Kitabı oku: «The Middle of Things», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XV
THE PRESENT HOLDER
Mr. Pawle turned sharply on his companion as Viner pulled him up. He saw the direction of Viner's suddenly arrested gaze and looked from him to the two men who had now walked down the steps of the house and were advancing towards them.
"What is it?" he asked. "Those fellows are coming away from Lord Ellingham's house. You seem to know them?"
"One of them," murmured Viner. "The clean-shaven man. Look at him!"
The two men came on in close, evidently absorbed conversation, passed Mr. Pawle and Viner without as much as a glance at them, and went along in the direction of Park Lane.
"Well?" demanded Mr. Pawle.
"The clean-shaven man is the man I told you of—the man who was in conversation with Ashton at that tavern in Notting Hill the night Ashton was murdered," answered Viner. "The other man I don't know."
Mr. Pawle turned and looked after the retreating figures.
"You're sure of that?" he asked.
"Certain!" replied Viner. "I should know him anywhere."
Mr. Pawle came to another halt, glancing first at the two men, now well up the street, and then at the somewhat sombre front of Ellingham House.
"Now, this is an extraordinary thing, Viner!" he exclaimed. "There's the man who, you say, was with Ashton not very long before he came to his end, and we find him coming away—presumably—from Lord Ellingham, certainly from Lord Ellingham's house! What on earth does it mean? And I wonder who the man is?"
"What I'd like to know," said Viner, "is—who is the other man? But as you say, it is certainly a very curious thing that we should find the first man evidently in touch with Lord Ellingham—considering our recent discoveries. But—what are you going to do?"
"Going in here," affirmed Mr. Pawle, "to the fountain-head. We may get to know something. Have you a card?"
The footman who took the cards looked doubtfully at them and their presenters.
"His Lordship is just going out," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "I don't know—"
Mr. Pawle pointed to the name of his firm at the corner of his card.
"I think Lord Ellingham will see me," he said. "Tell his lordship I shall not detain him many minutes if he will be kind enough to give me an interview."
The man went away—to return in a few minutes and to lead the callers into a room at the rear of the hall, wherein, his back to the fire, his look and attitude one of puzzled surprise, stood a very young man, dressed in the height of fashion, who, as his servant had said, was obviously just ready to go out. Viner, remembering what had brought him and Mr. Pawle there, looked at Lord Ellingham closely—he seemed to be frank, ingenuous, and decidedly youthful. But there was something decidedly practical and business-like in his greeting of his visitors.
"I'm afraid I can't give you very long, Mr. Pawle," he said, glancing instinctively at the old lawyer. "I've a most important engagement in half an hour, and it won't be put off. But I can give you ten minutes."
"I am deeply obliged to your lordship," answered Mr. Pawle. "As your lordship will have seen from my card, I am one of the partners in Crawle, Pawle and Rattenbury—a firm not at all unknown, I think. Allow me to introduce my friend Mr. Viner, a gentlemen who is deeply concerned and interested in the matter I want to mention to your lordship."
Lord Ellingham responded politely to Viner's bow and drew two chairs forward.
"Sit down, Mr. Pawle; sit down, Mr. Viner," he said. He dropped into a chair near a desk which stood in the centre of the room and looked interrogatively at his elder visitor. "Have you some business to discuss, Mr. Pawle?" he asked.
"Some business, my lord, which, I confess at once, is of extraordinary nature," answered the old lawyer. "I will go straight to it. Your lordship has doubtless read in the newspapers of the murder of a man named Ashton in Lonsdale Passage, in the Bayswater district?"
Lord Ellingham glanced at a pile of newspapers which lay on a side-table.
"Yes," he answered, "I have. I've been much interested in it—as a murder. A curious and mysterious case, don't you think?"
