"Then again, no proper accounts had been kept since the inception of the Institute five years ago; entries were spasmodic, irregular and unreliable; books were never audited; no one, apparently, had the slightest idea of profit and loss or of balances; no one knew from week to week where the salaries and wages were coming from, or from quarter to quarter if there would be funds enough to meet rates and taxes; no one, in fact, appeared to know anything about the affairs of the Institute, least of all the secretary himself, who had often remarked quite jocularly that he had never in all his life known anything about book-keeping, and that his appointment by the governors rested upon his agreeable personality rather than upon his financial and administrative ability.
"As you see, the Captain's position was, in consequence of this, a very serious one; it became still more so when presently two or three ominous facts came to light. To begin with, it seemed that he could give absolutely no account of himself during the greater part of the night of May fifth. He had left the Institute at about seven o'clock; he told the headmaster then that he was going for a walk which seemed strange as it was pouring with rain. On the other hand the landlady at the room where he lodged told the police that when she herself went to bed at eleven o'clock, the Captain had not come in: she hadn't seen him since morning, when he went to his work, and at what time he eventually came home she couldn't say.
"But there was worse to come: firstly, a stick was found on the beach some thirty yards or less from the spot where the body itself was discovered; and secondly, the police produced a few strands of wool which were, it seems, clinging to the poor girl's hatpin, and which presumably were torn out of a muffler during the brief struggle which must have occurred when she was first attacked and before she lost her footing and fell down the side of the cliff.
"Now the stick was identified as the property of Captain Marston, and he had been seen on the road with it in his hand in the early part of the evening. He was then walking alone on the Lovers' Walk; two Broxmouth visitors met him on their way back from Kurtmoor. Knowing him by sight, they passed the time of day. These witnesses, however, were quite sure that Captain Marston was not then wearing a muffler, on the other hand they were equally sure that he carried the stick; they had noticed it as a very unusual one, of what is known as Javanese snake-wood with a round heavy knob and leather strap which the Captain carried slung upon his arm.
"Of course, the matter interested me enormously; it is not often that a person of the social and intellectual calibre of Captain Marston stands accused of so foul a crime. If he was guilty, then indeed, he was one of the vilest criminals that ever defaced God's earth, and in the annals of crime there were few crimes more hideous. The poor girl, it seems, had been in love with him right up to the end and, according to some well-informed gossips, the wedding-day had actually been fixed.
"The unsuccessful rival, Major Gubbins, too, was an interesting personality, and it was difficult to suppose that he was entirely ignorant of the events which must of necessity have led up to the crime. Supposedly there had been a quarrel between the lovers; sundry rumours were current as to this and in a vague way those rumours connected this quarrel with the shaky financial situation of the Institute. But it was all mere surmise and very contradictory; no one could easily state what possible connection there could be between the affairs of the Institute and the murder of the chief matron.
"In the meanwhile the accused had been brought up before the magistrate, and formal evidence of the finding of the body and of the arrest was given, as well as of the subsequent discovery of the stick, which was identified by the two witnesses, and of the strands of wool. The accused was remanded until the following Monday, bail being refused. The inquest was held a day or two later, and I went down to Broxmouth for it. I remember how hot it was in that crowded court-room; excited and perspiring humanity filled the stuffy atmosphere with heat. While the crowd jabbered and fidgeted I had a good look at the chief personages who were about to enact a thrilling drama for my entertainment; you have seen portraits of them all in the illustrated papers, the British army being well represented by a trio of as fine specimens of manhood as any one would wish to see.
"The President, General Arkwright Jones, was there as a matter of course. He looked worried and annoyed that the even tenor of his pleasant existence should have been disturbed by this tiresome event; he is the regular type of British pre-war officer with ruddy face and white hair, something like a nice ripe tomato that has been packed in cotton wool. Then there was the headmaster, Major Gubbins, well-groomed, impassive, immaculate in dress and bearing; and finally the accused himself, in charge of two warders, a fine-looking man, obviously more of a soldier and an athlete than a clerk immersed in figures.
"Two other persons in the crowded room arrested my attention: two women. One of them dressed in deep black, thin lipped, with pale round eyes and pursed-up mouth was Miss Amelia Smith, the sister with whom the deceased had been living, and the other was Louisa Rumble who held the position of housekeeper at the Woodforde Institute. The latter was one of the first witnesses called: and her evidence was intensely interesting because it gave one the first clue as to the motive which underlay the hideous crime. The woman's testimony, you must know, bore entirely on the question of housekeeping and of the extraordinary scarcity of money in the richly-endowed Institute.
"'Often and often,' said the witness, a motherly old soul in a flamboyant bonnet, 'did I complain to Miss Smith when she give me my weekly allowance for the tradesmen's books: "'Tisn't enough, Miss Smith," I says to 'er, "not to feed a family," I says, "let alone thirty growin' boys and 'arf a dozen working girls." But Miss Smith she just shook 'er 'ead and says: "Committee's orders, Mrs. Rumble, I 'ave no power." "Why don't you speak to the Captain?" I says to 'er, "'e 'as the 'andling of the money, it is a scandal," I says. "Those boys can't live on boiled bacon an' beans and not English nor Irish bacon it ain't neither," I says. "Pore lambs! The money I 'ave won't pay for beef or mutton for them, Miss Smith," I says, "and you know it." But Miss Smith, she only shook 'er 'ead and says she would speak to the Captain about it.'
"Asked whether she knew if deceased had actually spoken to the secretary on the subject, Mrs. Rumble said most emphatically 'Yes!'
"'What's more, sir,' she went on, 'I can tell you that the very day before she died, the pore lamb 'ad a reg'lar tiff with the Captain about that there commissariat.'
"Mrs. Rumble had stumbled a little over the word, but strangely enough no one tittered; the importance of the old woman's testimony was impressed upon every mind and silenced every tongue. All eyes were turned in the direction of the accused. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, but otherwise stood quite still, with arms folded, and a dull expression of hopelessness upon his good-looking face.
"The coroner had asked the witness how she knew that Miss Smith had had words with Captain Marston: 'Because I 'eard them two 'aving words, sir,' Mrs. Rumble replied. 'I'd been in the office to get my money and my orders from Miss Smith, and we 'ad the usual talk about American bacon and boiled beans, with which I don't 'old, not for growing boys; then back I went to the kitchen, when I remembered I 'ad forgot to speak to Miss Smith about the scullery-maid, who'd been saucy and given notice. So up I went again, and I was just a-goin' to open the office door when I 'eard Miss Smith say quite loud and distinck: "It is shameful," she says, "and I can't bear it," she says, "and if you won't speak to the General then I will. He is staying at the Queen's at Kurtmoor, I understand," she says, "and I am goin' this very night to speak with him," she says, "as I can't spend another night," she says, "with this on my mind." Then I give a genteel cough and...'
"The worthy lady had got thus far in her story when her volubility was suddenly checked by a violent expletive from the accused.
"'But this is damnable!' he cried, and no doubt would have said a lot more, but a touch on his shoulder from the warders behind him quickly recalled him to himself. He once more took up his outwardly calm attitude, and Mrs. Rumble concluded her evidence amidst silence more ominous than any riotous scene would have been.
"'I give a genteel cough,' she resumed with unruffled dignity, 'and opened the door. Miss Smith, she was all flushed and I could see that she'd been crying; but the Captain; 'e just walked out of the room, and didn't say not another word.'
