It was, in fact, only a few minutes before Michael was back again,
looking distinctly glum. Out of pity, Wilson forbore to ask the
reason; had he done so, he would have found that Michael had once
again been dismissed with something less than cordiality. Mark
Warden, though his face, which looked unusually careworn, had
brightened up at Michael’s coming, had made it quite plain, after
the first greeting, that his conversation with the supposed inquiry
agent (now introduced as Strake) did not require a third; and Michael
was in no mood to hang about while his friend conducted private
conversations with “dirty little Paul Prys.” Accordingly, he returned
to the inn, feeling that the world was in a conspiracy to humiliate
and annoy him, and was so sulky during the evening that even Wilson,
equable as his own temper was, was beginning to wish that the late
Mr. Meston had stayed at the bottom of the river, when about nine
o’clock there was a sound of hurried feet on the stairs, a bang on
the door, and Mark Warden, pale and worried, rushed into the room.
“Oh, good! you’re there,” he exclaimed. “I say, Michael, I’m
frightfully sorry about that chap, but, you see--oh!----” he broke
off on seeing Wilson. “I’m sorry.”
“My friend, Wilson,” said Michael, introducing them. “Mark Warden.”
Wilson offered to leave, as the young man had clearly some trouble
on his mind; but Michael was anxious for him to stay, and after
a little beating about the bush, it was decided that he should.
Drinks were ordered, and they settled themselves comfortably, Wilson
meanwhile observing the young man with some care.
There was nothing apparent to distinguish Mark Warden from any other
pleasant, moderately idle young fellow of twenty-six or seven. He was
good-looking, in a way, but with the comeliness of youth and health
rather than any special distinction; he was above middle height, with
movements and a carriage which suggested that his body was probably
more specifically handsome than his face; and though that face at
present looked worried and worn, it was no more so than the faces of
many young creatures Wilson had known, when first they discovered
that life does not strictly correspond to the l.b.w. rule.
“I’m _frightfully_ sorry,” he said very earnestly, “to have been
talking to that awful bounder. Really, I couldn’t help it, though.
You see, he was put on by Hanborough to look into this business. Of
course, I thought Hanborough’d know what’d be best, and I didn’t ask
any questions--and then he stopped me in the street, of all places,
and began talking about it----”
“About _what_?” Michael interrupted. “About Meston’s death?”
“Yes, though God knows what business it was of his. He began feeding
me up with a frightful lot of scandal. Come to think of it, _your_
name got in somehow, Michael--about mysteries about Mr. Meston’s
death, and quarrels with his wife--disgusting sort of rubbish! Of
course, I pretty soon told him _that_ wasn’t what Mr. Hanborough’d
asked him to look into----”
“But what _had_ he been asked to look into?” Michael tried again.
“Why, the accounts. That’s just what I’ve come to ask you about--to
know what the blazes you think I ought to do. It’s frightfully
awkward for me, you see, anyway, and now Meston turning up drowned
fairly puts the lid on it.”
“Puts the lid on _what_?” Michael said impatiently. “What in thunder
are you talking about?”
“Perhaps if Mr. Warden started from the beginning,” Wilson suggested.
“He forgets you and I are strangers to the place.”
“You may be strangers,” Warden said bitterly, “but if you haven’t had
all the gossip four times over at least, you’ve very lucky strangers.
I never knew such a hornets’ nest as this. But I’m sorry I’m making
a muddle--I don’t know what to think or what to do. I’ll start again
properly.” He helped himself to a stiff drink, and pushed the hair
back from his forehead.
“_You_ know,”--to Michael, who nodded--“Dad put me in to learn the
business five years ago; and Christmas two years, when he had his
stroke, he got me made junior partner. Dad was senior partner of
Warden, Hanborough and Meston”--he added to Wilson--“of Colchester.
He built up the firm practically himself, and he did nearly
everything, and so, of course, with two other partners, there was
precious little for me to do; and, anyway, he was just as pleased I
should play cricket and be a kind of county ornament as do anything
else. I mean, I could be a sort of decoy duck for clients, don’t you
see, even if I didn’t do any work. Well, after I properly came into
the firm, this went on for some time; Hanborough and Meston between
them knew the whole show inside out, and I didn’t see why I should
bother. Then, you remember, I had that smash at the end of last
season, when you picked me up; and our old sawbones thinks I must
have managed to strain my guts, somehow, at the same time. Anyhow,
I had a horrid pain inside me for a bit; and what with that and my
knee, I didn’t feel much like playing games. So I took to going
regularly to business, though I don’t fancy anybody particularly
wanted me there, teaching somebody else their job--however, I thought
I really ought to.
