The First Sexton Blake
Page 21
It was a challenge bat, with a silver shield let in above the splice.
“Be careful with that bat! I prize it!” said Harry, coming forward. “It is a trophy of my Oxford days.”
“A most interesting one!” said Blake drily, as he examined the shield and the back of the splicing through his lens, and walked over to the table in the window.
“Most interesting!” he repeated. And then, with a sudden pressure of his thumb on the shield, and a deft movement of both wrists, he lifted the handle clean away from the blade, and, turning the latter upside-down, shook out a shower of pearls onto the table.
For a moment there was a dead silence that was broken by a low wail from the girl, who had shrank away from her husband’s side, and was looking at him wildly with dazed, horror-stricken eyes.
“As I thought,” said the lawyer, in a soft, unctuous tone.
“It is a plant!” said Harry passionately. “I did not even know the bat was made like that! Someone has had it done! I swear it! It was not like that when I used it last! I made a century off it! It would have splintered into forty pieces ax the first hit! It is a foul conspiracy!”
“Heroics and humbug will hardly serve you at this stage!” snapped the lawyer. “I shall formally charge him, Mr. Blake!”
“What with?” said Blake drily. “In the absence of any will, the stones are his own property.”
The lawyer went White as paper.
Blake watched him narrowly. The lawyer took up the bat and peered into the hollow.
“There is a document in there,” he said in a shrill, excited tone.
Blake took the bat from him, and with the aid of a dagger-like paper-knife on the table, drew out, after some skilful probing, a single sheet of parchment.
It was the last will and testament of Joshua Flinders, and, in some fifteen lines, devised the estate in the manner the lawyer had already described.
“This puts a different complexion on the matter,” said Blake, as he pocketed the will and tucked the bat under his arm.
“You still persist in the charge, Mr. Flinders?”
“More than ever!” snapped the lawyer, with an air of sardonic satisfaction.
“In that case,” said Blake, looking hard at Harry Flinders, “I must acquaint the police, and you had better come along with me at once. I will see you at three o’clock, and report in your office, Mr. Flinders.”
“At three,” said the lawyer.
Marion followed Sexton Blake and her husband to the waiting taxi.
“I am coming with you!” she said determinedly.
“It is the one thing I wanted to ask you to do,” said Blake, as he handed her in, waving her husband to follow. Then, whispering an order to the chauffeur, he climbed in himself.
* * * * *
It was exactly three o’clock when Blake, accompanied by a police inspector, was shown into Mr. Septimus Flinders’ room in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
“You are punctual,” began the lawyer, with an unctuous smile, that faded into an expression of fear and wrath as he perceived behind the inspector the forms of Harry and his bride.
“What is the meaning of this?” he cried, starting to ibis feet.
“It means,” said Blake coolly, “that you are to be arrested for conspiracy and attempted fraud.”
“You’re mad!” snarled the lawyer, coolly seating himself.
“Your mistake,” said Blake sweetly; “you shall judge. I suspected you from the first. You made your case too obvious. But you forgot to control your features in your cousin’s room. I was watching your eyes in this mirror in my link. They blazed on the bat. It was as though you told me in so many words that the pearls and the will were there. But on the bat, as on the parchment, I found in three distinct places the trace of your thumb. I traced the workmanship and hollowing of the bat to Kitson, in Red Lion Street, and he identified you as his customer.
“I also traced the chemicals you used on the will to efface the codicil to your purpose. It may interest you still further to know that by the use of other chemicals we have restored the codicil intact, and are ready to prove that it revokes your interest, and leaves all jointly to Harry and his wife, whom it appoints sole executors. That is the case against you, and I don’t think, with all your cleverness, you will squeeze out of it. Take him outside, inspector, before he faints.”
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