brought even a toothbrush!”
“Buy one!” he retorted. “Excellent shops in the place, my dear.”
Madrasia stared at him harder than ever.
“You’re developing a very extraordinary habit of ordering people about,
Jimmie!” she exclaimed at last. “Why all this insistence?”
“Needs must where the devil drives!” he answered with a cynical laugh.
“Are you the devil?” she asked.
“I don’t know exactly what I am, my dear, since night before last,” he
replied, with a relapse into mildness. “But I’m hoping to know before
long. And in the meantime, let’s be comfortable--here’s food and drink.”
Two waiters came in with hot dishes; we sat down. I don’t know if
Parslewe had expected us to be unusually hungry, but he had certainly
taken pains to order a delightful lunch and to prove to us that he had
a very nice and critical taste in champagne. And all the time we were
lunching he kept the waiters in the room, artfully, I thought, lest
Madrasia should open out on the subject uppermost in our thoughts;
true, he talked freely himself, but it was all about a play that he had
seen at the Theatre Royal on the previous evening, and of which he was
enthusiastically full.
“But you shall see it yourself to-night,” he wound up. “I’ve booked two
seats--Craye shall take you.”
“And--you?” asked Madrasia. “Won’t it bear seeing twice in succession?”
“I’ve some business,” he answered. “I shall be out when you return;
we’ll compare notes in the morning.”
I saw that Madrasia was dying to ask him what his business was, but
the waiters were still in the room. It was not until they had served
us with coffee and gone away for good that Parslewe came to what we
certainly regarded as business. Giving me a cigar and lighting one
himself, he turned his chair towards the hearth, settled in an easy
position with one elbow on the table, and flung us a glance over his
shoulder.
“Now, then!” he said. “What’s gone on up yonder since I left? And as
you can’t both speak at once, settle between yourselves which is going
to be spokesman. But first--where is that box?”
Madrasia, the morning being cold, had come in furs; amongst them a
big muff, in the pocket of which she had carried the copper box. She
rose, extracted it from its hiding-place, and laid it on the table at
Parslewe’s side; then she pointed a finger at me.
“Let him tell,” she said. “I’ll correct him where he’s wrong.”
“Go ahead, Craye,” commanded Parslewe. “Detail!”
I told him of everything that had happened at Kelpieshaw since his own
mysterious disappearance, watching him carefully and even narrowly
as I talked. He listened silently and impassively; only once did he
interrupt me, and that was to ask for a more particular description
of Mr. Augustus Weech. He seemed to reflect a good deal when he got
that, but he let me go on to the end without further questioning, and
received the message from Murthwaite just as phlegmatically as he had
taken in everything else. In point of absolute inscrutability and
imperviousness Parslewe in that particular mood of his could have given
points to the Sphinx.
“And that’s all,” I concluded. “All!”
“All!” repeated Madrasia. “Except that I reiterate precisely what
Murthwaite said--you’ve got to go back to Wooler and see him and
tell him all about it and enable him to keep his word to Sir Charles
Sperrigoe. And that’s that!”
Parslewe’s thin lips resolved themselves into that straight, rigid line
which I had already come to know as well as I knew my own reflection in
a mirror. When he relaxed them it was to indulge in one of his sardonic
laughs, which died away into a cynical chuckle and ended in one of his
angelic smiles, cast, of course, in his ward’s direction.
“Oh, that’s that, is it, my dear?” he said, sweetly. “Well, then, it
isn’t! I’m not going to traipse back to Wooler--till I please! I’m not
going to suit the convenience of either Charlie Sperrigoe or Jackie
Murthwaite--till I please! I reckon I know my own business as well as
the next man, and I shall just carry it out--as I please! And if you
want me to indulge in modern slang--that’s that!”
“And it all means that you know a great deal more than you’ve let out!”
exclaimed Madrasia.
He treated us to another of his sardonic bursts of laughter at that.
“I’m not aware that I’ve let out anything at all, my dear, so far!” he
retorted. “And I’ve no intention of doing so until----”
“Until you please!” said Madrasia. “Precisely! More mystery! Really,
Jimmie, for a respectable elderly gentleman----”
He laughed again, throwing up his head as if he enjoyed being scolded,
rose from his chair, and, standing on the hearth with his hands in his
pockets, looked from one to the other of us as if he enjoyed seeing us
wonder. Suddenly he drew one hand out, full of money. There was gold
in those days!--plenty of it--and Parslewe had a fist full. He held it
out to Madrasia.
