Chapter V

William Abbott, of Sydney, N.S.W., was a wool broker who came to England in the year 1906 and died worth some hundred and fifty thousand pounds. He had three sons, John, Alexander and Richard.

The Will was simple and direct. Murchison laid a copy of it before me, taken by permission of Abbott’s lawyer’s, whom he had found, and it ran something like this.

“Owing to the conduct of my eldest son, John Abbott, I hereby revoke my Will of June 7th, 1902, by which I bequeathed him the whole of my property, with the exception of the sum of twenty thousand pounds to be equally divided between my sons Alexander and Richard. I hereby bequeath the whole of my property to my son Alexander Abbott. Signed: William Abbott, July 10th, 1904. Witnesses: John Brooke, Jane Summers.”

“Well,” said Murchison, as I handed the paper back, “that signature is a forgery; the body of the document is written as if by a clerk in almost print character, but though I have never seen the handwriting of William Abbott, I will bet my reputation that the signature is forged.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Because the signatures of the witnesses are forged; they have both been written by the same hand. The signature ‘William Abbott’ has evidently been carefully copied from an original, there is a constraint about it that tells me that, but the witnesses’ signatures, where the forger had nothing to copy and had to invent imaginary names, simply shout. The fool never thought of that; leaving the point of similarity aside, the woman’s signature is as masculine as a Grenadier. The body of the document, though almost in print, is also the work of the forger.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” said he, “handwriting with me is not only a science which I have studied for fifty years; it is something that has developed in me an instinct. Now to go on. Alexander Abbott lives in a big house down in Kent. Richard, at the time of his father’s death, was a captain in the Black Bird Line, evidently working for his bread. A year after his father’s death he bought the steamer _Shanghai_, paying a large sum for it spot cash. He was an unmarried man, and when ashore occupied a flat in Bayswater. Alexander is a widower with one daughter.—That’s all. The case is complete.”

“How do you read it?” I asked. The old chap fetched a snuff box out of a drawer in the desk, took a pinch and put the box back without offering it.

“I read it,” he said, “in this way. John, the eldest son, was a bad lot; the father may have intended to disinherit him, and make a second will; anyhow, he didn’t; put it off as men do. When the father died, Alexander boldly did the trick. Richard may have been party to the business, at first—who knows? Anyhow, it seems that he was later on, since he was able to plank that big sum down for the ship, and since he was left nothing in the will, and since, as you say, he put up that notice you took off the boat and which told the truth.”

I said nothing for a while, thinking this thing over. I was sure Murchison was right.

This thing would have been weighing in the sailor’s mind for years; from what I could make out at Churles Street he had evidently been making John some sort of allowance; one could fancy the long watches of the night, the pacing of the deck under the stars, and the mind of the sailor always teased by the fact that he was party to this business, a forgery that had kept a brother, however bad, out of his inheritance. Then the last frantic attempt to put things right in the face of death, the agonised thought that to write the thing on paper was useless, paper that would be washed away by the rain or blown away by the wind.

“Well,” said I to Murchison, “it seems plain enough, and now, on the face of it, what would you advise me to do?”

“If I were in your place,” said he, “I would do nothing. You say this elder brother is a scamp; Alexander, on the other hand, is a rogue; if you mix yourself up in the business you may have trouble. Why should you worry yourself about a bad lot of strangers?—turn it down.”

That seemed sensible enough, but you see Murchison knew only the bare facts of the case; he had not seen that notice board tossing about in the desolation of the Pacific.

I left him without having made up my mind as to what I should do, half determined to do nothing.

The bother was that the facts Murchison had put before me gave a new complexion to the whole business, a new urgency to that message which I had not delivered. I felt as if the captain of the _Shanghai_ had suddenly come to my elbow, him and his uneasy conscience craving to be put at rest. Just so, but on the other hand there was John Abbott, and I can’t tell you the grue that chap had given me. It wasn’t that he was a boozer, or a waster; he was bad; bad right through and rotten. There is a sixth sense, it has to do with morals and the difference between good and evil; it told me this chap was evil, and the thought of helping to hand him a fortune made my soul revolt.

Still, there you are, I didn’t make the chap, and the fact remained that in doing nothing I was holding him out of his rights.

All that evening the thing worried me and most of that night. Next morning I couldn’t stand it any longer. I took the train for Oakslot in Kent. I had determined to go straight to Alexander Abbott, beard him, tell him of the notice I had found and see what he had to say. The idea came to me that he might make restitution in some way without handing all the fortune over to John—anyhow, it would be doing something, and I determined to use all my knowledge and power if necessary.

Ever been to Oakslot? It is the quaintest and quietest place, and it wasn’t till I got out of the train and found myself on the platform that the terrible nature of the business I was on took me by the arm.

I had no difficulty in finding Alexander Abbott’s residence; the Waterings was the name it went by, an old Georgian house set in a small park; one of those small, rook-haunted, sleepy, sunlit pleasaunces found only in England and best in Sussex or Kent.

