In Which Mr. Varney Once More Pulls the Strings
For the second time, in connection with the death of Daniel Purcell,
Mr. Varney found it necessary to give an attentive eye to the
movements of the postman. He had ascertained from the post office the
times at which letters were delivered in the neighbourhood of
Margaret’s flat; and now, in the gloom of a December evening, he
lurked in the vicinity until he saw the postman approaching down the
street and delivering letters at the other flats on his way. Then he
entered the now familiar portals and made his way quietly up the
stairs until he reached Margaret’s outer door. Here he paused for a
few moments, standing quite still and listening intently. If he had
been discovered he would have simply come to pay a call. But he was
not; and the silence from within suggested that there was nobody in
the hall. With a furtive look round, he drew a letter from his pocket
and silently slipped it into the letter-box, catching the flap on his
finger as it fell to prevent it from making any sound. Then he turned
and softly stole down the stairs; and as he reached the ground floor
the postman walked into the entry.
It was not without reluctance that he came away. For she was behind
that door, almost certainly; she, his darling, for whose freedom from
the imaginary shackles that she wore, he was carrying out this
particular deception. But his own guilty conscience made it seem to
him that he had better not be present when the fabricated letter
arrived. So he tore himself from the beloved precincts and went his
way, thinking his thoughts and dreaming his dreams.
Varney’s surmise was correct. Margaret was within. But it was perhaps
as well that he had refrained from paying a call, for she was not
alone, and his visit would not have been entirely welcome. About half
an hour before his arrival, Jack Rodney had ascended those stairs and
had been admitted in time to join Margaret at a somewhat belated tea.
“My excuse for coming to see you,” said Rodney, “is in my pocket—the
front page of _The Times_.”
“I don’t know what you mean by an excuse,” Margaret replied. “You know
perfectly well that I am always delighted to see you. But perhaps you
mean an excuse to yourself for wasting your time in gossiping with
me.”
“Indeed I don’t,” said he, “I count no time so profitably employed as
that which I spend here.”
“I don’t quite see what profit you get,” she rejoined, “unless it is
the moral benefit of doing a kindness to a lonely woman.”
“I should like to take that view if I honestly could. But the fact is
that I come here for the very great pleasure of seeing you and talking
to you; and the profit that I get is that very great pleasure. I only
wish the proprieties allowed me to come oftener.”
“So do I,” she said, frankly. “But you know that, too. And now tell
what there is in the front page of _The Times_ that gave you this
sorely needed excuse.”
Rodney laughed in a boisterous, schoolboy fashion as he drew from his
pocket a folded leaf of the newspaper. “It’s the great advertisement,”
said he. “The Thorndyke-Varney or Varney-Thorndyke advertisement. It
came out yesterday morning. Compose yourself to listen and I’ll read
it out to you.”
He opened the paper out, refolded it into a convenient size, and with
a portentous preliminary “Ahem!” read aloud in a solemn sing-song:
“_Purcell, D._ is earnestly requested to communicate to M. or her
solicitor his intentions with regard to the future. If his present
arrangements are permanent she would be grateful if he would notify
her to that effect in order that she may make the necessary
modifications in her own.”
As he finished, he looked up at her and laughed contemptuously.
“Well, Maggie,” said he, “what do you think of it?”
She laughed merrily and looked at him with hardly-disguised fondness
and admiration. “What a schoolboy you are, John!” she exclaimed. “How
annoyed Dr. Thorndyke would be if he could hear you! But it is rather
funny. I can imagine Dan’s face when he reads it—if he ever does read
it.”
“So can I,” chuckled Rodney. “I can see him pulling down his lower lip
and saying ‘Gur’ in that pleasant way that he has. But isn’t it a
perfectly preposterous exhibition? Just imagine a man of Thorndyke’s
position doing a thing like this! Why, it is beneath the dignity of a
country attorney’s office-boy. I can’t conceive how he got his
reputation. He seems to be an absolute greenhorn.”