“Go and buy a toothbrush!” he said. “You know the town--go and do a
bit of shopping. Better get all you want--didn’t I say we might be two
nights? Go and amuse yourself, my dear, and leave mysteries alone.
There are no mysteries--to me, anyway.” He thrust the money into her
hands, stood smilingly by while she put on her furs, and when she had
gone, turned to me with a laugh.
“Trust a woman for making the most of a mystery, Craye!” he said. “If
there isn’t one she’ll invent one.”
“Is there no mystery in this matter, then?” I asked. “It seems to me
that there’s a pretty handsome one. But evidently not to you--you’re in
the inside of things, you see, Mr. Parslewe.”
“Aye, well,” he answered. “I dare say I see the game from another
angle. However, I’m not quite so thickheaded as not to realise that
what’s pretty plain to me mayn’t be at all plain to other folk, and I’m
going to let you into a bit of my confidence. Come downstairs to the
smoking-room, and we’ll have these windows opened--this room’s got a
bit stuffy.”
He rang the bell and gave some orders about ventilating the room and
about having some light supper laid there for eleven o’clock that
evening (in readiness, he said in an aside to me, for our return from
the play), and then led me down to a quiet corner of the smoking-room.
And there, having first lighted another cigar, he proceeded to divest
the copper box of the neat wrappings in which Madrasia had carried it
from Kelpieshaw. He set it on the little table before us, and we both
stared at it. He, in particular, stared at it so hard that I began to
think the mere sight of the thing was hypnotising him. Suddenly he
started, and began to fumble in his waistcoat pocket.
“Aye,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “I shouldn’t wonder if
it is so!”
With that he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket a tiny foot-rule,
ivory, in folding sections, and, opening the copper box, measured its
interior depth. Then he measured the exterior depth, and turned to me
with one of his dangerously sweet smiles.
“The devil!” he exclaimed. “Craye!--there’s a false bottom to this box!
I’ve been suspecting that for the last half-hour, and by all that is,
it’s true!”
I was beginning to get excited, and I stared at the box as hard as he
had done.
“You make that out by measurement?” I asked.
“Precisely! There’s a difference of a quarter of an inch between the
interior and exterior depths,” he replied. “That means there’s the very
slightest of cavities, but ample to conceal--what?”
“Nothing much, I should think,” said I.
“No; but I’ve heard of very important and fateful things going into
small compass,” he remarked. “Anyway, there it is! You can’t get away
from the measurements. There’s a space--there! And there’ll be some
trick of opening the thing from the bottom--probably connected with
these feet.”
He pointed to the four circular knobs on which the copper box
rested, but made no attempt to touch them; his thoughts seemed to
be otherwhere. And after thinking a little, he suddenly turned to me
confidentially.
“I told you I’d tell you something,” he said. “You’re a dependable
chap, Craye--I showed that by leaving the girl in your charge. She
likes you, too, and I suppose you two young people will fall in love
with each other if you haven’t done so already, and if you have, my
lad--all right! You’ll make a big name in your art--but never mind
that; I’ll tell you a bit about this box. Not how it came into my
possession; the time for that is not yet. But when I did get it it was
locked, and I had no key to it, and never bothered to get one found
or made. When it got a wee bit damaged, I took it to Bickerdale, here
in this town, and asked him to put it right. He was a bit wary of
dealing with it, but said he knew a man who would, so I left it with
him, and, incidentally, asked him, while they were about it, to have it
unlocked. And now, Craye, now I think that while it was in Bickerdale’s
hands, or in the other man’s hands, something was abstracted
from that box--something that I never knew was in it. Abstracted
then--unless----”
He paused, making a queer, speculating grimace.
“Unless--what?” I asked.
He leaned nearer to my shoulder, dropping his voice, though there was
no one at all near us.
“Unless it was abstracted at Kelpieshaw yesterday, by that chap Weech!”
he replied. “Weech? Augustus? What a name!”
“Weech!” I exclaimed. “By him! Impossible!”
“And why impossible, my lad?” he asked. “No impossibility about it!
Didn’t you tell me just now, upstairs, while you were giving your
account of all that had transpired, that you and Madrasia went up to my
library to compare the titles of the books in _The Times_ advertisement
with certain volumes on my shelves, leaving Master Augustus Weech
alone--with the copper box in front of him? Of course!”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “I certainly never thought of that!”
