Читать книгу The Broken Thread - Le Queux William - Страница 3

Upon a bench in the front room of the artistic little cottage, the exterior of which was half hidden by Virginia creeper, lay the body of the stranger.

He was of middle age, with a dark, well-trimmed moustache, high cheek-bones, and hair slightly tinged with grey. He was wearing a smart, dark tweed suit, but his collar had been disarranged, and his tie removed, in the cursory examination made by the police when called.

Upon his cold, stiff hands were thin rubber gloves, such as surgeons wear during operations. They told their own tale. He wore them so as to obviate leaving any finger-prints. Upon his waistcoat there was a large damp patch which showed where Sir Henry’s bullet had struck him.

Old Edgson stood beside his young master, hushed and awed.

“He’s evidently an expert thief,” remarked Raife, as he gazed upon the dead assassin’s calm countenance. The eyes were, closed and he had all the composed appearance of a sleeper. “Have they searched him?”

“I don’t know, sir,” replied the old man.

“Then I will,” Raife said, and, thereupon, commenced to investigate the dead man’s pockets.

The work did not take long. From the breastpocket of his jacket he drew out a plain envelope containing three five-pound notes, as well as a scrap of torn newspaper. The young fellow, on unfolding it, found it to be the “Agony” column of the Morning Post, in which there was, no doubt, concealed some secret message. There were, however, a dozen or so advertisements, therefore which of them conveyed the message he was unable to decide. So he slipped it into his pocket until such time as he was able to give attention to it.

In the dead man’s vest-pocket he found the return half of a first-class ticket from Charing Cross to Tunbridge Wells, issued four days previously, while in one of the trousers-pockets were four sovereigns, some silver, and in the other a bunch of skeleton keys, together with a small, leather pocket-case containing some strange-looking little steel tools, beautifully finished – the last word in up-to-date instruments for safe-breaking.

Raife, holding them in his hand, carried them to the window and examined them with keen curiosity. It was, indeed, a neat outfit and could be carried in the pocket without exciting the least suspicion. That the unknown assassin was an expert thief was quite clear.

Old Edgson was impatient to return to the house.

“Perhaps her ladyship may be wanting me, sir,” he suggested. “May I go, sir?”

“Yes, Edgson,” replied the young man. “Tell my mother, if you see her, that I’ll be back presently.”

And the old servant, with his mechanical bow, retired, leaving his young master with his father’s murderer.

Raife gazed in silence upon the face of the dead stranger. Then, presently, speaking to himself, he said:

“I wonder who he is? The police will find out, no doubt. He’s probably known, or he would not have been so careful about his finger-prints. By jove!” he added, “if I’d met him in a train or in the street I would never have suspected him of being a criminal. One is too apt to judge a man by his clothes.”

The local police had evidently gone through the man’s pockets for evidence of identification, but finding none, had replaced the articles in the pockets just as they had found them. Therefore, Raife did the same, in order that the London detectives might be able to make full investigation. The only thing he kept was the scrap torn from the Morning Post.

He turned the body over to get at the hip-pocket of the trousers, when from it he at length drew a bundle of soft black material, which, when opened, he found to be a capacious sack of thin black silk, evidently for the purpose of conveying away stolen property.

This he also replaced, and when, on turning the body into its original position, the shirt became further dragged open at the throat he noticed around it something that had probably been overlooked by the local constable who had opened the dead man’s clothes in an endeavour to discover traces of life – a very fine silver chain.

Suspended from the chain was a tiny little ancient Egyptian charm, in the form of a statuette of the goddess Isis, wearing on her head the royal sign, the orb of the sun, supported by cobras on either side.

He removed it from the neck of the unknown, and, holding it in his palm, examined it. The modelling was perfect as a work of ancient art. It was cut in camelian about an inch and a quarter long, and, no doubt, five or six thousand years old. Up the back, from head to foot, were inscribed tiny Egyptian hieroglyphics, the circle of the sun, the feather, the sign of truth, a man kneeling in the act of adoration, a beetle and an ibis, the meaning of which were only intelligible to an Egyptologist.

“He wore this as a talisman, no doubt,” remarked Raife, speaking to himself. “Perhaps it may serve as a clue to his identity. Who knows?”

And, gathering the little goddess and its chain into his palm, he transferred it to his pocket.

Just as he did so, voices sounded outside the cottage. Edgson, with three men in overcoats and bowler hats were coming up the garden path.

They entered the room without ceremony, and old Edgson, who accompanied them, said:

“These are the gentlemen from London, Master Raife.”

Two of the men respectfully saluted the young baronet – for he had now succeeded to the title – while the third, Raife recognised as Inspector Caldwell from Tunbridge Wells.

“Well, Caldwell,” he said. “This is a very sad business for us.”

“Very sad, indeed, sir,” was the dark-bearded man’s reply. “We all sympathise with you and her ladyship very deeply, sir. Sir Henry was highly respected everywhere, sir, and there wasn’t a more just, and yet considerate, magistrate on any county bench in England.”

“Is that the popular opinion?” asked Raife, thoughtfully.

“Yes, sir. That’s what everybody says. The awful news has created the greatest sensation in Tunbridge Wells. I wonder who this blackguardly individual is?” he added.

The two detectives from Scotland Yard had crossed to where the dead man was lying, his white face upturned, and were scrutinising him narrowly.

“I don’t recognise him,” declared the elder of the pair. “He’s done time, no doubt. Look at his gloves.”

