"Sign that paper on the table there, and you'll be out of this within twenty-four hours," replied Joseph. "And – listen, you! – you'll have good food – and wine – wine! – within ten minutes. Come on, now!"
Further silence was followed by another moan, and at the sound of that, Neale, whose teeth had been clenched firmly for the last minute or two, slipped his hand round to the pocket in which the revolver lay.
"Don't be a damned fool!" said Joseph. "Sign and have done with it! There's the pen – sign! You could have signed any time the last week and been free. Get it done – damn you, I tell you, get it done! It's your last chance. I'm off tonight. If I leave you here, it's in your grave. Nobody'll ever come near this place for weeks – you'll be dead – starved to death, mind! – long before that. Do you hear me? Come on, now! – sign!"
Neale half drew the revolver from his pocket. But, as he was about to step from behind the screen, a sudden step sounded on the gravel outside the outer door, and he shrank back, watching. The door opened – was thrown back with some violence – and at the same instant Joseph darted from the inner room, livid with anger, to confront Gabriel Chestermarke.
That the younger man had not expected to encounter the elder was instantly evident to Neale. Joseph drew back, step by step, watching his uncle, until his back was against the door through which he had just rushed. His hand went out behind him and pulled the door to, heavily. And as it closed he spoke – and Neale knew that there was fear in his voice.
"What – what – is it?" he got out. "When did you come in here? Why – " Gabriel Chestermarke had come to a halt in the middle of the floor, and he was standing very still. His face was paler than ever, and his eyes burned in their deep-set sockets like live coals. And suddenly he lifted a forefinger and pointed it straight at his nephew.
"Thief!" he said, with a quietness which was startlingly impressive to the excited spectator. "Thief! Thief and liar – and murderer, for aught I know! But you are found out. Scoundrel! – you stole those securities! You stole those jewels! Don't trifle – don't attempt to dispute! I know! You got the jewels last Saturday night – you took those securities at the same time. You may have murdered that man Hollis for anything I know to the contrary – probably you did. But – no fencing with me! Now speak! Where are the jewels? Where are those securities? And – where is Horbury! Answer! – without lying. You devil! – I tell you I know —know! I have seen Mrs. Carswell!"
Gabriel had moved a little as he went on speaking – moved nearer to his nephew, still pointing the incriminating and accusing finger at him. And Joseph had moved, too – backward. He was watching his uncle with a queer expression. Neale saw the tip of his tongue emerge from his lips, as if the lips had become dry, and he wanted to moisten them. And suddenly his face changed, and Neale, closely watching him, saw his hand go quickly to his breast pocket, and caught the gleam of a revolver…
Neale was a cricketer – of reputation and experience. On a felt-covered stand close by him lay a couple of heavy spherical objects, fashioned of some shining-surfaced metal and about the size of a cricket ball, which he had previously noticed and handled in looking round. He snatched one of them up now, and flung it hard and straight at Joseph Chestermarke, intending to stun him. But for once in a way he missed his mark; the missile crashed against the wall behind. And then came a great flash, and the roar of all the world going to pieces, and a mighty lifting and upheaving – and he saw and felt and knew no more.
CHAPTER XXX
WRECKAGE
The four people standing beneath the portico of the police-station remained as if spell-bound for a full moment after the sudden flash and the sudden roar. Betty Fosdyke unconsciously clutched at Lord Ellersdeane's arm: Lord Ellersdeane spoke, wonderingly.
"Thunder?" he exclaimed. "Strange!"
Easleby turned sharply from Starmidge, who, holding by one of the pillars, was staring towards the quarter of the Market-Place, from whence the scream of dire fear had come.
"That's no thunder, my lord!" he said. "That's an explosion! – and a terrible one, too! Are there any gasworks close at hand? It was like – "
Polke came rushing out of the lobby behind them, followed by some of his men. And at the same instant people began running along the pavements, calling to each other.
"Did you hear that?" cried the superintendent excitedly. "An explosion! Which direction?"
Starmidge suddenly started, as if from a reverie. He put up his hand and wiped something from his cheek, and held the hand out to a shaft of light which came from the open door behind them. A smear of blood lay across his open palm.
