MR. JOHN PHILLIPS
He began to put back the various boxes and parcels into the chest as he
spoke, and we all looked at each other as men might look who, taking a
way unknown to them, come up against a blank wall. But Chisholm, who was
a sharp fellow, with a good headpiece on him, suddenly spoke.
"There's the fact that the murdered man sent that letter from Peebles,"
said he, "and that he himself appears to have travelled from Peebles but
yesterday. We might be hearing something of him at Peebles, and from what
we might hear, there or elsewhere, we might get some connection between
the two of them."
"You're right in all that, sergeant," said Mr. Lindsey, "and it's to
Peebles some of you'll have to go. For the thing's plain--that man has
been murdered by somebody, and the first way to get at the somebody is to
find out who the murdered man is, and why he came into these parts. As
for him," he continued, pointing significantly to the bed, "his
secret--whatever it is--has gone with him. And our question now is, Can
we get at it in any other way?"
We had more talk downstairs, and it was settled that Chisholm and I
should go on to Peebles by the first train that morning, find out what
we could there, and work back to the Cornhill station, where, according
to the half-ticket which had been found on him, the murdered man
appeared to have come on the evening of his death. Meanwhile, Murray
would have the scene of the murder thoroughly and strictly searched--the
daylight might reveal things which we had not been able to discover by
the light of the lamps.
"And there's another thing you can do," suggested Lindsey. "That scrap of
a bill-head with a name and address in Dundee on it, that you found on
him, you might wire there and see if anything is known of the man. Any
bit of information you can get in that way--"
"You're forgetting, Mr. Lindsey, that we don't know any name by which we
can call the man," objected Chisholm. "We'll have to find a name for him
before we can wire to Dundee or anywhere else. But if we can trace a name
to him in Peebles--"
"Aye, that'll be the way of it," said Murray. "Let's be getting all the
information we can during the day, and I'll settle with the coroner's
officer for the inquest at yon inn where you've taken him--it can't be
held before tomorrow morning. Mr. Lindsey," he went on, "what are you
going to do as regards this man that's lying dead upstairs? Mrs.
Moneylaws says the doctor had been twice with him, and'll be able to give
a certificate, so there'll be no inquest about him; but what's to be done
about his friends and relations? It's likely there'll be somebody,
somewhere. And--all that money on him and in his chest?"
Mr. Lindsey shook his head and smiled.
"If you think all this'll be done in hole-and-corner fashion,
superintendent," he said, "you're not the wise man I take you for. Lord
bless you, man, the news'll be all over the country within forty-eight
hours! If this Gilverthwaite has folk of his own, they'll be here fast as
crows hurry to a new-sown field! Let the news of it once out, and you'll
wish that such men as newspaper reporters had never been born. You can't
keep these things quiet; and if we're going to get to the bottom of all
this, then publicity's the very thing that's needed."
All this was said in the presence of my mother, who, being by nature as
quiet a body as ever lived, was by no means pleased to know that her
house was, as it were, to be made a centre of attraction. And when Mr.
Lindsey and the police had gone away, and she began getting some
breakfast ready for me before my going to meet Chisholm at the station,
she set on to bewail our misfortune in ever taking Gilverthwaite into the
house, and so getting mixed up with such awful things as murder. She
should have had references with the man, she said, before taking him in,
and so have known who she was dealing with. And nothing that either I or
Maisie--who was still there, staying to be of help, Tom Dunlop having
gone home to tell his father the great news--could say would drive out of
her head the idea that Gilverthwaite, somehow or other, had something to
do with the killing of the strange man. And, womanlike, and not being
over-amenable to reason, she saw no cause for a great fuss about the
affair in her own house, at any rate. The man was dead, she said, and let
them get him put decently away, and hold his money till somebody came
forward to claim it--all quietly and without the pieces in the paper that
Mr. Lindsey talked about.
"And how are we to let people know anything about him if there isn't news
in the papers?" I asked. "It's only that way that we can let his
relatives know he's dead, mother. You're forgetting that we don't even
know where the man's from!"
"Maybe I've a better idea of where he was from, when he came here, than
any lawyer-folk or police-folk either, my man!" she retorted, giving me
and Maisie a sharp look. "I've eyes in my head, anyway, and it doesn't
take me long to see a thing that's put plain before them."
"Well?" said I, seeing quick enough that she'd some notion in her mind.
"You've found something out?"
Without answering the question in words she went out of the kitchen and
up the stairs, and presently came back to us, carrying in one hand a
man's collar and in the other Gilverthwaite's blue serge jacket. And she
turned the inside of the collar to us, pointing her finger to some words
stamped in black on the linen.
