TRUE to his word, he returned to his lodgings and spent the afternoon in slumber. He had the gift which all great men possess, of being able to sleep at will. He was staying at a boarding-house, and occupied a room which had originally been a side veranda, but had been walled in and converted into an extra bedroom. It was a remarkably convenient room for him, as he had discovered on previous occasions. He had but to open the window and drop on to the grass to make his exit without anybody in the house being the wiser. More to the point, he could return at any hour by the same route without disturbing the household. He had his supper, and whilst it was still very light he went out to reconnoitre Sir John’s demesne. He was able to make the circuit of the house, which occupied a corner site and was isolated by two lanes, and he saw nobody until, returning to the front of the house, a car drove up and a woman alighted.
He had no difficulty in recognising Lady Maxell, but the taxi interested him more than the lady. It was smothered with mud and had evidently come a long journey.
As evidently she had hired it in some distant town and she had not as yet finished with it, because she gave the man some directions and money, and from the profound respect which the chauffeur showed, it was clear that that money was merely a tip.
Timothy stood where he could clearly be seen, but her back was toward him all the time and she did not so much as glance in his direction when she passed through the gate and up the garden path.
It was curious, thought Timothy, that she did not take the car up the drive to the house. More curious was it that she should, at this late hour of the evening, have further use for it.
He returned to his room, full of theories, the majority of which were wholly wild and improbable. He lay on his bed, indulging in those dreams which made up the happiest part of his life. Of late he had taken a new and a more radiant pattern to the web of his fancy and——
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” he said in disgust, rolling over and sitting up with a yawn.
He heard the feet of the boarders on the gravel path outside, and once he heard a girl say evidently to a visitor:
“Do you see that funny room! That is Mr. Anderson’s.”
There was still an hour or so to be passed, and he joined the party in the parlour so restless and distrait as to attract attention and a little mild raillery from his fellow guests. He went back to his room, turned on the light and pulled a trunk from under the bed.
Somehow his mind had been running all day upon that erring cousin whose name he bore and whose disappearance from public life was such a mystery. Possibly it was Sir John’s words which had brought Alfred Cartwright to his mind. His mother had left him a number of family documents, which, with the indolence of youth, he had never examined very closely. He had the impression that they consisted in the main of receipts, old diplomas of his father’s (who was an engineer) and sundry other family documents which were not calculated to excite the curiosity of the adventurous youth.
He took out the two big envelopes in which these papers were kept and turned them on to the bed, examining them one by one. Why his cousin should be in his mind, why he should have taken this action at that particular moment, the psychologist and the psychical expert alone can explain. They may produce in explanation such esoteric phenomena as auras, influences, and telepathies, and perhaps they are right.
He had not searched long before he came upon a small package of newspaper cuttings, bound about by a rubber band. He read them at first without interest, and then without comprehension. There was one cutting, however, which had been clipped from its context, which seemed to tell the whole story of the rest. It ran:
“When Cartwright stood up for sentence he did not seem to be greatly troubled by his serious position. As the words ‘twenty years’ passed Mr. Justice Maxell’s lips, he fell back as if he had been shot. Then, springing to the edge of the dock, he hurled an epithet at his lordship. Some of his business associates suggest that the learned judge was a partner of Cartwright’s—an astonishing and most improper suggestion to make. In view of the statement that the prisoner made before the trial, when suggestions had been made in a newspaper that the judge had been connected with him in business years before, and remembering that Cartwright’s statement was to the effect that he had had no business transactions with the judge, it seems as though the outburst was made in a fit of spleen at the severity of the sentence. Sir John Maxell, after the case, took the unusual step of informing a Press representative that he intended placing his affairs in the hands of a committee for investigation, and had invited the Attorney-General to appoint that committee. ‘I insist upon this being done,’ he said, ‘because after the prisoner’s accusation I should not feel comfortable until an impartial committee had examined my affairs.’ It is understood that after the investigation the learned judge intends retiring from the Bench.”
Timothy gasped. So that was the explanation. That was why Maxell had written to him, that was why he made no reference at all to his father, but to this disreputable cousin of his. Slowly he returned the package to its envelope, dropped it into his trunk and pushed the trunk under the bed.
And that was the secret of Cousin Cartwright’s disappearance. He might have guessed it; he might even have known had he troubled to look at these papers.
He sat on the bed, his hands clasping his knees. It was not a pleasant reflection that he had a relative, and a relative moreover after whom he was named, serving what might be a life sentence in a convict establishment. But what made him think of the matter to-night?
“Mr. Anderson! Timothy!”
Timothy looked round with a start. The man whose face was framed in the open window might have been forty, fifty or sixty. It was a face heavily seamed and sparsely bearded—a hollow-eyed, hungry face, but those eyes burnt like fire. Timothy jumped up.
“Hullo!” he said. “Who are you ‘Timothying’?”
“You don’t know me, eh?” the man laughed unpleasantly. “Can I come in?”
“Yes, you can come in,” said Timothy.
He wondered what old acquaintance this was who had come to the tramp level, and rapidly turned over in his mind all the possible candidates for trampdom he had met.
“You don’t know me, eh?” said the man again. “Well, I’ve tracked you here, and I’ve been sitting............