Читать книгу The Broken Thread - Le Queux William - Страница 4

“Tell him to be careful – to be wary of – the trap?”

Those dying words of Sir Henry’s rang ever in his son’s ears.

That afternoon, as Raife stood bowed in silence before the body of his beloved father, his mind was full of strange wonderings.

What was the nature of the dead man’s secret? Who was the woman to whom he had referred a few moments before he expired?

The young fellow gazed upon the grey shrunken face he had loved so well, and his eyes became dimmed by tears. Only a week before they had been in London together, and he had dined with his father at the Carlton Club, and they had afterwards gone to a theatre.

The baronet was then in the best of health and spirits. A keen sportsman, and an ardent golfer, he had been essentially an out-door man. Yet he now lay there still and dead, killed by an assassin’s bullet. Raife’s mother was inconsolable and he had decided that it was best for him to keep apart from her for the present.

To his friend, Mutimer, he had sent a wire announcing the tragic news, and had, by telephone, also informed Mr Kellaway, the family lawyer, whose offices were in Bedford Row, London. On hearing the astounding truth, Mr Kellaway – to whom Raife had spoken personally – had announced his intention of coming at once to Tunbridge Wells.

At six o’clock he arrived in the car which Raife had sent for him – a tall, elderly, clean-shaven man in respectful black.

“Now, Mr Kellaway,” said Raife, when they were alone together in the library, and the young baronet had explained what had occurred. “You have been my father’s very intimate friend, as well as his solicitor for many years. I want to ask you a simple question. Are you aware that my father held a secret – some secret of the past?”

“Not to my knowledge, Mr Raife – or Sir Raife, as I suppose I ought to call you now,” was the sombre, and rather sad, man’s reply.

“Well, he had a secret,” exclaimed Raife, looking at him, searchingly.

“How do you know?”

“He told Edgson, the butler, before he died.”

“Told his servant his secret!” echoed the lawyer, knitting his brows.

“No. He told him something – not all.”

“What did he tell him?” asked Mr Kellaway, in quick eagerness.

“My father said he wished that he had been frank with me, and revealed the truth.”

“Of what?”

“Of his secret. He left me a message, urging me to beware of the trap. Of what nature is the pitfall?” asked the young man. “You, his friend, must know.”

“I regret, but I know absolutely nothing,” declared the solicitor, frankly. “This is all news to me. What do you think was the nature of the secret? Is it concerning money matters?”

“No. I believe it mainly concerns a woman,” the young man replied. “My father had no financial worries. He was, as you know, a rich man. Evidently he was anxious on my behalf, or he would not have given Edgson that message. Ah! If his lips could only speak again – poor, dear guv’nor.”

And the young man sighed.

“Perhaps Edgson knows something?” the solicitor suggested.

“He knows nothing. He only suspects that there is a lady concerned in it, for my father, before his death, referred to ‘her’.”

“Your respected father was my client and friend through many years,” said Mr Kellaway. “As far as I know, he had no secrets from me.”

Raife looked him straight in the face for a few moments without speaking. Like all undergraduates he had no great liking for lawyers.

“Look here, Kellaway,” he said slowly. “Are you speaking the truth?”

“The absolute truth,” was the other’s grave reply.

“Then you know of no secret of my father’s. None – eh?”

“Ah, that is quite a different question,” the solicitor said. “During the many years I have acted for your late father I have been entrusted with many of his secrets – secrets of his private affairs and suchlike matters with which a man naturally trusts his lawyer. But there was nothing out of the common concerning any of them.”

“Nothing concerning any lady?”

“Nothing – I assure you.”

“Then what do you surmise regarding ‘the trap,’ about which my father left me this inexplicable message?”

“Edgson may be romancing,” the lawyer suggested. “In every case of a sudden and tragic death, the servant, male or female, always has some curious theory concerning the affair, some gossip or some scandal concerning their employer.”

“Edgson has been in our family ever since he was a lad. He’s not romancing,” replied Raife dryly.

Mr Kellaway was a hard, level-headed, pessimistic person, who judged all men as law-breakers and criminals. He was one of those smug, old-fashioned Bedford Row solicitors, who had a dozen peers as clients, who transacted only family business, and whose firm was an eminently respectable one.

“I have always thought Edgson a most reliable servant,” he admitted, crossing to the safe, the key of which Raife had handed to him.

“So he is. And when he tells me that my father possessed a secret, which he has carried to his grave – then I believe him. I have never yet known Edgson to tell a lie. Neither has my father. He was only saying so at dinner one night three months ago.”

“I have no personal knowledge of any secret of the late Sir Henry’s,” responded the elder man, speaking quite openly. “If I knew of any I would tell you frankly.”

“No, you wouldn’t, Kellaway. You know you wouldn’t betray a client’s confidence,” said Raife, with a grim, bitter smile, as he stood by the ancient window gazing across the old Jacobean garden.

“Ah, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you’re right,” replied the man addressed. “But at any rate I repeat that I am ignorant of any facts concerning your father’s past that he had sought to hide.”

“You mean that you will not betray my dead father’s confidence?”

