The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

by Fergus Hume

  Towards the end of the day, however, after reading over the earlier sheets, he experienced a revulsion of feeling, seeing how severe he had been on himself, so he wrote a defence upon his conduct, showing that fate had been too strong for him. It was a weak argument to bring forward, but still he felt it was the only one that he could make. It was quite dark when he had finished, and while sitting in the twilight, looking dreamily at the sheets scattered all over his desk, he heard a knock at the door, and heard his daughter’s voice asking if he was coming to dinner. All day long he had closed his door against everyone, but now his task being ended, he collected all the closely written sheets together, placed them in a drawer of his escritoire which he locked, and then opened the door.

  ‘Dear papa,’ cried Madge as she entered rapidly, and threw her arms around his neck. ‘What have you been doing here all day by yourself?’

  ‘Writing,’ returned her father laconically, as he gently removed her arms.

  ‘Why, I thought you were ill,’ she answered, looking at him apprehensively.

  ‘No, dear,’ he replied, quietly. ‘Not ill, but worried.’

  ‘I knew that dreadful man who came last night had told you something to worry you. Who was he?’

  ‘Oh! a friend of mine,’ answered Frettlby, with hesitation.

  ‘What—Roger Moreland?’

  Her father started.

  ‘How do you know it was Roger Moreland?’

  ‘Oh! Brian recognised him as he went out.’

  Mark Frettlby hesitated for a few moments, and then busied himself with the papers on his desk, as he replied in a low voice.

  ‘You are right—it was Roger Moreland—he is very hard up, and as he was a friend of poor Whyte’s, asked me to assist him, which I did.’

  He hated to hear himself telling such a deliberate falsehood, but there was no help for it—Madge must never know the truth as long as he could conceal it.

  ‘Just like you,’ said Madge, kissing him lightly with filial pride. ‘The best and kindest of men.’

  He shivered slightly as he felt her caress, and thought how she would recoil from him, did she know all. ‘After all,’ says some cynical writer, ‘the illusions of youth are mostly due to the want of experience.’ Madge, ignorant in a great measure of the world, cherished her pleasant illusions, though many of them had been destroyed by the trials of the past year, and her father longed to keep her in this frame of mind.

  ‘Now go down to dinner, my dear,’ he said, leading her to the door. ‘I will follow soon.’

  ‘Don’t be long,’ replied his daughter, ‘or I shall come up again,’ and she ran down the stairs, her heart feeling strangely light.

  Her father looked after her until she vanished, then heaving a regretful sigh returned to his study, and taking out the scattered papers fastened them together, and endorsed them, ‘My Confession.’ He then placed them in an envelope, sealed it, and put it back in the desk. ‘If all that is in that packet were known,’ he said aloud, as he left the room, ‘what would the world say?’

  That night he was singularly brilliant at the dinner table. Generally a very reticent and grave man, on this night he laughed and talked so gaily that the very servants noticed the change. The fact was he felt a sense of relief at having unburdened his mind, and felt as though by writing out that confession he had laid the spectre which had haunted him for so long. His daughter was delighted at the change in his spirits, but the old Scotch nurse who had been in the house since Madge was a baby shook her head—

  ‘He’s fey,’ she said gravely. ‘He’s no lang for the warld.’ Of course she was laughed at—people who believe in presentiments generally are—but, nevertheless, she held firmly to her opinion.

  Mr Frettlby went to bed early that night, as the excitement of the last few days, and the feverish gaiety in which he had lately indulged proved too strong for him. No sooner had he laid his head on his pillow than he dropped off to sleep at once, and forgot in placid slumber the troubles and worries of his waking hours.

