This House to Let Part 29

Hugh left with a great sense of relief. He felt that the matter was in very capable hands. If Bryant told him that he was following a will-o'-the-wisp, then the whole matter could drop. The fact of Mrs Spencer's relations with Tommy Esmond were hardly important enough to justify him in disturbing his friend's domestic felicity.

At the end of three days the detective rang him up. The message was brief: "Come and see me."

Bryant received him in his room. "Well, Major Murchison, your suspicions are quite correct. I have been very close to the interesting pair. Mrs Spencer has camouflaged herself very well, but beyond doubt she is Norah Burton. Our gaol-bird, George Burton, has been less particular. He has not disguised himself at all; the few years have made little or no impression on him. He has hid himself in the City, trusting that n.o.body he ever knew would come across him."

"Then I was right, after all, Mr Bryant. And now what would you advise me to do? This woman is the worst type of adventuress card-sharper all through--at least a confederate, in Paris with Burton, in London with Tommy Esmond. To be fair, we cannot say how much or how little she knew of his forgery business."

"Your idea is to turn her out of her husband's house, with or without scandal?" queried the detective.

"Without scandal, if possible. I would prefer that. I suppose you would back me up by saying that you have recognised her and this scoundrel who was yesterday her brother and is to-day her cousin?"

"If you push me to it, I will, Major Murchison, for the sake of our old acquaintance. But, for reasons which I stated last time we met, I don't want to mix myself up in a purely private affair. The woman caught hold of a fool in your friend Pomfret; she has caught hold of another equally silly fool in your friend Mr Spencer. Please forgive my blunt language, but it is so, is it not?"

"You are quite right, Bryant," groaned poor Hugh. "I seem fated to be mixed up in these matters. At the present moment I have a little stunt on, in which I don't require any help. A younger brother of mine has got mixed up with a young harpy in the chorus of a third-rate theatre.

The young fool has written compromising letters to her. I am trying to buy these letters. I need hardly tell you she is asking a high price.

I can't see her at my own place, for fear of my brother popping in. I have taken rooms in a suburb where I see her to carry on the bargaining."

Mr Bryant raised his hands. "Well, sir, when a woman once begins to twist a man round her little finger there is no knowing to what length he will go."

"Profoundly true, Mr Bryant. Well, what do you advise me to do?"

"For the moment, nothing. Get a little more evidence. When I watched this couple, I took my old friend Parkinson with me. He knows them now.

Get him to watch them. He will tell you where they meet, and how often. Here is his card. He will wait on you at your convenience."

"I quite see," said Hugh, as he took the proffered card. "If I can prove that they are meeting on the sly it will strengthen my hands, eh?"

"That is the idea. Of course, at the moment, I don't know which you are going to tackle first, the husband or the wife."

"I can't say myself, my mind is in such a whirl. But I feel I must avenge poor Jack Pomfret's death."

Mr Bryant rose. "You will excuse me, Major Murchison, but I have a very busy day. Make use of Parkinson; he is as keen as mustard. And if it comes to this, that you want me for purposes of identification, I am at your disposal, in Eaton Place or elsewhere."

Murchison left, but not before he had pressed a substantial cheque into Bryant's somewhat reluctant hand.

The next day he interviewed Parkinson, a lean, ascetic-looking man of the true sleuth-hound breed. He took his instructions.

"Give me a fortnight, if you please, sir; a week is hardly long enough.

I'll warrant, from what our friend Bryant has hinted to me, I will have something to report."

And he had. At the end of the fortnight he appeared. He produced a small pocket-book.

"I'm glad you didn't stipulate for only a week, sir; it was rather a blank one--only one meeting. I expect the lady couldn't get away comfortably. But the week after I was rewarded. Three meetings in that second week."

"Ah! Where do they meet?"

"At quite humble little restaurants and queer places in the City. I fancy the bucket-shop business is not very flourishing just now. For on the last two occasions when I followed them in, and sat at a table where I could observe them, I saw Mrs Spencer slip an envelope into his hand."

"Good Heavens!" cried Murchison in a tone of disgust. "She is keeping this criminal with her husband's money."

Mr Parkinson shrugged his shoulders. "A common enough case, sir, if you had seen as much of life as I have."

Hugh shuddered. The woman was depraved to the core. She could leave her house in Eaton Place, where she had been installed by her devoted and trustful husband, and journey down to some obscure eating-house in the City to meet this criminal who lived upon her bounty.

