But in the meanwhile his friends had been busy--notably, Mr.
Stonebridge's head clerk, Mr. Medburn, who was giving the police no
rest.  There was, even without the evidence of the principal witness
concerned, plenty of facts to go on, to make out a case against the
perpetrator of such a dastardly outrage.

"That robbery had been the main motive of the assault, was easily
enough established--a small fire- and burglar-proof safe which stood
in a corner of the morning-room had been opened and ransacked.  When
examined it was found to contain only a few trinkets which had
probably a sentimental value, but were otherwise worthless.  The key
of the safe--one of a bunch--was still in the lock, which went to
prove either that Mr. Stonebridge had the safe open when he was
attacked, or what was more likely--considering the solicitor's
well-known careful habits--that the assailant had ransacked his
victim's pockets after he had knocked him down.  A pocket-book, torn,
and containing only a few unimportant papers, lay on the ground;
there had been a fire in the room at the time of the outrage, and
careful analysis of the ashes found in the hearth revealed the
presence of a quantity of burnt paper.

"But robbery being established as the motive of the outrage did not
greatly help matters, because, while Mr. Stonebridge remained in such
a helpless condition, it was impossible to ascertain what booty his
assailant had carried away.  Soon, however, the first ray of light
was thrown upon what had seemed until this hour an impenetrable
mystery.

"It appears that Mr. Medburn was looking after the business in High
Street during his employer's absence, and one morning--it was on the
Monday following the night of the outrage--he had a visit from a
client, who sent in his name as Felix Shap.  The head clerk knew
something about this client, who had recently come over to England
from somewhere abroad, in order to make good his claim to certain
royalties on what is known as the Shap Fuelettes--a kind of cheap
fuel which was launched some time before the War by Sir Alfred
Carysfort, Bart., of Tytherton Grange, and out of which that
gentleman made an immense fortune, and incidentally got his title
thereby.

"This man, Shap--a Dutchman by birth--was, it appears, the original
inventor and patentee of these fuelettes, and Mr. Carysfort, as he
was then, had met him out in the Dutch East Indies, and had bought
the invention from him for a certain sum down, and then exploited it
in England first and afterwards all over the world at immense profit.
Sir Alfred Carysfort died about a year ago, leaving a fortune of over
a million sterling, and was succeeded in the title and in the
managing-directorship of the business by his eldest son David, a
married man with a large family.  The business had long since been
turned into a private limited liability company, the bulk of the
shares being held by the managing-director.

"The fact that the patent rights in the Shap Fuelettes had been sold
by the inventor to the late Alfred Carysfort had never been in
dispute.  It further appeared that Felix Shap had at one time been a
very promising mining engineer, but that in consequence of incurable,
intemperate habits he had gradually drifted down the social scale; he
lost one good appointment after another until he was just an
underpaid clerk in the office of an engineer in Batavia, whose
representative in England was Mr. Alfred Carysfort.  The latter was
on a visit to the head office in Batavia some twelve years ago when
he met Shap, who was then on his beam-ends.  He had recently been
sacked by his employers for intemperance, and was on the fair way to
becoming one of those hopeless human derelicts who usually end their
days either on the gallows or in a convict prison.

"But at the back of Shap's fuddled mind there had lingered throughout
his downward career the remembrance of a certain invention which he
had once patented, and which he had always declared would one day
bring him an immense fortune; but though he had spent quite a good
deal of money in keeping up his patent rights, he had never had the
pluck and perseverance to exploit or even to perfect his invention.

"Alfred Carysfort on the other hand, was brilliantly clever, he was
ambitious, probably none too scrupulous, and at once he saw the
immense possibilities, if properly worked, of Shap's rough invention,
and he set to work to obtain the man's confidence, and, presumably,
by exercising certain persuasion and pressure he got the wastrel to
make over to him in exchange for a few hundred pounds the entire
patent rights in the Fuelettes.

"The transaction was, as far as that goes, perfectly straightforward
and above board; it was embodied in a contract drawn up by an English
solicitor, who was the British Consul in Batavia at the time; nor was
it--taking everything into consideration--an unfair one.  Shap would
never have done anything with his invention, and a clean, wholesome
and entirely practical fuel would probably have been thus lost to the
world; but there remains the fact that Alfred Carysfort died a dozen
years later worth more than a million sterling, every penny of which
he had made out of an invention for which he had originally paid less
than five hundred.

"Mr. Medburn had been put in possession of these facts some few weeks
previously when Mr. Felix Shap had first presented himself at the
private house of Mr. Stonebridge; he came armed with a letter of
introduction from a relative of Mr. Stonebridge's whom he had met out
in Java, and he was accompanied by a friend--an American named Julian
Lloyd--who was piloting him about the place, and acting as his
interpreter and secretary, as he himself had never been in England
and spoke English very indifferently.  His passport and papers of
identification were perfectly in order; he appeared before Mr.
Stonebridge as a man still on the right side of sixty, who certainly
bore traces on his prematurely wrinkled face and in his tired,
lustreless eyes of a life spent in dissipation rather than in work,
but otherwise he bore himself well, was well-dressed and appeared
plentifully supplied with money.

"The story that he told Mr. Stonebridge through the intermediary of
his friend, Julian Lloyd, was a very curious one.  According to his
version of various transactions which took place between himself and
the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, the latter had, some time after the
signing of the original contract, made him a definite promise in
writing, that should the proceeds in the business of the Shap
Fuelettes exceed £10,000 in any one year, he, Sir Alfred, would pay
the original inventor, out of his own pocket, a sum equivalent to
twenty per cent. of all such profits over and above the £10,000, with
a minimum of £200.

"Mr. Shap had brought over with him all the correspondence relating
to this promise, and, moreover, he adduced as proof positive that Sir
Alfred had looked on that promise as binding, and had at first
loyally abided by it, the fact that until 1916 he had paid to Mr.
Felix Shap the sum of £200 every year.  These sums had been paid
half-yearly through Sir Alfred's bankers, and acknowledgments were
duly sent by Shap direct to the bank, all of which could of course be
easily verified.  But in the year 1916 these payments suddenly
ceased.  Mr. Shap wrote repeatedly to Sir Alfred, but never received
any reply.  At first he thought that there were certain difficulties
in the way owing to the European War, so after a while he ceased
writing.  But presently there came the Armistice.  Mr. Shap wrote
again and again, but was again met by the same obstinate silence.

"In the meanwhile he had come to the end of his resources; he had
spent all that he had ever saved, but, nevertheless, he was
determined that as soon as he could scrape up a sufficiency of money
he would go to England in order to establish his rights.  Then in
1922 he heard of Sir Alfred Carysfort's death.  It was now or never
if he did not mean to acquiesce silently in the terrible wrong which
was being put upon him.  Fortunately he had a good friend in Mr.
Julian Lloyd, who had helped him with money and advice, and at last
he had arrived in England.  It was for Mr. Stonebridge to say whether
the papers and correspondence which he had brought with him were
sufficient to establish his claim in law.  Mr. Medburn remembered Mr.
Stonebridge telling him all about these matters and emphasising the
fact that Felix Shap had undoubtedly a very strong case and that he
could not understand a man of the position of Sir Alfred Carysfort
thus wilfully repudiating his own signature.

"'There is not only the original letter,' Mr. Stonebridge had
concluded, 'making a definite promise to pay certain sums out of his
own pocket if the profits of the company exceeded ten thousand pounds
in any one year, but there are all the covering letters from Sir
Alfred's bankers whenever they sent cheques on his behalf to
Shap--usually twice a year for sums that varied between one hundred
and one hundred and fifty pounds.  I cannot understand it!' he had
reiterated more than once, and Mr. Medburn, who also had a great deal
of respect for the Carysforts, who were among the wealthiest people
in the county, was equally at a loss to understand the position.

"However Mr. Stonebridge, after he had seen the late Sir Alfred's
bankers about the payments to Shap, and consulted an expert on the
subject of the all-important letter signed by Alfred Carysfort,
sought an interview with Sir David.  From the first there seemed to
be an extraordinary amount of acrimony brought into the dispute by
both sides; this was understandable enough on the part of Felix Shap,
who felt he was being defrauded of his just dues by men who were
literally coining money out of the product of his brain; but the
greatest bitterness really appeared to come from the other side.

"At first Sir David Carysfort refused even to discuss the question;
he was quite sure that if his father had made promises of payments to
any one, he was the last man in the world to repudiate such
obligations.  Sir David had not yet had time to go through all his
father's papers, but he was quite convinced that correspondence, or
documents, would presently be found, which would set at nought the
original letter produced by Mr. Shap.  But, of course, the payments
to Shap up to and including the year 1916 could not be denied; there
was the testimony of Sir Alfred's bankers that sums in accordance
with Sir Alfred's instructions, varying between one hundred and one
hundred and fifty pounds, were paid by cheque every half year to the
order of Felix Shap in Batavia.  In 1916 these payments automatically
ceased, Sir Alfred giving no further orders for these to be made.
Mr. Stonebridge naturally desired to know what explanation Sir David
would give about those payments.

"At first Sir David denied all knowledge as to the reason or object
of the payments, but after a while he must have realised that public
opinion was beginning to raise its voice on the subject, and that it
was not exactly singing the praises of Sir David Carysfort, Bart.

"Although Mr. Stonebridge had, of course, been discretion itself, Mr.
Shap had admittedly not the same incentive to silence, and what's
more his friend, Mr. Lloyd, made it his business to get as much
publicity for the whole affair as he could.  Paragraphs in the local
papers had begun to appear with unabated regularity, and though there
were no actual comments on the case as a whole, no prejudging of
respective merits, there were unmistakable hints that it would be in
Sir David's interest to put dignity on one side and come out frankly
into the open with explanations and suggestions.  Soon the London
papers got hold of the story, and you know what that means.  The
Radical Press simply battened on a story which placed a poor,
down-at-heel inventor in the light of a victim to the insatiable
greed and frank dishonesty of a high-born profiteer.

"Whether it was pressure from outside, or from his own family, that
suddenly induced Sir David to 'come out into the open' is not
generally known; certain it is that presently he condescended to give
an explanation of the mysterious half-yearly payments made by his
father to Felix Shap, and the explanation was so romantic and frankly
so far-fetched that most people, especially men, refused to accept
it--notably Mr. Stonebridge.  It was not the business of a lawyer to
listen to sentimental stories, least of all was it the business of
the lawyer acting on the other side.

"The story told by Sir David, namely, was this:

"The late Sir Alfred, when quite a young man, had gone out as clerk
to that same engineering firm in Batavia, whom he represented later
on; it was then that he first met Felix Shap, who had not yet begun
to go downhill.  An intimacy sprang up between Alfred Carysfort and
Shap's sister, Berta, and the two were secretly married in Batavia.
A year later Berta had a son whose birth she only survived by a few
hours.  The marriage had been an unhappy one from the first, and
Carysfort was only too thankful when his firm called him back to
England and he was able to shake off the dust of Batavia from his
feet, as he hoped for ever.  He never spoke of his marriage, nor did
he ever recognise or have anything to do with his son.  By some
pecuniary arrangement entered into with Felix Shap the latter
undertook to provide for and look after the boy, to give him his own
name, and never to trouble his brother-in-law about him again.  A
deed-poll was, Sir David believed, duly executed, and the boy assumed
the name of Alfred Shap.

"Some years later there occurred the transaction over the Shap
Fuelettes.  Alfred Carysfort had come to Batavia on business: he had
met Felix Shap again, who by this time had become a hopeless wastrel.
The contract for the sale of the patent rights in the Fuelettes was
duly executed, but whether, after seeing his son once more, the call
of the blood became more insistent in the heart of Alfred Carysfort,
or whether he merely yielded to blackmail, Sir David could not say;
certain it is that after a while when the profits of the Shap
Fuelettes Company became substantial, Sir Alfred took to sending over
a couple of hundred pounds every year to Shap for the benefit of
young Alfred.  Then the war broke out; young Alfred joined the
Australian Expeditionary Force, and was killed in Gallipoli in
August, 1915.  As soon as Sir Alfred had definite news of the boy's
death, he naturally stopped all further payments to Shap.

"The story as you see sounded plausible enough, and if it proved to
be untrue, it would reflect great credit on Sir David's gift of
imagination.  Felix Shap, as was only to be expected, denied it from
beginning to end; the whole thing, he declared, was an impudent
falsehood, based on a semblance of truth.  It was quite true that he
had adopted and for years had cared for his sister's son, who was
subsequently killed in Gallipoli; it was also true that Alfred
Carysfort had years ago paid some attention to his sister Berta, but
there never was any question of marriage between them, young
Carysfort deeming himself far too grand and well-born to marry the
daughter of an obscure East Indian trader.  Berta had subsequently
married a man of mixed blood who deserted her and went off somewhere
to Argentina or Honduras--Shap did not know where; at any rate, he
was never heard of again.

"In proof of his version of the romantic story, Felix Shap actually
had a copy of his sister's marriage certificate, as well as one or
two letters written at different times to his sister Berta by her
rascally husband.  He had, indeed, plenty of proofs for his
assertions; but when Mr. Stonebridge asked for confirmation of Sir
David's story, the latter appeared either unprepared or unwilling to
produce any, whereupon, Mr. Stonebridge, on behalf of his client,
entered an action for the recovery of certain royalties due to him on
the sales of the Shap Fuelettes, the amount to be presently agreed on
after examination of the audited accounts.

