The Middle Temple Murder - J. S. Fletcher (reading women .TXT) 📗

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