Читать книгу The Dark Mill-Stream - Arthur Gask - Страница 4

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IN the meanwhile Hardacre was settling down somewhat uneasily in a little inn just outside Burnham, right on the muddy banks of the River Crouch. Of all places in which to hide away he had chosen Burnham because, as a boy, he had once spent a holiday there, and it had always remained in his memory as one of the quietest places he had been in.

Surrounded in every direction by boggy Essex flats, except in summer and then only for a few weeks, the district was as lonely and unfrequented as anyone could wish, the only permanent inhabitants being a few fishermen and some farmers with very small holdings.

He had remembered, too, a lonely little inn which stood all by itself about half a mile out of the town on its seaward side and, when he had been driven there that cold and misty evening, his heart sank in dismay at its desolate appearance.

Inside the inn, however, everything looked comfortable and clean, and the man and his wife who kept it were delighted when Hardacre informed them that, if the accommodation and the cooking were satisfactory, he might be staying for some time. He said he had but recently recovered from a serious illness and, a writer by profession, he wanted perfect peace and quiet.

The inn-keeper assured him with a grin that he would have all the quiet he wanted, as in the winter, from one week's end to another, no customers except an occasional fisherman and an odd farm-hand or two came in for refreshment.

That night, after a well-cooked and nicely served meal, washed down by two bottles of good beer, Hardacre took stock of his position, and, but for the fear that the Health Authorities might be putting detectives after him, he would have been by no means' in a depressed state of mind.

A shrewd, intelligent man, he had fully taken in all that the doctor had told him regarding his complaint, and that leprosy, like tuberculosis, would not flourish in healthy and well-nourished bodies. So he was confident then that he would be able to keep the disease at bay and had even hopes that in time he would throw it off altogether. As for what the Health people would do, well, he would just have to chance things there. If they were, indeed, to start upon an intensive search for him, he was hoping they would have expected him to have hidden away in some crowded city and not for one moment have gone to a little country town so near to the great Metropolis.

Anyhow, he would keep himself as much out of sight as possible and, when out for exercise and fresh air, take his walks where he was not likely to meet many people. He remembered there were nearly five miles of lonely and almost uninhabited country along the river bank towards the sea, and so there would be many chances against him coming upon any curious strangers. Also, he would grow a beard and that would soon make his appearance very different from any description which might have been given about him.

As to how he was going to earn his living, that would have to wait a while. He had nearly £1,400 in good English bank-notes sewn up in his belt and, at any rate, living economically they would provide for him for three or four years. Of an enterprising and go-ahead disposition, long before the money was spent he was certain he would have thought out some profitable occupation to follow.

In the days which followed, time did not hang nearly so heavily upon his hands as he had been expecting, and after the first rather anxious weeks, he became confident he was safe and would not now be discovered. The innkeeper and his wife were an unlettered incurious couple, and the few strangers he encountered upon his walks, after wishing him polite good-days, seemed to take no further interest in him.

When January came and the trader had been at the inn three months, he was satisfied with his condition of health, and quite sure the drug he had been most religiously taking was doing him good. Certainly, two more little spots had come out on his shin, but they were very small ones, and the first spot did not seem to have grown any bigger. In himself, too, he was feeling much better and his appetite was good.

With the coming of early spring, however, he thought it would not be safe to go on staying in Burnham much longer. Certainly, the rough bearded fellow he looked now was very different from the well-dressed patient who had consulted Dr. Monk. Still, he was not intending to take any chances, and he remembered having seen a large stuffed trout in a glass case in the doctor's consulting room. So it might be the doctor was an enthusiastic fisherman and, the million to one chance eventuating, he might one day come down to Burnham to fish in the Crouch.

Besides, he felt there was another reason why he must leave the place. Although the charges at the inn were very moderate, he was not living anything like as cheaply as he had expected he would. He found he could not do without luxuries, and had taken to sending up to Town for expensive delicatessen foods and cases of good champagne, with a dozen bottles of the wine often not lasting him a fortnight. Also, he must have the most expensive Egyptian cigarettes, and he could easily get through from thirty to forty of them in a day.

