The Charing Cross Mystery by J. S. Fletcher

Author:J. S. Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction, London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction, Detective and mystery stories, Lawyers -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019-08-18T22:19:36+00:00

XV Revelations

The late af­ter­noon edi­tion of the even­ing pa­pers were just out when Heth­er­wick and Mather­field reached Vict­oria. Mather­field snatched one up; a mo­ment later he thrust it be­fore Heth­er­wick, point­ing to some big black cap­it­als.

“Good God!” he ex­claimed. “Look at that!”

Heth­er­wick looked, and gasped his as­ton­ish­ment at what he read.

Murder of Robert Han­na­ford.

Five Thou­sand Pounds Re­ward.

Heth­er­wick turned on his com­pan­ion with a look that was both ques­tion­ing and sur­prised.

“This is prob­ably—no, cer­tainly!—what Penteney re­ferred to when he told Ba­sev­erie to look in the news­pa­pers!” he said. “That was yes­ter­day; it must have been in last night’s pa­pers, and this morn­ing’s. I saw neither.”

“Wait!” said Mather­field. He hur­ried back to the book­stall and re­turned with an arm­ful of pa­pers, turn­ing the top­most over as he came. “It’s here—and here!” he con­tin­ued. “Let’s get a quiet corner some­where and look this thing care­fully over!”

“Come into a wait­ing-room, then,” said Heth­er­wick. “Odd!” he muttered, as they turned away. “Who should of­fer a re­ward—like that, too!—who isn’t con­cerned in the case?”

“How do we know who isn’t con­cerned in the case?” ex­claimed Mather­field. “Some­body evid­ently is!—some­body who can not only af­ford to of­fer five thou­sand pounds, but isn’t afraid to spend no end in ad­vert­ising. Look at that—and that—and that,” he went on, turn­ing over his pur­chases rap­idly. “It’s in every pa­per in Lon­don!”

“Let’s read it care­fully,” said Heth­er­wick. He spread out one of the news­pa­pers on the wait­ing-room table and muttered the word­ing of the ad­vert­ise­ment while Mather­field looked over his shoulder. “Mys­ter­i­ous, very!” he con­cluded. “What’s it mean?”

But Mather­field was re­read­ing the ad­vert­ise­ment.

Whereas Robert Han­na­ford, formerly Su­per­in­tend­ent of Po­lice at Sel­lith­waite, York­shire, died sud­denly in an Under­ground Rail­way train, near Char­ing Cross (Em­bank­ment) Sta­tion about 1:15 a.m. on March 19th last, and ex­pert med­ical in­vest­ig­a­tion has proved that he was poisoned, and there is evid­ence to war­rant the be­lief that the poison was ad­min­istered by some per­son or per­sons with in­tent to cause his death, this is to give no­tice that the above-men­tioned sum of Five Thou­sand Pounds will be paid to any­one first giv­ing in­form­a­tion which will lead to the ar­rest and con­vic­tion of the per­son or per­sons con­cerned in ad­min­is­ter­ing the said poison and that such in­form­a­tion should be given to the un­der­signed, who will pay the said re­ward in ac­cord­ance with the above-stated con­di­tions.

Penteney, Blen­kin­sop & Penteney,

Soli­cit­ors.

April 22nd, 1920.

853, Lin­coln’s Inn Fields,

Lon­don, WC

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