PHIL TAKES UP THE TRAIL AFRESH.
"My darling Fanny,--That your letter, with its accompanying number of
_The Family Cornucopia_, was a great surprise to me I at once admit.
After reading it, I turned to the story, which I went through very
carefully, some parts of it more than once, and I quite agree with you
that the writer of it seems to have been mixed up in some, to me,
inexplicable way with the Loudwater Tragedy.
"So much, indeed, was I impressed with several points in the
narrative, so startling was the new theory of possibilities which it
had the effect of opening up, so minute did the writer's acquaintance
seem to be with the details of the crime, that a strong desire to find
out some particulars about him, and, if it were possible, to make his
acquaintance, took possession of me. All the more strongly did I feel
myself urged thereto in that it was impossible for me to forget how
thoroughly the case had baffled all my attempts at its elucidation.
"Accordingly, the following forenoon found me at the office of _The
Family Cornucopia_, where, after having sent in my card, I was
presently asked into the presence of the editor--a pleasant,
middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Philpot by name. When I told him that my
object in calling on him was to obtain the name and address of the
writer of an article in such and such a number of his magazine, he
shook his head and said with a smile that I was asking for a kind of
information which he was not prepared to give save in very exceptional
cases. To this I replied that my case was a very exceptional one
indeed, and thereupon I went on to tell him of my connection with the
Loudwater affair (leaving him to infer that I was still in the service
of Mr. Melray), how struck I had been by the perusal of the story
entitled 'How, and Why,' and proceeded to detail some of my reasons
for wishing to make the author's acquaintance. After that there was no
further difficulty. 'Here is what you ask for,' he said a couple of
minutes later, as he handed me a slip of paper.
"'May I ask, Mr. Philpot, whether you have had any previous
contributions from Mr. Frank Timmins?' I queried, after a glance at
the name on the paper.
"'None that we have seen our way to accept. From time to time he has
sent us several little things, none of which, however, have proved to
be quite up to our mark; but the story entitled "How, and Why," was so
far superior to anything Mr. Timmins had sent us before that we were
glad to retain it.'
"There being nothing further to learn from Mr. Philpot, I presently
went my way. A hansom took me to the address in Pentonville which the
editor had given me. Mr. Timmins, however, proved to be not at home.
He was a single man, his landlady told me, and I further elicited from
her that he was a reporter for certain newspapers, as also that the
most likely time for finding him at home was after seven o'clock in
the evening.
"Seven-thirty sharp saw me again at Pentonville. This time,
fortunately, Mr. Timmins was at home, and I was at once shown to his
sitting-room, which, I may add, was also his bedroom. He had just
finished his tea and was in the act of charging his pipe as I was
shown in. When his landlady disappeared she took the tea-tray with
her.
"Mr. Timmins is a man of four or five and twenty, with a fair but
somewhat freckled face, straw-coloured hair, and weak eyes. By the
time I had been ten minutes in his company I had discovered him to be
one of that numerous class of young men who have a very excellent
opinion of themselves and their abilities, without having anything to
offer the world in justification thereof.
"The first thing I did was to hand him my card.
"'To what may I attribute the honour of this visit, Mr. Winslade?' he
asked, as, after glancing at the card, he laid it on the table.
"'I am given to understand by the editor of _The Family Cornucopia_
that you are the author of a story entitled "How, and Why" which
appeared in a recent number of that magazine. May I assume, Mr.
Timmins, that such is the fact?'
"He changed colour and hesitated for a second or two before answering.
Then he said: 'Really, Mr. Winslade, I am at a loss to imagine how it
can possibly matter to you whether I am, or am not, the author of the
story in question. Still, if, as you state, Mr. Philpot has seen fit
to acknowledge the fact, I am not going to run counter to his
statement.'
