Part 5

“Well!” he said, graciously, “I’ll tell you! Of course, I came to tell Mr. Parslewe--but you’ll do. And no doubt you’ll be able to tell me something. Well, me first, then. As I said, I’m Bickerdale’s son-in-law. I married his third daughter, Melissa--she’s all right. Naturally, being in the relation I am to Bickerdale, I’m a good deal in and out of his place--go there Sundays, with the wife and kid. Now, not so very long ago, I was there one Sunday, and happening to go into his workshop for a smoke--my mother-in-law having a decided objection to tobacco in the parlour--I set eyes on that article--that very copper box! I was a bit taken with the engraved coat-of-arms and the queer motto underneath, and I asked Bickerdale where he’d got it. He told me that Mr. Parslewe of Kelpieshaw had brought it to him to be repaired--it had got slightly damaged by a fall, and needed a coppersmith’s attention. We talked a bit about it. Bickerdale said it had been made--beaten copper, you know--at least a hundred years, and was a very pretty bit of work. It had got a bulge in one side, and Bickerdale had to straighten it out--very delicate and gentle business. But he did it, and either Mr. Parslewe fetched it away, or it was sent to him. Anyhow, there it is!--that’s the box!”

Mr. Weech gave the copper box a tap with his finger-nail as if to evoke a confirmation of his words, and proceeded.

“Now, a bit--can’t say now how long exactly--after the box had come back here, I was up at Bickerdale’s one Sunday, and after dinner Bickerdale took me into his office. ‘I say!’ he says, when we were alone. ‘You remember that copper box that I was repairing, that you admired?--of course you do! Well, look here, there was some goods came the other day in an old copy of _The Times_,’ he says, ‘and my eye just happened to fall on this, on the front page,’ and he pulled out an old _Times_ and pointed to an advertisement that he’d marked, in the personal column. I read it, and I gaped at it! This,” continued Mr. Weech, suddenly producing a folded newspaper from an inner pocket, “this is not the identical copy of _The Times_ that Bickerdale had; this is another copy of the same issue--I got it, as a back number, for myself. Now, Miss Durham and Mr. Craye, you read that! and you’ll be getting at a very good notion of what it is that I want to get out of Mr. Parslewe! There, marked with red ink.”

He laid the newspaper on the table before us, and we bent over it, reading with feelings which--so far as I was concerned--rapidly became mixed.

“£250 REWARD. To Auctioneers, Antiquarian and Second-hand Booksellers, Buyers of Rare Books, etc.: Missing, and Probably Stolen, from a well-known Private Library, the following Scarce Works. 1. Hubbard’s Present State of New England, 1677; 2. Brandt’s Ship of Fooles, 1570; 3. Burton’s Anatomy, 1621; 4. Whole Works of Samuel Daniel, Esquire, in Poetrie, 1623; 5. Drayton’s Polyolbion, 1622; 6. Higden’s Polycronicon, 1527; 7. Florio’s Montaigne, 1603. Each of these copies, all extremely scarce, contains a book-plate of which the following is a full description. [Here followed a technical account, heraldic in detail.] Also Missing, and probably stolen at the same time, an Antique Box, of Beaten Copper, on the front of which is engraved the coat-of-arms and legend particularised in the foregoing description. It is probable that these properties will be offered to well-known collectors, here or abroad. The book-plates may have been removed. The above mentioned reward of £250 will be paid to any person giving information which will lead to their recovery. Such information should be given to the undersigned.

“SPERRIGOE, CHILLINGLEY, AND WATSON, “_Solicitors_.

“3, FRIARS’ PAVEMENT, MEDMINSTER.”

I took matters into my own hands on reading this. First nudging Madrasia’s elbow to give her warning that I was about to do something requiring delicacy and diplomacy, I turned to Mr. Weech.

“That’s very interesting,” said I. “And--curious! Er--perhaps you’d like a little refreshment, Mr. Weech, after your journey? A whisky-and-soda, now?”

“Well, thank you,” he answered, readily, with a glance at the sideboard. “It wouldn’t come amiss, Mr. Craye; I hired a push-bicycle at Wooler, but, my word! it wasn’t half a job shoving the old thing over your roads--some part of the way, at any rate! Cruel!”

I gave him a good stiff mixture and put a box of biscuits at the side of his glass. Then I got Madrasia’s attention once more, and, holding _The Times_ in my hand, turned to the door.

