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« on: May 20, 2023, 08:15:00 am » |
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WOMERSLEY, in his time, had been a uniformed policeman, and it was in his old voice and his old manner that he fired a sharp question at the startled youth before him.
“Now then, what’s this mean?---what are you doing here? Come on, now!” Then, before the lad could reply, he turned to Holaday, speaking rapidly. “This is the chap I told you about, who disappeared from the Euston Hotel two nights ago---the smoking-room waiter.” He whipped round on the youth again. “D’you hear, now?” he went on. “Answer my question!”
“I’m here as---as second footman, Mr. Womersley,” faltered the accosted one. “I---that’s why, sir.”
“You’ve got my name pat enough,” growled Womersley. “Let’s see---I ought to remember yours, from that inquest. Green!---that’s it---Walter Green. Now there’s something wrong, Green! You never went to your work at the Euston Hotel the other night, and you disappeared, without any notice, from the club where you live. I’ve been looking for you! What’ve you got to say?”
“I---I got this job, Mr. Womersley,” said Green. “It’s---it’s a better job than waiting, sir, and----”
“People don’t get jobs in that way, my lad!” broke in Womersley, his voice getting harder and sharper than ever. “That tale won’t do for me! You set off for your evening’s work at the Euston Hotel the other night in your usual way, but you never turned up at the hotel. Somebody got hold of you. Now----”
An elderly man, obviously an upper servant, butler, or house-steward, came forward from the inner hall, glancing questioningly at the two strangers on the steps.
“What’s this, Green?” he asked, authoritatively. “What do these gentlemen want? What is it?” he went on, addressing himself to Womersley in a somewhat altered tone, after a second look at him. “Do you wish----”
“I suppose you’re the butler?” interrupted Womersley. “I’m a police officer---there’s my official card. Is Lady Cheale at home?”
“She is not,” replied the butler, after glancing at the card which the detective thrust into his hand. “Her ladyship left for London early this morning.”
“Is Sir John Cheale at home?” persisted Womersley. “If so----”
“Sir John is not at home either,” said the butler. “Sir John is away on business---in the North of England.”
“Very well!” said Womersley. “I came here to see Lady Cheale. And I find this young man here---opening the door---a footman. I want him! I spent some time day before yesterday searching for him. When did he come here?”
The butler, a quiet-mannered, old-fashioned person, turned a troubled look on the footman.
“Well, really, this is very unpleasant!” he said. “I---I don’t understand it! He has only been here two days, but---her ladyship herself engaged him! In fact, she sent him down here from London, with a note to me, saying that she had engaged him as second footman. I----”
“Second footman or third footman, I want him!” exclaimed Womersley. “He’s got to give me a full explanation of his recent movements! You say Lady Cheale sent him down from London---was she in London two days ago, then?”
“Her ladyship was certainly in London two days ago!” replied the butler, with some show of dignity. “I have just told you so!”
“But you said that she left here for London early this morning,” retorted Womersley. “Do I understand----”
“Her ladyship returned from London yesterday,” said the butler. “She arrived here yesterday evening---late.”
“And was off back again first thing!” said Womersley. “Why, now?”
“Really, sir!” expostulated the butler. “I fail to see why----”
“I’ve given you my card!” exclaimed Womersley. “This is a very serious business. I want this lad---but I also want Lady Cheale! It was Lady Cheale I came to find---that I find this youngster here is accidental. Why did Lady Cheale leave again so hurriedly this morning?---you may just as well tell me!”
“I believe it was in consequence of a telegram which came for her just before breakfast,” replied the butler, who was obviously much upset by the detective’s last words. “She hurried over her breakfast, at any rate, and drove off at once to catch an express at Chester. I hope----”
Womersley walked into the hall, motioning Holaday to follow him.
“Now, look here,” he said, with a reassuring nod to the butler, “I don’t want to make any bother, or cause any suspicion among the servants, but I must have a talk with this lad Green. Either he talks to me here, or he’ll have to go with me to the police station at Chester. He’d better talk here---quietly. Can’t you show us into a room?”
The butler turned up the hall---unwillingly.
“I don’t understand this!” he muttered. “It’s very unpleasant for me---my master and mistress are away, and I scarcely know what to do. However, if you’re detectives, and want to talk to this young man----”
He threw open the door and showed them into a small parlour, with the air of a man who must needs receive unwelcome visitors.
