Читать книгу The Man who was Two - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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Sir Marston Manley had quite made up his mind what to do before he said good night to Gilette. He was not going to leave a stone unturned in getting to the bottom of this mystery. Ever since he had purchased his romantic studio-residence at Merston on the coast of North Devon he had known Raymond Mallison, who was now confronted by a charge that sounded almost grotesque to anyone who knew him. For the great artist had a high opinion of Mallison, who had thrust his way into a fine position by sheer hard work and genuine merit. He knew the hard struggle that Mallison's mother had had to send her boy to a public school and maintain, him at a London hospital afterwards. He knew that Mrs. Mallison's income was a slender one derived from her father on the other side of the world, but as to that, Marie Mallison said very little, nor would she hear of Manley accepting any share in her beloved Raymond's professional training. It was in vain that the great painter protested that he had no kith or kin in the world who stood in need of his help, and that in any case his will would see Raymond handsomely provided for. And so he had watched the boy's career with almost fatherly interest until he had carved out a real reputation for himself. This had taken some years, of course, during which time Sir Marston had painted those famous pictures of his, both in the grand house in Regent's Park and at the lovely old place at Merston. In the latter establishment Raymond Mallison came and went at his own sweet will, and occasionally took a hand with the catering of that delightful establishment, for there Manley lived the simple life and was looked after exclusively by an old woman and her fisherman husband, who shut up the rambling place in the winter, and retired to their own cottage on the beach.

Here Roy Gilette put in an occasional week or so during the fishing season, when he camped in the cottage and preferred to cater for himself. And, strange to say, he had never met Mallison, who had either been away at school or keeping his hospital terms in London whenever Gilette had paid one of his flying visits.

Obviously, then, Gilette could not be expected to take the same interest in the tragedy as did Sir Marston. We shall see presently how far the great artist's conclusions on this point were correct. He dropped Gilette presently, and gave his chauffeur directions to drive to the House of Commons, where, from the light in the tower, he could see that legislators were still sitting. The presentation of his card to an attendant in the lobby exercised its usual magical effect, and a few minutes later he found himself in the private room of the Home Secretary. Fortunately the great man had just emerged with flying colours from a verbal combat with a truculent member of the Opposition, and was consequently in his most amiable mood.

"Well, what can I do for you, my dear fellow?" he asked.

Sir Marston came to the point at once. He described the whole of the tragedy in detail, and wound up with a request for an order to see the prisoner in private. Mr. Calverley pursed his lips.

"My dear man," he protested, "this is most unusual. If you think that there is one law for the rich and--"

"Another for the politician," Sir Marston interrupted dryly. "That fact has not escaped me, Mr. Minister. We are old friends, and that being so, I can speak plainly. That boy's welfare is very dear to me, though he does not know it. I have watched his career from the time he was a little chap in knickerbockers, and never once has he disappointed me. And, dash it all, I was in love with his mother and would have married her, but she preferred to remain faithful to a memory. There is something desperately wrong here, and I mean to get to the bottom of it if it costs me half my fortune. And now you know all about it. You can give me that order if you choose."

"Very well, then," the Home Secretary growled. "But if some of those Red Flag chaps on the Opposition side below the gangway get wind of it, there will be trouble."

Sir Marston departed presently with the precious order in his pocket. He naturally concluded that Mallison would be brought before the presiding magistrate the following morning, when the police would give no more than evidence of arrest, and then ask for a formal remand of probably a week. It was his intention to see Mallison before he was brought into court. It was about half-past 9 the following morning when he passed over his permit to the inspector in charge, and a few moments later found himself in the cell where Raymond Mallison was detained.

It was a dreary and depressing place. A narrow whitewashed cell dimly lighted by a small barred window some eight feet from the ground, and containing nothing more than a wool mattress and a stool whereon reposed an empty basin, from which, obviously. Mallison had been eating something that passed as a breakfast. He sat on the bed with his head in his hands, a picture of lonely despair. He glanced up indifferently as Sir Marston entered, and a flush dyed his face.

