Wingate laid down the letter and looked at Sheila, who was regarding him
expectantly.
"What do you make of it?" she repeated.
"It is evident that he had an enemy, and a very bitter one," answered
her lover. "The sentences are deliberate, but they appear to have been
written by a man who was in a white heat of passion when he penned
them."
"Smeaton ought to see that letter, without loss of time, dear," she
said.
"I quite agree. His trained intelligence may get more out of it than we
can. I will make an appointment with him for to-morrow morning, and I
will be here when he comes."
Smeaton arrived next morning, hoping that at last he might discover a
substantial clue. He read the brief note carefully and deliberately.
"Is it important, do you think?" inquired Sheila eagerly.
"In my opinion it is of very considerable importance. Miss Monkton," he
replied. "I think it will help us."
"It certainly proves that he had a secret enemy," interjected Wingate,
"and one who would hesitate at nothing that would secure him revenge."
"I quite agree, sir. The letter breathes the most intense hatred in
every line. The motive of that hatred we have got to discover."
Then the detective, turning to Sheila, said: "Now, Miss Monkton, there
is a little information that I am sure you will be able to give us. I
am not so well posted in your father's biography as I ought to be. But,
before he became a prominent politician, I understand that he was a
barrister with an extensive and lucrative practice."
"That is so," corroborated Sheila. "He did not often talk about those
times, but I have always understood that he made quite a big income at
the Bar."
"And when did he retire from his profession?"
"About fifteen years ago."
"And he resolved to say good-bye to the Bar and devote himself entirely
to politics?"
Sheila nodded. "That is quite true. He had a very firm opinion that a
man could not serve two masters."
"Was he on the Chancery or the Common Law side?" was Smeaton's next
question.
"On the Common Law," replied Sheila. "But why do you ask that
question?"
"You shall know in good time. Miss Monkton. Well, we may take it,
then, that this vindictive letter was written more than fifteen years
ago."
"While he was still at the Bar," interrupted Wingate, who was beginning
to realise the point of the detective's reasoning. "You are assuming
that this venomous epistle did not come from a political enemy."
"It is an assumption for which I have reasonable grounds," was Smeaton's
answer. "There has been no bitterness in party politics ever since Mr
Monkton became a conspicuous figure in the House. And we know that,
while he was most popular with his own side, he was respected and liked
by his political opponents."
"Is it too much to ask you to give us the benefit of any theory you have
formed, Mr Smeaton?" suggested Sheila, in her pretty, gracious way.
"With all the pleasure in life, my dear young lady. This letter goes
back, in my opinion, to your father's barrister days, when he was one of
the foremost counsel in England. I asked you just now whether he was on
the Equity or the Common Law side, and you wondered why I asked the
question."
"I am still wondering," said Sheila simply.
"On the Equity side they try all sorts of cases concerned with points of
law, the majority of them of a very dry and uninteresting character. I
should not look in an Equity case for a defeated litigant who would turn
into a vindictive enemy of the type of the writer of this letter."
The young people began to see, as yet very dimly, whither he was leading
them.
"On the Common Law side, on the contrary, we are brought into the world
of human passion and emotion; one in which the issues of life or death
are at stake. We will suppose that your father, in the plenitude of his
powers, is retained as counsel against some adroit rogue, some swindling
company promoter, for example, who up to that moment had managed to keep
himself well on the right side of the law."
They began to see light, and listened with the closest attention.
"We will say this swindler, a more than usually clever rascal, is living
in luxury with his ill-gotten gains, when he makes a slip that brings
him within reach of the long arm of justice. One of his victims (or
perhaps several in combination) brings an action against him for the
return of the money he has inveigled out of him by his lying
prospectuses. He employs big counsel to defend him, but your father
wins his case. The wealthy rogue is forced to disgorge, finds his
occupation gone, and is reduced to penury."
Sheila nodded to show that she was following his argument.
"I am assuming for a moment that it is a civil action, and that it
disclosed sufficient evidence to justify his arrest on a criminal charge
later on. I deduce that from the fact that he was not a convicted felon
at the time of writing that letter, otherwise he would not have been
able to write and send it to your father. The meaning of the words
`forced me to fly the country' indicate, in my opinion, that he was in
hourly fear of arrest."
"It seems a very feasible theory," remarked Wingate.
"The rest is easy to understand. He nourishes a morbid hatred for the
man who has been the means of menacing his liberty, and driving him from
the society he polluted. He regards him as a personal enemy, not merely
the instrument of the justice he has defied. While smarting under this,
to his distorted ideas, sense of wrong, he pens the letter and has it
conveyed to your father by some trusted confederate. As there is no
stamp or postmark on it, it was conveyed by hand."
Wingate looked at Sheila, and she returned his glance. They were both
greatly impressed by the detective's clear reasoning.
Smeaton took up the half-sheet of notepaper, and submitted it to a close
observation.
"The man who wrote it is, I should judge, a keen business man of
methodical habits, inclined to neatness, of a strong but not impulsive
character. An impulsive man would have torn the sheet across, leaving a
rough and jagged edge. It has been pressed down with the finger and
thumb, and then carefully cut."
He held the small sheet up to the light, and made further observations.
