The Middle of Things by J. S. Fletcher (e reader TXT) 📗

of a morning. It contained little in the way of ornament or comfort—a solid writing-desk with a hard chair, an easy-chair by the fireplace, a sofa against the wall, a map of London and a picture or two, a shelf of old books, a collection of walking-sticks, and umbrellas: these made up all there was to see.

And upon examination the desk yielded next to nothing. One drawer contained a cash-box, a checkbook, a pass-book. Some sixty or seventy pounds in notes, gold and silver lay in the cash-box; the stubs of the checks revealed nothing but the payment of tradesmen's bills; the pass-book showed that an enormous balance lay at the bank. In another drawer rested a collection of tradesmen's books—Mr. Ashton, said Mrs. Killenhall, used to pay his tradesmen every week; these books had been handed to him on the very evening of his death for settlement next morning.

"Evidently a most methodical man!" remarked Mr. Pawle. "Which makes it all the more remarkable that so few papers are discoverable. You'd have thought that in his longish life he'd have accumulated a good many documents that he wanted to keep."

But documents there were next to none. Several of the drawers of the desk were empty, save for stationery. One contained a bunch of letters, tied up with blue ribbon—these, on examination, proved to be letters written by Miss Wickham, at school in England, to her guardian in Australia. Miss Wickham, present while Mr. Pawle and Viner searched, showed some emotion at the sight of them.

"I used to write to him once a month," she said. "I had no idea that he had kept the letters, though!"

The two men went silently on with their search. But there was no further result. Ashton did not appear to have kept any letters or papers relative to his life or doings prior to his coming to England. Private documents of any sort he seemed to have none. And whatever business had taken him to Marketstoke, they could find no written reference to it; nor could they discover anything about the diamond of which Mr. Van Hoeren had spoken. They went upstairs to his bedroom and examined the drawers, cabinets and dressing-case—they found nothing.

"This is distinctly disappointing," remarked Mr. Pawle when he and Viner returned to the little room. "I never knew a man who left such small evidence behind him. It's quite evident to me that there's nothing whatever in this house that's going to be of any use to us. I wonder if he rented a box at any of the safe-deposit places? He must have had documents of some sort."

"In that case, we should surely have found a key, and perhaps a receipt for the rent of the box," suggested Viner. "I should have thought he'd have had a safe in his own house," he added, "but we don't hear of one."

Mr. Pawle looked round the room, as if suspicious that Ashton might have hidden papers in the stuffing of the sofa or the easy-chair.

"I wonder if there's anything in that," he said suddenly. "It looks like a receptacle of some sort."

Viner turned and saw the old lawyer pointing to a curious Japanese cabinet which stood in the middle of the marble mantelpiece—the only really notable ornament in the room. Mr. Pawle laid hold of it and uttered a surprised exclamation. "That's a tremendous weight for so small a thing!" he said. "Feel it!"

Viner took hold of the cabinet—an affair of some eighteen inches in height and twelve in depth—and came to the conclusion that it was heavily weighted with lead. He lifted it down to the desk, giving it a slight shake.

"I took it for a cigar cabinet," he remarked. "How does it open? Have you a key that will fit it?"

But upon examination there was no keyhole, and nothing to show how the door was opened.

"I see what this is," said Viner, after looking closely over the cabinet, back, front and sides. "It opens by a trick—a secret. Probably you press something somewhere and the door flies open. But—where?"

"Try," counselled Mr. Pawle. "There's something inside—I heard it when you shook the thing."

It took Viner ten minutes to find out the secret. He would not have found it at all but for accident. But pressing here and pulling there, he suddenly touched what appeared to be no more than a cleverly inserted rivet in the ebony surface; there was a sharp click, and the panelled front flew open.

"There is something!" exclaimed Mr. Pawle. "Papers!"

He drew out a bundle of papers, folded in a strong sheet of cartridge-paper and sealed back and front. The enveloping cover was old and faded; the ribbon which had been tied round the bundle was discoloured by age; the wax of the seals was cracked all over the surface.

"No inscription, no writing," said Mr. Pawle. "Now, I wonder what's in here?"

"Shall I fetch Miss Wickham?" suggested Viner. Mr. Pawle hesitated.

"No!" he said at last. "I think not. Let us first find out what this packet contains. I'll take the responsibility."

He cut the ribbons beneath the seals, and presently revealed a number of letters, old and yellow, in a woman's handwriting. And after a hasty glance at one or two of the uppermost, he turned to Viner with an exclamation that signified much.

"Viner!" he said, "here is indeed a find! These are letters written by the Countess of Ellingham to her son, Lord Marketstoke, when he was a schoolboy at Eton!"

CHAPTER XIV THE ELLINGHAM MOTTO

Viner looked over Mr. Pawle's shoulder at the letters—there were numbers of them, all neatly folded and arranged; a faint scent of dried flowers rose from them as the old lawyer spread them out on the desk.

"Which Countess of Ellingham, and which Lord Marketstoke?" asked Viner.
"There have been—must have been—several during the last century."

"The Lord Marketstoke I mean is the one who disappeared," answered Mr. Pawle. "We've no concern with any other. Look at these dates! We know that if he were living, he would now be a man of sixty-one or so; therefore, he'd be at school about forty-five years ago. Now, look here," he went on, rapidly turning the letters over. "Compare these dates—they run through two or three years; they were all of forty-three to forty-six years since. You see how they're signed—you see how they're addressed? There's no doubt about it, Viner—this is a collection of letters written by the seventh Countess of Ellingham to her elder son, Lord Marketstoke, when he was at Eton."

