THE OTHER WITNESS
It was with a thumping heart and nerves all a-tingle that I followed Abel
Crone out of his front shop into a sort of office that he had at the back
of it--a little, dirty hole of a place, in which there was a ramshackle
table, a chair or two, a stand-up desk, a cupboard, and a variety of odds
and ends that he had picked up in his trade. The man's sudden revelation
of knowledge had knocked all the confidence out of me. It had never
crossed my mind that any living soul had a notion of my secret--for
secret, of course, it was, and one that I would not have trusted to
Crone, of all men in the world, knowing him as I did to be such a one for
gossip. And he had let this challenge out on me so sharply, catching me
unawares that I was alone with him, and, as it were, at his mercy, before
I could pull my wits together. Everything in me was confused. I was
thinking several things all at a time. How did he come to know? Had I
been watched? Had some person followed me out of Berwick that night? Was
this part of the general mystery? And what was going to come of it, now
that Abel Crone was aware that I knew something which, up to then, I had
kept back?
I stood helplessly staring at him as he turned up the wick of an oil
lamp that stood on a mantelpiece littered with a mess of small things,
and he caught a sight of my face when there was more light, and as he
shut the door on us he laughed--laughed as if he knew that he had me in a
trap. And before he spoke again he went over to the cupboard and took out
a bottle and glasses.
"Will you taste?" he asked, leering at me. "A wee drop, now? It'll do
you good."
"No!" said I.
"Then I'll drink for the two of us," he responded, and poured out a
half-tumblerful of whisky, to which he added precious little water.
"Here's to you, my lad; and may you have grace to take advantage of
your chances!"
He winked over the rim of his glass as he took a big pull at its
contents, and there was something so villainous in the look of him that
it did me good in the way of steeling my nerves again. For I now saw
that here was an uncommonly bad man to deal with, and that I had best be
on my guard.
"Mr. Crone," said I, gazing straight at him, "what's this you have to
say to me?"
"Sit you down," he answered, pointing at a chair that was shoved under
one side of the little table. "Pull that out and sit you down. What we
shall have to say to each other'll not be said in five minutes. Let's
confer in the proper and comfortable fashion."
I did what he asked, and he took another chair himself and sat down
opposite me, propping his elbow on the table and leaning across it, so
that, the table being but narrow, his sharp eyes and questioning lips
were closer to mine than I cared for. And while he leaned forward in his
chair I sat back in mine, keeping as far from him as I could, and just
staring at him--perhaps as if I had been some trapped animal that
couldn't get itself away from the eyes of another that meant presently to
kill it. Once again I asked him what he wanted.
"You didn't answer my question," he said. "I'll put it again, and you
needn't be afraid that anybody'll overhear us in this place, it's safe! I
say once more, what for did you not tell in your evidence at that inquest
that you saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs at the cross-roads on the night of the
murder! Um?"
"That's my business!" said I
"Just so," said he. "And I'll agree with you in that. It is your
business. But if by that you mean that it's yours alone, and nobody
else's, then I don't agree. Neither would the police."
We stared at each other across the table for a minute of silence, and
then I put the question directly to him that I had been wanting to put
ever since he had first spoken. And I put it crudely enough.
"How did you know?" I asked.
He laughed at that--sneeringly, of course.
"Aye, that's plain enough," said he. "No fencing about that! How did I
know? Because when you saw Sir Gilbert I wasn't five feet away from you,
and what you saw, I saw. I saw you both!"
"You were there?" I exclaimed.
"Snug behind the hedge in front of which you planted yourself," he
answered. "And if you want to know what I was doing there, I'll tell you.
I was doing--or had been doing--a bit of poaching. And, as I say, what
you saw, I saw!"
"Then I'll ask you a question, Mr. Crone," I said. "Why haven't you told,
yourself?"
"Aye!" he said. "You may well ask me that. But I wasn't called as a
witness at yon inquest."
"You could have come forward," I suggested.
"I didn't choose," he retorted.
We both looked at each other again, and while we looked he swigged off
his drink and helped himself, just as generously, to more. And, as I was
getting bolder by that time, I set to work at questioning him.
"You'll be attaching some importance to what you saw?" said I.
