The Borough Treasurer

J >> Joseph Smith Fletcher >> The Borough Treasurer

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"There!" said Cotherstone, handing back the batch of letters. "You'll be
going now, I suppose. Put those in the post. I'm not going just yet, so
I'll lock up the office. Leave the outer door open--Mr. Mallalieu's
coming back."

He pulled down the blinds of the private room when Stoner had gone, and
that done he fell to walking up and down, awaiting his partner. And
presently Mallalieu came, smoking a cigar, and evidently in as good
humour as usual.

"Oh, you're still here?" he said as he entered. "I--what's up?"

He had come to a sudden halt close to his partner, and he now stood
staring at him. And Cotherstone, glancing past Mallalieu's broad
shoulder at a mirror, saw that he himself had become startlingly pale
and haggard. He looked twenty years older than he had looked when he
shaved himself that morning.

"Aren't you well?" demanded Mallalieu. "What is it?"

Cotherstone made no answer. He walked past Mallalieu and looked into the
outer office. The clerk had gone, and the place was only half-lighted.
But Cotherstone closed the door with great care, and when he went back
to Mallalieu he sank his voice to a whisper.

"Bad news!" he said. "Bad--bad news!"

"What about?" asked Mallalieu. "Private? Business?"

Cotherstone put his lips almost close to Mallalieu's ear.

"That man Kitely--my new tenant," he whispered. "He's met us--you and
me--before!"

Mallalieu's rosy cheeks paled, and he turned sharply on his companion.

"Met--us!" he exclaimed. "Him! Where?--when?"

Cotherstone got his lips still closer.

"Wilchester!" he answered. "Thirty years ago. He--knows!"

Mallalieu dropped into the nearest chair: dropped as if he had been
shot. His face, full of colour from the keen air outside, became as pale
as his partner's; his jaw fell, his mouth opened; a strained look came
into his small eyes.

"Gad!" he muttered hoarsely. "You--you don't say so!"

"It's a fact," answered Cotherstone. "He knows everything. He's an
ex-detective. He was there--that day."

"Tracked us down?" asked Mallalieu. "That it?"

"No," said Cotherstone. "Sheer chance--pure accident. Recognized
us--after he came here. Aye--after all these years! Thirty years!"

Mallalieu's eyes, roving about the room, fell on the decanter. He pulled
himself out of his chair, found a clean glass, and took a stiff drink.
And his partner, watching him, saw that his hands, too, were shaking.

"That's a facer!" said Mallalieu. His voice had grown stronger, and the
colour came back to his cheeks. "A real facer! As you say--after thirty
years! It's hard--it's blessed hard! And--what does he want? What's he
going to do?"

"Wants to blackmail us, of course," replied Cotherstone, with a
mirthless laugh. "What else should he do? What could he do? Why, he
could tell all Highmarket who we are, and----"

"Aye, aye!--but the thing is here," interrupted Mallalieu.

"Supposing we do square him?--is there any reliance to be placed on him
then? It 'ud only be the old game--he'd only want more."

"He said an annuity," remarked Cotherstone, thoughtfully. "And he added
significantly, that he was getting an old man."

"How old?" demanded Mallalieu.

"Between sixty and seventy," said Cotherstone. "I'm under the impression
that he could be squared, could be satisfied. He'll have to be! We can't
let it get out--I can't, any way. There's my daughter to think of."

"D'ye think I'd let it get out?" asked Mallalieu. "No!--all I'm thinking
of is if we really can silence him. I've heard of cases where a man's
paid blackmail for years and years, and been no better for it in the
end."

"Well--he's coming here tomorrow afternoon some time," said Cotherstone.
"We'd better see him--together. After all, a hundred a year--a couple of
hundred a year--'ud be better than--exposure."

Mallalieu drank off his whisky and pushed the glass aside.

"I'll consider it," he remarked. "What's certain sure is that he'll have
to be quietened. I must go--I've an appointment. Are you coming out?"

"Not yet," replied Cotherstone. "I've all these papers to go through.
Well, think it well over. He's a man to be feared."

Mallalieu made no answer. He, like Kitely, went off without a word of
farewell, and Cotherstone was once more left alone.

CHAPTER III

MURDER

When Mallalieu had gone, Cotherstone gathered up the papers which his
clerk had brought in, and sitting down at his desk tried to give his
attention to them. The effort was not altogether a success. He had hoped
that the sharing of the bad news with his partner would bring some
relief to him, but his anxieties were still there. He was always seeing
that queer, sinister look in Kitely's knowing eyes: it suggested that as
long as Kitely lived there would be no safety. Even if Kitely kept his
word, kept any compact made with him, he would always have the two
partners under his thumb. And for thirty years Cotherstone had been
under no man's thumb, and the fear of having a master was hateful to
him. He heartily wished that Kitely was dead--dead and buried, and his
secret with him; he wished that it had been anywise possible to have
crushed the life out of him where he sat in that easy chair as soon as
he had shown himself the reptile that he was. A man might kill any
poisonous insect, any noxious reptile at pleasure--why not a human
blood-sucker like that?

