"My present arrangements are quite permanent. You have seen the last of yours truly. I have no intention of ever coming back—and I don’t suppose you particularly want me. It may interest you to know that I have made fresh domestic arrangements—necessarily a little unorthodox, but also quite permanent.
"With regard to financial questions, I am afraid I can’t contribute to your ‘arrangements,’ what ever they may be. You have enough to live on, and I have new responsibilities; but if you can get anything out of Levy you are welcome to it. You will be the first person who ever has. You can also try Penfield, and I wish you the best of luck. And that is all I have got to say on the subject.
"With best wishes,
"Yours sincerely,
"DANIEL PURCELL."
Rodney returned the letter with an expression of disgust. "It is a brutal, hoggish letter," said he, "typical of the writer. Where does he write from?"
"The postmark is Wivenhoe. It was posted last night at seven-thirty."
"That looks as if Varney were right and he were afloat; but it is a queer time of year for yachting on the East Coast. Well, I suppose you are not much afflicted by the tone of that letter?"
"Not at all. The more brutal the better. I shall have no qualms now. But the question is, will the letter do? What do you think?"
"It ought to do well enough—if it isn’t a little too good to be true."
"I don’t quite understand. You don’t doubt the truth of what he says, do you?"
"Not at all. What I mean is this: Divorce judges are pretty wary customers. They have to be. The law doesn’t allow married people, who are tired of one another and would like to try a fresh throw of the dice, to make nice little mutual arrangements to get their marriage dissolved. That is called collusion. And then there is a mischievous devil called the King’s Proctor, whose function is to ‘prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings’ and to trip up poor wretches who have got a decree and think they have escaped, and to send them back to cat-and-dog matrimony until death do them part. Now, the only pitfall about this letter of Dan’s is that it is so very complete. He makes things so remarkably easy for us. He leaves us nothing to prove. He admits everything in advance, and covers the whole of our case in our favour. That letter might have been dictated by a lawyer in our interest."
Margaret looked deeply disappointed. "You don’t mean to say that we shan’t be able to act on it!" she exclaimed in dismay.
"I don’t say that," he replied, "and I certainly think it will be worth trying. But I do wish that we could produce evidence that he is living with some woman, as he appears to state. That would be so much more convincing. However, I will get an opinion from a counsel who has had extensive experience of divorce practice—a man like Barnby, for instance. I could show him a copy of the letter and hear what he thinks."
"Why not Dr. Thorndyke?" said Margaret. "He was really right, after all, and we shall have to show him the letter."
"Yes, and he must see the original. But as to taking his opinion—well, we shall have to do that as a matter of courtesy, but I don’t set much value on his judgment. You see, he chose to go double Nap on this letter, and he happened to win. Events prove that he was right to take the chance, but it was primitive strategy. It doesn’t impress me."
Margaret made no immediate rejoinder. She was not a lawyer, and to her the fact that the plan had succeeded was evidence that it was a good plan. Accordingly, her waning faith in Thorndyke was strongly revived.
"I can’t help hoping," she said presently, "that this letter will secure a decision in our favour. It really ought to. You see, there is no question of arrangement or collusion on my side. Our relations were perfectly normal and pleasant up to the moment of Dan’s disappearance. There were no quarrels, no differences, nothing to hint at any desire for a change in our relations; and I have waited six months for him to come back, and have taken no action until he made it clear that he had gone for good. Don’t you think that I have a fair chance of getting my freedom?"
"Perhaps you are right, Maggie," he replied. ‘I may be looking out for snags that aren’t there. Of course, you could call me and Philip and Varney to prove that all was normal up to the last, and Penfield and Thorndyke to give evidence of your efforts to trace Dan. Yes, perhaps it is a better case than I thought. But all the same, I will show the letter to Barnby when Thorndyke has seen it and get his opinion without prejudice."
He paused and reflected profoundly for a while. Suddenly he looked up at Margaret, and in his eyes there was a new light.
"Supposing, Maggie," he said in a low, earnest voice, "you were to get this marriage dissolved. Then you would be free—free to marry. You know that years ago, when you were free, I loved you. You know that, because I told you; and I thought, and I still think, that you cared for me then. The fates were against us at that time, but in the years that have passed there has been no change in me. You are the only woman I have ever wanted, Of course, I have kept my feelings to myself. That had to be. But if we can win back your freedom, I shall ask you to be my wife, unless you forbid me. What shall you say to me, Maggie?"
Margaret sat with downcast eyes as Rodney was speaking. For a few moments she had appeared pale and agitated, but she was now quite composed, and nothing but a heightened colour hinted at any confusion. At the final question she raised her head and looked Rodney frankly in the face.
"At present, John," she said quietly, "I am the wife of Daniel Purcell, and as such have no right to contemplate any other marriage. But I will be honest with you. There is no reason why I should not be. You are quite right, John. I loved you in those days that you speak of, and if I never told you, you know why. You know how I came to marry Dan. It seemed to me then that I had no choice. Perhaps I was wrong, but I did what I thought was my duty to my father.
