Collected works of j s f.., p.359
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 359
“We had only just spoken — were only just speaking of you,” remarked Mr. Tertius. “In fact — yes, Mr. Selwood and I were thinking of going round to your offices to see if you were in town.”
The short, stout, and rosy gentleman who, as soon as he had got well within the room, began to unswathe his neck from a voluminous white silk muffler, now completed his task and advancing upon Peggie solemnly kissed her on both cheeks, held her away from him, looked at her, kissed her again, and then patted her on the shoulder. This done, he shook hands solemnly with Mr. Tertius, bowed to Selwood, took off his spectacles and proceeded to polish them with a highly-coloured bandana handkerchief which he produced from the tail of his overcoat. This operation concluded, he restored the spectacles to his nose, sat down, placed his hands, palm downwards, on his plump knees and solemnly inspected everybody.
“My dear friends!” he said in a hushed, deep voice. “My dear, good friends! This dreadful, awful, most afflicting news! I heard it but three-quarters of an hour ago — at the office, to which I happened by mere chance, to have come up for the day. I immediately ordered out our brougham and drove here — to see if I could be of any use. You will command me, my dear friends, in anything that I can do. Not professionally, of course. No — in that respect you have Mr. Barthorpe Herapath. But — otherwise.”
Mr. Tertius looked at Peggie.
“I don’t know whether we shan’t be glad of Mr. Halfpenny’s professional services?” he said. “The truth is, Halfpenny, we were talking of seeing you professionally when you came in. That’s one truth — another is that a will has been found — our poor friend’s will, of course.”
“God bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Halfpenny. “A will — our poor friend’s will — has been found! But surely, Barthorpe, as nephew, and solicitor — eh?”
Again Mr. Tertius looked at Peggie.
“I suppose we’d better tell Mr. Halfpenny everything,” he remarked. “Of course, Halfpenny, you’ll understand that as soon as this dreadful affair was discovered and the first arrangements had been made, Barthorpe, as only male relative, began to search for a will. He resented any interference from me and was very rude to me, but when he came here and proposed to examine that safe, I told him at once that I knew of a will and where it was, though I didn’t know its terms. And I immediately directed him to it, and we found it and read it a few minutes ago with the result that Barthorpe at once quitted the house — you must have passed him in the square.”
“God bless us!” repeated Mr. Halfpenny. “I judge from that, then — but you had better show me this document.”
Mr. Tertius at once produced the will, and Mr. Halfpenny, rising from his chair, marched across the room to one of the windows where he solemnly half-chanted every word from start to finish. This performance over, he carefully and punctiliously folded the document into its original lines, replaced it in its envelope, and grasping this firmly in his hand, resumed his seat and motioned everybody to attention.
“My dear Tertius!” he said. “Oblige me by narrating, carefully, briefly, your recollection of the circumstances under which your signature to this highly important document was obtained and made.”
“Easily done,” responded Mr. Tertius. “One night, some months ago, when our poor friend was at work here with his secretary, a Mr. Frank Burchill, he called me into the room, just as Burchill was about to leave. He said: ‘I want you two to witness my signature to a paper.’ He — —”
“A moment,” interrupted Mr. Halfpenny. “He said— ‘a paper.’ Did he not say ‘my will’?”
“Not before the two of us. He merely said a paper. He produced the paper — that paper, which you now hold. He let us see that it was covered with writing, but we did not see what the writing was. He folded it over, laid it, so folded, on that desk, and signed his name. Then we both signed it in the blank spaces which he indicated: I first, then Burchill. He then put it into an envelope — that envelope — and fastened it up. As regards that part of the proceedings,” said Mr. Tertius, “that is all.”
“There was, then, another part?” suggested Mr. Halfpenny.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Tertius. “There was. Burchill then left — at once. I, too, was leaving the room when Jacob called me back. When we were alone, he said: ‘That was my will that you’ve just witnessed. Never mind what’s in it — I may alter it, or some of it, some day, but I don’t think I shall. Now look here, I’m going to seal this envelope, and I’ll show you where I put it when it’s sealed.’ He then sealed the envelope in two places, as you see, and afterwards, in my presence, placed it in a secret drawer, which I’ll show to you now. And that done, he said: ‘There, Tertius, you needn’t mention that to anybody, unless I happen to be taken off suddenly.’ And,” concluded Mr. Tertius, as he motioned Mr. Halfpenny to accompany him to the old bureau, “I never, of course, did mention it until half an hour ago.”
