Collected works of j s f.., p.490
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 490
Glassdale threw his questioner a significant glance.
“Whatever information I might give,” he said, “I’d only give to a principal — the principal. From what I’ve seen and known of all this, there’s more in it than is on the surface. I can tell something. I knew John Braden — who, of course, was John Brake — very well, for some years. Naturally, I was in his confidence.”
“About more than the Saxonsteade jewels, you mean?” asked the solicitor.
“About more than that,” assented Glassdale. “Private matters. I’ve no doubt I can throw some light — some! — on this Wrychester Paradise affair. But, as I said just now, I’ll only deal with the principal. I wouldn’t tell you, for instance — as your principal’s solicitor.”
The solicitor smiled again.
“Your ideas, Mr. Glassdale, appear to fit in with our principal’s,” he remarked. “His instructions — strict instructions — to us are that if anybody turns up who can give any information, it’s not to be given to us, but to — himself!”
“Wise man!” observed Glassdale. “That’s just what I feel about it. It’s a mistake to share secrets with more than one person.”
“There is a secret, then!” asked the solicitor, half slyly.
“Might be,” replied Glassdale. “Who’s your client?”
The solicitor pulled a scrap of paper towards him and wrote a few words on it. He pushed it towards his caller, and Glassdale picked it up and read what had been written — Mr. Stephen Folliot, The Close.
“You’d better go and see him,” said the solicitor, suggestively. “You’ll find him reserved enough.”
Glassdale read and re-read the name — as if he were endeavouring to recollect it, or connect it with something.
“What particular reason has this man for wishing to find this out?” he inquired.
“Can’t say, my good sir!” replied the solicitor, with a smile. “Perhaps he’ll tell you. He hasn’t told me.”
Glassdale rose to take his leave. But with his hand on the door he turned.
“Is this gentleman a resident in the place?” he asked.
“A well-known townsman,” replied the solicitor. “You’ll easily find his house in the Close — everybody knows it.”
Glassdale went away then — and walked slowly towards the Cathedral precincts. On his way he passed two places at which he was half inclined to call — one was the police-station; the other, the office of the solicitors who were acting on behalf of the offerer of five hundred pounds. He half glanced at the solicitor’s door — but on reflection went forward. A man who was walking across the Close pointed out the Folliot residence — Glassdale entered by the garden door, and in another minute came face to face with Folliot himself, busied, as usual, amongst his rose-trees.
Glassdale saw Folliot and took stock of him before Folliot knew that a stranger was within his gates. Folliot, in an old jacket which he kept for his horticultural labours, was taking slips from a standard; he looked as harmless and peaceful as his occupation. A quiet, inoffensive, somewhat benevolent elderly man, engaged in work, which suggested leisure and peace.
But Glassdale, after a first quick, searching glance, took another and longer one — and went nearer with a discreet laugh.
Folliot turned quietly, and seeing the stranger, showed no surprise. He had a habit of looking over the top rims of his spectacles at people, and he looked in this way at Glassdale, glancing him up and down calmly. Glassdale lifted his slouch hat and advanced.
“Mr. Folliot, I believe, sir?” he said. “Mr. Stephen Folliot?”
“Aye, just so!” responded Folliot. “But I don’t know you. Who may you be, now?”
“My name, sir, is Glassdale,” answered the other. “I’ve just come from your solicitor’s. I called to see him this afternoon — and he told me that the business I called about could only be dealt with — or discussed — with you. So — I came here.”
Folliot, who had been cutting slips off a rose-tree, closed his knife and put it away in his old jacket. He turned and quietly inspected his visitor once more.
“Aye!” he said quietly. “So you’re after that thousand pound reward, eh?”
“I should have no objection to it, Mr. Folliot,” replied Glassdale.
“I dare say not,” remarked Folliot, dryly. “I dare say not! And which are you, now? — one of those who think they can tell something, or one that really can tell? Eh?”
“You’ll know that better when we’ve had a bit of talk, Mr. Folliot,” answered Glassdale, accompanying his reply with a direct glance.
