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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Knew, by Edgar Wallace
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Man Who Knew
+
+Author: Edgar Wallace
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2008 [EBook #24933]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO KNEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO KNEW
+
+BY
+
+EDGAR WALLACE
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED CANDLE," "KATE PLUS 10," ETC.
+
+WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY
+WILLIAM A. KIRKPATRICK
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+BOSTON
+SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
+_PUBLISHERS_
+
+
+Copyright, 1918
+BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
+(INCORPORATED)
+
+
+[Illustration: "The girl had risen to her feet and was shrinking back to
+the wall." _See page 333._]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                 PAGE
+
+   I THE MAN IN THE LABORATORY             9
+  II THE GIRL WHO CRIED                   27
+ III FOUR IMPORTANT CHARACTERS            40
+  IV THE ACCOUNTANT AT THE BANK           59
+   V JOHN MINUTE'S LEGACY                 73
+  VI THE MAN WHO KNEW                     99
+ VII INTRODUCING MR. REX HOLLAND         109
+VIII SERGEANT SMITH CALLS                135
+  IX FRANK MERRILL AT THE ALTAR          155
+   X A MURDER                            175
+  XI THE CASE AGAINST FRANK MERRILL      201
+ XII THE TRIAL OF FRANK MERRILL          220
+XIII THE MAN WHO CAME TO MONTREUX        243
+ XIV THE MAN WHO LOOKED LIKE FRANK       261
+  XV A LETTER IN THE GRATE               279
+ XVI THE COMING OF SERGEANT SMITH        289
+XVII THE MAN CALLED "MERRILL"            317
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO KNEW
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MAN IN THE LABORATORY
+
+
+The room was a small one, and had been chosen for its remoteness from
+the dwelling rooms. It had formed the billiard room, which the former
+owner of Weald Lodge had added to his premises, and John Minute, who had
+neither the time nor the patience for billiards, had readily handed over
+this damp annex to his scientific secretary.
+
+Along one side ran a plain deal bench which was crowded with glass
+stills and test tubes. In the middle was as plain a table, with half a
+dozen books, a microscope under a glass shade, a little wooden case
+which was opened to display an array of delicate scientific instruments,
+a Bunsen burner, which was burning bluely under a small glass bowl half
+filled with a dark and turgid concoction of some kind.
+
+The face of the man sitting at the table watching this unsavory stew was
+hidden behind a mica and rubber mask, for the fumes which were being
+given off by the fluid were neither pleasant nor healthy. Save for a
+shaded light upon the table and the blue glow of the Bunsen lamp, the
+room was in darkness. Now and again the student would take a glass rod,
+dip it for an instant into the boiling liquid, and, lifting it, would
+allow the liquid drop by drop to fall from the rod on to a strip of
+litmus paper. What he saw was evidently satisfactory, and presently he
+turned out the Bunsen lamp, walked to the window and opened it, and
+switched on an electric fan to aid the process of ventilation.
+
+He removed his mask, revealing the face of a good-looking young man,
+rather pale, with a slight dark mustache and heavy, black, wavy hair. He
+closed the window, filled his pipe from the well-worn pouch which he
+took from his pocket, and began to write in a notebook, stopping now and
+again to consult some authority from the books before him.
+
+In half an hour he had finished this work, had blotted and closed his
+book, and, pushing back his chair, gave himself up to reverie. They were
+not pleasant thoughts to judge by his face. He pulled from his inside
+pocket a leather case and opened it. From this he took a photograph. It
+was the picture of a girl of sixteen. It was a pretty face, a little
+sad, but attractive in its very weakness. He looked at it for a long
+time, shaking his head as at an unpleasant thought.
+
+There came a gentle tap at the door, and quickly he replaced the
+photograph in his case, folded it, and returned it to his pocket as he
+rose to unlock the door.
+
+John Minute, who entered, sniffed suspiciously.
+
+"What beastly smells you have in here, Jasper!" he growled. "Why on
+earth don't they invent chemicals that are more agreeable to the nose?"
+
+Jasper Cole laughed quietly.
+
+"I'm afraid, sir, that nature has ordered it otherwise," he said.
+
+"Have you finished?" asked his employer.
+
+He looked at the still warm bowl of fluid suspiciously.
+
+"It is all right, sir," said Jasper. "It is only noxious when it is
+boiling. That is why I keep the door locked."
+
+"What is it?" asked John Minute, scowling down at the unoffending
+liquor.
+
+"It is many things," said the other ruefully. "In point of fact, it is
+an experiment. The bowl contains one or two elements which will only mix
+with the others at a certain temperature, and as an experiment it is
+successful because I have kept the unmixable elements in suspension,
+though the liquid has gone cold."
+
+"I hope you will enjoy your dinner, even though it has gone cold,"
+grumbled John Minute.
+
+"I didn't hear the bell, sir," said Jasper Cole. "I'm awfully sorry if
+I've kept you waiting."
+
+They were the only two present in the big, black-looking dining room,
+and dinner was as usual a fairly silent meal. John Minute read the
+newspapers, particularly that portion of them which dealt with the
+latest fluctuations in the stock market.
+
+"Somebody has been buying Gwelo Deeps," he complained loudly.
+
+Jasper looked up.
+
+"Gwelo Deeps?" he said. "But they are the shares--"
+
+"Yes, yes," said the other testily; "I know. They were quoted at a
+shilling last week; they are up to two shillings and threepence. I've
+got five hundred thousand of them; to be exact," he corrected himself,
+"I've got a million of them, though half of them are not my property. I
+am almost tempted to sell."
+
+"Perhaps they have found gold," suggested Jasper.
+
+John Minute snorted.
+
+"If there is gold in the Gwelo Deeps there are diamonds on the downs,"
+he said scornfully. "By the way, the other five hundred thousand shares
+belong to May."
+
+Jasper Cole raised his eyebrows as much in interrogation as in surprise.
+
+John Minute leaned back in his chair and manipulated his gold toothpick.
+
+"May Nuttall's father was the best friend I ever had," he said gruffly.
+"He lured me into the Gwelo Deeps against my better judgment We sank a
+bore three thousand feet and found everything except gold."
+
+He gave one of his brief, rumbling chuckles.
+
+"I wish that mine had been a success. Poor old Bill Nuttall! He helped
+me in some tight places."
+
+"And I think you have done your best for his daughter, sir."
+
+"She's a nice girl," said John Minute, "a dear girl. I'm not taken with
+girls." He made a wry face. "But May is as honest and as sweet as they
+make them. She's the sort of girl who looks you in the eye when she
+talks to you; there's no damned nonsense about May."
+
+Jasper Cole concealed a smile.
+
+"What the devil are you grinning at?" demanded John Minute.
+
+"I also was thinking that there was no nonsense about her," he said.
+
+John Minute swung round.
+
+"Jasper," he said, "May is the kind of girl I would like you to marry;
+in fact, she _is_ the girl I would like you to marry."
+
+"I think Frank would have something to say about that," said the other,
+stirring his coffee.
+
+"Frank!" snorted John Minute. "What the devil do I care about Frank?
+Frank has to do as he's told. He's a lucky young man and a bit of a
+rascal, too, I'm thinking. Frank would marry anybody with a pretty face.
+Why, if I hadn't interfered--"
+
+Jasper looked up.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Never mind," growled John Minute.
+
+As was his practice, he sat a long time over dinner, half awake and half
+asleep. Jasper had annexed one of the newspapers, and was reading it.
+This was the routine which marked every evening of his life save on
+those occasions when he made a visit to London. He was in the midst of
+an article by a famous scientist on radium emanation, when John Minute
+continued a conversation which he had broken off an hour ago.
+
+"I'm worried about May sometimes."
+
+Jasper put down his paper.
+
+"Worried! Why?"
+
+"I am worried. Isn't that enough?" growled the other. "I wish you
+wouldn't ask me a lot of questions, Jasper. You irritate me beyond
+endurance."
+
+"Well, I'll take it that you're worried," said his confidential
+secretary patiently, "and that you've good reason."
+
+"I feel responsible for her, and I hate responsibilities of all kinds.
+The responsibilities of children--"
+
+He winced and changed the subject, nor did he return to it for several
+days.
+
+Instead he opened up a new line.
+
+"Sergeant Smith was here when I was out, I understand," he said.
+
+"He came this afternoon--yes."
+
+"Did you see him?"
+
+Jasper nodded.
+
+"What did he want?"
+
+"He wanted to see you, as far as I could make out. You were saying the
+other day that he drinks."
+
+"Drinks!" said the other scornfully. "He doesn't drink; he eats it. What
+do you think about Sergeant Smith?" he demanded.
+
+"I think he is a very curious person," said the other frankly, "and I
+can't understand why you go to such trouble to shield him or why you
+send him money every week."
+
+"One of these days you'll understand," said the other, and his prophecy
+was to be fulfilled. "For the present, it is enough to say that if
+there are two ways out of a difficulty, one of which is unpleasant and
+one of which is less unpleasant, I take the less unpleasant of the two.
+It is less unpleasant to pay Sergeant Smith a weekly stipend than it is
+to be annoyed, and I should most certainly be annoyed if I did not pay
+him."
+
+He rose up slowly from the chair and stretched himself.
+
+"Sergeant Smith," he said again, "is a pretty tough proposition. I know,
+and I have known him for years. In my business, Jasper, I have had to
+know some queer people, and I've had to do some queer things. I am not
+so sure that they would look well in print, though I am not sensitive as
+to what newspapers say about me or I should have been in my grave years
+ago; but Sergeant Smith and his knowledge touches me at a raw place. You
+are always messing about with narcotics and muck of all kinds, and you
+will understand when I tell you that the money I give Sergeant Smith
+every week serves a double purpose. It is an opiate and a prophy--"
+
+"Prophylactic," suggested the other.
+
+"That's the word," said John Minute. "I was never a whale at the long
+uns; when I was twelve I couldn't write my own name, and when I was
+nineteen I used to spell it with two n's."
+
+He chuckled again.
+
+"Opiate and prophylactic," he repeated, nodding his head. "That's
+Sergeant Smith. He is a dangerous devil because he is a rascal."
+
+"Constable Wiseman--" began Jasper.
+
+"Constable Wiseman," snapped John Minute, rubbing his hand through his
+rumpled gray hair, "is a dangerous devil because he's a fool. What has
+Constable Wiseman been here about?"
+
+"He didn't come here," smiled Jasper. "I met him on the road and had a
+little talk with him."
+
+"You might have been better employed," said John Minute gruffly. "That
+silly ass has summoned me three times. One of these days I'll get him
+thrown out of the force."
+
+"He's not a bad sort of fellow," soothed Jasper Cole. "He's rather
+stupid, but otherwise he is a decent, well-conducted man with a sense of
+the law."
+
+"Did he say anything worth repeating?" asked John Minute.
+
+"He was saying that Sergeant Smith is a disciplinarian."
+
+"I know of nobody more of a disciplinarian than Sergeant Smith," said
+the other sarcastically, "particularly when he is getting over a jag.
+The keenest sense of duty is that possessed by a man who has broken the
+law and has not been found out. I think I will go to bed," he added,
+looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I am going up to town
+to-morrow. I want to see May."
+
+"Is anything worrying you?" asked Jasper.
+
+"The bank is worrying me," said the old man.
+
+Jasper Cole looked at him steadily.
+
+"What's wrong with the bank?"
+
+"There is nothing wrong with the bank, and the knowledge that my dear
+nephew, Frank Merrill, esquire, is accountant at one of its branches
+removes any lingering doubt in my mind as to its stability. And I wish
+to Heaven you'd get out of the habit of asking me 'why' this happens or
+'why' I do that."
+
+Jasper lit a cigar before replying:
+
+"The only way you can find things out in this world is by asking
+questions."
+
+"Well, ask somebody else," boomed John Minute at the door.
+
+Jasper took up his paper, but was not to be left to the enjoyment its
+columns offered, for five minutes later John Minute appeared in the
+doorway, minus his tie and coat, having been surprised in the act of
+undressing with an idea which called for development.
+
+"Send a cable in the morning to the manager of the Gwelo Deeps and ask
+him if there is any report. By the way, you are the secretary of the
+company. I suppose you know that?"
+
+"Am I?" asked the startled Jasper.
+
+"Frank was, and I don't suppose he has been doing the work now. You had
+better find out or you will be getting me into a lot of trouble with the
+registrar. We ought to have a board meeting."
+
+"Am I the directors, too?" asked Jasper innocently.
+
+"It is very likely," said John Minute. "I know I am chairman, but there
+has never been any need to hold a meeting. You had better find out from
+Frank when the last was held."
+
+He went away, to reappear a quarter of an hour later, this time in his
+pajamas.
+
+"That mission May is running," he began, "they are probably short of
+money. You might inquire of their secretary. _They_ will have a
+secretary, I'll be bound! If they want anything send it on to them."
+
+He walked to the sideboard and mixed himself a whisky and soda.
+
+"I've been out the last three or four times Smith has called. If he
+comes to-morrow tell him I will see him when I return. Bolt the doors
+and don't leave it to that jackass, Wilkins."
+
+Jasper nodded.
+
+"You think I am a little mad, don't you, Jasper?" asked the older man,
+standing by the sideboard with the glass in his hand.
+
+"That thought has never occurred to me," said Jasper. "I think you are
+eccentric sometimes and inclined to exaggerate the dangers which
+surround you."
+
+The other shook his head.
+
+"I shall die a violent death; I know it. When I was in Zululand an old
+witch doctor 'tossed the bones.' You have never had that experience?"
+
+"I can't say that I have," said Jasper, with a little smile.
+
+"You can laugh at that sort of thing, but I tell you I've got a great
+faith in it. Once in the king's kraal and once in Echowe it happened,
+and both witch doctors told me the same thing--that I'd die by violence.
+I didn't use to worry about it very much, but I suppose I'm growing old
+now, and living surrounded by the law, as it were, I am too law-abiding.
+A law-abiding man is one who is afraid of people who are not
+law-abiding, and I am getting to that stage. You laugh at me because I'm
+jumpy whenever I see a stranger hanging around the house, but I have got
+more enemies to the square yard than most people have to the county. I
+suppose you think I am subject to delusions and ought to be put under
+restraint. A rich man hasn't a very happy time," he went on, speaking
+half to himself and half to the young man. "I've met all sorts of people
+in this country and been introduced as John Minute, the millionaire, and
+do you know what they say as soon as my back is turned?"
+
+Jasper offered no suggestion.
+
+"They say this," John Minute went on, "whether they're young or old,
+good, bad, or indifferent: 'I wish he'd die and leave me some of his
+money.'"
+
+Jasper laughed softly.
+
+"You haven't a very good opinion of humanity."
+
+"I have no opinion of humanity," corrected his chief, "and I am going to
+bed."
+
+Jasper heard his heavy feet upon the stairs and the thud of them
+overhead. He waited for some time; then he heard the bed creak. He
+closed the windows, personally inspected the fastenings of the doors,
+and went to his little office study on the first floor.
+
+He shut the door, took out the pocket case, and gave one glance at the
+portrait, and then took an unopened letter which had come that evening
+and which, by his deft handling of the mail, he had been able to smuggle
+into his pocket without John Minute's observance.
+
+He slit open the envelope, extracted the letter, and read:
+
+
+     DEAR SIR: Your esteemed favor is to hand. We have to thank you for
+     the check, and we are very pleased that we have given you
+     satisfactory service. The search has been a very long and, I am
+     afraid, a very expensive one to yourself, but now that discovery
+     has been made I trust you will feel rewarded for your energies.
+
+
+The note bore no heading, and was signed "J. B. Fleming."
+
+Jasper read it carefully, and then, striking a match, lit the paper and
+watched it burn in the grate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GIRL WHO CRIED
+
+
+The northern express had deposited its passengers at King's Cross on
+time. All the station approaches were crowded with hurrying passengers.
+Taxicabs and "growlers" were mixed in apparently inextricable confusion.
+There was a roaring babble of instruction and counter-instruction from
+police-men, from cab drivers, and from excited porters. Some of the
+passengers hurried swiftly across the broad asphalt space and
+disappeared down the stairs toward the underground station. Others
+waited for unpunctual friends with protesting and frequent examination
+of their watches.
+
+One alone seemed wholly bewildered by the noise and commotion. She was a
+young girl not more than eighteen, and she struggled with two or three
+brown paper parcels, a hat-box, and a bulky hand-bag. She was among
+those who expected to be met at the station, for she looked helplessly
+at the clock and wandered from one side of the building to the other
+till at last she came to a standstill in the center, put down all her
+parcels carefully, and, taking a letter from a shabby little bag, opened
+it and read.
+
+Evidently she saw something which she had not noticed before, for she
+hastily replaced the letter in the bag, scrambled together her parcels,
+and walked swiftly out of the station. Again she came to a halt and
+looked round the darkened courtyard.
+
+"Here!" snapped a voice irritably. She saw a door of a taxicab open, and
+came toward it timidly.
+
+"Come in, come in, for heaven's sake!" said the voice.
+
+She put in her parcels and stepped into the cab. The owner of the voice
+closed the door with a bang, and the taxi moved on.
+
+"I've been waiting here ten minutes," said the man in the cab.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear, but I didn't read--"
+
+"Of course you didn't read," interrupted the other brusquely.
+
+It was the voice of a young man not in the best of tempers, and the
+girl, folding her hands in her lap, prepared for the tirade which she
+knew was to follow her act of omission.
+
+"You never seem to be able to do anything right," said the man. "I
+suppose it is your natural stupidity."
+
+"Why couldn't you meet me inside the station?" she asked with some show
+of spirit.
+
+"I've told you a dozen times that I don't want to be seen with you,"
+said the man brutally. "I've had enough trouble over you already. I wish
+to Heaven I'd never met you."
+
+The girl could have echoed that wish, but eighteen months of bullying
+had cowed and all but broken her spirit.
+
+"You are a stone around my neck," said the man bitterly. "I have to hide
+you, and all the time I'm in a fret as to whether you will give me away
+or not. I am going to keep you under my eye now," he said. "You know a
+little too much about me."
+
+"I should never say a word against you," protested the girl.
+
+"I hope, for your sake, you don't," was the grim reply.
+
+The conversation slackened from this moment until the girl plucked up
+courage to ask where they were going.
+
+"Wait and see," snapped the man, but added later: "You are going to a
+much nicer home than you have ever had in your life, and you ought to be
+very thankful."
+
+"Indeed I am, dear," said the girl earnestly.
+
+"Don't call me 'dear,'" snarled her husband.
+
+The cab took them to Camden Town, and they descended in front of a
+respectable-looking house in a long, dull street. It was too dark for
+the girl to take stock of her surroundings, and she had scarcely time to
+gather her parcels together before the man opened the door and pushed
+her in.
+
+The cab drove off, and a motor cyclist who all the time had been
+following the taxi, wheeled his machine slowly from the corner of the
+street where he had waited until he came opposite the house. He let down
+the supports of his machine, went stealthily up the steps, and flashed a
+lamp upon the enamel numbers over the fanlight of the door. He jotted
+down the figures in a notebook, descended the steps again, and, wheeling
+his machine back a little way, mounted and rode off.
+
+Half an hour later another cab pulled up at the door, and a man
+descended, telling the driver to wait. He mounted the steps, knocked,
+and after a short delay was admitted.
+
+"Hello, Crawley!" said the man who had opened the door to him. "How goes
+it?"
+
+"Rotten," said the newcomer. "What do you want me for?"
+
+His was the voice of an uncultured man, but his tone was that of an
+equal.
+
+"What do you think I want you for?" asked the other savagely.
+
+He led the way to the sitting room, struck a match, and lit the gas. His
+bag was on the floor. He picked it up, opened it, and took out a flask
+of whisky which he handed to the other.
+
+"I thought you might need it," he said sarcastically.
+
+Crawley took the flask, poured out a stiff tot, and drank it at a gulp.
+He was a man of fifty, dark and dour. His face was lined and tanned as
+one who had lived for many years in a hot climate. This was true of him,
+for he had spent ten years of his life in the Matabeleland mounted
+police.
+
+The young man pulled up a chair to the table.
+
+"I've got an offer to make to you," he said.
+
+"Is there any money in it?"
+
+The other laughed.
+
+"You don't suppose I should make any kind of offer to you that hadn't
+money in it?" he answered contemptuously.
+
+Crawley, after a moment's hesitation, poured out another drink and
+gulped it down.
+
+"I haven't had a drink to-day," he said apologetically.
+
+"That is an obvious lie," said the younger man; "but now to get to
+business. I don't know what your game is in England, but I will tell you
+what mine is. I want a free hand, and I can only have a free hand if you
+take your daughter away out of the country."
+
+"You want to get rid of her, eh?" asked the other, looking at him
+shrewdly.
+
+The young man nodded.
+
+"I tell you, she's a millstone round my neck," he said for the second
+time that evening, "and I am scared of her. At any moment she may do
+some fool thing and ruin me."
+
+Crawley grinned.
+
+"'For better or for worse,'" he quoted, and then, seeing the ugly look
+in the other man's face, he said: "Don't try to frighten me, Mr. Brown
+or Jones, or whatever you call yourself, because I can't be frightened.
+I have had to deal with worse men than you and I'm still alive. I'll
+tell you right now that I'm not going out of England. I've got a big
+game on. What did you think of offering me?"
+
+"A thousand pounds," said the other.
+
+"I thought it would be something like that," said Crawley coolly. "It is
+a flea-bite to me. You take my tip and find another way of keeping her
+quiet. A clever fellow like you, who knows more about dope than any
+other man I have met, ought to be able to do the trick without any
+assistance from me. Why, didn't you tell me that you knew a drug that
+sapped the will power of people and made them do just as you like?
+That's the knockout drop to give her. Take my tip and try it."
+
+"You won't accept my offer?" asked the other.
+
+Crawley shook his head.
+
+"I've got a fortune in my hand if I work my cards right," he said. "I've
+managed to get a position right under the old devil's nose. I see him
+every day, and I have got him scared. What's a thousand pounds to me?
+I've lost more than a thousand on one race at Lewes. No, my boy, employ
+the resources of science," he said flippantly. "There's no sense in
+being a dope merchant if you can't get the right dope for the right
+case."
+
+"The less you say about my doping, the better," snarled the other man.
+"I was a fool to take you so much into my confidence."
+
+"Don't lose your temper," said the other, raising his hand in mock
+alarm. "Lord bless us, Mr. Wright or Robinson, who would have thought
+that the nice, mild-mannered young man who goes to church in Eastbourne
+could be such a fierce chap in London? I've often laughed, seeing you
+walk past me as though butter wouldn't melt in your mouth and everybody
+saying what a nice young man Mr. So-and-so is, and I have thought, if
+they only knew that this sleek lad--"
+
+"Shut up!" said the other savagely. "You are getting as much of a
+danger as this infernal girl."
+
+"You take things too much to heart," said the other. "Now I'll tell you
+what I'll do. I am not going out of England. I am going to keep my
+present menial job. You see, it isn't only the question of money, but I
+have an idea that your old man has got something up his sleeve for me,
+and the only way to prevent unpleasant happenings is to keep close to
+him."
+
+"I have told you a dozen times he has nothing against you," said the
+other emphatically. "I know his business, and I have seen most of his
+private papers. If he could have caught you with the goods, he would
+have had you long ago. I told you that the last time you called at the
+house and I saw you. What! Do you think John Minute would pay blackmail
+if he could get out of it? You are a fool!"
+
+"Maybe I am," said the other philosophically, "but I am not such a fool
+as you think me to be."
+
+"You had better see her," said his host suddenly.
+
+Crawley shook his head.
+
+"A parent's feelings," he protested, "have a sense of decency, Reginald
+or Horace or Hector; I always forget your London name. No," he said, "I
+won't accept your suggestion, but I have got a proposition to make to
+you, and it concerns a certain relative of John Minute--a nice, young
+fellow who will one day secure the old man's swag."
+
+"Will he?" said the other between his teeth.
+
+They sat for two hours discussing the proposition, and then Crawley rose
+to leave.
+
+"I leave my final jar for the last," he said pleasantly. He had finished
+the contents of the flask, and was in a very amiable frame of mind.
+
+"You are in some danger, my young friend, and I, your guardian angel,
+have discovered it. You have a valet at one of your numerous addresses."
+
+"A chauffeur," corrected the other; "a Swede, Jonsen."
+
+Crawley nodded.
+
+"I thought he was a Swede."
+
+"Have you seen him?" asked the other quickly.
+
+"He came down to make some inquiries in Eastbourne," said Crawley, "and
+I happened to meet him. One of those talkative fellows who opens his
+heart to a uniform. I stopped him from going to the house, so I saved
+you a shock--if John Minute had been there, I mean."
+
+The other bit his lips, and his face showed his concern.
+
+"That's bad," he said. "He has been very restless and rather impertinent
+lately, and has been looking for another job. What did you tell him?"
+
+"I told him to come down next Wednesday," said Crawley. "I thought you'd
+like to make a few arrangements in the meantime."
+
+He held out his hand, and the young man, who did not mistake the
+gesture, dived into his pockets with a scowl and handed four five-pound
+notes into the outstretched palm.
+
+"It will just pay my taxi," said Crawley light-heartedly.
+
+The other went upstairs. He found the girl sitting where he had left her
+in her bedroom.
+
+"Clear out of here," he said roughly. "I want the room."
+
+Meekly she obeyed. He locked the door behind her, lifted a suitcase on
+to the bed, and, opening it, took out a small Japanese box. From this he
+removed a tiny glass pestle and mortar, six little vials, a hypodermic
+syringe, and a small spirit lamp. Then from his pocket he took a
+cigarette case and removed two cigarettes which he laid carefully on the
+dressing table. He was busy for the greater part of the hour.
+
+As for the girl, she spent that time in the cold dining room huddled up
+in a chair, weeping softly to herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FOUR IMPORTANT CHARACTERS
+
+
+The writer pauses here to say that the story of "The Man Who Knew" is an
+unusual one. It is reconstructed partly from the reports of a certain
+trial, partly from the confidential matter which has come into the
+writer's hands from Saul Arthur Mann and his extraordinary bureau, and
+partly from the private diary which May Nuttall put at the writer's
+disposal.
+
+Those practiced readers who begin this narrative with the weary
+conviction that they are merely to see the workings out of a
+conventional record of crime, of love, and of mystery may be urged to
+pursue their investigations to the end. Truth is stranger than fiction,
+and has need to be, since most fiction is founded on truth. There is a
+strangeness in the story of "The Man Who Knew" which brings it into the
+category of veracious history. It cannot be said in truth that any story
+begins at the beginning of the first chapter, since all stories began
+with the creation of the world, but this present story may be said to
+begin when we cut into the lives of some of the characters concerned,
+upon the seventeenth day of July, 19--.
+
+There was a little group of people about the prostrate figure of a man
+who lay upon the sidewalk in Gray Square, Bloomsbury.
+
+The hour was eight o'clock on a warm summer evening, and that the
+unusual spectacle attracted only a small crowd may be explained by the
+fact that Gray Square is a professional quarter given up to the offices
+of lawyers, surveyors, and corporation offices which at eight o'clock on
+a summer's day are empty of occupants. The unprofessional classes who
+inhabit the shabby streets impinging upon the Euston Road do not include
+Gray Square in their itinerary when they take their evening
+constitutionals abroad, and even the loud children find a less
+depressing environment for their games.
+
+The gray-faced youth sprawled upon the pavement was decently dressed and
+was obviously of the superior servant type.
+
+He was as obviously dead.
+
+Death, which beautifies and softens the plainest, had failed entirely to
+dissipate the impression of meanness in the face of the stricken man.
+The lips were set in a little sneer, the half-closed eyes were small,
+the clean-shaven jaw was long and underhung, the ears were large and
+grotesquely prominent.
+
+A constable stood by the body, waiting for the arrival of the ambulance,
+answering in monosyllables the questions of the curious. Ten minutes
+before the ambulance arrived there joined the group a man of middle age.
+
+He wore the pepper-and-salt suit which distinguishes the country
+excursionist taking the day off in London. He had little side whiskers
+and a heavy brown mustache. His golf cap was new and set at a somewhat
+rakish angle on his head. Across his waistcoat was a large and heavy
+chain hung at intervals with small silver medals. For all his provincial
+appearance his movements were decisive and suggested authority. He
+elbowed his way through the little crowd, and met the constable's
+disapproving stare without faltering.
+
+"Can I be of any help, mate?" he said, and introduced himself as Police
+Constable Wiseman, of the Sussex constabulary.
+
+The London constable thawed.
+
+"Thanks," he said; "you can help me get him into the ambulance when it
+comes."
+
+"Fit?" asked the newcomer.
+
+The policeman shook his head.
+
+"He was seen to stagger and fall, and by the time I arrived he'd snuffed
+out. Heart disease, I suppose."
+
+"Ah!" said Constable Wiseman, regarding the body with a proprietorial
+and professional eye, and retailed his own experiences of similar
+tragedies, not without pride, as though he had to some extent the
+responsibility for their occurrence.
+
+On the far side of the square a young man and a girl were walking
+slowly. A tall, fair, good-looking youth he was, who might have
+attracted attention even in a crowd. But more likely would that
+attention have been focused, had he been accompanied by the girl at his
+side, for she was by every standard beautiful. They reached the corner
+of Tabor Street, and it was the fixed and eager stare of a little man
+who stood on the corner of the street and the intensity of his gaze
+which first directed their attention to the tragedy on the opposite side
+of the square.
+
+The little man who watched was dressed in an ill-fitting frock coat,
+trousers which seemed too long, since they concertinaed over his boots,
+and a glossy silk hat set at the back of his head.
+
+"What a funny old thing!" said Frank Merrill under his breath, and the
+girl smiled.
+
+The object of their amusement turned sharply as they came abreast of
+him. His freckled, clean-shaven face looked strangely old, and the big,
+gold-rimmed spectacles bridged halfway down his nose added to his
+ludicrous appearance. He raised his eyebrows and surveyed the two young
+people.
+
+"There's an accident over there," he said briefly and without any
+preliminary.
+
+"Indeed," said the young man politely.
+
+"There have been several accidents in Gray Square," said the strange old
+man meditatively. "There was one in 1875, when the corner house--you can
+see the end of it from here--collapsed and buried fourteen people, seven
+of whom were killed, four of whom were injured for life, and three of
+whom escaped with minor injuries."
+
+He said this calmly and apparently without any sense that he was acting
+at all unconventionally in volunteering the information, and went on:
+
+"There was another accident in 1881, on the seventeenth of October, a
+collision between two hansom cabs which resulted in the death of a
+driver whose name was Samuel Green. He lived at 14 Portington Mews, and
+had a wife and nine children."
+
+The girl looked at the old man with a little apprehension, and Frank
+Merrill laughed.
+
+"You have a very good memory for this kind of thing. Do you live here?"
+he asked.
+
+"Oh, no!" The little man shook his head vigorously.
+
+He was silent for a moment, and then:
+
+"I think we had better go over and see what it is all about," he said
+with a certain gravity.
+
+His assumption of leadership was a little staggering, and Frank turned
+to the girl.
+
+"Do you mind?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head, and the three passed over the road to the little
+group just as the ambulance came jangling into the square. To Merrill's
+surprise, the policeman greeted the little man respectfully, touching
+his helmet.
+
+"I'm afraid nothing can be done, sir. He is--gone."
+
+"Oh, yes, he's gone!" said the other quite calmly.
+
+He stooped down, turned back the man's coat, and slipped his hand into
+the inside pocket, but drew blank; the pocket was empty. With an
+extraordinary rapidity of movement, he continued his search, and to the
+astonishment of Frank Merrill the policeman did not deny his right. In
+the top left-hand pocket of the waistcoat he pulled out a crumpled slip
+which proved to be a newspaper clipping.
+
+"Ah!" said the little man. "An advertisement for a manservant cut out of
+this morning's _Daily Telegraph_; I saw it myself. Evidently a
+manservant who was on his way to interview a new employer. You see:
+'Call at eight-thirty at Holborn Viaduct Hotel.' He was taking a short
+cut when his illness overcame him. I know who is advertising for the
+valet," he added gratuitously; "he is a Mr. T. Burton, who is a rubber
+factor from Penang. Mr. T. Burton married the daughter of the Reverend
+George Smith, of Scarborough, in 1889, and has four children, one of
+whom is at Winchester. Hum!"
+
+He pursed his lips and looked down again at the body; then suddenly he
+turned to Frank Merrill.
+
+"Do you know this man?" he demanded.
+
+Frank looked at him in astonishment.
+
+"No. Why do you ask?"
+
+"You were looking at him as though you did," said the little man. "That
+is to say, you were not looking at his face. People who do not look at
+other people's faces under these circumstances know them."
+
+"Curiously enough," said Frank, with a little smile, "there is some one
+here I know," and he caught the eye of Constable Wiseman.
+
+That ornament of the Sussex constabulary touched his cap.