So he realized he must start earning money, but in exactly what way he had no idea until one came to him from a poultry-farmer whose place, about three miles from Burnham, he used to pass on his lonely walks in the direction of the sea. He had often noticed the man at work, but for a long while nothing more had passed between them than a wave of the hand. Then one day the man came running up to him to borrow a box of matches and, after a short conversation, asked him to come and look at his birds.

Rather bored, Hardacre complied with his request, and to his surprise, found himself interested at once. The poultry farm was small, but most methodically kept and, even to the trader's inexperienced eyes, contained some magnificent birds.

The man appeared to be delighted to have someone to talk to, and said he was doing well, very well and—with a grin—much better than he would like the Income Tax people to know. He said he had been there six years, but had only just learnt the secret of success and that was to sell his birds at a high price.

"You know," he explained, "I came to realize it is much easier to sell a live bird for a guinea than a dead one for three and six. So, I go in for stud birds now and breed from only the very best. I sell no hens under a guinea and ask five for my roosters. I am beginning to get known and people from all over the country buy from me. These Indian Game are my speciality. Lovely birds, aren't they?"

"They are indeed," agreed Hardacre. "They look quite up to exhibition standard."

"Oh, yes, I take prizes with them all over East Anglia," nodded the poultry-farmer. He frowned disgustedly. "But more often than not only second ones, because there is one man who always beats me when he enters any of his birds, Indian Game, the same as mine. Still, the chap is in a big way and has more than two thousand birds to pick from. That gives him a big pull over us little chaps. He is a clergyman in Ingatestone."

"But can't you breed from his strain?" asked Hardacre. "Doesn't he sell any of his eggs?"

"Oh, yes, he sells them, right enough," nodded the man. "He often sends away a couple of hundred dozen in one batch." He scowled. "But the old devil pricks every blooming eggshell with a needle, so that none of the eggs will hatch out."

"Gad, what a selfish brute!" exclaimed Hardacre. "It would serve him right if someone broke in and stole a dozen sittings. I know I'd do it if I wanted them."

"And I might do it, too," laughed the man, "if it were anything of a soft job, but he's got high fences all round his place and fierce dogs are turned loose on guard at night."

Returning thoughtfully to the inn, Hardacre considered everything the poultry-farmer had told him and, always quick and even hasty in his decisions, before he dropped off to sleep that night had quite made up his mind that poultry raising was the very occupation he had been looking for. He knew he was a good organizer and a good man of business, and that, when he put all his energies into anything, he invariably made a success of it.

So, keeping his intentions to himself, he took to making daily visits to the poultry farm, watching the man at his work, seeing how he handled the birds, and, with judicious questioning, learning from where he bought his supplies and what he paid for them. The man was a bachelor, living by himself, and was most flattered at the interest the trader took, lending him books, too, on poultry, and never seeming weary of explaining things to him.

In a few weeks Hardacre was confident he knew enough to start for himself and, buying a bicycle, he began taking long journeys all round the country-side to find a suitable place to begin operations. After a lot of looking about, he thought he had at last found what he wanted in a little property of about six acres, some seven miles from Manningtree and a little more than two miles from the village of Great Bromley. It was known as Benger's Flat and its situation he considered ideal, as its surroundings were very lonely, with no other habitation within a mile. There was an old water mill on the property and a rambling old house in a rather bad state of repair, with every window in it broken.

The mill had not been in use for many years and the property was part of the estate of an old lady who had died about a year previously. Her executors were anxious to get it off their hands, for no buyer had come forward and, indeed, not a single offer had been made. The estate agent in Manningtree, who secretly was delighted to have anyone now making inquiries about the place, told Hardacre the price was £1,000, as certain water rights went with the mill and the land was valuable.

