"You'll not forget that?" said Mrs. Saumarez insistently. "It's—those letters, I mean—they're nothing to do with this, of course—nothing! Don't let it out that——"

"I shan't volunteer any evidence of any sort," responded Brent. "If I'm confronted with a direct question which necessitates a direct answer, that's another matter. But I don't think you've anything to worry about—I should say that what they want you for is to ask a question or two as to my cousin's movements that night, didn't he call at your house on his way to the Mayor's Parlour? Yes, why that'll be about it!"

"I hope so!" said Mrs. Saumarez, with a sigh of relief. "But—that witness-box, and before all these people—I don't like it."

"Got to be done," observed Brent. "Soon over, though. Now let's get in."

He piloted Mrs. Saumarez and her companion into the borough Court, handed over to the Coroner for the special purposes of his inquest, found them seats in a reserved part, and leaving them went over to the solicitor's table, where he took a place by the side of Tansley, already settled there with his notes and papers. Tansley gave him a significant glance, nodding his head sideways at other men near them.

"Going to be a more serious affair, this, than the first was, Brent," he whispered. "These police chaps have either got something up their sleeves or Hawthwaite's got some bee in his bonnet! Anyway, there's a barrister in the case on their behalf—that little, keen-eyed chap at the far end of the table on your left; that's Meeking, one of the sharpest criminal barristers going—and I hear they're meaning to call a lot of new witnesses. But what it's all about, I don't know."

Brent looked up and down the table at which they were sitting. There were men there—legal-looking men—whom he had not seen at the opening day's proceedings.

"Who are these other fellows?" he asked.

"Oh, well, Crood's got a man representing his interests," replied Tansley. "And there's another solicitor watching the case on behalf of the Corporation. And I rather fancy that that chap at the extreme end of the table is representing the Treasury—which may mean that this affair is going to be taken up at Head-quarters. But we know nothing till the cards are on the board! Hawthwaite looks important enough this morning to hold all the aces!"

Brent glanced at the superintendent, who was exchanging whispers with the Coroner's officer, and from him to the crowded seats that ran round three sides of the court. All the notabilities of Hathelsborough were there again, in full force: Simon Crood, in a seat of honour, as befitted his new dignity of Mayor; Mallett; Coppinger, anybody and everybody of consequence. And there, too, was Krevin Crood, and Queenie, and, just behind Mrs. Saumarez, Dr. Wellesley, looking distinctly bored, and his assistant, Dr. Carstairs, a young Scotsman, and near them another medical man, Dr. Barber; and near the witness-box were several men whom Brent knew by sight as townsmen and who were obviously expecting to be called for testimony. He turned away wondering what was to come out of all this.

Once more the Coroner, precise and formal as ever, took his seat; once more the twelve jurymen settled in their places. And while Brent was speculating on the first order of procedure he was startled by the sharp, official voice of the Coroner's officer.

"Mrs. Anita Saumarez!"

Brent heard Tansley smother an exclamation of surprise; a murmur that was not smothered ran round the crowded benches behind him. There was something dramatic in the sudden calling of the pretty young widow, whose personality was still more or less of a mystery to Hathelsborough folk, and something curiosity-raising in the mere fact that she was called. All eyes were on her as, showing traces of confusion and dislike, she made her way to the witness-box. There was delay then; Mrs. Saumarez had to be instructed to lift her veil and remove her right-hand glove; this gave the crowd abundant opportunity for observing that her usually bright complexion had paled and that she was obviously ill at ease. It was with much embarrassment and in a very low voice that she replied to the preliminary questions. Anita Saumarez. Widow of the late Captain Roderick Francis Saumarez. Has been resident at the Abbey House, Hathelsborough, for about two years. "Doesn't like this job!" whispered Tansley to Brent. "Queer! From what bit I've seen of her, I should have said she'd make a very good and self-possessed witness. But she's nervous! Old Seagrave'll have to tackle her gently."

The Coroner evidently realized this as much as Tansley did. He leaned forward confidentially from his desk, toying with his spectacles, and regarded the witness with an encouraging and paternal smile.

"Mrs. Saumarez," he began, "we want to ask you a few questions—questions your replies to which may perhaps give us a little light on this very sad matter. I believe I am right in thinking that you and the late Mr. Wallingford were personal friends?"

Mrs. Saumarez's answer came in low tones—and in one word:

"Yes."

"Very close friends, I believe?"

"Yes."

"He used to visit at your house a great deal?"

"Yes."

"Dine with you, I think, once or twice a week?"

"At one time—yes."

"You say at one time? When was that period, now?"

Mrs. Saumarez, who up to this had kept her eyes on the ledge of the witness-box, began to take courage. She lifted them towards the Coroner and, encountering his placidly benevolent gaze, let them remain there.

"Well," she replied, "from about the time he became Mayor until the time of his death."

"Regularly?"

"Yes—regularly."

"We may take it, then, that you were fond of each other's society?"

Mrs. Saumarez hesitated.

"He was a very interesting man," she said at last. "I liked to talk to him."

The Coroner bent a little nearer.

"Well, now, a more personal question," he said suavely. "You will see the importance of it. Mr. Wallingford was constantly visiting you. I want a plain answer to what I am going to ask you. Was he a suitor for your hand?"

Mrs. Saumarez's cheeks flushed, and she looked down at the ungloved hand which rested, pressed on its gloved fellow, on the ledge before her.

"He certainly asked me to marry him," she murmured.

"When was that?"

"Not—not long before his death."

"And—I'm afraid I must ask you—what was your answer?"

"I refused his offer."

"Did that make any difference to your friendship?"

"It hadn't done up to the time of his death."

"He still visited you?"

"Yes, just as often."

The Coroner remained silent for a moment, glancing at his notes. When he looked towards the witness again he was blander than ever.

"Now I shall have to ask you still more personal questions," he said. "It is, as you must be aware, Mrs. Saumarez, well known in the town that on your first coming here as a resident you became on terms of great friendship with Dr. Wellesley. Do you agree to that?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"You used to go out a great deal with Dr. Wellesley—driving, and so on?"

"Yes."

"In fact, Dr. Wellesley at that time paid you great attention?"

"Yes."

"Did those attentions cease about the time that you became so friendly with Mr. Wallingford?"

"Well, they didn't altogether cease."

"But, shall we say, fell off?"

Mrs. Saumarez hesitated, obviously disliking the question.

"I have always been friends with Dr. Wellesley," she said eventually.

"All the same, has your friendship with him been quite what it was originally, since you became so very friendly with the late Mayor?"

"Well, perhaps not."

"Will you give me a plain answer to this question? Was there any jealousy aroused between Dr. Wellesley and Mr. Wallingford because of you?"

This time Mrs. Saumarez took a long time to answer. She seemed to be thinking, reflecting. And when she replied it was only to question the Coroner:

"Am I obliged to answer that?" she asked.

"I am afraid I must press for an answer," said the Coroner, "it is important."

"I think there was jealousy," she replied in a low voice.

"On whose part?"

"Dr. Wellesley thought I had thrown him over for Mr. Wallingford."

"Had Dr. Wellesley ever asked you to marry him?"

Mrs. Saumarez's answer came with unexpected swiftness.

"Oh, yes! two or three times!"

"Had you refused him also, then?"

Mrs Saumarez paused. Her cheeks flushed a deeper red.

"The fact was—I didn't want to marry anybody—just then anyway," she answered. "They—both asked me—several times. I—if you please, will you not ask me any more about my private affairs?—they've nothing to do with this! It wasn't my fault that those two were jealous of each other, and——"

"She's let the cat out of the bag now!" whispered Tansley to Brent. "Gad! I see how this thing's going to develop! Whew! Well, there she goes!"

For the Coroner had politely motioned Mrs. Saumarez away from the box, and the next instant the official voice rapped out another name:

"Dr. Rutherford Carstairs!"



CHAPTER XI

THE NINETEEN MINUTES' INTERVAL

Carstairs, a red-haired, blue-eyed, stolid-faced young Scotsman, stepped into the witness-box with the air of a man who is being forced against his will to the performance of some distasteful obligation. Everybody looked wonderingly at him; he was a comparative stranger in the town, and the unimaginative folk amongst the spectators were already cudgelling their brains for an explanation of his presence. But Brent, after a glance at Carstairs, transferred his attention to Carstairs's principal, at whom he had already looked once or twice during Mrs. Saumarez's brief occupancy of the witness-box. Wellesley, sitting in a corner seat a little to the rear of the solicitor's table, had manifested some signs of surprise and annoyance while Mrs. Saumarez was being questioned; now he showed blank wonder at hearing his assistant called. He looked from Carstairs to the Coroner, and from the Coroner to Hawthwaite, and suddenly, while Carstairs was taking the oath, he slipped from his seat, approached Cotman, a local solicitor, who sat listening, close by Tansley, and began to talk to him in hurried undertones. Tansley nudged Brent's elbow.

"Wellesley's tumbled to it!" he whispered. "The police suspect—him!"

"Good heavens!" muttered Brent, utterly unprepared for this suggestion. "You really think—that?"

"Dead sure!" asserted Tansley. "That's the theory! What's this red-headed chap called for, else? You listen!"

Brent was listening, keenly enough. The witness was giving an account of himself. Robert Carstairs, qualified medical practitioner—qualifications specified—at present assistant to Dr. Wellesley; been with him three months.

"Dr. Carstairs," began the Coroner, "do you remember the evening on which the late Mayor, Mr. Wallingford, was found dead in the Mayor's Parlour?"

"I do!" replied Carstairs bluntly.

"Where were you on that evening?"

"In the surgery."

"What are your surgery hours at Dr. Wellesley's?"

"Nine to ten of a morning; seven to nine of an evening."

"Was Dr. Wellesley with you in the surgery on that particular evening?"

"He was—some of the time."

"Not all the time?"

"No."

"What part of the time was he there, with you?"

"He was there, with me, from seven o'clock until half-past seven."

"Attending to patients, I suppose?"

"There were patients—three or four."

"Do you remember who they were?"

"Not particularly. Their names will be in the book."

"Just ordinary callers?"

"Just that."

"You say Dr. Wellesley was there until half-past seven. What happened then?"

"He went out of the surgery."

"Do you mean out of the house?"

"I mean what I say. Out of the surgery."

"Where is the surgery situated?"

"At the back of the house; behind the dining-room. There's a way into it from St. Lawrence Lane. That's the way the patients come in."

"Did Dr. Wellesley go out that way, or did he go into the house?"

"I don't know where he went. All I know is—he went, leaving me there."

