“Altogether this idea is well worth following up,” said he as the slow local train rumbled off at break of day towards the coast: “I am sure to have two or three days to spare in Scarborough waiting for the inquest to finish and the police-court proceedings to be adjusted, and I am certain that I can’t do better than to start an inquiry of my own into the crime, not with the intention of proving Arthur innocent, that will be the business of Mr. Spencer Holmes, his lawyer, but with the hope that I can show Mr. Ventris Blake is the real criminal. After all, my mind has not quite forgotten its cunning when I had to write special accounts of mysterious crimes about which the police would vouchsafe no line of information. I can, I do believe, see as far as most detectives: and in this I should be sharpened by my affection for the poor old fellow they have got in their clutches!” And again his face grew hard and stern, for, manlike, he would not even admit to himself how cut to the heart he was by Arthur’s miseries.
His close mental review of the case had, however, reminded him of one omission. That was the report from the private inquiry agency who had been instructed to watch the Charltons when they removed from the garret in Queen Victoria Street, and particularly to learn the antecedents of the wife—Rebecca Charlton—who was supposed to have witnessed the marriage at Peterborough. He now saw how vital these investigations might prove, and, blaming himself for his own foolishness in not getting possession of the documents before, he hurried out of the carriage directly the train stopped at Scarborough, and went to the platform telegraph office and wired to Arthur’s inquiry clerk, Perkins, with whom he had a nodding acquaintance:—
“Please have all Mr. Hudson’s letters opened. Send on to me any bearing on this dreadful charge, particularly the report of the private detectives who are engaged in watching the caretakers, named Charlton. Register, as matter is important.
“Paul Renishaw,
“Crown Hotel, Scarborough.”
Arthur’s solicitor, Spencer Holmes, was the first man Paul met as he stepped out of the station into the bleak, eager, January air, fresh from the Yorkshire sea and moors.
“Ah!” said he, warmly grasping his hand, “I thought somehow you would catch this train, so I got the boots of my hotel to call me early and hurried up to meet you.”
“No fresh news, I suppose?” asked Paul, throwing back his shoulders and marching out sturdily in the direction of the South Cliff, where he was told his hotel would be found.
His companion’s face clouded.
“I don’t know exactly what you mean by ‘fresh,’ ” said he, with a nervous little cough. “Only things could not be well darker than they are. That wretch Blake, not content with the evidence he’s got, has actually imported the cleverest detective they have in New York—a man who happened to be seeing him on business in London—a loud-mouthed, boastful, and aggressive Yankee, who answers to the name of Silas Q. Pinkerton.”
“Well, and what has he accomplished?” queried Paul lightly. “I should have thought the cut of his clothes, to say nothing of the vile character of his accent, would have paralysed every decent Yorkshireman!”
“Not a bit of it,” returned Holmes, sharply, but catching sight of a man in the distance he stopped. “Ah, as I guessed. He’s shadowed me. The fact is, he has done little else since I’ve been down here now. I’ll introduce you to him, and then you’ll know him and his ugly carriage, and you’ll be able to steer clear of him.” And raising his voice he shouted, “Pinkerton! Pinkerton!”
The man stopped, pretended to fumble with a boot-lace, then came towards them. As he drew nearer and his features became more distinct, Paul started violently, muttered something, then caught Holmes excitedly by the arm.
“Here,” he cried in a hoarse whisper, “who did you tell me that was?”
“Why, Silas Q. Pinkerton, the great New York detective,” responded the solicitor.
“Rubbish,” energetically returned Paul. “Why, I know that man as well as I know myself, and he’s no more a New Yorker or a detective, or a creature named Pinkerton, than he is His own Most Gracious Majesty, King Edward the VII.”
CHAPTER XII.
WHAT THE SERGEANT KNEW
Unfortunately, before Paul and the solicitor could come quite face to face with the redoubtable Silas Q. Pinkerton of New York, the great detective (who wore glasses and really looked short-sighted) got a good chance of scrutinising the London journalist’s features. The effect, too, was certainly electrical. No sooner did he do so than all his bold swagger and impudent stare seemed to vanish.
Almost instantly he stopped with a gesture of confusion. Then recovering himself he bent down and again fumbled with his boot-laces. Finally, sheer panic got him in her clutches, and, dropping all pretence, he cried out suddenly, “Excuse me, I’ve forgotten something,” and tore off down a street leading to The Crescent as though he were pursued by a ghost.
Spencer Holmes, the lawyer, stopped half petrified with astonishment. “Now what’s up?” he asked helplessly, and then he caught sight of Paul, who was simply holding both his sides with laughter, quite heedless of appearance.
“That’s good indeed,” chuckled Paul. “The mighty Silas has forgotten something, I can see, but it’s only his own name!”
“Then he’s not a detective at all,” questioned Holmes, giving a low whistle. “He’s down here under false pretences. He’s not even a Yankee!”
“No more than I am,” replied Paul. “He is simply a loafer in the streets of the city, glad to run here and there for anyone who will give him a glass of beer and a sandwich and an occasional half-a-crown. Two years ago, I remember, he attached himself to Ventris Blake. Everything that Blake saw, said, thought, or felt, or imagined he said, saw, thought or ought to feel, he threw into the form of a paragraph and carted it about from newspaper office to newspaper office in the hope that some particularly weak and good-natured sub-editor would buy the news from him at a rate of a penny or three half-pence a line. At that time I was on a smart, almost brilliant sheet that had made a reputation for the pungency and accuracy of its financial criticism, and he simply haunted our city editor, who never took a line from him on principle, but used him as a study for a play he was writing—a study of a species of financial parasite often found, it is true, but seldom so completely developed in the epidermis.”
“And what was his name then if it wasn’t Pinkerton?”
“His nick-name, I remember very well,” returned Paul. “That was ‘Sawdust.’ The boys about the place gave it to him for some obscure reason that he was ‘comfortable for the feet.’ His real name, I know, had some association with that because I remember telling the youngsters that their jest was not as clever as it looked. Now what was the connection?” He paused and thought. Then he seemed to recollect. “Yes, I know now,” he went on. “His right name always loomed up when you spoke to him, from the bottom of his shirt front. Whether his landlady was afraid she would lose him—or the shirt, I don’t know, but there it was in very big letters—Josiah Sawdry!”
“The same surname as that of Ventris Blake’s private secretary, the ugly little Jew, who gave evidence against Mr. Hudson at Bow Street, and declared he actually witnessed the sham marriage at Peterborough.”
“By Jove, I never thought of that,” cried Paul. “Then he’s down here for no good, we may be quite certain. He means mischief to Arthur for some personal reason of Blake’s. Can’t we get him nabbed for going about with a wrong name and falsely pretending to be a private detective?”
Spencer Holmes shook his head. “No, I think not,” he replied. “Anybody can call themselves what they like in name so long as they don’t commit a fraud in doing so,—for instance, obtain goods by false pretences. As for being a private detective, we can all call ourselves that. It’s the proper official police detectives that are the real persons that matter, and to personate one of these is certainly a crime punishable by imprisonment, but he has never held himself out to be one of these.”
“Then he can spy on us and shadow us just as much as he pleases?”
“I am afraid so. At all events, I know nothing in the law to prevent him if he does it quietly and peaceably, and doesn’t create any fuss. None the less, he doesn’t seem over anxious to come close to you, does he?”
