This House to Let Part 31

Mrs Spencer rose. It seemed that there was a sense of relief in the fact that the interview was ending so amicably.

"I would have preferred to remain as I am, but, on the whole, the life doesn't suit me, luxurious as it is. I am very fond of Guy really, he has been so good to me, but I have alienated him from his friends. And I have to sit here hour after hour by myself, with only my thoughts for company."

"Let us say one week from now I will have that confession ready to sign."

"And you will bring it here?" suggested Stella.

"I think not. It will take some time to read through, and we might be interrupted," was Hugh's answer.

"At your hotel, then, I suppose?" was the young woman's next suggestion.

"The same objection applies."

He scribbled down an address on a piece of paper. "Meet me there this day week at the hour I have appointed. n.o.body will interrupt us, I will take care of that."

And Mrs Spencer lay awake half the night, working out a problem that had suggested itself to her in a flash.

The next day she lunched with George Dutton in the City. The detective might be watching her, but did it matter? Whatever happened at the end of the week, she had burned her boats.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Two months had elapsed since the meeting between Major Murchison and Stella Spencer, recorded in the last chapter.

A handsome, well-set-up man of about thirty was travelling up from Manchester to London. The reason of his journey was his desire to visit his sister, Caroline Masters, who occupied a small flat in the neighbourhood of King's Cross.

Up to a short time ago this handsome, well-set-up man had been leading a very quiet life in the busy city of Manchester. He was an electrician by trade, and a very clever one. He was civil, well-spoken, intelligent beyond his station, but he had not foregathered much with his fellow-workers, had kept himself very much to himself. And yet, strange to say, this self-isolation had not provoked suspicion or resentment on the part of his daily a.s.sociates.

Reginald Davis, for such was his name, had been unjustly suspected of murder, and the police had been hot on his track. Then had come the suicide in Number 10 Cathcart Square, and his sister, Caroline Masters, had identified the dead body as that of her brother.

Caroline Masters had always been a plucky, resourceful girl, and devoted to him. The dead man, no doubt, bore some resemblance to himself, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to swear to a false identification, and remove from him the sleepless vigilance of the police. This much she had conveyed to him in a guarded letter.

Reginald Davis, the man falsely accused of murder, was dead in the eyes of the law: in a sense, he had nothing further to fear. But at the same time, caution must be observed. The few friends he had were in London; at any time he might run across one or more of them. So, taking another name, he had hidden himself in Manchester, and corresponded secretly with the one of the two sisters he could trust, Caroline Masters.

And then, suddenly, the burden had been lifted from his soul. There was a small paragraph in the evening newspapers, afterwards reproduced in the morning ones, which told him that he need not skulk through the world any longer.

A man lying under sentence of death for a brutal murder and without hope of reprieve, had confessed to the crime of which Davis had been falsely accused. In the paragraph, which was, of course, essentially the same in all the papers, were a few words of sympathy for the unfortunate Reginald Davis who had stolen into Number 10 Cathcart Square and committed suicide, under a sense of abject terror. The police had carefully investigated the statements of the condemned man, with the result that they found the late Reginald Davis absolutely innocent.

The late Reginald Davis, very alive and well, knocked at the door of his sister's flat. She had been apprised of his coming, and greeted him affectionately. She sat him down before a well-cooked supper. He was hungry and ate heartily. She did not disturb him with much conversation till he had finished.

"Well, Reggie, that was a bit of luck indeed." She was, of course, alluding to the confession of the real murderer. "Now you are as free as air. You were always a bit of a bad egg, old boy, but never a criminal to that extent."

"No, hang it all, I am not particular in a general way, but murder was not in my line," he answered briefly. "It was hard lines to get scot-free of the other things, and then to be suspected of that at the end."

He looked at her admiringly. "By Jove! Carrie, you were always the cleverest of the lot of us. That was a brain-wave of yours, walking in and identifying me as the suicide." Mrs Masters smiled appreciatively.

"Yes, it came to me in a flash. I read the account in the papers. It struck me I might do something useful. I went up to the court with the tale of a missing brother. I saw the body; the poor creature might have been your twin. Of course, I swore it was you, and gave you a new lease of life." She added severely, "I hope you have taken advantage of what I did, and become a reformed character." Davis spoke very gravely.