"Thus matters stood when on that Wednesday night in February last,
Mr. Stonebridge was found gagged and unconscious, the victim of a
murderous and inexplicable assault.

"On the Monday following, Mr. Felix Shap, accompanied by his friend,
Mr. Lloyd, called on Mr. Medburn at the office in High Street.  They
had read in the papers certain details which had filled Shap with
apprehension; they had read that the safe in the morning-room in Mr.
Stonebridge's house had been obviously ransacked, and that the
analysis of the ashes in the grate had revealed the presence of a
large quantity of burnt paper.

"'My friend Mr. Shap would like you to put his mind at rest,
Mr.--er--Medburn,' Mr. Lloyd said, in an anxious, agitated tone of
voice, 'that the papers relating to his case, which he entrusted to
Mr. Stonebridge, are safely locked up in a safe at this office.'

"Unfortunately, the head clerk was not able to satisfy Mr. Shap on
that point.  Mr. Stonebridge had never brought the papers to the
office, nor had Mr. Medburn ever seen them.  His impression was--he
regretted to say--that Mr. Stonebridge had, for the time being, kept
all papers relating to this particular case at his private house,
just as he had always seen Mr. Shap there rather than at the office.
Of course, Mr. Medburn hastened to assure his visitor, Mr.
Stonebridge may have kept the documents in some other secure place;
Mr. Medburn couldn't say, not having access to all his employer's
papers, and in any case he would make a comprehensive search for the
missing documents, and if nothing was found he would at once inform
the police.

"An evening or two later the papers came out with flaring headlines:
'Amazing Developments in the Tytherton outrage.  Missing documents.
Sensational turn in the Shap Fuelettes case.'  And so on.  The head
clerk had made an exhaustive search amongst his employer's papers,
but not a trace could he find of any documents relative to Mr. Shap's
case.  One and all had disappeared: the original letter from Alfred
Carysfort promising to pay an extra twenty per cent. on the profits
of the Shap Fuelette Company under certain conditions, the letters
from the scoundrel who had been Berta's husband, together with the
copy of Berta's marriage certificate--everything was gone, every
proof of the truth of the story which Felix Shap had come all this
way to tell.

§2

"The next exciting incident," the Old Man in the Corner continued
glibly, "in this remarkably mysterious case, was the news that Mr.
Allan Carysfort, eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., had been
detained in connection with the assault upon Mr. Stonebridge and the
disappearance of certain papers, the property of Mr. Felix Shap of
Batavia.

"Young Allan Carysfort, who was a subaltern in a cavalry regiment,
had come home from India recently, and, as a matter of fact, he had
arrived at the Grange, the family seat just outside Tytherton, the
very evening of the outrage.  Acting upon certain information
received, the police had detained him; he was to be brought before
the magistrates on the following day; and in the meanwhile it was
generally understood that some highly sensational evidence had been
collected by the police.

"It has been asserted that Sir David Carysfort and his family were
the last to realise how very strong public opinion had been against
them ever since Shap's story and the loss of the documents had become
generally known.  Though there had been no hint of it in the Press,
the public loudly declared that the Carysforts must have had
something to do with the outrage, seek him whom the crime benefits
being a most excellent adage.  But imagine the sensation when Allan
Carysfort, the eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., was arrested!

"Need I say that the following day when the young man was brought
before the magistrates, the court was crowded.  Sir David was a
magistrate, too, but of course he did not sit that day.  To see his
eldest son arraigned before his brother Beaks must have been a bitter
pill for his pride to swallow.

"We had the usual formal evidence of arrest, the medical evidence,
and so on, after which we quickly plunged into exciting business.
Mr. Stonebridge we were soon told had made a statement.  He was not
yet strong enough to appear in person, _but he had made a statement_,
so at last the public was to be initiated into the mysteries that
surrounded the inexplicable assault.

"'After my servants had gone to bed,' Mr. Stonebridge had stated, 'I
sat awhile reading in my study.  I was expecting a visit from Mr.
Shap, as we had talked over the possibility of a quiet chat at my
house that evening on the subject of his affairs.  He and Mr. Lloyd,
who were both of them very fond of the cinema, were in the habit of
dropping in after the show, on their way home.  At about a quarter to
eleven--I am sure it was not later--there was a ring at the
front-door bell, and I went to open the door.  No sooner had I done
this than a shawl or muffler of some sort was thrown over my face,
and I was made to lose my balance by the thrust of a foot between my
two shins.  I came down backwards with a crash.

"'The whole thing occurred in fewer seconds than it takes to
describe; the next moment I had the sensation of cold steel against
my temple, I heard an ominous click, and a husky voice whispered in
my ear, "Your servant is coming out of his room.  Speak to him, tell
him you are all right, or I shoot."  What could I do?  I was utterly
helpless and a revolver was held to my temple.  The muffler was then
lifted from my mouth, I could feel the man bending over me, I could
feel his hot breath on my forehead, and a few seconds later I heard
Henning come out of his room upstairs and switch on the light on the
top landing.  "If he comes downstairs," the voice whispered close to
my ear, "I shoot."

"'Then it was,' Mr. Stonebridge went on to say, 'that I shouted up to
Henning that I had only tripped over a rug, and that I was quite all
right.  I don't think I ever looked death so very near in the face
before.  The next moment I heard Henning switch off the light
upstairs and go back to his room.  After that I remember nothing
more.  I only have a vague recollection of a sudden terrible pain in
my head; everything else is a blank until I found myself in bed, and
with vague stirrings of memory bringing a return of that same
appalling headache.'

"The great point about Mr. Stonebridge's evidence was that he was
utterly unable to identify his assailant.  He was not even sure
whether he had been attacked by two men or one, since he had been
blindfolded at the outset, and all that he heard was a husky voice
that spoke in a whisper.  He was ready to admit that he might have
left the safe unlocked when he went to answer the front-door bell,
and he certainly had the papers relating to Mr. Shap's case on his
desk as he had been going through them earlier in the evening.  Those
papers, therefore, had undoubtedly been burned in the grate, and it
was obvious that the theft and destruction of those papers was the
motive of the assault.

"After that we went from excitement to excitement.  We did not get it
all the same day, of course; Allan Carysfort appeared, as far as I
can remember, three or four times before the local magistrates; in
between times he was out on bail, this having been fixed at £1,000 in
two recognisances £500 each, with an additional £500 on his own.  It
seems that when he was arrested he had made a statement, to which he
had since unreservedly subscribed.  He said that he had arrived in
London from Southampton on Monday the twenty-sixth, and after seeing
to some business in town, he took the eight-ten P.M. train on the
twenty-eighth to Tytherton, where he arrived at nine-fifty, having
dined on board.  His father met him at the station with the car, but
it was such a beautiful moon-lit night Sir David and himself decided
that they would walk to the Grange and then sent the car home with a
message to Lady Carysfort that they would be home at about eleven
o'clock.

"Carysfort had been asked whether it was not strange that after being
absent from home for so long, he should have elected to put off
seeing his mother till a much later hour.

"'Not at all,' he replied.  'My father wished to put me _au fait_ of
certain family matters before I actually saw Lady Carysfort.  These
matters,' he added emphatically in reply to questions put to him by
the magistrate, 'had nothing whatever to do with financial business,
least of all were they in any relation to Mr. Shap and his affairs.
Sir David and I,' he went on calmly, 'walked about for a while, and
then Sir David remembered that he wished to see a friend at the
County Club.  He went in there, but I preferred to take another turn
out of doors, as I had not had a taste of English country air for
nearly two years.'

"Asked how long he had walked about Tytherton waiting for Sir David,
Carysfort thought about half an hour, and when questioned as to the
direction he had taken, he said he really couldn't remember.

"The police of course had adduced certain witnesses whose testimony
would justify the course they had taken in arresting a gentleman in
the position of Mr. Allan Carysfort.  There was, first of all, Felix
Shap himself and his friend Julian Lloyd.  They deposed that at about
half-past ten, or perhaps a little earlier, they were on their way to
see Mr. Stonebridge, as the latter had expressed a wish to see them
both and have another quiet talk over a cigar and a glass of wine;
Shap and Lloyd had been to the P.P.P. cinema in High Street, and they
left just before the end to go to Mr. Stonebridge's house.  They were
within fifty yards of it when they saw a man turn out of the nearest
side street and go up to Mr. Stonebridge's house.  The man went
through the garden gate and up to the front door.  Shap and Lloyd saw
him in the act of ringing the bell.  It was then somewhere between
ten-thirty and ten-forty-five.  Mr. Stonebridge was so very much in
the habit of seeing friends, and even those clients with whom he was
intimate, late in the evenings, that Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd didn't
think anything of the incident; but, at the same time, they made up
their minds to postpone their own visit to Mr. Stonebridge until they
could be quite sure of seeing him alone.  So they turned then and
there, and went straight back to the Black Swan where they lodged.

"I may add that with commendable reserve both these witnesses refused
to identify Allan Carysfort with Mr. Stonebridge's visitor on that
memorable Wednesday evening.  The man they saw had an overcoat and
wore a Glengarry cap.  More they could not say, as they had not seen
his face clearly.

"On the other hand the hall-porter at the County Club, another
witness for the Treasury, had no cause for such reserve.  He said
that on the evening of February twenty-eighth, Sir David Carysfort
came to the Club a little before half-past ten.  Mr. Allan was with
him then, but he didn't come in.  The hall-porter heard him say to
Sir David: 'Very well, then!  I'll pick you up here in about half an
hour!'  And Sir David rejoined: 'Yes; don't be late!'  Mr. Allan did
return to the Club at about eleven o'clock and the two gentlemen then
went off together.  The hall-porter remembered the incident on that
date quite distinctly, because he recollected being much surprised at
seeing Mr. Allan Carysfort, who he thought was still abroad.

"After that there was another remand, Allan Carysfort's solicitor
having asked and obtained an adjournment for a week.  But by this
time, as you may imagine, not only the county, but London Society too
were absolutely horror-struck.  To think that a man in the position
of the Carysforts should have stooped to such an act, not only of
violence, but of improbity, was indeed staggering.  Nor did public
opinion swerve from this attitude one hair's breadth, even though at
the next hearing all the proofs which the police had adduced against
the accused were absolutely confuted.

"Fortunately for Carysfort, his solicitors had been successful in
finding two witnesses, Miriam Page and Arthur Ormeley, who had seen
Mr. Allan Carysfort, whom they knew by sight, strolling by the river
at a quarter to eleven.  They--like the hall-porter of the County
Club--remembered the circumstance very clearly, because they did not
know that Mr. Allan was home from abroad, and were astonished to see
him there.

"The point of the evidence of these witnesses was that the river
where they had seen Allan Carysfort strolling at a quarter to eleven
is at the diametrically opposite end of the town to that where lies
the Great West Road.  Now the hall-porter had seen Allan Carysfort
outside the County Club at half-past ten and again at eleven.  If
Carysfort was strolling by the river at a quarter to eleven, and
there was no reason to impugn the credibility of the witnesses, he
could not possibly have been the man whom Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd saw
ringing the bell of Mr. Stonebridge's house at about that same hour.

"Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, as you know.
There was no definite proof against him.  But public opinion is ever
an uncertain quantity, and it is still dead against the Carysforts.
In the public mind two facts have remained indelibly fixed: firstly,
that the Carysforts had everything to gain by the destruction of
Felix Shap's papers and, secondly, that there was nobody else who
could possibly have benefited by it.

"Since then also Mr. Stonebridge has made a declaration that nothing
was stolen out of his safe and pocketbook except the papers and
letters belonging to Felix Shap.  So what would you?  Although Allan
Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, really because there was
no tangible evidence against him, he did not leave the court without
a stain on his character.  The stain was there, and there it is to
this day.  It will take the Carysforts years to live the scandal
down; though some friends have remained loyal, there are always the
enemies, the envious, the uncharitable, and they insist that the two
witnesses--the only two, mind you, whose evidence did clear Allan
Carysfort of suspicion--had been bought and should not be believed,
while others simply declare that Sir David and his son employed some
ruffian to do the dirty work for them."

He gave a dry cackle, and contemplated me through his huge
horn-rimmed spectacles.

"And you are of that opinion, too, I imagine," he said.

"Well, it seems the only likely explanation," I replied guardedly.

"Surely you don't suppose," he retorted, "that a business man like
David Carysfort would place himself so entirely in the hands of a
ruffian that he would for ever after be the victim of blackmail!
Why, it would have been cheaper to buy off Felix Shap!"

"But," I rejoined, "I don't see who else had any interest in doing
away with those documents."

"I'll tell you," he rejoined dryly.  "Felix Shap himself."

"What _do_ you mean?" I queried, with as much lofty scorn as I could
command.

"I mean," he replied, "that all Felix Shap's documents were
forgeries."

"Forgeries?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, spurious!  False affidavits!  Forgeries, the lot of 'em.  My
belief is that Stonebridge began to suspect this himself, and I think
he has had a narrow escape of being murdered outright by those two
rascals.  As it is, they have destroyed every proof of their
villainy, and old Stonebridge, I imagine, is content to let things
remain as they are rather than admit publicly that he was completely
taken in by two very plausible rogues."

"But," I urged, "what about the handwriting expert?"

The funny creature laughed aloud.

"Yes!" he said, "what about the expert?  If there had been two they
would have disagreed.  And mind you at a distance of twelve years a
signature would be difficult of absolute identification.  Every one's
handwriting undergoes certain modifications in the course of years.
Experts," he reiterated.  "Bah!"

