cinders keenly, holding the surface sideways to the light. “Come,” he
said, “see if I can guess Rewse’s address in London. 17, Mountjoy
Gardens, Hampstead. Is that it?”
“Yes. Is it there? Can you read it? Show me.” Mr. Bowyer hurried
across the room, eager and excited.
“You can sometimes read words on charred paper,” Hewitt replied, “as
you may have noticed. This has curled and crinkled rather too much in
the burning, but it is plainly notepaper with an embossed heading,
which stands out rather clearly. He has evidently brought some
notepaper with him from home in his trunk. Look, you can just see the
ink lines crossing out the address; but there’s little else. At the
beginning of the letter there is ‘My d----’ then a gap, and then the
last stroke of ‘M’ and the rest of the word ‘mother.’ ‘My dear
Mother,’ or ‘My dearest Mother’ evidently. Something follows too in
the same line, but that is unreadable. ‘My dear Mother and Sister,’
perhaps. After that there is nothing recognisable. The first letter
looks rather like ‘W,’ but even that is indistinct. It seems to be a
longish letter--several sheets, but they are stuck together in the
charring. Perhaps more than one letter.”
“The thing is plain,” Mr. Bowyer said. “The poor lad was writing
home, and perhaps to other places, and Main, after his crime, burned
the letters, because they would have stultified his own with the
lying tale about small-pox.”
Hewitt said nothing, but resumed his general search. He passed his
hand rapidly over every inch of the surface of everything in the
room. Then he entered the bedroom and began an inspection of the same
sort there. There were two beds, one at each end of the room, and
each inch of each piece of bed-linen passed rapidly under his sharp
eye. After the bedroom he betook himself to the little bath-room, and
then to the scullery. Finally he went outside and examined every
board of a close fence that stood a few feet from the sitting-room
window, and the brick-paved path lying between.
When it was all over he returned to Mr. Bowyer. “Here is a strange
thing,” he said. “The shot passed clean through Rewse’s body,
striking no bones, and meeting no solid resistance. It was a
good-sized bullet, as Dr. O’Reilly testifies, and therefore must have
had a large charge of powder behind it in the cartridge. After
emerging from Rewse’s back it _must_ have struck something else in
this confined place. Yet on nowhere--ceiling, floor, wall nor
furniture--can I find the mark of a bullet nor the bullet itself.”
“The bullet itself Main might easily have got rid of.”
“Yes, but not the mark. Indeed, the bullet would scarcely be easy to
get at if it had struck anything I have seen about here; it would
have buried itself. Just look round now. Where could a bullet strike
in this place without leaving its mark?”
Mr. Bowyer looked round. “Well, no,” he said, “nowhere. Unless the
window was open and it went out that way.”
“Then it must have hit the fence or the brick paving between, and
there is no sign of a bullet there,” Hewitt replied. “Push the sash
as high as you please, the shot couldn’t have passed _over_ the fence
without hitting the window first. As to the bedroom windows, that’s
impossible. Mr. Shanahan and his friends would not only have heard
the shot, they would have seen it--which they didn’t.”
“Then what’s the meaning of it?”
“The meaning of it is simply this: either Rewse was shot somewhere
else and his body brought here afterwards, or the article, whatever
it was, that the bullet struck must have been taken away.”
“Yes, of course. It’s just another piece of evidence destroyed by
Main, that’s all. Every step we go we see the diabolical completeness
of his plans. But now every piece of evidence missing only tells the
more against him. The body alone condemns him past all redemption.”
Hewitt was gazing about the room thoughtfully. “I think we’ll have
Mrs. Hurley over here,” he said; “she should tell us if anything is
missing. Constable, will you ask Mrs. Hurley to step over here?”
Mrs. Hurley came at once and was brought into the sitting-room.
“Just look about you, Mrs. Hurley,” Hewitt said, “in this room and
everywhere else, and tell me if anything is missing that you can
remember was here on the morning of the day you last saw Mr. Rewse.”
She looked thoughtfully up and down the room. “Sure, sor,” she said,
“’tis all there as ord’nary.” Her eyes rested on the mantelpiece, and
she added at once, “Except the clock, indade.”
“Except the clock?”
“The clock ut is, sure. Ut stud on that same mantelpiece on that
mornin’ as ut always did.”
“What sort of clock was it?”
