Kitabı oku: «Dead Men's Money», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIV

DEAD MAN'S MONEY

I was so much amazed by this extraordinary suggestion, that for the moment I could only stand staring at him, and before I could find my tongue he threw a quick question at me.

"Lindsey wouldn't stand in your way, would he?" he asked. "Such jobs don't go begging, you know."

"Mr. Lindsey wouldn't stand in my way, Sir Gilbert," I answered. "But—"

"But what?" said he, seeing me hesitate. "Is it a post you wouldn't care about, then? There's five hundred a year with it—and a permanency."

Strange as it may seem, considering all the circumstances, it never occurred to me for one moment that the man was buying my silence, buying me. There wasn't the ghost of such a thought in my head—I let out what was there in my next words.

"I'd like such a post fine, Sir Gilbert," I said. "What I'm thinking of—could I give satisfaction?"

He laughed at that, as if my answer amused him.

"Well, there's nothing like a spice of modesty, Moneylaws," said he. "If you can do all we've just talked of, you'll satisfy me well enough. I like the looks of you, and I'm sure you're the sort that'll do the thing thoroughly. The post's at your disposal, if you like to take it."

I was still struggling with my amazement. Five hundred pounds a year!—and a permanency! It seemed a fortune to a lad of my age. And I was trying to find the right words in which to say all that I felt, when he spoke again.

"Look here!" he said. "Don't let us arrange this as if we'd done it behind your present employer's back—I wouldn't like Mr. Lindsey to think I'd gone behind him to get you. Let it be done this way: I'll call on Mr. Lindsey myself, and tell him I'm wanting a steward for the property, and that I've heard good reports of his clerk, and that I'll engage you on his recommendation. He's the sort that would give you a strong word by way of reference, eh?"

"Oh, he'll do that, Sir Gilbert!" I exclaimed. "Anything that'll help me on—"

"Then let's leave it at that," said he. "I'll drop in on him at his office—perhaps to-morrow. In the meantime, keep your own counsel. But—you'll take my offer?"

"I'd be proud and glad to, Sir Gilbert," said I. "And if you'll make allowance for a bit of inexperience—"

"You'll do your best, eh?" he laughed. "That's all right, Moneylaws."

He walked out with me to the door, and on to the terrace. And as I wheeled my bicycle away from the porch, he took a step or two alongside me, his hands in his pockets, his lips humming a careless tune. And suddenly he turned on me.

"Have you heard any more about that affair last night?" he asked. "I mean about Crone?"

"Nothing, Sir Gilbert," I answered.

"I hear that the opinion is that the man was struck down by a gaff," he remarked. "And perhaps killed before he was thrown into the Till."

"So the doctor seemed to think," I said. "And the police, too, I believe."

"Aye, well," said he, "I don't know if the police are aware of it, but I'm very sure there's night-poaching of salmon going on hereabouts, Moneylaws. I've fancied it for some time, and I've had thoughts of talking to the police about it. But you see, my land doesn't touch either Till or Tweed, so I haven't cared to interfere. But I'm sure that it is so, and it wouldn't surprise me if both these men, Crone and Phillips, met their deaths at the hands of the gang I'm thinking of. It's a notion that's worth following up, anyway, and I'll have a word with Murray about it when I'm in the town tomorrow."

Then, with a brief good night, he left me and went into the house, and I got outside Hathercleugh and rode home in a whirl of thoughts. And I'll confess readily that those thoughts had little to do with what Sir Gilbert Carstairs had last talked about—they were not so much of Phillips, nor of Crone, nor of his suggestion of a possible gang of night-poachers, as about myself and this sudden chance of a great change in my fortunes. For, when all is said and done, we must needs look after ourselves, and when a young man of the age I was then arrived at is asked if he would like to exchange a clerkship of a hundred and twenty a year for a stewardship at more than four times as much—as a permanency—you must agree that his mind will fix itself on what such an exchange means to him, to the exclusion of all other affairs. Five hundred a year to me meant all sorts of fine things—independence, and a house of my own, and, not least by a long way, marriage with Maisie Dunlop. And it was a wonder that I managed to keep cool, and to hold my tongue when I got home—but hold it I did, and to some purpose, and more than once. During the half hour which I managed to get with Maisie last thing that night, she asked me why I was so silent, and, hard though it was to keep from doing so, I let nothing out.

