“But,” I rejoined, “I don’t see who else had any interest in doing away with those documents.”
“I’ll tell you,” he rejoined drily. “Felix Shap himself.”
“What do you mean?” I queried, with as much lofty scorn as I could command.
“I mean,” he replied, “that all Felix Shap’s documents were forgeries.”
“Forgeries?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, spurious! False affidavits! Forgeries the lot of ’em. My belief is that Stonebridge began to suspect this himself, and I think he has had a narrow escape of being murdered outright by those two rascals. As it is they have destroyed every proof of their villainy, and old Stonebridge, I imagine, is content to let things remain as they are rather than admit publicly that he was completely taken in by two very plausible rogues.”
“But,” I urged, “what about the handwriting expert?”
The funny creature laughed aloud.
“Yes!” he said, “what about the expert? If there had been two they would have disagreed. And mind you at a distance of twelve years a signature would be difficult of absolute identification. Everyone’s handwriting undergoes certain modifications in the course of years. Experts,” he reiterated, “Bah!”
“But,” I went on impatiently, “I don’t see the object of the whole scheme.”
“The object was blackmail,” the whimsical creature retorted, “and it succeeded admirably. Already we read that Messrs. Shap and Lloyd are staying at expensive hotels in London, that they have granted interviews to pressmen and written articles for halfpenny newspapers. We shall hear of them as cinema stars presently. They have had the most gorgeous, the most paying publicity, and presently Sir David Carysfort will have had enough of them and will put a few more hundreds in their pockets just to be rid of them. That was the object of the whole scheme, my dear young lady! And see how well it was carried out. Of course the addle-headed Dutchman never thought of it. I imagine that the whole scheme originated in the fertile brain of Mr. Julian Lloyd, and it was thoroughly well thought out from the manufacture of the documents and letters down to the assault on the silly old country attorney. And, mind you, the rascals originally went to a silly country attorney; they would have been afraid to go to a London lawyer lest he be too sharp for them. The only mistake they made were the letters purported to be written to Berta Shap by the husband who is supposed to have disappeared, and the copy of Berta’s marriage certificate. It is those letters that gave me the clue to the whole thing; old Stonebridge was too dull to have seen through those letters. If they were genuine why should Felix Shap have brought them over to England? They had nothing whatever to do with any contract about the Shap Fuelettes. If they were genuine, how could he guess that he would have to disprove a story of a secret marriage and of young Alfred being the son of Sir Alfred Carysfort? By wanting to prove too much, he, to my mind, gave himself away, and one can but marvel that neither lawyers nor police saw through the roguery. Of course the moment one understands that one set of papers was spurious, it is easily concluded that all the others were forgeries. And the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, anxious only to obliterate every vestige of that early marriage of his, unwittingly played into the hands of those two scoundrels by destroying all the correspondence that he had ever had with Shap.
“Think it all over, you will see that I am right. Look at this paragraph again in the Evening Post, does it not bear out what I say?”
The paragraph in the evening paper to which the Man in the Corner was pointing read as follows:
“Among the passengers on the Dutch liner Stadt Rotterdam is Mr. Felix Shap, the hero of a recent celebrated case. He is returning to Batavia, having, through a misadventure which has remained an impenetrable mystery to this day, been deprived of all the proofs that would have established his claim to a substantial share of the profits in the Shap Fuelettes Company. Fortunately Mr. Shap had enlisted many sympathies in England that his friends had no difficulty in collecting a considerable sum of money which was presented to him on his departure in the form of a purse and as a compensation for the ill-luck which has attended him since he set foot in this country. Mr. Shap will now be able to take abroad with him the assurance that British public opinion is always on the side of the victims of an adverse and unmerited fate.”
“Yes!” the funny creature concluded with a cackle, “until the victims are found out to be rogues. Mr. Felix Shap and his friend, Mr. Julian Lloyd, will be found out some day.”
The next moment he had gone with that rapidity which was so characteristic of him, and I might have thought that he was just a spook who had come to visit me whilst I dozed over my cup of tea, only that on the table by the side of an empty glass was a piece of string adorned with a series of complicated knots.
VIII
The Mystery of Brudenell Court
I
“Did you ever make up your mind about that Brudenell Court affair,” the Man in the Corner said to me that day.
“No,” I replied. “As far as I am concerned the death of Colonel Forburg has remained a complete mystery.”
“You don’t think,” he insisted, “that Morley Thrall was guilty?”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know what to think.”
“Then don’t do it,” he rejoined with a chuckle, “if you don’t know what to think, then it’s best not to think at all. At any rate wait until I have told you exactly what did happen—not as it was reported in the newspapers, but in the sequence in which the various incidents occurred.
“On Christmas Eve, last year, while the family were at dinner, there was a sudden commotion and cries of ‘Stop thief!’ issuing from the back premises of Brudenell Court, the country seat of a certain Colonel Forburg. The butler ran in excitedly to say that Julia Mason, one of the maids, was drawing down the blinds in one of the first-floor rooms when she saw a man fiddling with the shutters of the French window in the smoking-room downstairs. She at once gave the alarm, whereupon the man bolted across the garden in the direction of the five-acre field. The Colonel and his stepson, as well as two male guests who were dining with them, immediately jumped up and hurried out to help in the chase. It was a very dark night, people were running to and fro, and for a few moments there was a great deal of noise and confusion, through which two pistol shots in close succession were distinctly heard.
