The Lost Million Part 42

"He made no mention whatever of any friends, save one--a Mr Dawnay, to whom I afterwards delivered a note."

"Dawnay?" repeated Mr Fryer. "You mean Harvey Shaw?"

"Exactly. So you know him, eh?"

The solicitor nodded in the affirmative, the deep lines upon his thin face becoming more accentuated.

I then told him of his client's wilful destruction of a large quant.i.ty of English banknotes which he had compelled me to burn, whereat the man seated at his table laughed grimly, saying--

"I do not think we need regret their destruction. They were better burnt."

"Why?"

"Well--because they were not genuine ones."

"But surely--your client was not a forger!" I cried.

"Certainly not. He was a great man. Cruelly misjudged by the public, he was compelled in recent years to hide his real ident.i.ty beneath another name, and live in strictest retirement. His actions were put down as eccentricities, but he was a great thinker, a wonderful organiser, marvellously modern among modern men, a man whose financial schemes brought millions into the pockets of those a.s.sociated with him, yet whose knowledge of ancient Egypt and dry-as-dust Egyptology was perhaps unique. But above all he was ever honest, upright and just."

"He was a complete enigma to me," I declared. "As he was to most people. I who have been his legal adviser and friend through much adversity, alone understood him. I was not even aware of his death. If he took a liking to you I shall not be surprised to find that he has left you a substantial legacy."

"He gave me a present before he died," I said, and told him of the banknotes I had found in the envelope, and also that I held the cylinder in the security of the Safe Deposit Company's vaults in Chancery Lane.

Finding the solicitor was perfectly frank and open with me, I related the curious and startling circ.u.mstances which had occurred within my knowledge since I had made the acquaintance of Mr Harvey Shaw. As I sat in the fading light of that November afternoon I narrated the facts in their proper sequence just as I have herein set them down in the foregoing pages of this personal history.

The man before me sat with folded arms in almost complete silence, listening intently to every word. The twilight faded and darkness fell quickly, as it does in November in the City. He had given orders that we were not to be disturbed, and he sat silent, so transfixed by my strange story that he did not rise to switch on the light.

I told him all, everything--until I described to him the discovery of that venomous tarantula in Asta's bedroom. Then he suddenly struck his table with his fist, and sprang to his feet, crying--

"Ah! I've been expecting to hear of this all along. The scoundrel meant to kill the poor girl! There were reasons--very strong reasons-- for doing so."

"What were they?" I demanded quickly. "I have told you everything, Mr Fryer. Now, be quite frank with me, I beg you--and tell me the whole truth."

He was silent. I could hardly distinguish his thin, deeply lined face seated as he was in the shadows, his back to the window, so dark had it now become.

Presently, he rose and turned on the light, saying as he did so--

"Well, Mr Kemball, as you seem to have been so intimately a.s.sociated with the closing scenes of poor Melvill Arnold's career, I will explain the whole truth to you--even at the risk of a breach of professional confidence. My client is dead, but the dastardly attempt upon Miss Asta Seymour must be avenged--that man Harvey Shaw shall be brought to justice. Listen, and I will tell you a story stranger than most men have ever listened to--a romance of real life of which, however, every word is the truth."

"The cylinder!" I cried. "Are you aware of what is contained in it?"

"I have not the slightest knowledge," he declared. "That we will investigate together later--after you have heard the strange romance of the man whom you knew as Melvill Arnold."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

THE TRUTH CONCERNING ARNOLD.

"The real name of your friend was--as you have guessed from the threatening letters addressed to him at Kingswear, in Devon--Arnold Edgec.u.mbe," the solicitor commenced, leaning his elbows upon his table and looking me straight in the face. "My firm acted for his father--a wealthy manufacturer in Bradford, who, upon his death, left his son an ample fortune. Twenty years ago he married an extremely pretty woman.

It was purely a love-match, and one daughter was born. Six months after that event, however, poor little Mrs Edgec.u.mbe died of phthisis, and her husband was inconsolable over his loss. He was devoted to his wife, and the blow proved a terrible one. Soon, in order to occupy his mind, he turned his attention to financial affairs in the City, and went into partners.h.i.+p with a man named Henry Harford."

