The Millionaire Mystery

‘I haven’t a shilling, I regret to say.’

‘Then you’d best get one, or go without your bed,’ replied the lady, and banged the door in his face.

Under this last indignity even Cicero’s philosophy gave way, and he launched an ecclesiastic curse at the inhospitable inn.

Fortunately the weather was warm and tranquil. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. The darkling earth was silent—silent as the watching stars. Even the sordid soul of the vagabond was stirred by the solemn majesty of the sky. He removed his battered hat and looked up.

‘The heavens are telling the glory of God,’ he said; but, not recollecting the rest of the text, he resumed his search for a resting-place.

It was now only between nine and ten o’clock, yet, as he wandered down the silent street, he could see no glimmer of a light in any window. His feet took him, half unconsciously as it were, by the path leading towards the tapering spire. He went on through a belt of pines which surrounded the church, and came suddenly upon the graveyard, populous with the forgotten dead—at least, he judged they were forgotten by the state of the tombstones.

On the hither side he came upon a circular chapel, with lance-shaped windows and marvellous decoration wrought in greystone on the outer walls. Some distance off rose a low wall, encircling the graveyard, and beyond the belt of pines through which he had just passed stretched the league-long herbage of the moor. He guessed this must be the Lady Chapel.

Between the building and the low wall he noticed a large tomb of white marble, surmounted by a winged angel with a trumpet. ‘Dick Marlow’s tomb,’ he surmised. Then he proceeded to walk round it as that of his own familiar friend, for he had already half persuaded himself into some such belief.

But he realized very soon that he had not come hither for sightseeing, for his limbs ached, and his feet burned, and his eyes were heavy with sleep. He rolled along towards a secluded corner, where the round of the Lady Chapel curved into the main wall of the church. There he found a grassy nook, warm and dry. He removed his gloves with great care, placed them in his silk hat, and then took off his boots and loosened his clothes. Finally he settled himself down amid the grass, put a hand up either coat-sleeve for warmth, and was soon wrapped in a sound slumber.

He slept on undisturbed until one o’clock, when—as say out-of-door observers—the earth turns in her slumber. This vagrant, feeling as it were the stir of Nature, turned too. A lowing of cows came from the moor beyond the pines. A breath of cool air swept through the branches, and the sombre boughs swayed like the plumes of a hearse. Across the face of the sky ran a shiver. He heard distinctly what he had not noticed before, the gush of running water. He roused himself and sat up alert, and strained his hearing. What was it he heard now? He listened and strained again. Voices surely! Men’s voices!

There could be no mistake. Voices he heard, though he could not catch the words they said. A tremor shook his whole body. Then, curiosity getting the better of his fear, he wriggled forward flat on his stomach until he was in such a position that he could peer round the corner of the Lady Chapel. Here he saw a sight which scared him.

Against the white wall of the mausoleum bulked two figures, one tall, the other short. The shorter carried a lantern. They stood on the threshold of the iron door, and the tall man was listening. They were nearer now, so that he could hear their talk very plainly.

‘All is quiet,’ said the taller man. ‘No one will suspect. We’ll get him away easily.’

Then Cicero heard the key grate in the lock, saw the door open and the men disappear into the tomb. He was sick with terror, and was minded to make a clean bolt of it; but with the greatest effort he controlled his fears and remained. There might be money in this adventure.

In ten minutes the men came out carrying a dark form between them, as Cicero guessed, the dead body of Richard Marlow. They set down their burden, made fast the door, and took up again the sinister load. He saw them carry it towards the low stone wall. Over this they lifted it, climbed over themselves, and disappeared into the pine-woods.

Cicero waited until he could no longer hear the rustle of their progress; then he crept cautiously forward and tried the door of the tomb. It was fast locked.

‘Resurrection-men! body-snatchers!’ he moaned.

He felt shaken to his very soul by the ghastliness of the whole proceeding. Then suddenly the awkwardness of his own position, if by chance anyone should find him there, rushed in upon his mind, and, without so much as another glance, he made off as quickly as he could in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER II

THE HUT ON THE HEATH

‘WELL, I’m glad it’s all over,’ said the footman, waving a cigar stolen from the box of his master. ‘Funerals don’t suit me.’

‘Yet we must all ’ave one of our own some day,’ said the cook, who was plainly under the influence of gin; ‘an’ that pore Miss Sophy—me ’art bleeds for ’er!’

‘An’ she with ’er millions,’ growled a red-faced coachman. ‘Wot rot!’

‘Come now, John, you know Miss Sophy was fond of her father’—this from a sprightly housemaid, who was trimming a hat.