"A splinter of falling glass," he said quietly. "Come on, all of you! That was an explosion – and I guess where! Get help, Polke – come on to the Cornmarket! Get the firemen out."
He set off running towards the end of the Market-Place, followed by Easleby, and at a slower pace by Lord Ellersdeane and Betty. Crowds were beginning to run in the same direction: very soon the two detectives found it difficult to thread a way through them. But within a few minutes they were in the Cornmarket, and Starmidge, seizing his companion's arm, dragged him round the corner of Joseph Chestermarke's house to the high garden wall which ran down the slope to the river bank. And as they turned the corner, he pointed.
"As I thought!" he muttered. "It's Joseph Chestermarke's workshop! Something's happened. Look there!"
The wall, a good ten feet high on that side, was blown to pieces, and lay, a mass of fallen masonry, on the green sward by the roadside. Through the gap thus made, Starmidge plunged into the garden – to be brought up at once by the twisted and interlaced boughs of the trees which had been lopped off as though by some giant ax, and then instantaneously transformed into a cunningly interwoven fence. The air was still thick with fine dust, and the atmosphere was charged with a curious, acid odour, which made eyes and nostrils smart.
"No ordinary burst up, this!" muttered Starmidge, as he and Easleby forced their way through branches and obstacles to the open lawn. "My God! – look at it! Blown to pieces!"
The two men stood for a moment staring at the scene before them, as it was revealed in the faint light of a waning moon. Neither had ever seen the effect of high explosives before, and they remained transfixed with utter astonishment at what they saw. Never, until then, had either believed it possible that such ruin could be wrought by such means.
The laboratory was a mass of shapeless wreckage. It seemed as if the roof had been blown into the sky – only to collapse again on the shattered walls. The masonry and woodwork lay all over lawns and gardens, and amidst the surrounding bushes and trees. In the middle of it yawned a black, deep cavity, from the heart of which curled a wisp of yellowish smoke. Between these ruins and the house a beech tree of considerable size had been completely uprooted, and had crashed down on the lower windows of the house, part of the wall and roof of which had been wrecked. And on the opposite side of the garden a great gap had been made in the smaller trees, and the shrubberies beneath them by the falling in of Rob Walford's old dove-cot, the ancient walls and timber roof of which had completely collapsed under the force of the explosion.
Over the actual area of the wreckage everything was still as death, save for a faint crackling where some loose wood was just catching fire. Starmidge began to make his way towards it.
"The thing is," he said mechanically, "the thing is, the thing is – yes, is – was – there anybody here – anybody here! We must have lights."
And just then as he came to where the burst of flame was growing bigger, and Polke with a body of firemen and constables came hurrying through a gap in the lower wall, he caught sight of a man's face, turned up to the half-light. Easleby saw it at the same time – together they went nearer. And Starmidge bent down and found himself looking at Gabriel Chestermarke.
"Him!" he whispered. "Then he came – here!"
"He's gone, anyway," muttered Easleby. "Dead as can be!" He lifted himself erect and called to Polke who was making his way towards them. "Bring a lantern!" he said. "There's a dead man here!"
"And keep the crowd out," called Starmidge. "Keep everybody out – while we look round."
But at that moment he caught sight of Betty Fosdyke, who, with Lord Ellersdeane in close attendance, had made her way into the garden and was clambering towards him. Starmidge stepped back to her.
"Hadn't you better go back?" he urged. "There'll be unpleasant sights. Do go back! – amongst the trees, anyway. We've found one dead man already, and there'll probably be – "
"No!" she said firmly. "I won't! Not until I know who's here. Because I think – I'm afraid Mr. Neale may be here. I must – I will stop! I'm not afraid. Whose body have you found?"
"Gabriel Chestermarke's," replied Starmidge quietly. "Dead! And – whoever's here, Miss Fosdyke, I don't see how he can possibly be alive. Do go back and let us search."
But Betty turned away and began to search, climbing from one mass of wreckage to another. Presently an exclamation from her brought the others hurriedly to her side. She pointed between two slabs of stone.
"There!" she whispered. "A man's – face!"
Starmidge turned to Lord Ellersdeane.
"Get her away – aside – anywhere – for a minute!" he muttered. "Let's see what condition he's in, anyway. The other – was blown to pieces."
