One of My Sons Part 45

I nodded, recognising the wisdom of the admonition thus given, and together we placed the typewriter back in the closet. Then he turned towards me with a new light in his small grey eye.

"And now, sir," he cried, "let me request you to stand back a trifle.

I am going to finish this business."

Opening the door with a sudden jerk, he plunged into the hall. A shadow was just disappearing from the opposite doorway. With a shout to me to light up, he leaped across the hall into the dining-room. The next minute I heard a cry, then a low gurgle; then the match I had hastily struck flared up, and I beheld the detective holding down the butler and looking eagerly towards me for the expected light.

The man in the hall was by this time at my side, and between us we soon had three jets lit, illuminating two white faces: Sweet.w.a.ter's pale with triumph, Hewson's blue-white from fear.

"Murderer! Poisoner of your benefactor and friend, I have you at last!" cried the struggling detective, watching how each terrible word he hurled blanched to a greater and greater degree the face he held pressed back for our inspection.

"You could see without faltering your master's sons, the boys you have dandled on your knee, fall one after the other under the shadow of public suspicion. Now we will see if you can show as much heroism on your own account. You are the man who drugged Mr. Gillespie's wine; and if the officer here will take you in charge for an hour or so, I will go down and procure a warrant for your arrest."

The attack was so sudden, and Sweet.w.a.ter's manner one of such complete conviction, that the old man succ.u.mbed to it without a struggle.

"Mercy!" he moaned. "I was old--tired of work--a little home--a little freedom in my old age--a--a----"

I fled from the room. It seemed as if the walls must cave in upon us.

For this, for this!

The sight of a half-dozen frightened faces in the hall restored my self-possession. The servants had come up from below and stood crowding and jostling each other just as they had done three weeks before. At the sight of Hewson's cowering figure they began to moan and cry.

"Be quiet there!" exhorted Sweet.w.a.ter, advancing upon them with the courage born of his triumphant success. "The old man whom you have doubtless thought the best-hearted and most reliable of you all has just confessed to the crime which has desolated this house and all but ruined the three young gentlemen, your masters. Cry away if you want to, but cry quietly and without giving the least alarm, for the good news has not gone upstairs yet, and this gentleman, who was the first to announce Mr. Gillespie's death to his sons, naturally would like the satisfaction of telling them that his murderer has been found. I have no doubt that Mr. George and his brother are to be found above."

"They be, sir, they be," spoke up a voice.

Sweet.w.a.ter, whose divination of my wishes struck me as remarkable, stepped aside at this, and, waiting for me to pa.s.s him, followed me to the floor above with a step so light he seemed to be buoyed up by wings.

As on a former memorable occasion, I stopped at George's door first.

The knock I gave was followed by a rather surly invitation to enter.

Excusing his un-graciousness in consideration of the fact that his visitors of late had not been entirely those of his own choice and consequently far from welcome, I pushed open the door without any other exhibition of feeling than an apologetic smile.

A scene of disorder confronted me; the disorder of an idle man who feels that with the withdrawal of all women from the house he had lost all incentive to neatness, perhaps to decency. In its midst, and lolling on a table over which lay spread some cards he was pus.h.i.+ng about with idle fingers, sat George, much the worse for liquor, and by just that much short of being the handsome man he was intended to be by nature.

At sight of me he rose, and, propping himself forward on the table, looked the inquiry he was probably unable to formulate in words. I answered as if he had spoken:

"You must pardon my intrusion, Mr. Gillespie. I have come to bring you very good news."

"What news?"

"News of your brother's speedy release. News of your father's murderer, who, though an inmate of his house, does not bear the name of Gillespie. It is your butler, Hewson----"

With a shout he threw out his hands, and then sank panting and with drooped head into the chair mercifully at hand to receive him.

"I have always sworn that Leighton was innocent," he cried out with unexpected vehemence. "In public and private, declared that--he could--no more--have done--that thing----"

Sweet.w.a.ter slipped from the room and I quietly followed, shutting the door softly behind me.

We went directly above; and this time found the room we wished to visit, open. As the face of its natural occupant could be plainly seen from where we stood, we gratified our curiosity by a momentary contemplation of it. Like his brother, Alfred Gillespie was sitting at a table, but he was neither flushed with wine nor engaged in idle revery. On the contrary, he was very busy writing letters. But he was not satisfied with his work. He looked restless and disturbed, and, in the minute or two we stood there watching him, tore up the wretched scrawls he had just indited, with a groan indicative not only of impatience, but deep, almost heartrending anguish. On his pale brow and in his attenuated frame few signs remained of the once luxurious Alfred, and when, after a second attempt at expressing himself, he made a dash at the unfinished letter and, crumpling it to nothing in his hand, threw it into the fire, I turned to Sweet.w.a.ter and whispered:

"Cut this misery short."

The young detective nodded, and with a clearing of his throat, meant, I am sure, as a warning, he advanced and entered the room, into which I rapidly followed him. Without pausing for any greeting from the astonished Alfred, he at once presented me in the following manner:

"Mr. Gillespie, will you allow me the honour of presenting Mr.

Outhwaite, who has come to offer you his hearty congratulations?"

"Congratulations!" I don't know whether I was more moved by the sarcasm or the despair expressed in this repet.i.tion of the word, which must have fallen with strange effect on Alfred Gillespie's ear. "For what, may I ask?"

"For the speedy lifting of the cloud which has darkened this house; for the free and honourable return of your brother from his present place of detention, and the incarceration in his stead of the old man, Hewson, who has just confessed to the crime of having poisoned your father."