+
+"I thought I recognized you, sir. I have often seen you at Weald Lodge,"
+he said.
+
+Further conversation was cut short as they lifted the body on to a
+stretcher and put it into the interior of the ambulance. The little
+group watched the white car disappear, and the crowd of idlers began to
+melt away.
+
+Constable Wiseman took a professional leave of his comrade, and came
+back to Frank a little shyly.
+
+"You are Mr. Minute's nephew, aren't you, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Quite right," said Frank.
+
+"I used to see you at your uncle's place."
+
+"Uncle's name?"
+
+It was the little man's pert but wholly inoffensive inquiry. He seemed
+to ask it as a matter of course and as one who had the right to be
+answered without equivocation.
+
+Frank Merrill laughed.
+
+"My uncle is Mr. John Minute," he said, and added, with a faint touch of
+sarcasm: "You probably know him."
+
+"Oh, yes," said the other readily. "One of the original Rhodesian
+pioneers who received a concession from Lo Bengula and amassed a large
+fortune by the sale of gold-mining properties which proved to be of no
+especial value. He was tried at Salisbury in 1897 with the murder of
+two Mashona chiefs, and was acquitted. He amassed another fortune in
+Johannesburg in the boom of '97, and came to this country in 1901,
+settling on a small estate between Polegate and Eastbourne. He has one
+nephew, his heir, Frank Merrill, the son of the late Doctor Henry
+Merrill, who is an accountant in the London and Western Counties Bank.
+He--"
+
+Frank looked at him in undisguised amazement.
+
+"You know my uncle?"
+
+"Never met him in my life," said the little man brusquely. He took off
+his silk hat with a sweep.
+
+"I wish you good afternoon," he said, and strode rapidly away.
+
+The uniformed policeman turned a solemn face upon the group.
+
+"Do you know that gentleman?" asked Frank.
+
+The constable smiled.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir; that is Mr. Mann. At the yard we call him 'The Man Who
+Knows!'"
+
+"Is he a detective?"
+
+The constable shook his head.
+
+"From what I understand, sir, he does a lot of work for the commissioner
+and for the government. We have orders never to interfere with him or
+refuse him any information that we can give."
+
+"The Man Who Knows?" repeated Frank, with a puzzled frown. "What an
+extraordinary person! What does he know?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"Everything," said the constable comprehensively.
+
+A few minutes later Frank was walking slowly toward Holborn.
+
+"You seem to be rather depressed," smiled the girl.
+
+"Confound that fellow!" said Frank, breaking his silence. "I wonder how
+he comes to know all about uncle?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Well,
+dear, this is not a very cheery evening for you. I did not bring you
+out to see accidents."
+
+"Frank," the girl said suddenly, "I seem to know that man's face--the
+man who was on the pavement, I mean--"
+
+She stopped with a shudder.
+
+"It seemed a little familiar to me," said Frank thoughtfully.
+
+"Didn't he pass us about twenty minutes ago?"
+
+"He may have done," said Frank, "but I have no particular recollection
+of it. My impression of him goes much farther back than this evening.
+Now where could I have seen him?"
+
+"Let's talk about something else," she said quickly. "I haven't a very
+long time. What am I to do about your uncle?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I hardly know what to suggest," he said. "I am very fond of Uncle John,
+and I hate to run counter to his wishes, but I am certainly not going to
+allow him to take my love affairs into his hands. I wish to Heaven you
+had never met him!"
+
+She gave a little gesture of despair.
+
+"It is no use wishing things like that, Frank. You see, I knew your
+uncle before I knew you. If it had not been for your uncle I should not
+have met you."
+
+"Tell me what happened," he asked. He looked at his watch. "You had
+better come on to Victoria," he said, "or I shall lose my train."
+
+He hailed a taxicab, and on the way to the station she told him of all
+that had happened.
+
+"He was very nice, as he always is, and he said nothing really which was
+very horrid about you. He merely said he did not want me to marry you
+because he did not think you'd make a suitable husband. He said that
+Jasper had all the qualities and most of the virtues."
+
+Frank frowned.
+
+"Jasper is a sleek brute," he said viciously.
+
+She laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Please be patient," she said. "Jasper has said nothing whatever to me
+and has never been anything but most polite and kind."
+
+"I know that variety of kindness," growled the young man. "He is one of
+those sly, soft-footed sneaks you can never get to the bottom of. He is
+worming his way into my uncle's confidence to an extraordinary extent.
+Why, he is more like a son to Uncle John than a beastly secretary."
+
+"He has made himself necessary," said the girl, "and that is halfway to
+making yourself wealthy."
+
+The little frown vanished from Frank's brow, and he chuckled.
+
+"That is almost an epigram," he said. "What did you tell uncle?"
+
+"I told him that I did not think that his suggestion was possible and
+that I did not care for Mr. Cole, nor he for me. You see, Frank, I owe
+your Uncle John so much. I am the daughter of one of his best friends,
+and since dear daddy died Uncle John has looked after me. He has given
+me my education--my income--my everything; he has been a second father
+to me."
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"I recognize all the difficulties," he said, "and here we are at
+Victoria."
+
+She stood on the platform and watched the train pull out and waved her
+hand in farewell, and then returned to the pretty flat in which John
+Minute had installed her. As she said, her life had been made very
+smooth for her. There was no need for her to worry about money, and she
+was able to devote her days to the work she loved best. The East End
+Provident Society, of which she was president, was wholly financed by
+the Rhodesian millionaire.
+
+May had a natural aptitude for charity work. She was an indefatigable
+worker, and there was no better known figure in the poor streets
+adjoining the West Indian Docks than Sister Nuttall. Frank was
+interested in the work without being enthusiastic. He had all the man's
+apprehension of infectious disease and of the inadvisability of a
+beautiful girl slumming without attendance, but the one visit he had
+made to the East End in her company had convinced him that there was no
+fear as to her personal safety.
+
+He was wont to grumble that she was more interested in her work than she
+was in him, which was probably true, because her development had been a
+slow one, and it could not be said that she was greatly in love with
+anything in the world save her self-imposed mission.
+
+She ate her frugal dinner, and drove down to the mission headquarters
+off the Albert Dock Road. Three nights a week were devoted by the
+mission to visitation work. Many women and girls living in this area
+spend their days at factories in the neighborhood, and they have only
+the evenings for the treatment of ailments which, in people better
+circumstanced, would produce the attendance of specialists. For the
+night work the nurses were accompanied by a volunteer male escort. May
+Nuttall's duties carried her that evening to Silvertown and to a
+network of mean streets to the east of the railway. Her work began at
+dusk, and was not ended until night had fallen and the stars were
+quivering in a hot sky.
+
+The heat was stifling, and as she came out of the last foul dwelling she
+welcomed as a relief even the vitiated air of the hot night. She went
+back into the passageway of the house, and by the light of a paraffin
+lamp made her last entry in the little diary she carried.
+
+"That makes eight we have seen, Thompson," she said to her escort. "Is
+there anybody else on the list?"
+
+"Nobody else to-night, miss," said the young man, concealing a yawn.
+
+"I'm afraid it is not very interesting for you, Thompson," said the girl
+sympathetically; "you haven't even the excitement of work. It must be
+awfully dull standing outside waiting for me."
+
+"Bless you, miss," said the man. "I don't mind at all. If it is good
+enough for you to come into these streets, it is good enough for me to
+go round with you."
+
+They stood in a little courtyard, a cul-de-sac cut off at one end by a
+sheer wall, and as the girl put back her diary into her little net bag a
+man came swiftly down from the street entrance of the court and passed
+her. As he did so the dim light of the lamp showed for a second his
+face, and her mouth formed an "O" of astonishment. She watched him until
+he disappeared into one of the dark doorways at the farther end of the
+court, and stood staring at the door as though unable to believe her
+eyes.
+
+There was no mistaking the pale face and the straight figure of Jasper
+Cole, John Minute's secretary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ACCOUNTANT AT THE BANK
+
+
+May Nuttall expressed her perplexity in a letter:
+
+
+     DEAR FRANK: Such a remarkable thing happened last night. I was in
+     Silvers Rents about eleven o'clock, and had just finished seeing
+     the last of my patients, when a man passed me and entered one of
+     the houses--it was, I thought at the time, either the last or the
+     last but one on the left. I now know that it was the last but one.
+     There is no doubt at all in my mind that it was Mr. Cole, for not
+     only did I see his face, but he carried the snakewood cane which he
+     always affects.
+
+     I must confess I was curious enough to make inquiries, and I found
+     that he is a frequent visitor here, but nobody quite knows why he
+     comes. The last house is occupied by two families, very
+     uninteresting people, and the last house but one is empty save for
+     a room which is apparently the one Mr. Cole uses. None of the
+     people in the Rents know Mr. Cole or have ever seen him. Apparently
+     the downstairs room in the empty house is kept locked, and a woman
+     who lives opposite told my informant, Thompson, whom you will
+     remember as the man who always goes with me when I am slumming,
+     that the gentleman sometimes comes, uses this room, and that he
+     always sweeps it out for himself. It cannot be very well furnished,
+     and apparently he never stays the night there.
+
+     Isn't it very extraordinary? Please tell me what you make of it--
+
+
+Frank Merrill put down the letter and slowly filled his pipe. He was
+puzzled, and found no solution either then or on his way to the office.
+
+He was the accountant of the Piccadilly branch of the London and Western
+Counties Bank, and had very little time to give to outside problems. But
+the thought of Cole and his curious appearance in a London slum under
+circumstances which, to say the least, were mysterious came between him
+and his work more than once.
+
+He was entering up some transactions when he was sent for by the
+manager. Frank Merrill, though he did not occupy a particularly imposing
+post in the bank, held nevertheless a very extraordinary position and
+one which insured for him more consideration than the average official
+receives at the hands of his superiors. His uncle was financially
+interested in the bank, and it was generally believed that Frank had
+been sent as much to watch his relative's interests as to prepare
+himself for the handling of the great fortune which John Minute would
+some day leave to his heir.
+
+The manager nodded cheerily as Frank came in and closed the door behind
+him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Merrill," said the chief. "I want to see you about
+Mr. Holland's account. You told me he was in the other day."
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"He came in in the lunch hour."
+
+"I wish I had been here," said the manager thoughtfully. "I would like
+to see this gentleman."
+
+"Is there anything wrong with his account?"
+
+"Oh, no," said the manager with a smile; "he has a very good balance. In
+fact, too large a balance for a floating account. I wish you would see
+him and persuade him to put some of this money on deposit. The head
+office does not like big floating balances which may be withdrawn at any
+moment and which necessitates the keeping here of a larger quantity of
+cash than I care to hold.
+
+"Personally," he went on, "I do not like our method of doing business at
+all. Our head office being in Plymouth, it is necessary, by the peculiar
+rules of the bank, that the floating balances should be so covered, and
+I confess that your uncle is as great a sinner as any. Look at this?"
+
+He pushed a check across the table.
+
+"Here's a bearer check for sixty thousand pounds which has just come in.
+It is to pay the remainder of the purchase price due to Consolidated
+Mines. Why they cannot accept the ordinary crossed check Heavens knows!"
+
+Frank looked at the sprawling signature and smiled.
+
+"You see, uncle's got a reputation to keep up," he said good-humoredly;
+"one is not called 'Ready-Money Minute' for nothing."
+
+The manager made a little grimace.
+
+"That sort of thing may be necessary in South Africa," he said, "but
+here in the very heart of the money world cash payments are a form of
+lunacy. I do not want you to repeat this to your relative."
+
+"I am hardly likely to do that," said Frank, "though I do think you
+ought to allow something for uncle's peculiar experiences in the early
+days of his career."
+
+"Oh, I make every allowance," said the other; "only it is very
+inconvenient, but it was not to discuss your uncle's shortcomings that I
+brought you here."
+
+He pulled out a pass book from a heap in front of him.
+
+"'Mr. Rex Holland,'" he read. "He opened his account while I was on my
+holiday, you remember."
+
+"I remember very well," said Frank, "and he opened it through me."
+
+"What sort of man is he?" asked the manager.
+
+"I am afraid I am no good at descriptions," replied Frank, "but I
+should describe him as a typical young man about town, not very brainy,
+very few ideas outside of his own immediate world--which begins at Hyde
+Park Corner--"
+
+"And ends at the Hippodrome," interrupted the manager.
+
+"Possibly," said Frank. "He seemed a very sound, capable man in spite of
+a certain languid assumption of ignorance as to financial matters, and
+he came very well recommended. What would you like me to do?"
+
+The manager pushed himself back in his chair, thrust his hands in his
+trousers' pockets, and looked at the ceiling for inspiration.
+
+"Suppose you go along and see him this afternoon and ask him as a favor
+to put some of his money on deposit. We will pay the usual interest and
+all that sort of thing. You can explain that he can get the money back
+whenever he wants it by giving us thirty days' notice. Will you do this
+for me?"
+
+"Surely," said Frank heartily. "I will see him this afternoon. What is
+his address? I have forgotten."
+
+"Albemarle Chambers, Knightsbridge," replied the manager. "He may be in
+town."
+
+"And what is his balance?" asked Frank.
+
+"Thirty-seven thousand pounds," said the other, "and as he is not buying
+Consolidated Mines I do not see what need he has for the money, the more
+so since we can always give him an overdraft on the security of his
+deposit. Suggest to him that he puts thirty thousand pounds with us and
+leaves seven thousand pounds floating. By the way, your uncle is sending
+his secretary here this afternoon to go into the question of his own
+account."
+
+Frank looked up.
+
+"Cole," he said quickly, "is he coming here? By Jove!"
+
+He stood by the manager's desk, and a look of amusement came into his
+eyes.
+
+"I want to ask Cole something," he said slowly. "What time do you expect
+him?"
+
+"About four o'clock."
+
+"After the bank closes?"
+
+The manager nodded.
+
+"Uncle has a weird way of doing business," said Frank, after a pause. "I
+suppose that means that I shall have to stay on?"
+
+"It isn't necessary," said Mr. Brandon. "You see Mr. Cole is one of our
+directors."
+
+Frank checked an exclamation of surprise.
+
+"How long has this been?" he asked.
+
+"Since last Monday. I thought I told you. At any rate, if you have not
+been told by your uncle, you had better pretend to know nothing about
+it," said Brandon hastily.
+
+"You may be sure I shall keep my counsel," said Frank, a little amused
+by the other's anxiety. "You have been very good to me, Mr. Brandon, and
+I appreciate your kindness."
+
+"Mr. Cole is a nominee of your uncle, of course," Brandon went on, with
+a little nod of acknowledgment for the other's thanks. "Your uncle makes
+a point of never sitting on boards if he can help it, and has never
+been represented except by his solicitor since he acquired so large an
+interest in the bank. As a matter of fact, I think Mr. Cole is coming
+here as much to examine the affairs of the branch as to look after your
+uncle's account. Cole is a very first-class man of business, isn't he?"
+
+Frank's answer was a grim smile.
+
+"Excellent!" he said dryly. "He has the scientific mind grafted to a
+singular business capacity."
+
+"You don't like him?"
+
+"I have no particular reason for not liking him," said the other.
+"Possibly I am being constitutionally uncharitable. He is not the type
+of man I greatly care for. He possesses all the virtues, according to
+uncle, spends his days and nights almost slavishly working for his
+employer. Oh, yes, I know what you are going to say; that is a very fine
+quality in a young man, and honestly I agree with you, only it doesn't
+seem natural. I don't suppose anybody works as hard as I or takes as
+much interest in his work, yet I have no particular anxiety to carry it
+on after business hours."
+
+The manager rose.
+
+"You are not even an idle apprentice," he said good-humoredly. "You will
+see Mr. Rex Holland for me?"
+
+"Certainly," said Frank, and went back to his desk deep in thought.
+
+It was four o'clock to the minute when Jasper Cole passed through the
+one open door of the bank at which the porter stood ready to close. He
+was well, but neatly, dressed, and had hooked to his wrist a thin
+snakewood cane attached to a crook handle.
+
+He saw Frank across the counter and smiled, displaying two rows of even,
+white teeth.
+
+"Hello, Jasper!" said Frank easily, extending his hand. "How is uncle?"
+
+"He is very well indeed," replied the other. "Of course he is very
+worried about things, but then I think he is always worried about
+something or other."
+
+"Anything in particular?" asked Frank interestedly.
+
+Jasper shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You know him much better than I; you were with him longer. He is
+getting so horribly suspicious of people, and sees a spy or an enemy in
+every strange face. That is usually a bad sign, but I think he has been
+a little overwrought lately."
+
+He spoke easily; his voice was low and modulated with the faintest
+suggestion of a drawl, which was especially irritating to Frank, who
+secretly despised the Oxford product, though he admitted--since he was a
+very well-balanced and on the whole good-humored young man--his dislike
+was unreasonable.
+
+"I hear you have come to audit the accounts," said Frank, leaning on the
+counter and opening his gold cigarette case.
+
+"Hardly that," drawled Jasper.
+
+He reached out his hand and selected a cigarette.
+
+"I just want to sort out a few things. By the way, your uncle had a
+letter from a friend of yours."
+
+"Mine?"
+
+"A Rex Holland," said the other.
+
+"He is hardly a friend of mine; in fact, he is rather an infernal
+nuisance," said Frank. "I went down to Knightsbridge to see him to-day,
+and he was out. What has Mr. Holland to say?"
+
+"Oh, he is interested in some sort of charity, and he is starting a
+guinea collection. I forget what the charity was."
+
+"Why do you call him a friend of mine?" asked Frank, eying the other
+keenly.
+
+Jasper Cole was halfway to the manager's office and turned.
+
+"A little joke," he said. "I had heard you mention the gentleman. I have
+no other reason for supposing he was a friend of yours."
+
+"Oh, by the way, Cole," said Frank suddenly, "were you in town last
+night?"
+
+Jasper Cole shot a swift glance at him.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Were you near Victoria Docks?"
+
+"What a question to ask!" said the other, with his inscrutable smile,
+and, turning abruptly, walked in to the waiting Mr. Brandon.
+
+Frank finished work at five-thirty that night and left Jasper Cole and a
+junior clerk to the congenial task of checking the securities. At nine
+o'clock the clerk went home, leaving Jasper alone in the bank. Mr.
+Brandon, the manager, was a bachelor and occupied a flat above the bank
+premises. From time to time he strode in, his big pipe in the corner of
+his mouth. The last of these occasions was when Jasper Cole had replaced
+the last ledger in Mr. Minute's private safe.
+
+"Half past eleven," said the manager disapprovingly, "and you have had
+no dinner."
+
+"I can afford to miss a dinner," laughed the other.
+
+"Lucky man," said the manager.
+
+Jasper Cole passed out into the street and called a passing taxi to the
+curb.
+
+"Charing Cross Station," he said.
+
+He dismissed the cab in the station courtyard, and after a while walked
+back to the Strand and hailed another.
+
+"Victoria Dock Road," he said in a low voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JOHN MINUTE'S LEGACY
+
+
+La Rochefoucauld has said that prudence and love are inconsistent. May
+Nuttall, who had never explored the philosophies of La Rochefoucauld,
+had nevertheless seen that quotation in the birthday book of an
+acquaintance, and the saying had made a great impression upon her. She
+was twenty-one years of age, at which age girls are most impressionable
+and are little influenced by the workings of pure reason. They are
+prepared to take their philosophies ready-made, and not disinclined to
+accept from others certain rigid standards by which they measure their
+own elastic temperaments.
+
+Frank Merrill was at once a comfort and the cause of a certain
+half-ashamed resentment, since she was of the age which resents
+dependence. The woman who spends any appreciable time in the discussion
+with herself as to whether she does or does not love a man can only have
+her doubts set at rest by the discovery of somebody whom she loves
+better. She liked Frank, and liked him well enough to accept the little
+ring which marked the beginning of a new relationship which was not
+exactly an engagement, yet brought to her friendship a glamour which it
+had never before possessed.
+
+She liked him well enough to want his love. She loved him little enough
+to find the prospect of an early marriage alarming. That she did not
+understand herself was not remarkable. Twenty-one has not the experience
+by which the complexities of twenty-one may be straightened out and made
+visible.
+
+She sat at breakfast, puzzling the matter out, and was a little
+disturbed and even distressed to find, in contrasting the men, that of
+the two she had a warmer and a deeper feeling for Jasper Cole. Her alarm
+was due to the recollection of one of Frank's warnings, almost
+prophetic, it seemed to her now:
+
+"That man has a fascination which I would be the last to deny. I find
+myself liking him, though my instinct tells me he is the worst enemy I
+have in the world."
+
+If her attitude toward Frank was difficult to define, more remarkable
+was her attitude of mind toward Jasper Cole. There was something
+sinister--no, that was not the word--something "frightening" about him.
+He had a magnetism, an aura of personal power, which seemed to paralyze
+the will of any who came into conflict with him.
+
+She remembered how often she had gone to the big library at Weald Lodge
+with the firm intention of "having it out with Jasper." Sometimes it was
+a question of domestic economy into which he had obtruded his
+views--when she was sixteen she was practically housekeeper to her
+adopted uncle--perhaps it was a matter of carriage arrangement. Once it
+had been much more serious, for after she had fixed up to go with a
+merry picnic party to the downs, Jasper, in her uncle's absence and on
+his authority, had firmly but gently forbidden her attendance. Was it an
+accident that Frank Merrill was one of the party, and that he was coming
+down from London for an afternoon's fun?
+
+In this case, as in every other, Jasper had his way. He even convinced
+her that his view was right and hers was wrong. He had pooh-poohed on
+this occasion all suggestion that it was the presence of Frank Merrill
+which had induced him to exercise the veto which his extraordinary
+position gave to him. According to his version, it had been the
+inclusion in the party of two ladies whose names were famous in the
+theatrical world which had raised his delicate gorge.
+
+May thought of this particular incident as she sat at breakfast, and
+with a feeling of exasperation she realized that whenever Jasper had set
+his foot down he had never been short of a plausible reason for opposing
+her.
+
+For one thing, however, she gave him credit. Never once had he spoken
+depreciatingly of Frank.
+
+She wondered what business brought Jasper to such an unsavory
+neighborhood as that in which she had seen him. She had all a woman's
+curiosity without a woman's suspicions, and, strangely enough, she did
+not associate his presence in this terrible neighborhood or his
+mysterious comings and goings with anything discreditable to himself.
+She thought it was a little eccentric in him, and wondered whether he,
+too, was running a "little mission" of his own, but dismissed that idea
+since she had received no confirmation of the theory from the people
+with whom she came into contact in that neighborhood.
+
+She was halfway through her breakfast when the telephone bell rang, and
+she rose from the table and crossed to the wall. At the first word from
+the caller she recognized him.
+
+"Why, uncle!" she said. "Whatever are you doing in town?"
+
+The voice of John Minute bellowed through the receiver:
+
+"I've an important engagement. Will you lunch with me at one-thirty at
+the Savoy?"
+
+He scarcely waited for her to accept the invitation before he hung up
+his receiver.
+
+
+The commissioner of police replaced the book which he had taken from the
+shelf at the side of his desk, swung round in his chair, and smiled
+quizzically at the perturbed and irascible visitor.
+
+The man who sat at the other side of the desk might have been
+fifty-five. He was of middle height, and was dressed in a somewhat
+violent check suit, the fit of which advertised the skill of the great
+tailor who had ably fashioned so fine a creation from so unlovely a
+pattern.
+
+He wore a low collar which would have displayed a massive neck but for
+the fact that a glaring purple cravat and a diamond as big as a hazelnut
+directed the observer's attention elsewhere. The face was an unusual
+one. Strong to a point of coarseness, the bulbous nose, the thick,
+irregular lips, the massive chin all spoke of the hard life which John
+Minute had spent. His eyes were blue and cold, his hair a thick and
+unruly mop of gray. At a distance he conveyed a curious illusion of
+refinement. Nearer at hand, his pink face repelled one by its crudities.
+He reminded the commissioner of a piece of scene painting that pleased
+from the gallery and disappointed from the boxes.
+
+"You see, Mr. Minute," said Sir George suavely, "we are rather limited
+in our opportunities and in our powers. Personally, I should be most
+happy to help you, not only because it is my business to help everybody,
+but because you were so kind to my boy in South Africa; the letters of
+introduction you gave to him were most helpful."
+
+The commissioner's son had been on a hunting trip through Rhodesia and
+Barotseland, and a chance meeting at a dinner party with the Rhodesian
+millionaire had produced these letters.
+
+"But," continued the official, with a little gesture of despair,
+"Scotland Yard has its limitations. We cannot investigate the cause of
+intangible fears. If you are threatened we can help you, but the mere
+fact that you fancy there is come sort of vague danger would not justify
+our taking any action."
+
+John Minute hitched about in his chair.
+
+"What are the police for?" he asked impatiently. "I have enemies, Sir
+George. I took a quiet little place in the country, just outside
+Eastbourne, to get away from London, and all sorts of new people are
+prying round us. There was a new parson called the other day for a
+subscription to some boy scouts' movement or other. He has been hanging
+round my place for a month, and lives at a cottage near Polegate. Why
+should he have come to Eastbourne?"
+
+"On a holiday trip?" suggested the commissioner.
+
+"Bah!" said John Minute contemptuously. "There's some other reason.
+I've had him watched. He goes every day to visit a woman at a hotel--a
+confederate. They're never seen in public together. Then there's a
+peddler, one of those fellows who sell glass and repair windows; nobody
+knows anything about him. He doesn't do enough business to keep a fly
+alive. He's always hanging round Weald Lodge. Then there's a Miss
+Paines, who says she's a landscape gardener, and wants to lay out the
+grounds in some newfangled way. I sent her packing about her business,
+but she hasn't left the neighborhood."
+
+"Have you reported the matter to the local police?" asked the
+commissioner.
+
+Minute nodded.
+
+"And they know nothing suspicious about them?"
+
+"Nothing!" said Mr. Minute briefly.
+
+"Then," said the other, smiling, "there is probably nothing known
+against them, and they are quite innocent people trying to get a
+living. After all, Mr. Minute, a man who is as rich as you are must
+expect to attract a number of people, each trying to secure some of your
+wealth in a more or less legitimate way. I suspect nothing more
+remarkable than this has happened."
+
+He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped, a sudden frown on his
+face.
+
+"I hate to suggest that anybody knows any more than we, but as you are
+so worried I will put you in touch with a man who will probably relieve
+your anxiety."
+
+Minute looked up.
+
+"A police officer?" he asked.
+
+Sir George shook his head.
+
+"No, this is a private detective. He can do things for you which we
+cannot. Have you ever heard of Saul Arthur Mann? I see you haven't. Saul
+Arthur Mann," said the commissioner, "has been a good friend of ours,
+and possibly in recommending him to you I may be a good friend to both
+of you. He is 'The Man Who Knows.'"
+
+"'The Man Who Knows,'" repeated Mr. Minute dubiously. "What does he
+know?"
+
+"I'll show you," said the commissioner. He went to the telephone, gave a
+number, and while he was waiting for the call to be put through he
+asked: "What is the name of your boy-scout parson?"
+
+"The Reverend Vincent Lock," replied Mr. Minute.
+
+"I suppose you don't know the name of your glass peddler?"
+
+Minute shook his head.
+
+"They call him 'Waxy' in the village," he said.
+
+"And the lady's name is Miss Paines, I think?" asked the commissioner,
+jotting down the names as he repeated them. "Well, we shall--Hello! Is
+that Saul Arthur Mann? This is Sir George Fuller. Connect me with Mr.
+Mann, will you?"
+
+He waited a second, and then continued:
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Mann? I want to ask you something. Will you note these
+three names? The Reverend Vincent Lock, a peddling glazier who is known
+as 'Waxy,' and a Miss Paines. Have you got them? I wish you would let me
+know something about them."
+
+Mr. Minute rose.
+
+"Perhaps you'll let me know, Sir George--" he began, holding out his
+hand.
+
+"Don't go yet," replied the commissioner, waving him to his chair again.
+"You will obtain all the information you want in a few minutes."
+
+"But surely he must make inquiries," said the other, surprised.
+
+Sir George shook his head.
+
+"The curious thing about Saul Arthur Mann is that he never has to make
+inquiries. That is why he is called 'The Man Who Knows.' He is one of
+the most remarkable people in the world of criminal investigation," he
+went on. "We tried to induce him to come to Scotland Yard. I am not so
+sure that the government would have paid him his price. At any rate, he
+saved me any embarrassment by refusing point-blank."
+
+The telephone bell rang at that moment, and Sir George lifted the
+receiver. He took a pencil and wrote rapidly on his pad, and when he had
+finished he said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver.
+
+"Here is your information, Mr. Minute," he said. "The Reverend Vincent
+Lock, curate in a very poor neighborhood near Manchester, interested in
+the boy scouts' movement. His brother, George Henry Locke, has had some
+domestic trouble, his wife running away from him. She is now staying at
+the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, and is visited every day by her
+brother-in-law, who is endeavoring to induce her to return to her home.
+That disposes of the reverend gentleman and his confederate. Miss Paines
+is a genuine landscape gardener, has been the plaintiff in two
+breach-of-promise cases, one of which came to the court. There is no
+doubt," the commissioner went on reading the paper, "that her _modus
+operandi_ is to get elderly gentlemen to propose marriage and then to
+commence her action. That disposes of Miss Paines, and you now know why
+she is worrying you. Our friend 'Waxy' has another name--Thomas
+Cobbler--and he has been three times convicted of larceny."
+
+The commissioner looked up with a grim little smile.
+
+"I shall have something to say to our own record department for failing
+to trace 'Waxy,'" he said, and then resumed his reading.
+
+"And that is everything! It disposes of our three," he said. "I will see
+that 'Waxy' does not annoy you any more."
+
+"But how the dickens--" began Mr. Minute. "How the dickens does this
+fellow find out in so short a time?"
+
+The commissioner shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He just knows," he said.
+
+He took leave of his visitor at the door.
+
+"If you are bothered any more," he said, "I should strongly advise you
+to go to Saul Arthur Mann. I don't know what your real trouble is, and
+you haven't told me exactly why you should fear an attack of any kind.
+You won't have to tell Mr. Mann," he said with a little twinkle in his
+eye.
+
+"Why not?" asked the other suspiciously.
+
+"Because he will know," said the commissioner.
+
+"The devil he will!" growled John Minute, and stumped down the broad
+stairs on to the Embankment, a greatly mystified man. He would have gone
+off to seek an interview with this strange individual there and then,
+for his curiosity was piqued and he had also a little apprehension, one
+which, in his impatient way, he desired should be allayed, but he
+remembered that he had asked May to lunch with him, and he was already
+five minutes late.
+
+He found the girl in the broad vestibule, waiting for him, and greeted
+her affectionately.
+
+Whatever may be said of John Minute that is not wholly to his credit, it
+cannot be said that he lacked sincerity.
+
+There are people in Rhodesia who speak of him without love. They
+describe him as the greatest land thief that ever rode a Zeedersburg
+coach from Port Charter to Salisbury to register land that he had
+obtained by trickery. They tell stories of those wonderful coach drives
+of his with relays of twelve mules waiting every ten miles. They speak
+of his gambling propensities, of ten-thousand-acre farms that changed
+hands at the turn of a card, and there are stories that are less
+printable. When M'Lupi, a little Mashona chief, found gold in '92, and
+refused to locate the reef, it was John Minute who staked him out and
+lit a grass fire on his chest until he spoke.
+
+Many of the stories are probably exaggerated, but all Rhodesia agrees
+that John Minute robbed impartially friend and foe. The confidant of
+Lo'Ben and the Company alike, he betrayed both, and on that terrible day
+when it was a toss of a coin whether the concession seekers would be
+butchered in Lo'Ben's kraal, John Minute escaped with the only
+available span of mules and left his comrades to their fate.
+
+Yet he had big, generous traits, and could on occasions be a tender and
+a kindly friend. He had married when a young man, and had taken his wife
+into the wilds.
+
+There was a story that she had met a handsome young trader and had
+eloped with him, that John Minute had chased them over three hundred
+miles of hostile country from Victoria Falls to Charter, from Charter to
+Marandalas, from Marandalas to Massikassi, and had arrived in Biera so
+close upon their trail that he had seen the ship which carried them to
+the Cape steaming down the river.
+
+He had never married again. Report said that the woman had died of
+malaria. A more popular version of the story was that John Minute had
+relentlessly followed his erring wife to Pieter Maritzburg and had shot
+her and had thereupon served seven years on the breakwater for his sin.
+
+About a man who is rich, powerful, and wholly unpopular, hated by the
+majority, and feared by all, legends grow as quickly as toadstools on a
+marshy moor. Some were half true, some wholly apocryphal, deliberate,
+and malicious inventions. True or false, John Minute ignored them all,
+denying nothing, explaining nothing, and even refusing to take action
+against a Cape Town weekly which dealt with his career in a spirit of
+unpardonable frankness.
+
+There was only one person in the world whom he loved more than the girl
+whose hand he held as they went down to the cheeriest restaurant in
+London.
