“Oh, certainly,” she replied. “Pray don’t have any scruples of delicacy. Ask anything you want to know.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Purcell,” said Thorndyke. “And to begin with the inevitable question: Do you know of, or suspect, any kind of entanglement with any woman?”
The direct, straightforward question came rather as a relief to Margaret, and she answered without embarrassment:
“Naturally, I suspect, because I can think of no other reason for his leaving me in this way. But to be honest, I have never had the slightest grounds of complaint in regard to his behaviour with other women. He married me because he fell in love with me, and he has never seemed to change. Whatever he has been to other people, to me he has always appeared, in his rough, taciturn way, as devoted as his nature allowed him to be. This affair is an utter surprise to me.”
Thorndyke made no comment on this, but, following the hint that Margaret had dropped, asked:
“As to his character in general, what sort of a man is he? Is he popular, for instance?”
“No,” replied Margaret, “he is not very much liked—in fact, with the exception of Mr. Varney he has no really intimate friends, and I have often wondered how poor Mr. Varney put up with the way he treated him. The truth is that Dan is rather a bully; he is strong, big, and pugnacious, and used to having his own way and somewhat brutal, at times, in his manner of getting it. He is a very self-contained, taciturn, rather secretive man, and—well, perhaps he is not very scrupulous. I am not painting a very flattering picture, I am afraid.”
“It sounds like a good portrait, though,” said Thorndyke. “When you say that he is not very scrupulous, are you referring to his business transactions?”
“Well, yes, and to his dealings with people generally.”
“By the way,” asked Thorndyke, “what is his occupation?”
Margaret uttered a little apologetic laugh. “It sounds absurd, but I really don’t quite know what his business is. He is so very uncommunicative. I have always understood that he is a financier, what ever that may be. I believe he negotiates loans and buys and sells stocks and shares, but he is not on the Stock Exchange. He has an office in Coleman Street, in the premises of a firm of outside brokers, and he keeps a clerk, a man named Levy. It seems to be quite a small establishment, though it appears to yield a fair income. That is all I can tell you, but I dare say Mr. Levy could give you other particulars if you wanted them.”
“I will make a note of the address, at any rate,” said Thorndyke; and having done so, he asked:
“As to your husband’s banking account: do you happen to know if any considerable sum has been drawn out quite lately, or if any cheques have been presented since he disappeared?”
“His current account is intact,” she replied. “I have an account at the same bank, and I saw the manager a couple of days ago. Of course, he was not very expansive, but he did tell me that no unusual amounts had been withdrawn, and that no cheque has been presented since the 21st of June, when Dan drew a cheque for me. It is really rather odd, especially as the balance is somewhat above the average. Don’t you think so?”
“I do,” he answered. “It suggests that your husband’s disappearance was unpremeditated, and that extreme precautions are being taken to conceal his present whereabouts. But the mystery is what he is living on if he took no considerable sum with him and has drawn no cheques since. However, we had better finish with the general questions. You don’t appear to know much about your husband’s present affairs: what do you know of his past?”
“Not a great deal, and I can think of nothing that throws any light on his extraordinary conduct in taking himself off as he has done. I met him at Maidstone about six years ago. He was then employed in the office of a large paper mill—Whichboy’s mill, I think it was—as a clerk or accountant. He had then recently come down from Cambridge, and seemed in rather low water. After a time, he left Whichboy’s and went to London, and very shortly his circumstances began to improve in a remarkable way. It was then that he began his present business, which I know included the making of loans, because he lent my father money—in fact, it was through these transactions and his visits on business to my father that the intimacy grew which resulted finally in our marriage. He then seemed, as he always has, to be a keen business man, very attentive to the main chance, not at all sentimental in his dealings, and, as I have said, not over-scrupulous as to his methods.”
Thorndyke nodded gravely but made no comment. The association of loans to the father with marriage with an evidently not infatuated daughter seemed to throw a sufficiently suggestive light on Daniel Purcell’s methods.
“And as to his personal habits and tastes?” he asked.
“He has always been reasonably temperate, though he likes good living and has a robust appetite; and he really has no vices beyond a rather unpleasant temper and excessive keenness on money. His principal interest is in boating, yachting, and fishing; he does not bet or gamble, and his relations with women have always seemed to be perfectly correct.”
“You spoke of his exceptional intimacy with Mr. Varney. Is the friendship of long standing?”
“Yes, quite. They were schoolfellows, they were at Cambridge together, and they both came down about the same time and for a similar reason. Both their fathers got suddenly into financial difficulties. Dan’s father was a stockbroker, and he failed suddenly, either through some unlucky speculations or through the default of a client. Mr. Varney’s father was a clergyman, and he, too, lost all his money, and at about the same time. I have always suspected that there was some connection between the two failures, but I have never heard that there actually was. Dan is as close as an oyster, and, of course, Mr. Varney has never referred to the affair.”
“Mr. Varney is not associated with your husband in business?”
“No. He is an artist, principally an etcher, and a very clever one, too. I think he is doing quite well now, but he had a hard struggle when he first came down from Cambridge. For a couple of years he worked for an engraver doing ordinary copperplate work for the trade, and I understand that he is remarkably skilful at engraving. But now he does nothing but etchings and mezzotints.”
