The Sign of Silence
by William Le Queux · English · Gutenberg #30477 · 442,832 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Sign of Silence
Author: William Le Queux
Release date: November 15, 2009 [eBook #30477]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIGN OF SILENCE ***
[Illustration: "'Well,' she asked, 'are you ready?'" (Chap. vi.)
_The Sign of Silence_] [_Frontispiece_
]
THE SIGN
OF SILENCE
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
_Author of_
_"If Sinners Entice Thee," "The Room of Secrets," etc._
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1917
"THE MASTER OF MYSTERY"
WILLIAM LE QUEUX'S NOVELS
_WORLD'S OPINIONS._
EUROPE.
"Mr. William Le Queux retains his position as 'The Master of Mystery.'
... He is far too skilful to allow pause for thought; he whirls his
readers from incident to incident, holding their attention from the first
page to the close of the book."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
"There is no better companion on a railway journey than Mr. William Le
Queux."--_Daily Mail._
"Mr. William Le Queux is 'The Master of Mystery.' His reputation is
world-famed."--_Le Matin_ (Paris).
"Mr. William Le Queux's romances are always enthralling. He is the Master
of the Mystery-story."--_Berliner Tageblatt_ (Berlin).
"Mr. William Le Queux is the most entrancing and thrilling English
novelist of to-day."--_Neue Freie Presse_ (Vienna).
ASIA.
"We always enjoy Mr. Le Queux's novels. His mysteries are
perfect."--_Englishman_ (Calcutta).
"Mr. William Le Queux has justly earned the title of 'The Master of
Mystery.'"--_Hong Kong Telegraph._
AFRICA.
"As a weaver of mysteries, Mr. William Le Queux has surely no equal. To
dash about Europe in his company, hot on the heels of an enigma, is a
pastime both exciting and exhilarating."--_Johannesburg Star._
AMERICA.
"Mr. William Le Queux's popularity is steadily increasing. No writer has
brought mystery and adventure to such a high degree of art. He never
fails to enthral and entertain us."--_New York Herald._
"Mr. William Le Queux's work is always excellent, and always
exciting."--_San Francisco Examiner._
"Not without good cause has Mr. Le Queux earned his very apt title, 'The
Master of Mystery.'"--_El Diario_ (Buenos Ayres).
AUSTRALIA.
"Mr. Le Queux is always fresh and original, and one can rely on being
interested and amused by his stories."--_Sydney Morning Herald._
"For mystery and sensation Mr. Le Queux cannot be beaten."--_Melbourne
Argus._
"Mr. Le Queux's large public are never satisfied. They always crave for
more from his pen."--_Christchurch Weekly Press_ (New Zealand).
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--INTRODUCES A GENTLEMAN 7
II.--THE SCENT 20
III.--DESCRIBES THE TRYSTING-PLACE 35
IV.--"DEAR OLD DIG" 45
V.--"TIME WILL PROVE" 54
VI.--THE PIECE OF CONVICTION 63
VII.--FATAL FINGERS 71
VIII.--CONTAINS FURTHER EVIDENCE 80
IX.--DESCRIBES THE YELLOW SIGN 89
X.--CHERCHEZ LA FEMME 97
XI.--IN WHICH AN ALLEGATION IS MADE 108
XII.--PHRIDA MAKES CONFESSION 117
XIII.--THE FUGITIVE'S SECRET 126
XIV.--REVEALS A FURTHER DECEPTION 136
XV.--AN EFFACED IDENTITY 144
XVI.--REVEALS ANOTHER ENIGMA 153
XVII.--CONCERNS MRS. PETRE 162
XVIII.--DISCLOSES THE TRAP 170
XIX.--THE SEAL OF SILENCE 179
XX.--FROM THE TOMB 187
XXI.--RECORDS A STRANGE STATEMENT 195
XXII.--"MARIE BRACQ!" 203
XXIII.--LOVE'S CONFESSION 213
XXIV.--OFFICIAL SECRECY 222
XXV.--FRÉMY, OF THE SURETÉ 231
XXVI.--SHOWS EXPERT METHODS 239
XXVII.--EDWARDS BECOMES MORE PUZZLED 248
XXVIII.--FURTHER ADMISSIONS 256
XXIX.--THE SELLER OF SHAWLS 265
XXX.--FACE TO FACE 274
XXXI.--SHOWS THE TRUTH-TELLER 284
XXXII.--IS THE CONCLUSION 294
THE SIGN OF SILENCE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCES A GENTLEMAN.
"Then it's an entire mystery?"
"Yes, Phrida."
"But it's astounding! It really seems so utterly impossible," declared my
well-beloved, amazed at what I had just related.
"I've simply stated hard facts."
"But there's been nothing about this affair in the papers."
"For certain reasons the authorities are not exactly anxious for any
publicity. It is a very puzzling problem, and they do not care to own
themselves baffled," I replied.
"Really, it's the most extraordinary story of London life that I've ever
heard," Phrida Shand declared, leaning forward in her chair, clasping her
small white hands as, with her elbows upon the _table-à-deux_, she looked
at me with her wondrous dark eyes across the bowl of red tulips between
us.
We were lunching together at the Berkeley, in Piccadilly, one January day
last year, and had just arrived at the dessert.
"The whole thing is quite bewildering, Teddy--an utter enigma," she
exclaimed in a low, rather strained voice, her pretty, pointed chin
resting upon the back of her hand as she gazed upon me from beneath those
long, curved lashes.
"I quite agree," was my answer. "The police are mystified, and so am I.
Sir Digby Kemsley is my friend, you know."
"I remember," she said. "You once introduced me--at the opening of the
Motor Show at Olympia, I believe. A very brilliant and famous man, isn't
he?"
"Rather! A famous engineer. He made the new railway across the Andes, and
possesses huge rubber interests in Peru. His name, both in Seina and
Valparaiso, is one to conjure with," was my reply; "but----"
"But what?" queried my well-beloved.
"Well, there's one fact which greatly increases the mystery--a fact which
is yet to be told."
"What's that?" she asked eagerly.
I hesitated.
"Well, I've been making inquiries this morning," I replied with some
reluctance, "and I learn to my blank amazement that there is no such
person as my friend."
"No such person!" she echoed, staring at me, her lips parted. Being
seated in a corner, no one could overhear our conversation. "I don't
follow you!"
"Well, Sir Digby died somewhere in South America about a year ago," was
my quiet response.
"What? Was your friend a fraud, eh?"
"Apparently so. And yet, if he was, he must have been a man of marvellous
cunning and subterfuge," I said. "He was most popular at the club, known
at the Ritz and the Savoy, and other places about town."
"He struck me as a man of great refinement--a gentleman, in fact," Phrida
said. "I recollect him perfectly: tall, rather thin, with a pointed, grey
beard, a long, oval face, and thinnish, grey hair. A very lithe, erect
man, whose polite, elegant manner was that of a diplomat, and in whose
dark eyes was an expression of constant merriment and good humour. He
spoke with a slight accent--Scotch, isn't it?"
"Exactly. You remember him perfectly, dear. A most excellent
description," I said; "and that same description has been circulated this
morning to every police office throughout the United Kingdom, as well as
to the prefectures of police in all the European capitals. All the ports
are being watched, as it is expected he may make his way abroad."
"But what do the authorities suspect?" asked Phrida, with a serious look.
"Ah, that's just it! They haven't yet decided what to suspect."
I looked across at her and thought, though slightly more pale than usual,
she had never appeared more charming.
Sweet-faced, slim, with a soft, sibilant voice, and dainty to her
finger-tips, she did not look more than nineteen, though her age was
twenty-four. How shall I describe her save to say that her oval,
well-defined features were perfect, her dark, arched brows gave piquancy
to a countenance that was remarked wherever she went, a merry face, with
a touch of impudence in her smile--the face of an essentially London
girl.
Only daughter of my father's late partner, James Shand, we had been
friends from childhood, and our friendship had, three years ago,
blossomed into a deep and mutual affection. Born and bred in Kensington,
she cared little for country life. She loved her London, its throbbing
streets, its life and movement, its concerts, its bright restaurants,
and, most of all, its theatres--for she was an ardent playgoer.
My father, Edward Royle, was head of the firm of well-known chemical
manufacturers, Messrs. Royle and Shand, whose works were a feature of the
river landscape close to Greenwich, and whose offices were in St. Mary
Axe. He had died two years before, pre-deceasing his partner by a year.
The business--a big one, for we were the largest chemical manufacturers
in England--had been left solely in my hands. Shand's widow still lived
with Phrida in Cromwell Road, drawing from it an income of seven thousand
pounds yearly.
As for myself, I was a bachelor, aged thirty-two, and if golf be a vice I
was greatly addicted to it. I occupied a cosy set of chambers, half-way
up Albemarle Street, and am thankful to say that in consequence of my
father's business acumen, my balance at my bankers was increasing
annually. At the works at Greenwich nearly two thousand hands were
employed, and it had always been the firm's proud boast that they
laboured under the most healthy conditions possible to secure in the
manufacture of chemicals.
