Part 9

The reporter and detective exchanged glances. This, then, was the explanation of the mysterious Chinaman who had been seen by Mr. Stott’s servant waiting outside Mayfield smoking a cigar in the cold hours of the morning. It explained, also the appearance of the cyclist in the roadway that morning when the tyres of Ursula Ardfern’s car had burst and Tab had been on hand to render timely assistance.

“I had no idea,” breathed the astonished girl, “is that true, Yeh Ling? Oh, how kind you have been.”

Tab saw tears in her eyes and wished that he, and not this uninteresting Chinaman, had been the person who excited her gratitude.

“Kindness is a relative term,” said Yeh Ling. He had brought his feet up on a chair and was rolling a cigarette; he had asked permission with his eyes and as Ursula nodded, he lit it with a quick flick of his fingers, a match having appeared, as it seemed, out of space, and carefully replaced the stalk in a match-box. “Was it kindness that you saved the life of one who is to me the light of my eyes and the inspiration of my soul, if you will forgive what may seem to you, a writer, Mr. Holland, a piece of flowery orientalism, but which is to me the quintessence of sincerity.”

Then without preamble he told his story; a story which was only half-known to the girl.

“I was in this peculiar position,” he said, “that I was a rich man or a poor man, whichever way the great law of this country interprets an agreement I made with Shi Soh. Shi Soh you know as ‘Trasmere’ and that, of course, is his name. On the Amur River we called him Shi Soh. I came to this country many years ago and worked in the restaurant of which I am now proprietor. I do not mean the Golden Roof, but the little place in Reed Street. The man who owned it lost all his money at Fan-tan, and I bought it a bargain. You may wonder why a man of education, and the son of a great Clan should be here in this country, playing the humble part of waiter in a Chinese restaurant. I might tell you,” he said simply and without conscious humour, “that education in China, when it is applied to political objectives is not always popular, and I left China hurriedly. That, however, is all past. The Manchu has gone, the old Empress, the Daughter of Heaven is dead, and Li Hung is asleep on the Terraces of the Night.

“I was making slow progress when Mr. Trasmere came one night. I did not recognize him at first. When I knew him first he was a very strong, healthy man, with a reputation for being cruel to his employees. I have known him to burn men to death in order to make them reveal where they had hidden gold which they had stolen from the diggings. We talked of old times, and then he asked me if there was money to be made in the restaurant business. I told him there was, and that was the beginning of the partnership which lasted until the day of his death. Three-quarters of the profits of the Golden Roof was paid every Monday to Mr. Trasmere and that was our agreement. It was the only agreement that we had, except one which I myself wrote at his dictation and which placed on record this fact: that in the event of his dying, the whole of the property should come to me. It was signed by me with my ‘hong’ and by him with his ‘hong’ which he always carried in his pocket.”

“The ‘hong’,” interrupted Carver, “is a small ivory stamp with a Chinese character at the end. It is carried in a thin ivory case, rather like a pencil case, isn’t it?”

Yeh Ling nodded.

“I kept the document until a few days before his death, when he asked me to let him take it away with him to make a copy. It will be news to you, though not perhaps to you, Miss Ardfern, that Mr. Trasmere spoke and wrote Chinese with greater ease than I, who am almost an authority upon Mandarin. A few days later he was murdered. My only hope of saving myself from ruin was to find that agreement, which he had taken away in my little lacquer box.”

“But could they touch your restaurant? Are there any other documents in existence which would give Mr. Trasmere’s heir the right of interfering with you?”

Yeh Ling looked at him steadily.

“It does not need a document,” he said quietly. “We Chinese are peculiar people. If Mr. Lander came to me on his return from Italy and said--‘Yeh Ling, this property is my uncle’s in which you have only a small share’, I would reply, ‘that is true’, and if the agreement which we two men had not signed was not discovered, I should make no effort at law to preserve my rights.”

And he meant it. Tab knew as he spoke, that he was telling the truth. He could only marvel that such an exalted code of honour could be held by a man who subconsciously, he regarded as of an inferior race and of an inferior civilisation.