“Then his activities are entirely concerned with art?”
“I believe so—now, at any rate. After he left the engraver he went to a merchant in the City as a clerk. But he was only there quite a short time, and I fancy he left on account of some sort of unpleasantness, but I know nothing about it. After that he went abroad and travelled about for a time, making sketches and drawings of the towns to do his etchings from—in fact, he only came back from Belgium a couple of months ago. But I am afraid I am wasting your time with a lot of irrelevant gossip.”
“It is my fault if you are,” said Thorndyke, “since I put the questions. But the fact is that nothing is irrelevant. Your husband has vanished into space in a perfectly unaccountable manner, and we have to find, if we can, something in his known circumstances which may give us a clue to the motive and the manner of his disappearance and his probable whereabouts at present. Has he any favourite haunts abroad or at home?”
“He is very partial to the Eastern Counties, especially the Broads and rivers of Norfolk. You remember he was on his way to Oulton Broad when he disappeared?”
“Yes; and one must admit that the waterways of Norfolk and Suffolk, with all their endless communications, would form an admirable hiding-place. In a small yacht or covered boat a man might lose himself in that network of rivers and lakes and lie hidden for months, creeping from end to end of the county without leaving a trace. We must bear that possibility in mind. By the way, have you brought me a copy of that very cautious letter of Mr. Penfield’s?”
“I have brought the letter itself,” she replied, producing it and laying it on the table.
“Thank you,” said Thorndyke. “I will make a copy of it and let you have the original back. And there is another question. Has the letter which Mr. Penfield ought to
have received been returned to you?”
“No,” replied Margaret.
“Ha!” said Thorndyke, “that is important, because it is undoubtedly a remarkable circumstance and rather significant. A letter in the wrong envelope practically always implies another letter in another wrong envelope. Now a letter was almost certainly written to Mr. Penfield and almost certainly sent. It was presumably a business letter and of some importance. It ought certainly to have been returned to the sender, and under ordinary circumstances would have been. Why has it not been returned? The person to whom it was sent was the person to whom the mysterious communication that Mr. Penfield received was addressed. That communication, we judge from Mr. Penfield’s letter, contained some highly confidential matter. But that implies some person who was in highly confidential relations with your husband. The suggestion seems to be that your husband discovered his mistake after he had posted the letter or letters, and that he went at once to this other person and informed him of what had happened.”
“Informed her,” Margaret corrected.
“I must admit,” said Thorndyke, “that the circumstances give colour to your inference, but we must remember that they would apply equally to a man. They certainly point to an associate of some kind. The character of that associate and the nature of the association are questions that turn on the contents of that letter that Mr. Penfield received.”
“Do you think,” asked Margaret, “that Mr. Penfield would be more confidential with you than he was with me?”
“I doubt it,” was the reply. “If the contents of that letter were of a secret nature, he will keep them to himself; and quite right, too. But I shall give him a trial all the same, and you had better let him know that you have consulted me.”
This brought the conference to an end, and shortly afterwards Margaret went on her way, now more than ever convinced that the inevitable woman was at the bottom of the mystery. For some time after she had gone Thorndyke sat with his notes before him, wrapped in profound thought and deeply interested in the problem that he was called upon to solve. He did not share Margaret’s suspicions, though he had not strongly contested them. To his experienced eye, the whole group of circumstances, with certain points which he had not thought fit to enlarge on, suggested something more sinister than a mere elopement.
There was Purcell’s behaviour, for instance. It had all the appearances of an unpremeditated flight. No preparations seemed to have been made, no attempt to wind up his affairs. His banking account was left intact, though no one but he could touch it during his lifetime. He had left or sent no letter of farewell, explanation, or apology to his wife; and now that he was gone, he was maintaining a secrecy as to his whereabouts so profound that, apparently, he did not even dare to draw a cheque.
But even more significant was the conduct of Mr. Penfield. Taking from its envelope the mysterious letter that had come to Sennen and exploded the mine, Thorndyke spread it out and slowly read it though; and his interpretation of it now was the same as on the occasion when he heard Margaret’s epitome of it at Sennen. It was a message to Purcell through his wife, telling him that something which had been discovered was not going to be divulged. What could that something be? The answer, in general terms, seemed to be given by Penfield’s subsequent conduct. He had been absolutely uncommunicative to Margaret. Yet Margaret, as the missing man’s wife, was a proper person to receive any information that could be given. Apparently, then, the information that Penfield possessed was of a kind that could not be imparted to anyone. Even its very nature could not be hinted at.
Now what kind of information could that be? The obvious inference was that the letter which had come to Penfield contained incriminating matter. That would explain everything. For if Penfield had thus stumbled on evidence of a crime, either committed or contemplated, he would have to choose between denouncing the criminal or keeping the matter to himself. But he was not entitled to keep it to himself; for, other considerations apart, this was not properly a client’s secret. It had not been communicated to him: he had discovered it by accident. He was therefore not bound to secrecy, and he could not, consequently, claim a lawyer’s privilege. In short, if he had discovered a crime and chose to suppress his discovery, he was, in effect, an accessory, before or after the fact, as the case might be; and he would necessarily keep the secret because he would not dare to divulge it.
