This House to Let

“I shall be pleased to hear any explanation you like to offer, with the reservation that I must please myself as to whether I accept it or not.”

“You are very hard, Major Murchison. As you are not prepared to believe me, perhaps it would be better if I did not embark on this history. But Tommie Esmond is really my uncle, my mother’s brother. When I was in low water he was very kind to me. I could not turn my back on him in his distress.” She spoke with sudden passion. “Of course, you, with your pharisaical way of looking at things, would say I should have forgotten all his previous kindness.”

“The Tommie Esmond affair is, comparatively, a trivial one, Mrs Spencer. I am coming in a moment to graver issues. You still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to you. Oh, think well before you answer! Remember, I have told you I have overwhelming evidence. And, believe me, the task I have set out upon is far from a welcome one.”

“I still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to me.” She spoke with a certain air of assurance, but he could see that she was quivering all over.

“Carry your memory back to that night at Blankfield when your so-called brother, George Burton, was arrested on a charge of forgery. You had been his decoy and accomplice in a gambling-saloon in Paris. You had inveigled my poor friend, Jack Pomfret, into a clandestine marriage a few days before. Jack, unable to survive his folly and disgrace, blew his brains out. If not in the eyes of the law, you were, morally, a murderess.”

“You are mad, raving mad!” she cried, but her voice seemed strangled as she made the bold denial.

“Not mad, Mrs Spencer, but very sane, as I will show you in a few seconds. As I told you, I recognised you that night at the Southleigh dinner-party, in spite of the pains you had taken to camouflage yourself. But I waited for corroborative evidence. The detective who arrested your so-called brother, George Burton, has seen you and is prepared to swear to your identity as Norah Burton.”

Then suddenly she gave way, fell on her knees before him, and stretched out appealing hands.

“Oh, you are very clever; I see you have found it all out. But you will be merciful, you will not drive an unhappy woman to despair, just when she has got into safe harbour. Will you be kind enough to listen to my miserable history?”

“I will listen to anything you have got to say.”

“My childhood and girlhood were most wretched and unhappy. At a time when most girls are tasting the sweets and joys of life, I had to live by my wits. I fell under the influence of a good-natured, but very wicked man.”

“In other words, George Burton?” queried Hugh.

“In other words, George Burton,” she repeated in the low, strangled voice that did not move Hugh very much. “I was starving when he met me and took me up. He was genuinely sorry for me. Mind you, I knew nothing of his nefarious schemes. He hid those very carefully away from me.”

“But you were his decoy, if not his confederate, in the gambling-saloon in Paris?”

“His decoy, perhaps, unconsciously, but never his confederate.”

“And when did Tommie Esmond appear on the scene?” queried Hugh.

“Oh, much later. George got into low water and had not enough for himself. I then hunted up my uncle, who received me with open arms.”

Hugh was developing the instincts of a cross-examiner. “And Tommie Esmond, I suppose, introduced you to the card-sharping crew at the Elsinore flat, and you were launched as the cousin of Mrs L’Estrange, who presided over this delectable establishment?”

“I was a distant cousin of Mrs L’Estrange on my dear mother’s side,” was the answer.

She was lying terribly, he felt assured. But he had a card or two up his sleeve yet. Still, it was wise to see how far she would go.

“And when did you part with the so-called brother, George Burton?”

“Oh, very shortly after he came out of prison. I had one interview with him; I could not do less after his kindness to me. And in the meantime I had hunted up poor old Tommie Esmond.”

“And what did you do after that night at Blankfield? I think you cleared out the next day. I heard you had paid everything up.”

“Thank Heaven, yes. There was just a little money left. My life after that was a nightmare. Amongst other humiliations, I was a waitress in a tea-shop.” A smile of vanity broke over the charming face. “The wages were very small, but I got a lot of tips.” Perhaps in this particular instance she was not lying, if it was true that she had been in a tea-shop at all.

There was a little pause, and then Murchison spoke in his stern, inflexible voice:

“And how long is it since you saw George Burton?”

She had answered the question before, but he was hoping to entrap her into some unguarded admission. He could see that she was considerably thrown off her balance, clever and ready as she was, by the extent of his knowledge.