My father, upon his deathbed, had held my hand and expressed to me his
profoundest satisfaction at my engagement with the daughter of his
partner, and almost with his last breath had pronounced a blessing upon
our union.
Yes, I loved Phrida--loved her with all my heart and all my soul. She was
mine--mine for ever.
Yet, as I sat at that little table in the white-enamelled restaurant
gazing at her across the bowl of tulips, I felt a strange, a very curious
misgiving, an extraordinary misty suspicion, for which I could not in the
least account.
I experienced a strange intuition of doubt and vague uncertainty.
The facts we had just been discussing were, to say the least, amazing.
Only the Metropolitan Police and myself were aware of the astounding
discovery which had been made that morning--a discovery of which the
ever-vigilant London evening newspapers had as yet no inkling.
The affair was being carefully hushed up. In certain quarters--high
official quarters, I believe--a flutter of excitement had been caused at
noon, when it had become known that a mystery had occurred, one which at
the outset New Scotland Yard had acknowledged itself utterly without a
clue.
About the affair there was nothing usual, nothing commonplace. The murder
mysteries of London always form exciting reading, for it is surely the
easiest work of the practised journalist to put forward from day to day
fresh clues and exciting propositions.
The present case, however, was an entirely fresh and unheard-of mystery,
one such as London had never before known.
In the whole annals of Scotland Yard no case presenting such unusual
features had previously been reported.
"Have you no theory as to what really occurred?" Phrida asked slowly,
after a very long and pensive silence.
"None whatever, dear," I replied.
What theory could I form? Aye, what indeed?
In order that the exact truth should be made entirely plain to the reader
and the mystery viewed in all its phases, it will be best for me to
briefly record the main facts prior to entering upon any detail.
The following were the circumstances exactly as I knew them.
At twenty-five minutes to ten on the previous night--the night of January
the sixth--I was at home in Albemarle Street, writing letters. Haines, my
man, had gone out, and I was alone, when the telephone bell rang. Taking
up the receiver I heard the cheery voice of Sir Digby Kemsley asking what
I was doing. My prompt reply was that I was staying at home that night,
whereupon his voice changed and he asked me in great earnestness to come
over to his flat in Harrington Gardens, South Kensington, at eleven
o'clock.
"And look here," he added in a confidential tone, "the outside door will
be closed at half-past ten and the porter off duty. I'll go down just
before eleven and leave the door ajar. Don't let anyone see you come in.
Be extremely careful. I have reasons I'll explain afterwards."
"Right," I replied, and shut off.
His request seemed just a little curious. It struck me that he perhaps
wished to consult with me over some private matter, as he had done once
before. Therefore, just before eleven I hailed a taxi in Piccadilly and
drove westward past Gloucester Road Station, and into the quiet,
eminently select neighbourhood where my friend lived.
At eleven o'clock Harrington Gardens--that long thoroughfare of big
rather gloomy houses, most of them residences of City merchants, or town
houses or flats of people who have seats in the country--was as silent as
the grave, and my taxi awoke its echoes until, about half way up, I
stopped the man, alighted, and paid him off.
Then, after walking a couple of hundred yards, I found the door ajar and
slipped into the hall unobserved.
Ascending the wide carpeted steps to the second floor, the door of the
flat was opened noiselessly by the owner himself, and a few seconds later
I found myself seated before a big fire in his snug sitting-room.
My friend's face was grey and entirely changed, yet his manner was still
as polished, cheery, and buoyant as ever.
The flat--quite a small one, though very expensive as he had once
remarked to me--was furnished throughout with elegance and taste. Upon
its walls everywhere hung curios and savage arms, which he had brought
from various parts of the world. The drawing-room was furnished entirely
in Arab style, with cedar-wood screens, semi-circular arches, low, soft
divans and silken rugs, which he had bought in Egypt, while, in contrast,
the little den in which we were sitting at that moment was panelled in
white with an old-rose carpet, rendering it essentially bright and
modern.
The tall, grey-bearded, elegant man handed me a box of Perfectos Finos,
from which we selected, and then, throwing myself into a chair, I slowly
lit up.
His back was turned from me at the moment, as he leaned over the
writing-table apparently gathering up some papers which he did not desire
that I should see. He was facing a circular mirror on the wall, and in it
I could see his countenance reflected. The expression upon his
face--cold, cynical, sinister--startled me. He placed the papers in a
drawer and locked it with a key upon his chain.
"Well?" I asked. "Why all this confounded mystery, Digby?"
He turned upon me quickly, his long face usually so full of merriment,
grey and drawn. I saw instantly that something very serious was amiss.
"I--I want to ask your advice, Royle," he replied in a hard voice scarce
above a whisper. Walking to the pretty rug of old-rose and pale green
silk spread before the fire he stood upon it, facing me. "And--well,
truth to tell, I don't want it to be known that you've been here
to-night, old fellow."
"Why?"
"For certain private reasons--very strong reasons."
"As you wish, my dear chap," was my response, as I drew at his perfect
cigar.
Then he looked me straight in the face and said: "My motive in asking you
here to-night, Royle, is to beg of you to extend your valued friendship
to me at a moment which is the greatest crisis of my career. The fact is,
I've played the game of life falsely, and the truth must out,
unless--unless you will consent to save me."
"I don't follow you," I said, staring at him. "What in heaven's name do
you mean?"
"My dear boy, I'll put my cards down on the table at once," he said in a
slow, deep tone. "Let's see--we've known each other for nearly a year.
You have been my best friend, entirely devoted to my interests--a staunch
friend, better than whom no man could ever desire. In return I've lied to
you, led you to believe that I am what I am not. Why? Because--well, I
suppose I'm no different to any other man--or woman for the matter of
that--I have a skeleton in my cupboard--a grim skeleton, my dear Royle.
One which I've always striven to hide--until to-night," he added with
emotion.
"But that hardly interferes with our friendship, does it? We all of us
have our private affairs, both of business and of heart," I said.
"The heart," he echoed bitterly. "Ah! yes--the heart. You, my dear boy,
are a man of the world. You understand life. You are never
narrow-minded--eh?" he asked, advancing a step nearer to me.
"I hope not," I said. "At any rate, I've always been your friend, ever
since our first meeting on the steamer on the Lake of Garda, last
February."
The eminent engineer rolled his cigar between his fingers, and calmly
contemplated it in silence.
Then, quite abruptly, he exclaimed:
"Royle, my present misfortune is due to a woman."
"Ah!" I sighed. "A woman! Always a woman in such cases! Well?"
"Mind you, I don't blame her in the least," he went on quickly, "I--I was
hot-tempered, and I miscalculated her power. We quarrelled, and--and she,
though so young, refined and pretty, has arisen to crush me."
"Anyone I know?"
"No. I think not," was his slow reply, his dark eyes gazing full into
mine as he still stood astride upon the hearthrug.
Then he fidgeted uneasily, stroked his well-clipped grey beard with his
strong, bronzed hand, and strode across the room and back again.
"Look here, Royle," he exclaimed at last. "You're my friend, so I may as
well speak straight out. Will you help me?"
"Certainly--if I can."
"I'm in a hole--a confounded hole. I've been worried ever since I got
back from Egypt just before Christmas. Only you can save me."
"Me! Why?"
"I want you to remain my friend; to still believe in me, when--well--when
I've gone under," he answered brokenly, his brows contracting as he
spoke.
"I don't understand you."
"Then I'll speak more plainly. To-night is the last time we shall meet.
I've played the game, I tell you--and I've lost!"
"You seem horribly hipped about something to-night, my dear fellow!" I
exclaimed in wonder at his strange words. In all my circle of friends no
man was more level-headed than Sir Digby Kemsley.
"Yes, I'm not quite myself. Perhaps you wouldn't be, Royle, in the same
circumstances." Halting, he stood erect with his hands clasped behind his
back. Even then, at that moment of despair, he presented the fine figure
of a man in his well-cut dinner clothes and the single ruby in his piqué
shirt-front. "I want to entrust a secret to you--a great secret," he went
on a few seconds later. "I tell you that to-night is the last occasion
we shall ever meet, but I beg--may I implore you to judge me with
leniency, to form no unjust conclusions, and when you remember me to
regard my memory as that of a man who was not a rogue, but a victim of
untoward circumstances."
"Really, my dear fellow," I said, "you speak in enigmas. What do you
mean--you intend what?"
"That matters nothing to you, Royle," was his hoarse reply. "I merely ask
for your continued friendship. I ask that you will treat my successor
here in the exact manner in which you have treated me--that you will
become his firm friend--and that you will perform for me one great and
most important service."
"Your successor! Who will succeed you? You have no son!"
"No, I have no male relation whatever," he replied. "But we were speaking
of the favour I am begging of you to perform for me. On the fourteenth of
January I shall not be here, but it is highly necessary that on that
evening, at eight o'clock, a secret message should be delivered into the
hands of a certain lady--a message from myself. Will you do it?"
"Certainly. Are you going abroad again?"
"I--well, I can hardly tell. I may be dead by then--who knows?" And he
smiled grimly.