"'Thank you for your frankness, Mr. Timmins,' I replied, as I drew my
chair a little closer to the table which divided us. 'You may take it
for granted that the information I am here to seek at your hands has
not for its object the satisfaction of an idle curiosity; very far
indeed is that from being the case. What I should like you to tell me
first of all is, whence and how you obtained the information, in other
words, the basis of fact, on which your story is built up.'
"As before, there was the same hesitation prior to answering. Then he
said: 'I fail to understand why you should assume that my story has
any, even the slightest substratum of fact, or that it is anything
more than a specimen of purely imaginative writing.'
"'That is a point as to which I can speedily enlighten you,' was my
reply.
"Thereupon I entered into the reasons, one by one, which had sufficed
to convince me that, whoever the writer of the story might be, he was
someone who had not merely a suspiciously intimate knowledge of all
the details of the Loudwater Tragedy, but one who professed to account
for the crime after a fashion so startling and original that I, as a
person connected to some extent with the case, felt bound to ascertain
what amount of truth, if any, underlaid his statements.
"Mr. Timmins listened with growing wonder, and when I had come to an
end he lay back in his chair, and for several seconds could do nothing
but stare blankly at me. At length he said: 'It is, perhaps, a
fortunate thing for me, Mr. Winslade, that my share in the story, or
whatever it may be called, is one that can very readily be explained.
To begin with, I am only part author of it. But perhaps I had better,
first of all, explain by what a singular conjunction of circumstances
the original MS. came into my hands. Possibly you may remember that,
some months ago, several people were killed owing to a railway
accident about a couple of miles beyond Eastwich?' I nodded. 'I, sir,
happened to be in the train when the accident took place, but was
fortunate enough to escape with nothing worse than a few bruises and a
severe shaking, while the only other passenger in the same compartment
with me was killed on the spot. I had been to report the speeches at a
great political meeting in the country, and was on my way back to
London by the night mail, travelling first-class in order that I might
be the better enabled to transcribe my notes _en route_. For a part of
the time I was alone, but at some station, I forget which, I was
joined by another passenger. I was too immersed in my work to take
more than the most casual notice of him, and all I can remember is
that he was young and dark-complexioned and had a black moustache. I
did notice, however, and I had occasion to remember the fact later on,
that after he had been some time in the carriage he took out of his
pocket a number of loose sheets of paper covered with writing, and
began to read them with what seemed to me the closest attention,
making an occasional pencil memorandum in the margin of one or another
of them as he went on. We were both at work, each in his own fashion,
when, without any other warning than a prolonged shriek of the engine,
of which neither of us took any notice, the crash came. All I knew, or
felt, of it was a momentary shock, as if all my limbs had been
suddenly dislocated, after which came an utter blank.
"'When consciousness returned, and I was able to realise what had
happened, I found myself lying on the sloping embankment of the line,
where I had been laid by the men who had extricated me from the
wrecked carriage. A yard or two away lay stretched the body of my
travelling companion, stone dead. A little brandy, administered by I
know not whom, revived me wonderfully, and thereupon I woke to the
necessity of recovering my missing shorthand notes, which doubtless
were somewhere among the _débris_ of the carriage. Feeling still too
shaken and bruised to go in search of them myself, I gave a platelayer
half-a-crown to find them for me by the aid of his hand-lamp. After a
quarter of an hour he returned with a jumble of loose papers, which he
said were all that he could find. Without looking at them, I thrust
them into my pocket, and it was not I after I reached home, some five
or six hours later, and came to examine them, that I found among them
the sheets which my dead travelling companion had been reading at the
moment of the accident, which the platelayer, in ignorance of their
not being my property, had rescued from the wreck together with my
own.
