Page:How I Helped to Lay a Ghost.pdf/4

686 next morning Meadowcroft still showed a little mental confusion, and I decided to keep him for at least another day in the seclusion of his darkened room; so when Major sent his subordinate to ask if he might bring the Reading manager to see him, I was inflexible in refusing. Edwards told me that the horse was found grazing by the roadside near Reading; that the books were safe inside, but that a black leather bag with the cash was missing. He also added the curious fact that the clerk's hat was discovered lying at the bottom of the trap. He got this, he said, from the manager, who had brought over a new porter—a married man this time, whom he had installed in place of the missing Wells.

The day after, Meadowcroft was so much better that I allowed him to get up, but still thought it best to keep him to his room. He would have been quite reminiscent if I had suffered him, but I would not listen, telling him to reserve his story for the manager. The latter, when he arrived in the evening, proved to be not a very starched official, and I was pleased to see he greeted Meadowcroft in most friendly style.

"This is a change of scene, Mr. Herbert," said the poor fellow.

"Never mind; it might have been worse. I'm glad to find you as well as this. Do you mind my asking him what he remembers, doctor? Thank you. Well now, Meadowcroft, was there anything particular in the afternoon?"

"No; nothing particular. Just the ordinary business."

"When did you close?"

"At three as usual. I had cleared everything up at three-thirty, and told Wells to get the horse put to. I remember collecting the books and taking them out to the cart, and then I got in with the bag."

"There was about £500 in it, wasn't there? At least, that is the amount I make it from the books."

"Yes; I remember now it was about £300 in notes and £200 in cash, besides several cheques and bills paid in by customers. Except for the cheques and so on, I was going back with about as much as I brought."

"Well, what then?"

There was a long silence. I could see the clerk racking his brain for a glimmer of recollection, and was just going to put a stop to the catechism when he flung his arms wide with a hopeless gesture, exclaiming:

"It's no use! I really don't know what happened next! Everything seems a blank after that. Tell me, how long ago was it?"

"Never mind that for the present," I said. "Can you tell us what Wells did?"

"I can't say at all."

"Do you remember where he went to?" asked the manager.

"No; but why don't you ask him that?"

At this point I thought it time to interfere. Meadowcroft was becoming unduly excited; obviously, he had told all he knew, which, after all, was rather less than the manager seemed to know already. In the weak state of his brain it was not only cruel but dangerous to worry him with further questions, and to let him guess the real state of affairs might undo all the good of the rest and treatment I had been giving him.

"It certainly is a most mysterious affair," said the manager presently, as we sat together in the consulting room. "I would have trusted Wells to any extent. He was an old army man of exemplary character, and the last man on earth I should have suspected of robbing the bank, still less of adding murder to his crime. Yet still everything seems to point to his shooting at poor Meadowcroft, and leaving him for dead while he escaped with the money in the cart; and then he must have abandoned it at what he thought a convenient spot, and made off with the cash, for nothing was found in the trap but the books and the hat."

"That seems the most curious point of all," I remarked. "For how came the hat in the cart when the wearer was found lying on the ground with no sign of any struggle?"

"You are certain there was no struggle?"

"Positive. Meadowcroft would have had extensive bruises or other evidence of the fact about him if there had been. But have you traced the revolver?"

"Oh, that is very easily explained. A clerk going to a branch for the day and taking cash with him always carries one—more for the look of the thing, I admit, than anything else, for I never knew of one being used before; and whether Meadowcroft fired it in self-defence at the porter, or whether the porter fired it murderously at him, and, if so, how Meadowcroft ever let him get possession of it, I can't imagine."

"Then, after all, the revolver part of it seems a very simple affair. It was with almost a sense of disappointment that I