The Mysterious Three

Chapter Twenty Nine

A Strange Truth is Told

I went straight up to the side-ward in the hospital where Thorold lay, the hall-porter, in his glass-box, having nodded me within. At the door of the ward I met the sister, in her blue gown.

“I am so glad you have come, Mr Ashton!” she exclaimed. “He wants so much to see you, and I fear he has not long to live.”

The dark-eyed woman, with the medal on her breast, seemed genuinely distressed. Thorold, for some reason, had always attracted women. I think it was his sympathetic nature that drew women to him.

I waited in the corridor. Suddenly Vera came out, a handkerchief saturated with antiseptic before her mouth, to avoid infection.

Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes red from weeping. On seeing me, she began to sob bitterly; then she buried her face in her hands.

I did my best to comfort her, though it was a hard task. At last she spoke – “Go in to him – go in to him now, dear,” she exclaimed broken-heartedly. “He wants you alone – quite alone.”

The invalid was quite conscious when I entered, a handkerchief similar to Vera’s having been given me by a nurse. He was propped up with pillows into almost a sitting posture. The other bed in the side-ward was unoccupied, for it was being used for isolation. After what I had been told, I was surprised at his appearance, for he struck me as looking better than when I had last seen him. A faint smile of welcome flickered upon his lips as he recognised me. Then he grew serious.

Without speaking, he indicated a chair beside the bed. I drew it near, and seated myself.

“We are quite alone?” he whispered, looking slowly about the room. “Nobody is listening – eh? Nobody can hear us?”

“Nobody,” I answered quickly. A lump rose in my throat. It was dreadful to see him like that. Yet, even then, I could hardly realise I was so soon to lose my valued and dearest friend, who had been such a striking figure in the hunting-field.

He put out his thin hand – oh, how his arm had shrunk in those few days! – and let it rest on mine. It felt damp and cold. It chilled me. The moisture of death seemed already to be upon it.

“Listen, Dick, my boy,” he said very feebly. “I have much to tell you, and – and very little time to tell it in. But you are going to marry Vera, so it – so it’s only right that you should know. Ah, yes, I can trust you,” he said, guessing the words I had been about to utter. “I know – oh, yes, I know that what I say to you won’t make any difference to our long friendship. But even if it should,” he said, grimly, “it wouldn’t matter – now we are so very soon to part.”

I felt the wasted hand grip more firmly upon my wrist.

“I have known you for half your life, my boy,” he said, after a pause, “and I’ll tell you this. There is no man I know, whom I would sooner Vera married, than yourself. You have your faults, but – but you will be good to her, always good to her. Ah! I know you will, and that is as much as any woman should expect. And Gwen is glad, too, that you are going to marry Vera. But now, Dick, there is this thing I must tell you. I – I should not rest after death, if I died without your knowing.”

Again he paused, and, in silent expectation, I waited for the old sportsman to speak.

“You have lately come to know,” he said at last, “that there is to do with me, and with my family, a mystery of some kind. Part of my secret, kept so well for all these years, I believe you have recently discovered. The rest you don’t know. Well – I’ll tell it – to – you – now.”

With an effort, he shifted his body into a more comfortable position. Then, after coughing violently, he went on —

“Dick, prepare yourself for a shock,” he said, staring straight at me with his fevered eyes. “I have – I have been a forger, and – and worse – a murderer!”

I started. What he said seemed impossible. He must suddenly be raving again. I refused to believe either statement, and I frankly told him so.

“I am not surprised at your refusing to believe me,” he said, calmly. “I don’t look like a criminal, perhaps – least of all like a forger, or a murderer. Yet I am both. It all occurred years ago. Ah! it’s a nightmare – a horrible dream, which has lived with me all my life since.”

He paused, then continued.