Mr. Halfpenny solemnly inspected the secret drawer, made no remark upon it, and reseated himself.
“Now,” he said, “this Mr. Frank Burchill — the other witness? He left our old friend?”
“Some little time ago,” replied Mr. Tertius.
“Still, we have his address on the will,” said Mr. Halfpenny. “I shall call on Mr. Burchill at once — as soon as I leave here. There is, of course, no doubt as to the validity of this will. You said just now that Barthorpe left you as soon as he had seen it. Now, what did Barthorpe say about it?”
“Nothing!” answered Mr. Tertius. “He went away without a word — rushed away, in fact.”
Mr. Halfpenny shook his head with profound solemnity.
“I am not in the least surprised to hear that,” he observed. “Barthorpe naturally received a great shock. What I am surprised at is — the terms of the will. Nothing whatever to Barthorpe — his only male relative — his only brother’s only son. Extraordinary! My dear,” he continued, turning to Peggie, “can you account for this? Do you know of anything, any difference between them, anything at all which would make your uncle leave his nephew out of his will?”
“Nothing!” answered Peggie. “And I’m very troubled about it. Does it really mean that I get everything, and Barthorpe nothing?”
“That is the precise state of affairs,” answered Mr. Halfpenny. “And it is all the more surprising when we bear in mind that you two are the only relations Jacob Herapath had, and that he was a rich man — a very rich man indeed. However, he doubtless had his reasons. And now, as I conclude you desire me to act for you, I shall take charge of this will and lock it up in my safe as soon as I return to the office. On my way, I shall call at Mr. Burchill’s address and just have a word with him. Tertius, you had better come with me. And — yes, there is another thing that I should like to have done. Mr. Selwood — are you engaged on any business?”
“No,” replied Selwood, who was secretly speculating on the meaning of the morning’s strange events. “I have nothing to attend to.”
“Then will you go to Mr. Barthorpe Herapath’s office — in Craven Street, I think? — and see him personally and tell him that Mr. Benjamin Halfpenny is in town, has been acquainted with these matters by Mr. Tertius and Miss Wynne, and would esteem it a favour if he would call upon him before five o’clock. Thank you, Mr. Selwood. Now, Tertius, you and I will attend to our business.”
Left alone, Peggie Wynne suddenly realized that the world had become a vastly different world to what it had seemed a few short hours before. This room, into which Jacob Herapath, bustling and busy, would never come again, was already a place of dread; nay, the whole house in which she had spent so many years of comfort and luxury suddenly assumed a strange atmosphere of distastefulness. It was true that her uncle had never spent much time in the house. An hour or two in the morning — yes, but by noon he had hurried off to some Committee at the House of Commons, and in session time she had never seen him again that day. But he had a trick of running in for a few minutes at intervals during the day; he would come for a cup of tea; sometimes he would contrive to dine at home; whether he was at home or not, his presence, always alert, masterful, active, seemed to be everywhere in the place. She could scarcely realize that she would never see him again. And as she stood looking at his vacant chair she made an effort to realize what it all really meant to her, and suddenly, for the first time in her life, she felt the meaning of the usually vague term — loneliness. In all practical essentials she was absolutely alone. So far as she knew she had no relations in the world but Barthorpe Herapath — and there was something — something shadowy and undefinable — about Barthorpe which she neither liked nor trusted. Moreover, she had caught a glimpse of Barthorpe’s face as he turned from looking at the will and hurried away, and what she had seen had given her a strange feeling of fear and discomfort. Barthorpe, she knew, was not the sort of man to be crossed or thwarted or balked of his will, and now ——
“Supposing Barthorpe should begin to hate me because all the money is mine?” she thought. “Then — why, then I should have no one! No one of my own flesh and blood, anyway. Of course, there’s Mr. Tertius. But — I must see Barthorpe. I must tell him that I shall insist on sharing — if it’s all mine, I can do that. And yet — why didn’t Uncle Jacob divide it? Why did he leave Barthorpe — nothing?”
