Unravelled Knots by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy - HTML preview

XIII
 A MOORLAND TRAGEDY

§1

The Old Man in the Corner had finished his glass of milk and ceased to munch his bun; from the capacious pocket of his huge tweed coat he extracted a piece of string, and for a while sat contemplating it, with his head on one side, so like one of those bald-headed storks at the Zoo.

"I always had a great predilection for that mystery," he said à propos of nothing at all. "It still fascinates me."

"What mystery?" I asked; but as usual he took no notice of my question.

"It was more romantic than the common crimes of to-day; in fact, I don't know if you will agree with me, but to me it has quite an eighteenth-century atmosphere about it."

"If you were to tell me to what particular crime you refer," I said coldly, "I might tell you whether I agree with you or not."

He looked at me as if he thought me an idiot, then he rejoined dryly:

"You don't mean to say that you have never thought of the Moorland Tragedy!"

"Yes," I said, "often!"

"And don't you think that the story is as romantic as any you have read in fiction recently?"

"Yes, I do think that the story is romantic, but only because of its mise en scène. The same thing might have occurred in a London slum, and then it would have been merely sordid. Of course, it is all very mysterious, and I, for one, have often wondered what has become of that Italian—I forget his name."

"Antonio Vissio. A queer creature, wasn't he? And we can well imagine with what suspicion he was regarded by the yokels in the neighbouring villages. Yorkshire yokels! Just think of them in connection with an exotic creature like Vissio. He had a curious history, too. His people owned a little farm somewhere in the mountains near Santa Catarina in Liguria, and during the war an English intelligence officer—Captain Arnott—lodged with them for a time. They were, it seems, extraordinarily kind to him. The family consisted of a widow, two daughters, and the son, Antonio. As he was the only son of a widow, he was, of course, exempt from military service, and helped his mother to look after the farm. His passion, however—and one, by the way, which is very common to Italian peasants—was shooting. There is very little game in that part of Italy, and it means long tramps before you can get as much as a rabbit or a partridge; but there was nothing that Antonio loved more than those tramps with a gun and a dog, and when Captain Arnott had leisure, the two of them would go off together at daybreak and never return till late at night.

"Some time in 1917 Captain Arnott was transferred to another front. He got his majority the following year, and after the war he retired with the rank of Lieut.-Colonel. He hadn't seen the Vissio family for some time, but he always retained the happiest recollections of their kindness to him, and of Antonio's pleasant companionship. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that when, in 1919, that terrible explosion occurred at the fort of Santa Catarina, which was only distant a quarter of a mile from the Vissios' farm, Colonel Arnott should at once think of his friends, and, as he happened to be at Genoa on business at the time, he motored over to Santa Catarina to see if he could ascertain anything of their fate. He found the village a complete devastation, the isolated farms for miles around nothing but masses of wreckage. I don't know how many people—men, women, and children—had been killed, there were over two hundred injured, and those who had escaped were herding together amongst the ruins of their homes. It was only by dint of perseverance and the exercise of an iron will that Captain Arnott succeeded at last in finding Antonio Vissio. There was nothing left of the farm but dust and ashes. The mother and one of the girls had been killed by the falling in of the roof, and the younger daughter was being taken care of by some sisters in a neighbouring convent which had escaped total destruction.

"Antonio was left in the world all alone, homeless, moneyless; Italy is not like England, where at times of disaster money comes pouring at once out of the pockets of the much-abused capitalists to help the unfortunate. There was no money poured out to help poor Antonio and his kindred.

"Colonel Arnott was deeply moved at sight of the man's loneliness. He worked hard to try and get him a job in England, right away from the scenes of the disaster that must perpetually have awakened bitter memories. Finally he succeeded. A friend of his, Lord Crookhaven, who owned considerable property in the North Riding, agreed to take Vissio as assistant to one of his gamekeepers, a fellow named William Topcoat. Of course this was an ideal life for Antonio. He could indulge his passion for shooting to his heart's content, and, incidentally, he would learn something of the science of preserving, and of the game laws as they exist in all the sporting countries.

"I don't suppose that Antonio ever realised quite how unpopular he was from the first in his new surroundings. The Yorkshire yokels looked upon him as a dago, and the fact that he had not fought in the war did not help matters. During the first six months he did not speak a word of English, and even after he had begun to pick up a sentence or two, he always remained unsociable. To begin with, he didn't drink: he hated beer and said so; he didn't understand cricket, and was bored with football. He didn't bet, and he was frightened of horses. All that he cared for was his gun; but he went about his work not only conscientiously, but intelligently, took great interest in the rearing of young birds, and was particularly successful with them.