“The ladies—amongst whom was Miss Monica Glenluce, the Colonel’s stepdaughter—had remained in the dining-room, and the dinner was kept waiting, pending the return of the gentlemen. They straggled in one by one, all except the Colonel. The ladies eagerly asked for news; the gentlemen could not say much—the night was very dark and they had just waited about outside until some of the indoor men who had given chase came back with the news that the thief had been caught. This news was confirmed by young Glenluce, Miss Monica’s brother, who was the last to return. He had actually witnessed the capture. The thief had bolted straight across the five-acre meadow, but doubled back before he reached the stables, turned sharply to the right through the kitchen garden and then jumped over the boundary wall of the ground into the lane beyond, where he fell straight into the arms of the local constable who happened to be passing by. Young Glenluce had great fun out of the chase; he had guessed the man’s purpose and instead of running after him across the meadow, he had gone round it, and had reached the boundary wall only a few seconds after the thief had scaled it. There was some talk about the gun shots that had been heard and everyone supposed that Colonel Forburg, who was a violent tempered man, had snatched up a revolver before giving chase to the burglar and had taken a pot-shot at him; it was fortunate that he had missed him.
“The incident would then have been closed and the interrupted dinner proceeded with, but for the fact that the host had not yet returned. Nothing was thought of this at first, for it was generally supposed that the Colonel had been kept talking by one of his men, or perhaps by the constable who had effected the capture; it was only when close on half an
hour had gone by that Miss Monica became impatient. She got the butler to telephone both to the stables and to the lodge, but the Colonel had not been seen at either place, either during or after the incident with the burglar; communication with the police station brought the same result; nothing had been seen or heard of the Colonel. Genuinely alarmed now, Monica gave orders for the grounds to be searched; it was just possible that the Colonel had fallen whilst running, and was lying somewhere, helpless in the dark, perhaps unconscious… Everyone began recalling those pistol shots and a sense of tragedy spread over the entire house. Monica blamed herself for not having thought of all this before.
“A search party went out at once; for a while stable-lanterns and electric torches gleamed through the darkness and past the shrubberies. Then suddenly there were calls for help, the wandering lights centred in one spot, somewhere in the middle of the five-acre meadow near the big elm tree. Obviously there had been an accident. Monica ran to the front door, followed by all the guests. Through the darkness a group of men were seen slowly wending their way toward the house: one man was running ahead, it was the chauffeur. Young Glenluce, half-guessing that something sinister had occurred, went forward to meet him. What had happened was indeed as tragic as it was mysterious; the search party had found the Colonel lying full-length in the meadow. His clothes were saturated with blood, he had been shot in the breast and was apparently dead. Close by a revolver had been picked up. It was impossible to keep the terrible news from Miss Monica. Her brother broke the news to her. She bore up with marvellous calm, and it was she who at once gave the necessary orders to have her stepfather’s body taken upstairs and to fetch both the doctor and the police.
“In the meanwhile the guests had gone back into the house. They stood about in groups, awestruck and whispering. They did not care to finish their dinner, or to go up to their rooms, as in all probability they would be required when the police came to make enquiries. Monica and Gerald Glenluce had gone to sit in the smoking-room.
“It was the most horrible Christmas Eve any one in that house had ever experienced.”
II
“Murder committed from any other motive than that of robbery,” the Man in the Corner went on after a moment’s pause, “always excites the interest of the public. There is nearly always an element of mystery about it, and it invariably suggests possibilities of romance. In this case, of course, there was no question of robbery. After Colonel Forburg fell, shot, as it transpired at close range and full in the breast, his clothes were left untouched; there was loose silver in his trouser pocket, a few treasury notes in his letter-case, and he was wearing a gold watch and chain and a fine pearl stud. The motive of the crime was therefore enmity or revenge, and, here the police were at once confronted with a great difficulty. Not, mind you, the difficulty of finding a man who hated the Colonel sufficiently to kill him, but that of choosing among his many enemies one who was most likely to have committed such a terrible crime. He was the best hated man in the county. Known as ‘Remount Forburg’ he was generally supposed to have made his fortune in some shady transactions connected with the Remount Department of the War Office during the Boer War, more than twenty years ago. His first wife was said to have died of a broken heart, and he had no children of his own; some ten years ago he had married a widow with two young children. She had a considerable fortune of her own, and when she died she left it in trust for her children, but she directed that her husband should be the sole guardian of Monica and Gerald until they came of age; moreover, she left him the interest on the whole of the capital amount for as long as they were in his house and unmarried. After his death the money would revert unconditionally to them.
