“I could not arrange conveniently,” she retorted, “to be in two different places half a mile apart at one and the same time.”
“No! I quite admit that you could not do this unless you also had a friend—”
“A friend? But you say—”
“I say that I admired Mr. John Ashley, for his was the head which planned the whole thing, but he could not have accomplished the fascinating and terrible drama without the help of willing and able hands.”
“Even then—” she protested.
“Point number one,” he began excitedly, fidgeting with his inevitable piece of string. “John Ashley and his friend Walter Hatherell leave the club together, and together decide on the plan of campaign. Hatherell returns to the club, and Ashley goes to fetch the revolver—the revolver which played such an important part in the drama, but not the part assigned to it by the police. Now try to follow Ashley closely, as he dogs Aaron Cohen’s footsteps. Do you believe that he entered into conversation with him? That he walked by his side? That he asked for delay? No! He sneaked behind him and caught him by the throat, as the garroters used to do in the fog. Cohen was apoplectic, and Ashley is young and powerful. Moreover, he meant to kill—”
“But the two men talked together outside the Square gates,” protested Polly, “one of whom was Cohen, and the other Ashley.”
“Pardon me,” he said, jumping up in his seat like a monkey on a stick, “there were not two men talking outside the Square gates. According to the testimony of James Funnell, the constable, two men were leaning arm in arm against the railings and one man was talking.”
“Then you think that—”
“At the hour when James Funnell heard Holy Trinity clock striking half-past two Aaron Cohen was already dead. Look how simple the whole thing is,” he added eagerly, “and how easy after that—easy, but oh, dear me! how wonderfully, how stupendously clever. As soon as James Funnell has passed on, John Ashley, having opened the gate, lifts the body of Aaron Cohen in his arms and carries him across the Square. The Square is deserted, of course, but the way is easy enough, and we must presume that Ashley had been in it before. Anyway, there was no fear of meeting anyone.
“In the meantime Hatherell has left the club: as fast as his athletic legs can carry him he rushes along Oxford Street and Portland Place. It had been arranged between the two miscreants that the Square gate should be left on the latch.
“Close on Ashley’s heels now, Hatherell too cuts across the Square, and reaches the further gate in good time to give his confederate a hand in disposing the body against the railings. Then, without another instant’s delay, Ashley runs back across the gardens, straight to the Ashton Club, throwing away the keys of the dead man, on the very spot where he had made it a point of being seen and heard by a passerby.
“Hatherell gives his friend six or seven minutes’ start, then he begins the altercation which lasts two or three minutes, and finally rouses the neighbourhood with cries of ‘Murder’ and report of pistol in order to establish that the crime was committed at the hour when its perpetrator has already made out an indisputable alibi.”
“I don’t know what you think of it all, of course,” added the funny creature as he fumbled for his coat and his gloves, “but I call the planning of that murder—on the part of novices, mind you—one of the cleverest pieces of strategy I have ever come across. It is one of those cases where there is no possibility whatever now of bringing the crime home to its perpetrator or his abettor. They have not left a single proof behind them; they foresaw everything, and each acted his part with a coolness and courage which, applied to a great and good cause, would have made fine statesmen of them both.
“As it is, I fear, they are just a pair of young blackguards, who have escaped human justice, and have only deserved the full and ungrudging admiration of yours very sincerely.”
He had gone. Polly wanted to call him back, but his meagre person was no longer visible through the glass door. There were many things she would have wished to ask of him—what were his proofs, his facts? His were theories, after all, and yet, somehow, she felt that he had solved once again one of the darkest mysteries of great criminal London.
XXXI
The de Genneville Peerage
The man in the corner rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and looked out upon the busy street below.
“I suppose,” he said, “there is some truth in the saying that Providence watches over bankrupts, kittens, and lawyers.”
“I didn’t know there was such a saying,” replied Polly, with guarded dignity.
“Isn’t there? Perhaps I am misquoting; anyway, there should be. Kittens, it seems, live and thrive through social and domestic upheavals which would annihilate a self-supporting tomcat, and today I read in the morning papers the account of a noble lord’s bankruptcy, and in the society ones that of his visit at the house of a Cabinet minister, where he is the most honoured guest. As for lawyers, when Providence had exhausted all other means of securing their welfare, it brought forth the peerage cases.”
“I believe, as a matter of fact, that this special dispensation of Providence, as you call it, requires more technical knowledge than any other legal complication that comes before the law courts,” she said.
“And also a great deal more money in the client’s pocket than any other complication. Now, take the Brockelsby peerage case. Have you any idea how much money was spent over
