Man with the Dark Beard (20 page)

She dropped back in her chair and laying her head on her arms burst into bitter weeping. The horror and thwarted love of the past few weeks found their outlet in those tears.

“Poor child!” Miss Lavinia said in an unwontedly softened tone. “It will do you good to have a cry. Hilary, do you know what I heard a man say in the train? That the only man that could save Basil Wilton now was Sir Felix Skrine.”

“Godfather!” Hilary looked up through her tears, a gleam of hope in her brown eyes. “But – but he doesn't like Basil. He wouldn't try to help him.”

“Perhaps he would if you asked him,” Miss Lavinia suggested. “Try, Hilary.”

“I don't believe he would if I did. I – I think he is very angry with me,” Hilary said tearfully. “He hasn't been to the Manor for ages.”

“He is coming today,” Miss Lavinia said quietly. “As soon as I saw the paper last night I rang him up, and he said he should be here almost as soon as I was. He is coming in his touring car and offered me a lift. But he is a rather reckless driver, I have heard, so I stuck to the train. I believe it is safer in the end. Besides, I always find Sir Felix a tiring person to talk to – never know what he is driving at myself.”

Hilary dried her tears.

“Yes, you think it tiring to talk to him for an hour or so, and you want me to have him altogether – to marry him!”

“Heaven defend me!” Miss Lavinia groaned. “Marrying a man is very different from talking to him, as you will find out some day. As for listening to them, you can always think of something else. But I believe Sir Felix is coming now. I hear the sort of ‘Yonk-yonk' he makes to tell fowls and children and other things to get out of the way. I'll leave you to talk to him, Hilary. I will go and have a chat with Fee.”

Sir Felix found Hilary still sitting with the paper before her when he entered the room some ten minutes later. He put his hand caressingly on her shoulder.

“Well, Hilary, this is sad news for you, I know, but –”

“Godfather!” Hilary did not shake off his hand. She looked up at him imploringly. “Basil is innocent, you know.”

Sir Felix frowned slightly. “I hope so, but I don't know. The case is very black against him. I'm afraid he will find it very difficult to persuade a jury of his innocence.”

Hilary took her courage in both hands.

“No, perhaps he will not be able to – but I think you could, Sir Felix.”

Sir Felix's frown deepened. He looked at her.

“What do you mean exactly, Hilary?”

“I – I mean that if you defend him, you can get him off – make the jury say he is not guilty,” Hilary faltered.

Sir Felix did not speak for a minute. At last he said slowly:

“I very much doubt whether I or anyone else could do anything for Wilton, Hilary. And how could I defend him – how could I try to help a man who is accused of murdering my best friend?”

Hilary twisted her fingers together.

“I thought perhaps – you would because – I asked you,” she stammered.

Sir Felix looked at her.

“Supposing that Wilton is guilty, as all the world believes – as I believe – would you still wish him to escape his punishment, Hilary?”

“Yes, yes! But I know – I know he is not guilty,” Hilary cried with sudden fire. “Oh, Sir Felix, save him – save him for –”

“For you,” he finished severely. “No, Hilary, you are asking too much! I will not raise a finger to help you to marry Basil Wilton. Remember your father on the last day of his life forbade your engagement. What would he say now – now that he is accused of murder – double murder? Do you think that he would give his cherished only daughter to him now? No, Hilary, I cannot defend Wilton.”

There was a tense silence. Hilary felt that every drop was draining from her face, even her lips felt stiff. Her vivid imagination was picturing the future that lay before Basil Wilton. The trial at which he would be pilloried before the world; the verdict of the jury; the sentence – “to be hanged by your neck until you are dead” – then the last dread morning, the stumbling blindfolded figure in the hands of his executioners. She shuddered as she raised her ghastly face. Such a horror was too awful to contemplate. Gazing into the stern eyes of the man before her, the certainty dawned on her that only in one way could she hope to alter Skrine's determination – one sacrifice that she must make for love's sake.

“Sir Felix, you – you asked me a – a – something the other day.”