The truth was, Sir Gilbert Carstairs had fascinated me, not only with his grand offer, but with his pleasant, off-hand, companionable manners. He had put me at my ease at once; he had spoken so frankly and with such evident sincerity about his doings on that eventful night, that I accepted every word he said. And—in the little that I had thought of it—I was very ready to accept his theory as to how those two men had come by their deaths—and it was one that was certainly feasible, and worth following up. Some years before, I remembered, something of the same sort had gone on, and had resulted in an affray between salmon-poachers and river-watchers—why should it not have cropped up again? The more I thought of it, the more I felt Sir Gilbert's suggestion to have reason in it. And in that case all the mystery would be knocked clean out of these affairs—the murder of Phillips, the death of Crone, might prove to be the outcome of some vulgar encounter between them and desperadoes who had subsequently scuttled to safety and were doubtless quaking near at hand, in fear of their misdeeds coming to light; what appeared to be a perfect tangle might be the simplest matter in the world. So I judged—and next morning there came news that seemed to indicate that matters were going to be explained on the lines which Sir Gilbert had suggested.

Chisholm brought that news to our office, just after Mr. Lindsey had come in. He told it to both of us; and from his manner of telling it, we both saw—I, perhaps, not so clearly as Mr. Lindsey—that the police were already at their favourite trick of going for what seemed to them the obvious line of pursuit.

"I'm thinking we've got on the right clue at last, as regards the murder of yon man Phillips," announced Chisholm, with an air of satisfaction. "And if it is the right clue, as it seems to be, Mr. Lindsey, there'll be no great mystery in the matter, after all. Just a plain case of murder for the sake of robbery—that's it!"

"What's your clue?" asked Mr. Lindsey quietly.

"Well," answered Chisholm, with a sort of sly wink, "you'll understand, Mr. Lindsey, that we haven't been doing nothing these last few days, since yon inquest on Phillips, you know. As a matter of fact, we've been making inquiries wherever there seemed a chance of finding anything out. And we've found something out—through one of the banks yonder at Peebles."

He looked at us as if to see if we were impressed; seeing, at any rate, that we were deeply interested, he went on.

"It appears—I'll tell you the story in order, as it were," he said—"it appears that about eight months ago the agent of the British Linen Bank at Peebles got a letter from one John Phillips, written from a place called Colon, in Panama—that's Central America, as you'll be aware—enclosing a draft for three thousand pounds on the International Banking Corporation of New York. The letter instructed the Peebles agent to collect this sum and to place it in his bank to the writer's credit. Furthermore, it stated that the money was to be there until Phillips came home to Scotland, in a few months' time from the date of writing. This, of course, was all done in due course—there was the three thousand pounds in Phillips's name. There was a bit of correspondence between him at Colon and the bank at Peebles—then, at last, he wrote that he was leaving Panama for Scotland, and would call on the bank soon after his arrival. And on the morning of the day on which he was murdered, Phillips did call at the bank and established his identity, and so on, and he then drew out five hundred pounds of his money—two hundred pounds in gold, and the rest in small notes; and, Mr. Lindsey, he carried that sum away with him in a little handbag that he had with him."

Mr. Lindsey, who had been listening with great attention, nodded.

"Aye!" he said. "Carried five hundred pounds away with him. Go on, then."

"Now," continued Chisholm, evidently very well satisfied with himself for the way he was marshalling his facts, "we—that is, to put it plainly, I myself—have been making more searching inquiries about Cornhill and Coldstream. There's two of the men at Cornhill station will swear that when Phillips got out of the train there, that evening of the murder, he was carrying a little handbag such as the bank cashier remembers—a small, new, brown leather bag. They're certain of it—the ticket-collector remembers him putting it under his arm while he searched his pocket for his ticket. And what's more, the landlord of the inn across the bridge there at Coldstream he remembers the bag, clearly enough, and that Phillips never had his hand off it while he was in his house. And of course, Mr. Lindsey, the probability is that in that bag was the money—just as he had drawn it out of the bank."

"You've more to tell," remarked Mr. Lindsey.

"Just so," replied Chisholm. "And there's two items. First of all—we've found that bag! Empty, you may be sure. In the woods near that old ruin on Till side. Thrown away under a lot of stuff—dead stuff, you'll understand, where it might have lain till Doomsday if I hadn't had a most particular search made. But—that's not all. The second item is here—the railway folk at Cornhill are unanimous in declaring that by that same train which brought Phillips there, two men, strangers, that looked like tourist gentlemen, came as well, whose tickets were from—where d'ye think, then, Mr. Lindsey?"

"Peebles, of course," answered Mr. Lindsey.

