                          THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

                            BY J.S. FLETCHER

                                  1922




CONTENTS

CHAPTER


      I FACED WITH REALITY

     II NUMBER SEVEN IN THE SQUARE

    III WHO WAS ASHTON?

     IV THE RING AND THE KNIFE

      V LOOK FOR THAT MAN!

     VI SPECULATIONS

    VII WHAT WAS THE SECRET?

   VIII NEWS FROM ARCADIA

     IX LOOKING BACKWARD

      X THE PARISH REGISTER

     XI WHAT HAPPENED IN PARIS

    XII THE GREY MARE INN

   XIII THE JAPANESE CABINET

    XIV THE ELLINGHAM MOTTO

     XV THE PRESENT HOLDER

    XVI THE OUTHOUSE

   XVII THE CLAIMANT

  XVIII LET HIM APPEAR!

    XIX UNDER EXAMINATION

     XX SURPRISING READINESS

    XXI THE MARSEILLES MEETING

   XXII ON REMAND

  XXIII IS THIS MAN RIGHT?

   XXIV THE BROKEN LETTER

    XXV THROUGH THE TELEPHONE

   XXVI THE DISMAL STREET

  XXVII THE BACK WAY

 XXVIII THE TRUTH

   XXIX WHO IS TO TELL HER?




CHAPTER I

FACED WITH REALITY


On that particular November evening, Viner, a young gentleman of means
and leisure, who lived in a comfortable old house in Markendale Square,
Bayswater, in company with his maiden aunt Miss Bethia Penkridge, had
spent his after-dinner hours in a fashion which had become a habit. Miss
Penkridge, a model housekeeper and an essentially worthy woman, whose
whole day was given to supervising somebody or something, had an
insatiable appetite for fiction, and loved nothing so much as that her
nephew should read a novel to her after the two glasses of port which she
allowed herself every night had been thoughtfully consumed and he and she
had adjourned from the dining-room to the hearthrug in the library. Her
tastes, however, in Viner's opinion were somewhat, if not decidedly,
limited. Brought up in her youth on Miss Braddon, Wilkie Collins and Mrs.
Henry Wood, Miss Penkridge had become a confirmed slave to the
sensational. She had no taste for the psychological, and nothing but
scorn for the erotic. What she loved was a story which began with crime
and ended with a detection--a story which kept you wondering who did it,
how it was done, and when the doing was going to be laid bare to the
light of day. Nothing pleased her better than to go to bed with a brain
titivated with the mysteries of the last three chapters; nothing gave her
such infinite delight as to find, when the final pages were turned, that
all her own theories were wrong, and that the real criminal was somebody
quite other than the person she had fancied. For a novelist who was so
little master of his trade as to let you see when and how things were
going, Miss Penkridge had little but good-natured pity; for one who led
you by all sorts of devious tracks to a startling and surprising
sensation she cherished a whole-souled love; but for the creator of a
plot who could keep his secret alive and burning to his last few
sentences she felt the deepest thing that she could give to any human
being--respect. Such a master was entered permanently on her mental
library list.

At precisely ten o'clock that evening Viner read the last page of a novel
which had proved to be exactly suited to his aunt's tastes. A dead
silence fell on the room, broken only by the crackling of the logs in the
grate. Miss Penkridge dropped her knitting on her silk-gowned knees and
stared at the leaping flames; her nephew, with an odd glance at her, rose
from his easy-chair, picked up a pipe and began to fill it from a
tobacco-jar on the mantelpiece. The clock had ticked several times before
Miss Penkridge spoke.

"Well!" she said, with the accompanying sigh which denotes complete
content. "So he did it! Now, I should never have thought it! The last
person of the whole lot! Clever--very clever! Richard, you'll get all the
books that that man has written!"

Viner lighted his pipe, thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousers
and leaned back against the mantelpiece.

"My dear aunt!" he said half-teasingly, half-seriously. "You're worse
than a drug-taker. Whatever makes a highly-respectable, shrewd old lady
like you cherish such an insensate fancy for this sort of stuff?"

"Stuff?" demanded Miss Penkridge, who had resumed her knitting. "Pooh!
It's not stuff--it's life! Real life--in the form of fiction!"