"We," replied Mr. Pawle, waving a hand toward Viner, "know it to be a much more mysterious case than anybody could gather from the newspaper accounts, for they know little who have written them, and we, who are behind the scenes, know a great deal. Now, your lordship will have seen that a young man, an actor named Langton Hyde, has been arrested and charged, and is on remand. This unfortunate fellow was an old schoolmate of Mr. Viner—they were at Rugby together; and Mr. Viner—and I may say I myself also—is convinced beyond doubt of his entire innocence, and we want to clear him; we are doing all we can to clear him. And it is because of this that we have ventured to call on your lordship."
"Oh!" exclaimed Lord Ellingham. "But—what can I do! How do I come in?"
"My lord," said Mr. Pawle in his most solemn manner, "I will go straight to this point also. We have reason to feel sure, from undoubted evidence, that Mr. John Ashton, a very wealthy man, who had recently come from Australia, where he had lived for a great many years, to settle here in London, had in his possession when he was murdered certain highly important papers relating to your lordship's family, and that he was murdered for the sake of them!"
The puzzled expression which Viner had noted in Lord Ellingham's boyish face when they entered the room grew more and more marked as Mr. Pawle proceeded, and he turned on the old lawyer at the end with a stare of amazement.
"You really think that!" he exclaimed.
"I shall be very much surprised if I'm not right!" declared Mr. Pawle.
"But what papers?" asked Lord Ellingham. "And what—how could this Mr. Ashton, who, you say, came from Australia, be in possession of papers relating to my family? I never heard of him."
"Your lordship," said Mr. Pawle, "is doubtless well aware that some years ago there was a very strange—shall we call it romance?—in your family. A very remarkable episode, anyway, a most unusual—"
"You mean the strange disappearance of my uncle—this Lord Marketstoke?" interrupted Lord Ellingham with a smile. "Oh, of course, I know all about that."
"Very well, my lord," continued Mr. Pawle. "Then your lordship is aware that Lord Marketstoke was believed to have gone to the Colonies—Australia or New Zealand—and was—lost there. His death was presumed. Now, Ashton came from Australia, and as I say, we believe him to have brought with him certain highly important papers relative to Lord Marketstoke, whom we think to have been well known to him at one time. Indeed, we felt sure that Ashton knew Lord Marketstoke's secret. Now, my lord, we are also confident that whoever killed John Ashton did so in order to get hold of certain papers which, I feel certain, Ashton made a habit of carrying on his person—papers relating to his friend Lord Marketstoke's identity."
Lord Ellingham remained silent for a moment, looking from one visitor to another. It was very clear to Viner that some train of thought had been aroused in him and that he was closely pursuing it. He fixed his gaze at last on the old lawyer.
"Mr. Pawle," he said quietly, "have you any proof—undoubted proof—that Mr. Ashton did possess papers relating to my long-missing uncle?"
"Yes," answered Mr. Pawle, "I have!" He pulled out the bundle of letters which he and Viner had unearthed from the Japanese cabinet. "This! It is a packet of letters written by the seventh Countess of Ellingham to her elder son, the Lord Marketstoke we are talking of, when he was a boy at Eton. Your Lordship will probably recognize your grandmother's handwriting."
Lord Ellingham bent over the letter which Mr. Pawle spread before him.
"Yes," he said, "I know the writing quite well. And—these were in Mr. Ashton's possession?"
"We have just found them—Mr. Viner and I—in a cabinet in his house," replied Mr. Pawle. "They are the only papers we have so far been able to bring to light. But as I have said, we are convinced there were others—much more important ones!—in his possession, probably in his pocketbook."
Lord Ellingham handed the letters back.
"You think that this Mr. Ashton was in possession of a secret relating to the missing man—my uncle, Lord Marketstoke?" he asked.
"I am convinced of it!" declared Mr. Pawle.
Lord Ellingham glanced shrewdly at his visitors.
"I should like to know what it was!" he said.
"Your lordship feels as I do," remarked Mr. Pawle. "But now I should like to ask a question which arises out of this visit. As we approached your lordship's door, just now, we saw, leaving it, two men. One of them, my friend Mr. Viner immediately recognized. He does not know who the man is—"
"Which of the two men do you mean!" interrupted Lord Ellingham. "I may as well say that they had just left me."
