Detection by Gaslight (16 page)

I reached out carefully and had the shovel in my hand without making a sound.

“I have it,” I said.

“That's right. The poker would have been on the same side as the shovel, and much easier to pick up quietly. Now, while my back is turned, grasp the shovel by the handle, leap out at me, and raise the shovel as if to hit me—but don't get excited and do it, because I don't want to realize the scene too completely.”

I obeyed. My footsteps were scarcely heard on the heavy-pile drawing-room carpet. When Dorcas turned round the shovel was above her head ready to strike.

“Thank you for letting me off,” she said, with a smile. Then her face becoming serious again, she exclaimed: “The murderer of Mrs. Hannaford concealed himself behind that brown bear lamp, and attacked her in exactly the way I have indicated. But why had he moved the bear two or three inches forward?”

“To conceal himself behind it.”

“Nonsense! His concealment was a sudden act. That bear is heavy—the glass chimney of the lamp would have rattled if it had been done violently and hurriedly while Mrs. Hannaford was coming downstairs—that would have attracted her attention and she would have called out, ‘Who's there?' at the doorway, and not have come in looking about for her husband.”

Dorcas looked the animal over carefully, prodded it with her fingers, and then went behind it.

After a minute or two's close examination, she uttered a little cry and called me to her side.

She had found in the back of the bear a small straight slit. This was quite invisible. She had only discovered it by an accidentally violent thrust of her fingers into the animal's fur. Into this slit she thrust her hand, and the aperture yielded sufficiently for her to thrust her arm in. The interior of the bear was hollow, but Dorcas's hand as it went down struck against a wooden bottom. Then she withdrew her arm and the aperture closed up. It had evidently been specially prepared as a place of concealment, and only the most careful examination would have revealed it.

“Now,” exclaimed Dorcas, triumphantly, “I think we are on a straight road! This, I believe, is where those missing bank-notes lay concealed for years. They were probably placed there by Mr. Drayson with the idea that some day his frauds might be discovered or he might be made a bankrupt. This was his little nest-egg, and his death in Paris before his fraud was discovered prevented him making use of them. Mrs. Hannaford evidently knew nothing of the hidden treasure, or she would speedily have removed it. But
some one
knew, and that some one put his knowledge to practical use the night that Mrs. Hannaford was murdered. The man who got in. at the front door that night, got in to relieve the bear of its valuable stuffing; he moved the bear to get at the aperture, and was behind it when Mrs. Hannaford came in. The rest is easy to understand.”

“But how did he get in at the front door?”

“That's what I have to find out. I am sure now that Flash George was in it. He was seen outside, and some of the notes that were concealed in the brown bear lamp have been traced to him. Who was Flash George's accomplice we may discover to-night. I think I have an idea, and if that is correct we shall have the solution of the whole mystery before dawn to-morrow morning.”

“Why do you think you will learn so much to-night?”

“Because Flash George met a man two nights ago outside the Criterion. I was selling wax matches, and followed them up, pestering them. I heard George say to his companion, whom I had never seen with him before, ‘Tell him Hungerford Bridge, midnight, Wednesday. Tell him to bring the lot and I'll cash up for them!'”

“And you think the ‘him'——?”

“Is the man who rifled the brown bear and killed Mrs. Hannaford.”

At eleven o'clock that evening I met Dorcas Dene in Villiers Street. I knew what she would be like, otherwise her disguise would have completely baffled me. She was dressed as an Italian street musician, and was with a man who looked like an Italian organ-grinder.

Dorcas took my breath away by her first words.

“Allow me to introduce you,” she said, “to Mr. Thomas Holmes. This is the gentleman who was Charles Drayson's partner, and was sentenced to five years' penal servitude over the partnership frauds.”

“Yes,” replied the organ-grinder in excellent English. “I suppose I deserved it for being a fool, but the villain was Drayson—he had all my money, and involved me in a fraud at the finish.”

