A FRESH LINE OF INQUIRY.
Once more Philip Winslade found himself under the necessity of
journeying down to Solchester. It took him no long time after his
arrival to discover that Mr. Noyes was the secretary and manager of a
certain Loan and Discount Corporation well known to not a few of the
good people of the town.
No sooner had he ascertained this than he made it his business to call
upon Mr. Noyes. Having explained who he was and that he was
prosecuting the inquiry on behalf of Mr. Robert Melray, he produced
his copy of the letter of the 4th of September, and asked the manager
to inform him whether he remembered the receipt of the original, to
which Mr. Noyes, having glanced his eye over the copy, replied that he
remembered it very well indeed.
"In that case," resumed Winslade, "will you be good enough to
enlighten me, and Mr. Robert Melray through me, as to the precise
nature of the transaction to which it refers, in view of the fact that
no note or memorandum of any kind has been found among the late Mr.
Melray's papers which helps in the slightest degree to explain it?"
Mr. Noyes toyed for some seconds with his watch-chain before
answering. Then he said: "I need scarcely tell you, Mr. Winslade, that
it is a matter of principle with me never to open my lips about any
confidential matters of which I may become the depositary in the
ordinary course of business. Seeing, however, that the case to which
this letter refers is of a very exceptional kind, that Mr. Melray is
dead, and that the information is asked for by his brother as his
partner and successor, I think that, for once, I shall be justified in
taking an exceptional course. Here is the 'Times.' If you will kindly
engage yourself with it for a matter of five or six minutes, I shall
then be at liberty to tell you all I know of the affair."
"It was about the middle of last August," began the manager a few
minutes later, as he wheeled his chair half round so as more directly
to confront his auditor, "that a young man called upon me whom I had
never to my knowledge seen before. (I can verify the exact date for
you, should it be necessary to do so.) His name, he told me, was
Richard Dyson, and that he was a relative of Mr. Melray, the
well-known shipowner of Merehampton. His object in calling on me was
to negotiate, on the part of that gentleman, a loan of three hundred
pounds, of which sum, he gave me to understand, Mr. Melray was in
immediate need; the security offered for the same being a fully
paid-up life policy for two thousand pounds. That Mr. Melray, although
in a large way of business, should be in pressing want of the sum in
question did not surprise me in the least. Many prosperous merchants
and tradesmen whose capital is locked up, or otherwise not available
at a moment's notice, are occasionally pressed for a comparatively
small amount of ready money. Consequently what I did was to take down
the particulars of the required loan and tell Mr. Dyson that I would
lay the application before my directors and communicate with him at
the earliest possible moment.
"Well, sir, the terms of the loan having been acceded to, a
communication to that effect was sent under cover to Mr. Dyson. Next
day saw him at my office again, his object in coming being to settle
with me the details for the completion of the affair. Mr. Melray
having an objection to being seen entering or leaving an office the
chief business of which was the lending of money, it was arranged
between Dyson and myself that I should wait upon his relative at
half-past seven on the evening of the next day but one, at the George
and Dragon Hotel, where a private room would be engaged by him.
"I was at the hotel punctually at the time agreed upon, and on asking
for Mr. Melray was at once ushered into his room. I found the
shipowner, whom I had never seen before, to be a thin, grey-haired
man, somewhat prim and old-fashioned in his attire, and wearing
smoke-tinted spectacles. After a brief greeting we at once entered on
the business which had taken me there. The evening was closing in and
the room was in semi-darkness. I thought Mr. Melray would have rung
for lights, but he did not. There were pen and ink on the table. At
his request I stationed myself by him, and pointed out the particular
spot on the assignment and other documents where his signature was
required. That done, I folded up the papers and handed him a cheque
for three hundred pounds; he, in return, presented me with the policy,
which, till the sum lent should be repaid, together with interest as
agreed on, would remain in my custody. The whole affair was over in
five or six minutes at the most. At this distance of time there can be
no harm in my confessing that I thought it rather stingy treatment on
the part of Mr. Melray not to offer me as much as a glass of wine.
"Now, one of the two people who, twice every year, audit the
Corporation's accounts and verify their securities, is Mr. Dunning, a
lawyer well known both at Solchester and Merehampton, At the
half-yearly audit, which took place about three weeks after my
interview with Mr. Melray, the policy of assurance, together with
other documents bearing on the transaction, came, in due course, under
Mr. Dunning's inspection. You will readily imagine, then, that I was
not a little surprised when he came to me with the papers in his hand
and asked me to tell him all I knew of the transaction to which they
referred. Taking into account his official connection with the
Corporation, there was no breach of confidence in my complying with
his request. It was then my turn to put certain questions to him, and
the surprise I had felt before was in nowise lessened when he told me
that he had been Mr. Melray's lawyer, and, in certain matters, his
confidential adviser, for something like a quarter of a century; that,
from his knowledge of that gentleman's affairs, he could aver that it
was next to impossible that he should have been in need of such a sum
as three hundred pounds; that, so far as he was aware, Mr. Melray,
whose eyes were remarkably good for his age, had never worn spectacles
in his life; and, finally, that he, Mr. Dunning, believed the
signatures which I had witnessed to be neither more nor less than
unblushing forgeries of his client's name. Thereupon it was agreed
that he should take the suspected documents away with him and see Mr.
