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CHAPTER IX

THE MARINE-STORE DEALER

Mr. Lindsey was standing just within his own room when Maisie and the strange woman came into the office, and hearing what was said, he called us all three to go into him. And, like myself, he looked at the woman with a good deal of curiosity, wanting—as I did—to see some likeness to the dead man. But there was no likeness to be seen, for whereas Gilverthwaite was a big and stalwart fellow, this was a small and spare woman, whose rusty black clothes made her look thinner and more meagre than she really was. All the same, when she spoke I knew there was a likeness between them, for her speech was like his, different altogether from ours of the Border.

"So you believe you're the sister of this man James Gilverthwaite, ma'am?" began Mr. Lindsey, motioning the visitor to sit down, and beckoning Maisie to stop with us. "What might your name be, now?"

"I believe this man that's talked about in the newspapers is my brother, sir," answered the woman. "Else I shouldn't have taken the trouble to come all this way. My name's Hanson—Mrs. Hanson. I come from Garston, near Liverpool."

"Aye—just so—a Lancashire woman," said Mr. Lindsey, nodding. "Your name would be Gilverthwaite, then, before you were married?"

"To be sure, sir—same as James's," she replied. "Him and me was the only two there was. I've brought papers with me that'll prove what I say. I went to a lawyer before ever I came, and he told me to come at once, and to bring my marriage lines, and a copy of James's birth certificate, and one or two other things of that sort. There's no doubt that this man we've read about in the newspapers was my brother, and of course I would like to put in my claim to what he's left—if he's left it to nobody else."

"Just so," agreed Mr. Lindsey. "Aye—and how long is it since you last saw your brother, now?"

The woman shook her head as if this question presented difficulties.

"I couldn't rightly say to a year or two, no, not even to a few years," she answered. "And to the best of my belief, sir, it'll be a good thirty years, at the least. It was just after I was married to Hanson, and that was when I was about three-and-twenty, and I was fifty-six last birthday. James came—once—to see me and Hanson soon after we was settled down, and I've never set eyes on him from that day to this. But—I should know him now."

"He was buried yesterday," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "It's a pity you didn't telegraph to some of us."

"The lawyer I went to, sir, said, 'Go yourself!'" replied Mrs. Hanson.

"So I set off—first thing this morning."

"Let me have a look at those papers," said Mr. Lindsey.

He motioned me to his side, and together we looked through two or three documents which the woman produced.

The most important was a certified copy of James Gilverthwaite's birth certificate, which went to prove that this man had been born in Liverpool about sixty-two years previously; that, as Mr. Lindsey was quick to point out, fitted in with what Gilverthwaite had told my mother and myself about his age.

"Well," he said, turning to Mrs. Hanson, "you can answer some questions, no doubt, about your brother, and about matters in relation to him. First of all, do you know if any of your folks hailed from this part?"

"Not that I ever heard of, sir," she replied. "No, I'm sure they wouldn't. They were all Lancashire folks, on both sides. I know all about them as far back as my great-grandfather's and great-grandmother's."

"Do you know if your brother ever came to Berwick as a lad?" asked Mr.

Lindsey, with a glance at me.

"He might ha' done that, sir," said Mrs. Hanson. "He was a great, masterful, strong lad, and he'd run off to sea by the time he was ten years old—there'd been no doing aught with him for a couple of years before that. I knew that when he was about twelve or thirteen he was on a coasting steamer that used to go in and out of Sunderland and Newcastle, and he might have put in here."

"To be sure," said Mr. Lindsey. "But what's more important is to get on to his later history. You say you've never seen him for thirty years, or more? But have you never heard of him?"

She nodded her head with decision at that question.

"Yes," she replied, "I have heard of him—just once. There was a man, a neighbour of ours, came home from Central America, maybe five years ago, and he told us he'd seen our James out there, and that he was working as a sub-contractor, or something of that sort, on that Panama Canal there was so much talk about in them days."

Mr. Lindsey and I looked at each other. Panama!—that was the password which James Gilverthwaite had given me. So—here, at any rate, was something, however little, that had the makings of a clue in it.

"Aye!" he said, "Panama, now? He was there? And that's the last you ever heard?"

"That's the very last we ever heard, sir," she answered. "Till, of course, we saw these pieces in the papers this last day or two."

Mr. Lindsey twisted round on her with a sharp look.

