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Page 99
"Well, I'll tell you one thing to-night, if you'll promise not to
ask any more questions. But you probably know it already."
"What is it?"
"Only that Mark Ablett did not kill his brother."
"And Cayley did?"
"That's another question, Bill. However, the answer is that
Cayley didn't, either."
"Then who on earth--"
"Have some more beer," said Antony with a smile. And Bill had to
be content with that.
They were early to bed that evening, for both of them were tired.
Bill slept loudly and defiantly, but Antony lay awake, wondering.
What was happening at the Red House now? Perhaps he would hear
in the morning; perhaps he would get a letter. He went over the
whole story again from the beginning--was there any possibility
of a mistake? What would the police do? Would they ever find
out? Ought he to have told them? Well, let them find out; it
was their job. Surely he couldn't have made a mistake this time.
No good wondering now; he would know definitely in the morning.
In the morning there was a letter for him.
CHAPTER XXI
Cayley's Apology
"My Dear Mr. Gillingham,
"I gather from your letter that you have made certain discoveries
which you may feel it your duty to communicate to the police, and
that in this case my arrest on a charge of murder would
inevitably follow. Why, in these circumstances, you should give
me such ample warning of your intentions I do not understand,
unless it is that you are not wholly out of sympathy with me.
But whether or not you sympathize, at any rate you will want to
know--and I want you to know--the exact manner in which Ablett
met his death and the reasons which made that death necessary.
If the police have to be told anything, I would rather that they
too knew the whole story. They, and even you, may call it
murder, but by that time I shall be out of the way. Let them
call it what they like.
"I must begin by taking you back to a summer day fifteen years
ago, when I was a boy of thirteen and Mark a young man of
twenty-five. His whole life was make-believe, and just now he
was pretending to be a philanthropist. He sat in our little
drawing-room, flicking his gloves against the back of his left
hand, and my mother, good soul, thought what a noble young
gentleman he was, and Philip and I, hastily washed and crammed
into collars, stood in front of him, nudging each other and
kicking the backs of our heels and cursing him in our hearts for
having interrupted our game. He had decided to adopt one of us,
kind Cousin Mark. Heaven knows why he chose me. Philip was
eleven; two years longer to wait. Perhaps that was why.
"Well, Mark educated me. I went to a public school and to
Cambridge, and I became his secretary. Well, much more than his
secretary as your friend Beverley perhaps has told you: his land
agent, his financial adviser, his courier, his--but this most of
all--his audience. Mark could never live alone. There must
always be somebody to listen to him. I think in his heart he
hoped I should be his Boswell. He told me one day that he had
made me his literary executor--poor devil. And he used to write
me the absurdest long letters when I was away from him, letters
which I read once and then tore up. The futility of the man!
"It was three years ago that Philip got into trouble. He had
been hurried through a cheap grammar school and into a London
office, and discovered there that there was not much fun to be
got in this world on two pounds a week. I had a frantic letter
from him one day, saying that he must have a hundred at once, or
he would be ruined, and I went to Mark for the money. Only to
borrow it, you understand; he gave me a good salary and I could
have paid it back in three months. But no. He saw nothing for
himself in it, I suppose; no applause, no admiration. Philip's
gratitude would be to me, not to him. I begged, I threatened, we
argued; and while we were arguing, Philip was arrested. It
killed my mother--he was always her favourite--but Mark, as
usual, got his satisfaction out of it. He preened himself on his
judgment of character in having chosen me and not Philip twelve
years before!
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