TRUE to his word, he returned to his lodgings and spent the afternoon
in slumber. He had the gift which all great men possess, of being able
to sleep at will. He was staying at a boarding-house, and occupied a
room which had originally been a side veranda, but had been walled in
and converted into an extra bedroom. It was a remarkably convenient room
for him, as he had discovered on previous occasions. He had but to open
the window and drop on to the grass to make his exit without anybody in
the house being the wiser. More to the point, he could return at any
hour by the same route without disturbing the household.
He had his supper, and whilst it was still very light he went out to
reconnoitre Sir John’s demesne. He was able to make the circuit of the
house, which occupied a corner site and was isolated by two lanes, and
he saw nobody until, returning to the front of the house, a car drove up
and a woman alighted.
He had no difficulty in recognising Lady Maxell, but the taxi interested
him more than the lady. It was smothered with mud and had evidently come
a long journey.
As evidently she had hired it in some distant town and she had not as
yet finished with it, because she gave the man some directions and
money, and from the profound respect which the chauffeur showed, it was
clear that that money was merely a tip.
Timothy stood where he could clearly be seen, but her back was toward
him all the time and she did not so much as glance in his direction when
she passed through the gate and up the garden path.
It was curious, thought Timothy, that she did not take the car up the
drive to the house. More curious was it that she should, at this late
hour of the evening, have further use for it.
He returned to his room, full of theories, the majority of which were
wholly wild and improbable. He lay on his bed, indulging in those dreams
which made up the happiest part of his life. Of late he had taken a new
and a more radiant pattern to the web of his fancy and——
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” he said in disgust, rolling over and sitting up with
a yawn.
He heard the feet of the boarders on the gravel path outside, and once
he heard a girl say evidently to a visitor:
“Do you see that funny room! That is Mr. Anderson’s.”
There was still an hour or so to be passed, and he joined the party in
the parlour so restless and distrait as to attract attention and a
little mild raillery from his fellow guests. He went back to his room,
turned on the light and pulled a trunk from under the bed.
Somehow his mind had been running all day upon that erring cousin whose
name he bore and whose disappearance from public life was such a
mystery. Possibly it was Sir John’s words which had brought Alfred
Cartwright to his mind. His mother had left him a number of family
documents, which, with the indolence of youth, he had never examined
very closely. He had the impression that they consisted in the main of
receipts, old diplomas of his father’s (who was an engineer) and sundry
other family documents which were not calculated to excite the curiosity
of the adventurous youth.
He took out the two big envelopes in which these papers were kept and
turned them on to the bed, examining them one by one. Why his cousin
should be in his mind, why he should have taken this action at that
particular moment, the psychologist and the psychical expert alone can
explain. They may produce in explanation such esoteric phenomena as
auras, influences, and telepathies, and perhaps they are right.
He had not searched long before he came upon a small package of
newspaper cuttings, bound about by a rubber band. He read them at first
without interest, and then without comprehension. There was one cutting,
however, which had been clipped from its context, which seemed to tell
the whole story of the rest. It ran:
“When Cartwright stood up for sentence he did not seem to be
greatly troubled by his serious position. As the words ‘twenty
years’ passed Mr. Justice Maxell’s lips, he fell back as if he
had been shot. Then, springing to the edge of the dock, he
hurled an epithet at his lordship. Some of his business
associates suggest that the learned judge was a partner of
Cartwright’s—an astonishing and most improper suggestion to
make. In view of the statement that the prisoner made before the
trial, when suggestions had been made in a newspaper that the
judge had been connected with him in business years before, and
remembering that Cartwright’s statement was to the effect that
he had had no business transactions with the judge, it seems as
though the outburst was made in a fit of spleen at the severity
of the sentence. Sir John Maxell, after the case, took the
unusual step of informing a Press representative that he
intended placing his affairs in the hands of a committee for
investigation, and had invited the Attorney-General to appoint
that committee. ‘I insist upon this being done,’ he said,
‘because after the prisoner’s accusation I should not feel
comfortable until an impartial committee had examined my
affairs.’ It is understood that after the investigation the
learned judge intends retiring from the Bench.”
Timothy gasped. So that was the explanation. That was why Maxell had
written to him, that was why he made no reference at all to his father,
but to this disreputable cousin of his. Slowly he returned the package
to its envelope, dropped it into his trunk and pushed the trunk under
the bed.
And that was the secret of Cousin Cartwright’s disappearance. He might
have guessed it; he might even have known had he troubled to look at
these papers.
He sat on the bed, his hands clasping his knees. It was not a pleasant
reflection that he had a relative, and a relative moreover after whom he
was named, serving what might be a life sentence in a convict
establishment. But what made him think of the matter to-night?
“Mr. Anderson! Timothy!”
Timothy looked round with a start. The man whose face was framed in the
open window might have been forty, fifty or sixty. It was a face heavily
seamed and sparsely bearded—a hollow-eyed, hungry face, but those eyes
burnt like fire. Timothy jumped up.
“Hullo!” he said. “Who are you ‘Timothying’?”
“You don’t know me, eh?” the man laughed unpleasantly. “Can I come in?”
“Yes, you can come in,” said Timothy.
He wondered what old acquaintance this was who had come to the tramp
level, and rapidly turned over in his mind all the possible candidates
for trampdom he had met.