"The clean-shaven man," answered Viner.
"Whom Mr. Viner knows for a fact," continued Mr. Pawle, "to have been in Ashton's company only an hour or so before Ashton's murder!"
Lord Ellingham looked at Viner in obvious surprise.
"But you do not know who he is?" he exclaimed.
"No," replied Viner, "I don't. But there is no doubt of the truth of what Mr. Pawle has just said. This man was certainly with Mr. Ashton at a tavern in Notting Hill from about nine-thirty to ten-thirty on the evening of Ashton's death. In fact, they left the tavern together."
The young nobleman suddenly pulled open a drawer in his desk, produced a box of cigarettes and silently offered it to his visitors. He lighted a cigarette himself, and for a moment smoked in silence—it seemed to Viner that his youthful face had grown unusually grave and thoughtful.
"Mr. Pawle," he said at last, "I'm immensely surprised by what you've told me, and all the more so because this is the second surprise I've had this afternoon. I may as well tell you that the two gentlemen whom you saw going away just now brought me some very astonishing news—yours comes right on top of it! And, if you please, I'd rather not say any more about it, just now, but I'm going to make a proposal to you. Will you—and Mr. Viner, if he'll be so good—meet me tomorrow morning, say at noon, at my solicitors' offices?"
"With pleasure!" responded Mr. Pawle. "Your lordship's solicitors are—"
"Carless and Driver, Lincoln's Inn Fields," answered Lord Ellingham.
"Friends of ours," said Mr. Pawle. "We will meet your lordship there at twelve o 'clock to the minute."
"And—you'll bring that with you?" suggested Lord Ellingham, pointing to the packet of letters which Mr. Pawle held in his hand.
"Just so, my lord," assented Mr. Pawle. "And we'll be ready to tell all we know—for there are further details."
Outside the house the old lawyer gripped Viner's elbow.
"That boy knows something!" he said with a meaning smile. "He's astute enough for his age—smart youngster! But—what does he know? Those two men have told him something. Viner, we must find out who that clean-shaven man is. I have some idea that I have seen him before—I shouldn't be at all surprised if he's a solicitor, may have seen him in some court or other. But in that case I wonder he didn't recognize me."
"He didn't look at you," replied Viner. "He and the other man were too much absorbed in whatever it was they were talking about. I have been wondering since I first saw him at the tavern," he continued, "if I ought not to tell the police what I know about him—I mean, that he was certainly in Ashton's company on the evening of the murder. What do you think?"
"I think not, at present," replied Mr. Pawle. "It seems evident—unless, indeed, it was all a piece of bluff, and it may have been—that this man is, or was when you saw him, just as ignorant as the landlord of that place was that the man who used to drop in there and Ashton were one and the same person. No, let the police go on their own lines—we're on others. We shall hear of this man again, whoever he is. Now I must get back to my office—come there at half-past eleven tomorrow morning, Viner, and we'll go on to Carless and Driver's."
Viner went thoughtfully homeward, ruminating over the events of the day, and entered his house to find his two guests, the sisters of the unlucky Hyde, in floods of tears, and Miss Penkridge looking unusually grave. The elder Miss Hyde sprang up at sight of him and held a tear-soaked handkerchief towards him in pantomimic appeal.
"Oh, Mr. Viner," she exclaimed, "you are so kind, and so clever. I'm sure you'll see a way out of this! It looks, oh, so very black, and so very much against him; but oh, dear Mr. Viner, there must be some explanation!"
"But what is it?" asked Viner, looking from one to the other. "What has happened! Has any one been here?"
Miss Penkridge silently handed to her nephew an early edition of one of the evening newspapers and pointed to a paragraph in large type. And Viner rapidly read it over, to the accompaniment of the younger Miss Hyde's sobs.
