The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 1 — April 1922)

Author of “The Middle Temple Murder,” Etc., Etc.

Editor's Note.

The Black Mask takes pride in presenting herewith what it considers to be not only J. S. Fletcher’s masterpiece in mystery writing, but, as well, the best detective novel that has made its appearance since the heyday of Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. Mr. Fletcher, as is well known, is the greatest living writer of mystery fiction. His earlier novel, “The Middle Temple Murder,” made a sensation upon its publication in America. We confidently believe that “Exterior to the Evidence” will duplicate its success.

Chapter I Youth

At the extreme height of a broken and widespreading moorland a vast mass of dark rock rose abruptly from the heather and ling, and on its table-like crown some man or men had built a high and tapering cairn of stone.

A girl sat on a boulder at the foot of the rocks, on a cloudless afternoon in the middle of May, looking fixedly along a narrow sheep-track which ran towards the sharply defined edge of the moor. As a figure suddenly showed itself far off against the sky-line, the girl’s quick eyes recognised her lover, and she sprang to her feet and went forward to meet him.

“Marston! — you’re an hour late!” she called in clear, ringing tones while they were yet thirty yards apart. “I’ve been up there at the Pike since two o’clock, and it’s three now, if it isn’t more!”

The boy thus hailed came hurrying along, panting and out of breath, flung himself on a cluster of heather, and pulling out a handkerchief began to mop his forehead.

“By George, and so would you have been late if you’d been in my shoes!” he exclaimed. “The wonder is that I’m here at all! There’s been the very deuce to pay at our place since lunch, and yet, by George, I don’t know which I’ve done most of as I came along — lost my breath with hurrying to get here, or laughed till my sides ached!”

The girl stood for a moment looking thoughtfully at him. He was a well-knit, handsome, open-faced lad of no more than twenty or twenty-one in appearance, though in reality he was already twenty-three; fair-haired, blue-eyed, typically English, and bearing all the signs and marks of fresh air and outdoor life. She herself was a dark beauty — the hair that showed under her hat was black and glossy, the colouring of her cheeks almost gipsylike. A smile began to dimple the corners of her full red lips, and she suddenly laughed softly as she sat down on the bank across which the belated lover had flung himself.

“Well, Marston,” she said softly, “and what’s the matter? Nothing wrong, if you’ve been laughing at it.”

Marston Stanbury sat up and resumed the soft cap which he had thrown aside in order to mop his forehead. He glanced approvingly at the girl by his side, who in her turn gave him an answering glance of entire contentment. It was not until he had got his pipe in full blast that he slipped an arm round the girl’s waist and gave her what was intended for a confidential embrace.

“You’d better prepare yourself for a pretty big sort of surprise, Letty,” he announced. “I wouldn’t mind laying my new gun against any old thing you’ve got that you couldn’t guess in a hundred!”

“Better tell, then,” responded Letty. “What is it?”

Marston took his pipe from his teeth and looked fixedly at his sweetheart.

“Hold tight!” he said warningly. “This is it. Sir Cheville’s going to be married!”

“Nonsense!”

“Fact!” declared Marston. “And jolly soon, too. Next month!”

“At his age!” exclaimed Letty.

“Just so!” said Marston. “Seventy-five last time. Still — a fact!”

“And — to whom?” asked Letty.

Marston gave her another warning look.

“Now you will have to sit tight!” he replied. “Else you’ll get thrown. You’d never guess that, either. Mademoiselle de Coulanges.”

Letty started and stared.

“What!” she exclaimed. “The Vicar’s French governess?”

“You’ve hit it in one,” said Marston. Mam’selle Zélie de Coulanges — French governess at the vicarage. That’s it! — she’s to be my Lady Stanbury. May and December — she’s twenty-five, and Sir Cheville’s just fifty years older. Um!”

Letty plucked a sprig of heather and began thoughtfully pulling it to pieces.

“Marston!” she said at last. “Whatever does your mother say?”

Marston nodded his head, Chinese mandarin style, with great vigour for several seconds before he replied.

“You mean,” he answered with a significant look, “you mean — what doesn’t she say!”

“Saying it — to whom?” asked Letty.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” continued Marston. My mother and I were at lunch, when in walked my uncle. I saw at once that something was up — he wouldn’t have any lunch, nor even a glass of Sherry, and he was jolly fidgety. And then, all of a sudden, he made a formal announcement — he was about to be married. And — to the Frenchwoman. Gad! — I thought my mother would have a fit!”

“Yes,” said Letty, “I should have expected her to. Well?”

“At first,” Marston went on, “she refused to believe it. Talked about his age. He said stiffly that he believed he was as hale and hearty as any man of sixty. And then, of course, she got personal — you know what a hot temper my mother has — and talked about how it would affect me. There I was, she said, his nephew and heir to the title, and always been led to expect it, and a jolly lot besides, and all that sort of thing. If he’d a son by this marriage, I’d be disinherited, and so on, and so on. She — well, to put it plainly, she was just furious!”

“And — Sir Cheville?” asked Letty.

“He got stiff and icy,” answered Marston. “Said it had always, been a possibility that he might marry, even late in life. And that whether I ever came to the title or not, he made full provision for me, most handsome provision, he repeated, with emphasis, and I should never have cause to blame him. But — it’s the title business that knocked my mother over! She’s always been awfully keen on my being Sir Marston Stanbury, Baronet — that’s about it!”