And both of the men laughed as they recalled his ignominious flight.
“Well,” said Paul finally, “if we can’t get him one way we may manage to catch him another. I remember the last time he called at my old office very well, for I had put my old silver watch on my desk to see I didn’t get late with any of the editions, and sure enough, when my back was turned it had gone and old ‘Sawdust’ with it. The lad who runs errands for me swore he saw ‘Sawdust’ nip it up and slip it into his pocket, but from that time to this I have never thought of worrying about the matter further. Might not we, however, use this as a weapon against him, and, without threatening him, let him see if he doesn’t desert Ventris Blake and come over on our side, we will have him arrested on the spot for robbery from a newspaper office?”
“Yes,” said Spencer Holmes thoughtfully, “I think with care and tact we can manage that. But what can we gain out of it?”
“Many things,” responded Paul cheerfully. “First and foremost, it will stop his espionage on you. Secondly, he will supply Ventris Blake with all the false information we chose to submit to him, and so won’t cover the ground with any more spies, less scrupulous perhaps, certainly more dangerous. Thirdly—and this is the most important—he will reveal to us why he was sent here, and all that the millionaire said to him when he posted him off from London.”
“Splendid!” returned the ever-cautious Holmes. “Luckily, I know where he puts up. It’s at the Grand—the same hotel as I do. Now, whilst you go and take your room at the Crown, and then run along to the police-station to see Hudson, I’ll slip up there, to his bedroom and nab him. Otherwise, he may take fright altogether and leave Scarborough, whereas, if we can only fix him right he’s much more useful selling his employer’s secrets to us!” And swinging off in the direction of the Spa Bridge, he soon disappeared from sight.
At first Paul was sorry that he had not confided more to this shrewd but kind-hearted advocate. Somehow, he got the idea that if he had only told him exactly his suspicion that the real murderer of Aimée Blake was no less a personage than the millionaire himself, that the lawyer might have turned his interview with the supposed detective to better advantage. Against this, he had to set the fact that up to the present he had nothing but his own belief to go upon. That belief might be worth little or it might be worth much—only patient, persistent investigation would prove, but certainly the lawyer himself was better employed thwarting the prosecution, proving an alibi, and conducting the defence from its strong and obvious stand-point.
“No, I must carry through this crusade against Blake alone,” Paul argued in the end. “If I succeed, well and good—if I fail, dear old Arthur won’t be injured: for his own innocence will then have a chance, although I alas! know too much of the so-called courts of justice, to expect that innocence in itself is bound to triumph.”
A few hours later he entered the police-station and, as soon as he revealed his identity and his object, he was permitted to interview his friend in the presence of a burly sergeant who had been told off to watch the prisoner for fear he should commit suicide!
Luckily he found Arthur bold, quiet, but resolute. The first shock of the charge had worn off, and now he had risen to face the ordeal, strong in a knowledge of his own freedom from stain. Very patiently but eagerly he listened to all Paul had to tell him about Winifred—about her flight from St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage—their adventures with those Three Glass Eyes, which culminated in that terrible scene outside Gray’s Inn, when Eleanor Kaufmann had reeled against a trotting horse and had been picked up dead. True, his face clouded at first when he heard that later Winifred had decided to seek a refuge once again in her uncle’s home—he could not easily believe that any good could come from association with a man like Russell Langford—but when Paul had argued the matter out as one of tactics and comparative safety from Ventris Blake’s persecution, he acquiesced in the course that had been adopted.
The consultation, however, was broken into rather suddenly by the police officer.
“I don’t want to hurry you, gentlemen,” said he, “but it’s my duty to remind you that in a few minutes the prisoner here will have to go before the magistrates, and you both had better prepare your minds for it.”
“It’s purely formal, I suppose,” queried Paul rising from the truckle bed on which he had been seated with Arthur and nodding pleasantly to the sergeant.
The man pursed up his mouth and looked mysterious. “I did hear,” he muttered slowly, “that it won’t be formal, as you call it, by no manner of means. Indeed, a man in the office as ought to know (he’s a detective they’ve borrowed for this job from Leeds) whispered to me that they’ve got a most tremendously important witness to produce this time, that will knock the stuffin’ out of all of you!”
“And who is that pray?” cried Arthur rising and advancing to form the group.
“Why it’s a telegraph clerk at the post-office at Scarborough, who will say you stopped him on the street the night of the murder and offered him a heavy bribe to tell you how to ‘tap’ the wires!”
“What a thundering lie!” interjected Paul.
“No it ain’t,” sturdily contended the sergeant, pulling out a box of snuff which he held invitingly in the direction of Paul. “It’s true enough, and don’t get your hair off about it, or you’ll go bald and catch cold and die from water on the brain.”
And, in spite of themselves as it were, both men had to laugh heartily. The next minute the expected summons came.
As at Bow Street, the place was packed with press-men and artists and friends of the sitting magistrates; but the buzz of excitement died down as the magistrates’ clerk said very gravely: “Put forward Arthur Hudson,” and with a white set face Arthur strode to the dock and bowing to the Bench, stood close against the rail.
This time, the Treasury were represented, and Ventris Blake was not. A Mr. Scarth rose and said he appeared to prosecute, but as it would be necessary to ask for a still further remand, all he would do would be to call, in addition to those who had appeared at Bow Street, one more witness—Henry Drummond, a telegraph clerk, engaged at Scarborough.
After this, the proceedings became formal for a time, as the old witnesses practically repeated their evidence to the effect that Arthur had stayed a night at the refreshment house near the scene of the crime: had bought the stick with which the poor woman was done to death: and had been seen in a greenhouse washing the blood off his hands. Only when the new witness, Drummond, a telegraph operator, put in an appearance, did the excitement sensibly increase. He proved to be a fair young fellow of twenty-five, with blue eyes and a bluff straightforward manner that made a most favourable impression on the court.
His story, too, had elements of the dramatic. He told how on the night of the murder he had gone for a walk along the Filey Road, and was just returning home when he was met by an anxious and haggard man, who first of all asked him for a match, which he gave him, and who then insisted on getting into conversation with him. Finally the stranger led the conversation round to the case with which any dishonest person could “tap” the wires belonging to the Government, and could take on an instrument of his own a record of any message that passed over that section.
At first witness fell into the trap and discussed the problem as though he were talking to a fellow operator anxious if possible to do away with the overhead wire system, and to substitute wireless telegraphy in its place. The man too posed at first as an amateur, anxious to discuss theories of transmission more than practices, but finally he seemed to throw prudence to the winds—talked darkly of a plot to ruin him by doctors and asylum attendants at York, which he must prevent at all hazards—and offered witness five hundred pounds, in a bundle of bank-notes, which he produced, to tell him how “to do the trick,” so that he could foil these villains, whom he alleged, sought his life.
Confused and bewildered by his earnestness, witness tried to slip off with a half-promise that he would give the offer his best consideration. That was useless. By this time they had reached a lonely part of the road against an overhanging cliff, and seeing that he was prevaricating, the stranger became most furious—caught him by the silk muffler he was wearing—and threatened to strangle him unless he yielded the information he sought.
