The Mortover Grange Affair/Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ABSCONDED
That the apprentice was full of what he evidently considered to be highly important news Wedgwood saw at the first glance. Nor did Stainsby waste time in prefatory remarks: the instant he caught sight of the detective he crystallized his tidings into one sharp exclamation.
"He's off!"
Wedgwood started. Stainsby, of course, meant Thomas Wraypoole. And if Thomas Wraypoole had made himself scarce, why, then, there was strong presumption that he had good reason for flight, and he would have to be pursued. He wished now that he had kept a closer watch on him, for he knew Thomas to be a cute, sly fellow who, if he ran away, would do it cleverly. With a growl that showed a certain feeling of discomfiture, he motioned Stainsby to a seat.
"Well?" he said curtly. "Let's hear about it! Where's he off to? But, of course, you don't know that, my lad!"
"No—but it might be found out," said Stainsby. "Anyway, he is off—that's certain, I told you that he'd been away from the warehouse a great deal lately, going out of a morning and not coming back till latish at night. Well, yesterday morning he went out soon after breakfast, as had become pretty usual, but last night he never came in. This morning a man named Gregson came to the warehouse. He's a chap I've seen before now and then—I think he's had a similar business down Whitechapel way. He asked to see the housekeeper. I took him up to the living-rooms and called her. Then he told me that Mr. Wraypoole had sold him the business, stock, private furniture, everything in the place, and produced a receipt for the lot."
"How much had been paid?" asked Wedgwood quickly.
"Three hundred pounds," answered Stainsby. "I noticed that—I took care to glance at the figures."
"From what you know," said Wedgwood, "would that be a reasonable figure?"
"I should think not!" exclaimed Stainsby. "Giving it away, if you ask me! There's at least three hundred pounds worth of stuff in the warehouse now, and there's good furniture upstairs. I should think the furniture's worth three hundred."
"Um!" mused Wedgwood. "The housekeeper, now—did she seem surprised?"
"She said she was—but I'd an idea that she wasn't," replied Stainsby. "Took it quietly enough, anyway."
"Is she staying there?" enquired Wedgwood.
"Gregson asked her to stay and look after the place a bit till he could make arrangements for bringing his wife there," answered the apprentice. "She said she would."
"And you?" asked Wedgwood.
"I don't know what my position is," replied Stainsby. "I was bound to Thomas Wraypoole—apprenticed, of course. I don't think he could hand me over with the business. Gregson wants me to stop. But I don't know about it."
"Stop there a bit, anyway," said Wedgwood. "You may find something out. About Wraypoole, now—did Gregson say anything as to where Wraypoole had gone?"
"I asked him that. He said he believed Wraypoole was going to take up a foreign agency somewhere. That's all he knew."
"Did the housekeeper ask Gregson anything of that sort?"
"She didn't—that's one of the reasons I had for thinking she wasn't really surprised. I think she knew Wraypoole was going away: I think she probably knows where he is."
"Well, you keep an eye on her," counselled the detective. "Watch her movements. If Wraypoole's in London she may go to meet him. Don't show any signs of doing so, but keep your eyes skinned—I'll see you're all right. And now look here—do you know where Thomas Wraypoole kept his banking account?"
"Yes!" replied Stainsby, promptly. "London and Surburban, in Wandsworth Road—two or three hundred yards from our place."
"All right!" said Wedgwood. "I'll make a private enquiry there. Now you get back to the warehouse and do what I tell you. If anything occurs you know what to do. But say nothing to Gregson."
He sat for some time after Stainsby had gone, thinking things over. To a man of his habit of thought this last action of Thomas Wraypoole's was highly suspicious. He began to think of the previous grounds for suspicion. There was the mystery of Thomas's movements on the evening of John's murder. There was the fact that on the evening he was certainly in the neighbourhood of Handel Street. There was the visit to John's rooms first thing on the morning after the murder. There was the burning of papers and documents at those rooms; the carrying away of other things, probably destroyed elsewhere. And there was the fact that by John's death Thomas came into a nice little property, easily realizable at a time when, according to Stainsby, business was not over good with him. Altogether, thought Wedgwood, there was a certain amount of presumptive evidence against Thomas to warant. . . .
But there he stopped dead—as in every other passage of this case, he found a blank wall confronting him. He knew nothing conclusive. Suspicion, after all, he said to himself, is but suspicion, it isn't evidence. Evidence was what he wanted, even if nothing but circumstantial, and in the hope of getting something to add to his store he presently went off to the bank in Wandsworth Road and asked for an interview with its manager.
In the course of his professional career Wedgwood had more than once had occasion to interview bank managers and he was well acquainted with the fact that there is nothing to be extracted from them in respect to their customers unless very serious reason is adduced. This particular manager opened his eyes when Wedgwood explained the why and wherefore of his visit, and from a certain expression in his face the detective surmised that Thomas Wraypoole's recent doings had roused suspicion in other breasts than his own.
"Is Thomas Wraypoole actually suspected of his brother's murder?" asked the manager, assuring himself by a glance at his door that the clerk who had shown the detective in had closed it. "Actually?"
"I can't say actually," answered Wedgwood. "There are a great many circumstances which are highly suspicious. Supposing—just for the sake of supposing—that he is guilty, I have several pieces of evidence which would tell against him if they were supplemented by other pieces. I've built up a certain amount———"
"But the edifice isn't complete, eh?" interrupted the manager, smiling. "Well, I don't know where Thomas Wraypoole is—I'm of no use there. The fact is, he closed his account here yesterday, so far as we were concerned there was an end of him, you see. We don't know where he's gone. Sometimes when customers close an account, they do so by transferring it to another bank. He didn't. He just drew the whole of his balance—and there was an end of it."