“And you, Marston?” suggested Letty. “What do you think?”

“Don’t care a hang about the title!” declared Marston. “If the old boy wants to marry, let him. What I want is to marry you. And, if this comes off, as it certainly will, it’ll make things all the easier for you and me.

“How?” asked Letty. “What difference will it make?”

“This,” said Marston eagerly. “So long as it was certain that there was nothing but Sir Cheville’s life between me and the title, he’d a hold over me. And as we know very well, he and your father are, somehow, not on very good terms. Now, if he takes his own way about this marriage, he can’t object to my taking mine about my marriage. And — I suggest that we tell your father and my mother all about our engagement now, straight off.”

Letty turned away and looked thoughtfully across the moor. It Was some time before she spoke, and when she glanced at Marston again there was a suspicion of foreboding in her eyes.

“Marston,” she asked quietly, “have you any idea why your uncle and my father are not on very good terms?”

“Not the slightest notion,” declared Marston. “But you know how things are. Your father’s a Radical, and Sir Cheville’s an out-and-out Tory of the old school. And there was a difference over that last County Council election. That’s all I can think of.”

“There’s something more than that,” said Letty. “They were always — well, pleasantly friendly, until lately. My father’s been awfully bothered for some time — I’ve seen it, though he tries to keep it from me.”

“Business matters?” asked Marston.

“It may be,” replied Letty. “But I don’t know. They say trade’s bad. You see, you and I don’t know anything about things of that sort — we’re only children, after all.”

Marston made no answer. He was thinking of what lay beyond the northern edge of the moor — the manufacturing villages, the big mills, the crowds of folk who worked in them, and particularly of Lithersdale Old Mill, Lucas Etherton’s place, which was one of the biggest manufactories in the district. He was thinking, too, of Lucas Etherton himself, a big, burly, reserved man, who always gave people the impression of power and of well-to-do-ness.

“I should have thought your father was all right in the way of business!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Why, look at the number of people he employs, and his mill’s always running!”

“All the same, I know there’s something,” declared Letty. “And — I don’t want to bother him about anything just now, so let it wait. Wait until Sir Cheville’s married, anyway.”

“After all,” said Marston ruminatively, “they must know, if they’ve got any eyes. All right! — leave it till the old chap’s tied himself up to the Frenchwoman. Then I’ll tell my mother, and you can tell your father, and we’ll get married this summer. How will that do?”

“I suppose so,” said Letty.

She looked down at him in a half-amused, half-teasing fashion, and Marston knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slipped his arm round her waist.

“It’s jolly hot here,” he said. “Come on through the coppice — only bit of shade there is on this moor.”

The two lovers strolled away in the direction of the pines; an hour had passed before they came out again on the farther side and walked rather more rapidly in the direction of the valley. A winding track led downwards, and Marston and Letty turned along it until they came to a point, close by an old farmstead, where it divided.

“I’m going down to the mill, to take father home,” said Letty. “He’s been there since seven o’clock this morning.”

“All right, tomorrow then, same time,” said Marston.

The click of the gate close by made him turn sharply. Letty turned, too. A tall, thin, pale-faced young man, of a peculiarly reserved and watchful expression of eye and mouth, came out of the garden of the old farmstead, wheeling a bicycle. He lifted his cap as he turned the machine in the direction of the valley, and while Letty nodded in response, Marston scowled.

“Can’t stand that clerk of your father’s!” he growled. “He always makes me think of that chap in Dickens — you know, Uriah Heep. What’s the fellow’s name?”

“Bradwell Pike,” answered Letty. “He isn’t prepossessing — but I believe he’s useful.”

“Pike!” sneered Marston. “Good name for him! Shark would have been better, though. Well, — tomorrow, then.”

Letty smiled and nodded as they separated. Tomorrow seemed close at hand, and there was nothing to indicate that the sunshine of today was not to last.

Chapter II The Gathering Clouds

Lithersdale Old Mill, towards which Letty took her way after leaving Marston Stanbury, was the oldest industrial building in that district, a survival of the age wherein manufacturers got their motive power from water. Its machinery had long been driven by steam, but the old water-wheel still stood, and the water-course still ran down from the moors above. The mill itself was out of date, and its present owner had often been advised to pull it down. But Lucas Etherton, Radical though he was in politics, was conservative enough in all else. The lives and endeavours of five generations of Ethertons were built into its gray walls, and Lucas Etherton felt that it would last his time — he was the last of his race in the male line, and Letty would marry. Let the old place stand, till he and it finished together.

Letty turned into the mill through a garden and orchard which lay at one end of it. There was a private door at the end of the garden which admitted to a staircase at the head of which were two or three rooms, shut off from the rest of the premises; Lucas Etherton used these as offices for himself and his clerk, Bradwell Pike. Letty always used this entrance when she went down to the mill of an afternoon, to fetch her father away in good time for their six-o'clock dinner. Lucas, in her opinion, was too much at the mill — going there at an early hour in the morning, breakfasting and lunching there, and occasionally staying there until late in the evening. And of late she had made a practice of going down to the mill between four and five in the afternoon and dragging him away, so that he might have an hour’s rest before dinner.

