Читать книгу The Man Without Nerves - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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The proceedings at the inquest on the following afternoon moved for the first half hour or so along the well-recognised lines. The body of Samuel Jesson was duly identified, the doctor’s evidence indicating suicide was reluctantly given and the deceased’s letter to his wife, found lying on the floor of the garage by the side of his limp fingers, was duly read in court. Its contents were brief but pitiful.

My dear Hester,—the dead man had written—

I pray your forgiveness for what I am about to do. I have made a great mistake with regard to my money affairs and I must pay for it. Alone you will be quite well enough off. Some years ago, before I ever dreamed of this trouble, I insured my life with a company whose policies did not contain a suicide clause. I scarcely noticed it at the time but I am thankful enough now.

Forgive me, dear, and thank you a thousand times for the many years of happiness we have had together.

Sam.

There was a little rustle of sympathy in court after the reading of the letter. One of the jurymen stood up.

“I should like to ask a question, if you please, Mr. Coroner,” he said.

“I shall be glad to reply to it if possible,” was the courteous response.

“I should like to ask whether any effort has yet been made to investigate the financial affairs of the deceased? My idea is that their condition was not nearly serious enough to account for suicide.”

The coroner looked over his spectacles at the questioner.

“The evidence of the next witness, sir,” he announced, “will answer your question.”

Mr. James Huitt was called and stepped at once into the box. It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that he was prepared to enjoy the importance of his position, but his attitude towards the whole affair was certainly one of gentle patronage. He had the air of a man who knows what is expected of him and is determined not to disappoint. He wore a black morning coat of formal pattern and a black bow tie. In the witness box, calm and detached, he looked the very prototype of the self-respecting, earnest professional man. The coroner bowed to him as he took his place. Mr. Huitt returned the greeting.

“Your name, I believe, is James Huitt?” the former asked.

“James Huitt is my name, sir.”

“You are manager of the Aldwych branch of Barton’s Bank?”

“That is so, sir.”

“The deceased’s banking account came under your care in the natural course of affairs?”

“Precisely.”

“You are the deceased’s executor, I believe?”

“Unless a later will has been executed of which I have no knowledge.”

“The account was well kept?”

“Until the last three months it was a model account.”

There was a rustle of interest in the court. Every one felt that elucidation was coming.

“Tell us briefly, Mr. Huitt, the change which took place in Mr. Jesson’s account during the last three months.”

“The deceased has withdrawn large sums of money and, from having a considerable credit balance, he applied to me only last week for an overdraft. With your permission, Mr. Coroner, I should like to enlarge for a few moments upon this point.”

“By all means,” the coroner conceded. “The Court is very desirous of obtaining all the information which you can give us.”

“During the last six or seven years,” Mr. Huitt confided, and, although he seemed to speak in a very low tone and in a voice without volume, every word of what he said was clearly heard in the court, “the last six or seven years Mr. Jesson’s account has been a model one. He kept a balance of between one and seven thousand pounds, upon which we allowed him a trifle of interest. The idea of an overdraft was abhorrent to him. I imagine that, although he had an excellent business, it was not capable of any great development and he would not have known how to use the money. We had also in safekeeping some thirty thousand pounds’ worth of excellent stocks and bonds. About two months ago the change began. Mr. Jesson asked to see me and was shown at once into my room as a valued client. He made out a cheque in my presence for four thousand pounds. At his request, I procured the money myself and he buttoned up the notes in his pocketbook. I remember the occasion because I ventured upon some chaffing remark to the effect that I hoped he was not betting too much. He failed to reply in his usual light-hearted way. Three times within this last month Mr. Jesson has called, has insisted upon seeing me personally, and has drawn out in large notes practically the whole of his available balance. A fortnight ago he began to sell his stocks and shares and invest in bearer bonds. Ten thousand pounds’ worth of these he took away when he called to see me last week. He sounded me then as to an overdraft.”

“And what was your reply?” the coroner asked.

“I did not precisely refuse, but I took the opportunity of talking to Mr. Jesson as his executor and as a friend. Without wishing to seem curious, I asked him the reason for these large withdrawals of cash and for the change of his excellent securities into bearer bonds. I asked him too, as was within my province as a bank manager, for what reason he required an overdraft and I told him that my directors would insist upon it that I see his last balance sheet.”

“And his reply?”

“I regret to say that, although I spoke as tactfully as possible and although I have always considered Mr. Jesson as a friend, he told me practically to mind my own business; it was his own money he was getting rid of, and as for the overdraft, he could get it elsewhere if not with me. I expostulated but without result. Mr. Jesson left me in a temper and I expected at any moment to be served with a notice of the withdrawal of his account.”

“Can you remember the date of this interview?”

“Last Thursday week.”

The coroner stroked his chin. There was much that was incomprehensible, even in the clear statement of this admirable witness.

“Tell me, Mr. Huitt,” he asked, “did you form any conclusion yourself as to the reason of this extraordinary change in your client?”

“I am afraid I must confess that I did, sir.”

