opposite,” said the owner of Beverley Hall. “I don’t know what woke
me. It may have been the creaking of the door, though I have such a
detestation of creaking doors that the hinges of all the doors at the
Hall are thoroughly oiled at regular intervals.”
“He took nothing from here?” asked Andy.
“Nothing,” was the reply. “He hadn’t time. The moment I sat up in bed
I heard the shuffle of his feet and he was gone. I caught a glimpse of
him at the other end of the corridor as I came out of the room and ran
downstairs shouting for Tilling. I caught another glimpse of him as he
got through the window of the library, which was in darkness when I
reached it. I always keep a pistol in my room, a Colt automatic, and I
fired after him as he ran down the steps of the terrace and vanished
into the darkness.”
“You didn’t hear him speak?”
Mr. Boyd Salter shook his head.
It was the work of an expert, Andy could see that at a glance. If he
were not absolutely sure that Scottie was at that moment sleeping the
sleep of the just, and was hardly likely at this juncture to go back to
his old ways, he could have sworn to that individual being the midnight
visitor.
Against this was the fact that Scottie had never been guilty of rifling
a place unless he had exact information as to the quantity and
position of the valuables it contained.
This burglar had had no fixed plan. Scottie would not have turned out
papers from the desk, and would certainly not have bearded Mr. Boyd
Salter in his room.
“This is the second burglary that has been committed to-night, sir,”
said Andy, and told of Wilmot’s visitor.
“Abraham Selim,” said the other thoughtfully. “No, I won’t interfere
with your theories, Mr. Macleod.”
“Is anything missing?”
The other shook his head.
“I hardly think so. There was nothing here worth taking except a few
leases, and I should not think he would trouble about those.”
“What is that?”
Andy walked to the fireplace. It was empty, as all the other fireplaces
had been empty, since the weather was unusually warm. At the bottom of
the grate were the black ashes of burnt paper! The identical feature
that had distinguished the murder of Darius Merrivan!
“Did you burn something?”
The squire shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Is the writing distinguishable? It sometimes is after
it is burnt.”
Andrew knelt down and flashed his lamp upon the ashes.
“No, this has been broken up,” he said, and gently lifted a scrap
larger than the others and carried it to the table.
“It looks like ‘R Y L,’” he said. “A curious combination of letters.”
“Orylbridge,” suggested Boyd Salter. “I have some property in that
village.”
He picked up some papers from the floor.
“It would be impossible for me to check them to-night,” he said.
“Perhaps you will come up in the morning, doctor.”
Andy waited to receive the report from two gamekeepers, who, hastily
summoned from bed, had searched the covert, before he returned to the
Green.
“This case is getting on my nerves, Dane,” he said as the car went down
the hill to the lodge gates. “One thing is certain, that concealed
somewhere in this valley is a murderer, call him Abraham Selim or
whatever you wish. Obviously he is a local. There is no other possible
explanation for the rapidity and sureness of his movements. He knows
every inch of the ground, and he is looking for something. He killed
Merrivan to find whatever it was he sought. He killed Sweeny because
by some accident Sweeny happened to be in the orchard. He broke into
Beverley Hall also for the purpose of search. But why did he in both
cases burn the ‘something’ in the fireplace?”
“Where else could he burn it?” asked Inspector Dane intelligently. “In
both cases the fireplace was near at hand.”
Andrew did not reply.
There was a third case of burning, he remembered, and it had been
Stella who had employed the same method of disposing of something she
wished destroyed.
It was half-past two, and the east was lighting palely when he said
good-night to the inspector and turned into his lodgings. As he did so
he glanced across to the Nelson house and stopped dead. Stella was up;
her light showed through the blinds.
He waited for nearly an hour, waited until the world was dawn-grey, and
then the light was extinguished.
Andrew sighed and went to bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MR. WENTWORTH DISAPPEARS
Scottie loafed into his room before Andy was awake the following
morning. Scottie had his hands thrust into his pockets and his face
wore a look of supreme discontent.
“Hullo, Scottie,” said Andrew, struggling to his elbow. “Anything
wrong?”