A sensational discovery in connection with the recent murder of Mr. Ashton in Lonsdale Passage, Bayswater, was made in the early hours of this morning. Charles Fisher, a greengrocer, carrying on business in the Harrow Road, found in his woodshed, concealed in a nook in the wall, a parcel containing Mr. Ashton's gold watch and chain and a diamond ring. He immediately communicated with the police, and these valuables are now in their possession. It will be remembered that Langton Hyde, the young actor who is charged with the crime, and who is now on remand, stated at the coroner's inquest that he passed the night on which the crime was committed in a shed in this neighbourhood.
Viner read this news twice over. Then a sudden idea occurred to him, and he turned to leave the room.
"I don't think you need be particularly alarmed about this," he said to the weeping sisters. "Cheer up, till I return—I am going round to the police."
CHAPTER XVI
THE OUTHOUSE
Near the police-station Viner fell in with his solicitor, Felpham, who turned a corner in a great hurry. Felpham's first glance showed his client that their purposes were in common.
"Seen that paragraph in the evening papers?" said Felpham without preface. "By George! that's serious news! What a pity that Hyde ever made that statement about his doings on the night of the murder! It would have been far better if he'd held his tongue altogether."
"He insisted on it—in the end," answered Viner. "And in my opinion he was right. But—you think this is very serious?"
"Serious? Yes!" exclaimed Felpham. "He says he spent the night in a shed in the Harrow Road district. Now the things that were taken from Ashton's body are discovered in such a place—nay, the very place; for if you remember, Hyde particularized his whereabouts. What's the obvious conclusion? What can anybody think?"
"I see two or three obvious conclusions, and I think several things," remarked Viner. "I'll tell you what they are when we've seen Drillford. I'm not alarmed about this discovery, Felpham. I think it may lead to finding the real murderer."
"You see further than I do, then," muttered Felpham. "I only see that it's highly dangerous to Hyde's interests. And I want first-handed information about it."
Drillford, discovered alone in his office, smiled as the two men walked in—there was an irritating I-told-you-so air about him.
"Ah!" he said. "I see you gentlemen have been reading the afternoon papers! What do you think about your friend now, Mr. Viner?"
"Precisely what I thought before and shall continue to think," retorted Viner. "I've seen no reason to alter my opinion."
"Oh—but I guess Mr. Felpham doesn't think that way?" replied Drillford with a shrewd glance at the solicitor. "Mr. Felpham knows the value of evidence, I believe!"
"What is it that's been found, exactly?" asked Felpham.
Drillford opened a locked drawer, lifted aside a sheet of cardboard, and revealed a fine gold watch and chain and a diamond ring. These lay on two or three sheets of much crumpled paper of a peculiar quality.
"There you are!" said Drillford. "Those belonged to Mr. Ashton; there's his name on the watch, and a mark of his inside the ring. They were found early this morning, hidden, in the very place in which Hyde confessed that he spent most of the night after Ashton's murder—a shed belonging to one Fisher, a greengrocer, up the Harrow Road.
"Who found them?" demanded Felpham.
"Fisher himself," answered Drillford. "He was pottering about in his shed before going to Covent Garden. He wanted some empty boxes, and in pulling things about he found—these! Couldn't have made a more important find, I think.
"Were these things loose?" asked Viner.
"Wrapped loosely in the paper they're lying on," replied Drillford.
Viner took the paper out of the drawer, examined it and lifted it to his nose.
"I wonder, if Hyde really did put those things there," he said, "how Hyde came to be carrying about with him these sheets of paper which had certainly been used before for the wrappings of chemicals or drugs?"
Felpham pricked his ears.
"Eh?" he said. "What's that?"
"Smell for yourself," answered Viner. "Let the inspector smell too. I draw the attention to both of you to the fact, because we'll raise that point whenever it's necessary. Those papers have at some time been used to wrap some strong-smelling drug."
"No doubt of it!" said Felpham, who was applying the papers to his nose. "Smell them, Drillford! As Mr. Viner says, what would Hyde be doing with this stuff in his pocket?"
