The Duplicate Death




_By the Same Author_

  THE DANGERVILLE INHERITANCE
  THE MAULEVERER MURDERS
  THE AVERAGE MAN
  THE FINANCES OF SIR JOHN KYNNERSLEY
  THE TROUBLES OF COLONEL MARWOOD
  THE SEX TRIUMPHANT


[Illustration: “‘One or other of you three, if not all of you, will be
accused of the murder’”]




  THE
  DUPLICATE DEATH

  BY
  A. C. FOX-DAVIES

  AUTHOR OF “THE DANGERVILLE INHERITANCE,”
  “THE MAULEVERER MURDERS,” ETC.

  _Illustrated by
  Hermann Heyer_

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  THE MACAULAY COMPANY
  1910




  COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
  THE MACAULAY COMPANY

  THE PREMIER PRESS
  NEW YORK




CONTENTS

                 PAGE
  CHAPTER I         9
  CHAPTER II       33
  CHAPTER III      45
  CHAPTER IV       83
  CHAPTER V       120




ILLUSTRATIONS


  “‘One or other of you three, if not all of you,
  will be accused of the murder’”                 _Frontispiece_

                                                     FACING PAGE

  “The maid found the dead body of her mistress”              22

  “Sir John was found still seated at his writing-table,
    but dead”                                                 46

  “Line for line, feature for feature, the face was
    that of Dolores Alvarez”                                  90

  “‘Look there!’ he almost shouted, as he pointed
    to the miniature”                                        188

  “‘I object to anyone tampering with the witness’”          300




The Duplicate Death




The Duplicate Death




CHAPTER I


Old Lord Madeley had taken unto himself a wife--one of the beautiful
Sisters Alvarez of the Pavilion Theatre of Varieties and the other
West-end halls. Whereat the world of Society wondered for ten days. His
relatives never ceased to wonder.

He was always called “Old Lord Madeley,” but as a matter of fact he had
but turned the half-century some four or five years previously. The man
and his history were curious. The twenty-fifth holder of the ancient
Barony of Madeley, he was a legitimate scion of the Plantagenets and
an illegitimate one of the Stuarts; and he had been born the youngest
child of his parents’ marriage.

In these later times the ancient and historic houses of Norman England
have fallen upon impoverished days, and a younger son succeeds to
but a pittance. The land is there for the eldest, but each generation
leaves it more burdened than did its predecessor, and there is little
if any margin realisable in hard cash.

Such a pittance had been the fortune to which Charles de Bohun Fitz
Aylwyn had succeeded at the death of his father. Hoarding his few poor
hundreds per annum, he had turned his back upon the society into which
he had been born, settled himself in dingy lodgings in Bloomsbury, and
lapsed into an eccentric recluse, with not a single thought beyond the
study of the science in which his soul delighted.

His eldest brother died childless after a brief but brilliant reign,
bequeathing the whole of his personalty to his widow in an attempt to
increase the meagre jointure which was her portion. In the realisation
of that personalty every stick of furniture and each single spoon
in the old Manor House, save the portraits on the walls, were passed
under the hammer of the auctioneer. The second brother was an absentee
landlord, never going near his property, and draining it to the last
penny. Strangers hired his house from him until he died.

At his death the title and estates passed to Charles de Bohun, then and
thereafter twenty-fifth Baron Madeley in the peerage of England.

With a mild curiosity his relatives and the world at large wondered
what on earth he would do with the inheritance. For months he never
went near the place.

Then, without a word or hint of warning, he left London, and travelled
down into Shropshire by the evening train. He had never heard of slip
coaches, he had forgotten where an obsequious porter had told him he
would have to change, and at nine o’clock at night he had been turned
out of the train at Shrewsbury, twenty miles beyond his destination.

By the time the lumbering cab he engaged at the railway station
deposited him at the Manor House, it was long past midnight. After
continuous knocking a sleepy caretaker descended, only to open the
door, tell the visitor to be gone, and slam it in his face. It had
needed the thunderous assistance of the cabman applied both to bell and
knocker and with boots upon the door panels to recall the caretaker.
Lord Madeley had discharged him and his wife there and then, and
neither knew, cared, nor ever inquired whether the couple left the
house in the darkness or waited until the following day. Such had been
the home-coming of Lord Madeley.

Instructing his lawyers to refurnish the house, engage servants, and
appoint a properly qualified agent to manage the estate, Lord Madeley
reorganised and required in his household a reversion and rigid
adherence to the studied solemnity of state which he remembered from
the dignified days of his father and grandfather. That he regarded as a
duty attaching to his rank, his caste, and his family.

Personally he remained wedded to his pursuit of science, and continued
his experiments and investigations. A recluse he had been in London--a
recluse he remained at Madeley, and for the first five years of his
enjoyment of the family heritage he never once set foot outside the
doors of the Manor House. Absorbed in science, his mind deep and
recondite in those directions, simple, straightforward, and lovable in
all the matters of a more worldly nature, the old peer had probably
never given a thought to either any woman in particular or to the
female sex as a general proposition. It is quite probable that it had
never crossed Lord Madeley’s mind that there really were two sexes,
save as a scientific proposition, of which scientific proposition he,
as a man of science, was naturally cognisant. As a social problem he
had never thought of it, knew nothing of it, and cared less.

But peers have obligations thrust upon them, from which lesser
mortals are exempt. The exact circumstances which had produced it are
immaterial to the story, but a royal command had left Lord Madeley
no alternative, and he had in obedience thereto betaken himself to
town. That it was the first time he had recrossed the threshold of
the Manor House since he had entered it was a thought which probably
never presented itself to his mind; and that he was returning to the
scenes in which the greater part of his life had been spent quickened
his pulse not at all. He was irked by the command, bored by the
anticipated absence of his scientific interests, and, in the hope of
avoiding ennui, he cast about in his mind for a companion to share with
him the suite of apartments he had engaged in the hotel at which his
father and grandfather before him had been accustomed to sojourn whilst
in town. Probably for the first time in his life his utter loneliness
in the world made itself manifest. He had one relative, and one only, a
young unmarried cousin, the son of a distant cousin, and from the point
of pedigree the future head of the house of Fitz Aylwyn.

Lord Madeley wrote and invited him. The invitation was accepted.

Young Billy Fitz Aylwyn was one of those men--there are such men--whom
to see was to like. Lord Madeley liked him wholeheartedly, and, in the
courteous attempt to give pleasure to the younger man, the old peer had
consented to a tentative suggestion of his relative that they should
spend the evening by going to the Pavilion Theatre. It was the first
time Lord Madeley had ever been inside a theatre. The meretriciousness
of things theatrical was not laid bare to the old peer by reason of
experience and knowledge, and he was fascinated by the beauty of the
Alvarez girls.

A passing comment on their beauty--for they were beautiful, judged by
any standard--had provoked in the younger of the men a confession of a
personal acquaintance with the sisters.

Absolutely in ignorance of the manner of man Lord Madeley was, and
thinking the pure artistic admiration of classic beauty was an interest
of a totally different kind, Fitz Aylwyn had suggested asking the
sisters to supper.

Lord Madeley, unsophisticated in the ways of the world, and merely
desiring to give pleasure to his relative and guest, whom he supposed
was putting himself out to relieve the ennui of an old man, made no
objection, and the supper party had taken place.

The Sisters Alvarez--Eulalie was the elder and Dolores the younger--of
pure Spanish descent, but of entirely English birth and domicile, were
stars of the music-hall world, but stars of no great or exceeding
magnitude. Calling themselves comediennes, their turn was the usual
song and dance of no particular or more than average merit. On the
other hand, it was useless to attempt to deny the fact that the sisters
were unquestionably the most beautiful women upon the stage at that
time. Descended in a left-handed way from some of the bluest blood of
Andalusia, their beauty had nothing in common with the thick-lipped,
teeth-displaying, plebeian prettiness, which, by reason of picture
postcard advertisement, one is now asked to believe represents a type
of the beauty of this country.

Alike in feature, the two sisters were as wide apart as the poles in
character and temperament. Eulalie, strong, compelling, masterful, and
passionate, controlled the lives of both; Dolores, gentle, trusting,
and submissive, intensely admired her sister, worshipped her ability,
and did whatsoever she was told.

The girls themselves--the outspoken frankness of their world--the utter
novelty of the whole thing--the novelty of young female society--the
awe-struck deference of the music-hall singer for a real peer of
England, who accorded to them the courtesy and deference to women which
he vaguely recollected from the world of his distant youth--interested
Lord Madeley.

With charming but unsophisticated hospitality he invited the sisters to
visit the Manor House, thinking it an obligation of hospitality owing
by him to Fitz Aylwyn. The invitation was accepted.

Eulalie, with a keen eye to opportunity, made up her mind that the
position of Lady Madeley, mistress of the rent roll of the great Manor
of Madeley and of Madeley Manor House, was within the possibilities.
She played for that position for all she was worth, with every atom
of knowledge she possessed or could acquire, played her game without
the opposition of tangible rivals, played her game as a clever and
beautiful woman of the world, knowing every wile and every blandishment
that was permissible, played her game against an old man to whom had
been given no weapon of defence and from whom had been withheld the
worldly knowledge out of which such weapons could have been fashioned
and which would have indicated their necessity. The result was never
in doubt. Lord Madeley married, or was married, as Eulalie had
intended should happen.

Let it here be said, for Lord Madeley soon passes out of the story,
that never for one single instant did he ever regret his marriage.
Save that his house was better ordered, his wishes more carefully
respected, his comfort more scrupulously provided for, Lady Madeley
was wise enough to recognise that the ingrained ways and habits of a
lonely man of fifty-five are fixed, and are altered only at the cost
of much discomfort. She contented herself with the rank and position,
the wealth, and the house which the marriage had brought her, and left
Lord Madeley to pursue his life as he inclined and much as he had
done theretofore. Two years after their marriage their only child--a
daughter, Consuelo--was born, and a few years later Lord Madeley died.
Inertia, even if productive of a contented mind, is not especially
conducive to length of years.

His widow raised a costly marble monument over his grave, mourned for
a decently prolonged interval, and re-emerged in the world; whilst
Consuelo, in her own right Baroness Madeley, figured in her father’s
place in the peerage books.

But there had been an incident shortly after the marriage which for
some time had thrown a blight upon the new-found happiness of Lord and
Lady Madeley.

Passing through London on their return from a honey-moon spent upon
the Continent, Lady Madeley had visited on two occasions her unmarried
sister at the small flat in Kensington which had been taken for her and
furnished by Lord Madeley.

The second visit was the last time the sisters met. Two hours
afterwards the maid found the dead body of her mistress stretched upon
the bed in her room, stark nude, and on the table by the bedside an
opened half-bottle of champagne and a glass from which some of the wine
had been drunk.

At the inquest which was held, however, everything was made plain by
the evidence of the maid, who described the arrival of Lady Madeley at
the flat. She had prepared and taken in tea, and had then been sent to
Bond Street to change the library books and to purchase stalls at one
of the theatres, Lady Madeley having come to invite her sister to spend
the evening with her husband and herself in that manner, and having
postponed the purchase of the stalls until she had ascertained to which
theatre her sister would prefer to go.

[Illustration: “The maid found the dead body of her mistress”]

On her return from Bond Street, the maid had found her mistress
alone--Lady Madeley having already left--and she described how her
mistress had at once sent her out again to order a carriage from the
livery stables, and to purchase flowers and gloves for that evening.
When she returned a second time she had found the drawing-room empty,
and the dead body of her mistress lying naked upon the bed.

In cross-examination the maid had denied having heard the least
quarrelling between the sisters, and could not suggest any reason for
her mistress having taken her own life.

Lady Madeley, obviously deeply affected by the tragic death of
her sister, had corroborated the evidence given by the maid; and
distinguished surgeons and analysts had deposed the death to have been
due to prussic acid, and that the same poison could be traced in the
wine remaining in the glass.

The coroner summed up, emphasising the evidence which had been given,
and which, he remarked, pointed conclusively to suicide. Alluding
to the fact that the body was unclothed, the coroner added that he
thought the jury would find therein ample justification for coming to
the conclusion that the mind of the deceased had become unhinged. With
such plain evidence of fact before them he assumed the jury would have
no difficulty in arriving at a verdict. If the evidence of the maid
had stood alone, they might well have had reason for some hesitation
and might have wished to probe further into the matter for a motive
to account sufficiently for self-destruction. But the maid had been
for some years in the employment of a family, members of which had
testified to the exemplary character she bore, and her evidence was in
every way corroborated not only by Lady Madeley, but also by witnesses
from the library in Bond Street, the livery stables, and the other
places to which she had been sent by her mistress. There could be,
therefore, not the smallest suspicion attaching to the maid. As far
as they were aware, the only other visitor Miss Alvarez had had that
afternoon had been her sister, Lady Madeley. Now, the evidence of the
maid had clearly established the fact that when she returned on the
first occasion Lady Madeley had already gone, and the maid then saw
her mistress alive and spoke to her. The only other alternative which
remained was that during the second absence of the maid some unknown
person had entered the flat and had administered the poison. That
alternative could not be dismissed as an impossibility. Miss Alvarez
was certainly alone in the flat at the time when this might have
occurred, but there was much evidence which all tended to negative the
likelihood of such an explanation being the correct one. For murder by
an unknown person to be the explanation, motive, and a strong motive,
became essential. Robbery was disproved by the fact that nothing
whatever had been removed from the flat, not even the purse which was
found lying on the table by the bedside; nor the money, some six or
seven pounds, which still remained in the purse. That disposed of any
hypothetical stranger calling, demanding money, being refused, and
committing a murder. Besides this, there were no signs of any struggle.
“Lady Madeley,” the coroner continued, “has told us of the intimate
terms of affection upon which she and her sister had always lived;
and Lady Madeley, out of her resulting knowledge, has assured us that
there was nothing in her sister’s life, and no one amongst her sister’s
acquaintances, that could provide or account for any sufficient motive
for such a crime. Of course, it is common knowledge that Lady Madeley
and Miss Alvarez were, until very recently, members of the theatrical
profession; but the many letters to Miss Alvarez, which remained
undestroyed in the flat, and which have all been carefully examined,
the tone of those letters, and the evidence we have had from so many
artistes of the high moral character both the sisters were known in
the profession to have, altogether negative, and it gives me sincere
pleasure even on this sad and melancholy occasion to say it, they
emphatically negative any supposition that there was an illicit side
to the life of Miss Alvarez to which we can turn in the hope of an
explanation. There was no such side. Therefore, I think any idea of
murder may be dismissed. Motive, of course, must always equally precede
self-destruction, but there motive need not be that outside motive
which must be looked for, and for which logical explanation must be
found, where another person is concerned to compass the death of a
victim. As I have already indicated, we have some actual evidence of
a disordered mind, and such a mind would imagine and accept as real
quite non-existent facts and weave those into a self-compelling motive.
Every fact that has been given in evidence is perfectly compatible with
suicide. There is no fact within our knowledge which conflicts with
that supposition, there is no single detail that raises any suspicion
to the contrary.”

Without hesitation the jury returned a verdict of “Suicide during
temporary insanity,” a verdict with which the coroner remarked that he
entirely concurred.

Ashley Tempest, then a romantic but rising young barrister, had been
present at the inquest, holding a watching brief which had been sent
him by the solicitors of Lord Madeley. He had been fascinated by the
beauty of the dead woman whom several times he happened to have seen
and greatly admired upon the stage. The little smile which still
seemed to play upon the lips, the long dark eyelashes resting upon
her cheeks, the profusion of long black hair, the delicately chiselled
features bit themselves in upon his brain, and for days afterwards the
face with its haunting beauty formed and reformed itself before his
eyes, no matter upon what he might be engaged. The face threatened to
become an obsession. The dead mask was eliminating his remembrance of
the living woman, whereas he would have had it otherwise; and partly
for that reason, but chiefly because it was the first cause célèbre in
which he had been engaged, he purchased all the photographs he could
obtain of the dead actress, and, sending them to a miniaturist, ordered
a miniature to be painted from them, and hung it in his chambers.

As time passed slowly on, Tempest’s fascination decreased; but
through all his busy life, amongst his multitudinous cases, weird and
mysterious as so many of them were, he never forgot the strange story
he had heard unfolded at the inquest upon the body of Dolores Alvarez.
Many a night when, pushing books and papers on one side, he had lighted
his final cigarette before turning into bed, the miniature would catch
his eye, and, gazing again at the beautiful face, his thoughts would
revert to the familiar story, and once again he would puzzle over the
facts he knew, in a vain attempt to find a solution of the mystery.
Why had she poisoned herself? As the succeeding years brought him
fuller knowledge of men and of women, and of their motives, as case
after case widened his experience, so time after time would he again
place together the pieces of his puzzle, arranging and rearranging them
as crime after crime passing through his hands revealed to him new
motives, new characters, any one of which might prove to be analogous
and afford him the clue he wanted. Suicide it seemed plain enough to
him it must have been. He always remembered how closely he had followed
at the time the reasoning of the coroner. He always felt convinced
it was logical and conclusive, save in one little detail. Tempest
had started his legal career with a certain fixed opinion concerning
suicide which he never altered--never had reason to alter--an opinion
that grew into conviction. Suicide of itself he held never was and
never could be evidence of insanity. He maintained his conviction in
argument on many occasions--at the Hardwicke--at the Union--in the
courts. He carried his theory further, though not with equal certainty.
But he laid it down as a proposition, yet to be disproved, that save
in exceptional cases an insane person never commits suicide; and he
confined those exceptional cases to cases of previously provable
delusions of fact, which facts, if true, would have created a logical
and sane motive sufficient to have resulted in the suicide of a sane
individual. He maintained that the act of suicide was in itself a sane
act, for which cause was required to be shown, and could always be
shown if the facts in full were available.

Such was the theory upon which he always relied whenever in the course
of his profession he was brought face to face with a necessity for the
elucidation of a death. He never found his theory at fault. Tempted he
often was at first sight to depart from it, but always in the end the
case would prove but a renewed confirmation of its accuracy.

Yet what was the motive which had caused Dolores Alvarez to destroy
herself? Why did she do it? Why? And ever would come that eternal Why?
to which he could suggest no answer.




CHAPTER II


“Understand me once and for all, Evangeline, I absolutely forbid it.”

Head in the air the girl walked out of the room, slamming the door
behind her.

Lady Stableford, thoroughly upset by the discussion which had taken
place, sank into a low easy-chair and put her handkerchief to her
eyes. She had married her husband at an early age, and had passed
up the social ladder with him, as a rapidly developing business had
increasingly provided him with the wealth which had opened the doors
of Parliament to the successful merchant, and finally brought him the
baronetcy which he had been permitted to pay for, so that his political
and party services might be rewarded therewith. No child had blessed
their marriage; and as time drew on, and unlikelihood dissolved
itself into impossibility, the old lady yearned the more for the child
to mother and take care of which was denied to her. As parliamentary
duties appropriated an increasing portion of her husband’s time, Lady
Stableford, after much opposition, at length obtained Sir James’
consent to her adoption of a child. Finally she advertised under an
assumed name, stipulating that the child must be a girl, must be
completely and irrevocably transferred, and thereafter remain in
ignorance of her real parentage: and she required that the child must
be of gentle birth.

The advertisement was answered by a solicitor on behalf of a client.
Lady Stableford attempted to insist on a substantiated disclosure
of the parentage, and in consequence the negotiations terminated
with the refusal of the information and the consequent withdrawal of
Lady Stableford’s offer of adoption. Within a week Lady Stableford,
returning to the drawing-room after a solitary dinner, found that
during her absence from the room, a child, plainly only a few days
old, had been left upon the sofa. The flapping of the blind drew her
attention to the still open French window, the obvious means by which
access to the room had been obtained. At once summoning assistance,
Lady Stableford had her park and gardens carefully searched, but
without results. For some time the child slept, and Lady Stableford was
puzzled what course to adopt. She objected to an unknown child being
thrust upon her in that way and without her consent; but the tiny atom
of humanity woke with a plaintive cry, and Lady Stableford’s decision
was made at once. All the motherliness of her nature welled up, and
from that moment she regarded the child as her own and treated it
precisely as if it had been.

Assuming, rightly or wrongly, she never could determine, that this
must be the child concerning which she had been in communication, she
again wrote to the solicitor. After an interval the letter was returned
to her from the Dead Letter Office, marked “gone; address unknown.” An
appeal to her own solicitors to help her at once revealed the fact that
there was no solicitor of the name upon the roll.

Carefully Lady Stableford had examined the clothing the child had worn
and the shawl in which it had been wrapped. Everything was new and of
good quality, and every article was scrupulously clean; but there was
no tell-tale coronet upon the clothing to suggest romance, nothing
by which identity could be traced. Even the clever brains of her
solicitors could suggest no steps she might take to put an end to her
doubts. Of birth-marks the child had none.

The identity, as Lady Stableford, of the lady who had advertised
the offer of adoption she knew of course had been disclosed only to
the supposititious solicitor with whom her own advisers had been in
correspondence. There could be little if any doubt the child was the
same; but that gave her no further knowledge than the bare fact, if
her supposition were correct, that the baby girl for whom she had now
accepted the responsibility was born on the 18th of August, 1881. From
what her doctor could tell her there could be no doubt that if that
were not actually the child’s birthday, her birth must have occurred
within the margin of a day or two on either side of it.

The child, as she grew up, was not a lovable child; and long before
the fair-haired baby had reached that stage of lankiness, when, a few
days after they were new, her frocks always seemed to shrink above her
knees, emphasising the spindle legs which needed so little of that
emphasis, the girl was a dark-haired little fury, with a perfectly
ungovernable temper.

Increasing years, and the chronic irritability of a constant invalid,
had all helped to diminish the patience of Lady Stableford; and a
child of the temper and temperament of the wayward Evangeline needs an
endless patience in her bringing up, which patience Lady Stableford had
ceased to possess. The result was that as time went on the child was
left more and more under the care and control of servants, none too
wisely chosen, and such affection as Lady Stableford had originally had
for the lonesome little baby had degenerated into the loveless duty to
the child whose future she had taken into her own hands.

Her schooldays over, Evangeline came back to her home--a tall,
aristocratic-looking beauty; and, in the hope of companionship, Lady
Stableford turned again to the girl. But it was then too late. Of duty
the girl knew nothing, and the keen memory of her youthful mind matched
against any present show of affection which was made to her, the vivid
recollections of the scoldings and punishments of her nursery days. The
two women were out of sympathy. The old lady ceased her efforts, the
girl never attempted to make any.

The pair lived together in the same house. The girl’s life was one
constant rebellion against the irritable, irritated, and irritating
attempts at her own control made by the elder woman.

Bored to extinction by the life she was apparently expected to
lead, exasperated by the querulous exactions of the irritable old
lady, driven inexorably by the exuberance of youth and the nervous
restlessness of her own excitable temperament, Evangeline had made
up her mind that it was a necessity to her that she should find
occupation in a working career. The girl was probably right, but it by
no means followed that her choice had been made in the right direction.
That choice had fallen upon the stage--had been expressed to Lady
Stableford--and the interview had terminated with an emphatic refusal
of consent and an emphatic forbidding of further thoughts in that
direction.

Sir James, now long since deceased, had been a stalwart among
Nonconformists. Lady Stableford, always despising in her heart
the social position of Nonconformity, had nevertheless lacked the
moral courage to adopt a change of religious persuasion, and, until
increasing years relieved her from the necessity of the great mental
effort involved in the framing of plausible excuses for absence,
continued, Sunday by Sunday, to “sit under” the long succession of
electro-plated divines who held forth in the building which her
husband had built, endowed, and opened. To say that Lady Stableford
was religious would not be accurate, because all that a lifetime of
Nonconformity had endowed her with was a restriction of her mental
aspect to the intolerant narrowness of the bigoted orthodoxy of her
own particular brand. Hatred of the theatre, which she regarded as a
forcing house of sin, was one of those fixed ideas she had absorbed
and accepted. Degradation in this world and damnation in the next she
believed to be the foreordained and inevitably resulting consequence of
any association with things theatrical.

To the inherent inclination of Evangeline towards a theatrical career
was now added not only the attraction of the forbidden thing, but also
the fascination of that which has been declared to be wicked. To this
composite and powerful temptation the girl succumbed. The thing was
inevitable--probably would have happened in any case; the happening
was in all likelihood no more than precipitated by Lady Stableford’s
attitude and prohibition. But these affected the relations of the two
when the separation came, and caused the elder woman many a long month
of pain and unhappiness, of stubborn anger, which step by step had
mellowed into regret, forgiveness, and then into comprehension and keen
remorse. Drilled by her loneliness the old lady at last swallowed her
pride and wrote asking the girl to come back to her.

Lady Stableford had waited too long. There had been occasions, many
and oft indeed, when Evangeline, cowed by the pitiful hardships in
the poverty-stricken existence of the provincial travelling company
in which she was striving to master her profession, would have jumped
at the invitation. There had even once or twice come times when,
heartbroken by illness, by lack of employment, and utter weariness of
spirit, the girl’s pride had been broken, and she had penned piteous
appeals to be allowed to return home; but the letters had never been
sent, and at last had come success. The girl’s reviving spirit soaked
up like a sponge the adulation that success brought in its train,
and her parched soul again expanded into the proud, high-spirited
temperament which had been her inheritance. But hardship bravely borne
had chastened her, taught her forbearance and charity of thought and
had given her some control of her hot temper.

The invitation when it reached her was not refused, but was accepted
only for a visit. A tentative suggestion to settle a suitable income,
and in return that Evangeline should leave the stage, was gently but
firmly put on one side, and Lady Stableford perforce had to content
herself with the consent of the girl to make her old home her
headquarters, living there whenever her profession did not require her
presence elsewhere, and with the acceptance of a liberal allowance.
Once again the old lady altered her will, and once more the name of
Evangeline Stableford stood as chief beneficiary and residuary legatee.




CHAPTER III


From time to time in the ever-recurring sequence of murders of which
the details are given to the world by a vigilant and busy Press,
one will be found which stands out and grips the public attention.
Sometimes it is the gruesome detail of the crime which awakens the
interest of the world at large. More often it is the mystery which
envelopes its circumstance and stands between the general curiosity
and the satisfaction thereof by a full explanation of the motive. But
the greatest excitement always occurs when the victim of the crime
happens to be an individual already, on other grounds, well known to
the public and more or less a celebrity. Such a murder occurred a few
days before Easter, in the year 1902. Sir John Rellingham, a well-known
solicitor--one of the most prominent men in his profession--stayed
on late at his offices one afternoon, busily engaged in writing. One
by one his junior partners and managing clerks had drifted away, and,
after the office clock had indicated the hour of six, Sir John and his
confidential secretary were the only ones who remained in the building.
The solicitor rang his bell, and his secretary presented himself.