+
+"I have had a queer interview," he said in his gruff, quick way, "I have
+been to see the police."
+
+"Oh, uncle!" she said reproachfully.
+
+He jerked his shoulder impatiently.
+
+"My dear, you don't know," he said. "I have got all sorts of people
+who--"
+
+He stopped short.
+
+"What was there remarkable in the interview? she asked, after he had
+ordered the lunch.
+
+"Have you ever heard," he asked, "of Saul Arthur Mann?"
+
+"Saul Arthur Mann?" she repeated, "I seem to know that name. Mann, Mann!
+Where have I heard it?"
+
+"Well," said he, with that fierce and fleeting little smile which rarely
+lit his face for a second, "if you don't know him he knows you; he knows
+everybody."
+
+"Oh, I remember! He is 'The Man Who Knows!'"
+
+It was his turn to be astonished.
+
+"Where in the world have you heard of him?"
+
+Briefly she retailed her experience, and when she came to describe the
+omniscient Mr. Mann--"A crank," growled Mr. Minute. "I was hoping there
+was something in it."
+
+"Surely, uncle, there must be something in it," said the girl seriously.
+"A man of the standing of the chief commissioner would not speak about
+him as Sir George did unless he had very excellent reason."
+
+"Tell me some more about what you saw," he said. "I seem to remember the
+report of the inquest. The dead man was unknown and has not been
+identified."
+
+She described, as well as she could remember, her meeting with the
+knowledgable Mr. Mann. She had to be tactful because she wished to tell
+the story without betraying the fact that she had been with Frank. But
+she might have saved herself the trouble, because when she was halfway
+through the narrative he interrupted her.
+
+"I gather you were not by yourself," he grumbled. "Master Frank was
+somewhere handy, I suppose?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I met him quite by accident," she said demurely.
+
+"Naturally," said John Minute.
+
+"Oh, uncle, and there was a man whom Frank knew! You probably know
+him--Constable Wiseman."
+
+John Minute unfolded his napkin, stirred his soup, and grunted.
+
+"Wiseman is a stupid ass," he said briefly. "The mere fact that he was
+mixed up in the affair is sufficient explanation as to why the dead man
+remains unknown. I know Constable Wiseman very well," he said. "He has
+summoned me twice--once for doing a little pistol-shooting in the garden
+just as an object lesson to all tramps, and once--confound him!--for a
+smoking chimney. Oh, yes, I know Constable Wiseman."
+
+Apparently the thought of Constable Wiseman filled his mind through two
+courses, for he did not speak until he set his fish knife and fork
+together and muttered something about a "silly, meddling jackass!"
+
+He was very silent throughout the meal, his mind being divided between
+two subjects. Uppermost, though of least importance, was the personality
+of Saul Arthur Mann. Him he mentally viewed with suspicion and
+apprehension. It was an irritation even to suggest that there might be
+secret places in his own life which could be flooded with the light of
+this man's knowledge, and he resolved to beard "The Man Who Knows" in
+his den that afternoon and challenge him by inference to produce all the
+information he had concerning his past.
+
+There was much which was public property. It was John Minute's boast
+that his life was a book which might be read, but in his inmost heart he
+knew of one dark place which baffled the outside world. He brought
+himself from the mental rehearsal of his interview to what was, after
+all, the first and more important business.
+
+"May," he said suddenly, "have you thought any more about what I asked
+you?"
+
+She made no attempt to fence with the question.
+
+"You mean Jasper Cole?"
+
+He nodded, and for the moment she made no reply, and sat with eyes
+downcast, tracing a little figure upon the tablecloth with her finger
+tip.
+
+"The truth is, uncle," she said at last, "I am not keen on marriage at
+all just yet, and you are sufficiently acquainted with human nature to
+know that anything which savors of coercion will not make me predisposed
+toward Mr. Cole."
+
+"I suppose the real truth is," he said gruffly, "that you are in love
+with Frank?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"That is just what the real truth is not," she said. "I like Frank very
+much. He is a dear, bright, sunny boy."
+
+Mr. Minute grunted.
+
+"Oh, yes, he is!" the girl went on. "But I am not in love with
+him--really."
+
+"I suppose you are not influenced by the fact that he is my--heir," he
+said, and eyed her keenly.
+
+She met his glance steadily.
+
+"If you were not the nicest man I know," she smiled, "I should be very
+offended. Of course, I don't care whether Frank is rich or poor. You
+have provided too well for me for mercenary considerations to weigh at
+all with me."
+
+John Minute grunted again.
+
+"I am quite serious about Jasper."
+
+"Why are you so keen on Jasper?" she asked.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"I know him," he said shortly. "He has proved to me in a hundred ways
+that he is a reliable, decent lad. He has become almost indispensable to
+me," he continued with his quick little laugh, "and that Frank has never
+been. Oh, yes, Frank's all right in his way, but he's crazy on things
+which cut no ice with me. Too fond of sports, too fond of loafing," he
+growled.
+
+The girl laughed again.
+
+"I can give you a little information on one point," John Minute went on,
+"and it was to tell you this that I brought you here to-day. I am a very
+rich man. You know that. I have made millions and lost them, but I have
+still enough to satisfy my heirs. I am leaving you two hundred thousand
+pounds in my will."
+
+She looked at him with a startled exclamation.
+
+"Uncle!" she said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"It is not a quarter of my fortune," he went on quickly, "but it will
+make you comfortable after I am gone."
+
+He rested his elbows on the table and looked at her searchingly.
+
+"You are an heiress," he said, "for, whatever you did, I should never
+change my mind. Oh, I know you will do nothing of which I should
+disapprove, but there is the fact. If you marry Frank you would still
+get your two hundred thousand, though I should bitterly regret your
+marriage. No, my girl," he said more kindly than was his wont, "I only
+ask you this--that whatever else you do, you will not make your choice
+until the next fortnight has expired."
+
+With a jerk of his head, John Minute summoned a waiter and paid his
+bill.
+
+No more was said until he handed her into her cab in the courtyard.
+
+"I shall be in town next week," he said.
+
+He watched the cab disappear in the stream of traffic which flowed along
+the Strand, and, calling another taxi, he drove to the address with
+which the chief commissioner had furnished him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MAN WHO KNEW
+
+
+Backwell Street, in the City of London, contains one palatial building
+which at one time was the headquarters of the South American Stock
+Exchange, a superior bucket shop which on its failure had claimed its
+fifty thousand victims. The ornate gold lettering on its great
+plate-glass window had long since been removed, and the big brass plate
+which announced to the passerby that here sat the spider weaving his
+golden web for the multitude of flies, had been replaced by a modest,
+oxidized scroll bearing the simple legend:
+
+
+                           SAUL ARTHUR MANN
+
+
+What Mr. Mann's business was few people knew. He kept an army of clerks.
+He had the largest collection of file cabinets possessed by any three
+business houses in the City, he had an enormous post bag, and both he
+and his clerks kept regulation business hours. His beginnings, however,
+were well known.
+
+He had been a stockbroker's clerk, with a passion for collecting
+clippings mainly dealing with political, geographical, and
+meteorological conditions obtaining in those areas wherein the great
+Joint Stock Companies of the earth were engaged in operations. He had
+gradually built up a service of correspondence all over the world.
+
+The first news of labor trouble on a gold field came to him, and his
+brokers indicated his view upon the situation in that particular area by
+"bearing" the stock of the affected company.
+
+If his Liverpool agents suddenly descended upon the Cotton Exchange and
+began buying May cotton in enormous quantities, the initiated knew that
+Saul Arthur Mann had been awakened from his slumbers by a telegram
+describing storm havoc in the cotton belt of the United States of
+America. When a curious blight fell upon the coffee plantations of
+Ceylon, a six-hundred-word cablegram describing the habits and
+characteristics of the minute insect which caused the blight reached
+Saul Arthur Mann at two o'clock in the afternoon, and by three o'clock
+the price of coffee had jumped.
+
+When, on another occasion, Senor Almarez, the President of Cacura, had
+thrown a glass of wine in the face of his brother-in-law, Captain
+Vassalaro, Saul Arthur Mann had jumped into the market and beaten down
+all Cacura stocks, which were fairly high as a result of excellent crops
+and secure government. He "beared" them because he knew that Vassalaro
+was a dead shot, and that the inevitable duel would deprive Cacura of
+the best president it had had for twenty years, and that the way would
+be open for the election of Sebastian Romelez, who had behind him a
+certain group of German financiers who desired to exploit the country in
+their own peculiar fashion.
+
+He probably built up a very considerable fortune, and it is certain
+that he extended the range of his inquiries until the making of money by
+means of his curious information bureau became only a secondary
+consideration. He had a marvelous memory, which was supplemented by his
+system of filing. He would go to work patiently for months, and spend
+sums of money out of all proportion to the value of the information, to
+discover, for example, the reason why a district officer in some
+far-away spot in India had been obliged to return to England before his
+tour of duty had ended.
+
+His thirst for facts was insatiable; his grasp of the politics of every
+country in the world, and his extraordinarily accurate information
+concerning the personality of all those who directed those policies, was
+the basis upon which he was able to build up theories of amazing
+accuracy.
+
+A man of simple tastes, who lived in a rambling old house in Streatham,
+his work, his hobby, and his very life was his bureau. He had assisted
+the police times without number, and had been so fascinated by the
+success of this branch of his investigations that he had started a new
+criminal record, which had been of the greatest help to the police and
+had piqued Scotland Yard to emulation.
+
+John Minute, descending from his cab at the door, looked up at the
+imposing facia with a frown. Entering the broad vestibule, he handed his
+card to the waiting attendant and took a seat in a well-furnished
+waiting room. Five minutes later he was ushered into the presence of
+"The Man Who Knew." Mr. Mann, a comical little figure at a very large
+writing table, jumped up and went halfway across the big room to meet
+his visitor. He beamed through his big spectacles as he waved John
+Minute to a deep armchair.
+
+"The chief commissioner sent you, didn't he?" he said, pointing an
+accusing finger at the visitor. "I know he did, because he called me up
+this morning and asked me about three people who, I happen to know, have
+been bothering you. Now what can I do for you, Mr. Minute?"
+
+John Minute stretched his legs and thrust his hands defiantly into his
+trousers' pockets.
+
+"You can tell me all you know about me," he said.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann trotted back to his big table and seated himself.
+
+"I haven't time to tell you as much," he said breezily, "but I'll give
+you a few outlines."
+
+He pressed a bell at his desk, opened a big index, and ran his finger
+down.
+
+"Bring me 8874," he said impressively to the clerk who made his
+appearance.
+
+To John Minute's surprise, it was not a bulky dossier with which the
+attendant returned, but a neat little book soberly bound in gray.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Mann, wriggling himself comfortably back in his chair,
+"I will read a few things to you."
+
+He held up the book.
+
+"There are no names in this book, my friend; not a single, blessed
+name. Nobody knows who 8874 is except myself."
+
+He patted the big index affectionately.
+
+"The name is there. When I leave this office it will be behind three
+depths of steel; when I die it will be burned with me."
+
+He opened the little book again and read. He read steadily for a quarter
+of an hour in a monotonous, singsong voice, and John Minute slowly sat
+himself erect and listened with tense face and narrow eyelids to the
+record. He did not interrupt until the other had finished.
+
+"Half of your facts are lies," he said harshly. "Some of them are just
+common gossip; some are purely imaginary."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann closed the book and shook his head.
+
+"Everything here," he said, touching the book, "is true. It may not be
+the truth as you want it known, but it is the truth. If I thought there
+was a single fact in there which was not true my _raison d'etre_ would
+be lost. That is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
+Mr. Minute," he went on, and the good-natured little face was pink with
+annoyance.
+
+"Suppose it were the truth," interrupted John Minute, "what price would
+you ask for that record and such documents as you say you have to prove
+its truth?"
+
+The other leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands meditatively.
+
+"How much do you think you are worth, Mr. Minute?"
+
+"You ought to know," said the other with a sneer.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann inclined his head.
+
+"At the present price of securities, I should say about one million two
+hundred and seventy thousand pounds," he said, and John Minute opened
+his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Near enough," he reluctantly admitted.
+
+"Well," the little man continued, "if you multiply that by fifty and you
+bring all that money into my office and place it on that table in
+ten-thousand-pound notes, you could not buy that little book or the
+records which support it."
+
+He jumped up.
+
+"I am afraid I am keeping you, Mr. Minute."
+
+"You are not keeping me," said the other roughly. "Before I go I want to
+know what use you are going to make of your knowledge."
+
+The little man spread out his hands in deprecation.
+
+"What use? You have seen the use to which I have put it. I have told you
+what no other living soul will know."
+
+"How do you know I am John Minute?" asked the visitor quickly.
+
+"Some twenty-seven photographs of you are included in the folder which
+contains your record, Mr. Minute," said the little investigator calmly.
+"You see, you are quite a prominent personage--one of the two hundred
+and four really rich men in England. I am not likely to mistake you for
+anybody else, and, more than this, your history is so interesting a one
+that naturally I know much more about you than I should if you had lived
+the dull and placid life of a city merchant."
+
+"Tell me one thing before I go," asked Minute. "Where is the person you
+refer to as 'X'?"
+
+Saul Arthur Mann smiled and inclined his head never so slightly.
+
+"That is a question which you have no right to ask," he said. "It is
+information which is available to the police or to any authorized person
+who wishes to get into touch with 'X.' I might add," he went on, "that
+there is much more I could tell you, if it were not that it would
+involve persons with whom you are acquainted."
+
+John Minute left the bureau looking a little older, a little paler than
+when he had entered. He drove to his club with one thought in his mind,
+and that thought revolved about the identity and the whereabouts of the
+person referred to in the little man's record as "X."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+INTRODUCING MR. REX HOLLAND
+
+
+Mr. Rex Holland stepped out of his new car, and, standing back a pace,
+surveyed his recent acquisition with a dispassionate eye.
+
+"I think she will do, Feltham," he said.
+
+The chauffeur touched his cap and grinned broadly.
+
+"She did it in thirty-eight minutes, sir; not bad for a twenty-mile
+run--half of it through London."
+
+"Not bad," agreed Mr. Holland, slowly stripping his gloves.
+
+The car was drawn up at the entrance to the country cottage which a
+lavish expenditure of money had converted into a bijou palace.
+
+He still lingered, and the chauffeur, feeling that some encouragement to
+conversation was called for, ventured the view that a car ought to be a
+good one if one spent eight hundred pounds on it.
+
+"Everything that is good costs money," said Mr. Rex Holland
+sententiously, and then continued: "Correct me if I am mistaken, but as
+we came through Putney did I not see you nod to the driver of another
+car?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"When I engaged you," Mr. Holland went on in his even voice, "you told
+me that you had just arrived from Australia and knew nobody in England;
+I think my advertisement made it clear that I wanted a man who fulfilled
+these conditions?"
+
+"Quite right, sir. I was as much surprised as you; the driver of that
+car was a fellow who traveled over to the old country on the same boat
+as me. It's rather rum that he should have got the same kind of job."
+
+Mr. Holland smiled quietly.
+
+"I hope his employer is not as eccentric as I and that he pays his
+servant on my scale."
+
+With this shot he unlocked and passed through the door of the cottage.
+
+Feltham drove his car to the garage which had been built at the back of
+the house, and, once free from observation, lit his pipe, and, seating
+himself on a box, drew from his pocket a little card which he perused
+with unusual care.
+
+He read:
+
+
+     One: To act as chauffeur and valet. Two: To receive ten pounds a
+     week and expenses. Three: To make no friends or acquaintances.
+     Four: Never under any circumstances to discuss my employer, his
+     habits, or his business. Five: Never under any circumstances to go
+     farther eastward into London than is represented by a line drawn
+     from the Marble Arch to Victoria Station. Six: Never to recognize
+     my employer if I see him in the street in company with any other
+     person.
+
+
+The chauffeur folded the card and scratched his chin reflectively.
+
+"Eccentricity," he said.
+
+It was a nice five-syllable word, and its employment was a comfort to
+this perturbed Australian. He cleaned his face and hands, and went into
+the tiny kitchen to prepare his master's dinner.
+
+Mr. Holland's house was a remarkable one. It was filled with every form
+of labor-saving device which the ingenuity of man could devise. The
+furniture, if luxurious, was not in any great quantity. Vacuum tubes
+were to be found in every room, and by the attachment of hose and nozzle
+and the pressure of a switch each room could be dusted in a few minutes.
+From the kitchen, at the back of the cottage, to the dining room ran two
+endless belts electrically controlled, which presently carried to the
+table the very simple meal which his cook-chauffeur had prepared.
+
+The remnants of dinner were cleared away, the chauffeur dismissed to his
+quarters, a little one-roomed building separated from the cottage, and
+the switch was turned over which heated the automatic coffee percolator
+which stood on the sideboard.
+
+Mr. Holland sat reading, his feet resting on a chair.
+
+He only interrupted his study long enough to draw off the coffee into a
+little white cup and to switch off the current.
+
+He sat until the little silver clock on the mantelshelf struck twelve,
+and then he placed a card in the book to mark the place, closed it, and
+rose leisurely.
+
+He slid back a panel in the wall, disclosing the steel door of a safe.
+This he opened with a key which he selected from a bunch. From the
+interior of the safe he removed a cedarwood box, also locked. He threw
+back the lid and removed one by one three check books and a pair of
+gloves of some thin, transparent fabric. These were obviously to guard
+against tell-tale finger prints.
+
+He carefully pulled them on and buttoned them. Next he detached three
+checks, one from each book, and, taking a fountain pen from his pocket,
+he began filling in the blank spaces. He wrote slowly, almost
+laboriously, and he wrote without a copy. There are very few forgers in
+the criminal records who have ever accomplished the feat of imitating a
+man's signature from memory. Mr. Rex Holland was singularly exceptional
+to all precedent, for from the date to the flourishing signature these
+checks might have been written and signed by John Minute.
+
+There were the same fantastic "E's," the same stiff-tailed "Y's." Even
+John Minute might have been in doubt whether he wrote the "Eight hundred
+and fifty" which appeared on one slip.
+
+Mr. Holland surveyed his handiwork without emotion.
+
+He waited for the ink to dry before he folded the checks and put them in
+his pocket. This was John Minute's way, for the millionaire never used
+blotting paper for some reason, probably not unconnected with an event
+in his earlier career. When the checks were in his pocket, Mr. Holland
+removed his gloves, replaced them with the check books in the box and in
+the safe, locked the steel door, drew the sliding panel, and went to
+bed.
+
+Early the next morning he summoned his servant.
+
+"Take the car back to town," he said. "I am going back by train. Meet me
+at the Holland Park tube at two o'clock; I have a little job for you
+which will earn you five hundred."
+
+"That's my job, sir," said the dazed man when he recovered from the
+shock.
+
+
+Frank sometimes accompanied May to the East End, and on the day Mr. Rex
+Holland returned to London he called for the girl at her flat to drive
+her to Canning Town.
+
+"You can come in and have some tea," she invited.
+
+"You're a luxurious beggar, May," he said, glancing round approvingly at
+the prettily furnished sitting room. "Contrast this with my humble abode
+in Bayswater."
+
+"I don't know your humble abode in Bayswater," she laughed. "But why on
+earth you should elect to live at Bayswater I can't imagine."
+
+He sipped his tea with a twinkle in his eye.
+
+"Guess what income the heir of the Minute millions enjoys?" he asked
+ironically. "No, I'll save you the agony of guessing. I earn seven
+pounds a week at the bank, and that is the whole of my income."
+
+"But doesn't uncle--" she began in surprise.
+
+"Not a bob," replied Frank vulgarly; "not half a bob."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I know what you're going to say; he treats you generously, I know. He
+treats me justly. Between generosity and justice, give me generosity all
+the time. I will tell you something else. He pays Jasper Cole a thousand
+a year! It's very curious, isn't it?"
+
+She leaned over and patted his arm.
+
+"Poor boy," she said sympathetically, "that doesn't make it any
+easier--Jasper, I mean."
+
+Frank indulged in a little grimace, and said:
+
+"By the way, I saw the mysterious Jasper this morning--coming out of the
+Waterloo Station looking more mysterious than ever. What particular
+business has he in the country?"
+
+She shook her head and rose.
+
+"I know as little about Jasper as you," she answered.
+
+She turned and looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"Frank," she said, "I am rather worried about you and Jasper. I am
+worried because your uncle does not seem to take the same view of Jasper
+as you take. It is not a very heroic position for either of you, and it
+is rather hateful for me."
+
+Frank looked at her with a quizzical smile.
+
+"Why hateful for you?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I would like to tell you everything, but that would not be fair."
+
+"To whom?" Frank asked quickly.
+
+"To you, your uncle, or to Jasper."
+
+He came nearer to her.
+
+"Have you so warm a feeling for Jasper?" he asked.
+
+"I have no warm feeling for anybody," she said candidly. "Oh, don't
+look so glum, Frank! I suppose I am slow to develop, but you cannot
+expect me to have any very decided views yet a while."
+
+Frank smiled ruefully.
+
+"That is my one big trouble, dear," he said quietly; "bigger than
+anything else in the world."
+
+She stood with her hand on the door, hesitating, a look of perplexity
+upon her beautiful face. She was of the tall, slender type, a girl
+slowly ripening into womanhood. She might have been described as cold
+and a little repressive, but the truth was that she was as yet untouched
+by the fires of passion, and for all her twenty-one years she was still
+something of the healthy schoolgirl, with a schoolgirl's impatience of
+sentiment.
+
+"I am the last to spin a hard-luck yarn," Frank went on, "but I have not
+had the best of everything, dear. I started wrong with uncle. He never
+liked my father nor any of my father's family. His treatment of his
+wife was infamous. My poor governor was one of those easy-going fellows
+who was always in trouble, and it was always John Minute's job to get
+him out. I don't like talking about him--" He hesitated.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I know," she said sympathetically.
+
+"Father was not the rotter that Uncle John thinks he was. He had his
+good points. He was careless, and he drank much more than was good for
+him, but all the scrapes he fell into were due to this latter failing."
+
+The girl knew the story of Doctor Merrill. It had been sketched briefly
+but vividly by John Minute. She knew also some of those scrapes which
+had involved Doctor Merrill's ruin, material and moral.
+
+"Frank," she said, "if I can help you in any way I would do it."
+
+"You can help me absolutely," said the young man quietly, "by marrying
+me."
+
+She gasped.
+
+"When?" she asked, startled.
+
+"Now, next week; at any rate, soon." He smiled, and, crossing to her,
+caught her hand in his.
+
+"May, dear, you know I love you. You know there is nothing in the world
+I would not do for you, no sacrifice that I would not make."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You must give me some time to think about this, Frank," she said.
+
+"Don't go," he begged. "You cannot know how urgent is my need of you.
+Uncle John has told you a great deal about me, but has he told you
+this--that my only hope of independence--independence of his millions
+and his influence--you cannot know how widespread or pernicious that
+influence is," he said, with an unaccustomed passion in his voice, "lies
+in my marriage before my twenty-fourth birthday?"
+
+"Frank!"
+
+"It is true. I cannot tell you any more, but John Minute knows. If I am
+married within the next ten days"--he snapped his fingers--"that for
+his millions. I am independent of his legacies, independent of his
+patronage."
+
+She stared at him, open-eyed.
+
+"You never told me this before."
+
+He shook his head a little despairingly.
+
+"There are some things I can never tell you, May, and some things which
+you can never know till we are married. I only ask you to trust me."
+
+"But suppose," she faltered, "you are not married within ten days, what
+will happen?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"'I am John's liege man of life and limb and of earthly regard,'" he
+quoted flippantly. "I shall wait hopefully for the only release that can
+come, the release which his death will bring. I hate saying that, for
+there is something about him that I like enormously, but that is the
+truth, and, May," he said, still holding her hand and looking earnestly
+into her face, "I don't want to feel like that about John Minute. I
+don't want to look forward to his end. I want to meet him without any
+sense of dependence. I don't want to be looking all the time for signs
+of decay and decrepitude, and hail each illness he may have with a
+feeling of pleasant anticipation. It is beastly of me to talk like this,
+I know, but if you were in my position--if you knew all that I know--you
+would understand."
+
+The girl's mind was in a ferment. An ordinary meeting had developed so
+tumultuously that she had lost her command of the situation. A hundred
+thoughts ran riot through her mind. She felt as though she were an
+arbitrator deciding between two men, of both of whom she was fond, and,
+even at that moment, there intruded into her mental vision a picture of
+Jasper Cole, with his pale, intellectual face and his grave, dark eyes.
+
+"I must think about this," she said again. "I don't think you had better
+come down to the mission with me."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Perhaps you're right," he said.
+
+Gently she released her hand and left him.
+
+For her that day was one of supreme mental perturbation. What was the
+extraordinary reason which compelled his marriage by his twenty-fourth
+birthday? She remembered how John Minute had insisted that her thoughts
+about marriage should be at least postponed for the next fortnight. Why
+had John Minute suddenly sprung this story of her legacy upon her? For
+the first time in her life she began to regard her uncle with suspicion.
+
+For Frank the day did not develop without its sensations. The Piccadilly
+branch of the London and Western Counties Bank occupies commodious
+premises, but Frank had never been granted the use of a private office.
+His big desk was in a corner remote from the counter, surrounded on
+three sides by a screen which was half glass and half teak paneling.
+From where he sat he could secure a view of the counter, a necessary
+provision, since he was occasionally called upon to identify the bearers
+of checks.
+
+He returned a little before three o'clock in the afternoon, and Mr.
+Brandon, the manager, came hurriedly from his little sanctum at the rear
+of the premises and beckoned Frank into his office.
+
+"You've taken an awful long time for lunch," he complained.
+
+"I'm sorry," said Frank. "I met Miss Nuttall, and the time flew."
+
+"Did you see Holland the other day?" the manager interrupted.
+
+"I didn't see him on the day you sent me," replied Frank, "but I saw him
+on the following day."
+
+"Is he a friend of your uncle's?"
+
+"I don't think so. Why do you ask?"
+
+The manager took up three checks which lay on the table, and Frank
+examined them. One was for eight hundred and fifty pounds six shillings,
+and was drawn upon the Liverpool Cotton Bank, one was for forty-one
+thousand one hundred and forty pounds, and was drawn upon the Bank of
+England, and the other was for seven thousand nine hundred and
+ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings. They were all signed "John
+Minute," and they were all made payable to "Rex Holland, esquire," and
+were crossed.
+
+Now John Minute had a very curious practice of splitting up payments so
+that they covered the three banking houses at which his money was
+deposited. The check for seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
+pounds fourteen shillings was drawn upon the London and Western Counties
+Bank, and that would have afforded the manager some clew even if he had
+not been well acquainted with John Minute's eccentricity.
+
+"Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings
+from Mr. Minute's balance," said the manager, "leaves exactly fifty
+thousand pounds."
+
+Mr. Brandon shook his head in despair at the unbusinesslike methods of
+his patron.
+
+"Does he know your uncle?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Rex Holland."
+
+Frank frowned in an effort of memory.
+
+"I don't remember my uncle ever speaking of him, and yet, now I come to
+think of it, one of the first checks he put into the bank was on my
+uncle's account. Yes, now I remember," he exclaimed. "He opened the
+account on a letter of introduction which was signed by Mr. Minute. I
+thought at the time that they had probably had business dealings
+together, and as uncle never encourages the discussion of bank affairs
+outside of the bank, I have never mentioned it to him."
+
+Again Mr. Brandon shook his head in doubt.
+
+"I must say, Mr. Merrill," he said, "I don't like these mysterious
+depositors. What is he like in appearance?"
+
+"Rather a tall, youngish man, exquisitely dressed."
+
+"Clean shaven?"
+
+"No, he has a closely trimmed black beard, though he cannot be much more
+than twenty-eight. In fact, when I saw him for the first time the face
+was familiar to me and I had an impression of having seen him before. I
+think he was wearing a gold-rimmed eyeglass when he came on the first
+occasion, but I have never met him in the street, and he hardly moves in
+my humble social circle." Frank smiled.
+
+"I suppose it is all right," said the manager dubiously; "but, anyway,
+I'll see him to-morrow. As a precautionary measure we might get in touch
+with your uncle, though I know he'll raise Cain if we bother him about
+his account."
+
+"He will certainly raise Cain if you get in touch with him to-day,"
+smiled Frank, "for he is due to leave by the two-twenty this afternoon
+for Paris."
+
+It wanted five minutes to the hour at which the bank closed when a clerk
+came through the swing door and laid a letter upon the counter which was
+taken in to Mr. Brandon, who came into the office immediately and
+crossed to where Frank sat.
+
+"Look at this," he said.
+
+Frank took the letter and read it. It was addressed to the manager, and
+ran:
+
+
+     DEAR SIR: I am leaving for Paris to-night to join my partner, Mr.
+     Minute. I shall be very glad, therefore, if you will arrange to
+     cash the inclosed check.      Yours faithfully,
+                                                 REX A. HOLLAND.
+
+
+The "inclosed check" was for fifty-five thousand pounds and was within
+five thousand pounds of the amount standing to Mr. Holland's account in
+the bank. There was a postscript to the letter:
+
+
+     You will accept this, my receipt, for the sum, and hand it to my
+     messenger, Sergeant George Graylin, of the corps of
+     commissionaires, and this form of receipt will serve to indemnify
+     you against loss in the event of mishap.
+
+
+The manager walked to the counter.
+
+"Who gave you this letter?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Holland, sir," said the man.
+
+"Where is Mr. Holland?" asked Frank.
+
+The sergeant shook his head.
+
+"At his flat. My instructions were to take this letter to the bank and
+bring back the money."
+
+The manager was in a quandary. It was a regular transaction, and it was
+by no means unusual to pay out money in this way. It was only the
+largeness of the sum which made him hesitate. He disappeared into his
+office and came back with two bundles of notes which he had taken from
+the safe. He counted them over, placed them in a sealed envelope, and
+received from the sergeant his receipt.
+
+When the man had gone Brandon wiped his forehead.
+
+"Phew!" he said. "I don't like this way of doing business very much, and
+I should be very glad indeed to be transferred back to the head office."
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth when a bell rang violently. The
+front doors of the bank had been closed with the departure of the
+commissioner, and one of the junior clerks, balancing up his day book,
+dropped his pen, and, at a sign from his chief, walking to the door,
+pulled back the bolts and admitted--John Minute.
+
+Frank stared at him in astonishment.
+
+"Hello, uncle," he said. "I wish you had come a few minutes before. I
+thought you were in Paris."
+
+"The wire calling me to Paris was a fake," growled John Minute. "I wired
+for confirmation, and discovered my Paris people had not sent me any
+message. I only got the wire just before the train started. I have been
+spending all the afternoon getting on to the phone to Paris to untangle
+the muddle. Why did you wish I was here five minutes before?"
+
+"Because," said Frank, "we have just paid out fifty-five thousand pounds
+to your friend, Mr. Holland."
+
+"My friend?" John Minute stared from the manager to Frank and from Frank
+to the manager, who suddenly experienced a sinking feeling which
+accompanies disaster.
+
+"What do you mean by 'my friend'?" asked John Minute. "I have never
+heard of the man before."
+
+"Didn't you give Mr. Holland checks amounting to fifty-five thousand
+pounds this morning?" gasped the manager, turning suddenly pale.
+
+"Certainly not!" roared John Minute. "Why the devil should I give him
+checks? I have never heard of the man."
+
+The manager grasped the counter for support.
+
+He explained the situation in a few halting words, and led the way to
+his office, Frank accompanying him.
+
+John Minute examined the checks.
+
+"That is my writing," he said. "I could swear to it myself, and yet I
+never wrote those checks or signed them. Did you note the
+commissionaire's number?"
+
+"As it happens I jotted it down," said Frank.
+
+By this time the manager was on the phone to the police. At seven
+o'clock that night the commissionaire was discovered. He had been
+employed, he said, by a Mr. Holland, whom he described as a slimmish
+man, clean shaven, and by no means answering to the description which
+Frank had given.
+
+"I have lived for a long time in Australia," said the commissionaire,
+"and he spoke like an Australian. In fact, when I mentioned certain
+places I had been to he told me he knew them."
+
+The police further discovered that the Knightsbridge flat had been
+taken, furnished, three months before by Mr. Rex Holland, the
+negotiations having been by letter. Mr. Holland's agent had assumed
+responsibility for the flat, and Mr. Holland's agent was easily
+discoverable in a clerk in the employment of a well-known firm of
+surveyors and auctioneers, who had also received his commission by
+letter.
+
+When the police searched the flat they found only one thing which helped
+them in their investigations. The hall porter said that, as often as
+not, the flat was untenanted, and only occasionally, when he was off
+duty, had Mr. Holland put in an appearance, and he only knew this from
+statements which had been made by other tenants.
+
+"It comes to this," said John Minute grimly; "that nobody has seen Mr.
+Holland but you, Frank."
