Dead Men's Money

They all looked at each other, and Mr. Lindsey's gaze finally fastened itself on Andrew Robertson.

"I suppose you don't know anything about this, my friend?" he asked.

"What should I know?" answered Robertson, a bit surlily. "The yacht's just as I found it—not a thing's been touched."

There was the luncheon basket lying on the cabin table—just as I had last seen it, except that Carstairs had evidently finished the provisions which he and I had left. And I think the same thought occurred to Mr. Lindsey and myself at the same moment—how long had he stopped on board that yacht after his cruel abandoning of me? For forty-eight hours had elapsed since that episode, and in forty-eight hours a man may do a great deal in the way of making himself scarce—which now seemed to me to be precisely what Sir Gilbert Carstairs had done, though in what particular fashion, and exactly why, it was beyond either of us to surmise.

"I suppose no one has heard anything of this yacht having been seen drifting about yesterday, or during last night?" asked Mr. Lindsey, putting his question to both men. "No talk of it hereabouts?"

But neither the police nor Andrew Robertson had heard a murmur of that nature, and there was evidently nothing to be got out of them more than we had already got. Nor had the police heard of any stranger being seen about there—though, as the man who was with us observed, there was no great likelihood of anybody noticing a stranger, for Largo was nowadays a somewhat popular seaside resort, and down there on the beach there were many strangers, it being summer, and holiday time, so that a strange man more or less would pass unobserved.

"Supposing a man landed about the coast, here," asked Mr. Lindsey—"I'm just putting a case to you—and didn't go into the town, but walked along the beach—where would he strike a railway station, now?"

The police official replied that there were railway stations to the right and left of the bay—a man could easily make Edinburgh in one direction, and St. Andrews in the other; and then, not unnaturally, he was wanting to know if Mr. Lindsey was suggesting that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had sailed his yacht ashore, left it, and that it had drifted out to sea again?

"I'm not suggesting anything," answered Mr. Lindsey. "I'm only speculating on possibilities. And that's about as idle work as standing here talking. What will be practical will be to arrange about this yacht being locked up in some boat-house, and we'd best see to that at once."

We made arrangements with the owner of a boat-house to pull the yacht in there, and to keep her under lock and key, and, after settling matters with the police to have an eye on her, and see that her contents were untouched until further instructions reached them from Berwick, we went off to continue our journey. But we had stayed so long in Largo that when we got to Edinburgh the last train for Berwick had gone, and we were obliged to turn into an hotel for the night. Naturally, all our talk was of what had just transpired—the events of the last two days, said Mr. Lindsey, only made these mysteries deeper than they were before, and why Sir Gilbert Carstairs should have abandoned his yacht, as he doubtless had, was a still further addition to the growing problem.

"And I'm not certain, my lad, that I believe yon man Robertson's tale," he remarked, as we were discussing matters from every imaginable point of view just before going to bed. "He may have brought the yacht in, but we don't know that he didn't bring Carstairs aboard her. Why was that change of clothes made? Probably because he knew that he'd be described as wearing certain things, and he wanted to come ashore in other things. For aught we know, he came safely ashore, boarded a train somewhere in the neighbourhood, or at Largo itself—why not?—and went off, likely here, to Edinburgh—where he'd mingle with a few thousand of folk, unnoticed."

"Then—in that case, you think he's—what, Mr. Lindsey?" I asked. "Do you mean he's running away?"

"Between you and me, that's not far from what I do think," he replied. "And I think I know what he's running away from, too! But we'll hear a lot more before many hours are over, or I'm mistaken."

We were in Berwick at an early hour next morning, and we went straight to the police station and into the superintendent's office. Chisholm was with Mr. Murray when we walked in, and both men turned to us with eagerness.

"Here's more mystery about this affair, Mr. Lindsey!" exclaimed Murray.

"It's enough to make a man's wits go wool-gathering. There's no news of Sir Gilbert, and Lady Carstairs has been missing since twelve o'clock noon yesterday!"

CHAPTER XXV

THE SECOND DISAPPEARANCE

Mr. Lindsey was always one of the coolest of hands at receiving news of a startling nature, and now, instead of breaking out into exclamations, he just nodded his head, and dropped into the nearest chair.

"Aye?" he remarked quietly. "So her ladyship's disappeared, too, has she?

And when did you get to hear that, now?"

