The Herapath Property Part 29

"I have!" replied Mr. Tertius. "And--I am amazed!"

"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 circ.u.mstances 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 m.u.f.f--"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 fas.h.i.+on," 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 c.o.x-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 pract.i.tioner at Granchester in Yorks.h.i.+re--a small town on the Yorks.h.i.+re and Lancas.h.i.+re 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 a.s.sizes 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, a.s.sumed possession and guardians.h.i.+p of the child, and took her away from Southampton. He took her into Buckinghams.h.i.+re 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 Buckinghams.h.i.+re 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 impa.s.sive, listening, and in them was a gleam which could not be mistaken--the gleam of bitter, personal dislike. Mr.

Halfpenny and Professor c.o.x-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 a.s.sizes--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 a.s.sumed 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----"