Dead Men's Money, J. S. Fletcher [great novels to read .txt] 📗

least strange; but, he added, with a half-apologetic glance at me, he would like to hear Sir Gilbert's version of that affair before he himself made up his mind about it.

"If we can lay hands on him, you'll be hearing his version from the dock!" retorted Mr. Lindsey. "Your natural love of letting things go smoothly, Portlethorpe, is leading you into strange courses! Man alive!—take a look at the whole thing from a dispassionate attitude! Since the fellow got hold of the Hathercleugh property, he's sold everything, practically, but Hathercleugh itself; he's lost no time in converting the proceeds—a couple of hundred thousand pounds!—into foreign securities, which, says yon man Paley, are convertible into cash at any moment in any market! Something occurs—we don't know what, yet—to make him insecure in his position; without doubt, it's mixed up with Phillips and Gilverthwaite, and no doubt, afterwards, with Crone. This lad here accidentally knows something which might be fatal—Carstairs tries, having, as I believe, murdered Crone, to drown Moneylaws! And what then? It's every evident that, after leaving Moneylaws, he ran his yacht in somewhere on the Scottish coast, and turned her adrift; or, which is more likely, fell in with that fisher-fellow Robertson at Largo, and bribed him to tell a cock-and-bull tale about the whole thing—made his way to Edinburgh next morning, and possessed himself of the rest of his securities, after which, he clears out, to be joined somewhere by his wife, who, if what Hollins told us last night is true—and it no doubt is,—carried certain valuables off with her! What does it look like but that he's an impostor, who's just made all he can out of the property while he'd the chance, and is now away to enjoy his ill-gotten gains? That's what I'm saying, Portlethorpe—and I insist on my common-sense view of it!"

"And I say it's just as common-sense to insist, as I do, that it's all capable of proper and reasonable explanation!" retorted Mr. Portlethorpe. "You're a good hand at drawing deductions, Lindsey, but you're bad in your premises! You start off by asking me to take something for granted, and I'm not fond of mental gymnastics. If you'd be strictly logical—"

They went on arguing like that, one against the other, for a good hour, and it seemed to me that the talk they were having would have gone on for ever, indefinitely, if, on the stroke of noon, Mr. Gavin Smeaton had not walked in on us. At sight of him they stopped, and presently they were deep in the matter of the similarity of the handwritings, Mr. Lindsey having brought the letter and the will with him. Deep, at any rate, Mr. Lindsey and Mr. Portlethorpe were; as for Mr. Gavin Smeaton, he appeared to be utterly amazed at the suggestion which Mr. Lindsey threw out to him—that the father of whom he knew so little was, in reality, Michael Carstairs.

"Do you know what it is you're suggesting, Lindsey?" demanded Mr. Portlethorpe, suddenly. "You've got the idea into your head now that this young man's father, whom he's always heard of as one Martin Smeaton, was in strict truth the late Michael Carstairs, elder son of the late Sir Alexander—in fact, being the wilful and headstrong man that you are, you're already positive of it?"

"I am so!" declared Mr. Lindsey. "That's a fact, Portlethorpe."

"Then what follows?" asked Mr. Portlethorpe. "If Mr. Smeaton there is the true and lawful son of the late Michael Carstairs, his name is not Smeaton at all, but Carstairs, and he's the true holder of the baronetcy, and, as his grandfather died intestate, the legal owner of the property! D'you follow that?"

"I should be a fool if I didn't!" retorted Mr. Lindsey. "I've been thinking of it for thirty-six hours."

"Well—it'll have to be proved," muttered Mr. Portlethorpe. He had been staring hard at Mr. Gavin Smeaton ever since he came in, and suddenly he let out a frank exclamation. "There's no denying you've a strong Carstairs look on you!" said he. "Bless and save me!—this is the strangest affair!"

Smeaton put his hand into his pocket, and drew out a little package which he began to unwrap.

"I wonder if this has anything to do with it," he said. "I remembered, thinking things over last night, that I had something which, so the Watsons used to tell me, was round my neck when I first came to them. It's a bit of gold ornament, with a motto on it. I've had it carefully locked away for many a long year!"

He took out of his package a heart-shaped pendant, with a much-worn gold chain attached to it, and turned it over to show an engraved inscription on the reverse side.

"There's the motto," he said. "You see—Who Will, Shall. Whose is it?"

"God bless us!" exclaimed Mr. Portlethorpe. "The Carstairs motto! Aye!—their motto for many a hundred years! Lindsey, this is an extraordinary thing!—I'm inclined to think you may have some right in your notions. We must—"

But before Mr. Portlethorpe could say what they must do, there was a diversion in our proceedings which took all interest in them clean away from me, and made me forget whatever mystery there was about Carstairs, Smeaton, or anybody else. A page lad came along with a telegram in his hand asking was there any gentleman there of the name of Moneylaws? I took the envelope from him in a whirl of wonder, and tore it open, feeling an unaccountable sense of coming trouble. And in another minute the room was spinning round me; but the wording of the telegram was clear enough:

"Come home first train Maisie Dunlop been unaccountably missing since last evening and no trace of her. Murray."

I flung the bit of paper on the table before the other three, and, feeling like my head was on fire, was out of the room and the hotel, and in the street and racing into the station, before one of them could find a word to put on his tongue.

