FATAL FINGERS
A MYSTERY
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1914
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
1. Is mainly about Richard Goodrick
2. The Night of the Seventeenth
3. The Affair at Charlwood Street
4. Yet Another Problem
5. Is About Uncle John
6. Suspicion!
7. Withheld from the Public
8. The Man of the Moment
9. Some Confidences
10. Richard Goodrick’s Secret
11. Concerns Love and a Mystery
12. To Face the Music
13. Face to Face
14. Introduces a Visitor
15. From the Beyond
16. A Scene in the House
17. To Pay the Price
18. The Marble Face
19. More about John Ambrose
20. Reveals Treachery
21. Don Mario at Home
22. Contains an Admission
23. The Lovers
24. In Faded Ink
25. Concerns the Unexpected
26. The Festa of Corpus Domini
27. From out the Past
28. Tells Gordon’s Secret
29. The Accusation
30. What Occurred on the Seventeenth
FATAL FINGERS
CHAPTER I.
IS MAINLY ABOUT RICHARD GOODRICK
“No; keep your money, my dear sir.”
“Then you refuse?”
“I do--absolutely.”
“Remember, I am making you a very substantial offer. Fifty thousand
pounds is not to be gained every day.”
“Not if you offered me one hundred times the amount. I have never been
open to bribery.”
“No, no; you can hardly call it bribery, Mr. Goodrick. I think----”
“I don’t know what you call it but bribery,” growled the thin,
white-bearded old man seated in the easy chair by the fireplace. “I’ve
really got nothing more to say to you. I wish you’d go--go away and
leave me in peace.”
The other, a rather stout, red-faced, well-dressed man of about fifty,
with a distinctly business-like air, made a quick gesture of
impatience as he stood upon the shabby hearthrug opposite the old man.
“You’ve surely been left in peace long enough. For eighteen years
you’ve lived in this stuffy little hole, hidden away from everybody.
Everyone believes you to be dead--that you died, and carried your
secret to the grave.”
“And if I did, what, in the name of Fate, does it matter to you--eh?”
croaked old Mr. Goodrick.
“Well--are you acting honestly and fairly towards Gordon--or Maidee,
and the rest?” queried his visitor.
“Fairly!” echoed the other, laughing. “That’s really capital--you,
George Ravenscourt, talking of fairness and honesty! You offer me
fifty thousand if I will--well, act in such a manner as will give a
distinct advantage to your friends--eh? Ah! my dear sir, your
reputation for honesty is well known--to me, at least, if not to some
others.”
“It seems you are in a somewhat insulting mood to-day,” exclaimed the
other hastily. “Some dealer has got the better of you, perhaps--sold
you a bit of faked silver or spurious china.”
“Dealers, I think, know me a little too well to attempt fraud upon
me,” snapped the old man in a thin, hoarse voice.
“But will nothing soften your heart towards those who have suffered by
this long self-effacement of yours?” asked his visitor, appealing to
him in a changed tone.
“No,” replied the yellow-faced, keen-eyed old fellow. “I dropped out
of life purposely. I’ve lived here all these years in the back streets
of Pimlico, because I had a motive.”
“What was your motive?”
“That’s my own affair,” was the sharp response; and the old man spread
out his thin hands to warm them by the fickle flame of the meagre
fire. “By a silly error, because I thought myself safe from
recognition, I betrayed my continued existence. But even you,
Ravenscourt, shall not tempt me to return to life--to face the past.”
“My dear Mr. Goodrick, after eighteen years the whole affair is
forgotten. The public have very short memories. Try to recall the
_cause célèbre_ of the year before last, and you’ll have difficulty
in recollecting the names of the parties concerned. You’re just a
little too sensitive. Think, if you returned--what a difference in
your position!”
“Yes,” croaked the old man; “here in Pimlico I’m known as Nosey
Goodrick, of Charlwood Street. The boys in the street call after me,
and the neighbours regard me, I think, as a harmless crank. What would
they say if they knew--if they knew _the truth_?”
“What would the world say if they knew that you, whose great talents
are perpetuated by that marble statue in Westminster, and whom
thousands followed to the grave; you, for whom the whole country
mourned, are here, still alive and active!”
“Hush!” cried the old fellow, glancing apprehensively at the closed
door. “Mrs. Ayres may overhear! Please do not recall the past,
Ravenscourt. It is all too painful. I’ve long ago forgotten it.
Nowadays I am plain Richard Goodrick, and soon I shall die and be
buried in some suburban cemetery in the name under which I have chosen
so long to live.”
“No,” declared his visitor; “you don’t mean that. You’ll return. It is
your duty to the nation. An excuse can easily be made.”
