The Avenger Part 15

"We all have our hobbies," Heneage answered. "Take the Colonel, for instance, the most harmless, the most good-natured man who ever lived.

Nothing in the world fascinates him so much as the details of a tragedy like this, however gruesome they may be. I have seen him handle a murderer's knife as though he loved it. His favourite museum is the professional Chamber of Horrors in Scotland Yard. My own interests run in a slightly different direction. I like to look at an affair of this sort as a chess problem, and to set myself to solve it. I like to make a silent study of all the characters around, to search for motives and dissect evidence. Human nature has its secrets, and very wonderful secrets too."

"I once," Wrayson said thoughtfully, "saw a man tracked down by bloodhounds. My sympathies were with the man."

Heneage nodded.

"Your view of life," he remarked, "was always a sentimental one."

"No correct view," Wrayson declared, "can ignore sentiment."

"Granted; but it must be true sentiment, not false," Heneage said. "This sentiment which interferes with justice is false sentiment."

"Justice is altogether an arbitrary, a relative phrase," Wrayson declared. "I know no more about the case of Morris Barnes than you do. I knew the man by sight and repute, and I knew the manner of his life, and it seems to me a likely thing that there is more human justice about his death than in the punis.h.i.+ng the person who compa.s.sed it."

"There are cases of that sort," Heneage admitted. "That is the advantage of being an amateur, like myself. My discoveries, if I make any, are my own. I am not bound to publish them."

Wrayson smiled a little bitterly.

"You would be less than human if you didn't," he said.

Heneage rose to his feet and began putting on his coat. Wrayson remained in his seat, without offering to help him.

"So I may take it, I suppose," he said, as he moved towards the door, "that my visit to you is a failure?"

"I have not the slightest idea of running away, if that is what you mean," Wrayson answered. "I am obliged to you for your warning, but what I did I am prepared to stand by."

"I am sorry," Heneage answered. "Good night!"

CHAPTER XII

TIDINGS FROM THE CAPE

Wrayson paused for a moment in his work to answer the telephone which stood upon his table.

"What is it?" he asked sharply.

His manager spoke to him from the offices below.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but there is a young man here who won't go away without seeing you. His name is Barnes, and he says that he has just arrived from South Africa."

It was a busy morning with Wrayson, for in an hour or so the paper went to press, but he did not hesitate for a moment.

"I will see him," he declared. "Bring him up yourself."

Wrayson laid down the telephone. Morris Barnes had come from South Africa. It was a common name enough, and yet, from the first, he was sure that this was some relative. What was the object of his visit? The ideas chased one another through his brain. Was he, too, an avenger?

There was a knock at the door, and the clerk from downstairs ushered in his visitor. Wrayson could scarcely repress a start. It was a younger edition of Morris Barnes who stood there, with an ingratiating smile upon his pale face, a trifle more Semitic in appearance, perhaps, but in other respects the likeness was almost startling. It extended even to the clothes, for Wrayson recognized with a start a purple and white tie of particularly loud pattern. The cut of his coat, the glossiness of his hat and boots, too, were all strikingly reminiscent of the dead man.

His visitor was becoming nervous under Wrayson's close scrutiny. His manner betrayed a curious mixture of diffidence and a.s.surance. He seemed overanxious to create a favourable impression.

"I took the liberty of coming to see you, Mr. Wrayson," he said, twisting his hat round in his hand. "My name is Barnes, Sydney Barnes. Morris Barnes was my brother."

Wrayson pointed to a chair, into which his visitor subsided with exaggerated expressions of grat.i.tude. He had very small black eyes, set very close together, and he blinked continually. The more Wrayson studied him, the less prepossessing he found him.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Barnes?" he asked quietly.

"I have just come from Cape Town," the young man said. "Such a shock it was to me--about my poor brother! Oh! such a shock!"

"How did you hear about it?" Wrayson asked.

"Just a newspaper--I read an account of it all. It did give me a turn and no mistake. Directly I'd finished, I went and booked my pa.s.sage on the _Dunottar Castle._ I had a very fair berth over there--two quid a week, but I felt I must come home at once. Fact is," he continued, looking down at his trousers, "I had no time to get my own togs together. I was so anxious, you see. That's why I'm wearing some of poor Morris's."

"Are you the only relative?" Wrayson asked.

"'Pon my sam, I am," the other answered with emphasis. "We hadn't a relation in the world. Father and mother died ten years ago, and Morris and I were the only two. Anything that poor Morris possessed belongs to me, sure! There's no one else to claim a farthing's worth. You must know that yourself, Mr. Wrayson, eh?"

"If, as you say, you are the only relative, your brother's effects, of course, belong to you," Wrayson answered.

"It's a sure thing," the young man declared. "I've been to the landlord of the flat, and he gave me up the keys at once. There's only one quarter's rent owing. Pretty stiff though--isn't it? Fifty pounds!"

"Your brother's was a furnished flat, I believe," Wrayson answered. "That makes a difference, of course."

The young man's face fell.

"Then the furniture wasn't his?" he remarked.

Wrayson shook his head.

"No! the furniture belongs to the landlord. There will be an inventory, of course, and you will be able to find out if anything was your brother's."

It was obvious that Mr. Sydney Barnes had not as yet entered upon the purpose of his visit. He fidgeted for a moment or two with his hat, and looked up at Wrayson, only to look nervously away again. To set him more at his ease, Wrayson lit a cigarette and pa.s.sed the box over.

"Thank you, Mr. Wrayson! Thank you, sir!" his visitor exclaimed. "You see I'm a smoker," he added, holding up his yellow-stained forefinger.

"That is, I smoke when I can afford to. Things have been pretty d.i.c.ky out in South Africa lately, you know. Terrible hard it has been to make a living."

"Your brother was supposed to have done pretty well out there," Wrayson remarked, more for the sake of keeping the conversation alive than anything. The effect of his words, however, was electrical. Mr. Sydney Barnes leaned over from his chair, and his little black eyes twinkled like polished beads.

"Mr. Wrayson," he declared, "a week before he sailed for England, Morris was on his uppers! He was caught in Johannesburg when the war broke out, and he had to stay there. When he turned up in Cape Town again, his own mother wouldn't have known him. He was in rags--he'd come down on a freight--he hadn't a sc.r.a.p of luggage, or a copper to his name. That was Morris when he came to me in Cape Town!"

Wrayson was listening attentively; he almost feared to let his visitor see how interested he was.

"He was fair done in!" the young man continued. "He never had the pluck of a chicken, and the night he found me in Cape Town he cried like a baby. He had lost everything, he said. It was no use staying in the country any longer. He was wild to get back to England. And yet, do you know, sir, all the time I had the idea that he was keeping something back from me. And he was! He was, too! The--!"

He stopped short. The vindictiveness of his countenance supplied the epithet.