“No doubt,” he remarked coolly. “But I did. However, now we come to
another matter, though connected with the main one. I have business
to-night which, I hope, will illuminate me as to if anything was in
the box or has been abstracted from it since--by Weech--and I want you
to do two or three things for me, chiefly in the way of looking after
Madrasia. We’ll dine early, to begin with. Then you can take her to
the play--here are the tickets while I remember them. When you come
back, you’ll find a bit of supper in that private sitting-room. Before
you go, I shall tell Madrasia that I may be very late in coming in, so
after supper she’ll go to bed. Now comes in a job for you! I want you
to wait up, in that sitting-room, until twelve o’clock--midnight. If
I’m not in by exactly twelve”--here he paused and produced a sealed
envelope which he placed in my hand--“put on your overcoat, and take
that round, yourself, to the police station--it’s not far off--ask to
see a responsible person, and hand it to him. Do you understand?”
“Every word!” said I. “But--police? Do you anticipate danger?”
“Not so much danger as difficulty, though I won’t deny that there may
be danger,” he answered. “But do what I say. You’ll find an inspector
on night duty--he’ll know my name when he reads my note, because I’m a
county magistrate. If he asks you a question or two, answer. And, if
you like, go with him if he goes himself, or with whoever he sends. Is
it all clear?--midnight?”
“It’s all clear,” I replied, putting the sealed envelope in my pocket.
“And I’ll carry it out. But I hope you’re not running into personal
danger, Mr. Parslewe!”
His lips tightened, and he looked away, as if to intimate that that
was a matter he wouldn’t discuss, and presently he began to talk about
something of a totally different nature. I wanted to ask him what I
should do supposing anything did happen to him, but I dared not; I saw
well enough that he had done with things for the time being, and that
there was nothing to be done but to carry out his instructions.
We dined quietly downstairs at half-past six; when, nearly an hour
later, Madrasia and I drove off to the theatre, we left Parslewe calmly
chatting to an old gentleman in the lounge. He waved his cigar to us as
we passed, then called Madrasia back.
“You go to bed when you get in, child,” he said. “At least, when you’ve
had some supper. Don’t wait for me; I mayn’t be in till the early
hours.”
Then he waved her off, and we went away, Madrasia mildly excited at the
thought of the play, and I feeling uncommonly anxious and depressed.
For the possibilities of the situation which might arise at midnight
were not pleasant to contemplate, and the more I thought about them the
less I liked them. It was useless to deny that Parslewe was a strange,
even an eccentric man, who would do things in his own fashion, and I
was sufficiently learned in the ways of the world, young as I was, to
know that such men run into danger. Where was he going that night,
and to do--what? Evidently on some mission which might need police
interference. And supposing that interference came along too late? What
was I to do then? When all was said and done, and in spite of what he
had said about myself and Madrasia in his easy-going fashion, I was
almost a stranger to him and to her, and I foresaw complications if
anything serious happened to him. I did not particularly love Parslewe
that evening; I thought he might have given me more of his confidence.
But there it was! and there was Madrasia. And Madrasia seemed to have
been restored to a more serene state of mind by this rejoining of her
guardian; evidently she possessed a sound belief in Parslewe’s powers.
“Did he tell you anything this afternoon when I was out shopping?” she
inquired suddenly as we rode up Grey Street. “I’m sure you must have
talked.”
“Well,” I answered. “A little. He thinks the copper box has a false
bottom, a narrow cavity, in it, and that something has been concealed
there, and stolen from it. Possibly by our friend Weech.”
“Weech!” she exclaimed. “When?”
“When we left him alone with the box while we went up to the library,”
I replied. “Of course, that’s possible--if Weech knew the secret.”
This seemed to fill her with new ideas.
“I wonder!” she said, musingly. “And is--is that what he’s after, here,
in Newcastle?”
“Something of the sort,” I assented. “At least, I gather so. You know
what he is--better than I do.”
She sat for a time in silence--in fact, till the cab drew up at the
theatre. Then she spoke.
“There’s one thing about Jimmie,” she remarked, reassuringly, “nobody
will get the better of him! So let him work things out.”
I did not tell her that there was no question of choice on my part. We
saw the play which Parslewe had commended so highly; we went back to
the hotel; we had supper together; then Madrasia went off to her room.
