The Witness for the Defense by A. E. W. Mason (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📖

one of Marie Antoinette at Lord Mirliton's sale. You asked a question as to its authenticity in Notes and Queries. It was answered—"

Mr. Hazlewood broke in excitedly:

"By a man called Thresk. That is why the name was familiar to me. But I could not remember." He turned upon his sister. "It is your fault, Margaret. You took my copy of Notes and Queries away with you. Dick noticed it and told me."

"Dick!" Pettifer exclaimed in alarm. But the alarm passed. "He cannot have guessed why."

Mrs. Pettifer was clear upon the point.

"No. I took the magazine because of a remark which Robert made to you.
Dick did not hear it. No, he cannot have guessed why."

"For it's important he should have no suspicion whatever of what I propose that you should do, Hazlewood," Pettifer said gravely. "I propose that we should take a lesson from the legal processes of another country. It may work, it may not, but to my mind it is our only chance."

"Let me hear!" said Hazlewood.

"Thresk is an authority on old silver and miniatures. He has a valuable collection himself. His advice is sought by people in the trade. You know what collectors are. Get him down to see your collection. It wouldn't be the first time that you have invited a stranger to pass a night in your house for that purpose, would it?"

"No."

"And the invitation has often been accepted?"

"Well—sometimes."

"We must hope that it will be this time. Get Thresk down to Little
Beeding upon that excuse. Then confront him unexpectedly with Mrs.
Ballantyne. And let me be there."

Such was the plan which Pettifer suggested. A period of silence followed upon his words. Even Mr. Hazlewood, in the extremity of his distress, recoiled from it.

"It would look like a trap."

Mr. Pettifer thumped his table impatiently.

"Let's be frank, for Heaven's sake. It wouldn't merely look like a trap, it would be one. It wouldn't be at all a pretty thing to do, but there's this marriage!"

"No, I couldn't do it," said Hazlewood.

"Very well. There's no more to be said."

Pettifer himself had no liking for the plan. It had been his intention originally to let Hazlewood know that if he wished to get into communication with Thresk there was a means by which he could do it. But the fact of Dick's engagement had carried him still further, and now that he had read the evidence of the trial carefully there was a real anxiety in his mind. Pettifer sealed up the cuttings in a fresh envelope and gave them to Hazlewood and went out with him to the door.

"Of course," said the old man, "if your legal experience, Robert, leads you to think that we should be justified—"

"But it doesn't," Pettifer was quick to interpose. He recognised his brother-in-law's intention to throw the discredit of the trick upon his shoulders but he would have none of it. "No, Hazlewood," he said cheerfully: "it's not a plan which a high-class lawyer would be likely to commend to a client."

"Then I am afraid that I couldn't do it."

"All right," said Pettifer with his hand upon the latch of the front door. "Thresk's chambers are in King's Bench Walk." He added the number.

"I simply couldn't think of it," Hazlewood repeated as he crossed the pavement to his car.

"Perhaps not," said Pettifer. "You have the envelope? Yes. Choose an evening towards the end of the week, a Friday will be your best chance of getting him."

"I will do nothing of the kind, Pettifer."

"And let me know when he is coming. Goodbye."

The car carried Mr. Hazlewood away still protesting that he really couldn't think of it for an instant. But he thought a good deal of it during the next week and his temper did not improve. "Pettifer has rubbed off the finer edges of his nature," he said to himself. "It is a pity—a great pity. But thirty years of life in a lawyer's office must no doubt have that effect. I regret very much that Pettifer should have imagined that I would condescend to such a scheme."

CHAPTER XX ON THE DOWNS

They went up by the steep chalk road which skirts the park wall to the top of the conical hill above the race-course. An escarpment of grass banks guards a hollow like a shallow crater on the very summit. They rode round it upon the rim, now facing the black slope of Charlton Forest across the valley to the north, now looking out over the plain and Chichester. Thirty miles away above the sea the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight gleamed under their thatch of dark turf. It was not yet nine in the morning. Later the day would climb dustily to noon; now it had the wonder and the stillness of great beginnings. A faint haze like a veil at the edges of the sky and a freshness of the air made the world magical to these two who rode high above weald and sea. Stella looked downwards to the silver flash of the broad water west of Chichester spire.

"That way they came, perhaps on a day like this," she said slowly, "those old centurions."

"Your thoughts go back," said Dick Hazlewood with a laugh.

"Not so far as you think," cried Stella, and suddenly her cheeks took fire and a smile dimpled them. "Oh, I dare to think of many things to-day."

