The Herapath Property

“You stand by what you said yourself? You gave us a perfectly truthful account of the execution of the will?”

“I stand by every word I said. I gave you—will give it again, anywhere!—a perfectly truthful account of the circumstances under which the will was signed and witnessed. I have made no mistakes—I am under no hallucination. I am—astonished!”

Mr. Halfpenny turned to Barthorpe with a wave of the hand.

“We are at your disposal, Mr. Barthorpe Herapath,” he said. “I leave the rest of these proceedings to you. You have openly and unqualifiedly accused Mr. Tertius of forging the will which we have all seen, and have said you can prove your accusations. Perhaps you’d better do it. Mind you!” he added, with a sudden heightening of tone, “mind you, I’m not asking you to prove anything. But if I know Tertius—and I think I do—he won’t object to your saying anything you like—we shall, perhaps, get at the truth by way of what you say. So—say on!”

“You’re very kind,” retorted Barthorpe. “I shall say on! But—I warned you—what I’ve got to say will give a good deal of pain to my cousin there. It would have been far better if you’d kept her out of this—still, she’d have had to hear it sooner or later in a court of justice–”

“It strikes me we shall have to hear a good deal in a court of justice—as you say, sooner or later,” interrupted Mr. Halfpenny, dryly. “So I don’t think you need spare Miss Wynne. I should advise you to go on, and let us become acquainted with what you’ve got to tell us.”

“Barthorpe!” said Peggie, “I do not mind what pain you give me—you can’t give me much more than I’ve already been given this morning. But I wish”—she turned appealingly to Mr. Halfpenny and again began to draw the sealed packet from her muff—“I do wish, Mr. Halfpenny, you’d let me say something before–”

“Say nothing, my dear, at present,” commanded Mr. Halfpenny, firmly. “Allow Mr. Barthorpe Herapath to have his say. Now, sir!” he went on, with a motion of his hand towards the younger solicitor. “Pray let us hear you.”

“In my own fashion,” retorted Barthorpe. “You’re not a judge, you know. Very good—if I give pain to you, Peggie, it’s not my fault. Now, Mr. Halfpenny,” he continued, turning and pointing contemptuously to Mr. Tertius, “as this is wholly informal, I’ll begin with an informal yet pertinent question, to you. Do you know who that man really is?”

“I believe that gentleman, sir, to be Mr. John Christopher Tertius, and my very good and much-esteemed friend,” replied Mr. Halfpenny, with asperity.

“Pshaw!” sneered Barthorpe. He turned to Professor Cox-Raythwaite. “I’ll put the same question to you?” he said. “Do you know who he is?”

“And I give you the same answer, sir,” answered the professor.

“No doubt!” said Barthorpe, still sneeringly. “The fact is, neither of you know who he is. So I’ll tell you. He’s an ex-convict. He served a term of penal servitude for forgery—forgery, do you hear? And his real name is not Tertius. What it is, and who he really is, and all about him, I’m going to tell you. Forger—ex-convict—get that into your minds, all of you. For it’s true!”

Mr. Tertius, who had started visibly as Barthorpe rapped out the first of his accusations, and had grown paler as they went on, quietly rose from his chair.

“Before this goes further, Halfpenny,” he said, “I should like to have a word in private with Miss Wynne. Afterwards—and I shan’t detain her more than a moment—I shall have no objection to hearing anything that Mr. Barthorpe Herapath has to say. My dear!—step this way with me a moment, I beg.”

Mr. Halfpenny’s private room was an apartment of considerable size, having in it two large recessed windows. Into one of these Mr. Tertius led Peggie, and there he spoke a few quiet words to her. Barthorpe Herapath affected to take no notice, but the other men, watching them closely, saw the girl start at something which Mr. Tertius said. But she instantly regained her self-possession and composure, and when she came back to the table her face, though pale, was firm and resolute. And Barthorpe looked at her then, and his voice, when he spoke again, was less aggressive and more civil.

“It’s not to my taste to bring unpleasant family scandals into public notice,” he said, “and that’s why I rather welcomed your proposal that we should discuss this affair in private, Mr. Halfpenny. And now for what I’ve got to tell you. I shall have to go back a long way in our family history. My late uncle, Jacob Herapath, was the eldest of the three children of his father, Matthew Herapath, who was a medical practitioner at Granchester in Yorkshire—a small town on the Yorkshire and Lancashire border. The three children were Jacob, Richard, and Susan. With the main outlines of Jacob Herapath’s career I believe we are all fairly well acquainted. He came to London as a youth, and he prospered, and became what we know him to have been. Richard, my father, went out to Canada, when he was very young, settled there, and there he died.

