XIX

Mr. Wellington Brown woke one morning feeling extraordinarily refreshed. Usually he woke with a clouded brain and a parched mouth, with no other desire than to satisfy that craving for opium which all his life had kept him poor and eventually had ruined him physically and morally. But on this occasion he opened his eyes, made a quick stock of his surroundings, and uttered a “faugh!” of disgust. He knew himself so well, and was so well acquainted with his idiosyncrasies and the character of these fits which came upon him, that he saw that the end of a bout had come. Some day he would not wake up feeling refreshed, or wake up at all.

He sat up in bed, fingering his beard, and sucked in the breeze that came through the open window. Rising to his feet, he found his knees a little unstable, and laughed foolishly. It was Yo Len Fo himself who came in bearing a tray with a glass of water, a bottle half-full of whiskey and the inevitable pipe.

Without a word, Wellington poured himself out a stiff dose of the spirit and gulped it down.

“You may take that pipe to the devil,” he said. His voice was quavery but determined.

“ ‘A pipe in the morning makes the sun shine,’ ” quoted Yo Len Fo.

“ ‘A pipe in the morning does not go out with the stars,’ ” replied Wellington Brown, giving proverb for proverb.

“If the Illustrious will stay I will have breakfast sent to him,” said the Chinaman urgently.

“I have stayed too long,” said Wellington Brown. “What is the day of the month by the foreign reckoning?”

“I do not know the foreign ways,” said Yo Len Fo, “but if your Excellency will deign to stay a few hours in this hovel⁠—”

“My Excellency will not deign to stay in any hovel or palace,” said Wellington. “Where is Yeh Ling?”

“I will send for him at once,” said the old man eagerly.

“Leave him,” replied Mr. Brown with a fine gesture and began to search his pockets. To his surprise, all his money, which was not much, was intact.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked.

Yo Len Fo nodded, thereby meaning “nothing.”

“Running a philanthropic hop joint?” asked the other sarcastically.

“It has all been paid by the excellent Yeh Ling,” answered the man.

Brown grunted.

“I suppose that old devil Trasmere is behind this,” he said in English, and seeing that the man did not comprehend him, he pushed his way past Yo Len Fo and went down the uncarpeted stairs into the street. He felt terribly weak, but his heart was light. Hesitating at the end of a narrow passage, he turned to the left, otherwise he could not have failed to have run into the arms of Inspector Carver who had made a call that morning upon the proprietor of the Golden Roof.

Mr. Brown’s day was spent simply. He found his way to the park and, sitting down on a bench, dozed and mused the hours away, basking in the glorious June sunlight and seemingly obvious to its heat.

Late in the afternoon he felt hungry and went to a refreshment kiosk in the park. Finishing his meal he found the nearest bench and continued his pleasant occupation of doing nothing. Mr. Wellington Brown was a born loafer; it is a knack which would prolong many lives in this strenuous age, if it could be acquired.

The stars were coming out in a velvet blue sky when, with a shiver, he aroused himself and made instinctively for the lights. As he slouched along one of the big main paths that cross the park, he overtook a man who was walking slowly in his direction. The man shot a quick glance at him and then turned suddenly away.

“Here,” said Mr. Brown truculently, “I know you. Why in hell are you running away from me? Think I’m a leper or something?”

The man stopped, glanced uneasily left and right.

“I don’t know you,” he said coldly.

“That’s a damned lie,” snarled Brown. The reaction of his bout was upon him. He would have quarrelled with anything or anybody. “I know you and I’ve met you.” He groped in his hazy mind for some string that would lead him to the identity of the stranger. “In China, wasn’t it? My name’s Brown⁠—Wellington Brown.”

“Yes, perhaps it was in China,” said the other and of a sudden became friendly, gripped Wellington Brown’s arm and leaving the path, led him across the green spaces of the park.

A courting couple sitting under one of the trees saw them pass and heard Wellington Brown say:

“Don’t say that I was his storekeeper, because I wasn’t, or his servant! I was his equal, by gad. A partner in the firm, the blamed old swindler⁠—”

So they passed, the Man in Black and the besotted pensioner from China.

At this hour another person deeply interested in Jesse Trasmere’s fate was making his final preparations for departure.

He had ventured forth in broad daylight, braved the glances of the purser of the Arak and had signed on as steward of the second saloon on a voyage to South Africa. The end of the long nightmare had come. Walters had to join his ship overnight, an excellent arrangement from his point of view, since it reduced the danger of detection to a minimum.

