Laverick, notwithstanding that the hour was becoming late, found an
outfitter’s shop in the Strand still open, and made such purchases as
he could on Morrison’s behalf. Then, with the bag ready packed, he
returned to his rooms. Time had passed quickly during the last three
hours. It was nearly nine o’clock when he stepped out of the lift and
opened the door of his small suite of rooms with the latchkey which
hung from his chain. He began to change his clothes mechanically, and
he had nearly finished when the telephone bell upon his table rang.
“Who’s that?” he asked, taking up the receiver.
“Hall-porter, sir,” was the answer. “Person here wishes to see you
particularly.”
“A person!” Laverick repeated. “Man or woman?”
“Man, sir.
“Better send him up,” Laverick ordered.
“He’s a seedy-looking lot, sir,” the porter explained “I told him that
I scarcely thought you’d see him.”
“Never mind,” Laverick answered. “I can soon get rid of the fellow if
he’s cadging.”
He went back to his room and finished fastening his tie. His own
affairs had sunk a little into the background lately, but the
announcement of this unusual visitor brought them back into his mind
with a rush. Notwithstanding his iron nerves, his fingers shook as he
drew on his dinner-jacket and walked out to the passageway to answer
the bell which rang a few seconds later. A man stood outside, dressed
in shabby black clothes, whose face somehow was familiar to him,
although he could not, for the moment, place it.
“Do you want to see me?” Laverick asked.
“If you please, Mr. Laverick,” the man replied, “if you could spare me
just a moment.”
“You had better come inside, then,” Laverick said, closing the door and
preceding the way into the sitting-room. At any rate, there was nothing
threatening about the appearance of this visitor—nor anything official.
“I have taken the liberty of coming, sir,” the man announced, “to ask
you if you can tell me where I can find Mr. Arthur Morrison.”
Laverick’s face showed no sign of his relief. What he felt he succeeded
in keeping to himself.
“You mean Morrison—my partner, I suppose?” he answered.
“If you please, sir,” the man admitted. “I wanted a word or two with
him most particular. I found out his address from the caretaker of your
office, but he don’t seem to have been home to his rooms at all last
night, and they know nothing about him there.”
“Your face seems familiar to me,” Laverick remarked. “Where do you come
from?”
The man hesitated.
“I am the waiter, sir, at the ‘Black Post,’—little bar and restaurant,
you know,” he added, “just behind your offices, sir, at the end of
Crooked Friars’ Alley. You’ve been in once or twice, Mr. Laverick, I
think. Mr. Morrison’s a regular customer. He comes in for a drink most
mornings.”
Laverick nodded.
“I knew I’d seen your face somewhere,” he said. “What do you want with
Mr. Morrison?”
The man was silent. He twirled his hat and looked embarrassed.
“It’s a matter I shouldn’t like to mention to any one except Mr.
Morrison himself, sir,” he declared finally. “If you could put me in
the way of seeing him, I’d be glad. I may say that it would be to his
advantage, too.”
Laverick was thoughtful for a moment.
“As it happens, that’s a little difficult,” he explained. “Mr. Morrison
and I disagreed on a matter of business last night. I undertook certain
responsibilities which he should have shared, and he arranged to leave
the firm and the country at once. We parted—well, not exactly the best
of friends. I am afraid I cannot give you any information.”
“You haven’t seen him since then, sir?” the man asked.
Laverick lied promptly but he lied badly. His visitor was not in the
least convinced.
“I am afraid I haven’t made myself quite plain, sir,” he said. “It’s to
do him a bit o’ good that I’m here. I’m not wishing him any harm at
all. On the contrary, it’s a great deal more to his advantage to see me
than it will be mine to find him.”
“I think,” Laverick suggested, “that you had better be frank with me.
Supposing I knew where to catch Morrison before he left the country, I
could easily deal with you on his behalf.”
The man looked doubtful.
“You see, sir,” he replied awkwardly, “it’s a matter I wouldn’t like to
breathe a word about to any one but Mr. Morrison himself. It’s—it’s a
bit serious.”
