The Complete Four Just Men (104 page)

‘But she has been to see you?’

The lawyer shook his head.

‘One of my clients called on her. Some property in Sydney which was overlooked in the settlement of her father’s estate came into the market. He had a tenth share, it seems. We tried to get in touch with the executor, Mr Flane, but we were unsuccessful – he’s travelling in the East – so we got the girl’s signature to the transfer.’

‘Flane?’

Mr Colgate was a busy man; he had intimated as much. He was now a little impatient.

‘A cousin of the late Joseph Farrer – the only other relative. As a matter of fact, Farrer was staying in Western Australia on his cousin’s station just before he went mad.’

Leon was blessed with an imagination, but even this, vivid as it was, could not quite bridge the gaps in what he suspected was an unusual story.

‘My own impression,’ said the lawyer, ‘and I tell you this in the strictest confidence, is that the girl is not quite . . . ’ He tapped his forehead. ‘She told my clerk, a man who is skilled in gaining the confidence of young people, that she had been followed about for weeks by a black man, on another occasion had been followed about by a black retriever. Apparently, whenever she takes her Saturday stroll, this retriever has appeared and never leaves her. So far as I can discover, nobody else has seen either the black man or the dog. You don’t need to be a doctor to know that this delusion of being followed is one of the commonest signs of an unbalanced mind.’

Leon knew something more than the average about police work. He knew that discovery is not a thing of a dramatic moment, but patiently accrued evidence, and he followed the same line of inquiry that a detective from Scotland Yard would follow.

Eileen Farrer lived in Landsbury Road, Clapham, and No 209 proved to be a house in a respectable terrace. The motherly-looking landlady who interviewed him in the hall was palpably relieved to see him when he stated the object of his visit.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said. ‘Are you a relation?’

Leon disclaimed that association.

‘She’s a very peculiar young lady,’ the landlady went on, ‘and I don’t know what to make of her. She’s been up all night walking about her room – she sleeps in the room above me – and this morning she’s taken no breakfast. I can’t help feeling that there’s something wrong – she’s so strange.’

‘You mean that she’s not quite right in her head?’ asked Leon brutally.

‘Yes, that’s what I mean. I thought of sending for my doctor, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She told me she’d had a great shock. Do you know her?’

‘I’ve met her,’ said Leon. ‘May I go upstairs?’

The landlady hesitated.

‘I think I’d better tell her you’re here. What name?’

‘I think it would be better if I saw her without being announced,’ said Leon, ‘if you will show me the door. Where is she?’

Eileen Farrer was, he learnt, in her sitting-room – she could afford the luxury of an extra apartment Leon tapped at the door and a startled voice asked: ‘Who is it?’

He did not answer but, turning the knob, entered the room. The girl was standing by the window, staring out; apparently the taxi that brought Leon had excited her apprehension.

‘Oh!’ she said in dismay, as she saw her visitor. ‘You’re the man . . . you haven’t come to arrest me?’

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the floor was strewn with papers. Evidently she had bought every available newspaper to discover tidings of the crime.

‘No, I haven’t come to arrest you,’ said Leon in an even tone. ‘I don’t exactly know what you could be arrested for – Mr Grasleigh is not dead. He’s not even hurt.’

She stared at him, wide-eyed.

‘Not even hurt?’ she repeated slowly.

‘He was quite well when I saw him last night.’

She passed her hand over her eyes.

‘I don’t understand. I saw him – oh, it’s terrible!’

‘You saw him, as you thought, very badly hurt. I had the pleasure of meeting him a few minutes afterwards and he was quite uninjured; and, what is more – ’ he was watching her as he spoke – ‘he said that he had never seen you.’

Wonder, incredulity, terror were in her eyes.

‘Now won’t you sit down, Miss Farrer, and tell me all about yourself. You see, I know quite a lot. I know, for example, that your father died in an institution.’

She was staring at him as though unable to grasp his words. Leon became instantly practical.

‘Now I want you to tell me. Miss Farrer, why your father went mad. Was there any other history of insanity in the family?’

Leon’s calmness was of the dominant kind: under its influence she had recovered something of her self-possession.

‘No, the cause was a fall from a horse; the full effect of it wasn’t known for years afterwards.’

He nodded and smiled.

‘I thought not. Where were you when he was taken away?’

‘I was at school in Melbourne,’ she said, ‘or rather, just outside of Melbourne. I never saw my father from the time I was seven. He was a long time in that horrible place, and they wouldn’t let me see him.’