"How came they into Ashton's possession, I wonder!" asked Viner.

"It's all of a piece!" exclaimed Mr. Pawle. "All of a piece with Ashton's visit to Marketstoke—all of a piece with the facts that Avice was a favourite name with the Cave-Gray family, and that one of the holders of the title married a Wickham. Viner, there's no doubt whatever—in my mind—that either Ashton was Lord Marketstoke or that he knew the man who was!"

"You remember what Armitstead told us," remarked Viner. "That Ashton told him, in Paris, that he, Ashton, hailed from Lancashire?"

"Then—he knew the missing man, and got these papers from him!" declared the old lawyer. "But why? Ah!—now I have an idea! It may be that Marketstoke, dying out there in Australia, handed these things to Ashton and asked him to give them to some members of the Cave-Gray family—perhaps an aunt, or a cousin, or so on—and that Ashton went down to Marketstoke to find out what relations were still in existence. That may be it—that would solve the problem!"

"No!" said Viner with sudden emphasis. He made sure that the door of the little room was closed, and then went up to the old lawyer's elbow. "Is that really all you can think of?" he asked, with a keen glance. "As for me—why, I'm thinking of something that seems absolutely—obvious!"

"What, then?" demanded Mr. Pawle. "Tell me!"

Viner pointed towards the door.

"Haven't we heard already, that a man named Wickham handed over his daughter Avice to Ashton's care and guardianship?" he asked. "Doesn't that seem to be an established fact?"

"No doubt of it!" assented Mr. Pawle. "Well?"

"In my opinion," said Viner, quietly, "Wickham was the missing Lord of
Marketstoke!"

Mr. Pawle, who was still turning over the letters, examining their dates, let them slip out of his hands and gasped.

"By George!" he exclaimed in a wondering voice. "It may be—possibly is!
Then, in that case, that girl outside there—"

"Well?" asked Viner, after a pause.

Mr. Pawle made a puzzled gesture and shook his head, as if in amazement.

"In that case, if Wickham was the missing Lord Marketstoke, and this girl is his daughter, she's—" He broke off, and became still more puzzled. "Upon my honour," he exclaimed, "I don't know who she is!"

"What do you mean?" asked Viner. "She's his daughter, of course—Wickham's. Only, in that case—I mean, if he was really Lord Marketstoke—her proper name, I suppose, is Cave-Gray."

Mr. Pawle looked his young assistant over with an amused expression.

"You haven't the old practitioner's flair, Viner, my boy!" he said. "When one's got to my age, and seen a number of queer things and happenings, one's quick to see possible cases. Look here!—if Wickham was really Lord Marketstoke, and that girl across the hall is his daughter, she's probably—I say probably, for I don't know if the succession in this case goes with the female line—Countess of Ellingham, in her own right!"

Viner looked his surprise.

"Is that really so—would it be so?" he asked.

"It may be—I'm not sure," replied Mr. Pawle. "As I say, I don't know how the succession runs in this particular instance. There are, as you are aware, several peeresses in their own rights—twenty-four or five, at least. Some are very ancient peerages. I know that three—Furnivale and Fauconberg and Conyers—go right back to the thirteenth century; three others—Beaumont, Darcy da Knayth, and Zorch of Haryngworth—date from the fourteenth. I'm not sure of this Ellingham peerage—but I'll find out when I get back to my office. However, granting the premises, and if the peerage does continue in the female line, it will be as I say—this girl's the rightful holder of the title!"

Viner made no immediate answer and Mr. Pawle began to put up the letters in their original wrappings.

"Regular romance, isn't it—if it is so?" he exclaimed. "Extraordinary!"

"Shall you tell her?" asked Viner.

Mr. Pawle considered the direct question while he completed his task.

"No," he said at last, "not at present. She evidently knows nothing, and she'd better be left in complete ignorance for a while. You see, Viner, as I've pointed out to you several times, there isn't a paper or a document of any description extant which refers to her. Nothing in my hands, nothing in the banker's hands, nothing here! And yet, supposing her father, Wickham, to have been Lord Marketstoke, and to have entrusted his secret to Ashton at the same time that he gave him the guardianship of his daughter, he must have given Ashton papers to prove his and her identity—must! Where are they?"

"Do you know what I think?" said Viner. "I think—if I'm to put it in plain language—that Ashton carried those papers on him, and that he was murdered for the possession of them!"

Mr. Pawle nodded, and put the packet of letters in his pocket.

"I shouldn't be surprised," he answered. "It's a very probable theory, my boy. But it presupposes one thing, and makes one horribly suspicious of another."

"Yes?" inquired Viner.

"It presupposes that Ashton let somebody into the secret," replied Mr. Pawle, "and it makes one suspect that the person to whom he did reveal it had such personal interest in suppressing it that he went to the length of murdering Ashton before Ashton could tell it to any one else. How does that strike you, Viner?"

"It's this—and not the diamond!" declared Viner doggedly. "I've a sort of absolute intuition that I'm right."

"I think so too," assented the old lawyer, dryly. "The fifty-thousand-pound diamond is a side-mine. Very well, now we know a lot, you and I. And, we're going to solve matters. And we're not going to say a word to this young lady, at present—that's settled. But I want to ask her some questions—come along."

He led the way across the hall to the dining-room where a reminder of Ashton's death met his and Viner's view as soon as they had crossed the threshold. The funeral was to take place next day, and Mrs. Killenhall and Miss Wickham were contemplating a