The Stolen Statesman: Being the Story of a Hushed Up Mystery

By this time the landlord and his wife were awake, and he heard the man’s heavy footsteps along the passage. He opened his door, and briefly explained the situation.

In a very short time he and the doctor were in the bedroom of the dying man. Strange was at the bedside, looking intently at the prostrate figure, without a trace of emotion in his sharp, inscrutable features. He withdrew a little distance as Janson approached, and murmured something in a low voice to the other. It was an apology for disturbing him.

The man lay motionless for some few minutes, the pallor of death settling deeper over the once swarthy features. Janson turned to Varney.

“I’m afraid it is too late, Mr Franks. He is sinking rapidly. If you could have been here when I first came.”

Was it fancy, or did he see an expression of relief steal across Strange’s impenetrable mask?

If so, he was doomed to disappointment. The dying man stirred, and his lips moved. Varney leaned over, and his quick ear caught some muttered words, growing fainter and fainter with the waning of the flickering strength.

The words were in the bastard tongue of Piedmont, difficult to understand by anyone who has not lived in Northern Italy.

“Dio!” gasped the dying man. “Forgive me. The doctors have long ago told me I should die suddenly, but – I – I never expected this. Oh, that somebody here could understand me?” he whispered to himself.

“I do. Signore,” said Varney, as he leaned over him.

In the dying man’s eyes came a gleam of satisfaction and hope.

“Ah! Thank Heaven! Then listen,” he said. “I want you to do something for me – something – ” and he halted as though in reflection. “Well,” he went on, “twenty years ago I did a great wrong in conjunction with another man. Go to him and tell him that Giovanni Roselli, his old comrade, implores him, from his deathbed, to make reparation. You will find him in Manchester. He was the head of the Compagnia Corezzo, and his name is James – ”

The surname was never told. As he strove to utter it, the end came. Giovanni Roselli had delivered his message, but he had gone into the shadows, before he could utter the full name of the man to whom it was conveyed. Varney translated the dying man’s message to Strange, but he made no comment.

Smeaton sat in silence for a long time when the recital was finished.

“A house of sinister inmates with sinister secrets,” he said at length. “What you have told me may have a bearing upon something that has gone before.”

Briefly he narrated to Varney the discovery of the threatening letter, and his visit to the engraver and stationer.

Varney saw at once what had occurred to him.

“The Compagnia Corezzo gives us a clue – eh? – the initials ‘C.C.,’ which are the initials on the envelope. Was it an envelope from the company’s office? You say that the old engraver thought the man who ordered the cipher came from Manchester or Liverpool. Roselli tells us we can find his man in Manchester?” Smeaton rose. “I’m in hopes that something may come out of it all,” he said, as they shook hands. “Anyway, stay down here, and keep a close watch on the place. An inquest will be held and sooner or later something of importance will happen. I’ve kept the taxi waiting; shall I give you a lift to Horsham? But I noticed a bike outside the inn-door. I suppose it is yours.” Varney nodded. “Yes, it is part of my machinery. I shall go for a good long spin, and think over all that has happened.”

As Smeaton put his foot on the step of the taxi a sudden thought struck him. He turned back, and drew the young man aside.

“Keep your eye on the parlourmaid especially,” he whispered. “If we ever get to the bottom of it, we shall find she plays an important part in this mystery.”

“I quite agree,” was Varney’s answer, as the two men finally parted.

Chapter Eighteen.

Another Mystery

Next day Smeaton sat in his official room, puzzling over the Monkton case, and sorely perplexed.

He had followed several trails now, but all, it seemed, to no purpose. Farloe and his sister had been shadowed without any result. The visit to Millington had ended in failure.

Varney had discovered something, and he would follow the clue with the pertinacity of a bloodhound pursuing a faint and elusive scent. But he himself was thoroughly disheartened.

There suddenly came a tap at the door, and a constable entered.

“A very old gentleman wants to see you, sir. He says you will remember him,” and he handed the detective a slip of paper on which was written “Mr Millington.”

“The gentleman seems to have one foot in the grave, and half of the other, to judge by appearances,” the constable went on. “The journey has tried him terribly. He’s wheezing so, that you’d think each moment would be his last. I made him sit down, and he’s trying to recover himself and get his breath.”

Smeaton sprang up. It was with difficulty he could retain his official calm. This plucky old man had not made the journey up to town for nothing. He had remembered something, or discovered something.

“That’s right. Baker,” he said. “Give him time, and when he is ready, show him in.”

It was a full five minutes before Millington was in a fit state to present himself. At last he entered, still husky of voice, but with a beaming aspect.

Smeaton greeted him cordially. “Mr Millington, this is indeed good of you. But why did you distress yourself with the journey? If you had sent me a wire, I would have run down to you,” he said.

“I owe you some amends, sir, for my failure yesterday. And besides, a little jaunt does me good.”

He smiled cheerfully, evidently wishing to convey that, at his time of life, an excursion up to London was a tonic.

“Again many thanks,” cried the grateful Smeaton. “Well, you came to see me, because you have remembered something – or found something fresh – eh?”

The old man spoke earnestly.

“All day after you left, sir, I was wild with myself to think what a useless old cumber-ground I was; me that used to have such a good memory, too. I thought and thought again, hoping that something would come back from that twenty or twenty-five years ago.”

“There was no need to distress yourself,” said Smeaton kindly.

“And then in a flash I remembered another box in which I had stuffed a lot of odd papers. Well, sir, I opened that box, went over those papers one by one, and this is what I found.”

He held out in his shaking hand an old letter. Smeaton took it from him.

“Before you read it, Mr Smeaton, I must explain that this gentleman always treated me in a very friendly way. We were both very fond of heraldry, and he used often to come to my shop and chat over our hobby. That accounts for the familiar way in which he addresses me.”

This is what Smeaton read:

“Dear Mr Millington, – I enclose you a cheque for the last work you did for me, which is as satisfactory as ever. It will be news to you that my company, the Compagnia Corezzo, is about to go into voluntary liquidation. I have accepted the position of manager of a big firm in Manchester, and shall take up my new post in the course of a few weeks. If I can possibly find time between now and then, I shall run in to say good-bye.

“I may have an opportunity of putting further work in your way. If that opportunity arises, I shall have the greatest pleasure in availing myself of it. I am afraid I shall not come across anybody who takes such a keen interest in my favourite hobby. – Yours truly, James Whyman.”

Over Smeaton’s face came a glow of satisfaction. He had got the name he wanted. Was he on the right track at last? He took the threatening letter out of his pocket, and compared the handwritings.

But here disappointment awaited him. They were totally dissimilar. Whyman wrote a small and niggling hand, the hand of a mean man. The other calligraphy was large, bold and free.

One thing was clear: James Whyman was not the writer of the threatening letter. That letter had been put in an envelope which belonged to the Compagnia Corezzo. Mr Whyman was, at that period, connected with that company, and the man who had given instructions for the cutting of the cipher. A visit to Manchester was the next item on the programme.

“It all came back to me with that letter,” remarked the old man presently. “I can see him standing in my shop, as if it were yesterday, quite a young man, not a day over thirty, I should say; very fussy, very precise, and always beating you down to the last farthing. But very pleasant withal.”

He was thirty at that time; he would, then, be in the ’fifties now, reasoned Smeaton. The odds therefore were that Mr James Whyman was still in the land of the living.

“Mr Millington, you have helped me very much,” said the detective, as the old gentleman rose to go. “Now, in your state of health I am not going to allow you to fatigue yourself by catching ’buses and trains. I shall get a taxi here, and it will drive you straight to Lower Halliford, at my expense.”