Chapter VI

It was, in fact, only a few minutes before Michael was back again, looking distinctly glum. Out of pity, Wilson forbore to ask the reason; had he done so, he would have found that Michael had once again been dismissed with something less than cordiality. Mark Warden, though his face, which looked unusually careworn, had brightened up at Michael’s coming, had made it quite plain, after the first greeting, that his conversation with the supposed inquiry agent (now introduced as Strake) did not require a third; and Michael was in no mood to hang about while his friend conducted private conversations with “dirty little Paul Prys.” Accordingly, he returned to the inn, feeling that the world was in a conspiracy to humiliate and annoy him, and was so sulky during the evening that even Wilson, equable as his own temper was, was beginning to wish that the late Mr. Meston had stayed at the bottom of the river, when about nine o’clock there was a sound of hurried feet on the stairs, a bang on the door, and Mark Warden, pale and worried, rushed into the room.

“Oh, good! you’re there,” he exclaimed. “I say, Michael, I’m frightfully sorry about that chap, but, you see--oh!----” he broke off on seeing Wilson. “I’m sorry.”

“My friend, Wilson,” said Michael, introducing them. “Mark Warden.”

Wilson offered to leave, as the young man had clearly some trouble on his mind; but Michael was anxious for him to stay, and after a little beating about the bush, it was decided that he should. Drinks were ordered, and they settled themselves comfortably, Wilson meanwhile observing the young man with some care.

There was nothing apparent to distinguish Mark Warden from any other pleasant, moderately idle young fellow of twenty-six or seven. He was good-looking, in a way, but with the comeliness of youth and health rather than any special distinction; he was above middle height, with movements and a carriage which suggested that his body was probably more specifically handsome than his face; and though that face at present looked worried and worn, it was no more so than the faces of many young creatures Wilson had known, when first they discovered that life does not strictly correspond to the l.b.w. rule.

“I’m _frightfully_ sorry,” he said very earnestly, “to have been talking to that awful bounder. Really, I couldn’t help it, though. You see, he was put on by Hanborough to look into this business. Of course, I thought Hanborough’d know what’d be best, and I didn’t ask any questions--and then he stopped me in the street, of all places, and began talking about it----”

“About _what_?” Michael interrupted. “About Meston’s death?”

“Yes, though God knows what business it was of his. He began feeding me up with a frightful lot of scandal. Come to think of it, _your_ name got in somehow, Michael--about mysteries about Mr. Meston’s death, and quarrels with his wife--disgusting sort of rubbish! Of course, I pretty soon told him _that_ wasn’t what Mr. Hanborough’d asked him to look into----”

“But what _had_ he been asked to look into?” Michael tried again.

“Why, the accounts. That’s just what I’ve come to ask you about--to know what the blazes you think I ought to do. It’s frightfully awkward for me, you see, anyway, and now Meston turning up drowned fairly puts the lid on it.”

“Puts the lid on _what_?” Michael said impatiently. “What in thunder are you talking about?”

“Perhaps if Mr. Warden started from the beginning,” Wilson suggested. “He forgets you and I are strangers to the place.”

“You may be strangers,” Warden said bitterly, “but if you haven’t had all the gossip four times over at least, you’ve very lucky strangers. I never knew such a hornets’ nest as this. But I’m sorry I’m making a muddle--I don’t know what to think or what to do. I’ll start again properly.” He helped himself to a stiff drink, and pushed the hair back from his forehead.

“_You_ know,”--to Michael, who nodded--“Dad put me in to learn the business five years ago; and Christmas two years, when he had his stroke, he got me made junior partner. Dad was senior partner of Warden, Hanborough and Meston”--he added to Wilson--“of Colchester. He built up the firm practically himself, and he did nearly everything, and so, of course, with two other partners, there was precious little for me to do; and, anyway, he was just as pleased I should play cricket and be a kind of county ornament as do anything else. I mean, I could be a sort of decoy duck for clients, don’t you see, even if I didn’t do any work. Well, after I properly came into the firm, this went on for some time; Hanborough and Meston between them knew the whole show inside out, and I didn’t see why I should bother. Then, you remember, I had that smash at the end of last season, when you picked me up; and our old sawbones thinks I must have managed to strain my guts, somehow, at the same time. Anyhow, I had a horrid pain inside me for a bit; and what with that and my knee, I didn’t feel much like playing games. So I took to going regularly to business, though I don’t fancy anybody particularly wanted me there, teaching somebody else their job--however, I thought I really ought to.

