"What do you make of this?" the Old Man in the Corner said to me that afternoon. "A curious case, is it not?"
And with his claw-like fingers he indicated the paragraph in the Evening Post which I had just been perusing with great interest.
"At best," I replied, "it is a very unpleasant business for the Carysforts."
"And at the worst?" he retorted with a chuckle.
"Well...!" I remarked dryly.
"Do you think they are guilty?" he asked.
"I don't see who else..."
"Ah!" he broke in, with his usual lack of manners, "that is such a stale argument. One doesn't see who else, therefore one makes up one's mind that so-and-so must be guilty. I'll lay an even bet with any one that out of a dozen cases of miscarriage of justice, I could point to ten that were directly due to that fallacious reasoning.
"Now take as an example the Tytherton case, in which you are apparently interested. It was an unprecedented outrage which stirred the busy provincial town to its depths, the victim, Mr. Walter Stonebridge, being one of its most noted solicitors. He had his office in Tytherton High Street, and lived in a small, detached house on the Great West Road. The house stood in the middle of a small garden, and had only one story above the ground floor; the front door opened straight on a long, narrow hall which ran along the full depth of the house. On the left side of this hall there were two doors, one leading to the drawing-room and the other to a small morning-room. At the end of the hall was the staircase, and beyond it, down a couple of steps, there was a tiny dining-room and the usual offices. The back door opened straight on the kitchen, and on the floor above there were four bedrooms and a bathroom. Mr. Walter Stonebridge was a bachelor, and his domestic staff consisted of a married couple—Henning by name—who did all that was necessary for him in the house.
"It was on the last evening of February. The weather was fair and bright. The Hennings had gone upstairs to their room as usual at ten o'clock. Mr. Stonebridge was at the time sitting in the morning-room. He was in the habit of sitting up late, reading and writing. On this occasion he told the Hennings to close the shutters and lock the back door as usual, but to leave the front door on the latch as he was expecting a visitor. The Hennings thought nothing of that, as one or two gentlemen—friends, or sometimes clients of Mr. Stonebridge—would now and then drop in late to see him. Anyway, they went contentedly to bed.
"A little while later—they could not exactly recollect at what hour, because they had already settled down for the night—they heard the front-door bell, and immediately afterwards Mr. Stonebridge's footsteps along the hall. Then suddenly they heard a crash followed by what sounded like a struggle, then a smothered cry, and finally silence. Henning was out of bed and on the landing with a candle in an instant, and he had just switched on the light there when he heard Mr. Stonebridge's voice calling up to him from below:
"It's all right, Henning. I caught my foot in this confounded rug. That's all.'
"Henning looked over the bannister, and seeing nothing he shouted down:
"'Shall I give you a 'and, sir?'
"But Mr. Stonebridge at once replied, quite cheerily:
"'No, no! I'm all right. You go back to bed.'
"And Henning did as he was told, nor did he or his wife hear anything more during the night. But in the early morning when Mrs. Henning came downstairs she was horror-struck to find Mr. Stonebridge in the dining-room, lying across the table, to which he was securely pinioned with a rope; a serviette taken out of the sideboard drawer had been tied tightly around his mouth and his eyes were blindfolded with his own pocket handkerchief.
"The woman's screams brought her husband upon the scene; together they set to work to rescue their master from his horrible plight. At first they thought that he was dead, and Henning was for fetching the police immediately, but his wife declared that Mr. Stonebridge was just unconscious and she started to apply certain household restoratives and made Henning force some brandy through Mr. Stonebridge's lips.
"Presently, the poor man opened his eyes, and gave one or two other signs of returning consciousness, but he was still very queer and shaky. The Hennings then carried him upstairs, undressed him and put him to bed; and then Henning ran for the doctor.
"Well, it was days, or in fact weeks before Mr. Stonebridge had sufficiently recovered to give a coherent statement of what happened to him on that fateful night, and—which was just as much to the point—what had happened the previous day. The doctor had prescribed complete rest in the interim. The patient had suffered from concussion and I know not what, and those events had got so mixed up in his brain that to try and disentangle them was such an effort that every time he attempted it it nearly sent him into a brain fever. But in the meanwhile his friends had been busy—notably, Mr. Stonebridge's head clerk, Mr. Medburn, who was giving the police no rest. There was, even without the evidence of the principal witness concerned, plenty of facts to go on, to make out a case against the perpetrator of such a dastardly outrage.
