Part 156

"There's not much more to tell, except," said Bingo, "that the first march of the Division on its route to Frostenberg led past the Border farm called Haargrond Plaats. It looked deserted and half-ruined, with only a slipshod woman and a coloured man in charge; but something was known of what had gone on there, and might be going on still, and the Boers are clever stage-managers, and it don't do to trust to appearances! So the Chief detached a party with dynamite cartridges and express orders to make the ruin real. Our men searched the place thoroughly before they blew it up; and hidden in a disused chimney--solid bit of old Dutch masonry big enough to accommodate a baker's dozen of sweeps--were a few things calculated to facilitate that search for the needle in the haystack--you understand? Disguises of various kinds--a suit of clothes lined with chamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin'--a good deal of the raw stuff itself, scattered all over the shop by the blow-up--and in a rusty cashbox a diary or private ledger, posted up in a clumsy kind of thieves' cipher, impossible to make out, but with the name written on it of the identical man my wife suspected and the Chief believed to be the murderer of Miss Mildare's adopted mother! And that's what you may call the Clue Direct, Saxham, I rather fancy?"

Major Bingo Wrynche leaned back with an air of some finality, and with some little difficulty extracted a biggish square envelope from the left inner pocket of the accurately-fitting frock-coat. He lightly placed the envelope upon the blotter before Saxham; reached out and took the shiny top-hat off the writing-table, fitted it with peculiar care on his pinkish, sandy, close-cropped head, and said, looking at Saxham with a pleasant smile.

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind throwin' your eye over the contents of that envelope? There are three photographs of handwritin' inside, marked on the backs respectively." He waited for Saxham to take the enclosures from the big envelope, examining the polish of his own varnished patent-leather boots with a fastidious air of anxiety that was extremely well assumed, if it was not strictly genuine. His large face was as bland and expressionless as the face of the grandfather-clock in the Sheraton case that ticked against the wainscot behind him, as he advised:

"Take 'em in numerical sequence. No. 1 is the photographed facsimile of the cover of the bogus letter to Mr. Casey. No. 2"--the speaker lightly touched it with a large round finger-tip--"that's the replica--also photographed--of a card the man we're after wrote on and gave to Lady Hannah, in case she found herself inclined to invest a hundred or so in the kind of wares he professed to supply. Photo No. 3 is a reproduction of an autograph and address that's written on the inside cover of the ledger --posted up in thieves' cipher--that was in the cashbox found at Haargrond Plaats." He waited, screwing painfully at the stiff, waxed ends of the scrubby moustache.

Saxham took the photographs in their order. The envelope of the bogus letter brought by the supposed runner from Diamond Town had been addressed in a big bold black round hand with curiously malformed capitals, to

"Mr. BARNEY CASEY, "Commercial Traveller, "Gueldersdorp.

"Care of the Officer Commanding H.M. Forces"

"--Don't put it back in the envelope," said Major Bingo. "Compare the writin' with No. 2."

No. 2 was the photograph of an oblong card. On it was written in ink, in the same bold hand:

"Mr. HENDRYK VAN BUSCH, "C/o Mr. W. Bough, "Transport Agent, "Haargrond Plaats, "Near Matambani, "Transvaal."

LXIV

There was a silence in the consulting-room, only broken by street noises filtered thin by walls and curtains, and the ticking of the Sheraton grandfather clock, and the breathing of two people. Saxham glanced at Major Bingo with eyes that seemed to have been bleached of colour, and laid the second calligraphic specimen beside the first, and took up No. 3, and read in the same large nourishing round hand:

"W. BOUGH, "Free State Hotel, "50 m. from Driepoort, "Orange Free State."

After that the silence was intense. The clock ticked, and the faint, far-off street noises came through the intervening screens, but only one of the men in the room seemed to be breathing. At last Saxham's grey lips moved. He said in a horrible clicking whisper:

"Van Busch and Bough are--one?"

Major Wrynche's large face nodded in the affirmative. But it was as expressionless as the grandfather clock's.

"One man!--and that's what I may call the pith of my verbal Despatch for you!"

Saxham said with hard composure:

"Van Busch is a Dutch surname that, as you say, is common in South Africa. With the name of Bough, as the Chief is aware, I have--associations. It was, in fact, one of the many aliases used by the witness for Regina in an Old Bailey case in which I was concerned nearly seven years ago."

The Major nodded once more, and said with brevity:

"Same man!"

Saxham seemed always to have known that the man was the same man. The tense muscles of his face told nothing. Bingo added:

"--But the wrong and injury done to you by Bough amount to little compared with the wrong and injury inflicted upon Mrs. Saxham! That---- Good Lord! what's the matter?"

For Saxham, with a madman's face, had leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, and stuttered with foam on his blue lips:

"What wrong? What injury? What--what are you hinting at?----"

"Hinting!" The astonishment in the Major's round light blue eyes was so palpably genuine that the crazy flame died out of the Doctor's, and his clenched hand dropped. "I didn't hint. I referred to the murder of your wife's adopted mother by this Bough, or Van Busch, that's all!"

"I beg your pardon, Major!" Saxham picked up his chair and sat down on it, inwardly cursing his lack of self-control. "My nerves have been giving trouble of late."

Going by the evidence of the haggard face and fever-bright eyes, the Doctor looked like that--uncommonly like that! And the big Major, remembering Alderman Brooker's revelation, wondered, as he screwed at the stiff, blunt ends of his sandy moustache, whether Saxham might not have reverted to the old vice? "Bad for the girl he's married if he has!" he thought, even as he said: