“A month only of such wanderings and Sir James Narford, habitually a very dapper man with sleek, sandy hair cropped very close, a tiny toothbrush moustache and shaven cheeks and chin, can easily be transformed into one with shaggy hair and beard and walrus moustache. Add to this a nose built out with grease-paint and highly-coloured, and cheeks stained a dull red, and you have the man who called for the key of that empty house at Messrs. Whiskin and Sons, with a parcel under his arm which contained the black cape and Montmartre hat purchased abroad at some time previously, during the course of his wanderings. That’s simple, is it not?” the funny creature continued, while his thin, claw-like fingers worked away feverishly at his piece of string.
“Now, all that our rascal wants is to change his clothes and his face; so, late that evening, by preconcerted plan, Ruggles meets him at the empty house under cover of the fog. Here he and his precious master change clothes with one another. Narford then completes his toilet by applying to his shaggy hair and beard one of those modern dyes that are so much advertised for the use of ladies desiring to possess raven locks. And so we have the explanation of all the conflicting evidence of the witnesses who saw a man with a parcel and yet were so much at variance both as to the time when they saw him, as to his appearance, and even as to the size of the parcel.
“Having thus created the personality of a foreign-looking individual in black clothes, you will easily see how important it was for the general scheme that the comedy of the row and the pistol shots in the empty house should be enacted. Attention had to be drawn to the created personage, attention coupled with mystery, and at this stage of the scheme there was not the slightest danger of the wounded man in Wicklow Lane being in any way connected with Sir James Narford of George Street, Mayfair. Time was no object. The mysterious Allen Lloyd of Wicklow Lane might be detained days, weeks, even months, but he would have to be let out some time or other. He was perfectly harmless apparently, and otherwise sane; he could not be kept for ever at the country’s expense. He was eventually discharged, went to an hotel and lived there quietly a while longer until he thought that the time was ripe for complete disappearance.
“In the meanwhile we must suppose that he was in touch with Ruggles. Ruggles made a point of taking a brisk walk every evening. Well, winter evenings are dark and London is a very crowded place. Ruggles would bring what money was required. What more easy than to meet in a crowd?
“Then at last the two rascals thought that the time was ripe. The mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd disappeared from the hotel in Mexborough Gate; he went to Sackville Street where he shaved off his shaggy moustache and beard and cut his hair once more so close that nothing of the dyed ends could be seen. He changed into his own clothes which Ruggles kept there ready for him. Then he slipped round to Victoria Station and crossed over to France, only in order to return to England openly this time as Sir James Narford, and just in time to find Ruggles just aroused from a drugged sleep and the whole flat seething with excitement. But it was he who in black cape and Montmartre hat visited the shop in Sackville Street, it was Ruggles who the following night spoke to the lift-boy, even while Narford was procuring for himself a perfect alibi by crossing over quite openly from France.
“Ruggles’ task was, of course, much easier. All he had to do was to put the gems in his pocket and these Narford took over from him in the morning at the flat before he telephoned for the police. To put on the black cape and hat and to accost the lift-boy was easy enough on a dark, snowy night in January. And now all the excitement has died down. The whole thing was so cleverly planned that the real rascal was never suspected. Ruggles may have been but nothing could really be brought up against him. The gems haven’t been found and to all appearances he has not benefited by the robbery. He is just the faithful, trusted servant of his master.
“Sir James Narford has got his money from the insurance company and since then has left for abroad. By the way,” the Man in the Corner concluded, as he gathered up his precious bit of string and slipped it in the pocket of his ulster, “I heard recently that he has bought some property in Argentina and has settled down there permanently with his friend Ruggles. I think he was wise to do that, and if you care to publish my version of that mysterious affair, you are at liberty to do so. I don’t think that our friend would sue you for defamation of character, and, anyway, I’ll undertake to pay damages if the case comes into court.”
XI
The Miser of Maida Vale
I
“One of the most puzzling cases I ever remember watching,” the Man in the Corner said to me that day, “was the one known to the public as that of ‘The Miser of Maida Vale.’ It presented certain altogether novel features, and for once I was willing to admit that, though the police had a very hard nut to crack in the elucidation of the mystery, and in the end failed to find a solution, they were at one time very near putting their finger on the key of the puzzle. If they had only possessed some of that instinct for true facts with which Nature did so kindly endow me, there is no doubt that they would have brought that clever criminal to book.”
I wish it were in my power to convey something of that air of ludicrous complacency with which he said this. I could almost hear him purring to himself, like a lean, shabby old cat. He had his inevitable bit of string in his hand and had been in rapturous contemplation of a series of knots which he had been fashioning until the moment when I sat down beside him and he began to speak. But as soon as he embarked upon his beloved topic he turned his rapturous contemplation on himself. He just sat there and admired himself, and now and again blinked at me, with such an air of self-satisfaction that I longed to say something terribly rude first and then to flounce out of the place, leaving him to admire himself at his leisure.