"That's a mere detail," remarked Drillford impatiently. "These chaps that mooch about, as Hyde was doing, pick up all sorts of odds and ends. He may have pinched them from a chemist's shop. Anyway, there's the fact—and we'll hang him on it! You'll see!"
"We shall never see anything of the sort!" said Viner. "You're on the wrong tack, Inspector. Let me put two or three things to your intelligence. Where's Ashton's purse? I know for a fact that Ashton had a purse full of money when he went out of his house that night—Mrs. Killenhall and Miss Wickham saw him take it out just before he left to give some cash to the parlourmaid, and they saw him replace it in his trousers pocket; I also know for another fact where he spent money that evening—in short, I know now a good deal about his movements for some hours before his death."
"Then you ought to tell us, Mr. Viner," said Drillford a little sulkily. "You oughtn't to keep any information to yourself."
"You're going on the wrong tack, or I might," retorted Viner. "But you'll know all in good time. Now, I ask you again—where's Ashton's purse? You know as well as I do that when his clothing was examined, almost immediately after his death, all his effects were gone—watch, chain, rings, pocketbook, purse. If Hyde took the whole lot, do you think he would ever have been such a consummate ass as to wait until next morning to pawn that ring in Edgware Road? The idea is preposterous!"
"And why, pray?" demanded Drillford, obviously nettled at the turn which the conversation was taking.
"I wonder your own common sense doesn't tell you," said Viner with intentional directness. "If Hyde took everything from his victim, as you say he did, he would have had a purse full of ready money. He could have gone off to some respectable lodging-house. He could have put a hundred miles between himself and London by breakfast-time. He would have had ready money to last him for months. But—he was starving when he went to the pawnbrokers! Hyde told you the truth—he never had anything but that ring."
"Good!" muttered Felpham. "Good, Viner! That's one in the eye for you, Drillford."
"Another thing that you're forgetting, Inspector," continued Viner: "I suppose you attach some value to probabilities? Do you, as a sensible man, believe for one moment that Hyde, placed in the position he is, would be such a fool, such a suicidal fool, as to tell you about that particular shed if he'd really hidden those things there? The mere idea is absurd—ridiculous!"
"Good again, Viner!" said Felpham. "He wouldn't!"
Drillford, obviously ill-pleased, put the strongly-smelling paper and the valuables which had been wrapped in it, back in the drawer and turned the key.
"All very well talking and theorizing, Mr. Viner," he said sullenly. "We know from his own lips that Hyde did spend the night in that shed. If he didn't put these things there, who did?"
Viner gave him a steady look.
"The man who murdered and robbed Ashton!" he answered. "And that man was not Hyde."
"You'll have that to prove," retorted Drillford, derisively. "I know what a jury'll think with all this evidence before it!"
"We shall prove a good many things that'll surprise you," said Viner quietly. "And you'll see, then, the foolishness of jumping at what seems to be an obvious conclusion."
He motioned Felpham to follow, and going outside, turned in the direction of the Harrow Road.
"I'm going to have a look at the place where these things were found," he said. "Come with me. You see for yourself," he continued as they walked on, "how ridiculous it is to suppose that Hyde planted them. The whole affair is plain enough, to me. The real murderer read—or may have heard—Hyde's statement before the coroner, and in order to strengthen the case against Hyde and divert suspicion from himself, sought out this shed and put the things there. Clumsy! If Hyde had ever had the purse, which more certainly disappeared with the rest of the property, he'd never have gone to that shed at all."
"We'll make the most of all that," said Felpham. "But I gathered, from what you said just now to Drillford, that you know more about this case than you've let out. If it's in Hyde's favour—"
"I can't tell you what I know," answered Viner. "I do know some strange things, which will all come out in good time. If we bring the murder home to the right man, Hyde of course will be cleared. I'll tell everything as soon as I can, Felpham."
They walked quickly forward until they came to the higher part of the Harrow Road; there, at a crowded point of that dismal thoroughfare, where the shops were small and mean, Felpham suddenly lifted a finger towards a sign which hung over an open front filled with the cheaper sorts of vegetables.
