Collected works of j s f.., p.780
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 780
“See that?” he said. “An address! 203 A, Hatton Garden, E.C.1.”
CHAPTER III. MRS. ROBBINS TALKS
HAVING MADE A note of the address and carefully consigned the Fortnightly Review to a capacious pocket in which he carried an accumulation of documents and papers, Chaney turned to the butler.
“Got a telephone in the house?” he asked.
Moysey smiled, shaking his head.
“I regret to say we have not, sir,” he replied. “It would be a matter of great convenience to me if we had. But Mr. Marston, sir, is a gentleman of very conservative ideas and habits, and he doesn’t favour telephones or electric lighting. There is a telegraph office in the village, sir — close by.”
We went downstairs again to the butler’s pantry; there, at Chaney’s direction, I wrote out a telegram to our faithful Chippendale:
Go at once to 203 A, Hatton Garden, find out name or names of occupying firms, and wire them to me at Sedbury Manor, Monkseaton, immediately.
Moysey sent off a messenger with this, and Chaney and I returned to the room in which we had left Marston, Sir Stephen, and Mr. Ellerthorpe. They were still discussing the situation.
“It would have been a great help to me,” Mr. Ellerthorpe was saying, “if Sir John had told Mr. Marston anything about his doings in London since he arrived at the Waldorf Hotel. Who, for instance, was the man who called on him at the Waldorf? That seems to suggest that he was having business relations with somebody.”
“We may have got a bit of light on that upstairs,” remarked Chaney. He pulled out the Fortnightly Review. “We found this in his room,” he went on. “Here’s an address pencilled on the cover — 203 A, Hatton Garden. What’s that suggest to you, Mr. Ellerthorpe?”
“No, but what does it suggest to you?” said Mr. Ellerthorpe. “I don’t boast of the detective mind!”
“It suggests to me — diamonds!” replied Chaney. “Dealing in diamonds! Perhaps Sir John Maxtondale had come from the diamond-fields. Didn’t you say that his luggage bore labels showing that he’d travelled to Southampton from some South American port?”
“Rio,” corrected Mr. Ellerthorpe.
“That’s Brazil. There are diamond-fields in Brazil. He may have some business dealings in diamonds. Anyhow,” continued Chaney, “Hatton Garden, to me, suggests diamonds or something of the sort. Now, as to this address, pencilled — hurriedly, you see, on a bit of blank space on the cover of this magazine — I should say that it means that Sir John, after buying this at the station bookstall — Euston, of course — when he came down here the day before yesterday, met some man with whom he had been having dealings, and wrote down this address for future reference. It is probably the address of some Hatton Garden dealer in precious stones to whom he was advised to go. But—”
At this point a footman entered the room and approached Mr. Marston.
“Mrs. Robbins, of the Upper Leys Farm, would like to speak to you, sir,” he announced.
Marston looked his surprise.
“What’s she want?” he demanded.
“She says, sir,” replied the footman, hesitatingly, “that it’s — it’s about the missing gentleman. She — she called him Sir John, sir.”
Marston looked from one to the other of us in astonishment. We all knew that no name had been given to the missing gentleman.
“Show her in!” he commanded.
Mrs. Robbins entered — a bright-faced, apple-cheeked old rustic lady, who bobbed a curtsy to her landlord in particular, and to the rest of us in general, and smiled all round as if to convey that she was pleased to see us. Marston stared at her.
“Now, Mother Robbins, what’ve you come about? Who’s this Sir John you’ve been talking of?”
Mrs. Robbins sank into a chair which Chaney pushed towards her, and began to untie the strings of her bonnet. She gave Marston an arch look.
“Lord bless you, Mr. Marston!” she exclaimed. “What are you talking about? As if I shouldn’t know Sir John Maxtondale when I saw him. Why, wasn’t I his own nurse till he was growing into a big boy? Know him, indeed!”
“I’ll lay anything you’ve never seen him for five-and-twenty years, anyway, Mother Robbins!” said Marston. “Come, now!”
“Then you’d lose, Mr. Marston, for I saw him scarce more than five-and-twenty hours ago!” retorted Mrs. Robbins. “And talked with him, too!”
“Where?” demanded Marston.