He returned to his writing-table, unlocked a drawer, and took therefrom a
letter which was carefully sealed with black wax.
"Now, listen," he said, holding the letter in his fingers; "on the night
of the fourteenth, just at eight o'clock precisely, go to the Piccadilly
tube station, stand at the telephone box numbered four on the Haymarket
side, when a lady in black will approach you and ask news of me. In
response you will give her this note. But there is a further condition:
you may be watched and recognised, therefore be extremely careful that
you are not followed on that day, and, above all, adopt some effective
disguise. Go there dressed as a working-man, I would suggest."
"That request, Kemsley, is certainly a very queer one," I remarked. "Is
she _the_ lady?"
He smiled, and I took that as an affirmative.
"You say she'll be dressed in black. Lots of ladies dress in black. I
might mistake her."
"Not very likely. I forgot to tell you that she will wear a small spray
of mimosa."
"Ah, that shows originality," I remarked. "Mimosa is not often worn on
the person."
"It will serve as a distinguishing mark." Then, after a pause, he added,
handing me the letter: "There is one further request I want to make--or,
at least, I want you to give me your promise, Royle. I ask you to make a
solemn vow to me that if any suspicion arises within your mind, that you
will believe nothing without absolute and decisive proof. I mean that you
will not misjudge her."
"I certainly will not."
"Your hand upon it?"
I put forth my hand and, gripping his warmly, gave him my word of honour.
"I hope you will never regret this, Royle," he said in an earnest tone.
"We are friends," I remarked simply.
"And I trust, Royle, you will never regret the responsibility which you
have accepted on my behalf," he said in a deep, hard voice--the voice of
a desperate man. "Remember to treat my successor exactly as you have
treated me. Be his best friend, as he will be yours. You will be
astonished, amazed, mystified, no doubt, at the events which must, alas!
inevitably occur. But it is not my fault, Royle, believe me," he declared
with solemn emphasis. "It is, alas! my misfortune!"
CHAPTER II.
THE SCENT.
After giving me the letter, and receiving my assurance that it would be
safely delivered, Sir Digby's spirits seemed somewhat to revive.
He chatted in his old, good-humoured style, drank a whisky and soda, and,
just before one o'clock, let me out, urging me to descend the stairs
noiselessly lest the hall-porter should know that he had had a visitor.
Time after time I had questioned him regarding his strange reference to
his successor, but to all my queries he was entirely dumb. He had, I
recollected, never been the same since his return from a flying visit to
Egypt.
"The future will, no doubt, astound you, but I know, Royle, that you are
a man of honour and of your word, and that you will keep your promise at
all hazards," was all he would reply.
The secrecy with which I had entered and left caused me considerable
curiosity. Kemsley was one of those free, bluff, open-hearted,
open-handed, men. He was never secretive, never elusive. I could only
account for his curious, mystifying actions by the fact that the
reputation of a woman was at stake--that he was acting for her
protection.
And I was to meet that woman face to face in eight days' time!
As I walked towards Gloucester Road Station--where I hoped to find a
taxi--all was silence. At that hour the streets of South Kensington are
as deserted as a graveyard, and as I bent towards the cutting wind from
the east, I wondered who could be the mysterious woman who had broken up
my dear friend's future plans. Yet he bore her no malice. Some men's
temperaments are really curious.
Beneath a street-lamp I paused and looked at the superscription upon the
envelope. It ran:
"For E. P. K."
The initial K! Was the lady Digby's wife? That was the suspicion which at
once fell upon me, and by which I became convinced.
At half-past one o'clock I let myself into my own flat in Albemarle
Street. The faithful Haines, who had been a marine wardroom servant in
the navy before entering my employ, was awaiting me.
"The telephone bell rang ten minutes ago, sir," he said. "Sir Digby
Kemsley wishes to speak to you."
"Very well!" I replied. "You can go to bed."
The man placed my tray with whisky and soda upon the little table near my
chair, as was his habit, and, wishing me good-night, retired.
I went to the telephone, and asked for Digby's number.
After a few seconds a voice, which at first I failed to recognise,
replied to mine:
"I say, Royle; I'm so sorry to disturb you, old chap, but could you
possibly come back here at once?"
"What?" I asked, very surprised. "Is it so very important? Can't it wait
till to-morrow?"
"No, unfortunately it can't. It's most imperative that I should see you.
Something has happened. Do come!" he begged. "But don't attract
attention--you understand!"
"Something happened!" I echoed. "What?"
"That woman. Come at once--do, there's a good fellow. Will you--for my
sake and hers?"
The mention of the woman decided me, so I replied "All right!" and hung
up the receiver.
Within half an hour I alighted in Courtfield Gardens and walked up
Harrington Gardens to the door of my friend's house, which I saw was
already ajar in anticipation of my arrival.
Closing the door noiselessly, in order not to attract the attention of
the alert porter who lived in the basement, I crept up the carpeted
stairs to the door of the flat, which I found also ajar.
Having closed the door, I slipped into the hall and made my way to the
warm, cosy room I had left earlier that night.
The door was closed, and without ceremony I turned the handle.
I threw it open laughingly in order to surprise my friend, but next
instant halted in amazement upon the threshold.
I stood there breathless, staring in speechless wonder, and drawing back.
"I'm really very sorry!" I exclaimed. "I thought Sir Digby was here!"
The man who had risen from his chair and bowed when I opened the door was
about the same build, but, apparently, a trifle younger. He had iron-grey
hair and a pointed beard, but his face was more triangular, with higher
cheek-bones, and eyes more brilliant and deeper set.
His thin countenance relaxed into a pleasant smile as he replied in a
calm, suave voice:
"I am Sir Digby Kemsley, and you--I believe--are Mr. Edward Royle--my
friend--my very intimate friend--are you not?"
"You!" I gasped, staring at him.
And then, for several seconds I failed to articulate any further words.
The imposture was so utterly barefaced.
"You are not Sir Digby Kemsley," I went on angrily at last. "What trick
is this?"
"No trick whatever, my dear Royle," was the man's quiet reply as he stood
upon the hearthrug in the same position in which my friend had stood an
hour before. "I tell you that my name is Kemsley--Sir Digby Kemsley."
"Then you assert that this flat is yours?"
"Most certainly I do."
"Bosh! How can you expect me to believe such a transparent tale?" I cried
impatiently. "Where is my friend?"
"I am your friend, my dear Royle!" he laughed.
"You're not."
"But did you not, only an hour ago, promise him to treat his successor in
the same manner in which you had treated himself?" the man asked very
slowly, his high, deep-set eyes fixed upon me with a crafty, almost
snake-like expression, an expression that was distinctly one of evil.
"True, I did," was my quick reply. "But I never bargained for this
attempted imposture."
"I tell you it is no imposture!" declared the man before me. "You will,
perhaps, understand later. Have a cigar," and he took up Digby's box and
handed it to me.
I declined very abruptly, and without much politeness, I fear.
I was surveying the man who, with such astounding impudence, was
attempting to impose upon me a false identity. There was something
curiously striking in his appearance, but what it was I could not exactly
determine. His speech was soft and educated, in a slightly higher pitch
than my friend's; his hands white and carefully manicured, yet, as he
stood, I noted that his left shoulder was slightly higher than the other,
that his dress clothes ill-fitted him in consequence; that in his
shirt-front were two rare, orange-coloured gems such as I had never seen
before, and, further, that when I caught him side face, it much resembled
Digby's, so aquiline as to present an almost birdlike appearance.
"Look here!" I exclaimed in anger a few moments later. "Why have you
called me over here? When you spoke to me your voice struck me as
peculiar, but I put it down to the distortion of sound on the telephone."
"I wanted to see if you recognised my other self," he answered with a
smile.
"At this late hour? Couldn't you have postponed your ghastly joke till
the morning?" I asked.
"Joke!" he echoed, his face suddenly pale and serious. "This is no joke,
Royle, but a very serious matter. The most serious that can occur in any
man's life."
"Well, what is it? Tell me the truth."
"You shall know that later."
"Where is Sir Digby?"
"Here! I am Sir Digby, I tell you."
"I mean my friend."
"I am your friend," was the man's response, as he turned away towards the
writing-table. "The friend you first met on the Lake of Garda."
"Now, why all this secrecy?" I asked. "I was first called here and warned
not to show myself, and, on arrival, find you here."
"And who else did you expect to find?" he asked with a faint smile.
"I expected to find my friend."
"But I am your friend," he asserted. "You promised me only an hour ago
that you would treat my successor exactly as you treated me. And," he
added, "I am my own successor!"
I stood much puzzled.
There were certain features in his countenance that were much like
Digby's, and certain tones in his voice that were the same. His hands
seemed the same, too, and yet he was not Digby himself.
"How can I believe you if you refuse to be frank and open with me?" I
asked.
"You promised me, Royle, and a good deal depends upon your promise," he
replied, looking me squarely in the face. "Perhaps even your own
future."
"My future!" I echoed. "What has that to do with you, pray?" I demanded
angrily.
"More than you imagine," was his low response, his eyes fixed upon mine.