Melray on the morrow.
"Of what passed between the two I have no knowledge, but when I tell
you that, as far as I am concerned, the sequel of the affair was the
letter of which you have this morning shown me a copy, you are at
liberty, just as I was, to think what you like. Having got my 'pound
of flesh,' as I suppose you would term it, I returned the policy as
requested, and from that day to this have never sought to pry further
into the affair."
The first thing Winslade did after leaving Mr. Noyes was to despatch a
telegram to Mr. Melray, which served to bring that gentleman to
Solchester by the next train. It is not needful to dilate on the
grieved astonishment with which he listened to the other's recital of
what had passed between himself and the money-lender. Dyson had been a
favourite with both the brothers, not merely because he was the only
son of an orphan cousin--of whom, as a girl, they had been both proud
and fond--but also by reason of certain pleasant qualities of his own,
which, if they did not spring from any genuine depth or sincerity of
feeling, had all the appearance of doing so and answered their purpose
equally as well.
"We must go at once and find Dunning," were Mr. Melray's first words
when he had in some measure regained his composure. "So far we have
only heard half the story. It rests with him to tell us the
remainder."
They were fortunate enough to find Mr. Dunning at home and disengaged.
A very few minutes sufficed to acquaint the lawyer with the nature of
their errand.
"We know all that Mr. Noyes has to tell," said Mr. Melray in
conclusion. "We want you to supplement his narrative from the point
where his information comes to an end."
"That I can very readily do," said the lawyer. "When I showed Mr.
James Melray the loan-office documents, with what purported to be
three separate signatures of his attached thereto, he at once, in the
most emphatic and indignant terms, denounced the whole affair as an
audacious mixture of forgery and fraud. He had never seen Noyes in his
life, much less applied to him for a loan, or pledged his policy of
assurance. But when he had reached that point of his disclaimer I said
to him, 'Would it not be as well to satisfy yourself that the policy
is still in your possession?' 'Why, I had it in my hand no longer ago
than yesterday,' was his reply. 'It lies where it has always lain, on
the top shelf in the large safe, one of a bundle of documents tied
round with red tape.' Thereupon, as if to make assurance doubly sure,
he rose, crossed the room, unlocked the safe, and produced from the
interior the bundle of papers of which he had spoken and extracted
from the rest a large oblong envelope, which he brought to the table.
It was labelled in his own writing, 'Paid-up Policy of Assurance on
Own Life for 2,000_l_.; 'There,' he said, with a little triumph in his
tone, 'whatever else the rogue may have been guilty of he has not
succeeded in making away with this.' 'I hope you won't think me
unreasonable,' I replied, 'if I ask you to open the envelope and
examine its contents.' Scarcely had the words left my lips before,
with his office knife, he had slit open one end of the envelope and
drawn forth the enclosure. An instant later he sank back in his chair
with a groan. All that the envelope contained was some blank sheets of
engrossing paper.
"For a few moments I was afraid that Mr. Melray was about to have a
seizure of some kind, so colourless was his face and so glassy were
his eyes. He would not, however, let me ring for help, and gradually
he came round. A careful examination of the envelope revealed the
_modus operandi_ by which the fictitious contents had been substituted
for the genuine. The large black seal, with its impression of Mr.
Melray's monogram, had not been meddled with beyond the point of
detaching it bodily, probably with the help of a sharp penknife, from
the thick paper of the envelope. Then, after the substitution had been
effected, the seal had been reaffixed in its place with the help of a
little gum; and, finally, a thin rim of melted wax had been run round
it so as completely to hide any evidence of the envelope having been
tampered with. In the confidential position held by Dyson under his
kinsman, he had free access to the safe and its contents. When once he
had got the policy into his possession and had put everything in train
with Mr. Noyes, it was a comparatively simple matter, with the aid
of a wig and a few other accessories, to pass himself off in the
half-light of the August evening for a man double his own age. What
puzzled me then, and not only me, but Mr. Melray, and what puzzles me
still, is, why he contented himself with the comparatively small sum
of three hundred pounds, when he might have borrowed double that
amount on the security of the policy had he been so minded. But it may
have been that he saw, or thought he saw, the means of repaying a
small sum, and so of redeeming the policy, while it might have been
impossible for him to do so in the case of a more considerable loan.
