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Then the two young men mounted the steps, the inference being that Robert Fenley wished to see his father's body before it was removed. A pallor was spreading beneath the glow on the younger Fenley's perspiring face. He was obviously shocked beyond measure. Grief and horror had imparted a certain strength to somewhat sullen features.
Mortimer Fenley's papers, for instance? There may be documents, letters, memoranda secreted in some private drawer or dispatch case." The other shook his head. He appeared not to resent the detective's tone. It seemed as if regret for the morning's lack of confidence had rendered him apologetic. "No," he said. "I have not had time yet to go through my father's papers.
"He saw that Sylvia Manning's gold was in the melting-pot, and appreciated precisely the cause of the elder Fenley's anxiety that she should marry Robert. Once in the family, you know, her fortunes were bound up with theirs; while any 'cute lawyer could dish her in the marriage settlements if sufficiently well paid for a nasty job. When Sylvia was Mrs.
"There's no sense in our quarreling about the chap anyhow," he said with a gruff attempt to smooth away difficulties. "Of course, I sh'an't let on I followed you. Just spotted you in the distance and joined you by chance, don't you know." Sylvia did not answer. She was comparing Robert Fenley's conversational style with John Trenholme's, and the comparison was unflattering to Robert.
Fenley's ward, an' the servants at The Towers say she'll come in for a heap when she's twenty-one, which will be next year." Somehow, this item of gossip, confirming Eliza's statement, was displeasing. Sylvia Manning, nymph of the lake, receded to some dim altitude where the high and mighty are enthroned.
At that instant a burly German, careless of any one's comfort but his own, and somewhat irritated by Fenley's halt at the mouth of the gangway, brushed forward. His weight, and Fenley's quick flinching from that ominous clutch, loosed the policeman's hold, and the murderer was free once more for a few fleeting seconds. The constable pressed on, shoving the other man against the rail. "Here.
The theft of the bonds had been hushed up in a way that savored of unwillingness on Mortimer Fenley's part to permit the police to take action. The man's tragic death might well be a sequel to the robbery, and, granted the impossibility of his elder son having committed the murder, there was nothing fantastic in the notion that he might be a party to it.
He had taken the oaf's measure with a nice exactitude. To trounce him without frightening him also was only inviting a complaint to the Commissioner, but Furneaux was well aware that the longer Robert Fenley's dull brain dwelt on the significance of that address in Battersea being known to the police, the less ready would he be to stir a hornets' nest into activity by showing his resentment.
Furneaux chatted with her while they descended the stairs and traversed devious passages till the butler's room was gained. By that time the housemaid was convinced that Mr. Furneaux was "a very nice man." When she "did" Hilton Fenley's rooms she missed the glass, but gave no heed to its absence. Who would bother about a glass in a house where murder had been done?
It was asking too much of editorial human nature to expect that the magazine which had commissioned the illustrated article on Roxton would not make capital of the fact that its special artist was actually sketching the house while Mr. Fenley's murderer was skulking among the trees surrounding it. Thus there was no escape for John Trenholme. He was doomed to become notorious.
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