The Middle Temple Murder Part 2

CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CHAMBERLAYNE STORY

"I perceive, sir," said Mr. Quarterpage, as Spargo entered the library, "that you have read the account of the Maitland trial."

"Twice," replied Spargo.

"And you have come to the conclusion that—but what conclusion have you come to?" asked Mr. Quarterpage.

"That the silver ticket in my purse was Maitland's property," said Spargo, who was not going to give all his conclusions at once.

"Just so," agreed the old gentleman. "I think so—I can't think anything else. But I was under the impression that I could have accounted for that ticket, just as I am sure I can account for the other forty-nine."

"Yes—and how?" asked Spargo.

Mr. Quarterpage turned to a corner cupboard and in silence produced a decanter and two curiously-shaped old wine-glasses. He carefully polished the glasses with a cloth which he took from a drawer, and set glasses and decanter on a table in the window, motioning Spargo to take a chair in proximity thereto. He himself pulled up his own elbow-chair.

"We'll take a glass of my old brown sherry," he said. ​"Though I say it as shouldn't, as the saying goes, I don't think you could find better brown sherry than that from Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, Mr. Spargo—no, nor further north either, where they used to have good taste in liquor in my young days! "Well, here's your good health, sir, and I'll tell you about Maitland."

"I'm curious," said Spargo. "And about more than Maitland. I want to know about a lot of things arising out of that newspaper report. I want to know something about the man referred to so much—the stockbroker, Chamberlayne."

"Just so," observed Mr. Quarterpage, smiling. "I thought that would touch your sense of the inquisitive. But Maitland first. Now, when Maitland went to prison, he left behind him a child, a boy, just then about two years old. The child's mother was dead. Her sister, a Miss Baylis, appeared on the scene—Maitland had married his wife from a distance—and took possession of the child and of Maitland's personal effects. He had been made bankrupt while he was awaiting his trial, and all his household goods were sold. But this Miss Baylis took some small personal things, and I always believed that she took the silver ticket. And she may have done, for anything I know to the contrary. Anyway, she took the child away, and there was an end of the Maitland family in Market Milcaster. Maitland, of course, was in due procedure of things removed to Dartmoor, and there he served his term. There were people who were very anxious to get hold of him when he came out—the bank people, for they believed that he knew more about the disposition of that money than he'd ever told, and ​they wanted to induce him to tell what they hoped he knew—between ourselves, Mr. Spargo, they were going to make it worth his while to tell."

Spargo tapped the newspaper, which he had retained while the old gentleman talked.

"Then they didn't believe what his counsel said—that Chamberlayne got all the money?" he asked.

Mr. Quarterpage laughed.

"No—nor anybody else!" he answered. "There was a strong idea in the town—you'll see why afterwards—that it was all a put-up job, and that Maitland cheerfully underwent his punishment knowing that there was a nice fortune waiting for him when he came out. And as I say, the bank people meant to get hold of him. But though they sent a special agent to meet him on his release, they never did get hold of him. Some mistake arose—when Maitland was released, he got clear away. Nobody's ever heard a word of him from that day to this. Unless Miss Baylis has. "

"Where does this Miss Baylis live?" asked Spargo.

"Well, I don't know," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "She did live in Brighton when she took the child away, and her address was known, and I have it somewhere. But when the bank people sought her out after Maitland's release, she, too, had clean disappeared, and all efforts to trace her failed. In fact, according to the folks who lived near her in Brighton, she'd completely disappeared, with the child, five years before. So there wasn't a clue to Maitland. He served his time—made a model prisoner—they did find that much out!—earned the maximum remission, was released, and vanished. ​And for that very reason there's a theory about him in this very town to this very day!"

"What?" asked Spargo.

"This. That he's now living comfortably, luxuriously abroad on what he got from the bank," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "They say that the sister-in-law was in at the game; that when she disappeared with the child, she went abroad somewhere and made a home ready for Maitland, and that he went off to them as soon as he came out. Do you see?"

"I suppose that was possible," said Spargo.

"Quite possible, sir. But now," continued the old gentleman, replenishing the glasses, "now we come on to the Chamberlayne story. It's a good deal more to do with the Maitland story than appears at first sight. I'll tell it to you and you can form your own conclusions. Chamberlayne was a man who came to Market Milcaster—I don't know from where—in 1886—five years before the Maitland smash-up. He was then about Maitland's age—a man of thirty-seven or eight. He came as clerk to old Mr. Vallas, the rope and twine manufacturer: Vallas's place is still there, at the bottom of the High Street, near the river, though old Vallas is dead. He was a smart, cute, pushing chap, this Chamberlayne; he made himself indispensable to old Vallas, and old Vallas paid him a rare good salary. He settled down in the town, and he married a town girl, one of the Corkindales, the saddlers, when he'd been here three years. Unfortunately she died in childbirth within a year of their marriage. It was very soon after that that Chamberlayne threw up his post at Vallas's, and started ​business as a stock-and-share broker. He'd been a saving man; he'd got a nice bit of money with his wife; he always let it be known that he had money of his own, and he started in a good way. He was a man of the most plausible manners; he'd have coaxed butter out of a dog's throat if he'd wanted to. The moneyed men of the town believed in him—I believed in him myself, Mr. Spargo—I'd many a transaction with him, and I never lost aught by him—on the contrary, he did very well for me. He did well for most of his clients—there were, of course, ups and downs, but on the whole he satisfied his clients uncommonly well. But, naturally, nobody ever knew what was going on between him and Maitland."

"I gather from this report," said Spargo, "that everything came out suddenly—unexpectedly?"

"That was so, sir," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "Sudden? Unexpected? Aye, as a crack of thunder on a fine winter's day. Nobody had the ghost of a notion that anything was wrong. John Maitland was much respected in the town; much thought of by everybody; well known to everybody. I can assure you, Mr. Spargo, that it was no pleasant thing to have to sit on that grand jury as I did—I was its foreman, sir,—and hear a man sentenced that you'd regarded as a bosom friend. But there it was!"

"How was the thing discovered?" asked Spargo, anxious to get at facts.

"In this way," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "The Market Milcaster Bank is in reality almost entirely the property of two old families in the town, the Gutchbys and ​the Hostables. Owing to the death of his father, a young Hostable, fresh from college, came into the business. He was a shrewd, keen young fellow; he got some suspicion, somehow, about Maitland, and he insisted on the other partners consenting to a special investigation, and on their making it suddenly. And Maitland was caught before he had a chance. But we're talking about Chamberlayne."

"Yes, about Chamberlayne," agreed Spargo.

"Well, now, Maitland was arrested one evening," continued Mr. Quarterpage. "Of course, the news of his arrest ran through the town like wild-fire. Everybody was astonished; he was at that time—aye, and had been for years—a churchwarden at the Parish Church, and I don't think there could have been more surprise if we'd heard that the Vicar had been arrested for bigamy. In a little town like this, news is all over the place in a few minutes. Of course, Chamberlayne would hear that news like everybody else. But it was remembered, and often remarked upon afterwards, that from the moment of Maitland's arrest nobody in Market Milcaster ever had speech with Chamberlayne again. After his wife's death he'd taken to spending an hour or so of an evening across there at the 'Dragon,' where you saw me and my friends last night, but on that night he didn't go to the 'Dragon.' And next morning he caught the eight o'clock train to London. He happened to remark to the stationmaster as he got into the train that he expected to be back late that night, and that he should have a tiring day of it. But Chamberlayne didn't come back that night, Mr. Spargo. He didn't come back to ​Market Milcaster for four days, and when he did come back it was in a coffin!"

"Dead?" exclaimed Spargo. "That was sudden!"

"Very sudden," agreed Mr. Quarterpage. "Yes, sir, he came back in his coffin, did Chamberlayne. On the very evening on which he'd spoken of being back, there came a telegram here to say that he'd died very suddenly at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. That telegram came to his brother-in-law, Corkindale, the saddler—you'll find him down the street, opposite the Town Hall. It was sent to Corkindale by a nephew of Chamberlayne's, another Chamberlayne, Stephen, who lived in London, and was understood to be on the Stock Exchange there. I saw that telegram, Mr. Spargo, and it was a long one. It said that Chamberlayne had had a sudden seizure, and though a doctor had been got to him he'd died shortly afterwards. Now, as Chamberlayne had his nephew and friends in London, his brother-in-law, Tom Corkindale, didn't feel that there was any necessity for him to go up to town, so he just sent off a wire to Stephen Chamberlayne asking if there was aught he could do. And next morning came another wire from Stephen saying that no inquest would be necessary, as the doctor had been present and able to certify the cause of death, and would Corkindale make all arrangements for the funeral two days later. You see, Chamberlayne had bought a vault in our cemetery when he buried his wife, so naturally they wished to bury him in it, with her."

Spargo nodded. He was beginning to imagine all sorts of things and theories; he was taking everything in.

"Well," continued Mr. Quarterpage, "on the second ​day after that, they brought Chamberlayne's body down. Three of 'em came with it—Stephen Chamberlayne, the doctor who'd been called in, and a solicitor. Everything was done according to proper form and usage. As Chamberlayne had been well known in the town, a good number of townsfolk met the body at the station and followed it to the cemetery. Of course, many of us who had been clients of Chamberlayne's were anxious to know how he had come to such a sudden end. According to Stephen Chamberlayne's account, our Chamberlayne had wired to him and to his solicitor to meet him at the Cosmopolitan to do some business. They were awaiting him there when he arrived, and they had lunch together. After that, they got to their business in a private room. Towards the end of the afternoon, Chamberlayne was taken suddenly ill, and though they got a doctor to him at once, he died before evening. The doctor said he'd a diseased heart. Anyhow, he was able to certify the cause of his death, so there was no inquest and they buried him, as I have told you."

The old gentleman paused find, taking a sip at his sherry, smiled at some reminiscence which occurred to him.

"Well," he said, presently going on, "of course, on that came all the Maitland revelations, and Maitland vowed and declared that Chamberlayne had not only had nearly all the money, but that he was absolutely certain that most of it was in his hands in hard cash. But Chamberlayne, Mr. Spargo, had left practically nothing. All that could be traced was about three or four thousand pounds. He'd left everything to his nephew, ​Stephen. There wasn't a trace, a clue to the vast sums with which Maitland had entrusted him. And then people began to talk, and they said what some of them say to this very day!"

"What's that?" asked Spargo.

Mr. Quarterpage leaned forward and tapped his guest on the arm.

"That Chamberlayne never did die, and that that coffin was weighted with lead!" he answered.

 CHAPTER TWENTY

MAITLAND ALIAS MARBURY

This remarkable declaration awoke such a new conception of matters in Spargo's mind, aroused such infinitely new possibilities in his imagination, that for a full moment he sat silently staring at his informant, who chuckled with quiet enjoyment at his visitor's surprise.

"Do you mean to tell me," said Spargo at last, "that there are people in this town who still believe that the coffin in your cemetery which is said to contain Chamberlayne's body contains—lead?"

"Lots of 'em, my dear sir!" replied Mr. Quarterpage. "Lots of 'em! Go out in the street and asked the first six men you meet, and I'll go bail that four out of the six believe it."

"Then why, in the sacred name of common sense did no one ever take steps to make certain?" asked Spargo. "Why didn't they get an order for exhumation?"

"Because it was nobody's particular business to do so," answered Mr. Quarterpage. "You don't know country-town life, my dear sir. In towns like Market Milcaster folks talk and gossip a great deal, but they're always slow to do anything. It's a case of who'll start first—of initiative. And if they see it's going to cost anything—then they'll have nothing to do with it."

"But—the bank people?" suggested Spargo.

​Mr. Quarterpage shook his head.

"They're amongst the lot who believe that Chamberlayne did die," he said. "They're very old-fashioned, conservative-minded people, the Gutchbys and the Hostables, and they accepted the version of the nephew, and the doctor, and the solicitor. But now I'll tell you something about those three. There was a man here in the town, a gentleman of your own profession, who came to edit that paper you've got on your knee. He got interested in this Chamberlayne case, and he began to make enquiries with the idea of getting hold of some good—what do you call it?"

"I suppose he'd call it 'copy,'" said Spargo.

"'Copy'—that was his term," agreed Mr. Quarterpage. "Well, he took the trouble to go to London to ask some quiet questions of the nephew, Stephen. That was just twelve months after Chamberlayne had been buried. But he found that Stephen Chamberlayne had left England—months before. Gone, they said, to one of the colonies, but they didn't know which. And the solicitor had also gone. And the doctor—couldn't be traced, no, sir, not even through the Medical Register. What do you think of all that, Mr. Spargo?"

"I think," answered Spargo, "that Market Milcaster folk are considerably slow. I should have had that death and burial enquired into. The whole thing looks to me like a conspiracy."

"Well, sir, it was, as I say, nobody's business," said Mr. Quarterpage. "The newspaper gentleman tried to stir up interest in it, but it was no good, and very soon afterwards he left. And there it is."

​"Mr. Quarterpage," said Spargo, "what's your own honest opinion?"

The old gentleman smiled.

"Ah!" he said. "I've often wondered, Mr. Spargo, if I really have an opinion on that point. I think that what I probably feel about the whole affair is that there was a good deal of mystery attaching to it. But we seem, sir, to have gone a long way from the question of that old silver ticket which you've got in your purse. Now——"

"No!" said Spargo, interrupting his host with an accompanying wag of his forefinger. "No! I think we're coming nearer to it. Now you've given me a great deal of your time, Mr. Quarterpage, and told me a lot, and, first of all, before I tell you a lot, I'm going to show you something."

And Spargo took out of his pocket-book a carefully-mounted photograph of John Marbury—the original of the process-picture which he had had made for the Watchman. He handed it over.

"Do you recognize that photograph as that of anybody you know?" he asked. "Look at it well and closely."

Mr. Quarterpage put on a special pair of spectacles and studied the photograph from several points of view.

"No, sir," he said at last with a shake of the head. "I don't recognize it at all."

"Can't see in it any resemblance to any man you've ever known?" asked Spargo.

"No, sir, none!" replied Mr. Quarterpage. "None whatever."

​"Very well," said Spargo, laying the photograph, on the table between them. "Now, then, I want you to tell me what John Maitland was like when you knew him. Also, I want you to describe Chamberlayne as he was when he died, or was supposed to die. You remember them, of course, quite well?"

Mr. Quarterpage got up and moved to the door.

"I can do better than that," he said. "I can show you photographs of both men as they were just before Maitland's trial. I have a photograph of a small group of Market Milcaster notabilities which was taken at a municipal garden-party; Maitland and Chamberlayne are both in it. It's been put away in a cabinet in my drawing-room for many a long year, and I've no doubt it's as fresh as when it was taken."

He left the room and presently returned with a large mounted-photograph which he laid on the table before his visitor.

"There you are, sir," he said. "Quite fresh, you see—it must be getting on to twenty years since that was taken out of the drawer that it's been kept in. Now, that's Maitland. And that's Chamberlayne."

Spargo found himself looking at a group of men who stood against an ivy-covered wall in the stiff attitudes in which photographers arrange masses of sitters. He fixed his attention on the two figures indicated by Mr. Quarterpage, and saw two medium-heighted, rather sturdily-built men about whom there was nothing very specially noticeable.

"Um!" he said, musingly. "Both bearded."

"Yes, they both wore beards—full beards," assented ​Mr. Quarterpage. "And you see, they weren't so much alike. But Maitland was a much darker man than Chamberlayne, and he had brown eyes, while Chamberlayne's were rather a bright blue."

"The removal of a beard makes a great difference," remarked Spargo. He looked at the photograph of Maitland in the group, comparing it with that of Marbury which he had taken from his pocket. "And twenty years makes a difference, too," he added musingly.

"To some people twenty years makes a vast difference, sir," said the old gentleman. "To others it makes none—I haven't changed much, they tell me, during the past twenty years. But I've known men change—age, almost beyond recognition!—in five years. It depends, sir, on what they go through."

Spargo suddenly laid aside the photographs, put his hands in his pockets, and looked steadfastly at Mr. Quarterpage.

"Look here!" he said. "I'm going to tell you what I'm after, Mr. Quarterpage. I'm sure you've heard all about what's known as the Middle Temple Murder—the Marbury case?"

"Yes, I've read of it," replied Mr. Quarterpage.

"Have you read the accounts of it in my paper, the Watchman?" asked Spargo.

Mr. Quarterpage shook his head.

"I've only read one newspaper, sir, since I was a young man," he replied. "I take the Times, sir—we always took it, aye, even in the days when newspapers were taxed."

"Very good," said Spargo. "But perhaps I can tell ​you a little more than you've read, for I've been working up that case ever since the body of the man known as John Marbury was found. Now, if you'll just give me your attention, I'll tell you the whole story from that moment until—now."

And Spargo, briefly, succinctly, re-told the story of the Marbury case from the first instant of his own connection with it until the discovery of the silver ticket, and Mr. Quarterpage listened in rapt attention, nodding his head from time to time as the younger man made his points.

"And now, Mr. Quarterpage," concluded Spargo, "this is the point I've come to. I believe that the man who came to the Anglo-Orient Hotel as John Marbury and who was undoubtedly murdered in Middle Temple Lane that night, was John Maitland—I haven't a doubt about it after learning what you tell me about the silver ticket. I've found out a great deal that's valuable here, and I think I'm getting nearer to a solution of the mystery. That is, of course, to find out who murdered John Maitland, or Marbury. What you have told me about the Chamberlayne affair has led me to think this—there may have been people, or a person, in London, who was anxious to get Marbury, as we'll call him, out of the way, and who somehow encountered him that night—anxious to silence him, I mean, because of the Chamberlayne affair. And I wondered, as there is so much mystery about him, and as he won't give any account of himself, if this man Aylmore was really Chamberlayne. Yes, I wondered that! But Aylmore's a tall, finely-built man, quite six feet in height, and his beard, though it's now ​getting grizzled, has been very dark, and Chamberlayne, you say, was a medium-sized, fair man, with blue eyes."

"That's so, sir," assented Mr. Quarterpage. "Yes, a middling-sized man, and fair—very fair. Deary me, Mr. Spargo!—this is a revelation. And you really think, sir, that John Maitland and John Marbury are one and the same person?"

"I'm sure of it, now," said Spargo. "I see it in this way. Maitland, on his release, went out to Australia, and there he stopped. At last he comes back, evidently well-to-do. He's murdered the very day of his arrival. Aylmore is the only man who knows anything of him—Aylmore won't tell all he knows; that's flat. But Aylmore's admitted that he knew him at some vague date, say from twenty-one to twenty-two or three years ago. Now, where did Aylmore know him? He says in London. That's a vague term. He won't say where—he won't say anything definite—he won't even say what he, Aylmore, himself was in those days. Do you recollect anything of anybody like Aylmore coming here to see Maitland, Mr. Quarterpage?"

"I don't," answered Mr. Quarterpage. "Maitland was a very quiet, retiring fellow, sir: he was about the quietest man in the town. I never remember that he had visitors; certainly I've no recollection of such a friend of his as this Aylmore, from your description of him, would be at that time."

"Did Maitland go up to London much in those days?" asked Spargo.

Mr. Quarterpage laughed.

"Well, now, to show you what a good memory I have," ​he said, "I'll tell you of something that occurred across there at the 'Dragon' only a few months before the Maitland affair came out. There were some of us in there one evening, and, for a rare thing, Maitland came in with Chamberlayne. Chamberlayne happened to remark that he was going up to town next day—he was always to and fro—and we got talking about London. And Maitland said in course of conversation, that he believed he was about the only man of his age in England—and, of course, he meant of his class and means—who'd never even seen London! And I don't think he ever went there between that time and his trial: in fact, I'm sure he didn't, for if he had, I should have heard of it."

"Well, that's queer," remarked Spargo. "It's very queer. For I'm certain Maitland and Marbury are one and the same person. My theory about that old leather box is that Maitland had that carefully planted before his arrest; that he dug it up when he came out of Dartmoor; that he took it off to Australia with him; that he brought it back with him; and that, of course, the Silver ticket and the photograph had been in it all these years. Now——"

At that moment the door of the library was opened, and a parlourmaid looked in at her master.

"There's the boots from the 'Dragon' at the front door, sir," she said. "He's brought two telegrams across from there for Mr. Spargo, thinking he might like to have them at once."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ARRESTED

Spargo hurried out to the hall, took the two telegrams from the boots of the "Dragon," and, tearing open the envelopes, read the messages hastily. He went back to Mr. Quarterpage.

"Here's important news," he said as he closed the library door and resumed his seat. "I'll read these telegrams to you, sir, and then we can discuss them in the light of what we've been talking about this morning. The first is from our office. I told you we sent over to Australia for a full report about Marbury at the place he said he hailed from—Coolumbidgee. That report's just reached the Watchman, and they've wired it on to me. It's from the chief of police at Coolumbidgee to the editor of the Watchman, London:—

"John Marbury came to Coolumbidgee in the winter of 1898-9. He was unaccompanied. He appeared to be in possession of fairly considerable means and bought a share in a small sheep-farm from its proprietor, Andrew Robertson, who is still here, and who says that Marbury never told him anything about himself except that he had emigrated for health reasons and ​was a widower. He mentioned that he had had a son who was dead, and was now without relations. He lived a very quiet, steady life on the sheep-farm, never leaving it for many years. About six months ago, however, he paid a visit to Melbourne, and on returning told Robertson that he had decided to return to England in consequence of some news he had received, and must therefore sell his share in the farm. Robertson bought it from him for three thousand pounds, and Marbury shortly afterwards left for Melbourne. From what we could gather, Robertson thinks Marbury was probably in command of five or six thousand when he left Coolumbidgee. He told Robertson that he had met a man in Melbourne who had given him news that surprised him, but did not say what news. He had in his possession when he left Robertson exactly the luggage he brought with him when he came—a stout portmanteau and a small, square leather box. There are no effects of his left behind at Coolumbidgee."