"Hewson! Old Hewson!" Alfred rose with a wild laugh that was not unlike a curse. "You are playing with me! You are----"

"No," I interposed, with a decision he could not but recognise. "Far from it, Mr. Gillespie. What the detective says is true. Hewson acknowledges the whole thing. He wanted a little home, knew that a legacy awaited him at your father's death, and wished to hasten his enjoyment of it. Your father recognised him as his poisoner when too late. He tried to communicate the fact to Miss Meredith in the five words: 'None of my sons. Hewson,' but his strength failed him, and he only succeeded in impressing on the paper the unfinished words: '_one of my sons he_.' The detective will explain."

"Ah!" was his troubled response, as he sank back into the seat from which he had risen. Then as he met our eyes fixed sympathetically upon him, he dropped his head upon his arms, crying brokenly: "Don't look at me! Don't look at me! All this misery and shame! And it was Hewson!

Oh, Hope! Hope!"

We left him. It was all we could do. As we stepped down together into the lower hall, Sweet.w.a.ter remarked to me, with one of his rare smiles:

"If you know of anyone to whom this unexpected clearing of the Gillespie name will be especially gratifying, you are at liberty now to make the good news known. I'm off for police headquarters, there to begin those proceedings which will release Leighton Gillespie in time to meet the body of his wife at Communipaw."

x.x.xIV

"IT WAS THE SHOCK!"

Later, Hewson made a fuller confession. In it, he explained how he first came to meditate the crime which he afterwards carried out with such diabolic persistence.

He had never indulged himself in dishonest longings, never allowed himself to dream of any other life than that of daily work in the household of which he had for so many years been a member, until the day he was called into his master's study on some errand or other which led him to the desk. A memorandum was lying there, and as he had his gla.s.ses on, he could not help seeing his own name among a list of others, with the figures $1000 against it. Now, it was no secret in the house that his master was at this very time engaged in drawing up his will. Indeed, the lawyer had been there that very morning.

Consequently, Hewson immediately drew the inference that these figures represented the amount he was to receive upon his master's death, and though at the moment he experienced nothing but grat.i.tude for the good-will thus shown, the knowledge of what he might expect under certain circ.u.mstances slowly roused in him strange ambitions and new desires, which afterwards resolved themselves into longings which gave him no rest day or night.

The relief from daily routine,--a little home in a country place where he could raise vegetables and flowers,--a quiet smoke in the twilight on a porch all his own,--all this would be paradise to the tired old man, and as he dwelt upon its charms he became impatient at his master's robust health, and began to note the difference in their years--which, alas! were entirely in his master's favour; and to think--yes, to think--that though it would cause him regret--naturally so--to see that master's health give way, it would not be so hard as this endless counting of years nothing but disease could annul; that, in short, a lifetime of service devoted to Mr. Gillespie and his sons had become as nothing in the light of his new desires, and when the usually healthy broker was finally seized with some complaint which laid him on his back, these desires grew into hopes which it was useless for him to smother, for he was now determined to have his little fortune whether or no, and have it before he was himself too old to miss its full enjoyment.

Meanwhile, he was much in the confidence of the family. He heard his master's symptoms discussed, and learned while waiting on table that Mr. Gillespie was being given small doses of a certain poison as medicine; doses which it would be dangerous to increase. He could go through all his duties with the utmost precision without ceasing to take in such a conversation; and when in the course of time he heard that Mr. Gillespie was improving and would soon be quite well, he allowed himself to dwell upon the tempter's whispered suggestion that three more little drops from a bottle constantly in use by his master's bedside would remedy all this, and in a safe and seemingly natural way end the one existence which stood between him and the money he now regarded as his own.

The carrying out of this thought was easy. He knew that his master was now well enough to be left alone at night, likewise to help himself to his own medicine after it was once prepared for him. One had only to steal into the room in the early hours of the night, and, with careful manipulation of bottle and gla.s.s, increase that dose before the time came for the sick man to want it. Hewson was accustomed to noiseless actions; he could even handle gla.s.s without a sound, having been trained in quiet ways by the very man who, in such an unexpected manner, was now destined to fall a victim to these very precautions.

He therefore did not fear waking Mr. Gillespie; he only feared finding him already awake.

But even this possibility lost its terrors when he considered that to make himself quite safe he had but to utter the low-whispered _Father!_ with which the young gentlemen were accustomed to approach the sick-bed at night. If Mr. Gillespie heard and answered, he would know the moment badly chosen and steal away. While, if no answer came, he had but to proceed as the devil and his own dark instincts prompted.

Night came, and he went through his part, as he supposed, successfully; but in the morning he missed the alarm he had a right to expect, and soon learned that Mr. Gillespie had accidentally overthrown the gla.s.s of medicine which had been so carefully prepared for him. Worse than this, he saw the bottle of poison emptied clean out, and heard that Mr. Gillespie's medicine was to be changed to one quite harmless.

What did this mean, and how could he now hope to carry out the scheme he was more than ever resolved upon? For a while he felt quite discouraged, and drooped a little over his work, which was becoming hourly more irksome. He began to hate the man who had upset the gla.s.s which, if drank, would have insured him an immediate enjoyment of his little fortune; and even to cherish the same feeling towards Mr.

Gillespie's three sons, to whose wants he catered and who were all young enough to wait for their fortunes, while he, now nearly four-score, could not. That is, he hated the two eldest; but Alfred--well, he didn't quite hate Alfred; indeed, he almost loved him, loved him well enough to be glad that he, as well as himself, would profit by the old man's death, if only some new way could be found of bringing it safely about.