The Avenger (Oppenheim)/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
TIDINGS FROM THE CAPE
WRAYSON paused for a moment in his work to answer the telephone which stood upon his table.
"What is it?" he asked sharply.
His manager spoke to him from the offices below.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but there is a young man here who won't go away without seeing you. His name is Barnes, and he says that he has just arrived from South Africa."
It was a busy morning with Wrayson, for in an hour or so the paper went to press, but he did not hesitate for a moment.
"I will see him," he declared. "Bring him up yourself."
Wrayson laid down the telephone. Morris Barnes had come from South Africa. It was a common name enough, and yet, from the first, he was sure that this was some relative. What was the object of his visit? The ideas chased one another through his brain. Was he, too, an avenger?
There was a knock at the door, and the clerk from downstairs ushered in his visitor. Wrayson could scarcely repress a start. It was a younger edition of Morris Barnes who stood there, with an ingratiating smile upon his pale face, a trifle more Semitic in appearance, perhaps, but in other respects the likeness was almost startling. It extended even to the clothes, for Wrayson recognized with a start a purple and white tie of particularly loud pattern. The cut of his coat, the glossiness of his hat and boots, too, were all strikingly reminiscent of the dead man.
His visitor was becoming nervous under Wrayson's close scrutiny. His manner betrayed a curious mixture of diffidence and assurance. He seemed over-anxious to create a favourable impression.
"I took the liberty of coming to see you, Mr. Wrayson," he said, twisting his hat round in his hand. "My name is Barnes, Sydney Barnes. Morris Barnes was my brother."
Wrayson pointed to a chair, into which his visitor subsided with exaggerated expressions of gratitude. He had very small black eyes, set very close together, and he blinked continually. The more Wrayson studied him, the less prepossessing he found him.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Barnes?" he asked quietly.
"I have just come from Cape Town," the young man said. "Such a shock it was to me—about my poor brother! Oh! such a shock!"
"How did you hear about it?" Wrayson asked.
"Just a newspaper—I read an account of it all. It did give me a turn and no mistake. Directly I'd finished, I went and booked my passage on the Dunottar Castle. I had a very fair berth over there—two quid a week, but I felt I must come home at once. Fact is," he continued, looking down at his trousers, "I had no time to get my own togs together. I was so anxious, you see. That's why I'm wearing some of poor Morris's."
"Are you the only relative?" Wrayson asked.
"'Pon my sam, I am," the other answered with emphasis. "We hadn't a relation in the world. Father and mother died ten years ago, and Morris and I were the only two. Anything that poor Morris possessed belongs to me, sure! There's no one else to claim a farthing's worth. You must know that yourself, Mr. Wrayson, eh?"
"If, as you say, you are the only relative, your brother's effects, of course, belong to you," Wrayson answered.
"It's a sure thing," the young man declared. "I've been to the landlord of the flat, and he gave me up the keys at once. There's only one quarter's rent owing. Pretty stiff though—isn't it? Fifty pounds!"
"Your brother's was a furnished flat, I believe," Wrayson answered. "That makes a difference, of course."
The young man's face fell.
"Then the furniture wasn't his?" he remarked.
Wrayson shook his head.
"No! the furniture belongs to the landlord. There will be an inventory, of course, and you will be able to find out if anything was your brother's."
It was obvious that Mr. Sydney Barnes had not as yet entered upon the purpose of his visit. He fidgeted for a moment or two with his hat, and looked up at Wrayson, only to look nervously away again. To set him more at his ease, Wrayson lit a cigarette and passed the box over.
"Thank you, Mr. Wrayson! Thank you, sir!" his visitor exclaimed. "You see I'm a smoker," he added, holding up his yellow-stained forefinger. "That is, I smoke when I can afford to. Things have been pretty dicky out in South Africa lately, you know. Terrible hard it has been to make a living."
"Your brother was supposed to have done pretty well out there," Wrayson remarked, more for the sake of keeping the conversation alive than anything. The effect of his words, however, was electrical. Mr. Sydney Barnes leaned over from his chair, and his little black eyes twinkled like polished beads.
"Mr. Wrayson," he declared, "a week before he sailed for England, Morris was on his uppers! He was caught in Johannesburg when the war broke out, and he had to stay there. When he turned up in Cape Town again, his own mother wouldn't have known him. He was in rags—he'd come down on a freight—he hadn't a scrap of luggage, or a copper to his name. That was Morris when he came to me in Cape Town!"
Wrayson was listening attentively; he almost feared to let his visitor see how interested he was.
