Chapter XXIX

At the Colchester office they entered upon a scene of funereal excitement. The place was not, indeed, closed; but in the outer lobby there was only one small, distracted boy, who was obviously dreadfully ill-used at being deprived of his colleagues’ society. Within, there was a sort of subdued bustle. Two plain-clothes police-officers were methodically going through books and correspondence, aided by a distressed old fellow whom Michael guessed to be the faithful Davis. Two or three other clerks buzzed in the background. One of the latter took Wilson and Michael through into the inner office, where they found Inspector Bille, very calm and official, sitting in an arm-chair with a large notebook open on his knee, while Mark Warden, all yesterday’s confidence gone from his face, strode restlessly up and down in front of the fireplace.

“Thank God you’ve come!” he said, as the two friends appeared. “This is appalling. Hanborough’s gone!”

“So I heard,” said Wilson, after greeting the Inspector. “Clean gone? Definitely run away, I mean?”

“I should say so,” the Inspector chuckled. “Read his letter, sir; it’s on the table there.” Wilson took it and read it carefully.

“DEAR MARK,”--it ran--“I’m sorry to tell you that I can’t keep
our appointment for this morning; and more sorry that I can’t
make another. The fact is, I’m throwing in my hand, and I hope
and believe that this is the last you’ll hear of me. I apologise
for leaving things in such a mess, but the truth is, it’s the
fault of your friends, the police, for getting so inquisitive. If
they’d let me have a little longer run I could have cleared it
all up; as it is, I’m afraid you’ll have difficulty in dealing
with Coxwell. The papers are in my desk, of which I enclose the
keys. It’s not an easy one to open, and it’s a nice piece of
furniture, so it would be a pity to knock it about.

“By the way, I shall have to leave Strake on your hands too.
I’d square him if I could, but I want every bit of cash I’ve
got. I don’t suppose you’ll have much to spare, either, but if
anybody has an odd five-pound note it would be an act of charity
to give it to him. He’s really had a rotten time, full of good
information which nobody would pay him for. With regrets and
apologies, Yours,

“NICHOLAS HANBOROUGH.”

“I’ve never had the pleasure of conversing with Mr. Hanborough,” Wilson said, looking up, “but I should guess that this was rather a characteristic letter, isn’t it?”

“Like his impudence, you mean, sir,” said the Inspector. “It is. Very like.”

“How did it get here?”

“By post this morning. It was sent off by the afternoon post yesterday. Must have been sent just before he skipped.”

“He has skipped, then?”

“Oh yes. Went off yesterday afternoon. We’ve tracked him to the coast, and there are two or three boats he might have got a lift on. At the moment we don’t know which, and none of them has wireless. But I think we’ll get him.”

“And do his effects throw any light on your problems?” Wilson asked Warden.

“As far as we’re concerned, they explain the whole thing,” was the gloomy reply. “It was all his doing. He’d been systematically converting the funds to his own use--must have been doing it while Dad was still there, that’s _my_ only comfort in the business. And that poor devil Meston was getting on his tracks. What we’re going to do now I can’t think. We’ve no possibility of meeting Coxwell, who wants to withdraw his account next week; and, of course, if he goes others will follow.”

“I see,” said Wilson, referring again to the letter, “that he says that if he had been given a few days’ more grace, he could have put the situation right. Is that correct, do you know? or merely gambler’s optimism?”

“Both, I should say,” said Bille, taking up the tale. “As far as we can make out, he was expecting to get in some cash directly, and that would have staved off the immediate collapse. How long he could have kept it up is quite another story, of course, sir.”

“Then why did he throw his hand in? Was it Warden’s suspicions?” To an intelligent listener, Wilson’s tone would have betrayed a doubt that an experienced swindler would have lost his nerve at the prospect of an interview with Mark Warden.

“Yes, and no. You see, sir,” Bille explained, “it wasn’t exactly what Mr. Warden thought, that he was afraid of. He didn’t mind about the misappropriation, because--if I may say so--he’d pulled the wool over Mr. Warden’s eyes once, and he’d pretty well reckon he could do it again. But it was one or two other things Mr. Warden let slip--about inquiries you and your friend were making about him--that hung on to some things we and the Colchester police had been finding out, and that put the wind up on him.”

“You mean,” put in Michael excitedly, “about his whereabouts the night Meston was killed?”

“That, and other things.” The Inspector obviously intended to have his money’s worth out of his sensation. “We’d an idea where he was that night. But, more than that, there was the question of what he did with the funds he’d embezzled. We were pretty certain what it was, but we couldn’t just find any way of fixing it on him.”

“And it was?”

“Drug-running, sir. Cocaine, principally; and other stuff as well. He’d a pretty big clientele hereabouts, but very difficult to come at. And it was with his makings on his last lot that he reckoned to clear off these impending troubles. But he took fright when he got Mr. Warden’s letter, and went off without them. However, we’ve got our evidence now; and when we catch him, he’ll be for it, sir, without a doubt.”

“Colonel Lockwood told me nothing of this,” Wilson wondered. It was indeed inconceivable that Lockwood should have kept so exciting a secret to himself.

