The Best Crime Stories Ever Told (17 page)

Folkingham started. He bent down, glanced at the dates, and let out a surprised exclamation.

“Good heavens, no!” he answered. “I haven’t accepted a bill of Charlesworth’s for—oh, eighteen months. I’ve dropped all trade with him for quite that time.”

“Then, those signatures, to be plain, are forged?” said the manager.

Folkingham shrugged his shoulders.

“So far as I’m concerned, yes,” he replied, “I know nothing whatever about them—nothing! I’ve dropped that particular line of trade—some time ago. You don’t mean to say that Charlesworth—”

Etherington sat down and told Folkingham all about it. There had been six bills. Three had been retired. Probably the other three would have been similarly retired. And—nobody would have known of the forgery. The two men stared at each other when the story came to an end. Each was thinking. But Etherington was thinking of something that was not in the other man’s thoughts—something worse than forgery.

“What’s to be done?” asked Folkingham at last. “Or, rather, what do you intend to do?”

“I should be greatly obliged to you if you’d come over to Leytonsdale in the morning,” answered the manager. “He must be confronted. And your denial to his face—is precisely what I do want.”

“All right,” agreed Folkingham, after thinking this proposal over. “I’ll be with you by noon. Now stop and have some dinner—you can get a train back at 8:30. Dear, dear, this is extraordinary! What on earth’s behind it?”

Etherington did not discuss that. He was still thinking of his other idea; he thought of it all the way home in the train; he thought of it during the night; he was thinking of it at 9 o’clock next morning when he went to the bank and found Lever there and took him into his private room.

“Lever,” he said, “you remember that last day that Swale was alive; just stir your memory. Can you remember anything special that he did—here? Anything relating to bank business? Think!”

Lever, a somewhat slow-going young man, thought for some time before he replied.

“I can’t think of anything except that, during the afternoon, he got all the acceptances out and went through them,” he answered. “There was nothing else, I’m sure, out of the ordinary.”

“Did he make any remark to you about any of those acceptances?” asked Etherington.

“No,” replied Lever. “None!”

Etherington nodded, intimating that he had no more to ask. But as soon as Lever had left the room he, himself, went out again and walked around to the police station.

Etherington remained closeted with Campbell, the superintendent of police, until after 10 o’clock. When he returned to the bank the doors had been opened to the public, and two or three customers had already entered. In one of them, a big, raw-boned countryman, the manager recognised Matthew Marshall, the tenant of Low Flatts Farm.

Marshall, who had evidently cashed a small cheque, was standing in front of the counter with a little pile of gold and silver between himself and Lever, who was leaning forward from the other side to look intently at something which the farmer held in his big hand.

“A’ but doan’t tell me!” Marshall was saying, in his broad vernacular. “I’m none one to forget owt o’ t’ sovereigns ‘at I paid to poor Mestur Swale t’ very neet ‘at he wor done for—it is! I tell yer—‘im an’ me, an‘ my wife an’ all, lewked at that theer mark.”

Etherington went directly to the farmer’s side and looked at the sovereign, on the upper side of which somebody had stamped two deeply-incised letters—X. M. And Marshall turned to him with a wide smile.

“I’m tellin’ Mestur Lever theer ‘at this here sovereign is one—” he began.

“I heard what you said,” interrupted Etherington, taking the coin and examining it. “Are you sure of what you say?”

“Ay, shure as I am ‘at I’m speakin’ to you, Mestur Etherington,” answered the farmer promptly. “I’d noticed them letters on that coin afore iver I paid it away to Mestur Swale yon neet ‘at t’ poor feller was murdered. Him an’ me had a bit o’ talk about it. Oh, ay, that’s t’ very identical coin ‘at I gev him! Now, isn’t it queer ‘at it should turn up at yor bank—what?”

“Leave it with me,” said Etherington, putting the marked sovereign in his pocket. “Mr. Lever will give you another in its place, Marshall,” he went on, leading the man towards the door; “don’t say anything about this in the town this morning. Come back here for a few minutes at 12 o’clock.”