“It happened in the house I had then just bought – my house in Belgrave Street. The governor had left me money, but I was ambitious – avaricious, if you like. I wanted more money – much more. And I wanted it at once. I could not brook delay. I had travelled a good deal, even then, and I was still a bachelor. During my wanderings, I had become acquainted with all sorts and conditions of people. In Mexico I had met Henry Whichelo, and on our way home to England on the same ship, we became very intimate. Another man on board, with whom I had also grown intimate, was Dan Paulton – or Dago, as his friends called him. A man of energy and dash, and of big ideas, he somehow fascinated and appealed to me. Well – he – he discovered my ambition to grow rich quickly and without trouble. He was a plausible and most convincing talker – he is that still, though less than he was – and by degrees he broke it to me that he was interested in, and in some way associated with, a group of ‘continental financiers,’ as he called them. Later, I discovered, when too late, that really they were bank-note forgers! He talked to me in such a way that gradually, against my will, and quite against my better nature, I became interested in the operations of these men. And, as he had thus ensnared me by his insidious talk, so, in the same way, he had ensnared our companion, Whichelo.”

And he paused, because of his difficulty in breathing.

“It was about this time that I married. Within a year after my marriage, I found that blackguard Paulton was doing his best to steal Gwen from me,” he went on, in a half-whisper. “He was talking her right round, I found, as he seemed able to talk anybody round. By this time, I had discovered him to be a far greater scoundrel than I had ever before suspected. Then came a revulsion in my feelings. I had come suddenly to hate him. My mind became set upon revenge. Already I had become actively interested in Paulton’s continental schemes for making money, the forgery of French bank-notes, and by manufacturing coin. My fortune was already more than doubled. Alas! It was too late to draw back. Some of the base coin had actually been moulded and finished in my house in Belgrave Street. The rest was made abroad. The coins, perfectly made by an ingenious process, were nearly all French louis and ten-franc pieces, these being the coins most easy to circulate at the time. Paulton’s plan for issuing the coin we made, was ingenious and most successful. It seemed impossible – of – of – discovery. And – ”

Once again he was compelled to pause, drawing a long and difficult breath. Then he continued —

“It was the year before I met you that the tragedy occurred. Paulton, Whichelo, Henderson, and also a half-brother of Paulton’s named Sutton, who was nearly always with him, and myself, were gathered in the room on the second floor, in my house in Belgrave Street, the room that was found recently with a hole cut in the floor. It was late at night, and the place was dimly lit. We worked in silence. The work we were engaged upon I need not trouble to explain to you – I expect you can guess it. My mind was in a whirl. I was thinking all the time of my wife, wondering how far her intrigue with Paulton had already gone. Then and there I would have assaulted Paulton, turned him out of the house, but I had so far compromised myself that I confess, I dare not. I could not do anything that might incur his enmity – he had the whip-hand of me completely – I, who had recently bought a knighthood, just as easily as I could have bought a new hat.

“Suddenly, some one knocked. Ah! How we all started! I was the first to spring to my feet. In a few moments all tools and implements we had been using, had been spirited away. They had disappeared into receptacles in the floor and in the walls, made specially for their concealment. Then I unlocked the door. Gwen entered. She had been dining out with friends, and had returned much earlier than she had expected. Her bedroom was far removed from the room in which we were at work, but she had noticed a faint light between a chink in the shutters, and so, on entering the house, she had come up to that room.”

And he was seized by another fit of coughing, and pointed to a glass half-filled with liquid, which I placed to his lips.

“How surprised and startled she looked, at finding us all there, apparently reading newspapers and smoking!” he went on. “That was the first time she began to suspect – something. The glance she exchanged with Paulton, brought the fire of jealousy to my brain. I believe at that moment I went mad, for I loved her. I have a furious, a most awful temper. You have never, in all these years we have known each other, my boy, discovered that – and yet I say the truth. Yes – it – it got the better of me that night. Without an instant’s forethought, I sprang across the room, crazed, beside myself with jealousy. I slammed the door and locked it. Then rushing at my wife – God forgive my having done it – I seized her by the arms, and flung her to the ground, charging her with infidelity, vilifying her most horribly, hurling blasphemy upon Paulton who, pale as death, glared at me. Then – ah, shall I ever forget that moment!” he cried, in agony of mind. “Then he sprang at me. I dodged him, and he slipped and fell. Instantly recovering himself, he made a second rush. This time his half-brother, Sutton, came at me, too, with a drawn knife. In my frenzy I picked up the nearest thing handy, with which to defend myself. It was a short iron bar, used for opening boxes, the only tool we had, in our haste, overlooked when hiding the implements. With one bound, Paulton was upon me, his half-brother just behind. As I aimed a terrific blow at him with the iron rod, he ducked. The blow meant for him struck Sutton just below the ear. The man collapsed in a heap upon the floor. He never spoke again. He died without a cry!”

