Chapter THIRTY-ONE: The Laying of Ghosts

There was one person to whom the statement of Hilda Masters should be shown, thought Andy. For some time he had had a suspicion that Mr. Boyd Salter could have thrown more illumination upon his friend Severn’s life and folly than he cared to cast.

He sent a wire to the master of Beverley Hall asking for an interview, and had found a note awaiting him on his return to the Green asking him to come up at once.

“I’ll go up with you,” said Stella. “You can leave me in the car outside.”

Tilling, that anxious man, seemed a little more nervous than usual.

“You’ll be careful with the squire, doctor, won’t you? He hasn’t been sleeping any too well, and the doctor told Mr. Francis—that’s our young master—that his nerves may go at any moment.”

“Thank you, Tilling,” said Andy, “I will be careful.”

He was to find that Tilling had not exaggerated Mr. Salter’s condition. His face was grey and sunken, but he greeted the detective with a smile.

“You’ve come to tell me that you’ve found my burglar,” he said good-humouredly. “You can save yourself the trouble. It was that jewel thief of yours!”

Andy was not prepared for this piece of information.

“I am afraid it was,” he said, “but I honestly believe that he came here without felonious intent. In fact he was trailing _my_ burglar.”

“And found him, eh?” said Salter slyly. “A mysterious gamekeeper.”

“How on earth did you find that out?”

Salter laughed, and as he laughed he winced.

Andy saw, and was distressed. The man had heart trouble.

“I won’t attempt to mystify you,” said Boyd Salter, enjoying his sensation. “Scottie—that’s the rascal’s name, eh?—disappeared the day after. Miss Nelson went away the same day. She went to a place called Castle Street and nursed somebody. Who but your disreputable friend?”

A light dawned on Andy.

“Downer, of course,” he said, and the other nodded smilingly. “But the gamekeeper, how did you know about him?”

“Downer again, plus another rascal—Martin is he called?”

Andy was too big a man to withhold the admiration which the clever Mr. Downer deserved.

“I hand it to Downer. He is certainly the best of the newsmen.”

“He came down to see me,” explained Salter, “and for his benefit I had all my gamekeepers paraded and questioned. There was one man who admitted that he was in the kitchen—we have cocoa for them there when they are on night duty—and he thinks he must have gone out at about the time Scottie saw a man go out. That was as far as I got. Now what is your important news?”

“I have found Hilda Masters.”

Mr. Salter looked up.

“Hilda Masters? Who is she?”

“You remember, Mr. Salter, that in a secret drawer in Merrivan’s room was found a marriage certificate.”

“I remember. It was reported in the newspaper. The marriage certificate of an old servant. And it was afterwards stolen from you by the ghost called Selim. Was that the name of the woman who was married? And you have found her, you say?”

Andy took a copy of the statement from his pocket and laid it on the desk before the Justice, and Mr. Salter looked at it for a long time before he fixed a pair of folding horn-rimmed glasses on his nose and began to read.

He read slowly, very slowly. It seemed to Andy that he assessed the value of every word. Once he turned back and read a page all over again. Five—ten—fifteen minutes passed in a silence punctuated only by the swish of a turned page. And Andy grew impatient, remembering the girl in the car outside.

“Ah!” said Mr. Salter as he put the manuscript down, “the ghost of the valley is laid—the greatest of all those malignant shapes that haunt us, Dr. Macleod.”

Andy could not follow him readily, and the other saw he was puzzled and came to the rescue.

“Selim,” he said, “revealed in his naked hideousness—the seller of souls, the breaker of hearts, the gambler in lives. This is he.” He tapped the manuscript, and Andy saw that his eyes were unnaturally bright. But of all the miracles most startling it seemed that his face had filled out and the deeply-scored lines had vanished.

He must have touched a secret bell, for Tilling came in.

“Bring me a bottle of green seal port, Tilling,” he said, and when the servitor had gone out, “you have achieved a triumph—an even greater triumph than if you had laid your hand on the shoulder of Abraham Selim. We must celebrate your success, doctor.”

