true to his word, he returned to his lodgings and spent the afternoon in slumber. he had the gift which all great men possess, of being able to sleep at will. he was staying at a boarding-house, and occupied a room which had originally been a side veranda, but had been walled in and converted into an extra bedroom. it was a remarkably convenient room for him, as he had discovered on previous occasions. he had but to open the window and drop on to the grass to make his exit without anybody in the house being the wiser. more to the point, he could return at any hour by the same route without disturbing the household.
he had his supper, and whilst it was still very light he went out to reconnoitre sir john’s demesne. he was able to make the circuit of the house, which occupied a corner site and was isolated by two lanes, and he saw nobody until, returning to the front of the house, a car drove up and a woman alighted.
he had no difficulty in recognising lady maxell, but the taxi interested him more than the lady. it was smothered with mud and had evidently come a long journey.
as evidently she had hired it in some distant town and she had not as yet finished with it, because she gave the man some directions and money, and from the profound respect which the chauffeur showed, it was clear that that money was merely a tip.
timothy stood where he could clearly be seen, but her back was toward him all the time and she did not so much as glance in his direction when she passed through the gate and up the garden path.
it was curious, thought timothy, that she did not take the car up the drive to the house. more curious was it that she should, at this late hour of the evening, have further use for it.
he returned to his room, full of theories, the majority of which were wholly wild and improbable. he lay on his bed, indulging in those dreams which made up the happiest part of his life. of late he had taken a new and a more radiant pattern to the web of his fancy and——
“oh, fiddlesticks!” he said in disgust, rolling over and sitting up with a yawn.
he heard the feet of the boarders on the gravel path outside, and once he heard a girl say evidently to a visitor:
“do you see that funny room! that is mr. anderson’s.”
there was still an hour or so to be passed, and he joined the party in the parlour so restless and distrait as to attract attention and a little mild raillery from his fellow guests. he went back to his room, turned on the light and pulled a trunk from under the bed.
somehow his mind had been running all day upon that erring cousin whose name he bore and whose disappearance from public life was such a mystery. possibly it was sir john’s words which had brought alfred cartwright to his mind. his mother had left him a number of family documents, which, with the indolence of youth, he had never examined very closely. he had the impression that they consisted in the main of receipts, old diplomas of his father’s (who was an engineer) and sundry other family documents which were not calculated to excite the curiosity of the adventurous youth.
he took out the two big envelopes in which these papers were kept and turned them on to the bed, examining them one by one. why his cousin should be in his mind, why he should have taken this action at that particular moment, the psychologist and the psychical expert alone can explain. they may produce in explanation such esoteric phenomena as auras, influences, and telepathies, and perhaps they are right.
he had not searched long before he came upon a small package of newspaper cuttings, bound about by a rubber band. he read them at first without interest, and then without comprehension. there was one cutting, however, which had been clipped from its context, which seemed to tell the whole story of the rest. it ran:
“when cartwright stood up for sentence he did not seem to be greatly troubled by his serious position. as the words ‘twenty years’ passed mr. justice maxell’s lips, he fell back as if he had been shot. then, springing to the edge of the dock, he hurled an epithet at his lordship. some of his business associates suggest that the learned judge was a partner of cartwright’s—an astonishing and most improper suggestion to make. in view of the statement that the prisoner made before the trial, when suggestions had been made in a newspaper that the judge had been connected with him in business years before, and remembering that cartwright’s statement was to the effect that he had had no business transactions with the judge, it seems as though the outburst was made in a fit of spleen at the severity of the sentence. sir john maxell, after the case, took the unusual step of informing a press representative that he intended placing his affairs in the hands of a committee for investigation, and had invited the attorney-general to appoint that committee. ‘i insist upon this being done,’ he said, ‘because after the prisoner’s accusation i should not feel comfortable until an impartial committee had examined my affairs.’ it is understood that after the investigation the learned judge intends retiring from the bench.”
timothy gasped. so that was the explanation. that was why maxell had written to him, that was why he made no reference at all to his father, but to this disreputable cousin of his. slowly he returned the package to its envelope, dropped it into his trunk and pushed the trunk under the bed.
and that was the secret of cousin cartwright’s disappearance. he might have guessed it; he might even have known had he troubled to look at these papers.
he sat on the bed, his hands clasping his knees. it was not a pleasant reflection that he had a relative, and a relative moreover after whom he was named, serving what might be a life sentence in a convict establishment. but what made him think of the matter to-night?
“mr. anderson! timothy!”
timothy looked round with a start. the man whose face was framed in the open window might have been forty, fifty or sixty. it was a face heavily seamed and sparsely bearded—a hollow-eyed, hungry face, but those eyes burnt like fire. timothy jumped up.
“hullo!” he said. “who are you ‘timothying’?”
“you don’t know me, eh?” the man laughed unpleasantly. “can i come in?”
“yes, you can come in,” said timothy.
he wondered what old acquaintance this was who had come to the tramp level, and rapidly turned over in his mind all the possible candidates for trampdom he had met.
