XIX

And now there were but two days⁠—to be accurate, but two nights⁠—to the date fixed for Roger Gretorex’s execution. All those to whom the matter was of grave moment had given up hope, and, to the great relief of each member of what may be described as the outside circle of those concerned in the still mysterious story, there was something stoic in the resignation and self-control of both the mother and the son.

But Enid Dent showed many signs of the strain and agony she was enduring, and Sir Joseph Molloy felt quite unlike his powerful, jovial self. Even against his better judgment he still felt convinced that an awful miscarriage of justice was going to be enacted. His conviction actually affected the nerves of Sir Edward Law, the Home Secretary, who happened, unfortunately for himself, to be one of Sir Joseph’s oldest friends.

Sir Edward hoped most fervently that Gretorex would make a last-moment confession. Not that the Home Secretary really doubted the fact of the young man’s guilt. But he felt the kind of anxiety which must possess any sensitive, conscientious human being who has the onerous gift of life in his hand, if he knows that the mind of a friend he trusts as deeply as he did trust Sir Joseph’s powerful mind, is convinced of a condemned man’s innocence.

The execution had been fixed for a Thursday. Deliberately Sir Joseph arranged to cross to Calais on the Wednesday in order to meet his wife, who was coming back the next day from the south of France.

Though Lady Molloy was an invalid, a tiny, fragile little body, and no longer young, her husband adored her, and when he was parted from “the woman who owned him,” as he sometimes oddly expressed it, he seemed at times only half himself. His Eileen, so he told himself now, would know how to heal the ache at his heart.

For one thing, Lady Molloy was deeply religious in a happy childlike way. Heaven seemed to her a beautiful place, just hard by, and so she would naturally view Roger Gretorex’s terrible mode of exit from life as the certain gateway to a happier existence than he could have hoped for on this earth.

“The day after tomorrow⁠—the day after tomorrow.”

Those four words seemed to beat themselves on Enid Dent’s brain. Sometimes would come a variant⁠—“What can be done, surely something can be done, before the day after tomorrow?”

Early on the Tuesday morning she wandered out of doors and walked for miles in the cold, still empty streets. At last she went into Westminster Abbey for a while, and then into the vast Catholic Cathedral. But she found she could not pray. She felt as if abandoned by God, as well as by man.

Reluctantly, she at last turned her feet towards Ebury Street. She shrank from seeing Mrs. Gretorex. To Enid there was something horribly unnatural in the calmness and appearance of strength shown by Roger’s mother. It was, as the girl knew, by Roger’s plainly expressed desire that they were going home tomorrow down to Sussex. By his wish, also, they would be in the parish church, which was actually an enclave in the grounds attached to what was still his house, when nine o’clock struck out his hour of doom on Thursday.

As Enid came in to their sitting-room Mrs. Gretorex held out an open letter.

“This has just reached me⁠—sent on from Mr. Oram’s office this morning. It’s from the old woman who used to look after Roger.” And as the other took it from her, “Rather a touching letter, but I don’t feel I can bring myself to go to Ferry Place, my dear. I went there once, and spent such a happy, happy day with Roger. This Mrs. Huntley waited on us. Perhaps you will go instead of me? See what she says.”

Enid took the letter, and this is what she read:

6 Ferry Place.
Tuesday.

Dear Madam,

I don’t know what to do about the doctor’s things, and I should be glad if you could spare time to come here. Also there is something on my mind that I’d like to tell you, Mrs. Gretorex. But I gave my word, I even swore my oath to the doctor not to. So perhaps I oughtn’t to.

I’ve tried to keep everything tidy, but the police pulled everything about so.

“I wonder what she wants to tell you?”

“I can form a shrewd guess,” said Mrs. Gretorex in a low voice.

The girl looked at her with eager eyes. “It may be something tremendously important,” she exclaimed.

The older woman shook her head.

“It might have had a certain importance before the trial, but it would have no importance now. I have no doubt that what Mrs. Huntley wants to tell me is⁠—”

Then she hesitated, for Mrs. Gretorex was an old-fashioned gentlewoman, who considered that certain things which unfortunately do happen in life should not be dwelt on, much less mentioned, by “nice” women.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Gretorex? Do tell me!”

