The Best Crime Stories Ever Told (15 page)

“I shall be brief for I feel my time is short. You remember some few years ago a Mr. Horatio Llewelyn and his wife were murdered in a train on the North-Western some fifty miles south of Carlisle?”

I dimly remembered the case.

“‘The sleeping-car express mystery,’ the papers called it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” he replied. “They never solved the mystery and they never got the murderer. But he’s going to pay now. I am he.”

I was horrified at the cool, deliberate way he spoke. Then I remembered that he was fighting death to make his confession and that, whatever my feelings, it was my business to hear and record it while yet there was time. I therefore sat down and said as gently as I could:

“Whatever you tell me I shall note carefully, and at the proper time shall inform the police.”

His eyes, which had watched me anxiously, showed relief.

“Thank you. I shall hurry. My name is Hubert Black, and I live at 24, Westbury Gardens, Hove. Until ten years and two months ago I lived at Bradford, and there I made the acquaintance of what I thought was the best and most wonderful girl on God’s earth—Miss Gladys Wentworth. I was poor, but she was well off. I was diffident about approaching her, but she encouraged me till at last I took my courage in both hands and proposed. She agreed to marry me, but made it a condition our engagement was to be kept secret for a few days. I was so mad about her I would have agreed to anything she wanted, so I said nothing, though I could hardly behave like a sane man from joy.

“Some time before this I had come across Llewelyn, and he had been very friendly, and had seemed to like my company. One day we met Gladys, and I introduced him. I did not know till later that he had followed up the acquaintanceship.

“A week after my acceptance there was a big dance at Halifax. I was to have met Gladys there, but at the last moment I had a wire that my mother was seriously ill, and I had to go. On my return I got a cool little note from Gladys saying she was sorry, but our engagement had been a mistake, and I must consider it at an end. I made a few inquiries, and then I learnt what had been done. Give me some stuff, doctor; I’m going down.”

I poured out some brandy and held it to his lips.

“That’s better,” he said, continuing with gasps and many pauses: “Llewelyn, I found out, had been struck by Gladys for some time. He knew I was friends with her, and so he made up to me. He wanted the introduction I was fool enough to give him, as well as the chances of meeting her he would get with me. Then he met her when he knew I was at my work, and made hay while the sun shone. Gladys spottedwhat he was after, but she didn’t know if he was serious. Then I proposed, and she thought she would hold me for fear the bigger fish would get off. Llewelyn was wealthy, you understand. She waited till the ball, then she hooked him, and I went overboard. Nice, wasn’t it?”

I did not reply, and the man went on:

“Well, after that I just went mad. I lost my head and went to Llewelyn, but he laughed in my face. I felt I wanted to knock his head off, but the butler happened by, so I couldn’t go on and finish him then. I needn’t try to describe the hell I went through—I couldn’t, anyway. But I was blind mad, and lived only for revenge. And then I got it. I followed them till I got a chance, and then I killed them. I shot them in that train. I shot her first and then, as he woke and sprang up, I got him too.”

The man paused.

“Tell me the details,” I asked; and after a time he went on in a weaker voice:

“I had worked out a plan to get them in a train, and had followed them all through their honeymoon, but I never got a chance till then. This time the circumstances fell out to suit. I was behind him at Euston and heard him book to Carlisle, so I booked to Glasgow. I got into the next compartment. There was a talkative man there, and I tried to make a sort of alibi for myself by letting him think I would get out at Crewe. I did get out, but I got in again, and travelled on in the same compartment with the blinds down. No one knew I was there. I waited till we got to the top of Shap, for I thought I could get away easier in a thinly populated country. Then, when the time came, I fixed the compartment doors with wedges, and shot them both. I left the train and got clear of the railway, crossing the country till I came on a road. I hid during the day and walked at night till after dark on the second evening I came to Carlisle. From there I went by rail quite openly. I was never suspected.”

He paused, exhausted, while the Dread Visitor hovered closer.

“Tell me,” I said, “just a word. How did you get out of the train?”

He smiled faintly.

“Some more of your stuff,” he whispered; and when I had given him a second dose of brandy he went on feebly and with long pauses which I am not attempting to reproduce:

“I had worked the thing out beforehand. I thought if I could get out on the buffers while the train was running and before the alarm was raised, I should be safe. No one looking out of the windows could see me, and when the train stopped, as I knew it soon would, I could drop down and make off. The difficulty was to get from the corridor to the buffers. I did it like this:

“I had brought about sixteen feet of fine, brown silk cord, and the same length of thin silk rope. When I got out at Crewe I moved to the corner of the coach and stood close to it by way of getting shelter to light a cigarette. Without anyone seeing what I was up to I slipped the end of the cord through the bracket handle above the buffers. Then I strolled to the nearest door, paying out the cord, but holding on to its two ends. I pretended to fumble at the door as if it was stiff to open, but all the time I was passing the cord through the handle-guard, and knotting the ends together.

“If you’ve followed me you’ll understand this gave me a loop of fine silk connecting the handles at the corner and the door. It was the colour of the carriage, and was nearly invisible. Then I took my seat again.

“When the time came to do the job, I first wedged the corridor doors. Then I opened the outside window and drew in the end of the cord loop and tied the end of the rope to it. I pulled one side of the cord loop and so got the rope pulled through the corner bracket handle and back again to the window. Its being silk made it run easily, and without marking the bracket. Then I put an end of the rope through the handle-guard, and after pulling it tight, knotted the ends together. This gave me a loop of rope tightly stretched from the door to the corner.

“I opened the door and then pulled up the window. I let the door close up against a bit of wood I had brought. The wind kept it to, and the wood prevented it from shutting.