“There’s no need for you to stay any longer, Smith. Don’t wait for me.
I shall be busy for some time.”

“I’ve just been working on those Trentbeck leases, and I may as well
finish them. I’m really in no hurry to go, sir.”

“Oh, those can wait, Smith. I’d rather you went. Just lock up
everything before you go.”

[Illustration: “Sir John was found still seated at his writing-table,
but dead”]

“Very well, Sir John,” had been the answer; and the man, in obedience
to the directions given him, had put books and papers away, locked up
the safe, and gone. Of what took place afterwards no one had any
knowledge. On the following day Sir John was found still seated at his
writing-table, but dead: shot through the temple.

No weapon of any kind was found in the room, and the appearance of the
wound left no doubt that the shot must have been fired from only a
short distance. That it was murder there could be no doubt. Suicide was
perfectly impossible.

Before the coroner’s jury had brought in their verdict of “Wilful
murder by some person or persons unknown,” the whole of the public
Press was seething with excitement. The firm of Rellingham, Baxter,
Marston & Moorhouse stood at the head of the profession. It had behind
it more than a century of untarnished and honourable repute; half the
peerage employed the firm in those parts of their legal necessities
which were of a reputable character, and the name of one or other of
the partners in the firm was to be found as a trustee in a very large
proportion of the great family settlements which were in operation. The
capital for which the firm somehow or other stood in the relation of
trustee ran into many millions. But the public had become suspicious
of solicitor trustees, and every one waited for the impending crash
to which the mysterious death of Sir John appeared to be the usual
prelude. Men whispered, “How much will they break for?” But the crash
never came. An immediate and searching audit, required at once by the
surviving partners, disclosed the facts that there was not a penny
missing, not a single suspicious circumstance in the affairs of the
firm. Its repute was as untarnished, its integrity as unchallengable
as had been the case throughout the long history of the firm; and the
public really began to believe in the truth of the verdict at the
inquest. The murder, of course, engaged the keenest attention of the
police; but as the weeks flew by without producing any explanation of
the mystery, the partners of Sir John commenced to take steps of their
own. Sir John, they knew, was a widower, without children, and with few
relatives, but many friends. Carefully and methodically his partners,
who were his executors, examined and scrutinised every paper left by
Sir John both at his house and at his office. Everything was perfectly
open, straightforward, and free from any trace of suspicion upon which
a clue could be founded. Everything was ordinary, humdrum, and usual,
with one exception.

This one exception was a clause in Sir John’s will, and this clause ran
as follows:--

“I give and bequeath, free of all charges and legacy duty, the sum of
£20,000 to my partners, Arthur Baxter, Charles Marston, and Edward
Moorhouse, upon trust, to be applied by them to and for the purposes
which I have taken steps to sufficiently indicate to them, such trust
to be executed according to their honour and integrity, of which I am
well satisfied, and without the interference, check, or control of any
person or persons whomsoever; and I direct that if at any time, in the
absolute exercise of their unfettered discretion, they or the survivors
or survivor of them shall at any time decide that the further existence
of the trust which I have hereby constituted and created has become
impossible, then and forthwith the said trust shall immediately cease
and determine, and my said partners or the then survivors or survivor
of them shall stand possessed in their or his own right and for their
or his own use and benefit of the capital moneys of the said trust, and
shall not be required by anybody to render accounts or explanations
of their or his dealings with the trust or of their or his action or
actions in regard to it. And I further direct that if at any time this
trust or the capital moneys of this trust shall be or shall become the
subject matter of litigation through the interference or intervention
of any party or parties other than my said partners, or the survivors
or survivor of them, then and forthwith and from the commencement of
such litigation the said trust shall cease and determine, and the
capital sums of the said trust shall be distributed and applied in the
form and manner above provided.”

In due course of time the will of Sir John Rellingham was proved, and,
as was only to be expected, this curious clause was reprinted in the
Press pretty widely. The mystery of Sir John’s murder had remained
unsolved, and was passing into the oblivion of public forgetfulness,
when curiosity was again aroused by the strange wording of the clause
in Sir John’s will. All other clues had failed. Here was the chance
of a clue. The sensational Press thundered for a full revelation of
this secret trust, arguing speciously that the mystery of Sir John’s
death was a matter of public concern, and private interests must bow
to public necessities. The partners met the demand by a point-blank
refusal to disclose any information whatever. As one of them--Arthur
Baxter--said to an inquisitive reporter: “The public know of the clause
in the will--the law has compelled us to disclose it; but if we could
have avoided doing so, we should not have made even that much public.
It would have been possible, by making other arrangements for Sir John,
to have obviated even that disclosure; but you can take it from me
that a secret trust in a will is not an uncommon occurrence. If Sir
John had not been murdered, the clause would never have attracted any
attention. But Sir John was a clever lawyer, and he knew perfectly
well, when he drew that clause, that public curiosity as to its meaning
need not be satisfied, and no doubt he preferred to run the risk of
that curiosity rather than constitute the trust in his own lifetime. So
you can tell your editor, with my compliments and the compliments of
the firm and my partners individually and collectively, that we will
see him and his paper and all of the rest of the Press a good deal
further on its way to an undesirable place before we give one word of
explanation of that clause.”

It was an unwise remark to have made. Mr. Baxter, a steady-going
solicitor, in the security of his knowledge of the law, scoffed at the
possibility of interference. He had no experience of the inquisitive
prying of a sensational evening paper. The latter, irritated by the
contempt of the solicitor, laid itself out to teach him a due and
proper respect for the power of the Press. Day after day it returned to
the attack, demanding, in the interests of justice, a full disclosure.
So reiterated became the demand, so irritating to the public curiosity
was the blank _non possumus_ of the solicitors, that at last the
inevitable happened and the public came to believe (a perfectly
unwarranted hypothesis) that in the details of the trust which had
been created lay the explanation of the murder, and the partners and
executors were publicly hounded into the position of accomplices in
the crime, on the assumption that by keeping the trust secret they
were assisting the culprit to evade the claims of justice. It is not
difficult for an energetic newspaper to create such an impression, and
the obstinate silence of the surviving partners of Sir John fanned the
flame of public curiosity. So rooted did this conviction become that at
last it took hold of Scotland Yard. Once a settled conviction obtains
a footing in that quarter, it usually sticks, and the Home Office took
a hand in the game and asked for an assurance from the firm that the
secret trust had no connection with the murder.

The firm replied that they were unable to give that or any other
assurance.

A lengthy correspondence followed, which culminated in a personal
letter from the Home Secretary, egged on by Scotland Yard, asking the
partners of the firm to disclose in confidence the terms and purposes
of the secret trust, and conveying concurrently an intimation that
the disclosure could be made personally to the Home Secretary without
witnesses, and his personal assurance that, no matter what the trust
might be, no action against any member of the firm should be based upon
any such disclosure.

The letter was misunderstood. The promise of the indemnity was made
_bona fide_. The Home Secretary was perfectly cognisant that many
secret trusts are illegal or made for illegal objects, and his only
desire was to let the firm know that he personally would respect that
trust and their confidence, if they would show him that this particular
trust had nothing to do with the murder.

Knowing the high reputation the firm deservedly enjoyed, the partners
were perfectly furious at the bare suggestion that they might be
parties to either illegal or dishonest actions, and the reply to the
Home Secretary was brief and to the point.

  “SIR,--On behalf of myself and the other surviving partners of this
  firm, I beg to state that we resent the tone and contents and the
  insinuations of your letter. We point-blank decline to supply you
  with any information whatsoever.--I am, sir, your obedient servant,
  (ARTHUR BAXTER) for Rellingham, Baxter, Marston & Moorhouse.”

The Home Secretary replied in another personal letter, regretting that
his letter had been misunderstood, and stating that he felt assured the
letter of Mr. Baxter had been written in momentary irritation, and that
the firm, upon reconsideration, would see that the most satisfactory
course to pursue would be a compliance with his suggestion. The answer
to the second letter was still briefer than had been the former.

  “SIR,--You can go to the devil or wherever else you feel
  inclined.--Yours faithfully, ARTHUR BAXTER.”

And the Home Secretary was on the horns of a dilemma. Afraid to
litigate and thus end the trust--for the terms of the will were
before him--worried by Scotland Yard to compel a revelation, which
the determined opposition he was meeting seemed only to intensify the
apparent necessity of--he nevertheless clearly saw there was another
possibility. Were the partners in the firm with diabolical cunning
simply doing all they knew to compel him to litigate, and by so doing
convey to them the actual property in the capital moneys of the
trust, free from any legal or moral liability? And with the ingrained
suspicion of the Government official he decided this must be the true
explanation.

Finally, on an _ex parte_ motion, he obtained an injunction pending
proceedings, restraining the trustees from taking any steps in regard
to the dissolution and realisation of the trust. Having done this he
served notice upon them of his intention to apply for a rule requiring
them to show cause why the trust should not be disclosed and the
capital moneys paid into court.

And then Mr. Baxter went and consulted Ashley Tempest.

“It isn’t often you come here on business, Baxter,” said the barrister,
as he rose to greet his caller.

“No; our work isn’t often in your line. I think it’s nearly fifty years
since we litigated a criminal case, and we don’t often litigate on the
King’s Bench side either. To be perfectly frank with you, Tempest, I’ve
come here as much for your advice as a man of the world as a barrister.”

“There are a good many men better qualified to give that kind of
counsel than I am.”

“Possibly, but they haven’t your knowledge of criminal law. Do you know
anything about trusts, Tempest?”

“A bit--I daresay as much as most of the men on our side of the hedge.
But if it’s a trust, why don’t you go to Overhill?”

“I’m going on to him presently--when I’ve heard what you’ve got to
say. But these chancery men always seem to me to be machines without
humanity. To be candid, my partners and I want to know exactly where we
stand over this infernal secret trust which old Sir John strapped on
our shoulders. I suppose you’ve heard about it?”

“I’ve seen what the newspapers have had to say, and I’ve heard the
usual gossip that’s gone on. What’s the trouble? But are you wise in
coming to me? Suppose it is--of course I don’t know--suppose it is
mixed up with Sir John’s murder, and the defence brief were to come
along to me, it might prove very inconvenient to you?”

“I don’t think so. My partners and I talked it over, on the supposition
that in such a case you would get the brief, and I have come to you, at
the express wish of the three of us. You see, we don’t know yet what
the real objects of this secret trust are.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Just what I say, Tempest. The trust, as it appears from the clause
of the will, is a holy terror of a mystery; but when you come to read
our instructions you’ll find that it’s twenty times as much a mystery.
Here, read this!” and the solicitor passed across a letter.

  “To ARTHUR BAXTER, CHARLES MARSTON, EDWARD MOORHOUSE, my partners and
  friends.

  “Forgive me if I remind you that your partnerships in the firm were
  not purchased in cash, but were given to you by myself in testimony
  of my high appreciation of your several abilities, of your worth,
  your integrity, and discretion. I have always had and still retain
  my high opinion of you all. As you will be aware, from my will,
  my remaining half share in the proprietorship of the firm I have
  bequeathed equally amongst you, and I have in my will also bequeathed
  to you jointly the sum of £20,000 upon trust. May I rest assured
  you will repay the obligations I remind you of, by accepting the
  trouble this trust may entail? The object of the trust is to pay the
  annual income arising from the capital moneys of the trust to the
  partners in the firm for the time being, as an annual payment for
  their services in preserving that capital intact. Whatever changes
  may take place in the firm after my death at any time during the
  continuance of the trust, I desire that the necessary steps shall be
  taken for its proper preservation. A certain eventuality may at some
  time arise, for which I wish to provide, should it ever happen. But
  I cannot provide for it, save by a disclosure which would amount to
  a breach of honour, a breach of confidence, and a breach of trust.
  That eventuality may never arise. Writing calmly and deliberately
  I say, for your guidance, that it is probable that it never will
  arise; but if it ever does, then certain information is necessary
  to enable you to act justly and as I desire. That information is
  contained in the sealed packet which you will find herewith; but,
  if you have any gratitude to my memory, then I solemnly charge you
  to respect my wishes that that packet shall remain sealed and its
  contents unexamined until events compel this by the occurrence of the
  eventuality for which I am providing. I cannot indicate what that
  eventuality will be, or in what manner it will arise, and I leave the
  point entirely to your discretion to determine whether it has arrived
  or not. I say only, that if it does you will at once recognise it. It
  will be plainly apparent beyond doubt that it has arisen, and I warn
  you that any eventuality as to which you have doubt cannot be the
  one I am providing for. If at the end of a hundred years, from the
  18th August 1881, no such eventuality has arisen, it will by then be
  impossible for it ever to occur, and I then desire that this packet
  shall be destroyed unopened. The commencement of any litigation which
  may involve the disclosure of the information in the packet is to be
  held to be the termination of the trust, and I desire this my wish to
  be regarded as a vital part of the trust, and I leave it as a sacred
  charge upon you all that the packet shall be immediately destroyed.
  Offering you my gratitude, not only for your past devotion to the
  firm, but also for the personal friendship of yourselves, which it
  has been my privilege to enjoy.--I remain, your affectionate partner,
  JOHN RELLINGHAM.”

“You are right about the mystery, Baxter.”

“Yes. I wonder if any such trust has ever been created before!”

“I doubt it. Still, it’s all pretty plain sailing. You three are just
to draw the income till some overpowering circumstance occurs which
advertises itself as the occasion Sir John refers to.”

“I haven’t told you quite all, Tempest. The Home Secretary has
commenced litigation, and he has also obtained an _ex parte_
injunction, restraining our firm from destroying any documents or
dealing with the trust, pending an order of the court.”

“Then by the terms of the will the trust is already at an end, and
you rake in and divide the capital. But it’s rather awkward about the
documents. By the terms of the trust they must at once be destroyed,
and yet you say the Crown have got an injunction to prevent you. What
have you done?”

“What should you have done, Tempest?”

The barrister laughed. “Are you here for a professional opinion?”

“Well, suppose you give me that to begin with?”

“Then I’m bound to tell you you must obey the order of the court, which
overrides the terms of the trust, and I’m bound to advise you that
disobedience would be flagrant contempt of court, for which the penalty
is imprisonment until the contempt is purged. Still, all that’s ancient
history to you and your firm. You didn’t come here, I’ll warrant, just
for me to tell you that much.”

“No, Tempest, I didn’t.”

The two men looked at each other, and gradually a smile formed itself
on each face.

“And I’m pretty certain,” said the barrister, “you did not come here
for me to tell you what to do. What have you done?”

“Tempest--frankly, now--tell me what you think we ought to have done.
I’ve told you our legal difficulty; but there’s the other one, and
that’s why I came to you. Are these documents likely to be a clue to
the murder? If so, ought we to disclose them? You are an adept at
murders--or rather at elucidating them. What do you think?”

“What a situation!”

The barrister rose to his feet and lit a cigarette as he began to pace
his room, backwards and forwards along the well-marked path across
his carpet. The solicitor sat and watched him--watched his impassive
face--watched the quick, nervous fingers as they clicked the rings upon
them backwards and forwards--watched the cigarette smoked to the end
and thrown away as another was lighted from it. At last the barrister
came to a pause in front of his fireplace.

“Baxter, the murder has proved an insoluble mystery, depending upon an
unknown motive. You know everything about Sir John’s affairs, except
what those papers may disclose. You cannot find a basis for a motive in
what you know. The odds are the clue is hidden in those papers.”

“I agree with you. I should say that is probable.”

“But no man contemplates his own murder without taking steps to avert
it, if that be possible. Sir John took no steps at all. No man would
sit down to be murdered, and content himself with providing evidence
to catch his murderer afterwards. Sir John never created the trust
for that purpose. You can rest assured this is not the eventuality to
provide for which that trust was created. It exists for some widely
different purpose. And there’s another thing, Baxter. Sir John says
a disclosure would be a breach of faith. That would involve a third
person. It is that third person on whose behalf Sir John has gone to
all that trouble. It wasn’t himself he was bothering about. So long as
he was alive he could have dealt with the thing himself, or he might
have been waiting for the knowledge that it never would arise. That
was why he did not constitute the trust during his own lifetime, but
preferred rather to run the risk of public curiosity about the clause
in his will.”

“What should you have done, Tempest?”

“I should have destroyed the papers, I think; but there is one awful
risk. Suppose they do contain the clue to the murder, and through the
lack of that clue an innocent person gets hanged?”

“Well, as a matter of fact we burnt them yesterday.”

“Then you elected to run that risk?”

“Tempest, it isn’t fair to a lawyer to tell him only half the tale.
Wrapped round the papers was another slip. As nearly as I remember, the
words written on it were as follows:--

“‘This paper is to be burnt the moment it has been read. I desire that
no memorandum of it shall ever be put into writing. If litigation is
threatened, this packet is to be burned immediately. A duplicate set
of the papers is deposited in the name of the firm at the Chancery
Lane Safe Deposit. The existence of this duplicate set is not to be
disclosed. I leave it to the honour and integrity of my partners that
if under litigation the trust ceases to exist, it shall at the earliest
safe opportunity be again reconstituted.’”

“That does away with the risk I spoke of. You were certainly right to
destroy the papers.”

“In spite of the court?”

“Yes, I think so. I’m sure of it. The old boy intended you to stand the
racket. I should fancy he anticipated it, though it’s more likely he
expected litigation from the heir-at-law than the Crown.”

“That is the conclusion my partners and I came to. But, Tempest, ought
we to disclose the other simply to catch the murderer?”

“No, I think not. Sir John is dead. You can’t bring him to life again.
All you can do is to regard his wishes. I bet he’d prefer that to the
stringing up of some poor devil.”

When the motion came on in court the trust was upheld. As constituted
under the will it had been perfectly valid; but now under the terms of
the will the litigation had put an end to it, and the court ruled that
the capital moneys had now vested in the surviving partners for their
own benefit.

“Come and dine with all of us to-night, Tempest,” said one of the
partners, as they left the law courts after hearing judgment given.
“We’re in a deuce of a quandary!”

The invitation was accepted, and after dinner the four men sat over the
walnuts and the wine in the sumptuously furnished bachelor chambers of
Arthur Baxter.

“You see, Tempest,” said the host, “the secret trust is already
reconstituted. We did it this afternoon. We can’t afford to run the
risk of one of us dying and his executors claiming any proprietorship
in the money. So the position now is exactly as it was when the will
was first proved. But now that the court has declared the money to
belong to us personally, the state of affairs isn’t particularly
pleasant, because that infernal evening rag is bound to adopt the
standpoint that by preventing the elucidation of the murder we have
advantaged our own pockets, and that we took the line we did for that
reason.”

“Is that as far as you’ve got, Baxter?”

“Yes, but what do you mean?”

“My dear man, don’t you see what the logical consequence is? Don’t any
of you see it?”

The three solicitors looked at each other in surprise, and then glanced
back at Tempest, as his grave face filled with concern, and they looked
the question to him which they waited for the barrister to answer.

“Moorhouse, I saw you at Epsom, so I suppose you bet? Well, I’ll lay
you a pound to a penny that unless the real murderer of Sir John is
discovered pretty quickly, one or other of you three, if not all of
you, will be accused of the murder--very likely arrested for it, if
they can find the semblance of any circumstantial evidence. If you’ll
take my advice, you’ll look pretty carefully to your alibis on the
evening and night Sir John was murdered.”

“You cannot mean that seriously, Tempest?”

“I do mean it, and I’m perfectly serious. You three men are not in an
enviable position.”

As Tempest spoke he looked across the table to where Marston was
sitting. His face had gone as white as a sheet, and his fingers were
trembling as mechanically he eased the collar at his throat.

“What’s the matter, Marston?” said one of his partners.

“It’s three months ago. I’ve no more idea than the man in the moon what
I was doing that evening.”

“Keep an engagement book?” asked Tempest.

“No--not private things. Just stick the cards up on the mantelpiece
till the shows are over and then pitch ’em away.”

“Nor a diary?”

“No. Never did such a thing.”

“Would your wife know?”

“Haven’t got a wife.”

“Do you think your servants would be likely to?”

“No. What can I do, Tempest?”

“Well, praying seems to be about all that’s left.”

“Why do you think we are any of us likely to be accused?”

“Simply because you must have motive for a murder. No one knows or can
suggest the shadow of a motive in regard to Sir John. You three who
knew him intimately and all his private affairs know of nothing that
even hints at a motive. You have gone through all his papers since his
death, and you can find nothing there to give you a clue. Nobody, as
far as you know, stood to profit by Sir John’s death except----”

“Except whom?”

“Except yourselves. Now, remember the police know less than you do, so
they can guess at no motive, save the obvious one I have pointed out
to you--that halfpenny rag has hounded Scotland Yard on till they got
the Home Office to interfere about the trust. They will go on now--mark
my words--on the basis that the line you three took was dictated by
your desire to bring the trust to an end. They will point out how you
all stood to benefit by Sir John’s death. They will assume--no matter
how much you may deny it--that being his partners you three were aware
beforehand both of the terms of the will and of the trust. Don’t
forget what the terms of the will were--‘to be applied by them to and
for the purposes which I have taken steps to sufficiently indicate to
them’--and don’t forget he divides his share of the partnership with
you. Just think what the obvious meaning of that is--what nine men out
of ten would assume to be the meaning----”

“What do you say that is, Tempest?”

“Simply that he had already told you. Nobody would, by the wildest
guess, be likely to imagine the existence of such a letter as he left.
And even the letter you can’t in honour disclose till it becomes a
matter of life and death.”

“It doesn’t seem to be very far off being that even now.”

“There’s another thing you fellows have overlooked. That shot was
obviously fired inside the room. There was nobody in the offices when
Smith left, except Sir John. How many keys are there?”

“We’ve each got one. Smith has one and the cleaner has one. The clerks
come whilst she is there. She does their rooms first and then does
ours afterwards. They arrive before she has finished.”

“Had Sir John a key?”

“Yes. We found it on his bunch in his pocket after he was dead.”

“Then his key wasn’t used. Now, Smith locked the door when he left.
It’s a spring latch--that came out at the inquest. So did Smith’s
alibi that evening. So did the old woman’s. That only leaves the
three keys you chaps have. There’s no difficulty about getting out
afterwards--it’s the getting in that matters.”

“God! Tempest, you are building up a case against us.”

“Well, there’s only one loophole; and that’s the possibility that Sir
John himself opened the door to his murderer. I really think that’s
the true explanation, because he had previously told Smith he wished
him to go. I’m pretty certain myself that Sir John was expecting
somebody whom he wished to see without the visit being known. But the
police will try the other tack first, and they will try and fix the
responsibility on one or all of you three. Don’t let me frighten you
too soon. They couldn’t get a conviction on what we or they know at
present; but once, by accident or by research, they can get any fact
that seems to corroborate the theory, then the position is changed. You
can rest assured they are looking for such a fact already. That’s what
I meant in warning you about your alibis.”

“Well, mine’s good enough,” said Baxter. “I was at the club.”

“What time did you go there?”

“About eight, and I stayed playing cards till nearly midnight.”

“Baxter, don’t forget Smith left Sir John soon after six. His dead body
wasn’t found till next morning. You’ve got to account for the time
from six to eight and after midnight. Then Marston has absolutely
forgotten. How about you, Moorhouse?”

“Oh, I was at the theatre.”

“That’s only another partial one, then. Why on earth don’t you people
try to find out who did murder the man and not wait till you are in
sight of the rope yourselves before you start?”

“But what can we do?”

“You can offer a reward for one thing. You can engage Dennis Yardley,
the detective, for another.”

“Tempest, can we make it worth your while for you to take a hand in it?”

“No. I’m not keen at playing detective professionally. It’s not my
profession. But I don’t mind helping Yardley, as I’ve done in other
cases, if that’s what you want.”

“Will you take a retainer from us?”

“What do you mean?”

“In case any of us are accused.”

“Oh, certainly. Fix it up with my clerk in the morning. Book it as
_in re_ Rellingham. Now, don’t do anything to draw suspicion upon
yourselves, but do your utmost to account for how you all spent that
particular night. Of course, I may be quite wrong in what I’ve said. I
hope I am, but I can’t help seeing the risk.”

The four men separated, each going his lonely way home. But
justification of all Tempest had said was to follow quickly. Step
by step, on the very lines the barrister had indicated, the case
was argued the following day in a leader in the same paper that
had previously taken up the matter, and the article wound up with
a definite demand for the arrest and trial of the three surviving
partners in the firm.

That a conviction could be obtained was a proposition which few cared
to admit; but, on the other hand, the bulk of the public were quite
willing to commit themselves to the ready admission that “there might
be something in it after all.” And, day by day, as the suspicion
grew, the position of the three solicitors became almost unbearable.
They felt themselves slowly but only too certainly drifting into the
position of social lepers. And there was nothing more that they could
do. They thought of libel, and the thing went to Lake Rodgers, K. C.,
for an opinion. His opinion was that the article had been so carefully
written that it contained no libel, and the opinion ended with the
friendly hint that a failure to obtain a verdict would probably be more
damaging under the circumstances than inaction.




CHAPTER IV


The summer of 1902 slowly slipped away. Twenty years had now passed
since Ashley Tempest had hung up the miniature of the dead Dolores in
his chambers--to him twenty busy and eventful years. He was by now one
of the leading members of his profession--the busiest junior at the
bar. The courts had risen for the vacation which Tempest was to spend
with the Shifnals. Securing his seat in the train at Euston, he had
bought the evening papers and pitched them in a heap in the corner he
had appropriated, and after doing so was standing in the fresh air
until the last moment, smoking one of his perpetual cigarettes.

As the doors were being noisily slammed along the train, he jumped in
and soon was smoothly gliding towards his destination. He heaved a
sigh of relief, for with the start from London he felt his holiday had
begun, and he could put the worries of his work behind him. Opening a
copy of the _Globe_ his attention was caught by the leaded capitals
announcing a “Sensational Tragedy.” The report that followed was not
very lengthy:

“A gruesome discovery has been made this afternoon at the Charing Cross
Hotel. A chambermaid, on entering one of the bedrooms in the annexe
which had not been let and which was supposed to be unoccupied, was
horror-struck to find lying upon the bed the dead and nude body of a
young woman. On the table by the bedside was an opened half-bottle of
champagne and a glass, evidently that from which the wine had been
drunk. We are informed that the victim of this tragedy, the facts
of which plainly point to suicide, was of surpassing beauty, but is
unknown in the hotel. No one can identify the body, and all the staff
of the hotel emphatically declare the lady was not registered there as
a visitor. Life had only been extinct for a short time, as the body,
when found, was still warm.”

