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Dead Men's Money

by J. S. Fletcher · English · Gutenberg #12239 · 430,632 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dead Men's Money

Author: J. S. Fletcher


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12239]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12239

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEAD MEN'S MONEY ***

                             DEAD MEN'S MONEY

                             BY J.S. FLETCHER

                                   1920




CONTENTS


       I THE ONE-EYED MAN

      II THE MIDNIGHT MISSION

     III THE RED STAIN

      IV THE MURDERED MAN

       V THE BRASS-BOUND CHEST

      VI MR. JOHN PHILLIPS

     VII THE INQUEST ON JOHN PHILLIPS

    VIII THE PARISH REGISTERS

      IX THE MARINE-STORE DEALER

       X THE OTHER WITNESS

      XI SIGNATURES TO THE WILL

     XII THE SALMON GAFF

    XIII SIR GILBERT CARSTAIRS

     XIV DEAD MAN'S MONEY

      XV FIVE HUNDRED A YEAR

     XVI THE MAN IN THE CELL

    XVII THE IRISH HOUSEKEEPER

   XVIII THE ICE AX

     XIX MY TURN

      XX THE SAMARITAN SKIPPER

     XXI MR. GAVIN SMEATON

    XXII I READ MY OWN OBITUARY

   XXIII FAMILY HISTORY

    XXIV THE SUIT OF CLOTHES

     XXV THE SECOND DISAPPEARANCE

    XXVI MRS. RALSTON OF CRAIG

   XXVII THE BANK BALANCE

  XXVIII THE HATHERCLEUGH BUTLER

    XXIX ALL IN ORDER

     XXX THE CARSTAIRS MOTTO

    XXXI NO TRACE

   XXXII THE LINK

  XXXIII THE OLD TOWER

   XXXIV THE BARGAIN

    XXXV THE SWAG

   XXXVI GOLD

  XXXVII THE DARK POOL




CHAPTER I

THE ONE-EYED MAN


The very beginning of this affair, which involved me, before I was aware
of it, in as much villainy and wickedness as ever man heard of, was, of
course, that spring evening, now ten years ago, whereon I looked out of
my mother's front parlour window in the main street of Berwick-upon-Tweed
and saw, standing right before the house, a man who had a black patch
over his left eye, an old plaid thrown loosely round his shoulders, and
in his right hand a stout stick and an old-fashioned carpet-bag. He
caught sight of me as I caught sight of him, and he stirred, and made at
once for our door. If I had possessed the power of seeing more than the
obvious, I should have seen robbery, and murder, and the very devil
himself coming in close attendance upon him as he crossed the pavement.
But as it was, I saw nothing but a stranger, and I threw open the window
and asked the man what he might be wanting.

"Lodgings!" he answered, jerking a thickly made thumb at a paper which my
mother had that day set in the transom above the door. "Lodgings! You've
lodgings to let for a single gentleman. I'm a single gentleman, and I
want lodgings. For a month--maybe more. Money no object. Thorough
respectability--on my part. Few needs and modest requirements. Not likely
to give trouble. Open the door!"

I went into the passage and opened the door to him. He strode in without
as much as a word, and, not waiting for my invitation, lurched
heavily--he was a big, heavy-moving fellow--into the parlour, where he
set down his bag, his plaid, and his stick, and dropping into an easy
chair, gave a sort of groan as he looked at me.

"And what's your name?" he demanded, as if he had all the right in the
world to walk into folks' houses and ask his questions. "Whatever it is,
you're a likely-looking youngster!"

"My name's Hugh Moneylaws," I answered, thinking it no harm to humour
him. "If you want to know about lodgings you must wait till my mother
comes in. Just now she's away up the street--she'll be back presently."

"No hurry, my lad," he replied. "None whatever. This is a comfortable
anchorage. Quiet. Your mother'll be a widow woman, now?"

"Yes," said I shortly.

"Any more of you--brothers and sisters?" he asked. "Any--aye, of
course!--any young children in the house? Because young children is what
I cannot abide--except at a distance."

"There's nobody but me and my mother, and a servant lass," I said. "This
is a quiet enough house, if that's what you mean."

"Quiet is the word," said he. "Nice, quiet, respectable lodgings. In
this town of Berwick. For a month. If not more. As I say, a comfortable
anchorage. And time, too!--when you've seen as many queer places as I
have in my day, young fellow, you'll know that peace and quiet is meat
and drink to an ageing man."

It struck me as I looked at him that he was just the sort of man that you
would expect to hear of as having been in queer places--a sort of gnarled
and stubbly man, with a wealth of seams and wrinkles about his face and
what could be seen of his neck, and much grizzled hair, and an eye--only
one being visible--that looked as if it had been on the watch ever since
he was born. He was a fellow of evident great strength and stout muscle,
and his hands, which he had clasped in front of him as he sat talking to
me, were big enough to go round another man's throat, or to fell a
bullock. And as for the rest of his appearance, he had gold rings in his
ears, and he wore a great, heavy gold chain across his waistcoat, and was
dressed in a new suit of blue serge, somewhat large for him, that he had
evidently purchased at a ready-made-clothing shop, not so long before.

My mother came quietly in upon us before I could reply to the stranger's
last remark, and I saw at once that he was a man of some politeness and
manners, for he got himself up out of his chair and made her a sort of
bow, in an old-fashioned way. And without waiting for me, he let his
tongue loose on her.

"Servant, ma'am," said he. "You'll be the lady of the house--Mrs.
Moneylaws. I'm seeking lodgings, Mrs. Moneylaws, and seeing your paper
at the door-light, and your son's face at the window, I came in. Nice,
quiet lodgings for a few weeks is what I'm wanting--a bit of plain
cooking--no fal-lals. And as for money--no object! Charge me what you
like, and I'll pay beforehand, any hand, whatever's convenient."

My mother, a shrewd little woman, who had had a good deal to do since my
father died, smiled at the corners of her mouth as she looked the
would-be lodger up and down.

"Why, sir," said she. "I like to know who I'm taking in. You're a
stranger in the place, I'm thinking."

"Fifty years since I last clapped eyes on it, ma'am," he answered. "And I
was then a youngster of no more than twelve years or so. But as to who
and what I am--name of James Gilverthwaite. Late master of as good a ship
as ever a man sailed. A quiet, respectable man. No swearer. No
drinker--saving in reason and sobriety. And as I say--money no object,
and cash down whenever it's wanted. Look here!"

He plunged one of the big hands into a trousers' pocket, and pulled it
out again running over with gold. And opening his fingers he extended
the gold-laden palm towards us. We were poor folk at that time, and it
was a strange sight to us, all that money lying in the man's hand, and
he apparently thinking no more of it than if it had been a heap of
six-penny pieces.

"Help yourself to whatever'll pay you for a month," he exclaimed. "And
don't be afraid--there's a lot more where that came from."

But my mother laughed, and motioned him to put up his money.

"Nay, nay, sir!" said she. "There's no need. And all I'm asking at you is
just to know who it is I'm taking in. You'll be having business in the
town for a while?"

"Not business in the ordinary sense, ma'am," he answered. "But there's
kin of mine lying in more than one graveyard just by, and it's a fancy of
my own to take a look at their resting-places, d'ye see, and to wander
round the old quarters where they lived. And while I'm doing that, it's a
quiet, and respectable, and a comfortable lodging I'm wanting."

I could see that the sentiment in his speech touched my mother, who was
fond of visiting graveyards herself, and she turned to Mr. James
Gilverthwaite with a nod of acquiescence.

"Well, now, what might you be wanting in the way of accommodation?" she
asked, and she began to tell him that he could have that parlour in which
they were talking, and the bedchamber immediately above it. I left them
arranging their affairs, and went into another room to attend to some of
my own, and after a while my mother came there to me. "I've let him the
rooms, Hugh," she said, with a note of satisfaction in her voice which
told me that the big man was going to pay well for them. "He's a great
bear of a man to look at," she went on, "but he seems quiet and
civil-spoken. And here's a ticket for a chest of his that he's left up at
the railway station, and as he's tired, maybe you'll get somebody
yourself to fetch it down for him?"

I went out to a man who lived close by and had a light cart, and sent him
up to the station with the ticket for the chest; he was back with it
before long, and I had to help him carry it up to Mr. Gilverthwaite's
room. And never had I felt or seen a chest like that before, nor had the
man who had fetched it, either. It was made of some very hard and dark
wood, and clamped at all the corners with brass, and underneath it there
were a couple of bars of iron, and though it was no more than two and a
half feet square, it took us all our time to lift it. And when, under Mr.
Gilverthwaite's orders, we set it down on a stout stand at the side of
his bed, there it remained until--but to say until when would be
anticipating.

Now that he was established in our house, the new lodger proved himself
all that he had said. He was a quiet, respectable, sober sort of man,
giving no trouble and paying down his money without question or murmur
every Saturday morning at his breakfast-time. All his days were passed in
pretty much the same fashion. After breakfast he would go out--you might
see him on the pier, or on the old town walls, or taking a walk across
the Border Bridge; now and then we heard of his longer excursions into
the country, one side or other of the Tweed. He took his dinner in the
evenings, having made a special arrangement with my mother to that
effect, and a very hearty eater he was, and fond of good things, which
he provided generously for himself; and when that episode of the day's
events was over, he would spend an hour or two over the newspapers, of
which he was a great reader, in company with his cigar and his glass. And
I'll say for him that from first to last he never put anything out, and
was always civil and polite, and there was never a Saturday that he did
not give the servant-maid a half-crown to buy herself a present.

All the same--we said it to ourselves afterwards, though not at the
time--there was an atmosphere of mystery about Mr. Gilverthwaite. He made
no acquaintance in the town. He was never seen in even brief conversation
with any of the men that hung about the pier, on the walls, or by the
shipping. He never visited the inns, nor brought anybody in to drink and
smoke with him. And until the last days of his lodging with us he never
received a letter.

A letter and the end of things came all at once. His stay had lengthened
beyond the month he had first spoken of. It was in the seventh week of
his coming that he came home to his dinner one June evening, complaining
to my mother of having got a great wetting in a sudden storm that had
come on that afternoon while he was away out in the country, and next
morning he was in bed with a bad pain in his chest, and not over well
able to talk. My mother kept him in his bed and began to doctor him; that
day, about noon, came for him the first and only letter he ever had while
he was with us--a letter that came in a registered envelope. The
servant-maid took it up to him when it was delivered, and she said later
that he started a bit when he saw it. But he said nothing about it to my
mother during that afternoon, nor indeed to me, specifically, when, later
on, he sent for me to go up to his room. All the same, having heard of
what he had got, I felt sure that it was because of it that, when I went
in to him, he beckoned me first to close the door on us and then to come
close to his side as he lay propped on his pillow.

"Private, my lad!" he whispered hoarsely. "There's a word I have for you
in private!"




CHAPTER II

THE MIDNIGHT MISSION


Before he said a word more, I knew that Mr. Gilverthwaite was very
ill--much worse, I fancied, than my mother had any notion of. It was
evidently hard work for him to get his breath, and the veins in his
temples and forehead swelled out, big and black, with the effort of
talking. He motioned to me to hand him a bottle of some stuff which he
had sent for from the chemist, and he took a swig of its contents from
the bottle neck before he spoke again. Then he pointed to a chair at the
bed-head, close to his pillow.

"My lungs!" he said, a bit more easily. "Mortal bad! Queer thing, a great
man like me, but I was always delicate in that way, ever since I was a
nipper--strong as a bull in all else. But this word is private. Look
here, you're a lawyer's clerk?"

He had known that, of course, for some time--known that I was clerk to a
solicitor of the town, and hoping to get my articles, and in due course
become a solicitor myself. So there was no need for me to do more than
nod in silence.

"And being so," he went on, "you'll be a good hand at keeping a secret
very well. Can you keep one for me, now?"

He had put out one of his big hands as he spoke, and had gripped my
wrist with it--ill as he was, the grip of his fingers was like steel, and
yet I could see that he had no idea that he was doing more than laying
his hand on me with the appeal of a sick man.

"It depends what it is, Mr. Gilverthwaite," I answered. "I should like to
do anything I can for you."

"You wouldn't do it for nothing," he put in sharply. "I'll make it well
worth your while. See here!"

He took his hand away from my wrist, put it under his pillow, and drew
out a bank-note, which he unfolded before me.

"Ten pound!" he said. "It's yours, if you'll do a bit of a job for me--in
private. Ten pound'll be useful to you. What do you say, now?"

"That it depends on what it is," said I. "I'd be as glad of ten pounds as
anybody, but I must know first what I'm expected to do for it."

"It's an easy enough thing to do," he replied. "Only it's got to be done
this very night, and I'm laid here, and can't do it. You can do it,
without danger, and at little trouble--only--it must be done private."

"You want me to do something that nobody's to know about?" I asked.

"Precisely!" said he. "Nobody! Not even your mother--for even the best of
women have tongues."

I hesitated a little--something warned me that there was more in all this
than I saw or understood at the moment.

"I'll promise this, Mr. Gilverthwaite," I said presently. "If you'll
tell me now what it is you want, I'll keep that a dead secret from
anybody for ever. Whether I'll do it or not'll depend on the nature of
your communication."

"Well spoken, lad!" he answered, with a feeble laugh. "You've the makings
of a good lawyer, anyway. Well, now, it's this--do you know this
neighbourhood well?"

"I've never known any other," said I.

"Do you know where Till meets Tweed?" he asked.

"As well as I know my own mother's door!" I answered.

"You know where that old--what do they call it?--chapel, cell, something
of that nature, is?" he asked again.

"Aye!--well enough, Mr. Gilverthwaite," I answered him. "Ever since I was
in breeches!"

"Well," said he, "if I was my own man, I ought to meet another man near
there this very night. And--here I am!"

"You want me to meet this other man?" I asked.

"I'm offering you ten pound if you will," he answered, with a quick look.
"Aye, that is what I'm wanting!"

"To do--what?" I inquired.

"Simple enough," he said. "Nothing to do but to meet him, to give him a
word that'll establish what they term your bony fides, and a message from
me that I'll have you learn by heart before you go. No more!"

"There's no danger in it?" I asked.

"Not a spice of danger!" he asserted. "Not half as much as you'd find in
serving a writ."

"You seem inclined to pay very handsomely for it, all the same," I
remarked, still feeling a bit suspicious.

"And for a simple reason," he retorted. "I must have some one to do
the job--aye, if it costs twenty pound! Somebody must meet this
friend o' mine, and tonight--and why shouldn't you have ten pound as
well as another?"

"There's nothing to do but what you say?" I asked.

"Nothing--not a thing!" he affirmed.

"And the time?" I said. "And the word--for surety?"

"Eleven o'clock is the time," he answered. "Eleven--an hour before
midnight. And as for the word--get you to the place and wait about a bit,
and if you see nobody there, say out loud, 'From James Gilverthwaite as
is sick and can't come himself'; and when the man appears, as he will,
say--aye!--say 'Panama,' my lad, and he'll understand in a jiffy!"

"Eleven o'clock--Panama," said I. "And--the message?"

"Aye!" he answered, "the message. Just this, then: 'James Gilverthwaite
is laid by for a day or two, and you'll bide quiet in the place you know
of till you hear from him.' That's all. And--how will you get out there,
now?--it's a goodish way."

"I have a bicycle," I answered, and at his question a thought struck me.
"How did you intend to get out there yourself, Mr. Gilverthwaite?" I
asked. "That far--and at that time of night?"

"Aye!" he said. "Just so--but I'd ha' done it easy enough, my lad--if I
hadn't been laid here. I'd ha' gone out by the last train to the nighest
station, and it being summer I'd ha' shifted for myself somehow during
the rest of the night--I'm used to night work. But--that's neither here
nor there. You'll go? And--private?"

"I'll go--and privately," I answered him. "Make yourself easy."

"And not a word to your mother?" he asked anxiously.

"Just so," I replied. "Leave it to me."

He looked vastly relieved at that, and after assuring him that I had the
message by heart I left his chamber and went downstairs. After all, it
was no great task that he had put on me. I had often stayed until very
late at the office, where I had the privilege of reading law-books at
nights, and it was an easy business to mention to my mother that I
wouldn't be in that night so very early. That part of my contract with
the sick man upstairs I could keep well enough, in letter and spirit--all
the same, I was not going out along Tweed-side at that hour of the night
without some safeguard, and though I would tell no one of what my
business for Mr. Gilverthwaite precisely amounted to, I would tell one
person where it would take me, in case anything untoward happened and I
had to be looked for. That person was the proper one for a lad to go to
under the circumstances--my sweetheart, Maisie Dunlop.

And here I'll take you into confidence and say that at that time Maisie
and I had been sweethearting a good two years, and were as certain of
each other as if the two had been twelve. I doubt if there was such
another old-fashioned couple as we were anywhere else in the British
Islands, for already we were as much bound up in each other as if we had
been married half a lifetime, and there was not an affair of mine that I
did not tell her of, nor had she a secret that she did not share with me.
But then, to be sure, we had been neighbours all our lives, for her
father, Andrew Dunlop, kept a grocer's shop not fifty yards from our
house, and she and I had been playmates ever since our school-days, and
had fallen to sober and serious love as soon as we arrived at what we at
any rate called years of discretion--which means that I was nineteen, and
she seventeen, when we first spoke definitely about getting married. And
two years had gone by since then, and one reason why I had no objection
to earning Mr. Gilverthwaite's ten pounds was that Maisie and I meant to
wed as soon as my salary was lifted to three pounds a week, as it soon
was to be, and we were saving money for our furnishing--and ten pounds,
of course, would be a nice help.

So presently I went along the street to Dunlop's and called Maisie out,
and we went down to the walls by the river mouth, which was a regular
evening performance of ours. And in a quiet corner, where there was a
seat on which we often sat whispering together of our future, I told
her that I had to do a piece of business for our lodger that night and
that the precise nature of it was a secret which I must not let out
even to her.

"But here's this much in it, Maisie," I went on, taking care that there
was no one near us that could catch a word of what I was saying; "I can
tell you where the spot is that I'm to do the business at, for a fine
lonely spot it is to be in at the time of night I'm to be there--an hour
before midnight, and the place is that old ruin that's close by where
Till meets Tweed--you know it well enough yourself."

I felt her shiver a bit at that, and I knew what it was that was in her
mind, for Maisie was a girl of imagination, and the mention of a lonely
place like that, to be visited at such an hour, set it working.

"Yon's a queer man, that lodger of your mother's, Hughie," she said. "And
it's a strange time and place you're talking of. I hope nothing'll come
to you in the way of mischance."

"Oh, it's nothing, nothing at all!" I hastened to say. "If you knew it
all, you'd see it's a very ordinary business that this man can't do
himself, being kept to his bed. But all the same, there's naught like
taking precautions beforehand, and so I'll tell you what we'll do. I
should be back in town soon after twelve, and I'll give a tap at your
window as I pass it, and then you'll know all's right."

That would be an easy enough thing to manage, for Maisie's room, where
she slept with a younger sister, was on the ground floor of her father's
house in a wing that butted on to the street, and I could knock at the
pane as I passed by. Yet still she seemed uneasy, and I hastened to say
what--not even then knowing her quite as well as I did later--I thought
would comfort her in any fears she had. "It's a very easy job, Maisie," I
said; "and the ten pounds'll go a long way in buying that furniture we're
always talking about."

She started worse than before when I said that and gripped the hand that
I had round her waist.

"Hughie!" she exclaimed. "He'll not be giving you ten pounds for a bit of
a ride like that! Oh, now I'm sure there's danger in it! What would a man
be paying ten pounds for to anybody just to take a message? Don't go,
Hughie! What do you know of yon man except that he's a stranger that
never speaks to a soul in the place, and wanders about like he was spying
things? And I would liefer go without chair or table, pot or pan, than
that you should be running risks in a lonesome place like that, and at
that time, with nobody near if you should be needing help. Don't go!"

"You're misunderstanding," said I. "It's a plain and easy thing--I've
nothing to do but ride there and back. And as for the ten pounds, it's
just this way: yon Mr. Gilverthwaite has more money than he knows what to
do with. He carries sovereigns in his pockets like they were sixpenny
pieces! Ten pounds is no more to him that ten pennies to us. And we've
had the man in our house seven weeks now, and there's nobody could say an
ill word of him."

"It's not so much him," she answered. "It's what you may meet--there!
For you've got to meet--somebody. You're going, then?"

"I've given my word, Maisie," I said. "And you'll see there'll be no
harm, and I'll give you a tap at the window as I pass your house coming
back. And we'll do grand things with that ten pounds, too."

"I'll never close my eyes till I hear you, then," she replied. "And I'll
not be satisfied with any tap, neither. If you give one, I'll draw the
blind an inch, and make sure it's yourself, Hughie."

We settled it at that, with a kiss that was meant on my part to be one of
reassurance, and presently we parted, and I went off to get my bicycle in
readiness for the ride.




