“She might do; for, of course, she can’t have the slightest suspicion that we have guessed she has some connection with the case.”
“How will you bring it on, Tempest? There isn’t much time.”
“Give notice of a motion for Friday next, and put up somebody, and I’ll have enough of a wrangle with him in court to get it into the papers, and then we’ll ask his lordship to adjourn it for a week, on the chance of a mutual settlement. It must be well reported, and I daresay that can be arranged. Very likely the lady will turn up on the following Friday.”
“But can you get the trial of Baxter postponed till afterwards?”
“Yes. I’ll put up some sort of defence, and address the magistrate at great length, and then get another remand. That will throw us over the coming sessions of the Central Criminal Court. There aren’t any sessions in August, so we will have over five weeks. We ought to know where we stand then.”
In due course affidavits were lodged; and Tempest moved on behalf of Marston, for an appointment of a receiver of the trust funds pending the decision of the court on an issue shortly to be raised as to a division of the trust funds between the surviving partners of the late Sir John Rellingham. Other counsel had been briefed for Baxter and for Moorhouse, and for three-quarters of an hour the three men wrangled before the judge. Hints of sensational disclosures, veiled comment, and flat contradiction, all did their work.
“Mr. Tempest,” said the judge, “I’m very much in the dark. Cannot you indicate in some way the nature of this trust? I’m not suggesting you should disclose anything obviously intended to be kept secret; but why was the trust created? Was it to benefit a person or persons, or was it to carry out a purpose? Obviously, under the terms of the will, and by the decree of this court, the money now belongs to the surviving partners of the firm. Why not divide it? Does a purpose still exist to which the partners desire to apply it?”
“Strange as it may appear, my lord, I can only ask your lordship to accept my word that the partners have not and have never had the remotest idea of what object was in the mind of Sir John Rellingham when he created the trust.”
“Surely that cannot be so. The will says, ‘to be applied by them to and for the purposes which I have sufficiently indicated to them.’ You see Sir John says he has indicated. It’s the past tense.”
“Quite so, my lord. The instructions were in a sealed packet. This packet was not to be opened until certain eventualities occurred; and there were certain stringent instructions left with it that the moment litigation began the packet was to be destroyed. Your lordship will remember the Crown did begin litigation, and consequently the papers were destroyed. It seems to me, my lord, that Sir John’s first idea, overriding everything else, was to preserve the secrecy he enjoined upon the trustees he appointed; and rather than that that secrecy should be waived, he preferred that the object of the trust should suffer and his partners benefit. His partners have loyally adhered to his wishes, and the money is theirs. They claim it, and they repudiate any claim to it by anybody else; but, nevertheless, they feel that the past action of the Crown could not have been anticipated by Sir John, and they are disinclined at present to dissipate what were originally trust funds. There has been no quarrel, but at the same time they differ amongst themselves as to the course which should now be pursued. May I put it that they are in a friendly state of doubt and uncertainty?”