“You found the agreement?”

“Yes, sir,” said Yeh Ling. “It had been taken out of the box in which I gave it to Mr. Trasmere and placed--elsewehere. But I found it--and other documents of no immediate interest. As to my coming here tonight--apart from your letter, lady, I was anxious to meet the Black Man also. Yes. He has been watching me for many days. I am certain it is the same.” He made a little grimace and rubbed his bruised head. “I met him,” he said.

Carver jotted down a few notes in his book and then putting the book away, he turned and faced the Chinaman squarely.

“Yeh Ling,” he said, “who murdered Jesse Trasmere?”

The Chinaman shook his head.

“I do not know,” he said simply. “To me it is amazing. There must be a secret passage that opens into the vault. I can think of no other way in which the murderer could have got in or out.”

“If there is a secret way,” said the detective grimly, “then it is the best kept secret I have known. It has certainly been kept a secret from the men who built the house and the vault, and the Clerk of the Works who was on the spot all the time it was being erected. No, Yeh Ling, you must get that idea out of your head. Either the man Brown or Walters is guilty. We shall know the method they employed when we get them.”

“Brown was not guilty,” said Yeh Ling quietly, “for I was with him when the murder was committed!”

They heard his pronouncement with astonishment, even the girl seemed surprised.

“Do you know what you are saying?”

“I know what I am saying, and I rather wish I hadn’t said it,” said the Chinaman with a quick smile. “Nevertheless, it is true. If the murder was committed on Saturday afternoon, then I certainly was with the man called Wellington Brown, but whom we called The Drinker or the Unemployed One, at that hour. It embarrasses me to say how or where, but it would embarrass me more if you were to ask me whether I know his whereabouts at the present moment. To that question I should answer: ‘No.’”

“And you would lie,” said Carver quietly.

“I should lie,” was the calm answer. “Yet I tell you, Mr. Carver, that Wellington Brown was with me, under my eye, from half-past one o’clock in the afternoon of the Saturday on which Jesse Trasmere was killed until night.”

Carver eyed him keenly.

“When he came to you,” he asked, “how was he dressed?”

The other shrugged his shoulders.

“Poorly. He has always been dressed poorly.”

“Did he wear gloves?”

“No. He had no gloves. That was the first thing I noticed because he was, what do you call it in English--fastidious to a degree. In the hottest days I have seen him wearing gloves. A shabby dandy! That is the expression I was seeking. I am sorry to disappoint you.”

“You haven’t disappointed me,” said Carver bitterly, “you have merely added another brick wall between me and my objective.”

Yeh Ling left soon after. He had bicycled down from town and cheerfully undertook the long return journey in preference to spending the remainder of the night at the cottage.

It was too late for Ursula to go to her hotel and they sat up all night, Carver playing an interminable game of Solitaire, whilst Tab and the girl walked about the garden in the growing light and talked oddly of incongruous things.

As soon as it was light, Carver went out to find the place where the car had stood and to examine wheel-tracks. He gained little from his inspection, except that the tyres were new and that the car was a powerful one, which was hardly a discovery.

“The man who drove was not a skilled driver, or else he was very nervous. Half-way up the lane he nearly swerved into a ditch and came into collision with a telegraph pole, which must have damaged his mud-guard severely. I found flakes of brand new enamel attaching to the damaged wood, so I guessed that the car also had not been long from the maker’s hands.”

Thus passed the second appearance of the Man In Black.

The third was to come in yet a more dramatic fashion.

XIX

Mr. Wellington Brown woke one morning feeling extraordinarily refreshed. Usually he woke with a clouded brain and a parched mouth, with no other desire than to satisfy that craving for opium which all his life had kept him poor and eventually had ruined him physically and morally. But on this occasion he opened his eyes, made a quick stock of his surroundings, and uttered a “faugh!” of disgust. He knew himself so well, and was so well acquainted with his idiosyncrasies and the character of these fits which came upon him, that he saw that the end of a bout had come. Some day he would not wake up feeling refreshed, or wake up at all.

