CHAPTER XXIII THE SILENCE OF THE MAN BARKER

"Harry Bellairs was an old friend of mine," Trendall went on, leaning back in his padded writing-chair and turning towards where the novelist was standing. "His curious end was a problem which, of course, attracted you as a writer of fiction. The world believed his death to be due to natural causes, in view of the failure of Professors Dale and Boyd, the Home Office analysts, to find a trace of poison or of foul play."

"You believe, then, that he was poisoned?" asked Fetherston quickly.

The other shrugged his shoulders, saying: "How can that point be cleared up? There was no evidence of it."

"It is curious that, though we are both so intensely interested in the problem, we have never before discussed it," remarked Walter. "I am so anxious to hear your views upon one or two points. What, for instance, do you think of Barker, the dead man's valet?"

Herbert Trendall hesitated, and for a moment twisted his moustache. He was a marvellously alert man, an unusually good linguist, and a cosmopolitan to his finger-tips. He had been a detective-sergeant in the T Division of Metropolitan Police for years before his appointment as director of that section. He knew more of the criminal undercurrents on the Continent than any living Englishman, and it was he who furnished accurate information to the Sûreté in Paris concerning the great Humbert swindle.

"Well," he said, "if I recollect aright, the inquiries regarding him were not altogether satisfactory. Previous to his engagement by Harry he had, it seems, been valet to a man named Mitchell, a horse-trainer of rather shady repute."

"Where is he now?"

"I really don't know, but I can easily find out—I gave orders that he was not to be lost sight of." And, scribbling a hasty memorandum, he pressed the electric button upon the arm of his chair.

His secretary, a tall, thin, deep-eyed man, entered, and to him he gave the note.

"Well, let us proceed while they are looking up the information," the chief went on. "Harry Bellairs, as you know, was on the staff of Sir Hugh Elcombe, that dear, harmless old friend of yours who inspects troops and seems to do odd jobs for Whitehall. I knew Harry before he went to Sandhurst; his people, who lived up near Durham, were very civil to me once or twice and gave me some excellent pheasant-shooting. It seems that on that day in September he came up to town from Salisbury—but you know all the facts, of course?"

"I know all the facts as far as they were related in the papers," Walter said. He did not reveal the results of the close independent inquiries he had already made—results which had utterly astounded, and at the same time mystified, him.

"Well," said Trendall, "what the Press published was mostly fiction. Even the evidence given before the coroner was utterly unreliable. It was mainly given in order to mislead the jury and prevent public suspicion that there had been a sensational tragedy—I arranged it so."

"And there had been a tragedy, no doubt?"

"Of course," declared the other, leaning both elbows upon the table before him and looking straight into the novelist's pale face. "Harry came up from Salisbury, the bearer of some papers from Sir Hugh. He duly arrived at Waterloo, discharged his duty, and went to his rooms in Half Moon Street. Now, according to Barker's story, his master arrived home early in the afternoon, and sent him out on a message to Richmond. He returned a little after five, when he found his master absent."

"That was the account he gave at the inquest," remarked Fetherston.

"Yes; but it was not the truth. On testing the man's story I discovered that at three-eighteen he was in the Leicester Lounge, in Leicester Square, with an ill-dressed old man, who was described as being short and wearing a rusty, old silk hat. They sat at a table near the window drinking ginger-ale, so that the barmaid could not overhear, and held a long and confidential chat."

"He may afterwards have gone down to Richmond," his friend suggested.

"No; he remained there until past four, and then went round to the Café Royal, where he met another man, a foreigner, of about his own age, believed to have been a Swiss, with whom he took a cup of coffee. The man was a stranger at the café, probably a stranger in London. Barker was in the habit of doing a little betting, and I believe the men he met were some of his betting friends."

"Then you disbelieve the Richmond story?"

"Entirely. What seems more than probable is that Harry gave his man the afternoon off because he wished to entertain somebody clandestinely at his rooms—a woman, perhaps. Yet, as far as I've been able to discover, no one in Half Moon Street saw any stranger of either sex go to his chambers that afternoon."

"You said that you believed the motive of the crime—if crime it really was—was jealousy," remarked Fetherston, thoughtfully rubbing his shaven chin.

"And I certainly do. Harry was essentially a lady's man. He was tall, and an extremely handsome fellow, a thorough-going sportsman, an excellent polo player, a perfect dancer, and a splendid rider to hounds. Little wonder was it that he was about to make a very fine match, for only a month before his death he confided to me in secret the fact—a fact known to me alone—that he was engaged to pretty little Lady Blanche Herbert, eldest daughter of the Earl of Warsborough."

"Engaged to Lady Blanche!" echoed the novelist in surprise, for the girl in question was the prettiest of that year's débutantes as well as a great heiress in her own right.

"Yes. Harry was a lucky dog, poor fellow. The engagement, known only to the Warsboroughs and myself, was to have been kept secret for a year. Now, it is my firm opinion, Fetherston, that some other woman, one of Harry's many female friends, had got wind of it, and very cleverly had her revenge."

"Upon what grounds do you suspect that?" asked the other eagerly—for surely the problem was becoming more inscrutable than any of those in the remarkable romances which he penned.

"Well, my conclusions are drawn from several very startling facts—facts which, of course, have never leaked out to the public. But before I reveal them to you I'd like to hear what opinion you've formed yourself."