“Now we come to Susan, the only daughter. Susan Herapath, at the age of twenty, married a man named Wynne—Arthur John Wynne, who at that time was about twenty-five years of age, was the secretary and treasurer of a recently formed railway—a sort of branch railway on the coast, which had its head office at Southampton, a coast town. In Southampton, this Arthur John Wynne and his wife settled down. At the end of a year their first child was born—my cousin Margaret, who is here with us. When she—I am putting all this as briefly as I can—when she was about eighteen months old a sad affair happened. Wynne, who had been living in a style very much above his position, was suddenly arrested on a charge of forgery. Investigations proved that he had executed a number of most skilful and clever forgeries, by which he had defrauded his employers of a large—a very large—amount of money. He was sent for trial to the assizes at Lancaster, he was found guilty, and he was sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude. And almost at once after the trial his wife died.

“Here my late uncle, Jacob Herapath, came forward. He went north, assumed possession and guardianship of the child, and took her away from Southampton. He took her into Buckinghamshire and there placed her in the care of some people named Bristowe, who were farmers near Aylesbury and whom he knew very well. In the care of Mrs. Bristowe, the child remained until she was between six and seven years old. Then she was removed to Jacob Herapath’s own house in Portman Square, where she has remained ever since. My cousin, I believe, has a very accurate recollection of her residence with the Bristowes, and she will remember being brought from Buckinghamshire to London at the time I have spoken of.”

Barthorpe paused for a moment and looked at Peggie. But Peggie, who was listening intently with downcast head, made no remark, and he presently continued.

“Now, not so very long after that—I mean, after the child was brought to Portman Square—another person came to the house as a permanent resident. His name was given to the servants as Mr. Tertius. The conditions of his residence were somewhat peculiar. He had rooms of his own; he did as he liked. Sometimes he joined Jacob Herapath at meals; sometimes he did not. There was an air of mystery about him. What was it? I will tell you in a word—the mystery or its secret, was this—the man Tertius, who sits there now, was in reality the girl’s father! He was Arthur John Wynne, the ex-convict—the clever forger!”

CHAPTER XXIV

COLD STEEL

The two men who formed what one may call the alien and impartial audience at that table were mutually and similarly impressed by a certain feature of Barthorpe Herapath’s speech—its exceeding malevolence. As he went on from sentence to sentence, his eyes continually turned to Mr. Tertius, who sat, composed and impassive, listening, and in them was a gleam which could not be mistaken—the gleam of bitter, personal dislike. Mr. Halfpenny and Professor Cox-Raythwaite both saw that look and drew their own conclusions, and when Barthorpe spat out his last words, the man of science turned to the man of law and muttered a sharp sentence in Latin which no one else caught. And Mr. Halfpenny nodded and muttered a word or two back before he turned to Barthorpe.

“Even supposing—mind, I only say supposing—even supposing you are correct in all you say—and I don’t know that you are,” he said, “what you have put before us does nothing to prove that the will which we have just inspected is not what we believe it to be—we, at any rate—the valid will of Jacob Herapath. You know as well as I do that you’d have to give stronger grounds than that before a judge and jury.”

“I’ll give you my grounds,” answered Barthorpe eagerly. He bent over the table in his eagerness, and the old lawyer suddenly realized that Barthorpe genuinely believed himself to be in the right. “I’ll give you my grounds without reserve. Consider them—I’ll check them off, point by point—you can follow them:

“First. It was well known—to me, at any rate, that my uncle Jacob Herapath, had never made a will.

“Second. Is it not probable that if he wanted to make a will he would have employed me, who had acted as his solicitor for fifteen years?

“Third. I had a conversation with him about making a will just under a year ago, and he then said he’d have it done, and he mentioned that he should divide his estate equally between me and my cousin there.

“Fourth. Mr. Burchill here absolutely denies all knowledge of this alleged will.

“Fifth. My uncle’s handwriting, as you all know, was exceedingly plain and very easy to imitate. Burchill’s handwriting is similarly plain—of the copperplate sort—and just as easy to imitate.