"Didn't say where he was going?"

"He didn't say anything."

"Was he dressed for going out?"

"No—he was wearing a white linen jacket. Such as we always wear at surgery hours."

"And that was at half-past seven?"

"Half-past seven precisely."

"How do you fix the time?"

"There's a big, old-fashioned clock in the surgery. Just as Dr. Wellesley went out I heard the Moot Hall clock chime half-past seven, and then the chimes of St. Hathelswide's Church. I noticed that our clock was a couple of minutes slow, and I put it right."

"When did you next see Dr. Wellesley?"

"At just eleven minutes to eight."

"Where?"

"In the surgery."

"He came back there?"

"Yes."

"How do you fix that precise time—eleven minutes to eight?"

"Because he'd arranged to see a patient in Meadow Gate at ten minutes to eight. I glanced at the clock as he came in, saw what time it was, and reminded him of the appointment."

"Did he go to keep it?"

"He did."

"Was he still wearing the white linen jacket when he came back to you?"

"Yes. He took it off, then put on his coat and hat and went out again."

"According to what you say he was out of the surgery, wearing that white linen jacket, exactly nineteen minutes. Did he say anything to you when he came back at eleven minutes to eight of where he had been or what he had been doing during the interval between 7.30 and 7.49?"

"He said nothing."

"You concluded that he had been in the house?"

"I concluded nothing. I never even thought about it. But I certainly shouldn't have thought that he would go out into the street in his surgery jacket."

"Well, Dr. Wellesley went out at 7.50 to see this patient in Meadow Gate. Did anything unusual happen after that—in the surgery, I mean?"

"Nothing, until a little after eight. Then a policeman came for Dr. Wellesley, saying that the Mayor had been found dead in his Parlour, and that it looked like murder. I sent him to find Dr. Wellesley in Meadow Gate, told him where he was."

"You didn't go to the Moot Hall yourself?"

"No; there were patients in the surgery."

The Coroner paused in his questioning, glanced at his papers, and then nodded to the witness as an intimation that he had nothing further to ask him. And Carstairs was about to step down from the box, when Cotman, the solicitor to whom Wellesley had been whispering, rose quickly from his seat and turned towards the Coroner.

"Before this witness leaves the box, sir," he said, "I should like to ask him two or three questions. I am instructed by Dr. Wellesley to appear for him. Dr. Wellesley, since you resumed this inquest, sir, learns with surprise and—yes, I will say disgust—for strong word though it is, it is strictly applicable!—that all unknown to him the police hold him suspect, and are endeavouring to fasten the crime of murder on him. In fact, sir, I cannot sufficiently express my condemnation of the methods which have evidently been resorted to, in underhand fashion——"

The Coroner waved a deprecating hand.

"Yes, yes!" he said. "But we are here, Mr. Cotman, to hold a full inquiry into the circumstances of the death of the late Mayor, and the police, or anybody else, as you know very well, are fully entitled to pursue any course they choose in the effort to get at the truth. Just as you are entitled to ask any questions of any witness, to be sure. You wish to question the present witness?"

"I shall exercise my right to question this and any other witness, sir," replied Cotman. He turned to Carstairs, who had lingered in the witness-box during this exchange between coroner and solicitor. "Dr. Carstairs," he continued, "you say that after being away from his surgery for nineteen minutes on the evening of Mr. Wallingford's death, Dr. Wellesley came back to you there?"

"Yes," answered Carstairs. "That's so."

"Was anyone with you in the surgery when he returned?"

"No, no one."

"You were alone with him, until he went out again to the appointment in Meadow Gate?"

"Yes, quite alone."

"So you had abundant opportunity of observing him. Did he seem at all excited, flurried, did you notice anything unusual in his manner?"

"I didn't. He was just himself."

"Quite calm and normal?"

"Oh, quite!"

"Didn't give you the impression that he'd just been going through any particularly moving or trying episode—such as murdering a fellow-creature?"

"He didn't," replied Carstairs, without the ghost of a smile. "He was—just as usual."

"When did you see him next, after he went out to keep the appointment in Meadow Gate?"

"About half-past eight, or a little later."

"Where?"

"At the mortuary. He sent for me. I went to the mortuary, and found him there with Dr. Barber. They were making an examination of the dead man and wanted my help."

"Was Dr. Wellesley excited or upset then?"

"He was not. He seemed to me—I'm speaking professionally, mind you—remarkably cool."

Cotman suddenly sat down, and turned to his client with a smile on his lips. Evidently he made some cynical remark to Wellesley, for Wellesley smiled too.

"Smart chap, Cotman!" whispered Tansley to Brent. "That bit of cross-exam'll tell with the jury. And now, what next?"

Bunning, recalled from the previous sitting, came next—merely to repeat that the Mayor went up to his parlour at twenty-five minutes past seven, and that he and Mr. Brent found his Worship dead just after eight o'clock. Following him came Dr. Barber, who testified that when he first saw Wallingford's dead body, just about a quarter-past eight, he came to the conclusion that death had taken place about forty-five minutes previously, perhaps a little less. And from him Cotman drew evidence that Wellesley, in the examination at the mortuary, was normal, calm, collected, and, added Dr. Barber, of his own will, greatly annoyed and horrified at the murder.

Brent was beginning to get sick of this new development: to him it seemed idle and purposeless. He whispered as much to Tansley. But Tansley shook his head.

"Can't say that," he replied. "Where was Wellesley during that nineteen minutes' absence from the surgery? He'll have to explain that anyway. But they'll have more evidence than what we've heard. Hello! here's Walkershaw, the Borough Surveyor! What are they going to get out of him, I wonder?"

Brent watched an official-looking person make his way to the witness-box. He was armed with a quantity of rolls of drawing-paper, and a clerk accompanied him whose duty, it presently appeared, was to act as a living easel and hold up these things, diagrams and outlines, while his principal explained them. Presently the eager audience found itself listening to what was neither more nor less than a lecture on the architecture of Hathelsborough Moot Hall and its immediately adjacent buildings—and then Brent began to see the drift of the Borough Surveyor's evidence.

The whole block of masonry between Copper Alley and Piper's Passage, testified Walkershaw, illustrating his observations by pointing to the large diagram held on high by his clerk, was extremely ancient. In it there were three separate buildings—separate, that was, in their use, but all joining on to each other. First, next to Copper Alley, which ran out of Meadow Gate, came the big house long used as a bank. Then came the Moot Hall itself. Next, between the Moot Hall and Piper's Passage, which was a narrow entry between River Gate and St. Lawrence Lane, stood Dr. Wellesley's house. Until comparatively recent times Dr. Wellesley's house had been the official residence of the Mayor of Hathelsborough. And between it and the Moot Hall there was a definite means of communication: in short, a private door.

There was a general pricking of ears upon this announcement, and Tansley indulged in a low whistle: he saw the significance of Walkershaw's statement.

"Another link in the chain, Brent!" he muttered. "'Pon my word, they're putting it together rather cleverly: nineteen minutes' absence? door between his house and the Moot Hall? Come!"

Brent made no comment. He was closely following the Borough Surveyor as that worthy pointed out on his plans and diagrams the means of communication between the Moot Hall and the old dwelling-place at its side. In former days, said Walkershaw, some Mayor of Hathelsborough had caused a door to be made in a certain small room in the house; that door opened on a passage in the Moot Hall which led to the corridor wherein the Mayor's Parlour was situated. It had no doubt been used by many occupants of the Mayoral chair during their term of office. Of late, however, nobody seemed to have known of it; but he himself having examined it, for the purposes of this inquiry, during the last day or two, had found that it showed unmistakable signs of recent usage. In fact, the lock and bolts had quite recently been oiled.

The evidence of this witness came to a dramatic end in the shape of a question from the Coroner:

"How long would it take, then, for any person to pass from Dr. Wellesley's house to the Mayor's Parlour in the Moot Hall?"

"One minute," replied Walkershaw promptly. "If anything—less."

Cotman, who had been whispering with his client during the Borough Surveyor's evidence, asked no questions, and presently the interest of the court shifted to a little shrewd-faced, self-possessed woman who tripped into the witness-box and admitted cheerfully that she was Mrs. Marriner, proprietor of Marriner's Laundry, and that she washed for several of the best families in Hathelsborough. The fragment of handkerchief which had been found in the Mayor's Parlour was handed to her for inspection, and the Coroner asked her if she could say definitely if she knew whose it was. There was considerable doubt and scepticism in his voice as he put the question; but Mrs. Marriner showed herself the incarnation of sure and positive conviction.

"Yes, sir," she answered. "It's Dr. Wellesley's."

"You must wash a great many handkerchiefs at your laundry, Mrs. Marriner," observed the Coroner. "How can you be sure about one—about that one?"

"I'm sure enough about that one, sir, because it's one of a dozen that's gone through my hands many a time!" asserted Mrs. Marriner. "There's nobody in the town, sir, leastways not amongst my customers—and I wash for all the very best people, sir—that has any handkerchiefs like them, except Dr. Wellesley. They're the very finest French cambric. That there is a piece of one of the doctor's best handkerchiefs, sir, as sure as I'm in this here box—which I wish I wasn't!"

The Coroner asked nothing further; he was still plainly impatient about the handkerchief evidence, if not wholly sceptical, and he waved Mrs. Marriner away. But Cotman stopped her.

"I suppose, Mrs. Marriner, that mistakes are sometimes made when you and your assistants send home the clean clothes?" he suggested. "Things get in the wrong baskets, eh?"

"Well, not often—at my place, sir," replied Mrs. Marriner. "We're very particular."

"Still—sometimes, you know?"

"Oh, I'll not say that they don't, sometimes, sir," admitted Mrs. Marriner. "We're all of us human creatures, as you're very well aware, sir."

"This particular handkerchief may have got into a wrong basket?" urged Cotman. "It's—possible?"

"Oh, it's possible, sir," said Mrs. Marriner. "Mistakes will happen, sir."

Mrs. Marriner disappeared amongst the crowd, and a new witness took her place. She, too, was a woman, and a young and pretty one—and in a tearful and nervous condition. Tansley glanced at her and turned, with a significant glance, to Brent.

"Great Scott!" he whispered. "Wellesley's housemaid!"