"That robbery had been the main motive of the assault, was easily enough established—a small fire- and burglar-proof safe which stood in a corner of the morning-room had been opened and ransacked. When examined it was found to contain only a few trinkets which had probably a sentimental value, but were otherwise worthless. The key of the safe—one of a bunch—was still in the lock, which went to prove either that Mr. Stonebridge had the safe open when he was attacked, or what was more likely—considering the solicitor's well-known careful habits—that the assailant had ransacked his victim's pockets after he had knocked him down. A pocket-book, torn, and containing only a few unimportant papers, lay on the ground; there had been a fire in the room at the time of the outrage, and careful analysis of the ashes found in the hearth revealed the presence of a quantity of burnt paper.
"But robbery being established as the motive of the outrage did not greatly help matters, because, while Mr. Stonebridge remained in such a helpless condition, it was impossible to ascertain what booty his assailant had carried away. Soon, however, the first ray of light was thrown upon what had seemed until this hour an impenetrable mystery.
"It appears that Mr. Medburn was looking after the business in High Street during his employer's absence, and one morning—it was on the Monday following the night of the outrage—he had a visit from a client, who sent in his name as Felix Shap. The head clerk knew something about this client, who had recently come over to England from somewhere abroad, in order to make good his claim to certain royalties on what is known as the Shap Fuelettes—a kind of cheap fuel which was launched some time before the War by Sir Alfred Carysfort, Bart., of Tytherton Grange, and out of which that gentleman made an immense fortune, and incidentally got his title thereby.
"This man, Shap—a Dutchman by birth—was, it appears, the original inventor and patentee of these fuelettes, and Mr. Carysfort, as he was then, had met him out in the Dutch East Indies, and had bought the invention from him for a certain sum down, and then exploited it in England first and afterwards all over the world at immense profit. Sir Alfred Carysfort died about a year ago, leaving a fortune of over a million sterling, and was succeeded in the title and in the managing-directorship of the business by his eldest son David, a married man with a large family. The business had long since been turned into a private limited liability company, the bulk of the shares being held by the managing-director.
"The fact that the patent rights in the Shap Fuelettes had been sold by the inventor to the late Alfred Carysfort had never been in dispute. It further appeared that Felix Shap had at one time been a very promising mining engineer, but that in consequence of incurable, intemperate habits he had gradually drifted down the social scale; he lost one good appointment after another until he was just an underpaid clerk in the office of an engineer in Batavia, whose representative in England was Mr. Alfred Carysfort. The latter was on a visit to the head office in Batavia some twelve years ago when he met Shap, who was then on his beam-ends. He had recently been sacked by his employers for intemperance, and was on the fair way to becoming one of those hopeless human derelicts who usually end their days either on the gallows or in a convict prison.
"But at the back of Shap's fuddled mind there had lingered throughout his downward career the remembrance of a certain invention which he had once patented, and which he had always declared would one day bring him an immense fortune; but though he had spent quite a good deal of money in keeping up his patent rights, he had never had the pluck and perseverance to exploit or even to perfect his invention.
"Alfred Carysfort on the other hand, was brilliantly clever, he was ambitious, probably none too scrupulous, and at once he saw the immense possibilities, if properly worked, of Shap's rough invention, and he set to work to obtain the man's confidence, and, presumably, by exercising certain persuasion and pressure he got the wastrel to make over to him in exchange for a few hundred pounds the entire patent rights in the Fuelettes.
"The transaction was, as far as that goes, perfectly straightforward and above board; it was embodied in a contract drawn up by an English solicitor, who was the British Consul in Batavia at the time; nor was it—taking everything into consideration—an unfair one. Shap would never have done anything with his invention, and a clean, wholesome and entirely practical fuel would probably have been thus lost to the world; but there remains the fact that Alfred Carysfort died a dozen years later worth more than a million sterling, every penny of which he had made out of an invention for which he had originally paid less than five hundred.
