MR. DRAYTON’S SUSPICIONS
The escape of Lionel Dering from Duxley Gaol created an extraordinary
sensation throughout the country. Government at once offered a reward
of two hundred pounds, which, a week later, was increased to four
hundred. The telegraph was set to work in every direction, and at every
sea-port in England and on the Continent sharp eyes were made sharper
still by the possibility of winning so magnificent a prize. But day
passed after day till a fortnight had come and gone, and still there
was not the slightest clue to the whereabouts of the missing man; nor
the smallest scrap of comfort for the disconsolate soul of Mr. Drayton,
the superintendent of the Duxley police.
However positive Jabez Creede, his landlady, and the various prison
warders might be that Mr. Hoskyns, and no one but he, was the man who
had assisted Lionel Dering to escape, it was easily proved that they
were one and all in the wrong. On the evening of the escape Mr. Hoskyns
had dined with Mr. Tressil and three or four other members of the bar,
and had not parted from them till after midnight. This fact the
gentlemen in question all came forward and swore to, and Mr. Hoskyns
was at once exculpated from any share in the extraordinary escape of
his client. With Jabez Creede it fared somewhat more hardly. Every one
at first was inclined to regard him in the light of an accomplice, and
it was not till after he had spent upwards of a week in prison, and had
been examined and remanded about a dozen times, that he was able to
prove how really innocent he was of any complicity in the heinous crime
of which he was accused.
But who, then, was the consummate actor who had so cleverly outwitted,
not only drink-soddened Jabez Creede, but the keen-eyed warders of the
prison, who, for weeks past, had been in the habit of seeing the real
Hoskyns almost daily, and who, one would have thought, were about the
last men in the world to be so easily deceived? Government supplemented
its second reward for the capture of the escaped prisoner by offering a
hundred and fifty pounds for the capture of the man who had helped him
to escape. But Government, to all appearance, might as well have never
offered to unloosen its purse-strings.
From the moment Lionel Dering and the arch-impostor who aided and
abetted him in his nefarious scheme set foot outside the walls of
Duxley Gaol, they seemed to have vanished into thinnest air. Like
creatures of a dream, they had melted utterly away; and not all the ten
thousand practised eyes that were on the look-out for them here, there,
and everywhere, could succeed in finding the faintest clue to their
hiding-place.
Of the two, as far as his private feelings went, Mr. Drayton would much
rather have captured the sham lawyer than the escaped prisoner. He had
no ill feeling towards Mr. Dering. Under similar circumstances, who
would not have attempted to escape? But towards the sham Hoskyns, who
had deceived everybody with such apparent ease, he certainly felt a
degree of animus which had kept him in a chronic state of ill-temper
both at home and abroad ever since the discovery of the escape, and
which would have caused it to fare but ill with the miscreant in
question, could Mr. Drayton’s heavy hand but once have been laid upon
his shoulder.
The celebrated Mr. Whiffins, of Scotland Yard, had, in the first
instance, been sent down to investigate the case, and had, so to speak,
taken the conduct of it into his own hands. But Mr. Drayton did not
believe in Mr. Whiffins—did not believe in his talents as a detective,
and secretly resented his interference. But, by-and-by, Mr. Whiffins
went back to London not much wiser than he had left it, and Mr. Drayton
was left to pursue his investigations in peace.
Many and profound were the cogitations of the worthy superintendent of
police, indulged in the privacy of his own circle, before the following
deductions worked themselves out to a logical issue in his mind:—The
man who personated Mr. Hoskyns so successfully must evidently have been
thoroughly acquainted with the speech, dress, gait, manner, and every
minute peculiarity in the appearance and habits of that gentleman, down
even to his yellow pocket-handkerchief and his silver snuff box. He
must also have had some knowledge of Jabez Creede, and of the position
he held with regard to his employer. He must also have known Mr.
Dering, and Mr. Dering must have known him: the supposition, in fact,
being that the two men were bosom friends—for who but a staunch friend
would have run the risk of failure in attempting so remarkable an
escape? Then, the man, whoever he might be, must also have had some
acquaintance with the gaol and with the gaol officials. Had he not
mentioned two or three of the warders by name? Then, he must be a man
about the same size and build as Mr. Hoskyns, with a thin, clear-cut
face, something like that of the old lawyer. Having worked out his
problem so far, Mr. Drayton’s next care was to look carefully round,
and endeavour to “spot” the man in whom the various requirements of the
case were most evidently combined.
The result of the cautious inquiries instituted by Mr. Drayton was,
that suspicion pointed in one direction, and in one only.