The rooms at the head of the private staircase up which Letty presently climbed were three in number: the first, a sort of anteroom for callers; the second, Lucas Etherton’s own room; the third, which opened into the mill, an office wherein Bradwell Pike was usually to be found. All three opened one into another, and instead of being shut off by doors were separated by heavy curtains, made of a certain fabric manufactured on the premises. They were all heavily carpeted, and Letty was light of foot, and she was halfway into the anteroom, intending to throw back the intervening curtain and surprise her father at his desk, when she heard voices in the next room, and knew that Lucas was there talking with Sir Cheville. There was nothing in that, but there was something in the words she caught which pulled her up sharply and sent the blood flushing hotly to her brown cheeks.

“Dishonourable!” Sir Cheville Stanbury was saying in loud, angry tones. “No other word for it! You’re treating me in a dishonourable fashion — a highly dishonourable fashion. That’s plain truth, Mr. Etherton.”

Letty felt her heart throb painfully as she waited for her father to speak. She had no impulse of retreating; after what she had heard, her one instinct was to stay where she was. There was trouble here, and bad trouble, and her father had no one in the world but herself.

It seemed a long time before Lucas spoke. She heard a movement, as if he were shifting or rearranging books or papers on the desk at which she knew he would be seated; it appeared to suggest that he wanted to gain time, or as if he felt at a loss for words.

“There are — well — various ways — of regarding it,” said Lucas Etherton. “It depends how — how you look at it.”

Letty heard a hasty, half-suppressed exclamation from Sir Cheville — it seemed to express contempt as much as to show irritation.

“Pshaw!” he said. “There is only one way of looking at it. You come to me a year ago, as a neighbour, and tell me that owing to certain trading reasons, which I, of course, didn’t ask you to explain, you were temporary short of ready money, and asked for a loan of five thousand pounds. I gave you a cheque for that amount there and then — with pleasure, and without even so much as asking for an acknowledgment. I naturally expected you to return my money as soon as your temporary embarrassment was over. A year has passed — you haven’t given me back one penny! Yet your mill goes on working — you are turning out quantities of goods — you seem to be going on as, to my knowledge, you have gone on for many a long year. What does it all mean?”

Letty’s heart was beating like a sledgehammer on an anvil by this time. Here, then, was the trouble of which she had had some foreboding, at which she had hinted to Marston. In the silence which followed upon Sir Cheville’s direct question, she stole gently to the curtain which separated her from the two men and looked cautiously into the room beyond.

One glance was sufficient to make her more puzzled than before. Her father sat at his desk, his chair tilted back, his long legs crossed; the toe of his right boot was quietly kicking the big waste-paper basket in front of him. But what puzzled his daughter more than this attitude was the fact that the upward twitch of his moustache showed that Lucas Etherton was smiling — smiling, so it seemed, at his own thoughts. Yet — how could a man smile who had just been called dishonourable, to his very face?

She glanced from him to the old baronet. At any other time she would have been amused. Sir Cheville Stanbury was noted in Lithersdale as being a dandy, and the best-dressed man in the neighbourhood, but Letty had never seen him in such gay garments before, and she wondered if his festive appearance had anything to do with his engagement to Mlle de Coulanges, the fascinating governess at the vicarage. Sir Cheville was a spare, medium-sized man, who made the most of every one of his inches and held himself invariably square and erect.

Everything about him was naturally aggressive — the glance of his eye, the cock of his chin, the upward twirl of his gray, carefully kept moustache, the very set of his shoulders. And now all this was set off in a faultlessly cut suit of summer tweeds finished by a tall white hat with a black band, white gloves with black stitches, white gaiters over patent leather boots — a vivid contrast to Lucas Etherton’s shaggy figure in an old blue suit liberally adorned with patches of grease and shreds and slivers of wool.

Why did not her father speak? Why did he sit there, evidently jingling the money and keys in his pockets, certainly kicking the waste-paper basket, certainly smiling in that queer, provoking way? This puzzled Letty beyond belief; it evidently puzzled Sir Cheville too, for after a long pause he turned from the window through which he was affecting to look, picked up the eyeglass which dangled from his neck by a thin gold chain, fixed it in his right eye and stared at the man he was reproaching.

“I repeat — what does it all mean?” he said testily. “And I’ll supplement that by another question. Are you going to repay me my loan, Mr. Etherton? I concluded it was for a few weeks — it has stretched into twelve months. I want my money. I am resettling my affairs. Why don’t you speak, sir?”

Lucas Etherton tilted his chair farther back and looked up at the ceiling. Even then, to the hearer who was with him and to the listener behind the curtain, it seemed as if he was unnecessarily slow in answering.

“Different folk have different notions, Sir Cheville,” he said. “When you were kind enough to lend me that money, I told you I wanted it until I’d got something fixed up. You said — I’m giving you your exact words — ‘Oh, any time, Etherton, any time — suit your own convenience.’ I took you at your word. It isn’t convenient to repay you yet.”

“But damme, sir, you must have known that I was using a mere figure of speech!” exclaimed Sir Cheville. “A man does say something of that sort when — when he lends money to another man. Mere politeness, don’t you know! But — one doesn’t mean it!”

Lucas Etherton chuckled.

“Ah, but, you see, I thought you did!” he retorted. “I’d always understood that you were one of those men who never say anything but what they mean.”

Sir Cheville made a final contortion, dropped his monocle, and tapped his smart walking-cane on the floor.

“You’re trifling with me, sir!” he said angrily. “You know as well as I do that the loan was a temporary one. Will you repay me — at once?”