“Then I fired. As soon as I saw that both were hit I got outside. I kicked away the wood and shut the door. Then with the rope for handrail I stepped along the footboard to the buffers. I cut both the cord and the rope and drew them after me, and shoved them in my pocket. This removed all traces.

“When the train stopped I slipped down on the ground. The people were getting out at the other side so I had only to creep along close to the coaches till I got out of their light, then I climbed up the bank and escaped.”

The man had evidently made a desperate effort to finish, for as he ceased speaking his eyes closed, and in a few minutes he fell into a state of coma which shortly preceded his death.

After communicating with the police I set myself to carry out his second injunction, and this statement is the result.

J. S. FLETCHER

Etherington, manager of the Old Bank at Leytonsdale, in Northshire, was in the first week of his annual month’s holiday, and he was celebrating his freedom from the ordinary routine of life by staying in bed an hour longer than usual every morning. Consequently, on this particular—and as fate would have it, eventful—morning, it was 10o’clock when he came down to breakfast in the coffee-room of the Grand Hotel at Scarborough, in which place he meant to stay a fortnight before going on for a similar period to Whitby. It would not have mattered to him if the hands of the clock had pointed to 11, for he had no plans for the day. His notion of a perfect holiday was to avoid plans of any sort, and to let things come. And something quite unexpected was coming to him at that moment—the hall-porter followed him into the room with a telegram.

“For you, sir,” he said. “Come this very minute.”

Etherington took the envelope and carried it to his usual seat near the window. He gave his order for breakfast before he opened it, but all the time he was talking to the waiter he was wondering what the message was about. He was a bachelor—his mother and sister who lived with him were such excellent administrators that he scouted the idea of any domestic catastrophe; neither of the two would have dreamed of bothering him for anything less than a fire or an explosion. His under-manager, Swale, was a thoroughly capable man, and all was in order at the bank, and likely to be so. Nor could he think of anyone who could have reason to wire him about business outside the bank affairs, nor about pleasure, nor about engagements. But just then the waiter retired, and Etherington opened the buff envelope, unfolded the flimsy sheet within, and read the message in one glance.

“Swale found shot on Blind Gap Moor at 6 o’clock this morning. Believed to be a case of murder. Police would like you to return. Please wire time arrival
Lever
.”

It was characteristic of Etherington, always a calm, self-possessed man, that he folded up the message, put it carefully in his pocket-book, and ate steadily through his substantial breakfast before asking the waiter to get him a railway time-table. But he was thinking all the time he ate and drank.

Murder? who would wish to murder Swale? He mentally figured Swale—a quiet, inoffensive fellow of thirty, who had been in the service of the Leytonsdale Old Bank ever since his schooldays, and had lived the life of a mouse. And what could have taken Swale, a man of fixed habits, to a wild desolate spot like Blind Gap Moor before 6 o’clock of a May morning? He knew Swale and his habits very well and he had never heard that the sub-manager was fond of getting up to see the sun, rise—and yet Blind Gap Moor was a good hour’s walk from the town. Perhaps he had been shot during the night, or during the previous evening—in that case, what was he doing there ? For Swale was not a fellow to take long, country walks—he was a bookworm, a bit of a scribbler, in an amateur fashion, given to writing essays and papers on the antiquities of the town, and he accordingly liked to spend his evenings and burn the midnight oil at home. Odd—the whole thing! But—murder? That was a serious business, murder! Still, no one who ever knew Swale would ever have dreamed of connecting him with suicide.

As for himself, he must act. He beckoned the head waiter to his side with a nod.

“You’ll have to get me my bill,” he said. “I am called home—unexpectedly. But first—a railway guide and a telegram form.”

It was a long journey across country to Leytonsdale, involving three changes and two tedious waitings for connections, and 5 o’clock had struck before Etherington got out of the branch train at the little station of his small market town. Lever, the junior clerk who had wired to him that morning, was awaiting him; together they walked out into the road which led to the centre of the place.

“Well?” asked Etherington, in his usual laconic fashion. “Anything fresh since morning?”

“Nothing,” replied Lever. “But the police are now certain it’s a case of murder; they say there’s no doubt about it.”

“Give me the facts,” said the manager. “Bare facts.”

“One of Lord Selwater’s gamekeepers found him,” answered the clerk. “Just before 6 this morning. He was lying dead near that cairn of stones on the top of Blind Gap Moor—shot through the heart. The doctors say he would die at once, and that he was shot at close quarters. And—he’d been robbed.”

Etherington made a little sound which denoted incredulity.

“Robbed!” he exclaimed. “Bless me! Why, what could Swale have on him that would make anybody go to the length of murder?”

“His watch and chain were gone,” began Lever, “and—”

“Worth three pounds at the outside!” interrupted Etherington.

“Yes; but he’d a lot of money on him,” proceeded the clerk. “It turns out that for this last year or two he’s collected the rents for those two farms up on the moor—Low Flatts and Quarry Hill. He’d been there last night. Marshall, the farmer at Low Flatts, says he paid him £56; Thomson, at Quarry Hill, paid him £48. So he’d have over £100 on him.”

“All missing?” asked the manager.

“There wasn’t anything on him but some coppers,” replied Lever. “Watch, chain, purse, pocket-book—all gone. That ring, that he used to wear, was gone.”

“How had those men paid him?” asked Etherington. “Cheque or cash?”

“Notes and gold,” answered Lever.

The manager walked on in silence for a while. Certainly this seemed like murder preceding robbery.

“Do they suspect anybody?” he asked. Lever shook his head.

“They haven’t said so to me if they do,” he replied. “The superintendent wants to see you at once.”

Etherington went straight to the police station. The superintendent shook his grizzled head at the sight of him.