Peter Ruff and the Double Four
by E. Phillips Oppenheim · English · Gutenberg #1976 · 684,978 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Peter Ruff and the Double Four
Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim
Release date: November 1, 1999 [eBook #1976]
Most recently updated: October 11, 2016
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1976
Credits: Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER RUFF AND THE DOUBLE FOUR ***
Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer
PETER RUFF AND THE DOUBLE FOUR
By E. Phillips Oppenheim
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER
I INTRODUCING MR. PETER RUFF
II A NEW CAREER
III VINCENT CAWDOR, COMMISSION AGENT
IV THE INDISCRETION OF LETTY SHAW
V DELILAH FROM STREATHAM
VI THE LITTLE LADY FROM SERVIA
VII THE DEMAND OF THE DOUBLE-FOUR
VIII MRS. BOGNOR’S STAR BOARDER
IX THE PERFIDY OF MISS BROWN
X WONDERFUL JOHN DORY
BOOK TWO
I RECALLED BY THE DOUBLE-FOUR
II PRINCE ALBERT’S CARD DEBTS
III THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE
IV THE MAN FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT
V THE FIRST SHOT
VI THE SEVEN SUPPERS OF ANDREA KORUST
VII MAJOR KOSUTH’S MISSION
VIII THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
IX THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA HARBOR
X THE AFFAIR OF AN ALIEN SOCIETY
XI THE THIRTEENTH ENCOUNTER
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCING MR. PETER RUFF
There was nothing about the supper party on that particular Sunday
evening in November at Daisy Villa, Green Street, Streatham, which
seemed to indicate in any way that one of the most interesting careers
connected with the world history of crime was to owe its very existence
to the disaster which befell that little gathering. The villa was the
residence and also--to his credit--the unmortgaged property of Mr. David
Barnes, a struggling but fairly prosperous coal merchant of excellent
character, some means, and Methodist proclivities. His habit of sitting
without his coat when carving, although deprecated by his wife and
daughter on account of the genteel aspirations of the latter, was a not
unusual one in the neighbourhood; and coupled with the proximity of a
cold joint of beef, his seat at the head of the table, and a carving
knife and fork grasped in his hands, established clearly the fact of
his position in the household, which a somewhat weak physiognomy might
otherwise have led the casual observer to doubt. Opposite him, at the
other end of the table, sat his wife, Mrs. Barnes, a somewhat voluminous
lady with a high colour, a black satin frock, and many ornaments. On
her left the son of the house, eighteen years old, of moderate stature,
somewhat pimply, with the fashion of the moment reflected in his pink
tie with white spots, drawn through a gold ring, and curving outwards to
seek obscurity underneath a dazzling waistcoat. A white tube-rose in
his buttonhole might have been intended as a sort of compliment to the
occasion, or an indication of his intention to take a walk after supper
in the fashionable purlieus of the neighbourhood. Facing him sat his
sister--a fluffy-haired, blue-eyed young lady, pretty in her way, but
chiefly noticeable for a peculiar sort of self-consciousness blended
with self-satisfaction, and possessed only at a certain period in their
lives by young ladies of her age. It was almost the air of the cat in
whose interior reposes the missing canary, except that in this instance
the canary obviously existed in the person of the young man who sat at
her side, introduced formally to the household for the first time. That
young man’s name was--at the moment--Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald.
It seems idle to attempt any description of a person who, in the past,
had secured a certain amount of fame under a varying personality; and
who, in the future, was to become more than ever notorious under a far
less aristocratic pseudonym than that by which he was at present known
to the inhabitants of Daisy Villa. There are photographs of him in New
York and Paris, St. Petersburg and Chicago, Vienna and Cape Town, but
there are no two pictures which present to the casual observer the
slightest likeness to one another. To allude to him by the name under
which he had won some part, at least, of the affections of Miss Maud
Barnes, Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, as he sat there, a suitor on probation
for her hand, was a young man of modest and genteel appearance. He wore
a blue serge suit--a little underdressed for the occasion, perhaps; but
his tie and collar were neat; his gold-rimmed spectacles--if a little
disapproved of by Maud on account of the air of steadiness which they
imparted--suggested excellent son-in-lawlike qualities to Mr. and Mrs.
Barnes. He had the promise of a fair moustache, but his complexion
generally was colourless. His features, except for a certain regularity,
were undistinguished. His speech was modest and correct. His manner
varied with his company. To-night it had been pronounced, by excellent
judges--genteel.
The conversation consisted--naturally enough, under the
circumstances--of a course of subtle and judicious pumping, tactfully
prompted, for the most part, by Mrs. Barnes. Such, for instance, as the
following:
“Talking about Marie Corelli’s new book reminds me, Mr. Fitzgerald--your
occupation is connected with books, is it not?” his prospective
mother-in-law enquired, artlessly.
Mr. Fitzgerald bowed assent.
“I am cashier at Howell & Wilson’s in Cheapside,” he said. “We sell
a great many books there--as many, I should think, as any retail
establishment in London.”
“Indeed!” Mrs. Barnes purred. “Very interesting work, I am sure. So nice
and intellectual, too; for, of course, you must be looking inside them
sometimes.”
“I know the place well,” Mr. Adolphus Barnes, Junior, announced
condescendingly,--“pass it every day on my way to lunch.”
“So much nicer,” Mrs. Barnes continued, “than any of the ordinary
businesses--grocery or drapery, or anything of that sort.”
Miss Maud elevated her eyebrows slightly. Was it likely that she would
have looked with eyes of favour upon a young man engaged in any of these
inferior occupations?
“There’s money in books, too,” Mr. Barnes declared with sudden
inspiration. His prospective son-in-law turned towards him
deferentially.
“You are right, sir,” he admitted. “There is money in them. There’s
money for those who write, and there’s money for those who sell. My
occupation,” he continued, with a modest little cough, “brings me often
into touch with publishers, travellers and clerks, so I am, as it were,
behind the scenes to some extent. I can assure you,” he continued,
looking from Mr. Barnes to his wife, and finally transfixing Mr.
Adolphus--“I can assure you that the money paid by some firms of
publishers to a few well-known authors--I will mention no names--as
advances against royalties, is something stupendous!”
“Ah!” Mr. Barnes murmured, solemnly shaking his head.
“Marie Corelli, I expect, and that Hall Caine,” remarked young Adolphus.
“Seems easy enough to write a book, too,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Why, I
declare that some of those we get from the library--we subscribe to a
library, Mr. Fitzgerald--are just as simple and straightforward that
a child might have written them. No plot whatsoever, no murders or
mysteries or anything of that sort--just stories about people like
ourselves. I don’t see how they can pay people for writing stories about
people just like those one meets every day!”
“I always say,” Maud intervened, “that Spencer means to write a book
some day. He has quite the literary air, hasn’t he, mother?”
“Indeed he has!” Mrs. Barnes declared, with an appreciative glance at
the gold-rimmed spectacles.
Mr. Fitzgerald modestly disclaimed any literary aspirations.
“The thing is a gift, after all,” he declared, generously. “I can keep
accounts, and earn a fair salary at it, but if I attempted fiction I
should soon be up a tree.”
Mr. Barnes nodded his approval of such sentiments.
“Every one to his trade, I say,” he remarked. “What sort of salaries do
they pay now in the book trade?” he asked guilelessly.
“Very fair,” Mr. Fitzgerald admitted candidly,--“very fair indeed.”
“When I was your age,” Mr. Barnes said reflectively, “I was getting--let
me see--forty-two shillings a week. Pretty good pay, too, for those
days.”
Mr. Fitzgerald admitted the fact.
“Of course,” he said apologetically, “salaries are a little higher now
all round. Mr. Howell has been very kind to me,--in fact I have had two
raises this year. I am getting four pounds ten now.”
“Four pounds ten per week?” Mrs. Barnes exclaimed, laying down her knife
and fork.
“Certainly,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered. “After Christmas, I have some
reason to believe that it may be five pounds.”
Mr. Barnes whistled softly, and looked at the young man with a new
respect.
“I told you that--Mr.--that Spencer was doing pretty well, Mother,” Maud
simpered, looking down at her plate.
“Any one to support?” her father asked, transferring a pickle from the
fork to his mouth.
“No one,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered. “In fact, I may say that I have
some small expectations. I haven’t done badly, either, out of the few
investments I have made from time to time.”
“Saved a bit of money, eh?” Mr. Barnes enquired genially.
“I have a matter of four hundred pounds put by,” Mr. Fitzgerald admitted
modestly, “besides a few sticks of furniture. I never cared much about
lodging-house things, so I furnished a couple of rooms myself some time
ago.”
Mrs. Barnes rose slowly to her feet.
“You are quite sure you won’t have a small piece more of beef?” she
enquired anxiously.
“Just a morsel?” Mr. Barnes asked, tapping the joint insinuatingly with
his carving knife.
“No, I thank you!” Mr. Fitzgerald declared firmly. “I have done
excellently.”
“Then if you will put the joint on the sideboard, Adolphus,” Mrs. Barnes
directed, “Maud and I will change the plates. We always let the girl go
out on Sundays, Mr. Fitzgerald,” she explained, turning to their guest.
“It’s very awkward, of course, but they seem to expect it.”
“Quite natural, I’m sure,” Mr. Fitzgerald murmured, watching Maud’s
light movements with admiring eyes. “I like to see ladies interested in
domestic work.”
“There’s one thing I will say for Maud,” her proud mother declared,
plumping down a dish of jelly upon the table, “she does know what’s what
in keeping house, and even if she hasn’t to scrape and save as I did
when David and I were first married, economy is a great thing when
you’re young. I have always said so, and I stick to it.”
“Quite right, Mother,” Mr. Barnes declared.
“If instead of sitting there,” Mrs. Barnes continued in high good
humour, “you were to get a bottle of that port wine out of the
cellarette, we might drink Mr. Fitzgerald’s health, being as it’s his
first visit.”
Mr. Barnes rose to his feet with alacrity. “For a woman with sound
ideas,” he declared, “commend me to your mother!”
Maud, having finished her duties, resumed her place by the side of the
guest of the evening. Their hands met under the tablecloth for a moment.
To the girl, the pleasure of such a proceeding was natural enough, but
Fitzgerald asked himself for the fiftieth time why on earth he, who,
notwithstanding his present modest exterior, was a young man of some
experience, should from such primitive love-making derive a rapture
which nothing else in life afforded him. He was, at that moment, content
with his future,--a future which he had absolutely and finally decided
upon. He was content with his father-in-law and his mother-in-law, with
Daisy Villa, and the prospect of a Daisy Villa for himself,--content,
even, with Adolphus! But for Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, these things were
not to be! The awakening was even then at hand.
The dining room of Daisy Villa fronted the street, and was removed from
it only a few feet. Consequently, the footsteps of passers-by upon the
flagged pavement were clearly distinguishable. It was just at the moment
when Mrs. Barnes was inserting a few fresh almonds into a somewhat
precarious tipsy cake, and Mr. Barnes was engaged with the decanting of
the port, that two pairs of footsteps, considerably heavier than those
of the ordinary promenader, paused outside and finally stopped. The gate
creaked. Mr. Barnes looked up.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed. “What’s that? Visitors?”
They all listened. The front-door bell rang. Adolphus, in response to a
gesture from his mother, rose sulkily to his feet.
“Job I hate!” he muttered as he left the room.
The rest of the family, full of the small curiosity of people of their
class, were intent upon listening for voices outside. The demeanour of
Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, therefore, escaped their notice. It is doubtful,
in any case, whether their perceptions would have been sufficiently keen
to have enabled them to trace the workings of emotion in the countenance
of a person so magnificently endowed by Providence with the art of
subterfuge. Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald seemed simply to have stiffened in
acute and earnest attention. It was only for a moment that he hesitated.
His unfailing inspiration told him the truth!
His course of action was simple,--he rose to his feet and strolled to
the window.
“Some people who have lost their way in the fog, perhaps,” he remarked.
“What a night!”
He laid his hand upon the sash--simultaneously there was a rush of
cold air into the room, a half-angry, half-frightened exclamation from
Adolphus in the passage, a scream from Miss Maud--and no Mr. Spencer
Fitzgerald! No one had time to be more than blankly astonished. The door
was opened, and a police inspector, in very nice dark braided uniform
and a peaked cap, stood in the doorway.
Mr. Barnes dropped the port, and Mrs. Barnes, emulating her daughter’s
example, screamed. The inspector, as though conscious of the draught,
moved rapidly toward the window.
“You had a visitor here, Mr. Barnes,” he said quickly--“a Mr. Spencer
Fitzgerald. Where is he?”
There was no one who could answer! Mr. Barnes was speechless between
the shock of the spilt port and the appearance of a couple of uniformed
policemen in his dining room. John Dory, the detective, he knew well
enough in his private capacity, but in his uniform, and attended by
policemen, he presented a new and startling appearance! Mrs. Barnes was
in hysterics, and Maud was gazing like a creature turned to stone at
the open window, through which little puffs of fog were already drifting
into the room. Adolphus, with an air of bewilderment, was standing with
his mouth and eyes wider open than they had ever been in his life. And
as for the honoured guest of these admirable inhabitants of Daisy Villa,
there was not the slightest doubt but that Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald had
disappeared through the window!
Fitzgerald’s expedition was nearly at an end. Soon he paused, crossed
the road to a block of flats, ascended to the eighth floor by an
automatic lift, and rang the bell at a door which bore simply the number
II. A trim parlourmaid opened it after a few minutes’ delay.
“Is Miss Emerson at home?” he asked.
“Miss Emerson is in,” the maid admitted, with some hesitation, “but I am
not sure that she will see any one to-night.”
“I have a message for her,” Fitzgerald said.
“Will you give me your name, sir, please?” the maid asked.
An inner door was suddenly opened. A slim girl, looking taller than she
really was by reason of the rug upon which she stood, looked out into
the hall--a girl with masses of brown hair loosely coiled on her head,
with pale face and strange eyes. She opened her lips as though to call
to her visitor by name, and as suddenly closed them again. There was not
much expression in her face, but there was enough to show that his visit
was not unwelcome.
“You!” she exclaimed. “Come in! Please come in at once!”
Fitzgerald obeyed the invitation of the girl whom he had come to visit.
She had retreated a little into the room, but the door was no sooner
closed than she held out her hands.
“Peter!” she exclaimed. “Peter, you have come to me at last!”
Her lips were a little parted; her eyes were bright with pleasure; her
whole expression was one of absolute delight. Fitzgerald frowned, as
though he found her welcome a little too enthusiastic for his taste.
“Violet,” he said, “please don’t look at me as though I were a prodigal
sheep. If you do, I shall be sorry that I came.”
Her hands fell to her side, the pleasure died out of her face--only her
eyes still questioned him. Fitzgerald carefully laid his hat on a vacant
chair.
“Something has happened?” she said. “Tell me that all that madness is
over--that you are yourself again!”
“So far as regards my engagement with Messrs. Howell & Wilson,” he said,
despondently, “you are right. As regards--Miss Barnes, there has been
no direct misunderstanding between us, but I am afraid, for the present,
that I must consider that--well, in abeyance.”
“That is something!” she exclaimed, drawing a little breath of relief.
“Sit down, Peter. Will you have something to eat? I finished dinner an
hour ago, but--”
“Thank you,” Fitzgerald interrupted, “I supped--extremely well in
Streatham!”
“In Streatham!” she repeated. “Why, how did you get there? The fog is
awful.”
“Fogs do not trouble me,” Fitzgerald answered. “I walked. I could have
done it as well blindfold. I will take a whisky and soda, if I may.”
She led him to an easy-chair.
“I will mix it myself,” she said.
Without being remarkably good-looking, she was certainly a pleasant
and attractive-looking young woman. Her cheeks were a little pale; her
hair--perfectly natural--was a wonderful deep shade of soft brown. Her
eyes were long and narrow--almost Oriental in shape--and they seemed
in some queer way to match the room; he could have sworn that in the
firelight they flashed green. Her body and limbs, notwithstanding her
extreme slightness, were graceful, perhaps, but with the grace of the
tigress. She wore a green silk dressing jacket, pulled together with a
belt of lizard skin, and her neck was bare. Her skirt was of some thin
black material. She was obviously in deshabille, and yet there was
something neat and trim about the smaller details of her toilette.
“Go on, please, Peter,” she begged. “You are keeping me in suspense.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” he answered. “It’s over--that’s all.”
She drew a sharp breath through her teeth.
“You are not going to marry that girl--that bourgeois doll in
Streatham?”
Fitzgerald sat up in his chair.
“Look here,” he said, seriously, “don’t you call her names. If I’m not
going to marry her, it isn’t my fault. She is the only girl I have ever
wanted, and probably--most probably--she will be the only one I ever
shall want. That’s honest, isn’t it?”
The girl winced.
“Yes,” she said, “it is honest!”
“I should have married her,” the young man continued, “and I should have
been happy. I had my eye on a villa--not too near her parents--and I saw
my way to a little increase of salary. I should have taken to gardening,
to walks in the Park, with an occasional theatre, and I should
have thoroughly enjoyed a fortnight every summer at Skegness or
Sutton-on-Sea. We should have saved a little money. I should have gone
to church regularly, and if possible I should have filled some
minor public offices. You may call this bourgeois--it was my idea of
happiness.”
“Was!” she murmured.
“Is still,” he declared, sharply, “but I shall never attain to it.
To-night I had to leave Maud--to leave the supper table of Daisy
Villa--through the window!”
She looked at him in amazement.
“The police,” he explained. “That brute Dory was at the bottom of it.”
“But surely,” she murmured, “you told me that you had a bona-fide
situation--”
“So I had,” he declared, “and I was a fool not to be content with it.
It was my habit of taking long country walks, and their rotten auditing,
which undid me! You understand that this was all before I met Maud?
Since the day I spoke to her, I turned over a new leaf. I have left the
night work alone, and I repaid every penny of the firm’s money which
they could ever have possibly found out about. There was only that one
little affair of mine down at Sudbury.”
“Tell me what you are going to do?” she whispered.
“I have no alternative,” he answered. “The law has kicked me out from
the respectable places. The law shall pay!”
She looked at him with glowing eyes.
“Have you any plans?” she asked, softly.
“I have,” he answered. “I have considered the subject from a good many
points of view, and I have decided to start in business for myself as a
private detective.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“My dear Peter!” she murmured. “Couldn’t you be a little more original?”
“That is only what I am going to call myself,” he answered. “I may tell
you that I am going to strike out on somewhat new lines.”
“Please explain,” she begged.
He recrossed his knees and made himself a little more comfortable.
“The weak part of every great robbery, however successful,” he began,
“is the great wastage in value which invariably results. For jewels
which cost--say five thousand pounds, and to procure which the artist
has to risk his life as well as his liberty, he has to consider
himself lucky if he clears eight hundred. For the Hermitage rubies, for
instance, where I nearly had to shoot a man dead, I realized rather less
than four hundred pounds. It doesn’t pay.”
“Go on,” she begged.
“I am not clear,” he continued, “how far this class of business will
attract me at all, but I do not propose, in any case, to enter into any
transactions on my own account. I shall work for other people, and for
cash down. Your experience of life, Violet, has been fairly large. Have
you not sometimes come into contact with people driven into a situation
from which they would willingly commit any crime to escape if they
dared? It is not with them a question of money at all--it is simply a
matter of ignorance. They do not know how to commit a crime. They have
had no experience, and if they attempt it, they know perfectly well that
they are likely to blunder. A person thoroughly experienced in the ways
of criminals--a person of genius like myself--would have, without a
doubt, an immense clientele, if only he dared put up his signboard.
Literally, I cannot do that. Actually, I mean to do so! I shall be
willing to accept contracts either to help nervous people out of an
undesirable crisis; or, on the other hand, to measure my wits against
the wits of Scotland Yard, and to discover the criminals whom they have
failed to secure. I shall make my own bargains, and I shall be paid in
cash. I shall take on nothing that I am not certain about.”
“But your clients?” she asked, curiously. “How will you come into
contact with them?”
He smiled.
“I am not afraid of business being slack,” he said. “The world is full
of fools.”
“You cannot live outside the law, Peter,” she objected. “You are clever,
I know, but they are not all fools at Scotland Yard.”
“You forget,” he reminded her, “that there will be a perfectly
legitimate side to my profession. The other sort of case I shall only
accept if I can see my way clear to make a success of it. Needless to
say, I shall have to refuse the majority that are offered to me.”
She came a little nearer to him.
“In any case,” she said, with a little sigh, “you have given up that
foolish, bourgeois life of yours?”
He looked down into her face, and his eyes were cold.
“Violet,” he said, “this is no time for misunderstandings. I should
like you to know that apart from one young lady, who possesses my whole
affection--”
“All of it?” she pleaded.
“All!” he declared emphatically. “She will doubtless be faithless to
me--under the circumstances, I cannot blame her--but so far as I am
concerned, I have no affection whatever for any one else.”
She crept back to her place.
“I could be so useful to you,” she murmured.
“You could and you shall, if you will be sensible,” he answered.
“Tell me how?” she begged.
He was silent for a moment.
“Are you acting now?” he asked.
“I am understudying Molly,” she answered, “and I have a very small part
at the Globe.”
He nodded.
“There is no reason to interfere with that,” he said, “in fact, I wish
you to continue your connection with the profession. It brings you into
touch with the class of people among whom I am likely to find clients.”
“Go on, please,” she begged.
“On two conditions--or rather one,” he said, “you can, if you like,
become my secretary and partner--and find the money we shall require to
make a start.”
“Conditions?” she asked.
“You must understand, once and for all,” he said, “that I will not be
made love to, and that I can treat you only as a working; companion. My
name will be Peter Ruff, and yours Miss Brown. You will have to dress
like a secretary, and behave like one. Sometimes there will be plenty
of work for you, and sometimes there will be none at all. Sometimes you
will be bored to death, and sometimes there will be excitement. I do not
wish to make you vain, but I may add, especially as you are aware of my
personal feelings toward you, that you are the only person in the world
to whom I would make this offer.”