‘Now tell me this: who is Mr Flane? Do you know him?’

She shook her head.

‘He was my father’s cousin. The only thing I know about him is that Daddy used to lend him money, and he was staying on the farm when he became ill. I’ve had several letters from him about money. He paid my fare to England. It was he who suggested I should go home and try to forget all the troubles I’d had.’

‘You never saw him?’

‘Never,’ she said. ‘He came once to school, but I was away on a picnic.’

‘You don’t know what money your father left?’

She shook her head again. ‘No, I’ve no idea.’

‘Now tell me, Miss Farrer, about the Negro you have seen following you, and the dog.’

She had very little to tell except the bare fact. The persecution had begun two years before, and her doctor had once called to inquire the cause. Here Leon stopped her quickly.

‘Did you send for the doctor?’

‘No,’ she said in surprise, ‘but he must have heard from somebody, though who I can’t think, because I told very few people.’

‘Can you show me any of the letters that Mr Flane sent you?’

These she had in a drawer, and Leon examined them carefully. Their tone was rather unusual, not the tone one would have expected from a guardian or from one who had control of her destinies. In the main they were protestations of the difficulties the writer found in providing for her schooling, for her clothes, and eventually for the trip to England, and each letter insisted on the fact that her father had left very little money.

‘And that was true,’ she said. ‘Poor Daddy was rather eccentric about money. He never kept his stocks at the bank but always carried them about with him in a big iron box. In fact, he was terribly secretive, and nobody knew exactly what money he had. I thought he was very rich, because he was a little – ’ she hesitated – ‘ “near” is the word. I hate saying anything disparaging about the poor darling, but he was never generous with money, and when I found that he had only left a few hundred pounds and a very few shares, and those not of any particular value, I was astonished. And so, of course, was everybody in Melbourne – everybody who knew us, I mean. In fact, I always regarded myself as poor until a few months ago. We then discovered that father had a large interest in the West Australian Gold Mine, which nobody knew anything about. It came to light by accident. If all they say is true, I shall be very rich. The lawyers have been trying to get into touch with Mr Flane, but they have only had a letter or two, one posted from China addressed to me, and another posted I think in Japan.’

‘Have you got the letter addressed to you?’

She produced it. It was written on thick paper. Leon held it up to the light and saw the watermark.

‘What shares did your father leave? I mean, what shares was he known to leave?’

She puzzled over this question.

‘There were some absolutely valueless, I know. I remember them because of the number – 967. What’s the matter?’

Leon was laughing.

‘I think I can promise you freedom from any further persecution, Miss Farrer, and my advice to you is that you get immediately in touch with the best firm of lawyers in London. I think I can give you their address. There’s one thing I want to tell you – ’ there was a very kindly smile in Leon Gonsalez’s eyes – ‘and it is that you are not mad, that you haven’t imagined you were followed by Negroes and by black dogs and that you didn’t imagine you saw Mr Grasleigh murdered. There’s one more question I want to ask you, and it’s about Mr Flane. Do you know what he did for a living?’

‘He had a small station – farm, you would call it,’ she said. ‘I think Daddy bought it for him and his wife. Before that I think he had the lease of a theatre in Adelaide, and he lost a lot of money.’

‘Thank you,’ said Leon. ‘That is all I want to know.’

He drove straight back to the flats in Curzon Street, and met Mr Grasleigh as he was leaving his flat.

‘Hullo! You’ve not come to tell me about another murder?’ said that jovial man with a loud laugh.

‘Worse than murder,’ said Leon, and something in his tone struck the smile from Mr Grasleigh’s lips.

Leon followed him into the study and himself closed the door.

‘Mr Flane, I understand?’ he said, and saw the colour fade from the man’s face.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ blustered Grasleigh. ‘My name is – ’

‘Your name is Flane,’ said Leon very gently. ‘A few years ago you got an inkling that the man you had robbed – Eileen Farrer’s father – was richer than you thought, and you evolved a rather clumsy, and certainly a diabolical scheme to retain possession of Eileen Farrer’s property. A shallow-brained man as you are, I have no doubt, would imagine that because the father was mad the daughter could also be driven into a mental asylum. I don’t know where you got your Negro from or where you found your trained dog, but I know where you got the money to take the lease of the Orpheum. And, Mr Flane, I want to tell you something more, and you might pass the information on to your wife, who is, I gather, a fellow-conspirator. “Negotiate” is spelt with a “t” and “profession” with an “s”. Both words occur in the letters you wrote to Miss Farrer.’