He sat there a long time, striving to give his attention to his papers,
and making a poor show of it. The figures danced about before him; he
could make neither head nor tail of the technicalities in the
specifications and estimates; every now and then fits of abstraction
came over him, and he sat drumming the tips of his fingers on his
blotting-pad, staring vacantly at the shadows in the far depths of the
room, and always thinking--thinking of the terrible danger of
revelation. And always, as an under-current, he was saying that for
himself he cared naught--Kitely could do what he liked, or would have
done what he liked, had there only been himself to think for.
But--Lettie! All his life was now centred in her, and in her happiness,
and Lettie's happiness, he knew, was centred in the man she was going to
marry. And Cotherstone, though he believed that he knew men pretty well,
was not sure that he knew Windle Bent sufficiently to feel sure that he
would endure a stiff test. Bent was ambitious--he was resolved on a
career. Was he the sort of man to stand the knowledge which Kitely might
give him? For there was always the risk that whatever he and Mallalieu
might do, Kitely, while there was breath in him, might split.

A sudden ringing at the bell of the telephone in the outer office made
Cotherstone jump in his chair as if the arresting hand of justice had
suddenly been laid on him. In spite of himself he rose trembling, and
there were beads of perspiration on his forehead as he walked across the
room.

"Nerves!" he muttered to himself. "I must be in a queer way to be taken
like that. It won't do!--especially at this turn. What is it?" he
demanded, going to the telephone. "Who is that?"

His daughter's voice, surprised and admonitory, came to him along the
wire.

"Is that you, father?" she exclaimed. "What are you doing? Don't you
remember you asked Windle, and his friend Mr. Brereton, to supper at
eight o'clock. It's a quarter to eight now. Do come home!"

Cotherstone let out an exclamation which signified annoyance. The event
of the late afternoon had completely driven it out of his recollection
that Windle Bent had an old school-friend, a young barrister from
London, staying with him, and that both had been asked to supper that
evening at Cotherstone's house. But Cotherstone's annoyance was not
because of his own forgetfulness, but because his present abstraction
made him dislike the notion of company.

"I'd forgotten--for the moment," he called. "I've been very busy. All
right, Lettie--I'm coming on at once. Shan't be long."

But when he had left the telephone he made no haste. He lingered by his
desk; he was slow in turning out the gas; slow in quitting and locking
up his office; he went slowly away through the town. Nothing could have
been further from his wishes than a desire to entertain company that
night--and especially a stranger. His footsteps dragged as he passed
through the market-place and turned into the outskirts beyond.

Some years previously to this, when they had both married and made
money, the two partners had built new houses for themselves. Outside
Highmarket, on its western boundary, rose a long, low hill called
Highmarket Shawl; the slope which overhung the town was thickly covered
with fir and pine, amidst which great masses of limestone crag jutted
out here and there. At the foot of this hill, certain plots of building
land had been sold, and Mallalieu had bought one and Cotherstone
another, and on these they had erected two solid stone houses, fitted up
with all the latest improvements known to the building trade. Each was
proud of his house; each delighted in welcoming friends and
acquaintances there--this was the first night Cotherstone could remember
on which it was hateful to him to cross his own threshold. The lighted
windows, the smell of good things cooked for supper, brought him no
sense of satisfaction; he had to make a distinct effort to enter and to
present a face of welcome to his two guests, who were already there,
awaiting him.

"Couldn't get in earlier," he said, replying to Lettie's half-anxious,
half-playful scoldings. "There was some awkward business turned up this
evening--and as it is, I shall have to run away for an hour after
supper--can't be helped. How do you do, sir?" he went on, giving his
hand to the stranger. "Glad to see you in these parts--you'll find this
a cold climate after London, I'm afraid."