“Where but in my parlour?” declared Mrs. Robbins. “At eleven o’clock in the forenoon of yesterday morning, for a good half-hour. And of that I’m willing to take my Bible oath or swear one o’ them affidavies, or anything you or these gentlemen likes, Mr. Marston. Especially,” concluded Mrs. Robbins, with a grave shake of her bonnet, “especially as I hear that Sir John is missing.”
“Who told you he’s missing?” asked Marston.
“It’s pretty well known that the gentleman who came here the other night is missing, Mr. Marston,” replied Mrs. Robbins. “When there’s as many servants, male and female, and especially female, in a house as you’ve got in yours, it isn’t human nature to expect such matters to remain private and confidential — oh, dear, no!”
“But who said it was — who said that the gentleman was Sir John Maxtondale?” demanded Marston.
“Nobody! But I can put two and two together as well as anybody, though no great scholar,” replied Mrs. Robbins, with dignified assurance. “And of course it is Sir John!”
Marston glanced at Sir Stephen. Sir Stephen turned to Mrs. Robbins.
“I should like to hear what you can tell us about my brother, Mrs. Robbins,” he said. “You say he came to your house yesterday morning?”
“As Sedbury Church clock struck eleven strokes, Sir Stephen,” replied Mrs. Robbins. “You see, I was standing in our front garden at that time, when I saw a gentleman coming across the park in our direction. Of course I thought it was the Squire; then I saw it wasn’t, because he’d neither dog nor gun with him. He came right close by our garden gate, which opens into the park, and he caught sight of me and stopped and smiled. ‘Bless me if that isn’t my old nurse!’ he says, and opens the gate and comes in. ‘Lord save us!’ says I, all of a tremble, ‘if it isn’t Mr. John! Sir John, I should have said.’ I says: ‘Dear-a-dear! Where ever have you been all this time?’ ‘All round the world, and in and out of it, my old friend,’ he says. ‘But here I am again, anyway!’ ‘Well, come in,’ I says, ‘and let’s hear about it.’ And we went into our best parlour and talked — for a good half-hour, Sir Stephen.”
“Yes?” said Sir Stephen. “And — what did you talk about, Mrs. Robbins?”
“Oh, well, of course I wanted to know first if Lucy Mills really did run away when he did — that was the gel, you know, gentlemen, that was engaged to Jim Robson and threw him over. Well, Sir John said she did, and, what was more, they were wed at once in London. Then, he said, they travelled in foreign parts — all sorts of queer places they’d been in, till at last they’d settled in South America. But Lucy, he said, was dead, and they’d never had any children, and he was now a lone man — which was the reason, he said, why he’d come home again. ‘Why,’ I said to him, ‘when your father, Sir William, died, they advertised for you all over the world — didn’t you see anything in them foreign papers?’ ‘I did,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want to come home then.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you’ll create a nice to-do coming home at this time — there’s Sir Stephen got the title and estates, and his one son, Mr. Rupert, who’ll look to have ’em when his pa’s dead, and now ye’ll upset it all!’ I said. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Stephen can have the estates, and Rupert can succeed to ’em — I don’t want ’em,’ he said. ‘I’m a rich man — made a great fortune in South America—’ ”
“Did he say what he’d made it in, ma’am?” interrupted Chaney.
“He didn’t, sir — not to me,” replied Mrs. Robbins. “All he said was he’d made one, and when he’d done with it, the family could have it. ‘But there’s the title!’ I said. ‘You can’t throw that away, Sir John.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘but it’ll pass from me to Stephen, and so Rupert’ll get it in the end.’ ‘Have you seen Sir Stephen?’ I asked him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Harry Marston and I are going to see him this afternoon.’ ‘And where are you going now?’ I inquired. ‘Oh, nowhere in particular,’ he said; ‘I was just looking round till lunch-time: Harry Marston’s gone to a magistrates’ meeting in Monkseaton.’ ‘Well, Sir John,’ I said, ‘just let me warn you. You left an enemy here, you know, and, in my opinion, he’s as black and bitter as ever! Be careful!’ ‘Do you mean Robson?’ he said. ‘That’s just the man I do mean!’ I said. ‘And I sez again — mind where you’re going!’ But he laughed at that. ‘Oh, nonsense, Polly’ — that was what he always called me when he was a little fellow and I was his nurse— ‘I don’t believe all that stuff! It would be a very truculent sort of fellow that cherished that feeling for twenty-five years!’ ‘Sir John,’ I said, as serious as I could, gentlemen, ‘Sir John, Robson’s the sort that would nurse his feelings of revenge for fifty years — keep away from him!’ But he only laughed, and when he’d had a glass of my home-brewed, he went.”