"A peculiar paper, peculiar, I mean, as to the texture. The watermark,
in its entirety, is, fortunately for us, on this half-sheet. That
enables us to trace where it comes from. Come here for a moment and
stand beside me."
They did so, followed his pointing finger, and saw a shield bearing a
coat-of-arms, and beneath, the words: "Westford Mill."
"That will help you," cried Sheila eagerly.
"I hope so. It is, as I said, a paper of peculiar texture, and
doubtless many tons of it have been sold. If, as I guess, it is now off
the market, I shall be compelled to fix a date. If I do that, it would
considerably narrow the field of my inquiries."
After a little further conversation, Smeaton took his leave with the
letter in his possession. Sheila and Wingate, when they were alone,
indulged in mutual admiration of his powers of analysis and deduction.
The detective, an hour later, looked in upon Mr Newsom-Perry, with whom
he was slightly acquainted, and handed him the document.
"We found this amongst the papers you sent to Miss Monkton," he
explained. "I called on the chance of finding that your client had
spoken to you, at one time or another, of some man who sent him a
threatening letter. I may say that we have found no allusion to it
amongst the other papers."
"Which seems to show that Monkton did not attach any importance to it
himself, I should say," remarked the solicitor. "No, so far as I am
concerned he never alluded to the matter. You attach some importance to
it--eh?"
"Some," replied Smeaton guardedly.
"Of course, you have a wider experience of these things than I, and you
are wise to neglect no possible clue. Still, I should think that any
big counsel in extensive practice has many letters of this kind from
impulsive and angry litigants, who regard him as the author of their
ruin."
Smeaton rose. "It may be so," he said quietly. "This man was angry,
but he was not impulsive; the handwriting alone proves that. He wrote
the letter at white heat, but he is of a resolute and determined
character."
Even though the writer of the anonymous threat had overlooked the fact
that a watermark was on the paper, the latter point was not half so easy
to clear up as Sheila and Wingate expected.
To the chief firms of paper makers and paper agents in the City Smeaton,
through the following days, showed a tracing of the watermark, but
without result.
Nobody could identify it.
The managing director of one firm of paper agents in Queen Victoria
Street declared it to be a foreign paper, even though it was marked
"Westford Mill."
"The vogue for English notepaper on the Continent has led French and
German mills to produce so-called `English writing paper'," he added.
"And if I am not mistaken this is a specimen."
For nearly a week Smeaton prosecuted his inquiries of stationers,
wholesale and retail, in all parts of the metropolis, taking with him
always the tracing of the watermark. He did not carry the letter, for
obvious reasons.
One day at a small retail stationer's in the Tottenham Court Road, when
he showed the tracing to the elderly shopkeeper, the man exclaimed:
"Oh, yes! I've seen that before. It's foreign. When I was an
assistant at Grimmel and Grice's in Bond Street, Mr Grice bought a
quantity of it from Paris because of its unusual colour and texture. It
was quite in vogue for a time, and it could only be obtained from us."
"Then all of this particular paper came from Grimmel and Grice's?"
"Certainly, sir, I recollect the `Westford Mill' well. We supplied it
to half the aristocracy of London."
Smeaton, much pleased with his discovery, took a taxi to Bond Street,
and entering the fashionable stationers' addressed himself to the first
person he saw, a young man of about twenty-five.
"Do you make this paper nowadays?" he asked.
The shopman examined it, and shook his head. "No, sir, that paper has
not been sold here since I've been in the business."
"And how long would that be?"
"A matter of six years or so."
"I am anxious to make some further inquiries," said Smeaton, after a
moment's pause. "Who is the oldest assistant in the shop?"
"Mr Morgan, sir. He's been with Grimmel and Grice a matter of nearly
fifty years, man and boy. He's on the other side. I will take you to
him."
Smeaton was introduced to the veteran Mr Morgan, an alert-looking man,
in spite of his years. Smeaton explained his name and errand, adding
that he was from Scotland Yard. Morgan at once became interested. He
looked at the watermark.
"I remember that paper well," he said at length. "It had a tremendous
vogue for a little time; we couldn't get it over from Paris fast enough.
Then it went as suddenly out of fashion."
"I suppose you can't help me with any dates?"
"Oh, but indeed I can, Mr Smeaton. I have a wonderful memory for
everything connected with the business. Old Mr Grice used to say that
my memory was as good as the firm's books. The paper started just
twenty-five years ago, and it ran for five years. After that, no more
was made."
Smeaton expressed his gratitude. Mr Morgan's excellent memory would
shorten his labours considerably.
"Can you give me any clue to these letters on the envelope, I wonder?"
But here Mr Morgan was at fault. "We supplied hundreds upon hundreds
of customers at the time. And all our old ledgers were burnt in our
fire fifteen years ago. But I think I recognise the workmanship of the
cipher. I should say that stamp was cut by Millingtons in Clerkenwell
Road. They made a speciality of that kind of thing years ago. If you
go there, they may have some record. They're new people there now; old
Mr Millington is my senior by ten years or more. He sold the business
about fifteen years ago. But he is still alive, and lives somewhere in
the Camberwell direction."
Smeaton entered the address in his notebook, and shook Mr Morgan
cordially by the hand. He would go to the Clerkenwell Road, and, if
necessary, hunt up the ancient Mr Millington. If he possessed as good
a memory as his friend some very useful information might be gathered.