Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  Hewitt examined them slightly and then asked, “Can I have a photograph of your husband, Mrs. Geldard?”

  She immediately produced, not only a photograph of her husband, but also one of the girl Trennatt, which she said belonged to the cook. Hewitt complimented her on her foresight. “And now,” he said, “I think we’ll go and take a look at Mr. Geldard’s office, if we may. Of course I shall follow him up now.” Hewitt made a sign to me, which I interpreted as asking whether I would care to accompany him. I assented with a nod, for the case seemed likely to be interesting.

  I omit most of Mrs. Geldard’s talk by the way, which was almost ceaseless, mostly compounded of useless repetition, and very tiresome.

  The office was on a third floor in a large building in Finsbury Pavement. The caretaker made no difficulty in admitting us. There were two rooms, neither very large, and one of them at the back very small indeed. In this was a small locked door.

  “That leads on to the small staircase, sir,” the caretaker said in response to Hewitt’s inquiry. “The staircase leads down to the basement, and it ain’t used much ‘cept by the cleaners.”

  “If I went down this back staircase,” Hewitt pursued, “I suppose I should have no difficulty in gaining the street?”

  “Not a bit, sir. You’d have to go a little way round to get into Finsbury Pavement, but there’s a passage leads straight from the bottom of the stairs out to Moorfields behind.”

  “Yes,” remarked Mrs. Geldard bitterly, when the caretaker had left the room, “that’s the way he’s been leaving the office every day, and in disguise, too.” She pointed to the cupboard where her husband’s clothes lay. “Pretty plain proof that he was ashamed of his doings, whatever they were.”

  “Come, come,” Hewitt answered deprecatingly, “we’ll hope there’s nothing to be ashamed of — at any rate till there’s proof of it. There’s no proof as yet that your husband has been disguising. A great many men who rent offices, I believe, keep dress clothes at them — I do it myself — for convenience in case of an unexpected invitation, or such other eventuality. We may find that he returned here last night, put on his evening dress and went somewhere dining. Illness, or fifty accidents, may have kept him from home.”

  But Mrs. Geldard was not to be softened by any such suggestion, which I could see Hewitt bad chiefly thrown out by way of pacifying the lady, and allaying her bitterness as far as he could, in view of a possible reconciliation when things were cleared up.

  “That isn’t very likely,” she said. “If he kept a dress suit here openly I should know of it, and if he kept it here unknown to me, what did he want it for? If he went out in dress clothes last night, who did he go with? Who do you suppose, after seeing those envelopes and that piece of the letter?”

  “Well, well, we shall see,” Hewitt replied. “May I turn out the pockets of these clothes?”

  “Certainly; there’s nothing in them of importance,” Mrs. Geldard said. “I looked before I came to you.”

  Nevertheless Hewitt turned them out. “Here is a cheque-book with a number of cheques remaining. No counterfoils filled in, which is awkward. Bankers, the London Amalgamated. We will call there presently. An ivory pocket paper-knife. A sovereign purse — empty.” Hewitt placed the articles on the table as he named them. “Gold pencil case, ivory folding rule, russia-leather card-case.” He turned to Mrs. Geldard. “There is no pocket-book,” he said, “no pocket-knife and no watch, and there are no keys. Did Mr. Geldard usually carry any of these things?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Geldard replied, “he carried all four.” Hewitt’s simple methodical calmness, and his plain disregard of her former volubility, appeared by this to have disciplined Mrs. Geldard into a businesslike brevity and directness of utterance.

  “As to the watch now. Can you describe it?”

  “Oh, it was only a cheap one. He had a gold one stolen — or at any rate he told me so — and since then he has only carried a very common sort of silver one, without a chain.”

  “The keys?”

  “I only know there was a bunch of keys. Some of them fitted drawers and bureaux at home, and others, I suppose, fitted locks in this office.”

  “What of the pocket-knife?”

  “That was a very uncommon one. It was a present, as a matter of fact, from an engineering friend, who had had it made specially. It was large, with a tortoise-shell handle and a silver plate with his initials. There was only one ordinary knife-blade in it, all the other implements were small tools or things of that kind. There was a small pair of silver calipers, for instance.”

