LEAD TRUMPS.
Naturally, under these circumstances, it was all in vain that Guy
Waring pursued his investigations into Montague Nevitt's whereabouts.
Neither at Plymouth nor anywhere else along the skirts of Dartmoor
could he learn that anything more had been seen or heard of the
man who called himself "Mr. McGregor." And yet Guy felt sure Nevitt
wouldn't go far from Mambury, as things stood just then; for as
soon as he missed the pocket-book containing the three thousand
pounds, he would surely take some steps to recover it.
Two days later, however, Gilbert Gildersleeve sat in the hotel
at Plymouth, where he had moved from Ivybridge after--well, as he
phrased it to himself, after that unfortunate accident. The blustering
Q.C. was like another man now. For the first time in his life he
knew what it meant to be nervous and timid. Every sound made him
suppress an involuntary start; for as yet he had heard no whisper
of the body being discovered. He couldn't leave the neighbourhood,
however, till the murder was out. Dangerous as he felt it to
remain on the spot, some strange spell seemed to bind him against
his will to Dartmoor. He must stop and hear what local gossip had
to say when the body came to light. And above all, for the present,
he hadn't the courage to go home; he dared not face his own wife
and daughter.
So he stayed on and lounged, and pretended to interest himself with
walks over the hills and up the Tamar valley.
As he sat there in the billiard-room, that day, a young fellow
entered whom he remembered to have seen once or twice in London,
at evening parties, with Montague Nevitt. He turned pale at the
sight--Gilbert Gildersleeve turned pale, that great red man. At
first he didn't even remember the young fellow's name; but it came
back to him in time that he was one Guy Waring. It was a hard ordeal
to meet him, but Gilbert Gildersleeve felt he must brazen it out.
To slink away from the young man would be to rouse suspicion. So
they sat and talked for a minute or two together, on indifferent
subjects, neither, to say truth, being very well pleased to see
the other under such peculiar circumstances. Then Guy, who had the
least reason for concealment of the two, sauntered out for a stroll,
with his heart still full of that villain Nevitt, whose name, of
course, he had never mentioned to Gilbert Gildersleeve. And Gilbert
Gildersleeve, for his part, had had equal cause for a corresponding
reticence as to their common acquaintance.
Just as Guy left the room, the landlord dropped in and began to
talk with his guest about the latest new sensation.
"Heard the news, sir, this morning?" he asked, with an important
air. "Inspector's just told me. A case very much in your line of
business. Dead body's been discovered at Mambury, choked, and then
thrown among the brake by the river. Name of McGregor--a visitor
from London. And they do say the police have a clue to the murderer.
Person who did it--"
Gilbert Gildersleeve's heart gave a great bound within him, and
then stood stock-still; but by an iron effort of will he suppressed
all outer sign of his profound emotion. He seemed to the observant
eye merely interested and curious, as the landlord finished his
sentence carelessly--"Person who did it's supposed to be a young
man who was at Mambury this week, of the name of Waring."
Gilbert Gildersleeve's heart gave another bound, still more violent
than before. But again he repressed with difficulty all external
symptoms of his profound agitation. This was very strange news. Then
somebody else was suspected instead of himself. In one way that
was bad; for Gilbert Gildersleeve had a conscience and a sense of
justice. But, in another way, why, it would save time for the moment,
and divert attention from his own personality. Better anything now
than immediate suspicion. In a week or two more every trace would
be lost of his presence at Mambury.
"Waring," he said thoughtfully, turning over the name to himself,
as if he attached it to no particular individual. "Waring--Waring--Waring."
He paused and looked hard. Ha! so far good! It was clear the
landlord didn't know Waring was the name of the young man who had
just left the billiard-room. This was lucky, indeed, for if he HAD
known it now, and had taxed Guy then and there, before his own very
face, with being the murderer of this unknown person at Mambury,
Gilbert Gildersleeve felt no course would have been open for him
save to tell the whole truth on the spot unreservedly. Try as he
would, he COULDN'T see another man arrested before his very eyes
for the crime he himself had really, though almost unwittingly,
committed.
"Waring," he repeated slowly, like one who endeavoured to collect
his scattered thoughts; "what sort of person was he, do you know?
And how did the police come to get a clue to him?"
The landlord, nothing loth, went off into a long and circumstantial
story of the discovery of the body, with minute details of how the
innkeeper at Mambury had traced the supposed murderer--who gave no
name--by an envelope which he'd left in his bedroom that evening.
The county was up in arms about the affair to-day. All Dartmoor
was being searched, and it was supposed the fellow was in hiding
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Tavistock or Oakhampton. They'd
catch him by to-night. The landlord wouldn't be surprised, indeed,
now he came to think on it, if his truest himself--here a very long
pause--were retained by-and-by for the prosecution.