Finally, witness told him how the thing was done, but at the suggestion of the Mayor who presided, and was a Post-office official himself, it was agreed between the prosecution and Mr. Spencer Holmes who defended, that the explanation should not be stated in public.
“Nearly all crimes are imitated,” said the mayor wisely. “I am practically certain if Mr. Drummond reveals the way the telegraph-wires can be ‘tapped’ and their secrets taken off, dozens of bold and resolute criminals will act on the information, and will telegraph messages for purposes of Stock Exchange frauds, absolute thefts, and the fouler uses of blackmail. Only the other day I read of a gang of scoundrels that chartered a vessel and went off the West Coast of Africa, and fished up the cable to South Africa, purposely to doctor messages from members of the London Stock Exchange to Johannesburg, so that the market could be ‘rigged’ in their interest. Luckily, a patriotic Englishman came forward and stopped them before they’d done any harm, but if those pranks can be played with a cable, what cannot be done to the great trunk wires, as they pass over some of our most lonely roads? As a matter of fact, public servants cannot be too careful!” And, forgetting that poor Arthur’s guilt was not proved yet, he actually turned and frowned at the prisoner as though he were a very daring and dangerous malefactor.
A moment later the witness went on with his story explaining how when he had given the desired information, the stranger released his hold on him, gruffly apologised for the force with which he had advanced his arguments, and, thrusting a bundle of Bank of England notes into his pocket, had torn off across a field, where, owing to the darkness, he was almost instantly lost to sight. At first, witness admitted he pinched himself to be sure he had not been the victim of some extraordinary hallucination—some bad dream. Then he imagined the affair was some stupid practical joke on the part of his colleagues, but when on reaching a gas lamp he inspected the supposed bundle of bank notes, he found they were genuine enough—and exactly of the amount of five hundred pounds.
“It is the freak of some lunatic who has escaped from one of the York Asylums,” he said to himself then. But finally growing nervous and apprehensive that all was not as straightforward as it might be, and that the maniac or criminal might actually put into practice the information about the “tapping” of telegraph wires which he had got possession of, he took to his heels and ran as hard as he could to the police-station on the north side of Scarborough.
Unfortunately, he excited himself so much that the bundle of notes must have jumped out of his pocket, for he could not find them when he recounted his adventures to the police-superintendent in charge. In fact, the officer in question, because he could not shew the notes, ridiculed his story altogether, and seemed half inclined to lock him up on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. Luckily, just then, the news of the crime reached the officer; his story was believed; and he and three or four constables were despatched to search for the missing notes.
“And did you find them?” put in Mr. Scarth with a fine air of not leading his witness, but of leaving him free to make any answer he chose.
“No,” said Drummond frankly. “We were up all night looking for them, but we could not discover any traces of them; and although I made many inquiries in Scarborough, I could hear of no one who had discovered them afterwards.”
“Look round the court,” proceeded the counsel impressively. “Do you see the man who accosted you that night and had that violent altercation with you?”
Drummond swung round from the magistrates whom he had been addressing hitherto, and looked long and anxiously at Arthur who, however, returned his gaze with a glance as keen but as non-criminal as his own.
There was an awkward pause—and counsel grew irritated at what seemed to all in that crowded court-room a purposeless delay. “Now then, Mr. Drummond,” he added impatiently, “you don’t, perhaps, understand that waits like this may cause a certain amount of misconception. Please rouse yourself, and tell me—can you see the mysterious stranger who asked you about ‘tapping’ those wires and bribed you with five hundred pounds, now present in this court?”
“I can’t,” broke out from the clerk at length. “When I saw the prisoner amongst ten or twelve others in that dirty, narrow, ill-lighted passage an hour ago, I was certain he was the man. Now, however, the light is stronger, and I will swear that that man in the dock is not the one who asked me for a match and seized me by the throat.”
For a moment there was absolute consternation in the court-house. Mr. Scarth dropped to his seat and gazed at his opponent, Mr. Spencer Holmes, almost dumbfounded. The latter fortunately, was on his feet in a second, asking the magistrate’s clerk to make a special and full note of the answer, and begging the reporters present to preserve their shorthand records for fear any controversy should arise as to the exact words employed.
“There is really no need to do so,” put in the witness who seemed the least disturbed of all the parties involved. “I have not spoken at random, I have not made up my mind without careful examination of the prisoner. It may be out of order, but would he mind speaking to me so that I can see if I can identify his voice even?”
“Certainly not,” began Holmes; but this time Arthur waved him aside.
“I shall be very glad to do as the witness asks me,” he returned. “I know I am innocent, and that until last night I had never set foot in this town. As for inquiring for a match from Mr. Drummond or discussing possible frauds on the General Post Office, I did nothing of the sort.”
“I am sure you didn’t,” put in Drummond impulsively. “I am convinced the police and I have blundered over you. The man who accosted me the night of the murder, was exactly like you to look at—but now I come to examine your hair, your eye-brows, and the shape of your chin and mouth, I see that yours are natural looking, whereas his were artificial.”
“In a word,” said Spencer Holmes blandly. “Your idea is that the man you saw was merely made up to resemble the prisoner?”
“That is so,” replied the witness. “It was a very clever make up, but it was a make up all the same. It wasn’t the genuine article at all. I remember I remarked his theatrical looks at the time, and when he caught me by the throat, I seized him by the chin—with the result that I actually got some grease paint on my fingers.”
“Why didn’t you tell the Court this earlier?” asked Mr. Scarth rising and glowering at the witness.
“Because you didn’t ask me,” promptly responded Drummond. “I told the police superintendent about it at the time, but he said it wasn’t material—and indeed it wasn’t until I saw I had been led away by a series of accidental resemblances to half swear away an innocent man’s life.”
“Well, at all events the prisoner is remanded,” said the Mayor whose rising was a signal for a general break up of the court, and Arthur was hurried off to the adjacent cells, while Spencer Holmes and Paul drew together and held a whispered consultation.
“At last we have won a move,” put in Paul, with a nod in the direction of Drummond. “Now tell me how you got on with Silas Q. Pinkerton.”
“Splendidly,” answered the lawyer with a quiet chuckle. “First of all, of course, he wanted to throw me through the window, but when he saw I had got the ‘drop’ on him he collapsed and begged abjectly for mercy.”
“But what is he doing down here?” queried the journalist.
“He has been sent hither by Ventris Blake as you suspected. His instructions are to ‘shadow’ me and to report all that I discover. Apart from this, however, he has got some wonderful secret of his own which he wants to sell to us. He swears it will clear Arthur Hudson from all these dreadful charges, and will convict a party we have never even spoken to yet—of the murder of poor Aimée Blake and the personation of our friend Arthur at Peterborough.”
“Does he mean Ventris Blake?”
“No, I asked him that, and he not only assured me it was not he, but he actually laughed at the idea!”
“Then—who can it be?” cried Paul half in despair.
“All the same,” he continued, “I don’t attach much importance to his clue. He may have stumbled on something the police have missed since he has been in Scarborough, but that is not very likely, I think. My own impression to-day is that when we have probed to the bottom we shall find Ventris Blake is the real criminal, for he, and he alone, had the best interest in seeing that poor woman in her grave!”
“That is where I differ from you,” Holmes answered. “On the face of it, of course, it looks the likeliest course to work on, but in crimes like murder, you get many and strange surprises. For instance, Aimée Blake may have had some clandestine love affair, some other dark passage in her life that neither you nor I nor the millionaire could ever hope to guess at.”