“I am afraid I cannot wait. The fact is, Miss Nelson is waiting outside in my car.”

Salter jumped up, turned white, and sat down again.

“I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly. “Really, it was unpardonable of me to leave her there and of you not to tell me. Please bring her in.”

“And you nearly killed him,” said Andy. “At least the news that you were sitting outside. I don’t like the look of him, Stella.”

Mr. Salter had recovered before they returned and was watching Tilling as he poured the precious wine into the glasses.

“Forgive me for not getting up,” smiled Salter. “So you helped my burglar?”

“Did Andy tell you?” she asked in alarm.

“No, Andy didn’t tell me. You will drink a glass of port, Miss Nelson? No? It was old wine when your father was a baby.”

He raised his glass to her and drank.

“And Miss Masters, or Mrs. Bonsor, what is going to happen to her?” he asked.

“I rather think that she will not wait in London. She has confessed to an indictable crime, but it is so old that I doubt if we could move in the matter even if we would. From certain indications I should say that this much-married lady will make yet a fourth plunge into the troubled sea of matrimony.”

Salter nodded.

“Poor soul!” he said softly. “Poor duped soul!”

Andy had not expected to find sympathy for Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor in the magistrate.

“She is not particularly poor,” he said drily, “Scottie, who is something of an expert, estimates her jewels as being worth a hundred thousand, and there are sundry properties in the States. What I wanted particularly to see you about was Severn. Have you any idea where he is? I cannot help feeling that Selim used the marriage for his own profit!”

“He did,” said Salter. “Selim represented to Mr. Severn that the woman was dead, and Severn married again, and, I believe, had children. Once he was safely married Selim held his bigamy and the illegitimacy of his children over his head, and extracted from him enormous sums of money. The contract you found was a fake. Selim never paid my friend a penny. He merely cancelled an old obligation—that to which the woman refers in her statement—and substituted one more onerous. And as the years went on his cupidity found new methods of extortion. You see, doctor, I am being frank with you. I did know more about Severn’s concerns than I have stated.”

“I never doubted that,” smiled Andy.

“And you, young lady—you also are nearing the end of the great chase. You have not come through this past month without losing something.”

“And finding something too, Mr. Salter,” she said.

He looked at Andy, and from him to the girl.

“That is true, I hope,” he said quietly. “Your little ghost—was it laid?”

She nodded.

“And your—Andy’s? I suppose he has adopted all our ghosts; taken them on to his own broad shoulders? May you soon conjure up and destroy the last!”

To the accompaniment of this good wish they left him.

Andy slept through the afternoon, and, as soon as it was dark, he began his vigil in the long, empty room. The night passed without any interruption to his quiet. Soon after daybreak, as he was looking through the front window across the dusky green, he saw Stella come out from the house, carrying something in her hand, and drew back to cover. She made straight for the house, and, to his amazement, knocked. He opened the door for her.

“I’ve brought you over some coffee and sandwiches, Andrew,” she said. “Poor dear, you must be very tired.”

“How did you know I was staying here?”

“Oh, I guessed that. When you didn’t come last night I was pretty certain you were on ghost duty.”

“You queer girl! And I purposely did not tell you.”

“And seeing me come into the house in the early morning, you suspected the worst?” She pinched his ear. “You heard nothing and saw nothing, I suppose?”

“Nothing,” said Andy.

She glanced along the gloomy passage and shook her head.

“I don’t think I should like to be a detective,” she said. “Andy, aren’t you ever afraid?”

“Often,” said Andy, “when I think of the kind of home I’m going to give you——”

“Let’s talk about it,” said Stella, and they sat down in the haunted room until the sun came in at the windows, and talked of houses and flats and the high cost of furnishing.

At eleven o’clock Andy, bearing no signs of his sleepless night, presented himself at the Great Metropolitan Hotel. There were yet one or two points that he wanted clearing up.

“Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor has gone, sir,” said the clerk.

“Gone?” said Andy in surprise. “When did she go?”

“Yesterday afternoon, sir. She and Professor Bellingham went together.”

“Has she taken her baggage?”

“All of it, sir.”