The man was breathing loudly through his nose, and the hand that went up to take out the dead stump of his cigar was shaking.

‘You’ve got to prove all this,’ he blustered.

‘Unfortunately I have,’ said Leon sadly. ‘In the old days when the Four Just Men were not quite so legally minded as they are today, you would not have been taken into a court of law: I rather imagine that my friends and I would have opened a manhole in Curzon Street and dropped you through.’

The Mystery of Mr Drake

All events go in threes – that was the considered opinion of Leon Gonsalez. This, for example, was his second meeting with Cornelius Malan. The last time Mr Roos Malan, the bearded brother of Cornelius, had been a third party, but now Roos was dead – though of this fact Leon was at the moment unaware.

This alert and bright-eyed man had never had a driving accident. The fact that he was alive proved this, for he was never quite happy if the needle of the speedometer on his big sports car fell below the seventy mark. By an odd chance it was well below thirty when he skidded on the slush and snow of a lonely Oxford road and slithered a back wheel into a four-foot ditch. That the car did not overturn was a miracle.

Leon climbed out and looked round. The squat farmstead beyond the stone wall which flanked the road had a familiar appearance. He grinned as he leapt the wall and made his way across the rough surface of an uncultivated field towards the building. A dog barked gruffly, but he saw no human creature. And when he knocked at the door there was no answer. Leon was not surprised. Cornelius kept few servants, even in the summer – he was unlikely to have his house well staffed in the unprofitable days of late autumn.

He made a tour of the house, passed through an untidy and weed-grown garden, and still could find no sign of life. And then from the ground, not a dozen yards away, arose a big, broad-shouldered giant of a man. He came veritably from the ground. For a moment the observer was staggered, and then he realized that the man had come out of a well. The back of Cornelius Malan was turned to his uninvited guest. Leon saw him stoop, heard the clang of steel and the click of a lock fastened. Presently the big man dusted his knees and stretched himself and, turning, came straight towards where Leon was standing. At the sight of a stranger, the broad, red face of Cornelius went a shade redder.

‘Hi, you!’ he began wrathfully, and then recognized his visitor. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘The detective!’

He spoke with scarcely a trace of accent, unlike his dead brother, who could hardly speak English.

‘What do you want, eh? Do more people think that poor Roos has swindled them? Well, he is dead, so you get nothing out of him.’

Leon was looking past him, and the man must have divined what was in his mind, for he said quickly: ‘There is a bad well here, full of gas. I must have it filled up – ’

‘In the meantime you’ve had it sensibly fastened,’ smiled Leon. ‘I’m sorry to barge in upon your Arcadian pursuits, Mr Malan, but the fact is my car has ditched itself, and I wanted help to get it up.’

There had been a strange look of apprehension on the man’s face, and this cleared away as Leon explained the object of his visit.

‘I myself could pick a car out of any ditch,’ he boasted. ‘You shall see.’

As he walked across the field with Leon he was almost affable.

‘I do not like you people from London, and you especially, Mr What’s-your-name. You are like the lawyer who swindled me and my poor brother by Potchefstroom, so many years ago that I forget his name. Poor Roos! You and such people as you have hounded him into his grave! Inspectors of taxes and God knows what. And we are both poor men and have nothing to say to them.’

When they got to the car, he found that his strength was hardly sufficient, and they returned to the farm and from some mysterious place gathered two hungry-looking labourers, who, with planks and ropes, succeeded in hauling the Bentley to road level. By this time, Cornelius Malan was his old self.

‘That will cost you one pound, my friend,’ he said. I cannot afford to pay these men for extra work. I am poor, and now that Roos is dead, who knows that I may not have to take that lazy wench of our sister’s . . . ’

Very solemnly Leon produced a pound note, and handed it to the old miser.

When he got back to Curzon Street he related his experience.

‘I’ll bet you we’re going to meet for the third time,’ he said. ‘It is odd, but it’s a fact. One of these days I am going to write a book on the Law of Coincidence – I’ve any amount of data.’

‘Add this,’ said Poiccart briefly, as he tossed a letter across the table.

Leon smoothed it out: the first thing he read was an Oxfordshire address. He turned quickly to the end of the letter, and saw it was signed, ‘Leonora Malan’.