"In the years that have passed since then—the long, grey years—I have kept my covenant with Dan loyally in every respect. If I have ever looked back with regret, it has been in secret. But through those years you have been a faithful friend to me, and of all my friends the best beloved. And so you are now. That is all I can say, John."
"It is enough, Maggie," he said, "and I thank you from my heart for saying so much. Whatever your answer might have been, I would have done everything in my power to set you free. But now I shall venture to have a hope that I hold a stake in your freedom."
She made no answer to this, and for some time both sat silently engrossed with their own thoughts, and each thinking much the same thoughts as the other. The silence was at length broken by Rodney.
"It was an awful blow to me when I came home from my travels and found you married. Of course, I guessed what had happened, though I never actually knew. I assumed that Dan had put the screw on your father in some way."
"Yes. He had lent my father money, and the bills could not be met."
"What a Juggernaut the fellow is!" exclaimed Rodney. "An absolutely ruthless egoist. By the way, was he in the habit of lending money? I notice that he refers in this letter to a person named Levy. Who is Levy? And what does Dan do for a livelihood? He is out of the paper trade, isn’t he?"
"I think so. The truth is, I have never known what his occupation is. I have suspected that he is principally a money-lender. As to Mr. Levy, I have always thought he was a clerk or manager, but it rather looks as if he were a partner."
"We must find out," said Rodney. "And there is another thing that we must look into—that mysterious letter that Penfield received from Dan. Did you ever learn what was in it?"
"Never. Mr. Penfield refused to divulge the slightest hint of its contents. But I feel convinced that it was in some way connected with Dan’s disappearance. You remember it arrived on the very day that Dan went away. I think Dr. Thorndyke called on Mr. Penfield to see if he could glean any information, but I assume that he didn’t succeed."
"We can take that for granted," said Rodney. "I don’t think Thorndyke would get much out of a wary old bird like Penfield. But
we must find out what was in that letter. Penfield will have to produce it if we put him in the witness-box, though he will be a mighty slippery witness. However, I will see Thorndyke and ask him about it when I have consulted Barnby. Perhaps I had better take charge of the letter."
Margaret handed him the letter, which he put securely in his wallet, and the plan of action being now settled, he stayed only for a little further gossip, and then took his leave.
On the following afternoon he called by appointment on Thorndyke, who, having admitted him, closed the "oak" and connected the bell with the laboratory upstairs, where his assistant, Polton, was at work.
"So," he said, "our fish has risen to the tin minnow, as I gather from your note."
"Yes. You have had better luck than I expected."
"Or than I deserved, you might have added if you had been less polite. Well, I don’t know that I should agree. I consider it bad practice to treat an improbability as an impossibility. But what does he say?"
"All that we could wish—and perhaps a little more. That is the only difficulty. He makes things a little too easy for us—at least, that is my feeling. But you had better see the letter."
He took it from his wallet and passed it to Thorndyke, who glanced at the postmark, and when he had taken out the letter looked quickly into the interior of the envelope.
"Wivenhoe," he remarked. "Some distance from Woodbridge, but in the same district."
He read carefully through the text, noting at the same time the peculiarities that he had observed in the former letter. In this case, too, the postmarks had been made when the envelope was empty—a curious oversight on the part of Varney in view of the care and ingenuity otherwise displayed. Indeed, as he read through the letter, Thorndyke’s opinion of that cunning artificer rose considerably. It was a most skilful and tactful production. It did certainly make things almost suspiciously easy, but then that was its function. The whole case for the petition rested on it. But the brutal attitude of the imaginary truant was admirably rendered, and, so far as he could judge, the personality of the missing man convincingly represented.
"It is not a courteous epistle," he remarked tentatively.
"No," agreed Rodney, "but it is exactly the sort of letter that one would expect from Purcell. It gives you his character in a nutshell."
This was highly satisfactory and very creditable to Varney.
"You mentioned in your note that you were going to take Barnby’s opinion on it. Have you seen him?"
"Yes, and he thinks the same as I do: that it would be a little risky to base a petition on this letter alone. The judge might smell a rat. He considers that if we could produce evidence that Purcell is actually living with another woman, this letter would be good evidence of desertion. He suggested putting a private inquiry agent on Purcell’s tracks. What do you say to that?"
"In the abstract it is an excellent suggestion. But how are you going to carry it out? You speak of putting the agent on Purcell’s tracks. But there are no tracks. There is no place in which he is known to have been staying; there is no person known to us who has seen him since he landed at Penzance. You would start your sleuth without a scent to wander about Essex and Suffolk looking for a man whom he had never seen and would probably not recognize if he met him, and who is possibly not in either of those counties at all. It really is not a practicable scheme."
Rodney emitted a discontented grunt. "Doesn’t sound very encouraging certainly," he admitted. "But how do the police manage in a case of the kind?"
"By having, not one agent but a thousand, and all in communication through a central office. And even the police fail if they haven’t enough data. But with regard to Barnby, of course his opinion has great weight. He knows the difficulties of these cases, and his outlook will probably be the judge’s outlook. But did you make clear to him the peculiarities of this case?—the character of the petitioner, her excellent relations with her husband, the sudden, unforeseen manner of the disappearance, and the total absence of any grounds for a suspicion of collusion? Did you present these points to him?"