She sighed gently.
“Tell me, Peter,” she asked, “when do you mean to start this new
enterprise?”
“Not for six months--perhaps a year,” he answered. “I must go to
Paris--perhaps Vienna. I might even have to go to New York. There
are certain associations with which I must come into touch--certain
information I must become possessed of.”
“Peter,” she said, “I like your scheme, but there is just one thing.
Such men as you should be the brains of great enterprises. Don’t you
understand what I mean? It shouldn’t be you who does the actual thing
which brings you within the power of the law. I am not over-scrupulous,
you know. I hate wrongdoing, but I have never been able to treat as
equal criminals the poor man who steals for a living, and the rich
financier who robs right and left out of sheer greed. I agree with you
that crime is not an absolute thing. The circumstances connected with
every action in life determine its morality or immorality. But, Peter,
it isn’t worth while to go outside the law!”
He nodded.
“You are a sensible girl,” he said, “I have always thought that. We’ll
talk over my cases together, if they seem to run a little too close to
the line.”
“Very well, Peter,” she said, “I accept.”
CHAPTER II. A NEW CAREER
About twelve months after the interrupted festivities at Daisy Villa,
that particular neighbourhood was again the scene of some rejoicing.
Standing before the residence of Mr. Barnes were three carriages, drawn
in each case by a pair of grey horses. The coachmen and their steeds
were similarly adorned with white rosettes. It would have been an insult
to the intelligence of the most youthful of the loungers-by to have
informed them that a wedding was projected.
At the neighbouring church all was ready. The clerk stood at the door,
the red drugget was down, the usual little crowd were standing all agog
upon the pavement. There was one unusual feature of the proceedings:
Instead of a solitary policeman, there were at least a dozen who kept
clear the entrance to the church. Their presence greatly puzzled a
little old gentleman who had joined the throng of sightseers. He pushed
himself to the front and touched one of them upon the shoulder.
“Mr. Policeman,” he said, “will you tell me why there are so many of you
to keep such a small crowd in order?”
“Bridegroom’s a member of the force, sir, for one reason,” the man
answered good-humouredly.
“And the other?” the old gentleman persisted.
The policeman behaved as though he had not heard--a proceeding which his
natural stolidity rendered easy. The little old gentleman, however, was
not so easily put off. He tapped the man once more upon the shoulder.
“And the other reason, Mr. Policeman?” he asked insinuatingly.
“Not allowed to talk about that, sir,” was the somewhat gruff reply.
The little old gentleman moved away, a trifle hurt. He was a very nicely
dressed old gentleman indeed, and everything about him seemed to savour
of prosperity. But he was certainly garrulous. An obviously invited
guest was standing upon the edge of the pavement stroking a pair of
lavender kid gloves. The little old gentleman sidled up to him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, raising his hat. “I am just back from
Australia--haven’t seen a wedding in England for fifty years. Do you
think that they would let me into the church?”
The invited guest looked down at his questioner and approved of him.
Furthermore, he seemed exceedingly glad to be interrupted in his
somewhat nervous task of waiting for the wedding party.
“Certainly, sir,” he replied cheerfully. “Come along in with me, and
I’ll find you a seat.”
Down the scarlet drugget they went--the big best man with the red hands
and the lavender kid gloves and the opulent-looking old gentleman with
the gold-rimmed spectacles and the handsome walking stick.
“Dear me, this is very interesting!” the latter remarked. “Is it
the custom, sir, always, may I ask, in this country, to have so many
policemen at a wedding?”
The big man looked downward and shook his head.
“Special reason,” he said mysteriously. “Fact is, young lady was engaged
once to a very bad character--a burglar whom the police have been
wanting for years. He had to leave the country, but he has written her
once or twice since in a mysterious sort of way--wanted her to be true
to him, and all that sort of thing. Dory--that’s the bridegroom--has got
a sort of an idea that he may turn up to-day.”
“This is very exciting--very!” the little old gentleman remarked.
“Reminds me of our younger days out in Australia.”
“You sit down here,” the best man directed, ushering his companion
into an empty pew. “I must get back again outside, or I shall have the
bridegroom arriving.”
“Good-day to you, sir, and many thanks!” the little old gentleman said
politely.
Soon the bridegroom arrived--a smart young officer, well thought of at
Scotland Yard, well set up, wearing a long tail coat a lilac and white
tie, and shaking in every limb. He walked up the aisle accompanied by
the best man, and the little old gentleman from Australia watched him
genially from behind those gold-rimmed glasses. And, then, scarcely was
he at the altar rails when through the open church door one heard the
sounds of horses’ feet, one heard a rustle, the murmur of voices, caught
a glimpse of a waiting group arranging themselves finally in the porch
of the church. Maud, on the arm of her father, came slowly up the aisle.
The little old gentleman turned his head as though this was something
upon which he feared to look. He saw nothing of Mr. Barnes, in a new
coat, with tuberose and spray of maidenhair in his coat, and exceedingly
tight patent leather boots on his feet; he saw nothing of Mrs. Barnes,
clad in a gown of the lightest magenta, with a bonnet smothered with
violets.
It was in the vestry that the only untoward incident of that highly
successful wedding took place. The ceremony was over! Bride, bridegroom
and parents trooped in. And when the register was opened, one witness
had already signed! In the clear, precise writing his name stood out
upon the virgin page--
Spencer Fitzgerald
The bridegroom swore, the bride nearly collapsed. The clerk pressed into
the hands of the latter an envelope.
“From the little old gentleman,” he announced, “who was fussing round
the church this morning.”
Mrs. Dory tore it open and gave a cry of delight. A diamond cross, worth
all the rest of her presents put together, flashed soft lights from a
background of dull velvet. Her husband had looked over her shoulder, and
with a scowl seized the morocco case and threw it far from him.
It was the only disturbing incident of a highly successful function!
At precisely the same moment when the wedding guests were seated
around the hospitable board of Daisy Villa, a celebration of a somewhat
different nature was taking place in the more aristocratic neighbourhood
of Curzon Street. Here, however, the little party was a much smaller
one, and the innocent gaiety of the gathering at Daisy Villa was
entirely lacking. The luncheon table around which the four men were
seated presented all the unlovely signs of a meal where self-restraint
had been abandoned--where conviviality has passed the bounds of licence.
Edibles were represented only by a single dish of fruit; the tablecloth,
stained with wine and cigar ash, seemed crowded with every sort of
bottle and every sort of glass. A magnum of champagne, empty, another
half full, stood in the middle of the table; whisky, brandy, liqueurs of
various sorts were all represented; glasses--some full, some empty, some
filled with cigar ash and cigarette stumps--an ugly sight!
The guest in chief arose. Short, thick-set, red-faced, with bulbous
eyes, and veins about his temples which just now were unpleasantly
prominent, he seemed, indeed, a very fitting person to have been the
recipient of such hospitality. He stood clutching a little at the
tablecloth and swaying upon his feet. He spoke as a drunken man, but
such words as he pronounced clearly showed him to be possessed of a
voice naturally thick and raspy. It was obvious that he was a person of
entirely different class from his three companions.
“G--gentlemen,” he said, “I must be off. I thank you very much for
this--hospitality. Honoured, I’m sure, to have sat down in such--such
company. Good afternoon, all!”
He lurched a little toward the door, but his neighbour at the table--who
was also his host--caught hold of his coat tail and pulled him back into
his chair.
“No hurry, Masters,” he said. “One more liqueur, eh? It’s a raw
afternoon.”
“N--not another drop, Sir Richard!” the man declared. “Not another drop
to drink. I am very much obliged to you all, but I must be off. Must be
off,” he repeated, making another effort to rise.
His host held him by the arm. The man resented it--he showed signs of
anger.
“D--n it all! I--I’m not a prisoner, am I?” he exclaimed angrily. “Tell
you I’ve got--appointment--club. Can’t you see it’s past five o’clock?”
“That’s all right, Masters,” the man whom he had addressed as Sir
Richard declared soothingly. “We want just a word with you on business
first, before you go--Colonel Dickinson, Lord Merries and myself.”
Masters shook his head.
“See you to-morrow,” he declared. “No time to talk business now. Let me
go!”
He made another attempt to rise, which his host also prevented.
“Masters, don’t be a fool!” the latter said firmly. “You’ve got to hear
what we want to say to you. Sit down and listen.”
Masters relapsed sullenly into his chair. His little eyes seemed to
creep closer to one another. So they wanted to talk business! Perhaps
it was for that reason that they had bidden him sit at their table--had
entertained him so well! The very thought cleared his brain.
“Go on,” he said shortly.
Sir Richard lit a cigarette and leaned further back in his chair. He was
a man apparently about fifty years of age--tall, well dressed, with good
features, save for his mouth, which resembled more than anything a
rat trap. He was perfectly bald, and he had the air of a man who was a
careful liver. His eyes were bright, almost beadlike; his fingers long
and a trifle over-manicured. One would have judged him to be what he
was--a man of fashion and a patron of the turf.
“Masters,” he said, “we are all old friends here. We want to speak to
you plainly. We three have had a try, as you know--Merries, Dickinson
and myself--to make the coup of our lives. We failed, and we’re up
against it hard.”
“Very hard, indeed,” Lord Merries murmured softly.
“Deuced hard!” Colonel Dickinson echoed.
Masters was sitting tight, breathing a little hard, looking fixedly at
his host.
“Take my own case first,” the latter continued. “I am Sir Richard Dyson,
ninth baronet, with estates in Wiltshire and Scotland, and a town
house in Cleveland Place. I belong to the proper clubs for a man in my
position, and, somehow or other--we won’t say how--I have managed to pay
my way. There isn’t an acre of my property that isn’t mortgaged for more
than its value. My town house--well, it doesn’t belong to me at all! I
have twenty-six thousand pounds to pay you on Monday. To save my life, I
could not raise twenty-six thousand farthings! So much for me.”
The man Masters ground his teeth.
“So much for you!” he muttered.
“Take the case next,” Sir Richard continued, “of my friend Merries
here. Merries is an Earl, it is true, but he never had a penny to bless
himself with. He’s tried acting, reporting, marrying--anything to make
an honest living. So far, I am afraid we must consider Lord Merries as
something of a failure, eh?”
“A rotten failure, I should say,” that young nobleman declared gloomily.
“Lord Merries is, to put it briefly, financially unsound,” Sir Richard
declared.
“What is the amount of your debt to Mr. Masters, Jim?”
“Eleven thousand two hundred pounds,” Lord Merries answered.
“And we may take it, I presume, for granted that you have not that sum,
nor anything like it, at your disposal?” Sir Richard asked.
“Not a fiver!” Lord Merries declared with emphasis.
“We come now, Mr. Masters, to our friend Colonel Dickinson,” Sir
Richard continued. “Colonel Dickinson is, perhaps, in a more favourable
situation than any of us. He has a small but regular income, and he has
expectations which it is not possible to mortgage fully. At the same
time, it will be many years before they can--er--fructify. He is,
therefore, with us in this somewhat unpleasant predicament in which we
find ourselves.”
“Cut it short,” Masters growled. “I’m sick of so much talk. What’s it
all mean?”
“It means simply this, Mr. Masters,” Sir Richard said, “we want you to
take six months’ bills for our indebtedness to you.”
Masters rose to his feet. His thick lips were drawn a little apart. He
had the appearance of a savage and discontented animal.
“So that’s why I’ve been asked here and fed up with wine and stuff, eh?”
he exclaimed thickly. “Well, my answer to you is soon given. NO! I’ll
take bills from no man! My terms are cash on settling day--cash to pay
or cash to receive. I’ll have no other!”
Sir Richard rose also to his feet.
“Mr. Masters, I beg of you to be reasonable,” he said. “You will do
yourself no good by adopting this attitude. Facts are facts. We haven’t
got a thousand pounds between us.”
“I’ve heard that sort of a tale before,” Masters answered, with a sneer.
“Job Masters is too old a bird to be caught by such chaff. I’ll take my
risks, gentlemen. I’ll take my risks.”
He moved toward the door. No one spoke a word. The silence as he crossed
the room seemed a little ominous. He looked over his shoulder. They were
all three standing in their places, looking at him. A vague sense of
uneasiness disturbed his equanimity.
“No offence, gents,” he said, “and good afternoon!”
Still no reply. He reached the door and turned the handle. The door
was fast. He shook it--gently at first, and then violently. Suddenly he
realized that it was locked. He turned sharply around.
“What game’s this?” he exclaimed, fiercely. “Let me out!”
They stood in their places without movement. There was something a
little ominous in their silence. Masters was fast becoming a sober man.
“Let me out of here,” he exclaimed, “or I’ll break the door down!”
Sir Richard Dyson came slowly towards him. There was something in his
appearance which terrified Masters. He raised his fist to strike the
door. He was a fighting man, but he felt a sudden sense of impotence.
“Mr. Masters,” Sir Richard said suavely, “the truth is that we cannot
afford to let you go--unless you agree to do what we have asked. You
see we really have not the money or any way of raising it--and the
inconvenience of being posted you have yourself very ably pointed out.
Change your mind, Mr. Masters. Take those bills. We’ll do our best to
meet them.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Masters answered, striking the door
fiercely with his clenched fist. “I’ll have cash--nothing but the cash!”
There was a dull, sickening thud, and the bookmaker went over like a
shot rabbit. His legs twitched for a moment--a little moan that was
scarcely audible broke from his lips. Then he lay quite still. Sir
Richard bent over him with the life preserver still in his hand.
“I’ve done it!” he muttered, hoarsely. “One blow! Thank Heaven, he
didn’t want another! His skull was as soft as pudding! Ugh!”
He turned away. The man who lay stretched upon the floor was an ugly
sight. His two companions, cowering over the table, were not much
better. Dyson’s trembling fingers went out for the brandy decanter. Half
of what he poured out was spilled upon the tablecloth. The rest he drank
from a tumbler, neat.
“It’s nervous work, this, you fellows,” he said, hoarsely.
“It’s hellish!” Dickinson answered. “Let’s have some air in the room. By
God, it’s close!”
He sank back into his chair, white to the lips. Dyson looked at him
sharply.
“Look here,” he exclaimed, “I hold you both to our bargain! I was to be
the one he attacked and who struck the blow--in self-defence! Remember
that--it was in self-defence! I’ve done it! I’ve done my share! I hope
to God I’ll forget it some day. Andrew, you know your task. Be a man,
and get to work!”
Dickinson rose to his feet unsteadily. “Yes!” he said. “What was it? I
have forgotten, for the moment, but I am ready.”
“You must get his betting book from his pocket,” Sir Richard directed.
“Then you must help Merries downstairs with him, and into the car.
Merries is--to get rid of him.”
Merries shivered. His hand, too, went out for the brandy.
“To get rid of him,” he muttered. “It sounds easy!”
“It is easy,” Sir Richard declared. “You have only to keep your nerve,
and the thing is done. No one will see him inside the car, in that
motoring coat and glasses. You can drive somewhere out into the country
and leave him.”
“Leave him!” Merries repeated, trembling. “Leave him--yes!”
Neither of the two men moved.
“I must do more than my share, I suppose,” Sir Richard declared
contemptuously. “Come!”
They dragged the man’s body on to a chair, wrapped a huge coat around
him, tied a motoring cap under his chin, fixed goggles over his eyes.
Sir Richard strolled into the hall and opened the front door. He stood
there for a moment, looking up and down the street. When he gave
the signal they dragged him out, supported between them, across the
pavement, into the car. Ugh! His attitude was so natural as to be
absolutely ghastly. Merries started the car and sprang into the driver’s
seat. There were people in the Square now, but the figure reclining in
the dark, cushioned interior looked perfectly natural.
“So long, Jimmy,” Sir Richard called out. “See you this evening.”
“Right O!” Merries replied, with a brave effort.
Peter Ruff, summoned by telephone from his sitting room, slipped down
the stairs like a cat--noiseless, swift. The voice which had
summoned him had been the voice of his secretary--a voice almost
unrecognisable--a voice shaken with fear. Fear? No, it had been terror!
On the landing below, exactly underneath the room from which he had
descended, there was a door upon which his name was written upon a small
brass plate--Mr. Peter Ruff. He opened and closed it behind him with
a swift movement which he had practised in his idle moments. He found
himself looking in upon a curious scene.
Miss Brown, with the radiance of her hair effectually concealed, in
plain black skirt and simple blouse--the ideal secretary--had risen from
the seat in front of her typewriter, and was standing facing the door
through which he had entered, with a small revolver--which he had
given her for a birthday present only the day before--clasped in her
outstretched hand. The object of her solicitude was, it seemed to Peter
Ruff, the most pitiful-looking object upon which he had ever looked. The
hours had dwelt with Merries as the years with some people, and worse.
He had lost his cap; his hair hung over his forehead in wild confusion;
his eyes were red, bloodshot, and absolutely aflame with the terrors
through which he had lived--underneath them the black marks might have
been traced with a charcoal pencil. His cheeks were livid save for one
burning spot. His clothes, too, were in disorder--the starch had gone
from his collar, his tie hung loosely outside his waistcoat. He was
cowering back against the wall. And between him and the girl, stretched
upon the floor, was the body of a man in a huge motor coat, a limp,
inert mass which neither moved nor seemed to have any sign of life. No
wonder that Peter Ruff looked around his office, whose serenity had been
so tragically disturbed, with an air of mild surprise.
“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “something seems to have happened! My dear
Violet, you can put that revolver away. I have secured the door.”
Her hand fell to her side. She gave a little shiver of relief. Peter
Ruff nodded.
“That is more comfortable,” he declared. “Now, perhaps, you will
explain--”
“That young man,” she interrupted, “or lunatic--whatever he calls
himself--burst in here a few minutes ago, dragging--that!” She pointed
to the motionless figure upon the floor. “If I had not stopped him, he
would have bolted off without a word of explanation.”
Peter Ruff, with his back against the door, shook his head gravely.
“My dear Lord Merries,” he said, “my office is not a mortuary.”
Merries gasped.
“You know me, then?” he muttered, hoarsely.
“Of course,” Ruff answered. “It is my profession to know everybody. Go
and sit down upon that easy-chair, and drink the brandy and soda which
Miss Brown is about to mix for you. That’s right.”
Merries staggered across the room and half fell into an easy-chair. He
leaned over the side with his face buried in his hands, unable still
to face the horror which lay upon the floor. A few seconds later, the
tumbler of brandy and soda was in his hands. He drank it like a man who
drains fresh life into his veins.
“Perhaps now,” Peter Ruff suggested, pointing to the motionless figure,
“you can give me some explanation as to this!”
Merries looked away from him all the time he was speaking. His voice was
thick and nervous.
“There were three of us lunching together,” he began--“four in all.
There was a dispute, and this man threatened us. Afterwards there was a
fight. It fell to my lot to take him away, and I can’t get rid of him!
I can’t get rid of him!” he repeated, with something that sounded like a
sob.
“I still do not see,” Peter Ruff argued, “why you should have brought
him here and deposited him upon my perfectly new carpet.”
“You are Peter Ruff,” Merries declared. “‘Crime Investigator and Private
Detective,’ you call yourself. You are used to this sort of thing. You
will know what to do with it. It is part of your business.”
“I can assure you,” Peter Ruff answered, “that you are under a delusion
as to the details of my profession. I am Peter Ruff,” he admitted, “and
I call myself a crime investigator--in fact, I am the only one worth
speaking of in the world. But I certainly deny that I am used to
having dead bodies deposited upon my carpet, and that I make a habit of
disposing of them--especially gratis.”
Merries tore open his coat.
“Listen,” he said, his voice shaking hysterically, “I must get rid of
it or go mad. For two hours I have been driving about in a motor car
with--it for a passenger. I drove to a quiet spot and I tried to lift
it out--a policeman rode up! I tried again, a man rushed by on a motor
cycle, and turned to look at me! I tried a few minutes later--the
policeman came back! It was always the same. The night seemed to have
eyes. I was watched everywhere. The--the face began to mock me. I’ll
swear that I heard it chuckle once!”
Peter Ruff moved a little further away.
“I don’t think I’ll have anything to do with it,” he declared. “I don’t
like your description at all.”
“It’ll be all right with you,” Merries declared eagerly. “It’s my
nerves, that’s all. You see, I was there--when the accident happened.
See here,” he added, tearing a pocketbook from his coat, “I have three
hundred and seventy pounds saved up in case I had to bolt. I’ll keep
seventy--three hundred for you--to dispose of it!”
Ruff leaned over the motionless body, looked into its face, and nodded.
“Masters, the bookmaker,” he remarked. “H’m! I did hear that he had a
lot of money coming to him over the Cambridgeshire.”
Merries shuddered.
“May I go?” he pleaded. “There’s the three hundred on the table. For
God’s sake, let me go!”
Peter Ruff nodded.
“I wish you’d saved a little more,” he said. “However--”
He turned the lock and Merries rushed out of the room. Ruff looked
across the room towards his secretary.
“Ring up 1535 Central,” he ordered, sharply.
Peter Ruff had descended from his apartments on the top floor of the
building, in a new brown suit with which he was violently displeased, to
meet a caller.
“I am sorry to intrude--Mr. Ruff, I believe it is?” Sir Richard Dyson
said, a little irritably--“but I have not a great deal of time to
spare--”
“Most natural!” Peter Ruff declared. “Pray take a chair, Sir Richard.
You want to know, of course, about Lord Merries and poor Masters.”
Sir Richard stared at his questioner, for a moment, without speech. Once
more the fear which he had succeeded in banishing for a while, shone in
his eyes--revealed itself in his white face.
“Try the easy-chair, Sir Richard,” Ruff continued, pleasantly. “Leave
your hat and cane on the table there, and make yourself comfortable. I
should like to understand exactly what you have come to me for.”
Sir Richard moved his head toward Miss Brown.