“Of course it was a foolish, one might say a criminal will, and one obviously made under the influence of her husband. One can only suppose that the poor woman had died without knowing anything of ‘Remount Forburg’s’ character. Since her death his violent temper and insufferable arrogance had alienated from the children every friend they ever had. Only some chance acquaintances ever came anywhere near Brudenell Court now. Naturally everyone said that the Colonel’s behaviour was part of a scheme for keeping suitors away from his stepdaughter Monica, who was a very beautiful girl; as for Gerald Glenluce, Monica’s younger brother, he had been sadly disfigured when he was a schoolboy through a fall against a sharp object that had broken his nose and somewhat mysteriously deprived him of the sight of one eye. Those who suffered most from Colonel Forburg’s violent tempers declared that the boy’s face had been smashed in by a blow from a stick, and that the stick had been wielded by his stepfather. Be that as it may, Gerald Glenluce had remained, in consequence of his disfigurement, a shy, retiring, silent boy, who neither played games nor rode to hounds and had no idea how to handle a gun; but he was essentially the Colonel’s favourite. Where Forburg was harsh and dictatorial with everyone else he would always unbend to Gerald, and was almost gentle and affectionate toward him. Perhaps an occasional twinge of remorse had something to do with that soft side of his disagreeable character. Certainly that softness did not extend to Monica.
“He made the girl’s life almost unbearable with his violence which amounted almost to brutality. The girl hated him openly and said so. Her one desire was to get away from Brudenell Court by any possible means. But owing to her mother’s foolish will she had no money of her own, and the few friends she had were not sufficiently rich, or sufficiently disinterested, to give her a home away from her stepfather, nor would the Colonel, for the matter of that, have given his consent to her living away from him. As for marriage, it was a difficult question. Young men fought shy of any family connection with ‘Remount Forburg.’ The latter’s nickname was bad enough, but there were rumours of secrets more unavowable still in the past history of the Colonel. Certain it is that though Monica excited admiration wherever she went, and though one or two of her admirers did go to the length of openly courting her, the courtship never matured into an actual engagement. Something or other always occurred to cool off the ardour of the wooers. Suddenly they would either go on a big-game shooting expedition, or on a tour round the world, or merely find that country air did not suit them. There would perhaps be a scene of fond farewell, but Monica would always understand that the farewell was a definite one, and, as she was an intelligent as well as a fascinating girl, she put two and two together, and observed that these farewell scenes were invariably preceded by a long interview behind closed doors between her stepfather and her admirer of the moment. Small wonder then that she hated the Colonel. She hated him as much as she loved her brother. A great affection had, especially of late, developed between these two; it was a love born of an affinity of trouble and sense of injustice. On Gerald’s part there was also an element of protection toward the beautiful sister; the fact that he was so avowedly the spoilt son of his irascible stepfather enabled him many a time to stand between Monica and the Colonel’s unbridled temper.
“Latterly, however, some brightness and romance had been introduced into the drab existence of Monica Glenluce by the discreet courtship of her latest admirer, Mr. Morley Thrall. Mr. Thrall was a wealthy man, not too young and of independent position, who presumably did not care whether county society would cut him or no in consequence of his marriage with the stepdaughter of ‘Remount Forburg.’ Subsequent events showed that he had observed the greatest discretion while he was courting Monica. No one knew that there was an understanding between him and the girl, least of all the Colonel. Mr. Morley Thrall came, not too frequently, to Brudenell Court; while there he appeared to devote most of his attention to his host and to Gerald, and to take little if any notice of Monica. She had probably given him a hint of rocks ahead, and he had succeeded in avoiding the momentous interview with the Colonel which Monica had learned to look on with dread.
“Mr. Morley Thrall had been asked to stay at Brudenell Court for Christmas, the other guests being a Major Rawstone, with his wife and daughter, Rachel. They were all at dinner on that
memorable Christmas Eve when the tragedy occurred, and all the men hurried out of the dining-room in the wake of their host when first the burglary alarm was given.”
III
“Thus did matters stand at Brudenell Court when directly after the holidays, Jim Peyton, a groom recently in the employ of Colonel Forburg, was brought before the magistrates charged with the murder of his former master. There was a pretty stiff case against him too. It seems that he had lately been dismissed by Colonel Forburg for drunkenness, and that before dismissing him the Colonel had given him a thrashing which apparently was well deserved, because while he was drunk he very nearly set fire to the stables, and an awful disaster was only averted by the timely arrival of the Colonel himself upon the scene.
“Be that as it may, the man went away swearing vengeance. Subsequently he took out a summons for assault against Colonel Forburg and only got damages of one shilling. This had occurred a week before Christmas. There were several witnesses there who could swear to the threatening language used by Peyton on more than one occasion since then, and of course he had been caught in the very act of trying to break into the house through the French window of the smoking-room.
“On the other hand, the revolver with which ‘Remount Forburg’ had been shot, and which was found close to the body with two empty chambers, was identified as the Colonel’s own property, one which he always kept, loaded, in a drawer of his desk in the smoking-room. And—this is the interesting point—the shutters of the smoking-room were found by the police inspector, who examined them subsequently, to be bolted on the inside, just as they had been left earlier in the evening by the footman whose business it was to see to the fastening of windows and shutters on the ground floor.
Unravelled Knots Page 16