"That's all," said Spargo, laying the first of the telegrams on the table. "And it seems to me to signify a good deal. But now here's more startling news. This is from Rathbury, the Scotland Yard detective that I told you of, Mr. Quarterpage—he promised, you know, to keep me posted in what went on in my absence. Here's what he says:

"Fresh evidence tending to incriminate Aylmore has come to hand. Authorities have decided to arrest ​him on suspicion. You'd better hurry back if you want material for to-morrow's paper."

Spargo threw that telegram down, too, waited while the old gentleman glanced at both of them with evident curiosity, and then jumped up.

"Well, I shall have to go, Mr. Quarterpage," he said. "I looked the trains out this morning so as to be in readiness. I can catch the 1.20 to Paddington—that'll get me in before half-past four. I've an hour yet. Now, there's another man I want to see in Market Milcaster. That's the photographer—or a photographer. You remember I told you of the photograph found with the silver ticket? Well, I'm calculating that that photograph was taken here, and I want to see the man who took it—if he's alive and I can find him. "

Mr. Quarterpage rose and put on his hat.

"There's only one photographer in this town, sir," he said, "and he's been here for a good many years—Cooper. I'll take you to him—it's only a few doors away."

Spargo wasted no time in letting the photographer know what he wanted. He put a direct question to Mr. Cooper—an elderly man.

"Do you remember taking a photograph of the child of John Maitland, the bank manager, some twenty or twenty-one years ago?" he asked, after Mr. Quarterpage had introduced him as a gentleman from London who wanted to ask a few questions.

"Quite well, sir," replied Mr. Cooper. "As well as if it had been yesterday."

​"Do you still happen to have a copy of it?" asked Spargo.

But Mr. Cooper had already turned to a row of file albums. He took down one labelled 1891, and began to search its pages. In a minute or two he laid it on his table before his callers.

"There you are, sir," he said. "That's the child!"

Spargo gave one glance at the photograph and turned to Mr. Quarterpage. "Just as I thought," he said. "That's the same photograph we found in the leather box with the silver ticket. I'm obliged to you, Mr. Cooper. Now, there's just one more question I want to ask. Did you ever supply any further copies of this photograph to anybody after the Maitland afifair?—that is, after the family had left the town?"

"Yes," replied the photographer. "I supplied half a dozen copies to Miss Baylis, the child's aunt, who, as a matter of fact, brought him here to be photographed. And I can give you her address, too," he continued, beginning to turn over another old file. "I have it somewhere."

Mr. Quarterpage nudged Spargo.

"That's something I couldn't have done!" he remarked. "As I told you, she'd disappeared from Brighton when enquiries were made after Maitland's release. "

"Here you are," said Mr. Cooper. "I sent six copies of that photograph to Miss Baylis in April, 1895. Her address was then 6, Chichester Square, Bayswater, W."

Spargo rapidly wrote this address down, thanked the ​photographer for his courtesy, and went out with Mr. Quarterpage. In the street he turned to the old gentleman with a smile.

"Well, I don't think there's much doubt about that!" he exclaimed. "Maitland and Marbury are the same man, Mr. Quarterpage. I'm as certain of that as that I see your Town Hall there."

"And what will you do next, sir?" enquired Mr. Quarterpage.

"Thank you—as I do—for all your kindness and assistance, and get off to town by this 1.20," replied Spargo. "And I shan't fail to let you know how things go on."

"One moment," said the old gentleman, as Spargo was hurrying away, "do you think this Mr. Aylmore really murdered Maitland?"

"No!" answered Spargo with emphasis. "I don't! And I think we've got a good deal to do before we find out who did."

Spargo purposely let the Marbury case drop out of his mind during his journey to town. He ate a hearty lunch in the train and talked with his neighbours; it was a relief to let his mind and attention turn to something else than the theme which had occupied it unceasingly for so many days. But at Reading the newspaper boys were shouting the news of the arrest of a Member of Parliament, and Spargo, glancing out of the window, caught sight of a newspaper placard:

The Marbury Murder Case
Arrest of Mr. Aylmore

​He snatched a paper from a boy as the train moved out and, unfolding it, found a mere announcement in the space reserved for stop-press news:

"Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P., was arrested at two o'clock this afternoon, on his way to the House of Commons, on a charge of being concerned in the murder of John Marbury in Middle Temple Lane on the night of June 21st last. It is understood he will be brought up at Bow Street at ten o'clock tomorrow morning."

Spargo hurried to New Scotland Yard as soon as he reached Paddington. He met Rathbury coming away from his room. At sight of him, the detective turned back.

"Well, so there you are!" he said. "I suppose you've heard the news?"

Spargo nodded as he dropped into a chair.

"What led to it?" he asked abruptly. "There must have been something."

"There was something," he replied. "The thing—stick, bludgeon, whatever you like to call it, some foreign article—with which Marbury was struck down was found last night."

"Well?" asked Spargo.

"It was proved to be Aylmore's property," answered Rathbury. "It was a South American curio that he had in his rooms in Fountain Court."

"Where was it found?" asked Spargo.

Rathbury laughed.

​"He was a clumsy fellow who did it, whether he was Aylmore or whoever he was!" he replied. "Do you know, it had been dropped into a sewer-trap in Middle Temple Lane—actually! Perhaps the murderer thought it would be washed out into the Thames and float away. But, of course, it was bound to come to light. A sewer man found it yesterday evening, and it was quickly recognized by the woman who cleans up for Aylmore as having been in his rooms ever since she knew them."

"What does Aylmore say about it?" asked Spargo. "I suppose he's said something?"

"Says that the bludgeon is certainly his, and that he brought it from South America with him," announced Rathbury; "but that he doesn't remember seeing it in his rooms for some time, and thinks that it was stolen from them."

"Um!" said Spargo, musingly. "But—how do you know that was the thing that Marbury was struck down with?"

Rathbury smiled grimly.

"There's some of his hair on it—mixed with blood," he answered. "No doubt about that. Well—anything come of your jaunt westward?"

"Yes, " replied Spargo. "Lots!"

"Good?" asked Rathbury.

"Extra good. I've found out who Marbury really was."

"No! Really?"

"No doubt, to my mind. I'm certain of it."

Rathbury sat down at his desk, watching Spargo with rapt attention.

​"And who was he?" he asked.

"John Maitland, once of Market Milcaster," replied Spargo. "Ex-bank manager. Also ex-convict."

"Ex-convict!"

"Ex-convict. He was sentenced, at Market Milcaster quarter Sessions, in autumn, 1891, to ten years' penal servitude, for embezzling the bank's money, to the tune of over two hundred thousand pounds. Served his term at Dartmoor. Went to Australia as soon, or soon after, he came out. That's who Marbury was—Maitland. Dead—certain!"

Rathbury still stared at his caller.

"Go on!" he said. "Tell all about it, Spargo. Let's hear every detail. I'll tell you all I know after. But what I know's nothing to that."

Spargo told him the whole story of his adventures at Market Milcaster, and the detective listened with rapt attention.

"Yes," he said at the end. "Yes—I don't think there's much doubt about that. Well, that clears up a lot, doesn't it?"

Spargo yawned.

"Yes, a whole slate full is wiped off there," he said. "I haven't so much interest in Marbury, or Maitland now. My interest is all in Aylmore."

Rathbury nodded.

"Yes," he said. "The thing to find out is—who is Aylmore, or who was he, twenty years ago?"

"Your people haven't found anything out, then?" asked Spargo.

"Nothing beyond the irreproachable history of Mr. ​Aylmore since he returned to this country, a very rich man, some ten years since," answered Rathbury, smiling. "They've no previous dates to go on. What are you going to do next, Spargo?"

"Seek out that Miss Baylis," replied Spargo.

"You think you could get something there?" asked Rathbury.

"Look here!" said Spargo. "I don't believe for a second Aylmore killed Marbury. I believe I shall get at the truth by following up what I call the Maitland trail. This Miss Baylis must know something—if she's alive. "Well, now I'm going to report at the office. Keep in touch with me, Rathbury."

He went on then to the Watchmen office, and as he got out of his taxi-cab at its door, another cab came up and set down Mr. Aylmore's daughters.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE BLANK PAST

Jessie Aylmore came forward to meet Spargo with ready confidence; the elder girl hung back diffidently.

"May we speak to you?" said Jessie. "We have come on purpose to speak to you. Evelyn didn't want to come, but I made her come."

Spargo shook hands silently with Evelyn Aylmore and motioned them both to follow him. He took them straight upstairs to his room and bestowed them in his easiest chairs before he addressed them.

"I've only just got back to town," he said abruptly. "I was sorry to hear the news about your father. That's what's brought you here, of course. But—I'm afraid I can't do much."

"I told you that we had no right to trouble Mr. Spargo, Jessie," said Evelyn Aylmore. "What can he do to help us?"

Jessie shook her head impatiently.

"The Watchman's about the most powerful paper in London, isn't it?" she said. "And isn't Mr. Spargo writing all these articles about the Marbury case? Mr. Spargo, you must help us!"

Spargo sat down at his desk and began turning over the letters and papers which had accumulated during his absence.

​"To be absolutely frank with you," he said, presently, "I don't see how anybody's going to help, so long as your father keeps up that mystery about the past."

"That," said Evelyn, quietly, "is exactly what Ronald says, Jessie. But we can't make our father speak, Mr. Spargo. That he is as innocent as we are of this terrible crime we are certain, and we don't know why he wouldn't answer the questions put to him at the inquest. And—we know no more than you know or anyone knows, and though I have begged my father to speak, he won't say a word. We saw his danger: Ronald—Mr. Breton—told us, and we implored him to tell everything he knew about Mr. Marbury. But so far he has simply laughed at the idea that he had anything to do with the murder, or could be arrested for it, and now——"

"And now he's locked up," said Spargo in his usual matter-of-fact fashion. "Well, there are people who have to be saved from themselves, you know. Perhaps you'll have to save your father from the consequences of his own—shall we say obstinacy? Now, look here, between ourselves, how much do you know about your father's—past?"

The two sisters looked at each other and then at Spargo.

"Nothing," said the elder.

"Absolutely nothing!" said the younger.

"Answer a few plain questions," said Spargo. "I'm not going to print your replies, nor make use of them in any way: I'm only asking the questions with a desire to help you. Have you any relations in England?"

​"None that we know of," replied Evelyn.

"Nobody you could go to for information about the past?" asked Spargo.

"No—nobody!"

Spargo drummed his fingers on his blotting-pad. He was thinking hard.

"How old is your father?" he asked suddenly.

"He was fifty-nine a few weeks ago," answered Evelyn.

"And how old are you, and how old is your sister?" demanded Spargo.

"I am twenty, and Jessie is nearly nineteen."

"Where were you born?"

"Both of us at San Gregorio, which is in the San Jose province of Argentina, north of Monte Video."

"Your father was in business there?"

"He was in business in the export trade, Mr. Spargo. There's no secret about that. He exported all sorts of things to England and to France—skins, hides, wools, dried salts, fruit. That's how he made his money."

"You don't know how long he'd been there when you were born?"

"No."

"Was he married when he went out there?"

"No, he wasn't. We do know that. He's told us the circumstances of his marriage, because they were romantic. When he sailed from England to Buenos Ayres, he met on the steamer a young lady who, he said, was like himself, relationless and nearly friendless. She was going out to Argentina as a governess. She and ​my father fell in love with each other, and they were married in Buenos Ayres soon after the steamer arrived."

"And your mother is dead?"

"My mother died before we came to England. I was eight years old, and Jessie six, then."

"And you came to England—how long after that?"

"Two years."

"So that you've been in England ten years. And you know nothing whatever of your father's past beyond what you've told me?"

"Nothing—absolutely nothing."

"Never heard him talk of—you see, according to your account, your father was a man of getting on to forty when he went out to Argentina. He must have had a career of some sort in this country. Have you never heard him speak of his boyhood? Did he never talk of old times, or that sort of thing?"

"I never remember hearing my father speak of any period antecedent to his marriage," replied Evelyn.

"I once asked him a question about his childhood," said Jessie. "He answered that his early days had not been very happy ones, and that he had done his best to forget them. So I never asked him anything again."

"So that it really comes to this," remarked Spargo. "You know nothing whatever about your father, his family, his fortunes, his life, beyond what you yourselves have observed since you were able to observe? That's about it, isn't it?"

"I should say that that is exactly it," answered Evelyn.

​"Just so," said Spargo. "And therefore, as I told your sister the other day, the public will say that your father has some dark secret behind him, and that Marbury had possession of it, and that your father killed him in order to silence him. That isn't my view. I not only believe your father to be absolutely innocent, but I believe that he knows no more than a child unborn of Marbury's murder, and I'm doing my best to find out who that murderer was. By the by, since you'll see all about it in tomorrow morning's Watchman, I may as well tell you that I've found out who Marbury really was. He——"

At this moment Spargo's door was opened and in walked Ronald Breton. He shook his head at sight of the two sisters.

"I thought I should find you here," he said. "Jessie said she was coming to see you, Spargo. I don't know what good you can do—I don't see what good the most powerful newspaper in the world can do. My God!—everything's about as black as ever it can be. Mr. Aylmore—I've just come away from him; his solicitor, Stratton, and I have been with him for an hour—is obstinate as ever—he will not tell more than he has told. Whatever good can you do, Spargo, when he won't speak about that knowledge of Marbury which he must have?"

"Oh, well!" said Spargo. "Perhaps we can give him some information about Marbury. Mr. Aylmore has forgotten that it's not such a difficult thing to rake up the past as he seems to think it is. For example, as I was just telling these young ladies, I myself have discovered who Marbury really was."

​Breton started.

"You have? Without doubt?" he exclaimed.

"Without reasonable doubt. Marbury was an ex-convict."

Spargo watched the effect of this sudden announcement. The two girls showed no sign of astonishment or of unusual curiosity; they received the news with as much unconcern as if Spargo had told them that Marbury was a famous musician. But Ronald Breton started, and it seemed to Spargo that he saw a sense of suspicion dawn in his eyes.

"Marbury—an ex-convict!" he exclaimed. "You mean that?"

"Read your Watchman in the morning," said Spargo. "You'll find the whole story there—I'm going to write it tonight when you people have gone. It'll make good reading. "

Evelyn and Jessie Aylmore took Spargo's hint and went away, Spargo seeing them to the door with another assurance of his belief in their father's innocence and his determination to hunt down the real criminal. Ronald Breton went down with them to the street and saw them into a cab, but in another minute he was back in Spargo's room as Spargo had expected. He shut the door carefully behind him and turned to Spargo with an eager face.

"I say, Spargo, is that really so?" he asked. "About Marbury being an ex-convict?"

"That's so, Breton. I've no more doubt about it than I have that I see you. Marbury was in reality one John Maitland, a bank manager, of Market Milcaster, who ​got ten years' penal servitude in 1891 for embezzlement."

"In 1891? Why—that's just about the time that Aylmore says he knew him!"

"Exactly. And—it just strikes me," said Spargo, sitting down at his desk and making a hurried note, "it just strikes me—didn't Aylmore say he knew Marbury in London?"

"Certainly," replied Breton. "In London."

"Um!" mused Spargo. "That's queer, because Maitland had never been in London up to the time of his going to Dartmoor, whatever he may have done when he came out of Dartmoor, and, of course, Aylmore had gone to South America long before that. Look here, Breton," he continued, aloud, "have you access to Aylmore? Will you, can you, see him before he's brought up at Bow Street tomorrow?"

"Yes," answered Breton. "I can see him with his solicitor."

"Then listen," said Spargo. "Tomorrow morning you'll find the whole story of how I proved Marbury's identity with Maitland in the Watchman. Read it as early as you can; get an interview with Aylmore as early as you can; make him read it, every word, before he's brought up. Beg him if he values his own safety and his daughters' peace of mind to throw away all that foolish reserve, and to tell all he knows about Maitland twenty years ago. He should have done that at first. Why, I was asking his daughters some questions before you came in—they know absolutely nothing of their father's history previous to the time when they began to ​understand things! Don't you see that Aylmore's career, previous to his return to England, is a blank past?"

"I know—I know!" said Breton. "Yes—although I've gone there a great deal, I never heard Aylmore speak of anything earlier than his Argentine experiences. And yet, he must have been getting on when he went out there."

"Thirty-seven or eight, at least," remarked Spargo. "Well, Aylmore's more or less of a public man, and no public man can keep his life hidden nowadays. By the by, how did you get to know the Aylmores?"

"My guardian, Mr. Elphick, and I met them in Switzerland," answered Breton. "We kept up the acquaintance after our return."

"Mr. Elphick still interesting himself in the Marbury case?" asked Spargo.

"Very much so. And so is old Cardlestone, at the foot of whose stairs the thing came off. I dined with them last night and they talked of little else," said Breton.

"And their theory——"

"Oh, still the murder for the sake of robbery!" replied Breton. "Old Cardlestone is furious that such a thing could have happened at his very door. He says that there ought to be a thorough enquiry into every tenant of the Temple."

"Longish business that," observed Spargo. "Well, run away now, Breton—I must write."

"Shall you be at Bow Street tomorrow morning?" asked Breton as he moved to the door. "It's to be at ten-thirty."

​"No, I shan't!" replied Spargo. "It'll only be a remand, and I know already just as much as I should hear there. I've got something much more important to do. But you'll remember what I asked of you—get Aylmore to read my story in the Watchman, and beg him to speak out and tell all he knows—all!"

And when Breton had gone, Spargo again murmured those last words: "All he knows—all!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MISS BAYLIS

Next day, a little before noon, Sparge found himself in one of those pretentious yet dismal Bayswater squares, which are almost entirely given up to the trade, calling, or occupation of the lodging and boarding-house keeper. They are very pretentious, those squares, with their many-storied houses, their stuccoed frontages, and their pilastered and balconied doorways; innocent country folk, coming into them from the neighbouring station of Paddington, take them to be the residences of the dukes and earls who, of course, live nowhere else but in London. They are further encouraged in this belief by the fact that young male persons in evening dress are often seen at the doorways in more or less elegant attitudes. These, of course, are taken by the country folk to be young lords enjoying the air of Bayswater, but others, more knowing, are aware that they are Swiss or German waiters whose linen might be cleaner.

Spargo gauged the character of the house at which he called as soon as the door was opened to him. There was the usual smell of eggs and bacon, of fish and chops; the usual mixed and ancient collection of overcoats, wraps, and sticks in the hall; the usual sort of parlourmaid to answer the bell. And presently, in answer to his enquiries, there was the usual type of landlady ​confronting him, a more than middle-aged person who desired to look younger, and made attempts in the way of false hair, teeth, and a little rouge, and who wore that somewhat air and smile which in its wearer—under these circumstances—always means that she is considering whether you will be able to cheat her or whether she will be able to see you.

"You wish to see Miss Baylis?" said this person, examining Spargo closely. "Miss Baylis does not often see anybody."

"I hope," said Spargo politely, "that Miss Baylis is not an invalid?"

"No, she's not an invalid," replied the landlady; "but she's not as young as she was, and she's an objection to strangers. Is it anything I can tell her?"

"No," said Spargo. "But you can, if you please, take her a message from me. Will you kindly give her my card, and tell her that I wish to ask her a question about John Maitland of Market Milcaster, and that I should be much obliged if she would give me a few minutes."

"Perhaps you will sit down," said the landlady. She led Spargo into a room which opened out upon a garden; in it two or three old ladies, evidently inmates, were sitting. The landlady left Spargo to sit with them and to amuse himself by watching them knit or sew or read the papers, and he wondered if they always did these things every day, and if they would go on doing them until a day would come when they would do them no more, and he was beginning to feel very dreary when the door opened and a woman entered whom Spargo, after ​one sharp glance at her, decided to be a person who was undoubtedly out of the common. And as she slowly walked across the room towards him he let his first glance lengthen into a look of steady inspection.

The woman whom Spargo thus narrowly inspected was of very remarkable appearance. She was almost masculine; she stood nearly six feet in height; she was of a masculine gait and tread, and spare, muscular, and athletic. What at once struck Spargo about her face was the strange contrast between her dark eyes and her white hair; the hair, worn in abundant coils round a well-shaped head, was of the most snowy whiteness; the eyes of a real coal-blackness, as were also the eyebrows above them. The features were well-cut and of a striking firmness; the jaw square and determined. And Spargo's first thought on taking all this in was that Miss Baylis seemed to have been fitted by Nature to be a prison wardress, or the matron of a hospital, or the governess of an unruly girl, and he began to wonder if he would ever manage to extract anything out of those firmly-locked lips.

Miss Baylis, on her part, looked Spargo over as if she was half-minded to order him to instant execution. And Spargo was so impressed by her that he made a profound bow and found a difficulty in finding his tongue.