"Well, all I know is that you are endeavouring to make me believe that
you are what you are not. Some evil purpose is, no doubt, behind it all.
But such an endeavour is an insult to my intelligence," I declared.
The man laughed a low, harsh laugh and turned away.
"I demand to know where my friend is!" I cried, stepping after him across
the room, and facing him again.
"My dear Royle," he replied, in that curious, high-pitched voice, yet
with a calm, irritating demeanour. "Haven't I already told you I am your
friend?"
"It's a lie! You are not Sir Digby!" I cried angrily. "I shall inform the
police that I've found you usurping his place and name, and leave them to
solve the mystery."
"Act just as you think fit, my dear old fellow," he laughed. "Perhaps the
police might discover more than you yourself would care for them to
know."
His words caused me to ponder. At what could he be hinting?
He saw my hesitancy, and with a sudden movement placed his face close to
me, saying:
"My dear fellow look--look into my countenance, you surely can penetrate
my disguise. It cannot be so very perfect, surely."
I looked, but turned from him in disgust.
"No. Stop this infernal fooling!" I cried. "I've never seen you before in
my life."
He burst out laughing--laughed heartily, and with genuine amusement.
His attitude held me in surprise.
"You refuse to be my friend, Royle--but I desire to be yours, if you will
allow me," he said.
"I can have no friend whom I cannot trust," I repeated.
"Naturally. But I hope you will soon learn to trust me," was his quiet
retort. "I called you back to-night in order to see if you--my most
intimate friend--would recognise me. But you do not. I am, therefore,
safe--safe to go forth and perform a certain mission which it is
imperative that I should perform."
"You are fooling me," I declared.
For a second he looked straight and unflinchingly into my eyes, then with
a sudden movement he drew the left cuff of his dress shirt up to the
elbow and held out his forearm for me to gaze upon.
I looked.
Then I stood dumbfounded, for half-way up the forearm, on the inside, was
the cicatrice of an old knife wound which long ago, he had told me, had
been made by an Indian in South America who had attempted to kill him,
and whom he had shot in self-defence.
"You believe me now?" he asked, in a voice scarce above a whisper.
"Of course," I said. "Pardon me, Digby--but this change in your
personality is marvellous--almost superhuman!"
"So I've been told before," he replied lightly.
"But, really, didn't you penetrate it?" he asked, resuming his normal
voice.
"No. I certainly did not," I answered, and helping myself to a drink,
swallowed it.
"Well?" I went on. "What does this mean?"
"At present I can't exactly tell you what I intend doing," he replied.
"To-night I wanted to test you, and have done so. It's late now," he
added, glancing at the clock, which showed it to be half-past two o'clock
in the morning. "Come in to-morrow at ten, will you?" he asked. "I want
to discuss the future with you very seriously. I have something to say
which concerns your own future, and which also closely concerns a friend
of yours. So come in your own interests, Royle--now don't fail, I beg of
you!"
"But can't you tell me to-night," I asked.
"Not until I know something of what my own movements are to be," he
replied. "I cannot know before to-morrow," he replied with a mysterious
air. "So if you wish to be forewarned of an impending peril, come and see
me and I will then explain. We shall, no doubt, be on closer terms
to-morrow. _Au revoir_," and he took my hand warmly and then let me out.
The rather narrow, ill-lit staircase, the outer door of which had been
shut for hours, was close and stuffy, but as I descended the second
flight and was about to pass along the hall to the door, I distinctly
heard a movement in the shadow where, on my left, the hall continued
along to the door of the ground-floor flat.
I peered over the banisters, but in the darkness could distinguish
nothing.
That somebody was lurking there I instantly felt assured, and next
moment the truth became revealed by two facts.
The first was a light, almost imperceptible noise, the jingle of a
woman's bangles, and, secondly, the faint odour of some subtle perfume, a
sweet, intoxicating scent such as my nostrils had never greeted before.
For the moment I felt surprise, but as the hidden lady was apparently
standing outside the ground-floor flat--perhaps awaiting admittance--I
felt it to be no concern of mine, and proceeding, opened the outer door
and passed outside, closing it quietly after me.
An unusually sweet perfume one can seldom forget. Even out in the keen
night air that delightful odour seemed to cling to my memory--the latest
creation of the Rue de la Paix, I supposed.
Well, I duly returned home to Albemarle Street once again, utterly
mystified.
What did it all mean? Why had Digby adopted such a marvellous disguise?
What did he mean by saying that he wished to stand my friend and
safeguard me from impending evil?
Yes, it was all a mystery--but surely not so great a mystery as that
which was to follow. Ah! had I but suspected the astounding truth how
very differently would I have acted!
Filled with curiosity regarding Digby's strange forebodings, I alighted
from a taxi in Harrington Gardens at a quarter to eleven that same
morning, but on entering found the uniformed hall-porter in a great state
of excitement and alarm.
"Oh, sir!" he cried breathlessly, advancing towards me. "You're a friend
of Sir Digby's sir. The police are upstairs. Something extraordinary has
happened."
"The police!" I gasped. "Why, what's happened?"
"Well, sir. As his man left the day before yesterday, my wife went up to
Sir Digby's flat as usual this morning about eight, and put him his early
cup of tea outside his door. But when she went in again she found he had
not taken it into his room. She believed him to be asleep, so not till
ten o'clock did she go into the sitting-room to draw up the blinds, when,
to her horror, she found a young lady, a perfect stranger, lying
stretched on the floor there! She rushed down and told me, and I went up.
I found that Sir Digby's bed hadn't been slept in, and that though the
poor girl was unconscious, she was still breathing. So I at once called
in the constable on point duty at the corner of Collingham Road, and he
'phoned to the police station."
"But the girl--is she dead?" I inquired quickly.
"I don't know, sir. You'd better go upstairs. There's an inspector, two
plain-clothes men, and a doctor up there."
He took me up in the lift, and a few moments later I stood beside Digby's
bed, whereon the men had laid the inanimate form of a well-dressed girl
whom I judged to be about twenty-two, whose dark hair, unbound, lay in
disorder upon the pillow. The face, white as marble, was handsome and
clean cut, but upon it, alas! was the ashen hue of death, the pale lips
slightly parted as though in a half-sarcastic smile.
The doctor was bending over her making his examination.
I looked upon her for a moment, but it was a countenance which I had
never seen before. Digby had many lady friends, but I had never seen her
among them. She was a perfect stranger.
Her gown was of dark blue serge, smartly made, and beneath her coat she
wore a cream silk blouse with deep sailor collar open at the neck, and a
soft flowing bow of turquoise blue. This, however, had been disarranged
by the doctor in opening her blouse to listen to her breathing, and I saw
that upon it was a small crimson stain.
Yes, she was remarkably good-looking, without a doubt.
When I announced myself as an intimate friend of Sir Digby Kemsley, the
inspector at once took me into the adjoining room and began to eagerly
question me.
With him I was perfectly frank; but I said nothing regarding my second
visit there in the night.
My gravest concern was the whereabouts of my friend.
"This is a very curious case, Mr. Royle," declared the inspector. "The
C.I.D. men have established one fact--that another woman was with the
stranger here in the early hours of this morning. This hair-comb"--and he
showed me a small side-comb of dark green horn--"was found close beside
her on the floor. Also a couple of hair-pins, which are different to
those in the dead woman's hair. There was a struggle, no doubt, and the
woman got away. In the poor girl's hair are two tortoiseshell
side-combs."
"But what is her injury?" I asked breathlessly.
"She's been stabbed," he replied. "Let's go back."
Together we re-entered the room, but as we did so we saw that the doctor
had now left the bedside, and was speaking earnestly with the two
detectives.
"Well, doctor?" asked the inspector in a low voice.
"She's quite dead--murder, without a doubt," was his reply. "The girl was
struck beneath the left breast--a small punctured wound, but fatal!"
"The woman who left this hair-comb behind knows something about the
affair evidently," exclaimed the inspector. "We must first discover Sir
Digby Kemsley. He seems to have been here up until eleven o'clock last
night. Then he mysteriously disappeared, and the stranger entered unseen,
two very curious and suspicious circumstances. I wonder who the poor girl
was?"
The two detectives were discussing the affair in low voices. Here was a
complete and very remarkable mystery, which, from the first, the police
told me they intended to keep to themselves, and not allow a syllable of
it to leak out to the public through the newspapers.
A woman had been there!
Did there not exist vividly in my recollection that strange encounter in
the darkness of the stairs? The jingle of the golden bangles, and the
sweet odour of that delicious perfume?
But I said nothing. I intended that the police should prosecute their
inquiries, find my friend, and establish the identity of the mysterious
girl who had met with such an untimely end presumably at the hands of
that woman who had been lurking in the darkness awaiting my departure.
Truly it was a mystery, a most remarkable problem among the many which
occur each week amid the amazing labyrinth of humanity which we term
London life.
Sir Digby Kemsley had disappeared. Where?
Half an hour after noon I had left Harrington Gardens utterly bewildered,
and returned to Albemarle Street, and at half-past one met Phrida at the
Berkeley, where, as I have already described, we lunched together.
