E. W. Hornung

“ I mopped my face and awaited Delavoye with little patience, which ran out altogether when he entered with a radiant face, particularly full of his own egregious researches in Bloomsbury.
"I can't do with that rot to-night!" I cried. "Here's this fat little fool going to get on the tracks of Mrs. Royle, and all through me! The woman's an invalid; this may finish her off. If it were the man himself I wouldn't mind. Where the devil do you suppose he is?"
"I'll tell you later," said Uvo Delavoye, without moving a muscle of his mobile face. ”

“ When a straight man goes off the rails, there's generally some tremendous cause; but one of the surprises of this case, as my banker has managed to ascertain, is that Abercromby Royle is in a position to repay every penny. He has more than enough to do it, lying idle in his bank; so there was no apparent motive for the crime, and I for my part am prepared to treat it as a sudden aberration."
"Exactly!" cried Delavoye, as though he were the missing man's oldest friend and more eager than either of us to find excuses for him. ”

“ It was so hot that the prematurely bronze leaves of the horse-chestnuts, behind the odd numbers in Mulcaster Park, were as crisp as tinfoil, while a tawny stubble defied the garden rollers of those tenants who had not been driven to the real country or the seaside. Half our inhabited houses were either locked up empty, or in the hands of servants who spent their time gossiping at the gate. And I personally was not surprised when the red blinds stayed down in their turn. ”

“ So it has, in point of fact; but for me, there'd have been days and days to spare. But imagine yourself creeping back into your empty hole to die like a rat, and still thinking of every little thing to prevent your being found!"
"And to keep it from looking like suicide when you were!" said I, with yet a lingering doubt in my mind.
"Well, then I say you have the finest suicide ever!" declared Uvo Delavoye. "I only wish I knew when he began to think it all out. Was it before he called you in to see the tap that didn't turn off? ”

“ Then the silence was sharply broken by a voice that I can still hear but hardly recognise as my own.
It was Abercromby Royle who was sitting in the moonlight over the escaping stove; and I shall not describe him; but a dead flower still drooped from the lapel of a flannel jacket which the dead man had horribly outgrown.
I drove Delavoye before me through the window he had just opened; it was he who insisted on returning, ostensibly to turn off the gas, and I could not let him go alone. But neither could I face the ghastly occupant of the basket chair ”

“ I have the certified accounts to prove it, and Royle must have bolted just when he knew the mail would reach me where I've been abroad. I don't wonder, either; he's been faking every statement for the last six months!"
"But not before?" cried Delavoye, as though it mattered.
Coysh turned to him with puzzled eyes.
"No; that's the funny part of it," said he. "You'd think a man who went so wrong—hundreds, in these few months—could never have been quite straight. But not a bit of it. I've got the accounts; they were as right as rain till this last spring." ”

“ Coysh," I went so far as to say. But I was already taken by surprise. And so, I could see, was Uvo Delavoye.
"I'll hold you to that," said Coysh frankly. "When did you see him last, Mr. Gillon?"
"Do you mean Mr. Royle?" I stammered, turning away from Delavoye. If only he had not been there!
"Of course I do; and let me tell you, Mr. Gillon, this is a serious matter for the man you know. You won't improve his chances by keeping anything back. ”

“ I implored. "The man you want has been here all the time, and dead for the last five days!"
That was a heavy night for me. If Coysh could have made it something worse, I think just at first he would; for he had been grossly deceived, and I had unwittingly promoted the deception. But his good sense and heart had brought him to reason before I accompanied the policeman to the station, leaving the other two on guard over a house as hermetically sealed as Delavoye and I had found it.
"The man you want has been here all the time" ”

“ Uvo smiled darkly as he shook his head.
"It's no use telling certain people certain things. You shall see for yourself with your own two eyes." He got up and crossed the room. "You know what I'm up to at the British Museum; did I tell you they'd got a fine old last-century plan of the original Estate? Well, for weeks I've had a man in Holborn trying to get me a copy for love or money. He's just succeeded. Here it is."
A massive hereditary desk, as mid-Victorian as all the Delavoye possessions, stood before the open window that looked out into the moonlight ”

“ Royle. You say you are hardly friends. I shall believe it if you stick to your present attitude when you've heard my story. Royle and I, however, have been only too friendly in the past, and I should not forget it even now—if I could find him."
He made a meaning pause, of which I did not avail myself, though Delavoye encouraged me with an eager eye.
"He was not only my solicitor," continued Coysh; "he has acted as my agent in a good many matters which neither lawyers nor patent agents will generally undertake. You've heard of my Mainspring bicycle, of course? ”

“ Old Sir Christopher was the only sober man at his own orgy, but my satanic ancestor seems to have made a mighty clean job of this poor brute!"
"I'm not so sure," said I gloomily. "I'm only sure of one thing—that the dead can't lead the living astray—and you'll never convince me that they can."
It was no use arguing, for we were oil and vinegar on this matter, and were beginning to recognise the fact. But I was grateful to Uvo Delavoye for his attitude on another point. I tried to explain why I had never told him about my last meeting with Abercromby Royle. It was not necessary ”

“ Or was it the defective tap that suggested the means of death? In either case, when he nailed up his letter-box, it was not, of course, to keep the postman from the door, but to keep the smell of gas inside if he or anybody else did come. That, I think, is fairly plain."
"It's ingenious," I conceded, "whether the idea's your own or Royle's."
"It must have been his," said Delavoye with conviction. "You don't engineer an elaborate fake and get in one of your best bits by accident. No; there was only one mistake poor Royle made, and it was unpremeditated. ”

“ When you think that by the very act of pedalling on the level we might be winding up—but there! It's going to revolutionise the most popular pastime of the day, and make my fortune incidentally; but meanwhile I've one or two pot boilers that bring me in a living wage in royalties. One's an appliance they use in every gold-mine in South Africa. It was taken up by the biggest people in Johannesburg, and of course I've done very well out of it, this last year or two; but ever since Christmas my little bit has been getting more and more overdue. Royle had the whole thing in hand. ”

“ The now eminent engineer is not much more conventional than the hot-headed patentee who in those days had still to find himself (and had lately been looking in the wrong place, with a howling Press at his heels) . But even then the quality of the man outshone the eccentricities of the supercrank. ”

“ Among other things, I said I would gladly have kept the empty house aired, had he cared to trust me with his key. It was an office that I had undertaken for more than one of our absentee tenants. But the lawyer's only answer was a grip of the hand as the train began to move. ”