"I'm convinced that Harry Bellairs met with foul play, and I'm equally certain that the man Barker lied in his depositions before the coroner. He knows the whole story, and has been paid to keep a still tongue."

"There I entirely agree with you," Trendall declared quickly; while at that moment the secretary returned with a slip of paper attached to the query which his chief had written. "Ah!" he exclaimed, glancing at the paper, "I see that the fellow Barker, who was a chauffeur before he entered Harry's service, has set up a motor-car business in Southampton."

"You believe him to have been an accessory, eh?"

"Yes, a dupe in the hands of a clever woman."

"Of what woman?" asked Walter, holding his breath.

"As you know, Harry was secretary to your friend Elcombe. Well, I happen to know that his pretty stepdaughter, Enid Orlebar, was over head and ears in love with him. My daughter Ethel and she are friends, and she confided this fact to Ethel only a month before the tragedy."

"Then you actually suggest that a—a certain woman murdered him?" gasped Fetherston.

"Well—there is no actual proof—only strong suspicion!"

Walter Fetherston held his breath. Did the suspicions of this man, from whom no secret was safe, run in the same direction as his own?

"There was in the evidence given before the coroner a suggestion that the captain had dined somewhere in secret," he said.

"I know. But we have since cleared up that point. He was not given poison while he sat at dinner, for we know that he dined at the Bachelors' with a man named Friend. They had a hurried meal, because Friend had to catch a train to the west of England."

"And afterwards?"

"He left the club in a taxi at eight. But what his movements exactly were we cannot ascertain. He returned to his chambers at a quarter past nine in order to change his clothes and go back to Salisbury, but he was almost immediately taken ill. Barker declares that his master sent him out on an errand instantly on his return, and that when he came in he found him dying."

"Did he not explain what the errand was?"

"No; he refused to say."

In that refusal Fetherston saw that the valet, whatever might be his fault, was loyal to his dead master and to Enid Orlebar. He had not told how Bellairs had sent to Hill Street that scribbled note, and how the distressed girl had torn along to Half Moon Street to arrive too late to speak for the last time with the man she loved. Was Barker an enemy, or was he a friend?

"That refusal arouses distinct suspicion, eh?"

"Barker has very cleverly concealed some important fact," replied the keen-faced man who controlled that section of Scotland Yard. "Bellairs, feeling deadly ill, and knowing that he had fallen a victim to some enemy, sent Barker out for somebody in whom to confide. The man claimed that the errand that his master sent him upon was one of confidence."

"And to whom do you think he was sent?"

"To a woman," was Trendall's slow and serious reply. "To the woman who murdered him!"

"But if she had poisoned him, surely he would not send for her?" exclaimed Fetherston.

"At the moment he was not aware of the woman's jealousy, or of the subtle means used to cause his untimely end. He was unsuspicious of that cruel, deadly hatred lying so deep in the woman's breast. Lady Blanche, on hearing of the death of her lover, was terribly grieved, and is still abroad. She, of course, made all sorts of wild allegations, but in none of them did we find any basis of fact. Yet, curiously enough, her views were exactly the same as my own—that one of poor Harry's lady friends had been responsible for his fatal seizure."

"Then, after all the inquiries you instituted, you were really unable to point to the actual assassin?" asked Fetherston rather more calmly.

"Not exactly unable—unwilling, rather."

"How do you mean unwilling? You were Bellairs' friend!"

"Yes, I was. He was one of the best and most noble fellows who ever wore the King's uniform, and he died by the treacherous hand of a jealous woman—a clever woman who had paid Barker to maintain silence."

"But, if the dying man wished to make a statement, he surely would not have sent for the very person by whose hand he had fallen," Fetherston protested. "Surely that is not a logical conclusion!"

"Bellairs was not certain that his sudden seizure was not due to something he had eaten at the club—remember he was not certain that her hand had administered the fatal drug," replied Trendall. A hard, serious expression rested upon his face. "He had, no doubt, seen her between the moment when he left the Bachelors' and his arrival, a little over an hour afterwards, at Half Moon Street—where, or how, we know not. Perhaps he drove to her house, and there, at her invitation, drank something. Yet, however it happened, the result was the same; she killed him, even though she was the first friend to whom he sent in his distress—killed him because she had somehow learnt of his secret engagement to Lady Blanche Herbert."

"Yours is certainly a remarkable theory," admitted Walter Fetherston. "May I ask the name of the woman to whom you refer?"

"Yes; she was the woman who loved him so passionately," replied Trendall—"Enid Orlebar."

"Then you really suspect her?" asked Fetherston breathlessly.

"Only as far as certain facts are concerned; and that since Harry's death she has been unceasingly interested in the career of the man Barker."

"Are you quite certain of this?" gasped Fetherston.

"Quite; it is proved beyond the shadow of a doubt."

"Then Enid Orlebar killed him?"

"That if she actually did not kill him with her own hand, she at least knew well who did," was the other's cold, hard reply. "She killed him for two reasons; first, because by poor Harry's death she prevented the exposure of some great secret!"

Walter Fetherston made no reply.

Those inquiries, instituted by Scotland Yard, had resulted in exactly the same theory as his own independent efforts—that Harry Bellairs had been secretly done to death by the woman, who, upon her own admission to him, had been summoned to the young officer's side.