CHAPTER III

THE RED STAIN


It was just half-past nine by the town clocks when I rode out across the
old Border Bridge and turned up the first climb of the road that runs
alongside the railway in the direction of Tillmouth Park, which was, of
course, my first objective. A hot, close night it was--there had been
thunder hanging about all day, and folk had expected it to break at any
minute, but up to this it had not come, and the air was thick and
oppressive. I was running with sweat before I had ridden two miles along
the road, and my head ached with the heaviness of the air, that seemed to
press on me till I was like to be stifled. Under ordinary circumstances
nothing would have taken me out on such a night. But the circumstances
were not ordinary, for it was the first time I had ever had the chance of
earning ten pounds by doing what appeared to be a very simple errand; and
though I was well enough inclined to be neighbourly to Mr. Gilverthwaite,
it was certainly his money that was my chief inducement in going on his
business at a time when all decent folk should be in their beds. And for
this first part of my journey my thoughts ran on that money, and on what
Maisie and I would do with it when it was safely in my pocket. We had
already bought the beginnings of our furnishing, and had them stored in
an unused warehouse at the back of her father's premises; with Mr.
Gilverthwaite's bank-note, lying there snugly in waiting for me, we
should be able to make considerable additions to our stock, and the
wedding-day would come nearer.

But from these anticipations I presently began to think about the
undertaking on which I was now fairly engaged. When I came to consider
it, it seemed a queer affair. As I understood it, it amounted to
this:--Here was Mr. Gilverthwaite, a man that was a stranger in Berwick,
and who appeared to have plenty of money and no business, suddenly
getting a letter which asked him to meet a man, near midnight, and in
about as lonely a spot as you could select out of the whole district. Why
at such a place, and at such an hour? And why was this meeting of so much
importance that Mr. Gilverthwaite, being unable to keep the appointment
himself, must pay as much as ten pounds to another person to keep it for
him? What I had said to Maisie about Mr. Gilverthwaite having so much
money that ten pounds was no more to him than ten pence to me was, of
course, all nonsense, said just to quieten her fears and suspicions--I
knew well enough, having seen a bit of the world in a solicitor's office
for the past six years, that even millionaires don't throw their money
about as if pounds were empty peascods. No! Mr. Gilverthwaite was giving
me that money because he thought that I, as a lawyer's clerk, would see
the thing in its right light as a secret and an important business, and
hold my tongue about it. And see it as a secret business I did--for what
else could it be that would make two men meet near an old ruin at
midnight, when in a town where, at any rate, one of them was a stranger,
and the other probably just as much so, they could have met by broad day
at a more convenient trysting-place without anybody having the least
concern in their doings? There was strange and subtle mystery in all
this, and the thinking and pondering it over led me before long to
wondering about its first natural consequence--who and what was the man I
was now on my way to meet, and where on earth could he be coming from to
keep a tryst at a place like that, and at that hour?

However, before I had covered three parts of that outward journey, I was
to meet another man who, all unknown to me, was to come into this truly
extraordinary series of events in which I, with no will of my own, was
just beginning--all unawares--to be mixed up. Taking it roughly, and as
the crow flies, it is a distance of some nine or ten miles from Berwick
town to Twizel Bridge on the Till, whereat I was to turn off from the
main road and take another, a by-lane, that would lead me down by the old
ruin, close by which Till and Tweed meet. Hot as the night was, and
unpleasant for riding, I had plenty and to spare of time in hand, and
when I came to the cross-ways between Norham and Grindon, I got off my
machine and sat down on the bank at the roadside to rest a bit before
going further. It was a quiet and a very lonely spot that; for three
miles or more I had not met a soul along the road, and there being next
to nothing in the way of village or farmstead between me and Cornhill, I
did not expect to meet one in the next stages of my journey. But as I sat
there on the bank, under a thick hedge, my bicycle lying at my side, I
heard steps coming along the road in the gloom--swift, sure steps, as of
a man who walks fast, and puts his feet firmly down as with determination
to get somewhere as soon as he may. And hearing that--and to this day I
have often wondered what made me do it--I off with my cap, and laid it
over the bicycle-lamp, and myself sat as still as any of the wee
creatures that were doubtless lying behind me in the hedge.

The steps came from the direction in which I was bound. There was a bit
of a dip in the road just there: they came steadily, strongly, up it. And
presently--for this was the height of June, when the nights are never
really dark--the figure of a man came over the ridge of the dip, and
showed itself plain against a piece of grey sky that was framed by the
fingers of the pines and firs on either side of the way. A strongly-built
figure it was, and, as I said before, the man put his feet, evidently
well shod, firmly and swiftly down, and with this alternate sound came
the steady and equally swift tapping of an iron-shod stick. Whoever this
night-traveller was, it was certain he was making his way somewhere
without losing any time in the business.

The man came close by me and my cover, seeing nothing, and at a few
yards' distance stopped dead. I knew why. He had come to the
cross-roads, and it was evident from his movements that he was puzzled
and uncertain. He went to the corners of each way: it seemed to me that
he was seeking for a guide-post. But, as I knew very well, there was no
guide-post at any corner, and presently he came to the middle of the
roads again and stood, looking this way and that, as if still in a
dubious mood. And then I heard a crackling and rustling as of stiff
paper--he was never more than a dozen yards from me all the time,--and in
another minute there was a spurt up of bluish flame, and I saw that the
man had turned on the light of an electric pocket-torch and was shining
it on a map which he had unfolded and shaken out, and was holding in his
right hand.

At this point I profited by a lesson which had been dinned into my ears
a good many times since boyhood. Andrew Dunlop, Maisie's father, was one
of those men who are uncommonly fond of lecturing young folk in season
and out of season. He would get a lot of us, boys and girls, together in
his parlour at such times as he was not behind the counter and give us
admonitions on what he called the practical things of life. And one of
his favourite precepts--especially addressed to us boys--was "Cultivate
your powers of observation." This advice fitted in very well with the
affairs of the career I had mapped out for myself--a solicitor should
naturally be an observant man, and I had made steady effort to do as
Andrew Dunlop counselled. Therefore it was with a keenly observant eye
that I, all unseen, watched the man with his electric torch and his
map, and it did not escape my notice that the hand which held the map
was short of the two middle fingers. But of the rest of him, except that
he was a tallish, well-made man, dressed in--as far as I could see
things--a gentlemanlike fashion in grey tweeds, I could see nothing. I
never caught one glimpse of his face, for all the time that he stood
there it was in shadow.

He did not stay there long either. The light of the electric torch was
suddenly switched off; I heard the crackling of the map again as he
folded it up and pocketed it. And just as suddenly he was once more on
the move, taking the by-way up to the north, which, as I knew well, led
to Norham, and--if he was going far--over the Tweed to Ladykirk. He went
away at the same quick pace; but the surface in that by-way was not as
hard and ringing as that of the main road, and before long the sound of
his steps died away into silence, and the hot, oppressive night became as
still as ever.

I presently mounted my bicycle again and rode forward on my last stage,
and having crossed Twizel Bridge, turned down the lane to the old ruin
close by where Till runs into Tweed. It was now as dark as ever it would
be that night, and the thunderclouds which hung all over the valley
deepened the gloom. Gloomy and dark the spot indeed was where I was to
meet the man of whom Mr. Gilverthwaite had spoken. By the light of my
bicycle lamp I saw that it was just turned eleven when I reached the
spot; but so far as I could judge there was no man there to meet
anybody. And remembering what I had been bidden to do, I spoke out loud.

"From James Gilverthwaite, who is sick, and can't come himself," I
repeated. And then, getting no immediate response, I spoke the password
in just as loud a voice. But there was no response to that either, and
for the instant I thought how ridiculous it was to stand there and say
Panama to nobody.

I made it out that the man had not yet come, and I was wheeling my
bicycle to the side of the lane, there to place it against the hedge and
to sit down myself, when the glancing light of the lamp fell on a great
red stain that had spread itself, and was still spreading, over the sandy
ground in front of me. And I knew on the instant that this was the stain
of blood, and I do not think I was surprised when, advancing a step or
two further, I saw, lying in the roadside grass at my feet, the still
figure and white face of a man who, I knew with a sure and certain
instinct, was not only dead but had been cruelly murdered.




CHAPTER IV

THE MURDERED MAN


There may be folk in the world to whom the finding of a dead man, lying
grim and stark by the roadside, with the blood freshly run from it and
making ugly patches of crimson on the grass and the gravel, would be an
ordinary thing; but to me that had never seen blood let in violence,
except in such matters as a bout of fisticuffs at school, it was the
biggest thing that had ever happened, and I stood staring down at the
white face as if I should never look at anything else as long as I lived.
I remember all about that scene and that moment as freshly now as if the
affair had happened last night. The dead man lying in the crushed
grass--his arms thrown out helplessly on either side of him--the gloom of
the trees all around--the murmuring of the waters, where Till was pouring
its sluggish flood into the more active swirl and rush of the Tweed--the
hot, oppressive air of the night--and the blood on the dry road--all that
was what, at Mr. Gilverthwaite's bidding, I had ridden out from Berwick
to find in that lonely spot.

But I knew, of course, that James Gilverthwaite himself had not foreseen
this affair, nor thought that I should find a murdered man. And as I at
last drew breath, and lifted myself up a little from staring at the
corpse, a great many thoughts rushed into my head, and began to tumble
about over each other. Was this the man Mr. Gilverthwaite meant me to
meet? Would Mr. Gilverthwaite have been murdered, too, if he had come
there in person? And had the man been murdered for the sake of robbery?
But I answered that last question as soon as I asked it, and in the
negative, for the light of my lamp showed a fine, heavy gold watch-chain
festooned across the man's waistcoat--if murderously inclined thieves had
been at him, they were not like to have left that. Then I wondered if I
had disturbed the murderers--it was fixed in me from the beginning that
there must have been more than one in at this dreadful game--and if they
were still lurking about and watching me from the brushwood; and I made
an effort, and bent down and touched one of the nerveless hands. It was
stiffened already, and I knew then that the man had been dead some time.

And I knew another thing in that moment: poor Maisie, lying awake to
listen for the tap at her window, so that she might get up and peep round
the corner of her blind to assure herself that her Hughie was alive and
safe, would have to lie quaking and speculating through the dark hours of
that night, for here was work that was going to keep me busied till day
broke. I set to it there and then, leaving the man just as I had found
him, and hastening back in the direction of the main road. As luck would
have it, I heard voices of men on Twizel Bridge, and ran right on the
local police-sergeant and a constable, who had met there in the course of
their night rounds. I knew them both, the sergeant being one Chisholm,
and the constable a man named Turndale, and they knew me well enough from
having seen me in the court at Berwick; and it was with open-mouthed
surprise that they listened to what I had to tell them. Presently we were
all three round the dead man, and this time there was the light of three
lamps on his face and on the gouts of blood that were all about him, and
Chisholm clicked his tongue sharply at what he saw.

"Here's a sore sight for honest folk!" he said in a low voice, as he bent
down and touched one of the hands. "Aye, and he's been dead a good hour,
I should say, by the feel of him! You heard nothing as you came down yon
lane, Mr. Hugh?"

"Not a sound!" I answered.

"And saw nothing?" he questioned.

"Nothing and nobody!" I said.

"Well," said he, "we'll have to get him away from this. You'll have to
get help," he went on, turning to the constable. "Fetch some men to help
us carry him. He'll have to be taken to the nearest inn for the
inquest--that's how the law is. I wasn't going to ask it while yon man
was about, Mr. Hugh," he continued, when Turndale had gone hurrying
towards the village; "but you'll not mind me asking it now--what were you
doing here yourself, at this hour?"

"You've a good right, Chisholm," said I; "and I'll tell you, for by all I
can see, there'll be no way of keeping it back, and it's no concern of
mine to keep it back, and I don't care who knows all about it--not me!
The truth is, we've a lodger at our house, one Mr. James Gilverthwaite,
that's a mysterious sort of man, and he's at present in his bed with a
chill or something that's like to keep him there; and tonight he got me
to ride out here to meet a man whom he ought to have met himself--and
that's why I'm here and all that I have to do with it."

"You don't mean to say that--that!" he exclaimed, jerking his thumb at
the dead man; "that--that's the man you were to meet?"

"Who else?" said I. "Can you think of any other that it would be? And I'm
wondering if whoever killed this fellow, whoever he may be, wouldn't have
killed Mr. Gilverthwaite, too, if he'd come? This is no by-chance murder,
Chisholm, as you'll be finding out."

"Well, well, I never knew its like!" he remarked, staring from me to the
body, and from it to me. "You saw nobody about close by--nor in the
neighbourhood--no strangers on the road?"

I was ready for that question. Ever since finding the body, I had been
wondering what I should say when authority, either in the shape of a
coroner or a policeman, asked me about my own adventures that night. To
be sure, I had seen a stranger, and I had observed that he had lost a
couple of fingers, the first and second, of his right hand; and it was
certainly a queer thing that he should be in that immediate neighbourhood
about the time when this unfortunate man met his death. But it had been
borne in on my mind pretty strongly that the man I had seen looking at
his map was some gentleman-tourist who was walking the district, and had
as like as not been tramping it over Plodden Field and that historic
corner of the country, and had become benighted ere he could reach
wherever his headquarters were. And I was not going to bring suspicion on
what was in all probability an innocent stranger, so I answered
Chisholm's question as I meant to answer any similar one--unless, indeed,
I had reason to alter my mind.

"I saw nobody and heard nothing--about here," said I. "It's not likely
there'd be strangers in this spot at midnight."

"For that matter, the poor fellow is a stranger himself," said he, once
more turning his lamp on the dead face. "Anyway, he's not known to me,
and I've been in these parts twenty years. And altogether it's a fine
mystery you've hit on, Mr. Hugh, and there'll be strange doings before
we're at the bottom of it, I'm thinking."

That there was mystery in this affair was surer than ever when, having
got the man to the nearest inn, and brought more help, including a
doctor, they began to examine him and his clothing. And now that I saw
him in a stronger light, I found that he was a strongly built, well-made
man of about Mr. Gilverthwaite's age--say, just over sixty years or
so,--dressed in a gentlemanlike fashion, and wearing good boots and linen
and a tweed suit of the sort affected by tourists. There was a good deal
of money in his pockets--bank-notes, gold, and silver--and an expensive
watch and chain, and other such things that a gentleman would carry; and
it seemed very evident that robbery had not been the motive of the
murderers. But of papers that could identify the man there was
nothing--in the shape of paper or its like there was not one scrap in all
the clothing, except the return half of a railway ticket between Peebles
and Coldstream, and a bit of a torn bill-head giving the name and address
of a tradesman in Dundee.

"There's something to go on, anyway," remarked Chisholm, as he carefully
put these things aside after pointing out to us that the ticket was
dated on what was now the previous day (for it was already well past
midnight, and the time was creeping on to morning), and that the dead
man must accordingly have come to Coldstream not many hours before his
death; "and we'll likely find something about him from either Dundee or
Peebles. But I'm inclined to think, Mr. Hugh," he continued, drawing me
aside, "that even though they didn't rob the man of his money and
valuables, they took something else from him that may have been of much
more value than either."

"What?" I asked.

"Papers!" said he. "Look at the general appearance of the man! He's no
common or ordinary sort. Is it likely, now, such a man would be without
letters and that sort of thing in his pockets? Like as not he'd carry his
pocket-book, and it may have been this pocket-book with what was in it
they were after, and not troubling about his purse at all."

"They made sure of him, anyway," said I, and went out of the room where
they had laid the body, not caring to stay longer. For I had heard what
the doctor said--that the man had been killed on the spot by a single
blow from a knife or dagger which had been thrust into his heart from
behind with tremendous force, and the thought of it was sickening me.
"What are you going to do now?" I asked of Chisholm, who had followed me.
"And do you want me any more, sergeant?--for, if not, I'm anxious to get
back to Berwick."

"That's just where I'm coming with you," he answered. "I've my bicycle
close by, and we'll ride into the town together at once. For, do you see,
Mr. Hugh, there's just one man hereabouts that can give us some light on
this affair straightaway--if he will--and that the lodger you were
telling me of. And I must get in and see the superintendent, and we must
get speech with this Mr. Gilverthwaite of yours--for, if he knows no
more, he'll know who yon man is!"

I made no answer to that. I had no certain answer to make. I was already
wondering about a lot of conjectures. Would Mr. Gilverthwaite know who
the man was? Was he the man I ought to have met? Or had that man been
there, witnessed the murder, and gone away, frightened to stop where the
murder had been done? Or--yet again--was this some man who had come upon
Mr. Gilverthwaite's correspondent, and, for some reason, been murdered
by him? It was, however, all beyond me just then, and presently the
sergeant and I were on our machines and making for Berwick. But we had
not been set out half an hour, and were only just where we could see
the town's lights before us in the night, when two folk came riding
bicycles through the mist that lay thick in a dip of the road, and,
calling to me, let me know that they were Maisie Dunlop and her brother
Tom that she had made to come with her, and in another minute Maisie and
I were whispering together.

"It's all right now that I know you're safe, Hugh," she said
breathlessly. "But you must get back with me quickly. Yon lodger of yours
is dead, and your mother in a fine way, wondering where you are!"




CHAPTER V

THE BRASS-BOUND CHEST


The police-sergeant had got off his bicycle at the same time that I
jumped from mine, and he was close behind me when Maisie and I met, and I
heard him give a sharp whistle at her news. And as for me, I was
dumbfounded, for though I had seen well enough that Mr. Gilverthwaite was
very ill when I left him, I was certainly a long way from thinking him
like to die. Indeed, I was so astonished that all I could do was to stand
staring at Maisie in the grey light which was just coming between the
midnight and the morning. But the sergeant found his tongue more readily.

"I suppose he died in his bed, miss?" he asked softly. "Mr. Hugh here
said he was ill; it would be a turn for the worse, no doubt, after Mr.
Hugh left him?"

"He died suddenly just after eleven o'clock," answered Maisie; "and your
mother sought you at Mr. Lindsey's office, Hugh, and when she found you
weren't there, she came down to our house, and I had to tell her that
you'd come out this way on an errand for Mr. Gilverthwaite. And I told
her, too, what I wasn't so sure of myself, that there'd no harm come to
you of it, and that you'd be back soon after twelve, and I went down to
your house and waited with her; and when you didn't come, and didn't
come, why, I got Tom here to get our bicycles out and we came to seek
you. And let's be getting back, for your mother's anxious about you, and
the man's death has upset her--he went all at once, she said, while she
was with him."

We all got on our bicycles again and set off homewards, and Chisholm
wheeled alongside me and we dropped behind a little.

"This is a strange affair," said he, in a low voice; "and it's like to be
made stranger by this man's sudden death. I'd been looking to him to get
news of this other man. What do you know of Mr. Gilverthwaite, now?"

"Nothing!" said I.

"But he's lodged with you seven weeks?" said he.

"If you'd known him, sergeant," I answered, "you'd know that he was this
sort of man--you'd know no more of him at the end of seven months than
you would at the end of seven weeks, and no more at the end of seven
years than at the end of seven months. We knew nothing, my mother and I,
except that he was a decent, well-spoken man, free with his money and
having plenty of it, and that his name was what he called it, and that he
said he'd been a master mariner. But who he was, or where he came from, I
know no more than you do."

"Well, he'll have papers, letters, something or other that'll throw some
light on matters, no doubt?" he suggested. "Can you say as to that?"

"I can tell you that he's got a chest in his chamber that's nigh as heavy
as if it were made of solid lead," I answered. "And doubtless he'll have
a key on him or about him that'll unlock it. But what might be in it, I
can't say, never having seen him open it at any time."

"Well," he said, "I'll have to bring the superintendent down, and we must
trouble your mother to let us take a look at this Mr. Gilverthwaite's
effects. Had he a doctor to him since he was taken ill?"

"Dr. Watson--this--I mean yesterday--afternoon," I answered.

"Then there'll be no inquest in his case," said the sergeant, "for the
doctor'll be able to certify. But there'll be a searching inquiry in this
murder affair, and as Gilverthwaite sent you to meet the man that's been
murdered--"

"Wait a bit!" said I. "You don't know, and I don't, that the man who's
been murdered is the man I was sent to meet. The man I was to meet may
have been the murderer; you don't know who the murdered man is. So you'd
better put it this way: since Gilverthwaite sent me to meet some man at
the place where this murder's been committed--well?"

"That'll be one of your lawyer's quibbles," said he calmly. "My meaning's
plain enough--we'll want to find out, if we can, who it was that
Gilverthwaite sent you to meet. And--for what reason? And--where it was
that the man was to wait for him? And I'll get the superintendent to
come down presently."

"Make it in, say, half an hour," said I. "This is a queer business
altogether, sergeant, and I'm so much in it that I'm not going to do
things on my own responsibility. I'll call Mr. Lindsey up from his bed,
and get him to come down to talk over what's to be done."

"Aye, you're in the right of it there," he said. "Mr. Lindsey'll know all
the law on such matters. Half an hour or so, then."

He made off to the county police-station, and Maisie and Tom and I went
on to our house, and were presently inside. My mother was so relieved at
the sight of me that she forbore to scold me at that time for going off
on such an errand without telling her of my business; but she grew white
as her cap when I told her of what I had chanced on, and she glanced at
the stair and shook her head.

