RECOUNTS PAUL’S DEFEAT
Again there was silence in that rustic arbour, broken only by the
sighing of the wind amidst the trees and the soft splash of the waves
as they rolled against the cliffs of clay that mark the boundary of
the Yorkshire coast between Filey and Scarborough. This time it was
Paul Renishaw who had to think deeply of the problem under
discussion--to think too, free from any personal bitterness against
the millionaire, to bring as it were an open but also a keen, alert
mind to a consideration of Josiah Sawdry’s astounding story, so that
he could dissect the man’s tale for himself, and see where it appeared
truthful and where it might be, however cleverly framed, unreliable or
false.
The Jew himself now seemed little concerned about the issue. For his
part, he had placed his cards fully, frankly, and freely on the table;
he was no longer a player; it rested with the journalist to make use
of his hand, or to throw it on one side as useless. Leaning back
there, however, puffing his pipe and immersed in a maze of hazy
speculation, he was none the less conscious of the quick scrutiny to
which Paul now and again subjected him, but oddly enough, these rapid
surveys, which would have offended the pride of some men to such a
pitch that they would have risen and protested hotly against them,
caused him no confusion. Somehow he seemed to recognise that he stood
in a parlous position in this matter of the murder of Aimée
Blake--half-way, as it were, between the prosecution and the
prisoner--at that moment untrusted by either side, but both equally
sincere in their anxiety to turn him to their own account.
At length Paul sighed deeply, and roused himself from his reverie.
“I must admit,” he said, “that you have given me a bit of a shock, and
almost enough food for speculation to last me a twelve month. Your
story, of course, is plausible enough, particularly as you tell it
with the background of your own blunders, your own failures, your own
lurid experiences to get money somehow, anyhow, but at all events to
get rich.
“At first sight, too, those points of yours about the disappearance at
the time of the crime, and this discovery of the gold link and the
insane desire for revenge--they are in a way conclusive, and one is
tempted to jump at them, and to adopt them as the main clues in the
future investigations. At the same time I am sure you will yourself
admit there are some very extraordinary incongruities--to use no
stronger term--in this theory that must sooner or later be accounted
for. First and foremost I should like to ask you to explain how could
a woman of the type of Rebecca Charlton personate a man of refinement
and wealth of the stamp of Arthur Hudson?”
“Not easily, I admit, if she were an ordinary person,” retorted
Sawdry, speaking in a quiet level tone as though he had no real
concern in the issue of that conversation. “Only you have strangely
misconceived my words if you think Rebecca is in any way normal.
First, unlike her sisters, she is tall, fair, good figure, with bright
blue eyes and a strong expressive face. Then for some reason or
other--she may indeed have done it herself--her hair was clipped quite
close, like a man’s, in the asylum. Ever since I knew her, she
affected masculine traits, and not once, but scores of times before
she was married, she played men’s parts in the private theatricals
which the Kaufmanns used to get up in their own homes! Her
presentation of young men about town, indeed, was almost perfect. She
studied them first hand--and there wasn’t a characteristic trick of
any of her subjects she couldn’t mimic either with natural complacency
or quite a grotesque spirit of fun.”
“Well, I will concede that point--and now we come to another and, to
my mind, a more difficult question. It is this: How could an
office-cleaner like she was, admittedly disowned by her relatives,
earning at the most not more than twelve or fifteen shillings a week,
how could she get the money to procure a wig and other materials for
disguise, to travel to Scarborough, to take a room here, and then in
one wild burst at the end, hand out five hundred pounds to the
telegraph-clerk, Drummond, on some wild cock and bull story as to the
secret of tapping the Post-office wires?”
“But did she do that?”
“Certainly, she did. The man swore to it in his evidence at the police
court this morning.”
“Of that I am perfectly aware--but that is not what I refer to. I
asked, was it she who gave Drummond that five hundred pounds?”
“If she came down here, personated Hudson and murdered Aimée Blake as
you assert,--then she did it, there can be no question,” returned
Paul, rather nettled at finding himself suddenly the subject of
cross-examination. “To me, it is as clear as daylight.”
