Chapter TWELVE: The Man From Nowhere

Scottie’s installation at the Nelsons served a double purpose. It recruited to Andy a shrewd if unprincipled, lieutenant, and it gave him a more comfortable feeling about leaving Stella with no other protection than her father. There was the indisputable fact that somewhere at large was the murderer, and that that murderer had possibly seen the interview between the girl and Merrivan, and might, to save his own skin, implicate her. For how had Stella’s scarf reached the orchard? For what purpose it had been taken he could not guess, but this was clear—that the murderer was well aware of her presence.

He drove to town that morning, carrying with him the charred diary which had told him nothing, for half the pages had been torn out and burnt separately before the book was thrown upon the fire.

His first call was at Ashlar Buildings. Mr. Abraham Selim’s office was in the hands of the police, and the predecessor of Sweeny had been found and was waiting for him. The most important find that the police had made was a letter which was addressed to Sweeny. It was evidently in answer to one which Sweeny had left for his master, and it dealt with the prosaic matter of office-cleaning and the expenses to be incurred. Its importance, from Andy’s point of view, was that the writing was identical with that which had been discovered on Merrivan’s desk.

The second fact which was elicited—and this evidence came from an elevator boy who knew Sweeny—was that the man had been discharged the day before his murder. The reason for his being fired was also learnt. Selim had accused him of steaming open letters and reading the contents, and his complaint was probably well founded, though the man had denied it to his confidante.

There was little else to learn. Sweeny’s predecessor had never seen his employer, and he apparently followed the same procedure as the man to whom he had handed over his duties. The letters were left in the safe and usually collected on Saturdays and Wednesdays, on which days the clerk was not expected to go anywhere near the office. Nobody had ever seen the mysterious Mr. Selim enter or leave the office and the hall porter did not know him. There was a possibility that he occupied another suit in the building, but enquiries accounted for all the other tenants. Thinking that from proximity the staff might have seen something of Mr. Selim, Andy personally visited the next office, which was occupied by a firm of shippers, Messrs. Wentworth & Wentworth.

He found that the staff consisted of a girl typist, and, from what she told him, the firm of Wentworth & Wentworth had seen better days, and the business was kept on from sentiment rather than from any profits which accrued.

“Mr. Wentworth is out just now,” said the girl. “He is not in very good health, and only comes to the office two days a week, and I know that he could not tell you much about Mr. Selim.”

“Have you ever seen Mr. Selim by any chance?”

“No, sir,” she shook her head, “and I am sure Mr. Wentworth hasn’t, because he said to me once or twice how curious it was that nobody ever saw Mr. Selim. The only person from that office I have seen was the clerk. He was there from eleven to one. It was a nice easy job for him. I wonder he was so silly as to lose it.”

She had heard also of the steamed envelope apparently.

Andy called on the local Income Tax Inspector. He reported that Mr. Selim’s accounts were always rendered in excellent order and that the tax was paid. He had not seen the man and had had no occasion to call upon him.

Andy left a detective in charge of the office and went back to Beverley Green, very little wiser than when he had started out.

Would Scottie know—Scottie, with his queer knowledge of the underworld and the strange people who constituted its population? He would consult Scottie. He had frequently consulted him since he had been staying at the Nelsons. It gave him an excuse for calling.

He found that worthy gentleman initiating Stella into the mysteries of bezique. Mr. Nelson was at the club expounding a new theory.

“Selim? Abraham Selim? Yes, he is a moneylender, and he’s on the crook, too, I think.”

Andy observed that the girl’s face had become suddenly serious. She was, in fact, experiencing the first twinge of uneasiness she had felt since the crime had been committed.

“I have never met anybody who knew him, but I have met lots of people who have been financed by him. He is a bad egg.”

“Is he the kind of man who would threaten some one who would not pay?”

“Threaten?” said the other contemptuously. “There’s nothing that Selim wouldn’t do. A friend of mi——” He corrected himself. “A man I have heard about, Harry Hopson, double-crossed him for a matter of two hundred. He got Harry ten years. Not that Harry didn’t deserve it, but Selim certainly put a fine case against him, an old one that Harry had forgotten. Anyway, he went down for ten years.”