"And you've guessed right!" exclaimed Chisholm, triumphantly; "Peebles it was—and now, how do you think this affair looks? There's so many tourists on Tweedside this time of the year that nobody paid any great attention that night to these men, nor where they went. But what could be plainer, d'ye think?—of course, those two had tracked Phillips from the bank, and they followed him till they had him in yon place where he was found, and they murdered him—to rob him!"

CHAPTER XV

FIVE HUNDRED A YEAR

It was very evident that Chisholm was in a state of gleeful assurance about his theory, and I don't think he was very well pleased when Mr. Lindsey, instead of enthusiastically acclaiming it as a promising one, began to ask him questions.

"You found a pretty considerable sum on Phillips as it was when you searched his body, didn't you?" he asked.

"Aye—a good lot!" assented Chisholm. "But it was in a pocket-book in an inner pocket of his coat, and in his purse."

"If it was robbery, why didn't they take everything?" inquired Mr.

Lindsey.

"Aye, I knew you'd ask that," replied Chisholm. "But the thing is that they were interrupted. The bag they could carry off—but it's probable that they heard Mr. Moneylaws here coming down the lane before they could search the man's pockets."

"Umph!" said Mr. Lindsey. "And how do you account for two men getting away from the neighbourhood without attracting attention?"

"Easy enough," declared Chisholm. "As I said just now, there's numbers of strangers comes about Tweedside at this time of the year, and who'd think anything of seeing them? What was easier than for these two to separate, to keep close during the rest of the night, and to get away by train from some wayside station or other next morning? They could manage it easily—and we're making inquiries at all the stations in the district on both sides the Tweed, with that idea."

"Well—you'll have a lot of people to follow up, then," remarked Mr.

Lindsey drily. "If you're going to follow every tourist that got on a train next morning between Berwick and Wooler, and Berwick and Kelso, and Berwick and Burnmouth, and Berwick and Blyth, you'll have your work set, I'm thinking!"

"All the same," said Chisholm doggedly, "that's how it's been. And the bank at Peebles has the numbers of the notes that Phillips carried off in his little bag—and I'll trace those fellows yet, Mr. Lindsey."

"Good luck to you, sergeant!" answered Mr. Lindsey. He turned to me when Chisholm had gone. "That's the police all over, Hugh," he remarked. "And you might talk till you were black in the face to yon man, and he'd stick to his story."

"You don't believe it, then?" I asked him, somewhat surprised.

"He may be right," he replied. "I'm not saying. Let him attend to his business—and now we'll be seeing to ours."

It was a busy day with us in the office that, being the day before court day, and we had no time to talk of anything but our own affairs. But during the afternoon, at a time when I had left the office for an hour or two on business, Sir Gilbert Carstairs called, and he was closeted with Mr. Lindsey when I returned. And after they had been together some time Mr. Lindsey came out to me and beckoned me into a little waiting-room that we had and shut the door on us, and I saw at once from the expression on his face that he had no idea that Sir Gilbert and I had met the night before, or that I had any notion of what he was going to say to me.

"Hugh, my lad!" said he, clapping me on the shoulder; "you're evidently one of those that are born lucky. What's the old saying—'Some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them!'—eh? Here's greatness—in a degree—thrusting itself on you!"

"What's this you're talking about, Mr. Lindsey?" I asked. "There's not much greatness about me, I'm thinking!"

"Well, it's not what you're thinking in this case," he answered; "it's what other folks are thinking of you. Here's Sir Gilbert Carstairs in my room yonder. He's wanting a steward—somebody that can keep accounts, and letters, and look after the estate, and he's been looking round for a likely man, and he's heard that Lindsey's clerk, Hugh Moneylaws, is just the sort he wants—and, in short, the job's yours, if you like to take it. And, my lad, it's worth five hundred a year—and a permanency, too! A fine chance for a young fellow of your age!"

"Do you advise me to take it, Mr. Lindsey?" I asked, endeavouring to combine surprise with a proper respect for the value of his counsel. "It's a serious job that for, as you say, a young fellow."

"Not if he's got your headpiece on him," he replied, giving me another clap on the shoulder. "I do advise you to take it. I've given you the strongest recommendations to him. Go into my office now and talk it over with Sir Gilbert by yourself. But when it comes to settling details, call me in—I'll see you're done right to."

I thanked him warmly, and went into his room, where Sir Gilbert was sitting in an easy-chair. He motioned me to shut the door, and, once that was done, he gave a quick, inquiring look.

"You didn't let him know that you and I had talked last night?" he asked at once.

"No," said I.