  “Like these?” Hewitt suggested, producing those he used for measuring drawers and cabinets in search of secret receptacles.

  “Yes, like those. And there were folding steel compasses, a tiny flat spanner, a little spirit level, and a number of other small instruments of that sort. It was very well made indeed; he used to say that it could not have been made for five pounds.”

  “Indeed?” Hewitt cast his eyes about the two rooms. “I see no signs of books here, Mrs. Geldard — account books I mean, of course. Your husband must have kept account books, I take it?”

  “Yes, naturally; he must have done. I never saw them, of course, but every business man keeps books.” Then after a pause Mrs. Geldard continued: “And they’re gone too. I never thought of that. But there, I might have known as much. Who can trust a man safely if his own wife can’t? But I won’t shield him. Whatever he’s been doing with his clients’ money he’ll have to answer for himself. Thank heaven I’ve enough to live on of my own without being dependent on a creature like him But think of the disgrace! My husband nothing better than a common thief — swindling his clients and making away with his books when he can’t go on any longer! But he shall be punished, oh yes; I’ll see he’s punished, if once I find him!”

  Hewitt thought for a moment, and then asked: “Do you know any of your husband’s clients, Mrs. Geldard?”

  “No,” she answered, rather snappishly, “I don’t. I’ve told you he never let me know anything of his business — never anything at all; and very good reason he had too, that’s certain.”

  “Then probably you do not happen to know the contents of these drawers?” Hewitt pursued, tapping the writing-table as he spoke.

  “Oh, there’s nothing of importance in them — at any rate in the unlocked ones. I looked at all of them this morning when I first came.”

  The table was of the ordinary pedestal pattern with four drawers at each side and a ninth in the middle at the top, and of very ordinary quality. The only locked drawer was the third from the top on the left-hand side. Hewitt pulled out one drawer after another. In one was a tin half full of tobacco; in another a few cigars at the bottom of a box; in a third a pile of notepaper headed with the address of the office, and rather dusty; another was empty; still another contained a handful of string. The top middle drawer rather reminded me of a similar drawer of my own at my last newspaper office, for it contained several pipes; but my own were mostly briars, whereas these were all clays.

  “There’s nothing really so satisfactory,” Hewitt said, as he lifted and examined each pipe by turn, “to a seasoned smoker as a well-used clay. Most such men keep one or more such pipes for strictly private use.” There was nothing noticeable about these pipes except that they were uncommonly dirty, but Hewitt scrutinised each before returning it to the drawer. Then he turned to Mrs. Geldard and said: “As to the bank now — the London Amalgamated, Mrs. Geldard. Are you known there personally?”

  “Oh, yes; my husband gave them authority to pay cheques signed by me up to a certain amount, and I often do it for household expenses, or when he happens to be away.”

  “Then perhaps it will be best for you to go alone,” Hewitt responded. “Of course they will never, as a general thing, give any person information as to the account of a customer, but perhaps, as you are known to them, and hold your husband’s authority to draw cheques, they may tell you something. What I want to
find out is, of course, whether your husband drew from the bank all his remaining balance yesterday, or any large sum. You must go alone, ask for the manager, and tell him that you have seen nothing of Mr. Geldard since he left for business yesterday morning. Mind, you are not to appear angry, or suspicious, or anything of that sort, and you mustn’t say you are employing me to bring him back from an elopement. That will shut up the channel of information at once. Hostile inquiries they’ll never answer, even by the smallest hint, except after legal injunction. You can be as distressed and as alarmed as you please. Your husband has disappeared since yesterday morning, and you’ve no notion what has become of him; that is your tale, and a perfectly true one. You would like to know whether or not he has withdrawn his balance, or a considerable sum, since that would indicate whether or not his absence was intentional and premeditated.”

  Mrs. Geldard understood and undertook to make the inquiry with all discretion. The bank was not far, and it was arranged that she should return to the office with the result.

