The Secretary’s Affairs
Sir Clinton received Ardsley’s news almost as if he had feared that
the end was inevitable. He made no attempt to express his feelings,
however.
“I think you’d better let the others know,” he suggested.
Ardsley agreed, with a faint grimace of reluctance for the task, and
left the room.
Stenness had listened to the interchange between the two with an air
of a man trying to persuade himself that he is in a dream and that by
a violent effort he may be able to shake off his nightmare. At last he
seemed to master his feelings.
“It’s all over, is it?” he asked in a choked voice, as though hoping
even at the last moment to be reassured by good news.
“It’s all over,” Sir Clinton admitted, gravely.
Stenness seemed to pull himself together.
“Then in that case,” he said, “there seems to be no reason why I
shouldn’t make a clean breast of things. Nothing matters much, now;
and you may as well get the true story. It’ll make no difference to
me.”
Sir Clinton made a vague gesture of assent, but refrained from
speaking. After a moment or two, Stenness began.
“This is how it happened. Not so long ago, I was a cub with no near
relations to look after me and keep me straight. I’m not whining; I’m
simply explaining. I had a few thousands of capital; and naturally a
good deal of it got frittered away. I learned something about the
world in the process, so perhaps it wasn’t a total loss.”
Sir Clinton noticed that even at this stage Stenness retained his
conciseness and stuck to the main facts. The secretary was sparing him
useless details; and, as he had said, he was not whining over his
losses.
“When I had been at it for a year or two, I had run myself down to a
little over five thousand pounds. That’s a good enough nest-egg. But I
hadn’t the sense to see it in that light. I wanted a good deal more
than three or four hundred a year. So I looked about for some way of
increasing my capital.”
A faintly contemptuous expression crossed his face.
“I must have been a very green hand in those days. I had a sort of
trustfulness which I’ve lost since then. To make a long story short I
was swindled out of that five thousand. I was so green that at the
time I didn’t realise who was at the back of the swindle. All I met
were agents of the big fish in the background. They cleaned me out,
almost completely.”
He shifted slightly in his chair as though the recollection made him
uncomfortable.
“I had to do something for a living; and somehow I dropped into
secretarial work—the kind where it’s more important that a man should
have a decent appearance than that he should know his work. But by
that time I realised that I’d have to work for a living, and I sobered
up. I took things seriously and picked up all I could. I turned into
quite a decently-efficient secretary.”
Sir Clinton nodded. It was no more than Stenness’s due.
“I drifted about from post to post, until a couple of years ago I
dropped into Roger Shandon’s place. I learned a lot with him. It was a
perfect education—on certain lines.”
“I can quite imagine that,” Sir Clinton interjected.
“He was a damned scoundrel,” Stenness pronounced, without heat. “But I
picked up a lot about the seamy side of affairs from things that
passed through my hands. It was interesting, even at first. And then,
it got more interesting.”
He shifted again in his chair so as to look Sir Clinton in the face.
“I came across a name in his correspondence, the name of one of the
fellows who had helped to rook me of that last five thousand. That put
me on the alert. I began to hunt things up. It took me a good while;
and none of it was in any way explicit, you understand; but I had
sense enough to put two and two together and fill up the blanks. My
late employer was the man who had been behind the ramp that cleared me
of the last of my cash.”
“You couldn’t have expected me to guess that,” Sir Clinton said, as
though defending himself. “I knew there was more behind this business
than appeared on the surface, but naturally I’d no inkling of anything
of that sort.”
Stenness paid no attention to the interruption.
“I suppose my training under Roger Shandon had taken the refined edge
off any honesty I had. Or else it had left the honesty but blunted my
respect for the conventions, if you like it better that way. It seemed
to me, anyhow, a simple enough state of affairs. This fellow Shandon
had picked my pocket—at least that was what it amounted to in
practice, though I doubt if I could have charged him with fraud and
brought it home to him. Well, I saw no particular reason why he should
get away with my money. He’d taken advantage of my stupidity or
trustfulness, or whatever you like to call it. I decided to pay him
back in his own coin. I might have milked him of a fair extra sum as a
fine; but that didn’t suit my book. I’ve got a peculiar brand of
conscience; and I made up my mind that I’d take precisely the cash
that he cheated me out of. No doubt the odd figures on the cheque
surprised you.”