Gilbert Gildersleeve drew a deep breath, unperceived. That was
all, was it? The pause had unnerved him. He talked some minutes,
as unconcernedly as he could, though trembling inwardly all the
while, about the murder and the murderer. The landlord listened
with profound respect to the words of legal wisdom as they dropped
from his lips; for he knew Mr. Gildersleeve by common repute as
one of the ablest and acutest of criminal lawyers in all England.
Then, after a short interval, the big burly man, moving his guilty
fingers nervously over the seal on his watch-chain, and assuming
as much as possible his ordinary air of blustering self-assertion,
asked, in an off-hand fashion, "By the way, let me see, I've, some
business to arrange; what's the number of my friend Mr. Billington's
bedroom?"
The landlord looked up with a little start of surprise. "Mr.
Billington?" he said, hesitating. "We've got no Mr. Billington."
Gilbert Gildersleeve smiled a sickly smile. It was neck or nothing
now. He must go right through with it. "Oh yes," he answered, with
prompt conviction, playing a dangerous card well--for how could
he know what name this young man Waring might possibly be passing
under? "The gentleman who was talking to me when you came in just
now. His name's Billington--though, perhaps," he added, after a
pause, with a reflective air, "he may have given you another one.
Young men will be young men. They've often some reason, when
travelling, for concealing their names. Though Billington's not
the sort of fellow, to be sure, who's likely to be knocking about
anywhere incognito."
The landlord laughed. "Oh, we've plenty of that sort," he replied
good-humouredly. "Both ladies and gentlemen. It all makes trade.
But your friend ain't one of 'em. To tell you the truth, he didn't
give any name at all when he came to the hotel; and we didn't
ask any. Billington, is it? Ah, Billington, Billington. I knew a
Billington myself once, a trainer at Newmarket. Well, he's a very
pleasant young man, nice-spoken, and that; but I don't fancy he's
quite right in his head, somehow."
With instinctive cleverness, Gilbert Gildersleeve snatched at the
opening at once. "Ah no, poor fellow," he said, shaking his head
sympathetically. "You've found that out already, have you? Well,
he's subject to delusions a bit; mere harmless delusions; but
he's not at all dangerous. Excitable, very, when anything odd turns
up; he'll be calling himself Waring and giving himself in charge
for this murder, I dare say, when he comes to hear of it. But as
good-hearted a fellow as ever lived, though; only, a trifle obstinate.
If you've any difficulty with him at any time, just send for me.
I've known him from a boy. He'll do anything I tell him."
It was a critical game, but Gilbert Gildersleeve saw something
definite must be done, and he trusted to bluster, and a well-known
name, to carry him through with it. And, indeed, he had said enough.
From that moment forth, the landlord's suspicions were never even
so much as aroused by the innocent young man with the preoccupied
manner, who knew Mr. Gildersleeve. The great Q.C.'s word
was guarantee enough--for any one but himself. And the great Q.C.
himself knew it. Why, a chance word from his lips was enough to
protect Guy Waring from suspicion. Who would ever believe, then,
anything so preposterously improbable as that the great Q.C. himself
was the murderer?
Not the police, you may be sure; nor the Plymouth landlord.
He went out into the town, with his mind now filled full of a
curious scheme. A plan of campaign loomed up visibly before him.
Waring was suspected. Therefore Waring must somehow have given cause
for suspicion. Well, Waring was a friend of Montague Nevitt's,
and had evidently been at Mambury, either with him or without him,
immediately before the--h'm--the unfortunate accident. But as
soon as Waring came to learn of the discovery of the body, which
he would be sure to do from the paper that evening at latest, he
would see at once the full strength of whatever suspicions might
tell against him. Now, Gilbert Gildersleeve's experience of criminal
cases had abundantly shown him that a suspected person, even when
innocent, always has one fixed desire in his head--to gain time,
anyhow. So Waring would naturally wish to gain time, at whatever
cost. There were evidently circumstances connecting Waring with the
crime; there were none at all, known to the outer world, connecting
the eminent lawyer. Therefore, the eminent lawyer argued to himself,
as coolly almost as if it had been somebody else's case, not his
own, he was conducting--therefore, if an immediate means of escape
is provided for Waring, Waring will almost undoubtedly fall blindfold
into it.
Not that he meant to let Guy pay the penalty in the end for his own
rash crime. He was no hardened villain. He had still a conscience.