"Mr. Medburn had been put in possession of these facts some few weeks previously when Mr. Felix Shap had first presented himself at the private house of Mr. Stonebridge; he came armed with a letter of introduction from a relative of Mr. Stonebridge's whom he had met out in Java, and he was accompanied by a friend—an American named Julian Lloyd—who was piloting him about the place, and acting as his interpreter and secretary, as he himself had never been in England and spoke English very indifferently. His passport and papers of identification were perfectly in order; he appeared before Mr. Stonebridge as a man still on the right side of sixty, who certainly bore traces on his prematurely wrinkled face and in his tired, lustreless eyes of a life spent in dissipation rather than in work, but otherwise he bore himself well, was well-dressed and appeared plentifully supplied with money.
"The story that he told Mr. Stonebridge through the intermediary of his friend, Julian Lloyd, was a very curious one. According to his version of various transactions which took place between himself and the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, the latter had, some time after the signing of the original contract, made him a definite promise in writing, that should the proceeds in the business of the Shap Fuelettes exceed £10,000 in any one year, he, Sir Alfred, would pay the original inventor, out of his own pocket, a sum equivalent to twenty per cent. of all such profits over and above the £10,000, with a minimum of £200.
"Mr. Shap had brought over with him all the correspondence relating to this promise, and, moreover, he adduced as proof positive that Sir Alfred had looked on that promise as binding, and had at first loyally abided by it, the fact that until 1916 he had paid to Mr. Felix Shap the sum of £200 every year. These sums had been paid half-yearly through Sir Alfred's bankers, and acknowledgments were duly sent by Shap direct to the bank, all of which could of course be easily verified. But in the year 1916 these payments suddenly ceased. Mr. Shap wrote repeatedly to Sir Alfred, but never received any reply. At first he thought that there were certain difficulties in the way owing to the European War, so after a while he ceased writing. But presently there came the Armistice. Mr. Shap wrote again and again, but was again met by the same obstinate silence.
"In the meanwhile he had come to the end of his resources; he had spent all that he had ever saved, but, nevertheless, he was determined that as soon as he could scrape up a sufficiency of money he would go to England in order to establish his rights. Then in 1922 he heard of Sir Alfred Carysfort's death. It was now or never if he did not mean to acquiesce silently in the terrible wrong which was being put upon him. Fortunately he had a good friend in Mr. Julian Lloyd, who had helped him with money and advice, and at last he had arrived in England. It was for Mr. Stonebridge to say whether the papers and correspondence which he had brought with him were sufficient to establish his claim in law. Mr. Medburn remembered Mr. Stonebridge telling him all about these matters and emphasising the fact that Felix Shap had undoubtedly a very strong case and that he could not understand a man of the position of Sir Alfred Carysfort thus wilfully repudiating his own signature.
"'There is not only the original letter,' Mr. Stonebridge had concluded, 'making a definite promise to pay certain sums out of his own pocket if the profits of the company exceeded ten thousand pounds in any one year, but there are all the covering letters from Sir Alfred's bankers whenever they sent cheques on his behalf to Shap—usually twice a year for sums that varied between one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds. I cannot understand it!' he had reiterated more than once, and Mr. Medburn, who also had a great deal of respect for the Carysforts, who were among the wealthiest people in the county, was equally at a loss to understand the position.
"However Mr. Stonebridge, after he had seen the late Sir Alfred's bankers about the payments to Shap, and consulted an expert on the subject of the all-important letter signed by Alfred Carysfort, sought an interview with Sir David. From the first there seemed to be an extraordinary amount of acrimony brought into the dispute by both sides; this was understandable enough on the part of Felix Shap, who felt he was being defrauded of his just dues by men who were literally coining money out of the product of his brain; but the greatest bitterness really appeared to come from the other side.
"At first Sir David Carysfort refused even to discuss the question; he was quite sure that if his father had made promises of payments to any one, he was the last man in the world to repudiate such obligations. Sir David had not yet had time to go through all his father's papers, but he was quite convinced that correspondence, or documents, would presently be found, which would set at nought the original letter produced by Mr. Shap. But, of course, the payments to Shap up to and including the year 1916 could not be denied; there was the testimony of Sir Alfred's bankers that sums in accordance with Sir Alfred's instructions, varying between one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds, were paid by cheque every half year to the order of Felix Shap in Batavia. In 1916 these payments automatically ceased, Sir Alfred giving no further orders for these to be made. Mr. Stonebridge naturally desired to know what explanation Sir David would give about those payments.
