Dead Men's Money by J. S. Fletcher (top 10 novels to read .txt) 📗

in the town and began to study the ins and outs of foreign trade. Then, when I was just twenty-one, my father sent me a considerable sum—two thousand pounds, as a matter of fact—saying it was for me to start business with. And, do you know, Mr. Lindsey, from that day—now ten years ago—to this, I've never heard a word of him."

Mr. Lindsey was always an attentive man in a business interview, but I had never seen him listen to anybody so closely as he listened to Mr. Smeaton. And after his usual fashion, he at once began to ask questions.

"Those Watsons, now," he said. "They're living?"

"No," replied Smeaton. "Both dead—a few years ago."

"That's a pity," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "But you'll have recollections of what they told you about your father from their own remembrance of him?"

"They'd little to tell," said Smeaton. "I made out they knew very little indeed of him, except that he was a tall, fine-looking fellow, evidently of a superior class and education. Of my mother they knew less."

"You'll have letters of your father's?" suggested Mr. Lindsey.

"Just a few mere scraps—he was never a man who did more than write down what he wanted doing, and as briefly as possible," replied Smeaton. "In fact," he added, with a laugh, "his letters to me were what you might call odd. When the money came that I mentioned just now, he wrote me the shortest note—I can repeat every word of it: 'I've sent Watson two thousand pounds for you,' he wrote. 'You can start yourself in business with it, as I hear you're inclined that way, and some day I'll come over and see how you're getting along.' That was all!"

"And you've never heard of or from him since?" exclaimed Mr. Lindsey. "That's a strange thing, now. But—where was he then? Where did he send the money from?"

"New York," replied Smeaton. "The other letters I have from him are from places in both North and South America. It always seemed to me and the Watsons that he was never in any place for long—always going about."

"I should like to see those letters, Mr. Smeaton," said Mr. Lindsey.
"Especially the last one."

"They're at my house," answered Smeaton. "I'll bring them down here this afternoon, and show them to you if you'll call in. But now—do you think this man Phillips may have been my father?"

"Well," replied Mr. Lindsey, reflectively, "it's an odd thing that
Phillips, whoever he was, drew five hundred pounds in cash out of the
British Linen Bank at Peebles, and carried it straight away to
Tweedside—where you believe your father came from. It looks as if
Phillips had meant to do something with that cash—to give it to
somebody, you know."

"I read the description of Phillips in the newspapers," remarked Smeaton.
"But, of course, it conveyed nothing to me."

"You've no photograph of your father?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"No—none—never had," answered Smeaton. "Nor any papers of his—except those bits of letters."

Mr. Lindsey sat in silence for a time, tapping the point of his stick on the floor and staring at the carpet.

"I wish we knew what that man Gilverthwaite was wanting at Berwick and in the district!" he said at last.

"But isn't that evident?" suggested Smeaton. "He was looking in the parish registers. I've a good mind to have a search made in those quarters for particulars of my father."

Mr. Lindsey gave him a sharp look.

"Aye!" he said, in a rather sly fashion. "But—you don't know if your father's real name was Smeaton!"

Both Smeaton and myself started at that—it was a new idea. And I saw that it struck Smeaton with great force.

"True!" he replied, after a pause. "I don't! It might have been. And in that case—how could one find out what it was?"

Mr. Lindsey got up, shaking his head.

"A big job!" he answered. "A stiff job! You'd have to work back a long way. But—it could be done. What time can I look in this afternoon, Mr. Smeaton, to get a glance at those letters?"

"Three o'clock," replied Smeaton. He walked to the door of his office with us, and he gave me a smile. "You're none the worse for your adventure, I see," he remarked. "Well, what about this man Carstairs—what news of him?"

"We'll maybe be able to tell you some later in the day," replied Mr. Lindsey. "There'll be lots of news about him, one way or another, before we're through with all this."

We went out into the street then, and at his request I took Mr. Lindsey to the docks, to see the friendly skipper, who was greatly delighted to tell the story of my rescue. We stopped on his ship talking with him for a good part of the morning, and it was well past noon when we went back to the hotel for lunch. And the first thing we saw there was a telegram for Mr. Lindsey. He tore the envelope open as we stood in the hall, and I made no apology for looking over his shoulder and reading the message with him.

"Just heard by wire from Largo police that small yacht answering description of Carstairs' has been brought in there by fishermen who found it early this morning in Largo Bay, empty."

We looked at each other. And Mr. Lindsey suddenly laughed.

"Empty!" he exclaimed. "Aye!—but that doesn't prove that the man's dead!"

CHAPTER XXIV THE SUIT OF CLOTHES

Mr. Lindsey made no further remark until we were half through our lunch—and it was not to me that he then spoke, but to a waiter who was just at his elbow.

"There's three things you can get me," he said. "Our bill—a railway guide—a map of Scotland. Bring the map first."

The man went away, and Mr. Lindsey bent across the table.

"Largo is in Fife," said he. "We'll go there. I'm going to see that yacht with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears what the man who found it has got to say. For, as I remarked just now, my lad, the mere fact that the yacht was found empty doesn't prove that Carstairs has been drowned! And we'll just settle up here, and go round and see Smeaton to get a look at those letters, and then we'll take train to Largo and make a bit of inquiry."

