THE MIDDLE TEMPLE MURDER

BY

J. S. FLETCHER

1919



CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE SCRAP OF GREY PAPER

II HIS FIRST BRIEF

III THE CLUE OF THE CAP

IV THE ANGLO-ORIENT HOTEL

V SPARGO WISHES TO SPECIALIZE

VI WITNESS TO A MEETING

VII MR. AYLMORE

VIII THE MAN FROM THE SAFE DEPOSIT

IX THE DEALER IN RARE STAMPS

X THE LEATHER BOX

XI MR. AYLMORE IS QUESTIONED

XII THE NEW WITNESS

XIII UNDER SUSPICION

XIV THE SILVER TICKET

XV MARKET MILCASTER

XVI THE "YELLOW DRAGON"

XVII MR. QUARTERPAGE HARKS BACK

XVIII AN OLD NEWSPAPER

XIX THE CHAMBERLAYNE STORY

XX MAITLAND _alias_ MARBURY

XXI ARRESTED

XXII THE BLANK PAST

XXIII MISS BAYLIS

XXIV MOTHER GUTCH

XXV REVELATIONS

XXVI STILL SILENT

XXVII MR. ELPHICK'S CHAMBERS

XXVIII OF PROVED IDENTITY

XXIX THE CLOSED DOORS

XXX REVELATION

XXXI THE PENITENT WINDOW-CLEANER

XXXII THE CONTENTS OF THE COFFIN

XXXIII FORESTALLED

XXXIV THE WHIP HAND

XXXV MYERST EXPLAINS

XXXVI THE FINAL TELEGRAM




CHAPTER ONE

THE SCRAP OF GREY PAPER


As a rule, Spargo left the _Watchman_ office at two o'clock. The paper
had then gone to press. There was nothing for him, recently promoted to
a sub-editorship, to do after he had passed the column for which he was
responsible; as a matter of fact he could have gone home before the
machines began their clatter. But he generally hung about, trifling,
until two o'clock came. On this occasion, the morning of the 22nd of
June, 1912, he stopped longer than usual, chatting with Hacket, who had
charge of the foreign news, and who began telling him about a telegram
which had just come through from Durazzo. What Hacket had to tell was
interesting: Spargo lingered to hear all about it, and to discuss it.
Altogether it was well beyond half-past two when he went out of the
office, unconsciously puffing away from him as he reached the threshold
the last breath of the atmosphere in which he had spent his midnight.
In Fleet Street the air was fresh, almost to sweetness, and the first
grey of the coming dawn was breaking faintly around the high silence of
St. Paul's.

Spargo lived in Bloomsbury, on the west side of Russell Square. Every
night and every morning he walked to and from the _Watchman_ office by
the same route--Southampton Row, Kingsway, the Strand, Fleet Street.
He came to know several faces, especially amongst the police; he formed
the habit of exchanging greetings with various officers whom he
encountered at regular points as he went slowly homewards, smoking his
pipe. And on this morning, as he drew near to Middle Temple Lane, he
saw a policeman whom he knew, one Driscoll, standing at the entrance,
looking about him. Further away another policeman appeared, sauntering.
Driscoll raised an arm and signalled; then, turning, he saw Spargo. He
moved a step or two towards him. Spargo saw news in his face.

"What is it?" asked Spargo.

Driscoll jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the partly open door
of the lane. Within, Spargo saw a man hastily donning a waistcoat and
jacket.

"He says," answered Driscoll, "him, there--the porter--that there's a
man lying in one of them entries down the lane, and he thinks he's
dead. Likewise, he thinks he's murdered."

Spargo echoed the word.

"But what makes him think that?" he asked, peeping with curiosity
beyond Driscoll's burly form. "Why?"

"He says there's blood about him," answered Driscoll. He turned and
glanced at the oncoming constable, and then turned again to Spargo.
"You're a newspaper man, sir?" he suggested.

"I am," replied Spargo.

"You'd better walk down with us," said Driscoll, with a grin. "There'll
be something to write pieces in the paper about. At least, there may
be." Spargo made no answer. He continued to look down the lane,
wondering what secret it held, until the other policeman came up. At
the same moment the porter, now fully clothed, came out.

"Come on!" he said shortly. "I'll show you."

Driscoll murmured a word or two to the newly-arrived constable, and
then turned to the porter.

"How came you to find him, then?" he asked

The porter jerked his head at the door which they were leaving.

"I heard that door slam," he replied, irritably, as if the fact which
he mentioned caused him offence. "I know I did! So I got up to look
around. Then--well, I saw that!"