“Can’t!” answered Lucas Etherton laconically. “Haven’t got it!”

“When will you have it?” demanded Sir Cheville. “Fix a date!”

“Couldn’t!” said Etherton, almost indifferently. “Might be soon — might be longer. Can’t say at all today. I’m speaking as I do because you’re talking about this matter as an ordinary, common creditor might. You’re talking about a debt of honour between two gentlemen as if it were a vulgar trade account, and you were the butcher or the candlestick maker. If—”

Sir Cheville, who had grown very red and angry during the manufacturer’s last few words, suddenly stepped up to the desk and smote his fist on it.

“Damme, sir!” he vociferated. “How dare you talk to me like that? Honour, indeed; I’d like to know what you know—”

“About honour?” interrupted Etherton. “Perhaps quite as much as yourself. You lent me a sum of money, willingly, to be paid back at my convenience. Now you come and demand it—”

“I’ll tell you what it is!” exclaimed Sir Cheville abruptly. “If you don’t pay me my money by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll instruct Birch to serve you with a writ! That’s final!”

Etherton looked up from his desk, and it seemed to his daughter that a new mood showed itself in his face.

“Birch?” he said slowly. “Ah! Now, do you mind telling me if you ever told Birch that I owe you this money?”

“No, I have not, sir!” retorted Sir Cheville indignantly. “I’m not in the habit of telling my solicitor that I lend anything — as I have done, more than once. But I shall tell him — now!”

“Don’t!” said Etherton, with a peculiar glance. “Don’t! If you please.”

“Why not, sir?” demanded Sir Cheville.

Etherton looked hard at his creditor for several seconds.

“Because it would upset certain plans of mine,” he answered. “That’s all.”

Sir Cheville pulled himself up and stared back.

“Plans! What plans?” he asked. “Tell me!”

“No!” replied Etherton. “Certainly not! Not if I owed you fifty thousand. And I’d like to know why you come upon me suddenly with a demand for five? You’re a very rich man, Sir Cheville, and you don’t want it.”

Sir Cheville turned round to the window and for a moment looked out in silence. Suddenly he turned again to the manufacturer.

“Do you know what’s being said about you, Etherton?” he asked in a low voice. “It’s rumoured that you’re in Queer Street! Now, if I am in pretty comfortable circumstances myself — well, even if I am a rich, a very rich man, I’m not going to lose my money. I have other people to consider. Now, it seems to be a fact that you can’t lay your hands on five thousand pounds, in spite of your apparently big business, and so on. So—”

Etherton suddenly lifted his hand as if to command silence. He pointed to the curtain which shut off his clerk’s room, and then called quietly:

“Pike! Are you there?”

There was no answer, and Etherton turned to his visitor.

“I thought I heard a step in that room,” he said. “That clerk of mine has a foot like a cat. Well, Sir Cheville, I see I shall have to give you my confidence, after all. Come this way, if you please.”

Etherton rose from his desk, motioned Sir Cheville to follow him, and crossed over to the opposite doorway.

He held the curtain aside; the visitor stepped through; he himself followed. And at that Letty turned, went down the private staircase, and crossing the garden and orchard climbed slowly up the hillside to Low Hall.

The comfort and pleasantness of the old house struck her painfully as she walked into its great stone porch. Any one entering it for the first time would have said that here was an ideal house filled with all that mortal could desire. And yet, as she now knew, there was something wrong, and some secret, and money owing to Marston Stanbury’s uncle which her father could not pay. And — she could only wait.

She was waiting at six o’clock when Etherton rang her up on the telephone.

“Letty,” he said hurriedly, “I shan’t be home to dinner, nor tonight, at all; I’ve got to go away on business. Take care of yourself!”

“Oh!” she answered. “Can’t you run up for five minutes? Or shall I come down? Do let me!”

“No!” he replied. “Can’t manage either. I’m off, just now. See you in the morning. By-by!”

He rang off there and then, and the girl turned disconsolately away — to find the parlor-maid at her elbow. Dinner was ready, and she must sit down alone.

Chapter III The Confidential Clerk

Had Lucas Etherton come home to dinner, his daughter’s naturally healthy appetite would have done justice to the carefully cooked food which always appeared on the tabie at Low Hall. But as things were, Letty could make no more than a pretense of eating, and she was glad to escape and get out into a favorite quiet nook in the garden. That had been an ideal day of spring, full of warmth and brightness, but the events of the last two hours had driven all its color away. What was the secret which Lucas Etherton had evidently been keeping to himself? Why should he take old Sir Cheville into his confidence about it? Why did he not take her into that confidence? — he and she had been inseparable, ever since she had come home from school eighteen months earlier. But, to be sure, there was a reason why her father was taking Sir Cheville into counsel — he owed Sir Cheville five thousand pounds. It galled her to think that money was owing to this proud, arrogant old man. There was a great deal of old-fashioned pride in the Etherton race, and Letty had her full share of it, and it was peculiarly distasteful to her to know that her father owed money to Marston Stanbury’s uncle which he could not pay on demand, and about which he spoke with curious uncertainty and vagueness. Moreover, she was utterly puzzled by what she had learned that afternoon. Her father’s mill was always running, he was employing four or five hundred workpeople, and there must be a lot of money about somewhere. Why, then, did he not pay Sir Cheville Stanbury his five thousand pounds and have done with him? And why, having said with emphasis that he wouldn’t tell Sir Cheville his plans if he owed him fifty thousand, did he suddenly turn round and say that, after all, he would take him into his confidence?