Lord Ellersdeane took a firm grip of Betty's arm and turned her round.
"That was not – Mr. Neale?" he asked.
"No!" she said faintly. "No!"
"Then leave them to deal with that, and let us look elsewhere," he said. "Come – after all, you don't know that he would be here."
"Where else should he be?" she answered. "I'm sure he's here, somewhere. Help me!"
She turned away with him in another direction, and the two detectives, with some of the firemen helping them, got to work on the place which she had pointed out. Presently Polke directed the light of a bulls'-eye on the dead face beneath them. He broke into an exclamation of amazement.
"Who's this?" he demanded. "Look!"
One of the firemen bent closer, and suddenly glanced up at the superintendent.
"It's young Chestermarke, sir," he said. "He must have shaved his beard off. But – it's him!"
They took out what was to be found of Joseph Chestermarke at that particular spot, and went on to search for the rest of him, and for anything else. And eventually they came across Neale – unconscious, but alive. His partial protection by the projecting iron walls of the furnace had saved him; he had evidently been carried back with them when the explosion occurred and wedged between them and the outer wall of the laboratory. He came round to find a doctor administering restoratives to him on one side, and Betty Fosdyke kneeling at the other. And suddenly he remembered, and made a great shift to speak.
"All right!" he muttered at length. "Bit knocked out, that's all! But – Horbury! Horbury's – somewhere! Get at him!"
They got at the missing bank manager at last – he, too, had been saved by the thick wall which stood between him and the explosion. He was alive and conscious when they had dug down to him – and his rescuers stared from him to each other when they saw that the broken links of a steel chain were still securely manacled about his waist.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE PRISONER SPEAKS
It was not until a week later that Neale, with a bandaged head and one arm in a sling, and Betty Fosdyke, inexpressibly thankful that the recent terrible catastrophe had at any rate brought relief in its train, were allowed to visit Horbury for their first interview of more than a few minutes' duration. Neale had made a quick recovery; beyond the fracture of a small bone in his arm, some cuts on his head, and a general shock to his system, he was little the worse for his experience. But the elder victim had suffered more severely; he had suffered, too, from a week's ill-treatment and starvation. Nevertheless, he managed an approving smile when the two young people were brought to his bedside, and he looked at them afterwards in a narrow and scrutinizing fashion, which made Betty redden and grow somewhat conscious.
"Not more than three-quarters of an hour at most, the nurse said," she remarked, as they sat down at the bedside. "So if you have anything to say, Uncle John, you must get it said within that."
"One can say a lot within three-quarters of an hour, my dear," answered the invalid. "There is something I wanted to say," he went on, glancing at Neale. "I suppose there has been an inquest on the two Chestermarkes?"
"Adjourned – until you're all right," replied Neale. "You and I, of course, are the two important witnesses. You – principally. You know everything – I only came in at the end."
"I suppose there are – and have been – all sorts of rumours?" said Horbury. "I don't see how anybody but myself could know all that happened in this horrible business. Hollis, for instance? – have they come to any conclusion about his death?"
"None!" replied Neale. "All that's known is that he was found at the bottom of one of the old lead mines. We," he added, nodding at Betty, "were there when he was taken out."
Horbury's face clouded.
"And I," he said, shaking his head, "was there when – but I'll tell you two all about it. I should like to go over it all again – before the inquest is resumed. Not that I've forgotten it," he went on, with a shudder. "I will never do that! It's all like a bad dream. You remember the Saturday night when all this began, Neale? If I had had any idea of what was to happen during the next week – !
"That night, between half-past five and six o'clock, I was rung up on the telephone. Greatly to my surprise I found the caller to be Frederick Hollis, an old schoolmate of mine, whom I had only seen once – I'll tell you when later – since we were at school together. Hollis said he had come down specially from London to see me; he was at the Station Hotel, about to have some food, and would like to meet me later. He said he had reasons for not coming to the Bank House; he wished to meet me in some quiet place about the town. I told him to walk along the river-side at half-past seven, and I would meet him. And after I had dined I went out through my garden and orchard and met him coming along. I took him over the foot-bridge into the woods.