"Half an hour ago," replied Murray. "The butler at Hathercleugh House has just been in—driven over in a hurry—to tell us. What do you make of it at all?"

"Before I answer that, I want to know what's been happening here while I've been away," replied Mr. Lindsey. "What's happened within your own province—officially, I mean?"

"Not much," answered Murray. "There began to be talk evening before last, amongst the fishermen, about Sir Gilbert's yacht. He'd been seen, of course, to go out with Moneylaws there, two days ago, at noon. And—there is Moneylaws! Doesn't he know anything? Where's Sir Gilbert, Moneylaws?"

"He'll tell all that—when I tell him to," said Mr. Lindsey, with a glance at me. "Go on with your story, first."

The superintendent shook his head, as if all these things were beyond his comprehension.

"Oh, well!" he continued. "I tell you there was talk—you know how they gossip down yonder on the beach. It was said the yacht had never come in, and, though many of them had been out, they'd never set eyes on her, and rumours of her soon began to spread. So I sent Chisholm there out to Hathercleugh to make some inquiry—tell Mr. Lindsey what you heard," he went on, turning to the sergeant. "Not much, I think."

"Next to nothing," replied Chisholm. "I saw Lady Carstairs. She laughed at me. She said Sir Gilbert was not likely to come to harm—he'd been sailing yachts, big and little, for many a year, and he'd no doubt gone further on this occasion than he'd first intended. I pointed out that he'd Mr. Moneylaws with him, and that he'd been due at his business early that morning. She laughed again at that, and said she'd no doubt Sir Gilbert and Mr. Moneylaws had settled that matter between them, and that, as she'd no anxieties, she was sure Berwick folk needn't have any. And so I came away."

"And we heard no more until we got your wire yesterday from Dundee, Mr. Lindsey," said Murray; "and that was followed not so very long after by one from the police at Largo, which I reported to you."

"Now, here's an important question," put in Mr. Lindsey, a bit hurriedly, as if something had just struck him. "Did you communicate the news from Largo to Hathercleugh?"

"We did, at once," answered Murray. "I telephoned immediately to Lady Carstairs—I spoke to her over the wire myself, telling her what the Largo police reported."

"What time would that be?" asked Mr. Lindsey, sharply.

"Half-past eleven," replied Murray.

"Then, according to what you tell me, she left Hathercleugh soon after you telephoned to her?" said Mr. Lindsey.

"According to what the butler told us this morning," answered Murray, "Lady Carstairs went out on her bicycle at exactly noon yesterday—and she's never been seen or heard of since."

"She left no message at the house?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"None! And," added the superintendent, significantly, "she didn't mention to the butler that I'd just telephoned to her. It's a queer business, this, I'm thinking, Mr. Lindsey. But—what's your own news?—and what's Moneylaws got to tell about Sir Gilbert?"

Mr. Lindsey took no notice of the last question. He sat in silence for a while, evidently thinking. And in the end he pointed to some telegram forms that lay on the superintendent's desk.

"There's one thing must be done at once, Murray," he said; "and I'll take the responsibility of doing it myself. We must communicate with the Carstairs family solicitors."

"I'd have done it, as soon as the butler brought me the news about Lady Carstairs," remarked Murray, "but I don't know who they are."

"I do!" answered Mr. Lindsey. "Holmshaw and Portlethorpe of Newcastle. Here," he went on, passing a telegram form to me. "Write out this message: 'Sir Gilbert and Lady Carstairs are both missing from Hathercleugh under strange circumstances please send some authorized person here at once.' Sign that with my name, Hugh—and take it to the post-office, and come back here."

When I got back, Mr. Lindsey had evidently told Murray and Chisholm all about my adventures with Sir Gilbert, and the two men regarded me with a new interest as if I had suddenly become a person of the first importance. And the superintendent at once fell upon me for my reticence.

"You made a bad mistake, young man, in keeping back what you ought to have told at the inquest on Phillips!" he said, reprovingly. "Indeed, you ought to have told it before that—you should have told us."

"Aye!—if I'd only known as much as that," began Chisholm, "I'd have—"

"You'd probably have done just what he did!" broke in Mr. Lindsey—"held your tongue till you knew more!—so let that pass—the lad did what he thought was for the best. You never suspected Sir Gilbert of any share in these affairs, either of you—so come, now!"