“Sixth. That man across there is an expert forger! I have the account of his trial at Lancaster Assizes—the evidence shows that his work was most expert. Is it likely that his hand should have lost its cunning—even after several years?

“Seventh. That man there had every opportunity of forging this will. With his experience and knowledge it would be a simple matter to him. He did it with the idea of getting everything into the hands of his own daughter, of defrauding me of my just rights. Since my uncle’s death he has made two attempts to see Burchill privately—why? To square him, of course! And–”

Mr. Tertius, who had been gazing at the table while Barthorpe went through these points, suddenly lifted his head and looked at Mr. Halfpenny. His usual nervousness seemed to have left him, and there was something very like a smile of contempt about his lips when he spoke.

“I think, Halfpenny,” he said quietly, “I really think it is time all this extraordinary farce—for it is nothing less!—came to an end. May I be permitted to ask Mr. Barthorpe Herapath a few questions?”

“So far as I am concerned, as many as you please, Tertius,” replied Mr. Halfpenny. “Whether he’ll answer them or not is another matter. He ought to.”

“I shall answer them if I please, and I shall not answer them if I don’t want to,” said Barthorpe sullenly. “You can put them, anyway. But they’ll make no difference—I know what I’m talking about.”

“So do I,” said Mr. Tertius. “And really, as we come here to get at the truth, it will be all the better for everybody concerned if you do answer my questions. Now—you say I am in reality Arthur Wynne, the father of your cousin, the brother-in-law of Jacob Herapath. What you have said about Arthur John Wynne is unfortunately only too true. It is true that he erred and was punished—severely. In due course he went to Portland. I want to ask you what became of him afterwards?—you say you have full knowledge.”

“You mean, what became of you afterwards,” sneered Barthorpe. “I know when you left Portland. You left it for London—and you came to London to be sheltered, under your assumed name, by Jacob Herapath.”

“No more than that?” asked Mr. Tertius.

“That’s enough,” answered Barthorpe. “You left Portland in April, 1897; you came to London when you were discharged; in June of that year you’d taken up your residence under Jacob Herapath’s roof. And it’s no use your trying to bluff me—I’ve traced your movements!”

“With the aid, no doubt, of Mr. Burchill there,” observed Mr. Tertius, dryly. “But–”

Burchill drew himself up.

“Sir!” he exclaimed. “That is an unwarrantable assumption, and–”

“Unwarrantable assumptions, Mr. Burchill, appear to be present in great quantity,” interrupted Mr. Tertius, with an air of defiance which surprised everybody. “Don’t you interrupt me, sir!—I’ll deal with you before long in a way that will astonish you. Now, Mr. Barthorpe Herapath,” he went on, turning to that person with determination, “I will astonish you somewhat, for I honestly believe you really have some belief in what you say. I am not Arthur John Wynne. I am what I have always been—John Christopher Tertius, as a considerable number of people in this town can prove. But I knew Arthur John Wynne. When he left Portland he came to me here in London—at the suggestion of Jacob Herapath. I then lived in Bloomsbury—I had recently lost my wife. I took Wynne to live with me. But he had not long to live. If you had searched into matters more deeply, you would have found that he got his discharge earlier than he would have done in the usual course, because of his health. As a matter of fact, he was very ill when he came to me, and he died six weeks after his arrival at my house. He is buried in the churchyard of the village from which he originally came—in Wales—and you can inspect all the documents relating to his death, and see his grave if you care to. After his death, for reasons into which I need not go, I went to live with Jacob Herapath. It was his great desire—and mine—that Wynne’s daughter, your cousin, should never know her father’s sad history. But for you she never would have known it! And—that is a plain answer to what you have had to allege against me. Now, sir, let me ask you a plain question. Who invented this cock-and-bull story? You don’t reply—readily? Shall I assist you by a suggestion? Was it that man who sits by you—Burchill? For Burchill knows that he has lied vilely and shamelessly this morning—Burchill knows that he did see Jacob Herapath sign that will—Burchill knows that that will was duly witnessed by himself and by me in the presence of each other and of the testator! God bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Tertius, thumping the table vehemently. “Why, man alive, your cousin Margaret has a document here which proves that that will is all right—a document written by Jacob Herapath himself! Bring it out, my dear—confound these men with an indisputable proof!”