Tempest read the account with amazement, for in every detail it
reproduced the story which was so deeply engraved on his memory. Here
was what he had been waiting for for twenty years--a case of suicide,
with a nude body. Save in cases of drowning, that one detail had
differentiated the case of Dolores Alvarez from all others he had ever
heard of, and it had always puzzled him. He had waited and waited for
a similar case, hoping that by some chance the motive or some other
circumstance might give him the clue to an answer to the perpetual
Why? which was ever in his mind as often as his eyes turned to the
miniature over his mantelpiece. He had waited in vain, until here at
last was what he had looked for, and that a more exact reproduction of
the former story than his wildest dreams had ever led him to imagine
could possibly occur. He put the paper down, and as the train ran into
Willesden his mind was made up. Calling a porter to look after his
luggage he wired to Lady Shifnal, postponing his visit, and returned to
town by the underground. Leaving the train at Westminster Station he
walked into Scotland Yard and asked for Inspector Parkyns.

“Parkyns,” he said, “I want you to do me a favour.”

“Delighted to, if I can, Mr. Tempest.”

“You’ve seen the account of this suicide at the Charing Cross Hotel?”

“Yes. As it happens, the case is in my hands.”

“That’s lucky. I want you to take me and let me see the room and the
body without making any fuss about it. Can you do it?”

“Well, perhaps it can be managed. Why are you so keen about it, sir?
You are not briefed by anybody yet, are you, sir?”

“No, Parkyns. Honest injun--I’m not. It’s purely curiosity. Look
here, inspector! Do you remember the suicide of the actress Dolores
Alvarez--the sister of Lady Madeley, you know--about twenty years ago?”

“Of course I do. I was in that as well; but I’d really forgotten all
about it.”

“I was in that case too, Parkyns. I had a watching brief at the inquest
from Lord Madeley’s solicitor, and ever since then that case has stuck
in my mind, because I never could see why she committed suicide, and
I want to know why. I don’t know whether you have noticed, now; but
in this case to-day, saving locale, you get every single detail of
that other case duplicated in this one. Of course, coincidences do
occur in the world. I don’t suppose or suggest there is any connection
between the two; but the details are so alike, that if this one can
be explained it may give me a hint I can build on, and so find an
explanation of the other.”

“I see what you mean, sir. Can you come along now, at once?”

“Yes, if that will suit you: any time you like.”

“We’d better go at once, as they will be removing the body to the
mortuary in an hour or two.”

Together the two men walked to the Charing Cross Hotel, and Parkyns led
the way to the bedroom, outside of which a constable was stationed.

“Has anyone been in since I left?”

“No, sir. The door hasn’t been opened,” answered the policeman.

“Well, then, Mr. Tempest, you’ll find everything exactly as I left
it, and I left it exactly as I found it, except that we got a sheet to
cover the body with. The hotel people say nothing was touched after
the body was found before I got here, and they sent for me at once.
Just as I arrived, the doctor came, and he just made certain that
life was extinct, and told me to send the glass and the bottle to the
analyst, and get the body removed to the mortuary, and I went away to
make arrangements. The people here are positive she was not staying as
a guest in the hotel, and none of them recognise the lady. Now, Mr.
Tempest, you know as much as I do. Would you like to look at the body,
sir?”

“Yes, I want to.”

The inspector turned down the sheet, and Tempest stared in
astonishment. Line for line, feature for feature, the face was that of
Dolores Alvarez, as he remembered seeing her. The little smile upon the
lips, the long dark eyelashes resting upon the cheek, the profusion
of long black hair lying loose upon the pillow, the same delicately
aristocratic features were here again, exactly reproduced. Were it
not that for twenty years the one woman had been dead, and lying
buried in her grave, Tempest would have sworn it was the same body he
had seen once before, under circumstances so similar. The likeness
and identity were uncanny, and the barrister knew it was no freak of
his imagination, for was not the face of Dolores hanging over his
mantelshelf, where he had looked at it that morning?

“What’s the matter, sir?”

“Parkyns, you say you were in the Alvarez case?”

“I was, sir; but, as I told you, I’d forgotten it.”

“And you haven’t noticed the likeness?”

[Illustration: “Line for line, feature for feature, the face was that
of Dolores Alvarez”]

“I never saw the body of Miss Alvarez.”

“Well, I did see her, and I remember her face. I’ve got a miniature of
her hanging in my chambers, so I know it well. Now, you can take it
from me, inspector, that the two faces are so similar that they might
be the same woman. If we didn’t know the one was dead, and had been
buried twenty years ago, I would have taken my oath they were the same.
The likeness is as strong as that. I never saw such a likeness in my
life. Talk about doubles, it’s an absolute reincarnation.”

The inspector was silent as Tempest, leaning on the foot of the bed,
gazed fascinated at the face of the dead woman.

“How are you going to identify her? You’ll have to try.”

“I’m going to have the body photographed here, before it is moved,
and then we shall take a cast of the face, and thoroughly examine
the body. That’s all that we can do, as far as I can see. We shall
examine the teeth, and I think we shall try and get finger-prints;
but she hardly looks as if her finger-prints are likely to be in our
collection.”

“No. There’s nothing of the criminal in that face. Was she married?”

“The doctor says not, and there is no mark of any wedding-ring.”

“What colour are her eyes?”

“Very dark blue.”

“Ah, that’s funny again! So were the eyes of Miss Alvarez, and she was
a Spaniard. When’s the inquest?”

“To-morrow, at eleven.”

“I shall be there. What’s the poison?”

“Prussic acid, so the doctor says. He said he could plainly smell it in
her mouth when he came.”

Tempest moved to the side of the bed and leant over the face. The
faint odour of almonds was still perceptible.

“Yes, I can smell it myself. There won’t be much mystery about the
manner of death.”

Tempest stayed until the body was removed, and wondered at the
reverence with which it was handled by men who must have long been
accustomed to death and callous at its manifestations, and then, saying
good night to Parkyns, he left. As he did so he turned back. “I say,
Parkyns, tell Yardley about it, and send word I’d particularly like him
to come to the inquest, if he can manage it, as I think it will be an
interesting case. There’s more here than there looks at first sight.”

“What do you mean by that, sir?”

“Ah, I’d like to think things over a bit.”

“Shall you give evidence or anything to-morrow, Mr. Tempest?”

“Oh, Lord, no! You needn’t be afraid of me getting a rise out of
any of your people. I’m not going to do that. To be perfectly frank,
Parkyns, I don’t approve altogether of coroner’s inquests. They serve
a useful purpose in deciding whether a death is a natural one or not.
But I think they ought to stop there. They must hamper your people
fearfully, if it is a case that has to come to you. I myself don’t
believe in making things public till you can go straight and arrest
your man. The coroner’s inquests only too often warn him to keep away.”

“I quite agree with you, sir. But still it’s the law, and we have to
put up with it.”

“Yes, I know. But as it is the law, get ’em over, and a verdict given
as quickly as possible, to leave your crowd with free hands. That’s
what I think.”

The inquest took place in due course the following day. The proceedings
were brief and formal. The body had been identified in the meantime as
that of Miss Evangeline Stableford, a well-known provincial actress;
and after evidence of identity and of the finding of the body, the
medical evidence which followed left no room for any doubt as to the
cause of death. The verdict of the jury was unanimous and immediate:
“Suicide by poisoning with prussic acid during temporary insanity,” in
spite of the remarks in the summing up of the coroner, that they had
no evidence before them of the state of mind of the deceased. But then
a coroner’s jury so often takes the bit in their teeth. The girl was
too beautiful to be buried with a stake driven through her body, which
many people still believe is even yet the legal consequence of a bare
verdict of suicide.

The public and the jury drifted out of the room; and the coroner, as he
left, noticing the barrister, said:

“Were you briefed here to-day, Mr. Tempest?”

“No--just curiosity; like the ’busman who takes his holiday by riding
on another man’s ’bus.”

“Well, from what one hears, I should have thought you were too busy to
bother about us.”

The barrister laughed. “The courts aren’t sitting.”

“Of course not. I’d forgotten. Inquests, you know, aren’t postponed
over vacations. Good morning.”

Tempest joined Yardley and Parkyns on the pavement outside.

“Well, Mr. Tempest, what do you think of it all?” said the inspector.

“Parkyns, you’ve known me a good many years now. It must be nearly
twenty years since I first cross-examined you at the Old Bailey.”

“Yes, it must be quite that long.”

“And we’ve been interested together or against each other in the same
cases a good many times since then, haven’t we?”

“We have, sir.”

“Well, have you ever known me to make a positive statement without
being fairly certain of it?”

“I don’t call one to mind.”

“And when I do make a positive statement, I’m not often wrong. Now am
I, inspector?”

“I’ve never known you wrong yet, sir.”

“Oh, I don’t say as much as that, Parkyns; but I’m going to make a
definite assertion now, and I think you can depend upon it.”

The two detectives listened with rapt attention as the barrister
continued.

“That woman no more committed suicide than I’ve done. It isn’t suicide
at all. She was murdered.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Just think, Parkyns. The body is found nude.”

“Quite so, sir; but so was Miss Alvarez, and you’ve never said that
case wasn’t suicide----”

“I agree, Parkyns, I never have said so; but when the body of Miss
Alvarez was found in the bedroom of her flat, her clothes were there in
the room. Now, it’s never dawned on you, or on the coroner or on the
jury, that Miss Stableford’s clothes were not in the bedroom or in the
hotel. There was nothing whatever in the room in the way of personal
belongings; there was not even a hairpin, and yet her hair was undone
and loose on the pillow. Now, a decent respectable woman, as we know
Miss Stableford was, doesn’t walk about the corridors of a decent
respectable hotel as this is, in broad daylight, with even her hair
undone. And she certainly doesn’t walk about the corridors without her
clothes on. I think that’s sound argument.”

“Then,” said Yardley, “do you think she was murdered somewhere else and
taken there afterwards?”

“No, not in the least. You can’t carry a dead body into a hotel without
it being noticed, nor dare anyone risk carrying a nude dead body along
the corridor from one room to another. No, the girl was murdered in
the room where her body was found, and only an hour or two before she
was found, and her clothes, belongings and hairpins were taken away
afterwards.”

“Why?” asked Yardley.

“Ah! now we get to speculation; but I think it was an attempt to hide
her identity. There you have your clue, Parkyns. At any rate, it’s the
only clue I see at the moment, and it’s one well worth your while to
follow up.”

“But in what way is it a clue?”

“It’s a clue, because whoever committed that murder--and mind you it
was murder, I’ve not a shadow of a doubt about that--whoever committed
that murder took pains that the body should not be identified.
Therefore, they feared that identification might throw suspicion in
their direction. You must first make certain that the body is that of
Miss Stableford. You say there were two teeth stopped with gold in
the upper jaw. Advertise for her dentist, and see if you can identify
that stopping. If you do that, then trace back the history of Miss
Stableford till you find someone likely to have desired her death;
someone upon whom the mere proof of identity can throw suspicion.”

The barrister nodded to the two detectives and went his way.

They watched him disappear in the crowd, and as they parted Parkyns
said:

“Jove! I wish we’d got him in the force.”

“Yes. He’d be a jewel for you, wouldn’t he? I often wonder how it is he
always puts his finger on the spot, and generally a spot nobody else
ever thought of.”

“Yes, it’s funny. I’ve no doubt whatever he is right, and that it’s a
case of murder. Why didn’t you and I think of that? Honour bright, I’d
have cheerfully taken the jury’s verdict if it hadn’t been for what he
said.”

“So should I,” answered Yardley. “Parkyns,” he continued, “if the girl
were murdered, somebody did it. Who was it?”

“Yes, that’s just the little detail you and I have got to try to find
out.”

Tempest left town to pay his postponed visit. With the verdict of
suicide the public rested content; and after the natural publicity of
the funeral, the public interest in the case quickly died down. This
was what Yardley and Parkyns desired, and quietly and unostentatiously
they then began to prosecute their inquiries. The stage history of Miss
Stableford was general knowledge in the profession, and it was a simple
matter to get into touch with Lady Stableford and learn all she knew
of the girl’s life. She could tell them, too, of the stopped teeth,
and with that all doubt as to the identification ended. Putting the
accounts together it was evident that they had the complete story, and
that with an accuracy of full detail amply sufficient to demonstrate
that ostensibly there was nothing in the life of Evangeline Stableford
which they could legitimately regard as a starting point for an
investigation with any hope of this resulting in an explanation of the
mystery. The thing was an absolute blank. Their inquiries showed beyond
doubt that Miss Stableford was a young provincial actress of some
talent and of great promise, leading an exemplary life, and possessed
of such means that inducement to the contrary on that score was in her
case wholly lacking. Lady Stableford, bitterly distressed at the fate
which had overtaken one who to all intents and purposes was her own
daughter, had placed ample funds at Yardley’s disposal, in the hope of
finding a clue to the mystery, and Yardley and Parkyns prosecuted their
research with zeal and vigor. But all to no purpose.

With the end of the vacation, Tempest returned to town, and Yardley
lost no time in making him aware of the result of their investigations.

Tempest, sitting in his chambers, listened attentively to what the
other men told him, and frankly confessed that he was absolutely
puzzled. But in his own mind he felt that the explanation lay in
the mystery surrounding the girl’s birth and in the great likeness
which existed between Evangeline Stableford and Dolores Alvarez. He
went to Somerset House, and, knowing the date of the birth of Miss
Stableford, he hunted for the certificate. No child named Alvarez
had been born in that year. That did not surprise him. He even went
to the trouble of getting copies of every certificate of the births
of an illegitimate child within a month on either side of the day on
which a child apparently evidently less than ten days old had been
found by Lady Stableford on the couch in her drawing-room. Tempest
knew that from the child’s clothes it was evident that the mother must
have been financially in comfortable circumstances at the time, and so
was able to eliminate the bulk of the children of whose births he had
certificates, by reason of the places of birth. The remainder Yardley
investigated one by one. It was a long and unpleasant task, but in
the end it had been possible in every case to trace each child--for
a period sufficiently prolonged to establish it as quite impossible
that Miss Stableford could be one of these children. But the likeness
between the two women haunted Tempest, and he wondered whether the real
explanation was that Evangeline Stableford was the child of Dolores
Alvarez. But an interview with the surgeon who had made the post-mortem
examination, and a reference by the latter to his case book, left no
doubt of the fact that Miss Alvarez had never had a child. Utterly
puzzled, Tempest turned to the only remaining possibility that Miss
Stableford might be the daughter of Lady Madeley; but a few careful
inquiries showed that Lord and Lady Madeley had been married some
days before Lady Stableford had found the child. By the fashionable
intelligence in different papers, and by the succession of hotel
registers, Tempest was able to trace the movements of the married
pair as day by day in easy stages they journeyed overland to Southern
Italy. The last supposition, therefore, was an absolute impossibility,
and Tempest finally could see no other conclusion than that the amazing
likeness was after all only coincidence.

So that they had nothing to go upon save the details of the tragedy.
These were strangely destitute of any enlightening clue.

Late one evening, Yardley and Parkyns called at Tempest’s chambers in
order to keep an appointment for which Parkyns had asked.

“Well, what is it?” asked the barrister.

“Mr. Tempest, I’m at my wits’ end about the murder of Miss Stableford.
I’ve done everything I can think of, so has Yardley. We haven’t found
out a thing, and the mystery is at the precise point it was when we
started. I’ve come to say that unless you can suggest anything, I’m
afraid I must give it up. You see, sir, this isn’t the only thing I
have to attend to. Have you thought of anything, sir?”

“Yes, Parkyns, many things, and I’ve done a little bit of inquiry
myself; but I must say all to no purpose, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t like to give it up, if you think there is anything more to be
done. Are you going to give it up, sir? Because if you do, there isn’t
much use of our going on.”

“Oh, it isn’t quite fair to me to say that, inspector. I’m only an
amateur. My interest in it isn’t professional.”

“What is your interest then, Mr. Tempest?”

The barrister turned and took from its nail above the mantelpiece, in
front of which he was standing, a miniature, which he passed to the
detective.

“That’s the explanation of my interest, inspector.”

“Where did you get this from, sir? Did Lady Stableford give it to you?”

“No. Who do you think it is?”

“Well, it’s a portrait of Miss Stableford, isn’t it.”

“No, not at all. It’s a portrait of Miss Alvarez. It’s been hanging
on that nail for twenty years. It’s the miniature I told you of. Your
mistake proves how great the likeness is. Now, do you understand how my
curiosity has been provoked?”

“I think I do, sir.”

“So far so good. Now, I’ve not given it up yet. There are two little
details that might pay for investigation. It’s no good trying to trace
the prussic acid, but you’ve got the champagne bottle. You might try
and trace that, and find out where that was bought and by whom. It’s
labelled Veuve Cliquot ’93, but I remember the cork. You’ve got it
still, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Last night I ordered a bottle of Cliquot ’93 at the club, and I saw
the cork of that. It’s got a totally different brand on it. Here it
is.” And the barrister passed the cork to the two detectives.

“But what do you make of that, sir?”

“Simply this--that one bottle or other is spurious. It’s not very
likely the club one is wrong, but still find out which is spurious; and
if it’s the one found in the hotel--you know the hotel people say they
didn’t sell that bottle--then you must hunt round and find out where
the spurious stuff is being made and sold. Then there’s another thing.
The bedrooms at the hotel all have self-closing doors, locking with
spring latches. They need the right key to open the doors.”

“Quite so.”

“Well, from the inquiries you made at the time it was perfectly evident
that no one had had the key of that bedroom, for the key had not left
the office for more than a week. The body had not been dead more than a
few hours even when I saw it. The scent of prussic acid will disappear
under twenty-four hours. Now, somebody entered that bedroom with a
key. There are two master keys to find. One will open all doors on
that corridor. That is in the possession of the head chambermaid, who
has charge of that corridor. The other, which will open all doors in
the annexe, the manager has. It is locked in his safe, and it is quite
impossible that that one can have been used.”

“Then that proves the chambermaid’s key was used?”

“It looks like it; but in that case the chambermaid herself used it,
for if you remember in her evidence at the inquest she said the key
which she wore on the chain attached to her belt had never been out
of her possession all day. She volunteered that evidence which is so
damning that she would never have said it except on the assumption
of its entire truth and her absolute innocence when she easily might
have overlooked the conclusion it pointed to. So I don’t think the
chambermaid’s key was used.”

“Then there must be another key?”

“Wait a bit, Yardley. Suppose that murder was premeditated? The
murderer would not have done it without making arrangements, and
thinking out his plans and seeing that they were possible. You can’t
walk blindly into an hotel and make certain that things will fall out
so absolutely as you require them to, that you can let your safety and
escape after committing a murder depend upon such a coincidence. The
thing isn’t reasonable. The chambermaid thinks that murder must have
been committed between two and three in the afternoon, because that is
the only time during the day when there is no one actually on duty
in the corridor. In the morning they are attending to the rooms, and
they have to stay about till two o’clock to answer the bells of those
people who come to their rooms to wash or change for lunch. About three
o’clock people come to their rooms to dress to go out calling, then
others change for tea, and again others change for dinner, and from two
to three is the only slack time during the day.”

“How do you know all this, Mr. Tempest?” put in the inspector.

The barrister laughed. “I had a long and interesting interview with
that chambermaid two days ago.”

“Then where was she during that time--from two to three on the day of
the murder?”

“Yardley, I’ll make a real detective of you some day; you’re getting
quite promising in the way you reason out things. Well, I’ll tell you.
She was having her _dinner_, and had got the key with her. Now she says
it is a regular thing that all the maids are at their dinner between
two and three. The murderer probably knew that, and if so there you get
premeditation again. The most likely way for that to be known would be
for the murderer to have himself stayed in the hotel and found it out.”

“But how could he get the key?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering, Yardley, and I can suggest one way.
Suppose the man goes and stays in the hotel in that very room, and
whilst the room is in his occupation, and the key legitimately in his
possession, suppose he had a duplicate made of it? Then he can keep and
use that duplicate when he likes.”

“But suppose all you say be true, Tempest. The girl was not staying in
the hotel. How in the name of fortune could he lure a respectable girl
up to his bedroom?”

“My dear Yardley, how was the girl to know it was his bedroom? There
are always suites of rooms in a hotel. Take it, for example, that the
man was an impresario, or said he was, and, deluding her into the idea
that he wished to talk business, invited her to go to his sitting-room.
The girl would go fast enough.”

“Would she stay when she got there and found it was a bedroom?”

“H’m--never thought of that. You’ve caught me out there, Yardley.
But--but--wait--wait a moment;” and the barrister picked up another
cigarette and lighted it, and the two men watched him as he began
unconsciously to pace up and down the room. Yardley knew the trick and
waited in silence.

“Yardley, you’ve brought it one step nearer. It must have been a woman
who murdered the girl. Any story would be sufficient excuse for her
going to a woman’s bedroom, and for her staying there after she got
into the room. Now there is another point, Yardley. All the keys have
stamped on them the name of the hotel and the number. No shop would
deliberately duplicate such a key. They would know it could not be
wanted for any legitimate purpose. A model must have been taken in wax
and the key made from that. I wish I had thought of that before. Still,
it may not be too late. The room had been empty for a week before the
body was found there. The chambermaid told me nobody had been put in it
since. Yardley, go to the Charing Cross Hotel at once, ask to see that
key, and examine it carefully, and see if there is any sign of wax on
it. If there is you will know I am right, and it will prove something
else besides.”

“What else will it prove?”

“Just this, that the previous occupant of the room is the guilty
person, for if anyone has used the key in between there will be no wax
on it. At least the odds are a hundred to one.”

The two detectives took their leave and went straight to the hotel.
It was exactly as Tempest had anticipated. There were still traces of
wax in the wards of the keys. It was a simple matter to ascertain that
the last occupant of the room had been a lady who had given her name
as Mrs. Garnett. A little investigation elicited the fact that she had
complained of her room being very dark, and had, by her own request,
been moved into one on the opposite side of the passage. She had
remained in the hotel until after the dead body had been discovered,
and had left, declaring vehemently that she would never be able to
sleep after her experience. The clerk and the other hotel servants had
no very definite recollection of the lady, save that she was always
dressed in black, and was dark and middle-aged.

As her own room was only just across the passage she could, of course,
easily make certain the other room was not occupied. A stranger to the
hotel wouldn’t know that.

“Yes, it all seems very simple now, doesn’t it, Parkyns?”

“Yardley, it makes us look rather amateurs. There’s nothing in it all
that we couldn’t have found out. Here you and I have been working on it
for weeks, and we draw everything quite blank, and that man just lights
one of his everlasting cigarettes and walks up and down his room in
front of us and gets the thing first try--talks it out--even thinks it
out before us.”

“Are you sure of that, Parkyns? It’s quite as likely he’d thought it
all out beforehand and made inquiries himself, and just sends us to
look for what he knew we should find.”

“He may have begun it, but he’d never have let you trip him up as to
its not being a man if he had done. He made a mistake there, and Mr.
Tempest doesn’t particularly care about doing that.”

“No, I agree with you on that point--he doesn’t. Still, the next move
is to find Mrs. Garnett, and I’ll tell you one certain fact, Yardley,
about her. The thing was premeditated, so you may be quite certain
Garnett is an assumed name, and probably a name assumed for the purpose
of the murder and consequently one that carried no clue in itself.”

A few days later, Tempest and Parkyns dropped across each other at
the Old Bailey, and the inspector told the barrister what he had
ascertained.

“Yes, I thought it would turn out that way. Now, you’ve got to try
to put your hands on Mrs. Garnett, and the only way I see of your
doing that is to find out some woman who will answer and whose life
somehow touched that of Miss Stableford. It’s a pretty little problem,
inspector. Here I must be off,” said the barrister, as his clerk
brought him word that the judge was summing up in a case that preceded
one in which he was himself briefed.




CHAPTER V


For some time Yardley and Parkyns devoted themselves diligently to the
search for Mrs. Garnett, but the effort proved like seeking a needle in
a bundle of hay. They had nothing to go upon--no detail from which they
could make a start. The hotel porters had not the smallest recollection
of the lady’s departure, and could give no hint how she had left the
hotel nor what might have been her destination.

At length, Yardley, confessing himself conquered, applied to Tempest.

“I know it isn’t fair to come bothering you,” he had said to the
barrister; “but the thing’s beaten me. If it were ordinary professional
work of mine, I should just report a failure and drop it. I really
don’t think it’s any good worrying over it any more, and Parkyns says
he’s had enough of it too. But you sent for me to go to the inquest,
and you say you are interested, so I decided I would see you again
before actually reporting to Lady Stableford.”

“I’m not sure I can help you much. I’m certainly not going to drop it
myself, but I don’t at present see how I can put you much further along
the road at present. Still, there’s one point. You remember what I
suggested as the reason Miss Stableford’s body was stripped?”

“You said it was an attempt to hide her identity; and that if we could
find any person upon whom suspicion attached, merely because the body
was that of Miss Stableford, that we should then have a clue. That was
what you said, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, exactly. But you couldn’t find any such person in relation to
Miss Stableford?”

“No, we couldn’t.”

“Well, here’s a suggestion. I tell you frankly, I don’t think it
could be substantiated in court. I don’t give it to you as a certain
deduction--it’s only a suggestion. The only mystery you can learn of in
connection with Miss Stableford is the mystery of her birth.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“Well, now, it’s pretty certain that the murderer of Miss Stableford
was a woman--this Mrs. Garnett.”

“Granted. What next?”

The barrister paused. “How old was Mrs. Garnett? The hotel people say
middle-aged, forty to forty-five.”

“Old enough to be Miss Stableford’s mother?”

“Yes, the girl was a bit short of twenty-one.”

“Well, Yardley, suppose you’ve got it now?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Suppose Mrs. Garnett were Miss Stableford’s mother, she would
naturally be concerned in the mystery of the girl’s birth? Yardley, I
tell you, if you can find out who was that girl’s mother, you’ll be a
big step onwards towards finding out the clue to this mystery. I am
fairly certain you will know then who Mrs. Garnett is.”

“Whatever made you think of that, Tempest?”

The barrister made no answer as he walked to the table, picked up a
cigarette and lighted it. Apparently he had dismissed the subject from
his mind. His next question had no relation to it.

“Have you done anything in the Rellingham murder case, Yardley?”

“How did you know I was working on it?”

“Oh, I advised them to retain you.”

“Then you’re in that as well, are you, Tempest?”

“It all depends what you mean by ‘in’ it. I’m not hunting for the
murderer, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you know all about it?”

“I do. What did they tell you, Yardley? You can speak frankly, for I
know all there is to be known about it, and I’m curious to know how
much they disclosed to you.”

“I think they told me all they knew themselves.”

“About the secret trust?”

“Oh, yes, they told me that;” and Yardley briefly recapitulated the
details Tempest already knew.