“I am sorry,” answered Sawdry softly, “that it is not quite so obvious
to me. In the first place, you must recollect that Drummond
specifically swore that Arthur Hudson was not the man he had that
encounter with, and hence, if Rebecca Charlton were got up to resemble
Arthur Hudson, then he didn’t either have that scene with the person
we are speaking of. In the second place, Drummond said quite frankly
he thought the person he spoke to was a madman escaped from a York
Asylum. Now have the police troubled to enquire whether a patient with
possibilities of wealth has recently escaped from any of the York
Asylums? Not a bit of it. They waved it aside, because it might prove
an inconvenient clue--and yet it might supply the gist of the
telegraph-tapping mystery and cut off Drummond’s evidence at one
stroke, for understand, there are several important private asylums at
York in which are taken very rich patients. In the third and last
place, you must ask yourself what motive had Rebecca Charlton for
troubling her distracted brain about the Post-office at all: and also
that, knowing she was a woman and enmeshed in a disguise that any
moment might be pierced, was it likely she would run the risk of
attacking a powerfully-built and determined-looking man like this
telegraph clerk?”
“She was mad. She would do anything,” observed Paul stolidly. “The
commission of a brutal murder like that was sufficient to dethrone her
reason absolutely, and to send it careering wildly through space. So
that she would seize on the first object that attracted her gaze--in
this case the telegraph wires running alongside of the road.”
“Well, I will concede you that victory,” said the Jew, suddenly
shifting his ground. “We will say you are prepared to believe Rebecca
might have done the deed if you had satisfactory evidence that she
could gain possession of a big sum over five hundred pounds. At this
moment you contend the assertion is preposterous, simply because she
was a poor cleaner of City offices, earning at the most not more than
twelve or fifteen shillings a week.”
“I do; I don’t see how you can get over it.”
“That is because you will not look deep enough,” retorted Sawdry
quietly and confidently. “Clear your mind for a second of all
prejudice, and consider in an unbiased way the trust that most
merchants and solicitors place in the women who clean their office. As
a matter of fact, in the best regulated establishments in the City of
London it is impossible to lock everything up. A great deal of
property, millions of pounds worth of property I should think, is
bound to be left within reach of these poorly-paid, half-starved
creatures. More than that, reflect how the best managers and
assistants are not perfect--how a moment of blank forgetfulness
overtakes the wisest, the cleverest, the most trusted of us! Then ask
yourself quite seriously if it may not have been possible for Rebecca
Charlton to have found the safe or cash-box open one morning early
when she went to clean one of the offices entrusted to her
charge--whether the sight of so much wealth may not have suggested to
her: ‘Ah! here at last are the means of gratifying the revenge I have
hugged to myself all those weary years of confinement in an asylum.’
Surely, I assert, there is nothing wonderful in the fact that she
might have seized the chance so offered and have gone off to
Scarborough, careless of what happened so long as she met Aimée Blake
and extracted ‘a life for a life’!”
Paul paused for a few seconds and pondered deeply. Then he nodded his
head. “It is quite possible I admit,” he said. “Almost thou persuadest
me to believe it was not Ventris Blake who did the deed after all, but
this woman Charlton.”
“My entire future depends on the truth of what I have stated,” added
Sawdry. “If I prove to be wrong I am doubly unfortunate, for I shall
have offended the millionaire beyond redemption, and I shall have
missed my way entirely with you and Mr. Hudson.”
“Well, I have a certain amount of opportunity of learning even more
about the Charltons than you can tell me,” said Paul guardedly. “As it
happens, Mr. Hudson has already got certain suspicions of them, and
so, before he was arrested, he set a firm of private detectives to
work on their past and present proceedings. As a consequence,
to-morrow morning I shall receive a report from this agency as to what
they have done of late. If it confirms what you have stated, I am not
sure we should not act on your information.”
“Unfortunately, to-morrow morning may be too late,” replied the man.
“Look here. I received this telegram just as I left Scarborough.” And
he pushed his band into his pocket and handed Paul a telegram.
“There is not a minute to spare,” he said.