‘I dunno why,’ said John. ‘Master was as cold as ice, an’ as silent as ’arf a dozen graves.’

The scullery-maid shuddered, and spread out her grimy hands.

‘Oh, Mr John, don’t talk of graves, please! I’ve ’ad the nightmare over ’em.’

‘Don’t put on airs an’ make out as ’ow you’ve got nerves, Cammelliar,’ put in the cook tearfully. ‘It’s me as ’as ’em—I’ve a bundle of ’em—real shivers. Ah, well! we’re cut down like green bay-trees, to be sure. Pass that bottle, Mr Thomas.’

This discussion took place in the kitchen of the Moat House. The heiress and Miss Parsh, the housekeeper, had departed for the seaside immediately after the funeral, and in the absence of control, the domestics were making merry. To be sure, Mr Marlow’s old and trusted servant, Joe Brill, had been told off to keep them in order, but just at present his grief was greater than his sense of duty. He was busy now sorting papers in the library—hence the domestic chaos.

It was, in truth, a cheerful kitchen, more especially at the present moment, with the noonday sun streaming in through the open casements. A vast apartment with a vast fireplace of the baronial hall kind; brown oaken walls and raftered roof; snow-white dresser and huge deal table, and a floor of shining white tiles.

There was a moment’s silence after the last unanswerable observation of the cook. It was broken by a voice at the open door—a voice which boomed like the drone of a bumble-bee.

‘Peace be unto this house,’ said the voice richly, ‘and plenty be its portion.’

The women screeched, the men swore—since the funeral their nerves had not been quite in order—and all eyes turned towards the door. There, in the hot sunshine, stood an enormously fat old man, clothed in black, and perspiring profusely. It was, in fact, none other than Cicero Gramp, come in the guise of Autolycus to pick up news and unconsidered trifles. He smiled benignly, and raised his fat hand.

‘Peace, maid-servants and men-servants,’ said he, after the manner of Chadband. ‘There is no need for alarm. I am a stranger, and you must take me in.’

‘Who the devil are you?’ queried the coachman.

‘We want no tramps here,’ growled the footman.

‘I am no tramp,’ said Cicero mildly, stepping into the kitchen. ‘I am a professor of elocution and eloquence, and a friend of your late master’s. He went up in the world, I dropped down. Now I come to him for assistance, and I find him occupying the narrow house; yes, my friends, Dick Marlow is as low as the worms whose prey he soon will be. Pax vobiscum!’

‘Calls master “Dick”,’ said the footman.

‘Sez ’e’s an old friend,’ murmured the cook.

They looked at each other, and the thought in every mind was the same. The servants were one and all anxious to hear the genesis of their late master, who had dropped into the Moat House, as from the skies, some five years before. Mrs Crammer, the cook, rose to the occasion with a curtsy.

‘I’m sure, sir, I’m sorry the master ain’t here to see you,’ she said, polishing a chair with her apron. ‘But as you says—or as I take it you means—’e’s gone where we must all go. Take a seat, sir, and I’ll tell Joe, who’s in the library.’

‘Joe—my old friend Joe!’ said Cicero, sitting down like a mountain. ‘Ah! the faithful fellow!’

This random remark brought forth information, which was Cicero’s intention in making it.

‘Faithful!’ growled the coachman, ‘an’ why not? Joe Brill was paid higher nor any of us, he was; just as of living all his life with an iceberg deserved it!’

‘Poor Dick was an iceberg!’ sighed Cicero pensively. ‘A cold, secretive man.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs Crammer, wiping her eye, ‘you may well say that. He ’ad secrets, I’m sure, and guilty ones, too!’

‘We all have our skeletons, ma’am. But would you mind giving me something to eat and to drink? for I have walked a long way. I am too poor,’ said Cicero, with a sweet smile, ‘to ride, as in the days of my infancy, but spero meliora.’

‘Talking about skeletons, sir,’ said the footman when Mr Gramp’s jaws were fully occupied, ‘what about the master’s?’

‘Ah!’ said Gramp profoundly. ‘What indeed!’

‘But whatever it is, it has to do with the West Indies,’ said the man.

‘Lor’!’ exclaimed the housemaid, ‘and how do you know that, Mr Thomas?’

‘From observation, Jane, my dear,’ Thomas smiled loftily. ‘A week or two afore master had the fit as took him, I brought in a letter with the West Indy stamp. He turned white as chalk when he saw it, and tore it open afore I could get out of the room. I ’ad to fetch a glass of whisky. He was struck all of a ’eap—gaspin’, faintin’, and cussin’ orful.’

