by Molly Thynne
Fayre, who was blessed with a quick and accurate memory, stared at him in amazement.
“But Sir Edward came down to Cumberland by train!” he exclaimed. “He didn’t have his car with him! I know, because I met him myself at the station. I’d gone down to see about a lost suitcase.”
“His chauffeur must have been joy-riding. The licence was the chauffeur’s. It’s not the first time that’s happened. Sir Edward, apparently, paid the fine without a murmur. What he said to the chauffeur is another matter!”
Fayre, knowing Kean, did not envy the delinquent.
Grey looked at his watch and rose.
“I must go,” he said. “Now Leslie has been moved to Carlisle it will be more difficult for Lady Cynthia to see him. Tell her to let me know when she goes North again and I’ll do my best for her. It’ll buck him up more than anything if he can have a few minutes with her.”
“And be uncommonly hard on Cynthia,” remarked Fayre grimly.
He and Cynthia arrived punctually at Kean’s Chambers. He had not returned, but had left a message asking them to wait for him. As Fayre sat chatting with Cynthia, his eye fell on a photograph of Sybil Kean that stood in a plain silver frame on the writing-table. He remembered suddenly that, owing to her illness, he had never answered her letter and it struck him that, if she were better and conscious, she might be worrying as to whether it had reached him. He decided to send a few noncommittal lines by Kean, saying that he had received it and would be delighted to do her commission. This would convey nothing to any one should she be too weak to read her own letters and would at least reassure her.
There were some sheets of writing-paper on the table and, with a word of explanation to Cynthia, he sat down and drew one towards him. Having written his note he looked about for an envelope, but could find none. Instinctively his hand went to the top drawer of the writing-table. It was unlocked and slid out easily and Fayre peered into it in search of the thing he wanted. He did not find it, but in the front of the drawer was lying an object he knew only too well, the “Red Dwarf” pen he had picked up near the gate of Leslie’s farm. The cap the tramp had given him was now fitted neatly over the nib. He picked the pen out of the drawer and turned it thoughtfully in his fingers. The mud stain still clung to the side, half obliterating a long smear of black ink. Here, after all, he reflected, lay the real clue to the puzzle. Leslie, he knew, had never used a stylo and Mrs. Draycott was the last person to carry a cheap pen of that type in her gold bag. Everything pointed to its having been dropped by the murderer. As a last resort, Grey had inserted an advertisement in most of the daily papers asking Page to come forward and it had appeared for the first time that morning. If Page were the owner of the pen, Fayre concluded, he was hardly likely to make himself known.
With a sigh he replaced the “Red Dwarf” in the drawer. As he did so his sleeve caught in the edge of a large envelope that was lying near the back of the drawer and shifted it a few inches. Cynthia, who was standing near the window watching for Kean, did not hear the quick intake of his breath as he picked it up to replace it. For perhaps five minutes he sat motionless, the envelope in his hand, then he put it gently back in its place and closed the drawer. The letter to Lady Kean he slipped into his pocket, having apparently given up the idea of sending it.
When Cynthia looked round he was immersed in a copy of the Times he had found lying on Kean’s table.
“Edward has just driven up in the car,” she said, and almost as she spoke the door opened and he came in. He looked distressingly worn and tired, but was more cheerful than Fayre had dared to hope. The doctors had given a good report of Sybil that morning, he told them, and they considered that she was responding to treatment better than she had done after the former attack. Fayre wondered whether the letter she had sent him had not been at least partly responsible for her illness and whether, now that the effort of writing it was over, she was not benefiting by the relief to her mind.
“I was afraid we’d have to leave town without seeing you,” he said. “It was too much to expect you to give your mind to anything while Sybil was laid up.”
Kean looked up sharply.
“I should have carried on, in any case,” he answered quickly. “If it’s humanly possible to get Leslie off I’m going to do it.”