The farmer opened his mouth, gave the manager a shrewd nod, and went off in silence; and Etherington went behind the counter to Lever.

“Did Charlesworth pay any of that money which he brought yesterday in gold?” he asked quiedy.

“Twenty pounds or so,” answered Lever. He, too, suddenly looked shrewdly at the manager, and his professional stolidity broke down. “Good heavens,” he exclaimed. “You don’t think—”

“Hush!” said Etherington. “Listen! Charlesworth will be coming here just after 12. I’ve telephoned him. He won’t suspect anything from my message. Bring him straight into the private room.”

There was no one but Etherington in the private room when Charlesworth walked into it at a quarter past 12. And there was nothing remarkable in the manager’s surroundings, except that on his blotting-pad lay a sovereign and a closed envelope.

“Just a question or two,” said Etherington, in his calmest and iciest manner. “You paid some money in yesterday—to retire one of those acceptances. That sovereign was amongst others which you paid in.”

“Well?” said Charlesworth. He glanced at the coin unconsciously; and the manager, watching him closely, failed to see any sign of alarm. “What of it?”

Etherington put the point of his pen to the coin.

“That sovereign,” he said, “is marked. It’s one which Marshall handed to Swale—the night Swale was murdered. How did it come into your possession?”

Charlesworth’s face flushed a little at that, and he bent forward, looking at the coin.

“How on earth can I tell that?” he demanded. “You know how money changes hands!”

“I should like,” remarked Etherington, “to know if that sovereign has changed hands more than once since Marshall gave it to Swale. But—here is another question. What did Swale tell you when you met him that night at Blind Gap Moor? Come!”

He rose to his feet as he spoke, picking up the envelope and beginning to take three strips of blue paper from it. And Charlesworth rose, too, and stepped back a little, staring almost incredulously at his questioner.

“Come!” repeated Etherington. “What’s the use of denial? Didn’t Swale tell you that he had found out that the supposed signature of Folkingham and Greensedge on your acceptances were—forgeries? And didn’t you—eh? You know what you did then, Mr. Charlesworth, I think. But—”

He tapped a bell as he spoke, and the door of an inner room opened and revealed Folkingham and the police superintendent, and behind them the round, staring amazed face of the farmer. Etherington laughed.

“You see?” he said, indicating Folkingham. “Hadn’t you better confess and be done with it? Come—”

“Look at him!” shouted Campbell, as he sprang into the room. “The revolver! Look out!”

But the room was a big one, and Charlesworth was at the further side. And before any of them could reach him he had turned the revolver on himself and sent a bullet through his brain.

Etherington made a little, half-articulate sound of vexation.

“I hurried him too much!” he muttered. “But, then, I never thought he’d do that!” He turned to the startled superintendent. “Get him taken away, will you?” he said quietly. “The affair is—over.”

BARONESS ORCZY

By this time Miss Polly Burton had become quite accustomed to her extraordinary
vis-à-vis
in the corner.

He was always there, when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty piece of string.

“Were you ever interested in the Regent’s Park murder?” he asked her one day.

Polly replied that she had forgotten most of the particulars connected with that curious murder, but that she fully remembered the stir and flutter it had caused in a certain section of London society.

“The racing and gambling set, particularly, you mean,” he said. “All the persons implicated in the murder, directly or indirectly, were of the type commonly called ‘Society men,’ or ‘men about town,’ whilst the Harewood Club in Hanover Square, round which centered all the scandal in connection with the murder, was one of the smartest clubs in London.

Probably the doings of the Harewood Club, which was essentially a gambling club, would for ever have remained ‘officially’ absent from the knowledge of the police authorities but for the murder in the Regent’s Park and the revelations which came to light in connection with it.

“I dare say you know the quiet square which lies between Portland Place and the Regent’s Park and is called Park Crescent at its south end, and subsequently Park Square East and West. The Marylebone Road, with all its heavy traffic, cuts straight across the large square and its pretty gardens, but the latter are connected together by a tunnel under the road; and of course you must remember that the new tube station in the south portion of the Square had not yet been planned.