+
+Frank stiffened.
+
+"I am not suggesting that you are in the swindle," said Minute gruffly.
+"As likely as not, the man you saw was not Mr. Holland, and it is
+probably the work of a gang, but I am going to find out who this man is,
+if I have to spend twice as much as I have lost."
+
+The police were not encouraging.
+
+Detective Inspector Nash, from Scotland Yard, who had handled some of
+the biggest cases of bank swindles, held out no hope of the money being
+recovered.
+
+"In theory you can get back the notes if you have their numbers," he
+said, "but in practice it is almost impossible to recover them, because
+it is quite easy to change even notes for five hundred pounds, and
+probably you will find these in circulation in a week or two."
+
+His speculation proved to be correct, for on the third day after the
+crime three of the missing notes made a curious appearance.
+
+"Ready-Money Minute," true to his nickname, was in the habit of
+balancing his accounts as between bank and bank by cash payments. He had
+made it a practice for all his dividends to be paid in actual cash, and
+these were sent to the Piccadilly branch of the London and Western
+Counties Bank in bulk. After a payment of a very large sum on account of
+certain dividends accruing from his South African investments, three of
+the missing notes were discovered in the bank itself.
+
+John Minute, apprised by telegram of the fact, said nothing; for the
+money had been paid in by his confidential secretary, Jasper Cole, and
+there was excellent reason why he did not desire to emphasize the fact.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SERGEANT SMITH CALLS
+
+
+The big library of Weald Lodge was brilliantly lighted and nobody had
+pulled down the blinds. So that it was possible for any man who troubled
+to jump the low stone wall which ran by the road and push a way through
+the damp shrubbery to see all that was happening in the room.
+
+Weald Lodge stands between Eastbourne and Wilmington, and in the winter
+months the curious, represented by youthful holiday makers, are few and
+far between. Constable Wiseman, of the Eastbourne constabulary,
+certainly was not curious. He paced his slow, moist way and merely
+noted, in passing, the fact that the flood of light reflected on the
+little patch of lawn at the side of the house.
+
+The hour was nine o'clock on a June evening, and officially it was only
+the hour of sunset, though lowering rain clouds had so darkened the
+world that night had closed down upon the weald, had blotted out its
+pleasant villages and had hidden the green downs.
+
+He continued to the end of his beat and met his impatient superior.
+
+"Everything's all right, sergeant," he reported; "only old Minute's
+lights are blazing away and his windows are open."
+
+"Better go and warn him," said the sergeant, pulling his bicycle into
+position for mounting.
+
+He had his foot on the treadle, but hesitated.
+
+"I'd warn him myself, but I don't think he'd be glad to see me."
+
+He grinned to himself, then remarked: "Something queer about
+Minute--eh?"
+
+"There is, indeed," agreed Constable Wiseman heartily. His beat was a
+lonely one, and he was a very bored man. If by agreement with his
+officer he could induce that loquacious gentleman to talk for a quarter
+of an hour, so much dull time might be passed. The fact that Sergeant
+Smith was loquacious indicated, too, that he had been drinking and was
+ready to quarrel with anybody.
+
+"Come under the shelter of that wall," said the sergeant, and pushed his
+machine to the protection afforded by the side wall of a house.
+
+It is possible that the sergeant was anxious to impress upon his
+subordinate's mind a point of view which might be useful to himself one
+day.
+
+"Minute is a dangerous old man," he said.
+
+"Don't I know it?" said Constable Wiseman, with the recollection of
+sundry "reportings" and inquiries.
+
+"You've got to remember that, Wiseman," the sergeant went on; "and by
+'dangerous' I mean that he's the sort of old fellow that would ask a
+constable to come in to have a drink and then report him."
+
+"Good Lord!" said the shocked Mr. Wiseman at this revelation of the
+blackest treachery.
+
+Sergeant Smith nodded.
+
+"That's the sort of man he is," he said. "I knew him years ago--at
+least, I've seen him. I was in Matabeleland with him, and I tell you
+there's nothing too mean for 'Ready-Money Minute'--curse him!"
+
+"I'll bet you have had a terrible life, sergeant," encouraged Constable
+Wiseman.
+
+The other laughed bitterly.
+
+"I have," he said.
+
+Sergeant Smith's acquaintance with Eastbourne was a short one. He had
+only been four years in the town, and had, so rumor ran, owed his
+promotion to influence. What that influence was none could say. It had
+been suggested that John Minute himself had secured him his sergeant's
+stripes, but that was a theory which was pooh-poohed by people who knew
+that the sergeant had little that was good to say of his supposed
+patron.
+
+Constable Wiseman, a profound thinker and a secret reader of sensational
+detective stories, had at one time made a report against John Minute for
+some technical offense, and had made it in fear and trembling,
+expecting his sergeant promptly to squash this attempt to persecute his
+patron; but, to his surprise and delight, Sergeant Smith had furthered
+his efforts and had helped to secure the conviction which involved a
+fine.
+
+"You go on and finish your beat, Constable," said the sergeant suddenly,
+"and I'll ride up to the old devil's house and see what's doing."
+
+He mounted his bicycle and trundled up the hill, dismounting before
+Weald Lodge, and propped his bicycle against the wall. He looked for a
+long time toward the open French windows, and then, jumping the wall,
+made his way slowly across the lawn, avoiding the gravel path which
+would betray his presence. He got to a point opposite the window which
+commanded a full view of the room.
+
+Though the window was open, there was a fire in the grate. To the
+sergeant's satisfaction, John Minute was alone. He sat in a deep
+armchair in his favorite attitude, his hands pushed into his pockets,
+his head upon his chest. He heard the sergeant's foot upon the gravel
+and stood up as the rain-drenched figure appeared at the open window.
+
+"Oh, it is you, is it?" growled John Minute. "What do you want?"
+
+"Alone?" said the sergeant, and he spoke as one to his equal.
+
+"Come in!"
+
+Mr. Minute's library had been furnished by the Artistic Furniture
+Company, of Eastbourne, which had branches at Hastings, Bexhill,
+Brighton, and--it was claimed--at London. The furniture was of dark oak,
+busily carved. There was a large bookcase which half covered one wall.
+This was the "library," and it was filled with books of uniform binding
+which occupied the shelves. The books had been supplied by a great
+bookseller of London, and included--at Mr. Minute's suggestion--"The
+Hundred Best Books," "Books That Have Helped Me," "The Encyclopedia
+Brillonica," and twenty bound volumes of a certain weekly periodical of
+international reputation. John Minute had no literary leanings.
+
+The sergeant hesitated, wiped his heavy boots on the sodden mat outside
+the window, and walked into the room.
+
+"You are pretty cozy, John," he said.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Minute, without enthusiasm.
+
+"I thought I'd look you up. My constable reported your windows were
+open, and I felt it my duty to come along and warn you--there are
+thieves about, John."
+
+"I know of one," said John Minute, looking at the other steadily. "Your
+constable, as you call him, is, I presume, that thick-headed jackass,
+Wiseman!"
+
+"Got him first time," said the sergeant, removing his waterproof cape.
+"I don't often trouble you, but somehow I had a feeling I'd like to see
+you to-night. My constable revived old memories, John."
+
+"Unpleasant for you, I hope," said John Minute ungraciously.
+
+"There's a nice little gold farm four hundred miles north of Gwelo,"
+said Sergeant Smith meditatively.
+
+"And a nice little breakwater half a mile south of Cape Town," said John
+Minute, "where the Cape government keeps highwaymen who hold up the
+Salisbury coach and rob the mails."
+
+Sergeant Smith smiled.
+
+"You will have your little joke," he said; "but I might remind you that
+they have plenty of accommodation on the breakwater, John. They even
+take care of men who have stolen land and murdered natives."
+
+"What do you want?" asked John Minute again.
+
+The other grinned.
+
+"Just a pleasant little friendly visit," he explained. "I haven't looked
+you up for twelve months. It is a hard life, this police work, even when
+you have got two or three pounds a week from a private source to add to
+your pay. It is nothing like the work we have in the Matabele mounted
+police, eh, John? But, Lord," he said, looking into the fire
+thoughtfully, "when I think how I stood up in the attorney's office at
+Salisbury and took my solemn oath that old John Gedding had transferred
+his Saibach gold claims to you on his death bed; when I think of the
+amount of perjury--me a uniformed servant of the British South African
+Company, and, so to speak, an official of the law--I blush for myself."
+
+"Do you ever blush for yourself when you think of how you and your pals
+held up Hoffman's store, shot Hoffman, and took his swag?" asked John
+Minute. "I'd give a lot of money to see you blush, Crawley; and now, for
+about the fourteenth time, what do you want? If it is money, you can't
+have it. If it is more promotion, you are not fit to have it. If it is a
+word of advice--"
+
+The other stopped him with a motion of his hand.
+
+"I can't afford to have your advice, John," he said. "All I know is that
+you promised me my fair share over those Saibach claims. It is a paying
+mine now. They tell me that its capital is two millions."
+
+"You were well paid," said John Minute shortly.
+
+"Five hundred pounds isn't much for the surrender of your soul's
+salvation," said Sergeant Smith.
+
+He slowly replaced his cape on his broad shoulders and walked to the
+window.
+
+"Listen here, John Minute!" All the good nature had gone out of his
+voice, and it was Trooper Henry Crawley, the lawbreaker, who spoke. "You
+are not going to satisfy me much longer with a few pounds a week. You
+have got to do the right thing by me, or I am going to blow."
+
+"Let me know when your blowing starts," said John Minute, "and I'll send
+you a bowl of soup to cool."
+
+"You're funny, but you don't amuse me," were the last words of the
+sergeant as he walked into the rain.
+
+As before, he avoided the drive and jumped over the low wall on to the
+road, and was glad that he had done so, for a motor car swung into the
+drive and pulled up before the dark doorway of the house. He was over
+the wall again in an instant, and crossing with swift, noiseless steps
+in the direction of the car. He got as close as he could and listened.
+
+Two of the voices he recognized. The third, that of a man, was a
+stranger. He heard this third person called "inspector," and wondered
+who was the guest. His curiosity was not to be satisfied, for by the
+time he had reached the view place on the lawn which overlooked the
+library John Minute had closed the windows and pulled down the blinds.
+
+The visitors to Weald Lodge were three--Jasper Cole, May Nuttall, and a
+stout, middle-aged man of slow speech but of authoritative tone. This
+was Inspector Nash, of Scotland Yard, who was in charge of the
+investigations into the forgeries. Minute received them in the library.
+He knew the inspector of old.
+
+Jasper had brought May down in response to the telegraphed instructions
+which John Minute had sent him.
+
+"What's the news?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I think I have found your Mr. Holland," said the inspector.
+
+He took a fat case from his inside pocket, opened it, and extracted a
+snapshot photograph. It represented a big motor car, and, standing by
+its bonnet, a little man in chauffeur's uniform.
+
+"This is the fellow who called himself 'Rex Holland' and who sent the
+commissionaire on his errand. The photograph came into my possession as
+the result of an accident. It was discovered in the flat and had
+evidently fallen out of the man's pocket. I made inquiries and found
+that it was taken by a small photographer in Putney, and that the man
+had called for the photographs about ten o'clock in the morning of the
+same day that he sent the commissionaire on his errand. He was probably
+examining them during the period of his waiting in the flat, and one of
+them slipped to the ground. At any rate, the commissionaire has no doubt
+that this was the man."
+
+"Do you seriously suggest that this fellow is Rex Holland?"
+
+The inspector shook his head.
+
+"I think he is merely one of the gang," he said. "I don't believe you
+will ever find Rex Holland, for each of the gang took the name in turn
+to take the part, according to the circumstances in which they found
+themselves. I have been unable to identify him, except that he went by
+the name of Feltham and was an Australian. That was the name he gave to
+the photographer with whom he talked. You see, the photograph was taken
+in High Street, Putney. The only clew we have is that he has been seen
+several times on the Portsmouth Road, driving one or two cars in which
+was a man who is probably the nearest approach to Rex Holland we shall
+get.
+
+"I put my men on to make further investigations, and the Haslemere
+police told them that it is believed that the car was the property of a
+gentleman who lived in a lockup cottage some distance from
+Haslemere--evidently rather a swagger affair, because its owner had an
+electric cable and telephone wires laid in, and the cottage was altered
+and renovated twelve months ago at a very considerable cost. I shall be
+able to tell you more about that to-morrow."
+
+They spent the rest of the evening discussing the crime, and the girl
+was a silent listener. It was not until very late that John Minute was
+able to give her his undivided attention.
+
+"I asked you to come down," he said, "because I am getting a little
+worried about you."
+
+"Worried about me, uncle?" she said, in surprise.
+
+He nodded.
+
+The two men had gone off to Jasper's study, and she was alone with her
+uncle.
+
+"When I lunched with you the other day at the Savoy," he said, "I spoke
+to you about your marriage, and I asked you to defer any action for a
+fortnight."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I was coming down to see you on that very matter," she said. "Uncle,
+won't you tell me why you want me to delay my marriage for a fortnight,
+and why you think I am going to get married at all?"
+
+He did not answer immediately, but paced up and down the room.
+
+"May," he said, "you have heard a great deal about me which is not very
+flattering. I lived a very rough life in South Africa, and I only had
+one friend in the world in whom I had the slightest confidence. That
+friend was your father. He stood by me in my bad times. He never worried
+me when I was flush of money, never denied me when I was broke. Whenever
+he helped me, he was content with what reward I offered him. There was
+no 'fifty-fifty' with Bill Nuttall. He was a man who had no ambition, no
+avarice--the whitest man I have ever met. What I have not told you about
+him is this: He and I were equal partners in a mine, the Gwelo Deep. He
+had great faith in the mine, and I had none at all. I knew it to be one
+of those properties you sometimes get in Rhodesia, all pocket and
+outcrop. Anyway, we floated a company."
+
+He stopped and chuckled as at an amusing memory.
+
+"The pound shares were worth a little less than sixpence until a
+fortnight ago."
+
+He looked at her with one of those swift, penetrating glances, as though
+he were anxious to discover her thoughts.
+
+"A fortnight ago," he said, "I learned from my agent in Bulawayo that a
+reef had been struck on an adjoining mine, and that the reef runs
+through our property. If that is true, you will be a rich woman in your
+own right, apart from the money you get from me. I cannot tell whether
+it is true until I have heard from the engineers, who are now examining
+the property, and I cannot know that for a fortnight. May, you are a
+dear girl," he said, and laid his hand on her arm, "and I have looked
+after you as though you were my own daughter. It is a happiness to me
+to know that you will be a very rich woman, because your father's shares
+was the only property you inherited from him. There is, however, one
+curious thing about it that I cannot understand."
+
+He walked over to the bureau, unlocked a drawer, and took out a letter.
+
+"My agent says that he advised me two years ago that this reef existed,
+and wondered why I had never given him authority to bore. I have no
+recollection of his ever having told me anything of the sort. Now you
+know the position," he said, putting back the letter and closing the
+drawer with a bang.
+
+"You want me to wait for a better match," said the girl.
+
+He inclined his head.
+
+"I don't want you to get married for a fortnight," he repeated.
+
+May Nuttall went to bed that night full of doubt and more than a little
+unhappy. The story that John Minute told about her father--was it true?
+Was it a story invented on the spur of the moment to counter Frank's
+plan? She thought of Frank and his almost solemn entreaty. There had
+been no mistaking his earnestness or his sincerity. If he would only
+take her into his confidence--and yet she recognized and was surprised
+at the revelation that she did not want that confidence. She wanted to
+help Frank very badly, and it was not the romance of the situation which
+appealed to her. There was a large sense of duty, something of that
+mother sense which every woman possesses, which tempted her to the
+sacrifice. Yet was it a sacrifice?
+
+She debated that question half the night, tossing from side to side. She
+could not sleep, and, rising before the dawn, slipped into her dressing
+gown and went to the window. The rain had ceased, the clouds had broken
+and stood in black bars against the silver light of dawn. She felt
+unaccountably hungry, and after a second's hesitation she opened the
+door and went down the broad stairs to the hall.
+
+To reach the kitchen she had to pass her uncle's door, and she noticed
+that it was ajar. She thought possibly he had gone to bed and left the
+light on, and her hand was on the knob to investigate when she heard a
+voice and drew back hurriedly. It was the voice of Jasper Cole.
+
+"I have been into the books very carefully with Mackensen, the
+accountant, and there seems no doubt," he said.
+
+"You think--" demanded her uncle.
+
+"I am certain," answered Jasper, in his even, passionless tone. "The
+fraud has been worked by Frank. He had access to the books. He was the
+only person who saw Rex Holland; he was the only official at the bank
+who could possibly falsify the entries and at the same time hide his
+trail."
+
+The girl turned cold and for a moment swayed as though she would faint.
+She clutched the jamb of the door for support and waited.
+
+"I am half inclined to your belief," said John Minute slowly. "It is
+awful to believe that Frank is a forger, as his father was--awful!"
+
+"It is pretty ghastly," said Jasper's voice, "but it is true."
+
+The girl flung open the door and stood in the doorway.
+
+"It is a lie!" she cried wrathfully. "A horrible lie--and you know it is
+a lie, Jasper!"
+
+Without another word, she turned, slamming the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FRANK MERRILL AT THE ALTAR
+
+
+Frank Merrill stepped through the swing doors of the London and Western
+Counties Bank with a light heart and a smile in his eyes, and went
+straight to his chief's office.
+
+"I shall want you to let me go out this afternoon for an hour," he said.
+
+Brandon looked up wearily. He had not been without his sleepless
+moments, and the strain of the forgery and the audit which followed was
+telling heavily upon him. He nodded a silent agreement, and Frank went
+back to his desk, humming a tune.
+
+He had every reason to be happy, for in his pocket was the special
+license which, for a consideration, had been granted to him, and which
+empowered him to marry the girl whose amazing telegram had arrived that
+morning while he was at breakfast. It had contained only four words:
+
+
+     Marry you to-day. MAY.
+
+
+He could not guess what extraordinary circumstances had induced her to
+take so definite a view, but he was a very contented and happy young
+man.
+
+She was to arrive in London soon after twelve, and he had arranged to
+meet her at the station and take her to lunch. Perhaps then she would
+explain the reason for her action. He numbered among his acquaintances
+the rector of a suburban church, who had agreed to perform the ceremony
+and to provide the necessary witnesses.
+
+It was a beaming young man that met the girl, but the smile left his
+face when he saw how wan and haggard she was.
+
+"Take me somewhere," she said quickly.
+
+"Are you ill?" he asked anxiously.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+They had the Pall Mall Restaurant to themselves, for it was too early
+for the regular lunchers.
+
+"Now tell me, dear," he said, catching her hands over the table, "to
+what do I owe this wonderful decision?"
+
+"I cannot tell you, Frank," she said breathlessly. "I don't want to
+think about it. All I know is that people have been beastly about you. I
+am going to do all I possibly can to make up for it."
+
+She was a little hysterical and very much overwrought, and he decided
+not to press the question, though her words puzzled him.
+
+"Where are you going to stay?" he asked.
+
+"I am staying at the Savoy," she replied. "What am I to do?"
+
+In as few words as possible he told her where the ceremony was to be
+performed, and the hour at which she must leave the hotel.
+
+"We will take the night train for the Continent," he said.
+
+"But your work, Frank?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Oh, blow work!" he cried hilariously. "I cannot think of work to-day."
+
+At two-fifteen he was waiting in the vestry for the girl's arrival,
+chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to
+be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman
+engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building,
+waiting to earn the guinea which they had been promised.
+
+The conversation was about nothing in particular--one of those empty,
+purposeless exchanges of banal thought and speech characteristic of such
+an occasion.
+
+At two-thirty Frank looked at his watch and walked out of the church to
+the end of the road. There was no sign of the girl. At two-forty-five he
+crossed to a providential tobacconist and telephoned to the Savoy and
+was told that the lady had left half an hour before.
+
+"She ought to be here very soon," he said to the priest. He was a little
+impatient, a little nervous, and terribly anxious.
+
+As the church clock struck three, the rector turned to him.
+
+"I am afraid I cannot marry you to-day, Mr. Merrill," he said.
+
+Frank was very pale.
+
+"Why not?" he asked quickly. "Miss Nuttall has probably been detained by
+the traffic or a burst tire. She will be here very shortly."
+
+The minister shook his head and hung up his white surplice in the
+cupboard.
+
+"The law of the land, my dear Mr. Merrill," he said, "does not allow
+weddings after three in the afternoon. You can come along to-morrow
+morning any time after eight."
+
+There was a tap at the door, and Frank swung round. It was not the girl,
+but a telegraph boy. He snatched the buff envelope from the lad's hand
+and tore it open. It read simply:
+
+
+     The wedding cannot take place.
+
+
+It was unsigned.
+
+At two-fifteen that afternoon May had passed through the vestibule of
+the hotel, and her foot was on the step of the taxicab when a hand fell
+upon her arm, and she turned in alarm to meet the searching eyes of
+Jasper Cole.
+
+"Where are you off to in such a hurry, May?"
+
+She flushed and drew her arm away with a decisive gesture.
+
+"I have nothing to say to you, Jasper," she said coldly. "After your
+horrible charge against Frank, I never want to speak to you again."
+
+He winced a little, then smiled.
+
+"At least you can be civil to an old friend," he said good-humoredly,
+"and tell me where you are off to in such a hurry."
+
+Should she tell him? A moment's indecision, and then she spoke.
+
+"I am going to marry Frank Merrill," she said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I thought as much. In that case, I am coming down to the church to
+make a scene."
+
+He said this with a smile on his lips; but there was no mistaking the
+resolution which showed in the thrust of his square jaw.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said. "Don't be absurd, Jasper. My mind is made
+up."
+
+"I mean," he said quietly, "that I have Mr. Minute's power of attorney
+to act for him, and Mr. Minute happens to be your legal guardian. You
+are, in point of fact, my dear May, more or less of a ward, and you
+cannot marry before you are twenty-one without your guardian's consent."
+
+"I shall be twenty-one next week," she said defiantly.
+
+"Then," smiled the other, "wait till next week before you marry. There
+is no very pressing hurry."
+
+"You forced this situation upon me," said the girl hotly, "and I think
+it is very horrid of you. I am going to marry Frank to-day."
+
+"Under those circumstances, I must come down and forbid the marriage;
+and when our parson asks if there is any just cause I shall step forward
+to the rails, gayly flourishing the power of attorney, and not even the
+most hardened parson could continue in the face of that legal
+instrument. It is a mandamus, a caveat, and all sorts of horrific
+things."
+
+"Why are you doing this?" she asked.
+
+"Because I have no desire that you shall marry a man who is certainly a
+forger, and possibly a murderer," said Jasper Cole calmly.
+
+"I won't listen to you!" she cried, and stepped into the waiting
+taxicab.
+
+Without a word, Jasper followed her.
+
+"You can't turn me out," he said, "and I know where you are going,
+anyway, because you were giving directions to the driver when I stood
+behind you. You had better let me go with you. I like the suburbs."
+
+She turned and faced him swiftly.
+
+"And Silvers Rents?" she asked.
+
+He went a shade paler.
+
+"What do you know about Silvers Rents?" he demanded, recovering himself
+with an effort.
+
+She did not reply.
+
+The taxicab was halfway to its destination before the girl spoke again:
+
+"Are you serious when you say you will forbid the marriage?"
+
+"Quite serious," he replied; "so much so that I shall bring in a
+policeman to witness my act."
+
+The girl was nearly in tears.
+
+"It is monstrous of you! Uncle wouldn't--"
+
+"Had you not better see your uncle?" he asked.
+
+Something told her that he would keep his word. She had a horror of
+scenes, and, worst of all, she feared the meeting of the two men under
+these circumstances. Suddenly she leaned forward and tapped the window,
+and the taxi slowed down.
+
+"Tell him to go back and call at the nearest telegraph office. I want to
+send a wire."
+
+"If it is to Mr. Frank Merrill," said Jasper smoothly, "you may save
+yourself the trouble. I have already wired."
+
+Frank came back to London in a pardonable fury. He drove straight to the
+hotel, only to learn that the girl had left again with her uncle. He
+looked at his watch. He had still some work to do at the bank, though he
+had little appetite for work.
+
+Yet it was to the bank he went. He threw a glance over the counter to
+the table and the chair where he had sat for so long and at which he was
+destined never to sit again, for as he was passing behind the counter
+Mr. Brandon met him.
+
+"Your uncle wishes to see you, Mr. Merrill," he said gravely.
+
+Frank hesitated, then walked into the office, closing the door behind
+him, and he noticed that Mr. Brandon did not attempt to follow.
+
+John Minute sat in the one easy chair and looked up heavily as Frank
+entered.
+
+"Sit down, Frank," he said. "I have a lot of things to ask you."
+
+"And I've one or two things to ask you, uncle," said Frank calmly.
+
+"If it is about May, you can save yourself the trouble," said the other.
+"If it is about Mr. Rex Holland, I can give you a little information."
+
+Frank looked at him steadily.
+
+"I don't quite get your meaning, sir," he said, "though I gather there
+is something offensive behind what you have said."
+
+John Minute twisted round in the chair and threw one leg over its padded
+arm.
+
+"Frank," he said, "I want you to be perfectly straight with me, and I'll
+be as perfectly straight with you."
+
+The young man made no reply.
+
+"Certain facts have been brought to my attention, which leave no doubt
+in my mind as to the identity of the alleged Mr. Rex Holland," said John
+Minute slowly. "I don't relish saying this, because I have liked you,
+Frank, though I have sometimes stood in your way and we have not seen
+eye to eye together. Now, I want you to come down to Eastbourne
+to-morrow and have a heart-to-heart talk with me."
+
+"What do you expect I can tell you?" asked Frank quietly.
+
+"I want you to tell me the truth. I expect you won't," said John Minute.
+
+A half smile played for a second upon Frank's lips.
+
+"At any rate," he said, "you are being straight with me. I don't know
+exactly what you are driving at, uncle, but I gather that it is
+something rather unpleasant, and that somewhere in the background there
+is hovering an accusation against me. From the fact that you have
+mentioned Mr. Rex Holland or the gang which went by that name, I suppose
+that you are suggesting that I am an accomplice of that gentleman."
+
+"I suggest more than that," said the other quickly. "I suggest that you
+are Rex Holland."
+
+Frank laughed aloud.
+
+"It is no laughing matter," said John Minute sternly.
+
+"From your point of view it is not," said Frank, "but from my point of
+view it has certain humorous aspects, and unfortunately I am cursed with
+a sense of humor. I hardly know how I can go into the matter here"--he
+looked round--"for even if this is the time, it is certainly not the
+place, and I think I'll accept your invitation and come down to Weald
+Lodge to-morrow night. I gather you don't want to travel down with a
+master criminal who might at any moment take your watch and chain."
+
+"I wish you would look at this matter more seriously, Frank," said John
+Minute earnestly. "I want to get to the truth, and any truth which
+exonerates you will be very welcome to me."
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"I will give you credit for that," he said. "You may expect me
+to-morrow. May I ask you as a personal favor that you will not discuss
+this matter with me in the presence of your admirable secretary? I have
+a feeling at the back of my mind that he is at the bottom of all this.
+Remember that he is as likely to know about Rex Holland as I.
+
+"There has been an audit at the bank," Frank went on, "and I am not so
+stupid that I don't understand what this has meant. There has also been
+a certain coldness in the attitude of Brandon, and I have intercepted
+suspicious and meaning glances from the clerks. I shall not be
+surprised, therefore, if you tell me that my books are not in order. But
+again I would point out to you that it is just as possible for Jasper,
+who has access to the bank at all hours of the day and night, to have
+altered them as it is for me.
+
+"I hasten to add," he said, with a smile, "that I don't accuse Jasper.
+He is such a machine, and I cannot imagine him capable of so much
+initiative as systematically to forge checks and falsify ledgers. I
+merely mention Jasper because I want to emphasize the injustice of
+putting any man under suspicion unless you have the strongest and most
+convincing proof of his guilt. To declare my innocence is unnecessary
+from my point of view, and probably from yours also; but I declare to
+you, Uncle John, that I know no more about this matter than you."
+
+He stood leaning on the desk and looking down at his uncle; and John
+Minute, with all his experience of men, and for all his suspicions, felt
+just a twinge of remorse. It was not to last long, however.
+
+"I shall expect you to-morrow," he said.
+
+Frank nodded, walked out of the room and out of the bank, and
+twenty-four pairs of speculative eyes followed him.
+
+A few hours later another curious scene was being enacted, this time
+near the town of East Grinstead. There is a lonely stretch of road
+across a heath, which is called, for some reason, Ashdown Forest. A car
+was drawn up on a patch of turf by the side of the heath. Its owner was
+sitting in a little clearing out of view of the road, sipping a cup of
+tea which his chauffeur had made. He finished this and watched his
+servant take the basket.
+
+"Come back to me when you have finished," he said.
+
+The man touched his hat and disappeared with the package, but returned
+again in a few minutes.
+
+"Sit down, Feltham," said Mr. Rex Holland. "I dare say you think it was
+rather strange of me to give you that little commission the other day,"
+said Mr. Holland, crossing his legs and leaning back against a tree.
+
+The chauffeur smiled uncomfortably.
+
+"Yes, sir, I did," he said shortly.
+
+"Were you satisfied with what I gave you?" asked the man.
+
+The chauffeur shuffled his feet uneasily.
+
+"Quite satisfied, sir," he said.
+
+"You seem a little distrait, Feltham; I mean a little upset about
+something. What is it?"
+
+The man coughed in embarrassed confusion.
+
+"Well, sir," he began, "the fact is, I don't like it."
+
+"You don't like what? The five hundred pounds I gave you?"
+
+"No, sir. It is not that, but it was a queer thing to ask me to
+do--pretend to be you and send a commissionaire to the bank for your
+money, and then get away out of London to a quiet little hole like
+Bilstead."
+
+"So you think it was queer?"
+
+The chauffeur nodded.
+
+"The fact is, sir," he blurted out, "I've seen the papers."
+
+The other nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"I presume you mean the newspapers. And what is there in the newspapers
+that interests you?"
+
+Mr. Holland took a gold case from his pocket, opened it languidly, and
+selected a cigarette. He was closing it when he caught the chauffeur's
+eye and tossed a cigarette to him.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the man.
+
+"What was it you didn't like?" asked Mr. Holland again, passing a match.
+
+"Well, sir, I've been in all sorts of queer places," said Feltham
+doggedly, as he puffed away at the cigarette, "but I've always managed
+to keep clear of anything--funny. Do you see what I mean?"
+
+"By funny I presume you don't mean comic," said Mr. Rex Holland
+cheerfully. "You mean dishonest, I suppose?"
+
+"That's right, sir, and there's no doubt that I have been in a swindle,
+and it's worrying me--that bank-forgery case. Why, I read my own
+description in the paper!"
+
+Beads of perspiration stood upon the little man's forehead, and there
+was a pathetic droop to his mouth.
+
+"That is a distinction which falls to few of us," said his employer
+suavely. "You ought to feel highly honored. And what are you going to do
+about it, Feltham?"
+
+The man looked to left and right as though seeking some friend in need
+who would step forth with ready-made advice.
+
+"The only thing I can do, sir," he said, "is to give myself up."
+
+"And give me up, too," said the other, with a little laugh. "Oh, no, my
+dear Feltham. Listen; I will tell you something. A few weeks ago I had a
+very promising valet chauffeur just like you. He was an admirable man,
+and he was also a foreigner. I believe he was a Swede. He came to me
+under exactly the same circumstances as you arrived, and he received
+exactly the same instructions as you have received, which unfortunately
+he did not carry out to the letter. I caught him pilfering from me--a
+few trinkets of no great value--and, instead of the foolish fellow
+repenting, he blurted out the one fact which I did not wish him to know,
+and incidentally which I did not wish anybody in the world to know.
+
+"He knew who I was. He had seen me in the West End and had discovered my
+identity. He even sought an interview with some one to whom it would
+have been inconvenient to have made known my--character. I promised to
+find him another job, but he had already decided upon changing and had
+cut out an advertisement from a newspaper. I parted friendly with him,
+wished him luck, and he went off to interview his possible employer,
+smoking one of my cigarettes just as you are smoking--and he threw it
+away, I have no doubt, just as you have thrown it away when it began to
+taste a little bitter."
+
+"Look here!" said the chauffeur, and scrambled to his feet. "If you try
+any monkey tricks with me--"
+
+Mr. Holland eyed him with interest.
+
+"If you try any monkey tricks with me," said the chauffeur thickly,
+"I'll--"
+
+He pitched forward on his face and lay still.
+
+Mr. Holland waited long enough to search his pockets, and then, stepping
+cautiously into the road, donned the chauffeur's cap and goggles and set
+his car running swiftly southward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A MURDER
+
+
+Constable Wiseman lived in the bosom of his admiring family in a small
+cottage on the Bexhill Road. That "my father was a policeman" was the
+proud boast of two small boys, a boast which entitled them to no small
+amount of respect, because P. C. Wiseman was not only honored in his own
+circle but throughout the village in which he dwelt.