Then he rose awkwardly enough, and half held out his hand.

"This--this is very kind of you," he whispered. "Sir Marston, if you only knew what it is to feel--"

But Manley was having nothing of that. He took Mallison's hand, and shook it warmly. Then he noticed for the first time that Mallison was wearing a pair of green-tinted spectacles. Under the right eye was a nasty red scar. Just for an instant Sir Marston's faith in his young friend was a little shaken. He pointed to the glasses.

"In the name of goodness, what have you been doing to yourself?" he asked. "What's wrong with your one eye?"

"Oh, that's nothing." Mallison said. "Just a bit of an accident after I got home to change last night. I got back too late for your dinner, as I told you I might do, and when I was changing to join you after I had a fancy to do a few exercises with my Sandow outfit. When I was on my back pulling at the elastic straps the hook in the wall gave away, and the fastening struck me violently in the eye. Nothing very serious, but by way of a precaution I put on these glasses, and very glad I am because I find that the trouble is likely to last for a month or so. I'm afraid that I have damaged the optic nerve. But why do you ask? Oh, well, in the circumstances, I suppose that anyone might ask a pointed question."

Mallison smiled a little bitterly as he spoke.

"You are quite wrong, my boy," Sir Marston said warmly. "I am quite prepared to believe everything that you say. Otherwise, I should not be here to-day. Naturally this has been a terrible shock to us all, but there is not one of your friends that count who is not absolutely convinced of your innocence."

"That is the sort of thing that brings the tears into the eyes," Mallison murmured. "And Peggy--how is she? It must have been a terrible shock to her. Did she send anything in--?"

"Peggy is as true as steel," Sir Marston said. "She's a girl in a million, Raymond. She absolutely refuses to hear a word against you. And, as she said last night, even if you were guilty. It would make no difference to her. Raymond, you are not guilty?"

"No more than you are," Mallison said with a quiet sincerity that carried conviction to the visitor's mind. "I was nowhere near Rutland Inn last night. Pennington and myself have not spoken for months, friends as we used to be. You will remember that I thought he had carried the privilege of counsel too far when he tried to discredit me in the Venn case. It was just after 9 o'clock when I got back to my rooms, and I was just dressing to join your party when they came along and arrested me. I was dumbfounded."

"But where had you been?" Sir Marston asked. "You should have no difficulty in proving an alibi. Someone must have seen you."

"So I thought at first. But it is not so easy as you think. I don't remember coming in contact with anybody who knows me. Upon my word, Sir Marston, I am in more desperate case than I thought. Here are three credible witnesses--people who have no sort of a grudge against me--who come forward ready to swear that they saw me coming along the corridor leading from Pennington's chambers a few minutes before his man found him dead--murdered. His man positively identified me. Then there were those two men outside, acquaintances of mine. And, mind you, I didn't get back to my rooms until a quarter of an hour after Pennington's body was found. Oh, as regards time, they have a splendid case."

"But where were you all last night?" Sir Marston asked. "Can't you see how vitally important it is?"

Mallison gave a groan of something like despair.

"Of course I can," he admitted doggedly. "And it is just here that I am going to test your belief in my story to the breaking point. Let me try and explain. About five o'clock I had an urgent message on the telephone to meet Blake--that's our big man--at an address in Willesden for an unusually interesting operation. I need not bother you with the details. Anyway, it was the sort of case that appeals to me, and I wanted the experience. I rather wondered why the venue was a private house, although it didn't very much matter. So I arranged to be there. Being a little short of exercise, I decided to walk. When I got to the address in question I found that the people in the house had never heard of Blake, and that no operation was needed. There was nothing for it but to come back and apologise to Blake for my stupidity in mistaking the address, and so I walked back again. But, Sir Marston, I shall never get a magistrate to believe that story."

"You never can tell," Sir Marston murmured. Even to his ears it sounded exceedingly thin.

"Did you 'phone to Blake when you got back? But of course you did. Blake's evidence ought to be a tower of strength to you. At any rate it goes to prove that you promised to go to Willesden, and in the circumstances anybody might be excused for blundering over the address. Let's have Blake by all means."