"At first Sir David denied all knowledge as to the reason or object of the payments, but after a while he must have realised that public opinion was beginning to raise its voice on the subject, and that it was not exactly singing the praises of Sir David Carysfort, Bart.
"Although Mr. Stonebridge had, of course, been discretion itself, Mr. Shap had admittedly not the same incentive to silence, and what's more his friend, Mr. Lloyd, made it his business to get as much publicity for the whole affair as he could. Paragraphs in the local papers had begun to appear with unabated regularity, and though there were no actual comments on the case as a whole, no prejudging of respective merits, there were unmistakable hints that it would be in Sir David's interest to put dignity on one side and come out frankly into the open with explanations and suggestions. Soon the London papers got hold of the story, and you know what that means. The Radical Press simply battened on a story which placed a poor, down-at-heel inventor in the light of a victim to the insatiable greed and frank dishonesty of a high-born profiteer.
"Whether it was pressure from outside, or from his own family, that suddenly induced Sir David to 'come out into the open' is not generally known; certain it is that presently he condescended to give an explanation of the mysterious half-yearly payments made by his father to Felix Shap, and the explanation was so romantic and frankly so far-fetched that most people, especially men, refused to accept it—notably Mr. Stonebridge. It was not the business of a lawyer to listen to sentimental stories, least of all was it the business of the lawyer acting on the other side.
"The story told by Sir David, namely, was this:
"The late Sir Alfred, when quite a young man, had gone out as clerk to that same engineering firm in Batavia, whom he represented later on; it was then that he first met Felix Shap, who had not yet begun to go downhill. An intimacy sprang up between Alfred Carysfort and Shap's sister, Berta, and the two were secretly married in Batavia. A year later Berta had a son whose birth she only survived by a few hours. The marriage had been an unhappy one from the first, and Carysfort was only too thankful when his firm called him back to England and he was able to shake off the dust of Batavia from his feet, as he hoped for ever. He never spoke of his marriage, nor did he ever recognise or have anything to do with his son. By some pecuniary arrangement entered into with Felix Shap the latter undertook to provide for and look after the boy, to give him his own name, and never to trouble his brother-in-law about him again. A deed-poll was, Sir David believed, duly executed, and the boy assumed the name of Alfred Shap.
"Some years later there occurred the transaction over the Shap Fuelettes. Alfred Carysfort had come to Batavia on business: he had met Felix Shap again, who by this time had become a hopeless wastrel. The contract for the sale of the patent rights in the Fuelettes was duly executed, but whether, after seeing his son once more, the call of the blood became more insistent in the heart of Alfred Carysfort, or whether he merely yielded to blackmail, Sir David could not say; certain it is that after a while when the profits of the Shap Fuelettes Company became substantial, Sir Alfred took to sending over a couple of hundred pounds every year to Shap for the benefit of young Alfred. Then the war broke out; young Alfred joined the Australian Expeditionary Force, and was killed in Gallipoli in August, 1915. As soon as Sir Alfred had definite news of the boy's death, he naturally stopped all further payments to Shap.
"The story as you see sounded plausible enough, and if it proved to be untrue, it would reflect great credit on Sir David's gift of imagination. Felix Shap, as was only to be expected, denied it from beginning to end; the whole thing, he declared, was an impudent falsehood, based on a semblance of truth. It was quite true that he had adopted and for years had cared for his sister's son, who was subsequently killed in Gallipoli; it was also true that Alfred Carysfort had years ago paid some attention to his sister Berta, but there never was any question of marriage between them, young Carysfort deeming himself far too grand and well-born to marry the daughter of an obscure East Indian trader. Berta had subsequently married a man of mixed blood who deserted her and went off somewhere to Argentina or Honduras—Shap did not know where; at any rate, he was never heard of again.
