The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley Part 42

"Good Heavens!" he cried, on reaching the cross gallery. "It's in Mr.

Fenley's rooms!"

Mr. Fenley's rooms! No need to tell the horrified staff which rooms he meant. A fire was raging in the private suite of the dead man!

The residence was singularly well equipped with fire-extinguis.h.i.+ng appliances. Mortimer Fenley had seen to that. Hand grenades, producing carbonic acid gas generated by mixing water with acid and alkali, were stored in convenient places, and there was a plentiful supply of water from many hose pipes. The north and south galleries looked on to an internal courtyard, so there was every chance of isolating the outbreak if it were tackled vigorously; and no fault could be found with either the spirit or training of the amateur brigade.

Consequently, only two rooms, a bedroom and adjoining dressing-room, were well alight; these were burned out completely. A sitting-room on one side was badly scorched, as was a spare room on the other; but the men soon knew that they had checked the further progress of the flames, and were speculating, while they worked, as to the cause of a fire originating in a set of empty apartments, when Parker, Mrs.

Fenley's personal attendant, came sobbing and distraught to Sylvia.

"Oh, miss!" she cried. "Oh, miss! Where is your aunt?"

"Isn't Mrs. Fenley in her room?" asked the girl, yielding to a sense of neglect in not having gone to see if Mrs. Fenley was alarmed, though the older woman was not in the slightest danger. The two main sections of the building were separated by an open s.p.a.ce of forty feet, and The Towers had exceedingly thick walls.

"No, miss. I can't find her anywhere!" said the woman, well aware that if any one was at fault it was herself. "You know when I saw you. I went back then, and she was sleeping, so I thought I could leave her safely. Oh, miss, what has become of her? Maybe she was aroused by the shooting!"

All hands that could be spared from the fire-fighting operations engaged instantly in an active search, but there was no clue to Mrs.

Fenley's disappearance beyond an open door and a missing night light.

The electric current was shut off at the main at midnight, except on a special circuit communicating with the hall, the courtyard, and MacBain's den, where he had control of these things.

High and low they hunted without avail, until MacBain himself stumbled over a calcinated body in the murdered banker's bedroom. The poor creature had waked to some sense of disaster. Vague memories of the morning's horror had led her, night light in hand, to the spot where she fancied she would find the one person on earth in whom she placed confidence, for Mortimer Fenley had always treated her with kindness, even if his methods were not in accord with the commonly accepted moral code.

Presumably, on discovering that the rooms were empty, some further glimmering knowledge had stirred her benumbed consciousness. She may have flung herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping, heedless of the overturned night light and the havoc it caused. That, of course, is sheer guesswork, though the gla.s.s dish which held the light was found later on the charred floor, which was protected, to some extent, by a thick carpet.

At any rate, she had not long survived the husband who had given her a pomp and circ.u.mstance for which she was ill fitted. They were buried in the same grave, and Hertfords.h.i.+re sent its thousands to the funeral.

Soon after her fate became known, Winter wanted Furneaux, but his colleague was not in the house. The telephone having broken down, owing to the collapse of a standard, and the necessity of subduing the fire having put a stop to any immediate search being made in the park, Winter thought that the pair of them would be better employed if they transferred their energies to the local police station.

He found Furneaux seated on the lowermost step at the entrance; the Jerseyman was crying as if his heart would break, and Trenholme was trying to comfort him, but in vain.

"What's up now?" inquired the Superintendent, thinking at the moment that his friend and comrade was giving way to hysteria indirectly owing to the blow he had received.

Furneaux looked up. It was the darkest hour of the night, and his chief could not see the distraught features wrung with pain.

"James," he said, mastering his voice by a fierce effort, "my mad antics killed that unfortunate woman! She was aroused by the shots.

She would cry for help, and none came. Heavens! I can hear her now!

Then she ran for refuge to the man who had been everything to her since she was a barrack room kid in India. I'm done, old fellow. I resign. I can never show my face in the Yard again."

"It'll do you a world of good if you talk," said Winter, meaning to console, but unconsciously wounding by cruel sarcasm.

"I'll be dumb enough after this night's work," said Furneaux, in a tone of such utter dejection that Winter began to take him seriously.

