Collected works of j s f.., p.685
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 685
“I see! And what did you tell Jennison?”
“I told him — to put it short — that when Jakyn came into the smoking-room at about nine-thirty, there was an old gentleman and a youngish lady in there; he was reading and she was writing. Jakyn asked me to get him a drink; I went for it, and left the three there. When I came back, after a few minutes, the lady and gentleman had gone and Jakyn was alone. Afterwards — but I told that at the inquest.”
“I know — Jakyn was restless, and you saw him read a bit of paper that he took from his pocket; then he went out. Well? — what did Jennison say about this?”
“He asked me if I knew the gentleman and lady; I said I didn’t, but they’d been staying in the hotel a day or two, and I could find out. I went to find out, and came back to him and told him who they were.”
“Just so! — and who were they?”
“Sir John and Lady Cheale!”
Womersley again glanced at Holaday, and the American, towering behind Green, made a significant grimace.
“Oh!” said Womersley. “Very well! Now, we’ll go back to the other evening, when Jennison accosted you outside the hotel, as you were about to go to your work. What did he say to you?”
“Reminded me that he’d told me there was more money to come, and said that now was the time! — if I’d like to profit by what I knew, I could make a lot. Said I must go with him there and then. I said I couldn’t — I was about due at my work. He said, let the work go hang! This was a chance of putting hundreds of pounds, ready money, in one’s pocket. So I went with him.”
“Where?”
“To a place in Charles Street, close by. Sort of shop that had been turned into a surgery — a doctor’s surgery.”
“A surgery, eh? Whose surgery? What doctor?”
“Well, that Dr. Syphax was there — I’d seen him before, at the inquest. And Lady Cheale — she was there. I recognised her at once.”
“Dr. Syphax and Lady Cheale, eh? Anybody else?”
“Yes. There was a young lady that they called Miss Walker; she was there when I got there; she was with Dr. Syphax and Lady Cheale. They were talking — in a sort of parlour behind the surgery. I made out that Jennison had brought her there, just as he’d brought me.”
“No doubt!” observed Womersley drily, and with another glance at Holaday. “I should say he had. Well — what took place? What had they to say to you?”
“Jennison said most of it. The others didn’t have much to say. Dr. Syphax scarcely said anything, and Lady Cheale only sort of said yes and no to what Jennison said to her. After I got there, and when Jennison had fastened the street door, so that no patients could get in, he talked to me and this Miss Walker — Chrissie he called her, familiar-like, as if — well, as if what concerned one concerned the other, see?”
“I see! Sharers in a secret, eh, Green? Very well, and what did Jennison say? — with, apparently, the tacit consent of Lady Cheale and Dr. Syphax.”
“Well, he told me that it was of the very highest importance, most serious importance, that Lady Cheale’s name shouldn’t get out in connection with the Alfred Jakyn affair. He said that Lady Cheale was absolutely ignorant and innocent of anything relating to that affair, and hadn’t the slightest idea as to who poisoned Alfred Jakyn, if he really was poisoned. But she’d known Alfred Jakyn in past years, before he left England, and she’d met him unfortunately on the evening of his death, and had spent half an hour talking to him. The only people, however, said Jennison, who could prove that, were me and Miss Walker. I could prove that Lady Cheale was in the smoking-room at the hotel at the time that Alfred Jakyn was, and that the note I saw him read was probably written by her and slipped into his hand, or dropped near his chair for him to pick up; Miss Walker could prove that Jakyn and Lady Cheale were in the saloon of the place where she was barmaid, from soon after ten to about ten-thirty that evening. Nobody but us could prove those facts, Jennison said, and they’d got me there to have a quiet little talk about it.”
“And to make you both an offer, eh?” suggested the detective with a laugh.
“That’s about it, Mr. Womersley,” agreed the footman. “That’s what it came to. Jennison said that if it came to us being questioned, as we might be, we couldn’t avoid telling what we knew — they’d force it out of us. But, he said, it was absolutely certain this affair would blow over, or the truth would be got in such a fashion that there’d be no suspicion whatever resting on Lady Cheale, and the really necessary thing at present was to get me and Miss Walker away somewhere, quietly, where nobody could get at us to ask inconvenient questions. And then he came straight to it, and he said that if we’d agree to just clear out for a bit, there and then, Lady Cheale would give us five hundred pounds each.”
