Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

good through my father’s position and the standing of the firm to which I am attached. I heard on reliable authority, and very early, that the Central and Suburban, and the Deferred especially, was safe to fall heavily, through a motor bus amalgamation that was then a secret. I opened a bear account and sold largely. The shares fell, but only fractionally, and I waited. Then, unfortunately, they began to go up. Adverse forces were at work and rumours were put about. I could not stand the settlement, and in order to carry over an account I was literally compelled to deal temporarily with some securities that were not technically my own property.”

“Embezzlement, sir,” commented Mr Carlyle icily. “But what is embezzlement on the top of wholesale murder!”

“That is what it is called. In my case, however, it was only to be temporary. Unfortunately, the rise continued. Then, at the height of my despair, I chanced to be returning to Swanstead rather earlier than usual one evening, and the train was stopped at a certain signal to let another pass. There was conversation in the carriage and I learned certain details. One said that there would be an accident some day, and so forth. In a flash—as by an inspiration—I saw how the circumstance might be turned to account. A bad accident and the shares would certainly fall and my position would be retrieved. I think Mr Carrados has somehow learned the rest.”

“Max,” said Mr Carlyle, with emotion, “is there any reason why you should not send your man for a police officer and have this monster arrested on his own confession without further delay?”

“Pray do so, Mr Carrados,” acquiesced Drishna. “I shall certainly be hanged, but the speech I shall prepare will ring from one end of India to the other; my memory will be venerated as that of a martyr; and the emancipation of my motherland will be hastened by my sacrifice.”

“In other words,” commented Carrados, “there will be disturbances at half-a-dozen disaffected places, a few unfortunate police will be clubbed to death, and possibly worse things may happen. That does not suit us, Mr Drishna.”

“And how do you propose to prevent it?” asked Drishna, with cool assurance.

“It is very unpleasant being hanged on a dark winter morning; very cold, very friendless, very inhuman. The long trial, the solitude and the confinement, the thoughts of the long sleepless night before, the hangman and the pinioning and the noosing of the rope, are apt to prey on the imagination. Only a very stupid man can take hanging easily.”

“What do you want me to do instead, Mr Carrados?” asked Drishna shrewdly.

Carrados’s hand closed on the weapon that still lay on the table between them. Without a word he pushed it across.

“I see,” commented Drishna, with a short laugh and a gleaming eye. “Shoot myself and hush it up to suit your purpose. Withhold my message to save the exposures of a trial, and keep the flame from the torch of insurrectionary freedom.”

“Also,” interposed Carrados mildly, “to save your worthy people a good deal of shame, and to save the lady who is nameless the unpleasant necessity of relinquishing the house and the income which you have just settled on her. She certainly would not then venerate your memory.”

“What is that?”

“The transaction which you carried through was based on a felony and could not be upheld. The firm you dealt with will go to the courts, and the money, being directly traceable, will be held forfeit as no good consideration passed.”

“Max!” cried Mr Carlyle hotly, “you are not going to let this scoundrel cheat the gallows after all?”

“The best use you can make of the gallows is to cheat it, Louis,” replied Carrados. “Have you ever reflected what human beings will think of us a hundred years hence?”

“Oh, of course I’m not really in favour of hanging,” admitted Mr Carlyle.

“Nobody really is. But we go on hanging. Mr Drishna is a dangerous animal who for the sake of pacific animals must cease to exist. Let his barbarous exploit pass into oblivion with him. The disadvantages of spreading it broadcast immeasurably outweigh the benefits.”

“I have considered,” announced Drishna. “I will do as you wish.”

“Very well,” said Carrados. “Here is some plain notepaper. You had better write a letter to someone saying that the financial difficulties in which you are involved make life unbearable.”

“But there are no financial difficulties—now.”

“That does not matter in the least. It will be put down to an hallucination and taken as showing the state of your mind.”

“But what guarantee have we that he will not escape?” whispered Mr Carlyle.

“He cannot escape,” replied Carrados tranquilly. “His identity is too clear.”

“I have no intention of trying to escape,” put in Drishna, as he wrote. “You hardly imagine that I have not considered this eventuality, do you?”

“All the same,” murmured the ex-lawyer, “I should like to have a jury behind me. It is one thing to execute a man morally; it is another to do it almost literally.”

“Is that all right?” asked Drishna, passing across the letter he had written.

Carrados smiled at this tribute to his perception.

“Quite excellent,” he replied courteously. “There is a train at nine-forty. Will that suit you?”

Drishna nodded and stood up. Mr Carlyle had a very uneasy feeling that he ought to do something but could not suggest to himself what.

The next moment he heard his friend heartily thanking the visitor for the assistance he had been in the matter of the Indo-Scythian inscription, as they walked across the hall together. Then a door closed.

“I believe that there is something positively uncanny about Max at times,” murmured the perturbed gentleman to himself.

THE TRAGEDY AT BROOKBEND COTTAGE

“Max,” said Mr Carlyle, when Parkinson had closed the door behind him, “this is Lieutenant Hollyer, whom you consented to see.”

“To hear,” corrected Carrados, smiling straight into the healthy and rather embarrassed face of the stranger before him. “Mr Hollyer knows of my disability?”

“Mr Carlyle told me,” said the young man, “but, as a matter of fact, I had heard of you before, Mr Carrados, from one of our men. It was in connexion with the foundering of the Ivan Saratov.”