"But," I went on, impatiently, "I don't see the object of the whole
scheme."

"The object was blackmail," the whimsical creature retorted, "and it
has succeeded admirably.  Already we read that Messrs. Shap and Lloyd
are staying at expensive hotels in London, that they have granted
interviews to pressmen and written articles for half-penny
newspapers.  We shall hear of them as cinema stars presently.  They
have had the most gorgeous, the most paying publicity, and presently
Sir David Carysfort will have had enough of them and will put a few
more hundreds in their pockets just to be rid of them.  That was the
object of the whole scheme, my dear young lady!  And see how well it
was carried out.

"Of course the fuddle-headed Dutchman never thought of it.  I imagine
that the whole scheme originated in the fertile brain of Mr. Julian
Lloyd.  And it was thoroughly well thought out from the manufacture
of the documents and letters down to the assault on the silly old
country attorney.  And, mind you, the rascals originally went to a
silly country attorney; they would have been afraid to go to a London
lawyer, lest he be too sharp for them.

"The only mistake they made were the letters purported to be written
to Berta Shap by the husband who is supposed to have disappeared, and
the copy of Berta's marriage certificate.  It is those letters that
gave me the clue to the whole thing; old Stonebridge was too dull to
have seen through those letters.  If they were genuine why should
Felix Shap have brought them over to England?  They had nothing
whatever to do with any contract about the Shap Fuelettes.  If they
were genuine, how could he guess that he would have to disprove a
story of a secret marriage and of young Alfred being the son of Sir
Alfred Carysfort?  By wanting to prove too much, he, to my mind, gave
himself away, and one can but marvel that neither lawyers nor police
saw through the roguery.

"Of course the moment one understands that one set of papers was
spurious, it is easily concluded that all the others were forgeries.
And the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, anxious only to obliterate every
vestige of that early marriage of his, unwittingly played into the
hands of those two scoundrels by destroying all the correspondence
that he had ever had with Shap.

"Think it all over, you will see that I am right.  Look at this
paragraph again in the _Evening Post_, does it not bear out what I
say?"

The paragraph in the evening paper to which the Old Man in the Corner
was pointing read as follows:

"Among the passengers on the Dutch liner _Stadt Rotterdam_ is Mr.
Felix Shap, the hero of a recent celebrated case.  He is returning to
Batavia, having, through a misadventure which has remained an
impenetrable mystery to this day, been deprived of all the proofs
that would have established his claim to a substantial share of the
profits in the Shap Fuelettes Company.  Fortunately Mr. Shap had
enlisted so many sympathies in England that his friends had no
difficulty in collecting a considerable sum of money which was
presented to him on his departure in the form of a purse and as a
compensation for the ill-luck which has attended him since he set
foot in this country.  Mr. Shap will now be able to take abroad with
him the assurance that British public opinion is always on the side
of the victims of an adverse and unmerited fate."

"Yes!" the funny creature concluded with a cackle, "until the victims
are found out to be rogues.  Mr. Felix Shap and his friend, Mr.
Julian Lloyd, will be found out some day."

The next moment he had gone with that rapidity which was so
characteristic of him, and I might have thought that he was just a
spook who had come to visit me whilst I dozed over my cup of tea,
only that on the table by the side of an empty glass was a piece of
string adorned with a series of complicated knots.

VIII

THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT

§1

"Did you ever make up your mind about that Brudenell Court affair?"
the Old Man in the Corner said to me that day.

"No," I replied.  "As far as I am concerned the death of Colonel
Forburg has remained a complete mystery."

"You don't think," he insisted, "that Morley Thrall was guilty?"

"Well," I said, "I don't know what to think."

"Then don't do it," he rejoined, with a chuckle, "if you don't know
what to think, then it's best not to think at all.  At any rate wait
until I have told you exactly what did happen--not as it was reported
in the newspapers, but in the sequence in which the various incidents
occurred.

"On Christmas Eve, last year, while the family were at dinner, there
was a sudden commotion and cries of 'Stop, thief!' issuing from the
back premises of Brudenell Court, the country seat of a certain
Colonel Forburg.  The butler ran in excitedly to say that Julia
Mason, one of the maids, was drawing down the blinds in one of the
first-floor rooms, when she saw a man fiddling with the shutters of
the French window in the smoking-room downstairs.  She at once gave
the alarm, whereupon the man bolted across the garden in the
direction of the five-acre field.  The Colonel and his stepson, as
well as two male guests who were dining with them, immediately jumped
up and hurried out to help in the chase.  It was a very dark night,
people were running to and fro, and for a few moments there was a
great deal of noise and confusion, through which two pistol-shots in
close succession were distinctly heard.

"The ladies--amongst whom was Miss Monica Glenluce, the Colonel's
stepdaughter--had remained in the dining-room, and the dinner was
kept waiting, pending the return of the gentlemen.  They straggled in
one by one, all except the Colonel.  The ladies eagerly asked for
news; the gentlemen could not say much--the night was very dark and
they had just waited about outside until some of the indoor men who
had given chase came back with the news that the thief had been
caught.

"This news was confirmed by young Glenluce, Miss Monica's brother,
who was the last to return.  He had actually witnessed the capture.
The thief had bolted straight across the five-acre meadow, but
doubled back before he reached the stables, turned sharply to the
right through the kitchen garden, and then jumped over the boundary
wall of the grounds into the lane beyond, where he fell straight into
the arms of the local constable who happened to be passing by.

"Young Glenluce had great fun out of the chase; he had guessed the
man's purpose, and instead of running after him across the meadow, he
had gone round it, and had reached the boundary wall only a few
seconds after the thief had scaled it.  There was some talk about the
gunshots that had been heard, and every one supposed that Colonel
Forburg, who was a violent-tempered man, had snatched up a revolver
before giving chase to the burglar, and had taken a potshot at him;
it was fortunate that he had missed him.

"The incident would then have been closed and the interrupted dinner
proceeded with, but for the fact that the host had not yet returned.
Nothing was thought of this at first, for it was generally supposed
that the Colonel had been kept talking by one of his men, or perhaps
by the constable who had effected the capture; it was only when close
on half an hour had gone by that Miss Monica became impatient.  She
got the butler to telephone both to the stables and the lodge, but
the Colonel had not been seen at either place, either during or after
the incident with the burglar; communication with the police station
brought the same result; nothing had been seen or heard of the
Colonel.

"Genuinely alarmed now, Miss Monica gave orders for the grounds to be
searched; it was just possible that the Colonel had fallen whilst
running, and was lying somewhere, helpless in the dark, perhaps
unconscious....  Every one began recalling those pistol-shots and a
vague sense of tragedy spread over the entire house.  Monica blamed
herself for not having thought of all this before.

"A search party went out at once; for a while stable-lanterns and
electric-torches gleamed through the darkness and past the
shrubberies.  Then suddenly there were calls for help, the wandering
lights centred in one spot, somewhere in the middle of the five-acre
meadow near the big elm tree.  Obviously there had been an accident.
Monica ran to the front door, followed by all the guests.  Through
the darkness a group of men were seen slowly wending their way
towards the house; one man was running ahead, it was the chauffeur.
Young Glenluce, half guessing that something sinister had occurred,
went forward to meet him.

"What had happened was indeed as tragic as it was mysterious; the
search party had found the Colonel lying full-length in the meadow.
His clothes were saturated with blood; he had been shot in the breast
and was apparently dead.  Close by a revolver had been picked up.  It
was impossible to keep the terrible news from Miss Monica.  Her
brother broke the news to her.  She bore up with marvellous calm, and
it was she who at once gave the necessary orders to have her
stepfather's body taken upstairs and to fetch both the doctor and the
police.

"In the meanwhile the guests had gone back into the house.  They
stood about in groups, awestruck and whispering.  They did not care
to finish their dinner, or to go up to their rooms, as in all
probability they would be required when the police came to make
enquiries.  Monica and Gerald Glenluce had gone to sit in the
smoking-room.

"It was the most horrible Christmas Eve any one in that house had
ever experienced."

§2

"Murder committed from any other motive than that of robbery," the
Old Man in the Corner went on after a moment's pause, "always excites
the interest of the public.  There is nearly always an element of
mystery about it, and it invariably suggests possibilities of
romance.  In this case, of course, there was no question of robbery.
After Colonel Forburg fell, shot, as it transpired, at close range
and full in the breast, his clothes were left untouched; there was
loose silver in his trousers pocket, a few treasury notes in his
letter-case, and he was wearing a gold watch and chain and a fine
pearl stud.

"The motive of the crime was therefore enmity or revenge, and here
the police were at once confronted with a great difficulty.  Not,
mind you, the difficulty of finding a man who hated the Colonel
sufficiently to kill him, but that of choosing among his many enemies
one who was most likely to have committed such a terrible crime.  He
was the best-hated man in the county.  Known as 'Remount Forburg,' he
was generally supposed to have made his fortune in some shady
transactions connected with the Remount Department of the War Office
during the Boer War, more than twenty years ago.

"His first wife was said to have died of a broken heart, and he had
no children of his own; some ten years ago he had married a widow
with two young children.  She had a considerable fortune of her own,
and when she died she left it in trust for her children, but she
directed that her husband should be the sole guardian of Monica and
Gerald until they came of age; moreover, she left him the interest of
the whole of the capital amount for so long as they were in his house
and unmarried.  After his death the money would revert
unconditionally to them.

"Of course it was a foolish, one might say a criminal will, and one
obviously made under the influence of her husband.  One can only
suppose that the poor woman had died without knowing anything of
'Remount Forburg's' character.  Since her death his violent temper
and insufferable arrogance had alienated from the children every
friend they ever had.  Only some chance acquaintances ever came
anywhere near Brudenell Court now.  Naturally every one said that the
Colonel's behaviour was part of a scheme for keeping suitors away
from his stepdaughter Monica, who was a very beautiful girl; as for
Gerald Glenluce, Monica's younger brother, he had been sadly
disfigured when he was a schoolboy through a fall against a sharp
object that had broken his nose and somewhat mysteriously deprived
him of the sight of one eye.

"Those who had suffered most from Colonel Forburg's violent tempers
declared that the boy's face had been smashed in by a blow from a
stick, and that the stick had been wielded by his stepfather.  Be
that as it may, Gerald Glenluce had remained, in consequence of this
disfigurement, a shy, retiring, silent boy, who neither played games
nor rode to hounds and had no idea how to handle a gun; but he was
essentially the Colonel's favourite.  Where Forburg was harsh and
dictatorial with every one else, he would always unbend to Gerald,
and was almost gentle and affectionate toward him.  Perhaps an
occasional twinge of remorse had something to do with this soft side
of his disagreeable character.

"Certainly that softness did not extend to Monica.  He made the
girl's life almost unbearable with his violence which amounted almost
to brutality.  The girl hated him and openly said so.  Her one desire
was to get away from Brudenell Court by any possible means.  But
owing to her mother's foolish will she had no money of her own, and
the few friends she had were not sufficiently rich, or sufficiently
disinterested, to give her a home away from her stepfather, nor would
the Colonel, for a matter of that, have given his consent to her
living away from him.

"As for marriage, it was a difficult question.  Young men fought shy
of any family connection with 'Remount Forburg.'  The latter's
nickname was bad enough, but there were rumours of secrets more
unavowable still in the past history of the Colonel.  Certain it is
that though Monica excited admiration wherever she went, and though
one or two of her admirers did go to the length of openly courting
her, the courtship never matured into an actual engagement.
Something or other always occurred to cool off the ardour of the
wooers.  Suddenly they would either go on a big-game shooting
expedition, or on a tour round the world, or merely find that country
air did not suit them.  There would perhaps be a scene of fond
farewell, but Monica would always understand that the farewell was a
definite one, and, as she was an intelligent as well as a fascinating
girl, she put two and two together, and observed that these farewell
scenes were invariably preceded by a long interview behind closed
doors between her stepfather and her admirer of the moment.

"Small wonder then that she hated the Colonel.  She hated him as much
as she loved her brother.  A great affection had, especially of late,
developed between these two; it was a love born of an affinity of
trouble and sense of injustice.  On Gerald's part there was also an
element of protection towards his beautiful sister; the fact that he
was so avowedly the spoilt son of his irascible stepfather enabled
him many a time to stand between Monica and the Colonel's unbridled
temper.

"Latterly, however, some brightness and romance had been introduced
into the drab existence of Monica Glenluce by the discreet courtship
of her latest admirer, Mr. Morley Thrall.  Mr. Thrall was a wealthy
man, not too young and of independent position, who presumably did
not care whether county society would cut him or no in consequence of
his marriage with the stepdaughter of 'Remount Forburg.'

"Subsequent events showed that he had observed the greatest
discretion while he was courting Monica.  No one knew that there was
an understanding between him and the girl, least of all the Colonel.
Mr. Morley Thrall came, not too frequently, to Brudenell Court; while
there he appeared to devote most of his attention to his host and to
Gerald, and to take little if any notice of Monica.  She had probably
given him a hint of rocks ahead, and he had succeeded in avoiding the
momentous interview with the Colonel which Monica had learned to look
on with dread.

"Mr. Morley Thrall had been asked to stay at Brudenell Court for
Christmas, the other guests being a Major Rawstone, with his wife and
daughter, Rachel.  They were all at dinner on that memorable
Christmas Eve when the tragedy occurred, and all the men hurried out
of the dining-room in the wake of their host when first the burglary
alarm was given.