“Just excuse Miss Durham and myself for a few minutes, Mr. Weech,” I said. “We’ll not keep you long.”

Outside the parlour, and with its door safely shut on our visitor, I looked at Madrasia, who, in her turn, looked inquiringly at me.

“Come up to the library!” I whispered. “Those books!”

“Yes!” she answered. “I thought of that!”

We stole up the stair, for all the world as if we were going to commit some nefarious deed, and into the room wherein Parslewe kept his various and many treasures. Within five minutes we had satisfied ourselves, and stood looking questioningly at each other. We had reason; the books specified in the advertisement were all there! Every one of them!--book-plates and all.

“What next?” muttered Madrasia at last. “Of course, we mustn’t tell him!”

She nodded at the floor, indicating the spot beneath which Mr. Weech was sipping his drink and nibbling biscuits.

“Tell him nothing!” said I. “But, let him tell us! Come down!”

We went down again; Mr. Weech looked very comfortable.

“We should like to hear more of your very interesting story, Mr. Weech,” I said. “You got to the point where Bickerdale showed you this advertisement. What happened after that?”

“Why, this,” he answered, evidently more ready to talk than ever. “Bickerdale and I consulted. He was all for writing to these lawyers at once, denouncing Mr. Parslewe as the thief. I said, metaphorically, you know--that he was an ass; it was much more likely that Mr. Parslewe had been taken in by the real and actual thief. I advised seeing Mr. Parslewe. But Bickerdale, he wrote, unbeknown to me, to these lawyers, saying that he was sure he’d had this copper box in his hands, and that where it was, probably the books would be. And those lawyers sent a man--a private detective--down to investigate----”

“Name of Pawley, eh?” I suggested.

“Never heard it, but I shouldn’t wonder if it was,” he answered. “I only heard of him. Anyway, he came--and his principal followed him--a big, pompous man, who was at Bickerdale’s yesterday. And that’s where Bickerdale and I quarrelled, see?”

“Not quite,” I replied. “How, and why, did you quarrel?”

“Because Bickerdale, for some queer reason or other, suddenly shut his mouth after that fat old party had been, and wouldn’t give me one scrap of information,” answered Mr. Weech, with a highly injured air. “Dead silence on his part, eh? Flat refusal! That was after I saw you leaving him. Ab-so-lute-ly refused to tell me one word about what was going on! Me! his son-in-law, and more than, for that’s where the shoe pinches, a pressman!”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, seeing light at last. “I see! You want to make what they call a story of it?”

“What else?” he answered, with a knowing wink. “What d’ye suppose I’m here for? I don’t believe Mr. Parslewe--I’ve heard of him, many a time--stole that blessed box--not I! But there’s romance, and mystery, and what not about the whole thing, and I want to work it up and make a live column, or a couple of ’em, out of it, and so I came to the fountainhead, and Mr. Parslewe’s away, worse luck. Now, _can_ you tell me anything?”

We got rid of Mr. Weech by promising him faithfully that on Mr. Parslewe’s return we would tell him all that had transpired, and would entreat him to favour our visitor with his exclusive confidence, and after another whisky-and-soda, during his consumption of which he told us confidentially that he meant to Ride High, he went away, leaving us more mystified than ever.

And we were still more mystified when, during the course of that afternoon, a telegraph boy came all the way over the moors from Wooler, bringing me a message. It was, of course, from Parslewe, and, as Madrasia at once remarked, just like him.

_Both of you meet me Newcastle Central Station noon to-morrow._

VII

_What the Dying Man Said_

We discussed that telegram during the greater part of the next few hours, arguing out its meanings and significances; we became no wiser in the process, but it seemed hopeless to endeavour to settle down to anything else. Madrasia, I think, got some relief in making the necessary arrangements for our departure in the morning; I think, too, that she was further relieved at the prospect of meeting her eccentric guardian and getting--or attempting to get--some explanation of these curious proceedings. For that they were curious, to the last degree, was beyond question. My own rapid review of them, taking in everything from the first coming of Pawley to the visit of Mr. Augustus Weech, only served to convince me that we were becoming hopelessly entangled in a series of problems and theories about which it was as useless as it was impossible to speculate.

But there was more to come before the afternoon closed. First of all came another wire from Parslewe. It was short and peremptory, like the first, but it was more illuminating, and, in some queer way, it cheered us up.

