Loe raamatut: «The Lost Million», lehekülg 15

Chapter Twenty Nine
Discloses Shaw’s Secret

The Thing was ugly, hairy, and horrible – a huge dark brown tarantula, the size of a man’s palm, which, the instant it was discovered, turned and sped across the bedclothes and disappeared in the darkness.

Cardew had jumped to his feet with a wild, startled ejaculation of horror, having switched on the light, but though we rapidly searched the room high and low, yet nowhere could we find the horrible arachnid. But the secret was out! The revolting hairy thing, which had on that night in Arnay-le-Duc appeared to me like a weird hand, was that huge venomous spider whose bite was as fatal as that of a cobra!

Armed with sticks, Cardew and I groped into every hole and corner of that room, but it had vanished so suddenly that we could not decide in which direction it had gone.

“Well!” gasped my friend, amazed. “By Gad! I never expected that!”

“Neither did I,” was my breathless reply. “But the reason of poor Guy’s death is now vividly apparent. He was bitten by that arachnid, which Shaw, in all probability, purposely left in his young friend’s library, prior to returning home on that fatal night. I think I realise the truth!” I cried. “This particular species of lycosa tarantula is, I have read, found in the primeval forests of Peru, and will only attack human beings when they are motionless or asleep. Its bite is most deadly. It causes stupor, followed by coma or paralysis, and the victim rapidly dies. Yet if the mark of its bite be concealed and unsuspected, as it may easily be in the hair, then the symptoms are identical with those of inflammation of the brain – the disease which from poor Guy is supposed to have died!”

“Then you suspect Shaw of having kept the horrible thing as a pet – eh!” he gasped, staring at me amazed.

“Both as a pet and as an instrument of murder,” I replied. “The thing being nocturnal in its habits would, if introduced into a room, remain carefully hidden all day, and only attack the victim at night while he is sleeping. I had a narrow escape while motoring in France with Shaw,” – and then, in a few words, I described my own experience, and also Asta’s previous sight of what had appeared to both of us as a weird, uncanny hand.

“Then this scoundrel Shaw evidently intended that you should die!” he exclaimed. “By Jove! old chap, you have had a narrow escape!”

“Yes. He must have carried his dangerous pet in secret in a box, I suppose. And must have taken it away with him when he fled from Aix.”

Then, suddenly recollecting that curious whistle of his, I realised how Shaw had used it in order to recall the great spider.

“Put out the light, Cardew,” I said. “Have your torch ready. I have an idea.”

“But – ” he hesitated, in apprehension.

“Have no fear. We want to see the hideous thing again – and to kill it,” I said.

The next second the room was once more in darkness, and after a few moments I began to imitate softly that peculiar whistle that I had learnt from Shaw.

Then we waited in breathless silence, not moving a muscle.

Again and again I whistled, but we could hear no movement. The huge spider was, we felt assured, somewhere in the room, but where we could not discover.

“Switch on the light,” I cried at last, and in a second the place became illuminated again, when, to our surprise, halfway down the pink-and-white cretonne curtains at the head of the bed the ugly arachnid, with its long claws, stood revealed and startled at the sudden turning on of the light.

He had crept slowly down from the small canopy above the bed, seeking the place where I had lain.

In an instant he turned to ascend the curtain again, but we were too quick for him, for with two or three sharp cuts with our sticks we brought him down, and he was quickly stretched dead upon the floor.

I went forth boldly to search for Shaw, but could not find him. His room was in disorder, for he had apparently seized some things, packed hurriedly and left.

The car we heard leaving the house while we were in Asta’s bedroom had evidently been his!

He had escaped at the very moment when we had discovered the ingenious means by which he had committed his crimes.

We called the three doctors and showed them the huge dead spider. Then, in a moment, all three agreed that Guy Nicholson had succumbed to its bite, and examination of poor unconscious Asta’s hair showed plainly where she, too, had been bitten just above the right ear. The trio of medical men stood utterly astounded. No time, however, was lost by Sir George in applying various antidotes and restoratives, and by dawn he came to me with the joyful news that she had taken a turn for the better.