"Valuable, fiddlesticks!" commented Hardacre scoffingly. "If the place is worth anything like that figure, why has it been left to go to wrack and ruin all this time? My offer is six hundred pounds, and not a penny more." And get it for the £600 he eventually did, the agent having averred it was the cheapest place he had ever sold.

Saying not a word to anyone in Burnham, Hardacre commissioned a builder to make the house habitable, and then called in a carpenter to fix up poultry sheds, exactly after the style of those of his poultry-farmer friend. Finally, one morning he left the little town on the Crouch as quietly and unostentatiously as he had arrived, with not a soul knowing where he was going. Through the medium of advertisements in a poultry journal, he stocked his pens with some of the best birds he could buy, and settled down to what, he told himself, should be poultry raising in a scientific way.

He had been hoping he would be quite content with his new life, but speedily was not by any means so certain about that. The loneliness was depressing, as from one week's end to another he saw no human being except the man from the general store in Great Bromley, who called twice a week with bread, groceries, meat and the London newspapers. Hardacre would have liked to have cycled into Colchester or Manningtree every now and then for a change, but a paragraph he had come across in one of the papers had put the wind up him and made him afraid to show himself anywhere in public.

The paragraph had been headed, "The Long Arm of the Law," and it related how a man, who had been wanted by the Birmingham Police for nearly six years, had only that week been picked out by a constable in Ipswich, simply by the description which had been broadcast, and tabulated in every police station all those years ago.

"Hell," exclaimed Hardacre with a sickening feeling in his stomach, "wanted in Birmingham and recognized in Ipswich, all those miles away!" He moistened his dry lips with his tongue. "Perhaps if I only knew it, my description has been on the wall of every police station ever since I got away."

One day when the provision man called, Hardacre was in one of the fields a little distance from the house, and the man came over to find him and get his order. Hardacre was watering his fowls and the tradesman, with poultry of his own, was immensely struck with the appearance of some of the prize birds. He was most enthusiastic about them and, an inveterate gossip, Hardacre was sure he would spread all over the district what good-class birds they were. That might mean, he cursed, people coming to see them and, almost as bad, thieves coming after them at night.

So he bought a big ugly-looking dog to mount guard, and was immensely pleased the animal growled savagely at the tradesman and wanted to go for him whenever he called. With a grim smile, he hoped the man would broadcast that about, too.

Three months went by and a great change was manifesting itself in Hardacre. His depression had got much worse and his nerves were beginning to fray so badly that he realized he could not go on much longer in the same way. It was not that he was worried about his health, for the spots on his shin had none of them become perceptibly bigger. He felt pretty well in himself, too, and he had a good appetite. He had not been denying himself anything in the way of eating and drinking, continuing with the hampers of wine and expensive delicacies sent down from one of the best provision stores in London.

He told himself he had been only following the doctor's instructions to do himself well, and had kept on, too, with his medicine all the time, but, strangely enough, although he knew the doctor had done him a lot of good, nevertheless he had worked himself into a state of vicious and venomous hatred against him, arguing perversely that the specialist was responsible for most of his present troubles. The man was a scaremonger and an alarmist and had grossly exaggerated his, Hardacre's, infectiousness. He cursed him deeply for having sent the Health Authorities to run him down.

No, physically he was certain there was not much the matter with him, at any rate not enough for him to have been condemned to this lonely, desolate way of life, but, mentally, he knew himself to be fast becoming a sick man.

He cursed that the poultry-farming business was a wash-out, and was greatly disappointed that he had so lost all interest in it. Certainly, he had had a lot of set-backs to dishearten him. Many of his expensive birds had sickened and died within a few weeks of his having bought them, and he found the day-upon-day attending to fowls a most monotonous business. They were dirty and messy creatures at best, and he was beginning to loathe the very sight of them.

It was not only, too, that his occupation was so palling upon him. He wanted excitement, he wanted company, he wanted people to talk to and, above all, he had begun to hanker after the companionship of the other sex.