“I have told Mr. Holmes the story of our discovery,” said Dorcas. “I have been in communication with him ever since I discovered the notes were in circulation. He knew Drayson's affairs, and he has given me some valuable information. He is with us to-night because he knew Mr. Drayson's former associates, and he may be able to identify the man who knew the secret of the house at Haverstock Hill.”

“You think that is the man Flash George is to meet?”

“I do. What else can ‘Tell him to bring the lot and I'll cash up' mean but the rest of the bank-notes?”

Shortly before twelve we got on to Hungerford Bridge—the narrow footway that runs across the Thames by the side of the railway.

I was to walk ahead and keep clear of the Italians until I heard a signal.

We crossed the bridge after that once or twice, I coming from one end and the Italians from the other, and passing each other about the centre.

At five minutes to midnight I saw Flash George come slowly along from the Middlesex side. The Italians were not far behind. A minute later an old man with a grey beard, and wearing an old Inverness cape, passed me, coming from the Surrey side. When he met Flash George the two stopped and leant over the parapet, apparently interested in the river. Suddenly I heard Dorcas's signal. She began to sing the Italian song, “Santa Lucia.”

I had my instructions. I jostled up against the two men and begged their pardon.

Flash George turned fiercely round. At the same moment I seized the old man and shouted for help. The Italians came hastily up. Several foot passengers rushed to the scene and inquired what was the matter.

“He was going to commit suicide,” I cried. “He was just going to jump into the water.”

The old man was struggling in my grasp. The crowd were keeping back Flash George. They believed the old man was struggling to get free to throw himself into the water.

The Italian rushed up to me.

“Ah, poor old man!” he said. “Don't let him get away!”

He gave a violent tug to the grey beard. It came off in his hands. Then with an oath he seized the supposed would-be suicide by the throat.

“You infernal villain!” he said.

“Who is he?” asked Dorcas.

“Who is he!” exclaimed Thomas Holmes, “why, the villain who brought me to ruin—
my precious
partner
—Charles
Drayson!”

As the words escaped from the supposed Italian's lips, Charles Drayson gave a cry of terror, and leaping on to the parapet, plunged into the river.

Flash George turned to run, but was stopped by a policeman who had just come up.

Dorcas whispered something in the man's ear, and the officer, thrusting his hand in the rascal's pocket, drew out a bundle of bank-notes.

A few minutes later the would-be suicide was brought ashore. He was still alive, but had injured himself terribly in his fall, and was taken to the hospital.

Before he died he was induced to confess that he had taken advantage of the Paris fire to disappear. He had flung his watch down in order that it might be found as evidence of his death. He had, previously to visiting the rue Jean Goujon, received a letter at his hotel which told him pretty plainly the game was up, and he knew that at any moment a warrant might be issued against him. After reading his name amongst the victims, he lived as best he could abroad, but after some years, being in desperate straits, he determined to do a bold thing, return to London and endeavour to get into his house and obtain possession of the money which was lying unsuspected in the interior of the brown bear lamp. He had concealed it, well knowing that at any time the crash might come, and everything belonging to him be seized. The hiding-place he had selected was one which neither his creditors nor his relatives would suspect.

On the night he entered the house, Flash George, whose acquaintance he had made in London, kept watch for him
while he let himself in with his latch-key,
which he had carefully preserved. Mr. Hannaford's leaving the house was one of those pieces of good fortune which occasionally favour the wicked.

With his dying breath Charles Drayson declared that he had no intention of killing his wife. He feared that, having heard a noise, she had come to see what it was, and might alarm the house in her terror, and as she turned to go out of the drawing-room he struck her, intending only to render her senseless until he had secured the booty.

Mr. Hannaford, completely recovered and in his right mind, was in due time released from Broadmoor. The letter from his mother to Dorcas Dene, thanking her for clearing her son's character and proving his innocence of the terrible crime for which he had been practically condemned, brought tears to my eyes as Dorcas read it aloud to Paul and myself. It was touching and beautiful to a degree.

As she folded it up and put it away, I saw that Dorcas herself was deeply moved.