"Oh, I 'phoned Blake all right," Mallison sighed. "I got him personally. It was not Blake who called me up originally, but some assistant at the hospital, as I imagined. You can picture my feelings now when Blake told me that he had sent for me, and that, as a matter of fact, he had been out of town all day. Sir Marston, some enemy of mine has done this thing. My story will sound ridiculous in court, especially when Blake is called to depose that he never made any attempt to get me on the telephone. So you see the more truthful I am the worse it looks for me. And yet, so far as I know, I have not a single enemy in the world. It sounds like a scrap from some wild melodrama in which the villain lays a deadly trap for the hero. Who is it that hates me so virulently to get me hanged?"

To this wildly improbable tale Sir Marston listened with a queer sinking of the heart. A blacker case against an accused man he had never listened to. Still, so far as he was concerned, he did not doubt Mallison for a moment. But as a man of the world he was forced to the conclusion that Mallison's statement was terribly inadequate in the face of the evidence possessed by the police.

"I believe you, Raymond," he said. "And I am quite sure that the others will share my view. But it is the jury that we have to think about. You must have the best advice that money can procure. But that I have already seen to. I asked my own man on the telephone before I came here, and he recommended a criminal attorney who has a big reputation in cases like yours, and he will be here in due course. I expect that the evidence to-day will only be formal and that the police will ask for a remand. Now is there anyone else that you would like to see, because if so I think that I can manage it? What shall I tell Peggy, for instance?"

Mallison looked with almost loving gratitude at the benign figure of his old friend whose presence had heartened him so much. Here was one with a world-wide reputation, the friend of rulers, who had put everything else aside to come at once to his assistance. It was good to have such a friend as Sir Marston Manley.

"I think I understand."' he said thickly. "My fondest love to Peggy and tell her how her faith inspires me. But no, she must not come here--the very atmosphere would break her heart. I must go my own way and stick it as best I can until I am free or until I am forced to turn my back upon the world. I shall not fear."

Then came a warder with a curt intimation that time was up, though he was civil enough so far as Sir Marston was concerned. It was for Mallison that the almost brutal brevity was reserved, and Manley could see how the sensitive blood tinged his face. It was the first taste of what might follow in the hard time to come.

Then along a narrow corridor, and after that the dingy light of the courthouse with its stuffy atmosphere and the foul reek of humanity at its worst. A belated and sickly fly was buzzing against the grimy window pane, a thin light filtered on to the seat where the magistrate had already taken his place. In the gallery at the back a woman of tender years was seated nursing a whining child, a woman who would have been pretty save for her rags and dirt and the black eye that she flaunted defiantly like a banner. In the well of the court the reporters and a solicitor or two lounged and listened with a bored air to the usual sordid charges. In the dock sprawled a young man in a fine overcoat plastered with mud who listened with some show of vanity to the statement that it had taken four policemen to remove him from the Palace Theatre on the previous evening. His bloodshot eye and draggled white dress-tie stamped the charge. Over all these hung a prevailing odour of beer and boot-leather that seemed to dominate everything else. It was a positive relief to Manley when presently the name of Raymond Mallison was called.

He stood there with the dim light shining on his face, thankful for the hurt that had compelled him to don the green spectacles. The magistrate looked casually at the charge sheet through his glasses.

"Um, yes," he mumbled. "Quite so. Raymond Mallison, of St. Agnes Hospital, charged with doing grievous bodily harm to one Walter Pennington. Does the prisoner plead guilty or not guilty?"

Thus the representative of the law, with an air of detachment absolutely wooden. A thin man, with the face of an actor and keen eyes that seemed to flash sparks from behind his pince-nez, jumped to his feet. The man on the bench leaned forward.

"Well, Mr. Linnell," he said combatively. "What is it? And why do you presume to interrupt me?"

