"You--did--not--tell--me--this!"
Then Spargo, turning to the woman, saw that she, too, was white to the
lips and as frightened as the man.

"I--didn't know!" she muttered. "He didn't tell me. He only told me
this morning what--what I've told you."

Spargo picked up his hat.

"Good-night, Mr. Elphick," he said.

But before he could reach the door the old barrister had leapt from his
chair and seized him with trembling hands. Spargo turned and looked at
him. He knew then that for some reason or other he had given Mr.
Septimus Elphick a thoroughly bad fright.

"Well?" he growled.

"My dear young gentleman!" implored Mr. Elphick. "Don't go! I'll--I'll
do anything for you if you won't go away to print that. I'll--I'll give
you a thousand pounds!"

Spargo shook him off.

"That's enough!" he snarled. "Now, I am off! What, you'd try to bribe
me?"

Mr. Elphick wrung his hands.

"I didn't mean that--indeed I didn't!" he almost wailed. "I--I don't
know what I meant. Stay, young gentleman, stay a little, and let
us--let us talk. Let me have a word with you--as many words as you
please. I implore you!"

Spargo made a fine pretence of hesitation.

"If I stay," he said, at last, "it will only be on the strict condition
that you answer--and answer truly--whatever questions I like to ask
you. Otherwise----"

He made another move to the door, and again Mr. Elphick laid beseeching
hands on him.

"Stay!" he said. "I'll answer anything you like!"




CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

OF PROVED IDENTITY


Spargo sat down again in the chair which he had just left, and looked
at the two people upon whom his startling announcement had produced
such a curious effect. And he recognized as he looked at them that,
while they were both frightened, they were frightened in different
ways. Miss Baylis had already recovered her composure; she now sat
sombre and stern as ever, returning Spargo's look with something of
indifferent defiance; he thought he could see that in her mind a
certain fear was battling with a certain amount of wonder that he had
discovered the secret. It seemed to him that so far as she was
concerned the secret had come to an end; it was as if she said in so
many words that now the secret was out he might do his worst.

But upon Mr. Septimus Elphick the effect was very different. He was
still trembling from excitement; he groaned as he sank into his chair
and the hand with which he poured out a glass of spirits shook; the
glass rattled against his teeth when he raised it to his lips. The
half-contemptuous fashion of his reception of Spargo had now wholly
disappeared; he was a man who had received a shock, and a bad one. And
Spargo, watching him keenly, said to himself: This man knows a great
deal more than, a great deal beyond, the mere fact that Marbury was
Maitland, and that Ronald Breton is in reality Maitland's son; he knows
something which he never wanted anybody to know, which he firmly
believed it impossible anybody ever could know. It was as if he had
buried something deep, deep down in the lowest depths, and was as
astounded as he was frightened to find that it had been at last flung
up to the broad light of day.

"I shall wait," suddenly said Spargo, "until you are composed, Mr.
Elphick. I have no wish to distress you. But I see, of course, that the
truths which I have told you are of a sort that cause you
considerable--shall we say fear?"

Elphick took another stiff pull at his liquor. His hand had grown
steadier, and the colour was coming back to his face.

"If you will let me explain," he said. "If you will hear what was done
for the boy's sake--eh?"

"That," answered Spargo, "is precisely what I wish. I can tell you
this--I am the last man in the world to wish harm of any sort to Mr.
Breton."

Miss Baylis relieved her feelings with a scornful sniff. "He says
that!" she exclaimed, addressing the ceiling. "He says that, knowing
that he means to tell the world in his rag of a paper that Ronald
Breton, on whom every care has been lavished, is the son of a
scoundrel, an ex-convict, a----"

Elphick lifted his hand.

"Hush--hush!" he said imploringly. "Mr. Spargo means well, I am sure--I
am convinced. If Mr. Spargo will hear me----"

But before Spargo could reply, a loud insistent knocking came at the
outer door. Elphick started nervously, but presently he moved across
the room, walking as if he had received a blow, and opened the door. A
boy's voice penetrated into the sitting-room.

