Читать книгу The Massingham Butterfly and Other Stories - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 9

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I walked into the presence of a not yet middle-aged, handsome man, who, but for his keen eyes and watchful, businesslike air, might have been taken for a well-to-do country squire, for he was attired in hunting rig, and his hat and crop lay ready to his hand on his big desk. But I knew there were no thoughts of horses and hounds in this man’s mind as he gave me a searching, interested glance and politely motioned me to a chair.

“Mr. Paul Campenhaye?” he said, looking at my card, which he still held in his hand. “Have I the pleasure of seeing the Mr. Campenhaye—expert in shady matters?”

He laughed a little and I smiled in answer.

“Dear me!” he said. “That’s curious. I have heard of you, Mr. Campenhaye, and once recently I thought of requisitioning your services; but I have employed others for many years who have served me very well—only, unfortunately, they seem to have come to a certain impasse.”

“I take it that you are referring to the Maygrove affair, Mr. Candew?” I said.

He gave me a quick glance of surprise.

“Ah!” he said. “You know something of that?”

“I am beginning to know something of it,” I answered. “I have come to tell you what I know of it.”

“I shall be very glad to hear anything you can tell me,” he said. “I have been working at it for many a long year, determined to get at the bottom of it. Strange that it should come into your work.”

“Accident,” I remarked, “pure accident. But I will tell you all I know.”

I gave him a clear, brief account of all that had happened to me since Millwaters’ coming to my office the previous morning, winding up with a recapitulation of all that the old shoemaker had told me. He never took his keen blue eyes off me from start to finish, and I saw the growing satisfaction in his face as I progressed with the story. In fact, his expression struck me—it was that of a man who has persistently hunted somebody or something down, and who at last saw the end of his search before him. He even sighed with relief when I had finally marshalled the facts.

“Yes!” he said. “There’s no doubt the man’s Richard Maygrove. Odd! I did everything that mortal man could do to track him from the moment he left Portland, nearly three years ago, and failed. My agents lost him at Waterloo Station—and never found trace of him again. Perhaps you wonder why I was so keen about finding him, Mr. Campenhaye? I’ll tell you what the outside public doesn’t know. The old man across there—Daniels—said that it was supposed Maygrove robbed us of thirty or forty thousand pounds, didn’t he? Ah! We have never let anybody know what the real amount was. It was nearer two hundred thousand!”

“Two hundred thousand!” I exclaimed. “Amazing!”

“The precise figure was just over one hundred and ninety thousand, seven hundred,” he answered quietly. “It was one of the most diabolically clever frauds ever compassed, and, naturally, I have done all I could towards the recovery of our money. Of course, you heard all about Richard Maygrove’s speech in the dock?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“All empty braggadocio,” exclaimed Mr. Candew. “The transaction between my father and Robert Maygrove was a perfectly proper one—Richard Maygrove put forward that plan to excite popular sympathy. That is another reason why I have wanted to trace him; to clear my father’s name. I have been working on other lines for years, at great expense. And now—now I see my way to ending the whole thing, thanks to this lucky accident. Mr. Campenhaye, I was going hunting, instead I will go to town with you by the 3 o’clock express. I must see this dead man, and then——”

“Yes?” I said, as he hesitated and smiled a little grimly. “And then?”

“Then,” he answered, “you shall hear—and see—more.”

I amused myself in studying the antiquities of Stilminster, made the learned shoemaker a little present, ate a hurried lunch, and at 3 o’clock joined Mr. Francis Candew. The railway people had reserved a first-class compartment for him, and in its privacy he gave me a deeply interesting account of how he had detached and brought to light the frauds and defalcations of Richard Maygrove twelve years before. His revelations and particulars showed me that the evil doer must have been a genius in his way, and that the man who tracked him down was no less of a marvel in the intricate paths of high finance.

“But, naturally, everything had been in Maygrove’s favour,” he said in conclusion. “My father was not a very precise business man; he had two businesses to attend to; he was fond of other matters; he trusted Maygrove implicitly, and he let the affairs of the bank rest in his hands. And so, when I came to the end of my investigations, there, Mr. Campenhaye, was the unpleasant fact that we had been robbed of nearly £200,000!”

“You think that Richard Maygrove appropriated all that for himself?” I asked.

“I know that he handled all that, of course,” he replied.

“And the amount which I have seen in his rooms and in the safe?” I said. “What of that!”

“That, I take it, is what he cleverly put aside for himself in his old age,” he answered. “According to you, it’s about one-sixth of the lot.”

“And the rest?” I said. “Have you any hope of recovering that? Have you traced it at all?”

He gave me quite a smile.

“You shall know more about that when I have identified Richard Maygrove,” he answered. “I am sure I shall identify this body, from what you tell me. What a world of chance and coincidence! If it hadn’t been for the man’s love of antiquities and archæology, I don’t suppose you’d ever have found out who the quiet old student calling himself Robert Walshaw really was!”

It was long past dark when we reached Ebury Street, and, at Mr. Candew’s request, Millwaters took us straight to the dead man. My companion gave him one look and turned to me with a satisfied expression.

“Undoubtedly,” he said. He went across the room to Millwaters, who lingered at the door. “I know who this man is,” he went on. “He has friends, relatives. They will come for him to-morrow. And, of course, they will relieve you of all further anxiety and responsibility. Mr. Campenhaye, we will go a little farther.”