"Harford!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Why, that was the man against whom he warned me! The words he wrote down are still in my possession."

"He had strong reasons for doing so," went on the man sitting at his table. "The combination of the pair--both of whom were fearless and successful speculators--soon raised the firm to the position of one of the best-known financial houses in London. They dealt in millions, as others deal in thousands, and both men, in the course of a few years, ama.s.sed great fortunes. Suddenly, when just in the zenith of their prosperity, a great and terrible exposure was made. It was found that they had, by promoting certain bogus companies, which had been largely taken up, netted huge profits. The shareholders, numbering many thousands of widows, clergymen, retired officers, and such-like persons, who are ever ready to swallow the bait of a well-written prospectus, became furious, and the Public Prosecutor took up the matter actively.

Though my client was, I a.s.sure you, utterly blameless in the matter, and afterwards paid back every penny he had received from the transaction, nevertheless such public outcry was made against him as a swindler, that, victim of circ.u.mstances, he was compelled to fly the country.

Trusting implicitly to his partner, Harford--who, by a very shrewd move, cleared himself, although he was, no doubt, the actual culprit--he, on the night of his flight, placed his little daughter, to whom he was entirely devoted, in his care, urging him to adopt her, and not to allow her to know her real father's name."

"What?" I cried, starting suddenly to my feet as the amazing truth flashed upon me for the first time. "Then Asta is Edgec.u.mbe's daughter, and Shaw's real name is Harford!"

"Exactly. With these facts in your mind you will be able to follow me more closely."

Again I sank back into my chair astounded.

"Well," he went on, "ingeniously as did Harford endeavour to cover his connection with the bogus promotions--of which the Britannia Banking Corporation, which you will remember, perhaps, was one--yet the Public Prosecutor, after the accounts and books had been examined, decided that he was also a culprit, and two months after his partner's disappearance a warrant was also issued for his arrest. Harford, always wary, had, however, on the day previously, taken little Asta with him and left for Greece, with which country we have no treaty of extradition. Meanwhile, Edgec.u.mbe had a younger sister who had married a man of bad character, an expert forger of banknotes, named Earnshaw, and who sometimes went in the name of King, and the pair had, to a great extent, a.s.sisted Harford in his fraudulent schemes entirely unknown to Edgec.u.mbe. The woman and her husband were adventurers of the most ingenious cla.s.s, and with Harford, reaped a golden harvest in the circulation on the Continent of the clever imitations of Bank of England notes. Edgec.u.mbe was all unconscious of this, and, indeed, only became aware of the transactions by accident. It seems that on the night of his flight from England he went to the office after it had been locked up, in order to get some cash for his journey. There was only forty pounds in the safe, but on breaking open a drawer in his partner's table he found a big roll of new notes. He took them, and left on the table a memorandum of what he had done. Ere he arrived at Dover, however, suspicion grew upon him that the notes were not genuine. So he kept them, and said nothing. It was his first suspicion that Harford was playing a double game. Through all the years that elapsed from that day till his death they remained in his possession as evidence against Earnshaw and his accomplice, but in order that after his death they should not be found in his possession, he apparently got you to destroy them."

"But this man Harford--or Shaw? Who was he?" I inquired eagerly.

"Of that I know very little, except that, before meeting Edgec.u.mbe, he had lived for many years in Ecuador and Peru, where he had been engaged in the adventurous pursuit of collecting orchids and natural history specimens. Probably while there, he knew of the giant venomous tarantula, and had trained one to answer to his call," was Mr Fryer's reply. "Apparently, from what you have told me concerning the threatening letter, Edgec.u.mbe's sister suspected him of betraying her to the police, and, after serving her sentence for swindling, she and her husband again became on friendly terms with Harford, who, in the name of Harvey Shaw, was then posing as a county magnate, deriving his income partly from the proceeds of his financial transactions, and partly from the pa.s.sing at various banks on the Continent the bogus notes printed in secret in a room at Ridgehill Manor. It was for that reason the police of Europe have, for the last ten years, been in search of Harford--the English police because of the charges against him in the City, and the European police because he has defrauded hundreds of _bureaux-de-change_ all over the Continent by exchanging thousands of his marvellous imitations of Bank of England notes for foreign notes or gold. Yet being a man of such colossal ideas, such a splendid linguist, and possessing such marvellous powers of invention and clever evasion, he acted so boldly and sustained his role of English gentleman so well, that he often pa.s.sed beneath the very noses of those in active search of him."