“My business with you,” he said, “is more than ordinarily private. I
have the honour of knowing Miss--”
“Miss Brown,” Peter interrupted quickly. “In these offices, this young
lady’s name is Miss Violet Brown.”
Sir Richard shrugged his shoulders.
“It is of no importance,” he said, “only, as you may understand, my
business with you scarcely requires the presence of a third party, even
one with the discretion which I am sure Miss--Brown possesses.”
“In these matters,” Ruff answered, “my secretary does not exist apart
from myself. Her presence is necessary. She takes down in shorthand
notes of our conversation. I have a shocking memory, and there are
always points which I forget. At the conclusion of our business,
whatever it may be, these notes are destroyed. I could not work without
them, however.”
Sir Richard glanced a little doubtfully at the long, slim back of the
girl who sat with her face turned away from him. “Of course,” he began,
“if you make yourself personally responsible for her discretion--”
“I am willing to do so,” Ruff interrupted, brusquely. “I guarantee it.
Go on, please.”
“I do not know, of course, where you got your information from,” Sir
Richard began, “but it is perfectly true that I have come here to
consult you upon a matter in which the two people whose names you have
mentioned are concerned. The disappearance of Job Masters is, of course,
common talk; but I cannot tell what has led you to associate with it the
temporary absence of Lord Merries from this country.”
“Let me ask you this question,” Ruff said. “How are you affected by the
disappearance of Masters?”
“Indirectly, it has caused me a great deal of inconvenience,” Sir
Richard declared.
“Facts, please,” murmured Peter.
“It has been rumoured,” Sir Richard admitted, “that I owed Masters a
large sum of money which I could not pay.”
“Anything else?”
“It has also been rumoured,” Sir Richard continued, “that he was seen
to enter my house that day, and that he remained there until late in the
afternoon.”
“Did he?” asked Ruff.
“Certainly not,” Sir Richard answered.
Peter Ruff yawned for a moment, but covered the indiscretion with his
hand.
“Respecting this inconvenience,” he said, “which you admit that the
disappearance of Job Masters has caused you, what is its tangible side?”
Sir Richard drew his chair a little nearer to the table where Ruff was
sitting. His voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“It seems absurd,” he said, “and yet, what I tell you is the truth. I
have been followed about--shadowed, in fact--for several days. Men, even
in my own social circle, seem to hold aloof from me. It is as though,”
he continued slowly, “people were beginning to suspect me of being
connected in some way with the man’s disappearance.”
Ruff, who had been making figures with a pencil on the edge of his
blotting paper, suddenly turned round. His eyes flashed with a new light
as they became fixed upon his companion’s.
“And are you not?” he asked, calmly. Sir Richard bore himself well. For
a moment he had shrunk back. Then he half rose to his feet.
“Mr. Ruff!” he said. “I must protest--”
“Stop!”
Peter Ruff used no violent gesture. Only his forefinger tapped the desk
in front of him. His voice was as smooth as velvet.
“Tell me as much or as little as you please, Sir Richard,” he said, “but
let that little or that much be the truth! On those terms only I may
be able to help you. You do not go to your physician and expect him to
prescribe to you while you conceal your symptoms, or to your lawyer for
advice and tell him half the truth. I am not asking for your confidence.
I simply tell you that you are wasting your time and mine if you choose
to withhold it.”
Sir Richard was silent. He recognized a new quality in the man--but the
truth was an awful thing to tell! He considered--then told.
Ruff briskly asked two questions. “In alluding to your heavy settlement
with Masters, you said just now that you could not have paid him--then.”
“Quite so,” Sir Richard admitted. “That is the rotten part of the whole
affair. Four days later a wonderful double came off--one in which we
were all interested, and one which not one of us expected. We’ve drawn a
considerable amount already from one or two bookies, and I believe even
Masters owes us a bit now.”
“Thank you,” Ruff said. “I think that I know everything now. My fee is
five hundred guineas.”
Sir Richard looked at him.
“What?” he exclaimed.
“Five hundred guineas,” Ruff repeated.
“For a consultation?” Sir Richard asked.
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“More than that,” he said. “You are a brave man in your way, Sir Richard
Dyson, but you are going about now shivering under a load of fear. It
sits like a devil incarnate upon your shoulders. It poisons the air
wherever you go. Write your cheque, Sir Richard, and you can leave
that little black devil in my wastebasket. You are under my protection.
Nothing will happen to you.”
Sir Richard sat like a man mesmerised. The little man with the amiable
expression and the badly fitting suit was leaning back in his chair, his
finger tips pressed together, waiting.
“Nothing will happen!” Sir Richard repeated, incredulously.
“Certainly not. I guarantee you against any inconvenience which might
arise to you from this recent unfortunate affair. Isn’t that all you
want?”
“It’s all I want, certainly,” Sir Richard declared, “but I must
understand a little how you propose to secure my immunity.”
Ruff shook his head.
“I have my own methods,” he said. “I can help only those who trust me.”
Sir Richard drew a cheque book from his pocket. “I don’t know why I
should believe in you,” he said, as he wrote the cheque.
“But you do,” Peter Ruff said, smiling. “Fortunately for you, you do!”
It was not so easy to impart a similar confidence into the breast of
Colonel Dickinson, with whom Sir Richard dined that night tete-a-tete.
Dickinson was inclined to think that Sir Richard ad been “had.”
“You’ve paid a ridiculous fee,” he argued, “and all that you have in
return is the fellow’s promise to see you through. It isn’t like you to
part with money so easily, Richard. Did he hypnotise you?”
“I don’t think so,” Sir Richard answered. “I wasn’t conscious of it.”
“What sort of a fellow is he?” Dickinson asked.
Sir Richard looked reflectively into his glass.
“He’s a vulgar sort of little Johnny,” he said. “Looks as though he were
always dressed in new clothes and couldn’t get used to them.”
Three men entered the room. Two remained in the background. John Dory
came forward towards the table.
“Sir Richard Dyson,” he said, gravely, “I have come upon an unpleasant
errand.”
“Go on,” Sir Richard said, fingering something hard inside pocket of his
coat.
“I have a warrant for your arrest,” Dory continued, “in connection with
the disappearance of Job Masters on Saturday, the 10th of November last.
I will read the terms of the warrant, if you choose. It is my duty to
warn you that anything you may now say can be used in evidence against
you. This gentleman, I believe, is Colonel Dickinson?”
“That is my name, sir,” Dickinson answered, with unexpected fortitude.
“I regret to say,” the detective continued, “that I have also a warrant
for your arrest in connection with the same matter.”
Sir Richard had hold of the butt end of his revolver then. Like grisly
phantoms, the thoughts chased one another through his brain. Should he
shoot and end it--pass into black nothingness--escape disgrace, but die
like a rat in a corner? His finger was upon the trigger. Then suddenly
his heart gave a great leap. He raised his head as though listening.
Something flashed in his eyes--something that was almost like hope.
There was no mistaking that voice which he had heard in the hall! He
made a great rally.
“I can only conclude,” he said, turning to the detective, “that you have
made some absurd blunder. If you really possess the warrants you speak
of, however, Colonel Dickinson and I will accompany you wherever you
choose.”
Then the door opened and Peter Ruff walked in, followed by Job Masters,
whose head was still bandaged, and who seemed to have lost a little
flesh and a lot of colour. Peter Ruff looked round apologetically. He
seemed surprised not to find Sir Richard Dyson and Colonel Dickinson
alone. He seemed more than ever surprised to recognize Dory.
“I trust,” he said smoothly, “that our visit is not inopportune. Sir
Richard Dyson, I believe?” he continued, bowing--“my friend, Mr. Masters
here, has consulted me as to the loss of a betting book, and we ventured
to call to ask you, sir, if by any chance on his recent visit to your
house--”
“God in Heaven, it’s Masters!” Dyson exclaimed. “It’s Job Masters!”
“That’s me, sir,” Masters admitted. “Mr. Ruff thought you might be able
to help me find that book.”
Sir Richard swayed upon his feet. Then the blood rushed once more
through his veins.
“Your book’s here in my cabinet, safe enough,” he said. “You left it
here after our luncheon that day. Where on earth have you been to, man?”
he continued. “We want some money from you over Myopia.”
“I’ll pay all right, sir,” Masters answered. “Fact is, after our
luncheon party I’m afraid I got a bit fuddled. I don’t seem to remember
much.”
He sat down a little heavily. Peter Ruff hastened to the table and took
up a glass.
“You will excuse me if I give him a little brandy, won’t you, sir?”
he said. “He’s really not quite fit for getting about yet, but he was
worrying about his book.”
“Give him all the brandy he can drink,” Sir Richard answered.
The detective’s face had been a study. He knew Masters well enough by
sight--there was no doubt about his identity! His teeth came together
with an angry little click. He had made a mistake! It was a thing which
would be remembered against him forever! It was as bad as his failure to
arrest that young man at Daisy Villa.
“Your visit, Masters,” Sir Richard said, with a curious smile at the
corners of his lips, “is, in some respects, a little opportune. About
that little matter we were speaking of,” he continued, turning towards
the detective.
“We have only to offer you our apologies, Sir Richard,” Dory answered.
Then he crossed the room and confronted Peter Ruff.
“Do I understand, sir, that your name is Ruff--Peter Ruff?” he asked.
“That is my name, sir,” Peter Ruff admitted, pleasantly “Yours I
believe, is Dory. We are likely to come across one another now and then,
I suppose. Glad to know you.”
The detective stood quite still, and there was no geniality in his face.
“I wonder--have we ever met before?” he asked, without removing his eyes
from the other’s face. Peter Ruff smiled.
“Not professionally, at any rate,” he answered. “I know that Scotland
Yard you don’t think much of us small fry, but we find out things
sometimes!”
“Why didn’t you contradict all those rumours as to his disappearance?”
the detective asked, pointing to where Job Masters was contentedly
sipping his brandy and water.
“I was acting for my client, and in my own interests,” replied Peter.
“It was surely no part of my duty to save you gentlemen at Scotland Yard
from hunting up mare’s nests!”
John Dory went out, followed by his men. Sir Richard took Peter Ruff by
the arm, and, leading him to the sideboard, mixed him a drink.
“Peter Ruff,” he said, “you’re a clever scoundrel, but you’ve earned
your five hundred guineas. Hang it, you’re welcome to them! Is there
anything else I can do for you?”
Peter Ruff raised his glass and set it down again. Once more he eyed
with admiration his client’s well-turned out figure.
“You might give me a letter to your tailors, Sir Richard,” he begged.
Sir Richard laughed outright--it was some time since he had laughed!
“You shall have it, Peter Ruff,” he declared, raising his glass--“and
here’s to you!”
CHAPTER III. VINCENT CAWDOR, COMMISSION AGENT
For the second time since their new association, Peter Ruff had
surprised that look upon his secretary’s face. This time he wheeled
around in his chair and addressed her.
“My dear Violet,” he said, “be frank with me. What is wrong?”
Miss Brown turned to face her employer. Save for a greater demureness
of expression and the extreme simplicity of her attire, she had changed
very little since she had given up her life of comparative luxury to
become Peter Ruff’s secretary. There was a sort of personal elegance
which clung to her, notwithstanding her strenuous attempts to dress for
her part, except for which she looked precisely as a private secretary
and typist should look. She even wore a black bow at the back of her
hair.
“I have not complained, have I?” she asked.
“Do not waste time,” Peter Ruff said, coldly. “Proceed.”
“I have not enough to do,” she said. “I do not understand why you refuse
so many cases.”
Peter Ruff nodded.
“I did not bring my talents into this business,” he said, “to watch
flirting wives, to ascertain the haunts of gay husbands, or to detect
the pilferings of servants.”
“Anything is better than sitting still,” she protested.
“I do not agree with you,” Peter Ruff said. “I like sitting still very
much indeed--one has time to think. Is there anything else?”
“Shall I really go on?” she asked.
“By all means,” he answered.
“I have idea,” she continued, “that you are subordinating your general
interests to your secret enmity--to one man. You are waiting until you
can find another case in which you are pitted against him.”
“Sometimes,” Peter Ruff said, “your intelligence surprises me!”
“I came to you,” she continued, looking at him earnestly, “for two
reasons. The personal one I will not touch upon. The other was my love
of excitement. I have tried many things in life, as you know, Peter,
but I have seemed to carry always with me the heritage of weariness. I
thought that my position here would help me to fight against it.”
“You have seen me bring a corpse to life,” Peter Ruff reminded her, a
little aggrieved.
She smiled.
“It was a month ago,” she reminded him.
“I can’t do that sort of thing every day,” he declared.
“Naturally,” she answered; “but you have refused four cases within the
last five days.”
Peter Ruff whistled softly to himself for several moments.
“Seen anything of our new neighbour in the flat above?” he asked, with
apparent irrelevance.
Miss Brown looked across at him with upraised eyebrows.
“I have been in the lift with him twice,” she answered.
“Fancy his appearance?” Ruff asked, casually.
“Not in the least!” Violet answered. “I thought him a vulgar, offensive
person!”
Peter Ruff chuckled. He seemed immensely delighted.
“Mr. Vincent Cawdor he calls himself, I believe,” he remarked.
“I have no idea,” Miss Brown declared. The subject did not appeal to
her.
“His name is on a small copper plate just over the letter-box,” Ruff
said. “Rather neat idea, by the bye. He calls himself a commission
agent, I believe.”
Violet was suddenly interested. She realized, after all, that Mr.
Vincent Cawdor might be a person of some importance.
“What is a commission agent?” she asked.
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“It might mean anything,” he declared. “Never trust any one who is not
a little more explicit as to his profession. I am afraid that this Mr.
Vincent Cawdor, for instance, is a bad lot.”
“I am sure he is,” Miss Brown declared.
“Looks after a pretty girl, coughs in the lift--all that sort of thing,
eh?” Peter Ruff asked.
She nodded.
“Disgusting!” she exclaimed, with emphasis.
Peter Ruff sighed, and glanced at the clock. The existence of Mr.
Vincent Cawdor seemed to pass out of his mind.
“It is nearly one o’clock,” he said. “Where do you usually lunch,
Violet?”
“It depends upon my appetite,” she answered, carelessly. “Most often at
an A B C.”
“To-day,” Peter Ruff said, “you will be extravagant--at my expense.”
“I had a poor breakfast,” Miss Brown remarked, complacently.
“You will leave at once,” Peter Ruff said, “and you will go to the
French Cafe at the Milan. Get a table facing the courtyard, and towards
the hotel side of the room. Keep your eyes open and tell me exactly what
you see.”
She looked at him with parted lips. Her eyes were full of eager
questioning.
“Mere skirmishing,” Peter Ruff continued, “but I think--yes, I think
that it may lead to something.”
“Whom am I to watch?” she asked.
“Any one who looks interesting,” Peter Ruff answered. “For instance, if
this person Vincent Cawdor should be about.”
“He would recognize me!” she declared.
Peter Ruff shrugged his shoulders.
“One must hold the candle,” he remarked.
“I decline to flirt with him,” she declared. “Nothing would induce me to
be pleasant to such an odious creature.”
“He will be too busy to attempt anything of the sort. Of course he may
not be there. It may be the merest fancy on my part. At any rate, you
may rely upon it that he will not make any overtures in a public place
like the Milan. Mr. Vincent Cawdor may be a curious sort of person, but
I do not fancy that he is a fool!”
“Very well,” Miss Brown said, “I will go.”
“Be back soon after three,” Peter Ruff said. “I am going up to my room
to do my exercises.”
“And afterwards?” she asked.
“I shall have my lunch sent in,” he answered. “Don’t hurry back, though.
I shall not expect you till a quarter past three.”
It was a few minutes past that time when Miss Brown returned. Peter Ruff
was sitting at his desk, looking as though he had never moved. He was
absorbed by a book of patterns sent in by his new tailor, and he only
glanced up when she entered the room.
“Violet,” he said, earnestly, “come in and sit down. I want to consult
you. There is a new material here--a sort of mouse-coloured cheviot. I
wonder whether it would suit me?”
Violet was looking very handsome and a little flushed. She raised her
veil and came over to his side.
“Put that stupid book away, Peter,” she said. “I want to tell you about
the Milan.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“Ah!” he said. “I had forgotten! Was Mr. Vincent Cawdor there?”
“Yes!” she answered, still a little breathless. “There was some one else
there, too, in whom you are still more interested.”
He nodded.
“Go on,” he said.
“Mr. Vincent Cawdor,” she continued, “came in alone. He looked just as
objectionable as ever, and he stared at me till I nearly threw my wine
glass at him.”
“He did not speak to you?” Peter Ruff asked.
“I was afraid that he was going to,” Miss Brown said, “but fortunately
he met a friend who came to his table and lunched with him.”
“A friend,” Ruff remarked. “Good! What was he like?”
“Fair, slight, Teutonic,” Miss Brown answered. “He wore thick
spectacles, and his moustache was positively yellow.”
Ruff nodded.
“Go on,” he said.
“Towards the end of luncheon,” she continued, “an American came up to
them.”
“An American?” Peter Ruff interrupted. “How do you know that?”
Miss Brown smiled.
“He was clean-shaven and he wore neat clothes,” she said. “He talked
with an accent you could have cut with a knife and he had a Baedeker
sticking out of his pocket. After luncheon, they all three went away to
the smoking room.”
Peter Ruff nodded.
“Anything else?” he asked.
The girl smiled triumphantly.
“Yes!” she declared. “There was something else--something which I
think you will find interesting. At the next table to me there was a
man--alone. Can you guess who he was?”
“John Dory,” Ruff said, calmly.
The girl was disappointed.
“You knew!” she exclaimed.
“My dear Violet,” he said, “I did not send you there on a fool’s
errand.”
“There is something doing, then?” she exclaimed.
“There is likely,” he answered, grimly, “to be a great deal doing!”
The two men who stood upon the hill, and Peter Ruff, who lay upon his
stomach behind a huge boulder, looked upon a new thing.
Far down in the valley from out of a black shed--the only sign of man’s
handiwork for many miles--it came--something grey at first, moving
slowly as though being pushed down a slight incline, then afloat in the
air, gathering speed--something between a torpedo with wings and a
great prehistoric insect. Now and then it described strange circles, but
mostly it came towards them as swift and as true as an arrow shot from a
bow. The two men looked at one another--the shorter, to whose cheeks the
Cumberland winds had brought no trace of colour, gave vent to a hoarse
exclamation.
“He’s done it!” he growled.
“Wait!” the other answered.
Over their heads the thing wheeled, and seemed to stand still in the
air. The beating of the engine was so faint that Peter Ruff from behind
the boulder, could hear all that was said. A man leaned out from his
seat--a man with wan cheeks but blazing eyes.
“Listen,” he said. “Take your glasses. There--due north--can you see a
steeple?”
The men turned their field glasses in the direction toward which the
other pointed. “Yes!” they answered. “It is sixteen miles, as the crow
flies, to Barnham Church--thirty-two miles there and back. Wait!”
He swung round, dived till he seemed about to touch the hillside, then
soared upwards and straight away. Peter Ruff took out his watch. The
other two men gazed with fascinated eyes after the disappearing speck.
“If he does it--” the shorter one muttered.
“He will do it!” the other answered.
He was back again before their eyes were weary of watching. Peter Ruff,
from behind the boulder, closed his watch. Thirty-two miles in less than
half an hour! The youth leaned from his seat.
“Is it enough?” he asked, hoarsely.
“It is enough!” the two men answered together. “We will come down.”
The youth touched a lever and the machine glided down towards the
valley, falling all the while with the effortless grace a parachute. The
shed from which his machine had issued was midway down a slope, with
a short length of rails which ran, apparently, through it. The machine
seemed to hover for several moments above the building, then descended
slowly on to the rails and disappeared in the shed. The two men were
already half-way down the hill. Peter Ruff rose from behind the boulder,
stretched himself with a sense of immense relief, and lit a pipe. As
yet he dared not descend. He simply changed his hiding place for a spot
which enabled him to command a view of the handful of cottages at the
back of the hill. He had plenty to think about. It was a wonderful
thing--this--which he had seen!
The youth, meanwhile, was drinking deep of the poisonous cup. He walked
between the two men--his cheeks were flushed, his eyes on fire.
“If all the world to-day had seen what we have seen,” the older man was
saying, “there would be no more talk of Wilbur Wrights or Farmans. Those
men are babies, playing with their toys.”
“Mine is the ideal principle,” the youth declared. “No one else has
thought of it, no one else has made use of it. Yet all the time I am
afraid--it is so simple.”
“Sell quick, then,” the fair-headed man advised. “By to-morrow night I
can promise you fifty thousand pounds.”
The youth stopped. He drew a deep breath.
“I shall sell,” he declared. “I need money. I want to live. Fifty
thousand pounds is enough. Eleven weary months I have slept and toiled
there in the shed.”
“It is finished,” the older man declared. “To-night you shall come with
us to London. To-morrow night your pockets shall be full of gold. It
will be a change for you.”
The youth sobbed.
“God knows it will,” he muttered. “I haven’t two shillings in the world,
and I owe for my last petrol.”
The two men laughed heartily. The elder took a little bundle of notes
from his pocket and handed them to the boy.
“Come,” he said, “not for another moment shall you feel as poor as
that. Money will have no value for you in the future. The fifty thousand
pounds will only be a start. After that, you will get royalties. If I
had it, I would give you a quarter of a million now for your plans; I
know that I can get you more.”
The youth laughed hysterically. They entered the tiny inn and drank
home-made wine--the best they could get. Then a great car drew up
outside, and the older--the clean-shaven man, who looked like an
American--hurried out, and dragging a hamper from beneath the seat
returned with a gold-foiled bottle in his hand.
“Come,” he said, “a toast! We have one bottle left--one bottle of the
best!”
“Champagne!” the youth cried eagerly, holding out his hand.
“The only wine for the conquerors,” the other declared, pouring it out
into the thick tumblers. “Drink, all of you, to the Franklin Flying
Machine, to the millions she will earn--to to-morrow night!”
The youth drained his glass, watched it replenished, and drained it
again. Then they went out to the car.