"If you please, sir, is Mr. Spargo, of the _Watchman_, here? He left
this address in case he was wanted."

Spargo recognized the voice as that of one of the office messenger
boys, and jumping up, went to the door.

"What is it, Rawlins?" he asked.

"Will you please come back to the office, sir, at once? There's Mr.
Rathbury there and says he must see you instantly."

"All right," answered Spargo. "I'm coming just now."

He motioned the lad away, and turned to Elphick.

"I shall have to go," he said. "I may be kept. Now, Mr. Elphick, can I
come to see you tomorrow morning?"

"Yes, yes, tomorrow morning!" replied Elphick eagerly. "Tomorrow
morning, certainly. At eleven--eleven o'clock. That will do?"

"I shall be here at eleven," said Spargo. "Eleven sharp."

He was moving away when Elphick caught him by the sleeve.

"A word--just a word!" he said. "You--you have not told the--the
boy--Ronald--of what you know? You haven't?"

"I haven't," replied Spargo.

Elphick tightened his grip on Spargo's sleeve. He looked into his face
beseechingly.

"Promise me--promise me, Mr. Spargo, that you won't tell him until you
have seen me in the morning!" he implored. "I beg you to promise me
this."

Spargo hesitated, considering matters.

"Very well--I promise," he said.

"And you won't print it?" continued Elphick, still clinging to him.
"Say you won't print it tonight?"

"I shall not print it tonight," answered Spargo. "That's certain."

Elphick released his grip on the young man's arm.

"Come--at eleven tomorrow morning," he said, and drew back and closed
the door.

Spargo ran quickly to the office and hurried up to his own room. And
there, calmly seated in an easy-chair, smoking a cigar, and reading an
evening newspaper, was Rathbury, unconcerned and outwardly as
imperturbable as ever. He greeted Spargo with a careless nod and a
smile.

"Well," he said, "how's things?"

Spargo, half-breathless, dropped into his desk-chair.

"You didn't come here to tell me that," he said.

Rathbury laughed.

"No," he said, throwing the newspaper aside, "I didn't. I came to tell
you my latest. You're at full liberty to stick it into your paper
tonight: it may just as well be known."

"Well?" said Spargo.

Rathbury took his cigar out of his lips and yawned.

"Aylmore's identified," he said lazily.

Spargo sat up, sharply.

"Identified!"

"Identified, my son. Beyond doubt."

"But as whom--as what?" exclaimed Spargo.

Rathbury laughed.

"He's an old lag--an ex-convict. Served his time partly at Dartmoor.
That, of course, is where he met Maitland or Marbury. D'ye see? Clear
as noontide now, Spargo."

Spargo sat drumming his fingers on the desk before him. His eyes were
fixed on a map of London that hung on the opposite wall; his ears heard
the throbbing of the printing-machines far below. But what he really
saw was the faces of the two girls; what he really heard was the voices
of two girls ...

"Clear as noontide--as noontide," repeated Rathbury with great
cheerfulness.

Spargo came back to the earth of plain and brutal fact.

"What's clear as noontide?" he asked sharply.

"What? Why, the whole thing! Motive--everything," answered Rathbury.
"Don't you see, Maitland and Aylmore (his real name is Ainsworth, by
the by) meet at Dartmoor, probably, or, rather, certainly, just before
Aylmore's release. Aylmore goes abroad, makes money, in time comes
back, starts new career, gets into Parliament, becomes big man. In
time, Maitland, who, after his time, has also gone abroad, also comes
back. The two meet. Maitland probably tries to blackmail Aylmore or
threatens to let folk know that the flourishing Mr. Aylmore, M.P., is
an ex-convict. Result--Aylmore lures him to the Temple and quiets him.
Pooh!--the whole thing's clear as noontide, as I say. As--noontide!"