Fayre was astonished at the depth of feeling in his voice, but he realized that Kean meant what he said and that he would fight for Leslie as he had never fought before. What would happen if he failed, Fayre did not dare contemplate. He was convinced now that, for some reason he could not fathom, the lines of Leslie’s fate were inextricably intermingled with those of Sybil and Edward Kean and he had a grim conviction that more than Kean’s professional reputation was at stake should he fail to get an acquittal.
He sat through the long interview between Kean and Cynthia like a man in a dream and his report of their conversation, had he been called upon to make one, would have been both vague and garbled. It was only at the close, when Kean offered to drive her back to her aunt’s house, that he woke to a sense of his surroundings and managed to rouse himself to action.
“If you are going to steal Cynthia I’ll be off,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve one or two things I must do on the way home.”
They were so absorbed that they hardly noticed his departure; but if Kean had happened to glance out of the window, he would no doubt have wondered why Fayre, instead of going directly about his business, had chosen to waste fifteen minutes or so in desultory chat with the chauffeur of Kean’s car.
His talk finished, he hailed a taxi and drove to the club. Arrived there he went straight to his room and looked up the address Gregg had given him when he suggested that he should look up his chemist friend, Lloyd. Then, from the bottom of his portmanteau, he unearthed a pile of old photographs, adding to them the snapshot he had borrowed from Miss Allen. Thrusting them into his pocket he ran downstairs and got into the waiting taxi, giving the driver Lloyd’s address.
He found him at home, an unkempt little man with a face not unlike that of an abnormally intelligent monkey, surmounted by a shock of untidy grey hair. Evidently he had been expecting to hear from Fayre and showed no surprise at his visit. His manner was business-like and a trifle brusque. He impressed Fayre as a man who had little time to give to the affairs of others, but who invariably bent his whole mind to the matter in hand, whatever it might be.
“I can’t do much for you,” he began frankly. “Never have known who the chap was that I saw with Mrs. Draycott in Paris and I don’t suppose I ever shall, unless I run into him somewhere. And that’s unlikely, as I never go anywhere if I can help it. Beastly waste of time. Hate society. Tepid tea and a lot of silly talk about nothing. Better ask me what you want to know. Quicker and more satisfactory.” He ran his hand through his untidy hair and, sitting perched on the edge of his littered writing-table, blinked at Fayre expectantly through his strong glasses.
“If you’d give me an account of what happened in Paris I should be grateful,” suggested Fayre. “I’m a bit vague as to dates, for instance.”
“One gift I have got,” went on Lloyd abstractedly. “That’s a memory for faces. Never forget a face. Beastly bore sometimes it is, too. I should know that man if I saw him again. As regards dates, it was in the spring of 1920 that I saw him. Went over to Paris to consult a man at the Sorbonne and ran into this chap and Mrs. Draycott in a little restaurant in Montmartre. Sort of place I go to because it suits me, but this fellow wasn’t the sort to go there at all. Wrong place for Mrs. Draycott, too. They were there because they didn’t want to be seen and, of course, they were seen. That’s how things happen. I’d met Draycott once and I knew this man wasn’t he. Mrs. Draycott being what she was, I put the worst interpretation on it. May have been mistaken, of course. Don’t quite know to this day why I followed them. Gregg was a pal of mine and I knew he was jumpy for fear she would make a grab at the boy and I’d just finished a big job and was at a loose end for the moment with
a blank evening in front of me. Anyway, it was the third night I’d seen them and I happened to leave just behind them. She never even looked my way and, if she had, she probably wouldn’t have recognized me. They were walking and I just went too. It was a dark night and I tagged along behind till they got to their hotel and watched them go in. A little place bang in the middle of the Latin Quarter. By that time I’d had about enough of it and I didn’t wait to see if either of them came out, but a couple of days later I was in that part of the world and I dropped in and asked to see the visitors’ book. Drew a complete blank. The only English names registered for months were a Mrs. Grant, whom I took to be Mrs. Draycott, and a George Collins. Apparently there was no other English man or woman staying in the hotel. I wrote to Gregg, telling him what I’d done and there the matter ended. I found out afterwards that Draycott was in Egypt at the time. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do for you.”