"In proof of his version of the romantic story, Felix Shap actually had a copy of his sister's marriage certificate, as well as one or two letters written at different times to his sister Berta by her rascally husband. He had, indeed, plenty of proofs for his assertions; but when Mr. Stonebridge asked for confirmation of Sir David's story, the latter appeared either unprepared or unwilling to produce any, whereupon, Mr. Stonebridge, on behalf of his client, entered an action for the recovery of certain royalties due to him on the sales of the Shap Fuelettes, the amount to be presently agreed on after examination of the audited accounts.
"Thus matters stood when on that Wednesday night in February last, Mr. Stonebridge was found gagged and unconscious, the victim of a murderous and inexplicable assault.
"On the Monday following, Mr. Felix Shap, accompanied by his friend, Mr. Lloyd, called on Mr. Medburn at the office in High Street. They had read in the papers certain details which had filled Shap with apprehension; they had read that the safe in the morning-room in Mr. Stonebridge's house had been obviously ransacked, and that the analysis of the ashes in the grate had revealed the presence of a large quantity of burnt paper.
"'My friend Mr. Shap would like you to put his mind at rest, Mr.—er—Medburn,' Mr. Lloyd said, in an anxious, agitated tone of voice, 'that the papers relating to his case, which he entrusted to Mr. Stonebridge, are safely locked up in a safe at this office.'
"Unfortunately, the head clerk was not able to satisfy Mr. Shap on that point. Mr. Stonebridge had never brought the papers to the office, nor had Mr. Medburn ever seen them. His impression was—he regretted to say—that Mr. Stonebridge had, for the time being, kept all papers relating to this particular case at his private house, just as he had always seen Mr. Shap there rather than at the office. Of course, Mr. Medburn hastened to assure his visitor, Mr. Stonebridge may have kept the documents in some other secure place; Mr. Medburn couldn't say, not having access to all his employer's papers, and in any case he would make a comprehensive search for the missing documents, and if nothing was found he would at once inform the police.
"An evening or two later the papers came out with flaring headlines: 'Amazing Developments in the Tytherton outrage. Missing documents. Sensational turn in the Shap Fuelettes case.' And so on. The head clerk had made an exhaustive search amongst his employer's papers, but not a trace could he find of any documents relative to Mr. Shap's case. One and all had disappeared: the original letter from Alfred Carysfort promising to pay an extra twenty per cent. on the profits of the Shap Fuelette Company under certain conditions, the letters from the scoundrel who had been Berta's husband, together with the copy of Berta's marriage certificate—everything was gone, every proof of the truth of the story which Felix Shap had come all this way to tell.
"The next exciting incident," the Old Man in the Corner continued glibly, "in this remarkably mysterious case, was the news that Mr. Allan Carysfort, eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., had been detained in connection with the assault upon Mr. Stonebridge and the disappearance of certain papers, the property of Mr. Felix Shap of Batavia.
"Young Allan Carysfort, who was a subaltern in a cavalry regiment, had come home from India recently, and, as a matter of fact, he had arrived at the Grange, the family seat just outside Tytherton, the very evening of the outrage. Acting upon certain information received, the police had detained him; he was to be brought before the magistrates on the following day; and in the meanwhile it was generally understood that some highly sensational evidence had been collected by the police.
"It has been asserted that Sir David Carysfort and his family were the last to realise how very strong public opinion had been against them ever since Shap's story and the loss of the documents had become generally known. Though there had been no hint of it in the Press, the public loudly declared that the Carysforts must have had something to do with the outrage, seek him whom the crime benefits being a most excellent adage. But imagine the sensation when Allan Carysfort, the eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., was arrested!
"Need I say that the following day when the young man was brought before the magistrates, the court was crowded. Sir David was a magistrate, too, but of course he did not sit that day. To see his eldest son arraigned before his brother Beaks must have been a bitter pill for his pride to swallow.
"We had the usual formal evidence of arrest, the medical evidence, and so on, after which we quickly plunged into exciting business. Mr. Stonebridge we were soon told had made a statement. He was not yet strong enough to appear in person, but he had made a statement, so at last the public was to be initiated into the mysteries that surrounded the inexplicable assault.