CHAPTER XXXI NO TRACE

That telegram had swept all the doings of the morning clear away from me. Little I cared about the Carstairs affairs and all the mystery that was wrapping round them in comparison with the news which Murray had sent along in that peculiarly distressing fashion! I would cheerfully have given all I ever hoped to be worth if he had only added more news; but he had just said enough to make me feel as if I should go mad unless I could get home there and then. I had not seen Maisie since she and my mother had left Mr. Lindsey and me at Dundee—I had been so fully engaged since then, what with the police, and Mrs. Ralston, and Mr. Portlethorpe, and the hurried journeys, first to Newcastle and then to Edinburgh, that I had never had a minute to run down and see how things were going on. What, of course, drove me into an agony of apprehension was Murray's use of that one word "unaccountably." Why should Maisie be "unaccountably" missing? What had happened to take her out of her father's house?—where had she gone, that no trace of her could be got?—what had led to this utterly startling development?—what—

But it was no use speculating on these things—the need was for action. And I had seized on the first porter I met, and was asking him for the next train to Berwick, when Mr. Gavin Smeaton gripped my arm.

"There's a train in ten minutes, Moneylaws," said he quietly. "Come away to it—I'll go with you—we're all going. Mr. Lindsey thinks we'll do as much there as here, now."

Looking round I saw the two solicitors hurrying in our direction, Mr. Lindsey carrying Murray's telegram in his hand. He pulled me aside as we all walked towards the train.

"What do you make of this, Hugh?" he asked. "Can you account for any reason why the girl should be missing?"

"I haven't an idea," said I. "But if it's anything to do with all the rest of this business, Mr. Lindsey, let somebody look out! I'll have no mercy on anybody that's interfered with her—and what else can it be? I wish I'd never left the town!"

"Aye, well, we'll soon be back in it," he said, consolingly. "And we'll hope to find better news. I wish Murray had said more; it's a mistake to frighten folk in that way—he's said just too much and just too little."

It was a fast express that we caught for Berwick, and we were not long in covering the distance, but it seemed like ages to me, and the rest of them failed to get a word out of my lips during the whole time. And my heart was in my mouth when, as we ran into Berwick station, I saw Chisholm and Andrew Dunlop on the platform waiting us. Folk that have had bad news are always in a state of fearing to receive worse, and I dreaded what they might have come to the station to tell us. And Mr. Lindsey saw how I was feeling, and he was on the two of them with an instant question.

"Do you know any more about the girl than was in Murray's wire?" he demanded. "If so, what? The lad here's mad for news!"

Chisholm shook his head, and Andrew Dunlop looked searchingly at me.

"We know nothing more," he answered. "You don't know anything yourself, my lad?" he went on, staring at me still harder.

"I, Mr. Dunlop!" I exclaimed. "What do you think, now, asking me a question like yon! What should I know?"

"How should I know that?" said he. "You dragged your mother and my lass all the way to Dundee for nothing—so far as I could learn; and—"

"He'd good reason," interrupted Mr. Lindsey. "He did quite right. Now what is this about your daughter, Mr. Dunlop? Just let's have the plain tale of it, and then we'll know where we are."

I had already seen that Andrew Dunlop was not over well pleased with me—and now I saw why. He was a terrible hand at economy, saving every penny he could lay hands on, and as nothing particular seemed to have come of it, and—so far as he could see—there had been no great reason for it, he was sore at my sending for his daughter to Dundee, and all the sorer because—though I, of course, was utterly innocent of it—Maisie had gone off on that journey without as much as a by-your-leave to him. And he was not over ready or over civil to Mr. Lindsey.

"Aye, well!" said he. "There's strange doings afoot, and it's not my will that my lass should be at all mixed up in them, Mr. Lindsey! All this running up and down, hither and thither, on business that doesn't concern—"

Mr. Lindsey had the shortest of tempers on occasion, and I saw that he was already impatient. He suddenly turned away with a growl and collared Chisholm.

"You're a fool, Dunlop," he exclaimed over his shoulder; "it's your tongue that wants to go running! Now then, sergeant!—what is all this about Miss Dunlop? Come on!"

My future father-in-law drew off in high displeasure, but Chisholm hurriedly explained matters.

"He's in a huffy state, Mr. Lindsey," he said, nodding at Andrew's retreating figure. "Until you came in, he was under the firm belief that you and Mr. Hugh had got the young lady away again on some of this mystery business—he wouldn't have it any other way. And truth to tell, I was wondering if you had, myself! But since you haven't, it's here—and I hope nothing's befallen the poor young thing, for—"

"For God's sake, man, get it out!" said I. "We've had preface enough—come to your tale!"

"I'm only explaining to you, Mr. Hugh," he answered, calmly. "And I understand your impatience. It's like this, d'ye see?—Andrew Dunlop yonder has a sister that's married to a man, a sheep-farmer, whose place is near Coldsmouth Hill, between Mindrum and Kirk Yetholm—"

"I know!" I said. "You mean Mrs. Heselton. Well, man?"

"Mrs. Heselton, of course," said he. "You're right there. And last night—about seven or so in the evening—a telegram came to the Dunlops saying Mrs. Heselton was taken very ill, and would Miss Dunlop go over? And away she went there and then, on her bicycle, and alone—and she never reached the place!"

"How do you know that?" demanded Mr. Lindsey.

"Because," answered Chisholm, "about nine o'clock this morning in comes one of the Heselton lads to Dunlop to tell him his mother had died during the night; and then, of course,