“THE WAY OUT”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 516, 20 November 1928, Page 5

“THE WAY OUT”

Or “ HEMING S PROBLEM. ”

H. Maxwell.

By

CHAPTER XXIV. (Continued). “Exactly,” said Roger, ‘‘that’s the pity of it. You know what you ought to do, but you can’t go and do it. You can only sit, there and say and say and say.” “Wait he r e,” spld the other savagely, and flounced out of the room. Roger had ample leisure to reflect upon his folly in falling foul of this man. It was unintentional and stupid, the result of his wayward contrary mood. The official had been reasonably civil and not exceptionally prelix. He determined to apologise to him directly he returned. But when half an hour had elapsed, and he had not returned, the desire to apologise faded. “More red tape,” he thought drearily, “more red tape,” and feeling utterly exasperated resolved to wait no longer, and got up to go. And just then the other came back. “The First Lord will see you if you will kindly follow me. A thousand apologies for detaining you,” he said, with marked deference. “He is very good, but I really don’t think I want to see him,” said Roger. “My dear sir, he will be gravely disappointed if you don’t give him the Pleasure of seeing you: I must beg °f you to follow me. Y'our visit has happened most opportunely, and has relieved him from considerable embarrassment. Sir Edward Conway-Heming had called to make a request, which was as difficult to grant as to refuse, and your coming has relieved him from the embrarassment of doing either. He is particularly anxious to see you—you may count unon an excellent reception.” “Oh, all right,” said Roger. ‘Til follow you—” “You will also see the SolicitorGeneral ?” “Very well, very well. I will try to Put up with it,” Roger answered huffily. The official’s prophesy was in every *ay fulfilled. The kindly, simple courtesy of Roger's reception could not have been exceeded. The First Lord rose and shook hands with him. nodded toward Heming, and said, “I think you know, Edward.” then asked him to sit uown. and at once began to talk with business-like directness. 'T am told. Mr. Temple, you desire to withdraw your application for an inQuiry into the circumstances of your designation in the year 1905?” ‘ Yes.” Roger replied. ‘‘You’re doing this of your own free You are not doing it as the result of outside pressure? No one li/ts Jorced your hand? No one has been weatealßg you?” one; entirely of my own free

will; there have been no threats or pressure.” ‘‘Thank you, I am much obliged, your application will be treated as withdrawn; I am making a note of my question and your answer.” He wrote a few lines very rapidly on a sheet of foolscap, which h* showed to Heming, who said: ‘‘Yes, those are the words used.” “You might initial them, Sir Edward.” Heming scribbled his initials, and the First Lord added his and the date. When Roger had also initialled them the few lines constituted an accurate and unassailable record of the interview. “And now, Mr. Temple,” said the First Lord, ‘‘l have much pleasure in telling you that your withdrawal of your demand, your voluntary withd- wal, is the very best thing you could have done for yourself. Without it the Board, or shall I say the Government, would have had the greatest difficulty in doing you the justice your case requires. With it there is no difficulty whatever, and I can give you a definite promise of reinstatement at no distant date; in fact, as soon as the public mind has had time to quiet down. In my opinion you were very harshly used.” “Thank you,” said Roger, “I suppose you have not forgotten the other matter.” ... “You refer to the crime of which vou were convicted in the name of George Braid?” “Yes, I am on ticket-of-leave, and l am a little surprised that that is not held to be a bar to my reinstatement. I was wondering whether you knew.” The First Lord smiled with sly amusement. The notion of his not knowing anything he ought to know appealed to his sense of humour. “My friend, the Attorney General, he said, “has made an exhaustive inquiry into that case, and we now know that whoever killed Mary Barstow you as least did not. You could easily have proved an alibi if you had so chosen. I should be interested to know why you didn’t? However, that it why your being a ticket-of-leave man is no bar to. your reinstatement.” “‘Would you mind giving me a sisned memorandum to that effect?” “For what purpose, Mr. Temple? Not for publication?” “For the satisfaction of the lady I am about to marry.” "Certainly, if you give me your word of honour it will not be supplied to the Press.” "I do give it.” “Then by all means,” said the First Lord, and at once wrote out and signed the desired statement. "Thank you,” murmured Roger, "thank you.” He was profoundly moved. The strange unexpectedness of this release from all his troubles filled him with awe. How inscrutable are the workings of Fate! If he had not been