Our knowledge of the real cause of the ailment had only been gained in the very nick of time.

Further examination of the walls of Asta’s room resulted in the amazing discovery that the door of a cupboard in the wall beside the fireplace was warped and when closed left a space of an inch open at the bottom. The cupboard was lined inside with wood panelling, and in one panel at the back a tiny trapdoor about four inches square had been cut, so that it could be removed from within the corresponding cupboard which was in Shaw’s room adjoining.

Investigation showed that the cupboard in question was the one secured by those two patent locks, and on breaking it open we found that in it Shaw had kept the venomous spider, for both water and food were there, as well as a thick india-rubber glove which he no doubt used when he wished to handle his hideous pet, and a small wire cage in which it could be carried.

In order to release it into Asta’s room he had only to move the small piece of cut panel in the back of its place of imprisonment, and, glad to escape, the thing would pass through, as no doubt it had done on the night when my well-beloved had been attacked.

To recall it, Shaw had only to whistle. The spider knew the call.

After the attack upon Asta the scoundrel had evidently lost the reptile in the confusion, and disliking the light it had found refuge on the small cretonne canopy fixed against the ceiling, over the head of the bed.

Knowledge that its bite had not proved fatal, as in Nicholson’s case, and that Asta might recover and describe what she had seen, together with the fact that he had been unable to induce his pet to return to him, had terrified him, and he had escaped.

Quickly I telephoned to the police in Northampton, and very soon two officers came out on bicycles, and to them we made a statement. Then, an hour later, a hue-and-cry was flashed across the wires for the assassin’s arrest.

Slowly – very slowly – Asta recovered consciousness, but I was not allowed to see her, nor was she allowed, indeed, to speak.

Yet the knowledge that my beloved would again be given back to life was, in itself, all-sufficient for me.

I had at least solved two points in that amazing mystery of avarice and cunning. I had discovered the cruel ingenious manner in which Guy Nicholson had been killed because of the knowledge he had accidentally gained, and I had also established the fact that Shaw intended that poor Asta should succumb.

But what was the motive of this double crime? That point was, in itself, the most puzzling point of all.

Chapter Thirty
The Third of November

Through the whole of the following day I remained at the Hall, but as may be imagined the consternation was great when it became known to the servants, and through them to the countryside, that Mr Harvey Shaw, the eminently respectable county magistrate, was being searched for by the police.

Curious how quickly popularity disappears at the first breath of scandal. The very persons who had been loudest in Shaw’s praises were now the first to hint at dark things and declare that they had all along suspected him of leading a double life.

Sir George remained, but the two local practitioners went forth to do their daily rounds. Asta had greatly improved, and though ordered not to refer to the tragic events of the past few hours, I was allowed to see her for five minutes about seven o’clock.

Wan and very pale, she was in a blue silk dressing-jacket, propped up with pillows. As I entered, she put out her small white hand and a single trembling word, my name, escaped her lips.

I saw in the shaded light that her big eyes were filled with tears – tears of joy by which mine were also dimmed.

“I’ve – I’ve had such a bad dream!” she managed to say. “But, oh! Mr Kemball, how glad I am that it is only a dream, and that the doctor says I am getting better.”

“I hope, Miss Seymour, that you’ll be quite right and about again within a week,” exclaimed Sir George cheerily.

And hearing those words she turned her wonderful eyes full on mine.

What words of sympathy and congratulation I uttered I scarcely know. How can I remember! I only recollect that when the great specialist touched me upon the shoulder as sign to leave her bedside, I bent and kissed her soft white hand.

All through the day and all that evening I remained eagerly expecting to hear news of Shaw’s arrest. Yet, knowing what a past-master he was in the art of evading the police, I despaired that he would ever be caught and brought up for punishment.