"By this time," the Old Man in the Corner went on dryly, "we must suppose that the amateur detectives and the large body of unintelligent public felt that they were being cheated. Never had there been so simple a case. Here, with the testimony of Mrs. Rumble, was the whole thing clear as daylight—motive, quarrel, means, everything was there already. No chance of exercising those powers of deduction so laboriously acquired by a systematic study of detective fiction. Had it not been for the position of the accused and his popularity in Broxmouth society, all interest in the case would have departed in the wake of Mrs. Rumble, and at first, when Miss Amelia Smith, sister of the deceased, was called, her appearance only roused languid curiosity. Miss Amelia looked what, in fact, she was: a retired school marm, and wore the regular hallmark of impecunious and somewhat soured spinsterhood.
"'Janet often told me,' she said, in the course of her evidence, 'that she was quite sure there was roguery going on in the affairs of the Institute, because she knew for a fact that subscriptions were constantly pouring in from the public, far in excess of what was being spent for the welfare of the boys. I often used to urge her to go straight to the governors or even to the President himself about the whole matter, but she would always give the same disheartened reply. General Arkwright Jones, it seems, had made it a condition when he accepted the presidency that he was never to be worried about the administration of the place, and he refused to have anything to do with the handling of the subscriptions; as for the governors, my poor sister declared that they cared more for tennis parties than for the welfare of a lot of poor officers' children.'
"But a moment or two later we realised that Miss Amelia Smith was keeping her titbit of evidence until the end. It seems that she had not even spoken about it to the police, determined as she was, no doubt, to create a sensation for once in her monotonous and dreary life. So now she pursed up her lips tighter than before, and after a moment's dramatic silence, she said:
"'The day before her death, my poor sister was very depressed. In the late afternoon, when she came in for tea, I could see that she had been crying. I guessed, of course, what was troubling her, but I didn't say much. Captain Franklin Marston was in the habit of calling for Janet in the evening, and they would go for a walk together; at eight o'clock on that sad evening I asked her whether Captain Marston was coming as usual; whereupon she became quite excited, and said: "No, no, I don't wish to see him!" and after a while she added in a voice choked with tears: "Never again!"
"'About a quarter of an hour later,' Miss Amelia went on, 'Janet suddenly took up her hat and coat. I asked her where she was going, and she said to me: "I don't know, but I must put an end to all this. I must know one way or the other." I tried to question her further, but she was in an obstinate mood; when I remarked that it was raining hard she said: "That's all right, the rain will do me good." And when I asked her whether she wasn't going to meet Captain Marston after all, she just gave me a look, but she made no reply. And so my poor sister went out into the darkness and the rain, and I never again saw her alive.'
"Miss Amelia paused just long enough to give true dramatic value to her statement, and indeed there was nothing lukewarm now about the interest which she aroused; then she continued:
"'As the clock was striking nine I was surprised to receive a visit from the headmaster, Major Gubbins. He came with a message from Captain Marston to my sister; I told him that Janet had gone out. He appeared vexed, and told me that the Captain would be terribly disappointed.'
"'What was this message?' the coroner asked, amidst breathless silence.
"'That Janet would please meet Captain Marston at the Dog's Tooth Cliff. He would wait for her there until nine o'clock.'"
The Old Man in the Corner gave a short, sharp laugh, and with loving eyes contemplated his bit of string, in which he had just woven an elegant and complicated knot. Then he said:
"Now it was at the foot of the Dog's Tooth Cliff that the dead body of Janet Smith was found and some thirty yards further on the stick which had last been seen in the hand of Captain Franklin Marston. Nervous women gave a gasp, and scarcely dared to look at the accused, for fear, no doubt, that they would see the hangman's rope around his neck, but I took a good look at him then. He had uttered a loud groan and buried his face in his hands, and I, with that unerring intuition on which I pride myself, knew that he was acting. Yes, deliberately acting a part—the part of shame and despair. You, no doubt, would ask me why he should have done this. Well, you shall understand presently. For the moment, and to all unthinking spectators, the attitude of despair on the part of the accused appeared fully justified.
"Later on we heard the evidence of Major Gubbins himself. He said that about seven o'clock he met Captain Marston in the hall of the Institute.
"'He appeared flushed and agitated,' the witness went on, very reluctantly it seemed, but in answer to pressing questions put to him by the coroner, 'and told me he was going for a walk. When I remarked that it was raining hard, he retorted that the rain would do him good. He didn't say where he was going, but presently he put his hand on my shoulder and said in a tone of pleading and affection which I shall never forget: "Old man," he said, "I want you to do something for me. Tell Janet that I must see her again to-night; beg her not to deny me. I will meet her at our usual place on the Dog's Tooth Cliff. Tell her I will wait for her there until nine o'clock, whatever the weather. But she must come. Tell her she must."
"'Unfortunately,' the Major continued, 'I was unable to deliver the message immediately, as I had work to do in my office which kept me till close on nine o'clock. Then I hurried down to the Smiths' house, and just missed Miss Janet who, it seems, had already gone out.'
"Asked why he had not spoken about this before, the Major replied that he did not intend to give evidence at all unless he was absolutely forced to do so, as a matter of duty. Captain Marston was his friend, and he did not think that any man was called upon to give what might prove damnatory evidence against his friend.
"All this sounded very nice and very loyal until we learned that William Peryer, batman at the Institute, testified to having overheard violent words between the headmaster and the secretary at the very same hour when the latter was supposed to have made so pathetic an appeal to his friend to deliver a message on his behalf. Peryer swore that the two men were quarrelling and quarrelling bitterly. The words he overheard were: 'You villain! You shall pay for this!' But he was so upset and so frightened that he could not state positively which of the two gentlemen had spoken them, but he was inclined to think that it was Major Gubbins.
"And so the tangle grew, a tangled web that was dexterously being woven around the secretary of the Institute. The two Broxmouth visitors were recalled, and they once more swore positively to having met Captain Marston on the Lovers' Walk at about eight o'clock of that fateful evening. They spoke to him and they noticed the stick which he was carrying. They were on their way home from Kurtmoor, and they met the Captain some two hundred yards or so before they came to the Dog's Tooth Cliff. Of this they were both quite positive. The lady remembered coming to the cliff a few minutes later: she was nervous in the dark and therefore the details of the incident impressed themselves upon her memory. Subsequently when they were nearing home they met a lady who might or might not have been the deceased; they did not know her by sight and the person they met had her hat pulled down over her eyes and the collar of her coat up to her ears. It was raining hard then, and they themselves were hurrying along and paid no attention to passers-by.
"We also heard that at about nine o'clock James Hoggs and his wife, who live in a cottage not very far from the Dog's Tooth Cliff, heard a terrifying scream. They were just going to bed and closing up for the night. Hoggs had the front door open at the moment and was looking at the weather. It was raining, but nevertheless he picked up his hat and ran out toward the cliff. A moment or two later he came up against a man whom he hailed; it was very dark, but he noticed that the man was engaged in wrapping a muffler round his neck. He asked him whether he had heard a scream, but the man said: 'No, I've not!' then hurried quickly out of sight. As Hoggs heard nothing more, or saw anything, he thought that perhaps, after all, he and his missis had been mistaken, so he turned back home and went to bed.
"I think," the Old Man in the Corner continued thoughtfully, "that I have now put before you all the most salient points in the chain of evidence collected by the police against the accused. There were not many faulty links in the chain, you will admit. The motive for the hideous crime was clear enough: for there was the fraudulent secretary and the unfortunate girl who had suspected the defalcations and was threatening to go and denounce her lover either to the President of the Institute or to the governors. And the method was equally clear: the meeting in the dark and the rain on the lonely cliff, the muffler quickly thrown around the victim's mouth to smother her screams, the blow with the stick, the push over the edge of the cliff. The stick stood up as an incontestable piece of evidence. The absence from home of the accused during the greater part of that night had been testified by his landlady, whilst his presence on the scene of the crime some time during the evening was not disputed.