There was only one person to be found to whom the whole of the
deductions worked out in the superintendent’s mind would clearly apply.
That person was Mr. Tom Bristow.
Mr. Bristow was a friend of the prisoner, and had visited him almost
daily in gaol. He was well acquainted both with Mr. Hoskyns and Jabez
Creede; and, taking the difference of age into account, he was not
unlike the old lawyer in personal appearance.
“I think I’ve nailed you, my fine fellow!” said Mr. Drayton
triumphantly to himself one evening, as he shook the ashes out of his
pipe and brought his cogitations to an end for the time being.
But it is one thing to suspect a man, and another to have sufficient
evidence against him to warrant his arrest. The evidence against Mr.
Bristow, such as it was, was entirely presumptive, and even Sir Harry
Cripps, the senior magistrate, anxious as he was that the culprit
should be brought to light, had yet some doubts as to the advisability
of issuing a warrant for the arrest of Tom. Now, as it happened, Sir
Harry and Mr. Culpepper were old and intimate friends, and when, in the
course of conversation, Mr. Drayton chanced to mention that Mr. Bristow
had more than once been up to Pincote to dinner, Sir Harry caught at
the idea, and decided to take no further steps in the matter till after
he had consulted with his old friend. So he at once dropped the squire
a note, in which he asked him to look in at the Town Hall on a matter
of private business when next in Duxley.
Next morning brought the Squire, and the case was at once laid before
him. He laughed loud and long at the idea of “young Bristow,” whom he
knew so well, having had anything to do with so nefarious a
transaction. He did not scruple to express in voluble terms his
gratification at poor Dering’s escape—thereby shocking Sir Harry’s
susceptibilities as a magistrate not a little—but that Bristow was the
disguised conspirator who had assisted him to escape was a thought
which found no resting-place in the squire’s mind. “He’s too simple—too
straightforward ever to think of such a thing—letting alone the
carrying of it out,” said Mr. Culpepper. “You don’t know Bristow as
well as I do, or you would never connect such an idea with his name.”
“Suppose we send for him,” said Sir Harry, “and put a few questions to
him quietly in this room?”
“With all my heart,” said the squire; “and have your pains for your
reward.”
So a messenger was sent round to Tom’s lodgings with Mr. Culpepper’s
compliments, and would Mr. Bristow be good enough to step up to the
magistrate’s private room at the Town Hall for a few minutes?
Tom, who happened to be at home, went back with the messenger without a
moment’s hesitation; but it would, perhaps, be too much to say that his
heart did not misgive him a little as he walked smilingly into the
lion’s den. Mr. Culpepper shook hands with him, and pointed to a chair
next his own. Sir Harry nodded and said, “How do you do, Mr. Bristow?”
but looked anxious and flurried. Drayton coughed behind his hand, and
quietly changed his position so as to get between Tom and the door.
“There’s no knowing what may happen,” said the superintendent to
himself. “He may grow desperate as soon as he finds it’s all up with
him.”
“We have sent for you, Bristow,” said the squire, “that we may have a
little talk with you about Mr. Dering’s extraordinary escape.”
“It was indeed an extraordinary escape, sir,” said Tom; “but I am not
aware that I am in a position to furnish you with any special
information respecting it. The ‘Duxley Gazette’ seems to me——”
“No—no, that isn’t what we mean,” interrupted the squire. “To be plain
with you, Bristow, a report has got abroad—no matter how it
originated—that you were somehow mixed up in that very queer piece of
business.”
“In other words, people think that because I was Mr. Dering’s friend,
it must be I who assisted him to escape?”
“That’s just about it,” said the squire. “You couldn’t have put it in
plainer language.”
“Well, gentlemen, I will tell you candidly that believing firmly, as I
do, in Mr. Dering’s innocence, I would gladly have assisted him to
escape had it lain in my power to do so. But I think I shall be able to
prove to your entire satisfaction that, unless it is possible for a man
to be in two places at once, I was in a direction quite the opposite of
that of Duxley gaol at the exact time that the escape was being carried
into effect.”
“There! what did I tell you?” said the squire triumphantly. “I knew the
lad was innocent.”
“Mr. Bristow has yet to enlighten us as to his proceedings on the night
in question,” said Sir Harry, stiffly.
“In the first place,” said Tom, “if you will kindly send for Mrs.
