There was a tense silence, broken only by the sound of the distant
traffic in Victoria Street. Fayre made an ineffectual effort to speak,
but no words came. There was nothing he could say. His mind was a
chaos of contending emotions, the strongest of which, even now, was
pity: pity for the man who, in his blind arrogance, had wrecked the
life of the one being he had hoped to save.
Something of what he felt must have reached Kean, for when he spoke
again there was a gentler, almost apologetic note in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Hatter,” he said. “Of all my friends you are the one I can
least afford to lose. If it had not been for Farrer’s appalling
blunder in not letting me know in time that the case in which John
Leslie was to appear had been postponed things would have turned out
very differently. Luck was against me from the beginning.
“When Eve invited us to Staveley and told me that Mrs. Draycott was to
be there I realized that my opportunity had come at last. I laid my
plans carefully and thought I had covered any possible emergency; but
I did not realize that I should have you to reckon with, Hatter. You
were too intimately connected with us all to be a safe antagonist.
“On the plea that there had been a delay in the selling of certain
securities I persuaded Mrs. Draycott to go on from Staveley’s to her
sister’s, arranging to meet her while she was there and hand the money
in cash over to her. We arranged to meet at the corner of the
Greycross lane at six o’clock on the evening of March 23rd. Meanwhile
I had brought the car from London and garaged it at the garage at
Whitbury. If you remember, Sybil was the first to arrive at Staveley
and I followed her four days later, that is to say, on March 14th. I
wired the time of my arrival and was met by the Staveley motor in the
usual way and you all took it for granted that I had come by train. As
a matter of fact, I drove the car myself from London to Whitbury,
garaged it there and then went on by train to Staveley Grange.
Unfortunately my sidelights gave out at York and I was held up. I had
had the forethought to borrow my chauffeur’s licence, on the plea that
I had mislaid my own and might have occasion to use the car while he
was on his holiday, and it was that licence that the policeman who
stopped me saw. That was where you proved my undoing, Hatter. If it
had not been for your long memory and the fact that you took the
trouble to interrogate my chauffeur your suspicions would never have
been aroused. Grey, who knew nothing of my supposed movements at that
date, certainly wouldn’t have jumped to it. As it was, that _Y.0.7._
number you were looking for was under your very nose and you never saw
it!”
Fayre looked up suddenly.
“Then Page—?”
Kean nodded.
“Page was the name I gave when I garaged the car at Whitbury. It was
there that the woman noticed my hands. I was startled when Grey told
me that, I admit.”
He spread out his hands on the blotter before him and regarded them
thoughtfully. They were characteristic enough, with their long,
clean-boned, sensitive fingers, and hard, muscular palms.
“Fortunately they are not marked in any way, or it might have been
awkward. Apart from that, I had covered my tracks well. On the evening
of the 23rd I was driven to the station from Staveley. There I took a
ticket to London and got into the local train from Staveley Grange to
Whitbury. At Whitbury, as you know, there is an hour’s wait before the
London express comes in. I had only a small suitcase with me and this
I carried to the Whitbury garage, where I picked up the car. I drove
to the corner of the Greycross lane, where I was joined by Mrs.
Draycott. I had prepared a packet of notes, tied up in batches of one
thousand pounds. The uppermost packet only was genuine, the rest were
made up of sheets of paper, cut to the correct size.”
He paused for a moment.
“Here I knew I was up against my one real difficulty, that of
persuading Mrs. Draycott to go to the farm. Fortunately, the weather
was on my side. She hated the country, at the best of times, and had
suffered considerably during her short walk to the corner of the lane.
So as not to arouse her sister’s suspicions she had come out in the
thin dress and slippers she had been wearing in the house, and it had
been no joke struggling against a bitter wind in inadequate garments.
I put it to her that she would have to count the notes in my presence
before I could undertake to hand them over to her and that, in view of
the size of the payment, I had no intention of making it without a
receipt. I had some argument with her over the last point, but she had
seen the notes in the light of my head-lamps and her cupidity had been
aroused. Also, she knew that, since the affair of the cheque, I
already had a hold over her. It was blowing a gale and bitterly cold
and, while she was hesitating, a big branch came down with a crash in
the field quite close to us. I think that decided her. I explained
that, as we could not go to her sister’s, I proposed to drive her to
Leslie’s farm, where we could complete our transaction under cover,
telling her that he was away and that I had the run of the place.
Leslie had let drop one day that he invariably left either the front
or the back door open and I had taken stock of the place when Sybil
and I had gone over to tea with him and Cynthia there. I knew that,
if, by any chance, we found the door locked I could run the car into
the barn and complete my plans there.
“As it turned out, the door was unlocked and I led the way into the
sitting-room by the light of an electric torch I had brought with me.
Mrs. Draycott sat down at the writing-table and I stood behind her,
holding the torch in one hand so that its light fell on the table. I
handed her the packet of notes and she began to count them. My
revolver was in the right-hand pocket of my overcoat.”
His eyes contracted as though, for a moment, the whole scene were
vividly before him.
“The rest was easy. The thing was over in a moment. She fell forward
without uttering a sound. I made sure that she was dead, then I picked
up the bundle of notes and thrust the torch and the revolver into my
pocket. Then I felt my way out in the dark. I must have left the front
door open, but I only found that out after Leslie had been arrested.
At the gate I undid my coat and placed the notes in an inside pocket.
It must have been then that Sybil’s ‘Red Dwarf’ pen rolled out onto
the path where you found it.”
Fayre drew in his breath sharply.
“Good God!” he muttered.