at a loose end, if he had not called at the Admiralty, if he had not been satirical at the expense of the high official, this could not have happened. And now the world was transformed for him. Cicely would be convinced of his innocence. His marriage would be a real marriage. For a moment or two the room seemed to swim round him, for the fraction of a minute he was in a trance of ecstasy, but he had a good sound head and these sensations quickly passed. When he was again completely conscious of his surroundings the First Lord was saying to Heming: “Well, Sir Edward, this has saved vou a great deal of dull and monotonous labour, and I will trouble you for those plans. For the satisfaction of my curiosity will you tell me why you wanted them? What was at the back of your mind? To be quite frank with you I was not convinced that they were essential to your investigation of the case against Mr. Temple. Will you or shall I?” he said, and stretched out his hand for the dispatch-box which lay in front of Heming. There was a queer vacant look on the latter’s face, as be slowly opened the box, and with a kind of mechanical reluctance, as though restrained by an invisible hand, extracted a large roll of paper and passed it across the table to the other. And the First Lord said to Roger: “Sir Edward has been a staunch friend of yours, Mr. Temple, full of ingenious suggestions for the establishment of your innocence. He applied for the latest plans of the Westmouth docks and arsenal to compare them with the obsolete and stolen plans, and proposed thereby to prove something or other which would be of the greatest advantage to you. I confess I couldn’t follow the argument, but I bowed to the superior subtlety of his trained, legal intelligence, and let him have them. Now that your affair is happily ended, I am intensely curious to know how he would have drawn inferences favourable to you from comparing them, and the exact use he intended to make of them.” “I intended to sell them,” said Heming abruptly. The First Lord replied with a constrained smile: “My dear fellow, a humorous notion, but rather a painful subject for joking, don’t you think?” “I intended to sell them,” Heming repeated in stark, tense tones, "and the price I had stipulated for was ‘another man’s silence.” “My dear fellow, please don’t, a joke is a joke, but ” “I have not been Roger Temple’s friend: all his troubles and sufferings lie at my door and that of my wife’s family. Between us we have ruined his life.” “Sir Edward, enough of this, please ” “My wife’s father, Lord Redderton, sold the obsolete plans, and I am the man who is responsible for the death of the hapless Mary Barstow.’’ “Heming, what’s the matter witli you? Pull yourself together,” said the First Lord sharply. Heming’s hand wandered over his forehead, and then he said: "The order for the strychnine, the

poor girl was poisoned with strychnine, is iff the possession of Carstairs, and I will endeavour to persuade him to produce it.” The First Lord had risen and passed quickly round to the side of the table where Heming sat. "You’ve been doing too much,” he said, with a hand on Heming’s shoulder, “you’ve come back to work too soon. I’m going to take you home. Is your wife in town?” “I am not going home,” said Heming. “I am going to Scotland Yard to give myself up.” “Do you know whether Lady Elizabeth is in town?” the other whispered anxiously to Roger. "I’m afraid I don’t, but I’ll undertake to look after him.” “He’ll want very careful looking after.” Both of them were gazing at Heming, who seemed wholly unconscious of their presence. He had got up and was standing by the table gently tapping his head with his fingers, while his face was a study of complicated perplexity. “Ah,” he said, with a sudden smile, “my hat.” He put it on; it had been close by him all the while, but he had not seen it. “I am going,” he said again, “to

