“Dear Parkyns,—I take it you will have to call Smith (Sir John Rellingham’s confidential clerk) as a witness when Mr. Baxter is tried. I very particularly wish to cross-examine him. I don’t want to arouse his suspicions by doing it before the magistrate, and I don’t want you to put him on his guard by any obvious attentions. But I wish you would pass the word along that care must be taken that he doesn’t slip through our fingers. I shouldn’t be surprised at this, if he thought it likely he would be asked certain questions which I intend to put to him. Could you also make an opportunity of taking that bank clerk to the firm’s offices, and let him see Smith, on the chance of his recognising him as Everard Clarke? If you’ll ask for Mr. Marston, I’ll arrange with him that Smith shall be called in on some excuse whilst you are there.—Yours faithfully, Ashley Tempest.”
A few days later came the reply:
“Dear Sir,—I did as you requested, but Jenks (the bank clerk) evidently did not recognise Smith. I also took Isaacson’s clerk there the next day. He was certain he had never seen Smith before. I will have Smith watched, as you suggest.—Yours respectfully, S. Parkyns.
“P. S.—At Bow Street to-morrow we are calling evidence as to the state of Mr. Baxter’s banking account. He had only a very small balance—far less than one would expect—but he had a balance. I cannot find, however, that he was in debt, and I hear he spends a lot of money in buying pictures, etc.”
“Yardley,” said Parkyns the following day, when the prisoner had been again remanded, “do you think Mr. Tempest knows young Deverell—the young brother of the new Lord?”
“Why?”
“Because there’s one line I’m puzzled to think why your lot don’t try to follow up.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I don’t know that it’s any particular business of mine to help you with the defence, but it seems so obvious to me. Young Deverell’s a rank bad lot. Oh, I know he hasn’t lost caste, or anything of that kind,” added the inspector, as Yardley attempted to interrupt; “but all the same he’s a bad lot. We’ve had a good many inquiries about him at the Yard over one thing and another, and I know he is hard up. It may not mean anything, and nothing has ever been brought home to him, but he has been mixed up in several fishy transactions that never came into court. You see, Deverell would know who his father’s solicitors were. I know myself he has borrowed money from Isaacson’s. Suppose he forged his father’s name to that bill; and then suppose he got frightened and told his father? The old man, at any rate if it were the first time, might very well try to hush it up according to the evidence Isaacson gave, and there’s no doubt whatever that young Deverell left England between that time and his father’s death. He wasn’t mentioned in Lord Deverell’s will, at least not in the newspaper note of it. I haven’t bothered to see the will itself.”
“But that doesn’t account for the Rellingham bill, Parkyns?”