CHAPTER XIII AUNT AND “NEPHEW”!

There was not very much to discuss when Lane did get to Deanery Street. Certain inexplicable things had happened for which, at present, there seemed no accounting. Somebody seemed to be doing what he liked with this wonderful safe, abstracting and replacing property when he chose, without hindrance, in a house full of people. One novel feature on this occasion was the total absence of finger-prints. They had been carefully rubbed out.

Morrice seemed greatly perturbed, as was quite natural under the circumstances; but Lane noticed that there was a considerable difference in his demeanour on this occasion from the last, when he had insisted, with some display of temper, upon the certainty of Croxton’s guilt.

Lane had been a little nettled at the time—at the cocksure attitude of this hard-headed man of business who, however great his success in his own particular line, did not seem to possess a very great logical faculty, and could not forbear putting a rather pertinent question.

“Are you quite as sure as you were, Mr. Morrice, that your late secretary is the thief?”

Morrice shrugged his shoulders. It was easy to see that he was in a subdued mood; there was no fear of further explosions to-day. “I admit there are complications in this infernal business that perplex one extremely. But I don’t think that, so far, I can see any particular reasons for altering my previous opinion. You can’t get over the insurmountable fact that Croxton and myself were the only two persons who knew the secret of the mechanism. He may not be the actual purloiner, I admit; he may have passed on his knowledge to a confederate with whom he shares the spoil.”

Lane let fall only a few words in answer to these observations, but they were very significant ones.

“Don’t forget, Mr. Morrice, that you lost the original key or memorandum, as you call it, of the workings.”

But the financier was an obstinate person, as many strong-minded men are. When he had once formed a theory, he did not give it up in a hurry.

“Only mislaid, I expect,” he answered, but it was easy to see his tone was not quite so confident as usual. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned up at any moment.”

But Lane hastened to put on a damper at once. “And if it did, I don’t see that it would help you so very much. You couldn’t possibly know in what other hands it might have been during the interval.”

The financier had no wish to engage in further argument with this calm, self-possessed man, whose merciless logic made such short work of anything in the nature of a positive opinion.

“It doesn’t seem to matter much what I think,” he cried with a slight return of his old petulance. “And perhaps it would be wiser to admit at once that I don’t possess your capacity for weighing facts and drawing deductions from them. I should like to know one thing, Mr. Lane—does what has just happened convey any new suggestions to you, throw any fresh light upon the situation?”

He did not gauge the detective as accurately as one might have expected from a man with his wide knowledge of human nature, or he would never have put this question in the hope of getting a satisfactory answer. Whatever theory or theories might be forming in his mind, and there could be no doubt that it was working at full-speed all the time, and readjusting itself to every fresh turn of events, Lane would make no disclosures till he judged the time was ripe.

He shook his head with great gravity: “We work very slowly, Mr. Morrice; we come to conclusions with equal slowness, in our profession. I dare say to a keen business man like yourself who plan your coups with lightning rapidity, make and clinch a deal of many thousands in a few minutes, we must seem dull, plodding fellows. But you must remember that most of our time we are working underground where very little light penetrates. What has happened to-day may suggest a new line of thought to me, but I have not yet had time to digest its significance. It will want a great deal of patient thinking over before it bears any fruit.”

With this the rather impatient financier had to be content. He was beginning to have a certain respect for the firm, self-reliant attitude of the detective, who did not appear to be in the least overawed by Morrice’s wealth and position. And he had a shrewd idea that, in his own particular and less remunerative line, Lane had a brain not greatly inferior to his own. They worked in different directions with a vast disproportion between the rewards attending their efforts. Morrice had the instinct of moneymaking, Lane the instinct of unravelling criminal mysteries. Perhaps in the bare fact of intellectual equipment there was not much to choose between them.

As the detective passed through the hall on his way out, he found Rosabelle waiting for him. She was of course cognizant of what had happened, and on Lane’s arrival her first idea had been to be present at the interview between him and her uncle. But on second thoughts she had decided to speak to the detective alone.

She still loved her uncle very dearly; she must always do that for all the kindness and affection he had lavished on her. But it was impossible there should not be a little secret antagonism between the two in the circumstances. He appeared to be firmly convinced of Richard Croxton’s guilt, she as firmly convinced of his innocence. She was a fair-minded girl, and she was prepared to make every allowance for Morrice’s attitude, but as there did not seem any common ground on which they could meet when the matter was under discussion, she judged it best to speak of it to him as little as possible.

She put to him practically the same question that her uncle had done: “Well, Mr. Lane, what do you think of the new development? Does it reveal anything to you?”