CHAPTER XII

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Interest was beginning to thicken: the people in court, from Simon Crood, pompous and aloof in his new grandeur of chief magistrate, to Spizey the bellman, equally pompous in his ancient livery, were already open-mouthed with wonder at the new and startling development. But the sudden advent of the young and pretty domestic, whose tears betrayed her unwillingness to come forward, deepened the interest still further; everybody leaned forward towards the centre of the court, intent on hearing what the girl had to tell. She, however, paid no attention to these manifestations of inquisitiveness; standing in the witness-box, a tear-soaked handkerchief in her hands, half-sullen, half-resentful of mouth and eye, she looked at nobody but the Coroner; her whole expression was that of a defenceless animal, pinned in a corner and watchful of its captor.

But this time it was not the Coroner who put questions to the witness. There had been some whispering between him, Hawthwaite and Meeking, the barrister who represented the police authorities, and it was Meeking who turned to the girl and began to get her information from her by means of bland, suavely-expressed, half-suggesting interrogatories. Winifred Wilson; twenty years of age; housemaid at Dr. Wellesley's—been in the doctor's employ about fourteen months.

"Did you give certain information to the police recently?" inquired Meeking, going straight to his point as soon as these preliminaries were over. "Information bearing on the matter now being inquired into?"

"Yes, sir," replied the witness in a low voice.

"Was it relating to something that you saw, in Dr. Wellesley's house, on the evening on which Mr. Wallingford was found dead in the Mayor's Parlour?"

"Yes, sir."

"What was it that you saw?"

The girl hesitated. Evidently on the verge of a fresh outburst of tears, she compressed her nether lip, looking fixedly at the ledge of the witness-box.

"Don't be afraid," said Meeking. "We only want the truth—tell that, and you've nothing to be afraid of, nor to reproach yourself with. Now what did you see?"

The girl's answer came in a whisper.

"I saw Dr. Wellesley!"

"You saw your master, Dr. Wellesley. Where did you see Dr. Wellesley?"

"On the hall staircase, sir."

"On the hall staircase. That, I suppose, is the main staircase of the house? Very well. Now where were you?"

"Up on the top landing, sir."

"What were you doing there?"

"I'd just come out of my room, sir—I'd been getting dressed to go out."

"And how came you to see your master?"

"I heard a door open on the landing below, sir, and I just looked over the banister to see who it was."

"Who was it?"

"Dr. Wellesley, sir."

"Dr. Wellesley. What was he doing?"

"He'd just come out of the drawing-room door, sir."

"Are you sure he'd come out of that particular door?"

"Well, sir, I saw him close it behind him."

"What happened then?"

"He stood for a minute, sir, on the landing."

"Doing anything?"

"No, sir—just standing."

"And what then?"

"He went downstairs, sir."

"And disappeared?"

"He went towards the surgery, sir."

"How was the staircase lighted when you saw all this?"

"Well, sir, there was a light in the hall, at the foot of the staircase, and there was another on the drawing-room floor landing."

"Then you could see Dr. Wellesley quite clearly?"

"Yes, sir."

"How was he dressed?"

"He'd his surgery jacket on, sir—a white linen jacket."

"You saw Dr. Wellesley quite clearly, wearing a white linen jacket, and coming out of the drawing-room door. Now I want to ask you about the drawing-room. Is there another room, a small room, opening out of Dr. Wellesley's drawing-room?"

"Yes, sir."

"How big is it?"

"Well, sir, it's a little room. Not very big, sir."

"What is it used for? What is there in it now?"

"Nothing much, sir. Some book-cases and a desk and a chair or two."

"Is there a door on its farther side—the next side to the Moot Hall?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you ever seen it open?"

"No, sir, never."

"You don't know where it gives access to?"

"No, sir."

"Might be a cupboard door, eh?"

"I always thought it was a cupboard door, sir."

"Very good. Now I want you to be very particular about answering my next question. What time was it when you saw Dr. Wellesley come out of his drawing-room?"

"It would be just about a quarter to eight, sir."

"Are you quite sure about that?"

"Quite sure, sir!"

"Did anything fix the time on your mind?"

"Yes, sir—at least, I heard the clocks strike the quarter just after. The Moot Hall clock, sir, and the parish church."

"You're sure it was a quarter to eight o'clock that you heard?"

"Yes, sir, quite sure."

"Why are you quite sure?"

The witness reddened a little and looked shyly aside.

"Well, sir, I'd got to meet somebody, outside the house, at a quarter to eight o'clock," she murmured.

"I see! Did you meet him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Punctually?"

"I might have been a minute late, sir. The clocks had done striking."

"Very good. And just before they began to strike you saw Dr. Wellesley come out of his drawing-room door?"

"Yes, sir."

Meeking suddenly dropped back into his seat and began to shuffle his papers. The Coroner glanced at Cotman—and Cotman, with a cynical smile, got to his feet and confronted the witness.

"Was it your young man that you went out to meet at a quarter to eight o'clock that evening?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," admitted the girl.

"What's his name?"

"Joe Green, sir."

"Did you tell Joe Green that you'd just seen Dr. Wellesley come out of his drawing-room?"

"No, sir!"

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't think anything of it, sir."

"You didn't think anything of it? And pray when did you begin to think something of it?"

"Well, sir, it was—it was when the police began asking questions."

"And of whom did they ask questions?"

"Me and the other servants, sir."

"Dr. Wellesley's servants?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many servants has Dr. Wellesley?"

"Four, sir—and a boy."

"So the police came asking questions, did they? About Dr. Wellesley? What about him?"

"Well, sir, it was about what we knew of Dr. Wellesley's movements on that evening, sir—where he was from half-past seven to eight o'clock. Then I remembered, sir."

"And told the police?"

"No, sir—not then. I said nothing to anybody—at first."

"But you did later on. Now, to whom?"

The witness here began to show more signs of tearfulness.

"Don't cry!" said Cotman. "Whom did you first mention this to?"

"Well, sir, it was to Mrs. Lane. I got so upset about it that I told her."

"Who is Mrs. Lane?"

"She's the lady that looks after the Girls' Friendly Society, sir."

"Are you a member of that?"

"Yes, sir."

"So you went and told Mrs. Lane all about it?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did Mrs. Lane say?"

"She said I must tell Mr. Hawthwaite, sir."

"Did she take you to Mr. Hawthwaite?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you told him all that you have told us now?"

"Yes, sir—Mrs. Lane said I must."

"You didn't want to, eh?"

Here the girl burst into tears, and Cotman turned to the Coroner.

"I have no further questions to put to this witness, sir," he said, "but I would make a respectful suggestion to yourself. That is, that my client, Dr. Wellesley, should be called at once. We know now that the police have been secretly working up a case against Dr. Wellesley—in fact, I am very much surprised that, ignoring these proceedings altogether, they have not gone to the length of arresting him! Perhaps that's a card which Superintendent Hawthwaite still keeps up his sleeve. I may tell him, on behalf of my client, that he's quite welcome to arrest Dr. Wellesley and bring him before the magistrates whenever he likes! But as Dr. Wellesley's name has been very freely mentioned this morning I think it will be only fair, sir, that he should be allowed to go into that box at once, where he will give evidence on oath——"

"If Dr. Wellesley elects to go into the box," interrupted the Coroner, "I shall, of course, warn him in the usual way, Mr. Cotman. He is not bound to give any evidence that might incriminate himself, but no doubt you have already made him aware of that."

"Dr. Wellesley is very well aware of it, sir," replied Cotman. "I ask that he should be allowed to give evidence at once."

"Let Dr. Wellesley be called, then," said the Coroner. "That course, perhaps, will be best."

Brent inspected Wellesley closely as he stepped into the witness-box. He was a well set-up, handsome man, noted in the town for his correct and fashionable attire, and he made a distinguished figure as the centre-point of these somewhat sordid surroundings. That he was indignant was very obvious; he answered the preliminary questions impatiently; there was impatience, too, in his manner as after taking the oath he turned to the Coroner; it seemed to Brent that Wellesley's notion was that the point-blank denial of a man of honour was enough to dispose of any charge.

This time the Coroner went to work himself, quietly and confidentially.

"Dr. Wellesley," he began, leaning over his desk, "I need not warn you in the way I mentioned just now: I'm sure you quite understand the position. Now, as you have been in Court all the morning, you have heard the evidence that has already offered itself. As regards the evidence given by your assistant, Dr. Carstairs, as to your movements and absence from the surgery between 7.30 and 7.49—is that correct?"

Wellesley drew himself to his full height, and spoke with emphasis:

"Absolutely!"

"And the evidence of the young woman, your housemaid? Is she correct in what she told us?"

"Quite!"

The Coroner looked down at his papers, his spectacled eyes wandering about them as if in search of something. Suddenly he looked up.

"There's this matter of the handkerchief, or portion of a handkerchief," he said. "Picked up, we are told, from the hearth in the Mayor's Parlour, where the rest of it had been burned. Did you hear Mrs. Marriner's evidence about that, Dr. Wellesley?"

"I did!"

"Is what she said, or suggested, correct? Is the handkerchief yours?"

"I have never seen the handkerchief, or, rather, the remains of it. I heard that some portion of a handkerchief, charred and blood-stained, was found on the hearth in the Mayor's Parlour, and that it had been handed over to Superintendent Hawthwaite, but I have not had it shown to me."

The Coroner glanced at Hawthwaite, who since the opening of the Court had sat near Meeking, occasionally exchanging whispered remarks.

"Let Dr. Wellesley see that fragment," he said.

All eyes were fixed on the witness as he took the piece of charred and faintly stained stuff in his hands and examined it. Everybody knew that the stain was from the blood of the murdered man; the same thought was in everybody's mind—was that stain now being critically inspected by the actual murderer?

Wellesley suddenly looked up; at the same time he handed back the fragment to the policeman who had passed it to him.

"To the best of my belief," he said, turning to the Coroner, "that is certainly part of a handkerchief of mine. The handkerchief is one of a dozen which I bought in Paris about a year ago."

A murmur ran round the crowded court at this candid avowal; as it died away the Coroner again spoke:

"Had you missed this handkerchief?"

"I had not. I have a drawer in my dressing-room full of handkerchiefs—several dozens of them. But—from the texture—I am positive that that is mine."

"Very well," said the Coroner. "Now about the evidence of Mr. Walkershaw. Did you know of the door between your house and the Moot Hall?"

"Yes! So did the late Mayor. As a matter of fact, he and I, some time ago, had it put to rights. We both used it; I, to go into the Moot Hall; he, to come and see me."

"There was no secrecy about it, then?"

"Not between Wallingford and myself at any rate."

The Coroner took off his spectacles and leaned back in his chair—sure sign that he had done. And Meeking rose, cool, level-voiced.

"Dr. Wellesley, I think you heard the evidence of Mrs. Saumarez?"

