Chapter III

The law took its course. Although circumstantial evidence was lacking, the statement of George Fiske and the undoubted opportunity and evident motive, combined, caused the arrest of Everett Collins.

The will, when produced, left nearly all the estate to him, and as he was known to be a thriftless, improvident young man, the majority of those interested felt convinced that he was indeed the villain.

The property of the late Mr. Hemmingway, however, was of far less amount than was generally supposed, and also, the large fortune which he had in trust for his ward, Miss Sheldon, had dwindled surprisingly. But this, of course, was in no way the fault of the nephew, and it was thought that Mr. Hemmingway had perhaps been unfortunate in his investments. George Fiske became executor, as desired by the late millionaire, but probate of the will was deferred until after Everett Collins should have been tried at the bar of justice.

Collins himself was stubbornly quiet. He seemed rather dazed at the position in which he found himself, but had nothing to say except a simple assertion of his innocence.

“And he _is_ innocent, Harris,” declared Bert Bayliss soundlessly. “No villain ever possessed that simple straightforward gaze. Villains are complex. That man may be a spendthrift and a ne’er-do-well, but I’ll swear he’s no murderer, and I’ll prove it!”

“Marvelous, Bayliss, marvelous!” said Harris.

Bayliss had come to Clearbrook on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Collins was arrested.

On Wednesday afternoon Bayliss shut himself up alone in the library to clue-hunt, as he called it. Acting on his conviction that Collins was innocent, he eagerly sought for evidence in some other direction. Seating himself at Mr. Hemmingway’s desk, he jotted down a few notes, using for the purpose a pencil from the pen-tray in front of him.

* * * * *

He looked at the pencil abstractedly, and then he suddenly stared at it intently.

“A clue!” he said mentally to Harris. “Hush, don’t speak,” though Harris hadn’t. “I sure have a clue, but such a dinky one!”

He looked at the pencil as at a valuable curio. He glanced about the desk for others, and found several. In a drawer he found many more. They were all of the same make and same number, and while those on the desk were all more or less well sharpened, those in the drawer had never yet been cut.

“Oh!” said Bayliss, and putting carefully into his pocket the pencil he had used in making his notes, he began scrutinizing the waste-basket.

There were not many torn papers in it, but the top ones were letters, envelopes or circulars, each torn once across. On top of these were some chips of pencil cedar and a trifle of black dust.

As if collecting precious treasure, Bayliss, with extreme care, lifted out the top layer of torn envelopes and, without disarranging the tiny wooden chips and black lead scrapings, laid all in a box, which he then put in a small cupboard and, locking its door, put the key in his pocket. Then he returned to the desk and picked up the packet of letters which had been received on Monday and from which Mr. Fiske’s letter had been taken. There were about a dozen of them and he looked with interest at each one. Every one was cut open the same way, not by a letter-opener, but with shears—a quick clean cut, which took off a tiny edge along the right-hand end. Each was stamped at the top with the rubber “Received” stamp in red ink.

“Clever, clever villain!” mused Bayliss. “I say, Harris, he’s the slickest ever! And nobody could have found him but Yours Truly.”

“Marvelous!” murmured Harris.

Then straight to Inspector Garson Bayliss marched and asked to see the letter that Mr. Fiske wrote to Mr. Hemmingway.

Receiving it, he stared at it steadily for a moment, then, going to the window, scrutinized it through a lens.

Moved by an excitement which he strove not to show, he returned it to Mr. Garson, saying: “You’ve no doubt, I suppose, as to the genuineness of that letter and all that it means and implies.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Mr. Garson, looking straight at the young man. “I have wondered whether there could be anything wrong about Fiske, but that letter is incontrovertible evidence of his veracity.”

“Why couldn’t it be faked?” persisted Bayliss.

“I’ve thought of that,” said Mr. Garson patiently, “but it’s too real. Whether it was written Sunday or not, it was positively posted Sunday evening and it was positively delivered to Mr. Hemmingway Monday morning. The postmark proves that. Then Mr. Hemmingway opened it, for it is cut open precisely the way he cuts open all his letters, and he dated it with his own dating-stamp, and put it with his lot ‘To be answered.’ Can anything be more convincing of Fiske’s good faith?”

“And yet,” said Bert Bayliss, “it _is_ a faked letter, and George Fiske’s the murderer of Richard Hemmingway!”

“My dear sir, what _do_ you mean?”

“Just what I say. Richard Hemmingway never saw this letter!”