“But this is the devil of it--I hadn’t been going there regularly for
very long before I began to see that something was wrong with the
money side. It wasn’t any credit to me that I did; the greenest mug
could have seen it with half an eye if he’d happened to come across
it the way I did. I don’t mean to bother you with details--the long
and short of it was that the funds weren’t where they should be;
they were in oil-shares and that sort of stuff, and some, I believe,
weren’t there at all.
“Well, I began to sweat with fright, because if some of our big
people had called us to pay up, we should have been in the soup--and
it would have been as much my fault as any one’s. I would have asked
Dad; but he can’t talk even, much less look after business. So I
went to Hanborough at last, and consulted him. That was this spring.
Hanborough wouldn’t listen for some time. He practically told me
I was an idiot, who didn’t know the difference between one kind of
share and another, but at last I convinced him that it wasn’t only a
question of shares, but of money actually missing. With that I got
him down to the office and made him go into it thoroughly.
“Then he got into an awful stew, and declared we must go very
carefully. You see, we neither of us knew who’d been monkeying with
the business; and, as Hanborough said, if a whisper got out, somebody
would be sure to try and withdraw their money, and then it would be
all U.P. We talked a long time about what was to be done, and at last
I persuaded Hanborough to put on a private detective to investigate
and see what was going on. Meanwhile, he said, he and I would keep a
personal look-out into everything that was going on in the office,
and stop any more hanky-panky. And he particularly urged me to say
nothing about our feelings to Meston----”
“Why not to Meston?” Wilson asked. “Wasn’t he concerned?”
“Well, I suppose you can guess why not, _now_, as I can,” young
Warden said ruefully. “But it never occurred to me at the time.
Hanborough only said that in cases like this it was as well for
as few people as possible to know what was in the wind, and that
as Meston had to be in the office a lot--he was the partner who
generally saw people--it was just as well that he should be quite
innocent. Also, he said, Meston had only been a clerk in the firm,
and wouldn’t feel a thing like this as he or I should. I know it
sounds as if I ought to have seen what he was driving at; but at
the time I was so muddled that I couldn’t think of anything but that
_we_ must find out what was happening and nobody else must know.
Hanborough got hold of this fellow Strake--though, as I say, I hadn’t
a ghost of a notion what he was like--and sent me reports every now
and then to say how things were going on. Then this afternoon they
rang up from Hellier to let me know Meston had been found drowned.
I couldn’t get hold of Hanborough, so I came down myself at once to
see what had happened. And _this_ is what I find--and that little
beast of a Strake nosing round into it. He had the impudence to wave
an expense account in my face, too! How Hanborough could ever have
brought himself to employ such a fellow, I can’t think.”
“Spying isn’t a nice trade, you know,” Wilson pointed out to him.
“You can’t always expect to employ a spy whom you’d like to ask to
dinner. But what’s the position now? I gather from what you say that
you think Meston may have been the villain of the piece?”
“Well, they say here he committed suicide,” Warden said. “Why, they
say you said so, Michael.”
“I never said anything of the kind!” Michael contradicted him
indignantly. “I never even got a chance----” Nor did he then, for
Warden interrupted.
“Well, if you didn’t, _somebody_ said he did. But what the hell ought
I to do? It’ll have to come out now; and Hanborough’s away.”
“Gently!” said Wilson. “Aren’t you going a bit fast? You don’t seem
to me to have much proof that Meston embezzled your funds.”
“Well, I don’t know what Strake’s got,” Warden said. “But, if he
killed himself, it looks----”
“Yes, I know; but we can hardly assume that, at any rate, until the
inquest’s been held. What do you suppose he did with the funds, if he
did take them?”
“_I_ don’t know. Salted ’em down, perhaps. Or lost ’em.”
“Had he expensive tastes, I mean? Did he bet, or speculate? Might he
have lost the money?”
“I don’t know. Outside of the office, I hardly knew him.”
“He certainly didn’t _sound_ like a successful embezzler, when he was
here,” Michael put in. “If he did embezzle funds, I should say he’d
certainly lost them all. I never saw such a gloomy fellow.”
“Oh, that’ll be his wife, poor devil,” Warden said. “She made him
feel like that.”
