The Loudwater Mystery Part 23

Mr. Manley hesitated, thinking; then he said: "I can't remember at the moment. You see, I was downstairs some little time. I found an evening paper in the dining-room and looked through it there. I might have heard him from there."

"You can't remember?" said Mr. Flexen in a tone of disappointment.

"Not at the moment," said Mr. Manley. "Is it important?"

"Yes; very important. It would probably help me to fix the time of Lord Loudwater's death."

"I see. A lot may turn on that," said Mr. Manley thoughtfully.

"Yes. You can see how immensely it helps to have a fact like that fixed,"

said Mr. Flexen.

"Yes: of course," said Mr. Manley. "Well, I must try to remember. I daresay I shall, if I keep the fact in my mind gently, and do not try to wrench the recollection out of it. You know how hard it is to remember a thing, if it hasn't caught your attention fairly when it happened."

"Yes," said Mr. Flexen. "But I hope to goodness you'll remember it quickly. It may be of the greatest use to me."

"Ah, yes; I must," said Mr. Manley, giving him a queer look.

"I was forgetting," said Mr. Flexen, understanding the thought behind the queer look. "You'd hardly believe it, Mr. Carrington, but Mr. Manley told me at the very beginning of this business that he was not going to help in any way to discover the murderer of Lord Loudwater, because he considered that murderer a benefactor of society."

"But I never heard of such a thing!" cried the lawyer in a tone of astonished disapproval. "Such a course might be possible in the case of some minor crime, or in a person intimately connected with the criminal in the case of a major crime. But for an outsider to pursue such a course in the case of a murder is unheard of--absolutely unheard of."

"I daresay it isn't common," said Mr. Manley in a tone of modest satisfaction. "But I am modern; I claim the right of private judgment in all matters of morality."

"Oh, that won't do--that won't do at all!" cried the shocked lawyer.

"There would be hopeless confusion--in fact, if everybody did that, the law might easily become a dead letter--absolutely a dead letter."

"But there's no fear of everybody doing anything of the kind. The ruck of men have no private judgment to claim the right of. They take whatever's given them in the way of morals by their pastors and masters.

Only exceptional people have ideas of their own to carry out; and there are not enough exceptional people to make much difference," said Mr.

Manley calmly.

"But, all the same, such principles are subversive of society--absolutely subversive of society," said Mr. Carrington warmly, and his square, ma.s.sive face was growing redder.

"I daresay," said Mr. Manley amiably. "But if any one chooses to have them, and act on them, what are you going to do about it? For example, if I happened to know who had murdered Lord Loudwater and did not choose to tell, how could you make me?"

"If there were many people with such principles about, society would soon find out a way of protecting itself," said the lawyer, in the accents of one whose tenderest sensibilities are being outraged.

"It would have to have recourse to torture then," said Mr. Manley cheerfully.

"But let me remind you that it is a crime to be an accessory before, or after, the fact to murder," said the lawyer in a tone of some triumph.

"Oh, I'm not going as far as that," said Mr. Manley. "A man might very well approve of a murder without being willing to further it."

Mr. Flexen laughed and said: "I understand Mr. Manley's point of view. Sometimes I have felt inclined to be judge as well as investigator--especially in the East."

"And you followed your inclination," said Mr. Manley with amiable certainty.

"Perhaps--perhaps not," said Mr. Flexen, smiling at him.

"The war has upset everything. I never heard such ideas before the war,"

grumbled the lawyer.

There was a silence as Holloway brought in the coffee and cigars.

When he had gone, Mr. Flexen said in an almost fretful tone: "It's an extraordinary thing that Lord Loudwater kept so few papers."

"I don't know," said Mr. Manley carelessly. "During the six months I've been here we were never stuck for want of a paper. He seemed to me to have kept all that were necessary."

"It's the destroying of his pa.s.s-books that seems so odd to me," said the lawyer. "A man must often want to know how he spent his money in a given year."

"I'm sure I never want to," said Mr. Manley. "And certainly pa.s.s-books are unattractive-looking objects to have about."

"All the same, they might have proved very useful in this case," said Mr.

Flexen. "Of course, they wouldn't tell us anything we shall not find out eventually. But they might have saved us a lot of time and trouble. They might put us on to the track of another firm of lawyers who did certain business for Lord Loudwater."

"Well, no one but Mr. Carrington's firm did any business for him during the last six months," said Mr. Manley, rising. "I feel inclined to take advantage of the moonlight and go for a stroll. So I will leave you to go on working on the murder. Good-bye for the present."

He sauntered out of the room, and when the door closed behind him, the lawyer said earnestly: "I do hate a crank."

The words came from his heart.

"Oh, I don't think he's a crank," said Mr. Flexen in an indulgent tone.

"He's too intelligent; that's all."

"There's nothing so dangerous as too much intelligence. It's always a nuisance to other people," said the lawyer. "Do you think he really knows anything?"

"He knows something--nothing of real importance, I think," said Mr.

Flexen. "But, as I expect you've noticed, he likes to feel himself of importance. And whatever knowledge he has helps him to feel important.

It's a harmless hobby. By the way, is there anything in the way of insanity in Lady Loudwater's family?"

"No, I never heard of any, and I should have been almost certain to hear if there were any," said the lawyer in some surprise.

"That's all right," said Mr. Flexen.

"By the way, how did you get on with the newspaper men?" said the lawyer.

"I put them in the way of making themselves very useful to me, and, at the same time, I gave them exactly the kind of thing they wanted. I think, too, that when they've run the story I gave them for all it's worth, they'll very likely drop the case--unless, that is, we've really got it cleared up. I was careful to point out to them that the verdict of the coroner's jury was a piece of pig-headed idiocy, and they'll see the unlikelihood of securing a conviction for murder with the medical evidence as it is, unless we have an absolutely clear case."

"But, all the same, there's going to be a tremendous fuss in the papers,"

said Mr. Carrington, in the tone of dissatisfaction of the lawyer who is always doing his best to keep tremendous fusses out of the papers.

"Oh, yes. That was necessary. It's out of that fuss that I hope to get the evidence which will settle once and for all, in my mind at any rate, the question whether Lord Loudwater was murdered or not."

"But surely you haven't any doubt about that?" said the lawyer sharply.

"Just a trifle, and I may as well get rid of it," said Mr. Flexen.

Mr. Manley took his hat and stick and went leisurely out of the front door of the Castle. He paused on the steps for half a minute to admire the moonlit night and murmur a few lines from Keats. Then he strolled down the drive whistling the tune of an American c.o.o.n song. But presently the whistle died on his lips as he considered Mr. Flexen's keen desire to discover the other firm of lawyers who had done business for Lord Loudwater. He could not but think, when he put this keenness of Mr.

Flexen beside Helena's strange anxiety, that she had done something of which she had not told him, something that might have drawn suspicion on her. He did not see what she could have done; but there it was. He had a feeling, an intuition that it was she whom Mr. Flexen was seeking, and he prided himself on his intuition. Well, the longer they were finding Shepherd, the lawyer who had handled the business of her allowance, the better he would be pleased. He had certainly done his best to block their way. At the same time, they might at any moment learn who he was. It was fortunate, therefore, that Shepherd had a job in Mesopotamia, and that his business was closed down for the present. If they did learn who he was, they would still be a long while before they obtained any information about Helena from him. Mr. Manley's keen desire was that the first excitement about the murder should have died down before they did get it. He was a firm believer in the soothing effect of time. The discovery of Helena's allowance, if it were made now, might cause her considerable annoyance, if not actual trouble. Coming in six weeks' time, or even a month's time, it would be far less likely to make that trouble.