“I told you just now, soon after he came out of prison.”

And then Hugh rose in his wrath. And then she, seeing in his face that he had another and a stronger card to play, got up from her kneeling position and watched him with an agonised countenance.

“I am sorry to use such harsh words to a woman, even such a woman as you are, Mrs Spencer. But when you say that you are lying miserably, and you know it as well as I do.” Her face went livid. She assumed a tone of indignation, but her voice died away in a sob. “How dare you say that?”

“I am not the sort of man to make a statement unless I can prove it up to the hilt. Your so-called cousin, George Dutton, keeps a bucket-shop in the City; from certain evidence in my possession, I should say it was not a very paying business.”

Stella did not attempt to reply to this last shot, but she recognised that he had gone about the business very thoroughly.

“George Dutton, the bucket-shop keeper, is George Burton, the forger, come to life again, still, I take it, on the same criminal tack, perhaps in a lesser degree. Do you admit,” he cried vehemently, “that George Burton and George Dutton are one and the same?”

“Yes, since you seem to have proof, I admit it,” was the somewhat sullen answer.

“That is as well; it clears the ground, up to a certain point. You say you parted from Burton soon after his release from prison, and have not seen him since. When was that – how long ago? You met him frequently as George Dutton at Elsinore Gardens.”

The courage of despair seemed to come to her, and she ceased to tremble. “I will answer no more questions. Tell me what you allege and I will admit or deny. Of course, you have employed a detective; you have had me watched.”

“Of course. I should not presume to cope single-handed with a clever woman like yourself. You have met George Dutton, alias George Burton, four times within the last fortnight at obscure restaurants in the City, and there is a strong presumption that you were handing to him envelopes containing money.” She seemed now to recognise that the game was up. Her self-possession returned to her. She sat down, and motioned to him to seat himself.

“You are much too clever for me, Major Murchison. You have handled the matter very well, so well that you have turned your vague suspicions into absolute certainty. Well, what action are you going to take? As a matter of course, you intend to turn me out of my husband’s house?”

“If not at the moment, very speedily. You will admit, I think, with your clever brain, that you should not remain under the roof of such an honourable English, gentleman as he is a day longer than necessary.”

“I will admit it, from your point of view, if you like. Oh, believe me, I can see your side,” replied this remarkable young woman. “But you will forgive me, Major Murchison, if I say that, from my point of view, I would have preferred that you had never been born. Guy is very happy; he believes in me and trusts me. It will be a great blow to him as to me.”

“I know. I wish it were in my power to spare him this misery. But, in common honesty, I cannot.”

“And have you thought of what is to become of me when I am turned out of my husband’s house?” she inquired in a composed voice. Her adroit mind had evidently adapted itself to the altered circumstances, and was now busied in turning them, as far as possible, to her own advantage.

“You have George Dutton to fall back upon, also Tommie Esmond,” was Murchison’s retort.

She snapped her fingers in a fashion that was almost vulgar, and she was so free from vulgar actions.

“George is thankful that I can, from time to time, fling him a ten-pound note; his luck has deserted him. Tommie Esmond, I believe, saved a bit out of the wreck, but he has not more than enough to keep body and soul together.”

“Guy is not a man to behave ungenerously, however deeply he has been wronged,” said Hugh, after he had reflected a few moments. He added more hesitatingly, “And if Guy should take an obdurate attitude, it is possible I might come to your assistance. I have hunted you down, but I do not want to drive you into the gutter.”

“But a man must support his wife, even if her past has not been quite so respectable as it might have been,” she cried defiantly.

Hugh directed upon her a searching look. “Mrs Spencer, it is in my mind that you may not be Guy’s wife after all. If I probed a little deeper, I might get at your real relations with this George Dutton, or rather Burton.”

“Oh, this time you are really pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp, I assure you. George has never been anything to me but brother or cousin, as the occasion demanded.”

She paused a second, and there was a terrified look in her eyes as she added, “But even if your suspicions were correct, which they are not, you would not go back from your own promise. If Guy proved obdurate, you would not drive me to the gutter. You promised me that.”

“I shall keep my promise, Mrs Spencer, and I will give it you in writing, if you wish.”

