Part 11

"Of course, Mr. Boon argued, it was easy enough to upset a witness of the type of James Hoggs, but an English jury's duty was not to fasten guilt on the first man who happens to be handy, but to see justice meted out to innocent and guilty alike. The evidence of the muffler, argued the eminent counsel, was proof positive of the innocence of the accused. The witnesses who saw him in the Lovers' Walk on that fateful night had declared most emphatically that he was not wearing a muffler. Then where was the man with the muffler? Where was the man who was within a few yards of the scene of the crime five minutes after James Hoggs had heard the scream--the man who had denied hearing the scream although both Hoggs and his wife heard it over a quarter of a mile away?

"'Yes, gentlemen of the jury,' the eminent counsel concluded with a dramatic gesture, 'it is the man with the muffler who murdered the unfortunate girl. If he is innocent why is he not here to give evidence? There are no side tracks that lead to the cliffs at this point, so the man with the muffler must have seen something or some one; he must know something that would be of invaluable assistance in the elucidation of this sad mystery. Then why does he not come forward? I say because he dare not. But let the police look for him, I say. The accused is innocent; he is the victim of tragic circumstances, but his whole life, his war-record, his affection for the deceased, all proclaim him to be guiltless of such a dastardly crime, and above all there stands the incontestable proof of his innocence, the muffler, gentlemen of the jury--the muffler!'

"He said a lot more than that, of course," the Old Man in the Corner went on, chuckling dryly to himself, "and said it a lot better than ever I can repeat it, but I have given you the gist of what he said. You know the result of the trial. The accused was acquitted, the jury having deliberated less than a quarter of an hour. There was no getting away from that muffler, even though every other circumstance pointed to Marston as the murderer of Janet Smith.

"On the whole, his acquittal was a popular one, although many who were present at the trial shook their heads, and thought that if they had been on the jury Marston would not have got off so easily, but for the most part these sceptics were not Broxmouth people. In Broxmouth the Captain was personally liked, and the proclamation of his innocence was hailed with enthusiasm; and, what's more, those same champions of the good-looking secretary--they were the women mostly--looked askance on the headmaster, who, they averred, had woven a Machiavellian net for trapping and removing from his path for ever a hated and successful rival.

"The police have received a perfect deluge of anonymous communications suggesting that Major Gubbins was identical with the mysterious man with the muffler, but, of course, such a suggestion is perfectly absurd, since at the very hour when James Hoggs heard the scream, and a very few minutes before he met the man with the muffler, Major Gubbins was paying his belated visit to Miss Amelia Smith and delivering the alleged message. Even those ladies who disliked the headmaster most cordially had to admit that he could not very well have been in two places at the same time. The Dog's Tooth Cliff is a good half hour's walk from Miss Smith's house, and the Lovers' Walk itself is not accessible to cyclists or motors.

"And thus, to all intents and purposes, the Cliff murder has remained a mystery, but it won't be one for long. Have I not told you that you may expect important developments within the next few days? And I am seldom wrong. Already in this evening's paper you will have read that the entire executive of the Woodforde Institute has placed its resignation in the hands of the governors, that several august personages have withdrawn their names from the list of patrons, and that though the President has been implored not to withdraw his name, he has proved adamant on the subject, and even refused to recommend successors to the headmaster, the secretary, or the matron; in fact, he has seemingly washed his hands of the whole concern."

"But surely," I now broke in, seeing that the Old Man in the Corner threatened to put away his piece of string and to leave me without the usual epilogue to his interesting narrative, "surely General Sir Arkwright Jones cannot be blamed for the scandal which undoubtedly has dimmed the fortunes of the Woodforde Institute?"

"Cannot be blamed?" the Old Man in the Corner retorted sarcastically. "Cannot be blamed for entering into a conspiracy with his secretary and his head-master to defraud the Institute, and then to silence for ever the one voice that might have been raised in accusation against him."

"Sir Arkwright Jones?" I exclaimed incredulously, for indeed the idea appeared to me preposterous then, as the General's name was almost a household word before the catastrophe. "Impossible!"

"Impossible!" he reiterated. "Why? He murdered Janet Smith; of that you will be as convinced within the next few days as I am at this hour. That the three men were in collusion I have not the shadow of doubt. Marston only made love to Janet Smith in order to secure her silence; but in this he failed, and the girl boldly accused him of roguery as soon as she found him out. It would be inconceivable to suppose that being the bright, intelligent girl that she admittedly was, she could remain for ever in ignorance of the defalcations in the books; she must and did tax her lover of irregularities, she must have and indeed did threaten to put the whole thing before the governors. So much for the lovers' quarrel overheard by Mrs. Rumble.