“Return--never, I tell you!” cried the old man fiercely, starting to
his feet, exhibiting the fact that he was unusually tall and straight
for his age. His white face was bony and narrow, with an exceptionally
prominent nose, a shock of white hair, and long white whiskers. He was
dressed in a loosely made suit of shabby grey whip-cord tweed, with a
narrow stand-up collar and a seedy black cravat.
The room was a small back one on the ground floor, but so filled with
curios of all descriptions that it had an appearance more like the
shop of a dealer in antiques than a living-room. Dusty pictures,
priceless china, ivories, miniatures, a piece or two of genuine
Chippendale, bundles of rare prints, some savage weapons, an ancient
bronze torso from Greece, a quantity of rusty mediæval damascened
armour, a big case of stuffed birds, and other curios were heaped
about the place, until there seemed only barely room to move in the
centre.
Opposite the fire was a square table covered with a piece of old green
serge in lieu of a cloth; the carpet was so threadbare that all
pattern had, years ago, disappeared, while on the frayed horsehair
sofa beneath the window lay piles of old newspapers.
The day was the seventeenth of January, 1908. The faint grey light of
the short wintry afternoon struggling in increased the depressing
cheerlessness of the place, for the outlook was upon a high blank
wall.
The visitor gazed around, and shuddered at the miserable abode. For
eighteen years that man before him, the bearer of one of the most
honoured and renowned names in Great Britain--the man whose reputation
was known in many corners of the globe--had lived there, silent,
alone, and unsuspected; absorbed in various studies, reading his own
obituary notices, and sneering at the fulsome praise which those who
were his enemies in life bestowed upon him when they believed him dead
and out of the way.
He had had the unusual experience of being able to judge impartially
his own popularity. Aloof from the world he had known and wherein he
had been a power, he had looked on and laughed in triumph at his own
obsequies. As Richard Goodrick, a retired schoolmaster, he had lived
there in the house of the worthy Mrs. Ayres and her husband, paying
his weekly rent punctually, and pursuing a life clock-like in its
regularity.
As an art collector he had once been world-famed, and was, of course,
known personally to all the great dealers in London and Paris. So,
after his “death,” he dare no longer visit them, being compelled to
pursue his hobby of curio-collecting among the smaller shops and
obscure dealers. For eighteen years he had lived alone in Charlwood
Street, and it was said by the women who gossiped over their garden
walls that for eighteen years he had never been known to smile.
As he stood before his visitor he betrayed the fact that he was a man
of iron will, quick to decide, and very resolute. In his dark,
piercing eyes, which age had not dimmed, shone a fire of anger at the
suggestion his visitor had made.
“I tell you,” he repeated firmly, “that I shall never reveal my
existence. I died--they have buried me, fools that they are, and put
up a statue to perpetuate my memory. American tourists go and gaze
upon it, and say: ‘Wal, he was a grand man, anyhow.’ And I’ve fooled
them--fooled the world--for I’m still alive.”
“That’s just it! You have withheld your aid, which, if given,
would--if you will pardon my remark--bring happiness to many.”
“Why should I bring happiness to many?” snapped the quick-tempered old
fellow. “I am the odd man out of the game. I am dead, remember--dead,
unless you betray me, Ravenscourt,” he added, looking his visitor
straight and unflinchingly in the face.
“I shall not betray you. Surely you know me better than that!” said
the other reproachfully.
“If you offer me fifty thousand, then it would be worth an equal sum
to you to betray me,” said the old man, speaking very slowly and
distinctly. “You are not so well off as you once were. The money would
be useful to you.”
“It would,” admitted his visitor. “But not for double the sum would I
betray my old chief--the man to whom I owe everything.”
“I believe you, Ravenscourt,” the old recluse said, after a pause. “I
used to trust you long ago--and I’ll trust you now.”
“And you will take my advice, and accept the sum offered?”
“No, no!” he cried quickly. “Never that. You can never bribe me. As I
have lived, so will I die--in silence.”
“Leave this wretched place,” urged his visitor. “It is unfitted to
you--you who have lived the life of the great. It is a marvel how you
have existed here all these years.”
“It satisfies all my requirements,” was the man’s calm reply. “I am
friendless, it is true, but I have my books and my collection,” and he
waved his thin hand across the narrow, stuffy little room. “What more
can I desire in this the evening of my life? Do you know,” he added,
“I would not exchange this quiet, uneventful existence in a back
street in London for all the society gatherings, the yachting, the
racing, the Riviera, and the grouse moors in Christendom. When I
‘died’ I gladly finished with it all.”
“Who knew the real secret of your death?” asked his visitor,
interested.