"I have already told you, gentlemen," continued the lawyer, "how
terribly Mr. Melray was put about by the discovery of his young
relative's treachery and ingratitude, not to call his conduct by a
stronger name. In the first excess of his resentment he vowed that the
moment Dyson returned (just then he happened to be away on his annual
holiday) he would cause him to be arrested, and would prosecute him
with the most extreme rigour of the law. But, after a while, the flame
of his anger began to burn less fiercely. He called to mind that the
culprit was the only son of his favourite cousin, to whom he had
passed his word when she lay on her death-bed that he would act a
parent's part by the lad. He remembered, too, his unfortunate
bringing-up, and that his father had been a dissolute spendthrift,
bankrupt of all moral principle. Nor did he forget that young men
often flounder into difficulties almost unwittingly and through no
very grave dereliction on their part, and that, in order to get rid of
one difficulty, they sometimes succumb to the first temptation that
comes in their way, and thereby saddle themselves with an incubus of a
far more onerous kind. Finally, he decided that on Dyson's return he
would confront him with the evidences of his crime, but that, instead
of handing him over to the arm of the law, he would insist on his
quitting England for a certain term of years, and would forgive him to
the extent of finding him the means wherewith to make a fresh start in
life on the other side of the world. Me he bound to secrecy, while,
either on the same or the following day, he forwarded the three
hundred and fifty pounds to Noyes and thereby redeemed his policy.
"As we all know," said Robert Melray, "the interview between my
brother and Richard never took place. The latter did not get back from
his holidays till the third day after James's death; but it seems
somewhat remarkable, in view of my brother's intention, as avowed to
you, of confronting Richard with the evidence of his guilt, that the
criminatory documents should not have been found by Mr. Cray among his
papers."
"The absence of the papers in question, as it seems to me, can only be
explained by one of two suppositions. Either your brother afterwards
changed his mind and himself destroyed them, or else Dyson, either
suspecting or knowing that his crime had been brought to light during
his absence, contrived to find and appropriate them in advance of Mr.
Cray."
"Your last supposition seems to me the more likely of the two," said
Mr. Melray. "I recollect now that it was not till after the funeral
that Mr. Cray set about a systematic examination of my brother's
papers, so that, in the interim, Richard would have plenty of
opportunity to search for and find what he wanted. I declare that,
next to my poor brother's death, to-day's revelation is the most
distressing thing I have had to contend with in the whole course of my
life!"
"You say, Mr. Dunning, that my brother bound you to secrecy," resumed
Robert Melray after a pause. "Would it not have been better if you had
looked upon his death as virtually absolving you from your promise,
thereby enabling you to bring under my notice certain facts which I
have learnt to-day for the first time?"
"The point is one which I have debated with myself not once, but many
times. The conclusion I finally came to was that, having regard to
certain special features of the case, your brother's death did not
absolve me from my promise. That a grievous crime had been committed
could not be gainsaid; but if Mr. Melray chose to condone it that was
no business of mine. In all probability, as he said, it was the one
great sin of the young man's life, and who should say that it had not
been bitterly repented of? Further, how was I to be sure in what light
you would look at the affair? You might have chosen to prosecute the
culprit, which would have made it a very difficult matter for me ever
to forgive myself. In any case his character would have been blasted,
and his career, almost of necessity, ruined. Still, I am not prepared
to state positively what I might or might not have done, had it been
your intention to carry on the business of Melray Brothers, which,
almost as a matter of course, would have involved the retention of
your kinsman in your service. Knowing, however, as I have from the
first, that it is your resolve to get rid of the business as speedily
as possible and retire into private life, in which case you and he
would part, probably for ever, I deemed it best to keep the secret of
his delinquencies locked up in my own breast, where, I can assure you,
it had no lack of other secrets to keep it company."
"I will not say but that you have perhaps acted for the best,"
remarked Mr. Melray. "Still---- But at this stage of the affair it
would be futile to dwell on suppositions. What I have now to decide
upon is the nature of the steps which it behoves me to take after what
has been told me to-day. That, however," he added with a sigh, "is a
problem which requires consideration."
"May I ask whether Mr. Dyson is entitled to any bequest under his late
cousin's will?" It was Winslade who put the question.
"His name is down in the late Mr. Melray's will for a legacy of three
thousand pounds," replied the lawyer. "The reason he has not been paid
it before now is because the estate has not yet been finally wound
up."
Presently Mr. Melray and Winslade went their way, the former to the
railway station, the latter to prosecute certain inquiries on his own
account.
The first thing he did was to retrace his steps to the office of Mr.
Noyes.
"I must ask you to excuse me for troubling you again," he said to the
money-lender; "but what I am desirous of knowing is whether any
communication passed between Dyson and yourself after his return from
his holidays?"