“I’m glad they told you, Yardley, else I should have had to hold my
tongue. You’ve seen the letter Sir John wrote?”

“I’ve got a copy,” and the detective produced it from his letter-case.
“Can you give me any tips about that? I want some badly, though I’m not
at the end of my tether with that case yet.”

“Well, Yardley, there’s one very curious sentence. Sir John says that
if the eventuality the trust is to provide for doesn’t turn up in one
hundred years from the 18th of August, 1881, it never will. What do you
make of that?”

“If you want to know my candid opinion, I think it’s all damned rot! I
believe Sir John was insane, and I’ve been interviewing his doctors. I
can’t say they welcome the suggestion, but that’s what I think. Look
here, Tempest, how can you call such a trust sane? Did you ever hear of
one like it before? It just seems wildly preposterous to me. I think
the fact that he could create such a trust--the will’s all in his own
handwriting, so he couldn’t have had advice--is just the best proof you
could want to demonstrate the truth of his insanity.”

“Yardley, I’m a lawyer--you aren’t. You can take it from me--even if
it were not a judgment in court--that the trust is legal, and I think
it is perfectly sane. The difficulty is this. Sir John had to deal
with a secret, and he did his best to make that secret sacred. But
Sir John knew nothing apparently about deduction, for it’s possible
to get a good deal of explanation out of the thing as it stands. All
I am doubtful about is how far one is justified in trying to find any
explanation at all. You see, he leaves things to his partners, trusting
blindly in their honour and integrity, and they accept the matter as
sacred. I don’t blame them. It’s what they ought to do. They retain
me in one way and you in another, and they disclose to us what they
decline to make public. You see, you and I in all decency--paid by
them, working in their interests--must adopt their standpoint. If they
are not justified in ferretting, neither are we.”

“Well, Tempest, your morality is chalks above mine; but take it as you
say, I don’t see what you are driving at.”

“I’m simply trying to decide what is the point at which we must stop;
but I think we are justified in going this far. It seems to me pretty
certain Sir John was considering the honour or the reputation of some
third party.”

“That’s so. I’ll admit that, if you bar insanity, I think the same.”

“Very well; that’s one step. Now, he speaks of an interval of one
hundred years. What can you connect one hundred years with?”

“It’s a blooming century, if that’s any help.”

“It isn’t, Yardley. To be perfectly candid, I have racked my brains for
days over it, and I can think of nothing in which one hundred years
from any given date is an integral and essential part of any fact,
idea, or supposition.”

“Well, Tempest, if you can’t think of anything, I’m willing to bet
there is nothing.”

“I distrust your premise, but I agree with your conclusion, Yardley.
What I believe is that it is an outside interval which is sufficient
for one to be certain it covers some other known but uncertain
interval. Now, what does a hundred years cover?”

“As much as charity. I’ve no doubt you’ve settled it to your own
satisfaction. Go on; don’t wait for me.”

“Well, Yardley, I think I can tell you. What’s the length of a man’s
life?”

“‘The days of our years shall be three score years and ten, and if by
reason of strength they be four score years’--there, you’ve got Bible
authority for that, Mr. Tempest.”

“Precisely. An interval of one hundred years is bound to embrace and
cover the whole period of any person’s life--to include his birth and
his death.”

“How about the centenarians?”

“They are too rare to take into consideration.”

“Well, take it then, Tempest, that you are right. The hundred years is
to cover some person’s life. Whose?”

“The life of some person born on the 18th of August, 1881. Now,
Yardley, who was born on that day?”

“Really, I’m not the Registrar-General.”

“No, of course not; but I wouldn’t give tuppence for your memory, my
dear Yardley.”

“Oh, go on; don’t beat about the bush. Take it for granted I’m as
stupid as an owl. I assure you I feel I am when I’m talking to you.”

The barrister laughed, and, taking his cigarette from his mouth, he
watched it as the smoke curled away from the burning end.

“Yardley, the water-tight compartments of your mind get locked a
bit too tightly. The 18th of August, 1881, is probably--pretty
certainly--the date of the birth of Evangeline Stableford. At any rate
that is the date of the birth of the child which was offered to Lady
Stableford for adoption, and the probabilities are overwhelming that
the child that was planted on her was that child.”

“Then do you mean to say Mrs. Garnett murdered Sir John as well?”

The barrister’s eyes half closed, and he spoke slowly and deliberately.

“No, Yardley, I don’t; but mark you, I do say this, that that
secret trust refers to Evangeline Stableford, and that Sir John was
safeguarding the honour of that girl’s mother, and her mother I am
pretty certain was Mrs. Garnett. Now, find the explanation of the one,
and you’ve explained the other. The two mysteries are one and the same;
of that I’m positive. What we have got to do is to trace Mrs. Garnett,
and find out who she is. The more I think of it the more convinced I am
that the papers Sir John left, which have been destroyed, would give us
the clue. But this also I am certain of, that they were never preserved
to clear up murder mysteries.”

“What do you really think, Tempest?”

“No; that’s not fair. I’ve told you what I feel certain about--the
things that it seems to me one is justified in arriving at by pure
deduction, and justified in acting upon. What I’ve told you already
I’ll stand to. Anything beyond that is just guessing, for which I won’t
be held responsible.”

“Quite so; but what do you guess?”

“Well, if you will treat this as no more than a guess, and not bracket
it as equally a certainty with all the rest that I’ve told you, I
don’t mind your knowing what I do think. I believe that Miss Stableford
was the daughter of Sir John and Mrs. Garnett, and that the secret
trust is an attempt by Sir John to secure that his daughter should be
provided for.”

“But that doesn’t explain his death or hers?”

“I grant you that: and that’s precisely why I doubt the accuracy of my
guess. Still, it’s the only logical conclusion I have argued out so
far. Look here, Yardley. Take it for granted that Miss Stableford was
Sir John’s daughter. He can disclose his own position as the father,
but he stands to hurt his daughter by labelling her a bastard, and he
also stands to damage her mother by labelling her to be immoral. Now,
either risk is considerable whilst the two women are alive. Neither
matters twopence when they are both dead. Sir John must have known
Evangeline was for the present well provided for. The probability was
that Lady Stableford would leave her a fortune, and in that case no
further provision would be necessary. With that probability it was, it
would certainly be, a positive shame to label Evangeline Stableford
as illegitimate or her mother as immoral. It would be so absolutely
unnecessary.”

“But, steady on, Tempest, how on earth was Sir John to be sure Lady
Stableford would leave the girl a fortune? Suppose the girl had lived,
and Lady Stableford had left her nothing? How was Sir John to know? How
were his partners to know from what you presume--assume it all to be
true--that the occasion had arisen when the trust came into operation?”

“They wouldn’t know.”

“Then your argument falls to the ground?”

“No, Yardley, it doesn’t. Your remark takes it one step further
forward.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Assume it all to be true, then something else has to be done to bring
about the occasion for the intervention of the trust. You can argue
it out, and think it over till the crack of doom, Yardley, but I am
positive that that trust cannot come into operation by mere fortuitous
circumstance. Somebody else has still got to do something; therefore,
Yardley, mark this--there is somebody else alive now who knows the
whole of the circumstances which were known to Sir John, and that
somebody else will create at the proper time, _if it be necessary_,
such an occasion that resort to the trust will be essential. That
person is the person whose honour Sir John was safeguarding. Now,
that person’s honour is precious in his or her lifetime--it will
matter little or nothing after death. Therefore, the other person was
watching Miss Stableford’s career. If Evangeline had been provided for
by Lady Stableford, nothing would ever have been done. But supposing
the old lady had left her unprovided for, then that person by his or
her will could and was intended to disclose sufficient to bring the
trust into operation for the benefit of Evangeline. You can discuss the
thing for a century, Yardley, but you will find that it is the only
logical conclusion you can come to on what we know. It’s the only one
possible.”

“Why didn’t Sir John simply hand over £20,000 in his lifetime to Miss
Stableford? It could have been done anonymously, if there were any
secret to be guarded.”

“Very likely he meant to when she came of age. Don’t forget she died a
minor.”

“Well, then, why didn’t he hand the money to this other person whom you
say knows everything and is now alive?”

“I don’t know, Yardley; but it was probably because he didn’t trust
that person. He did trust his partners. Look here, there are scores of
people in this world who can be trusted to do a specified thing who
are absolute fools over money. They are not necessarily dishonest. It
simply is that they muddle money away. Pay it all into a single banking
account, and find to their horror, when it is too late, that they have
overdrawn their accounts. That’s how half the trust funds which are
lost go. That is what Sir John was afraid of.”

“Who do you think that other person is, Tempest?”

“You can take it for granted Sir John never gave away a client in his
life. The child’s mother is bound to have known. I expect that other
person was the mother.

“Still, after all, Yardley,” said the barrister, as he helped himself
to another cigarette from his case, “you see, if it were merely the
providing for the welfare of a certain person, there are hundreds of
ways in which this could have been done without exciting any suspicion
at all. Sir John was a clever lawyer, and knew of those ways. The
secret trust was so unnecessary. Therefore, though I am still inclined
to think my guess correct, I’m certain that if it be correct, there is
a lot more to come out. You see, it is quite possible no provision will
ever be claimed under the trust--which makes one doubt the daughter
idea. What we know or can guess won’t properly explain everything.
Yardley, you must find out Mrs. Garnett and who she is.”

“Can’t you set me something easier to do? Working with you somehow
always seems to involve these forlorn hopes, wild-goose sort of hunts.
How _am_ I to find the woman?”

“God knows, Yardley; I don’t. I think the most likely way would be to
trace the birth of Miss Stableford.”

“But we’ve tried that, and failed.”

“I know; but we’ve only tried England. I’ve never been in such a
position myself, and perhaps I don’t know, but it’s always a standing
mystery to me, why the illegitimate child of a woman who wants to
cover up its birth is ever born in England. A few pounds take you over
to France, where not a soul knows you. The mother can call herself
Mrs. anybody, and register the child as the child of any father or a
mythical father, if you like. The fraud couldn’t possibly come out till
afterwards, when the mother is safe back in England. I’ve never looked
it up, but I doubt if they would extradite for such an offence. It’s
forgery here by Act of Parliament, but I don’t suppose it is in France.”

“You might say the same of any country in Europe?”

“Yes, I agree; but don’t forget the child was only ten days old when
it was left with Lady Stableford. The baby was already born, for her
sex was disclosed when the first letter was written to Lady Stableford.
Between the date at which the lady disclosed her name and address and
her finding of the child, there was no time for the infant to have been
brought from any great distance. The baby was probably born in France.”

“Do you think it’s worth while going to France and making inquiries
there?”

“Hardly; for the odds are 20,000 to one against the birth being
registered in the correct or any genuine name. Nor do we know what name
to look for. Obviously it couldn’t be Stableford.”

“Up against a blank wall again. Which way round are you going?”

“Well, you’ve got the remarkable likeness between Evangeline Stableford
and Dolores Alvarez. Dolores was certainly not the child’s mother.
She had never had a child; but it’s worth your while to work out the
Alvarez pedigree, for I shall be everlastingly surprised if there
proves to have been no blood relationship at all between the two women.
I don’t promise you that you’ll find the solution; but that’s the only
channel I think of at present, and it’s worth trying. Still, there’s
one other alternative. Suppose Sir John is trying to protect the honour
of a man, and that the child is not his at all? Suppose Sir John
himself were only a trustee, and that he did not create the trust, but
only passed it on?”

“Suppose indeed, Tempest! However do you think of things as you do?”

“Think! One can’t help thinking. The alternatives jump at you. But you
can take it for granted that if Sir John were protecting a man, that
man was no ordinary client. Any man will go to any lengths in the
interests of a woman, particularly if she be a pretty woman; but I’m
hanged if I think many men would go to the bother Sir John did simply
in the interests of a man. Besides, a man’s interests never get so
important in this avenue that they are worth such procedure. In fact,
it is hardly a very likely solution.”

“Tempest, suppose her father were a king?”

“I’ve thought of that, but then kings’ mistresses are always the wives
of other men, who father their children for them. Added to which,
Yardley, a king lives his life so much in the open that his bastards
are known to many people, often to all the world. They can’t be hidden
up. No, it isn’t a king. Do you remember the story of poor Parnell?
It’s always been a mystery to me that the Irish have ever tolerated
the English Liberal Party since. The Irish were more powerful under
Parnell than they have ever been before or since. Yet they let the
Radical Nonconformist conscience fire the ultimatum at them that they
must throw Parnell over. And so they broke him and broke themselves.
It was such sickening cant--that ultimatum. Yardley, she was far more
likely to be the child of a man in the position of Parnell than the
child of a king. You see, a king is not dependent on public support for
his position. A public man is, and the whole of his private life is
expected to be white as driven snow. If it isn’t, he’s got to whitewash
over the shady places till the public can’t spot them. And that takes
some doing. What I doubt is that Sir John would lend himself to it. You
see, both the alternatives are unlikely. Which is the least unlikely?”

“Hanged if I know!”

“I’m sure I don’t, Yardley. As far as we know at present, it’s just a
case of ‘you pays your money and you takes your choice.’”

“Tempest, what sort of a man was Sir John?”

“Can’t tell you. I’ve seen him in court a few times. Just knew the old
boy to nod to, but that’s all. I never held a brief for him. You see,
he was one of the beastly respectable sort of solicitor. A divorce
case or anything nasty or criminal he’d send on at once to another
firm. Nice stodgy conveyancing, chancery work or family trust deeds and
things of that kind were all he would do. He was a splendid father to
unregenerate cubs.”

“And all the time--as likely as not--he was a hot ’un at home, eh?”

“May have been, for all I know; but I never heard a whisper of that
kind of thing about him. He wasn’t a Wesleyan or a class leader or any
other advertised kind of humbug. He would play cards at the club. I’ve
seen him at Ascot and Good-wood. He was a great first-nighter, and all
that sounds pretty decent and ordinary.”

“Have you asked his partners if he had any private clients?”

“Yes, I did. They know of none. As far as they are aware, all
the business he did went through the office in the regular way.
Occasionally he would press-copy a letter himself in a private
letter-book he kept. But Baxter has been through that, and he says
there is nothing suspicious in it and nothing the other partners didn’t
know about.”

“Then why did he keep the letter-book private?”

“Baxter told me that the letters certainly were private--the sort of
letters you wouldn’t let the office boy see, but nothing more than
that.”

“I’d like to see that book, Tempest.”

“So should I. But in the face of what Baxter says, I hardly see how
we could press the point. We mustn’t let them get the idea that we
are merely curious, or they will all just shut up like oysters.
Still, Baxter isn’t a fool; and if he says it wouldn’t help us, the
probabilities certainly are that he is right. To sum it all up,
Yardley, you’ve got the mystery of the death of Sir John, the mystery
of the secret trust, and the mystery of the death of Miss Stableford,
and I am convinced that all the lot are really only one mystery. But
all the same, we haven’t got the explanation of that mystery.”

Some days later, Arthur Baxter came round to Tempest’s chambers.

“I haven’t any idea,” he said, “whether there is anything in it or
not, but you asked me about Sir John’s private letter-book. Yesterday
I found a letter had been copied in it which I had never previously
noticed; and as I can’t explain it, and as neither of my partners know
or can even guess to what it refers, we three have all come to the
conclusion that you had better be told about it, in case there may be
any clue to be got from it.”

“How did you come to miss it before?”

“Well, the old boy didn’t copy it following on the others. It was on a
page quite by itself, very nearly at the end of the book. I was looking
in the index. I wanted some figures from a certain letter which I knew
Sir John had copied in his own book, and I came across the reference
‘S. T. 477.’ Now, it is a 500-page letter-book. The last copied letter
is on page 304. Naturally we didn’t look on through a lot of blank
pages, and so we missed it. I can’t imagine why he copied it there and
not in its proper place.”

“Probably he half meant to tear it out. It was most likely copied for
_temporary reference_, and when the opportunity for its use was over
he probably intended to destroy it. That would be why it was only
indexed under initials.”

“What do you suppose ‘S. T.’ means?”

“Secret trust, I should guess. Would that fit the letter? Let me see
it,” said Tempest.

“Well, here’s a copy of it.”

“Sir John Rellingham has received and carefully considered the letter.
In the exercise of his discretion he must decline the request. He
cannot but think that the interview is essential.”

“Who was it written to?”

“There isn’t a hint, and it isn’t dated.”

“When was it written?”

“Some time during the week before his death.”

“How can you prove that?”

“Well, it’s rather funny. The copying-ink we used to use in the office
was a sticky purple kind of stuff. But we changed to Stephen’s
blue-black copying-ink for some reason or other a week before he died,
and this letter was written in the new ink.”

“Did Sir John open his own letters at the office?”

“No, the confidential clerk opened everything addressed to anybody. It
was the understood thing amongst the lot of us that everything that
arrived at that address must be the common interest and knowledge of
the firm, so nobody used the address for his private purposes.”

“But suppose a letter marked ‘_Private_,’ and addressed to one of you
personally arrived. What would happen?”

“Oh, Smith would open it!”

“Has Smith seen this copy?”

“Yes, and he says no letters arrived at the office for Sir John, within
the last month of his life, that this could possibly have related to.”

“Then Sir John must have received it at his own address?”

“That’s probable. You see, the letter carries over to the second
page. Sir John’s private notepaper (he kept some at the office) would
fit this letter. The office paper won’t. So much of our stuff is
typewritten that all the office paper is the single sheet, square
quarto stuff. Our paper never does carry over, because one sheet is one
page. Therefore, as he used his private notepaper, with his own address
on, to answer it, I should guess it was a reply to a letter which had
reached him at home.”

“Baxter, I suppose you haven’t found any letters this could possibly be
a reply to?”

“No, there’s nothing. I’ve been through all the letters in his pocket,
or that came to the office during the last ten days of his life, and
there was nothing at his house. It couldn’t possibly fit anything.
Still, Sir John often said that the safest place for a secret was in
the fire.”

“Then we had better take it that whatever letter it was a reply to has
been destroyed?”

“That seems pretty certainly so. Tempest, can’t you think of any
explanation? Can’t you unravel the business? They say you’ve never
failed with any one of these murder cases that you’ve tackled. Why have
you failed us?”

“No, Baxter, that isn’t cricket. I’m not a detective, and I never
undertook to play detective for you. When I have had to get a prisoner
off, there’s precious little I stick at. I’ve done all that lay to my
hand. I’ve sometimes gone out of my way and done a bit more, but I
don’t undertake to do detective work.”

“Tempest, for God’s sake have pity on us! Since this bother cropped
up, forty-five clients have formally removed their business from us.
Goodness only knows how many more have quietly dropped us without
making a fuss and intend never to come back. In twelve months’ time we
shan’t have a client left. I’m not married, no more is Marston, and
he’s young, but Moorhouse has a wife and family. It’s serious enough
for all of us, but it’s Gehenna for him. Can’t you suggest something?
What do you think?”

Tempest and the solicitor walked out of Lincoln’s Inn together, and
slowly across the fields, and as they went the barrister repeated the
story he had argued out with Yardley.

The solicitor stopped and turned and faced the other man on the
pavement.

“Tempest, you were present when that trust case was on. Do you remember
that woman in court, sitting by herself, heavily veiled at the back,
and we wondered what brought her there?”

“Remember! Damn! damn! damn! Why didn’t I think of it? What an asinine
fool I was. That must have been Mrs. Garnett. Baxter, why don’t you
kick me?”

“I ought to be kicked myself. We were a pair of fools.”

“That explains why she was so interested. Yes, she wanted to know about
the trust.”

“Tempest, had you thought all this out when that case was on? If you
had, then I will kick you.”

“No, old man, I hadn’t. I was arguing it out with Yardley a few days
ago. To be perfectly frank, I tried to put a certain proposition to
him, and he kept on objecting and objecting; and all the time, as I
was explaining away his objections to him, I was step by step arguing
myself further on. That’s the real truth.”

“I wish we had got hold of that woman. Her presence in court that day
seems to confirm your theory, Tempest.”

“Baxter, go back to your office and make inquiries whether any of
your clients have altered their wills since the date of Evangeline
Stableford’s death.”

“I’ve asked that already. We know of no alteration of a will by any
client. Of course, we’ve made a good many wills since; but, as far as
I can find out, none of them are for any client for whom we held a
previous one. But Sir John was a clever lawyer, and I don’t for one
moment suppose that the firm would hold such a will as you suppose
exists, if we held the other ends of the tangled thread, as apparently
we do. It’s all amazingly funny, Tempest.”

“I think it is,” began the barrister, as with his eyes on the ground he
slowly paced on along the pavement.

“I’ve a warrant for your arrest, Mr. Baxter!” and both the men turned,
as an inspector of police, overtaking them, placed his hand on the
solicitor’s arm.

“It’s really come, then?” he gasped, as he turned, his face blanching
deathly pale.

“Damn you, Baxter! hold your tongue!” said Tempest, whose mind,
accustomed to criminal work, at once saw the danger of the ghastly
remark the solicitor had made. “Robson,” he added, for he recognised
the inspector, “what’s this arrest for?”

“Murder of Sir John Rellingham, sir.”

“But I understood Parkyns had got that case in hand?”

“So he has, Mr. Tempest. I’m simply making the arrest for him. He’s ill
in bed.”

“What’s your evidence, Robson?”

“There’s a lot, Mr. Tempest--all that secret trust business.”

“Oh, that’s only the halfpenny rag stuff! You haven’t arrested Mr.
Baxter on that. What’s turned up fresh? Come on--out with it. You’ll
have to tell the magistrate under twenty-four hours.”

“Well, Mr. Tempest, a revolver has been found in Mr. Baxter’s rooms,
with one chamber empty, whilst the other bullets match the one Sir John
Rellingham was killed with.”

“It’s a----” began the solicitor, but Tempest’s hand closed on his arm
like a vice. “Be quiet,” he said; adding, “I can’t do much before the
magistrate, but I’ll be there.”

“Tempest, try and get me bail?”

“Hopeless, old man. It’s a charge of murder.”

The inspector formally gave his prisoner the usual warning; and Tempest
asked, “Where are you going to charge him?”

“Bow Street, sir.”

“When?”

“Now, at once.”

“Then I’ll come along with you.”

The clerk of a friend of Tempest’s passed at the moment, and the
barrister stopped him. “Just go into my chambers, and tell my clerk to
come along to me at Bow Street at once, will you?”

The three men got into a four-wheeler, and were rapidly driven to the
police station. A few minutes of brief formality and Arthur Baxter was
charged before the magistrate and remanded. Evidence of arrest and of
the finding of the revolver was given.

Tempest knew that, as the necessity for further investigations had been
alleged, it was purposeless to try to break up the case at that stage,
and he merely contented himself with reserving his cross-examination of
the witness.

The inspector asked for a search warrant, to enable a search to be made
of the offices of the firm.

Tempest at once objected, pleading the privilege of the solicitor.

“Is there any case on this point, Mr. Tempest?” said the magistrate.
“It seems rather an interesting one.”

“I know of none, sir; and, even if there were, his partners could plead
the same privilege.”

The inspector urged the necessity of the search strongly, but Tempest
strenuously objected.

“I am not sure you are not right, Mr. Tempest. Still, it’s a point that
ought to be authoritatively settled. Would you be content if I grant
the application of the inspector, subject to an undertaking that no
attempt to execute it is made till your appeal is decided? I suppose
you will appeal?”

“Certainly.”

“Then that is how it had better stand.”

“But papers may be destroyed meanwhile, your worship?” objected the
inspector.

“You must take that risk, inspector. It doesn’t amount to much, for if
there ever were anything compromising, I’ve no doubt it was destroyed
long ago. Still, it’s an interesting point that ought to be settled.
Who issued the search warrant for Mr. Baxter’s rooms, inspector?”

“That was done at Scotland Yard, your worship. But because of this
privilege I was told to apply to you, sir, for this other warrant.”

“Quite so--quite so,” assented the magistrate, and Arthur Baxter was
led away to the cells.

“Mr. Tempest,” said the magistrate, as the barrister, picking up his
hat and stick, was preparing to leave the court, “I’ve no doubt this
appeal will take some time. I quite appreciate the reason why you
did not ask for bail. It is never ordinarily granted in a charge of
murder. But _prima facie_ it seems so unlikely that anyone in the
position of Mr. Baxter would be likely to be guilty of the crime, that
I look with a good deal of apprehension at the possibility of retaining
an innocent man in custody until that appeal can be argued. Between now
and next week you will doubtless have an opportunity of consulting your
client; and if you find there is any really satisfactory explanation
of the discovery of the revolver, and you are in a position to then
substantiate it with proper evidence, I am at present inclined to think
I might favourably consider an application for bail, providing there is
not then any additional evidence. But, of course, it will need to be
very substantial bail.”

“I’ll undertake it shall be forthcoming to any amount, sir,” answered
the barrister.

The next day Tempest had an interview with the prisoner. “Now, how
about this revolver?” he asked.

“My dear man, I know no more about it than you do. I’ve never had a
revolver in my hand in my life, much less fired one. I never put it
there. I never knew it was there.”

“The inspector swore he found it in your empty suit-case in your
bedroom. When did you last use your suit-case?”

“About a fortnight before Sir John was shot. I stayed a week-end with
the Trelawneys at Ashover.”

“Haven’t you been away from town since?”

“Oh, yes; but I’ve got a larger case, which I generally use.”

“Who unpacked for you when you came back from Ashover?”

“My man, Bailey.”

“Well, the inspector says the suit-case was not locked--just strapped.”

“That’s how it always is. Do you think the police put it there,
Tempest?”

“Oh, no. Parkyns was present when Robson found it. I know Parkyns
well, and I’d trust him anywhere. Besides, the police don’t do that
kind of thing. They try to get convictions, of course; and if a simple
constable makes a mistake he can always get his pals to come and back
him up. But higher up in the force they wouldn’t even do that. They are
a fine lot of men. Can you trust Bailey?”

“If I find I can’t, I’ll never believe in anyone else so long as I
live. I’d have cheerfully trusted my life to him.”

“Well, Baxter, it’s simply this, unless that revolver can be explained
it won’t be much good asking for bail. Can you suggest anything? I’ll
go and cross-question Bailey, and I’ll see if Parkyns will tell me
whether the police have found out where it was purchased. That may help
us.”

The barrister left the prison, puzzled and troubled. After the broad
hint the magistrate had given him it was disheartening to him as an
advocate, and damning to his client, that he could put forward no
explanation.

He went straight to Baxter’s rooms and interviewed Bailey. As he had
expected, he learned that, of course, the revolver was not in the case
when Bailey had unpacked it.

“Did you lock it up then?”

“No, sir; just strapped it. To be quite frank, Mr. Baxter has lost the
key of it. That happened years ago. If he ever uses it he always takes
it in the railway carriage with him.”

