The Hand in the Dark
On receipt of this information Merrington turned to his office
telephone, and, receiver in hand, bellowed forth peremptory instructions
which set in motion the far-reaching organization of Scotland Yard for
the capture of a fugitive from justice. Nepcote's description was
circulated to police stations, detectives were told off to keep an eye
on outgoing trains and the docks, and the entrances to the tubes and
underground railways were watched. After enclosing London, Merrington
made a wider cast, and long before nightfall he had flung around England
a net of fine meshes through which no man could wriggle.
But it is difficult even for Scotland Yard to lay quick hands on a
fugitive in the vast city of London, as Merrington well knew. While
waiting for the net to close over his destined captive, he decided in
the new strange turn of the case to investigate the whole of the
circumstances afresh. Inquiries set afoot in London, with the object of
discovering all that could be learnt of Nepcote's career and Violet
Heredith's single life, occupied an important share in Scotland Yard's
renewed investigations into the Heredith murder.
Caldew was sent to Heredith to look for new facts. He returned after a
day's absence with information which might have been obtained before if
chance had not directed suspicion to Hazel Rath: with a story of an
unknown young man who had left the London train to Heredith at Weydene
Junction on the night of the murder. The story, as extracted from an
unintelligent ticket collector, threw no light on the identity of the
stranger beyond a statement that he had worn a long light trench-coat,
beneath which the collector had caught a glimpse of khaki uniform as the
gentleman felt for his ticket at the barrier.
On that slight information Caldew had pursued inquiries across a long
two miles of country between Weydene and the moat-house, and had deemed
himself fortunate in finding a farm labourer who, on his homeward walk
that night, had been passed by a young man in a long coat making rapidly
across the fields in the direction of Heredith. The labourer had stared
after the retreating figure until it disappeared in the darkness, and
had then gone home without thinking any more of the incident. Caldew was
so impressed by the significance of the second appearance of the man in
the trench-coat that he had timed himself in a fast walk over the same
ground from Weydene to the moat-house, and was able to cover the
distance in half an hour. On the basis of these facts, he pointed out to
Merrington that, if Nepcote was the man who left the train at Weydene at
seven o'clock, he had time to walk across the fields and reach the
moat-house by half-past seven, which was ten minutes before the murder
was committed.
Merrington admitted the possibility, but refused to accept the
inference. He was forced by recent events to accept the theory of
Nepcote's implication in the mystery, but he was not prepared to believe
without much more definite proof that he was the murderer. He was still
strong in his belief that Hazel Rath was the person who had killed Mrs.
Heredith, whatever the young man's share in the crime might be. The
discovery about the man in the trench-coat was all very well as far as
it went, and perhaps formed another clue in the puzzling set of
circumstances of the case, but it did not carry them very far, and
certainly did nothing to lessen the weight of evidence against the girl
who was charged with the murder.
Merrington was forced back on the conclusion that the most important
step towards the solution of the mystery was to lay hold of Nepcote, and
to that end he directed his own efforts and that of the service of the
great organization at his command. As the days went on, he supplemented
his original arrangements for Nepcote's arrest with guileful traps. The
female dragon who guarded masculine reputations at 10, Sherryman Street,
was badgered into cold anger by pretty girls, who sought with tips and
blandishments to glean scraps of information about the missing tenant.
Scented letters in female handwriting, marked "Important," appeared in
the letter racks of Nepcote's West End clubs. Merrington even inserted
an advertisement in the "Personal" column of the _Times_, setting forth
a touching female appeal to Nepcote for a meeting in a sequestered spot.
At the end of three days, with no sign of Nepcote in that period,
Merrington was compelled to make application to the Sussex magistrates
for another adjournment of the police court proceedings, on the ground
that fresh information needed investigation before Scotland Yard could
proceed with the charge against Hazel Rath. An additional week was
granted with reluctance by the chairman of the bench, a Nonconformist
draper with political ambitions, who seized the opportunity to impress
the electors of a constituency he was nursing for the next general
election by making some spirited remarks on the sanctity of British
liberty, which he coupled with a scathing reference to the dilatory
methods of Scotland Yard. He let it be understood that the police must
be prepared at the next hearing to go on with the charge against the
prisoner or withdraw it altogether.
In the face of these awkward alternatives, Merrington pursued the quest
for Nepcote with vigour. The men working immediately under his
instructions were spurred into an excess of energy which brought about
the detention of several young men who could not adequately explain
themselves or their right to liberty in the great city of London. But
none of these captures turned out to be Nepcote. Merrington believed he
was hiding in London, but at the end of five days he still remained
mysteriously at liberty in spite of the constant search for him. He
seemed to have disappeared as completely as though he had passed out of
the world and merged his identity into a chiselled name and a banal
aspiration on a tombstone.