"After he had been in England a year he fell madly in love with Winnie Gooden. And that is how the tragedy began.

§2

"An Italian peasant's idea of love is altogether different to that of an English yokel. The latter will begin by keeping company with his sweetheart: he will walk out with her in the twilight, and sit beside her on the stile, chewing the end of a straw and timidly holding her hand. Kisses are exchanged, and sighs, and usually no end of jokes and chaff. On the whole the English yokel is a cheerful lover. Not so the Italian. With him love is the serious drama of life; he is always prepared for it to turn to tragedy. His love is overwhelming, tempestuous. With one arm he fondles his sweetheart, but the other hand is behind his back, grasping a knife.

"So it was with Antonio Vissio. Winnie Gooden was the daughter of one of the gardeners at Markthwaite Hall, Lord Crookhaven's residence. She was remarkably pretty, and I suppose that she was attracted by the silent, rather sullen Italian, who, by the way, was extraordinarily good-looking. Dark eyes, a soft creamy skin, quantities of wavy hair; every one admitted that the two of them made a splendid pair when they walked out together on Sunday afternoons. Thanks to the kindness of Colonel Arnott, Vissio had succeeded in selling the bit of land on which his farm had stood, so he had a good bit of money, too, and though James Gooden, the father, was said to be averse to the idea of his daughter marrying a foreigner, it was thought that Winnie would talk her father over easily enough, if she really meant to have Antonio; but people didn't think that she was seriously in love with him.

"During the spring of 1922 Mr. Gerald Moville came home from Argentina, where he was said to be engaged in cattle-rearing. He was the youngest son of Sir Timothy Moville, whose property adjoined that of Lord Crookhaven. His arrival caused quite a flutter in feminine hearts for miles around, for smart young men are scarce in those parts, and Gerald Moville was both good-looking and smart, a splendid dancer, a fine tennis and bridge player, and in fact, was possessed of the very qualities which young ladies of all classes admire, and which were so sadly lacking in the other young men of the neighbourhood. The fact that he had always been very wild, and that it was only through joining the Air Force at the beginning of the war that he escaped prosecution for some shady transaction in connection with a bridge club in London, did not seriously stand against him, at any rate with the ladies; the men, perhaps, cold-shouldered him at first, and he was not made an honorary member of the County Club at Richmond, but he was welcome at all the tea and garden parties, the dances, and the tennis matches throughout the North Riding, and in social matters it is, after all, the ladies who rule the roost.

"The Movilles, moreover, were big people in the neighbourhood, whom nobody would have cared to offend. The eldest son was colonel commanding a smart regiment—I forget which; one daughter had married an eminent K.C., and the other was the wife of a bishop; so for the sake of the family, if for no other reason, Gerald Moville was accepted socially and his peccadilloes, of which it seems there were more than the one in connection with the bridge club, were conveniently forgotten. Besides which it was declared that he was now a reformed character. He had joined the Air Force quite early in the war, been a prisoner of the Germans until 1919, when he went out to Argentina, where he had made good, and where, it was said, he was making a huge fortune. This rumour also helped, no doubt, to make Gerald Moville popular, even though he himself had laughingly sworn on more than one occasion that he was not a marrying man: he was in love with too many girls ever to settle down with one. He certainly was a terrible flirt, and gave all the pretty girls of the neighbourhood a very good time; he had hired a smart little two-seater at Richmond, and motor-excursions, lunches at the Wheatsheaf at Reeth, jade earrings or wrist watches—the girls who were ready to flirt with him and to amuse him could get anything they wanted out of him.

"But it was soon pretty evident that though Gerald Moville flirted with many, it was Winnie Gooden whom he admired the most. From the first he ran after that girl in a way that scandalised the village gossips. She, of course, was flattered by his attentions, but did not show the slightest inclination to throw Antonio over. She was sensible enough to know that Gerald Moville would never marry her, and she made it very clear that though he amused her, her heart would remain true to her Italian lover. But here was the trouble. Antonio was not the man to run in double harness. His fiery Southern blood rose in revolt against any thought of rivalry. He had won Winnie's love and meant to hold it against all comers, and more than once in public and in private he threatened to do for any man who came between him and Winnie.

"You would have thought that those who were in the know would have foreseen the tragedy from the moment that Winnie Gooden started to flirt with Gerald Moville; nevertheless, when it did occur there was universal surprise quite as much as horror, and there seemed to be no one clever enough to understand the psychological problem that was the true key of that so-called mystery.”