§3

"Thus did matters stand at Brudenell Court when, directly after the
holidays, Jim Peyton, a groom recently in the employ of Colonel
Forburg, was brought before the magistrates charged with the murder
of his former master.  There was a pretty stiff case against him too.
It seems that he had lately been dismissed by Colonel Forburg for
drunkenness, and that before dismissing him the Colonel had given him
a thrashing which apparently was well deserved, because while he was
drunk he very nearly set fire to the stables, and an awful disaster
was only averted by the timely arrival of the Colonel himself upon
the scene.

"Be that as it may, the man went away swearing vengeance.
Subsequently he took out a summons for assault against Colonel
Forburg and only got one shilling damages.  This had occurred a week
before Christmas.  There were several witnesses there who could swear
to the threatening language used by Peyton on more than one occasion
since then, and of course he had been caught in the very act of
trying to break into the house through the French window of the
smoking-room.

"On the other hand, the revolver with which 'Remount Forburg' had
been shot, and which was found close to the body with two empty
chambers, was identified as the Colonel's own property, one which he
always kept, loaded, in a drawer of his desk in the smoking-room.
And--this is the interesting point--the shutters of the smoking-room
were found by the police inspector, who examined them subsequently,
to be bolted on the inside, just as they had been left earlier in the
evening by the footman whose business it was to see to the fastening
of windows and shutters on the ground floor.

"This fact--the shutters being bolted on the inside--was confirmed by
Miss Monica Glenluce, who had been the first to go into the
smoking-room after the tragic event.  Her brother joined her
subsequently.  Both of these witnesses said that the room looked
absolutely undisturbed, the shutters were bolted, the drawer of the
desk was closed: they had remained in the room until after the visit
of the police inspector.

"After the positive evidence of these two witnesses, the police
prosecution had of necessity to fall back on the far-fetched theory
that Colonel Forburg himself, before he hurried out in order to join
in the chase against the burglar, had run into the smoking-room and
picked up his revolver, and that, having overtaken Peyton, he had
threatened him; that Peyton had then jumped on him, wrenched the
weapon out of his hand and shot him.  It was a far-fetched theory
certainly, and one which the defence quickly upset.  Gerald Glenluce
for one was distinctly under the impression that the Colonel ran from
the dining-room straight out into the garden, and the young footman
who was watching the fun from the front door, and saw the Colonel run
out, was equally sure that he had not a revolver in his hand.

"Peyton got six months hard for attempted house-breaking, there
really was no evidence against him to justify the more serious
charge; but when the charge of murder was withdrawn, it left the
mystery of 'Remount Forburg's' tragic end seemingly more impenetrable
than before.  Nevertheless the coroner and jury laboured
conscientiously at the inquest.  No stone was to be left unturned to
bring the murder of 'Remount Forburg' to justice, and in this
laudable effort the coroner had the able and unqualified assistance
of Miss Glenluce.  However bitter her feelings may have been in the
past towards her stepfather while he lived, she seemed determined
that his murderer should not go unpunished.  Nay more, there appeared
to be in all her actions during this terrible time a strange note of
vindictiveness and animosity, as if the unknown man who had rid her
of an arrogant and brutal tyrant had really done her a lasting injury.

"It was entirely through her energy and exertions that certain
witnesses were induced to come forward and give what turned out to be
highly sensational evidence.  The police who were convinced that
James Peyton was guilty had turned all their investigations in the
direction of proving their theories; Miss Monica, on the other hand,
had seemingly made up her mind that the murderer was to be sought for
inside the house; it even appeared as if she had certain suspicions
which she only desired to confirm.  To this end she had questioned
and cross-questioned every one who was in the house on that fatal
night, well knowing how reluctant some people are to be mixed up in
any way with police proceedings.  But at last she had forced two
persons to speak, and it was on the first day of the inquest that at
last a glimmer of light was thrown upon the mysterious tragedy.

"After the medical evidence which went to establish beyond a doubt
that Colonel Forburg died from a gunshot wound inflicted at close
range, both balls having penetrated the heart, Miss Glenluce was
called.  Replying to the coroner, who had put certain questions to
her with regard to the Colonel's state of mind just before the
tragedy, she said that he appeared to have a premonition that
something untoward was about to happen.  When the butler ran into the
dining-room saying that a burglar had been seen trying to break into
the house, the Colonel had jumped up from the table at once.

"'I did the same,' Miss Monica went on, 'as I was genuinely alarmed;
but my stepfather, in his peremptory way, ordered me to sit still.
"I believe," he said to me, with a funny laugh, "that it's a put-up
job.  It's some friend of Thrall's giving him a hand."  I could not,
of course, understand what he meant by that, and I looked at Mr.
Thrall for an explanation.  I must add that Mr. Thrall had been
extraordinarily moody all through dinner; he appeared flushed, and I
noticed particularly that he never spoke either to my step-father, to
my brother, or to me.  However at the moment I failed to catch his
eye, and the very next second he was out of the room, on the heels of
Colonel Forburg.'

"This was remarkable evidence to say the least of it, but
nevertheless it was confirmed by two witnesses who heard the Colonel
make that strange remark: one was Rachel Rawstone, the young friend
who was dining at Brudenell Court that Christmas Eve, and the other
was Gerald Glenluce.  Of course, by this time the public was getting
very excited: they were like so many hounds heading for a scent, and
the jury was beginning to show signs of that obstinate prejudice
which culminated in a ridiculous verdict.  But there was more to
come.  Thanks again to Miss Monica's insistence, the footman at
Brudenell Court, a lad named Cambalt, had been induced to come
forward with a story which he had evidently intended to keep hidden
within his bosom, if possible.  He gave his evidence with obvious
reluctance and in a scarcely audible voice.  It was generally
noticed, however, that Miss Monica urged him frequently to speak up.

"Cambalt deposed that just before dinner on Christmas Eve, he had
gone in to tidy the smoking-room before the gentlemen came down from
dressing.  As he opened the door he saw Mr. Morley Thrall standing in
the middle of the room facing Colonel Forburg who was seated at his
desk.  Young Mr. Glenluce was standing near the mantelpiece with one
foot on the fender, staring into the fire.  Mr. Thrall, according to
witness, was livid with rage.

"''E took a step forward like,' Cambalt went on, amidst breathless
silence on the part of the public and jury alike, 'and 'e raised 'is
fist.  But the Colonel 'e just laughed, then 'e opened the drawer of
the desk and took out a revolver and showed it to Mr. Thrall and
says: "'Ere y'are, there's a revolver 'andy, any way."  Then Mr.
Thrall 'e swore like anything, and says: "You blackguard!  You d----
scoundrel!  You ought to be shot like the cur you are."  I thought he
would strike the Colonel, but young Mr. Glenluce 'e just stepped
quickly in between the two gentlemen and 'e says: "Look 'ere, Thrall,
I won't put up with this!  You jess get out!"  Then one of the
gentlemen seed me, and Mr. Thrall 'e walked out of the room.'

"'And what happened after he had gone?' the coroner asked.

"'Oh!' the witness replied, 'the Colonel 'e threw the revolver back
into the drawer and laughed sarcastic like.  Then 'e 'eld out 'is
'and to Mr. Gerald, and says: "Thanks, my boy.  You did 'elp me to
get rid of that ruffian."  After that,' Cambalt concluded, 'I got on
with my work, and the gentlemen took no notice of me.'

"This witness was very much pressed with questions as to what
happened later on when the burglary alarm was given and the gentlemen
all hurried out of the house.  Cambalt was in the hall at the time
and he made straight for the front door to see some of the fun.  He
said that the Colonel was out first, and the other three gentlemen,
Mr. Gerald, Mr. Rawstone and Mr. Morley Thrall went out after him;
Mr. Thrall was the last to go outside; he ran across the garden in
the direction of the five-acre field.  Major Rawstone remained
somewhere near the house, but it was a very dark night, and he,
Cambalt, soon lost sight of the gentlemen.  Presently, however, Mr.
Thrall came back toward the house.  It was a few minutes after the
shots had been fired and witness heard Mr. Thrall say to Major
Rawstone: 'I suppose it's that fool Forburg potting away at the
burglar; hell get himself into trouble, if he doesn't look out.'
Soon after that Mr. Gerald came running back with the news that the
burglar had fallen into the arms of a passing constable and Cambalt
then returned to his duties in the dining-room.

"As you see," the Old Man in the Corner went on glibly, "this
witness's evidence was certainly sensational.  The jury, which was
composed of farm labourers, with the local butcher as foreman, had by
now fully made up its silly mind that Mr. Morley Thrall had taken the
opportunity of sneaking into the smoking-room, snatching up the
revolver, and shooting 'Remount Forburg,' whom he hated because the
Colonel was opposing his marriage with Miss Monica.  It was all as
clear as daylight to those dunderheads, and from that moment they
simply would not listen to any more evidence.  They had made up their
minds; they were ready with their verdict and it was: Manslaughter
against Morley Thrall.  Not murder, you see!  The dolts who had all
of them suffered from 'Remount Forburg's' arrogance and violent
temper would not admit that killing such vermin was a capital crime.

"What I am telling you would be unbelievable if it were not a
positive fact.  It is no use quoting British justice and dilating on
the absolute fairness of trial by jury.  A coroner's inquest
fortunately is not a trial.  The verdict of a coroner's jury, such as
the one which sat on the Brudenell Court affair, though it may have
very unpleasant consequences for an innocent person, cannot have
fatal results.  In this case it cast a stigma on a gentleman of high
position and repute, and the following day Mr. Morley Thrall, himself
J.P., was brought up before his brother magistrates on an ignominious
charge.

§4

"It is not often," the Old Man in the Corner resumed after a while,
"that so serious a charge is preferred against a gentleman of Mr.
Morley Thrall's social position, and I am afraid that the best of us
are snobbish enough to be more interested in a gentleman criminal
than in an ordinary Bill Sykes.

"I happened to be present at that magisterial enquiry when Mr. Morley
Thrall, J.P., was brought in between two warders, looking quite calm
and self-possessed.  Every one of us there noticed that when he first
came in, and in fact throughout that trying enquiry, his eyes sought
to meet those of Miss Glenluce who sat at the solicitor's table; but
whenever she chanced to look his way, she quickly averted her gaze
again, and turned her head away with a contemptuous shrug.  Gerald
Glenluce, on the other hand, made pathetic efforts at showing
sympathy with the accused, but he was of such unprepossessing
appearance and was so shy and awkward that it was small wonder Morley
Thrall took little if any notice of him.

"Very soon we got going.  I must tell you, first of all, that the
whole point of the evidence rested upon a question of time.  If the
accused took the revolver out of the desk in the smoking-room, when
did he do it?  The footman, Cambalt, reiterated the statement which
he had made at the inquest.  He was, of course, pressed to say
definitely whether after the quarrel between Mr. Morley Thrall and
the Colonel which he had witnessed, and before every one went in to
dinner, Mr. Thrall might have gone back to the smoking-room and
extracted the revolver from the drawer of the desk; but Cambalt said
positively that he did not think this was possible.  He himself,
after he had tidied the smoking-room, had been in and out of the hall
preparing to serve dinner.  The door of the smoking-room gave on the
hall, between the dining-room and the passage leading to the
kitchens.  If any one had gone in or out of the smoking-room at that
time, Cambalt must have seen them.

"At this point Miss Glenluce was seen to lean forward and to say
something in a whisper to the Clerk of the Justices, who in his turn
whispered to the chairman on the Bench, and a moment or two later
that gentleman asked the witness:

"'Are you absolutely prepared to swear that no one went in or out of
the smoking-room while you were making ready to serve dinner?7

"Then, as the young man seemed to hesitate, the magistrate added more
emphatically:

"Think now!  You were busy with your usual avocations; there would
have been nothing extraordinary in one of the gentlemen going in or
out of the smoking-room at that hour.  Do you really believe and are
you prepared to swear that such a very ordinary incident would have
impressed itself indelibly upon your mind?'

"Thus pressed and admonished, Cambalt retrenched himself behind a
vague: 'No, sir!  I shouldn't like to swear one way or the other.'

"Whereat Miss Monica threw a defiant look at the accused, who,
however, did not as much as wink an eyelid in response.

"Presently when that lady herself was called, no one could fail to
notice that she, like the coroner's jury the previous day, had
absolutely made up her mind that Morley Thrall was guilty, otherwise
her attitude of open hostility toward him would have been quite
inexplicable.  She dwelt at full length on the fact that Mr. Thrall
had paid her marked attention for months, and that he had asked her
to marry him.  She had given him her consent, and between them they
had decided to keep their engagement a secret until after she,
Monica, had attained her twenty-first birthday, when she would be
free to marry whom she chose.

"'Unfortunately,' the witness went on, suddenly assuming a dry,
pursed-up manner, 'Colonel Forburg got wind of this.  He was always
very much set against my marrying at all, and between tea and dinner
on Christmas Eve he and I had some very sharp words together on the
subject, at the end of which my stepfather said very determinedly:
"Christmas or no Christmas, the fellow shall leave my house by the
first available train to-morrow, and to-night I am going to give him
a piece of my mind."'

"Just for a moment after Miss Glenluce had finished speaking, the
accused seemed to depart from his attitude of dignity and reserve,
and an indignant 'Oh!' quickly repressed, escaped his lips.  The
public by this time was dead against him.  They are just like sheep,
as you know, and the verdict of the coroner's jury had prejudiced
them from the start, and the police, aided by Miss Glenluce, had
certainly built up a formidable case against the unfortunate man.
Every one felt that the motive for the crime was fully established
already.  'Remount Forburg' had had a violent quarrel with Morley
Thrall, then had turned him out of the house, and the latter, furious
at being separated from the girl he loved, had killed the man who
stood in his way.