“An old hand, that’s quite certain. We’ve got his finger-prints in the Department, you bet,” remarked the other. “We’d better take off his gloves and take some prints as soon as we can; they will, no doubt, establish his identity. Mr Caldwell, will you please telephone to a printer’s somewhere near for a little printing-ink?”

“Certainly,” replied the inspector. “I’ll ’phone back to Tunbridge Wells and have it sent out by a constable on a bicycle.”

The three officers then proceeded to make a minute examination of the body, but Raife did not remain. He returned to the house, accompanied by Edgson.

A few minutes later he stood in the library before the open safe, plunged in thought. The sunshine streamed across the fine old room filled with books from floor to ceiling, for Sir Henry was a student, and his library, being his hobby, was cosily furnished – a pleasant, restful place, the long, stained-glass windows of which looked out upon the quaint old Jacobean garden, with its grey, weather-beaten sundial, its level lawns, and high, well-clipped beech hedges.

Raife stood gazing at the safe, which, standing open, just as it was when his father had surprised the intruder, revealed a quantity of papers, bundles of which were tied with faded pink tape: a number of valuable securities, correspondence, insurance policies, and the usual private documentary treasures of an important landowner. Papers concerning the estate were mostly preserved at the agent’s office in Tunbridge Wells: only those concerning his own private affairs did Sir Henry keep in the library.

What had his dead father meant by those dying words uttered to old Edgson? That warning to be careful of the trap! What trap? What could his father fear? What truth was it which his father had hesitated to tell him – the important truth the telling of which had been too late.

He recollected his father’s words as uttered to the faithful old servant: “I was a fool, Edgson. I ought to have told my boy from the first. Every man has a skeleton in his cupboard. This is mine!”

“And, further, who was the woman whom he had referred to as ‘her’?”

The young man gazed upon the dark patch on the carpet near the door, soaked by the life-blood of his unfortunate father. The latter, so suddenly cut off, had carried his secret to the grave.

That big, sombre room, wherein the tragedy had taken place, looked pleasant and cheerful with the bright, summer sunlight now slanting upon it. The big, silver bowl of roses upon the side-table shed a sweet fragrance there, while the spacious, old-fashioned mahogany writing-table was still littered with the dead man’s correspondence.

The writing-chair he had vacated on the previous night, before going to bed, stood there, the silk cushion still crushed just as he had risen from it. His big briar-pipe lay just as he had knocked it out and placed it in the little bowl of beaten brass which he used as an ash-tray.

The newspapers which he had read were, as usual, flung upon the floor, while the waste-paper basket had not been emptied that morning. The servants had not dared to enter that room of disaster.

Young Raife re-crossed the room, and again examined the open door of the safe.

He saw that it had not been forced, but opened by a duplicate key – one that had, no doubt, been cut from a cast secretly taken of the one which his father always carried attached to his watch-chain. So well had the false key fitted that the door had yielded instantly.

In the darkness in that well-remembered room, the room which he recollected as his father’s den ever since he was a child, the two men – the baronet and the burglar – had come face to face.

“I wonder,” Raife exclaimed, speaking to himself softly, scarce above a whisper. “I wonder if there was a recognition? The words of the poor guv’nor almost tell me that, in that critical moment, the pair, bound together in one common secret, met. They hated each other – and they killed each other! Why did the guv’nor admit that he had been a fool? Why did he wish to warn me of a trap? What trap? Surely at my age I’m not likely to fall into any trap. No,” he added, with a bitter smile, “I fancy I’m a bit too wary to do that.”

He paced up and down the long, silent, book-lined chamber, much puzzled.

As he did so, the sweet, pale, refined face of Gilda Tempest again arose before him. He had only met her casually, a few hours ago, yet, somehow why he could not explain, they had seemed to have already become old friends and, amid all his trouble, anxiety and bewilderment, he found himself wondering how she fared, and whether the dear little black pom, Snookie, was guarding his dainty little mistress.

True, a black shadow had fallen upon his home, a tragic event which had rendered him a baronet, and in a few months he would be possessor of great estates, nevertheless that thought had not yet occurred to him. His only concern had been for his bereaved mother, to whom he was so devoted, and from whom his father had hidden his strange secret. Through that dark cloud of mourning, which had so suddenly enveloped him, arose the beautiful countenance of the girl into whose society chance had so suddenly thrown him, and he felt he must see her again, that he must stroll at her side once again, at all hazards.

As his father’s only son, he had a right to investigate the contents of the open safe, for he knew that one executor was away at Dinard, while the other, an uncle, lived in Perthshire. At present, his father’s lawyer had not been communicated with, therefore he crossed again to the safe and methodically removed paper after paper to examine it.

Most of them were securities, mortgages, bonds, and other such documents, which, at that moment, did not possess much interest for him.

One bundle of old and faded letters which he untied were in a handwriting he at once recognised – the letters of his mother before she had become Lady Remington. Another – a batch written forty years ago – were the letters from his grandfather, while his father was at Oxford. With these were other letters from dead friends and relatives; but, though he spent an hour in searching through them, Raife discovered no clue to the strange secret which Sir Henry had died without divulging.

Then he afterwards replaced the papers, closed the safe and re-locked it with the false key which still remained in it.

His mother was still too prostrated to speak with him, therefore he again went across to the cottage where the police were with the dead assassin.

As he entered, one of the detectives was carefully applying printer’s ink to the tips of the cold, stiff fingers, and afterwards taking impressions of them upon pieces of paper.

The secret of the dead thief’s identity would, they declared among themselves, very soon be known.