+
+He was, in the first place, a town policeman, as distinct from a county
+policeman, though he wore the badge and uniform of the Sussex
+constabulary. It was felt that a town policeman had more in common with
+crime, had a vaster experience, and was in consequence a more helpful
+adviser than a man whose duties began and ended in the patrolling of
+country lanes and law-abiding villages where nothing more exciting than
+an occasional dog fight or a charge of poaching served to fill the
+hiatus of constabulary life.
+
+Constable Wiseman was looked upon as a shrewd fellow, a man to whom
+might be brought the delicate problems which occasionally perplexed and
+confused the bucolic mind. He had settled the vexed question as to
+whether a policeman could or could not enter a house where a man was
+beating his wife, and had decided that such a trespass could only be
+committed if the lady involved should utter piercing cries of "Murder!"
+
+He added significantly that the constable who was called upon must be
+the constable on duty, and not an ornament of the force who by accident
+was a resident in their midst.
+
+The problem of the straying chicken and the egg that is laid on alien
+property, the point of law involved in the question as to when a servant
+should give notice and the date from which her notice should count--all
+these matters came within Constable Wiseman's purview, and were solved
+to the satisfaction of all who brought their little obscurities for
+solution.
+
+But it was in his own domestic circle that Constable
+Wiseman--appropriately named, as all agreed--shone with an effulgence
+that was almost dazzling, and was a source of irritation to the male
+relatives on his wife's side, one of whom had unfortunately come within
+the grasp of the law over a matter of a snared rabbit and was in
+consequence predisposed to anarchy in so far as the abolition of law and
+order affected the police force.
+
+Constable Wiseman sat at tea one summer evening, and about the spotless
+white cloth which covered the table was grouped all that Constable
+Wiseman might legally call his. Tea was a function, and to the younger
+members of the family meant just tea and bread and butter. To Constable
+Wiseman it meant luxuries of a varied and costly nature. His taste
+ranged from rump steak to Yarmouth bloaters, and once he had introduced
+a foreign delicacy--foreign to the village, which had never known
+before the reason for their existence--sweetbreads.
+
+The conversation, which was well sustained by Mr. Wiseman, was usually
+of himself, his wife being content to punctuate his autobiography with
+such encouraging phrases as, "Dear, dear!" "Well, whatever next!" the
+children doing no more than ask in a whisper for more food. This they
+did at regular and frequent intervals, but because of their whispers
+they were supposed to be unheard.
+
+Constable Wiseman spoke about himself because he knew of nothing more
+interesting to talk about. His evening conversation usually took the
+form of a very full resume of his previous day's experience. He left the
+impression upon his wife--and glad enough she was to have such an
+impression--that Eastbourne was a well-conducted town mainly as a result
+of P. C. Wiseman's ceaseless and tireless efforts.
+
+"I never had a clew yet that I never follered to the bitter end," said
+the preening constable.
+
+"You remember when Raggett's orchard was robbed--who found the
+thieves?"
+
+"You did, of course; I'm sure you did," said Mrs. Wiseman, jigging her
+youngest on her knee, the youngest not having arrived at the age where
+he recognized the necessity for expressing his desires in whispers.
+
+"Who caught them three-card-trick men after the Lewes races last year?"
+went on Constable Wiseman passionately. "Who has had more summonses for
+smoking chimneys than any other man in the force? Some people," he
+added, as he rose heavily and took down his tunic, which hung on the
+wall--"some people would ask for promotion; but I'm perfectly satisfied.
+I'm not one of those ambitious sort. Why, I wouldn't know at all what to
+do with myself if they made me a sergeant."
+
+"You deserve it, anyway," said Mrs. Wiseman.
+
+"I don't deserve anything I don't want," said Mr. Wiseman loftily. "I've
+learned a few things, too, but I've never made use of what's come to me
+officially to get me pushed along. You'll hear something in a day or
+two," he said mysteriously, "and in high life, too, in a manner of
+speaking--that is, if you can call old Minute high life, which I very
+much doubt."
+
+"You don't say so!" said Mrs. Wiseman, appropriately amazed.
+
+Her husband nodded his head.
+
+"There's trouble up there," he said. "From certain information I've
+received, there has been a big row between young Mr. Merrill and the old
+man, and the C. I. D. people have been down about it. What's more," he
+said, "I could tell a thing or two. I've seen that boy look at the old
+man as though he'd like to kill him. You wouldn't believe it, would you,
+but I know, and it didn't happen so long ago either. He was always
+snubbing him when young Merrill was down here acting as his secretary,
+and as good as called him a fool in front of my face when I served him
+with that summons for having his lights up. You'll hear something one
+of these days."
+
+Constable Wiseman was an excellent prophet, vague as his prophecy was.
+
+He went out of the cottage to his duty in a complacent frame of mind,
+which was not unusual, for Constable Wiseman was nothing if not
+satisfied with his fate. His complacency continued until a little after
+seven o'clock that evening.
+
+It so happened that Constable Wiseman, no less than every other member
+of the force on duty that night, had much to think about, much that was
+at once exciting and absorbing. It had been whispered before the evening
+parade that Sergeant Smith was to leave the force. There was some talk
+of his being dismissed, but it was clear that he had been given the
+opportunity of resigning, for he was still doing duty, which would not
+have been the case had he been forcibly removed.
+
+Sergeant Smith's mien and attitude had confirmed the rumor. Nobody was
+surprised, since this dour officer had been in trouble before. Twice
+had he been before the deputy chief constable for neglect of, and being
+drunk while on, duty. On the earlier occasions he had had remarkable
+escapes. Some people talked of influence, but it is more likely that the
+man's record had helped him, for he was a first-class policeman with a
+nose for crime, absolutely fearless, and had, moreover, assisted in the
+capture of one or two very desperate criminals who had made their way to
+the south-coast town.
+
+His last offense, however, was too grave to overlook. His inspector,
+going the rounds, had missed him, and after a search he was discovered
+outside a public house. It is no great crime to be found outside a
+public house, particularly when an officer has a fairly extensive area
+to cover, and in this respect he was well within the limits of that
+area. But it must be explained that the reason the sergeant was outside
+the public house was because he had challenged a fellow carouser to
+fight, and at the moment he was discovered he was stripped to the waist
+and setting about his task with rare workmanlike skill.
+
+He was also drunk.
+
+To have retained his services thereafter would have been little less
+than a crying scandal. There is no doubt, however, that Sergeant Smith
+had made a desperate attempt to use the influence behind him, and use it
+to its fullest extent.
+
+He had had one stormy interview with John Minute, and had planned
+another. Constable Wiseman, patrolling the London Road, his mind filled
+with the great news, was suddenly confronted with the object of his
+thoughts. The sergeant rode up to where the constable was standing in a
+professional attitude at the corner of two roads, and jumped off with
+the manner of a man who has an object in view.
+
+"Wiseman," he said--and his voice was such as to suggest that he had
+been drinking again--"where will you be at ten o'clock to-night?"
+
+Constable Wiseman raised his eyes in thought.
+
+"At ten o'clock, Sergeant, I shall be opposite the gates of the
+cemetery."
+
+The sergeant looked round left and right.
+
+"I am going to see Mr. Minute on a matter of business," he said, "and
+you needn't mention the fact."
+
+"I keep myself to myself," began Constable Wiseman. "What I see with one
+eye goes out of the other, in the manner of speaking--"
+
+The sergeant nodded, stepped on to his bicycle again, turned it about,
+and went at full speed down the gentle incline toward Weald Lodge. He
+made no secret of his visit, but rode through the wide gates up the
+gravel drive to the front of the house, rang the bell, and to the
+servant who answered demanded peremptorily to see Mr. Minute.
+
+John Minute received him in the library, where the previous interviews
+had taken place. Minute waited until the servant had gone and the door
+was closed, and then he said:
+
+"Now, Crawley, there's no sense in coming to me; I can do nothing for
+you."
+
+The sergeant put his helmet on the table, walked to a sideboard where a
+tray and decanter stood, and poured himself out a stiff dose of whisky
+without invitation. John Minute watched him without any great
+resentment. This was not civilized Eastbourne they were in. They were
+back in the old free-and-easy days of Gwelo, where men did not expect
+invitations to drink.
+
+Smith--or Crawley, to give him his real name--tossed down half a tumbler
+of neat whisky and turned, wiping his heavy mustache with the back of
+his hand.
+
+"So you can't do anything, can't you?" he mimicked. "Well, I'm going to
+show you that you can, and that you will!"
+
+He put up his hand to check the words on John Minute's lips.
+
+"There's no sense in your putting that rough stuff over me about your
+being able to send me to jail, because you wouldn't do it. It doesn't
+suit your book, John Minute, to go into the court and testify against
+me. Too many things would come out in the witness box, and you well know
+it--besides, Rhodesia is a long way off!"
+
+"I know a place which isn't so far distant," said the other, looking up
+from his chair--"a place called Felixstowe, for example. There's another
+place called Cromer. I've been in consultation with a gentleman you may
+have heard of, a Mr. Saul Arthur Mann."
+
+"Saul Arthur Mann," repeated the other slowly. "I've never heard of
+him."
+
+"You would not, but he has heard of you," said John Minute calmly. "The
+fact is, Crawley, there's a big bad record against you, between your
+serious crimes in Rhodesia and your blackmail of to-day. I've a few
+facts about you which will interest you. I know the date you came to
+this country, which I didn't know before, and I know how you earned your
+living until you found me. I know of some shares in a non-existent
+Rhodesian mine which you sold to a feeble-minded gentleman at Cromer,
+and to a lady, equally feeble-minded, at Felixstowe. I've not only got
+the shares you sold, with your signature as a director, but I have
+letters and receipts signed by you. It has cost me a lot of money to get
+them, but it was well worth it."
+
+Crawley's face was livid. He took a step toward the other, but recoiled,
+for at the first hint of danger John Minute had pulled the revolver he
+invariably carried.
+
+"Keep just where you are, Crawley!" he said. "You are close enough now
+to be unpleasant."
+
+"So you've got my record, have you?" said the other, with an oath.
+"Tucked away with your marriage lines, I'll bet, and the certificate of
+birth of the kids you left to starve with their mother."
+
+"Get out of here!" said Minute, with dangerous quiet. "Get away while
+you're safe!"
+
+There was something in his eye which cowed the half-drunken man who,
+turning with a laugh, picked up his helmet and walked from the room.
+
+The hour was seven-thirty-five by Constable Wiseman's watch; for, slowly
+patrolling back, he saw the sergeant come flying out of the gateway on
+his bicycle and turn down toward the town. Constable Wiseman
+subsequently explained that he looked at his watch because he had a
+regular point at which he should meet Sergeant Smith at seven-forty-five
+and he was wondering whether his superior would return.
+
+The chronology of the next three hours has been so often given in
+various accounts of the events which marked that evening that I may be
+excused if I give them in detail.
+
+
+A car, white with dust, turned into the stable yard of the Star Hotel,
+Maidstone. The driver, in a dust coat and a chauffeur's cap, descended
+and handed over the car to a garage keeper with instructions to clean it
+up and have it filled ready for him the following morning. He gave
+explicit instructions as to the number of tins of petrol he required to
+carry always and tipped the garage keeper handsomely in advance.
+
+He was described as a young man with a slight black mustache, and he was
+wearing his motor goggles when he went into the office of the hotel and
+ordered a bed and a sitting room. Therefore his face was not seen. When
+his dinner was served, it was remarked by the waiter that his goggles
+were still on his face. He gave instructions that the whole of the
+dinner was to be served at once and put upon the sideboard, and that he
+did not wish to be disturbed until he rang the bell.
+
+When the bell rang the waiter came to find the room empty. But from the
+adjoining room he received orders to have breakfast by seven o'clock the
+following morning.
+
+At seven o'clock the driver of the car paid his bill, his big motor
+goggles still upon his face, again tipped the garage keeper handsomely,
+and drove his car from the yard. He turned to the right and appeared to
+be taking the London Road, but later in the day, as has been
+established, the car was seen on its way to Paddock Wood, and was later
+observed at Tonbridge. The driver pulled up at a little tea house half a
+mile from the town, ordered sandwiches and tea, which were brought to
+him, and which he consumed in the car.
+
+Late in the afternoon the car was seen at Uckfield, and the theory
+generally held was that the driver was killing time. At the wayside
+cottage at which he stopped for tea--it was one of those little places
+that invite cyclists by an ill-printed board to tarry a while and
+refresh themselves--he had some conversation with the tenant of the
+cottage, a widow. She seems to have been the usual loquacious, friendly
+soul who tells one without reserve her business, her troubles, and a
+fair sprinkling of the news of the day in the shortest possible time.
+
+"I haven't seen a paper," said Rex Holland politely. "It is a very
+curious thing that I never thought about newspapers."
+
+"I can get you one," said the woman eagerly. "You ought to read about
+that case."
+
+"The dead chauffeur?" asked Rex Holland interestedly, for that had been
+the item of general news which was foremost in the woman's conversation.
+
+"Yes, sir; he was murdered in Ashdown Forest. Many's the time I've
+driven over there."
+
+"How do you know it was a murder?"
+
+She knew for many reasons. Her brother-in-law was gamekeeper to Lord
+Ferring, and a colleague of his had been the man who had discovered the
+body, and it had appeared, as the good lady explained, that this same
+chauffeur was a man for whom the police had been searching in connection
+with a bank robbery about which much had appeared in the newspapers of
+the day previous.
+
+"How very interesting!" said Mr. Holland, and took the paper from her
+hand.
+
+He read the description line by line. He learned that the police were in
+possession of important clews, and that they were on the track of the
+man who had been seen in the company of the chauffeur. Moreover, said a
+most indiscreet newspaper writer, the police had a photograph showing
+the chauffeur standing by the side of his car, and reproductions of this
+photograph, showing the type of machine, were being circulated.
+
+"How very interesting!" said Mr. Rex Holland again, being perfectly
+content in his mind, for his search of the body had revealed copies of
+this identical picture, and the car in which he was seated was not the
+car which had been photographed. From this point, a mile and a half
+beyond Uckfield, all trace of the car and its occupant was lost.
+
+The writer has been very careful to note the exact times and to confirm
+those about which there was any doubt. At nine-twenty on the night when
+Constable Wiseman had patrolled the road before Weald Lodge and had seen
+Sergeant Smith flying down the road on his bicycle, and on the night of
+that day when Mr. Rex Holland had been seen at Uckfield, there arrived
+by the London train, which is due at Eastbourne at nine-twenty, Frank
+Merrill. The train, as a matter of fact, was three minutes late, and
+Frank, who had been in the latter part of the train, was one of the last
+of the passengers to arrive at the barrier.
+
+When he reached the barrier, he discovered that he had no railway
+ticket, a very ordinary and vexatious experience which travelers before
+now have endured. He searched in every pocket, including the pocket of
+the light ulster he wore, but without success. He was vexed, but he
+laughed because he had a strong sense of humor.
+
+"I could pay for my ticket," he smiled, "but I be hanged if I will!
+Inspector, you search that overcoat."
+
+The amused inspector complied while Frank again went through all his
+pockets. At his request he accompanied the inspector to the latter's
+office, and there deposited on the table the contents of his pockets,
+his money, letters, and pocketbook.
+
+"You're used to searching people," he said. "See if you can find it.
+I'll swear I've got it about me somewhere."
+
+The obliging inspector felt, probed, but without success, till suddenly,
+with a roar of laughter, Frank cried:
+
+"What a stupid ass I am! I've got it in my hat!"
+
+He took off his hat, and there in the lining was a first-class ticket
+from London to Eastbourne.
+
+It is necessary to lay particular stress upon this incident, which had
+an important bearing upon subsequent events. He called a taxicab, drove
+to Weald Lodge, and dismissed the driver in the road. He arrived at
+Weald Lodge, by the testimony of the driver and by that of Constable
+Wiseman, whom the car had passed, at about nine-forty.
+
+Mr. John Minute at this time was alone; his suspicious nature would not
+allow the presence of servants in the house during the interview which
+he was to have with his nephew. He regarded servants as spies and
+eavesdroppers, and perhaps there was an excuse for his uncharitable
+view.
+
+At nine-fifty, ten minutes after Frank had entered the gates of Weald
+Lodge, a car with gleaming headlights came quickly from the opposite
+direction and pulled up outside the gates. P. C. Wiseman, who at this
+moment was less than fifty yards from the gate, saw a man descend and
+pass quickly into the grounds of the house.
+
+At nine-fifty-two or nine-fifty-three the constable, walking slowly
+toward the house, came abreast of the wall, and, looking up, saw a light
+flash for a moment in one of the upper windows. He had hardly seen this
+when he heard two shots fired in rapid succession, and a cry.
+
+Only for a moment did P. C. Wiseman hesitate. He jumped the low wall,
+pushed through the shrubs, and made for the side of the house from
+whence a flood of light fell from the open French windows of the
+library. He blundered into the room a pace or two, and then stopped, for
+the sight was one which might well arrest even as unimaginative a man as
+a county constable.
+
+John Minute lay on the floor on his back, and it did not need a doctor
+to tell that he was dead. By his side, and almost within reach of his
+hand, was a revolver of a very heavy army pattern. Mechanically the
+constable picked up the revolver and turned his stern face to the other
+occupant of the room.
+
+"This is a bad business, Mr. Merrill," he found his breath to say.
+
+Frank Merrill had been leaning over his uncle as the constable entered,
+but now stood erect, pale, but perfectly self-possessed.
+
+"I heard the shot and I came in," he said.
+
+"Stay where you are," said the constable, and, stepping quickly out on
+to the lawn, he blew his whistle long and shrilly, then returned to the
+room.
+
+"This is a bad business, Mr. Merrill," he repeated.
+
+"It is a very bad business," said the other in a low voice.
+
+"Is this revolver yours?"
+
+Frank shook his head.
+
+"I've never seen it before," he said with emphasis.
+
+The constable thought as quickly as it was humanly possible for him to
+think. He had no doubt in his mind that this unhappy youth had fired the
+shots which had ended the life of the man on the floor.
+
+"Stay here," he said again, and again went out to blow his whistle. He
+walked this time on the lawn by the side of the drive toward the road.
+He had not taken half a dozen steps when he saw a dark figure of a man
+creeping stealthily along before him in the shade of the shrubs. In a
+second the constable was on him, had grasped him and swung him round,
+flashing his lantern into his prisoner's face. Instantly he released his
+hold.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sergeant," he stammered.
+
+"What's the matter?" scowled the other. "What's wrong with you,
+Constable?"
+
+Sergeant Smith's face was drawn and haggard. The policeman looked at him
+with open-mouthed astonishment.
+
+"I didn't know it was you," he said.
+
+"What's wrong?" asked the other again, and his voice was cracked and
+unnatural.
+
+"There's been a murder--old Minute--shot!"
+
+Sergeant Smith staggered back a pace.
+
+"Good God!" he said. "Minute murdered? Then he did it! The young devil
+did it!"
+
+"Come and have a look," invited Wiseman, recovering his balance. "I've
+got his nephew."
+
+"No, no! I don't want to see John Minute dead! You go back. I'll bring
+another constable and a doctor."
+
+He stumbled blindly along the drive into the road, and Constable Wiseman
+went back to the house. Frank was where he had left him, save that he
+had seated himself and was gazing steadfastly upon the dead man. He
+looked up as the policeman entered.
+
+"What have you done?" he asked.
+
+"The sergeant's gone for a doctor and another constable," said Wiseman
+gravely.
+
+"I'm afraid they will be too late," said Frank. "He is--What's that?"
+
+There was a distant hammering and a faint voice calling for help.
+
+"What's that?" whispered Frank again.
+
+The constable strode through the open doorway to the foot of the stairs
+and listened. The sound came from the upper story. He ran upstairs,
+mounting two at a time, and presently located the noise. It came from an
+end room, and somebody was hammering on the panels. The door was locked,
+but the key had been left in the lock, and this Constable Wiseman
+turned, flooding the dark interior with light.
+
+"Come out!" he said, and Jasper Cole staggered out, dazed and shaking.
+
+"Somebody hit me on the head with a sandbag," he said thickly. "I heard
+the shot. What has happened?"
+
+"Mr. Minute has been killed," said the policeman.
+
+"Killed!" He fell back against the wall, his face working. "Killed!" he
+repeated. "Not killed!"
+
+The constable nodded. He had found the electric switch and the
+passageway was illuminated.
+
+Presently the young man mastered his emotion.
+
+"Where is he?" he asked, and Wiseman led the way downstairs.
+
+Jasper Cole walked into the room without a glance at Frank and bent over
+the dead man. For a long time he looked at him earnestly, then he turned
+to Frank.
+
+"You did this!" he said. "I heard your voice and the shots! I heard you
+threaten him!"
+
+Frank said nothing. He merely stared at the other, and in his eyes was a
+look of infinite scorn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CASE AGAINST FRANK MERRILL
+
+
+Mr. Saul Arthur Mann stood by the window of his office and moodily
+watched the traffic passing up and down this busy city street at what
+was the busiest hour of the day. He stood there such a long time that
+the girl who had sought his help thought he must have forgotten her.
+
+May was pale, and her pallor was emphasized by the black dress she wore.
+The terrible happening of a week before had left its impression upon
+her. For her it had been a week of sleepless nights, a week's anguish of
+mind unspeakable. Everybody had been most kind, and Jasper was as gentle
+as a woman. Such was the influence that he exercised over her that she
+did not feel any sense of resentment against him, even though she knew
+that he was the principal witness for the crown. He was so sincere, so
+honest in his sympathy, she told herself.
+
+He was so free from any bitterness against the man who he believed had
+killed his best friend and his most generous employer that she could not
+sustain the first feeling of resentment she had felt. Perhaps it was
+because her great sorrow overshadowed all other emotions; yet she was
+free to analyze her friendship with the man who was working day and
+night to send the man who loved her to a felon's doom. She could not
+understand herself; still less could she understand Jasper.
+
+She looked up again at Mr. Mann as he stood by the window, his hands
+clasped behind him; and as she did so he turned slowly and came back to
+where she sat. His usually jocund face was lugubrious and worried.
+
+"I have given more thought to this matter than I've given to any other
+problem I have tackled," he said. "I believe Mr. Merrill to be falsely
+accused, and I have one or two points to make to his counsel which, when
+they are brought forward in court, will prove beyond any doubt whatever
+that he was innocent. I don't believe that matters are so black against
+him as you think. The other side will certainly bring forward the
+forgery and the doctored books to supply a motive for the murder.
+Inspector Nash is in charge of the case, and he promised to call here at
+four o'clock."
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"It wants three minutes. Have you any suggestion to offer?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I can floor the prosecution," Mr. Mann went on, "but what I cannot do
+is to find the murderer for certain. It is obviously one of three men.
+It is either Sergeant Crawley, alias Smith, about whose antecedents Mr.
+Minute made an inquiry, or Jasper Cole, the secretary, or--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+It was not necessary to say who was the third suspect.
+
+There came a knock at the door, and the clerk announced Inspector Nash.
+That stout and stoical officer gave a noncommittal nod to Mr. Mann and a
+smiling recognition to the girl.
+
+"Well, you know how matters stand, Inspector," said Mr. Mann briskly,
+"and I thought I'd ask you to come here to-day to straighten a few
+things out."
+
+"It is rather irregular, Mr. Mann," said the inspector, "but as they've
+no objection at headquarters, I don't mind telling you, within limits,
+all that I know; but I don't suppose I can tell you any more than you
+have found out for yourself."
+
+"Do you really think Mr. Merrill committed this crime?" asked the girl.
+
+The inspector raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips.
+
+"It looks uncommonly like it, miss," he said. "We have evidence that the
+bank has been robbed, and it is almost certainly proved that Merrill had
+access to the books and was the only person in the bank who could have
+faked the figures and transferred the money from one account to another
+without being found out. There are still one or two doubtful points to
+be cleared up, but there is the motive, and when you've got the motive
+you are three parts on your way to finding the criminal. It isn't a
+straightforward case by any means," he confessed, "and the more I go
+into it the more puzzled I am. I don't mind telling you this frankly: I
+have seen Constable Wiseman, who swears that at the moment the shots
+were fired he saw a light flash in the upper window. We have the
+statement of Mr. Cole that he was in his room, his employer having
+requested that he should make himself scarce when the nephew came, and
+he tells us how somebody opened the door quietly and flashed an electric
+torch upon him."
+
+"What was Cole doing in the dark?" asked Mann quickly.
+
+"He had a headache and was lying down," said the inspector. "When he saw
+the light he jumped up and made for it, and was immediately slugged; the
+door closed upon him and was locked. Between his leaving the bed and
+reaching the door he heard Mr. Merrill's voice threatening his uncle,
+and the shots. Immediately afterward he was rendered insensible."
+
+"A curious story," said Saul Arthur Mann dryly. "A very curious story!"
+
+The girl felt an unaccountable and altogether amazing desire to defend
+Jasper against the innuendo in the other's tone, and it was with
+difficulty that she restrained herself.
+
+"I don't think it is a good story," said the inspector frankly; "but
+that is between ourselves. And then, of course," he went on, "we have
+the remarkable behavior of Sergeant Smith."
+
+"Where is he?" asked Mr. Mann.
+
+The inspector shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Sergeant Smith has disappeared," he said, "though I dare say we shall
+find him before long. He is only one; the most puzzling element of all
+is the fourth man concerned, the man who arrived in the motor car and
+who was evidently Mr. Rex Holland. We have got a very full description
+of him."
+
+"I also have a very full description of him," said Mr. Mann quietly;
+"but I've been unable to identify him with any of the people in my
+records."
+
+"Anyway, it was his car; there is no doubt about that."
+
+"And he was the murderer," said Mr. Mann. "I've no doubt about that, nor
+have you."
+
+"I have doubts about everything," replied the inspector diplomatically.
+
+"What was in the car?" asked the little man brightly. He was rapidly
+recovering his good humor.
+
+"That I am afraid I cannot tell you," smiled the detective.
+
+"Then I'll tell you," said Saul Arthur Mann, and, stepping up to his
+desk, took a memorandum from a drawer. "There were two motor rugs, two
+holland coats, one white, one brown. There were two sets of motor
+goggles. There was a package of revolver cartridges, from which six had
+been extracted, a leather revolver holster, a small garden trowel, and
+one or two other little things."
+
+Inspector Nash swore softly under his breath.
+
+"I'm blessed if I know how you found all that out," he said, with a
+little asperity in his voice. "The car was not touched or searched until
+we came on the scene, and, beyond myself and Sergeant Mannering of my
+department, nobody knows what the car contained."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann smiled, and it was a very happy and triumphant smile.
+
+"You see, I know!" he purred. "That is one point in Merrill's favor."
+
+"Yes," agreed the detective, and smiled.
+
+"Why do you smile, Mr. Nash?" asked the little man suspiciously.
+
+"I was thinking of a county policeman who seems to have some
+extraordinary theories on the subject."
+
+"Oh, you mean Wiseman," said Mann, with a grin. "I've interviewed that
+gentleman. There is a great detective lost in him, Inspector."
+
+"It is lost, all right," said the detective laconically. "Wiseman is
+very certain that Merrill committed the crime, and I think you are going
+to have a difficulty in persuading a jury that he didn't. You see
+Merrill's story is that he came and saw his uncle, that they had a few
+minutes' chat together, that his uncle suddenly had an attack of
+faintness, and that he went out of the room into the dining room to get
+a glass of water. While Merrill was in the dining room he heard the
+shots, and came running back, still with the glass in his hand, and saw
+his uncle lying on the ground. I saw the glass, which was half filled.
+
+"I was also there in time to examine the dining room and see that Mr.
+Merrill had spilled some of the water when he was taking it from the
+carafe. All that part of the story is circumstantially sound. What we
+cannot understand, and what a jury will never understand, is how, in the
+very short space of time, the murderer could have got into the room and
+made his escape again."
+
+"The French windows were open," said Mr. Mann. "All the evidence that we
+have is to this effect, including the evidence of P. C. Wiseman."
+
+"In those circumstances, how comes it that the constable, who, when he
+heard the shot, made straight for the room, did not meet the murderer
+escaping? He saw nobody in the grounds--"
+
+"Except Sergeant Smith, or Crawley," interspersed Saul Arthur Mann
+readily. "I have reason to believe, and, indeed, reason to know, that
+Sergeant Smith, or Crawley, had a motive for being in the house. I
+supplied Mr. Minute, who was a client of mine, with certain documents,
+and those documents were in a safe in his bedroom. What is more likely
+than that this Crawley, to whom it was vitally necessary that the
+documents in question should be recovered, should have entered the house
+in search of those documents? I don't mind telling you that they
+related to a fraud of which he was the author, and they were in
+themselves all the proof which the police would require to obtain a
+conviction against him. He was obviously the man who struck down Mr.
+Cole, and whose light the constable saw flashing in the upper window."
+
+"In that case he cannot have been the murderer," said the detective
+quickly, "because the shots were fired while he was still in the room.
+They were almost simultaneous with the appearance of the flash at the
+upper window."
+
+"H'm!" said Saul Arthur Mann, for the moment nonplussed.
+
+"The more you go into this matter, the more complicated does it become,"
+said the police officer, with a shake of his head, "and to my mind the
+clearer is the case against Merrill."
+
+"With this reservation," interrupted the other, "that you have to
+account for the movements of Mr. Rex Holland, who comes on the scene ten
+minutes after Frank Merrill arrives and who leaves his car. He leaves
+his car for a very excellent reason," he went on. "Sergeant Smith, who
+runs away to get assistance, meets two men of the Sussex constabulary,
+hurrying in response to Wiseman's whistle. One of them stands by the
+car, and the other comes into the house. It was, therefore, impossible
+for the murderer to make use of the car. Here is another point I would
+have you explain."
+
+He had hoisted himself on the edge of his desk, and sat, an amusing
+little figure, his legs swinging a foot from the ground.
+
+"The revolver used was a big Webley, not an easy thing to carry or
+conceal about your person, and undoubtedly brought to the scene of the
+crime by the man in the car. You will say that Merrill, who wore an
+overcoat, might have easily brought it in his pocket; but the absolute
+proof that that could not have been the case is that on his arrival by
+train from London, Mr. Merrill lost his ticket and very carefully
+searched himself, a railway inspector assisting, to discover the bit of
+pasteboard. He turned out everything he had in his pocket in the
+inspector's presence, and his overcoat--the only place where he could
+have concealed such a heavy weapon--was searched by the inspector
+himself."
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+"It is a very difficult case," he agreed, "and one in which I've no
+great heart; for, to be absolutely honest, my views are that while it
+might have been Merrill, the balance of proof is that it was not. That
+is, of course, my unofficial view, and I shall work pretty hard to
+secure a conviction."
+
+"I am sure you will," said Mr. Mann heartily.
+
+"Must the case go into the court?" asked the girl anxiously.
+
+"There is no other way for it," replied the officer. "You see, we have
+arrested him, and unless something turns up the magistrate must commit
+him for trial on the evidence we have secured."
+
+"Poor Frank!" she said softly.
+
+"It is rough on him, if he is innocent," agreed Nash, "but it is lucky
+for him if he's guilty. My experience of crime and criminals is that it
+is generally the obvious man who commits that crime; only once in fifty
+years is he innocent, whether he is acquitted or whether he is found
+guilty."
+
+He offered his hand to Mr. Mann.
+
+"I'll be getting along now, sir," he said. "The commissioner asked me to
+give you all the assistance I possibly could, and I hope I have done
+so."
+
+"What are you doing in the case of Jasper Cole?" asked Mann quickly.
+
+The detective smiled.
+
+"You ought to know, sir," he said, and was amused at his own little
+joke.
+
+"Well, young lady," said Mann, turning to the girl, after the detective
+had gone, "I think you know how matters stand. Nash suspects Cole."
+
+"Jasper!" she said, in shocked surprise.
+
+"Jasper," he repeated.
+
+"But that is impossible! He was locked in his room."
+
+"That doesn't make it impossible. I know of fourteen distinct cases of
+men who committed crimes and were able to lock themselves in their
+rooms, leaving the key outside. There was a case of Henry Burton,
+coiner; there was William Francis Rector, who killed a warder while in
+prison and locked the cell upon himself from the inside. There was--But
+there; why should I bother you with instances? That kind of trick is
+common enough. No," he said, "it is the motive that we have to find. Do
+you still want me to go with you to-morrow, Miss Nuttall?" he asked.
+
+"I should be very glad if you would," she said earnestly. "Poor, dear
+uncle! I didn't think I could ever enter the house again."
+
+"I can relieve your mind about that," he said. "The will is not to be
+read in the house. Mr. Minute's lawyers have arranged for the reading at
+their offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields. I have the address here
+somewhere."
+
+He fumbled in his pocket and took out a card.