I had revealed to her everything under seal of the secrecy placed upon me
by the police--everything save that suspicion I had had in the darkness,
and the suspicion the police also held--the suspicion of a woman.
Relation of the curious affair seemed to have unnerved her. She had
become paler and was fidgeting with her serviette. Loving me so
devotedly, she seemed to entertain vague and ridiculous fears regarding
my own personal safety.
"It was very foolish and hazardous of you to have returned there at that
hour, dear," she declared with sweet solicitation, as she drew on her
white gloves preparatory to leaving the restaurant, for I had already
paid the bill and drained my liqueur-glass.
"I don't see why," I said. "Whatever could have happened to me, when----"
My sentence remained unfinished.
I held my breath. The colour must have left my cheeks, I know.
My well-beloved had at that moment opened her handbag and taken out her
wisp of lace handkerchief.
My nostrils were instantly filled with that same sweet, subtle perfume
which I so vividly recollected, the identical perfume of the woman
concealed in that dark passage-way!
Her bangles, two thin gold ones, jingled as she moved--that same sound
which had come up to me from the blackness. I sat like a statue, staring
at her amazed, aghast, like a man in a dream.
CHAPTER III.
DESCRIBES THE TRYSTING-PLACE.
I drove Phrida back to Cromwell Road in a taxi.
As I sat beside her, that sweet irritating perfume filled my senses,
almost intoxicating me. For some time I remained silent; then, unable to
longer restrain my curiosity, I exclaimed with a calm, irresponsible air,
though with great difficulty of self-restraint:
"What awfully nice perfume you have, dearest! Surely it's new, isn't it?
I never remember smelling it before!"
"Quite new, and rather delicious, don't you think? My cousin Arthur
brought it from Paris a few days ago. I only opened the bottle last
night. Mother declared it to be the sweetest she's ever smelt. It's so
very strong that one single drop is sufficient."
"What do they call it?"
"Parfait d'Amour. Lauzan, in the Placé Vendôme, makes it. It's quite new,
and not yet on the market, Arthur said. He got it--a sample bottle--from
a friend of his in the perfume trade."
Not on the market! Those words of hers condemned her. Little did she
dream that I had smelt that same sweet, subtle odour as I descended the
stairs from Sir Digby's flat. She, no doubt, had recognised my silhouette
in the half darkness, yet nevertheless she felt herself quite safe,
knowing that I had not seen her.
Why had she been lurking there?
A black cloud of suspicion fell upon me. She kept up a desultory
conversation as we went along Piccadilly in the dreary gloom of that dull
January afternoon, but I only replied in monosyllables, until at length
she remarked:
"Really, Teddy, you're not thinking of a word I'm saying. I suppose your
mind is centred upon your friend--the man who has turned out to be an
impostor."
The conclusion of that sentence and its tone showed a distinct
antagonism.
It was true that the man whom I had known as Sir Digby Kemsley--the man
who for years past had been so popular among a really good set in
London--was according to the police an impostor.
The detective-inspector had told me so. From the flat in Harrington
Gardens the men of the Criminal Investigation Department had rung up New
Scotland Yard to make their report, and about noon, while I was resting
at home in Albemarle Street, I was told over the telephone that my whilom
friend was not the man I had believed him to be.
As I had listened to the inspector's voice, I heard him say:
"There's another complication of this affair, Mr. Royle. Your friend
could not have been Sir Digby Kemsley, for that gentleman died suddenly a
year ago, at Huacho, in Peru. There was some mystery about his death, it
seems, for it was reported by the British Consul at Lima. Inspector
Edwards, of the C.I. Department, will call upon you this afternoon. What
time could you conveniently be at home?"
I named five o'clock, and that appointment I intended, at all hazards, to
keep.
The big, heavily-furnished drawing-room in Cromwell Road was dark and
sombre as I stood with Phrida, who, bright and happy, pulled off her
gloves and declared to her mother--that charming, sedate, grey-haired,
but wonderfully preserved, woman--that she had had such "a jolly lunch."
"I saw the Redmaynes there, mother," she was saying. "Mr. Redmayne has
asked us to lunch with them at the Carlton next Tuesday. Can we go?"
"I think so, dear," was her mother's reply. "I'll look at my
engagements."
"Oh, do let's go! Ida is coming home from her trip to the West Indies. I
do want to see her so much."
Strange it was that my well-beloved, in face of that amazing mystery,
preserved such an extraordinary, nay, an astounding, calm. I was thinking
of the little side-comb of green horn, for I had seen her wearing a pair
exactly similar!
Standing by I watched her pale sweet countenance, full of speechless
wonder.
After the first moment of suspense she had found herself treading firm
ground, and now, feeling herself perfectly secure, she had assumed a
perfectly frank and confident attitude.
Yet the perfume still arose to my nostrils--the sweet, subtle scent which
had condemned her.
I briefly related to Mrs. Shand my amazing adventures of the previous
night, my eyes furtively upon Phrida's countenance the while. Strangely
enough, she betrayed no guilty knowledge, but fell to discussing the
mystery with ease and common-sense calm.
"What I can't really make out is how your friend could have had the
audacity to pose as Sir Digby Kemsley, well knowing that the real person
was alive," she remarked.
"The police have discovered that Sir Digby died in Peru last January," I
said.
"While your friend was in London?"
"Certainly. My friend--I shall still call him Sir Digby, for I have known
him by no other name--has not been abroad since last July, when he went
on business to Moscow."
"How very extraordinary," remarked Mrs. Shand. "Your friend must surely
have had some object in posing as the dead man."
"But he posed as a man who was still alive!" I exclaimed.
"Until, perhaps, he was found out," observed Phrida shrewdly. "Then he
bolted."
I glanced at her quickly. Did those words betray any knowledge of the
truth, I wondered.
"Apparently there was some mystery surrounding the death of Sir Digby at
Huacho," I remarked. "The British Consul in Lima made a report upon it to
the Foreign Office, who, in turn, handed it to Scotland Yard. I wonder
what it was."
"When you know, we shall be better able to judge the matter and to form
some theory," Phrida said, crossing the room and re-arranging the big
bowl of daffodils in the window.
I remained about an hour, and then, amazed at the calmness of my
well-beloved, I returned to my rooms.
In impatience I waited till a quarter past five, when Haines ushered in a
tall, well-dressed, clean-shaven man, wearing a dark grey overcoat and
white slip beneath his waistcoat, and who introduced himself as Inspector
Charles Edwards.
"I've called, Mr. Royle, in order to make some further inquiries
regarding this person you have known as Sir Digby Kemsley," he said when
he had seated himself. "A very curious affair happened last night. I've
been down to Harrington Gardens, and have had a look around there myself.
Many features of the affair are unique."
"Yes," I agreed. "It is curious--very curious."
"I have a copy of your statement regarding your visit to the house during
the night," said the official, who was one of the Council of Seven at the
Yard, looking up at me suddenly from the cigarette he was about to light.
"Have you any suspicion who killed the young lady?"
"How can I have--except that my friend----"
"Is missing--eh?"
"Exactly."
"But now, tell me all about this friend whom you knew as Sir Digby
Kemsley. How did you first become acquainted with him?"
"I met him on a steamer on the Lake of Garda this last summer," was my
reply. "I was staying at Riva, the little town at the north end of the
lake, over the Austrian frontier, and one day took the steamer down to
Gardone, in Italy. We sat next each other at lunch on board, and, owing
to a chance conversation, became friends."
"What did he tell you?"
"Well, only that he was travelling for his health. He mentioned that he
had been a great deal in South America, and was then over in Europe for
a holiday. Indeed, on the first day we met, he did not even mention his
name, and I quite forgot to ask for it. In travelling one meets so many
people who are only of brief passing interest. It was not until a week
later, when I found him staying in the same hotel as myself, the Cavour,
in Milan, I learnt from the hall-porter that he was Sir Digby Kemsley,
the great engineer. We travelled to Florence together, and stayed at the
Baglioni, but one morning when I came down I found a hurried note
awaiting me. From the hall-porter I learned that a gentleman had arrived
in the middle of the night, and Sir Digby, after an excited controversy,
left with him for London. In the note he gave me his address in
Harrington Gardens, and asked me not to fail to call on my return to
town."
"Curious to have a visitor in the middle of the night," remarked the
detective reflectively.
"I thought so at the time, but, knowing him to be a man of wide business
interests, concluded that it was someone who had brought him an urgent
message," I replied. "Well, the rest is quickly told. On my return home I
sought him out, with the result that we became great friends."
"You had no suspicion that he was an impostor?"
"None whatever. He seemed well known in London," I replied. "Besides, if
he was not the real Sir Digby, how is it possible that he could have so
completely deceived his friends! Why, he has visited the offices of
Colliers, the great railway contractors in Westminster--the firm who
constructed the railway in Peru. I recollect calling there with him in a
taxi one day."
Edwards smiled.
"He probably did that to impress you, sir," he replied. "They may have
known him as somebody else. Or he simply went in and made an inquiry.
He's evidently a very clever person."
