The Middle Temple Murder by J. S. Fletcher (top books to read txt) 📗
- Author: J. S. Fletcher
Book online «The Middle Temple Murder by J. S. Fletcher (top books to read txt) 📗». Author J. S. Fletcher
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 Spargo, 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!”
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,
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