"Do you know aught of that man, John Phillips, whose name's in the papers too?" he asked.

"No, sir, nothing!" she replied promptly. "Never heard tell of him!"

"And you've never heard of your brother's having been seen in Liverpool of late?" he went on. "Never heard that he called to see any old friends at all? For we know, as you have seen in the papers, Mrs. Hanson, that he was certainly in Liverpool, and bought clothes and linen there, within this last three months."

"He never came near me, sir," she said. "And I never heard word of his being there from anybody."

There was a bit of a silence then, and at last the woman put the question which, it was evident, she was anxious to have answered definitely.

"Do you think there's a will, mister?" she asked. "For, if not, the lawyer I went to said what there was would come to me—and I could do with it."

"We've seen nothing of any will," answered Mr. Lindsey. "And I should say there is none, and on satisfactory proof of your being next-of-kin, you'll get all he left. I've no doubt you're his sister, and I'll take the responsibility of going through his effects with you. You'll be stopping in the town a day or two? Maybe your mother, Hugh, can find Mrs. Hanson a lodging?"

I answered that my mother would no doubt do what she could to look after Mrs. Hanson; and presently the woman went away with Maisie, leaving her papers with Mr. Lindsey. He turned to me when we were alone.

"Some folks would think that was a bit of help to me in solving the mystery, Hugh," said he; "but hang me if I don't think it makes the whole thing more mysterious than ever! And do you know, my lad, where, in my opinion, the very beginning of it may have to be sought for?"

"I can't put a word to that, Mr. Lindsey," I answered. "Where, sir?"

"Panama!" he exclaimed, with a jerk of his head. "Panama! just that! It began a long way off—Panama, as far as I see it. And what did begin, and what was going on? The two men that knew, and could have told, are dead as door-nails—and both buried, for that matter."

So, in spite of Mrs. Hanson's coming and her revelations as to some, at any rate, of James Gilverthwaite's history, we were just as wise as ever at the end of the first week after the murder of John Phillips. And it was just the eighth night after my finding of the body that I got into the hands of Abel Crone.

Abel Crone was a man that had come to Berwick about three years before this, from heaven only knows where, and had set himself up in business as a marine-store dealer, in a back street which ran down to the shore of the Tweed. He was a little red-haired, pale-eyed rat of a man, with ferrety eyes and a goatee beard, quiet and peaceable in his ways and inoffensive enough, but a rare hand at gossiping about the beach and the walls—you might find him at all odd hours either in these public places or in the door of his shop, talking away with any idler like himself. And how I came to get into talk with him on that particular night was here: Tom Dunlop, Maisie's young brother, was for keeping tame rabbits just then, and I was helping him to build hutches for the beasts in his father's back-yard, and we were wanting some bits of stuff, iron and wire and the like, and knowing I would pick it up for a few pence at Crone's shop, I went round there alone. Before I knew how it came about, Crone was deep into the murder business.

"They'll not have found much out by this time, yon police fellows, no doubt, Mr. Moneylaws?" he said, eyeing me inquisitively in the light of the one naphtha lamp that was spurting and jumping in his untidy shop. "They're a slow unoriginal lot, the police—there's no imagination in their brains and no ingenuity in their minds. What's wanted in an affair like this is one of those geniuses you read about in the storybooks—the men that can trace a murder from the way a man turns out his toes, or by the fashion he's bitten into a bit of bread that he's left on his plate, or the like of that—something more than by ordinary, you'll understand me to mean, Mr. Moneylaws?"

"Maybe you'll be for taking a hand in this game yourself, Mr. Crone?" said I, thinking to joke with him. "You seem to have the right instinct for it, anyway."

"Aye, well," he answered, "and I might be doing as well as anybody else, and no worse. You haven't thought of following anything up yourself, Mr. Moneylaws, I suppose?"

"Me!" I exclaimed. "What should I be following up, man? I know no more than the mere surface facts of the affair."

He gave a sharp glance at his open door when I thus answered him, and the next instant he was close to me in the gloom and looking sharply in my face.

"Are you so sure of that, now?" he whispered cunningly. "Come now, I'll put a question to yourself, Mr. Moneylaws. What for did you not let on in your evidence that you saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs at yon cross-roads just before you found the dead man? Come!"

You could have knocked me down with a feather, as the saying is, when he said that. And before I could recover from the surprise of it, he had a hand on my arm.

