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

The puzzled expression which Viner had noted in Lord Ellingham's boyish face when they entered the room grew more and more marked as Mr. Pawle proceeded, and he turned on the old lawyer at the end with a stare of amazement.

"You really think that!" he exclaimed.

"I shall be very much surprised if I'm not right!" declared Mr. Pawle.

"But what papers?" asked Lord Ellingham. "And what—how could this Mr. Ashton, who, you say, came from Australia, be in possession of papers relating to my family? I never heard of him."

"Your lordship," said Mr. Pawle, "is doubtless well aware that some years ago there was a very strange—shall we call it romance?—in your family. A very remarkable episode, anyway, a most unusual—"

"You mean the strange disappearance of my uncle—this Lord Marketstoke?" interrupted Lord Ellingham with a smile. "Oh, of course, I know all about that."

"Very well, my lord," continued Mr. Pawle. "Then your lordship is aware that Lord Marketstoke was believed to have gone to the Colonies—Australia or New Zealand—and was—lost there. His death was presumed. Now, Ashton came from Australia, and as I say, we believe him to have brought with him certain highly important papers relative to Lord Marketstoke, whom we think to have been well known to him at one time. Indeed, we felt sure that Ashton knew Lord Marketstoke's secret. Now, my lord, we are also confident that whoever killed John Ashton did so in order to get hold of certain papers which, I feel certain, Ashton made a habit of carrying on his person—papers relating to his friend Lord Marketstoke's identity."

Lord Ellingham remained silent for a moment, looking from one visitor to another. It was very clear to Viner that some train of thought had been aroused in him and that he was closely pursuing it. He fixed his gaze at last on the old lawyer.

"Mr. Pawle," he said quietly, "have you any proof—undoubted proof—that
Mr. Ashton did possess papers relating to my long-missing uncle?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Pawle, "I have!" He pulled out the bundle of letters which he and Viner had unearthed from the Japanese cabinet. "This! It is a packet of letters written by the seventh Countess of Ellingham to her elder son, the Lord Marketstoke we are talking of, when he was a boy at Eton. Your Lordship will probably recognize your grandmother's handwriting."

Lord Ellingham bent over the letter which Mr. Pawle spread before him.

"Yes," he said, "I know the writing quite well. And—these were in Mr.
Ashton's possession?"

"We have just found them—Mr. Viner and I—in a cabinet in his house," replied Mr. Pawle. "They are the only papers we have so far been able to bring to light. But as I have said, we are convinced there were others—much more important ones!—in his possession, probably in his pocketbook."

Lord Ellingham handed the letters back.

"You think that this Mr. Ashton was in possession of a secret relating to the missing man—my uncle, Lord Marketstoke?" he asked.

"I am convinced of it!" declared Mr. Pawle.

Lord Ellingham glanced shrewdly at his visitors.

"I should like to know what it was!" he said.

"Your lordship feels as I do," remarked Mr. Pawle. "But now I should like to ask a question which arises out of this visit. As we approached your lordship's door, just now, we saw, leaving it, two men. One of them, my friend Mr. Viner immediately recognized. He does not know who the man is—"

"Which of the two men do you mean!" interrupted Lord Ellingham. "I may as well say that they had just left me."

"The clean-shaven man," answered Viner.

"Whom Mr. Viner knows for a fact," continued Mr. Pawle, "to have been in
Ashton's company only an hour or so before Ashton's murder!"

Lord Ellingham looked at Viner in obvious surprise.

"But you do not know who he is?" he exclaimed.

"No," replied Viner, "I don't. But there is no doubt of the truth of what Mr. Pawle has just said. This man was certainly with Mr. Ashton at a tavern in Notting Hill from about nine-thirty to ten-thirty on the evening of Ashton's death. In fact, they left the tavern together."

The young nobleman suddenly pulled open a drawer in his desk, produced a box of cigarettes and silently offered it to his visitors. He lighted a cigarette himself, and for a moment smoked in silence—it seemed to Viner that his youthful face had grown unusually grave and thoughtful.

"Mr. Pawle," he said at last, "I'm immensely surprised by what you've told me, and all the more so because this is the second surprise I've had this afternoon. I may as well tell you that the two gentlemen whom you saw going away just now brought me some very astonishing news—yours comes right on top of it! And, if you please, I'd rather not say any more about it, just now, but I'm going to make a proposal to you. Will you—and Mr. Viner, if he'll be so good—meet me tomorrow morning, say at noon, at my solicitors' offices?"

"With pleasure!" responded Mr. Pawle. "Your lordship's solicitors are—"

"Carless and Driver, Lincoln's Inn Fields," answered Lord Ellingham.

"Friends of ours," said Mr. Pawle. "We will meet your lordship there at twelve o 'clock to the minute."

"And—you'll bring that with you?" suggested Lord Ellingham, pointing to the packet of letters which Mr. Pawle held in his hand.

"Just so, my lord," assented Mr. Pawle. "And we'll be ready to tell all we know—for there are further details."

Outside the house the old lawyer gripped Viner's elbow.

"That boy knows something!" he said with a meaning smile. "He's astute enough for his age—smart youngster! But—what does he know? Those two men have told him something. Viner, we must find out who that clean-shaven man is. I have some idea that I have seen him before—I shouldn't be at all surprised if he's a solicitor, may have seen him in some court or other. But in that case I wonder he didn't recognize me."