“Spot cash?” asked Womersley cynically.
“Spot cash! He pulled out the money, Mr. Womersley, Jennison did — bank-notes. He put it on the table — two wads of notes. New ones — Bank of England.”
“Tempting!” observed the detective. “And — you agreed, eh? Both of you?”
“I agreed, yes; I didn’t see why I shouldn’t,” replied the footman. “I didn’t know — and I don’t know now — that I was doing anything wrong. I didn’t know that Lady Cheale had committed any — —”
“All right, my lad!” interrupted Womersley. “That’s another matter. Well, you took your money — did the girl take hers?”
“Yes, she took it. And, of course, we both promised we wouldn’t go back to where we lived — we’d clear out for a bit, there and then. And then came the question of where we were to go, d’ye see, Mr. Womersley? It was then that Lady Cheale began to do a bit of the talking — up to that point she left it nearly all to Jennison. She said, as regarded me, that they wanted a second footman at Cheale Court, and that if I’d go there, she’d give me extra good wages: it would be the very place, she said, for me to lie low in for a while. She told me a bit about it, and I agreed, so she wrote me a note to hand to the butler, and after a little more talk, Jennison walked along to Euston with me and sent me off by the next train to Chester.”
“Smart work!” answered Womersley. “With your five hundred pounds in your pocket, of course!”
“Yes!” admitted Green. “And I hope, Mr. Womersley — —”
“You don’t know where the girl, Chrissie Walker, went?” interrupted the detective.
“I don’t, Mr. Womersley, I’ve no idea,” replied Green. “I left her there, with Lady Cheale and Dr. Syphax, when Jennison and I went off to the station. It was all of a hurry at the end — Jennison said I’d just nice time, and no more, to get the evening express, and he rushed me off, got me a ticket, and shoved me into the train. That’s — that’s all I know, Mr. Womersley. And I do hope — —”
Again Womersley waved aside the footman’s anxiety and his hopes.
“You didn’t hear anything of what was being paid to Jennison?” he asked. “Or where Jennison was going? No? Well, did you hear anything about where Jennison had gone? — where he was living?”
Green gave his questioner a sly smile.
“No, not there!” he answered. “But yesterday, when Lady Cheale was here, I posted some letters for her, and I saw one addressed to Mr. A. Jennings, Great Western Hotel, Paddington. And I should say, Mr. Womersley, that A. Jennings is A. Jennison!”
CHAPTER XVII. HOME-MADE TOFFEE
WOMERSLEY ROSE FROM his seat, glanced at his watch, consulted his time-table, and, crossing over to the window, beckoned to Holaday to join him there.
“What do you think of all that?” he asked in an undertone.
“Pretty much what I expected,” answered the American. “And I guess we’d better be making tracks for London! Of course, the telegram we’ve heard about, that Lady Cheale got very early this morning, was from Syphax. That’s in consequence of our call on him last night. He’s warned her.”
“The worst of it is, she’s got several hours’ start of us,” said Womersley. “We can’t get back to town before evening, and she’ll have been there a couple of hours now — we should pass her going up as we came down. However, we’ve got something to go on now. And, as you say, we’d better shift. As regards this chap — —” He turned and went back to the table. “Now, look here, Green,” he continued, “I think you’ve made a clean breast of it.”
“Upon my honour, Mr. Womersley, I’ve told you everything I know!” protested the footman. “I haven’t kept a thing back!”
“Very well,” said Womersley. “All the same, I think you’d better clear out of this — you can’t stop here after giving Lady Cheale away, you know. Now, will you do what I tell you?”
“Certainly, Mr. Womersley — anything, sir,” replied Green. “I don’t want to stop here — I’ve been afraid there was something wrong ever since Jennison bundled me off so sharply. You see, Mr. Womersley, they had me at a disadvantage — they sprang it on me, sudden, and got me before I’d time to think. And there was the money, the five hundred pounds — shoved right under my nose, gentlemen! And what am I to do about that, Mr. Womersley?”
