The Crooked Hinge Page 3

  The solicitor greeted his host and hostess with almost painful formality; and Farnleigh had drawn himself up stiffly, as though he were going to fight a duel.

  “I think,” Burrows added, “we shall be able to proceed to business soon. Mr. Page has kindly consented to act as the witness we desired______”

  “Oh, look here,” protested Page, with an effort. “We’re not being besieged in a citadel, you know. You’re one of the largest and most respected landowners in Kent. To hear what I’ve just heard from Burrows,” he looked at Farnleigh, and could not discuss the matter, “is like hearing that grass is red or water runs uphill. It’s about as reasonable, in the eyes of most people. Have you got to be so much on the defensive?”

  Farnleigh spoke slowly.

  “That’s true,” he admitted. “I suppose I’m being a fool.”

  “You are,” agreed Molly. “Thanks, Brian.”

  “Old Murray—” said Farnleigh, with a far-away look. “Have you seen him, Burrows?”

  “Only for a short time, Sir John. Not officially. Neither have the Other Side. His position is, plainly, that he has a test to apply; and in the meantime he says nothing.”

  “Has he changed much?”

  Burrows became more human. “Not much. He’s older and stiffer and sourer, and his beard is gray. Old days______”

  “Old days,” said Farnleigh. “My God, yes!” He turned something over in his mind. “There’s just one question I want to ask you. Have you got any reason to suspect that Murray isn’t straight? Wait! I know it’s a rotten thing to say. Old Murray always was too honest: transparently. But we haven’t seen him for twenty-five years. It’s a long time. I’ve changed. No possibility of crooked work, is there?”

  “You can rest assured there is not,” said Burrows grimly. “I think we have discussed that before. It was the first thing that occurred to me, of course; and, considering the steps we have taken, you yourself have been satisfied of Mr. Murray’s bona fides. Have you not?”*

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Then may I ask why you bring it up now?”

  “You will oblige me,” retorted Farnleigh, suddenly freezing up in a very passable imitation of Burrows’s own manner, “by not looking as though you thought I were the impostor and the crook. You’re all doing it. Don’t deny it! That’s exactly what you’re doing. Peace, peace, peace: I’ve been looking all over the world for peace, and where am I going to get it? But I’ll tell you why I ask about Murray. If you don’t think there is anything crooked about Murray, why have you got a private detective watching him?”

  Behind the big spectacles Burrows’s eyes opened in obvious astonishment.

  “I beg your pardon, Sir John. I have had no private detective watching Mr. Murray or anybody else.”

  Farnleigh pulled himself up. “Then who’s the other fellow down at the Bull and Butcher? You know: youngish, hard-faced chap with all the sly asides and questions? Everybody in the village says he’s a private detective. He says he’s interested in ‘folklore,’ and writing a book. Folklore my foot. He’s sticking to Murray like a limpet.”

  They all looked at each other.

  “Yes,” Burrows observed thoughtfully. “I have heard of the folklorist and his interest in people. He may have been sent by Welkyn______”

  “Welkyn?”

  “The claimant’s solicitor. Or he may have nothing to do with the case, as is most probable.”

  “I doubt it,” said Farnleigh, and the blood seemed to come up under his eyes, making his face darker. “Not all he’s interested in. The private detective chap, I mean. He’s been asking all kinds of questions, from what I hear, about poor Victoria Daly.”

  To Brian Page it seemed that values had shifted slightly, and all familiar things were becoming unfamiliar. In the midst of a debate about his right to an estate worth thirty thousand pounds a year, Farnleigh seemed more preoccupied with the commonplace—if sordid—tragedy of the previous summer. Well? Victoria Daly, an inoffensive spinster of thirty-five, strangled in her cottage by a tramp who professed to sell boot-laces and collar-studs? Strangled, curiously enough, with a bootlace; and her purse found in the tramp’s pocket when he was killed on the railway-line?

  In the midst of a silence, while Page and Molly Farnleigh looked at each other, the door of the room opened. Knowles came in with an air of equal uncertainty.