"Well," he replied slowly, "it's not a pleasant thing--for a man's
safety--to be as near as what he was to a place where another man's just
been done to his death."
"You and I were near enough, anyway," I remarked.
"We know what we were there for," he flung back at me. "We don't know
what he was there for."
"Put your tongue to it, Mr. Crone," I said boldly. "The fact is, you
suspicion him?"
"I suspicion a good deal, maybe," he admitted. "After all, even a man of
that degree's only a man, when all's said and done, and there might be
reasons that you and me knows nothing about. Let me ask you a question,"
he went on, edging nearer at me across the table. "Have you mentioned it
to a soul?"
I made a mistake at that, but he was on me so sharp, and his manner was
so insistent, that I had the word out of my lips before I thought.
"No!" I replied. "I haven't."
"Nor me," he said. "Nor me. So--you and me are the only two folk
that know."
"Well?" I asked.
He took another pull at his liquor and for a moment or two sat silent,
tapping his finger-nails against the rim of the glass.
"It's a queer business, Moneylaws," he said at last. "Look at it anyway
you like, it's a queer business! Here's one man, yon lodger of your
mother's, comes into the town and goes round the neighbourhood reading
the old parish registers and asking questions at the parson's--aye,
and he was at it both sides of the Tweed--I've found that much out
for myself! For what purpose? Is there money at the back of
it--property--something of that sort, dependent on this Gilverthwaite
unearthing some facts or other out of those old books? And then comes
another man, a stranger, that's as mysterious in his movements as
Gilverthwaite was, and he's to meet Gilverthwaite at a certain lonely
spot, and at a very strange hour, and Gilverthwaite can't go, and he gets
you to go, and you find the man--murdered! And--close by--you've seen
this other man, who, between you and me--though it's no secret--is as
much a stranger to the neighbourhood as ever Gilverthwaite was or
Phillips was!"
"I don't follow you at that," I said.
"No?" said he. "Then I'll make it plainer to you. Do you know that until
yon Sir Gilbert Carstairs came here, not so long since, to take up his
title and his house and the estate, he'd never set foot in the place,
never been near the place, this thirty year? Man! his own father, old
Sir Alec, and his own sister, Mrs. Ralston of Craig, had never clapped
eyes on him since he went away from Hathercleugh a youngster of
one-and-twenty!"
"Do you tell me that, Mr. Crone?" I exclaimed, much surprised at his
words. "I didn't know so much. Where had he been, then?"
"God knows!" said he. "And himself. It was said he was a doctor in
London, and in foreign parts. Him and his brother--elder brother, you're
aware, Mr. Michael--they both quarrelled with the old baronet when they
were little more than lads, and out they cleared, going their own ways.
And news of Michael's death, and the proofs of it, came home not so long
before old Sir Alec died, and as Michael had never married, of course the
younger brother succeeded when his father came to his end last winter.
And, as I say, who knows anything about his past doings when he was away
more than thirty years, nor what company he kept, nor what secrets he
has? Do you follow me?"
"Aye, I'm following you, Mr. Crone," I answered. "It comes to this--you
suspect Sir Gilbert?"
"What I say," he answered, "is this: he may have had something to do
with the affair. You cannot tell. But you and me knows he was near the
place--coming from its direction--at the time the murder would be in the
doing. And--there is nobody knows but you--and me!"
"What are you going to do about it?" I asked.
He had another period of reflection before he replied, and when he spoke
it was to the accompaniment of a warning look.
"It's an ill-advised thing to talk about rich men," said he. "Yon man not
only has money of his own, in what you might call considerable quantity,
but his wife he brought with him is a woman of vast wealth, they tell me.
It would be no very wise action on your part to set rumours going,
Moneylaws, unless you could substantiate them."
"What about yourself?" I asked. "You know as much as I do."
"Aye, and there's one word that sums all up," said he. "And it's a short
one. Wait! There'll be more coming out. Keep your counsel a bit. And when
the moment comes, and if the moment comes--why, you know there's me
behind you to corroborate. And--that's all!"
He got up then, with a nod, as if to show that the interview was over,
and I was that glad to get away from him that I walked off without
another word.