Something like a gleam of triumph shot into the steel-blue eyes. But Skrine's voice was colder than Hilary had ever heard it:

“Yes. And you said no. I am not likely to forget that, Hilary.” His tone was repressive in the extreme.

But Hilary was desperate. The sinister visions her distorted fancy had conjured up, the pain and the terror, the thwarted love of the past months had warped her judgment.

“If I tell you that I will marry you, will you save Basil Wilton?” she questioned with a crudity that made Skrine draw his lips together.

When he spoke it was very deliberately. “Naturally I should wish to do anything my wife asked me. Does this mean that you have changed your mind, Hilary?”

“I will marry you if you will save Basil Wilton,” she replied tonelessly.

“Suppose that I do defend him and cannot get him off – it, as far as I have read the evidence in the papers, looks as though it might be beyond the power of mortal man to do – what would you say to me then, Hilary?”

Hilary clasped her hands.

“Oh, but you will – you must. People are saying that you are the only man who can get Basil off. Dad used to say that you could make a jury believe that black was white.”

“Ah! He thought too much of me.” Skrine's face was curiously contorted.

He turned, as though the very mention of his dead friend was too much for his self-control. He began to walk up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent as if in thought. Hilary watched him miserably, catching her breath every now and then in long drawn sobs.

At last he came to a standstill beside her.

“If I did give all my energies to getting Wilton off – for I warn you that it is an almost impossible task that you set me, Hilary, one that will tax my strength to the utmost – and if I succeed, what guarantee have I that you will keep your promise, that, Wilton being free, you will not throw me over for him?”

Hilary drew herself up. “You will have my word.”

“Yes.” Skrine turned from her beseeching eyes and resumed his walk to the end of the room and back. Through the open window beside her Hilary heard the sound of voices. Fee was being taken out to the garden, Miss Lavinia with him. Both were speaking in low tones, as though some doom overhung the house.

Hilary watched with unseeing eyes, hardly knowing what she was looking at, her whole being absorbed in the one thought of Basil Wilton's danger. More than once Skrine looked at her. When at last he spoke it was from the other end of the room.

*“Yes, Hilary, I will defend Wilton. I think I can promise you that I will get him off – at any rate I will do my best – if you will let me announce the engagement and forthcoming marriage now.”

A hot touch of crimson streaked Hilary's white cheeks.

“I will marry you if you save Basil,” she echoed. “But what guarantee shall I have that you will when I have bound myself?”

“My word – as you said just now. My word that I will do my best,” Sir Felix said gravely. “More it is not in the power of man to promise.”

Hilary threw out her hands.

“Oh, you must – you must. If you do – I –”

“You will want to marry him, I am afraid. Hilary, I will do my very utmost to save Wilton if you give me your word of honour to marry me the day after the trial. If you do not – well” – he shrugged his shoulders – “I shall leave Wilton to his fate. And that fate will be – death.”

Hilary's face turned ghastly, then flushed hotly crimson, back again to white.

“You give me no choice. I cannot help myself. I will marry you at once after the trial if – if you get Basil off. I shall always remember that you – that you –” she gasped.

“Hilary, you have conquered!” Skrine interrupted. “Heaven forbid that I should take advantage of your – your trouble. Promise to marry me – some day – and I will trust you to keep your word. I will defend Wilton, and Fee shall go to Dr. Blathwayte's home for his cure. What do you say?”

“I don't know –” Hilary hesitated.

When she was a child she had been fond of Skrine, but her affection for him had not grown deeper as the years rolled by. Lately, in these few months since her father's death, since she had been in his guardianship, a new element of fear seemed to have crept into their relationship. But now – now she told herself, that she had no choice, false and treacherous though he had shown himself, she could not let Basil Wilton meet a shameful death when a word of hers might save him. She held out her hand.

“I – I will trust you too. I will marry you – when you have saved Basil, Sir Felix.”

“You know that Sir Felix Skrine offered to defend Wilton?”

The inspector nodded.