"And indeed I wish that poor man had never come here, if it's this sort
of dreadfulness follows him!" she said. "And though I was slow to say
it, Hugh, I always had a feeling of mystery about him. However, he's
gone now--and died that suddenly and quietly!--and we've laid him out in
his bed; and--and--what's to be done now?" she exclaimed. "We don't know
who he is!"

"Don't trouble yourself, mother," said I. "You've done your duty by him.
And now that you've seen I'm safe, I'm away to bring Mr. Lindsey down and
he'll tell us all that should be done."

I left Maisie and Tom Dunlop keeping my mother company and made haste to
Mr. Lindsey's house, and after a little trouble roused him out of his bed
and got him down to me. It was nearly daylight by that time, and the grey
morning was breaking over the sea and the river as he and I walked back
through the empty streets--I telling him of all the events of the night,
and he listening with an occasional word of surprise. He was not a native
of our parts, but a Yorkshireman that had bought a practice in the town
some years before, and had gained a great character for shrewdness and
ability, and I knew that he was the very man to turn to in an affair of
this sort.

"There's a lot more in this than's on the surface, Hugh, my lad," he
remarked when I had made an end of my tale. "And it'll be a nice job
to find out all the meaning of it, and if the man that's been murdered
was the man Gilverthwaite sent you to meet, or if he's some other that
got there before you, and was got rid of for some extraordinary reason
that we know nothing about. But one thing's certain: we've got to get
some light on your late lodger. That's step number one--and a most
important one."

The superintendent of police, Mr. Murray, a big, bustling man, was
outside our house with Chisholm when we got there, and after a word or
two between us, we went in, and were presently upstairs in
Gilverthwaite's room. He lay there in his bed, the sheet drawn about him
and a napkin over his face; and though the police took a look at him, I
kept away, being too much upset by the doings of the night to stand any
more just then. What I was anxious about was to get some inkling of what
all this meant, and I waited impatiently to see what Mr. Lindsey would
do. He was looking about the room, and when the others turned away from
the dead man he pointed to Gilverthwaite's clothes, that were laid tidily
folded on a chair.

"The first thing to do is to search for his papers and his keys," he
said. "Go carefully through his pockets, sergeant, and let's see what
there is."

But there was as little in the way of papers there, as there had been in
the case of the murdered man. There were no letters. There was a map of
the district, and under the names of several of the villages and places
on either side of the Tweed, between Berwick and Kelso, heavy marks in
blue pencil had been made. I, who knew something of Gilverthwaite's
habits, took it that these were the places he had visited during his
seven weeks' stay with us. And folded in the map were scraps of newspaper
cuttings, every one of them about some antiquity or other in the
neighbourhood, as if such things had an interest for him. And in another
pocket was a guide-book, much thumbed, and between two of the leaves,
slipped as if to mark a place, was a registered envelope.

"That'll be what he got yesterday afternoon!" I exclaimed. "I'm certain
it was whatever there was in it that made him send me out last night, and
maybe the letter in it'll tell us something."

However, there was no letter in the envelope--there was nothing. But on
the envelope itself was a postmark, at which Chisholm instantly pointed.

"Peebles!" said he. "Yon man that you found murdered--his half-ticket's
for Peebles. There's something of a clue, anyway."

They went on searching the clothing, only to find money--plenty of it,
notes in an old pocket-book, and gold in a wash-leather bag--and the
man's watch and chain, and his pocket-knife and the like, and a bunch of
keys. And with the keys in his hand Mr. Lindsey turned to the chest.

"If we're going to find anything that'll throw any light on the question
of this man's identity, it'll be in this box," he said. "I'll take the
responsibility of opening it, in Mrs. Moneylaws' interest, anyway. Lift
it on to that table, and let's see if one of these keys'll fit the lock."

There was no difficulty about finding the key--there were but a few on
the bunch, and he hit on the right one straightaway, and we all crowded
round him as he threw back the heavy lid. There was a curious aromatic
smell came from within, a sort of mingling of cedar and camphor and
spices--a smell that made you think of foreign parts and queer, far-off
places. And it was indeed a strange collection of things and objects that
Mr. Lindsey took out of the chest and set down on the table. There was an
old cigar-box, tied about with twine, full to the brim with money--over
two thousand pounds in bank-notes and gold, as we found on counting it up
later on,--and there were others filled with cigars, and yet others in
which the man had packed all manner of curiosities such as three of us at
any rate had never seen in our lives before. But Mr. Lindsey, who was
something of a curiosity collector himself, nodded his head at the sight
of some of them.

"Wherever else this man may have been in his roving life," he said,
"here's one thing certain--he's spent a lot of time in Mexico and Central
America. And--what was the name he told you to use as a password once you
met his man, Hugh--wasn't it Panama?"

"Panama!" I answered. "Just that--Panama."

"Well, and he's picked up lots of these things in those parts--Panama,
Nicaragua, Mexico," he said. "And very interesting matters they are.
But--you see, superintendent?--there's not a paper nor anything in this
chest to tell us who this man is, nor where he came from when he came
here, nor where his relations are to be found, if he has any. There's
literally nothing whatever of that sort."

The police officials nodded in silence.

"And so--there's where things are," concluded Mr. Lindsey. "You've
two dead men on your hands, and you know nothing whatever about
either of them!"




CHAPTER VI

MR. JOHN PHILLIPS


He began to put back the various boxes and parcels into the chest as he
spoke, and we all looked at each other as men might look who, taking a
way unknown to them, come up against a blank wall. But Chisholm, who was
a sharp fellow, with a good headpiece on him, suddenly spoke.

"There's the fact that the murdered man sent that letter from Peebles,"
said he, "and that he himself appears to have travelled from Peebles but
yesterday. We might be hearing something of him at Peebles, and from what
we might hear, there or elsewhere, we might get some connection between
the two of them."

"You're right in all that, sergeant," said Mr. Lindsey, "and it's to
Peebles some of you'll have to go. For the thing's plain--that man has
been murdered by somebody, and the first way to get at the somebody is to
find out who the murdered man is, and why he came into these parts. As
for him," he continued, pointing significantly to the bed, "his
secret--whatever it is--has gone with him. And our question now is, Can
we get at it in any other way?"

We had more talk downstairs, and it was settled that Chisholm and I
should go on to Peebles by the first train that morning, find out what
we could there, and work back to the Cornhill station, where, according
to the half-ticket which had been found on him, the murdered man
appeared to have come on the evening of his death. Meanwhile, Murray
would have the scene of the murder thoroughly and strictly searched--the
daylight might reveal things which we had not been able to discover by
the light of the lamps.

"And there's another thing you can do," suggested Lindsey. "That scrap of
a bill-head with a name and address in Dundee on it, that you found on
him, you might wire there and see if anything is known of the man. Any
bit of information you can get in that way--"

"You're forgetting, Mr. Lindsey, that we don't know any name by which we
can call the man," objected Chisholm. "We'll have to find a name for him
before we can wire to Dundee or anywhere else. But if we can trace a name
to him in Peebles--"

"Aye, that'll be the way of it," said Murray. "Let's be getting all the
information we can during the day, and I'll settle with the coroner's
officer for the inquest at yon inn where you've taken him--it can't be
held before tomorrow morning. Mr. Lindsey," he went on, "what are you
going to do as regards this man that's lying dead upstairs? Mrs.
Moneylaws says the doctor had been twice with him, and'll be able to give
a certificate, so there'll be no inquest about him; but what's to be done
about his friends and relations? It's likely there'll be somebody,
somewhere. And--all that money on him and in his chest?"

Mr. Lindsey shook his head and smiled.

"If you think all this'll be done in hole-and-corner fashion,
superintendent," he said, "you're not the wise man I take you for. Lord
bless you, man, the news'll be all over the country within forty-eight
hours! If this Gilverthwaite has folk of his own, they'll be here fast as
crows hurry to a new-sown field! Let the news of it once out, and you'll
wish that such men as newspaper reporters had never been born. You can't
keep these things quiet; and if we're going to get to the bottom of all
this, then publicity's the very thing that's needed."

All this was said in the presence of my mother, who, being by nature as
quiet a body as ever lived, was by no means pleased to know that her
house was, as it were, to be made a centre of attraction. And when Mr.
Lindsey and the police had gone away, and she began getting some
breakfast ready for me before my going to meet Chisholm at the station,
she set on to bewail our misfortune in ever taking Gilverthwaite into the
house, and so getting mixed up with such awful things as murder. She
should have had references with the man, she said, before taking him in,
and so have known who she was dealing with. And nothing that either I or
Maisie--who was still there, staying to be of help, Tom Dunlop having
gone home to tell his father the great news--could say would drive out of
her head the idea that Gilverthwaite, somehow or other, had something to
do with the killing of the strange man. And, womanlike, and not being
over-amenable to reason, she saw no cause for a great fuss about the
affair in her own house, at any rate. The man was dead, she said, and let
them get him put decently away, and hold his money till somebody came
forward to claim it--all quietly and without the pieces in the paper that
Mr. Lindsey talked about.

"And how are we to let people know anything about him if there isn't news
in the papers?" I asked. "It's only that way that we can let his
relatives know he's dead, mother. You're forgetting that we don't even
know where the man's from!"

"Maybe I've a better idea of where he was from, when he came here, than
any lawyer-folk or police-folk either, my man!" she retorted, giving me
and Maisie a sharp look. "I've eyes in my head, anyway, and it doesn't
take me long to see a thing that's put plain before them."

"Well?" said I, seeing quick enough that she'd some notion in her mind.
"You've found something out?"

Without answering the question in words she went out of the kitchen and
up the stairs, and presently came back to us, carrying in one hand a
man's collar and in the other Gilverthwaite's blue serge jacket. And she
turned the inside of the collar to us, pointing her finger to some words
stamped in black on the linen.

"Take heed of that!" she said. "He'd a dozen of those collars,
brand-new, when he came, and this, you see, is where he bought them; and
where he bought them, there, too, he bought his ready-made suit of
clothes--that was brand-new as well,--here's the name on a tab inside the
coat: Brown Brothers, Gentlemen's Outfitters, Exchange Street, Liverpool.
What does all that prove but that it was from Liverpool he came?"

"Aye!" I said. "And it proves, too, that he was wanting an outfit when he
came to Liverpool from--where? A long way further afield, I'm thinking!
But it's something to know as much as that, and you've no doubt hit on a
clue that might be useful, mother. And if we can find out that the other
man came from Liverpool, too, why then--"

But I stopped short there, having a sudden vision of a very wide world of
which Liverpool was but an outlet. Where had Gilverthwaite last come from
when he struck Liverpool, and set himself up with new clothes and linen?
And had this mysterious man who had met such a terrible fate come also
from some far-off part, to join him in whatever it was that had brought
Gilverthwaite to Berwick? And--a far more important thing,--mysterious as
these two men were, what about the equally mysterious man that was
somewhere in the background--the murderer?

Chisholm and I had no great difficulty--indeed, we had nothing that you
might call a difficulty--in finding out something about the murdered man
at Peebles. We had the half-ticket with us, and we soon got hold of the
booking-clerk who had issued it on the previous afternoon. He remembered
the looks of the man to whom he had sold it, and described him to us well
enough. Moreover, he found us a ticket-collector who remembered that same
man arriving in Peebles two days before, and giving up a ticket from
Glasgow. He had a reason for remembering him, for the man had asked him
to recommend him to a good hotel, and had given him a two-shilling piece
for his trouble. So far, then, we had plain sailing, and it continued
plain and easy during the short time we stayed in Peebles. And it came to
this: the man we were asking about came to the town early in the
afternoon of the day before the murder; he put himself up at the best
hotel in the place; he was in and out of it all the afternoon and
evening; he stayed there until the middle of the afternoon of the next
day, when he paid his bill and left. And there was the name he had
written in the register book--Mr. John Phillips, Glasgow.

Chisholm drew me out of the hotel where we had heard all this and pulled
the scrap of bill-head from his pocket-book.

"Now that we've got the name to go on," said he, "we'll send a wire to
this address in Dundee asking if anything's known there of Mr. John
Phillips. And we'll have the reply sent to Berwick--it'll be waiting us
when we get back this morning."

The name and address in Dundee was of one Gavin Smeaton, Agent, 131A Bank
Street. And the question which Chisholm sent him over the wire was plain
and direct enough: Could he give the Berwick police any information about
a man named John Phillips, found dead, on whose body Mr. Smeaton's name
and address had been discovered?

"We may get something out of that," said Chisholm, as we left the
post-office, "and we may get nothing. And now that we do know that this
man left here for Coldstream, let's get back there, and go on with our
tracing of his movements last night."

But when we had got back to our own district we were quickly at a dead
loss. The folk at Cornhill station remembered the man well enough. He had
arrived there about half-past eight the previous evening. He had been
seen to go down the road to the bridge which leads over the Tweed to
Coldstream. We could not find out that he had asked the way of
anybody--he appeared to have just walked that way as if he were well
acquainted with the place. But we got news of him at an inn just across
the bridge. Such a man--a gentleman, the inn folk called him--had walked
in there, asked for a glass of whisky, lingered for a few minutes while
he drank it, and had gone out again. And from that point we lost all
trace of him. We were now, of course, within a few miles of the place
where the man had been murdered, and the people on both sides of the
river were all in a high state of excitement about it; but we could learn
nothing more. From the moment of the man's leaving the inn on the
Coldstream side of the bridge, nobody seemed to have seen him until I
myself found his body.

There was another back-set for us when we reached Berwick--in the reply
from Dundee. It was brief and decisive enough. "Have no knowledge
whatever of any person named John Phillips--Gavin Smeaton." So, for the
moment, there was nothing to be gained from that quarter.

Mr. Lindsey and I were at the inn where the body had been taken, and
where the inquest was to be held, early next morning, in company with
the police, and amidst a crowd that had gathered from all parts of
the country. As we hung about, waiting the coroner's arrival, a
gentleman rode up on a fine bay horse--a good-looking elderly man,
whose coming attracted much attention. He dismounted and came towards
the inn door, and as he drew the glove off his right hand I saw that
the first and second fingers of that hand were missing. Here, without
doubt, was the man whom I had seen at the cross-roads just before my
discovery of the murder!




CHAPTER VII

THE INQUEST ON JOHN PHILLIPS


Several of the notabilities of the neighbourhood had ridden or driven to
the inn, attracted, of course, by curiosity, and the man with the maimed
hand immediately joined them as they stood talking apart from the rest of
us. Now, I knew all such people of our parts well enough by sight, but I
did not know this man, who certainly belonged to their class, and I
turned to Mr. Lindsey, asking him who was this gentleman that had just
ridden up. He glanced at me with evident surprise at my question.

"What?" said he. "You don't know him? That's the man there's been so much
talk about lately--Sir Gilbert Carstairs of Hathercleugh House, the new
successor to the old baronetcy."

I knew at once what he meant. Between Norham and Berwick, overlooking the
Tweed, and on the English side of the river, stood an ancient,
picturesque, romantic old place, half-mansion, half-castle, set in its
own grounds, and shut off from the rest of the world by high walls and
groves of pine and fir, which had belonged for many a generation to the
old family of Carstairs. Its last proprietor, Sir Alexander Carstairs,
sixth baronet, had been a good deal of a recluse, and I never remember
seeing him but once, when I caught sight of him driving in the town--a
very, very old man who looked like what he really was, a hermit. He had
been a widower for many long years, and though he had three children, it
was little company that he seemed to have ever got out of them, for his
elder son, Mr. Michael Carstairs, had long since gone away to foreign
parts, and had died there; his younger son, Mr. Gilbert, was, it was
understood, a doctor in London, and never came near the old place; and
his one daughter, Mrs. Ralston, though she lived within ten miles of her
father, was not on good terms with him. It was said that the old
gentleman was queer and eccentric, and hard to please or manage; however
that may be, it is certain that he lived a lonely life till he was well
over eighty years of age. And he had died suddenly, not so very long
before James Gilverthwaite came to lodge with us; and Mr. Michael being
dead, unmarried, and therefore without family, the title and estate had
passed to Mr. Gilbert, who had recently come down to Hathercleugh House
and taken possession, bringing with him--though he himself was getting on
in years, being certainly over fifty--a beautiful young wife whom, they
said, he had recently married, and was, according to various accounts
which had crept out, a very wealthy woman in her own right.

So here was Sir Gilbert Carstairs, seventh baronet, before me, chatting
away to some of the other gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and there was
not a doubt in my mind that he was the man whom I had seen on the road
the night of the murder. I was close enough to him now to look more
particularly at his hand, and I saw that the two first fingers had
completely disappeared, and that the rest of it was no more than a claw.
It was not likely there could be two men in our neighbourhood thus
disfigured. Moreover, the general build of the man, the tweed suit of
grey that he was wearing, the attitude in which he stood, all convinced
me that this was the person I had seen at the cross-roads, holding his
electric torch to the face of his map. And I made up my mind there and
then to say nothing in my evidence about that meeting, for I had no
reason to connect such a great gentleman as Sir Gilbert Carstairs with
the murder, and it seemed to me that his presence at those cross-roads
was easily enough explained. He was a big, athletic man and was likely
fond of a walk, and had been taking one that evening, and, not as yet
being over-familiar with the neighbourhood--having lived so long away
from it,--had got somewhat out of his way in returning home. No, I would
say nothing. I had been brought up to have a firm belief in the old
proverb which tells you that the least said is soonest mended. We were
all packed pretty tightly in the big room of the inn when the coroner
opened his inquiry. And at the very onset of the proceedings he made a
remark which was expected by all of us that knew how these things are
done and are likely to go. We could not do much that day; there would
have to be an adjournment, after taking what he might call the surface
evidence. He understood, he remarked, with a significant glance at the
police officials and at one or two solicitors that were there, that there
was some extraordinary mystery at the back of this matter, and that a
good many things would have to be brought to light before the jury could
get even an idea as to who it was that had killed the man whose body had
been found, and as to the reason for his murder. And all they could do
that day, he went on, was to hear such evidence--not much--as had already
been collected, and then to adjourn.

Mr. Lindsey had said to me as we drove along to the inn that I should
find myself the principal witness, and that Gilverthwaite would come into
the matter more prominently than anybody fancied. And this, of course,
was soon made evident. What there was to tell of the dead man, up to that
time, was little. There was the medical evidence that he had been stabbed
to death by a blow from a very formidable knife or dagger, which had been
driven into his heart from behind. There was the evidence which Chisholm
and I had collected in Peebles and at Cornhill station, and at the inn
across the Coldstream Bridge. There was the telegram which had been sent
by Mr. Gavin Smeaton--whoever he might be--from Dundee. And that was
about all, and it came to this: that here was a man who, in registering
at a Peebles hotel, called himself John Phillips and wrote down that he
came from Glasgow, where, up to that moment, the police had failed to
trace anything relating to such a person; and this man had travelled to
Cornhill station from Peebles, been seen in an adjacent inn, had then
disappeared, and had been found, about two hours later, murdered in a
lonely place.

"And the question comes to this," observed the coroner, "what was this
man doing at that place, and who was he likely to meet there? We have
some evidence on that point, and," he added, with one shrewd glance at
the legal folk in front of him and another at the jurymen at his side,
"I think you'll find, gentlemen of the jury, that it's just enough to
whet your appetite for more."

They had kept my evidence to the last, and if there had been a good deal
of suppressed excitement in the crowded room while Chisholm and the
doctor and the landlord of the inn on the other side of Coldstream Bridge
gave their testimonies, there was much more when I got up to tell my
tale, and to answer any questions that anybody liked to put to me. Mine,
of course, was a straight enough story, told in a few sentences, and I
did not see what great amount of questioning could arise out of it. But
whether it was that he fancied I was keeping something back, or that he
wanted, even at that initial stage of the proceedings, to make matters as
plain as possible, a solicitor that was representing the county police
began to ask me questions.

"There was no one else with you in the room when this man Gilverthwaite
gave you his orders?" he asked.

"No one," I answered.

"And you've told me everything that he said to you?"

"As near as I can recollect it, every word."

"He didn't describe the man you were to meet?"

"He didn't--in any way."

"Nor tell you his name?"

"Nor tell me his name."

"So that you'd no idea whatever as to who it was that you were to meet,
nor for what purpose he was coming to meet Gilverthwaite, if
Gilverthwaite had been able to meet him?"

"I'd no idea," said I. "I knew nothing but that I was to meet a man and
give him a message."

He seemed to consider matters a little, keeping silence, and then he went
off on another tack.

"What do you know of the movements of this man Gilverthwaite while he was
lodging with your mother?" he asked.

"Next to nothing," I replied.

"But how much?" he inquired. "You'd know something."

"Of my own knowledge, next to nothing," I repeated. "I've seen him in the
streets, and on the pier, and taking his walks on the walls and over the
Border Bridge; and I've heard him say that he'd been out in the country.
And that's all."

"Was he always alone?" he asked.

"I never saw him with anybody, never heard of his talking to anybody, nor
of his going to see a soul in the place," I answered; "and first and
last, he never brought any one into our house, nor had anybody asked at
the door for him."