Letty Etherton was one of those people who become utterly miserable if left alone with a wearing secret. If her father had only come home that evening, she would have made a clean breast to him of her knowledge of what had happened at the mill, and have begged him to tell her what it all meant. But Lucas had not come, was not coming; she did not even know where his business had taken him. And there was no mother to turn to — Mrs. Etherton had been dead some years — and no brother and no sister. She needed a confidential ear that could be trusted, and the knowledge of this sent her thoughts instinctively flying to her godfather, Mr. Nicholas Getherfield, an old gentleman who lived, all alone, in a queer old house seven miles higher up the valley.

To think of Mr. Getherfield, with his sweet, quiet, old-world manners, his ready sympathy and understanding, was sufficient to make Letty long to go to him, and within a few minutes she had made up her mind; had got out her bicycle and taken the road which led far into the wilder, uninhabited parts of Lithersdale. In half an hour she had left the mills and houses behind, and was following a winding track that ran between the river and the hillside. And there, as she turned the corner of a coppice of stunted oak trees, just then bursting into leaf, she came face to face with her father’s clerk, Bradwell Pike, who was busily engaged at the roadside, mending a puncture in the tube of his bicycle.

Letty had no reason for sharing the boyish aversion which Marston always manifested whenever Pike crossed his path. She had known Pike ever since she was ten years old. He was as much a feature of the Old Mill as the ancient water-wheel or the stone sundial in the mill garden. She knew him as her father’s clerk — a quiet, reserved, hardworking fellow, eminently useful. She had grown so used to his looks and appearance that she had never particularly noticed them. Perhaps his nose was a trifle too long, and too thin about the nostrils; perhaps his eyes were too closely set together; perhaps he carried an habitual air of furtive secrecy — but Letty had never thought of him as anything else than the clerk at the mill. And she was only thinking of him in this way when she jumped off her bicycle at his side.

“Mr. Pike!” she exclaimed, “do you happen to know where my father has gone on business? He telephoned to me at six o’clock saying he was going somewhere, for the night, but he was in such a hurry that he didn’t say where. Do you know anything about it?”

Pike, who was endeavouring to locate the puncture in his tube, looked up eagerly from his work.

“I don’t, Miss Letty,” he answered. “I don’t know anything at all. He never said a word to me. He came into the office from the mill just before six, and I heard him telephoning to you — then he went out, straight off. But I should say he was going over to the station to catch the six-ten into Hallithwaite.”

“You don’t know of any reason — business reason — that would take him away?” suggested Letty.

“No,” answered Pike. “No, Miss Letty, can’t say that I do.”

He had located the puncture by that time, and he methodically proceeded to mark its whereabouts by drawing a pencil line round it. She stood watching his long, slender fingers — fingers of an unusual length and thinness — why, she could not tell. And Pike suddenly looked up at her.

“You’re not anxious about him, Miss Letty?” he asked.

“I don’t think he’s very well,” replied Letty half-evasively. “And — yes, I am a little anxious.”

Pike produced a small box from the bag which hung behind his saddle, and finding a bit of sandpaper in it began to clean the coating off his tube.

“Miss Letty,” he said suddenly, “you’ve known me a great many years. So has Mr. Etherton. I’ve been a good servant to him ever since I came to the Old Mill. So — I can speak. I saw you this afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Letty unsuspectingly. “On the moor.”

“I didn’t mean that,” answered Pike, with a swift side-glance. “I meant — at the mill. You were looking through the curtain on one side of your father’s room — I was looking through the curtain on the other side.”

Letty’s face flushed and she instinctively drew back a little.

“You were — listening?” she exclaimed.

“Just as you were, Miss Letty,” replied Pike. “It wasn’t my fault I came in there. I heard your father and Sir Cheville Stanbury talking, and — well, I did listen, for a minute or two. But — I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t know already.”

“You knew that — that my father owed that money to Sir Cheville Stanbury!” exclaimed Letty. “You did?”

Pike’s thin lips curved in a curious smile.

“I keep your father’s banking account,” he said. “There’s not much about it that I’m not aware of. I remember the time of his borrowing that money from Sir Cheville — and he wanted it pretty badly.”

Letty made no remark. She was astonished to find that Pike knew so much, and she stood, considering, while he proceeded to coat his little patch with the necessary solution. Something in the way in which he clapped the patch on the puncture and held it there seemed to denote his grip of things.

“There’s some queer secret about Mr. Etherton, Miss Letty,” he said suddenly, in his quietest manner. “I don’t know where the money goes! I mean — I don’t know where a lot of it’s gone, this last year or two. I’m uneasy. You mightn’t think it, but I’ve a fondness for your father. He’s always been very good to me. To be sure, I’ve served him well, but he’s been a kind employer. And, frankly, I don’t know what’s up! He draws big sums for something or other — and I don’t know what he’s doing with it. But, it isn’t going into the business, I know that. You’re uneasy yourself,” he added, with a suddenly sharp glance. “You know you are!”

“Mr. Pike!” said Letty. “Did you overhear the end of that talk between my father and Sir Cheville? Did you hear my father say that, after all, he’d have to take Sir Cheville into his confidence?”

“I heard that,” replied Pike.