"He didn't look at you," replied Viner. "He and the other man were too much absorbed in whatever it was they were talking about. I have been wondering since I first saw him at the tavern," he continued, "if I ought not to tell the police what I know about him—I mean, that he was certainly in Ashton's company on the evening of the murder. What do you think?"

"I think not, at present," replied Mr. Pawle. "It seems evident—unless, indeed, it was all a piece of bluff, and it may have been—that this man is, or was when you saw him, just as ignorant as the landlord of that place was that the man who used to drop in there and Ashton were one and the same person. No, let the police go on their own lines—we're on others. We shall hear of this man again, whoever he is. Now I must get back to my office—come there at half-past eleven tomorrow morning, Viner, and we'll go on to Carless and Driver's."

Viner went thoughtfully homeward, ruminating over the events of the day, and entered his house to find his two guests, the sisters of the unlucky Hyde, in floods of tears, and Miss Penkridge looking unusually grave. The elder Miss Hyde sprang up at sight of him and held a tear-soaked handkerchief towards him in pantomimic appeal.

"Oh, Mr. Viner," she exclaimed, "you are so kind, and so clever. I'm sure you'll see a way out of this! It looks, oh, so very black, and so very much against him; but oh, dear Mr. Viner, there must be some explanation!"

"But what is it?" asked Viner, looking from one to the other. "What has happened! Has any one been here?"

Miss Penkridge silently handed to her nephew an early edition of one of
the evening newspapers and pointed to a paragraph in large type. And
Viner rapidly read it over, to the accompaniment of the younger Miss
Hyde's sobs.

A sensational discovery in connection with the recent murder of Mr. Ashton in Lonsdale Passage, Bayswater, was made in the early hours of this morning. Charles Fisher, a greengrocer, carrying on business in the Harrow Road, found in his woodshed, concealed in a nook in the wall, a parcel containing Mr. Ashton's gold watch and chain and a diamond ring. He immediately communicated with the police, and these valuables are now in their possession. It will be remembered that Langton Hyde, the young actor who is charged with the crime, and who is now on remand, stated at the coroner's inquest that he passed the night on which the crime was committed in a shed in this neighbourhood.

Viner read this news twice over. Then a sudden idea occurred to him, and he turned to leave the room.

"I don't think you need be particularly alarmed about this," he said to the weeping sisters. "Cheer up, till I return—I am going round to the police."

Near the police-station Viner fell in with his solicitor, Felpham, who turned a corner in a great hurry. Felpham's first glance showed his client that their purposes were in common.

"Seen that paragraph in the evening papers?" said Felpham without preface. "By George! that's serious news! What a pity that Hyde ever made that statement about his doings on the night of the murder! It would have been far better if he'd held his tongue altogether."

"He insisted on it—in the end," answered Viner. "And in my opinion he was right. But—you think this is very serious?"

"Serious? Yes!" exclaimed Felpham. "He says he spent the night in a shed in the Harrow Road district. Now the things that were taken from Ashton's body are discovered in such a place—nay, the very place; for if you remember, Hyde particularized his whereabouts. What's the obvious conclusion? What can anybody think?"

"I see two or three obvious conclusions, and I think several things," remarked Viner. "I'll tell you what they are when we've seen Drillford. I'm not alarmed about this discovery, Felpham. I think it may lead to finding the real murderer."

"You see further than I do, then," muttered Felpham. "I only see that it's highly dangerous to Hyde's interests. And I want first-handed information about it."

Drillford, discovered alone in his office, smiled as the two men walked in—there was an irritating I-told-you-so air about him.

"Ah!" he said. "I see you gentlemen have been reading the afternoon papers! What do you think about your friend now, Mr. Viner?"

"Precisely what I thought before and shall continue to think," retorted
Viner. "I've seen no reason to alter my opinion."

"Oh—but I guess Mr. Felpham doesn't think that way?" replied Drillford with a shrewd glance at the solicitor. "Mr. Felpham knows the value of evidence, I believe!"

"What is it that's been found, exactly?" asked Felpham.

Drillford opened a locked drawer, lifted aside a sheet of cardboard, and revealed a fine gold watch and chain and a diamond ring. These lay on two or three sheets of much crumpled paper of a peculiar quality.

"There you are!" said Drillford. "Those belonged to Mr. Ashton; there's his name on the watch, and a mark of his inside the ring. They were found early this morning, hidden, in the very place in which Hyde confessed that he spent most of the night after Ashton's murder—a shed belonging to one Fisher, a greengrocer, up the Harrow Road.

"Who found them?" demanded Felpham.

"Fisher himself," answered Drillford. "He was pottering about in his shed before going to Covent Garden. He wanted some empty boxes, and in pulling things about he found—these! Couldn't have made a more important find, I think.

"Were these things loose?" asked Viner.

"Wrapped loosely in the paper they're lying on," replied Drillford.

Viner took the paper out of the drawer, examined it and lifted it to his nose.

"I wonder, if Hyde really did put those things there," he said, "how Hyde came to be carrying about with him these sheets of paper which had certainly been used before for the wrappings of chemicals or drugs?"

Felpham pricked his ears.

"Eh?" he said. "What's that?"

"Smell for yourself," answered Viner. "Let the inspector smell too. I draw the attention to both of you to the fact, because we'll raise that point whenever it's necessary. Those papers have at some time been used to wrap some strong-smelling drug."

"No doubt of it!" said Felpham, who was applying the papers to his nose. "Smell them, Drillford! As Mr. Viner says, what would Hyde be doing with this stuff in his pocket?"

"That's a mere