The Man Who Knew Part 20

The man coughed in embarra.s.sed confusion.

"Well, sir," he began, "the fact is, I don't like it."

"You don't like what? The five hundred pounds I gave you?"

"No, sir. It is not that, but it was a queer thing to ask me to do--pretend to be you and send a commissionaire to the bank for your money, and then get away out of London to a quiet little hole like Bilstead."

"So you think it was queer?"

The chauffeur nodded.

"The fact is, sir," he blurted out, "I've seen the papers."

The other nodded thoughtfully.

"I presume you mean the newspapers. And what is there in the newspapers that interests you?"

Mr. Holland took a gold case from his pocket, opened it languidly, and selected a cigarette. He was closing it when he caught the chauffeur's eye and tossed a cigarette to him.

"Thank you, sir," said the man.

"What was it you didn't like?" asked Mr. Holland again, pa.s.sing a match.

"Well, sir, I've been in all sorts of queer places," said Feltham doggedly, as he puffed away at the cigarette, "but I've always managed to keep clear of anything--funny. Do you see what I mean?"

"By funny I presume you don't mean comic," said Mr. Rex Holland cheerfully. "You mean dishonest, I suppose?"

"That's right, sir, and there's no doubt that I have been in a swindle, and it's worrying me--that bank-forgery case. Why, I read my own description in the paper!"

Beads of perspiration stood upon the little man's forehead, and there was a pathetic droop to his mouth.

"That is a distinction which falls to few of us," said his employer suavely. "You ought to feel highly honored. And what are you going to do about it, Feltham?"

The man looked to left and right as though seeking some friend in need who would step forth with ready-made advice.

"The only thing I can do, sir," he said, "is to give myself up."

"And give me up, too," said the other, with a little laugh. "Oh, no, my dear Feltham. Listen; I will tell you something. A few weeks ago I had a very promising valet chauffeur just like you. He was an admirable man, and he was also a foreigner. I believe he was a Swede. He came to me under exactly the same circ.u.mstances as you arrived, and he received exactly the same instructions as you have received, which unfortunately he did not carry out to the letter. I caught him pilfering from me--a few trinkets of no great value--and, instead of the foolish fellow repenting, he blurted out the one fact which I did not wish him to know, and incidentally which I did not wish anybody in the world to know.

"He knew who I was. He had seen me in the West End and had discovered my ident.i.ty. He even sought an interview with some one to whom it would have been inconvenient to have made known my--character. I promised to find him another job, but he had already decided upon changing and had cut out an advertis.e.m.e.nt from a newspaper. I parted friendly with him, wished him luck, and he went off to interview his possible employer, smoking one of my cigarettes just as you are smoking--and he threw it away, I have no doubt, just as you have thrown it away when it began to taste a little bitter."

"Look here!" said the chauffeur, and scrambled to his feet. "If you try any monkey tricks with me--"

Mr. Holland eyed him with interest.

"If you try any monkey tricks with me," said the chauffeur thickly, "I'll--"

He pitched forward on his face and lay still.

Mr. Holland waited long enough to search his pockets, and then, stepping cautiously into the road, donned the chauffeur's cap and goggles and set his car running swiftly southward.

CHAPTER X

A MURDER

Constable Wiseman lived in the bosom of his admiring family in a small cottage on the Bexhill Road. That "my father was a policeman" was the proud boast of two small boys, a boast which ent.i.tled them to no small amount of respect, because P. C. Wiseman was not only honored in his own circle but throughout the village in which he dwelt.

He was, in the first place, a town policeman, as distinct from a county policeman, though he wore the badge and uniform of the Suss.e.x constabulary. It was felt that a town policeman had more in common with crime, had a vaster experience, and was in consequence a more helpful adviser than a man whose duties began and ended in the patrolling of country lanes and law-abiding villages where nothing more exciting than an occasional dog fight or a charge of poaching served to fill the hiatus of constabulary life.