The girl was looking at her with perplexed, unhappy eyes. Perhaps, after all, it would be better to tell her the truth? It might cause her to forget Roger more quickly than she could otherwise do.

“I have very little doubt, Enid, that Mrs. Lexton, at one time, often went to Ferry Place. Naturally Roger bound the old woman to silence. He may have even made her swear that she would never reveal a fact so damaging to Ivy Lexton’s reputation. I don’t know if a knowledge of what I feel sure was the truth would have made any difference, one way or the other, at the trial. In any case, it won’t make any difference now.”

“May I go off to Ferry Place now?” asked Enid eagerly.

“Do, if you like. But be careful what you say, child.” She gazed into the girl’s flushed face. “I think we ought to do what we know Roger would wish us to do⁠—and not to do.”

And then, with a slight break in her even voice, she quoted the fine line⁠—“For silence is most noble to the end.”

As Enid Dent walked with what, to one passing her, would have appeared to be the happy, eager steps of youth towards Ferry Place, she more than once felt strongly inclined to turn back.

The thought of going to the house where Roger Gretorex had lived and worked during the months when he and she had become so entirely estranged was bitter to her. Also, she now had to endure the incessant talking and the kindly meant, but to her almost intolerable, sympathy of the landlady of Mrs. Gretorex’s lodgings. The thought that she would now endure more sympathy, and more garrulous talk, on the part of Mrs. Huntley was well nigh unendurable. Why not go back and write a nice letter to the old woman, explaining that Mrs. Gretorex was ill, but wished Mrs. Huntley to know how deep was her gratitude for everything she had done for her dear son?

And then, just as she was going to turn around, Enid felt ashamed of her strained nerves. If this old woman had been fond of Roger, then she must be very unhappy now.

She had to ask the way twice to Ferry Place, and each time she asked the question she saw a peculiar look come over the stranger’s face, showing, plainly enough, that he had recalled the fact that this was where Roger Gretorex had lived, the man who had committed murder for the sake of the woman he loved. The name of the obscure thoroughfare had been constantly mentioned, bandied to and fro, during Gretorex’s trial.

Enid soon found the double row of shabby little houses. It was strange to remember that Roger had lived for over a year in this sordid-looking place.

She walked slowly down the middle of the roadway till she reached No. 6. It looked just a little cleaner and “better class” than the houses on each side of it.

She knocked, and the door was opened almost at once, revealing a grey-haired, sad-faced old woman, who, before the visitor could speak, said sharply, “You’ve made a mistake. No one lives here now.”

“I’ve come from Mrs. Gretorex,” said Enid in a low voice.

And then the door, which had been nearly closed in her face, was opened widely.

“Come in, miss. Come in, do!” and the old woman opened a door to the left, and showed the visitor into what had been Roger Gretorex’s consulting-room. It was bare and poor-looking, but the girl, with a stab of pain, saw at once a small piece of furniture which had always stood in what was still called “the day nursery” at Anchorford Hall.

“Mrs. Gretorex is ill, or she would have come herself. But she has given me a message for you, Mrs. Huntley. She wishes me to tell you how grateful⁠—how grateful⁠—”

And then all at once Enid Dent broke down, and burst into a storm of tears.

She had not so “let herself go,” at any rate not in the daytime, since the end of Roger Gretorex’s trial. But somehow now, with this stranger, she didn’t care. It was such a comfort to have a good cry, and something seemed to tell her that this sad, anxious-looking old woman would understand, and sympathise with, her grief.

Mrs. Huntley pushed the sobbing girl gently down into the worn leather armchair in which Gretorex would sometimes put a delicate-looking woman patient⁠—the sort of patient who did not care to go into the surgery.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Huntley in a troubled voice, “that you was the doctor’s young lady, miss?”

It somehow comforted Enid to hear those simple words, uttered in so quiet, if pitying a tone.

“I think I was,” she sobbed. “Indeed, I am sure I was⁠—though that was a long time ago, Mrs. Huntley.”

“I know,” came the low-toned answer. And the old woman did know, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, why Roger Gretorex had left off thinking of the girl who now sat, the picture of despair, before her.