  “There are two gentlemen to see you, sir,” Knowles said. “One is a Mr. Welkyn, a solicitor. The other______”

  “Well? The other?”

  “The other asks me to say that he is Sir John Farnleigh.”

  “Does he? Oh. Well______”

  Molly got up quietly, but muscles had tightened at the corners of her jaws.

  “Take back this message from Sir John Farnleigh,” she instructed Knowles. “Sir John Farnleigh presents his compliments; and, if the caller has no name to give other than that, he may go round and wait in the servants’ hall until Sir John finds time to see him.”

  “No, come, come!” stuttered Burrows, in a kind of legal agony. “Trying circumstances—necessary to be tactful—freeze him all you like, but don’t______”

  The shadow of a smile crossed Farnleigh’s dark face.

  “Very well, Knowles. Take that message.”

  “Impudence,” said Molly, breathing hard.

  When Knowles returned he had less the air of a courier than of a sensitive tennis-ball being driven to different corners of the court.

  “The gentleman says, sir, that he deeply apologizes for his message, which was premature, and hopes there will be no ill-feeling in the matter. He says he has chosen for some years to be known as Mr. Patrick Gore.”

  “I see,” said Farnleigh. “Show Mr. Gore and Mr. Welkyn into the library.”

  * Newspaper-readers may remember, in the bitter debate which followed tragedy in the Farnleigh case, that this point was often brought up by amateurs. Having myself once wasted time on many futile theories in an attempt to solve the mystery, I feel that I had better clear it up here. The honesty and good faith of Kennet Murray may be accepted as a fact. The evidence he possessed, with regard to establishing the identity of the real heir, was genuine evidence; and, it may be recalled, was later used to establish the truth.—J. D. C.

  Chapter Three

  THE CLAIMANT GOT UP from his chair. Despite the fact that one wall of the library was built of windows, multitudinous panes set in a pattern of stone oblongs, the daylight was going; and the trees threw heavy shadows. On the stone-flagged floor there was insufficient carpeting. The heavy bookshelves were built up like tiers in a crypt, scrolled along the top. Green-shadowed light through the windows drew across the floor a silhouette of a hundred panes, stretching almost to the man who rose to his feet beside the table.

  Molly has since confessed that her heart was in her mouth when the door opened, and that she wondered whether a living counterpart of her husband might not appear from behind it, as in a mirror. Yet there was no great resemblance between these two.

  The man in the library was no heavier than Farnleigh, yet less wiry. His dark, fine hair had no gray in it, but he was going a little thin on top. Though dark of complexion, he was clean-shaven and his face was comparatively unfurrowed. Any wrinkles in his forehead or round his eyes were those of amusement rather than doggedness. For the claimant’s whole expression was one of ease, irony, and amusement, with very dark gray eyes, and eyebrows wisped up a little at the outer corners. He was well dressed, in town clothes as opposed to Farnleigh’s old tweeds.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  Even his voice was a baritone, in contrast to Farnleigh’s harsh and rasping tenor. His walk was not exactly limping, but a bit clumsy.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said with grave courtesy, but with a certain oblique look of amusement, “for seeming so insistent about returning to my old home. But you will, I hope, appreciate my motives. Er—let me present my legal representative, Mr. Welkyn.”

  A
fat man with somewhat protuberant eyes had got up from a chair at the other side of the table. But they hardly saw him. The claimant was not only studying them with interest; he was glancing round the room as though he were recognizing and drinking in every detail.

  “Let’s get down to business,” said Farnleigh abruptly. “I think you’ve met Burrows. This is Mr. Page. This is my wife.”

  “I have met—” said the claimant, hesitating and then looking full at Molly—“your wife. Forgive me if I do not know quite how to address her. I can’t call her Lady Farnleigh. And I can’t call her Molly, as I used to do when she wore hair-ribbons.”

  Neither of the Farnleighs commented. Molly was calm but flushed, and there was a dry strain about her eyes.

  “Also,” went on the claimant, “I should like to thank you for taking this very awkward and unpleasant business in such good part______”

  “I don’t,” snapped Farnleigh. “I take it in devilish damned bad part, and you might as well understand that. The only reason why I don’t throw you out of the house is because my own solicitor seems to think we ought to be tactful. All right: speak up. What have you got to say?”