"As a matter of fact, the only points in the man's favour were the strands of wool found sticking to the girl's hatpin, and Hoggs's story of the man whom he had seen in the dark, engaged in readjusting a muffler around his neck. Unfortunately Hoggs, when more closely questioned on that subject, became incoherent and confused, as men of his class are apt to do when pinned down to a definite statement.
"Anyway, the accused was committed for trial on the coroner's warrant, and, of course, reserved his defence. You probably, like the rest of the public, kept up a certain amount of interest in the Cliff murder, as it was popularly called, for a time, and then allowed your mind to dwell on other matters and forgot poor Captain Franklin Marston who was languishing in gaol under such a horrible accusation. Subsequently your interest in him revived when he was brought up for trial the other day at the Barchester Assizes. In the meanwhile he had secured the services of Messrs. Charnton and Inglewood, the noted solicitors, who had engaged Mr. Provost Boon, K.C., to defend their client.
"You know as well as I do what happened at the trial, and how Mr. Boon turned the witnesses for the Crown inside out and round about until they contradicted themselves and one another all along the line. The defence was conducted in a masterly fashion. To begin with, the worthy housekeeper, Mrs. Rumble, after a stiff cross-examination, which lasted nearly an hour, was forced to admit that she could not swear positively to the exact words which she overheard between the deceased and Captain Marston. All that she could swear to was that the Captain and his sweetheart had apparently had a tiff. Then, as to Miss Amelia Smith's evidence; it also merely went to prove that the lovers had had a quarrel; there was nothing whatever to say that it was on the subject of finance, nor that deceased had any intention either of speaking to the President about it or of handing in her resignation to the governors.
"Next came the question of Major Gubbins's story of the message which he had been asked by his friend to deliver to the deceased. Now accused flatly denied that story, and denied it on oath. The whole thing, he declared, was a fabrication on the part of the Major who, far from being his friend, was his bitter enemy and unsuccessful rival. In support of this theory William Peryer's evidence was cited as conclusive. He had heard the two men quarrelling at the very moment when accused was alleged to have made a pathetic appeal to his friend. Peryer had heard one of them say to the other: 'You villain! You shall pay for this!' And in very truth, the unfortunate Captain was paying for it, in humiliation and racking anxiety.
"Then there came the great, the vital question of the stick and of the strands of wool so obviously torn out of a muffler. With regard to the stick, the accused had stated that in the course of his walk he had caught his foot against a stone and stumbled, and that the stick had fallen out of his hand and over the edge of the cliff. Now this statement was certainly borne out by the fact that, as eminent counsel reminded the jury, the stick was found more than thirty yards away from the body. As for the muffler, it was a graver point still; strands of wool were found sticking to the girl's hatpin, and James Hoggs, after hearing a scream at nine o'clock that evening, ran out towards the cliff and came across a man who was engaged in readjusting a muffler round his throat. That was incontestable.
"Of course, Mr. Boon argued, it was easy enough to upset a witness of the type of James Hoggs, but an English jury's duty was not to fasten guilt on the first man who happens to be handy, but to see justice meted out to innocent and guilty alike. The evidence of the muffler, argued the eminent counsel, was proof positive of the innocence of the accused. The witnesses who saw him in the Lovers' Walk on that fateful night had declared most emphatically that he was not wearing a muffler. Then where was the man with the muffler? Where was the man who was within a few yards of the scene of the crime five minutes after James Hoggs had heard the scream—the man who had denied hearing the scream although both Hoggs and his wife heard it over a quarter of a mile away?
"'Yes, gentlemen of the jury,' the eminent counsel concluded with a dramatic gesture, 'it is the man with the muffler who murdered the unfortunate girl. If he is innocent why is he not here to give evidence? There are no side tracks that lead to the cliffs at this point, so the man with the muffler must have seen something or some one; he must know something that would be of invaluable assistance in the elucidation of this sad mystery. Then why does he not come forward? I say because he dare not. But let the police look for him, I say. The accused is innocent; he is the victim of tragic circumstances, but his whole life, his war-record, his affection for the deceased, all proclaim him to be guiltless of such a dastardly crime, and above all there stands the incontestable proof of his innocence, the muffler, gentlemen of the jury—the muffler!'
"He said a lot more than that, of course," the Old Man in the Corner went on, chuckling dryly to himself, "and said it a lot better than ever I can repeat it, but I have given you the gist of what he said. You know the result of the trial. The accused was acquitted, the jury having deliberated less than a quarter of an hour. There was no getting away from that muffler, even though every other circumstance pointed to Marston as the murderer of Janet Smith.
"On the whole, his acquittal was a popular one, although many who were present at the trial shook their heads, and thought that if they had been on the jury Marston would not have got off so easily, but for the most part these sceptics were not Broxmouth people. In Broxmouth the Captain was personally liked, and the proclamation of his innocence was hailed with enthusiasm; and, what's more, those same champions of the good-looking secretary—they were the women mostly—looked askance on the headmaster, who, they averred, had woven a Machiavellian net for trapping and removing from his path for ever a hated and successful rival.
"The police have received a perfect deluge of anonymous communications suggesting that Major Gubbins was identical with the mysterious man with the muffler, but, of course, such a suggestion is perfectly absurd, since at the very hour when James Hoggs heard the scream, and a very few minutes before he met the man with the muffler, Major Gubbins was paying his belated visit to Miss Amelia Smith and delivering the alleged message. Even those ladies who disliked the headmaster most cordially had to admit that he could not very well have been in two places at the same time. The Dog's Tooth Cliff is a good half hour's walk from Miss Smith's house, and the Lovers' Walk itself is not accessible to cyclists or motors.
"And thus, to all intents and purposes, the Cliff murder has remained a mystery, but it won't be one for long. Have I not told you that you may expect important developments within the next few days? And I am seldom wrong. Already in this evening's paper you will have read that the entire executive of the Woodforde Institute has placed its resignation in the hands of the governors, that several august personages have withdrawn their names from the list of patrons, and that though the President has been implored not to withdraw his name, he has proved adamant on the subject, and even refused to recommend successors to the headmaster, the secretary, or the matron; in fact, he has seemingly washed his hands of the whole concern."
"But surely," I now broke in, seeing that the Old Man in the Corner threatened to put away his piece of string and to leave me without the usual epilogue to his interesting narrative, "surely General Sir Arkwright Jones cannot be blamed for the scandal which undoubtedly has dimmed the fortunes of the Woodforde Institute?"
"Cannot be blamed?" the Old Man in the Corner retorted sarcastically. "Cannot be blamed for entering into a conspiracy with his secretary and his head-master to defraud the Institute, and then to silence for ever the one voice that might have been raised in accusation against him."
"Sir Arkwright Jones?" I exclaimed incredulously, for indeed the idea appeared to me preposterous then, as the General's name was almost a household word before the catastrophe. "Impossible!"
"Impossible!" he reiterated. "Why? He murdered Janet Smith; of that you will be as convinced within the next few days as I am at this hour. That the three men were in collusion I have not the shadow of doubt. Marston only made love to Janet Smith in order to secure her silence; but in this he failed, and the girl boldly accused him of roguery as soon as she found him out. It would be inconceivable to suppose that being the bright, intelligent girl that she admittedly was, she could remain for ever in ignorance of the defalcations in the books; she must and did tax her lover of irregularities, she must have and indeed did threaten to put the whole thing before the governors. So much for the lovers' quarrel overheard by Mrs. Rumble.