I followed him out to the taxi cab, which we had kept waiting, and he told its driver to go to one of our ultra fashionable hotels. All the way there he kept silence, we exchanged no further conversation until he had spoken to an official, given him a sealed envelope, which I noticed he had brought with him from Stilminster, and had been shown with me into a private sitting-room. Then he turned to me.

“Now,” he said, “now you are going to hear and see something. I have come here to see Mr. James Marchdale. Mr. Marchdale is a multi-millionaire, head of the great firm of Marchdales, machine makers, of St. Louis, Missouri. He is at present over here with his wife and daughter; the daughter, as you may have heard, is to be married next month to our Earl of Cherington, one of the poorest, and possibly the proudest peers in England. Mr. Marchdale is, of course, to dower his daughter, the countess-to-be, very handsomely, being, as I said, a multi-millionaire. And incidentally, Campenhaye, Mr. James Marchdale is Robert Maygrove.”

The door had opened before I could recover from my start of surprise, and a man entered, an elderly man, strikingly alike to the dead man whom we had just left in Ebury Street. That he was under the influence of a great shock, a sudden fear, was abundantly evident from his pallid face and the perspiration on his brow. He looked at both of us with furtive glances, and his low voice shook as he spoke.

“Mr. Candew?” he said thickly.

Mr. Candew moved forward.

“I am Mr. Candew,” he said. “And you are Mr. James Marchdale—in reality, Robert Maygrove. You won’t deny that. I have come to tell you that your brother Richard, who was released from penal servitude about three years ago, is dead. He is lying dead—unfriended—at this address, and you must see to his funeral arrangements. But—first a word with me.”

The man took the card on which Mr. Candew had scribbled Millwaters’ address, and his hand trembled so that he let it fall.

“What—what is this?” he muttered. “This—this, of course, is a shock. It—it—unnerves me, as you see.”

“Then I must ask you to pull yourself together,” said Candew mercilessly, “for I have serious words to say to you. Now, let me tell you, Robert Maygrove, that I have spent large sums in tracking you. When you disappeared from Stilminster you went across to the United States. From time to time you received capital from England—I know with whom you banked it in St. Louis, how you started your business, how you built it up, how you have become what you are—an American millionaire, about to marry a daughter into our peerage. And I am very sure that your original capital was sent to you, year by year, by your brother, and that it was our money. I have no hold on you. I can’t say that you know the money was stolen. But we punished your brother, and he became a convict. Do you wish the Earl of Cherington to know that he is going to marry a convict’s niece?”

The man to whom all this was addressed grew paler and paler as Candew proceeded. And at the last words he winced so much that I thought he would cry out. But Candew went on as mercilessly as ever.

“Some £30,000 or £40,000 of your brother’s booty lies at his rooms or in his safe, at your disposal,” he said. “It represents little of the amount of which he robbed my father and me. You have no doubt kept yourself acquainted with his career—I have, of course, heard before of men who did not mind serving a few years in penal servitude for the sake of a fortune, but your brother evidently kept only a part of his gains for himself. He furnished—somebody else—with the major portion. And——”

“For pity’s sake stop!” exclaimed the other. “What—what do you want? What do you propose? I—I didn’t know he was dead. I went to meet him the other night, secretly, but he didn’t turn up. Don’t let this come out, Mr. Francis. My daughter——”

“I want restitution of what is my father’s and mine,” answered Candew with stern determination.

It seemed to me that I saw Maygrove’s breast heave with relief. Mechanically he lifted his right hand to an inner pocket of his dinner jacket.

“How much?” he whispered. “How much?”

“Your brother robbed us of £190,723 10s,” replied Candew. “I have carried the precise figures in my head for many years.”

I stood wonderingly by as the cornered man sat heavily down at a writing table and wrote out a cheque. He did not look at Candew as he handed it over, but Candew read it over carefully before putting it in his pocket-book. Then, without as much as a glance at Robert Maygrove, he turned to the door.

“Come!” he said to me. “That’s all.”

Maygrove rose with a sudden exclamation.

“This—this affair!” he said, holding out the card. “What am I to do? I don’t want publicity—it mustn’t be known! I don’t know the ways of this country now and——”

“I will waste enough breath on you to advise you to employ a confidential solicitor in the morning,” said Candew, turning from the door. “Tell him everything—and he will manage everything for you.”

Then he strode out, and I strode after him amazed and wondering. We had walked away some distance from the hotel before he spoke. Then he lifted his hat, as if to find relief in the sharp winter air.

“There!” he exclaimed, “that’s good! After breathing the same atmosphere with that fellow! Campenhaye, that man was as guilty as the other! Did you see his face? A plant—a plant! All through, a wicked plant—and one man, clever enough in his way, didn’t mind going into penal servitude to work it! It makes me—sick.”

“You’ve recovered your money, anyway,” I said, still wonderstruck at the recent scene.

He turned in the light of the gas lamp and gave me a queer, sidelong look. “I’m afraid you are not a financial expert, my friend,” he remarked dryly. “You forget that we have lost a good twelve years’ interest on this little sum. And twelve years’ interest on £190,000 is—but never mind that! Come and dine with me somewhere.”