"Represent the prisoner, your Worship," the other said in a quick staccato voice. "Only instructed by telephone this morning. Understood that I was retained for the defence on a charge of murder. Now find it reduced to a charge of doing grievous bodily harm. Most 'straordinary. Appeal to Inspector Price to--"

Rising from the well of the court. Inspector Price explained that a remarkable mistake had been made. It had transpired late the night before that Mr. Pennington was not dead, as the police had concluded, but was in a state of collapse from which he might emerge, but that if so it would be something in the nature of a miracle. The charge sheet would have to be amended, and the Inspector proceeded to do so. A great burst of thankfulness welled up in Mallison's heart. Whilst there was life in Pennington's body there was hope.

Then up rose a little fat man with a red face exuding good nature, and announced the fact that he represented the Treasury. Sir Marston knew him for one of the shrewdest lawyers in London. It was a plain story that he had to tell, but it went dead against the prisoner. No venom or vindictiveness, but a simple tale delivered in an almost apologetic manner, as if counsel and prisoner had met at dinner the night before, and the task was a hateful one. Then he subsided with a sigh, and John Fisher, Pennington's servant, stepped into the witness box with a story as plain as that of the Treasury solicitor.

On the night before he had been called up on the telephone to speak to someone who said that he represented the witness's brother. That message was subsequently proved to be a false one, for the witness found no sign of his brother at the arranged spot. Nor had the tenant of the house of call sent or passed such message.

"It was a hoax, in fact?" the magistrate suggested.

"It must 'ave been a hoax, sir," the witness declared. "My brother hadn't been in London all day. Then I goes back, thinkin' that something was wrong, and that it was a burglar's trick, me being alone in the master's chambers, and sure by this time as he had gone out to a party at some hotel. But when I gets back Mr. Pennington hadn't gone out, for his coat and silk scarf was still hangin' up in the 'all. As I couldn't make him 'ear, I goes into his bedroom and finds him dead, as I thought."

Fisher went on to describe the injury sustained by the wounded man and how he had telephoned to the police at once. He was wandering on, rather pleased with his impression, when he was pulled up short by the barrister representing the Crown.

"One moment," he said. "Let us go back a bit. Did you pass anyone as you came along the corridor leading to the front door of Mr. Pennington's chambers?"

"That's right, sir," the witness said affably. "I met the prisoner in the dock. Mr. Mallison, that is."

"You are quite sure? Remember that you are on your oath. You met the prisoner coming from the direction of Mr. Pennington's chambers. Are there any other sets of chambers there?"

"Not on the ground floor, sir. There are others reached by a flight of stone stairs that turn to the right."

"Um, the prisoner might have been coming from one of these. By the way, was he wearing the green glasses that he has on now?"

Innocent as the question was. Sir Marston could fathom the deadly import of it. He waited eagerly for the reply.

"No, he wasn't, sir," the witness said confidently. "That I'll swear to. I spoke to him, for he used to visit Mr. Pennington regular at one time. I says, 'Good evenin', sir. Haven't had the pleasure of seein' you for a long time.'"

"And what did he say to that?" counsel asked.

"Just nothing, sir. He seemed a little annoyed or disturbed at seeing me, and he hurried off without a word. Mistaken, sir? No, I ain't mistaken--I'll swear to it anywheres."

Then came two more witnesses, typical society men about town, both of whom were personally acquainted with Mallison, to give much the same testimony. They were waiting outside the Inn for a man who had arranged to meet them there. The friend had not turned up--he had asked them not to wait very long as possibly he might be detained--but in the meantime they had seen Mallison and had hailed him by name. He had not responded, but perhaps it had been a little too dark for the prisoner to be sure of them, and they had only made certain as to Mallison's identity as he passed a lamp.

Sir Marston bent over and whispered some thing in Linnell's ear. The other nodded as he rose to ask a question or two.

"What was the name of the gentleman that you were waiting for?" he queried. "And where does he come from?"

The witness looked a little surprised.

"Name of Marne," he drawled. "From the Argentine and on his way to Liverpool last night."

Sir Marston sat back in his chair with a stolid face and never a word escaped him. But he smiled like a man who is not displeased.