"I believe that the fate of the poor girl was decided on then and there by two of the scoundrels; it only remained to consult with their other accomplice as to the best means for carrying their hideous project through. Janet had announced her determination to go to Kurtmoor that self-same evening, the only question was which of those three miscreants would meet her in the darkness and solitude of the Lovers' Walk. But in order at the outset to throw dust in the eyes of the public and the police and not appear to be in any way associated with one another, Marston and Gubbins made pretence of a violent quarrel which Peryer overheard; then Gubbins, in order to make sure that the poor girl would carry out her intention of going over to Kurtmoor that evening, went to her house with the supposed message from Marston, and incidentally secured thereby his own alibi. This made him safe.
"Marston in the meanwhile went to arrange matters with Arkwright Jones. His position was, of course, more difficult than that of Gubbins. If there was to be murder—and my belief is that the scoundrels had been resolved on murder for some time before—the first suspicion would inevitably fall on the secretary who had kept the books and who had had the handling of the money. The miscreants had some sort of vague plan in their heads: of this there can be no doubt; they were only procrastinating, hoping against hope that chance would continue to favour them. But now the hour had come, the danger was imminent; within the next four-and-twenty hours Janet Smith, being promised no redress on the part of the President, would place the whole matter before the governors.Unless she was effectually made to hold her tongue.
"We can easily suppose that Marston would be clever enough to arrange to meet Arkwright Jones, without arousing suspicion. We do know that soon after he finally quarrelled with Janet Smith he walked over to Kurtmoor; the two witnesses who spoke with him stated that they met him whilst they themselves were walking to Broxmouth. It was then past eight o'clock. Arkwright Jones had either dined at his hotel or not; we do not know, for it never struck the police to inquire at once how the popular General had spent his time on that fateful evening. You know what those unconventional seaside places are: people spend most of their time out of doors, and there would be nothing strange, let alone suspicious, in any visitor going out for an hour after dinner, even if it rained.
"Then surely you can in your mind see those two scoundrels putting their villainous heads together, and as suspicion of any foul play would of necessity at once fall on Marston, Jones decided to take the hideous onus on himself. He went to the Dog's Tooth Cliff to meet Janet Smith himself, and borrowed Marston's stick to aid him in his abominable deed. He was clever enough, however, to throw it over the edge of the cliff some distance away from the scene of his crime. We do not know, of course, whether the poor girl recognised him, or whether he just fell on her in the dark; she gave only one scream before she fell.
"They were clever scoundrels, we must admit, but chance favoured them, too, especially in one thing: she favoured them when she prompted Arkwright Jones to put a muffler round his throat. This one fact, as you know, saved Marston's neck from the gallows, but for the strands of wool in the girl's hatpin, and Hoggs's brief view of a man manipulating a muffler, nothing but Jones's own confession could have saved his accomplice. Whether he would have confessed remains a riddle which no one will ever solve. But as to the whole so-called mystery, I saw daylight through it the moment I realised that Marston's despair and humiliation during the inquest was a pretence. If he feigned despair it was because he desiredtemporarilyto be the victim of circumstantial evidence. From that point to the unravelling of the tangled skein was but a step for a mind bent on logic."
"But," I argued, for indeed I was bewildered, and really incredulous, "what will be the end of it all? Surely three scoundrels like that will not go scot free. There will be an enquiry into the affairs of the Institute: the governors——"
"The governors have talked of an inquiry," the funny creature broke in, with a chuckle, "but if you had any experience of these private charities, you would know that the first thing their administrators wish to avoid is publicity. The President of the Woodforde Institute had sufficient influence on the committee you may be sure to stifle any suggestion of creating public scandal by any sort of enquiry."
"But the question of the finances of the Institute is, anyhow, public property now, and——"
"And it will be allowed to sink into oblivion. The executive has resigned. Marston and Gubbins will leave the country, and everything will be conveniently hushed up."
"But Arkwright Jones—" I protested.
"You see the papers regularly," he rejoined dryly; "watch them, and you will see..."
I don't know when he went, but a moment or two later I found myself sitting alone at the table in the blameless teashop. The matter interested me more than I cared to admit, but, for once, I was not altogether prepared to accept the funny creature's deductions.
Twenty-four hours later, however, I had to own that he had been right, when the following piece of sensational news appeared in theEvening Post.
"TRAGIC SEQUEL TO THE CLIFF MURDER
"An extraordinary sequel to the mysterious tragedy of the Dog's Tooth Cliff near Broxmouth occurred last night, when on the self-same spot where Miss Janet Smith met her death three months ago, General Sir Arkwright Jones lost his footing and fell a distance of two hundred feet on to the rocks below. It was a beautiful moonlight evening, and the tide being low a number of visitors were down on the beach at the time; but those who immediately hurried to the General's assistance found life already extinct. The distinguished soldier, who will be deeply mourned, must have been killed on the spot. Indeed now general public opinion as well as every inhabitant of Broxmouth will bring pressure to bear upon the Borough Council to see that a suitable barrier is erected along the dangerous portions of the beautiful Lovers' Walk. The double tragedy of this year's season renders such an erection imperative."
I was probably the only reader of that paragraph who guessed that the once distinguished soldier had not come accidentally by his death. No doubt the police had followed up the clue of the man with the muffler, and were actually on the track of the miscreant, when the latter, guessing that exposure was imminent, preferred to put an end to his own miserable life.
I have since heard from friends at Broxmouth that Marston has gone to the Malay States, and that Gubbins is doing something in Germany. Curious creature Marston must have been! Imagine after Jones had returned from his infamous errand and told him that the hideous deed was done, imagine Marston walking back to Broxmouth along the Lovers' Walk in the rain and the darkness, past the Dog's Tooth Cliff, at the foot of which the body of the murdered girl lay! I wonder what would be the views of the Old Man in the Corner on the psychology of a man with nerve enough for such an ordeal.
"What do you make of this?" the Old Man in the Corner said to me that afternoon. "A curious case, is it not?"
And with his claw-like fingers he indicated the paragraph in theEvening Postwhich I had just been perusing with great interest.
"At best," I replied, "it is a very unpleasant business for the Carysforts."
"And at the worst?" he retorted with a chuckle.
"Well...!" I remarked dryly.
"Do you think they are guilty?" he asked.
"I don't see who else..."
"Ah!" he broke in, with his usual lack of manners, "that is such a stale argument. One doesn't see who else, therefore one makes up one's mind that so-and-so must be guilty. I'll lay an even bet with any one that out of a dozen cases of miscarriage of justice, I could point to ten that were directly due to that fallacious reasoning.
"Now take as an example the Tytherton case, in which you are apparently interested. It was an unprecedented outrage which stirred the busy provincial town to its depths, the victim, Mr. Walter Stonebridge, being one of its most noted solicitors. He had his office in Tytherton High Street, and lived in a small, detached house on the Great West Road. The house stood in the middle of a small garden, and had only one story above the ground floor; the front door opened straight on a long, narrow hall which ran along the full depth of the house. On the left side of this hall there were two doors, one leading to the drawing-room and the other to a small morning-room. At the end of the hall was the staircase, and beyond it, down a couple of steps, there was a tiny dining-room and the usual offices. The back door opened straight on the kitchen, and on the floor above there were four bedrooms and a bathroom. Mr. Walter Stonebridge was a bachelor, and his domestic staff consisted of a married couple—Henning by name—who did all that was necessary for him in the house.
