|Two months had elapsed since the meeting between Major Murchison and
Stella Spencer, recorded in the last chapter.
A handsome, well-set-up man of about thirty was travelling up from
Manchester to London. The reason of his journey was his desire to
visit his sister, Caroline Masters, who occupied a small flat in the
neighbourhood of King's Cross.
Up to a short time ago this handsome, well-set-up man had been leading a
very quiet life in the busy city of Manchester. He was an electrician
by trade, and a very clever one. He was civil, well-spoken, intelligent
beyond his station, but he had not forgathered much with his
fellow-workers, had kept himself very much to himself. And yet, strange
to say, this self-isolation had not provoked suspicion or resentment on
the part of his daily associates.
Reginald Davis, for such was his name, had been unjustly suspected of
murder, and the police had been hot on his track. Then had come the
suicide in No. 10 Cathcart Square, and his sister, Caroline Masters, had
identified the dead body as that of her brother.
Caroline Masters had always been a plucky, resourceful girl, and devoted
to him. The dead man, no doubt, bore some resemblance to himself,
and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to swear to a false
identification, and remove from him the sleepless vigilance of the
police. This much she had conveyed to him in a guarded letter.
Reginald Davis, the man falsely accused of murder, was dead in the eyes
of the law: in a sense, he had nothing further to fear. But at the same
time, caution must be observed. The few friends he had were in London;
at any time he might run across one or more of them. So, taking another
name, he had hidden himself in Manchester, and corresponded secretly
with the one of the two sisters he could trust, Caroline Masters.
And then, suddenly, the burden had been lifted from his soul. There was
a small paragraph in the evening newspapers, afterwards reproduced in
the morning ones, which told him that he need not skulk through the
world any longer.
A man lying under sentence of death for a brutal murder and without hope
of reprieve, had confessed to the crime of which Davis had been falsely
accused. In the paragraph, which was, of course, essentially the same
in all the papers, were a few words of sympathy for the unfortunate
Reginald Davis who had stolen into No. 10 Cathcart Square and committed
suicide, under a sense of abject terror. The police had carefully
investigated the statements of the condemned man, with the result that
they found the late Reginald Davis absolutely innocent.
The late Reginald Davis, very alive and well, knocked at the door of
his sister's flat. She had been apprised of his coming, and greeted him
affectionately. She sat him down before a well-cooked supper. He was
hungry and ate heartily. She did not disturb him with much conversation
till he had finished. Then she spoke.
"Well, Reggie, that was a bit of luck indeed." She was, of course,
alluding to the confession of the real murderer. "Now you are as free as
air. You were always a bit of a bad egg, old boy, but never a criminal
to that extent."
"No, hang it all, I am not particular in a general way, but murder
was not in my line," he answered briefly. "It was hard lines to get
scot-free of the other things, and then to be suspected of that at the
end."
He looked at her admiringly. "By Jove! Carrie, you were always the
cleverest of the lot of us. That was a brain-wave of yours, walking in
and identifying me as the suicide." Mrs. Masters smiled appreciatively.
"Yes, it came to me in a flash. I read the account in the papers. It
struck me I might do something useful. I went up to the court with the
tale of a missing brother. I saw the body; the poor creature might have
been your twin. Of course, I swore it was you, and gave you a new lease
of life." She added severely, "I hope you have taken advantage of what
I did, and become a reformed character." Davis spoke very gravely. "Yes,
Carrie, I swear to you I have. That shock was the making of me. I have
lain very low, worked hard, and put by money."
He pulled out an envelope from his breastpocket, and thrust it into her
hand; it was full of one-pound notes.
"Fifty of the best, old girl, for a little nest-egg. I have not
forgotten my best pal, you see."
The tears came into Mrs. Masters' eyes. He had been a bad egg, but he
had a good heart at bottom.
"That is very sweet of you, Reggie; it will come in very useful. And now
to go back for a moment to Cathart Square. Who was the poor devil
who killed himself there? He was as like you as two peas are like each
other."
"I think we have got to find that out," said Reginald Davis gravely.
"Nor, reading the account in the papers, am I quite sure that it was a
suicide."
"But that was the verdict," interrupted the sister.
"I know, but there are peculiar things about the case. Letters addressed
to Reginald Davis were found on him; there was a letter signed Reginald
Davis, addressed to the Coroner, announcing his intention to commit
suicide. Those letters had been placed there by the person who murdered
him, and that person who murdered him was somebody who knew me, unless
it was the accidental taking of a common name."
"But the razor was clutched in his hand, Reggie!"
"Quite easy," replied Davis, who, if not a murderer himself, could
easily project himself, apparently, into the mind of one. "We will
assume, for the moment, it was a man. He cut the poor devil's throat,
and then thrust the razor into his stiffening hand, to convey the idea
of suicide."
"It might be," agreed Mrs. Masters.
"Well, Carrie, one thing I have fixed on, and it is one of the things
for which I have come up. I go to Scotland Yard to-morrow, tell them
straight I am Reginald Davis, without a stain upon my character, explain
to them that you were misled by a close resemblance. We will have that
body exhumed. I am firmly convinced it was a murder."
"Let sleeping dogs lie, Reggie," advised Mrs. Masters, who had a horror
of the law and its subtle ways. "Never mind who was the poor devil who
was found there, whether he was murdered or committed suicide. It is no
affair of yours."
"It is an affair of mine in this way," replied Davis in a dogged tone.