“Probably he is quite good at his own specialty,” suggested Margaret.
“But this _is_ his own specialty. The truth is that the ordinary
lawyer’s prejudice against experts is to a great extent justified.
They are really humbugs and pretenders. You saw what his attitude was
when I suggested that he should get Dan under observation. Of course
it was the obvious thing to do, and one would suppose that it would be
quite in his line. Yet as soon as I made the suggestion, he raised all
sorts of difficulties; whereas a common private inquiry agent would
have made no difficulty about it at all.”
“Do you think not?” Margaret asked, a little eagerly. “Perhaps it
might be worth while to employ one. It would be such a blessed thing
to get rid of Dan for good.”
“It would, indeed,” Rodney agreed heartily. “But perhaps we had better
see if Thorndyke gets a bite. If he fails, we can try the other plan.”
Margaret was slightly disappointed. She wanted to see some progress
made and was a little impatient of the law’s delays. But the truth is
that Rodney had been speaking rather at random. When he came to
consider what information he had to give to a private detective, the
affair did not look quite such plain sailing.
“Perhaps,” said Margaret, “Dr. Thorndyke was right in giving Mr.
Varney’s plan a trial. We are no worse off if it fails; and if it were
by any chance to succeed, oh, what a relief it would be! Not that
there is the slightest chance that it will.”
“Not a dog’s chance,” agreed Rodney, “and Thorndyke was an ass to have
anything to do with the advertisement. He should have let Varney put
it in. No one expects an artist to show any particular legal acumen.”
“Poor Mr. Varney!” murmured Margaret, with a faint smile; and at this
moment the housemaid entered the room with a couple of letters on a
salver. Margaret took the letters and, having thanked the maid, laid
them on the table by her side.
“Won’t you read your letters?” said Rodney. “You are not going to make
a stranger of me, I hope.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “If you will excuse me, I will just see whom
they are from.”
She took up the top letter, opened it, glanced through it and laid it
down. Then she picked up the second letter; and as her glance fell on
the address she uttered a little cry of amazement.
“What is it?” asked Rodney.
She held the envelope out for him to see. “It’s from Dan,” she
exclaimed; and forthwith she tore it open and eagerly took out the
letter. As she read it, Rodney watched her with mingled amusement,
vexation and astonishment. The utterly inconceivable thing had
happened. Thorndyke had taken odds of a million to one against and it
had come off. That was just a piece of pure luck. It reflected no
particular credit on Thorndyke’s judgment; but still Rodney rather
wished he had been less dogmatic.
When she had quickly read through the letter, Margaret handed it to
him without comment. He took it from her and rapidly ran through the
contents.
“Dear Maggie [it ran]:
“I have just seen your quaint advertisement and send you a few lines
as requested. I don’t know what you mean by ‘modifying your
arrangements’ but I can guess. However, that is no concern of mine
and whatever your plans may be, I don’t want to stand in your way.
So I will give you a plain statement and you can do what you like.
“My present arrangements are quite permanent. You have seen the last
of yours truly. I have no intention of ever coming back—and I don’t
suppose you particularly want me. It may interest you to know that I
have made fresh domestic arrangements—necessarily a little
unorthodox, but also quite permanent.
“With regard to financial questions: I am afraid I can’t contribute
to your ‘arrangements,’ whatever they may be. You have enough to
live on, and I have new responsibilities; but if you can get
anything out of Levy you are welcome to it. You will be the first
person who ever has. You can also try Penfield and I wish you the
best of luck. And that is all I have got to say on the subject. With
best wishes,
“Yours sincerely,
“Daniel Purcell.”
Rodney returned the letter with an expression of disgust. “It is a
brutal, hoggish letter,” said he; “typical of the writer. Where does
he write from?”
“The post-mark is Wivenhoe. It was posted last night at 7:30.”
“That looks as if Varney were right and he were afloat; but it is a
queer time of year for yachting on the East Coast. Well, I suppose you
are not much afflicted by the tone of that letter?”
