“Only in prospect. To murder him before he was twenty-five would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
“That’s so. And yet it’s not at all impossible that some gang of crooks were after him, with the idea of murdering or kidnapping him and then personating him to get the money. You may not be aware, Mr. Bredon, that in our country kidnapping is almost a recognized means of getting your living. But I can’t say; it may have been that, it may have been a private vendetta. But it seems to me when a man pretends to sleep in a particular place, and then sends another man there to personate him, it means that man’s going in peril of his life, and he’s anxious to sleep anywhere else except just there.”
“It’s a very interesting idea of yours. But suppose it’s true, why should his cousin consent to put himself in such a position of danger? Surely the odds were that the murderer would do him in by mistake.”
“I’ve thought of that, and I’ll tell you how it seems to me—he didn’t know just how close these people were on his track. He didn’t think they were near enough to do him any harm that night; but he wanted to leave a false trail behind him. He wanted them to go on tracking that canoe down the river, when he himself had left it and skipped off to London or wherever he reckoned he’d be safe.”
“But he did rejoin the canoe next day—at least, unless all our evidence is incorrect.” Bredon thought for a moment of Mr. Carmichael, and his theory of the soap dummy.
“That’s just what complicates the thing; but I’ve two ways of explaining that. Either he changed his mind—heard some news which made that precaution seem unnecessary; or, more probably than that, he was playing a game of double bluff, if you understand what I mean. These are pretty cute fellows (he’d say to himself) and it’s not likely they’d be taken in by an old dodge like this. If they come here and make inquiries, they’ll tumble to it soon enough that I didn’t really sleep here; they’ll think I’ve tried to give them the slip and gone off to London. Meanwhile, the old canoe is good enough for me. So he joined the canoe again next morning.”
“Crooks seem to have very complicated processes of thought by your account of them. But I dare say you’re right. And you think that in reality the pursuit was far closer than poor Burtell thought? So that the very next day they caught him up and did for him?”
“That would be my idea. They must have been extraordinarily close on his tracks, shadowing him all the time—they didn’t show up, you see, until his cousin had left the canoe.”
“But there’s another thing—granted that Nigel Burtell ran no danger from his cousin’s pursuers, wasn’t there a worse danger still, the danger of his being mistaken for their accomplice?”
“Their accomplice? I don’t just see how there’d be any great danger of that.”
“Why, juries are only human. Here is this young man, his cousin’s only companion—the moment he leaves the boat, the cousin gets murdered. When his cousin fails to turn up at the rendezvous, he shows a suspicious anxiety as to what may have become of him. He himself, it is to be observed, has been careful to cover his tracks by an alibi. All that business at Millington Bridge shows that he was aware of the danger which hung over his cousin’s head; and what steps has he taken to avert it? On the contrary, he has quietly walked out of the way, so as to let the murderers have their chance. If it is murder, he is the sole beneficiary of the murder; if it is kidnapping, the kidnappers can get no further with their plans unless they manage to squeeze him. Doesn’t all that build up rather a heavy case against young Nigel?”
“Why, yes, in the abstract. But, the way justice works, you can’t incriminate a man as an accomplice unless you catch the principals. You’ll have to catch them first, and then confront him with them. And here’s this besides, he may have a trump card up his sleeve which we know nothing about. We shan’t hear of that until we find him; and where is he? You’ll excuse my giving the impression of kind of criticizing your excellent police, but don’t they attach any significance to his disappearance? A man who’s got an alibi like his doesn’t want to arouse suspicion by making tracks for South America.”
“You mean that the murderers—”
“I say nothing about murder. I only say that these two cousins have disappeared, one after the other, and old man Burtell’s legacy is going to God knows who. Isn’t it natural to calculate that if we can catch the men who’ve mislaid one, we might catch the men who’ve mislaid both?”
“I doubt if Leyland’s thought of that. I should mention it to him certainly, if I were you. But Nigel’s disappearance had the air of being a deliberate performance. He took his ticket for one train and then hopped on to another.”
“Say, you don’t know much about crooks if you think they can’t hustle a man on a platform the way he’ll think he’s getting into the right train when he’s getting into the wrong one. Why, I’ve read of a case where they changed the labels on a coach merely to get hold of one man. But then, you seem to be making a dead set to fix the blame on this unfortunate Nigel. If he slips into a wrong train, you make out that he’s trying to dodge the police. If he’s got murderers on his track, and knows