Carrados wagged his head in good-humoured resignation.

“And the owners were sworn to inviolable secrecy!” he exclaimed. “Well, it is inevitable, I suppose. Not another scuttling case, Mr Hollyer?”

“No, mine is quite a private matter,” replied the lieutenant. “My sister, Mrs Creake—but Mr Carlyle would tell you better than I can. He knows all about it.”

“No, no; Carlyle is a professional. Let me have it in the rough, Mr Hollyer. My ears are my eyes, you know.”

“Very well, sir. I can tell you what there is to tell, right enough, but I feel that when all’s said and done it must sound very little to another, although it seems important enough to me.”

“We have occasionally found trifles of significance ourselves,” said Carrados encouragingly. “Don’t let that deter you.”

This was the essence of Lieutenant Hollyer’s narrative:

“I have a sister, Millicent, who is married to a man called Creake. She is about twenty-eight now and he is at least fifteen years older. Neither my mother (who has since died), nor I, cared very much about Creake. We had nothing particular against him, except, perhaps, the moderate disparity of age, but none of us appeared to have anything in common. He was a dark, taciturn man, and his moody silence froze up conversation. As a result, of course, we didn’t see much of each other.”

“This, you must understand, was four or five years ago, Max,” interposed Mr Carlyle officiously.

Carrados maintained an uncompromising silence. Mr Carlyle blew his nose and contrived to impart a hurt significance into the operation. Then Lieutenant Hollyer continued:

“Millicent married Creake after a very short engagement. It was a frightfully subdued wedding—more like a funeral to me. The man professed to have no relations and apparently he had scarcely any friends or business acquaintances. He was an agent for something or other and had an office off Holborn. I suppose he made a living out of it then, although we knew practically nothing of his private affairs, but I gather that it has been going down since, and I suspect that for the past few years they have been getting along almost entirely on Millicent’s little income. You would like the particulars of that?”

“Please,” assented Carrados.

“When our father died about seven years ago, he left three thousand pounds. It was invested in Canadian stock and brought in a little over a hundred a year. By his will my mother was to have the income of that for life and on her death it was to pass to Millicent, subject to the payment of a lump sum of five hundred pounds to me. But my father privately suggested to me that if I should have no particular use for the money at the time, he would propose my letting Millicent have the income of it until I did want it, as she would not be particularly well off. You see, Mr Carrados, a great deal more had been spent on my education and advancement than on her; I had my pay, and, of course, I could look out for myself better than a girl could.”

“Quite so,” agreed Carrados.

“Therefore I did nothing about that,” continued the lieutenant. “Three years ago I was over again but I did not see much of them. They were living in lodgings. That was the only time since the marriage that I have seen them until last week. In the meanwhile our mother had died and Millicent had been receiving her income. She wrote me several letters at the time. Otherwise we did not correspond much, but about a year ago she sent me their new address—Brookbend Cottage, Mulling Common—a house that they had taken. When I got two months’ leave I invited myself there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably depressing.” He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward earnestly, and dropped his voice. “Mr Carrados, it is my absolute conviction that Creake is only waiting for a favourable opportunity to murder Millicent.”

“Go on,” said Carrados quietly. “A week of the depressing surroundings of Brookbend Cottage would not alone convince you of that, Mr Hollyer.”

“I am not so sure,” declared Hollyer doubtfully. “There was a feeling of suspicion and—before me—polite hatred that would have gone a good way towards it. All the same there was something more definite. Millicent told me this the day after I went there. There is no doubt that a few months ago Creake deliberately planned to poison her with some weed-killer. She told me the circumstances in a rather distressed moment, but afterwards she refused to speak of it again—even weakly denied it—and, as a matter of fact, it was with the greatest difficulty that I could get her at any time to talk about her husband or his affairs. The gist of it was that she had the strongest suspicion that Creake doctored a bottle of stout which he expected she would drink for her supper when she was alone. The weed-killer, properly labelled, but also in a beer bottle, was kept with other miscellaneous liquids in the same cupboard as the beer but on a high shelf. When he found that it had miscarried he poured away the mixture, washed out the bottle and put in the dregs from another. There is no doubt in my mind that if he had come back and found Millicent dead or dying he would have contrived it to appear that she had made a mistake in the dark and drunk some of the poison before she found out.”

“Yes,” assented Carrados. “The open way; the safe way.”

“You must understand that they live in a very small style, Mr Carrados, and Millicent is almost entirely in the man’s power. The only servant they have is a woman who comes in for a few hours every day. The house is lonely and secluded. Creake is sometimes away for days and nights at a time, and Millicent, either through pride or indifference, seems to have dropped off all her old friends and to have made no others. He might poison her, bury the body in the garden, and be a thousand miles away before anyone began even to inquire about her. What am I to do, Mr Carrados?”

“He is less likely to try poison than some other means now,” pondered Carrados. “That having failed, his wife will always be on her guard. He may know, or at least suspect, that others know. No.... The common-sense precaution would be for your sister to leave the man, Mr Hollyer. She will not?”

“No,” admitted Hollyer, “she will not. I at once urged that.” The young man struggled with some hesitation for a moment and then blurted out: “The fact is, Mr Carrados, I don’t understand Millicent. She is not