The man’s face gave weight to his words. Curiously enough, the gleam of
terror which Laverick caught in his white face reminded him of a
similar look which he had seen in Morrison’s eyes barely an hour ago.
To gain time, Laverick moved across the room, took a cigarette from a
box and lit it. A conviction was forming itself in his mind. There was
something definite behind these hysterical paroxysms of his late
partner, something of which this man had an inkling.
“Look here,” he said, throwing himself into an easychair, “I think you
had better be frank with me. I must know more than I know at present
before I help you to find Morrison, even if he is to be found. We
didn’t part very good friends, but I’m his friend enough—for the sake
of others,” he added, after a moment’s hesitation, “to do all that I
could to help him out of any difficulty he may have stumbled into. So
you see that so far as anything you may have to say to him is
concerned, I think you might as well say it to me.”
“You couldn’t see your way, then, sir,” the man continued doggedly, “to
tell me where I could find Mr. Morrison himself?”
“No, I couldn’t,” Laverick decided. “Even if I knew exactly where he
was—and I’m not admitting that—I couldn’t put you in touch with him
unless I knew what your business was.”
The man’s eyes gleamed. He was a typical waiter—pasty-faced,
unwholesome-looking—but he had small eyes of a greenish cast, and they
were expressive.
“I think, sir,” he said, “you’ve some idea yourself, then, that Mr.
Morrison has been getting into a bit of trouble.”
“We won’t discuss that,” Laverick answered. “You must either go
away—it’s past nine o’clock and I haven’t had my dinner yet—or you must
treat me as you would Mr. Morrison.”
The man looked upon the carpet for several moments.
“Very well, sir,” he said, “there’s no great reason why I should put
myself out about this at all. The only thing is—”
He hesitated.
“Well, go on,” Laverick said encouragingly.
“I think,” the man continued, “that Mr. Morrison—knowing, as I well do,
sir, the sort of gent he is—would be more likely to talk common sense
with me about this matter than you, sir.”
“I’ll imagine I’m Morrison, for the moment,” Laverick said smiling,
“especially as I’m acting for him.”
The man looked around the room. The door behind had been left ajar. He
stepped backward and closed it.
“You’ll pardon the liberty, sir,” he said, “but this is a serious
matter I’m going to speak about. I’ll just tell you a little thing and
you can form your own conclusions. Last night we was open late at the
‘Black Post.’ We keep open, sir, as you know, when you gentlemen at the
Stock Exchange are busy. About nine o’clock there was a strange
customer came in. He had two drinks and he sat as though he were
waiting. In about ’arf-an-hour another gent came in, and they went into
a corner together and seemed to be doing some sort of business.
Anyways, there was papers passed between them. I was fairly busy about
then, as there were one or two more customers in the place, but I
noticed these two talking together, and I noticed the dark gentleman
leave. The others went out a few minutes afterwards, and the gent who
had come first was alone in the place. He sat in the corner and he had
a pocket-book on the table before him. I had a sort of casual glance at
it when I brought him a drink, and it seemed to me that it was full of
bank-notes. He sat there just like a man extra deep in thought. Just
after eleven, in came Mr. Morrison. I could see he was rare and put
out, for he was white, and shaking all over. ‘Give me a drink, Jim,’ he
said,—‘a big brandy and soda, big as you make ’em.’”
The man paused for a moment as though to collect himself. Laverick was
suddenly conscious of a strange thrill creeping through his pulses.
“Go on,” he said. “That was after he left me. Go on.”
“He was quite close to the other gent, Mr. Morrison was,” the waiter
continued, “but they didn’t say nowt to each other. All of a sudden I
see Mr. Morrison set down his glass and stare at the other chap as
though he’d seen something that had given him a turn. I leaned over the
counter and had a look, too. There he sat—this tall, fair chap who had
been in the place so long—with his big pocket-book on the table in
front of him, and even from where I was I could see that there was a
great pile of bank-notes sticking out from it. All of a sudden he looks
up and sees Mr. Morrison a-watching him and me from behind the counter.
Back he whisks the pocket-book into his pocket, calls me for my bill,
gives me two mouldy pennies for a tip, buttons up his coat and walks
out.”