“Nothing, except the general moral tone of this community,” said
Scottie, sitting down. “I am going up to town, Macleod. This place
is a bit too exciting for me, and, anyway, you’re getting yourself a
bad name. I met that pen-pusher, Downer, this morning, and he was as
full of trouble as a dog is full of fleas. Said it was the worst case
he had ever handled, and that he had given up a good, comfortable,
straightforward murder to come here, and he wishes he hadn’t.”
“Have you seen his paper?”
Scottie nodded.
“Mild, Macleod, that’s the word, and punk. It was all about what
terrible danger he was in, and how a masked figure sprang from the
curtains and threatened him with death.”
“Whether it was masked or not, nobody knows. I should say it wasn’t,”
said Andy. “What does he say about Miss Nelson?”
“He gives her a clean bill. Everything has been satisfactorily
explained, he says, and there is an apology in the paper.”
“Then he’s going away?” asked Andy with some satisfaction.
Scottie shook his head.
“He said so. But what a—a—reporter! I’ll bet he’s staying another week.”
He strolled to the door.
“Maybe I’ll come back, Macleod,” he said. “So long.”
He was gone before Andy could ask him whether Stella Nelson was visible
at that hour.
He was reaching the dead-end of this crime, facing a baffling
cul-de-sac. The time was approaching when he must leave Beverly Green
and the murder must pass into the category of unpunished crimes.
The real mystery was the chain of circumstances that bound together
Darius Merrivan, Abraham Selim, and the murderer.
He intended calling on Stella, but his plan was changed by the arrival
of a long telegram from headquarters. He read it and whistled.
“Come to town at once. Mr. Wentworth, a member of a business in Ashlar
Buildings, has disappeared. Enquiries at his bank show that he has
an enormous sum of money on deposit. There is reason to believe that
Abraham Selim is connected with the disappearance.”
Mr. Wentworth had occupied a suite of offices next door to that which
Abraham Selim had rented. Andrew knew this from his previous enquiries;
knew, too, something of the standing of the firm before he questioned
Mr. Wentworth’s distressed lady clerk.
“He was in the office last Friday,” said the girl. “He left my salary,
money for petty cash, and told me that he would be in on Monday or
Tuesday. I had a little talk with him about the business, because we
were doing practically none and I was worrying about how long he would
go on before he closed up the office. But he was very cheerful and told
me that he would soon have good news for me. He said this in a joking
way. He was always a little jocular.”
“You know where he lives, of course?” asked Andy.
“No, sir, I don’t. I have an idea that he lives in hotels. He wrote me
once or twice when he was away, and his address was always an hotel,
though I never sent any letters to him there. Another remark I remember
his making the last time I saw him was, that it was funny we never saw
much of Mr. Selim.”
“You told me that before,” said Andy, nodding. “Do you remember the
hotel he wrote you from and about what date?”
“I’ve got those in the day book,” she said. “I thought you might want
them, and I have taken them out.”
Andy glanced at the list she had prepared. They were well-known hotels
in various parts of the country and he pocketed the memorandum for
future action.
“Have you a photograph of Mr. Wentworth?”
She shook her head.
“In appearance, what was he like?”
Here she was very vague indeed. Her own age was nineteen, which is
an age when anybody over thirty-five is “old.” He had a stoop, she
remembered, and wore horn-rimmed spectacles. She knew very little
about the business, and had only been in his employ for twelve months.
She knew no other houses that he did business with; she never sent
out accounts, and apparently her job was to receive callers who did
not come, to make a précis from the newspapers of transactions on the
Provision Exchange (she showed him a great heap of manuscript she had
compiled in this way), and to receive her salary regularly on Friday
afternoon.
It was not much of a business, she admitted.
“I did write a letter or two to him about the prices, but beyond that I
did nothing.”
Andrew visited the two hotels in town which were included in the list
the girl had given him. They turned up their books and confirmed her
story. Mr. Wentworth had stayed with them, but they knew nothing about
him, except that he was a name and a number.
Andy went back to headquarters and reported.
“Wentworth and Abraham Selim are identical personages,” he said.
“‘Wentworth & Wentworth’ is a fake concern, and existed to give Selim
an excuse for being in the building. Remember that Selim’s clerk only
attended at the office between eleven and one. Wentworth never came
to Ashlar Buildings until two o’clock in the afternoon, and then
only on certain days, which were the days that the clerk was away on
his holiday. For Wentworth to slip into Abraham Selim’s office, take
out the letters, and get back into his own room was a simple matter.