“Thank you,” said Womersley. “And don’t alarm yourself! When I’ve finished questioning Green I shall be glad to see you again, and perhaps to explain matters more fully, but for the present you’d better leave us alone with him. Now, Green,” he continued, turning to the footman when the butler had gone away and closed the door, “you’d better be frank and open with me about this business, for I’ll warn you at once that you’re in a serious position! Sit down there, the other side of that table, and listen to me. You say Lady Cheale sent you down here, night before last, after engaging you as second footman, in London? Very well---how came you to meet Lady Cheale in London? Now, remember, I know all about your movements the evening on which you failed to turn up at your work at the hotel: that is, I know all about them to a certain point. You left that residential club where you’ve been living at your usual time, all ready dressed in your waiter’s clothes, to go straight to your duties as smoking-room waiter. But you never reached the hotel. Now---why?”
Green had listened to all this with a troubled countenance, his eyes turning attentively from Womersley to Holaday, and always with deepening suspicion. When the detective’s final demand came, he twisted restlessly in his chair.
“It’s hard on me, Mr. Womersley,” he muttered. “It’s uncommon hard! I haven’t done anything. I wish her ladyship was here!”
“So do I, my lad!” exclaimed Womersley, heartily. “There’s nothing I’d like better---and my friend here would like it, too, just as much. We want Lady Cheale!---that’s what we’ve come down for. But she’s not here---and you are. Now, take my advice and tell me what you know, for I’m convinced you know a lot. You were a witness, you know, Green, in that Alfred Jakyn inquest, and I’m pretty certain that it’s because you were that you’re here at Cheale Court. Come, now, why didn’t you go to your work the other evening?”
Green gave his questioner a look that was half-sullen, half-significant.
“Because I met Jennison!” he answered.
Womersley threw a quick glance at Holaday, who, hands in pockets, was lounging against the mantelpiece, behind the footman. But quick as the glance was, it was not quicker than the question which shot itself at the unwilling examinee.
“What did you know of Jennison?”
“Saw him at that inquest,” muttered Green.
“Had you seen him since?---before the other evening?”
“Yes---once or twice.”
“Where?”
“At the hotel. He came there one night and asked me for some information about Alfred Jakyn. I gave him some---about what happened when Jakyn was in the smoking-room the night of his death. He---I may as well tell you, now I’m started on it, Mr. Womersley---he gave me two or three pounds, and said there’d be more to come.”
“I see! And what did you tell Jennison?”
“I told him---to put it short---that when Jakyn came into the smoking-room at about nine-thirty, there was an old gentleman and a youngish lady in there; he was reading and she was writing. Jakyn asked me to get him a drink; I went for it, and left the three there. When I came back, after a few minutes, the lady and gentleman had gone and Jakyn was alone. Afterwards---but I told that at the inquest.”
“I know---Jakyn was restless, and you saw him read a bit of paper that he took from his pocket; then he went out. Well?---what did Jennison say about this?”
“He asked me if I knew the gentleman and lady; I said I didn’t, but they’d been staying in the hotel a day or two, and I could find out. I went to find out, and came back to him and told him who they were.”
“Just so!---and who were they?”
“Sir John and Lady Cheale!”
Womersley again glanced at Holaday, and the American, towering behind Green, made a significant grimace.
“Oh!” said Womersley. “Very well! Now, we’ll go back to the other evening, when Jennison accosted you outside the hotel, as you were about to go to your work. What did he say to you?”
“Reminded me that he’d told me there was more money to come, and said that now was the time!---if I’d like to profit by what I knew, I could make a lot. Said I must go with him there and then. I said I couldn’t---I was about due at my work. He said, let the work go hang! This was a chance of putting hundreds of pounds, ready money, in one’s pocket. So I went with him.”
“Where?”
“To a place in Charles Street, close by. Sort of shop that had been turned into a surgery---a doctor’s surgery.”
“A surgery, eh? Whose surgery? What doctor?”
“Well, that Dr. Syphax was there---I’d seen him before, at the inquest. And Lady Cheale---she was there. I recognised her at once.”
“Dr. Syphax and Lady Cheale, eh? Anybody else?”
“Yes. There was a young lady that they called Miss Walker; she was there when I got there; she was with Dr. Syphax and Lady Cheale. They were talking---in a sort of parlour behind the surgery. I made out that Jennison had brought her there, just as he’d brought me.”
“No doubt!” observed Womersley drily, and with another glance at Holaday. “I should say he had. Well---what took place? What had they to say to you?”