Viner shook his head, pityingly. He never read fiction for his own
amusement; his tastes in reading lay elsewhere, in solid directions.
Moreover, in those directions he was a good deal of a student, and he
knew more of his own library than of the world outside it. So he shook
his head again.

"Life!" he said. "You don't mean to say that you think those things"--he
pointed a half-scornful finger to a pile of novels which had come in from
Mudie's that day--"really represent life?"

"What else?" demanded Miss Penkridge.

"Oh--I don't know," replied Viner vaguely. "Fancy, I suppose, and
imagination, and all that sort of thing--invention, you know, and so on.
But--life! Do you really think such things happen in real life, as those
we've been reading about?"

"I don't think anything about it," retorted Miss Penkridge sturdily. "I'm
sure of it. I never had a novel yet, nor heard one read to me, that was
half as strong as it might have been!"

"Queer thing, one never hears or sees of these things, then!" exclaimed
Viner. "I never have!--and I've been on this planet thirty years."

"That sort of thing hasn't come your way, Richard," remarked Miss
Penkridge sententiously. "And you don't read the popular Sunday
newspapers. I do! They're full of crime of all sorts. So's the world. And
as to mysteries--well, I've known of two or three in my time that were
much more extraordinary than any I've ever read of in novels. I should
think so!"

Viner dropped into his easy-chair and stretched his legs.

"Such as--what?" he asked.

"Well," answered Miss Penkridge, regarding her knitting with appraising
eyes, "there was a case that excited great interest when your poor mother
and I were mere girls. It was in our town--young Quainton, the banker. He
was about your age, married to a very pretty girl, and they'd a fine
baby. He was immensely rich, a strong healthy young fellow, fond of life,
popular, without a care in the world, so far as any one knew. One
morning, after breakfasting with his wife, he walked away from his house,
on the outskirts of the town--only a very small town, mind you--to go to
the bank, as usual. He never reached the bank--in fact, he was never seen
again, never heard of again. He'd only half a mile to walk, along a
fairly frequented road, but--complete, absolute, final disappearance!
And--never cleared up!"

"Odd!" agreed Viner. "Very odd, indeed. Well--any more?"

"Plenty!" said Miss Penkridge, with a click of her needles. "There was
the case of poor young Lady Marshflower--as sweet a young thing as man
could wish to see! Your mother and I saw her married--she was a
Ravenstone, and only nineteen. She married Sir Thomas Marshflower, a man
of forty. They'd only just come home from the honeymoon when
it--happened. One morning Sir Thomas rode into the market-town to preside
at the petty sessions--he hadn't been long gone when a fine,
distinguished-looking man called, and asked to see Lady Marshflower. He
was shown into the morning-room--she went to him. Five minutes later a
shot was heard. The servants rushed in--to find their young mistress shot
through the heart, dead. But the murderer? Disappeared as completely as
last year's snow! That was never solved, never!"

"Do you mean to tell me the man was never caught?" exclaimed Viner.

"I tell you that not only was the man never caught, but that although Sir
Thomas spent a fortune and nearly lost his senses in trying to find out
who he was, what he wanted and what he had to do with Lady Marshflower,
he never discovered one single fact!" affirmed Miss Penkridge. "There!"

"That's queerer than the other," observed Viner. "A veritable mystery!"

"Veritable mysteries!" said Miss Penkridge, with a sniff. "The world's
full of 'em! How many murders go undetected--how many burglaries are
never traced--how many forgeries are done and never found out? Piles of
'em--as the police could tell you. And talking about forgeries, what
about old Barrett, who was _the_ great man at Pumpney, when your mother
and I were girls there? That was a fine case of crime going on for years
and years and years, undetected--aye, and not even suspected!"

"What was it?" asked Viner, who had begun by being amused and was now
becoming interested. "Who was Barrett?"