Another matter also was worrying him a lot. It had of late become an obsession with him that even after all these months his hiding-place might yet be discovered. All sorts of suspicions were coming into his mind. He imagined the bi-weekly grocer had taken to looking queerly at him every time he called, and, also, he believed the place was being watched. His common sense told him he hadn't the slightest grounds for this last belief, but it grew upon him until he was absolutely convinced that there were spies posted about.

This idea became so strong that he sent to Town for the best pair of binoculars he could get, and, some days for hours at a time, would take himself up into the loft of the mill and from well behind the narrow window there sweep the glasses round and round in every direction, in the certain expectation of, sooner or later, catching sight of someone hiding in the reeds of the mill stream or among the tussocks of thick grass in the surrounding meadows.

Weeks went by and his patience was not rewarded. Then, all in an instant, it came to him that his worst suspicions had been justified and that things were as bad as they could be, for late one afternoon his horrified and startled eyes did fall upon a man crouching in a clump of willows, over upon the side of the mill stream about two hundred yards from the house.

He went breathless in his terror and excitement. So the police were upon his track at last! A detective had been posted to watch the house! Then, it would be only a matter of days, perhaps even only hours, before he himself would be arrested and taken off for segregation!

For quite ten minutes, still as a graven image, he stood watching. Through his strong glasses he could see every line of the man's face quite plainly, and to his frenzied imagination they were as evil as could be.

The man peered hard at the mill, he stared at the chicken sheds, and he looked up and down the placid mill stream, many times.

Then he disappeared, to come in sight again, however, in about a couple of minutes from the other side of the clump of willows. He was now sauntering along aimlessly with a cigarette in his mouth. He did not look once in the direction of the house or the mill, and, proceeding very slowly on his way, finally disappeared in the direction of the distant village.

Hardacre wiped the sweat from his forehead and laughed in derisive relief. That man a detective! There wasn't one chance in a million that he was! A weedy, under-nourished-looking little rat, he had never been connected with the police! He was just some little sneak thief from a city slum after his, Hardacre's, fowls!

The trader scoffed contemptuously. Well, let him come! The dog was off his chain every night and it would go badly with any blackguard prowling round. The trader felt like a man suddenly reprieved from impending violent death.

Two mornings later, however, he came out into the yard to find his watch-dog stretched stark and stiff before the house door. Undoubtedly poisoned, in his death agonies he had half bitten through his tongue. Hardacre's face went as black as night. Then the poisoner was undoubtedly intending to come after the fowls and he had got rid of the dog first, so that he should not be interfered with when he came!

Hardacre gritted his teeth savagely and, taking a small automatic from one of his trunks, made certain it was loaded and placed it handy in his hip pocket. God, he would shoot the thief when he came, and bury him in one of the cellars! There was going to be no police-court publicity about it!

All that night he remained on the watch, but nothing happened and the next morning found him irritable and exhausted from want of sleep, and in a more murderous mood than ever.

The next night, determined not to be caught out in his fatigue, he made a bed for himself on the floor of the mill itself and, leaving the big door ajar, was confident he would hear anyone passing to get to the poultry sheds. It was from the house, he argued, the marauder would expect danger to come, and most probably he would give no thought to the old mill, particularly so if he saw the door had been left carelessly open.

He put out all the lights at the usual time, about ten o'clock, and, creeping into the mill, lay down upon his improvised bed of old sacks and prepared for fitful sleep, most annoyed at the draught which fanned his face from the unclosed door. Within a few minutes, however, before at any rate even in his dreadfully tired condition he had begun to drop off to sleep, he no longer felt the draught and, opening his eyes uneasily to see what had happened, to his amazement, saw the door had been pushed to, and a light, as from a small electric torch, flashing quite near to him. The light went round and round. A thrill of great triumph surged through the ex-trader and his first impulse was to spring up and grapple with the thief. Then it leapt into his mind that unless he succeeded in laying hands upon him in his first attempt, the wretch might bolt outside and escape in the darkness. So, realizing that his own recumbent body was in part hidden by some sacks of chicken food, he decided to make no move until the thief was within seizing distance. Then he would get him without difficulty. So he continued to lie where he was, with a finger upon the button of his own torch. He would give the little thief the shock of his life, for of course the intruder was the small man he had seen spying from the willows, two days previously.