  Mr. Welkyn moved out from the table, clearing his throat.

  “My client, Sir John Farnleigh—” he began.

  “One moment,” interposed Burrows, with equal suavity. Page seemed to hear a faint hiss as legal axes began to grind; as forensic sleeves were rolled up; as the conversation was being geared to the pace these gentlemen would have it take. “May I request, for the sake of convenience, that we refer to your client by some other name? He chose to give the name of ‘Patrick Gore.’ ”

  “I should prefer,” said Welkyn, “to refer to him simply as ‘my client.’ Will that be satisfactory?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Thank you. I have here,” pursued Welkyn, opening his brief-case, “a proposal which my client is prepared to submit. My client wishes to be fair. While under the necessity of pointing out that the present holder has no claim to the title and estates, nevertheless my client remembers the circumstances under which the imposture was begun. He also recognizes the present holder’s able stewardship and the fact that nothing but credit has been reflected on the family name.

  “Therefore, if the present holder will at once withdraw without making it necessary to take the matter into the courts, there will be, of course, no question of prosecution. To the contrary, my client is willing to make some financial compensation to the present holder: let us say an annuity of one thousand pounds a year for life. My client has ascertained that the present holder’s wife—née Miss Mary Bishop—has inherited a fortune in her own right; and the question of straitened finances should not, therefore, arise. Of course, I confess that should the present holder’s wife care to question the validity of the marriage on the grounds of fraudulent______”

  Again the blood had come up under Farnleigh’s eyes.

  “God!” he said. “Of all the brazen, bare-faced______”

  Nathaniel Burrows made a noise which was too polite to be called shushing, but it restrained Farnleigh.

  “May I suggest, Mr. Welkyn,” Burrows replied, “that we are here at the moment to determine whether your client has a claim? Until that is determined, any other considerations do not arise.”

  “As you please. My client,” said Welkyn, with a disdainful movement of his shoulders, “merely wished to avoid unpleasantness. Mr. Kennet Murray should be with us in a few minutes. After that I fear the result will be no longer in doubt. If the present holder persists in his attitude, then I am afraid the consequences will be______”

  “Look here,” Farnleigh interposed again, “let’s cut the cackle and get down to the horses.”

  The claimant smiled, which seemed to turn his eyes inwards with some secret joke. “You see?” he remarked. “His pseudo-gentility is so grafted on him that he cannot bring himself to say ’osses.”

  “It doesn’t bring him to giving cheap insults, in any case,” said Molly; and now it was the claimant who showed a slight flush.

  “I beg your pardon. I should not have said that. But you must remember,” said the claimant, his tone again changing a little, “that I have dwelt among wicked ways, and hardly by the springs of Dove. Have I leave to present my own case in my own way?”

  “Yes,” said Farnleigh. “Shut up,” he added to both lawyers. “This is a personal matter now.”

  As though by common consent they all moved towards the table and took chairs. The claimant sat with his back to the great window. For a time he remained thoughtful, absently patting the slight thinning patch that showed in the crown of his dark hair. Then he looked up, with the edge of mockery showing in the wrinkles round his eyes.

  “I am John Farnleigh,” he began with great simplicity and apparent earnestness. “Kindly do not interrupt me with legal quibbles at this time; I am presenting my case, and am entitled to call myself the Cham of Tartary if I feel so inclined. However, I really do happen to be John Farnleigh, and I will tell you what happened to me.

  “As a boy I may have been something of a young swine; though even now I am not certain I did not have the right attitude. My late father, Dudley Farnleigh, would put up my hackles just as much if he were alive now. No, I cannot say I was wrong, except that I should have learned more give-and-take. I quarreled with my elders for pointing out that I was young, I quarreled with my tutors because I despised every subject in which I was not interested.

  “To get down to business, you know why I left here. I sailed with Murray in the Titanic. And, from the first, I spent as much time as I could with the steerage passengers. Not, you understand, because I felt any particular liking for the steerage passengers, but simply because I hated my own crowd in first-class. This is not a defense, you know: it is a psychological account which I think you will find convincing.