He took a careful look at Bent's friend as they all sat down to
supper--out of sheer habit of inspecting any man who was new to him. And
after a glance or two he said to himself that this young limb of the law
was a sharp chap--a keen-eyed, alert, noticeable fellow, whose every
action and tone denoted great mental activity. He was sharper than Bent,
said Cotherstone, and in his opinion, that was saying a good deal.
Bent's ability was on the surface; he was an excellent specimen of the
business man of action, who had ideas out of the common but was not so
much given to deep and quiet thinking as to prompt doing of things
quickly decided on. He glanced from one to the other, mentally comparing
them. Bent was a tall, handsome man, blonde, blue-eyed, ready of word
and laugh; Brereton, a medium-sized, compact fellow, dark of hair and
eye, with an olive complexion that almost suggested foreign origin: the
sort, decided Cotherstone, that thought a lot and said little. And
forcing himself to talk he tried to draw the stranger out, watching him,
too, to see if he admired Lettie. For it was one of Cotherstone's
greatest joys in life to bring folk to his house and watch the effect
which his pretty daughter had on them, and he was rewarded now in seeing
that the young man from London evidently applauded his friend's choice
and paid polite tribute to Lettie's charm.

"And what might you have been doing with Mr. Brereton since he got down
yesterday?" asked Cotherstone. "Showing him round, of course?"

"I've been tormenting him chiefly with family history," answered Bent,
with a laughing glance at his sweetheart. "You didn't know I was raking
up everything I could get hold of about my forbears, did you? Oh, I've
been busy at that innocent amusement for a month past--old Kitely put me
up to it."

Cotherstone could barely repress an inclination to start in his chair;
he himself was not sure that he did not show undue surprise.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Kitely? My tenant? What does he know about your
family? A stranger!"

"Much more than I do," replied Bent. "The old chap's nothing to do, you
know, and since he took up his abode here he's been spending all his
time digging up local records--he's a good bit of an antiquary, and that
sort of thing. The Town Clerk tells me Kitely's been through nearly all
the old town documents--chests full of them! And Kitely told me one day
that if I liked he'd trace our pedigree back to I don't know when, and
as he seemed keen, I told him to go ahead. He's found out a lot of
interesting things in the borough records that I never heard of."

Cotherstone had kept his eyes on his plate while Bent was talking; he
spoke now without looking up.

"Oh?" he said, trying to speak unconcernedly. "Ah!--then you'll have
been seeing a good deal of Kitely lately?"

"Not so much," replied Bent. "He's brought me the result of his work now
and then--things he's copied out of old registers, and so on."

"And what good might it all amount to?" asked Cotherstone, more for the
sake of talking than for any interest he felt. "Will it come to aught?"

"Bent wants to trace his family history back to the Conquest," observed
Brereton, slyly. "He thinks the original Bent came over with the
Conqueror. But his old man hasn't got beyond the Tudor period yet."

"Never mind!" said Bent. "There were Bents in Highmarket in Henry the
Seventh's time, anyhow. And if one has a pedigree, why not have it
properly searched out? He's a keen old hand at that sort of thing,
Kitely. The Town Clerk says he can read some of our borough charters of
six hundred years ago as if they were newspaper articles."

Cotherstone made no remark on that. He was thinking. So Kitely was in
close communication with Bent, was he?--constantly seeing him, being
employed by him? Well, that cut two ways. It showed that up to now he
had taken no advantage of his secret knowledge and might therefore be
considered as likely to play straight if he were squared by the two
partners. But it also proved that Bent would probably believe anything
that Kitely might tell him. Certainly Kitely must be dealt with at once.
He knew too much, and was obviously too clever, to be allowed to go
about unfettered. Cost what it might, he must be attached to the
Mallalieu-Cotherstone interest. And what Cotherstone was concentrating
on just then, as he ate and drank, was--how to make that attachment in
such a fashion that Kitely would have no option but to keep silence. If
only he and Mallalieu could get a hold on Kitely, such as that which he
had on them----

"Well," he said as supper came to an end, "I'm sorry, but I'm forced to
leave you gentlemen for an hour, at any rate--can't be helped. Lettie,
you must try to amuse 'em until I come back. Sing Mr. Brereton some of
your new songs. Bent--you know where the whisky and the cigars are--help
yourselves--make yourselves at home."

"You won't be more than an hour, father?" asked Lettie.

"An hour'll finish what I've got to do," replied Cotherstone, "maybe
less--I'll be as quick as I can, anyway, my lass."

He hurried off without further ceremony; a moment later and he had
exchanged the warmth and brightness of his comfortable dining-room for
the chill night and the darkness. And as he turned out of his garden he
was thinking still further and harder. So Windle Bent was one of those
chaps who have what folk call family pride, was he? Actually proud of
the fact that he had a pedigree, and could say who his grandfather and
grandmother were?--things on which most people were as hazy as they were
indifferent. In that case, if he was really family-proud, all the more
reason why Kitely should be made to keep his tongue still. For if Windle
Bent was going on the game of making out that he was a man of family, he
certainly would not relish the prospect of uniting his ancient blood
with that of a man who had seen the inside of a prison.
Kitely!--promptly and definitely--and for _good_!--that was the ticket.