“There is one thing yet to be done,” he said. “Wait here for me.”
They waited whilst he climbed up toward the shed. The two men watched
him. A little group of rustics stood open-mouthed around the great car.
Then there was a little shout. From above their heads came the sound of
a great explosion--red flames were leaping up from that black barn to
the sky. The two men looked at one another. They rushed to the hill and
met the youth descending.
“What the--”
He stopped them.
“I dared not leave it here,” he explained. “It would have been madness.
I am perfectly certain that I have been watched during the last few
days. I can build another in a week. I have the plans in my pocket for
every part.”
The older man wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
“You are sure--that you have the plans?” he asked.
The youth struck himself on the chest.
“They are here,” he answered, “every one of them!”
“Perhaps you are right, then,” the other man answered. “It gave me a
turn, though. You are sure that you can make it again in the time you
say?”
“Of course!” the youth answered, impatiently. “Besides, the thing is so
simple. It speaks for itself.”
They climbed into the car, and in a few minutes were rushing away
southwards.
“To-morrow night--to-morrow night it all begins!” the youth continued.
“I must start with ready-made clothes. I’ll get the best I can, eat the
best I can, drink wine, go to the music halls. To-morrow night.”
His speech ended in a wail--a strange, half-stifled cry which rang out
with a chill, ghostly sound upon the black silence. His face was covered
with a wet towel, a ghastly odor was in his nostrils, his lips refused
to utter any further sound. He lay back among the cushions, senseless.
The car slowed down.
“Get the papers, quick!” the elder man muttered, opening the youth’s
coat. “Here they are! Catch hold, Dick! My God! What’s that?”
He shook from head to foot. The little fair man looked at him with
contempt.
“A sheep bell on the moor,” he said. “Are you sure you have everything?”
“Yes!” the other muttered.
They both stood up and raised the prostrate form between them. Below
them were the black waters of the lake.
“Over with him!” the younger said. “Quick!”
Once more his companion shrank away.
“Listen!” he muttered, hoarsely.
They both held their breaths. From somewhere along the road behind came
a faint sound like the beating of an engine.
“It’s a car!” the elder man exclaimed. “Quick! Over with him!”
They lifted the body of the boy, whose lips were white and speechless
now, and threw him into the water. With a great splash he disappeared.
They watched for a moment. Only the ripples flowed away from the place
where he had sunk. They jumped back to their seats.
“There’s something close behind,” the older man muttered. “Get on! Fast!
Fast!”
The younger man hesitated.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “it would be better to wait and see who it is
coming up behind. Our young friend there is safe. The current has him,
and the tarn is bottomless.”
There was a moment’s indecision--a moment which was to count for much
in the lives of three men. Then the elder one’s counsels prevailed. They
crept away down the hill, smoothly and noiselessly. Behind them, the
faint throbbing grew less and less distinct. Soon they heard it no more.
They drove into the dawn and through the long day.
Side by side on one of the big leather couches in the small smoking room
of the Milan Hotel, Mr. James P. Rounceby and his friend Mr. Richard
Marnstam sat whispering together. It was nearly two o clock, and they
were alone in the room. Some of the lights had been turned out. The roar
of life in the streets without had ceased. It was an uneasy hour for
those whose consciences were not wholly at rest!
The two men were in evening dress--Rounceby in dinner coat and black
tie, as befitted his role of travelling American. The glasses in front
of them were only half-filled, and had remained so for the last hour.
Their conversation had been nervous and spasmodic. It was obvious that
they were waiting for some one.
Three o’clock struck by the little timepiece on the mantel shelf. A
little exclamation of a profane nature broke from Rounceby’s lips. He
leaned toward his companion.
“Say,” he muttered, in a rather thick undertone, “how about this fellow
Vincent Cawdor? You haven’t any doubts about him, I suppose? He’s on the
square, all right, eh?”
Marnstam wet his lips nervously.
“Cawdor’s all right,” he said. “I had it direct from headquarters at
Paris. What are you uneasy about, eh?”
Rounceby pointed towards the clock.
“Do you see the time?” he asked.
“He said he’d be late,” Marnstam answered.
Rounceby put his hand to his forehead and found it moist.
“It’s been a silly game, all along,” he muttered. “We’d better have
brought the young ass up here and jostled him!”
“Not so easy,” Marnstam answered. “These young fools have a way of
turning obstinate. He’d have chucked us, sure. Anyhow, he’s safer where
he is.”
They relapsed once more into silence. A storm of rain beat upon the
window. Rounceby glanced up. It was as black out there as were the
waters of that silent tarn! The man shivered as the thought struck
him. Marnstam, who had no nerves, twirled his moustache and watched his
companion with wonder.
“You look as though you saw a ghost,” he remarked.
“Perhaps I do!” Rounceby growled.
“You had better finish your drink, my dear fellow,” Marnstam advised.
“Afterwards--”
Suddenly he stiffened into attention. He laid his hand upon his
companion’s knee.
“Listen!” he said. “There is some one coming.”
They leaned a little forward. The swing doors were opened. A girl’s
musical laugh rang out from the corridor. Tall and elegant, with her
black lace skirt trailing upon the floor, her left hand resting upon the
shoulder of the man into whose ear she was whispering, and whom she led
straight to one of the writing tables, Miss Violet Brown swept into the
room. On her right, and nearest to the two men, was Mr. Vincent Cawdor.
“Now you can go and talk to your friends!” she exclaimed, lightly. “I am
going to make Victor listen to me.”
Cawdor left his two companions and sank on to the couch by Rounceby’s
side. The young man, with his opera hat still on his head, and the light
overcoat which he had been carrying on the floor by his side, was seated
before the writing table with his back to them. Miss Brown was leaning
over him, with her hand upon the back of his chair. They were out of
hearing of the other three men.
“Well, Rounceby, my friend,” Mr. Vincent Cawdor remarked, cheerfully,
“you’re having a late sitting, eh?”
“We’ve been waiting for you, you fool!” Rounceby answered. “What on
earth are you thinking about, bringing a crowd like this about with you,
eh?”
Cawdor smiled, reassuringly.
“Don’t you worry,” he said, in a lower tone. “I know my way in and out
of the ropes here better than you can teach me. A big hotel like this
is the safest and the most dangerous place in the world--just how you
choose to make it. You’ve got to bluff ‘em all the time. That’s why I
brought the young lady--particular friend of mine--real nice girl, too!”
“And the young man?” Rounceby asked, suspiciously.
Cawdor grew more serious.
“That’s Captain Lowther,” he said softly--“private secretary to Colonel
Dean, who’s the chief of the aeronaut department at Aldershot. He has
a draft in his pocket for twenty thousand pounds. It is yours if he is
satisfied with the plans.”
“Twenty thousand pounds!” Marnstam said, thoughtfully. “It is very
little--very little indeed for the risks which we have run!”
Cawdor moved his place and sat between the men. He laid a hand upon
Marnstam’s shoulder--another on Rounceby’s knee.
“My dear friends,” he said, impressively, “if you could have built a
model, or conducted these negotiations in the usual way, you might have
asked a million. As it is, I think I am the only man in England who
could have dealt with this matter--so satisfactorily.”
Rounceby glanced suspiciously at the young man to whom Miss Brown was
still devoting the whole of her attention.
“Why don’t he come out and talk like a man?” he asked. “What’s the idea
of his sitting over there with his back to us?”
“I want him never to see your faces--to deal only with me,” Cawdor
explained. “Remember that he is in an official position. The money he is
going to part with is secret service money.”
The two men were beginning to be more reassured. Rounceby slowly
produced a roll of oilskin from his pocket.
“He’ll look at them as he sits there,” he insisted. “There must be no
copying or making notes, mind.”
Cawdor smiled in a superior fashion.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “you are dealing with the emissary of a
government--not one of your own sort.”
Rounceby glanced at his companion, who nodded. Then he handed over the
plans.
“Tell him to look sharp,” he said. “It’s not so late but that there may
be people in here yet.”
Cawdor crossed the room with the plans, and laid them down before the
writing table. Rounceby rose to his feet and lit a cigar. Marnstam
walked to the further window and back again. They stood side by side.
Rounceby’s whole frame seemed to have stiffened with some new emotion.
“There’s something wrong, Jim,” Marnstam whispered softly in his ear.
“You’ve got the old lady in your pocket?”
“Yes!” Rounceby answered thickly, “and, by Heavens, I’m going to use
it!”
“Don’t shoot unless it’s the worst,” Marnstam counselled. “I shall go
out of that window, into the tree, and run for the river. But bluff
first, Jim--bluff for your life!”
There were swinging doors leading into the room from the hotel side, and
a small door exactly opposite which led to the residential part of the
place. Both of these doors were opened at precisely the same moment.
Through the former stepped two strong looking men in long overcoats, and
with the unmistakable appearance of policemen in plain clothes. Through
the latter came John Dory! He walked straight up to the two men.
It spoke volumes for his courage that, knowing their characters and
believing them to be in desperate straits, he came unarmed.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I hold warrants for your arrest. I will not
trouble you with your aliases. You are known to-day, I believe, as James
Rounceby and Richard Marnstam. Will you come quietly?”
Marnstam’s expression was one of bland and beautiful surprise.
“My dear sir,” he said, edging, however, a little toward the
window--“you must be joking! What is the charge?”
“You are charged with the wilful murder of a young man named Victor
Franklin,” answered Dory. “His body was recovered from Longthorp Tarn
this afternoon. You had better say nothing. Also with the theft of
certain papers known to have been in his possession.”
Now it is possible that at this precise moment Marnstam would have made
his spring for the window and Rounceby his running fight for liberty.
The hands of both men were upon their revolvers, and John Dory’s life
was a thing of no account. But at this juncture a thing happened. There
were in the room the two policemen guarding the swing doors, and behind
them the pale faces of a couple of night porters looking anxiously in.
Vincent Cawdor and Miss Brown were standing side by side, a little in
the background, and the young man who had been their companion had risen
also to his feet. As though with some intention of intervening, he moved
a step forward, almost in line with Dory. Rounceby saw him, and a new
fear gripped him by the heart. He shrank back, his fingers relaxed
their hold of his weapon, the sweat was hot upon his forehead. Marnstam,
though he seemed for a moment stupefied, realised the miracle which had
happened and struck boldly for his own.
“If this is a joke,” he said, “it strikes me as being a particularly bad
one. I should like to know, sir, how you dare to come into this room
and charge me and my friend--Mr. Rounceby--with being concerned in the
murder of a young man who is even now actually standing by your side.”
John Dory started back. He looked with something like apprehension at
the youth to whom Marnstam pointed.
“My name is Victor Franklin,” that young man declared. “What’s all this
about?”
Dory felt the ground give beneath his feet. Nevertheless, he set his
teeth and fought for his hand.
“You say that your name is Victor Franklin?” he asked.
“Certainly!”
“You are the inventor of a flying machine?”
“I am.”
“You were in Westmoreland with these two men a few days go?”
“I was,” the young man admitted.
“You left the village of Scawton in a motor car with them?”
“Yes! We quarrelled on the way, and parted.”
“You were robbed of nothing?”
Victor Franklin smiled.
“Certainly not,” he answered. “I had nothing worth stealing except my
plans, and they are in my pocket now.”
There was a few moments’ intense silence. Dory wheeled suddenly round,
and looked to where Mr. Vincent Cawdor had been standing.
“Where is Mr. Cawdor?” he asked, sharply.
“The gentleman with the grey moustache left a few seconds ago,” one of
the men at the door said. Dory was very pale.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have to offer you my apologies. I have
apparently been deceived by some false information. The charge is
withdrawn.”
He turned on his heel and left the room. The two policemen followed him.
“Keep them under observation,” Dory ordered shortly, “but I am afraid
this fellow Cawdor has sold me.”
He found a hansom outside, and sprang into it.
“Number 27, Southampton Row,” he ordered.
Rounceby and his partner were alone in the little smoking room. The
former was almost inarticulate. The night porter brought them brandy,
and both men drank.
“We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Marnstam,” Mr. Rounceby
muttered.
Mr. Marnstam was thinking.
“Do you remember that sound through the darkness,” he said--“the beating
of an engine way back on the road?”
“What of it?” Rounceby demanded.
“It was a motor bicycle,” Marnstam said quietly. “I thought so at the
time.”
“Supposing some one followed us and pulled him out,” Rounceby said,
hoarsely, “why are we treated like this? I tell you we’ve been made
fools of! We’ve been treated like children--not even to be punished!
We’ll have the truth somehow out of that devil Cawdor! Come!”
They made their way to the courtyard and found a cab.
“Number 27, Southampton Row!” they ordered.
They reached their destination some time before Dory, whose horse fell
down in the Strand, and who had to walk. They ascended to the fourth
floor of the building and rang the bell of Vincent Cawdor’s room--no
answer. They plied the knocker--no result. Rounceby peered through the
keyhole.
“He hasn’t come home yet,” he remarked. “There is no light anywhere in
the place.”
The door of a flat across the passage was quietly opened. Mr. Peter
Ruff, in a neat black smoking suit and slippers, and holding a pipe in
his hand, looked out.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but I do not think that Mr. Cawdor is
in. He went out early this evening, and I have not heard him return.”
The two men turned away.
“We are much obliged to you, sir,” Mr. Marnstam said.
“Can I give him any message?” Peter Ruff asked, politely. “We generally
see something of one another in the morning.”
“You can tell him--” Rounceby began.
“No message, thanks!” Marnstam interrupted. “We shall probably run
across him ourselves to-morrow.”
John Dory was nearly a quarter of an hour late. After his third useless
summons, Mr. Peter Ruff presented himself again.
“I am afraid,” he said, “you will not find my neighbour at home.
There have been several people enquiring for him to-night, without any
result.”
John Dory came slowly across the landing.
“Good evening, Mr. Ruff!” he said.
“Why, it’s Mr. Dory!” Peter Ruff declared. “Come in, do, and have a
drink.”
John Dory accepted the invitation, and his eyes were busy in that little
sitting room during the few minutes which it took his host to mix that
whisky and soda.
“Nothing wrong with our friend opposite, I hope?” Peter Ruff asked,
jerking his head across the landing.
“I hope not, Mr. Ruff,” John Dory said. “No doubt in the morning he will
be able to explain everything. I must say that I should like to see him
to-night, though.”
“He may turn up yet,” Peter Ruff remarked, cheerfully. “He’s like
myself--a late bird.”
“I fear not,” Dory answered, drily. “Nice rooms you have here, sir. Just
a sitting room and bedroom, eh?”
Peter Ruff stood up and threw open the door of the inner apartment.
“That’s so,” he answered. “Care to have a look round?”
The detective did look round, and pretty thoroughly. As soon as he was
sure that there was no one concealed upon the premises, he drank his
whisky and soda and went.
“I’ll look in again to see Cawdor,” he remarked--“to-morrow, perhaps, or
the next day.”
“I’ll let him know if I see him about,” Peter Ruff declared. “Sorry the
lift’s stopped. Three steps to the left and straight on. Good-night!”
Miss Brown arrived early the following morning, and was disposed to be
inquisitive.
“I should like to know,” she said, “exactly what has become of Mr.
Vincent Cawdor.”
Peter Ruff took her upstairs. There was a little mound of ashes in the
grate.
She nodded.
“I imagined that,” she said. “But why did you send me out to watch
yourself?”
“My dear Violet,” Peter Ruff answered, “there is no man in the world
to-day who is my equal in the art of disguising himself. At the same
time, I wanted to know whether I could deceive you. I wanted to be quite
sure that my study of Mr. Vincent Cawdor was a safe one. I took those
rooms in his name and in his own person. I do not think that it occurred
even to our friend John Dory to connect us in his mind.”
“Very well,” she went on. “Now tell me, please, what took you up to
Westmoreland?”
“I followed Rounceby and Marnstam,” he answered, “I knew them when I was
abroad, studying crime--I could tell you a good deal about both those
men if it were worth while--and I knew, when they hired a big motor car
and engaged a crook to drive it, that they were worth following. I saw
the trial of the flying machine, and when they started off with young
Franklin, I followed on a motor bicycle. I fished him out of the tarn
where they left him for dead, brought him on to London, and made my own
terms with him.”
“What about the body which was found in the Longthorp Tarn?” she asked.
“I had that telegram sent myself,” Peter Ruff answered.
She looked at him severely.
“You went out of your way to make a fool of John Dory!” she said,
frowning at him.
“That I admit,” he answered.
“It seems to me,” she continued, “that that, after all, has been the
chief object of the whole affair. I do not see that we--that is the
firm--profit in the least.”
Peter Ruff chuckled.
“We’ve got a fourth share in the Franklin Flying Machine,” he answered,
“and I’m hanged if I’d sell it for a hundred thousand pounds.”
“You’ve taken advantage of that young man’s gratitude,” she declared.
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“I earned the money,” he answered.
CHAPTER IV. THE INDISCRETION OF LETTY SHAW
Amidst a storm of whispered criticisms, the general opinion was that
Letty Shaw was a silly little fool who ought to have known better. When
she had entered the restaurant a few minutes before midnight, followed
by Austen Abbott, every one looked to see a third person following them.
No third person, however, appeared. Gustav himself conducted them to a
small table laid for two, covered with pink roses, and handed his fair
client the menu of a specially ordered supper. There was no gainsaying
the fact that Letty and her escort proposed supping alone!
The Cafe at the Milan was, without doubt, the fashionable rendezvous of
the moment for those ladies connected with the stage who, after
their performance, had not the time or the inclination to make the
conventional toilet demanded by the larger restaurants. Letty Shaw,
being one of the principal ornaments of the musical comedy stage, was
well known to every one in the room. There was scarcely a person
there who within the last fortnight had not found an opportunity of
congratulating her upon her engagement to Captain the Honourable Brian
Sotherst. Sotherst was rich, and one of the most popular young men about
town. Letty Shaw, although she had had one or two harmless flirtations,
was well known as a self-respecting and hard-working young actress who
loved her work, and against whom no one had ever had a word to say.
Consequently, the shock was all the greater when, within a fortnight of
her engagement, she was thus to be seen openly supping alone with the
most notorious woman hunter about town--a man of bad reputation, a man,
too, towards whom Sotherst was known to have a special aversion. Nothing
but a break with Sotherst or a fit of temporary insanity seemed to
explain, even inadequately, the situation.
Her best friend--the friend who knew her and believed in her--rose to
her feet and came sailing down the room. She nodded gaily to Abbott,
whom she hated, and whom she had not recognized for years, and laid her
hand upon Letty’s arm.
“Where’s Brian?” she asked.
Letty shrugged her shoulders--it was not altogether a natural gesture.
“On duty to-night,” she answered.
Her best friend paused for a moment.
“Come over and join our party, both of you,” she said. “Dicky Pennell’s
here and Gracie Marsh--just landed. They’d love to meet you.”
Letty shook her head slowly. There was a look in her face which even her
best friend did not understand.
“I’m afraid that we can’t do that,” she said. “I am Mr. Abbott’s guest.”
“And to-night,” Austen Abbott intervened, looking up at the woman who
stood between them, “I am not disposed to share Miss Shaw with anybody.”
Her best friend could do no more than shake her head and go away. The
two were left alone for the rest of the evening. When they departed
together, people who knew felt that a whiff of tragedy had passed
through the room. Nobody understood--or pretended to understand. Even
before her engagement, Letty had never been known to sup alone with
a man. That she should do so now, and with this particular man, was
preposterous!
“Something will come of it,” her best friend murmured, sadly, as she
watched Austen Abbott help his companion on with her cloak.
Something did!
Peter Ruff rose at his accustomed time the following morning, and
attired himself, if possible, with more than his usual care. He wore
the grey suit which he had carefully put out the night before, but he
hesitated long between the rival appeals of a red tie with white spots
and a plain mauve one. He finally chose the latter, finding that it
harmonised more satisfactorily with his socks, and after a final survey
of himself in the looking-glass, he entered the next room, where his
coffee was set out upon a small round table near the fire, together with
his letters and newspapers.
Peter Ruff was, after all, like the rest of us, a creature of habit.
He made an invariable rule of glancing through the newspapers before he
paid any regard at all to his letters or his breakfast. In the absence
of anything of a particularly sensational character, he then opened his
letters in leisurely fashion, and went back afterwards to the newspaper
as he finished his meal. This morning, however, both his breakfast and
letters remained for some time untouched. The first paragraph which
caught his eye as he shook open the Daily Telegraph was sufficiently
absorbing. There it was in great black type:
TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN THE FLAT OF A WELL-KNOWN ACTRESS!
AUSTEN ABBOTT SHOT DEAD!
ARREST OF CAPTAIN SOTHERST
Beyond the inevitable shock which is always associated with the taking
of life, and the unusual position of the people concerned in it,
there was little in the brief account of the incident to excite the
imagination. A policeman on the pavement outside the flat in which Miss
Shaw and her mother lived fancied that he heard, about two o’clock
in the morning, the report of a revolver shot. As nothing further
transpired, and as the sound was very indistinct, he did not at once
enter the building, but kept it, so far as possible, under observation.
About twenty minutes later, a young gentleman in evening dress came out
into the street, and the policeman noticed at once that he was carrying
a small revolver, which he attempted to conceal. The constable thereupon
whistled for his sergeant, and accompanied by the young gentleman--who
made no effort to escape--ascended to Miss Shaw’s rooms, where the body
of Austen Abbott was discovered lying upon the threshold of the sitting
room with a small bullet mark through the forehead. The inmates of
the house were aroused and a doctor sent for. The deceased man was
identified as Austen Abbott--a well-known actor--and the man under
arrest gave his name at once as Captain the Honourable Brian Sotherst.
Peter Ruff sighed as he laid down the paper. The case seemed to him
perfectly clear, and his sympathies were altogether with the young
officer who had taken the law into his own hands. He knew nothing of
Miss Letty Shaw, and, consequently, did her, perhaps, less than justice
in his thoughts. Of Austen Abbott, on the other hand, he knew a great
deal--and nothing of good. It was absurd, after all, that any one should
be punished for killing such a brute!