"I should be talking until to-morrow morning were I to give you in
detail all the evidence that was adduced in support of the
prosecution.  The accused listened to it all with perfect calm.  He
stood with arms folded, his eyes fixed on nothing.  The 'Oh!' of
indignation did not again cross his lips, nor did he look once at
Miss Monica Glenluce.  I can assure you that at one moment that day
things were looking very black against him.

"Fortunately for him, however, he had a very clever lawyer to defend
him in the person of his distinguished cousin, Sir Evelyn Thrall.
The latter, by amazingly clever cross-examination of the servants and
guests at Brudenell Court, had succeeded in establishing the fact
that at no time, from the moment that the burglary alarm was given
until after the two revolver shots had been heard, was the accused
completely out of sight of some one or other of the witnesses.  He
was the last to leave the dining-room.  Mrs. Rawstone and her
daughter testified to that.  He had stayed behind one moment after
the other three gentlemen had gone out in order to say a few words to
Monica Glenluce.  Miss Rawstone was standing inside the dining-room
door and she was quite positive that Mr. Thrall went straight out
into the garden.

"On the other hand Major Rawstone saw him in the forecourt coming
away from the five-acre meadow only a very few moments after the
shots were fired, and gave it absolutely as his opinion that it would
have been impossible for the accused to have fired those shots.  This
is where the question of time came in.

"'When a man who bears a spotless reputation,' Major Rawstone argued,
'finds that he has killed a fellow creature, he would necessarily
pause a moment, horror-struck with what he has done; whether the deed
was premeditated or involuntary he would at least try and ascertain
if life was really extinct.  It is inconceivable that any man save an
habitual and therefore callous criminal, would just throw down his
weapon and with absolute calm, hands in pocket and without a tremor
in his voice, make a casual remark to a friend.  Now I saw Mr. Morley
Thrall perhaps two minutes after the shots were fired; in that time
he could not have walked from the centre of the field to the
forecourt where I was standing; and he had not been running as his
voice was absolutely clear and he came walking towards me with his
hands in his pockets.'

"As was only to be expected, Sir Evelyn Thrall made the most of Major
Rawstone's evidence, and I may say that it was chiefly on the
strength of it that the charge of murder against the accused was
withdrawn, even though the Clerk to the Magistrates, perpetually
egged on by Miss Glenluce, did his best to upset Major Rawstone.
When the lady found that this could not be done, she tried to switch
back to the idea that accused had abstracted the revolver out of the
smoking-room before dinner and immediately after his quarrel with
Colonel Forburg.  The footman Cambalt's evidence on this point had
been somewhat discounted by his refusing to state positively that no
one could have gone into the smoking-room at that time without his
seeing them.  But against this theory there was always the
argument--of which Sir Evelyn Thrall made the most as you know--that
before dinner the accused could not have known that there would be an
alarm of burglary which would give him the opportunity of waylaying
the Colonel in the open field.  With equal skill, too, Sir Evelyn
brought forward evidence to bear out the statement made by the
accused on the matter of his quarrel with Colonel Forburg.

"'Just before dinner,' Mr. Thrall stated, 'Colonel Forburg told me he
had something to say to me in private.  I followed him into the
smoking-room, and there he gave me certain information with regard to
his past life, and also with regard to Miss Glenluce's parentage,
which made it absolutely impossible for me, in spite of the deep
regard which I have for that lady, to offer her marriage.  Miss
Glenluce is the innocent victim of tragic circumstances in the past,
and Forburg was just an unmitigated blackguard, and I told him so,
but I had my family to consider and very reluctantly I came to the
conclusion that I could not introduce any relation of Colonel Forburg
into its circle.  Colonel Forburg did not stand in the way of my
marrying his stepdaughter; it was I who most reluctantly withdrew.'

"Whilst the accused was cross-examined upon this statement, and he
gave his answers in firm, dignified tones, Miss Monica never took her
eyes off him, and surely if looks could kill, Mr. Morley Thrall would
not at that moment have escaped with his life, so full of deadly
hatred and contempt was her gaze.  The accused had signed a much
fuller statement than the one which he made in open court; it
contained a detailed account of his interview with Colonel Forburg,
and of the circumstances which finally induced him to give up all
thoughts of asking Miss Glenluce to be his wife.

"These facts were not made public at the time for the sake of Miss
Monica and of the unfortunate, Gerald, but it seems that the
transactions which had earned for the Colonel the sobriquet of
'Remount Forburg' were so disreputable and so dishonest that not only
was he cashiered from the army, but he served a term of imprisonment
for treason, fraud, and embezzlement.  He had no right to be styled
Colonel any longer, and quite recently had been threatened with
prosecution if he persisted in making further use of his army rank.

"But this was not all the trouble.  It seems that in his career of
improbity he had been associated with a man named Nosdel, a man of
Dutch extraction whom he had known in South Africa.  This man was
subsequently hanged for a particularly brutal murder, and it was his
widow who was 'Remount Forburg's' second wife, and the mother of
Monica and of Gerald, who had been given the fancy name of Glenluce.

"Obviously a man in Mr. Morley Thrall's position could not marry into
such a family, and it appears that whenever there was a question of a
suitor for Monica, 'Remount Forburg' would tell the aspirant the
whole story of his own shady past and, above all, that of Monica's
father.  Sir Evelyn Thrall had been clever enough to discover one or
two gentlemen who had had the same experience as his cousin Morley;
they, too, just before their courtship came to a head had had a
momentous interview with 'Remount Forburg,' who found this means of
choking off any further desire for matrimony on the part of a man who
had family connections to consider.  But it was very obvious that Mr.
Morley Thrall had no motive for killing 'Remount Forburg'; he would
have left Brudenell Court that very evening, he said, only that young
Glenluce had begged him, for Monica's sake, not to make a scene;
anyway, he was leaving the house the next day and had no intention of
ever darkening its doors again.

"Poor Monica Glenluce or Nosdel, ignorant of the hideous cloud that
hung over her entire life, ignorant, too, of what had passed between
her stepfather and Mr. Morley Thrall, felt nothing but hatred and
contempt for the man whose love, she believed, had proved as unstable
as that of any of her other admirers.  For charity's sake one must
suppose that she really thought him guilty at first, and hoped that
when the clouds had rolled by he would return to her more ardent than
before.  Presumably he found means to make her understand that all
was irrevocably at an end between them as far as he was concerned,
whereupon her regard for him turned to bitterness and desire for
revenge.

"And, indeed, but for the cleverness of a distinguished lawyer, poor
Morley Thrall might have found himself the victim of a judicial error
brought about by the deliberate enmity of a woman.  Had he been
committed for trial, she would have had more time at her disposal to
manufacture evidence against him, which I am convinced she had a mind
to do."

"As it is," I now put in tentatively, for the Old Man in the Corner
had been silent for some little while, "the withdrawal of the charge
of murder against Morley Thrall did not help to clear up the mystery
of 'Remount Forburg's' tragic death."

"Not so far as the public is concerned," he retorted dryly.

"You have a theory?" I asked.

"Not a theory," he replied.  "I know who killed 'Remount Forburg.'"

"How do you know?" I riposted.

"By logic and inference," he said.  "As it was proved that Morley
Thrall did not kill him, and that Miss Monica could not have done it,
as the ladies did not join in the chase after the burglar, I looked
about me for the only other person in whose interest it was to put
that blackguard out of the way."

"You mean----?"

"I mean the boy Gerald, of course.  Openly and before the other
witness, Cambalt, he stood up for his stepfather against Thrall who
was not measuring his words, but just think how the knowledge which
he had gained about his own parentage and that of his sister must
have rankled in his mind.  He must have come to the conclusion that
while this man--his stepfather--lived, there would be no chance for
him to make friends, no chance for the sister whom he loved ever to
have a home, a life of her own.  Whether that interview on Christmas
Eve was the first inkling which he had of the real past history of
his own and Forburg's family, it is impossible to say.  Probably he
had suspicions of it before, when, one by one, Monica's suitors fell
away after certain private interviews with the Colonel.  Morley
Thrall must have been a last hope, and that, too, was dashed to the
ground by the same infamous means.

"I am not prepared to say that the boy got hold of the revolver that
night with the deliberate intention of killing his stepfather at the
earliest opportunity; he may have run into the smoking-room to snatch
up the weapon, only with a view to using it against the burglar;
certain it is that he overtook 'Remount Forburg' in the five-acre
field and that he shot him then and there.  Remember that the night
was very dark, and that there was a great deal of running about and
of confusion.  The boy was young enough and nimble enough after he
had thrown down the revolver to run across the field and then to go
back to the house by a roundabout way.  It is easy enough in a case
like that to cover one's tracks, and, of course, no one suspected
anything at the time.  Even the sound of firing created but little
astonishment; it was so very much on the cards that the Colonel would
use a revolver without the slightest hesitation against a man who had
been trying to break into his house.  It was just the sort of revenge
that a man of Gerald's temperament--disfigured, shy, silent and
self-absorbed--would seek against one whom he considered the fount of
all his wrongs."

"But," I objected, "how could young Glenluce run into the
smoking-room, pick up the revolver out of a drawer, and run back
through the hall with servants and guests standing about?  Some one
would be sure to see him."

"No one saw him," the funny creature retorted, "for he did it at the
moment of the greatest confusion.  The butler had run in with the
news of the burglary, the Colonel jumped up and ran out through the
hall, the guests had not yet made up their minds what to do.  In
moments like this there are always just a few seconds of pandemonium,
quite sufficient for a boy like Gerald to make a dash for the
smoking-room."

"But after that----"

"He took the revolver out of the drawer and ran out through the
French window."

"But the shutters were found to be bolted on the inside," I argued,
"when they were examined by the police inspector."

"So they were," he admitted.  "Miss Monica had already been in there
with young Gerald.  They had seen to the shutters."

"Then you think that Monica knew?"

"Of course she did."

"Then her desire to prove Morley Thrall guilty----"

"Was partly hatred of him, and partly the desire to shield her
brother," the funny creature concluded as he collected traps, his bit
of string and his huge umbrella.  "Think it over; you will see that I
am right.  I am sorry for those two, aren't you?  But they are
selling Brudenell Court, I understand, and their mother's fortune has
become theirs absolutely.  They will go abroad together, make a home
for themselves, and one day, perhaps, everything will be forgotten,
and a new era of happiness will arise for the innocent, now that the
guilty has been so signally punished.  But it was an interesting
case.  Don't you agree with me?"

IX

THE MYSTERY OF THE WHITE CARNATION

§1

"I suppose that is a form of snobbishness," the Old Man in the Corner
began abruptly.

I gave such a jump that I nearly upset the contents of a cup of
boiling tea which I was conveying to my mouth.  As it was, I scalded
my tongue and nearly choked.

"What is?" I queried with a frown, for I was really vexed with the
creature.  I had no idea he was there at all.  But he only smiled and
concluded his speech, quite unperturbed.

"... that creates additional interest in a crime when it concerns
people of wealth or rank."

"Snobbishness," I rejoined, "of course it's snobbishness!  And when
the little suburban madam has finished reading about Lady
Stickinthemud's reception at Claridge's she likes to turn to Lord
Tomnoodle's prospective sojourn in gaol."

"You were thinking of the disappearance of the Australian
millionaire?" he asked blandly.

"I don't know that I was," I retorted.

"But of course you were.  How could any journalist worthy of the name
fail to be interested in that intricate case?"

"I suppose you have your theory--as usual?"

"It is not a theory," the creature replied, with that fatuous smile
of his which always irritated me; "it is a certainty."

Then, as he became silent, absorbed in the contemplation of a
wonderfully complicated knot in his beloved bit of string, I said
with gracious condescension:

"You may talk about it, if you like."

He did like, fortunately for me, because, frankly, I could not see
daylight in that maze of intrigue, adventure and possibly crime,
which was described by the Press as "The Mystery of the White
Carnation."

"The events were interesting from the outset," he began after a
while, whilst I settled down to listen, "and so were various actors
in the society drama.  Chief amongst these was, of course, Captain
Shillington, an Australian ex-officer, commonly reputed to be a
millionaire, who, with his mother and sister, rented Mexfield House
in Somerset Street, Mayfair, the summer before last.  It appears that
Lord Mexfield's younger son, the Honorable Henry Buckley, who was an
incorrigible rake and whom his father had sent on a tour round the
world in order to keep him temporarily out of mischief, not to say
out of gaol, had met a married brother of Captain Shillington's out
in the Antipodes, they had been very kind to him, and so on, with the
result that when came the following London season the family turned
up in England, and, after spending a couple of days at the Savoy,
they moved into the Mexfields' house in Somerset Street.

"Lord and Lady Mexfield were abroad that year, and Henry Buckley and
his sister Angela were living with an aunt who had a small house
somewhere in Mayfair.