“The Court is bound to ask you what it was, Mr. Huitt. You see, we have to rely a great deal upon you. You are the only one with whom Mr. Jesson appears to have discussed the change in the state of his affairs. Even to his wife, we gather, he was cheerful to the end.”

Mr. Huitt was silent for a moment. He seemed graver than ever. Finally he answered the coroner’s question.

“My experience in such matters, sir, is practically nil, but I came to the conclusion—I could think of no other explanation—that Mr. Jesson was being blackmailed in some mysterious fashion.”

The coroner inclined his head gravely.

“Thank you, Mr. Huitt,” he said. “We need not trouble you any further.”

Half an hour later the obvious thing happened. The verdict of the jury was unanimous. Mr. Samuel Jesson had committed suicide whilst temporarily insane.

A triumphant egress, that of Mr. James Huitt. He was the man of the moment. He had supplied the crowded court with the thrill it had been hoping for. Acquaintances tried to detain him in the passage and in the corridor, but he shook his head and passed on. One, however, thicker-skinned than the others, blocked his final exit into the street. It was Mr. Tyssen!

“If you had told me that story last night, Mr. Huitt,” the young man said reproachfully, “it would not have done any one a bit of harm and it would have done me a lot of good, if ever I want to go back to ‘the shop.’ ”

“It is not my mission in life,” Mr. Huitt rejoined coldly, “to do you good at ‘the shop’—whatever that may mean. With your permission, I should like to pass.”

“One word first, if you please,” the young man insisted. “You have brought this upon yourself. You were the first to use the term ‘blackmail’ in court. You must have had something at the back of your mind. Now, be a little more human, sir. Give me an idea as to what you think yourself?”

“What I am thinking at the present moment, sir,” Mr. Huitt remarked with dignity, “is that you are being very impertinent and that you are very much in my way.”

“Have a heart, sir,” the other begged. “I want to get on to this blackmail stunt. It couldn’t have been anything else to have made a man strip himself like that. Do you know anything of his past history?”

“If I did,” Mr. Huitt assured his questioner in cold exasperation, “I should not tell it to you. Constable,” he added, beckoning to a burly policeman who was standing in the vicinity, “I am anxious to pass through the doorway and this young man is obstructing me.”

The policeman swung round. Tyssen removed his cap with a grin.

“One up to you, Mr. Huitt,” he admitted, as he strolled dolefully away.

Outside in the sunny village street Mr. Roland Martin was leaning back in the corner of his limousine, smoking a cigar and waiting for the hero of the hour. He was doomed to wait still longer, however, for a thin aristocratic-looking man with tired eyes and the general appearance of indifferent health, who had lounged into the court and taken a place by the coroner about halfway through the proceedings, leaned from the driving seat of a very powerful two-seater Rolls and intercepted the bank manager.

“Good afternoon, Huitt,” he greeted him, nodding languidly. “I got into court just in time to hear you throw your bombshells.”

The bank manager had the air of one who was really a little flattered by this notice but had savoir faire enough to conceal it.

“The bombs were not of my making, Lord Milhaven,” he protested. “It was my duty to help the coroner as far as possible.”

“Quaint idea, that of blackmail,” the great man of the neighbourhood meditated. “I suppose there must have been something of the sort.”

“We can, I think,” Mr. Huitt observed with gentle irony, “leave the police to deal with the matter, now that they have had the way pointed out to them.”

“Rather well put, that,” the other approved, as he paused to light a cigarette. “One can never tell these fellows anything, but initiative is certainly what they lack. They won’t go out to look for crime. They wait for it to come to them.... Doing anything tonight, Huitt?”

“Nothing outside my ordinary routine, your lordship.”

Milhaven touched the starting button of his car and signalled to his chauffeur to close the door and get in behind.

“Come up and dine,” he invited. “Eight o’clock. Short coat. Her ladyship’s away. I will let you off early—I know what you City grubs are.”

“I shall be delighted,” Mr. Huitt replied.

His lordship nodded and drove on. The bank manager stepped into the waiting limousine in full and proud consciousness of his friend Martin’s almost awed astonishment.

“You seem quite pally with the great man,” the latter remarked, as they rumbled off.

“Lord Milhaven is always very kind,” Huitt acknowledged, “although up till now I have only been invited for tennis. You must remember, Martin, that he is a director of our bank. He has, in fact, an account of his own at my branch. He paid me quite a long visit the other morning, and he was kind enough to invite me to luncheon at the Paradise Golf Club on the day the Oxford and Cambridge Society come down to play their match.”

“You are in luck and no mistake, Huitt,” Roland Martin remarked enviously. “Where do you want to go to?”

“Home—if it doesn’t take you out of your way,” was the placid reply. “I was afraid the proceedings might take longer, so I arranged for my absence from the bank this afternoon. I propose to change into flannels and have a set of tennis.”

Tyssen, more unprepossessing than ever in motor outfit, roared by upon his ancient but powerful Harley Davidson. Martin looked after him.

“Isn’t that our new neighbour?” he enquired.

Huitt’s thin lips were drawn very closely together.

“A most unpleasant young man,” he pronounced.