Personally, I could not see how my friend could possibly have posed as
Sir Digby Kemsley if he were not, even though Edwards pointed out that
the real Sir Digby had only been in London a fortnight for the past nine
years.
Still, on viewing the whole situation, I confess inclination towards the
belief that my friend was, notwithstanding the allegations, the real Sir
Digby.
And yet those strange words of his, spoken in such confidence on the
previous night, recurred to me. There was mystery somewhere--a far more
obscure mystery even than what was apparent at that moment.
"Tell me what is known concerning Sir Digby's death in Peru," I asked.
"From the report furnished to us at the Yard it seems that one day last
August, while the gentleman in question was riding upon a trolley on the
Cerro de Pasco railway, the conveyance was accidentally overturned into a
river, and he was badly injured in the spine. A friend of his, a somewhat
mysterious Englishman named Cane, brought him down to the hospital at
Lima, and after two months there, he becoming convalescent, was conveyed
for fresh air to Huacho, on the sea. Here he lived with Cane in a small
bungalow in a somewhat retired spot, until on one night in February last
year something occurred--but exactly what, nobody is able to tell. Sir
Digby was found by his Peruvian servant dead from snake-bite. Cane
evinced the greatest distress and horror until, of a sudden, a second
man-servant declared that he had heard his master cry out in terror as he
lay helpless in his bed. He heard him shriek: 'You--you blackguard,
Cane--take the thing away! Ah! God! You've--you've killed me!' Cane
denied it, and proved that he was at a friend's house playing cards at
the hour when the servant heard his master shout for help. Next day,
however, he disappeared. Our Consul in Lima took up the matter, and in
due course a full report of the affair was forwarded to the Yard,
together with a very detailed description of the man wanted. This we sent
around the world, but up to to-day without result."
"Then the man Cane was apparently responsible for the death of the
invalid," I remarked.
"I think so--without a doubt."
"But who was the invalid? Was he the real Sir Digby?"
"Aye, that's the question," said Edwards, thrusting his hands into his
trouser pockets. For some moments we both sat staring blankly into the
fire.
"Among the papers sent to us," he said very slowly at last, "was this.
Read it, and tell me your opinion."
And then he took from his pocket-book and handed me a half-sheet of thin
foreign notepaper, which had been closely written upon on both sides. It
was apparently a sheet from a letter, for there was no beginning and no
ending.
The handwriting was educated, though small and crabbed, and the ink brown
and half-faded, perhaps because of its exposure to a tropical climate. It
had been written by a man, without a doubt.
"That," said Edwards, "was found in a pocket-book belonging to Cane,
which, in his hasty flight, he apparently forgot. According to our report
the wallet was found concealed beneath the mattress of his bed, as though
he feared lest anyone should read and learn what it contained. Read it,
and tell me what you think."
I took the sheet of thin paper in my fingers, and, crossing the room to a
brighter light, managed to decipher the writing as follows:
"... At fourteen paces from where this wall rises from the lawn
stands the ever-plashing fountain. The basin is circular, while
around runs a paved path, hemmed in by smoke-blackened laurels
and cut off from the public way by iron railings. The water
falls with pleasant cadence into a small basin set upon a base
of moss-grown rockwork. Looking south one meets a vista of green
grass, of never-ceasing London traffic, and one tall distant
factory chimney away in the grey haze, while around the fountain
are four stunted trees. On the right stretches a strip of
garden, in spring green and gay with bulbs which bloom and die
unnoticed by the hundreds upon hundreds of London's workers who
pass and re-pass daily in their mad, reckless hurry to earn the
wherewithal to live.
"Halt upon the gravel at that spot on the twenty-third of the
month punctually at noon, and she will pass wearing the yellow
flower. It is the only trysting-place. She has kept it
religiously for one whole year without--alas!--effecting a
meeting. Go there--tell her that I still live, shake her hand in
greeting and assure her that I will come there as soon as ever I
am given strength so to do.
"I have been at that spot once only, yet every detail of its
appearance is impressed indelibly upon my memory. Alas! that I
do not know its name. Search and you will assuredly find it--and
you will see her. You will speak, and give her courage."
I bit my lip.
A sudden thought illuminated my mind.
The yellow flower!
Was not the mysterious woman whom I was to meet on the night of the
fourteenth also to wear a yellow flower--the mimosa!
CHAPTER IV.
"DEAR OLD DIG."
I told Edwards nothing of Sir Digby's curious request, of his strange
confidences, or of the mysterious letter to "E. P. K.", which now reposed
in a locked drawer in my writing-table.
My friend, be he impostor or not, had always treated me strictly
honourably and well. Therefore, I did not intend to betray him, although
he might be a fugitive hunted by the police.
Yet was he a fugitive? Did not his words to me and his marvellous
disguise prior to the tragedy imply an intention to disappear?
The enigma was indeed beyond solution.
At seven o'clock my visitor, finding necessity to revisit Harrington
Gardens, I eagerly accompanied him.
There is a briskness and brightness in Piccadilly at seven o'clock on a
clear, cold, winter's night unequalled in any thoroughfare in the world.
On the pavements and in the motor-buses are thousands of London's workers
hurrying to their homes in western suburbs, mostly the female employees
of the hundreds of shops and work-rooms which supply the world's
fashions--for, after all, London has now ousted Paris as the centre of
the feminine mode--the shops are still gaily lit, the club windows have
not yet drawn their blinds, and as motors and taxis flash past eastward,
one catches glimpses of pretty women in gay evening gowns, accompanied by
their male escorts on pleasure bent: the restaurant, the theatre, and the
supper, until the unwelcome cry--that cry which resounds at half-past
twelve from end to end of Greater London, "Time, please, ladies and
gentlemen. Time!"--the pharisaical decree that further harmless merriment
is forbidden. How the foreigner laughs at our childish obedience to the
decree of the killjoys. And well he may, especially when we know full
well that while the good people of the middle class are forced to return
to the dulness of their particular suburb, the people of the class above
them can sneak in by back doors of unsuspected places, and indulge in
drinking, gambling, and dancing till daylight. Truly the middle-class
Londoner is a meek, obedient person. One day, however, he may revolt.
Piccadilly was particularly bright and gay that night, as, passing the
end of St. James's Street, we sped forward in the taxi towards Brompton
Road and past the Natural History Museum to Gloucester Road.
On our arrival the door of the flat was opened by a constable without a
helmet. Recognising the famous inspector, he saluted.
The body of the unknown girl had been removed to the mortuary for a
post-mortem examination, but nothing else had been moved, and two
officers of the C.I.D. were busy making examination for finger-prints.
I allowed them to take mine for comparison, but some they found upon the
mahogany table and upon the back of a chair were undoubtedly those of
the victim herself.
The small glass-topped specimen-table still lay where it had been
overturned, and the fragments of the two green-glass flower-vases were
strewn upon the carpet with the drooping red anemones themselves.
Regarding the overturned table the two detectives held that it had
separated the assassin from his victim; that the girl had been chased
around it several times before her assailant had thrown it down, suddenly
sprung upon her, and delivered the fatal blow, full in her chest.
"We've thoroughly examined it for finger-prints, sir," the elder of the
two officers explained to my companion. "Both on the glass top and on the
mahogany edge there are a number of prints of the victim herself, as well
as a number made by another hand."
"A man's?" I asked.
"No; curiously enough, it seems to be a woman's," was the reply.
"A woman's!"
I thought of that sweet perfume, and of the person who had lurked in the
shadow of the stairs!
"That's interesting," remarked Edwards. "They may be those of the woman
who wore green combs in her hair, or else of the porter's wife."
"The owner's man-servant is away abroad on business for his master, we've
found out," answered the man addressed. "So of late the porter's wife,
who lives in the basement of the next house, has been in the habit of
coming in every day and tidying up the room. We took her prints this
morning, and have found quite a lot about the place. No," added the man
emphatically, "the finger-prints on that little table yonder are not
those of the porter's wife, but of another woman who's been here
recently. We only find them upon the door-handle and on the edge of the
writing-table, against which the woman must have leaned. We'll have them
photographed to-morrow."
The men then showed us the marks in question--distinct impressions of
small finger-tips, which they had rendered vivid and undeniable by the
application of a finely-powdered chalk of a pale green colour.
Apparently the two experts had devoted the whole day to the search for
finger-print clues, and they had established the fact that two women had
been there--the victim and another.
Who was she?
The investigation of the papers in my friend's writing-table had not yet
been made. Inspector Edwards had telephoned earlier in the day, stating
that he would himself go through them.
Therefore, exercising every care not to obliterate the three finger-marks
upon the edge of the table, the officers proceeded to break open drawer
after drawer and methodically examine the contents while I looked on.
The work was exciting. At any moment we might discover something which
would throw light upon the tragedy, the grim evidence of which remained
in that dark, still damp stain upon the carpet--the life-blood of the
unknown victim.
Already the face of the dead girl had been photographed, and would,
before morning, be circulated everywhere in an endeavour to secure
identification.
