not an easy one, because when the police called at the hotel in
Mexborough Gate they learned that the mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd had
been gone three days. Having paid his bill, he had walked out of the
house one dark afternoon and not been seen or heard of since. He
went off carrying a paper parcel, which no doubt contained the few
belongings he had bought of late.
"Of course he was the thief and a marvellous cunning one. Just think
what it meant. It meant, first of all, immense presence of mind and
daring to accost the lift-boy and engage him in conversation whilst
pouring a drug into a mug of beer; then it meant sneaking into the
block of flats in George Street, breaking the glass panel of a door,
entering the flat, stealing the keys, sneaking out of the building
again, going round to Sackville Street, watching until the police on
duty had passed by, entering the house, opening the safe, collecting
the gems--all in full view of the street, mind you, or else in
absolute darkness--then relocking the safe and again watching for the
opportunity to sneak out of the house until the man on duty was out
of sight. Clever? I should think it would have been clever, if it
had ever been done!"
"How do you mean, if it had ever been done?" I ejaculated, with some
impatience. "Whoever the thief was--and I suppose that you have your
theory--he must have done all those things."
"Oh no, he did not!" the funny creature asserted emphatically, "he
merely put all the gems away in his own pocket after the exhibition
was closed for the night, instead of locking them up in the safe."
"Then you think it was Ruggles?" I exclaimed.
"In conjunction with his master."
"Sir James Narford? But why?"
"For the sake of the insurance money."
"But, man alive!" I ejaculated, "that was the tragedy of the whole
thing. I remember reading about it at the time. I suppose that it
was either out of meanness or because he had so little ready money,
but Sir James Narford had only insured his treasure for £20,000,
whereas the jewels----"
"Were not worth a penny more than that," the Old Man in the Corner
broke in with his bland smile. "The public may have been bamboozled
with tales of fabulous value--nowadays people talk as glibly of
millions as the past generation did of thousands--but insurance
companies don't usually listen to fairy tales."
"But even so," I argued, "the jewels must have been worth more than
the insurance after all the advertisement they got. Why shouldn't
Sir James have sold them, rather than take the risk of stealing them?"
"But, my dear young lady," he retorted, "can't you see that the
jewels can still be sold and that they will
be--abroad--presently--one by one? Twenty thousand pounds insurance
money is good, but you double the amount and it is better."
"But what about the wounded man in Wicklow Lane?" I asked.
"A red herring across the trail," he replied, with a smile, "only
with this difference, that it was dragged across before the hounds
were on the scent. And that is where the immense cleverness of the
man comes in. To create a personality on whom to draw suspicion of a
crime and then make that personality disappear before the crime is
committed, is as clever a bit of rascality as I have ever seen. It
needed absolute coolness and a knowledge of facial make-up, in both
of which we must take it Sir James Narford was a past-master. Think
then how easy everything else would be for him.
"Just let me reconstruct the whole thing for you from beginning to
end, that is from the moment when Sir James Narford first conceived
the idea of doubling the value of his gems, and took his man Ruggles
as partner in that fine piece of rascality. He couldn't have done it
without a partner, of course, and probably this was not the first
villainy those two scoundrels had carried through together. Well
then, Narford having given instructions to Ruggles and arranged
certain matters of detail with him, begins his campaign by ostensibly
starting on a journey. He crossed over to France probably and then
back to England. It is easy enough for a man to disappear in crowded
trains or railway stations if there is no one on his track; easy
enough for him to stay in one hotel after another in any big town if
he chooses hotels whose proprietors have reason to dread the police,
and will not volunteer information if any of their visitors are
'wanted.' A month only of such wanderings and Sir James Narford,
habitually a very dapper man, with sleek, sandy hair cropped very
close, a tiny tooth-brush moustache and shaven cheeks and chin, can
easily be transformed into one with shaggy hair and beard and walrus
moustache. Add to this a nose built out with grease-paint and highly
coloured, and cheeks stained a dull red, and you have the man who
called for the key of the empty house at Messrs. Whiskin and Sons,
with a parcel under his arm, which contained the black cape and
Montmartre hat purchased abroad at some time previously, during the
course of his wanderings. That's simple, is it not?" the funny
creature continued, while his thin, claw-like fingers worked away
feverishly at his piece of string. "Now, all that our rascal wants
is to change his clothes and his face; so, late that evening, by
preconcerted plan, Ruggles meets him at the empty house under cover
of the fog. Here he and his precious master change clothes with one
another. Narford then completes his toilet by applying to his shaggy
hair and beard one of those modern dyes that are so much advertised
for the use of ladies desiring to possess raven locks. And so we
have the explanation of all the conflicting evidence of the witnesses
who saw a man with a parcel, and yet were so much at variance both as
to the time when they saw him, as to his appearance, and even as to
the size of the parcel.