But before Dr. Wellesley could make answer, the other doctors present in the Court-room were suddenly called into action. As the barrister pronounced her name, Mrs. Saumarez collapsed in her seat, fainting.



CHAPTER XIII

A WOMAN INTERVENES

In the midst of the commotion that followed and while Mrs. Saumarez, attended by the doctors, was being carried out of the Court-room, Tansley, at Brent's elbow, drew in his breath with a sharp sibilant sound that came near being a whistle. Brent turned from the withdrawing figures to look at him questioningly.

"Well?" he said.

"Queer!" muttered Tansley. "Why should she faint? I wonder——"

"What?" demanded Brent as the solicitor paused.

"I'm wondering if she and Wellesley know anything that they're keeping to themselves," said Tansley. "She was obviously nervous and frightened when she was in that box just now."

"She's a nervous, highly-strung woman—so I should say, from what bit I've seen of her," remarked Brent. "Excitable!"

"Well, he's cool enough," said Tansley, nodding towards the witness-box. "Hasn't turned a hair! Meeking'll get nothing out of him!"

The barrister was again addressing himself to Wellesley, who, after one glance at Mrs. Saumarez as she fainted, had continued, erect and defiant, facing the Court.

"You heard Mrs. Saumarez's evidence just now, Dr. Wellesley?" asked Meeking quietly.

"I did!"

"Was it correct?"

"I am not going to discuss it!"

"Nor answer any questions arising out of it?"

"I am not!"

"Perhaps you will answer some questions of mine. Was there any jealousy existing between you and the late John Wallingford, of which Mrs. Saumarez was the cause?"

Wellesley hesitated, taking a full minute for evident consideration.

"I will answer that to a certain extent," he replied at last. "At the time of his death, no! None!"

"Had there been previously?"

"At one time—yes. It was over."

"You and he were good friends?"

"Absolutely! Both in private and public—I mean in public affairs. I was in complete touch and sympathy with him as regards his public work."

"Now, Dr. Wellesley, I think that for your own sake you ought to give us some information on one or two points. Mrs. Saumarez said on oath that you asked her to marry you, two or three times. She also said that the late Mayor asked her too. Now——"

Wellesley suddenly brought down his hand on the ledge of the witness-box.

"I have already told you, sir, that I am not going to discuss my affairs with Mrs. Saumarez nor with the late Mayor in relation to Mrs. Saumarez!" he exclaimed with some show of anger. "They are private and have nothing to do with this inquiry. I shall not answer any question relating to them."

"In that case, Dr. Wellesley, you will lay yourself open to whatever conclusions the jury chooses to make," said Meeking. "We have already heard Mrs. Saumarez say—what she did say. But, as you won't answer, I will pass to another matter. You have already told us that the evidence of your assistant, Dr. Carstairs, is correct as to your movements between half-past seven and eleven minutes to eight, or, rather, as to your absence from the surgery during those nineteen minutes. You adhere to that?"

"Certainly! Carstairs is quite correct."

"Very well. Where were you during that time—nineteen minutes?"

"For the most part of the time, in my drawing-room."

"What do you mean by most part of the time?"

"Well, I should say three parts of it."

"And the other part?"

"Spent in letting a caller in and letting the caller out."

"By your front door?"

"No; by a side door—a private door."

"You took this caller to your drawing-room?"

"Yes."

"For a private interview?"

"Precisely."

Meeking allowed a minute to elapse, during which he affected to look at his papers. Suddenly he turned full on his witness.

"Who was the caller?"

Wellesley drew his tall figure still more erect.

"I refuse to say!"

"Why?"

"Because I am not going to drag in the name of my caller! The business my caller came upon was of a very private and confidential nature, and I am not going to break my rule of professional silence. I shall not give the name."

Meeking again paused. Finally, with a glance at the Coroner, he turned to his witness and began to speak more earnestly.

"Let me put this to you," he said. "Consider calmly, if you please, what we have heard already, from previous witnesses, and what you yourself have admitted. Mrs. Saumarez has sworn that you and the late Mayor were rivals for her hand and that there was jealousy between you. You admit that Mrs. Marriner is correct in identifying the burnt and blood-stained fragment of handkerchief found in the Mayor's Parlour after the murder as your property; you also acknowledge the existence of a door communicating between your house and the Moot Hall. You further admit that you were away from your surgery for nineteen minutes at the very time the murder was committed—according to the medical evidence—and that you were in your drawing-room from an inner room of which the door I have just referred to opens. Now I suggest to you, Dr. Wellesley, that you should give us the name of the person who was with you in your drawing-room?"

Wellesley, who, during this exordium, had steadily watched his questioner, shook his head more decidedly than before.

"No!" he answered promptly. "I shall not say who my caller was."

Meeking spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He turned to the Coroner who, for the last few minutes, had shown signs of being ill at ease, and had frequently shaken his head at Wellesley's point-blank refusals.

"I don't know if it is any use appealing to you, sir," said Meeking. "The witness——"

The Coroner leaned towards Wellesley, his whole attitude conciliatory and inviting.

"I really think that it would be better, doctor, if you could find it in your way to answer Mr. Meeking's question——"

"I have answered it, sir," interrupted Wellesley. "My answer is—no!"

"Yes, yes, but I don't want the jury to get any false impressions—to draw any wrong conclusions," said the Coroner a little testily. "I feel sure that in your own interest——"

"I am not thinking of my own interest," declared Wellesley. "Once again—I shall not give the name of my caller."

There was a further pause, during which Meeking and the Coroner exchanged glances. Then Meeking suddenly turned again to the witness-box.

"Was your caller a man or a woman?" he asked.

"That I shan't say!" answered Wellesley steadily.

"Who admitted him—or her?"

"I did."

"How—by what door of your house?"

"By the side-door in Piper's Passage."

"Did any of your servants see the caller?"

"No."

"How came that about? You have several servants."

"My caller came to that door by arrangement with myself at a certain time—7.30—was admitted by me, and taken straight up to my drawing-room by a side staircase. My caller left, when the interview was over, by the same way."

"The interview, then, was a secret one?"

"Precisely! Secret; private; confidential."

"And you flatly refuse to give us the caller's name?"

"Flatly!"

Meeking hesitated a moment. Then, with a sudden gesture, as though he washed his hands of the whole episode, he dropped back into his seat, bundled his papers together, and made some evidently cynical remark to Hawthwaite who sat near to him. But Hawthwaite made no response: he was watching the Coroner, and in answer to a questioning glance he shook his head.

"No more evidence," whispered Tansley to Brent, as Wellesley, dismissed, stepped down from the witness-box. "Whew! this is a queer business, and our non-responsive medical friend may come to rue his obstinacy. I wonder what old Seagrave will make of it? He'll have to sum it all up now."

The Coroner was already turning to the jury. He began with his notes of the first day's proceedings and spent some time over them, but eventually he told his listeners that all that had transpired in the opening stages of the inquiry faded into comparative insignificance when viewed in the light of the evidence they had heard that morning. He analysed that evidence with the acumen of the cute old lawyer that everybody knew him to be, and at last got to what the sharper intellects amongst his hearers felt, with him, to be the crux of the situation—was there jealousy of an appreciable nature between Wallingford and Wellesley in respect of Mrs. Saumarez? If there was—and he brushed aside, rather cavalierly, Wellesley's denial that it existed at the time of Wallingford's death, estimating lightly that denial in face of the fact that the cause was still there, and that Wellesley had admitted that it had existed, at one time—then the evidence as they had it clearly showed that between 7.30 and 7.49 on the evening of the late Mayor's death, Wellesley had ready and easy means of access to the Mayor's Parlour. Something might have occurred which had revivified the old jealousy—there might have been a sudden scene, a quarrel, high words: it was a pity, a thousand pities, that Dr. Wellesley refused to give the name of the person who, according to his story, was with him during the nineteen minutes' interval which——

"Going dead against him!" whispered Tansley to Brent. "The old chap's taken Meeking's job out of his hands. Good thing this is a coroner's court—if a judge said as much as Seagrave's saying to an assize jury, Gad! Wellesley would hang! Look at these jurymen! They're half dead-certain that Wellesley's guilty already!"

"Well?" muttered Brent. "I'm not so far off that stage myself. Why didn't he speak out, and be done with it. There's been more in that love affair than I guessed at, Tansley—that's where it is! The woman's anxious enough anyway—look at her!"

Mrs. Saumarez had come back into court. She was pale enough and eager enough—and it seemed to Brent that she was almost holding her breath as the old Coroner, in his slow, carefully-measured accents and phrases, went on piling up the damning conclusions that might be drawn against Wellesley.

"You must not allow yourselves to forget, gentlemen," he was saying, "that Dr. Wellesley's assertion that he was busy with a caller during the fateful nineteen minutes is wholly uncorroborated. There are several—four or five, I think—domestic servants in his establishment, and there was also his assistant in the house, and there were patients going in and out of the surgery, but no one has been brought forward to prove that he was engaged with a visitor in his drawing-room. Now you are only concerned with the evidence that has been put before you, and I am bound to tell you that there is no evidence that Dr. Wellesley had any caller——"

A woman's voice suddenly rang out, clear and sharp, from a point of the audience immediately facing the Coroner.

"He had! I was the caller!"

In the excitement of the moment Tansley sprang to his feet, stared, sank back again.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Mrs. Mallett! Who'd have thought it!"

Brent, too, got up and looked. He saw a handsome, determined-looking woman standing amidst the closely-packed spectators. Mallett sat by her side; he was evidently struck dumb with sudden amazement and was staring open-mouthed at her; on the other side, two or three men and women, evidently friends, were expostulating with the interrupter. But Mrs. Mallett was oblivious of her husband's wonder and her friends' entreaties; confronting the Coroner she spoke again.

"Mr. Seagrave, I am the person who called on Dr. Wellesley!" she said in a loud, clear voice. "I was there all the time you're discussing, and if you'll let me give evidence you shall have it on my oath. I am not going to sit here and hear an innocent man traduced for lack of a word of mine."

The Coroner, who looked none too well pleased at this interruption, motioned Mrs. Mallett to come forward. He waved aside impatiently a protest from Wellesley, who seemed to be begging this voluntary witness to go back to her seat and say nothing, and, as Mrs. Mallett entered the witness-box, turned to Meeking.

"Perhaps you'll be good enough to examine this witness," he said a little irritably. "These irregular interruptions! But let her say what she has to say."

