SIR GEORGE IS ARRESTED
The long narrative was finished. Three times had Miss Buckley opened
the door, intimating by that action that it was time the interview was
concluded, and each time Mrs. Morrice had signalled to her to withdraw.
It only remained now for the wretched woman to sign the confession
admitting her guilt, and clearing Richard Croxton in the eyes of those
who held him in regard.
Had Rosabelle been present she would have shed compassionate tears over
those passages in which Mrs. Morrice described the mental tortures she
had suffered through the machinations of this evil pair.
But Lane was made of sterner stuff. She had been deeply sinned against,
it was true, but she had been a great sinner herself. She had been the
victim of a tragic set of circumstances which might well have appalled
the bravest woman, but in her selfish desire to keep herself afloat,
she had chosen the line of least resistance.
Apart from her lapse into actual criminal courses, there were three
things he could not forgive her for, her callous abandonment of her
child, the son of a felon it is true, but still “flesh of her flesh and
bone of her bone”; the equally callous sacrifice of Richard Croxton;
her unscrupulous conduct in marrying Morrice, an honourable and upright
man, under false pretences. True, that if she had told him the truth
about her past he would not have married her, but it was little short
of dastardly to involve him in her own unhappy career.
Anticipating that he would have no difficulty in wringing the truth out
of her, Lane had brought with him the confession ready written for her
to sign. But, before handing it to her, he had a few questions to put
upon collateral points.
“Before you embarked upon these robberies, Mrs. Morrice, you had to
obtain possession of the two keys and get duplicates made. That was
rather a difficult matter, wasn’t it?”
Not so very difficult, he learned. Mr. Morrice was a very careless
man in some respects, and he was so confident nobody but himself
and Richard was acquainted with the mechanism of the safe, that he
was incautious in small details. He frequently left his key lying
about in his room when he went up to the City. Richard was not quite
so careless, but occasionally he did the same. The moment Mrs.
Morrice—ever on the watch—got hold of them, Sir George was ’phoned for
to come to the house, and the rest was easy.
“And now tell me about those finger-prints of the man ‘Tubby’ Thomas
who was in Dartmoor at the time the robberies were committed. What was
the motive of that, and how were they obtained?”
The answer to this question involved a longer explanation. It was
done, as Lane had rightly suspected, as a mere act of devilment, for
the purpose of making a fool for the moment of any agent of the law
who might be called in by Mr. Morrice. It had succeeded temporarily in
making a fool of the astute detective himself.
The _modus operandi_ was as follows: Young Archie Brookes, to call him
by his assumed name, had provided her with a pair of surgical rubber
gloves upon which a copy of the expert robber’s finger-prints had been
impressed.
How were they obtained? Sir George, who took a great interest in the
science of identifying latent finger-prints, had procured those of the
notorious “Tubby,” with whom he had maintained some sort of association
before his conviction, and had very cleverly reproduced them upon the
thin rubber gloves.
“It would appear, then, that your pretended relative by marriage was
the friend of crooks; were you aware of this, Mrs. Morrice?”
“By certain things that he let drop now and then, I had no doubt that
the man was engaged in every kind of villainy and wrong-doing,” was
Mrs. Morrice’s answer.
“And now tell me a little about Miss Buckley’s attitude towards him
when she found out his real character. You say she was in love with
him; did she break off all relations with him, and forbid him the
house?”
“It was the dearest wish of her heart to do so,” replied the unhappy
woman. “For my sake she forbore, as she feared that if she angered him
it might make things worse for me. And, besides, her place was a useful
meeting ground when it might have been too risky for him to come to
Deanery Street, in such things as handing over money, for instance.”
“I quite understand. And you are positive that, although she knew about
the blackmailing and the disposal of your jewellery and the fraud of
Archie Brookes, she was ignorant of the robberies?”
“Quite positive. They were very particular about that. I think they
were a bit afraid of what she might do, if she had an inkling. She is a
strong-minded woman in many respects, and she might have determined to
go to Mr. Morrice and tell him the whole truth to save me from becoming
an actual criminal.”
There was nothing more to be said. The confession was signed. Lane,
punctilious in everything he did, gave her a copy and left the flat.
Shortly before dinner-time he went to Deanery Street to communicate the
result of his interview to the financier. He found him and Rosabelle
together, and was invited to speak before them both, Morrice having no
desire to keep anything from his pretty niece in a matter in which her
interest was as keen as his own.
Of course, both had guessed that the pseudo Archie Brookes was, in
all probability, Mrs. Morrice’s son, and that there was some shameful
secret connected with the relationship. But they were not prepared
for the terrible disclosures now made by Lane. It was a great blow
to the proud man to learn that the woman who had borne his name and
done the honours of his house with such a calm and gracious dignity,
was the widow of a convicted felon, that she had involved him in her
disgraceful past.
He turned sternly to his niece. “From this day, never let her name be
mentioned between us. Let us think of her as one dead to us.”
Presently Lane spoke. “This winds up the mystery so far as I am
concerned, Mr. Morrice. I shall pay a formal visit to Mr. Croxton and
acquaint him with these results; he must, of course, be made aware of
them.”
Morrice nodded. “Of course. I have no wish to hide my disgrace from
him.”
“Your reflected disgrace,” said the detective gently. “Well, there
is a little thing I wish to mention. I am not at all sure that this
scoundrel of a baronet has not got some of those French francs left.
They would be awkward things to get rid of in bulk. Depend upon it
he is peddling them out as occasion offers. If you would give me the
necessary authority to act, I do not think it impossible for me to
frighten out of him what he has got left, if any, with the threat of
criminal proceedings. Of course _we_ know you will not take these, for
obvious reasons, but he cannot be sure.”