“But this is the devil of it--I hadn’t been going there regularly for very long before I began to see that something was wrong with the money side. It wasn’t any credit to me that I did; the greenest mug could have seen it with half an eye if he’d happened to come across it the way I did. I don’t mean to bother you with details--the long and short of it was that the funds weren’t where they should be; they were in oil-shares and that sort of stuff, and some, I believe, weren’t there at all.

“Well, I began to sweat with fright, because if some of our big people had called us to pay up, we should have been in the soup--and it would have been as much my fault as any one’s. I would have asked Dad; but he can’t talk even, much less look after business. So I went to Hanborough at last, and consulted him. That was this spring. Hanborough wouldn’t listen for some time. He practically told me I was an idiot, who didn’t know the difference between one kind of share and another, but at last I convinced him that it wasn’t only a question of shares, but of money actually missing. With that I got him down to the office and made him go into it thoroughly.

“Then he got into an awful stew, and declared we must go very carefully. You see, we neither of us knew who’d been monkeying with the business; and, as Hanborough said, if a whisper got out, somebody would be sure to try and withdraw their money, and then it would be all U.P. We talked a long time about what was to be done, and at last I persuaded Hanborough to put on a private detective to investigate and see what was going on. Meanwhile, he said, he and I would keep a personal look-out into everything that was going on in the office, and stop any more hanky-panky. And he particularly urged me to say nothing about our feelings to Meston----”

“Why not to Meston?” Wilson asked. “Wasn’t he concerned?”

“Well, I suppose you can guess why not, _now_, as I can,” young Warden said ruefully. “But it never occurred to me at the time. Hanborough only said that in cases like this it was as well for as few people as possible to know what was in the wind, and that as Meston had to be in the office a lot--he was the partner who generally saw people--it was just as well that he should be quite innocent. Also, he said, Meston had only been a clerk in the firm, and wouldn’t feel a thing like this as he or I should. I know it sounds as if I ought to have seen what he was driving at; but at the time I was so muddled that I couldn’t think of anything but that _we_ must find out what was happening and nobody else must know. Hanborough got hold of this fellow Strake--though, as I say, I hadn’t a ghost of a notion what he was like--and sent me reports every now and then to say how things were going on. Then this afternoon they rang up from Hellier to let me know Meston had been found drowned. I couldn’t get hold of Hanborough, so I came down myself at once to see what had happened. And _this_ is what I find--and that little beast of a Strake nosing round into it. He had the impudence to wave an expense account in my face, too! How Hanborough could ever have brought himself to employ such a fellow, I can’t think.”

“Spying isn’t a nice trade, you know,” Wilson pointed out to him. “You can’t always expect to employ a spy whom you’d like to ask to dinner. But what’s the position now? I gather from what you say that you think Meston may have been the villain of the piece?”

“Well, they say here he committed suicide,” Warden said. “Why, they say you said so, Michael.”

“I never said anything of the kind!” Michael contradicted him indignantly. “I never even got a chance----” Nor did he then, for Warden interrupted.

“Well, if you didn’t, _somebody_ said he did. But what the hell ought I to do? It’ll have to come out now; and Hanborough’s away.”

“Gently!” said Wilson. “Aren’t you going a bit fast? You don’t seem to me to have much proof that Meston embezzled your funds.”

“Well, I don’t know what Strake’s got,” Warden said. “But, if he killed himself, it looks----”

“Yes, I know; but we can hardly assume that, at any rate, until the inquest’s been held. What do you suppose he did with the funds, if he did take them?”

“_I_ don’t know. Salted ’em down, perhaps. Or lost ’em.”

“Had he expensive tastes, I mean? Did he bet, or speculate? Might he have lost the money?”

“I don’t know. Outside of the office, I hardly knew him.”

“He certainly didn’t _sound_ like a successful embezzler, when he was here,” Michael put in. “If he did embezzle funds, I should say he’d certainly lost them all. I never saw such a gloomy fellow.”

“Oh, that’ll be his wife, poor devil,” Warden said. “She made him feel like that.”