  It was only nine o’clock, so Madge stayed by herself in the great drawing-room, and read a new novel, which was then creating a sensation, which was called Sweet Violet Eyes. It belied its reputation however, for it was very soon thrown on the table with a look of disgust, and rising from her seat Madge walked up and down the room, and wished some good fairy would hint to Brian that he was wanted. If man is a gregarious animal, how much more then is a woman. This is not a conundrum, but a simple truth. ‘A female Robinson Crusoe,’ says a writer who prided himself upon being a keen observer of human nature—‘a female Robinson Crusoe would have gone mad for want of something to talk to.’ This remark, though severe, nevertheless contains several grains of truth, for women as a rule talk more than men. They are more sociable, and a Miss Misanthrope, in spite of Justin McCarthy’s, is unknown—at least in civilised communities. Miss Frettlby being neither misanthropic nor dumb, began to long for someone to talk to, and ringing the bell ordered Sal to be sent in. The two girls had become great friends, and Madge, though two years younger than the other assumed the role of mentor, and under her guidance Sal was rapidly improving. It was a strange irony of fate, which brought together these two children of the same father, each with such different histories—the one reared in luxury and affluence never having known want—the other dragged up in the gutter, all unsexed and besmirched by the life she had led. ‘The whirligig of time brings in its revenges,’ and it was the last thing in the world Mark Frettlby would have thought of, seeing Rosanna Moore’s child, whom he fancied dead, under the same roof as his daughter Madge.

  On receiving Madge’s message Sal came to the drawing-room, and the two were soon chatting amicably together. The drawing-room was almost in darkness, only one lamp being lighted. Mr Frettlby very sensibly detested gas, with its glaring light, and had nothing but lamps in his drawing-room. Away at the end of the apartment, where Sal and Madge were seated, there was a small table, on which stood a large lamp, with an opaque globe, which, having a shade over it, threw a soft and subdued circle of light round the table, leaving the rest of the room in a kind of semidarkness. Near this, sat Madge and Sal, talking gaily, and away up on the left-hand side they could see the door open, and a warm flood of light pouring in from the hall.

  They had been talking together for some time, when Sal’s quick ear caught a footfall on the soft carpet, and, turning rapidly, she saw a tall figure advancing down the room. Madge saw it too, and started up in surprise on recognising her father. He was clothed in his dressing-gown, and carried some papers in his hand.

  ‘Why, papa,’ said Madge, in surprise, ‘I—’

  ‘Hush!’ whispered Sal, grasping her arms. ‘He’s asleep.’

  And so he was. In accordance with the dictates of the excited brain, the weary body had risen from the bed and wandered about the house. The two girls, drawing back into the shadow, watched him with bated breath as he came slowly down the room. In a few moments he was within the circle of light, and, moving noiselessly along, he laid the papers he carried on the table. They were in a large blue envelope, much worn, with writing in red ink on it. Sal recognised it at once as the one she had seen the dead woman with, and with an instinctive feeling that there was something wrong tried to draw Madge back as she watched her father’s action with an intensity of feeling which held her spellbound. Frettlby opened the envelope, and took therefrom a yellow frayed piece of paper, which he spread out on the table. Madge bent forward to see it, but Sal, with sudden terror, drew her back.

  ‘For God’s sake, no,’ she cried.

  But it was too late. Madge had caught sight of the names on the paper—‘Marriage—Rosanna Moore—Mark Frettlby’—and the whole awful truth flashed upon her. These were the papers Rosanna Moore had handed to Whyte. Whyte had been murdered by the man to whom the papers were of value—

  ‘God! My father!’

  She staggered blindly forward, and then, with one piercing shriek, fell to the gro
und. In doing so, she struck against her father, who was still standing beside the table. Awakened suddenly, with that wild cry in his ears, he opened his eyes wide, put out feeble hands as if to keep something back, and with a strangled cry fell dead on the floor beside his daughter. Sal, horror-struck, did not lose her presence of mind, but, snatching the papers off the table, she thrust them into her pocket, and then shrieked aloud for the servants. But they, already attracted by Madge’s wild cry, came hurrying in, to find Mark Frettlby, the millionaire, lying dead, and his daughter lying in a faint beside her father’s corpse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  HUSH-MONEY

  As soon as Brian received the telegram which announced the death of Mark Frettlby, he put on his hat, stepped into Calton’s trap and drove along to the St Kilda station in Flinders Street, with that gentleman. There Calton dismissed his trap, sending a note to his clerk with the groom, and went down to St Kilda with Fitzgerald. On arrival they found the whole house perfectly quiet and orderly, owing to the excellent management of Sal Rawlins. She had taken the command in everything, and although the servants, knowing her antecedents, were disposed to resent her doing so, yet such was her administrative powers and strong will, that they obeyed her implicitly. Mark Frettlby’s body had been taken up to his bedroom, Madge had been put to bed, and Dr Chinston and Brian sent for. When they arrived they could not help expressing their admiration at the capital way in which Sal Rawlins had managed things.