“Have you any idea what he meant?” asked Letty.

“Not the least idea,” affirmed Pike. “But I can tell you this. In the old part of the mill your father has a room into which nobody’s ever admitted. They’d have a job to get in! About two years ago he’d a special door made for that room. It’s sheeted with iron; it’s sound-proof; it’s got a patent double lock. And when your father took Sir Cheville out of the office this afternoon, they went In the direction of that room.”

“But — but what does my father want with such a room?” exclaimed Letty. “It sounds like a secret—”

“There is a secret,” said Pike. “He spends most of his time in that room. What doing, I don’t know. But then, I don’t know everything. I never go into those parts of the place — my work’s in the office. All I know is that money’s going somewhere as it oughtn’t to. Piles of money, Miss Letty! And it isn’t paid by cheque, either. Your father keeps drawing big sums in cash — and what he does with it, Heaven knows, I don’t! Just now, for instance—”

“Well?” demanded Letty, as Pike paused, evidently uncertain whether he ought to say more. “What? As you’ve said so much, you may as well say everything.”

“Well, he’d be glad of ready money at the moment,” continued Pike. “I know that! The business is all right, or would be if it weren’t for this drain on it. However, after all, it’s not my concern, and I daresay I oughtn’t to have said as much as I have said just now. Still, you asked me. And of course, you’re bothered. And so am I. You see, I’ve had ideas, notions — you might call them dreams, Miss Letty.”

The punctured tube was mended by this time, and Pike’s lithe fingers were adjusting it to the wheel. There was something almost fascinating in the strength of those apparently fragile fingers, and Letty could not keep her eyes off them as they went about their work.

“Yes — dream!” said Pike, with a final pressure of the slim finger-tips.

“What sort of dreams?” asked Letty, curious to know what he meant, and contrasting his somewhat odd face and figure with his soft, suave voice. “I shouldn’t have fancied you were a dreamer, Mr. Pike.”

“You can’t always tell by appearances,” said Pike. He leaned his tall figure towards her, resting his hands on the bars of his bicycle, and Letty noticed for the first time that he had curiously green eyes which scintillated in a strange manner. “Most people who know me, Miss Letty,” he went on, “think I’m a money-grubber. I don’t drink — never tasted even a glass of ale in my life! — and I don’t smoke — even cheap cigarettes — and I save every penny I can. But — all for a purpose. I want to be somebody — I mean to be somebody! And of late years, I have thought — I won’t deny it — that I might be somebody in a certain direction.”

“Oh!” said Letty. The conversation was becoming personal in a way for which she had no taste, but it was difficult to break it off. “What direction? I hope you’ll succeed, I’m sure, Mr. Pike.”

“Do you, Miss Letty?” he exclaimed eagerly. “Do you indeed! Ah, I’m sure that’s very kind of you. And I wonder if I might dare to tell you in which direction my thoughts, ambitions, hopes, and all that, have tended of late? Do you know, I’ve even dared to hope that, perhaps, your father would take me into partnership? Etherton & Pike, eh, Miss Letty! It — it wouldn’t sound or look so bad, would it, now?”

“Oh, well, that’s a question for my father, Mr. Pike,” answered Letty. “That’s business.”

“But you?” said Pike. “You now? — you wouldn’t object? You see, your father has no son. Ah, Miss Letty, I would be a good son to him — if I were allowed to be! Eh?”

Letty moved her bicycle a yard or two away and gathered her skirts together preparatory to mounting it. There was something in Pike’s green eyes which she did not like, something extraordinary in the queer curve of his thin lips which she could not understand, and she wanted to leave him.

“All business that, Mr. Pike,” she said with an attempt at nonchalance. “You must talk to my father about it — I don’t know anything.”

“Not just yet,” remarked Pike softly.

“But the time may come, Miss Letty!”

“Well?” asked Letty with one foot on the pedal and without turning her head. “What is it?”

Pike edged his machine a little nearer, and in spite of the solitude in which they stood, lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Would you like me to find out what this secret is that your father’s got?” he asked. “You know it’s troubling you. I can! There’s little that I can’t do in that way, if I set myself to it.”

“No, certainly not!” answered Letty coldly. “My father’s secrets are his own, Mr. Pike. No!”

“You mean — were his own, Miss Letty,” said Pike, with a meaning smile. “He was going to give them — or it — away this afternoon to old Sir Cheville, because he owes him five thousand pounds. Yet — only a few minutes before, too! — he’d just declared he wouldn’t tell him if he owed him fifty thousand!”

“It is my father’s concern entirely,” declared Letty. She got into her saddle and moved off. “Good-night, Mr. Pike,” she said, over her shoulder.

“One moment,” said Pike. He stretched out one of his long arms and laid a detaining hand on the bars of her bicycle. “You’re going to Mr. Getherfield’s, Miss Letty?” he continued, with his face in closer proximity to her own than she liked. “Aren’t you?”

“What if I am?” she demanded half-angrily.

“Just so — but you are,” said Pike, “and if I were you, I shouldn’t say a word to Mr. Getherfield about what you heard this afternoon, or about what we’ve spoken of this evening. You know what Mr. Etherton said to Sir Cheville? — if Birch, the solicitor, heard, it would upset all his plans. Mr. Etherton doesn’t want anybody to know. Let you and I keep to ourselves — what we know. It’s safe with me.”

He lifted his hand as he spoke, and Letty took advantage of the movement to push off her machine.

