A few moments after I had seen the stranger disappear into Hewitt’s office, Kerrett brought to Hewitt in his inner room a visitor’s slip announcing the arrival on argent business of Mr. Horace Bowyer. That the visitor was in a hurry was plain from a hasty rattling of the closed wicket in the outer room where Mr. Bowyer was evidently making impatient attempts to follow his announcement in person. Hewitt showed himself at the door and invited Mr. Bowyer to as soon as Kerrett had with much impetuosity florid gentleman with a loud voice and a large stare.
“Mr. Hewitt,” he said, “I must claim your immediate attention to a business of the utmost gravity. Will you please consider yourself commissioned, wholly regardless of expense, to set aside whatever you may have in hand and devote yourself to the case I shall put in your hands?”
“Certainly not,” Hewitt replied with a slight smile. “What I have in hand are matters which I have engaged to attend to, and no mere compensation for loss of fees could persuade me to leave my clients in the lurch, else what would prevent some other gentleman coming here to-morrow with a bigger fee than yours and bribing me away from you?”
“But this—this is a most serious thing, Mr. Hewitt. A matter of life or death—it is indeed!”
“Quite so,” Hewitt replied; “but there are a thousand such matters at this moment pending of which you and I know nothing, and there are also two or three more of which you know nothing but on which I am at work. So that it becomes a question of practicability. If you will tell me your business I can judge whether or not I may be able to accept your commission concurrently with those I have in hand. Some operations take months of constant attention; some can be conducted intermittently; others still are a mere matter of a few days many of hours simply.”
“I will tell you then,” Mr. Bowyer replied. “In the first place, will you have the kindness to read that? It is a cutting from the Standard’s column of news from the provinces of two days ago.”
Hewitt took the cutting and read as follows:—
“The epidemic of small-pox in County Mayo, Ireland, shows few signs of abating. The spread of the disease has been very remarkable considering the widely-scattered nature of the population, though there can be no doubt that the market towns are the centres of infection, and that it is from these that the germs of contagion are carried into the country by people from all parts who resort thither on market days. In many cases the disease has assumed a particularly malignant form, and deaths have been very rapid and numerous. The comparatively few medical men available are sadly overworked, owing largely to the distances separating their different patients. Among those who have succumbed within the last few days is Mr. Algernon Rewse, a young English gentleman who has been staying with a friend at a cottage a few miles from Cullanin, on a fishing excursion.”
Hewitt placed the cutting on the table at his side. “Yes?” he said inquiringly.
“It is to Mr. Algernon Rewse’s death you wish to draw my attention?”
“It is,” Mr. Bowyer answered; “and the reason I come to you is that I very much suspect—more than suspect, indeed—that Mr. Algernon Rewse has not died by smallpox, but has been murdered—murdered cold-bloodedly, and for the most sordid motives, by the friend who has been sharing his holiday.”
“In what way do you suppose him to have been murdered?”
“That I cannot say—that, indeed, I want you to find out, among other things—chiefly perhaps, the murderer himself, who has made off.”
“And your own status in the matter,” queried Hewitt, “is that of—?”
“I am trustee under a will by which Mr. Rewse would have benefited considerably had he lived but a month or two longer. That circumstance indeed lies rather near the root of the matter. The thing stood thus. Under the will I speak of that of young Rewse’s uncle, a very old friend of mine in his lifetime—the money lay in trust till the young fellow should attain twenty-five years of age. His younger sister, Miss Mary Rewse, was also benefited, but to a much smaller extent. She was to come into her property also on attaining the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage, whichever event happened first. It was further provided that in case either of these young people died before coming into the inheritance, his Or her share should go to the survivor: I want you particularly to remember this. You will observe that now, in consequence of young Algernon Rewse’s death, barely two months before his twenty-fifth birthday, the whole of the very large property—all personalty, and free from any tie or restriction—which would otherwise have been his, will, in the regular course, pass, on her twenty=fifth birthday, or on her marriage, to Miss Mary Rewse, whose own legacy was comparatively trifling. You will understand the importance of this when I tell you that the man whom I suspect of causing Algernon Rewse’s death, and who has been his companion on his otherwise lonely holiday, is engaged to be married to Miss Rewse.”
Mr. Bowyer paused at this, but Hewitt only raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“I have never particularly liked the man,” Mr. Bowyer went on. “He never seemed to have much to say for himself. I like a man who holds up his head and opens ‘his mouth. I don’t believe in the sort of modesty that he showed so much of-it isn’t genuine, A man can’t afford to be genuinely meek and retiring who has his way to make in the world—and he was clever enough to know that.”
“He is poor, then?” Hewitt asked.
“Oh yes, poor enough. His name, by-the-bye, is Main Stanley Main—and he is a medical man. He hasn’t been practising, except as assistant, since he became qualified, the reason being, I understand, that he couldn’t afford to buy a good practice. He is the person who will profit by young Rewse’s death—or at any rate who intended to; but we will see about that. As for Mary, poor girl, she wouldn’t have lost her brother for fifty fortunes.”
“As to the circumstances of the death, now?”
“Yes, yes, I am coming to that. Young Algernon Rewse, you must know, had rather run down in health, and Main persuaded him that he wanted a change. I don’t know what it was altogether, but Rewse seemed to have been having his own little love troubles and that sort of thing, you know. He’d been engaged, I think, or very nearly so, and the young lady died, and so on. Well, as I said, he had run down and got into low health and spirits, and no doubt a change of some sort would have done him good. This Stanley Main always seemed to have a great influence over the poor boy—he was about four or five years older than Rewse—and somehow he persuaded him to go away, the two together, to some outlandish wilderness of a place in the West of. Ireland for salmon-fishing. It seemed to me at the time rather a ridiculous sort of place to go to, but Main had his way, and they went. There was a cottage—rather a good sort of cottage, I believe, for the district—which some friend of Main’s, once a landowner in the district, had put up as a convenient box for salmon-fishing, and they rented it. Not long after they got there this epidemic of small-pox got about in the district—though that, I believe, has had little to do with poor young Rewse’s death. All appeared to go well until a day over a week ago, when Mrs. Rewse received this letter from Main.” Mr. Bowyer handed Martin Hewitt a letter, written in an irregular and broken hand, as though of a person writing under stress of extreme agitation. It ran thus:—
“My dear Mrs. Rewse,—” You will probably have heard through the newspapers—indeed I think Algernon has told you in his letters—that a very bad epidemic of small-pox is abroad in this district. I am deeply grieved to have to tell you that Algernon himself has taken the disease in a rather bad form. He showed the first symptoms to-day (Tuesday), and he is now in bed in the cottage. It is fortunate that I, as a medical man, happen to be on the spot, as the nearest local doctor is five miles off at Cullanin, and he is working and travelling