“Just a plain round wan wid a metal case--an American clock they
said ut was. But ut kept nigh as good time as me own.”
“It _did_ keep good time, you say?”
“Faith an’ ut did, sor. Mine an’ this ran together for weeks wid
nivir a minute betune thim.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hurley, thank you; that will do,” Hewitt exclaimed,
with something of excitement in his voice. He turned to Mr. Bowyer.
“We must find that clock,” he said. “And there’s the pistol; nothing
has been seen of that. Come, help me search. Look for a loose board.”
“But he’ll have taken them away with him, probably.”
“The pistol perhaps--although that isn’t likely. The clock, no. It’s
evidence, man, evidence!” Hewitt darted outside and walked hurriedly
round the cottage, looking this way and that about the country
adjacent.
Presently he returned. “No,” he said, “I think it’s more likely in
the house.” He stood for a moment and thought. Then he made for the
fireplace and flung the fender across the floor. All round the
hearthstone an open crack extended. “See there!” he exclaimed as he
pointed to it. He took the tongs, and with one leg levered the stone
up till he could seize it in his fingers. Then he dragged it out and
pushed it across the linoleum that covered the floor. In the space
beneath lay a large revolver and a common American round
nickel-plated clock. “See here!” he cried, “see here!” and he rose
and placed the articles on the mantelpiece. The glass before the
clock-face was smashed to atoms, and there was a gaping rent in the
face itself. For a few seconds Hewitt regarded it as it stood, and
then he turned to Mr. Bowyer. “Mr. Bowyer,” he said, “we have done
Mr. Stanley Main a sad injustice. Poor young Rewse committed suicide.
There is proof undeniable,” and he pointed to the clock.
[Illustration: “HE TOOK THE TONGS, AND WITH ONE LEG LEVERED THE STONE
UP.”]
“Proof? How? Where? Nonsense, man! Pooh! Ridiculous! If Rewse
committed suicide, why should Main go to all that trouble and tell
all those lies to prove that he died of small-pox? More even than
that, what has he run away for?”
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Bowyer, in a moment. But first as to this clock.
Remember, Main set his watch by the Cullanin Town Hall clock, and
Mrs. Hurley’s clock agreed exactly. That we have proved ourselves
to-day by my own watch. Mrs. Hurley’s clock still agrees. _This_
clock was always kept in time with Mrs. Hurley’s. Main returned at
two exactly. Look at the time by that clock--the time when the bullet
crashed into and stopped it.”
The time was three minutes to one.
Hewitt took the clock, unscrewed the winder and quickly stripped off
the back, exposing the works. “See,” he said, “the bullet is lodged
firmly among the wheels, and has been torn into snags and strips by
the impact. The wheels themselves are ruined altogether. The central
axle which carries the hands is bent. See there! Neither hand will
move in the slightest. That bullet struck the axle and fixed those
hands immovably at the moment of time when Algernon Rewse died. Look
at the mainspring. It is less than half run out. Proof that the clock
was going when the shot struck it. Main left Rewse alive and well at
half-past nine. He did not return till two--when Rewse had been dead
more than an hour.”
“But then, hang it all! How about the lies, and the false
certificate, and the bolting?”
“Let me tell you the whole tale, Mr. Bowyer, as I conjecture it to
have been. Poor young Rewse was, as you told me, in a bad state of
health--thoroughly run down, I think you said. You said something of
his engagement and the death of the lady. This pointed clearly to a
nervous--a mental upset. Very well. He broods, and so forth. He must
go away and find change of scene and occupation. His intimate friend
Main brings him here. The holiday has its good effect perhaps, at
first, but after a while it gets monotonous, and brooding sets in
again. I do not know whether or not you happen to know it, but it is
a fact that four-fifths of all persons suffering from melancholia
have suicidal tendencies. This may never have been suspected by Main,
who otherwise might not have left him so long alone. At any rate he
_is_ left alone, and he takes the opportunity. He writes a note to
Main, and a long letter to his mother--an awful, heartbreaking
letter, with a terrible picture of the mental agony wherein he was to
die--perhaps with a tincture of religious mania in it, and
prophesying merited hell for himself in the hereafter. This done, he
simply stands up from this table, at which he has been writing, and
with his back to the fireplace shoots himself. There he lies till
Main returns an hour later. Main finds the door shut, and nobody
answers his knock. He goes round to the sitting-room window, looks
through, and perhaps he sees the body. Anyway he pushes back the
catch with his knife, opens the window and gets in, and _then_ he
sees. He is completely knocked out of time. The thing is terrible.