Mrs. Mallett, in Brent's opinion, looked precisely the sort of lady to have her say, and to have it right out. She was calm enough now, and when she had taken the oath and told her questioner formally who she was, she faced him with equanimity. Meeking, somewhat uncertain of his ground, took his cue from the witness's dramatic intervention.

"Mrs. Mallett, did you call on Dr. Wellesley at 7.30 on the evening in question—the evening on which Mr. Wallingford met his death?"

"I did."

"By arrangement?"

"Certainly—by arrangement."

"When was the arrangement made?"

"That afternoon. Dr. Wellesley and I met, in the market-place, about four o'clock. We made it then."

"Was it to be a strictly private interview?"

"Yes, it was. That was why I went to the side door in Piper's Passage."

"Did Dr. Wellesley admit you himself?"

"Yes, he did, and he took me straight up to his drawing-room by a side staircase."

"No one saw you going in?"

"No; nor leaving, either!"

"Why all this privacy, Mrs. Mallett?"

"My business was of a private sort, sir!"

"Will you tell us what it was?"

"I will tell you that I had reasons of my own—my particular own—for seeing Dr. Wellesley and the Mayor."

"The Mayor! Did you see the Mayor—there?"

"No. I meant to see him, but I didn't."

"Do you mean that you expected to meet him there—in Dr. Wellesley's drawing-room?"

"No. Dr. Wellesley had told me of the door between his house and the Moot Hall, and he said that after he and I had had our talk I could go through that door to the Mayor's Parlour, where I should be sure to find Mr. Wallingford at that time."

"I see. Then, did you go to see Mr. Wallingford?"

"I did."

"After talking with Dr. Wellesley?"

"Yes. He showed me the way—opened the door for me——"

"Stay, what time would that be?"

"About 7.35 or so. I went along the passage to the Mayor's Parlour, but I never entered."

"Never entered? Why, now, Mrs. Mallett?"

"Because, as I reached the door, I heard people talking inside the Parlour. So I went back."



CHAPTER XIV

WHOSE VOICES?

Meeking, who by long experience knew the value of dramatic effect in the examination of witnesses, took full advantage of Mrs. Mallett's strange and unexpected announcement. He paused, staring at her—he knew well enough that when he stared other folk would stare too. So for a full moment the situation rested—there stood Mrs. Mallett, resolute and unmoved, in the box, with every eye in the crowded court fixed full upon her, and Meeking still gazing at her intently—and, of set purpose, half-incredulously. There was something intentionally sceptical, cynical, in his tone when, at last, he spoke:

"Do you say—on oath—that you went, through the door between Dr. Wellesley's house and the Moot Hall, to the Mayor's Parlour—that evening?"

"To the door of the Mayor's Parlour," corrected Mrs. Mallett. "Yes. I do. I did!"

"Was the door closed?"

"The door was closed."

"But you say you heard voices?"

"I heard voices—within."

"Whose voices?"

"That I can't say. I couldn't distinguish them."

"Well, did you hear the Mayor's voice?"

"I tell you I couldn't distinguish any voice. There were two people talking inside the Mayor's Parlour, anyway, in loud voices. It seemed to me that they were both talking at the same time—in fact, I thought——"

"What did you think?" demanded Meeking, as Mrs. Mallett paused.

"Well, I thought that, whoever they were, the two people were quarrelling—the voices were loud, lifted, angry, I thought."

"And yet you couldn't distinguish them?"

"No, I couldn't. I might have recognized the Mayor's voice perhaps, if I'd gone closer to the door and listened, but I didn't stay. As soon as I heard—what I have told you of—I went straight back."

"By the same way? To Dr. Wellesley's drawing-room?"

"Yes."

"What happened then?"

"I told Dr. Wellesley that the Mayor had somebody with him and that they appeared to be having high words, and as I didn't want to stop he suggested that I should come again next evening. Then I went home."

"In the same way—by the private door into Piper's Passage?"

"Exactly."

"Did Dr. Wellesley go downstairs with you and let you out?"

"He did."

"See anybody about on that occasion?"

"No—no one."

Meeking paused, and after a glance round the table at which he was standing looked at his notes.

"Now, Mrs. Mallett," he said presently, "what time was this—I mean, when you left Dr. Wellesley's?"

"A little before a quarter to eight. The clock struck a quarter to eight just after I got into my own house."

"And—where is your house?"

"Next door to the Moot Hall. Dr. Wellesley's house is on one side of the Moot Hall; ours is on the other."

"It would take you a very short time, then, to go home?"

"A minute or two."

"Very well. And you went to Dr. Wellesley's at 7.30?"

"Just about that."

"Then you were with him most of the time you were there—in his drawing-room?"

"Certainly! All the time except for the two or three minutes spent in going to the Mayor's Parlour."

"Talking to Dr. Wellesley?"

"Of course! What do you suppose I went for?"

"That's just what I want to find out!" retorted Meeking, with a glance that took in the audience, now all agog with excitement. "Will you tell us, Mrs. Mallett?"

Mrs. Mallett's handsome face became rigid, and her well-cut lips fixed themselves in a straight line. But she relaxed them to rap out one word.

"No!"

"Come, now, Mrs. Mallett! This is a serious, a very serious inquiry. It is becoming more serious the more it becomes mysterious, and it is becoming increasingly mysterious. You have already told us that you went secretly to Dr. Wellesley's house in order that you might see him and, afterwards, the Mayor, Mr. Wallingford. Now, you must have had some very special reason, or cause, for these interviews. Tell me what it was. What was it, Mrs. Mallett?"

"No! That's my business! Nobody else's. I shall not say."

"Does Dr. Wellesley know what it was?"

"Of course!"

"Would the Mayor have known if you'd seen him?"

"Considering that that was the object I had in wanting to see him, of course he would!" retorted Mrs. Mallett. "I should think that's obvious."

"But you didn't see him, eh?"

"You know very well I didn't!"

"Pardon me, madam," said Meeking with lightning-like promptitude. "I don't know anything of the sort! However, does anyone else know of this—business?"

"That, too, is my concern," declared Mrs. Mallett, who had bridled indignantly at the barrister's swift reply. "I shan't say."

"Does your husband know of it?"

"I'm not going to say that, either!"

"Did your husband—who, I believe, is one of the Town Trustees—did he know of your visit to Dr. Wellesley's house on this particular occasion?"

"I'll answer that! He did not."

"Where was he, while you were at Dr. Wellesley's? Had you left him at home?"

"No, he had gone out before I went out myself. As to where he was, I should say he was either at the Conservative Club or at Mr. Simon Crood's. Is it relevant?"

Amidst a ripple of laughter Meeking made a gesture which signified that he had done with Mrs. Mallett, and she presently stepped down from the witness-box. Meeking turned to the Coroner.

"I want to have Dr. Wellesley in that box again, sir," he said.

"Let Dr. Wellesley be recalled," commanded the Coroner.

Wellesley, once more in the full gaze of the court, looked vexed and impatient. Those who had occasionally glanced at him while Mrs. Mallett was giving her evidence had observed that he showed signs of being by no means pleased at the turn things had taken since her sudden intervention—sometimes he had frowned; once or twice he had muttered to himself. And he now looked blackly at Meeking as the barrister once more confronted him.

"You have heard the evidence of the last witness?" asked Meeking abruptly.

"All of it," replied Wellesley.

"Is it correct as to details of time?"

"So far as I recollect, quite!"

"When Mrs. Mallett went by the private door between your drawing-room and the Moot Hall to see the Mayor, what did you do?"

"Waited for her in my drawing-room."

"How long was she away?"

"Five minutes perhaps."

"Had you made any appointment with the Mayor on her behalf?"

"No. I had not."

"You sent her to see him on the chance of her finding him there—in the Mayor's Parlour?"

"There was no chance about it. I knew—as a good many other people did—that just then Wallingford spent almost every evening in the Mayor's Parlour."

"Had you ever visited him in the Mayor's Parlour during these evening attendances of his?"

"Oh, yes—several times!"

"By this communicating door?"

"Certainly. And he had made use of it in coming to see me."

"Do you know what the Mayor was doing on these occasions—I mean, do you know why he spent so much time at the Mayor's Parlour of an evening?"

"Yes. He was going as thoroughly as he could into the financial affairs of the Corporation."

"Now I want to put a very particular question to you—with the object of getting at some solution of this mystery. What was Mrs. Mallett's business with you and the Mayor?"

"I cannot reply to that."

"You won't give me an answer?"

"I won't!"

"Do you base your refusal on professional privilege, doctor?"

"No! Not at all. Mrs. Mallett's business was of an absolutely private nature. It had nothing whatever to do with the subject of this inquiry—I tell you that on my honour, on my oath. Nothing whatever!"

"You mean—directly?"

Meeking threw a good deal of significance into this question, which he put slowly, and with a peculiarly meaning glance at his witness. But Wellesley either did not see or affected not to see any significance, and his answer came promptly:

"I mean precisely what I say—as I always do."

Meeking leaned across the table, eyeing Wellesley still more closely.

"Do you think, knowing all that you do now, that it had anything to do with it indirectly? Indirectly!"

Self-controlled though he was, Wellesley could not repress a start of surprise at this question. It was obviously unexpected—and it seemed to those who, like Brent and Tansley, were watching him narrowly, that he was considerably taken aback by it. He hesitated.

"I want an answer to that," said Meeking, after a pause.

"Well," replied Wellesley at last, "I can't say. What I mean by that is that I am not in a position to say. I am not sufficiently acquainted with—let me call them facts to be able to say. What I do say is that Mrs. Mallett's business with me and with Wallingford that evening was of an essentially private nature and had nothing whatever to do with what happened in the Mayor's Parlour just about the time she was in my drawing-room."

"That is, as far as you are aware?"

"As far as I am aware—yes! But I am quite sure it hadn't."

"You can't give this court any information that would help to solve this problem?"

"I cannot!"

"Well, a question or two more. When Mrs. Mallett left you at your door in Piper's Passage—I mean, when you let her out, just before a quarter to eight, what did you next do?"

"I went upstairs again to my drawing-room."

"May I ask why?"

"Yes. I thought of going to see Wallingford, in the Mayor's Parlour."

"Did you go?"

"No. I should have gone, but I suddenly remembered that I had an appointment with a patient in Meadow Gate at ten minutes to eight o'clock. So I went back to the surgery, exchanged my jacket for a coat and went out."

"On your oath, have you the slightest idea as to who killed John Wallingford?"

"I have not the least idea! I never have had."

Meeking nodded, as much as to imply that he had no further questions to ask; when his witness had stepped down, he turned to the Coroner.