Mr. Smeaton had the letters spread out on his desk when we went in, and Mr. Lindsey looked them over. There were not more than half a dozen altogether, and they were mere scraps, as he had said—usually a few lines on half-sheets of paper. Mr. Lindsey appeared to take no great notice of any of them but the last—the one that Smeaton had quoted to us in the morning. But over that he bent for some time, examining it closely, in silence.

"I wish you'd lend me this for a day or two," he said at last. "I'll take the greatest care of it; it shan't go out of my own personal possession, and I'll return it by registered post. The fact is, Mr. Smeaton, I want to compare that writing with some other writing."

"Certainly," agreed Smeaton, handing the letter over. "I'll do anything I can to help. I'm beginning, you know, Mr. Lindsey, to fear I'm mixed up in this. You'll keep me informed?"

"I can give you some information now," answered Mr. Lindsey, pulling out the telegram. "There's more mystery, do you see? And Moneylaws and I are off to Largo now—we'll take it on our way home. For by this and that, I'm going to know what's become of Sir Gilbert Carstairs!"

We presently left Mr. Gavin Smeaton, with a promise to keep him posted up, and a promise on his part that he'd come to Berwick, if that seemed necessary; and then we set out on our journey. It was not such an easy business to get quickly to Largo, and the afternoon was wearing well into evening when we reached it, and found the police official who had wired to Berwick. There was not much that he could tell us, of his own knowledge. The yacht, he said, was now lying in the harbour at Lower Largo, where it had been brought in by a fisherman named Andrew Robertson, to whom he offered to take us. Him we found at a little inn, near the harbour—a taciturn, somewhat sour-faced fellow who showed no great desire to talk, and would probably have given us scant information if we had not been accompanied by the police official, though he brightened up when Mr. Lindsey hinted at the possibility of reward.

"When did you come across this yacht?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"Between eight and nine o'clock this morning," replied Robertson.

"And where?"

"About seven miles out—a bit outside the bay."

"Empty?" demanded Mr. Lindsey, looking keenly at the man. "Not a soul in her?"

"Not a soul!" answered Robertson. "Neither alive nor dead!"

"Were her sails set at all?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"They were not. She was just drifting—anywhere," replied the man. "And I put a line to her and brought her in."

"Any other craft than yours about at the time?" inquired Mr. Lindsey.

"Not within a few miles," said Robertson.

We went off to the yacht then. She had been towed into a quiet corner of the harbour, and an old fellow who was keeping guard over her assured us that nobody but the police had been aboard her since Robertson brought her in. We, of course, went aboard, Mr. Lindsey, after being assured by me that this really was Sir Gilbert Carstairs' yacht, remarking that he didn't know we could do much good by doing so. But I speedily made a discovery of singular and significant importance. Small as she was, the yacht possessed a cabin—there was no great amount of head-room in it, it's true, and a tall man could not stand upright in it, but it was spacious for a craft of that size, and amply furnished with shelving and lockers. And on these lockers lay the clothes—a Norfolk suit of grey tweed—in which Sir Gilbert Carstairs had set out with me from Berwick.

I let out a fine exclamation when I saw that, and the other three turned and stared at me.

"Mr. Lindsey!" said I, "look here! Those are the clothes he was wearing when I saw the last of him. And there's the shirt he had on, too, and the shoes. Wherever he is, and whatever happened to him, he made a complete change of linen and clothing before he quitted the yacht! That's a plain fact, Mr. Lindsey!"

A fact it was—and one that made me think, however it affected the others. It disposed, for instance, of any notion or theory of suicide. A man doesn't change his clothes if he's going to drown himself. And it looked as if this had been part of some premeditated plan: at the very least of it, it was a curious thing.

"You're sure of that?" inquired Mr. Lindsey, eyeing the things that had been thrown aside.

"Dead sure of it!" said I. "I couldn't be mistaken."

"Did he bring a portmanteau or anything aboard with him, then?" asked he.

"He didn't; but he could have kept clothes and linen and the like in these lockers," I pointed out, beginning to lift the lids. "See here!—here's brushes and combs and the like. I tell you before ever he left this yacht, or fell out of it, or whatever's happened him, he'd changed everything from his toe to his top—there's the very cap he was wearing."

They all looked at each other, and Mr. Lindsey's gaze finally fastened itself on Andrew Robertson.

"I suppose you don't know anything about this, my friend?" he asked.

"What should I know?" answered Robertson, a bit surlily. "The yacht's just as I found it—not a thing's been touched."

There was the luncheon basket lying on the cabin table—just as I had last seen it, except that Carstairs had evidently finished the provisions which he and I had left. And I think the same thought occurred to Mr. Lindsey and myself at the same moment—how long had he stopped on board that yacht after his cruel abandoning of me? For forty-eight hours had elapsed since that episode, and in forty-eight hours a man may do a great deal in the way of making himself scarce—which now seemed to me to be precisely what Sir Gilbert Carstairs had done, though in what particular fashion, and exactly why, it was