“No,” said Morrice, “I shall certainly not take proceedings. I have
no desire to wash my dirty linen in public, to show how I have been
made a dupe and a fool. There will be plenty of conjecture as it is;
let it stop at that. But if you feel keen about this, you have my full
permission to do what you think advisable.”
Pretty early the next morning, Lane made his way to Sir George’s flat.
He chuckled inwardly as he recalled that memorable evening when he
and Simmons the valet had been surprised there by the so-called Archie
Brookes. He remembered how he had been puzzled by the smallness of the
baronet’s banking account and the somewhat contradictory statements
made by Simmons with regard to his actual financial position. Of
course, now it was all quite clear. That banking account was a blind,
Sir George had other depositories in which he placed the moneys he made
by his nefarious schemes.
Simmons opened the door; Lane saw that the man was in a state of
considerable excitement. At the query of: Was his master at home? the
valet smiled broadly:
“Come in, Mr. Lane, and welcome. No, Sir George isn’t at home nor
likely to be. Something’s up, sir; we always had an idea he was a
‘fishy’ customer, didn’t we?”
The detective went with Simmons into the room where he had conducted
his investigations on that memorable evening. It was in a state of
confusion; the key of the safe into which he would have so dearly loved
to peep on that occasion was in the door. Lane unlocked it and swung it
open, to find the safe was empty. The drawers of the writing-table were
all unlocked, some of them partly open, and in them nothing of value,
only a few old letters and unimportant memoranda. The fireplace was
littered with the ashes of burned papers.
“What’s the meaning of it all?” asked Lane with a frown. He had a
pretty shrewd premonition that his visit had been paid too late, that
there was very small chance of recovering any of his plunder from this
wily scoundrel.
It appeared that early the previous morning, young Archie Brookes had
called and the two men were closeted together for over a couple of
hours. Simmons had followed his usual tactics of applying his ear to
the keyhole, but they were on their guard, and spoke in such low tones
that he could not catch a word. After the young man had left, Sir
George came out and ordered the valet to fill a good-sized portmanteau
with clothes; he had in his hand a bag which, no doubt, contained all
the money and everything of portable value in the flat.
He explained briefly that he was going abroad for some months, and
had given his solicitors instructions to dispose of the furniture and
contents, and sub-let the flat. He handed Simmons a written character
and—wonderful to relate—gave him three months’ wages in lieu of notice.
A taxi was called, and the chauffeur given instructions to drive to
Charing Cross station.
It was pretty evident that Sir George, to use the valet’s graphic
expression, had “done a bunk.” Simmons had not noticed the number of
the taxi, but even if he had taken this precaution, it was not likely
to have given Lane much assistance. A practised campaigner like this
well-born rogue would be clever enough to conceal his tracks; he had
already his plans cut and dried to evade pursuit.
The valet had come round this morning to clear up things a bit, and
after he had done that he was to post his own key to Sir George’s
solicitors.
The scoundrel had enjoyed a long start, and by now was clear away. It
was not worth while wasting time over him. Mr. Morrice had shown by
his manner that he was sick and tired of the whole matter, and wished
to shut it out of his recollection. To a wealthy man such as he, the
recovery of a portion of the stolen money was a matter of comparative
unimportance.
So Lane decided that he would go no further in what might be termed the
side-issue of the Deanery Street mystery. But second thoughts induced
him to look up his old friend MacKenzie at Scotland Yard.
What was the motive of the baronet’s sudden departure? Of course, he
would have learned from Mrs. Morrice or Alma Buckley that his game was
up in that direction. Did he dread the vengeance of the financier, or
were other causes at work?
MacKenzie received him with his accustomed cordiality. “Well, how are
you getting on with the case you told me about?”
Lane informed him that it had ended successfully from a professional
point of view: he had proved his client’s innocence and found the real
criminal. Lane did not proffer the name of that real criminal, nor did
MacKenzie ask it. They were confidential with each other up to a point,
but a certain etiquette was always preserved.
“I went round to the flat of our friend, Sir George Clayton-Brookes,
this morning and learned that he had left in a violent hurry. I was
sorry, as I wanted to have a little talk with him. Seems something
‘fishy’ about this sudden flight.”
The keen Scotchman smiled and tapped his broad chest with his finger.
“Scotland Yard has got something to do with that. We have been years
trying to get him, as I told you, but he was so devilish cunning that
we might have gone on for years longer but for a lucky accident. We
got one of his gang and the fellow split. We have plenty of evidence
against the gentleman now. I suppose he got wind of it before we could
get a warrant out. It’s astonishing what a freemasonry there is among
these scoundrels. But he won’t escape us now. Clever as he is, we shall
have him by the heels before he is much older.”
“Have you found any evidence that involves the young man known as
Archie Brookes?” queried Lane.
“No, we can’t find that he has any connection with this particular
‘stunt’—I shouldn’t say Sir George was a man to share more than he
could help with anybody.”
MacKenzie’s prophecy was fulfilled. Within three weeks from that date
the baronet was arrested in Italy, and brought back to England after
the observance of the usual formalities.
As he now disappears from these pages, it is only necessary to say
that he was put upon his trial, found guilty, and awarded an exemplary
sentence.
It was a nine days’ wonder in Clubland and the circles in which he had
been a prominent figure; and then other startling events occurred and
drove him out of the public mind, and the plausible, well-mannered,
smartly-groomed baronet who had led such a chequered existence became a
memory.
But much to the relief of Rupert Morrice and his niece, nothing came
out at the trial which could in any way connect him with the robberies
at Deanery Street. Morrice’s friends and acquaintances were, of course,
very grieved at the reflected disgrace cast upon him by the fact that,
through his wife, the financier and the criminal were some sort of
distant connection.