Cotherstone went off into the shadows of the night--and a good hour had
passed when he returned to his house. It was then ten o'clock; he
afterwards remembered that he glanced at the old grandfather clock in
his hall when he let himself in. All was very quiet in there; he opened
the drawing-room door to find the two young men and Lettie sitting over
a bright fire, and Brereton evidently telling the other two some story,
which he was just bringing to a conclusion.

" ... for it's a fact, in criminal practice," Brereton was saying, "that
there are no end of undiscovered crimes--there are any amount of guilty
men going about free as the air, and----"

"Hope you've been enjoying yourselves," said Cotherstone, going forward
to the group. "I've been as quick as I could."

"Mr. Brereton has been telling us most interesting stories about
criminals," said Lettie. "Facts--much stranger than fiction!"

"Then I'm sure it's time he'd something to refresh himself with," said
Cotherstone hospitably. "Come away, gentlemen, and we'll see if we can't
find a drop to drink and a cigar to smoke."

He led the way to the dining-room and busied himself in bringing out
some boxes of cigars from a cupboard while Lettie produced decanters and
glasses from the sideboard.

"So you're interested in criminal matters, sir?" observed Cotherstone as
he offered Brereton a cigar. "Going in for that line, eh?"

"What practice I've had has been in that line," answered Brereton, with
a quiet laugh. "One sort of gets pitchforked into these things, you
know, so----"

"What's that?" exclaimed Lettie, who was just then handing the young
barrister a tumbler of whisky and soda which Bent had mixed for him.
"Somebody running hurriedly up the drive--as if something had happened!
Surely you're not going to be fetched out again, father?"

A loud ringing of the bell prefaced the entrance of some visitor, whose
voice was heard in eager conversation with a parlourmaid in the hall.

"That's your neighbour--Mr. Garthwaite," said Bent.

Cotherstone set down the cigars and opened the dining-room door. A
youngish, fresh-coloured man, who looked upset and startled, came out of
the hall, glancing round him inquiringly.

"Sorry to intrude, Mr. Cotherstone," he said. "I say!--that old
gentleman you let the cottage to--Kitely, you know."

"What of him?" demanded Cotherstone sharply.

"He's lying there in the coppice above your house--I stumbled over him
coming through there just now," replied Garthwaite. "He--don't be
frightened, Miss Cotherstone--he's--well, there's no doubt of it--he's
dead! And----"

"And--what?" asked Cotherstone. "What, man? Out with it!"

"And I should say, murdered!" said Garthwaite. "I--yes, I just saw
enough to say that. Murdered--without a doubt!"

CHAPTER IV

THE PINE WOOD

Brereton, standing back in the room, the cigar which Cotherstone had
just given him unlighted in one hand, the glass which Lettie had
presented to him in the other, was keenly watching the man who had just
spoken and the man to whom he spoke. But all his attention was quickly
concentrated on Cotherstone. For despite a strong effort to control
himself, Cotherstone swayed a little, and instinctively put out a hand
and clutched Bent's arm. He paled, too--the sudden spasm of pallor was
almost instantly succeeded by a quick flush of colour. He made another
effort--and tried to laugh.

"Nonsense, man!" he said thickly and hoarsely. "Murder? Who should want
to kill an old chap like that? It's--here, give me a drink, one of
you--that's--a bit startling!"

Bent seized a tumbler which he himself had just mixed, and Cotherstone
gulped off half its contents. He looked round apologetically.

"I--I think I'm not as strong as I was," he muttered. "Overwork,
likely--I've been a bit shaky of late. A shock like that----"

"I'm sorry," said Garthwaite, who looked surprised at the effect of his
news. "I ought to have known better. But you see, yours is the nearest
house----"

"Quite right, my lad, quite right," exclaimed Cotherstone. "You did the
right thing. Here!--we'd better go up. Have you called the police?"

"I sent the man from the cottage at the foot of your garden," answered
Garthwaite. "He was just locking up as I passed, so I told him, and sent
him off."

"We'll go," said Cotherstone. He looked round at his guests. "You'll
come?" he asked.

"Don't you go, father," urged Lettie, "if you're not feeling well."

"I'm all right," insisted Cotherstone. "A mere bit of weakness--that's
all. Now that I know what's to be faced--" he twisted suddenly on
Garthwaite--"what makes you think it's murder?" he demanded. "Murder!
That's a big word."

Garthwaite glanced at Lettie, who was whispering to Bent, and shook his
head.

"Tell you when we get outside," he said. "I don't want to frighten your
daughter."