"The person who murdered the poor devil, as you call him, knew something
about me, and took a liberty with my name."
"It served you a good turn, Reggie, anyway."
"I know; I admit that. But the murderer did not know he was doing me,
thanks to you, a good turn when he killed the other fellow."
Mrs. Masters thought deeply for a few moments. "Reggie, you have been a
very bad egg, I am sure. I shall never guess a quarter of what you have
been guilty of."
He laid his hand affectionately on her arm. "Well for you, old girl, you
can't. That is all past and done with. By the way, that letter found on
the poor chap, announcing his intention to commit suicide, did they ask
you to identify my handwriting? Of course, the others addressed to him
didn't matter much. Anybody could have written them. But my letter was a
forgery. Did they ask you to identify that particular letter?"
"They did, Reggie, and my brain was in such a whirl that I could hardly
read it. I said that I believed it was in your handwriting. It was
certainly very like, although, as you can imagine, I looked at it
through a sort of mist. Anyway, it was as like your handwriting as the
dead man was like you." Davis ruminated for a few moments. "That letter
was forged by somebody who knew me and could imitate my hand to a
nicety. I am thinking of all the wrong'uns I knew in the old days. I
think I can fix him."
"Yes," said Mrs. Masters breathlessly. She was capable of great daring
in the cause and the service of those she loved, but she was not
habituated to the ways of hardened criminals.
"A man I was a bit associated with in the old days; luckily he didn't
drag me in far enough. He was an expert forger. We used to call him
'George the Penman.'"
Mrs. Masters shuddered. "Oh, you poor weak soul, you were so near it as
that?"
"Very near, Carrie. The shock of the false accusation of murder pulled
me up straight. I saw where I was drifting, and made up my mind that
the straight path was the surest." At the moment that Mr. Davis gave
utterance to this honourable sentiment there was a ring at the bell.
Mrs. Masters rose at once. "It is Iris. I dropped her a note to say you
were coming. She will be so pleased to see you."
There floated into the small sitting-room a very dainty and ethereal
figure, Miss Iris Deane, a charming member of the chorus at the
Frivolity Theatre.
She flung her arms round the neck of her handsome brother. "Oh Reggie,
dear, what a treat to see you! And all this dreadful thing is lifted
from you."
Iris was not his favourite sister. She was clever in a worldly way, and
had made good. But she had not the sterling loyalty of Caroline.
Davis gently checked her enthusiasm. "And how have you been getting on,
Iris? Always floating on the top as usual?"
Miss Iris showed her dimples. "Always floating on the top, as you
say, dear old boy. A silly, soft chap fell in love with me; wrote most
impassioned love-letters. Well, he was too soppy for me to care much
about him, and when his rich brother came along, offering me a price for
his love-letters, I can tell you I just jumped at the chance."
"Did you get a good price?" queried her brother.
"I stuck out for ten thousand," explained the capable Iris; "but this
chap was a good bargainer, and I let them go at seven. It was better on
the whole. If I had married Roddie, I should have been so fed-up in a
month that I should have run away from him, and then Heaven knows where
I might have ended."
Davis looked at his sister approvingly. There was enough of the old Adam
left in him to entertain a slight envy of his sister's chances. Seven
thousand pounds, a little fortune in itself, was a good bit of work, a
handsome reward for the display of her dimples.
"Roddie who, dear? You might tell us his other name," queried Mrs.
Masters, who perhaps was also smitten with a sense of envy.
"That's telling," answered the sprightly Iris, who was not given to be
too frank about her own affairs. "But if either of you two dear things
want a little ready, apply to me. Of course, you will remember I have
got to take care of myself, to make provision for my old age."
Davis and Carrie exchanged glances. They knew the volatile Iris of old.
As a child she had always been mean and grasping. Not much of the seven
thousand would come their way, if they were on the verge of starvation.
Carrie spoke in cold accents. "You are really too generous, Iris. But
we shall not have to trespass upon your generosity. I have enough for my
humble wants. And Reggie has been able to put by, so much so that he has
been kind enough to make me a very handsome money present to-night."
"Dear old Reggie," said the sweetly smiling Iris. "I am so glad you have
made good."
And then Davis spoke: "Thanks, in great part, to Carrie, who told that
splendid lie about the suicide, or murder, at 10 Cathcart Square. You
remember that, of course?"
"Suicide, wasn't it?" said Iris, but her cheek had grown a little pale.
"I don't think so. There was a forged letter purporting to be written by
me. I am going to Scotland Yard to-morrow, stating frankly who I am,
and urging them to exhume the body. We will find out who the man, buried
under the name of Reginald Davis, really was."
And then the agitation of his younger sister became extreme. She
clutched convulsively at his arm.
"Reggie, you will not do this. What does it matter to you who the man
was? Go under some other name, and let sleeping dogs lie." Unconsciously
she had used the same expression as Mrs. Masters, but from different
motives.
"I have been under a different name for a longer time than I care to
remember," answered Davis doggedly. "I have a fancy to resume my own,
and make a clean breast of it to the police. They have nothing else to
charge me with."
Iris fell on her knees, and the tears rained down her cheeks.
"For my sake, Reggie, if not for your own."
"And why for your sake? Tell us what you mean," demanded her brother
sternly.
And Iris spoke as clearly as she could speak amidst her strangled sobs.
"If you try and unearth that mystery at Cathcart Square, I might be
dragged in, and it might be very awkward for me."