"If you'd known Pumpney when we lived there," replied Miss Penkridge,
"you wouldn't have had to ask twice who Mr. Samuel Barrett was. He was
everybody. He was everything--except honest. But nobody knew that--until
it was too late. He was a solicitor by profession, but that was a mere
nothing--in comparison. He was chief spirit in the place. I don't know
how many times he wasn't mayor of Pumpney. He held all sorts of offices.
He was a big man at the parish church--vicar's warden, and all that. And
he was trustee for half the moneyed people in the town--everybody wanted
Samuel Barrett, for trustee or executor; he was such a solid,
respectable, square-toed man, the personification of integrity. And
he died, suddenly, and then it was found that he'd led a double life,
and had an establishment here in London, and was a gambler and a
speculator, and Heaven knows what, and all the money that had been
intrusted to him was nowhere, and he'd systematically forged, and
cooked accounts, and embezzled corporation money--and he'd no doubt
have gone on doing it for many a year longer if he hadn't had a stroke
of apoplexy. And that wasn't in a novel!" concluded Miss Penkridge
triumphantly. "Novels--Improbability--pooh! Judged by what some people
can tell of life, the novel that's improbable hasn't yet been written!"

"Well!" remarked Viner after a pause, "I dare say you're right, Aunt
Bethia. Only, you see, I haven't come across the things in life that you
read about in novels."

"You may yet," replied Miss Penkridge. "But when anybody says to me of a
novel that it's impossible and far-fetched and so on, I'm always inclined
to remind him of the old adage. For you can take it from me, Richard,
that truth is stranger than fiction, and that life's full of queer
things. Only, as you say, we don't all come across the strange things."

The silvery chime of the clock on the mantelpiece caused Miss Penkridge,
at this point, to bring her work and her words to a summary conclusion.
Hurrying her knitting into the hand-bag which she carried at her belt,
she rose, kissed her nephew and departed bedward; while Viner, after
refilling his pipe, proceeded to carry out another nightly proceeding
which had become a habit. Every night, throughout the year, he always
went for a walk before going to bed. And now, getting into an overcoat
and pulling a soft cap over his head, he let himself out of the house,
and crossing the square, turned down a side-street and marched slowly in
the direction of the Bayswater Road.

November though it was the night was fine and clear, and there was a
half-moon in the heavens; also there was rather more than a suspicion of
frost in the air, and the stars, accordingly, wore a more brilliant
appearance. To one who loved night strolling, as Viner did, this was
indeed an ideal night for the time of year; and on this occasion,
therefore, he went further than usual going along Bayswater Road as far
as Notting Hill Gate, and thence returning through the various streets
and terraces which lay between Pembridge Gardens and Markendale Square.
And while he strolled along, smoking his pipe, watching the twinkling
lights of passing vehicles and enjoying the touch of frost, he was
thinking, in a half-cynical, half-amused way, of his Aunt Bethia's taste
for the sensational fiction and of her evidently sincere conviction that
there were much stranger things in real life than could be found between
the covers of any novel.

"Those were certainly two very odd instances which she gave me," he
mused, "those of the prosperous banker and the pretty bride. In the
first, how on earth did the man contrive to get away unobserved from a
town in which, presumably, every soul knew him? Why did he go? Did he go?
Is his body lying at the bottom of some hole by some roadside? Was he
murdered in broad daylight on a public road? Did he lose his reason or
his memory, and wander away and away? I think, as my aunt sagely
remarked, that nobody is ever going to find anything about that affair!
Then my Lady Marshflower--there's a fine mystery! Who was the man? What
did she know about him? Where had they met? Had they ever met? Why did he
shoot her? How on earth did he contrive to disappear without leaving some
trace? How--"

At this point Viner's musings and questionings were suddenly and rudely
interrupted. Unconsciously he had walked back close to his own Square,
but on the opposite side to that by which he had left it, approaching it
by one of the numerous long terraces which run out of the main road in
the Westbourne Grove district--when his musings were rudely interrupted.
Between this terrace and Markendale Square was a narrow passage, little
frequented save by residents, or by such folk familiar enough with the
neighbourhood to know that it afforded a shortcut. Viner was about to
turn into this passage, a dark affair set between high walls, when a
young man darted hurriedly out of it, half collided with him, uttered a
hasty word of apology, ran across the road and disappeared round the
nearest corner. But just there stood a street-lamp, and in its glare
Viner caught sight of the hurrying young man's face. And when the
retreating footsteps had grown faint, Viner still stood staring in the
direction in which they had gone.