"That's right—and I didn't either," he went on. "I don't want him to know I spoke to you before speaking to him—it would look as if I were trying to get his clerk away from him. Well, it's settled, then, Moneylaws? You'll take the post?"

"I shall be very glad to, Sir Gilbert," said I. "And I'll serve you to the best of my ability, if you'll have a bit of patience with me at the beginning. There'll be some difference between my present job and this you're giving me, but I'm a quick learner, and—"

"Oh, that's all right, man!" he interrupted carelessly. "You'll do all that I want. I hate accounts, and letter-writing, and all that sort of thing—take all that off my hands, and you'll do. Of course, whenever you're in a fix about anything, come to me—but I can explain all there is to do in an hour's talk with you at the beginning. All right!—ask Mr. Lindsey to step in to me, and we'll put the matter on a business footing."

Mr. Lindsey came in and took over the job of settling matters on my behalf. And the affair was quickly arranged. I was to stay with Mr. Lindsey another month, so as to give him the opportunity of getting a new head clerk, then I was to enter on my new duties at Hathercleugh. I was to have five hundred pounds a year salary, with six months' notice on either side; at the end of five years, if I was still in the situation, the terms were to be revised with a view to an increase—and all this was to be duly set down in black and white. These propositions, of course, were Mr. Lindsey's, and Sir Gilbert assented to all of them readily and promptly. He appeared to be the sort of man who is inclined to accept anything put before him rather than have a lot of talk about it. And presently, remarking that that was all right, and he'd leave Mr. Lindsey to see to it, he rose to go, but at the door paused and came back.

"I'm thinking of dropping in at the police-station and telling Murray my ideas about that Crone affair," he remarked. "It's my opinion, Mr. Lindsey, that there's salmon-poaching going on hereabouts, and if my land adjoined either Tweed or Till I'd have spoken about it before. There are queer characters about along both rivers at nights—I know, because I go out a good deal, very late, walking, to try and cure myself of insomnia; and I know what I've seen. It's my impression that Crone was probably mixed up with some gang, and that his death arose out of an affray between them."

"That's probable," answered Mr. Lindsey. "There was trouble of that sort some years ago, but I haven't heard of it lately. Certainly, it would be a good thing to start the idea in Murray's mind; he might follow it up and find something out."

"That other business—the Phillips murder—might have sprung out of the same cause," suggested Sir Gilbert. "If those chaps caught a stranger in a lonely place—"

"The police have a theory already about Phillips," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "They think he was followed from Peebles, and murdered for the sake of money that he was carrying in a bag he had with him. And my experience," he added with a laugh, "is that if the police once get a theory of their own, it's no use suggesting any other to them—they'll ride theirs, either till it drops or they get home with it."

Sir Gilbert nodded his head, as if he agreed with that, and he suddenly gave Mr. Lindsey an inquiring look.

"What's your own opinion?" he asked.

But Mr. Lindsey was not to be drawn. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders, as if to indicate that the affair was none of his.

"I wouldn't say that I have an opinion, Sir Gilbert," he answered. "It's much too soon to form one, and I haven't the details, and I'm not a detective. But all these matters are very simple—when you get to the bottom of them. The police think this is going to be a very simple affair—mere vulgar murder for the sake of mere vulgar robbery. We shall see!"

Then Sir Gilbert went away, and Mr. Lindsey looked at me, who stood a little apart, and he saw that I was thinking.

"Well, my lad," he said; "a bit dazed by your new opening? It's a fine chance for you, too! Now, I suppose, you'll be wanting to get married. Is it that you're thinking about?"

"Well, I was not, Mr. Lindsey," said I. "I was just wondering—if you must know—how it was that, as he was here, you didn't tell Sir Gilbert about that signature of his brother's that you found on Gilverthwaite's will."

He shared a sharp look between me and the door—but the door was safely shut.

"No!" he said. "Neither to him nor to anybody, yet a while! And don't you mention that, my lad. Keep it dark till I give the word. I'll find out about that in my own way. You understand—on that point, absolute silence."

I replied that, of course, I would not say a word; and presently I went into the office to resume my duties. But I had not been long at that before the door opened, and Chisholm put his face within and looked at me.

"I'm wanting you, Mr. Moneylaws," he said. "You said you were with Crone, buying something, that night before his body was found. You'd be paying him money—and he might be giving you change. Did you happen to see his purse, now?"

"Aye!" answered I. "What for do you ask that?"

"Because," said he, "we've taken a fellow at one of those riverside publics that's been drinking heavily, and, of course, spending money freely. And he has a queer-looking purse on him, and one or two men that's seen it vows and declares it was Abel Crone's."