"Come on, then," said Cotherstone. He hurried into the hall and snatched
up an overcoat. "Fetch me that lantern out of the kitchen," he called to
the parlourmaid. "Light it! Don't you be afraid, Lettie," he went on,
turning to his daughter. "There's naught to be afraid of--now. You
gentlemen coming with us?"

Bent and Brereton had already got into their coats: when the maid came
with the lantern, all four men went out. And as soon as they were in
the garden Cotherstone turned on Garthwaite.

"How do you know he's murdered?" he asked. "How could you tell?"

"I'll tell you all about it, now we're outside," answered Garthwaite.
"I'd been over to Spennigarth, to see Hollings. I came back over the
Shawl, and made a short cut through the wood. And I struck my foot
against something--something soft, you know--I don't like thinking of
that! And so I struck a match, and looked, and saw this old
fellow--don't like thinking of that, either. He was laid there, a few
yards out of the path that runs across the Shawl at that point. I saw he
was dead--and as for his being murdered, well, all I can say is, he's
been strangled! That's flat."

"Strangled!" exclaimed Bent.

"Aye, without doubt," replied Garthwaite. "There's a bit of rope round
his neck that tight that I couldn't put my little finger between it and
him! But you'll see for yourselves--it's not far up the Shawl. You never
heard anything, Mr. Cotherstone?"

"No, we heard naught," answered Cotherstone. "If it's as you say,
there'd be naught to hear."

He had led them out of his grounds by a side-gate, and they were now in
the thick of the firs and pines which grew along the steep, somewhat
rugged slope of the Shawl. He put the lantern into Garthwaite's hand.

"Here--you show the way," he said. "I don't know where it is, of
course."

"You were going straight to it," remarked Garthwaite. He turned to
Brereton, who was walking at his side. "You're a lawyer, aren't you?" he
asked. "I heard that Mr. Bent had a lawyer friend stopping with him just
now--we hear all the bits of news in a little place like Highmarket.
Well--you'll understand, likely--it hadn't been long done!"

"You noticed that?" said Brereton.

"I touched him," replied Garthwaite. "His hand and cheek were--just
warm. He couldn't have been dead so very long--as I judged matters.
And--here he is!"

He twisted sharply round the corner of one of the great masses of
limestone which cropped out amongst the trees, and turned the light of
the lantern on the dead man.

"There!" he said in a hushed voice. "There!"

The four men came to a halt, each gazing steadily at the sight they had
come to see. It needed no more than a glance to assure each that he was
looking on death: there was that in Kitely's attitude which forbade any
other possibility.

"He's just as I found him," whispered Garthwaite. "I came round this
rock from there, d'ye see, and my foot knocked against his shoulder.
But, you know, he's been dragged here! Look at that!"

Brereton, after a glance at the body, had looked round at its
surroundings. The wood thereabouts was carpeted--thickly carpeted--with
pine needles; they lay several inches thick beneath the trunks of the
trees; they stretched right up to the edge of the rock. And now, as
Garthwaite turned the lantern, they saw that on this soft carpet there
was a great slur--the murderer had evidently dragged his victim some
yards across the pine needles before depositing him behind the rock. And
at the end of this mark there were plain traces of a struggle--the soft,
easily yielding stuff was disturbed, kicked about, upheaved, but as
Brereton at once recognized, it was impossible to trace footprints in
it.

"That's where it must have been," said Garthwaite. "You see there's a
bit of a path there. The old man must have been walking along that path,
and whoever did it must have sprung out on him there--where all those
marks are--and when he'd strangled him dragged him here. That's how I
figure it, Mr. Cotherstone."

Lights were coming up through the wood beneath them, glancing from point
to point amongst the trees. Then followed a murmur of voices, and three
or four men came into view--policemen, carrying their lamps, the man
whom Garthwaite had sent into the town, and a medical man who acted as
police surgeon.

"Here!" said Bent, as the newcomers advanced and halted irresolutely.
"This way, doctor--there's work for you here--of a sort, anyway. Of
course, he's dead?"

The doctor had gone forward as soon as he caught sight of the body, and
he dropped on his knees at its side while the others gathered round. In
the added light everybody now saw things more clearly. Kitely lay in a
heap--just as a man would lie who had been unceremoniously thrown down.
But Brereton's sharp eyes saw at once that after he had been flung at
the foot of the mass of rock some hand had disarranged his clothing. His
overcoat and under coat had been torn open, hastily, if not with
absolute violence; the lining of one trousers pocket was pulled out;
there were evidences that his waistcoat had been unbuttoned and its
inside searched: everything seemed to indicate that the murderer had
also been a robber.

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