“February 6th, 1907, was a very foggy night, nevertheless Mr. Aaron Cohen, of 30, Park Square West, at two o’clock in the morning, having finally pocketed the heavy winnings which he had just swept off the green table of the Harewood Club, started to walk home alone. An hour later most of the inhabitants of Park Square West were aroused from their peaceful slumbers by the sounds of a violent altercation in the road. A man’s angry voice was heard shouting violently for a minute or two, and was followed immediately by frantic screams of ‘Police’ and ‘Murder.’ Then there was the double sharp report of firearms, and nothing more.

“The fog was very dense, and, as you no doubt have experienced yourself, it is very difficult to locate sound in a fog. Nevertheless, not more than a minute or two had elapsed before Constable F 18, the point policeman at the corner of Marylebone Road, arrived on the scene, and, having first of all whistled for any of his comrades on the beat, began to grope his way about in the fog, more confused than effectually assisted by contradictory directions from the inhabitants of the houses close by, who were nearly falling out of the upper windows as they shouted out to the constable.

“‘By the railings, policeman.’

“‘Higher up the road.’

“‘No, lower down.’

“‘It was on this side of the pavement I am sure.’

“‘No, the other.’

“At last it was another policeman, F 22, who, turning into Park Square West from the north side, almost stumbled upon the body of a man lying on the pavement with his head against the railings of the Square. By this time quite a little crowd of people from the different houses in the road had come down, curious to know what had actually happened.

“The policeman turned the strong light of his bull’s-eye lantern on the unfortunate man’s face.

“‘It looks as if he had been strangled, don’t it?’ he murmured to his comrade.

“And he pointed to the swollen tongue, the eyes half out of their sockets, bloodshot and congested, the purple, almost black, hue of the face.

“At this point one of the spectators, more callous to horrors, peered curiously into the dead man’s face. He uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

“‘Why, surely, it’s Mr. Cohen from No. 30!’

“The mention of a name familiar down the length of the street had caused two or three other men to come forward and to look more closely into the horribly distorted mask of the murdered man.

“‘Our next-door neighbour, undoubtedly,’ asserted Mr. Ellison, a young barrister, residing at No. 31.

“‘What in the world was he doing this foggy night all alone, and on foot?’ asked somebody else.

“‘He usually came home very late. I fancy he belonged to some gambling club in town. I dare say he couldn’t get a cab to bring him out here. Mind you, I don’t know much about him. We only knew him to nod to.’

“‘Poor beggar! it looks almost like an old-fashioned case of garrotting.’

“‘Anyway, the blackguardly murderer, whoever he was, wanted to make sure he had killed his man!’ added Constable F 18, as he picked up an object from the pavement. ‘Here’s the revolver, with two cartridges missing. You gentlemen heard the report just now?’

“‘He don’t seem to have hit him though. The poor bloke was strangled, no doubt.’

“‘And tried to shoot at his assailant, obviously,’ asserted the young barrister with authority.

“‘If he succeeded in hitting the brute, there might be a chance of tracing the way he went.’

“‘But not in the fog.’

“Soon, however, the appearance of the inspector, detective, and medical officer, who had quickly been informed of the tragedy, put an end to further discussion.

“The bell at No. 30 was rung, and the servants—all four of them women—were asked to look at the body.

“Amidst tears of horror and screams of fright, they all recognized in the murdered man their master, Mr. Aaron Cohen. He was therefore conveyed to his own room pending the coroner’s inquest.

“The police had a pretty difficult task, you will admit; there were so very few indications to go by, and at first literally no clue.

“The inquest revealed practically nothing. Very little was known in the neighbourhood about Mr. Aaron Cohen and his affairs. His female
servants did not even know the name or whereabouts of the various clubs he frequented.

“He had an office in Throgmorton Street and went to business every day. He dined at home, and sometimes had friends to dinner. When he was alone he invariably went to the club, where he stayed until the small hours of the morning.

“The night of the murder he had gone out at about nine o’clock. That was the last his servants had seen of him. With regard to the revolver, all four servants swore positively that they had never seen it before, and that, unless Mr. Cohen had bought it that very day, it did not belong to their master.