The Shadow of the Rope

by E. W. Hornung

  CHAPTER XXIII

  DAWN

  The hall-porter was only too ready for further chat. It was the dullseason, and this visitor was one of a variety always popular in thequieter hotels; he was never above a pleasant word with the servants.Yet the porter stared at Langholm as he approached. His face wasflushed, and his eyes so bright that there would have been but onediagnosis by the average observer. But the porter knew that Langholm hadcome in sober, and that for the last twenty minutes he had sat absorbedin the hotel register.

  "I see," said Langholm--and even his voice was altered, which made theother stare the harder--"I see that a friend of mine stayed here justupon a year ago. I wonder if you remember him?"

  "If it was the off-season, sir, I dare say I shall."

  "It was in September, and his name was Steel."

  "How long did he stay?"

  "Only one night, I gather--an elderly gentleman with very white hair."

  The porter's face lighted up.

  "I remember him, sir! I should think I did! A very rich gentleman, Ishould say; yes, he only stayed the one night, but he gave me asovereign when he went away next day."

  "He is very rich," said Langholm, repressing by main force a desire toask a string of questions. He fancied that the porter was not one whoneeded questioning, and his patience had its immediate reward.

  "I remember when he arrived," the man went on. "It was late at night,and he hadn't ordered his room. He came in first to see whether we couldgive him one. I paid the cab myself and brought in his bag."

  "He had just arrived from the country, I presume?"

  The porter nodded.

  "At King's Cross, by the 10.45, I believe; but it must have been a goodbit late, for I was just coming off duty, and the night-porter was justcoming on."

  "Then you didn't see any more of Mr. Steel that night?"

  "I saw him go out again," said the porter, dryly, "after he hadsomething to eat, for we are short-handed in the off-season, and Istopped up myself to see he got it. I didn't see him come in the secondtime."

  Langholm could hardly believe his ears. To cover his excitement he burstout laughing.

  "The old dog!" he cried. "Do you know if he ever came in at all?"

  "Between two and three, I believe," said the porter in the same tone.

  Langholm laughed again, but asked no more questions, and in a little hewas pacing his bedroom floor, with fevered face and tremulous stride, ashe was to continue pacing it for the greater part of that August night.

  Yet it was not a night spent in thought, but rather in intercepting andin casting out the kind of thoughts that chased each other through thenovelist's brain. His imagination had him by the forelock once more, butthis time he was resisting with all his might. It meant resistance tothe strongest attribute that he possessed. The man's mind was now apicture-gallery and now a stage. He thought in pictures and he saw inscenes. It was no fault of Langholm's, any more than it was a merit.Imagination was the predominant force of his intellect, as in others isthe power of reasoning, or the gift of languages, or the mastery offigures. Langholm could no more help it than he could change the colorof his eyes, but to-night he did his best. He had mistaken invention fordiscovery once already. He was grimly determined not to let it happentwice.

  To suspect Steel because he chanced to have been in the neighborhood ofChelsea on the night of the murder, and absent from his hotel about thehour of its committal, was not less absurd than his first suspicion ofthe man who could be proved to have been lying between life and death atthe time. There had been something to connect the dead man withSeverino. There was nothing within Langholm's knowledge to connect himwith Steel. Yet Steel was the most mysterious person that he had evermet with outside the pages of his own novels. No one knew where he hadmade his money. He might well have made it in Australia; they might haveknown each other out there. Langholm suddenly remembered the Australianswagman whom he had seen "knocking down his check" at a wayside innwithin a few miles of Normanthorpe, and Steel's gratuitously explicitstatement that neither he nor his wife had ever been in Australia intheir lives. There was one lie at least, then why not two? Yet, theproven lie might have been told by Steel simply to anticipate and allayany possible suspicion of his wife's identity. That was at leastconceivable. And this time Langholm sought the conceivable explanationmore sedulously than the suspicious circumstance.

