On the evening of the day following the arrest of Jim Gilson I received a telegram from Christopher Quarles, asking me to go to him without delay. He was in the empty room, his granddaughter with him.
"Wigan, this Suss.e.x affair?" were the words with which he greeted me.
"All over. The murderer was arrested yesterday," I answered.
I had not seen Quarles for some days, and the case had not been mentioned between us. His theories would probably have hindered rather than helped me.
"You"re wrong, all wrong," he said.
"My dear professor, n.o.body knows your ability better than I do, but you haven"t had anything to do with this affair. I a.s.sure you----"
"You may tell me the whole story, if you like, but you"re wrong. You haven"t caught your man."
"Nonsense," I said angrily.
"Tell me the story."
"The newspaper resume of the affair is quite correct," I said.
"I"d rather hear it from you."
And, in spite of my annoyance, I told it in answer to an appealing glance from Zena. There was nothing I would not have done to please her.
"I"ll tell you the story in a different way," said Quarles, when I had finished, "and you can pull me up if I go outside reason. At the beginning of this mystery, four or five years ago, I felt no interest in it; now I am impelled to interfere. True, I have taken no active part in the affair, but with me that is not always necessary. Into my empty brain something has come from outside."
I smiled. There was something of the charlatan in him.
"The body of Peter Judd is found," Quarles went on, "his brother"s isn"t. Where is it? Down the well? You do not think so, yet by the shred of pajamas and the slipper found there it is desired by someone to suggest this solution. A well can be made to give up its secrets, as a rule, but not this particular well. This is a point in Richard Coleman"s favor, since he would not be likely to have any knowledge of local lore; and, if you like, it is against Gilson, who might have such knowledge. But what possible object could he have in laying such a misleading trail?"
"To implicate some other person--the man he had seen join the Judds as he left them."
"I am not combating your theory that two men left the Judds in much the same manner that night, and that the man who gave evidence at the trial was not the one Coleman saw. No doubt Coleman saw Gilson; but do you suggest it was a premeditated crime?"
"No. Gilson was curious about the visitor, and watched; and while he waited Peter Judd went to the well, and Gilson saw the gold. Then desire to possess came to him."
"So he murdered the two men who had been kind to him. Why?" asked Quarles. "During the night he could have broken open the shed and taken the gold. The Judds would undoubtedly have jumped to the conclusion that their nephew had robbed them."
"I should say Gilson"s idea was to get the key, hence the murder."
"And while he was strangling Peter, what was Simon doing? Since Peter was found in the sitting-room in his pajamas, it is permissible to suppose that something had aroused him. If it did not arouse Simon too, Peter would be likely to do so, and at the very least he would have called for help the moment he was attacked."
"You forget the doctor"s evidence," I said. "He was killed by the shock as much as by the man"s fingers at his throat."
"A most important point," said Quarles; "we will come back to it in a minute. Having murdered both the Judds, this imbecile breaks into the shed, because he fails to find the key, I suppose; and having got the money, is satisfied. He hides one body and leaves the other. He lays a false trail for no earthly reason, I submit. For months he does not let fall a word to disturb his mother, but he haunts the gate of the farm."
"His mother knows he is guilty, professor; remember that."
"Did she see him do it? Has he shown her the money?"
"No."
"Then, I ask, what made Gilson haunt the farm? The right answer to that question will put you on the right road. It was Zena who propounded that question to me."
"In seeking for motives we must not be too precise in dealing with a madman," I said. "I think his idea was to protect the money which he had hidden somewhere close at hand."
"I don"t," said Quarles. "He was watching for the man who murdered Peter Judd."
"Rather a fantastic conclusion, isn"t it?" I said.
"It might be were there no evidence to support it. Let me tell the story as I imagine it. The twin brothers were much attached to each other. Few people knew them well; they kept altogether to themselves.
From Coleman"s statement it would seem that Peter took the lead. It was he who went for the money. He appears to have managed all the money transactions. It may have been merely a division of labor, but there may have been another reason. Perhaps Simon"s temperament was to waste money, and to keep him out of temptation Peter kept the key of the treasury."
"Still a little fantastic, I fancy," I said somewhat contemptuously.
"Quite true, and we will go a little farther on the same road. We will a.s.sume that the sight of gold was not good for the moral welfare of Simon Judd. So long as he did not see gold he was content to go on his simple way, but the sight of it set him desiring possession. The nephew came, and twenty sovereigns were fetched from the treasury chest and displayed before Simon"s gloating eyes. There was a sudden desire to possess gold himself. Peter had the key, had a hiding-place for it, probably; and on this night, thinking of his nephew, was not careful enough to conceal that hiding-place from his brother, or it may be he was forgetful, and left the key on the mantelshelf. In the night he remembered it, or was aroused by some noise, and went down to find Simon, who was fully dressed, taking the key. Some words may have been spoken; Peter may have reasoned with him, but Simon was beyond reason. He attacked his brother, and killed him. The shock of such a thing may well have had something to do with Peter"s death, as the doctor suggests. Would shock have had such effect upon him, do you suppose, had he been attacked by Gilson, an innocent imbecile?"
I did not answer.
"Simon at once realized his position. Suspicion must fall upon him unless he was murdered too. So he laid the trail, shreds of his pajamas here and there, and the old slipper. The well would be an excellent grave for him. He remembered that Gilson saw Coleman arrive; suspicion would fall upon Coleman. Conscience was dead now, he could take the gold. So he left Cross Roads Farm, being careful to dress himself in clothes that probably only his brother knew he possessed, and left his ordinary clothes on the chair in his room."
"And Gilson?" I asked.
"No doubt he saw Peter Judd go to the shed, and was fascinated by the sight of the gold; at any rate, he remained there. He would see Coleman leave. That he saw the actual murder is unlikely, did not know of it until the next day, I should conjecture; but he would see what Simon Judd did, would see him take the money and go. When he knew Peter Judd was dead, Gilson would guess who had killed him. He would say nothing, because both men had been good to him; but knowing the two brothers, being in touch, perhaps, since he is one of G.o.d"s fools, with a plane of thought which is above the normal man, he waited for Simon Judd"s return, and he has not been disappointed."
"Not disappointed!" I exclaimed.
"I imagine Simon spent his money riotously, every penny of it, conscience troubling him at times, which trouble he drowned with drink and drugs; but in the end he was irresistibly drawn back, a tramp, dirty, unrecognizable, except to the eyes expecting him--Gilson"s."
"And then?"
Quarles paused for a moment.
"If Gilson watched him closely, as he probably did, he may some day, in a lucid interval, confirm my surmise. I think Simon Judd stood before the lifted veil when he returned to Cross Roads Farm again; that on the spot where so many familiar hours had been spent he saw his brother once more, and remorse came to him. The gold had gone, you see. Every detail of that tragic night was recalled in a moment of time, and, terror seizing him, he clutched himself by the throat and fell dead."
"I think you are right, dear," Zena said solemnly.
"But how is it no one knew him?" I asked.
"Few people did know him, and he had pa.s.sed through five years of debauchery. Find someone who knew of some peculiarity he had. Coleman might help you here. Gilson knew him. Didn"t he tell you Simon Judd was buried? That would be a day or so after the tramp had been buried in Hanley."
This case was certainly one of my failures, although I had to accept praise when both Coleman and Gilson were released.
It happened, too, that Coleman knew that, as a young man, his Uncle Simon had undergone an operation, the scar of which the doctor found on the tramp"s body.
Jim Gilson was never lucid enough to give a detailed account of what happened when Simon Judd returned to the farm, but piecing together statements he made at intervals there is little doubt that Quarles"s surmise was not very far from the truth.