“I mean what I say, Sir Raife – that I am in entire ignorance of anything which might be construed into a scandal.”

“I did not suggest scandal, Mr Kellaway,” was his rather hard reply. “My father was, I suspect, acquainted with the man who shot him. The two men met in this room, and, I believe, the recognition was mutual!”

“Your father knew the assassin?” echoed the lawyer, staring at the young man.

“I believe so.”

“It seems incredible that Sir Henry should have been acquainted with an expert burglar – for such he apparently was.”

“Why should he have left me that warning message? Why should he seek to forewarn me of some mysterious trap?”

The old solicitor shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply. The whole, tragic affair was a complete and absolute mystery.

The London papers that afternoon were full of it, and already a host of eager reporters and press-photographers were waiting about on the off-chance of obtaining a glimpse of Raife, or any other member of the bereaved family. More than one had had the audacity to send in his card to Raife with a request for an interview, which had promptly been refused, and Edgson now had orders that the young master was not at home to any one.

Raife, still unconvinced that Mr Kellaway was in ignorance of his father’s secret, took him across to the cottage where lay the body of the stranger. The police were no longer there, but two doctors were making an examination. The inquest had been fixed for the morrow, and the medical men were consulting prior to the post-mortem.

The cause of death was only too apparent, but the principles of the law are hidebound, and it was necessary that a post-mortem should be made, in order that the coroner’s jury should arrive at their verdict.

Later Raife, assisted the family solicitor to gather out the contents of the safe and make them into bundles, which they sealed up carefully and counted.

“Of course,” Kellaway said, “I am not aware of the contents of your lamented father’s will, and I frankly confess I was rather disappointed at not being asked to make it.”

“I think it was made by some solicitors in Edinburgh,” was Raife’s reply. “Gordon and Gordon, I believe, is the name of the firm. It is deposited at Barclay’s Bank in London.”

“The executors will, no doubt, know. You have wired to them, you say?” Then, after a pause, Kellaway added: “The fact that Sir Henry engaged a strange solicitor to draw up his will would rather lead to the assumption that he had something to hide from me, wouldn’t it?”

“By jove, yes,” was the young man’s response. “I had never thought of that! He wished to preserve his secret until his death. I wonder if the will reveals anything?”

“Perhaps – who knows?”

Raife remained silent. He was still carefully removing the papers from the steel inner drawer of the safe – a drawer which had been overlooked when he had made his investigation. The papers were mostly memoranda regarding financial transactions, sales and purchases of land, and other matters. Among them were a number of old letters, mostly signed by George Mountjoy, who had been member for South Gloucestershire, and his father’s particular crony. He had died a year ago, and Sir Henry had keenly felt the loss of his life-long friend.

They had been as brothers, and old Mr Mountjoy was frequently a guest at Aldborough for months at a stretch, and treated quite as one of the family.

Letter after letter he turned over aimlessly, reading scraps here and there. They were strange letters, which showed a great bond of friendship existing between the two men. In some, Mountjoy asked Sir Henry’s advice regarding his most intimate and private affairs, and in others he gave the baronet his aid, and made suggestions regarding his line of action in many matters.

One struck him as very strange. Dated from the Hotel Angst, in Bordighera, over three years ago, it contained the following passage:

“As you have asked my advice upon the most secret page of our history, my dear Henry, I am most decidedly and emphatically of opinion that it will be best to allow them to remain in entire ignorance. He should, however, be diplomatically warned lest the pitfall you fear be placed in his path – as no doubt it will be sooner or later.

“Under no circumstances whatever would I alarm your wife by revealing to her the truth. Remember the state of her health is delicate, and undue anxiety would most probably shatter her nerves. No, remain silent. Only you and I know the truth, and that it is our duty to keep it strictly to ourselves.

“I know how it must gall you, and how helpless you must feel in the strange, unheard-of circumstances. But I beg of you to regard the threats as idle ones. For your safety I fear nothing, but for Raife it is different. He should be warned, but not in a way to cause him undue anxiety; only to impress upon him the need of shrewd precaution against his enemies.

“I shall never divulge the truth, and you, my dear Henry, should still preserve a calm and smiling face. Too well I know the extreme difficulty of doing this; but remember there is not the least suspicion of the truth abroad, and that most men in every walk of life have ugly secrets which they would not care to expose to the light of day.

“Your son, Raife, is in ignorance. Let him remain so, I beg of you. The truth, if told, will only bring unhappiness upon you both. He is young and fearless. Warn him against the trap that we, alas! know will be set sooner or later. But further than that do not go. I shall be back in London at the end of this month, and we can discuss the situation further.”

The remainder of the letter consisted mainly of Riviera gossip.

Raife stood staring at the sheet of grey note-paper, his brows knit in wonder.

“What is it?” asked Kellaway, noticing the effect the letter had had upon the young man.

“Read that,” was his reply. “It shows that my suspicions were well-grounded. My father had a secret – a secret which was known to no one else besides his friend, George Mountjoy. Read it, Kellaway. It is evident from that letter, and from the poor guv’nor’s dying message urging me to be careful, that I am in some strange, mysterious peril! What can it be?”