But, of course, this could not be. To use the funny creature’s own verbiage, Nature had endowed me with the journalistic instinct. I had to listen to him; I had to pick his brains and to get copy out of him. The irresistible desire to learn something new, something that would thrill my editor as well as my public compelled me to swallow my impatience, to smile at him—somewhat wryly perhaps—and then to beg him to proceed.
I was all attention.
“Well,” he said, still wearing an irritating air of condescension, “do you remember the case of the old miser of Maida Vale?”
“Only vaguely,” I was willing to admit.
“It presented some very interesting features,” he went on blandly, “and, assuming that you really only remember them vaguely, I will put them before you as clearly as possible, in order that you may follow my argument more easily later on.
“The victim of the mysterious tragedy was, as no doubt you remember, an eccentric old invalid named Thornton Ashley, the well-known naval constructor, who had made a considerable fortune during the war and then retired, chiefly, it was said, owing to ill-health. He had two sons, one of whom, Charles, was a misshapen, undersized creature, singularly unprepossessing both in appearance and in manner, whilst the other, Philip, was a tall, good-looking fellow, very agreeable and popular wherever he went. Both these young men were bachelors, a fact which, it appears, had been for some time a bone of contention between them and their father. Old Ashley was passionately fond of children and the only desire of his declining years was to see the grandchildren who would ultimately enjoy the fortune which he had accumulated. Whilst he was ready to admit that Charles, with his many afflictions, did not stand much chance with the fair sex, there was no reason at all why Philip should not marry, and there had been more than one heated quarrel between father and son on that one subject.
“So much so, indeed, that presently Philip cut his stick and went to live in rooms in Jermyn Street. He had a few hundreds a year of his own, left to him by a godmother. He had been to Rugby and to Cambridge and had been a temporary officer in the war; pending his obtaining some kind of job he settled down to live the life of a smart young bachelor in town, whilst his brother Charles was left to look after the old
man, who became more and more eccentric as his health gradually broke up.
“He sold his fine house in Hyde Park Gardens, his motor and the bulk of his furniture, and moved into a cheap flat in Maida Vale, where he promptly took to his bed, which he never left again. His eccentricities became more and more pronounced and his temper more and more irascible. He took a violent dislike to strangers, refused to see anybody except his sons and two old friends, Mr. Oldwall, the well-known solicitor, and Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg, who visited him from time to time, and whose orders he obstinately refused to obey. Worst of all, as far as the unfortunate Charles was concerned, he became desperately mean, denying himself (and, incidentally, his son) every luxury, subsisting on the barest necessities, and keeping no servant to wait on him except a daily ‘char.’
“Soon his miserliness degenerated into a regular mania.
“‘Charles and I are saving money for the grandchildren you are going to give me one day,’ he would say with a chuckle whenever Philip tried to reason with him on the subject of this self-denying ordinance. ‘When you have an establishment of your own, you can invite us to come and live with you. There will be plenty then for housekeeping, I promise you!’
“At which the handsome Philip would laugh and shrug his shoulders and go back to his comfortable rooms in Jermyn Street. But no one knew what Charles thought about it all. To an outsider his case must always have appeared singularly pathetic. He had no money of his own and his delicate health had made it impossible for him to take up any profession: he could not cut his stick like his brother Philip had done, but, truth to tell, he did not appear to wish to do so. Perhaps it was real fondness for his father that made him seem contented with his lot. Certain it is that as time went on he became a regular slave to the old man, waiting on him hand and foot, more hard-worked than the daily ‘char,’ who put on her bonnet and walked out of the flat every day at six o’clock when her work was done, and who had all her Sundays to herself.
“All the relaxation that Charles ever had were alternate weekends, when his brother Philip would come over and spend Saturday to Monday in the flat, taking charge of the invalid. On those occasions Charles would get on an old bicycle, and with just a few shillings in his pocket which he had saved during the past fortnight out of the meagre housekeeping allowance which he handled, he would go off for the day somewhere into the country, nobody ever knew where. Then on Monday morning he would return to the flat in Maida Vale, ready to take up his slave’s yoke, to all appearance with a light heart.
“‘Charles Ashley is wise,’ the gossiping acquaintances would say, ‘he sticks to the old miser. Thornton Ashley can’t live for ever, and Oldwall says that he is worth close to a quarter of a million.’
“Philip, on the other hand, could have had no illusions with regard to his father’s testamentary intentions. The bone of contention—Philip’s celibacy—was still there, making bad blood between father and son; more than once the old miser had said to him with a sardonic grin: ‘Let me see you married soon, my boy, and with a growing family around you, or I tell you that my money shall go to that fool Charles, or to the founding of an orphan asylum or the establishment of a matrimonial agency.’”
“Mr. Oldwall the solicitor, a very old friend of the Ashleys, and who had seen the two boys grow up, threw out as broad a hint to Philip on that same subject as professional honour allowed.
“‘Your father,’ he said to him one day, ‘has got that mania for saving money, but otherwise he is perfectly sane you know. He’ll never forgive you if you don’t gratify his wish to see you married. Hang it all, man, there are plenty of nice girls about. And what on earth would poor old Charles do with a quarter of a million, I’d like to know.’