Spargo drummed his fingers again.

"How?" he asked quietly. "How came Aylmore to be identified?"

"My work," said Rathbury proudly. "My work, my son. You see, I thought
a lot. And especially after we'd found out that Marbury was Maitland."

"You mean after I'd found out," remarked Spargo.

Rathbury waved his cigar.

"Well, well, it's all the same," he said. "You help me, and I help you,
eh? Well, as I say, I thought a considerable lot. I thought--now, where
did Maitland, or Marbury, know or meet Aylmore twenty or twenty-two
years ago? Not in London, because we knew Maitland never was in
London--at any rate, before his trial, and we haven't the least proof
that he was in London after. And why won't Aylmore tell? Clearly
because it must have been in some undesirable place. And then, all of a
sudden, it flashed on me in a moment of--what do you writing fellows
call those moments, Spargo?"

"Inspiration, I should think," said Spargo. "Direct inspiration."

"That's it. In a moment of direct inspiration, it flashed on me--why,
twenty years ago, Maitland was in Dartmoor--they must have met there!
And so, we got some old warders who'd been there at that time to come
to town, and we gave 'em opportunities to see Aylmore and to study him.
Of course, he's twenty years older, and he's grown a beard, but they
began to recall him, and then one man remembered that if he was the man
they thought he'd a certain birth-mark. And--he has!"

"Does Aylmore know that he's been identified?" asked Spargo.

Rathbury pitched his cigar into the fireplace and laughed.

"Know!" he said scornfully. "Know? He's admitted it. What was the use
of standing out against proof like that. He admitted it tonight in my
presence. Oh, he knows all right!"

"And what did he say?"

Rathbury laughed contemptuously.

"Say? Oh, not much. Pretty much what he said about this affair--that
when he was convicted the time before he was an innocent man. He's
certainly a good hand at playing the innocent game."

"And of what was he convicted?"

"Oh, of course, we know all about it--now. As soon as we found out who
he really was, we had all the particulars turned up. Aylmore, or
Ainsworth (Stephen Ainsworth his name really is) was a man who ran a
sort of what they call a Mutual Benefit Society in a town right away up
in the North--Cloudhampton--some thirty years ago. He was nominally
secretary, but it was really his own affair. It was patronized by the
working classes--Cloudhampton's a purely artisan population--and they
stuck a lot of their brass, as they call it, in it. Then suddenly it
came to smash, and there was nothing. He--Ainsworth, or Aylmore--
pleaded that he was robbed and duped by another man, but the court
didn't believe him, and he got seven years. Plain story you see,
Spargo, when it all comes out, eh?"

"All stories are quite plain--when they come out," observed Spargo.
"And he kept silence now, I suppose, because he didn't want his
daughters to know about his past?"

"Just so," agreed Rathbury. "And I don't know that I blame him. He
thought, of course, that he'd go scot-free over this Marbury affair.
But he made his mistake in the initial stages, my boy--oh, yes!"

Spargo got up from his desk and walked around his room for a few
minutes, Rathbury meanwhile finding and lighting another cigar. At last
Spargo came back and clapped a hand on the detective's shoulder.

"Look here, Rathbury!" he said. "It's very evident that you're now
going on the lines that Aylmore did murder Marbury. Eh?"

Rathbury looked up. His face showed astonishment.

"After evidence like that!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course. There's the
motive, my son, the motive!"

Spargo laughed.

"Rathbury!" he said. "Aylmore no more murdered Marbury than you did!"

The detective got up and put on his hat.

"Oh!" he said. "Perhaps you know who did, then?"

"I shall know in a few days," answered Spargo.

Rathbury stared wonderingly at him. Then he suddenly walked to the
door. "Good-night!" he said gruffly.

"Good-night, Rathbury," replied Spargo and sat down at his desk.