  As soon as she had left Hewitt turned to the pedestal table and probed the keyhole of the locked drawer with the small stiletto attached to his penknife. “This seems to be a common sort of lock,” he said. “I could probably open it with a bent nail. But the whole table is a cheap sort of thing. Perhaps there is an easier way.”

  He drew the unlocked drawer above completely out, passed his hand into the opening and felt about. “Yes,” he said, “it’s just as I hoped — as it usually is in pedestal tables not of the best quality; the partition between the drawers doesn’t go more than two-thirds of the way back, and I can drop my hand into the drawer below. But T can’t feel anything there — it seems empty.”

  He withdrew his hand and we tilted the whole table backward, so as to cause whatever lay in the drawers to slide to the back. This dodge was successful. Hewitt reinserted his hand and withdrew it with two orderly heaps of papers, each held together by a metal clip.

  The papers in each clip, on examination, proved to be all of an identical character, with the exception of dates. They were, in fact, rent receipts. Those for the office, which had been given quarterly, were put back in their place with scarcely a glance, and the others Hewitt placed on the table before him. Each ran, apart from dates, in this fashion: “Received from Mr. J. Cookson 15s., one month’s rent of stable at 8 Dragon Yard, Benton Street, to” — here followed the date. “Also rent, feed and care of horse in own stable as agreed, £2. — W. GASK.” The receipts were ill-written, and here and there ill-spelt. Hewitt put the last of the receipts in his pocket and returned the others to the drawer. “Either,” he said, “Mr. Cookson is a client who gets Mr. Geldard to hire stables for him, which may not be likely, or Mr. Geldard calls himself Mr. Cookson when he goes driving — possibly with Miss Trennatt. We shall see.”

  The pedestal table put in order again, Hewitt took the poker and raked in the fireplace. It was summer, and behind the bars was a sort of screen of cartridge paper with a frilled edge, and behind this various odds and ends had been thrown — spent matches, trade-circulars crumpled up, and torn paper. There were also the remains of several cigars, some only half smoked, and one almost whole. The torn paper Hewitt examined piece by piece, and finally sorted out a number of pieces which he set to work to arrange on the blotting pad. They formed a complete note, written in the same hand as were the envelopes already found by Mrs. Geldard — that of the girl Emma Trennatt. It corresponded also with the solitary fragment of another letter which had accompanied them, by way of having a number of crosses below the signature, and it ran thus: —

  Tuesday Night.

  Dear Sam, — To-morrow, to carry. Not late because people are coming for flowers. What you did was no good. The smoke leaks worse than ever, and F. thinks you must light a new pipe or else stop smoking altogether for a bit. Uncle is anxious. — Emma.

  Then followed the crosses, filling one line and nearly half the next; seventeen in all.

  Hewitt gazed at the fragments thoughtfully. “This is a find,” he said— “most decidedly a find. It looks so much like nonsense that it must mean something of importance. The date, you see, is Tuesday night. It would be received here on Wednesday — yesterday — morning. So that it was immediately after the receipt of this note that Geldard left. It’s pretty plain the crosses don’t mean kisses. The note isn’t quite of the sort that usually carries such symbols, and moreover, when a lady fills the end of a sheet of notepaper with kisses she doesn’t stop less than half way across the last line — she fills it to the end. These crosses mean something very different. I should like, too, to know what ‘smoke’ means. Anyway this letter would probably astonish Mrs. Geldard if she saw it. We’ll say nothing about it for the present.” He swept the fragments into an envelope, and put away the envelope in his breast pocket. There was nothing more to be found of the least value in the fireplace, and a careful examination of the office in other parts revealed nothing that I had not noticed before, so far as I could see, except Geldard’s boots standing on the floor of the cupboard wherein his clothes lay. The whole place was singularly bare of what one commonly finds in an office in the way of papers, handbooks, and general business material.