A few minutes of intense silence followed, and then with the light still bobbing round, he heard the sounds of someone breathing hard and a shadowy form loomed up close near him. With a fierce shout he thrust out his foot, and the man with the light tripped over it and fell heavily to the floor.

Hardacre was upon him in a flash and, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket, shook him like a terrier with a rat. His prisoner, however, showed no fight at all and just slumped in his arms as limp as a piece of rag.

Thinking he must be unconscious through the force of his fall, Hardacre lifted the man up roughly and carried him into the house. Then, after passing his hands quickly over him to make sure he was carrying no weapon, he bumped him down not too gently upon the kitchen floor and, keeping a wary eye on him all the time, proceeded to light the big hanging lamp.

The man opened his eyes, and struggled to a sitting position with some effort, but he had, evidently, not quite recovered all his senses, as he regarded his captor with puzzled and bewildered eyes.

Hardacre jerked him up into a big chair, and, seeing no danger in his puny body, did not even trouble to tie him up. The kitchen door was shut and the little devil, he told himself, would have no chance of getting away. He smiled at recognizing in him, as he had expected, the man he had seen hiding in the willows. Well, he would almost murder him now! He had killed his dog, and come thieving after his chickens and he would have no mercy on him! He would let him revive a bit and then flay him with the whip he kept handy for the dog! He frowned. Ah, but he must not make him a hospital case. He must not be too much hurt to be sent packing, later, as there must be no police inquiries about what had happened!

Suddenly the man seemed to look whiter and more sickly still and Hardacre, thinking he was going to faint, hurriedly poured out a stiff measure of whisky and, tipping up his head, forced him to gulp it down. It was no act of pity or kindness. It was only that Hardacre did not want a fainting man who could not take the punishment he was going to give him.

And all this while not a word had been spoken by either of them, but neither's eyes had left the other's face.

At last, apparently revived by the burning spirit, the man broke the silence in weak and shaking tones. "You'd no business to have knocked me about like that," he whimpered hoarsely. "I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was only trying to find somewhere to get shelter for the night, and seeing that door open, I——"

"You liar,"' burst out Hardacre fiercely, "you had come after my fowls and you poisoned my dog two days ago."

"No, sir, I've never been here before," wailed the man, "and I was here quite by chance to-night. I——"

"Shut up!" thundered Hardacre. He almost hissed out his next words. "You little sneaking rat, I saw you spying from the willows the other day. I was watching you through my glasses." He spoke menacingly. "You wait a moment and you'll feel what I'm going to give you. You won't have a whole bone in your body after I've done with you, you little thieving blackguard!"

He turned to reach for the dog whip hanging on the wall, quite unknowing that in all his life before never had he been in greater danger than he was then. His back was towards the man and there was a big butcher's knife upon the table.

The man's eyes flashed. He was no rat as Hardacre had called him. He was more of the weasel than the rat, and his body, though slight and puny-looking, was lithe and tough as whipcord, and hardened by the rigours of recent prison life. He had knifed a man in the back before, and indeed had just been released from the best part of seven years' penal servitude for having clone so, and he would have stabbed Hardacre with no more compunction than killing a fowl. Thirty-three years of age, he had been in the hands of the police many times and "robbery with violence" was his special line. Cowardice, certainly, had never been one of his failings.

He ground his teeth now in his impotence, for he felt his legs were wobbling under him. One of his ankles, too, had been so twisted in his fall in the mill that it was heavy as lead and he dared not put it to the ground.

So Hardacre had no lightning stab in the back and, with the whip in his hand, he turned to regard the little man with a cruel and menacing smile. "Now then," he snarled, uplifting the whip, "are you ready to take it?"