"He was fair done in!" the young man continued. "He never had the pluck of a chicken, and the night he found me in Cape Town he cried like a baby. He had lost everything, he said. It was no use staying in the country any longer. He was wild to get back to England. And yet, do you know, sir, all the time I had the idea that he was keeping something back from me. And he was! He was, too! The——!"
He stopped short. The vindictiveness of his countenance supplied the epithet.
"You'll excuse me if I'm a bit excited, Mr. Wrayson," he continued. "I'll leave you to judge how I've been served when you hear all. He got over me, and I lent him nearly half of my savings, and he started back to England. He took this flat at two hundred pounds a year the very week he got back, and he's lived, from what I can hear, like a lord ever since. Will you believe this, sir! He sent back the money he borrowed from me a quid at a time, and wrote me to say he was saving it with great difficulty—out of his salary of three pounds a week. When he'd paid back the lot, I never heard another line from him. I was doing rotten myself, and he knew well enough that I should have been over first steamer if I'd known about his two hundred a year flat, and all the rest of it. What do you think of my brother, sir, eh? What do you think of him? Treated me nicely, didn't he? Nine pounds ten it was I lent him, and nine pounds ten was all I had back, and here he was living like a duke, and lying to me about his three pounds a week; and there was I hawkering groceries on a barrow, selling sham diamonds, any blooming thing to get a mouthful to eat. Nice sort of brother that, eh? What?"
Wrayson repressed an inclination to smile. There was something grimly humourous about his visitor's indignation.
"You must remember," he said, "that your brother is dead, and that his death itself was a terrible one. Besides, even if you have had to wait for a little time, you are his heir now."
The young man was breathing hard. The perspiration stood out in little beads upon his forehead. He showed his teeth a little. He was becoming more and more unpleasant to look upon as his excitement increased.
"Look here, Mr. Wrayson!" he exclaimed. "I'm coming to that. I've been through his things. Clothes! I never saw such a collection. All from a West End tailor, too! And boots! Patent, with white tops; pumps, everything slap up! Heaven knows what he must have spent upon his clothes. Bills from restaurants, too; why, he seems to have thought nothing of spending a quid or two on a dinner or a supper. Photographs of ladies, little notes asking him to tea; why, between you and me, Mr. Wrayson, sir, he was living like a prince! And look here!"
He rose to his feet and planked down a bank-book on the desk in front of Wrayson.
"Look here, sir," he declared. "Every three months, within a day or two, cash—five hundred pounds. Here you are. Here's the last: March 27—cash, £500! Look back! January 1—By cash £500! October 2—cash, £500! There you are, right back to the very day he arrived in England. And he left South Africa with ten bob of mine in his pocket, after he'd paid his passage! and from what I can hear, he never did a day's work after he landed. And me over there working thirteen and fourteen hours a day, and half the time stony-broke! There's a brother for you! Cain was a fool to him!"
"But you must remember that after all you are going to reap the benefit of it now," Wrayson remarked.
"Ah! but am I?" the young man exclaimed fiercely. "That's what I want to know. Look here! I've been through every letter and every scrap of paper I can find, I've been to the bank and to his few pals, and strike me dead if I can find where that five hundred pounds came from every three months! It was in gold always; he must have gone and changed it somewhere—five hundred golden sovereigns every three months, and I can't find where they came from!"
"Have you been to a solicitor?" Wrayson asked.
"Not yet," the young man answered. "I don't see what good he'll be when I do. Morris was always one of the close sort, and I can't fancy him spending much over lawyers."
"What made you come to me?" Wrayson inquired.
"Well, the caretaker at the flat told me that you and Morris used to speak now and then, and I'm trying every one. I'm afraid he wasn't quite classy enough for you to have palled up with, but I thought he might have let something slip perhaps."
Wrayson shook his head.
"He never spoke to me of his affairs," he said. "He always seemed to have plenty of money, though."
"Doesn't the bank-book prove it?" the young man exclaimed excitedly. "Every one who knew anything about him says the same. There was I half starved in Cape Town, and here was he spending two thousand a year. Beast, he was! I'll find out where it came from if it takes me a lifetime."
Wrayson leaned back in his chair. Nothing since the events of that night itself had appealed to him more than the coming of this young man and his strange story.
"I am sorry that I have no information to give you," he said. "On the other hand, if I can help you in any other way I shall be very glad."
"What should you advise me to do?" the young man asked.
"I should like to think the matter over carefully," Wrayson answered. "What are your engagements for to-day? Can you lunch with me?"
"I have no engagements," his visitor answered eagerly. "When and what time?"
Wrayson repressed a smile.
"I shall be ready in twenty minutes," he answered. "We will go out together if you don't mind waiting."
"I'm on," Mr. Sydney Barnes declared, crossing his legs. "Don't you hurry on my account. I'll wait as long as you like."