"Mr. Spargo?" she said in a deep voice which seemed peculiarly suited to her. "Of, I see, the Watchman? You wish to speak to me?"

Spargo again bowed in silence. She signed him to the window near which they were standing.

​"Open the casement, if you please," she commanded him. "We will walk in the garden. This is not private."

Spargo obediently obeyed her orders; she swept through the opened window and he followed her. It was not until they had reached the bottom of the garden that she spoke again.

"I understand that you desire to ask me some question about John Maitland, of Market Milcaster?" she said. "Before you put it, I must ask you a question. Do you wish any reply I may give you for publication?"

"Not without your permission," replied Spargo. "I should not think of publishing anything you may tell me except with your express permission. "

She looked at him gloomily, seemed to gather an impression of his good faith, and nodded her head.

"In that case," she said, "what do you want to ask?"

"I have lately had reason for making certain enquiries about John Maitland," answered Spargo. "I suppose you read the newspapers and possibly the Watchman, Miss Baylis?"

But Miss Baylis shook her head.

"I read no newspapers," she said. "I have no interest in the affairs of the world. I have work which occupies all my time: I give my whole devotion to it."

"Then you have not recently heard of what is known as the Marbury case—a case of a man who was found murdered?" asked Spargo.

"I have not," she answered. "I am not likely to hear such things."

​Spargo suddenly realized that the power of the Press is not quite as great nor as far-reaching as very young journalists hold it to be, and that there actually are, even in London, people who can live quite cheerfully without a newspaper. He concealed his astonishment and went on.

"Well," he said, "I believe that the murdered man, known to the police as John Marbury, was, in reality, your brother-in-law, John Maitland. In fact. Miss Baylis, I'm absolutely certain of it!"

He made this declaration with some emphasis, and looked at his stern companion to see how she was impressed. But Miss Baylis showed no sign of being impressed.

"I can quite believe that, Mr. Spargo," she said coldly. "It is no surprise to me that John Maitland should come to such an end. He was a thoroughly bad and unprincipled man, who brought the most terrible disgrace on those who were, unfortunately, connected with him. He was likely to die a bad man's death."

"I may ask you a few questions about him?" suggested Spargo in his most insinuating manner.

"You may, so long as you do not drag my name into the papers," she replied. "But pray, how do you know that I have the sad shame of being John Maitland's sister-in-law?"

"I found that out at Market Milcaster," said Spargo. "The photographer told me—Cooper."

"Ah!" she exclaimed.

"The questions I want to ask are very simple," said Spargo. "But your answers may materially help me. ​You remember Maitland going to prison, of course?"

Miss Baylis laughed—a laugh of scorn.

"Could I ever forget it?" she exclaimed.

"Did you ever visit him in prison?" asked Spargo.

"Visit him in prison!" she said indignantly. "Visits in prison are to be paid to those who deserve them, who are repentant; not to scoundrels who are hardened in their sin!"

"All right. Did you ever see him after he left prison?"

"I saw him, for he forced himself upon me—I could not help myself. He was in my presence before I was aware that he had even been released."

"What did he come for?" asked Spargo.

"To ask for his son—who had been in my charge," she replied.

"That's a thing I want to know about," said Spargo. "Do you know what a certain lot of people in Market Milcaster say to this day. Miss Baylis?—they say that you were in at the game with Maitland; that you had a lot of the money placed in your charge; that when Maitland went to prison, you took the child away, first to Brighton, then abroad—disappeared with him—and that you made a home ready for Maitland when he came out. That's what's said by some people in Market Milcaster."

Miss Baylis's stern lips curled.

"People in Market Milcaster!" she exclaimed. "All the people I ever knew in Market Milcaster had about as many brains between them as that cat on the wall there. As for making a home for John Maitland, I ​would have seen him die in the gutter, of absolute want, before I would have given him a crust of dry bread!"

"You appear to have a terrible dislike of this man," observed Spargo, astonished at her vehemence.

"I had—and I have," she answered. "He tricked my sister into a marriage with him when he knew that she would rather have married an honest man who worshipped her; he treated her with quiet, infernal cruelty; he robbed her and me of the small fortunes our father left us."

"Ah!" said Spargo. "Well, so you say Maitland came to you, when he came out of prison, to ask for his boy. Did he take the boy?"

"No—the boy was dead."

"Dead, eh? Then I suppose Maitland did not stop long with you?"

Miss Baylis laughed her scornful laugh.

"I showed him the door!" she said.

"Well, did he tell you that he was going to Australia?" enquired Spargo.

"I should not have listened to anything that he told me, Mr. Spargo," she answered.

"Then, in short," said Spargo, "you never heard of him again?"

"I never heard of him again," she declared passionately, "and I only hope that what you tell me is true, and that Marbury really was Maitland!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MOTHER GUTCH

Spargo, having exhausted the list of questions which he had thought out on his way to Bayswater, was about to take his leave of Miss Baylis, when a new idea suddenly occurred to him, and he turned back to that formidable lady.

"I've just thought of something else," he said. "I told you that I'm certain Marbury was Maitland, and that he came to a sad end—murdered."

"And I've told you," she replied scornfully, "that in my opinion no end could be too bad for him."

"Just so—I understand you," said Spargo. "But I didn't tell you that he was not only murdered but robbed—robbed of probably a good deal. There's good reason to believe that he had securities, bank notes, loose diamonds, and other things on him to the value of a large amount. He'd several thousand pounds when he left Coolumbidgee, in New South Wales, where he'd lived quietly for some years."

Miss Baylis smiled sourly.

"What's all this to me?" she asked.

"Possibly nothing. But you see, that money, those securities, may be recovered. And as the boy you speak ​of is dead, there surely must be somebody who's entitled to the lot. It's worth having, Miss Baylis, and there's strong belief on the part of the police that it will turn up."

This was a bit of ingenious bluff on the part of Spargo; he watched its effect with keen eyes. But Miss Baylis was adamant, and she looked as scornful as ever.

"I say again what's all that to me?" she exclaimed.

"Well, but hadn't the dead boy any relatives on his father's side?" asked Spargo. " I know you're his aunt on the mother's side, and as you're indifferent perhaps, I can find some on the other side. It's very easy to find all these things out, you know. "

Miss Baylis, who had begun to stalk back to the house in gloomy and majestic fashion, and had let Spargo see plainly that this part of the interview was distasteful to her, suddenly paused in her stride and glared at the young journalist.

"Easy to find all these things out?" she repeated.

Spargo caught, or fancied he caught, a note of anxiety in her tone. He was quick to turn his fancy to practical purpose.

"Oh, easy enough!" he said. "I could find out all about Maitland's family through that boy. Quite, quite easily!"

Miss Baylis had stopped now, and stood glaring at him. "How?" she demanded.

"I'll tell you," said Spargo with cheerful alacrity. "It is, of course, the easiest thing in the world to trace all about his short life. I suppose I can find the register of his birth at Market Milcaster, and you, of course, will ​tell me where he died. By the by, when did he die, Miss Baylis?"

But Miss Baylis was going on again to the house.

"I shall tell you nothing more," she said angrily. "I've told you too much already, and I believe all you're here for is to get some news for your paper. But I will, at any rate tell you this—when Maitland went to prison his child would have been defenceless but for me; he'd have had to go to the workhouse but for me; he hadn't a single relation in the world but me, on either father's or mother's side. And even at my age, old woman as I am, I'd rather beg my bread in the street, I'd rather starve and die, than touch a penny piece that had come from John Maitland! That's all."

Then without further word, without offering to show Spargo the way out, she marched in at the open window and disappeared. And Spargo, knowing no other way, was about to follow her when he heard a sudden rustling sound in the shadow by which they had stood, and the next moment a queer, cracked, horrible voice, suggesting all sorts of things, said distinctly and yet in a whisper:

"Young man!"

Spargo turned and stared at the privet hedge behind him. It was thick and bushy, and in its full summer green, but it seemed to him that he saw a nondescript shape behind. "Who's there?" he demanded. "Somebody listening?"

There was a curious cackle of laughter from behind the hedge; then the cracked, husky voice spoke again.

"Young man, don't you move or look as if you were ​talking to anybody. Do you know where the 'King of Madagascar' public-house is in this quarter of the town, young man?"

"No!" answered Spargo. "Certainly not!"

"Well, anybody'll tell you when you get outside, young man," continued the queer voice of the unseen person. "Go there, and wait at the corner by the 'King of Madagascar,' and I'll come there to you at the end of half an hour. Then I'll tell you something, young man—I'll tell you something. Now run away, young man, run away to the 'King of Madagascar'—I'm coming!"

The voice ended in low, horrible cachinnation which made Spargo feel queer. But he was young enough to be in love with adventure, and he immediately turned on his heel without so much as a glance at the privet hedge, and went across the garden and through the house, and let himself out at the door. And at the next corner of the square he met a policeman and asked him if he knew where the "King of Madagascar" was.

"First to the right, second to the left," answered the policeman tersely. "You can't miss it anywhere round there—it's a landmark."

And Spargo found the landmark—a great, square-built tavern—easily, and he waited at a corner of it wondering what he was going to see, and intensely curious about the owner of the queer voice, with all its suggestions of he knew not what. And suddenly there came up to him an old woman and leered at him in a fashion that made him suddenly realize how dreadful old age may be.

Spargo had never seen such an old woman as this in ​his life. She was dressed respectably, better than respectably. Her gown was good; her bonnet was smart; her smaller fittings were good. But her face was evil; it showed unmistakable signs of a long devotion to the bottle; the old eyes leered and ogled, the old lips were wicked. Spargo felt a sense of disgust almost amounting to nausea, but he was going to hear what the old harridan had to say and he tried not to look what he felt.

"Well?" he said, almost roughly. "Well?"

"Well, young man, there you are," said his new acquaintance. "Let us go inside, young man; there's a quiet little place where a lady can sit and take her drop of gin—I'll show you. And if you're good to me, I'll tell you something about that cat that you were talking to just now. But you'll give me a little matter to put in my pocket, young man? Old ladies like me have a right to buy little comforts, you know, little comforts."

Spargo followed this extraordinary person into a small parlour within; the attendant who came in response to a ring showed no astonishment at her presence; he also seemed to know exactly what she required, which was a certain brand of gin, sweetened, and warm. And Spargo watched her curiously as with shaking hand she pushed up the veil which hid little of her wicked old face, and lifted the glass to her mouth with a zest which was not thirst but pure greed of liquor. Almost instantly he saw a new light steal into her eyes, and she laughed in a voice that grew clearer with every sound she made.

"Ah, young man!" she said with a confidential nudge ​of the elbow that made Spargo long to get up and fly. "I wanted that! It's done me good. When I've finished that, you'll pay for another for me—and perhaps another? They'll do me still more good. And you'll give me a little matter of money, won't you, young man?"

"Not till I know what I'm giving it for," replied Spargo.

"You'll be giving it because I'm going to tell you that if it's made worth my while I can tell you, or somebody that sent you, more about Jane Baylis than anybody in the world. I'm not going to tell you that now, young man—I'm sure you don't carry in your pocket what I shall want for my secret, not you, by the look of you! I'm only going to show you that I have the secret. Eh?"

"Who are you?" asked Spargo.

The woman leered and chuckled. "What are you going to give me, young man?" she asked.

Spargo put his fingers in his pocket and pulled out two half-sovereigns.

"Look here," he said, showing his companion the coins, "if you can tell me anything of importance you shall have these. But no trifling, now. And no wasting of time. If you have anything to tell, out with it!"

The woman stretched out a trembling, claw-like hand.

"But let me hold one of those, young man!" she implored. "Let me hold one of the beautiful bits of gold. I shall tell you all the better if I hold one of them. Let me—there's a good young gentleman."

​Spargo gave her one of the coins, and resigned himself to his fate, whatever it might be.

"You won't get the other unless you tell something," he said. "Who are you, anyway?"

The woman, who had begun mumbling and chuckling over the half-sovereign, grinned horribly.

"At the boarding-house yonder, young man, they call me Mother Gutch," she answered; "but my proper name is Mrs. Sabina Gutch, and once upon a time I was a good-looking young woman. And when my husband died I went to Jane Baylis as housekeeper, and when she retired from that and came to live in that boarding-house where we live now, she was forced to bring me with her and to keep me. Why had she to do that, young man?"

"Heaven knows!" answered Spargo.

"Because I've got a hold on her, young man—I've got a secret of hers," continued Mother Gutch. "She'd be scared to death if she knew I'd been behind that hedge and had heard what she said to you, and she'd be more than scared if she knew that you and I were here, talking. But she's grown hard and near with me, and she won't give me a penny to get a drop of anything with, and an old woman like me has a right to her little comforts, and if you'll buy the secret, young man, I'll split on her, there and then, when you pay the money."

"Before I talk about buying any secret," said Spargo, "you'll have to prove to me that you've a secret to sell that's worth my buying."

​"And I will prove it!" said Mother Gutch with sudden fierceness. "Touch the bell, and let me have another glass, and then I'll tell you. Now," she went on, more quietly—Spargo noticed that the more she drank, the more rational she became, and that her nerves seemed to gain strength and her whole appearance to be improved—"now, you came to her to find out about her brother-in-law, Maitland, that went to prison, didn't you?"

"Well?" demanded Spargo.

"And about that boy of his?" she continued.

"You heard all that was said," answered Spargo. "I'm waiting to hear what you have to say."

But Mother Gutch was resolute in having her own way. She continued her questions:

"And she told you that Maitland came and asked for the boy, and that she told him the boy was dead, didn't she?" she went on.

"Well?" said Spargo despairingly. "She did. What then?"

Mother Gutch took an appreciative pull at her glass and smiled knowingly. "What then?" she chuckled. "All lies, young man, the boy isn't dead—any more than I am. And my secret is——"

"Well?" demanded Spargo impatiently. "What is it?"

"This!" answered Mother Gutch, digging her companion in the ribs, "I know what she did with him!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
REVELATIONS

Spargo turned on his disreputable and dissolute companion with all his journalistic energies and instincts roused. He had not been sure, since entering the "King of Madagascar," that he was going to hear anything material to the Middle Temple Murder; he had more than once feared that this old gin-drinking harridan was deceiving him, for the purpose of extracting drink and money from him. But now, at the mere prospect of getting important information from her, he forgot all about Mother Gutch's unfortunate propensities, evil eyes, and sodden face; he only saw in her somebody who could tell him something. He turned on her eagerly.

"You say that John Maitland's son didn't die!" he exclaimed.

"The boy did not die," replied Mother Gutch.

"And that you know where he is?" asked Spargo.

Mother Gutch shook her head.

"I didn't say that I know where he is, young man," she replied. "I said I knew what she did with him."

"What, then?" demanded Spargo.

Mother Gutch drew herself up in a vast assumption of dignity, and favoured Spargo with a look.

"That's the secret, young man," she said. "I'm ​willing to sell that secret, but not for two half-sovereigns and two or three drops of cold gin. If Maitland left all that money you told Jane Baylis of, when I was listening to you from behind the hedge, my secret's worth something."

Spargo suddenly remembered his bit of bluff to Miss Baylis. Here was an unexpected result of it.

"Nobody but me can help you to trace Maitland's boy," continued Mother Gutch, "and I shall expect to be paid accordingly. That's plain language, young man."

Spargo considered the situation in silence for a minute or two. Could this wretched, bibulous old woman really be in possession of a secret which would lead to the solving of the mystery of the Middle Temple Murder? Well, it would be a fine thing for the Watchman if the clearing up of everything came through one of its men. And the Watchman was noted for being generous even to extravagance in laying out money on all sorts of objects: it had spent money like water on much less serious matters than this.

"How much do you want for your secret?" he suddenly asked, turning to his companion.

Mother Gutch began to smooth out a pleat in her gown. It was really wonderful to Spargo to find how very sober and normal this old harridan had become; he did not understand that her nerves had been all a-quiver and on edge when he first met her, and that a resort to her favourite form of alcohol in liberal quantity had calmed and quickened them; secretly he was regarding her with astonishment as the most extraordinary old person he had ever met, and he was almost afraid ​of her as he waited for her decision. At last Mother Gutch spoke.

"Well, young man," she said, "having considered matters, and having a right to look well to myself, I think that what I should prefer to have would be one of those annuities. A nice, comfortable annuity, paid weekly—none of your monthlies or quarterlies, but regular and punctual, every Saturday morning. Or Monday morning, as was convenient to the parties concerned—but punctual and regular. I know a good many ladies in my sphere of life as enjoys annuities, and it's a great comfort to have 'em paid weekly."

It occurred to Spargo that Mrs. Gutch would probably get rid of her weekly dole on the day it was paid, whether that day happened to be Monday or Saturday, but that, after all, was no concern of his, so he came back to first principles.

"Even now you haven't said how much," he remarked.

"Three pound a week," replied Mother Gutch. "And cheap, too!"

Spargo thought hard for two minutes. The secret might—might!—lead to something big. This wretched old woman would probably drink herself to death within a year or two. Anyhow, a few hundreds of pounds was nothing to the Watchman. He glanced at his watch. At that hour—for the next hour—the great man of the Watchman would be at the office. He jumped to his feet, suddenly resolved and alert.

"Here, I'll take you to see my principals," he said. "We'll run along in a taxi-cab."

​"With all the pleasure in the world, young man," replied Mother Gutch; "when you've given me that other half-sovereign. As for principals, I'd far rather talk business with masters than with men—though I mean no disrespect to you."

Spargo, feeling that he was in for it, handed over the second half-sovereign, and busied himself in ordering a taxi-cab. But when that came round he had to wait while Mrs. Gutch consumed a third glass of gin and purchased a flask of the same beverage to put in her pocket. At last he got her off, and in due course to the Watchman office, where the hall-porter and the messenger boys stared at her in amazement, well used as they were to seeing strange. folk, and he got her to his own room, and locked her in, and then he sought the presence of the mighty.

What Spargo said to his editor and to the great man who controlled the fortunes and workings of the Watchman he never knew. It was probably fortunate for him that they were both thoroughly conversant with the facts of the Middle Temple Murder, and saw that there might be an advantage in securing the revelations of which Spargo had got the conditional promise. At any rate, they accompanied Spargo to his room, intent on seeing, hearing and bargaining with the lady he had locked up there.

Spargo's room smelt heavily of unsweetened gin, but Mother Gutch was soberer than ever. She insisted upon being introduced to proprietor and editor in due and proper form, and in discussing terms with them before going into any further particulars. The editor was all ​for temporizing with her until something could be done to find out what likelihood of truth there was in her, but the proprietor, after sizing her up in his own shrewd fashion, took his two companions out of the room.

"We'll hear what the old woman has to say on her own terms," he said. "She may have something to tell that is really of the greatest importance in this case: she certainly has something to tell. And, as Spargo says, she'll probably drink herself to death in about as short a time as possible. Come back—let's hear her story." So they returned to the gin-scented atmosphere, and a formal document was drawn out by which the proprietor of the Watchman bound himself to pay Mrs. Gutch the sum of three pounds a week for life (Mrs. Gutch insisting on the insertion of the words "every Saturday morning, punctual and regular") and then Mrs. Gutch was invited to tell her tale. And Mrs. Gutch settled herself to do so, and Spargo prepared to take it down, word for word.

"Which the story, as that young man called it, is not so long as a monkey's tail nor so short as a Manx cat's, gentlemen," said Mrs. Gutch; "but full of meat as an egg. Now, you see, when that Maitland affair at Market Milcaster came off, I was housekeeper to Miss Jane Baylis at Brighton. She kept a boarding-house there, in Kemp Town, and close to the sea-front, and a very good thing she made out of it, and had saved a nice bit, and having, like her sister, Mrs. Maitland, had a little fortune left her by her father, as was at one time a publican here in London, she had a good lump of money. And all that money was in this here Maitland's hands, every penny. I very well remember the day when the news ​came about that affair of Maitland robbing the bank. Miss Baylis, she was like a mad thing when she saw it in the paper, and before she'd seen it an hour she was off to Market Milcaster. I went up to the station with her, and she told me then before she got in the train that Maitland had all her fortune and her savings, and her sister's, his wife's, too, and that she feared all would be lost."

"Mrs. Maitland was then dead," observed Spargo without looking up from his writing-block.

"She was, young man, and a good thing, too," continued Mrs. Gutch. "Well, away went Miss Baylis, and no more did I hear or see for nearly a week, and then back she comes, and brings a little boy with her—which was Maitland's. And she told me that night that she'd lost every penny she had in the world, and that her sister's money, what ought to have been the child's, was gone, too, and she said her say about Maitland. However, she saw well to that child; nobody could have seen better. And very soon after, when Maitland was sent to prison for ten years, her and me talked about things. 'What's the use,' says I to her, 'of your letting yourself get so fond of that child, and looking after it as you do, and educating it, and so on?' I says. 'Why not?' says she. ''Tisn't yours,' I says, 'you haven't no right to it,' I says. 'As soon as ever its father comes out,' says I, 'he'll come and claim it, and you can't do nothing to stop him.' Well, gentlemen, if you'll believe me, never did I see a woman look as she did when I says all that. And she up and swore that Maitland should never ​see or touch the child again—not under no circumstances whatever."

