"He may want a quarter of a million of money and yet have no desire to marry. It is a theory, but unsatisfactory, I admit. One thing, however, we may take as certain. Eva Wilkinson was not driven away in that car. We have no news of any suspicious car being seen in any other direction, nor of any suspicious people being seen about, and it seems obvious that a false trail was laid for us. Wigan, it is quite possible that the girl never left Whiteladies at all, that she is hidden there now, in fact.
Doesn"t the disappearance of that coat and skirt tend to corroborate this? She was in evening dress at the time. It would be natural to get her another dress."
"That would mean confederates in the house," I said.
"Exactly. This girl Perry, perhaps, in league with her lover, the gamekeeper; or it may be Mrs. Reville herself. We are going down to Whiteladies to-morrow to try and find out, and we are going circ.u.mspectly to work, Wigan. You shall go to the house in the ordinary way, while I stroll across to the ruins. They are a likely hiding place. It will be dark, and I may chance upon some one keeping watch. In a few words you can explain our idea to Sir Michael, and then, without letting the servants know, you can come and find me in the ruins."
It was nearly dark when we arrived at Whiteladies on the following day, and as arranged, I left Quarles before we reached the lodge gates--in fact, helped him over a fence into the park before I went on to the house alone. Near the front door I found Mrs. Reville giving a couple of pug dogs a run. She told me Sir Michael was expecting me, and led the way into the hall.
"I think he is in the library," she said, and opened a door. "Oh, I am sorry, I thought you were alone, Sir Michael. It is Mr. Wigan."
He called out for me to enter. He was standing by a writing table, talking to a young farmer, apparently a tenant on the estate because Sir Michael was dismissing him with a promise to consider certain repairs to some outbuildings. As the farmer pa.s.sed me on his way to the door Sir Michael held out his hand.
"You are later than I expected, and I thought Mr. Quarles--"
Then he laughed. I had been seized from behind, a rope was round me, binding my arms to my side, a sudden jerk had me on my back. In that instant Sir Michael was upon me, and I was gagged and trussed almost before I realized what had happened. Never did the veriest tyro walk more innocently into a trap.
"That"s well done," said Sir Michael to the farmer. "You had better go and see that the other has been taken as successfully."
Alone with me, he removed the revolver from my hip pocket and placed it in a drawer, which he locked.
"Rather a surprise for you, Mr. Wigan. I am afraid Scotland Yard is likely to lose an officer, and your friend Quarles is an old man who has had a very good inning. I do not know exactly where he is at the present moment, but somewhere about the grounds he has been caught and is in a similar condition to yourself. You have both been very carefully shadowed to-day. The quarter of a million will be paid, Mr. Wigan, and my niece will reappear. She will be none the worse for her adventure--will thank me for all the trouble I have taken to rescue her from the kidnapers her father dreaded so much--and she will never suspect that the bulk of the ransom money has gone into my pocket. It is money sorely needed, I can a.s.sure you. I shall probably give my consent to her marriage with Cayley; her marriage will make my guardianship less irksome. He will be as unsuspicious of me as Eva. I prevailed upon him not to come to Whiteladies until to-morrow by suggesting that you were foolish enough to suspect him. I think it has all been rather cleverly managed. The only regrettable thing will be the death of two--two brilliant detectives. It may interest you to know that you will be found dead--shot--which will account for my having waited for you in vain at Whiteladies to-night. You have helped me greatly by being secretive to-day and not arriving here until after dark. Your death will be a nine days" wonder, but it will be a mystery which will not be solved, I fancy."
His cold-blooded manner left no doubt of his sinister intention, and I felt convinced that Quarles had been trapped just as I had been. Sir Michael laughed again as he bent over me to make sure that my bonds were secure. Then he stood erect suddenly.
"Don"t move," said a voice, "or I shall fire."
He did move, and a bullet ripped into a picture just behind him. With an oath he stood perfectly still. A door had opened across the room and a girl stood there. It was Joan Perry.
"I missed you on purpose," she said. "I shall not miss a second time. Cut those ropes."