  ‘She’s a clever girl that,’ whispered Calton to Fitzgerald, ‘curious thing she should have taken up her proper position in her father’s house. Fate is a deal cleverer than we mortals think her.’

  Brian was about to reply when Dr Chinston entered the room. His face was very grave, and Fitzgerald looked at him in alarm.

  ‘Madge—Miss Frettlby,’ he faltered.

  ‘Is very ill,’ replied the doctor, ‘has an attack of brain fever—I can’t answer for the consequences yet.’

  Brian sat down on the sofa, and stared at the doctor in a dazed sort of way. Madge dangerously ill—perhaps dying—what if she did die, and he lost the true-hearted woman who stood so nobly by him in his trouble.

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Chinston patting him on the shoulder, ‘while there’s life there’s hope, and whatever human aid can do to save her will be done.’

  Brian grasped the doctor’s hand in silence, his heart being too full to speak.

  ‘How did Frettlby die?’ asked Calton.

  ‘Heart disease,’ said Chinston. ‘His heart was very much affected, as I discovered a week or so ago. It appears he was walking in his sleep, and entering the drawing-room, he alarmed Miss Frettlby, who screamed and must have touched him—he awoke suddenly, and the natural consequences followed—he dropped down dead.’

  ‘What alarmed Miss Frettlby?’ asked Brian in a low voice, covering his face with his hand.

  ‘The sight of her father walking in his sleep, I suppose,’ said Chinston, buttoning his glove, ‘and the shock of his death which took place indirectly through her, accounts for the brain fever.’

  ‘Madge Frettlby is not the woman to scream and waken a somnambulist,’ said Calton decidedly, ‘knowing as she did the danger—there must be some other reason.’

  ‘This young woman will tell you all about it,’ said Chinston, nodding towards Sal, who entered the room at this moment. ‘She was present, and since then has managed things admirably—and now I must go,’ he said, shaking hands with Calton and Fitzgerald. ‘Keep up your heart my boy, I’ll pull her through yet.’

  After the doctor had gone, Calton turned sharply to Sal Rawlins, who stood waiting to be addressed.

  ‘Well,’ he said briskly, ‘can you tell us what startled Miss Frettlby?’

  ‘I can, sir,’ she answered quietly. ‘I was in the drawing-room when Mr Frettlby died—but—we had better go up to the study.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Calton in surprise, as he and Fitzgerald followed her upstairs.

  ‘Because, sir,’ she said, when they had entered the study and she had locked the door, ‘I don’t want anyone but yourselves to know what I tell you.’

  ‘More mystery,’ muttered Calton, as he glanced at Brian, and took his seat at the escritoire.

  ‘Mr Frettlby went to bed early last night,’ said Sal, calmly, ‘and Miss Madge and I were talking together in the drawing-room, when he entered, walking in his sleep, and carrying some papers—’

  Both Calton and Fitzgerald started, and the latter grew pale.

  ‘He came down the room, and spread out a paper on the table, where the lamp was. Miss Madge bent forward to see what it was—I tried to stop her, but it was too late—she gave a scream, and fell on the floor. In doing so she happened to touch her father— he awoke and fell down dead.’

  ‘And the papers?’ asked Calton, uneasily.

  Sal did not answer, but producing them from her pocket, laid them in his hands.

  Brian bent forward, as Calton opened the envelope in silence, but both gave vent to an explanation of horror at seeing the certificate of marriage which they knew Rosanna Moore had given to Whyte. Their worst suspicions were confirmed, and Brian turned away his head, afraid to meet the barrister’s eye. The latter folded up the papers thoughtfully, and put them in his pocket.

  ‘You know what these are?’ he asked Sal, eyeing her keenly.

  ‘I could hardly help knowing,’ she answered. ‘It proves that Rosanna Moore was Mr Frettlby’s wife, and—’ she hesitated.

  ‘Go on,’ said Brian, in a harsh tone, looking up.