He sat up in bed, fingering his beard, and sucked in the breeze that came through the open window. Rising to his feet, he found his knees a little unstable, and laughed foolishly. It was Yo Len Fo himself who came in bearing a tray with a glass of water, a bottle half-full of whiskey and the inevitable pipe.

Without a word, Wellington poured himself out a stiff dose of the spirit and gulped it down.

“You may take that pipe to the devil,” he said. His voice was quavery but determined.

“‘A pipe in the morning makes the sun shine,’” quoted Yo Len Fo.

“‘A pipe in the morning does not go out with the stars,’” replied Wellington Brown, giving proverb for proverb.

“If the Illustrious will stay I will have breakfast sent to him,” said the Chinaman urgently.

“I have stayed too long,” said Wellington Brown. “What is the day of the month by the foreign reckoning?”

“I do not know the foreign ways,” said Yo Len Fo, “but if your Excellency will deign to stay a few hours in this hovel--”

“My Excellency will not deign to stay in any hovel or palace,” said Wellington. “Where is Yeh Ling?”

“I will send for him at once,” said the old man eagerly.

“Leave him,” replied Mr. Brown with a fine gesture and began to search his pockets. To his surprise, all his money, which was not much, was intact.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked.

Yo Len Fo nodded, thereby meaning “nothing.”

“Running a philanthropic hop joint?” asked the other sarcastically.

“It has all been paid by the excellent Yeh Ling,” answered the man.

Brown grunted.

“I suppose that old devil Trasmere is behind this,” he said in English, and seeing that the man did not comprehend him, he pushed his way past Yo Len Fo and went down the uncarpeted stairs into the street. He felt terribly weak, but his heart was light. Hesitating at the end of a narrow passage, he turned to the left, otherwise he could not have failed to have run into the arms of Inspector Carver who had made a call that morning upon the proprietor of the Golden Roof.

Mr. Brown’s day was spent simply. He found his way to the park and, sitting down on a bench, dozed and mused the hours away, basking in the glorious June sunlight and seemingly obvious to its heat.

Late in the afternoon he felt hungry and went to a refreshment kiosk in the park. Finishing his meal he found the nearest bench and continued his pleasant occupation of doing nothing. Mr. Wellington Brown was a born loafer; it is a knack which would prolong many lives in this strenuous age, if it could be acquired.

The stars were coming out in a velvet blue sky when, with a shiver, he aroused himself and made instinctively for the lights. As he slouched along one of the big main paths that cross the park, he overtook a man who was walking slowly in his direction. The man shot a quick glance at him and then turned suddenly away.

“Here,” said Mr. Brown truculently, “I know you. Why in hell are you running away from me? Think I’m a leper or something?”

The man stopped, glanced uneasily left and right.

“I don’t know you,” he said coldly.

“That’s a damned lie,” snarled Brown. The reaction of his bout was upon him. He would have quarrelled with anything or anybody. “I know you and I’ve met you.” He groped in his hazy mind for some string that would lead him to the identity of the stranger. “In China, wasn’t it? My name’s Brown--Wellington Brown.”

“Yes, perhaps it was in China,” said the other and of a sudden became friendly, gripped Wellington Brown’s arm and leaving the path, led him across the green spaces of the park.

A courting couple sitting under one of the trees saw them pass and heard Wellington Brown say:

“Don’t say that I was his storekeeper, because I wasn’t, or his servant! I was his equal, by gad. A partner in the firm, the blamed old swindler--”

So they passed, the Man in Black and the besotted pensioner from China.

At this hour another person deeply interested in Jesse Trasmere’s fate was making his final preparations for departure.

He had ventured forth in broad daylight, braved the glances of the purser of the “Arak” and had signed on as steward of the second saloon on a voyage to South Africa. The end of the long nightmare had come. Walters had to join his ship overnight, an excellent arrangement from his point of view, since it reduced the danger of detection to a minimum.

He carried with him to the big roomy docks, a respectable sum of money, the proceeds of his pilfering at Mayfield and his opportunities had been many, remembering Mr. Trasmere’s parsimony.