“These are the
rewards
of my profession,” she said. “They compensate for everything.”

ABOUT HALF-PAST EIGHT on a fine, sunny June morning, a small yacht crept out of Sennen Cove, near the Land's End, and headed for the open sea. On the shelving beach of the cove two women and a man, evidently visitors (or “foreigners,” to use the local term), stood watching her departure with valedictory waving of cap or handkerchief, and the boatman who had put the crew on board, aided by two of his comrades, was hauling his boat up above the tide-mark.

A light, northerly breeze filled the yacht's sails and drew her gradually seaward. The figures of her crew dwindled to the size of dolls, shrank with the increasing distance to the magnitude of insects, and at last, losing all individuality, became mere specks merged in the form of the fabric that bore them.

On board the receding craft two men sat in the little cockpit. They formed the entire crew, for the
Sandhopper
was only a ship's lifeboat, timbered and decked, of light draught and, in the matter of spars and canvas, what the art critics would call “reticent.”

Both men, despite the fineness of the weather, wore yellow oilskins and sou'westers, and that was about all they had in common. In other respects they made a curious contrast—the one small, slender, sharp-featured, dark almost to swarthiness, and restless and quick in his movements; the other large, massive, red-faced, blue-eyed, with the rounded outlines suggestive of ponderous strength; a great ox of a man, heavy, stolid, but much less unwieldy than he looked.

The conversation incidental to getting the yacht under way had ceased, and silence had fallen on the occupants of the cockpit. The big man grasped the tiller and looked sulky, which was probably his usual aspect, and the small man watched him furtively.

The land was nearly two miles distant when the latter broke the silence.

“Joan Haygarth has come on wonderfully the last few months; getting quite a fine-looking girl. Don't you think so, Purcell?”

“Yes,” answered Purcell, “and so does Phil Rodney.”

“You're right,” agreed the other. “She isn't a patch on her sister, though, and never will be. I was looking at Maggie as we came down the beach this morning and thinking what a handsome girl she is. Don't you agree with me?”

Purcell stooped to look under the boom, and answered without turning his head:

“Yes, she's all right.”

“All right!” exclaimed the other. “Is that the way—”

“Look here, Varney,” interrupted Purcell. “I don't want to discuss my wife's looks with you or any other man. She'll do for me or I shouldn't have married her.”

A deep, coppery flush stole into Varney's cheeks. But he had brought the rather brutal snub on himself and apparently had the fairness to recognise the fact, for he mumbled an apology and relapsed into silence.

When next he spoke he did so with a manner diffident and uneasy, as though approaching a disagreeable or difficult subject.

“There's a little matter, Dan, that I've been wanting to speak to you about when we got a chance of a private talk.”

He glanced rather anxiously at his stolid companion, who grunted, and then, without removing his gaze from the horizon ahead, replied: “You've a pretty fair chance now, seeing that we shall be bottled up together for another five or six hours. And it's fairly private unless you bawl loud enough to be heard at the Longships.”

It was not a gracious invitation. But if Varney resented the rebuff he showed no sign of annoyance, for reasons which appeared when he opened his subject.

“What I wanted to say,” he resumed, “was this. We're both doing pretty well now on the square. You must be positively piling up the shekels, and I can earn a decent living, which is all I want. Why shouldn't we drop this flash note business?”

Purcell kept his blue eye fixed on the horizon and appeared to ignore the question; but after an interval and without moving a muscle he said gruffly: “Go on,” and Varney continued:

“The lay isn't what it was, you know. At first it was all plain sailing. The notes were 1st-class copies and not a soul suspected anything until they were presented at the bank. Then the murder was out, and the next little trip that I made was a very different affair. Two or three of the notes were queried quite soon after I had changed them, and I had to be precious fly, I can tell you, to avoid complications. And now that the second batch has come in to the Bank, the planting of fresh specimens is going to be harder still. There isn't a money-changer on the Continent of Europe that isn't keeping his weather eyeball peeled, to say nothing of the detectives that the Bank people have sent abroad.”