§3

"Lord Crookhaven's property, you must know," the Old Man in the Corner resumed after a moment's pause, "extends right over Markthwaite Moor, which is a lonely stretch of country, intersected by gullies, down which, during the heavy rains in spring and autumn, the water rushes in torrents. There are one or two disused stone quarries on the moor, and, except for the shooting season, when Lord Crookhaven has an occasional party of sportsmen to stay with him at the Hall, who are out after the birds all day, this stretch of country is singularly desolate.

"Topcoat's cottage, where Vissio lodged, is on the edge of the moor on the Markthwaite side; about a couple of miles away to the north the moor is intersected by the secondary road which runs from Kirkby Stephen and joins up with the main road at Richmond, and three or four miles again to the north of the road is the boundary wall that divides Lord Crookhaven's property from that of his neighbour, Sir Timothy Moville.

"It was in September, 1922, that the tragedy occurred which made Markthwaite Moor so notorious at the time. Topcoat was walking across the moor in the company of the Italian, both carrying their guns, when about half a mile away, on the further side of the quarry known as the Poacher's Leap, the gamekeeper spied a man who appeared to be crouching behind some scrub. Without much reflection he pointed this crouching figure out to Vissio and said:

"There's a fellow who is up to no good. After the birds again, the damned thief. Run along, my lad, and see if you can't put a shot or two into his legs.'

"Topcoat swore subsequently that when he said this he had not recognised who the crouching figure was. But he was a very hard man where poachers were concerned; he had been much worried with them lately, and a day or two ago had been reprimanded by Lord Crookhaven for want of vigilance. This, no doubt, irritated his temper, and made him rather 'jumpy.'

"Vissio, with his gun on his shoulder, went off in the direction of the Poacher's Leap. Topcoat watched him until a bit of sharply-rising ground hid him from sight. A moment or two later the crouching figure stood up, and Topcoat recognised Mr. Gerald Moville. He had always had exceptionally fine sight, and Mr. Moville had certain tricks of gait and movement which were unmistakable even at that distance. Topcoat immediately shouted to Vissio to come back, but apparently the Italian did not hear him; and the last thing that the gamekeeper saw on that eventful morning was Mr. Moville suddenly turn and walk towards the high bit of ground behind which Vissio had just disappeared.

"And that was the last," my eccentric neighbour concluded with a chuckle all his own, "that has been seen up to this hour of those two men—Mr. Gerald Moville and Antonio Vissio. Topcoat waited for a while on the moor, and called to the Italian several times, but as he heard nothing in response, and as it had started to rain heavily, he finally went home. Vissio did not turn up at the cottage the whole of that day, and he did not come home that night. The following morning, which was a Thursday, Topcoat walked across to the Goodens' cottage to make enquiries, but no one had seen the Italian, and Winnie knew nothing about him. The gamekeeper waited until the Saturday before he informed the police; that, of course, was a serious delay which ought never to have occurred, but you have to know that class of north-country yokel intimately to appreciate this man's conduct throughout the affair. They all have a perfect horror of anything to do with the police: the type of delinquency most frequent in these parts is, of course, poaching, and the gamekeepers on the big estates look on themselves as the only efficient police for those cases. Half the time they don't turn the delinquent over to the magistrates at all, and administer a kind of rough justice as they think best. They hate police interference.

"In this case we must also bear Topcoat's subsequent statement in mind, which was that at first no suspicion of foul play had entered his head. He had not heard the report of a gun, and all he feared was that the Italian had tried to pick a quarrel with Mr. Moville and been soundly punished for his impertinence, and that probably he did not dare show his face until the trouble had blown over. Topcoat, however, spent a couple of days scouring the moor for the missing man, in case he had met with an accident and was lying somewhere unable to move. On the second day he found Vissio's gun lying in a gully close to the Poacher's Leap; it had not been discharged; and the next day—that is, on the Saturday—he very reluctantly went to the police. Even then he made no mention of Mr. Gerald Moville; he only said that his assistant, an Italian named Antonio Vissio, who lodged with him, had not been home for three days, and that he had last seen him on Markthwaite Moor on the previous Wednesday carrying a gun and walking in the direction of the Poacher's Leap. Poachers, of course, were at once suspected; Topcoat referred vaguely to Vissio having gone after a man whose movements had appeared suspicious. He was severely blamed for having delayed so long before informing the police; even if the Italian had not been the victim of foul play he might, it was argued, have met with a serious accident, and been lying for days perhaps with a broken leg out in the cold and wet, and might even have perished of exposure and neglect. But this latter theory Topcoat would not admit. He had scoured the moor, he declared, from end to end; if Vissio had been lying anywhere he swore that he would have found him.