"That's strange!" he muttered. "I've seen that chap somewhere--I know
him. Now, who is he? And what made him in such a deuce of a hurry?"

It was very quiet at that point. There seemed to be nobody about. Behind
him, far down the long, wide terrace, he heard slow, measured
steps--that, of course, was a policeman on his beat. But beyond the
subdued murmur of the traffic in the Bayswater Road in one direction and
in Bishop's Road, Viner heard nothing but those measured steps. And after
listening to them for a minute, he turned into the passage out of which
the young man had just rushed so unceremoniously.

There was just one lamp in that passage--an old-fashioned affair, fixed
against the wall, halfway down. It threw but little light on its
surroundings. Those surroundings were ordinary enough. The passage itself
was about thirty yards in length. It was inclosed on each-side by old
brick walls, so old that the brick had grown black with age and smoke.
These walls were some fifteen feet in height; here and there they were
pierced by doors--the doors of the yards at the rear of the big houses on
either side. The doors were set flush with the walls--Viner, who often
walked through that passage at night, and who had something of a
whimsical fancy, had thought more than once that after nightfall the
doors looked as if they had never been opened, never shut. There was an
air of queer, cloistral or prisonlike security in their very look. They
were all shut now, as he paced down the passage, as lonely a place at
that hour as you could find in all London. It was queer, he reflected,
that he scarcely ever remembered meeting anybody in that passage.

And then he suddenly paused, pulling himself up with a strange
consciousness that at last he was to meet something. Beneath the feeble
light of the one lamp Viner saw a man. Not a man walking, or standing
still, or leaning against the wall, but lying full length across the
flagged pavement, motionless--so motionless that at the end of the first
moment of surprise, Viner felt sure that he was in the presence of death.
And then he stole nearer, listening, and looked down, and drawing his
match-box from his pocket added the flash of a match to the poor rays
from above. Then he saw white linen, and a bloodstain slowly spreading
over its glossy surface.




CHAPTER II

NUMBER SEVEN IN THE SQUARE


Before the sputter of the match had died out, Viner had recognized the
man who lay dead at his feet. He was a man about whom he had recently
felt some curiosity, a man who, a few weeks before, had come to live in a
house close to his own, in company with an elderly lady and a pretty
girl; Viner and Miss Penkridge had often seen all three in and about
Markendale Square, and had wondered who they were. The man looked as if
he had seen things in life--a big, burly, bearded man of apparently sixty
years of age, hard, bronzed; something about him suggested sun and wind
as they are met with in the far-off places. Usually he was seen in loose,
comfortable, semi-nautical suits of blue serge; there was a roll in his
walk that suggested the sea. But here, as he lay before Viner, he was in
evening dress, with a light overcoat thrown over it; the overcoat was
unbuttoned and the shirt-front exposed. And on it that sickening crimson
stain widened and widened as Viner watched.

Here, without doubt, was murder, and Viner's thoughts immediately turned
to two things--one the hurrying young man whose face he thought he had
remembered in some vague fashion; the other the fact that a policeman
was slowly pacing up the terrace close by. He turned and ran swiftly up
the still deserted passage. And there was the policeman, twenty yards
away, coming along with the leisureliness of one who knows that he has a
certain area to patrol. He pulled himself to an attitude of watchful
attention as Viner ran up to him; then suddenly recognizing Viner as a
well-known inhabitant of the Square, touched the rim of his helmet.

"I say!" said Viner in the hushed voice of one who imparts strange and
confidential tidings. "There's a man lying dead in the passage round
here. And without doubt murdered! There's blood all over his
shirt-front."

The policeman stood stock still for the fraction of a second. Then he
pulled out his whistle and blew loudly and insistently. Before the
shrill call had died away, he was striding towards the passage, with
Viner at his side.

"Did you find him, Mr. Viner?" he asked.

"I found him," asserted Viner. "Just now--halfway down the passage!"

"Sure he's dead, sir?"

"Dead--yes! And murdered, too! And--"

He was about to mention the hurrying young man, but they had just then
arrived at the mouth of the passage, and the policeman once more drew out
his whistle and blew more insistently than before.