"And with the exception of that registered letter we've heard of, he
never had a letter delivered to him all the time he lodged with
you?" he said.

"Not one," said I. "From first to last, not one."

He was silent again for a time, and all the folk staring at him and me;
and for the life of me I could not think what other questions he could
get out of his brain to throw at me. But he found one, and put it with a
sharp cast of his eye.

"Now, did this man ever give you, while he was in your house, any reason
at all for his coming to Berwick?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered; "he did that when he came asking for lodgings. He said
he had folk of his own buried in the neighbourhood, and he was minded to
take a look at their graves and at the old places where they'd lived."

"Giving you, in fact, an impression that he was either a native of
these parts, or had lived here at some time, or had kindred that
had?" he asked.

"Just that," I replied.

"Did he tell you the names of such folk, or where they were buried, or
anything of that sort?" he suggested.

"No--never," said I. "He never mentioned the matter again."

"And you don't know that he ever went to any particular place to look at
any particular grave or house?" he inquired.

"No," I replied; "but we knew that he took his walks into the country on
both sides Tweed."

He hesitated a bit, looked at me and back at his papers, and then, with a
glance at the coroner, sat down. And the coroner, nodding at him as if
there was some understanding between them, turned to the jury.

"It may seem without the scope of this inquiry, gentlemen," he said,
"but the presence of this man Gilverthwaite in the neighbourhood has
evidently so much to do with the death of the other man, whom we know as
John Phillips, that we must not neglect any pertinent evidence. There is
a gentleman present that can tell us something. Call the Reverend
Septimus Ridley."




CHAPTER VIII

THE PARISH REGISTERS


I had noticed the Reverend Mr. Ridley sitting in the room with some other
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and had wondered what had brought him, a
clergyman, there. I knew him well enough by sight. He was a vicar of a
lonely parish away up in the hills--a tall, thin, student-looking man
that you might occasionally see in the Berwick streets, walking very fast
with his eyes on the ground, as if, as the youngsters say, he was seeking
sixpences; and I should not have thought him likely to be attracted to an
affair of that sort by mere curiosity. And, whatever he might be in his
pulpit, he looked very nervous and shy as he stood up between the coroner
and the jury to give his evidence.

"Whatever are we going to hear now?" whispered Mr. Lindsey in my ear.
"Didn't I tell you there'd be revelations about Gilverthwaite, Hugh, my
lad? Well, there's something coming out! But what can this parson know?"

As it soon appeared, Mr. Ridley knew a good deal. After a bit of
preliminary questioning, making things right in the proper legal fashion
as to who he was, and so on, the coroner put a plain inquiry to him. "Mr.
Ridley, you have had some recent dealings with this man James
Gilverthwaite, who has just been mentioned in connection with this
inquiry?" he asked.

"Some dealings recently--yes," answered the clergyman.

"Just tell us, in your own way, what they were," said the coroner. "And,
of course, when they took place."

"Gilverthwaite," said Mr. Ridley, "came to me, at my vicarage, about a
month or five weeks ago. I had previously seen him about the church and
churchyard. He told me he was interested in parish registers, and in
antiquities generally, and asked if he could see our registers, offering
to pay whatever fee was charged. I allowed him to look at the registers,
but I soon discovered that his interest was confined to a particular
period. The fact was, he wished to examine the various entries made
between 1870 and 1880. That became very plain; but as he did not express
his wish in so many words, I humoured him. Still, as I was with him
during the whole of the time he was looking at the books, I saw what it
was that he examined."

Here Mr. Ridley paused, glancing at the coroner.

"That is really about all that I can tell," he said. "He only came to me
on that one occasion."

"Perhaps I can get a little more out of you, Mr. Ridley," remarked the
coroner with a smile. "A question or two, now. What particular registers
did this man examine? Births, deaths, marriages--which?"

"All three, between the dates I have mentioned--1870 to 1880," replied
Mr. Ridley.

"Did you think that he was searching for some particular entry?"

"I certainly did think so."

"Did he seem to find it?" asked the coroner, with a shrewd glance.

"If he did find such an entry," replied Mr. Ridley slowly, "he gave no
sign of it; he did not copy or make a note of it, and he did not ask any
copy of it from me. My impression--whatever it is worth--is that he did
not find what he wanted in our registers. I am all the more convinced of
that because--"

Here Mr. Ridley paused, as if uncertain whether to proceed or not; but at
an encouraging nod from the coroner he went on.

"I was merely going to say--and I don't suppose it is evidence--" he
added, "that I understand this man visited several of my brother
clergymen in the neighbourhood on the same errand. It was talked of at
the last meeting of our rural deanery."

"Ah!" remarked the coroner significantly. "He appears, then, to have been
going round examining the parish registers--we must get more evidence of
that later, for I'm convinced it has a bearing on the subject of this
present inquiry. But a question or two more, Mr. Ridley. There are
stipulated fees for searching the registers, I believe. Did Gilverthwaite
pay them in your case?"

Mr. Ridley smiled.

"He not only paid the fees," he answered, "but he forced me to accept
something for the poor box. He struck me as being a man who was inclined
to be free with his money."

The coroner looked at the solicitor who was representing the police.

"I don't know if you want to ask this witness any questions?" he
inquired.

"Yes," said the solicitor. He turned to Mr. Ridley. "You heard what the
witness Hugh Moneylaws said?--that Gilverthwaite mentioned on his coming
to Berwick that he had kinsfolk buried in the neighbourhood? You did?
Well, Mr. Ridley, do you know if there are people of that name buried in
your churchyard?"

"There are not," replied Mr. Ridley promptly. "What is more, the name
Gilverthwaite does not occur in our parish registers. I have a complete
index of the registers from 1580, when they began to be kept, and there
is no such name in it. I can also tell you this," he added, "I am, I
think I may say, something of an authority on the parish registers of
this district--I have prepared and edited several of them for
publication, and I am familiar with most of them. I do not think that
name, Gilverthwaite, occurs in any of them."

"What do you deduce from that, now?" asked the solicitor.

"That whatever it was that the man was searching for--and I am sure he
was searching--it was not for particulars of his father's family,"
answered Mr. Ridley. "That is, of course, if his name really was what he
gave it out to be--Gilverthwaite."

"Precisely!" said the coroner. "It may have been an assumed name."

"The man may have been searching for particulars of his mother's family,"
remarked the solicitor.

"That line of thought would carry us too far afield just now," said the
coroner. He turned to the jury. "I've allowed this evidence about the man
Gilverthwaite, gentlemen," he said, "because it's very evident that
Gilverthwaite came to this neighbourhood for some special purpose and
wanted to get some particular information; and it's more than probable
that the man into the circumstances of whose death we're inquiring was
concerned with him in his purpose. But we cannot go any further today,"
he concluded, "and I shall adjourn the inquiry for a fortnight, when, no
doubt, there'll be more evidence to put before you."

I think that the folk who had crowded into that room, all agog to hear
whatever could be told, went out of it more puzzled than when they came
in. They split up into groups outside the inn, and began to discuss
matters amongst themselves. And presently two sharp-looking young
fellows, whom I had seen taking notes at the end of the big table
whereat the coroner and the officials sat, came up to me, and telling me
that they were reporters, specially sent over, one from Edinburgh, the
other from Newcastle, begged me to give them a faithful and detailed
account of my doings and experiences on the night of the murder--there
was already vast interest in this affair all over the country, they
affirmed, and whatever I could or would tell them would make splendid
reading and be printed in big type in their journals. But Mr. Lindsey,
who was close by, seized my arm and steered me away from these
persistent seekers after copy.

"Not just now, my lads!" said he good-humouredly. "You've got plenty
enough to go on with--you've heard plenty in there this morning to keep
your readers going for a bit. Not a word, Hugh! And as for you,
gentlemen, if you want to do something towards clearing up this mystery,
and assisting justice, there's something you can do--and nobody can do
it better."

"What's that?" asked one of them eagerly.

"Ask through your columns for the relations, friends, acquaintances,
anybody who knows them or aught about them, of these two men, James
Gilverthwaite and John Phillips," replied Mr. Lindsey. "Noise it abroad
as much as you like and can! If they've folk belonging to them, let them
come forward. For," he went on, giving them a knowing look, "there's a
bigger mystery in this affair than any one of us has any conception of,
and the more we can find out the sooner it'll be solved. And I'll say
this to you young fellows: the press can do more than the police. There's
a hint for you!"

Then he led me off, and we got into the trap in which he and I had driven
out from Berwick, and as soon as we had started homeward he fell into a
brown study and continued in it until we were in sight of the town.

"Hugh, my lad!" he suddenly exclaimed, at last starting out of his
reverie. "I'd give a good deal if I could see daylight in this affair!
I've had two-and-twenty years' experience of the law, and I've known some
queer matters, and some dark matters, and some ugly matters in my time;
but hang me if I ever knew one that promises to be as ugly and as dark
and as queer as this does--that's a fact!"

"You're thinking it's all that, Mr. Lindsey?" I asked, knowing him as I
did to be an uncommonly sharp man.

"I'm thinking there's more than meets the eye," he answered. "Bloody
murder we know there is--maybe there'll be more, or maybe there has been
more already. What was that deep old fish Gilverthwaite after? What took
place between Phillips's walking out of that inn at Coldstream Bridge and
your finding of his body? Who met Phillips? Who did him to his death? And
what were the two of 'em after in this corner of the country? Black
mystery, my lad, on all hands!"

I made no answer just then. I was thinking, wondering if I should tell
him about my meeting with Sir Gilbert Carstairs at the cross-roads. Mr.
Lindsey was just the man you could and would tell anything to, and it
would maybe have been best if I had told him of that matter there and
then. But there's a curious run of caution and reserve in our family. I
got it from both father and mother, and deepened it on my own account,
and I could not bring myself to be incriminating and suspicioning a man
whose presence so near the place of the murder might be innocent enough.
So I held my tongue.

"I wonder will all the stuff in the newspapers bring any one forward?" he
said, presently. "It ought to!--if there is anybody."

Nothing, however, was heard by the police or by ourselves for the next
three or four days; and then--I think it was the fourth day after the
inquest--I looked up from my desk in Mr. Lindsey's outer office one
afternoon to see Maisie Dunlop coming in at the door, followed by an
elderly woman, poorly but respectably dressed, a stranger.

"Hugh," said Maisie, coming up to my side, "your mother asked me to bring
this woman up to see Mr. Lindsey. She's just come in from the south, and
she says she's yon James Gilverthwaite's sister."




CHAPTER IX

THE MARINE-STORE DEALER


Mr. Lindsey was standing just within his own room when Maisie and the
strange woman came into the office, and hearing what was said, he called
us all three to go into him. And, like myself, he looked at the woman
with a good deal of curiosity, wanting--as I did--to see some likeness to
the dead man. But there was no likeness to be seen, for whereas
Gilverthwaite was a big and stalwart fellow, this was a small and spare
woman, whose rusty black clothes made her look thinner and more meagre
than she really was. All the same, when she spoke I knew there was a
likeness between them, for her speech was like his, different altogether
from ours of the Border.

"So you believe you're the sister of this man James Gilverthwaite,
ma'am?" began Mr. Lindsey, motioning the visitor to sit down, and
beckoning Maisie to stop with us. "What might your name be, now?"

"I believe this man that's talked about in the newspapers is my brother,
sir," answered the woman. "Else I shouldn't have taken the trouble to
come all this way. My name's Hanson--Mrs. Hanson. I come from Garston,
near Liverpool."

"Aye--just so--a Lancashire woman," said Mr. Lindsey, nodding. "Your
name would be Gilverthwaite, then, before you were married?"

"To be sure, sir--same as James's," she replied. "Him and me was the
only two there was. I've brought papers with me that'll prove what I
say. I went to a lawyer before ever I came, and he told me to come at
once, and to bring my marriage lines, and a copy of James's birth
certificate, and one or two other things of that sort. There's no doubt
that this man we've read about in the newspapers was my brother, and of
course I would like to put in my claim to what he's left--if he's left
it to nobody else."

"Just so," agreed Mr. Lindsey. "Aye--and how long is it since you last
saw your brother, now?"

The woman shook her head as if this question presented difficulties.

"I couldn't rightly say to a year or two, no, not even to a few years,"
she answered. "And to the best of my belief, sir, it'll be a good thirty
years, at the least. It was just after I was married to Hanson, and that
was when I was about three-and-twenty, and I was fifty-six last
birthday. James came--once--to see me and Hanson soon after we was
settled down, and I've never set eyes on him from that day to this.
But--I should know him now."

"He was buried yesterday," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "It's a pity you didn't
telegraph to some of us."

"The lawyer I went to, sir, said, 'Go yourself!'" replied Mrs. Hanson.
"So I set off--first thing this morning."

"Let me have a look at those papers," said Mr. Lindsey.

He motioned me to his side, and together we looked through two or three
documents which the woman produced.

The most important was a certified copy of James Gilverthwaite's birth
certificate, which went to prove that this man had been born in Liverpool
about sixty-two years previously; that, as Mr. Lindsey was quick to point
out, fitted in with what Gilverthwaite had told my mother and myself
about his age.

"Well," he said, turning to Mrs. Hanson, "you can answer some questions,
no doubt, about your brother, and about matters in relation to him. First
of all, do you know if any of your folks hailed from this part?"

"Not that I ever heard of, sir," she replied. "No, I'm sure they
wouldn't. They were all Lancashire folks, on both sides. I know all about
them as far back as my great-grandfather's and great-grandmother's."

"Do you know if your brother ever came to Berwick as a lad?" asked Mr.
Lindsey, with a glance at me.

"He might ha' done that, sir," said Mrs. Hanson. "He was a great,
masterful, strong lad, and he'd run off to sea by the time he was ten
years old--there'd been no doing aught with him for a couple of years
before that. I knew that when he was about twelve or thirteen he was on a
coasting steamer that used to go in and out of Sunderland and Newcastle,
and he might have put in here."

"To be sure," said Mr. Lindsey. "But what's more important is to get on
to his later history. You say you've never seen him for thirty years, or
more? But have you never heard of him?"

She nodded her head with decision at that question.

"Yes," she replied, "I have heard of him--just once. There was a man, a
neighbour of ours, came home from Central America, maybe five years ago,
and he told us he'd seen our James out there, and that he was working as
a sub-contractor, or something of that sort, on that Panama Canal there
was so much talk about in them days."

Mr. Lindsey and I looked at each other. Panama!--that was the password
which James Gilverthwaite had given me. So--here, at any rate, was
something, however little, that had the makings of a clue in it.

"Aye!" he said, "Panama, now? He was there? And that's the last you
ever heard?"

"That's the very last we ever heard, sir," she answered. "Till, of
course, we saw these pieces in the papers this last day or two."

Mr. Lindsey twisted round on her with a sharp look.

"Do you know aught of that man, John Phillips, whose name's in the papers
too?" he asked.

"No, sir, nothing!" she replied promptly. "Never heard tell of him!"

"And you've never heard of your brother's having been seen in Liverpool
of late?" he went on. "Never heard that he called to see any old friends
at all? For we know, as you have seen in the papers, Mrs. Hanson, that he
was certainly in Liverpool, and bought clothes and linen there, within
this last three months."

"He never came near me, sir," she said. "And I never heard word of his
being there from anybody."

There was a bit of a silence then, and at last the woman put the question
which, it was evident, she was anxious to have answered definitely.

"Do you think there's a will, mister?" she asked. "For, if not, the
lawyer I went to said what there was would come to me--and I could
do with it."

"We've seen nothing of any will," answered Mr. Lindsey. "And I should say
there is none, and on satisfactory proof of your being next-of-kin,
you'll get all he left. I've no doubt you're his sister, and I'll take
the responsibility of going through his effects with you. You'll be
stopping in the town a day or two? Maybe your mother, Hugh, can find Mrs.
Hanson a lodging?"

I answered that my mother would no doubt do what she could to look after
Mrs. Hanson; and presently the woman went away with Maisie, leaving her
papers with Mr. Lindsey. He turned to me when we were alone.

"Some folks would think that was a bit of help to me in solving the
mystery, Hugh," said he; "but hang me if I don't think it makes the whole
thing more mysterious than ever! And do you know, my lad, where, in my
opinion, the very beginning of it may have to be sought for?"

"I can't put a word to that, Mr. Lindsey," I answered. "Where, sir?"

"Panama!" he exclaimed, with a jerk of his head. "Panama! just that! It
began a long way off--Panama, as far as I see it. And what did begin, and
what was going on? The two men that knew, and could have told, are dead
as door-nails--and both buried, for that matter."

So, in spite of Mrs. Hanson's coming and her revelations as to some, at
any rate, of James Gilverthwaite's history, we were just as wise as ever
at the end of the first week after the murder of John Phillips. And it
was just the eighth night after my finding of the body that I got into
the hands of Abel Crone.

Abel Crone was a man that had come to Berwick about three years before
this, from heaven only knows where, and had set himself up in business as
a marine-store dealer, in a back street which ran down to the shore of
the Tweed. He was a little red-haired, pale-eyed rat of a man, with
ferrety eyes and a goatee beard, quiet and peaceable in his ways and
inoffensive enough, but a rare hand at gossiping about the beach and the
walls--you might find him at all odd hours either in these public places
or in the door of his shop, talking away with any idler like himself. And
how I came to get into talk with him on that particular night was here:
Tom Dunlop, Maisie's young brother, was for keeping tame rabbits just
then, and I was helping him to build hutches for the beasts in his
father's back-yard, and we were wanting some bits of stuff, iron and wire
and the like, and knowing I would pick it up for a few pence at Crone's
shop, I went round there alone. Before I knew how it came about, Crone
was deep into the murder business.

"They'll not have found much out by this time, yon police fellows, no
doubt, Mr. Moneylaws?" he said, eyeing me inquisitively in the light of
the one naphtha lamp that was spurting and jumping in his untidy shop.
"They're a slow unoriginal lot, the police--there's no imagination in
their brains and no ingenuity in their minds. What's wanted in an affair
like this is one of those geniuses you read about in the storybooks--the
men that can trace a murder from the way a man turns out his toes, or by
the fashion he's bitten into a bit of bread that he's left on his plate,
or the like of that--something more than by ordinary, you'll understand
me to mean, Mr. Moneylaws?"

"Maybe you'll be for taking a hand in this game yourself, Mr. Crone?"
said I, thinking to joke with him. "You seem to have the right instinct
for it, anyway."

"Aye, well," he answered, "and I might be doing as well as anybody else,
and no worse. You haven't thought of following anything up yourself, Mr.
Moneylaws, I suppose?"

"Me!" I exclaimed. "What should I be following up, man? I know no more
than the mere surface facts of the affair."

He gave a sharp glance at his open door when I thus answered him, and
the next instant he was close to me in the gloom and looking sharply
in my face.

"Are you so sure of that, now?" he whispered cunningly. "Come now, I'll
put a question to yourself, Mr. Moneylaws. What for did you not let on in
your evidence that you saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs at yon cross-roads just
before you found the dead man? Come!"

You could have knocked me down with a feather, as the saying is, when he
said that. And before I could recover from the surprise of it, he had a
hand on my arm.

"Come this way," he said. "I'll have a word with you in private."




CHAPTER X

THE OTHER WITNESS


It was with a thumping heart and nerves all a-tingle that I followed Abel
Crone out of his front shop into a sort of office that he had at the back
of it--a little, dirty hole of a place, in which there was a ramshackle
table, a chair or two, a stand-up desk, a cupboard, and a variety of odds
and ends that he had picked up in his trade. The man's sudden revelation
of knowledge had knocked all the confidence out of me. It had never
crossed my mind that any living soul had a notion of my secret--for
secret, of course, it was, and one that I would not have trusted to
Crone, of all men in the world, knowing him as I did to be such a one for
gossip. And he had let this challenge out on me so sharply, catching me
unawares that I was alone with him, and, as it were, at his mercy, before
I could pull my wits together. Everything in me was confused. I was
thinking several things all at a time. How did he come to know? Had I
been watched? Had some person followed me out of Berwick that night? Was
this part of the general mystery? And what was going to come of it, now
that Abel Crone was aware that I knew something which, up to then, I had
kept back?

I stood helplessly staring at him as he turned up the wick of an oil
lamp that stood on a mantelpiece littered with a mess of small things,
and he caught a sight of my face when there was more light, and as he
shut the door on us he laughed--laughed as if he knew that he had me in a
trap. And before he spoke again he went over to the cupboard and took out
a bottle and glasses.

"Will you taste?" he asked, leering at me. "A wee drop, now? It'll do
you good."

"No!" said I.

"Then I'll drink for the two of us," he responded, and poured out a
half-tumblerful of whisky, to which he added precious little water.
"Here's to you, my lad; and may you have grace to take advantage of
your chances!"

He winked over the rim of his glass as he took a big pull at its
contents, and there was something so villainous in the look of him that
it did me good in the way of steeling my nerves again. For I now saw
that here was an uncommonly bad man to deal with, and that I had best be
on my guard.

"Mr. Crone," said I, gazing straight at him, "what's this you have to
say to me?"