"I should like to have Bunning, the caretaker, recalled, sir," he said. "I want to ask him certain questions which have just occurred to me. Bunning," he continued, when the ex-sergeant had been summoned to the witness-box, "I want you to give me some information about the relation of your rooms to the upper portion of the Moot Hall. You live in rooms on the ground floor, don't you? Yes? Very well, now, is there any entrance to your rooms other than that at the front of the building—the entrance from the market-place?"

"Yes, sir. There's an entrance from St. Lawrence Lane, at the back."

"Is there any way from your rooms to the upper floors of the Moot Hall?"

"Yes, sir. There's a back stair, from our back door."

"Could anybody reach the Mayor's Parlour by that stair?"

"They could, sir, certainly; but either me or my wife would see them."

"Just so, if you were in your rooms. But you told us in your first evidence that from about 7.20 or so until eight o'clock you were smoking your pipe at the market-place entrance to the Moot Hall, where, of course, you couldn't see your back door. That correct? Very well. Now, while you were at the front, was your wife in your rooms at the back?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know what she was doing?"

"I do, sir. She was getting our supper ready."

"Are you sure she never left the house—your rooms, you know?"

Bunning started. Obviously, a new idea had occurred.

"Ay!" said Meeking, with a smile. "Just so, Bunning. You're not sure?"

"Well, sir," replied Bunning slowly, "now that I come to think of it, I'm not! It never occurred to me before, but during that time my missis may have been out of the place for a few minutes or so, to fetch the supper beer, sir."

"To be sure! Now where does Mrs. Bunning get your supper beer?"

"At the Chancellor Vaults, sir—round the corner."

Meeking turned quietly to the Coroner.

"I think we ought to have Mrs. Bunning's evidence," he remarked.

It took ten minutes to fetch Mrs. Bunning from her rooms in the lower regions of the old Moot Hall. She came at last, breathless, and in her working attire, and turned a wondering, good-natured face on the barrister.

"Just a little question or two, Mrs. Bunning," he said half-indifferently. "On the evening of the late Mayor's death, did you go out to the Chancellor Vaults to fetch your supper beer?"

"I did, sir—just as usual."

"What time?"

"A bit earlier than usual, sir—half-past seven."

"How long were you away?"

"Why, sir, to tell you the truth, nigh on to half an hour. I met a neighbour at the corner and——"

"Exactly! And stopped chatting a bit. So you were out of your rooms in the Moot Hall that evening from 7.30 to nearly eight o'clock?"

"Yes, sir."

Meeking gave the Coroner a glance, thrust his hands into his pockets, and dropped back into his seat—silent and apparently satisfied.



CHAPTER XV

THE SPECIAL EDITION

But if the barrister was satisfied with the possibilities suggested by this new evidence, the gist of which had apparently altered the whole aspect of the case, the Coroner obviously was not. Ever since Mrs. Mallett had interrupted his summing-up to the jury, he had shown signs of fidgetiness. He had continually put on and taken off his spectacles; he had moved restlessly in his chair; now and then he had seemed on the point of interrupting counsel or witnesses: it was evident that things were not at all to his liking. And now as Meeking sat down the Coroner turned to Mrs. Bunning, who stood, looking wonderingly about her, and still fingering the apron in which she had been found at her work.

"Mrs. Bunning," he said, "I want to ask you some questions about this back entrance of yours. What is it—a door opening out of the rear of the Moot Hall?"

"Yes, sir; that's it, sir."

"Does it open on St. Lawrence Lane?"

"Yes, sir."

"What does it open into—a hall, lobby, passage, or what?"

"A lobby, sir, next to our living-room."

"Is there a staircase, then, in that lobby—I mean, by which you can get to the upper rooms in the Moot Hall?"

"Oh, yes, sir; that's the staircase we use, me and my husband, when we go up for cleaning and dusting, sir."

"Then, if anybody went in by that door while you were out that evening, whoever it was could go up that staircase to the upper rooms?"

"Oh, yes, sir, they could."

"And get to the Mayor's Parlour?"

"Yes, sir. The staircase opens on to the big landing, sir, and the door of the Mayor's Parlour is at the far end of it."

"And you were out of your rooms for half an hour that evening?"

"Just about that, sir. It would be a bit after half-past seven when I went out, and it was just before eight when I went in again."

"Did you notice anything that made you think somebody had been in?"

"Oh, no, sir, nothing!"

"Had you left your door open—your outer door?"

"Yes, sir—a bit ajar. Of course I never thought to be away many minutes, sir."

"Very good. That's all, thank you, Mrs. Bunning," said the Coroner. He looked round the court. "Is the Borough Surveyor still there?" he asked. "Mr. Walkershaw? Let him come into the witness-box again."

But the Borough Surveyor had gone—nor was he to be found in his office in another part of the building. Once more the Coroner looked round.

"I dare say we are all quite familiar with what I may call the geography of St. Lawrence Lane," he remarked. "But I want some formal evidence about it that can be put on the record. I see Mr. Krevin Crood there—I believe Mr. Crood is as big an authority on Hathelsborough as anybody living—perhaps he'll oblige me by coming forward."

Krevin Crood, sitting at the front of the densely-packed mass of spectators, rose and walked into the witness-box. The Coroner leaned confidentially in his direction.

"Mr. Crood," he said, "I think you're perfectly familiar with St. Lawrence Lane—in its relation to the immediately surrounding property?"

"I am, sir," replied Krevin. "Every inch of it!"

"Just describe it to us, as if we knew nothing about it," continued the Coroner. "You know what I want, and what I mean."

"Certainly, sir," assented Krevin. "St. Lawrence Lane is a narrow thoroughfare, about eighty to ninety yards in length which lies at the back of Mr. Mallett's house—I mean the bank premises—the Moot Hall, and Dr. Wellesley's house. It's north entrance, at the corner of the bank, is in Woolmarket; its south in Strand Lane. On its west side there is a back door to the bank house; another into Bunning's rooms on the basement of the Moot Hall; a third into the Police Office, also in that basement; a fourth into the rear of Dr. Wellesley's house. On the opposite side of the lane—the east—there is nothing but St. Lawrence's Church and churchyard. St. Lawrence's church tower and west end faces the back of the Moot Hall; there is a part of the churchyard opposite the bank premises—the rear premises; the rest of the churchyard faces Dr. Wellesley's house—the back of it, of course."

"Is the lane much frequented?"

"No, sir; it is very little used. Except by tradesmen going to Mr. Mallett's or to Dr. Wellesley's back doors, and by people going to the Police Office, it is scarcely used at all. There is no traffic along it. On Sundays, of course, it is used by people going to the services at St. Lawrence."

"Would it be likely to be quiet, unfrequented, of an evening?"

"Emphatically—yes."

"Do you think it likely that any person wishing to enter the Moot Hall unobserved and seeing Mrs. Bunning go away from her rooms and round the corner to the Chancellor Vaults—as we've just heard she did—could slip in unseen?"

"Oh, to be sure!" affirmed Krevin. "The easiest thing in the world! If I may suggest something——?"

"Go on, go on!" said the Coroner, waving his spectacles. "Anything that helps—suggest whatever you like."

"Well," said Krevin, slowly and thoughtfully, "if I may put it in my own way. Suppose that there is somebody in the town who is desirous of finding the late Mayor alone in the Mayor's Parlour, being also cognizant of the fact—well known to many people—that the late Mr. Wallingford was to be found there every evening? Suppose, too, that that person was well acquainted with the geography of St. Lawrence Lane and the Moot Hall? Suppose further that he or she was also familiar with the fact that Mrs. Bunning invariably went out every evening to fetch the supper beer from the Chancellor Vaults? Such a person could easily enter the Bunnings' back door with an absolutely minimum risk of detection. The churchyard of St. Lawrence is edged with thick shrubs and trees, anybody could easily hide amongst the shrub—laurel, myrtle, ivy—watch for Mrs. Bunning's going out, and, when she had gone, slip across the lane—a very narrow one!—and enter the door which, as she says, she left open. It would not take two minutes for any person who knew the place to pass from St. Lawrence Churchyard to the Mayor's Parlour, or from the Mayor's Parlour to St. Lawrence Churchyard."

A murmur of comprehension and understanding ran round the court: most of the people present knew St. Lawrence Lane and the Moot Hall as well as Krevin Crood knew them; his suggestion appealed to their common sense. And Tansley, with a sudden start, turned to Brent.

"That's done it!" he whispered. "Everybody tumbles to that! We've been going off on all sorts of side-tracks all the morning, now Wellesley, now Mrs. Mallett, and now—here's another! Access to the Mayor's Parlour—there you are! Easy as winking, on Krevin Crood's theory. Lay you a fiver to a shilling old Seagrave won't go on any farther."

Herein Tansley was quickly proved to be right. The Coroner was showing unmistakable symptoms of his satiety for the time being. He thanked Krevin Crood punctiliously for his assistance, and once again toying restlessly with his spectacles, turned to the jury, who, on their part, looked blank and doubtful.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "it seems to me that the entire complexion of this matter is changed by the evidence we have heard since Mrs. Mallett broke in so unexpectedly upon what I was saying to you. I don't propose now to say any more as regards the evidence of either Dr. Wellesley or Mrs. Mallett: since we heard what they had to say we have learnt a good deal which I think will be found to have more importance than we attach to it at present. As matters stand, the evidence of Mrs. Bunning is of supreme importance—there is no doubt whatever that there was easy means of access to the Mayor's Parlour during that half hour wherein the Mayor met his death. The mystery of the whole affair has deepened considerably during to-day's proceedings, and instead of bringing this inquiry to a definite conclusion I feel that I must wait for more evidence. I adjourn this inquest for a month from to-day."

The court cleared; the spectators filtered out into the market-place in various moods, and under different degrees of excitement. Some were openly disappointed that the jury had not been allowed to return a verdict; some were vehement in declaring that the jury never would return a verdict; here and there were men who wagged their heads sagely and remarked with sinister smiles that they knew what they thought about it. But, within the rapidly emptying court Brent, Tansley and Hawthwaite were grouped around Meeking—the barrister was indulging in some private remarks upon the morning's proceedings, chiefly addressed to the police superintendent.

"There's no doubt about it, you know," he was saying. "The evidence of the Bunning woman, supplemented by what Krevin Crood said—which was a mere, formal, crystallizing of common knowledge—has altered the whole thing. Here's the back entrance to the Moot Hall left absolutely unprotected, unguarded, unwatched—whatever you like to call it—for half an hour, the critical half hour. Of course the murderer got up to the Mayor's Parlour that way and got away by the same means. You're as far off as ever, Hawthwaite, and it's a pity you wasted time on that jealousy business. I watched Wellesley closely, and I believe that he spoke the truth when he said that whatever there might have been there was no jealousy about Mrs. Saumarez between him and Wallingford at the end. My own impression is that Wellesley was clear off with Mrs. Saumarez."