"There's my sergeant and inspector not far off," he remarked. "Some of
'em'll be on the spot in a minute or two. Now then, sir."

He marched down the passage to the dead man, glanced at the lamp, and
turning on his own lantern, directed its light on the body.

"God bless me!" he muttered. "Mr. Ashton!"

"You know him?" said Viner.

"Gent that came to live at number seven in your square a while back,
Mr. Viner," answered the policeman. "Australian or New Zealander, I
fancy. He's gone right enough, sir! And--knifed! You didn't see anybody
about, sir?"

"Yes," replied Viner, "that's just it. As I turned into the passage, I
met a young fellow running out of it in a great hurry--he ran into me,
and then, shot off across the road, Westbourne Grove way. Then I came
along and found--this!"

The policeman bent lower and suddenly put a knowing finger on certain of
the dead man's pockets.

"Robbed!" he said. "No watch there, anyway, and nothing where you'd
expect to find his purse. Robbery and murder--murder for the sake of
robbery--that's what it is, Mr. Viner! Westbourne Grove way, you say this
fellow went? And five minutes' start!"

"Is it any good getting a doctor?" asked Viner.

"A thousand doctors'll do him no good," replied the policeman grimly.
"But--there's Dr. Cortelyon somewhere about here--number seven in the
terrace. One of these back doors is his. We might call him."

He turned the light of his lantern on the line of doors in the
right-hand wall, and finding the number he wanted, pulled the bell. As
its tinkle sounded somewhere up the yard behind, he thrust his whistle
into Viner's hand.

"Mr. Viner," he said, "go up to the end of the passage and blow on that
as loud as you can, three times. I'll stand by here till you come back.
If you don't hear or see any of our people coming from either direction,
blow again."

Viner heard steps coming down the yard behind the door as he walked away.
And he heard more steps, hurrying steps, as he reached the end of the
passage. He turned it to find an inspector and a sergeant approaching
from one part of the terrace, a constable from another.

"You're wanted down here," said Viner as they all converged on him.
"There's been murder! One of your men's there--he gave me this whistle to
summon further help. This way!"

The police followed him in silence down the passage. Another figure had
come on the scene. Bending over the body and closely scrutinizing it in
the light of the policeman's lantern was a man whom Viner knew well
enough by sight--a tall, handsome man, whose olive-tinted complexion,
large lustrous eyes and Vandyke beard gave him the appearance of a
foreigner. Yet though he had often seen him, Viner did not know his name;
the police-inspector, however, evidently knew it well enough.

"What is it, Dr. Cortelyon?" he asked as he pushed himself to the front.
"Is the man dead?"

Dr. Cortelyon drew himself up from his stooping position to his full
height--a striking figure in his dress jacket and immaculate linen. He
glanced round at the expectant faces.

"The man's been murdered!" he said in calm, professional accents. "He's
been stabbed clean through the heart. Dead? Yes, for several minutes."

"Who found him here?" demanded the inspector.

"I found him," answered Viner. He gave a hurried account of the whole
circumstances as he knew them, the police watching him keenly. "I should
know the man again if I saw him," he concluded. "I saw his face clearly
enough as he passed me."

The inspector bent down and hastily felt the dead man's pockets.

"Nothing at all here," he said as he straightened himself. "No watch or
chain or purse or anything. Looks like robbery as well as murder. Does
anybody know him?"

"I know who this gentlemen is, sir," answered the policeman to whom Viner
had first gone. "He's a Mr. Ashton, who came to live not so long since at
number seven in Markendale Square, close by Mr. Viner there. I've heard
that he came from the Colonies."

"Do you know him," asked the inspector, turning to Viner.

"Only by sight," answered Viner. "I've seen him often, but I didn't know
his name. I believe he has a wife and daughter--"

"No sir," interrupted the policeman. "He was a single gentleman. The
young lady at number seven is his ward, and the older lady looked after
her--sort of a companion."

The Inspector looked round. Other policemen, attracted by the whistle,
were coming into the passage at each end, and he turned to his sergeant.

"Put a man at the top and another at the bottom of this passage," he
said. "Keep everybody out. Send for the divisional surgeon. Dr.
Cortelyon, will you see him when he comes along? I want him to see the