"Sit you down," he answered, pointing at a chair that was shoved under
one side of the little table. "Pull that out and sit you down. What we
shall have to say to each other'll not be said in five minutes. Let's
confer in the proper and comfortable fashion."

I did what he asked, and he took another chair himself and sat down
opposite me, propping his elbow on the table and leaning across it, so
that, the table being but narrow, his sharp eyes and questioning lips
were closer to mine than I cared for. And while he leaned forward in his
chair I sat back in mine, keeping as far from him as I could, and just
staring at him--perhaps as if I had been some trapped animal that
couldn't get itself away from the eyes of another that meant presently to
kill it. Once again I asked him what he wanted.

"You didn't answer my question," he said. "I'll put it again, and you
needn't be afraid that anybody'll overhear us in this place, it's safe! I
say once more, what for did you not tell in your evidence at that inquest
that you saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs at the cross-roads on the night of the
murder! Um?"

"That's my business!" said I

"Just so," said he. "And I'll agree with you in that. It is your
business. But if by that you mean that it's yours alone, and nobody
else's, then I don't agree. Neither would the police."

We stared at each other across the table for a minute of silence, and
then I put the question directly to him that I had been wanting to put
ever since he had first spoken. And I put it crudely enough.

"How did you know?" I asked.

He laughed at that--sneeringly, of course.

"Aye, that's plain enough," said he. "No fencing about that! How did I
know? Because when you saw Sir Gilbert I wasn't five feet away from you,
and what you saw, I saw. I saw you both!"

"You were there?" I exclaimed.

"Snug behind the hedge in front of which you planted yourself," he
answered. "And if you want to know what I was doing there, I'll tell you.
I was doing--or had been doing--a bit of poaching. And, as I say, what
you saw, I saw!"

"Then I'll ask you a question, Mr. Crone," I said. "Why haven't you told,
yourself?"

"Aye!" he said. "You may well ask me that. But I wasn't called as a
witness at yon inquest."

"You could have come forward," I suggested.

"I didn't choose," he retorted.

We both looked at each other again, and while we looked he swigged off
his drink and helped himself, just as generously, to more. And, as I was
getting bolder by that time, I set to work at questioning him.

"You'll be attaching some importance to what you saw?" said I.

"Well," he replied slowly, "it's not a pleasant thing--for a man's
safety--to be as near as what he was to a place where another man's just
been done to his death."

"You and I were near enough, anyway," I remarked.

"We know what we were there for," he flung back at me. "We don't know
what he was there for."

"Put your tongue to it, Mr. Crone," I said boldly. "The fact is, you
suspicion him?"

"I suspicion a good deal, maybe," he admitted. "After all, even a man of
that degree's only a man, when all's said and done, and there might be
reasons that you and me knows nothing about. Let me ask you a question,"
he went on, edging nearer at me across the table. "Have you mentioned it
to a soul?"

I made a mistake at that, but he was on me so sharp, and his manner was
so insistent, that I had the word out of my lips before I thought.

"No!" I replied. "I haven't."

"Nor me," he said. "Nor me. So--you and me are the only two folk
that know."

"Well?" I asked.

He took another pull at his liquor and for a moment or two sat silent,
tapping his finger-nails against the rim of the glass.

"It's a queer business, Moneylaws," he said at last. "Look at it anyway
you like, it's a queer business! Here's one man, yon lodger of your
mother's, comes into the town and goes round the neighbourhood reading
the old parish registers and asking questions at the parson's--aye,
and he was at it both sides of the Tweed--I've found that much out
for myself! For what purpose? Is there money at the back of
it--property--something of that sort, dependent on this Gilverthwaite
unearthing some facts or other out of those old books? And then comes
another man, a stranger, that's as mysterious in his movements as
Gilverthwaite was, and he's to meet Gilverthwaite at a certain lonely
spot, and at a very strange hour, and Gilverthwaite can't go, and he gets
you to go, and you find the man--murdered! And--close by--you've seen
this other man, who, between you and me--though it's no secret--is as
much a stranger to the neighbourhood as ever Gilverthwaite was or
Phillips was!"

"I don't follow you at that," I said.

"No?" said he. "Then I'll make it plainer to you. Do you know that until
yon Sir Gilbert Carstairs came here, not so long since, to take up his
title and his house and the estate, he'd never set foot in the place,
never been near the place, this thirty year? Man! his own father, old
Sir Alec, and his own sister, Mrs. Ralston of Craig, had never clapped
eyes on him since he went away from Hathercleugh a youngster of
one-and-twenty!"

"Do you tell me that, Mr. Crone?" I exclaimed, much surprised at his
words. "I didn't know so much. Where had he been, then?"

"God knows!" said he. "And himself. It was said he was a doctor in
London, and in foreign parts. Him and his brother--elder brother, you're
aware, Mr. Michael--they both quarrelled with the old baronet when they
were little more than lads, and out they cleared, going their own ways.
And news of Michael's death, and the proofs of it, came home not so long
before old Sir Alec died, and as Michael had never married, of course the
younger brother succeeded when his father came to his end last winter.
And, as I say, who knows anything about his past doings when he was away
more than thirty years, nor what company he kept, nor what secrets he
has? Do you follow me?"

"Aye, I'm following you, Mr. Crone," I answered. "It comes to this--you
suspect Sir Gilbert?"

"What I say," he answered, "is this: he may have had something to do
with the affair. You cannot tell. But you and me knows he was near the
place--coming from its direction--at the time the murder would be in the
doing. And--there is nobody knows but you--and me!"

"What are you going to do about it?" I asked.

He had another period of reflection before he replied, and when he spoke
it was to the accompaniment of a warning look.

"It's an ill-advised thing to talk about rich men," said he. "Yon man not
only has money of his own, in what you might call considerable quantity,
but his wife he brought with him is a woman of vast wealth, they tell me.
It would be no very wise action on your part to set rumours going,
Moneylaws, unless you could substantiate them."

"What about yourself?" I asked. "You know as much as I do."

"Aye, and there's one word that sums all up," said he. "And it's a short
one. Wait! There'll be more coming out. Keep your counsel a bit. And when
the moment comes, and if the moment comes--why, you know there's me
behind you to corroborate. And--that's all!"

He got up then, with a nod, as if to show that the interview was over,
and I was that glad to get away from him that I walked off without
another word.




CHAPTER XI

SIGNATURES TO THE WILL


I was so knocked out of the usual run of things by this conversation with
Crone that I went away forgetting the bits of stuff I had bought for Tom
Dunlop's rabbit-hutches and Tom himself, and, for that matter, Maisie as
well; and, instead of going back to Dunlop's, I turned down the
riverside, thinking. It was beyond me at that moment to get a clear
understanding of the new situation. I could not make out what Crone was
at. Clearly, he had strong suspicions that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had
something to do with, or some knowledge of, the murder of Phillips, and
he knew now that there were two of us to bear out each other's testimony
that Sir Gilbert was near the scene of the murder at the time it was
committed. Why, then, should he counsel waiting? Why should not the two
of us go to the police and tell what we knew? What was it that Crone
advised we should wait for? Was something going on, some inquiry being
made in the background of things, of which he knew and would not tell me?
And--this, I think, was what was chiefly in my thoughts--was Crone
playing some game of his own and designing to use me as a puppet in it?
For there was a general atmosphere of subtlety and slyness about the man
that forced itself upon me, young as I was; and the way he kept eyeing me
as we talked made me feel that I had to do with one that would be hard to
circumvent if it came to a matter of craftiness. And at last, after a lot
of thinking, as I walked about in the dusk, it struck me that Crone might
be for taking a hand in the game of which I had heard, but had never seen
played--blackmail.

The more I thought over that idea, the more I felt certain of it. His
hints about Sir Gilbert's money and his wealthy wife, his advice to wait
until we knew more, all seemed to point to this--that evidence might
come out which would but require our joint testimony, Crone's and mine,
to make it complete. If that were so, then, of course, Crone or I,
or--as he probably designed--the two of us, would be in a position to go
to Sir Gilbert Carstairs and tell him what we knew, and ask him how much
he would give us to hold our tongues. I saw all the theory of it at
last, clear enough, and it was just what I would have expected of Abel
Crone, knowing him even as little as I did. Wait until we were sure--and
then strike! That was his game. And I was not going to have anything to
do with it.

I went home to my bed resolved on that. I had heard of blackmailing, and
had a good notion of its wickedness--and of its danger--and I was not
taking shares with Crone in any venture of that sort. But there Crone
was, an actual, concrete fact that I had got to deal with, and to come to
some terms with, simply because he knew that I was in possession of
knowledge which, to be sure, I ought to have communicated to the police
at once. And I was awake much during the night, thinking matters over,
and by the time I rose in the morning I had come to a decision. I would
see Crone at once, and give him a sort of an ultimatum. Let him come,
there and then, with me to Mr. Murray, and let the two of us tell what we
knew and be done with it: if not, then I myself would go straight to Mr.
Lindsey and tell him.

I set out for the office earlier than usual that morning, and went round
by way of the back street at the bottom of which Crone's store stood
facing the river. I sometimes walked round that way of a morning, and I
knew that Crone was as a rule at his place very early, amongst his old
rubbish, or at his favourite game of gossiping with the fishermen that
had their boats drawn up there. But when I reached it, the shop was still
shut, and though I waited as long as I could, Crone did not come. I knew
where he lived, at the top end of the town, and I thought to meet him as
I walked up to Mr. Lindsey's; but I had seen nothing of him by the time I
reached our office door, so I laid the matter aside until noon, meaning
to get a word with him when I went home to my dinner. And though I could
have done so there and then, I determined not to say anything to Mr.
Lindsey until I had given Crone the chance of saying it with me--to him,
or to the police. I expected, of course, that Crone would fly into a rage
at my suggestion--if so, then I would tell him, straight out, that I
would just take my own way, and take it at once.

But before noon there was another development in this affair. In the
course of the morning Mr. Lindsey bade me go with him down to my
mother's house, where Mrs. Hanson had been lodged for the night--we
would go through Gilverthwaite's effects with her, he said, with a view
to doing what we could to put her in possession. It might--probably
would--be a lengthy and a difficult business that, he remarked, seeing
that there was so much that was dark about her brother's recent
movements; and as the woman was obviously poor, we had best be stirring
on her behalf. So down we went, and in my mother's front parlour, the
same that Gilverthwaite had taken as his sitting-room, Mr. Lindsey
opened the heavy box for the second time, in Mrs. Hanson's presence, and
I began to make a list of its contents. At the sight of the money it
contained, the woman began to tremble.

"Eh, mister!" she exclaimed, almost tearfully, "but that's a sight of
money to be lying there, doing naught! I hope there'll be some way of
bringing it to me and mine--we could do with it, I promise you!"

"We'll do our best, ma'am," said Mr. Lindsey. "As you're next of kin
there oughtn't to be much difficulty, and I'll hurry matters up for you
as quickly as possible. What I want this morning is for you to see all
there is in this chest; he seems to have had no other belongings than
this and his clothes--here at Mrs. Moneylaws', at any rate. And as you
see, beyond the money, there's little else in the chest but cigars, and
box after box of curiosities that he's evidently picked up in his
travels--coins, shells, ornaments, all sorts of queer things--some of 'em
no doubt of value. But no papers--no letters--no documents of any sort."

A notion suddenly occurred to me.

"Mr. Lindsey," said I, "you never turned out the contents of any of
these smaller boxes the other night. There might be papers in one or
other of them."

"Good notion, Hugh, my lad!" he exclaimed. "True--there might. Here goes,
then--we'll look through them systematically."

In addition to the half-dozen boxes full of prime Havana cigars, which
lay at the top of the chest, there were quite a dozen of similar boxes,
emptied of cigars and literally packed full of the curiosities of which
Mr. Lindsey had just spoken. He had turned out, and carefully replaced,
the contents of three or four of these, when, at the bottom of one,
filled with old coins, which, he said, were Mexican and Peruvian, and
probably of great interest to collectors, he came across a paper, folded
and endorsed in bold letters. And he let out an exclamation as he took
this paper out and pointed us to the endorsement.

"Do you see that?" said he. "It's the man's will!"

The endorsement was plain enough--My will: _James Gilverthwaite_. And
beneath it was a date, 27-8-1904.

There was a dead silence amongst the four of us--my mother had been with
us all the time--as Mr. Lindsey unfolded the paper--a thick, half-sheet
of foolscap, and read what was written on it.

"This is the last will and testament of me, James Gilverthwaite, a
British subject, born at Liverpool, and formerly of Garston, in
Lancashire, England, now residing temporarily at Colon, in the Republic
of Panama. I devise and bequeath all my estate and effects, real and
personal, which I may be possessed of or entitled to, unto my sister,
Sarah Ellen Hanson, the wife of Matthew Hanson, of 37 Preston Street,
Garston, Lancashire, England, absolutely, and failing her to any children
she may have had by her marriage with Matthew Hanson, in equal shares.
And I appoint the said Sarah Ellen Hanson, or in the case of her death,
her eldest child, the executor of this my will; and I revoke all former
wills. Dated this twenty-seventh day of August, 1904. _James
Gilverthwaite_. Signed by the testator in the presence of us--"

Mr. Lindsey suddenly broke off. And I, looking at him, saw his eyes screw
themselves up with sheer wonder at something he saw. Without another word
he folded up the paper, put it in his pocket, and turning to Mrs. Hanson,
clapped her on the shoulder.

"That's all right, ma'am!" he said heartily. "That's a good will, duly
signed and attested, and there'll be no difficulty about getting it
admitted to probate; leave it to me, and I'll see to it, and get it
through for you as soon as ever I can. And we must do what's possible to
find out if this brother of yours has left any other property; and
meanwhile we'll just lock everything up again that we've taken out of
this chest."

It was close on my dinner hour when we had finished, but Mr. Lindsey, at
his going, motioned me out into the street with him. In a quiet corner,
he turned to me and pulled the will from his pocket.

"Hugh!" he said. "Do you know who's one of the witnesses to this will?
Aye, who are the two witnesses? Man!--you could have knocked me down with
a feather when I saw the names! Look for yourself!"

He handed me the paper and pointed to the attestation clause with which
it ended. And I saw the two names at once--John Phillips, Michael
Carstairs--and I let out a cry of astonishment.

"Aye, you may well exclaim!" said he, taking the will back. "John
Phillips!--that's the man was murdered the other night! Michael
Carstairs--that's the elder brother of Sir Gilbert yonder at
Hathercleugh, the man that would have succeeded to the title and estates
if he hadn't predeceased old Sir Alexander. What would he be doing now, a
friend of Gilverthwaite's?"

"I've heard that this Mr. Michael Carstairs went abroad as a young man,
Mr. Lindsey, and never came home again," I remarked. "Likely he
foregathered with Gilverthwaite out yonder."

"Just that," he agreed. "That would be the way of it, no doubt. To be
sure! He's set down in this attestation clause as Michael Carstairs,
engineer, American Quarter, Colon; and John Phillips is described as
sub-contractor, of the same address. The three of 'em'll have been
working in connection with the Panama Canal. But--God bless us!--there's
some queer facts coming out, my lad! Michael Carstairs knows
Gilverthwaite and Phillips in yon corner of the world--Phillips and
Gilverthwaite, when Michael Carstairs is dead, come home to the corner of
the world that Michael Carstairs sprang from. And Phillips is murdered as
soon as he gets here--and Gilverthwaite dies that suddenly that he can't
tell us a word of what it's all about! What is it all about--and who's
going to piece it all together? Man!--there's more than murder at the
bottom of all this!"

It's a wonder that I didn't let out everything that I knew at that
minute. And it may have been on the tip of my tongue, but just then he
gave me a push towards our door.

"I heard your mother say your dinner was waiting you," he said. "Go in,
now; we'll talk more this afternoon."

He strode off up the street, and I turned back and made haste with my
dinner. I wanted to drop in at Crone's before I went again to the office:
what had just happened, had made me resolved that Crone and I should
speak out; and if he wouldn't, then I would. And presently I was hurrying
away to his place, and as I turned into the back lane that led to it I
ran up against Sergeant Chisholm.

"Here's another fine to-do, Mr. Moneylaws!" said he. "You'll know yon
Abel Crone, the marine-store dealer? Aye, well, he's been found drowned,
not an hour ago, and by this and that, there's queer marks, that looks
like violence, on him!"




CHAPTER XII

THE SALMON GAFF


I gave such a jump on hearing this that Chisholm himself started, and
he stared at me with a question in his eyes. But I was quick enough to
let him know that he was giving me news that I hadn't heard until he
opened his lips.

"You don't tell me that!" I exclaimed. "What!--more of it?"

"Aye!" he said. "You'll be thinking that this is all of a piece with the
other affair. And to be sure, they found Crone's body close by where you
found yon other man--Phillips."

"Where, then?" I asked. "And when?"

"I tell you, not an hour ago," he replied. "The news just came in. I was
going down here to see if any of the neighbours at the shop saw Crone in
any strange company last night."

I hesitated for a second or two, and then spoke out.

"I saw him myself last night," said I. "I went to his shop--maybe it was
nine o'clock--to buy some bits of stuff to make Tom Dunlop a door to his
rabbit-hutch, and I was there talking to him ten minutes or so. He was
all right then--and I saw nobody else with him."

"Aye, well, he never went home to his house last night," observed
Chisholm. "I called in there on my way down--he lived, you know, in a
cottage by the police-station, and I dropped in and asked the woman that
keeps house for him had she seen him this morning, and she said he never
came home last night at all. And no wonder--as things are!"

"But you were saying where it happened," I said.

"Where he was found?" said he. "Well, and it was where Till runs into
Tweed--leastways, a bit up the Till. Do you know John McIlwraith's
lad--yon youngster that they've had such a bother with about the
school--always running away to his play, and stopping out at nights, and
the like--there was the question of sending him to a reformatory, you'll
remember? Aye, well, it turns out the young waster was out last night in
those woods below Twizel, and early this morning--though he didn't let on
at it till some time after--he saw the body of a man lying in one of them
deep pools in Till. And when he himself was caught by Turndale, who was
on the look out for him, he told of what he'd seen, and Turndale and some
other men went there, and they found--Crone!"

"You were saying there were marks of violence," said I.

"I haven't seen them myself," he answered. "But by Turndale's account--it
was him brought in the news--there is queer marks on the body. Like as
if--as near as Turndale could describe it--as if the man had been struck
down before he was drowned. Bruises, you understand."

"Where is he?" I asked.

"He's where they took Phillips," replied Chisholm. "Dod!--that's two of
'em that's been taken there within--aye, nearly within the week!"

"What are you going to do, now?" I inquired.

"I was just going, as I said, to ask a question or two down here--did
anybody hear Crone say anything last night about going out that way?" he
answered. "But, there, I don't see the good of it. Between you and me,
Crone was a bit of a night-bird--I've suspected him of poaching, time and
again. Well, he'll do no more of that! You'll be on your way to the
office, likely?"

"Straight there," said I. "I'll tell Mr. Lindsey of this."

But when I reached the office, Mr. Lindsey, who had been out to get his
lunch, knew all about it. He was standing outside the door, talking to
Mr. Murray, and as I went up the superintendent turned away to the police
station, and Mr. Lindsey took a step or two towards me.

"Have you heard this about that man Crone?" he asked.

"I've heard just now," I answered. "Chisholm told me."

He looked at me, and I at him; there were questions in the eyes of both
of us. But between parting from the police-sergeant and meeting Mr.
Lindsey, I had made up my mind, by a bit of sharp thinking and
reflection, on what my own plan of action was going to be about all this,
once and for all, and I spoke before he could ask anything.

"Chisholm," said I, "was down that way, wondering could he hear word of
Crone's being seen with anybody last night. I saw Crone last night. I
went to his shop, buying some bits of old stuff. He was all right then--I
saw nothing. Chisholm--he says Crone was a poacher. That would account,
likely, for his being out there."

"Aye!" said Mr. Lindsey. "But--they say there's marks of violence on the
body. And--the long and short of it is, my lad!" he went on, first
interrupting himself, and then giving me an odd look; "the long and short
of it is, it's a queer thing that Crone should have come by his death
close to the spot where you found yon man Phillips! There may be nothing
but coincidence in it--but there's no denying it's a queer thing. Go and
order a conveyance, and we'll drive out yonder."

In pursuance of the determination I had come to, I said no more about
Crone to Mr. Lindsey. I had made up my mind on a certain course, and
until it was taken I could not let out a word of what was by that time
nobody's secret but mine to him, nor to any one--not even to Maisie
Dunlop, to whom, purposely, I had not as yet said anything about my
seeing Sir Gilbert Carstairs on the night of Phillips's murder. And all
the way out to the inn there was silence between Mr. Lindsey and me, and
the event of the morning, about Gilverthwaite's will, and the odd
circumstance of its attestation by Michael Carstairs, was not once
mentioned. We kept silence, indeed, until we were in the place to which
they had carried Crone's dead body. Mr. Murray and Sergeant Chisholm had
got there before us, and with them was a doctor--the same that had been
fetched to Phillips--and they were all talking together quietly when we
went in. The superintendent came up to Mr. Lindsey.

