The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  “Her mind is in such a state that it is useless to question her. She keeps repeating that it was to be opened in the event of his death. It was only after great difficulty I ascertained from her that she had given the paper back to Brett last night. I am anxious that Brett’s body should be recovered in order to ascertain what its contents are.”

  “I should think the girl would have a fair idea of the contents.”

  “I think so too, but she is not in a fit state to be questioned at present, and may not be for some time. The strain has been too much for her. In my opinion she is in for a severe illness.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “At the station. Of course, I had to take her into custody on a charge of attempting to steal this money. Whether the public prosecutor will go on with the charge or whether he will bring any other charge of a more serious nature against her remains to be seen.”

  Marsland, who had abandoned his stone throwing, had strolled back to the porch in time to hear Gillett’s last remarks.

  “It is a strange thing to find a girl of her type in love with such a scoundrel,” he said.

  “Quite a common thing,” said Detective Gillett, speaking from the experience of the seamy side of life which comes under the attention of Scotland Yard. “There are some women brought up in good surroundings who seem to be attracted irresistibly to scoundrels. You never know what a woman will do. By the by, it is a good thing, Mr. Marsland, that you did not hit him when you fired at him last night. If you had killed him I should have had to arrest you, and the case would have had to go to a jury. Of course, there is no doubt how it would have ended, but it would have been an unpleasant experience for you.”

  “I shouldn’t have minded that,” was the young man’s answer.

  Gillett regarded this declaration as bravado, and merely continued:

  “As it is, you are virtually responsible for his death in frightening him over the cliff, but the law takes no account of that.”

  “I should prefer to have shot him,” said Marsland.

  “Ah, well, I must get away and see what they are doing,” said the Scotland Yard detective, who obviously disliked Marsland’s attitude. “I suppose I’ll see you again during the day?”

  When he had gone off towards the cliffs Crewe turned to Marsland and said:

  “I am going to have another look at the place—now that this case is concluded.”

  He entered the house and Marsland followed him. The interior looked more sombre and deserted than ever. The fortnight which had elapsed since the tragedy—during which time the place had been left untenanted—had intensified the air of desolation and neglect that brooded over the empty rooms, had thickened the dust on the moth-eaten carpets and heavy old furniture, and gave an uncanny air to the staring eyes of the stuffed animals which hung on the wall in glass cases—dead pets of dead occupants of Cliff Farm.

  Crewe and Marsland looked through the house, entered the room where the grandfather clock stood, and Crewe pointed out the mark of the bullet which Marsland had fired at Brett the previous night. In his excitement he had fired too high, and the bullet had gone into the wall about eight feet from the floor, between two photographs which hung on the wall. One of these photographs was of James Lumsden, the eccentric old owner of Cliff Farm, who had broken his neck by falling downstairs. The other was Frank Lumsden, whose dead body had been found in the house by Marsland thirteen days before.

  “That was the second time I missed Brett,” said Marsland, staring at the bullet hole in the wall between the photographs.

  “The second time?” echoed Crewe. “Do you mean that he was the burglar at whom you fired a week ago?”

  “Yes. I came into the room just as he was getting out of the window. I caught only a glimpse of him but I knew him instantly. I had a presentiment that he was near and that is why I happened to be wearing my revolver.”

  “What was his object in breaking into the house?”

  “He wanted to be sure that I was the man he had to fear just as I wanted to be sure that he was the man I wanted to kill. An hour before I had broken into his rooms at 41 Whitethorn Gardens, for the purpose of making sure about him. I saw his photograph there, and that is all I wanted.”

  “And it was you and not he who was in the house when Mrs. Penfield called out that the police were in the house?”

  “Yes, that was I. I didn’t understand why she called out, but it served as a warning to me that she expected him. And so when I got back to my uncle’s I got my revolver out of the drawer. The first I heard of him being in England was when Inspector Murchison told us, although I was prepared in a way after finding that Lumsden had been here. Murchison spoke of him as Brett, but I did not know him by that name. So to make sure I got Mrs. Penfield out of the house by a hoax on the telephone and broke into the place in her absence. I did not know that it was you who came back with her.”

  “But his object in breaking into your room was probably to get some article of yours which would help to bring suspicion against you with regard to Lumsden’s death. No doubt it was he who took the glasses which were subsequently found in the well. As you lost a pair of glasses in the storm and arrived at the farm without them, Miss Maynard probably mentioned the fact to Brett. Did you tell her that you had lost your glasses that night?”

  “I forget. Oh, yes, I did! I mentioned it when we were looking at the cryptogram on the stairs.”

  “He was certainly an enterprising scoundrel.”

  “Don’t you wish to know why I wanted to kill him?” asked the young man after a pause.

  “I do, very much.”

  “I feel that I must speak about it,” he said. “And you are the only man to whom I can. You heard Murchison tell us that Lumsden and Brett, as he called himself, had been tortured by the Germans but that they gave away no information. That is their version; let me tell you the truth about them. Both of them belonged to my company in France. Lumsden had been under me for four or five months and I had nothing against him. He was a fairly good soldier and I thought I could depend upon him. Powell—or Brett—had come over with a recent draft. One night when I was holding a short advanced trench to the south of Armentières I sent Lumsden and Brett out on a listening patrol. The trench we were holding was reached through a sap: it was the first of four or five that were being dug as jumping off places for an attack on the German trenches.