“When I say we, sir,” the Inspector amplified, “I should have mentioned it was the Colchester force handled it. It was their business, really. We only came in because Hanborough was planting his stuff outside the city boundaries. In fact, I’m not sure that the Colonel really knows very much about it. You see, sir, he’s pretty well acquainted with most of the parties we’ve suspected, and it might have been difficult for him.” The Inspector’s opinion of his superior’s discretion could not have been more delicately conveyed.

“Such as Kershaw, eh?” Wilson suggested. The Inspector seemed pleased, if not astonished.

“You’ve that for a fact, sir? I’ve suspected it for some time, but I can’t say I’ve any proof. For an open-handed, free-spoken man, Hanborough was extremely cautious. It’s been remarkably difficult to come on his trail. If you’ve any proof, sir, I should be very glad if you’d let me see it.”

“You shall have it when you want it,” Wilson promised. “Meantime, perhaps you can help me on one or two points. Do you know whether Meston had any of this--side-line of his partner’s?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. There’s nothing in what we’ve found to show one way or the other. Mr. Meston, unfortunately for himself, was a very secretive man. He put hardly anything in writing, and what he had, I think Mr. Hanborough got. He had first access to his papers after his death, you see, sir.”

“There was nothing, as far as I remember, in the stuff found at Steeple Tollesbury?”

“Nothing whatever. And it’s the general belief, and I don’t see much reason to doubt it, that whatever he was doing before, the reason he went to Steeple Tollesbury was just the obvious one--to get at his wife. He was much stronger about her than about the firm, sir. Bit touched, in my opinion,” said the Inspector.

“And when he left it?”

“Who’s to say? May have been going to end it all, for aught anybody knows. Guessing’s not much good, sir.”

“It is not,” Wilson sighed. “_Was_ Hanborough anywhere in particular that night, when he’d disappeared from the Grange, do you know?”

“Yes, sir, he was. He was with Sir Felix Lewis’s gamekeeper, fixing up business with him. He must have been rather put to it, to choose such a suspicious time; but I suppose he thought he wouldn’t be missed.”

“Oh! And where did he meet this gamekeeper?”

“At his cottage. He lives alone in a little place a couple of miles up beyond the old bridge. The cottage stands all by itself, close to the river, and there’s a path to it from the tow-path.”

“Oh!” Wilson digested this piece of information for some time; then, to Mark Warden’s relief, turned back to the matter in hand. For some time they discussed the effects of Hanborough’s flight on the firm’s affairs, Wilson endeavouring to administer a little consolation to the young man. Then Inspector Bille looked at his watch, and announced that he must go.

“Are you going back to Steeple Tollesbury?” Wilson asked. “If so, perhaps we can give you a lift. Our car’s outside, and we shall just get back in time for some lunch.” The Inspector accepted gratefully, and they piled in. Wilson and the Inspector exchanged a few commonplaces on the affairs of the Warden firm.

“Is it your opinion, sir,” Bille asked, “that these two affairs are connected--I mean this and the murder? I notice you’ve got your eye on Hanborough’s whereabouts that night?”

“I can’t say,” said Wilson. “Of course, we appear to have provided him with an excellent motive for making away with Meston--supposing we can prove that the latter knew anything of his activities. But you say we can’t. Then I confess I don’t quite see Hanborough, little as I know him, in the rôle of hangman. Do you?”

“No, sir,” the Inspector agreed. “But folk act strangely when they’re up against it.”

“Still,” Michael put in, “the man couldn’t have been murdered all along the river bank. This cottage, I think you said, is two miles above where the rope was found?”

“The rope!” There was a sudden note of excitement in Wilson’s voice. “I’d nearly forgotten the rope. Have you seen it, Bille? What was it like? And where was it found?”

“It’s a silk rope, sir,” said Bille, puzzled, but obliging. “Quite an ordinary kind of silk rope, I should say--though they’re not very common. We’ve got a man now trying to find out where it came from. It’s a good length--thirty feet or so--and it’s been knotted tight, and cut, just as you would if you’d strangled a man and then cut him down. I should say almost certainly it was the rope that was used to hang him. The Colonel’s having the fibres tested--I don’t know if that’ll prove anything, of course.”

“And where was it found?”

“Not thirty yards from the boathouse, sir, along by the tow-path, just inside the woods, in a heap of dead leaves. Just by the stump of an alder. It’s queer how our people came to miss it, being so near the place.”

“It is indeed.” Wilson’s eyes were shining with a curious inward light. “And how did they come to find it now?”

“They didn’t, sir. It was Potts, the man from the Grange, brought it in.”

“Potts?”

“Yes, sir. I understand he was taking a walk along the tow-path with his young lady, and sat down on the stump. Then he was kicking his heels about in the leaves, and it came to light. So, having heard something about strangling, though Lord knows how he did--that place is a whispering gallery--he brought it along to the station.”

“And when did he do that?”

“This morning. It was last night he found it. Does it suggest anything, sir?”

“It’s just possible--only just. But _something’s_ queer about this, at all events. Would it inconvenience you greatly, Bille, if we took the Grange on our way back? I want to make an inquiry or two about that rope, and it won’t keep.”

The Inspector making no objection, he gave the word to the chauffeur, and for the rest of their drive remained sunk in a deep cogitation, which Michael knew better than to interrupt.