The man was breathing quickly, but he spoke quietly and with restraint. "Don't you strike me, sir. It will pay you far better not to. I can tell you something which will make you a rich man."

"You little liar!" scoffed Hardacre. He laughed contemptuously. "And you little fool, too."

"But I'm not lying, and I'm anything but a fool," protested the man vehemently. "I know a secret about this old mill. There is a large sum of money hidden here, but you won't find it without me."

"Liar!" scoffed Hardacre again, but for all that the man's vehemence had impressed him, and he lowered the whip.

The man spoke quickly. "I'll make a clean breast of everything and you shall judge for yourself. I'm completely in your hands and I know it will pay me to speak the truth. Yes, I poisoned your dog, but it was not to get to your fowls." He nodded impressively. "I was after the best part of fifty thousand pounds."

Hardacre frowned incredulously, but for the moment his rage had been submerged in his curiosity. "Who are you?" he asked curtly.

"My name's Werrick," said the man, "James Werrick, and I'm a convict on ticket-of-leave." He nodded. "Oh, yes, I'm going to keep nothing back. I'm not a common man although I last worked as a tally-clerk in the London Docks, but I got found out taking things and was given three years' imprisonment. After a while I was put in the prison infirmary as an attendant. Last year Royce Millington was brought into my ward very sick with pneumonia, and he was one of the patients I was looking after when he died." He dropped his voice almost to a whisper. "He talked when he was delirious, and I picked up where he'd hidden all the money." He clenched his fist in his excitement. "It's hidden in this mill and if you agree to go halves with me I'll find it." His eyes gloated. "Fifty thousand pounds good it must be, perhaps even more than that, for you remember it could only be traced that he'd betted away five thousand pounds."

"What on earth are you talking about?" demanded Hardacre. "What's all this rigmarole? Who's this Royce Millington, anyhow?"

Werrick looked aghast. "Royce Millington who robbed the Consolidated Bank in Lothbury of more than fifty thousand pounds!"

"Never heard of him," grunted Hardacre. "I believe you are making it all up."

Werrick drew in a deep breath. "But it only happened three years ago! The papers were full of it! It was such a scandal that a clerk had been able to go on robbing his bank for so long before being found out. Why, you must have heard of it."

"Well, I didn't," frowned Hardacre. "I was in America then." He eyed Werrick doubtfully. "But how do I know you are not making it all up to escape this thrashing? You look to me an out-and-out liar who would say anything."

Werrick spoke angrily. "Well, I'll give you the proof I'm speaking the truth now, anyhow." He unbuttoned the inner pocket of his jacket and, from a carefully folded and tied-round piece of brown paper, after much fumbling with the string because his hands were shaking badly, held out a long newspaper cutting to Hardacre. "Here, this is the report of the trial which I cut out from a copy of the Times."

As if reluctantly and still unbelieving, Hardacre took the cutting from him, and then Werrick remarked jauntily: "And while you are reading it will you please give me a cigarette?" He made a grimace. "My nerves are still very upset from the shaking you gave me."

Hardacre swore at him for his impudence. "I'll give you nothing," he added curtly, "unless it's that thrashing I promised you," and he cast his eyes down upon the paper and commenced to read.

Werrick ground his teeth savagely and cursed his strained ankle once again. The big knife was so handy and its point looked so very nice and sharp.

A long silence followed and Hardacre read slowly and carefully. Rex versus Edward Royce Millington was certainly a startling case. A trusted officer of the bank for two years, so it was estimated, had been systematically purloining bank-notes, never of a greater value than £20, all of which notes had been in circulation, and none of the numbers of which had been recorded. His method had been simple but so cunning that it had escaped detection. £56,000 odd had been taken from the bank reserves, and all of it had gone, so the accused averred, in gambling on the Stock Exchange and in betting. But a bare £5,000 was all which had been actually traced, and both the Prosecutor for the Crown and the judge who tried the case had expressed their emphatic disbelief in the prisoner's story as to what had become of the rest. He had been sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

"How did you get hold of this cutting?" asked Hardacre. "You couldn't have been keeping it on the chance that you might one day meet the man."