Enid suddenly got up. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

“And now,” she said, “let me deliver the rest of my message, Mrs. Huntley. Mrs. Gretorex knows how good you were to her son, and she wants me to tell you that a little later on she would like you to come down to Anchorford, for she does want to see you.”

“Later on?” echoed the old woman in a strange voice. “But that would be too late, miss. I has to see Mrs. Gretorex today for it to be of any good. Can’t you take me to her? Not that I likes to leave the house alone. I never do leave it⁠—not since I got the message from Mr. Oram that I was to regard myself as caretaker, that is.”

“I am afraid you can’t see Mrs. Gretorex today,” said Enid firmly. “But I’ll give her any message, and⁠—and you can trust me, Mrs. Huntley, you really can!”

“I wonder if I can? I wonder if I dare?”

“Have you anything to say that we don’t already know?” she asked.

“Yes, I have, miss. But in telling it I may be doing wrong.”

“D’you mean something about Dr. Gretorex? Something that might, even now, make a difference?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I fear me it may be too late.”

“Let me judge of that,” said Enid Dent.

She had become quiet, collected, though she was filled with a feeling of suspense and, she dared not call it “hope.”

“Shall I tell you?” said Mrs. Huntley as if asking herself the question. And then, all at once, she answered it, “Yes, surely I will!”

Alfred Finch was reading a copy of an old complicated will. But though he was trying to concentrate on the business in hand, he found his mind straying persistently to the prison cell where Roger Gretorex sat waiting for the morning of the day after tomorrow. For one thing, he had heard by a side wind that the warder who had Gretorex in his special charge believed him innocent, and this made a great impression on him. That warder had had charge of over thirty men condemned to death, and this was the first time he had ever believed one of them to have been innocent of the crime for which he was to suffer death.

The telephone bell at his elbow rang.

“Miss Dent is on the line, Mr. Finch. Can you speak to her? She says it’s very urgent.”

“Put her through at once.”

And then he heard an eager, quivering voice, “Is that Mr. Finch? Can you come at once, Mr. Finch, to 6 Ferry Place? I believe I’ve got some new evidence.”

“New evidence?”

Mr. Finch, though he was alone, shook his head. Had he not himself done everything that was in the power of mortal man to procure new evidence in the last three weeks, and had he not entirely failed?

“I don’t wish to say more over the telephone, but can you come now, at once, to take a statement from Dr. Gretorex’s day maid, Mrs. Huntley?”

Mrs. Huntley? Why, that was the old caretaker woman! He remembered distinctly reading over the record of her short, colourless, unimportant interview with Inspector Orpington.

Mrs. Huntley could have nothing new to say of the slightest value. Stop, though⁠—she probably knew certain facts which might have been regarded as greatly to Mrs. Lexton’s discredit, had they come out at the trial. Facts which would certainly have added pungency to Sir Joseph Molloy’s speech for the defence. But Mrs. Huntley could have nothing to reveal that could make any real difference, now, to the fate of Roger Gretorex.

However, if only because he had come to like and respect Mrs. Gretorex’s young friend, Mr. Finch made up his mind he would do what Enid Dent desired.

“I’ll be with you within twenty minutes,” he called out.

“Be as quick as you can. I’m so frightened, Mr. Finch.”

“Frightened?” he repeated, surprised.

“Yes.” The voice dropped. “Supposing Mrs. Huntley were to die, suddenly, before you’ve heard what she’s got to say? I dare not tell you what it is over the telephone. But it is very important⁠—”

Now Mr. Finch thought so little of what he was going to do, and, presumably, hear, that he simply left word for Mr. Oram that he had had to go out. And when he reached Westminster, he did not dismiss his taxicab; he left it at the end of Ferry Place.

Enid Dent stood waiting for him at the open door of the little house, and he noted at once the strained, excited look on her face.

Had she been a young man, and not a young woman, Alfred Finch would have exclaimed, “Come, come! What’s all this pother about?” But as it was, he looked at her very kindly, and made up his mind that he would “let her down” as gently as might be.