"Then Edgec.u.mbe was in entire ignorance of the true character of his late partner?" I exclaimed.

"Absolutely--until too late. He only became convinced on the day of his death. He wished you to a.s.sist him, though he warned you against him.

Apparently, by slow degrees, during his rare visits to England, he had become cognisant of Harford's criminal instincts, and of the fact that he was in possession of that venomous pet which the man had once--I believe--boastingly described as his `Hand,' yet Edgec.u.mbe was diplomatic enough not to quarrel with him. Asta, ignorant of her parentage, looked upon Harford as her father and held him in highest esteem. For Edgec.u.mbe to denounce him would be to disillusion the girl in whom all his hopes were centred, and who regarded him, not as a father, but as a very dear friend. On arrival in England he seems to have written immediately to her, urging her to meet him, unknown to Harford, yet, when she went to the hotel it was only to discover, that he was dead."

"But the terrible tarantula--the `Hand,' as Harford termed it--surely Edgec.u.mbe must have suspected something?" I said.

"He probably was unaware that the thing was so deadly venomous, and he never dreamed to what use the scoundrel would put it," said the solicitor. "The truth only dawned upon him when too late! Remember he placed the utmost confidence in you--and in you alone--a stranger."

"Yes. He gave me that bronze cylinder. I wonder what it can possibly contain?"

"Let us take a taxi down to Chancery Lane," Mr Fryer suggested. "Let us carry it up here, open it--and ascertain."

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

A HEART'S SECRET.

"Mr Edgec.u.mbe was always of an antiquarian turn of mind, and when he left England he took up the study of Egyptology in order to occupy his time," said the solicitor, as we sat in the taxi whirling along Newgate Street. "He spent many years in Egypt, and being, of course, in possession of ample funds, he was enabled to make very extensive explorations, for which he was granted special privileges by the Khedive. Many of his discoveries have enriched the British Museum, the Louvre, and other museums on the Continent, while, stored here in London--in a place of which I hold the key--is a magnificent and valuable collection of objects from the period of Shaaru, down to that of the first Amenhotep, all of which will pa.s.s into the possession of his daughter, Miss Asta. Even the collection in the British Museum cannot compare with them in value or interest. Every object in our late client's collection is absolutely unique."

"As is the bronze cylinder," I added.

"Yes. I confess I have been filled with wonder as to what it can contain ever since the receipt of the letter asking us to advertise on the third of November for an unknown person--yourself, Mr Kemball.

Whatever where the actions of the late Mr Edgec.u.mbe, we must not lose sight of the main fact that the death of his wife, whom he adored, caused in him certain eccentricities. He was devoted to his little daughter Asta, and in order that she should never know that her father had been accused and compelled to fly from justice, he induced his partner to adopt her--only to discover afterwards that he was a criminal and unscrupulous, and was, moreover, in a.s.sociation with a man and woman who were, undoubtedly, criminals. Yet having taken the step he had done ten years before, he could not well draw back. I advised him, as soon as exposure came, to stay and face the music. But the death of his wife had utterly broken him, and his only reply was to say that he was tired of an active business life, and preferred obscurity and study abroad.

Yes, Mr Kemball," added the man at my side, "Arnold Edgec.u.mbe was a decidedly remarkable man--a man of great talent and attainments, of wondrous perception, and honest as few men in this city of London are honest nowadays. He knew that Harford's arrest would bring disgrace upon Asta, and for that reason urged you to become his friend. The situation was, indeed, unique."

On arrival at the Safe Deposit vaults we found, unfortunately, that they had been closed a quarter of an hour, therefore there was nothing to do but to wait till next morning.

So, after some final words with Fryer, I left him, promising to return on the morrow, and then drove straight to St Pancras, and went down to Lydford, arriving there soon after nine o'clock.

Asta was, I found, so much better that she had been left in charge of a nurse whom Sir George had summoned from London that day. And at my urgent request she allowed me to see her patient alone.