, and I’ve got something more than that,” Roger retorted. “I’ve got a thoroughly sound working idea as to who killed Stanworth and under what circumstances. I can tell you, friend Alec, I’ve been uncommonly busy these last two hours or so.”
“You have?” said Alec eagerly. “Tell me.”
Roger shook his head. “Not at the moment,” he said, sitting down in Jefferson’s chair. “Let’s get this little job safely done first. Now look here, you go through these miscellaneous documents, will you? I want to study the passbooks first of all. And I’ll tell you one thing I’ve discovered. The income from those various businesses of his didn’t amount to a quarter of what he must have been spending. He cleared just over two thousand out of all five of them last year, and I should say that he’s been living at the rate of at least ten thousand a year. And besides all that, he’s been investing heavily as well. Where does all the extra cash come from? That’s what I want to find out.”
Alec began to wade obediently through the sheaf of papers that Roger had indicated, while the latter picked out the passbooks and glanced at them.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Two of these accounts are in his own name, and the other three appear to be in three different names. Jefferson never said anything about that. Now I wonder what the devil that means?”
He began to pore over them methodically, and for some time there was silence in the room. Then Roger looked up with a frown.
“I don’t understand these at all,” he said slowly. “The dividends are all shown in his own two passbooks, and various checks and so on; but the other three seem to be made up entirely of cash payments, on the credit side at any rate. Listen to this: Feb. 9th, £100; Feb. 17th, £500; Mar. 12th, £200; Mar. 28th, £350; and then April 9th, £1,000. What on earth do you make of that? All in cash, and such nice round sums. Why a thousand pounds in cash?”
“Seems funny, certainly,” Alec agreed.
Roger picked up another of the books, and flicked the pages through carefully.
“This is just the same sort of thing. Hullo, here’s an entry of £5,000 paid in cash. £5,000 in cash! Now why? What does it mean? Does your pile throw any light on it?”
“No, these are only business letters. There doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary here at all.”
Roger still held the book mechanically in his hand, but he was staring blankly at the wall.
“Nothing but cash,” he murmured softly; “all sorts of sums between £10 and £5,000; each sum a multiple of ten, or some other round figure; no shillings or pence; andcash!That’s what worries me. Why cash? I can’t find a single check marked on the credit side of these three books. And where in the name of goodness did all this cash come from? There’s absolutely nothing to account for it, as far as I can make out. It’s not the proceeds of any sort of business, apparently. Besides, the debit side shows nothing but checks drawn to self. He paid it in as cash and he drew it out himself. Now what on earth does all this mean?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Alec helplessly.
Roger stared at the wall in silence for a few minutes. Suddenly, his mouth opened, and he whistled softly.
“By—Jove!” he exclaimed, transferring his gaze to Alec. “I believe I’ve got it. And doesn’t it simplify things, too? Yes, itmustbe right. It makes everything as clear as daylight. Good lord! Well, I’m damned!”
“Out with it, then!”
Roger paused impressively. This was the most dramatic moment he had yet encountered, and he was not going to spoil it by any undue precipitation.
He smote the table softly with his fist by way of preparation. Then:
“Old Stanworth was a professional blackmailer!” he said in vibrant tones.