Читать книгу The Mystery of the Hidden Room (Vintage Mysteries Series) - Marion Harvey - Страница 9

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At the coroner's words the man beside me arose and walked to the front of the room. He was about Philip Darwin's build and height, but his face was fleshier, and he wore a full, square beard of a peculiar mottled red, the same shade as his hair, as though both had been liberally sprinkled with gray. He was very fastidiously dressed, I might say almost foppishly so, even to the point of wearing spats and an eyeglass, which he was continually screwing into his eye as he spoke.

"You are Mr. Darwin's lawyer?" asked the coroner.

"Yes. You will pardon me if I reply rather briefly. I have a bad throat to-day and find it trying to speak at length," he apologized in a husky voice.

"Certainly, certainly. This is a mere formality," responded the coroner affably, whereat the lawyer smiled, rather sardonically, I thought.

"Mr. Cunningham, do you know whether the will that was destroyed was in Mrs. Darwin's favor?"

"It was."

"Are you absolutely certain?"

"Yes. I made it out when Mr. Darwin was married."

"Do you know whether Mr. Darwin keeps any of his valuable papers in that safe?"

"I am sure he keeps nothing of value in it. His papers are in his vault at the bank."

"Have you none, then?"

The lawyer shook his head and replaced his eyeglass with great deliberation. "Two nights ago Mr. Darwin removed the last of his securities from my office," he said with evident difficulty.

"The last of his securities? Do you mean that he had been gradually removing them from your care?"

This time the lawyer nodded.

"For what purpose?" asked the coroner.

"I do not know," was the candid answer. "He was rather secretive. I surmised he needed them in his dealings in Wall Street."

"He did not actually say so?"

"No. He told me nothing."

"Since he was so secretive, might he not have put some of his securities in that safe?"

"No, I don't think so. However, you might have it opened—to satisfy yourself," with a slight, rather mocking accent on the last word.

"I think it just as well," responded the coroner, briskly. "Mr. Cunningham, you don't by any chance happen to know the combination?"

"No, I do not."

"Jones, can you open that safe?" inquired the coroner.

"I think so." The detective rose and advanced down the long room to the safe, where he knelt down, the better to hear the fall of the tumblers. While he twirled the knob of the dial now this way and now that, Mr. Cunningham, as if in no way interested, moved to the window, where he stood looking out with his back to the room. Now it happened that I was sitting so that I could see his reflection in the window-pane, and I was surprised to note the look of diabolical joy that overspread his countenance as he rubbed his hands together in unholy glee, for it seemed to me that such levity was decidedly out of place at this particular time.

But now my attention was diverted, for the detective straightened to his full height and opened the safe door, which swung back on noiseless hinges. As the detective darted within the cavernous depths, the lawyer turned toward the room once more with a remnant of his smile on his lips as he stroked his beard with a well-kept white hand. And then it flashed across me where I had seen him before. It was on the Knickerbocker Roof, late one evening in September, where I was supping with my partner after the show. Cunningham had come in with a couple of chorus girls and my partner had mentioned that he was a gay old boy, to which I had agreed after watching him as he stroked his beard and made love to the girls. I had not seen him since that night, roof gardens not being much in my line, and so, of course, I had failed to remember him until that gesture which seemed habitual with him recalled him to my mind.

"Nothing, your honor," reported the detective, emerging with a crestfallen face. "Nothing but a few receipted tailor's bills, an empty cash box and a stoneless ring."

"A what?" The coroner screwed himself around in his chair and the jury strained backward as Jones spoke.

Mr. Cunningham involuntarily put out his hand for the bauble as the detective passed him, but Jones shook his head with a smile, as he returned to the front of the room and placed the objects on the table before the coroner.

Coroner Graves examined with meticulous care the sheaf of bills, the empty box. Then he put them aside and turned his attention to the stoneless ring.

"Odd, very odd," he said. "Why should a man like Mr. Darwin preserve a stoneless ring?"

"I think I can explain that," said the lawyer, coming forward very leisurely. "May I look at it?" He held out his hand and the coroner placed the ring within it. "Ah, yes, it is the same." He handed it back with a courteous air, but I could not help feeling that somehow he was merely amused by the attempts of the coroner to solve the problem. But it must have been my own overwrought fancy, for his voice was sinister enough through its throatiness, as he said:

"My client, as perhaps you know, was very fond of the ladies. Before his marriage he met a very beautiful young lady—her name does not matter, it was not her own, for she was an actress, I believe—of whom he became very fond. In fact, he told me he was going to engage himself to her, and showed me that ring which he had bought her. It held within that now broken setting a magnificent blue-white diamond. If you will look within you will see the inscription which Mr. Darwin had engraved upon it."

He paused, as much to rest his voice as to give the coroner the opportunity of reading aloud for the benefit of the jury the sentiment which graced the ring: "To my one love—D."

"I remonstrated with him, told him she would take the ring and leave him high and dry, but he would not listen and bestowed it upon her," resumed the lawyer. "A week later he received a letter from her enclosing that." He waved his hand toward the golden circlet contemptuously. "She had kept the diamond and returned him his ring. She left the country and he never heard from her again. Why he kept that empty shell I don't know. Perhaps he put it in the safe and forgot it was there."

"Where did you find it, Jones?" asked the coroner.

"In one corner of the top shelf. I only discovered it because as I passed my hand over the shelf the broken prong scratched me," replied Jones.

The coroner nodded. "A thin bit of gold not worth considering," he said, adding as the lawyer was about to return to his seat: "Mr. Cunningham, do you know Mr. Darwin's nephew?"

"Yes, I have met him several times," responded the lawyer.

"Was there not a will in his favor before the wedding?"

"Yes, but it was destroyed when the new will was made."

"Did Mr. Darwin mention to you recently that he intended changing his will?"

"No."

"Have you ever heard of Cora Manning?"

"No."

"Yet Mr. Darwin had written her name on the will he was making at the time he was shot, Mr. Cunningham."

"Indeed? This is all news to me, sir. My client, as perhaps you have heard, was exceedingly peculiar. He did not confide all his affairs to me. In fact, he often employed more than one lawyer."

The coroner raised his brows. "Well, he certainly was peculiar if he did that. One lawyer ought to be enough for any sane man."

"Quite right," responded Mr. Cunningham with an odd smile. "But perhaps my client wasn't quite sane."