He descended, a few minutes later, to his office, and found Miss Brown
busy arranging a bowl of violets upon his desk.
“Isn’t it horrible?” she cried, as he entered, carrying a bundle of
papers under his arm. “I never have had such a shock!”
“Do you know any of them, then?” Peter Ruff asked, straightening his tie
in the mirror.
“Of course!” she answered. “Why, I was in the same company as Letty Shaw
for a year. I was at the Milan, too, last night. Letty was there having
supper alone with Austen Abbott. We all said that there’d be trouble,
but of course we never dreamed of this! Isn’t there any chance for him,
Peter? Can’t he get off?”
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“I’m afraid not,” he answered. “They may be able to bring evidence of
a quarrel and reduce it to manslaughter, but what you’ve just told me
about this supper party makes it all the worse. It will come out in the
evidence, of course.”
“Captain Sotherst is such a dear,” Miss Brown declared, “and so
good-looking! And as for that brute Austen Abbott, he ought to have been
shot long ago!”
Peter Ruff seated himself before his desk and hitched up his trousers at
the knees.
“No doubt you are right, Violet,” he said, “but people go about these
things so foolishly. To me it is simply exasperating to reflect how
little use is made of persons such as myself, whose profession in
life it is to arrange these little matters. Take the present case, for
example. Captain Sotherst had only to lay these facts before me, and
Austen Abbott was a ruined man. I could have arranged the affair for
him in half-a-dozen different ways. Whereas now it must be a life for
a life--the life of an honest young English gentleman for that of a
creature who should have been kicked out of the world as vermin!... I
have some letters give you, Violet, if you please.”
She swung round in her chair reluctantly.
“I can’t help thinking of that poor young fellow,” she said, with a
sigh.
“Sentiment after office hours, if you please!” said Peter.
Then there came a knock at the door.
His visitor lifted her veil, and Peter Ruff recognized her immediately.
“What can I do for you, Lady Mary?” he asked.
She saw the recognition in his eyes even before he spoke, and wondered
at it.
“You know me?” she exclaimed.
“I know most people,” he answered, drily; “it is part of my profession.”
“Tell me--you are Mr. Peter Ruff,” she said, “the famous specialist in
the detection of crime? You know that Brian Sotherst is my brother?”
“Yes,” he said, “I know it! I am sorry--very sorry, indeed.”
He handed her a chair. She seated herself with a little tightening of
the lips.
“I want more than sympathy from you, Mr. Ruff,” she warned him. “I want
your help.”
“It is my profession,” he admitted, “but your brother’s case makes
intervention difficult, does it not?”
“You mean--” she began.
“Your brother himself does not deny his guilt, I understand.”
“He has not denied it,” she answered--“very likely he will not do so
before the magistrate--but neither has he admitted it. Mr. Ruff, you are
such a clever man. Can’t you see the truth?”
Peter Ruff looked at her steadily for several moments.
“Lady Mary,” he said, “I can see what you are going to suggest. You are
going on the assumption that Austen Abbott was shot by Letty Shaw and
that your brother is taking the thing on his shoulders.”
“I am sure of it!” she declared. “The girl did it herself, beyond a
doubt. Brian would never have shot any one. He might have horsewhipped
him, perhaps--even beaten him to death--but shot him in cold
blood--never!”
“The provocation--” Ruff began.
“There was no provocation,” she interrupted. “He was engaged to the
girl, and of course we hated it, but she was an honest little thing, and
devoted to him.”
“Doubtless,” Ruff admitted. “But all the same, as you will hear before
the magistrates, or at the inquest, she was having supper alone with
Austen Abbott that night at the Milan.”
Lady Mary’s eyes flashed.
“I don’t believe it!” she declared.
“It is nevertheless true,” Peter Ruff assured her. “There is no shadow
of doubt about it.”
Lady Mary was staggered. For a few moment she seemed struggling to
rearrange her thoughts.
“You see,” Ruff continued, “the fact that Miss Shaw was willing to
sup with Austen Abbott tete-a-tete renders it more improbable that she
should shoot him in her sitting room, an hour or so later, and then go
calmly up to her mother’s room as though nothing had happened.”
Lady Mary had lost some of her confidence, but she was not daunted.
“Even if we have been deceived in the girl,” she said,
thoughtfully--“even if she were disposed to flirt with other men--even
then there might be a stronger motive than ever for her wishing to get
rid of Abbott. He may have become jealous, and threatened her.”
“It is, of course, possible,” Ruff assented, politely. “Your theory
would, at any rate, account for your brother’s present attitude.”
She looked at him steadfastly.
“You believe, then,” she said, “that my brother shot Austen Abbott?”
“I do,” he admitted frankly. “So does every man or woman of common sense
in London. On the facts as they are stated in the newspapers, with the
addition of which I have told you, no other conclusion is possible.”
Lady Mary rose.
“Then I may as well go,” she said tearfully.
“Not at all,” Peter Ruff declared. “Listen. This is a matter of business
with me. I say that on the facts as they are known, your brother’s guilt
appears indubitable. I do not say that there may not be other facts
in the background which alter the state of affairs. If you wish me to
search for them, engage me, and I will do my best.”
“Isn’t that what I am here for?” the girl exclaimed.
“Very well,” Peter Ruff said. “My services are at your disposal.”
“You will do your best--more than your best, won’t you?” she begged.
“Remember that he is my brother--my favourite brother!”
“I will do what can be done,” Peter Ruff promised. “Please sit down at
that desk and write me two letters of introduction.”
She drew off her gloves and prepared to obey him.
“To whom?” she asked.
“To the solicitors who are defending your brother,” he said, “and to
Miss Letty Shaw.”
“You mean to go and see her?” Lady Mary asked, doubtfully.
“Naturally,” Peter Ruff answered. “If your supposition is correct, she
might easily give herself away under a little subtle cross-examination.
It is my business to know how to ask people questions in such a way that
if they do not speak the truth their words give some indication of it.
If she is innocent I shall know that I have to make my effort in another
direction.”
“What other direction can there be?” Lady Mary asked dismally.
Peter Ruff said nothing. He was too kind-hearted to kindle false hopes.
“It’s a hopeless case, of course,” Miss Brown remarked, after Lady Mary
had departed.
“I’m afraid so,” Peter Ruff answered. “Still I must earn my money.
Please get some one to take you to supper to-night at the Milan, and see
if you can pick up any scandal.”
“About Letty?” she asked.
“About either of them,” he answered. “Particularly I should like to
know if any explanation has cropped up of her supping alone with Austen
Abbott.”
“I don’t see why you can’t take me yourself,” she remarked. “You are on
the side of the law this time, at any rate.”
“I will,” he answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I will call for you
at eleven o’clock to-night.”
He rose and closed his desk emphatically.
“You are going out?” she asked.
“I am going to see Miss Letty Shaw,” he answered.
He took a taxicab to the flats, and found a handful of curious people
still gazing up at the third floor. The parlourmaid who answered his
summons was absolutely certain that Miss Shaw would not see him. He
persuaded her, after some difficulty, to take in his letter while he
waited in the hall. When she returned, she showed him into a small
sitting room and pulled down the blinds.
“Miss Shaw will see you, sir, for a few minutes,” she announced, in
a subdued tone. “Poor dear young lady,” she continued, “she has been
crying her eyes out all the morning.”
“No wonder,” Peter Ruff said, sympathetically. “It’s a terrible
business, this!”
“One of the nicest young men as ever walked,” the girl declared, firmly.
“As for that brute, he deserved all he’s got, and more!”
Peter Ruff was left alone for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then the door
was softly opened and Letty Shaw entered. There was no doubt whatever
about her suffering. Ruff, who had seen her only lately at the theatre,
was shocked. Under her eyes were blacker lines than her pencil had
ever traced. Not only was she ghastly pale, but her face seemed wan and
shrunken. She spoke to him the moment she entered, leaning with on hand
upon the sideboard.
“Lady Mary writes that you want to help us,” she said. “How can you? How
is it possible?”
Even her voice had gone. She spoke hoarsely, and as though short of
breath. Her eyes searched his face feverishly. It seemed cruelty not to
answer her at once, and Peter Ruff was not a cruel man. Nevertheless, he
remained silent, and it seemed to her that his eyes were like points of
fire upon her face.
“What is the matter?” she cried, with breaking voice. “What have you
come for? Why don’t you speak to me?”
“Madam,” Peter Ruff said, “I should like to help you, and I will do what
I can. But in order that I may do so, it is necessary that you should
answer me two questions--truthfully!”
Her eyes grew wider. It was the face of a terrified child.
“Why not?” she exclaimed. “What have I to conceal?”
Peter Ruff’s expression never changed. There was nothing about him,
as he stood there with his hands behind him, his head thrown a little
forward, in the least inspiring--nothing calculated to terrify the most
timid person. Yet the girl looked at him with the eyes of a frightened
bird.
“Remember, then,” he continued, smoothly, “that what you say to me is
sacred. You and I are alone without witnesses or eavesdroppers. Was it
Brian Sotherst who shot Abbott--or was it you?”
She gave a little cry. Her hands clasped the sides of her head in
horror.
“I!” she exclaimed, “I! God help me!”
He waited. In a moment she looked up.
“You cannot believe that,” she said, with a calmness for which he was
scarcely prepared. “It is absurd. I left the room by the inner door as
he took up his hat to step out into the hall.”
“Incidentally,” he asked--“this is not my other question, mind--why did
you not let him out yourself?”
“We had disagreed,” she answered, curtly.
Peter Ruff bent his head in assent.
“I see,” he remarked. “You had disagreed. Abbott probably hoped that you
would relent, so he waited for a few minutes. Brian Sotherst, who had
escaped from his engagement in time, he thought, to come and wish you
good night, must have walked in and found him there. By the bye, how
would Captain Sotherst get in?”
“He had a key,” the girl answered. “My mother lives here with me, and
we have only one maid. It was more convenient. I gave him one washed in
gold for a birthday present only a few days ago.”
“Thank you,” Peter Ruff said. “The revolver, I understand, was your
property?”
She nodded.
“It was a present from Brian,” she said. “He gave it to me in a joke,
and I had it on the table with some other curiosities.”
“The first question,” Peter Ruff said, “is disposed of. May I proceed to
the second?”
The girl moistened her lips.
“Yes!” she answered.
“Why did you sup alone with Austen Abbott last night?”
She shrank a little away.
“Why should I not?” she asked.
“You have been on the stage, my dear Miss Shaw,” Peter Ruff continued,
“for between four and five years. During the whole of that time, it has
been your very wise habit to join supper parties, of course, when the
company was agreeable to you, but to sup alone with no man! Am I not
right?”
“You seem to know a great deal about me,” she faltered.
“Am I not right?” he repeated.
“Yes!”
“You break your rule for the first time,” Peter Ruff continued, “in
favour of a man of notoriously bad character, a few weeks after
the announcement of your engagement to an honourable young English
gentleman. You know very well the construction likely to be put
upon your behaviour--you, of all people, would be the most likely to
appreciate the risk you ran. Why did you run it? In other words, I
repeat my question. Why did you sup alone with Austen Abbott last
night?”
All this time she had been standing. She came a little forward now, and
threw herself into an easy-chair.
“It doesn’t help!” she exclaimed. “All this doesn’t help!”
“Nor can I help you, then,” Peter Ruff said, stretching out his hand for
his hat.
She waved to him to put it down.
“I will tell you,” she said. “It has nothing to do with the case,
but since you ask, you shall know. There is a dear little girl in our
company--Fluffy Dean we all call her--only eighteen years old. We all
love her, she is so sweet, and just like I was when I first went on the
stage, only much nicer. She is very pretty, she has no money, and she is
such an affectionate little dear that although she is as good as gold,
we are all terrified for her sake whenever she makes acquaintances.
Several of us who are most interested made a sort of covenant. We all
took it in turns to look after her, and try to see that she did not meet
any one she shouldn’t. Yet, for all our precautions, Austen Abbott
got hold of her and turned her silly little head. He was a man of
experience, and she was only a child. She wouldn’t listen to us--she
wouldn’t hear a word against him. I took what seemed to me to be the
only chance. I went to him myself--I begged for mercy, I begged him
to spare the child. I swore that if--anything happened to her, I would
start a crusade against him, I would pledge my word that he should be
cut by every decent man and woman on the stage! He listened to what I
had to say and at first he only smiled. When I had finished, he made me
an offer. He said that if I would sup with him alone at the Milan, and
permit him to escort me home afterwards, he would spare the child. One
further condition he made--that I was to tell no one why I did it. It
was the man’s brutal vanity! I made the promise, but I break it now.
You have asked me and I have told you. I went through with the supper,
although I hated it. I let him come in for a drink as though he had been
a friend. Then he tried to make love to me. I took the opportunity of
telling him exactly what I thought of him. Then I showed him the door,
and left him. Afterwards--afterwards--Brian came in! They must have met
upon the very threshold!”
Peter Ruff took up his hat.
“Thank you!” he said.
“You see,” she continued, drearily, “that it all has very little to do
with the case. I meant to keep it to myself, because, of course, apart
from anything else, apart from Brian’s meeting him coming out of my
rooms, it supplies an additional cause for anger on Brian’s part.”
“I see,” he answered. “I am much obliged to you, Miss Shaw. Believe me
that you have my sincere sympathy!”
Peter Ruff’s farewell words were unheard. Letty had fallen forward in
her chair, her head buried in her hands.
Peter Ruff went to Berkeley Square and found Lady Mary waiting for
him. Sir William Trencham, the great solicitor, was with her. Lady Mary
introduced the two men. All the time she was anxiously watching Ruff’s
face.
“Mr. Ruff has been to see Miss Shaw,” she explained to Sir William. “Mr.
Ruff, tell me quickly,” she continued, with her hand upon his shoulder,
“did she say anything? Did you find anything out?”
He shook his head.
“No!” he said. “I found nothing out!”
“You don’t think, then,” Lady Mary gasped, “that there is any chance--of
getting her to confess--that she did it herself?”
“Why should she have done it herself?” Peter Ruff asked. “She admits
that the man tried to make love to her. She simply left him. She was
in her own home, with her mother and servant within call. There was no
struggle in the room--we know that. There was no necessity for any.”
“Have you made any other enquiries?” Lady Mary asked.
“The few which I have made,” Peter Ruff answered gravely, “point all in
the same direction. I ascertained at the Milan that your brother called
there late last night, and that he heard Miss Shaw had been supping
alone with Austen Abbott. He followed them home. I have ascertained,
too, that he had a key to Miss Shaw’s flat. He apparently met Austen
Abbott upon the threshold.”
Lady Mary covered her face with her hands. She seemed to read in
Ruff’s words the verdict of the two men--the verdict of common sense.
Nevertheless, he made one more request before leaving.
“I should like to see Captain Sotherst, if you can get me an order,” he
said to Sir William.
“You can go with me to-morrow morning,” the lawyer answered. “The
proceedings this morning, of course, were simply formal. Until after the
inquest it will be easy to arrange an interview.”
Lady Mary looked up quickly.
“There is still something in your mind, then?” she asked. “You think
that there is a bare chance?”
“There is always the hundredth chance!” Peter Ruff replied.
Peter Ruff and Miss Brown supped at the Milan that night as they had
arranged, but it was not a cheerful evening. Brian Sotherst had been
very popular among Letty Shaw’s little circle of friends, and the
general feeling was one of horror and consternation at this thing which
had befallen him. Austen Abbot, too, was known to all of them, and
although a good many of the men--and even the women--were outspoken
enough to declare at once that it served him right, nevertheless, the
shock of death--death without a second’s warning--had a paralysing
effect even upon those who were his severest critics. Violet Brown
spoke to a few of her friends--introduced Peter Ruff here and there--but
nothing was said which could throw in any way even the glimmerings of
a new light upon the tragedy. It all seemed too hopelessly and fatally
obvious.
About twenty minutes before closing time, the habitues of the place were
provided with something in the nature of a sensation. A little party
entered who seemed altogether free from the general air of gloom.
Foremost among them was a very young and exceedingly pretty girl, with
light golden hair waved in front of her forehead, deep blue eyes, and
the slight, airy figure of a child. She was accompanied by another young
woman, whose appearance was a little too obvious to be prepossessing,
and three or four young men--dark, clean-shaven, dressed with the
irritating exactness of their class--young stockbrokers or boys about
town. Miss Brown’s eyes grew very wide open.
“What a little beast!” she exclaimed.
“Who?” Peter Ruff asked.
“That pretty girl there,” she answered--“Fluffy Dean her name is. She is
Letty Shaw’s protege, and she wouldn’t have dreamed of allowing her to
come out with a crowd like that. Tonight, of all nights,” she continued,
indignantly, “when Letty is away!”
Peter Ruff was interested.
“So that is Miss Fluffy Dean,” he remarked, looking at her curiously.
“She seems a little excited.”
“She’s a horrid little wretch!” Miss Brown declared. “I hope that some
one will tell Letty, and that she will drop her now. A girl who would
do such a thing as that when Letty is in such trouble isn’t worth taking
care of! Just listen to them all!”
They were certainly becoming a little boisterous. A magnum of champagne
was being opened. Fluffy Dean’s cheeks were already flushed, and her
eyes glittering. Every one at the table was talking a great deal and
drinking toasts.
“This is the end of Fluffy Dean,” Violet Brown said, severely. “I hate
to be uncharitable, but it serves her right.”
Peter Ruff paid his bill.
“Let us go,” he said.
In the taxicab, on their way back to Miss Brown’s rooms, Ruff was
unusually silent, but just before he said good night to her--on the
pavement, in fact, outside her front door--he asked a question.
“Violet,” he said, “would you like to play detective for an hour or
two?”
She looked at him in some surprise.
“You know I always like to help in anything that’s going,” she said.
“Letty Shaw was an Australian, wasn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“She was born there, and lived there till she was nearly eighteen--is
that true?” he asked again.
“Quite true,” Miss Brown answered.
“You know the offices of the P.& O. line of steamers in Pall Mall?” he
asked.
She nodded.
“Well?”
“Get a sailing list to Australia--there should be a boat going Thursday.
Present yourself as a prospective passenger. See how many young women
alone there are going out, and ask their names. Incidentally put in a
little spare time watching the office.”
She looked at him with parted lips and wide-open eyes.
“Do you think--” she began.
He shook her hand warmly and stepped back into the taxicab.
“Good night!” he said. “No questions, please. I sha’n’t expect you at
the office at the usual time to-morrow, at any rate. Telephone or run
around if you’ve anything to tell me.”
The taxicab disappeared round the corner of the street. Miss Brown was
standing still upon the pavement with the latchkey in her hand.
*****
It was afternoon before the inquest on the body of Austen Abbott, and
there was gathered together in Letty Shaw’s parlor a curiously assorted
little group of people. There was Miss Shaw herself--or rather what
seemed to be the ghost of herself--and her mother; Lady Mary and Sir
William Trencham; Peter Ruff and Violet Brown--and Mr. John Dory. The
eyes of all of them were fixed upon Peter Ruff, who was the latest
arrival. He stood in the middle of the room, calmly taking off his
gloves, and glancing complacently down at his well-creased trousers.
“Lady Mary,” he said, “and Miss Shaw, I know that you are both anxious
for me to explain why I ask you to meet me here this afternoon, and why
I also requested my friend Mr. Dory from Scotland Yard, who has charge
of the case against Captain Sotherst, to be present. I will tell you.”
Mr. Dory nodded, a little impatiently.
“Unless you have something very definite to say,” he remarked, “I think
it would be as well to postpone any general discussion of this matter
until after the inquest. I must warn you that so far as I, personally,
am concerned, I must absolutely decline to allude to the subject at all.
It would be most unprofessional.”
“I have something definite to say,” Peter Ruff declared, mildly.
Lady Mary’s eyes flashed with hope--Letty Shaw leaned forward in her
chair with white, drawn face.
“Let it be understood,” Peter Ruff said, with a slight note of gravity
creeping into his tone, “that I am here solely as the agent of Lady
Mary Sotherst. I am paid and employed by her. My sole object is on
her behalf, therefore, to discover proof of the innocence of Captain
Sotherst. I take it, however,” he added, turning towards the drooping
figure in the easy-chair, “that Miss Shaw is as anxious to have the
truth known.”
“Of course! Of course!” she murmured.
“In France,” Peter Ruff continued, “there is a somewhat curious custom,
which, despite a certain theatricality, yet has its points. The scene of
a crime is visited, and its events, so far as may be, reconstructed. Let
us suppose for a moment that we are now engaged upon something of the
sort.”
Letty Shaw shrank back in her chair. Her thin white fingers were
gripping its sides. Her eyes seemed to look upon terrible things.
“It is too--awful!” she faltered.
“Madam,” Peter Ruff said, firmly, “we seek the truth. Be so good as to
humour me in this. Dory, will you go to the front door, stand upon the
mat--so? You are Captain Sotherst--you have just entered. I am Austen
Abbott. You, Miss Shaw, have just ordered me from the room. You see,
I move toward the door. I open it--so. Miss Shaw,” he added, turning
swiftly towards her, “once more will you assure me that every one who
was in the flat that night, with the exception of your domestic servant,
is present now?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Good! Then who,” he asked, suddenly pointing to a door on the
left--“who is in that room?”
They had all crowded after him to the threshold--thronging around him as
he stood face to face with John Dory. His finger never wavered--it
was pointing steadily towards that closed door a few feet to the left.
Suddenly Letty Shaw rushed past them with a loud shriek.
“You shall not go in!” she cried. “What business is it of his?”
She stood with her back to the door, her arms outstretched like a cross.
Her cheeks were livid. Her eyes seemed starting from her head.
Peter Ruff and John Dory laid their hands upon the girl’s wrists. She
clung to her place frantically. She was dragged from it, screaming.