"Another three or four days were now spent by the police in scouring the moor, and it was only after a last fruitless search that Topcoat mentioned the fact that he had seen Mr. Gerald Moville the very morning and close to the spot where Vissio disappeared: that, as a matter of fact, he was the man after whom the Italian had gone, and that the two must have met somewhere near the north end of the Poacher's Leap.

"Of course, to the general public—to you, for instance—Topcoat's attitude of reticence all this while must seem positively criminal; but it is useless to measure the conduct of people of that class in remote north-country districts by the ordinary rules of common sense. For a man in Topcoat's position to connect 'one of the gentry' with the disappearance of a gamekeeper's assistant—and a foreigner at that—would seem as preposterous as to imagine that the King of England would go poaching on his neighbour's estate. It simply couldn't be, and when the D.C.C. to whom Topcoat first made this statement rebuked him with unusual severity, the gamekeeper turned sulky and declared that he didn't see he had done anything wrong.

"More than a week you see had elapsed since that Wednesday morning when Vissio had last been seen alive; for the past four days the police had worked very hard, but entirely in the dark. Now at last they felt that they had a glimmer of light to guide them in their search. The public, who had taken some interest at first in the Moorland Mystery, was beginning to tire of reading about this fruitless search for a missing dago. But now, suddenly, the mystery had taken a sensational turn. Topcoat's statement had found its way into the local papers, and Mr. Gerald Moville's name was whispered in connection with the case. And hardly had the lovers of sensation recovered from this first shock of surprise, when they received another that was even more staggering.

"Mr. Gerald Moville, it seems, had left home on the very day that Vissio disappeared, and his people were without news of him. Just think what this sensational bit of news meant! It evoked at once in the mind of the imaginative a drama of love and jealousy, a real romance such as is only dreamt of in the cinema, with an Italian dago as the jealous lover, and a handsome young Englishman as the victim of that jealousy. The police, holding on to this clue, turned their attention to the investigation of Mr. Gerald Moville's movements on the morning of that eventful Wednesday: they had to go very tactfully to work, so as not to cause alarm to Sir Timothy and Lady Moville. It seems that Mr. Gerald had on the Monday previously announced his sudden intention to return immediately to Argentina. According to statements made by one or two of the servants, he did this at breakfast one morning after he had received a couple of official-looking letters that bore the Buenos Ayres postmark. Lady Moville had been very distressed at this, and she and Sir Timothy had tried to dissuade Mr. Gerald from going quite so soon; but he was quite determined to go, saying that there was some trouble at the farm which he must see to at once or it would mean a severe loss not only to himself, but to his partner. He finally announced that he would have to go up to London on the Wednesday at latest to see about getting a berth, if possible, in a boat that left Southampton for Buenos Ayres the following Saturday. Preparations for his departure were made accordingly. On the Tuesday the chauffeur took his luggage to Richmond and saw to its being sent off to London in advance. It was addressed to the Carlton Hotel. On the Wednesday Mr. Gerald had breakfast at half-past six, as he wished to make an early start; he was going to drive the little two-seater back to the place in Richmond whence he had hired it, and then take the train that would take him to Dalton in time to catch the express up to London. He had said good-bye to his parents the evening before, and, having tipped all the servants lavishly, he made a start soon after seven.

"Two labourers going to their work saw the little car speeding along the road that intersects the moor; according to their statement there were two people in the car, a man and a woman. They thought that the man who was driving might have been Mr. Moville, but the woman had on a thick veil and they had not particularly noticed who she was. On the other hand, one witness had seen the car standing unattended on the roadside within a hundred yards of a group of cottages, one of which was occupied by Gooden. Whereupon Winnie was taken to task by the police. Amidst a flood of tears she finally confessed that she had seen Mr. Moville on the Wednesday morning. He had called for her in his car very early; her father had only just gone to work, so it could not have been much later than seven o'clock; he told her that he had some business to attend to in Richmond, would she like to come for a run and have lunch there with him. To this she willingly assented. On the way Mr. Moville told her that as a matter of fact he was going away for good, and that he could not possibly live without her. He begged her to come away with him; he would take her to London first, and buy her everything she wanted in the way of clothes, and then they would go on to Paris, and travel all over the world and be the happiest couple on this earth.

"It seems that the girl at first was carried away by his eloquence; she was immensely flattered and thrilled by this romantic adventure, until something he said, or didn't say, some expression or some gesture—Winnie couldn't say what it was—but something seemed to drag her back. Probably it was just sound Yorkshire common sense. Anyway, she took fright, turned a deaf ear to Gerald Moville's blandishments, and insisted on being taken back to her father's cottage at once. Still to the accompaniment of a flood of tears Winnie went on to say that Mr. Gerald 'carried on terribly' when she finally refused to go away with him, and he reproached her bitterly for having played with him, all the while that she was in love with that 'dirty dago.' But Winnie was firm, and in the end the disappointed lover had to turn the car back and take the girl home again. It was then close upon nine o'clock. Mr. Gerald drove her to within half a mile of her father's cottage; here she got out and walked the rest of the way home. She had not seen Mr. Moville since; on the other hand, one of the neighbours told her that soon after she went off in the car that morning, Antonio Vissio had called at the cottage, and seemed in a terrible way when he was told that she had gone out with Mr. Moville.

