CHAPTER TWO
THE SECRET MAN
Wedgwood was a quiet, stolid, reserved man, who had learnt how to hold his tongue. He had seen the diamond—or, at any rate, something which he fancied might turn out to be a diamond—on first entering the room, and had said nothing about it to his companions. Now that he held it in his hand, he knew it to be a diamond: he had had experience of diamonds in the course of his professional career. It looked like a good diamond, too—worth a fair amount of money. And it had undoubtedly dropped out of its setting in a ring or a pin. His assurance as to that fact made him examine the dead man's hands and his neck-wear. But Wraypoole had no ring on either hand, and there was no scarf-pin in his cravat. The detective put the diamond carefully away in his pocketbook, and when the police had removed the body from the parlour he locked up the flat and took the key to Miss Tandy. He said nothing to her about the diamond, but he asked her a question or two about Wraypoole.
"Porteous Road, Paddington, was the address, I think, ma'am?" he said. "I shall go along there. This manuscript, now, that was brought you to type?—did he give you to understand that it was at all valuable?"
"He said nothing about that," replied Miss Tandy. "His only concern was about it being done—typed, you know—by a certain hour tomorrow."
"He didn't suggest that it was something—shall we say important?"
"Important that the typed copy should be finished," said Miss Tandy. "Not of special importance in any other way, that I know of."
"Did you look it over?" asked Wedgwood.
"I just glanced it over. It was of the sort that I'd done before for him—genealogical stuff, pedigrees, and so forth."
"Just another question," said Wedgwood. "He didn't give you the impression of being in any fear of anything?—of being followed by anybody, for instance?"
"Oh, dear me, no!" exclaimed Miss Tandy. "He was quite ordinary—a quiet, well-spoken man—quite a gentleman, in fact—very good manners. No!—the only thing he was in any way what you might call anxious about was that I should do the work myself, or be helped with it by somebody I could trust."
"Ah!—he mentioned that, did he?" asked Wedgwood. "Trust, eh?"
"He did say 'I suppose she's to be trusted not to let it out of her hands?' when I told him I should have to give part of his manuscript to Miss Callender. Of course, I assured him he could trust her as he would trust me."
"Then there evidently was something of a secret nature about the work," said Wedgwood. "Well, ma'am, I think it's very obvious that the man who murdered him did so in order to get possession of the manuscript. And—he's got it! Now we've got to find—him!"
He went away on that, and after a brief look-in at the police-station close by, boarded a bus and journeyed to Paddington. And during his half-hour's journey Wedgwood occupied himself in speculating on his chances of bringing Wraypoole's assailant to justice. It was too soon to say whether they were good or bad, but of one thing he was already certain: this was no ordinary case of murder. But that it was murder, and intentional murder, there was no doubt. At first, Wedgwood had thought that possibly there had been no intent; that Wraypoole's assailant had merely meant to stun him in order to rob him of the manuscript. But the doctors had pointed out that Wraypoole had been struck again and again; there was plain, unmistakable evidence of at least four savage blows, any one of them of sufficient force to cause almost instantaneous death: the intent of the assailant was obvious.
"Not just the theft of that manuscript," mused Wedgwood, as he journeyed westward. "That was wanted, sure enough, but whoever wanted it—and got it!—wanted more: to silence Wraypoole. So it comes to this, as I figure it:—Wraypoole knew something—a secret—evidently a mighty important one. He put it, or something about it, on paper—that was the manuscript. Somebody affected by the secret knew of Wraypoole's possession of it, and of the manuscript. That somebody killed Wraypoole, not merely to get the manuscript but to prevent him from letting the secret out. Who is that somebody? Man?—or woman? However, to begin with—who was Wraypoole?"
Wedgwood was hoping to find that out at the end of his brief journey. Porteous Road was easily located—a short street running between St. Mary's Terrace and the Harrow Road. Although the daylight had gone long since and there was nothing but a feeble gas-lamp here and there Wedgwood sized up the character of the street before he had walked many yards along it; it was one of those streets of which, as of some people, you can safely say that they have seen better days. But there was still an atmosphere of shabby gentility about it—just as there was about the faded woman who presently opened the door of Number 89.