‘Did he show it to Miss Sophy?’ asked Mrs Crammer.

‘Not as I knows of. He kept his business to hisself,’ replied Thomas.

Gramp was taking in all this with greedy ears.

‘Ha!’ he said, ‘when you took in the letter, might you have looked at the postmark, my friend?’

With an access of colour, the footman admitted that he had been curious enough to do so.

‘And the postmark was Kingston, Jamaica,’ said he.

‘It recalls my youth,’ said Cicero. ‘Ah! they were happy, happy days!’

‘What was Mr Marlow, sir?’

‘A planter of—of—rice,’ hazarded Gramp. He knew that there were planters in the West Indies, but he was not quite sure what it was they planted. ‘Rice—acres of it!’

‘Well, he didn’t make his money out of that, sir,’ growled the coachman.

‘No, he did not,’ admitted the professor of elocution. ‘He acquired his millions in Mashonaland—the Ophir of the Jews.’

This last piece of knowledge had been acquired from Slack, the schoolmaster.

‘He was precious careful not to part with none of it,’ said the footman.

‘Except to Dr Warrender,’ said the cook. ‘The doctor was always screwing money out of him. Not that it was so much ’im as ’is wife. I can’t abear that doctor’s wife—a stuck-up peacock, I call her. She fairly ruined her husband in clothes. Miss Sophy didn’t like her, neither.’

‘Dick’s child!’ cried Gramp, who had by this time procured a cigar from the footman. ‘Ah! is little Sophy still alive?’

He lighted the cigar and puffed luxuriously.

‘Still alive!’ echoed Mrs Crammer, ‘and as pretty as a picture. Dark ’air, dark eyes—not a bit like ’er father.’

‘No,’ said Cicero, grasping the idea. ‘Dick was fair when we were boys. I heard rumours that little Sophy was engaged—let me see—to a Mr Thorold.’

‘Alan Thorold, Esquire,’ corrected the coachman gruffly; ‘one of the oldest families hereabouts, as lives at the Abbey farm. He’s gone with her to the seaside.’

‘To the seaside? Not to Brighton?’

‘Nothin’ of the sort—to Bournemouth, if you know where that is.’

‘I know some things, my friend,’ said Cicero mildly. ‘It was Bournemouth I meant—not unlike Brighton, I think, since both names begin with a B. I know that Miss Marlow—dear little Sophy!—is staying at the Imperial Hotel, Bournemouth.’

‘You’re just wrong!’ cried Thomas, falling into the trap; ‘she is at the Soudan Hotel. I’ve got the address to send on letters.’

‘Can I take them?’ asked Gramp, rising. ‘I am going to Bournemouth to see little Sophy and Mr Thorold. I shall tell them of your hospitality.’

Before the footman could reply to this generous offer, the page-boy of the establishment darted in much excited.

‘Oh, here’s a go!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dr Warrender’s run away, an’ the Quiet Gentleman’s followed!’

‘Wot d’ye mean, Billy?’

‘Wot I say. The doctor ain’t bin ’ome all night, nor all mornin’, an’ Mrs Warrender’s in hysterics over him. Their ’ousemaid I met shoppin’ tole me.’

The servants looked at one another. Here was more trouble, more excitement.

‘And the Quiet Gentleman?’ asked the cook with ghoulish interest.

‘He’s gone, too. Went out larst night, an’ never come back. Mrs Marry thinks he’s bin murdered.’

There was a babel of voices and cries, but after a moment quiet was restored. Then Cicero placed his hand on the boy’s head.

‘My boy,’ he said pompously, ‘who is the Quiet Gentleman? Let us be clear upon the point of the Quiet Gentleman.’

‘Don’t you know, sir?’ put in the eager cook. ‘He’s a mystery, ’aving bin staying at Mrs Marry’s cottage, she a lone widder taking in boarders.’

‘I’ll give a week’s notice!’ sobbed the scullery-maid. ‘These crimes is too much for me.’

‘I didn’t say the Quiet Gentleman ’ad been murdered,’ said Billy, the page; ‘but Mrs Marry only thinks so, cos ’e ain’t come ’ome.’

‘As like as not he’s cold and stiff in some lonely grave!’ groaned Mrs Crammer hopefully.

‘The Quiet Gentleman,’ said Cicero, bent upon acquiring further information—‘tall, yellow-bearded, with a high forehead and a bald head?’

‘Well, I never, sir!’ cried Jane, the housemaid. ‘If you ain’t describing Dr Warrender! Did you know him, sir?’