"As you see the mystery was deepening. Instead of the one missing man, there were now two who had disappeared, and the question was what had become of Mr. Gerald Moville and his car. Enquiries at the garage where it belonged brought no light upon the subject. The car had not been returned, and nothing had been seen in Richmond of Mr. Moville or the car. Enquiries were then telegraphed all over the place, and twenty-four hours later the car was traced to a small placed called Falconblane, which is about twelve miles from Paisley, where it was left at a garage late on the Wednesday night by a man who had never since been to claim it. The people at the garage could only give a vague description of this man. It was about eleven o'clock, a very dark night, and just upon closing time. The man wore a big motor coat and a cap with flaps over the ears; he had on a pair of goggles, and the lower part of his face looked coated with grime. It would be next to impossible to swear to his identity, but the assistant who took charge of the car said that the man spoke broken English.

"The police searched the car and found a hand-bag containing a number of effects, such as a man would take with him if he was going on a long train journey: brush and comb, a novel, a couple of handkerchiefs, and so on. Some of these effects bore the initials 'G.M.'

"Pursuing their investigations further, the police discovered that a man wearing a big motor coat, goggles, and a cap with flap ears had taken a first-class ticket for Glasgow at Beith, which is a small place on a local branch line, in the early morning of Thursday, and had travelled to Glasgow by the 7.05 a.m. Glasgow being a very busy terminus, no one appears to have noticed him there, but one of the porters found a motor coat, a cap, and a pair of goggles in one of the first-class carriages on the local from Beith, and a certain Mr. Etty, who was a gentleman's outfitter in the Station Road, stated that he had a customer in his shop early on Thursday morning who purchased a tweed cap and an overcoat off the peg. He had come in without either hat or coat, his face and hands were black with grime, and his hair looked covered with coal dust. He explained that he was an engineer who had been engaged all night on some salvage work down the line where there had been a breakdown, and that he had somehow lost his coat and his cap. He paid for the goods with a five-pound note, which he took from a case out of his pocket, and the case appeared to be bulging over with notes. Mr. Etty thought that he might possibly be able to identify the man if he saw him again; one thing he did note about him, and that was that he spoke broken English.

"But from that moment, in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of the police, all traces of the man with the dirty face, who spoke broken English, vanished completely. And what's more, all trace of Mr. Gerald Moville had also vanished. He did not go up to London, and all this while his luggage was at the Carlton Hotel waiting to be claimed. Nor was it ever claimed by him, because about a month after that tragic Wednesday in September the body of Mr. Gerald Moville was found in a 'gruff' or gully about three-quarters of a mile from the Poacher's Leap. When I say that the body was found, I am wrong, for it was only a part of the body, and that, of course, was completely decomposed. The head was missing, and it was never found, in spite of the most strenuous efforts on the part of professional and amateur detectives, and lavish expenditure of money, thought, and trouble on the part of Sir Timothy Moville. It lies buried, I imagine, somewhere on the moor. The clothes, though sodden, were, however, still recognisable, also the unfortunate man's wrist watch which had stopped at five minutes past eleven, his cuff-links, and his signet ring, which had fallen from his fleshless finger and lay beside it in the 'gruff.'

"And about seventy yards higher up the gully a search party found a knife of obviously foreign make, which still bore certain stains, which scientific analysis proved to be human blood. That knife was identified by Topcoat as the property of Vissio.”

§4

The Old Man in the Corner had been silent for a little while, as was his habit when he reached a certain stage of his narrative. At such moments it always seemed as if nothing in the world interested him, except the fashioning of innumerable and complicated knots in a bit of string. It was my business to set him talking again.

"Of course, there was an inquest after that," I said casually.

