THE CROW'S INN TRAGEDY (Murder Mystery Classic). Annie Haynes

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      The clergyman looked undecided for a moment; then he shook his head.

      "No, I shouldn't care to do anything that might look like spying. Time enough for me to see her when there is anything decided."

      "Please yourself!" Luke Bechcombe said gruffly. "Anyway if I had to choose between Tony and Aubrey Todmarsh I should take Tony."

      "I wouldn't," Tony's father said. "The lad is a good lad when he is away from these friends of his. But he is weak--terribly weak. Now Aubrey Todmarsh--though I haven't always approved of him--is doing wonderful work in that East End settlement of his. He is marvellously successful in dealing with a class of men that we clergy are seldom able to reach."

      "Umph! Well, he is always out for money for something," said the solicitor. "He invades this office sometimes almost demanding subscriptions. Will he expect his wife to go and live down at his Community house, I wonder? However, I believe the settlement is an attraction to some silly women, and to my mind he will want all the attraction he can get. I can't stand Aubrey myself. I have no use for conscientious objectors--never had!"

      "There I am with you," assented the clergyman. "But I think Aubrey is hardly to be judged by ordinary standards. He is a visionary, an enthusiast. Of course I hold him to have been mistaken about the War, but honestly mistaken. With his dreams of reforming mankind I can understand--"

      Mr. Bechcombe snorted.

      "Can you? I can't! I am jolly glad your Tony didn't dream such dreams. Two conscientious objectors in the family would have been too much for me. I never could stand old Todmarsh. Aubrey is the very spit of him, as we used to say in Leicestershire."

      "Oh, I don't see any resemblance between Aubrey and his father," the rector dissented. "Old Aubrey Todmarsh was a thoroughly self-indulgent man. I don't believe he ever gave a thought to anyone else in the world. Now Aubrey with his visions and his dreams--"

      "Which he does his best to get other people to pay for," the solicitor interposed. "No use. You won't get me to enthuse over Aubrey, James. I remember him too well as a boy--a selfish, self-seeking little beast."

      "Yes, I was not fond of him as a child. But I believe it to be a case of genuine conversion. He spends himself and his little patrimony for others. Next week he goes to Geneva, he tells me, to attend a sitting of the League of Nations, to explain the workings of--"

      "Damn the League of Nations!" uttered the solicitor, banging his fist upon his writing-pad with an energy that rattled his inkstand. "I beg your pardon, James. Not but what it went out of fashion to apologize to parsons for swearing in the War. Most of them do it themselves nowadays--eh, what?" with a chuckle at his own wit that threatened to choke him.

      The rector did not smile.

      "I look upon the League of Nations as our great hope for the future."

      "Do you? I don't," contradicted his brother-in-law flatly. "I look to a largely augmented Air Force with plenty of practice in bomb-throwing as my hope for the future. It will be worth fifty of that rotten League of Nations. Aubrey Todmarsh addressing the League of Nations! It makes me sick. I suppose they will knight him next. No, no more of that, please, James. When I think of the League of Nations I get excited and that is bad for my heart. But now to business. You say you want money for Tony--how do you propose to get it? I should say you have exhausted all ways of doing it by now."

      "How about a further mortgage on my little farm at Halvers?"

      The solicitor shook his head.

      "No use thinking of it. Farm is mortgaged up to the hilt already--rather past it, in fact."

      "And I can't raise any more on my life insurance." Mr. Collyer sighed. "Well, it must be--there is nothing else--the emerald cross."

      "Oh, but that would be a thousand pities--an heirloom with a history such as that. Oh, you can't part with it."

      "What else am I to do?" questioned the clergyman. "You said yourself that I had exhausted all my resources. No. I had practically made up my mind to it when I came here. I had just a forlorn hope that you might be able to suggest something else, though as a matter of fact I want your assistance still. I am deplorably ignorant on such matters. How does one set about selling jewellery? Can you tell me a good place to go to?"

      "Um!" The solicitor pursed up his lips. "If you have really made up your mind, how would you like to put the matter in my hands? First, of course, I must have the emeralds valued--then I can see what offers we get, and you can decide which, if any, you care to accept. Not but what I think you are quite wrong, mind you!"

      "I shall be enormously obliged to you," the clergyman said haltingly. "But do you know anything of selling jewellery yourself, Luke?"

      Mr. Bechcombe smiled. "A man in my position and profession has to know a bit of everything. As a matter of fact I have a job of this kind on hand just now, and I might work the two together. I will do my best if you like to entrust me with the emeralds."

      The clergyman rose.

      "You are very good, Luke. All my life long you have been the one to help me out of any difficulty. Here are the emeralds," fumbling in his breast pocket. "I brought them with me in case of any emergency such as this that has arisen."

      "You surely don't mean that you have put them in your pocket?" exclaimed the solicitor.

      Mr. Collyer looked surprised.

      "They are quite safe. See, I button my coat when I am outside. No one could possibly take them from me."

      Mr. Bechcombe coughed.

      "Oh, James, nothing will ever alter you! Don't you know that there have been as many jewels stolen in the past year in London as in twenty years previously? People say there is a regular gang at work--they call it the Yellow Gang, and the head of it goes by the name of the Yellow Dog. If it had been known you were carrying the emeralds in that careless fashion they would never have got here. However, all's well that ends well. You had better leave them in my safe."

      The rector brought an ancient leather case out of his pocket.

      Mr. Bechcombe held his hand out for the case.

      "Here it is."

      "So this is the Collyer cross! I haven't seen it for years." He was opening the case as he spoke. Inside the cross lay on its satin bed, gleaming with baleful, green fire. As Mr. Bechcombe looked at it his expression changed. "Where have you kept the cross, James?"

      The rector blinked.

      "In the secret drawer in my writing-table. Why do you ask?"

      Mr. Bechcombe groaned.

      "A secret drawer that is no secret at all, since all the household, not to say the parish, knows it. As for why I asked, I know enough about precious stones to see"--he raised the cross and peered at it in a ray of sunlight that slanted in through the dust-dimmed window--"to fear that these so-called emeralds are only paste."

      "What!" The rector stared at him. "The Collyer emeralds--paste! Why, they have been admired by experts!"

      "No. Not the Collyer emeralds," Mr. Bechcombe contradicted. "The Collyer emeralds were magnificent gems. This worthless paste has been substituted."

      "Impossible! СКАЧАТЬ