"Although the Shillingtons were reputed to be very wealthy, they
appeared to be very quiet, simple folk, and it certainly seemed
rather strange that they should have gone to the expense of a house
in town, when obviously they had no social ambitions and did not mean
to entertain.  As a matter of fact, as far as Mrs. Shillington and
her daughter were concerned, nobody could have lived a quieter, more
retiring life than they did.  Mrs. Shillington was an invalid and
hardly ever went outside her front door, and the girl Marion seemed
to be suffering from a perpetual cold in the head.  They seemed to be
in a chronic state of servant trouble.  Mrs. Shillington was
dreadfully irritable, and one set of servants after another were
engaged only to leave without notice after a few days.  The one
faithful servant who remained was a snuffy old man who came to them
about a month after they moved into Mexfield House.  He and a
charwoman did all the work of cooking and valeting and so on.
Presumably the old man could not have got a situation elsewhere as
his appearance was very unprepossessing, and therefore he was willing
to put up with what the servants' registry offices would term 'a very
uncomfortable situation.'

"Captain Shillington, the hero of the tragic adventure, on the other
hand, went about quite a good deal.  He was certainly voted to be
rather strait-laced, not to say priggish, but he was very
good-looking and a fine dancer.  Henry Buckley introduced him to some
of his smart friends and Lady Angela constituted him her dancing
partner.  The partnership soon developed into warmer friendship and
presently it was given out that Lady Angela Buckley, only daughter of
the Earl and Countess of Mexfield, was engaged to Captain Denver
Shillington, the Australian millionaire.  Lady Angela confided to her
friends that her fiancé was the owner of immense estates in Western
Australia, on a portion of which rich deposits of gold had lately
been discovered.  He certainly had plenty of money to spend, and on
one occasion he actually paid Henry Buckley's gambling debts to the
tune of two or three hundred pounds.

"On the whole, society pronounced the match a suitable one.  Lady
Angela Buckley was no longer in her first youth, whilst her brother,
to whom she was really devoted, would be all the better for a
somewhat puritanical, strait-laced and, above all, wealthy
brother-in-law."

§2

"That, then, was the position," the Old Man in the Corner continued
after a while, "and the date of Lady Angela Buckley's marriage to
Captain Denver Shillington had been actually fixed when the public
was startled one afternoon towards the end of the summer by the
sensational news in all the evening papers: 'Mysterious disappearance
of a millionaire.'  This highly coloured description applied, as it
turned out, to Captain Shillington, the fiancé of Lady Angela
Buckley.  It seems that during the course of that same morning a
young lady, apparently in deep distress and suffering from a
streaming cold in the head, had called at Scotland Yard.  She gave
her name and address as Marion Shillington, of Mexfield House,
Somerset Street, Mayfair, and stated that she and her mother were in
the greatest possible anxiety owing to the disappearance of her
brother, Captain Denver Shillington.  They had last seen him on the
previous Friday evening at about nine o'clock when he left home in
order to pick up his fiancée, Lady Angela Buckley, whom he was
escorting that night to a reception in Grosvenor Square.  He was
wearing full evening dress and a soft hat.  Miss Shillington couldn't
say whether he had any money in his pockets.  She thought that
probably he was carrying a gold cigarette case, which Lady Angela had
given him, but, as a matter of fact, he never wore any jewellery.

"No one in the house had heard him come in again that night, and his
bed had not been slept in.  Questioned by the police, Miss
Shillington explained that neither she nor her mother felt any alarm
at first because there had been some talk of Captain Shillington
going away with his fiancée to stay with friends over the week-end,
somewhere near Newmarket.  It was only this morning, Wednesday, that
Mrs. Shillington first began to worry when there was still no sign or
letter from him.  'My brother is a very good son,' Miss Shillington
continued, explaining to the police, 'and always very considerate to
mother.  It was so unlike him to leave us without news all this while
and not let us know when to expect him home.  So I rang up Lady
Angela Buckley, who is his fiancée, to see if I could get news
through her, as I could see mother was beginning to get anxious.  Mr.
Henry Buckley, Lady Angela's brother, answered the 'phone.  I asked
after his sister and he told me that she was staying on in the
country a day or two longer.  He himself had come back to town the
previous night.  I then asked him, quite casually, if he knew whether
Denver--that's my brother--would be returning with Angela.  And his
answer to me was, "Denver?  Why, I haven't seen him since Friday.
And I can tell you that he is in for a row with Angela.  She was
furious with him that he never wrote once to her while she was away."
I was so upset that I hung up the receiver and just sat there
wondering what to do next.  But Mr. Buckley rang up a moment or two
later and asked quite cheerily if there was anything wrong.  "Good
old Square-toes!" he said, meaning my brother, whom he always used to
chaff by calling him "Square-toes," "don't tell me he has gone off on
the spree without letting you know.  I say, that's too bad of him,
though.  But I shouldn't be anxious if I were you.  Boys, you know,
Miss Shillington, will be boys, and I like old Square-toes all the
better for it."'

"Miss Shillington," the Old Man in the Corner went on, "was as usual
suffering from a streaming cold, and between spluttering and crying,
she had reduced two or three handkerchiefs to wet balls.  At best she
was no beauty, and with a red nose and streaming eyes she presented a
most pitiable spectacle.  'I made Mr. Buckley assure me once more,'
she said, 'that he had seen nothing of Denver since Friday.  That
night he and Lady Angela and Denver were at a reception in Grosvenor
Square.  They all left about the same time.  Angela and Denver went,
presumably, straight home; at any rate, he, Mr. Buckley, saw nothing
more of them after they got into their car.  He himself went to spend
an hour or two at his club and came home about two a.m.  The next
morning, after breakfast, he drove his sister out to Tatchford, near
Newmarket, where they spent the week-end with some friends.  And that
was all Mr. Buckley could say to me,' Miss Shillington concluded,
vigorously blowing her nose: 'He came home last night from Tatchford,
and was expecting Lady Angela in a couple of days.  Denver had not
been at Tatchford at all, and he had not once written to Angela all
the while she was away.'

"Of course the police inspector to whom Miss Shillington related all
these facts had a great many questions to put to her.  For one thing
he wanted to know whether she had been in communication with Lady
Angela Buckley since this morning.

"'No,' the girl replied, 'I have not, and so far, I haven't said
anything to mother.  As soon as I felt strong enough I put on my
things and came along here.'

"Then the inspector wanted to know if she knew of any friends or
acquaintances of her brother's with whom he might have gone off for a
week-end jaunt without saying anything about it, either at home or to
his fiancée.  He put the questions as delicately as he could, but the
sister flared up with indignation.  It seems that the Captain's
conduct had always been irreproachable.  He was a model son, a model
brother, and deeply in love with Lady Angela.  Miss Shillington also
refused to believe that he could have been enticed to a place of
ill-fame and robbed by one of the usual confidence tricksters.

"'My brother is exceptionally shrewd,' she declared, 'and a splendid
business man.  Though he is not yet thirty, he has built up an
enormous fortune out in Australia, and administers his estates
himself to the admiration of every one who knows him.  He is not the
sort of man who could be fooled in that way.'

"But beyond all this, and beyond giving a detailed description of her
brother's appearance, the poor girl had very little to say, and the
detective who was put in charge of the case could only assure her
that enquiries would at once be instituted in every possible
direction, and that the police would keep her informed of everything
that was being done.  Obviously, the person most likely to be able to
throw some light upon the mystery was Lady Angela Buckley, but as you
know, the advent of this charming lady upon the scene only helped to
complicate matters.  It appears that Henry Buckley, delighted at what
he jocosely called, 'Old "Square-toes" falling from grace,' had rung
up his sister in order to tell her the startling news over the
telephone.  Lady Angela being a very modern young woman, her brother
thought that she might storm for a bit but in the end see the
humorous side of the situation.  But not at all!  Lady Angela took
the affair entirely _au tragique_.  Over the telephone she only
exclaimed, 'Great Lord!' but at one o'clock in the afternoon she
arrived at the flat, having taken the first train up to town and not
even waiting for her maid to pack her things.  Mr. Henry Buckley was
just going out to lunch.  Without condescending to explain anything,
his sister dragged him off then and there to Scotland Yard.
'Something has happened to Denver,' was all that she would say.
'Something dreadful, I am sure.'  In vain did her brother protest
that she would only be making a fool of herself by rushing to the
police like this, that old Square-toes had only gone on the spree,
and that, anyway, she ought to consult with the Shillingtons before
doing anything silly; Lady Angela would not listen to reason.  'You
don't know!  You don't know!' she kept on reiterating with
ever-increasing agitation.  'He has been murdered, I tell you.
Murdered!'

"By the time that the pair arrived at Scotland Yard, Lady Angela was
in a state bordering on hysterics, and her brother appeared both
sulky and perplexed.  They saw the same Inspector who had interviewed
Miss Shillington, and certainly his amazement was no whit less than
that of Mr. Henry Buckley when Lady Angela having mentioned the
disappearance of Captain Denver Shillington, said abruptly, 'Yes, he
has disappeared, and incidentally, he had my pearls in his pocket.'
The Inspector made no immediate comment; men of his calling are used
to those kinds of surprises, but Henry Buckley gave a gasp of horror.

"'Your pearls?' he exclaimed.  'What pearls? Not----?'

"'Yes,' Lady Angela rejoined, coolly.  'The Glenarm pearls.  All of
them!'

"'But----' Henry Buckley stammered, wide-eyed and white to the lips.

"His sister threw him what appeared to be a warning glance, then she
turned once more to the police inspector.

"'My brother is upset,' she said calmly, 'because he knows that the
pearls are of immense value.  The late Lord Glenarm left them to me
in his will.  He made a huge fortune by a successful speculation in
sugar.  He had no daughters of his own, and late in life he married
my mother's sister.  He was my godfather, and when he first bought
the pearls and gave them to his wife as a wedding present, he said
that after her death and his they should belong to me.  They were
valued for probate at twenty-five thousand pounds.'

"Henry Buckley was still speechless, and it was in answer to several
questions put to her by the Inspector that Lady Angela gave the full
history, as far as she knew it, of the disappearance of her pearls.

"'I was going to spend the week-end with some friends at Tatchford,
near Newmarket,' she said.  'My brother at first had decided not to
come with me.  On the Friday evening I went with Captain Shillington
to a ball at the Duchess of Flint's in Grosvenor Square.  I wore my
pearls; on the way home in the car, Captain Shillington appeared very
anxious as to what I should do about the pearls whilst I was away.
He wanted me to take them to the bank first thing in the morning
before I left.  But I knew I couldn't do this, because my train was
at nine-fifty from Liverpool Street.  Captain Shillington had once or
twice before shown anxiety about the pearls and urged me to keep them
at the bank when I was not wearing them, but he had never been so
insistent as that night.'

"Lady Angela appeared to hesitate for a moment or two.  She glanced
at her brother with a curious expression, both of anxiety and
contempt.  It seemed as if she were trying to make up her mind to say
something that was very difficult, to put in so many words.  The
Inspector sat silent and impassive, waiting for her to continue her
story, and at last she did make up her mind to speak.

"'I had a safe in the flat,' she went on, glibly, 'where I keep my
jewellery, but Captain Shillington did not seem satisfied.  He argued
and argued, and at last he persuaded me to let him have the pearls
while I was away and he would deposit them at his own bank until my
return.'

"Presumably at this point the lady caught an expression on the face
of the Inspector which displeased her, for she added with becoming
dignity, 'I am engaged to be married to Captain Denver Shillington.'

"'My God!' Henry Buckley exclaimed at this point, and with a groan he
buried his face in his hands.

"Mind you," the Old Man in the Corner proceeded, after a moment's
pause, "the public had no information as to the exact words, and so
on, that passed between Lady Angela, her brother Henry, and the
officials of Scotland Yard.  All that I am telling you, and what I am
still about to tell you, came out bit by bit in the papers.
Sensation-lovers were immensely interested in the case from the
outset, because, although both public and police are familiar enough
with the tragi-comedy of the good-looking young blackguard who gets
confiding females to entrust him with their little bits of jewellery,
this was the first time that the confidence trick had been played by
a well-known man about town--reputed wealthy, since he had gone to
the length of paying a friend's gambling debts--on a society lady who
was not in her first youth and must presumably have had some
knowledge of the world she lived in.

"Lady Angela had concluded her statements by saying that during the
drive home in the car she took off her pearls and handed them to her
fiancé, who slipped them into his pocket just as they were, although
when presently the car drew up at her door she suggested running up
to her room to get the case for them.  The Captain, however, declared
this to be unnecessary.  What he said was, 'I will sleep with them
under my pillow to-night, and to-morrow morning first thing I will
take them round to the bank for you.'  After this he said good-night.
Lady Angela let herself into the house with her latchkey, and Captain
Shillington then dismissed the car, saying that he would enjoy a bit
of a walk as the rooms at Grosvenor Square had been so desperately
hot.

"And it was at this point," the Old Man in the Corner now said with
deliberate emphasis as he worked away at an exceptionally intricate
knot in his beloved bit of string, "it was at this point that certain
facts leaked out which lent to the whole case a sinister aspect.

"It appears that on the Saturday morning at break of day one of the
boats belonging to the Thames District Police found a grey Homburg
hat floating under one of the old steamship landing stages and, stuck
to one of the wooden piles close by, a man's silk scarf.  There was
no name inside the hat or any other clue as to the owner's identity,
but both the scarf, which had once been white or light grey, and the
hat were terribly soiled and torn, and both were stained with blood.
The police had tried on the quiet to trace the owner of the hat and
scarf but without success.  After Lady Angela had told her story of
the missing pearls, the things were shown to Miss Shillington, who at
once identified the hat as belonging to her brother; the scarf,
however, she knew nothing about.