"Why, as to that, Mr. Lindsey," remarked Murray, who looked somewhat nettled by this last passage, "you didn't suspect him yourself—or, if you did, you kept it uncommonly quiet!"

"Does Mr. Lindsey suspect him now?" asked Chisholm, a bit maliciously.

"For if he does, maybe he'll give us a hand."

Mr. Lindsey looked at both of them in a way that he had of looking at people of whose abilities he had no very great idea—but there was some indulgence in the look on this occasion.

"Well, now that things have come to this pass," he said, "and after Sir Gilbert's deliberate attempt to get rid of Moneylaws—to murder him, in fact—I don't mind telling you the truth. I do suspect Sir Gilbert of the murder of Crone—and that's why I produced that ice-ax in court the other day. And—when he saw that ice-ax, he knew that I suspected him, and that's why he took Moneylaws out with him, intending to rid himself of a man that could give evidence against him. If I'd known that Moneylaws was going with him, I'd have likely charged Sir Gilbert there and then!—anyway, I wouldn't have let Moneylaws go."

"Aye!—you know something, then?" exclaimed Murray. "You're in possession of some evidence that we know nothing about?"

"I know this—and I'll make you a present of it, now," answered Mr. Lindsey. "As you're aware, I'm a bit of a mountaineer—you know that I've spent a good many of my holidays in Switzerland, climbing. Consequently, I know what alpenstocks and ice-axes are. And when I came to reflect on the circumstances of Crone's murder, I remember that not so long since, happening to be out along the riverside, I chanced across Sir Gilbert Carstairs using a very late type of ice-ax as a walking-stick—as he well could do, and might have picked up in his hall as some men'll pick up a golf-stick to go walking with, and I've done that myself, hundred of times. And I knew that I had an ice-ax of that very pattern at home—and so I just shoved it under the doctor's nose in court, and asked him if that hole in Crone's head couldn't have been made by the spike of it. Why? Because I knew that Carstairs would be present in court, and I wanted to see if he would catch what I was after!"

"And—you think he did?" asked the superintendent, eagerly.

"I kept the corner of an eye on him," answered Mr. Lindsey, knowingly. "He saw what I was after! He's a clever fellow, that—but he took the mask off his face for the thousandth part of a second. I saw!"

The two listeners were so amazed by this that they sat in silence for a while, staring at Mr. Lindsey with open-mouthed amazement.

"It's a dark, dark business!" sighed Murray at last. "What's the true meaning of it, do you think, Mr. Lindsey?"

"Some secret that's being gradually got at," replied Mr. Lindsey, promptly. "That's what it is. And there's nothing to do, just now, but wait until somebody comes from Holmshaw and Portlethorpe's. Holmshaw is an old man—probably Portlethorpe himself will come along. He may know something—they've been family solicitors to the Carstairs lot for many a year. But it's my impression that Sir Gilbert Carstairs is away!—and that his wife's after him. And if you want to be doing something, try to find out where she went on her bicycle yesterday—likely, she rode to some station in the neighbourhood, and then took train."

Mr. Lindsey and I then went to the office, and we had not been there long when a telegram arrived from Newcastle. Mr. Portlethorpe himself was coming on to Berwick immediately. And in the middle of the afternoon he arrived—a middle-aged, somewhat nervous-mannered man, whom I had seen two or three times when we had business at the Assizes, and whom Mr. Lindsey evidently knew pretty well, judging by their familiar manner of greeting each other.

"What's all this, Lindsey?" asked Mr. Portlethorpe, as soon as he walked in, and without any preliminaries. "Your wire says Sir Gilbert and Lady Carstairs have disappeared. Does that mean—"

"Did you read your newspaper yesterday?" interrupted Mr. Lindsey, who knew that what we had read in the Dundee Advertiser had also appeared in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle. "Evidently not, Portlethorpe, or you'd have known, in part at any rate, what my wire meant. But I'll tell you in a hundred words—and then I'll ask you a couple of questions before we go any further."

He gave Mr. Portlethorpe an epitomized account of the situation, and Mr. Portlethorpe listened attentively to the end. And without making any comment he said three words:

"Well—your questions?"

"The first," answered Mr. Lindsey, "is this—How long is it since you saw or heard from Sir Gilbert Carstairs?"

"A week—by letter," replied Mr. Portlethorpe.

"The second," continued Mr. Lindsey, "is much more important—much! What, Portlethorpe, do you know of Sir Gilbert Carstairs?"