“Take care of it!” answered Womersley, with a grim laugh. “Where is it?” The footman tapped his right side.
“Here, sir, in a body belt,” he replied. “At least, there’s four hundred and eighty of it, all in notes. I used a bit of it, buying things in Chester yesterday.”
“Well, don’t use any more,” said Womersley. “Now listen — you pack up anything you have here, and come back to London this evening. Go back to that club you live at — I’ll come there for you to-morrow morning, if I want you. And don’t bother about that money; there’s a big reward out for news of Alfred Jakyn, and you’ll get more than you have there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Womersley, thank you, sir!” exclaimed Green, apparently immensely relieved to find that he was not to be led away in handcuffs. “I’ll do exactly what you say. But the butler, sir? — perhaps you’ll say a word or two?”
“I’ll speak to him,” assented Womersley. He went outside and found the butler waiting in the hall. “Look here!” he said. “This man Green will have to leave here this afternoon — I’ve given him strict orders that he’s to pack up whatever he has and to come up to town by an evening train — I shall probably want him to-morrow morning. So you mustn’t put anything in his way, and if Lady Cheale should return here to-night, or during the night, you can give her my card, and tell her that Green has left by my instructions — she’ll understand.”
“I hope there’s nothing seriously wrong?” said the butler plaintively. “Sir John being away, and her ladyship, too — —”
“There’s something very seriously wrong!” answered Womersley, “as you’ll probably hear in due time. But that’s all I want at present.” He consulted his time-table again, went back and gave the footman a further instruction, and beckoned Holaday out to the car in which they had ridden over from Chester. “Filled up a hole or two in the net this morning, I think!” he said with a laugh, as they went off. “It was an inspiration, after all, that notion of yours about following up Millie Clover! But what do you make of it?”
“I should like to get hold of that man Jennison,” answered Holaday. “Seems to me he’s a sort of mainspring in this machinery.”
“We’ll get hold of the young devil right enough, if he’s in England!” affirmed Womersley. “I’ve never trusted him since I first set eyes on him, but I made the mistake of thinking him more a fool than a knave. We’ll be on to his track as soon as we strike London. Now look here — it’s now one o’clock. There’s an express at two-thirty — that leaves us time for lunch at the station. We’re due at Euston about six, and I’m going to wire to a colleague of mine, Kellington, to meet us there. And then we’ll just go along to the Great Western Hotel and find out if the Mr. A. Jennings to whom Lady Cheale wrote yesterday is Mr. Albert Jennison.”
“Well, I reckon he is,” said Holaday. “But I don’t suppose we shall find him there. You can bet your stars that if the waiter and the barmaid got five hundred pounds each out of Lady Cheale, Jennison got a lot more and has gone away with it!”
“I don’t know!” said Womersley. “Jennison, I think, is probably one of these people who believe that if you want to make yourself scarce, the best thing is to take lodgings next door. They’re not far wrong, either! — as my experience goes. I once searched London high and low for a man who’d made a disappearance from his family, and found at the end that he’d been living all the time three or four doors from them. No! I think we shall find Jennison at that hotel — that’s my impression!”
“What I’d like is to find Lady Cheale,” remarked Holaday. “Though we’ll not get information out of her as easily as you got it out of the footman fellow.”
“Information!” exclaimed Womersley. “Pooh! I think Lady Cheale poisoned Jakyn!” Holaday wagged his head to and fro and smiled in his peculiar fashion.
“Well, I don’t go as far as all that,” he said. “But I think she knows a lot — a lot that I want to know!”
“I say she poisoned him when they were together in that Cat and Bagpipe,” declared Womersley stoutly. “Dropped something in his glass when he wasn’t looking. For some reason and purpose of her own, of course. Jennison came to that conclusion when he found out she’d been there, and he’s blackmailed her. Clear as crystal, my boy! I see all the whole thing!”
