the accusation

The old lawyer, who had bent forward across the table in speaking to Burchill, pulled himself up sharply on receiving this answer, and for a second or two stared with a keen, searching gaze at the man he had questioned, who, on his part, returned the stare with calm assurance. A deep silence had fallen on the room; nothing broke it until Professor Cox-Raythwaite suddenly began to tap the table with the ends of his fingers. The sound roused Mr. Halfpenny to speech and action. He bent forward again towards Burchill, once more laying a hand on the will.

“That is not your signature?” he asked quietly.

Burchill shook his head—this time with a gesture of something very like contempt.

“It is not!” he answered.

“Did you see the late Jacob Herapath write—that?”

“I did not!”

“Did you see Mr. Tertius write—that?”

“I did not!”

“Have you ever seen this will, this document, before?”

“Never!”

Mr. Halfpenny drew the will towards himself with an impatient movement and began to replace it in the large envelope from which it had been taken.

“In short, you never assisted at the execution of this document—never saw Jacob Herapath make any will—never witnessed any signature of his to this?” he said testily. “That’s what you really say—what you affirm?”

“Just so,” replied Burchill. “You apprehend me exactly.”

“Yet you have just heard what Mr. Tertius says! What do you say to that, Mr. Burchill?”

“I say nothing to that, Mr. Halfpenny. I have nothing to do with what Mr. Tertius says. I have answered your questions.”

“Mr. Tertius says that he and you saw Jacob Herapath sign that document, saw each other sign it! What you say now gives Mr. Tertius the direct lie, and——”

“Pardon me, Mr. Halfpenny,” interrupted Burchill quietly. “Mr. Tertius may be under some strange misapprehension; Mr. Tertius may be suffering from some curious hallucination. What I say is—I did not see the late Jacob Herapath sign that paper; I did not sign it myself; I did not see Mr. Tertius sign it; I have never seen it before!”

Mr. Halfpenny made a little snorting sound, got up from his chair, picked up the envelope which contained the will, walked over to his safe, deposited the envelope in some inner receptacle, came back, produced his snuff-box, took a hearty pinch of its contents, snorted again, and looked hard at Barthorpe.

“I don’t see the least use in going on with this!” he said. “We have heard what Mr. Tertius, as one witness, says; we have heard what Mr. Frank Burchill, as the other witness, says. Mr. Tertius says that he saw the will executed in Mr. Burchill’s presence; Mr. Burchill denies that in the fullest and most unqualified fashion. Why waste more time? We had better separate.”

But Barthorpe laughed, maliciously.

“Scarcely!” he said. “You brought us here. It was your own proposal. I assented. And now that we are here, and you have heard—what you have heard—I’m going to have my say. You have gone, all along, Mr. Halfpenny, on the assumption that the piece of paper which you have just replaced in your safe is a genuine will. That’s what you’ve said—I believe it’s what you say now. I don’t say so!”

“What do you say it is, then?” demanded Mr. Halfpenny.

Barthorpe slightly lowered his voice.

“I say it’s a forgery!” he answered. “That, I hope, is plain language. A forgery—from the first word to its last.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Halfpenny, a little sneeringly. “And who’s the forger, pray?”

“That man, there!” said Barthorpe, suddenly pointing to Mr. Tertius. “He’s the forger! I accuse him to his face of forging every word, every letter of it from the first stroke to the final one. And I’ll give you enough evidence to prove it—enough evidence, at any rate, to prove it to any reasonable man or before a judge and jury. Forgery, I tell you!”

Mr. Halfpenny sat down again and became very calm and judicial. And he had at once to restrain Peggie Wynne, who during Barthorpe’s last speech had manifested signs of a desire to speak, and had begun to produce a sealed packet from her muff.

“Wait, my dear,” said Mr. Halfpenny. “Do not speak just now—you shall have an opportunity later—leave this to me at present. So you say you can prove that this will is a forgery, Mr. Barthorpe Herapath?” he continued, turning to the other side of the table. “Very well—since I suggested that you should come here, you shall certainly have the opportunity. But just allow me to ask Mr. Tertius a question—Tertius, you have heard what Mr. Frank Burchill has just said?”

“I have!” replied Mr. Tertius. “And—I am amazed!”

“You stand by what you said yourself? You gave us a perfectly truthful account of the execution of the will?”

“I stand by every word I said. I gave you—will give it again, anywhere!—a perfectly truthful account of the circumstances under which the will was signed and witnessed. I have made no mistakes—I am under no hallucination. I am—astonished!”

Mr. Halfpenny turned to Barthorpe with a wave of the hand.

“We are at your disposal, Mr. Barthorpe Herapath,” he said. “I leave the rest of these proceedings to you. You have openly and unqualifiedly accused Mr. Tertius of forging the will which we have all seen, and have said you can prove your accusations. Perhaps you’d better do it. Mind you!” he added, with a sudden heightening of tone, “mind you, I’m not asking you to prove anything. But if I know Tertius—and I think I do—he won’t object to your saying anything you like—we shall, perhaps, get at the truth by way of what you say. So—say on!”

“You’re very kind,” retorted Barthorpe. “I shall say on! But—I warned you—what I’ve got to say will give a good deal of pain to my cousin there. It would have been far better if you’d kept her out of this—still, she’d have had to hear it sooner or later in a court of justice——”

“It strikes me we shall have to hear a good deal in a court of justice—as you say, sooner or later,” interrupted Mr. Halfpenny, dryly. “So I don’t think you need spare Miss Wynne. I should advise you to go on, and let us become acquainted with what you’ve got to tell us.”