Mrs. Gutch paused to take a little refreshment from her pocket-flask, with an apologetic remark as to the state of her heart. She resumed, presently, apparently refreshed.

"Well, gentlemen, that notion, about Maitland's taking the child away from her seemed to get on her mind, and she used to talk to me at times about it, always saying the same thing—that Maitland should never have him. And one day she told me she was going to London to see lawyers about it, and she went, and she came back, seeming more satisfied, and a day or two afterwards, there came a gentleman who looked like a lawyer, and he stopped a day or two, and he came again and again, until one day she came to me, and she says, 'You don't know who that gentleman is that's come so much lately?' she says. 'Not I,' I says, 'unless he's after you.' 'After me!' she says, tossing her head: 'That's the gentleman that ought to have married my poor sister if that scoundrel Maitland hadn't tricked her into throwing him over!' 'You don't say so!' I says. 'Then by rights he ought to have been the child's pa!' 'He's going to be a father to the boy,' she says. 'He's going to take him and educate him in the highest fashion, and make a gentleman of him,' she says, 'for his mother's sake.' 'Mercy on us!' says I. 'What'll Maitland say when he comes for him?' 'Maitland'll never come for him,' she says, 'for I'm going to leave here, and the boy'll be gone before then. This is all being done,' she says, 'so ​that the child'll never know his father's shame—he'll never know who his father was.' And true enough, the boy was taken away, but Maitland came before she'd gone, and she told him the child was dead, and I never see a man so cut up. However, it wasn't no concern of mine. And so there's so much of the secret, gentlemen, and I would like to know if I ain't giving good value."

"Very good," said the proprietor. "Go on." But Spargo intervened.

"Did you ever hear the name of the gentleman who took the boy away?" he asked.

"Yes, I did," replied Mrs. Gutch. "Of course I did. Which it was Elphick."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
STILL SILENT

Spargo dropped his pen on the desk before him with a sharp clatter that made Mrs. Gutch jump. A steady devotion to the bottle had made her nerves to be none of the strongest, and she looked at the startler of them with angry malevolence.

"Don't do that again, young man!" she exclaimed sharply. "I can't a-bear to be jumped out of my skin, and it's bad manners. I observed that the gentleman's name was Elphick."

Spargo contrived to get in a glance at his proprietor and his editor—a glance which came near to being a wink.

"Just so—Elphick," he said. "A law gentleman I think you said, Mrs. Gutch?"

"I said," answered Mrs. Gutch, "as how he looked like a lawyer gentleman. And since you're so particular, young man, though I wasn't addressing you but your principals, he was a lawyer gentleman. One of the sort that wears wigs and gowns—ain't I seen his picture in Jane Baylis's room at the boarding-house where you saw her this morning?"

"Elderly man?" asked Spargo.

"Elderly he will be now," replied the informant; "but when he took the boy away he was a middle-aged ​man. About his age," she added, pointing to the editor in a fashion which made that worthy man wince and the proprietor desire to laugh unconsumedly; "and not so very unlike him neither, being one as had no hair on his face."

"Ah!" said Spargo. "And where did this Mr. Elphick take the boy, Mrs. Gutch?"

But Mrs. Gutch shook her head.

"Ain't no idea," she said. "He took him. Then, as I told you, Maitland came, and Jane Baylis told him that the boy was dead. And after that she never even told me anything about the boy. She kept a tight tongue. Once or twice I asked her, and she says, 'Never you mind,' she says; 'he's all right for life, if he lives to be as old as Methusalem.' And she never said more, and I never said more. But," continued Mrs. Gutch, whose pocket-flask was empty, and who began to wipe tears away, "she's treated me hard has Jane Baylis, never allowing me a little comfort such as a lady of my age should have, and when I hears the two of you a-talking this morning the other side of that privet hedge, thinks I, 'Now's the time to have my knife into you, my fine madam!' And I hope I done it."

Spargo looked at the editor and the proprietor, nodding his head slightly. He meant them to understand that he had got all he wanted from Mother Gutch.

"What are you going to do, Mrs. Gutch, when you leave here?" he asked. "You shall be driven straight back to Bayswater, if you like."

"Which I shall be obliged for, young man," said Mrs. Gutch, "and likewise for the first week of the annuity. ​and will call every Saturday for the same at eleven punctual, or can be posted to me on a Friday, whichever is agreeable to you gentlemen. And having my first week in my purse, and being driven to Bayswater, I shall take my boxes and go to a friend of mine where I shall be hearty welcome, shaking the dust of my feet off against Jane Baylis and where I've been living with her."

"Yes, but, Mrs. Gutch," said Spargo, with some anxiety, "if you go back there tonight, you'll be very careful not to tell Miss Baylis that you've been here and told us all this?"

Mrs. Gutch rose, dignified and composed.

"Young man," she said, "you mean well, but you ain't used to dealing with ladies. I can keep my tongue as still as anybody when I like. I wouldn't tell Jane Baylis my affairs—my new affairs, gentlemen, thanks to you—not for two annuities, paid twice a week!"

"Take Mrs. Gutch downstairs, Spargo, and see her all right, and then come to my room," said the editor. "And don't you forget, Mrs. Gutch—keep a quiet tongue in your head—no more talk—or there'll be no annuities on Saturday mornings."

So Spargo took Mother Gutch to the cashier's department and paid her her first week's money, and he got her a taxi-cab, and paid for it, and saw her depart, and then he went to the editor's room, strangely thoughtful. The editor and the proprietor were talking, but they stopped when Spargo entered and looked at him eagerly.

"I think we've done it," said Spargo quietly.

"What, precisely, have we found out?" asked the editor.

​"A great deal more than I'd anticipated," answered Spargo, "and I don't know what fields it doesn't open out. If you look back, you'll remember that the only thing found on Marbury's body was a scrap of grey paper on which was a name and address—Ronald Breton, King's Bench Walk."

"Well?"

"Breton is a young barrister. Also he writes a bit—I have accepted two or three articles of his for our literary page."

"Well?"

"Further, he is engaged to Miss Aylmore, the eldest daughter of Aylmore, the Member of Parliament who has been charged at Bow Street today with the murder of Marbury."

"I know. Well, what then, Spargo?"

"But the most important matter, " continued Spargo, speaking very deliberately, "is this—that is, taking that old woman's statement to be true, as I personally believe it is—that Breton, as he has told me himself (I have seen a good deal of him) was brought up by a guardian. That guardian is Mr. Septimus Elphick, the barrister."

The proprietor and the editor looked at each other. Their faces wore the expression of men thinking on the same lines and arriving at the same conclusion. And the proprietor suddenly turned on Spargo with a sharp interrogation: "You think then——"

Spargo nodded.

"I think that Mr. Septimus Elphick is the Elphick, ​and that Breton is the young Maitland of whom Mrs. Gutch has been talking," he answered.

The editor got up, thrust his hands in his pockets, and began to pace the room.

"If that's so," he said, "if that's so, the mystery deepens. What do you propose to do, Spargo?"

"I think," said Spargo, slowly, "I think that without telling him anything of what we have learnt, I should like to see young Breton and get an introduction from him to Mr. Elphick. I can make a good excuse for wanting an interview with him. If you will leave it in my hands——"

"Yes, yes!" said the proprietor, waving a hand. "Leave it entirely in Spargo's hands."

"Keep me informed," said the editor. "Do what you think. It strikes me you're on the track."

Spargo left their presence, and going back to his own room, still faintly redolent of the personality of Mrs. Gutch, got hold of the reporter who had been present at Bow Street when Aylmore was brought up that morning. There was nothing new; the authorities had merely asked for another remand. So far as the reporter knew, Aylmore had said nothing fresh to anybody.

Spargo went round to the Temple and up to Ronald Breton's chambers. He found the young barrister just preparing to leave, and looking unusually grave and thoughtful. At sight of Spargo he turned back from his outer door, beckoned the journalist to follow him, and led him into an inner room.

​"I say, Spargo!" he said, as he motioned his visitor to take a chair. "This is becoming something more than serious. You know what you told me to do yesterday as regards Aylmore?"

"To get him to tell all?—Yes," said Spargo.

Breton shook his head.

"Stratton—his solicitor, you know—and I saw him this morning before the police-court proceedings," he continued. "I told him of my talk with you; I even went as far as to tell him that his daughters had been to the Watchman office. Stratton and I both begged him to take your advice and tell all, everything, no matter at what cost to his private feelings. We pointed out to him the serious nature of the evidence against him; how he had damaged himself by not telling the whole truth at once; how he had certainly done a great deal to excite suspicion against himself; how, as the evidence stands at present, any jury could scarcely do less than convict him. And it was all no good, Spargo!"

"He won't say anything?"

"He'll say no more. He was adamant. 'I told the entire truth in respect to my dealings with Marbury on the night he met his death at the inquest,' he said, over and over again, 'and I shall say nothing further on any consideration. If the law likes to hang an innocent man on such evidence as that, let it!' And he persisted in that until we left him. Spargo, I don't know what's to be done."

"And nothing happened at the police-court?"

"Nothing—another remand. Stratton and I saw Aylmore again before he was removed. He left us with a ​sort of sardonic remark—'If you all want to prove me innocent,' he said, 'find the guilty man.'"

"Well, there was a tremendous lot of common sense in that," said Spargo.

"Yes, of course, but how, how, how is it going to be done?" exclaimed Breton. "Are you any nearer—is Kathbury any nearer? Is there the slightest clue that will fasten the guilt on anybody else?"

Spargo gave no answer to these questions. He remained silent a while, apparently thinking.

"Was Rathbury in court?" he suddenly asked.

"He was," replied Breton. "He was there with two or three other men who I suppose were detectives, and seemed to be greatly interested in Aylmore."

"If I don't see Rathbury tonight I'll see him in the morning," said Spargo. He rose as if to go, but after lingering a moment, sat down again. "Look here," he continued, "I don't know how this thing stands in law, but would it be a very weak case against Aylmore if the prosecution couldn't show some motive for his killing Marbury?"

Breton smiled.

"There's no necessity to prove motive in murder," he said. "But I'll tell you what, Spargo—if the prosecution can show that Aylmore had a motive for getting rid of Marbury, if they could prove that it was to Aylmore's advantage to silence him—why, then, I don't think he's a chance."

"I see. But so far no motive, no reason for his killing Marbury has been shown."

"I know of none."

​Spargo rose and moved to the door.

"Well, I'm off," he said. Then, as if he suddenly recollected something, he turned back. "Oh, by the by," he said, "isn't your guardian, Mr. Elphick, a big authority on philately?"

"One of the biggest. Awful enthusiast."

"Do you think he'd tell me a bit about those Australian stamps which Marbury showed to Criedir, the dealer?"

"Certain, he would—delighted. Here"—and Breton scribbled a few words on a card—"there's his address and a word from me. I'll tell you when you can always find him in, five nights out of seven—at nine o'clock, after he's dined. I'd go with you tonight, but I must go to Aylmore's. The two girls are in terrible trouble."

"Give them a message from me," said Spargo as they went out together. "Tell them to keep up their hearts and their courage."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MR. ELPHICK'S CHAMBERS

Spargo went round again to the Temple that night at nine o'clock, asking himself over and over again two questions—the first, how much does Elphick know? the second, how much shall I tell him?

The old house in the Temple to which he repaired and in which many a generation of old fogies had lived since the days of Queen Anne, was full of stairs and passages, and as Spargo had forgotten to get the exact number of the set of chambers he wanted, he was obliged to wander about in what was a deserted building. So wandering, he suddenly heard steps, firm, decisive steps coming up a staircase which he himself had just climbed. He looked over the banisters down into the hollow beneath. And there, marching up resolutely, was the figure of a tall, veiled woman, and Spargo suddenly realized, with a sharp quickening of his pulses, that for the second time that day he was beneath one roof with Miss Baylis.

Spargo's mind acted quickly. Knowing what he now knew, from his extraordinary dealings with Mother Gutch, he had no doubt whatever that Miss Baylis had come to see Mr. Elphick—come, of course, to tell Mr. Elphick that he, Spargo, had visited her that morning, ​and that he was on the track of the Maitland secret history. He had never thought of it before, for he had been busily engaged since the departure of Mother Gutch; but, naturally, Miss Baylis and Mr. Elphick would keep in communication with each other. At any rate, here she was, and her destination was, surely, Elphick's chambers. And the question for him, Sparge, was—what to do?

What Spargo did was to remain in absolute silence, motionless, tense, where he was on the stair, and to trust to the chance that the woman did not look up. But Miss Baylis neither looked up nor down: she reached a landing, turned along a corridor with decision, and marched forward. A moment later Spargo heard a sharp double knock on a door: a moment after that he heard a door heavily shut; he knew then that Miss Baylis had sought and gained admittance—somewhere.

To find out precisely where that somewhere was drew Spargo down to the landing which Miss Baylis had just left. There was no one about—he had not, in fact, seen a soul since he entered the building. Accordingly he went along the corridor into which he had seen Miss Baylis turn. He knew that all the doors in that house were double ones, and that the outer oak in each was solid and substantial enough to be sound proof. Yet, as men will under such circumstances, he walked softly; he said to himself, smiling at the thought, that he would be sure to start if somebody suddenly opened a door on him. But no hand opened any door, and at last he came to the end of the corridor and found himself ​confronting a small board on which was painted in white letters on a black ground, Mr. Elphick's Chambers.

Having satisfied himself as to his exact whereabouts, Spargo drew back as quietly as he had come. There was a window half-way along the corridor from which, he had noticed as he came along, one could catch a glimpse of the Embankment and the Thames; to this he withdrew, and leaning on the sill looked out and considered matters. Should he go and—if he could gain admittance—beard these two conspirators? Should he wait until the woman came out and let her see that he was on the track? Should he hide again until she went, and then see Elphick alone?

In the end Spargo did none of these things immediately. He let things slide for the moment. He lighted a cigarette and stared at the river and the brown sails, and the buildings across on the Surrey side. Ten minutes went by—twenty minutes—nothing happened. Then, as half-past nine struck from all the neighbouring clocks, Spargo flung away a second cigarette, marched straight down the corridor and knocked boldly at Mr. Elphick's door.

Greatly to Spargo's surprise, the door was opened before there was any necessity to knock again. And there, calmly confronting him, a benevolent, yet somewhat deprecating expression on his spectacled and placid face, stood Mr. Elphick, a smoking cap on his head, a tasseled smoking jacket over his dress shirt, and a short pipe in his hand.

Spargo was taken aback: Mr. Elphick apparently was ​not. He held the door well open, and motioned the journalist to enter.

"Come in, Mr. Spargo," he said. "I was expecting you. Walk forward into my sitting-room."

Spargo, much astonished at this reception, passed through an ante-room into a handsomely furnished apartment full of books and pictures. In spite of the fact that it was still very little past midsummer there was a cheery fire in the grate, and on a table set near a roomy arm-chair was set such creature comforts as a spirit-case, a syphon, a tumbler, and a novel—from which things Spargo argued that Mr. Elphick had been taking his ease since his dinner. But in another armchair on the opposite side of the hearth was the forbidding figure of Miss Baylis, blacker, gloomier, more mysterious than ever. She neither spoke nor moved when Spargo entered: she did not even look at him. And Spargo stood staring at her until Mr. Elphick, having closed his doors, touched him on the elbow, and motioned him courteously to a seat.

"Yes, I was expecting you, Mr. Spargo," he said, as he resumed his own chair. "I have been expecting you at any time, ever since you took up your investigation of the Marbury affair, in some of the earlier stages of which you saw me, you will remember, at the mortuary. But since Miss Baylis told me, twenty minutes ago, that you had been to her this morning I felt sure that it would not be more than a few hours before you would come to me."

"Why, Mr. Elphick, should you suppose that I should ​come to you at all?" asked Sparge, now in full possession of his wits.

"Because I felt sure that you would leave no stone unturned, no corner unexplored," replied Mr. Elphick. "The curiosity of the modern pressman is insatiable."

Spargo stiffened.

"I have no curiosity, Mr. Elphick," he said. "I am charged by my paper to investigate the circumstances of the death of the man who was found in Middle Temple Lane, and, if possible, to track his murderer, and——"

Mr. Elphick laughed slightly and waved his hand.

"My good young gentleman!" he said. "You exaggerate your own importance. I don't approve of modern journalism nor of its methods. In your own case you have got hold of some absurd notion that the man John Marbury was in reality one John Maitland, once of Market Milcaster, and you have been trying to frighten Miss Baylis here into——"

Spargo suddenly rose from his chair. There was a certain temper in him which, when once roused, led him to straight hitting, and it was roused now. He looked the old barrister full in the face.

"Mr. Elphick," he said, "you are evidently unaware of all that I know. So I will tell you what I will do. I will go back to my office, and I will write down what I do know, and give the true and absolute proofs of what I know, and, if you will trouble yourself to read the Watchman tomorrow morning, then you, too, will know."

​"Dear me—dear me!" said Mr. Elphick, banteringly. "We are so used to ultra-sensational stories from the Watchman that—but I am a curious and inquisitive old man, my good young sir, so perhaps you will tell me in a word what it is you do know, eh?"

Spargo reflected for a second. Then he bent forward across the table and looked the old barrister straight in the face.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I will tell you what I know beyond doubt. I know that the man murdered under the name of John Marbury was, without doubt, John Maitland, of Market Milcaster, and that Ronald Breton is his son, whom you took from that woman!"

If Spargo had desired a complete revenge for the cavalier fashion in which Mr. Elphick had treated it he could not have been afforded a more ample one than that offered to him by the old barrister's reception of this news. Mr. Elphick's face not only fell, but changed; his expression of almost sneering contempt was transformed to one clearly resembling abject terror; he dropped his pipe, fell back in his chair, recovered himself, gripped the chair's arms, and stared at Spargo as if the young man had suddenly announced to him that in another minute he must be led to instant execution. And Spargo, quick to see his advantage, followed it up.

"That is what I know, Mr. Elphick, and if I choose, all the world shall know it tomorrow morning!" he said firmly. "Ronald Breton is the son of the murdered man, and Ronald Breton is engaged to be married to the daughter of the man charged with the murder. Do you ​hear that? It is not matter of suspicion, or of idea, or of conjecture, it is fact—fact!"

Mr. Elphick slowly turned his face to Miss Baylis. He gasped out a few words.

"You—did— not—tell—me—this!"

Then Spargo, turning to the woman, saw that she, too, was white to the lips and as frightened as the man.

"I—didn't know!" she muttered. "He didn't tell me. He only told me this morning what—what I've told you."

Spargo picked up his hat.

"Good-night, Mr. Elphick," he said.

But before he could reach the door the old barrister had leapt from his chair and seized him with trembling hands. Spargo turned and looked at him. He knew then that for some reason or other he had given Mr. Septimus Elphick a thoroughly bad fright.

"Well?" he growled.

"My dear young gentleman!" implored Mr. Elphick. "Don't go! I'll—I'll do anything for you if you won't go away to print that. I'll—I'll give you a thousand pounds!"

Spargo shook him off.

"That's enough!" he snarled. "Now, I am off! What, you'd try to bribe me?"

Mr. Elphick wrung his hands.

"I didn't mean that—indeed I didn't!" he almost wailed. "I—I don't know what I meant. Stay, young gentleman, stay a little, and let us—let us talk. Let me have a word with you—as many words as you please. I implore you!"

​Spargo made a fine pretence of hesitation.

"If I stay," he said, at last, "it will only be on the strict condition that you answer—and answer truly—whatever questions I like to ask you. Otherwise——"

He made another move to the door, and again Mr. Elphick laid beseeching hands on him.

"Stay!" he said. "I'll answer anything you like!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
OF PROVED IDENTITY

Spargo sat down again in the chair which he had just left, and looked at the two people upon whom his startling announcement had produced such a curious effect. And he recognized as he looked at them that, while they were both frightened, they were frightened in different ways. Miss Baylis had already recovered her composure; she now sat sombre and stern as ever, returning Spargo's look with something of indifferent defiance; he thought he could see that in her mind a certain fear was battling with a certain amount of wonder that he had discovered the secret. It seemed to him that so far as she was concerned the secret had come to an end; it was as if she said in so many words that now the secret was out he might do his worst.

But upon Mr. Septimus Elphick the effect was very different. He was still trembling from excitement; he groaned as he sank into his chair and the hand with which he poured out a glass of spirits shook; the glass rattled against his teeth when he raised it to his lips. The half-contemptuous fashion of his reception of Spargo had now wholly disappeared; he was a man who had received a shock, and a bad one. And Spargo, watching him keenly, said to himself: This man knows a great deal more than, a great deal beyond, the mere fact that ​Marbury was Maitland, and that Ronald Breton is in reality Maitland's son; he knows something which he never wanted anybody to know, which he firmly believed it impossible anybody ever could know. It was as if he had buried something deep, deep down in the lowest depths, and was as astounded as he was frightened to find that it had been at last flung up to the broad light of day.

"I shall wait," suddenly said Spargo, "until you are composed, Mr. Elphick. I have no wish to distress you. But I see, of course, that the truths which I have told you are of a sort that cause you considerable—shall we say fear?"

Elphick took another stiff pull at his liquor. His hand had grown steadier, and the colour was coming back to his face.

"If you will let me explain," he said. "If you will hear what was done for the boy's sake—eh?"