What shall he--what can he do? Poor Rewse’s mother and sister dote on
him, and his mother is an invalid--heart disease. To let her see that
awful letter would be to kill her. He burns the letter, also the note
to himself. Then an idea strikes him. Even without the letter the
news of her boy’s suicide will probably kill the poor old lady. Can
she be prevented hearing of it? Of his death she must know--that’s
inevitable. But as to the manner? Would it not be possible to concoct
some kind lie? And then the opportunities of the situation occur to
him. Nobody but himself knows of it. He is a medical man, fully
qualified, and empowered to give certificates of death. More, there
is an epidemic of small-pox in the neighbourhood. What easier, with a
little management, than to call the death one by small-pox? Nobody
would be anxious to examine too closely the corpse of a small-pox
patient. He decides that he will do it. He writes the letter to Mrs.
Rewse announcing that her son has the disease, and he forbids Mrs.
Hurley to come near the place for fear of infection. He cleans the
floor--it is linoleum here, you see, and the stains were fresh--burns
the clothes, cleans and stops the wound. At every turn his medical
knowledge is of use. He puts the smashed clock and the pistol out of
sight under the hearth. In a word, he carries out the whole thing
rather cleverly, and a terrible few days he must have passed. It
never strikes him that he has dug a frightful pit for his own feet.
You are suspicious, and you come across. In a perhaps rather
peremptory manner you tell him how suspicious his conduct has been.
And then a sense of his terrible position comes upon him like a
thunderclap. He sees it all. He has deliberately of his own motion
destroyed every evidence of the suicide. There is no evidence in the
world that Rewse did not die a natural death, except the body, and
that you are going to dig up. He sees now (you remind him of it, in
fact) that _he_ is the one man alive who can profit by Rewse’s death.
And there is the shot body, and there is the false death certificate,
and there are the lying letters, and the tales to the neighbours and
everything. He has himself destroyed everything that proves suicide.
All that remains points to a foul murder, and to him as the murderer.
Can you wonder at his complete breakdown and his flight? What else in
the world could the poor fellow do?”
“Well, well--yes, yes,” Mr. Bowyer replied thoughtfully, “it seems
very plausible, of course. But still, look at probabilities, my dear
sir, look at probabilities.”
“No, but look at _possibilities._ There is that clock. Get over it
if you can. Was there ever a more insurmountable alibi? Could Main
possibly be here shooting Rewse and half-way between here and
Cullanin at the same time? Remember, Mrs. Hurley saw him come back at
two, and she had been watching for an hour, and could see more than
half a mile up the road.”
“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right. And what must we do now?”
“Bring Main back. I think we should advertise to begin with. Say,
‘Rewse is proved to have died over an hour before you came. All safe.
Your evidence is wanted,’ or something of that sort. And we must set
the telegraph going. The police already are looking for him, no
doubt. Meanwhile I will look here for a clue myself.”
The advertisement was successful in two days. Indeed, Main
afterwards said that he was at the time, once the first terror was
over, in doubt whether or not it would be best to go back and face
the thing out, trusting to his innocence. He could not venture home
for money, nor to his bank, for fear of the police. He chanced upon
the advertisement as he searched the paper for news of the case, and
that decided him. His explanation of the matter was precisely as
Hewitt had expected. His only thought till Mr. Bowyer first arrived
at the cottage had been to smother the real facts and to spare the
feelings of Mrs. Rewse and her daughter, and it was not till that
gentleman put them so plainly before him that he in the least
realised the dangers of his position. That his fears for Mrs. Rewse
were only too well grounded was proved by events, for the poor old
lady only survived her son by a month.
These events took place some little while ago, as may be gathered
from the fact that Miss Rewse has now been Mrs. Stanley Main for
nearly three years.