“Oh, well, now then, I’ve no objection to a bit of talk — none whatever!” said Folliot. “Here! — we’ll sit down on that bench, amongst the roses. Quite private here — nobody about. And now,” he continued, as Glassdale accompanied him to a rustic bench set beneath a pergola of rambler roses, “who are you, like? I read a queer account in this morning’s local paper of what happened in the Cathedral grounds yonder last night, and there was a person of your name mentioned. Are you that Glassdale?”
“The same, Mr. Folliot,” answered the visitor, promptly.
“Then you knew Braden — the man who lost his life here?” asked Folliot.
“Very well indeed,” replied Glassdale.
“For how long?” demanded Folliot.
“Some years — as a mere acquaintance, seen now and then,” said Glassdale. “A few years, recently, as what you might call a close friend.”
“Tell you any of his secrets?” asked Folliot.
“Yes, he did!” answered Glassdale.
“Anything that seems to relate to his death — and the mystery about it?” inquired Folliot.
“I think so,” said Glassdale. “Upon consideration, I think so!”
“Ah — and what might it be, now?” continued Folliot. He gave Glassdale a look which seemed to denote and imply several things. “It might be to your advantage to explain a bit, you know,” he added. “One has to be a little — vague, eh?”
“There was a certain man that Braden was very anxious to find,” said Glassdale. “He’d been looking for him for a good many years.”
“A man?” asked Folliot. “One?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, there were two,” admitted Glassdale, “but there was one in particular. The other — the second — so Braden said, didn’t matter; he was or had been, only a sort of cat’s-paw of the man he especially wanted.”
“I see,” said Folliot. He pulled out a cigar case and offered a cigar to his visitor, afterwards lighting one himself. “And what did Braden want that man for?” he asked.
Glassdale waited until his cigar was in full going order before he answered this question. Then he replied in one word.
“Revenge!”
Folliot put his thumbs in the armholes of his buff waistcoat and leaning back, seemed to be admiring his roses.
“Ah!” he said at last. “Revenge, now? A sort of vindictive man, was he? Wanted to get his knife into somebody, eh?”
“He wanted to get something of his own back from a man who’d done him,” answered Glassdale, with a short laugh. “That’s about it!”
For a minute or two both men smoked in silence. Then Folliot — still regarding his roses — put a leading question.
“Give you any details?” he asked.
“Enough,” said Glassdale. “Braden had been done — over a money transaction — by these men — one especially, as head and front of the affair — and it had cost him — more than anybody would think! Naturally, he wanted — if he ever got the chance — his revenge. Who wouldn’t?”
“And he’d tracked ’em down, eh?” asked Folliot.
“There are questions I can answer, and there are questions I can’t answer,” responded Glassdale. “That’s one of the questions I’ve no reply to. For — I don’t know! But — I can say this. He hadn’t tracked ’em down the day before he came to Wrychester!”
“You’re sure of that?” asked Folliot. “He — didn’t come here on that account?”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t!” answered Glassdale, readily. “If he had, I should have known. I was with him till noon the day he came here — in London — and when he took his ticket at Victoria for Wrychester, he’d no more idea than the man in the moon as to where those men had got to. He mentioned it as we were having a bit of lunch together before he got into the train. No — he didn’t come to Wrychester for any such purpose as that! But—”
He paused and gave Folliot a meaning glance out of the corner of his eyes.
“Aye — what?” asked Folliot.
“I think he met at least one of ’em here,” said Glassdale, quietly. “And — perhaps both.”
“Leading to — misfortune for him?” suggested Folliot.
“If you like to put it that way — yes,” assented Glassdale.
Folliot smoked a while in more reflective silence.
“Aye, well!” he said at last. “I suppose you haven’t put these ideas of yours before anybody, now?”
“Present ideas?” asked Glassdale, sharply. “Not to a soul! I’ve not had ’em — very long.”
“You’re the sort of man that another man can do a deal with, I suppose?” suggested Folliot. “That is, if it’s made worth your while, of course?”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Glassdale. “And — if it is made worth my while.”