"Come this way," he said. "I'll have a word with you in private."

CHAPTER X

THE OTHER WITNESS

It was with a thumping heart and nerves all a-tingle that I followed Abel Crone out of his front shop into a sort of office that he had at the back of it—a little, dirty hole of a place, in which there was a ramshackle table, a chair or two, a stand-up desk, a cupboard, and a variety of odds and ends that he had picked up in his trade. The man's sudden revelation of knowledge had knocked all the confidence out of me. It had never crossed my mind that any living soul had a notion of my secret—for secret, of course, it was, and one that I would not have trusted to Crone, of all men in the world, knowing him as I did to be such a one for gossip. And he had let this challenge out on me so sharply, catching me unawares that I was alone with him, and, as it were, at his mercy, before I could pull my wits together. Everything in me was confused. I was thinking several things all at a time. How did he come to know? Had I been watched? Had some person followed me out of Berwick that night? Was this part of the general mystery? And what was going to come of it, now that Abel Crone was aware that I knew something which, up to then, I had kept back?

I stood helplessly staring at him as he turned up the wick of an oil lamp that stood on a mantelpiece littered with a mess of small things, and he caught a sight of my face when there was more light, and as he shut the door on us he laughed—laughed as if he knew that he had me in a trap. And before he spoke again he went over to the cupboard and took out a bottle and glasses.

"Will you taste?" he asked, leering at me. "A wee drop, now? It'll do you good."

"No!" said I.

"Then I'll drink for the two of us," he responded, and poured out a half-tumblerful of whisky, to which he added precious little water. "Here's to you, my lad; and may you have grace to take advantage of your chances!"

He winked over the rim of his glass as he took a big pull at its contents, and there was something so villainous in the look of him that it did me good in the way of steeling my nerves again. For I now saw that here was an uncommonly bad man to deal with, and that I had best be on my guard.

"Mr. Crone," said I, gazing straight at him, "what's this you have to say to me?"

"Sit you down," he answered, pointing at a chair that was shoved under one side of the little table. "Pull that out and sit you down. What we shall have to say to each other'll not be said in five minutes. Let's confer in the proper and comfortable fashion."

I did what he asked, and he took another chair himself and sat down opposite me, propping his elbow on the table and leaning across it, so that, the table being but narrow, his sharp eyes and questioning lips were closer to mine than I cared for. And while he leaned forward in his chair I sat back in mine, keeping as far from him as I could, and just staring at him—perhaps as if I had been some trapped animal that couldn't get itself away from the eyes of another that meant presently to kill it. Once again I asked him what he wanted.

"You didn't answer my question," he said. "I'll put it again, and you needn't be afraid that anybody'll overhear us in this place, it's safe! I say once more, what for did you not tell in your evidence at that inquest that you saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs at the cross-roads on the night of the murder! Um?"

"That's my business!" said I

"Just so," said he. "And I'll agree with you in that. It is your business. But if by that you mean that it's yours alone, and nobody else's, then I don't agree. Neither would the police."

We stared at each other across the table for a minute of silence, and then I put the question directly to him that I had been wanting to put ever since he had first spoken. And I put it crudely enough.

"How did you know?" I asked.

He laughed at that—sneeringly, of course.

"Aye, that's plain enough," said he. "No fencing about that! How did I know? Because when you saw Sir Gilbert I wasn't five feet away from you, and what you saw, I saw. I saw you both!"

"You were there?" I exclaimed.

"Snug behind the hedge in front of which you planted yourself," he answered. "And if you want to know what I was doing there, I'll tell you. I was doing—or had been doing—a bit of poaching. And, as I say, what you saw, I saw!"

"Then I'll ask you a question, Mr. Crone," I said. "Why haven't you told, yourself?"

"Aye!" he said. "You may well ask me that. But I wasn't called as a witness at yon inquest."

"You could have come forward," I suggested.

"I didn't choose," he retorted.

We both looked at each other again, and while we looked he swigged off his drink and helped himself, just as generously, to more. And, as I was getting bolder by that time, I set to work at questioning him.

"You'll be attaching some importance to what you saw?" said I.

"Well," he replied slowly, "it's not a pleasant thing—for a man's safety—to be as near as what he was to a place where another man's just been done to his death."

"You and I were near enough, anyway," I remarked.