"But this was not by any means all.  It appears that for some reason
which was never quite clear, Captain Shillington, after he said
good-night to Lady Angela, altered his mind about the proposed walk.
It may have started to rain, or he may not, after all, have liked the
idea of walking about the streets at night with twenty-five thousand
pounds' worth of pearls in his pocket.  Be that as it may, he hailed
a passing taxi and drove to Mexfield House.  The driver came forward
voluntarily in answer to an advertisement put in the papers by the
police.  He stated that he remembered the circumstance quite well
because of what followed.  He remembered taking up a fare outside
Stanhope Gate and being ordered to drive to Mexfield House in
Somerset Street.  When he slowed down close to Mexfield House he
noticed a man with his hands in his pockets lounging under the
doorway of one of the houses close by.  As far as he could see the
man was in evening dress and wore a light overcoat.  He had on a silk
hat tilted right over his eyes so that only the lower part of his
face was visible, and he had a white or pale grey scarf tied loosely
round his neck.  The chauffeur also noticed that he had a large white
flower, probably a carnation, in his buttonhole.  After the taxi-man
had put down his fare he drove off, and as he did so he saw the man
in the light overcoat step out from under the doorway, where he had
been lounging, and turn in the direction of Mexfield House.  What
happened after that he didn't know, as he drove away without taking
further notice, but the police were already in touch with another man
who had been watching that night in Somerset Street, where a portion
of the road was up for repair.  This man, whose name, I think, was
William Rugger, remembered quite distinctly seeing a 'swell' in a
light overcoat and wearing a light-coloured scarf round his neck,
loafing around Mexfield House.  He remembered the taxi drawing up and
a gentleman getting out of it, whereupon the one in the light
overcoat and the scarf went up to him and said, 'Hullo, Denver!' at
which the other gent, the one who had come in the taxi, appeared very
surprised, for Rugger heard him say, 'Good Lord, Henry, what are you
doing here?'

"Rugger didn't hear any more because the gentleman in the light
overcoat then took the other one by the arm and together the pair of
them walked away down the street.  When they had gone Rugger noticed
a large white carnation lying on the pavement; he picked it up and
subsequently took it home to his missis.

"You may imagine what a stir and excitement this story--which pretty
soon leaked out in all its details--caused amongst the public.  It
seems that although neither the taxi-driver nor the man Rugger had
seen the face of the man who had stepped out from under a
neighbouring doorway and accosted Captain Shillington, they were both
of them quite positive that he was in evening dress, and that he wore
a silk hat, a light overcoat, and had a pale grey or white scarf
wound round his neck.  And besides that, there was the white
carnation.  But, of course, the crux of the whole evidence was
Rugger's assertion that he heard one gentleman--the one who got out
of the cab--say to the other in tones of great surprise, 'Good Lord,
Henry, what are you doing here?'  Questioned again and again he never
wavered in this statement.  He heard the name Henry quite distinctly
and it stuck in his mind because his eldest boy was Henry.  He was
also asked whether the gentleman, who had stepped out of the
taxi--obviously Captain Shillington, since the other had called to
him, 'Hullo, Denver'--walked away reluctantly or willingly when he
was thus summarily taken hold of by the arm.  Rugger was under the
impression that he walked away reluctantly; he freed his arm once,
but the other got hold of him again, and, though Rugger did not catch
the actual words, he certainly thought that the two gentlemen were
quarrelling.

"And thus public opinion, which at first had been dead against the
Australian Captain, now went equally dead against Henry Buckley.
Ugly stories were current of his extravagance, his gambling debts,
his addiction to drink.  People who knew him remembered one or two
ugly pages in his life's history: altercations with the police, raids
on gambling clubs of which he was a prominent member; there was even
a fraudulent bankruptcy which had been the original cause of his
being sent out to Australia by his harassed parents until the worst
of the clouds had rolled by.

"The only thing that told in his favour, as far as the public was
concerned, was the bitter vindictiveness displayed against him by
Miss Shillington.  That the girl had cause for bitterness was not to
be denied.  For a time, at any rate, public opinion had branded her
brother as a common trickster and a thief, and she and her mother had
no doubt suffered terribly under the stigma; in consequence of this,
Mrs. Shillington's health, always in a precarious state, had
completely broken down and the old lady had taken to her bed, not
suffering from any particular disease, but just from debility of mind
and body, obstinately refusing to see a doctor, declaring that
nothing would cure her except the return of her son.

"And on the top of all that came the growing conviction that the son
never would return and that he had been foully murdered for the sake
of Lady Angela's pearls, which he so foolishly was carrying in his
pocket that night.  No wonder, then, that his sister Marion felt
bitter against the people who were the original cause of all these
disasters; no wonder that she threw herself heart and soul into the
search for evidence against the man whom she sincerely believed to be
guilty of a most hideous crime.

"It was mainly due to her that the police came on the track of
William Rugger, the night-watchman, and through the latter that the
driver of the taxi-cab was advertised for, because Rugger remembered
seeing the gentleman alight from a taxi outside Mexfield House.  But
Miss Shillington's valuable assistance in the matter of investigation
went even further than that.  She at last prevailed upon the old
man-servant at Mexfield House to come forward like a man and to speak
the truth.  He was a poor creature, not really old, probably not more
than fifty, but timid and almost abject.  He had at first declined to
make any statement whatever, declaring that he had nothing to say.
To every question put to him by the police, he gave the one answer,
'I saw nothing, sir, I 'eard nothing.  I went to bed as usual on the
Friday night.  The Captain 'e never expected me to sit up for 'im
when 'e was out to parties, and I never 'ear 'im come in, as I sleep
at the top of the 'ouse.  No, sir, I didn't 'ear nothing that night.
The last I seed of the Captain was at nine o'clock, when 'e got into
the car and said good-night to me.'  When he was shown the
blood-stained hat, he burst out crying, and said, 'Yes, sir!  Yes,
sir!  That is the Captain's 'at.  My Lord!  What 'as become of 'im?'
He also failed to identify the scarf as being his master's property.

"Then one day Miss Shillington, still suffering from a cold in the
head, but otherwise very business-like and brisk, arrived at Scotland
Yard with the man--James Rose was his name--in tow.  By what means
she had persuaded him to speak the truth at last no one ever knew,
but in a tremulous voice and shaken with nervousness, he did tell
what he swore to be the truth.  'I must 'ave dropped to sleep in the
dining-room,' he said.  'I was very tired that evening, and I
remember after I 'ad cleared supper away I just felt as 'ow I
couldn't stand on my legs any longer, and I sat down in an armchair
and must 'ave dozed off.  What woke me was the front-door bell which
rings in the 'all as well as in the basement.  I looked at the clock,
it was past midnight.  Captain forgot 'is key, that's what I thought.
Lucky I 'adn't gone to bed, or I should never 'ave 'eard 'im.  Funny
'is forgetting 'is key, I thought.  Never done such a thing before, I
thought, and went to open the door for 'im.  But it wasn't the
Captain,' Rose went on, his voice getting more and more husky as no
doubt he realised the deadly importance of what he was about to say.
'No, it wasn't the Captain,' he reiterated, and shook his head in a
doleful manner.

"'Who was it?' the Inspector demanded.

"'The young gentleman who sometimes came to the 'ouse,' Rose repeated
under his breath.  'Mr. 'Enery Buckley it was, sir.  Yes, Mr. 'Enery,
that's 'oo it was.'

"'What did he say?' Rose was asked.

"''E asked if the Captain was in, and I said no, not as I knew, but I
would go and see.  So up I went to the Captain's room and saw 'e
wasn't there.  Not yet.  And I told Mr. 'Enery so when I came down
again.'

"'Then what happened?'

"'Mr. 'Enery 'e told me that 'e wouldn't wait and that I was to tell
the Captain 'e 'ad called, and that 'e would call again in 'arf an
hour.  I said that I was going to bed and I wouldn't probably see the
Captain.  'E might be ever so late.  Then Mr. 'Enery 'e just said,
"Very good," and "Never mind," and "Good-night, Rose," 'e said, and
then I let 'im out.'

"'Well?  And what happened after that?'

"'I don't know, sir,' the old man concluded.  'I went to bed and I
never seed the Captain again, nor yet Mr. 'Enery--not from that day
to this, sir.  No, not again, sir.'  And Rose once more shook his
head in the same doleful manner.  Of course the police were very down
on him for keeping back this valuable piece of information, and they
were even inclined to look with suspicion upon the man.  They wanted
to know something about his antecedents and why he seemed so
frightened of facing the police authorities.  Fortunately for him,
however, Miss Shillington could give them all the information they
wanted.  She said that James Rose had been for years in the service
of a Mrs. O'Shea, who was a great friend of Mrs. Shillington's.  When
Mrs. O'Shea died she left him a hundred pounds.  But the poor thing
had never been very strong, and he was nothing to look at, he
couldn't get another place, and the hundred pounds vanished bit by
bit.  About a month ago Mrs. Shillington, who was requiring a
man-servant, advertised for one in the _Daily Mail_.  Rose answered
the advertisement, and though the poor thing in the meanwhile had
gone terribly downhill physically, Mrs. Shillington, remembering how
honest and respectable he had always been when he was in Mrs.
O'Shea's service, engaged him out of compassion and for the sake of
old times.  Miss Shillington gave him an excellent character and the
police were satisfied.

"I think," the Old Man in the Corner said, amorously contemplating a
marvellously intricate knot, which he had just made in his bit of
string, "I think that the police were mainly satisfied because at
last they felt that 'they had made out a case.'  From that moment the
detectives and inspectors in charge became absolutely convinced that
Henry Buckley had enticed Captain Denver Shillington to some place of
evil fame close to the river and there, in collusion probably with
other disreputable characters, had robbed and murdered him.  To say
the least, the case looked black enough against Buckley.  His fast
living, his mountain of debt, the absence in him of moral rectitude
as proved by his fraudulent bankruptcy, all told against him; and now
it was definitely proved that he had sought out and actually been in
the company of Captain Shillington the night that the latter
disappeared.  A light grey overcoat similar to the one described by
Rugger and by the chauffeur as worn by the gentleman who was loafing
in Somerset Street was found to be a part of his wardrobe; no one
could swear, however, as to the scarf, but it turned out that he
never went out in the evening without wearing a large, white
carnation in his button-hole.

"The fact that he had not stated from the beginning that he had
called at Mexfield House that night, and subsequently met the missing
man and walked away with him, naturally told terribly against him.
Obviously the man lost his head.  Questioned by the police, he tried
at first to deny the whole thing: he declared that the man with the
white carnation and the light-coloured scarf was some other man whose
name happened to be Henry, and he tried to upset Rose's evidence by
declaring that the man lied and that he had never called at Mexfield
House that night.  But, unfortunately for him, he had taken a taxi
from his club to the house, the taxi-driver was found, and the noose
was further tightened round the Honourable Henry Buckley's neck.  In
vain did he assert after that that Denver Shillington had told him to
call at Mexfield House at a quarter-past midnight on that fatal
Friday.  He was no longer believed.  He admitted that he was in
financial difficulties, and that he had spoken about these to Captain
Shillington earlier in the evening.  He admitted, tardily enough,
that he went to Mexfield House hoping that Denver would give him some
money in order to wipe out his most pressing debts.  When he found
that the Captain had not yet come home, he left a message with the
man-servant and thought he would go on to the club for a little while
and return later to see Shillington.  Unfortunately, he drank rather
heavily whilst he was at the club and never thought any more either
about his money worries or about the Captain.  In fact, he remembered
nothing very clearly beyond the fact that he went home, in the small
hours and went straight to bed.

"He then went on to say that he woke up the next morning with a
splitting headache.  It was pouring with rain and London was looking
particularly beastly, as he picturesquely termed it.  He recollected
that his sister Angela had planned to go down with old Square-toes to
some friends near Newmarket for the weekend.  He, too, had been asked
but had declined the invitation, but now he began to wish he hadn't;
while he was out of town money-lenders couldn't dun him, and a breath
of country air would certainly do him good.

"And he was just cogitating over these matters at eight a.m. on that
Saturday morning, when his sister Angela came into his room.  'She
told me,' he went on, 'that old Square-toes was unable to accompany
her to these friends in Cambridgeshire, that she didn't want to go
alone, and would I hire a car and drive her down.  She offered to pay
for the car, and, as the scheme happened to suit me, I agreed.  We
drove down to Tatchford, and on the Tuesday I had an unpleasant
reminder from one of my creditors and thought that I must get back to
see what old Square-toes would do for me.  I got home that same
evening, and the next morning early Miss Shillington rang up and told
me over the 'phone that they had heard nothing of Captain Shillington
since the previous Friday and that they were getting anxious.  And
that's all I know,' he concluded.  'I swear that I never set eyes on
Shillington after he drove off from the Duchess of Flint's, with my
sister in his car.  I did call at Mexfield House, but it was at
Shillington's suggestion, but when the man told me that the Captain
was not yet home, I did not loaf about the street, I went straight
back to the club and then home.'

"Of course all this was very clear and very categorical, but there
were one or two doubtful points in Buckley's statements, which the
police--dead out now to prove him guilty of murder--made the most of.
Firstly, there was his former denial on oath that he had not called
at Mexfield House that night.  It was only when he was confronted
with the testimony of the taxi-cab driver that he made the admission.
The employees at his club, which, by the way, was in Hanover Square,
had seen him come in at about half-past eleven.  He went out again
twenty minutes later and the hall porter saw him hail a taxi-cab.  He
was once more in the club at half-past twelve, and it is a
significant fact that two of the younger members chaffed him
subsequently because he had not the usual white carnation in his
button-hole.