He paused and looked appealingly at his companion. But Purcell, still minding his helm, only growled “Well?”

“Well, I want to chuck it, Dan. When you've had a run of luck and pocketed your winnings it is time to stop play.”

“You've come into some money, then, I take it?” said Purcell.

“No, I haven't. But I can make a living now by safe and respectable means, and I'm sick of all this scheming and dodging with the gaol everlastingly under my lee.”

“The reason I asked,” said Purcell, “is that there is a trifle outstanding. You hadn't forgotten that, I suppose?”

“No, I hadn't forgotten it, but I thought that perhaps you might be willing to let me down a bit easily.”

The other man pursed up his thick lips and continued to gaze stonily over the bow.

“Oh, that's what you thought?” he said; and then, after a pause: “I fancy you must have lost sight of some of the facts when you thought that. Let me just remind you how the case stands. To begin with, you start your career with a little playful embezzlement, you blue the proceeds and you are mug enough to be found out. Then I come in. I compound the affair with old Marston for a couple of thousand, and practically clean myself out of every penny I possess, and he consents to regard your temporary absence in the light of a holiday.

“Now, why do I do this? Am I a philanthropist? Devil a bit. I'm a man of business. Before I ladle out that two thousand, I make a business contract with you. I have discovered how to make a passable imitation of the Bank of England paper; you are a skilled engraver and a plausible scamp. I am to supply you with paper blanks, you are to engrave plates, print the notes, and get them changed. I am to take two-thirds of the proceeds; and, although I have done the most difficult part of the work, I agree to regard my share of the profits as constituting repayment of the loan.

“Our contract amounts to this: I lend you two thousand without security—with an infernal amount of insecurity, in fact—you ‘promise, covenant, and agree,' as the lawyers say, to hand me back ten thousand in instalments, being the products of our joint industry. It is a verbal contract which I have no means of enforcing, but I trust you to keep your word, and up to the present you have kept it. You have paid me a little over four thousand. Now you want to cry off and leave the balance unpaid. Isn't that the position?”

“Not exactly,” said Varney. “I'm not crying off the debt; I only want time. Look here, Dan; I'm making about three fifty a year now. That isn't much, but I'll manage to let you have a hundred a year out of it. What do you say to that?”

Purcell laughed scornfully. “A hundred a year to pay off six thousand! That'll take just sixty years: and as I'm now forty-three, I shall be exactly a hundred and three years of age when the last instalment is paid. I think, Varney, you'll admit that a man of a hundred and three is getting past his prime.”

“Well, I'll pay you something down to start. I've saved about eighteen hundred pounds out of the note business. You can have that now, and I'll pay off as much I can at a time until I'm clear. Remember, that if I should happen to get clapped in chokee for twenty years or so, you won't get anything. And, I tell you, it's getting a risky business.”

“I'm willing to take the risk,” said Purcell.

“I daresay you are,” Varney retorted passionately, “because it's my risk. If I am grabbed, it's my racket. You sit out. It's I who passed the notes, and I'm known to be a skilled engraver. That'll be good enough for them. They won't trouble about who made the paper.”

“I hope not,” said Purcell.

“Of course they wouldn't; and you know I shouldn't give you away.”

“Naturally. Why should you? Wouldn't do you any good.”

“Well, give me a chance, Dan,” Varney pleaded. “This business is getting on my nerves. I want to be quit of it. You've had four thousand; that's a hundred per cent. You haven't done so badly.”

“I didn't expect to do badly. I took a big risk. I gambled two thousand for ten.”

“Yes; and you got me out of the way while you put the screw on poor old Haygarth to make his daughter marry you.”

It was an indiscreet thing to say, but Purcell's stolid indifference to his danger and distress had ruffled Varney's temper.

Purcell, however, was unmoved. “I don't know,” he said, “what you mean by getting you out of the way. You were never in the way. You were always hankering after Maggie, but I could never see that she wanted you.”

“Well, she certainly didn't want you,” Varney retorted. “And, for that matter, I don't much think she wants you now.”