  “In the steerage I met a Rumanian-English boy, about my own age, who was going out alone to the States. He interested me. His father—who could never afterwards be found—he said was an English gentleman. His mother was a Rumanian girl, a snake-dancer at a travelling circus in England during the times when she was not drinking. There came a time when real snakes would not mix with imaginary ones, and the woman was reduced to the position of part-time cook in the circus mess-tent. The boy became a nuisance. An old admirer of hers was doing well in a small way with a circus in America, and so she was sending the boy out to him.

  “He would be taught to ride a bicycle on the tight-rope, he would be taught—and how I envied him. Lord of saints and snakes, HOW I envied him! Will any right-minded boy or man blame me?”

  The claimant shifted a little in his chair. He seemed to be looking back cynically, yet with a certain satisfaction; and none of the others moved. The suave Mr. Welkyn, who seemed about to interpose with a comment or suggestion, looked quickly round at the group of faces and remained silent.

  “The odd part of it,” continued the speaker, examining his fingernails, “was that this boy envied me. His name (which was something unpronounceable) he had changed to ‘Patrick Gore’ because he liked the sound of it. He disliked circus life. He disliked the movement and the change and the din and the upset. He hated stakes driven in overnight to be pulled up in the morning, and elbows in your face at the soup-kitchen. I don’t know where he got it: he was a reserved, cold-faced, well-mannered little bounder. The first time we met we flew at each other and fought until half the steerage had to drag us apart. I am afraid that I was so enraged I wanted to go at him afterwards with my clasp-knife. He simply bowed to me and walked away; I can see him yet.—I am referring, my friend, to you.”

  He glanced up at Farnleigh.

  “This can’t be real,” Farnleigh said suddenly, and passed his hand across his forehead, “I don’t believe it. It’s a nightmare. Are you seriously suggesting______?”

  “Yes,” agreed the other, with a decisive snap. “We discussed how pleasant it would be if we could swap identities. Only as a w
ild dream of let’s pretend, of course: at that moment. You said it would never work, though you looked as though you would like to murder me to get it. I don’t suppose I ever really meant to carry out any such thing; the interesting point is that you did mean it. I used to give you information about myself. I used to tell you, ‘Now if you met my Aunt So-and-So or my Cousin This-and-That, this is what you must say to them,’ and lord it over you in a way that I do not like to remember: for this is no justification of my behavior there. I thought you were a prig and I still think so. I also showed you my diary. I always kept a diary, for the simple reason that there was nobody on earth I could talk to. I still keep one.” Here the claimant glanced up almost whimsically. “Do you remember me, Patrick? Do you remember the night the Titanic went down?”

  There was a pause.

  On Farnleigh’s face there was no expression of anger: only of bewilderment.

  “I keep telling you,” he said, “that you’re mad.”

  “When we struck that iceberg,” the other went on carefully, “I will tell you exactly what I was doing. I was down in the cabin I shared with poor old Murray, while he was in the smoking-room playing bridge. Murray kept a flask of brandy in one of his coats; and I was sampling it because they would not serve me in the bar.

  “I scarcely felt it when we struck; I question if anybody did. There was a very slight bump, hardly enough to spill a filled cocktail-glass on a table; and then the stopping of the engines. I only went out into the alleyway because I wondered why the engines had stopped. The first I knew of it came from the noise of voices getting louder and closer; and then a woman suddenly running past screaming with a blue quilt wrapped round her shoulders.”

  For the first time the claimant hesitated.

  “I am not going to bring back old tragedies by saying anything more about that part of it,” he said, opening and shutting his hands. “I will say only this, for which God forgive me, even as a boy: I rather enjoyed it. I was not in the least frightened. I was exhilarated. It was something out of the common, something to take away the ordinary sameness of everyday life; and I had always been looking for things like that. And I was so wild with excitement that I agreed to change identities with Patrick Gore. The determination seemed to come to me all at once, though I am wondering if he had thought about it for a long time.