“You don’t know me, eh?” said the man again. “Well, I’ve tracked you
here, and I’ve been sitting in those bushes for two hours. I heard one
of the boarders say that it was your window and I waited till it was
dark before I came out.”
“All this is highly interesting,” said Timothy, surveying the shrunken
figure without enthusiasm, “but who are you?”
“I had a provisional pardon,” said the man, “and they put me in a
sanatorium—I’ve something the matter with one of my lungs. It was
always a trouble to me. I was supposed to stay in the sanatorium—that
was one of the terms on which I was pardoned—but I escaped.”
Timothy stared at him with open mouth.
“Alfred Cartwright!” he breathed.
The man nodded.
“That’s me,” he said.
Timothy looked down at the edge of the black box.
“So that is why I was thinking about you,” he said. “Well, this beats
all! Sit down, won’t you?”
He pulled a chair up for his visitor and again gazed on him with
curiosity but without affection. Something in Timothy’s attitude annoyed
Cartwright.
“You’re not glad to see me?” he said.
“Not very,” admitted Timothy. “The truth is, you’ve only just come into
existence so far as I am concerned. I thought you were dead.”
“You didn’t know?”
Timothy shook his head.
“Not until a few minutes ago. I was reading the cuttings about your
trial——”
“So that was what you were reading?” said the man. “I’d like to see ’em
one of these days. Do you know what I’ve come for?”
It was only at that moment that Sir John flashed through Timothy’s mind.
“I guess what you’ve come after,” he said slowly. “You’re here to see
Sir John Maxell.”
“I’m here to see Mister Justice Maxell,” said the man between his teeth.
“You’re a good guesser.”
He took the stump of a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lit it.
“John Maxell and I have a score to settle, and it is going to be settled
very soon.”
“Tide and weather permitting,” said Timothy flippantly, recovering his
self-possession. “All that vendetta stuff doesn’t go, Mr. Cartwright.”
Then he asked in a flash: “Did you shoot at him last night?”
The man’s surprise was a convincing reply.
“Shoot at him? I only got to this place this afternoon. It’s more likely
he’s waiting to shoot at me, for the sanatorium people will have
telegraphed to him the moment I was missing.”
Timothy walked to the window and pulled down the blinds.
“Now tell me, Mr. Cartwright, before we go any farther, do you still
persist in the story you told the court, that the judge was a party to
your swindle?”
“A party to it!” said the other man furiously. “Of course he was! I was
using the money of my companies to buy concessions from the Moorish
Government, as much on his behalf as on mine. He wasn’t in the Brigot
swindle—but he held shares in the company I was financing. We located a
gold mine in the Angera country, and Maxell and I went across to Europe
every year regularly to look after our property.
“We had to keep it quiet because we secured the concessions from the
Pretender, knowing that he’d put the Sultan out of business the moment
he got busy. If it had been known, the Sultan would have repudiated the
concession, and our Government would have upheld the repudiation. Maxell
speaks the language like a native, and I learnt enough to get on with El
Mograb, who is the biggest thing amongst the rebel tribes. El Mograb
wanted us to stay there, Maxell and I; he’d have made us shereefs or
pashas, and I’d have done it, because I knew there was going to be an
investigation sooner or later into the affairs of my companies. But
Maxell wouldn’t have it. He always pretended that, so far as he knew, my
financing was straight. You know the rest,” he said. “When I came before
Maxell, I thought I was safe.”
“But Sir John allowed his affairs to be inspected,” said Timothy. “If he
had been engaged with you in this Morocco business, there must have been
papers to prove it.”
Cartwright laughed harshly.
“Of course he’d allow his affairs to be investigated,” he sneered. “Do
you think that old fox couldn’t _cache_ all the documents that put him
wrong? Papers? Why, he must have enough papers to hang him, if you could
only find ’em!”
“What are you going to do?” asked Timothy.
There was one thing he was determined that this man should _not_ do, and
that was to disturb the peace of mind, not of Sir John Maxell or his
wife, but of a certain goddess whose bedroom overlooked the lawn.
“What am I going to do?” replied Cartwright. “Why, I’m going up to get
my share. And he’ll be lucky if that’s all he loses. One of the mines
was sold to a syndicate last year—I had news of it in gaol. He didn’t
get much for it because he was in a hurry to sell—I suppose his other
investments must have been going wrong twelve months ago—but I want my
share of that!”
Timothy nodded.
“Then you had best see Sir John in the morning. I will arrange an
interview.”
“In the morning!” said the other contemptuously. “Suppose you make the
arrangement, what would happen? When I went up there I should find a
couple of cops waiting to pinch me. I know John! I’m going to see him
to-night.”
“I think not,” said Timothy, and the man stared at him.
“You think not?” he said. “What has it to do with you?”
“Quite a lot,” said Timothy. “I merely state that you will not see him
to-night.”
Cartwright stroked his bristly chin undecidedly and then:
“Oh, well,” he said in a milder tone, “maybe you can fix things up for
me in the morning.”
“Where are you sleeping to-night?” asked Timothy. “Have you any money?”
He had money, a little; and he had arranged to sleep at the house of a
man he had known in better times. Timothy accompanied him through the
window and into the street, and walked with him to the end of the road.
“If my gamble had come off, you’d have benefited, Anderson,” said the
man unexpectedly, breaking in upon another topic which they were
discussing.
They parted, and Timothy watched him out of sight, then turned on and
walked in the opposite direction, to take up his self-imposed vigil.