“But for a long time Philip remained obstinate and his friends knew well enough the cause of this obstinacy; it had its root in a prewar romance. Philip Ashley had been in love—some say that he had actually been engaged to her—with a beautiful girl, Muriel Balleine, the daughter of the eminent surgeon, Sir Arnold Balleine. The two young people were thought to be devoted to one another. But the lovely Muriel had, as it turned out, another admirer in Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson, the wealthy ship-owner, who worshipped her. Philip Ashley and Wilfred Peet-Jackson were great friends; they had been at school and Varsity together. In 1915 they both obtained a commission in the Coldstreams and in 1916 Peet-Jackson was very severely wounded. He was sent home to be nursed by the beautiful Muriel in her father’s hospital in Grosvenor Square. His case had already been pronounced hopeless, and Sir Arnold himself, as well as other equally eminent surgeons, gave it as their opinion that the unfortunate young man could not live more than a few months—if that.
“We must then take it that pity and romance played their part in the events that ensued. Certain it is that London society was one day thrilled to read in its Times that Miss Muriel Balleine had been married the previous morning to Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson, the wealthy ship-owner and owner of lovely Deverill Castle in Northamptonshire. Her friends at once put it about that Muriel had only yielded to a dying man’s wish, and that there was nothing mercenary or calculating in this unexpected marriage; she probably would be a widow within a very short time and free to return to her original love and to marry Philip Ashley. But in this case, like in so many others in life, the unexpected occurred. Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson did not die—not just then. He lived six years after the doctors had said that he must die in six months. He remained an invalid and he and his beautiful wife spent their winters in the Canaries and their summers in Switzerland, but Muriel did not become a widow until 1922, and Philip Ashley all that time never looked at another girl; he was even willing to allow a fortune to slip away from him, because he always hoped that the woman whom he had never ceased to worship would be his wife one day.
“Probably old Ashley knew all that; probably he hated the idea that this one woman should spoil his son’s life for always; probably he thought that threat of disinheritance would bring Philip back out of the realms of romance to the realities of life. All this we shall never know. The old man spoke to no one about that, not even to Mr. Oldwall, possibly not even to Charles. By the time that Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson had died and Philip had announced his engagement to the beautiful widow, Thornton Ashley was practically a dying man. However, he did have the satisfaction before he died of hearing the good news. Philip told him of his engagement one Saturday in May when he came for his usual fortnightly weekend visit.
“Strangely enough although the old man must have been delighted at this tardy realisation of his life’s desire, he did not after that make any difference in his mode of life. He remained just as irascible, just as difficult and every bit as mean as he had always been; he never asked to see his future daughter-in-law, whom he had known in the past, though she did come once or twice to see him; nor did he encourage Philip to come and see him any more frequently than he had done before. The only indication he ever gave that he was pleased with the engagement was an obvious impatience to see the wedding-day fixed as soon as possible, and one day he worked himself up into a state of violent passion because Philip told him that Lady Peet-Jackson was bound to let a full year lapse before she married again, out of respect for Wilfred’s memory.”
II
“Of course a good deal of gossip was concentrated on all these events. Although Thornton Ashley had, for the past three years, cut himself adrift from all social intercourse, past friends and acquaintances had not altogether forgotten him, whilst Philip Ashley and Lady Peet-Jackson had always been well-known figures in a certain set in London. It was not likely, therefore, that their affairs would not be discussed and commented on at tea-parties and in the clubs. Philip Ashley was exalted to the position of a hero. By his marriage he would at last grasp the fortune which he had so obstinately and romantically evaded: true love was obtaining its just reward, and so on. Lady Peet-Jackson, on the other hand, was not quite so leniently dealt with by the gossips. It was now generally averred that she had
originally thrown Philip Ashley over only because Peet-Jackson was a very rich man and had a handle to his name, and that she was only returning to her former love now, because Thornton Ashley had already one foot in the grave and was reputed to be worth a quarter of a million.
“I have a photograph here,” the Man in the Corner went on, and threw a bundle of newspaper cuttings down before me, “of Lady Peet-Jackson. As no doubt you will admit, she is very beautiful, but the face is hard; looking at it one feels instinctively that she is not a woman who would stand by a man in case of trouble or disgrace. But it is difficult to judge from these smudgy reproductions, and there is no doubt that Philip Ashley was madly in love with her. That she had enemies, especially amongst those of her own sex, was only natural in view of the fact that she was exceptionally beautiful, had made one brilliant marriage and was on the point of making another.
“But the two romantic lovers were not the sole food of the gossip-mongers. There was the position of Charles Ashley to be discussed and talked over. What was going to become of him? How would he take this change in his fortune? If rumour, chiefly based on Mr. Oldwall’s indiscretions, was correct, he would be losing that reputed quarter of a million if Philip’s marriage came off. But in this case gossip had to rest satisfied with conjectures. No one ever saw Charles, and Philip, when questioned about him, had apparently very little to say.
Unravelled Knots Page 23
