Dead Men's Money

I knew then what must have happened. After I had left him, Crone had gone away up the river towards Tillmouth—he had a crazy old bicycle that he rode about on. And most people, having heard Nance Maguire's admissions, would have said that he had gone poaching. But I was not so sure of that. I was beginning to suspect that Crone had played some game with me, and had not told me anything like the truth during our conversation. There had been more within his knowledge than he had let out—but what was it? And I could not help feeling that his object in setting off in that direction, immediately after I had left him, might have been, not poaching, but somebody to whom he wished to communicate the result of his talk with me. And, in that case, who was the somebody?

But just then I had to leave my own thoughts and speculations alone, and to attend to what was going on between my principal and Nance Maguire. Mr. Lindsey, however, appeared to be satisfied with what he had heard. He gave the woman some further advice about keeping her tongue still, told her what to do as regards Crone's effects, and left the cottage. And when we were out in the main street again on our way back to the office he turned to me with a look of decision.

"I've come to a definite theory about this affair, Hugh," he said. "And I'll lay a fiver to a farthing that it's the right one!"

"Yes, Mr. Lindsey?" said I, keenly interested at hearing that.

"Crone knew who killed Phillips," he said. "And the man who killed Phillips killed Crone, too, because Crone knew! That's been the way of it, my lad! And now, then, who's the man?"

I could make no reply to such a question, and presently he went on—talking as much to himself, I think, as to me.

"I wish I knew certain things!" he muttered. "I wish I knew what Phillips and Gilverthwaite came here for. I wish I knew if Gilverthwaite ever had any secret dealings with Crone. I wish—I do wish!—I knew if there has been—if there is—a third man in this Phillips-Gilverthwaite affair who has managed, and is managing, to keep himself in the background. But—I'll stake my professional reputation on one thing—whoever killed Phillips, killed Abel Crone! It's all of a piece."

Now, of course I know now—have known for many a year—that it was at this exact juncture that I made a fatal, a reprehensible mistake in my share of all this business. It was there, at that exact point, that I ought to have made a clean breast to Mr. Lindsey of everything that I knew. I ought to have told him, there and then, of what I had seen at the cross-roads that night of the murder of Phillips; and of my conversation about that with Abel Crone at his shop; and of my visit to Sir Gilbert Carstairs at Hathercleugh House. Had I done so, matters would have become simplified, and much more horror and trouble avoided, for Mr. Lindsey was just then at the beginning of a straight track and my silence turned him away from it, to get into more twisted and obscure ones. But—I said nothing. And why? The answer is simple, and there's the excuse of human nature in it—I was so much filled with the grand prospects of my stewardship, and of all it would bring me, and was so highly pleased with Sir Gilbert Carstairs for his advancement of my fortunes, that—here's the plain truth—I could not bring myself to think of, or bother with, anything else. Up to then, of course, I had not said a word to my mother or to Maisie Dunlop of the stewardship—I was impatient to tell both. So I held my peace and said nothing to Mr. Lindsey—and presently the office work for the day was over and I was free to race home with my grand news. Is it likely that with such news as that I would be troubling my head any longer about other folks' lives and deaths?

That, I suppose, was the most important evening I had ever spent in my life. To begin with, I felt as if I had suddenly become older, and bigger, and much more important. I became inclined to adopt magisterial airs to my mother and my sweetheart, laying down the law to them as to the future in a fashion which made Maisie poke fun at me for a crowing cockerel. It was only natural that I should suffer a little from swelled head that night—I should not have been human otherwise. But Andrew Dunlop took the conceit out of me with a vengeance when Maisie and I told him the news, and I explained everything to him in his back-parlour. He was at times a man of many words, and at times a man of few words—and when he said little, he meant most.

"Aye!" said he. "Well, that's a fine prospect, Hugh, my man, and I wish you well in it. But there'll be no talk of any wedding for two years—so get that notion out of your heads, both of you! In two years you'll just have got settled to your new job, and you'll be finding out how you suit your master and how he suits you—we'll get the preliminaries over, and see how things promise in that time. And we'll see, too, how much money you've saved out of your salary, my man—so you'll just not hear the wedding-bells calling for a couple of twelvemonths, and'll behave yourselves like good children in the meanwhile. There's a deal of things may happen in two years, I'm thinking."