Manfred was watching him with a smile in his eyes. ‘There’s a job after your own heart, Leon,’ he said.

Leon read the letter.

Dear Sirs,

Some time ago you came into town to see my uncle, who has now, I am sorry to say, passed over. Will you please grant me an inter-view on Wednesday morning in regard to my late uncle’s money? I don’t suppose you can help me, but there is just a chance.

It was signed ‘Leonora Malan’, and there was a postscript.

Please do not let my Uncle Cornelius know I have written.

Leon scratched his chin.

‘Leon and Leonora,’ murmured Manfred. ‘That alone is sufficient basis for a chapter on coincidences.’

On Wednesday morning, rainy and gusty, Miss Malan called, and with her was the young man who was to be the fourth and the greatest coincidence of all.

A scrawny man of thirty, with irregular features and eyes that were never still, she introduced him as Mr Jones, the late manager of her dead uncle.

Leonora Malan was astonishingly pretty. That was the first impression Leon had of his visitor. He had expected something dumpy and plain – Leonora was a name to shy at. Malan was obviously Cape Dutch. He would have known this even if he had not been aware, from personal experience, of the nationality of her two uncles. He had had an encounter with the notorious Jappy, and the no less objectionable Roos – less objectionable now, since he had been gathered to his fathers. And he was agreeably surprised, for this slim, bright-eyed girl with the peach and rose complexion was a very happy upsetting of preconceived ideas.

She came with him into the bright little drawing-room which was also the office of the Three, and sat down in the chair which Poiccart pushed forward for her before, in his role of butler, he glided out, closing the door respectfully and noiselessly behind him.

She looked up at Leon, her eyes twinkling, and smiled.

‘You can do nothing for me, Mr Gonsalez, but Mr Jones thought I ought to see you,’ she said, with a trustful glance at her ill-favoured companion which appalled Gonsalez. ‘That isn’t a very promising beginning, is it? I suppose you’ll wonder why I’m wasting your time if I believe that? But just now I’m clutching at straws, and – ’

‘I am a very substantial straw,’ laughed Leon.

Mr Jones spoke. His voice was harsh and coarse.

‘It’s like this. Leonora is entitled to about eighty thousand pounds.
I know it was there before the old boy died. Got the will, Leonora?’

She nodded quickly and sighed, half-opened her little hand-bag, reached mechanically for a battered silver case, but quickly withdrew her hand and snapped the bag tight. Leon reached for the cigarette box and passed it to her.

‘You know my uncle?’ she said, as she took a cigarette. ‘Poor Uncle Roos often spoke about you – ’

‘Very uncomplimentarily, I am sure,’ said Leon.

She nodded.

‘Yes, he didn’t like you. He was rather afraid of you, and you cost him money.’

Roos Malan had figured in one of Leon’s more humdrum cases. Roos and his brother Cornelius had been prosperous farmers in South Africa. And then gold was discovered on their farm, and they became, of a sudden, very rich men; both came to England and settled on two desolate farms in Oxfordshire. It was Roos who had adopted his dead sister’s baby with much grumbling and complaining for, like his brother, he was that rarest of misers who grudges every farthing spent even on himself. Yet both brothers were shrewd speculators; too shrewd sometimes. It was a case in which their cupidity had overrun their discretion, that had brought Leon into their orbit.

‘Uncle Roos,’ said the girl, ‘was not so bad as you think. Of course, he was terribly mean about money, and even about the food that was eaten on the farm; and life was a little difficult with him. Sometimes he was kindness itself, and I feel a pig that I am bothering about his wretched money.’

‘Don’t worry about him,’ began Jones impatiently.

‘You find that there is no wretched money?’ interrupted Leon, glancing again at the letter she had sent him.

She shook her head.

‘I can’t understand it,’ she said.

‘Show him the will,’ Jones snapped.

She opened her bag again and took out a folded paper.

‘Here is a copy.’

Leon took the paper and opened it. It was a short, hand-written document in Dutch. Beneath was the English translation. In a few lines the late Roos Malan had left ‘all the property I possess to my niece Leonora Mary Malan’.

‘Every penny,’ said Jones, with satisfaction that he did not attempt to conceal. ‘Leonora and I were going into business in London. Her money, my brains. See what I mean?’

Leon saw very clearly.

‘When did he die?’ he asked.

‘Six months ago.’ Leonora frowned as at an unpleasant memory. ‘You’ll think I am heartless, but really I had no love for him, though at times I was very fond of him.’