That wary and cautious person shook his head. He had taken a great liking to Rosabelle. Her staunch devotion to her lover had appealed to the finer chords of his nature; for although he never allowed sentiment to sway him unduly, he was by no means destitute of that human quality. But not even for Rosabelle’s sake would he depart greatly from that cautious attitude which was habitual to him.

“It is a strange development, Miss Sheldon, but I have not yet had time to think it over. I am going back to my office to do so, and the thinking over will take some time.”

Her charming face fell. “You cannot see in it even the remotest thing that tells in favour of Richard Croxton?”

The eyes were very sad, the voice was very pleading. Should he give the unhappy girl one little crumb of comfort? For a little time he hesitated, then compassion got the better of prudence and of his iron reserve.

“I will just say this, Miss Sheldon, and no more. It is becoming a less impossible task to clear him than I at first thought; but please don’t be too jubilant—there are still very formidable difficulties in the way.”

A radiant light came into the charming face, although her eyes filled with tears and she clasped her hands nervously together. Her voice trembled as she spoke.

“You have put new life into me with those words, Mr. Lane. I know you quite well by now, and I am sure that, coming from you, they mean much.”

Poor Lane began to think he had made a bit of a mistake in departing from his usual caution, in being moved by the pleading attitude of the girl into giving her this small crumb of comfort. That was the worst of women—they were so impressionable and optimistic, or pessimistic, as the case might be. Their moods were never equable: they were either at the height of elation or in the depth of despair.

“Please do not let me excite false hopes, Miss Sheldon,” he hastened to say. “Remember, I have told you there are great difficulties in the way. Until we are on much firmer ground I would beg that you do not repeat my words to Mr. Croxton.”

But she did not give any answer to this request, and he knew that for all practical purposes he might have held his peace. Of course, she would post off to her lover as soon as she could get away, and infect him with her own optimism. Well, he was loath to confide too much in the most hard-headed and sceptical man; he had only himself to blame for having been over-confidential with a member of the emotional sex.

Later on in the day Rosabelle carried out his prediction; she made up her mind to pay a visit to Petersham, to hearten her lover with a recital of those words which she was convinced meant so much, coming from a man of Lane’s cautious temperament.

Morrice had left the house shortly after the detective’s departure. The two women would have lunched alone together but for the unexpected arrival of young Archie Brookes, who was pressed to stay for the meal.

Rosabelle was very sensitive to impressions, and, for so young a girl, particularly observant. It struck her that during the progress of the luncheon the young man seemed rather distrait and preoccupied. Two or three times he answered at random, and once Mrs. Morrice called out to him sharply, “I don’t think you are listening to what I am saying, Archie.” At that rebuke he seemed to pull himself together, but the girl was sure his thoughts were far away from her aunt’s light chatter.

Presently aunt and nephew, to call him what Rosabelle, ignorant of Lane’s discoveries, still believed him to be, went up to Mrs. Morrice’s boudoir. There was nothing unusual in this; it was a frequent custom when the young man called or lunched at the house.

Rosabelle thought she would start for Petersham at once, making her journey there as usual in a taxi. She always had plenty of money for her needs, as Morrice supplemented her own little modest income of a hundred a year with a very generous allowance.

As she went upstairs to her own room to make ready for her expedition, she passed her aunt’s boudoir, the door of which stood slightly ajar. It was a rather unusual circumstance, for when the two were closeted together Rosabelle had noticed that it was nearly always closed. This time it had evidently been forgotten by both.

She was not a girl who in ordinary circumstances would have condescended to listen at doors, but she could not help hearing words that startled and puzzled her.

Archie was speaking in a voice of great excitement and emotion. “But if I don’t have it I am ruined. It means that I cannot face the disgrace—there is only one alternative——” His voice had by now sunk almost to a whisper, and she could not catch what followed.

She stood rooted to the spot. The young man’s preoccupied manner at the lunch-table was accounted for. He was in some deep trouble from which he was begging Mrs. Morrice to rescue him.

She heard her aunt reply in tones that were half angry, half tearful. “How many times have you threatened me with that, and I have yielded. I have half ruined myself for you; it cannot go on much longer.”

Suddenly she felt that she was listening to a conversation not intended for her ears, and resolutely turned away and went to her own room. For the present she would say nothing, not even to Dick, of what she had heard by the purest accident. But she thought over it all the way on the long drive to Petersham. Was there yet another tragedy going on in the Morrice household, and was her placid-looking, dignified aunt the centre of it?

And what was that alternative which Archie Brookes had described in a whisper she could not catch? Had he threatened to destroy himself if his request were not acceded to? And what did Mrs. Morrice mean by saying she had half ruined herself for him?