He had sent his bag off to the ship in the afternoon and he had only to convey himself to the docks. He went on foot, keeping to the less frequented streets, and although this entailed a longer journey he was taking no risks. A month ago he would have trembled at every shadow, and the sight of a policeman would have paralysed his activities, but now the case had been forgotten; one never read a line about it in even the more sensational newspapers, and it was with some confidence that he traversed the wharf and mounted the gangway leading to the ill-lighted decks of the liner.

“Report to the chief steward,” said the custodian on duty at the ship end of the plank and Walters enquired his way forward, went down the broad companion to the broader deck where the chief steward’s office is situated, and joined a dozen other men who were lined up in queues waiting to report.

Walters would not have worried if the waiting had occupied the rest of the evening, but in a remarkably short space of time he stepped into the chief steward’s cabin, knuckled his forehead and said:

“Reporting for duty, sir. John Williams, steward--” and then he stopped.

On the further side of the steward’s table was Inspector Carver.

Walters turned in a flash but the doorway was blocked by a detective.

“All right,” he said despondently as they snapped the steel handcuffs on his wrists, “but I didn’t do it, Mr. Carver. I know nothing about the murder. I am as innocent as a babe unborn.”

“What I like about you,” said Carver unpleasantly, “is your originality.”

He followed behind the two men who held the arms of their manacled prisoner and Tab joined him. As they came off the ship, Tab asked:

“Well, do you honestly think you have him, Carver?”

“Who--Walters? That’s the man all right, I know him very well indeed.”

“I mean the murderer,” said Tab.

“Oh, the murderer. No, I don’t think that this is the gentleman, but he will have some difficulty in proving he isn’t. You can say that he’s arrested, Tab, but I would rather you didn’t say that I charged him with the murder, because I shan’t, until I have much more information in my possession than I have at present. Perhaps if you come round to the station after you have been to the office, I will be able to tell you a little more, especially if Walters makes a statement, as I think he will.”

In this the detective was right, for Mr. Walters lost no time in putting his defence on record.

_The Statement of Walter Felling._

“My name is Walter John Felling, I have sometimes assumed the name of Walters, sometimes MacCarty. I have served three terms of imprisonment for theft and impersonation, and in July, 1913, I was sent to prison for five years at Newcastle. I was released from prison in 1917 and served in the army as a cook until 1919. On leaving the army I heard from a nose[A] that Mr. Trasmere was in want of a valet, and knowing that he was a very rich man and very mean, I applied for the job, producing false references, which were made out by a man named Coleby, who does that kind of job. When Mr. Trasmere asked me what salary I wanted, I purposely said a sum which I knew was below the rate usually paid and he engaged me on the spot. I do not think he wrote for my references. If he had Coleby would have replied.

“There were two other servants at Mayfield when I went there, a Mr. and Mrs. Green. Mr. Green was an Australian but I think Mrs. Green was born in Canada. He acted as butler to Mr. Trasmere, but he did not have a very happy time. He did not like Mr. Trasmere, I think. Certainly Mr. Trasmere did not like him. My object in securing employment with Mr. Trasmere was to find an opportunity for getting away with a good haul. I knew from the first it was going to be very difficult because of the peculiar habits of the house, but I managed to get a few things together, a gold watch and two silver candle-sticks, and was thinking of making a get-away when Mr. Trasmere detected Green giving food away to Mrs. Green’s brother-in-law and fired them on the spot. Then he discovered the loss of the gold watch and had their boxes searched. I felt very sorry for Green, but of course I could say nothing.

“After the Greens had left I had to do the work of valet and butler, too. I very soon discovered that all the valuables in the house were kept in a room in the cellar. I have never been into that room, but I know it is somewhere in the passage which leads from Mr. Trasmere’s study, because I have seen the door opened and by bending down, have been able to look along the corridor.