"It was on the last evening of February. The weather was fair and bright. The Hennings had gone upstairs to their room as usual at ten o'clock. Mr. Stonebridge was at the time sitting in the morning-room. He was in the habit of sitting up late, reading and writing. On this occasion he told the Hennings to close the shutters and lock the back door as usual, but to leave the front door on the latch as he was expecting a visitor. The Hennings thought nothing of that, as one or two gentlemen—friends, or sometimes clients of Mr. Stonebridge—would now and then drop in late to see him. Anyway, they went contentedly to bed.
"A little while later—they could not exactly recollect at what hour, because they had already settled down for the night—they heard the front-door bell, and immediately afterwards Mr. Stonebridge's footsteps along the hall. Then suddenly they heard a crash followed by what sounded like a struggle, then a smothered cry, and finally silence. Henning was out of bed and on the landing with a candle in an instant, and he had just switched on the light there when he heard Mr. Stonebridge's voice calling up to him from below:
"It's all right, Henning. I caught my foot in this confounded rug. That's all.'
"Henning looked over the bannister, and seeing nothing he shouted down:
"'Shall I give you a 'and, sir?'
"But Mr. Stonebridge at once replied, quite cheerily:
"'No, no! I'm all right. You go back to bed.'
"And Henning did as he was told, nor did he or his wife hear anything more during the night. But in the early morning when Mrs. Henning came downstairs she was horror-struck to find Mr. Stonebridge in the dining-room, lying across the table, to which he was securely pinioned with a rope; a serviette taken out of the sideboard drawer had been tied tightly around his mouth and his eyes were blindfolded with his own pocket handkerchief.
"The woman's screams brought her husband upon the scene; together they set to work to rescue their master from his horrible plight. At first they thought that he was dead, and Henning was for fetching the police immediately, but his wife declared that Mr. Stonebridge was just unconscious and she started to apply certain household restoratives and made Henning force some brandy through Mr. Stonebridge's lips.
"Presently, the poor man opened his eyes, and gave one or two other signs of returning consciousness, but he was still very queer and shaky. The Hennings then carried him upstairs, undressed him and put him to bed; and then Henning ran for the doctor.
"Well, it was days, or in fact weeks before Mr. Stonebridge had sufficiently recovered to give a coherent statement of what happened to him on that fateful night, and—which was just as much to the point—what had happened the previous day. The doctor had prescribed complete rest in the interim. The patient had suffered from concussion and I know not what, and those events had got so mixed up in his brain that to try and disentangle them was such an effort that every time he attempted it it nearly sent him into a brain fever. But in the meanwhile his friends had been busy—notably, Mr. Stonebridge's head clerk, Mr. Medburn, who was giving the police no rest. There was, even without the evidence of the principal witness concerned, plenty of facts to go on, to make out a case against the perpetrator of such a dastardly outrage.
"That robbery had been the main motive of the assault, was easily enough established—a small fire- and burglar-proof safe which stood in a corner of the morning-room had been opened and ransacked. When examined it was found to contain only a few trinkets which had probably a sentimental value, but were otherwise worthless. The key of the safe—one of a bunch—was still in the lock, which went to prove either that Mr. Stonebridge had the safe open when he was attacked, or what was more likely—considering the solicitor's well-known careful habits—that the assailant had ransacked his victim's pockets after he had knocked him down. A pocket-book, torn, and containing only a few unimportant papers, lay on the ground; there had been a fire in the room at the time of the outrage, and careful analysis of the ashes found in the hearth revealed the presence of a quantity of burnt paper.
"But robbery being established as the motive of the outrage did not greatly help matters, because, while Mr. Stonebridge remained in such a helpless condition, it was impossible to ascertain what booty his assailant had carried away. Soon, however, the first ray of light was thrown upon what had seemed until this hour an impenetrable mystery.
"It appears that Mr. Medburn was looking after the business in High Street during his employer's absence, and one morning—it was on the Monday following the night of the outrage—he had a visit from a client, who sent in his name as Felix Shap. The head clerk knew something about this client, who had recently come over to England from somewhere abroad, in order to make good his claim to certain royalties on what is known as the Shap Fuelettes—a kind of cheap fuel which was launched some time before the War by Sir Alfred Carysfort, Bart., of Tytherton Grange, and out of which that gentleman made an immense fortune, and incidentally got his title thereby.
"This man, Shap—a Dutchman by birth—was, it appears, the original inventor and patentee of these fuelettes, and Mr. Carysfort, as he was then, had met him out in the Dutch East Indies, and had bought the invention from him for a certain sum down, and then exploited it in England first and afterwards all over the world at immense profit. Sir Alfred Carysfort died about a year ago, leaving a fortune of over a million sterling, and was succeeded in the title and in the managing-directorship of the business by his eldest son David, a married man with a large family. The business had long since been turned into a private limited liability company, the bulk of the shares being held by the managing-director.
"The fact that the patent rights in the Shap Fuelettes had been sold by the inventor to the late Alfred Carysfort had never been in dispute. It further appeared that Felix Shap had at one time been a very promising mining engineer, but that in consequence of incurable, intemperate habits he had gradually drifted down the social scale; he lost one good appointment after another until he was just an underpaid clerk in the office of an engineer in Batavia, whose representative in England was Mr. Alfred Carysfort. The latter was on a visit to the head office in Batavia some twelve years ago when he met Shap, who was then on his beam-ends. He had recently been sacked by his employers for intemperance, and was on the fair way to becoming one of those hopeless human derelicts who usually end their days either on the gallows or in a convict prison.
"But at the back of Shap's fuddled mind there had lingered throughout his downward career the remembrance of a certain invention which he had once patented, and which he had always declared would one day bring him an immense fortune; but though he had spent quite a good deal of money in keeping up his patent rights, he had never had the pluck and perseverance to exploit or even to perfect his invention.
"Alfred Carysfort on the other hand, was brilliantly clever, he was ambitious, probably none too scrupulous, and at once he saw the immense possibilities, if properly worked, of Shap's rough invention, and he set to work to obtain the man's confidence, and, presumably, by exercising certain persuasion and pressure he got the wastrel to make over to him in exchange for a few hundred pounds the entire patent rights in the Fuelettes.
"The transaction was, as far as that goes, perfectly straightforward and above board; it was embodied in a contract drawn up by an English solicitor, who was the British Consul in Batavia at the time; nor was it—taking everything into consideration—an unfair one. Shap would never have done anything with his invention, and a clean, wholesome and entirely practical fuel would probably have been thus lost to the world; but there remains the fact that Alfred Carysfort died a dozen years later worth more than a million sterling, every penny of which he had made out of an invention for which he had originally paid less than five hundred.
"Mr. Medburn had been put in possession of these facts some few weeks previously when Mr. Felix Shap had first presented himself at the private house of Mr. Stonebridge; he came armed with a letter of introduction from a relative of Mr. Stonebridge's whom he had met out in Java, and he was accompanied by a friend—an American named Julian Lloyd—who was piloting him about the place, and acting as his interpreter and secretary, as he himself had never been in England and spoke English very indifferently. His passport and papers of identification were perfectly in order; he appeared before Mr. Stonebridge as a man still on the right side of sixty, who certainly bore traces on his prematurely wrinkled face and in his tired, lustreless eyes of a life spent in dissipation rather than in work, but otherwise he bore himself well, was well-dressed and appeared plentifully supplied with money.