"'After my servants had gone to bed,' Mr. Stonebridge had stated, 'I sat awhile reading in my study. I was expecting a visit from Mr. Shap, as we had talked over the possibility of a quiet chat at my house that evening on the subject of his affairs. He and Mr. Lloyd, who were both of them very fond of the cinema, were in the habit of dropping in after the show, on their way home. At about a quarter to eleven—I am sure it was not later—there was a ring at the front-door bell, and I went to open the door. No sooner had I done this than a shawl or muffler of some sort was thrown over my face, and I was made to lose my balance by the thrust of a foot between my two shins. I came down backwards with a crash.
"'The whole thing occurred in fewer seconds than it takes to describe; the next moment I had the sensation of cold steel against my temple, I heard an ominous click, and a husky voice whispered in my ear, "Your servant is coming out of his room. Speak to him, tell him you are all right, or I shoot." What could I do? I was utterly helpless and a revolver was held to my temple. The muffler was then lifted from my mouth, I could feel the man bending over me, I could feel his hot breath on my forehead, and a few seconds later I heard Henning come out of his room upstairs and switch on the light on the top landing. "If he comes downstairs," the voice whispered close to my ear, "I shoot."
"'Then it was,' Mr. Stonebridge went on to say, 'that I shouted up to Henning that I had only tripped over a rug, and that I was quite all right. I don't think I ever looked death so very near in the face before. The next moment I heard Henning switch off the light upstairs and go back to his room. After that I remember nothing more. I only have a vague recollection of a sudden terrible pain in my head; everything else is a blank until I found myself in bed, and with vague stirrings of memory bringing a return of that same appalling headache.'
"The great point about Mr. Stonebridge's evidence was that he was utterly unable to identify his assailant. He was not even sure whether he had been attacked by two men or one, since he had been blindfolded at the outset, and all that he heard was a husky voice that spoke in a whisper. He was ready to admit that he might have left the safe unlocked when he went to answer the front-door bell, and he certainly had the papers relating to Mr. Shap's case on his desk as he had been going through them earlier in the evening. Those papers, therefore, had undoubtedly been burned in the grate, and it was obvious that the theft and destruction of those papers was the motive of the assault.
"After that we went from excitement to excitement. We did not get it all the same day, of course; Allan Carysfort appeared, as far as I can remember, three or four times before the local magistrates; in between times he was out on bail, this having been fixed at £1,000 in two recognisances £500 each, with an additional £500 on his own. It seems that when he was arrested he had made a statement, to which he had since unreservedly subscribed. He said that he had arrived in London from Southampton on Monday the twenty-sixth, and after seeing to some business in town, he took the eight-ten P.M. train on the twenty-eighth to Tytherton, where he arrived at nine-fifty, having dined on board. His father met him at the station with the car, but it was such a beautiful moon-lit night Sir David and himself decided that they would walk to the Grange and then sent the car home with a message to Lady Carysfort that they would be home at about eleven o'clock.
"Carysfort had been asked whether it was not strange that after being absent from home for so long, he should have elected to put off seeing his mother till a much later hour.
"'Not at all,' he replied. 'My father wished to put me au fait of certain family matters before I actually saw Lady Carysfort. These matters,' he added emphatically in reply to questions put to him by the magistrate, 'had nothing whatever to do with financial business, least of all were they in any relation to Mr. Shap and his affairs. Sir David and I,' he went on calmly, 'walked about for a while, and then Sir David remembered that he wished to see a friend at the County Club. He went in there, but I preferred to take another turn out of doors, as I had not had a taste of English country air for nearly two years.'
"Asked how long he had walked about Tytherton waiting for Sir David, Carysfort thought about half an hour, and when questioned as to the direction he had taken, he said he really couldn't remember.