“You say you’d recognize the man if you saw him?” asked Fayre eagerly.
“Could pick him out anywhere. I tell you, I’ve got an abnormally good memory for faces.”
Fayre took half a dozen photographs from his pocket, the snapshot among them, and placed them on the table.
“Do any of these suggest him to you?” he asked.
Lloyd ran through them quickly, then stabbed one of them with a long, yellow-stained forefinger.
“That’s the fellow,” he pronounced unhesitatingly. “It’s an unusual head and quite unmistakable.”
Fayre picked it up with a hand that shook a little. He had had a vague notion that Lloyd might pitch on the snapshot, though, in his secret heart, he had prayed that he would recognize none of the photographs.
This, of all others, was the last he had expected him to select.
CHAPTER XXII
The next six weeks dragged heavily enough for John Leslie within the four walls of his cell at Carlisle, but, to Cynthia, they were one long agony. She spent one short week-end with her people at Galston and then gratefully accepted Miss Allen’s proposal that she should stay with her till the Assizes opened at Carlisle. Her mother’s open antagonism to John Leslie made her home unbearable to the girl and she was thankful to get away.
Miss Allen’s tactful sympathy and uncompromising common sense acted as a tonic to the girl and the older woman, who was never idle for long herself, managed to keep her guest employed with a variety of small occupations which gave her little chance to brood over the ordeal that lay before her.
“It’s no earthly good meeting troubles half-way,” Miss Allen assured her. “The more you think of things, the more likely you are to invent all sorts of horrors that will probably never happen. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t go off your food now or you’ll be fit for nothing when the time comes.”
In spite of her sharp tongue she watched over the girl like a mother, pampered her uncertain appetite with all sorts of unexpected and tempting dishes and developed an almost uncanny instinct for knowing when she was sleeping badly and would appear in her room with hot milk and biscuits in the small hours of the morning and sit and chat until she saw the girl’s eyelids beginning to droop. Cynthia grew to love the sight of her bulky red-quilted dressing-gown and the grey plait that stuck out stiffly between her shoulders.
Fayre ran down to Staveley for a fortnight and spent most of his time over at Greycross. He and Miss Allen were fast becoming close friends and she had already promised to be the first of his guests when the cottage of his dreams materialized.
The rest of his time he spent in London, looking up old friends and haunting Grey’s office, a disheartening pursuit, for the solicitor had little enough to report as time went on.
The middle of May found them all gathered at Carlisle. Dreading the publicity of a hotel Miss Allen had taken lodgings for herself and Cynthia. Grey and Fayre were at the station hotel, where they were joined by Kean on the night before the trial.
Fayre had tried in vain to persuade Cynthia not to go near the courthouse until she was actually called as witness for the Defence, but he received no support from either Kean or Grey, both of whom considered that her appearance would create a good impression and, in any case, he would not have succeeded in keeping her away. He could only feel thankful that she was in the keeping of so staunch a friend as Miss Allen and do all in his power to make things as easy for her as possible.
The trial seemed to drag on interminably and it was not till the afternoon of the sixth day that Kean rose to make his speech for the Defence. To Fayre, who had sat through the Counsel for the Crown’s very able address to the Jury, Leslie’s case seemed almost hopeless and he was beginning to feel that only a miracle could save him. He had watched Kean, on whom all their hopes rested, sitting motionless, his face utterly impassive, apparently entirely unmoved by his rival’s eloquence, and had tried to read his mind in vain. And all the time he had thanked his stars that he had allowed Cynthia to influence him and had kept back until after the trial the secret that, even now, he dreaded to reveal to Kean. Indeed, it seemed to Fayre, during the long hours of suspense, as though his mind had become a sort of Bluebeard’s chamber into which he no longer dared look. So much that he could not fathom and a little that he understood only too well he had locked away there until after Leslie’s fate was decided. Even if Kean managed to secure an acquittal for him Fayre could only look forward with a kind of horror to the aftermath of the trial.
