Dead Men's Money Part 18

"And we heard no more until we got your wire yesterday from Dundee, Mr. Lindsey," said Murray; "and that was followed not so very long after by one from the police at Largo, which I reported to you."

"Now, here's an important question," put in Mr. Lindsey, a bit hurriedly, as if something had just struck him. "Did you communicate the news from Largo to Hathercleugh?"

"We did, at once," answered Murray. "I telephoned immediately to Lady Carstairs-I spoke to her over the wire myself, telling her what the Largo police reported."

"What time would that be?" asked Mr. Lindsey, sharply.

"Half-past eleven," replied Murray.

"Then, according to what you tell me, she left Hathercleugh soon after you telephoned to her?" said Mr. Lindsey.

"According to what the butler told us this morning," answered Murray, "Lady Carstairs went out on her bicycle at exactly noon yesterday-and she's never been seen or heard of since."

"She left no message at the house?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"None! And," added the superintendent, significantly, "she didn't mention to the butler that I'd just telephoned to her. It's a queer business, this, I'm thinking, Mr. Lindsey. But-what's your own news?-and what's Moneylaws got to tell about Sir Gilbert?"

Mr. Lindsey took no notice of the last question. He sat in silence for a while, evidently thinking. And in the end he pointed to some telegram forms that lay on the superintendent's desk.

"There's one thing must be done at once, Murray," he said; "and I'll take the responsibility of doing it myself. We must communicate with the Carstairs family solicitors."

"I'd have done it, as soon as the butler brought me the news about Lady Carstairs," remarked Murray, "but I don't know who they are."

"I do!" answered Mr. Lindsey. "Holmshaw and Portlethorpe of Newcastle. Here," he went on, pa.s.sing a telegram form to me. "Write out this message: 'Sir Gilbert and Lady Carstairs are both missing from Hathercleugh under strange circ.u.mstances please send some authorized person here at once.' Sign that with my name, Hugh-and take it to the post-office, and come back here."

When I got back, Mr. Lindsey had evidently told Murray and Chisholm all about my adventures with Sir Gilbert, and the two men regarded me with a new interest as if I had suddenly become a person of the first importance. And the superintendent at once fell upon me for my reticence.

"You made a bad mistake, young man, in keeping back what you ought to have told at the inquest on Phillips!" he said, reprovingly. "Indeed, you ought to have told it before that-you should have told us."

"Aye!-if I'd only known as much as that," began Chisholm, "I'd have-"

"You'd probably have done just what he did!" broke in Mr. Lindsey-"held your tongue till you knew more!-so let that pa.s.s-the lad did what he thought was for the best. You never suspected Sir Gilbert of any share in these affairs, either of you-so come, now!"

"Why, as to that, Mr. Lindsey," remarked Murray, who looked somewhat nettled by this last pa.s.sage, "you didn't suspect him yourself-or, if you did, you kept it uncommonly quiet!"

"Does Mr. Lindsey suspect him now?" asked Chisholm, a bit maliciously.

"For if he does, maybe he'll give us a hand."

Mr. Lindsey looked at both of them in a way that he had of looking at people of whose abilities he had no very great idea-but there was some indulgence in the look on this occasion.

"Well, now that things have come to this pa.s.s," he said, "and after Sir Gilbert's deliberate attempt to get rid of Moneylaws-to murder him, in fact-I don't mind telling you the truth. I do suspect Sir Gilbert of the murder of Crone-and that's why I produced that ice-ax in court the other day. And-when he saw that ice-ax, he knew that I suspected him, and that's why he took Moneylaws out with him, intending to rid himself of a man that could give evidence against him. If I'd known that Moneylaws was going with him, I'd have likely charged Sir Gilbert there and then!-anyway, I wouldn't have let Moneylaws go."

"Aye!-you know something, then?" exclaimed Murray. "You're in possession of some evidence that we know nothing about?"