Well, the chain of evidence was complete. Bryant would swear to the identification, and Parkinson would swear that Mrs Guy Spencer, once Norah Burton, had met George Burton clandestinely four times in a fortnight, and had supplied him with money.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

It was in his blackest and most grim mood that Hugh Murchison walked to Eaton Place, for the purpose of paying an afternoon call upon Mrs Spencer. He had not been near her since the night of the dinner, had only left cards. And, very fortunately, he had not come across Guy in the interval.

On that particular night he had reproached himself with indiscretion.

He had availed himself of Fairfax's information to tax her with meeting Tommie Esmond at Charing Cross Station on the morning of his flight to the Continent.

And at the moment that he had made that dramatic announcement, the drawing-room door had opened to admit the unsuspecting husband. Hugh had left shortly after dinner, on the plea of another engagement. Had Mrs Spencer tried to take the wind out of his sails by volunteering some plausible explanation about her meeting with Esmond? She was a clever young woman; she might try to forestall him. On the other hand, she might sit tight till he forced her hand. Anyway, he was going to force it to-day, armed with the new evidence that had been furnished to him.

Mrs Spencer was not looking well. Her eyes had lost their brightness, her once charming smile was forced and mechanical.

She rose as he was announced, and advanced to him with outstretched hands, with an exaggerated air of cordiality.

"I thought you had forgotten us." She seated herself on the Chesterfield and motioned him to sit beside her. "Major Murchison, I fear I was a little rude to you the other night, you remember, just before Guy came in." She clasped her hands nervously together. "I do trust we are going to be friends."

Hugh looked at her grimly. He had no compa.s.sion for this shameless adventuress who had driven the poor foolish Pomfret to his grave, who had ensnared Guy Spencer, a man of stronger fibre, but equally powerless in the hands of an unscrupulous woman.

"Mrs Spencer--to call you by one of the many names by which you are known--we were not friends the last time I was at this house. To-day we are bitter enemies."

"What do you mean?" she faltered. "You are speaking in riddles. Why should you, the old friend of my husband, be the bitter enemy of his innocent wife?"

"His innocent wife!" repeated Hugh sternly. "Dare you look me in the face and say that my name, even if you fail to recognise me after these years, does not recall to you certain tragic episodes at Blankfield?"

"I know nothing of Blankfield." The voice was low but very unsteady.

"You put that question to me the other night in a roundabout sort of way. My answer is the same--I know nothing of Blankfield."

There was a long pause. Hugh continued to look at her with his steady and disconcerting gaze. Suddenly she rose, and paced restlessly up and down the long drawing-room.

"Major Murchison, put your cards on the table. You have come into this house, an old friend of my husband's; I have done my best to make you welcome. But you have some spite against me. Of what do you accuse me?"

"I will put my cards on the table," answered Hugh in his inflexible voice. "On the night I met you at Carlton House Terrace I had my suspicions; no two women could be so exactly alike. Since that night I have been picking up information here and there. I have now got a complete chain of evidence."

"Evidence of what?" she gasped, still pursuing her restless walk up and down the room. "Of my having met Tommie Esmond at Charing Cross Station? Would you like to hear the true history of that?"

"I shall be pleased to hear any explanation you like to offer, with the reservation that I must please myself as to whether I accept it or not."

"You are very hard, Major Murchison. As you are not prepared to believe me, perhaps it would be better if I did not embark on this history. But Tommie Esmond is really my uncle, my mother's brother. When I was in low water he was very kind to me. I could not turn my back on him in his distress." She spoke with sudden pa.s.sion. "Of course, you, with your pharisaical way of looking at things, would say I should have forgotten all his previous kindness."

"The Tommie Esmond affair is, comparatively, a trivial one, Mrs Spencer. I am coming in a moment to graver issues. You still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to you. Oh, think well before you answer! Remember, I have told you I have overwhelming evidence. And, believe me, the task I have set out upon is far from a welcome one."

"I still say that the name of Murchison conveys nothing to me." She spoke with a certain air of a.s.surance, but he could see that she was quivering all over.

"Carry your memory back to that night at Blankfield when your so-called brother, George Burton, was arrested on a charge of forgery. You had been his decoy and accomplice in a gambling-saloon in Paris. You had inveigled my poor friend, Jack Pomfret, into a clandestine marriage a few days before. Jack, unable to survive his folly and disgrace, blew his brains out. If not in the eyes of the law, you were, morally, a murderess."