And it was then twenty minutes to twelve, and I sat out every one of
them, waiting, watching the door, listening for a step in the corridor
without. But Parslewe did not come.
And at one minute past twelve I seized my overcoat and cap and left the
room.
IX
_The Whitesmith’s Parlour_
There were few people about in the big hall of the hotel, but amongst
them was the principal hall-porter, who, as I came there, appeared
to be handing over his duties to his deputy for the night. An idea
occurred to me, and I went up to him, drawing him aside.
“You know Mr. Parslewe?” I asked.
“Mr. Parslewe, sir--yes, sir!” he answered.
“Have you seen him go out this evening?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Parslewe went out just about eleven, sir--not many
minutes before you came in with the young lady.”
“You haven’t seen him come in again?”
“Not yet, sir--not been in since then.”
I nodded, and went out into the street. So Parslewe’s business,
whatever it was, had been fixed for a late hour, after eleven. He might
have gone with us to the theatre, then! Unless, indeed, he had been
doing other business at the hotel. But it was no use speculating on
these things, my job was to do his bidding. And it was not cowardice on
my part that I heartily disliked the doing of it. I had no idea as to
the whereabouts of the police station. Parslewe had said it was close
by, but I did not know in which direction. I might have inquired in the
hotel, but I did not wish the hotel people to know that we were or were
about to be mixed up with the police; it might have got to Madrasia’s
ears before I got back. There were still people in the streets, I could
ask my way. And just then, as I might have expected, a policeman came
round the corner, and at my question directed me. Parslewe had been
quite correct, the place was close at hand.
I went in, wonderingly, having never been in such a building before,
and not knowing what to expect, I had no more idea of what a police
headquarters was like than of the interior of an Eastern palace,
perhaps less. It was all very ordinary, when I got inside; there was
a well-lighted office, with a counter, and tables, and desks; three
or four policemen stood or sat about, examining papers or writing
in books. One of them, seeing me approach the counter and probably
noticing my diffident and greenhorn air, got off his stool, put his pen
behind his ear, and came across with an almost fatherly solicitude on
his fresh-coloured face.
“Can I see some responsible official?” I asked.
He half turned, indicating a man who wore braid on his closely buttoned
tunic, and sat at a desk in the corner.
“Inspector, sir,” he said. “Speak to him.”
He lifted a hinged door in the counter, and I went across to the man in
question. He looked up as I drew near, and gave me a swift glance from
top to toe. I had a vague sense of thankfulness that I was well dressed.
“Yes!” he said.
I got close to him. Possibly I looked mysterious--anyway, I felt so.
“You know Mr. James Parslewe of Kelpieshaw, near Wooler?” I suggested.
“Yes!”
“Mr. Parslewe is staying at the North Eastern Station Hotel. I
am staying there with him. He asked me, in case of a certain
eventuality----”
He interrupted me with an almost imperceptible smile--amused, I think,
at my precision of language.
“What eventuality?”
“In case he was not back at his hotel by midnight, I was to bring and
give you this note from him,” I answered, and laid the letter on his
desk. “He was not back--so I came straight to you.”
He picked up and opened the letter and began to read it; from where I
stood I could see that it covered three sides of a sheet of the hotel
notepaper. There was not a sign of anything--surprise, perplexity,
wonder--on the man’s face as he read--and he only read the thing over
once. Then he folded the letter, put it in his desk, and turned to me.
“Mr. Alvery Craye, I think?” he asked.
“Yes,” said I.
“Do you know what’s in this letter, Mr. Craye?” he went on. “Did Mr.
Parslewe tell you its contents?”
“No,” I replied. “But he said I could answer any questions you asked,
and, if you go anywhere in consequence of the letter, I could go with
you.”
“I’ve only one question,” he remarked. “Do you know what time Mr.
Parslewe left the hotel?”
“Yes,” I said. “I found that out. He left just about eleven--a few
minutes before, I gathered from the hall-porter.”
He nodded, turned a key in his desk, put the key in his pocket, rose,
and asking me to sit down a moment, went across the room and through a
door at its farther extremity. Within a couple of minutes he was back
again, in company with a man in plain clothes; he himself had put on a
uniform overcoat and peaked cap. He made some whispered communication
to a sergeant who was busily writing at a table in the centre of the
room; then he beckoned to me, and the three of us went out into the
night.