“It won't do him any harm, if it does not do him any good,” he returned enigmatically.

“You have not heard the latest, then,” Harbord went on. “Wilton has refused to be defended by him and has chosen Arnold Westerham instead.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

Harbord stared. “I should have thought the mere fact that Skrine was Bastow's closest friend would have some effect on the jury.”

“Dare say it would,” Stoddart growled. “Juries – or the folks that serve on them – are mostly fools.”

“Quite!” Harbord agreed. “But Sir Felix Skrine would hardly defend Wilton if he thought he was guilty, especially since Skrine is engaged to Miss Bastow.”

“Eh – what?” the inspector interrupted.

“What is that you're saying? Skrine is not engaged to Miss Bastow.”

“He is!” Harbord said positively. “Didn't you know?”

“I did not!” the inspector said emphatically. “I always took it for granted that she was sweet on Wilton.”

“Not much good being sweet on him when he had married Miss Houlton.”

“Well, no, it was not. That's a fact. And young women do change their minds nowadays,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “Always did for that matter. But I would not give much for her chance of marrying Skrine.”

The two men were in the inspector's office at Scotland Yard. The inspector had been down in the country on some mysterious business for the last day or two, and on his return to town this morning had been met by Harbord with the foregoing piece of information.

The Hawksview Mansions Case was coming on at the Michaelmas Assizes, to be held in a fortnight. Basil Wilton had appeared before the magistrates and had been charged with murdering his wife, and had in due course been committed for trial. The coroner's inquest that had sat upon poor Iris Wilton's body had returned a verdict of “Wilful Murder against Basil Wilton.” Public opinion, never too charitable, had long since decided that Wilton was guilty not only of murdering his wife, but also of killing Dr. Bastow. In most quarters Wilton's trial was looked upon as a mere formality, and many people opined that he might have been hanged without it.

“Ruthven is to be the judge,” Harbord went on. “I expect he will pretty well turn Wilton inside out. I suppose he will give evidence himself, sir?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Stoddart acquiesced, “if the trial comes on. But I doubt whether he can tell us anything we don't know already.”

Harbord opened his eyes. “If the trial comes on, sir?”

“It will, if the real murderer is not discovered before the time,” the inspector said irritably. “Basil Wilton is not guilty, Harbord.”

“I have doubted it myself sometimes,” the younger detective said thoughtfully. “But the evidence is very strong against him. The question of the time is so difficult. According to the medical evidence Mrs. Wilton died within a few minutes of Wilton's leaving the flat, either a few minutes before or a few minutes after. That brings it rather close. If he is not guilty, who is?”

“You know as well as I do that the defence is not called upon to answer that question,” Stoddart said, standing up and reaching for his hat. “If Wilton can be proved innocent, it does not matter to the defence who is guilty.”

Harbord glanced keenly at his superior.

“Sometimes I have fancied that you have some definite suspicion, sir.”

The inspector met his eyes squarely.

“Have you none?” he asked meaningly.

Harbord considered a minute.

“If sometimes a hazy suspicion has crossed my mind, I have no proof whatever.”

“Ah! That,” said the inspector, “is a very different matter.”

As the last word left his lips there was a tap at the door.

“A lady, sir, wants to speak to you. Leastways she said she must see the officer in charge of the Hawksview Mansions Case. Quite the lady, sir, but she wouldn't give her name. Said you wouldn't know it.”

“There,” the inspector said quickly, “she is probably mistaken. Ask her to walk in, Miles.”

Harbord looked puzzled.

“Who can it be?”

“Probably the maid at the flat. Maids and ladies look all alike nowadays with their silk stockings and shingled heads. Miles would not know the difference. I dare say that girl did not tell us all she knew.”

“They will get it out of her at the trial,” Harbord began, just as the constable ushered in a tall woman whom both men knew at once to be a stranger to them.

Little as could be seen of her face with the black hat pulled low over it, and the collar of her coat turned up high all round, the detectives recognized at once that Miles's description had been correct enough. This was unmistakably a lady.