“I hope she’ll tell you all she told me,” murmured Enid as he shut the door. “Mrs. Lexton told a lie when she said she had never been here but once, and then with a woman friend. Mrs. Huntley swore to Roger Gretorex that she would say nothing about that, and she feels that she is breaking her oath. But I doubt if she realises herself the fearful importance of something else she told me, something Roger may suspect, but which only she actually saw.”

And then she opened the door of the consulting-room.

Mrs. Huntley was sitting all in a heap in a chair, staring before her. She looked up when the two came in, but she did not get up.

“Here is Mr. Finch. I want you to tell him exactly what you told me.”

“You tell him, miss,” muttered the old woman. “I’ve told you everything and⁠—and I feels very upset.”

“Mrs. Huntley is ready to swear,” said Enid quietly, “that she once found Mrs. Lexton alone in the surgery here, with a jar labelled arsenic standing on the table before her.”

Alfred Finch, startled, looked hard at the old woman. Was she telling the truth, or had she invented this ingenious story?

“When did that happen?” he asked quietly. “Is there any way in which you can fix the date of that occurrence, Mrs. Huntley?”

She looked up at him. “Yes,” she said dully. “ ’Twas the last time Mrs. Lexton ever had supper here. The doctor got a messenger boy, and sent him up to a grand shop in Piccadilly for some cold fish⁠—sole, I thinks it was⁠—done up in a newfangled fashion. Also there was a game pie, likewise an ice.”

“But how does that fix the date in your mind?” asked Alfred Finch rather impatiently.

“I can’t fix it. But you could, sir, from the messenger boys’ office. I heard one of them boys once tell the doctor that they kep’ all their receipts. ’Twas early last summer when that happened.”

He felt suddenly convinced that she at least believed she was telling the truth.

“The last time Mrs. Lexton had supper here?” It was that statement which in a sense impressed him. And had he been another kind of man he would undoubtedly have explained, “But you yourself signed a statement declaring that Mrs. Lexton had never been here, at 6 Ferry Place, excepting on one occasion to tea?”

But, instead of saying that, he observed encouragingly, “Now listen to me, Mrs. Huntley. You say, I notice, ‘the last time.’ Would Mrs. Lexton have been here to supper as many, say, as three or four times?”

“Much oftener than that!” exclaimed the old woman, rousing herself. “At one time, Mrs. Lexton was here constant. She’d come in just for ten minutes. ’Nother time, maybe, for a couple of hours. She’d phone first, to see if the doctor’ud be in. Mostly I couldn’t help knowing about it, though the doctor always made an excuse to get me out of the place before she come.”

“And on that last occasion, what exactly was it that happened? Are you sure this jar of arsenic was on the table, in front of Mrs. Lexton?”

In his eagerness he came and flung himself across a chair, close to the old woman.

“I’m sure ’twas there, though I don’t know how it come there, excepting that the doctor had maybe some medicine to make up. I come in to clear up, and as I puts my key in the surgery door⁠—that’s our back-way in, sir⁠—she didn’t hear me. When she did, she was awfully put about. I begged her pardon, and I went away. And when I come round to the front of the house, I saw the doctor letting a man out. That was why Mrs. Lexton was alone, then, in the surgery. She was waiting for the doctor, maybe to get her a cab. He often did that.”

“I suppose you can give me nothing that would afford any corroboration as to what you have just told me? I mean that would make anyone know that you are now telling the truth? I believe you, Mrs. Huntley, but you know that, in a matter of this sort, belief doesn’t go very far. People want proof.”

“I knows that. But I can’t say no more than I have said.”

“Is there nothing? Think, Mrs. Huntley!” exclaimed Enid Dent. “Did you never tell anyone outside that you’d found Mrs. Lexton in the surgery under such curious circumstances?”

“I give the doctor my word I’d never tell on either of them. He said I could do a great thing for him in doing that, and I’ve kep’ my word till today.”

And then Alfred Finch had something like an inspiration.

“Of course, I know the police made a thorough search of this house,” he observed. “But I ask myself, Mrs. Huntley, if they overlooked anything⁠—anything in the way of a letter or letters?” And he looked very hard at the old woman.

Mrs. Huntley blinked at him, and for the first time she looked uneasy and ashamed.