"Hollis told me an extraordinary story – yet one which did not surprise me as much as you might think. I knew that he was a solicitor in London. He said that only a few days before this interview a lady friend of his had privately asked his advice. She was a Mrs. Lester, the widow of a man – an old friend of Hollis's – who in his time made a very big fortune. They had an only son, a lad who went into the Army, and into a crack cavalry regiment. The father made his son a handsome, but not sufficient allowance – the son, finding it impossible to get it increased, had recourse, after he was of age, to a London money-lender, named Godwin Markham, of Conduit Street, from whom, in course of time, he borrowed some seven or eight thousand pounds. Old Lester died – instead of leaving a handsome fortune to the son, he left every penny he had to his wife. The lad was pressed for repayment – Markham claimed some fifteen or sixteen thousand. Young Lester was obliged to tell his mother. She urged him to make terms – for cash. Markham would not abate a penny of his claim. So Mrs. Lester called in Frederick Hollis and asked his advice. At his suggestion she gave him a cheque for ten thousand pounds: he was to see Markham and endeavour to get a settlement for that sum.
"The day before he came down to Scarnham – Friday – Hollis did two things. He got young Lester to come up to town and tell him the exact particulars of his financial dealings with Godwin Markham. Primed with these, and knowing that the demand was extortionate, he went, alone, to Markham's office in Conduit Street. Markham was away, but Hollis saw the manager, a man named Stipp. He saw something more, too. On Stipp's mantelpiece he saw a portrait which he recognized immediately as one of Gabriel Chestermarke.
"Now, you want to know how Hollis knew Gabriel Chestermarke. In this way: I told you just now that Hollis and I had only met once since our school-days. Some few years ago – I think the year before you came into the bank, Neale – Hollis came up North on a holiday. He was a bit of an archæologist; he was looking round the old towns, and he took Scarnham in his itinerary. Knowing that an old schoolmate of his was manager at Chestermarke's Bank in Scarnham, he called in to see me. He and I lunched together at the Scarnham Arms. I showed him round the town a bit, after bank hours. And as we were standing in the upper-room window of the Arms, Gabriel Chestermarke came out of the bank and stood talking to some person in the Market-Place for awhile. I drew Hollis's attention to him, and asked, jocularly, if he had ever seen a more remarkable and striking countenance? He answered that it was one which, once seen, would not readily be forgotten. And he had not forgotten it once he saw the portrait at Markham's office – he knew very well that it was extremely unlikely that so noticeable a man as Gabriel Chestermarke could have a double.
"Now, Hollis was a sharp fellow. He immediately began to suspect things. He talked awhile with Stipp, and contrived to find out that the portrait over the mantelpiece was that of Godwin Markham. He also found out that Mr. Godwin Markham was rarely to be found at his office – that there was no such thing as daily, or even weekly attendance there by him. And after mutual desires that the Lester affair should be satisfactorily settled, but without telling Stipp anything about the ten thousand pounds, he left the office with a promise to call a few days later.
"Next day, certain of what he had discovered, Hollis came down to see me, and told me all that I have just told you. It did not surprise me as much as you would think. I knew that for a great many years Gabriel Chestermarke had spent practically half his time in London – I had always felt sure that he had a finger in some business there, and I naturally concluded that he had some sort of a pied-à-terre in London as well. One fact had always struck me as peculiar – he never allowed letters to be sent on to him from Scarnham to London. Anything that required his personal attention had to await his return. So that when I heard all that Hollis had to tell, I was not so greatly astonished. In fact, the one thing that immediately occupied my thoughts was – was Joseph Chestermarke also concerned in the Godwin Markham money-lending business? He, too, was constantly away in London – or believed to be so. He, too, never had letters sent on to him. Taking everything into consideration, I came to the conclusion that Joseph was in all probability his uncle's partner in the Conduit Street concern, just as he was in the bank at home.
