‘What was his excuse?’ asked Mr. Reeder, and the other shrugged.
‘He wanted money. At first he was civil and asked me to persuade his uncle; then he grew abusive, said that I was conspiring to rob him-I and my “infernal charities”!’
He chuckled, but grew grave again.
‘The situation is mysterious to me,’ he said. ‘Evidently Carlin has committed some crime against his lordship, for he is terrified of him!’
‘You think Mr. Carlin forged your name and secured the money?’
The superintendent spread out his arms in despair.
‘Who else can I suspect?’ he asked.
Mr. Reeder took the forged letter from his pocket and read it again.
‘I’ve just been on the phone to his lordship,’ Mr. Lassard went on. ‘He is waiting, of course, to hear your report, and if you have failed to make this young man confess his guilt, Lord Sellington intends seeing his nephew tonight and making an appeal to him. I can hardly believe that Mr. Carlin could have done this wicked thing, though the circumstances seem very suspicious. Have you seen him, Mr. Reeder?’
‘I have seen him,’ said Mr. Reeder shortly. ‘Oh, yes, I have seen him!’
Mr. Arthur Lassard was scrutinising his face as though he were trying to read the conclusion which the detective had reached, but Mr. Reeder’s face was notoriously expressionless.
He offered a limp hand and went back to the UnderSecretary’s house. The interview was short and on the whole disagreeable.
‘I never dreamt he would confess to you,’ said Lord Sellington with ill-disguised contempt. ‘Harry needs somebody to frighten him, and, my God! I’m the man to do it! I’m seeing him tonight.’
A fit of coughing stopped him and he gulped savagely from a little medicine bottle that stood on his desk.
‘I’ll see him tonight,’ he gasped, ‘and I’ll tell him what I intend doing! I’ve spared him hitherto because of his relationship and because he inherits the title. But I’m through. Every cent I have goes to charity. I’m good for twenty years yet, but every penny-’
He stopped. He was a man who never disguised his emotion, and Mr. Reeder, who understood men, saw the struggle that was going on in Sellington’s mind.
‘He says he hasn’t had a chance. I may have treated him unfairly-we shall see.’ He waved the detective from his office as though he were dismissing a strange dog that had intruded upon his privacy, and Mr. Reeder went out reluctantly, for he had something to tell his lordship.
It was peculiar to him that, in his more secretive moments, he sought the privacy of his old-fashioned study in Brockley Road. For two hours he sat at his desk calling a succession of numbers-and curiously enough, the gentlemen to whom he spoke were bookmakers. Most of them he knew. In the days when he was the greatest expert in the world on forged currency notes, he had been brought into contact with a class which is often the innocent medium by which the forger distributed his handicraft-and more often the instrument of his detection.
It was a Friday, a day on which most of the principals were in their offices till a late hour. At eight o’clock he finished, wrote a note and, phoning for a messenger, sent his letter on its fateful errand.
He spent the rest of the evening musing on past experiences and in refreshing his memory from the thin scrapbooks which filled two shelves in his study.
What happened elsewhere that evening can best be told in the plain language of the witnessbox. Lord Sellington had gone home after his interview with Mr. Reeder suffering from a feverish cold, and was disposed, according to the evidence of his secretary, to put off the interview which he had arranged with his nephew. A telephone message had been sent through to Mr. Carlin’s hotel, but he was out. Until nine o’clock his lordship was busy with the affairs of his numerous charities, Mr. Lassard being in attendance. Lord Sellington was working in a small study which opened from his bedroom.
At a quarter-past nine Carlin arrived and was shown upstairs by the butler, who subsequently stated that he heard voices raised in anger. Mr. Carlin came downstairs and was shown out as the clock struck half-past nine, and a few minutes later the bell rang for Lord Sellington’s valet, who went up to assist his master to bed.
At half-past seven the next morning, the valet, who slept in an adjoining apartment, went into his master’s room to take him a cup of tea. He found his employer lying face downward on the floor; he was dead, and had been dead for some hours. There was no sign of wounds, and at first glance it looked as though this man of sixty had collapsed in the night. But there were circumstances which pointed to some unusual happening. In Lord Sellington’s bedroom was a small steel wall-safe, and the first thing the valet noticed was that this was open, papers were lying on the floor, and that in the grate was a heap of paper which, except for one corner, was entirely burnt.
The valet telephoned immediately for the doctor and for the police, and from that moment the case went out of Mr. Reeder’s able hands.
Later that morning he reported briefly to his superior the result of his inquiries.
‘Murder, I am afraid,’ he said sadly. ‘The Home Office pathologist is perfectly certain that it is a case of aconitine poisoning. The paper in the hearth has been photographed, and there is no doubt whatever that the burnt document is the will by which Lord Sellington left all his property to various charitable institutions.’
He paused here.
‘Well?’ asked his chief, ‘what does that mean?’
Mr. Reeder coughed.
‘It means that if this will cannot be proved, and I doubt whether it can, his lordship died intestate. The property goes with the title-’
‘To Carlin?’ asked the startled Prosecutor.
Mr. Reeder nodded.
‘There were other things burnt; four small oblong slips of paper, which had evidently been fastened together by a pin. These are quite indecipherable.’ He sighed again. The Public Prosecutor looked up.
‘You haven’t mentioned the letter that arrived by district messenger after Lord Sellington had retired for the night.’
Mr. Reeder rubbed his chin.
‘No, I didn’t mention that,’ he said reluctantly.
‘Has it been found?’
Mr. Reeder hesitated.
‘I don’t know. I rather think that it has not been,’ he said.
‘Would it throw any light upon the crime, do you think?’
Mr. Reeder scratched his chin with some sign of embarrassment.
‘I should think it might,’ he said. ‘Will you excuse me, sir? Inspector Salter is waiting for me.’ And he was out of the room before the Prosecutor could frame any further inquiry.
Inspector Salter was striding impatiently up and down the little room when Mr. Reeder came back. They left the building together. The car that was waiting for them brought them to Jermyn Street in a few minutes. Outside the flat three plainclothes men were waiting, evidently for the arrival of their chief, and the Inspector passed into the building, followed closely by Mr. Reeder. They were halfway up the stairs when Reeder asked:
‘Does Carlin know you?’
‘He ought to,’ was the grim reply. ‘I did my best to get him penal servitude before he skipped from England.’
‘Humph!’ said Mr. Reeder. ‘I’m sorry he knows you.’
‘Why?’ The Inspector stopped on the stairs to ask the question.