Chapter 17

HERON FOLLOWS THE TRAIL.

Ruth could not rid herself of a haunting doubt that her father knew more of the Jenner murder than he chose to confess. If he himself had not killed the man in a fit of impetuous rage--and the girl could not bring herself to think this--he knew who had struck the fatal blow. Ruth was certain now that Mrs. Jenner was innocent, notwithstanding the fact that she had been found guilty. This being so, she argued to herself that if her father were aware of the truth he should at once take steps to remedy the grave miscarriage of justice which had taken place. But as he made no move, Ruth, perplexed and doubtful, became quite ill with suspense. It was no wonder then that Geoffrey had found her poor company, and had failed to understand her constant melancholy. Under these circumstances he had taken his departure, wondering what had befallen the house which had formerly been so bright and pleasant. But no satisfaction was to be had either from Mr. Cass or from his daughter.

On arriving at his own place he went at once to the library to look for some document with his father's signature in order to compare it with that on the bill. And after a close inspection of some half-dozen autographs of the late Mr. Heron, he came to the conclusion that the signature to the bill was a forgery. Once convinced of this, he began to see daylight, and argued out the case that evening, alone and undisturbed.

"Jenner was at one time a clerk in the firm of Cass and Marshall," he thought; "therefore he must have known Marshall very well; he was dismissed, and so had no cause to love his employers. Mr. Cass, so far as I know, was always an upright man, and Jenner had no chance of injuring him in any way. With Marshall the case was different. If I remember rightly, Mrs. Jenner told me that her husband and Marshall were as thick as thieves; the master patronising the clerk on account of the man's beautiful voice and musical accomplishments. Marshall, too, lived a gay life, and was given to spending pretty freely. It is quite possible that he might have made use of Jenner as a tool to get more money through this bill! Five hundred pounds," said Geoffrey, looking at the document in question. "Humph! Just the sum he might require for an emergency." He turned over the bill, and found it endorsed by Julius Roper. "Ah!" he went on, "where have I heard that name? Roper--Roper--I am sure someone spoke of Roper."

Suddenly it flashed into his mind that Roper was the moneylender in whose employment Jenner had been after he had failed on the stage.

"The bill was discounted in the office in which Jenner was employed," he thought, with growing excitement, for the matter was becoming more interesting every minute, "and Jenner, knowing it was forged, stole it from Roper. He meant to use it as a means of extorting blackmail! Ah!" He stopped short. "Blackmail? It was of that he boasted to his wife--this, then, was the material for getting money that he said he had in the red pocket-book. The pocket-book has disappeared; but the bill?--Humph! How did it get inside the horse? Could Jenner himself have put it there? If so, why? What was his reason? I must see Mrs. Jenner and ask her. Between the two of us we may get at the truth."

But although he was satisfied that his father's signature had been forged, he could not be absolutely certain that Marshall had been the forger. He had drawn the bill, it was true, but Jenner might have counterfeited the signature and have assisted Marshall to get the money.

Then Geoffrey recollected that his father--a particularly precise man--had been in the habit of keeping a diary in which he was accustomed to set down the most trivial details of his somewhat uninteresting life. No sooner had this thought struck him than he went to a certain press and pulled out the series of little books which contained these entries. Glancing at the date of the bill, he set to work, and after an hour's search found the evidence.

The late Mr. Heron had made no attempt to conceal Marshall's rascality; for it was plainly set down that a certain Mr. Roper had called upon him to shew a bill of exchange and to ask if the signature were his. Mr. Heron had replied that he had never signed a bill in his life, where upon Roper had intimated that the bill had been presented by Frank Marshall, and that the money had been paid to him. Roper had also expressed his intention of having Marshall arrested, but to this Mr. Heron had objected. Bad as he thought the man, he wanted to avoid any serious trouble, less for Marshall's own sake than for that of Miss Inez Cass, to whom he was engaged, and who was deeply in love with him. Roper had left the house with the avowed intention of making things hot for him, so Mr. Heron had called on Marshall at his house near Hollyoak and told him what had happened. Then Marshall had confessed that, being in want of money, he had forged Mr. Heron's name. But he stated that he was going to pay the money back to Roper very shortly, and he implored Mr. Heron to take no steps against him; it would break Miss Cass's heart, he said, and Mr. Heron, pitying Inez, and having a great respect for her brother, had promised to say no more about it, and had agreed to refrain from assisting Roper on condition that the five hundred pounds were repaid. This--as a later entry in the diary-proved--had been done. After that there was no further mention of the matter.

"Well," Geoffrey said to himself, as he put away the books, "all this is quite plain. It seems that Mr. Frank Marshall is a pretty scoundrel! Oh, there is no doubt that this bill is the blackmailing document referred to by Jenner. Now, I wonder if Marshall murdered him to get possession of it; but if he did the bill would not have been concealed in the toy horse. Ah! no doubt Marshall thought it was in the red pocket-book, and stole that after he had killed him; that was why the pocket-book disappeared. Probably Marshall himself destroyed it. Humph! I have gone so far with very good results; now, before I can proceed further, I must see Mrs. Jenner and Roper. I wonder if that scoundrel is still alive?"

Next day Geoffrey paid a visit to the gaol where Mrs. Jenner was serving her life sentence. After some difficulty he was permitted to see the prisoner; indeed, he might not have procured the interview at all had he not told the governor that he saw a good chance of proving the woman innocent. The governor was a humane man, and, anxious that justice should be done, he stretched a point and allowed Heron to see her with as much privacy as was compatible with prison discipline.