"According to what the doctor here says," he whispered, jerking his head
at the body, which lay on a table with a sheet thrown over it, "there's a
question as to whether the man met his death by drowning. Look here!"

He led us up to the table, drew back the sheet from the head and face,
and motioning the doctor to come up, pointed to a mark that was just
between the left temple and the top of the ear, where the hair was
wearing thin.

"D'ye see that, now?" he murmured. "You'll notice there's some sort of a
weapon penetrated there--penetrated! But the doctor can say more than I
can on that point."

"The man was struck--felled--by some sort of a weapon," said the doctor.
"It's penetrated, I should say from mere superficial examination, to the
brain. You'll observe there's a bruise outwardly--aye, but this has been
a sharp weapon as well, something with a point, and there's the
puncture--how far it may extend I can't tell yet. But on the surface of
things, Mr. Lindsey, I should incline to the opinion that the poor
fellow was dead, or dying, when he was thrown into yon pool. Anyway,
after a blow like that, he'd be unconscious. But I'm thinking he was dead
before the water closed on him."

Mr. Lindsey looked closer at the mark, and at the hole in the
centre of it.

"Has it struck any of you how that could be caused?" he asked suddenly.
"It hasn't? Then I'll suggest something to you. There's an implement in
pretty constant use hereabouts that would do just that--a salmon gaff!"

The two police officials started--the doctor nodded his head.

"Aye, and that's a sensible remark," said he. "A salmon gaff would just
do it." He turned to Chisholm with a sharp look. "You were saying this
man was suspected of poaching?" he asked. "Likely it'll have been some
poaching affair he was after last night--him and others. And they may
have quarrelled and come to blows--and there you are!"

"Were there any signs of an affray close by--or near, on the bank?" asked
Mr. Lindsey.

"We're going down there now ourselves to have a look round," answered Mr.
Murray. "But according to Turndale, the body was lying in a deep pool in
the Till, under the trees on the bank--it might have lain there for many
a month if it hadn't been for yon young McIlwraith that has a turn for
prying into dark and out-of-the-way corners. Well, here's more matter for
the coroner."

Mr. Lindsey and I went back to Berwick after that. And, once more, he
said little on the journey, except that it would be well if it came out
that this was but a poaching affair in which Crone had got across with
some companion of his; and for the rest of the afternoon he made no
further remark to me about the matter, nor about the discovery of the
morning. But as I was leaving the office at night, he gave me a word.

"Say nothing about that will, to anybody," said he. "I'll think that
matter over to-night, and see what'll come of my thinking. It's as I said
before, Hugh--to get at the bottom of all this, we'll have to go
back--maybe a far way."

I said nothing and went home. For now I had work of my own--I was going
to what I had resolved on after Chisholm told me the news about Crone. I
would not tell my secret to Mr. Lindsey, nor to the police, nor even to
Maisie. I would go straight and tell it to the one man whom it
concerned--Sir Gilbert Carstairs. I would speak plainly to him, and be
done with it. And as soon as I had eaten my supper, I mounted my bicycle,
and, as the dusk was coming on, rode off to Hathercleugh House.




CHAPTER XIII

SIR GILBERT CARSTAIRS


It was probably with a notion of justifying my present course of
procedure to myself that during that ride I went over the reasons which
had kept my tongue quiet up to that time, and now led me to go to Sir
Gilbert Carstairs. Why I had not told the police nor Mr. Lindsey of what
I had seen, I have already explained--my own natural caution and reserve
made me afraid of saying anything that might cast suspicion on an
innocent man; and also I wanted to await developments. I was not
concerned much with that feature of the matter. But I had undergone some
qualms because I had not told Maisie Dunlop, for ever since the time at
which she and I had come to a serious and sober understanding, it had
been a settled thing between us that we would never have any secrets from
each other. Why, then, had I not told her of this? That took a lot of
explaining afterwards, when things so turned out that it would have been
the best thing ever I did in my life if I only had confided in her; but
this explanation was, after all, to my credit--I did not tell Maisie
because I knew that, taking all the circumstances into consideration, she
would fill herself with doubts and fears for me, and would for ever be
living in an atmosphere of dread lest I, like Phillips, should be found
with a knife-thrust in me. So much for that--it was in Maisie's own
interest. And why, after keeping silence to everybody, did I decide to
break it to Sir Gilbert Carstairs? There, Andrew Dunlop came in--of
course, unawares to himself. For in those lecturings that he was so fond
of giving us young folk, there was a moral precept of his kept cropping
up which he seemed to set great store by--"If you've anything against a
man, or reason to mistrust him," he would say, "don't keep it to
yourself, or hint it to other people behind his back, but go straight to
him and tell him to his face, and have it out with him." He was a wise
man, Andrew Dunlop, as all his acquaintance knew, and I felt that I could
do no better than take a lesson from him in this matter. So I would go
straight to Sir Gilbert Carstairs, and tell him what was in my mind--let
the consequences be what they might.

It was well after sunset, and the gloaming was over the hills and the
river, when I turned into the grounds of Hathercleugh and looked round me
at a place which, though I had lived close to it ever since I was born, I
had never set foot in before. The house stood on a plateau of ground high
above Tweed, with a deep shawl of wood behind it and a fringe of
plantations on either side; house and pleasure-grounds were enclosed by a
high ivied wall on all sides--you could see little of either until you
were within the gates. It looked, in that evening light, a romantic and
picturesque old spot and one in which you might well expect to see
ghosts, or fairies, or the like. The house itself was something between
an eighteenth-century mansion and an old Border fortress; its centre part
was very high in the roof, and had turrets, with outer stairs to them, at
the corners; the parapets were embattled, and in the turrets were
arrow-slits. But romantic as the place was, there was nothing gloomy
about it, and as I passed to the front, between the grey walls and a sunk
balustered garden that lay at the foot of a terrace, I heard through the
open windows of one brilliantly lighted room the click of billiard balls
and the sound of men's light-hearted laughter, and through another the
notes of a piano.

There was a grand butler man met me at the hall door, and looked sourly
at me as I leaned my bicycle against one of the pillars and made up to
him. He was sourer still when I asked to see his master, and he shook his
head at me, looking me up and down as if I were some undesirable.

"You can't see Sir Gilbert at this time of the evening," said he. "What
do you want?"

"Will you tell Sir Gilbert that Mr. Moneylaws, clerk to Mr. Lindsey,
solicitor, wishes to see him on important business?" I answered, looking
him hard in the face. "I think he'll be quick to see me when you give him
that message."

He stared and growled at me a second or two before he went off with an
ill grace, leaving me on the steps. But, as I had expected, he was back
almost at once, and beckoning me to enter and follow him. And follow him
I did, past more flunkeys who stared at me as if I had come to steal the
silver, and through soft-carpeted passages, to a room into which he led
me with small politeness.

"You're to sit down and wait," he said gruffly. "Sir Gilbert will attend
to you presently."

He closed the door on me, and I sat down and looked around. I was in a
small room that was filled with books from floor to ceiling--big books
and little, in fine leather bindings, and the gilt of their letterings
and labels shining in the rays of a tall lamp that stood on a big desk in
the centre. It was a fine room that, with everything luxurious in the way
of furnishing and appointments; you could have sunk your feet in the
warmth of the carpets and rugs, and there were things in it for comfort
and convenience that I had never heard tell of. I had never been in a
rich man's house before, and the grandeur of it, and the idea that it
gave one of wealth, made me feel that there's a vast gulf fixed between
them that have and them that have not. And in the middle of these
philosophies the door suddenly opened, and in walked Sir Gilbert
Carstairs, and I stood up and made my politest bow to him. He nodded
affably enough, and he laughed as he nodded.

"Oh!" said he. "Mr. Moneylaws! I've seen you before--at that inquest the
other day, I think. Didn't I?"

"That is so, Sir Gilbert," I answered. "I was there, with Mr. Lindsey."

"Why, of course, and you gave evidence," he said. "I remember. Well, and
what did you want to see me about, Mr. Moneylaws? Will you smoke a
cigar?" he went on, picking up a box from the table and holding it out to
me. "Help yourself."

"Thank you, Sir Gilbert," I answered, "but I haven't started that yet."

"Well, then, I will," he laughed, and he picked out a cigar, lighted it,
and flinging himself into an easy chair, motioned me to take another
exactly opposite to him. "Now, then, fire away!" he said. "Nobody'll
interrupt us, and my time's yours. You've some message for me?"

I took a good look at him before I spoke. He was a big, fine, handsome
man, some five-and-fifty years of age, I should have said, but uncommonly
well preserved--a clean-shaven, powerful-faced man, with quick eyes and a
very alert glance; maybe, if there was anything struck me particularly
about him, it was the rapidity and watchfulness of his glances, the
determination in his square jaw, and the extraordinary strength and
whiteness of his teeth. He was quick at smiling, and quick, too, in the
use of his hands, which were always moving as he spoke, as if to
emphasize whatever he said. And he made a very fine and elegant figure as
he sat there in his grand evening clothes, and I was puzzled to know
which struck me most--the fact that he was what he was, the seventh
baronet and head of an old family, or the familiar, easy, good-natured
fashion which he treated me, and talked to me, as if I had been a man of
his own rank.

I had determined what to do as I sat waiting him; and now that he had
bidden me to speak, I told him the whole story from start to finish,
beginning with Gilverthwaite and ending with Crone, and sparing no detail
or explanation of my own conduct. He listened in silence, and with more
intentness and watchfulness than I had ever seen a man show in my life,
and now and then he nodded and sometimes smiled; and when I had made an
end he put a sharp question.

"So--beyond Crone--who, I hear, is dead--you've never told a living soul
of this?" he asked, eyeing me closely.

"Not one, Sir Gilbert," I assured him. "Not even--"

"Not even--who?" he inquired quickly.

"Not even my own sweetheart," I said. "And it's the first secret ever I
kept from her."

He smiled at that, and gave me a quick look as if he were trying to get a
fuller idea of me.

"Well," he said, "and you did right. Not that I should care two pins, Mr.
Moneylaws, if you'd told all this out at the inquest. But suspicion is
easily aroused, and it spreads--aye, like wildfire! And I'm a stranger,
as it were, in this country, so far, and there's people might think
things that I wouldn't have them think, and--in short, I'm much obliged
to you. And I'll tell you frankly, as you've been frank with me, how I
came to be at those cross-roads at that particular time and on that
particular night. It's a simple explanation, and could be easily
corroborated, if need be. I suffer from a disturbing form of
insomnia--sleeplessness--it's a custom of mine to go long walks late at
night. Since I came here, I've been out that way almost every night, as
my servants could assure you. I walk, as a rule, from nine o'clock to
twelve--to induce sleep. And on that night I'd been miles and miles out
towards Yetholm, and back; and when you saw me with my map and electric
torch, I was looking for the nearest turn home--I'm not too well
acquainted with the Border yet," he concluded, with a flash of his white
teeth, "and I have to carry a map with me. And--that's how it was; and
that's all."

I rose out of my chair at that. He spoke so readily and ingenuously that
I had no more doubt of the truth of what he was saying than I had of my
own existence.

"Then it's all for me, too, Sir Gilbert," said I. "I shan't say a word
more of the matter to anybody. It's--as if it never existed. I was
thinking all the time there'd be an explanation of it. So I'll be bidding
you good-night."

"Sit you down again a minute," said he, pointing to the easy-chair. "No
need for hurry. You're a clerk to Mr. Lindsey, the solicitor?"

"I am that," I answered.

"Are you articled to him?" he asked.

"No," said I. "I'm an ordinary clerk--of seven years' standing."

"Plenty of experience of office work and routine?" he inquired.

"Aye!" I replied. "No end of that, Sir Gilbert!"

"Are you good at figures and accounts?" he asked.

"I've kept all Mr. Lindsey's--and a good many trust accounts--for the
last five years," I answered, wondering what all this was about.

"In fact, you're thoroughly well up in all clerical matters?" he
suggested. "Keeping books, writing letters, all that sort of thing?"

"I can honestly say I'm a past master in everything of that sort,"
I affirmed.

He gave me a quick glance, as if he were sizing me up altogether.

"Well, I'll tell you what, Mr. Moneylaws," he said. "The fact is, I'm
wanting a sort of steward, and it strikes me that you're just the man I'm
looking for!"




CHAPTER XIV

DEAD MAN'S MONEY


I was so much amazed by this extraordinary suggestion, that for the
moment I could only stand staring at him, and before I could find my
tongue he threw a quick question at me.

"Lindsey wouldn't stand in your way, would he?" he asked. "Such jobs
don't go begging, you know."

"Mr. Lindsey wouldn't stand in my way, Sir Gilbert," I answered. "But--"

"But what?" said he, seeing me hesitate. "Is it a post you wouldn't care
about, then? There's five hundred a year with it--and a permanency."

Strange as it may seem, considering all the circumstances, it never
occurred to me for one moment that the man was buying my silence, buying
me. There wasn't the ghost of such a thought in my head--I let out what
was there in my next words.

"I'd like such a post fine, Sir Gilbert," I said. "What I'm thinking
of--could I give satisfaction?"

He laughed at that, as if my answer amused him.

"Well, there's nothing like a spice of modesty, Moneylaws," said he. "If
you can do all we've just talked of, you'll satisfy me well enough. I
like the looks of you, and I'm sure you're the sort that'll do the thing
thoroughly. The post's at your disposal, if you like to take it."

I was still struggling with my amazement. Five hundred pounds a
year!--and a permanency! It seemed a fortune to a lad of my age. And I
was trying to find the right words in which to say all that I felt, when
he spoke again.

"Look here!" he said. "Don't let us arrange this as if we'd done it
behind your present employer's back--I wouldn't like Mr. Lindsey to think
I'd gone behind him to get you. Let it be done this way: I'll call on Mr.
Lindsey myself, and tell him I'm wanting a steward for the property, and
that I've heard good reports of his clerk, and that I'll engage you on
his recommendation. He's the sort that would give you a strong word by
way of reference, eh?"

"Oh, he'll do that, Sir Gilbert!" I exclaimed. "Anything that'll
help me on--"

"Then let's leave it at that," said he. "I'll drop in on him at his
office--perhaps to-morrow. In the meantime, keep your own counsel.
But--you'll take my offer?"

"I'd be proud and glad to, Sir Gilbert," said I. "And if you'll make
allowance for a bit of inexperience--"

"You'll do your best, eh?" he laughed. "That's all right, Moneylaws."

He walked out with me to the door, and on to the terrace. And as I
wheeled my bicycle away from the porch, he took a step or two alongside
me, his hands in his pockets, his lips humming a careless tune. And
suddenly he turned on me.

"Have you heard any more about that affair last night?" he asked. "I mean
about Crone?"

"Nothing, Sir Gilbert," I answered.

"I hear that the opinion is that the man was struck down by a gaff," he
remarked. "And perhaps killed before he was thrown into the Till."

"So the doctor seemed to think," I said. "And the police, too, I
believe."

"Aye, well," said he, "I don't know if the police are aware of it, but
I'm very sure there's night-poaching of salmon going on hereabouts,
Moneylaws. I've fancied it for some time, and I've had thoughts of
talking to the police about it. But you see, my land doesn't touch either
Till or Tweed, so I haven't cared to interfere. But I'm sure that it is
so, and it wouldn't surprise me if both these men, Crone and Phillips,
met their deaths at the hands of the gang I'm thinking of. It's a notion
that's worth following up, anyway, and I'll have a word with Murray about
it when I'm in the town tomorrow."

Then, with a brief good night, he left me and went into the house, and I
got outside Hathercleugh and rode home in a whirl of thoughts. And I'll
confess readily that those thoughts had little to do with what Sir
Gilbert Carstairs had last talked about--they were not so much of
Phillips, nor of Crone, nor of his suggestion of a possible gang of
night-poachers, as about myself and this sudden chance of a great change
in my fortunes. For, when all is said and done, we must needs look after
ourselves, and when a young man of the age I was then arrived at is asked
if he would like to exchange a clerkship of a hundred and twenty a year
for a stewardship at more than four times as much--as a permanency--you
must agree that his mind will fix itself on what such an exchange means
to him, to the exclusion of all other affairs. Five hundred a year to me
meant all sorts of fine things--independence, and a house of my own, and,
not least by a long way, marriage with Maisie Dunlop. And it was a wonder
that I managed to keep cool, and to hold my tongue when I got home--but
hold it I did, and to some purpose, and more than once. During the half
hour which I managed to get with Maisie last thing that night, she asked
me why I was so silent, and, hard though it was to keep from doing so, I
let nothing out.

The truth was, Sir Gilbert Carstairs had fascinated me, not only with his
grand offer, but with his pleasant, off-hand, companionable manners. He
had put me at my ease at once; he had spoken so frankly and with such
evident sincerity about his doings on that eventful night, that I
accepted every word he said. And--in the little that I had thought of
it--I was very ready to accept his theory as to how those two men had
come by their deaths--and it was one that was certainly feasible, and
worth following up. Some years before, I remembered, something of the
same sort had gone on, and had resulted in an affray between
salmon-poachers and river-watchers--why should it not have cropped up
again? The more I thought of it, the more I felt Sir Gilbert's
suggestion to have reason in it. And in that case all the mystery would
be knocked clean out of these affairs--the murder of Phillips, the death
of Crone, might prove to be the outcome of some vulgar encounter between
them and desperadoes who had subsequently scuttled to safety and were
doubtless quaking near at hand, in fear of their misdeeds coming to
light; what appeared to be a perfect tangle might be the simplest matter
in the world. So I judged--and next morning there came news that seemed
to indicate that matters were going to be explained on the lines which
Sir Gilbert had suggested.

Chisholm brought that news to our office, just after Mr. Lindsey had come
in. He told it to both of us; and from his manner of telling it, we both
saw--I, perhaps, not so clearly as Mr. Lindsey--that the police were
already at their favourite trick of going for what seemed to them the
obvious line of pursuit.

"I'm thinking we've got on the right clue at last, as regards the murder
of yon man Phillips," announced Chisholm, with an air of satisfaction.
"And if it is the right clue, as it seems to be, Mr. Lindsey, there'll be
no great mystery in the matter, after all. Just a plain case of murder
for the sake of robbery--that's it!"

"What's your clue?" asked Mr. Lindsey quietly.

"Well," answered Chisholm, with a sort of sly wink, "you'll understand,
Mr. Lindsey, that we haven't been doing nothing these last few days,
since yon inquest on Phillips, you know. As a matter of fact, we've
been making inquiries wherever there seemed a chance of finding
anything out. And we've found something out--through one of the banks
yonder at Peebles."

He looked at us as if to see if we were impressed; seeing, at any rate,
that we were deeply interested, he went on.

"It appears--I'll tell you the story in order, as it were," he said--"it
appears that about eight months ago the agent of the British Linen Bank
at Peebles got a letter from one John Phillips, written from a place
called Colon, in Panama--that's Central America, as you'll be
aware--enclosing a draft for three thousand pounds on the International
Banking Corporation of New York. The letter instructed the Peebles agent
to collect this sum and to place it in his bank to the writer's credit.
Furthermore, it stated that the money was to be there until Phillips came
home to Scotland, in a few months' time from the date of writing. This,
of course, was all done in due course--there was the three thousand
pounds in Phillips's name. There was a bit of correspondence between him
at Colon and the bank at Peebles--then, at last, he wrote that he was
leaving Panama for Scotland, and would call on the bank soon after his
arrival. And on the morning of the day on which he was murdered, Phillips
did call at the bank and established his identity, and so on, and he then
drew out five hundred pounds of his money--two hundred pounds in gold,
and the rest in small notes; and, Mr. Lindsey, he carried that sum away
with him in a little handbag that he had with him."

Mr. Lindsey, who had been listening with great attention, nodded.

"Aye!" he said. "Carried five hundred pounds away with him. Go on, then."

"Now," continued Chisholm, evidently very well satisfied with himself for
the way he was marshalling his facts, "we--that is, to put it plainly, I
myself--have been making more searching inquiries about Cornhill and
Coldstream. There's two of the men at Cornhill station will swear that
when Phillips got out of the train there, that evening of the murder, he
was carrying a little handbag such as the bank cashier remembers--a
small, new, brown leather bag. They're certain of it--the
ticket-collector remembers him putting it under his arm while he searched
his pocket for his ticket. And what's more, the landlord of the inn
across the bridge there at Coldstream he remembers the bag, clearly
enough, and that Phillips never had his hand off it while he was in his
house. And of course, Mr. Lindsey, the probability is that in that bag
was the money--just as he had drawn it out of the bank."

"You've more to tell," remarked Mr. Lindsey.

"Just so," replied Chisholm. "And there's two items. First of all--we've
found that bag! Empty, you may be sure. In the woods near that old ruin
on Till side. Thrown away under a lot of stuff--dead stuff, you'll
understand, where it might have lain till Doomsday if I hadn't had a
most particular search made. But--that's not all. The second item is
here--the railway folk at Cornhill are unanimous in declaring that by
that same train which brought Phillips there, two men, strangers, that
looked like tourist gentlemen, came as well, whose tickets were
from--where d'ye think, then, Mr. Lindsey?"