“Then,” said Paul in some surprise, “you don’t think old ‘Sawdust,’ as the boys dubbed him, is a colossal humbug!”
“Not altogether,” replied the lawyer. “Only take your time over him. Don’t appear to jump at the secret he has to sell you. Busy yourself about something else for a time, and let him come to you. After all, he is not in this beautiful sea-side resort for his health. He wants money like the rest of us—and, if he has failed to get it out of Blake, as he seems to have done, judging by what you tell me about the paragraphs he used to hawk about concerning the millionaire, he’ll not be likely to lose sight of us when he’s in touch with possible wealth.”
“At all events, I shan’t upset my plan of campaign for him. You can believe in him if you like. I consider I have a more pressing duty to go over the scene of the crime, and to sift the evidence of residents on the Filey road which the police have rejected.”
And with a quick word of farewell, Paul took his way out of the police court. Already indeed his mind was made up and course of action decided upon. In fact, he had barely gone thirty or forty yards in the direction of the main thoroughfare before he came upon one of the principal places he sought—a cheap and quick jobbing printer’s. This he entered and begging the loan of a pencil (a thing by the way your true journalist seldom possesses), and a large piece of paper, he drew out the following poster, of which he ordered a thousand copies should be posted over all the best boardings in Scarborough and Filey:—
WILFUL MURDER.
£500 REWARD.WHEREAS it has come to the knowledge of the lawyer engaged for the defence of Arthur Hudson who now stands charged of the wilful murder of Aimée Blake, that certain residents in this district are withholding certain information that will tend to prove the innocence of the accused.
This, therefore, is to invite them to come forward, and to put all the facts they are acquainted with relating to the sad affair before the undersigned, who will give £500 reward to the man, woman, or child who supplies such information as will lead to the arrest of the real criminal other than Arthur Hudson.
(Signed) Paul Renishaw,
Crown Hotel,
ScarboroughGOD SAVE THE KING!
“I don’t know whether this is illegal or not,” Paul mused as he paid the man for the printing and the posting, “but, if it is, I must stand the racket. It’s too good a chance to get hold of the information which the police must have had and rejected, judging by their treatment of the telegraph operator, Drummond, to miss through any craven fear of consequences. Leastways, I can plead my zeal outran my discretion, and, the better to suggest this, I’ll engage a small army of fifty sandwichmen to parade the streets of Scarborough bearing this notice of mine in a prominent position every day for at least next week.” And striking a bargain for this unique display also, Paul, feeling he had made a very good start with his efforts to prove Arthur innocent, set off on another coup.
Now it is a curious thing, but it is none the less true, that men use the materials of life very much according to their professions. Thus if a member of the Stock Exchange wants anything organised it is the most natural thing for him to appeal to members of his own profession—whether it is to get up a sweep-stake for a job lot of hats which he has picked up cheap, or to form a society of glee singers. The same holds good of the theatrical world. Let a prominent actor desire to do anything out of the common—to feed a lot of hungry children, to give some handsome present to a church, or to compile a book of recitations—he never dreams of approaching the general public. It’s always his brother professionals he victimises; and so it was with Paul in his present sea of trouble.
He was, as it happened, most anxious that a properly organised search should be made for that missing bundle of bank notes, which the mysterious stranger had foisted on Drummond as the payment for his tips about how telegraph wires could be tapped. Somehow he felt convinced that, could he but get hold of this the rest of his task would be easy enough, for, after all, Bank of England notes when they are passed from hand to hand in England, and not on foreign racecourses, are the most dangerously tell-tale things in the world. The trouble was, there he was in a strange town without a friend and without an idea as to what source he could rightly look for assistance. In the circumstances most men would have raced hither and thither begging advice.
Not so Paul. He was a journalist, and he knew the value of the news lad as a factor of prime common sense; and hence, no sooner did he get through his interview with the printer, than he walked into the office of the local evening paper, the Daily Post, as it happened just at the time when the special edition of the paper, with an account of the murder trial, was destined to appear. There was gathered a motley crowd of about 40 of the shrewdest urchins in the town, and, without a word of introduction, he called out to them just as he had heard the publisher of The Moon do scores of times:—“Who wants to earn five shillings cash down!”
“I do,” cried half a dozen voices promptly.
“Then form yourselves into a brigade and march two by two to the Filey road. I want you to search the streets from the spot where the poor woman Blake was killed right to the police station for the bundle of bank notes Mr. Drummond has lost. To who ever finds it I will give a reward of £5. But anyway you are each of you sure of 5s. for three hours’ work.”
And, sad to relate not one boy was left to sell the special murder edition. “The papers can wait until we get back,” they brutally agreed,—and something like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Paul found himself followed by the entire staff of newslads.
Now, in every company of boys, there are three or four born leaders. It proved so in this case, and so he had no difficulty in explaining his plan of campaign to this mob of workers through these self constituted lieutenants who first of all gathered around him and heard his wishes, then slunk off and explained to their own particular set the work expected of them, and who when anybody showed any sign of independent thinking promptly cuffed them into subjection.
The district they had to search was quickly split into sections. At the far end of each, a number of lads were left under the charge of a self-elected captain, and realising that he could not even pretend to keep a look-out on this miniature brigade’s operations, Paul told these members of his autocratic executive to direct all of their followers to work towards the town, and when they had covered the part given them to search, to meet him outside the Crown Hotel and report the results. He himself proceeded beyond the farthermost point, the exact spot of the murder, to that little group of houses, in one of which it was alleged Arthur had spent a night prior to the crime.
As it happened, the inevitable crowd of morbid sight-seers had drifted into the town, to the streets adjacent to the police-station, in the hope that, if they did not catch sight of the prisoner, they might, at least, gaze unchecked at the other actors in this crime-drama. As a consequence, the road was comparatively deserted, and he found himself able to survey the ground without any unnecessary interruption.
The object, however, that fascinated him most was not the refreshment-house, where Arthur was supposed to have taken a bed, but the garden into which he was alleged to have retreated after the commission of the crime itself. This place was really dark and forbidding, and suggestive of mystery; and, almost before he quite realised what he was doing, he had lifted the latch of the gate, and strolled along three or four of the paths that wound away from the high road.
CHAPTER XIII.
CERTAIN LOVE LETTERS
For a time, however, we must leave Paul hard at work on his investigations in that tiny hamlet outside Scarborough. True, important results are to follow his labours, although those results are not precisely of the kind he had expected when he had decided so rapidly that Ventris Blake, and nobody else, was responsible for the death of that poor woman on the Filey Road. Unfortunately, the tide of events will not stand still for any of us. We may be the principal actors in the little pitiable tragedies that are enacted in our midst, or we may play quite second-rate insignificant parts. The moment comes when we must all step forward and bear our share, great or little—and so it happened to Winifred and Vera the day after the former returned to the shelter of her uncle’s roof in Emperor’s Gate.