Scotland Yard to give myself up for the murder of Mary Barstow.” He stalked out, and Roger hurried after him. “All right,” he said to the First Lord, “I’ll take care of him.” And Roger, who had wanted occupation, now realised he had got more than he had bargained for. CHAPTER XXV.—AT WILCHESTER Roger and Heming arrived at Wilchester at ten o’clock, for the former had decided to take him home, and they had just caught the last evening train. He had wired to Lady Elizabeth to say they were coming, and asking to be met. He had also wired to Cicely the magic message: “Vindicated. Have complete proof of innocence.” If the world had been tumbling in ruins about him he would have made an opportunity of sending that message somehow. But there had been no trouble or difficulty; Heming had been quite passive in his hands. “Can you direct me to Scotland Yard?” he had said when Roger came abreast of him outside the Admiralty. “Certainly, I’ll go with you,” was the answer, and he made no demur when Roger put him into a taxi and told the cabman to drive to the railway terminus. “You’ve been in prison and know all the ropes,” he said, “so you are just the man to see me through.” “I’ll see you through,” Roger answered, and got %he tickets and arranged for a reserved compartment and got Heming into it without any protest on his part. Scotland Yard and his intention to give himself up had passed clean from his recollection. His brain was now centred on the Westmouth plans, and how pleased Lady Elizabeth would be when heard he had got them, for he thought they were still in his dispatch box. On the journey down he chattered incessantly of Carstairs, and how loathsome was the calling of a paid spy. “Who is Carstairs, Roger? Well, we know now who he is. He was in that old affair of yours with Compton—great rascal Carstairs. Dreadful to be in such a man’s power. Horrible the way he showed me up to Elizabeth, and equally horrible the way he showed her up to me. Still there’ll be no public exposure now we’ve got the plans, and you and Cicely will be able eventually to marry. Elizabeth and I were dreadfully distressed about you both.” Thanks to his artless chatter Roger obtained a fairly accurate idea of what had occurred at Wilchester in his absence, and of the meaning of Heming’s visit to the Admiralty. They were duly met by the car, and drove rapidly out to Heming’s country home. Roger was astonished at the animation and excitement in the streets of the little town as they passed through them, until he caught sight of one of the “Gazette’s” placards, which explained everything, announcing in enormous head-lines and a special edition: THE RAY'AIOND COAIPTON AIURDER SENSATIONAL ARREST OF DR. CARSTAIRS Heming fortunately noticed nothing.

Roger remembered a point, which had greatly puzzled him: why had Carstairs delayed so many years to blackmail Heming? This arrest seemed to suggest the answer that the delay was caused by Compton: that Compton somehow or other had stood in his way. The blackmailing did not begin till after Compton was dead. Lady Elizabeth had been expecting them in great anxiety. “What’s the matter? What has happened?’’ “Nothing, my dear, nothing, I’ve got the plans,” said Heming, in his natural manner. “Is Carstairs here? He ought to have them at once, for they must positively be returned not later than the day after to-morrow. I can’t tell you the fuss they made about letting me have them at all.” Lady Elizabeth was horrified at the indiscretion of this disclosure before the servants, but it was useful in that it prepared her for what Roger had to tell her, viz.: that her husband was btfreft of reason. She bore the blow with extraordinary fortitude: all she said at the time was: “How can I be surprised? The wonder is not that he has lost his reason, but that I have preserved my own.” Heming proved as docile as could be. He seemed to look to Roger for orders, which he obeyed implicitly when given. He was asked not to talk, and didn’t. He was persuaded to eat some supper and go to bed, and readily consented not to get up in the morning till the doctor had seen him. He was soundly asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. And Lady Elizabeth and Roger talked far into the night, and when

they separated each knew all that the other had to tell. “I shall telegraph for Cicely to come home to-morrow, Roger.” “Yes, I think she ought to be here.” “And I shall tell her everything.” “Everything ?” “Everything.” “As you think best,” said Roger. When she had retired he found a letter addressed to Heming, marked “very urgent,” lying on the hall table, and recognising Carstairs’s handwriting he did not scruple to open it This is what he read: “I count upon you giving me every assistance. Your need is every bit as desperate as mine. If I go under, so do you. Come and see me tomorrow without fail. R.C.” CHAPTER XXVI.—COMMITTED FOR TRIAL. There was a full bench of magistrates when Dr. Reginald Carstairs was brought up at the Wilchester Police Court at tw-elve o'clock next day and formally charged with the wilful murder of Raymond Compton. The little court was crowded to suffocation, and there were two persons in it who were the cynosure of all eyes. These were Jane Finlay and Alexander Stone. Jahe’s enjoyment of her own importance was unconcealed. Stone’s face wore its sternest and grimmest aspect, he spoke to no one: his very aloofness made him prominent. The one had ferreted out the criminal, the other had seen the crime committed; how could the good folks of Wilchester help regarding them with wonder and awe?

But if Stone wrapped himself in a mantle of reticence and mystery, Jane was only too pleased to tell all and sundry anything she knew' about anything and anybody; she was still talking when the magistrates took their seats, and was only suppressed with difficulty. When Carstairs stepped into the dock, a dapper figure, with no perceptible diminution of his normal jauntiness and ease of manner, she pointed her finger at him and murmured audibly: “Ah, that’s him, poisoned me in my legs, for weeks together, under old Thrippence’s nose, unbeknownst, he did.” She was warned to keep quiet, and the proceedings began. "Are you represented by counsel?” the chairman asked the prisoner. “No, not at this stage. I prefer to represent myself.” (To he continued)