He might have added that a deal of things may happen in two weeks—and, indeed, he would have had good reason for adding it, could he have looked a few days ahead.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ICE AX

The police put Carter in the dock before a full bench of magistrates next morning, and the court was so crowded that it was all Mr. Lindsey and I could do to force our way to the solicitors' table. Several minor cases came on before Carter was brought up from the cells, and during this hearing I had leisure to look round the court and see who was there. And almost at once I saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs, who, though not yet a justice of the peace—his commission to that honourable office arrived a few days later, oddly enough,—had been given a seat on the bench, in company with one or two other local dignitaries, one of whom, I observed with some curiosity, was that Reverend Mr. Ridley who had given evidence at the inquest on Phillips. All these folk, it was easy to see, were in a high state of inquisitiveness about Crone's murder; and from certain whispers that I overheard, I gathered that the chief cause of this interest lay in a generally accepted opinion that it was, as Mr. Lindsey had declared to me more than once, all of a piece with the crime of the previous week. And it was very easy to observe that they were not so curious to see Carter as to hear what might be alleged against him.

There appeared to be some general surprise when Mr. Lindsey quietly announced that he was there on behalf of the prisoner. You would have thought from the demeanour of the police that, in their opinion, there was nothing for the bench to do but hear a bit of evidence and commit Carter straight away to the Assizes to take his trial for wilful murder. What evidence they did bring forward was, of course, plain and straightforward enough. Crone had been found lying in a deep pool in the River Till; but the medical testimony showed that he had met his fate by a blow from some sharp instrument, the point of which had penetrated the skull and the frontal part of the brain in such a fashion as to cause instantaneous death. The man in the dock had been apprehended with Crone's purse in his possession—therefore, said the police, he had murdered and robbed Crone. As I say, Mr. Murray and all of them—as you could see—were quite of the opinion that this was sufficient; and I am pretty sure that the magistrates were of the same way of thinking. And the police were not over well pleased, and the rest of the folk in court were, to say the least, a little mystified, when Mr. Lindsey asked a few questions of two witnesses—of whom Chisholm was one, and the doctor who had been fetched to Crone's body the other. And before setting down what questions they were that Mr. Lindsey asked, I will remark here that there was a certain something, a sort of mysterious hinting in his manner of asking them, that suggested a lot more than the mere questions themselves, and made people begin to whisper amongst each other that Lawyer Lindsey knew things that he was not just then minded to let out.

It was to Chisholm that he put his first questions—casually, as if they were very ordinary ones, and yet with an atmosphere of meaning behind them that excited curiosity.

"You made a very exhaustive search of the neighbourhood of the spot where Crone's body was found, didn't you?" he inquired.

"A thorough search," answered Chisholm.

"You found the exact spot where the man had been struck down?"

"Judging by the marks of blood—yes."

"On the river-bank—between the river and a coppice, wasn't it?"

"Just so—between the bank and the coppice."

"How far had the body been dragged before it was thrown into the river?"

"Ten yards," replied Chisholm promptly.

"Did you notice any footprints?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"It would be difficult to trace any," explained Chisholm. "The grass is very thick in some places, and where it isn't thick it's that close and wiry in texture that a boot wouldn't make any impression."

"One more question," said Mr. Lindsey, leaning forward and looking Chisholm full in the face. "When you charged the man there in the dock with the murder of Abel Crone, didn't he at once—instantly!—show the greatest surprise? Come, now, on your oath—yes or no?"

"Yes!" admitted Chisholm; "he did."

"But he just as readily admitted he was in possession of Crone's purse?

Again—yes or no?"

"Yes," said Chisholm. "Yes—that's so."

That was all Mr. Lindsey asked Chisholm. It was not much more that he asked the doctor. But there was more excitement about what he did ask him—arising out of something that he did in asking it.

"There's been talk, doctor, as to what the precise weapon was which caused the fatal injury to this man Crone," he said. "It's been suggested that the wound which occasioned his death might have been—and probably was—caused by a blow from a salmon gaff. What is your opinion?"