Constable Wiseman was looked upon as a shrewd fellow, a man to whom might be brought the delicate problems which occasionally perplexed and confused the bucolic mind. He had settled the vexed question as to whether a policeman could or could not enter a house where a man was beating his wife, and had decided that such a trespa.s.s could only be committed if the lady involved should utter piercing cries of "Murder!"

He added significantly that the constable who was called upon must be the constable on duty, and not an ornament of the force who by accident was a resident in their midst.

The problem of the straying chicken and the egg that is laid on alien property, the point of law involved in the question as to when a servant should give notice and the date from which her notice should count--all these matters came within Constable Wiseman's purview, and were solved to the satisfaction of all who brought their little obscurities for solution.

But it was in his own domestic circle that Constable Wiseman--appropriately named, as all agreed--shone with an effulgence that was almost dazzling, and was a source of irritation to the male relatives on his wife's side, one of whom had unfortunately come within the grasp of the law over a matter of a snared rabbit and was in consequence predisposed to anarchy in so far as the abolition of law and order affected the police force.

Constable Wiseman sat at tea one summer evening, and about the spotless white cloth which covered the table was grouped all that Constable Wiseman might legally call his. Tea was a function, and to the younger members of the family meant just tea and bread and b.u.t.ter. To Constable Wiseman it meant luxuries of a varied and costly nature. His taste ranged from rump steak to Yarmouth bloaters, and once he had introduced a foreign delicacy--foreign to the village, which had never known before the reason for their existence--sweetbreads.

The conversation, which was well sustained by Mr. Wiseman, was usually of himself, his wife being content to punctuate his autobiography with such encouraging phrases as, "Dear, dear!" "Well, whatever next!" the children doing no more than ask in a whisper for more food. This they did at regular and frequent intervals, but because of their whispers they were supposed to be unheard.

Constable Wiseman spoke about himself because he knew of nothing more interesting to talk about. His evening conversation usually took the form of a very full resume of his previous day's experience. He left the impression upon his wife--and glad enough she was to have such an impression--that Eastbourne was a well-conducted town mainly as a result of P. C. Wiseman's ceaseless and tireless efforts.

"I never had a clew yet that I never follered to the bitter end," said the preening constable.

"You remember when Raggett's orchard was robbed--who found the thieves?"

"You did, of course; I'm sure you did," said Mrs. Wiseman, jigging her youngest on her knee, the youngest not having arrived at the age where he recognized the necessity for expressing his desires in whispers.

"Who caught them three-card-trick men after the Lewes races last year?"

went on Constable Wiseman pa.s.sionately. "Who has had more summonses for smoking chimneys than any other man in the force? Some people," he added, as he rose heavily and took down his tunic, which hung on the wall--"some people would ask for promotion; but I'm perfectly satisfied.

I'm not one of those ambitious sort. Why, I wouldn't know at all what to do with myself if they made me a sergeant."

"You deserve it, anyway," said Mrs. Wiseman.

"I don't deserve anything I don't want," said Mr. Wiseman loftily. "I've learned a few things, too, but I've never made use of what's come to me officially to get me pushed along. You'll hear something in a day or two," he said mysteriously, "and in high life, too, in a manner of speaking--that is, if you can call old Minute high life, which I very much doubt."

"You don't say so!" said Mrs. Wiseman, appropriately amazed.

Her husband nodded his head.

"There's trouble up there," he said. "From certain information I've received, there has been a big row between young Mr. Merrill and the old man, and the C. I. D. people have been down about it. What's more," he said, "I could tell a thing or two. I've seen that boy look at the old man as though he'd like to kill him. You wouldn't believe it, would you, but I know, and it didn't happen so long ago either. He was always snubbing him when young Merrill was down here acting as his secretary, and as good as called him a fool in front of my face when I served him with that summons for having his lights up. You'll hear something one of these days."

Constable Wiseman was an excellent prophet, vague as his prophecy was.