“Were you in the room when the police found it?”

“No, sir, I wasn’t.”

“Bailey, what are Mr. Baxter’s arrangements here? Who are the other
servants?”

“There’s only my wife and myself, sir. It’s quite a small flat. The
dining-room, the sitting-room, the kitchen, and three bedrooms.”

“Is it ever left entirely empty?”

“Not as a rule, sir; if one’s out the other’s in. Mr. Baxter makes a
point of that, unless sometimes when he’s been in himself he’s told me
to take my wife out for a walk.”

“Then it’s never been quite empty?”

“Well, I can’t say that. Some time ago my wife’s mother was very
ill, and she went home to nurse her. You know, sir, I used to be
soldier-servant to Mr. Baxter’s brother--the one who was killed in
South Africa. He was in the Army Service Corps. So I could do most
things. So Mr. Baxter said that if I could manage his breakfasts he
would dine out till my wife came back. That was how we managed it; but,
of course, I often had to run out to do shopping, and then the flat
would be empty.”

“There would be the chance then that somebody could enter the flat
without you knowing?”

“Yes, sir, at those times.”

“But you wouldn’t leave the flat unlocked?”

“No, sir, of course not; but there was only the one latch;” and the man
led the way to the door.

Tempest wondered at the array of bolts and chains which was there, and
doubtless brought into use every night when three people were sleeping
in the flat; whilst all the time a single drop latch was the only
protection when the place was unoccupied.

“Who carries the key?”

“There are two, sir. I carry one and Mr. Baxter has one.”

“Has yours ever left your possession?”

“Never, sir.”

“Well, Bailey, unless you or your master are hiding something from me,
the explanation of this revolver business must come from you. Can you
suggest anything? Look here, I’m on Mr. Baxter’s side, so you needn’t
mind what you say to me. Tell me anything you know or can think of--no
matter how black it looks. The truth always helps, no matter what it
is, when a prisoner is innocent.”

The man hesitated, and Tempest saw at once there was something to come
out. He began once or twice in a stammering way, and then stopped.

“Now, what is it?”

“Please, sir, perhaps you ought to know Sir John Rellingham came here
the day before he was murdered.”

“Came here! Whatever for?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What time of day?”

“About nine o’clock in the evening, sir.”

“Well, why shouldn’t he?”

“No reason at all, sir--only what he said when he left.”

“What was that?”

“I think Mr. Baxter was trying to persuade him to something; for, as he
stood in the doorway, I heard Sir John say--‘No, Arthur; don’t say any
more. It’s quite final. I will not; I can’t;’ and then I let him out
and called a cab for him.”

The barrister’s face grew grave. “Had there been a quarrel?” he asked.

“No, sir. They didn’t seem to have been quarrelling. They seemed to
part quite friends, but they had had a long argument. I could hear that
much.”

Tempest turned away and moodily walked down the stairs. What had been
the point of difference between the two men? When he got back to his
chambers in Lincoln’s Inn he found a note from Inspector Parkyns.

  “DEAR SIR,--In reply to your inquiry, there is no reason at all why
  I should not tell you. All identification marks on the revolver have
  been carefully filed out, and we are quite unable to trace it.--Yours
  respectfully, S. PARKYNS.”

Another clue had failed.

When Baxter was again brought up at Bow Street, Tempest was compelled
to admit he could at present offer no explanation of the presence
of the revolver in the prisoner’s rooms. Not only had he failed in
this direction, but evidence was now given by the bankers of Sir John
Rellingham, that since the death of Sir John a bill for £2000 had been
presented for payment purporting to bear his signature as acceptor.
They had never previously known Sir John to accept a bill, and his
current credit balance was always so large that it seemed strange he
should have done so on this occasion. They had also grave doubt as
to the signature. The bill had been presented by a well-known firm
of money-lenders, whose endorsement appeared on the back. A member
of the firm in question, when called to give evidence, deposed that
three months previously they had had dealings with the prisoner, who,
professing to be acting for a client, had taken up before maturity a
bill bearing the signature of a well-known peer. They had had doubts as
to the genuineness of that particular signature, but had discounted it
on the strength of the name with which it was endorsed.

Tempest left his seat and went over to the dock.

“Baxter, is this true?” he asked in a low tone.

“Perfectly true. I did deal with them, but I was acting for Lord
Deverell, and I did it at his request.”

“Then the papers in the office will explain that?”

“I’m afraid not. He came and called on us, and I saw him. The bill
was only £500, and he brought the money in gold. He seemed very upset
and anxious about it, so I went off there and then to Isaacson’s--got
the bill, and Lord Deverell waited in my room whilst I was away.
Consequently there was no note of any kind made about the case. He
asked me not to, in fact, and he burnt the bill in my room as soon as
he got it back.”

“But you’ll charge him for doing it, won’t you? It will be in your
ledger or somewhere?”

“No. You see, we do all his estate business--that’s hundreds a year.
So as he seemed very anxious there should be no record made of the case
I let it slide. I told Marston and Moorhouse, and they quite agreed.”

“Well, we shall have to get Lord Deverell to give evidence for you.”

“He died three weeks ago.”

Tempest returned to his seat to cross-examine the money-lender.

“How did you get that bill?”

“We discounted it in the ordinary course of business.”

“For whom did you discount it?”

“It was brought to us with this letter,” and the witness produced a
letter for inspection. It was handed to the magistrate, who passed
it on to Tempest for inspection. To his amazement he saw that it was
written on the notepaper of the firm of Rellingham, Baxter, Marston &
Moorhouse--obviously in a disguised handwriting.

The note merely stated that the firm were requested by one of their
clients to ask Messrs. Isaacson to discount the bill enclosed on the
best terms they could, and hand the proceeds to the bearer.

“Who was the bearer?” asked counsel. The witness was unable to say.
He had assumed it was one of the firm’s clerks. He had not taken any
particular notice of the man.

“How did you get the other bill--the one bearing Sir John Rellingham’s
signature?”

“That reached us in the same way, brought by a messenger with a note.”

“Have you got that note?”

The witness produced it. It was similar to the other, but merely asked
Messrs. Isaacson to oblige the firm by discounting it, saying that on
behalf of a client the firm had to find the money in the course of a
few hours, to meet a heavy payment, and their client required time to
realise money to meet his liability.

“Was it the same messenger who brought it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see the man myself.”

“Would your clerks know?”

“I hardly suppose so. They would simply receive a note, and bring it
in to me in each case. There would be nothing in either instance which
would give them any special reason to connect a given messenger with
any particular transaction. They would know nothing of the transaction
or from whom the messenger came.”

“Would there be no entry they would make in your books? Wouldn’t they
be aware of the transaction in that way?”

“I always keep my own books.”

“How did you pay these bills?”

“In bank notes.”

“Did you keep the numbers?”

“Yes;” and the witness handed them in.

“Have the notes been traced?” asked the magistrate.

“Yes, sir. I’m going to call evidence,” replied the prosecuting
solicitor.

A bank clerk next proved the opening of an account by a Mr. Everard
Clarke, who had given references. They had communicated with the
references given, and had received satisfactory replies. All the notes
had been paid in by Mr. Clarke. In each case the bulk of the money had
been withdrawn in gold shortly afterwards, but not all in one sum. The
account was now practically closed. Their own charges would more than
absorb the small remaining balance. They had since tried to trace Mr.
Clarke, but the address he had given had proved fictitious, and the
same with his references--these, it was now found, having been written
from accommodation addresses.

“Could he recognise Mr. Clarke?”

“He was afraid not. He believed the gentleman only came to the bank
once--when he opened the account.”

“Was it the prisoner?”

“I really couldn’t say. I don’t recognise him.”

The barrister sat down in despair, and the prisoner was again remanded.
The two men had an interview in the cells immediately afterwards.

“Tempest,” immediately began the solicitor, “those letters are absolute
forgeries. There isn’t one of us would have dreamed of doing such a
thing. If Lord Deverell had wanted £500 he could have had that much,
or £5000, for the mere asking, and we should have paid it out of our
current account. We are constantly financing our clients, and we keep
a big floating balance for the purpose. Besides, we should never have
sent any client to Isaacson’s, and as for sending for £2000 for
ourselves, it is ridiculous. Fancy a firm of our standing touching such
a crowd or that kind of business!”

“How could they get your notepaper?”

“Easily enough. They could get a heading engraved like ours for a few
shillings, if they could find a man they’d trust to do it.”

“Baxter, what did Sir John go to your rooms about the day before he was
murdered?”

“Who told you that?”

“Bailey did.”

“Oh, it was simple enough,” the solicitor answered, speaking very
slowly. “He--he just came in for a smoke and a chat.”

“Baxter, that’s a lie, and you know it. What was it that he refused to
do?”

The other man flushed a dusky crimson. “I’d asked him,” he stammered,
“to help me to float a little syndicate I was interested in. He said
solicitors ought not to gamble, and so he declined to have anything to
do with it.”

From his half-closed eyes Tempest watched the other as he had invented
the story. He felt certain the tale was perfectly untrue, and that the
solicitor was hiding something. What was that something?

Thinking it all out quietly afterwards, Tempest came to the conclusion
that, whether Baxter were innocent or guilty, probably the interview
with Sir John had no relation to his murder. Presuming that it had, the
motive for the crime was the desire to profit financially by Sir John’s
death. The only financial matter that could possibly be on the tapis,
and be in issue between Baxter and Sir John, involved the supposition
that Baxter had forged Sir John’s signature and that Sir John had found
this out. Because the Deverell bill had been taken up and settled,
that matter was closed. But the two had parted on quite friendly terms,
an impossible supposition if the one had discovered that the other had
forged his name. There might be--as there probably were--many private
matters which Sir John and his partner could have been discussing
which had no relation to the crime. But supposing Baxter’s story were
true as regards his interview with Lord Deverell, then there was fraud
regarding the inception of the matter in the forgery of the letter on
the strength of which the bill had been discounted.

Assuming that fraud, how had Lord Deverell ever got to know of the
existence of the bill? Isaacson’s had admitted they did not communicate
with him. And why had he wished to take up the bill? His desire to do
so was an admission of the signature. Yet why, if that were so, had
Lord Deverell troubled to forge a letter from his own solicitors? His
own name was on the bill, so there could be no question of an attempt
to cover up his identity of his participation in the matter. His
interest in it being admitted, it would have been simple enough for
him to get it discounted by his own bank, or even by Isaacson’s, who
would have jumped at the chance of temporarily obliging a person of
his financial stability, even supposing it to be necessary for him to
draw a bill at all. There were all these improbabilities in the way
of accepting Baxter’s own story. On the other hand, the prosecution
alleged that Baxter had himself forged the bill, and written the letter
bearing his firm’s name, and then had himself taken the bill up to
prevent its presentation. Against that supposition there was only the
character of Arthur Baxter. And if Baxter would forge one bill he would
forge another. He would know the signatures of both Lord Deverell and
Sir John.

But then--and the thought flashed across Tempest’s brain--so would any
of the clerks in the office. They could get at the key of the office.
It was by no means unlikely that one of them might have had access
to Baxter’s rooms. Picking up the telephone, he at once rang up the
Exchange and asked to be put on the number which he knew was that of
the solicitor’s flat.

“That you Bailey?--I’m Mr. Tempest. Have any of the clerks from the
firm’s offices ever been down to Mr. Baxter’s in his absence?--Just ask
your wife then.--Yes?--Which of them--Smith, do you say?--When did he
come?--Can she fix the day?--What excuse did he give?--Was he allowed
to go in?--Oh no, I don’t blame her--of course she knew who Smith
was.--Tell her not to say anything.”

Tempest put down the receiver, and sat at his table, puzzled and
worried to distraction. Should he have Smith arrested? To all intents
and purposes, the evidence against Baxter and Smith was practically the
same. If the revolver was found in the suit-case of the former, the
latter had had an opportunity of putting it there, and, to all intents
and purposes, was the only person who, as far as he could see, had had
such an opportunity.

But he felt certain that no jury would convict Smith, and release
Baxter, on the evidence as it stood. Smith had had a perfect alibi at
the inquest. He had been at home all the evening. Both his father and
his brother had given evidence of it, and other evidence was offered,
as a party had been taking place at their house that night. Still, they
had Smith’s admission that, save Sir John, he was the last to leave,
and he might have shot Sir John before he left. If Smith were guilty,
he would have to be convicted out of his own mouth, and Tempest
believed this would be easier to do, when cross-examining him as a
witness, than if he were a prisoner. One can go to greater lengths with
a witness than one can in cross-examining a prisoner. Decency compels a
prisoner to be given fair play, and a judge would take good care he had
it. Picking up a pen, Tempest wrote a note to the inspector:

  “DEAR PARKYNS,--I take it you will have to call Smith (Sir John
  Rellingham’s confidential clerk) as a witness when Mr. Baxter is
  tried. I very particularly wish to cross-examine him. I don’t want to
  arouse his suspicions by doing it before the magistrate, and I don’t
  want you to put him on his guard by any obvious attentions. But I
  wish you would pass the word along that care must be taken that he
  doesn’t slip through our fingers. I shouldn’t be surprised at this,
  if he thought it likely he would be asked certain questions which I
  intend to put to him. Could you also make an opportunity of taking
  that bank clerk to the firm’s offices, and let him see Smith, on the
  chance of his recognising him as Everard Clarke? If you’ll ask for
  Mr. Marston, I’ll arrange with him that Smith shall be called in on
  some excuse whilst you are there.--Yours faithfully, ASHLEY TEMPEST.”

A few days later came the reply:

  “DEAR SIR,--I did as you requested, but Jenks (the bank clerk)
  evidently did _not_ recognise Smith. I also took Isaacson’s clerk
  there the next day. He was certain he had never seen Smith before.
  I will have Smith watched, as you suggest.--Yours respectfully, S.
  PARKYNS.

  “_P. S._--At Bow Street to-morrow we are calling evidence as to
  the state of Mr. Baxter’s banking account. He had only a very small
  balance--far less than one would expect--but he had a balance. I
  cannot find, however, that he was in debt, and I hear he spends a lot
  of money in buying pictures, etc.”

“Yardley,” said Parkyns the following day, when the prisoner had been
again remanded, “do you think Mr. Tempest knows young Deverell--the
young brother of the new Lord?”

“Why?”

“Because there’s one line I’m puzzled to think why your lot don’t try
to follow up.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I don’t know that it’s any particular business of mine to help
you with the defence, but it seems so obvious to me. Young Deverell’s
a rank bad lot. Oh, I know he hasn’t lost caste, or anything of that
kind,” added the inspector, as Yardley attempted to interrupt; “but all
the same he’s a bad lot. We’ve had a good many inquiries about him at
the Yard over one thing and another, and I know he is hard up. It may
not mean anything, and nothing has ever been brought home to him, but
he has been mixed up in several fishy transactions that never came into
court. You see, Deverell would know who his father’s solicitors were.
I know myself he has borrowed money from Isaacson’s. Suppose he forged
his father’s name to that bill; and then suppose he got frightened and
told his father? The old man, at any rate if it were the first time,
might very well try to hush it up according to the evidence Isaacson
gave, and there’s no doubt whatever that young Deverell left England
between that time and his father’s death. He wasn’t mentioned in Lord
Deverell’s will, at least not in the newspaper note of it. I haven’t
bothered to see the will itself.”

“But that doesn’t account for the Rellingham bill, Parkyns?”

“No, I quite admit that; and, of course, Mr. Tempest may know a lot of
other details that upset what I’ve told you. But just ask him if he
knew young Deverell.”

Yardley passed on his conversation with Parkyns to Tempest at the
earliest opportunity.

“No,” the barrister at once said. “I know nothing about Deverell.
What you tell me is most important;” and once again Tempest’s wits
were started in a new direction. That such a person as young Deverell
existed he did know, but of his character he was entirely ignorant. The
man belonged to a younger generation, and the two had never happened to
meet.

The hint of Parkyns opened up a new position. Deverell might have
forged the one bill. Whoever did had had access to or had copied the
firm’s notepaper. Having successfully discounted one bill it was quite
likely a second attempt might be made; and Sir John Rellingham, likely
enough, would write personal letters to Lord Deverell, from which his
writing and signature could be copied. But Tempest could not think out
that supposition any further: nor could he fit it in any way with the
discovery of the revolver in Baxter’s suit-case. Involuntarily his
suspicions harked back to Smith, and the barrister turned his mind to
the possibility of breaking up the alibi which Smith put forward. The
alibi given at the coroner’s inquest had certainly never been subjected
to cross-examination. Such was the point at which matters stood when
an entirely new development occurred. Marston came round to Tempest’s
chambers, and, their greeting over, placed a gold watch and chain on
the table. “Tempest, this was Sir John’s,” he said.

“Well, how can they help?” said the barrister, picking them up.

“Open the back. I only saw that the back opened yesterday. It’s a
keyless watch; and though I bought it at the sale of Sir John’s things
I never thought of opening it till yesterday.” Tempest opened the
watch, and almost jumped from his seat in his astonishment.

“Look there!” he almost shouted, as he pointed to the miniature hanging
on the wall, and then held out, for the other man to compare with it,
the portrait inside the case. The two faces were identical.

“Who is it, Tempest?”

“That miniature is Dolores Alvarez, who died twenty years ago, and it’s
the living image of Evangeline Stableford, who was murdered the other
day.”

“Then, which of the two did Sir John know? Whose portrait was he
carrying?”

“You can soon settle that. If it be the younger woman, then this
miniature of Sir John’s must have been painted within the last three
or four years. Otherwise it could not be a full-grown woman, but would
be a picture of a young girl. If the miniature was fitted in by the
firm who made the watch, then it’s the portrait of Dolores. I’ve been
confident all along--at any rate of late--that the mystery of Sir
John’s death and the mystery of Evangeline Stableford’s death was one
and the same mystery. This likeness between the three can’t be pure
coincidence. Marston, Yardley will tell you that weeks ago I came
to the conclusion that Evangeline was Sir John’s daughter, and this
portrait in Sir John’s watch is probably that of Evangeline’s mother.”

[Illustration: “‘Look there!’ he almost shouted, as he pointed to the
miniature”]

“Then do you think that Evangeline was the daughter of Dolores Alvarez?”

The barrister lighted a cigarette, and dropped into his habit of pacing
up and down his room. At last Marston broke the silence by repeating
the question.

“Marston, everything points to that--if there is anything in deductive
reasoning when applied to the solution of this kind of problem--it
would seem that that is the certain fact. Over and over again I come
back to it. Argue it out, reason it out by any chain of reasoning,
by any sequence of argument you like to adopt, you must come back,
as I always do, to that conclusion. It seems as certain to me as
the mathematical answer to a problem in algebra. There is no other
conclusion. It’s the logical solution of every argument, but it’s wrong
somewhere, for it doesn’t happen to be right.”

“Why not? Why’s it wrong?”

“Simply because Dolores never had a child. The doctors who made the
post-mortem are positive about that. It’s a matter that can’t admit of
any doubt. It’s a fact that cannot be questioned. Dolores never had a
child. So our reasoning is at fault, though I can’t see where.”

“Had she a sister?”

“Only Lady Madeley. Yardley has made inquiries that settle that.”

“Then could Evangeline have been a child of Lady Madeley--
unacknowledged, of course?”

“No, that can’t be true either.”

“Why not?”

“Evangeline is left at Lady Stableford’s House on a certain
date--within ten days of the date of the marriage of Lord and Lady
Madeley. The child that was left was less than ten days old. That much
the doctors can swear to. I’ve seen the case book of the man Lady
Stableford called in. The child must have been born within a margin of
two days on either side of the date of the wedding. Lord Madeley dined
with his fiancée at the Langham Hotel the night before the wedding.
Obviously a woman could not have been dining out within twenty-four
hours of having had a child. The day before that she came to town from
Cornwall. After the wedding they went to Paris. The child could not
have been born on the wedding day. The day after they dined at the
Embassy in Paris. The next day they went on further south. No, Lady
Madeley could not have given birth to a child at that time.

“Besides, Marston, the hundred years in the secret trust was to run
from 18th August, 1881. That was the date of the wedding day, and that
was stated to be the date of the birth of the child originally offered
to Lady Stableford, and in all probability that was the child she did
adopt. The secret trust was for the benefit of Evangeline, of that I
am certain. By the way, I suppose your firm aren’t Lady Stableford’s
solicitors by any chance?”

“As it happens we are--or at any rate were. We still have a lot of her
papers. She was one of Sir John’s old original clients. Sir John acted
for her when she was negotiating for the adoption of that child which
you say is Evangeline.”

“Did you make her will?”

“Sir John did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“How was I to know there was any connection?”

“What’s the date of Sir John’s will?”

“September, 1900.”

“When did Lady Stableford make her will?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you off-hand. I’ll send you word.”

“No, I’ll come round now.”

Together the two men went to the offices of Messrs. Rellingham, Baxter,
Marston & Moorhouse, and Marston turned up the letter-books. “Here you
are, Tempest. Lady Stableford must have written, because here, you
see, Sir John writes, suggesting Lady Stableford should reconsider her
suggestion, and pointing out that going on the stage is not necessarily
an abandonment of all morality. Then here’s the next letter in which
he sends the will for execution, and again refers to the injustice
of leaving the girl penniless, after having brought her up to regard
herself as heir. That’s the end of July, 1900.”

“And then Sir John, evidently knowing that Evangeline was cut off with
a shilling, I suppose by Lady Stableford, a month or more later creates
this secret trust. The thing is self-evident.”

“That may be so, Tempest; but some six months before Sir John died,
Lady Stableford and Evangeline were reconciled, and the old lady made
another will, by which the girl would have got nearly everything. I
remember that will, for I drafted it. Now, Sir John never altered his
will or cancelled the secret trust which then became unnecessary, if
your theory were right.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. He very likely thought it quite probable Lady
Stableford might possibly change her mind again.”

“Well, granted it’s all as you say--granted Evangeline was Sir John’s
daughter, what’s it all come to?”

“Nothing as yet, Marston; but who was the girl’s mother? Who was or is
Lady Rellingham?”

“Did he marry the mother?”

“Quite likely. Let’s look it up. It must be before August, 1881. Come
along down to Somerset House.”

Together the two men made the search, and found that early in 1880 John
Rellingham, solicitor, had married Sarah Jane Manuel, daughter of Pedro
Manuel of Dublin, hairdresser. His second marriage to Georgiana Drury,
as they knew, had not taken place until 1890.

“That’s put the stopper on any Alvarez business, Tempest, at any rate.”

“It looks like it certainly.”

Tempest paid for another search ticket, and turned up the marriage of
Lord Madeley. Lady Madeley had been married in the name of Eulalie
Alvarez.

“I think we must put Yardley on to an investigation of Pedro Manuel and
his family. That is obviously the thing to do.” “What earthly chance is
there of his finding out anything?”

“Precious little, I’m afraid,” said the barrister. “But there’s one
thing we might do, Marston. Bring that trust into court again, and
paragraph it as an approaching case, and see if we can tempt the lady
to turn up again.”

“I wonder if she would?”

“She might do; for, of course, she can’t have the slightest suspicion
that we have guessed she has some connection with the case.”

“How will you bring it on, Tempest? There isn’t much time.”

“Give notice of a motion for Friday next, and put up somebody, and I’ll
have enough of a wrangle with him in court to get it into the papers,
and then we’ll ask his lordship to adjourn it for a week, on the chance
of a mutual settlement. It must be well reported, and I daresay that
can be arranged. Very likely the lady will turn up on the following
Friday.”

“But can you get the trial of Baxter postponed till afterwards?”

“Yes. I’ll put up some sort of defence, and address the magistrate
at great length, and then get another remand. That will throw us over
the coming sessions of the Central Criminal Court. There aren’t any
sessions in August, so we will have over five weeks. We ought to know
where we stand then.”

In due course affidavits were lodged; and Tempest moved on behalf of
Marston, for an appointment of a receiver of the trust funds pending
the decision of the court on an issue shortly to be raised as to a
division of the trust funds between the surviving partners of the late
Sir John Rellingham. Other counsel had been briefed for Baxter and for
Moorhouse, and for three-quarters of an hour the three men wrangled
before the judge. Hints of sensational disclosures, veiled comment, and
flat contradiction, all did their work.

“Mr. Tempest,” said the judge, “I’m very much in the dark. Cannot you
indicate in some way the nature of this trust? I’m not suggesting you
should disclose anything obviously intended to be kept secret; but why
was the trust created? Was it to benefit a person or persons, or was
it to carry out a purpose? Obviously, under the terms of the will, and
by the decree of this court, the money now belongs to the surviving
partners of the firm. Why not divide it? Does a purpose still exist to
which the partners desire to apply it?”

“Strange as it may appear, my lord, I can only ask your lordship to
accept my word that the partners have not and have never had the
remotest idea of what object was in the mind of Sir John Rellingham
when he created the trust.”

“Surely that cannot be so. The will says, ‘to be applied by them to and
for the purposes which I have sufficiently indicated to them.’ You see
Sir John says he has indicated. It’s the past tense.”

“Quite so, my lord. The instructions were in a sealed packet. This
packet was not to be opened until certain eventualities occurred; and
there were certain stringent instructions left with it that the moment
litigation began the packet was to be destroyed. Your lordship will
remember the Crown did begin litigation, and consequently the papers
were destroyed. It seems to me, my lord, that Sir John’s first idea,
overriding everything else, was to preserve the secrecy he enjoined
upon the trustees he appointed; and rather than that that secrecy
should be waived, he preferred that the object of the trust should
suffer and his partners benefit. His partners have loyally adhered to
his wishes, and the money is theirs. They claim it, and they repudiate
any claim to it by anybody else; but, nevertheless, they feel that
the past action of the Crown could not have been anticipated by Sir
John, and they are disinclined at present to dissipate what were
originally trust funds. There has been no quarrel, but at the same time
they differ amongst themselves as to the course which should now be
pursued. May I put it that they are in a friendly state of doubt and
uncertainty?”

The discussion went on; and finally, at the end of an hour, Tempest
threw out a suggestion that perhaps, if his lordship would adjourn
the case for a week, it might be possible to agree to terms which
could then be submitted for the approval of the court. The judge
at once consented; and in view of the newspaper interest which had
previously been excited on the subject of this secret trust, all of the
evening papers and most of the morning ones the next day reported the
proceedings with some detail.

Nothing remained to do but to wait patiently for the week which
must ensue before they could know whether or not the bait had been
effective.

On the following Friday morning Tempest was early in his seat in
Chancery Court No. 3. The benches were always packed on a motion day,
and Tempest had no desire to take part in the jostling scrimmage for
seats, which was usual on such occasions.