But before Peggie could draw the packet from her muff, Burchill had risen and was showing signs of retreat. And Barthorpe, now pale with anger and perplexity, had risen too—and he was looking at Burchill.

Mr. Halfpenny looked at both men. Then he pointed to their chairs. “Hadn’t you better sit down again?” he said. “It seems to me that we’re just arriving at the most interesting stage of these proceedings.”

Burchill stepped towards the door.

“I do not propose to stay in company in which I am ruthlessly insulted,” he said. “It is, of course, a question of my word against Mr. Tertius’s. We shall see. As for the present, I do.”

“Stop!” said Barthorpe. He moved towards Burchill, motioning him towards the window in which Peggie and Mr. Tertius had spoken together. “Here—a word with you!”

But Burchill made for the door, and Mr. Halfpenny nudged Professor Cox-Raythwaite.

“I say—stop!” exclaimed Barthorpe. “There’s some explanation–”

He was about to lay a hand on the door when Mr. Halfpenny touched a bell which stood in front of him on the table. And at its sharp sound the door opened from without, and Burchill fell back at what he saw—fell back upon Barthorpe, who looked past him, and started in his turn.

“Great Scot!” said Barthorpe. “Police!”

Davidge came quickly and quietly in—three other men with him. And in the room from which they emerged Barthorpe saw more men, many more men, and with them an eager, excited face which he somehow recognized—the face of the little Argus reporter who had asked him and Selwood for news on the morning after Jacob Herapath’s murder.

But Barthorpe had no time to waste thoughts on Triffitt. He suddenly became alive to the fact that two exceedingly strong men had seized his arms; that two others had similarly seized Burchill. The pallor died out of his face and gave place to a dull glow of anger.

“Now, then?” he growled. “What’s all this!”

“The same for both of you, Mr. Herapath,” answered Davidge, cheerfully and in business-like fashion. “I’ll charge both you and Mr. Burchill formally when we’ve got you to the station. You’re both under arrest, you know. And I may as well warn you–”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Barthorpe. “Arrest!—on what charge?”

“Charge will be the same for both,” answered Davidge coolly. “The murder of Jacob Herapath.”

A dead silence fell on the room. Then Peggie Wynne cried out, and Barthorpe suddenly made a spring at Burchill.

“You villain!” he said in a low concentrated voice. “You’ve done me, you devil! Let me get my hands on–”

The other men, Triffitt on their heels, came bustling into the room, obedient to Davidge’s lifted finger.

“Put the handcuffs on both of ’em,” commanded Davidge. “Can’t take any chances, Mr. Herapath, if you lose your temper—the other gentleman–”

It was at that moment that the other gentleman took his chance. While Barthorpe Herapath had foolishly allowed himself to become warm and excited, Burchill had remained cool and watchful and calculating. And now in the slight diversion made by the entrance of the other detectives, he suddenly and adroitly threw off the grasp of the men who held him, darted through the open door on to the stairs, and had vanished before Davidge could cry out. Davidge darted too, the other police darted, Mr. Halfpenny smote his bell and shouted to his clerks. But the clerks were downstairs, out of hearing, and the police were fleshy men, slow of movement, while Burchill was slippery as an eel and agile as an athlete. Moreover, Burchill, during his secretaryship to Jacob Herapath, had constantly visited Mr. Halfpenny’s office, and was as well acquainted with its ins and outs as its tenant; he knew where, in those dark stairs there was a side stair which led to a private door in a neighbouring alley. And while the pursuers blundered this way and that, he calmly slipped out to freedom, and, in a couple of minutes was mingling with the crowds in a busy thoroughfare, safe for that time.

Then Davidge, cursing his men and his luck, took Barthorpe Herapath away, and Triffitt rushed headlong to Fleet Street, seething with excitement and brimming with news.