"Having thus _created_ the personality of a foreign-looking
individual in black clothes, you will easily see how important it was
for the general scheme that the comedy of the row and the
pistol-shots in the empty house should be enacted. Attention had to
be drawn to the created personage, attention coupled with mystery,
and at this stage of the scheme there was not the slightest danger of
the wounded man in Wicklow Lane being in any way connected with Sir
James Narford of George Street, Mayfair. Time was no object. The
mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd of Wicklow Lane might be detained days,
weeks, even months, but he would have to be let out some time or
other. He was perfectly harmless apparently, and otherwise sane; he
could not be kept for ever at the country's expense. He was
eventually discharged; went to an hotel, and lived there quietly a
while longer until he thought that the time was ripe for complete
disappearance. In the meanwhile we must suppose that he was in touch
with Ruggles. Ruggles made a point of taking a brisk walk every
evening. Well, winter evenings are dark and London is a very crowded
place. Ruggles would bring what money was required. What more easy
than to meet in a crowd?
"Then at last the two rascals thought that the time was ripe. The
mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd disappeared from the hotel in Mexborough
Gate; he went to Sackville Street, where he shaved off his shaggy
moustache and beard, and cut his hair once more so close that nothing
of the dyed ends could be seen. He changed into his own clothes,
which Ruggles kept there ready for him. Then he slipped round to
Victoria Station and crossed over to France, only in order to return
to England, openly this time, as Sir James Narford, and just in time
to find Ruggles just aroused from a drugged sleep and the whole flat
seething with excitement. But it was he who in black cape and
Montmartre hat visited the shop in Sackville Street, it was Ruggles
who the following night spoke to the lift-boy, even while Narford was
procuring for himself a perfect alibi by crossing over quite openly
from France.
"Ruggles's task was, of course, much easier. All he had to do was to
put the gems in his pocket, and these Narford took over from him in
the morning at the flat before he telephoned for the police. To put
on the black cape and hat and to accost the lift-boy was easy enough
on a dark, snowy night in January. And now all the excitement has
died down. The whole thing was so cleverly planned that the real
rascal was never suspected. Ruggles may have been but nothing could
really be brought up against him. The gems haven't been found and to
all appearances he has not benefited by the robbery. He is just the
faithful, trusted servant of his master.
"Sir James Narford has got his money from the Insurance Company and
since then has left for abroad. By the way," the Old Man in the
Corner concluded, as he gathered up his precious bit of string and
slipped it in the pocket of his ulster, "I heard recently that he has
bought some property in Argentina and has settled down there
permanently with his friend Ruggles. I think he was wise to do that,
and if you care to publish my version of that mysterious affair, you
are at liberty to do so. I don't think that our friend would sue you
for defamation of character, and, anyway, I'll undertake to pay
damages if the case comes into court."
XI
THE MISER OF MAIDA VALE
§1
"One of the most puzzling cases I ever remember watching," the Old
Man in the Corner said to me that day, "was the one known to the
public as that of 'The Miser of Maida Vale.' It presented certain
altogether novel features, and for once I was willing to admit that,
though the police had a very hard nut to crack in the elucidation of
the mystery, and in the end failed to find a solution, they were at
one time very near putting their finger on the key of the puzzle. If
they had only possessed some of that instinct for true facts with
which Nature did so kindly endow me, there is no doubt that they
would have brought that clever criminal to book."