"I believe that the fate of the poor girl was decided on then and there by two of the scoundrels; it only remained to consult with their other accomplice as to the best means for carrying their hideous project through. Janet had announced her determination to go to Kurtmoor that self-same evening, the only question was which of those three miscreants would meet her in the darkness and solitude of the Lovers' Walk. But in order at the outset to throw dust in the eyes of the public and the police and not appear to be in any way associated with one another, Marston and Gubbins made pretence of a violent quarrel which Peryer overheard; then Gubbins, in order to make sure that the poor girl would carry out her intention of going over to Kurtmoor that evening, went to her house with the supposed message from Marston, and incidentally secured thereby his own alibi. This made him safe.

"Marston in the meanwhile went to arrange matters with Arkwright Jones. His position was, of course, more difficult than that of Gubbins. If there was to be murder--and my belief is that the scoundrels had been resolved on murder for some time before--the first suspicion would inevitably fall on the secretary who had kept the books and who had had the handling of the money. The miscreants had some sort of vague plan in their heads: of this there can be no doubt; they were only procrastinating, hoping against hope that chance would continue to favour them. But now the hour had come, the danger was imminent; within the next four-and-twenty hours Janet Smith, being promised no redress on the part of the President, would place the whole matter before the governors. _Unless she was effectually made to hold her tongue_.

"We can easily suppose that Marston would be clever enough to arrange to meet Arkwright Jones, without arousing suspicion. We do know that soon after he finally quarrelled with Janet Smith he walked over to Kurtmoor; the two witnesses who spoke with him stated that they met him whilst they themselves were walking to Broxmouth. It was then past eight o'clock. Arkwright Jones had either dined at his hotel or not; we do not know, for it never struck the police to inquire at once how the popular General had spent his time on that fateful evening. You know what those unconventional seaside places are: people spend most of their time out of doors, and there would be nothing strange, let alone suspicious, in any visitor going out for an hour after dinner, even if it rained.

"Then surely you can in your mind see those two scoundrels putting their villainous heads together, and as suspicion of any foul play would of necessity at once fall on Marston, Jones decided to take the hideous onus on himself. He went to the Dog's Tooth Cliff to meet Janet Smith himself, and borrowed Marston's stick to aid him in his abominable deed. He was clever enough, however, to throw it over the edge of the cliff some distance away from the scene of his crime. We do not know, of course, whether the poor girl recognised him, or whether he just fell on her in the dark; she gave only one scream before she fell.

"They were clever scoundrels, we must admit, but chance favoured them, too, especially in one thing: she favoured them when she prompted Arkwright Jones to put a muffler round his throat. This one fact, as you know, saved Marston's neck from the gallows, but for the strands of wool in the girl's hatpin, and Hoggs's brief view of a man manipulating a muffler, nothing but Jones's own confession could have saved his accomplice. Whether he would have confessed remains a riddle which no one will ever solve. But as to the whole so-called mystery, I saw daylight through it the moment I realised that Marston's despair and humiliation during the inquest was a pretence. If he feigned despair it was because he desired _temporarily_ to be the victim of circumstantial evidence. From that point to the unravelling of the tangled skein was but a step for a mind bent on logic."

"But," I argued, for indeed I was bewildered, and really incredulous, "what will be the end of it all? Surely three scoundrels like that will not go scot free. There will be an enquiry into the affairs of the Institute: the governors----"

"The governors have talked of an inquiry," the funny creature broke in, with a chuckle, "but if you had any experience of these private charities, you would know that the first thing their administrators wish to avoid is publicity. The President of the Woodforde Institute had sufficient influence on the committee you may be sure to stifle any suggestion of creating public scandal by any sort of enquiry."

"But the question of the finances of the Institute is, anyhow, public property now, and----"

"And it will be allowed to sink into oblivion. The executive has resigned. Marston and Gubbins will leave the country, and everything will be conveniently hushed up."

"But Arkwright Jones--" I protested.

"You see the papers regularly," he rejoined dryly; "watch them, and you will see..."

I don't know when he went, but a moment or two later I found myself sitting alone at the table in the blameless teashop. The matter interested me more than I cared to admit, but, for once, I was not altogether prepared to accept the funny creature's deductions.

Twenty-four hours later, however, I had to own that he had been right, when the following piece of sensational news appeared in the _Evening Post_.

"TRAGIC SEQUEL TO THE CLIFF MURDER

"An extraordinary sequel to the mysterious tragedy of the Dog's Tooth Cliff near Broxmouth occurred last night, when on the self-same spot where Miss Janet Smith met her death three months ago, General Sir Arkwright Jones lost his footing and fell a distance of two hundred feet on to the rocks below. It was a beautiful moonlight evening, and the tide being low a number of visitors were down on the beach at the time; but those who immediately hurried to the General's assistance found life already extinct. The distinguished soldier, who will be deeply mourned, must have been killed on the spot. Indeed now general public opinion as well as every inhabitant of Broxmouth will bring pressure to bear upon the Borough Council to see that a suitable barrier is erected along the dangerous portions of the beautiful Lovers' Walk. The double tragedy of this year's season renders such an erection imperative."

