FACE TO FACE
“Mr. Ambrose?” inquired the well-dressed detective, politely
standing, silk hat in hand.
“That’s my name,” snapped the old man, recovering his marvellous
self-control and looking inquiringly at his visitor.
“I’ve ventured to call, and I want to have a few words with you. I may
as well introduce myself. My name is March, and I am a solicitor.”
“Yes,” replied the old man, inviting his visitor inside, but instantly
upon his mettle. He eyed him from head to foot and then laughed within
himself at the thinness of the detective’s disguise. “And upon what do
you wish to consult me?” he asked, when his visitor had seated
himself.
“Well,” said March, “I suppose I had better explain that my firm,
March and Edwards, of 28 Bedford Row, are solicitors to a certain
family who are interested in the estate of a person who committed
suicide recently--an eccentric man named Richard Goodrick, who lived
in obscurity at Charlwood Street, Pimlico. You may, perhaps, have seen
an account of it in the papers?”
“No,” snapped the old man. “I never read the papers. They contain
mostly lies nowadays. I can’t stand the modern journalism.”
“Mr. Goodrick was apparently a very eccentric man who had lived in the
same lodgings for the past eighteen years or so, and had had only one
or two visitors the whole time. When he died he left a collection of
antiques, which experts have since valued roughly at twenty to
twenty-five thousand pounds, and in his room a will was discovered--a
very curious will----”
“A will!” gasped the old man leaning forward eagerly.
“Yes--a will which contained certain very strange revelations.”
“Concerning whom?”
“Concerning himself.”
Ambrose slowly rubbed his clean-shaven chin and pursed his lips.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, the purpose of my visit to-day is to have a confidential chat
with you,” said March, looking the wily old fellow straight in the
face. “In the course of my inquiries concerning the deceased I have
reason to believe that you were acquainted with him.”
“I!” cried Ambrose, opening his eyes in wonder.
The truth was this. On that morning there had been received at
Scotland Yard an ill-spelt anonymous letter in what appeared to be a
foreign handwriting, asserting that Mr. John Ambrose, living in Wansey
Street, Walworth Road, possessed considerable knowledge of the
mysterious recluse of Pimlico. It had been placed in Medland’s hands,
and he had resolved to interview the person in question.
It was perhaps fortunate for Ambrose that the officer had not called
there a quarter of an hour earlier. Had he done so he would have come
face to face with Maidee Lambton.
Medland’s sharp, penetrating gaze was fixed upon the shrewd old
fellow’s countenance, but so well did the latter express blank
astonishment that he felt at once that there was perhaps nothing after
all in the anonymous allegation. The public is, alas! too fond of
sending bogus clues to Scotland Yard, for hardly a day passes but
endeavours are made to hoax the police.
“I am told,” said the visitor, “that you were upon friendly terms with
the old gentleman who led such a secluded and mysterious life.”
“What did you say the name was?” asked Ambrose.
“Goodrick--Richard Goodrick, late of 78 Charlwood Street, Pimlico.”
“Don’t know anybody of that name,” grunted the old man. “Did you say
that he committed suicide?”
“Yes. He was a great collector of antiques. I believe you are an
expert, too, are you not?”
“Expert!” cried the old man. “No, I’m not an expert. I know a little
about old English pottery and something regarding mediæval
manuscripts--but there my knowledge ends.”
“You may have met him in connection with collecting,” March suggested.
“Search your memory. He was an old man with white hair and a long,
white beard--quite a patriarch, in fact.”
“A good many old men in London correspond with that description,”
Ambrose remarked. “I fear, sir, that I cannot help you. I do not
recollect ever meeting the eccentric gentleman in question.”
“And yet my information certainly goes to prove that you do know
him--know him quite intimately.”
The sharp features of the old fellow were a perfect blank.
“What you have told me is greatly interesting,” he remarked. “The old
man left twenty thousand pounds worth of antiques, you say. A good
thing he left a will, eh?”
“Yes--for the relatives.”
“Who are they?” queried Ambrose.
“Well, clients of mine who do not yet wish their identity to be
disclosed. The old man committed suicide, as I have said, and they
naturally feel some little hesitation,” replied the pseudo-solicitor,
believing that the old man credited his explanation.
“Ah, of course, I quite understand. Naturally they do not desire the
world to know they are inheriting a suicide’s estate, eh?”
March nodded in the affirmative, twisting his gold signet-ring around
the little finger of his left hand.
“I understood you to say that the will made certain revelations, eh?”
old Ambrose asked. “Most interesting. What did it reveal--some
secret?”
“Yes; a very curious secret concerning himself--one which, if
divulged, would create an enormous sensation.”
Ambrose knit his brows and was silent for a few seconds. How much, he
wondered, did the detective know?
“Then I take it that the dead man was not what he had represented
himself to be, eh?” he remarked.
“No. His will has made clear several points which have been hitherto
regarded as mysterious,” replied the solicitor.
“Well,” remarked the shrewd old man of mystery, “the will must be
proved in due course, and these remarkable revelations of which you
speak will then be made public. There will be no suppressing them
then, will there?”
His visitor saw that he had made an unfortunate slip and hastened to
recover himself. Old Ambrose was, however, as wary as his
interrogator.
“The revelations will have to become public, whatever they are,” he
went on. “Surely it is very unfortunate for your clients that they are
contained in the will. Many men very foolishly make confessions or
place records in their wills which are both injudicious and improper,
and in dying bring pain upon the living.”