Still pondering sadly over these and kindred subjects Peggie went upstairs to a parlour of her own, a room in which she did as she liked and made into a den after her own taste. There, while the November afternoon deepened in shadow, she sat and thought still more deeply. And she was still plunged in thought when Kitteridge came softly into the room and presented a card. Peggie took it from the butler’s salver and glanced half carelessly at it. Then she looked at Kitteridge with some concern.
“Mr. Burchill?” she said. “Here?”
“No, miss,” answered Kitteridge. “Mr. Burchill desired me to present his most respectful sympathy, and to say that if he could be of any service to you or to the family, he begged that you would command him. His address is on this card, miss.”
“Very kind of him,” murmured Peggie, and laid the card aside on her writing-table. When Kitteridge had gone she picked it up and looked at it again. Burchill? — she had been thinking of him only a few minutes before the butler’s entrance; thinking a good deal. And her thoughts had been disquieted and unhappy. Burchill was the last man in the world that she wished to have anything to do with, and the fact that his name appeared on Jacob Herapath’s will had disturbed her more than she would have cared to admit.
CHAPTER XI
THE SHADOW
MR. HALFPENNY, CONDUCTING Mr. Tertius to the coupé brougham, installed him in its further corner, got in himself and bade his coachman drive slowly to 331, Upper Seymour Street.
“I said slowly,” he remarked as they moved gently away, “because I wanted a word with you before we see this young man. Tertius — what’s the meaning of all this?”
Mr. Tertius groaned dolefully and shook his head.
“There is so much, Halfpenny,” he answered, “that I don’t quite know what you specifically mean by this. Do you mean — —”
“I mean, first of all, Herapath’s murder,” said Mr. Halfpenny. “You think it is a case of murder?”
“I’m sure it’s a case of murder — cold, calculated murder,” replied Mr. Tertius, with energy. “Vile murder, Halfpenny.”
“And, as far as you know, is there no clue?” asked the old lawyer. “There’s nothing said or suggested in the newspapers. Haven’t you any notion — hasn’t Barthorpe any notion?”
Mr. Tertius remained silent for a while. The coupé brougham turned into Upper Seymour Street.
“I think,” he said at last, “yes, I think that when we’ve made this call, I shall ask you to accompany me to my friend Cox-Raythwaite’s, in Endsleigh Gardens — you know him, I believe. I’ve already seen him this morning and told him — something. When we get there, I’ll tell it to you, and he shall show you — something. After that, we’ll hear what your legal instinct suggests. It is my opinion, Halfpenny — I offer it with all deference, as a layman — that great, excessive caution is necessary. This case is extraordinary — very extraordinary. That is — in my opinion.”
“It’s an extraordinary thing that Jacob Herapath should have made that will,” murmured Mr. Halfpenny reflectively. “Why Barthorpe should be entirely ignored is — to me — marvellous. And — it may be — significant. You never heard of any difference, quarrel, anything of that sort, between him and his uncle?”
“I have not the remotest notion as to what the relations were that existed between the uncle and the nephew,” replied Mr. Tertius. “And though, as I have said, I knew that the will was in existence, I hadn’t the remotest idea, the faintest notion, of its contents until we took it out of the sealed envelope an hour or so ago. But — —” he paused and shook his head meaningly.
“Well?” said Mr. Halfpenny.
“I’m very sure, knowing Jacob as I did, that he had a purpose in making that will,” answered Mr. Tertius. “He was not the man to do anything without good reasons. I think we are here.”
The landlady of No. 331 opened its door herself to these two visitors. Her look of speculative interest on seeing two highly respectable elderly gentlemen changed to one of inquisitiveness when she heard what they wanted.
“No, sir,” she answered. “Mr. Frank Burchill doesn’t live here now. And it’s a queer thing that during the time he did live here and gave me more trouble than any lodger I ever had, him keeping such strange hours of a night and early morning, he never had nobody to call on him, as I recollect of! And now here’s been three gentlemen asking for him within this last hour — you two and another gentleman. And I don’t know where Mr. Burchill lives, and don’t want, neither!”