CHAPTER XXV

PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS

The Argus came out in great style next morning, and it and Triffitt continued to give its vast circle of readers a similar feast of excitement for a good ten days. Triffitt, in fact, went almost foodless and sleepless; there was so much to do. To begin with, there was the daily hue and cry after Burchill, who had disappeared as completely as if his familiar evil spirits had carried him bodily away from the very door of Halfpenny and Farthing’s office. Then there was the bringing up of Barthorpe Herapath before the magistrate at Bow Street, and the proceedings at the adjourned coroner’s inquest. It was not until the tenth day that anything like a breathing space came. But the position of affairs on that tenth day was a fairly clear one. The coroner’s jury had returned a verdict of wilful murder against Barthorpe Herapath and Frank Burchill; the magistrate had committed Barthorpe for trial; the police were still hunting high and low for Burchill. And there was scarcely a soul who had heard the evidence before the coroner and the magistrate who did not believe that both the suspected men were guilty and that both—when Burchill had been caught—would ere long stand in the Old Bailey dock and eventually hear themselves sentenced to the scaffold.

One man, however, believed nothing of the sort, and that man was Professor Cox-Raythwaite. His big, burly form had been very much in evidence at all the proceedings before coroner and magistrate. He had followed every scrap of testimony with the most scrupulous care; he had made notes from time to time; he had given up his leisure moments, and stolen some from his proper pursuits, to a deep consideration of the case as presented by the police. And on the afternoon which saw Barthorpe committed to take his trial, he went away from Bow Street, alone, thinking more deeply than ever. He walked home to his house in Endsleigh Gardens, head bent, hands clasped behind his big back, the very incarnation of deep and ponderous musing. He shut himself in his study; he threw himself into his easy chair before his hearth; he remained smoking infinite tobacco, staring into vacancy, until his dinner-bell rang. He roused himself to eat and drink; then he went out into the street, bought all the evening newspapers he could lay hands on, and, hailing a taxi-cab, drove to Portman Square.

Peggie, Mr. Tertius, and Selwood had just dined; they were sitting in a quiet little parlour, silent and melancholy. The disgrace of Barthorpe’s arrest, of the revelations before coroner and magistrate, of his committal on the capital charge, had reduced Peggie to a state of intense misery; the two men felt hopelessly unable to give her any comfort. To both, the entrance of Cox-Raythwaite came as a positive relief.

Cox-Raythwaite, shown into the presence of these three, closed the door in a fashion which showed that he did not wish to be disturbed, came silently across the room, and drew a chair into the midst of the disconsolate group. His glance round commanded attention.

“Now, my friends,” he said, plunging straight into his subject, “if we don’t wish to see Barthorpe hanged, we’ve just got to stir ourselves! I’ve come here to begin the stirring.”

Peggie looked up with a sudden heightening of colour. Mr. Tertius slowly shook his head.

“Pitiable!” he murmured. “Pitiable, most pitiable! But the evidence, my dear Cox-Raythwaite, the evidence! I only wish–”

“I’ve been listening to all the evidence that could be brought before coroner’s jury and magistrate in police court,” broke in the Professor. “Listening with all my ears until I know every scrap of it by heart. And for four solid hours this afternoon I’ve been analysing it. I’m going to analyse it to you—and then I’ll show you why it doesn’t satisfy me. Give me your close attention, all of you.”

He drew a little table to his elbow, laid his bundle of papers upon it, and began to talk, checking off his points on the tips of his big, chemical-stained fingers.

“Now,” he said, “we’ll just go through the evidence which has been brought against these two men, Barthorpe and Burchill, which evidence has resulted in Barthorpe being committed for trial and in the police’s increased anxiety to lay hold of Burchill. The police theory, after all, is a very simple one—let’s take it and their evidence point by point.

“1. The police say that Jacob Herapath came to his death as the result of a conspiracy between his nephew Barthorpe Herapath and Frank Burchill.

“2. They say that the proof that that conspiracy existed is found in certain documents discovered by Davidge at Burchill’s flat, in which documents Barthorpe covenants to pay Burchill ten per cent. of the value of the Herapath property if and when he, Barthorpe, comes into it.

“3. The police argue that this conspiracy to murder Jacob Herapath and upset the will was in existence before November 12th—in other words that the idea of upsetting the will came first, and that the murder arose out of it.

“4. In support of this they have proved that Barthorpe was in close touch with Burchill as soon as the murder was committed—afternoon of the same day, at any rate—and therefore presumably had been in close touch with him previously.

“5. They have proved to the full a certain matter about which there is no doubt—that Barthorpe was at the estate office about the time at which, according to medical evidence, his uncle was murdered, that he subsequently put on his uncle’s coat and hat and visited this house, and afterwards returned to the estate office. That, I say, is certain—and it is the most damning thing against Barthorpe.