No, I didn’t. We merely discussed the letter."
"Well, see him again and put the whole case to him. My feeling is that a petition would probably succeed."
"I hope you are right," said Rodney, more encouraged than he would have liked to admit. "I’ll see Barnby again. Oh, and there is another point. That letter that Purcell sent to Penfield by mistake in June. It probably throws some light on the disappearance, and might be important as evidence on our side. I suppose Penfield did not tell you what was in it or show it to you?"
"No, he would say nothing about it; but he allowed me, at my request, to examine the envelope."
Rodney grinned. "He might also have shown you the postman who delivered the letter. But if he won’t tell us anything, we might put him in the witness-box and make him disgorge his secret."
"Yes, and you may have to if the court demands to have the letter produced. But I strongly advise you to avoid doing so if you can. I have the impression that the production of that letter would be very much the reverse of helpful—might, in fact, be fatal to the success of the case and would in addition be very disagreeable to Mrs. Purcell."
Rodney looked at him in astonishment. "Then you know what was in the letter?" said he.
"No, but I have formed certain opinions which I have no doubt are correct, but which I do not feel at liberty to communicate. I advise you to leave Mr. Penfield alone. Remember that he is a lawyer, that he is Mrs. Purcell’s friend, that he does know what is in the letter, and that he thinks it best to keep his knowledge to himself. But he will have to be approached on the question as to whether he is willing to act for Mrs. Purcell against her husband. If you undertake that office you can raise the question of the letter with him, but I would urge you most strongly not to force his hand."
Rodney listened to this advice with a slightly puzzled expression. Like Mr. Penfield, he viewed Thorndyke with mixed feelings, now thinking of him as an amateur, a doctor who dabbled in effectively in law, and now considering the possibility that he might command some means of acquiring knowledge that were not available to the orthodox legal practitioner. Here was a case in point. He had examined the envelope of that mysterious letter "at his own request" and evidently for a specific purpose, and from that inspection he had in some unaccountable way formed a very definite opinion as to what the envelope had contained. That was very curious. Of course, he might be wrong; but he seemed to he pretty confident. Then there was the present transaction. Rodney himself had rejected Varney’s suggestion with scorn. But Thorndyke had adopted it quite hopefully, and the plan had succeeded in the face of all probabilities. Could it be that Thorndyke had some odd means of gauging those probabilities? It looked rather like it.
"You are only guessing at the nature of that letter," he said tentatively, "and you may have got it wrong."
"That is quite possible," Thorndyke agreed. "But Penfield isn’t guessing. Put the case to him, hear what he says, and follow his advice. And if you see Barnby again it would be better to say nothing about that letter. Penfield will advise you to keep it out of the case if you can, and that is my advice, too."
When Rodney took his departure, which he did a few minutes later, he carried with him a growing suspicion that he had under-estimated Thorndyke; that the latter, perhaps, played a deeper game than at first sight appeared; and that he played with pieces unknown to traditional legal practice.
For some time after his visitor had left Thorndyke remained wrapped in profound thought. In his heart he was sensible of a deep distaste for this case that he was promoting. If it were to succeed, it could only be by misleading the court. It is true that the parties were acting in good faith, that the falsities which they would present were falsities that they believed to be true. But the whole case was based on a fiction, and Thorndyke detested fictions. Nor was he satisfied with his own position in an ethical sense. He knew that the case was fictitious, t
hat the respondent was a dead man, and that the documents to be produced in evidence were forgeries. He was, in fact, an accessory to those forgeries. He did not like it at all. And he was not so optimistic as to the success of the petition as he had led Rodney to believe, though he was not very uneasy on that score. What troubled him was that this was, in effect, a bogus case, and that he was lending it his support.
But what was the alternative? His thoughts turned to Margaret, sweet-faced, sweet-natured, gracious-mannered, the perfect type of an English gentlewoman; and he thought of the fine, handsome, high-minded gentleman who had just gone away. These two loved one another—loved as only persons of character can love. Their marriage, if it could be achieved, would secure to them a lifelong happiness, in so far as such happiness is attainable by mortals. But between them and their happiness stood the fiction of Daniel Purcell. In order that they might marry, Purcell must either be proved to be dead or assumed to be alive.
Could he be proved to be dead? If he could, that were the better way, because it would demonstrate the truth. But was it possible? In a scientific sense it probably was. Science can accept a conclusion with reservations. But the law has to say "yes" or "no" without any reservations at all. This was not a case of death merely presumed. It was a death alleged to have occurred at a specific time and place and in a specific manner; and inseparably bound up with it was a charge of murder. If Purcell was dead, Varney had murdered him, and the murder was the issue that would be tried. But no jury would entertain for a moment the guilt of the accused on such evidence as Thorndyke could offer. And an acquittal would amount to a legal decision that Purcell was not dead. On that decision Margaret’s marriage to Rodney would be impossible.
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