In the angry consciousness of failure, Merrington was not blind to the
fact that he had only his own impetuosity to blame for allowing Nepcote
to slip through his fingers. His mistake was due to his dislike of
private detectives and his unbelief in modern deductive methods of crime
solution. His own system, which is the system of Scotland Yard, was
based on motive and knowledge. If he found a strong motive for a crime
he searched for the person to whom it pointed. If there was no apparent
motive he fell back on his great knowledge of the underworld and its
denizens to fit a criminal to the crime. The system has its measure of
success, as the records of Scotland Yard attest.
Merrington had brought both methods to bear in his handling of the
Heredith case. When his original investigations failed to reveal a
motive for the murder, he determined to return to London to ascertain
what dangerous criminals were at liberty who might have committed the
murder. His own view then was that the murder was the work of an old
hand who had entered the moat-house to commit burglary, and had murdered
Mrs. Heredith to escape identification. The isolation of the moat-house,
the presence of guests with valuable jewels, the time chosen for the
crime, and the scream of the victim, tended to confirm him in this
belief. Caldew's chance discovery about Hazel Rath, and the subsequent
events which arrayed such strong circumstantial evidence against her,
brought the other side of the system uppermost and set Merrington
seeking for a motive which would accord with the presumption of the
girl's guilt. Having found that motive, he was satisfied that he had
done his duty, and he thought very little more about the case.
It was his tenacious adhesion to conservative methods which caused him
to blunder in his treatment of Colwyn's information about the missing
necklace. He rarely acted on impulse. His habitual distrust of humanity
was deep, and to it was wedded a wariness which was the heritage of long
experience. But his obstinate conviction of Hazel Rath's guilt led him
to make a false move in his effort to square the loss of the necklace
with the evidence against the girl. His own poor opinion of human nature
hindered him from seeing, as Colwyn had seen, any inconsequence between
such widely different motives as maddened love and theft; that was one
of those subtle differentiations of human psychology in which his
coarse-grained temperament was at fault. It is probable that
Merrington's dislike of private detectives contributed to obscure his
judgment at a critical moment. He was unable to see that Colwyn, by
reason of his intellect and practical capacity, stood in a class apart
and alone.
In his contemplation of the case Merrington's thoughts turned to Colwyn,
and he wondered in what direction the private detective's investigations
into the case had progressed--if they had progressed at all--since he
had seen him last. In a chastened mood, he reflected that Colwyn had not
only given him a warning which was annoyingly different from other
advice in being well worth following, but had acted generously in
informing him of the missing necklace when he might have kept the
discovery to himself, in order to score a point over Scotland Yard and
place one of the Yard's most distinguished officials in an awkward
position.
With a belated but unconscious recognition of an intelligence which far
surpassed his own, Merrington felt that it would be worth while to have
another talk with Colwyn, in the hope of finding some way out of the
perplexities in which he had plunged himself by permitting Nepcote to
escape.
The next interview, which was of his seeking, took place at Colwyn's
rooms in the evening, after Merrington had previously arranged for it by
telephone. The face of the private detective revealed neither surprise
nor resentment at the sight of Merrington. He invited his guest to sit
down, and then seated himself a little distance from the table, on which
whisky and cigars were set out.
"Well, Mr. Colwyn, you were right and I was wrong about that fellow
Nepcote," Merrington commenced, realizing that it was best to come to
the point at once. "I wish now that I had followed your advice."
"If you hadn't gone to see him perhaps you wouldn't know as much as you
know now," said Colwyn drily.
"That's one way of looking at it," responded Merrington with his great
laugh. "Unfortunately, that interview caused Nepcote to bolt, and so far
he has shown us a clean pair of heels."
"You've had no news of him?"
"Only a lot of false reports. I am convinced that he is still hiding in
London, but the trouble is to get hold of him. These infernal darkened
streets make it more difficult. A wanted man can walk along them at
night right under the nose of the police without fear of being seen."
"Have you made any fresh discoveries about the case?"
"We have ascertained that a man who may have been Nepcote was seen near
the moat-house on the night of the murder."
Colwyn nodded indifferently. The tracing of Nepcote's movements on the
night of the murder was to him one of the minor points of the problem,
like the first pawn move in chess--essential, but without real
significance, in view of the inevitable inference of the flight.
"I have been working on the case from this end," he said.
"In what direction?"
"Trying to arrive at the beginning of the mystery. I have been
endeavouring to find out something about Mrs. Heredith's earlier life.
It struck me that it might throw some light on the subsequent events."
"I have been investigating along similar lines. Shall we compare notes?"
"With pleasure, but I should think that you have been able to find out
more than I have been able to discover single-handed. For one thing, I
have seen Lady Vaughan, the wife of Sir William Vaughan, of the War