“Is she the lady who’s supposed to be rejoicing at his death?”
Michael asked.
“Well, they didn’t get on at all, if that’s what you mean. In
fact, she’d just run away from him, and he’d taken leave from the
office--really, I suppose, to go and get her back, though he didn’t
say so.”
“Why did he come here, then?”
“Because she was at the Lorings’, of course,” said Warden, who seemed
to imagine that all his hearers were as familiar with the current
gossip as he was himself. “They’re her cousins, you know; and she
always goes there when she can.”
“Did he get her back?”
“Not on your life,” Warden said, with decision. “But what’s it got to
do----Oh, I see! You mean he might have killed himself for that!”
“Well, it’s a possibility.”
“Without having pinched any of our cash? I see. Well, I’m sure I hope
he did,” Warden said, with a deep disregard of any one’s feelings but
his own. “But tell me, d’you think there’s anything I can do?”
“Not much, I should say,” said Wilson, “at least, until the inquest,
when it may be known how he died, and when his papers will have been
examined.”
“But that’s just what I don’t want!” Warden cried. “Don’t you see,
Mr. Wilson, if police officials get hold of his papers, and a whole
lot of things come out, then the firm will bust. I’m absolutely
certain we couldn’t meet our commitments, if even two or three people
wanted their money. And--you see, it isn’t only looking like a fool,
it’s my family. All our money, practically, except my mother’s,
was--is--in the business; and I’ve two sisters. It would mean selling
the house and turning Dad out, and--it would be my fault, you see.”
“Well, it may not have been Meston,” said Michael, pitying his
distress but not seeing any way of dealing with it.
“But I _must_ know! Whether it is or it isn’t, I must get at what
happened! Really, I can’t stand going on like this--and everybody
at home thinking it’s all very nice, only why can’t dear Mark be
a little pleasanter? You know,” said the athlete ingenuously, “I
used to think it was all bunkum about worry making you lose your
appetite. But half a dozen times lately I’ve really felt so rotten
with bothering about this, I haven’t wanted to touch anything. Only,
of course, I had to, or they’d have wondered what on earth was
happening. Oh yes, of course you’ll laugh at me,”--and Michael had
striven so hard to restrain his smiles--“but it’s not a joke, even
if I _am_ a fool. Look here, Michael, that’s what I really came to
ask. You know that friend of yours who’s at Scotland Yard--what’s
his name? Well, couldn’t you get him to come and find out what’s
happened? I mean, I can’t stand not knowing, and I can’t stand that
fellow of Hanborough’s. Of course”--to Wilson--“I know what you mean,
that a spy isn’t a gentleman; but a policeman at Scotland Yard’s
not likely to be so bad as a little tuppenny-ha’penny chap from
Walthamstow, is he? You know what I mean.”
They did, indeed: so well that they could scarcely keep their faces
while Michael carefully explained that Scotland Yard is not for
casual use by any and every private citizen in any case of suspicion.
Warden’s face fell, but brightened again when Michael offered to put
his troubles privately before the great man and see what he thought.
“And I’ll sack that little perisher,” he said. “He’ll make me sick if
he hangs about much longer.”
“I don’t know that I should be in a hurry,” Wilson advised. “It may
be better for him to be bringing his gossip to you than scattering it
broadcast. Besides, isn’t Mr. Hanborough concerned?”
“Yes, damn it. I’d forgotten him. I wish to hell he’d come back.
Well, thanks awfully, both of you. You’ve made me feel a lot better.
Now I must be going, or they’ll wonder what’s up. I expect I’ll be
round again some time, if I’m not bothering. And you will ask Wilson,
won’t you? So long.” And he took himself off, leaving Michael in fits
of laughter on the couch.
“Unfeeling fellow,” Wilson said.
“Well, he is rather an outsize in geese,” Michael protested.
“You’ve no real appreciation of youth and innocence, Michael. If
you’d been as much in contact with their opposites as I have, you’d
regard your friend as a spring of water in a thirsty land. Oh, laugh
if you like. I’m delighted to find you brightening up a little. Only
don’t break the ornaments.” He stooped to pick up a photograph which
Michael had knocked to the floor.
“Friend of yours?” the latter asked, glancing at it.
“Not that I know of. From that scrawl in the corner, one would judge
it to be Mrs. Meston. It’s a striking face, isn’t it? Would you
commit suicide if that face had left you, Michael?”
“I shouldn’t have married it in the first place,” Michael said. He
was a bachelor.