LANE VISITS RICHARD
Alma Buckley, the friend of Lettice Larchester’s youth, the woman whom
Sellars was proposing to interview at the earliest opportunity! Truly,
the actors who had first played their parts with the small village
of Brinkstone for their stage so many years ago, were apparently
still in close connection. Well, Sellars must be apprised of this new
development in the situation before he saw the music-hall artist; it
would certainly strengthen his hand in case the lady proved obstinate.
Reviewing the position of affairs very carefully after his interview
with his old friend MacKenzie, Lane came to the conclusion that the
time had arrived when young Croxton ought to be told of what had been
discovered so far. He was not quite sure that Morrice ought not also to
be put in possession of the facts. But he was going to leave him to the
last; it was rather a delicate matter having to tell him in cold blood
that his wife, in conjunction with Sir George Clayton-Brookes, the
mysterious baronet about whom he had made a very important discovery,
was countenancing, from some motive, the rank imposture of young Archie
Brookes.
He did not think it politic to be too frank with Rosabelle, sweet and
sensible as she was, much as he liked her personally. She was young
and inexperienced, romantically and passionately in love, and, he
thought, a little inclined to be rash and impulsive. She might find
it impossible to keep her own counsel, and blurt out what she knew in
quarters where he least wanted anything to be known.
Up to the present he had not seen Richard in the affair, although
he was actually employed by him, all the negotiations having been
conducted through Rosabelle, owing to a certain sensitiveness on the
young man’s part. This was naturally accounted for by the fact of the
very damaging evidence against him. He could not help feeling in his
heart that, although it was the detective’s business to prove his
innocence, he must from the nature of the circumstances start with a
very strong presumption of his guilt. Moreover, he might think it a
piece of rather audacious bluff on the young man’s part, designed to
throw dust in the eyes of Morrice, from whom he knew he was quite safe
so far as criminal proceedings were concerned.
When therefore Lane walked into the little parlour of the cottage at
Petersham the day after the interview at Scotland Yard with MacKenzie,
after having apprised Croxton by a telegram that he was coming to see
him, the young man received him with a certain embarrassment.
The detective went to the point at once. “I thought it was about time
we met, Mr. Croxton,” he began. When Lane had once made up his mind
that the time had arrived for abandoning his usual reticence, he did so
whole-heartedly. And his manner to-day was perfectly cordial, the more
especially as he perceived Richard’s embarrassment, and, of course, was
shrewd enough to divine the cause of it.
As briefly as he could, and with admirable lucidity, he narrated to his
attentive listener all the things that had come to light since he had
taken up the investigation; the brief history of Mrs. Morrice’s life in
the little village of Brinkstone where she had made the acquaintance
of Archibald Brookes the elder, and no doubt that of the two other
brothers, Charles and the present Sir George; her close friendship for
a few months with Alma Buckley; the discovery from perfectly reliable
evidence that young Archie Brookes was neither Sir George’s nephew nor
her own, although it served their purpose to pass him off as such;
the admission by Mr. Morrice that he had lost or mislaid the original
memorandum containing a full description of the mechanism of the
safe; the fact that Archie Brookes had been brought up by the woman
Alma Buckley, and had, previously to his adoption by Sir George, been
engaged in a humble mercantile occupation.
There were a few things he did not mention, one of them being the
fact that Sir George was suspected at Scotland Yard of being engaged
in certain criminal enterprises with some leading spirits of the
underworld. Also he made no mention of the anonymous letter. For the
present he kept all this in reserve.
Needless to say that Richard was much astounded at these revelations,
especially at the fact of the imposture of young Archie Brookes, with
Mrs. Morrice’s connivance, and the loss of the important memorandum
relating to the safe.
“You have not told anything of this to Miss Sheldon,” was his first
comment. “Or, if you have done so, it would be under the seal of
secrecy, as otherwise she would have taken me into her confidence.”
“No, I have not said a word to Miss Sheldon,” was Lane’s answer. “To
tell you the truth, Mr. Croxton, in our profession we are not too
prone to make confidantes of women. We respect their good and noble
qualities, but we distrust their impulsiveness, their incapacity to
keep a secret where secrecy is of vital importance.”
Croxton was bound to agree with this general estimate. Women were by
temperament unfitted to be the coadjutors of men in transactions of
this special nature.
“Now, I have told you that Mr. Morrice asked me to allow him to be
joined in this investigation, and I consented because it did not
seem to prejudice your interests in any way, the aim of both being
to discover the guilty party. Now, it seems to me that the time has
arrived, or will very shortly be approaching, when it will be my
painful duty to inform him of his wife’s singular conduct in passing
off this young man, brought up by the woman Alma Buckley, as her
nephew. Before doing so, there is one contingency which we ought
to anticipate, although I consider it a very unlikely one. Is Mr.
Morrice himself a party to the deception? Is he already aware of it,
and has acquiesced in it from some motive satisfactory to himself?
From your close association with him, you must be well acquainted with
his character, his habits of thought, his views of what are right and
wrong. Do you think it likely that he would from any motives be a
consenting party to such a fraud?”