“Is she the lady who’s supposed to be rejoicing at his death?” Michael asked.

“Well, they didn’t get on at all, if that’s what you mean. In fact, she’d just run away from him, and he’d taken leave from the office--really, I suppose, to go and get her back, though he didn’t say so.”

“Why did he come here, then?”

“Because she was at the Lorings’, of course,” said Warden, who seemed to imagine that all his hearers were as familiar with the current gossip as he was himself. “They’re her cousins, you know; and she always goes there when she can.”

“Did he get her back?”

“Not on your life,” Warden said, with decision. “But what’s it got to do----Oh, I see! You mean he might have killed himself for that!”

“Well, it’s a possibility.”

“Without having pinched any of our cash? I see. Well, I’m sure I hope he did,” Warden said, with a deep disregard of any one’s feelings but his own. “But tell me, d’you think there’s anything I can do?”

“Not much, I should say,” said Wilson, “at least, until the inquest, when it may be known how he died, and when his papers will have been examined.”

“But that’s just what I don’t want!” Warden cried. “Don’t you see, Mr. Wilson, if police officials get hold of his papers, and a whole lot of things come out, then the firm will bust. I’m absolutely certain we couldn’t meet our commitments, if even two or three people wanted their money. And--you see, it isn’t only looking like a fool, it’s my family. All our money, practically, except my mother’s, was--is--in the business; and I’ve two sisters. It would mean selling the house and turning Dad out, and--it would be my fault, you see.”

“Well, it may not have been Meston,” said Michael, pitying his distress but not seeing any way of dealing with it.

“But I _must_ know! Whether it is or it isn’t, I must get at what happened! Really, I can’t stand going on like this--and everybody at home thinking it’s all very nice, only why can’t dear Mark be a little pleasanter? You know,” said the athlete ingenuously, “I used to think it was all bunkum about worry making you lose your appetite. But half a dozen times lately I’ve really felt so rotten with bothering about this, I haven’t wanted to touch anything. Only, of course, I had to, or they’d have wondered what on earth was happening. Oh yes, of course you’ll laugh at me,”--and Michael had striven so hard to restrain his smiles--“but it’s not a joke, even if I _am_ a fool. Look here, Michael, that’s what I really came to ask. You know that friend of yours who’s at Scotland Yard--what’s his name? Well, couldn’t you get him to come and find out what’s happened? I mean, I can’t stand not knowing, and I can’t stand that fellow of Hanborough’s. Of course”--to Wilson--“I know what you mean, that a spy isn’t a gentleman; but a policeman at Scotland Yard’s not likely to be so bad as a little tuppenny-ha’penny chap from Walthamstow, is he? You know what I mean.”

They did, indeed: so well that they could scarcely keep their faces while Michael carefully explained that Scotland Yard is not for casual use by any and every private citizen in any case of suspicion. Warden’s face fell, but brightened again when Michael offered to put his troubles privately before the great man and see what he thought. “And I’ll sack that little perisher,” he said. “He’ll make me sick if he hangs about much longer.”

“I don’t know that I should be in a hurry,” Wilson advised. “It may be better for him to be bringing his gossip to you than scattering it broadcast. Besides, isn’t Mr. Hanborough concerned?”

“Yes, damn it. I’d forgotten him. I wish to hell he’d come back. Well, thanks awfully, both of you. You’ve made me feel a lot better. Now I must be going, or they’ll wonder what’s up. I expect I’ll be round again some time, if I’m not bothering. And you will ask Wilson, won’t you? So long.” And he took himself off, leaving Michael in fits of laughter on the couch.

“Unfeeling fellow,” Wilson said.

“Well, he is rather an outsize in geese,” Michael protested.

“You’ve no real appreciation of youth and innocence, Michael. If you’d been as much in contact with their opposites as I have, you’d regard your friend as a spring of water in a thirsty land. Oh, laugh if you like. I’m delighted to find you brightening up a little. Only don’t break the ornaments.” He stooped to pick up a photograph which Michael had knocked to the floor.

“Friend of yours?” the latter asked, glancing at it.

“Not that I know of. From that scrawl in the corner, one would judge it to be Mrs. Meston. It’s a striking face, isn’t it? Would you commit suicide if that face had left you, Michael?”

“I shouldn’t have married it in the first place,” Michael said. He was a bachelor.