"Certainly not," agreed Werrick. "I got it from the newspaper files in the British Museum. Of course, with my record I knew I could never get a ticket of admission to the Reading Room, but"—and for the first time during the interview a smile came into his face—"I hung about the entrance until I saw a likely-looking chap coming out and then I picked his pocket as he was going home in the bus. I used his ticket, and in the newspaper room cut out the paragraph, without being seen."

Hardacre was, apparently, still in two minds whether to believe the man or not. "And you say," he asked, "that this thieving bank clerk told you he'd got the money and had hidden it here?"

"No, no," exclaimed Werrick, "he didn't tell me anything. He only babbled about it when he was delirious. He talked about what were seven years in prison for a man who could live rich for the remainder of his life and he kept saying that no rats in the old mill could get at the notes to destroy them. He talked about the old mill so often that I hoped it was the name of some place."

"But if this estate belonged to him," frowned Hardacre, "why didn't the police search here to find the money?"

"It didn't belong to him," said Werrick, "and no one except me learnt he had ever had anything to do with it." His expression was a triumphant one. "I found it out after as smart a piece of detective work as was ever done at Scotland Yard," and he at once proceeded to tell Hardacre the whole story.

It was not until the bank officer had been dead nearly six months that Werrick had been released on ticket-of-leave, and then he had set about finding out all he could about the dead man. He had set about it, too, with infinite patience and cunning.

First, he had trailed the commissionaire of the bank in Lothbury which Royce Millington had robbed to his home in Waltham Green. He found his hobby was chrysanthemums and, catching the man in the front garden of his modest little house, stopped to admire his blooms. Then he suggested a friendly glass of beer at a nearby public house and learnt the one the commissionaire generally frequented of an evening. He hobnobbed with him several times before drawing from him his occupation, and then it was an easy matter to bring up Royce Millington and the shameful way he had robbed the bank. He hazarded the opinion that the embezzler must have been living very extravagantly in, probably, a very swanky house.

"No, he didn't," said the commissionaire. "At any rate he couldn't have got rid of much of the money in that way. He had a cheap little flat in Langham Mansions in West Kensington."

That had been quite enough for Werrick, and the talkative commissionaire never set eyes on his new-found friend again. At Langham Mansions Werrick palled up with the porter and, getting to know him pretty well, soon pumped him dry about Millington. He learnt he was considered quite a quiet young fellow, and that he had a little car and often went off for weekends somewhere in the country, the porter didn't know where. Fishing and a little rough shooting were his hobbies, not sea fishing for it was only fresh-water fish he ever brought home, trout and perch and an occasional eel. A few times he had shot some wild duck. He had no particular friends, but was on very good terms with his aunt, an old lady, Miss Matilda Hendry, who lived in Philbeach Gardens in Earl's Court.

Off to this Miss Hendry's home Werrick went, intending to pitch a yarn and invoke the old lady's sympathy by a pathetic story of how he had nursed her nephew in his dying moments. To his dismay, however, he learnt that Miss Hendry had died a year previously and no one seemed to know what relations, besides the bank clerk, she had had.

Then a brain-wave seized Werrick and, proceeding to Somerset House, he paid a shilling and inspected her will. He found she had left most of her money to her brother, but a property, Benger's Green, near Great Bromley in Essex had gone to a niece in Scotland.

That was enough for Werrick, and associating fresh-water fish with a stream somewhere, and eels and wild duck with the muddy flats and lonely places round the Essex coast, down to Great Bromley he had come at once.

"Then imagine my feelings, sir," he finished up, "when I saw there was a mill on this property." He raised his hands in his excitement. "I am certain the money is here and it must be hidden in the mill itself."