"It might have been," said the doctor cautiously.

"It was certainly caused by a pointed weapon—some sort of a spiked weapon?" suggested Mr. Lindsey.

"A sharp, pointed weapon, most certainly," affirmed the doctor.

"There are other things than a salmon gaff that, in your opinion, could have caused it?"

"Oh, of course!" said the doctor.

Mr. Lindsey paused a moment, and looked round the court as if he were thinking over his next question. Then he suddenly plunged his hand under the table at which he was standing, and amidst a dead silence drew out a long, narrow brown-paper parcel which I had seen him bring to the office that morning. Quietly, while the silence grew deeper and the interest stronger, he produced from this an object such as I had never seen before—an implement or weapon about three feet in length, its shaft made of some tough but evidently elastic wood, furnished at one end with a strong iron ferrule, and at the other with a steel head, one extremity of which was shaped like a carpenter's adze, while the other tapered off to a fine point. He balanced this across his open palms for a moment, so that the court might see it—then he passed it over to the witness-box.

"Now, doctor," he said, "look at that—which is one of the latest forms of the ice-ax. Could that wound have been caused by that—or something very similar to it?"

The witness put a forefinger on the sharp point of the head.

"Certainly!" he answered. "It is much more likely to have been caused by such an implement as this than by a salmon gaff."

Mr. Lindsey reached out his hand for the ice-ax, and, repossessing himself of it, passed it and its brown-paper wrapping to me.

"Thank you, doctor," he said; "that's all I wanted to know." He turned to the bench. "I wish to ask your worships, if it is your intention, on the evidence you have heard, to commit the prisoner on the capital charge today?" he asked. "If it is, I shall oppose such a course. What I do ask, knowing what I do, is that you should adjourn this case for a week—when I shall have some evidence to put before you which, I think, will prove that this man did not kill Abel Crone."

There was some discussion. I paid little attention to it, being considerably amazed at the sudden turn which things had taken, and astonished altogether by Mr. Lindsey's production of the ice-ax. But the discussion ended in Mr. Lindsey having his own way, and Carter was remanded in custody, to be brought up again a week later; and presently we were all out in the streets, in groups, everybody talking excitedly about what had just taken place, and speculating on what it was that Lawyer Lindsey was after. Mr. Lindsey himself, however, was more imperturbable and, if anything, cooler than usual. He tapped me on the arm as we went out of court, and at the same time took the parcel containing the ice-ax from me.

"Hugh," he said; "there's nothing more to do today, and I'm going out of town at once, until tomorrow. You can lock up the office now, and you and the other two can take a holiday. I'm going straight home and then to the station."

He turned hurriedly away in the direction of his house, and I went off to the office to carry out his instructions. There was nothing strange in his giving us a holiday—it was a thing he often did in summer, on fine days when we had nothing much to do, and this was a gloriously fine day and the proceedings in court had been so short that it was not yet noon. So I packed off the two junior clerks and the office lad, and locked up, and went away myself—and in the street outside I met Sir Gilbert Carstairs. He was coming along in our direction, evidently deep in thought, and he started a little as he looked up and saw me.

"Hullo, Moneylaws!" he said in his off-hand fashion. "I was just wanting to see you. I say!" he went on, laying a hand on my arm, "you're dead certain that you've never mentioned to a soul but myself anything about that affair of yours and Crone's—you know what I mean?"

"Absolutely certain, Sir Gilbert!" I answered. "There's no living being knows—but yourself."

"That's all right," he said, and I could see he was relieved. "I don't want mixing up with these matters—I should very much dislike it. What's Lindsey trying to get at in his defence of this man Carter?"

"I can't think," I replied. "Unless it is that he's now inclining to the theory of the police that Phillips was murdered by some man or men who followed him from Peebles, and that the same man or men murdered Crone. I think that must be it: there were some men—tourists—about, who haven't been found yet."

He hesitated a moment, and then glanced at our office door.

"Lindsey in?" he asked.

"No, Sir Gilbert," I replied. "He's gone out of town and given us a holiday."