"Mrs, Creech?" enquired the detective, who, when he called in at the police-station had referred to the directory. "Thank you. Sorry to trouble you, ma'am—I'm a police-officer—Detective Sergeant Wedgwood. There's been a sad accident to your lodger, Mr. Wraypoole, Mrs. Creech. I came to tell you."
Mrs. Creech, one of those women who look as if ill news came to them at regular and periodical times as part of the accepted and necessary things of life, received this announcement with the sigh of one whom nothing surprises.
"Dear-a-dear!" she said. "And him unusual cheerful when he went out this morning! It'll be one of these motor accidents, I suppose? The streets are getting——"
"I'll come in a minute, Mrs. Creech," interrupted the detective. He followed the landlady into a dimly-lighted front parlour. "The fact is, ma'am," he went on, confidentially, "my news is about as serious as can be—Mr. Wraypoole's dead! And what's more, we've very little doubt he's been murdered."
Mrs. Creech, a tall, spare woman, indefinite in everything, opened her eyes and her mouth and stared hopelessly at her caller. Wedgwood saw that she was a very simple sort, with just enough brains to do her bit; he saw, too, that beyond surface facts he was not likely to get much out of her.
"You don't say!" she exclaimed at last in an awed whisper. "Murdered? Why, whoever would want to murder a quiet man like that?"
"He was a quiet man, was he?" asked Wedgwood.
"You couldn't have found a more peaceable!" declared Mrs. Creech. "Three years he's lodged with me—second floor back he had, and a very nice room, too—and I never had the least cause for complaint. Nor him with me. 'Mrs. Creech,' he said to me more than once, 'you and me just suits each other.' As landlady and lodger, of course he meant. Oh, yes, mister!—as regular in his habits he was as that clock!"
"What was he, Mrs. Creech—what did he do?" enquired Wedgwood.
"He did his work, mister, at the British Museum," replied the landlady. "What it was exactly, I couldn't say; writing work of some sort, I believe. Every morning at nine o'clock he'd set off there, with his little bag full of books and papers, and every evening he'd come home to his tea at six o'clock, and he'd be writing and reading in his room till ten or eleven. Always at that sort of work he was—studying I suppose."
"Do you know anything about his relations, or his friends?" asked Wedgwood.
"I don't, mister. He never had anybody to see him here—never! And I never heard him mention any relations. To be sure, he wasn't one for a great deal of talk. No—I couldn't say anything about that."
"How was he off as regards money?" enquired the detective.
"Well, he always paid me regular," said the landlady. "Every Saturday morning, after breakfast, there was his money, down on the nail! I never remember him being short. He seemed to be what you might call comfortable."
"Did he ever go away—for a holiday, or anything of that sort?"
"He didn't! All the three years he was here, I never knew him go away but once, mister, and that was recently. He was away the better part of a fortnight; in fact, he'd only just come home again. Business, he said—but of course I don't know where or what it was."
"I should like to see his room," said Wedgwood. "We want to find out if he has any relations, and where they're to be heard of."
Mrs. Creech conducted him to the second floor back and turned on the gas. A bed sitting-room; nothing in or about it at first sight to distinguish it from a thousand similar London lodging-house rooms of its sort, except that a recess was fitted with shelves and filled with books, and that a desk in the window was crowded with books and papers. The landlady looked round it with obvious satisfaction.
"A very comfortable room this is," she said.
"Mr. Wraypoole, he partly furnished it himself. That chair there, he said, once belonged to King George the Fourth, and that what he sat to write in was a real, genuine Chippendale. And the pictures on the walls were his."