“Yes, I quite agree,” declared March. “It is extremely unfortunate for
my clients, because the revelation has reference to a serious crime.”
“A crime!” exclaimed Ambrose quickly, looking straight into the
detective’s face.
“Yes--a mysterious affair, the truth of which is revealed by
Goodrick’s statement.”
“Was this Goodrick a criminal, then?”
“No. I’m glad, for my clients’ sake, that he was not. But by this
statement the dead man wrote before his death a terrible crime has
been placed upon the shoulders of one who has hitherto been entirely
unsuspected.”
Ambrose held his breath. What his visitor said would have caused any
other man in a similar position, and holding the secret knowledge
which he held, to betray some signs of nervousness. But even under his
visitor’s hard gaze he remained perfectly calm, unperturbed,
unflinching.
“Not a nice prospect for the unsuspected person,” he merely remarked
with a careless laugh.
“Not very,” admitted the other. “But I was certainly given to
understand that you were well acquainted with the man Goodrick, and
for that reason I ventured to call, in order to see if you could give
me any information regarding him or his recent movements.”
“I thought you said he was eccentric, and something of a recluse.”
“So he was. But his actions on the night of his death appear to have
been mysterious,” March said. “Are you really quite certain that you
have no knowledge of him?” he added, looking inquiringly into the dark
eyes.
“My dear sir, if I had, I would most willingly render you any
assistance possible,” declared the old man. “I expect your information
concerns someone else of my name. Ambrose is not uncommon.”
“No. It is certainly quite clear,” declared the detective positively.
“John Ambrose of Wansey Street.”
“Well, that’s certainly me,” laughed the old fellow. “I quite
anticipate that if I could furnish you with information you would
readily pay for it, eh?”
“Most willingly,” the other assured him at once.
“And most eagerly would I be ready to earn a trifle,” Ambrose
remarked; “for I am by no means well off.”
“But are you quite positive that you’ve never met Richard Goodrick?”
“Never met him in my life, I much regret to say.”
“Or a Catholic priest, Don Mario Mellini?”
“I don’t like priests,” snapped the other. “I hate Catholics.”
The detective was nonplussed. He prided himself that he could always
tell when a man spoke the truth, and certainly, as far as he could
see, this old fellow, blinking at him through his spectacles, did not
seem to be concealing any knowledge of the mysterious recluse of
Pimlico.
“Well!” he exclaimed at last. “My information was so exact that I
confess I came here in the full expectation of learning something of
interest. See, here!” he added, taking some five-pound notes from his
pocket. “I brought a hundred pounds in readiness to pay you for any
information you could furnish me.”
“In order to earn the money it would be quite easy for me to fake up
some information, my dear sir,” replied the cunning old fellow. “But I
am an honest man, and though I’m sorely in need of money I do not
desire to gain it by such means.”
“Then you really can tell me absolutely nothing?” asked March, bending
persuasively towards the old man in spectacles.
“Absolutely nothing. I have never met this mysterious person--at
least, not to my knowledge. Of course, we may have met casually in
some sale-room, or some place where our common tastes may have led us.
But as to possessing any knowledge of him--well, I do not. Is the
inquiry you are making so very important that you can afford to pay so
generously for information?”
“Yes,” was the prompt reply. “My clients are sparing no expense in
order to get at the exact truth.”
“It, of course, means money to them.”
“They are not regarding that; they are seeking to preserve the honour
of the dead.”
“Not exactly a profitable proceeding sometimes, eh?” growled the old
fellow in a rather changed manner. “When a man dies, his honour dies
with him. Men who achieve great honours are usually the mere
favourites of fortune. Actual personal merit seldom, alas! brings with
it deserved honour. Did not Dryden say that honour was an empty
bubble?”
“The personal honour of my clients--or, rather, one of them--is at
stake, and it is for me to gather information which will remove any
stigma which may have been placed upon it,” Mr. March said, his quick
eyes wandering about the dim, shabby room, for he was still
unconvinced, even though the old man had been so blank in his
knowledge of Richard Goodrick.
“Well, I regret very much that, for my own sake pecuniarily, I am
unable to furnish you with information,” declared Ambrose, with a
clever affectation of ignorance. “What you have told me is certainly
most interesting. I shall look forward to the proving of the will, and
the sensation which you say the revelation must cause. The papers will
be full of it--eh?”
“Yes,” replied March slowly, looking the man straight in the face. “I
suppose, in due course, they will.”
“I expect that your informant, whoever he was, either mistook me for
some other person, or else he made a blunder in the name. I’ve lived
here a couple of months, and before that I lived in Albany Road,
Clerkenwell. If it is somebody named Ambrose who knew this mysterious
man in Pimlico, it certainly was not myself!”
With this the detective had to be satisfied. So cleverly, and with
such cool disregard of his own peril, did the wily old man deny all
knowledge of the mysterious Richard Goodrick that at last, after some
further discussion, he convinced Medland that the anonymous
communication was, after all, only a mischievous hoax.
So, full of disappointment, the detective apologised and departed from
the house, leaving John Ambrose to rub his thin, bony hands and laugh
weirdly at his own success.
“But I mustn’t remain here much longer!” he croaked to himself, adding
in a low, hard voice: “Don Mario must get away at once. I wonder who
has given me away--who it is who can possibly suspect? Has Maidee the
least suspicion, I wonder, that I am not the Uncle John she once
knew?”