“Good!” said Holaday, with a chuckle. “That simplifies matters — for you. But — I don’t!”
Womersley took no notice of his companion’s uncertainty. He saw a clear case before him, and was jubilant in consequence.
“Hang those Home Office experts!” he exclaimed. “If only they’d tell me how Jakyn was poisoned — I mean by what — it ‘ud be a help that I badly want. They’ve been messing about, speculating, thinking, and I don’t know what, all this time, and never said anything definite. What’s the use of being experts if — —”
But when the train ran into Euston, and Womersley’s colleague, Kellington, met them, there was the very news that Womersley wanted — in part, at any rate.
“Come into the refreshment room a few minutes,” said Kellington, when Womersley had introduced Holaday to him. “I’ve something to tell you: a report from those Home Office experts — it came in this afternoon.” He led them into a quiet corner, and when each had got a glass before him, bent over the table. “They’ve found out how Alfred Jakyn was poisoned!” he whispered. “Fact! — at last! And hang me if I’m not surprised that they never thought of it before!”
“Well?” demanded Womersley.
Kellington smiled, as a man smiles who has a good tale to tell.
“You mayn’t remember,” he went on, “that when Alfred Jakyn’s personal effects were taken off him, after his removal to the mortuary, there was amongst them, found in an outer pocket of his coat, a small tin box.”
“Yes, I do!” interrupted Womersley. “Ought to! I took it out myself.”
“Well, evidently nobody paid any attention to it at the time,” continued Kellington. “And so far as we’re informed, the doctors only got hold of it during this last day or two. But they did get hold of it, and they found it contained some pieces of home-made toffee — just ordinary home-made toffee. Six or seven pieces — small lumps, you know, broken up. And they experimented with them, yesterday and this morning. A lump was given to a dog. The dog showed no sign of anything out of the ordinary for exactly forty-five minutes. Then he just laid down and died! — died straight off! Another lump was tried on a cat. Same effect — except that the cat survived five minutes longer. But in each case — instantaneous death, when it did come on. And, of course, that’s how Alfred Jakyn got this poison. Home-made toffee! Now then — who gave it to him?”
“The box is no clue,” observed Womersley. “I remember it — plain tin.”
“No wrapper, no label; nothing on it in the way of lettering,” agreed Kellington. “I’ve seen it — saw it this afternoon.”
“What was the poison?” asked Womersley.
“They haven’t said — if they know; that’s all they have said — what I’ve told you. But I rather gathered,” added Kellington, “that though they now know its effects, they’re confoundedly puzzled as to its nature! And — but you know how close they are!”
Womersley nodded and took a reflective pull at the contents of his glass.
“Well,” he said. “That’s something. Now we’d better tell you what we’ve been after to-day, and then consult about a move I want to make to-night. It’s like this — —” Kellington listened attentively to Womersley’s story of his day’s doings, and at the end shook his head.
“He’ll be off!” he said. “Your friend there’s right. Waste of time, my lad, to go on to Paddington. I should go to Brunswick Square — to that doctor’s.”
“No!” declared Womersley determinedly. “I’m going to the Great Western Hotel. Bet you three drinks he’s there! Going there, anyhow — we’ll try Syphax later.”
The other men saw that he was bent on finding Jennison before doing anything else, and then rose with him. But Holaday tapped him on the arm as they walked out of the refreshment room.
“Look here!” he said. “This Jennison, now? Supposing we find him at that hotel we’re going to — what are you going to do with him?”
“There’s one thing certain about that, my lad!” replied Womersley. “If I put my hand on him, I shan’t take it off again — until I’m satisfied. In other words, I shan’t let him go! That’s why I wired for Kellington to meet us. If we get Jennison, we stick to him!”
“You’ll arrest him?” suggested Holaday.
“Well, we needn’t put it into such plain language,” said Womersley. “We shall just ask him to come with us — we shall show him that we’re so fond of his company that we can’t do without it — see? Oh, that’ll be all right. Once let me get him, and he won’t go out of my sight until he’s either given a full satisfactory explanation — or been safely locked up!”