She rode down the steep grass slope towards the race-course with Dick at her side. It was the first morning they had ridden together since the night of the dinner-party at Little Beeding. Mr. Hazlewood was at this moment ordering his car so that he might drive in to the town and learn what Pettifer had discovered in the cuttings from the newspapers. But they were quite unaware of the plot which was being hatched against them. They went forward under the high beech-trees watching for the great roots which stretched across their path, and talking little. An open way between wooden posts led them now on to turf and gave them the freedom of the downs. They saw no one. With the larks and the field-fares they had the world to themselves; and in the shade beneath the hedges the dew still sparkled on the grass. They left the long arm of Halnaker Down upon their right, its old mill standing up on the edge like some lighthouse on a bluff of the sea, and crossing the high road from Up-Waltham rode along a narrow glade amongst beeches and nut-trees and small oaks and bushes of wild roses. Open spaces came again; below them were the woods and the green country of Slindon and the deep grass of Dale Park. And so they drew near to Gumber Corner where Stane Street climbs over Bignor Hill. Here Dick Hazlewood halted.

"I suppose we turn."

"Not to-day," said Stella, and Dick turned to her with surprise. Always before they had stopped at this point and always by Stella's wish. Either she was tired or was needed at home or had letters to write—always there had been some excuse and no reason. Dick Hazlewood had come to believe that she would not pass this point, that the down land beyond was a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground on which she would not trespass. He had wondered why, but his instinct had warned him from questions. He had always turned at this spot immediately, as if he believed the excuse which she had ready.

Stella noticed the surprise upon his face; and the blushes rose again in her cheeks.

"You knew that I would not go beyond," she said.

"Yes."

"But you did not know why?" There was a note of urgency in her voice.

"I guessed," he said. "I mean I played with guesses—oh not seriously," and he laughed. "There runs Stane Street from Chichester to London and through London to the great North Wall. Up that road the Romans marched and back by that road they returned to their galleys in the water there by Chichester. I pictured you living in those days, a Boadicea of the Weald who had set her heart, against her will, on some dashing captain of old Rome camped here on the top of Bignor Hill. You crept from your own people at night to meet him in the lane at the bottom. Then came week after week when the street rang with the tramp of soldiers returning from London and Lichfield and the North to embark in their boats for Gaul and Rome."

"They took my captain with them?" cried Stella, laughing with him at the conceit.

"Yes, so my fable ran. He pined for the circus and the theatre and the painted ladies, so he went willingly."

"The brute," cried Stella. "And so I broke my heart over a decadent philanderer in a suit of bright brass clothes and remember it thirteen hundred years afterwards in another life! Thank you, Captain Hazlewood!"

"No, you don't actually remember it, Stella, but you have a feeling that round about Stane Street you once suffered great humiliation and unhappiness." And suddenly Stella rode swiftly past him, but in a moment she waited for him and showed him a face of smiles.

"You see I have crossed Stane Street to-day, Dick," she said. "We'll ride on to Arundel."

"Yes," answered Dick, "my story won't do," and he remembered a sentence of hers spoken an hour and a half ago: "My thoughts do not go back as far as you think."

At all events she was emancipated to-day, for they rode on until at the end of a long gentle slope the great arch of the gate into Arundel Park gleamed white in a line of tall dark trees.

CHAPTER XXI THE LETTER IS WRITTEN

But Stella's confidence did not live long. Mr. Hazlewood was a child at deceptions; and day by day his anxieties increased. His friends argued with him—his folly and weakness were the themes—and he must needs repel the argument though his thoughts echoed every word they used. Never was a man brought to such a piteous depth of misery by the practice of his own theories. He sat by the hour at his desk, burying his face amongst his papers if Dick came into the room, with a great show of occupation. He could hardly bear to contemplate the marriage of his son, yet day and night he must think of it and search for expedients which might put an end to the trouble and let him walk free again with his head raised high. But there were only the two expedients. He must speak out his fears that justice had miscarried, and that device his vanity forbade; or he must adopt Pettifer's suggestion, and from that he shrank almost as much. He began to resent the presence of Stella Ballantyne and he showed it. Sometimes a friendliness, so excessive that it was almost hysterical, betrayed him; more usually a discomfort and constraint. He avoided her if by any means he could; if he could not quite avoid her an excuse of business was always on his lips.

"Your father hates me, Dick," she said. "He was my friend until I touched his own life. Then I was in the black books in a second."

Dick would not hear of it.

"You were never in the black books at all, Stella," he said, comforting her as well as he could. "We knew that there would be a little struggle, didn't we? But the worst of that's over. You make friends daily."

"Not with your father, Dick. I go back with him. Ever since that night—it's three weeks ago now—when you took me home from Little Beeding."

"No," cried Dick, but Stella nodded her head gloomily.

"Mr. Pettifer dined here that night. He's an enemy of mine."

"Stella," young Hazlewood remonstrated, "you see enemies everywhere," and upon that Stella broke out with a quivering troubled face.

"Is it wonderful? Oh, Dick, I couldn't lose you! A month ago—before that night—yes. Nothing had been said. But now! I couldn't, I couldn't! I have often thought it would be better for me to go right away and never see you again. And—and I have tried to tell you something, Dick, ever so many times."

"Yes?" said Dick. He slipped his arm through hers and held her close to him, as though to give her courage and security. "Yes, Stella?" and he stood very still.

"I mean," she said, looking down upon the ground, "that I have