As I sat smoking in his armchair in the big morning-room I reflected deeply, and saw with what marvellous cunning and forethought he had misled Nicholson, Asta, myself – and, indeed, everybody – into a belief that he was devoted to the girl whom, so many years ago, he had adopted and brought up as his own daughter.

That decision to kill her lover and afterwards kill her was no sudden impulse, but the result of a carefully thought-out and ingenious plan. Whether the huge tarantula had been put into my room at that French inn with evil intent, or whether it had got loose, and had concealed itself there, I could not determine. Yet in the case of Guy and Asta there must, I decided, have been some very strong incentive – a motive which none had ever dreamed. As regards the incident at Scarborough, he must have placed the tarantula in Asta’s room in secret, and have succeeded in regaining possession of it. Indeed, inquiry I afterwards made showed that he had bribed one of the maid-servants while every one was absent to show him the house, his explanation being that he thought of purchasing it.

Shaw was a master-criminal. Bold and defiant, yet he was at the same time ever ready with means for escape, in case he was cornered. His exploit in the hotel at Aix showed how cunning and clever he was in subterfuge. He preserved a cloak of the highest respectability, and had even succeeded in being placed on the roll of Justices of the Peace – he, the man who regarded murder as the practice of a science, had actually sentenced poachers, wife-beaters, tramps, and drunkards to terms of imprisonment?

And yet so clever had he been that the Criminal Investigation Department had never recognised in the wealthy tenant of Lydford Hall the fugitive for whom they had so long been in search.

A second night I remained there, so as to be near the woman I loved so fervently.

Sir George gave me an assurance, as we sat together before we turned in for a few hours’ sleep, that his patient was progressing favourably, and that I might again see her the next day. Cardew also remained, and as we three sat smoking we discussed the strange affair, wondering what motive the man Shaw could possibly have in attempting so ingeniously and in such cold blood a second crime. But we could arrive at no definite conclusion. The whole affair was entirely shrouded in mystery.

In the morning I was permitted to see Asta again. She seemed much better and spoke quite brightly.

“Mr Kemball,” she said, after we had been chatting for some minutes, “I – I – I want to tell you something – something very important – when we are alone.”

“No, not now. Miss Seymour,” interrupted Sir George, shaking his finger at his patient, and laughing. “Later on – a little later on. You must not excite yourself to-day.”

And so, with a pretty pout, she was compelled to remain silent at the doctor’s orders.

I suppose I must have been there a full quarter of an hour, though the time passed so rapidly that it only appeared like a few moments. Then I bade her be of good cheer and went forth again.

She had made no mention of the man who was a fugitive.

The only poignant remark she had made was a warning.

“Be careful when you go into my bedroom. There is something in there,” she had said. But I had only laughed and promised her that I would not intrude.

About eleven o’clock Redwood arrived, and as he met me in the hall he pushed a copy of that day’s Times under my nose, asking —

“Seen this, Mr Kemball? It concerns you, I fancy. That’s the name you mentioned yesterday, isn’t it?”

Eagerly I scanned the lines which he indicated. It was an advertisement, which read —

“Re Melvill, Arnold. – Will the gentleman to whom Mr Melvill Arnold has entrusted a certain ancient object in bronze kindly deliver it according to promise, first communicating with Messrs Fryer and Davidson, solicitors, 196 London Wall, London, E.C.”

I read it again and again.

Then of a sudden I recollected that it was the third of November. On that day I had instructions to deliver the bronze cylinder to the first person who made application for it!

The low, soft-spoken words of the dying man as he had handed me the heavy cylinder, bidding me keep it in safe custody, recurred to me as I stood there with the newspaper in my hand. So I resolved to go at once to London, and call upon the firm who had advertised.

Soon after three o’clock, therefore, I ascended in the lift of a large block of offices in London Wall, and entered the swing doors of Messrs Fryer and Davidson.

