Leon woke with a start from his reverie.
“We must first prove that this fellow is guilty,” he said, “and we’ll have to start on that job tonight. I wonder if our good landlady has a garden.”
The good landlady had one. It stretched out for two hundred yards at the back of the house, and Leon made a survey and was satisfied.
“The doctor’s place?” he asked innocently, as the landlady pointed out this object of interest. “Not the man who was tried at Baxeter?”
“The very man,” said the woman triumphantly. “I tell you, it caused a bit of a sensation round here.”
“Do you think he was innocent?”
The landlady was not prepared to take a definite standpoint.
“Some think one thing and some think the other,” she replied, in the true spirit of diplomacy. “He’s always been a nice man, and he attended my husband when he was home last.”
“Is the doctor staying in his house?”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman. “He’s going abroad soon.”
“Oh yes, he is distributing that money, isn’t he? I read something about it in the newspapers—the poor are to benefit, are they not?”
The landlady sniffed.
“I hope they get it,” she said significantly.
“Which means that you don’t think they will,” smiled Manfred, strolling back from an inspection of her early chrysanthemums.
“They may,” said the cautious landlady, “but nothing has happened yet. The vicar went to the doctor yesterday morning, and asked him whether a little of it couldn’t be spared for the poor of Newton Abbot. We’ve had a lot of unemployment here lately, and the doctor said ‘Yes he would think about it,’ and sent him a cheque for fifty pounds from what I heard.”
“That’s not a great deal,” said Manfred. “What makes you think he is going abroad?”
“All his trunks are packed and his servants are under notice, that’s how I came to know,” said the landlady. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Poor soul, she didn’t have a very happy life.”
The “poor soul” referred to was apparently the doctor’s wife, and when asked to explain, the landlady knew no more than that people had talked, that there was probably nothing in it, and why shouldn’t the doctor go motoring on the moor with pretty girls if he felt that way inclined.
“He had his fancies,” said the landlady.
Apparently those “fancies” came and went through the years of his married life.
“I should like to meet the doctor,” said Leon, but she shook her head.
“He won’t see anyone, not even his patients, sir,” she said.
Nevertheless Leon succeeded in obtaining an interview. He had judged the man’s character correctly thus far, and he knew he would not refuse an interview with a journalist.
The servant took Leon’s name, closing the front door in his face while she went to see the doctor, and when she came back it was to invite him in.
He found the medical gentleman in his study, and the dismantled condition of the room supported Mrs. Martin’s statement that he was leaving the town at an early date. He was in fact engaged in destroying old business letters and bills when Leon arrived.
“Come in,” grumbled the doctor. “I suppose if I didn’t see you, you’d invent something about me. Now what do you want?”
He was a good-looking young man with regular features, a carefully trimmed black moustache and tiny black side-whiskers.
“Light-blue eyes I do not like,” said Leon to himself, “and I should like to see you without a moustache.”
“I’ve been sent down from London to ask to what charities you are distributing your wife’s money, Dr. Twenden,” said Leon, with the brisk and even rude directness of a London reporter.
The doctor’s lips curled.
“The least they can do is to give me a chance to make up my mind,” he said. “The fact is, I’ve got to go abroad on business, and whilst I’m away I shall carefully consider the merits of the various charity organisations of Devon to discover which are the most worthy and how the money is to be distributed.”
“Suppose you don’t come back again?” asked Leon cruelly. “I mean, anything might happen; the ship may sink or the train smash—what happens to the money then?”
“That is entirely my affair,” said the doctor stiffly, and closing his eyes, arched his eyebrows for a second as he spoke. “I really don’t wish to reopen this matter. I’ve had some very charming letters from the public, but I’ve had abusive ones too. I had one this morning saying that it was a pity that the Four Just Men were not in existence! The Four just Men!” he smiled contemptuously, “as though I should have cared a snap of my fingers for that kind of cattle!”
Leon smiled too.
“Perhaps it would be more convenient if I saw you tonight,” he suggested.
The doctor shook his head.
“I’m to be the guest of honour of a few friends of mine,” he said, with a queer air of importance, “and I shan’t be back until half past eleven at the earliest.”
“Where is the dinner to be held? That might make an interesting item of news,” said Leon.
“It’s to be held at the Lion Hotel. You can say that Sir John Murden is in the chair, and that Lord Tussborough has promised to attend. I can give you the list of the people who’ll be there.”
“The dinner engagement is a genuine one,” thought Leon with satisfaction.
The list was forthcoming, and pocketing the paper with due reverence, Gonsalez bowed himself out. From his bedroom window that evening he watched the doctor, splendidly arrayed, enter a taxi and drive away. A quarter of an hour later the servant, whom Leon had seen, came out pulling on her gloves. Gonsalez watched her for a good quarter of an hour, during which time she stood at the corner of the street. She was obviously waiting for something or somebody. What it was he saw. The Torquay bus passed by, stopped, and she mounted it.
After dinner he had a talk with the