“No,” Sir Clinton objected. “I simply took it that Shandon wasn’t in
the habit of drawing cheques for round thousands and that you filled
in an odd figure so as not to make the cheque look uncommon.”
“I’d have done that in any case, of course,” Stenness explained, “but
as it happened, the exact sum he took from me originally made a likely
enough figure; and I stuck to it. I didn’t even fine him a sovereign
for his swindling. I contented myself with taking back exactly what
I’d lost. I saw nothing wrong in it; and I see nothing wrong in it
now. My conscience doesn’t trouble me a rap in the matter. Legally, of
course, it’s quite a different question.”
“Quite,” said Sir Clinton, but his tone gave no clue to his views on
the matter.
“As to the actual business, I needn’t go over it; for you put your
finger on it quite correctly up to a point, not ten minutes ago. I
forged his signature, destroyed the cancelled cheque, cut the
counterfoil out of the cheque-book, and cashed the forged cheque.
Nobody suspected anything.”
“There was no reason why they should—at the time.”
“No. But now I come to the point where you made a further suggestion.
You brought out the idea that I’d murdered Shandon to cover the
trail.”
“I suggested it as an hypothesis that some people might be inclined to
put forward,” corrected Sir Clinton. “If you remember, I refrained
from supporting it myself.”
Stenness reflected for a moment.
“That’s true. But murder never entered into my plans at all. Bear in
mind that I don’t feel a criminal in this affair. All I’ve done is to
take my own money out of the hand of a fellow who had picked my
pocket. You’d recover your own purse if you caught a thief red-handed
with it; and you wouldn’t call yourself a robber for doing so. Well,
no more do I.”
“Go on,” said Sir Clinton, in unconscious plagiarism.
“That being so,” Stenness continued, “murder was the last thing that
would have entered my mind. Why should I murder him? I’d squared the
account; I’d got my money back again. What would be the point in
putting my neck into a noose? None whatever! All I needed was a clean
get-away. I planned that carefully enough.”
“That’s no particular business of mine at present,” Sir Clinton
reminded him. “But one might ask what you’re doing here, since it’s
evidently not according to plan.”
“It’s easy to account for that. I had planned to get away on the
evening of the day when the Shandons were murdered. I was in the
middle of clearing up preparations for a bolt . . . and suddenly came
the affair in the Maze. Could I bolt then? Not likely. I’d have been
marked down as the murderer if I’d stirred a step. And look what face
would have been on things if I’d cleared out. It would have added the
last touch of substance to the very hypothesis you put forward. The
whole forgery business would have been raked up to furnish a motive. I
couldn’t have faced it—for I hadn’t an alibi. Nobody could swear that
I was in my room—I was packing up—at the time the murders were done.
It would have been a clear enough case for any jury.”
Sir Clinton’s face showed that he agreed with this reading.
“There’s one point that hasn’t come out, though,” he said. “What’s the
meaning of this sudden collapse on your part? If your conscience is
clear—and I don’t doubt your account of it—why do you throw up the
sponge like this? That’s not very clear.”
Stenness’s face showed that Sir Clinton had touched him on the raw. He
had some difficulty with his voice as he replied.
“I may as well put all the cards on the table. You know what Miss
Hawkhurst was like? Any man might have fallen in love with her. I did,
at any rate.”
“Were you engaged?”
“No. I’ve got some sort of pride, even if I am a forger. Miss
Hawkhurst had an income of her own. What had I? Nothing. Anyone might
have supposed I was after her money.”
“Hardly the money alone, surely—Miss Hawkhurst herself would account
for the attraction without that.”
“Well, I’m not that sort,” said Stenness, abruptly. “I’m not the kind
of man who can live on his wife’s money. I can’t explain it. It is
so.”
“Your conscience is a rum contrivance,” Sir Clinton commented, not
unkindly.
“It’s in good working order, at any rate,” Stenness retorted. “Now,
isn’t the thing clear enough to you? I meant to recover my money,
clear out, work hard and make enough for my purposes. I reckoned that
a couple of years would do it, if I took risks. And before I went, I
was going to take the biggest risk of all. I was going to tell Sylvia
the whole story and see what she had to say.”
Sir Clinton could not repress his surprise.
“You’re a rum card, Stenness. Be thankful I’ve had a large experience
of liars and know when a man’s speaking the truth; for that yarn
wouldn’t be believed by one person in a hundred.”