I wish it were in my power to convey something of that air of
ludicrous complacency with which he said this. I could almost hear
him purring to himself, like a lean, shabby old cat. He had his
inevitable bit of string in his hand, and had been in rapturous
contemplation of a series of knots which he had been fashioning until
the moment when I sat down beside him and he began to speak. But as
soon as he embarked upon his beloved topic he turned his rapturous
contemplation on himself. He just sat there and admired himself, and
now and again blinked at me, with such an air of self-satisfaction
that I longed to say something terribly rude first, and then to
flounce out of the place, leaving him to admire himself at his
leisure.
But, of course, this could not be. To use the funny creature's own
verbiage, Nature had endowed me with the journalistic instinct. I
had to listen to him; I had to pick his brains and to get copy out of
him. The irresistible desire to learn something new, something that
would thrill my editor, as well as my public, compelled me to swallow
my impatience, to smile at him--somewhat wryly, perhaps--and then to
beg him to proceed.
I was all attention.
"Well," he said, still wearing an irritating air of condescension,
"do you remember the case of the old miser of Maida Vale?"
"Only vaguely," I was willing to admit.
"It presented some very interesting features," he went on, blandly,
"and assuming that you really only remember them vaguely, I will put
them before you as clearly as possible, in order that you may follow
my argument more easily later on.
"The victim of the mysterious tragedy was, as no doubt you remember,
an eccentric old invalid named Thornton Ashley, the well-known naval
constructor, who had made a considerable fortune during the war and
then retired, chiefly, it was said, owing to ill-health. He had two
sons, one of whom, Charles, was a misshapen, undersized creature,
singularly unprepossessing both in appearance and in manner, whilst
the other, Philip, was a tall, good-looking fellow, very agreeable
and popular wherever he went. Both these young men were bachelors, a
fact which, it appears, had been for some time a bone of contention
between them and their father. Old Ashley was passionately fond of
children, and the one desire of his declining years was to see the
grandchildren who would ultimately enjoy the fortune which he had
accumulated. Whilst he was ready to admit that Charles, with his
many afflictions, did not stand much chance with the fair sex, there
was no reason at all why Philip should not marry, and there had been
more than one heated quarrel between father and son on that one
subject.
"So much so, indeed, that presently Philip cut his stick and went to
live in rooms in Jermyn Street. He had a few hundreds a year of his
own, left to him by a godmother. He had been to Rugby and to
Cambridge, and had been a temporary officer in the war: pending his
obtaining some kind of job he settled down to live the life of a
smart young bachelor in town, whilst his brother Charles was left to
look after the old man, who became more and more eccentric as his
health gradually broke up. He sold his fine house in Hyde Park
Gardens, his motor, and the bulk of his furniture, and moved into a
cheap flat in Maida Vale, where he promptly took to his bed, which he
never left again. His eccentricities became more and more pronounced
and his temper more and more irascible. He took a violent dislike to
strangers, refused to see anybody except his sons and two old
friends, Mr. Oldwall, the well-known solicitor, and Dr.
Fanshawe-Bigg, who visited him from time to time and whose orders he
obstinately refused to obey. Worst of all, as far as the unfortunate
Charles was concerned, he became desperately mean, denying himself
(and, incidentally, his son) every luxury, subsisting on the barest
necessities, and keeping no servant to wait on him except a daily
'char.'
"Soon his miserliness degenerated into a regular mania.
"'Charles and I are saving money for the grand-children you are going
to give me one day,' he would say with a chuckle whenever Philip
tried to reason with him on the subject of this self-denying
ordinance. 'When you have an establishment of your own, you can
invite us to come and live with you. There will be plenty then for
housekeeping, I promise you!'
"At which the handsome Philip would laugh and shrug his shoulders and
go back to his comfortable rooms in Jermyn Street. But no one knew
what Charles thought about it all. To an outsider his case must
always have appeared singularly pathetic. He had no money of his own
and his delicate health had made it impossible for him to take up any
profession: he could not cut his stick like his brother Philip had
done, but, truth to tell, he did not appear to wish to do so.