“Not at all. The more brutal the better. I shall have no qualms now.
But the question is, will the letter do? What do you think?”
“It ought to do well enough—if it isn’t a little too good to be true.”
“I don’t quite understand. You don’t doubt the truth of what he says,
do you?”
“Not at all. What I mean is this: Divorce judges are pretty wary
customers. They have to be. The law doesn’t allow married people who
are tired of one another and would like to try a fresh throw of the
dice to make nice little mutual arrangements to get their marriage
dissolved. That is called collusion. And then there is a mischievous
devil called The King’s Proctor whose function is to ‘prevent us, O
Lord, in all our doings’ and to trip up poor wretches who have got a
decree and think they have escaped, and to send them back to
cat-and-dog matrimony until death do them part.
“Now the only pitfall about this letter of Dan’s is that it is so very
complete. He makes things so remarkably easy for us. He leaves us
nothing to prove. He admits everything in advance and covers the whole
of our case in our favour. That letter might have been dictated by a
lawyer in our interest.”
Margaret looked deeply disappointed. “You don’t mean to say that we
shan’t be able to act on it!” she exclaimed in dismay.
“I don’t say that,” he replied, “and I certainly think it will be
worth trying. But I do wish that we could produce evidence that he is
living with some woman, as he appears to state. That would be so much
more convincing. However, I will get an opinion from a counsel who has
had extensive experience of divorce practice; a man like Barnby, for
instance. I could show him a copy of the letter and hear what he
thinks.”
“Why not Dr. Thorndyke?” said Margaret. “He was really right, after
all, and we shall have to show him the letter.”
“Yes; and he must see the original. But as to taking his opinion, well
we shall have to do that as a matter of courtesy; but I don’t set much
value on his judgment. You see, he chose to go double Nap on this
letter and he happened to win. Events prove that he was right to take
the chance, but it was primitive strategy. It doesn’t impress me.”
Margaret made no immediate rejoinder. She was not a lawyer, and to her
the fact that the plan had succeeded was evidence that it was a good
plan. Accordingly, her waning faith in Thorndyke was strongly revived.
“I can’t help hoping,” she said, presently, “that this letter will
secure a decision in our favour. It really ought to. You see, there is
no question of arrangement or collusion on my side. Our relations were
perfectly normal and pleasant up to the moment of Dan’s disappearance.
There were no quarrels, no differences, nothing to hint at any desire
for a change in our relations; and I have waited six months for him to
come back, and have taken no action until he made it clear that he had
gone for good. Don’t you think that I have a fair chance of getting my
freedom?”
“Perhaps you are right, Maggie,” he replied. “I may be looking out for
snags that aren’t there. Of course, you could call me and Phillip and
Varney to prove that all was normal up to the last, and Penfield and
Thorndyke to give evidence of your efforts to trace Dan. Yes; perhaps
it is a better case than I thought. But all the same, I will show the
letter to Barnby when Thorndyke has seen it and get his opinion
without prejudice.”
He paused and reflected profoundly for a while. Suddenly he looked up
at Margaret; and in his eyes there was a new light.
“Supposing, Maggie,” he said in a low, earnest voice, “you were to get
this marriage dissolved. Then you would be free—free to marry. You
know that, years ago, when you were free, I loved you. You know that,
because I told you; and I thought, and I still think that you cared
for me then. The fates were against us at that time, but in the years
that have passed, there has been no change in me. You are the only
woman I have ever wanted. Of course I have kept my feelings to myself.
That had to be. But if we can win back your freedom, I shall ask you
to be my wife, unless you forbid me. What shall you say to me,
Maggie?”
Margaret sat with downcast eyes as Rodney was speaking. For a few
moments she had appeared pale and agitated, but she was now quite
composed and nothing but a heightened colour hinted at any confusion.
At the final question she raised her head and looked Rodney frankly in
the face.