"I know this-and I'll make you a present of it, now," answered Mr. Lindsey. "As you're aware, I'm a bit of a mountaineer-you know that I've spent a good many of my holidays in Switzerland, climbing. Consequently, I know what alpenstocks and ice-axes are. And when I came to reflect on the circ.u.mstances of Crone's murder, I remember that not so long since, happening to be out along the riverside, I chanced across Sir Gilbert Carstairs using a very late type of ice-ax as a walking-stick-as he well could do, and might have picked up in his hall as some men'll pick up a golf-stick to go walking with, and I've done that myself, hundred of times. And I knew that I had an ice-ax of that very pattern at home-and so I just shoved it under the doctor's nose in court, and asked him if that hole in Crone's head couldn't have been made by the spike of it. Why? Because I knew that Carstairs would be present in court, and I wanted to see if he would catch what I was after!"

"And-you think he did?" asked the superintendent, eagerly.

"I kept the corner of an eye on him," answered Mr. Lindsey, knowingly. "He saw what I was after! He's a clever fellow, that-but he took the mask off his face for the thousandth part of a second. I saw!"

The two listeners were so amazed by this that they sat in silence for a while, staring at Mr. Lindsey with open-mouthed amazement.

"It's a dark, dark business!" sighed Murray at last. "What's the true meaning of it, do you think, Mr. Lindsey?"

"Some secret that's being gradually got at," replied Mr. Lindsey, promptly. "That's what it is. And there's nothing to do, just now, but wait until somebody comes from Holmshaw and Portlethorpe's. Holmshaw is an old man-probably Portlethorpe himself will come along. He may know something-they've been family solicitors to the Carstairs lot for many a year. But it's my impression that Sir Gilbert Carstairs is away!-and that his wife's after him. And if you want to be doing something, try to find out where she went on her bicycle yesterday-likely, she rode to some station in the neighbourhood, and then took train."

Mr. Lindsey and I then went to the office, and we had not been there long when a telegram arrived from Newcastle. Mr. Portlethorpe himself was coming on to Berwick immediately. And in the middle of the afternoon he arrived-a middle-aged, somewhat nervous-mannered man, whom I had seen two or three times when we had business at the a.s.sizes, and whom Mr. Lindsey evidently knew pretty well, judging by their familiar manner of greeting each other.

"What's all this, Lindsey?" asked Mr. Portlethorpe, as soon as he walked in, and without any preliminaries. "Your wire says Sir Gilbert and Lady Carstairs have disappeared. Does that mean-"

"Did you read your newspaper yesterday?" interrupted Mr. Lindsey, who knew that what we had read in the Dundee Advertiser had also appeared in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle. "Evidently not, Portlethorpe, or you'd have known, in part at any rate, what my wire meant. But I'll tell you in a hundred words-and then I'll ask you a couple of questions before we go any further."

He gave Mr. Portlethorpe an epitomized account of the situation, and Mr. Portlethorpe listened attentively to the end. And without making any comment he said three words:

"Well-your questions?"

"The first," answered Mr. Lindsey, "is this-How long is it since you saw or heard from Sir Gilbert Carstairs?"

"A week-by letter," replied Mr. Portlethorpe.

"The second," continued Mr. Lindsey, "is much more important-much! What, Portlethorpe, do you know of Sir Gilbert Carstairs?"

Mr. Portlethorpe hesitated a moment. Then he replied, frankly and with evident candour.

"To tell you the truth, Lindsey," he said, "beyond knowing that he is Sir Gilbert Carstairs-nothing!"

CHAPTER XXVI

MRS. RALSTON OF CRAIG

Mr. Lindsey made no remark on this answer, and for a minute or two he and Mr. Portlethorpe sat looking at each other. Then Mr. Portlethorpe bent forward a little, his hands on his knees, and gave Mr. Lindsey a sort of quizzical but earnest glance.

"Now, why do you ask that last question?" he said quietly. "You've some object?"