‘And the property?’ said Leon.

She frowned.

‘All that is left seems to be the farm and the furniture. The valuers say that it’s worth five thousand pounds, and it’s mortgaged for four thousand. Uncle Cornelius holds the mortgage. Yet Roos Malan must have been very rich; he drew royalties from his property in South Africa, and I’ve seen the money in the house; it came every quarter and was always paid in banknotes.’

‘I could explain the mortgage,’ said Jones. ‘Those two mean old skunks exchanged mortgages to protect one another in case the authorities ever tried to play tricks on ’em! The money’s gone, mister – I’ve searched the house from top to bottom. There’s a strongroom built in a corner of the cellar – we’ve had that door opened, but there’s not a penny to be found. They’re great for strongrooms, the Malans. I know where Cornelius keeps his too. He doesn’t know it, but by God, if he doesn’t play fair with this kid . . . !’

The girl seemed a little embarrassed by the championship of the man. The friendship was a little one-sided, he thought, and had the impression that Mr Jones’s glib plans for ‘going into business’ were particularly his own.

Jones gave him one piece of news. Neither of the brothers had banking accounts. Though they speculated heavily and wisely in South African stocks, their dividends were paid or their stock was bought with ready money, and invariably cash payments were made in the same medium.

‘Both these old blighters objected to paying taxation, and they used all sorts of dirty tricks to avoid payment. They suspected all banks, because they believed that banks tell the Government their clients’ business.’

Leonora shook her head again despairingly.

‘I don’t think you can do anything, Mr Gonsalez, and I almost wish I hadn’t written. The money isn’t there; there’s no record that it ever was there. I really don’t mind very much, because I can work. Happily I took typing lessons and improved my speed at the farm: I did most of Uncle’s correspondence.’

‘During the last illness was Cornelius at the farm?’

She nodded.

‘All the time?’

She nodded again.

And he left – ?’

‘Immediately after poor Roos’s death. I haven’t seen him again, and the only communication I’ve had from him was a letter in which he told me that I ought to earn my living and that I couldn’t depend on him. Now what can I do?’

Leon considered this problem for a long time.

‘I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Mr Gonsalez,’ she went on. ‘I am sure Uncle Cornelius collected what money there was in the house before he left. Mr Jones thinks that too.’

‘Think it – I know it!’ The hatchet-faced man was very emphatic. ‘I saw him coming out of the cellar with a big Gladstone bag. Old Roos was in the habit of keeping his key of the strongroom under his pillow; when he died it wasn’t there – I found it on the kitchen mantelpiece!’

When the man and the girl were leaving, Leon so manoeuvred the departure that she was the last to go.

‘Who is Jones?’ he asked, dropping his voice.

She was a little uncomfortable.

‘He was Uncle’s farm manager – he’s been very nice . . . a little too nice.’

Leon nodded, and as he heard Mr Jones returning, asked her immediate plans. She was, she said, staying the week in London, making preparations to earn her own livelihood. After he had taken down her address and seen the party to the door, he walked thoughtfully back to the common room where his two companions were playing chess – an immoral occupation for eleven o’clock in the forenoon.

‘She is very pretty,’ said Poiccart, not looking up from the piece he was fingering, ‘and she has come about her inheritance. And the man with her is no good.’

‘You were listening at the door,’ accused Leon.

‘I have read the local newspapers and I know that Mr Roos Malan died penniless – not sufficient to meet the demands of the Inspector of Taxes,’ said Poiccart as he checked Manfred’s king. ‘Both men were terrible misers, both are enormously rich, and both men have got Somerset House tearing their hair.’

‘And naturally,’ George Manfred went on, ‘she came to you to recover her property. What did the man want?’

He sat back in his chair and sighed.

‘We’re fearfully respectable, aren’t we? It was so easy ten, fifteen years ago. I know so many ways of making Cornelius disgorge.’

‘And I know one,’ interrupted Leon promptly. ‘And if all my theories and views are correct – and I cannot imagine them being anything else – Mr Drake will make the recovery.’

‘Mr Who?’ Poiccart looked up with a heavy frown.

‘Mr Drake,’ said Leon glibly; ‘an old enemy of mine. We have been at daggers drawn for ten years. He knows one of my most precious secrets, and I have lived in mortal terror of him, so much so that I contemplate removing him from his present sphere of activity.’

George looked at him thoughtfully; then a light dawned in his face.