For one who wished nothing but happiness to his fellow men the world had indeed gone agley. The knowledge that lay at the back of all his thoughts and actions had come between him and Edward Kean and their friendship had lost its old ease and intimacy. In his distress he had lost all desire to see and consult with Sybil Kean and, in spite of the fact that her health was mending rapidly and that he had had a charming letter of invitation from her in answer to the note he had written in Kean’s Chambers and had eventually posted from his club, he had felt unable to face her. Fortunately her health had given no further cause for anxiety and her improvement had been so steady that Kean had come north for the trial comparatively free from anxiety.
He was at his best now as he stood facing the Jury. Fayre, who had persuaded Cynthia to allow Miss Allen to take her home before lunch, fell so completely under the spell of his eloquence that, for a few brief moments, he forgot his personal interest in the case and was lost in admiration of the sheer genius that inspired it. It was not the first time he had heard Kean plead. One of his first actions on reaching England had been to go to the Old Bailey to see his old friend in harness. He had not been disappointed then, in spite of all he had heard of his ability, but to-day Kean spoke like a man inspired. One by one he took the very points which the Counsel for the Crown had used so effectively and turned them to his client’s advantage. He possessed a beautiful voice and knew how to make the most of it. He had had Cynthia in the box the day before and had examined her with a skill that was so little apparent that it was all the more telling. And Cynthia, partly helped by her own quick wits and partly as the result of careful coaching, had backed him up nobly. He used her evidence now as the basis of his speech, turning even the quarrel between her and Leslie to advantage and playing on the emotions of his audience with a skill and audacity that was little short of amazing. Given a Latin jury, Fayre told himself, the result would have been a foregone conclusion by now and, not for the first time in his life, he cursed British stolidity as he gazed hopelessly at the inscrutable countenances of the twelve respectable citizens who composed the jury and tried in vain to follow the progress of their thoughts. To his excited fancy they seemed the only people in the packed courthouse who remained totally unmoved by Kean’s eloquence.
Then, suddenly it was over and, like a douche of icy water, after the burning flow of Kean’s impassioned appeal, came the calm, measured accents of the Judge as he summed up.
By the time he had finished Fayre was once more in the depths of depression and in bad shape to face the long wait while the Jury considered th
eir verdict. He watched them file out feeling as near despair as he had ever been in his life and then settled down to endure a suspense that seemed interminable but which, in reality, lasted just over an hour and a half.
By the time the jury returned, the proceedings seemed to Fayre to have taken on all the unreality of a nightmare. As one in a dream he heard the Judge’s voice break the tense silence of the crowded court.
“Are you all agreed?”
“We are all agreed, My Lord.”
Then, as his numbed brain mechanically registered the fact that the foreman, surprisingly, spoke with a strong Cockney accent instead of the North-country burr he had expected, came the verdict.
“We find the prisoner guilty, My Lord.”
CHAPTER XXIII
“To be hanged by the neck until you are dead.” The sentence still rang in Fayre’s ears as his taxi sped through the streets on its way to Miss Allen’s lodgings. He could hear the thin, strained voice of the Judge, an old man nearing death himself, but still, after a long experience on the Bench, shaken and appalled at the awful magnitude of the words he was called upon to utter.
Fayre groaned aloud as the full sum of their meaning dawned upon him. Leslie, of whose innocence he was assured, cut off from life just when it was about to mean so much to him and Cynthia!
Fayre did not dare to think of Cynthia, waiting, torn between hope and fear, through the long hours in the grey old house where she and Miss Allen lodged. He wished with all his heart that it had not fallen to him to break the news to her.
He stopped his cab at the corner of the street and walked the last hundred yards to the house. At least he could save the girl the inevitable rush to the window at the sound of wheels and the moments of suspense while he entered the house and mounted the stairs. As it happened, he found the front door open and reached the sitting-room before she realized his presence in the house.