“At present, John,” she said quietly, “I am the wife of Daniel Purcell
and as such have no right to contemplate any other marriage. But I
will be honest with you. There is no reason why I should not be. You
are quite right, John. I loved you in those days that you speak of,
and if I never told you, you know why. You know how I came to marry
Dan. It seemed to me then that I had no choice. Perhaps I was wrong;
but I did what I thought was my duty to my father.
“In the years that have passed since then—the long, grey years—I have
kept my covenant with Dan loyally in every respect. If I have ever
looked back with regret, it has been in secret. But through those
years you have been a faithful friend to me, and of all my friends the
best beloved. And so you are now. That is all I can say, John.”
“It is enough, Maggie,” he said; “and I thank you from my heart for
saying so much. Whatever your answer might have been, I would have
done everything in my power to set you free. But now I shall venture
to have a hope that I hold a stake in your freedom.”
She made no answer to this, and for some time both sat silently
engrossed with their own thoughts and each thinking much the same
thoughts as the other. The silence was at length broken by Rodney.
“It was an awful blow to me when I came home from my travels and found
you married. Of course I guessed what had happened, though I never
actually knew. I assumed that Dan had put the screw on your father in
some way.”
“Yes. He had lent my father money and the bills could not be met.”
“What a Juggernaut the fellow is!” exclaimed Rodney. “An absolutely
ruthless egoist. By the way, was he in the habit of lending money? I
notice that he refers in this letter to a person named Levy. Who is
Levy? And what does Dan do for a livelihood? He is out of the paper
trade, isn’t he?”
“I think so. The truth is, I have never known what his occupation is.
I have suspected that he is principally a money-lender. As to Mr.
Levy, I have always thought he was a clerk or manager; but it rather
looks as if he were a partner.”
“We must find out,” said Rodney. “And there is another thing that we
must look into: that mysterious letter that Penfield received from
Dan. Did you ever learn what was in it?”
“Never. Mr. Penfield refused to divulge the slightest hint of its
contents. But I feel convinced that it was in some way connected with
Dan’s disappearance. You remember it arrived on the day after Dan went
away. I think Dr. Thorndyke called on Mr. Penfield to see if he could
glean any information, but I assume that he didn’t succeed.”
“We can take that for granted,” said Rodney. “I don’t think Thorndyke
would get much out of a wary old bird like Penfield. But we must find
out what was in that letter. Penfield will have to produce it if we
put him in the witness-box, though he will be a mighty slippery
witness. However, I will see Thorndyke and ask him about it when I
have consulted Barnby. Perhaps I had better take charge of the
letter.”
Margaret handed him the letter, which he put securely in his wallet,
and, the plan of action being now settled, he stayed only for a little
further gossip and then took his leave.
On the following afternoon he called by appointment on Thorndyke, who,
having admitted him, closed the “oak” and connected the bell with the
laboratory upstairs where his assistant, Polton, was at work.
“So,” he said, “our fish has risen to the tin minnow, as I gather from
your note.”
“Yes. You have had better luck than I expected.”
“Or than I deserved, you might have added if you had been less polite.
Well, I don’t know that I should agree. I consider it bad practice to
treat an improbability as an impossibility. But what does he say?”
“All that we could wish—and perhaps a little more. That is the only
difficulty. He makes things a little too easy for us; at least that is
my feeling. But you had better see the letter.”
He took it from his wallet and passed it to Thorndyke, who glanced at
the post-mark, and, when he had taken out the letter, looked quickly
into the interior of the envelope.
“Wivenhoe,” he remarked. “Some distance from Woodbridge, but in the
same district.” He read carefully through the text, noting at the same
time the peculiarities that he had observed in the former letter. In
this case, too, the post-marks had been made when the envelope was
empty; a curious oversight on the part of Varney, in view of the care
and ingenuity otherwise displayed. Indeed, as he read through the
letter, Thorndyke’s opinion of that cunning artificer rose
considerably. It was a most skilful and tactful production. It did,
certainly, make things almost suspiciously easy, but then that was its
function. The whole case for the petition rested on it. But the brutal
attitude of the imaginary truant was admirably rendered, and, so far
as he could judge, the personality of the missing man convincingly
represented.