And Richard’s answer was emphatic. Rupert Morrice was one of the
whitest men he had ever known, abhorrent of deceit and chicanery
in any form, high-minded and honourable to a fault, just a little
intolerant perhaps of weakness in others. Even in his business life,
his notions of rectitude were considered by those who knew him best
almost quixotic, and in private life his code of morality was just as
stringent. Even if he loved his wife with a passionate devotion, he
would never have tacitly suffered such a thing as this. And everybody
knew that while he treated Mrs. Morrice with the utmost respect and
consideration, ardent love played no part in their relations. They made
no pretence at being other than a very ordinary couple who jogged along
placidly enough.
After a little further conversation the interview terminated, leaving
the two men mutually pleased with each other. Lane thought that Richard
seemed a very straightforward, transparent sort of young fellow with
whom it was very difficult to associate a criminal enterprise of such
depth and cunning. And Dick recognized in the detective a sound, solid
man, with great gifts for his difficult task, neither optimistic nor
pessimistic, but holding the just mean between the two extremes.
Lane was impressed by the shrewdness of the young man’s remark when
they parted. “If you can find who has got that memorandum, you will
discover the actual thief. I don’t believe in Mr. Morrice’s theory of
it having passed into the hands of the dustman.”
“Neither do I, Mr. Croxton. Well, good-bye for the present. I think for
the moment we will say nothing about these happenings to Miss Sheldon.
It is not because I wish to keep her in the dark, for I am sure she is
a good and noble girl. But for the moment, except to those actually
concerned, secrecy is imperative. A chance word, a chance look, even a
gesture might convey a warning where I do not wish it to be conveyed.
You understand.”
Yes, Richard thoroughly understood. He hated to keep anything from his
beloved Rosabelle, who had stood by him so staunchly in these dark
hours. But the detective was right, women cannot control their feelings
like men, especially where their deepest emotions are concerned.
Lane had perhaps been more frank in his statement of the facts than
illuminating in his deductions from them, if indeed he had suffered
himself to draw from them any deductions of a very positive nature. But
the young man felt much more cheerful after that visit. He felt quite
sure that if the detective had started with suspicions of him, he had
dropped them by now, or his manner could not have been so cordial. He
was certain that was not assumed.
This keen and patient investigator had certainly made a series of
remarkable discoveries, it was almost impossible that nothing would
result from them. It was easy to see that he was not a man who would
tell you what was passing in his mind till the decisive moment for
revelation had come. No doubt, in his own quiet way, he was drawing
his net tighter and tighter. Would he draw it so closely at the end
that the real criminal could not escape from its meshes? And would
he, Richard Croxton, be rehabilitated in the sight of all men? Would
the day come when Rupert Morrice would ask his pardon for his unjust
suspicions, his harsh treatment, for having branded the son of his old
sweetheart as a thief?
On his return from Petersham to his office, Lane found Sellars waiting
for him by appointment. To this keen-witted young man he detailed
the three fresh incidents that had occurred in so short a space—the
conversation between Mrs. Morrice and her supposed nephew, overheard
by Rosabelle; the fact that Sir George was under the close observation
of Scotland Yard, the further startling fact that Archie Brookes had
been brought up in the home of Alma Buckley. He wound up with the
information that he had dispatched an anonymous letter to Rupert
Morrice, the contents of which he trusted would induce the financier to
start a searching investigation on his own account.
“By Jove, that was a fine idea, Lane, and got you out of an awkward
situation,” said Sellars in a tone of admiration. “If he finds what, no
doubt, we expect him to find, there will be trouble in Deanery Street.
For, although I can’t pretend to know very much about him, he strikes
me as just the kind of man who could be as hard as nails in certain
circumstances.”
“Yes, I should say it was so,” Lane agreed. “Young Croxton, with whom
I had a long talk to-day, tells me that he is the soul of honour and
rectitude, that he has no toleration of wrong-doing in others, being
so exempt from weaknesses himself. He gives me that impression too—the
sort of man who would sacrifice his own son if he thought justice
demanded it.”
Sellars had no petty jealousy of the other man’s superior powers in the
line in which Lane was a master, and he, comparatively speaking, only
a promising pupil. But he did occasionally fancy that he could see a
point which the master, perhaps through carelessness, had overlooked.
He thought he saw one now.
“That’s not quite true, is it? He firmly believed in young Croxton’s
guilt, believes in it still from what you have told me. But he didn’t
prosecute him. Not quite such a hard nut as we think him, perhaps.”
But Lane was not to be worsted in argument by his nimble-minded young
pupil. “I didn’t say he was out for revenge, only for justice. He
satisfied justice by turning him out of the house and ruining his
career. And he did that in spite of the fact that he passionately loved
the mother.”
“Yes, I see your point. Perhaps he may shield his wife in the same
way, or rather a different way, keep up the appearance of a happy
couple in public, and treat her as a stranger in private. Well, the
next important move on the board is the meeting with Miss Buckley—that
information you have just got ought to give me a point in the game,
anyway.”