Bold, unscrupulous scoundrels of the type of Ventris Blake strike quickly and deeply when once they see a chance of success has come. Indeed, no sooner did one of his spies report to him that Winifred was safe again in Russell Langford’s flat than he despatched his secretary, Israel Sawdry, to remind Vera of her promise to bring the girl to Park Lane, and at the same time he delicately forwarded a cutting from that evening’s papers, which set out:
“A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Mr. Jules Prendergast, the popular and gifted actor manager of the Belsize Theatre, and The Lady Desborough of Prince’s Gate, W., Illowen, Stamford, and Breakly, Co. Galway. The approach of this happy event, it need, perhaps, hardly be added, has caused quite a flutter in those smart circles where both Mr. Prendergast and Lady Desborough are interesting and inevitable figures.”
As the millionaire had guessed, this cruel goad, although not very delicate, was certainly highly effective; and with heart aflame with rage, Vera made her way to the morning room, and had her first long talk with Winifred since her cousin’s return. Winifred herself chanced to be seated writing at a small table that stood within a recess close to the window, but she rose quickly as the girl entered, some subtle feminine instinct warning her that fresh trouble was astir.
“I want to talk to you seriously, Winnie,” Vera began, as she dragged an arm chair to the fire and seated herself in it. “Do sit down yourself and listen to me, or you will get upon my nerves. First of all, I suppose you have heard that all is over between Jules Prendergast and myself.”
“Yes,” said Winifred, dropping into a chair opposite to her cousin. “I have. Your father told me about it at dinner last night!”
“That is just the mischief. Father has heard of it, and I doubt if he will ever speak kindly to me again. I don’t,” she went on with a gulp and a convulsive twist of the handkerchief she was toying with, “mind about the break with Jules. It’s the pater I am worrying about.”
“Why should you?” queried Winifred, kindly. “He’s not really an ogre. Only give him time and a little thoughtful consideration, and he will come round fast enough, you will find!”
“If it were only the matter between Jules and myself no doubt he would. That, unfortunately, is not the worst aspect of the business. You see Mr. Blake is in it too.”
“But how?” questioned Winnie sternly, with a sudden tightening of the heart strings. “I know, of course, you let him do a little speculation for you—but what of that? You fairly risked your money and won. That’s all, and that’s an end of it. He can’t blame you for it.”
“No, but there are other transactions,” proceeded Vera, who thought the time had now come for a few crocodile tears to drop unchecked from her eyes, and accordingly she made no effort to suppress any sign of emotion: “you don’t know about them, of course, but they occurred when Jules was absolutely on the point of bankruptcy, when his production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ had been a most ghastly failure, and he was at his wits’ end to find cash to produce ‘Othello.’ ”
“And you took money from a man of such an awful reputation as Blake’s, took it as a gift,” cried Winnie, startled and disgusted. “Oh, Vera! how could you?”
“Not exactly a gift,” the girl returned guiltily, “but to do things I ought not to have promised I would. One promise was—that I should use my influence with you on his behalf.”
“That is useless, quite. I consider the man a most diabolical mischief maker, thief and rogue.”
“I know,” answered Vera, eagerly. “I told him so—but he would make me give my word to do all that he asked. He has a great idea that, if he could only see you, he could make you think better of him. As a consequence, he induced me to enter into another bond with him—that I should bring you to his house in Park Lane to stay for a few days there at the same time as I did.”
“Never,” cried Winifred, springing to her feet, her eyes flashing with anger. “Never, understand that. I know this Ventris Blake better than you think! I know it is he who has brought all this cruel, dreadful trouble on Arthur and on myself. I know what his reason is, to separate me from the man I love, and to make me his; but he shall never do it—never. Therefore you can return to him and tell him the truth, and warn him that his persecution of me had better cease before it is too late. Of course, he thinks that, with his millions behind him, he can do anything in London. So alas! he can up to a point, but only to a point. Heaven won’t desert Arthur or myself, you see—”
“I do, I do,” put in Vera soothingly, artfully realising that after an outburst like this Winifred would be spent and broken, and emotionally all the easier to manage. “Indeed, I don’t think I should have shown you the ghastly skeleton in my cup-board at all, but would have borne it all had I not thought one good thing might come of the visit both to Arthur and yourself.”
“And what good thing could come from Ventris Blake!” queried Winifred scornfully.
“What you yourself suggested,” said her treacherous cousin. “The absolute stoppage of his persecution of Arthur Hudson and yourself.”
“I will make no terms with him,” retorted Winifred hotly. “That would be treachery to Arthur and to my better self.”
“For my sake!” pleaded Vera sinking to her knees in front of her cousin and looking at her with streaming eyes.
“No, not even for your sake.”
“But you don’t realise how terribly harsh your decision will prove to me,” Vera wailed, now genuinely alarmed lest her strategy should fail, and determined to stop at no falsehood to effect her purpose; “after all, you have not yet heard the whole of my wretched plight. I would have spared you if I could, but I see I must drain my cup of bitterness before you to the very dregs before you will be melted. Oh! you can’t have any soft place in your heart to humiliate me like this! You must almost hate me, not to be content with a hint but to probe and probe until you bring out to the light of day the terror that haunts me every hour I live!”
“Vera,” cried Winifred bewildered and astounded; “never have I known you talk wildly like this! What can have happened to you?” And she flung her arms impulsively around the girl and pressed her tightly to her breast. “Don’t tell me a thing more if you don’t want,” she went on soothingly. “I am sure you can’t mean any of the terrible things you suggest. After all, I know you better than you know yourself, and I am sure you have never done a thing you have really and truly cause to bewail in so grievous a fashion as this.”
“I haven’t,” whispered Vera, “but Jules has.”
“Jules,” repeated Winifred. “Again—I don’t understand.”
“Oh, it’s easy enough,” returned her cousin in hard and bitter tones. “Jules Prendergast never cared for me you see—but only for the money I could find for him. When my little fortune ran out, and he had squandered the sum I had got from Ventris Blake he was still in financial difficulties—and so, like the cad he is, he too went to the Park Lane millionaire, and sold all my love letters to him!”
“Sold your love letters,” repeated Winifred too horrified to move. “But they were yours. He should have returned them. What use can Ventris Blake make of them!”
“Ah, you don’t know London, I see,” recklessly proceeded Vera who had no feeling of modesty or compunction now that she had once started on a career of falsehood, and only thought of frightening her cousin and of achieving a great emotional triumph. “There are scores of ways in which a man of wealth and fashion can make use of a packet of a well known girl’s love letters, particularly if they are so full of silly girlish outpourings of sentiment and jealousy as mine are! He can, for instance, shew them his friends at the club. He can publish them in a novel, with the identity only thinly veiled. He can even hand them to some scurrilous Society paper which he has financed himself, and which would dish them up as the latest scandal and sensation under some catch-penny title like ‘An English Girl’s Love Letters to a Popular Actor-Manager; Puzzle: Why was the match broken off!’ ” And the better to heighten the effect Vera flung her cousin from her and began to move hysterically up and down the room.
For a moment Winifred did not know what to do, but stood with hands clenched and face blanched with horror. “Oh! it’s monstrous!” she murmured half to herself and half to Vera. “Oh, that we had some man now who would go to this creature Blake and horse-whip him—horse-whip him within an inch of his life, and literally force him to disgorge love letters that should have been sacred from all sickening barter such as this!” And then, as she realised her own bereavement, her eyes filled, and she too gave way to tears.