“I hoped that some day or other I should be able to make a more careful inspection of the place, but that opportunity never came, although it seemed that I was going to have a chance a week or two before Mr. Trasmere’s death. I managed to get the key from his neck whilst he was in a kind of fit and take an impression, but the fit did not last very long, and I had hardly got the key back before the old gentleman recovered. It was a lucky thing for me that I had wiped the soap from the key on my sleeve, for the first thing he felt for was the chain round his neck. However, I had quite enough to work on, and I started in to make a key that would fit the impression. That is as much as I can tell you about the vault, which I never saw.

“I went to bed every night at ten o’clock and Mr. Trasmere used to lock the door which shut me off from the rest of the house, so that it was impossible for me to see what was going on at night. I complained to him and he had a key put in a glass box in my room so that in case of emergency I could smash the glass, and with the aid of the key, unlock the door that separated me from the rest of the house. He didn’t even agree to this until he was taken ill one night and I was unable to go to his assistance.

“To open the door which locked me in was one thing, to open the little glass cupboard and take out the key was, however, a simpler matter. I used that key several times. The first time I used it, I heard voices in the dining-room downstairs and wondered who it was calling at that late hour. I hadn’t the courage to go down and see for fear I should be detected, for there was a light in the hall. But another night, hearing a woman’s voice, I went down, the lights being out, and saw a young lady sitting at a table with a typewriter in front of her, tapping the keys whilst Mr. Trasmere walked up and down, with his hands behind him, dictating. She was the prettiest young lady I have seen in my life, and somehow I was sure that I had seen her before. I did not recognize her until I saw her photograph in an illustrated paper and then it seemed to me to be impossible that it could be Miss Ursula Ardfern, the well-known actress. I came down again the next night and this time they were talking together and Mr. Trasmere called her ‘Ursula’ and I knew I was right. She used to come from the theatre every night, and sometimes he would keep her there as late as two o’clock.

“One evening, soon after she came, I crept downstairs and in my stockinged feet, listened to them. I heard him say very sharply: ‘Ursula, where is the pin?’ The young lady answered, ‘It is there, somewhere,’ and then I heard him grumbling and grunting and presently he said, ‘Yes, here it is.’

“There was much more to be picked up in the house than I had imagined.” (Here Walters enumerated minutely and as far as can be ascertained exactly, the number and nature of the valuables which he succeeded in acquiring.) “When Mr. Trasmere was alone he used to sit at the table with a little porcelain dish in front of him and a brush. I don’t know what he was painting, I never saw any of his pictures. I only know that he did this because I managed to peep at him on several nights, and saw him at work. He did not use a canvas, he always painted on paper, and he always used black ink. The paper must have been very thin, because once the window was slightly open and a sheet blew away.

“I managed to see him because there was a glass fanlight over the door which I used to keep clean, and from the head of the stairs you could look into the room and if he happened to be sitting in a certain place, it was easy to see him.

“On the morning I left the house, I was engaged in working at the key I was making, and I could do this without any danger, because Mr. Trasmere never came into my room, the door of which I kept locked in case of accidents. I served lunch to my master, and he talked to me about Brown, the man I had turned away from the door. He told me that I had done quite right and that Brown was wanted by the police in this country and he wondered why he had taken the risk of coming back. He told me that Brown was an opium taker and a drunkard, and that he was a worthless fellow. After lunch he cleared me out of the room and I knew that he was going down to his vault, which he usually did on Saturday afternoons.

“At about ten minutes to three I was in my room working at the key and had just brought a cup of coffee from the kitchen, when the front door bell rang and I answered it. There was a messenger boy with a telegram and it was addressed to me. I had never before received telegrams at the house and I was surprised. On opening it I read a message reminding me that I had been convicted at Newcastle eight years before and telling me that the police were calling at three o’clock.

“I was in a terrible state of mind, for I had in my room a considerable quantity of stolen property and I knew that my next conviction would mean a very long sentence. I rushed up to the room, gathered my stuff together and was out of the house a little before three. As I opened the door I saw Mr. Rex Lander standing by the gate. I had seen Mr. Lander before, because he had stayed for a little time in the house a month after I had taken up my position. He had always been very nice to me and he is a gentleman for whom I have a great deal of respect.