"Peebles, of course," answered Mr. Lindsey.

"And you've guessed right!" exclaimed Chisholm, triumphantly; "Peebles it
was--and now, how do you think this affair looks? There's so many
tourists on Tweedside this time of the year that nobody paid any great
attention that night to these men, nor where they went. But what could be
plainer, d'ye think?--of course, those two had tracked Phillips from the
bank, and they followed him till they had him in yon place where he was
found, and they murdered him--to rob him!"




CHAPTER XV

FIVE HUNDRED A YEAR


It was very evident that Chisholm was in a state of gleeful assurance
about his theory, and I don't think he was very well pleased when Mr.
Lindsey, instead of enthusiastically acclaiming it as a promising one,
began to ask him questions.

"You found a pretty considerable sum on Phillips as it was when you
searched his body, didn't you?" he asked.

"Aye--a good lot!" assented Chisholm. "But it was in a pocket-book in an
inner pocket of his coat, and in his purse."

"If it was robbery, why didn't they take everything?" inquired Mr.
Lindsey.

"Aye, I knew you'd ask that," replied Chisholm. "But the thing is that
they were interrupted. The bag they could carry off--but it's probable
that they heard Mr. Moneylaws here coming down the lane before they could
search the man's pockets."

"Umph!" said Mr. Lindsey. "And how do you account for two men getting
away from the neighbourhood without attracting attention?"

"Easy enough," declared Chisholm. "As I said just now, there's numbers of
strangers comes about Tweedside at this time of the year, and who'd
think anything of seeing them? What was easier than for these two to
separate, to keep close during the rest of the night, and to get away by
train from some wayside station or other next morning? They could manage
it easily--and we're making inquiries at all the stations in the district
on both sides the Tweed, with that idea."

"Well--you'll have a lot of people to follow up, then," remarked Mr.
Lindsey drily. "If you're going to follow every tourist that got on a
train next morning between Berwick and Wooler, and Berwick and Kelso, and
Berwick and Burnmouth, and Berwick and Blyth, you'll have your work set,
I'm thinking!"

"All the same," said Chisholm doggedly, "that's how it's been. And the
bank at Peebles has the numbers of the notes that Phillips carried off in
his little bag--and I'll trace those fellows yet, Mr. Lindsey."

"Good luck to you, sergeant!" answered Mr. Lindsey. He turned to me when
Chisholm had gone. "That's the police all over, Hugh," he remarked. "And
you might talk till you were black in the face to yon man, and he'd stick
to his story."

"You don't believe it, then?" I asked him, somewhat surprised.

"He may be right," he replied. "I'm not saying. Let him attend to his
business--and now we'll be seeing to ours."

It was a busy day with us in the office that, being the day before court
day, and we had no time to talk of anything but our own affairs. But
during the afternoon, at a time when I had left the office for an hour
or two on business, Sir Gilbert Carstairs called, and he was closeted
with Mr. Lindsey when I returned. And after they had been together some
time Mr. Lindsey came out to me and beckoned me into a little
waiting-room that we had and shut the door on us, and I saw at once from
the expression on his face that he had no idea that Sir Gilbert and I
had met the night before, or that I had any notion of what he was going
to say to me.

"Hugh, my lad!" said he, clapping me on the shoulder; "you're evidently
one of those that are born lucky. What's the old saying--'Some achieve
greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them!'--eh? Here's
greatness--in a degree--thrusting itself on you!"

"What's this you're talking about, Mr. Lindsey?" I asked. "There's not
much greatness about me, I'm thinking!"

"Well, it's not what you're thinking in this case," he answered; "it's
what other folks are thinking of you. Here's Sir Gilbert Carstairs in my
room yonder. He's wanting a steward--somebody that can keep accounts, and
letters, and look after the estate, and he's been looking round for a
likely man, and he's heard that Lindsey's clerk, Hugh Moneylaws, is just
the sort he wants--and, in short, the job's yours, if you like to take
it. And, my lad, it's worth five hundred a year--and a permanency, too! A
fine chance for a young fellow of your age!"

"Do you advise me to take it, Mr. Lindsey?" I asked, endeavouring to
combine surprise with a proper respect for the value of his counsel.
"It's a serious job that for, as you say, a young fellow."

"Not if he's got your headpiece on him," he replied, giving me another
clap on the shoulder. "I do advise you to take it. I've given you the
strongest recommendations to him. Go into my office now and talk it over
with Sir Gilbert by yourself. But when it comes to settling details, call
me in--I'll see you're done right to."

I thanked him warmly, and went into his room, where Sir Gilbert was
sitting in an easy-chair. He motioned me to shut the door, and, once that
was done, he gave a quick, inquiring look.

"You didn't let him know that you and I had talked last night?" he
asked at once.

"No," said I.

"That's right--and I didn't either," he went on. "I don't want him to
know I spoke to you before speaking to him--it would look as if I were
trying to get his clerk away from him. Well, it's settled, then,
Moneylaws? You'll take the post?"

"I shall be very glad to, Sir Gilbert," said I. "And I'll serve you to
the best of my ability, if you'll have a bit of patience with me at the
beginning. There'll be some difference between my present job and this
you're giving me, but I'm a quick learner, and--"

"Oh, that's all right, man!" he interrupted carelessly. "You'll do all
that I want. I hate accounts, and letter-writing, and all that sort
of thing--take all that off my hands, and you'll do. Of course,
whenever you're in a fix about anything, come to me--but I can explain
all there is to do in an hour's talk with you at the beginning. All
right!--ask Mr. Lindsey to step in to me, and we'll put the matter on
a business footing."

Mr. Lindsey came in and took over the job of settling matters on my
behalf. And the affair was quickly arranged. I was to stay with Mr.
Lindsey another month, so as to give him the opportunity of getting a new
head clerk, then I was to enter on my new duties at Hathercleugh. I was
to have five hundred pounds a year salary, with six months' notice on
either side; at the end of five years, if I was still in the situation,
the terms were to be revised with a view to an increase--and all this was
to be duly set down in black and white. These propositions, of course,
were Mr. Lindsey's, and Sir Gilbert assented to all of them readily and
promptly. He appeared to be the sort of man who is inclined to accept
anything put before him rather than have a lot of talk about it. And
presently, remarking that that was all right, and he'd leave Mr. Lindsey
to see to it, he rose to go, but at the door paused and came back.

"I'm thinking of dropping in at the police-station and telling Murray my
ideas about that Crone affair," he remarked. "It's my opinion, Mr.
Lindsey, that there's salmon-poaching going on hereabouts, and if my land
adjoined either Tweed or Till I'd have spoken about it before. There are
queer characters about along both rivers at nights--I know, because I go
out a good deal, very late, walking, to try and cure myself of insomnia;
and I know what I've seen. It's my impression that Crone was probably
mixed up with some gang, and that his death arose out of an affray
between them."

"That's probable," answered Mr. Lindsey. "There was trouble of that sort
some years ago, but I haven't heard of it lately. Certainly, it would be
a good thing to start the idea in Murray's mind; he might follow it up
and find something out."

"That other business--the Phillips murder--might have sprung out of the
same cause," suggested Sir Gilbert. "If those chaps caught a stranger in
a lonely place--"

"The police have a theory already about Phillips," remarked Mr. Lindsey.
"They think he was followed from Peebles, and murdered for the sake of
money that he was carrying in a bag he had with him. And my experience,"
he added with a laugh, "is that if the police once get a theory of their
own, it's no use suggesting any other to them--they'll ride theirs,
either till it drops or they get home with it."

Sir Gilbert nodded his head, as if he agreed with that, and he suddenly
gave Mr. Lindsey an inquiring look.

"What's your own opinion?" he asked.

But Mr. Lindsey was not to be drawn. He laughed and shrugged his
shoulders, as if to indicate that the affair was none of his.

"I wouldn't say that I have an opinion, Sir Gilbert," he answered.
"It's much too soon to form one, and I haven't the details, and I'm not
a detective. But all these matters are very simple--when you get to the
bottom of them. The police think this is going to be a very simple
affair--mere vulgar murder for the sake of mere vulgar robbery. We
shall see!"

Then Sir Gilbert went away, and Mr. Lindsey looked at me, who stood a
little apart, and he saw that I was thinking.

"Well, my lad," he said; "a bit dazed by your new opening? It's a fine
chance for you, too! Now, I suppose, you'll be wanting to get married. Is
it that you're thinking about?"

"Well, I was not, Mr. Lindsey," said I. "I was just wondering--if you
must know--how it was that, as he was here, you didn't tell Sir
Gilbert about that signature of his brother's that you found on
Gilverthwaite's will."

He shared a sharp look between me and the door--but the door was
safely shut.

"No!" he said. "Neither to him nor to anybody, yet a while! And don't
you mention that, my lad. Keep it dark till I give the word. I'll
find out about that in my own way. You understand--on that point,
absolute silence."

I replied that, of course, I would not say a word; and presently I
went into the office to resume my duties. But I had not been long at
that before the door opened, and Chisholm put his face within and
looked at me.

"I'm wanting you, Mr. Moneylaws," he said. "You said you were with
Crone, buying something, that night before his body was found. You'd be
paying him money--and he might be giving you change. Did you happen to
see his purse, now?"

"Aye!" answered I. "What for do you ask that?"

"Because," said he, "we've taken a fellow at one of those riverside
publics that's been drinking heavily, and, of course, spending money
freely. And he has a queer-looking purse on him, and one or two men
that's seen it vows and declares it was Abel Crone's."




CHAPTER XVI

THE MAN IN THE CELL


Before I could reply to Chisholm's inquiry, Mr. Lindsey put his head out
of his door and seeing the police-sergeant there asked what he was after.
And when Chisholm had repeated his inquiry, both looked at me.

"I did see Crone's purse that night," I answered, "an old thing that he
kept tied up with a boot-lace. And he'd a lot of money in it, too."

"Come round, then, and see if you can identify this that we found on the
man," requested Chisholm. "And," he added, turning to Mr. Lindsey,
"there's another thing. The man's sober enough, now that we've got
him--it's given him a bit of a pull-together, being arrested. And he's
demanding a lawyer. Perhaps you'll come to him, Mr. Lindsey."

"Who is he?" asked Mr. Lindsey. "A Berwick man?"

"He isn't," replied Chisholm. "He's a stranger--a fellow that says he was
seeking work, and had been stopping at a common lodging-house in the
town. He vows and declares that he'd nothing to do with killing Crone,
and he's shouting for a lawyer."

Mr. Lindsey put on his hat, and he and I went off with Chisholm to the
police-station. And as we got in sight of it, we became aware that there
was a fine to-do in the street before its door. The news of the arrest
had spread quickly, and folk had come running to get more particulars.
And amongst the women and children and loafers that were crowding around
was Crone's housekeeper, a great, heavy, rough-haired Irishwoman called
Nance Maguire, and she was waving her big arms and shaking her fists at a
couple of policemen, whom she was adjuring to bring out the murderer, so
that she might do justice on him then and there--all this being mingled
with encomiums on the victim.

"The best man that ever lived!" she was screaming at the top of her
voice. "The best and kindest creature ever set foot in your murdering
town! And didn't I know he was to be done to death by some of ye? Didn't
he tell me himself that there was one would give his two eyes to be
seeing his corpse? And if ye've laid hands on him that did it, bring him
out to me, so, and I'll--"

Mr. Lindsey laid a quiet hand on the woman's arm and twisted her round in
the direction of her cottage.

"Hold your wisht, good wife, and go home!" he whispered to her. "And if
you know anything, keep your tongue still till I come to see you. Be
away, now, and leave it to me."

I don't know how it was, but Nance Maguire, after a sharp look at Mr.
Lindsey, turned away as meekly as a lamb, and went off, tearful enough,
but quiet, down the street, followed by half the rabble, while Mr.
Lindsey, Chisholm, and myself turned into the police-station. And there
we met Mr. Murray, who wagged his head at us as if he were very well
satisfied with something.

"Not much doubt about this last affair, anyhow," said he, as he took us
into his office. "You might say the man was caught red-handed! All the
same, Mr. Lindsey, he's in his rights to ask for a lawyer, and you can
see him whenever you like."

"What are the facts?" asked Mr. Lindsey. "Let me know that much first."

Mr. Murray jerked his thumb at Chisholm.

"The sergeant there knows them," he answered. "He took the man."

"It was this way, d'ye see, Mr. Lindsey," said Chisholm, who was becoming
an adept at putting statements before people. "You know that bit of a
public there is along the river yonder, outside the wall--the Cod and
Lobster? Well, James Macfarlane, that keeps it, he came to me, maybe an
hour or so ago, and said there was a fellow, a stranger, had been in and
out there all day since morning, drinking; and though he wouldn't say the
man was what you'd rightly call drunk, still he'd had a skinful, and he
was in there again, and they wouldn't serve him, and he was getting
quarrelsome and abusive, and in the middle of it had pulled out a purse
that another man who was in there vowed and declared, aside, to
Macfarlane, was Abel Crone's. So I got a couple of constables and went
back with Macfarlane, and there was the man vowing he'd be served, and
with a handful of money to prove that he could pay for whatever he
called for. And as he began to turn ugly, and show fight, we just clapped
the bracelets on him and brought him along, and there he is in the
cells--and, of course, it's sobered him down, and he's demanding his
rights to see a lawyer."

"Who is he?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"A stranger to the town," replied Chisholm. "And he'll neither give name
nor address but to a lawyer, he declares. But we know he was staying at
one of the common lodging-houses--Watson's--three nights ago, and that
the last two nights he wasn't in there at all."

"Well--where's that purse?" demanded Mr. Lindsey. "Mr. Moneylaws here
says he can identify it, if it's Crone's."

Chisholm opened a drawer and took out what I at once knew to be Abel
Crone's purse--which was in reality a sort of old pocket-book or wallet,
of some sort of skin, with a good deal of the original hair left on it,
and tied about with a bit of old bootlace. There were both gold and
silver in it--just as I had seen when Crone pulled it out to find me some
change for a five-shilling piece I had given him--and more by token,
there was the five-shilling piece itself!

"That's Crone's purse!" I exclaimed. "I've no doubt about that. And
that's a crown piece I gave him myself; I've no doubt about that either!"

"Let us see the man," said Mr. Lindsey.

Chisholm led us down a corridor to the cells, and unlocked a door. He
stepped within the cell behind it, motioning us to follow. And there, on
the one stool which the place contained, sat a big, hulking fellow that
looked like a navvy, whose rough clothes bore evidence of his having
slept out in them, and whose boots were stained with the mud and clay
which they would be likely to collect along the riverside. He was sitting
nursing his head in his hands, growling to himself, and he looked up at
us as I have seen wild beasts look out through the bars of cages. And
somehow, there was that in the man's eyes which made me think, there and
then, that he was not reflecting on any murder that he had done, but was
sullenly and stupidly angry with himself.

"Now, then, here's a lawyer for you," said Chisholm. "Mr. Lindsey,
solicitor."

"Well, my man!" began Mr. Lindsey, taking a careful look at this queer
client. "What have you got to say to me?"

The prisoner gave Chisholm a disapproving look.

"Not going to say a word before the likes of him!" he growled. "I know my
rights, guv'nor! What I say, I'll say private to you."

"Better leave us, sergeant," said Mr. Lindsey. He waited till Chisholm, a
bit unwilling, had left the cell and closed the door, and then he turned
to the man. "Now, then," he continued, "you know what they charge you
with? You've been drinking hard--are you sober enough to talk sense? Very
well, then--what's this you want me for?"

"To defend me, of course!" growled the prisoner. He twisted a hand round
to the back of his trousers as if to find something. "I've money of my
own--a bit put away in a belt," he said; "I'll pay you."

"Never mind that now," answered Mr. Lindsey. "Who are you?--and what do
you want to say?"

"Name of John Carter," replied the man. "General labourer--navvy
work--anything of that sort. On tramp--seeking a job. Came here, going
north, night before last. And--no more to do with the murder of yon man
than you have!"

"They found his purse on you, anyway," remarked Mr. Lindsey bluntly.
"What have you got to say to that?"

"What I say is that I'm a damned fool!" answered Carter surlily. "It's
all against me, I know, but I'll tell you--you can tell lawyers anything.
Who's that young fellow?" he demanded suddenly, glaring at me. "I'm not
going to talk before no detectives."

"My clerk," replied Mr. Lindsey. "Now, then--tell your tale. And just
remember what a dangerous position you're in."

"Know that as well as you do," muttered the prisoner. "But I'm sober
enough, now! It's this way--I stopped here in the town three nights
since, and looked about for a job next day, and then I heard of something
likely up the river and went after it and didn't get it, so I started
back here--late at night it was. And after crossing that bridge at a
place called Twizel, I turned down to the river-bank, thinking to take a
short cut. And--it was well after dark, then, mind you, guv'nor--in
coming along through the woods, just before where the little river runs
into the big one, I come across this man's body--stumbled on it. That's
the truth!"

"Well!" said Mr. Lindsey.

"He was lying--I could show you the place, easy--between the edge of the
wood and the river-bank," continued Carter. "And though he was dead
enough when I found him, guv'nor, he hadn't been dead so long. But dead
he was--and not from aught of my doing."

"What time was this?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"It would be past eleven o'clock," replied Carter. "It was ten when I
called by Cornhill station. I went the way I did--down through the woods
to the river-bank--because I'd noticed a hut there in the morning that I
could sleep in--I was making for that when I found the body."

"Well--about the purse?" demanded Mr. Lindsey shortly. "No lies, now!"

The prisoner shook his head at that, and growled--but it was evident he
was growling at himself.

"That's right enough," he confessed. "I felt in his pockets, and I did
take the purse. But--I didn't put him in the water. True as I'm here,
guv'nor. I did no more than take the purse! I left him there--just as he
was--and the next day I got drinking, and last night I stopped in that
hut again, and today I was drinking, pretty heavy--and I sort of lost my
head and pulled the purse out, and--that's the truth, anyway, whether you
believe it or not. But I didn't kill yon man, though I'll admit I robbed
his body--like the fool I am!"

"Well, you see where it's landed you," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "All
right--hold your tongue now, and I'll see what I can do. I'll appear for
you when you come before the magistrate tomorrow."

He tapped at the door of the cell, and Chisholm, who had evidently waited
in the corridor, let us out. Mr. Lindsey said nothing to him, nor to the
superintendent--he led me away into the street. And there he clapped me
on the arm.

"I believe every word that man said!" he murmured. "Come on, now--we'll
see this Nance Maguire."




CHAPTER XVII

THE IRISH HOUSEKEEPER


I was a good deal surprised that Mr. Lindsey should be--apparently--so
anxious to interview Crone's housekeeper, and I said as much. He turned
on me sharply, with a knowing look.

"Didn't you hear what the woman was saying when we came across her there
outside the police-station?" he exclaimed. "She was saying that Crone had
said to her that there was some man who would give his two eyes to be
seeing his corpse! Crone's been telling her something. And I'm so
convinced that that man in the cells yonder has told us the truth, as
regards himself, that I'm going to find out what Crone did tell her. Who
is there--who could there be that wanted to see Crone's dead body? Let's
try to find that out."

I made no answer--but I was beginning to think; and to wonder, too, in a
vague, not very pleasant fashion. Was this--was Crone's death, murder,
whatever it was--at all connected with the previous affair of Phillips?
Had Crone told me the truth that night I went to buy the stuff for Tom
Dunlop's rabbit-hutches? or had he kept something back? And while I was
reflecting on these points, Mr. Lindsey began talking again.

"I watched that man closely when he was giving me his account of what
happened," he said, "and, as I said just now, I believe he told us the
truth. Whoever it was that did Crone to death, he's not in that cell,
Hugh, my lad; and, unless I'm much mistaken, all this is of a piece with
Phillips's murder. But let's hear what this Irishwoman has to say."

Crone's cottage was a mean, miserable shanty sort of place down a narrow
alley in a poor part of the town. When we reached its door there was a
group of women and children round it, all agog with excitement. But the
door itself was closed, and it was not opened to us until Nance Maguire's
face had appeared at the bit of a window, and Nance had assured herself
of the identity of her visitors. And when she had let us in, she shut the
door once more and slipped a bolt into its socket.

"I an't said a word, your honour," said she, "since your honour told me
not to, though them outside is sharp on me to tell 'em this and that. And
I wouldn't have said what I did up yonder had I known your honour would
be for supporting me. I was feeling there wasn't a soul in the place
would see justice done for him that's gone--the poor, good man!"

"If you want justice, my good woman," remarked Mr. Lindsey, "keep your
tongue quiet, and don't talk to your neighbours, nor to the police--just
keep anything you know till I tell you to let it out. Now, then, what's
this you were saying?--that Crone told you there was a man in the place
would give his two eyes to see him a corpse?"

"Them very words, your honour; and not once nor twice, but a good many
times did he say it," replied the woman. "It was a sort of hint he was
giving me, your honour--he had that way of speaking."

"Since when did he give you such hints?" asked Mr. Lindsey. "Was it
only lately?"