Wentworth’s banker tells me that he has a dozen deed boxes filled with
papers, and with these, I think, we shall be able to establish the
identity beyond any doubt.”
“Has Wentworth drawn any money from the bank since he disappeared?”
“I asked that, and they tell me that he has not. That, however, is
easily accounted for. Selim knew that we should go straight to his
office. He probably thought that we should immediately discover the
relationship between Wentworth and himself. To draw a cheque as
Wentworth would mean that he would run the risk of detection.”
He secured the necessary orders for access to the possessions of
Wentworth, and in the manager’s private office he sat through the
afternoon and far into the night, examining the contents of six tightly
packed steel boxes.
His work was facilitated by the discovery that two of the boxes had
documents relating to the legitimate firm of Wentworth. Apparently
Selim had purchased the business some years before, and even then it
was not in a flourishing condition. Under his guidance it had gone
from bad to worse, for the simple reason there was no need for his
exploiting legitimate trade when he found an easier way to wealth, a
way which offered few risks and enormous benefits.
The other boxes held title deeds, instruments of transfer, old
contracts, and in every case they were made out in the name of Abraham
Selim.
The man seemed to possess property in every part of the country. A farm
here, a few workmen’s cottages there, a coal-mine in some other place;
there were particulars of mineral rights he had acquired, details of
a sugar plantation in the West Indies, and numerous other pieces of
documentary evidence of his enormous wealth.
It was nearing the hour of midnight, and the last pile of papers was
being disposed of, when Andrew, glancing at an old contract, saw a
familiar name.
“John Aldayn Severn.”
Severn!
The contract was drawn up in legal language. It was between Abraham
Selim on the one part, “hereinafter called the lender,” and John Aldayn
Severn on the other part. And as he read he grew more and more amazed
at the extraordinary conditions which were imposed. Stripped of its
legal terminology, the lender agreed to place at the unknown Severn’s
disposal the sum of five thousand pounds per annum for life, and “for
particular services rendered” Severn agreed that, in the event of his
inheriting any property which produced the sum assured to him, he would
pay regularly to Selim’s account one-half of the revenues he acquired.
The property concerned was not particularised.
Andy looked at the deed thoughtfully. It was dated five years after
Severn’s marriage, if Arthur Wilmot’s information was correct. Had
Severn ever inherited his estate, and, if he had, did he ever fulfil
the contract?
The bank manager had left two clerks to assist him, and there was
available all the books dealing with Selim’s accounts. Andrew ran his
finger down page after page, but it was difficult to distinguish the
origin of any sum except——
He glanced at the contract again. The payments were to be made on the
1st. of March and the 1st. of September. He turned to the books and
traced back the accounts for twenty years, and on the 1st. March and
the 1st. September, every year, there had been paid to Selim’s account
sums varying from seven thousand to nine thousand five hundred. So
Severn had acquired his property and was paying.
“Here is my man,” said Andrew to himself. “If I find Severn I can find
Abraham Selim.”
There were no works of reference available, and on the following
morning he examined carefully every directory of landed proprietors
he could find. The name Severn occurred three times, but in each case
they owned very little land, and his telegraph enquiries brought him no
nearer to the identity of the John Aldayn Severn of the contract. It
was a name entirely unknown in the vicinity of Beverley except to one
man.
Mr. Boyd Salter was something of an authority on the landed gentry, and
Andy called on him the morning he came back to Beverley Green.
“I think the Severn you are in search of went to Australia some years
ago. I told you when we first met that a friend of mine had suffered
grievously at the hands of Selim. I was speaking of Severn at the time.
I knew him rather well, and I knew he was in the hands of moneylenders.”
“Then the estate he inherited was in Australia?” suggested Andy.
“You sound disappointed,” smiled Boyd Salter.
“I am a little,” replied Andy. “Can you suggest any reason why Merrivan
should have treasured his marriage certificate?”
“I had no idea that he had, and talking of Merrivan reminds me of my
burglar. I hit him.”
“The dickens you did!” said Andy, interested. “How do you know, sir?”
“We found blood marks the next morning; not many, but sufficient to
show that he had been wounded, and in the hand. The imprint of his hand
is on a leaf. I took the liberty of informing Inspector Dane in your
absence, and I believe he has made enquiries of the doctors around, so
far without success.”