Peter Ruff, as was his right, entered first. Almost immediately he
turned round, and his face was very grave.
“Something has happened in here, I am afraid,” he said. “Please come in
quietly.”
On the bed lay Fluffy Dean, fully dressed--motionless. One hand hung
down toward the floor--from the lifeless fingers a little phial had
slipped. The room was full of trunks addressed to--
MISS SMITH,
Passenger to Melborne.
S.S. Caroline.
Peter Ruff moved over toward the bed and took up a piece of paper, upon
which were scribbled a few lines in pencil.
“I think,” he said, “that I must read these aloud. You all have a right
to hear them.”
No one spoke. He continued:
Forgive me, Letty, but I cannot go to Australia. They would only bring
me back. When I remember that awful moment, my brain burns--I feel that
I am going mad! Some day I should do this--better now. Give my love to
the girls.
FLUFFY.
They sent for a doctor, and John Dory rang up Scotland Yard. Letty Shaw
had fainted, and had been carried to her room. While they waited about
in strange, half-benumbed excitement, Peter Ruff once more spoke to
them.
“The reconstruction is easy enough now,” he remarked. “The partition
between this sitting room and that little bedroom is only an artificial
one--something almost as flimsy as a screen. You see,” he continued,
tapping with his knuckles, “you can almost put your hand through it.
If you look a little lower down, you will see where an opening has been
made. Fluffy Dean was being taken care of by Miss Shaw--staying with her
here, even. Miss Dean hears her lover’s voice in this room--hears him
pleading with Miss Shaw on he night of the murder. She has been sent
home early from the theatre, and it is just possible that she saw or had
been told that Austen Abbott had fetched Miss Shaw after the performance
and had taken her to supper. She was mad with anger and jealousy. The
revolver was there upon the table, with a silver box of cartridges. She
possessed herself of it and waited in her room. What she heard proved,
at least, her lover’s infidelity. She stood there at her door, waiting.
When Austen Abbott comes out, she shoots, throws the revolver at
him, closes her door, and goes off into a faint. Perhaps she hears
footsteps--a key in the door. At any rate, Captain Sotherst arrives a
few minutes later. He finds, half in the hall, half on the threshold of
the sitting room, Austen Abbott dead, and Miss Shaw’s revolver by the
side of him. If he had been a wise young man, he would have aroused the
household. Why he did not do so, we can perhaps guess. He put two and
two together a little too quickly. It is certain that he believed that
the dead man had been shot by his fiancee. His first thought was to get
rid of the revolver. At any rate, he walked down to the street with it
in his hand, and was promptly arrested by the policeman who had heard
the shot. Naturally he refused to plead, because he believed that
Miss Shaw had killed the man, probably in self-defence. She, at first,
believed her lover guilty, and when afterwards Fluffy Dean confessed,
she, with feminine lack of common sense, was trying to get the girl out
of the country before telling the truth. A visit of hers to the office
of the steamship company gave me the clue I required.”
Lady Mary grasped both his hands.
“And Scotland Yard,” she exclaimed, with a withering glance at Dory,
“have done their best to hang my brother!”
Peter Ruff raised his eyebrows.
“Dear Lady Mary,” he said, “remember that it is the business of Scotland
Yard to find a man guilty. It is mine, when I am employed for that
purpose, to find him innocent. You must not be too hard upon my friend
Mr. Dory. He and I seem to come up against each other a little too
often, as it is.”
“A little too often!” John Dory repeated, softly. “But one cannot tell.
Don’t believe, Lady Mary,” he added, “that we ever want to kill an
innocent man.”
“It is your profession, though,” she answered, “to find criminals--and
his,” she added, touching Peter Ruff on the shoulder, “to look for the
truth.”
Peter Ruff bowed low--the compliment pleased him.
CHAPTER V. DELILAH FROM STREATHAM
It was a favourite theory with Peter Ruff that the morning papers
received very insufficient consideration from the majority of the
British public. A glance at the headlines and a few of the spiciest
paragraphs, a vague look at the leading article, and the sheets were
thrown away to make room for more interesting literature. It was not
so with Peter Ruff. Novels he very seldom read--he did not, in fact,
appreciate the necessity for their existence. The whole epitome of
modern life was, he argued, to be found among the columns of the daily
press. The police news, perhaps, was his favourite study, but he did
not neglect the advertisements. It followed, therefore, as a matter of
course, that the appeal of “M” in the personal column of the Daily Mail
was read by him on the morning of its appearance--read not once only nor
twice--it was a paragraph which had its own peculiar interest for him.
Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, if still in England, is requested to communicate
with “M,” at Vagali’s Library, Cook’s Alley, Ledham Street, Soho.
Peter Ruff laid the paper down upon his desk and looked steadily at a
box of India-rubber bands. Almost his fingers, as he parted with the
newspaper, had seemed to be shaking. His eyes were certainly set in
an unusually retrospective stare. Who was this who sought to probe his
past, to renew an acquaintance with a dead personality? “M” could be but
one person! What did she want of him? Was it possible that, after all,
a little flame of sentiment had been kept alight in her bosom, too--that
in the quiet moments her thoughts had turned towards him as his had
so often done to her? Then a sudden idea--an ugly thought--drove the
tenderness from his face. She was no longer Maud Barnes--she was Mrs.
John Dory, and John Dory was his enemy! Could there be treachery lurking
beneath those simple lines? Things had not gone well with John Dory
lately. Somehow or other, his cases seemed to have crumpled into dust.
He was no longer held in the same esteem at headquarters. Yet could even
John Dory stoop to such means as these?
He turned in his chair.
“Miss Brown,” he said, “please take your pencil.”
“I am quite ready, sir,” she answered.
He marked the advertisement with a ring and passed it to her.
“Reply to that as follows,” he said:
DEAR SIR:
I notice in the Daily Mail of this morning that you are enquiring
through the “personal” column for the whereabouts of Mr. Spencer
Fitzgerald. That gentleman has been a client of mine, and I have been in
occasional communication with him. If you will inform me of the nature
of your business, I may, perhaps, be able to put you in touch with Mr.
Fitzgerald. You will understand, however, that, under the circumstances,
I shall require proofs of your good faith.
Truly yours,
PETER RUFF.
Miss Brown glanced through the advertisement and closed her notebook
with a little snap.
“Did you say--‘Dear Sir’?” she asked.
“Certainly!” Peter Ruff answered.
“And you really mean,” she continued, with obvious disapproval, “that I
am to send this?”
“I do not usually waste my time,” Peter Ruff reminded her, mildly, “by
giving you down communications destined for the waste-paper basket.”
She turned unwillingly to her machine.
“Mr. Fitzgerald is very much better where he is,” she remarked.
“That depends,” he answered.
She adjusted a sheet of paper into her typewriter.
“Who do you suppose ‘M’ is?” she asked.
“With your assistance,” Peter Ruff remarked, a little
sarcastically--“with your very kind assistance--I propose to find out!”
Miss Brown sniffed, and banged at the keys of her typewriter.
“That coal-dealer’s girl from Streatham!” she murmured to herself....
A few politely worded letters were exchanged. “M” declined to reveal her
identity, but made an appointment to visit Mr. Ruff at his office. The
morning she was expected, he wore an entirely new suit of clothes and
was palpably nervous. Miss Brown, who had arrived a little late, sat
with her back turned upon him, and ignored even his usual morning
greeting. The atmosphere of the office was decidedly chilly!
Fortunately, the expected visitor arrived early.
Peter Ruff rose to receive his former sweetheart with an agitation
perforce concealed, yet to him poignant indeed. For it was indeed
Maud who entered the room and came towards him with carefully studied
embarrassment and half doubtfully extended hand. He did not see the
cheap millinery, the slightly more developed figure, the passing of
that insipid prettiness which had once charmed him into the bloom of an
over-early maturity. His eyes were blinded with that sort of masculine
chivalry--the heritage only of fools and very clever men--which takes no
note of such things. It was Miss Brown who, from her place in a corner
of the room, ran over the cheap attractions of this unwelcome visitor
with an expression of scornful wonder--who understood the tinsel of her
jewellery, the cheap shoddiness of her ready-made gown; who appreciated,
with merciless judgment, her mincing speech, her cheap, flirtatious
method.
Maud, with a diffidence not altogether assumed, had accepted the chair
which Peter Ruff had placed for her, and sat fidgeting, for a moment,
with the imitation gold purse which she was carrying.
“I am sure, Mr. Ruff,” she said, looking demurely into her lap, “I
ought not to have come here. I feel terribly guilty. It’s such an
uncomfortable sort of position, too, isn’t it?”
“I am sorry that you find it so,” Peter Ruff said. “If there is anything
I can do--”
“You are very kind,” she murmured, half raising her eyes to his and
dropping them again, “but, you see, we are perfect strangers to one
another. You don’t know me at all, do you? And I have only heard of you
through the newspapers. You might think all sorts of things about my
coming here to make enquiries about a gentleman.”
“I can assure you,” Peter Ruff said, sincerely, “that you need have no
fears--no fears at all. Just speak to me quite frankly. Mr. Fitzgerald
was a friend of yours, was he not?”
Maud simpered.
“He was more than that,” she answered, looking down. “We were engaged to
be married.”
Peter Ruff sighed.
“I knew all about it,” he declared. “Fitzgerald used to tell me
everything.”
“You were his friend?” she asked, looking him in the face.
“I was,” Peter Ruff answered fervently, “his best friend! No one was
more grieved than I about that--little mistake.”
She sighed.
“In some ways,” she remarked softly, “you remind me of him.”
“You could scarcely say anything,” Peter Ruff murmured “which would give
me more pleasure. I am flattered.”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t flattery,” she said, “it’s the truth. You may be a few years
older, and Spencer had a very nice moustache, which you haven’t, but you
are really not unlike. Mr. Ruff, do tell me where he is!”
Peter Ruff coughed.
“You must remember,” he said, “that Mr. Fitzgerald’s absence was caused
by events of a somewhat unfortunate character.”
“I know all about it,” she answered, with a little sigh.
“You can appreciate the fact, therefore,” Peter Ruff continued, “that
as his friend and well-wisher I can scarcely disclose his whereabouts
without his permission. Will you tell me exactly why you want to meet
him again?”
She blushed--looked down and up again--betrayed, in fact, all the signs
of confusion which might have been expected from her.
“Must I tell you that?” she asked.
“You are married, are you not?” Peter Ruff asked, looking down at her
wedding ring.
She bit her lip with vexation. What a fool she had been not to take it
off!
“Yes! Well, no--that is to say--”
“Never mind,” Peter Ruff interrupted. “Please don’t think that I want to
cross-examine you. I only asked these questions because I have a sincere
regard for Fitzgerald. I know how fond he was of you, and I cannot see
what there is to be gained, from his point of view, by reopening old
wounds.”
“I suppose, then,” she remarked, looking at him in such a manner
that Miss Brown had to cover her mouth with her hands to prevent her
screaming out--“I suppose you are one of those who think it a crime for
a woman who is married even to want to see, for a few moments, an old
sweetheart?”
“On the contrary,” Peter Ruff answered, “as a bachelor, I have no
convictions of any sort upon the subject.”
She sighed.
“I am glad of that,” she said.
“I am to understand, then,” Peter Ruff remarked, “that your reason for
wishing to meet Mr. Fitzgerald again is purely a sentimental one?”
“I am afraid it is,” she murmured; “I have thought of him so often
lately. He was such a dear!” she declared, with enthusiasm.
“I have never been sufficiently thankful,” she continued, “that he got
away that night. At the time, I was very angry, but often since then I
have wished that I could have passed out with him into the fog and been
lost--but I mustn’t talk like this! Please don’t misunderstand me, Mr.
Ruff. I am happily married--quite happily married!”
Peter Ruff sighed.
“My friend Fitzgerald,” he remarked, “will be glad to hear that.”
Maud fidgeted. It was not quite the effect she had intended to produce!
“Of course,” she remarked, looking away with a pensive air, “one has
regrets.”
“Regrets!” Peter Ruff murmured.
“Mr. Dory is not well off,” she continued, “and I am afraid that I
am very fond of life and going about, and everything is so expensive
nowadays. Then I don’t like his profession. I think it is hateful to
be always trying to catch people and put them in prison--don’t you, Mr.
Ruff?”
Peter Ruff smiled.
“Naturally,” he answered. “Your husband and I work from the opposite
poles of life. He is always seeking to make criminals of the people whom
I am always trying to prove worthy members of society.”
“How noble!” Maud exclaimed, clasping her hands and looking up at him.
“So much more remunerative, too, I should think,” she added, after a
moment’s pause.
“Naturally,” Peter Ruff admitted. “A private individual will pay more
to escape from the clutches of the law than the law will to secure
its victims. Scotland Yard expects them to come into its arms
automatically--regards them as a perquisite of its existence.”
“I wish my husband were in your profession, Mr. Ruff,” Maud said, with a
sidelong glance of her blue eyes which she had always found so effective
upon her various admirers. “I am sure that I should be a great deal
fonder of him.”
Peter Ruff leaned forward in his chair. He, too, had expressive eyes at
times.
“Madam,” he said--and stopped. But Maud blushed, all the same.
She looked down into her lap.
“We are forgetting Mr. Fitzgerald,” she murmured.
Peter Ruff glanced up at the clock.
“It is a long story,” he said. “Are you in a hurry, Mrs. Dory?
“Not at all,” she assured him, “unless you want to close you office, or
anything. It must be nearly one o’clock.”
“I wonder,” he asked, “if you would do me the honour of lunching with
me? We might go to the Prince’s or the Carlton--whichever you prefer. I
will promise to talk about Mr. Fitzgerald all the time.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Maud declared, with a little gasp. “At least--well,
I’m sure I don’t know!”
“You have no engagement for luncheon?” Peter Ruff asked quietly.
“Oh, no!” she answered; “but, you see, we live so quietly. I have
never been to one of those places. I’d love to go--but if we were seen!
Wouldn’t people talk?”
Peter Ruff smiled. Just the same dear, modest little thing!
“I can assure you,” he said, “that nothing whatever could be said
against our lunching together. People are not so strict nowadays, you
know, and a married lady has always a great deal of latitude.”
She looked up at him with a dazzling smile.
“I’d simply love to go to Prince’s!” she declared.
“Cat!” Miss Brown murmured, as Peter Ruff and his client left the room
together.
Peter Ruff returned from his luncheon in no very jubilant state of mind.
For some time he sat in his easy-chair, with his legs crossed and
his finger tips pressed close together, looking steadily into space.
Contrary to his usual custom, he did not smoke. Miss Brown watched him
from behind her machine.
“Disenchanted?” she asked calmly.
Peter Ruff did not reply for several moments.
“I am afraid,” he admitted, hesitatingly, “that marriage with John Dory
has--well, not had a beneficial effect. She allowed me, for instance, to
hold her hand in the cab! Maud would never have permitted a stranger to
take such a liberty in the old days.”
Miss Brown smiled curiously.
“Is that all?” she asked.
Peter Ruff felt that he was in the confessional.
“She certainly did seem,” he admitted, “to enjoy her champagne a great
deal, and she talked about her dull life at home a little more, perhaps,
than was discreet to one who was presumably a stranger. She was curious,
too, about dining out. Poor little girl, though. Just fancy, John Dory
has never taken her anywhere but to Lyons’ or an A B C, and the pit of a
theatre!”
“Which evening is it to be?” Miss Brown asked.
“Something was said about Thursday,” Peter Ruff admitted.
“And her husband?” Miss Brown enquired.
“He happens to be in Glasgow for a few days,” Peter Ruff answered.
Miss Brown looked at her employer steadily. She addressed him by his
Christian name, which was a thing she very seldom did in office hours.
“Peter,” she said, “are you going to let that woman make a fool of you?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Go on,” he said; “say anything you want to--only, if you please, don’t
speak disrespectfully of Maud.”
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you at all,” Miss Brown continued, rising
to her feet, “that this Maud, or whatever you want to call her, may be
playing a low-down game of her husband’s? He hates you, and he has
vague suspicions. Can’t you see that he is probably making use of your
infatuation for his common, middle-class little wife, to try and get
you to give yourself away? Can’t you see it, Peter? You are not going to
tell me that you are so blind as all that!”
“I must admit,” he answered with a sigh, “that, although I think you go
altogether too far, some suspicion of the sort has interfered with my
perfect enjoyment of the morning.”
Miss Brown drew a little breath of relief. After all, then, his folly
was not so consummate as it had seemed!
“What are you going to do about it, then?” she asked.
Peter Ruff coughed--he seemed in an unusually amenable frame of mind,
and submitted to cross-examination without murmur.
“The subject of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald,” he remarked, “seemed, somehow
or other, to drop into the background during our luncheon. I propose,
therefore, to continue to offer to Mrs. John Dory my most respectful
admiration. If she accepts my friendship, and is satisfied with it,
so much the better. I must admit that it would give me a great deal of
pleasure to be her occasional companion--at such times when her husband
happens to be in Glasgow!”
“And supposing,” Miss Brown asked, “that this is not all she
wants--supposing, for instance, that she persists in her desire for
information concerning Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald?”
“Then,” Peter Ruff admitted, “I’m afraid that I must conclude that her
unchivalrous clod of a husband has indeed stooped to make a fool of
her.”
“And in that case,” Miss Brown demanded, “what shall you do?”
“I was just thinking that out,” Peter Ruff said mildly, “when you
spoke....”
The friendship of Peter Ruff with the wife of his enemy certainly
appeared to progress in most satisfactory fashion. The dinner and visit
to the theatre duly took place. Mr. Ruff was afterwards permitted to
offer a slight supper and to accompany his fair companion a portion of
the way home in a taxicab. She made several half-hearted attempts to
return to the subject of Spencer Fitzgerald, but her companion had been
able on each occasion to avoid the subject. Whether or not she was the
victim of her husband’s guile, there was no question about the reality
of her enjoyment during the evening. Ruff, when he remembered the flash
of her eyes across the table, the touch of her fingers in the taxi, was
almost content to believe her false to her truant lover. If only she had
not been married to John Dory, he realised, with a little sigh, that he
might have taught her to forget that such a person existed as Spencer
Fitzgerald, might have induced her to become Mrs. Peter Ruff!
On their next meeting, however, Peter Ruff was forced to realise that
his secretary’s instinct had not misled her. It was, alas, no personal
and sentimental regrets for her former lover which had brought the fair
Maud to his office. The pleasures of her evening--they dined at Romano’s
and had a box at the Empire--were insufficient this time to keep her
from recurring continually to the subject of her vanished lover. He
tried strategy--jealousy amongst other things.
“Supposing,” he said, as they sat quite close to one another in the box
during the interval, “supposing I were to induce our friend to come to
London--I imagine he would be fairly safe now if he kept out of your
husband’s way--what would happen to me?”
“You!” she murmured, glancing at him from behind her fan and then
dropping her eyes.
“Certainly--me!” he continued. “Don’t you think that I should be doing
myself a very ill turn if I brought you two together? I have very few
friends, and I cannot afford to lose one. I am quite sure that you still
care for him.”
She shook her head.
“Not a scrap!” she declared.
“Then why did you put that advertisement in the paper?” Ruff asked, with
smooth but swift directness.
She was not quick enough to parry his question. He read the truth in her
disconcerted face. Knowing it now for a certainty, he hastened to her
aid.
“Forgive me,” he said, looking away. “I should not have asked that
question--it is not my business. I will write to Fitzgerald. I will tell
him that you want to see him, and that I think it would be safe for him
to come to London.”
Maud recovered herself quickly. She thanked him with her eyes as well as
her words.
“And you needn’t be jealous, really,” she whispered behind her fan. “I
only want to see him once for a few minutes--to ask a question. After
that, I don’t care what becomes of him.”
A poor sort of Delilah, really, with her flushed face, her too
elaborately coiffured hair with its ugly ornament, her ready-made
evening dress with its cheap attempts at smartness, her cleaned gloves,
indifferent shoes. But Peter Ruff thought otherwise.
“You mean that, after I have found him for you, you will still come out
with me again sometimes?” he asked wistfully.
“Of course!” she answered. “Whenever I can without John knowing,” she
added, with an unpleasant little laugh. “If you only knew how I loved
the music and the theatres, and this sort of life! What a good time your
wife would have, Mr. Ruff!” she added archly.
It was no joking matter with him. He had to remember that he was, in
effect, her tool, that she was making use of him, willing to betray her
former lover at her husband’s bidding. It was enough to make him, on
his side, burn for revenge! Yet he put the thought away from him with
a shiver. She was still the woman he had loved--she was still sacred to
him! That night he pleaded an engagement, and sent her home in a taxicab
alone.
John Dory, waiting patiently at home for his wife’s return, felt a
certain uneasiness when she swept into their little sitting room in all
her cheap splendour, with flushed cheeks--an obvious air of satisfaction
with herself and disdain for her immediate surroundings. John Dory was
a commonplace looking man--the absence of his collar, and his somewhat
shabby carpet slippers, did not improve his appearance. He had
neglected to shave, and he was drinking beer. At headquarters he was not
considered quite the smart young officer which he had once shown signs
of becoming. He looked at his wife with darkening face, and his wife, on
her part, thought of Peter Ruff in his immaculate evening clothes.
“Well,” he remarked, grumblingly, “you seem to find a good deal of
pleasure in this gadding about!”
She threw her soiled fan on the table.
“If I do,” she answered, “you are not the one to sit there and reproach
me with it, are you?”
“It’s gone far enough, anyway,” John Dory said. “It’s gone further than
I meant it to go. Understand me, Maud--it’s finished! I’ll find your old
sweetheart for myself.”
She laughed heartily.
“You needn’t trouble,” she answered, with a little toss of the head.
“I am not such a fool as you seem to think me. Mr. Ruff has made an
appointment with him.”
There was a change in John Dory’s face. The man’s eyes were bright--they
almost glittered.
“You mean that your friend Mr. Ruff is going to produce Spencer
Fitzgerald?” he exclaimed.