He carried with him to the big roomy docks, a respectable sum of money, the proceeds of his pilfering at Mayfield and his opportunities had been many, remembering Mr. Trasmere’s parsimony.

He had sent his bag off to the ship in the afternoon and he had only to convey himself to the docks. He went on foot, keeping to the less frequented streets, and although this entailed a longer journey he was taking no risks. A month ago he would have trembled at every shadow, and the sight of a policeman would have paralysed his activities, but now the case had been forgotten; one never read a line about it in even the more sensational newspapers, and it was with some confidence that he traversed the wharf and mounted the gangway leading to the ill-lighted decks of the liner.

“Report to the chief steward,” said the custodian on duty at the ship end of the plank and Walters enquired his way forward, went down the broad companion to the broader deck where the chief steward’s office is situated, and joined a dozen other men who were lined up in queues waiting to report.

Walters would not have worried if the waiting had occupied the rest of the evening, but in a remarkably short space of time he stepped into the chief steward’s cabin, knuckled his forehead and said:

“Reporting for duty, sir. John Williams, steward⁠—” and then he stopped.

On the further side of the steward’s table was Inspector Carver.

Walters turned in a flash but the doorway was blocked by a detective.

“All right,” he said despondently as they snapped the steel handcuffs on his wrists, “but I didn’t do it, Mr. Carver. I know nothing about the murder. I am as innocent as a babe unborn.”

“What I like about you,” said Carver unpleasantly, “is your originality.”

He followed behind the two men who held the arms of their manacled prisoner and Tab joined him. As they came off the ship, Tab asked:

“Well, do you honestly think you have him, Carver?”

“Who⁠—Walters? That’s the man all right, I know him very well indeed.”

“I mean the murderer,” said Tab.

“Oh, the murderer. No, I don’t think that this is the gentleman, but he will have some difficulty in proving he isn’t. You can say that he’s arrested, Tab, but I would rather you didn’t say that I charged him with the murder, because I shan’t, until I have much more information in my possession than I have at present. Perhaps if you come round to the station after you have been to the office, I will be able to tell you a little more, especially if Walters makes a statement, as I think he will.”

In this the detective was right, for Mr. Walters lost no time in putting his defence on record.

The Statement of Walter Felling.

“My name is Walter John Felling, I have sometimes assumed the name of Walters, sometimes MacCarty. I have served three terms of imprisonment for theft and impersonation, and in July, 1913, I was sent to prison for five years at Newcastle. I was released from prison in 1917 and served in the army as a cook until 1919. On leaving the army I heard from a nose1 that Mr. Trasmere was in want of a valet, and knowing that he was a very rich man and very mean, I applied for the job, producing false references, which were made out by a man named Coleby, who does that kind of job. When Mr. Trasmere asked me what salary I wanted, I purposely said a sum which I knew was below the rate usually paid and he engaged me on the spot. I do not think he wrote for my references. If he had Coleby would have replied.

“There were two other servants at Mayfield when I went there, a Mr. and Mrs. Green. Mr. Green was an Australian but I think Mrs. Green was born in Canada. He acted as butler to Mr. Trasmere, but he did not have a very happy time. He did not like Mr. Trasmere, I think. Certainly Mr. Trasmere did not like him. My object in securing employment with Mr. Trasmere was to find an opportunity for getting away with a good haul. I knew from the first it was going to be very difficult because of the peculiar habits of the house, but I managed to get a few things together, a gold watch and two silver candlesticks, and was thinking of making a getaway when Mr. Trasmere detected Green giving food away to Mrs. Green’s brother-in-law and fired them on the spot. Then he discovered the loss of the gold watch and had their boxes searched. I felt very sorry for Green, but of course I could say nothing.

“After the Greens had left I had to do the work of valet and butler, too. I very soon discovered that all the valuables in the house were kept in a room in the cellar. I have never been into that room, but I know it is somewhere in the passage which leads from Mr. Trasmere’s study, because I have seen the door opened and by bending down, have been able to look along the corridor.

“I hoped that some day or other I should be able to make a more careful inspection of the place, but that opportunity never came, although it seemed that I was going to have a chance a week or two before Mr. Trasmere’s death. I managed to get the key from his neck whilst he was in a kind of fit and take an impression, but the fit did not last very long, and I had hardly got the key back before the old gentleman recovered. It was a lucky thing for me that I had wiped the soap from the key on my sleeve, for the first thing he felt for was the chain round his neck. However, I had quite enough to work on, and I started in to make a key that would fit the impression. That is as much as I can tell you about the vault, which I never saw.