"That," answered Spargo, "is precisely what I wish. I can tell you this—I am the last man in the world to wish harm of any sort to Mr. Breton."

Miss Baylis relieved her feelings with a scornful sniff.

"He says that!" she exclaimed, addressing the ceiling. "He says that, knowing that he means to tell the world in his rag of a paper that Ronald Breton, on whom every care has been lavished, is the son of a scoundrel, an ex-convict, a——"

Elphick lifted his hand.

"Hush—hush!" he said imploringly. "Mr. Spargo means well, I am sure—I am convinced. If Mr. Spargo will hear me——"

​But before Spargo could reply, a loud insistent knocking came at the outer door. Elphick started nervously, but presently he moved across the room, walking as if he had received a blow, and opened the door. A boy's voice penetrated into the sitting-room.

"If you please, sir, is Mr. Spargo, of the Watchman, here? He left this address in case he was wanted."

Spargo recognized the voice as that of one of the office messenger boys, and jumping up, went to the door.

"What is it, Rawlins?" he asked.

"Will you please come back to the office, sir, at once? There's Mr. Rathbury there and says he must see you instantly. "

"All right," answered Spargo. "I'm coming just now."

He motioned the lad away, and turned to Elphick.

"I shall have to go," he said. "I may be kept. Now, Mr. Elphick, can I come to see you tomorrow morning?"

"Yes, yes, tomorrow morning!" replied Elphick eagerly. "Tomorrow morning, certainly. At eleven—eleven o'clock. That will do?"

"I shall be here at eleven," said Spargo. "Eleven sharp."

He was moving away when Elphick caught him by the sleeve.

"A word—just a word!" he said. "You—you have not told the—the boy—Ronald—of what you know? You haven't?"

"I haven't," replied Spargo.

Elphick tightened his grip on Spargo's sleeve. He looked into his face beseechingly.

​"Promise me—promise me, Mr. Spargo, that you won't tell him until you have seen me in the morning!" he implored. "I beg you to promise me this."

Spargo hesitated, considering matters.

"Very well—I promise," he said.

"And you won't print it?" continued Elphick, still clinging to him. "Say you won't print it tonight?"

"I shall not print it tonight," answered Spargo. "That's certain."

Elphick released his grip on the young man's arm. "Come—at eleven tomorrow morning," he said, and drew back and closed the door.

Spargo ran quickly to the office and hurried up to his own room. And there, calmly seated in an easy-chair, smoking a cigar, and reading an evening newspaper, was Rathbury, unconcerned and outwardly as imperturbable as ever. He greeted Spargo with a careless nod and a smile.

"Well," he said, "how's things?"

Spargo, half-breathless, dropped into his desk-chair. "You didn't come here to tell me that," he said.

Rathbury laughed.

"No," he said, throwing the newspaper aside, "I didn't. I came to tell you my latest. You're at full liberty to stick it into your paper tonight: it may just as well be known."

"Well?" said Spargo.

Rathbury took his cigar out of his lips and yawned.

"Aylmore's identified," he said lazily.

Spargo sat up, sharply.

​"Identified!"

"Identified, my son. Beyond doubt."

"But as whom—as what?" exclaimed Spargo.

Rathbury laughed.

"He's an old lag—an ex-convict. Served his time partly at Dartmoor. That, of course, is where he met Maitland or Marbury. D'ye see? Clear as noontide now, Spargo."

Spargo sat drumming his fingers on the desk before him. His eyes were fixed on a map of London that hung on the opposite wall; his ears heard the throbbing of the printing-machines far below. But what he really saw was the faces of the two girls; what he really heard was the voices of two girls...

"Clear as noontide—as noontide," repeated Rathbury with great cheerfulness.

Spargo came back to the earth of plain and brutal fact.

"What's clear as noontide?" he asked sharply.

"What? Why, the whole thing! Motive—everything," answered Rathbury. "Don't you see, Maitland and Aylmore (his real name is Ainsworth, by the by) meet at Dartmoor, probably, or, rather, certainly, just before Aylmore's release. Aylmore goes abroad, makes money, in time comes back, starts new career, gets into Parliament, becomes big man. In time, Maitland, who, after his time, has also gone abroad, also comes back. The two meet. Maitland probably tries to blackmail Aylmore or threatens to let folk know that the flourishing Mr. Aylmore, M.P., is an ex-convict. ​Result—Aylmore lures him to the Temple and quiets him. Pooh!—the whole thing's clear as noontide, as I say. As—noontide!"

Spargo drummed his fingers again.

"How?" he asked quietly. "How came Aylmore to be identified?"

"My work," said Rathbury proudly. "My work, my son. You see, I thought a lot. And especially after we'd found out that Marbury was Maitland."

"You mean after I'd found out," remarked Spargo.

Rathbury waved his cigar.

"Well, well, it's all the same," he said. "You help me, and I help you, eh? Well, as I say, I thought a considerable lot. I thought—now, where did Maitland, or Marbury, know or meet Aylmore twenty or twenty-two years ago? Not in London, because we knew Maitland never was in London—at any rate, before his trial, and we haven't the least proof that he was in London after. And why won't Aylmore tell? Clearly because it must have been in some undesirable place. And then, all of a sudden, it flashed on me in a moment of—that do you writing fellows call those moments, Spargo?"

"Inspiration, I should think," said Spargo. "Direct inspiration."

"That's it. In a moment of direct inspiration, it flashed on me—why, twenty years ago, Maitland was in Dartmoor—they must have met there! And so, we got some old warders who'd been there at that time to come to town, and we gave 'em opportunities to see Aylmore and to study him. Of course, he's twenty years older, and he's grown a beard, but they began to recall him, ​and then one man remembered that if he was the man they thought he'd a certain birth-mark. And—he has!"

"Does Aylmore know that he's been identified?" asked Spargo.

Rathbury pitched his cigar into the fireplace and laughed.

"Know!" he said scornfully. "Know? He's admitted it. What was the use of standing out against proof like that. He admitted it tonight in my presence. Oh, he knows all right!"

"And what did he say?"

Rathbury laughed contemptuously.

"Say? Oh, not much. Pretty much what he said about this affair—that when he was convicted the time before he was an innocent man. He's certainly a good hand at playing the innocent game."

"And of what was he convicted?"

"Oh, of course, we know all about it—now. As soon as we found out who he really was, we had all the particulars turned up. Aylmore, or Ainsworth (Stephen Ainsworth his name really is) was a man who ran a sort of what they call a Mutual Benefit Society in a town right away up in the North—Cloudhampton—some thirty years ago. He was nominally secretary, but it was really his own affair. It was patronized by the working classes—Cloudhampton's a purely artisan population—and they stuck a lot of their brass, as they call it, in it. Then suddenly it came to smash, and there was nothing. He—Ainsworth, or Aylmore—pleaded that he was robbed and duped by another man, but the court ​didn't believe him, and he got seven years. Plain story you see, Spargo, when it all comes out, eh?"

"All stories are quite plain—when they come out," observed Spargo. "And he kept silence now, I suppose, because he didn't want his daughters to know about his past?"

"Just so," agreed Rathbury. "And I don't know that I blame him. He thought, of course, that he'd go scot-free over this Marbury affair. But he made his mistake in the initial stages, my boy—oh, yes!"

Spargo got up from his desk and walked around his room for a few minutes, Rathbury meanwhile finding and lighting another cigar. At last Spargo came back and clapped a hand on the detective's shoulder.

"Look here, Rathbury!" he said. "It's very evident that you're now going on the lines that Aylmore did murder Marbury. Eh?"

Rathbury looked up. His face showed astonishment.

"After evidence like that!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course. There's the motive, my son, the motive!"

Spargo laughed.

"Rathbury!" he said. "Aylmore no more murdered Marbury than you did!"

The detective got up and put on his hat.

"Oh!" he said. "Perhaps you know who did, then?"

"I shall know in a few days," answered Spargo.

Rathbury stared wonderingly at him. Then he suddenly walked to the door. "Good-night!" he said gruffly.

"Good-night, Rathbury," replied Spargo and sat down at his desk.

​But that night Spargo wrote nothing for the Watchman. All he wrote was a short telegram addressed to Aylmore's daughters. There were only three words on it—Have no fear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE CLOSED DOORS

Alone of all the London morning newspapers, the Watchman appeared next day destitute of sensationalism in respect to the Middle Temple Murder. The other daily journals published more or less vivid accounts of the identification of Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P. for the Brookminster Division, as the ci-devant Stephen Ainsworth, ex-convict, once upon a time founder and secretary of the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society, the headquarters of which had been at Cloudhampton, in Daleshire; the fall of which had involved thousands of honest working folk in terrible distress if not in absolute ruin. Most of them had raked up Ainsworth's past to considerable journalistic purpose: it had been an easy matter to turn up old files, to recount the fall of the Hearth and Home, to tell anew the story of the privations of the humble investors whose small hoards had gone in the crash; it had been easy, too, to set out again the history of Ainsworth 's arrest, trial, and fate. There was plenty of romance in the story: it was that of a man who by his financial ability had built up a great industrial insurance society; had—as was alleged—converted the large sums entrusted to him to his own purposes; had ​been detected and punished; had disappeared, after his punishment, so effectually that no one knew where he had gone; had come back, comparatively a few years later, under another name, a very rich man, and had entered Parliament and been, in a modest way, a public character without any of those who knew him in his new career suspecting that he had once worn a dress liberally ornamented with the broad arrow. Fine copy, excellent copy: some of the morning newspapers made a couple of columns of it.

But the Watchman, up to then easily ahead of all its contemporaries in keeping the public informed of all the latest news in connection with the Marbury affair, contented itself with a brief announcement. For after Rathbury had left him, Spargo had sought his proprietor and his editor, and had sat long in consultation with them, and the result of their talk had been that all the Watchman thought fit to tell its readers next morning was contained in a curt paragraph:

"We understand that Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P., who is charged with the murder of John Marbury, or Maitland, in the Temple on June 21st last, was yesterday afternoon identified by certain officials as Stephen Ainsworth, who was sentenced to a term of penal servitude in connection with the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society funds nearly thirty years ago."

Coming down to Fleet Street that morning, Spargo, strolling jauntily along the front of the Law Courts, encountered a fellow-journalist, a man on an opposition newspaper, who grinned at him in a fashion which indicated derision.

​"Left behind a bit, that rag of yours, this morning, Spargo, my boy!" he remarked elegantly. "Why, you've missed one of the finest opportunities I ever heard of in connection with that Aylmore affair. A miserable paragraph!—why, I worked off a column and a half in ours! What were you doing last night, old man?"

"Sleeping," said Spargo and went by with a nod. "Sleeping!"

He left the other staring at him, and crossed the road to Middle Temple Lane. It was just on the stroke of eleven as he walked up the stairs to Mr. Elphick's chambers; precisely eleven as he knocked at the outer door. It is seldom that outer doors are closed in the Temple at that hour, but Elphick's door was closed fast enough. The night before it had been promptly opened, but there was no response to Spargo's first knock, nor to his second, nor to his third. And half-unconsciously he murmured aloud: "Elphick's door is closed!"

It never occurred to Spargo to knock again: instinct told him that Elphick's door was closed because Elphick was not there; closed because Elphick was not going to keep the appointment. He turned and walked slowly back along the corridor. And just as he reached the head of the stairs Ronald Breton, pale and anxious, came running up them, and at sight of Spargo paused, staring questioningly at him. As if with a mutual sympathy the two young men shook hands.

"I'm glad you didn't print more than those two or three lines in the Watchman this morning,," said Breton. "It was—considerate. As for the other papers!—Aylmore assured me last night, Spargo, that though he did ​serve that term at Dartmoor he was innocent enough! He was scapegoat for another man who disappeared."

Then, as Spargo merely nodded, he added, awkwardly:

"And I'm obliged to you, too, old chap, for sending that wire to the two girls last night—it was good of you. They want all the comfort they can get, poor things! But—what are you doing here, Spargo?"

Spargo leant against the head of the stairs and folded his hands.

"I came here," he said, "to keep an appointment with Mr. Elphick—an appointment which he made when I called on him, as you suggested, at nine o'clock. The appointment—a most important one—was for eleven o'clock."

Breton glanced at his watch.

"Come on, then," he said. "It's well past that now, and my guardian's a very martinet in the matter of punctuality."

But Spargo did not move. Instead, he shook his head, regarding Breton with troubled eyes.

"So am I," he answered. "I was trained to it. Your guardian isn't there, Breton."

"Not there? If he made an appointment for eleven? Nonsense— I never knew him miss an appointment!"

"I knocked three times—three separate times," answered Spargo.

"You should have knocked half a dozen times—he may have overslept himself. He sits up late—he and old Cardlestone often sit up half the night, talking stamps or playing piquet," said Breton. "Come on—you'll see!"

​Spargo shook his head again.

"He's not there, Breton," he said. "He's gone!"

Breton stared at the journalist as if he had just announced that he had seen Mr. Septimus Elphick riding down Fleet Street on a dromedary. He seized Spargo's elbow.

"Come on!" he said. "I have a key to Mr. Elphick's door, so that I can go in and out as I like. I'll soon show you whether he's gone or not."

Spargo followed the young barrister down the corridor.

"All the same," he said meditatively as Breton fitted a key to the latch, "he's not there, Breton. He's—off!"

"Good heavens, man, I don't know what you're talking about!" exclaimed Breton, opening the door and walking into the lobby. "Off! Where on earth should he be off to, when he's made an appointment with you for eleven, and—Hullo!"

He had opened the door of the room in which Spargo had met Elphick and Miss Baylis the night before, and was walking in when he pulled himself up on the threshold with a sharp exclamation.

"Good God!" he cried. "What—what's all this?"

Spargo quietly looked over Breton's shoulder. It needed but one quick glance to show him that much had happened in that quiet room since he had quitted it the night before. There stood the easy-chair in which he had left Elphick; there, close by it, but pushed aside, as if by a hurried hand, was the little table with its ​spirit case, its syphon, its glass, in which stale liquid still stood; there was the novel, turned face downwards; there, upon the novel, was Elphick's pipe. But the rest of the room was in dire confusion. The drawers of a bureau had been pulled open and never put back; papers of all descriptions, old legal-looking documents, old letters, littered the centre-table and the floor; in one corner of the room a black japanned box had been opened, its contents strewn about, and the lid left yawning. And in the grate, and all over the fender there were masses of burned and charred paper; it was only too evident that the occupant of the chambers, wherever he might have disappeared to, had spent some time before his disappearance in destroying a considerable heap of documents and papers, and in such haste that he had not troubled to put matters straight before he went.

Breton stared at this scene for a moment in utter consternation. Then he made one step towards an inner door, and Spargo followed him. Together they entered an inner room—a sleeping apartment. There was no one in it, but there were evidences that Elphick had just as hastily packed a bag as he had destroyed his papers. The clothes which Spargo had seen him wearing the previous evening were flung here, there, everywhere; the gorgeous smoking-jacket was tossed unceremoniously in one corner, a dress-shirt, in the bosom of which valuable studs still glistened, in another. One or two suitcases lay about, as if they had been examined and discarded in favour of something more portable; here, too, drawers, revealing stocks of linen and underclothing, ​had been torn open and left open; open, too, swung the door of a wardrobe, revealing a quantity of expensive clothing. And Spargo, looking around him, seemed to see all that had happened—the hasty, almost frantic search for and tearing up and burning of papers; the hurried change of clothing, of packing necessaries into a bag that could be carried, and then the flight the getting away, the——

"What on earth does all this mean?" exclaimed Breton. "What is it, Spargo?"

"I mean exactly what I told you," answered Spargo. "He's off! Off!"

"Off! But why off? What—my guardian!—as quiet an old gentleman as there is in the Temple—off!" cried Breton. "For what reason, eh? It isn't—good God, Spargo, it isn't because of anything you said to him last night!"

"I should say it is precisely because of something that I said to him last night," replied Spargo. "I was a fool ever to let him out of my sight."

Breton turned on his companion and gasped.

"Out—of—your—sight!" he exclaimed. "Why—why—you don't mean to say that Mr. Elphick has anything to do with this Marbury affair? For God's sake, Spargo——"

Spargo laid a hand on the young barrister's shoulder.

"I'm afraid you'll have to hear a good deal, Breton," he said. "I was going to talk to you today in any case. You see——"

Before Spargo could say more a woman, bearing the implements which denote the charwoman's profession, ​entered the room and immediately cried out at what she saw. Breton turned on her almost savagely.

"Here, you!" he said. "Have you seen anything of Mr. Elphick this morning?"

The charwoman rolled her eyes and lifted her hands.

"Me, sir! Not a sign of him, sir. Which I never comes here much before half-past eleven, sir, Mr. Elphick being then gone out to his breakfast. I see him yesterday morning, sir, which he was then in his usual state of good health, sir, if anything's the matter with him now. No, sir, I ain't seen nothing of him."

Breton let out another exclamation of impatience.

"You'd better leave all this," he said. "Mr. Elphick's evidently gone away in a hurry, and you mustn't touch anything here until he comes back. I'm going to lock up the chambers: if you've a key of them give it to me."

The charwoman handed over a key, gave another astonished look at the rooms, and vanished, muttering, and Breton turned to Spargo.

"What do you say?" he demanded. "I must hear—a good deal! Out with it, then, man, for Heaven's sake."

But Spargo shook his head.

"Not now, Breton," he answered. "Presently, I tell you, for Miss Aylmore's sake, and your own, the first thing to do is to get on your guardian's track. We must—must, I say!—and at once."

Breton stood staring at Spargo for a moment as if he could not credit his own senses. Then he suddenly motioned Spargo out of the room.

​"Come on!" he said. "I know who'll know where he is, if anybody does."

"Who, then?" asked Spargo, as they hurried out.

"Cardlestone," answered Breton, grimly. "Cardlestone!"

CHAPTER THIRTY
REVELATION

There was as much bright sunshine that morning in Middle Temple Lane as ever manages to get into it, and some of it was shining in the entry into which Spargo and Breton presently hurried. Full of haste as he was Breton paused at the foot of the stair. He looked down at the floor and at the wall at its side.

"Wasn't it there?" he said in a low voice, pointing at the place he looked at. "Wasn't it there, Spargo, just there, that Marbury, or, rather, Maitland, was found?"

"It was just there," answered Spargo.

"You saw him?"

"I saw him."

"Soon—afterwards?"

"Immediately after he was found. You know all that, Breton. Why do you ask now?"

Breton, who was still staring at the place on which he had fixed his eyes on walking into the entry, shook his head.

"Don't know," he answered. "I—but come on—let's see if old Cardlestone can tell us anything."

There was another charwoman, armed with pails and buckets, outside Cardlestone's door, into which she was just fitting a key. It was evident to Spargo that she ​knew Breton, for she smiled at him as she opened the door.

"I don't think Mr. Cardlestone'll be in, sir," she said. "He's generally gone out to breakfast at this time—him and Mr. Elphick goes together."

"Just see," said Breton. "I want to see him if he is in." The charwoman entered the chambers and immediately screamed.

"Quite so," remarked Spargo. "That's what I expected to hear. Cardlestone, you see, Breton, is also—off!"

Breton made no reply. He rushed after the charwoman, with Spargo in close attendance.

"Good God—another!" groaned Breton.

If the confusion in Elphick's rooms had been bad, that in Cardlestone's chambers was worse. Here again all the features of the previous scene were repeated—drawers had been torn open, papers thrown about; the hearth was choked with light ashes; everything was at sixes and sevens. An open door leading into an inner room showed that Cardlestone, like Elphick, had hastily packed a bag; like Elphick had changed his clothes, and had thrown his discarded garments anywhere, into any corner. Spargo began to realize what had taken place—Elphick, having made his own preparations for flight, had come to Cardlestone, and had expedited him, and they had fled together. But—why?

The charwoman sat down in the nearest chair and began to moan and sob; Breton strode forward, across the heaps of papers and miscellaneous objects tossed aside in that hurried search and clearing up, into the inner ​room, And Spargo, looking about him, suddenly caught sight of something lying on the floor at which he made a sharp clutch. He had just secured it and hurried it into his pocket when Breton came back.

"I don't know what all this means, Spargo," he said, almost wearily. "I suppose you do. Look here," he went on, turning to the charwoman, "stop that row—that'll do no good, you know. I suppose Mr. Cardlestone's gone away in a hurry. You'd better—what had she better do, Spargo?"

"Leave things exactly as they are, lock up the chambers, and as you're a friend of Mr. Cardlestone's give you the key," answered Spargo, with a significant glance. "Do that, now, and let's go—I've something to do."

Once outside, with the startled charwoman gone away, Spargo turned to Breton.

"I'll tell you all I know, presently, Breton," he said. "In the meantime, I want to find out if the lodge porter saw Mr. Elphick or Mr. Cardlestone leave. I must know where they've gone—if I can only find out. I don't suppose they went on foot."

"All right," responded Breton, gloomily. "We'll go and ask. But this is all beyond me. You don't mean to say——"

"Wait a while," answered Spargo. "One thing at once," he continued, as they walked up Middle Temple Lane. "This is the first thing. You ask the porter if he's seen anything of either of them—he knows you."

The porter, duly interrogated, responded with alacrity.

