Captain Calamity Part 36

"It vas not!" cried Mr. Solomon hotly. "Vy should I not wish him to be captured?"

The lawyer placed both hands on the back of his chair and leaned forward.

"Because," he said in a denunciatory tone, "you were the accused's partner; because, having partly financed his scheme, you wanted to reap all the profits by swindling your partner out of his share. I maintain,"

he went on, waving aside an interruption that Mr. Solomon was about to make, "that your object was to let my client capture what prizes he could, and then, by contriving his arrest, seize for yourself all the proceeds of the expedition, together with any money that might accrue from the Government."

"It is a lie, a vicked lie!" the witness almost shrieked.

"I will go even further," pursued the lawyer, ignoring Mr. Solomon's indignant protest. "I will a.s.sert that the whole thing was a plot, engineered by you as soon as my client had laid his plans before you.

With or without the connivance of Mr. Rossenbaum, the _Arrow_ was brought round to Singapore, coaled, provisioned, and armed by you, and, after you had caused the name _Hawk_ to be subst.i.tuted for _Arrow_, was handed over to my client with the understanding that it was your s.h.i.+p."

Mr. Solomon attempted to make a reply, but was so overcome with indignation, anger, and other emotions that he could only utter inarticulate sounds.

"I should like to recall the witness, Tilak Sumbowa," went on Mr. Vayne, and the s.h.i.+p-chandler sat down, biting his nails with rage.

The water-clerk came forward looking very nervous.

"I gathered from your evidence that neither you nor Mr. Solomon were in Singapore on the night the _Arrow_, or, as she was then called, the _Hawk_, left," said Mr. Vayne.

"No; Mr. Solomon left me a note at mid-day saying he was called away on business. I have it here," and the witness triumphantly produced an envelope from his pocket.

"Let me see it."

Sumbowa pa.s.sed the note to the lawyer, who scrutinised the envelope critically.

"This envelope is addressed to Mr. Solomon," he said.

"Yes. The note was lying on his desk without an envelope, so I picked one out of the waste-paper basket and put the note in it."

"And this is the identical envelope which you picked up out of the waste-paper basket?"

"Yes."

"At the time you found the note?"

"Directly I had finished reading it."

"All of which circ.u.mstance took place a few hours before the _Hawk_ left Singapore and during the time that Mr. Solomon was out of town?"

"Yes."

"Then," said the lawyer quietly, "how do you account for the fact that this envelope bears on it a postmark dated a week after the _Arrow's_ departure?"

There was a dead silence. The witness looked from one to the other with an almost pitiful expression of bewilderment.

"Well," said the lawyer after a long pause, "what explanation have you to offer us? I presume you will not suggest that the postal authorities post-date letters?"

"I--I must have made a mistake," faltered the unhappy Sumbowa. "Now I come to think of it, I didn't put the note into the envelope till some days afterwards."

"Oh yes, you've made a mistake," commented the lawyer drily, "but not exactly in the way you would have us believe. However, we will let that pa.s.s for the moment. Were you in the office yourself on the night that the _Arrow_ left?"

"No."

"What time did Mr. Solomon arrive at the office on the following morning?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you go to the office in the mornings, then?"

"Oh yes, I went to the office at eight o'clock as usual, but Mr. Solomon was not there. I waited about for a little while and then went away.

When I came back at half-past ten he had returned."

"Was there anyone in the office at the time he arrived?"

"Oh no."

"How do you know?"

"It was locked up. That was why I went away."

A gleam came into the lawyer's eye as he realised, in a flash, what he had accidentally stumbled upon. Without looking, he knew that Solomon was making frantic but stealthy signs to Sumbowa, and by a kind of hypnotism he kept the little water-clerk's attention fixed upon himself.

It would never do to let the half-caste guess what a mess he was getting his employer into. Mr. Vayne's next question, therefore, was purposely casual.

"You, yourself, had no key to the office then?"

"Oh no."

"Mr. Solomon had the only one?"

"Yes."

"Then do you suggest that he went away and left the office unlocked, because, if not, how did you get in and find the note? And if it was unlocked when you went in, how came it to be locked when you returned in the morning, you having no key and Mr. Solomon not having arrived?"

The witness looked bewildered for a moment and then, catching sight of Mr. Solomon's face, seemed to crumple up.

"Come, answer my question," rapped out the other.

"He--he must have come back to the office after I found the note,"

whimpered Sumbowa.

"You have simply been telling the court a tissue of lies from beginning to end," thundered the lawyer. "You have contradicted yourself so many times that you can't remember what you have said. Now let me tell you this, my man: unless you are prepared to confess the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you will find yourself in the dock on a charge of perjury and with the moral certainty of being sentenced to a long term of imprisonment with hard labour. Now, answer me; did you receive that note before or after the departure of the _Hawk_?"

"Af-after," sobbed the witness.

"How long after?"

"About a fortnight."