When asked by the clerk for my name, I gave a card, adding that I had called in response to the advertisement, and a few moments later found myself in a comfortable private room with a thin, clean-shaven, thin-faced, alert-looking man of middle age, who introduced himself as Mr Cyril Fryer, the head of the firm.

After thanking me for my call he said —

“Perhaps, Mr Kemball, I may tell you briefly what I know of our client Mr Melvill Arnold’s rather eccentric action. He lived mostly abroad in recent years for certain private reasons, and one day, early this year, we received from him a somewhat curious letter upon the notepaper of the Carlton Hotel, saying that he had returned to England unexpectedly, and that he had entrusted a certain bronze cylinder, containing something very important, to the care of a friend. That friend was, curiously enough, not named, but he instructed us to advertise to-day – the third of November. We made inquiry at the Carlton, but he was unknown there. To-day we have advertised, according to our client’s instructions, and you are here in response.”

“There is considerable mystery surrounding this affair, Mr Fryer,” I exclaimed in reply.

“I do not doubt it. Our client, whom I have known for a good many years, was a very reserved and mysterious man,” replied the solicitor, leaning back in his padded chair.

“Well,” I said, “I met him on board ship between Naples and London,” and then in detail described his sudden illness, how he had induced me to accept the trust, and his death, a narrative to which Mr Fryer listened with greatest interest.

“Then the letter must have been written on the afternoon of his arrival in London. He probably wrote it in the smoking-room of the Carlton. But why he should seek to mislead us, I cannot imagine,” exclaimed the solicitor.

“I recollect,” I said. “I was with him in a taxi, when he stopped at the Carlton and went inside, asking me to wait. I did so, and he returned in about a quarter of an hour. In the meantime he must have written to you. He was very ill then, and that same evening he died.”

“He did not mention us?”

“He made no mention whatever of any friends, save one – a Mr Dawnay, to whom I afterwards delivered a note.”

“Dawnay?” repeated Mr Fryer. “You mean Harvey Shaw?”

“Exactly. So you know him, eh?”

The solicitor nodded in the affirmative, the deep lines upon his thin face becoming more accentuated.

I then told him of his client’s wilful destruction of a large quantity of English banknotes which he had compelled me to burn, whereat the man seated at his table laughed grimly, saying —

“I do not think we need regret their destruction. They were better burnt.”

“Why?”

“Well – because they were not genuine ones.”

“But surely – your client was not a forger!” I cried.

“Certainly not. He was a great man. Cruelly misjudged by the public, he was compelled in recent years to hide his real identity beneath another name, and live in strictest retirement. His actions were put down as eccentricities, but he was a great thinker, a wonderful organiser, marvellously modern among modern men, a man whose financial schemes brought millions into the pockets of those associated with him, yet whose knowledge of ancient Egypt and dry-as-dust Egyptology was perhaps unique. But above all he was ever honest, upright and just.”

“He was a complete enigma to me,” I declared. “As he was to most people. I who have been his legal adviser and friend through much adversity, alone understood him. I was not even aware of his death. If he took a liking to you I shall not be surprised to find that he has left you a substantial legacy.”

“He gave me a present before he died,” I said, and told him of the banknotes I had found in the envelope, and also that I held the cylinder in the security of the Safe Deposit Company’s vaults in Chancery Lane.

Finding the solicitor was perfectly frank and open with me, I related the curious and startling circumstances which had occurred within my knowledge since I had made the acquaintance of Mr Harvey Shaw. As I sat in the fading light of that November afternoon I narrated the facts in their proper sequence just as I have herein set them down in the foregoing pages of this personal history.

The man before me sat with folded arms in almost complete silence, listening intently to every word. The twilight faded and darkness fell quickly, as it does in November in the City. He had given orders that we were not to be disturbed, and he sat silent, so transfixed by my strange story that he did not rise to switch on the light.