“It would be as well. And you will want something from me in writing also, I expect,” she concluded shrewdly.

“Certainly I shall,” said Hugh steadily. “I shall draw up a full confession for you to sign, to prevent you from ever troubling your husband again – if, as I suggested just now, he is your husband.”

Mrs Spencer rose. It seemed that there was a sense of relief in the fact that the interview was ending so amicably.

“I would have preferred to remain as I am, but, on the whole, the life doesn’t suit me, luxurious as it is. I am very fond of Guy really, he has been so good to me, but I have alienated him from his friends. And I have to sit here hour after hour by myself, with only my thoughts for company.”

“Let us say one week from now I will have that confession ready to sign.”

“And you will bring it here?” suggested Stella.

“I think not. It will take some time to read through, and we might be interrupted,” was Hugh’s answer.

“At your hotel, then, I suppose?” was the young woman’s next suggestion.

“The same objection applies.”

He scribbled down an address on a piece of paper. “Meet me there this day week at the hour I have appointed. Nobody will interrupt us, I will take care of that.”

And Mrs Spencer lay awake half the night, working out a problem that had suggested itself to her in a flash.

The next day she lunched with George Dutton in the City. The detective might be watching her, but did it matter? Whatever happened at the end of the week, she had burned her boats.

Chapter Twenty

Two months had elapsed since the meeting between Major Murchison and Stella Spencer, recorded in the last chapter.

A handsome, well-set-up man of about thirty was travelling up from Manchester to London. The reason of his journey was his desire to visit his sister, Caroline Masters, who occupied a small flat in the neighbourhood of King’s Cross.

Up to a short time ago this handsome, well-set-up man had been leading a very quiet life in the busy city of Manchester. He was an electrician by trade, and a very clever one. He was civil, well-spoken, intelligent beyond his station, but he had not foregathered much with his fellow-workers, had kept himself very much to himself. And yet, strange to say, this self-isolation had not provoked suspicion or resentment on the part of his daily associates.

Reginald Davis, for such was his name, had been unjustly suspected of murder, and the police had been hot on his track. Then had come the suicide in Number 1 °Cathcart Square, and his sister, Caroline Masters, had identified the dead body as that of her brother.

Caroline Masters had always been a plucky, resourceful girl, and devoted to him. The dead man, no doubt, bore some resemblance to himself, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to swear to a false identification, and remove from him the sleepless vigilance of the police. This much she had conveyed to him in a guarded letter.

Reginald Davis, the man falsely accused of murder, was dead in the eyes of the law: in a sense, he had nothing further to fear. But at the same time, caution must be observed. The few friends he had were in London; at any time he might run across one or more of them. So, taking another name, he had hidden himself in Manchester, and corresponded secretly with the one of the two sisters he could trust, Caroline Masters.

And then, suddenly, the burden had been lifted from his soul. There was a small paragraph in the evening newspapers, afterwards reproduced in the morning ones, which told him that he need not skulk through the world any longer.

A man lying under sentence of death for a brutal murder and without hope of reprieve, had confessed to the crime of which Davis had been falsely accused. In the paragraph, which was, of course, essentially the same in all the papers, were a few words of sympathy for the unfortunate Reginald Davis who had stolen into Number 1 °Cathcart Square and committed suicide, under a sense of abject terror. The police had carefully investigated the statements of the condemned man, with the result that they found the late Reginald Davis absolutely innocent.

The late Reginald Davis, very alive and well, knocked at the door of his sister’s flat. She had been apprised of his coming, and greeted him affectionately. She sat him down before a well-cooked supper. He was hungry and ate heartily. She did not disturb him with much conversation till he had finished.

“Well, Reggie, that was a bit of luck indeed.” She was, of course, alluding to the confession of the real murderer. “Now you are as free as air. You were always a bit of a bad egg, old boy, but never a criminal to that extent.”

“No, hang it all, I am not particular in a general way, but murder was not in my line,” he answered briefly. “It was hard lines to get scot-free of the other things, and then to be suspected of that at the end.”