“Do you know where it has gone?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. She said she was going to the sea for a few days.”

It was a set-back for Andy.

He called at 73 Castle Street in the hope of finding Scottie. He found, instead, the embarrassed Mr. Martin.

“No, doctor, Scottie hasn’t been here for three days.”

“And he didn’t give you any instructions about running this den of thieves?” asked Andy.

“No, sir,” said Martin. There was a complacency about his tone that told Andy that he was lying.

No useful purpose could be served by cross-examining one whose respect for the truth was conspicuously minus at any time, and Andy returned to Beverley Green and to bed.

At nine o’clock he let himself into the Merrivan house. During the day Johnston had placed an arm-chair in the room. It was a comfortable arm-chair, and Andy found himself nodding.

“This won’t do,” he said to himself, and, walking to the front window, opened it to let in the cool air.

Beverley Church struck one o’clock, and still there was no sign of the visitor. He had removed the bolt from the back window, being sure that that was the way the stranger had entered, when Johnston had seen him at the window.

Two o’clock and Andy’s chin was on his breast, and his mind was filled with confused thoughts of Stella and Mrs. Crafton-Bonsor.

And then he heard a sound, and was wide awake in an instant. Looking toward the back window, he saw a dark figure against the faint light. The electric current had been restored at his request during the day, and he moved stealthily to the switch. The man outside was gently raising the lower sash. Higher and higher it came, and then Andy heard the soft pad of feet striking the floor. Still he did not turn on the light, but waited, and then:

“_Get up and face me, Abraham Selim, you dog!_”

The voice rang out thunderously in that empty room.

“_Get up!_” it called again, and Andy turned on the light.

Standing with his back to the open window was a man in a yellow dressing-gown, and in his extended hand, pointing straight at his invisible enemy, was a long-barrelled revolver.

Salter! Boyd Salter!

Andy gave a gasp. Then it _was_ Boyd Salter, that cool, languid man who had fenced with him so skilfully, so surely!

His eyes were wide open, fixed, vacant.

He was asleep. Andrew had known that when he heard the slurred, harsh voice.

“_Take that, you damned villain!_”

The figure hissed the word, and there was a click. And then he saw Salter’s head incline towards the floor. He was looking down upon the spot where Merrivan had been found, then slowly he went on his knees and his groping palms touched the body that he saw. And all the time he was talking to himself; little sobbing sounds of hateful gratification escaped him.

He was reconstructing the crime—not for the first time. Night after night Salter had come down from his bed and had gone over and over every incident of the murder. It was queer to see him searching a desk that was not there, and unlocking a safe that had been removed, but Andrew watched him, fascinated, as he struck a match and set light, as he thought, to a heap of papers he had placed on the hearth. Then he stopped. It was at the spot where the letter had been found.

“You won’t send any more letters, Merrivan, damn you! No more letters put under doors. That letter was for me, wasn’t it?” He turned to where he thought the body was lying. “For me?” His gaze suddenly shifted. He seemed to be picking up something. “I must take the girl’s scarf,” he muttered. “Poor Stella! This fiend will not hurt you. I’ll take it.” He put his hand into his pocket as though he were placing something there. “If they find it they’ll think that you were here when I shot him.”

Andrew gasped.

Now it was as clear as light to him. Abraham Selim and Merrivan were one and the same person, and the threatening letter which he had thought had been received by Merrivan had really been written by him. That was it! Merrivan was going out that night to leave the letter at the Hall; had written it, folded it, and had no time to address an envelope before doom appeared to him.

Salter was moving slowly round the room. A few seconds later and he had passed through the window. He closed it behind him, but Andrew was out in the garden in a few seconds, trailing the sleep-walker as with stealthy strides he passed into the orchard, and then:

“_Stand out of my way, damn you!_”

It was Salter’s voice, and again came the click of the pistol.

So that was how Sweeny died? Sweeny was there. He had probably discovered the identity of Selim, and was watching the house that night. It was so simple now. Merrivan had blackmailed Salter. But who was Severn—Severn, the husband of Hilda Masters?