"If you fail me now, Charles," he said, and his utterance was thick with anger at the cra.s.sness of things, "I'll consider the advisability of sending in my own papers. Dash it!" He said something quite different, but his friends may read this record, and they would repudiate an exact version with scorn and disbelief. "Are we going to admit ourselves beaten by a half-bred hound like Hilton Fenley? Not if I know it, or I know you. We've got the noose 'round his neck, and you and I will pull it tight if we have to follow him to----"

"Pardon the interruption, gentlemen," said a voice. "I was called out o' bed to come to the fire, an' took a short cut across the park. Blow me if I didn't kick my foot against this!"

And Police Constable Farrow, who had approached unnoticed, held out an object which seemed to be a rifle. Owing to his being seated Furneaux's eyes were on a level with it, and he could see more clearly than the others. He struck a match; then there could be no doubt that the policeman had actually picked up the weapon which had set in motion so many and such varied vicissitudes.

But Farrow had more to say. It had been his happy lot during many hours to figure bravely in the Fenley case, and he carried himself as a valiant man and true to the end.

"I think I heard you mention Mr. Hilton," he went on. "I met Dr. Stern in the village, an' he tol' me Mr. Hilton had borrowed his car."

Furneaux stood up.

"Continue, Solomon," he said, and Winter sighed with relief; the little man was himself again.

"That's all, gentlemen, or practically all. It struck me as unusual, but Dr. Stern said Mr. Hilton's motor was out o' gear, an' he wanted a car in a desp'rit hurry."

"He did, indeed!" growled Furneaux. "You're quite sure there is no mistake?"

"Mistake, sir? How could there be? The doctor was walkin' home. That's an unusual thing. He never walks a yard if he can help it. Mr. Hilton borrowed the car to go to St. Albans."

"Did he, indeed? Just how did he come to find the car waiting for him?"

"Oh, that's the queer part of it. Dr. Stern is lookin' after poor old Joe Bland, who's mighty bad with--there, now, if I haven't gone and forgotten the name; something-itis--and Mr. Hilton must have seen the car standin' outside Bland's house. But what was he doin' in Roxton at arf past twelve? That's wot beats me. And then, just fancy me stubbin'

my toe against this!"

Again he displayed the rifle as if it were an exhibit and he were giving evidence.

"Let's go inside and get a light," said Winter, and the four mounted the steps into the hall. Robert Fenley was there--red-faced as ever, for he had helped in putting out the fire, but quite sober, since he had been very sick.

Some lamps and candles gave a fair amount of light, and Robert eyed Trenholme viciously.

"So it was you!" he said. "I thought it was. Well, my father and mother are both dead, and this is no time for settlin' matters; but I'll look you up when this business is all over."

"If you do, you'll get hurt," said Winter brusquely. "Is that your rifle?" and he pointed to the weapon in Farrow's hands.

"Yes. Where was it found?"

"In the Quarry Wood, sir, but a'most in the park," said the policeman.

"Has it been used recently?"

Fenley could hardly have put a question better calculated to prove his own innocence of any complicity in the crime.

Winter took the gun, meaning to open the breech, but he and Furneaux simultaneously noticed a bit of black thread tied to one of the triggers. It had been broken, and the two loose ends were some inches in length.

"That settles it," muttered Furneaux. "The scoundrel fixed it to a thick branch, aimed it carefully on more than one occasion--look at the sights, set for four hundred yards--and fired it by pulling a cord from his bedroom window when he saw his father occupying the exact position where the sighting practiced on Monday and Tuesday showed that a fatal wound would be inflicted. The remaining length of cord was stronger than this packing thread, which was bound to give way first when force was applied.... Well, that side of the question didn't bother us much, did it, Winter?"

"May I ask who you're talking about?" inquired Robert Fenley hoa.r.s.ely.

"About that precious rogue, your half brother," was the answer. "That is why he went to his bedroom, one window of which looks out on the park and the other on the east front, where he watched his father standing to light a cigar before entering the motor. He laid the cord before breakfast, knowing that Miss Manning's habit of bathing in the lake would keep gardeners and others from that part of the grounds.

When the shot was fired he pulled in the cord----"

"I saw him doing that," interrupted Trenholme, who, after one glance at the signs of his handiwork on Robert Fenley's left jaw, had devoted his attention to the extraordinary story revealed by the detectives.

"You _saw_ him!" And Furneaux wheeled round in sudden wrath. "Why the deuce didn't you tell me that?"

"You never asked me."