But that night Spargo wrote nothing for the _Watchman_. All he wrote
was a short telegram addressed to Aylmore's daughters. There were only
three words on it--_Have no fear._




CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE CLOSED DOORS


Alone of all the London morning newspapers, the _Watchman_ appeared
next day destitute of sensationalism in respect to the Middle Temple
Murder. The other daily journals published more or less vivid accounts
of the identification of Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P. for the Brookminster
Division, as the _ci-devant_ Stephen Ainsworth, ex-convict, once upon a
time founder and secretary of the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit
Society, the headquarters of which had been at Cloudhampton, in
Daleshire; the fall of which had involved thousands of honest working
folk in terrible distress if not in absolute ruin. Most of them had
raked up Ainsworth's past to considerable journalistic purpose: it had
been an easy matter to turn up old files, to recount the fall of the
Hearth and Home, to tell anew the story of the privations of the humble
investors whose small hoards had gone in the crash; it had been easy,
too, to set out again the history of Ainsworth's arrest, trial, and
fate. There was plenty of romance in the story: it was that of a man
who by his financial ability had built up a great industrial insurance
society; had--as was alleged--converted the large sums entrusted to him
to his own purposes; had been detected and punished; had disappeared,
after his punishment, so effectually that no one knew where he had
gone; had come back, comparatively a few years later, under another
name, a very rich man, and had entered Parliament and been, in a modest
way, a public character without any of those who knew him in his new
career suspecting that he had once worn a dress liberally ornamented
with the broad arrow. Fine copy, excellent copy: some of the morning
newspapers made a couple of columns of it.

But the _Watchman_, up to then easily ahead of all its contemporaries
in keeping the public informed of all the latest news in connection
with the Marbury affair, contented itself with a brief announcement.
For after Rathbury had left him, Spargo had sought his proprietor and
his editor, and had sat long in consultation with them, and the result
of their talk had been that all the _Watchman_ thought fit to tell its
readers next morning was contained in a curt paragraph:

"We understand that Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P., who is charged with the
murder of John Marbury, or Maitland, in the Temple on June 21st last,
was yesterday afternoon identified by certain officials as Stephen
Ainsworth, who was sentenced to a term of penal servitude in connection
with the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society funds nearly thirty
years ago."

Coming down to Fleet Street that morning, Spargo, strolling jauntily
along the front of the Law Courts, encountered a fellow-journalist, a
man on an opposition newspaper, who grinned at him in a fashion which
indicated derision.

"Left behind a bit, that rag of yours, this morning, Spargo, my boy!"
he remarked elegantly. "Why, you've missed one of the finest
opportunities I ever heard of in connection with that Aylmore affair. A
miserable paragraph!--why, I worked off a column and a half in ours!
What were you doing last night, old man?"

"Sleeping," said Spargo and went by with a nod. "Sleeping!"

He left the other staring at him, and crossed the road to Middle Temple
Lane. It was just on the stroke of eleven as he walked up the stairs to
Mr. Elphick's chambers; precisely eleven as he knocked at the outer
door. It is seldom that outer doors are closed in the Temple at that
hour, but Elphick's door was closed fast enough. The night before it
had been promptly opened, but there was no response to Spargo's first
knock, nor to his second, nor to his third. And half-unconsciously he
murmured aloud: "Elphick's door is closed!"

It never occurred to Spargo to knock again: instinct told him that
Elphick's door was closed because Elphick was not there; closed because
Elphick was not going to keep the appointment. He turned and walked
slowly back along the corridor. And just as he reached the head of the
stairs Ronald Breton, pale and anxious, came running up them, and at
sight of Spargo paused, staring questioningly at him. As if with a
mutual sympathy the two young men shook hands.

"I'm glad you didn't print more than those two or three lines in the
_Watchman_ this morning," said Breton. "It was--considerate. As for the
other papers!--Aylmore assured me last night, Spargo, that though he
did serve that term at Dartmoor he was innocent enough! He was
scapegoat for another man who disappeared."

