A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

The detective went to the point at once. “I thought it was about time we met, Mr. Croxton,” he began. When Lane had once made up his mind that the time had arrived for abandoning his usual reticence, he did so whole-heartedly. And his manner to-day was perfectly cordial, the more especially as he perceived Richard’s embarrassment, and, of course, was shrewd enough to divine the cause of it.

As briefly as he could, and with admirable lucidity, he narrated to his attentive listener all the things that had come to light since he had taken up the investigation; the brief history of Mrs. Morrice’s life in the little village of Brinkstone where she had made the acquaintance of Archibald Brookes the elder, and no doubt that of the two other brothers, Charles and the present Sir George; her close friendship for a few months with Alma Buckley; the discovery from perfectly reliable evidence that young Archie Brookes was neither Sir George’s nephew nor her own, although it served their purpose to pass him off as such; the admission by Mr. Morrice that he had lost or mislaid the original memorandum containing a full description of the mechanism of the safe; the fact that Archie Brookes had been brought up by the woman Alma Buckley, and had, previously to his adoption by Sir George, been engaged in a humble mercantile occupation.

There were a few things he did not mention, one of them being the fact that Sir George was suspected at Scotland Yard of being engaged in certain criminal enterprises with some leading spirits of the underworld. Also he made no mention of the anonymous letter. For the present he kept all this in reserve.

Needless to say that Richard was much astounded at these revelations, especially at the fact of the imposture of young Archie Brookes, with Mrs. Morrice’s connivance, and the loss of the important memorandum relating to the safe.

“You have not told anything of this to Miss Sheldon,” was his first comment. “Or, if you have done so, it would be under the seal of secrecy, as otherwise she would have taken me into her confidence.”

“No, I have not said a word to Miss Sheldon,” was Lane’s answer. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Croxton, in our profession we are not too prone to make confidantes of women. We respect their good and noble qualities, but we distrust their impulsiveness, their incapacity to keep a secret where secrecy is of vital importance.”

Croxton was bound to agree with this general estimate. Women were by temperament unfitted to be the coadjutors of men in transactions of this special nature.

“Now, I have told you that Mr. Morrice asked me to allow him to be joined in this investigation, and I consented because it did not seem to prejudice your interests in any way, the aim of both being to discover the guilty party. Now, it seems to me that the time has arrived, or will very shortly be approaching, when it will be my painful duty to inform him of his wife’s singular conduct in passing off this young man, brought up by the woman Alma Buckley, as her nephew. Before doing so, there is one contingency which we ought to anticipate, although I consider it a very unlikely one. Is Mr. Morrice himself a party to the deception? Is he already aware of it, and has acquiesced in it from some motive satisfactory to himself? From your close association with him, you must be well acquainted with his character, his habits of thought, his views of what are right and wrong. Do you think it likely that he would from any motives be a consenting party to such a fraud?”

And Richard’s answer was emphatic. Rupert Morrice was one of the whitest men he had ever known, abhorrent of deceit and chicanery in any form, high-minded and honourable to a fault, just a little intolerant perhaps of weakness in others. Even in his business life, his notions of rectitude were considered by those who knew him best almost quixotic, and in private life his code of morality was just as stringent. Even if he loved his wife with a passionate devotion, he would never have tacitly suffered such a thing as this. And everybody knew that while he treated Mrs. Morrice with the utmost respect and consideration, ardent love played no part in their relations. They made no pretence at being other than a very ordinary couple who jogged along placidly enough.

After a little further conversation the interview terminated, leaving the two men mutually pleased with each other. Lane thought that Richard seemed a very straightforward, transparent sort of young fellow with whom it was very difficult to associate a criminal enterprise of such depth and cunning. And Dick recognized in the detective a sound, solid man, with great gifts for his difficult task, neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but holding the just mean between the two extremes.