For a moment he stood still, then he moved again, but not with the intention of setting me free; the next instant he stumbled, as if his leg had suddenly given way, and he let out a savage oath.
"To show you I do not miss," said the girl. "Cut those ropes, or the third bullet finds your heart."
Sir Michael took a knife from his pocket, and the girl came a little closer, but not near enough to give him a chance of grabbing at her. Her calm deliberation was wonderful.
"Do more than cut the ropes and you are a dead man," she said.
The instant my arms were free I had the gag from my mouth and could do something in my own defense. I was quickly on my feet.
"Keep him covered," I said to Perry. "I think we change places, Sir Michael."
Physically he was not a powerful man, and with Joan Perry near him he seemed to have lost his nerve. Her courage had shaken him badly, and he made no resistance. I was not long in having him bound and handcuffed.
"I have to thank you," I said, turning to the girl.
"Not yet. There is more to do. Mrs. Reville is in it, and Mr. Quarles has no doubt been caught in the grounds, as he said. I will ring. The servants are honest, and I expect Mr. Saunders is in the house by now. He usually comes up in the evening."
Fortunately Mrs. Reville had not heard the revolver shots, or she might have given the alarm to the two men who had secured the professor in the ruins, and they would very probably have killed him. I took the lady by strategy. I sent a servant to tell her that Sir Michael wished to speak to her, a summons which she had evidently been expecting, and I secured her as she came down the stairs. Then, leaving her and Sir Michael in charge of Perry and Saunders and a footman, I went with other servants to rescue Quarles. We took the confederates in the ruins by surprise, but in my anxiety that no harm should come to the professor, who was bound just as I had been, they managed to get away.
Now that he was captured, Sir Michael Lavory"s pluck entirely deserted him, and he told us where to find his niece. She was in a secret chamber under a tower in the ruins. She had been caught that night at the end of the terrace by Sir Michael"s accomplices, had been rendered unconscious by chloroform, and taken to the tower.
Quarles"s deductions so far as they went were right, but they had not gone nearly far enough. Neither of us had thought of Sir Michael as the criminal, and had it not been for the maid Perry I have little doubt that this would have been our last case. Perry herself had not suspected Sir Michael until that day, but she had always been suspicious of Mrs.
Reville. That morning, however, when Sir Michael arrived at Whiteladies, she had chanced to overhear a conversation. She heard Sir Michael tell Mrs. Reville there would be visitors that evening, and suggested that she should be near the front door at the time to admit them, as it would be well if they were not seen by the servants. Perry did not understand who the visitors were to be, but she thought such secrecy might be connected with her young mistress, and she had hidden herself earlier in the evening in the small room adjoining the library.
"It is fortunate Saunders taught me how to use a revolver," she said, when Quarles thanked and complimented her.
"A narrow escape, Wigan," the professor said to me. "One of our failures, eh? The fear expressed in the will, the fact that Sir Michael could not benefit by the death of his niece, confused me. He is a very clever scoundrel, making no mistake, making no attempt to implicate any one. His treatment of Cayley on his sudden return from Paris was a masterpiece of diplomacy; so was his handling of us from the first. He concocted no complicated story, so ran no risk of contradicting himself. He was simple and straightforward, and when a villain is that a detective is practically helpless. I was thoroughly deceived, Wigan, I admit it, and it is certain that had it not been for Joan Perry I should not be alive to say so, and you would not be here to listen. Do you know, I should not be surprised if it was the fear expressed in the will which gave Sir Michael the idea of kidnaping his niece and putting the ransom into his own pocket."
At his trial Sir Michael confessed that the will had given him the idea.
Personally I think he got far too light a sentence.
As I hear that Cayley and Miss Wilkinson are to be married shortly, I suppose her guardian"s consent to her marriage has been obtained; at any rate, it will be a good thing for her to have a husband to protect her from such a guardian. I hear, too, that Saunders and Perry are to be married on the same day as their mistress, and I am quite sure of one thing, two of the handsomest wedding presents Joan Perry receives will come from Christopher Quarles and myself.