Then, as Spargo merely nodded, he added, awkwardly:

"And I'm obliged to you, too, old chap, for sending that wire to the
two girls last night--it was good of you. They want all the comfort
they can get, poor things! But--what are you doing here, Spargo?"

Spargo leant against the head of the stairs and folded his hands.

"I came here," he said, "to keep an appointment with Mr. Elphick--an
appointment which he made when I called on him, as you suggested, at
nine o'clock. The appointment--a most important one--was for eleven
o'clock."

Breton glanced at his watch.

"Come on, then," he said. "It's well past that now, and my guardian's a
very martinet in the matter of punctuality."

But Spargo did not move. Instead, he shook his head, regarding Breton
with troubled eyes.

"So am I," he answered. "I was trained to it. Your guardian isn't
there, Breton."

"Not there? If he made an appointment for eleven? Nonsense--I never
knew him miss an appointment!"

"I knocked three times--three separate times," answered Spargo.

"You should have knocked half a dozen times--he may have overslept
himself. He sits up late--he and old Cardlestone often sit up half the
night, talking stamps or playing piquet," said Breton. "Come on--you'll
see!"

Spargo shook his head again.

"He's not there, Breton," he said. "He's gone!"

Breton stared at the journalist as if he had just announced that he had
seen Mr. Septimus Elphick riding down Fleet Street on a dromedary. He
seized Spargo's elbow.

"Come on!" he said. "I have a key to Mr. Elphick's door, so that I can
go in and out as I like. I'll soon show you whether he's gone or not."

Spargo followed the young barrister down the corridor.

"All the same," he said meditatively as Breton fitted a key to the
latch, "he's not there, Breton. He's--off!"

"Good heavens, man, I don't know what you're talking about!" exclaimed
Breton, opening the door and walking into the lobby. "Off! Where on
earth should he be off to, when he's made an appointment with you for
eleven, and--Hullo!"

He had opened the door of the room in which Spargo had met Elphick and
Miss Baylis the night before, and was walking in when he pulled himself
up on the threshold with a sharp exclamation.

"Good God!" he cried. "What--what's all this?"

Spargo quietly looked over Breton's shoulder. It needed but one quick
glance to show him that much had happened in that quiet room since he
had quitted it the night before. There stood the easy-chair in which he
had left Elphick; there, close by it, but pushed aside, as if by a
hurried hand, was the little table with its spirit case, its syphon,
its glass, in which stale liquid still stood; there was the novel,
turned face downwards; there, upon the novel, was Elphick's pipe. But
the rest of the room was in dire confusion. The drawers of a bureau had
been pulled open and never put back; papers of all descriptions, old
legal-looking documents, old letters, littered the centre-table and
the floor; in one corner of the room a black japanned box had been
opened, its contents strewn about, and the lid left yawning. And in the
grate, and all over the fender there were masses of burned and charred
paper; it was only too evident that the occupant of the chambers,
wherever he might have disappeared to, had spent some time before his
disappearance in destroying a considerable heap of documents and
papers, and in such haste that he had not troubled to put matters
straight before he went.

Breton stared at this scene for a moment in utter consternation. Then
he made one step towards an inner door, and Spargo followed him.
Together they entered an inner room--a sleeping apartment. There was no
one in it, but there were evidences that Elphick had just as hastily
packed a bag as he had destroyed his papers. The clothes which Spargo
had seen him wearing the previous evening were flung here, there,
everywhere: the gorgeous smoking-jacket was tossed unceremoniously in
one corner, a dress-shirt, in the bosom of which valuable studs still
glistened, in another. One or two suitcases lay about, as if they had
been examined and discarded in favour of something more portable; here,
too, drawers, revealing stocks of linen and underclothing, had been
torn open and left open; open, too, swung the door of a wardrobe,
revealing a quantity of expensive clothing. And Spargo, looking around
him, seemed to see all that had happened--the hasty, almost frantic
search for and tearing up and burning of papers; the hurried change of
clothing, of packing necessaries into a bag that could be carried, and
then the flight the getting away, the----

"What on earth does all this mean?" exclaimed Breton. "What is it,
Spargo?"