"Then again it was more than strange that on the Friday he was so
worried about his debts that he went in the middle of the night to
his friend's house in order to try and borrow money from him, and yet
when, according to his own statements, he never even saw his friend,
off he went the very next morning to the country, stayed away four
days, and on his return did not make any attempt seemingly to see the
Captain or to ask him for money.  Thirdly, it was equally
inconceivable that Captain Shillington should have appointed to see
Buckley at that hour of the night, however pressed the latter might
have been for money.  Why should he?  The next morning would have
done just as well, whether he meant to help him or whether he did
not, and, according to the testimony of the night-watchman, William
Rugger, when he was accosted by Buckley, he exclaimed in tones of
great surprise, 'Good Lord, Henry, what are you doing here?'  These
are not words which a man would say to a friend whom he had appointed
to meet at this very hour.

"However, this portion of the taxi-driver's and Rugger's testimony
Buckley still strenuously denied.  He could not deny the other.  He
had called at Mexfield House and reluctantly admitted that it had
been nothing but 'blue funk' that had prompted him at first to hold
his tongue about that and then to deny the fact altogether.

"But, above all, there was yet another fact which to the police was
more conclusive, more damning than any other and that was that on the
Wednesday morning the Honourable Henry Buckley had called at Messrs.
Foster and Turnbull, the well-known pawnbrokers of Oxford Street, and
had pledged a pair of diamond ear-rings and a couple of valuable
bracelets there for which he received three hundred and fifty pounds.

"Here again, if Buckley had volunteered this statement, all might
have been well, but it was the pawnbrokers who gave information to
the police.  It turned out that the ear-rings and the two bracelets
were the property of his sister, Lady Angela.  Buckley declared that
she had given them to him, and she, very nobly, did her best to
corroborate this statement of his, but it had become impossible to
believe a word he said.  Lady Angela's valiant efforts on his behalf
were thought to be unconvincing, and, as a matter of fact, the public
has never known from that day to this whether Henry Buckley stole his
sister's jewellery, or whether she gave it to him voluntarily.

§3

"Mind you, there can be no question but that the police acted very
injudiciously when they actually preferred a charge of murder against
Henry Buckley.  There were two such damning flaws in the chain of
evidence that had been collected against him that the man ought never
to have been arrested.  Even the magistrate was of that opinion.  As
you know, if there is the slightest doubt about such a serious
charge, the magistrates will always commit a man for trial and let a
jury of twelve men pronounce on the final issue rather than decide
such grave matters on their own.  But in this case there were really
no proofs.  There were deductions: the accused was a young
blackguard, a moral coward and a liar.  There was the blood-stained
scarf, the hat and the white carnation, there was the testimony of
the taxi-driver and the night watchman that Henry Buckley had been in
the company of Captain Shillington that night, but there was no proof
that he had murdered his friend and stolen the pearls.

"To begin with, if there had been a murder, where was it committed,
and what became of Captain Shillington's body?  Of course, the police
still hope to find traces of it, but, as you know, they have not yet
succeeded.  Various theories are put forward that Henry Buckley was a
member of a gang of ruffians with headquarters in some obscure corner
of London close to the river, and that he enticed the Captain there
and murdered him with the help of his criminal associates with whom
he probably shared the proceeds of the crime.  But over a year has
gone by since Shillington disappeared and the police are no nearer
finding the body of the missing man.

"The magistrate dismissed the case against Henry Buckley.  There was
not sufficient evidence to commit him for trial.  What told most in
his favour in the end was the question of time.  He was able to prove
that he was at his club in Hanover Square at half-past midnight on
the fateful night.  Now, according to James Rose's testimony, it was
after midnight when he, Buckley, called at Mexfield House.  Even
supposing that Shillington had arrived in the taxi five minutes
later, it was inconceivable that a man could entice another to an
out-of-the-way part of London, murder him--even if he left others to
dispose of the body--and walk back unconcernedly to Hanover Square,
all in less than half an hour.  Nor were the pearls or any large sum
of money ever traced to Henry Buckley.  He was just as deeply in debt
after the disappearance of Captain Shillington as he had been before.
Now he has gone on another tour round the world, and the
Shillingtons--mother and daughter--have given up all hopes of ever
seeing the gallant Captain, who was such a model son, again.  A
little while ago the illustrated papers published photos of the two
ladies on board a P. and O. steamer bound for Australia, but the
public had forgotten all about Lady Angela's pearls and the
mysterious white carnation.  No one was interested in the old lady
with the white hair and stooping figure, who was carried on board in
a chair, and who obstinately refused to be interviewed by newspaper
men eager for copy.  The case is relegated, as far as the public is
concerned, to the category of undiscovered crimes."

"But," I argued, as the Old Man in the Corner became silent, absorbed
in the untying of an intricate knot which he had made a little while
ago, "surely the police have found out who the man was who accosted
Captain Shillington in Somerset Street that night, the man with the
light-coloured scarf, which was subsequently found in the river by
the side of the missing man's hat, the man who called the Captain
'Denver,' and whom the latter called 'Henry,' and was so surprised to
see.  If it was not Henry Buckley, who was it?"

"Ah!" the exasperating creature retorted with a fatuous smile, "who
was it?  That's just the point--a point just as dark as that a man
like Captain Shillington could be enticed at that hour of the night
to an out-of-the-way part of London, and at a moment when he had his
fiancée's jewellery worth twenty-five thousand pounds in his pocket.
Don't you think that _that_ point is absolutely inconceivable?"

"Well," I said, "it does seem----"

"Of course it does," he broke in eagerly.  "I ask you: Is it likely?
At one moment we are told that Captain Shillington was a pattern of
all the virtues and that his business acumen and abilities had earned
for him not only a fortune but the admiration of all those who knew
him; and the very next we are asked to suppose that he would meekly
allow a young blackguard, whom he knew to be dishonest and
unscrupulous, to drag him 'reluctantly' to some obscure haunt of a
gang of criminals.  Surely that should have jumped to the eyes of any
sane person who had studied the case."

"I don't suppose," I retorted, "that Captain Shillington allowed
Buckley to drag him very far.  Most people believed at the time that
he was attacked directly he rounded the corner of Somerset Street.
There are one or two entrances to mews just about there----"

"Yes," the funny creature rejoined excitedly, "but not one nearer
than fifty yards from Mexfield House.  And do you think that the
immaculate Australian would have walked ten at night with young
Buckley and with those pearls in his pocket?  Why should he?  He was
outside his own door.  Wouldn't he have taken Henry into the house
with him if he wished to speak to him?  No!  No!  The whole theory is
inconceivable...."

"But Captain Shillington disappeared," I argued, "and so did the
pearls, and his hat was found floating in the river, torn and
blood-stained.  You cannot deny that."

"I certainly cannot deny," he replied, "that a blood-stained hat will
float on the water if it is thrown--say, from a convenient bridge."

"But the scarf?" I retorted.

"A scarf will obey the same laws of Nature as a hat."

"But surely you are not going to tell me----?"

"What?"

"That the whole thing was a confidence trick, after all?"

"I am certain that it was.  A clever one, I'll admit, and even I was
puzzled at the time.  I couldn't think who 'Henry' could possibly be.
It wasn't young Buckley, that was obvious.  The alibi was conclusive
as to that: the miscreants who had planned to throw dust in the eyes
of the police by trying to fasten a hideous crime on that unfortunate
young Buckley set their stage rather too elaborately when they
devised the trick about the scarf.  By identifying the murderer with
the wearer of the scarf, they saved Buckley from the gallows; without
it, there might have remained some doubt in the mind of some of the
jury.  But, of course, it raised a tremendous puzzle.  Who was the
'Henry' of Somerset Street?  And was it not a curious coincidence
that he should be wearing an overcoat similar to the one habitually
worn by Henry Buckley and a white carnation, which many friends would
at once associate with that unfortunate young man?  From the
examination of the puzzle to its solution was but a step.  I came at
once to the conclusion that here was no coincidence, but a deliberate
attempt to impersonate Henry Buckley, the man most likely in the eyes
of the public to waylay, rob, and even murder a man whom he knew to
be in possession of valuable jewellery.  Such a deliberate attempt,
therefore, argued that Captain Shillington himself must have been in
it.  'Good Lord, Henry, what in the world are you doing here?' was
obviously intended for any passer-by to hear in the same way that the
white carnation was intended for any chance passer-by to pick up.
Having established the _mise en scène_, the two scoundrels walked
off, having previously provided themselves with a blood-stained hat,
which presently Miss Shillington would identify as the property of
her brother."

"Miss Shillington?" I broke in eagerly, "then you think that the
whole Australian family was in the conspiracy?  And what about the
man Rose?"

"The whole family," he rejoined, "only consisted of two.  Man and
wife most likely."

"But the man Rose?" I insisted.

"An excellent part, alternately played with remarkable skill by the
Captain and his female accomplice."

"Do reconstruct the whole thing for me," I pleaded.  "I own that I am
bewildered."

And from my bag I extracted a brand-new piece of string which I
handed to him with an engaging smile.  Nothing could have pleased the
fatuous creature more.  With long, claw-like fingers twiddling the
string, he began leisurely:

"Nothing could be more simple.  Captain Shillington takes leave of
his fiancée, having her pearls in his pocket.  It is then about
half-past eleven.  Henry Buckley has gone to his club, Shillington
having appointed to see him at Mexfield House soon after midnight.
There is, therefore, plenty of time.  Shillington hurries home,
changes his personality into that of James Rose, as he often has done
before, and subsequently interviews Henry Buckley on the door-step.
You can see that, can't you?"

"Easily," I replied.

"Then as soon as he has got rid of Buckley, our friend the Captain
quits the personality of a snuffy, middle-aged man-servant, and
becomes himself once more.  He goes back to the neighbourhood of
Mayfair, hails a taxi and drives to Mexfield House.  But in the
meanwhile the female confederate--we'll call her Miss Shillington for
convenience' sake--in male attire and evening dress, wearing a light
overcoat, a light-coloured scarf and a white carnation in her
button-hole, lounges under a doorway in Somerset Street, waiting to
play her part.  Now do you see how simple it all is?"

"Perfectly," I admitted.  "As you said before, they had provided
themselves with a blood-stained hat, which presently they threw into
the river, together with the scarf; and what happened after that?"

"They walked home quietly and went to bed."

"What?  Both of them? ... But the mother?"

"I don't believe in the mother," he retorted blandly.  "Do you?"

"I thought----"

"She takes to her bed--she never sees a doctor--she and her daughter
never see any one--they have no friends--no servants save the man
Rose; put two and two together, my dear," the funny old man concluded
as he slipped the piece of string in his pocket.  "Captain
Shillington was the only one in that house who ever went outside the
doors.  The mother never did--no one ever saw her--the daughter had a
perpetual cold in the head--the man Rose had no one to speak for him,
no one to relate his past history, except Miss Shillington.  Where is
he now?  What has become of him?  There's nobody to enquire after
him, so the police don't trouble.  The two Shillingtons--supposed to
be mother and daughter--went back to Australia last year, but not the
man Rose.  Then where is he?  But I say that the two passengers on
board that P. and O. boat were not mother and daughter, but male and
female confederates in as fine a bit of rascality as I've ever seen.
And the man Rose never existed.  He was just a disguise assumed from
time to time by Captain Shillington.  It is not difficult, you know,
to assume a personality of that sort.  The police inspectors who
questioned him had never seen Captain Shillington, and dirt and
shabby clothes are very perfect disguises.  Now the pair of them are
knocking about the world somewhere, they will dispose of the pearls
to Continental dealers not over scrupulous where a good bargain can
be struck.  If you will just think of Captain Shillington
impersonating James Rose and a decrepit old woman alternately, and of
Miss Shillington impersonating Henry Buckley on that one occasion,
you will see how conclusive are my deductions.  I have a snapshot
here of the two Australian 'ladies,' taken on board the boat.  This
muffled-up bundle of bonnet and shawl is supposed to be Mrs.
Shillington; it might as well be M. Poincaré or the Kaiser, don't you
think?  And here is a snapshot of James Rose giving evidence in the
magistrate's court.  Unfortunately, I have no photo of Captain
Shillington, or I could have shown you just how to trace the
personality of the handsome young man about town under that of this
snuffy, dirty, ill-kempt, unwashed, and badly clothed, stooping
figure of an out-at-elbows servant."

He threw a bundle of newspaper cuttings down on the table.  I gazed
at them still puzzled, but nevertheless convinced that he was right.
When I looked up again, I only saw a corner of his shabby checked
ulster disappearing through the swing doors.

X

THE MYSTERY OF THE MONTMARTRE HAT

§1

"It was during a foggy, rainy night in November a couple of years
ago," the Old Man in the Corner said to me that day, "that the
inhabitants of Wicklow Lane, Southwark, were startled by a terrible
row proceeding from one of the houses down the street.  There was a
lot of shouting and banging, then a couple of pistol-shots, after
that nothing more.  It was then just after midnight.  The dwellers in
Wicklow Lane are all of them poor, they are all of them worried with
the cares of large families, small accommodation, and irregular work,
all of which we must take it make for indifference to other people's
worries, and above all, to other people's quarrels.  Rows were not an
unknown occurrence in Wicklow Lane, not always perhaps at dead of
night and not necessarily accompanied by pistol-shots, but
nevertheless sufficiently frequent not to arouse more than passing
interest.  Half-a-dozen tousled heads--no more--were thrust out of
the windows to ascertain what this particular row was about; but as