As soon as they were alone. Heron related all that he had discovered, and then proceeded to ask his questions. Mrs. Jenner, poor woman, became much excited, and small wonder, seeing, that for the first time, she saw a chance of regaining her freedom.

"But, after all, it will be to die, Mr. Heron," she said, sadly. "I am very ill; trouble, exposure and mental worry have been too much for me. The doctor saw me two days ago, and has ordered my removal to the Infirmary." Geoffrey looked at her, and, true enough, there was death in her face. A few weeks were all of life left to her now. And yet on hearing Geoffrey's news, the bold spirit flamed up again in her for the last time.

"I am sure you are right, Mr. Heron!" she said, feverishly. "Mr. Marshall is the guilty person. He was always a scamp and a rake. There is no doubt that it was for the purpose of blackmailing him that my husband came down to Westham on the night he was murdered; in fact, he said as much to me at the Turnpike House. Do you know that he had met Marshall on that very night?"

"No; you did not tell me that."

"I forgot; besides, I really did not think it mattered. I did not expect that Mr. Marshall would be brought into the affair. He was always cunning enough to look after himself. At that time he was engaged to marry Miss Cass, and she loved him with the fierceness of a tigress."

"Do you mean the present Mrs. Marshal?"

"Who else should I mean? She always loved him. He had a strange fascination for women: why, I don't know, for he was not particularly good-looking or attractive. But Miss Inez loved him, and it was within two months of the murder that they were married. I was in prison then, as I am now, and under sentence of death."

"Then you think that Marshall killed your husband?"

"I do," she said, with a look of hatred in her large blue eyes. "I feel certain of it. Look at the motive he had! He was engaged to marry Miss Inez Cass: she was rich and he needed money; then again there was some talk of his leaving the firm. I believe myself that Mr. Cass was quite tired of the way he was going on."

"I wonder that Mr. Cass--knowing him as he did--did not forbid the marriage."

"What would have been the use? His sister was her own mistress; she had her own money--a large fortune--and she was madly in love with Marshall. She would have done anything for him; she simply grovelled at his feet. Her infatuation was the talk of all Westham at the time I was starving at the Turnpike House.'

"Extraordinary!" mused Geoffrey. "She is so masterful a woman that I wonder she could have fallen in love with so weak a man."

"It is one of those things in which a woman's nature is stronger than her principles," said Mrs. Jenner. "Besides, he was fascinating, and she was no longer a young woman," she added, with a touch of feminine spite. "At any rate, she was delighted when he fell in love with her, and determined not to let him go."

"Was he in love with her?"

"No: perhaps I was wrong to put it that way. No doubt he wanted her money. Did he leave the firm?"

"Yes; shortly after his marriage."

"Ah! Then depend upon it, Mr. Cass got rid of him. He married Miss Cass for her money--he must have been in great straits when he committed that forgery. Oh, I quite believe it was he who did it: he was wonderfully clever at imitating handwriting. I knew of that accomplishment long before I was married."

"How you hate him!" Geoffrey could not help exclaiming.

"I am a very good hater," she said, quietly; "and I have every reason to hate that man. It was he who got my husband dismissed, and it was certainly he who led him into dissipated ways; for Jenner was not a bad man during the early years of our married life. It was only when he came under Marshall's influence that he took to drink and began to treat me cruelly. Oh, I know what I owe him only too well! I should like to see him arrested for this murder, and hanged--hanged!"

She spoke with such vehemence that Heron shivered. "I hope he will be proved innocent for all that," he said. "Remember I am engaged to his niece."

"Miss Ruth is not his niece save by marriage."

"Still, the disgrace----"

"Well, leave the matter alone," said Mrs. Jenner, abruptly. "I have suffered so much that a little, more or less, does not matter. When I I am gone, there will be an end of all your trouble. Let Marshall live to repent, if he can. I am willing to die with the disgrace on me; I can't well be worse off than I am. And my son will soon forget me----"

"You do him wrong, Mrs. Jenner; he loves you dearly. But, let this be as it may, what I have to do is to get at the truth of it all. If Marshall will confess his guilt, I will consult with Mr. Cass and see what is to be done. I confess, that on Ruth's account, I do not want a scandal."

"Would you desert her?"

"No, for I love her. And I am too just, I hope, to visit the sins of other people upon her innocent head."

Mrs. Jenner seemed to be considering; then, "Mr. Heron," she said at last, "you are a good man. Leave the matter where it stands, and let me die a guilty woman in the eyes of the world. If I were in good health, I might speak differently but I am dying. Let me die. I have suffered so much, that now I could not even enjoy freedom. There is no rest for me but in the grave. Believe me, it is better to leave things as they are."

"Well, we'll see about that. But tell me, how did the bill get inside the toy horse?"

"Ah, that is difficult to explain! The horse belonged to my boy; he was playing with it before the fire on that evening. I left it there when I took the child to bed. It is likely enough," she went on, musingly, "that my husband, knowing he had driven Marshall into a corner, was afraid he might lose this bill. He may have sewn it up inside the horse when I was out of the room. He knew very well that I kept all my boy's toys, and he thought it would be safe there. No one would ever have dreamt of looking for it in such a hiding-place. It is really most wonderful, when one comes to think of it, that it has come to light at all."

"Can you tell me where Jenner met Marshall on that night?"

"No, I cannot. All I know is what he told me--that he had seen him two hours before he came to see me. He boasted of his blackmailing. That is all I can tell you."

Geoffrey rose. "Well, you have given me some information, if not very much," he said. "Now I will go and see Roper to make certain how the bill came to be stolen."

"My husband stole it when he was with Roper," said Mrs. Jenner. And with this last piece of information Geoffrey departed to follow up the clue.