For the first time Purcell withdrew his eye from the horizon to turn it on his companion. And an evil eye it was, set in the great, sensual face, now purple with anger.

“What the devil do you mean?” he exclaimed furiously; “you infernal, sallow-faced, little whipper-snapper! If you mention my wife's name again I'll knock you on the head and pitch you overboard.”

Varney's face flushed darkly, and for a moment he was inclined to try the wager a battle. But the odds were impossible, and if Varney was not a coward, neither was he a fool. But the discussion was at an end. Nothing was to be hoped for now. These indiscreet words had rendered further pleading impossible.

The silence that settled down in the yacht and the aloofness that encompassed the two men were conducive to reflection. Each ignored the presence of the other. When the course was altered southerly, Purcell slacked out the sheets with his own hand as he put up the helm. He might have been sailing singlehanded. And Varney watched him askance, but made no move; sitting hunched up on the locker, nursing a slowly-matured hatred and thinking his thoughts.

Very queer thoughts they were. He was following out the train of events that might have happened, pursuing them to their possible consequences. Supposing Purcell had carried out his threat? Well, there would have been a pretty tough struggle, for Varney was no weakling. But a struggle with that solid fifteen stone of flesh could end only one way. No, there was no doubt; he would have gone overboard.

And what then? Would Purcell have gone back to Sennen Cove, or sailed alone into Penzance? In either case, he would have had to make up some sort of story; and no one could have contradicted him whether the story was believed or not. But it would have been awkward for Purcell.

Then there was the body. That would have been washed up sooner or later, as much of it as the lobsters had left. Well, lobsters don't eat clothes or bones, and a dent in the skull might take some accounting for. Very awkward this—for Purcell. He would probably have had to clear out; to make a bolt for it, in short.

The mental picture of this great bully fleeing in terror from the vengeance of the law gave Varney appreciable pleasure. Most of his life he had been borne down by the moral and physical weight of this domineering brute. At school, Purcell had fagged him; he had even bullied him up at Cambridge; and now he had fastened on for ever, like the Old Man of the Sea. And Purcell always got the best of it. When he, Varney, had come back from Italy after that unfortunate little affair, behold! the girl whom they had both wanted (and who had wanted neither of them) had changed from Maggie Haygarth into Maggie Purcell. And so it was even unto this day. Purcell, a prosperous stockjobber now, spent a part of his secret leisure making, in absolute safety, these accursed paper blanks; which he, Varney, must risk his liberty to change into money. Yes, it was quite pleasant to think of Purcell sneaking from town to town, from country to country, with the police at his heels.

But in these days of telegraphs and extradition there isn't much chance for a fugitive. Purcell would have been caught to a certainty; and he would have been hanged; no doubt of it. The imagined picture of the execution gave him quite a lengthy entertainment. Then his errant thoughts began to spread out in search of other possibilities. For, after all, it was not an absolute certainty that Purcell could have got him overboard. There was just the chance that Purcell might have gone overboard himself. That would have been a very different affair.

Varney settled himself composedly to consider the new and interesting train of consequences that would thus have been set going. They were more agreeable to contemplate than the others, because they did not include his own demise. The execution scene made no appearance in this version. The salient fact was that his oppressor would have vanished; that the intolerable burden of his servitude would have been lifted for ever; that he would have been free.

It was mere idle speculation to while away a dull hour with an uncongenial companion, and he let his thoughts ramble at large. One moment he was dreamily wondering whether Maggie would ever have listened to him, ever have come to care for him; the next, he was back in the yacht's cabin, where hung from a hook on the bulkhead the revolver that the Rodneys used to practise at floating bottles. It was usually loaded, he knew, but, if not, there was a canvas bag full of cartridges in the starboard locker. Again, he found himself dreaming of the home that he would have had, a home very different from the cheerless lodgings in which he moped at present; and then his thoughts had flitted back to the yacht's hold, and were busying themselves with the row of half-hundredweights that rested on the timbers on either side of the kelson.