A belated K. C. struggled through the crowd in the doorway, his gown
half torn from his back in the crush. Seeing Tempest, he turned and
said:

“Look here, old man, why can’t you keep your beastly sensational cases
out of our way here? Just look at this menagerie of a place instead
of the usual staid and sober appearance of a chancery court? It’s
demoralising!”

Tempest laughed. “For pity’s sake, don’t blame me. I didn’t bring ’em.”

“No, but your case has.”

“Well, they’ll be awfully disappointed. It’s all arranged between us
now.”

“Silence!” called out the usher, and their conversation ended, as
everybody rose, and returned the bow of Mr. Justice Barker.

“Mr. So-and-So,” and the judge called on the leader in his court.
Tempest turned in his seat and eagerly scanned the faces of those
present in court and in the gallery. At last, right at the back of the
court, he caught sight of the person for whom he was looking. Dressed
in black, and heavily veiled, he saw the same woman who had excited
his curiosity on a previous occasion. He looked at Yardley wedged in
the crowd near the doorway, and caught the detective’s half-veiled nod
which showed that he had also found his quarry. Next to Yardley was
standing Craven, his assistant, a perfect sleuthhound of a tracker; and
before Tempest’s gaze had dropped again to his papers, he had seen
Craven leave the court, to reappear in a moment at the other door,
within a yard or two of the woman they wanted.

One by one the King’s Council present in court were called upon;
and then, after one or two of the junior bar--habitués of that
particular court--had each been given his opportunity by name, came the
concluding, “Any more motions behind the bar?” and Tempest rose, and
in a few words said that the parties concerned had agreed to ask his
lordship to appoint them jointly to be receivers, pending the trial of
the issue. The judge promptly assented to the proposal, and then at
once the court began to empty of the public, baulked of the anticipated
revelation; but Tempest lingered, curious to see what might happen. A
tedious dispute as to a right-of-way injunction followed, but the lady
sat on, apparently keenly interested. Concluding it to be a ruse to
mask any apparent concern with the matter just concluded, and knowing
she would be safe in the care of Yardley and Craven, Tempest signed to
his clerk to collect his papers, and took his way to the King’s Bench
side, where another case awaited him. Marston followed him into the
passage.

“Well, it unearthed the lady,” said the barrister.

“Yes, and I saw Yardley was there.”

“So was Craven, his chief assistant. By the way, what instructions did
you give him, Marston?”

“He is to find out who she is and where she lives. I wish she had
raised her veil in court. I’d have liked to have seen her.”

“So should I; but I never for a moment expected that. She’ll be much
too downy a bird. How old would you guess her to be, Marston?”

“Forty to fifty.”

“Yes, that’s what I put her down to be; but one really cannot tell
under that veil of hers. It’s only guessing from her figure and manner.
She might really be anything from thirty to seventy.”

Late that evening Yardley came round to Tempest’s chambers.

“Well, who is she, Yardley?” was the latter’s greeting.

“She’s staying at the Hotel Victoria, in the name of Mrs. Seymour. I’ve
left Craven there, and he’s subsidised one of the chambermaids as well,
so I don’t think she’ll slip through our fingers.”

“Where does she come from?”

“I don’t know for certain yet. She’s registered as from Paris. I’ve
arranged that one of my young women shall go to the hotel as a
chambermaid to-morrow, on the chance of an opportunity of going through
the lady’s belongings.”

Three days later Yardley again came round to see Tempest, but only
to report an ignominious failure. It was evident that Mrs. Seymour
had become aware that she was being watched and had made her plans
accordingly.

Asking for a hansom to be called one morning, she had ostentatiously
given instructions to the hall porter that she was expecting a visitor
at noon, and, if she herself had not returned, the visitor was to be
asked to wait. She then gave the cabby directions to go to Paquin’s
showrooms in Doder Street, and had driven away. Craven had been
inclined to follow; but feeling certain Mrs. Seymour would return, he
decided that more was to be gained by overhauling her boxes, and he
at once sought his confederate, who was figuring in the hotel as a
chambermaid. Together they had thoroughly and systematically searched
Mrs. Seymour’s room. Not a scrap of writing did they find--not the
faintest clue of any sort from which they could start to establish the
identity of Mrs. Seymour. Finally, they had relinquished the search in
disgust, and Craven had set himself to await the lady’s return. She
never did return; and when Craven reported, Yardley saw at once that
the whole thing had been a ruse. The cabby, when found and questioned,
told them that when they reached Trafalgar Square, his fare had told
him to drive to Euston. He had done so, and the lady had entered the
station. The most diligent inquiry failed to produce any person who had
seen and recognised or had noticed the lady at the station. None of the
booking-clerks recognised her from the description which was given. Her
luggage, which remained at the hotel unclaimed, contained nothing of
any sufficient value for it to be in the least likely it would ever be
claimed, if Yardley were correct in his surmise that Mrs. Seymour had
by some means become aware that she herself was under surveillance, and
had deliberately elected to withdraw herself from observation.

The court for Crown cases reserved having decided--much to the
disgust of the police--that the privilege of a solicitor prevented
the execution of the search warrant and the overhauling of the papers
of the firm, the trial of Arthur Baxter could no longer be delayed,
and took its place in the judge’s list at the ensuing sessions of the
Central Criminal Court. At the first reference by the prosecution to
the secret trust, Tempest successfully objected. As he pointed out,
Baxter had only been advantaged by the action of the Crown, which
had, with full knowledge of the consequence, itself precipitated the
circumstances, which vested the money in the hands of the surviving
partners. That result Baxter could neither have produced nor
anticipated; but for the moment assuming he could have produced it,
then the three partners were equally concerned, and must be equally
guilty; but the Crown had only indicated one, though, on an indictment
of the three for conspiracy, a conviction would have been more easy to
procure. Finally, he said that if his lordship admitted any reference
to the secret trust on the ground of motive, then he should at once
call the other surviving partners to prove that no one of the three
had ever even suggested the division of the trust money, even after
the court had formally declared it to be the absolute property of
the partners; but that they had voluntarily reconstituted the trust,
or rather had themselves constituted a trust for purposes which they
declined to divulge, but which advantaged themselves personally no more
than had the original will. In the end the judge upheld the objection.
The trial was thus narrowed down to the fact that the partners
possessed keys, and could have obtained access; that Baxter had been
overheard to have had a difference with Sir John, when the latter had
called at his chambers the night preceding the murder; and, what was
most damning, that a revolver, with its marks of identification erased,
together with bullets similar to the one which had caused the death of
Sir John Rellingham, had been found at Mr. Baxter’s chambers secreted
in a seldom used suit-case.

The case at best was a weak one; and doubtless relying upon the fact
that Arthur Baxter would go into the witness-box and might convict
himself under cross-examination, the ruling out of the question of the
secret trust seriously handicapped the prosecution. Tempest had frankly
told Baxter he didn’t believe the explanation of the quarrel which the
solicitor had vouchsafed him, but Baxter declined to give any other.
For that reason the barrister was surprised that only one or two formal
questions relating to the quarrel were put to Bailey, the factotum of
Arthur Baxter, and one of the witnesses called for the prosecution.
Consequently Tempest asked Baxter no questions on the point when he put
him in the witness-box. But the matter was raised and pressed in his
cross-examination. Question after question he cleverly fenced with;
but at last, driven into a corner, he gave a full explanation: “I have
tried to keep faith with Sir John,” he said; “but you won’t let me.
The point was simply this: Sir John called at my chambers, and asked
me if I would marry his daughter. Neither I nor my partners at that
time had the smallest idea that Sir John had ever been married except
to his late wife, whom we all knew, or had ever had a daughter; and
when I was talking to him, I didn’t know whether his daughter were
illegitimate or legitimate. He showed me her portrait. She was a very
beautiful girl; but all I felt inclined to promise was that I was quite
willing to meet her, with the idea of marriage, if we mutually liked
each other, and providing all knowledge was kept from her until after
marriage that she had been the subject of discussion and arrangement
between us. I wanted to win the affection of the girl on my own merits,
or else I would be no party to such a marriage.”

“But, Mr. Baxter,” had been counsel’s reply, “you say Sir John was
asking a favour of you, or requesting you to fall in with a proposal
of his? How do you account for the fact that it was Sir John who said,
‘No, Arthur; don’t say any more. It’s quite final. I will not’? You
admit, I suppose, that he did say that?”

“Oh, yes, he said it.”

“Well, then, how do you reconcile that with your story?”

“I asked him if he would acknowledge the girl openly as his daughter.
He wouldn’t. I tried to persuade him, and then he answered in the words
you put to me.”

Then came a searching cross-examination about the two bills. Baxter
explained the second one by saying he was acting for the late Lord
Deverell. The other bill, which had reached the money-lenders who had
discounted it, with a request written in the name of the firm, Baxter
absolutely repudiated any knowledge of. He likewise disclaimed the
slightest knowledge of the revolver or the bullets, and emphatically
denied having himself hidden them in the suit-case.

Tempest then called clerks in the office of the firm to prove that the
letter to the money-lenders was not in the handwriting of Mr. Baxter
or of any of the firm’s clerks, and then played his trump card. Calling
an expert, he proved that the revolver was of faulty construction,
and that it had never been fired, and that it would have been quite
impossible for the bullet which killed Sir John Rellingham to have been
fired from it.

“What would happen if the attempt had been made?”

“It would have burst.”

“Why?”

“Because the barrel of the revolver is imperfectly bored, and at one
point the bullet could not have passed through.”

The revolver, a bullet, and a ramrod were then passed to the jury, to
satisfy themselves on the point.

With this disclosure the case for the prosecution practically
collapsed; and though it pursued its formal course, to its completion,
there remained no further doubt that the verdict would be one of
acquittal, as eventually it proved to be. Arthur Baxter left the court
a free man, honourably acquitted.

When the partners and Tempest were discussing the trial that evening
over the dinner which Marston gave to celebrate the result of the
trial, Tempest turned to Baxter and asked:

“Why on earth wouldn’t you tell me before what that discussion was that
you had with Sir John?”

“Simply because he said the disclosure would be the disclosure of a
secret, not of his own, but of somebody else whom he couldn’t give
away.”

“Ah! Then I guessed right?”

“What do you mean?”

And then Tempest explained how he had argued himself into the
conclusion that the secret trust had been constituted to provide for
Sir John’s daughter, and arranged in its curious form that the secret
of a third party might be safeguarded.

“Why didn’t you tell me all that, Tempest?”

“I told Marston, but I didn’t see at the time how it affected you. Did
Sir John tell you who his daughter was, or what the name was that she
was known by?”

“No, he wouldn’t tell me even that, unless I would promise blindly to
marry her. As I said in court, I only promised conditionally, and Sir
John said that he must refuse to tell me her name.”

“Marston, show him Sir John’s watch.”

The solicitor took the watch from his chain and passed it across the
table to his partner.

“That’s the girl whose portrait he showed me, though the face is in a
different position.”

“No, Baxter, it isn’t the same girl. The portrait in the watch is an
exact duplicate of a miniature I have hanging in my chambers. Twenty
years ago I had a watching brief at the inquest of Dolores Alvarez, an
actress----”

“I remember the case. Verdict of suicide, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, that was it. It was my first cause célèbre. I saw the dead woman,
and was very much struck by her beauty. I collected all the photographs
I could purchase of her, and I had a miniature painted from them. It
was not exactly like any of the photographs, and I was puzzled how
Sir John could have got hold of what was undoubtedly a copy of my
miniature till I made inquiries. Then I found that the firm--a big
firm of photographers, whom I had commissioned--had been so struck by
the miniature that they had ordered a copy of it from the artist, and
they had exhibited this copy as a specimen. Sir John had seen it and
bought it. Consequently, Baxter, the portrait in Sir John’s watch was
to him a fancy portrait, which I assume he must have bought on account
of its likeness to his wife--oh, yes, he was married twice. We got the
certificate of his first marriage all right--for a man would hardly
carry about inside his watch a definite portrait of a person in whom
he had no interest. Besides, Baxter, I can probably tell you who Sir
John’s daughter was. She was Evangeline Stableford--the actress--the
adopted daughter of old Lady Stableford. She was the living image of
Dolores Alvarez, and she was murdered a few months ago--since the death
of Sir John, in fact. The curious thing is, that every detail and every
circumstance of her death exactly reproduces the death of Dolores
Alvarez twenty years ago.”

“Were the two women related, Tempest?”

“The likeness is so remarkable that I think they must have been; but,
as a matter of actual fact, I cannot prove it. Evangeline was certainly
not the daughter of Dolores. The only relative I have unearthed of
Dolores is Lady Madeley; and from the date of Lady Madeley’s wedding
and the date of Evangeline’s birth, she could not have been the child
of Lady Madeley. Besides, Sir John didn’t marry a Miss Alvarez. The
maiden name of Lady Rellingham, for I daresay she is still alive, or
Sir John wouldn’t have guarded her secret so closely, was Sarah Jane
Manuel.”

“But Alvarez may have been only a theatrical name?”

“That’s quite possible--likely even; only, Lady Madeley is married
in the name of Alvarez. There’s such a widespread idea, particularly
in the lower classes, that a marriage in a false name is invalid,
that I hardly think it probable that Lady Madeley would have risked
the validity of her marriage by going through the ceremony in any
other than her real name. She may have done so, of course; but the
probabilities are vastly to the contrary. Frankly, Baxter, the idea of
relationship rests exclusively upon the likeness.”

“Yes, that must be so; besides, assume Dolores and Evangeline were
related. What’s the nearest possible relationship? You say they can’t
be mother and daughter. The next nearest relationship is aunt and
niece, on the supposition that Lady Rellingham is an undiscovered
sister of Lady Madeley and Dolores Alvarez. You must take into account
that it is not an identity of parentage. Evangeline is only a daughter
of a supposed sister and Sir John. You must make allowance for her
descent from Sir John as well.”

“No, I don’t think you need do that. Given a parent of a pronounced
type--what one would call an aggressive type--that type will be
reproduced and the type of the other parent submerged altogether.
Probably Evangeline exactly reproduced her mother. She had nothing of
Sir John in her appearance. Here I’ll show you what I mean. Waiter!”

The obsequious servant hurried forward.

“Send out and buy me a copy of this week’s _Sketch_, will you?” and
Tempest handed a coin to the man.

Shortly afterwards the latter reappeared with the paper for which
the barrister had asked. He rapidly turned the pages. “Now this,”
he said, “is what I mean. Here is a portrait of the young Lady
Madeley--Consuelo, Baroness Madeley in her own right, the daughter of
Eulalie Alvarez.”

Folding the paper he indicated the portrait to which he referred.
“You see,” he added, “that’s awfully like Dolores. There’s the same
type again, submerging any likelihood of a likeness to the other
parent, for old Lord Madeley was fair and fat and podgy--blue eyes,
as a matter of fact. Sir John was fair, and his features were very
indefinite. Evangeline’s mother and Lady Madeley, even if there were
no relationship, were of the same physiological type, and that an
aggressive one, and you see the type reproduces itself. I’m almost
beginning to think it must be merely type and domination of type, and
that alone, with no question of consanguinity. Besides, when all’s said
and done, it’s a foreign type.”

“But what does that matter?”

“What I mean is this: Just as all niggers look alike to an Englishman,
and just as we find it hard to distinguish one Chinaman from another,
so a strange type to us overrides in our observations the little
differences by which in our own type we distinguish one another and
recognise each other. Therefore, may not this type--Spanish, I suppose
it must be, from the name Alvarez--override, in our observation (from
the fact that it is foreign and unusual), the little niceties of
difference by which those who belonged to the type would themselves
differentiate?”

“Then, do you mean that these people may not really be so alike as we
think they are?”

“That’s precisely what I do mean. Here we have apparently Eulalie Lady
Madeley, and Dolores Alvarez, and Consuelo Lady Madeley, whom we know
to be related, all very much alike. We have Lady Rellingham and another
girl, Evangeline Stableford, and yet another, Sir John’s daughter,
if they are not one and the same, though I am sure they are. We are
trying to presume an Alvarez relationship for Evangeline, solely on
account of her remarkable likeness and the presumed likeness of Lady
Rellingham. There is not one other single solitary reason from which
relationship can be presumed; and after all, to a person familiar with
the type, the likeness might not be so pronounced as to us it appears
to be. To a Spaniard, for instance, it might not be sufficient to even
suggest relationship. You’ve always got to bear that in mind. So long
as the identity of Evangeline was a mystery, we had to clutch at any
straw that might prove who she was, and perhaps I attached too great an
importance to the likeness. It is nothing like so important now we are
practically certain Evangeline was Sir John’s daughter and that we know
who her mother was. Besides, Lady Rellingham’s name was Manuel. That
name is Spanish or Portuguese, and very likely Jewish as well, which
accounts for the occurrence of the type, and, as I said, the likeness
may be no more than identity of type.”

“Tempest,” said Marston, “I’m beginning to understand your wonderful
success with juries. We argued this likeness point once before, when
you were putting forward a very different theory. I thoroughly accepted
what you said then, but you have convinced me just as thoroughly of
your new proposition.”

The barrister laughed. “I’ll tell you the secret of that. There
are weak points in both propositions, because there is in each an
unknown quantity, and one argues on the ‘may’ and the ‘might’ and
the ‘probable.’ One can always persuade a reasonable man that a
thing ‘may’ be so, if the proposition you offer is plausible and
not self-negatived. But when you lay down a proposition as not only
possible but unquestionably correct, and one goes on to the words ‘is’
and ‘must be’ and ‘therefore,’ one needs to prove things. However, what
are we going to do to-night? What do you say, Baxter? How about the
Palace?”

Baxter shivered. “Don’t let me stop you others, if you want to go; but
I don’t feel up to it. God! It’s only a few hours since the noose was
around my neck, and I haven’t got over the horror of it yet.”

The others looked at him with sympathy. They had been ready enough to
forget what was over and done with.

“But I told you yesterday, Baxter, that I would get you off. Didn’t you
believe I could?”

“It wasn’t you I doubted, Tempest; it was the jury. One does get
such damned fools sometimes as jurymen, and there’s an awful lot of
prejudice against us. That newspaper campaign was carried to ghastly
lengths. Tempest, have you got any nearer in your own way to solving
the mystery of either Sir John’s death or Evangeline’s death?”

“No, not an inch nearer; except that I’m pretty certain Evangeline
was Sir John’s daughter. At present it’s arguing with several unknown
quantities. Still, one has got a bit of a foundation now. Sir John has
been proved to have married a certain Sarah Jane Manuel.”

“Then Sarah Jane Manuel was Evangeline’s mother, Q. E. D.? Go along,
Tempest!”

“How do you know, Marston? I don’t feel by any means certain on the
point. Look here, then, why didn’t Sir John acknowledge his wife and
daughter? He told you, Baxter, that he couldn’t because that would
involve the disclosure of somebody else’s secret. If she were his
daughter by his wedded wife, what secret could there be about her
birth? I can assure you that it looks very much as if Evangeline were
his illegitimate daughter. Only, if she were, what earthly object could
anyone have in murdering her? Sir John had left her nothing in his
will. She was not his heir. She stood in no one’s way.”

“Why didn’t Sir John provide for her, Tempest? He was a just,
honourable man, with plenty of money. He leaves the whole of his money
practically to us--the three of us; and none of us had any claim on
him. As a matter of fact, it was the contrary. We were all indebted to
Sir John.”

“But you’ve forgotten the probability is that Sir John did provide for
her by means of the secret trust. Evangeline was expected to be the
heir of Lady Stableford. Here, of course, it won’t go any further.
You fellows have got the old lady’s will at your office. Now, did she
provide for the girl?”

“Yes. Sir John drew her will, so he knew what she had done.”

“Quite so; and if she did provide, Sir John was under no necessity to
disclose the other person’s secret, which he was guarding, by providing
for the girl in his own will. But Evangeline had quarrelled once with
Lady Stableford, and had been cut out of the will once before. There
was always the risk of another quarrel and the same thing happening
again. That was the risk for which the secret trust provides--of that
I’m positive now. Yes, I think we can take that as certain;” and the
barrister, lighting another of his eternal cigarettes, tilted his chair
back and lapsed into silence as he thought.

The other men kept silent. Tempest was so obviously puzzling the thing
out further. At last Marston broke the silence. “Granted all that,
Tempest. But what on earth was the good to Evangeline of creating that
trust at all, if we, the trustees, don’t know when we are to call it
into operation for her benefit?”

“Don’t you forget your instructions. You were to wait till something
happened from outside, to put you all in motion. You must assume Sir
John had laid his plans for this something to be made to happen, if
necessary. As he would then be dead, the making of the happening
rested with some third person, probably Evangeline herself. Have you
fellows forgotten the basis of a cryptogram? The key is divided into
two parts, and those two parts must come together in unison before the
key is apparent. You three have one part of the cryptogram in your
hands contained in your instructions. It was probable Evangeline had
the other part. She was probably to write to you, if through a change
of Lady Stableford’s will she needed the money. She is dead. She will
never claim the money, and you three can spend it now with a light
heart. Still, here’s another thing. If Evangeline knew all, and could
call that trust into operation merely by writing to you, what was to
prevent her doing so, whether she needed the money or not? If Sir John
left things in that state, the secret was at the mercy of Evangeline,
and I don’t think it was her secret. She may not have known what the
secret was, nor indeed that there was one at all, but nevertheless its
disclosure rested with her. There was probably a third part to the
cryptogram in the hands of someone else.”

“Who would that be likely to be?”

“Probably the person whose secret it was?”

“But if that were so, what would the inducement be to her to ever
disclose her secret?”

“One or other of two things. Either she is to participate in the trust,
or else Sir John depended on the affection of a mother to efface
herself for her child in case of dire necessity. Remember, it’s only
a disclosure to you three, and that’s not a very serious risk. Few
people need mind that.”

“Then, why didn’t Sir John disclose it to us?”

“Firstly, his loyalty regarding the secret of another person; secondly,
the risk run by putting it on paper, when very likely, in all
probability, he would outlive Lady Stableford, and himself know whether
or not Evangeline had been provided for; because, if in his lifetime
he knew Lady Stableford had left her money to Evangeline, the trust
was quite unnecessary, and Sir John would at once have destroyed his
present will and made another. Now, assuming all that to be true, who
stood to benefit by Evangeline’s death?”

“We three did.”

“Quite so. Consequently it was jolly lucky for Baxter the terms of the
trust are not public.”

“God! Tempest. What a risk I ran!”

“You did at first, old man. But there was somebody else who would
benefit. If Evangeline were illegitimate, the person whose secret was
at stake might desire her death. If Evangeline were legitimate, her
heir would benefit. In either case it is the mother. Now, didn’t I
tell you once before--argued from a totally different standpoint--that
Evangeline’s mother had murdered her?”

“But it’s such a horrible thought, Tempest, that a mother would murder
her own child!”

“I know it is; but horrible or not, Marston, it’s a thing done every
day. Scarcely a session at the Old Bailey goes by that some poor
wretched girl or other isn’t taking her trial for it. We generally
get them let off as Not Guilty, or else only guilty of concealment of
birth, and then they are usually discharged. But it’s generally murder
all the same. We all know it--the police know it--and the judge knows
it; but there is a kind of unwritten code that in cases of infanticide
the girl is to get off, if the facts can in any way be sufficiently
twisted.”

“But Evangeline wasn’t an infant.”

“No; but you were objecting only on the score of maternal feeling. With
an infant, the maternal feeling is often overcome; and as Evangeline’s
mother got rid of her as an infant, the maternal feeling can’t have
been any greater. It never had any opportunity of growing.”

“Then you think, Tempest, that if we find Evangeline’s mother, that we
shall have got to the solution of the girl’s murder?”

“You’ll have got the guilty person; but assuming you do get hold of
her, I don’t see how you will ever convict her or get a full solution,
except by means of a confession.”

“Tempest, how about the murder of Sir John? That is what we are most
concerned about.”

“Yes, I know; and it puzzles me far more than the other one. Outside
you three, what earthly object could anyone have had in murdering him?
Any client with a grievance has got to murder all the lot of you,
either to wreak a revenge for a business grievance to alter the course
of any events.”

“But, Tempest, we haven’t got such a client. We scarcely ever litigate
in the ordinary sense. Chancery motions, by mutual arrangement to get
orders of the court, and that kind of thing, don’t beget clients or
opponents with a grievance. Our business is conveyancing and trust work
and family settlements. In the whole history of the firm, we’ve never
quarrelled with a client over his or her account.”

“Then you are arguing yourselves a bit closer. I’m certain of
this much. Sir John had an appointment at the office that evening
with someone over a matter which was not the business of the firm.
If Smith’s tale be true, Smith was practically made to clear out.
Therefore, Sir John himself answers the door and admits somebody.
That somebody shoots him, and lets himself or herself out afterwards,
taking the revolver with him. As far as I can see, that is all you are
justified as taking to be provable by deduction, and you must start
guessing. Now, what was the only thing we are any of us aware of that
Sir John was keeping secret?”

“His secret trust.”

“Well, put it rather the secret of this other person to safeguard,
which Sir John created, the secret trust?”

“What next?”

“Who were the people who knew the secret?”

“Sir John.”

“Yes, and also the person it concerned, and perhaps Evangeline
Stableford, too, though I rather doubt if she knew the whole or indeed
very much of it. Now, as I’ve told you, I believe it to be Evangeline’s
mother whose secret is being safeguarded.”

“Then do you say it was Evangeline’s mother who murdered Sir John?”

“Oh, wait a bit! What was to prevent Sir John having arranged a meeting
between the two of them there in his presence, to make arrangements
about calling the trust into operation, if it were ever necessary?
Let’s assume he did. Assume they met there, which of them would be the
more likely to shoot him?”

“The daughter,” said Marston.

“Why do you think that?”

“She murdered him and then committed suicide.”

Tempest shook his head. “No, I think you are wrong. The mother shot Sir
John in the presence of her daughter; then she murders the daughter
as well, to cover up the disclosure. _Voila tout._ There you have a
complete explanation--a logical explanation, and a sufficient one for
both murders.”

“Tempest, I believe you’ve hit it.”

“I may have done; but it’s all pure guesswork. It won’t hang her.”

“How did she put the revolver in my suit-case?”

“God knows, old man! That I fancy will always be a mystery. When was
the revolver put there?”

“I wish I knew.”

“If the woman had thought, as she probably did, she would know that
you, with a man servant, would never pack for yourself. She couldn’t
know which bag you used, nor could she know when you would use
any particular one. If she put that revolver there any long time
afterwards, she must have guessed that the veriest fool would know that
Bailey might have packed and unpacked in the interval, and could swear
to the absence of the revolver on the days he packed and unpacked for
you. No, she probably put it there soon after the murder--probably when
Bailey’s wife was away. That was soon after the murder was committed.
It’s quite likely you were watched.”