The dying man moaned again in mental agony, and moved feverishly upon his pillow.

“Don’t – don’t tell me any more,” I urged in distress, seeing how it upset him to recall what had happened.

“I must. By Heaven, I must!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You must know everything before I die. I shall never rest unless you do. Never!”

He breathed with increasing difficulty, then went on —

“And – and seeing what had happened, Paulton, I truly believe, went mad,” said the prostrate man. “It took Whichelo, and Henderson and myself, all our strength to hold him down. Gwen was on the sofa, in hysterics. What surprised me was that nobody in the street outside was attracted by the uproar. I suppose they couldn’t hear it through the double windows. I won’t go into further details of that awful night. I can’t bear to think of them, even now. But from that night onward, Paulton had me in his power. It was Whichelo who suggested embalming Sutton’s body and hiding it in the house. He would himself perform the embalming. He had embalmed bodies in Mexico, and understood the process.”

He remained silent for some seconds.

“And so that was done,” he continued. “Paulton and Henderson had left the house, the former satisfied at the thought that he could now use me as his cat’s-paw – and by Heaven! he has done so! The coin we had in the house, some genuine, but most of it base, we hid away with the body between the ceiling and the floor. None knew our secret but my wife, Gwen – who almost revealed it during an attack of brain fever, which resulted from the shock she had received – Paulton, Henderson and myself. Vera was not old enough to know, but when she reached her seventeenth year, we decided to tell her the whole story, deeming it wiser, for various reasons, to do so. And now you understand.”

“And during all the years I have known you,” I said, “where has Paulton been? What became of Whichelo, and of Henderson? I met Whichelo for the first time in my life, just after you had left Houghton so mysteriously. Yet you say you have known him all these years.”

“Whichelo joined his brother in Mexico City, and remained there for many years,” he replied. “Paulton and Henderson continued their clever work of money-making, though mostly in Rome, and in Barcelona, where they had a number of accomplices. And I was bled – blackmailed by Paulton to the extent of nearly all my fortune – month after month, year after year. My wife, as you know, has her own fortune, and there were reasons why he could not touch that without incriminating himself, so for years I have had to live almost entirely on her means. Some years ago, Paulton and Henderson were both arrested in Paris on a charge of forgery of Russian bank-notes. They were tried, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. At the end of seven years, they were released. Paulton returned to England, and began once more to blackmail me. Worse, he had seen Vera, and at once told me he should marry her. If I refused my consent he would, he declared – ”

The poor fellow who had once bought a knighthood, stopped, gasping for breath. I laid my hand upon his arm, as I thought to soothe him, but he pushed it off quite roughly.

“Some months ago he sent me an ultimatum. If I still refused to let my girl marry him, he – would call before the last day of – March – and – ”

“Yes? Yes?” I exclaimed, unable now to restrain my curiosity.

“He declared he would disclose all he knew, take Vera from me by a plan that he explained, and that I saw I could not frustrate, and encompass the death of any persons to whom he thought I might have revealed the secret concerning him. Also he would tell the police the truth about the murder of his half-brother. He believed that you and I being such intimate friends, I had told you about him. Also he believed, for some reason, that my butler, James, knew something. He said he would kill you both. One of his accomplices was Judith, whom, a year ago, Gwen unsuspectingly engaged as maid. She, it seems, had kept Paulton posted in all that was happening in Houghton. I was driven to my wits’ ends – entirely desperate – though – you – you never suspected it.”

“But the photograph,” I exclaimed, as I noticed a curious change suddenly come over him, “that photograph of Paulton – why was it at Houghton?”