I told him all, everything – until I described to him the discovery of that venomous tarantula in Asta’s bedroom. Then he suddenly struck his table with his fist, and sprang to his feet, crying —

“Ah! I’ve been expecting to hear of this all along. The scoundrel meant to kill the poor girl! There were reasons – very strong reasons – for doing so.”

“What were they?” I demanded quickly. “I have told you everything, Mr Fryer. Now, be quite frank with me, I beg you – and tell me the whole truth.”

He was silent. I could hardly distinguish his thin, deeply lined face seated as he was in the shadows, his back to the window, so dark had it now become.

Presently, he rose and turned on the light, saying as he did so —

“Well, Mr Kemball, as you seem to have been so intimately associated with the closing scenes of poor Melvill Arnold’s career, I will explain the whole truth to you – even at the risk of a breach of professional confidence. My client is dead, but the dastardly attempt upon Miss Asta Seymour must be avenged – that man Harvey Shaw shall be brought to justice. Listen, and I will tell you a story stranger than most men have ever listened to – a romance of real life of which, however, every word is the truth.”

“The cylinder!” I cried. “Are you aware of what is contained in it?”

“I have not the slightest knowledge,” he declared. “That we will investigate together later – after you have heard the strange romance of the man whom you knew as Melvill Arnold.”

Chapter Thirty One
The Truth Concerning Arnold

“The real name of your friend was – as you have guessed from the threatening letters addressed to him at Kingswear, in Devon – Arnold Edgecumbe,” the solicitor commenced, leaning his elbows upon his table and looking me straight in the face. “My firm acted for his father – a wealthy manufacturer in Bradford, who, upon his death, left his son an ample fortune. Twenty years ago he married an extremely pretty woman. It was purely a love-match, and one daughter was born. Six months after that event, however, poor little Mrs Edgecumbe died of phthisis, and her husband was inconsolable over his loss. He was devoted to his wife, and the blow proved a terrible one. Soon, in order to occupy his mind, he turned his attention to financial affairs in the City, and went into partnership with a man named Henry Harford.”

“Harford!” I ejaculated. “Why, that was the man against whom he warned me! The words he wrote down are still in my possession.”

“He had strong reasons for doing so,” went on the man sitting at his table. “The combination of the pair – both of whom were fearless and successful speculators – soon raised the firm to the position of one of the best-known financial houses in London. They dealt in millions, as others deal in thousands, and both men, in the course of a few years, amassed great fortunes. Suddenly, when just in the zenith of their prosperity, a great and terrible exposure was made. It was found that they had, by promoting certain bogus companies, which had been largely taken up, netted huge profits. The shareholders, numbering many thousands of widows, clergymen, retired officers, and such-like persons, who are ever ready to swallow the bait of a well-written prospectus, became furious, and the Public Prosecutor took up the matter actively. Though my client was, I assure you, utterly blameless in the matter, and afterwards paid back every penny he had received from the transaction, nevertheless such public outcry was made against him as a swindler, that, victim of circumstances, he was compelled to fly the country. Trusting implicitly to his partner, Harford – who, by a very shrewd move, cleared himself, although he was, no doubt, the actual culprit – he, on the night of his flight, placed his little daughter, to whom he was entirely devoted, in his care, urging him to adopt her, and not to allow her to know her real father’s name.”

“What?” I cried, starting suddenly to my feet as the amazing truth flashed upon me for the first time. “Then Asta is Edgecumbe’s daughter, and Shaw’s real name is Harford!”

“Exactly. With these facts in your mind you will be able to follow me more closely.”

Again I sank back into my chair astounded.