“But why should she pitch upon me?”

“Because the first person suspected of an unexplained murder is a
person who would stand to profit by the death. Don’t forget she knew
the broad outlines of the secret trust--probably was the only person
to know them--and knew you three would benefit greatly. Any one of you
three would satisfy her purpose. She simply followed the line of least
resistance.”

“But you are making her out, and assuming her to be, as clever as
yourself in thinking things out. It’s a wrong presumption, Tempest. I
think I’d pass for a man of average intelligence any day, but I should
never have thought of half the things you’ve laid down.”

“No! no! Baxter. You may be a wee bit surprised at my thinking them
out--you may, even as you say, have failed to do it yourself, but the
surprise to you rests on the arrival at the conclusion from apparently
unknown premises. You must remember there was nothing unknown to her,
whilst we are groping in the dark. She was in the full light of a
complete knowledge of all the facts. I wish I knew whether the woman
were Sir John’s wife, or the mother of Evangeline, or a third person
altogether. She may be both wife and mother. What I advise you to do
now is to search again for the birth of Evangeline under the names of
Manuel and Rellingham. Search in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and
France and Belgium and Holland. There’s hardly time enough for her to
have been born further afield.”

“Is that all we can do?”

“Well, one step at a time isn’t a bad plan. But as it happens there is
something else you can do. Look here! Assume that I am right, and that
the interview with one or both of the women took place in reference to
the trust. It’s a big assumption of course; but take it for granted
for the moment. Why did Sir John provoke or permit that interview?
Lady Stableford had altered her will, cutting out Evangeline nearly
two years before; yet Sir John took no steps. His will was certainly
in existence some time before his death; but, as I explained to you,
one, if not two, other people had to be let into their share of the
cryptogram. If they knew before, we can hardly presume the meeting to
have a reference to this point. On the other hand, why have the meeting
at all, when Evangeline would come of age so soon after? The moment she
came of age Sir John could have given her the money without any other
explanation than that he was her father. He needn’t even have told her
that much. Any tale would have done, and he had plenty of money to
provide for her in cash, and might just as well have done so, instead
of putting the money in the trust. Why didn’t he wait a few months
longer? He had already waited twenty years. He wasn’t an old man--only
fifty-five. Why should he have anticipated his own death?”

“Goodness only knows! But go on. I can see you’ve got some idea. Out
with it.”

“Who was Sir John’s doctor?”

“Old Allingham of Harley Street.”

“I don’t know the gentleman; but go to him, and ask him whether, at any
time shortly before his death, Sir John consulted him? I expect you
will find Allingham told him his heart was affected. If he did, then
you have the reason why Sir John precipitated the matter. And mind you,
if you do find that to be true, it’s pretty good confirmation that all
the rest of the supposition I put to you will hold water.”

Soon afterwards the party broke off, and Tempest heard no more of the
matter until ten days later, when Baxter called to show him a copy
of the birth-certificate of an unnamed female child, born in Dublin
on the 18th of August, 1881, and registered as the daughter of John
Rellingham, solicitor, and Sarah Jane, formerly Manuel. Tempest laughed
as he read the certificate through. “Isn’t it funny,” he said, “that
when we were hunting high and low for the birth of that child, it
never entered our heads to look for a daughter of Sir John? She’s
registered in the right name, too.”

“I’ve seen Allingham. You were quite right in your guess. He thoroughly
examined Sir John about a month before the date of the murder. It
wasn’t heart disease. It was cancer of the throat. He told Sir John he
could count on at least three months. He strongly advised an operation,
and Sir John was very much inclined to agree; in fact it was almost
arranged, but it would have been a very risky operation.”

“Then, that’s why he was making his arrangements? Didn’t he say
anything to any of you three?”

“Not a word; but then he was always very reserved about himself.”

The barrister hummed a tune, and then, lighting a cigarette, fell to
pacing his room, as he always did when working out his problems.

“Well, Baxter, Sir John provoked that interview, which we presume
was about the secret trust, in order to make the different parts
of the key to the cryptogram ready to work, in case he died before
Evangeline came of age. Do you remember that letter you found copied
in his private letter-book? That was an invitation to the interview.
Now, knowing it was going to take place, knowing he had to provide for
Evangeline’s future, he goes to see you the night before and asks you
to marry the girl. Then he could have settled everything by leaving
the money to you. That would have excited no comment, and probably
he would have abandoned his secret trust, and no doubt he would have
taken a different line at the interview. But you wouldn’t promise
unconditionally to marry the girl?”

“He wanted me to marry her in a day or two’s time by special licence. I
couldn’t do it. I’d never seen the girl.”

“And Sir John knew he couldn’t wait.”

“I almost wish I’d consented. I wonder if it would have altered
matters?”

“That we shall never know.”

The solicitor was grave enough as he added, “Something else has
happened.”

“What’s that?”

“What do you guess, Tempest?”

“How do I know, unless you’ve found the lady?”

Baxter pitched him a letter across the table. The barrister picked it
up and read it.

                                               “135 CHANCERY LANE, W. C.

  “DEAR SIRS,--We are instructed by our client, Lady Rellingham, relict
  of Sir John Rellingham, deceased, late the senior partner in your
  firm, to make formal claim to the £20,000 held in trust for her,
  under Sir John’s will, by yourselves, his surviving partners and
  executors. The terms of the will are before us, and of course these
  do not specifically allude to Lady Rellingham by that or any other
  name or description; but we are enclosing a copy, and are prepared
  to produce, for your inspection, the original of a letter from the
  late Sir John Rellingham, in his own handwriting, which can leave no
  doubt of his intentions, and we have no doubt it will be in accord
  with those directions to yourself to which the will alludes. We
  should have ventured to express our surprise that the money should
  have remained in your hands so long, and that during that time no
  effort should have been made to fulfil the obligations of the trust,
  were it not that our client informs us that she has been abroad for
  many years past, that her marriage to Sir John has always been kept a
  profound secret, and that she was, until quite recently, unaware of
  Sir John’s death. We are prepared to produce, as and when required,
  proof of the marriage of Sir John to our client and of her identity.
  Our client has no desire to encourage any greater publicity than
  may be necessary in view of the terms of separation which had long
  existed between herself and her husband; in fact, she would prefer
  to maintain the silence which has hitherto been observed concerning
  the marriage. In this we trust you will feel disposed and able to act
  in unison and conformity with such expression of her wishes; and we
  should suppose, as he subsequently contracted a bigamous marriage,
  that for the sake of Sir John Rellingham’s reputation, you would
  yourselves prefer to do so. But, of course, the large sum at stake
  precludes any suggestion of less favourable terms being accepted
  merely to obtain an avoidance of publicity. If you require publicity,
  our client will not shrink from it.--We are, dear sirs, yours
  faithfully, CLUTCH & HOLDEM.

  “To Messrs. Rellingham, Baxter, Marston & Moorhouse.”

The enclosure was as follows:--

  “MY DEAR,--As a tangible evidence of my wish when you claim the money
  which I am leaving in trust for you to have, if you are so placed
  that you ever need it after I am gone, I write you this letter. You
  understand it, so will my partners when you produce it.--Yours most
  affectionately, JOHN RELLINGHAM.”

“What do you think of it, Tempest?” asked the solicitor.

“It’s precisely what I’ve been expecting.”

“Expecting! Why should you expect it?”

“When I told the judge in open court (I shouldn’t have said it, of
course, if I hadn’t known of the duplicate set of papers), but when I
told him that the directions for the disposal of the trust were in a
sealed packet, and that that packet had been destroyed, and that you
three didn’t yourselves know what were the original intentions of Sir
John in creating the trust, I felt pretty confident you would have a
crop of bogus claims. This is the first. I was inviting them, and I
knew it.”

“But this looks genuine. They have the fact of the marriage. That is
not public property, but we know it is true.”

“Quite so, Baxter; but at least three other people, the witnesses and
the parson, must also have known it originally. And goodness only knows
who they have since told, and very likely there are several other
people as well,--the relatives of Sir John’s wife.”

“But the letter fits so well.”

“Of course it does; but in view of what the public know, anybody could
have concocted that letter. It could have been made to fit. You weren’t
likely to have a letter fired at you that wouldn’t fit. Now, there are
these points you must bear in mind: (1) The letter may be a forgery.
(2) There may be no Lady Rellingham now in existence, and this may be
a simple ramp on the part of Clutch & Holdem--you know the sort of
reputation that firm has? (3) They may have a client who is claiming
to be Lady Rellingham, but who is nothing of the kind. (4) But even if
she is Lady Rellingham, and even if the letter is genuine, it doesn’t
follow that it refers to the secret trust. Then added to all that, by a
decree of the court, under the terms of the will, the money now belongs
to you three in fee simple.”

“But we’ve reconstituted the trust.”

“Yes, but who knows except yourselves? That didn’t come out in court.
All that came out was, that you three still held the money.”

“Is that a complete answer?”

“I’m not quite sure. I work on the common law side, and I don’t want to
dogmatise on a chancery point; but it seems to me at any rate arguable
that if the trust is a simple trust for her benefit, claimable by her
on Sir John’s death, if she were then alive, then it had already vested
in her before the Treasury took action against you, and consequently
the trust created by the will was at an end, and the money would be her
absolute property before the court decrees it to yourselves. If it were
hers I should fancy the decree could hardly divest her of her absolute
property. You’ll probably have to open that packet, if the thing is
pressed, for it has the semblance of being a genuine claim and one that
looks _prima facie_ as if it might be substantiated.”

“Do you recommend us to pay or get out the papers?”

“I wouldn’t get ’em out yet. Sir John trusted you all so implicitly
that I wouldn’t get them out until the very last resort. If this is a
mere bluff, you may stop it by bluffing back. Go and see the letter,
and if it’s in Sir John’s handwriting, then ask for proof of the
marriage and proof of identity. When those are forthcoming, if they
are, simply point-blank refuse to pay, and see what happens. Say that
under the judgment of the court the trust is over and the money vested
in yourselves. Here, I’ll draft you the reply.”

Seating himself at his writing-table Tempest wrote as follows:--

  “Messrs. CLUTCH & HOLDEM.

  “DEAR SIRS,--Without attempting to discuss the merits of the claim,
  if any, which your client may conceive herself to possess, we would
  refer you to the terms of the will of Sir John Rellingham, of which
  you appear to have ample knowledge. We would remind you that the
  Crown commenced legal proceedings against us, to compel a disclosure
  of the terms of the trust; that we resisted this; and that the court
  decreed that under the expressed terms of Sir John’s will the capital
  funds had vested in us as our absolute property.--Yours faithfully,
  RELLINGHAM, BAXTER, MARSTON & MOORHOUSE.”

The solicitor read the draft.

“I don’t like it, Tempest. All three of us are ready and anxious to pay
over the money, if this be really Sir John’s intention.”

“Of course I know that; but the odds are so heavy that this is a bogus
claim that you are bound to fight it.”

By return of post came the following reply, which Baxter took round to
his chambers for Tempest to see:--

  “DEAR SIRS,--We are surprised at the tone and contents of your
  letter. We had not overlooked the facts you allude to, but we are
  advised by counsel that the trust moneys had already become vested
  in our client before the Crown took action, and that therefore the
  decree is of no weight. We shall be glad if you will give the matter
  further consideration, as we do not wish to resort to litigation
  unnecessarily.--Yours faithfully, CLUTCH & HOLDEM.”

“This seems to be getting interesting,” said Tempest as he read the
letter.

“Now write to them, and ask them to produce, for your inspection, the
original of the letter written by Sir John and the certificate of the
marriage. You should also ask them how they propose to prove the
identity of their client with the lady who married Sir John? Let me
know what they say.”

The letter was duly written; and Tempest learned afterwards from
Baxter that there could be no doubt whatever that the letter had been
written by Sir John. “It’s on the firm’s paper. It’s all in his own
handwriting. It couldn’t have been forged so perfectly. You see, it
isn’t just the question of a signature.”

“Very well, then, I take it that Sir John wrote it. Did you ask to see
the envelope.”

“Yes; and I was told it was given personally to Lady Rellingham by Sir
John, and was never put into an envelope.”

“Oh, that’s important; as the admission, if it were true, would prove
she had seen Sir John since or at the date of the making of the will.
Anything else?”

“Yes, it was written in the new copying-ink. I told you about that once
before, so it must have been written within a week or so before he
died.”

“Had the letter been copied?”

“Yes, press-copied. That was evident.”

“Can you find the copy in Sir John’s private book?”

“No, I’ve looked carefully. It isn’t there.”

“Are there any pages torn out?”

“No, I’ve gone carefully through the pages. There are no numbers
missing.”

“Then I’ll tell you where the press-copy is--it’s in the sealed packet.
There were probably two copies taken. Baxter, that letter was never
written to Lady Rellingham.”

“Why not?”

“It’s written in terms of genuine affection. If Sir John had been on
such terms with his wife, he would not have been separated from her so
completely that not one of you three had ever heard of her existence.
Why, Sir John couldn’t have known she were still alive, or he wouldn’t
have married a second time.”

“Then who was it written to?”

“Evangeline Stableford.”

“Then how did it come into Lady Rellingham’s hands?”

“Assuming there is a person posing as Lady Rellingham, you get a motive
which may account for the fact that Evangeline was murdered. I’m not
sure at present that it was the actual motive. There may, perhaps, have
been another, but the letter was stolen at the time of her death. You
know I’ve always said she was murdered by that woman who was staying in
the hotel in the name of Mrs. Garnett. Mrs. Garnett is the woman who is
now posing as Lady Rellingham. She is the woman who was in the court on
those two occasions--the woman Yardley tracked to the Hotel Victoria,
where she was staying as Mrs. Seymour. Now, mark you! the letter is
not used on Sir John’s death. It is not used until I have declared, in
open court, that the directions for disposing of the trust have been
destroyed. Clutch & Holdem have probably got as their client that woman
Mrs. Garnett, but it doesn’t absolutely follow she is identical with
Lady Rellingham. Still, I think she must be. You see, Evangeline was
the legitimate daughter of Sir John. I’ve felt fairly certain all along
that Mrs. Garnett was Evangeline’s mother.”

“Well, what had we better do? I’m here for professional advice,
Tempest.”

“Oh! you must decline to pay. Say you will accept service of a writ,
as you prefer to submit the matter to the arbitrament of the court.
I’ll keep your name straight before the court. Nobody shall go away
with the impression that you were declining to pay simply so that you
could stick to the money. You see, Baxter, they must produce their
client in court. They can’t get out of doing it. The only documents
they can cite are the will and this letter. As the two stand together
they don’t prove their case. They must obviously explain the letter
by the evidence of their client. You must have the papers in court,
in case the jury seem inclined to believe the woman. We’ll open the
packet there, if necessary. This letter from Sir John is obviously the
eventuality he created and ample justification for your opening the
packet; but, as I am pretty sure it has got into the wrong hands, we
won’t meddle with the secret until it becomes unavoidable, and then
we’ll cross-examine this Lady Rellingham.”

“Can we keep the papers secret until then? Surely Clutch & Holdem will
get discovery?”

“How can they? They can’t get a general fishing order. They can only
get discovery of documents they can specify.”

“But they’ll require an affidavit of documents?”

“I suppose they will. Put into the affidavit the sealed packet you had,
and say that it was destroyed. They know that much. They will never
dream of there being a duplicate set of papers. Why, this action is
only brought because they know the papers have been destroyed. Besides,
the set which are now at the safe deposit place have never been
reduced into custody yet. I tell you what. Don’t swear an affidavit of
documents at all. Don’t wait till you are asked for one, but treat it
as all in the day’s march; and, before they ask, send them an informal
list of your documents. Send it with a kind of put-off letter, saying
you don’t wish to inconvenience them, so send them at once a list of
the documents, and say that a thorough search is being made amongst
the office papers for additional papers, if any; and consequently, with
their consent, you will postpone swearing a formal affidavit till the
last moment. Then forget all about it. They’ll probably never tumble
to what your game is. They’ve very likely got one or two documents
themselves which they would rather keep up their sleeve at the moment,
so, if you don’t worry them for their affidavit, very likely they
won’t bother you. They think they know you have nothing of the least
importance.”

In due course the case came on for hearing in one of the chancery
courts. Barnett, K. C., and Mr. Hayford were for Lady Rellingham;
Tempest was alone, as usual, for the surviving partners in the firm of
Rellingham, Baxter, Marston & Moorhouse.

In an easy tone the well-known K. C. opened the case. He dwelt at
some length on the strange circumstances of the death of Sir John
Rellingham, described how he had been found murdered, and mentioned
the newspaper agitation which had resulted first in the action taken
by the Crown against the partners to compel disclosure of the terms of
the trust, which action had resulted in the court decreeing the capital
moneys to be the property of the surviving partners in their own right.
“We now know,” said Mr. Barnett, “that in defiance of the injunction
of the court, certainly an order obtained _ex parte_, but a valid
injunction nevertheless, the partners and executors of Sir John took
it upon themselves to destroy the sealed packet containing Sir John’s
instructions as to the conduct and disposal of the trust.”

“How do you know that, Mr. Barnett?”

“My lord,” answered the K. C., “my learned friend who is against me
in this case made a statement to that effect a few weeks ago, when
acting for one of the partners in a motion in one of the other courts
concerning the distribution of the money. I presume he will not
contradict his previous statement?”

“Oh, dear no!” said Tempest, without rising from his seat. “If my
learned friend’s client hadn’t known the papers had been destroyed, she
wouldn’t have dared to bring this action.”

“I can only say,” continued the K. C., “that this is a most improper
observation to have made, and I am surprised at my learned friend
allowing such a scandalous suggestion to have been put into his mouth.”

“Mr. Barnett,” said the judge with a smile, “we hear many scandalous
suggestions of that kind in this court. I should have thought
that, with your experience of them, you would hardly allowed your
imperturbable equanimity to be ruffled by what Mr. Tempest said. He
has still to prove it, you know.”

“Quite so, my lord;” and then the K. C. passed to another result of
the newspaper agitation which had been “the cause of the arrest and
trial of Mr. Baxter, one of the defendants in the present case, for
the murder of his partner, the late Sir John Rellingham. I know your
lordship will permit me to dissociate myself and my client from any
possible accusation of repeating any such suggestion here. Rather, if
I may, would I tender to Mr. Baxter congratulations on behalf of our
mutual profession at the happy issue of those proceedings, and I would
congratulate my learned friend as well, for he was closely concerned in
that issue.”

“Mr. Barnett, aren’t you rather on the horns of a dilemma? If you
congratulate Mr. Tempest too much, you’ll be making the very suggestion
you repudiate.”

A smile went round the court, and, as the ushers called for “silence,”
the learned counsel resumed his speech.

“The delay in bringing this action, my lord, or rather the delay in
making the claim which has resulted in this action, was not due to
the reason suggested in the innuendo of my learned friend, but simply
to the fact that Lady Rellingham was absent from England, and was not
aware of the death of Sir John. I cannot ignore the unhappy fact, my
lord--it is bound to come out in these proceedings; but Sir John and
Lady Rellingham separated within a few months of their marriage, and
since that separation never again cohabited with each other, and I
understand never again met each other. So complete was this separation,
that it came as a great surprise to all of us, including those of us
who had known the late Sir John Rellingham intimately, to be informed
that he had ever been married before his marriage to the late Lady
Rellingham, whom we all knew. My client will go into the box, my lord,
and will give the court the short history of her brief married life.
I shall put in the certificate of the marriage. None of the witnesses
are now alive. It was a marriage in a London city church; and the two
witnesses, the verger and a cleaner, were then both old, and they and
the clergyman who performed the ceremony are all dead. But I shall call
before your lordship the mother of the plaintiff, who will identify her
daughter. She was aware of her marriage; and there cannot therefore be
any objection, successfully upheld, that my client, Lady Rellingham,
is any other person than the lady who went through the ceremony of
marriage with Sir John. The real difficulty I have to face, my lord,
is that the terms of Sir John’s will are so strange. Not only does he
create a secret trust, but he attached to it this curious clause:

“‘And I further direct that if at any time this trust or the capital
moneys of this trust shall be or shall become the subject matter of
litigation through the interference or intervention of any party or
parties other than my said partners, or the survivor or survivors of
them, then and forthwith, and from the commencement of such litigation,
the said trust shall cease and determine, and the capital sums of the
said trust shall be distributed and applied in the form and manner next
above provided.’”

“What was that form and manner, Mr. Barnett?”

“Your lordship has a copy of the will before you. The previous clause
directs the distribution of the money amongst the partners for their
own benefit in a certain eventually.”

“Oh, yes, I see.”

“Now, the surviving partners of the late Sir John profess ignorance of
the original purposes of the trust. They assert that their instructions
were sealed in a packet which was only to be opened in a certain
eventuality; and they say, also, that those instructions directed them,
in the event of litigation, to destroy the parcel unopened.

“The Crown commenced litigation. The parcel was destroyed. But the
result of that litigation was that, under the clause in Sir John’s
will, which I have just read to your lordship, the court decrees the
trust funds to have vested in the three surviving partners in their
own right. But if the trustees and executors are really in the entire
ignorance they suggest, we are not. Not only was Lady Rellingham aware
of the purposes of the trust, but what we believe are the actual terms
of the instructions concerning it were within her knowledge. Amongst
certain papers of Sir John’s, which were in her possession, is a paper
containing these words:--

“‘Upon trust, to be settled tightly for her exclusive use and benefit,
without power of alienation or anticipation in the names of suitable
trustees, the new trust deed to be executed immediately after my death,
and to contain a clause cancelling the trust created by my will.’

“That paper was given to Lady Rellingham at the same time as the letter
which I shall presently read to your lordship and which she was to show
to the trustees and executors. Now, my lord, if, as I submit, we have
a right to assume those were either the actual words or an epitome of
the instructions Sir John left to his executors, then I submit to your
lordship that it was their duty to at once transfer this money, and
themselves create this trust in favour of Lady Rellingham. I submit
it had vested in her as the beneficiary, and, as a new trust, was
not subject to the clause by which litigation transferred it to the
surviving partners. Alternatively, my lord, I shall submit, that if the
old trust still existed, and the money therefore under the terms of the
will was still subject to the forfeiture clause, and was accordingly
forfeited, then the trustees were guilty of negligence in not having
constituted the new trust, and through their negligence Lady Rellingham
has found the provision made for her forfeited through causes over
which she had no control, and for which negligence she is entitled to
damages. Her statement of claim, my lord, as you will see, alleges the
further negligence that the forfeiture was consequent upon the refusal
of the partners to disclose the terms of the trust, and that they were
not justified in that refusal, but, on the other hand, deliberately
provoked the litigation which resulted in the forfeiture. Before
calling my client, my lord, I propose to proceed chronologically by
first proving the marriage.”

Formal proof of the marriage and the certificate was given, and then
Mr. Barnett called “Esther Manuel.”

An old woman, dressed plainly but inexpensively, came forward, and was
sworn. She gave her name and her residence in Nassau Street, Dublin,
and said that she was the widow of Pedro Manuel.

“Who was Pedro Manuel?”

“He was a hairdresser.”

“Where did he carry on business?”

“In Dublin.”

“When did he die?”

“Eight years after my marriage, in 1865.”

“How many children had you?”

“Two daughters.”

“When were they born?”

“Sarah Jane was born in 1858 and Dorothy in 1860.”

“What has became of Dorothy?”

“She died about twenty years ago. I don’t know the exact date.”

“Where did she die?”

“In London.”

“Now, your elder daughter. Do you see her in court?”

“Yes--that lady;” and the old woman pointed to the plaintiff, who was
seated at the solicitor’s table.

“Will you raise your veil, please, Lady Rellingham?” said the judge.
“Now,” he added, turning to the witness, “is that your daughter Sarah
Jane?”

“Yes. I’m positive. I should know her anywhere.”

As Lady Rellingham raised her veil for a moment, Tempest saw her face
and started in amazement. An older woman certainly, but nevertheless
the likeness to Evangeline Stableford was startling in the extreme.
There could be no doubt of the relationship of those two.

Tempest rose to cross-examine. “When did your daughters leave home?”

“Oh, many a year ago! I couldn’t tell you the date.”

“How old were they?”

“I think Sarah Jane was seventeen or eighteen, and Dorothy was two
years younger.”

“Why did they leave home? Was there any quarrel?”

“Oh, no, sir. They left home to go into service. I found it very hard
to support them, and they had good situations offered to them.”

“What were the situations?”

“They went to some dressmaker’s shop here in London. I forget the name.”

“When was the next time you saw them?”

“I never saw Dorothy again. She died.”

“Did they write to you?”

“Sometimes; but not often. I’m not much of a scholar myself, and I
couldn’t write back, so I suppose they got tired of writing.”

“When did you next see your daughter Sarah Jane?”

The witness hesitated, but the question was pressed, and finally came
the answer, “Yesterday.”

“Then, from the day they left home until yesterday, an interval of
between twenty and thirty years, you have never set eyes on your
daughter?”

“No, sir.”

“And yet you are positive she is your daughter?”

“Quite sure, sir.”

“Did you know of her marriage?”

“Yes.”

“When did you hear of it?”

“I can’t say exactly. She wrote and told me she had married a rich man,
and since then she’s always allowed me ten shillings a week, and with
the little bit of money I had that made me very comfortable.”

“Did you know whom she married?”

“No. I didn’t know the name.”

“How did you address your letters to her when you wrote?”

“I used to write them to Miss Manuel. She told me to.”

“What address did you send them to?”

“I always sent them to her at an address she gave me.” The old lady
mentioned the address, but it told Tempest nothing. He guessed it to be
an accommodation address--a surmise which subsequently proved correct.

“How did you get to know of your daughter Dorothy’s death?”

“Sarah Jane--her ladyship--wrote and told me.”

“Did she tell you where she died?”

“I don’t remember, sir. I don’t think so.”

“Did she tell you what was the cause of her death?”

“No, sir. I wrote and asked her to send me word about it, but I didn’t
hear again after that from Sarah Jane for a long time, and then she
wrote and said she’d been living in France.”

“Did you ever write and ask your daughter Sarah Jane who it was she had
married?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did she tell you?”

“No. She said she had to keep her marriage quite secret, and it was
safest to say nothing.”

“Did either of your daughters tell you when they left their situation?”

“No, sir.”

“Then, for all you knew to the contrary, Sarah Jane might still have
been there all these years?”

“Well, sir, she said she had married a rich man, so naturally I didn’t
suppose she would have to go on working for her living.”

“Did she ever send you word whether she had a child?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you know now whether or not she has ever had one?”

“No, sir.”