“You know who he was?” Laverick inquired.
Again the waiter paused for a moment before he answered—paused and
looked nervously around the room. His voice shook.
“He was the man as was murdered about a hundred yards off the ‘Black
Post’ last night, sir,” he said.
“How do you know?” Laverick asked.
“I got an hour off to-day,” the waiter continued, “and went down to the
Mortuary. There was no doubt about it. There he was—same chap, same
clothes. I could swear to him anywhere, and I reckon I’ll have to at
the inquest.”
Laverick’s cigarette burned away between his fingers. It seemed to him
that he was no longer in the room. He was listening to Big Ben striking
the hour, he was back again in that tiny little bedroom with its
spotless sheets and lace curtains. The man on the bed was looking at
him. Laverick remembered the look and shivered.
“What has this to do with Morrison?” he demanded.
Once more the waiter looked around in that half mysterious, half
terrified way.
“Mr. Morrison, sir,” he said, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper,
“he followed the other chap out within thirty seconds. A sort of queer
look he’d got in his face too, and he went out without paying me. I’ve
read the papers pretty careful, sir,” the man went on, “but I ain’t
seen no word of that pocket-book of bank-notes being found on the man
as was murdered.”
Laverick threw the end of his burning cigarette away. He walked to the
window, keeping his back deliberately turned on his visitor. His eyes
followed the glittering arc of lights which fringed the Thames
Embankment, were caught by the flaring sky-sign on the other side of
the river. He felt his heart beating with unaccustomed vigor. Was this,
then, the secret of Morrison’s terror? He wondered no longer at his
collapse. The terror was upon him, too. He felt his forehead, and his
hand, when he drew it away, was wet. It was not Morrison alone but he
himself who might be implicated in this man’s knowledge. The thoughts
flitted through his brain like parts of a nightmare. He saw Morrison
arrested, he saw the whole story of the missing pocket-book in the
papers, he imagined his bank manager reading it and thinking of that
parcel of mysterious bank-notes deposited in his keeping on the morning
after the tragedy... Laverick was a strong man, and his moment of
weakness, poignant though it had been, passed. This was no new thing
with which he was confronted. All the time he had known that the
probabilities were in favor of such a discovery. He set his teeth and
turned to face his visitor.
“This is a very serious thing which you have told me,” he said. “Have
you spoken about it to any one else?”
“Not a soul, sir,” the man answered. “I thought it best to have a word
or two first with Mr. Morrison.”
“You were thinking of attending the inquest,” Laverick said
thoughtfully. “The police would thank you for your evidence, and there,
I suppose, the matter would end.”
“You’ve hit it precisely, sir,” the man admitted. “There the matter
would end.”
“On the other hand,” Laverick continued, speaking as though he were
reasoning this matter out to himself, “supposing you decided not to
meddle in an affair which does not concern you, supposing you were not
sure as to the identity of your customer last night, and being a little
tired you could not rightly remember whether Mr. Morrison called in for
a drink or not, and so, to cut the matter short, you dismissed the
whole matter from your mind and let the inquest take its own
course,—”
Laverick paused. His visitor scratched the side of his chin and nodded.
“You’ve put this matter plainly, sir,” he said, “in what I call an
understandable, straightforward way. I’m a poor man—I’ve been a poor
man all my life—and I’ve never seed a chance before of getting away
from it. I see one now.”
“You want to do the best you can for yourself?”
“So ’elp me God, sir, I do!” the man agreed.
Laverick nodded.
“You have done a remarkably wise thing,” he said, “in coming to me and
in telling me about this affair. The idea of connecting Mr. Morrison
with the murder would, of course, be ridiculous, but, on the other
hand, it would be very disagreeable to him to have his name mentioned
in connection with it. You have behaved discreetly, and you have done
Mr. Morrison a service in trying to find him out. You will do him a
further service by adopting the second course I suggested with regard
to the inquest. What do you consider that service is worth?”
“It depends, sir,” the man answered quietly, “at what price Mr.
Morrison values his life!”