  “It was just about midnight that I sent Lumsden and Brett out and they ought to have been back by 2 a.m. It was the middle of summer and dawn commenced about 3 a.m. Either they had been captured or had lost their way and were waiting for dawn. When it was light enough to see the landscape, two figures appeared on the parapet of a German trench in front about three hundred yards away. They were calling and gesticulating to us. At that distance it was impossible to make out what they were saying, but from their gestures we gathered that the Germans had deserted the trench and it was ours if we liked to go over and occupy it.

  “It came as such a surprise that none of us stopped to think; but if we had stopped no one would have thought of treachery. The men went over the parapet—every one of them. It was a race—they were laughing and joking as to who should be there first. And when we were within forty yards or so there was a volley from rifles and machine guns. The bullets seemed to come from every quarter. The men were taken by surprise and they dropped almost before they had time to realize what had happened. I was one of the first to go down but it was only a bullet in the leg. As I lay where I fell I was struck by another bullet in the shoulder. Then I crawled to a shell hole for shelter. I found seven of my men there, all of whom had been hit.

  “We were not there long before the Germans commenced to lob hand grenades into the shell hole. How I escaped death I do not know: it was an awful experience to see those murderous bombs coming down and to be powerless to escape from them. I saw several of my poor men with limbs blown off dying in agony, and from what I learned subsequently much the same thing had ha
ppened in other shell holes where men had crawled for shelter. Out of my company of 82—we were not at full strength, and I had only three second lieutenants besides myself—I was the only one to come through alive. And I lay in a state of semi-collapse in the shell hole for two days before being rescued when our men drove the Germans out of their trenches.”

  “A dreadful experience,” said Crewe sympathetically.

  “These two miserable loathsome creatures, Brett and Lumsden, to save their own lives, had beckoned my company into the trap. They had been captured by the Germans, and no doubt were tortured in order to make them do what they did. But as British soldiers they should have died under torture rather than be guilty of treachery. The memory of how my poor men died without having a chance to defend themselves haunts me day and night. I hear their voices—their curses as they realized that they were the victims of a horrible act of treachery, their cries and moans in the agony of death.”

  He sat down on the upturned clock case and buried his face in his hands.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  “Am I the first man to whom you have told this story?” asked Crewe, in a gentle voice.

  “Yes,” said Marsland. “It is not a story that I would care to tell to many. It is not a story that reflects any credit on me—my company wiped out through treachery on the part of two of my men.”

  “But when you came back to England, wouldn’t it have been better to have reported the matter to the military authorities and have had Brett and Lumsden tried by court martial?”

  “I did not know they were in England until I came down here: I thought that if they were not dead they were prisoners in Germany. I have no witnesses for a court martial, and after being off my head in the hospital for a couple of months I doubt if a court martial would believe my story. Counsel for the defence would say I was suffering from delusions. And it would have driven me mad if such a scoundrel as Brett had been acquitted by a court martial for want of evidence. Besides, the satisfaction of having him shot was not to be compared with the satisfaction of shooting him down myself just as if he were a dog.”

  “But it is a terribly grave thing to take human life—to send a man to his death without trial.”

  “I have seen so many men die, Crewe, that death seems to me but a little thing. If a man deserves death, if he knows himself that he deserves it a hundredfold, why waste time in proving it to others? If I had shot Brett I should doubtless have had to stand my trial for murder. But if the police searched all over England could they have found a jury who would convict me if I saw fit to tell my story in the dock? Told by a man in the dock it would carry conviction; but told by a man in the witness-box at a court martial it might not.”

  “I believe there is some truth in that,” said Crewe, in a firm, quiet voice. “But it is a matter which must be put to the test.”

  Marsland stood up and fixed on him an intent gaze.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “If Brett is dead he died by accident—by a fall over the cliff. The law cannot touch me.”

  The detective did not speak, but his eyes held the young man’s glance intently for a moment, and then traveled slowly to the portrait of Frank Lumsden on the wall.

  “I mean that,” he said slowly.

  “Do you know all?” Marsland asked, in a voice which was little more than a whisper.

  “I know that it was you who shot Frank Lumsden.”

  “Yes, I shot him!” The young man sprang to his feet and uttered the words in a loud, excited tone which rang through the empty house. “And so little do I regret what I have done, that if I had the chance to recall the past I would not falter—I would shoot him again.”

  “Sit down again,” said Crewe kindly. “Do not excite yourself. You and I can discuss this thing quietly whatever else is to happen afterwards.”

  “How long have you known that I did it?” asked Marsland, after a pause.

