CHAPTER XVI.
“BAL. TO R. T., £300.”
When Dibble was fairly locked up in the Brazencrook station, and Bales had indulged in a quiet joke with the Brazencrook chief, he had the curiosity to examine the roll of notes after Mr. Flooks had identified them.
Two of these notes were new Bank of Englands, and were for £10 each. At the back of one there were some figures in pencil,—a calculation evidently of interest, and the result was carried down at the corner—“Bal. to R. T., £300.” Then the figures had been run through with the pencil, as though the writer had made a simple calculation of moneys on the spur of the moment, and the sum showed a balance of £300 to “R. T.” Who was “R. T.”? Singular that these should be the initials of the man who was murdered at Montem! Mere coincidence thought the detective,—nothing in it; nevertheless, he would see Mr. Flooks again.
“Do you remember whether these notes were paid by the Severntown man in the £300?” said the detective.
“I do not.”
“Yet you identified the bundle easily?”
“O yes, I could swear to the lot. But wait a moment; we will go into the Treasury.”
And into the Treasury (as theatrical managers call the room occupied by the cashier of the establishment) they went.
“You paid me a balance of petty receipts and other things yesterday with the balance of the receipts of the night before.”
“Yes,” said the treasurer, “twenty pounds.”
“Did you pay me in these notes?”
“I think so; I am not quite sure.”
“Where did you get them?” asked the detective.
“From the bank. I changed your cheque for £30, for the purpose of paying a poor-rate when you were away at Severntown,” said the treasurer.
The detective extended his inquiries to the bank. A cheque had been cashed as described; but it had been paid in gold. The two notes in question had not passed through this bank.
Bales went back to the music-hall treasury.
“Did you cash that cheque yourself?” he asked the cashier.
“No, sir; I sent the porter to cash it.”
“Will you let me see the porter?” said Bales.
Mr. Flooks sent out for the porter, who was no less a personage than our old acquaintance the showman, Digby Martin, alias Bill Smith, “The Magician of the North.”
“You cashed a cheque on Friday for the treasurer?” said Bales, addressing the porter.
“Yes,” said the man, hesitatingly. “Yes, I did.”
“Send that dog out,” said Mr. Flooks; whereupon a tall grey animal which had followed the porter in a very undog-like attitude, quietly disappeared behind the scenes.
“You got the money in gold?” said Bales, fixing the porter with his cold grey eye.
The man hesitated, held down his head, changed colour, and then looked at Mr. Flooks.
“Don’t look at me,” said Mr. Flooks, “attend to this gentleman.”
“What is your name?” Mr. Bales asked.
“William Smith’s my own name; Digby Martin was my professional name before I came down to being a porter,” said the man.
“Come, you answered that question quickly enough; now why can’t you tell me with the same rapidity whether you got gold for that cheque at the bank or notes?”
“I forget,” said the porter, sulkily.
“No, you don’t. Now come, Mr. Smith, you changed the gold for notes yourself; you can’t deceive me. Now where did you get the notes?”
The porter made no reply, but turning upon his heel to leave the room, he said he did not know what the gentleman meant.
“Then I’ll tell you, my friend,” said Bales. “I arrest you, William Smith, on the charge of being concerned in the murder of one Richard Tallant.”
We need hardly say that the music-hall gentlemen were not a little surprised at this striking dénoûment; their astonishment was much greater than the porter’s.
“Oh!” said the porter, when the detective produced those same “bracelets” which had frightened poor Dibble. “You’ve got the wrong ’un, guvner; but suppose I put you on the right track?”
“You had better be careful,” said Bales: “anything that you may say now can be used in evidence against you.”
“All right, guvner, the truth’s the truth, and you shall have it. I’ve always done my duty by you, Mr. Flooks,” said the porter.
“Yes, you have been a sober steady fellow for this year past,” said Mr. Flooks.
“There’s a bill out offering a reward to discover the man as did the deed, ain’t there?”
“Yes,” said Bales.
“I knows that, ’cos I’ve read it: me and Momus read it last night, and there’s a free pardon for him as confesses who may know about it, and yet was not actually concerned in it.”
“Yes,” said Bales.