Potts, my landlady, who is, I believe, a most trustworthy woman, you
will find on inquiry of her that, on the night of the escape, the clock
had just struck eleven as I reached home. Mrs. Potts, will remember the
circumstance, because, a minute or two after going indoors, I heard her
fastening up the house as usual, and I called over the banisters to ask
her the time, my watch having stopped for want of winding up. On
hearing my question, Mrs. Potts held up her candle to the face of the
old case-clock in the entrance-hall, and called out that it was just
five minutes past eleven. Now, if I was in my own lodgings at five
minutes past eleven, I could not have had anything to do with the
escape of Mr. Dering, who, it was proved in evidence by the warders,
did not set foot outside the gates till a quarter of an hour past that
time.”
“Of course not. The thing’s as clear as daylight,” said the squire,
heartily.
“Perhaps, Sir Harry, you will kindly send for Mrs. Potts,” said Tom. “I
should like you to hear the corroboration of my story from her lips,
while I am here.”
“Drayton, send one of your men with my compliments to Mrs. Potts,
and——”
“Beg pardon, Sir Harry,” said Drayton, with some confusion, “but I
found out two or three days ago, in consequence of certain private
inquiries made by me, that what Mr. Bristow says about Mrs. Potts and
the clock is quite true. According to that clock, Mr. Bristow, on the
night of the escape, was at home at eleven to the minute.”
“What on earth do you mean, Drayton?” said Sir Harry, growing very red
in the face. “If you knew all this before, why let me send for Mr.
Bristow? If what you say is true, there is no case whatever against
this gentleman, and I can only apologize to him for having brought him
here at all.”
Drayton turned very white, but he was a man not easily put down. “Such
things have been known,” he said, “as clock fingers being put either
backward or forward so as to suit people’s own convenience.”
“Drayton, you are a bigger fool than I took you to be,” said Sir Harry,
irately, “and I never had a very high opinion of your brains.”
Drayton, metaphorically speaking, sank into his boots.
“As it happens,” said Tom, “I am in a position to offer you a still
stronger confirmation of the impossibility of my having had anything to
do with effecting the escape of Mr. Dering.”
“We shall be very happy, Mr. Bristow, to listen to anything you have to
say,” said Sir Harry, politely.
“Then I must ask you, Sir Harry, to kindly answer me one or two
questions,” said Tom.
“As many as you like, Mr. Bristow.”
“Were not you yourself in Duxley till rather a late hour on the night
of the escape?”
“I was. I did not leave the White Bear till nearly ten o’clock.”
“Precisely so. You and your son together in your dog-cart. When you
reached Deadman’s Hollow—you know the place I mean; that deep cutting
in the road about two miles out of Duxley, where the trees, planted
thick on both sides, nearly meet overhead?”
“I know the place you mean,” said Sir Harry.
“When you reached that spot, you did not see a man sitting on a broken
bit of wall in the gloomiest part of the road?”
“I certainly did not.”
“He had been taking a constitutional by starlight. The night was close
and oppressive, and he had sat down, hat in hand, to gather breath
before climbing the opposite hill.
“I certainly did not see the person to whom you allude.”
“But he saw you, Sir Harry. He saw you come to a dead stop within a
dozen yards of where he was sitting. One of the traces had suddenly
given way. You got down to ascertain what was the matter, and as you
did so, you made use of a rather strong expression. Would you like me,
Sir Harry, to repeat the exact words made use of by you on the occasion
in question?”
“Not at all, Mr. Bristow, not at all. Not requisite, I assure you,”
said Sir Harry, hastily.
“You alighted from the dog-cart,” resumed Tom. “Your son got down after
you, and you gave him one of the side-lamps to hold while you did your
best to mend the broken trace. As you got into the trap again, the
church clock at Leyland chimed the quarter. ‘We shall be very late
home, father,’ said your son. ‘Mamma will have given us up long ago.’
What you answered I did not hear, but next moment you were driving away
again as hard as you could, as if to make up for lost time, And now,
gentlemen, I hope you will agree with me that it was a sheer
impossibility for the man who was a witness of this incident to have
been at that very moment in Duxley gaol assisting a prisoner to
escape.”
“Mr. Bristow, not another word,” cried Sir Harry. “I regret exceedingly
that you were ever called upon for any such explanation. Mr. Culpepper
and I are going to have luncheon in five minutes. Will you do me the
favour of joining us?”
“This will be something to tell Jane when I get home,” said the squire
with a chuckle. “I believe you are a prime favourite with my Jenny,” he
added, turning to Tom.
So Tom lunched at the White Bear with Sir Harry and the squire, and
parted from them afterwards on the best of terms.