Perhaps it was real fondness for his father that made him seem
contented with his lot. Certain it is that as time went on he became
a regular slave to the old man, waiting on him hand and foot, more
hard-worked than the daily 'char,' who put on her bonnet and walked
out of the flat every day at six o'clock when her work was done, and
who had all her Sundays to herself.
"All the relaxation that Charles ever had were alternate week-ends,
when his brother Philip would come over and spend Saturday to Monday
in the flat taking charge of the invalid. On those occasions Charles
would get on an old bicycle, and with just a few shillings in his
pocket which he had saved during the past fortnight out of the meagre
housekeeping allowance which he handled, he would go off for the day
somewhere into the country, nobody ever knew where. Then on Monday
morning he would return to the flat in Maida Vale, ready to take up
his slave's yoke, to all appearances with a light heart.
"'Charles Ashley is wise,' the gossiping acquaintances would say, 'he
sticks to the old miser. Thornton Ashley can't live for ever, and
Oldwall says that he is worth close on a quarter of a million.'
"Philip, on the other hand, could have had no illusions with regard
to his father's testamentary intentions. The bone of
contention--Philip's celibacy--was still there, making bad blood
between father and son; more than once the old miser had said to him
with a sardonic grin: 'Let me see you married soon, my boy, and with
a growing family around you, or I tell you that my money shall go to
that fool Charles, or to the founding of an orphan asylum or the
establishment of a matrimonial agency.'
"Mr. Oldwall, the solicitor, a very old friend of the Ashleys, and
who had seen the two boys grow up, threw out as broad a hint to
Philip on that same subject as professional honour allowed.
"'Your father,' he said to him one day, 'has got that mania for
saving money, but otherwise he is perfectly sane, you know. He'll
never forgive you if you don't gratify his wish to see you married.
Hang it all, man, there are plenty of nice girls about. And what on
earth would poor old Charles do with a quarter of a million, I'd like
to know.'
"But for a long time Philip remained obstinate and his friends knew
well enough the cause of this obstinacy; it had its root in a pre-war
romance. Philip Ashley had been in love--some say that he had
actually been engaged to her--with a beautiful girl, Muriel Balleine,
the daughter of the eminent surgeon, Sir Arnold Balleine. The two
young people were thought to be devoted to one another. But the
lovely Muriel had, as it turned out, another admirer in Sir Wilfred
Peet-Jackson, the wealthy shipowner, who worshipped her in secret.
Philip Ashley and Wilfred Peet-Jackson were great friends; they had
been at school and 'Varsity together. In 1915 they both obtained a
commission in the Coldstreams and in 1916 Peet-Jackson was very
severely wounded. He was sent home to be nursed by the beautiful
Muriel in her father's hospital in Grosvenor Square. His case had
already been pronounced hopeless, and Sir Arnold himself, as well as
other equally eminent surgeons, gave it as their opinion that the
unfortunate young man could not live more than a few months--if that.
"We must then take it that pity and romance played their part in the
events that ensued. Certain it is that London society was one day
thrilled to read in its _Times_ that Miss Muriel Balleine had been
married the previous morning to Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson, the wealthy
shipowner and owner of lovely Deverill Castle in Northamptonshire.
Her friends at once put it about that Muriel had only yielded to a
dying man's wish, and that there was nothing mercenary or calculating
in this unexpected marriage; she probably would be a widow within a
very short time and free to return to her original love and to marry
Philip Ashley. But in this case, like in so many others in life, the
unexpected occurred. Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson did not die--not just
then. He lived six years after the doctors had said that he must die
in six months. He remained an invalid and he and his beautiful wife
spent their winters in the Canaries and their summers in Switzerland,
but Muriel did not become a widow until 1922, and Philip Ashley all
that time never looked at another girl; he was even willing to allow
a fortune to slip away from him, because he always hoped that the
woman whom he had never ceased to worship would be his wife one day.
"Probably old Ashley knew all that; probably he hated the idea that
this one woman should spoil his son's life for always; probably he
thought that threat of disinheritance would bring Philip back out of
the realms of romance to the realities of life. All this we shall
never know. The old man spoke to no one about that, not even to Mr.