"We know what we were there for," he flung back at me. "We don't know what he was there for."

"Put your tongue to it, Mr. Crone," I said boldly. "The fact is, you suspicion him?"

"I suspicion a good deal, maybe," he admitted. "After all, even a man of that degree's only a man, when all's said and done, and there might be reasons that you and me knows nothing about. Let me ask you a question," he went on, edging nearer at me across the table. "Have you mentioned it to a soul?"

I made a mistake at that, but he was on me so sharp, and his manner was so insistent, that I had the word out of my lips before I thought.

"No!" I replied. "I haven't."

"Nor me," he said. "Nor me. So—you and me are the only two folk that know."

"Well?" I asked.

He took another pull at his liquor and for a moment or two sat silent, tapping his finger-nails against the rim of the glass.

"It's a queer business, Moneylaws," he said at last. "Look at it anyway you like, it's a queer business! Here's one man, yon lodger of your mother's, comes into the town and goes round the neighbourhood reading the old parish registers and asking questions at the parson's—aye, and he was at it both sides of the Tweed—I've found that much out for myself! For what purpose? Is there money at the back of it—property—something of that sort, dependent on this Gilverthwaite unearthing some facts or other out of those old books? And then comes another man, a stranger, that's as mysterious in his movements as Gilverthwaite was, and he's to meet Gilverthwaite at a certain lonely spot, and at a very strange hour, and Gilverthwaite can't go, and he gets you to go, and you find the man—murdered! And—close by—you've seen this other man, who, between you and me—though it's no secret—is as much a stranger to the neighbourhood as ever Gilverthwaite was or Phillips was!"

"I don't follow you at that," I said.

"No?" said he. "Then I'll make it plainer to you. Do you know that until yon Sir Gilbert Carstairs came here, not so long since, to take up his title and his house and the estate, he'd never set foot in the place, never been near the place, this thirty year? Man! his own father, old Sir Alec, and his own sister, Mrs. Ralston of Craig, had never clapped eyes on him since he went away from Hathercleugh a youngster of one-and-twenty!"

"Do you tell me that, Mr. Crone?" I exclaimed, much surprised at his words. "I didn't know so much. Where had he been, then?"

"God knows!" said he. "And himself. It was said he was a doctor in London, and in foreign parts. Him and his brother—elder brother, you're aware, Mr. Michael—they both quarrelled with the old baronet when they were little more than lads, and out they cleared, going their own ways. And news of Michael's death, and the proofs of it, came home not so long before old Sir Alec died, and as Michael had never married, of course the younger brother succeeded when his father came to his end last winter. And, as I say, who knows anything about his past doings when he was away more than thirty years, nor what company he kept, nor what secrets he has? Do you follow me?"

"Aye, I'm following you, Mr. Crone," I answered. "It comes to this—you suspect Sir Gilbert?"

"What I say," he answered, "is this: he may have had something to do with the affair. You cannot tell. But you and me knows he was near the place—coming from its direction—at the time the murder would be in the doing. And—there is nobody knows but you—and me!"

"What are you going to do about it?" I asked.

He had another period of reflection before he replied, and when he spoke it was to the accompaniment of a warning look.

"It's an ill-advised thing to talk about rich men," said he. "Yon man not only has money of his own, in what you might call considerable quantity, but his wife he brought with him is a woman of vast wealth, they tell me. It would be no very wise action on your part to set rumours going, Moneylaws, unless you could substantiate them."

"What about yourself?" I asked. "You know as much as I do."

"Aye, and there's one word that sums all up," said he. "And it's a short one. Wait! There'll be more coming out. Keep your counsel a bit. And when the moment comes, and if the moment comes—why, you know there's me behind you to corroborate. And—that's all!"

He got up then, with a nod, as if to show that the interview was over, and I was that glad to get away from him that I walked off without another word.