"The story that he told Mr. Stonebridge through the intermediary of his friend, Julian Lloyd, was a very curious one. According to his version of various transactions which took place between himself and the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, the latter had, some time after the signing of the original contract, made him a definite promise in writing, that should the proceeds in the business of the Shap Fuelettes exceed £10,000 in any one year, he, Sir Alfred, would pay the original inventor, out of his own pocket, a sum equivalent to twenty per cent. of all such profits over and above the £10,000, with a minimum of £200.
"Mr. Shap had brought over with him all the correspondence relating to this promise, and, moreover, he adduced as proof positive that Sir Alfred had looked on that promise as binding, and had at first loyally abided by it, the fact that until 1916 he had paid to Mr. Felix Shap the sum of £200 every year. These sums had been paid half-yearly through Sir Alfred's bankers, and acknowledgments were duly sent by Shap direct to the bank, all of which could of course be easily verified. But in the year 1916 these payments suddenly ceased. Mr. Shap wrote repeatedly to Sir Alfred, but never received any reply. At first he thought that there were certain difficulties in the way owing to the European War, so after a while he ceased writing. But presently there came the Armistice. Mr. Shap wrote again and again, but was again met by the same obstinate silence.
"In the meanwhile he had come to the end of his resources; he had spent all that he had ever saved, but, nevertheless, he was determined that as soon as he could scrape up a sufficiency of money he would go to England in order to establish his rights. Then in 1922 he heard of Sir Alfred Carysfort's death. It was now or never if he did not mean to acquiesce silently in the terrible wrong which was being put upon him. Fortunately he had a good friend in Mr. Julian Lloyd, who had helped him with money and advice, and at last he had arrived in England. It was for Mr. Stonebridge to say whether the papers and correspondence which he had brought with him were sufficient to establish his claim in law. Mr. Medburn remembered Mr. Stonebridge telling him all about these matters and emphasising the fact that Felix Shap had undoubtedly a very strong case and that he could not understand a man of the position of Sir Alfred Carysfort thus wilfully repudiating his own signature.
"'There is not only the original letter,' Mr. Stonebridge had concluded, 'making a definite promise to pay certain sums out of his own pocket if the profits of the company exceeded ten thousand pounds in any one year, but there are all the covering letters from Sir Alfred's bankers whenever they sent cheques on his behalf to Shap—usually twice a year for sums that varied between one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds. I cannot understand it!' he had reiterated more than once, and Mr. Medburn, who also had a great deal of respect for the Carysforts, who were among the wealthiest people in the county, was equally at a loss to understand the position.
"However Mr. Stonebridge, after he had seen the late Sir Alfred's bankers about the payments to Shap, and consulted an expert on the subject of the all-important letter signed by Alfred Carysfort, sought an interview with Sir David. From the first there seemed to be an extraordinary amount of acrimony brought into the dispute by both sides; this was understandable enough on the part of Felix Shap, who felt he was being defrauded of his just dues by men who were literally coining money out of the product of his brain; but the greatest bitterness really appeared to come from the other side.
"At first Sir David Carysfort refused even to discuss the question; he was quite sure that if his father had made promises of payments to any one, he was the last man in the world to repudiate such obligations. Sir David had not yet had time to go through all his father's papers, but he was quite convinced that correspondence, or documents, would presently be found, which would set at nought the original letter produced by Mr. Shap. But, of course, the payments to Shap up to and including the year 1916 could not be denied; there was the testimony of Sir Alfred's bankers that sums in accordance with Sir Alfred's instructions, varying between one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds, were paid by cheque every half year to the order of Felix Shap in Batavia. In 1916 these payments automatically ceased, Sir Alfred giving no further orders for these to be made. Mr. Stonebridge naturally desired to know what explanation Sir David would give about those payments.
"At first Sir David denied all knowledge as to the reason or object of the payments, but after a while he must have realised that public opinion was beginning to raise its voice on the subject, and that it was not exactly singing the praises of Sir David Carysfort, Bart.
"Although Mr. Stonebridge had, of course, been discretion itself, Mr. Shap had admittedly not the same incentive to silence, and what's more his friend, Mr. Lloyd, made it his business to get as much publicity for the whole affair as he could. Paragraphs in the local papers had begun to appear with unabated regularity, and though there were no actual comments on the case as a whole, no prejudging of respective merits, there were unmistakable hints that it would be in Sir David's interest to put dignity on one side and come out frankly into the open with explanations and suggestions. Soon the London papers got hold of the story, and you know what that means. The Radical Press simply battened on a story which placed a poor, down-at-heel inventor in the light of a victim to the insatiable greed and frank dishonesty of a high-born profiteer.
"Whether it was pressure from outside, or from his own family, that suddenly induced Sir David to 'come out into the open' is not generally known; certain it is that presently he condescended to give an explanation of the mysterious half-yearly payments made by his father to Felix Shap, and the explanation was so romantic and frankly so far-fetched that most people, especially men, refused to accept it—notably Mr. Stonebridge. It was not the business of a lawyer to listen to sentimental stories, least of all was it the business of the lawyer acting on the other side.
"The story told by Sir David, namely, was this:
"The late Sir Alfred, when quite a young man, had gone out as clerk to that same engineering firm in Batavia, whom he represented later on; it was then that he first met Felix Shap, who had not yet begun to go downhill. An intimacy sprang up between Alfred Carysfort and Shap's sister, Berta, and the two were secretly married in Batavia. A year later Berta had a son whose birth she only survived by a few hours. The marriage had been an unhappy one from the first, and Carysfort was only too thankful when his firm called him back to England and he was able to shake off the dust of Batavia from his feet, as he hoped for ever. He never spoke of his marriage, nor did he ever recognise or have anything to do with his son. By some pecuniary arrangement entered into with Felix Shap the latter undertook to provide for and look after the boy, to give him his own name, and never to trouble his brother-in-law about him again. A deed-poll was, Sir David believed, duly executed, and the boy assumed the name of Alfred Shap.
"Some years later there occurred the transaction over the Shap Fuelettes. Alfred Carysfort had come to Batavia on business: he had met Felix Shap again, who by this time had become a hopeless wastrel. The contract for the sale of the patent rights in the Fuelettes was duly executed, but whether, after seeing his son once more, the call of the blood became more insistent in the heart of Alfred Carysfort, or whether he merely yielded to blackmail, Sir David could not say; certain it is that after a while when the profits of the Shap Fuelettes Company became substantial, Sir Alfred took to sending over a couple of hundred pounds every year to Shap for the benefit of young Alfred. Then the war broke out; young Alfred joined the Australian Expeditionary Force, and was killed in Gallipoli in August, 1915. As soon as Sir Alfred had definite news of the boy's death, he naturally stopped all further payments to Shap.
"The story as you see sounded plausible enough, and if it proved to be untrue, it would reflect great credit on Sir David's gift of imagination. Felix Shap, as was only to be expected, denied it from beginning to end; the whole thing, he declared, was an impudent falsehood, based on a semblance of truth. It was quite true that he had adopted and for years had cared for his sister's son, who was subsequently killed in Gallipoli; it was also true that Alfred Carysfort had years ago paid some attention to his sister Berta, but there never was any question of marriage between them, young Carysfort deeming himself far too grand and well-born to marry the daughter of an obscure East Indian trader. Berta had subsequently married a man of mixed blood who deserted her and went off somewhere to Argentina or Honduras—Shap did not know where; at any rate, he was never heard of again.