Folliot mused a little. Then he tapped Glassdale’s elbow.
“You see,” he said, confidentially, “it might be, you know, that I had a little purpose of my own in offering that reward. It might be that it was a very particular friend of mine that had the misfortune to have incurred this man Braden’s hatred. And I might want to save him, d’ye see, from — well, from the consequence of what’s happened, and to hear about it first if anybody came forward, eh?”
“As I’ve done,” said Glassdale.
“As — you’ve done,” assented Folliot. “Now, perhaps it would be in the interest of this particular friend of mine if he made it worth your while to — say no more to anybody, eh?”
“Very much worth his while, Mr. Folliot,” declared Glassdale.
“Aye, well,” continued Folliot. “This very particular friend would just want to know, you know, how much you really, truly know! Now, for instance, about these two men — and one in particular — that Braden was after? Did — did he name ’em?”
Glassdale leaned a little nearer to his companion on the rose-screened bench.
“He named them — to me!” he said in a whisper. “One was a man called Falkiner Wraye, and the other man was a man named Flood. Is that enough?”
“I think you’d better come and see me this evening,” answered Folliot. “Come just about dusk to that door — I’ll meet you there. Fine roses these of mine, aren’t they?” he continued, as they rose. “I occupy myself entirely with ’em.”
He walked with Glassdale to the garden door, and stood there watching his visitor go away up the side of the high wall until he turned into the path across Paradise. And then, as Folliot was retreating to his roses, he saw Bryce coming over the Close — and Bryce beckoned to him.
CHAPTER XXV. THE OLD WELL HOUSE
WHEN BRYCE CAME hurrying up to him, Folliot was standing at his garden door with his hands thrust under his coat-tails — the very picture of a benevolent, leisured gentleman who has nothing to do and is disposed to give his time to anybody. He glanced at Bryce as he had glanced at Glassdale — over the tops of his spectacles, and the glance had no more than mild inquiry in it. But if Bryce had been less excited, he would have seen that Folliot, as he beckoned him inside the garden, swept a sharp look over the Close and ascertained that there was no one about, that Bryce’s entrance was unobserved. Save for a child or two, playing under the tall elms near one of the gates, and for a clerical figure that stalked a path in the far distance, the Close was empty of life. And there was no one about, either, in that part of Folliot’s big garden.
“I want a bit of talk with you,” said Bryce as Folliot closed the door and turned down a side-path to a still more retired region. “Private talk. Let’s go where it’s quiet.”
Without replying in words to this suggestion, Folliot led the way through his rose-trees to a far corner of his grounds, where an old building of grey stone, covered with ivy, stood amongst high trees. He turned the key of a doorway and motioned Bryce to enter.
“Quiet enough in here, doctor,” he observed. “You’ve never seen this place — bit of a fancy of mine.”
Bryce, absorbed as he was in the thoughts of the moment, glanced cursorily at the place into which Folliot had led him. It was a square building of old stone, its walls unlined, unplastered; its floor paved with much worn flags of limestone, evidently set down in a long dead age and now polished to marble-like smoothness. In its midst, set flush with the floor, was what was evidently a trap-door, furnished with a heavy iron ring. To this Folliot pointed, with a glance of significant interest.
“Deepest well in all Wrychester under that,” he remarked. “You’d never think it — it’s a hundred feet deep — and more! Dry now — water gave out some years ago. Some people would have pulled this old well-house down — but not me! I did better — I turned it to good account.” He raised a hand and pointed upward to an obviously modern ceiling of strong oak timbers. “Had that put in,” he continued, “and turned the top of the building into a little snuggery. Come up!”
He led the way to a flight of steps in one corner of the lower room, pushed open a door at their head, and showed his companion into a small apartment arranged and furnished in something closely approaching to luxury. The walls were hung with thick fabrics; the carpeting was equally thick; there were pictures, books, and curiosities; the two or three chairs were deep and big enough to lie down in; the two windows commanded pleasant views of the Cathedral towers on one side and of the Close on the other.