  ‘And they were the papers she gave Mr Whyte.’

  ‘Well!’

  Sal was silent for a moment, and then looked up with a flush.

  ‘You needn’t think I’m going to split,’ she said, indignantly, recurring to her Bourke Street slang in the excitement of the moment. ‘I know what you know, but s’elp me God, I’ll be as silent as the grave.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Brian fervently, taking her hand, ‘I know you love her too well to betray this terrible secret.’

  ‘I would be a nice ’un, I would,’ said Sal with scorn, ‘after her lifting me out of the gutter, to round on her—a poor girl like me, without a friend or a relative now gran’s dead.’

  Calton looked up quickly. It was plain Sal was quite ignorant that Rosanna Moore was her mother. So much the better, they would keep her in ignorance, perhaps not altogether, but it would be folly to undeceive her at present.

  ‘I’m goin’ to Miss Madge now,’ she said, going to the door, ‘and I won’t see you again; she’s getting light-headed, and might let it out; but I’ll not let anyone in but myself,’ and so saying she left the room.

  ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters,’ said Calton oracularly. ‘The kindness of Miss Frettlby to that poor waif is already bearing fruit—gratitude is the rarest of qualities, rarer even than modesty.’

  Fitzgerald made no answer, but stared out of the window, and thought of his darling lying sick unto death, and he could do nothing to save her.

  ‘Well,’ said Calton, sharply.

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Fitzgerald, turning in confusion. ‘I suppose the will must be read, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered the barrister, ‘I am one of the executors.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Yourself and Chinston,’ answered Calton, ‘So I suppose,’ turning to the desk, ‘we can look at his papers and see that all is straight.’

  ‘Yes; I suppose so,’ replied Brian mechanically, his thoughts far away, and then he turned again to the window. Suddenly Calton gave vent to an exclamation of surprise, and, turning hastily, Brian saw him holding a thick roll of papers in his hand, which he had taken out of the drawer.

  ‘Look here, Fitzgerald,’ he said, greatly excited, ‘Here is Frettlby’s confession, look!’ and he held it up.

  Brian sprang forward in astonishment. So at last the hansom cab mystery was to be cleared up. These sheets, no doubt,
contained the whole narration of the crime, and how it was committed.

  ‘We will read it, of course,’ he said, hesitating, half hoping that Calton would propose to destroy it at once.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Calton. ‘The three executors must read it, and then—we will burn it.’

  ‘That will be the better way,’ answered Brian, gloomily. ‘Frettlby is dead, and the law can do nothing in the matter, so it would be best to avoid the scandal of publicity. But why tell Chinston?’

  ‘We must,’ said Calton, decidedly. ‘He will be sure to gather the truth from Madge’s ravings, and may as well know all. He is quite safe, and will be silent as the grave. But I am more sorry to tell Kilsip.’

  ‘The detective? Good God! Calton, surely you will not do so.’

  ‘I must,’ replied the barrister, quietly. ‘Kilsip is firmly persuaded that Moreland committed the crime, and I have the same dread of his pertinacity as you had of mine. He may find out all.’

  ‘What must be, must be,’ said Fitzgerald, clenching his hands. ‘But I hope no one else will find out this miserable story. There’s Moreland, for instance.’

  ‘Ah, true!’ said Calton, thoughtfully. ‘He called and saw Frettlby the other night, you say?’

  ‘Yes! I wonder what for?’

  ‘There is only one answer,’ said the barrister, slowly. ‘He must have seen Frettlby following Whyte when he left the hotel, and wanted hush-money.’

  ‘I wonder if he got it?’ observed Fitzgerald.

  ‘Oh, I’ll soon find that out,’ answered Calton, opening the drawer again, and taking out the dead man’s chequebook. ‘Let me see what cheques have been drawn lately.’

  Most of the blocks were filled up for small amounts, and one or two for a hundred or so. Calton could find no large sum such as Moreland would have demanded, when, at the very end of the book, he found a cheque torn off, leaving the block slip quite blank.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, triumphantly, holding out the book to Fitzgerald. ‘He wasn’t such a fool as to write in the amount on the block, but tore the cheque out and wrote in the sum required.’