Hawthwaite, essentially a man of fixed ideas, looked sullen.

"Well, it isn't mine, then," he growled. "From all I've learnt—and I've chances and opportunities that most folks haven't—my impression is that both men were after her, right up to the time Wallingford was murdered. I can tell you this—and I could have put it in evidence if I'd thought it worth while—Wellesley used to go and see her, of an evening, constantly, up to a very recent date, though she was supposed to have broken off with him and to be on with the Mayor. Now then!"

"Do you know that for a fact, Hawthwaite?" asked Tansley.

"I know it for a fact! He used to go there late at night, and stop late. If you want to know where I got it from, it was from a young woman that used to be housemaid at the Abbey House, Mrs. Saumarez's place. She's told me a lot; both Wallingford and Wellesley used to visit there a good deal, but as I say, Wellesley used to go there very late of an evening. This young woman says that she knows for a fact that he was often with her mistress till close on midnight. I don't care twopence what Wellesley said; I believe he was, and is, after her, and of course he'd be jealous enough about her being so friendly with Wallingford. There's a deal more in all this than's come out yet—let me tell you that!"

"I don't think anybody will contradict you, Hawthwaite," observed the barrister dryly. "But the pertinent fact is what I tell you—the fact of access! Somebody got to the Mayor's Parlour by way of the back staircase, through Bunning's rooms, that evening. Who was it? That's what you've got to find out. If you'd only found out, before now, that Mrs. Bunning took half an hour to fetch the supper beer that night we should have been spared a lot of talk this morning. As things are, we're as wise as ever."

Then Meeking, with a cynical laugh, picked up his papers and went off, and Brent, leaving Tansley talking to the superintendent, who was inclined to be huffy, strolled out of the Moot Hall, and went round to the back, with the idea of seeing for himself the narrow street which Krevin Crood had formally described. He saw at once that Krevin was an admirable exponent of the art of description: everything in St. Lawrence Lane was as the ex-official had said: there was the door into the Bunnings' rooms, and there, facing it, the ancient church and its equally ancient churchyard. It was to the churchyard that Brent gave most attention; he immediately realized that Krevin Crood was quite right in speaking of it as a place wherein anybody could conveniently hide—a dark, gloomy, sheltered, high-walled place, filled with thick shrubbery, out of which, here and there, grew sombre yew-trees, some of them of an antiquity as venerable as that of the church itself. It would be a very easy thing indeed, Brent decided, for any designing person to hide amongst these trees and shrubs, watch the Bunnings' door until Mrs. Bunning left it, jug in hand, and then to slip across the grass-grown, cobble-paved lane, silent and lonely enough, and up to the Mayor's Parlour. But all that presupposed knowledge of the place and of its people and their movements.

He went back to the market-place and towards the Chancellor. Peppermore came hurrying out of the hotel as Brent turned into it. He carried a folded paper in his hand, and he waved it at Brent as, at sight of him, he came to a sudden halt.

"Just been looking for you, Mr. Brent!" he said mysteriously. "Come into some quiet spot, sir, and glance at this. Here we are, sir, corner of the hall."

He drew Brent into an alcove that opened close by them, and affecting a mysterious air began to unfold his paper, a sheet of news-print which, Brent's professional eye was quick to see, had just been pulled as a proof.

"All that affair to-day, Mr. Brent," he whispered, "most unsatisfactory, sir, most unsatisfactory—unconvincing, inconclusive, Mr. Brent! The thing's getting no farther, sir, no farther, except, of course, for the very pertinent fact about Mrs. Bunning's absence from her quarters that fateful evening. My own impression, sir, is that Hawthwaite and all the rest of 'em don't know the right way of going about this business. But the Monitor's going to wade in, sir—the Monitor is coming to the rescue! Look here, sir, we're going to publish a special edition to-night, with a full account of to-day's proceedings at the inquest, and with it we're going to give away, as a gratis supplement—what do you think, sir? This, produced at great cost, sir, in the interest of Justice! Look at it!"

Therewith Peppermore, first convincing himself that he and his companion were secure from observation, spread out before Brent a square sheet of very damp paper, strongly redolent of printers' ink, at the head of which appeared, in big, bold, black characters, the question:

WHO TYPED THIS LETTER?

Beneath it, excellently reproduced, was a facsimile of the typewritten letter which Wallingford had shown to Epplewhite and afterwards left in his keeping. And beneath that was a note in large italics inviting anyone who could give any information as to the origin of the document to communicate with the Editor of the Monitor, at once.

"What d'ye think of that for a coup, Mr. Brent?" demanded Peppermore proudly. "Up to Fleet Street form that, sir, ain't it? I borrowed the original, sir, had it carefully reproduced in facsimile, and persuaded my proprietor to go to the expense of having sufficient copies struck off on this specially prepared paper to give one away with every copy of the Monitor that we shall print to-night. Five thousand copies, Mr. Brent! That facsimile, sir, will be all over Hathelsborough by supper time!"

"Smart!" observed Brent. "Top-hole idea, Peppermore. And you hope——?"

"There aren't so many typewriters in Hathelsborough as all that," replied Peppermore. "I hope that somebody'll come forward who can tell something. Do you notice, sir, that this has been done—the original, I mean—on an old-fashioned machine, and that the lettering is considerably worn, sir? I hope the Monitor's efforts will solve the mystery!"

"Much obliged to you," said Brent. "There's a lot of spade-work to do—yet."

He was thinking over the best methods of further attempts on that spade-work, when, late that evening, he received a note from Queenie Crood. It was confined to one line:

To-morrow usual place three urgent—Q.



CHAPTER XVI

THE CASTLE WALL

Brent went to bed that night wondering what it was that Queenie Crood wanted. Since their first meeting in the Castle grounds they had met frequently. He was getting interested in Queenie: she developed on acquaintance. Instead of being the meek and mild mouse of Simon Crood's domestic hearth that Brent had fancied her to be on his visit to the Tannery, he was discovering possibilities in her that he had not suspected. She had spirit and imagination and a continually rebellious desire to get out of Simon Crood's cage and spread her wings in flight—anywhere, so long as Hathelsborough was left behind. She had told Brent plainly that she thought him foolish for buying property in the town; what was there in that rotten old borough, said Queenie, to keep any man of spirit and enterprise there? Brent argued the point in his downright way: it was his job, he conceived, to take up his cousin's work where it had been laid down; he was going to regenerate Hathelsborough.

"And that you'll never do!" affirmed Queenie. "You might as well try to blow up the Castle keep with a halfpenny cracker! Hathelsborough people are like the man in the Bible—they're joined to their idols. You can try and try, and you'll only break your heart, or your back, in the effort, just as Wallingford would have done. If Wallingford had been a wise man he'd have let Hathelsborough go to the devil in its own way; then he'd have been alive now."

"Well, I'm going to try," declared Brent. "I said I would, and I will! You wait till I'm elected to that Town Council! Then we'll see."

"It's fighting a den of wild beasts," said Queenie. "You won't have a rag left on you when they're through with you."

She used to tell him at these meetings of the machinations of Simon Crood and Coppinger and Mallett against his chances of success in the Castle Ward election: according to her they were moving heaven and earth to prevent him from succeeding Wallingford. Evidently believing Queenie to be a tame bird that carried no tales, they were given to talking freely before her during their nightly conclaves. Brent heard a good deal about the underhand methods in which municipal elections are carried on in small country towns, and was almost as much amused as amazed at the unblushing corruption and chicanery of which Queenie told him. And now he fancied that she had some special news of a similar sort to give him: the election was close at hand, and he knew that Simon and his gang were desperately anxious to defeat him. Although Simon had been elected to the Mayoralty, his party in the Town Council was in a parlous position—at present it had a majority of one; if Brent were elected, that majority would disappear, and there were signs that at the annual elections in the coming November it would be transformed into a minority. Moreover, the opponent whom Brent had to face in this by-election was a strong man, a well-known, highly respected ratepayer, who, though an adherent of the Old Party, was a fair-minded and moderate politician, and likely to secure the suffrages of the non-party electors. It was going to be a stiff fight, and Brent was thankful for the occasional insights into the opposition's plans of campaign which Queenie was able to give him.

But there were other things than this to think about, and he thought much as he lay wakeful in bed that night and as he dressed next morning. The proceedings at the adjourned inquest had puzzled him; left him doubtful and uncertain. He was not sure about the jealousy theory. He was not sure about Mrs. Saumarez, from what he had seen of her personally and from what he had heard of her. He was inclined to believe that she was not only a dabbler in politics with a liking for influencing men who were concerned in them but that she was also the sort of woman who likes to have more than one man in leash. He was now disposed to think that there had been love-passages between her and Wallingford, and not only between her and Wallingford but between her and Wellesley—there might, after all, be something in the jealousy idea. But then came in the curious episode of Mrs. Mallett, and the mystery attaching to it—as things presented themselves at present there seemed to be no chance whatever that either Mrs. Mallett or Wellesley would lift the veil on what was evidently a secret between them. The only satisfactory and straightforward feature about yesterday's proceedings, he thought, was the testimony of Mrs. Bunning as to her unguarded door. Now, at any rate, it was a sure thing that there had been ready means of access to the Mayor's Parlour that evening; what was necessary was to discover who it was that had taken advantage of them.

After breakfast Brent went round to see Hawthwaite. Hawthwaite gave him a chair and eyed him expectantly.

"We don't seem to be going very fast ahead," remarked Brent.

"Mr. Brent," exclaimed Hawthwaite, "I assure you we're doing all we can! But did you ever know a more puzzling case? Between you and me, I'm not at all convinced about either Dr. Wellesley or Mrs. Mallett—there's a mystery there which I can't make out. They may have said truth, and they mayn't, and——"

"Cut them out," interrupted Brent. "For the time being anyway. We got some direct evidence yesterday—for the first time."

"As—how?" questioned Hawthwaite.

"That door into Bunning's room," replied Brent. "That's where the murderer slipped in."

"Ay; but did he?" said Hawthwaite. "If one could be certain——"

"Look here!" asserted Brent. "There is one thing that is certain—dead certain. That handkerchief!"

"Well?" asked Hawthwaite.