"In cash?" asked Wedgwood.
"In cash! It was a considerable amount, too," replied the manager. "Under the circumstances, I can tell you something about his recent transactions with us. They didn't arouse any suspicion in me, but I was certainly interested in them."
"I should like to know," said Wedgwood. "It's what I came for."
"Well," continued the manager, "until quite recently Thomas Wraypoole's banking account was in a rather poor way. I should say his business just about kept going, and that was all. He was certainly a little pressed for money not so long ago: now and then he arranged temporary over-drafts. Then he suddenly be gan paying in considerable amounts, and he told me that by the death of his brother he had come in for a nice bit of property and was realizing it."
"Yes," observed Wedgwood. "John left him everything. About six hundred pounds, I believe."
"About that," assented the manager. "He gradually accumulated it here—in cash. I imagine he realized all the property. But only a few days ago an unusual incident occurred. He brought here a cheque on a certain private bank—Fentiman's, in Lombard Street—and asked us to have it specially cleared. It was for five thousand pounds, made payable to him. But the signature of the drawer was unusual. Instead of initials and a surname it appeared to be all one name, and whatever that name was it was utterly illegible! Our cashier brought it to me as a curiosity: I couldn't make it out—none of us could. It was a scrawl—a sheer scrawl that might have been in some foreign style of writing for anything I could tell."
"It evidently attracted you," said Wedgwood.
"It did—I never saw a signature like it. It looked to have been written with one of those wooden pens that gardeners use for the labels of plants and shrubs—you know. However, it was apparently quite in order and well-known to Fentiman's, for the cheque was cleared at once."
"Five thousand, eh?" observed Wedgwood. "And this was—when?"
"Two days ago," answered the manager.
"Then yesterday, when you say Wraypoole closed his account he would have a lot of money standing to his credit in your books?" suggested Wedgwood. "The proceeds of the sale of his brother's property and this five thousand pounds."
"He'd a balance of over eleven thousand pounds," replied the manager. "He drew the lot in Bank of England notes. They were chiefly of large denomination, but he took a certain amount in smaller notes."
"A man can do a lot of things with eleven thousand pounds at his command," remarked Wedgwood. "And he's a sharp, crafty man in my opinion, full of trickery. You haven't even an idea where he was going? I've heard that he told the man to whom he sold his business that he was thinking of taking up a foreign agency."
"Oh, I should say he's off abroad!" exclaimed the manager. "After hearing what you've told me it's the only conclusion I can come to. And if you really think that he murdered his brother———"
"I don't say that," interrupted Wedgwood. "He may have done. What I think is that if he didn't he knows who did! Or he may have a very strong suspicion. But you were saying———?"
"I was going to say that if you want him, why not try the ports if it isn't too late," said the manager. "Of course, he's got a good twenty-four hours start of you."
Wedgwood shook his head.
"If he's gone abroad," he said, "he probably went yesterday. It doesn't take long to slip across to France. I was in hopes when I came here that he'd possibly got a draft on some foreign bank from you, and that I could have traced his movements through that."
"Too cute for that!" replied the manager. "He'd his money in his pocket."
Wedgwood went away wondering what to do next. He was becoming more and more puzzled by the intricacy of the web which he had been given to take to pieces: it seemed to him that if he untied one knot it was only to find half a dozen present themselves in its place. But suddenly as he walked slowly along the gloomy streets a new idea came to him. If Thomas Wraypoole wanted to go abroad he would have to possess a passport. And Wedgwood knew something about passports. They are not got in a hurry; there are tiresome and tedious things to be done in getting them. Supposing you are a British subject, or naturalized in the United Kingdom, you have to fill up a declaration made by either a banker, or a mayor, or a magistrate, or a provost, or a justice of the peace, or a minister of religion, or a barrister-at-law, or a physician, or a surgeon, or a solicitor, or a notary public; the authorities may also require your certificate of birth and certain other evidence to show, one supposes, that you really are the person you claim to be. But that is not all. You must furnish with your application and its verification two copies of your photograph, one of which must be certified by the recommender. And you must put in your application not less than four days before the passport is to be issued, when you must pay seven shillings and sixpence for it. And even then, unless you merely wish to travel to some one country there are tiresome things like endorsements and visas and other matters to obtain and attend to—the whole business is exasperating. But Wedgwood, reflecting on it, knew that if he could obtain information that Thomas Wraypoole had recently applied for and procured a passport it would show that for some little time he had been meditating taking his departure from his native land.
The Passport Office is in Queen Anne's Gate Buildings, not such a very long way from where Wedgwood remembered the existence of these tiresome documents, and he proceeded to walk in its direction. He had reached the southern end of Westminster Bridge when, glancing aside at the crowded traffic, he suddenly caught sight of Stainsby in a taxi-cab. The apprentice was leaning out of the window, pointing the driver either to something ahead or to some shop or office on the other side of the road. And Wedgwood, fancying Stainsby to be there on some business of his new employer's turned away, looking no more. Had he contrived to catch Stainsby's eye and gone over to speak to him, the detective would have saved himself several hours of trouble and brought matters to an issue. But he attached no particular importance to Stainsby's presence there, nor in a taxi-cab; his head was still full of Thomas Wraypoole. He was wondering what he should do if he found that Thomas had got a passport. It depended, of course, if he had, on what country or countries it was available for. And there was the disturbing fact of the twenty-four hours start! That meant possible defeat for the present. And presently he encountered delay—unacquainted with its office hours he found on reaching it that the Passport Office closed its doors at four o'clock.