Mr. Portlethorpe hesitated a moment. Then he replied, frankly and with evident candour.

"To tell you the truth, Lindsey," he said, "beyond knowing that he is Sir Gilbert Carstairs—nothing!"

CHAPTER XXVI

MRS. RALSTON OF CRAIG

Mr. Lindsey made no remark on this answer, and for a minute or two he and Mr. Portlethorpe sat looking at each other. Then Mr. Portlethorpe bent forward a little, his hands on his knees, and gave Mr. Lindsey a sort of quizzical but earnest glance.

"Now, why do you ask that last question?" he said quietly. "You've some object?"

"It's like this," answered Mr. Lindsey. "Here's a man comes into these parts to take up a title and estates, who certainly had been out of them for thirty years. His recent conduct is something more than suspicious—no one can deny that he left my clerk there to drown, without possibility of help! That's intended murder! And so I ask, What do you, his solicitor, know of him—his character, his doings during the thirty years he was away? And you answer—nothing!"

"Just so!" assented Mr. Portlethorpe. "And nobody does hereabouts. Except that he is Sir Gilbert Carstairs, nobody in these parts knows anything about him—how should they? We, I suppose, know more than anybody—and we know just a few bare facts."

"I think you'll have to let me know what these bare facts are," remarked Mr. Lindsey. "And Moneylaws, too. Moneylaws has a definite charge to bring against this man—and he'll bring it, if I've anything to do with it! He shall press it!—if he can find Carstairs. And I think you'd better tell us what you know, Portlethorpe. Things have got to come out."

"I've no objection to telling you and Mr. Moneylaws what we know," answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "After all, it is, in a way, common knowledge—to some people, at any rate. And to begin with, you are probably aware that the recent history of this Carstairs family is a queer one. You know that old Sir Alexander had two sons and one daughter—the daughter being very much younger than her brothers. When the two sons, Michael and Gilbert, were about from twenty-one to twenty-three, both quarrelled with their father, and cleared out of this neighbourhood altogether; it's always believed that Sir Alexander gave Michael a fair lot of money to go and do for himself, each hating the other's society, and that Michael went off to America. As to Gilbert, he got money at that time, too, and went south, and was understood to be first a medical student and then a doctor, in London and abroad. There is no doubt at all that both sons did get money—considerable amounts,—because from the time they went away, no allowance was ever paid to them, nor did Sir Alexander ever have any relations with them. What the cause of the quarrel was, nobody knows; but the quarrel itself, and the ensuing separation, were final—father and sons never resumed relations. And when the daughter, now Mrs. Ralston of Craig, near here, grew up and married, old Sir Alexander pursued a similar money policy towards her—he presented her with thirty thousand pounds the day she was married, and told her she'd never have another penny from him. I tell you, he was a queer man."

"Queer lot altogether!" muttered Mr. Lindsey. "And interesting!"

"Oh, it's interesting enough!" agreed Mr. Portlethorpe, with a chuckle. "Deeply so. Well, that's how things were until about a year before old Sir Alexander died—which, as you know, is fourteen months since. As I say, about six years before his death, formal notice came of the death of Michael Carstairs, who, of course, was next in succession to the title. It came from a solicitor in Havana, where Michael had died—there were all the formal proofs. He had died unmarried and intestate, and his estate amounted to about a thousand pounds. Sir Alexander put the affair in our hands; and of course, as he was next-of-kin to his eldest son, what there was came to him. And we then pointed out to him that now that Mr. Michael Carstairs was dead, Mr. Gilbert came next—he would get the title, in any case—and we earnestly pressed Sir Alexander to make a will. And he was always going to, and he never did—and he died intestate, as you know. And at that, of course, Sir Gilbert Carstairs came forward, and—"

"A moment," interrupted Mr. Lindsey. "Did anybody know where he was at the time of his father's death?"

"Nobody hereabouts, at any rate," replied Mr. Portlethorpe. "Neither his father, nor his sister, nor ourselves had heard of him for many a long year. But he called on us within twenty-four hours of his father's death."

"With proof, of course, that he was the man he represented himself to be?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"Oh, of course—full proof!" answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "Papers, letters, all that sort of thing—all in order. He had been living in London for a year or two at that time; but, according to his own account, he had gone pretty well all over the world during the thirty years' absence. He'd been a ship's surgeon—he'd been attached to the medical staff of more than one foreign army, and had seen service—he'd been on one or two voyages of discovery—he'd lived in every continent—in fact, he'd had a very adventurous life, and lately he'd married a rich American heiress."