"Anything of Mr. Elphick this morning, Mr. Breton?" he answered. "Certainly, sir. I got a taxi for Mr. ​Elphick and Mr. Cardlestone early this morning—soon after seven. Mr. Elphick said they were going to Paris, and they'd breakfast at Charing Cross before the train left."

"Say when they'd be back?" asked Breton, with an assumption of entire carelessness.

"No, sir, Mr. Elphick didn't," answered the porter. "But I should say they wouldn't be long because they'd only got small suit-cases with them—such as they'd put a day or two's things in, sir."

"All right," said Breton. He turned away towards Spargo who had already moved off. "What next?" he asked. "Charing Cross, I suppose?"

Spargo smiled and shook his head.

"No," he answered. "I've no use for Charing Cross. They haven't gone to Paris. That was all a blind. For the present let's go back to your chambers. Then I'll talk to you."

Once within Breton's inner room, with the door closed upon them, Spargo dropped into an easy-chair and looked at the young barrister with earnest attention.

"Breton!" he said. "I believe we're coming in sight of land. You want to save your prospective father-in-law, don't you?"

"Of course!" growled Breton. "That goes without saying. But——"

"But you may have to make some sacrifices in order to do it," said Spargo. "You see——"

"Sacrifices!" exclaimed Breton. "What——"

"You may have to sacrifice some ideas—you may find ​that you'll not be able to think as well of some people in the future as you have thought of them in the past. For instance—Mr. Elphick."

Breton's face grew dark.

"Speak plainly, Spargo!" he said. "It's best with me."

"Very well," replied Spargo. "Mr. Elphick, then, is in some way connected with this affair."

"You mean the—murder?"

"I mean the murder. So is Cardlestone. Of that I'm now dead certain. And that's why they're off. I startled Elphick last night. It's evident that he immediately communicated with Cardlestone, and that they made a rapid exit. Why?"

"Why? That's what I'm asking you! Why? Why? Why?"

"Because they're afraid of something coming out. And being afraid, their first instinct is to—run. They've run at the first alarm. Foolish—but instinctive."

Breton, who had flung himself into the elbow-chair at his desk, jumped to his feet and thumped his blotting-pad.

"Spargo!" he exclaimed. "Are you telling me that you accuse my guardian and his friend, Mr. Cardlestone, of being—murderers?"

"Nothing of the sort. I am accusing Mr. Elphick and Mr. Cardlestone of knowing more about the murder than they care to tell or want to tell. I am also accusing them, and especially your guardian, of knowing all about ​Maitland, alias Marbury. I made him confess last night that he knew this dead man to be John Maitland."

"You did!"

"I did. And now, Breton, since it's got to come out, we'll have the truth. Pull yourself together—get your nerves ready, for you'll have to stand a shock or two. But I know what I'm talking about—I can prove every word I'm going to say to you. And first let me ask you a few questions. Do you know anything about your parentage?"

"Nothing—beyond what Mr. Elphick has told me."

"And what was that?"

"That my parents were old friends of his, who died young, leaving me unprovided for, and that he took me up and looked after me."

"And he's never given you any documentary evidence of any sort to prove the truth of that story?"

"Never! I never questioned his statement. Why should I?"

"You never remember anything of your childhood—I mean of any person who was particularly near you in your childhood?"

"I remember the people who brought me up from the time I was three years old. And I have just a faint, shadowy recollection of some woman, a tall, dark woman, I think, before that."

"Miss Baylis," said Spargo to himself. "All right, Breton," he went on aloud. "I'm going to tell you the truth. I'll tell it to you straight out and give you all the explanations afterwards. Your real name is not Breton at all. Your real name is Maitland, and you're ​the only child of the man who was found murdered at the foot of Cardlestone's staircase!"

Spargo had been wondering how Breton would take this, and he gazed at him with some anxiety as he got out the last words. What would he do?—what would he say?—what——

Breton sat down quietly at his desk and looked Spargo hard between the eyes.

"Prove that to me, Spargo," he said, in hard, matter-of-fact tones. "Prove it to me, every word. Every word, Spargo!"

Spargo nodded.

"I will—every word," he answered. "It's the right thing. Listen, then."

It was a quarter to twelve, Spargo noticed, throwing a glance at the clock outside, as he began his story; it was past one when he brought it to an end. And all that time Breton listened with the keenest attention, only asking a question now and then; now and then making a brief note on a sheet of paper which he had drawn to him.

"That's all," said Spargo at last.

"It's plenty," observed Breton laconically.

He sat staring at his notes for a moment; then he looked up at Spargo. "What do you really think?" he asked.

"About—what?" said Spargo.

"This flight of Elphick's and Cardlestone's."

"I think, as I said, that they knew something which they think may be forced upon them. I never saw a man in a greater fright than that I saw Elphick in last ​night. And it's evident that Cardlestone shares in that fright, or they wouldn't have gone off in this way together."

"Do you think they know anything of the actual murder?"

Spargo shook his head.

"I don't know. Probably. They know something. And—look here!"

Spargo put his hand in his breast pocket and drew something out which he handed to Breton, who gazed at it curiously.

"What's this?" he demanded. "Stamps?"

"That, from the description of Criedir, the stamp-dealer, is a sheet of those rare Australian stamps which Maitland had on him—carried on him. I picked it up just now in Cardlestone's room, when you were looking into his bedroom."

"But that, after all, proves nothing. Those mayn't be the identical stamps. And whether they are or not——"

"What are the probabilities?" interrupted Spargo sharply. "I believe that those are the stamps which Maitland—your father!—had on him, and I want to know how they came to be in Cardlestone's rooms. And I will know."

Breton handed the stamps back.

"But the general thing, Spargo?" he said. "If they didn't murder—I can't realize the thing yet!—my father——"

"If they didn't murder your father, they know who did!" exclaimed Spargo. "Now, then, it's time for ​more action. Let Elphick and Cardlestone alone for the moment—they'll be tracked easily enough. I want to tackle something else for the moment. How do you get an authority from the Government to open a grave?"

"Order from the Home Secretary, which will have to be obtained by showing the very strongest reasons why it should be made."

"Good! We'll give the reasons. I want to have a grave opened."

"A grave opened! Whose grave?"

"The grave of the man Chamberlayne at Market Milcaster," replied Spargo.

Breton started.

"His? In Heaven's name, why?" he demanded.

Spargo laughed as he got up.

"Because I believe it's empty," he answered. "Because I believe that Chamberlayne is alive, and that his other name is—Cardlestone!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE PENITENT WINDOW-CLEANER

That afternoon Spargo had another of his momentous interviews with his proprietor and his editor. The first result was that all three drove to the offices of the legal gentleman who catered for the Watchman when it wanted any law, and that things were put in shape for an immediate application to the Home Office for permission to open the Chamberlayne grave at Market Milcaster; the second was that on the following morning there appeared in the Watchman a notice which set half the mouths of London a-watering. That notice, penned by Spargo, ran as follows:—

"One Thousand Pounds Reward.

"Whereas, on some date within the past twelve months, there was stolen, abstracted, or taken from the chambers in Fountain Court, Temple, occupied by Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P., under the name of Mr. Anderson, a walking-stick, or stout staff, of foreign make, and of curious workmanship, which stick was probably used in the murder of John Marbury, or Maitland, in Middle Temple Lane, on the night of June 21-22 last, and is now in the hands of the police:

"This is to give notice that the Proprietor of the Watchman newspaper will pay the above-mentioned reward (One Thousand Pounds Sterling) at once and in cash to whosoever will prove that he or she ​stole, abstracted, or took away the said stick from the said chambers, and will further give full information as to his or her disposal of the same, and the Proprietor of the Watchman moreover engages to treat any revelation affecting the said stick in the most strictly private and confidential manner, and to abstain from using it in any way detrimental to the informant, who should call at the Watchman office, and ask for Mr. Frank Spargo at any time between eleven and one o'clock midday, and seven and eleven o'clock in the evening."

"And you really expect to get some information through that?" asked Breton, who came into Spargo's room about noon on the day on which the promising announcement came out. "You really do?"

"Before today is out," said Spargo confidently. "There is more magic in a thousand-pound reward than you fancy, Breton. I'll have the history of that stick before midnight."

"How are you to tell that you won't be imposed upon?" suggested Breton. "Anybody can say that he or she stole the stick."

"Whoever comes here with any tale of a stick will have to prove to me how he or she got the stick and what was done with the stick," said Spargo. "I haven't the least doubt that that stick was stolen or taken away from Aylmore's rooms in Fountain Court, and that it got into the hands of——"

"Yes, of whom?"

"That's what I want to know in some fashion. I've ​an idea, already. But I can afford to wait for definite information. I know one thing—when I get that information—as I shall—we shall be a long way on the road towards establishing Aylmore's innocence."

Breton made no remark upon this. He was looking at Spargo with a meditative expression.

"Spargo," he said, suddenly, "do you think you'll get that order for the opening of the grave at Market Milcaster?"

"I was talking to the solicitors over the 'phone just now," answered Spargo. "They've every confidence about it. In fact, it's possible it may be made this afternoon. In that case, the opening will be made early tomorrow morning."

"Shall you go?" asked Breton.

"Certainly. And you can go with me, if you like. Better keep in touch with us all day in case we hear. You ought to be there—you're concerned."

"I should like to go—I will go," said Breton. "And if that grave proves to be—empty—I'll—I'll tell you something."

Spargo looked up with sharp instinct.

"You'll tell me something? Something? What?"

"Never mind—wait until we see if that coffin contains a dead body or lead and sawdust. If there's no body there——"

At that moment one of the senior messenger boys came in and approached Spargo. His countenance, usually subdued to an official stolidity, showed signs of something very like excitement.

"There's a man downstairs asking for you, Mr. ​Spargo," he said. "He's been hanging about a bit, sir,—seems very shy about coming up. He won't say what he wants, and he won't fill up a form, sir. Says all he wants is a word or two with you."

"Bring him up at once!" commanded Spargo. He turned to Breton when the boy had gone. "There!" he said, laughing. "This is the man about the stick—you see if it isn't."

"You're such a cock-sure chap, Spargo," said Breton. "You're always going on a straight line."

"Trying to, you mean," retorted Spargo. "Well, stop here, and hear what this chap has to say: it'll no doubt be amusing."

The messenger boy, deeply conscious that he was ushering into Spargo's room an individual who might shortly carry away a thousand pounds of good Watchman money in his pocket, opened the door and introduced a shy and self-conscious young man, whose nervousness was painfully apparent to everybody and deeply felt by himself. He halted on the threshold, looking round the comfortably-furnished room, and at the two well-dressed young men which it framed as if he feared to enter on a scene of such grandeur.

"Come in, come in!" said Spargo, rising and pointing to an easy-chair at the side of his desk. "Take a seat. You've called about that reward, of course."

The man in the chair eyed the two of them cautiously, and not without suspicion. He cleared his throat with a palpable effort.

"Of course," he said. "It's all on the strict private. Name of Edward Mollison, sir."

​"And where do you live, and what do you do?" asked Spargo.

"You might put it down Rowton House, Whitechapel," answered Edward Mollison. "Leastways, that's where I generally hang out when I can afford it. And—window-cleaner. Leastways, I was window cleaning when—when——"

"When you came in contact with the stick we've been advertising about," suggested Spargo. "Just so. Well, Mollison—what about the stick?"

Mollison looked round at the door, and then at the windows, and then at Breton.

"There ain't no danger of me being got into trouble along of that stick?" he asked. "'Cause if there is, I ain't a-going to say a word—no, not for no thousand pounds! Me never having been in no trouble of any sort, guv'nor—though a poor man."

"Not the slightest danger in the world, Mollison," replied Spargo. "Not the least. All you've got to do is to tell the truth—and prove that it is the truth. So it was you who took that queer-looking stick out of Mr. Aylmore's rooms in Fountain Court, was it?"

Mollison appeared to find this direct question soothing to his feelings. He smiled weakly.

"It was cert'nly me as took it, sir," he said. "Not that I meant to pinch it—not me! And, as you might say, I didn't take it, when all's said and done. It was—put on me."

"Put on you, was it?" said Spargo. "That's interesting. And how was it put on you?"

Mollison grinned again and rubbed his chin.

​"It was this here way," he answered. "You see, I was working at that time—near on to nine months since, it is—for the Universal Daylight Window Cleaning Company, and I used to clean a many windows here and there in the Temple, and them windows at Mr. Aylmore's—only I knew them as Mr. Anderson's—among 'em. And I was there one morning, early it was, when the charwoman she says to me, 'I wish you'd take these two or three hearthrugs,' she says, 'and give 'em a good beating,' she says. And me being always a ready one to oblige, 'All right!' I says, and takes 'em. 'Here's something to wallop 'em with,' she says, and pulls that there old stick out of a lot that was in a stand in a corner of the lobby. And that's how I came to handle it, sir."

"I see," said Spargo. "A good explanation. And when you had beaten the hearthrugs—what then?"

Mollison smiled his weak smile again.

"Well, sir, I looked at that there stick and I see it was something uncommon," he answered. "And I thinks—'Well, this Mr. Anderson, he's got a bundle of sticks and walking canes up there—he'll never miss this old thing,' I thinks. And so I left it in a corner when I'd done beating the rugs, and when I went away with my things I took it with me."

"You took it with you?" said Spargo. "Just so. To keep as a curiosity, I suppose?"

Mollison's weak smile turned to one of cunning. He was obviously losing his nervousness; the sound of his own voice and the reception of his news was imparting confidence to him.

"Not half!" he answered. "You see, guv'nor, there ​was an old cove as I knew in the Temple there as is, or was, 'cause I ain't been there since, a collector of antikities, like, and I'd sold him a queer old thing, time and again. And, of course, I had him in my eye when I took the stick away—see?"

"I see. And you took the stick to him?"

"I took it there and then," replied Mollison. "Pitched him a tale, I did, about it having been brought from foreign parts by Uncle Simon—which I never had no Uncle Simon. Made out it was a rare curiosity—which it might ha' been one, for all I know."

"Exactly. And the old cove took a fancy to it, eh?"

"Bought it there and then," answered Mollison, with something very like a wink.

"Ah! Bought it there and then. And how much did he give you for it?" asked Spargo. "Something handsome, I hope?"

"Couple o' quid," replied Mollison. "Me not wishing to part with a family heirloom for less."

"Just so. And do you happen to be able to tell me the old cove's name and his address, Mollison?" asked Spargo.

"I do, sir. Which they've painted on his entry—the fifth or sixth as you go down Middle Temple Lane," answered Mollison. "Mr. Nicholas Cardlestone, first floor up the staircase."

Spargo rose from his seat without as much as a look at Breton.

"Come this way, Mollison," he said. "We'll go and see about your little reward. Excuse me, Breton."

​Breton kicked his heels in solitude for half an hour. Then Spargo came back.

"There—that's one matter settled, Breton," he said. "Now for the next. The Home Secretary's made the order for the opening of the grave at Market Milcaster. I'm going down there at once, and I suppose you're coming. And remember, if that grave's empty——"

"If that grave's empty," said Breton, "I'll tell you—a good deal."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE CONTENTS OF THE COFFIN

There travelled down together to Market Milcaster late that afternoon, Spargo, Breton, the officials from the Home Office, entrusted with the order for the opening of the Chamberlayne grave, and a solicitor acting on behalf of the proprietor of the Watchman. It was late in the evening when they reached the little town, but Spargo, having looked in at the parlour of the "Yellow Dragon" and ascertained that Mr. Quarterpage had only just gone home, took Breton across the street to the old gentleman's house. Mr. Quarterpage himself came to the door, and recognized Spargo immediately. Nothing would satisfy him but that the two should go in; his family, he said, had just retired, but he himself was going to take a final nightcap and a cigar, and they must share it.

"For a few minutes only then, Mr. Quarterpage," said Spargo as they followed the old man into his dining-room. "We have to be up at daybreak. And—possibly—you, too, would like to be up just as early."

Mr. Quarterpage looked an enquiry over the top of a decanter which he was handling.

"At daybreak?" he exclaimed.

"The fact is," said Spargo, "that grave of Chamberlayne's is going to be opened at daybreak. We have ​managed to get an order from the Home Secretary for the exhumation of Chamberlayne's body: the officials in charge of it have come down in the same train with us; we're all staying across there at the 'Dragon.' The officials have gone to make the proper arrangements with your authorities. It will be at daybreak, or as near it as can conveniently be managed. And I suppose, now that you know of it, you'll be there?"

"God bless me!" exclaimed Mr. Quarterpage. "You've really done that! Well, well, so we shall know the truth at last, after all these years. You're a very wonderful young man, Mr. Spargo, upon my word. And this other young gentleman?"

Spargo looked at Breton, who had already given him permission to speak. "Mr. Quarterpage," he said, "this young gentleman is, without doubt, John Maitland's son. He's the young barrister, Mr. Ronald Breton, that I told you of, but there's no doubt about his parentage. And I'm sure you'll shake hands with him and wish him well."

Mr. Quarterpage set down decanter and glass and hastened to give Breton his hand.

"My dear young sir!" he exclaimed. "That I will indeed! And as to wishing you well—ah, I never wished anything but well to your poor father. He was led away, sir, led away by Chamberlayne. God bless me, what a night of surprises! Why, Mr. Spargo, supposing that coffin is found empty—what then?"

"Then," answered Spargo, "then I think we shall be able to put our hands on the man who is supposed to be in it."

​"You think my father was worked upon by this man Chamberlayne, sir?" observed Breton a few minutes later when they had all sat down round Mr. Quarterpage's hospitable hearth. "You think he was unduly influenced by him?"

Mr. Quarterpage shook his head sadly.

"Chamberlayne, my dear young sir," he answered. "Chamberlayne was a plausible and a clever fellow. Nobody knew anything about him until he came to this town, and yet before he had been here very long he had contrived to ingratiate himself with everybody—of course, to his own advantage. I firmly believe that he twisted your father round his little finger. As I told Mr. Spargo there when he was making his enquiries of me a short while back, it would never have been any surprise to me to hear—definitely, I mean, young gentlemen—that all this money that was in question went into Chamberlayne's pockets. Dear me—dear me!—and you really believe that Chamberlayne is actually alive, Mr. Spargo?"

Spargo pulled out his watch. "We shall all know whether he was buried in that grave before another six hours are over, Mr. Quarterpage," he said.

He might well have spoken of four hours instead of six, for it was then nearly midnight, and before three o'clock Spargo and Breton, with the other men who had accompanied them from London were out of the "Yellow Dragon" and on their way to the cemetery just outside the little town. Over the hills to the eastward the grey dawn was slowly breaking: the long stretch of ​marshland which lies between Market Milcaster and the sea was white with fog: on the cypresses and acacias of the cemetery hung veils and webs of gossamer: everything around them was quiet as the dead folk who lay beneath their feet. And the people actively concerned went quietly to work, and those who could do nothing but watch stood around in silence.

"In all my long life of over ninety years," whispered old Quarterpage, who had met them at the cemetery gates, looking fresh and brisk in spite of his shortened rest, "I have never seen this done before. It seems a strange, strange thing to interfere with a dead man's last resting-place—a dreadful thing."

"If there is a dead man there," said Spargo.

He himself was mainly curious about the details of this exhumation; he had no scruples, sentimental or otherwise, about the breaking in upon the dead. He watched all that was done. The men employed by the local authorities, instructed over-night, had fenced in the grave with canvas; the proceedings were accordingly conducted in strict privacy; a man was posted to keep away any very early passersby, who might be attracted by the unusual proceedings. At first there was nothing to do but wait, and Spargo occupied himself by reflecting that every spadeful of earth thrown out of that grave was bringing him nearer to the truth; he had an unconquerable intuition that the truth of at any rate one phase of the Marbury case was going to be revealed to them. If the coffin to which they were digging down contained a body, and that the body of the stockbroker, ​Chamberlayme, then a good deal of his, Spargo's, latest theory, would be dissolved to nothingness. But if that coffin contained no body at all, then——"

"They're down to it!" whispered Breton.

Presently they all went and looked down into the grave. The workmen had uncovered the coffin preparatory to lifting it to the surface; one of them was brushing the earth away from the name-plate. And in the now strong light they could all read the lettering on it.

James Cartweight Chamberlayne
Born 1852
Died 1891

Spargo turned away as the men began to lift the coffin out of the grave.

"We shall know now!" he whispered to Breton. "And yet—what is it we shall know if——"

"If what?" said Breton. "If—what?"

But Spargo shook his head. This was one of the great moments he had lately been working for, and the issues were tremendous.

"Now for it!" said the Watchman's solicitor in an undertone. "Come, Mr. Spargo, now we shall see."

They all gathered round the coffin, set on low trestles at the graveside, as the workmen silently went to work on the screws. The screws were rusted in their sockets; they grated as the men slowly worked them out. It seemed to Spargo that each man grew slower and slower in his movements; he felt that he himself was getting fidgety. Then he heard a voice of authority.

​"Lift the lid off!"

A man at the head of the coffin, a man at the foot suddenly and swiftly raised the lid: the men gathered round craned their necks with a quick movement.

Sawdust!

The coffin was packed to the brim with sawdust, tightly pressed down. The surface lay smooth, undisturbed, levelled as some hand had levelled it long years before. They were not in the presence of death, but of deceit.

Somebody laughed faintly. The sound of the laughter broke the spell. The chief official present looked round him with a smile.