Lady Rellingham was the next witness called, and, in answer to her
counsel, said she left home about the year 1875. It might be 1876; she
could not be certain. She had left home with her sister, and they both
obtained situations in the same milliner’s shop. There she had met Mr.
John Rellingham, as he then was, and she had married him after a very
short engagement. Their marriage had been kept secret by her wish at
first. She did not wish to give up her employment. They never had a
joint home. She and her sister shared rooms, and she used to go away
with her husband for week ends.

“Then I think you separated from your husband. Can you tell the court
the reason?”

“We couldn’t get on. We were always quarrelling, and we both felt it
was hopeless to pretend to keep up the farce of appearing fond of each
other. So we just agreed to part. That was easy. Because no one knew of
our marriage except my sister.”

“Did Sir John make any provision for you?”

“He allowed me an income for a few years, and then it ceased.”

“Did you ever see Sir John again?”

“Not until shortly before his death, when he gave me the letter and
paper I produce.”

“Do you identify this letter (and it was handed to the witness) as in
the handwriting of Sir John?”

“Yes, it is in his writing.”

“You are perfectly familiar with his writing? Now, this other paper--is
that in his handwriting?”

“No. He had it ready written out, and he gave it me with the letter.”

“Why were they given to you?”

“So that I could claim the money which he told me he was putting into
trust for me under his will.”

“What was the reason for making it a secret trust and not leaving it to
you by name?”

“Sir John still wished our marriage kept secret. You see, he had been
married again himself.”

“Do you swear on your oath that Sir John intended that trust for your
benefit?”

“He told me so. He told me I should only have to show that letter to
his partners, that they would understand it; and he gave me the paper,
and told me that those were the instructions he had left for his
partners.”

“I really don’t know how much of this is evidence,” interrupted the
judge.

Tempest rose. “I make no objection to it, my lord. I am not here to
assist my clients to retain money which should rightly go elsewhere;
and under the curious, I might say the utterly weird, circumstances
of this present case, I think it very desirable we should have all
possible information we can get.”

“If you raise no objection, Mr. Tempest, I am very much inclined to
agree with you;” and the examination was continued.

“When did you hear of Sir John’s death?”

“Only a few weeks ago. I have been travelling in Egypt.”

“And that is the reason, I understand, why you have only recently
instructed your solicitors to claim the money?”

“That is so;” and the examination then closed, and Tempest began to
cross-examine.

“For how long, Lady Rellingham, have you used that title?”

“Only since I commenced this claim.”

“That, I take it, is since the death of Sir John, and since he has been
unable to raise objection to your doing so. Is not that the case?”

“Yes.”

“What name were you known by previously?”

“My maiden name was Sarah Jane Manuel.”

“What name were you known by previously, Lady Rellingham, if you
please?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Will you answer my question, please?”

“I decline to.”

“Was it the name of another man?”

“Yes.”

“Was that why Sir John Rellingham ceased to pay your allowance?”

“I don’t know.”

The question was pressed.

“I don’t think it was.”

“What was the reason?”

“My husband thought I was dead.”

Tempest’s face plainly showed his surprise.

“How did you know he thought you were dead?”

“He heard of the death of my sister, and must have thought it was my
death, for he wrote to my sister to condole with her, and offering to
pay the expenses of the funeral. It suited me to let him think so, so
I answered it in my sister’s name, and I never undeceived him.”

“If he thought you were dead, then why did he wish to provide for you
by making this trust?”

“He found out his mistake.”

“How?”

“We met, and he recognised me.”

“When did you meet?”

“It was just before his death, when he gave me that letter and the
paper.”

“How was it you came to meet?”

“He wrote that he had some business he wanted to discuss with me.”

“But he thought you were dead?”

“Yes; but he thought my sister--his sister-in-law--was alive.”

Tempest hunted through his papers, and then, turning to the witness,
asked, “Was this the letter?” and Tempest read out:

“‘Sir John Rellingham has received and carefully considered the
letter. In the exercise of his discretion, he must decline the request.
He cannot but think the interview was essential.’”

“It was something like that.”

“Was that the letter, please? Yes or no?”

“I believe it was.”

“Did the interview take place after you received that letter?”

“Yes.”

“Then we can date it. That letter was written within a week of Sir
John’s death.”

“Do you propose to prove that, Mr. Tempest?” asked the judge.

“Certainly, my lord--now that it has become material.--Now, do I
understand that, until that interview took place, Sir John Rellingham
had no idea that you, his wife, were still alive?”

“That is so.”

“Lady Rellingham, Sir John died in the week preceding Easter in 1902.
If he were not aware you were alive until the interview took place
in 1902, how do you account for the fact that his will was made in
1900--the trust drawn up in 1900--a trust which you say was for your
benefit, whereas he did not know in 1900, when he drew his will, that
you were alive?”

There was no answer, and, time after time, the question was repeated.
Lady Rellingham got whiter and whiter, till her face was a pale ashy
grey; but she made not even a suggestion in reply. At last came her
whispered reply, “I cannot say.”

“Mr. Tempest, of course it’s quite possible--mind, I do not say it is
so--but it is possible that the trust may have been created for the
benefit of someone else, and Sir John may have changed his mind, when
he became aware that his wife was still alive.”

Tempest listened in growing irritation as the judge helped the witness
out of the pitfall he had dug so carefully for her, and curtly answered:

“That is a point I shall have to discuss at some length a little
later;” and then, turning to the witness, he asked: “Did Sir John write
this letter and this paper in your presence?”

“Yes, and handed them to me.”

“Where did this interview take place?”

“At his office.”

“How is it, then, that neither of Sir John’s partners nor any of the
clerks in the office are aware of such an interview having taken place?”

“It was after office hours, and all the clerks had gone.”

“Who admitted you?”

“Sir John himself. He had made the appointment, and expected us.”

“Did Sir John leave you in his room and go into any other room whilst
you were there?”

“No.”

“Then, Lady Rellingham, how do you account for this letter having been
press-copied?”

“I really cannot tell. Perhaps he did it in his own room, and I never
noticed him copying it. I don’t know how letters are copied.”

“But I do know, Lady Rellingham. It needs a press to press-copy a
letter, and the press is in the clerks’ office.”

“Perhaps we were in the clerks’ office?”

“Will you describe the room, Lady Rellingham?”

“It was a room on the first floor, not looking into the square, and it
had a large table and some chairs.”

“Then, Lady Rellingham, if I can prove the clerks’ offices are all on
the ground floor, and that none of them have chairs or tables, but all
have desks and stools, you must be mistaken?”

“Are you going to prove that, Mr. Tempest?”

“Oh certainly, my lord; if you wish it. Now, Lady Rellingham, a moment
ago you said Sir John admitted you. Your exact words were, ‘He had made
the appointment and expected us.’ Who was the other person?”

“That was a mistake. I went alone.”

“Did you expect to meet anyone else there?”

“No.”

“Did anyone else go there?”

“No.”

“Was no one else present at the interview between yourself and Sir
John?”

“No one at all.”

“What time was it when the interview took place?”

“About a quarter to seven.”

“And none of the clerks were present?”

“No.”

“Now, Lady Rellingham, if I can prove, as I am going to do
presently--now just listen, please--if I can prove that that letter
was written less than a week before Sir John died, and that during
that week there was only one evening on which all of the clerks had
gone before seven o’clock, and that on that evening Sir John sent the
last one away at half-past six, that must have been the evening the
interview took place?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“And if that evening was the evening Sir John was murdered, you must
have been the last person who saw Sir John alive? Now, Lady Rellingham,
I will ask you again, was no one else present at the interview between
Sir John and yourself?”

“There was someone else.”

“I thought so. Who was that other person?”

“I decline to say.”

“But don’t you see, Lady Rellingham, that if that other person can
corroborate what you say, you have won your case. If, as you admit,
there was another person, and you don’t call that person as a witness,
the natural presumption is that you are afraid to do so because that
person would tell a different story. Now, who was that other person?”

“The other person is dead.”

“Well, we’ll leave that point for the present. Have you any children,
Lady Rellingham?”

“No.”

Tempest handed the witness a birth-certificate. “Isn’t that the
certificate of the birth of a daughter of Sir John and yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why did you say you had no children?”

“You asked me if I have any children. That child was adopted by
somebody very soon after it was born. I didn’t want anyone to know I
had had a child.”

“Who adopted it?”

“I don’t know. I told the monthly nurse to make arrangements, and it
was adopted on condition that I was not to know where it went, and I
was never to claim it.”

“Was your husband with you when the child was born?”

“No.”

“Did he know you had had a child?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know what became of it?”

“I think he found out afterwards.”

“Did he tell you what name it was known by, or what had become of it
when you had this interview with him?”

“Yes.”

“What was the name?”

“I decline to say.”

“I insist on your answering;” and as the witness remained silent, the
judge intervened. “You know, Lady Rellingham, I can commit you to
prison if you do not answer; and if you do not tell the truth, you will
be guilty of perjury.”

“Lady Rellingham, I put it to you that your daughter went by the name
of Evangeline Stableford. Is not that a fact?” And reluctantly came the
admission that it was.

“Now, then, I put it to you that the other person who was present was
Evangeline Stableford. Isn’t that so?”

And that was admitted.

“Now, didn’t Sir John tell you he was suffering from cancer of the
throat, and was going to be operated on?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t he remind you that Evangeline had not yet come of age?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t he say he hoped Lady Stableford would provide for her adopted
daughter, Evangeline, in her will?”

“Yes.”

“But there was always the chance that Lady Stableford might change her
mind, and that Evangeline had no legal claim on her?”

“He might have done.”

“Didn’t he?”

“Yes, I think he did.”

“Now, you say he thought you were Evangeline’s aunt and not her mother?”

“Yes.”

“Then, was it that he wished to leave Evangeline in your charge in case
he died under the operation, and before Evangeline came of age, that he
had sent for you?”

“I suppose so.”

“And your story is that when he saw you he recognised you as his wife?”

“Yes; that is what happened.”

“And that, whatever may have been his previous intentions, he thereupon
changed his mind and wrote the letter, so that you should benefit by
the trust.”

“Yes. I promised him to leave the money to Evangeline at my death, that
is, if Lady Stableford did not provide for her.”

“Lady Rellingham, isn’t the real fact that Sir John had known you were
alive for some five or six years--before he ever made the will which
you say was to benefit you?”

“He may, perhaps, have done. He may have seen me, and recognised me,
without my knowledge.”

“Lady Rellingham,” said Tempest in his quiet voice as he leaned
forward, “isn’t it the fact that Sir John had found out you were alive
and living under another man’s name, and he sent for you and sent for
Evangeline, and he told you, in her presence, that he knew and had
known, but that he was going to respect your secret, if it could be
protected, so long as you lived; and that if he died before Evangeline
came of age, and that if then Lady Stableford had not provided for her,
Evangeline was to be able to claim the money he put in trust; but that,
as that would probably result in your secret being disclosed, he gave
you the opportunity of providing for Evangeline during your lifetime,
so that your secret need not be revealed whilst you were alive? Isn’t
that the real fact?”

“No, it is not.”

“Isn’t it the fact that that letter was written for Evangeline and
given to her in your presence?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Lady Rellingham, I know your secret. Isn’t what I put to you the fact?”

“Certainly not.”

“Did Evangeline know?”

“No. I stopped him telling her. She only knew I was her mother.”

“I’ve tried to keep your secret. I’m afraid it will have to come out
now;” and then, turning to Baxter, he said, “Let me have that parcel,”
and a sealed packet was handed to him.

“Lady Rellingham,” said Tempest, “did Sir John tell you that the
instructions to his partners as to the execution of the trust were in a
sealed packet, and that they would not be aware of the contents until
the time came for them to act?”

“He did.”

“You were aware that that parcel was destroyed unopened?”

“I saw it in the papers that you said so in court.”

“Did Sir John tell you he had created a duplicate, in case that parcel
was destroyed?”

“No, he did not.”

“It’s news to you, then, that there was such a duplicate?”

“Quite news. I don’t believe it.”

“You won’t believe me, then, if I tell you this is the duplicate?”

“No, I shall not. You’re only trying to frighten me.”

“Are you willing to let this case depend upon the result of opening
this duplicate?”

“Certainly not. How do I know it’s genuine?”

“I shall require you to prove that, Mr. Tempest,” said the judge.

“As your lordship pleases,” replied the barrister.

“My lord,” said Mr. Barnett, “I shall strongly object to the production
of that document. It is not mentioned in their affidavit of documents.”

“I haven’t the remotest idea what is in the parcel,” said Tempest.
“I imagine the documents it contains will be in the handwriting of
Sir John, and will practically prove themselves. But I can assure
my learned friend that I was only intending to use the contents in
cross-examination. He seems much more afraid of them than I am.”

As Tempest took a pen-knife from his pocket and cut the sealed string,
there was a dramatic pause, and the court hushed into breathless
silence. One could hear the wax breaking as the string was cut; and
Lady Rellingham, gripping the rail of the witness-box, gasped towards
her solicitor, “I withdraw! I withdraw!”

“Then, my lord, I ask you to order the arrest of the witness.”

“On what ground, Mr. Tempest?”

“Perjury, my lord, at least.”

“But you haven’t proved that her evidence is incorrect?”

“I take it, my lord, that her withdrawal is tantamount to such an
admission.”

Mr. Clutch hurriedly passed to the witness-box and urged his client not
to withdraw.

Tempest’s voice was clear above the racket and bustle in the court. “I
object to anyone tampering with the witness.”

[Illustration: “‘I object to anyone tampering with the witness’”]

“No--no. She has a right to take counsel with her advisers on such a
matter as a withdrawal of her claim. You mustn’t forget, Mr. Tempest,
she has practically admitted there is some secret of hers mixed up
in this matter. You yourself have suggested it is a secret that Sir
John created this trust to obviate the disclosure of, and you have
practically threatened the witness with a disclosure of her secret,
if she continues her claim. She may well prefer to forfeit a just
claim rather than have it disclosed; and, Mr. Tempest, I must remind
you I shall not permit any disclosure of a matter which is entirely
irrelevant to the issue for the mere purpose of harassing the witness.”

“As your lordship pleases. I could have hoped, my lord, that you would
not have thought such a warning necessary to me.”

As Tempest finished speaking there was a momentary hush, and Clutch was
heard to say, “I tell you he’s simply bluffing. He often does. Very
likely it’s only waste-paper.”

A few whispered words passed between the solicitor and the K. C., and
the latter rose, and said, “My client does not withdraw, my lord.”

Tempest calmly broke the remaining seals, and in the dead silence
every eye watched him as he took the papers one by one from the
packet and unfolded them. The first two were obviously Somerset
House certificates. The next was a buff-coloured piece of
tissue-paper--obviously the press-copy of a letter. With a cursory
glance that also was laid aside. The last remaining paper was a letter
which Tempest read through as the court waited. Refolding it he slipped
the papers back into the parcel, and resumed his cross-examination.

“Lady Rellingham, I will ask you again, were not the letter and the
other paper you produce given to Evangeline Stableford?”

“They were not.”

“How did they come into your possession?”

“Sir John gave them to me himself with his own hands.”

“Didn’t you take them from the dead body of Evangeline Stableford?”

“Don’t answer. I object to such a question, my lord,” said Mr. Barnett.

“I think you must take your answer, Mr. Tempest,” replied the judge.

“As your lordship pleases. What was your occupation, Lady Rellingham,
at the time of your marriage?”

“I had a situation at a milliner’s.”

“Lady Rellingham, when did you go on the stage? Weren’t you on the
stage when you married?”

And in a whisper the admission came.

“Now, wasn’t your stage name Eulalie Alvarez?”

“Yes.”

“And your sister Dorothy Manuel was Dolores Alvarez?”

“Yes.”

“Now, when your husband heard of your engagement to Lord Madeley,
didn’t he object strongly and threaten to make your marriage to him
public?”

“Yes.”

“And didn’t you tell him that you were about to have a child, and that
it wouldn’t be possible for you to marry Lord Madeley, and that, taking
advantage of Lord Madeley’s inexperience of women, you and your sister
had arranged that, though Eulalie Alvarez was engaged to him, it was
Dolores Alvarez who was going to go through the ceremony of marriage
with Lord Madeley in the name of Eulalie Alvarez?”

“Yes.”

“So that, when Dolores Alvarez was found dead, Sir John Rellingham
thought it was his wife who was dead, and troubled no more, and stopped
the allowance. Isn’t that so?”

And without waiting for a reply Tempest went on:

“Now, then, are you Sarah Jane Manuel--Eulalie Alvarez--Lady
Rellingham? or are you Dorothy Manuel--Dolores Alvarez--Lady Madeley?”

“I’m Lady Rellingham--Eulalie.”

“Then it was Lady Madeley--Dolores--who died, and you have been living
all these years masquerading as Lady Madeley? Isn’t that so?”

There was no answer.

“That was the secret Sir John tried to protect for you?”

Again there was no answer.

“Now, once again I ask you: Was not the letter you have produced given
to Evangeline Stableford, and wasn’t the trust created for her benefit?”

Tempest hesitated, and then sat down; but the witness had fainted.
Barnett, K. C., rose, and remarked that he felt he had no alternative
consistent with the dignity of his profession but to retire from the
case, and his junior did the same. The judge adjourned, and the court
slowly emptied.

With a grave face Tempest returned to his chambers.

Baxter and Marston joined him in the corridor, and the three men walked
in silence across New Square.

“Come along in. I know a great deal more than you do, and I’m at my
wits’ end what to do,” said the barrister. Handing his wig and gown to
his clerk he lighted a cigarette, and backwards and forwards he paced
along the narrow pathway across his carpet.

“I ought to have done it, but I simply couldn’t. Very few people in
court could know all the facts. It’s simply a coincidence that all of
them happen to have come into my hands. The chances can be only one
in a thousand that such a thing could happen. The two Manuel girls
were the two sisters Alvarez, and to-day Lady Rellingham has given the
explanation of the whole thing. Do you remember the suicide of Dolores
Alvarez twenty years ago?”

“Yes, I remember something of it. It was a nine days’ wonder at the
time.”

“That’s Dolores,” said Tempest, as he pointed to the painted miniature
over the mantelpiece. “I was in that case, and it has always puzzled
me. You remember she was found dead in her flat--stark nude on the bed,
and by the side an opened bottle of champagne, with prussic acid in the
glass? The evidence was that her sister, Lady Madeley, called; that she
sent her maid out; that the maid came back, found Lady Madeley gone,
and her mistress at once sent her out again, and the maid came back
to find the dead body of Dolores. The coroner’s verdict was suicide.
Now, I’ve puzzled over that for twenty years. Then comes the death
of Evangeline Stableford--the body found nude at the Charing Cross
Hotel, and again the opened bottle of champagne and prussic acid; and
then there was the utterly marvellous likeness between Dolores and
Evangeline. But they could not be mother and daughter, for Dolores had
never had a child, and I had always assumed Evangeline could not be
the daughter of Lady Madeley, because she was born on the day Lord and
Lady Madeley were married. It never dawned on me that the two sisters
changed places.”

“But, even if they did, you can’t make it fit. Look here----”

“My dear Baxter, it does fit. They changed places, and then changed
back again. I’d thought of the possibility of one change; it never
dawned on me that there were two changes. This is what happened:
Eulalie married Sir John, and keeps her marriage secret, and Sir
John makes her an allowance. His father was alive then, and probably
didn’t approve of actresses. Then she gets engaged to Lord Madeley,
for I daresay Rellingham wasn’t much catch then. Now, she can’t marry
Lord Madeley--that would be bigamy; and she’s just going to have a
child, so she persuades her sister Dolores to go through the ceremony
in her place and in her name; and I have no doubt whatever that the
arrangement was that Eulalie was to take the place of Lady Madeley when
the honey-moon was over. I knew Lord Madeley, and it would have been
quite possible with him. He never noticed the difference between one
woman and another.

“Now, Sir John Rellingham hears of the engagement and protests.
Eulalie tells him of the expected child, and explains that it is her
sister who is really to marry Lord Madeley, and that it was arranged
that she would marry him in the name of Eulalie Alvarez. That being
merely an assumed name, one sister has no greater right to it than
the other. So Sir John was content, for, of course, he wouldn’t be
told the sisters intended to change places after the marriage. Well,
the marriage does take place, and Eulalie’s child Evangeline is born
and adopted by Lady Stableford. Then Lord and Lady Madeley come back
from the honey-moon, and Eulalie, of course, wants her sister to stand
down and carry out the arrangement they had come to. Dolores, who has
found her feet, very naturally objects. Then she goes to tea with her
sister. The maid sees the two sisters together, and is sent out on an
errand. Eulalie poisons Dolores in the bedroom. The maid comes back,
is told Lady Madeley has gone, and is at once sent out again. Then
Eulalie strips the body of Dolores, and puts those clothes on. She
leaves her own clothes in the bedroom, because she cannot dress the
dead body in them. From that moment she becomes Lady Madeley, and
she leaves the flat before the maid returns. She bears Lord Madeley a
child, the present Consuelo, Baroness Madeley. Lord Madeley dies. Lady
Madeley has a small jointure, but she has a handsome allowance for the
maintenance of Consuelo, and has the use of Madeley Manor. Consuelo
will be of age in a year’s time, and Eulalie’s income would be reduced
to her jointure. Consuelo, I hear, is engaged already, so there was no
chance of staving off the drop to the jointure. Sir John, believing his
wife was dead, later on marries again. Now Sir John, as time goes by,
discovers that his first wife, whom he had thought was dead, is really
alive, and masquerading as Lady Madeley. He ought to have shown her
up at once, but he hesitates to do so, because not only does it lay
his wife open to a charge of fraud and probable imprisonment, but it
also bastardises Consuelo and creates a huge scandal, and, moreover,
it is a slur on the memory of his second wife, to whom he was very
devoted. Added to all, it means that he himself has committed bigamy.
So he lets things slide. Then Lady Stableford quarrels with Evangeline,
and alters her will, and Sir John realises that somehow or other he
must provide for his daughter. He therefore creates the secret trust,
knowing that if he puts everything in your hands in that way he can
trust his wife’s secret not to be revealed, if this can possibly be
avoided; but he is so loyal that even to you he won’t reveal it, unless
this becomes absolutely unavoidable. If he hadn’t been murdered, none
of this would ever have come out. Then, knowing he was going to be
operated upon whilst Evangeline was still a minor, he sends to Lady
Madeley to come to his office, and he sends for Evangeline. He gives
that paper and letter to Evangeline, but tells her she is not to use
it if Lady Stableford provides for her. But if he himself dies before
she comes of age, and if Lady Stableford does not provide for her,
then she is to use it, unless, to obviate the risk of her secret being
disclosed, Lady Madeley, her mother, prefers to make the necessary
provision. He probably tells them in each other’s presence, so as to
give each the hold on the other. But Lady Madeley, knowing she will be
reduced to her jointure in a year or two, or else trying to avert the
disclosure, or in temper, kills Sir John. I fancy it must have been a
right down quarrel, and she probably killed him in temper, though the
use of the revolver looks as if she had planned it out beforehand.
It may have been that she was fond of Consuelo, and was willing to
sacrifice anything to prevent her succession being interfered with or
jeopardised. Sir John may have threatened her with disclosure, or she
may have shot him to stop his speaking. Anyhow, she kills him, and then
it dawns on her that she is at the mercy of Evangeline, who knows she
has killed him. So she determines to murder Evangeline. She remembers
that Dolores’ death was put down to suicide, and the nude body was used
as an argument to suggest insanity. So she lays her plans, takes a room
at Charing Cross Hotel, and entices Evangeline there, and poisons her.
She takes away her clothes, to prevent or delay a discovery of the
identity of the body, and to suggest insanity, forgetting all the time
that at an hotel the absence of any clothes in the room would establish
the complicity of another person. She finds the letter from Sir John in
the pocket of Evangeline, and appropriates it. As soon as I had stated
in court that the directions to your partners had been destroyed, she
sees her chance, and, knowing her income will very shortly be reduced,
and relying on this letter, she brings the action against you three.
As to the other paper, very likely Clutch & Holdem wrote that out, and
were responsible for that part of the story. Now, that’s the whole
explanation of everything.”

“Shall you tell the police, Tempest?”

“No, old man. I don’t hunt murderers for a living. The police read the
papers. If they like to put two and two together, from what came out in
court to-day, let them. It’s not my business or yours.”

“Would she be convicted?”

“I doubt it. I’m certain of what I’ve told you; but there’s too much
deduction for a jury. A jury will only convict for murder on cold-drawn
facts, and plenty of them. But that woman will save them the trouble.
Unless they’ve arrested her already, I expect she’ll commit suicide
before the morning. She’s shown up to the world--utterly discredited.
She isn’t Lady Madeley, and consequently she hasn’t got any income
now. And she knows what the chances are, that she’ll be arrested for
murder. You’ll see she won’t risk it.”

“Then Consuelo isn’t Lady Madeley either?”

“As it happens, she is, because I happen to know that her trustees very
wisely got letters patent of confirmation when she succeeded. It only
means that Billy Fitz Aylwyn succeeds to the old barony, whilst the
girl gets a new peerage, dating from her patent.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning the daily papers announced that during the passage of
the Dover-Calais boat a lady passenger had been missed. The unclaimed
luggage left behind proved her to have been Eulalie, Lady Madeley.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some six weeks later, Tempest received a letter:

  “DEAR MR. TEMPEST,--In thinking things over quietly, I have come to
  the conclusion that you probably knew a great deal more than you made
  public at the trial. If I am right, I am grateful to you, though you
  left me no alternative but to leave England at once. If you will do
  one generous action, you will do another. Evangeline I never knew
  or cared about; Consuelo is and was the delight of my life. Will
  you, whatever happens, whatever comes out, please do everything that
  is possible for her? She has no one to guard her now, for, as an
  illegitimate child, she has not inherited the property, and so the
  trustees who have been acting are not really her trustees at all.
  Will you please do what you can to straighten out the tangle I have
  made? You will never hear of me again. I am going to Australia, to
  earn my living, and start again, if I can. If I cannot, then in
  reality I shall end it, as the world already thinks I have done.
  Please don’t try to find me.

  “Now, for the last time I sign myself by the name to which I have no
  right.--Yours, EULALIE MADELEY.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Sometimes things straighten themselves out without much outside
interference. Billy Fitz Aylwyn preferred to waive his own claims in
view of the realisation of his great desire. Let the _Times_ tell the
conclusion of the story.

“FITZ AYLWYN--MADELEY.--On the 17th inst., at St. Peter’s, Eaton
Square, Wilbraham Plantagenet de Bohun, only son of the late Sir
Brabazon Fitz Aylwyn, G.C.B., to Consuelo, Baroness Madeley.”




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

  The Table of Contents was created by the transcriber for the reader's
    convenience and is entered into the public domain.