“I went to bed every night at ten o’clock and Mr. Trasmere used to lock the door which shut me off from the rest of the house, so that it was impossible for me to see what was going on at night. I complained to him and he had a key put in a glass box in my room so that in case of emergency I could smash the glass, and with the aid of the key, unlock the door that separated me from the rest of the house. He didn’t even agree to this until he was taken ill one night and I was unable to go to his assistance.

“To open the door which locked me in was one thing, to open the little glass cupboard and take out the key was, however, a simpler matter. I used that key several times. The first time I used it, I heard voices in the dining-room downstairs and wondered who it was calling at that late hour. I hadn’t the courage to go down and see for fear I should be detected, for there was a light in the hall. But another night, hearing a woman’s voice, I went down, the lights being out, and saw a young lady sitting at a table with a typewriter in front of her, tapping the keys whilst Mr. Trasmere walked up and down, with his hands behind him, dictating. She was the prettiest young lady I have seen in my life, and somehow I was sure that I had seen her before. I did not recognize her until I saw her photograph in an illustrated paper and then it seemed to me to be impossible that it could be Miss Ursula Ardfern, the well-known actress. I came down again the next night and this time they were talking together and Mr. Trasmere called her ‘Ursula’ and I knew I was right. She used to come from the theatre every night, and sometimes he would keep her there as late as two o’clock.

“One evening, soon after she came, I crept downstairs and in my stockinged feet, listened to them. I heard him say very sharply: ‘Ursula, where is the pin?’ The young lady answered, ‘It is there, somewhere,’ and then I heard him grumbling and grunting and presently he said, ‘Yes, here it is.’

“There was much more to be picked up in the house than I had imagined.” (Here Walters enumerated minutely and as far as can be ascertained exactly, the number and nature of the valuables which he succeeded in acquiring.) “When Mr. Trasmere was alone he used to sit at the table with a little porcelain dish in front of him and a brush. I don’t know what he was painting, I never saw any of his pictures. I only know that he did this because I managed to peep at him on several nights, and saw him at work. He did not use a canvas, he always painted on paper, and he always used black ink. The paper must have been very thin, because once the window was slightly open and a sheet blew away.

“I managed to see him because there was a glass fanlight over the door which I used to keep clean, and from the head of the stairs you could look into the room and if he happened to be sitting in a certain place, it was easy to see him.

“On the morning I left the house, I was engaged in working at the key I was making, and I could do this without any danger, because Mr. Trasmere never came into my room, the door of which I kept locked in case of accidents. I served lunch to my master, and he talked to me about Brown, the man I had turned away from the door. He told me that I had done quite right and that Brown was wanted by the police in this country and he wondered why he had taken the risk of coming back. He told me that Brown was an opium taker and a drunkard, and that he was a worthless fellow. After lunch he cleared me out of the room and I knew that he was going down to his vault, which he usually did on Saturday afternoons.

“At about ten minutes to three I was in my room working at the key and had just brought a cup of coffee from the kitchen, when the front door bell rang and I answered it. There was a messenger boy with a telegram and it was addressed to me. I had never before received telegrams at the house and I was surprised. On opening it I read a message reminding me that I had been convicted at Newcastle eight years before and telling me that the police were calling at three o’clock.

“I was in a terrible state of mind, for I had in my room a considerable quantity of stolen property and I knew that my next conviction would mean a very long sentence. I rushed up to the room, gathered my stuff together and was out of the house a little before three. As I opened the door I saw Mr. Rex Lander standing by the gate. I had seen Mr. Lander before, because he had stayed for a little time in the house a month after I had taken up my position. He had always been very nice to me and he is a gentleman for whom I have a great deal of respect.

“His uncle, the late Mr. Trasmere, did not like him. He told me once that Mr. Rex was extravagant and lazy. On seeing Mr. Rex at the gate my heart went down into my boots and I thought that he must immediately detect that something was wrong. He asked me if his uncle was ill and that gave me a moment to pull myself together, and I told him that I was going on a very urgent errand and running into the street, I had the good luck to find a taxicab which drove me to the Central Station. I did not, however, leave town, but made my way to a room which I had once occupied in a house which I knew in Reed Street, where I have been in hiding ever since. I did not see Mr. Trasmere again after lunch. He did not come out to enquire who had called when the telegram arrived; there were frequent callers, tradesmen and others, and I never reported to him unless there was something important or unless letters or telegrams came for him. I have never been in the vault or in the passage leading to the vault, nor have I at any time owned a revolver.

“I make this statement voluntarily, without any pressure, and have answered the questions which Inspector Carver has put to me, without any suggestion on his part as to the way they should be answered.”