“you don’t know me, eh?” said the man again. “well, i’ve tracked you here, and i’ve been sitting in those bushes for two hours. i heard one of the boarders say that it was your window and i waited till it was dark before i came out.”
“all this is highly interesting,” said timothy, surveying the shrunken figure without enthusiasm, “but who are you?”
“i had a provisional pardon,” said the man, “and they put me in a sanatorium—i’ve something the matter with one of my lungs. it was always a trouble to me. i was supposed to stay in the sanatorium—that was one of the terms on which i was pardoned—but i escaped.”
timothy stared at him with open mouth.
“alfred cartwright!” he breathed.
the man nodded.
“that’s me,” he said.
timothy looked down at the edge of the black box.
“so that is why i was thinking about you,” he said. “well, this beats all! sit down, won’t you?”
he pulled a chair up for his visitor and again gazed on him with curiosity but without affection. something in timothy’s attitude annoyed cartwright.
“you’re not glad to see me?” he said.
“not very,” admitted timothy. “the truth is, you’ve only just come into existence so far as i am concerned. i thought you were dead.”
“you didn’t know?”
timothy shook his head.
“not until a few minutes ago. i was reading the cuttings about your trial——”
“so that was what you were reading?” said the man. “i’d like to see ’em one of these days. do you know what i’ve come for?”
it was only at that moment that sir john flashed through timothy’s mind.
“i guess what you’ve come after,” he said slowly. “you’re here to see sir john maxell.”
“i’m here to see mister justice maxell,” said the man between his teeth. “you’re a good guesser.”
he took the stump of a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lit it.
“john maxell and i have a score to settle, and it is going to be settled very soon.”
“tide and weather permitting,” said timothy flippantly, recovering his self-possession. “all that vendetta stuff doesn’t go, mr. cartwright.” then he asked in a flash: “did you shoot at him last night?”
the man’s surprise was a convincing reply.
“shoot at him? i only got to this place this afternoon. it’s more likely he’s waiting to shoot at me, for the sanatorium people will have telegraphed to him the moment i was missing.”
timothy walked to the window and pulled down the blinds.
“now tell me, mr. cartwright, before we go any farther, do you still persist in the story you told the court, that the judge was a party to your swindle?”
“a party to it!” said the other man furiously. “of course he was! i was using the money of my companies to buy concessions from the moorish government, as much on his behalf as on mine. he wasn’t in the brigot swindle—but he held shares in the company i was financing. we located a gold mine in the angera country, and maxell and i went across to europe every year regularly to look after our property.
“we had to keep it quiet because we secured the concessions from the pretender, knowing that he’d put the sultan out of business the moment he got busy. if it had been known, the sultan would have repudiated the concession, and our government would have upheld the repudiation. maxell speaks the language like a native, and i learnt enough to get on with el mograb, who is the biggest thing amongst the rebel tribes. el mograb wanted us to stay there, maxell and i; he’d have made us shereefs or pashas, and i’d have done it, because i knew there was going to be an investigation sooner or later into the affairs of my companies. but maxell wouldn’t have it. he always pretended that, so far as he knew, my financing was straight. you know the rest,” he said. “when i came before maxell, i thought i was safe.”
“but sir john allowed his affairs to be inspected,” said timothy. “if he had been engaged with you in this morocco business, there must have been papers to prove it.”
cartwright laughed harshly.
“of course he’d allow his affairs to be investigated,” he sneered. “do you think that old fox couldn’t cache all the documents that put him wrong? papers? why, he must have enough papers to hang him, if you could only find ’em!”
“what are you going to do?” asked timothy.
there was one thing he was determined that this man should not do, and that was to disturb the peace of mind, not of sir john maxell or his wife, but of a certain goddess whose bedroom overlooked the lawn.
“what am i going to do?” replied cartwright. “why, i’m going up to get my share. and he’ll be lucky if that’s all he loses. one of the mines was sold to a syndicate last year—i had news of it in gaol. he didn’t get much for it because he was in a hurry to sell—i suppose his other investments must have been going wrong twelve months ago—but i want my share of that!”
timothy nodded.
“then you had best see sir john in the morning. i will arrange an interview.”
“in the morning!” said the other contemptuously. “suppose you make the arrangement, what would happen? when i went up there i should find a couple of cops waiting to pinch me. i know john! i’m going to see him to-night.”
“i think not,” said timothy, and the man stared at him.
“you think not?” he said. “what has it to do with you?”
“quite a lot,” said timothy. “i merely state that you will not see him to-night.”
cartwright stroked his bristly chin undecidedly and then:
“oh, well,” he said in a milder tone, “maybe you can fix things up for me in the morning.”
“where are you sleeping to-night?” asked timothy. “have you any money?”
he had money, a little; and he had arranged to sleep at the house of a man he had known in better times. timothy accompanied him through the window and into the street, and walked with him to the end of the road.
“if my gamble had come off, you’d have benefited, anderson,” said the man unexpectedly, breaking in upon another topic which they were discussing.
they parted, and timothy watched him out of sight, then turned on and walked in the opposite direction, to take up his self-imposed vigil.