"In proof of his version of the romantic story, Felix Shap actually had a copy of his sister's marriage certificate, as well as one or two letters written at different times to his sister Berta by her rascally husband. He had, indeed, plenty of proofs for his assertions; but when Mr. Stonebridge asked for confirmation of Sir David's story, the latter appeared either unprepared or unwilling to produce any, whereupon, Mr. Stonebridge, on behalf of his client, entered an action for the recovery of certain royalties due to him on the sales of the Shap Fuelettes, the amount to be presently agreed on after examination of the audited accounts.
"Thus matters stood when on that Wednesday night in February last, Mr. Stonebridge was found gagged and unconscious, the victim of a murderous and inexplicable assault.
"On the Monday following, Mr. Felix Shap, accompanied by his friend, Mr. Lloyd, called on Mr. Medburn at the office in High Street. They had read in the papers certain details which had filled Shap with apprehension; they had read that the safe in the morning-room in Mr. Stonebridge's house had been obviously ransacked, and that the analysis of the ashes in the grate had revealed the presence of a large quantity of burnt paper.
"'My friend Mr. Shap would like you to put his mind at rest, Mr.—er—Medburn,' Mr. Lloyd said, in an anxious, agitated tone of voice, 'that the papers relating to his case, which he entrusted to Mr. Stonebridge, are safely locked up in a safe at this office.'
"Unfortunately, the head clerk was not able to satisfy Mr. Shap on that point. Mr. Stonebridge had never brought the papers to the office, nor had Mr. Medburn ever seen them. His impression was—he regretted to say—that Mr. Stonebridge had, for the time being, kept all papers relating to this particular case at his private house, just as he had always seen Mr. Shap there rather than at the office. Of course, Mr. Medburn hastened to assure his visitor, Mr. Stonebridge may have kept the documents in some other secure place; Mr. Medburn couldn't say, not having access to all his employer's papers, and in any case he would make a comprehensive search for the missing documents, and if nothing was found he would at once inform the police.
"An evening or two later the papers came out with flaring headlines: 'Amazing Developments in the Tytherton outrage. Missing documents. Sensational turn in the Shap Fuelettes case.' And so on. The head clerk had made an exhaustive search amongst his employer's papers, but not a trace could he find of any documents relative to Mr. Shap's case. One and all had disappeared: the original letter from Alfred Carysfort promising to pay an extra twenty per cent. on the profits of the Shap Fuelette Company under certain conditions, the letters from the scoundrel who had been Berta's husband, together with the copy of Berta's marriage certificate—everything was gone, every proof of the truth of the story which Felix Shap had come all this way to tell.
"The next exciting incident," the Old Man in the Corner continued glibly, "in this remarkably mysterious case, was the news that Mr. Allan Carysfort, eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., had been detained in connection with the assault upon Mr. Stonebridge and the disappearance of certain papers, the property of Mr. Felix Shap of Batavia.
"Young Allan Carysfort, who was a subaltern in a cavalry regiment, had come home from India recently, and, as a matter of fact, he had arrived at the Grange, the family seat just outside Tytherton, the very evening of the outrage. Acting upon certain information received, the police had detained him; he was to be brought before the magistrates on the following day; and in the meanwhile it was generally understood that some highly sensational evidence had been collected by the police.
"It has been asserted that Sir David Carysfort and his family were the last to realise how very strong public opinion had been against them ever since Shap's story and the loss of the documents had become generally known. Though there had been no hint of it in the Press, the public loudly declared that the Carysforts must have had something to do with the outrage, seek him whom the crime benefits being a most excellent adage. But imagine the sensation when Allan Carysfort, the eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., was arrested!
"Need I say that the following day when the young man was brought before the magistrates, the court was crowded. Sir David was a magistrate, too, but of course he did not sit that day. To see his eldest son arraigned before his brother Beaks must have been a bitter pill for his pride to swallow.
"We had the usual formal evidence of arrest, the medical evidence, and so on, after which we quickly plunged into exciting business. Mr. Stonebridge we were soon told had made a statement. He was not yet strong enough to appear in person,but he had made a statement, so at last the public was to be initiated into the mysteries that surrounded the inexplicable assault.
"'After my servants had gone to bed,' Mr. Stonebridge had stated, 'I sat awhile reading in my study. I was expecting a visit from Mr. Shap, as we had talked over the possibility of a quiet chat at my house that evening on the subject of his affairs. He and Mr. Lloyd, who were both of them very fond of the cinema, were in the habit of dropping in after the show, on their way home. At about a quarter to eleven—I am sure it was not later—there was a ring at the front-door bell, and I went to open the door. No sooner had I done this than a shawl or muffler of some sort was thrown over my face, and I was made to lose my balance by the thrust of a foot between my two shins. I came down backwards with a crash.
"'The whole thing occurred in fewer seconds than it takes to describe; the next moment I had the sensation of cold steel against my temple, I heard an ominous click, and a husky voice whispered in my ear, "Your servant is coming out of his room. Speak to him, tell him you are all right, or I shoot." What could I do? I was utterly helpless and a revolver was held to my temple. The muffler was then lifted from my mouth, I could feel the man bending over me, I could feel his hot breath on my forehead, and a few seconds later I heard Henning come out of his room upstairs and switch on the light on the top landing. "If he comes downstairs," the voice whispered close to my ear, "I shoot."
"'Then it was,' Mr. Stonebridge went on to say, 'that I shouted up to Henning that I had only tripped over a rug, and that I was quite all right. I don't think I ever looked death so very near in the face before. The next moment I heard Henning switch off the light upstairs and go back to his room. After that I remember nothing more. I only have a vague recollection of a sudden terrible pain in my head; everything else is a blank until I found myself in bed, and with vague stirrings of memory bringing a return of that same appalling headache.'
"The great point about Mr. Stonebridge's evidence was that he was utterly unable to identify his assailant. He was not even sure whether he had been attacked by two men or one, since he had been blindfolded at the outset, and all that he heard was a husky voice that spoke in a whisper. He was ready to admit that he might have left the safe unlocked when he went to answer the front-door bell, and he certainly had the papers relating to Mr. Shap's case on his desk as he had been going through them earlier in the evening. Those papers, therefore, had undoubtedly been burned in the grate, and it was obvious that the theft and destruction of those papers was the motive of the assault.
"After that we went from excitement to excitement. We did not get it all the same day, of course; Allan Carysfort appeared, as far as I can remember, three or four times before the local magistrates; in between times he was out on bail, this having been fixed at £1,000 in two recognisances £500 each, with an additional £500 on his own. It seems that when he was arrested he had made a statement, to which he had since unreservedly subscribed. He said that he had arrived in London from Southampton on Monday the twenty-sixth, and after seeing to some business in town, he took the eight-ten P.M. train on the twenty-eighth to Tytherton, where he arrived at nine-fifty, having dined on board. His father met him at the station with the car, but it was such a beautiful moon-lit night Sir David and himself decided that they would walk to the Grange and then sent the car home with a message to Lady Carysfort that they would be home at about eleven o'clock.
"Carysfort had been asked whether it was not strange that after being absent from home for so long, he should have elected to put off seeing his mother till a much later hour.
"'Not at all,' he replied. 'My father wished to put meau faitof certain family matters before I actually saw Lady Carysfort. These matters,' he added emphatically in reply to questions put to him by the magistrate, 'had nothing whatever to do with financial business, least of all were they in any relation to Mr. Shap and his affairs. Sir David and I,' he went on calmly, 'walked about for a while, and then Sir David remembered that he wished to see a friend at the County Club. He went in there, but I preferred to take another turn out of doors, as I had not had a taste of English country air for nearly two years.'