"'For the time being I laid them aside, but later in the day, when my
own work had been despatched, I sat down to read them; and next day,
when I went down by train to attend the inquest to which I had been
summoned as a witness, I took the papers with me. And now comes a very
singular feature of the affair. The body of my travelling companion
was never identified; nor, so far as I am aware, is it known to this
day who he was; nor, beyond such information on the point as the
railway-ticket found in one of his pockets afforded, whence he had
come or for what place other than London--which is a big address--he
was bound. He seemed to have been travelling without luggage of any
kind; his linen was unmarked, and there was nothing whatever found on
him by the aid of which his identity could be established. Under those
circumstances, I kept the dead man's papers by me, saying no word
about them to anybody. As a matter of course, I took the precaution of
looking carefully through them with a view of ascertaining whether
they furnished any clue to the personality of the writer, but none
such could I find. When I tell you this, Mr. Winslade, you will at
once understand in what light I regarded the MS. To me it seemed
neither more nor less than a rather clever little magazine story--a
piece of pure fiction, in point of fact. As such I read it, and such I
should have still believed it to be but for what you have told me this
evening.
"'Well, sir, some three or four months after the unknown writer of the
MS. had been buried, I said to myself one day, "Why not write it out
in my own hand, invent an ending to it, give it a name, and send it to
one of the magazines? If it comes back it will only be one failure the
more." And failures in that line were things to which I was becoming
pretty well used.'
"Here I interrupted Mr. Timmins for the first time.
"'You say "invent an ending to it,"' I remarked. 'Had the MS., then, a
different ending from that which it has in the printed story?'
"'I ought, perhaps, to have remarked before that it had no ending of
any kind,' replied Timmins, 'but broke off abruptly at the bottom of a
page. Whether the writer had never finished it, or whether, if a more
thorough search had been made in the carriage, the continuation of it
would have been found, I am, of course, unable to say. In any case, as
far as I am concerned, unfinished it was; consequently all the latter
part of the story, as printed, is from my pen.'
"I at once saw, how important a knowledge of this fact might prove to
be, should the Loudwater Case ever come to be reopened. Laying the
open periodical before him on the table, I said, 'Will you be good
enough, Mr. Timmins, to point out the place where the original MS.
left off, and your pen took up the running?'
"After drawing the magazine to him and casting his eye over the
columns, he said presently, marking a certain place with his
thumb-nail as he did so, 'Here is where the original writer ends and I
begin.'
"'May I take it, then, as a fact that up to the point indicated by you
the printed story follows exactly on the lines of the MS.?'
"'As nearly so as makes no matter. Here and there a word may have been
changed or transposed, or the turn of a sentence altered, but it may
be accepted as being to all intents and purposes a faithful copy of
the MS.'
"You, my dear Fan, have read the story; so, when I tell you that the
point at which the break occurs is where 'Ernestine' and her former
lover find themselves together in the old merchant's office, you will
not fail to call to mind what a very important share of the narrative
proves to be wholly due to the inventive genius of Mr. Timmins. And
yet, perhaps, on further consideration, it is not really so important
as at first sight it seems. You and I knew, the moment we read it,
that the latter half of the narrative was nothing more than a farrago
of fiction; but who, in view of the little that is really known of the
causes which led to Mr. Melray's death, dare venture to assert that
the incidents, as detailed in the early part of it, may not be based
on fact? That is just what one would like to be in a position to
determine.
"But to return.
"'By the way, Mr. Timmins,' I said, 'I should like very particularly
to inspect the original MS.; indeed, I may add that I should like to
take possession of it for a little while.'
"'I am sorry to say that it is no longer in existence. I kept it till
I heard that my story was accepted; then I burnt it.'
"'Oh, you idiot!' was my mental exclamation; but aloud I only said it
was a great pity he had done so.
"'Judging from what you have told me,' I went on presently, 'I suppose
I may take it for a fact that there was no hint whatever in the MS.
about suspicion fixing itself on "Mr. Day," the head clerk, nor
anything about his arrest and subsequent trial and conviction?
Neither, I presume, was there any mention made of the writer's
intention to commit suicide?'