I had learnt from Edwards that before noon that morning, upon the
notice-board outside Bow Street Police Station, there had been posted one
of those pale, buff-coloured bills headed in great, bold capitals: "Body
found," in which the description had been filled in by a clerkish hand,
and at the bottom a statement that the corpse was lying at the Kensington
Mortuary awaiting identification.
That she was a lady seemed established by her dress, her well-kept hands,
innocent of manual labour, by the costly rings and bracelet she was
wearing, and the fact that, in the pocket of her coat was found her purse
containing eleven pounds in gold and some silver.
Sir Digby's papers promised to be extremely interesting, as we cleared
the books off a side-table and sat down to carefully investigate them.
The writing-table was a pedestal one, with a centre drawer and four
drawers on either side. The first drawer burst open was the top one on
the left, and from it Edwards drew two bundles of letters, each secured
by faded pink tape.
These bundles he handed to me, saying--
"See what you think of these, Mr. Royle!"
One after another I opened them. They were all in the same sprawly
handwriting of a woman--a woman who simply signed herself "Mittie."
They were love-letters written in the long ago, many commencing "My
darling," or "Dearest," and some with "Dear old Dig."
Though it seemed mean of me to peer into the closed chapter of my
friend's history, I quickly found myself absorbed in them. They were the
passionate outpourings of a brave but overburdened heart. Most of them
were dated from hotels in the South of England and in Ireland, and were
apparently written at the end of the eighties. But as no envelopes had
been preserved they gave no clue to where the addressee had been at the
time.
Nearly all were on foreign notepaper, so we agreed that he must have been
abroad.
As I read, it became apparent that the writer and the addressee had been
deeply in love with one another, but the lady's parents had forbidden
their marriage; and as, alas! in so many like cases, she had been induced
to make an odious but wealthier marriage. The man's name was Francis.
"He is, alas! just the same," she wrote in one letter dated
"Mount Ephraim Hotel, at Tunbridge Wells, Thursday": "We have
nothing in common. He only thinks of his dividends, his stocks
and shares, and his business in the City always. I am simply an
ornament of his life, a woman who acts as his hostess and
relieves him of much trouble in social anxieties. If father had
not owed him seventeen thousand pounds he would, I feel certain,
never have allowed me to marry him. But I paid my father's debt
with my happiness, with my very life. And you, dear old Dig, are
the only person who knows the secret of my broken heart. You
will be home in London seven weeks from to-day. I will meet you
at the old place at three o'clock on the first of October, for I
have much--so very much--to tell you. Father knows now how I
hate this dull, impossible life of mine, and how dearly I love
your own kind self. I told him so to-day, and he pities me. I
hope you will get this letter before you leave, but I shall
watch the movements of your ship, and I shall meet you on the
first of October. Till then adieu.--Ever your own MITTIE."
At the old place! Where was it, I wondered? At what spot had the secret
meeting been effected between the man who had returned from abroad and
the woman who loved him so well, though she had been forced to become the
wife of another.
That meeting had taken place more than twenty years ago. What had been
its result was shown in the next letter I opened.
Written from the Queen's Hotel at Hastings on the fourth of October, the
unfortunate "Mittie," who seemed to spend her life travelling on the
South Coast, penned the following in a thin, uncertain hand:--
"Our meeting was a mistake, Dig, a grave mistake. We were
watched by somebody in the employ of Francis. When I returned to
Tunbridge Wells he taxed me with having met you, described our
trysting-place--the fountain--and how we had walked and walked
until, becoming too tired, we had entered that quiet little
restaurant to dine. He has misjudged me horribly. The sneak who
watched us must have lied to him, or he would never have spoken
to me as he did--he would not have insulted me. That night I
left him, and am here alone. Do not come near me, do not reply
to this. It might make matters worse. Though we are parted, Dig,
you know I love you and only you--_you_! Still your own MITTIE."
I sat staring at that half-faded letter, taking no heed of what Edwards
was saying.
The fountain! They had met at the fountain, and had been seen!
Could that spot be the same as mentioned in the mysterious letter left
behind by the fugitive Cane after the sudden death of the Englishman away
in far-off Peru?
Did someone, after all the lapse of years, go there on every twenty-third
of the month at noon wearing a yellow flower, to wait for a person who,
alas! never came?
The thought filled me with romance, even though we were at that moment
investigating a very remarkable tragedy. Yet surely in no city in this
world is there so much romance, so much pathos, such whole-hearted love
and affection, or such deep and deadly hatred as in our great palpitating
metropolis, where secret assassinations are of daily occurrence, and
where the most unpardonable sin is that of being found out.
"What's that you've got hold of?" Edwards asked me, as he crossed to the
table and bent over me.
I started.
Then, recovering myself--for I had no desire that he should
know--replied, quite coolly:
"Oh, only a few old letters--written long ago, in the eighties."
"Ah! Ancient history, eh?"
"Yes," I replied, packing them together and retying them with the soiled,
pink tape. "But have you discovered anything?"
"Well," he replied with a self-conscious smile, "I've found a letter here
which rather alters my theory," and I saw that he held a piece of grey
notepaper in his hand. "Here is a note addressed to him as long ago as
1900 in the name of Sir Digby Kemsley! Perhaps, after all, the man who
died so mysteriously in Peru was an impostor, and the owner of this place
was the real Sir Digby!"
"Exactly my own theory," I declared.
"But that fountain!" he remarked. "The fountain mentioned in the letter
left behind by the man Cane. We must take immediate steps to identify it,
and it must be watched on the twenty-third for the coming of the woman
who wears a yellow flower. When we find her, we shall be able to discover
something very interesting, Mr. Royle. Don't you agree?"
CHAPTER V.
"TIME WILL PROVE."
These are truly the fevered days of journalistic enterprise the world
over.
There are no smarter journalists than those of Fleet Street, and none,
not even in New York, with scent more keen for sensational news. "The
day's story" is the first thought in every newspaper office, and surely
no story would have been a greater "scoop" for any journal than the
curious facts which I have related in the foregoing pages.
But even though the gentlemen of the Press are ubiquitous, many a curious
happening, and many a remarkable coroner's inquiry, often remain
unreported.
And so in this case. When, on the following morning, the coroner for the
borough of Kensington held his inquiry in the little court off the High
Street, no reporter was present, and only half a dozen idlers were seated
in the back of the gloomy room.
When the jury had taken their seats after viewing the remains, according
to custom, the police inspector reported to the coroner that the body
remained unidentified, though the description had been telegraphed
everywhere.
"I might add, sir," went on the inspector, "that there is strong belief
that the young lady may be a foreigner. Upon the tab of her coat she was
wearing was the name of a costumier: 'Sartori, Via Roma.' Only the name
of the street, and not the town is given. But it must be somewhere in
Italy. We are in communication with the Italian police with a view to
ascertaining the name of the town, and hope thus to identify the
deceased."
"Very well!" said the coroner, a shrewd, middle-aged, clean-shaven man in
gold pince-nez. "Let us have the evidence," and he arranged his papers
with business-like exactitude.
The procedure differed in no way from that in any other coroner's court
in the kingdom, the relation of dry details by matter-of-fact persons
spoken slowly in order that they might be carefully taken down.
The scene was, indeed, a gloomy one, for the morning was dark, and the
place was lit by electric light. The jury--twelve honest householders of
Kensington--appeared from the outset eager to get back to their daily
avocations. They were unaware of the curious enigma about to be presented
to them.
Not until I began to give my evidence did they appear to evince any
curiosity regarding the case. But presently, when I had related my
midnight interview with my friend, who was now a fugitive, the foreman
put to me several questions.
"You say that after your return from your visit from this man, Sir Digby
Kemsley, he rang you up on the telephone?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?" inquired the foreman, a thin, white-headed man whose
social standing was no doubt slightly above that of his fellow jurymen.
"He asked me to return to him at once," was my reply.
"But this appears extraordinary----"
"We are not here to criticise the evidence, sir!" interrupted the coroner
sharply. "We are only here to decide how the deceased came by her
death--by accident, or by violence. Have you any doubt?"
The foreman replied in the negative, and refrained from further
cross-examining me.
The coroner himself, however, put one or two pointed questions. He asked
me whether I believed that it had actually been Sir Digby speaking on the
second occasion, when I had been rung up, to which I replied:
"At first, the voice sounded unfamiliar."
"At first! Did you recognise it afterwards?"
I paused for a few seconds, and then was compelled to admit that I had
not been entirely certain.
"Voices are, of course, often distorted by the telephone," remarked the
coroner. "But in this case you may have believed the voice to have been
your friend's because he spoke of things which you had been discussing in
private only half-an-hour before. It may have been the voice of a
stranger."
"That is my own opinion, sir," I replied.
"Ah!" he ejaculated, "and I entirely agree with you, for if your friend
had contemplated the crime of murder he would scarcely have telephoned to
you to come back. He would be most anxious to get the longest start he
could before the raising of any hue and cry."
This remark further aroused the curiosity of the hitherto apathetic jury,
who sat and listened intently to the medical evidence which followed.