One thing was certain, that if Merrivan was in such financial difficulties that he had been obliged to borrow from Selim, his indebtedness represented an enormous sum. His tradesmen had been paid up until the Saturday, there was a balance at his bank amounting to several thousands, and there was no evidence at all that he was pressed for money. Until the accountant had set to work on his securities it was difficult to tell how rich he was. No correspondence of any kind had been discovered that revealed the slightest obligation to the mystery man, nor were any other letters found from the moneylender.

One point had been cleared up—the extraordinary boots which Merrivan had been wearing at the moment of his death. He had been in the habit of making nocturnal visits—but why the heavy boots, if, as Scottie supposed, the object of his midnight rambles was in the village itself? And if that were the case, why wear boots which would make an infernal din the moment they were on gravel or wood? Surely rubber-soled shoes would be more in keeping with that kind of adventure? Andy considered these matters as he walked across to Merrivan’s house.

All day long and for two days the place had been besieged by reporters. There had been an inflow of strange men with cameras and inquisitive youths with note-books. At this hour the last of the newspaper men had gone. He had promised himself the task of a thorough inspection of the house. Up till now he had confined his minutest scrutiny to the long room and contented himself with a casual examination of the other apartments.

The remaining inspection narrowed itself to a more careful search of Mr. Merrivan’s bedroom. It was on the first floor, in front of the house, and consisted of a large and airy bedroom, furnished only with the necessities of toilet, a dressing-room leading out from one door and a handsomely appointed bathroom opening from another. Mr. Merrivan had taken a great deal of pains to secure his comfort. The bathroom was surprisingly luxurious. It was lined with marble, and had been fitted by a Swiss firm which specialised in this kind of work. The furniture in the bedroom consisted of a four-poster bed, a tall-boy, and a large bureau. The floor was partly covered by a square of grey carpet. There was also a dressing-chest, a smaller table, and a low arm-chair and two other chairs, and this practically comprised the contents.

He began by devoting a little more attention to the bed than he had been able to give to it. It was a very solid piece of furniture, and the supports at both sides were heavy and thick. He tapped one of them at the head of the bed and found it solid. The footboard was beautifully carved on the inner side, the outer side being fairly plain, except for two carved shields surmounted by a heraldic rose which appeared on the squat footposts. He turned up the bed and examined the mattresses, spent an unprofitable half-hour in tapping the walls and examining the remaining furniture.

It baffled him that he could find no further reference to Abraham Selim. Not a single document had been discovered which threw any light upon the threat contained in the letter found by the dead man’s desk. As for Abraham Selim, he had disappeared completely. Every letter arriving at his office had been opened, and the surprising volume of his business and the solid character of his clientele had been revealed, but neither letter of appeal for loans or time to pay gave any clue to his identity. The man was a usurer of the worst type, and his disappearance must have been a relief to scores of unhappy people who were in his clutches.

But it was an extraordinary circumstance, and one which puzzled the police, that there was no documentary proof of the obligations of his clients. No bill or promissory notes were discovered in the office or at his bank. Usually a moneylender lodges these, with his other securities, in the bank’s vaults. Nor was his credit a very high one. Though an enormous volume of business passed through his accounts, his floating balance was never more than a few thousands, and the money he paid in was, as soon as the cheques were cleared, withdrawn again. When it was necessary for him to cover a cheque he had issued for any large amount, it came to the bank manager in the shape of notes.

Here again it would seem impossible that this elusive man could have escaped observation. He must have gone to the bank to open an account, argued the police, but it proved to be that the account had been transferred from a country branch, the manager of which was dead. Even had he been alive, it is probable he would have failed to have given any satisfactory testimony as to the identity of Abraham Selim.

To say that he had hidden his tracks would be untrue. He had made no tracks to hide. He had come from nowhere unseen, and, unseen, had vanished into the void from when he came.