CHAPTER XI

SIGNATURES TO THE WILL

I was so knocked out of the usual run of things by this conversation with Crone that I went away forgetting the bits of stuff I had bought for Tom Dunlop's rabbit-hutches and Tom himself, and, for that matter, Maisie as well; and, instead of going back to Dunlop's, I turned down the riverside, thinking. It was beyond me at that moment to get a clear understanding of the new situation. I could not make out what Crone was at. Clearly, he had strong suspicions that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had something to do with, or some knowledge of, the murder of Phillips, and he knew now that there were two of us to bear out each other's testimony that Sir Gilbert was near the scene of the murder at the time it was committed. Why, then, should he counsel waiting? Why should not the two of us go to the police and tell what we knew? What was it that Crone advised we should wait for? Was something going on, some inquiry being made in the background of things, of which he knew and would not tell me? And—this, I think, was what was chiefly in my thoughts—was Crone playing some game of his own and designing to use me as a puppet in it? For there was a general atmosphere of subtlety and slyness about the man that forced itself upon me, young as I was; and the way he kept eyeing me as we talked made me feel that I had to do with one that would be hard to circumvent if it came to a matter of craftiness. And at last, after a lot of thinking, as I walked about in the dusk, it struck me that Crone might be for taking a hand in the game of which I had heard, but had never seen played—blackmail.

The more I thought over that idea, the more I felt certain of it. His hints about Sir Gilbert's money and his wealthy wife, his advice to wait until we knew more, all seemed to point to this—that evidence might come out which would but require our joint testimony, Crone's and mine, to make it complete. If that were so, then, of course, Crone or I, or—as he probably designed—the two of us, would be in a position to go to Sir Gilbert Carstairs and tell him what we knew, and ask him how much he would give us to hold our tongues. I saw all the theory of it at last, clear enough, and it was just what I would have expected of Abel Crone, knowing him even as little as I did. Wait until we were sure—and then strike! That was his game. And I was not going to have anything to do with it.

I went home to my bed resolved on that. I had heard of blackmailing, and had a good notion of its wickedness—and of its danger—and I was not taking shares with Crone in any venture of that sort. But there Crone was, an actual, concrete fact that I had got to deal with, and to come to some terms with, simply because he knew that I was in possession of knowledge which, to be sure, I ought to have communicated to the police at once. And I was awake much during the night, thinking matters over, and by the time I rose in the morning I had come to a decision. I would see Crone at once, and give him a sort of an ultimatum. Let him come, there and then, with me to Mr. Murray, and let the two of us tell what we knew and be done with it: if not, then I myself would go straight to Mr. Lindsey and tell him.

I set out for the office earlier than usual that morning, and went round by way of the back street at the bottom of which Crone's store stood facing the river. I sometimes walked round that way of a morning, and I knew that Crone was as a rule at his place very early, amongst his old rubbish, or at his favourite game of gossiping with the fishermen that had their boats drawn up there. But when I reached it, the shop was still shut, and though I waited as long as I could, Crone did not come. I knew where he lived, at the top end of the town, and I thought to meet him as I walked up to Mr. Lindsey's; but I had seen nothing of him by the time I reached our office door, so I laid the matter aside until noon, meaning to get a word with him when I went home to my dinner. And though I could have done so there and then, I determined not to say anything to Mr. Lindsey until I had given Crone the chance of saying it with me—to him, or to the police. I expected, of course, that Crone would fly into a rage at my suggestion—if so, then I would tell him, straight out, that I would just take my own way, and take it at once.

But before noon there was another development in this affair. In the course of the morning Mr. Lindsey bade me go with him down to my mother's house, where Mrs. Hanson had been lodged for the night—we would go through Gilverthwaite's effects with her, he said, with a view to doing what we could to put her in possession. It might—probably would—be a lengthy and a difficult business that, he remarked, seeing that there was so much that was dark about her brother's recent movements; and as the woman was obviously poor, we had best be stirring on her behalf. So down we went, and in my mother's front parlour, the same that Gilverthwaite had taken as his sitting-room, Mr. Lindsey opened the heavy box for the second time, in Mrs. Hanson's presence, and I began to make a list of its contents. At the sight of the money it contained, the woman began to tremble.

"Eh, mister!" she exclaimed, almost tearfully, "but that's a sight of money to be lying there, doing naught! I hope there'll be some way of bringing it to me and mine—we could do with it, I promise you!"

"We'll do our best, ma'am," said Mr. Lindsey. "As you're next of kin there oughtn't to be much difficulty, and I'll hurry matters up for you as quickly as possible. What I want this morning is for you to see all there is in this chest; he seems to have had no other belongings than this and his clothes—here at Mrs. Moneylaws', at any rate. And as you see, beyond the money, there's little else in the chest but cigars, and box after box of curiosities that he's evidently picked up in his travels—coins, shells, ornaments, all sorts of queer things—some of 'em no doubt of value. But no papers—no letters—no documents of any sort."