“Don’t cry,” said Vera savagely, stopping suddenly and banging the table. “Don’t! I can’t stand it! Just listen to me. Now you understand why I want you to go with me to Ventris Blake’s—to find out where those letters are and to take them. Now, will you be a true cousin to me, and go with me and help me to get them?”
“I will,” cried Winifred, holding out her hands impetuously.
So it came about the very next day that visit was paid to that luxurious home of Ventris Blake in Park Lane. Indeed it all happened precisely as the millionaire had arranged. In some miraculous fashion, not perhaps wholly unconnected with the mystery of The Three Glass Eyes, the permission of Russell Langford was obtained for the experiment—and, in order to satisfy the proprieties, Blake produced a venerable aunt of his, with the sweet name of Prudence Gordon, who duly wrote the two girls and begged them “to give a lonely old woman the pleasure of their young, bright, cheering society for a week.”
Of course, it would be folly to pretend that Winifred had no misgivings about the effect of her visit. As a matter of fact, the very night she had acquiesced in her cousin’s scheme to obtain possession of the stolen love-letters, she was haunted by doubts as to the wisdom of the course she had agreed on, and beset by suspicions—but Vera herself seemed so hopeful as to the result of the experiment, so buoyant that the danger which threatened would now pass over, that Winifred felt it would be cruel to put any new obstacles in her path.
Thus, indeed, it is that most good women are turned to base account by bad. It is really never hard for any evilly-disposed person to appeal to, and to traffic in, the higher motives that dominate feminine nature—and so long as the good fear to give pain, are slow to think evil, and believe that perfection comes from the sacrifice of self, such wicked triumphs as this of Vera Langford’s will not only be possible but also frequent.
If, however, Winifred had been more suspicious, an incident that occurred just as the Langford’s carriage drew up outside Ventris Blake’s home, would have certainly placed her on her guard. It chanced that, just as the brougham drew to a standstill, the door suddenly opened, and no less a personage than her old much-disliked employer, the Reverend Duncan Kilroy, the vicar of St. Sepulchre’s Church, Piccadilly, came quickly down the steps. Apparently he was labouring under considerable excitement, for his face looked hot and flushed and his movements were spasmodic and anxious. When, however, he caught sight of Winifred he drew himself together, and in place of returning her quiet stare of contempt, his face broke into an insolent grin.
“Ah, Miss Pontifex,” he cried with a wave of his soft-brimmed hat. “So we meet again, do we? Well it is not for the last occasion. Next time though, let us hope we can have a little explanation, and a little chance of clearing up a lot of disagreeable differences. For the present I can only assure you I look forward to a tête-à-tête with you with considerable eagerness!” And, with another wave of the hat, he, still smiling, turned and disappeared down the street.
Was that an apology, or a threat?
For some seconds, indeed, Winifred sat like a statue of stone, beset by a chain of perplexing conjectures, Had she only listened to that inward monitor that had never ceased to strive with her ever since she had resolved on this rash venture, she would have, even at that eleventh hour, broken away from Vera’s sophistries. As it was, however, she argued with herself that she must have grown very selfish since her engagement, that all her impulses were to think of Arthur and herself, and not at all of her cousin who, if she had had more of her time and love, might never have landed herself in this trouble—and thus goading herself on to the wrong path, she permitted Vera to lead her into Ventris Blake’s presence without a word of protest.
Blake himself received them in his drawing room, but to all appearances, his manner was cold, quiet and dignified. He apologised for the absence of Mrs. Gordon, who, he said, was detained in her room by a sick headache, but who would appear shortly and pour tea for them. He went on to explain that he had placed an entire wing at the disposal of them both, and he trusted that if they didn’t find everything quite satisfactory they would speak quite plainly to his aunt, who was most anxious to make their stay in Park Lane happy and memorable.
“Miss Pontifex won’t believe me, I know,” he went on with an added touch of pathos, “but we men who are reputed to be wealthy, have few people about us we dare really rely on. I don’t know how it is, but if you ever want to find anybody who is really lonely, cut off from the best unselfish friendship, and doomed to battle with his worse self daily, because, being rich, he has the means of gratifying his worst instincts, take the present-day millionaire. Really, when you come to see us as we are, you will say with me, we are a depressed, spiritless lot. Most of us have drained life’s pleasures to the dregs, and realised they are but the lees of the best vintages that can never be ours. Many of us who have sprung from the ranks, as it were, would be glad to be poor again with the honest joy of a day’s toil if—if we were sure we should never come to see the inside of a work-house.”
With a pensive smile he rose and opened the door wide for his aunt—Prudence Gordon, a dainty little figure in black silk and lace, who came rustling in, all aglow with excitement at the girls’ arrival. A moment later he had vanished—but all the good impression he had made was obliterated as he walked off, by his treatment of a cat that came purring towards him on the edge of an ottoman.
“What a nuisance these domestic animals are,” he said half to himself and half to his companions, and before even he could realise the significance of his own act, he shot out an arm and knocked it headlong to the floor.
Winifred and Vera exchanged glances—but no words. Vera, however, was now on her best behaviour, and the message she telegraphed was plain enough:—“I know the man is a brute, but remember he has those love letters, and we must put up with him until we have got them, lest worse may happen to us.” With this, Winifred had perforce to be content, but she was unaffectedly glad when night came, and that when she had retired to her room, Vera was able to tell her she had discovered where the precious package was hidden, through some unguarded words of Blake’s, and that all they had to do was to slip down when everybody had retired to rest, and to seize them.
“You are quite sure you have hit on the right spot?” asked Winifred anxiously. “Remember, we don’t want to figure as common thieves in this matter.”
“Of course not,” answered Vera reassuringly. “I am too keen on the recovery of the letters to make any error about their whereabouts. I lured Ventris Blake on to talk about them, and, in the excitement of a discussion as to the ethics of his retaining them, he actually pointed to the place where they were—in a small safe behind a picture of a Florentine monk, and assured me that if I didn’t annoy him, they would never see the light of day again.
“Ugh! of course, I pretended to be satisfied by his promise, but I know exactly what his word is worth, and so later, I came down to him in a panic and pretended I had lost the key of my jewel case, and got him to lend me the master key of all his doors and safes, which he carried on his watch chain. Luckily too, I had a key very like his, and so, when I returned it, I substituted his master key for mine, with the result that unless he has occasion to try it to-night, he will never ‘spot’ the difference. If he does, I shall say I suddenly found mine, and in my excitement, I muddled the two up together!” And she held out the stolen key for Winifred to inspect.
Winifred, however, was too sick at heart to take much heed of her preparations, and only waited feverishly for the time to come when they both might make the attempt to recover the fatal love-letters. One—two—three hours thus crept on with feet of lead. They heard doors slam in the distance. They noted the steps of the servants as, one after another, they straggled past the end of the corridor up to their quarters at the top of the mansion. Finally a profound silence seemed to sink over the household—and taking advantage of this, the girls stealthily opened the bedroom door, and each carrying a candle (the flame of which they covered with a hand), they started to descend the darkened staircase, treading as softly as though they had previously bared their feet.
At first Vera took the lead of the expedition, and piloted the way towards the millionaire’s study with an almost unerring instinct. Even the precise picture of the monk of Florence, which marked the safe from the public gaze, she indicated almost as soon as they crept noiselessly into the apartment, but when this panel had been swung backwards on its secret hinges and the master key had been fitted into the lock, she gave a convulsive little start.