If the worst came to the worst, he said to himself, he would tell
all, openly, rather than let an innocent man suffer. But, like every
one else, in accordance with his own inference from his observation
of others, he, too, wanted to gain time, anyhow; and if he could
but gain time by kindly helping Guy to escape for the present,
why, he would gladly do so. An innocent man may be suspected for
the moment, Gilbert Gildersleeve thought to himself, with a lawyer's
blind confidence; but under our English law he need never at least
fear that the suspicion will be permanent. For lawyers repeat
their own incredible commonplaces about the absolute perfection of
English law so often that at last, by a sort of retributive nemesis,
they really almost come to believe them.
Filled with these ideas, then, which rose naturally up in his mind
without his taking the trouble, as it were, definitely to prove
them, Gilbert Gildersleeve hurried on through the crowded streets
of Plymouth town, till he reached the office of the London and
South African Steamship Company. There he entered with an air of
decided business, and asked to take a passage to Cape Town at once
by the steamer "Cetewayo", due to call at Plymouth, outward bound,
that evening. He had looked up particulars of sailing in the
papers at the hotel, and asked now, as if for himself, for a large
and roomy berth, with all his usual self-possession and boldness
of manner. The clerk gazed at him carelessly; that big and burly
man with the great awkward hands raised no picture in his brain of
the supposed murderer of McGregor in the wood at Mambury as that
murderer had been described to him by the police that morning, from
a verbal portrait after the landlord of the Talbot Arms. This
colossal, red-faced, loud-spoken person, who required a large
and roomy berth, was certainly "not" the rather slim young man, a
little above the medium height, with a dark moustache and a gentle
musical voice, whom the inn-keeper had seen in an excited mood on
the hunt for McGregor along the slopes of Dartmoor.
"What name?" the clerk asked briskly, after Gilbert Gildersleeve had
selected his state-room from the plan, with some show of interest
as to its being well amidships and not too near the noise of the
engines.
"Billington," the barrister answered, without a glimmer of hesitation.
"Arthur Standish Billington, if you want the full name. Thirty-two
will suit me very well, I think, and I'll pay for it now. Go aboard
when she's sighted, I suppose; nine o'clock or thereabouts."
The clerk made out the ticket in the name he was told. "Yes, nine
o'clock," he said curtly. "All luggage to be on board the tender
by eight, sharp. You've left taking your passage very late, Mr.
Billington. Lucky we've a room that'll suit you, I'm sure, It
isn't often we have berths left amidships like this on the day of
sailing."
Gilbert Gildersleeve pretended to look unconcerned once more. "No,
I suppose not," he answered, in a careless voice. "People generally
know their own minds rather longer beforehand. But I'd a telegram
from the Cape this morning that calls me over immediately."
He folded up his ticket, and put it in his pocket. Then he pulled
out a roll of notes and paid the amount in full. The clerk gave him
change promptly. Nobody could ever have suspected so solid a man
as the great Q.C. of any more serious crime or misdemeanour than
shirking the second service on Sunday evening. There was a ponderous
respectability about his portly build that defied detection. The
agents of all the steamboat companies had been warned that morning
that the slim young man of the name of Waring might try to escape
at the last moment. But who could ever suspect this colossal pile,
in the British churchwarden style of human architecture, of aiding
and abetting the escape of the young man Waring from the pervasive
myrmidons of English justice? The very idea was absurd. Gilbert
Gildersleeve's waistcoat was above suspicion.
And when Guy Waring returned to his room at the Duke of Devonshire
Hotel half an hour later, in complete ignorance as yet of the bare
fact of the murder, he found on his table an envelope addressed,
in an unknown hand, "Guy Waring, Esq.," while below in the corner,
twice underlined, were the importunate words, "IMMEDIATE! IMPORTANT!"
Guy tore it open in wonder. What on earth could this mean? He
trembled as he read. Could Cyril have learnt all? Or had Nevitt,
that double-dyed traitor, now trebled his treachery by informing
against the man whom he had driven into a crime? Guy couldn't imagine
what it all could be driving at, for there, before his eyes, in a
round schoolboy hand, very carefully formed, without the faintest
trace of anything like character, were the words of this strange
and startling message, whose origin and intent were alike a mystery
to him.
"Guy Waring, a warrant is out for your apprehension. Fly at once,
or things may be worse for you. It is something always to gain time
for the moment. You will avoid suspicion, public scandal, trial.
Enclosed find a ticket for Cape Town by the Cetewayo to-night. She
sails at nine. Luggage to be on board the tender by eight sharp.
If you go, all can yet be satisfactorily cleared up. If you stay,
the danger is great, and may be very serious. Ticket is taken (and
paid for) in the name of Arthur Standish Billington. Settle your
account at the hotel in that name and go.
"Yours, in frantic haste,
"A SINCERE WELL-WISHER."
Guy gazed at the strange missive long and dubiously. "A warrant
is out." He scarcely knew what to do. Oh, for time, time, time!
Had Cyril sent this? Or was it some final device of that fiend,
Nevitt?