"The police of course had adduced certain witnesses whose testimony would justify the course they had taken in arresting a gentleman in the position of Mr. Allan Carysfort. There was, first of all, Felix Shap himself and his friend Julian Lloyd. They deposed that at about half-past ten, or perhaps a little earlier, they were on their way to see Mr. Stonebridge, as the latter had expressed a wish to see them both and have another quiet talk over a cigar and a glass of wine; Shap and Lloyd had been to the P.P.P. cinema in High Street, and they left just before the end to go to Mr. Stonebridge's house. They were within fifty yards of it when they saw a man turn out of the nearest side street and go up to Mr. Stonebridge's house. The man went through the garden gate and up to the front door. Shap and Lloyd saw him in the act of ringing the bell. It was then somewhere between ten-thirty and ten-forty-five. Mr. Stonebridge was so very much in the habit of seeing friends, and even those clients with whom he was intimate, late in the evenings, that Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd didn't think anything of the incident; but, at the same time, they made up their minds to postpone their own visit to Mr. Stonebridge until they could be quite sure of seeing him alone. So they turned then and there, and went straight back to the Black Swan where they lodged.
"I may add that with commendable reserve both these witnesses refused to identify Allan Carysfort with Mr. Stonebridge's visitor on that memorable Wednesday evening. The man they saw had an overcoat and wore a Glengarry cap. More they could not say, as they had not seen his face clearly.
"On the other hand the hall-porter at the County Club, another witness for the Treasury, had no cause for such reserve. He said that on the evening of February twenty-eighth, Sir David Carysfort came to the Club a little before half-past ten. Mr. Allan was with him then, but he didn't come in. The hall-porter heard him say to Sir David: 'Very well, then! I'll pick you up here in about half an hour!' And Sir David rejoined: 'Yes; don't be late!' Mr. Allan did return to the Club at about eleven o'clock and the two gentlemen then went off together. The hall-porter remembered the incident on that date quite distinctly, because he recollected being much surprised at seeing Mr. Allan Carysfort, who he thought was still abroad.
"After that there was another remand, Allan Carysfort's solicitor having asked and obtained an adjournment for a week. But by this time, as you may imagine, not only the county, but London Society too were absolutely horror-struck. To think that a man in the position of the Carysforts should have stooped to such an act, not only of violence, but of improbity, was indeed staggering. Nor did public opinion swerve from this attitude one hair's breadth, even though at the next hearing all the proofs which the police had adduced against the accused were absolutely confuted.
"Fortunately for Carysfort, his solicitors had been successful in finding two witnesses, Miriam Page and Arthur Ormeley, who had seen Mr. Allan Carysfort, whom they knew by sight, strolling by the river at a quarter to eleven. They—like the hall-porter of the County Club—remembered the circumstance very clearly, because they did not know that Mr. Allan was home from abroad, and were astonished to see him there.
"The point of the evidence of these witnesses was that the river where they had seen Allan Carysfort strolling at a quarter to eleven is at the diametrically opposite end of the town to that where lies the Great West Road. Now the hall-porter had seen Allan Carysfort outside the County Club at half-past ten and again at eleven. If Carysfort was strolling by the river at a quarter to eleven, and there was no reason to impugn the credibility of the witnesses, he could not possibly have been the man whom Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd saw ringing the bell of Mr. Stonebridge's house at about that same hour.
"Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, as you know. There was no definite proof against him. But public opinion is ever an uncertain quantity, and it is still dead against the Carysforts. In the public mind two facts have remained indelibly fixed: firstly, that the Carysforts had everything to gain by the destruction of Felix Shap's papers and, secondly, that there was nobody else who could possibly have benefited by it.
"Since then also Mr. Stonebridge has made a declaration that nothing was stolen out of his safe and pocketbook except the papers and letters belonging to Felix Shap. So what would you? Although Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, really because there was no tangible evidence against him, he did not leave the court without a stain on his character. The stain was there, and there it is to this day. It will take the Carysforts years to live the scandal down; though some friends have remained loyal, there are always the enemies, the envious, the uncharitable, and they insist that the two witnesses—the only two, mind you, whose evidence did clear Allan Carysfort of suspicion—had been bought and should not be believed, while others simply declare that Sir David and his son employed some ruffian to do the dirty work for them."
He gave a dry cackle, and contemplated me through his huge horn-rimmed spectacles.
"And you are of that opinion, too, I imagine," he said.
"Well, it seems the only likely explanation," I replied guardedly.
"Surely you don't suppose," he retorted, "that a business man like David Carysfort would place himself so entirely in the hands of a ruffian that he would for ever after be the victim of blackmail! Why, it would have been cheaper to buy off Felix Shap!"