“Oh! Winnie,” she cried, “this excitement is too much for me. I feel I can’t breathe. I’m afraid I’m going to faint!”
“Never mind, dear,” replied the unsuspicious and generous Winifred. “Be brave. We are nearly through our task. Another minute—”
“And I shall drop,” the girl declared. “Oh! do excuse me. I really can’t stand this. You bring the letters to me to my room. I know they will be safe with you!” And without waiting to hear her cousin’s permission, she snatched up her candle and raced back as hard as she could to her own apartment.
“Poor girl!” commented Winifred trustful as ever, in spite of what looked now what it really was, a most obvious trick. “No wonder she is a bit upset. Success or failure in this quest means so much to her. Well, I, at least, won’t fail her. I will strike for her letters for her,” and twisting round the key, she drew back the door of the safe, which was in diameter about two feet square, but was also in interior quite four or five feet deep.
Right at the end she espied a small bundle tied with red tape, that looked like a bundle of a girl’s correspondence—and, baring her arm to the elbow, she thrust her hand forward to seize this when she found herself caught in a trap—by iron bracelets inside the safe that pinned her where she stood and instantly set ringing a score of electric burglar alarms all over the house.
CHAPTER XIV.
TURNS ON THE LETTER “K”
We must now, however, return to Paul and his search in the mysterious garden.
At first there seemed nothing out of the common to attract his attention. From right to left his quick glance wandered, noting a thousand things that would escape the ordinary policeman, and yet might yield an expert some clue to the identity of the wild frantic creature who tore amongst those trees at midnight with hands crimson with the blood of a fellow creature but newly slain.
Eventually he reached the green-house where, it was supposed, the criminal had washed himself clear of the stains of his guilt, and, thrusting open the door, he marched inside and narrowly examined the interior. Of course, the detectives had been there before him, but Paul knew enough of their methods to believe that it was just possible some fine object had escaped them that might turn completely the burden of proof from the shoulders of his wretched and unfortunate friend.
For a few minutes, however, he could discover nothing, but just as he was about to step into the open air again, his eyes caught the glint of gold on the floor.
“Ah!” said he with a chuckle, “this is a find I am certain—” but just as he was about to bend down and seize it, a long hairy hand was thrust out from behind the hot-water pipes; the object was seized; and a familiar voice cried out tauntingly: “Mine, Mr. Renishaw, I think!”
Luckily, Paul did not lose his presence of mind.
Quick as lightning he realised that a false move at this point might do the poor prisoner at Scarborough Police Station almost irreparable damage—so, drawing back a step, he glanced hurriedly round to see whether he could not at a touch checkmate his unseen foe.
As he did so, one fact made itself clear to him—that the man was not concealed in the greenhouse at all, or of course, he would have discovered him as soon as he had started to make his examination. As a matter of fact, the fellow had only just put in an appearance at all, and, oddly enough, he had arrived through an opening few would have utilised or expected—the long but square flue that communicated with a furnace-like grate built out some few feet from the outside wall of the greenhouse.
To slip round and close the door that led to this was the work of an instant. Then Paul bolted back to the interior again, and was just about to drop the iron slide that shut off the flue from the inside of the greenhouse and to catch the knave in his own trap as it were, when again that mysterious hand was thrust forward, only this time it exhibited the object which had been the cause of all the mischief.
“Here take it,” said the same familiar voice he had heard first. “I admit that I have been fairly ‘euchred’! Only let me get out of this poisonous hole. Phew! I feel as though I should never be able to breathe anything but carbonic acid again.” And, as Paul fell backward, to take the precaution to snap the key in the door lock, no less a personage than Josiah Sawdry—variously, the “far-famed Silas Q. Pinkerton, the great New York detective,” or “old Sawdust,” just as one happened to frequent the public-houses of Scarborough or Fleet Street—emerged, covered from head to foot in soot.
So distressful indeed were his fits of coughing and his general aspect of grime and dirt, that even Paul could not avoid breaking into a hearty laugh. “Good heavens, man,” he said, “you’re no good as a detective. Only an idiot would get himself in a mess so frightful that the first person he spoke to would run away from him for fear of catching the Black Plague!”
“I know,” said Sawdry, with a pathetic effort to shake off some of the soot and ashes. “I feel myself that I have been a bit of an ass—only I was anxious that you should not get any particular ‘bulge’ on me before you and I came to terms. None the less, I ain’t the man to run off my word. Here take the thing that caused me to shew up before I wanted.” And he passed over to Paul the object that had been discovered on the floor of the greenhouse, and overlooked by the market gardener to whom the place belonged and the police—the broken half of a gold link.
With fingers he could scarcely control, Paul took the glittering fragment of jewellery and inspected it with great care. It had evidently been newly broken off its stem. No doubt when the criminal had frantically torn off his incriminating garments, he had caught his sleeve in one of the iron supports of the greenhouse shelves and fractured the connecting gold band in pieces, with the result that this portion had dropped away unseen. Probably it would never have been discovered at all had not Paul kicked away a piece of matting by accident, for it had been entangled in the folds of this, and had only just dropped out with its freshness quite untarnished.
What, however, excited the journalist more than anything was the design on the face of the link itself. It was a very simple one, it was true—it was just one ordinary letter of the alphabet, neatly engraved, but free from an extravagant flourish, but it was the letter itself that spoke volumes.
That was the letter “K.”
Of course, with the childish, almost pathetic confidence of youth, Paul had expected it would bear a pattern totally different. Had he indeed been asked to guess first what monogram ought by common right and justice to have been written in indelible characters on this damning piece of gold, he would have unhesitatingly answered, “V.B.”
Of course, too, if the object had been handed first to the police, they would have guessed something totally different to either of these two things. They, with the childish, almost pathetic confidence of men who had made up their minds to believe one person guilty, and one person alone, (though the heavens might open and reveal something exactly different), would have sworn that the monogram must have been “A.H.” when the link was first lost.
As it was, however, it was simply the letter “K.”
Poor Paul’s face dropped as he turned the thing over between his fingers. He was so sure that the millionaire had done away with Aimée Blake, to leave himself free to win Winifred Pontifex, that the discovery of this link afflicted him with a sense of keen personal disappointment. In a flash, as it were, it had upset all his plans—all his theories, for how could he connect an object like this with Ventris Blake?
“You are disappointed, I see,” put in Sawdry who had been narrowly watching the expression on Paul’s face. “You had got your brain fixed on the idea that you would discover somebody else to be the real criminal.”
“I admit it,” said the journalist brokenly, and he began to move about with quick nervous gestures, peering here and there in the hope that he might still discover something else that the authorities had overlooked.
Sawdry paused and watched him for a few moments, for he saw Paul was too mortified then to engage either in pleasantries, recriminations, or business. Finally, however, he said: “When you’ve quite finished, Renishaw, come and have a chat with me. I know a tap where I can rid myself of some of this grime. First then I’ll do it—but afterwards, I will go and smoke a pipe in that little arbour between the laurel trees near the gate. Find me there, entirely at your own convenience.”