  He had been far too precipitate in all that he had done hitherto, fromthe Monday morning up to this Wednesday night. His departure on theMonday had been in itself premature. He had come away without seeing theSteels again, whereas he should have had an exhaustive interview withone or both of them before embarking upon his task. But Steel'shalf-hostile and half-scornful attitude was more than Langholm couldtrust his temper to endure, and he had despaired of seeing Mrs. Steelalone. There were innumerable points upon which she could have suppliedhim with valuable information. He had hoped to obtain what he wantedfrom the fuller reports of the trial; but that investigation had beenconducted upon the supposition that his wife, and no other, had causedthe death of Alexander Minchin. No business friend of the deceased hadbeen included among the witnesses, and the very least had been made ofhis financial difficulties, which had formed no part of the case for theCrown.

  Langholm, however, his wits immensely quickened by the tonic of his newdiscovery, began to see possibilities in this aspect of the matter, and,as soon as the telegraph offices were open, he despatched a rather longmessage to Mrs. Steel, reply paid. It was simply to request the businessaddress of her late husband, with the name and address of any partner orother business man who had seen much of him in the City. If the telegramwere not intercepted, Langholm calculated that he should have his replyin a couple of hours, and one came early in the forenoon:--

  "Shared office 2 Adam's Court Old Broad Street with a Mr. Crofts his friend but not mine Rachel Steel."

  Langholm looked first at the end, and was thankful to see that the replywas from Rachel herself. But the penultimate clause introduced acomplication. It must have some meaning. It would scarcely be a whollyirrelevant expression of dislike. Langholm, at all events, read awarning in the words--a warning to himself not to call on Mr. Crofts asa friend of the dead man's wife. And this increased the complication,ultimately suggesting a bolder step than the man of letters quiterelished, yet one which he took without hesitation in Rachel's cause. Hehad in his pocket the card of the detective officer who had shown himover the Black Museum; luckily it was still quite clean; and Langholmonly wished he looked the part a little more as he finally salliedforth.

  Mr. Crofts was in, his small clerk said, and the sham detective followedthe real one's card into the inner chamber of the poky offices upon thethird floor. Mr. Crofts sat aghast in his office chair, the puzzledpicture of a man who feels his hour has come, but who wonders which ofhis many delinquencies has come to light. He was large and florid, witha bald head and a dyed mustache, but his coloring was an unwholesomepurple as the false pretender was ushered in.

  "I am sorry to intrude upon you, Mr. Crofts," began Langholm, "but Ihave come to make a few inquiries about the late Alexander Minchin, who,I believe, once--"

  "Quite right! Quite right!" cried Crofts, as the purple turned a normalred in his sanguine countenance. "Alexander Minchin--poor fellow--to besure! Take a seat, Inspector, take a seat. Happy to afford you anyinformation in my power."

  If Mr. Crofts looked relieved, however, as many a decent citizen mightunder similar visitation, it was a very real relief to Langholm not tohave been found out at a glance. He took the proffered seat with thegreater readiness on noting how near it was to the door.

  "The death of Mr. Minchin is, as you know, still a mystery--"

  "I didn't know it," interrupted Crofts, who had quite recovered hisspirits. "I thought the only mystery was how twelve sane men could haveacquitted his wife."

  "That," said Langholm, "was the opinion of many at the time; but it isone which we are obliged to disrega
rd, whether we agree with it or not.The case still engages our attention, and must do so until we haveexplored every possible channel of investigation. What I want from you,Mr. Crofts, is any information that you can give me concerning Mr.Minchin's financial position at the time of his death."

  "It was bad," said Mr. Crofts, promptly; "about as bad as it could be.He had one lucky flutter, and it would have been the ruin of him if hehad lived. He backed his luck for more than it was worth, and his luckdeserted him on the spot. Yes, poor old devil!" sighed the sympatheticCrofts: "he thought he was going to make his pile out of hand, but inanother week he would have been a bankrupt."

  "Had you known him long, Mr. Crofts?"

  "Not six months; it was down at Brighton we met, quite by chance, andgot on talking about Westralians. It was I put him on to his one goodspec. His wife was with him at the time--couldn't stand the woman! Shewas much too good for me and my missus, to say nothing of her ownhusband. I remember one night on the pier--"

  "I won't trouble you about Brighton, Mr. Crofts," Langholm interrupted,as politely as he could. "Mr. Minchin was not afterwards a partner ofyours, was he?"