Wedgwood saw at once that any examination of the desk and its papers would have to be put off till another day. He glanced at the books in the recess—they were all of an archæological or genealogical nature. The pictures were all old prints; one of some size, over the mantelpiece was a fine old copperplate; out of sheer curiosity Wedgwood read the lettering beneath it—Netherwell Church, Derbyshire.
"Was there no one about here that Mr. Wraypoole associated with?" he asked suddenly. "No one who knew him?"
Mrs. Creech shook her head.
"I couldn't say that there was, mister," she answered. "As I remarked previous, nobody ever came to see him. And he never went out o' nights, nor of a Sunday, 'cepting for a bit of a walk before his dinner. He was a retiring gentleman."
Wedgwood pursued his enquiries no further that evening. But next morning he went to the British Museum and had no difficulty in finding officials and attendants who knew John Wraypoole well enough.
"Wraypoole," said one of them, "has attended here for quite twenty years, regularly. He was an expert in pedigrees, though he didn't confine his attention entirely to that. He was a good all-round antiquary and I should say very well acquainted with the local history of his own county."
"What county's that?" asked Wedgwood.
"Derbyshire," replied the librarian. "I have discussed Derbyshire with him at times. He had a surprising knowledge of out-of-the-way information. Lately he has been investigating certain matters relative to Derbyshire, but I don't know their exact nature. What I do know is that of late he has had a lot of rare books, pamphlets, and so on, dug out for him, all of them dealing with Derbyshire."
"Do you know if he was writing anything?" enquired Wedgwood.
"He was not a writer. I have heard him say, often, that he had no instinct to write. That is, I mean, to write books, or even articles. He could draw up a pedigree with any man living, or prepare a table of statistics on one of his subjects, but that was as far as his writing went. I should imagine that this manuscript you mention as having been taken by him to Miss Tandy, and now missing, was some pedigree he had prepared. But whose, of course, one has no idea."
Wedgwood considered matters awhile. He was a leisurely thinker, and when any factor in a case was presented to him, liked to meditate on it before going further. "If he'd been coming here all these years, regularly," he said at last, looking round the great dome-topped library. "He must be pretty well known to other frequenters. I mean, there must be somebody here who knew him well, if not intimately."
"I don't think so," answered the man to whom he was talking. "He was a recluse—as far as I had knowledge of him. I never remember seeing him in conversation with anybody here. There," he continued, pointing to a table near at hand, "is the place he always occupied—you'd find him there from ten o'clock until five every day. But I question if he ever spoke to a soul here except to one of us, or to the attendants who fetched him his books. And by the by, on that table are the books he was busy with yesterday—you can look them over if you like."
Wedgwood saw little of value in this suggestion, but he was not the man to neglect any chance, and he moved over to the table and inspected a pile of volumes resting there.
"You see?" said his companion, turning the books over and directing his attention to the title-pages. "All relating to local history in Derbyshire. Every one! I told you—that's been his recent study. But why—heaven only knows! I should suggest you should get hold of some of his papers. Notes, you know—he was always making notes."
Wedgwood went away more than ever convinced that Wraypoole had been tracked to Miss Tandy's flat and done to death there by somebody who was so desirious of laying hands on the document Wraypoole had taken there for typing that he was resolved on stopping at nothing to secure it. If only Miss Tandy's memory was better about it—the description she had given of it was little more than general, and vague at that. And the murderer had got away with the document and there was no clue to his identity—unless the diamond was a clue. To be sure, Wedgwood already had a theory about that diamond. It seemed to him a reasonable thing to suppose that it had fallen, being already loose in its setting, from the murderer's hand as he struck down his victim. But . . . he couldn't go all over London searching for a man from whose finger-ring or scarf-pin a stone was missing. . . .
He went round to Handel Street presently, and found Miss Tandy.
"You can't remember any of the wording of that manuscript Wraypoole brought you?" he asked abruptly. "Nothing of it, eh?"
"I remember one word," replied Miss Tandy, promptly. "Just one! Title, I suppose—in big letters, on the brown paper cover. A queer word—or name, Mortover."