The telegram itself however seemed frank enough. It had been, it
appeared, despatched by the man Charlton to Sawdry’s private address
at Islington, from whence it had been re-transmitted to the Grand
Hotel, Scarborough, and it set out:--
“The wife been gone some days now. This morning she writes to me from
The Retreat, Scalby, just three miles out of Scarborough. Begs me to
forgive her. Says she has come into a fortune. Will you go and see her
about it to-morrow afternoon certain, as it will pay you? Depend on me
to pay expenses.
Charlton.”
Paul read and re-read this message several times before he vouchsafed
any remark. There were a good many things about it that were not very
clear, particularly the reference to the fortune, and the request that
Sawdry, and not her own husband should go and look after the woman.
But, apart from those defects, the story, such as it was, seemed
reasonable enough.
“At all events,” said Paul quite frankly, “this will give me a very
good opportunity of testing what you have told me. I’ll own at once I
am impressed by it, but not convinced.”
“At present you don’t know how far you dare trust me,” put in the man,
rising and shrugging his shoulders. “I quite understand that. You
can’t forget that I stole your watch: I came here at the bidding of
your arch enemy, Ventris Blake; I have gone about under a false name
and description, as Silas Q. Pinkerton, the great New York detective.
Were I in your place, I should feel very much as you feel.”
“Indeed you would,” answered the journalist, “and I will tell you the
reason. Because it was not your own piece of mind, your own innocence,
or your own security you were fighting for! You see, I am here in
Scarborough as the one reliable friend and representative of that poor
fellow who has been so unjustly arrested and detained in the local
police-station here, on the gravest of charges--murder. Any mistake I
make now I shall not pay for--he will. A slip on my part, a failure to
stick to the right track, a waste of precious time on a wild-goose
chase--and he may be brought up at York Assizes and condemned to death
before I could lift one little finger to help him--I, the one man in
the wide world whom he has trusted to vindicate his good name and to
save him.”
“I quite appreciate the gravity of the situation,” replied the Jew
earnestly, knocking the ashes out of the bowl of his pipe and giving
Paul a steady straightforward look. “Indeed, that is why I have not
tried to force your hand unduly; and I am sure if you quietly review
the conversation we have just had, you will see that all through I
have tried to be scrupulously fair to yourself.”
“There is, however, one other question I should like to put to you
before we return to the town,” proceeded Paul, rising too and walking
by the side of Sawdry in the direction of the market gardener’s gate.
“It is this. You know, of course, that Arthur Hudson is alleged to
have married Aimée Blake at the Registry Office at Peterborough. Do
you believe he did so?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you believe that he had any part, or lot, or knowledge of that
ceremony?”
“I am sure he had not.”
“Then who was the scoundrel who got himself up to resemble him, made
use of his name, and passed himself off as the genuine man?”
“I don’t know, I only wish I did,” replied Sawdry. “As I told you when
I started my story to you this afternoon, my first idea when I got to
know Blake was to blackmail him. Oddly enough too, I discovered about
this marriage of his wife’s to Hudson; and read some private memoranda
in a diary of the millionaire’s that suggested the whole affair was a
gigantic imposture--but never could I get farther than that. In the
course of my inquiries into the mystery, however, I picked up with the
Charltons, but, press how I would, tempt how I would, I could never
persuade Rebecca to say one word on the subject. Indeed, whenever I
mentioned it to her, her face would go ghastly pale and she looked, as
no doubt she really felt, absolutely terrified.”
“But do you think that she really learned who it was who was
pretending to be Hudson?”
“I am certain she did. Once I got her so far as to tell me she could
make ten thousand pounds any day she cared to open her mouth about it,
but she dared not for fear of the consequences!”
“Why? She was very poor. She had little to lose.”
“True, that was another thing about her I could not make out. Put in a
corner, she would almost always relapse into a kind of gibberish, out
of which I could make nothing coherent except the words: ‘Three Glass
Eyes.’ It was in vain I tried to chaff her and to say, why ‘three,’
why ‘glass,’ and whose ‘eyes’? At those times she seemed to have a
kind of shivering fit of horror, and, if I carried the joke too far,
she would go into convulsions--froth at the mouth--and finish with a
long spell of insensibility.”