  “It was not until yesterday that I felt quite certain. What annoys me—what offends my personal pride—is that my impetuous young friend Gillett picked you out as the right man before I did. He was wrong in his facts, wrong in his deductions, wrong in his theories, and hopelessly wrong in his reconstruction of the crime. He had no more chance of proving a case against you than against the first man he might pick out blindfolded from a crowd, and yet he was right. True, he came to the conclusion that he was wrong when I put him right as to the circumstances under which the tragedy occurred, but that doesn’t soothe my pride altogether. If there is one lesson I have learned from this case, it is that humility is a virtue that becomes us all.

  “But, after all, I do not think I have been so very long in solving the problem,” the detective continued. “It is only thirteen days since the tragedy took place, and from the first I saw it was a complicated case. I never ruled out the possibility of your being the right man after Brett and Miss Maynard tried to sheet home Lumsden’s death to you. I do not think she was fully in Brett’s confidence—in fact, it is fairly obvious that he would not tell her the story of his treachery. But he knew that you had shot Lumsden and she caught at his conviction without being fully convinced herself. Brett’s conduct was inconsistent with guilt. But it was consistent with the knowledge that Lumsden had met his death at your hands and that he himself would share the same fate if you encountered him.

  “I am under the impression that he reached Lumsden a few minutes after you rode away from the spot, and that Lumsden was then alive. Probably he was able to breathe out your name to Brett. The latter helped the dying man into the motor-car and started to drive back to Staveley for medical aid, and after passing the thatched cottage on the right he became aware that Lumsden had collapsed and was past human aid. So he decided to take the body to the farm, and in order to disappear, without drawing immediate suspicion on himself, he tried to indicate that Lumsden was shot in the house.

  “Then he disappeared because he was afraid of you. If he had got you under lock and key he might have risked coming into the open and giving evidence against you. But I rather fancy that his intention was to get away to a foreign country with old Lumsden’s money, and then put the police on your track by giving the true circumstances under which Lumsden was shot.”

  “Did he write to you?” asked Marsland.

  “No.”

  “I was always afraid he would. What put you on my track?”

  “The conviction that you had warned this girl to clear out as Gillett had obtained some awkward facts against her. You were the only person who had any object in warning her, though Gillett thinks you had even less reason to do so than Brett. I regarded you merely as an average human being and not actuated by Quixotic impulses. I remembered that she had tried to sheet home the crime to you and therefore you had little cause to be grateful to her—so far I am in accord with Gillett. But if you knew that she had nothing to do with the tragedy, and if you felt that Gillett’s close questioning might lead to information from Brett which would tell against you, it was common sense on your part to get her out of the way.”

  “It is wonderful how you have divined my mind and the line of thought I followed,” said the young man. His even tones were an indication that he was regaining his composure.

  “Next, there was your attempt to kill Brett instead of helping me to capture him. That told against you. True, it indicated that you had what you regarded as a just cause of deadly hatred. But if you were under the belief that Brett had killed Lumsden it would have suited you better to capture him than to shoot him. Your shot at Brett showed me that you knew it was not Brett who had killed Lumsden, and also that you feared if Brett were arrested he would charge you with shooting Lumsden.”

  “Go on,” said the young man breathlessly.

  “There is little more to tell,” said Crewe. “I had to ask Gillett yesterday not to refer to the doubts I had expressed to him regarding Brett’s guilt. I was afraid he might do so in your presence and that would have put you on your guard. The final proof came when Gillet
t discovered the bullet in the tree where Lumsden fell. At the moment Gillett found the bullet I picked up these in the grass.”

  Crewe produced from his waistcoat pocket a pair of eye-glasses.

  “So that is where I lost them!” exclaimed Marsland. “It never occurred to me before. I have no recollection of their dropping off—I suppose I was too excited to notice they had gone.”

  “Your meeting with him was accidental?” said Crewe.

  “Quite. I had been out riding on the downs and when I struck the road I wasn’t sure which way I had to go to get home. I saw a man coming along the road and I rode up to him. It was Lumsden. I tell you, Crewe, he was terrified at the sight of me—no doubt he thought that I had been killed in France. As I was dismounting and tying up my horse he pleaded for his life. He grovelled at my feet in the dirt. But I didn’t waste much time or pity. I told him that he had earned death a hundredfold, and that the only thing I was sorry for was that I could kill him only once. He sprang up the bank in the hope of getting away, but I brought him down with a single shot. I saw that he was done for and I left him gasping in the agony of death. I had no pity—I had seen so many men die, and I had seen my company of good men go to their deaths because of his treachery.

  “I rode back over the downs, and caring little which way I went I lost my way and was overtaken by the storm. Eventually I saw the farm and went there for shelter. And upstairs I found the dead body of this man Lumsden. It was the strangest experience of my life. I did not know what to think—I could not make out how the body had got there. And when Miss Maynard asked me to say nothing to the police about her having been there I thought it was the least I could do for her. I knew that whatever errand had brought her there she had nothing to do with his death.”

  There was a long pause during which the two men looked at one another.

  “You think that I had just cause for shooting him?” said Marsland.

  “I think you had no right to take upon yourself the responsibility of saying ‘The law will fail to punish these men and therefore I will punish them without invoking the aid of the law!’”