  "Never; though I won't say he mightn't have been if things had pannedout differently, and he had gone back to Westralia with some capital.Meanwhile he had the run of my office, and that was all."

  "And not even the benefit of your advice?"

  "He wouldn't take it, once he was bitten with the game."

  Thus far Langholm had simply satisfied his own curiosity upon one or twopoints concerning a dead man who had been little more than a name to himhitherto. His one discovery of the least potential value was thatMinchin had evidently died in difficulties. He now consulted some notesjotted down on an envelope upon his way to the City.

  "Mr. Minchin, as you are aware," resumed Langholm, "was, like his wife,an Australian by birth. Had he many Australian friends here in London?"

  "None at all," replied Mr. Crofts, "that I am aware of."

  "Nor anywhere else in the country, think you?"

  "Not that I remember."

  "Not in the north of England, for example?"

  Thus led, Mr. Crofts frowned at his desk until an enlightened look brokeover his florid face.

  "By Jove, yes!" said he. "Now you speak of it, there _was_ somebody upnorth--a rich man, too--but he only heard of him by chance a day or sobefore his death."

  "A rich man, you say, and an Australian?"

  "I don't know about that, but it was out there they had known eachother, and Minchin had no idea he was in England till he saw it in thepaper a day or two before his death."

  "Do you remember the name?"

  "No, I don't, for he never told it to me; fact is, we were not on thebest of terms just at the last," explained Mr. Crofts. "Moneymatters--money matters--they divide the best of friends--and to tell youthe truth he owed me more than I could afford to lose. But the daybefore the last day of his life he came in and said it was all right,he'd square up before the week was out, and if that wasn't good enoughfor me I could go to the devil. Of course I asked him where the moneywas coming from, and he said from a man he'd not heard of for yearsuntil that morning, but he didn't say how he'd heard of him then, onlythat he must be a millionaire. So then I asked why a man he hadn't seenfor so long should pay his debts, but Minchin only laughed and sworethat he'd make him. And that was the last I ever heard of it; he satdown at that desk over yonder and wrote to his millionaire there andthen, and took it out himself to post. It was the last time I saw himalive, for he said he wasn't coming back till he got his answer, and itwas the last letter he ever wrote in the place."

  "On that desk, eh?" Langholm glanced at the spare piece of officefurniture in the corner. "Didn't he keep any papers here?" he added.

  "He did, but you fellows impounded them."

  "Of course we did," said Langholm, hastily. "Then you have nothing ofhis left?"

  "Only his pen, and a diary in which he hadn't written a word. I slippedthem into a drawer with his papers, and there they are still."

  Langholm felt disappointed. He had learnt so much, it was tantalizingnot to learn a little more. If he could only make sure of thatmillionaire friend of Minchin! In his own mind he was all but sure, buthis own mind was too elastic by half.

  Crofts was drumming on the blotting-pad in front of him; all of a suddenLangholm noticed that it had a diary attached.

  "Minchin's diary wasn't one like yours, was it?" he exclaimed.

  "The same thing," said Mr. Crofts.

  "Then I should like to see it."

  "There's not a word written in it; one of you chaps overhauled it at thetime."

  "Never mind!"

  "Well, then, it's in the top long drawer of the desk he used to use--ifmy clerk has not appropriated it to his own use."

  Langholm held his breath as he went to the drawer in question. Inanother instant his breath escaped him in a sigh of thankfulness. The"Universal Diary" (for the year before) was there, sure enough. And itwas attached to a pink blotter precisely similar to that upon which Mr.Crofts still drummed with idle fingers.

  "Anything more I can show you?" inquired that worthy, humorously.

  Langholm was gazing intently, not at the diary, but at the pinkblotting-paper. Suddenly he looked up.

  "You say that was the last letter he ever wrote in your office?"

  "The very last."

  "Then--yes--you can show me a looking-glass if you have one!"

  Crofts had a small one on his chimney-piece.

  "By the Lord Harry," said he, handing it, "but you tip-top 'tecs are aleery lot!"