"I mean exactly what I told you," answered Spargo. "He's off! Off!"

"Off! But why off? What--my guardian!--as quiet an old gentleman as
there is in the Temple--off!" cried Breton. "For what reason, eh? It
isn't--good God, Spargo, it isn't because of anything you said to him
last night!"

"I should say it is precisely because of something that I said to him
last night," replied Spargo. "I was a fool ever to let him out of my
sight."

Breton turned on his companion and gasped.

"Out--of--your--sight!" he exclaimed. "Why--why--you don't mean to say
that Mr. Elphick has anything to do with this Marbury affair? For God's
sake, Spargo----"

Spargo laid a hand on the young barrister's shoulder.

"I'm afraid you'll have to hear a good deal, Breton," he said. "I was
going to talk to you today in any case. You see----"

Before Spargo could say more a woman, bearing the implements which
denote the charwoman's profession, entered the room and immediately
cried out at what she saw. Breton turned on her almost savagely.

"Here, you!" he said. "Have you seen anything of Mr. Elphick this
morning?"

The charwoman rolled her eyes and lifted her hands.

"Me, sir! Not a sign of him, sir. Which I never comes here much before
half-past eleven, sir, Mr. Elphick being then gone out to his
breakfast. I see him yesterday morning, sir, which he was then in his
usual state of good health, sir, if any thing's the matter with him
now. No, sir, I ain't seen nothing of him."

Breton let out another exclamation of impatience.

"You'd better leave all this," he said. "Mr. Elphick's evidently gone
away in a hurry, and you mustn't touch anything here until he comes
back. I'm going to lock up the chambers: if you've a key of them give
it to me."

The charwoman handed over a key, gave another astonished look at the
rooms, and vanished, muttering, and Breton turned to Spargo.

"What do you say?" he demanded. "I must hear--a good deal! Out with it,
then, man, for Heaven's sake."

But Spargo shook his head.

"Not now, Breton," he answered. "Presently, I tell you, for Miss
Aylmore's sake, and your own, the first thing to do is to get on your
guardian's track. We must--must, I say!--and at once."

Breton stood staring at Spargo for a moment as if he could not credit
his own senses. Then he suddenly motioned Spargo out of the room.

"Come on!" he said. "I know who'll know where he is, if anybody does."

"Who, then?" asked Spargo, as they hurried out.

"Cardlestone," answered Breton, grimly. "Cardlestone!"




CHAPTER THIRTY

REVELATION


There was as much bright sunshine that morning in Middle Temple Lane as
ever manages to get into it, and some of it was shining in the entry
into which Spargo and Breton presently hurried. Full of haste as he was
Breton paused at the foot of the stair. He looked down at the floor and
at the wall at its side.

"Wasn't it there?" he said in a low voice, pointing at the place he
looked at. "Wasn't it there, Spargo, just there, that Marbury, or,
rather, Maitland, was found?"

"It was just there," answered Spargo.

"You saw him?"

"I saw him."

"Soon--afterwards?"

"Immediately after he was found. You know all that, Breton. Why do you
ask now?"

Breton, who was still staring at the place on which he had fixed his
eyes on walking into the entry, shook his head.

"Don't know," he answered. "I--but come on--let's see if old
Cardlestone can tell us anything."

There was another charwoman, armed with pails and buckets, outside
Cardlestone's door, into which she was just fitting a key. It was
evident to Spargo that she knew Breton, for she smiled at him as she
opened the door.

"I don't think Mr. Cardlestone'll be in, sir," she said. "He's
generally gone out to breakfast at this time--him and Mr. Elphick goes
together."

"Just see," said Breton. "I want to see him if he is in." The charwoman
entered the chambers and immediately screamed.