Cicero was quite equal to the occasion.

‘I knew him professionally. He attended me for a relaxed throat. I was vox et praeterea nihil until he cured me. But what was this mysterious gentleman like? Short, eh?’

‘No; tall and thin, with a stoop. Long white hair, longer beard and black eyes like gimblets,’ gabbled the cook. ‘I met ’im arter dark one evenin’, and I declare as ’is eyes were glow-worms. Ugh! They looked me through and through. I’ve never bin the same woman since.’

At this moment a raucous voice came from the inner doorway.

‘What the devil’s all this?’ was the polite question.

Cicero turned, and saw a heavily-built man surveying the company in general, and himself in particular, anything but favourably. His face was a mahogany hue, and he had a veritable tangle of whiskers and hair. The whole cut of the man was distinctly nautical, his trousers being of the dungaree, and his pea-jacket plentifully sprinkled with brass buttons. In his ears he wore rings of gold, and his clenched fists hung by his side as though eager for any emergency, and ‘the sooner the better’. That was how he impressed Cicero, who, in nowise fancying the expression on his face, edged towards the door.

‘Oh, Joe!’ shrieked the cook, ‘wot a turn you give me! an’ sich news as we’ve ’ad!’

‘News?’ said Joe uneasily, his eyes still on Cicero.

‘Mrs Warrender’s lost her husband, and the Quiet Gentleman’s disappeared mysterious!’

‘Rubbish! Get to your work, all of you!’

So saying, Joe drove the frightened crowd hither and thither to their respective duties, and Cicero, somewhat to his dismay, found himself alone with the buccaneer, as he had inwardly dubbed the newcomer.

‘Who the devil are you?’ asked Joe, advancing.

‘Fellow,’ replied Cicero, getting into the doorway, ‘I am a friend of your late master. Cicero Gramp is my name. I came here to see Dick Marlow, but I find he’s gone aloft.’

Joe turned pale, even through his tan.

‘A friend of Mr Marlow,’ he repeated hoarsely. ‘That’s a lie! I’ve been with him these thirty years, and I never saw you!’

‘Not in Jamaica?’ inquired Cicero sweetly.

‘Jamaica? What do you mean?’

‘What I wrote in that letter your master received before he died.’

‘Oh, you liar! I know the man who wrote it.’ Joe clenched his fists more tightly and swung forward. ‘You’re a rank impostor, and I’ll hand you over to the police, lest I smash you completely!’

Cicero saw he had made a mistake, but he did not flinch. Hardihood alone could carry him through now.

‘Do,’ he said. ‘I’m particularly anxious to see the police, Mr Joe Brill.’

‘Who are you, in Heaven’s name?’ shouted Joe, much agitated. ‘Do you come from him?’

‘Perhaps I do,’ answered Cicero, wondering to whom the ‘him’ might now refer.

‘Then go back and tell him he’s too late—too late, curse him! and you too, you lubber!’

‘Very good.’ Cicero stepped out into the hot sunshine. ‘I’ll deliver your message—for a sovereign.’

Joe Brill tugged at his whiskers, and cast an uneasy glance around. Evidently, he was by no means astute, and the present situation was rather too much for him. His sole idea, for some reason best known to himself, was to get rid of Cicero. With a groan, he plunged his huge fist into his pocket and pulled out a gold coin.

‘Here, take it and go to hell!’ he said, throwing it to Cicero.

‘Mariner, fata obstant,’ rolled Gramp in his deep voice.

Then he strode haughtily away. He looked round as he turned the corner of the house, and saw Joe clutching his iron-grey locks, still at the kitchen door.

So with a guinea in his pocket and a certain amount of knowledge which he hoped would bring him many more, Cicero departed, considerable uplifted. At the village grocery he bought bread, meat and a bottle of whisky, then he proceeded to shake the dust of Heathton off his feet. As he stepped out on to the moor he recalled the Latin words he had used, and he shuddered.

‘Why did I say that?’ he murmured. ‘The words came into my head somehow. Just when Joe was talking of my employer, too! Who is my employer? What has he to do with all this? I’m all in the dark! So Dr Warrender’s gone, and the Quiet Gentleman too. It must have been Dr Warrender who helped to steal Marlow’s body. The description tallies exactly—tall, fair beard and bald. I wonder if t’other chap was the Quiet Gentleman? And what on earth could they want with the body? Anyway, the body’s gone, and, as it’s a millionaire corpse, I’ll have some of its money or I’m a Dutchman!’

He stopped and placed his hand to his head.