“Nice little place to be alone in, d’ye see?” said Folliot. “Cool in summer — warm in winter — modern fire-grate, you notice. Come here when I want to do a bit of quiet thinking, what?”
“Good place for that — certainly,” agreed Bryce.
Folliot pointed his visitor to one of the big chairs and turning to a cabinet brought out some glasses, a syphon of soda-water, and a heavy cut-glass decanter. He nodded at a box of cigars which lay open on a table at Bryce’s elbow as he began to mix a couple of drinks.
“Help yourself,” he said. “Good stuff, those.”
Not until he had given Bryce a drink, and had carried his own glass to another easy chair did Folliot refer to any reason for Bryce’s visit. But once settled down, he looked at him speculatively.
“What did you want to see me about?” he asked.
Bryce, who had lighted a cigar, looked across its smoke at the imperturbable face opposite.
“You’ve just had Glassdale here,” he observed quietly. “I saw him leave you.”
Folliot nodded — without any change of expression.
“Aye, doctor,” he said. “And — what do you know about Glassdale, now?”
Bryce, who would have cheerfully hobnobbed with a man whom he was about to conduct to the scaffold, lifted his glass and drank.
“A good deal,” he answered as he set the glass down. “The fact is — I came here to tell you so! — I know a good deal about everything.”
“A wide term!” remarked Folliot. “You’ve got some limitation to it, I should think. What do you mean by — everything?”
“I mean about recent matters,” replied Bryce. “I’ve interested myself in them — for reasons of my own. Ever since Braden was found at the foot of those stairs in Paradise, and I was fetched to him, I’ve interested myself. And — I’ve discovered a great deal — more, much more than’s known to anybody.”
Folliot threw one leg over the other and began to jog his foot.
“Oh!” he said after a pause. “Dear me! And — what might you know, now, doctor? Aught you can tell me eh?”
“Lots!” answered Bryce. “I came to tell you — on seeing that Glassdale had been with you. Because — I was with Glassdale this morning.”
Folliot made no answer. But Bryce saw that his cool, almost indifferent manner was changing — he was beginning, under the surface, to get anxious.
“When I left Glassdale — at noon,” continued Bryce, “I’d no idea — and I don’t think he had — that he was coming to see you. But I know what put the notion into his head. I gave him copies of those two reward bills. He no doubt thought he might make a bit — and so he came in to town, and — to you.”
“Well?” asked Folliot.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” remarked Bryce, reflectively, and almost as if speaking to himself, “I shouldn’t at all wonder if Glassdale’s the sort of man who can be bought. He, no doubt, has his price. But all that Glassdale knows is nothing — to what I know.”
Folliot had allowed his cigar to go out. He threw it away, took a fresh one from the box, and slowly struck a match and lighted it.
“What might you know, now?” he asked after another pause.
“I’ve a bit of a faculty for finding things out,” answered Bryce boldly. “And I’ve developed it. I wanted to know all about Braden — and about who killed him — and why. There’s only one way of doing all that sort of thing, you know. You’ve got to go back — a long way back — to the very beginnings. I went back — to the time when Braden was married. Not as Braden, of course — but as who he really was — John Brake. That was at a place called Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire.”
He paused there, watching Folliot. But Folliot showed no more than close attention, and Bryce went on.
“Not much in that — for the really important part of the story,” he continued. “But Brake had other associations with Barthorpe — a bit later. He got to know — got into close touch with a Barthorpe man who, about the time of Brake’s marriage, left Barthorpe and settled in London. Brake and this man began to have some secret dealings together. There was another man in with them, too — a man who was a sort of partner of the Barthorpe man’s. Brake had evidently a belief in these men, and he trusted them — unfortunately for himself he sometimes trusted the bank’s money to them. I know what happened — he used to let them have money for short financial transactions — to be refunded within a very brief space. But — he went to the fire too often, and got his fingers burned in the end. The two men did him — one of them in particular — and cleared out. He had to stand the racket. He stood it — to the tune of ten years’ penal servitude. And, naturally, when he’d finished his time, he wanted to find those two men — and began a long search for them. Like to know the names of the men, Mr. Folliot?”