"It is evident that there were good grounds for suspicion," he remarked. "Here is no dead body, gentlemen. See if anything lies beneath the sawdust," he added, turning to the workmen. "Turn it out!"

The workmen began to scoop out the sawdust with their hands; one of them, evidently desirous of making sure that no body was in the coffin, thrust down his fingers at various places along its length. He, too, laughed.

"The coffin's weighted with lead!" he remarked. "See!"

And tearing the sawdust aside, he showed those around him that at three intervals bars of lead had been tightly wedged into the coffin where the head, the middle, and the feet of a corpse would have rested.

"Done it cleverly," he remarked, looking round. "You see how these weights have been adjusted. When a body's laid out in a coffin, you know, all the weight's in the end where the head and trunk rest. Here you see ​the heaviest bar of lead is in the middle; the lightest at the feet. Clever!"

"Clear out all the sawdust," said some one. "Let's see if there's anything else."

There was something else. At the bottom of the coffin two bundles of papers, tied up with pink tape. The legal gentlemen present immediately manifested great interest in these. So did Spargo, who, pulling Breton along with him, forced his way to where the officials from the Home Office and the solicitor sent by the Watchman were hastily examining their discoveries.

The first bundle of papers opened evidently related to transactions at Market Milcaster: Spargo caught glimpses of names that were familiar to him, Mr. Quarterpage's amongst them. He was not at all astonished to see these things. But he was something more than astonished when, on the second parcel being opened, a quantity of papers relating to Cloudhampton and the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society were revealed. He gave a hasty glance at these and drew Breton aside.

"It strikes me we've found a good deal more than we ever bargained for!" he exclaimed. "Didn't Aylmore say that the real culprit at Cloudhampton was another man—his clerk or something of that sort?"

"He did," agreed Breton. "he insists on it."

"Then this fellow Chamberlayne must have been the man," said Spargo. "He came to Market Milcaster from the north. What'll be done with those papers?" he asked, turning to the officials.

"We are going to seal them up at once, and take them ​to London," replied the principal person in authority. "They will be quite safe, Mr. Spargo; have no fear. We don't know what they may reveal."

"You don't, indeed!" said Spargo. "But I may as well tell yon that I have a strong belief that they'll reveal a good deal that nobody dreams of, so take the greatest care of them."

Then, without waiting for further talk with any one, Spargo hurried Breton out of the cemetery. At the gate, he seized him by the arm.

"Now, then, Breton!" he commanded. "Out with it!"

"With what?"

"You promised to tell me something—a great deal, you said—if we found that coffin empty. It is empty. Come on—quick!"

"All right. I believe I know where Elphick and Cardlestone can be found. That's all."

"All! It's enough. Where, then, in heaven's name?"

"Elphick has a queer little place where he and Cardlestone sometimes go fishing—right away up in one of the wildest parts of the Yorkshire moors. I expect they've gone there. Nobody knows even their names there—they could go and lie quiet there for—ages."

"Do you know the way to it?"

"I do—I've been there."

Spargo motioned him to hurry.

"Come on, then," he said. "We're going there by the very first train out of this. I know the train, ​too—we've just time to snatch a mouthful of breakfast and to send a wire to the Watchman, and then we'll be off. Yorkshire!—Gad, Breton, that's over three hundred miles away!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
FORESTALLED

Travelling all that long summer day, first from the south-west of England to the Midlands, then from the Midlands to the north, Spargo and Breton came late at night to Hawes' Junction, on the border of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, and saw rising all around them in the half-darkness the mighty bulks of the great fells which rise amongst that wild and lonely stretch of land. At that hour of the night and amidst that weird silence, broken only by the murmur of some adjacent waterfall the scene was impressive and suggestive; it seemed to Spargo as if London were a million miles away, and the rush and bustle of human life a thing of another planet. Here and there in the valleys he saw a light, but such lights were few and far between; even as he looked some of them twinkled and went out. It was evident that he and Breton were presently to be alone with the night.

"How far?" he asked Breton as they walked away from the station.

"We'd better discuss matters," answered Breton. "The place is in a narrow valley called Fossdale, some six or seven miles away across these fells, and as wild a walk as any lover of such things could wish for. It's half-past nine now, Spargo: I reckon it will take us a ​good two and a half hours, if not more, to do it. Now, the question is—Do we go straight there, or do we put up for the night? There's an inn here at this junction; there's the Moor Cock Inn a mile or so along the road which we must take before we turn off to the moorland and the fells. It's going to be a black night—look at those masses of black cloud gathering there!—and possibly a wet one, and we've no waterproofs. But it's for you to say—I'm game for whatever you like."

"Do you know the way?" asked Spargo.

"I've been the way. In the daytime I could go straight ahead. I remember all the landmarks. Even in the darkness I believe I can find my way. But it's rough walking."

"We'll go straight there," said Spargo. "Every minute's precious. But—can we get a mouthful of bread and cheese and a glass of ale first?"

"Good idea! We'll call in at the 'Moor Cock.' Now then, while we're on this firm road, step it out lively."

The "Moor Cock" was almost deserted at that hour: there was scarcely a soul in it when the two travellers turned in to its dimly-lighted parlour. The landlord, bringing the desired refreshment, looked hard at Breton. "Come our way again then, sir?" he remarked with a sudden grin of recognition.

"Ah, you remember me?" said Breton.

"I call in mind when you came here with the two old gents last year," replied the landlord. "I hear they're here again—Tom Summers was coming across that way this morning, and said he'd seen 'em at the little cottage. Going to join 'em, I reckon, sir?"

​Breton kicked Spargo under the table.

"Yes, we're going to have a day or two with them," he answered. "Just to get a breath of your moorland air."

"Well, you'll have a roughish walk over there tonight, gentlemen," said the landlord. "There's going to be a storm. And it's a stiffish way to make out at this time o'night."

"Oh, we'll manage," said Breton, nonchalantly. "I know the way, and we're not afraid of a wet skin."

The landlord laughed, and sitting down on his long settle folded his arms and scratched his elbows.

"There was a gentleman—London gentleman by his tongue—came in here this afternoon, and asked the way to Fossdale," he observed. "He'll be there long since—he'd have daylight for his walk. Happen he's one of your party?—he asked where the old gentlemen's little cottage was."

Again Spargo felt his shin kicked and made no sign.

"One of their friends, perhaps," answered Breton. "What was he like?"

The landlord ruminated. He was not good at description and was conscious of the fact.

"Well, a darkish, serious-faced gentleman," he said. "Stranger hereabouts, at all events. Wore a grey suit—something like your friend's there. Yes—he took some bread and cheese with him when he heard what a long way it was."

"Wise man," remarked Breton. He hastily finished his own bread and cheese, and drank off the rest of his pint of ale. "Come on," he said, "let's be stepping."

​Outside, in the almost tangible darkness, Breton clutched Sparge's arm. "Who's the man?" he said. "Can you think, Spargo?"

"Can't," answered Spargo. "I was trying to, while that chap was talking. But—it's somebody that's got in before us. Not Rathbury, anyhow—he's not serious-faced. Heavens, Breton, however are you going to find your way in this darkness?"

"You'll see presently. We follow the road a little. Then we turn up the fell side there. On the top, if the night clears a bit, we ought to see Great Shunnor Fell and Lovely Seat—they're both well over two thousand feet, and they stand up well. We want to make for a point clear between them. But I warn you, Spargo, it's stiff going!"

"Go ahead!" said Spargo. "It's the first time in my life I ever did anything of this sort, but we're going on if it takes us all night. I couldn't sleep in any bed now that I've heard there's somebody ahead of us. Go first, old chap, and I'll follow."

Breton went steadily forward along the road. That was easy work, but when he turned off and began to thread his way up the fell-side by what was obviously no more than a sheep-track, Spargo's troubles began. It seemed to him that he was walking as in a nightmare; all that he saw was magnified and heightened; the darkening sky above; the faint outlines of the towering hills; the gaunt spectres of fir and pine; the figure of Breton forging stolidly and surely ahead. Now the ground was soft and spongy under his feet; now it was stony and rugged; more than once he caught an ankle in the ​wire-like heather and tripped, bruising his knees. And in the end he resigned himself to keeping his eye on Breton, outlined against the sky, and following doggedly in his footsteps.

"Was there no other way than this?" he asked after a long interval of silence. "Do you mean to say those two—Elphick and Cardlestone—would take this way?"

"There is another way—down the valley, by Thwaite Bridge and Hardraw," answered Breton, "but it's miles and miles round. This is a straight cut across country, and in daylight it's a delightful walk. But at night—Gad!—here's the rain, Spargo!"

The rain came down as it does in that part of the world, with a suddenness that was as fierce as it was heavy. The whole of the grey night was blotted out; Spargo was only conscious that he stood in a vast solitude and was being gradually drowned. But Breton, whose sight was keener, and who had more knowledge of the situation dragged his companion into the shelter of a group of rocks. He laughed a little as they huddled closely together.

"This is a different sort of thing to pursuing detective work in Fleet Street, Spargo," he said. "You would come on, you know."

"I'm going on if we go through cataracts and floods," answered Spargo. "I might have been induced to stop at the 'Moor Cock' overnight if we hadn't heard of that chap in front. If he's after those two he's somebody who knows something. "What I can't make out is—who he can be."

"Nor I," said Breton. "I can't think of anybody ​who knows of this retreat. But—has it ever struck you, Spargo, that somebody beside yourself may have been investigating?"

"Possible," replied Spargo. "One never knows. I only wish we'd been a few hours earlier. For I wanted to have the first word with those two."

The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come. Just as suddenly the heavens cleared. And going forward to the top of the ridge which they were then crossing, Breton pointed an arm to something shining far away below them.

"You see that?" he said. "That's a sheet of water lying between us and Cotterdale. We leave that on our right hand, climb the fell beyond it, drop down into Cotterdale, cross two more ranges of fell, and come down into Fossdale under Lovely Seat. There's a good two hours and a half stiff pull yet, Spargo. Think you can stick it?"

Spargo set his teeth.

"Go on!" he said.

Up hill, down dale, now up to his ankles in peaty ground, now tearing his shins, now bruising his knees, Spargo, yearning for the London lights, the well-paved London streets, the convenient taxi-cab, even the humble omnibus, plodded forward after his guide. It seemed to him that they had walked for ages and had traversed a whole continent of mountains and valley when at last Breton, halting on the summit of a wind-swept ridge, laid one hand on his companion's shoulder and pointed downward with the other.

"There!" he said. "There!"

​Spargo looked ahead into the night. Far away, at what seemed to him to be a considerable distance, he saw the faint, very faint glimmer of a light—a mere spark of a light.

"That's the cottage," said Breton. "Late as it is, you see, they're up. And here's the roughest bit of the journey. It'll take me all my time to find the track across this moor, Spargo, so step carefully after me—there are bogs and holes hereabouts."

Another hour had gone by ere the two came to the cottage. Sometimes the guiding light had vanished, blotted out by intervening rises in the ground; always, when they saw it again, they were slowly drawing nearer to it. And now when they were at last close to it, Spargo realized that he found himself in one of the loneliest places he had ever been capable of imagining—so lonely and desolate a spot he had certainly never seen. In the dim light he could see a narrow, crawling stream, making its way down over rocks and stones from the high ground of Great Shunnor Fell. Opposite to the place at which they stood, on the edge of the moorland, a horseshoe like formation of ground was backed by a ring of fir and pine; beneath, this protecting fringe of trees stood a small building of grey stone which looked as if it had been originally built by some shepherd as a pen for the moorland sheep. It was of no more than one storey in height, but of some length; a considerable part of it was hidden by shrubs and brushwood. And from one uncurtained, blindless window the light of a lamp shone boldly into the fading darkness without.

Breton pulled up on the edge of the crawling stream.

​"We've got to get across there, Spargo," he said. "But as we're already soaked to the knee it doesn't matter about getting another wetting. Have you any idea how long we've been walking?"

"Hours—days—years!" replied Spargo.

"I should say quite four hours," said Breton. "In that case, it's well past two o'clock, and the light will be breaking in another hour or so. Now, once across this stream, what shall we do?"

"What have we come to do? Go to the cottage, of course!"

"Wait a bit. No need to startle them. By the fact they've got a light, I take it that they're up. Look there!"

As he spoke, a figure crossed the window passing between it and the light.

"That's not Elphick, nor yet Cardlestone," said Spargo. "They're medium-heighted men. That's a tallish man."

"Then it's the man the landlord of the 'Moor Cock' told us about," said Breton. "Now, look here—I know every inch of this place. When we're across let me go up to the cottage, and I'll take an observation through that window and see who's inside. Come on."

He led Spargo across the stream at a place where a succession of boulders made a natural bridge, and bidding him keep quiet, went up the bank to the cottage. Spargo, watching him, saw him make his way past the shrubs and undergrowth until he came to a great bush which stood between the lighted window and the projecting porch of the cottage. He lingered in the shadow ​of this bush but for a short moment; then came swiftly and noiselessly back to his companion. His hand fell on Spargo's arm with a clutch of nervous excitement.

"Spargo!" he whispered. "Who on earth do you think the other man is?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE WHIP HAND

Spargo, almost irritable from desire to get at close grips with the objects of his long journey, shook off Breton's hand with a growl of resentment.

"And how on earth can I waste time guessing?" he exclaimed. "Who is he?"

Breton laughed softly.

"Steady, Spargo, steady!" he said. "It's Myerst—the Safe Deposit man. Myerst!"

Spargo started as if something had bitten him.

"Myerst!" he almost shouted. "Myerst! Good Lord!—why did I never think of him? Myerst! Then——"

"I don't know why you should have thought of him," said Breton. "But—he's there."

Spargo took a step towards the cottage; Breton pulled him back.

"Wait!" he said. "We've got to discuss this. I'd better tell you what they're doing."

"What are they doing, then?" demanded Spargo impatiently.

"Well," answered Breton. "They're going through a quantity of papers. The two old gentlemen look very ill and very miserable. Myerst is evidently laying down ​the law to them in some fashion or other. I've formed a notion, Spargo."

"What notion?"

"Myerst is in possession of whatever secret they have, and he's followed them down here to blackmail them. That's my notion."

Spargo thought awhile, pacing up and down the river bank.

"I daresay you're right," he said. "Now, what's to be done?"

Breton, too, considered matters.

"I wish," he said at last, "I wish we could get in there and overhear what's going on. But that's impossible—I know that cottage. The only thing we can do is this—we must catch Myerst unawares. He's here for no good. Look here!"

And reaching round to his hip-pocket Breton drew out a Browning revolver and wagged it in his hand with a smile.

"That's a useful thing to have, Spargo, " he remarked. "I slipped it into my pocket the other day, wondering why on earth I did it. Now it'll come in handy. For anything we know Myerst may be armed."

"Well?" said Spargo.

"Come up to the cottage. If things turn out as I think they will, Myerst, when he's got what he wants, will be off. Now, you shall get where I did just now, behind that bush, and I'll station myself in the doorway. You can report to me, and when Myerst comes out I'll cover him. Come on, Spargo; it's beginning to get light already."

​Breton cautiously led the way along the river bank, making use of such cover as the willows and alders afforded. Together, he and Spargo made their way to the front of the cottage. Arrived at the door, Breton posted himself in the porch, motioning to Spargo to creep in behind the bushes and to look through the window. And Spargo noiselessly followed his directions and slightly parting the branches which concealed him looked in through the uncurtained glass.

The interior into which he looked was rough and comfortless in the extreme. There were the bare accessories of a moorland cottage; rough chairs and tables, plastered walls, a fishing rod or two piled in a corner; some food set out on a side table. At the table in the middle of the floor the three men sat. Cardlestone's face was in the shadow; Myerst had his back to the window; old Elphick bending over the table was laboriously writing with shaking fingers. And Spargo twisted his head round to his companion.

"Elphick," he said, "is writing a cheque. Myerst has another cheque in his hand. Be ready!—when he gets that second cheque I guess he'll be off."

Breton smiled grimly and nodded. A moment later Spargo whispered again.

"Look out, Breton! He's coming."

Breton drew back into the angle of the porch; Spargo quitted his protecting bush and took the other angle. The door opened. And they heard Myerst's voice, threatening, commanding in tone.

"Now, remember all I've said! And don't you ​forget—I've the whip hand of both of you—the whip hand!"

Then Myerst turned and stepped out into the grey light—to find himself confronted by an athletic young man who held the muzzle of an ugly revolver within two inches of the bridge of his nose and in a remarkably firm and steady grip. Another glance showed him the figure of a second business-like looking young man at his side, whose attitude showed a desire to grapple with him.

"Good-morning, Mr. Myerst," said Breton with cold and ironic politeness. "We are glad to meet you so unexpectedly. And—I must trouble you to put up your hands. Quick!"

Myerst made one hurried movement of his right hand towards his hip, but a sudden growl from Breton made him shift it just as quickly above his head, whither the left followed it. Breton laughed softly.

"That's wise, Mr. Myerst," he said, keeping his revolver steadily pointed at his prisoner's nose. "Discretion will certainly be the better part of your valour on this occasion. Spargo—may I trouble you to see what Mr. Myerst carries in his pockets? Go through them carefully. Not for papers or documents—just now. We can leave that matter—we've plenty of time. See if he's got a weapon of any sort on him, Spargo—that's the important thing.

Considering that Spargo had never gone through the experience of searching a man before, he made sharp and creditable work of seeing what the prisoner carried.

​And he forthwith drew out and exhibited a revolver, while Myerst, finding his tongue, cursed them both, heartily and with profusion.

"Excellent!" said Breton, laughing again. "Sure he's got nothing else on him that's dangerous, Spargo? All right. Now, Mr. Myerst, right about face! Walk into the cottage, hands up, and remember there are two revolvers behind your back. March!"

Myerst obeyed this peremptory order with more curses. The three walked into the cottage. Breton kept his eye on his captive; Spargo gave a glance at the two old men. Cardlestone, white and shaking, was lying back in his chair; Elphick, scarcely less alarmed, had risen, and was coming forward with trembling limbs.

""Wait a moment," said Breton, soothingly. "Don't alarm yourself; We'll deal with Mr. Myerst here first. Now, Myerst, my man, sit down in that chair—it's the heaviest the place affords. Into it, now! Spargo, you see that coil of rope there. Tie Myerst up—hand and foot—to that chair. And tie him well. All the knots to be double, Spargo, and behind him."

Myerst suddenly laughed.

"You damned young bully!" he exclaimed. "If you put a rope round me, you're only putting ropes round the necks of these two old villains. Mark that, my fine fellows!"

"We'll see about that later," answered Breton. He kept Myerst covered while Spargo made play with the rope. "Don't be afraid of hurting him, Spargo," he said. "Tie him well and strong. He won't shift that chair in a hurry."

​Spargo spliced his man to the chair in a fashion that would have done credit to a sailor. He left Myerst literally unable to move either hand or foot, and Myerst cursed him from crown to heel for his pains. "That'll do," said Breton at last. He dropped his revolver into his pocket and turned to the two old men. Elphick averted his eyes and sank into a chair in the darkest corner of the room: old Cardlestone shook as with palsy and muttered words which the two young men could not catch. "Guardian," continued Breton, "don't be frightened! And don't you be frightened, either, Mr. Cardlestone. There's nothing to be afraid of, just yet, whatever there may be later on. It seems to me that Mr. Spargo and I came just in time. Now, guardian, what was this fellow after?"

Old Elphick lifted his head and shook it; he was plainly on the verge of tears; as for Cardlestone, it was evident that his nerve was completely gone. And Breton pointed Spargo to an old corner cupboard.

"Spargo," he said, "I'm pretty sure you'll find whisky in there. Give them both a stiff dose: they've broken up. Now, guardian," he continued, when Spargo had carried out this order, "what was he after? Shall I suggest it? Was it—blackmail?"

Cardlestone began to whimper; Elphick nodded his head. "Yes, yes!" he muttered. "Blackmail! That was it—blackmail. He—he got money—papers—from us. They're on him."

Breton turned on the captive with a look of contempt.

"I thought as much, Mr. Myerst," he said. "Spargo, let's see what he has on him."

​Spargo began to search the prisoner's pockets. He laid out everything on the table as he found it. It was plain that Myerst had contemplated some sort of flight or a long, long journey. There was a quantity of loose gold; a number of bank-notes of the more easily negotiated denominations; various foreign securities, realizable in Paris. And there was an open cheque, signed by Cardlestone for ten thousand pounds, and another, with Elphick's name at the foot, also open, for half that amount. Breton examined all these matters as Spargo handed them out. He turned to old Elphick.

"Guardian," he said, "why have you or Mr. Cardlestone given this man these cheques and securities? What hold has he on you?"

Old Cardlestone began to whimper afresh; Elphick turned a troubled face on his ward.

"He—he threatened to accuse us of the murder of Marbury!" he faltered. "We—we didn't see that we had a chance."

"What does he know of the murder of Marbury and of you in connection with it?" demanded Breton. "Come—tell me the truth now."

"He's been investigating—so he says," answered Elphick. "He lives in that house in Middle Temple Lane, you know, in the top-floor rooms above Cardlestone's. And—and he says he's the fullest evidence against Cardlestone—and against me as an accessory after the fact."

"And—it's a lie?" asked Breton.

