Vintage Mysteries – 6 Intriguing Brainteasers in One Premium Edition. E. W. Hornung
visitation, it was a very real relief to Langholm not to have been found out at a glance. He took the proffered seat with the greater readiness on noting how near it was to the door.
"The death of Mr. Minchin is, as you know, still a mystery—"
"I didn't know it," interrupted Crofts, who had quite recovered his spirits. "I thought the only mystery was how twelve sane men could have acquitted his wife."
"That," said Langholm, "was the opinion of many at the time; but it is one which we are obliged to disregard, whether we agree with it or not. The case still engages our attention, and must do so until we have explored every possible channel of investigation. What I want from you, Mr. Crofts, is any information that you can give me concerning Mr. Minchin's financial position at the time of his death."
"It was bad," said Mr. Crofts, promptly; "about as bad as it could be. He had one lucky flutter, and it would have been the ruin of him if he had lived. He backed his luck for more than it was worth, and his luck deserted him on the spot. Yes, poor old devil!" sighed the sympathetic Crofts: "he thought he was going to make his pile out of hand, but in another week he would have been a bankrupt."
"Had you known him long, Mr. Crofts?"
"Not six months; it was down at Brighton we met, quite by chance, and got on talking about Westralians. It was I put him on to his one good spec. His wife was with him at the time—couldn't stand the woman! She was much too good for me and my missus, to say nothing of her own husband. I remember one night on the pier—"
"I won't trouble you about Brighton, Mr. Crofts," Langholm interrupted, as politely as he could. "Mr. Minchin was not afterwards a partner of yours, was he?"
"Never; though I won't say he mightn't have been if things had panned out differently, and he had gone back to Westralia with some capital. Meanwhile he had the run of my office, and that was all."
"And not even the benefit of your advice?"
"He wouldn't take it, once he was bitten with the game."
Thus far Langholm had simply satisfied his own curiosity upon one or two points concerning a dead man who had been little more than a name to him hitherto. His one discovery of the least potential value was that Minchin had evidently died in difficulties. He now consulted some notes jotted down on an envelope upon his way to the City.
"Mr. Minchin, as you are aware," resumed Langholm, "was, like his wife, an Australian by birth. Had he many Australian friends here in London?"
"None at all," replied Mr. Crofts, "that I am aware of."
"Nor anywhere else in the country, think you?"
"Not that I remember."
"Not in the north of England, for example?"
Thus led, Mr. Crofts frowned at his desk until an enlightened look broke over his florid face.
"By Jove, yes!" said he. "Now you speak of it, there was somebody up north—a rich man, too—but he only heard of him by chance a day or so before his death."
"A rich man, you say, and an Australian?"
"I don't know about that, but it was out there they had known each other, and Minchin had no idea he was in England till he saw it in the paper a day or two before his death."
"Do you remember the name?"
"No, I don't, for he never told it to me; fact is, we were not on the best of terms just at the last," explained Mr. Crofts. "Money matters—money matters—they divide the best of friends—and to tell you the truth he owed me more than I could afford to lose. But the day before the last day of his life he came in and said it was all right, he'd square up before the week was out, and if that wasn't good enough for me I could go to the devil. Of course I asked him where the money was coming from, and he said from a man he'd not heard of for years until that morning, but he didn't say how he'd heard of him then, only that he must be a millionaire. So then I asked why a man he hadn't seen for so long should pay his debts, but Minchin only laughed and swore that he'd make him. And that was the last I ever heard of it; he sat down at that desk over yonder and wrote to his millionaire there and then, and took it out himself to post. It was the last time I saw him alive, for he said he wasn't coming back till he got his answer, and it was the last letter he ever wrote in the place."
"On that desk, eh?" Langholm glanced at the spare piece of office furniture in the corner. "Didn't he keep any papers here?" he added.
"He did, but you fellows impounded them."
"Of course we did," said Langholm, hastily. "Then you have nothing of his left?"
"Only his pen, and a diary in which he hadn't written a word. I slipped them into a drawer with his papers, and there they are still."
Langholm felt disappointed. He had learnt so much, it was tantalizing not to learn a little more. If he could only make sure of that millionaire friend of Minchin! In his own mind he was all but sure, but his own mind was too elastic by half.
Crofts was drumming on the blotting-pad in front of him; all of a sudden Langholm noticed that it had a diary attached.
"Minchin's diary wasn't one like yours, was it?" he exclaimed.
"The same thing," said Mr. Crofts.
"Then I should like to see it."
"There's not a word written in it; one of you chaps overhauled it at the time."
"Never mind!"
"Well, then, it's in the top long drawer of the desk he used to use—if my clerk has not appropriated it to his own use."
Langholm held his breath as he went to the drawer in question. In another instant his breath escaped him in a sigh of thankfulness. The "Universal Diary" (for the year before) was there, sure enough. And it was attached to a pink blotter precisely similar to that upon which Mr. Crofts still drummed with idle fingers.
"Anything more I can show you?" inquired that worthy, humorously.
Langholm was gazing intently, not at the diary, but at the pink blotting-paper. Suddenly he looked up.
"You say that was the last letter he ever wrote in your office?"
"The very last."
"Then—yes—you can show me a looking-glass if you have one!"
Crofts had a small one on his chimney-piece.
"By the Lord Harry," said he, handing it, "but you tip-top 'tecs are a leery lot!"
Chapter XXIV
One Who was Not Bidden
Langholm went north next morning by the ten o'clock express from King's Cross. He had been but four nights in town, and not four days, yet to Langholm they might have been weeks, for he had never felt so much and slept so little in all his life. He had also done a good deal; but it is the moments of keen sensation that make up the really crowded hours, and Langholm was to run the gamut of his emotions before this memorable week was out. In psychological experience it was to be, for him, a little lifetime in itself; indeed, the week seemed that already, while it was still young, and comparatively poor in incident and surprise.
He had bought magazines and the literary papers for his journey, but he could concentrate his mind on nothing, and only the exigencies of railway travelling kept him off his legs. Luckily for Langholm, however, sleep came to him when least expected, in his cool corner of the corridor train, and he only awoke in time for luncheon before the change at York. His tired brain was vastly refreshed, but so far he could not concentrate it, even on the events of these eventful days. He was still in the thick of them. A sense of proportion was as yet impossible, and a consecutive review the most difficult of intellectual feats. Langholm was too excited, and the situation too identical with suspense, for a clear sight of all its bearings