  Mrs. Geldard was not long away. At the bank she found that the manager was absent and his deputy had been very reluctant to say anything definite without his sanction. He gave Mrs. Geldard to understand, however, that there was a balance still remaining to her husband’s credit; also that Mr. Geldard had drawn a cheque the previous morning, Wednesday, for an amount “rather larger than usual.” And that was all.

  “By the way, Mrs. Geldard,” Hewitt observed, with an air of recollecting something, “there was a Mr. Cookson I believe, if I remember, who knew a Mr. Geldard. You don’t happen to know, do you, whether or not Mr. Geldard had a client or an acquaintance of that name?”

  “No, I know nobody of the name.”

  “Ah, it doesn’t matter. I suppose it isn’t necessary for your husband to keep horses or vehicles of any description in his business?”

  “No, certainly not.” Mrs. Geldard looked surprised at the question.

  “Of course — I should have known that. He does not drive to business, I suppose?”

  “No, he goes by omnibus.”

  “But as to Emma Trennatt now. This photograph is most welcome, and will be of great assistance, I make no doubt. But is there anything individual by which I might identify her if I saw her — anything beyond what I see in the photograph? A peculiarity of step, for instance, or a scar, or what not.”

  “Yes, there is a large mole — more than a quarter of an inch across I should think — on her left cheek, an inch below the outer corner of her eye. The photograph only shows the other side of the face.”

  “That will be useful to know. Now has she a relative living at Crouch End, or thereabout?”

  “Yes, her uncle; she’s living with him now — or she was at any rate till lately. But how did you know that?”

  “The Crouch End postmark was on those envelopes you found. Do you know anything of her uncle?”

  “Nothing, except that he’s a nurseryman, I believe.”

  “Not his full address?”

  “No.”

  “And Trennatt is his name?”

  “Thank you. I think, Mrs. Geldard,” Hewitt said, taking his hat, “that I will set out after your husband at once. You, I think, can do no better than stay at home till I have news for you. I have your address. If anything comes to your knowledge please telegraph it to my office at once.”

  The office door was locked, the keys were left with the caretaker, and we saw Mrs. Geldard into a cab at the door. “Come,” said Hewitt, “we’ll go somewhere and look at a directory, and after that to Dragon Yard. I think I know a man in Moorgate Street who’ll let me see his directory.”

  We started to walk down Finsbury Pavement. Suddenly Hewitt caught my arm and directed my eyes toward a woman who had passed hurriedly in the opposite direction. I had
not seen her face, but Hewitt had. “If that isn’t Miss Emma Trennatt,” he said, “it’s uncommonly like the notion I’ve formed of her. We’ll see if she goes to Geldard’s office.”

  We hurried after the woman, who, sure enough, turned into the large door of the building we had just left. As it was impossible that she should know us we followed her boldly up the stairs and saw her stop before the door of Geldard’s office and knock. We passed her as she stood there — a handsome young woman enough — and well back on her left cheek, in the place Mrs. Geldard had indicated, there was plain to see a very large mole. We pursued our way to the landing above and there we stopped in a position that commanded a view of Geldard’s door. The young woman knocked again and waited.

  “This doesn’t look like an elopement yesterday morning, does it?” Hewitt whispered. “Unless Geldard’s left both this one and his wife in the lurch.”

  The young woman below knocked once or twice more, walked irresolutely across the corridor and back, and in the end, after a parting knock, started slowly back downstairs.

  “Brett,” Hewitt exclaimed with suddenness, “will you do me a favour? That woman understands Geldard’s secret comings and goings, as is plain from the letter. But she would appear to know nothing of where he is now, since she seems to have come here to find him. Perhaps this last absence of his has nothing to do with the others. In any case will you follow this woman? She must be watched; but I want to see to the matter in other places. Will you do it?”

  Of course I assented at once. We had been descending the stairs as Hewitt spoke, keeping distance behind the girl we were following. “Thank you,” Hewitt now said. “Do it. If you find anything urgent to communicate wire to me in care of the inspector at Crouch End Police Station. He knows me, and I will call there in case you may have sent. But if it’s after five this afternoon, wire also to my office. If you keep with her to Crouch End, where she lives, we shall probably meet.”