I was probably the only reader of that paragraph who guessed that the once distinguished soldier had not come accidentally by his death. No doubt the police had followed up the clue of the man with the muffler, and were actually on the track of the miscreant, when the latter, guessing that exposure was imminent, preferred to put an end to his own miserable life.

I have since heard from friends at Broxmouth that Marston has gone to the Malay States, and that Gubbins is doing something in Germany. Curious creature Marston must have been! Imagine after Jones had returned from his infamous errand and told him that the hideous deed was done, imagine Marston walking back to Broxmouth along the Lovers' Walk in the rain and the darkness, past the Dog's Tooth Cliff, at the foot of which the body of the murdered girl lay! I wonder what would be the views of the Old Man in the Corner on the psychology of a man with nerve enough for such an ordeal.

VII

THE TYTHERTON CASE

§1

"What do you make of this?" the Old Man in the Corner said to me that afternoon. "A curious case, is it not?"

And with his claw-like fingers he indicated the paragraph in the _Evening Post_ which I had just been perusing with great interest.

"At best," I replied, "it is a very unpleasant business for the Carysforts."

"And at the worst?" he retorted with a chuckle.

"Well...!" I remarked dryly.

"Do you think they are guilty?" he asked.

"I don't see who else..."

"Ah!" he broke in, with his usual lack of manners, "that is such a stale argument. One doesn't see who else, therefore one makes up one's mind that so-and-so must be guilty. I'll lay an even bet with any one that out of a dozen cases of miscarriage of justice, I could point to ten that were directly due to that fallacious reasoning.

"Now take as an example the Tytherton case, in which you are apparently interested. It was an unprecedented outrage which stirred the busy provincial town to its depths, the victim, Mr. Walter Stonebridge, being one of its most noted solicitors. He had his office in Tytherton High Street, and lived in a small, detached house on the Great West Road. The house stood in the middle of a small garden, and had only one story above the ground floor; the front door opened straight on a long, narrow hall which ran along the full depth of the house. On the left side of this hall there were two doors, one leading to the drawing-room and the other to a small morning-room. At the end of the hall was the staircase, and beyond it, down a couple of steps, there was a tiny dining-room and the usual offices. The back door opened straight on the kitchen, and on the floor above there were four bedrooms and a bathroom. Mr. Walter Stonebridge was a bachelor, and his domestic staff consisted of a married couple--Henning by name--who did all that was necessary for him in the house.

"It was on the last evening of February. The weather was fair and bright. The Hennings had gone upstairs to their room as usual at ten o'clock. Mr. Stonebridge was at the time sitting in the morning-room. He was in the habit of sitting up late, reading and writing. On this occasion he told the Hennings to close the shutters and lock the back door as usual, but to leave the front door on the latch as he was expecting a visitor. The Hennings thought nothing of that, as one or two gentlemen--friends, or sometimes clients of Mr. Stonebridge--would now and then drop in late to see him. Anyway, they went contentedly to bed.

"A little while later--they could not exactly recollect at what hour, because they had already settled down for the night--they heard the front-door bell, and immediately afterwards Mr. Stonebridge's footsteps along the hall. Then suddenly they heard a crash followed by what sounded like a struggle, then a smothered cry, and finally silence. Henning was out of bed and on the landing with a candle in an instant, and he had just switched on the light there when he heard Mr. Stonebridge's voice calling up to him from below:

"It's all right, Henning. I caught my foot in this confounded rug. That's all.'

"Henning looked over the bannister, and seeing nothing he shouted down:

"'Shall I give you a 'and, sir?'

"But Mr. Stonebridge at once replied, quite cheerily:

"'No, no! I'm all right. You go back to bed.'

"And Henning did as he was told, nor did he or his wife hear anything more during the night. But in the early morning when Mrs. Henning came downstairs she was horror-struck to find Mr. Stonebridge in the dining-room, lying across the table, to which he was securely pinioned with a rope; a serviette taken out of the sideboard drawer had been tied tightly around his mouth and his eyes were blindfolded with his own pocket handkerchief.

"The woman's screams brought her husband upon the scene; together they set to work to rescue their master from his horrible plight. At first they thought that he was dead, and Henning was for fetching the police immediately, but his wife declared that Mr. Stonebridge was just unconscious and she started to apply certain household restoratives and made Henning force some brandy through Mr. Stonebridge's lips.