He followed the walker under the trees of the orchard and out through a gate in the hedge. Salter was on his own estate now, and moved with that curious, deliberate stride which is the sleep-walker’s own. Still keeping him in sight, Andrew followed. The man kept to a path that led to Spring Covert, then turned off abruptly to the left, crossing the grass-land that would lead him directly to Beverley Hall.

He had hardly taken a dozen paces when out of the grass came a flash of flame, there was a deafening explosion, and Salter stumbled forward and fell. Andy was at his side in a second, but the figure was motionless.

He flashed his lamp and shouted for help, and a voice almost at once answered him. It proved to be the gamekeeper he had met before, Madding.

“What’s wrong, sir?” said Madding when he had recognised Andy. “You must have tripped over one of those alarm guns. We have put several in the park to trap the poachers. My God!” he gasped. “That’s Mr. Salter!”

They turned the stricken man on his back; Andy pulled open the pyjamas and listened for a minute to Salter’s breast.

“I am afraid he’s dead,” he said.

“Dead?” said the other, awe-stricken. “There was no shot in the gun.”

“It woke him, and I think the shock must have killed him, and, on the whole, Madding, I think it as well that he died that way.”

* * * * *

“The last ghost is laid.”

Andy came into the Nelsons’ sitting-room and sank wearily into a chair.

“What is the last, dear?” Stella seated herself on an arm of the chair and laid her hand on his head.

“That’s the last.”

Andy took a newspaper cutting from his pocket and gave it into her hands.

“I found that in Salter’s safe. Oh yes, the boy has taken it very well. They expected such an end. They knew that he had been sleep-walking by the mud they found on the legs of his pyjamas, and they had a guard outside his door. But the old Hall has half-a-dozen secret stairways, and he got away every time. What do you think of that?”

She read the cutting again. It was from _The Times_ of 1889:

“In accordance with the conditions of the late Mr. Philip Boyd Salter’s will, Mr. John Severn, his nephew, who is his uncle’s sole heir, will assume the name and style of John Boyd Salter. A statutory declaration to this effect appears in our legal advertisement columns of to-day’s date.”

“That is the story,” said Andy. “Severn was Boyd Salter all the time; if I had had the sense to look up the will of his uncle I should have known a month ago. He died a happy man. For years he has lived under the shadow of his guilt, and with the knowledge that, if Merrivan spoke, his son would have no title to the estate, which cannot be left to anybody but legal heirs. And when I brought him the statement of Hilda Masters—she married Scottie, by the way, the day before they left—a statement which proved the legality of his marriage with the mother of his son, do you remember how I told you he seemed suddenly to grow twenty years younger?

“It puzzled me when he said that the biggest ghost had been laid, but he spoke the truth. That was the greatest terror. To save his boy from disgrace he killed Merrivan or Selim. To save him he got into Wilmot’s house dressed as a gamekeeper and stole and burnt the marriage certificate.”

“How did he know it was there?”

“Downer revealed it in that shocking article he wrote about us.”

“What happens to Selim’s fortune—it goes to Arthur Wilmot?”

Andy shook his head.

“It goes to swell the wealth of Mrs. Professor Bellingham,” he said. “It is rather tragic, isn’t it?”

She laughed and slipped her arm about his neck.

“Andy, aren’t I a ghost, too? You’re not going away until you lay my unquiet spirit, are you?”

“You’re a shameless woman,” said Andy. “You always were.”

There was a happy little interregnum of silence.

“Scottie is clever,” she said suddenly.

“Clever? Well, yes, I suppose he is. Why do you say that?”

“Look how quickly Scottie got—the marriage licence——”

A week later Mr. Downer heard the news. He neither grieved nor did he rejoice. He was a man of business, and weddings and murders had one value. Getting the _Megaphone_ on the wire, he was put through to the City editor.

“See Macleod’s married that Nelson girl. I can give you a column of real good inside stuff about that engagement. Sure I can get a picture of her. She’d do anything for me. Two columns? All right!”

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes.

1. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.

2. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

3. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
errors.

4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings and some
inconsistent hyphenation as printed.