CHAPTER XXXI
THE ABSCONDER
The old lawyer relinquished his hold on the bank manager's coat and stepped back. His hands fell nervelessly to his sides; his lips, quivering and pale, parted in a queer, almost ghastly grin.
"What!" he exclaimed, in a tone that nearly approached a snarl "My clerk, Letwige, fetched that box this afternoon?"
"To be exact, yesterday afternoon," replied the manager, glancing at a clock which hung on the wall of the bank parlour. "It’s past midnight, you see, Mr. Semmerby. At ten minutes to four yesterday afternoon."
"By whose order?" demanded Semmerby. "You couldn't give up that box without authority!"
The bank manager turned away in silence, and, unlocking a drawer in his desk, turned over some documents.
"There you are, Mr. Semmerby," he said, handing the old man a sheet of letter paper. "All correct, I believe, so far as we’re concerned."
Semmerby’s hands shook so much that he was obliged to lay the paper on the edge of the desk before he could read it. Linthwaite and Brixey, without ceremony, bent over it on either side of him.
"Nothing could be plainer," remarked the bank manager. "That’s Mrs. Byfield’s private note-paper, and Mrs. Byfield’s signature. I ought to know that, anyway!"
Brixey found himself regarding an octavo sheet of slightly tinted notepaper whereon an address was embossed in thick black letters. All but the signature of what he saw on it was type-written. The signature was in a somewhat conventional feminine style, of the old-fashioned Italian type of penmanship so popular among English women in the Victorian era.
The Minories, Selchester,
May 19th, 1919.
Dear Mr. Semmerby,
Will you please ask Mr. Hollinshaw to hand over to you the box of securities and deeds this afternoon, so as to have everything in readiness for me first thing to-morrow morning?
Yours truly,
Harriet Byfield.
"That’s what your man brought, Mr. Semmerby," continued Hollinshaw. "Of course, as he brought it direct from you, I took it as sufficient authorisation, and handed over the box."
The old lawyer brought his fist heavily down on the letter.
"I never saw this thing till now!" he exclaimed. "Never! I believe it’s a forgery!"
The bank manager started, picked up the letter, and looked sharply at it. He put it down again with a decisive shake of his head.
"No, sir!" he said quietly. "Not Mrs. Byfield's signature, anyway. I've not been familiar with that for several years for nothing!"
Linthwaite, who, as soon as Semmerby spoke of forgery, had nudged Brixey’s elbow, picked up the letter.
"A question or two," he said. "Does Mrs. Byfield commonly use a typewriter?"
"She’s used one for two or three years, to my knowledge," said Hollinshaw.
"This signature of hers is a fairly easy one to imitate," remarked Linthwaite. "A very clever forger"
"I'll say that's no forgery!" exclaimed Hollinshaw. "I’ve seen Mrs. Byfield's signature on hundreds of cheques. I know it as well as I know my own!"
Linthwaite said no more. He turned and looked at Semmerby, who was groaning and muttering.
"I suppose there was a good deal that was valuable in the box?" he asked.
"Valuable!" said Semmerby bitterly. "There’s pretty nearly the whole of the Byfield estate in it. And the worst of it is, it's mostly in negotiable securities! If that scoundrel, Letwige, has those, and what’s missing from my office"
Hollinshaw turned sharply from the drawer to which he was restoring the letter.
"Ah, he’s got something from your office, has he?" he exclaimed. "Then that explains what puzzled me! That letter came into his hands, and he has made use of it without your knowledge. But what’s he got?"
"A quantity of East India bonds, for one thing," answered Semmerby. "And other matters just as easily negotiable. As I was saying, Letwige, with his knowledge of London, where he was a clerk in the City before coming to me, will be able to convert a lot of these securities into cash, easily, in an hour or two.
"And some of the others he could do the same thing with, on sight, in Paris, or Vienna, or New York. They’re most of them as good as an open cheque!"
"Then," remarked Hollinshaw drily, "the best thing to do, Mr. Semmerby, is to lay Letwige by the heels! But I imagine he’s off."
Brixey, who had refrained from telling Linthwaite of the address in the green purse and was by this time determined on keeping it to himself, stepped into the arena.
"I have very good reason for knowing that Letwige went away from Selchester in a motor-car, travelling west, in company with Nat Lee and his daughter, this evening," he said. "And I suggest that we now go and ask Mr. Crabbe to track him and his companions. They can possibly find out something about the car."
"We'll have to do more than that," muttered Semmerby. "I must get up to London—at once! Who knows Mrs. Byfield's address there?"
"I do!" said Brixey. "She’s at the Grosvenor Hotel."
Hollinshaw picked up a railway guide.
"Get a train from Ledfield Junction just after four o’clock," he said. "Land you at London Bridge ten minutes past six."
"I shall take it!" exclaimed Semmerby, "I must see Mrs. Byfield at once."
"I’ll go with you," said Linthwaite. "I, too, want to see Mrs. Byfield—and some other people, who, I rather suspect, will be somewhere near her."
Brixey walked with his elderly companions as far as the hotel, and then, under pretence of going on to the police station, walked farther up the street. But he had no intention of knocking up Inspector Crabbe.
While in the bank he had been thinking hard. It was very clear to him that Letwige had been, if not the chief at any rate one of the chief partners in the conspiracy which had been interfered with by Linthwaite's appearance in Selchester. Clear, too, that something else—perhaps his own doings—having interfered at the last moment, Letwige had effected a bold and daring stroke by helping himself to the wealth which he would probably have shared in more comfortable and less risky fashion had things gone well with him and his partners.
But had he made that stroke on his own behalf, solely? Or was it in collusion with somebody else. Mesham, for instance? As for the Lees, father and daughter, Brixey regarded them as no more than agents—servants—tools—who were probably being well paid and bundled into obscurity.
Nevertheless, they might be useful, and Brixey, as he thoughtfully paced the deserted streets, once more repeated to himself the address which he had seen in the green purse—Wolmark's Private Hotel, Trinity Square, E.C.
He went back to the "Mitre" at last, without having been near the police station. But during the hour in which he paced the streets of the old town, meeting no one but a very occasional and much surprised policeman, Brixey had formulated a plan of action. It was like most of his schemes, a plan which depended on luck.
But he believed in his luck. There was a chance, a sporting chance, a toss-up chance, that he could possibly circumvent Letwige, or Letwige and his gang, at the eleventh hour. And he was going to take it without saying a word to anyone.
Brackett, ardently solicitous that Mr. Linthwaite and Mr. Semmerby should not suffer by these unwonted adventures, had roused up his cook and caused a refection to be ready at three o'clock, which, he said, he scarcely knew whether to call very early breakfast or very late supper.
Whichever it was, it sent Semmerby off in better spirits, and his feelings of despondency had changed to sentiments of lively anger by the time all three were in the comers of a first-class carriage and bound for London.
"If I can lay hands, on my clerk," he said, "I'll—I'll—but you shall see!"
"By the by," remarked Brixey. "Do you happen to remember where your clerk was last Thursday afternoon?"
Semmerby reflected for a while.
"Yes, I do!" he answered suddenly. "I sent him over to Newhaven, on business—about the sale of some property, near the harbour. And I wish he'd fallen in the harbour, and broken his neck, and been drowned! I do, indeed, though I am a churchwarden!"
Brixey smiled. Things were smoothing themselves out. Now he knew beyond doubt that Letwige had sent the altered telegram. But was it his own idea, or had it been at the instigation of some cleverer man?