“Good-night, Mr. Pike,” she repeated.

Pike made no answer beyond raising his cap, and Letty rode rapidly away along the lonely road. Somehow, she was now far more upset than when she had first set out.

Chapter IV Foxden Manor

Another mile of lonely, widening road had slipped away beneath her wheels before Letty suddenly realised the true significance of what Bradwell Pike had called his dreams. Pike had adopted this method of letting her know that he was in love with her! A curious, indefinable feeling of aversion came over her, and was as suddenly swept away by an equally curious and vague sense of fear. What a pity, what a thousand pities, she thought, that the clerk knew so much of his master’s business! It gave him a hold which Letty, knowing what she did, had no wish he should have. Pike, the quiet, reserved clerk, suddenly became to her a watchful schemer, and the only relief from this deduction was that he had in some degree shown her his hand.

“I shall tell Mr. Getherfield all about it!” she murmured as she sped along. “He’ll understand things better than I do.”

The sun was just dipping behind the far-off hills in the West as Letty rounded a cliff-like promontory of the valley and came in sight of Mr. Getherfield’s house, Foxden Manor, a quaint, seventeenth-century structure. Here, amid the solitude of the moors, Mr. Getherfield grew roses, improved his grounds, planted rare shrubs, and indulged in the antiquarian tastes which had been his recreation through a long life spent among mills and machines.

He came out of his door as she wheeled her bicycle up the path between the trim lawns, and trotted eagerly towards her, a little, spare, very old but intensely active man who still clung to something like a Quakerish simplicity and invariably presented himself in old-fashioned drab-hued garments. He admitted to being already eighty years of age, but Lucas Etherton had once remarked to his daughter that he honestly believed the old fellow had dropped ten years somewhere in his journey and forgotten to pick them up again.

Eighty or ninety, there was a plenitude of vigour in the hearty embrace which the old man gave his godchild as, they met in his garden, and in the way in which he took her bicycle from her and wheeled it off to an outhouse. That done, he linked his arm in hers, and turned her towards a distant corner of the grounds.

“Just in time, my dear, to see by daylight a nice little improvement we’ve carried out since you were here,” he said, with a satisfied chuckle. “Do you remember saying I ought to put a seat up, down there by the stream? Well, come and see what’s been done — for you.”

But Letty held back and glanced at the house.

“Godfather,” she said, “I’m in no mood for improvements! I’m awfully bothered — so I came to you. Let’s go in — I want to tell you something — a lot.”

The old man gave her a quick glance out of his shrewd old eyes, and turned to the porch.

“Come along!” he said soothingly. “Glad you came, my dear — always ready, here, you know.”

“That's just why I came — knowing that,” answered Letty.

She followed him across the raftered hall into a low-ceilinged, oak-panelled room, on the open hearth of which, although May was nearly over, a bright fire of pine logs was sending out an inviting crackle.

“Now, my dear?” he said quietly. “What’s it all about?”

Letty had made up her mind to tell Mr. Getherfield everything, and narrated the whole story of the events of the afternoon, from the time of her meeting with Marston Stanbury to her recent encounter with Pike, and Mr. Getherfield listened in silence, only nodding his old head now and then at certain passages.

“What does it all mean, Godfather?” asked Letty in the end. “Don’t you think I’ve cause to be anxious — and unhappy?”

Old Getherfield laughed softly, and turning to his desk, drew a cigar-case to him and selected a cigar.

“Only about one thing, my dear,” he answered, as he began to smoke — “only about one thing!”

“What?” demanded Letty.

“I don’t like that young man Pike knowing so much about your father’s affairs,” said Mr. Getherfield. “That’s not well! Now, though Pike has been at the Old Mill so long that he couldn’t fail to know a good deal, your father ought not to have let him get as much knowledge as he evidently possesses. Pike is a sly fellow, my dear! — and I’m surprised that he was as candid as he was with you tonight. It looks to me as if he knew rather more — perhaps a good deal more — than he revealed. But of course he does — men of that sort never tell all they know.”

“Oh, you don’t think he knows more about father’s affairs?” exclaimed Letty.

“He may,” answered Mr. Getherfield. “Probably he was paving the way this evening, thinking that next time he had the chance of a téte-à-téte with you he’d tell you more — if you let him. Have a care of that fellow, Letty! Your father’s kept Pike too long. He knows too much. But as regards the rest—”

“Yes — the rest!” said Letty eagerly. “That’s what’s bothering me!”

“Has nothing struck you?” asked the old man, with an almost whimsical smile. “Think! — a locked room into which nobody but your father goes — money going out otherwise than for strictly business purposes — a secret, to be revealed to somebody who’s lent some of the money — why, of course, the whole thing’s plain enough! And you can’t see it?”

“I see nothing!” replied Letty.

The old man waved his cigar and laughed.

“Why, you father’s inventing something!” he said. “That’s it! Years before you were born, my dear, your father spent time, thought, money, prodigally, in trying to perfect a certain invention — he gave it up then, after spending a fortune over it, because he came to the conclusion that it was premature. But I happened to know that he always meant to return to it, and I should say that he has returned! Leave him alone — he’ll come out all right. All the same, I wish he hadn’t borrowed money from Sir Cheville Stanbury. Why didn’t he come to me?” Letty’s eyes had grown bigger and bigger during this explanation, and at its conclusion she heaved a sigh of intense relief.