"That should be followed up, more," continued Brent. "There's no doubt whatever that that handkerchief, which Wellesley admits is his, got sent by mistake to one or other of Mrs. Marriner's other customers. That's flat! Now, you can trace it."

"How?" exclaimed Hawthwaite. "A small article like that!"

"It can be done, with patience," said Brent. "It's got to be done. That handkerchief got into somebody's hands. That somebody is probably the murderer. As to how it can be traced—well, I suggest this. As far as I'm conversant with laundry matters, families, such as Mrs. Marriner says she works for, have laundry books. These books are checked, I believe, when the washing's sent home. If there's an article missing, the person who does the checking notes it; if a wrong article's enclosed, that, too, is noted, and returned to the laundry."

"If Wellesley's handkerchief got to the wrong place, why wasn't it returned?" demanded Hawthwaite.

"To be sure; but that's just what you've got to find out," retorted Brent. "You ought to go to Mrs. Marriner's laundry and make an exhaustive search of her books, lists, and so on till you get some light—see?"

"Mrs. Marriner has, I should say, a hundred customers," remarked Hawthwaite.

"Don't matter if Mrs. Marriner's got five hundred customers," said Brent. "That's got to be seen into. If you aren't going to do it, I will. Whoever it was that was in that Mayor's Parlour tried to burn a blood-stained handkerchief there. That handkerchief was Wellesley's. Wellesley swears he was never near the Mayor's Parlour. I believe him! So that handkerchief got by error into the box or basket of some other customer of Mrs. Marriner. Trace it!"

He rose and moved towards the door, and Hawthwaite nodded.

"We'll make a try at it, Mr. Brent," he said. "But, as I say, to work on a slight clue like that——"

"I've known of far slighter clues," replied Brent.

Yet, as he went away, he reflected on the extreme thinness of this clue—it was possible that the handkerchief had passed through more hands than one before settling in those of the person who had thrown it on the hearth, stained with Wallingford's blood, in the Mayor's Parlour. But it was a clue, and, in Brent's opinion, the clue. One fact in relation to it had always struck him forcibly—the murderer of his cousin was either a very careless and thoughtless person or had been obliged to quit the Mayor's Parlour very hurriedly. Anyone meticulously particular about destroying clues or covering up traces would have seen to it that the handkerchief was completely burnt up before leaving the room. As it was, it seemed to Brent that the murderer had either thrown the handkerchief on the hearth, seen it catch fire and paid no more attention to it—which would denote carelessness—or had quitted the place immediately after flinging it aside, which would imply that some sound from without had startled him—or her. And, was it him—or was it her? There were certain features of the case which had inclined Brent of late to speculating on the possibility that his cousin had been murdered by a woman. And, to be sure, a woman was now in the case—Mrs. Mallett. If only he knew why Mrs. Mallett went to see the doctor and the Mayor....

But that, after all, was mere speculation, and he had a busy morning before him, in relation to his election business. He had been continuously engaged all the time when at three o'clock he hurried to the Castle Grounds to meet Queenie. He found her in her usual haunt, a quiet spot in the angle of a wall, where she was accustomed to sit and read.

"Well, and why 'urgent'?" asked Brent as he dropped on the seat at her side.

"To make sure that you'd come," retorted Queenie. "Didn't want to leave it to chance."

"I'm here!" said Brent. "Go ahead with the business."

"Did you see the Monitor last night and that facsimile they gave away with it?" inquired Queenie.

"I did! Saw the facsimile before it was published. Peppermore showed it to me."

"Very well—that's the urgent business. I know whose machine that letter—the original, I mean—was typed on!"

"You do? Great Scott! Whose, then?"

"Uncle Simon Crood's! Fact!"

"Whew! So the old fossil's got such a modern invention as a typewriter, has he? And you think——"

"Don't think—I know! He's had a typewriter for years; it's an old-fashioned thing, a good deal worn out. He rarely uses it, but now and then he operates, with one finger, slowly. And that letter originated from him—his machine."

"Proof!" said Brent.

Queenie took up a book that lay on the seat between them and from it extracted a folded copy of the Monitor's facsimile. She leaned nearer to Brent.

"Now look!" she said. "Do you notice that two or three of the letters are broken? That M—part of it's gone. That O—half made. The top of that A is missing. More noticeable still—do you see that the small t there is slanting the wrong way? Well, all that's on Uncle Simon's machine! I knew where that letter had originated as soon as ever I saw this facsimile last night."

She laid aside the supplement and once more opening her book produced a sheet of paper.

"Look at this!" she continued. "When Uncle Simon went out to the tannery this morning, I just took advantage of his absence to type out the alphabet on his machine. Now then, you glance over that and compare the faulty letters with those in the facsimile! What do you say now?"

"You're a smart girl, Queenie!" said Brent. "You're just the sort of girl I've been wanting to meet—the sort that can see things when they're right in front of her eyes. Oh, my! that's sure, positive proof that old Simon——"

"Oh!" broke in Queenie sharply. "Oh, I say!"

Before Brent could look up, he was conscious that a big and bulky shadow had fallen across the gravelled path at their feet. He lifted his eyes. There, in his usual raiment of funereal black, his top-hat at the back of his head, his hands behind him under the ample skirts of his frock-coat, his broad, fat face heavy with righteous and affectedly sorrowful indignation, stood Simon Crood. His small, pig-like eyes were fixed on the papers which the two young people were comparing.

"Hello!" exclaimed Brent. He was quick to see that he and Queenie were in for a row, probably for a row of a decisive sort which would affect both their lives, and he purposely threw as much hearty insolence into his tone as he could summon. "Eavesdropping, eh, Mr. Crood?"

Simon withdrew a hand from the sable folds behind him, and waved it in lordly fashion.

"I've no words to waste on impudent young fellers as comes from nobody knows where," he said loftily. "My words is addressed to my niece, as I see sitting there, a-deceiving of her lawful rellytive and guardian. Go you home at once, miss!"

"Rot!" exclaimed Brent. "She'll go home when she likes—and not at all, if she doesn't like! You stick where you are, Queenie! I'm here."

And as if to prove the truth of his words he slipped his right arm round Queenie's waist, clasped it tightly, and turned a defiant eye on Simon.

"See that?" he said. "Well! that's just where Queenie stops, as long as ever Queenie likes! Eh, Queenie?"

The girl, reddening as Brent's arm slipped round her, instinctively laid her free hand on his wrist. And as he appealed to her he felt her fingers tighten there with a firm, understanding pressure.

"That's all right!" he whispered to her. "We've done it, girlie—it's for good!" He looked up at Simon, whose mouth was opening with astonishment. "Queenie's my girl, old bird!" he went on. "She isn't going anywhere—not anywhere at all—at anybody's bidding, unless she likes. And why shouldn't she be here?"

It seemed, from the pause that followed, as if Simon would never find his tongue again. But at last he spoke.

"So this here is what's been going on behind my back, is it, miss?" he demanded, pointedly ignoring Brent and fixing his gaze on Queenie. "A-carrying on with strangers at my very gates, as you might say, and in public places in a town of which I'm chief magistrate! What sort o' return do you call this, miss, I should like to know, for all that I've done for you? me that's lodged and boarded and clothed you, ever since——"

"What have I done for you in return?" demanded Queenie with a flash of spirit. "Saved you the wages of a couple of servants for all these years! But this is the end, if you're going to throw that in my teeth——"

Brent drew Queenie to her feet and turned her away from Simon. He gave the big man a look over his shoulder.

"That's it, my friend!" he said. "That's the right term—the end! Find somebody else to do your household drudgery—this young lady's done her last stroke for you. And now don't begin to bluster," he added, as Simon, purpling with wrath, shook his fist. "We'll just leave you to yourself."

He led Queenie away down a side-path, and once within its shelter, put a finger under her chin, and lifting her face, looked steadily at her.

"Look here, girlie," he said. "You heard what I whispered to you just now? 'It's for good!' Didn't I say that? Well, is it?"

Queenie managed to get her eyes to turn on him at last.

"Do you mean it?" she murmured.

"I just do!" answered Brent fervently. "Say the word!"

"Yes, then!" whispered Queenie.

She looked at him wonderingly when he had bent and kissed her.

"You're an extraordinary man!" she said. "Whatever am I going to do—now? Homeless!"

"Not much!" exclaimed Brent. "You come along with me, Queenie. I'm a good hand at thinking fast. I'll put you up, warm and comfortable, at Mother Appleyard's; and as quick as the thing can be done we'll be married. Got that into your little head? Come on, then!"

That night Brent told Tansley of what had happened and what he was going to do. Tansley listened, laughed, and shook his head.

"All right, my lad!" he said. "I've no doubt you and Queenie'll suit each other excellently. But you've settled your chances of winning that election, Brent! Simon Crood'll bring up every bit of his heavy artillery against you, now—and will smash you!"



CHAPTER XVII

IMPREGNABLE

Brent received this plain-spoken declaration with a curious tightening of lips and setting of jaw which Tansley, during their brief acquaintance, had come to know well enough. They were accompanied by a fixed stare—the solicitor knew that too. These things meant that Brent's fighting spirit was roused and that his temper became ugly. Tansley laughed.

"You're the sort of chap for a scrap, Brent," he continued, "and a go-ahead customer too! But—you don't know this lot, nor their resources. Whatever anybody may say, and whatever men like your late cousin, and Epplewhite, and any of the so-called Progressives—I'm not one, myself; it pays me to belong to neither party!—whatever these folks may think or say, Simon Crood and his lot are top-dogs in this little old town! Vested interests, my boy!—ancient tree, with roots firmly fixed in the piled-up soil, strata upon strata, of a thousand years! You're not going to pull up these roots, my lad!"

"How'll Simon Crood smash me?" demanded Brent quietly.

"As to the exact how," answered Tansley, "can't say! Mole work—but he'll set the majority of the electors in that Castle Ward against you."

"I've enough promises of support now to give me a majority," retorted Brent.

"That for promises!" exclaimed Tansley, snapping his fingers. "You don't know Hathelsborough people! They'll promise you their support to your face—just to get rid of your presence on their door-steps—and vote against you when they reach the ballot-box. I'll lay anything most of the folk you've been to see have promised their support to both candidates."

"Why should these people support Crood and his crew?" demanded Brent.

"Because Crood and his crew represent the only god they worship!" said Tansley, with a cynical laugh. "Brass!—as they call it. All that a Hathelsborough man thinks about is brass—money. Get money where you can—never mind how, as long as you get it, and keep just within the law. Simon Crood represents the Hathelsborough principle of graft, and whatever you may think, he's the paramount influence in the town to-day."