He raised a hand, pointing down the lane. The three men followed his
outstretched finger. And Spargo then saw a man's foot, booted,
grey-socked, protruding from an entry on the left hand.

"Sticking out there, just as you see it now," said the porter. "I ain't
touched it. And so--"

He paused and made a grimace as if at the memory of some unpleasant
thing. Driscoll nodded comprehendingly.

"And so you went along and looked?" he suggested. "Just so--just to see
who it belonged to, as it might be."

"Just to see--what there was to see," agreed the porter. "Then I saw
there was blood. And then--well, I made up the lane to tell one of you
chaps."

"Best thing you could have done," said Driscoll. "Well, now then--"

The little procession came to a halt at the entry. The entry was a cold
and formal thing of itself; not a nice place to lie dead in, having
glazed white tiles for its walls and concrete for its flooring;
something about its appearance in that grey morning air suggested to
Spargo the idea of a mortuary. And that the man whose foot projected
over the step was dead he had no doubt: the limpness of his pose
certified to it.

For a moment none of the four men moved or spoke. The two policemen
unconsciously stuck their thumbs in their belts and made play with
their fingers; the porter rubbed his chin thoughtfully--Spargo
remembered afterwards the rasping sound of this action; he himself put
his hands in his pockets and began to jingle his money and his keys.
Each man had his own thoughts as he contemplated the piece of human
wreckage which lay before him.

"You'll notice," suddenly observed Driscoll, speaking in a hushed
voice, "You'll notice that he's lying there in a queer way--same as
if--as if he'd been put there. Sort of propped up against that wall, at
first, and had slid down, like."

Spargo was taking in all the details with a professional eye. He saw at
his feet the body of an elderly man; the face was turned away from him,
crushed in against the glaze of the wall, but he judged the man to be
elderly because of grey hair and whitening whisker; it was clothed in a
good, well-made suit of grey check cloth--tweed--and the boots were
good: so, too, was the linen cuff which projected from the sleeve that
hung so limply. One leg was half doubled under the body; the other was
stretched straight out across the threshold; the trunk was twisted to
the wall. Over the white glaze of the tiles against which it and the
shoulder towards which it had sunk were crushed there were gouts and
stains of blood. And Driscoll, taking a hand out of his belt, pointed a
finger at them.

"Seems to me," he said, slowly, "seems to me as how he's been struck
down from behind as he came out of here. That blood's from his
nose--gushed out as he fell. What do you say, Jim?" The other policeman
coughed.

"Better get the inspector here," he said. "And the doctor and the
ambulance. Dead--ain't he?"

Driscoll bent down and put a thumb on the hand which lay on the
pavement.

"As ever they make 'em," he remarked laconically. "And stiff, too.
Well, hurry up, Jim!"

Spargo waited until the inspector arrived; waited until the
hand-ambulance came. More policemen came with it; they moved the body
for transference to the mortuary, and Spargo then saw the dead man's
face. He looked long and steadily at it while the police arranged the
limbs, wondering all the time who it was that he gazed at, how he came
to that end, what was the object of his murderer, and many other
things. There was some professionalism in Spargo's curiosity, but there
was also a natural dislike that a fellow-being should have been so
unceremoniously smitten out of the world.

There was nothing very remarkable about the dead man's face. It was
that of a man of apparently sixty to sixty-five years of age; plain,
even homely of feature, clean-shaven, except for a fringe of white
whisker, trimmed, after an old-fashioned pattern, between the ear and
the point of the jaw. The only remarkable thing about it was that it
was much lined and seamed; the wrinkles were many and deep around the
corners of the lips and the angles of the eyes; this man, you would
have said to yourself, has led a hard life and weathered storm, mental
as well as physical.

Driscoll nudged Spargo with a turn of his elbow. He gave him a wink.
"Better come down to the dead-house," he muttered confidentially.

"Why?" asked Spargo.

"They'll go through him," whispered Driscoll. "Search him, d'ye see?
Then you'll get to know all about him, and so on. Help to write that
piece in the paper, eh?"

Spargo hesitated. He had had a stiff night's work, and until his
encounter with Driscoll he had cherished warm anticipation of the meal
which would be laid out for him at his rooms, and of the bed into which
he would subsequently tumble. Besides, a telephone message would send a
man from the _Watchman_ to the mortuary. This sort of thing was not in
his line now, now--

"You'll be for getting one o' them big play-cards out with something
about a mystery on it," suggested Driscoll. "You never know what lies
at the bottom o' these affairs, no more you don't."

That last observation decided Spargo; moreover, the old instinct for
getting news began to assert itself.

"All right," he said. "I'll go along with you."