He looked at her admiringly. “By Jove! Carrie, you were always the cleverest of the lot of us. That was a brain-wave of yours, walking in and identifying me as the suicide.” Mrs Masters smiled appreciatively. “Yes, it came to me in a flash. I read the account in the papers. It struck me I might do something useful. I went up to the court with the tale of a missing brother. I saw the body; the poor creature might have been your twin. Of course, I swore it was you, and gave you a new lease of life.” She added severely, “I hope you have taken advantage of what I did, and become a reformed character.” Davis spoke very gravely. “Yes, Carrie, I swear to you I have. That shock was the making of me. I have lain very low, worked hard, and put by money.”

He pulled out an envelope from his breastpocket, and thrust it into her hand; it was full of one-pound notes.

“Fifty of the best, old girl, for a little nest-egg. I have not forgotten my best pal, you see.”

The tears came into Mrs Masters’ eyes. He had been a bad egg, but he had a good heart at bottom.

“That is very sweet of you, Reggie; it will come in very useful. And now to go back for a moment to Cathcart Square. Who was the poor devil who killed himself there? He was as like you as two peas are like each other.”

“I think we have got to find that out,” said Reginald Davis gravely. “Nor, reading the account in the papers, am I quite sure that it was a suicide.”

“But that was the verdict,” interrupted the sister.

“I know, but there are peculiar things about the case. Letters addressed to Reginald Davis were found on him; there was a letter signed Reginald Davis, addressed to the Coroner, announcing his intention to commit suicide. Those letters had been placed there by the person who murdered him, and that person who murdered him was somebody who knew me, unless it was the accidental taking of a common name.”

“But the razor was clutched in his hand, Reggie!”

“Quite easy,” replied Davis, who, if not a murderer himself, could easily project himself, apparently, into the mind of one. “We will assume, for the moment, it was a man. He cut the poor devil’s throat, and then thrust the razor into his stiffening hand, to convey the idea of suicide.”

“It might be,” agreed Mrs Masters.

“Well, Carrie, one thing I have fixed on, and it is one of the things for which I have come up. I go to Scotland Yard to-morrow, tell them straight I am Reginald Davis, without a stain upon my character, explain to them that you were misled by a close resemblance. We will have that body exhumed. I am firmly convinced it was a murder.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie, Reggie,” advised Mrs Masters, who had a horror of the law and its subtle ways. “Never mind who was the poor devil who was found there, whether he was murdered or committed suicide. It is no affair of yours.”

“It is an affair of mine in this way,” replied Davis in a dogged tone. “The person who murdered the poor devil, as you call him, knew something about me, and took a liberty with my name.”

“It served you a good turn, Reggie, anyway.”

“I know; I admit that. But the murderer did not know he was doing me, thanks to you, a good turn when he killed the other fellow.” Mrs Masters thought deeply for a few moments. “Reggie, you have been a very bad egg, I am sure. I shall never guess a quarter of what you have been guilty of.”

He laid his hand affectionately on her arm. “Well for you, old girl, you can’t. That is all past and done with. By the way, that letter found on the poor chap, announcing his intention to commit suicide, did they ask you to identify my handwriting? Of course, the others addressed to him didn’t matter much. Anybody could have written them. But my letter was a forgery. Did they ask you to identify that particular letter?”

“They did, Reggie, and my brain was in such a whirl that I could hardly read it. I said that I believed it was in your handwriting. It was certainly very like, although, as you can imagine, I looked at it through a sort of mist. Anyway, it was as like your handwriting as the dead man was like you.” Davis ruminated for a few moments. “That letter was forged by somebody who knew me and could imitate my hand to a nicety. I am thinking of all the wrong ’uns I knew in the old days. I think I can fix him.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Masters breathlessly. She was capable of great daring in the cause and the service of those she loved, but she was not habituated to the ways of hardened criminals.

“A man I was a bit associated with in the old days; luckily he didn’t drag me in far enough. He was an expert forger. We used to call him ‘George the Penman.’”

Mrs Masters shuddered. “Oh, you poor weak soul, you were so near it as that?”

“Very near, Carrie. The shock of the false accusation of murder pulled me up straight. I saw where I was drifting, and made up my mind that the straight path was the surest.” At the moment that Mr Davis gave utterance to this honourable sentiment there was a ring at the bell.