_Bring the box with you._

Madrasia clapped her hands.

“That’s better!” she exclaimed. “That’s lots better! It means that he’s clearing things up, or he’s going to. For heaven’s sake, don’t let’s forget the copper box! Which of us is most to be depended upon for remembering?”

“I, of course,” said I, “being a man.”

“We’ll debate that on some other occasion,” she retorted. “As a woman--Lord! what’s that?”

Old Tibbie was just entering with the tea-tray; as she opened the door, a loud, insistent knocking came on the iron-studded panels at the foot of the stair. Tibbie groaned and almost dropped her tray, and Madrasia turned appealingly to me.

“We’re all getting nervous,” she said. “Will you run down?”

I went down the stair, opened the great door, and found myself confronting a fresh-coloured, pleasant-faced man who had just dismounted from a serviceable but handsome cob and stood in the courtyard with its bridle over his arm. He smiled at sight of me.

“Mr. Craye, I’m sure?” he said. “I’ve heard of you. Staying here with Mr. Parslewe. Now, is Mr. Parslewe in? I mean, has he returned?”

“No!” I answered, bluntly enough.

He looked at me with a glance that was at once understanding and confidential; there was, I thought, something very like the suspicion of a wink in his eye.

“The fact of the case is, I’m his solicitor,” he remarked. “And----”

But just then Madrasia came flying down the stairs, and greeted the visitor so warmly that for the fraction of a second I really felt jealous.

“Mr. Murthwaite!” she cried, catching his readily extended hand and shaking it almost fervently. “Oh!--this is awfully good of you. We’re in an absolute muddle here--mentally, I mean--and now you’ll clear everything up for us! The sight of you is as good as sunshine after storm. Come in!--old Edie shall take your horse. This gentleman is Mr. Alvery Craye, a famous artist, and he’s nearly as much out of his wits as I am!”

“Then I find myself in queer and possibly dangerous company!” remarked Mr. Murthwaite, with another half wink at me. “However, I hope you’re sane enough to give me some tea, Miss Durham? Good!--then I’ll come in.” He handed his horse over to old Muir and followed Madrasia up the stair, I coming behind. His tone had been light and bantering up to then, but as soon as the three of us had reached the parlour and I had closed the door he turned to both with a quick, searching, earnest glance, and, unconsciously, I think, lowered his voice. “Now look here,” he said, in the tone of a man who wants a direct answer. “Do you young people, either of you, know where Parslewe is? What I really mean, though, is--is he in this house?”

“In this house!” exclaimed Madrasia. “Good heavens! Do you mean--hidden?”

“Why not?” answered Murthwaite. “I dare say one who knows it could hide in this old place for a month. But is he? Or anywhere about?”

Madrasia looked at me; I looked at the two telegrams which were lying on the table beyond the tea-tray.

“As Mr. Murthwaite is Mr. Parslewe’s solicitor,” said I, “I should show him those wires. They are the best answer to his question.”

“Yes!” agreed Madrasia. She snatched up the telegrams, and put them in Murthwaite’s hand; we both watched him intently while he read. “There!” she said, as he folded them again. “What do you think?”

“I think that Parslewe is a very strange man!” replied Murthwaite. “I think, too, that I must have a talk to you--both--about him. Now, as the tea is there, and you are so hospitable----”

We gathered round the table, and Madrasia began to busy herself with the teapot and the cups. It was useless to attempt the talking of nothings; we were all full of the occasion of Murthwaite’s visit, and he was acute enough not to keep Madrasia and myself waiting for his news.

“I’ll tell you, briefly, what brought me here,” he said, after his first cup. “To-day, about noon, I had a visit from a Sir Charles Sperrigoe, who, after introducing himself as a fellow solicitor from a distant part of the country, told me that he had just ascertained in the town that I was solicitor to Mr. James Parslewe of Kelpieshaw; that he had been out to Kelpieshaw to find Mr. Parslewe, had failed to find him, and so had come to me. He then told me a very wonderful tale, which I am quite at liberty to tell you, and will tell to you presently. But first, I want to hear from Mr. Craye a story which I think he can tell about Newcastle. Sir Charles is under the impression that Mr. Craye told something to Mr. Parslewe last night which sent him off on his travels. I should like to hear that story, and then I’ll tell you what Sir Charles Sperrigoe told me, under persuasion.”