“Where?” asked Chaney.
“Oh, well, master,” replied Mrs. Robbins, with a portentous shake of her bonnet, “if you really want to know, he went off in the very direction which I’d warned him against taking. He was always an obstinate one, Sir John, ever since he was that high, gentlemen. Yes, he went right away across the park towards Heronswood. As Sir Stephen there knows very well, there’s a foot-path at the end of Sedbury Park which leads past Robson’s place, the home farm, to Heronswood, through the coppices and past Dutchman’s Cut, which is a piece of water — well, Sir John went that way. Right past — Robson’s!”
Silence fell on the room. Sir Stephen broke it.
“Have you mentioned this to anyone, Mrs. Robbins?” he inquired.
“I have not, sir,” replied Mrs. Robbins, firmly. “He — Sir John — asked me not to do so until later on. No — not to a soul, sir. But when I heard that a gentleman who had come to stay with Mr. Marston was missing, I put two and two together and decided that that gentleman was and could be no other than Sir John Maxtondale, so I came here.”
“Very proper, Mrs. Robbins, very proper!” said Sir Stephen. “Well, keep it to yourself a little longer, if you please. My brother,” he added, “may have gone back to London.”
Mrs. Robbins murmured something about her ardent regret that Sir John Maxtondale had not taken her advice and kept away from Heronswood home farm, and then, with more curtsies, departed. Ellerthorpe shook his head.
“There you are!” he said, dolefully. “Whether it’s so or not, you’ll see that local opinion will be that Sir John’s been murdered by Robson! What that old party thinks, everybody will be thinking. Anyhow, this will have to be cleared up. There’ll have to be a search. I think we should go into Monkseaton and see the Superintendent of Police.”
But while we were discussing this, a telegram from Chippendale arrived and was brought in to Chaney, who, after reading it, handed it over to me. It was after Chippendale’s style — brief, business-like:
Seen place mentioned six different tenants their names as follows — Avenser and Goldmark, Smith and Wellstein, Marcus Rosenbaum, Waldo Samman, Cashmore and Morris, Emanuel and Millard. All apparently connected with usual Hatton Garden trade.
“Which, mainly, is diamonds!” said Chaney, when, at his suggestion, I read out the message. “Diamonds! I shan’t be surprised, considering what we know about Sir John’s coming from South America — Brazil, to be correct — if diamonds are at the back of all this.”
“You mean, Mr. Chaney—” asked Sir Stephen. “Exactly — what, now?”
“That he may have had diamonds on him, Sir Stephen, and been followed down here,” replied Chaney. “That’s got to be considered, anyhow. The Robson theory seems, at the moment, obvious — but I’ve no faith in the obvious!”
“Do you advise seeing the local police?” inquired Sir Stephen.
“I do! Can’t do better. Let us see the Superintendent at Monkseaton,” said Chaney. “Tell him everything. Then let the local police take their own line. As for Camberwell and myself, we’ll take ours — if you wish it.”
“I certainly wish it,” said Sir Stephen. “But — you seem to suggest, Mr. Chaney, that your way mayn’t be that of the local police?”
“I don’t think it will, Sir Stephen,” replied Chaney, with a laugh. “I’ve a pretty good idea of what the local police will do and say when they’ve heard the story. They’ll have hanged, drawn, and quartered Robson within five minutes!”
“And — you?” asked Sir Stephen.
“We,” replied Chaney, “are in no hurry. Besides, as I said just now, we distrust the seeming obvious.”
Chaney was right about the police. The Superintendent, an elderly man and, as we soon found out, a native of those parts, had no sooner heard all the details of our story, narrated by Mr. Ellerthorpe and brought up to date and embracing Mrs. Robbins’s contribution, than he gave Sir Stephen a significant glance.
“That looks like Robson’s work, Sir Stephen,” he said. “He’s never forgotten — nor forgiven!”
“But — all these years!” exclaimed Sir Stephen.