"Yes, Carrie, I swear to you I have. That shock was the making of me.

I have lain very low, worked hard, and put by money."

He pulled out an envelope from his breastpocket, and thrust it into her hand; it was full of one-pound notes.

"Fifty of the best, old girl, for a little nest-egg. I have not forgotten my best pal, you see."

The tears came into Mrs Masters' eyes. He had been a bad egg, but he had a good heart at bottom.

"That is very sweet of you, Reggie; it will come in very useful. And now to go back for a moment to Cathcart Square. Who was the poor devil who killed himself there? He was as like you as two peas are like each other."

"I think we have got to find that out," said Reginald Davis gravely.

"Nor, reading the account in the papers, am I quite sure that it was a suicide."

"But that was the verdict," interrupted the sister.

"I know, but there are peculiar things about the case. Letters addressed to Reginald Davis were found on him; there was a letter signed Reginald Davis, addressed to the Coroner, announcing his intention to commit suicide. Those letters had been placed there by the person who murdered him, and that person who murdered him was somebody who knew me, unless it was the accidental taking of a common name."

"But the razor was clutched in his hand, Reggie!"

"Quite easy," replied Davis, who, if not a murderer himself, could easily project himself, apparently, into the mind of one. "We will a.s.sume, for the moment, it was a man. He cut the poor devil's throat, and then thrust the razor into his stiffening hand, to convey the idea of suicide."

"It might be," agreed Mrs Masters.

"Well, Carrie, one thing I have fixed on, and it is one of the things for which I have come up. I go to Scotland Yard to-morrow, tell them straight I am Reginald Davis, without a stain upon my character, explain to them that you were misled by a close resemblance. We will have that body exhumed. I am firmly convinced it was a murder."

"Let sleeping dogs lie, Reggie," advised Mrs Masters, who had a horror of the law and its subtle ways. "Never mind who was the poor devil who was found there, whether he was murdered or committed suicide. It is no affair of yours."

"It is an affair of mine in this way," replied Davis in a dogged tone.

"The person who murdered the poor devil, as you call him, knew something about me, and took a liberty with my name."

"It served you a good turn, Reggie, anyway."

"I know; I admit that. But the murderer did not know he was doing me, thanks to you, a good turn when he killed the other fellow." Mrs Masters thought deeply for a few moments. "Reggie, you have been a very bad egg, I am sure. I shall never guess a quarter of what you have been guilty of."

He laid his hand affectionately on her arm. "Well for you, old girl, you can't. That is all past and done with. By the way, that letter found on the poor chap, announcing his intention to commit suicide, did they ask you to identify my handwriting? Of course, the others addressed to him didn't matter much. Anybody could have written them.

But my letter was a forgery. Did they ask you to identify that particular letter?"

"They did, Reggie, and my brain was in such a whirl that I could hardly read it. I said that I believed it was in your handwriting. It was certainly very like, although, as you can imagine, I looked at it through a sort of mist. Anyway, it was as like your handwriting as the dead man was like you." Davis ruminated for a few moments. "That letter was forged by somebody who knew me and could imitate my hand to a nicety. I am thinking of all the wrong 'uns I knew in the old days. I think I can fix him."

"Yes," said Mrs Masters breathlessly. She was capable of great daring in the cause and the service of those she loved, but she was not habituated to the ways of hardened criminals.

"A man I was a bit a.s.sociated with in the old days; luckily he didn't drag me in far enough. He was an expert forger. We used to call him `George the Penman.'"

Mrs Masters shuddered. "Oh, you poor weak soul, you were so near it as that?"

"Very near, Carrie. The shock of the false accusation of murder pulled me up straight. I saw where I was drifting, and made up my mind that the straight path was the surest." At the moment that Mr Davis gave utterance to this honourable sentiment there was a ring at the bell.

Mrs Masters rose at once. "It is Iris. I dropped her a note to say you were coming. She will be so pleased to see you."

There floated into the small sitting-room a very dainty and ethereal figure, Miss Iris Deane, a charming member of the chorus at the Frivolity Theatre.

She flung her arms round the neck of her handsome brother. "Oh Reggie, dear, what a treat to see you! And all this dreadful thing is lifted from you."