+
+"Power, Commons & Co.," he read, "194 Lincoln's Inn Fields. I will meet
+you there at three o'clock."
+
+He rumpled his untidy hair with an embarrassed laugh.
+
+"I seem to have drifted into the position of guardian to you, young
+lady," he said. "I can't say that it is an unpleasant task, although it
+is a great responsibility."
+
+"You have been splendid, Mr. Mann," she said warmly, "and I shall never
+forget all you have done for me. Somehow I feel that Frank will get off;
+and I hope--I pray that it will not be at Jasper's expense."
+
+He looked at her in surprise and disappointment.
+
+"I thought--" he stopped.
+
+"You thought I was engaged to Frank, and so I am," she said, with
+heightened color. "But Jasper is--I hardly know how to put it."
+
+"I see," said Mr. Mann, though, if the truth be told, he saw nothing
+which enlightened him.
+
+Punctually at three o'clock the next afternoon, they walked up the steps
+of the lawyers' office together. Jasper Cole was already there, and to
+Mr. Mann's surprise so also was Inspector Nash, who explained his
+presence in a few words.
+
+"There may be something in the will which will open a new viewpoint," he
+said.
+
+Mr. Power, the solicitor, an elderly man, inclined to rotundity, was
+introduced, and, taking his position before the fireplace, opened the
+proceedings with an expression of regret as to the circumstances which
+had brought them together.
+
+"The will of my late client," he said, "was not drawn up by me. It is
+written in Mr. Minute's handwriting, and revokes the only other will,
+one which was prepared some four years ago and which made provisions
+rather different to those in the present instrument. This will"--he
+took a single sheet of paper out of an envelope--"was made last year and
+was witnessed by Thomas Wellington Crawley"--he adjusted his pince-nez
+and examined the signature--"late trooper of the Matabeleland mounted
+police, and by George Warrell, who was Mr. Minute's butler at the time.
+Warrell died in the Eastbourne hospital in the spring of this year."
+
+There was a deep silence. Saul Arthur Mann's face was eagerly thrust
+forward, his head turned slightly to one side. Inspector Nash showed an
+unusual amount of interest. Both men had the same thought--a new will,
+witnessed by two people, one of whom was dead, and the other a fugitive
+from justice; what did this will contain?
+
+It was the briefest of documents. To his ward he left the sum of two
+hundred thousand pounds, "a provision which was also made in the
+previous will, I might add," said the lawyer, and to this he added all
+his shares in the Gwelo Deep.
+
+"To his nephew, Francis Merrill, he left twenty thousand pounds."
+
+The lawyer paused and looked round the little circle, and then
+continued:
+
+"The residue of my property, movable and immovable, all my furniture,
+leases, shares, cash at bankers, and all interests whatsoever, I
+bequeath to Jasper Cole, so-called, who is at present my secretary and
+confidential agent."
+
+The detective and Saul Arthur Mann exchanged glances, and Nash's lips
+moved.
+
+"How is that for a 'motive'?" he whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TRIAL OF FRANK MERRILL
+
+
+The trial of Frank Merrill on the charge that he "did on the
+twenty-eighth day of June in the year of our Lord one thousand nine
+hundred--wilfully and wickedly kill and slay by a pistol shot John
+Minute" was the sensation of a season which was unusually prolific in
+murder trials. The trial took place at the Lewes Assizes in a crowded
+courtroom, and lasted, as we know, for sixteen days, five days of which
+were given to the examination in chief and the cross-examination of the
+accountants who had gone into the books of the bank.
+
+The prosecution endeavored to establish the fact that no other person
+but Frank Merrill could have access to the books, and that therefore no
+other person could have falsified them or manipulated the transfer of
+moneys. It cannot be said that the prosecution had wholly succeeded; for
+when Brandon, the bank manager, was put into the witness box he was
+compelled to admit that not only Frank, but he himself and Jasper Cole,
+were in a position to reach the books.
+
+The opening speech for the crown had been a masterly one. But that there
+were many weak points in the evidence and in the assumptions which the
+prosecution drew was evident to the merest tyro.
+
+Sir George Murphy Jackson, the attorney general, who prosecuted,
+attempted to dispose summarily of certain conflictions, and it had to be
+confessed that his explanations were very plausible.
+
+"The defense will tell us," he said, in that shrill, clarion tone of his
+which has made to quake the hearts of so many hostile witnesses, "that
+we have not accounted for the fourth man who drove up in his car ten
+minutes after Merrill had entered the house, and disappeared, but I am
+going to tell you my theory of that incident.
+
+"Merrill had an accomplice who is not in custody, and that accomplice is
+Rex Holland. Merrill had planned and prepared this murder, because from
+some statement which his uncle had made he believed that not only was
+his whole future dependent upon destroying his benefactor and silencing
+forever the one man who knew the extent of his villainy, but he had in
+his cold, shrewd way accurately foreseen the exact consequence of such a
+shooting. It was a big criminal's big idea.
+
+"He foresaw this trial," he said impressively; "he foresaw, gentlemen of
+the jury, his acquittal at your hands. He foresaw a reaction which would
+not only give him the woman he professes to love, but in consequence
+place in his hands the disposal of her considerable fortune.
+
+"Why should he shoot John Minute? you may ask; and I reply to that
+question with another: What would have happened had he not shot his
+uncle? He would have been a ruined man. The doors of his uncle's house
+would have been closed to him. The legacy would have been revoked, the
+marriage for which he had planned so long would have been an unrealized
+dream.
+
+"He knew the extent of the fortune which was coming to Miss Nuttall. Mr.
+Minute made two wills, in both of which he left an identical sum to his
+ward. The first of these, revoked by the second and containing the same
+provision, was witnessed by the man in the dock! He knew, too, that the
+Rhodesian gold mine, the shares of which were held by John Minute on the
+girl's behalf, was likely to prove a very rich proposition, and I
+suggest that the information coming to him as Mr. Minute's secretary, he
+deliberately suppressed that information for his own purpose.
+
+"What had he to gain? I ask you to believe that if he is acquitted he
+will have achieved all that he ever hoped to achieve."
+
+There was a little murmur in the court. Frank Merrill, leaning on the
+ledge of the dock, looked down at the girl in the body of the court, and
+their eyes met. He saw the indignation in her face and nodded with a
+little smile, then turned again to the counsel with that eager,
+half-quizzical look of interest which the girl had so often seen upon
+his handsome face.
+
+"Much will be made, in the course of this trial, of the presence of
+another man, and the defense will endeavor to secure capital out of the
+fact that the man Crawley, who it was suggested was in the house for an
+improper purpose, has not been discovered. As to the fourth man, the
+driver of the motor car, there seems little doubt but that he was an
+accomplice of Merrill. This mysterious Rex Holland, who has been
+identified by Mrs. Totney, of Uckfield, spent the whole of the day
+wandering about Sussex, obviously having one plan in his mind, which was
+to arrive at Mr. Minute's house at the same time as his confederate.
+
+"You will have the taxi-driver's evidence that when Merrill stepped
+down, after being driven from the station, he looked left and right, as
+though he were expecting somebody. The plan to some extent miscarried.
+The accomplice arrived ten minutes too late. On some pretext or other
+Merrill probably left the room. I suggest that he did not go into the
+dining room, but that he went out into the garden and was met by his
+accomplice, who handed him the weapon with which this crime was
+committed.
+
+"It may be asked by the defense why the accomplice, who was presumably
+Rex Holland, did not himself commit the crime. I could offer two or
+three alternative suggestions, all of which are feasible. The deceased
+man was shot at close quarters, and was found in such an attitude as to
+suggest that he was wholly unprepared for the attack. We know that he
+was in some fear and that he invariably went armed; yet it is fairly
+certain that he made no attempt to draw his weapon, which he certainly
+would have done had he been suddenly confronted by an armed stranger.
+
+"I do not pretend that I am explaining the strange relationship between
+Merrill and this mysterious forger. Merrill is the only man who has seen
+him and has given a vague and somewhat confused description of him. 'He
+was a man with a short, close-clipped beard' is Merrill's description.
+The woman who served him with tea near Uckfield describes him as a
+'youngish man with a dark mustache, but otherwise clean shaven.'
+
+"There is no reason, of course, why he should not have removed his
+beard, but as against that suggestion we will call evidence to prove
+that the man seen driving with the murdered chauffeur was invariably a
+man with a mustache and no beard, so that the balance of probability is
+on the side of the supposition that Merrill is not telling the truth. An
+unknown client with a large deposit at his bank would not be likely
+constantly to alter his appearance. If he were a criminal, as we know
+him to be, there would be another reason why he should not excite
+suspicion in this way."
+
+His address covered the greater part of a day--but he returned to the
+scene in the garden, to the supposed meeting of the two men, and to the
+murder.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann, sitting with Frank's solicitor, scratched his nose and
+grinned.
+
+"I have never heard a more ingenious piece of reconstruction," he said;
+"though, of course, the whole thing is palpably absurd."
+
+As a theory it was no doubt excellent; but men are not sentenced to
+death on theories, however ingenious they may be. Probably nobody in the
+court so completely admired the ingenuity as the man most affected. At
+the lunch interval on the day on which this theory was put forward he
+met his solicitor and Saul Arthur Mann in the bare room in which such
+interviews are permitted.
+
+"It was really fascinating to hear him," said Frank, as he sipped the
+cup of tea which they had brought him. "I almost began to believe that
+I had committed the murder! But isn't it rather alarming? Will the jury
+take the same view?" he asked, a little troubled.
+
+The solicitor shook his head.
+
+"Unsupported theories of that sort do not go well with juries, and, of
+course, the whole story is so flimsy and so improbable that it will go
+for no more than a piece of clever reasoning."
+
+"Did anybody see you at the railway station?"
+
+Frank shook his head.
+
+"I suppose hundreds of people saw me, but would hardly remember me."
+
+"Was there any one on the train who knew you?"
+
+"No," said Frank, after a moment's thought. "There were six people in my
+carriage until we got to Lewes, but I think I told you that, and you
+have not succeeded in tracing any of them."
+
+"It is most difficult to get into touch with those people," said the
+lawyer. "Think of the scores of people one travels with, without ever
+remembering what they looked like or how they were dressed. If you had
+been a woman, traveling with women, every one of your five fellow
+passengers would have remembered you and would have recalled your hat."
+
+Frank laughed.
+
+"There are certain disadvantages in being a man," he said. "How do you
+think the case is going?"
+
+"They have offered no evidence yet. I think you will agree, Mr. Mann,"
+he said respectfully, for Saul Arthur Mann was a power in legal circles.
+
+"None at all," the little fellow agreed.
+
+Frank recalled the first day he had seen him, with his hat perched on
+the back of his head and his shabby, genteel exterior.
+
+"Oh, by Jove!" he said. "I suppose they will be trying to fasten the
+death of that man upon me that we saw in Gray Square."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann nodded.
+
+"They have not put that in the indictment," he said, "nor the case of
+the chauffeur. You see, your conviction will rest entirely upon this
+present charge, and both the other matters are subsidiary."
+
+Frank walked thoughtfully up and down the room, his hands behind his
+back.
+
+"I wonder who Rex Holland is," he said, half to himself.
+
+"You still have your theory?" asked the lawyer, eying him keenly.
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"And you still would rather not put it into words?"
+
+"Much rather not," said Frank gravely.
+
+He returned to the court and glanced round for the girl, but she was not
+there. The rest of the afternoon's proceedings, taken up as they were
+with the preliminaries of the case, bored him.
+
+It was on the twelfth day of the trial that Jasper Cole stepped on to
+the witness stand. He was dressed in black and was paler than usual,
+but he took the oath in a firm voice and answered the questions which
+were put to him without hesitation.
+
+The story of Frank's quarrel with his uncle, of the forged checks, and
+of his own experience on the night of the crime filled the greater part
+of the forenoon, and it was in the afternoon when Bryan Bennett, one of
+the most brilliant barristers of his time, stood up to cross-examine.
+
+"Had you any suspicion that your employer was being robbed?"
+
+"I had a suspicion," replied Jasper.
+
+"Did you communicate your suspicion to your employer?"
+
+Jasper hesitated.
+
+"No," he replied at last.
+
+"Why do you hesitate?" asked Bennett sharply.
+
+"Because, although I did not directly communicate my suspicions, I
+hinted to Mr. Minute that he should have an independent audit."
+
+"So you thought the books were wrong?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"In these circumstances," asked Bennett slowly, "do you not think it was
+very unwise of you to touch those books yourself?"
+
+"When did I touch them?" asked Jasper quickly.
+
+"I suggest that on a certain night you came to the bank and remained in
+the bank by yourself, examining the ledgers on behalf of your employer,
+and that during that time you handled at least three books in which
+these falsifications were made."
+
+"That is quite correct," said Jasper, after a moment's thought; "but my
+suspicions were general and did not apply to any particular group of
+books."
+
+"But did you not think it was dangerous?"
+
+Again the hesitation.
+
+"It may have been foolish, and if I had known how matters were
+developing I should certainly not have touched them."
+
+"You do admit that there were several periods of time from seven in the
+evening until nine and from nine-thirty until eleven-fifteen when you
+were absolutely alone in the bank?"
+
+"That is true," said Jasper.
+
+"And during those periods you could, had you wished and had you been a
+forger, for example, or had you any reason for falsifying the entries,
+have made those falsifications?"
+
+"I admit there was time," said Jasper.
+
+"Would you describe yourself as a friend of Frank Merrill's?"
+
+"Not a close friend," replied Jasper.
+
+"Did you like him?"
+
+"I cannot say that I was fond of him," was the reply.
+
+"He was a rival of yours?"
+
+"In what respect?"
+
+Counsel shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He was very fond of Miss Nuttall."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And she was fond of him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you not aspire to pay your addresses to Miss Nuttall?"
+
+Jasper Cole looked down to the girl, and May averted her eyes. Her
+cheeks were burning and she had a wild desire to flee from the court.
+
+"If you mean did I love Miss Nuttall," said Jasper Cole, in his quiet,
+even tone, "I reply that I did."
+
+"You even secured the active support of Mr. Minute?"
+
+"I never urged the matter with Mr. Minute," said Jasper.
+
+"So that if he moved on your behalf he did so without your knowledge?"
+
+"Without my pre-knowledge," corrected the witness. "He told me afterward
+that he had spoken to Miss Nuttall, and I was considerably embarrassed."
+
+"I understand you were a man of curious habits, Mr. Cole."
+
+"We are all people of curious habits," smiled the witness.
+
+"But you in particular. You were an Orientalist, I believe?"
+
+"I have studied Oriental languages and customs," said Jasper shortly.
+
+"Have you ever extended your study to the realm of hypnotism?"
+
+"I have," replied the witness.
+
+"Have you ever made experiments?"
+
+"On animals, yes."
+
+"On human beings?"
+
+"No, I have never made experiments on human beings."
+
+"Have you also made a study of narcotics?"
+
+The lawyer leaned forward over the table and looked at the witness
+between half-closed eyes.
+
+"I have made experiments with narcotic herbs and plants," said Jasper,
+after a moment's hesitation. "I think you should know that the career
+which was planned for me was that of a doctor, and I have always been
+very interested in the effects of narcotics."
+
+"You know of a drug called _cannabis indica_?" asked the counsel,
+consulting his paper.
+
+"Yes; it is 'Indian hemp.'"
+
+"Is there an infusion of _cannabis indica_ to be obtained?"
+
+"I do not think there is," said the other. "I can probably enlighten you
+because I see now the trend of your examination. I once told Frank
+Merrill, many years ago, when I was very enthusiastic, that an infusion
+of _cannabis indica_, combined with tincture of opium and hyocine,
+produced certain effects."
+
+"It is inclined to sap the will power of a man or a woman who is
+constantly absorbing this poison in small doses?" suggested the counsel.
+
+"That is so."
+
+The counsel now switched off on a new tack.
+
+"Do you know the East of London?"
+
+"Yes, slightly."
+
+"Do you know Silvers Rents?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you ever go to Silvers Rents?"
+
+"Yes; I go there very regularly."
+
+The readiness of the reply astonished both Frank and the girl. She had
+been feeling more and more uncomfortable as the cross-examination
+continued, and had a feeling that she had in some way betrayed Jasper
+Cole's confidence. She had listened to the cross-examination which
+revealed Jasper as a scientist with something approaching amazement. She
+had known of the laboratory, but had associated the place with those
+entertaining experiments that an idle dabbler in chemistry might
+undertake.
+
+For a moment she doubted, and searched her mind for some occasion when
+he had practiced his medical knowledge. Dimly she realized that there
+_had_ been some such occasion, and then she remembered that it had
+always been Jasper Cole who had concocted the strange drafts which had
+so relieved the headache to which, when she was a little younger, she
+had been something of a martyr. Could he--She struggled hard to dismiss
+the thought as being unworthy of her; and now, when the object of his
+visits to Silvers Rents was under examination, she found her curiosity
+growing.
+
+"Why did you go to Silvers Rents?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"I will repeat my question: With what object did you go to Silvers
+Rents?"
+
+"I decline to answer that question," said the man in the box coolly. "I
+merely tell you that I went there frequently."
+
+"And you refuse to say why?"
+
+"I refuse to say why," repeated the witness.
+
+The judge on the bench made a little note.
+
+"I put it to you," said counsel, speaking impressively, "that it was in
+Silvers Rents that you took on another identity."
+
+"That is probably true," said the other, and the girl gasped; he was so
+cool, so self-possessed, so sure of himself.
+
+"I suggest to you," the counsel went on, "that in those Rents Jasper
+Cole became Rex Holland."
+
+There was a buzz of excitement, a sudden soft clamor of voices through
+which the usher's harsh demand for silence cut like a knife.
+
+"Your suggestion is an absurd one," said Jasper, without heat, "and I
+presume that you are going to produce evidence to support so infamous a
+statement."
+
+"What evidence I produce," said counsel, with asperity, "is a matter for
+me to decide."
+
+"It is also a matter for the witness," interposed the soft voice of the
+judge. "As you have suggested that Holland was a party to the murder,
+and as you are inferring that Rex Holland is Jasper Cole, it is presumed
+that you will call evidence to support so serious a charge."
+
+"I am not prepared to call evidence, my lord, and if your lordship
+thinks the question should not have been put I am willing to withdraw
+it."
+
+The judge nodded and turned his head to the jury.
+
+"You will consider that question as not having been put, gentlemen," he
+said. "Doubtless counsel is trying to establish the fact that one person
+might just as easily have been Rex Holland as another. There is no
+suggestion that Mr. Cole went to Silvers Rents--which I understand is in
+a very poor neighborhood--with any illegal intent, or that he was
+committing any crime or behaving in any way improperly by paying such
+frequent visits. There may be something in the witness's life associated
+with that poor house which has no bearing on the case and which he does
+not desire should be ventilated in this court. It happens to many of
+us," the judge went on, "that we have associations which it would
+embarrass us to reveal."
+
+This little incident closed that portion of the cross-examination, and
+counsel went on to the night of the murder.
+
+"When did you come to the house?" he asked.
+
+"I came to the house soon after dark."
+
+"Had you been in London?"
+
+"Yes; I walked from Bexhill."
+
+"It was dark when you arrived?"
+
+"Yes, nearly dark."
+
+"The servants had all gone out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was Mr. Minute pleased to see you?"
+
+"Yes; he had expected me earlier in the day."
+
+"Did he tell you that his nephew was coming to see him?"
+
+"I knew that."
+
+"You say he suggested that you should make yourself scarce?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And as you had a headache, you went upstairs and lay down on your bed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What were you doing in Bexhill?"
+
+"I came down from town and got into the wrong portion of the train."
+
+A junior leaned over and whispered quickly to his leader.
+
+"I see, I see," said the counsel petulantly. "Your ticket was found at
+Bexhill. Have you ever seen Mr. Rex Holland?" he asked.
+
+"Never."
+
+"You have never met any person of that name?"
+
+"Never."
+
+In this tame way the cross-examination closed, as cross-examinations
+have a habit of doing.
+
+By the time the final addresses of counsel had ended, and the judge had
+finished a masterly summing-up, there was no doubt whatever in the mind
+of any person in the court as to what the verdict would be. The jury was
+absent from the box for twenty minutes and returned a verdict of "Not
+guilty!"
+
+The judge discharged Frank Merrill without comment, and he left the
+court a free but ruined man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MAN WHO CAME TO MONTREUX
+
+
+It was two months after the great trial, on a warm day in October, when
+Frank Merrill stepped ashore from the big white paddle boat which had
+carried him across Lake Leman from Lausanne, and, handing his bag to a
+porter, made his way to the hotel omnibus. He looked at his watch. It
+pointed to a quarter to four, and May was not due to arrive until half
+past. He went to his hotel, washed and changed and came down to the
+vestibule to inquire if the instructions he had telegraphed had been
+carried out.
+
+May was arriving in company with Saul Arthur Mann, who was taking one of
+his rare holidays abroad. Frank had only seen the girl once since the
+day of the trial. He had come to breakfast on the following morning, and
+very little had been said. He was due to leave that afternoon for the
+Continent. He had a little money, sufficient for his needs, and Jasper
+Cole had offered no suggestion that he would dispute the will, in so far
+as it affected Frank. So he had gone abroad and had idled away two
+months in France, Spain, and Italy, and had then made his leisurely way
+back to Switzerland by way of Maggiore.
+
+He had grown a little graver, was a little more set in his movements,
+but he bore upon his face no mark to indicate the mental agony through
+which he must have passed in that long-drawn-out and wearisome trial. So
+thought the girl as she came through the swing doors of the hotel,
+passed the obsequious hotel servants, and greeted him in the big palm
+court.
+
+If she saw any change in him he remarked a development in her which was
+a little short of wonderful. She was at that age when the woman is
+breaking through the beautiful chrysalis of girlhood. In those two
+months a remarkable change had come over her, a change which he could
+not for the moment define, for this phenomenon of development had been
+denied to his experience.
+
+"Why, May," he said, "you are quite old."
+
+She laughed, and again he noticed the change. The laugh was richer,
+sweeter, purer than the bubbling treble he had known.
+
+"You are not getting complimentary, are you?" she asked.
+
+She was exquisitely dressed, and had that poise which few Englishwomen
+achieve. She had the art of wearing clothes, and from the flimsy crest
+of her toque to the tips of her little feet she was all that the most
+exacting critic could desire. There are well-dressed women who are no
+more than mannequins. There are fine ladies who cannot be mistaken for
+anything but fine ladies, whose dresses are a horror and an abomination
+and whose expressed tastes are execrable.
+
+May Nuttall was a fine lady, finely appareled.
+
+"When you have finished admiring me, Frank," she said, "tell us what
+you have been doing. But first of all let us have some tea. You know Mr.
+Mann?"
+
+The little investigator beaming in the background took Frank's hand and
+shook it heartily. He was dressed in what he thought was an appropriate
+costume for a mountainous country. His boots were stout, the woolen
+stockings which covered his very thin legs were very woolen, and his
+knickerbocker suit was warranted to stand wear and tear. He had
+abandoned his top hat for a large golf cap, which was perched rakishly
+over one eye. Frank looked round apprehensively for Saul Arthur's
+alpenstock, and was relieved when he failed to discover one.
+
+The girl threw off her fur wrap and unbuttoned her gloves as the waiter
+placed the big silver tray on the table before her.
+
+"I'm afraid I have not much to tell," said Frank in answer to her
+question. "I've just been loafing around. What is your news?"
+
+"What is my news?" she asked. "I don't think I have any, except that
+everything is going very smoothly in England, and, oh, Frank, I am so
+immensely rich!"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"The appropriate thing would be to say that I am immensely poor," he
+said, "but as a matter of fact I am not. I went down to Aix and won
+quite a lot of money."
+
+"Won it?" she said.
+
+He nodded with an amused little smile.
+
+"You wouldn't have thought I was a gambler, would you?" he asked
+solemnly. "I don't think I am, as a matter of fact, but somehow I wanted
+to occupy my mind."
+
+"I understand," she said quickly.
+
+Another little pause while she poured out the tea, which afforded Saul
+Arthur Mann an opportunity of firing off fifty facts about Geneva in as
+many sentences.
+
+"What has happened to Jasper?" asked Frank after a while.
+
+The girl flushed a little.
+
+"Oh, Jasper," she said awkwardly, "I see him, you know. He has become
+more mysterious than ever, quite like one of those wicked people one
+reads about in sensational stories. He has a laboratory somewhere in the
+country, and he does quite a lot of motoring. I've seen him several
+times at Brighton, for instance."
+
+Frank nodded slowly.
+
+"I should think that he was a good driver," he said.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann looked up and met his eye with a smile which was lost
+upon the girl.
+
+"He has been kind to me," she said hesitatingly.
+
+"Does he ever speak about--"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I don't want to think about that," she said; "please don't let us talk
+about it."
+
+He knew she was referring to John Minute's death, and changed the
+conversation.
+
+A few minutes later he had an opportunity of speaking with Mr. Mann.
+
+"What is the news?" he asked.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann looked round.
+
+"I think we are getting near the truth," he said, dropping his voice.
+"One of my men has had him under observation ever since the day of the
+trial. There is no doubt that he is really a brilliant chemist."
+
+"Have you a theory?"
+
+"I have several," said Mr. Mann. "I am perfectly satisfied that the
+unfortunate fellow we saw together on the occasion of our first meeting
+was Rex Holland's servant. I was as certain that he was poisoned by a
+very powerful poisoning. When your trial was on the body was exhumed and
+examined, and the presence of that drug was discovered. It was the same
+as that employed in the case of the chauffeur. Obviously, Rex Holland is
+a clever chemist. I wanted to see you about that. He said at the trial
+that he had discussed such matters with you."
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"We used to have quite long talks about drugs," he said. "I have
+recalled many of those conversations since the day of the trial. He
+even fired me with his enthusiasm, and I used to assist him in his
+little experiments, and obtained quite a working knowledge of these
+particular elements. Unfortunately I cannot remember very much, for my
+enthusiasm soon died, and beyond the fact that he employed hyocine and
+Indian hemp I have only the dimmest recollection of any of the
+constituents he employed."
+
+Saul Arthur nodded energetically.
+
+"I shall have more to tell you later, perhaps," he said, "but at present
+my inquiries are shaping quite nicely. He is going to be a difficult man
+to catch, because, if all I believe is true, he is one of the most
+cold-blooded and calculating men it has ever been my lot to meet--and I
+have met a few," he added grimly.
+
+When he said men Frank knew that he had meant criminals.
+
+"We are probably doing him a horrible injustice," he smiled. "Poor old
+Jasper!"
+
+"You are not cut out for police work," snapped Saul Arthur Mann;
+"you've too many sympathies."
+
+"I don't exactly sympathize," rejoined Frank, "but I just pity him in a
+way."
+
+Again Mr. Mann looked round cautiously and again lowered his voice,
+which had risen.
+
+"There is one thing I want to talk to you about. It is rather a delicate
+matter, Mr. Merrill," he said.
+
+"Fire ahead!"
+
+"It is about Miss Nuttall. She has seen a lot of our friend Jasper, and
+after every interview she seems to grow more and more reliant upon his
+help. Once or twice she has been embarrassed when I have spoken about
+Jasper Cole and has changed the subject."
+
+Frank pursed his lips thoughtfully, and a hard little look came into his
+eyes, which did not promise well for Jasper.
+
+"So that is it," he said, and shrugged his shoulders. "If she cares for
+him, it is not my business."
+
+"But it is your business," said the other sharply. "She was fond enough
+of you to offer to marry you."
+
+Further talk was cut short by the arrival of the girl. Their meeting at
+Geneva had been to some extent a chance one. She was going through to
+Chamonix to spend the winter, and Saul Arthur Mann seized the
+opportunity of taking a short and pleasant holiday. Hearing that Frank
+was in Switzerland, she had telegraphed him to meet her.
+
+"Are you staying any time in Switzerland?" she asked him as they
+strolled along the beautiful quay.
+
+"I am going back to London to-night," he replied.
+
+"To-night," she said in surprise.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"But I am staying here for two or three days," she protested.
+
+"I intended also staying for two or three days," he smiled, "but my
+business will not wait."
+
+Nevertheless, she persuaded him to stay till the morrow.
+
+They were at breakfast when the morning mail was delivered, and Frank
+noted that she went rapidly through the dozen letters which came to her,
+and she chose one for first reading. He could not help but see that that
+bore an English stamp, and his long acquaintance with the curious
+calligraphy of Jasper Cole left him in no doubt as to who was the
+correspondent. He saw with what eagerness she read the letter, the
+little look of disappointment when she turned to an inside sheet and
+found that it had not been filled, and his mind was made up. He had a
+post also, which he examined with some evidence of impatience.
+
+"Your mail is not so nice as mine," said the girl with a smile.
+
+"It is not nice at all," he grumbled; "the one thing I wanted, and, to
+be very truthful, May, the one inducement--"
+
+"To stay over the night," she added, "was--what?"
+
+"I have been trying to buy a house on the lake," he said, "and the
+infernal agent at Lausanne promised to write telling me whether my terms
+had been agreed to by his client."
+
+He looked down at the table and frowned. Saul Arthur Mann had a great
+and extensive knowledge of human nature. He had remarked the
+disappointment on Frank's face, having identified also the correspondent
+whose letter claimed priority of attention. He knew that Frank's anger
+with the house agent was very likely the expression of his anger in
+quite another direction.
+
+"Can I send the letter on?" suggested the girl.
+
+"That won't help me," said Frank, with a little grimace. "I wanted to
+settle the business this week."
+
+"I have it," she said. "I will open the letter and telegraph to you in
+Paris whether the terms are accepted or not."
+
+Frank laughed.
+
+"It hardly seems worth that," he said, "but I should take it as awfully
+kind of you if you would, May."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann believed in his mind that Frank did not care tuppence
+whether the agent accepted the terms or not, but that he had taken this
+as a Heaven-sent opportunity for veiling his annoyance.
+
+"You have had quite a large mail, Miss Nuttall," he said.
+
+"I've only opened one, though. It is from Jasper," she said hurriedly.
+
+Again both men noticed the faint flush, the strange, unusual light which
+came to her eyes.
+
+"And where does Jasper write from?" asked Frank, steadying his voice.
+
+"He writes from England, but he was going on the Continent to Holland
+the day he wrote," she said. "It is funny to think that he is here."
+
+"In Switzerland?" asked Frank in surprise.
+
+"Don't be silly," she laughed. "No, I mean on the mainland--I mean there
+is no sea between us."
+
+She went crimson.
+
+"It sounds thrilling," said Frank dryly.
+
+She flashed round at him.
+
+"You mustn't be horrid about Jasper," she said quickly; "he never speaks
+about you unkindly."
+
+"I don't see why he should," said Frank; "but let's get off a subject
+which is--"
+
+"Which is--what?" she challenged
+
+"Which is controversial," said Frank diplomatically.
+
+She came down to the station to see him off. As he looked out of the
+window, waving his farewells, he thought he had never seen a more lovely
+being or one more desirable.
+
+It was in the afternoon of that day which saw Frank Merrill speeding
+toward the Swiss frontier and Paris that Mr. Rex Holland strode into the
+Palace Hotel at Montreux and seated himself at a table in the
+restaurant. The hour was late and the room was almost deserted.
+Giovanni, the head waiter, recognized him and came hurriedly across the
+room.
+
+"Ah, m'sieur," he said, "you are back from England. I didn't expect you
+till the winter sports had started. Is Paris very dull?"
+
+"I didn't come through Paris," said the other shortly; "there are many
+roads leading to Switzerland."
+
+"But few pleasant roads, m'sieur. I have come to Montreux by all manner
+of ways--from Paris, through Pontarlier, through Ostend, Brussels,
+through the Hook of Holland and Amsterdam, but Paris is the only way for
+the man who is flying to this beautiful land."
+
+The man at the table said nothing, scanning the menu carefully. He
+looked tired as one who had taken a very long journey.
+
+"It may interest you to know," he said, after he had given his order and
+as Giovanni was turning away, "that I came by the longest route. Tell
+me, Giovanni, have you a man called Merrill staying at the hotel?"
+
+"No, m'sieur," said the other. "Is he a friend of yours?"
+
+Mr. Rex Holland smiled.
+
+"In a sense he is a friend, in a sense he is not," he said flippantly,
+and offered no further enlightenment, although Giovanni waited with a
+deferential cock of his head.
+
+Later, when he had finished his modest dinner, he strolled into the one
+long street of the town, returning to the writing room of the hotel with
+a number of papers which included the visitors' list, a publication
+printed in English, and which, as it related the comings and goings of
+visitors, not only to Lausanne, Montreux, and Teritet, but also to Evian
+and Geneva, enjoyed a fair circulation. He sat at the table, and,
+drawing a sheet of paper from the rack, wrote, addressed an envelope to
+Frank Merrill, esquire, Hotel de France, Geneva, slipped it into the
+hotel pillar box, and went to bed.