“I’d better tell you the plain facts about the whole affair, from the coming here of a man named Pawley until your own arrival just now,” said I. “You’ll then have the entire history of the matter before you, as far as I know it. It’s this----”

He listened carefully, sipping his tea and munching his toast, while I told him everything. Now and then Madrasia corrected or prompted me a little; between us we gave him all the salient facts and details, down to the visit of Weech and the receipt of the last telegram; Madrasia had the last word.

“And then you came, Mr. Murthwaite! And if you can tell us what it all means, we’ll bless you!” she said. “Can you?”

But Murthwaite shook his head, decidedly.

“I can’t!” he answered. “Even now it’s as much a mystery to me as ever, though I think I see a little gleam of light--a very, very little one. No, I can only tell you what Sperrigoe told me this morning. If I may have another cup of your very excellent tea, and a cigarette with it----”

He waited during a moment’s silent reflection, then, leaning back in his chair, and using his cigarette occasionally to point his remarks, he began to address us pretty much as if we constituted a jury.

“The firm of which Sir Charles Sperrigoe is senior partner,” he said, “has for many years acted as legal advisers to a very ancient family in the Midlands, the Palkeneys of Palkeney Manor, whose coat-of-arms you see on the now famous copper box on that sideboard, complete with its curious legend, or motto. The Palkeneys have been there at Palkeney ever since Tudor times--in fact, since the earliest Tudor times. A wealthy race, I understand, but one of those which have gradually dwindled. And to come down to quite recent times, a few years ago, an old gentleman who was believed to be the very last of the Palkeneys, Mr. Matthew Palkeney, was living at Palkeney Manor. He was a very old man, nearly ninety. Once, in his early days, he had had a younger brother, John Palkeney, but he, as a young man, had taken his portion, a younger son’s portion, gone away from the ancestral home, and never been heard of again--the last that was heard of him was from South America, sixty or seventy years ago, when he was starting into hitherto unexplored country, where, it was believed, he lost his life. And so, in his old age, Matthew Palkeney, as last of his race, was very lonely. And one day he was stricken down in his last illness, and for some hours Sperrigoe, the doctor, the housekeeper, the nurse, all gathered about his death-bed, were considerably disturbed and puzzled by the old man’s repetition of certain words. They were the only words he murmured after being struck down, and he said them over and over again before he died. I will tell you what they were. These--_The copper box--a Palkeney--a Palkeney--the copper box!_”

He paused, with due appreciation of the dramatic effect, and looked at us. Madrasia gave a little shudder.

“Creepy!” she murmured.

“Very!” agreed Murthwaite. “Well, nobody knew what the old man meant, and it was useless to try to get him to give any explanation. But when he was dead, the old housekeeper, after much cudgelling of her brains, remembered that in a certain cabinet in a certain corner of the library there was a small box of beaten copper which she had seen Matthew Palkeney polish with his own hands in past years. She and Sperrigoe went to look for it; it was gone! Sperrigoe had the house searched from top to bottom for it; it was not in the house! That copper box had been stolen--and there it is, on Parslewe’s sideboard, here in Northumberland. That is--fact. Fact!”

He paused again, and we kept silence until it pleased him to go on.

“How did it get here?--or, rather, since nobody but Parslewe knows that, we can only deal with this--how did Sperrigoe find out that it was here? Mr. Craye has just told me one side of that, I can tell another. When Sperrigoe found that the copper box had been undoubtedly stolen, he had a thorough examination made of the contents of the library and checked by a printed catalogue kept there--for the library is famous. Then he found that several rare and valuable old books had disappeared with the copper box. Then he advertised. You know the rest. Parslewe had taken the copper box to Bickerdale; Bickerdale saw Sperrigoe’s advertisement--and so on. And now, when Pawley, as Sperrigoe’s advance agent, and then Sperrigoe himself, turn up to ask a direct question as to how he became possessed of the copper box, why does he run off?”

“Happening to know him,” said Madrasia quickly, “I can answer that. For good and honest reasons of his own!”

“As his friend and solicitor,” remarked Murthwaite, “I say Amen to that! But--why not have given some explanation?”

But it was time for me to step in there.