"Hollis and I walked about the paths in the wood for some time, discussing this affair. I asked at last what he proposed to do. He inquired if I thought the Chestermarkes would be keen about preserving their secret. I replied that in my opinion, seeing that they were highly respectable country-town bankers, chiefly doing business with ultra-respectable folk, they would be very sorry indeed to have it come out that they were also money-lenders in London, and evidently very extortionate ones. Hollis then said that that was his own opinion, and it would influence the line he proposed to take. He said that he had a cheque in his pocket, already made out for ten thousand pounds, and only requiring filling up with the names of payee and drawer; he would like to see Gabriel Chestermarke, tell him what he had discovered, offer him the cheque in full satisfaction of young Lester's liabilities to the Markham concern, and hint plainly that if his offer of it was not accepted, he would take steps which would show that Gabriel Chestermarke and Godwin Markham were one and the same person.
"Now, I had no objection to this. I had not told you of it, Neale, but I had already determined to resign my position as manager at Chestermarke's. I had grown tired of it. I was going to resign as soon as I returned from my holiday. So I assented to Hollis's proposal, and offered to accompany him to the Warren – I don't mind admitting that I was a little – perhaps a good deal – eager to see how Gabriel would behave when he discovered that his double dealing was found out – and known to me. We therefore set off across Ellersdeane Hollow. I have been told while lying here that some of you found the pipe which you, Betty, gave me last Christmas, lying near the old tower – quite right. I lost it there that night, as I was showing Hollis the view, in the moonlight, from the top of the crags. I meant to pick it up as we returned, but what happened put it completely out of my mind.
"Hollis and I crossed the moor and the high road and went into the little lane, or carriage-drive, which leads to the Warren. Half-way down it we met Joseph Chestermarke. He was coming away from the Warren – from the garden. He, of course, wanted to know if we were going to see his uncle. I told him that my companion, Mr. Frederick Hollis, a London solicitor, had come specially from town to see Mr. Gabriel Chestermarke, and that, being an old friend of mine, he had first come to see me. Joseph therefore said that we were too late to find his uncle at home: Gabriel, he went on, had been suffering terribly from insomnia, and, by his doctor's advice, he was trying the effect of a long solitary walk every night before going to bed, and he had just started out over the moor at the back of his house. Turning to Hollis, he asked if he could do anything – was his visit about banking business?
"Now I determined to settle at once the question as to Joseph's participation in the affairs of the Conduit Street concern. Before Hollis could reply, I spoke. I said, 'Mr. Hollis wishes to see your uncle on the affairs of Lieutenant Lester and the Godwin Markham loans.' I watched Joseph closely. The moonlight was full on his face. He started – a little. And he gave me a swift, queer look which was gone as quickly as it came – it meant 'So you know!' Then he answered in quite an assured, off-hand manner, 'Oh, I know all about that, of course! I can deal with it as well as my uncle could. Come back across the moor to my house – we'll have a drink, and a cigar, and talk it over with Mr. Hollis.'
"I nudged Hollis's arm, and we turned back with Joseph towards Scarnham, crossing the Hollow in another direction, by a track which leads straight from a point exactly opposite the Warren to the foot of Scarnham Bridge, near the wall of Joseph Chestermarke's house. It is not a very long way – half an hour's sharp walk. We did not begin talking business – as a matter of fact, Hollis began talking about the curious nature of that patch of moorland and about the old lead-mines. And when we were nearly half-way, the affair happened which, I suppose, led to all that has happened since. It – gave Joseph Chestermarke an opening.
"Having lost my pipe, and being now going in a different direction from that necessary to recover it, I had nothing to smoke. Joseph Chestermarke offered me a cigar. He opened his case. I was taking a cigar from it when Hollis stepped aside to one of the old shafts which stood close by, and resting his hands on the parapet leaned over the coping, either to look down or to drop something down. Before we had grasped what he was doing, certainly before either of us could cry out and warn him, the parapet completely collapsed before him and he disappeared into the mine! He was gone in a second – with just one scream. And after that – we heard nothing.
"We hurried to the place and got as near as we dared. Joseph Chestermarke dropped on his hands and knees, and peered over and listened. There was not a sound – except the occasional dropping of loosened pebbles. And we both knew that in that drop of seventy or eighty feet, Hollis must certainly have met his death.