CHAPTER III
THE DELVERTON AFFAIR
After our experience at Whiteladies Christopher Quarles went into Devonshire. He declared that excitement of that kind was a little too much for a man of his years and he must take a long rest to recuperate and get his nerves in order. Under no circ.u.mstances whatever was I to bother him with any problems. Had I been able to do so I should have gone away too. Sir Michael Lavory had succeeded in giving me the jumps. In her letters Zena told me the professor was playing golf, and knowing something of him as a golfer, I rather pitied the men he induced to play with him. It was not so much that he was a very bad player, it was the peculiar twist in his brain which convinced him that he was a good one.
To give him a hint was to raise his anger at once.
One morning I received a letter from him, two pages of golf talk, in which he opined he was playing at about five handicap--pure imagination, of course, because he never kept a card and didn"t count his foozled shots--and then he came to the _raison d"etre_ of his letter.
"I want you to look up a case," he wrote. "It happened about three years ago. A man named Farrell, partner in the firm of Delverton Brothers of Austin Friars, was found dead in his office. An open verdict was returned. It may have been a case of suicide. Get all the facts you can.
If you can obtain any information from some who were interested in the tragedy, do. I am not sure that the result of your inquiries will interest me, but it may. Send me along a full report, it may bring me back to Chelsea, but I am so keen to put another fifty yards on to my drive that I may remain here for three months. Why live in Chelsea when there is such a place as Devonshire?"
I remembered that the Delverton case had caused a considerable amount of excitement at the time, and had remained an unsolved mystery, but I knew no more than this. Three years ago I had been away from London engaged on an intricate investigation, with neither time nor inclination to think of anything else.
As it happened there was little difficulty in getting a very full account of the affair. It had been in the hands of Detective Southey, since retired, and it was a persistent grievance with him that this case had beaten him. He was delighted to talk about it when I went to see him in his little riverside cottage at Twickenham.
Delverton Brothers were foreign bankers, and at the time of the tragedy consisted of three partners, John and Martin Delverton, who were brothers, and Thomas Farrell, their nephew. John Delverton was an invalid, and for a year past had only come to the office for an hour once or twice a week. He had died about six months after the tragedy.
One day during a Stock Exchange settlement Thomas Farrell left the office early, and Martin Delverton was there until seven o"clock. When he left the only clerks remaining in the outer office were Kellner, the second in seniority on the staff, and a junior named Small.
These two left the office together ten minutes after Mr. Delverton had gone. Next morning when the housekeeper went to the offices he found Thomas Farrell sitting at the table in his private room, his head fallen on his arms, which were stretched across the table. He had died from the effects of poison, yet the tumbler beside him showed no traces of poison.
Medical evidence proved that he had been dead some hours, but there was nothing to show at what time he had returned to the office.
"In view of the doctor"s statement it must have been between ten minutes past seven and midnight," Southey told me. "The poison would produce intense drowsiness, then sleep from which there was no waking. The time of its action would vary in different individuals. I am inclined to think it was late when he returned. He was a well-known figure in Austin Friars and Throgmorton Street, and had he been about earlier in the evening some one would almost certainly have seen him. That part of the world is alive to a late hour during a Stock Exchange settlement. The offices consist of a large outer room, which accommodates seven or eight clerks, and two private rooms opening into one another, but opening into the outer office only from the first room. This first room, which is the larger of the two, the brothers Delverton occupied, Farrell having the smaller inner room. From this there is a side door which gives on to a short pa.s.sage leading into Austin Friars. The partners used this side door constantly, each of them having a key to the Yale lock, and we know from Mr.
Delverton that Farrell went out by the side door that afternoon.
Presumably he returned by it. Everything seemed to point to suicide, and possibly had there been a shadow of a motive for Farrell taking his own life, a verdict of suicide would have been returned. Apparently there was no motive. His affairs were in perfect order, he was shortly to be married, and the only person who suggested that he had looked in any way worried recently was the junior clerk, Small."
"What of the woman he was to have married?"
"She was a Miss Lester, and she introduces a complication. Her people were comparatively poor, her father being a clerk in a City bank. Mr.