“It is not a courteous epistle,” he remarked, tentatively.
“No,” agreed Rodney, “but it is exactly the sort of letter that one
would expect from Purcell. It gives you his character in a nutshell.”
This was highly satisfactory and very creditable to Varney. “You
mentioned in your note that you were going to take Barnby’s opinion on
it. Have you seen him?”
“Yes, and he thinks the same as I do: that it would be a little risky
to base a petition on this letter alone. The judge might smell a rat.
He considers that if we could produce evidence that Purcell is
actually living with another woman, this letter would be good evidence
of desertion. He suggested putting a private inquiry agent on
Purcell’s tracks. What do you say to that?”
“In the abstract, it is an excellent suggestion. But how are you going
to carry it out? You speak of putting the agent on Purcell’s tracks.
But there are no tracks. There is no place in which he is known to
have been staying; there is no person known to us who has seen him
since he landed at Penzance. You would start your sleuth without a
scent to wander about Essex and Suffolk looking for a man whom he had
never seen and would probably not recognize if he met him, and who is
possibly not in either of those counties at all. It really is not a
practicable scheme.”
Rodney emitted a discontented grunt. “Doesn’t sound very encouraging
certainly,” he admitted. “But how do the police manage in a case of
the kind?”
“By having, not one agent, but a thousand, and all in communication
through a central office. And even the police fail if they haven’t
enough data. But with regard to Barnby; of course his opinion has
great weight. He knows the difficulties of these cases, and his
outlook will probably be the judge’s outlook. But did you make clear
to him the peculiarities of this case? The character of the
petitioner, her excellent relations with her husband, the sudden,
unforeseen manner of the disappearance and the total absence of any
grounds of a suspicion of collusion? Did you present these points to
him?”
“No, I didn’t. We merely discussed the letter.”
“Well, see him again and put the whole case to him. My feeling is that
a petition would probably succeed.”
“I hope you are right,” said Rodney, more encouraged than he would
have liked to admit. “I’ll see Barnby again. Oh, and there is another
point. That letter that Purcell sent to Penfield by mistake in June.
It probably throws some light on the disappearance and might be
important as evidence on our side. I suppose Penfield did not tell you
what was in it, or show it to you?”
“No, he would say nothing about it; but he allowed me, at my request,
to examine the envelope.”
Rodney grinned. “He might also have shown you the postman who
delivered the letter. But if he won’t tell us anything, we might put
him in the witness-box and make him disgorge his secret.”
“Yes, and you may have to if the Court demands to have the letter
produced. But I strongly advise you to avoid doing so, if you can. I
have the impression that the production of that letter would be very
much the reverse of helpful—might, in fact, be fatal to the success of
the case—and would in addition be very disagreeable to Mrs. Purcell.”
Rodney looked at him in astonishment. “Then you know what was in the
letter?” said he.
“No; but I have formed certain opinions which I have no doubt are
correct, but which I do not feel at liberty to communicate. I advise
you to leave Mr. Penfield alone. Remember that he is a lawyer, that he
is Mrs. Purcell’s friend, that he does know what is in the letter and
that he thinks it best to keep his knowledge to himself. But he will
have to be approached on the question as to whether he is willing to
act for Mrs. Purcell against her husband. If you undertake that office
you can raise the question of the letter with him; but I would urge
you most strongly not to force his hand.”
Rodney listened to this advice with a slightly puzzled expression.
Like Mr. Penfield, he viewed Thorndyke with mixed feelings, now
thinking of him as an amateur, a doctor who dabbled ineffectively in
law, and now considering the possibility that he might command some
means of acquiring knowledge that were not available to the orthodox
legal practitioner. Here was a case in point. He had examined the
envelope of that mysterious letter “at his own request” and evidently
for a specific purpose; and from that inspection he had in some
unaccountable way formed a very definite opinion as to what the
envelope had contained. That was very curious. Of course, he might be
wrong; but he seemed to be pretty confident. Then there was the
present transaction. Rodney, himself, had rejected Varney’s suggestion
with scorn. But Thorndyke had adopted it quite hopefully, and the plan
had succeeded in the face of all probabilities. Could it be that
Thorndyke had some unknown means of gauging those probabilities? It
looked rather like it.