Kean’s fixed gaze shifted for a moment to Fayre’s face.
“You never guessed it was Sybil’s. And yet she had used one for years.
That wretched ‘Red Dwarf’ gave me more than one bad quarter of an
hour. For one thing, I was terrified that you would mention it to her.
She lent it to me on the morning of the 23rd, and I must have slipped
it into my pocket; when I got back to Staveley on the 26th one of the
first things she did was to ask me for it. I made the excuse that I
had left it in London. If you had spoken to her about it after that
she might possibly have put two and two together.”
Fayre opened his lips to say that he had mentioned it, with ominous
results, but Kean interrupted him. Afterwards he was thankful that he
had not been given the chance to speak.
“I suppose you must have opened the drawer of the table at my Chambers
and seen the two pens or you wouldn’t have produced them as you did
this morning. You probably also realized what I had been doing. I was
afraid she would ask me for it again and, somehow, I could not bring
myself to return her own to her, apart from the fact that I might have
been called upon to produce it and did not dare let it out of my
possession. So I bought another and stained it with ink, meaning to
return it to her as her own. You guessed that?”
Fayre nodded.
“I knew, naturally, that you had been trying to fake a duplicate, but
I was entirely at sea as to your object.”
“I think, all along, Sybil was the person I feared most. She has more
intuition than any one I have ever met and I was in terror that
something in my manner or attitude towards the case would rouse her
suspicions. Thank goodness she never dreamed that anything was wrong.”
This time Fayre deliberately held his peace, but his heart turned sick
within him, for, bit by bit, the patterns in the puzzle were beginning
to slip into their places and, among them, Sybil’s letter and the
enclosure.
“There’s not much more to tell,” pursued Kean. “It was too late to
pick up the London train at Whitbury, so I drove straight to Carlisle,
counting on the fact that the express waited there for an hour. I just
had time to garage the car and catch the train, arriving in London at
the same hour and by the same train I should have arrived by had I
taken it direct from Whitbury. I made a point of speaking to the three
men who shared my table in the dining-car and went out of my way to
give them a clue as to my profession, mentioning the fact that I had
been staying at Staveley. I did not anticipate any trouble, but, had I
been forced to prove an alibi, I have no doubt they would have come
forward and it would have been taken for granted that I had travelled
over the entire distance by train. But, from the time I left the farm,
luck was against me. There was the collision with the farm-cart that
put you onto the track of the mythical Page. You were right, by the
way, about the number-plate. I broke it myself as a precaution. I had
it replaced and the mudguard mended in Carlisle. You took it for
granted that, when the car was removed from the first garage in
Carlisle on March 26th it was driven to London. As a matter of fact, I
simply moved it to one on the other side of the town, where I had the
repairs executed and it stayed there till I picked it up on April 1st
on my way to Staveley. The news that the case in which Leslie was to
appear had been postponed and that he had already been notified was, I
think, the greatest shock I have ever had. I had been so absolutely
certain that he was in London. It was as though an abyss had opened
under my feet. Until I actually saw the papers and read the first
description of the case I hoped that he might not have received the
notification in time. As soon as I saw them I knew that, unless I
could manage to get him off, I was faced with disaster.”
He raised his clasped hands and brought them down so heavily on the
table that it shook.
“Everything was against me,” he exclaimed with uncontrollable
bitterness. “If the police had not found Leslie’s revolver or if that
wretched cat had not got caught in a trap, just at that particular
moment in the whole of Leslie’s career, I could have got him off
without a stain on his character. As it was, I was helpless from the
beginning.”
He rose, picked up the sheets of manuscript from the table, and joined
Fayre.
“The whole thing is here,” he said, handing them to him. “It is signed
and witnessed by two of the servants. I believe they thought it was my
will,” he added ironically. “I want you to take it to Grey first thing
to-morrow.”
Fayre sprang to his feet and laid his hand on the other man’s arm.
“What are you going to do, Edward?” he asked.
Kean hesitated.
“Make a bolt for it, I suppose,” he said grimly. “I may bring it off
with luck.”
“Where will you go?”
Kean looked at him curiously.
“I don’t know,” he said. “On my word, Hatter, I don’t know.”
“Edward,” began Fayre impulsively; but Kean cut him off.
“There’s one thing you can do for me, old chap,” he said swiftly. “I
want to see Cynthia. I’ve got something I must say to her, something
that I cannot leave unsaid. It’s early still and she won’t have gone
to bed. Will you go round there now and ask her if I can see her? What
I’ve got to say won’t take more than ten minutes.”
Fayre stared at him in astonishment.
“Don’t you realize that, if you are going, you must go now?” he
expostulated. “Edward, there’s no time to lose. For God’s sake, don’t
take a chance like that!”
“There’s time for that,” said Kean dryly. “I will go straight from
there. I can catch the night boat to Ostend. I don’t suppose we shall
meet again, Hatter, and it’s the last thing I shall ask you to do for
me. Will you do it?”
“I’ll do it,” answered Fayre reluctantly, “but I think it’s sheer
madness at this juncture.”
“I want you to go to her now and ask her if I can come round. Don’t
tell her anything else. If she can see me, ring me up here and I’ll
start at once. After I am gone you can tell her the whole story, but
get this through as quickly as you can first.”
Fayre moved to the door. Half-way he stopped as though he had been
shot.
“Good God, Edward!” he cried. “Sybil! You can’t leave her without a
word!”
Kean straightened his shoulders with a jerk, as though he were bracing
himself to face something he was seeing clearly for the first time.
“Sybil died about an hour before I telephoned to you this evening,” he
said slowly.