“Finnimore.”
“Finnimore, your old valet? And he died ten years ago!”
“Yes. And only you, Ravenscourt, are now aware of the fact that I did
not die. And you I trust to maintain the strictest silence.”
“You place me in a very difficult position,” the other said in
dissatisfaction. “That night, a week ago, when, as I passed you in
Whitehall, something in your face struck me as familiar--what it was I
can’t tell--you knew that I had recognised you, and you cleverly
evaded me. It was not until I employed Jewell, the private inquiry
agent, that I was able to track you here to your hiding-place, and
meet you face to face in daylight. Then I convinced myself of the
astounding truth that you, for whom the whole country had mourned,
were not dead, but actually lived!”
“Well, and have not other men, tired of life or crushed by some great
sorrow or misfortune, done exactly the same thing as myself? I am not
alone.”
“But--permit me to say so--you are not now acting with that high
feeling of honesty and humanity with which you always acted throughout
your brilliant career.”
“Because I do not return to my proper station!” exclaimed the old man
angrily. “I am the proper judge of that, Ravenscourt! I am inexorable;
I shall never leave here. Keep your fifty thousand pounds--and I will
keep my secret.”
“And bring ruin upon us?”
“I regret, but I cannot depart from the course I laid down eighteen
years ago.”
“You were not usually so cruel.”
“Not before the great blow fell upon me, George. It wrecked your life,
ended my career, and hardened my heart,” he said slowly in a changed
voice. “But don’t let us discuss it further. I’m glad to have seen
you, though I’ve passed you often and often when you have failed to
recognise me. But now please leave me--and forget that you have spoken
with one who is ‘dead.’”
A deep shadow of pain crossed the face of his visitor. The men,
standing together, seemed to fill the narrow, musty-smelling little
apartment. From the smoke-blackened wall opposite an ugly Japanese
mask grinned down upon them.
There was a movement outside the door, and Ravenscourt noticed how the
old man started nervously and grew pale as his eyes turned
apprehensively towards the door.
“I cannot forget that I have spoken with you,” said his visitor. “The
hour I have spent here is the strangest one of my whole life--speaking
with one whom the world has lost. True, I owe much to you, and it is
in repayment of that I am here, offering you the sum of fifty thousand
pounds if you will only consent to return and resume your place in
society and in the world of London.”
Goodrick smiled bitterly and stroked his white beard.
“What do I want with fifty thousand pounds?” he asked. “Before I left
the world I made long and careful preparation. I carried with me
twenty thousand pounds, much of it in gold, because notes might have
given me away. With some of that I have speculated in curios. The
contents of this room”--and he waved his thin hand--“would fetch forty
thousand if put up to auction. See!”--and he took out a small,
ancient, leather-bound, illuminated manuscript in parchment--“this
thirteenth-century volume from the Borghese collection would alone
fetch fifteen hundred to two thousand at Sotheby’s any day. No; I do
not want money. When I do--I have it here.”
“Aren’t you afraid of being robbed of your treasures?” queried his
visitor, gazing around at the miscellaneous collection of antiques.
“Robbed? No. Who would dream that here, in this back room in Pimlico,
are stored some of the best curios that have been in the market during
the past fifteen years? Look at this Caxton,” and he opened a small,
thin, black-letter book, “it is unique. No other copy of this work
exists. The British Museum would gladly purchase it for almost any sum
to-morrow--if they only knew of it!”
“And you actually refuse to act as I suggest?”
“I do!” cried the old man, the fire of resentment again in his eyes.
“Go, Ravenscourt, guard my secret--and forget that you have seen or
spoken with me. I am dead, remember--dead to all, even to you. And,”
he added, looking at him meaningly, “you dare not betray
me--_remember_!”
“But I----”
“There are no buts. Leave me. Farewell,” he said in a firm,
authoritative tone as he stood erect, holding forth his long, bony
hand.
For a moment his visitor hesitated. Then, seeing determination in the
old man’s eyes, he took the proffered hand and bent over it with
courtly gesture, accepting his dismissal with a sigh.
“If you reconsider your decision, remember that I am at any moment at
your service,” he said.
“I shall never do that, Ravenscourt. Adieu--for always.”
And then the other, his voice choked by emotion, opened the door and
passed down the narrow little hall and out into the street.
The old man listened till the front door slammed, then casting himself
back into his arm-chair, held out his hands to the cheerless fire,
and, nodding his head slowly in self-satisfaction, croaked aloud in a
weak, thin voice:
“That man is my enemy. He knows the identity of Richard Goodrick! But
he does not know his secret! Oh, no! no! He will never know
that--never--_never_! He will die before that.”