“Mr. Murthwaite!” I said. “Neither Pawley nor Sir Charles Sperrigoe asked for any explanation! Sperrigoe, of course, never saw Mr. Parslewe; Pawley came here as a mere spy----”

“Yes, yes!” he interrupted. “But what I really mean is, why didn’t he give some explanation to you?”

“To me!” I exclaimed. “Why to me?”

“Because you were the only person who knew the--shall we say immediate facts of the case?” he replied. “Evidently, although you have only known each other a few days, he trusts you, Mr. Craye. Why didn’t he give you a brief explanation of this seeming mystery instead of stealing away in the night? Why?”

“As I said!” exclaimed Madrasia. “For good reasons--of his own.”

Murthwaite drummed his fingers on the table, regarding us intently.

“Don’t you see?” he said suddenly. “Don’t you realise the suspicion he has brought on himself? Sir Charles Sperrigoe doesn’t know him.”

“I’m not so sure of that!” said I, with equal suddenness. “Anyway, I’m quite sure he knows Sperrigoe--or knew him once. Sure of it from a remark he made when I was telling him about Sperrigoe.”

“Eh!” exclaimed Murthwaite. “What remark?”

I told him. He rose suddenly from his chair, as if an idea had struck him, and for a minute or two paced the room, evidently thinking. Then he came back to the table, resumed his seat, and turned from one to the other, pointing to the two telegrams which still lay where he had put them down.

“Let us get to business,” he said. “Now I suppose you two young people are going to meet Parslewe at Newcastle to-morrow morning in response to those wires?”

“Certainly,” answered Madrasia. “And we shall take the copper box with us.”

“Very well,” he continued. “Then I want you to do three things. First, tell Parslewe all that I have told you as regards the Palkeney affair. Second, tell him that on my own responsibility, and as his friend and solicitor, I have given Sir Charles Sperrigoe an assurance--a pledge, in fact--that he will, as quickly as possible, give Sir Charles a full account of how box and books came into his possession, so that their progress from Palkeney Manor to Kelpieshaw may be traced--it’s inconceivable, of course, that Mr. Parslewe came by them in any other than an honest way. Third, I have persuaded Sir Charles to go home--where he awaits Mr. Parslewe’s communication.”

“Oh!” said Madrasia. “But has he gone?”

“He went south after seeing me--by the next train,” replied Murthwaite.

“Leaving the police inspector at Wooler under the impression that my guardian is a possible thief, eh?” suggested Madrasia.

“Nothing of the sort!” retorted Murthwaite. “Come, come, my dear young lady!--things aren’t done in that way. All that Sperrigoe did in that quarter was to make certain guarded inquiries as to Parslewe’s status in the neighbourhood. The police know nothing, of course.”

There was a brief silence, broken at last by Madrasia.

“Of course, we will give my guardian your message,” she said. “Every word! But, Mr. Murthwaite, haven’t you any idea of what all this is about? All this fuss, mystery, running up and down country about a copper box--that box?”

Murthwaite laughed, and turning to the sideboard took the copper box from it.

“I’ve no more idea of the solution of the mystery than you have,” he answered. “This article is certainly a curiosity in itself. Fine old beaten copper, beautifully made, and beautifully engraved. But why all this fuss about it--as you say--I can’t think. Still, when a dying man mutters what old Matthew Palkeney did, over and over again, eh? Naturally his man-of-law wants to get at some sort of clearing up. My own notion is that it’s not the copper box, but what may have been in the copper box! Not the case, but the contents--don’t you see?”

“You think something was kept in it at Palkeney Manor?” I suggested.

“Probably,” he assented. “That’s just about what I do think.”

“And that the original thief has stolen whatever it was?”

“Just so! The box may have passed through several hands before it came into Parslewe’s. Parslewe no doubt picked up this thing in some curio shop--the books, too.”

“Have the people of Palkeney Manor any idea as to how the theft occurred?” I asked.

“None!--according to Sperrigoe. But I understand that Palkeney Manor is a sort of show-place. That is, there are certain rooms which are shown to the public, including the library. A shilling fee is charged on certain mornings of the week--the proceeds are given to the local charities. And, of course, Sperrigoe thinks that this box and the books were stolen by some visitor only just before old Mr. Matthew Palkeney’s death. So--there we are! All that’s wanted now is--a few words from Parslewe.”

He then said he must go, and presently we went down the stair and out into the courtyard with him. Old Edie brought out the cob; with his hand on its bridle Murthwaite turned to Madrasia.