“It’s the truth for all that,” returned Stenness, doggedly. “I’ve told
you before that I see nothing wrong in what I’ve done—nothing morally
wrong, I mean. He swindled me. I take my money back again. What’s
wrong in that?”
“I wish I had your simple way of looking at things.”
Sir Clinton sat in silence for a few moments, evidently pondering over
the case.
“You’re a problem, Stenness,” he said at last. “I don’t really know
what to do with you.”
“Oh, arrest me!” Stenness exclaimed, bitterly. “Nothing matters now.
She’s dead. It’s all over; and I don’t much care what happens.”
“Pull yourself together, man,” said Sir Clinton, curtly. “That sort of
chatter does all right on the stage. Nobody with a backbone takes a
knock like that. If you wake up three years hence in a prison cell,
you’ll look at things in a different light, and be very fed-up that
you’ve lost your liberty as well as other things. Some things are
inevitable. Others aren’t. Don’t behave like a child.”
Stenness took the rebuke sullenly.
“Well, what does it matter?” he demanded. “You have enough in your
hands to convict me if you want to—and I don’t care. Do as you like.
I’ll write it out for you now, if you think it’ll save you trouble.
I’m not inclined to wriggle at the last moment.”
Sir Clinton gave no sign that he had heard him. Instead, he seemed
engrossed on some problem. At last he lifted his head.
“I can’t follow that intricate conscience of yours, Stenness. It’s
beyond me. But I can sympathise to some extent with your analogy of
the pickpocket caught red-handed. That was very apt. I’m going to give
you a chance. I know well enough that you’re speaking the truth about
this business. Besides, I can get it checked if necessary. On the
basis of ethics, I think you’ve some right to the money. You have it
here in notes, I suppose?”
“It’s upstairs.”
“Very well. Bring it down. Put it in the safe. Seal it up in an
envelope with your name on it before putting it away. I’ll see what’s
to be done about it to-morrow. Now, do that at once. Don’t argue.”
“The money means nothing much to me now,” said Stenness angrily.
“Then hand it back to the people it legally belongs to,” Sir Clinton
said coolly. “If you don’t want it, other people may have a use for
it. It’s a fair test of all that high falutin’ stuff you laid off a
minute or two ago.”
Stenness made no reply, but rose and went towards the door.
“Oh, just another thing, Stenness. Meet me at the front of the house
here at . . . at. . . . Have you a time-table?”
Stenness produced the ABC from a shelf and Sir Clinton turned over its
pages before continuing.
“The first train’s at 7.10 a.m.,” he said. “Meet me out at the
house-door at half-past six sharp to-morrow morning. Now don’t fail!”
Stenness was plainly bewildered, and in his astonishment he gave a
grudging assent.
“That’ll do, then,” Sir Clinton went on. “Just put that cash in the
safe, now. And, by-the-bye, send Ardsley to me as you go out.”
Stenness nodded dully and moved towards the door. Now that he had made
a clean breast of things, his mind seemed to have gone back to his
loss; and his whole bearing was eloquent of his utter despair. Sir
Clinton watched him leave the room.
“A tough bullet for the poor devil to bite on,” he thought to himself.
“Well, ‘joy cometh in the morning,’ it says somewhere or other.
Perhaps he’ll find it so.”
He lit a fresh cigarette and seemed to dismiss Stenness from his mind.
“I wonder if that devil is wound up far enough to make a final
effort?” he reflected in some perplexity. “I believe he is. At any
rate, I’ll take the chance of it. He’s had it all his own way so far,
and this ought to encourage him.”
Ardsley came into the room and smiled on seeing that Sir Clinton was
alone.
“I’m in a hurry, Ardsley. Stenness has taken up a lot of valuable time
with his woes. What I wanted is this. Will you be at the house-door
here at half-past six o’clock to-morrow morning without fail? I’ll
need you, perhaps.”
He paused, then as an after-thought apparently, he added:
“I don’t suppose you could give a death certificate in the case of a
death by misadventure, could you?”
Ardsley shook his head.
“I’d need to know something about the case before I could venture on
that sort of thing. The Coroner would want to have a say in business
of that kind.”
Sir Clinton reluctantly agreed.
“Now suppose we pick up Wendover in the other room. No one will want
to see Miss Hawkhurst to-night?”
“I’ll see to that,” Ardsley assured him. “Another doctor will need to
be called in, and so forth. Until he turns up, I think no one need go
into that room.”