"Oh!" he said, looking at me with a sudden smile. "You've got a holiday, have you, Moneylaws? Look here—I'm going for a run in my bit of a yacht—come with me! How soon can you be ready?"

"As soon as I've taken my dinner, Sir Gilbert," I answered, pleased enough at the invitation. "Would an hour do?"

"You needn't bother about your dinner," he said. "I'm having a lunch basket packed now at the hotel, and I'll step in and tell them to put in enough for two. Go and get a good thick coat, and meet me down at the front in half an hour."

I ran off home, told my mother where I was going, and hurried away to the river-side. The Tweed was like a mirror flashing back the sunlight that day, and out beyond its mouth the open sea was bright and blue as the sky above. How could I foresee that out there, in those far-off dancing waters, there was that awaiting me of which I can only think now, when it is long past, with fear and horror?

CHAPTER XIX

MY TURN

I had known for some time that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had a small yacht lying at one of the boathouses on the riverside; indeed, I had seen her before ever I saw him. She was a trim, graceful thing, with all the appearance of an excellent sea-boat, and though she looked like a craft that could stand a lot of heavy weather, she had the advantage of being so light in draught—something under three feet—that it was possible for her to enter the shallowest harbour. I had heard that Sir Gilbert was constantly sailing her up and down the coast, and sometimes going well out to sea in her. On these occasions he was usually accompanied by a fisherlad whom he had picked up somehow or other: this lad, Wattie Mason, was down by the yacht when I reached her, and he gave me a glowering look when he found that I was to put his nose out for this time at any rate. He hung around us until we got off, as a hungry dog hangs around a table on the chance of a bone being thrown to him; but he got no recognition from Sir Gilbert, who, though the lad had been useful enough to him before, took no more notice of him that day than of one of the pebbles on the beach. And if I had been more of a student of human nature, I should have gained some idea of my future employer's character from that small circumstance, and have seen that he had no feeling or consideration for anybody unless it happened to be serving and suiting his purpose.

But at that moment I was thinking of nothing but the pleasure of taking a cruise in the yacht, in the company of a man in whom I was naturally interested. I was passionately fond of the sea, and had already learned from the Berwick sea-going folk how to handle small craft, and the management of a three-oar vessel like this was an easy matter to me, as I soon let Sir Gilbert know. Once outside the river mouth, with a nice light breeze blowing off the land, we set squaresail, mainsail, and foresail and stood directly out to sea on as grand a day and under as fair conditions as a yachtsman could desire; and when we were gaily bowling along Sir Gilbert bade me unpack the basket which had been put aboard from the hotel—it was a long time, he said, since his breakfast, and we would eat and drink at the outset of things. If I had not been hungry myself, the sight of the provisions in that basket would have made me so—there was everything in there that a man could desire, from cold salmon and cold chicken to solid roast beef, and there was plenty of claret and whisky to wash it down with. And, considering how readily and healthily Sir Gilbert Carstairs ate and drank, and how he talked and laughed while we lunched side by side under that glorious sky, gliding away over a smooth, innocent-looking sea, I have often wondered since if what was to come before nightfall came of deliberate intention on his part, or from a sudden yielding to temptation when the chance of it arose—and for the life of me I cannot decide! But if the man had murder in his heart, while he sat there at my side, eating his good food and drinking his fine liquor, and sharing both with me and pressing me to help myself to his generous provision—if it was so, I say, then he was of an indescribable cruelty which it makes me cringe to think of, and I would prefer to believe that the impulse to bring about my death came from a sudden temptation springing from a sudden chance. And yet—God knows it is a difficult problem to settle!