At that moment I had not the slightest idea as to our destination.
There was a vague notion, utterly cloudy, in my mind that we might be
going to some dark and unsavoury quarter of the city; I had been in
Newcastle two or three times previously, and in my wanderings had
realised that it harboured some slums which were quite as disreputable
as anything you can find in Liverpool or Cardiff. But my companions
turned up town, towards the best parts of the place. It was quiet in
those spacious and stately streets, and the echo of our footsteps
sounded eerie in the silence. Nobody spoke until we had walked some
distance; then the inspector turned to me.
“Did Mr. Parslewe speak to you of any possible danger, Mr. Craye, as
regards what he was after?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you precisely what he did say,” I answered. “He said, ‘Not
so much danger as difficulty, though I won’t deny that there may be
danger.’ His exact words!”
“Just so,” he remarked. “And he didn’t tell you much more?”
“He told me nothing, except that he was hoping to get hold of a
possible something,” I replied. “If you know Mr. Parslewe, you
know that on occasion, when it suits him, he can be both vague and
ambiguous.”
“I know Mr. Parslewe--well enough!” he answered, with a sly chuckle.
“Highly eccentric gentleman, Mr. Parslewe, and uncommonly fond of
having his own way, and going his own way, and taking his own line
about everything. There isn’t one of his brother magistrates in all
Northumberland who isn’t aware of that, Mr. Craye! Then, you have no
idea of where we are going just now?”
“No idea whatever!” I answered.
“Well, as he said you could go with us, I may as well tell you,” he
remarked, with another laugh. “We’re going to the house and shop of
one Bickerdale, a whitesmith and coppersmith, in a side street just up
here. That’s where Mr. Parslewe’s gone.”
Of course, I might have known it! I felt myself an ass for not having
thought of it before. But I started, involuntarily.
“The name seems familiar to you,” suggested the inspector.
“Yes, I know it!” I asserted. “I’ve been in that shop. Oh! so he’s
there, is he?”
“That’s where we’re to look for him, anyway,” he replied. “But whether
we do find him there, or, if we do, under what conditions it’ll be,
that I don’t know. However, we’re carrying out his instructions, and
here’s the corner of the street.”
I knew that corner well enough, and the street, too. It was there
that I had shadowed White Whiskers and the Newcastle solicitor, and
thence that I had retreated after my passage-at-arms with Bickerdale.
Presently we stood before the side door of Bickerdale’s shop, the door
which presumably led to his house at the rear. There was no light
visible through the transom over the door, none in the shop window,
none in the windows over the shop. And when the plain-clothes man,
in response to the inspector’s order, rang the bell and knocked in
addition, no reply came.
It was not until we had knocked and rung three times, each more loudly
and urgently, that we heard sounds inside the door. They were the
sounds of somebody cautiously drawing back a bolt and turning a key.
But no light showed through keyhole or letter-box, or the glass in the
transom, and the inspector gave his man a whispered instruction.
“Turn your lamp full on whoever opens the door!” he said. “And get a
foot over the threshold.”
I held my breath as the door was opened. It moved back; the
plain-clothes man’s light from a bull’s-eye lantern flashed on a
frightened, inquiring face looking round the edge of the door.
_Weech!_
I could have laughed aloud as Weech turned and fled, for he let out
a squeal at the sight of us, and bolted for all the world like a
frightened rabbit. And, of course, he left the door wide open, and
we were at once on his heels, and after him down the passage. He
swept aside a curtain, flung open a door behind it, and burst into a
well-lighted parlour or living-room with a sharp cry of warning.
“Police!”
I got a full view of the men in that room in one quick glance from
between the two policemen as they walked in. There was a table in its
centre, an oblong table; at our end of it, with his back to us, sat
Parslewe, calmly smoking a cigar; at the other, morose, perplexed,
defiant, sat Bickerdale. And behind Bickerdale, leaning against a
dresser or sideboard, stood Pawley!
These three all looked towards us as we entered, each with a different
expression. Bickerdale’s face became angry, almost savage; Pawley
appeared, after his first glance of surprise, to be intensely annoyed.
But Parslewe, half turning, motioned to the inspector and whispered
a few words to him; the inspector, his plain-clothes man, and myself
remained after that in the doorway by which we had entered, and
Parslewe gave his attention to Bickerdale, to whose side, near the
fireplace, Weech, still nervous and upset, had made his way round the
table.