"Presently, the poor man opened his eyes, and gave one or two other signs of returning consciousness, but he was still very queer and shaky. The Hennings then carried him upstairs, undressed him and put him to bed; and then Henning ran for the doctor.

"Well, it was days, or in fact weeks before Mr. Stonebridge had sufficiently recovered to give a coherent statement of what happened to him on that fateful night, and--which was just as much to the point--what had happened the previous day. The doctor had prescribed complete rest in the interim. The patient had suffered from concussion and I know not what, and those events had got so mixed up in his brain that to try and disentangle them was such an effort that every time he attempted it it nearly sent him into a brain fever. But in the meanwhile his friends had been busy--notably, Mr. Stonebridge's head clerk, Mr. Medburn, who was giving the police no rest. There was, even without the evidence of the principal witness concerned, plenty of facts to go on, to make out a case against the perpetrator of such a dastardly outrage.

"That robbery had been the main motive of the assault, was easily enough established--a small fire- and burglar-proof safe which stood in a corner of the morning-room had been opened and ransacked. When examined it was found to contain only a few trinkets which had probably a sentimental value, but were otherwise worthless. The key of the safe--one of a bunch--was still in the lock, which went to prove either that Mr. Stonebridge had the safe open when he was attacked, or what was more likely--considering the solicitor's well-known careful habits--that the assailant had ransacked his victim's pockets after he had knocked him down. A pocket-book, torn, and containing only a few unimportant papers, lay on the ground; there had been a fire in the room at the time of the outrage, and careful analysis of the ashes found in the hearth revealed the presence of a quantity of burnt paper.

"But robbery being established as the motive of the outrage did not greatly help matters, because, while Mr. Stonebridge remained in such a helpless condition, it was impossible to ascertain what booty his assailant had carried away. Soon, however, the first ray of light was thrown upon what had seemed until this hour an impenetrable mystery.

"It appears that Mr. Medburn was looking after the business in High Street during his employer's absence, and one morning--it was on the Monday following the night of the outrage--he had a visit from a client, who sent in his name as Felix Shap. The head clerk knew something about this client, who had recently come over to England from somewhere abroad, in order to make good his claim to certain royalties on what is known as the Shap Fuelettes--a kind of cheap fuel which was launched some time before the War by Sir Alfred Carysfort, Bart., of Tytherton Grange, and out of which that gentleman made an immense fortune, and incidentally got his title thereby.

"This man, Shap--a Dutchman by birth--was, it appears, the original inventor and patentee of these fuelettes, and Mr. Carysfort, as he was then, had met him out in the Dutch East Indies, and had bought the invention from him for a certain sum down, and then exploited it in England first and afterwards all over the world at immense profit. Sir Alfred Carysfort died about a year ago, leaving a fortune of over a million sterling, and was succeeded in the title and in the managing-directorship of the business by his eldest son David, a married man with a large family. The business had long since been turned into a private limited liability company, the bulk of the shares being held by the managing-director.

"The fact that the patent rights in the Shap Fuelettes had been sold by the inventor to the late Alfred Carysfort had never been in dispute. It further appeared that Felix Shap had at one time been a very promising mining engineer, but that in consequence of incurable, intemperate habits he had gradually drifted down the social scale; he lost one good appointment after another until he was just an underpaid clerk in the office of an engineer in Batavia, whose representative in England was Mr. Alfred Carysfort. The latter was on a visit to the head office in Batavia some twelve years ago when he met Shap, who was then on his beam-ends. He had recently been sacked by his employers for intemperance, and was on the fair way to becoming one of those hopeless human derelicts who usually end their days either on the gallows or in a convict prison.

"But at the back of Shap's fuddled mind there had lingered throughout his downward career the remembrance of a certain invention which he had once patented, and which he had always declared would one day bring him an immense fortune; but though he had spent quite a good deal of money in keeping up his patent rights, he had never had the pluck and perseverance to exploit or even to perfect his invention.

"Alfred Carysfort on the other hand, was brilliantly clever, he was ambitious, probably none too scrupulous, and at once he saw the immense possibilities, if properly worked, of Shap's rough invention, and he set to work to obtain the man's confidence, and, presumably, by exercising certain persuasion and pressure he got the wastrel to make over to him in exchange for a few hundred pounds the entire patent rights in the Fuelettes.

"The transaction was, as far as that goes, perfectly straightforward and above board; it was embodied in a contract drawn up by an English solicitor, who was the British Consul in Batavia at the time; nor was it--taking everything into consideration--an unfair one. Shap would never have done anything with his invention, and a clean, wholesome and entirely practical fuel would probably have been thus lost to the world; but there remains the fact that Alfred Carysfort died a dozen years later worth more than a million sterling, every penny of which he had made out of an invention for which he had originally paid less than five hundred.