The Borough Treasurer, J. S. Fletcher [learn to read books TXT] 📗

carefully cut open the flap of the envelope and drew out the enclosure—a square sheet of typewriting paper folded about a thin wad of Bank of England notes. He detached these at once and glanced quickly at them. There were six of them: all new and crisp—and each was for a hundred and fifty pounds.

Brereton laid this money aside and opened the letter. This, too, was typewritten: a mere glance at[Pg 126] its termination showed that it was anonymous. He sat down at Bent's desk and carefully read it through.

There was no address: there was nothing beyond the postmark on the envelope to show where the letter came from; there was absolutely nothing in the contents to give any clue to the sender. But the wording was clear and plain.

"Mr. Gifford Brereton,—Having learnt from the newspapers that you are acting as counsel for John Harborough, charged with the murder of a man named Kitely at Highmarket, I send you the enclosed £900 to be used in furthering Harborough's defence. You will use it precisely as you think fit. You are not to spare it nor any endeavour to prove Harborough's innocence—which is known to the sender. Whenever further funds are needed, all you need do is to insert an advertisement in the personal column of The Times newspaper in these words: Highmarket Exchequer needs replenishing, with your initials added. Allow me to suggest that you should at once offer a reward of £500 to whoever gives information which will lead to the capture and conviction of the real murderer or murderers. If this offer fails to bring information speedily, double it. I repeat that no pains must be spared in this matter, and that money to any amount is no object. The sender of this letter will keep well informed of the progress of events as narrated in the newspapers, to which you will please to afford all proper information."

[Pg 127]

Brereton read this extraordinary communication through three times; then he replaced letter and bank-notes in the envelope, put the envelope in an inner pocket, left the house, and walking across to the Northrop villa, asked to see Avice Harborough.

Avice came to him in Mrs. Northrop's drawing-room, and Brereton glancing keenly at her as she entered saw that she was looking worn and pale. He put the letter into her hands with a mere word.

"Your father has a powerful friend—somewhere," he said.

To his astonishment the girl showed no very great surprise. She started a little at the sight of the money; she flushed at one or two expressions in the letter. But she read the letter through without comment and handed it back to him with a look of inquiry.

"You don't seem surprised!" said Brereton.

"There has always been so much mystery to me about my father that I'm not surprised," she replied. "No!—I'm just thankful! For this man—whoever he is—says that my father's innocence is known to him. And that's—just think what it means—to me!"

"Why doesn't he come forward and prove it, then?" demanded Brereton.

Avice shook her head.

"He—they—want it to be proved without that," she answered. "But—don't you think that if all else fails the man who wrote this would come forward? Oh, surely!"

Brereton stood silently looking at her for a full[Pg 128] minute. From the first time of meeting with her he had felt strangely and strongly attracted to his client's daughter, and as he looked at her now he began to realize that he was perhaps more deeply interested in her than he knew.

"It's all the most extraordinary mystery—this about your father—that ever I came across!" he exclaimed suddenly. Then he looked still more closely at her. "You've been worrying!" he said impetuously. "Don't! I beg you not to. I'll move heaven and earth—because I, personally, am absolutely convinced of your father's innocence. And—here's powerful help."

"You'll do what's suggested here?" she asked.

"Certainly! It's a capital idea," he answered. "I'd have done it myself if I'd been a rich man—but I'm not. Cheer up, now!—we're getting on splendidly. Look here—ask Mrs. Northrop to let you come out with me. We'll go to the solicitor—together—and see about that reward at once."

As they presently walked down to the town Brereton gave Avice another of his critical looks of inspection.

"You're feeling better," he said in his somewhat brusque fashion. "Is it this bit of good news?"

"That—and the sense of doing something," she answered. "If I wasn't looking well when you came in just now, it was because this inaction is bad for me. I want to do something!—something to help. If I could only be stirring—moving about. You understand?"

"Quite!" responded Brereton. "And there is[Pg 129] something you can do. I saw you on a bicycle the other day. Why not give up your teaching for a while, and scour the country round about, trying to get hold of some news about your father's movements that night? That he won't tell us anything himself is no reason why we shouldn't find out something for ourselves. He must have been somewhere—someone must have seen him! Why not begin some investigation?—you know the district. How does that strike you?"

"I should be only too thankful," she said. "And I'll do it. The Northrops are very kind—they'll understand, and they'll let me off. I'll begin at once—tomorrow. I'll hunt every village between the sea and the hills!"

"Good!" said Brereton. "Some work of that sort, and this reward—ah, we shall come out all right, you'll see."

"I don't know what we should have done if it hadn't been for you!" said Avice. "But—we shan't forget. My father is a strange man, Mr. Brereton, but he's not the sort of man he's believed to be by these Highmarket people—and he's grateful to you—as you'll see."

"But I must do something to merit his gratitude first, you know," replied Brereton. "Come!—I've done next to nothing as yet. But we'll make a fresh start with this reward—if your father's solicitor approves."

The solicitor did approve—strongly. And he opened his eyes to their widest extent when he read the anonymous letter and saw the bank-notes.

[Pg 130]"Your father," he observed to Avice, "is the most mysterious man I ever heard of! The Kitely mystery, in my opinion, is nothing to the Harborough mystery. Do you really mean to tell me that you haven't an idea of what all this means?"