I was shown into the drawing-room by an old manservant, who took my card, on which I had pencilled: “From Captain Richard Abbott.”

A few moments passed and the door opened and a girl came in, a girl of sixteen or so, pretty as a picture and charming as a rose; one of those sweet, whole, fresh, candid creatures, almost sexless as yet, but made to love and be loved.

I stood before her. I was Tragedy, but she only saw a man. She told me her father was unwell but would see me. Would I follow her?

She led me to a library, and there, seated by the window which gave upon the sunlit park, sat the criminal, a man of forty or so, a man with seemingly a good and kindly face, a man I would have trusted on sight. He was evidently far gone in consumption, this forger of documents, and it was pretty evident that anxiety had helped in the business; a weight on the conscience is a big handicap if one is trying to fight disease.

I sat down near him and started right in; the quicker you get a surgical operation over the better, and so he seemed to think, for when I told him of the finding of the notice and went on to say that it might be necessary to inquire into the will and that I had reason to believe there was something wrong about it, he saw I knew nearly everything and stopped me right off.

“Everything is wrong about it,” said he, “and thank God that this matter has fallen into the hands of a straight and honest man like you—you will understand. This thing has tormented me for years, but when you have heard what I have to say you will know I did wrong only to do right. There is no greater scoundrel in this world than my brother John Abbott; a terrible thing to say but the truth. My father had made a will leaving him everything. He placed that will in the hands of James Anderson of Sydney, our lawyer. Anderson knew John’s character better than my father and was averse from the business, but he could do nothing. My father was a very headstrong man and blind to John’s doings, which the scamp somehow managed to partly conceal from him. He thought John was sowing his wild oats and that he would be all the better for it. John could do no wrong in his eyes, but a few days before his death he had a terrible awakening with a forged bill of exchange—forgery seems to run in the family. It cost him five thousand pounds to stifle the matter, and the day after the business was settled my father died; slipped coming downstairs, fell, and broke his back.

“I was there and he died in my arms, and his last words were: ‘Get that will from Anderson and destroy it.’ He had no power to write a new will, no strength even to write his signature, and when he was dead there was I with those words ringing in my ears.

“I knew my father intended to revoke his first will, would have done it that day; maybe, ought to have done it days ago, but his mind was in a turmoil and he was a strong, hearty man with never a thought of death. Well, there I was, not only with that knowledge but the knowledge that if the property fell to John it would be the end of the family’s good name; that beast was only possible when he was kept short of money—then there was the lower consideration of my own position, penniless and at John’s mercy.

“I made a will and put my father’s name to it, sure that Anderson would make no trouble, sure that John would not inquire into it, for the forgery of the bill of exchange had drawn his teeth, and the fact of that forgery would account to him for the change in the disposition of the property.

“I dated the will, it is true, some years back, and in the time my father lived in Sydney. I did that because I had to forge the names of the two witnesses; had I dated it recently someone might ask who are these witnesses? As it was there was no one to put that question to, for I was not in Sydney at the time indicated in the will—they might have been hotel servants—anyone.

“I left myself the whole property, not from greed but simply because my brother Richard was at sea. I knew his temperament and character, and it was possible that, had I made him part heir, he would have revolted and disclosed all—for I had determined to tell him everything.

“I placed the forged will among my father’s papers; it was proved and there was no trouble. Anderson, whose clients are largely wool brokers and Australian merchants, has a branch office in London; they were my father’s solicitors in England as well as Australia, and the whole thing went through their hands. They had all the less reason to cast any suspicious eye on the document in as much as they had dealt with the forgery of the bill of exchange.

“Then Richard came back from sea and I told him all. He was horrified, yet he saw that what I had done had been simply to carry out my father’s wish. It was impossible to destroy the old will as he had directed, or possible only in one way—by the creation of a new will.

“After a while he cooled on the matter and even accepted a large sum for the purchase of a ship, the _Shanghai_, now lost. But the thing weighed on his mind as it has on mine, only more so. He was of a different temperament. He did not dread detection, with him it was entirely a matter of conscience: he felt he had defrauded John by being partner to the business, and accepting that sum of money. He seemed to think in his sailor way it would bring him bad luck; no doubt when the end came and he lost his ship he had that in mind, and lest the bad luck might follow him into the next world wrote that notice you found. I have only a few more months to live—now tell me, was I right or wrong in doing what I did?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I am not your judge, but all I can say is this: from what I know of the business, I will move no further in the matter, if for no other reason than that, should John Abbott get word of the business, your daughter would be rendered penniless after your death.”

“Absolutely,” said he.

I asked him was John receiving an allowance, and he said yes. He was receiving two pounds a week for life.

Then I left him and took the train for London, and from that day to this I have heard nothing of any of the lot of them. I expect he’s dead and his daughter an heiress—I don’t know, but I’ll never touch a thing like that again. Even still I’m bothered to know if I was right or wrong in holding my hand and tongue. What would you have done in similar circumstances?