+
+
+"There's a letter here for Frank," said the girl. "I wonder if it is
+from his agent."
+
+She examined the envelope, which bore the Montreux postmark.
+
+"I should imagine it is," said Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+"Well, I am going to open it, anyway," said the girl. "Poor Frank! He
+will be in a state of suspense."
+
+She tore open the envelope, and took out a letter. Mr. Mann saw her face
+go white, and the letter trembled in her hand. Without a word she passed
+it to him, and he read:
+
+"Dear Frank Merrill," said the letter. "Give me another month's grace
+and then you may tell the whole story. Yours, Rex Holland."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann stared at the letter with open mouth.
+
+"What does it mean?" asked the girl in a whisper.
+
+"It means that Merrill is shielding somebody," said the other. "It
+means--"
+
+Suddenly his face lit up with excitement.
+
+"The writing!" he gasped.
+
+Her eyes followed his, and for a moment she did not understand; then,
+with a lightning sweep of her arm, she snatched the letter from his
+hand and crumpled it in a ball.
+
+"The writing!" said Mr. Mann again. "I've seen it before. It is--Jasper
+Cole's!"
+
+She looked at him steadily, though her face was white, and the hand
+which grasped the crumpled paper was shaking.
+
+"I think you are mistaken, Mr. Mann," she said quietly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MAN WHO LOOKED LIKE FRANK
+
+
+Saul Arthur Mann came back to England full of his news, and found Frank
+at the little Jermyn Street hotel where he had installed himself, and
+Frank listened without interruption to the story of the letter.
+
+"Of course," the little fellow went on, "I went straight over to
+Montreux. The note heading was not on the paper, but I had no
+difficulty, by comparing the qualities of papers used at the various
+hotels, in discovering that it was written from the Palace. The head
+waiter knew this Rex Holland, who had been a frequent visitor, had
+always tipped very liberally, and lived in something like style. He
+could not describe his patron, except that he was a young man with a
+very languid manner who had arrived the previous morning from Holland
+and had immediately inquired for Frank Merrill."
+
+"From Holland! Are you sure it was the morning? I have a particular
+reason for asking," asked Frank quickly.
+
+"No, it was not in the morning, now you mention it. It was in the
+evening. He left again the following morning by the northern train."
+
+"How did he find my address?" asked Frank.
+
+"Obviously from the visitors' list. The waiter on duty in the writing
+room remembered having seen him consulting the newspaper. Now, my boy,
+you have to be perfectly candid with me. What do you know about Rex
+Holland?"
+
+Frank opened his case, took out a cigarette, and lit it before he
+replied.
+
+"I know what everybody knows about him," he said, with a hint of
+bitterness in his voice, "and something which nobody knows but me."
+
+"But, my dear fellow," said Saul Arthur Mann, laying his hand on the
+other's shoulder, "surely you realize how important it is for you that
+you should tell me all you know."
+
+Frank shook his head.
+
+"The time is not come," he said, and he would make no further statement.
+
+But on another matter he was emphatic.
+
+"By heaven, Mann, I am not going to stand by and see May ruin her life.
+There's something sinister in this influence which Jasper is exercising
+over her. You have seen it for yourself."
+
+Saul Arthur nodded.
+
+"I can't understand what it is," he confessed. "Of course Jasper is not
+a bad-looking fellow. He has perfect manners and is a charming
+companion. You don't think--"
+
+"That he is winning on his merits?" Frank shook his head. "No, indeed, I
+do not. It is difficult for me to discuss my private affairs, and you
+know how reluctant I am to do so, but you are also aware of what I think
+of May. I was hoping that we should go back to the place where we left
+off, and, although she is kindness itself, this girl who is more to me
+than anything or anybody in the world, and who was prepared to marry me,
+and would have married me but for Jasper's machinations, was almost
+cold."
+
+He was walking up and down the room, and now halted in his stride and
+spread out his arms despairingly.
+
+"What am I to do? I cannot lose her. I cannot!"
+
+There was a fierceness in his tone which revealed the depth of his
+feeling, and Saul Arthur Mann understood.
+
+"I think it is too soon to say you have lost her, Frank," he said.
+
+He had conceived a genuine liking for Frank Merrill, and the period of
+tribulation through which the young man had passed had heightened the
+respect in which he held him.
+
+"We shall see light in dark places before we go much farther," he said.
+"There is something behind this crime, Frank, which I don't understand,
+but which I am certain is no mystery to you. I am sure that you are
+shielding somebody, for what reason I am not in a position to tell, but
+I will get to the bottom of it."
+
+No event in the interesting life of this little man, who had spent his
+years in the accumulation of facts, had so distressed and piqued him as
+the murder of John Minute. The case had ended where the trial had left
+it.
+
+Crawley, who might have offered a new aspect to the tragedy, had
+disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him. The
+most strenuous efforts which the official police had made, added to the
+investigations which Saul Arthur Mann had conducted independently, had
+failed to trace the fugitive ex-sergeant of police. Obviously, he was
+not to be confounded with Rex Holland. He was a distinct personality
+working possibly in collusion, but there the association ended.
+
+It had occurred to the investigator that possibly Crawley had
+accompanied Rex Holland in his flight, but the most careful inquiries
+which he had pursued at Montreux were fruitless in this respect as in
+all others.
+
+To add to his bewilderment, investigations nearer at home were
+constantly bringing him across the track of Frank Merrill. It was as
+though fate had conspired to show the boy in the blackest light. Frank
+had been acting as secretary to his uncle, and then Jasper Cole had
+suddenly appeared upon the scene from nowhere in particular. The
+suggestion had been made somewhat vaguely that he had come from
+"abroad," and it was certain that he arrived as a result of long
+negotiations which John Minute himself had conducted. They were
+negotiations which involved months of correspondence, no letter of which
+either from one or the other had Frank seen.
+
+While the trial was pending, the little man collected quite a volume of
+information, both from Frank and the girl, but nothing had been quite as
+inexplicable as this intrusion of Jasper Cole upon the scene, or the
+extraordinary mystery which John Minute had made of his engagement.
+
+He had written and posted all the letters to Jasper himself, and had
+apparently received the replies, which he had burned, at some other
+address of which Frank was ignorant.
+
+Jasper had come, and then one day there had been a quarrel, not between
+the two young men, but between Frank and his uncle. It was a singularly
+bitter quarrel, and again Frank refused to discuss the cause. He left
+the impression upon Saul Arthur's mind that he had to some extent been
+responsible. And here was another fact which puzzled "The Man Who Knew."
+Sergeant Smith, as he was then, had been to some extent responsible. It
+was Frank who had introduced the sergeant to Eastbourne and brought him
+to his uncle. But this was only one aspect of the mystery. There were
+others as obscure.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann went back to his bureau, and for the twentieth time
+gathered the considerable dossiers he had accumulated relating to the
+case and to the characters, and went through them systematically and
+carefully.
+
+He left his office near midnight, but at nine o'clock the next morning
+was on his way to Eastbourne. Constable Wiseman was, by good fortune,
+enjoying a day's holiday, and was at work in his kitchen garden when Mr.
+Mann's car pulled up before the cottage. Wiseman received his visitor
+importantly, for, though the constable's prestige was regarded in
+official circles as having diminished as a result of the trial, it was
+felt by the villagers that their policeman, if he had not solved the
+mystery of John Minute's death, had at least gone a long way to its
+solution.
+
+In the spotless room which was half kitchen and half sitting room, with
+its red-tiled floor covered by bright matting, Mrs. Wiseman produced a
+well-dusted Windsor chair, which she placed at Saul Arthur Mann's
+disposal before she politely vanished. In a very few words the
+investigator stated his errand, and Constable Wiseman listened in
+noncommittal silence. When his visitor had finished, he shook his head.
+
+"The only thing about the sergeant I know," he said, "I have already
+told the chief constable who sat in that very chair," he explained. "He
+was always a bit of a mystery--the sergeant, I mean. When he was
+'tanked,' if I may use the expression, he would tell you stories by the
+hour, but when he was sober you couldn't get a word out of him. His
+daughter only lived with him for about a fortnight."
+
+"His daughter!" said Mr. Mann quickly.
+
+"He had a daughter, as I've already notified my superiors," said
+Constable Wiseman gravely. "Rather a pretty girl. I never saw much of
+her, but she was in Eastbourne off and on for about a fortnight after
+the sergeant came. Funny thing, I happen to know the day he arrived,
+because the wheel of his fly came off on my beat, and I noticed the
+circumstances according to law and reported the same. I don't even know
+if she was living with him. He had a cottage down at Birlham Gap, and
+that is where I saw her. Yes, she was a pretty girl," he said
+reminiscently; "one of the slim and slender kind, very dark and with a
+complexion like milk. But they never found her," he said.
+
+Again Mr. Mann interrupted.
+
+"You mean the police?"
+
+Constable Wiseman shook his head.
+
+"Oh, no," he said; "they've been looking for her for years; long before
+Mr. Minute was killed."
+
+"Who are 'they'?"
+
+"Well, several people," said the constable slowly. "I happen to know
+that Mr. Cole wanted to find out where she was. But then he didn't start
+searching until weeks after she disappeared. It is very rum," mused
+Constable Wiseman, "the way Mr. Cole went about it. He didn't come
+straight to us and ask our assistance, but he had a lot of private
+detectives nosing round Eastbourne; one of 'em happened to be a cousin
+of my wife's. So we got to know about it. Cole spent a lot of money
+trying to trace her, and so did Mr. Minute."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann saw a faint gleam of daylight.
+
+"Mr. Minute, too?" he asked. "Was he working with Mr. Cole?"
+
+"So far as I can find out, they were both working independent of the
+other--Mr. Cole and Mr. Minute," explained Mr. Wiseman. "It is what I
+call a mystery within a mystery, and it has never been properly cleared
+up. I thought something was coming out about it at the trial, but you
+know what a mess the lawyers made of it."
+
+It was Constable Wiseman's firm conviction that Frank Merrill had
+escaped through the incompetence of the crown authorities, and there
+were moments in his domestic circle when he was bitter and even
+insubordinate on the subject.
+
+"You still think Mr. Merrill was guilty?" asked Saul Arthur Mann as he
+took his leave of the other.
+
+"I am as sure of it as I am that I am standing here," said the
+constable, not without a certain pride in the consistency of his view.
+"Didn't I go into the room? Wasn't he there with the deceased? Wasn't
+his revolver found? Hadn't there been some jiggery-pokery with his books
+in London?"
+
+Saul Arthur Mann smiled.
+
+"There are some of us who think differently, Constable," he said,
+shaking hands with the implacable officer of the law.
+
+He brought back to London a few new facts to be added to his record of
+Sergeant Crawley, alias Smith, and on these he went painstakingly to
+work.
+
+As has been already explained, Saul Arthur Mann had a particularly
+useful relationship with Scotland Yard, and fortunately, about that
+time, he was on the most excellent terms with official police
+headquarters, for he had been able to assist them in running to earth
+one of the most powerful blackmailing gangs that had ever operated in
+Europe. His files had been drawn upon to such good purpose that the
+police had secured convictions against the seventeen members of the gang
+who were in England.
+
+He sought an interview with the chief commissioner, and that same night,
+accompanied by a small army of detectives, he made a systematic search
+of Silvers Rents. The house into which Jasper Cole had been seen to
+enter was again raided, and again without result. The house was empty
+save for one room, a big room which was simply furnished with a
+truckle-bed, a table, a chair, a lamp, and a strip of carpet. There were
+four rooms--two upstairs, which were never used, and two on the ground
+floor.
+
+At the end of a passage was a kitchen, which also was empty, save for a
+length of bamboo ladder. From the kitchen a bolted door led on to a tiny
+square of yard which was separated by three walls from yards of similar
+dimensions to left and right and to the back of the premises. At the
+back of Silvers Rents was Royston Court, which was another cul-de-sac,
+running parallel with Silvers Rents.
+
+Mr. Mann returned to the house, and again searched the upstairs rooms,
+looking particularly for a trapdoor, for the bamboo ladder suggested
+some such exit. This time, however, he completely failed. Jasper Cole,
+he found, had made only one visit to the house since John Minute's
+death.
+
+It is a curious fact, as showing the localizing of interest, that
+Silvers Rents knew nothing of what had occurred almost at its doors,
+and, though it had at its finger tips all the gossip of the docks and
+the Thames Iron Works, it was profoundly ignorant of what was common
+property in Royston Court. It is even more remarkable that Saul Arthur
+Mann, with his squadron of detectives, should have confined their
+investigations to Silvers Rents.
+
+The investigator was baffled and disappointed, but by the oddest of
+chances he was to pick up yet another thread of the Minute mystery, a
+thread which, however, was to lead him into an ever-deeper maze than
+that which he had already and so unsuccessfully attempted to penetrate.
+
+Three days after his search of Silvers Rents, business took Mr. Mann to
+Camden Town. To be exact, he had gone at the request of the police to
+Holloway Jail to see a prisoner who had turned state's evidence on a
+matter in which the police and Mr. Mann were equally interested. Very
+foolishly he had dismissed his taxi, and when he emerged from the doors
+there was no conveyance in sight. He decided, rather than take the trams
+which would have carried him to King's Cross, to walk, and, since he
+hated main roads, he had taken a short cut, which, as he knew, would
+lead him into the Hampstead Road.
+
+Thus he found himself in Flowerton Road, a thoroughfare of respectable
+detached houses occupied by the superior industrial type. He was
+striding along, swinging his umbrella and humming, as was his wont, an
+unmusical rendering of a popular tune, when his attention was attracted
+to a sight which took his breath away and brought him to a halt.
+
+It was half past five, and dull, but his eyesight was excellent, and it
+was impossible for him to make a mistake. The houses of Flowerton Road
+stand back and are separated from the sidewalk by diminutive gardens.
+The front doors are approached by six or seven steps, and it was on the
+top of one of these flights in front of an open door that the scene was
+enacted which brought Mr. Mann to a standstill.
+
+The characters were a young man and a girl. The girl was extremely
+pretty and very pale. The man was the exact double of Frank Merrill. He
+was dressed in a rough tweed suit, and wore a soft felt hat with a
+fairly wide brim. But it was not the appearance of this remarkable
+apparition which startled the investigator. It was the attitude of the
+two people. The girl was evidently pleading with her companion. Saul
+Arthur Mann was too far away to hear what she said, but he saw the
+young man shake himself loose from the girl. She again grasped his arm
+and raised her face imploringly.
+
+Mr. Mann gasped, for he saw the young man's hand come up and strike her
+back into the house. Then he caught hold of the door and banged it
+savagely, walked down the stairs, and, turning, hurried away.
+
+The investigator stood as though he were rooted to the spot, and before
+he could recover himself the fellow had turned the corner of the road
+and was out of sight. Saul Arthur Mann took off his hat and wiped his
+forehead. All his initiative was for the moment paralyzed. He walked
+slowly up to the gate and hesitated. What excuse could he have for
+calling? If this were Frank, assuredly his own views were all wrong, and
+the mystery was a greater mystery still.
+
+His energies began to reawaken. He took a note of the number of the
+house, and hurried off after the young man. When he turned the corner
+his quarry had vanished. He hurried to the next corner, but without
+overtaking the object of his pursuit. Fortunately, at this moment, he
+found an empty taxicab and hailed it.
+
+"Grimm's Hotel, Jermyn Street," he directed.
+
+At least he could satisfy his mind upon one point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A LETTER IN THE GRATE
+
+
+Grimm's Hotel is in reality a block of flats, with a restaurant
+attached. The restaurant is little more than a kitchen from whence meals
+are served to residents in their rooms. Frank's suite was on the third
+floor, and Mr. Mann, paying his cabman, hurried into the hall, stepped
+into the automatic lift, pressed the button, and was deposited at
+Frank's door. He knocked with a sickening sense of apprehension that
+there would be no answer. To his delight and amazement, he heard Frank's
+firm step in the tiny hall of his flat, and the door was opened. Frank
+was in the act of dressing for dinner.
+
+"Come in, S. A. M.," he said cheerily, "and tell me all the news."
+
+He led the way back to his room and resumed the delicate task of tying
+his dress bow.
+
+"How long have you been here?" asked Mr. Mann.
+
+Frank looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"How long have I been here?" he repeated. "I cannot tell you the exact
+time, but I have been here since a short while after lunch."
+
+Mr. Mann was bewildered and still unconvinced.
+
+"What clothes did you take off?"
+
+It was Frank's turn to look amazed and bewildered.
+
+"Clothes?" he repeated. "What are you driving at, my dear chap?"
+
+"What suit were you wearing to-day?" persisted Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+Frank disappeared into his dressing room and came out with a tumbled
+bundle which he dropped on a chair. It was the blue suit which he
+usually affected.
+
+"Now what is the joke?"
+
+"It is no joke," said the other. "I could have sworn that I saw you less
+than half an hour ago in Camden Town."
+
+"I won't pretend that I don't know where Camden Town is," smiled Frank,
+"but I have not visited that interesting locality for many years."
+
+Saul Arthur Mann was silent. It was obvious to him that whoever was the
+occupant of 69 Flowerton Road, it was not Frank Merrill. Frank listened
+to the narrative with interest.
+
+"You were probably mistaken; the light played you a trick, I expect," he
+said.
+
+But Mr. Mann was emphatic.
+
+"I could have taken an oath in a court that it was you," he said.
+
+Frank stared out of the window.
+
+"How very curious!" he mused. "I suppose I cannot very well prosecute a
+man for looking like me--poor girl!"
+
+"Of whom are you thinking?" asked the other.
+
+"I was thinking of the unfortunate woman," answered Frank. "What brutes
+there are in the world!"
+
+"You gave me a terrible fright," admitted his friend.
+
+Frank's laugh was loud and hearty.
+
+"I suppose you saw me figuring in a court, charged with common assault,"
+he said.
+
+"I saw more than that," said the other gravely, "and I see more than
+that now. Suppose you have a double, and suppose that double is working
+in collusion with your enemies."
+
+Frank shook his head wearily.
+
+"My dear friend," he said, with a little smile, "I am tired of supposing
+things. Come and dine with me."
+
+But Mr. Mann had another engagement. Moreover, he wanted to think things
+out.
+
+Thinking things out was a process which brought little reward in this
+instance, and he went to bed that night a vexed and puzzled man. He
+always had his breakfast in bed at ten o'clock in the morning, for he
+had reached the age of habits and had fixed ten o'clock, since it gave
+his clerks time to bring down his personal mail from the office to his
+private residence.
+
+It was a profitable mail, it was an exciting mail, and it contained an
+element of rich promise, for it included a letter from Constable
+Wiseman:
+
+
+     DEAR SIR: Re our previous conversation, I have just come across one
+     of the photographs of the young lady--Sergeant Smith's daughter. It
+     was given to the private detective who was searching for her. It
+     was given to my wife by her cousin, and I send it to you hoping it
+     may be of some use.
+                         Yours respectfully,
+                                  PETER JOHN WISEMAN.
+
+
+The photograph was wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, and Saul Arthur
+Mann opened it eagerly. He looked at the oblong card and gasped, for the
+girl who was depicted there was the girl he had seen on the steps of 69
+Flowerton Road.
+
+
+A telephone message prepared Frank for the news, and an hour later the
+two men were together in the office of the bureau.
+
+"I am going along to that house to see the girl," said Saul Arthur
+Mann. "Will you come?"
+
+"With all the pleasure in life," said Frank. "Curiously enough, I am as
+eager to find her as you. I remember her very well, and one of the
+quarrels I had with my uncle was due to her. She had come up to the
+house on behalf of her father, and I thought uncle treated her rather
+brutally."
+
+"Point number one cleared up," thought Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+"Then she disappeared," Frank went on, "and Jasper came on the scene.
+There was some association between this girl and Jasper, which I have
+never been able to fathom. All I know is that he took a tremendous
+interest in her and tried to find her, and, so far as I remember, he
+never succeeded."
+
+Mr. Mann's car was at the door, and in a few minutes they were deposited
+before the prim exterior of Number 69.
+
+The door was opened by a girl servant, who stared from Saul Arthur Mann
+to his companion.
+
+"There is a lady living here," said Mr. Mann.
+
+He produced the photograph.
+
+"This is the lady?"
+
+The girl nodded, still staring at Frank.
+
+"I want to see her."
+
+"She's gone," said the girl.
+
+"You are looking at me very intently," said Frank. "Have you ever seen
+me before?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the girl; "you used to come here, or a gentleman very
+much like you. You are Mr. Merrill."
+
+"That is my name," smiled Frank, "but I do not think I have ever been
+here before."
+
+"Where has the lady gone?" asked Saul Arthur.
+
+"She went last night. Took all her boxes and went off in a cab."
+
+"Is anybody living in the house?"
+
+"No, sir," said the girl.
+
+"How long have you been in service here?"
+
+"About a week, sir," replied the girl.
+
+"We are friends of hers," said Saul Arthur shamelessly, "and we have
+been asked to call to see if everything is all right."
+
+The girl hesitated, but Saul Arthur Mann, with that air of authority
+which he so readily assumed, swept past her and began an inspection of
+the house.
+
+It was plainly furnished, but the furniture was good.
+
+"Apparently the spurious Mr. Merrill had plenty of money," said Saul
+Arthur Mann.
+
+There were no photographs or papers visible until they came to the
+bedroom, where, in the grate, was a torn sheet of paper bearing a few
+lines of fine writing, which Mr. Mann immediately annexed. Before they
+left, Frank again asked the girl:
+
+"Was the gentleman who lived here really like me?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the little slavey.
+
+"Have a good look at me," said Frank humorously, and the girl stared
+again.
+
+"Something like you," she admitted.
+
+"Did he talk like me?"
+
+"I never heard him talk, sir," said the girl.
+
+"Tell me," said Saul Arthur Mann, "was he kind to his wife?"
+
+A faint grin appeared on the face of the little servant.
+
+"They was always rowing," she admitted. "A bullying fellow he was, and
+she was frightened of him. Are you the police?" she asked with sudden
+interest.
+
+Frank shook his head.
+
+"No, we are not the police."
+
+He gave the girl half a crown, and walked down the steps ahead of his
+companion.
+
+"It is rather awkward if I have a double who bullies his wife and lives
+in Camden Town," he said as the car hummed back to the city office.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann was silent during the journey, and only answered in
+monosyllables.
+
+Again in the privacy of his office, he took the torn letter and
+carefully pieced it together on his desk. It bore no address, and there
+were no affectionate preliminaries:
+
+
+     You must get out of London. Saul Arthur Mann saw you both to-day.
+     Go to the old place and await instructions.
+
+
+There was no signature, but across the table the two men looked at one
+another, for the writing was the writing of Jasper Cole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE COMING OF SERGEANT SMITH
+
+
+Jasper Cole at that moment was trudging through the snow to the little
+chalet which May Nuttall had taken on the slope of the mountain
+overlooking Chamonix. The sleigh which had brought him up from the
+station was at the foot of the rise. May saw him from the veranda, and
+coo-ooed a welcome. He stamped the snow from his boots and ran up the
+steps of the veranda to meet her.
+
+"This is a very pleasant surprise," she said, giving him both her hands
+and looking at him approvingly. He had lost much of his pallor, and his
+face was tanned and healthy, though a little fine drawn.
+
+"It was rather a mad thing to do, wasn't it?" he confessed ruefully.
+
+"You are such a confirmed bachelor, Jasper, that I believe you hate
+doing anything outside your regular routine. Why did you come all the
+way from Holland to the Haute Savoie?"
+
+He had followed her into the warm and cozy sitting room, and was warming
+his chilled fingers by the big log fire which burned on the hearth.
+
+"Can you ask? I came to see you."
+
+"And how are all the experiments going?"
+
+She turned him to another topic in some hurry.
+
+"There have been no experiments since last month; at least not the kind
+of experiments you mean. The one in which I have been engaged has been
+very successful."
+
+"And what was that?" she asked curiously.
+
+"I will tell you one of these days," he said.
+
+He was staying at the Hotel des Alpes, and hoped to be a week in
+Chamonix. They chatted about the weather, the early snow which had
+covered the valley in a mantle of white, about the tantalizing behavior
+of Mont Blanc, which had not been visible since May had arrived, of the
+early avalanches, which awakened her with their thunder on the night of
+her arrival, of the pleasant road to Argentieres, of the villages by the
+Col de Balme, which are buried in snow, of the sparkling, ethereal green
+of the great glacier--of everything save that which was nearest to their
+thoughts and to their hearts.
+
+Jasper broke the ice when he referred to Frank's visit to Geneva.
+
+"How did you know?" she asked, suddenly grave.
+
+"Somebody told me," he said casually.
+
+"Jasper, were you ever at Montreux?" she asked, looking him straight in
+the eye.
+
+"I have been to Montreux, or rather to Caux," he said. "That is the
+village on the mountain above, and one has to go through Montreux to
+reach it. Why did you ask?"
+
+A sudden chill had fallen upon her, which she did not shake off that day
+or the next.
+
+They made the usual excursions together, climbed up the wooded slopes
+of the Butte, and on the third morning after his arrival stood together
+in the clear dawn and watched the first pink rays of the sun striking
+the humped summit of Mont Blanc.
+
+"Isn't it glorious?" she whispered.
+
+He nodded.
+
+The serene beauty of it all, the purity, the majestic aloofness of
+mountains at once depressed and exalted her, brought her nearer to the
+sublimity of ancient truths, cleansed her of petty fears. She turned to
+him unexpectedly and asked:
+
+"Jasper, who killed John Minute?"
+
+He made no reply. His wistful eyes were fixed hungrily upon the glories
+of light and shade, of space, of inaccessibility, of purity, of
+coloring, of all that dawn upon Mont Blanc comprehended. When he spoke
+his voice was lowered to almost a whisper.
+
+"I know that the man who killed John Minute is alive and free," he said.
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+"If you do not know now, you may never know," he said.
+
+There was a silence which lasted for fully five minutes, and the crimson
+light upon the mountain top had paled to lemon yellow.
+
+Then she asked again:
+
+"Are you directly or indirectly guilty?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Neither directly nor indirectly," he said shortly, and the next minute
+she was in his arms.
+
+There had been no word of love between them, no tender passage, no
+letter which the world could not read. It was a love-making which had
+begun where other love-makings end--in conquest and in surrender. In
+this strange way, beyond all understanding, May Nuttall became engaged,
+and announced the fact in the briefest of letters to her friends.
+
+A fortnight later the girl arrived in England, and was met at Charing
+Cross by Saul Arthur Mann. She was radiantly happy and bubbling over
+with good spirits, a picture of health and beauty.
+
+All this Mr. Mann observed with a sinking heart. He had a duty to
+perform, and that duty was not a pleasant one. He knew it was useless to
+reason with the girl. He could offer her no more than half-formed
+theories and suspicions, but at least he had one trump card. He debated
+in his mind whether he should play this, for here, too, his information
+was of the scantiest description. He carried his account of the girl to
+Frank Merrill.
+
+"My dear Frank, she is simply infatuated," said the little man in
+despair. "Oh, if that infernal record of mine was only completed I could
+convince her in a second! There is no single investigation I have ever
+undertaken which has been so disappointing."
+
+"Can nothing be done?" asked Frank, "I cannot believe that it will
+happen. Marry Jasper! Great Caesar! After all--"
+
+His voice was hoarse. The hand he raised in protest shook.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann scratched his chin reflectively.
+
+"Suppose you saw her," he suggested, and added a little grimly: "I will
+see Mr. Cole at the same time."
+
+Frank hesitated.
+
+"I can understand your reluctance," the little man went on, "but there
+is too much at stake to allow your finer feelings to stop you. This
+matter has got to be prevented at all costs. We are fighting for time.
+In a month, possibly less, we may have the whole of the facts in our
+hands."
+
+"Have you found out anything about the girl in Camden Town?" asked
+Frank.
+
+"She has disappeared completely," replied the other. "Every clew we have
+had has led nowhere."
+
+Frank dressed himself with unusual care that afternoon, and, having
+previously telephoned and secured the girl's permission to call, he
+presented himself to the minute. She was, as usual, cordiality itself.
+
+"I was rather hurt at your not calling before, Frank," she said. "You
+have come to congratulate me?"
+
+She looked at him straight in the eyes as she said this.
+
+"You can hardly expect that, May," he said gently, "knowing how much you
+are to me and how greatly I wanted you. Honestly, I cannot understand
+it, and I can only suppose that you, whom I love better than anything in
+the world--and you mean more to me than any other being--share the
+suspicion which surrounds me like a poison cloud."
+
+"Yet if I shared that suspicion," she said calmly, "would I let you see
+me? No, Frank, I was a child when--you know. It was only a few months
+ago, but I believe--indeed I know--it would have been the greatest
+mistake I could possibly have made. I should have been a very unhappy
+woman, for I have loved Jasper all along."
+
+She said this evenly, without any display of emotion or embarrassment.
+Frank, narrating the interview to Saul Arthur Mann, described the
+speech as almost mechanical.
+
+"I hope you are going to take it nicely," she went on, "that we are
+going to be such good friends as we always were, and that even the
+memory of your poor uncle's death and the ghastly trial which followed
+and the part that Jasper played will not spoil our friendship."
+
+"But don't you see what it means to me?" he burst forth, and for a
+second they looked at one another, and Frank divined her thoughts and
+winced.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," he said huskily; "you are thinking of
+all the beastly things that were said at the trial, that if I had gained
+you I should have gained all that I tried to gain."
+
+She went red.
+
+"It was horrid of me, wasn't it?" she confessed. "And yet that idea came
+to me. One cannot control one's thoughts, Frank, and you must be content
+to know that I believe in your innocence. There are some thoughts which
+flourish in one's mind like weeds, and which refuse to be uprooted.
+Don't blame me if I recalled the lawyer's words; it was an involuntary,
+hateful thought."
+
+He inclined his head.
+
+"There is another thought which is not involuntary," she went on, "and
+it is because I want to retain our friendship and I want everything to
+go on as usual that I am asking you one question. Your twenty-fourth
+birthday has come and gone; you told me that your uncle's design was to
+keep you unmarried until that day. You are still unmarried, and your
+twenty-fourth birthday has passed. What has happened?"
+
+"Many things have happened," he replied quietly. "My uncle is dead. I am
+a rich man apart from the accident of his legacy. I could meet you on
+level terms."
+
+"I knew nothing of this," she said quickly.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Didn't Jasper tell you?" he asked.
+
+"No--Jasper told me nothing."
+
+Frank drew a long breath.
+
+"Then I can only say that until the mystery of my uncle's death is
+solved you cannot know," he said. "I can only repeat what I have already
+told you."
+
+She offered her hand.
+
+"I believe you, Frank," she said, "and I was wrong even to doubt you in
+the smallest degree."
+
+He took her hand and held it.
+
+"May," he said, "what is this strange fascination that Jasper has over
+you?"
+
+For the second time in that interview she flushed and pulled her hand
+back.
+
+"There is nothing unusual in the fascination which Jasper exercises,"
+she smiled, quickly recovering, almost against her will, from the little
+twinge of anger she felt. "It is the influence which every woman has
+felt and which you one day will feel."
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+"Then nothing will make you change your mind?" he said.
+
+"Nothing in the world," she answered emphatically.
+
+For a moment she was sorry for him, as he stood, both hands resting on a
+chair, his eyes on the ground, a picture of despair, and she crossed to
+him and slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Don't take it so badly, Frank," she said softly. "I am a capricious,
+foolish girl, I know, and I am really not worth a moment's suffering."
+
+He shook himself together, gathered up his hat, his stick, and his
+overcoat and offered his hand.
+
+"Good-by," he said, "and good luck!"
+
+In the meantime another interview of a widely different character was
+taking place in the little house which Jasper Cole occupied on the
+Portsmouth Road. Jasper and Saul Arthur Mann had met before, but this
+was the first visit that the investigator had paid to the home of John
+Minute's heir.
+
+Jasper was waiting at the door to greet the little man when he arrived,
+and had offered him a quiet but warm welcome and led the way to the
+beautiful study which was half laboratory, which he had built for
+himself since John Minute's death.
+
+"I am coming straight to the point without any beating about the bush,
+Mr. Cole," said the little man, depositing his bag on the side of his
+chair and opening it with a jerk. "I will tell you frankly that I am
+acting on Mr. Merrill's behalf and that I am also acting, as I believe,
+in the interests of justice."
+
+"Your motives, at any rate, are admirable," said Jasper, pushing back
+the papers which littered his big library table, and seating himself on
+the edge.
+
+"You are probably aware that you are to some extent under suspicion, Mr.
+Cole."
+
+"Under your suspicion or the suspicion of the authorities?" asked the
+other coolly.
+
+"Under mine," said Saul Arthur Mann emphatically. "I cannot speak for
+the authorities."
+
+"In what direction does this suspicion run?"
+
+He thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and eyed the other
+keenly.
+
+"My first suspicion is that you are well aware as to who murdered John
+Minute."