[Illustration: Gun and broken clock]
THE AFFAIR OF MRS. SETON’S CHILD
It has struck me that many of my readers may wonder that, although I
have set down in detail a number of interesting cases wherein Hewitt
figured with success, I have scarcely as much as alluded to his
failures. For failures he had, and of a fair number. More than once
he has found his search met, perhaps at the beginning, perhaps after
some little while, by an impenetrable wall of darkness through which
no clue led. At other times he has lost time on a false trail while
his quarry escaped. At others still the stupidity or inaccuracy of
some person upon whom he has depended for information has set his
plans to naught. The reason why none of these cases have been
embodied in the present papers is simply this: that a problem with no
answer, a puzzle with no explanation, an incident with no
satisfactory end, as a rule lends itself but poorly to purposes of
popular narrative, and it is often difficult to make understood and
appreciated any degree of skill and acumen unless it produces a clear
and intelligible result. That such results attended Hewitt’s efforts
in an extraordinary degree those who have followed my narratives so
far will need no assurance; but withal impossibilities still remain
impossibilities, for Hewitt as for the dullest creature alive. On
some other occasion I may perhaps set out at length a case in which
Martin Hewitt achieved nothing more than unqualified failure; for the
present I shall content myself with a case which, although it was
completely cleared up in the end, yet for some while baffled Hewitt
because of some of the reasons I have alluded to.
On the ground floor of the building wherein Hewitt kept his office,
and in which I myself had my chambers, were the offices of Messrs.
Streatley & Raikes, an old-fashioned firm of family solicitors.
Messrs. Streatley & Raikes’s junior clerk appeared in Hewitt’s outer
office one morning with the query, “Is your guv’nor in?”
Kerrett admitted the fact.
“Will you tell him Mr. Raikes sends his compliments and will be
obliged if he can step downstairs for a few minutes? It’s a client of
ours--a lady--and she’s in a great state about losing her baby or
something. Say Mr. Raikes would bring her up, only she seems too ill
to get up the stairs.”
This was the purport of the message which Kerrett brought into the
inner room, and in three minutes Hewitt was in Streatley & Raikes’s
office.
“I thought the only useful thing possible would be to send for you,
Mr Hewitt,” Mr. Raikes explained; “indeed, if my client had been
better acquainted with London, no doubt she would have come to you
direct. She is in a bad state in the inner office. Her name is Mrs.
Seton; her husband is a recent client of ours. Quite young, and
rather wealthy people, so far as I know. Made a fortune early, I
believe, in South Africa, and came here to live. Their child--their
only child, a little toddler of two years or thereabout--disappeared
yesterday in a most mysterious way, and all efforts to find it seem
to have failed as yet. The police have been set going everywhere, but
there is no news as yet. Mrs. Seton seems to have passed a dreadful
night, and could think of nothing better to do this morning than to
come to us. She has her maid with her, and looks to be breaking down
entirely. I believe she’s lying on the sofa in my private room now.
Will you see her? I think you might hear what she has to say, whether
you take the case in hand or not; something may strike you, and in
any case it will comfort her to get your opinion. I told her all
about you, you know, and she clutched at the chance eagerly. Shall I
see if we may go in?”
Mr. Raikes knocked at the door of his inner sanctum and waited; then
he knocked again and set the door ajar. There was a quiet “Come in,”
and pushing open the door the lawyer motioned Hewitt to follow him.
On the sofa facing the door sat a lady, very pale, and exhibiting
plain signs of grief and physical weariness. A heavy veil was thrown
back over her bonnet, and her maid stood at her side holding a bottle
of salts. As she saw Hewitt she made as if to rise, but he stepped
quickly forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Pray don’t
disturb yourself, Mrs. Seton,” he said; “Mr. Raikes has told me
something of your trouble, and perhaps when I know a little more I
shall be able to offer you some advice. But remember that it will be
very important for you to maintain your strength and spirits as much
as possible.”
[Illustration: “ON THE SOFA FACING THE DOOR SAT A LADY, VERY PALE,
AND EXHIBITING PLAIN SIGNS OF GRIEF.”]
“This is Mr. Martin Hewitt, you know,” Mr. Raikes here put in--“of
whom I was speaking.”
Mrs. Seton inclined her head, and with a very obvious effort began.
“It is my child, you know, Mr. Hewitt--my little boy Charley; we
can’t find him.”
“Mr. Raikes has told me so. When did you see the child last?”
“Yesterday morning. His nurse left him sitting on the floor in a
room we call the small morning-room, where we sometimes allowed him
to play when nurse was out, because the nursery was out of hearing,
except from the bedrooms. I myself was in the large morning-room, and
as he seemed to be very quiet I went to look, and found he was not
there.”
“You looked elsewhere, of course?”