"I wrote to him the day after the funeral, asking him to come and see
me. He came. Thereupon I proceeded to tell him of Mr. Melray's
discovery of the payment by the latter of the three hundred and fifty
pounds (principal and interest of the loan), and of my return to him
of the policy of assurance. What, however, I positively declined to
tell him, although he pressed me hard to do so, was how and by whose
agency the discovery had been brought about. From that day to this I
have seen nothing of Mr. Dyson, neither do I care if I never set eyes
on him again."
Philip Winslade thanked Mr. Noyes and took his leave. "There can be
little doubt," he said to himself as he walked along, "that, as
Dunning suggested, Dyson obtained access to the dead man's papers
before Mr. Cray had an opportunity of going through them, and
abstracted the promissory note and other documents which bore Mr.
Melray's signature as forged by himself."
In the course of the interview with Mr. Dunning the question had
suggested itself to him whether it was really a fact that Dyson did
not get back from his holidays till the third day after Mr. Melray's
death. In order to answer it, it would be needful for him to go to
Merehampton; but, as he had still another inquiry to make in
Solchester, he resolved to take that in hand first.
It was not till late in the evening that he got back to his hotel,
after having brought his inquiry to a successful issue. The nature of
it and its result cannot be told more succinctly than in the following
note:
"My dearest Fanny,--In Mrs. Melray's statement there occurs the
following passage: 'Evan was an especially handsome young man, with
large, black, lustrous eyes, and a dark Italian-looking face.'
Elsewhere she makes mention of his 'ebon brows.' Now, in face of this,
I have ascertained to-day beyond the possibility of doubt, and not
from one, but from three different sources, that Evan Wildash, instead
of being a dark-complexioned man with black eyes and 'ebon brows,' had
a particularly fair complexion, also that his eyes were blue-grey, and
the colour both of his hair and eyebrows a light reddish brown.
"Solve me the problem which is involved in this contradiction if you
can. For myself, I confess that it baffles me.
"For the present I have decided to say nothing of this to Mr. Melray.
It would only unsettle him and cause him to imagine all sorts of
things, and just now he has enough to occupy his thoughts, poor man!
"I will write you fully in the matter of R. D. in the course of a few
days. I shall be in Merehampton for an hour or two to-morrow, but it
is not advisable that we should meet.
"Ever and always yours,
"Phil."
In the dusk of the following evening Philip Winslade alighted at
Merehampton station. Thence he made his way to the head constable's
office, where he was already known, and where he found awaiting him
certain information which, the day before, he had asked by letter
might be obtained for him.
The information thus supplied him was to the effect that Richard
Dyson, at the time of Mr. Melray's death, was lodging with a widow of
the name of Parkinson, at No. 5 Lydd Place, but that he had removed to
fresh rooms about a month later. It was to No. 5 Lydd Place that
Winslade now betook himself.
Widow Parkinson proved to be quite willing to tell all she knew, which
was not much, about her late lodger, and even to adorn her somewhat
bald narrative with a little fanciful embroidery of her own invention.
She considered that she had a grievance against Mr. Dyson. According
to her account, he had left her, without any just cause or reason, in
what she was pleased to term a very shabby way, and had taken himself
and his belongings elsewhere; therefore did she feel herself at
liberty to throw reticence to the winds.
That from the widow's flood of talk, which at times threatened,
metaphorically, to wash him off his feet, Phil contrived to eliminate
the particular bit of information he was in search of goes without
saying. Mr. Melray came by his death on the evening of Friday,
September 18. According to his landlady, Dyson, at that time on his
holidays, did not put in an appearance at his lodgings till Monday,
the 21st, early on the morning of which day--that is to say, somewhere
between five and six o'clock--he knocked the widow up. The account of
himself which he volunteered was to the effect that he had just
arrived by an early train, having lengthened out his holiday to the
last possible moment, and that he was due back at the office at nine
o'clock that same morning. It was the widow herself who broke to him
the news of his cousin's tragical fate. "And awfully cut up about it
he was surely," she went on to remark. "He had always been a laughing,
careless, easy-going sort of gent, and I did not think he had so much
feeling in him."
Philip Winslade left No. 5 Lydd Place no wiser than he had entered it.
While his inquiries of the last few days had served to bring to light
many strange and hitherto unsuspected facts, they left the Loudwater
Tragedy as much a mystery as before, and to Phil, in the mood in which
he then was, it seemed likely to remain such for all time to come. But
it sometimes happens that when everything seems at a standstill, when
the way we would go is, as it were, blocked by a solid wall against
which it would be folly to dash ourselves, silent forces of which we
know nothing are at work, and in their own way and their own good time
bring round the appointed end, which, as often as not, proves to be an
end such as has not been dreamed of by us in any of our schemes of
what the future might possibly bring to pass.