And re-lighting his pipe he followed the little cortège through the
streets, still deserted and quiet, and as he walked behind he reflected
on the unobtrusive fashion in which murder could stalk about. Here was
the work of murder, no doubt, and it was being quietly carried along a
principal London thoroughfare, without fuss or noise, by officials to
whom the dealing with it was all a matter of routine. Surely--

"My opinion," said a voice at Spargo's elbow, "my opinion is that it
was done elsewhere. Not there! He was put there. That's what I say."
Spargo turned and saw that the porter was at his side. He, too, was
accompanying the body.

"Oh!" said Spargo. "You think--"

"I think he was struck down elsewhere and carried there," said the
porter. "In somebody's chambers, maybe. I've known of some queer games
in our bit of London! Well!--he never came in at my lodge last
night--I'll stand to that. And who is he, I should like to know? From
what I see of him, not the sort to be about our place."

"That's what we shall hear presently," said Spargo. "They're going to
search him."

But Spargo was presently made aware that the searchers had found
nothing. The police-surgeon said that the dead man had, without doubt,
been struck down from behind by a terrible blow which had fractured the
skull and caused death almost instantaneously. In Driscoll's opinion,
the murder had been committed for the sake of plunder. For there was
nothing whatever on the body. It was reasonable to suppose that a man
who is well dressed would possess a watch and chain, and have money in
his pockets, and possibly rings on his fingers. But there was nothing
valuable to be found; in fact there was nothing at all to be found that
could lead to identification--no letters, no papers, nothing. It was
plain that whoever had struck the dead man down had subsequently
stripped him of whatever was on him. The only clue to possible identity
lay in the fact that a soft cap of grey cloth appeared to have been
newly purchased at a fashionable shop in the West End.

Spargo went home; there seemed to be nothing to stop for. He ate his
food and he went to bed, only to do poor things in the way of sleeping.
He was not the sort to be impressed by horrors, but he recognized at
last that the morning's event had destroyed his chance of rest; he
accordingly rose, took a cold bath, drank a cup of coffee, and went
out. He was not sure of any particular idea when he strolled away from
Bloomsbury, but it did not surprise him when, half an hour later he
found that he had walked down to the police station near which the
unknown man's body lay in the mortuary. And there he met Driscoll, just
going off duty. Driscoll grinned at sight of him.

"You're in luck," he said. "'Tisn't five minutes since they found a bit
of grey writing paper crumpled up in the poor man's waistcoat
pocket--it had slipped into a crack. Come in, and you'll see it."

Spargo went into the inspector's office. In another minute he found
himself staring at the scrap of paper. There was nothing on it but an
address, scrawled in pencil:--Ronald Breton, Barrister, King's Bench
Walk, Temple, London.




CHAPTER TWO

HIS FIRST BRIEF


Spargo looked up at the inspector with a quick jerk of his head. "I
know this man," he said.

The inspector showed new interest.

"What, Mr. Breton?" he asked.

"Yes. I'm on the _Watchman_, you know, sub-editor. I took an article
from him the other day--article on 'Ideal Sites for Campers-Out.' He
came to the office about it. So this was in the dead man's pocket?"

"Found in a hole in his pocket, I understand: I wasn't present myself.
It's not much, but it may afford some clue to identity."

Spargo picked up the scrap of grey paper and looked closely at it. It
seemed to him to be the sort of paper that is found in hotels and in
clubs; it had been torn roughly from the sheet.

"What," he asked meditatively, "what will you do about getting this man
identified?"

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, usual thing, I suppose. There'll be publicity, you know. I suppose
you'll be doing a special account yourself, for your paper, eh? Then
there'll be the others. And we shall put out the usual notice. Somebody
will come forward to identify--sure to. And--"

A man came into the office--a stolid-faced, quiet-mannered, soberly
attired person, who might have been a respectable tradesman out for a
stroll, and who gave the inspector a sidelong nod as he approached his
desk, at the same time extending his hand towards the scrap of paper
which Spargo had just laid down.

"I'll go along to King's Bench Walk and see Mr. Breton," he observed,
looking at his watch. "It's just about ten--I daresay he'll be there
now."

"I'm going there, too," remarked Spargo, but as if speaking to himself.
"Yes, I'll go there."

The newcomer glanced at Spargo, and then at the inspector. The
inspector nodded at Spargo.

"Journalist," he said, "Mr. Spargo of the _Watchman_. Mr. Spargo was
there when the body was found. And he knows Mr. Breton." Then he nodded
from Spargo to the stolid-faced person. "This is Detective-Sergeant
Rathbury, from the Yard," he said to Spargo. "He's come to take charge
of this case."