Paul did not vouchsafe any answer, but as soon as the man had taken himself off he redoubled his exertions, shifting and scrutinising narrowly pots, boxes of earth, tins of seeds, twine and dressings, until he could safely say there was not an inch of the entire greenhouse that had escaped his examination. Only one other find rewarded his patience and his persistence. That was a piece of linen which had been thrust between the sash and the frame of one of the lights in the top of the structure. Seen first, it merely appeared a piece of dirty rag half covered with earth and cob-webs, but taken down and examined it turned out, first that it had not been in use in that direction many days, and second, that it was no ordinary piece of rag, but was actually a dainty cambric handkerchief, small enough for use by a woman of ease and refinement.
And in the corner was the same significant letter that was emblazoned on that link of gold—no other than the letter “K.”
This time, Paul put his pride and his prejudice on one side, and went promptly and consulted Sawdry who was stretched on a rustic seat, a carefully studied image of insouciance and patience.
“Look here,” said the journalist bluntly, “I have found another confounded clue, only it is no more valuable than that piece of gold we picked up. It also bears the letter ‘K.’ ”
“Quite so,” replied the pseudo-detective. “What else can you expect?” And he pursed up his mouth, looked very mysterious, and nodded his head thrice.
“Well?” said Paul, now coming to the point the man had aimed at. “Can you throw any light on the mystery at all?”
“Yes,” he responded with a sigh by which he would suggest, like Romeo’s apothecary, his poverty and not his will consented. “I can, but on terms.”
“Oh, of course, on terms?” echoed Paul irritably. “But what terms?”
“Well, it’s like this,” said Sawdry, suddenly sitting up and facing his cross-examiner. “I am thoroughly tired of being a rogue. It doesn’t pay either in purse, in physical comfort, or in peace of mind. Honesty, in my opinion, is the best policy, because honesty is the more profitable—and so I have to-day one object in life and really one object alone, to become honest.”
“Well that’s easy enough,” returned Paul with a laugh.
“Is it?” said the man bitterly. “You try it. You try it when all your life, more or less, has been crooked. Why, it’s worse than trying to keep water in a sieve! The Old Book says the road to the other place—hell, isn’t it?—is broad and smooth. So it may be at the start, but it winds and winds till it becomes a veritable morass full of treacherous bogs, dotted by sunken reefs and trees that trip you up when you seek to turn and that stretch out long detaining vice-like branches which suck you down into their foul miasmatic depths till your frame reeks of poison and you haven’t the strength to get on your feet again, much less retrace your steps. Oh! I know it, man. I have tried it till I am sick—I have got too far to free myself of my own strength.
“Of course,” he went on in a different key. “I stole your watch. It is not the only thing I have stolen in my life by many a score. But I am sick of it, dead. The devil is the worst paymaster the scheme of creation ever invented. Help me to get out of his clutches—to free myself from the bond of servitude into which I have fallen with Ventris Blake; and I’ll serve you true and faithfully and honourably as long as God gives me breath.”
“But what can I do?” queried Paul helplessly, borne down by the man’s fierceness. “I am not an employer myself. I am only a sub-editor, a servant on a great newspaper. I have no situations in my gift.”
“Mr. Hudson has,” said Sawdry quickly. “Promise me, in his name, a berth worth £250 a year just as long as I run straight, and I’ll tell you all I know about this awful business of the murder of Aimée Blake.”
“Very well,” replied Paul, after a second’s thought.
For a moment there was an interval of strained silence between the two men.
Paul seated himself at the end of the bench in the rustic arbour, his attitude one of patient if not indulgent expectation. The Jew, on the other hand, took three or four deep-lunged pulls at his pipe before he moved at all. Then he laid his pipe gently on the ledge near his elbow, and gathering himself up into a kind of heap—in which the most distinct things were two piercing black eyes and two white hands unstained by toil, but now clasped nervously over his knees—he began his strange and dramatic story.
“First of all,” said he, “you must get quite clearly fixed in your mind who I am and with whom I am connected. Thus always remember I am Josiah Sawdry, a Hebrew who once stood high in his own faith, and who has had access to all the magic Freemasonry that binds Jews in prominent positions in all great cities together, first for mutual helpfulness in times of difficulty and danger, and second for purposes of aggression against the Gentiles. This fact alone has put me in a more favourable position for many things than most Scotland Yard detectives, and had I only gone straight in the early days and won the good opinion of our rabbis, there is no doubt I should have been one of the rich and honoured citizens of London.
“As it was, however, I preferred devious courses—but ‘blood is thicker than water,’ and so when my brother Israel got the position of private secretary to Ventris Blake, the millionaire, I determined to worm myself into their plans and their confidences, and, if necessary, become rich at one stroke by means of blackmail. Mind, I am not now defending this course, I couldn’t even if I tried. Crime is crime, and yet, believe me, if you knew your city as well as I do you’d be astonished at the amount of blackmail that is paid there every year.
“Of course, I don’t mean by this a man goes to a rich operator and says, ‘pay me so-and-so, or I will go and tell all your friends that you put your old landlady’s savings in a rotten Company of yours and lost all her money for her, and then let her die in the gutter starving and penniless.’ That would be obtaining money by threats; there are laws that deal with slander; and such a thing as a fuss is not wanted by any one. No, in London it is quite enough to let a man know that you know something discreditable about him. It may not be true even. It may be the most wicked invention Satan ever put it into the heart of man to conceive—but as long as it has a certain dirty colour about it that will make it stick on the poor wretch against whom it is projected, well, you are all right. All you can consider is:—
“Is it worth it to have a scandal? Ten to one, if I crush it utterly, there are some kind Christians who will believe that I am not as innocent as the Judge made me out to be. And then what will become of the baronetcy I am fighting for—the membership of the yacht club—that appointment as Chairman of the Hospital—or even my seat as a Member of Parliament? Well, it’s gone and all the thousands I have spent on it to gain it?
“What indeed does it benefit anyone to fight with a sweep? One simply gets covered with soot, while though you may roll him in the mud, still he may rise just as clean as when he started. These, in brief, are the conclusions forced on every wealthy man whether he be wise or foolish; and so the aim of thousands of people in London with more brains than cash is to trade on these facts, and to terrorise those who are better off than themselves.
“But to return to myself, I had early discovered this as the secret of many shady unscrupulous people’s fortunes, and no sooner did Israel make headway with Blake, than I made it my business to make headway with Israel and to spy about on Blake’s private life. Then I soon learned that Blake had a skeleton in his cupboard, like most other folks. At that time he was married to a girl named Kaufmann.”
“What,” cried Paul, forgetting himself for a moment. “The sister of Flora Kaufmann the actress, and of Eleanor Kaufmann who died the other day in Gray’s Inn Road!”
“Yes,” returned Sawdry, “and also the sister of Rebecca Kaufmann, the eldest girl, who married that drunken little sweep, Charlton, who finished up as a caretaker in some offices in Queen Victoria Street.”
“No!” interjected Paul, still more amazed. “The woman who professed that she witnessed the marriage between Arthur Hudson and the woman who called herself Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne?”
“Certainly,” responded the Jew, slowly rubbing his hands, “Rebecca witnessed that marriage on the strength of a series of falsehoods from Blake. She thought the thing had been arranged to gratify some private spleen of the millionaire’s against the woman, but when she discovered later that it was just part of some diabolical plot the end of which was the infatuation of Blake for the Burgoyne creature, she nearly went mad with rage.”