“All very well, Sir Stephen, but he’s that sort,” replied the Superintendent. “I never told you — never told anyone, in fact — but years since, at the time in question, long before I was Superintendent, I took it on myself to warn Robson. He’d been uttering these wild threats against Sir John — Mr. John as he was then — here in Monkseaton, at a farmer’s ordinary, and it had got talked about. Now, I knew Robson, and I warned him against such foolishness. ‘There may come a time,’ I said, ‘when all this could be brought up against you.’ Well, it’s evidently come! What do you wish me to do, Sir Stephen?”
Sir Stephen was at a loss, but Mr. Ellerthorpe came to the rescue.
“I think there should be a thorough search of the country between Sedbury and Heronswood,” he said. “Sir John may have met with an accident. I suggest that you set your men to work, and, to help them, that you see the manager of the colliery and get him to enlist the services of his men. This is certain — Sir John must be found!”
We left the Superintendent making arrangements for a search, to be started at once, and went back to Sir Stephen Maxtondale’s car. He had asked Chaney, Ellerthorpe, and me to stay with him at Heronswood during our investigations, and thither we now repaired; it was already evening. Heronswood, a great, gaunt, grey pile of masonry, set in the midst of a thickly wooded park, looked grim and sombre as we drove up to it. But there was a great fire of logs burning bravely in the big hall when we entered; and when dinner was served, half an hour later, Sir Stephen proved himself such a genial and thoughtful host that my first feeling of being overawed and overweighted by the size of the place quickly wore off.
We were half-way through dinner when a young man apparently about twenty-eight or thirty, in riding-costume, suddenly burst in on us — a typical specimen of the horse-dog-and-gun variety. His fresh-coloured cheeks were ablaze with haste or excitement; his eyes shone. He made straight up to Sir Stephen.
“I say, what’s all this I hear?” he demanded abruptly. “I came through Sedbury; I met Dick Ferard there. The whole place is on the go! They say Uncle John has come back from God knows where, and is somewhere about. Is it — is it true?”
“I think it is quite true that your uncle has returned, Rupert,” replied Sir Stephen, quietly.
“Then — is he here?” asked Rupert, glancing round the table. “Is—”
“He is not here,” said Sir Stephen with some severity of speech. “We’ll talk about him later.”
Rupert Maxtondale hesitated a moment; then he slipped into a chair and, with no more than a mere nod to Mr. Ellerthorpe, began to eat his dinner. Conversation on our previous topic dropped: Sir Stephen began to talk about the prospects of the coming cricket season.
Dinner over, Chaney drew me aside.
“Say nothing to anyone,” he whispered, “but in a few minutes follow me out of this room into the outer hall. We’re going out — and if you want to know where, to have a look at James Robson and his surroundings.”
CHAPTER IV. THE UNCURTAINED WINDOW
CHANEY LEFT THE room; I waited; the servants were handing round coffee and cigars. Rupert Maxtondale had already disappeared; he had bolted, rather than eaten, his dinner; it seemed to me that he was badly upset about something. After the obvious check from his father, he had relapsed into silence, and if he looked round at any of us, it was with questioning, if not wholly suspicious, glances. There was something about him to which I took an instinctive dislike; a furtive air, a sullen expression; he was altogether different from Sir Stephen, who was frankness itself.
Waiting a few minutes, until Sir Stephen and Mr. Ellerthorpe had begun to talk, I left the room and in the hall found Chaney, in conversation with one of the footmen. He motioned me to put on my overcoat; together we passed out to the terrace in front of the big house. That was lighted by the gleam from the long range of windows; outside in the far-spreading pleasure-grounds and the park beyond, the night was already dark. Above the woods in the distance we could see in the sombre skies the reflected glow of the lights of Monkseaton; from that direction, too, we heard the rumble of the rising and falling machinery of the colliery shaft; the night shift, doubtless, was going down to its subterranean labours.
“I’ve found out the way to Robson’s place,” whispered Chaney, as we walked away from the house. “We take this path at the end of the terrace and follow it across this side of the park till we come to a biggish house on our left; that, so says that flunkey I was talking to, is the steward’s place — Mr. Weekes. After that there’s a cluster of cottages — labourers’ dwellings. And a bit farther on there’s a big farmstead — that’s the home farm. Robson’s. We call on Robson — privately.”