“My dear lady!” said Mr. Halfpenny, mildly and suavely. “I am sure we are deeply sorry to disturb you — no doubt we have called you away from your dinner. Perhaps, er, this” — here there was a slight chink of silver in Mr. Halfpenny’s hand, presently repeated in one of the landlady’s— “will, er, compensate you a little? But we are really anxious to see Mr. Burchill — haven’t you any idea where he’s gone to live? Didn’t he leave an address for any letters that might come here?”
“He didn’t, sir — not that he ever had many letters,” answered the landlady. “And I haven’t the remotest notion. Of course, if I had I’d give the address. But, as I said to the gentleman what was here not so long ago, I’ve neither seen nor heard of Mr. Burchill since he left — and that’s six months since.”
Mr. Halfpenny contrived to give his companion a nudge of the elbow.
“Is it, indeed, ma’am?” he said. “Ah! That gentleman who called, now? — I think he must be a friend of ours, who didn’t know we were coming. What was he like, now, ma’am?”
“He was a tallish, fine-built gentleman,” answered the landlady. “Fresh-coloured, clean-shaved gentleman. And for that matter, he can’t be so far away — it isn’t more than a quarter of an hour since he was here. I’ll ask my girl if she saw which way he went.”
“Don’t trouble, pray, ma’am, on my account,” entreated Mr. Halfpenny. “It’s of no consequence. We’re deeply obliged to you.” He swept off his hat in an old-fashioned obeisance and drew Mr. Tertius away to the coupé brougham. “That was Barthorpe, of course,” he said. “He lost no time, you see, Tertius, in trying to see Burchill.”
“Why should he want to see Burchill?” asked Mr. Tertius.
“Wanted to know what Burchill had to say about signing the will, of course,” replied Mr. Halfpenny. “Well — what next? Do you want me to see Cox-Raythwaite with you?”
Mr. Tertius, who had seemed to be relapsing into a brown study on the edge of the pavement, woke up into some show of eagerness. “Yes, yes!” he said. “Yes, by all means let us go to Cox-Raythwaite. I’m sure that’s the thing to do. And there’s another man — the chauffeur. But — yes, we’ll go to Cox-Raythwaite first. Tell your man to drive to the corner of Endsleigh Gardens — the corner by St. Pancras Church.”
Professor Cox-Raythwaite was exactly where Mr. Tertius had left him in the morning, when the two visitors were ushered into his laboratory. And for the second time that day he listened in silence to Mr. Tertius’s story. When it was finished, he looked at Mr. Halfpenny, whose solemn countenance had grown more solemn than ever.
“Queer story, isn’t it, Halfpenny?” he said laconically. “How does it strike you?”
Mr. Halfpenny slowly opened his pursed-up lips.
“Queer?” he exclaimed. “God bless me! — I’m astounded! I — but let me see these — these things.”
“Sealed ’em up not so long ago — just after lunch,” remarked the Professor, lifting his heavy bulk out of his chair. “But you can see ’em all right through the glass. There you are!” He led the way to a side-table and pointed to the hermetically-sealed receptacles in which he had safely bestowed the tumbler and the sandwich brought so gingerly from Portman Square by Mr. Tertius. “The tumbler,” he continued, jerking a big thumb at it, “will have, of course, to be carefully examined by an expert in finger-prints; the sandwich, so to speak, affords primary evidence. You see — what there is to see, Halfpenny?”
Mr. Halfpenny adjusted his spectacles, bent down, and examined the exhibits with scrupulous, absorbed interest. Again he pursed up his lips, firmly, tightly, as if he would never open them again; when he did open them it was to emit a veritable whistle which indicated almost as much delight as astonishment. Then he clapped Mr. Tertius on the back.
“A veritable stroke of genius!” he exclaimed. “Tertius, my boy, you should have been a Vidocq or a Hawkshaw! How did you come to think of it? For I confess that with all my forty years’ experience of Law, I — well, I don’t think I should ever have thought of it!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Tertius, modestly. “I — well, I looked — and then, of course, I saw. That’s all!”