‘Bournemouth, Bournemouth!’ he muttered. ‘Ah, that’s it—the Soudan Hotel, Bournemouth!’

It was now the middle of the afternoon, and, as he plodded on, the moor glowed like a furnace. No vestige of shade was there beneath which to rest, not even a tree or a bush. Then, a short distance up the road, he espied a hut. It seemed to be in ruins. It was a shepherd’s hut, no doubt. The grass roof was torn, the door was broken, though closed, and the mud walls were crumbling. Impatient of any obstacle, he shoved his back against it and burst it open. It had been fastened with a piece of rope. He fell in, headlong almost. But the gloom was grateful to him, though for the moment he could see but little.

When his eyes had become more accustomed to the half-light, the first object upon which they fell was a stiff human form stretched on the mud floor—a body with a handkerchief over the face. Yelling with terror, Cicero hurled himself out again.

‘Marlow’s body!’ he gasped. ‘They’ve put it here!’

With feverish haste he produced a corkscrew knife, and opened his whisky bottle. A fiery draught gave him courage. He ventured back into the hut and knelt down beside the body. Over the heart gaped an ugly wound, and the clothes were caked with blood. He gasped again.

‘No fit this, but murder! Stabbed to the heart! And Joe—what does Joe know about this—and my employer? Lord!’

He snatched the handkerchief from the face, and fell back on his knees with another cry, this time of wonderment rather than of terror. He beheld the dead man’s fair beard and bald head.

‘Dr Warrender! And he was alive last night! This is murder indeed!’

Then his nerves gave way utterly, and he began to cry like a frightened child.

‘Murder! Wilful and horrible murder!’ wept the professor of elocution and eloquence.

CHAPTER III

AN ELEGANT EPISTLE

ON Bournemouth cliffs, where pine-trees cluster to the edge, sat an elderly spinster, knitting a homely stocking. She wore, in spite of the heat, a handsome cashmere shawl, pinned across her spare shoulders with a portrait brooch, and that hideous variety of Early Victorian head-gear known as the mushroom hat. From under this streamed a frizzy crop of grey curls, which framed a rosy, wrinkled face, brightened by twinkling eyes. These, sparkling as those of sweet seventeen, proved that their owner was still young in heart. This quaint survival of the last century knitted as assiduously as was possible under the circumstances, for at a discreet distance were two young people, towards whom she acted the part of chaperon. Doubtless such an office is somewhat out-of-date nowadays; but Miss Victoria Parsh would rather have died than have left a young girl alone in the company of a young man.

Yet she knew well enough that this young man was altogether above reproach, and, moreover, engaged by parental consent to the pretty girl to whom he was talking so earnestly. And no one could deny that Sophy Marlow was indeed charming. There was somewhat of the Andalusian about her. Not very tall, shaped delicately as a nymph, she well deserved Alan Thorold’s name. He called her the ‘Midnight Fairy’, and, indeed, she looked like a brunette Titania. Her complexion was dark, and faintly flushed with red; her mouth and nose were exquisitely shaped, while her eyes were wells of liquid light—glorious Spanish orbs. About her, too, was that peculiar charm of personality which defies description.

Alan her lover was not tall, but uncommonly well-built and muscular, as fair as Sophy was dark—of that golden Saxon race which came before the Dane. Not that he could be called handsome. He was simply a clean, clear-skinned, well-groomed young Englishman, such as can be seen everywhere. Of a strong character, he exercised great control over his somewhat frivolous betrothed.

Miss Vicky, as the little spinster was usually called, cast romantic glances at the dark head and the fair one so close to one another. As a rule she would have been shocked at such a sight, but she knew how keenly Sophy grieved for the death of her father, and was only too willing that the girl should be comforted. And Miss Vicky occasionally touched the brooch, which contained the portrait of a red-coated officer. She also had lived in Arcady, but her Lieutenant had been shot in the Indian Mutiny, and Miss Vicky had left Arcady after a short sojourn, for a longer one in the work-a-day world. At once, she had lost her lover and her small income, and, like many another lonely woman, had had to turn to and work. But the memory of that short romance kept her heart young, hence her sympathy with this young couple.

‘Poor dear father!’ sighed Sophy, looking at the sea below, dotted with white sails. ‘I can hardly believe he is gone. Only two weeks ago and he was so well, and now—oh! I was so fond of him! We were so happy together! He was cold to everyone else, but kindly to me! How could he have died so suddenly, Alan?’

‘Well, of course, dear, a fit is always sudden. But try and bear up, Sophy dear. Don’t give way like this. Be comforted.’

She looked up wistfully to the blue sky.