Paul, who had seen something of those three terrible moving eyes in
operation in the millionaire’s garret did not wonder at the poor
creature’s terror, particularly when he recalled the awful effect a
glimpse of them had had on her own sister, Eleanor Kaufmann.
Nevertheless he said nothing of his weird experiences with them to
Sawdry, but once again attacked the critical point in
dispute:--“Could, or could not, they hope to get the information as to
the man who carried off the sham marriage now Rebecca Charlton was
away from London and apparently out of the radius of Ventris Blake’s
baleful influence?”
The Jew thought a moment before he answered. Then he raised his head
and his face brightened. “Honestly,” said he, “I think we can get it.
Let us frighten her with a story that her husband has been suspected
of it, and has been arrested for it. Nothing else on this earth, I am
sure, would force her to speak, but that will--for, blackguard though
he is, she still recognises that she is married to him, and owes him
certain duties as his wife.”
“Very well,” replied Paul firmly, “we will go to her after I have
called at my hotel and settled up with my news-lads.”
They turned into the high road and set their faces northward, but they
had not proceeded many yards before they were conscious of the hurried
tramp of many feet in their direction, and all at once there burst
into view a howling mob of men and boys who immediately they caught
sight of them, doubled their speed and redoubled their cries.
“What the deuce can have happened?” queried the Jew anxiously, for his
conscience, not being of the easiest, was ever a prey to a thousand
unformed apprehensions. “Can your friend Hudson have escaped--”
“Or been set free?” corrected Paul, his own face flushed with
excitement.
“Or can Rebecca Charlton have been found by the police, and have made
a full confession of the murder?” suggested Sawdry, nervously
increasing his speed.
Luckily, he had not long to wait for an answer to his question. Just
then the breathless leaders of the crowd arrived, dragging a small
newsboy, aged about twelve, along with them.
“The Notes! The Notes!” they cried, shrill with pleasurable
anticipation. “This youngster has done the trick. Here are the Notes.
Five hundred pounds worth as promised. Congratulate you, sir. Where is
the reward?”
Paul promptly produced a five pound Bank of England note and handed it
to the youngster, also the crown he had promised him for taking part
originally in the search. Then, yielding to the hint of a bystander he
cordially passed over a sovereign wherewith the crowd generally might
have the opportunity of drinking his health and the poor prisoner’s
health, and of also wishing him good luck. A few minutes later the
whole of the newsboys he had borrowed from the _Scarborough Daily
Post_ office arrived on the scene. They had heard too that the notes
had been found and given over to their temporary employer, and all
they cared about now was to draw their own payments, which they did,
and to hasten pell-mell back to the town to take up the “special
murder edition” which was awaiting their return.
Paul himself carefully bestowed the precious bundle of notes, having
previously counted them, inside his breast pocket and buttoned up his
coat. Josiah Sawdry watched him do this in silence, but as they fell
into step again, he turned and asked his companion what he intended to
do with them.
“Why, take them up to London and trace the Bank they were paid from,
and the person they were paid to, of course,” rejoined Paul, his heart
beating with pleasurable anticipation of the chase.
“I shouldn’t if I were you,” said Sawdry quietly. “It would only be a
waste of time!”
“Why--how--what do you mean?” spluttered Paul.
“Well, first of all, the police of Scarborough could claim them and
take them from you? No doubt, when they hear of the find they will,
for they are most valuable material evidence, and they don’t even
belong to you. Now why not make a virtue of necessity and let them
have them? After all, they are bound to handle the matter honestly,
and to find out who got them--where they came from--and what the
original owner was doing with them in so large a sum. Any evidence
they get on these points will be more valuable than any you could
procure, for theirs will be held to be fairly impartial, whereas, at
the best, yours must be _ex parte_. As a matter of fact, you can much
better employ your time looking up Rebecca Charlton. I have a great
idea as to the wonderful results that will accrue from this visit of
ours. Hence don’t let us waste any time, but let us go to her at
once.”
Paul hesitated--but all the same the Hebrew had won.
As a consequence the notes were forwarded to the Chief Constable of
Scarborough by the first policeman they met, when they reached
Ramshill Road; and then these two oddly assorted companions turned off
the South Cliff, and made their way as rapidly as they could across
the Valley to Scalby.