"A lie!" answered Elphick. "Of course, it's a lie. But—he's so clever that—that——

​"That you don't know how you could prove it otherwise," said Breton. "Ah! And so this fellow lives over Mr. Cardlestone there, does he? That may account for a good many things. Now we must have the police here." He sat down at the table and drew the writing materials to him. "Look here, Spargo," he continued. "I'm going to write a note to the superintendent of police at Hawes—there's a farm half a mile from here where I can get a man to ride down to Hawes with the note. Now, if you want to send a wire to the Watchman, draft it out, and he'll take it with him."

Elphick began to move in his corner.

"Must the police come?" he said. "Must——"

"The police must come," answered Breton firmly. "Go ahead with your wire, Spargo, while I write this note."

Three quarters of an hour later, when Breton came back from the farm, he sat down at Elphick's side and laid his hand on the old man's.

"Now, guardian," he said, quietly, "you've got to tell us the truth."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
MYERST EXPLAINS

It had been apparent to Spargo, from the moment of his entering the cottage, that the two old men were suffering badly from shock and fright: Cardlestone still sat in his corner shivering and trembling; he looked incapable of explaining anything; Elphick was scarcely more fitted to speak. And when Breton issued his peremptory invitation to his guardian to tell the truth, Spargo intervened.

"Far better leave him alone, Breton," he said in a low voice. "Don't you see the old chap's done up? They're both done up. We don't know what they've gone through with this fellow before we came, and it's certain they've had no sleep. Leave it all till later—after all, we've found them and we've found him." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in Myerst's direction, and Breton involuntarily followed the movement. He caught the prisoner's eye, and Myerst laughed.

"I daresay you two young men think yourselves very clever," he said sneeringly. "Don't you, now?"

"We've been clever enough to catch you, anyway," retorted Breton. "And now we've got you we'll keep you till the police can relieve us of you."

"Oh!" said Myerst, with another sneering laugh. ​"And on what charge do you propose to hand me over to the police? It strikes me you'll have some difficulty in formulating one, Mr. Breton."

"We'll see about that later," said Breton. "You've extorted money by menaces from these gentlemen, at any rate."

"Have I? How do you know they didn't entrust me with these cheques as their agent?" exclaimed Myerst. "Answer me that! Or, rather, let them answer if they dare. Here you, Cardlestone, you Elphick—didn't you give me these cheques as your agent? Speak up now, and quick!"

Spargo, watching the two old men, saw them both quiver at the sound of Myerst's voice; Cardlestone indeed, began to whimper softly.

"Look here, Breton," he said, whispering, "this scoundrel's got some hold on these two old chaps—they're frightened, to death of him. Leave them alone: it would be best for them if they could get some rest. Hold your tongue, you!" he added aloud, turning to Myerst. "When we want you to speak we'll tell you."

But Myerst laughed again.

"All very high and mighty, Mr. Spargo of the Watchman!" he sneered. "You're another of the cock-sure lot. And you're very clever, but not clever enough. Now, look here! Supposing——"

Spargo turned his back on him. He went over to old Cardlestone and felt his hands. And he turned to Breton with a look of concern.

"I say!" he exclaimed. "He's more than frightened—he's ill! What's to be done?"

​"I asked the police to bring a doctor along with them," answered Breton. "In the meantime, let's put him to bed—there are beds in that inner room. We'll get him to bed and give him something hot to drink—that's all I can think of for the present."

Between them they managed to get Cardlestone to his bed, and Spargo, with a happy thought, boiled water on the rusty stove and put hot bottles to his feet. When that was done they persuaded Elphick to lie down in the inner room. Presently both old men fell asleep, and then Breton and Spargo suddenly realized that they themselves were hungry and wet and weary.

"There ought to be food in the cupboard," said Breton, beginning to rummage. "They've generally had a good stock of tinned things. Here we are, Spargo—these are tongues and sardines. Make some hot coffee while I open one of these tins."

The prisoner watched the preparations for a rough and ready breakfast with eyes that eventually began to glisten.

"I may remind you that I'm hungry, too," he said as Spargo set the coffee on the table. "And you've no right to starve me, even if you've the physical ability to keep me tied up. Give me something to eat, if you please."

"You shan't starve," said Breton, carelessly. He cut an ample supply of bread and meat, filled a cup with coffee and placed cup and plate before Myerst. "Untie his right arm, Spargo," he continued. "I think we can give him that liberty. We've got his revolver, anyhow."

​For a while the three men ate and drank in silence. At last Myerst pushed his plate away. He looked scrutinizingly at his two captors. "Look here!" he said. "You think you know a lot about all this affair, Spargo, but there's only one person who knows all about it. That's me!"

"We're taking that for granted," said Spargo. "We guessed as much when we found you here. You'll have ample opportunity for explanation, you know, later on."

"I'll explain now, if you care to hear," said Myerst with another of his cynical laughs. "And if I do, I'll tell you the truth. I know you've got an idea in your heads that isn't favourable to me, but you're utterly wrong, whatever you may think. Look here!—I'll make you a fair offer. There are some cigars in my case there—give me one, and mix me a drink of that whisky—a good 'un—and I'll tell you what I know about this matter. Come on!—anything's better than sitting here doing nothing."

The two young men looked at each other. Then Breton nodded. "Let him talk if he likes," he said. "We're not bound to believe him. And we may hear something that's true. Give him his cigar and his drink.

Myerst took a stiff pull at the contents of the tumbler which Spargo presently set before him. He laughed as he inhaled the first fumes of his cigar.

"As it happens, you'll hear nothing but the truth," he observed. "Now that things are as they are, there's no reason why I shouldn't tell the truth. The fact is, I've nothing to fear. You can't give me in charge, for it so happens that I've got a power of attorney from ​these two old chaps inside there to act for them in regard to the money they entrusted me with. It's in an inside pocket of that letter-case, and if you look at it, Breton, you'll see it's in order. I'm not even going to dare you to interfere with or destroy it—you're a barrister, and you'll respect the law. But that's a fact—and if anybody's got a case against anybody, I have against you two for assault and illegal detention. But I'm not a vindictive man, and——"

Breton took up Myerst's letter-case and examined its contents. And presently he turned to Spargo.

"He's right!" he whispered. "This is quite in order." He turned to Myerst. "All the same," he said, addressing him, "we shan't release you, because we believe you're concerned in the murder of John Marbury. We're justified in holding you on that account."

"All right, my young friend," said Myerst. "Have your own stupid way. But I said I'd tell you the plain truth. Well, the plain truth is that I know no more of the absolute murder of your father than I know of what is going on in Timbuctoo at this moment! I do not know who killed John Maitland. That's a fact! It may have been the old man in there who's already at his own last gasp, or it mayn't. I tell you! don't know—though, like you, Spargo, I've tried hard to find out. That's the truth—I do not know."

"You expect us to believe that?" exclaimed Breton incredulously.

"Believe it or not, as you like—it's the truth," answered Myerst. "Now, look here—I said nobody knew as much of this affair as I know, and that's true also.

​And here's the truth of what I know. The old man in that room, whom you know as Nicholas Cardlestone, is in reality Chamberlayne, the stockbroker, of Market Milcaster, whose name was so freely mentioned when your father was tried there. That's another fact!"

"How," asked Breton, sternly, "can you prove it? How do you know it?"

"Because," replied Myerst, with a cunning grin, "I helped to carry out his mock death and burial—I was a solicitor in those days, and my name was—something else. There were three of us at it: Chamberlayne's nephew; a doctor of no reputation; and myself. We carried it out very cleverly, and Chamberlayne gave us five thousand pounds apiece for our trouble. It was not the first time that I had helped him and been well paid for my help. The first time was in connection with the Cloudhampton Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society affair—Aylmore, or Ainsworth, was as innocent as a child in that!—Chamberlayne was the man at the back. But, unfortunately, Chamberlayne didn't profit—he lost all he got by it, pretty quick. That was why he transferred his abilities to Market Milcaster."

"You can prove all this, I suppose?" remarked Spargo.

"Every word—every letter! But about the Market Milcaster affair: Your father, Breton, was right in what he said about Chamberlayne having all the money that was got from the bank. He had—and he engineered that mock death and funeral so that he could disappear, and he paid us who helped him generously, as I've told you. The thing couldn't have been better ​done. When it was done, the nephew disappeared; the doctor disappeared; Chamberlayne disappeared. I had bad luck—to tell you the truth, I was struck off the rolls for a technical offence. So I changed my name and became Mr. Myerst, and eventually what I am now. And it was not until three years ago that I found Chamberlayne. I found him in this way: After I became secretary to the Safe Deposit Company, I took chambers in the Temple, above Cardlestone's. And I speedily found out who he was. Instead of going abroad, the old fox—though he was a comparatively young 'un, then!—had shaved off his beard, settled down in the Temple and given himself up to his two hobbies, collecting curiosities and stamps. There he'd lived quietly all these years, and nobody had ever recognized or suspected him. Indeed, I don't see how they could; he lived such a quiet, secluded life, with his collections, his old port, and his little whims and fads. But—I knew him!"

"And you doubtless profited by your recognition," suggested Breton.

"I certainly did. He was glad to pay me a nice sum every quarter to hold my tongue," replied Myerst, "and I was glad to take it and, naturally, I gained a considerable knowledge of him. He had only one friend—Mr. Elphick, in there. Now, I'll you about him."

"Only if you are going to speak respectfully of him," said Breton sternly.

"I've no reason to do otherwise. Elphick is the man who ought to have married your mother. When things turned out as they did, Elphick took you and brought ​you up as he has done, so that you should never know of your father's disgrace. Elphick never knew until last night that Cardlestone is Chamberlayne. Even the biggest scoundrels have friends—Elphick's very fond of Cardlestone. He——"

Spargo turned sharply on Myerst.

"You say Elphick didn't know until last night!" he exclaimed. "Why, then, this running away? What were they running from?"

"I have no more notion than you have, Spargo," replied Myerst. "I tell you one or other of them knows something that I don't. Elphick, I gather, took fright from you, and went to Cardlestone—then they both vanished. It may be that Cardlestone did kill Maitland—I don't know. But I'll tell you what I know about the actual murder—for I do know a good deal about it, though, as I say, I don't know who killed Maitland. Now, first, you know all that about Maitland's having papers and valuables and gold on him? Very well—I've got all that. The whole lot is locked up—safely—and I'm willing to hand it over to you, Breton, when we go back to town, and the necessary proof is given—as it will be—that you're Maitland's son."

Myerst paused to see the effect of this announcement, and laughed when he saw the blank astonishment which stole over his hearers' faces.

"And still more," he continued, "I've got all the contents of that leather box which Maitland deposited with me—that's safely locked up, too, and at your disposal. I took possession of that the day after the murder. Then, for purposes of my own, I went to Scotland ​Yard, as Spargo there is aware. You see, I was playing a game—and it required some ingenuity."

"A game!" exclaimed Breton. "Good heavens—what game?"

"I never knew until I had possession of all these things that Marbury was Maitland of Market Milcaster," answered Myerst. "When I did know then I began to put things together and to pursue my own line, independent of everybody. I tell you I had all Maitland's papers and possessions, by that time—except one thing. That packet of Australian stamps. And—I found out that those stamps were in the hands of—Cardlestone!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE FINAL TELEGRAM

Myerst paused, to take a pull at his glass, and to look at the two amazed listeners with a smile of conscious triumph.

"In the hands of Cardlestone," he repeated. "Now, what did I argue from that? Why, of course, that Maitland had been to Cardlestone's rooms that night. Wasn't he found lying dead at the foot of Cardlestone's stairs? Aye—but who found him? Not the porter—not the police—not you, Master Spargo, with all your cleverness. The man who found Maitland lying dead there that night was—I!"

In the silence that followed, Spargo, who had been making notes of what Myerst said, suddenly dropped his pencil and thrusting his hands in his pockets sat bolt upright with a look which Breton, who was watching him seriously, could not make out. It was the look of a man whose ideas and conceptions are being rudely upset. And Myerst, too, saw it and he laughed, more sneeringly than ever.

"That's one for you, Spargo!" he said. "That surprises you—that makes you think. Now what do you think?—if one may ask."

"I think," said Spargo, "that you are either a ​consummate liar, or that this mystery is bigger than before."

"I can lie when it's necessary," retorted Myerst. "Just now it isn't necessary. I'm telling you the plain truth: there's no reason why I shouldn't. As I've said before, although you two young bullies have tied me up in this fashion, you can't do anything against me. I've a power of attorney from those two old men in there, and that's enough to satisfy anybody as to my possession of their cheques and securities. I've the whip hand of you, my sons, in all ways. And that's why I'm telling you the truth—to amuse myself during this period of waiting. The plain truth, my sons!"

"In pursuance of which," observed Breton, drily, "I think you mentioned that you were the first person to find my father lying dead?"

"I was. That is—as far as I can gather. I'll tell you all about it. As I said, I live over Cardlestone. That night I came home very late—it was well past one o'clock. There was nobody about—as a matter of fact, no one has residential chambers in that building but Cardlestone and myself. I found the body of a man lying in the entry. I struck a match and immediately recognized my visitor of the afternoon—John Marbury. Now, although I was so late in going home, I was as sober as a man can be, and I think pretty quickly at all times. I thought at double extra speed just then. And the first thing I did was to strip the body of every article it had on it—money, papers, everything. All these things are safely locked up—they've never been tracked. Next day, using my facilities as secretary to the Safe Deposit ​Company, I secured the things in that box. Then I found out who the dead man really was. And then I deliberately set to work to throw dust in the eyes of the police and of the newspapers, and particularly in the eyes of young Master Spargo there. I had an object."

"What?" asked Breton.

"What! Knowing all I did, I firmly believed that Marbury, or, rather, Maitland, had been murdered by either Cardlestone or Elphick. I put it to myself in this way, and my opinion was strengthened as you, Spargo, inserted news in your paper—Maitland, finding himself in the vicinity of Cardlestone after leaving Aylmore's rooms that night, turned into our building, perhaps just to see where Cardlestone lived. He met Cardlestone accidentally, or he perhaps met Cardlestone and Elphick together—they recognized each other. Maitland probably threatened to expose Cardlestone, or, rather, Chamberlayne—nobody, of course, could know what happened, but my theory was that Chamberlayne killed him. There, at any rate, was the fact that Maitland was found murdered at Chamberlayne's very threshold. And, in the course of a few days, I proved, to my own positive satisfaction, by getting access to Chamberlayne's rooms in his absence that Maitland had been there, had been in those rooms. For I found there, in Chamberlayne's desk, the rare Australian stamps of which Criedir told at the inquest. That was proof positive."

Spargo looked at Breton. They knew what Myerst did not know—that the stamps of which he spoke were lying in Spargo's breast pocket, where they had lain ​since he had picked them up from the litter and confusion of Chamberlayne's floor.

"Why," asked Breton, after a pause, "why did you never accuse Cardlestone, or Chamberlayne, of the murder?"

"I did! I have accused him a score of times—and Elphick, too," replied Myerst with emphasis. "Not at first, mind you—I never let Chamberlayne know that I ever suspected him for some time. I had my own game to play. But at last—not so many days ago—I did. I accused them both. That's how I got the whip hand of them. They began to be afraid—by that time Elphick had got to know all about Cardlestone's past as Chamberlayne. And as I tell you, Elphick's fond of Cardlestone. It's queer, but he is. He—wants to shield him."

"What did they say when you accused them?" asked Breton. "Let's keep to that point—never mind their feelings for one another."

"Just so, but that feeling's a lot more to do with this mystery than you think, my young friend," said Myerst. "What did they say, you ask? Why, they strenuously denied it. Cardlestone swore solemnly to me that he had no part or lot in the murder of Maitland. So did Elphick. But—they know something about the murder. If those two old men can't tell you definitely who actually struck John Maitland down, I'm certain that they have a very clear idea in their minds as to who really did! They——"

A sudden sharp cry from the inner room interrupted ​Myerst. Breton and Spargo started to their feet and made for the door. But before they could reach it Elphick came out, white and shaking.

"He's gone!" he exclaimed in quavering accents. "My old friend's gone—he's dead! I was—asleep. I woke suddenly and looked at him. He——"

Spargo forced the old man into a chair and gave him some whisky; Breton passed quickly into the inner room; only to come back shaking his head.

"He's dead," he said. "He evidently died in his sleep."

"Then his secret's gone with him," remarked Myerst, calmly. "And now we shall never know if he did kill John Maitland or if he didn't. So that's done with!"

Old Elphick suddenly sat up in his chair, pushing Spargo fiercely away from his side.

"He didn't kill John Maitland!" he cried angrily, attempting to shake his fist at Myerst. "Whoever says he killed Maitland lies. He was as innocent as I am. You've tortured and tormented him to his death with that charge, as you're torturing me—among you. I tell you he'd nothing to do with John Maitland's death—nothing!"

Myerst laughed.

"Who had, then?" he said.

"Hold your tongue!" commanded Breton, turning angrily on him. He sat down by Elphick's side and laid his hand soothingly on the old man's arm.

"Guardian," he said, "why don't you tell what you know? Don't be afraid of that fellow there—he's safe ​enough. Tell Spargo and me what you know of the matter. Remember, nothing can hurt Cardlestone, or Chamberlayne, or whoever he is or was, now."

Elphick sat for a moment shaking his head. He allowed Spargo to give him another drink; he lifted his head and looked at the two young men with something of an appeal.

"I'm badly shaken," he said. "I've suffered much lately—I've learnt things that I didn't know. Perhaps I ought to have spoken before, but I was afraid for—for him. He was a good friend, Cardlestone, whatever else he may have been—a good friend. And—I don't know any more than what happened that night."

"Tell us what happened that night," said Breton.

"Well, that night I went round, as I often did, to play piquet with Cardlestone. That was about ten o'clock. About eleven Jane Baylis came to Cardlestone's—she'd been to my rooms to find me—wanted to see me particularly—and she'd come on there, knowing where I should be. Cardlestone would make her have a glass of wine and a biscuit; she sat down and we all talked. Then, about, I should think, a quarter to twelve, a knock came at Cardlestone's door—his outer door was open, and of course anybody outside could see lights within. Cardlestone went to the door: we heard a man's voice enquire for him by name; then the voice added that Criedir, the stamp dealer, had advised him to call on Mr. Cardlestone to show him some rare Australian stamps, and that seeing a light under his door he had knocked. Cardlestone asked him in—he came in. That was the man we saw next day at the mortuary. Upon ​my honour, we didn't know him, either that night or next day!"

"What happened when he came in?" asked Breton.

"Cardlestone asked him to sit down: he offered and gave him a drink. The man said Criedir had given him Cardlestone's address, and that he'd been with a friend at some rooms in Fountain Court, and as he was passing our building he'd just looked to make sure where Cardlestone lived, and as he'd noticed a light he'd made bold to knock. He and Cardlestone began to examine the stamps. Jane Baylis said good-night, and she and I left Cardlestone and the man together."

"No one had recognized him?" said Breton.

"No one! Remember, I only once or twice saw Maitland in all my life. The others certainly did not recognize him. At least, I never knew that they did—if they did."

"Tell us," said Spargo, joining in for the first time, "tell us what you and Miss Baylis did?"

"At the foot of the stairs Jane Baylis suddenly said she'd forgotten something in Cardlestone's lobby. As she was going out in to Fleet Street, and I was going down Middle Temple Lane to turn off to my own rooms we said good-night. She went back upstairs. And I went home. And upon my soul and honour that's all I know!"

Spargo suddenly leapt to his feet. He snatched at his cap—a sodden and bedraggled headgear which he had thrown down when they entered the cottage.

"That's enough!" he almost shouted. "I've got it—at last! Breton—where's the nearest telegraph office? ​Hawes? Straight down this valley? Then, here's for it! Look after things till I'm back, or, when the police come, join me there. I shall catch the first train to town, anyhow, after wiring."

"But—what are you after, Spargo?" exclaimed Breton. "Stop! What on earth——"

But Spargo had closed the door and was running for all he was worth down the valley. Three quarters of an hour later he startled a quiet and peaceful telegraphist by darting, breathless and dirty, into a sleepy country post office, snatching a telegraph form and scribbling down a message in shaky handwriting:—

Rathbury, New Scotland Yard, London.

Arrest Jane Baylis at once for murder of John Maitland. Coming straight to town with full evidence.

Frank Spargo.

Then Spargo dropped on the office bench, and while the wondering operator set the wires ticking, strove to get his breath, utterly spent in his mad race across the heather. And when it was got he set out again—to find the station.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Some days later, Spargo, having seen Stephen Aylmore walk out of the Bow Street dock, cleared of the charge against him, and in a fair way of being cleared of the affair of twenty years before, found himself in a very quiet corner of the Court holding the hand of Jessie Aylmore, who, he discovered, was saying things to him ​which he scarcely comprehended. There was nobody near them and the girl spoke freely and warmly.

"But you will come—you will come today—and be properly thanked," she said. "You will—won't you?"

Spargo allowed himself to retain possession of the hand. Also he took a straight look into Jessie Aylmore's eyes.

"I don't want thanks," he said. "It was all a lot of luck. And if I come—today—it will be to see—just you!"

Jessie Aylmore looked down at the two hands.

"I think," she whispered, "I think that is what I really meant!"

THE END

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