“Oh, do you really think that’s it!” she exclaimed. “Of course, that would account for everything! But — would so much money go into a mere invention?”

Mr. Getherfield laughed drily and patted the girl’s head.

“Bless your innocence!” he said. “There’s one man within twenty miles of us, now a peer of the realm, who spent three hundred thousand pounds over a machine before he got it to be what he wanted! Oh, yes, my dear, invention is — a sink down which you can pour money like water, as in those cases.”

“But they succeeded? — and made money?” asked Letty.

“Yes, they succeeded and made money — so much money that neither of them knows how much money he’s got!” replied the old man, still more drily. “And the probability is that if — as seems certain — Lucas Etherton has gone back to his invention, why, he’ll come out on top, and then — we shall see! And that’s why I’m sorry, very sorry indeed, that he either borrowed a little money from Sir Cheville or gave him his confidence this afternoon.”

“Why, particularly, Godfather!” inquired Letty.

“It would have been far better jf he’d kept his secret to himself,” answered Mr. Getherfield. “However, he may have had another idea in taking Sir Cheville into his confidence — perhaps that didn’t strike you?”

“No!” said Letty wonderingly. “Nothing struck me. I must be very dense.”

“Ah, well, I don’t suppose Lucas is so wrapped up in his invention that he isn’t aware of his daughter’s love affairs!” remarked the old man, with a teasing laugh. “And Lucas may have said, ‘Oh, well, no harm in letting the old fellow see that when my girl marries his nephew, she’ll not go to him empty-handed — far from it!’ ”

Letty made no answer. She sat for a long time staring into the fire, and the old man continued to smoke, silently watching her. At last she got up and kissed him.

“I knew you’d be able to smooth everything out!” she said. “You’re a wise old thing! — like an old owl in a bam. Now I’ll go home — quite happy.”

“Nothing of the sort!” declared Mr. Getherfield. “You’ll stop here for the night. Your room’s always ready, and your father’s away, so why should you go home? Now run off to the telephone, and then come back and tell me all the gossip about Sir Cheville and his French lady — I’m dying to hear it.”

However old and wise he might be, Mr. Getherfield was not above an innocent love of the current talk of the countryside, and he listened with great interest and amusement while Letty told him what she had heard from Marston Stanbury about Sir Cheville’s engagement to the French governess at the vicarage. In the end he shook his head and smiled — the smile was as sage as it was whimsical.

“Ah, my dear!” he said. “It’s all very well for a boy like Marston — who’s particularly youthful for his age — to say that he doesn't care if his uncle marries, nor if he should have a son, nor if the baronetcy doesn’t come to him; but I’ll make bold to say that if there’s a thoroughly angry, and even furious, woman in all England tonight, it’s Marston’s mother! And upon my word, I think she’s good reason!”

“You think Sir Cheville oughtn’t to marry?” asked Letty.

“I don’t say that Sir Cheville oughtn’t to marry, not I!” answered Mr. Getherfield. “But I think he might have done it some years earlier! Here’s Mrs. Stanbury, his sister-in-law, been led to expect that her one chick was to inherit the baronetcy — a very old title — and at the last moment Sir Cheville elects to put Marston’s chances in jeopardy. And of all the women I know,” added the old man with a chuckle, “Mrs. Stanbury is the hottest-tempered, and the most determined, and the most implacable, and under a different condition of things she’d have moved heaven and earth to get her baronet brother-in-law shut up in a lunatic asylum!”

“Marston says she was fearfully angry with Sir Cheville,” remarked Letty. “He left her telling Sir Cheville no end of her mind.”

“She could — I’m sure!” said Mr. Getherfield. “Well, we seem to be living in strange times, hereabouts. You’ll be hearing that I’ve run away with somebody’s cook next.”

Letty went to bed that night in the room which was always kept for her at Foxden Manor, and she slept the sleep which follows on sudden relief from anxiety that has no very definite cause. When she joined the old man at breakfast next morning, she was in her usual good spirits. She forgot all the fear which had oppressed her the previous evening — and she forgot Bradwell Pike. But a word from Mr. Getherfield, spoken as they made ready for departure, recalled him.

“I’m going to have a quiet chat with your father this morning, my dear,” said the old man, as he stood with Letty in the porch, waiting for his cob to be brought round. “I’m going to advise him — very quietly — not to trust that fellow Pike too much. If he says anything to you, afterwards, tell him that you told me all that Pike said to you last night. That’s best — don’t have any secrets from your father.”

“I never had one. until yesterday, Godfather,” responded Letty. “And I meant to tell him I’d been behind that curtain and what I heard. He knows — quite well — about Marston.”

She was wondering all the way down the valley if she would find her father at the mill, whither she meant to go before returning home; if so, she was going to tell him straight out, in her godfather’s presence, what her trouble had been. But before she and Mr. Getherfield came in sight of the manufacturing village and its tall chimneys, a man, striding rapidly down the hillside from the moors, lifted a hand and stopped them. Letty recognised him as one of Sir Cheville’s moor-rangers. He came up to Mr. Getherfield’s stirrup, looking from him to Letty with a face full of grave concern.

“Have you heard it, sir?” he asked excitedly. “Sir Cheville’s dead! Found dead on the moors, this morning, by our head keeper. And the police will have it there’s been foul play. Murder!”

(To be continued next month.)