“Then here goes! The day after the murder as me and Momus were having a bit o’ dinner in at the Music-Hall Tavern at the back of the house here, a traveller comes in—a half-starved looking sort of a chap—and he sets down afore the fire. Momus, that’s my dog, sir, one of the wonderfullest animals out, sir. Momus smells at him, as if she had met him afore, and walks round him on her hind-legs. That causes me to take notice of him like. The gal comes in, and he orders some grub, and asks if there’s a fire in the other room: she says yes, and in he goes. ‘Do you know him, Momus; does yer know the gent, old gal?’ She wags her bit o’ stump, as much as to say ‘I does,’ and so does yer guvner, says I, all of a suddent; ’cos it just then flashed on me that it were my son-in-law. Yes, gents, I ain’t talking no bosh—my son-in-law, Mr. Jefferson Crawley.”
Mr. Bales pursed up his lips, and gave a low whistle at this, and could not resist making other indications of his surprise and satisfaction.
“Oh, you knows him, do yer?” said the porter. “Well, arter a bit, I goes into the room, and I sees him a reading the newspaper all about the murder, and when I goes in he drops it as though it had bitten him. ‘Don’t yer like the news, guvner,’ says I? ‘don’t you like it, son-in-law?’ He looked awful at this. He bolted with my gal ‘Chrissy,’ you know.”
The detective whistled again.
“Oh, you know’d her, did yer?” said the porter.
“I know she was not your daughter,” said Bales.
“S’help me Davy, but you seem to know everything.”
“Never mind, go on,” said Bales.
“Well, he looked hawful, as I said afore, and I thought as he was a going to faint. He didn’t, however. He rung the bell and ordered a pint of gin, and drunk it off, and then he seemed better. ‘How come you here?’ says he. ‘How come you here?’ says I. ‘You seems to have been travelling; and what’s that blood on yer shirt?’ says I. ‘Blood?’ says he. ‘Yes,’ says I. ‘O, I had a bit of a row.’—‘O,’ says I. With that I says, ‘Where’s my gal?’ and then he begins to say as how she’d treated him shameful, and a lot of it, and gets to abusing me. Then he says, ‘We’re relations, you know;’ and I says, ‘Yes, of a sort.’—‘I was a gentleman,’ says he, ‘till I know’d your daughter.’—‘Perhaps,’ says I. ‘Fact!’ says he; and then he tells me how she brought him to poverty, and all that, which I quite believe; and then, after his grub he says, says he, ‘We’re relations—brothers in distress, deceived by a wretched gal;’ and it was a fact too; ‘so let’s drink,’ says he; and he had another pint of gin, but I was not to be tempted. However, I has a little, and then I leaves him sitting afore the fire, drunk I should think, and he paid for what he had: so I leaves him, as he had took a bed for the night. ‘You’ll stand my friend?’ says he, as I was going; ‘relations, you know!’ and all that. When business was over, about twelve o’clock, I goes again, and I finds him muddling over the fire, still drinking gin, and I hears as he’d changed a five-pound-note; so says I, ‘Guvner—son-in-law, money’s flush with you;’ and he says, ‘Father-in-law, it is; and if you’ll be my friend, it shall be with you: swear,’ says he, and his hands trembled awful to behold: so I swears. ‘I’m hawful bad,’ says he, ‘being out in the rain; be my friend—take care of me;’ and I says, ‘All right, guvner;’ he puts his hand into his coat, pulls out a pocket-book, and gives me them two notes; then he seemed as if he was off his head, and I and the gal sees him to bed. That ere pocket-book, and the blood and altogether bothered me a good deal; and when I changed that cheque, thinks I, I’ll get rid on ’em; ’cos you see, I didn’t know what might happen, and somehow I thought as my son-in-law might have had a hand in the job, and you see, as we were sort of relations, and all that, I didn’t like to say nothing, and especially as he wor so bad—so hawful ill—and that’s the whole truth o’ the matter.”
“And what became of him?” asked the detective; “don’t answer unless you choose.”
“O, bless yer life, he’s there now in bed, and it’s my humble opinion as he’ll never stir out of it again.”
He did “stir out of it again,” nevertheless, and the decayed showman and his son-in-law were in Brazencrook lock-up within an hour, to the relief and release of Lionel Hammerton; for the Brazencrook chief deemed it necessary to get two magistrates at once to authorise the Captain’s release from custody.
What a change came over the spirit of the Brazencrook policeman’s dream, as he smoked his pipe and talked to his wife on this night over the kitchen fire! It needed all the wifely consolation which his admiring spouse could bring to bear upon his deep dejection, to save him from utter despair.
“I’m a ruined man! I’m a ruined man!” was all the defeated officer could say. His two new prisoners were not more chapfallen than the Brazencrook chief, through whose fingers had slipped government reward, credit, reputation—everything which he hoped to gain—by his rash act of the morning.