"Asked how long he had walked about Tytherton waiting for Sir David, Carysfort thought about half an hour, and when questioned as to the direction he had taken, he said he really couldn't remember.
"The police of course had adduced certain witnesses whose testimony would justify the course they had taken in arresting a gentleman in the position of Mr. Allan Carysfort. There was, first of all, Felix Shap himself and his friend Julian Lloyd. They deposed that at about half-past ten, or perhaps a little earlier, they were on their way to see Mr. Stonebridge, as the latter had expressed a wish to see them both and have another quiet talk over a cigar and a glass of wine; Shap and Lloyd had been to the P.P.P. cinema in High Street, and they left just before the end to go to Mr. Stonebridge's house. They were within fifty yards of it when they saw a man turn out of the nearest side street and go up to Mr. Stonebridge's house. The man went through the garden gate and up to the front door. Shap and Lloyd saw him in the act of ringing the bell. It was then somewhere between ten-thirty and ten-forty-five. Mr. Stonebridge was so very much in the habit of seeing friends, and even those clients with whom he was intimate, late in the evenings, that Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd didn't think anything of the incident; but, at the same time, they made up their minds to postpone their own visit to Mr. Stonebridge until they could be quite sure of seeing him alone. So they turned then and there, and went straight back to the Black Swan where they lodged.
"I may add that with commendable reserve both these witnesses refused to identify Allan Carysfort with Mr. Stonebridge's visitor on that memorable Wednesday evening. The man they saw had an overcoat and wore a Glengarry cap. More they could not say, as they had not seen his face clearly.
"On the other hand the hall-porter at the County Club, another witness for the Treasury, had no cause for such reserve. He said that on the evening of February twenty-eighth, Sir David Carysfort came to the Club a little before half-past ten. Mr. Allan was with him then, but he didn't come in. The hall-porter heard him say to Sir David: 'Very well, then! I'll pick you up here in about half an hour!' And Sir David rejoined: 'Yes; don't be late!' Mr. Allan did return to the Club at about eleven o'clock and the two gentlemen then went off together. The hall-porter remembered the incident on that date quite distinctly, because he recollected being much surprised at seeing Mr. Allan Carysfort, who he thought was still abroad.
"After that there was another remand, Allan Carysfort's solicitor having asked and obtained an adjournment for a week. But by this time, as you may imagine, not only the county, but London Society too were absolutely horror-struck. To think that a man in the position of the Carysforts should have stooped to such an act, not only of violence, but of improbity, was indeed staggering. Nor did public opinion swerve from this attitude one hair's breadth, even though at the next hearing all the proofs which the police had adduced against the accused were absolutely confuted.
"Fortunately for Carysfort, his solicitors had been successful in finding two witnesses, Miriam Page and Arthur Ormeley, who had seen Mr. Allan Carysfort, whom they knew by sight, strolling by the river at a quarter to eleven. They—like the hall-porter of the County Club—remembered the circumstance very clearly, because they did not know that Mr. Allan was home from abroad, and were astonished to see him there.
"The point of the evidence of these witnesses was that the river where they had seen Allan Carysfort strolling at a quarter to eleven is at the diametrically opposite end of the town to that where lies the Great West Road. Now the hall-porter had seen Allan Carysfort outside the County Club at half-past ten and again at eleven. If Carysfort was strolling by the river at a quarter to eleven, and there was no reason to impugn the credibility of the witnesses, he could not possibly have been the man whom Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd saw ringing the bell of Mr. Stonebridge's house at about that same hour.
"Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, as you know. There was no definite proof against him. But public opinion is ever an uncertain quantity, and it is still dead against the Carysforts. In the public mind two facts have remained indelibly fixed: firstly, that the Carysforts had everything to gain by the destruction of Felix Shap's papers and, secondly, that there was nobody else who could possibly have benefited by it.
"Since then also Mr. Stonebridge has made a declaration that nothing was stolen out of his safe and pocketbook except the papers and letters belonging to Felix Shap. So what would you? Although Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, really because there was no tangible evidence against him, he did not leave the court without a stain on his character. The stain was there, and there it is to this day. It will take the Carysforts years to live the scandal down; though some friends have remained loyal, there are always the enemies, the envious, the uncharitable, and they insist that the two witnesses—the only two, mind you, whose evidence did clear Allan Carysfort of suspicion—had been bought and should not be believed, while others simply declare that Sir David and his son employed some ruffian to do the dirty work for them."
He gave a dry cackle, and contemplated me through his huge horn-rimmed spectacles.
"And you are of that opinion, too, I imagine," he said.
"Well, it seems the only likely explanation," I replied guardedly.
"Surely you don't suppose," he retorted, "that a business man like David Carysfort would place himself so entirely in the hands of a ruffian that he would for ever after be the victim of blackmail! Why, it would have been cheaper to buy off Felix Shap!"
"But," I rejoined, "I don't see who else had any interest in doing away with those documents."
"I'll tell you," he rejoined dryly. "Felix Shap himself."
"Whatdoyou mean?" I queried, with as much lofty scorn as I could command.
"I mean," he replied, "that all Felix Shap's documents were forgeries."
"Forgeries?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, spurious! False affidavits! Forgeries, the lot of 'em. My belief is that Stonebridge began to suspect this himself, and I think he has had a narrow escape of being murdered outright by those two rascals. As it is, they have destroyed every proof of their villainy, and old Stonebridge, I imagine, is content to let things remain as they are rather than admit publicly that he was completely taken in by two very plausible rogues."
"But," I urged, "what about the handwriting expert?"
The funny creature laughed aloud.
"Yes!" he said, "what about the expert? If there had been two they would have disagreed. And mind you at a distance of twelve years a signature would be difficult of absolute identification. Every one's handwriting undergoes certain modifications in the course of years. Experts," he reiterated. "Bah!"
"But," I went on, impatiently, "I don't see the object of the whole scheme."
"The object was blackmail," the whimsical creature retorted, "and it has succeeded admirably. Already we read that Messrs. Shap and Lloyd are staying at expensive hotels in London, that they have granted interviews to pressmen and written articles for half-penny newspapers. We shall hear of them as cinema stars presently. They have had the most gorgeous, the most paying publicity, and presently Sir David Carysfort will have had enough of them and will put a few more hundreds in their pockets just to be rid of them. That was the object of the whole scheme, my dear young lady! And see how well it was carried out.
"Of course the fuddle-headed Dutchman never thought of it. I imagine that the whole scheme originated in the fertile brain of Mr. Julian Lloyd. And it was thoroughly well thought out from the manufacture of the documents and letters down to the assault on the silly old country attorney. And, mind you, the rascals originally went to a silly country attorney; they would have been afraid to go to a London lawyer, lest he be too sharp for them.
"The only mistake they made were the letters purported to be written to Berta Shap by the husband who is supposed to have disappeared, and the copy of Berta's marriage certificate. It is those letters that gave me the clue to the whole thing; old Stonebridge was too dull to have seen through those letters. If they were genuine why should Felix Shap have brought them over to England? They had nothing whatever to do with any contract about the Shap Fuelettes. If they were genuine, how could he guess that he would have to disprove a story of a secret marriage and of young Alfred being the son of Sir Alfred Carysfort? By wanting to prove too much, he, to my mind, gave himself away, and one can but marvel that neither lawyers nor police saw through the roguery.