“Barthorpe!” said Peggie, “I do not mind what pain you give me—you can’t give me much more than I’ve already been given this morning. But I wish”—she turned appealingly to Mr. Halfpenny and again began to draw the sealed packet from her muff—“I do wish, Mr. Halfpenny, you’d let me say something before——”

“Say nothing, my dear, at present,” commanded Mr. Halfpenny, firmly. “Allow Mr. Barthorpe Herapath to have his say. Now, sir!” he went on, with a motion of his hand towards the younger solicitor. “Pray let us hear you.”

“In my own fashion,” retorted Barthorpe. “You’re not a judge, you know. Very good—if I give pain to you, Peggie, it’s not my fault. Now, Mr. Halfpenny,” he continued, turning and pointing contemptuously to Mr. Tertius, “as this is wholly informal, I’ll begin with an informal yet pertinent question, to you. Do you know who that man really is?”

“I believe that gentleman, sir, to be Mr. John Christopher Tertius, and my very good and much-esteemed friend,” replied Mr. Halfpenny, with asperity.

“Pshaw!” sneered Barthorpe. He turned to Professor Cox-Raythwaite. “I’ll put the same question to you?” he said. “Do you know who he is?”

“And I give you the same answer, sir,” answered the professor.

“No doubt!” said Barthorpe, still sneeringly. “The fact is, neither of you know who he is. So I’ll tell you. He’s an ex-convict. He served a term of penal servitude for forgery—forgery, do you hear? And his real name is not Tertius. What it is, and who he really is, and all about him, I’m going to tell you. Forger—ex-convict—get that into your minds, all of you. For it’s true!”

Mr. Tertius, who had started visibly as Barthorpe rapped out the first of his accusations, and had grown paler as they went on, quietly rose from his chair.

“Before this goes further, Halfpenny,” he said, “I should like to have a word in private with Miss Wynne. Afterwards—and I shan’t detain her more than a moment—I shall have no objection to hearing anything that Mr. Barthorpe Herapath has to say. My dear!—step this way with me a moment, I beg.”

Mr. Halfpenny’s private room was an apartment of considerable size, having in it two large recessed windows. Into one of these Mr. Tertius led Peggie, and there he spoke a few quiet words to her. Barthorpe Herapath affected to take no notice, but the other men, watching them closely, saw the girl start at something which Mr. Tertius said. But she instantly regained her self-possession and composure, and when she came back to the table her face, though pale, was firm and resolute. And Barthorpe looked at her then, and his voice, when he spoke again, was less aggressive and more civil.

“It’s not to my taste to bring unpleasant family scandals into public notice,” he said, “and that’s why I rather welcomed your proposal that we should discuss this affair in private, Mr. Halfpenny. And now for what I’ve got to tell you. I shall have to go back a long way in our family history. My late uncle, Jacob Herapath, was the eldest of the three children of his father, Matthew Herapath, who was a medical practitioner at Granchester in Yorkshire—a small town on the Yorkshire and Lancashire border. The three children were Jacob, Richard, and Susan. With the main outlines of Jacob Herapath’s career I believe we are all fairly well acquainted. He came to London as a youth, and he prospered, and became what we know him to have been. Richard, my father, went out to Canada, when he was very young, settled there, and there he died.

“Now we come to Susan, the only daughter. Susan Herapath, at the age of twenty, married a man named Wynne—Arthur John Wynne, who at that time was about twenty-five years of age, was the secretary and treasurer of a recently formed railway—a sort of branch railway on the coast, which had its head office at Southampton, a coast town. In Southampton, this Arthur John Wynne and his wife settled down. At the end of a year their first child was born—my cousin Margaret, who is here with us. When she—I am putting all this as briefly as I can—when she was about eighteen months old a sad affair happened. Wynne, who had been living in a style very much above his position, was suddenly arrested on a charge of forgery. Investigations proved that he had executed a number of most skilful and clever forgeries, by which he had defrauded his employers of a large—a very large—amount of money. He was sent for trial to the assizes at Lancaster, he was found guilty, and he was sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude. And almost at once after the trial his wife died.

“Here my late uncle, Jacob Herapath, came forward. He went north, assumed possession and guardianship of the child, and took her away from Southampton. He took her into Buckinghamshire and there placed her in the care of some people named Bristowe, who were farmers near Aylesbury and whom he knew very well. In the care of Mrs. Bristowe, the child remained until she was between six and seven years old. Then she was removed to Jacob Herapath’s own house in Portman Square, where she has remained ever since. My cousin, I believe, has a very accurate recollection of her residence with the Bristowes, and she will remember being brought from Buckinghamshire to London at the time I have spoken of.”

Barthorpe paused for a moment and looked at Peggie. But Peggie, who was listening intently with downcast head, made no remark, and he presently continued.

“Now, not so very long after that—I mean, after the child was brought to Portman Square—another person came to the house as a permanent resident. His name was given to the servants as Mr. Tertius. The conditions of his residence were somewhat peculiar. He had rooms of his own; he did as he liked. Sometimes he joined Jacob Herapath at meals; sometimes he did not. There was an air of mystery about him. What was it? I will tell you in a word—the mystery or its secret, was this—the man Tertius, who sits there now, was in reality the girl’s father! He was Arthur John Wynne, the ex-convict—the clever forger!”

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