"It was since that other bloody murder, your honour," said Nance Maguire.
"Only since then. He would talk of it as we sat over the fire there at
nights. 'There's murder in the air,' says he. 'Bloody murder is all
around us!' he says. 'And it's myself will have to pick my steps
careful,' he says, 'for there's him about would give his two eyes to see
me a stark and staring corpse,' he says. 'Me knowing,' he says, 'more
than you'd give me credit for,' says he. And not another word than them
could I get out of him, your honour."

"He never told you who the man was that he had his fears of?" inquired
Mr. Lindsey.

"He did not, then, your honour," replied Nance. "He was a close man, and
you wouldn't be getting more out of him than he liked to tell."

"Now, then, just tell me the truth about a thing or two," said Mr.
Lindsey. "Crone used to be out at nights now and then, didn't he?"

"Indeed, then, he did so, your honour," she answered readily. "'Tis true,
he would be out at nights, now and again."

"Poaching, as a matter of fact," suggested Mr. Lindsey.

"And that's the truth, your honour," she assented. "He was a clever hand
with the rabbits."

"Aye; but did he never bring home a salmon, now?" asked Mr. Lindsey.
"Come, out with it."

"I'll not deny that, neither, your honour," admitted the woman. "He was
clever at that too."

"Well, now, about that night when he was supposed to be killed,"
continued Mr. Lindsey; "that's Tuesday last--this being Thursday. Did he
ever come home that evening from his shop?"

I had been listening silently all this time, and I listened with
redoubled attention for the woman's answer to the last question. It was
on the Tuesday evening, about nine o'clock, that I had had my talk with
Crone, and I was anxious to know what happened after that. And Nance
Maguire replied readily enough--it was evident her memory was clear on
these events.

"He did not, then," she said. "He was in here having his tea at six
o'clock that evening, and he went away to the shop when he'd had it, and
I never put my eyes on him again, alive, your honour. He was never home
that night, and he didn't come to his breakfast next morning, and he
wasn't at the shop--and I never heard this or that of him till they come
and tell me the bad news."

I knew then what must have happened. After I had left him, Crone had gone
away up the river towards Tillmouth--he had a crazy old bicycle that he
rode about on. And most people, having heard Nance Maguire's admissions,
would have said that he had gone poaching. But I was not so sure of that.
I was beginning to suspect that Crone had played some game with me, and
had not told me anything like the truth during our conversation. There
had been more within his knowledge than he had let out--but what was it?
And I could not help feeling that his object in setting off in that
direction, immediately after I had left him, might have been, not
poaching, but somebody to whom he wished to communicate the result of his
talk with me. And, in that case, who was the somebody?

But just then I had to leave my own thoughts and speculations alone, and
to attend to what was going on between my principal and Nance Maguire.
Mr. Lindsey, however, appeared to be satisfied with what he had heard. He
gave the woman some further advice about keeping her tongue still, told
her what to do as regards Crone's effects, and left the cottage. And when
we were out in the main street again on our way back to the office he
turned to me with a look of decision.

"I've come to a definite theory about this affair, Hugh," he said. "And
I'll lay a fiver to a farthing that it's the right one!"

"Yes, Mr. Lindsey?" said I, keenly interested at hearing that.

"Crone knew who killed Phillips," he said. "And the man who killed
Phillips killed Crone, too, because Crone knew! That's been the way of
it, my lad! And now, then, who's the man?"

I could make no reply to such a question, and presently he went
on--talking as much to himself, I think, as to me.

"I wish I knew certain things!" he muttered. "I wish I knew what Phillips
and Gilverthwaite came here for. I wish I knew if Gilverthwaite ever had
any secret dealings with Crone. I wish--I do wish!--I knew if there has
been--if there is--a third man in this Phillips-Gilverthwaite affair who
has managed, and is managing, to keep himself in the background.
But--I'll stake my professional reputation on one thing--whoever killed
Phillips, killed Abel Crone! It's all of a piece."

Now, of course I know now--have known for many a year--that it was at
this exact juncture that I made a fatal, a reprehensible mistake in my
share of all this business. It was there, at that exact point, that I
ought to have made a clean breast to Mr. Lindsey of everything that I
knew. I ought to have told him, there and then, of what I had seen at the
cross-roads that night of the murder of Phillips; and of my conversation
about that with Abel Crone at his shop; and of my visit to Sir Gilbert
Carstairs at Hathercleugh House. Had I done so, matters would have become
simplified, and much more horror and trouble avoided, for Mr. Lindsey was
just then at the beginning of a straight track and my silence turned him
away from it, to get into more twisted and obscure ones. But--I said
nothing. And why? The answer is simple, and there's the excuse of human
nature in it--I was so much filled with the grand prospects of my
stewardship, and of all it would bring me, and was so highly pleased with
Sir Gilbert Carstairs for his advancement of my fortunes, that--here's
the plain truth--I could not bring myself to think of, or bother with,
anything else. Up to then, of course, I had not said a word to my mother
or to Maisie Dunlop of the stewardship--I was impatient to tell both. So
I held my peace and said nothing to Mr. Lindsey--and presently the office
work for the day was over and I was free to race home with my grand news.
Is it likely that with such news as that I would be troubling my head any
longer about other folks' lives and deaths?

That, I suppose, was the most important evening I had ever spent in my
life. To begin with, I felt as if I had suddenly become older, and
bigger, and much more important. I became inclined to adopt magisterial
airs to my mother and my sweetheart, laying down the law to them as to
the future in a fashion which made Maisie poke fun at me for a crowing
cockerel. It was only natural that I should suffer a little from swelled
head that night--I should not have been human otherwise. But Andrew
Dunlop took the conceit out of me with a vengeance when Maisie and I told
him the news, and I explained everything to him in his back-parlour. He
was at times a man of many words, and at times a man of few words--and
when he said little, he meant most.

"Aye!" said he. "Well, that's a fine prospect, Hugh, my man, and I wish
you well in it. But there'll be no talk of any wedding for two years--so
get that notion out of your heads, both of you! In two years you'll just
have got settled to your new job, and you'll be finding out how you suit
your master and how he suits you--we'll get the preliminaries over, and
see how things promise in that time. And we'll see, too, how much money
you've saved out of your salary, my man--so you'll just not hear the
wedding-bells calling for a couple of twelvemonths, and'll behave
yourselves like good children in the meanwhile. There's a deal of things
may happen in two years, I'm thinking."

He might have added that a deal of things may happen in two weeks--and,
indeed, he would have had good reason for adding it, could he have looked
a few days ahead.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE ICE AX


The police put Carter in the dock before a full bench of magistrates next
morning, and the court was so crowded that it was all Mr. Lindsey and I
could do to force our way to the solicitors' table. Several minor cases
came on before Carter was brought up from the cells, and during this
hearing I had leisure to look round the court and see who was there. And
almost at once I saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs, who, though not yet a justice
of the peace--his commission to that honourable office arrived a few days
later, oddly enough,--had been given a seat on the bench, in company with
one or two other local dignitaries, one of whom, I observed with some
curiosity, was that Reverend Mr. Ridley who had given evidence at the
inquest on Phillips. All these folk, it was easy to see, were in a high
state of inquisitiveness about Crone's murder; and from certain whispers
that I overheard, I gathered that the chief cause of this interest lay in
a generally accepted opinion that it was, as Mr. Lindsey had declared to
me more than once, all of a piece with the crime of the previous week.
And it was very easy to observe that they were not so curious to see
Carter as to hear what might be alleged against him.

There appeared to be some general surprise when Mr. Lindsey quietly
announced that he was there on behalf of the prisoner. You would have
thought from the demeanour of the police that, in their opinion, there
was nothing for the bench to do but hear a bit of evidence and commit
Carter straight away to the Assizes to take his trial for wilful murder.
What evidence they did bring forward was, of course, plain and
straightforward enough. Crone had been found lying in a deep pool in the
River Till; but the medical testimony showed that he had met his fate by
a blow from some sharp instrument, the point of which had penetrated the
skull and the frontal part of the brain in such a fashion as to cause
instantaneous death. The man in the dock had been apprehended with
Crone's purse in his possession--therefore, said the police, he had
murdered and robbed Crone. As I say, Mr. Murray and all of them--as you
could see--were quite of the opinion that this was sufficient; and I am
pretty sure that the magistrates were of the same way of thinking. And
the police were not over well pleased, and the rest of the folk in court
were, to say the least, a little mystified, when Mr. Lindsey asked a few
questions of two witnesses--of whom Chisholm was one, and the doctor who
had been fetched to Crone's body the other. And before setting down what
questions they were that Mr. Lindsey asked, I will remark here that there
was a certain something, a sort of mysterious hinting in his manner of
asking them, that suggested a lot more than the mere questions
themselves, and made people begin to whisper amongst each other that
Lawyer Lindsey knew things that he was not just then minded to let out.

It was to Chisholm that he put his first questions--casually, as if they
were very ordinary ones, and yet with an atmosphere of meaning behind
them that excited curiosity.

"You made a very exhaustive search of the neighbourhood of the spot where
Crone's body was found, didn't you?" he inquired.

"A thorough search," answered Chisholm.

"You found the exact spot where the man had been struck down?"

"Judging by the marks of blood--yes."

"On the river-bank--between the river and a coppice, wasn't it?"

"Just so--between the bank and the coppice."

"How far had the body been dragged before it was thrown into the river?"

"Ten yards," replied Chisholm promptly.

"Did you notice any footprints?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"It would be difficult to trace any," explained Chisholm. "The grass is
very thick in some places, and where it isn't thick it's that close and
wiry in texture that a boot wouldn't make any impression."

"One more question," said Mr. Lindsey, leaning forward and looking
Chisholm full in the face. "When you charged the man there in the dock
with the murder of Abel Crone, didn't he at once--instantly!--show the
greatest surprise? Come, now, on your oath--yes or no?"

"Yes!" admitted Chisholm; "he did."

"But he just as readily admitted he was in possession of Crone's purse?
Again--yes or no?"

"Yes," said Chisholm. "Yes--that's so."

That was all Mr. Lindsey asked Chisholm. It was not much more that he
asked the doctor. But there was more excitement about what he did ask
him--arising out of something that he did in asking it.

"There's been talk, doctor, as to what the precise weapon was which
caused the fatal injury to this man Crone," he said. "It's been suggested
that the wound which occasioned his death might have been--and probably
was--caused by a blow from a salmon gaff. What is your opinion?"

"It might have been," said the doctor cautiously.

"It was certainly caused by a pointed weapon--some sort of a spiked
weapon?" suggested Mr. Lindsey.

"A sharp, pointed weapon, most certainly," affirmed the doctor.

"There are other things than a salmon gaff that, in your opinion, could
have caused it?"

"Oh, of course!" said the doctor.

Mr. Lindsey paused a moment, and looked round the court as if he were
thinking over his next question. Then he suddenly plunged his hand under
the table at which he was standing, and amidst a dead silence drew out a
long, narrow brown-paper parcel which I had seen him bring to the office
that morning. Quietly, while the silence grew deeper and the interest
stronger, he produced from this an object such as I had never seen
before--an implement or weapon about three feet in length, its shaft made
of some tough but evidently elastic wood, furnished at one end with a
strong iron ferrule, and at the other with a steel head, one extremity of
which was shaped like a carpenter's adze, while the other tapered off to
a fine point. He balanced this across his open palms for a moment, so
that the court might see it--then he passed it over to the witness-box.

"Now, doctor," he said, "look at that--which is one of the latest forms
of the ice-ax. Could that wound have been caused by that--or something
very similar to it?"

The witness put a forefinger on the sharp point of the head.

"Certainly!" he answered. "It is much more likely to have been caused by
such an implement as this than by a salmon gaff."

Mr. Lindsey reached out his hand for the ice-ax, and, repossessing
himself of it, passed it and its brown-paper wrapping to me.

"Thank you, doctor," he said; "that's all I wanted to know." He turned to
the bench. "I wish to ask your worships, if it is your intention, on the
evidence you have heard, to commit the prisoner on the capital charge
today?" he asked. "If it is, I shall oppose such a course. What I do ask,
knowing what I do, is that you should adjourn this case for a week--when
I shall have some evidence to put before you which, I think, will prove
that this man did not kill Abel Crone."

There was some discussion. I paid little attention to it, being
considerably amazed at the sudden turn which things had taken, and
astonished altogether by Mr. Lindsey's production of the ice-ax. But the
discussion ended in Mr. Lindsey having his own way, and Carter was
remanded in custody, to be brought up again a week later; and presently
we were all out in the streets, in groups, everybody talking excitedly
about what had just taken place, and speculating on what it was that
Lawyer Lindsey was after. Mr. Lindsey himself, however, was more
imperturbable and, if anything, cooler than usual. He tapped me on the
arm as we went out of court, and at the same time took the parcel
containing the ice-ax from me.

"Hugh," he said; "there's nothing more to do today, and I'm going out of
town at once, until tomorrow. You can lock up the office now, and you
and the other two can take a holiday. I'm going straight home and then
to the station."

He turned hurriedly away in the direction of his house, and I went off to
the office to carry out his instructions. There was nothing strange in
his giving us a holiday--it was a thing he often did in summer, on fine
days when we had nothing much to do, and this was a gloriously fine day
and the proceedings in court had been so short that it was not yet noon.
So I packed off the two junior clerks and the office lad, and locked up,
and went away myself--and in the street outside I met Sir Gilbert
Carstairs. He was coming along in our direction, evidently deep in
thought, and he started a little as he looked up and saw me.

"Hullo, Moneylaws!" he said in his off-hand fashion. "I was just wanting
to see you. I say!" he went on, laying a hand on my arm, "you're dead
certain that you've never mentioned to a soul but myself anything about
that affair of yours and Crone's--you know what I mean?"

"Absolutely certain, Sir Gilbert!" I answered. "There's no living being
knows--but yourself."

"That's all right," he said, and I could see he was relieved. "I don't
want mixing up with these matters--I should very much dislike it. What's
Lindsey trying to get at in his defence of this man Carter?"

"I can't think," I replied. "Unless it is that he's now inclining to the
theory of the police that Phillips was murdered by some man or men who
followed him from Peebles, and that the same man or men murdered Crone. I
think that must be it: there were some men--tourists--about, who haven't
been found yet."

He hesitated a moment, and then glanced at our office door.

"Lindsey in?" he asked.

"No, Sir Gilbert," I replied. "He's gone out of town and given us
a holiday."

"Oh!" he said, looking at me with a sudden smile. "You've got a holiday,
have you, Moneylaws? Look here--I'm going for a run in my bit of a
yacht--come with me! How soon can you be ready?"

"As soon as I've taken my dinner, Sir Gilbert," I answered, pleased
enough at the invitation. "Would an hour do?"

"You needn't bother about your dinner," he said. "I'm having a lunch
basket packed now at the hotel, and I'll step in and tell them to put in
enough for two. Go and get a good thick coat, and meet me down at the
front in half an hour."

I ran off home, told my mother where I was going, and hurried away to the
river-side. The Tweed was like a mirror flashing back the sunlight that
day, and out beyond its mouth the open sea was bright and blue as the sky
above. How could I foresee that out there, in those far-off dancing
waters, there was that awaiting me of which I can only think now, when it
is long past, with fear and horror?




CHAPTER XIX

MY TURN


I had known for some time that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had a small yacht
lying at one of the boathouses on the riverside; indeed, I had seen her
before ever I saw him. She was a trim, graceful thing, with all the
appearance of an excellent sea-boat, and though she looked like a craft
that could stand a lot of heavy weather, she had the advantage of being
so light in draught--something under three feet--that it was possible for
her to enter the shallowest harbour. I had heard that Sir Gilbert was
constantly sailing her up and down the coast, and sometimes going well
out to sea in her. On these occasions he was usually accompanied by a
fisherlad whom he had picked up somehow or other: this lad, Wattie Mason,
was down by the yacht when I reached her, and he gave me a glowering look
when he found that I was to put his nose out for this time at any rate.
He hung around us until we got off, as a hungry dog hangs around a table
on the chance of a bone being thrown to him; but he got no recognition
from Sir Gilbert, who, though the lad had been useful enough to him
before, took no more notice of him that day than of one of the pebbles on
the beach. And if I had been more of a student of human nature, I should
have gained some idea of my future employer's character from that small
circumstance, and have seen that he had no feeling or consideration for
anybody unless it happened to be serving and suiting his purpose.

But at that moment I was thinking of nothing but the pleasure of taking a
cruise in the yacht, in the company of a man in whom I was naturally
interested. I was passionately fond of the sea, and had already learned
from the Berwick sea-going folk how to handle small craft, and the
management of a three-oar vessel like this was an easy matter to me, as I
soon let Sir Gilbert know. Once outside the river mouth, with a nice
light breeze blowing off the land, we set squaresail, mainsail, and
foresail and stood directly out to sea on as grand a day and under as
fair conditions as a yachtsman could desire; and when we were gaily
bowling along Sir Gilbert bade me unpack the basket which had been put
aboard from the hotel--it was a long time, he said, since his breakfast,
and we would eat and drink at the outset of things. If I had not been
hungry myself, the sight of the provisions in that basket would have made
me so--there was everything in there that a man could desire, from cold
salmon and cold chicken to solid roast beef, and there was plenty of
claret and whisky to wash it down with. And, considering how readily and
healthily Sir Gilbert Carstairs ate and drank, and how he talked and
laughed while we lunched side by side under that glorious sky, gliding
away over a smooth, innocent-looking sea, I have often wondered since if
what was to come before nightfall came of deliberate intention on his
part, or from a sudden yielding to temptation when the chance of it
arose--and for the life of me I cannot decide! But if the man had murder
in his heart, while he sat there at my side, eating his good food and
drinking his fine liquor, and sharing both with me and pressing me to
help myself to his generous provision--if it was so, I say, then he was
of an indescribable cruelty which it makes me cringe to think of, and I
would prefer to believe that the impulse to bring about my death came
from a sudden temptation springing from a sudden chance. And yet--God
knows it is a difficult problem to settle!

For this was what it came to, and before sunset was reddening the western
skies behind the Cheviots. We went a long, long way out--far beyond the
thirty-fathom line, which is, as all sailors acquainted with those waters
know, a good seven miles from shore; indeed, as I afterwards reckoned, we
were more than twice that distance from Berwick pier-end when the affair
happened--perhaps still further. We had been tacking about all the
afternoon, first south, then north, not with any particular purpose, but
aimlessly. We scarcely set eyes on another sail, and at a little after
seven o'clock in the evening, when there was some talk of going about and
catching the wind, which had changed a good deal since noon and was now
coming more from the southeast, we were in the midst of a great waste of
sea in which I could not make out a sign of any craft but ours--not even
a trail of smoke on the horizon. The flat of the land had long since
disappeared: the upper slopes of the Cheviots on one side of Tweed and
of the Lammermoor Hills on the other, only just showed above the line of
the sea. There was, I say, nothing visible on all that level of scarcely
stirred water but our own sails, set to catch whatever breeze there was,
when that happened which not only brought me to the very gates of death,
but, in the mere doing of it, gave me the greatest horror of any that I
have ever known.

I was standing up at the moment, one foot on the gunwale, the other on
the planking behind me, carelessly balancing myself while I stared across
the sea in search of some object which he--this man that I trusted so
thoroughly and in whose company I had spent so many pleasant hours that
afternoon, and who was standing behind me at the moment--professed to see
in the distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had
slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling
moment--but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was
confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!--but he
remained where he was. And my weight--I was weighing a good thirteen
stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster--carried me down and
down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with
considerable impetus. And when I came up, a couple of boat's-lengths from
the yacht, expecting to find that he was bringing her up so that I could
scramble aboard, I saw with amazed and incredulous affright that he was
doing nothing of the sort; instead, working at it as hard as he could
go, he was letting out a couple of reefs which he had taken up in the
mainsail an hour before--in another minute they were out, the yacht moved
more swiftly, and, springing to the tiller, he deliberately steered her
clear away from me.

I suppose I saw his purpose all at once. Perhaps it drove me wild, mad,
frenzied. The yacht was going away from me fast--faster; good swimmer
though I was, it was impossible for me to catch up to her--she was making
her own length to every stroke I took, and as she drew away he stood
there, one hand on the tiller, the other in his pocket (I have often
wondered if it was fingering a revolver in there!), his eyes turned
steadily on me. And I began first to beg and entreat him to save me, and
then to shout out and curse him--and at that, and seeing that we were
becoming further and further separated, he deliberately put the yacht
still more before the freshening wind, and went swiftly away, and looked
at me no more.

So he left me to drown.

We had been talking a lot about swimming during the afternoon, and I had
told him that though I had been a swimmer ever since boyhood, I had never
done more than a mile at a stretch, and then only in the river. He knew,
therefore, that he was leaving me a good fourteen miles from land with
not a sail in sight, not a chance of being picked up. Was it likely that
I could make land?--was there ever a probability of anything coming along
that would sight me? There was small likelihood, anyway; the likelihood
was that long before the darkness had come on I should be exhausted,
give up, and go down.

You may conceive with what anger, and with what fierce resentment, I
watched this man and his yacht going fast away from me--and with what
desp

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