A long silence followed and then Hardacre asked sharply: "How old are you? Thirty-three! Then how long have you been a criminal?"

Werrick appeared most indignant. "Only once, when I got those three years for taking a pound of tobacco which I saw lying about. It was——"

Hardacre shook his head angrily. "No, no, it's no good you telling me that. No judge would have given you three years for just taking a pound of tobacco."

"Well, he did," asserted Werrick with some heat. Then, realizing that Hardacre was no fool to be taken in easily, he recovered himself quickly and added: "But it was not only for taking the tobacco I was sentenced. I had injured the man who caught me. In my fright I had struck at him with a spanner."

"Exactly, robbery with violence!" commented the trader dryly. "And I don't take you either, for the innocent first offender you want to make yourself out to be. You look like a hardened type to me." He nodded. "So, I'm taking no chance. I shall lock you up to-night and consider to-morrow what I shall do."

Werrick looked hurt. "Why I wouldn't hurt a soul, sir. It's not in my nature to."

"Perhaps not," sneered Hardacre, "but for all that, you poisoned my dog, and I have no wish to wake up in the night with my throat cut. So I shall put you down in the cellar." A thought appeared to strike him. "But are you acting alone in this, or have you any confederate prowling about outside?"

"Certainly not!" cried Werrick emphatically. "I have never breathed a word to any human being. No one knows I have come down here and no one but yourself has seen me near this place. Everything now is between you and me."

"Good," nodded Hardacre, "then I know how we stand. Well, down you go into the cellar. You can sleep on some sacks, and in the morning we'll have another talk."

So that night two men of no conscience or scruples whatsoever slept within a few yards of each other, and neither would have felt easy in his mind had he known what the other's thoughts were.

Werrick in the cellar was all out for murder—at its proper time. There would be no sharing the notes if they found them, and he would knife Hardacre like a sheep and load down his body with some of those rusty chains he had noticed in the mill, and sink him in the stream. But he, Werrick, must be careful for the man was of a suspicious nature, and he must not let him get the ghost of an idea that his life might be actually in danger. Still, with all his bullying, the big chap seemed a bit of a softy, to be taken in easily when the right man came along.

Now the ex-convict had been many things in his life, a student in a veterinary college—until he had been turned out for theft—a steward on a P. & O. liner until he had deserted his ship in Bombay, taking with him a passenger's wallet; a bookmaker's clerk until he had had to cut and run for robbing again, a waiter in a shady night club in Soho, and a pursuer of many occupations, several of which should have brought him under notice of the police.

In all these callings he had fallen badly, mainly because he had been always such a poor judge of character, and he had never misjudged anyone more grossly than he was now misjudging his present captor. Hardacre was anything but a softy. He was hard as hell and, in his present embittered state of mind against authority and the law, would be as merciless and as murderously inclined as any Thug on the plains of India.

So, that night, Hardacre was thinking of murder, too. If they found the money—and he saw no reason now to doubt the ex-convict's story—there would be no halving of it, and the little wretch in the cellar would not get a penny. If he had his share, it would only mean that in a couple of years or so he would have spent it all, and be tracking him, Hardacre, down to blackmail for more. Hardacre knew his kind, a waster who had been on the down grade all his life.

The trader smiled a cold, grim smile. He was in a reckless mood. If he laid hands upon the money he would risk everything. He would go back into the world and enjoy what years of health were left to him. He would chance it that no one would ever recognize him. After all, the doctor fellow had only seen him twice and, with the many patients who passed through his hands, he would surely not be able to remember him for long. At any rate the risk would be worth the taking.

As for the little devil who had come so strangely into his life, well, the cellar or some other place like it would be his last home. He would pistol him when the time came, and his small body would be easily tucked away somewhere. All or nothing, that was going to be his, Hardacre's, motto for the future.

The two evil men beneath that old time-worn roof fell asleep at last and, surely, no guardian angels were watching over their slumber. They were both beasts of the jungle and no one would have had pity for either of them, whatever harm came.