A notion suddenly occurred to me.

"Mr. Lindsey," said I, "you never turned out the contents of any of these smaller boxes the other night. There might be papers in one or other of them."

"Good notion, Hugh, my lad!" he exclaimed. "True—there might. Here goes, then—we'll look through them systematically."

In addition to the half-dozen boxes full of prime Havana cigars, which lay at the top of the chest, there were quite a dozen of similar boxes, emptied of cigars and literally packed full of the curiosities of which Mr. Lindsey had just spoken. He had turned out, and carefully replaced, the contents of three or four of these, when, at the bottom of one, filled with old coins, which, he said, were Mexican and Peruvian, and probably of great interest to collectors, he came across a paper, folded and endorsed in bold letters. And he let out an exclamation as he took this paper out and pointed us to the endorsement.

"Do you see that?" said he. "It's the man's will!"

The endorsement was plain enough—My will: James Gilverthwaite. And beneath it was a date, 27-8-1904.

There was a dead silence amongst the four of us—my mother had been with us all the time—as Mr. Lindsey unfolded the paper—a thick, half-sheet of foolscap, and read what was written on it.

"This is the last will and testament of me, James Gilverthwaite, a British subject, born at Liverpool, and formerly of Garston, in Lancashire, England, now residing temporarily at Colon, in the Republic of Panama. I devise and bequeath all my estate and effects, real and personal, which I may be possessed of or entitled to, unto my sister, Sarah Ellen Hanson, the wife of Matthew Hanson, of 37 Preston Street, Garston, Lancashire, England, absolutely, and failing her to any children she may have had by her marriage with Matthew Hanson, in equal shares. And I appoint the said Sarah Ellen Hanson, or in the case of her death, her eldest child, the executor of this my will; and I revoke all former wills. Dated this twenty-seventh day of August, 1904. James Gilverthwaite. Signed by the testator in the presence of us—"

Mr. Lindsey suddenly broke off. And I, looking at him, saw his eyes screw themselves up with sheer wonder at something he saw. Without another word he folded up the paper, put it in his pocket, and turning to Mrs. Hanson, clapped her on the shoulder.

"That's all right, ma'am!" he said heartily. "That's a good will, duly signed and attested, and there'll be no difficulty about getting it admitted to probate; leave it to me, and I'll see to it, and get it through for you as soon as ever I can. And we must do what's possible to find out if this brother of yours has left any other property; and meanwhile we'll just lock everything up again that we've taken out of this chest."

It was close on my dinner hour when we had finished, but Mr. Lindsey, at his going, motioned me out into the street with him. In a quiet corner, he turned to me and pulled the will from his pocket.

"Hugh!" he said. "Do you know who's one of the witnesses to this will? Aye, who are the two witnesses? Man!—you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw the names! Look for yourself!"

He handed me the paper and pointed to the attestation clause with which it ended. And I saw the two names at once—John Phillips, Michael Carstairs—and I let out a cry of astonishment.

"Aye, you may well exclaim!" said he, taking the will back. "John Phillips!—that's the man was murdered the other night! Michael Carstairs—that's the elder brother of Sir Gilbert yonder at Hathercleugh, the man that would have succeeded to the title and estates if he hadn't predeceased old Sir Alexander. What would he be doing now, a friend of Gilverthwaite's?"

"I've heard that this Mr. Michael Carstairs went abroad as a young man, Mr. Lindsey, and never came home again," I remarked. "Likely he foregathered with Gilverthwaite out yonder."

"Just that," he agreed. "That would be the way of it, no doubt. To be sure! He's set down in this attestation clause as Michael Carstairs, engineer, American Quarter, Colon; and John Phillips is described as sub-contractor, of the same address. The three of 'em'll have been working in connection with the Panama Canal. But—God bless us!—there's some queer facts coming out, my lad! Michael Carstairs knows Gilverthwaite and Phillips in yon corner of the world—Phillips and Gilverthwaite, when Michael Carstairs is dead, come home to the corner of the world that Michael Carstairs sprang from. And Phillips is murdered as soon as he gets here—and Gilverthwaite dies that suddenly that he can't tell us a word of what it's all about! What is it all about—and who's going to piece it all together? Man!—there's more than murder at the bottom of all this!"