This view was strongly supported by Purcell’s conduct. The disappearance of the latter coincided exactly with the delivery of the mysterious letter to Penfield. The inference was that Purcell, having discovered his fatal mistake, and assuming that Penfield would immediately denounce him to the police, had fled instantly and was now in hiding. Purcell’s and Penfield’s conduct were both in complete agreement with this theory.
But there was a further consideration. If the contents of that letter were incriminating, they incriminated someone besides Purcell. The person for whom the letter was intended must have been a party to any unlawful proceedings referred to in it. He—or she—must, in fact, have been a confederate. Now, who could that confederate be? Someone, apparently, who was unknown to Margaret, unless it might be the somewhat shadowy Mr. Levy. And that raised yet a further question: What was Purcell? How did he get his living? His wife evidently did not know, which was a striking and rather suspicious fact. He had been described as a financier. But that meant nothing. The word “financier” covered a multitude of sins; the question was, What sins did it cover in the present instance? And the answer to that question seemed to involve a visit of exploration to Coleman Street.
As Thorndyke collected his notes to form the nucleus of a dossier of the Purcell Case, he foresaw that his investigations might well unearth some very unlovely skeletons. But that was no fault of his, nor need the disclosures be unnecessarily paraded. But Margaret Purcell’s position must be secured and made regular. Her missing husband must either be found and brought back, or he must be written off and disposed of in a proper and legal fashion.
CHAPTER V
In which Thorndyke makes a Few Inquiries
If Mr. Penfield had been reluctant to arrange an interview with Margaret Purcell, he was yet more unwilling to accept one with Dr. John Thorndyke. It is true that, as a lawyer of the old school, he regarded Thorndyke with a certain indulgent contempt, as a dabbler in law, an amateur, a mere doctor masquerading as a lawyer. But coupled with this contempt was an unacknowledged fear. For it was not unknown to him that this medico-legal hermaphrodite had strange and disconcerting methods; that he had a habit of driving his chariot through well-established legal conventions, and of using his eyes and ears in a fashion not recognized by orthodox legal precedents.
Accordingly, when he received a note from Thorndyke announcing the intention of the writer to call on him, he would have liked to decline the encounter. A less courageous man would have absented himself. But Mr. Penfield was a sportsman to the backbone, and having got himself into difficulties by that very quality, elected to “face the music” like a man; and so it happened that when Thorndyke arrived in the clerks’ office, he was informed that Mr. Penfield was at liberty, and was duly announced and ushered into the sanctum.
The old solicitor received him with a sort of stiff cordiality, helped himself to a pinch of snuff, and awaited the opening of the offensive.
“You have heard from Mrs. Purcell, I presume,” said Thorndyke.
“Yes. I understand that you are commissioned by her to ascertain the whereabouts of her husband—a very desirable thing to do, and I wish you every success.”
“I am sure you do,” said Thorndyke, “and it is with that conviction that I have called on you to enable you to give effect to your good wishes.”
Mr. Penfield paused, with his snuff-box open and an infinitesimal particle between his finger and thumb, to steal a quick glance at Thorndyke.
“In what way?” he asked.
“You received a certain communication, concerning which you wrote to Mrs. Purcell at—�
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“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Penfield, “but I received no communication. A communication was no doubt dispatched by Mr. Purcell, but it never reached me.”
“I am referring to a letter which did reach you—a letter with certain enclosures, apparently put into the wrong envelope.”
“And which,” said Penfield, “is consequently no concern of mine, or, if you will pardon my saying so, of yours.”
“Of that,” said Thorndyke, “you are doubtless a better judge than I am, since you have read the letter and I have not. But I am instructed to investigate the disappearance of Mr. Purcell, and as this letter appears to be connected with this disappearance, it naturally becomes an object of interest to me.”
“Why do you assume that it is connected with the disappearance?” Penfield demanded.
“Because of the striking coincidence of the time of its arrival and the time of the disappearance,” replied Thorndyke.
“That seems a very insufficient reason,” said Penfield.
“Not, I think,” rejoined Thorndyke, “if taken in conjunction with the terms of your own letter to Mrs. Purcell. But do I understand you to say that there was no connection?”
“I did not say that. What I say is that I have inadvertently seen a letter which was not addressed to me and which I was not intended to see. You will agree with me that it would be entirely inadmissible for me to divulge or discuss its contents.”
“I am not sure that I do agree with you, seeing that the writer of the letter is the husband of our client and the consignee is a person unknown to us both. But you will naturally act on your own convictions. Would it be admissible for you to indicate the nature of the enclosures?”
“It would be entirely inadmissible,” replied Mr. Penfield.
There was a short silence, during which Mr. Penfield refreshed himself with a pinch of snuff and Thorndyke rapidly turned over the situation. Obviously, the old solicitor did not intend to give any information whatever, possibly for very good reasons. At any rate, his decision had to be accepted and this Thorndyke proceeded to acknowledge.
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