"It's like this," answered Mr. Lindsey. "Here's a man comes into these parts to take up a t.i.tle and estates, who certainly had been out of them for thirty years. His recent conduct is something more than suspicious-no one can deny that he left my clerk there to drown, without possibility of help! That's intended murder! And so I ask, What do you, his solicitor, know of him-his character, his doings during the thirty years he was away? And you answer-nothing!"

"Just so!" a.s.sented Mr. Portlethorpe. "And n.o.body does hereabouts. Except that he is Sir Gilbert Carstairs, n.o.body in these parts knows anything about him-how should they? We, I suppose, know more than anybody-and we know just a few bare facts."

"I think you'll have to let me know what these bare facts are," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "And Moneylaws, too. Moneylaws has a definite charge to bring against this man-and he'll bring it, if I've anything to do with it! He shall press it!-if he can find Carstairs. And I think you'd better tell us what you know, Portlethorpe. Things have got to come out."

"I've no objection to telling you and Mr. Moneylaws what we know," answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "After all, it is, in a way, common knowledge-to some people, at any rate. And to begin with, you are probably aware that the recent history of this Carstairs family is a queer one. You know that old Sir Alexander had two sons and one daughter-the daughter being very much younger than her brothers. When the two sons, Michael and Gilbert, were about from twenty-one to twenty-three, both quarrelled with their father, and cleared out of this neighbourhood altogether; it's always believed that Sir Alexander gave Michael a fair lot of money to go and do for himself, each hating the other's society, and that Michael went off to America. As to Gilbert, he got money at that time, too, and went south, and was understood to be first a medical student and then a doctor, in London and abroad. There is no doubt at all that both sons did get money-considerable amounts,-because from the time they went away, no allowance was ever paid to them, nor did Sir Alexander ever have any relations with them. What the cause of the quarrel was, n.o.body knows; but the quarrel itself, and the ensuing separation, were final-father and sons never resumed relations. And when the daughter, now Mrs. Ralston of Craig, near here, grew up and married, old Sir Alexander pursued a similar money policy towards her-he presented her with thirty thousand pounds the day she was married, and told her she'd never have another penny from him. I tell you, he was a queer man."

"Queer lot altogether!" muttered Mr. Lindsey. "And interesting!"

"Oh, it's interesting enough!" agreed Mr. Portlethorpe, with a chuckle. "Deeply so. Well, that's how things were until about a year before old Sir Alexander died-which, as you know, is fourteen months since. As I say, about six years before his death, formal notice came of the death of Michael Carstairs, who, of course, was next in succession to the t.i.tle. It came from a solicitor in Havana, where Michael had died-there were all the formal proofs. He had died unmarried and intestate, and his estate amounted to about a thousand pounds. Sir Alexander put the affair in our hands; and of course, as he was next-of-kin to his eldest son, what there was came to him. And we then pointed out to him that now that Mr. Michael Carstairs was dead, Mr. Gilbert came next-he would get the t.i.tle, in any case-and we earnestly pressed Sir Alexander to make a will. And he was always going to, and he never did-and he died intestate, as you know. And at that, of course, Sir Gilbert Carstairs came forward, and-"

"A moment," interrupted Mr. Lindsey. "Did anybody know where he was at the time of his father's death?"

"n.o.body hereabouts, at any rate," replied Mr. Portlethorpe. "Neither his father, nor his sister, nor ourselves had heard of him for many a long year. But he called on us within twenty-four hours of his father's death."

"With proof, of course, that he was the man he represented himself to be?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"Oh, of course-full proof!" answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "Papers, letters, all that sort of thing-all in order. He had been living in London for a year or two at that time; but, according to his own account, he had gone pretty well all over the world during the thirty years' absence. He'd been a ship's surgeon-he'd been attached to the medical staff of more than one foreign army, and had seen service-he'd been on one or two voyages of discovery-he'd lived in every continent-in fact, he'd had a very adventurous life, and lately he'd married a rich American heiress."