Oldwall, possibly not even to Charles. By the time that Sir Wilfred
Peet-Jackson had died and Philip had announced his engagement to the
beautiful widow, Thornton Ashley was practically a dying man.
However, he did have the satisfaction before he died of hearing the
good news. Philip told him of his engagement one Saturday in May
when he came for his usual fortnightly week-end visit. Strangely
enough, although the old man must have been delighted at this tardy
realisation of his life's desire, he did not after that make any
difference in his mode of life. He remained just as irascible, just
as difficult, and every bit as mean as he had always been; he never
asked to see his future daughter-in-law, whom he had known in the
past, though she did come once or twice to see him; nor did he
encourage Philip to come and see him any more frequently than he had
done before. The only indication he ever gave that he was pleased
with the engagement was an obvious impatience to see the wedding-day
fixed as soon as possible, and one day he worked himself up into a
state of violent passion because Philip told him that Lady
Peet-Jackson was bound to let a full year lapse before she married
again, out of respect for poor Wilfred's memory.
§2
"Of course a good deal of gossip was concentrated on all these
events. Although Thornton Ashley had, for the past three years, cut
himself adrift from all social intercourse, past friends and
acquaintances had not altogether forgotten him, whilst Philip Ashley
and Lady Peet-Jackson had always been well-known figures in a certain
set in London. It was not likely, therefore, that their affairs
would not be discussed and commented on at tea-parties and in the
clubs. Philip Ashley was exalted to the position of a hero. By his
marriage he would at last grasp the fortune which he had so
obstinately and romantically evaded: true love was obtaining its just
reward, and so on. Lady Peet-Jackson, on the other hand, was not
quite so leniently dealt with by the gossips. It was now generally
averred that she had originally thrown Philip Ashley over only
because Peet-Jackson was a very rich man and had a handle to his
name, and that she was only returning to her former lover now because
Thornton Ashley had already one foot in the grave, and was reputed to
be worth a quarter of a million.
"I have a photograph here," the Old Man in the Corner went on, and
threw a bundle of newspaper cuttings down before me, "of Lady
Peet-Jackson. As no doubt you will admit, she is very beautiful, but
the face is hard; looking at it one feels instinctively that she is
not a woman who would stand by a man in case of trouble or disgrace.
But it is difficult to judge from these smudgy reproductions, and
there is no doubt that Philip Ashley was madly in love with her.
That she had enemies, especially amongst those of her own sex, was
only natural in view of the fact that she was exceptionally
beautiful, had made one brilliant marriage, and was on the point of
making another.
"But the two romantic lovers were not the sole food of the
gossip-mongers. There was the position of Charles Ashley to be
discussed and talked over. What was going to become of him? How
would he take this change in his fortune? If rumour, chiefly based
on Mr. Oldwall's indiscretions, was correct, he would be losing that
reputed quarter of a million if Philip's marriage came off. But in
this case gossip had to rest satisfied with conjectures. No one ever
saw Charles, and Philip, when questioned about him, had apparently
very little to say.
"'Charles is a queer fish,' he would reply. 'I don't profess to know
what goes on inside him. He seems delighted at the prospect of my
marriage, but he doesn't say much. He is very shy and very sensitive
about his deformity, and he won't see any one now, not even Muriel.'
"And thus the stage was set," the funny creature continued with a
fatuous grin, "for the mysterious tragedy which has puzzled the
public and the police as much as the friends of the chief actors in
the drama. It was set for the scene of Philip Ashley's marriage to
Muriel Lady Peet-Jackson, which was to take place very quietly at St.
Saviour's, Warwick Road, early in the following year.
"On the twenty-seventh of August old Thornton Ashley died, that is to
say he was found dead in his bed by his son Charles, who had returned
that morning from his fortnightly week-end holiday. The cause of
death was not in question at first, though Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg was out
of town at the moment, his _locum tenens_ knew all about the case,
and had seen the invalid on the Thursday preceding his death. In
accordance with the amazing laws of this country, he gave the
necessary certificate without taking a last look at the dead man, and
Thornton Ashley would no doubt have been buried then and there,
without either fuss or ceremony, but for the amazing events which
thereupon followed one another in quick succession.