“He has promised to,” she answered. “John,” she declared, throwing
herself into an easy-chair, “I feel horrid about it. I wonder what Mr.
Ruff will think when he knows!”
“You can feel how you like,” John Dory answered bluntly, “so long as I
get the handcuffs on Spencer Fitzgerald’s wrists!”
She shuddered. She looked at her husband with distaste.
“Don’t talk about it!” she begged sharply. “It makes me feel the meanest
creature that ever crawled. I can’t help feeling, too, that Mr. Ruff
will think me a wretch--quite the gentleman he’s been all the time! I
never knew any one half so nice!”
John Dory set down his empty glass.
“I wonder,” he said, looking at her thoughtfully, “what made him take
such a fancy to you! Rather sudden, wasn’t it, eh?”
Maud tossed her head.
“I don’t see anything so wonderful about that,” she declared.
“Listen to me, Maud,” her husband said, rising to his feet. “You
aren’t a fool--not quite. You’ve spent some time with Peter Ruff.
How much--think carefully--how much does he remind you of Spencer
Fitzgerald?”
“Not at all,” she answered promptly. “Why, he is years older, and though
Spencer was quite the gentleman, there’s something about Mr. Ruff, and
the way he dresses and knows his way about--well, you can tell he’s been
a gentleman all his life.”
John Dory’s face fell.
“Think again,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Can’t see any likeness,” she declared. “He did remind me a little of
him just at first, though,” she added, reflectively--“little things he
said, and sort of mannerisms. I’ve sort of lost sight of them the last
few times, though.”
“When is this meeting with Fitzgerald to come off?” John Dory asked
abruptly.
She did not answer him at once. A low, triumphant smile had parted her
lips.
“To-morrow night,” she said; “he is to meet me in Mr. Ruff’s office.”
“At what time?” John Dory asked.
“At eight o’clock,” she answered. “Mr. Ruff is keeping his office open
late on purpose. Spencer thinks that afterwards he is going to take me
out to dinner.”
“You are sure of this?” John Dory asked eagerly. “You are sure that the
man Ruff does not suspect you? You believe he means that you shall meet
Fitzgerald?”
“I am sure of it,” she answered. “He is even a little jealous,” she
continued, with an affected laugh. “He told me--well, never mind!”
“He told you what?” John Dory asked.
She laughed.
“Never you mind,” she said. “I have done what you asked me anyway.
If Mr. Ruff had not found me an agreeable companion he would not have
bothered about getting Spencer to meet me. And now he’s done it,” she
added, “I do believe he’s a little jealous.”
John Dory glared, but he said nothing. It seemed to him that his hour of
revenge was close at hand!
It was the first occasion upon which words of this sort had passed
between Peter Ruff and his secretary. There was no denying the fact
that Miss Violet Brown was in a passion. It was an hour past the time
at which she usually left the office. For an hour she had pleaded, and
Peter Ruff remained unmoved.
“You are a fool!” she cried to him at last. “I am a fool, too, that I
have ever wasted my thoughts and time upon you. Why can’t I make you
see? In every other way, heaven knows, you are clever enough! And yet
there comes this vulgar, commonplace, tawdry little woman from heaven
knows where, and makes such a fool of you that you are willing to fling
away your career--to hold your wrists out for John Dory’s handcuffs!”
“My dear Violet,” Peter Ruff answered deprecatingly, “you really worry
me--you do indeed!”
“Not half so much as you worry me,” she declared. “Look at the time.
It’s already past seven. At eight o’clock Mrs. Dory--your Maud--is
coming in here hoping to find her old sweetheart.”
“Why not?” he murmured.
“Why not, indeed?” Miss Brown answered angrily. “Don’t you know--can’t
you believe--that close on her heels will come her husband--that Mr.
Spencer Fitzgerald, if ever he comes to life in this room, will leave it
between two policemen?”
Peter Ruff sighed.
“What a pessimist you are, my dear Violet!” he said.
She came up to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.
“Peter,” she said, “I will tell you something--I must! I am fond of you,
Peter. I always have been. Don’t make me miserable if there is no need
for it. Tell me honestly--do you really believe in this woman?”
He removed her hands gently, and raised them to his lips.
“My dear girl,” he said, “I believe in every one until I find them
out. I look upon suspicion as a vice. But, at the same time,” he added,
“there are always certain precautions which one takes.”
“What precautions can you take?” she cried. “Can you sit there and make
yourself invisible? John Dory is not a fool. The moment he is in this
room with the door closed behind him, it is the end.”
“We must hope not,” Peter Ruff said cheerfully. “There are other things
which may happen, you know.”
She turned away from him a little drearily.
“You do not mind if I stay?” she said. “I am not working to-night.
Perhaps, later on, I may be of use!”
“As you will,” he answered. “You will excuse me for a little time, won’t
you? I have some preparations to make.”
She turned her head away from him. He left the room and ascended the
stairs to his own apartments.
Eight o’clock was striking from St. Martin’s Church when the door of
Peter Ruff’s office was softly opened and closed again. A man in a
slouch hat and overcoat entered, and after feeling along the wall for a
moment, turned up the electric light. Violet Brown rose from her place
with a little sob. She stretched out her hand to him.
“Peter!” she cried. “Peter!”
“My name,” the newcomer said calmly, “is Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald.”
“Oh, listen to me!” she begged. “There is still time, if you hurry.
Think how many clever men before you have been deceived by the woman
in whom they trusted. Please, please go! Hurry upstairs and put those
things away.”
“Madam,” the newcomer said, “I am much obliged to you for your interest,
but I think that you are making a mistake. I have come here to meet--”
He stopped short. There was a soft knocking at the door. A stifled
scream broke from Violet Brown’s lips.
“It is too late!” she cried. “Peter! Peter!”
She sank into her chair and covered her face with her hands. The door
was opened and Maud came in. When she saw who it was who sat in Peter
Ruff’s place, she gave a little cry. Perhaps after all, she had not
believed that this thing would happen.
“Spencer!” she cried, “Spencer! Have you really come back?”
He held out his hands.
“You are glad to see me?” he asked.
She came slowly forward. The man rose from his place and came towards
her with outstretched hands. Then through the door came John Dory, and
one caught a glimpse of others behind him.
“If my wife is not glad to see you, Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald,” he aid, in
a tone from which he vainly tried to keep the note of triumph, “I can
assure you that I am. You slipped away from me cleverly at Daisy Villa,
but this time I think you will not find it so easy.”
Maud shrank back, and her husband took her place. But Mr. Spencer
Fitzgerald looked upon them both as one who looks upon figures in a
dream. Miss Brown rose hurriedly from her seat. She came over to him and
thrust her arm through his.
“Peter,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “don’t shoot. It isn’t worth
while. You should have listened to me.”
The little man in the gold-rimmed spectacles looked at her, looked at
Mr. John Dory, looked at the woman who was shrinking back now against
the wall.
“Really,” he said, “this is the most extraordinary situation in which I
ever found myself!”
“We will help you to realise it,” John Dory cried, and the triumph in
his tone had swelled into a deeper note. “I came here to arrest Mr.
Fitzgerald, but I hear this young lady call you ‘Peter.’ Perhaps this
may be the solution--”
The little man struck the table with the flat of his hand.
“Come,” he said, “this is getting a bit too thick. First of all--you,”
he said, turning to Miss Brown--“my name is not Peter, and I have no
idea of shooting anybody. As for that lady against the wall, I don’t
know her--never saw her before in my life. As for you,” he added,
turning to John Dory, “you talk about arresting me--what for?”
Mr. John Dory smiled.
“There is an old warrant,” he said, “which I have in my pocket, but I
fancy that there are a few little things since then which we may have to
enquire into.”
“This beats me!” the little man declared. “Who do you think I am?”
“Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, to start with,” John Dory said. “It seems to me
not impossible that we may find another pseudonym for you.”
“You can find as many as you like,” the little man answered testily,
“but my name is James Fitzgerald, and I am an actor employed at the
Shaftesbury Theatre, as I can prove with the utmost ease. I never called
myself Spencer; nor, to my knowledge, was I ever called by such a name.
Nor, as I remarked before, have I ever seen any one of you three people
before with the exception of Miss Brown here, whom I have seen on the
stage.”
John Dory grunted.
“It was Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald,” he said, “a clerk in Howell & Wilson’s
bookshop, who leapt out of the window of Daisy Villa two years ago. It
may be Mr. James Fitzgerald now. Gentlemen of your profession have a
knack of changing their names.”
“My profession’s as good as yours, anyway!” the little man exclaimed.
“We aren’t all fools in it! My friend Mr. Peter Ruff said to me that
there was a young lady whom I used to know who was anxious to meet me
again, and would I step around here about eight o’clock. Here I am, and
all I can say is, if that’s the young lady, I never saw her before in my
life.”
There was a moment’s breathless silence. Then the door was softly
opened. Violet Brown went staggering back like a woman who sees a
ghost. She bit her lips till the blood came. It was Peter Ruff who stood
looking in upon them--Peter Ruff, carefully dressed in evening clothes,
his silk hat at exactly the correct angle, his coat and white kid gloves
upon his arm.
“Dear me,” he said, “you don’t seem to be getting on very well! Mr.
Dory,” he added, with a note of surprise in his tone, “this is indeed an
unexpected pleasure!”
The man who stood by the desk turned to him. The others were stricken
dumb.
“Look here,” he said, “there’s some mistake. You told me to come here
at eight o’clock to meet a young lady whom I used to know. Well, I never
saw her before in my life,” he added, pointing to Maud. “There’s a
man there who wants to arrest me--Lord knows what for! And here’s Miss
Brown, whom I have seen at the theatre several times but who never
condescended to speak to me before, telling me not to shoot! What’s it
all about, Ruff? Is it a practical joke?”
Peter Ruff laid down his coat and hat, and sat upon the table with his
hands in his pockets.
“Is it possible,” he said, “that I have made a mistake? Isn’t your
second name Spencer?”
The man shook his head.
“My name is James Fitzgerald,” he said. “I haven’t missed a day at the
Shaftesbury Theatre for three years, as you can find out by going
round the corner. I never called myself Spencer, I was never clerk in a
bookshop, and I never saw that lady before in my life.”
Maud came out from her place against the wall, and leaned eagerly
forward. John Dory turned his head slowly towards his wife. A sickening
fear had arisen in his heart--gripped him by the throat. Fooled once
more, and by Peter Ruff!
“It isn’t Spencer!” Maud said huskily. “Mr. Ruff,” she added, turning
to him, “you know very well that this is not the Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald
whom you promised to bring here to-night--Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald to whom
I was once engaged.”
Peter Ruff pointed to the figure of her husband.
“Madam,” he said, “my invitation did not include your husband.”
John Dory took a step forward, and laid his hands upon the shoulders of
the man who called himself Mr. James Fitzgerald. He looked into his face
long and carefully. Then he turned away, and, gripping his wife by the
arm, he passed out of the room. The door slammed behind him. The sound
of heavy footsteps was heard descending to the floor below.
Violet Brown crossed the room to where Peter Ruff was still sitting with
a queer look upon his face, and, gripping him by the shoulders, shook
him.
“How dare you!” she exclaimed. “How dare you! Do you know that I have
nearly cried my eyes out?”
Peter Ruff came back from the world into which, for the moment, his
thoughts had taken him.
“Violet,” he said, “you have known me for some years. You have been my
secretary for some months. If you choose still to take me for a fool, I
cannot help it.”
“But,” she exclaimed, pointing to Mr. James Fitzgerald--
Peter Ruff nodded.
“I have been practising on him for some time,” he said, with an air of
self-satisfaction.
“A thin, mobile face, you see, and plenty of experience in the art of
making up. It is astonishing what one can do if one tries.”
Mr. James Fitzgerald picked up his hat and coat.
“It was worth more than five quid,” he growled; “when I saw the
handcuffs in that fellow’s hand, I felt a cold shiver go down my spine.”
Peter Ruff counted out two banknotes and passed them to his confederate.
“You have earned the money,” he said. “Go and spend it. Perhaps,
Violet,” he added, turning towards her, “I have been a little
inconsiderate. Come and have dinner with me, and forget it.”
She drew a little sigh.
“You are sure,” she murmured, “that you wouldn’t rather take Maud?”
CHAPTER VI. THE LITTLE LADY FROM SERVIA
Westward sped the little electric brougham, driven without regard to
police regulations or any rule of the road: silent and swift, wholly
regardless of other vehicles--as though, indeed, its occupants were
assuming to themselves the rights of Royalty. Inside, Peter Ruff, a
little breathless, was leaning forward, tying his white cravat with the
aid of the little polished mirror set in the middle of the dark green
cushions. At his right hand was Lady Mary, watching his proceedings with
an air of agonised impatience.
“Let me tell you--” she begged.
“Kindly wait till I have tied this and put my studs in,” Peter Ruff
interrupted. “It is impossible for me to arrive at a ball in this
condition, and I cannot give my whole attention to more than one thing
at a time.”
“We shall be there in five minutes!” she exclaimed. “What is the good,
unless you understand, of your coming at all?”
Peter Ruff surveyed his tie critically. Fortunately, it pleased him.
He began to press the studs into their places with firm fingers. Around
them surged the traffic of Piccadilly; in front, the gleaming arc of
lights around Hyde Park Corner. They had several narrow escapes. Once
the brougham swayed dangerously as they cut in on the wrong side of an
island lamp-post. A policeman shouted after them, another held up his
hand--the driver of the brougham took no notice.
“I am ready,” Peter Ruff said, quietly.
“My younger brother--Maurice,” she began, breathlessly--“you’ve never
met him, I know, but you’ve heard me speak of him. He is private
secretary to Sir James Wentley--”
“Minister for Foreign Affairs?” Ruff asked, swiftly.
“Yes! Maurice wants to go in for the Diplomatic Service. He is a dear,
and so clever!”
“Is it Maurice who is in trouble?” Peter Ruff asked. “Why didn’t he come
himself?”
“I am trying to explain,” Lady Mary protested. “This afternoon he had an
important paper to turn into cipher and hand over to the Prime Minister
at the Duchess of Montford’s dance to-night. The Prime Minister will
arrive in a motor car from the country at about two o’clock, and the
first thing he will ask for will be that paper. It has been stolen!”
“At what time did your brother finish copying it, and when did he
discover its loss?” Ruff asked, with a slight air of weariness. These
preliminary enquiries always bored him.
“He finished it in his own rooms at half-past seven,” Lady Mary
answered. “He discovered its loss at eleven o’clock--directly he had
arrived at the ball.”
“Why didn’t he come to me himself?” Peter Ruff asked. “I like to have
these particulars at first hand.”
“He is in attendance upon Sir James at the ball,” Lady Mary answered.
“There is trouble in the East, as you know, and Sir James is expecting
dispatches to-night. Maurice is not allowed to leave.”
“Has he told Sir James yet?”
“He had not when I left,” Lady Mary answered. “If he is forced to do so,
it will be ruin! Mr. Ruff, you must help us Maurice is such a dear,
but a mistake like this, at the very beginning of his career, would be
fatal. Here we are. That is my brother waiting just inside the hall.”
A young man came up to them in the vestibule. He was somewhat pale, but
otherwise perfectly self-possessed. From the shine of his glossy black
hair to the tips of his patent boots he was, in appearance, everything
that a young Englishman of birth and athletic tastes could hope to be.
Peter Ruff liked the look of him. He waited for no introduction, but
laid his hand at once upon the young man’s shoulder.
“Between seven-thirty and arriving here,” he said, drawing him on one
side--“quick! Tell me, whom did you see? What opportunities were there
of stealing the paper, and by whom?”
“I finished it at five and twenty past seven,” the young man said,
“sealed it in an official envelope, and stood it up on my desk by the
side of my coat and hat and muffler, which my servant had laid there,
ready for me to put on. My bedroom opens out from my sitting room. While
I was dressing, two men called for me--Paul Jermyn and Count von Hern.
They walked through to my bedroom first, and then sat together in the
sitting room until I came out. The door was wide open, and we talked all
the time.”
“They called accidentally?” Peter Ruff asked.
“No--by appointment,” the young man replied. “We were all coming on here
to the dance, and we had agreed to dine together first at the Savoy.”
“You say that you left the paper on your desk with your coat and hat?”
Peter Ruff asked. “Was it there when you came out?”
“Apparently so,” the young man answered. “It seemed to be standing in
exactly the same place as where I had left it. I put it into my breast
pocket, and it was only when I arrived here that I fancied the envelope
seemed lighter. I went off by myself and tore it open. There was nothing
inside but half a newspaper!”
“What about the envelope?” Peter Ruff asked. “That must have been the
same sort of one as you had used or you would have noticed it?”
“It was,” the Honorable Maurice answered.
“It was a sort which you kept in your room?”
“Yes!” the young man admitted.
“The packet was changed, then, by some one in your room, or some one who
had access to it,” Peter Ruff said. “How about your servant?”
“It was his evening off. I let him put out my things and go at seven
o’clock.”
“You must tell me the nature of the contents of the packet,” Peter Ruff
declared. “Don’t hesitate. You must do it. Remember the alternative.”
The young man did hesitate for several moments, but a glance into his
sister’s appealing face decided him.
“It was our official reply to a secret communication from Russia
respecting--a certain matter in the Balkans.”
Peter Ruff nodded.
“Where is Count von Hern?” he asked abruptly.
“Inside, dancing.”
“I must use a telephone at once,” Peter Ruff said. “Ask one of the
servants here where I can find one.”
Peter Ruff was conducted to a gloomy waiting room, on the table of
which stood a small telephone instrument. He closed the door, but he
was absent for only a few minutes. When he rejoined Lady Mary and her
brother they were talking together in agitated whispers. The latter
turned towards him at once.
“Do you mean that you suspect Count von Hern?” he asked, doubtfully. “He
is a friend of the Danish Minister’s, and every one says that he’s
such a good chap. He doesn’t seem to take the slightest interest in
politics--spends nearly all his time hunting or playing polo.”
“I don’t suspect any one,” Peter Ruff answered. “I only know that Count
von Hern is an Austrian spy, and that he took your paper! Has he been
out of your sight at all since you rejoined him in the sitting room? I
mean to say--had he any opportunity of leaving you during the time you
were dining together, or did he make any calls en route, either on the
way to the Savoy or from the Savoy here?”
The young man shook his head.
“He has not been out of my sight for a second.”
“Who is the other man--Jermyn?” Peter Ruff asked. “I never heard of
him.”
“An American--cousin of the Duchess. He could not have had the slightest
interest in the affair.”
“Please take me into the ballroom,” Peter Ruff said to Lady Mary. “Your
brother had better not come with us. I want to be as near the Count von
Hern as possible.”
They passed into the crowded rooms, unnoticed, purposely avoiding the
little space where the Duchess was still receiving the late comers among
her guests. They found progress difficult, and Lady Mary felt her heart
sink as she glanced at the little jewelled watch which hung from her
wrist. Suddenly Peter Ruff came to a standstill.
“Don’t look for a moment,” he said, “but tell me as soon as you can--who
is that tall young man, like a Goliath, talking to the little dark
woman? You see whom I mean?”
Lady Mary nodded, and they passed on. In a moment or two she answered
him.
“How strange that you should ask!” she whispered in his ear. “That is
Mr. Jermyn.”
They were on the outskirts now of the ballroom itself. One of Lady
Mary’s partners came up with an open programme and a face full of
reproach.
“Do please forgive me, Captain Henderson,” Lady Mary begged. “I have
hurt my foot, and I am not dancing any more.”
“But surely I was to take you in to supper?” the young officer
protested, good-humouredly. “Don’t tell me that you are going to cut
that?”
“I am going to cut everything to-night with everybody,” Lady Mary said.
“Please forgive me. Come to tea to-morrow and I’ll explain.”
The young man bowed, and, with a curious glance at Ruff, accepted his
dismissal. Another partner was simply waved away.
“Please turn round and come back,” Peter Ruff said. “I want to see those
two again.”
“But we haven’t found Count von Hern yet,” she protested. “Surely that
is more important, is it not? I believe that I saw him dancing just
now--there, with the tall girl in yellow.”
“Never mind about him, for the moment,” Ruff answered. “Walk down this
corridor with me. Do you mind talking all the time, please? It will
sound more natural, and I want to listen.”
The young American and his partner had found a more retired seat now,
about three quarters of the way down the pillared vestibule which
bordered the ballroom. He was bending over his companion with an air of
unmistakable devotion, but it was she who talked. She seemed, indeed,
to have a good deal to say to him. The slim white fingers of one hand
played all the time with a string of magnificent pearls. Her dark, soft
eyes--black as aloes and absolutely un-English--flashed into his. A
delightful smile hovered at the corners of her lips. All the time she
was talking and he was listening. Lady Mary and her partner passed by
unnoticed. At the end of the vestibule they turned and retraced their
steps. Peter Ruff was very quiet--he had caught a few of those rapid
words. But the woman’s foreign accent had troubled him.
“If only she would speak in her own language!” he muttered.
Lady Mary’s hand suddenly tightened upon his arm.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “That is Count von Hern!”
A tall, fair young man, very exact in his dress, very stiff in his
carriage, with a not unpleasant face, was standing talking to Jermyn and
his companion. Jermyn, who apparently found the intrusion an annoyance,
was listening to the conversation between the two, with a frown upon his
face and a general attitude of irritation. As Lady Mary and her
escort drew near, the reason for the young American’s annoyance
became clearer--his two companions were talking softly, but with great
animation, in a foreign language, which it was obvious that he did not
understand. Peter Ruff’s elbow pressed against his partner’s arm, and
their pace slackened. He ventured, even, to pause for a moment, looking
into the ballroom as though in search of some one, and he had by no
means the appearance of a man likely to understand Hungarian. Then, to
Lady Mary’s surprise, he touched the Count von Hern on the shoulder and
addressed him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but I fancy that we accidentally
exchanged programmes, a few minutes ago, at the buffet. I have lost mine
and picked up one which does not belong to me. As we were standing side
by side, it is possibly yours.”