For this was what it came to, and before sunset was reddening the western skies behind the Cheviots. We went a long, long way out—far beyond the thirty-fathom line, which is, as all sailors acquainted with those waters know, a good seven miles from shore; indeed, as I afterwards reckoned, we were more than twice that distance from Berwick pier-end when the affair happened—perhaps still further. We had been tacking about all the afternoon, first south, then north, not with any particular purpose, but aimlessly. We scarcely set eyes on another sail, and at a little after seven o'clock in the evening, when there was some talk of going about and catching the wind, which had changed a good deal since noon and was now coming more from the southeast, we were in the midst of a great waste of sea in which I could not make out a sign of any craft but ours—not even a trail of smoke on the horizon. The flat of the land had long since disappeared: the upper slopes of the Cheviots on one side of Tweed and of the Lammermoor Hills on the other, only just showed above the line of the sea. There was, I say, nothing visible on all that level of scarcely stirred water but our own sails, set to catch whatever breeze there was, when that happened which not only brought me to the very gates of death, but, in the mere doing of it, gave me the greatest horror of any that I have ever known.

I was standing up at the moment, one foot on the gunwale, the other on the planking behind me, carelessly balancing myself while I stared across the sea in search of some object which he—this man that I trusted so thoroughly and in whose company I had spent so many pleasant hours that afternoon, and who was standing behind me at the moment—professed to see in the distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling moment—but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!—but he remained where he was. And my weight—I was weighing a good thirteen stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster—carried me down and down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with considerable impetus. And when I came up, a couple of boat's-lengths from the yacht, expecting to find that he was bringing her up so that I could scramble aboard, I saw with amazed and incredulous affright that he was doing nothing of the sort; instead, working at it as hard as he could go, he was letting out a couple of reefs which he had taken up in the mainsail an hour before—in another minute they were out, the yacht moved more swiftly, and, springing to the tiller, he deliberately steered her clear away from me.

I suppose I saw his purpose all at once. Perhaps it drove me wild, mad, frenzied. The yacht was going away from me fast—faster; good swimmer though I was, it was impossible for me to catch up to her—she was making her own length to every stroke I took, and as she drew away he stood there, one hand on the tiller, the other in his pocket (I have often wondered if it was fingering a revolver in there!), his eyes turned steadily on me. And I began first to beg and entreat him to save me, and then to shout out and curse him—and at that, and seeing that we were becoming further and further separated, he deliberately put the yacht still more before the freshening wind, and went swiftly away, and looked at me no more.

So he left me to drown.

We had been talking a lot about swimming during the afternoon, and I had told him that though I had been a swimmer ever since boyhood, I had never done more than a mile at a stretch, and then only in the river. He knew, therefore, that he was leaving me a good fourteen miles from land with not a sail in sight, not a chance of being picked up. Was it likely that I could make land?—was there ever a probability of anything coming along that would sight me? There was small likelihood, anyway; the likelihood was that long before the darkness had come on I should be exhausted, give up, and go down.

You may conceive with what anger, and with what fierce resentment, I watched this man and his yacht going fast away from me—and with what despair too. But even in that moment I was conscious of two facts—I now knew that yonder was the probable murderer of both Phillips and Crone, and that he was leaving me to die because I was the one person living who could throw some light on those matters, and, though I had kept silence up to then, might be tempted, or induced, or obliged to do so—he would silence me while he had so good a chance. And the other was, that although there seemed about as much likelihood of my ever seeing Berwick again as of being made King of England, I must do my utmost to save my strength and my life. I had a wealth of incentives—Maisie, my mother, Mr. Lindsey, youth, the desire to live; and now there was another added to them—the desire to circumvent that cold-hearted, cruel devil, who, I was now sure, had all along been up to some desperate game, and to have my revenge and see justice done on him. I was not going to give in without making a fight for it.

But it was a poor chance that I had—and I was well aware of it. There was small prospect of fishing boats or the like coming out that evening; small likelihood of any coasting steamer sighting a bit of a speck like me. All the same, I was going to keep my chin up as long as possible, and the first thing to do was to take care of my strength. I made shift to divest myself of a heavy pea-jacket that I was wearing and of the unnecessary clothing beneath it; I got rid, too, of my boots. And after resting a bit on my back and considering matters, I decided to make a try for land—I might perhaps meet some boat coming out. I lifted my head well up and took a glance at what I could see—and my heart sank at what I did see! The yacht was a speck in the distance by that time, and far beyond it the Cheviots and the Lammermoors were mere bits of grey outline against the gold and crimson of the sky. One thought instantly filled and depressed me—I was further from land than I had believed.