“You are only guessing at the nature of that letter,” he said
tentatively, “and you may have guessed wrong.”
“That is quite possible,” Thorndyke agreed. “But Penfield isn’t
guessing. Put the case to him, hear what he says and follow his
advice. And if you see Varney again, it would be better to say nothing
about that letter. Penfield will advise you to keep it out of the case
if you can, and that is my advice, too.”
When Rodney took his departure, which he did a few minutes later, he
carried with him a growing suspicion that he had underestimated
Thorndyke; that the latter, perhaps, played a deeper game than at
first sight appeared and that he played with pieces unknown to
traditional legal practice.
For some time after his visitor had left Thorndyke remained wrapped in
profound thought. In his heart he was sensible of a deep distaste for
this case that he was promoting. If it were to succeed, it could only
be by misleading the Court. It is true that the parties were acting in
good faith, that the falsities which they would present were falsities
that they believed to be true. But the whole case was based on a
fiction, and Thorndyke detested fictions. Nor was he satisfied with
his own position, in an ethical sense. He knew that the case was
fictitious; that the respondent was a dead man and that the documents
to be produced in evidence were forgeries. He was, in fact, an
accessory to those forgeries. He did not like it at all. And he was
not so optimistic as to the success of the petition as he had led
Rodney to believe, though he was not very uneasy on that score. What
troubled him was that this was, in effect, a bogus case and that he
was lending it his support.
But what was the alternative? His thoughts turned to
Margaret—sweet-faced, sweet-natured, gracious-mannered, the perfect
type of an English gentlewoman—and he thought of the fine, handsome,
high-minded gentleman who had just gone away. These two loved one
another; loved as only persons of character can love. Their marriage,
if it could be achieved, would secure to them a lifelong happiness, in
so far as such happiness is attainable by mortals. But between them
and their happiness stood the fiction of Daniel Purcell. In order that
they might marry, Purcell must either be proved to be dead or assumed
to be alive.
Could he be proved to be dead? If he could, that were the better way,
because it would demonstrate the truth. But was it possible? In a
scientific sense it probably was. Science can accept a conclusion with
reservations. But the law has to say “yes” or “no” without any
reservations at all. This was not a case of death merely presumed. It
was a death alleged to have occurred at a specific time and place and
in a specific manner; and inseparably bound up with it was a charge of
murder. If Purcell was dead, Varney had murdered him, and the murder
was the issue that would be tried. But no jury would entertain for a
moment the guilt of the accused on such evidence as Thorndyke could
offer. And an acquittal would amount to a legal decision that Purcell
was not dead. On that decision Margaret’s marriage to Rodney would be
impossible.
Thus Thorndyke’s reflections led him back, as they always did, to the
conclusion that Purcell’s death was incapable of legal proof, and must
ever remain so, unless by some miracle, new and conclusive evidence
should come to light. But to wait for a miracle to happen was an
unsatisfactory policy. If Purcell could not be proved to be dead, and
if such failure of proof must wreck the happiness of two estimable
persons, then it would appear that it might be allowable to accept
what was the actual legal position and assume that he was alive.
So, once again, Thorndyke decided that he had no choice but to
continue to share with Varney the secret of Purcell’s death and to
hold his peace. And if this must be the petition must take its course,
aided and abetted, if necessary, by him. After all, nobody would be
injured and nothing done which was contrary either to public policy or
private morals. There were only two alternatives, as matters stood.
The fiction of Purcell as a living man would either keep Margaret and
Rodney apart, as it was now doing; or it would be employed (with other
fictions) to enable them to be united. And it was better that they
should be united.