Instead of going to the village by car Andy walked back, leaving
the car to be brought round to the village by Mr. Boyd Salter’s
chauffeur. He followed the supposed track of the thief, and Madding,
the gamekeeper, pointed out where the blood-stains had been found. The
faintest trace remained. He examined the leaf; that and the twigs about
it were gory evidence of the burglar’s hurt.
Andy went on by the covert path into the village. His way skirted the
orchard where Sweeny had been found, and he came on to the green via
the tennis court and the narrow lane which ran by the side of Mr.
Merrivan’s house.
He had not seen Stella for two days. It seemed more like two years, and
a century since he had first watched her through the glass panel of the
telephone booth in Beverley post office.
A servant answered the door.
“Miss Nelson has gone away, sir.”
“Gone away?” repeated Andy in astonishment. “Where has she gone?”
“Would you like to see Mr. Nelson, sir. He is in the studio. You know
your way.”
Andy found the artist pretending to work, and Kenneth Nelson welcomed
him warmly.
“You don’t know how glad I am you are back, Macleod,” he said. “I am
worried almost to death.”
“Where is Stella?”
“Well, she is supposed to be at her aunt’s,” said Nelson slowly.
“Supposed to be? Isn’t she there?”
“I sent a wire asking when she was coming back, and I had a reply from
my sister saying that Stella had only spent the afternoon in the house
and that she had gone north on business.”
“Very probably she has,” said Andy, relieved.
What he had expected he could not say, but Nelson’s news was certainly
not alarming. He had a suspicion that Stella did not take her father
into her confidence even in matters pertaining to his own welfare.
“That alone wouldn’t worry me,” said Nelson, as though he read his
thoughts. “I’ll show you what does.”
He went upstairs with a wondering Andy behind him, and on the second
floor he opened a door disclosing a pretty little bedroom.
“This is Stella’s room,” he said unnecessarily, for Andrew knew the
exact location.
“I came up here the day she left, which, by the way, was the same day
that you went to town, to get some soft rags—Stella keeps a supply of
them for me—but the cupboard was locked. Fortunately, or unfortunately,
I had a key which fitted, and the first thing which met my eye when I
opened the door was this.”
He put his hand on to a shelf and pulled down a little bundle of linen
strips. They were stained a deep red.
“And look there.”
He pointed to the floor, where the tell-tale spots showed clearly.
“And on the edge of that basin. She must have cut herself and did not
tell me a word. Her hand, I should think, from the regular intervals
in which the stain occurs. Of course she can look after herself. She
had a full nursing course during the war and liked it.”
Andy looked at the bandages without seeing them. That sudden light
which had occurred in Stella’s room after the burglary at Beverley
Hall! The stains which had been found in the park! It was incredible,
impossible, that Stella could have been the burglar, but her sudden
disappearance from view almost confirmed his half-formed suspicion. Why
had she gone away so unexpectedly?
“Did you see Stella’s hand when she went?” he asked.
“No; she had it in her muff. It was strange that she had a muff on a
warm day like this. I particularly remembered that after I had found
the bandages. She was awfully nervous, too. Quite jumpy for Stella.”
Andrew threw out his arms with a gesture of despair.
“I’m beaten,” he said.
He packed his bag that afternoon and stowed it behind his car, and with
one glance at the valley of mystery he drove through Beverley village
and to town. But it was not the Beverley mystery which had beaten him.
It was the inexplicable Miss Nelson.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MR. DOWNER FOLLOWS A LADY
Mr. Downer came out of the Newspaper Club with a tightly rolled
umbrella under his arm and two inches of cigar in the corner of his
mouth.
The day was hot and breathless. It seemed that unless he employed his
umbrella to relieve him of the pitiless glare of the sun it was a
superfluity. But Mr. Downer would no more have thought of going out
without his umbrella than an ordinary man would have thought of going
about without his collar and tie. It was part of his personality, like
his cigar and his hard Derby hat, and the three pencils and stylo that
peeped out of his left-hand waistcoat pocket.
He examined the visible world through his highly magnifying glasses and
found it neither good nor bad. What was good was the brief respite he
had from labour, for it was the end of the week, and he had a bungalow
on the sea-shore, where he could carry his umbrella along the beach and
stare through his powerful glasses at the sea.