"Yes, there was," he replied dryly, "but it revealed nothing that the public did not already know. A few minor details—that was all. For instance, it came to light that when Mr. Moville left home on that fateful morning he was wearing the coat, cap, and goggles which were subsequently found in the train at Glasgow Station. It was easy to suppose that the murderer had stolen these from his victim; the cap and goggles being especially useful for purposes of disguise. The same supposition applies to money. Vissio, it was argued, had probably only a few shillings in his pocket when in a moment of mad jealousy he killed Gerald Moville. That, of course, was the universally accepted theory; it was only desperate necessity that pushed him on to robbing the dead. Topcoat and others who knew Antonio well declared that he was quite harmless except where Winnie Gooden was concerned; but it was more than likely that that morning he was tortured by one of his jealous fits. He had hated Gerald Moville from the first, and, according to the girl's own admissions, she must have given him definite cause for jealousy. That very morning he had called at her cottage and found that she had gone out with his rival. Perhaps he knew that Moville was going away for good. Perhaps he guessed that he would try and induce Winnie to go with him. With such torturing fears in his heart, what wonder that when he met his rival on the lonely moor he 'saw red' and used his knife, as Southerners, unfortunately, are only too apt to do?

"The coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Antonio Vissio, and the police hold a warrant for his arrest. But more than two years have gone by since then, and Vissio has succeeded in eluding the police. For many weeks the public were deeply interested in the mystery; the evening papers used to come out with the headlines: 'Where is Antonio Vissio?' and one great daily offered a reward of five hundred pounds for information that would lead to his apprehension. But, as you know, it has all been in vain. The public want to know how a man of unusual personality and speaking broken English could possibly lie perdu so long in this tight little island.

"And if he did leave the country, then how did he do it? He hadn't his passport with him, as that remained with his effects at Topcoat's cottage. How then did he evade the passport officials at Glasgow or any other port of embarkation? It is done sometimes, we all know that, and in this case Vissio had four days' start before Topcoat gave information to the police, but somehow the newspaper-reading public felt that if Vissio got out of the country, something would have betrayed him, some one would have seen him and furnished the first clue that would lead to discovery.

"And so the disappearance of the Italian has been classed as one of the unsolved mysteries in the annals of crime. But to me the only point on which I am not absolutely clear (although even there I hold a theory), is why Gerald Moville should have gone wandering about the moor after he had parted from Winnie Gooden, and when he hadn't very much time left to catch his train, if he didn't want to miss his connection at Dalton. That point did strike Inspector Dodsworth of the C.I.D., who had been sent down from London to assist the local police in the investigation of the crime. I know Dodsworth very well, and he and I discussed that point once or twice. Of course, I was not going to give him the key to the whole mystery—a key, mind you, which I had discovered for myself—but I didn't object to talking over one or two of the minor details with the man, and I told him that in my opinion Moville undoubtedly went out on the moor in order to meet Vissio, and have it out with him on the subject of Winnie.

"He wanted Winnie—badly—to come away with him, and I believe that he was just the sort of man who would think that he could bribe the Italian to stand aside for him by offering him money. I believe those half-bred Spaniards and Portuguese out in Argentina are a most corrupt and venal crowd, and Gerald Moville classed Vissio amongst that lot. I have no doubt whatever in my mind that Moville was walking across the moor to see if he couldn't find Vissio in Topcoat's cottage. It was obviously not for me to tell the police that the Poacher's Leap is in a direct line between that cottage and the place where the two-seater was seen at a standstill on the roadside. But Dodsworth had to admit that I was right on that point."

"Then you think," I rejoined, "that Mr. Moville, after he parted from Winnie Gooden, set out to seek an interview with Antonio Vissio with a view to entering into an arrangement with him about the girl?"

"Yes!" my eccentric friend assented with a nod.

"He wanted to bribe Vissio to stand aside for him?"

"Exactly."

"Then," I went on, "he met Vissio on the moor?"

"Yes!"

"Came out with his proposition?"

"Yes!"

"Which so enraged the Italian that he knocked the other man down and finally knifed him in accordance with the amiable custom of his country."

"No," the Old Man in the Corner retorted dryly, "I didn't say that."

"But we know that the two men met and that——"

"And that one of them was killed," he broke in quickly. "But that man was not Gerald Moville."

"He was seen," I argued, "at Falconblane, at Beith, and at Glasgow. The man with the dirty face, the motor coat, and the goggles."

"Exactly," he broke in once more. "The man in the cap with the flap ears, and wearing motor goggles; the man whose face and hair were, in addition, covered with grime. An excellent disguise; as it indeed proved to be."

"But the foreign accent? The man spoke broken English."

"There are few things," he said with a sarcastic smile, "that are easier to assume than broken English, especially when only uneducated ears are there to hear."