"Take heed of that!" she said. "He'd a dozen of those collars,
brand-new, when he came, and this, you see, is where he bought them; and
where he bought them, there, too, he bought his ready-made suit of
clothes--that was brand-new as well,--here's the name on a tab inside the
coat: Brown Brothers, Gentlemen's Outfitters, Exchange Street, Liverpool.
What does all that prove but that it was from Liverpool he came?"
"Aye!" I said. "And it proves, too, that he was wanting an outfit when he
came to Liverpool from--where? A long way further afield, I'm thinking!
But it's something to know as much as that, and you've no doubt hit on a
clue that might be useful, mother. And if we can find out that the other
man came from Liverpool, too, why then--"
But I stopped short there, having a sudden vision of a very wide world of
which Liverpool was but an outlet. Where had Gilverthwaite last come from
when he struck Liverpool, and set himself up with new clothes and linen?
And had this mysterious man who had met such a terrible fate come also
from some far-off part, to join him in whatever it was that had brought
Gilverthwaite to Berwick? And--a far more important thing,--mysterious as
these two men were, what about the equally mysterious man that was
somewhere in the background--the murderer?
Chisholm and I had no great difficulty--indeed, we had nothing that you
might call a difficulty--in finding out something about the murdered man
at Peebles. We had the half-ticket with us, and we soon got hold of the
booking-clerk who had issued it on the previous afternoon. He remembered
the looks of the man to whom he had sold it, and described him to us well
enough. Moreover, he found us a ticket-collector who remembered that same
man arriving in Peebles two days before, and giving up a ticket from
Glasgow. He had a reason for remembering him, for the man had asked him
to recommend him to a good hotel, and had given him a two-shilling piece
for his trouble. So far, then, we had plain sailing, and it continued
plain and easy during the short time we stayed in Peebles. And it came to
this: the man we were asking about came to the town early in the
afternoon of the day before the murder; he put himself up at the best
hotel in the place; he was in and out of it all the afternoon and
evening; he stayed there until the middle of the afternoon of the next
day, when he paid his bill and left. And there was the name he had
written in the register book--Mr. John Phillips, Glasgow.
Chisholm drew me out of the hotel where we had heard all this and pulled
the scrap of bill-head from his pocket-book.
"Now that we've got the name to go on," said he, "we'll send a wire to
this address in Dundee asking if anything's known there of Mr. John
Phillips. And we'll have the reply sent to Berwick--it'll be waiting us
when we get back this morning."
The name and address in Dundee was of one Gavin Smeaton, Agent, 131A Bank
Street. And the question which Chisholm sent him over the wire was plain
and direct enough: Could he give the Berwick police any information about
a man named John Phillips, found dead, on whose body Mr. Smeaton's name
and address had been discovered?
"We may get something out of that," said Chisholm, as we left the
post-office, "and we may get nothing. And now that we do know that this
man left here for Coldstream, let's get back there, and go on with our
tracing of his movements last night."
But when we had got back to our own district we were quickly at a dead
loss. The folk at Cornhill station remembered the man well enough. He had
arrived there about half-past eight the previous evening. He had been
seen to go down the road to the bridge which leads over the Tweed to
Coldstream. We could not find out that he had asked the way of
anybody--he appeared to have just walked that way as if he were well
acquainted with the place. But we got news of him at an inn just across
the bridge. Such a man--a gentleman, the inn folk called him--had walked
in there, asked for a glass of whisky, lingered for a few minutes while
he drank it, and had gone out again. And from that point we lost all
trace of him. We were now, of course, within a few miles of the place
where the man had been murdered, and the people on both sides of the
river were all in a high state of excitement about it; but we could learn
nothing more. From the moment of the man's leaving the inn on the
Coldstream side of the bridge, nobody seemed to have seen him until I
myself found his body.
There was another back-set for us when we reached Berwick--in the reply
from Dundee. It was brief and decisive enough. "Have no knowledge
whatever of any person named John Phillips--Gavin Smeaton." So, for the
moment, there was nothing to be gained from that quarter.
Mr. Lindsey and I were at the inn where the body had been taken, and
where the inquest was to be held, early next morning, in company with
the police, and amidst a crowd that had gathered from all parts of
the country. As we hung about, waiting the coroner's arrival, a
gentleman rode up on a fine bay horse--a good-looking elderly man,
whose coming attracted much attention. He dismounted and came towards
the inn door, and as he drew the glove off his right hand I saw that
the first and second fingers of that hand were missing. Here, without
doubt, was the man whom I had seen at the cross-roads just before my
discovery of the murder!