"Here's the place," he said, "a corner shop. The shed, of course, will be somewhere behind."
Viner looked with interest at the refuge which Hyde had chosen after his hurried flight from the scene of the murder. A shabby looking street ran down from the corner of the greengrocer's shop; the first twenty yards of it on that side were filled with palings, more or less broken and dilapidated; behind them lay a yard in which stood a van, two or three barrows, a collection of boxes and baskets and crates, and a lean-to shed, built against the wall of the adjoining house. The door of this yard hung loosely on its rusty hinges; Viner saw at once that nothing could be easier than for a man to slip into this miserable shelter unseen.
"Let's get hold of the tenant," he said. "Better show him your card, and then he'll know we're on professional business."
The greengrocer, a dull-looking fellow who was measuring potatoes, showed no great interest on hearing what his callers wanted. Summoning his wife to mind the shop, he led Viner and Felpham round to the yard and opened the door of the shed. This was as untidy as the yard, and filled with a similar collection of boxes, baskets and crates. In one corner lay a bundle of empty potato sacks—the greengrocer at once pointed to it.
"I reckon that's where the fellow got a bit of a sleep that night," he said. "There was nothing to prevent him getting in here—no locks or bolts on either gate of the yard or that door. He may have been in here many a night, for all I know."
"Where did you find those valuables this morning?" asked Viner.
The greengrocer pointed to a shelf in a corner above the bundle of sacking.
"There!" he answered. "I wanted some small boxes to take down to Covent Garden, and in turning some of these over I came across a little parcel, wrapped in paper—slipped under a box that was turned top downwards on the shelf, you understand? So of course I opened it, and there was the watch and chain and ring."
"Just folded in the papers that you handed to the police?" suggested Viner.
"Well, there was more paper about 'em than what I gave to Inspector Drillford," said the greengrocer. "A well-wrapped-up bit of parcel it was—there's the rest of the paper there, where I threw it down."
He pointed to some loose sheets of paper which lay on the sacking, and Viner went forward, picked them up, looked quickly at them, and put them in his pocket.
"I suppose you never heard anybody about, that night?" he asked turning to the greengrocer.
"Not I!" the man replied. "I sleep too sound to hear aught of that sort. There's nothing in here that's of any value. No—a dozen folk could come into this yard at night and we shouldn't hear 'em—we sleep at the front of the house."
Viner slipped some silver into the greengrocer's hand and led Felpham away. And when they reached a quieter part of the district, he pulled out the papers which he had picked out of the corner in the shed and held them in front of his companion's eyes.
"We did some good in coming up here, after all, Felpham!" he said, with a grim smile. "It wasn't a mere desire to satisfy idle curiosity that made me come. I thought I might, by sheer good luck, hit on something, or some idea that would help. Now then, look at these things. That's a piece of newspaper from out of a copy of the Melbourne Argus of September 6th last. Likely thing for Langton Hyde to be carrying in his pocket, eh?"
"Good heavens, that's certainly important!" exclaimed Felpham.
"And so is this, and perhaps much more so," said Viner, making a second exhibit. "That's a sheet of brown wrapping-paper with the name and address of a famous firm of wholesale druggists and chemical manufacturers on one side—printed. It's another likely thing for Hyde to possess, and to carry about, isn't it?"
"And the same bitter, penetrating smell about it!" said Felpham.
"Hyde, of course, if Drillford is correct, had all this paper in his pocket when he went into that shed," said Viner. "But I have a different idea, and a different theory. Here," he went on, folding his discoveries together neatly, "you take charge of these—and take care of them. They may be of more importance than we think."
He went home full of thought, restored the sisters to something like cheerfulness by assuring them that the situation was no worse, and possibly rather better, and spent the rest of the evening in his study, silently working things out. Viner, by the time he went to bed, had evolved an idea, and it was still developing and growing stronger when he set out next morning to accompany Mr. Pawle to Lord Ellingham's solicitors.