"But," I rejoined, "I don't see who else had any interest in doing away with those documents."
"I'll tell you," he rejoined dryly. "Felix Shap himself."
"What do you mean?" I queried, with as much lofty scorn as I could command.
"I mean," he replied, "that all Felix Shap's documents were forgeries."
"Forgeries?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, spurious! False affidavits! Forgeries, the lot of 'em. My belief is that Stonebridge began to suspect this himself, and I think he has had a narrow escape of being murdered outright by those two rascals. As it is, they have destroyed every proof of their villainy, and old Stonebridge, I imagine, is content to let things remain as they are rather than admit publicly that he was completely taken in by two very plausible rogues."
"But," I urged, "what about the handwriting expert?"
The funny creature laughed aloud.
"Yes!" he said, "what about the expert? If there had been two they would have disagreed. And mind you at a distance of twelve years a signature would be difficult of absolute identification. Every one's handwriting undergoes certain modifications in the course of years. Experts," he reiterated. "Bah!"
"But," I went on, impatiently, "I don't see the object of the whole scheme."
"The object was blackmail," the whimsical creature retorted, "and it has succeeded admirably. Already we read that Messrs. Shap and Lloyd are staying at expensive hotels in London, that they have granted interviews to pressmen and written articles for half-penny newspapers. We shall hear of them as cinema stars presently. They have had the most gorgeous, the most paying publicity, and presently Sir David Carysfort will have had enough of them and will put a few more hundreds in their pockets just to be rid of them. That was the object of the whole scheme, my dear young lady! And see how well it was carried out.
"Of course the fuddle-headed Dutchman never thought of it. I imagine that the whole scheme originated in the fertile brain of Mr. Julian Lloyd. And it was thoroughly well thought out from the manufacture of the documents and letters down to the assault on the silly old country attorney. And, mind you, the rascals originally went to a silly country attorney; they would have been afraid to go to a London lawyer, lest he be too sharp for them.
"The only mistake they made were the letters purported to be written to Berta Shap by the husband who is supposed to have disappeared, and the copy of Berta's marriage certificate. It is those letters that gave me the clue to the whole thing; old Stonebridge was too dull to have seen through those letters. If they were genuine why should Felix Shap have brought them over to England? They had nothing whatever to do with any contract about the Shap Fuelettes. If they were genuine, how could he guess that he would have to disprove a story of a secret marriage and of young Alfred being the son of Sir Alfred Carysfort? By wanting to prove too much, he, to my mind, gave himself away, and one can but marvel that neither lawyers nor police saw through the roguery.
"Of course the moment one understands that one set of papers was spurious, it is easily concluded that all the others were forgeries. And the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, anxious only to obliterate every vestige of that early marriage of his, unwittingly played into the hands of those two scoundrels by destroying all the correspondence that he had ever had with Shap.
"Think it all over, you will see that I am right. Look at this paragraph again in the Evening Post, does it not bear out what I say?"
The paragraph in the evening paper to which the Old Man in the Corner was pointing read as follows:
"Among the passengers on the Dutch liner Stadt Rotterdam is Mr. Felix Shap, the hero of a recent celebrated case. He is returning to Batavia, having, through a misadventure which has remained an impenetrable mystery to this day, been deprived of all the proofs that would have established his claim to a substantial share of the profits in the Shap Fuelettes Company. Fortunately Mr. Shap had enlisted so many sympathies in England that his friends had no difficulty in collecting a considerable sum of money which was presented to him on his departure in the form of a purse and as a compensation for the ill-luck which has attended him since he set foot in this country. Mr. Shap will now be able to take abroad with him the assurance that British public opinion is always on the side of the victims of an adverse and unmerited fate."
"Yes!" the funny creature concluded with a cackle, "until the victims are found out to be rogues. Mr. Felix Shap and his friend, Mr. Julian Lloyd, will be found out some day."
The next moment he had gone with that rapidity which was so characteristic of him, and I might have thought that he was just a spook who had come to visit me whilst I dozed over my cup of tea, only that on the table by the side of an empty glass was a piece of string adorned with a series of complicated knots.