“Can you prove that?”

“I can. Look at the envelope closely with this lens, in a strong light. What do you see between the letters of Mr. Hemmingway’s name?”

“I see”—the Inspector peered closer—“I see faint pencil-marks.”

“Can you make out what they spell?”

“No—yes—‘G-e-o’— _is_ it ‘George Fiske’?”

“It is, though not all the letters are discernible. Fiske wrote this letter on Sunday and mailed it on Sunday, _but_ —he addressed it to himself, _not_ to his employer.”

“Why?” exclaimed Mr. Garson in amazement.

“Listen. He addressed it with a very soft pencil to himself, and traced the address very lightly. It reached his boarding-house Monday morning, of course, and then he erased the pencil-marks and boldly wrote Mr. Hemmingway’s name in ink. Then he cut off the end, in precisely the way Mr. Hemmingway opens his letters, and put the whole thing in his pocket. All day he carried it in his pocket (I am reconstructing this affair as it must have happened), and at four o’clock he went home with the missive still there.

“Late Monday night he returned. After the three visitors had left, he strangled Mr. Hemmingway. You know he’s an athlete, and his employer was a frail old man.

“And _then_ he used the rubber stamp on his own letter and tucked it into the bunch of ‘To be answered.’ Then he rifled the safe, with Mr. Hemmingway’s own keys, turned off all the lights but one and swiftly and silently went home to bed. The rest you know.”

“Mr. Bayliss, I can scarcely believe this!” said Inspector Garson, fairly gasping for breath.

“What, you can’t believe it when the villain has written his own name as damning evidence against himself?”

“It must be,” said the inspector, again scrutinizing the faint trace of pencil-marks. “But why did he do it?”

“Because he wanted to be executor and thus be able to convert into cash the securities he has stolen.”

“He returned those.”

“Only a few. Oh, it was a clever and deep-laid scheme! Fiske has quantities of bonds and other valuable papers entirely unaccounted for and which, as sole executor, he can cash at his leisure, all unknown to any one.”

“How did you discover this?”

“By the simplest clue. I chanced to notice on Mr. Hemmingway’s desk a pencil, freshly sharpened, but sharpened in a totally different way from those sharpened by the man himself. I looked at all the other pencils on his desk, at the one taken from his pocket and at one in his bedroom—they are all sharpened in exactly the same way, with numerous long careful shaves, producing a whittled pyramid. The pencil I spoke of—here it is—is sharpened by only five strong, clean cuts, making a short exposure of cut wood, quite different from the long point of wood in the others. Then I looked in the waste-basket, which at your orders had not been touched since the discovery of the crime, and _on top_ I found the chips and lead-dust of this very pencil. They were _on top_ of some torn envelopes whose postmarks proved they had come in Monday evening’s mail, which reaches the Hemmingway house about six-thirty. Hence, whoever sharpened that pencil did it _after_ six-thirty o’clock Monday night, and _before_ the discovery of Mr. Hemmingway’s dead body.”

Mr. Garson listened breathlessly. “And then?” he said.

“And then,” went on Bayliss, “I looked around for some pencils sharpened like that, and found several on and in Fiske’s desk in the library. The pencil might have been borrowed from Fiske’s desk, but it was sharpened right there at Mr. Hemmingway’s desk after half-past six o’clock. Fiske, as you know, testified that he left at four and did not return until Tuesday morning.”

* * * * *

Bayliss’ deductions were true. Confronted suddenly with the story and with the traced envelope, Fiske broke down completely and confessed all. He had been planning it for weeks, and had the decoy letter ready to use when Mr. Hemmingway should have a large amount of bonds in his own home safe. The whole story of the Saturday morning interview was a figment of Fiske’s fertile brain, and of course Mr. Hemmingway had no suspicions of his nephew. Fiske had known of the expected callers, had watched outside the house until the last one went away and then, running up the steps, had stopped Mr. Hemmingway just as he was closing the door and requested a short interview. Innocently enough Mr. Hemmingway took his secretary into the library, and, while waiting for his fell opportunity, Fiske talked over some business matters. While making a memorandum, Mr. Hemmingway broke his pencil point, and, unthinkingly, Fiske obligingly sharpened it.

“And to think,” murmured Bayliss to Harris, “that little act of ordinary courtesy proved his undoing!”

“Marvelous, Bayliss, marvelous!” said Harris.

THE END

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 1911 issue of Adventure magazine.]