What was bad was the uncomfortable memory of a failure. He had
been reminded of it that morning when his cheque came in from the
_Megaphone_ for the Beverley murder case. If the newspapers referred
to the killing of Darius Merrivan it was only in a few lines of type on
one of the inside pages, for two weeks had passed, there had been an
interesting bank failure and a fascinating divorce case to carry the
public along, and his offer to begin his investigations anew had been
coldly received by the newspaper to which it had been made.
He knew that Andrew Macleod had returned to town. He had seen him twice
on other matters. Andrew had given up the case as a bad job, evidently.
He had in fact, conveyed as much in his interview with Downer.
Probate of the Merrivan estate had been applied for on behalf of Mr.
Arthur Wilmot, who had expressed his intention of selling the Merrivan
house just as soon as a likely buyer came along.
Mr. Downer stepped out into the crowded streets, aloof from and
superior to his surroundings. He had wondered whether Andy was in love
with the Nelson girl—a train of thought brought his mind to her—and
promised himself the luxury of describing their wedding, and attaching
thereto a réchauffé of the murder case and its romantic sequel.
But apparently Andy had not been back to Beverley Green since he left.
That proved nothing, for, according to his information, Stella Nelson
had not returned to Beverley either. Downer’s explanation of this
latter circumstance was that she was waiting until the little scandal
he had aroused had blown over. That, however, did not account for the
detachment of Dr. Andrew Macleod.
He was on his way to leave a manuscript at the office of a magazine.
Mr. Downer had literary moments. He was the author of _Famous Criminals
I have met_; _Professional Sharpers and their Methods_; _Some Famous
Cases of Forgery_, and divers other contributions to belles-lettres
bore his name upon the title page.
The office was situated in an unfashionable corner of the town, and to
reach his objective he found it necessary to pass through a network of
small streets occupied by working-class people. He was pausing at a
corner marked with the inevitable general store when a girl came from
the shop and walked away quickly. She carried a parcel under her arm,
and he thought he recognised the figure. There was a certain familiar
swing of shoulders, and, instead of pursuing his way, which lay in the
opposite direction, he followed her. She turned another corner and he
caught a glimpse of her face. There was no doubt at all. It was Stella
Nelson. What was she doing in this neighbourhood? he wondered, and
followed her cautiously.
He saw her stop at the door of a small house, insert the key, and
disappear from view. It was a very tiny house indeed. The number on the
discoloured door was 73. He made a mental note and continued until he
found a woman standing idly in her doorway. Her arms were rolled in her
apron, and she was pathetically eager to find somebody who had as much
time as she to gossip.
“No, mister, she doesn’t live here,” she said, shaking her head when
Downer asked for a fictitious name.
“I haven’t been in this street for years,” mused Downer. “It hasn’t
changed.”
“Nothing changes here,” said the woman oracularly. “It will be just the
same in a hundred years’ time.”
“I thought I recognised the young lady who went into 73. How long has
she been living here? She used to be very well off.”
“Oh, she,” said the woman. “She doesn’t live here. She comes every day
and goes home every night. Quite a lady, too, and yet she does the
house work. I’ve seen her sweeping the front of the pavement.”
“Who lives there?”
“A seafaring man, as far as I can understand. Maybe it is her father.”
“A seafaring man, eh?” said Downer. “A sailor?”
“Something like that. He goes away for months at a time, but I have
never seen her before.”
Mr. Downer pulled at his dead cigar, scenting a scandal.
“Rather nice-looking fellow, tall——”
She shook her head.
“No, he isn’t what I’d call strong on looks. He’s ill now, and I
suppose she’s come to look after him. Got on in the world and hasn’t
forgotten her old father. That’s what I like to see about a girl.”
The good lady, now thoroughly wound up, was prepared to express her
views on girls at length, but Mr. Downer had his appointment.
He pulled the brim of his hard hat further over his eyes, an action
less designed to disguise himself than to shut him still further from
the world in which he moved, and, shifting his umbrella from one arm to
the other, moved back the way he had come.
It was characteristic of him that he left the woman without an apology
and in the midst of her narrative. She had served her purpose,
could be of no further use. He might spend time and art in finding
acquaintances; he wasted neither in demolishing the structure of
friendship which often he had so laboriously created.