+
+Jasper Cole nodded.
+
+"I am perfectly aware that he was murdered by your friend, Mr. Merrill,"
+he said.
+
+"I suggest," said Saul Arthur Mann calmly, "that you know the murderer,
+and you know the murderer was _not_ Frank Merrill."
+
+Jasper made no reply, and a faint smile flickered for a second at the
+corner of his mouth, but he gave no other sign of his inward feelings.
+
+"And the other point you wish to raise?" he asked.
+
+"The other is a more delicate subject, since it involves a lady," said
+the little man. "You are about to be married to Miss Nuttall."
+
+Jasper Cole nodded.
+
+"You have obtained an extraordinary influence over the lady in this past
+few months."
+
+"I hope so," said the other cheerfully.
+
+"It is an influence which might have been brought about by normal
+methods, but it is also one," Saul Arthur leaned over and tapped the
+table emphatically with each word, "which might be secured by a very
+clever chemist who had found a way of sapping the will of his victim."
+
+"By the administration of drugs?" asked Jasper.
+
+"By the administration of drugs," repeated Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+Jasper Cole smiled.
+
+"I should like to know the drug," he said. "One would make a fortune, to
+say nothing of benefiting humanity to an extraordinary degree by its
+employment. For example, I might give you a dose and you would tell me
+all that you know; I am told that your knowledge is fairly extensive,"
+he bantered. "Surely you, Mr. Mann, with your remarkable collection of
+information on all subjects under the sun, do not suggest that such a
+drug exists?"
+
+"On the contrary," said "The Man Who Knew" in triumph, "it is known and
+is employed. It was known as long ago as the days of the Borgias. It was
+employed in France in the days of Louis XVI. It has been, to some
+extent, rediscovered and used in lunatic asylums to quiet dangerous
+patients."
+
+He saw the interest deepen in the other's eyes.
+
+"I have never heard of that," said Jasper slowly; "the only drug that is
+employed for that purpose is, as far as I know, bromide of potassium."
+
+Mr. Mann produced a slip of paper, and read off a list of names, mostly
+of mental institutions in the United States of America and in Germany.
+
+"Oh, that drug!" said Jasper Cole contemptuously. "I know the use to
+which that is put. There was an article on the subject in the _British
+Medical Journal_ three months ago. It is a modified kind of 'twilight
+sleep'--hyocine and morphia. I'm afraid, Mr. Mann," he went on, "you
+have come on a fruitless errand, and, speaking as a humble student of
+science, I may suggest without offense that your theories are wholly
+fantastic."
+
+"Then I will put another suggestion to you, Mr. Cole," said the little
+man without resentment, "and to me this constitutes the chief reason why
+you should not marry the lady whose confidence I enjoy and who, I feel
+sure, will be influenced by my advice."
+
+"And what is that?" asked Jasper.
+
+"It affects your own character, and it is in consequence a very
+embarrassing matter for me to discuss," said the little man.
+
+Again the other favored him with that inscrutable smile of his.
+
+"My moral character, I presume, is now being assailed," he said
+flippantly. "Please go on; you promise to be interesting."
+
+"You were in Holland a short time ago. Does Miss Nuttall know this?"
+
+Jasper nodded.
+
+"She is well aware of the fact."
+
+"You were in Holland with a lady," accused Mr. Mann slowly. "Is Miss
+Nuttall well aware of this fact, too?"
+
+Jasper slipped from the table and stood upright. Through his narrow lids
+he looked down upon his accuser.
+
+"Is that all you know?" he asked softly.
+
+"Not all, but one of the things I know," retorted the other. "You were
+seen in her company. She was staying in the same hotel with you as 'Mrs.
+Cole.'"
+
+Jasper nodded.
+
+"You will excuse me if I decline to discuss the matter," he said.
+
+"Suppose I ask Miss Nuttall to discuss it?" challenged the little man.
+
+"You are the master of your own actions," said Jasper Cole quickly, "and
+I dare say, if you regard it as expedient, you will tell her, but I can
+promise you that whether you tell her or not I shall marry Miss
+Nuttall."
+
+With this he ushered his visitor to the door, and hardly waited for the
+car to drive off before he had shut that door behind him.
+
+Late that night the two friends forgathered and exchanged their
+experiences.
+
+"I am sure there is something very wrong indeed," said Frank
+emphatically. "She was not herself. She spoke mechanically, almost as
+though she were reciting a lesson. You had the feeling that she was
+connected by wires with somebody who was dictating her every word and
+action. It is damnable, Mann. What can we do?"
+
+"We must prevent the marriage," said the little man quietly, "and employ
+every means that opportunity suggests to that purpose. Make no mistake,"
+he said emphatically; "Cole will stop at nothing. His attitude was one
+big bluff. He knows that I have beaten him. It was only by luck that I
+found out about the woman in Holland. I got my agent to examine the
+hotel register, and there it was, without any attempt at disguise: 'Mr.
+and Mrs. Cole, of London.'"
+
+"The thing to do is to see May at once," said Frank, "and put all the
+facts before her, though I hate the idea; it seems like sneaking."
+
+"Sneaking!" exploded Saul Arthur Mann. "What nonsense you talk! You are
+too full of scruples, my friend, for this work. I will see her
+to-morrow."
+
+"I will go with you," said Frank, after a moment's thought. "I have no
+wish to escape my responsibility in the matter. She will probably hate
+me for my interference, but I have reached beyond the point where I
+care--so long as she can be saved."
+
+It was agreed that they should meet one another at the office in the
+morning and make their way together.
+
+"Remember this," said Mann, seriously, before they parted, "that if Cole
+finds the game is up he will stop at nothing."
+
+"Do you think we ought to take precautions?" asked Frank.
+
+"Honestly I do," confessed the other, "I don't think we can get the men
+from the Yard, but there is a very excellent agency which sometimes
+works for me, and they can provide a guard for the girl."
+
+"I wish you would get in touch with them," said Frank earnestly. "I am
+worried sick over this business. She ought never to be left out of their
+sight. I will see if I can have a talk to her maid, so that we may know
+whenever she is going out. There ought to be a man on a motor cycle
+always waiting about the Savoy to follow her wherever she goes."
+
+They parted at the entrance of the bureau, Saul Arthur Mann returning to
+telephone the necessary instructions. How necessary they were was proved
+that very night.
+
+At nine o'clock May was sitting down to a solitary dinner when a
+telegram was delivered to her. It was from the chief of the little
+mission in which she had been interested, and ran:
+
+
+     Very urgent. Have something of the greatest importance to tell you.
+
+
+It was signed with the name of the matron of the mission, and, leaving
+her dinner untouched, May only delayed long enough to change her dress
+before she was speeding in a taxi eastward.
+
+She arrived at the "hall," which was the headquarters of the mission, to
+find it in darkness. A man who was evidently a new helper was waiting in
+the doorway and addressed her.
+
+"You are Miss Nuttall, aren't you? I thought so. The matron has gone
+down to Silvers Rents, and she asked me to go along with you."
+
+The girl dismissed the taxi, and in company with her guide threaded the
+narrow tangle of streets between the mission and Silvers Rents. She was
+halfway along one of the ill-lighted thoroughfares when she noticed that
+drawn up by the side of the road was a big, handsome motor car, and she
+wondered what had brought this evidence of luxurious living to the mean
+streets of Canning Town. She was not left in doubt very long, for as she
+came up to the lights and was shielding her eyes from their glare her
+arms were tightly grasped, a shawl was thrown over her head, and she
+was lifted and thrust into the car's interior. A hand gripped her
+throat.
+
+"You scream and I will kill you!" hissed a voice in her ear.
+
+At that moment the car started, and the girl, with a scream which was
+strangled in her throat, fell swooning back on the seat.
+
+May recovered consciousness to find the car still rushing forward in the
+dark and the hand of her captor still resting at her throat.
+
+"You be a sensible girl," said a muffled voice, "and do as you're told
+and no harm will come to you."
+
+It was too dark to see his face, and it was evident that even if there
+were light the face was so well concealed that she could not recognize
+the speaker. Then she remembered that this man, who had acted as her
+guide, had been careful to keep in the shadow of whatever light there
+was while he was conducting her, as he said, to the matron.
+
+"Where are you taking me?" she asked.
+
+"You'll know in time," was the noncommittal answer.
+
+It was a wild night; rain splashed against the windows of the car, and
+she could hear the wind howling above the noise of the engines. They
+were evidently going into the country, for now and again, by the light
+of the headlamps, she glimpsed hedges and trees which flashed past. Her
+captor suddenly let down one of the windows and leaned out, giving some
+instructions to the driver. What they were she guessed, for the lights
+were suddenly switched off and the car ran in darkness.
+
+The girl was in a panic for all her bold showing. She knew that this
+desperate man was fearless of consequence, and that, if her death would
+achieve his ends and the ends of his partners, her life was in imminent
+peril. What were those ends, she wondered. Were these the same men who
+had done to death John Minute?
+
+"Who are you?" she asked.
+
+There was a little, chuckling laugh.
+
+"You'll know soon enough."
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth when there was a terrific crash.
+The car stopped suddenly and canted over, and the girl was jerked
+forward to her knees. Every pane of glass in the car was smashed, and it
+was clear, from the angle at which it lay, that irremediable damage had
+been done. The man scrambled up, kicked open the door, and jumped out.
+
+"Level-crossing gate, sir," said the voice of the chauffeur. "I've
+broken my wrist."
+
+With the disappearance of her captor, the girl had felt for the
+fastening of the opposite door, and had turned it. To her delight it
+opened smoothly, and had evidently been unaffected by the jam. She
+stepped out to the road, trembling in every limb.
+
+She felt, rather than saw, the level-crossing gate, and knew that at one
+side was a swing gate for passengers. She reached this when her abductor
+discovered her flight.
+
+"Come back!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+She heard a roar and saw a flashing of lights and fled across the line
+just as an express train came flying northward. It missed her by inches,
+and the force of the wind threw her to the ground. She scrambled up,
+stumbled across the remaining rails, and, reaching the gate opposite,
+fled down the dark road She had gained just that much time which the
+train took in passing. She ran blindly along the dark road, slipping and
+stumbling in the mud, and she heard her pursuer squelching through the
+mud in the rear.
+
+The wind flew her hair awry, the rain beat down upon her face, but she
+stumbled on. Suddenly she slipped and fell, and as she struggled to her
+feet the heavy hand of her pursuer fell upon her shoulder, and she
+screamed aloud.
+
+"None of that," said the voice, and his hand covered her mouth.
+
+At that moment a bright light enveloped the two, a light so intensely,
+dazzlingly white, so unexpected that it hit the girl almost like a
+blow. It came from somewhere not two yards away, and the man released
+his hold upon the girl and stared at the light.
+
+"Hello!" said a voice from the darkness. "What's the game?"
+
+She was behind the man, and could not see his face. All that she knew
+was that here was help, unexpected, Heaven sent, and she strove to
+recover her breath and her speech.
+
+"It's all right," growled the man. "She's a lunatic and I'm taking her
+to the asylum."
+
+Suddenly the light was pushed forward to the man's face, and a heavy
+hand was laid upon his shoulder.
+
+"You are, are you?" said the other. "Well, I am going to take you to a
+lunatic asylum, Sergeant Smith or Crawley or whatever your name is. You
+know me; my name's Wiseman."
+
+For a moment the man stood as though petrified, and then, with a sudden
+jerk, he wrenched his hand free and sprang at the policeman with a wild
+yell of rage, and in a second both men were rolling over in the
+darkness. Constable Wiseman was no child, but he had lost his initial
+advantage, and by the time he got to his feet and had found his electric
+torch Crawley had vanished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE MAN CALLED "MERRILL"
+
+
+"If Wiseman did not think you were a murderer, I should regard him as an
+intelligent being," said Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+"Have they found Crawley?" asked Frank.
+
+"No, he got away. The chauffeur and the car were hired from a West End
+garage, with this story of a lunatic who had to be removed to an asylum,
+and apparently Crawley, or Smith, was the man who hired them. He even
+paid a little extra for the damage which the alleged lunatic might do
+the car. The chauffeur says that he had some doubt, and had intended to
+inform the police after he had arrived at his destination. As a matter
+of fact, they were just outside Eastbourne when the accident occurred."
+"The Man Who Knew" paused.
+
+"Where did he say he was taking her?" he asked Frank.
+
+"He was told to drive into Eastbourne, where more detailed instructions
+would be given to him. The police have confirmed his story, and he has
+been released.
+
+"I have just come from May," said Frank. "She looks none the worse for
+her exciting adventure. I hope you have arranged to have her guarded?"
+
+Saul Arthur Mann nodded.
+
+"It will be the last adventure of that kind our friend will attempt," he
+said.
+
+"Still, this enlightens us a little. We know that Mr. Rex Holland has an
+accomplice, and that accomplice is Sergeant Smith, so we may presume
+that they were both in the murder. Constable Wiseman has been suitably
+rewarded, as he well deserves," said Frank heartily.
+
+"You bear no malice," smiled Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+Frank laughed, and shook his head.
+
+"How can one?" he asked simply.
+
+May had another visitor. Jasper Cole came hurriedly to London at the
+first intimation of the outrage, but was reassured by the girl's
+appearance.
+
+"It was awfully thrilling," she said, "but really I am not greatly
+distressed; in fact, I think I look less tired than you."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"That is very possible. I did not go to bed until very late this
+morning," he said. "I was so engrossed in my research work that I did
+not realize it was morning until they brought me my tea."
+
+"You haven't been in bed all night?" she said, shocked, and shook her
+head reprovingly. "That is one of your habits of life which will have to
+be changed," she warned him.
+
+Jasper Cole did not dismiss her unpleasant experience as lightly as she.
+
+"I wonder what the object of it all was," he said, "and why they took
+you back to Eastbourne? I think we shall find that the headquarters of
+this infernal combination is somewhere in Sussex."
+
+"Mr. Mann doesn't think so," she said, "but believes that the car was to
+be met by another at Eastbourne and I was to be transferred. He says
+that the idea of taking me there was to throw the police off the scent."
+
+She shivered.
+
+"It wasn't a nice experience," she confessed.
+
+The interview took place in the afternoon, and was some two hours after
+Frank had interviewed the girl; Saul Arthur Mann had gone to Eastbourne
+to bring her back. Jasper had arranged to spend the night in town, and
+had booked two stalls at the Hippodrome. She had told Saul Arthur Mann
+this, in accordance with her promise to keep him informed as to her
+movements, and she was, therefore, surprised when, half an hour later,
+the little investigator presented himself.
+
+She met him in the presence of her fiance, and it was clear to Jasper
+what Saul Arthur Mann's intentions were.
+
+"I don't want to make myself a nuisance," he said, "but before we go
+any further, Miss Nuttall, there are certain matters on which you ought
+to be informed. I have every reason to believe that I know who was
+responsible for the outrage of last night, and I do not intend risking a
+repetition."
+
+"Who do you think was responsible?" asked the girl quietly.
+
+"I honestly believe that the author is in this room," was the startling
+response.
+
+"You mean me?" asked Jasper Cole angrily.
+
+"I mean you, Mr. Cole. I believe that you are the man who planned the
+coup and that you are its sole author," said the other.
+
+The girl stared at him in astonishment.
+
+"You surely do not mean what you say."
+
+"I mean that Mr. Cole has every reason for wishing to marry you," he
+said. "What that reason is I do not know completely, but I shall
+discover. I am satisfied," he went on slowly, "that Mr. Cole is already
+married."
+
+She looked from one to the other.
+
+"Already married?" repeated Jasper.
+
+"If he is not already married," said Saul Arthur Mann bluntly, "then I
+have been indiscreet. The only thing I can tell you is that your fiance
+has been traveling on the Continent with a lady who describes herself as
+Mrs. Cole."
+
+Jasper said nothing for a moment, but looked at the other oddly and
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I understand, Mr. Mann," he said at length, "that you collect facts as
+other people collect postage stamps?"
+
+Saul Arthur Mann bristled.
+
+"You may carry this off, sir," he began, "if you can--"
+
+"Let me speak," said Jasper Cole, raising his voice. "I want to ask you
+this: Have you a complete record of John Minute's life?"
+
+"I know it so well," said Saul Arthur Mann emphatically, "that I could
+repeat his history word for word."
+
+"Will you sit down, May?" said Jasper, taking the girl's hand in his and
+gently forcing her to a chair. "We are going to put Mr. Mann's memory
+to the test."
+
+"Do you seriously mean that you want me to repeat that history?" asked
+the other suspiciously.
+
+"I mean just that," said Jasper, and drew up a chair for his unpleasant
+visitor.
+
+The record of John Minute's life came trippingly from Mann's tongue. He
+knew to an extraordinary extent the details of that strange and wild
+career.
+
+"In 1892," said the investigator, continuing his narrative, "he was
+married at St. Bride's church, Port Elizabeth, to Agnes Gertrude Cole."
+
+"Cole," murmured Jasper.
+
+The little man looked at him with open mouth.
+
+"Cole! Good Lord--you are--"
+
+"I am his son," said Jasper quietly. "I am one of his two children. Your
+information is that there was one. As a matter of fact, there were two.
+My mother left my father with one of the greatest scoundrels that has
+ever lived. He took her to Australia, where my sister was born six
+months after she had left John Minute. There her friend deserted her,
+and she worked for seven years as a kitchen maid, in Melbourne, in order
+to save up enough money to bring us to Cape Town. My mother opened a tea
+shop off Aderley Street, and earned enough to educate me and my sister.
+It was there she met Crawley, and Crawley promised to use his influence
+with my father to bring about a reconciliation for her children's sake.
+I do not know what was the result of his attempt, but I gather it was
+unsuccessful, and things went on very much as they were before.
+
+"Then one day, when I was still at the South African College, my mother
+went home, taking my sister with her. I have reason to believe that
+Crawley was responsible for her sailing and that he met them on landing.
+All that I knew was that from that day my mother disappeared. She had
+left me a sum of money to continue my studies, but after eight months
+had passed, and no word had come from her, I decided to go on to
+England. I have since learned what had happened. My mother had been
+seized with a stroke and had been conveyed to the workhouse infirmary by
+Crawley, who had left her there and had taken my sister, who apparently
+he passed off as his own daughter.
+
+"I did not know this at the time, but being well aware of my father's
+identity I wrote to him, asking him for help to discover my mother. He
+answered, telling me that my mother was dead, that Crawley had told him
+so, and that there was no trace of Marguerite, my sister. We exchanged a
+good many letters, and then my father asked me to come and act as his
+secretary and assist him in his search for Marguerite. What he did not
+know was that Crawley's alleged daughter, whom he had not seen, was the
+girl for whom he was seeking. I fell into the new life, and found John
+Minute--I can scarcely call him 'father'--much more bearable than I
+expected--and then one day I found my mother."
+
+"You found your mother?" said Saul Arthur Mann, a light dawning upon
+him.
+
+"Your persistent search of the little house in Silvers Rents produced
+nothing," he smiled. "Had you taken the bamboo ladder and crossed the
+yard at the back of the house into another yard, then through the door,
+you would have come to Number 16 Royston Court, and you would have been
+considerably surprised to find an interior much more luxurious than you
+would have expected in that quarter. In Royston Court they spoke of
+Number 16 as 'the house with the nurses' because there were always three
+nurses on duty, and nobody ever saw the inside of the house but
+themselves. There you would have found my mother, bedridden, and,
+indeed, so ill that the doctors who saw her would not allow her to be
+moved from the house.
+
+"I furnished this hovel piece by piece, generally at night, because I
+did not want to excite the curiosity of the people in the court, nor
+did I wish this matter to reach the ears of John Minute. I felt that
+while I retained his friendship and his confidence there was at least a
+chance of his reconciliation with my mother, and that, before all
+things, she desired. It was not to be," he said sadly. "John Minute was
+struck down at the moment my plans seemed as though they were going to
+result in complete success. Strangely enough, with his death, my mother
+made an extraordinary recovery, and I was able to move her to the
+Continent. She had always wanted to see Holland, France, and at this
+moment"--he turned to the girl with a smile--"she is in the chalet which
+you occupied during your holiday."
+
+Mr. Mann was dumfounded. All his pet theories had gone by the board.
+
+"But what of your sister?" he asked at last.
+
+A black look gathered in Jasper Cole's face.
+
+"My sister's whereabouts are known to me now," he said shortly. "For
+some time she lived in Camden Town, at Number 69 Flowerton Road. At the
+present moment she is nearer and is watched night and day, almost as
+carefully as Mr. Mann's agents are watching you." He smiled again at the
+girl.
+
+"Watching me?" she said, startled.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann went red.
+
+"It was my idea," he said stiffly.
+
+"And a very excellent one," agreed Jasper, "but unfortunately you
+appointed your guards too late."
+
+Mr. Mann went back to his office, his brain in a whirl, yet such was his
+habit that he did not allow himself to speculate upon the new and
+amazing situation until he had carefully jotted down every new fact he
+had collected.
+
+It was astounding that he had overlooked the connection between Jasper
+Cole and John Minute's wife. His labors did not cease until eleven
+o'clock, and he was preparing to go home when the commissionaire who
+acted as caretaker came to tell him that a lady wished to see him.
+
+"A lady? At this hour of the night?" said Mr. Mann, perturbed. "Tell
+her to come in the morning."
+
+"I have told her that, sir, but she insists upon seeing you to-night."
+
+"What is her name?"
+
+"Mrs. Merrill," said the commissionaire.
+
+Saul Arthur Mann collapsed into his chair.
+
+"Show her up," he said feebly.
+
+He had no difficulty in recognizing the girl, who came timidly into the
+room, as the original of the photograph which had been sent to him by
+Constable Wiseman. She was plainly dressed and wore no ornament, and she
+was undeniably pretty, but there was about her a furtiveness and a
+nervous indecision which spoke of her apprehension.
+
+"Sit down," said Mr. Mann kindly. "What do you want me to do for you?"
+
+"I am Mrs. Merrill," she said timidly.
+
+"So the commissionaire said," replied the little man. "You are nervous
+about something?"
+
+"Oh, I am so frightened!" said the girl, with a shudder. "If he knows I
+have been here he'll--"
+
+"You have nothing to be frightened about Just sit here for one moment."
+
+He went into the next room, which had a branch telephone connection, and
+called up May. She was out, and he left an urgent message that she was
+to come, bringing Jasper with her, as soon as she returned. When he got
+back to his office, he found the girl as he had left her, sitting on the
+edge of a big armchair, plucking nervously at her handkerchief.
+
+"I have heard about you," she said. "He mentioned you once--before we
+went to that Sussex cottage with Mr. Crawley. They were going to bring
+another lady, and I was to look after her, but he--"
+
+"Who is 'he'?" asked Mr. Mann.
+
+"My husband," said the girl.
+
+"How long have you been married?" demanded the little man.
+
+"I ran away with him a long time ago," she said. "It has been an awful
+life; it was Mr. Crawley's idea. He told me that if I married Mr.
+Merrill he would take me to see my mother and Jasper. But he was so
+cruel--"
+
+She shuddered again.
+
+"We've been living in furnished houses all over the country, and I have
+been alone most of the time, and he would not let me go out by myself or
+do anything."
+
+She spoke in a subdued, monotonous tone that betrayed the nearness of a
+bad, nervous breakdown.
+
+"What does your husband call himself?"
+
+"Why, Frank Merrill," said the girl in astonishment; "that's his name.
+Mr. Crawley always told me his name was Merrill. Isn't it?"
+
+Mr. Mann shook his head.
+
+"My poor girl," he said sympathetically, "I am afraid you have been
+grossly deceived. The man you married as Merrill is an impostor."
+
+"An impostor?" she faltered.
+
+Mr. Mann nodded.
+
+"He has taken a good man's name, and I am afraid has committed
+abominable crimes in that man's name," said the investigator gently. "I
+hope we shall be able to rid you and the world of a great villain."
+
+Still she stared uncomprehendingly.
+
+"He has always been a liar," she said slowly. "He lied naturally and
+acted things so well that you believed him. He told me things which I
+know aren't true. He told me my brother was dead, but I saw his name in
+the paper the other day, and that is why I came to you. Do you know
+Jasper?"
+
+She was as naive and as unsophisticated as a schoolgirl, and it made the
+little man's heart ache to hear the plaintive monotony of tone and see
+the trembling lip.
+
+"I promise you that you will meet your brother," he said.
+
+"I have run away from Frank," she said suddenly. "Isn't that a wicked
+thing to do? I could not stand it. He struck me again yesterday, and he
+pretends to be a gentleman. My mother used to say that no gentleman ever
+treats a woman badly, but Frank does."
+
+"Nobody shall treat you badly any more," said Mr. Mann.
+
+"I hate him!" she went on with sudden vehemence. "He sneers and says
+he's going to get another wife, and--oh!"
+
+He saw her hands go up to her face, and saw her staring eyes turn to the
+door in affright.
+
+Frank Merrill stood in the doorway, and looked at her without
+recognition.
+
+"I am sorry," he said. "You have a visitor?"
+
+"Come in," said Mr. Mann. "I am awfully glad you called."
+
+The girl had risen to her feet, and was shrinking back to the wall.
+
+"Do you know this lady?"
+
+Frank looked at her keenly.
+
+"Why, yes, that's Sergeant Smith's daughter," he said, and he smiled.
+"Where on earth have you been?"
+
+"Don't touch me!" she breathed, and put her hands before her, warding
+him off.
+
+He looked at her in astonishment, and from her to Mann. Then he looked
+back at the girl, his brow wrinkled in perplexity.
+
+"This girl," said Mr. Mann, "thinks she is your wife."
+
+"My wife?" said Frank, and looked again at her.
+
+"Is this a bad joke or something--do you say that I am your husband?" he
+asked.
+
+She did not speak, but nodded slowly.
+
+He sat down in a chair and whistled.
+
+"This rather complicates matters," he said blankly, "but perhaps you can
+explain?"
+
+"I only know what the girl has told me," said Mr. Mann, shaking his
+head. "I am afraid there is a terrible mistake here."
+
+Frank turned to the girl.
+
+"But did your husband look like me?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And did he call himself Frank Merrill?"
+
+Again she nodded.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+She nodded, this time at him.
+
+"But, great heavens," said Frank, with a gesture of despair, "you do not
+suggest that I am the man?"
+
+"You are the man," said the girl.
+
+Again Frank looked appealingly at his friend, and Saul Arthur Mann saw
+dismay and laughter in his eyes.
+
+"I don't know what I can do," he said. "Perhaps if you left me alone
+with her for a minute--"
+
+"Don't! Don't!" she breathed. "Don't leave me alone with him. Stay
+here."
+
+"And where have you come from now?" asked Frank.
+
+"From the house where you took me. You struck me yesterday," she went on
+inconsequently.
+
+Frank laughed.
+
+"I am not only married, but I am a wife beater apparently," he said
+desperately. "Now what can I do? I think the best thing that can be
+done is for this lady to tell us where she lives and I will take her
+back and confront her husband."
+
+"I won't go with you!" cried the girl. "I won't! I won't! You said you'd
+look after me, Mr. Mann. You promised."
+
+The little investigator saw that she was distraught to a point where a
+collapse was imminent.
+
+"This gentleman will look after you also," he said encouragingly. "He is
+as anxious to save you from your husband as anybody."
+
+"I will not go," she cried, "If that man touches me," and she pointed to
+Frank, "I'll scream."
+
+Again came the tap at the door, and Frank looked round.
+
+"More visitors?" he asked.
+
+"It is all right," said Saul Arthur Mann. "There's a lady and a
+gentleman to see me, isn't there?" he asked the commissionaire. "Show
+them in."
+
+May came first, saw the little tableau, and stopped, knowing
+instinctively all that it portended. Jasper followed her.
+
+The girl, who had been watching Frank, shifted her eyes for a moment to
+the visitors, and at sight of Jasper flung across the room. In an
+instant her brother's arms were around her, and she was sobbing on his
+breast.
+
+"Am I entitled to ask what all this means?" asked Frank quietly. "I am
+sure you will overlook my natural irritation, but I have suffered so
+much and I have been the victim of so many surprises that I do not feel
+inclined to accept all the shocks which fate sends me in a spirit of
+joyful resignation. Perhaps you will be good enough to elucidate this
+new mystery. Is everybody mad--or am I the sole sufferer?"
+
+"There is no mystery about it," said Jasper, still holding the girl. "I
+think you know this lady?"
+
+"I have never met her before in my life," said Frank, "but she persists
+in regarding me as her husband for some reason. Is this a new scheme of
+yours, Jasper?"
+
+"I think you know this lady," said Jasper Cole again.
+
+Frank shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You are almost monotonous. I repeat that I have never seen her before."
+
+"Then I will explain to you," said Jasper.
+
+He put the girl gently from him for a moment, and turned and whispered
+something to May. Together they passed out of the room.
+
+"You were confidential secretary to John Minute for some time, Merrill,
+and in that capacity you made several discoveries. The most remarkable
+discovery was made when Sergeant Smith came to blackmail my father. Oh,
+don't pretend you didn't know that John Minute was my father!" he said
+in answer to the look of amazement on Frank Merrill's face.
+
+"Smith took you into his confidence, and you married his alleged
+daughter. John Minute discovered this fact, not that he was aware that
+it was his own daughter, or that he thought that your association with
+my sister was any more than an intrigue beneath the dignity of his
+nephew. You did not think the time was ripe to spring a son-in-law upon
+him, and so you waited until you had seen his will. In that will he made
+no mention of a daughter, because the child had been born after his wife
+had left him, and he refused to recognize his paternity.
+
+"Later, in some doubt as to whether he was doing an injustice to what
+might have been his own child, he endeavored to find her. Had you known
+of those investigations, you could have helped considerably, but as it
+happened you did not. You married her because you thought you would get
+a share of John Minute's millions, and when you found your plan had
+miscarried you planned an act of bigamy in order to secure a portion of
+Mr. Minute's fortune, which you knew would be considerable."
+
+He turned to Saul Arthur Mann.
+
+"You think I have not been very energetic in pursuing my inquiries as to
+who killed John Minute? There is the explanation of my tolerance."
+
+He pointed his finger at Frank.
+
+"This man is the husband of my sister. To ruin him would have meant
+involving her in that ruin. For a time I thought they were happily
+married. It was only recently that I have discovered the truth."
+
+Frank shook his head.
+
+"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," he said. "I have certainly not
+heard--"
+
+"You will hear more," said Jasper Cole. "I will tell you how the murder
+was committed and who was the mysterious Rex Holland.
+
+"Your father was a forger. That is known. You also have been forging
+signatures since you were a boy. You were Rex Holland. You came to
+Eastbourne on the night of the murder, and by an ingenious device you
+secured evidence in your favor in advance. Pretending to have lost your
+ticket, you allowed station officials to search you and to testify that
+you had no weapon. You were dropped at the gate of my father's house,
+and, as soon as the cab driver had disappeared, you made your way to
+where you had hidden your car in a field at a short distance from the
+house.
+
+"You had arrived there earlier in the evening, and had made your way
+across the metals to Polegate Junction, where you joined the train. As
+you had taken the precaution to have your return ticket clipped in
+London, your trick was not discovered. You had regained your car, and
+drove up to the house ten minutes after you had been seen to disappear
+through the gateway. From your car you had taken the revolver, and with
+that revolver you murdered my father. In order to shield yourself you
+threw suspicion on me and made friends with one of the shrewdest men,"
+he inclined his head toward the speechless Mr. Mann, "and through him
+conveyed those suspicions to authoritative quarters. It was you who,
+having said farewell to Miss Nuttall in Geneva, reappeared the same
+evening at Montreux and wrote a note forging my handwriting. It was you
+who left a torn sheet of paper in the room at Number 69 Flowerton Road,
+also in your writing.
+
+"You have never moved a step but that I have followed you. My agents
+have been with you day and night ever since the day of the murder. I
+have waited my time, and that has come now."
+
+Frank heaved a long sigh, and took up his hat.
+
+"To-morrow morning I shall have a story to tell," he said.
+
+"You are an excellent actor," said Jasper, "and an excellent liar, but
+you have never deceived me."
+
+He flung open the door.
+
+"There is your road. You have twenty thousand pounds which my father
+left you. You have some fifty-five thousand pounds which you buried on
+the night of the murder--you remember the gardener's trowel in the car?"
+he said, turning to Mann.
+
+"I give you twenty-four hours to leave England. We cannot try you for
+the murder of John Minute; you can still be tried for the murder of your
+unfortunate servants."
+
+Frank Merrill made no movement toward the door. He walked over to the
+other end of the room, and stood with his back to them. Then he turned.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "I feel that it isn't worth while going on. It has
+been rather a strain--all this."
+
+Jasper Cole sprang toward him and caught him as he fell. They laid him
+down, and Saul Arthur Mann called urgently on the telephone for a
+doctor, but Frank Merrill was dead.
+
+
+"I knew," said Constable Wiseman, when the story came to him.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Knew, by Edgar Wallace
+
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