"Then you think——"

"I don't think," he replied curtly, "I know. I know that Gerald Moville met the Italian on the moor, that he quarrelled with him over Winnie Gooden, that he knocked him down, and that Vissio was killed in the fall. I can see the whole scene as plainly as if I had been there. Can't you see Moville realising that he had killed the man?—that inevitably suspicion would fall on him? Topcoat had seen him, witnesses had seen his car in the road, he was known to be the Italian's rival in Winnie's affections! Already he could feel the hangman's rope round his neck. But we must look on Gerald Moville as a man of resource, a man, above all, up to many tricks for drawing a red herring across the trail of his own delinquencies. I will spare you the details of what I can see in my own mind as having happened after Moville had realised that Vissio was dead: the stripping of the body, the exchange of clothes down to the vest and shirt, the mutilation of the corpse with the victim's own knife, and the dragging of the body to a distant 'gruff,' where it must inevitably remain hidden for days, until advanced decomposition had set in to efface all identification marks. Fear, no doubt, lent ingenuity and strength to the miscreant; and, as a matter of fact, Gerald Moville is one of the few criminals who committed no appreciable blunder when he set to work to obliterate all traces of his crime; he left the knife with its tell-tale stains on the spot, and that knife was identified as the property of the Italian, and the head, which alone might have betrayed him, even if the body were not found for weeks, he took away with him to bury somewhere far away—goodness only knows where, but somewhere between Yorkshire and Scotland.

"I can see Gerald Moville after he had accomplished his grim task making his way back to his car—the loneliness of this stretch of country would be entirely in his favour, more especially as it had begun to rain; I can see him driving along putting mile upon mile between himself and the scene of his crime. At one place he stopped—a lonely spot it must have been—where he disposed of his gruesome burden; then on and on, past the borders of Yorkshire, of Westmoreland and Cumberland and into Scotland, till he came close to the network of railway round about Paisley and Glasgow. Falconblane, a village tucked away on a lonely bit of country but boasting of a garage, must have seemed an ideal spot wherein to abandon the car altogether and take to the road, and this Moville did, trusting to the long night, and also to luck, to further efface his traces. Again I can see him wandering restlessly through the dark hours of that night, not daring to enter a house and ask for a bed, determined at all costs to obliterate every vestige of his movements since the crime.

"Then in the morning he takes train for Glasgow, the busiest centre wherein a man can disappear in a crowd; in the train he takes the precaution of divesting himself of the motor coat, the goggles and the cap, but not of the grime that covers his face and hair. We know how he provided himself with a more suitable hat and coat; we know how all through his wanderings he kept up his broken English. At Glasgow all traces of him vanish; he has become a very ordinary-looking man, wearing quite ordinary clothes, and in Glasgow people are far too busy to take much notice of passers-by.

"We can easily conjecture how easy it was for Moville to leave the country altogether. He had plenty of money, and it is never difficult for a man of resource to leave a British port for any destination he pleases, especially if he is of obviously British nationality. Money, we all know, will accomplish anything, and rogues will slip through a cordon of officials where the respectable citizens will be chivied about and harassed with regulations. Moreover, we must always bear this in mind, that the police were not on his track, nor on that of the Italian, for that matter. Moville was free to come and go, and you may be sure that he was quite clever enough not to behave in any way that might create suspicion."

The Old Man in the Corner paused quite abruptly. A complicated knot was absorbing his whole attention. I felt thoughtful, meditative, and after a few minutes' silence I put my meditations into words.

"That is all very well," I said, "but, personally, I don't see that you have anything definite this time on which to base your theory. Both the men have disappeared; the police say that Vissio killed Moville; you assert the reverse, and declare that Moville deliberately dressed up the body of the Italian in his own clothes, but you have nothing more to go on for your assertion than the police have for theirs."

"I was waiting for that," he rejoined with a dry chuckle. "But let me assure you that I have at least three psychological facts to go on for my assertion, whereas the police only go on two very superficial matters for theirs; they base their whole argument firstly on the clothes, watch, jewellery, and so on found on a body that was otherwise unidentifiable, and, secondly, on a blood-stained knife known to have belonged to the Italian. Now I have demonstrated to you, have I not, how easy it was for Moville to manufacture both these pieces of evidence. So mark the force of my argument," the funny creature went on, gesticulating with his thin hands like a scarecrow blown by the wind. "First of all, why did Moville suddenly declare his intention of leaving England? In order to look after his partner's affairs? Not a bit of it. He left England because of some shady transaction out there in Argentina which was coming to light, and because of which he thought it best to disappear altogether for a time. My proof for this? you will ask. The simple proof that his parents accepted his disappearance for a whole week without making any enquiries about him either in Richmond, or London, or the shipping company that controls the steamers to Buenos Ayres. Can you imagine that Sir Timothy Moville, having seen the last of his son on the Tuesday evening, would say and do nothing, when he was left eight days without news; he would have enquired in London; he knew to which hotel his son intended to go; some one would have enquired at Richmond whether the car had been left there. But no! There was not a single enquiry made for Gerald Moville by his parents, or his brothers and sisters, until after Topcoat had mentioned his name to the police and the latter had started their investigations. And why? Because his people knew where he was; that is to say, they knew—or some of them knew—that Gerald had to lie low, at any rate for a time. Of course his supposed death under such tragic circumstances must have been a terrible shock to them, but it is a remarkable fact, you will admit, that the offer of a substantial reward for the apprehension of the murderer did not come from Sir Timothy Moville; it came from one of the big dailies, out for publicity.