"Not an idea!" replied Avice. "Not the ghost of one."

"Well—we'll get these posters and handbills out, anyway, Mr. Brereton," said the solicitor. "Five hundred pounds is a good figure. Lord bless you!—some of these Highmarket folk would sell their mothers for half that! The whole population will be turned into amateur detectives. Now let's draft the exact wording, and then we'll see the printer."

Next day the bill-poster placarded Highmarket with the reward bills, and distributed them broadcast in shops and offices, and one of the first persons to lay hands on one was Mallalieu & Cotherstone's clerk, Herbert Stoner.

[Pg 131]

CHAPTER XIV THE SHEET OF FIGURES

At that time Stoner had been in the employment of Mallalieu and Cotherstone for some five or six years. He was then twenty-seven years of age. He was a young man of some ability—sharp, alert, quick at figures, good at correspondence, punctual, willing: he could run the business in the absence of its owners. The two partners appreciated Stoner, and they had gradually increased his salary until it reached the sum of two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence per week. In their opinion a young single man ought to have done very well on that: Mallalieu and Cotherstone had both done very well on less when they were clerks in that long vanished past of which they did not care to think. But Stoner was a young man of tastes. He liked to dress well. He liked to play cards and billiards. He liked to take a drink or two at the Highmarket taverns of an evening, and to be able to give his favourite barmaids boxes of chocolate or pairs of gloves now and then—judiciously. And he found his salary not at all too great, and he was always on the look-out for a chance of increasing it.

Stoner emerged from Mallalieu & Cotherstone's of[Pg 132]fice at his usual hour of half-past five on the afternoon of the day on which the reward bills were put out. It was his practice to drop in at the Grey Mare Inn every evening on his way to his supper, there to drink a half-pint of bitter ale and hear the news of the day from various cronies who were to be met with in the bar-parlour. As he crossed the street on this errand on this particular evening, Postick, the local bill-poster, came hurrying out of the printer's shop with a bundle of handbills under his arm, and as he sped past Stoner, thrust a couple of them into the clerk's hand.

"Here y'are, Mr. Stoner!" he said without stopping. "Something for you to set your wits to work on. Five hundred reward—for a bit o' brain work!"

Stoner, who thought Postick was chaffing him, was about to throw the handbills, still damp from the press, into the gutter which he was stepping over. But in the light of an adjacent lamp he caught sight of the word Murder in big staring capitals at the top of them. Beneath it he caught further sight of familiar names—and at that he folded up the bills, went into the Grey Mare, sat down in a quiet corner, and read carefully through the announcement. It was a very simple one, and plainly worded. Five hundred pounds would be paid by Mr. Tallington, solicitor, of Highmarket, to any person or persons who would afford information which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers of the deceased Kitely.

No one was in the bar-parlour of the Grey Mare when Stoner first entered it, but by the time he had[Pg 133] re-read the handbill, two or three men of the town had come in, and he saw that each carried a copy. One of them, a small tradesman whose shop was in the centre of the Market Square, leaned against the bar and read the terms of the reward aloud.

"And whose money might that be?" he asked, half-sneeringly. "Who's throwing brass round in that free-handed fashion? I should want to know if the money's safe before I wasted my time in trying to get it."

"Money'll be all right," observed one of the speaker's companions. "There's Lawyer Tallington's name at the foot o' that bill. He wouldn't put his name to no offer o' that sort if he hadn't the brass in hand."

"Whose money is it, then?" demanded the first speaker. "It's not a Government reward. They say that Kitely had no relatives, so it can't be them. And it can't be that old housekeeper of his, because they say she's satisfied enough that Jack Harborough's the man, and they've got him. Queer do altogether, I call it!"

"It's done in Harborough's interest," said a third man. "Either that, or there's something very deep in it. Somebody's not satisfied and somebody's going to have a flutter with his brass over it." He turned and glanced at Stoner, who had come to the bar for his customary half-pint of ale. "Your folks aught to do with this?" he asked. "Kitely was Mr. Cotherstone's tenant, of course."

Stoner laughed scornfully as he picked up his tankard.

[Pg 134]"Yes, I don't think!" he sneered. "Catch either of my governors wasting five hundred pence, or five pence, in that way! Not likely!"

"Well, there's Tallington's name to back it," said one of the men. "We all know Tallington. What he says, he does. The money'll be there—if it's earned."

Then they all looked at each other silently, surmise and speculation in the eyes of each.

"Tell you what!" suddenly observed the little tradesman, as if struck with a clever idea. "It might be young Bent! Five hundred pound is naught to him. This here young London barrister that's defending Harborough is stopping with Bent—they're old schoolmates. Happen he's persuaded Bent to do the handsome: they say that this barrister chap's right down convinced that Harborough's innocent. It must be Bent's brass!"

"What's Popsie say?" asked one of the younger members of the party, winking at the barmaid, who, having supplied her customers' needs, was leaning over a copy of the handbill which somebody had laid on the bar. "Whose brass can it be, Popsie?"

The barmaid stood up, seized a glass and a cloth, and began to polish the glass with vigor.

"What's Popsie say?" she repeated. "Why, what she says is that you're a lot of donkeys for wasting your time in wondering whose brass it is. What does it matter whose brass it