“Jennison said most of it. The others didn’t have much to say. Dr. Syphax scarcely said anything, and Lady Cheale only sort of said yes and no to what Jennison said to her. After I got there, and when Jennison had fastened the street door, so that no patients could get in, he talked to me and this Miss Walker---Chrissie he called her, familiar-like, as if---well, as if what concerned one concerned the other, see?”
“I see! Sharers in a secret, eh, Green? Very well, and what did Jennison say?---with, apparently, the tacit consent of Lady Cheale and Dr. Syphax.”
“Well, he told me that it was of the very highest importance, most serious importance, that Lady Cheale’s name shouldn’t get out in connection with the Alfred Jakyn affair. He said that Lady Cheale was absolutely ignorant and innocent of anything relating to that affair, and hadn’t the slightest idea as to who poisoned Alfred Jakyn, if he really was poisoned. But she’d known Alfred Jakyn in past years, before he left England, and she’d met him unfortunately on the evening of his death, and had spent half an hour talking to him. The only people, however, said Jennison, who could prove that, were me and Miss Walker. I could prove that Lady Cheale was in the smoking-room at the hotel at the time that Alfred Jakyn was, and that the note I saw him read was probably written by her and slipped into his hand, or dropped near his chair for him to pick up; Miss Walker could prove that Jakyn and Lady Cheale were in the saloon of the place where she was barmaid, from soon after ten to about ten-thirty that evening. Nobody but us could prove those facts, Jennison said, and they’d got me there to have a quiet little talk about it.”
“And to make you both an offer, eh?” suggested the detective with a laugh.
“That’s about it, Mr. Womersley,” agreed the footman. “That’s what it came to. Jennison said that if it came to us being questioned, as we might be, we couldn’t avoid telling what we knew---they’d force it out of us. But, he said, it was absolutely certain this affair would blow over, or the truth would be got in such a fashion that there’d be no suspicion whatever resting on Lady Cheale, and the really necessary thing at present was to get me and Miss Walker away somewhere, quietly, where nobody could get at us to ask inconvenient questions. And then he came straight to it, and he said that if we’d agree to just clear out for a bit, there and then, Lady Cheale would give us five hundred pounds each.”
“Spot cash?” asked Womersley cynically.
“Spot cash! He pulled out the money, Mr. Womersley, Jennison did---bank-notes. He put it on the table---two wads of notes. New ones---Bank of England.”
“Tempting!” observed the detective. “And---you agreed, eh? Both of you?”
“I agreed, yes; I didn’t see why I shouldn’t,” replied the footman. “I didn’t know---and I don’t know now---that I was doing anything wrong. I didn’t know that Lady Cheale had committed any----”
“All right, my lad!” interrupted Womersley. “That’s another matter. Well, you took your money---did the girl take hers?”
“Yes, she took it. And, of course, we both promised we wouldn’t go back to where we lived---we’d clear out for a bit, there and then. And then came the question of where we were to go, d’ye see, Mr. Womersley? It was then that Lady Cheale began to do a bit of the talking---up to that point she left it nearly all to Jennison. She said, as regarded me, that they wanted a second footman at Cheale Court, and that if I’d go there, she’d give me extra good wages: it would be the very place, she said, for me to lie low in for a while. She told me a bit about it, and I agreed, so she wrote me a note to hand to the butler, and after a little more talk, Jennison walked along to Euston with me and sent me off by the next train to Chester.”
“Smart work!” answered Womersley. “With your five hundred pounds in your pocket, of course!”
“Yes!” admitted Green. “And I hope, Mr. Womersley----”
“You don’t know where the girl, Chrissie Walker, went?” interrupted the detective.
“I don’t, Mr. Womersley, I’ve no idea,” replied Green. “I left her there, with Lady Cheale and Dr. Syphax, when Jennison and I went off to the station. It was all of a hurry at the end---Jennison said I’d just nice time, and no more, to get the evening express, and he rushed me off, got me a ticket, and shoved me into the train. That’s---that’s all I know, Mr. Womersley. And I do hope----”
Again Womersley waved aside the footman’s anxiety and his hopes.
“You didn’t hear anything of what was being paid to Jennison?” he asked. “Or where Jennison was going? No? Well, did you hear anything about where Jennison had gone?---where he was living?”
Green gave his questioner a sly smile.
“No, not there!” he answered. “But yesterday, when Lady Cheale was here, I posted some letters for her, and I saw one addressed to Mr. A. Jennings, Great Western Hotel, Paddington. And I should say, Mr. Womersley, that A. Jennings is A. Jennison!”
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