"We hastened away to the town – to summon assistance. I don't think we had any very clear ideas, except to tell the police, and to see if we could get one of the fire brigade men to go down. I was in a dreadful state about the affair. I felt as though some blame attached to me. By the time we reached the bridge I felt like fainting. And Joseph suggested we should go in through his garden door to his workshop – he had some brandy there, he said – it would revive me. He took me in, up the garden, and into the workshop: I dropped down on a couch he had there, feeling very ill. He went to a side table, mixed something which looked – and tasted – like brandy and soda, brought it to me, and bade me drink it right off. I did so – and within I should say a minute, I knew nothing more.
"The next I knew I awoke in pitch darkness, feeling very ill. It was some little time before I could gather my wits together. Then I remembered what had happened. I felt about – I was lying on what appeared to be a couch or small bed, covered with rugs. But there was something strange – apart from the darkness and the silence. Then I discovered that I was chained! – chained round my waist, and that the chain had other chains attached to it. I felt along one of them, then along the other – they terminated in rings in a wall.
"I can't tell you what I felt until daylight came – I knew, however, that I was at Joseph Chestermarke's – perhaps at Gabriel's – mercy. I had discovered their secret – Hollis was out of the way – but what were they going to do with me? Oddly enough, though I had always had a secret dislike of Gabriel, and even some sort of fear of him, believing him to be a cruel and implacable man, it was Joseph that I now feared. It was he who had drugged and trapped me without a doubt. Why? Then I remembered something else. I had told Joseph – but not Gabriel – about my temporary custody of Lady Ellersdeane's jewels, and he knew where they were safely deposited at the bank – in a certain small safe in the strong room, of which he had a duplicate key.
"I found myself – when the light came – in a small room, or cell, in which was a bed, a table, a chair, a dressing-table, evidently a retreat for Joseph when he was working in his laboratory at night. But I soon saw that it was also a strong room. I could hear nothing – the silence was terrible. And – eventually – so was my hunger. I could rise – I could even pace about a little – but there was no food there – and no water.
"I don't know how long it was, nor when it was, that Joseph Chestermarke came. But when he came, he brought his true character with him. I could not have believed that any human being could be so callous, so brutal, so coldly indifferent to another's sufferings. I thought as I listened to him of all I had heard about that ancestor of his who had killed a man in cold blood in the old house at the bank – and I knew that Joseph Chestermarke would kill me with no more compunction, and no less, than he would show in crushing a beetle that crossed his path.
"His cruelty came out in his frankness. He told me plainly that he had me in his power. Nobody knew where I was – nobody could get to know. His uncle knew nothing of the Hollis affair – no one knew. No one would be told. His uncle, moreover, believed I had run away with convertible securities and Lady Ellersdeane's jewels – he, Joseph, would take care that he and everybody should continue to think so. And then he told me cynically that he had helped himself to the missing securities and to the jewels as well – the event of Saturday night, he said, had just given him the chance he wanted, and in a few days he would be out of this country and in another, where his great talent as a chemist and an inventor would be valued and put to grand use. But he was not going empty-handed, not he! – he was going with as much as ever he could rake together.
"And it was on that first occasion that he told me what he wanted of me. You know, Neale, that I am trustee for two or three families in this town. Joseph knew that I held certain securities – deposited in a private safe of mine at the bank – which could be converted into cash in, say, London, at an hour's notice. He had already helped himself to them, and had prepared a document which only needed my signature to enable him to deal with them. That signature would have put nearly a quarter of a million into his pocket.
"He used every endeavour to make me sign the paper which he brought. He said that if I would sign, he would leave an ample supply of the best food and drink within my reach, and that I should be released within thirty-six hours, by which time he would be out of England. When I steadily refused he had recourse to cruelty. Twice he beat me severely with a dog-whip; another time he assaulted me with hands and feet, like a madman. And then, when he found physical violence was no good, he told me he would slowly starve me to death. But he was doing that all along. The first three days I had nothing but a little soup and dry bread – the remaining part of the time, nothing but dry bread. And during the last two days, I knew that there was something in that bread which sent me off into long, continued periods of absolute unconsciousness. And – I was glad!
"That's all. You know the rest – better than I do. I don't know yet how that explosion came about. He had been in to me only a few minutes before it happened, badgering me again to sign that authority. And – I felt myself weakening. Flesh and blood were alike at their end of endurance. Then – it came! And as I say, that's all! – but there's one thing I wanted to ask you. Have those jewels been found?"