“I’ve got summat,” she said in a low reluctant voice. “Summat I’ve no business to have. It’s two love-letters Mrs. Lexton wrote to the doctor. As was his way, poor young gentleman, he tore them up in little pieces, and⁠—”

“You pieced them together,” observed Mr. Finch pleasantly.

Enid Dent gave a gasp, as he went on:

“If you can produce those letters, I think I can promise you, Mrs. Huntley, that Dr. Gretorex will not hang the day after tomorrow. They, together with a sworn statement made by you before a Commissioner of Oaths, will provide what is called ‘new evidence.’ I want you to go with me now into the surgery, to tell me exactly where Mrs. Lexton was standing when you surprised her. You are sure that she was alone?” he added quickly.

“She was quite alone,” said Mrs. Huntley positively. “I come in softly like, and there she was! I can show you exactly where she was standing.”

She got up and led the way down the passage, and through the two doors which shut off the surgery from the house.

“Is everything here just as it was?” asked Mr. Finch quickly.

“No, sir. They took away everything as was in that cupboard, but they left the books.”

He glanced up at the row of shabby volumes in the hanging bookcase, but made no comment.

“Is that the same table where stood the jar labelled arsenic?”

Mrs. Huntley put her work-worn hand on a certain spot on the deal table.

“The jar was here; the light was full on it, and I saw it plain as plain.”

And then she acted, or, rather, enacted, the scene with some spirit, making Enid Dent stand exactly where Ivy Lexton had stood.

“I noticed particular how she was dressed,” she went on eagerly. “She always dressed very dainty-like, lovely clothes they was! And she had the most peculiar looking bag I ever did see. ’Twas exactly like mother-of-pearl. Lovely it was! I noticed it when she turned round. Says she, ‘Why, Mrs. Huntley, how you did startle me,’ or something like that, sir.”

Alfred Finch was writing down every word that came out of her mouth. He was one of those men who never lose a chance, and he had invented a kind of shorthand for himself. Everything the woman had said since he had come into the room had been put on record by him.

“And now,” he said quietly, “I’ll trouble you to show me those two letters.”

Finch noticed that Mrs. Huntley gave just an imperceptible glance towards the girl who stood a little aside, gazing into vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away, as indeed they were⁠—with Roger Gretorex in his prison cell.

“Yes, sir, I’ll go and get the letters, but I do hope Dr. Gretorex won’t ever know I did such a thing as that, sir? I was very attached to the doctor, and that made me feel curious, I suppose. I oughtn’t to have acted so, sir; I knew I was doing wrong.”

“All I can say now is, thank God you did do wrong, Mrs. Huntley! But don’t you worry⁠—we won’t let him ever know you did what you did. After all, anyone who found those pieces might have put them together, eh? Why people don’t burn compromising documents always beats me! I’ve got a cab at the end of the street, and I want you to come along this very minute to a Commissioner of Oaths. I’ve got all you’ve told me in black and white. You’ll only have just to repeat word for word what I’ve got down here before the gentleman, and then swear it’s true.”

“But do you think I ought to leave the house, sir?”

“We can leave Miss Dent here, while I go on to your place to get those letters.”

When, within a quarter of an hour, the three were standing outside the queer little office of a Commissioner of Oaths, with whom Alfred Finch happened to be acquainted, Mr. Finch said something which surprised Enid Dent. “I think you’d better not come in here with us,” he muttered. “You see, it’s better, in such a case, to have the witness alone. Prevents her being nervous.”

She did not guess the truth, which was that, in the few minutes he had been away with the old woman, she had spoken more freely than she had cared to do before the girl whom she regarded as Gretorex’s “young lady.” And some of the things she had then told him Alfred Finch determined should be embodied in her statutory declaration. Mr. Finch was keenly alive to the value of prejudice. He was aware that the Home Secretary was a man of rigid, some would have said too rigid, moral principle.

So it was with considerable satisfaction that he had exclaimed, after reading through the two letters, “My word! Mrs. Lexton’s what I call a hot cup of tea. Eh? Mrs. Huntley?”

Solemnly she had nodded her head. She had always known that such was the fact, though she wouldn’t perhaps have put it in just those words, for she was a refined, delicate-natured old woman.