"Oh?" said Spargo blankly. "I see--what," he went on, with sudden
abruptness, "what shall you do about Breton?"

"Get him to come and look at the body," replied Rathbury. "He may know
the man and he mayn't. Anyway, his name and address are here, aren't
they?"

"Come along," said Spargo. "I'll walk there with you."

Spargo remained in a species of brown study all the way along Tudor
Street; his companion also maintained silence in a fashion which showed
that he was by nature and custom a man of few words. It was not until
the two were climbing the old balustrated staircase of the house in
King's Bench Walk in which Ronald Breton's chambers were somewhere
situate that Spargo spoke.

"Do you think that old chap was killed for what he may have had on
him?" he asked, suddenly turning on the detective.

"I should like to know what he had on him before I answered that
question, Mr. Spargo," replied Rathbury, with a smile.

"Yes," said Spargo, dreamily. "I suppose so. He might have had--nothing
on him, eh?"

The detective laughed, and pointed to a board on which names were
printed.

"We don't know anything yet, sir," he observed, "except that Mr. Breton
is on the fourth floor. By which I conclude that it isn't long since he
was eating his dinner."

"Oh, he's young--he's quite young," said Spargo. "I should say he's
about four-and-twenty. I've met him only--"

At that moment the unmistakable sounds of girlish laughter came down
the staircase. Two girls seemed to be laughing--presently masculine
laughter mingled with the lighter feminine.

"Seems to be studying law in very pleasant fashion up here, anyway,"
said Rathbury. "Mr. Breton's chambers, too. And the door's open."

The outer oak door of Ronald Breton's chambers stood thrown wide; the
inner one was well ajar; through the opening thus made Spargo and the
detective obtained a full view of the interior of Mr. Ronald Breton's
rooms. There, against a background of law books, bundles of papers tied
up with pink tape, and black-framed pictures of famous legal
notabilities, they saw a pretty, vivacious-eyed girl, who, perched on a
chair, wigged and gowned, and flourishing a mass of crisp paper, was
haranguing an imaginary judge and jury, to the amusement of a young man
who had his back to the door, and of another girl who leant
confidentially against his shoulder.

"I put it to you, gentlemen of the jury--I put it to you with
confidence, feeling that you must be, must necessarily be, some,
perhaps brothers, perhaps husbands, and fathers, can you, on your
consciences do my client the great wrong, the irreparable injury,
the--the--"

"Think of some more adjectives!" exclaimed the young man. "Hot and
strong 'uns--pile 'em up. That's what they like--they--Hullo!"

This exclamation arose from the fact that at this point of the
proceedings the detective rapped at the inner door, and then put his
head round its edge. Whereupon the young lady who was orating from the
chair, jumped hastily down; the other young lady withdrew from the
young man's protecting arm; there was a feminine giggle and a feminine
swishing of skirts, and a hasty bolt into an inner room, and Mr. Ronald
Breton came forward, blushing a little, to greet the interrupter.

"Come in, come in!" he exclaimed hastily. "I--"

Then he paused, catching sight of Spargo, and held out his hand with a
look of surprise.

"Oh--Mr. Spargo?" he said. "How do you do?--we--I--we were just having
a lark--I'm off to court in a few minutes. What can I do for you, Mr.
Spargo?"

He had backed to the inner door as he spoke, and he now closed it and
turned again to the two men, looking from one to the other. The
detective, on his part, was looking at the young barrister. He saw a
tall, slimly-built youth, of handsome features and engaging presence,
perfectly groomed, and immaculately garbed, and having upon him a
general air of well-to-do-ness, and he formed the impression from these
matters that Mr. Breton was one of those fortunate young men who may
take up a profession but are certainly not dependent upon it. He turned
and glanced at the journalist.

"How do you do?" said Spargo slowly. "I--the fact is, I came here with
Mr. Rathbury. He--wants to see you. Detective-Sergeant Rathbury--of New
Scotland Yard."

Spargo pronounced this formal introduction as if he were repeating a
lesson. But he was watching the young barrister's face. And Breton
turned to the detective with a look of surprise.

"Oh!" he said. "You wish--"

Rathbury had been fumbling in his pocket for the scrap of grey paper,
which he had carefully bestowed in a much-worn memorandum-book. "I
wished to ask a question, Mr. Breton," he said. "This morning, about a
quarter to three, a man--elderly man--was found dead in Middle Temple
Lane, and there seems little doubt that he was murdered. Mr. Spargo
here--he was present when the body was found."

"Soon after," corrected Spargo. "A few minutes after."

"When this body was examined at the mortuary," continued Rathbury, in