“Yes; but he was nowhere in the house, and none of the servants had
seen him. At first I supposed that his nurse had gone back to the
small morning-room and taken him with her--I had sent her on an
errand--but when she returned I found that was not the case.”
“Can he walk?”
“Oh, yes, he can walk quite well. But he could scarcely have come
out from the room without my hearing him. The two rooms, the
morning-room and the small sitting-room, are on opposite sides of the
same passage.”
“Do the doors face each other?”
“No; the door of the small room is farther up the passage than the
other. But in any case he was nowhere in the house.”
“But if he left the room he must have got out somehow. Is there no
other door?”
“Yes, there is a French window, with the lower panels of wood, in
the room; it gives on to a few steps leading down into the garden;
but that was closed and bolted on the inside.”
“You found no trace whatever of him, I take it, on the whole
premises?”
“Not a trace of any sort, nor had anybody about the place seen him.”
“Did you yourself actually see him in this room, or have you merely
the nurse’s word for it?”
“I saw her put him there. She left him playing with a box of toys.
When I went to look for him the toys were there, scattered on the
floor, but he had gone.” Mrs. Seton sank on the arms of her maid and
her breast heaved.
“I’m sure,” Hewitt said, “You’ll keep your nerves as steady as you
can, Mrs. Seton: much may depend on it. If you have nothing else to
tell me now, I think I will come to your house at once, look at it,
and question your servants myself. Meantime, what has been done?”
“The police have been notified everywhere, of course,” Mr. Raikes
said, handing Hewitt a printed bill, damp from the press; “and here
is a bill containing a description of the child and offering a
reward, which is being circulated now.”
Hewitt glanced at the bill and nodded. “That is quite right,” he
said, “so far as I can tell at present. But I must see the place. Do
you feel strong enough to come home now, Mrs. Seton?”
Hewitt’s business-like decision and confidence of manner gave the
lady fresh strength. “The brougham is here,” she said, “and we can
drive home at once. We live at Cricklewood.”
A fine pair of horses stood before the brougham, though they still
bore signs of hard work; and indeed they had been kept at their best
pace all that morning. All the way to Cricklewood Hewitt kept Mrs.
Seton in conversation, never for a moment leaving her attention
disengaged. The missing child, he learned, was the only one, and the
family had only been in England for something less than a year. Mr.
Seton had become possessed of real property in South Africa, had sold
it in London, and had determined to settle here.
A little way past Shoot-up Hill the coachman swung his pair off to
the left, and presently entering a gate, pulled up before a large,
old-fashioned house.
Here Hewitt immediately began a complete examination of the
premises. The possible exits from the grounds, he found, were four in
number: the two wide front gates giving on to the carriage-drive, the
kitchen and stable entrance, and a side gate in a fence--always
locked, however. Inside the house, from the central hall, a passage
to the right led to another wherein was the door of the small
morning-room. This was a very ordinary room, fifteen feet square or
so, lighted by the glass in the French window, the bottom panes of
which, however, had been filled in with wood. The contents of a box
of toys lay scattered on the floor, and the box itself lay near.
“Have these toys been moved,” Hewitt asked, “since the child was
missed?”
“No, we haven’t allowed anything to be disturbed. The disappearance
seemed so wholly unaccountable that we thought the police might wish
to examine the place exactly as it was. They did not seem to think it
necessary, however.”
Hewitt knelt and examined the toys without disturbing them. They
were of very good quality, and represented a farmyard, with horses,
carts, ducks, geese and cows complete. One of the carts had had a
string attached so that it might be pulled along the floor.
“Now,” Hewitt said, rising, “you think, Mrs. Seton, that the child
could not have toddled through the passage, and so into some other
part of the house, without you hearing him?”
“Well,” Mrs. Seton answered with indecision, “I thought so at first,
but I begin to doubt. Because he _must_ have done so, I suppose.”
They went into the passage. The door of the large morning-room was
four or five yards further toward the passage leading to the hall,
and on the opposite side. “The floor in this passage,” Hewitt
observed, “is rather thickly carpeted. See here, I can walk on it at
a good pace without noise.”
Mrs. Seton assented. “Of course,” she said, “if he got past here he
might have got anywhere about the house, and so into the grounds.
There is a veranda outside the drawing-room, and doors in various
places.’
“Of course the grounds have been completely examined?”
“Oh, yes, every inch.”