"'All those portions of the narrative were of my own invention. The
thing needed an ending of some kind in order to render it acceptable
to a magazine editor, and, to tell you the truth, I rather prided
myself on the way in which I got over the difficulty.'
"Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of Mr. Timmins. The
truthfulness of what he had told me I did not for a moment doubt. He
made no difficulty, before I left him, about pledging me his word not
to speak of our interview to anyone.
"The first thing I did next day was to hunt through a file of old
newspapers for the particulars of the Eastwich railway accident. What
I there read confirmed Timmins's statement in every respect. One of
the four victims of the accident was buried without having been
identified. Still, it was just possible that someone might have since
come forward and, by means of his clothes and the minute personal
description of him which would doubtless be taken prior to his
interment, have been able to claim him as the missing relative, or
friend, of whom they were in search, in which case his name and
address when living, with, possibly, other particulars concerning him,
would doubtless be now in the possession of the railway authorities.
"But my hope that such might prove to be the case was doomed to
disappointment. The next post took a note from me to the railway
company, to which they promptly replied. No one, they informed me, had
ever come forward to claim, or identify, the unknown victim of the
Eastwich accident. My next step was to write to Mr. Robert Melray and
ask him to inform me when and where I could have half an hour's talk
with him. His reply was to the effect that he should be in town a
couple of days later and would call upon me.
"My justification for so doing lay in the fact that in the
MS.--supposing that any value was to be attached to its
statements--there were certain allegations so seriously affecting the
reputation of the widow of the murdered man that it seemed to me
absolutely essential that the present head of the family should be
made acquainted with them. It would then rest with him to decide
whether any further action, and if so, of what kind, should be taken
in the affair, or whether it should be allowed to rest where it does
and remain an unsolved mystery till the end of time.
"Well, my interview with Mr. Melray came off in due course. As I think
I have told you before, he is a man of strong feelings, although he
shows little of them on the surface, and his burning desire to bring
to justice the unknown person, or persons, who were concerned in his
brother's tragic fate remains just as strong as ever it was. I found
him more inclined than I confess I am to look upon the MS. (so to term
that portion of the narrative found in the railway carriage) as a
genuine recital of facts. To him it seems by no means unlikely that
the assassin of his brother may, in very truth, have been a former
lover of Mrs. Melray. Of course the question did not fail to put
itself to him, as it had already put itself to me: Were the murderer
and the unknown man who was killed in the railway accident one and the
same person? And if so, was he also the writer of the MS.? But those
were questions which he was no more able to answer than I had been.
"I had already cause for believing that the feeling with which Mr.
Robert Melray regards his brother's widow is not of the most friendly
kind. That to a certain extent she is inimical to him I cannot doubt.
Consequently I was not much surprised when he avowed his intention of
having the case reopened--to the extent, at least, if such a thing
should prove possible, of testing the accuracy of the MS. so far as it
concerned itself with the relations between 'Ernestine,' otherwise the
wife, and her lover. But such a course was far easier to determine on
than to carry into effect, and how to set about it was a point which
puzzled both of us. Finally Mr. Melray and I parted without having
come to an agreement as to any definite course of action. He has
promised to call on me again three days hence. Meanwhile, at his
request, I am going down to Solchester with the view of making a few
cautious inquiries having reference to the existence there of any
possible lover of Mrs. Melray prior to her marriage.
"And now to change the subject to something more personal to
ourselves.
* * * * * *
"Yours unalterably,
"Philip Winslade.
"P.S.--If any further evidence were needed to prove that the story
'How, and Why' is based on the Loudwater Tragedy, one might find it in
several of the thinly-veiled names which the anonymous writer has
thought fit to make use of. Thus, in the story Mr. Melray becomes 'Mr.
Melville'; the head clerk, Mr. Cray, is changed into 'Mr. Day';
Silston, the chief constable, becomes 'Dilston'; while, in place of
Merehampton as the _locale_ of the narrative, we are introduced to the
town of 'Hampton Magna.'"