"Oh, Lady Carstairs is an American, is she?" remarked Mr. Lindsey.

"Just so—haven't you met her?" asked Mr. Portlethorpe.

"Never set eyes on her that I know of," replied Mr. Lindsey. "But go on."

"Well, of course, there was no doubt of Sir Gilbert's identity," continued Mr. Portlethorpe; "and as there was also no doubt that Sir Alexander had died intestate, we at once began to put matters right. Sir Gilbert, of course, came into the whole of the real estate, and he and Mrs. Ralston shared the personalty—which, by-the-by, was considerable: they both got nearly a hundred thousand each, in cash. And—there you are!"

"That all?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

Mr. Portlethorpe hesitated a moment—then he glanced at me.

"Moneylaws is safe at a secret," said Mr. Lindsey. "If it is a secret."

"Well, then," answered Mr. Portlethorpe, "it's not quite all. There is a circumstance which has—I can't exactly say bothered—but has somewhat disturbed me. Sir Gilbert Carstairs has now been in possession of his estates for a little over a year, and during that time he has sold nearly every yard of them except Hathercleugh!"

Mr. Lindsey whistled. It was the first symptom of astonishment that he had manifested, and I glanced quickly at him and saw a look of indescribable intelligence and almost undeniable cunning cross his face. But it went as swiftly as it came, and he merely nodded, as if in surprise.

"Aye!" he exclaimed. "Quick work, Portlethorpe."

"Oh, he gave good reasons!" answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "He said, from the first, that he meant to do it—he wanted, and his wife wanted too, to get rid of these small and detached Northern properties, and buy a really fine one in the South of England, keeping Hathercleugh as a sort of holiday seat. He'd no intention of selling that, at any time. But—there's the fact!—he's sold pretty nearly everything else."

"I never heard of these sales of land," remarked Mr. Lindsey.

"Oh, they've all been sold by private treaty," replied Mr. Portlethorpe. "The Carstairs property was in parcels, here and there—the last two baronets before this one had bought considerably in other parts. It was all valuable—there was no difficulty in selling to adjacent owners."

"Then, if he's been selling to that extent, Sir Gilbert must have large sums of money at command—unless he's bought that new estate you're talking of," said Mr. Lindsey.

"He has not bought anything—that I know of," answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "And he must have a considerable—a very large—sum of money at his bankers'. All of which," he continued, looking keenly at Mr. Lindsey, "makes me absolutely amazed to hear what you've just told me. It's very serious, this charge you're implying against him, Lindsey! Why should he want to take men's lives in this fashion! A man of his position, his great wealth—"

"Portlethorpe!" broke in Mr. Lindsey, "didn't you tell me just now that this man, according to his own account, has lived a most adventurous life, in all parts of the world? What more likely than that in the course of such a life he made acquaintance with queer characters, and—possibly—did some queer things himself? Isn't it a significant thing that, within a year of his coming into the title and estates, two highly mysterious individuals turn up here, and that all this foul play ensues? It's impossible, now, to doubt that Gilverthwaite and Phillips came into these parts because this man was already here! If you've read all the stuff that's been in the papers, and add to it just what we've told you about this last adventure with the yacht, you can't doubt it, either."

"It's very, very strange—all of it," agreed Mr. Portlethorpe. "Have you no theory, Lindsey?"

"I've a sort of one," answered Mr. Lindsey. "I think Gilverthwaite and Phillips probably were in possession of some secret about Sir Gilbert Carstairs, and that Crone may have somehow got an inkling of it. Now, as we know, Gilverthwaite died, suddenly—and it's possible that Carstairs killed both Phillips and Crone, as he certainly meant to kill this lad. And what does it all look like?"

Before Mr. Portlethorpe could reply to that last question, and while he was shaking his head over it, one of our junior clerks brought in Mrs. Ralston of Craig, at the mention of whose name Mr. Lindsey immediately bustled forward. She was a shrewd, clever-looking woman, well under middle age, who had been a widow for the last four or five years, and was celebrated in our parts for being a very managing and interfering sort of body who chiefly occupied herself with works of charity and philanthropy and was prominent on committees and boards. And she looked over the two solicitors as if they were candidates for examination, and she the examiner.