Mrs Masters rose at once. “It is Iris. I dropped her a note to say you were coming. She will be so pleased to see you.”

There floated into the small sitting-room a very dainty and ethereal figure, Miss Iris Deane, a charming member of the chorus at the Frivolity Theatre.

She flung her arms round the neck of her handsome brother. “Oh Reggie, dear, what a treat to see you! And all this dreadful thing is lifted from you.”

Iris was not his favourite sister. She was clever in a worldly way, and had made good. But she had not the sterling loyalty of Caroline.

Davis gently checked her enthusiasm. “And how have you been getting on, Iris? Always floating on the top as usual?”

Miss Iris showed her dimples. “Always floating on the top, as you say, dear old boy. A silly, soft chap fell in love with me; wrote most impassioned love-letters. Well, he was too soppy for me to care much about him, and when his rich brother came along, offering me a price for his love-letters, I can tell you I just jumped at the chance.”

“Did you get a good price?” queried her brother.

“I stuck out for ten thousand,” explained the capable Iris; “but this chap was a good bargainer, and I let them go at seven. It was better on the whole. If I had married Roddie, I should have been so fed-up in a month that I should have run away from him, and then Heaven knows where I might have ended.”

Davis looked at his sister approvingly. There was enough of the old Adam left in him to entertain a slight envy of his sister’s chances. Seven thousand pounds, a little fortune in itself, was a good bit of work, a handsome reward for the display of her dimples.

“Roddie who, dear? You might tell us his other name,” queried Mrs Masters, who perhaps was also smitten with a sense of envy.

“That’s telling,” answered the sprightly Iris, who was not given to be too frank about her own affairs. “But if either of you two dear things want a little ready, apply to me. Of course, you will remember I have got to take care of myself, to make provision for my old age.”

Davis and Carrie exchanged glances. They knew the volatile Iris of old. As a child she had always been mean and grasping. Not much of the seven thousand would come their way, if they were on the verge of starvation.

Carrie spoke in cold accents. “You are really too generous, Iris. But we shall not have to trespass upon your generosity. I have enough for my humble wants. And Reggie has been able to put by, so much so that he has been kind enough to make me a very handsome money present to-night.”

“Dear old Reggie,” said the sweetly smiling Iris. “I am so glad you have made good.”

And then Davis spoke: “Thanks, in great part, to Carrie, who told that splendid lie about the suicide, or murder, at 1 °Cathcart Square. You remember that, of course?”

“Suicide, wasn’t it?” said Iris, but her cheek had grown a little pale.

“I don’t think so. There was a forged letter purporting to be written by me. I am going to Scotland Yard to-morrow, stating frankly who I am, and urging them to exhume the body. We will find out who the man, buried under the name of Reginald Davis, really was.”

And then the agitation of his younger sister became extreme. She clutched convulsively at his arm.

“Reggie, you will not do this. What does it matter to you who the man was? Go under some other name, and let sleeping dogs lie.” Unconsciously she had used the same expression as Mrs Masters, but from different motives.

“I have been under a different name for a longer time than I care to remember,” answered Davis doggedly. “I have a fancy to resume my own, and make a clean breast of it to the police. They have nothing else to charge me with.”

Iris fell on her knees, and the tears rained down her cheeks.

“For my sake, Reggie, if not for your own.”

“And why for your sake? Tell us what you mean,” demanded her brother sternly.

And Iris spoke as clearly as she could speak amidst her strangled sobs.

“If you try and unearth that mystery at Cathcart Square, I might be dragged in, and it might be very awkward for me.”

Chapter Twenty One

Davis directed a keen glance at his elder sister over the bowed head of Iris. The younger woman was by no means of an emotional nature. Light, frivolous and volatile, she had danced through life, and, on the whole, had had a good time. One could not picture her in a tragic mood.

And yet, she was the personification of deep emotion now. She could hardly speak for those convulsive sobs, and in her frightened eyes there was a deep and haunting terror. At what point, and through what circumstances, had tragedy touched this little selfish, self-centred butterfly, gifted with a certain amount of cunning and sharpness, but utterly brainless.