“Well,” he went on, “ingeniously as did Harford endeavour to cover his connection with the bogus promotions – of which the Britannia Banking Corporation, which you will remember, perhaps, was one – yet the Public Prosecutor, after the accounts and books had been examined, decided that he was also a culprit, and two months after his partner’s disappearance a warrant was also issued for his arrest. Harford, always wary, had, however, on the day previously, taken little Asta with him and left for Greece, with which country we have no treaty of extradition. Meanwhile, Edgecumbe had a younger sister who had married a man of bad character, an expert forger of banknotes, named Earnshaw, and who sometimes went in the name of King, and the pair had, to a great extent, assisted Harford in his fraudulent schemes entirely unknown to Edgecumbe. The woman and her husband were adventurers of the most ingenious class, and with Harford, reaped a golden harvest in the circulation on the Continent of the clever imitations of Bank of England notes. Edgecumbe was all unconscious of this, and, indeed, only became aware of the transactions by accident. It seems that on the night of his flight from England he went to the office after it had been locked up, in order to get some cash for his journey. There was only forty pounds in the safe, but on breaking open a drawer in his partner’s table he found a big roll of new notes. He took them, and left on the table a memorandum of what he had done. Ere he arrived at Dover, however, suspicion grew upon him that the notes were not genuine. So he kept them, and said nothing. It was his first suspicion that Harford was playing a double game. Through all the years that elapsed from that day till his death they remained in his possession as evidence against Earnshaw and his accomplice, but in order that after his death they should not be found in his possession, he apparently got you to destroy them.”

“But this man Harford – or Shaw? Who was he?” I inquired eagerly.

“Of that I know very little, except that, before meeting Edgecumbe, he had lived for many years in Ecuador and Peru, where he had been engaged in the adventurous pursuit of collecting orchids and natural history specimens. Probably while there, he knew of the giant venomous tarantula, and had trained one to answer to his call,” was Mr Fryer’s reply. “Apparently, from what you have told me concerning the threatening letter, Edgecumbe’s sister suspected him of betraying her to the police, and, after serving her sentence for swindling, she and her husband again became on friendly terms with Harford, who, in the name of Harvey Shaw, was then posing as a county magnate, deriving his income partly from the proceeds of his financial transactions, and partly from the passing at various banks on the Continent the bogus notes printed in secret in a room at Ridgehill Manor. It was for that reason the police of Europe have, for the last ten years, been in search of Harford – the English police because of the charges against him in the City, and the European police because he has defrauded hundreds of bureaux-de-change all over the Continent by exchanging thousands of his marvellous imitations of Bank of England notes for foreign notes or gold. Yet being a man of such colossal ideas, such a splendid linguist, and possessing such marvellous powers of invention and clever evasion, he acted so boldly and sustained his rôle of English gentleman so well, that he often passed beneath the very noses of those in active search of him.”

“Then Edgecumbe was in entire ignorance of the true character of his late partner?” I exclaimed.

“Absolutely – until too late. He only became convinced on the day of his death. He wished you to assist him, though he warned you against him. Apparently, by slow degrees, during his rare visits to England, he had become cognisant of Harford’s criminal instincts, and of the fact that he was in possession of that venomous pet which the man had once – I believe – boastingly described as his ‘Hand,’ yet Edgecumbe was diplomatic enough not to quarrel with him. Asta, ignorant of her parentage, looked upon Harford as her father and held him in highest esteem. For Edgecumbe to denounce him would be to disillusion the girl in whom all his hopes were centred, and who regarded him, not as a father, but as a very dear friend. On arrival in England he seems to have written immediately to her, urging her to meet him, unknown to Harford, yet, when she went to the hotel it was only to discover, that he was dead.”

“But the terrible tarantula – the ‘Hand,’ as Harford termed it – surely Edgecumbe must have suspected something?” I said.

“He probably was unaware that the thing was so deadly venomous, and he never dreamed to what use the scoundrel would put it,” said the solicitor. “The truth only dawned upon him when too late! Remember he placed the utmost confidence in you – and in you alone – a stranger.”

“Yes. He gave me that bronze cylinder. I wonder what it can possibly contain?”

“Let us take a taxi down to Chancery Lane,” Mr Fryer suggested. “Let us carry it up here, open it – and ascertain.”