"My whole argument rests on psychological grounds, and in criminal cases psychology is by far the surest guide. Now there was not a single detail in connection with the Moorland Tragedy that in any way suggested the hand of a man like Antonio Vissio. Can you see an Italian peasant who, moreover, has lived all his life with a gun in his hand, solemnly laying that gun down before embarking on a quarrel with his rival? And yet the gun was found undischarged, lying in a gully. Vissio was much more likely to have shouldered it at sight of the man he hated, and shot him dead; more especially as the Englishman would have an enormous advantage in a hand-to-hand fight, even if the other man had suddenly whisked out a knife. Vissio was not the type of man who would think of the consequence of his crime. Maddened by jealousy, he would kill his man at sight, but in his own country and also in France, there would be no disgrace attached to such a deed—no disgrace and very little punishment. The man who last year shot the English dancing girl on the Riviera because he thought that she was carrying on with another man, only got five years' imprisonment; Vissio would not realise that he would be amenable to English law, which does not look at Homicide quite so leniently.

"Having killed his rival, the Italian would, in all probability, have swanked as far as the nearest village, had a good drink to steady his nerves, and then have boasted loudly of what he had done, certain that he would be leniently dealt with by a judge, and sympathised with by a jury, because of the torments of jealousy which he had endured until he could do so no longer. You can't imagine such a man sawing off his victim's head and wrapping it up in a newspaper taken out of the dead man's pocket.

"And this brings me to the final point in my argument, and one which ought to have struck the police from the first: the question of the car. How would Vissio know that he would find Moville's car conveniently stationed by the roadside? He would have to know that before he could dare walk across the moor carrying his gruesome parcel. Now Vissio couldn't possibly know all that, and what's more, though he might not have been altogether ignorant of driving, he certainly was not expert enough to drive a car all by himself for over a hundred miles, at top speed, and for several hours in the dark. To my mind, if this fact had been driven home to the jury by a motoring expert they never would have brought in a verdict against Vissio, and if you think the whole matter over you will be bound to admit that there is not a single flaw in my argument. From the point of view of possibility as well as of psychology, only one man could have committed that crime, and that was Gerald Moville. I suppose his unfortunate parents will know the truth one day. Soon, probably, when the young miscreant is short of money and writes home for funds.

"Or else he may return to Argentina and under an assumed name start life anew. They are not over-particular there as to a man's antecedents. They would perhaps think all the more of him, when they knew that where a girl is concerned he will stand no nonsense from a rival. Think it all over, you'll come to the conclusion that I'm right."

He gathered up his bit of string and took his spectacles from off his nose. For the first time I saw his pale, shrewd eyes looking down straight at me.

"I shan't see you again for some time," he said with a wry smile. "Won't you shake hands and wish me luck?"

"Indeed I will," I replied, "but you are not going away, are you?"

He gave a curious, short, dry chuckle:

"I am going out of England for the benefit of my health," he said coolly.

I hadn't shaken hands with him, because the very next moment he had turned his back on me as if he thought better of it. The next morning I read in the papers a curious account of some extensive robberies committed in the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden. The burglar had managed to escape, but the police were said to hold an important clue. A curious feature about those robberies was the way in which a knotted cord had been used to effect an entrance through a skylight. The newspaper reporters gave a very full description of this cord: it was photographed and reproduced in the illustrated papers. The knots in it were of a wonderful and intricate pattern.

They set me thinking—and wondering!

I have often been to that blameless teashop in Fleet Street since.

But the Old Man in the Corner is never there now, and the police have never been able to trace the large consignment of diamonds stolen from that shop in Hatton Garden and which has been valued at £80,000.

I wonder if I shall ever see my eccentric friend again.

Somehow I think that I shall. And if I do, shall I see him sitting in his accustomed corner, with his spectacles on his nose, and his long, thin fingers working away at a bit of string—fashioning knots—many knots—complicated knots—like those in the cord by the aid of which an entrance was effected into that shop in Hatton Garden and diamonds worth £80,000 were stolen?

I wonder!!

THE END