But Mr. Drayton, although staggered by Tom’s statement, was by no means
convinced in his own mind of the latter’s innocence. “Artful—very,” was
his muttered comment as he left the room. “But hang me if I don’t think
he’s been bamboozling Sir Harry all the way through.”
And Mr. Drayton was not far wrong in his supposition.
Tom _had_ put the clock at his lodgings half-an-hour back, and had
purposely called his landlady’s particular attention to the time of his
arrival at home, knowing well how such evidence would tell in his
favour should worthy Mrs. Potts ever be called upon to give it.
As for the incident of the broken trace, Tom had obtained his knowledge
of that quite by accident. As he was taking a country ramble the day
after the escape, a sudden thunder-shower drove him for shelter into a
little roadside public-house. He sat down and called for some
refreshment. While waiting for the rain to abate, his attention was
attracted by the conversation of two labouring men who were sitting on
the opposite side of the partition against which he was seated. One of
the two men was recounting some incident to his companion, with all
that particularity as to time and place, and the actual words
overheard, which, not unfrequently, makes the narrations of uneducated
persons so thoroughly vivid and life-like. The man, it appeared, was on
his way home, and had stopped to rest awhile in the dark part of the
road, when Sir Harry’s dog-cart drove up. Then came the sudden halt and
the after-incidents, exactly as told by Tom at second-hand from the
man.
“I’d have gone and lent him a hand,” added the man, “if it had been
anybody but Sir Harry Cripps. But he gave me three months once because
a hare was found in my pocket, which had got there quite accidental, so
that if he had broke his neck it wouldn’t have broke my heart.”
It was the story thus told which Tom had boldly seized upon and
appropriated as an experience of his own when before Sir Harry; with
what result has been already seen.
It had been a serious question with Tom whether, after the escape of
Lionel, he should continue to call at Alder Cottage as he had been in
the habit of doing previously, or whether he should absent himself
entirely till the first ardour of the hue-and-cry was over, and his
friend had been safely smuggled away to some more distant hiding-place.
After mature consideration, Tom decided that it would be better in
every way that he should keep up his visits as usual—as if, in fact,
the escape of Lionel Dering were a matter of no moment either to the
inmates of Alder Cottage or to himself. To break off his visits might
merely serve to breed suspicion where none existed already; besides
which it was absolutely necessary that he should see Lionel
occasionally, in order that the means might be concocted and agreed
upon for his further escape.
So Tom came and went as usual, and in no wise altered the mode of his
daily life. But, after a time, he became conscious that not only he
himself, but the inmates of Alder Cottage, had been placed under police
surveillance.
Wherever he went his footsteps were dogged—not offensively, but
cautiously, respectfully, and at a distance. The cottage, too, was, so
to speak, surrounded with spies.
This gave Tom some anxiety. It seemed to show that the suspicions of
Messrs. Whiffins and Drayton were beginning to concentrate themselves
nearer home. And to a certain extent he was right. After slow and
painful cogitation, and not till more than three weeks after the
escape, Mr. Drayton arrived at the conclusion that it was just possible
that Mr. Dering might never have attempted to go abroad at all, or even
to get as far as London, but might be snugly hidden somewhere close at
hand. And if so—where?
The result of this question was the watching by day and night of Alder
Cottage, and of the comings and goings of its inmates.
A week passed away and Mr. Drayton began to despair. His men had
absolutely nothing to report, except that the ladies went out
occasionally for a short walk; that Martha Vince, the servant, went out
every morning to make the needful domestic purchases; and that Mr.
Bristow called every other day and was the only visitor at the cottage.
Mr. Drayton was seriously considering as to the advisability of
withdrawing his men, when one of them brought him a piece of
information which startled him considerably. This man, Tidey by name,
had been on watch in a clump of trees a short distance from the
cottage, when, so he averred, he saw a corner of one of the blinds
drawn on one side, and a man’s face peer out along the road, as if
expecting some one. Tidey was positive that it was a man’s face. He was
equally certain it was not the face of Mr. Bristow, which was well
known to him by sight. That it could not be Mr. Bristow was proved in
another way, by another man, who had seen that gentleman leave the
cottage only two hours previously.
Mr. Drayton decided to strike while the iron was hot. He went at once
to Colonel Chumley, one of the magistrates—he would not go to Sir Harry
Cripps again, who, indeed, happened not to be sitting that day—and
having deposed to his belief that Lionel Dering was at that moment
hiding at Alder Cottage, he at once obtained the requisite warrant,
authorizing him to search the premises in question.
Half an hour later, followed by four picked men in plain clothes, Mr.
Drayton set out for the cottage.