“I believe not, sir,” he answered, with that pleasant smile which had
gone such a long way toward winning him the reputation of being “a good
fellow” amongst a fairly large circle of friends. “I believe at any
rate,” he added, glancing at his programme, “that this is my own. You
mistake me, probably, for some one else.”
Peter Ruff, without saying a word, was actor enough to suggest that he
was unconvinced. The Count good-humouredly held out his programme.
“You shall see for yourself,” he remarked. “That is not yours, is it?
Besides, I have not been to the buffet at all this evening.”
Peter Ruff cast a swift glance down the programme which the Count had
handed him. Then he apologised profusely.
“I was mistaken,” he admitted. “I am very sorry.”
The Count bowed.
“It is of no consequence, sir,” he said, and resumed his conversation.
Peter Ruff passed on with Lady Mary. At a safe distance, she glanced at
him enquiringly.
“It was his programme I wanted to see,” Peter Ruff explained. “It is as
I thought. He has had four dances with the Countess--”
“Who is she?” Lady Mary asked, quickly.
“The little dark lady with whom he is talking now,” Peter Ruff
continued. “He seems, too, to be going early. He has no dances reserved
after the twelfth. We will go downstairs at once, if you please. I must
speak to your brother.”
“Have you been able to think of anything?” she asked, anxiously. “Is
there any chance at all, do you think?”
“I believe so,” Peter Ruff answered. “It is most interesting. Don’t
be too sanguine, though. The odds are against us, and the time is very
short. Is the driver of your electric brougham to be trusted?”
“Absolutely,” she assured him. “He is an old servant.”
“Will you lend him to me?” Peter Ruff asked, “and tell him that he is to
obey my instructions absolutely?”
“Of course,” she answered. “You are going away, then?”
Peter Ruff nodded. He was a little sparing of words just then. The
thoughts were chasing one another through his brain. He was listening,
too, for the sweep of a dress behind.
“Is there nothing I can do?” Lady Mary begged, eagerly.
Peter Ruff shook his head. In the distance he saw the Honourable Maurice
come quickly toward them. With a firm but imperceptible gesture he waved
him away.
“Don’t let your brother speak to me,” he said. “We can’t tell who is
behind. What time did you say the Prime Minister was expected?”
“At two o’clock,” Lady Mary said, anxiously.
Peter Ruff glanced at his watch. It was already half an hour past
midnight.
“Very well,” he said, “I will do what I can. If my theory is wrong, it
will be nothing. If I am right--well, there is a chance, anyhow. In the
meantime--”
“In the meantime?” she repeated, breathlessly.
“Take your brother back to the ballroom,” Peter Ruff directed. “Make him
dance--dance yourself. Don’t give yourselves away by looking anxious.
When the time is short--say at a quarter to two--he can come down here
and wait for me.”
“If you don’t come!” she exclaimed.
“Then we shall have lost,” Peter Ruff said, calmly. “If you don’t see
me again to-night, you had better read the newspapers carefully for the
next few days.”
“You are going to do something dangerous!” she protested.
“There is danger in interfering at all in such a matter as this,” he
answered, “but you must remember that it is not only my profession--it
is my hobby. Remember, too,” he added, with a smile, “that I do not
often lose!”
For twenty minutes Peter Ruff sat in the remote corner of Lady Mary’s
electric brougham, drawn up at the other side of the Square, and waited.
At last he pressed a button. They glided off. Before them was a large,
closed motor car. They started in discreet chase.
Fortunately, however, the chase was not a long one. The car which Peter
Ruff had been following was drawn up before a plain, solid-looking
house, unlit and of gloomy appearance. The little lady with the
wonderful eyes was already halfway up the flagged steps. Hastily lifting
the flap and looking behind as they passed, her pursuer saw her open the
door with a latchkey, and disappear. Peter Ruff pulled the check-string
and descended. For several moments he stood and observed the house
into which the lady whom he had been following had disappeared. Then he
turned to the driver.
“I want you to watch that house,” he said, “never to take your eyes off
it. When I reappear from it, if I do at all, I shall probably be in a
hurry. Directly you see me be on your box ready to start. A good deal
may depend upon our getting away quickly.”
“Very good, sir,” the man answered. “How long am I to wait here for
you?”
Peter Ruff’s lips twisted into a curious little smile.
“Until two o’clock,” he answered. “If I am not out by then, you needn’t
bother any more about me. You can return and tell your mistress exactly
what has happened.”
“Hadn’t I better come and try and get you out, sir?” the man asked.
“Begging your pardon, but her Ladyship told me that there might be queer
doings. I’m a bit useful in a scrap, sir,” he added. “I do a bit of
sparring regularly.”
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“If there’s any scrap at all,” he said, “you had better be out of it. Do
as I have said.”
The motor car had turned round and disappeared now, and in a few moments
Peter Ruff stood before the door of the house into which the little lady
had disappeared. The problem of entrance was already solved for him. The
door had been left unlatched; only a footstool had been placed against
it inside. Peter Ruff, without hesitation, pushed the door softly open
and entered, replaced the footstool in its former position, and stood
with his back to the wall, in the darkest corner of the hall, looking
around him--listening intently. Nearly opposite the door of a room stood
ajar. It was apparently lit up, but there was no sound of any one moving
inside. Upstairs, in one of the rooms on the first floor, he could hear
light footsteps--a woman’s voice humming a song. He listened to the
first few bars, and understanding became easier. Those first few bars
were the opening ones of the Servian national anthem!
With an effort, Peter Ruff concentrated his thoughts upon the immediate
present. The little lady was upstairs. The servants had apparently
retired for the night. He crept up to the half-open door and peered in.
The room, as he had hoped to find it, was empty, but Madame’s easy-chair
was drawn up to the fire, and some coffee stood upon the hob. Stealthily
Peter Ruff crept in and glanced around, seeking for a hiding place. A
movement upstairs hastened his decision. He pushed aside the massive
curtains which separated this from a connecting room. He had scarcely
done so when light footsteps were heard descending the stairs.
Peter Ruff found his hiding place all that could have been desired. This
secondary room itself was almost in darkness, but he was just able to
appreciate the comforting fact that it possessed a separate exit into
the hall. Through the folds of the curtain he had a complete view of the
further apartment. The little lady had changed her gown of stiff white
satin for one of flimsier material, and, seated in the easy-chair, she
was busy pouring herself out some coffee. She took a cigarette from a
silver box, and lighting it, curled herself up in the chair and composed
herself as though to listen. To her as well as to Peter Ruff, as he
crouched in his hiding place, the moments seemed to pass slowly enough.
Yet, as he realised afterward, it could not have been ten minutes before
she sat upright in a listening attitude. There was some one coming!
Peter Ruff, too, heard a man’s firm footsteps come up the flagged
stones.
The little lady sprang to her feet.
“Paul!” she exclaimed.
Paul Jermyn came slowly to meet her. He seemed a little out of breath.
His tie was all disarranged and his collar unfastened.
The little lady, however, noticed none of these things. She looked only
into his face.
“Have you got it?” she asked, eagerly.
He thrust his hand into his breast-coat pocket, and held an envelope out
toward her.
“Sure!” he answered. “I promised!”
She gave a little sob, and with the packet in her hand came running
straight toward the spot where Peter Ruff was hiding.
He shrank back as far as possible. She stopped just short of the
curtain, opened the drawer of a table which stood there, and slipped
the packet in. Then she came back once more to where Paul Jermyn was
standing.
“My friend!” she cried, holding out her hands--“my dear, dear friend!
Shall I ever be able to thank you enough?”
“Why, if you try,” he answered, smiling, “I think that you could!”
She laid her hand upon his arm--a little caressing, foreign gesture.
“Tell me,” she said, “how did you manage it?”
“We left the dance together,” Jermyn said. “I could see that he wanted
to get rid of me, but I offered to take him in my motor car. I told the
man to choose some back streets, and while we were passing through one
of them, I took Von Hern by the throat. We had a struggle, of course,
but I got the paper.”
“What did you do with Von Hern?” she asked.
“I left him on his doorstep,” the young American answered. “He wasn’t
really hurt, but he was only half conscious. I don’t think he’ll bother
any one to-night.”
“You dear, brave man!” she murmured. “Paul, what am I to say to you?”
He laughed.
“That’s what I’m here to ask,” he declared. “You wouldn’t give me my
answer at the ball. Perhaps you’ll give it me now?”
They sprang apart. Ruff felt his nerves stiffen--felt himself
constrained to hold even his breath as he widened a little the crack
in the curtains. This was no stealthy entrance. The door had been flung
open. Von Hern, his dress in wild disorder, pale as a ghost, and with a
great bloodstain upon his cheek, stood confronting them.
“When you have done with your love-making,” he called out, “I’ll trouble
you to restore my property!”
The electric light gleamed upon a small revolver which flashed out
toward the young American. Paul Jermyn never hesitated for a moment. He
seized the chair by his side and flung it at Von Hern. There was a shot,
the crash of the falling chair, a cry from Jermyn, who never hesitated,
however, in his rush. The two men closed. A second shot went harmlessly
to the ceiling. The little lady stole away--stole softly across the room
toward the table. She opened the drawer. Suddenly the blood in her veins
was frozen into fear. From nowhere, it seemed to her, came a hand which
held her wrists like iron!
“Madam,” Peter Ruff whispered from behind the curtain, “I am sorry to
deprive you of it, but this is stolen property.”
Her screams rang through the room. Even the two men released one
another.
“It is gone! It is gone!” she cried. “Some one was hiding in the room!
Quick!”
She sprang into the hall. The two men followed her. The front door was
slammed. They heard flying footsteps outside. Von Hern was out first,
clearing the little flight of steps in one bound. Across the road he
saw a flying figure. A level stream of fire poured from his hand--twice,
three times. But Peter Ruff never faltered. Round the corner he tore.
The man had kept his word--the brougham was already moving slowly.
“Jump in, sir,” the man cried. “Throw yourself in. Never mind about the
door.”
They heard the shouts behind. Peter Ruff did as he was bid, and sat upon
the floor, raising himself gradually to the seat when they had turned
another corner. Then he put his head out of the window.
“Back to the Duchess of Montford’s!” he ordered.
The latest of the guests had ceased to arrive--a few were already
departing. It was an idle time, however, with the servants who loitered
in the vestibules of Montford House, and they looked with curiosity upon
this strange guest who arrived at five minutes to two, limping a little,
and holding his left arm in his right hand. One footman on the threshold
nearly addressed him, but the words were taken out of his mouth when he
saw Lady Mary and her brother--the Honorable Maurice Sotherst--hasten
forward to greet him.
Peter Ruff smiled upon them benignly.
“You can take the paper out of my breast-coat pocket,” he said.
The young man’s fingers gripped it. Through Lady Mary’s great
thankfulness, however, the sudden fear came shivering.
“You are hurt!” she whispered. “There is blood on your sleeve.”
“Just a graze,” Peter Ruff answered. “Von Hern wasn’t much good at a
running target. Back to the ballroom, young man,” he added. “Don’t you
see who’s coming?”
The Prime Minister came up the tented way into Montford House. He, too,
wondered a little at the man whom he met on his way out, holding his
left arm, and looking more as though he had emerged from a street fight
than from the Duchess of Montford’s ball. Peter Ruff went home smiling.
CHAPTER VII. THE DEMAND OF THE DOUBLE-FOUR
It was about this time that Peter Ruff found among his letters
one morning a highly-scented little missive, addressed to him in a
handwriting with which he had once been familiar. He looked at it for
several moments before opening it. Even as the paper cutter slid through
the top of the envelope, he felt that he had already divined the nature
of its contents.
FRIVOLITY THEATRE
March 10th
MY DEAR Mr. RUFF: I expect that you will be surprised to hear from me
again, but I do hope that you will not be annoyed. I know that I behaved
very horridly a little time ago, but it was not altogether my fault, and
I have been more sorry for it than I can tell you--in fact, John and I
have never been the same since, and for the present, at any rate, I have
left him and gone on the stage. A lady whom I knew got me a place in the
chorus here, and so far I like it immensely.
Won’t you come and meet me after the show to-morrow night, and I will
tell you all about it? I should like so much to see you again.
MAUD.
Peter Ruff placed this letter in his breast-coat pocket, and withheld it
from his secretary’s notice. He felt, however, very little pleasure at
the invitation it conveyed. He hesitated for some time, in fact, whether
to accept it or not. Finally, after his modest dinner that evening, he
bought a stall for the Frivolity and watched the piece. The girl he had
come to see was there in the second row of the chorus, but she certainly
did not look her best in the somewhat scant costume required by the
part. She showed no signs whatever of any special ability--neither her
dancing nor her singing seemed to entitle her to any consideration. She
carried herself with a certain amount of self-consciousness, and her
eyes seemed perpetually fixed upon the occupants of the stalls. Peter
Ruff laid down his glasses with something between a sigh and a groan.
There was something to him inexpressibly sad in the sight of his old
sweetheart so transformed, so utterly changed from the prim, somewhat
genteel young person who had accepted his modest advances with such
ladylike diffidence. She seemed, indeed, to have lost those very gifts
which had first attracted him. Nevertheless, he kept his appointment at
the stage-door.
She was among the first to come out, and she greeted him warmly--almost
noisily. With her new profession, she seemed to have adopted a different
and certainly more flamboyant deportment.
“I thought you’d come to-night,” she declared, with an arch look.
“I felt certain I saw you in the stalls. You are going to take me to
supper, aren’t you? Shall we go to the Milan?”
Peter Ruff assented without enthusiasm, handed her into a hansom, and
took his place beside her. She wore a very large hat, untidily put on;
some of the paint seemed still to be upon her face; her voice, too,
seemed to have become louder, and her manner more assertive. There were
obvious indications that she no longer considered brandy and soda an
unladylike beverage. Peter Ruff was not pleased with himself or proud of
his companion.
“You’ll take some wine?” he suggested, after he had ordered, with a few
hints from her, a somewhat extensive supper.
“Champagne,” she answered, decidedly. “I’ve got quite used to it,
nowadays,” she went on. “I could laugh to think how strange it tasted
when you first took me out.”
“Tell me,” Peter Ruff said, “why you have left your husband?”
She laughed.
“Because he was dull and because he was cross,” she answered, “and
because the life down at Streatham was simply intolerable. I think it
was a little your fault, too,” she said, making eyes; at him across the
table. “You gave me a taste of what life was like outside Streatham, and
I never forgot it.”
Peter Ruff did not respond--he led the conversation, indeed, into other
channels. On the whole, the supper was scarcely a success. Maud, who was
growing to consider herself something of a Bohemian, and who certainly
looked for some touch of sentiment on the part of her old admirer, was
annoyed by the quiet deference with which he treated her. She reproached
him with it once, bluntly.
“Say,” she exclaimed, “you don’t seem to want to be so friendly as you
did! You haven’t forgiven me yet, I suppose?”
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“It is not that,” he said, “but I think that you have scarcely done a
wise thing in leaving your husband. I cannot think that this life on the
stage is good for you.”
She laughed, scornfully.
“Well,” she said, “I never thought to have you preaching at me!”
They finished their supper. Maud accepted a cigarette and did her
best to change her companion’s mood. She only alluded once more to her
husband.
“I don’t see how I could have stayed with him, anyhow,” she said. “You
know, he’s been put back--he only gets two pounds fifteen a week now. He
couldn’t expect me to live upon that.”
“Put back?” Peter Ruff repeated.
She nodded.
“He seemed to have a lot of bad luck this last year,” she said. “All his
cases went wrong, and they don’t think so much of him at Scotland Yard
as they did. I am not sure that he hasn’t begun to drink a little.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Peter Ruff said, gravely.
“I don’t see why you should be,” she answered, bluntly. “He was no
friend of yours, nor isn’t now. He may not be so dangerous as he was,
but if ever you come across him, you take my tip and be careful. He
means to do you a mischief some day, if he can. I am not sure,” she
added, “that he doesn’t believe that it was partly your fault about my
leaving home.”
“I should be sorry for him to think that,” Peter Ruff answered. “While
we are upon the subject, can’t you tell me exactly why your husband
dislikes me so?”
“For one thing, because you have been up against him in several of his
cases, and have always won.”
“And for the other?”
“Well,” she said, doubtfully, “he seems to connect you in his
mind, somehow, with a boy who was in love with me once--Mr. Spencer
Fitzgerald--you know who I mean.”
Ruff nodded.
“He still has that in his mind, has he?” he remarked.
“Oh, he’s mad!” she declared. “However, don’t let us talk about him any
more.”
The lights were being put out. Peter Ruff paid his bill and they rose
together.
“Come down to the fiat for an hour or so,” she begged, taking his arm.
“I have a dear little place with another girl--Carrie Pearce. I’ll sing
to you, if you like. Come down and have one drink, anyhow.”
Peter Ruff shook his head firmly.
“I am sorry,” he said, “but you must excuse me. In some ways, I am very
old-fashioned,” he added. “I never sit up late, and I hate music.”
“Just drive as far as the door with me, then,” she begged.
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“You must excuse me,” he said, handing her into the hansom. “And, Maud,”
he added--“if I may call you so--take my advice: give it up--go back to
your husband and stick to him--you’ll be better off in the long run.”
She would have answered him scornfully, but there was something
impressive in the crisp, clear words--in his expression, too, as he
looked into her eyes. She threw herself back in a corner of the cab with
an affected little laugh, and turned her head away from him.
Peter Ruff walked back into the cloak-room for his coat and hat, and
sighed softly to himself. It was the end of the one sentimental episode
of his life!
It had been the study of Peter Ruff’s life, so far as possible, to
maintain under all circumstances an equable temperament, to refuse to
recognize the meaning of the word “nerves,” and to be guided in all
his actions by that profound common sense which was one of his natural
gifts. Yet there were times when, like any other ordinary person, he
suffered acutely from presentiments. He left his rooms, for instance, at
five o’clock on the afternoon of the day following his supper with Maud,
suffering from a sense of depression for which he found it altogether
impossible to account. It was true that the letter which he had in his
pocket, the appointment which he was on his way to keep, were both of
them probable sources of embarrassment and annoyance, if not of danger.
He was being invited, without the option of refusal, to enter upon some
risky undertaking which would yield him neither fee nor reward. Yet his
common sense told him that it was part of the game. In Paris, he had
looked upon his admittance into the order of the “Double-Four” as one of
the stepping-stones to success in his career. Through them he had gained
knowledge which he could have acquired in no other way. Through them,
for instance, he had acquired the information that Madame la Comtesse de
Pilitz was a Servian patriot and a friend of the Crown Prince; and that
the Count von Hern, posing in England as a sportsman and an idler, was a
highly paid and dangerous Austrian spy. There had been other occasions,
too, upon which they had come to his aid. Now they had made an appeal
to him--an appeal which must be obeyed. His time--perhaps, even, his
safety--must be placed entirely at their disposal. It was only an
ordinary return a thing expected of him--a thing which he dared not
refuse. Yet he knew very well what he could not explain to them--that
the whole success of his life depended so absolutely upon his remaining
free from any suspicion of wrong-doing, that he had received his summons
with something like dismay, and proceeded to obey it with unaccustomed
reluctance.
He drove to Cirey’s cafe in Regent Street, where he dismissed the driver
of his hansom and strolled in with the air of an habitue. He selected a
corner table, ordered some refreshment, and asked for a box of dominoes.
The place was fairly well filled. A few women were sitting about; a
sprinkling of Frenchmen were taking their aperitif; here and there a
man of affairs, on his way from the city, had called in for a glass
of vermouth. Peter Ruff looked them over, recognizing the
type--recognizing, even, some of their faces. Apparently, the person
whom he was to meet had not yet arrived.
He lit a cigarette and smoked slowly. Presently the door opened and a
woman entered in a long fur coat, a large hat, and a thick veil. She
raised it to glance around, disclosing the unnaturally pale face and
dark, swollen eyes of a certain type of Frenchwoman. She seemed to
notice no one in particular. Her eyes traveled over Peter Ruff without
any sign of interest. Nevertheless, she took a seat somewhere near his
and ordered some vermouth from the waiter, whom she addressed by
name. When she had been served and the waiter had departed, she looked
curiously at the dominoes which stood before her neighbor.
“Monsieur plays dominoes, perhaps?” she remarked, taking one of them
into her fingers and examining it. “A very interesting game!”
Peter Ruff showed her a domino which he had been covering with his
hand--it was a double four. She nodded, and moved from her seat to one
immediately next him.
“I had not imagined,” Peter Ruff said, “that it was a lady whom I was to
meet.”
“Monsieur is not disappointed, I trust?” she said, smiling. “If I talk
banalities, Monsieur must pardon it. Both the waiters here are spies,
and there are always people who watch. Monsieur is ready to do us a
service?”
“To the limits of my ability,” Peter Ruff answered. “Madame will
remember that we are not in Paris; that our police system, if not so
wonderful as yours, is still a closer and a more present thing. They
have not the brains at Scotland Yard, but they are persistent--hard to
escape.”
“Do I not know it?” the woman said. “It is through them that we send for
you. One of us is in danger.”
“Do I know him?” Peter Ruff asked.
“It is doubtful,” she answered. “Monsieur’s stay in Paris was so brief.
If Monsieur will recognize his name--it is Jean Lemaitre himself.”
Peter Ruff started slightly.
“I thought,” he said, with some hesitation, “that Lemaitre did not visit
this country.”
“He came well disguised,” the woman answered. “It was thought to be
safe. Nevertheless, it was a foolish thing. They have tracked him
down from hotel to apartments, till he lives now in the back room of
a wretched little cafe in Soho. Even from there we cannot get him
away--the whole district is watched by spies. We need help.”
“For a genius like Lemaitre,” Peter Ruff said, thoughtfully, “to have
even thought of Soho, was foolish. He should have gone to Hampstead
or Balham. It is easy to fool our police if you know how. On the other
hand, they hang on to the scent like leec
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