The result of the doctor's examination was quickly told, and not of great
interest. He had been called by the police and found the young woman
dying from a deep wound under the breast, which had penetrated to the
heart, the result of a savage blow with some long, thin, and very sharp
instrument. The girl was not dead when he first saw her, but she expired
about ten minutes afterwards.
"I should think that the weapon used was a knife with a very sharp,
triangular blade judging from the wound," the spruce-looking doctor
explained. "The police, however, have failed to discover it."
The words of the witness held me dumbfounded.
"Have you ever met with knives with triangular blades, doctor?" inquired
the coroner.
"Oh, yes!" was the reply. "One sees them in collections of mediæval arms.
In ancient days they were carried almost universally in Southern
Europe--the blade about nine inches long, and sometimes perforated. Along
the blade, grease impregnated with mineral poison was placed, so that, on
striking, some of the grease would remain in the wound. This form of
knife was most deadly, and in Italy it was known as a misericordia."
I sat there listening with open mouth. Why? Because I knew where one of
those curious knives had been--one with a carved handle of cracked,
yellow ivory. I had often taken it up and looked at the coat of arms
carved upon the ivory--the shield with the six balls of the princely
house of the Medici.
"And in your opinion, doctor, the deceased came by her death from a blow
from such a weapon as you describe?" the coroner was asking.
"That is my firm opinion. The wound penetrated to the heart, and death
was probably almost instantaneous."
"Would she utter a cry?"
"I think she would."
"And yet no one seems to have heard any noise!" remarked the coroner. "Is
that so?" he asked, turning to the police inspector.
"We have no evidence of any cry being heard," replied the officer. "I
purposely asked the other tenants of the flats above and below. But they
heard no unusual sound."
One of the detective-sergeants was then called; Inspector Edwards, though
present, being purposely omitted. In reply to the coroner, he described
the finding of the body, its examination, and the investigation which
ensued.
"I need not ask you if you have any clue to the assassin," said the
coroner, when he had concluded writing down the depositions. "I presume
you are actively prosecuting inquiries?"
"Yes, sir," was the brief response.
"I think, gentlemen," the coroner said, turning at last to the jury,
"that we can go no further with this inquiry to-day. We must leave it for
the police to investigate, and if we adjourn, let us say for a fortnight,
we may then, I hope, have evidence of identification before us. The case
certainly presents a number of curious features, not the least being the
fact that the owner of the flat has mysteriously fled. When he is found
he will, no doubt, throw some light upon the puzzling affair. I have to
thank you for your attendance to-day, gentlemen," he added, addressing
the dozen respectable householders, "and ask you to be present again this
day fortnight--at noon."
There was evident dissatisfaction among the jury, as there is always when
a coroner's inquest is ever adjourned.
It is certainly the reverse of pleasant to be compelled to keep an
appointment which may mean considerable out-of-pocket expense and much
personal inconvenience.
One juror, indeed, raised an objection, as he had to go to do business in
Scotland. Whereupon the coroner, as he rose, expressed his regret but
declared himself unable to assist him. It was, he remarked, his duty as a
citizen to assist in this inquiry, and to arrive at a verdict.
After that the court rose, and every one broke up into small groups to
discuss the strange affair of which the Press were at present in
ignorance.
Edwards had crossed the room and was speaking to me. But I heard him not.
I was thinking of that triangular-bladed weapon--the "misericordia" of
the middle ages--so frequently used for stealthy knife-thrusts.
"Coming?" he asked at last. This aroused me to a sense of my
surroundings, and I followed him blindly out into the afternoon shopping
bustle of High Street, Kensington.
Outside the Underground Station were the flower-sellers. Some were
offering that tribute which the Riviera never fails to send to us
Londoners in spring--sprigs of mimosa: the yellow flower which would be
worn by the mysterious "E. P. K.," the written message to whom reposed in
my writing-table at home.
Personally, I am not a man of mystery, but just an ordinary London
business man, differing in no way to thousands of others who are at the
head of prosperous commercial concerns. London with all its garish
glitter, its moods of dulness and of gaiety, its petrol-smelling streets,
its farces of passing life, and its hard and bitter dramas always
appealed to me. It was my home, the atmosphere in which I had been born
and bred, nay, my very existence. I loved London and was ever true to the
city of my birth, even though its climate might be derided, and Paris
claimed as the one city in which to find the acme of comfort and
enjoyment.
I had not sought mystery--far from it. It had been thrust upon me, and
now, as we went along the High Street in Kensington, towards the
police-station, I found myself a sudden but important factor in a stern
chase--a man-hunt--such as London had seldom known, for Edwards was
saying to me:
"At all hazards we must find your friend Kemsley, and you, Mr. Royle,
must help us. You know him, and can identify him. There are grave
suspicions against him, and these must be cleared up in view of the
mysterious tragedy in Harrington Gardens."
"You surely don't expect me to denounce my friend!" I cried.
"It is not a question of denouncing him. His own actions have rendered
the truth patent to every one. The girl was brutally killed, and he
disappeared. Therefore he must be found," Edwards said.
"But who was it who telephoned to me, do you think?" I asked.
"Himself, perhaps. He was full of inventiveness, and he may have adopted
that course hoping, when the time came, to prove an alibi. Who knows?"
asked the famous inspector.
"Look here!" I said as we crossed the threshold of the police-station, "I
don't believe Sir Digby was either an impostor or an assassin."
"Time will prove, Mr. Royle," he laughed with an incredulous air. "A man
don't take all these precautions before disappearing unless he has a
deeper motive. Your friend evidently knew of the lady's impending visit.
Indeed, how could she have entered the flat had he not admitted her?"
"She might have had a key," I hazarded.
"Might--but not very likely," he said. "No, my firm conviction is that
the man you know as Sir Digby Kemsley struck the fatal blow, and took the
knife away with him."
I shrugged my shoulders, but did not reply.
Inside the station, we passed into the long room devoted to the officers
of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the division, and
there met two sergeants who had given evidence.
I was shown the photograph of the dead unknown, calm, and even pretty,
just as I had seen her lying stretched in Digby's room.
"The medical evidence was curious, Mr. Royle, wasn't it?" Edwards
remarked. "That triangular knife ought not to be very difficult to trace.
There surely are not many of them about."
"No," I replied faintly, for the recollection of one which I had seen
only a few days prior to the tragic occurrence--the one with the arms of
the Medici carved upon its hilt, arose vividly before me.
To me, alas! the awful truth was now plain.
My suspicion regarding the culprit had, by the doctor's evidence, become
entirely confirmed.
I set my jaws hard in agony of mind. What was a mystery of London was to
me no longer a mystery!
CHAPTER VI.
THE PIECE OF CONVICTION.
The morning of the tenth of January was one of those of gloom and
darkness which are, on occasions, the blots upon London's reputation.
There seemed no fog, only a heavy, threatening cloud of night fell
suddenly upon the city, and at three o'clock it might have been midnight.
Streets, shops, and offices were lit everywhere, and buses and taxis
compelled to light up, while in the atmosphere was a sulphurous odour
with a black deposit which caused the eyes to smart and the lungs to
irritate.
Londoners know those periods of unpleasant darkness only too well.
I was sitting in my room in Albemarle Street, watching Haines, who was
cleaning a piece of old silver I had bought at an auction on the previous
day. The collecting of old silver is, I may say, my hobby, and the piece
was a very fine old Italian reliquary, about ten inches in height, with
the Sicilian mark of the seventeenth century.
Haines, under my tuition, had become an expert and careful cleaner of
silver, and I was watching and exhorting him to exercise the greatest
care, as the ornamentation was thin, and some of the scrollwork around
the top extremely fragile. It had, according to the inscription at its
base, contained a bone of a certain saint--a local saint of Palermo it
seemed--but the relic had disappeared long ago. Yet the silver case
which, for centuries, had stood upon an altar somewhere, was a really
exquisite piece of the silversmith's art.
Suddenly the telephone-bell rang, and on answering it I heard Phrida's
voice asking--
"I say, Teddy, is that you? Why haven't you been over since Thursday?"
I started, recollecting that I had not been to Cromwell Road since the
afternoon of the inquest--three days ago.
"Dear, do forgive me," I craved. "I--I've been so horribly busy. Had to
be at the works each day."
"But you might have been over in the evening," she responded in a tone of
complaint. "You remember you promised to take me to the St. James's last
night, and I expected you."
"Oh, dearest, I'm so sorry," I said. "But I've been awfully worried, you
know. Do forgive me!"
"Yes, I know!" she answered. "Well, I'll forgive you if you'll run over
now and take me to tea at the Leslies. I've ordered the car for four
o'clock. Will that suit you?"
The Leslies! They were snobbish folk with whom I had but little in
common. Yet what could I do but agree?
And then my well-beloved rang off.
When I got down to Cromwell Road just before four o'clock, the darkness
had not lifted.
My feelings as I passed along the big, old-fashioned hall and up the
thickly-carpeted stairs to the drawing-room were mixed ones of doubt,
and yet of deep affection.
Ah, I loved Phrida--loved her better than my own life--and yet----?
Fresh in my memory was the doctor's evidence that the crime in Harrington
Gardens had been committed with a thin, triangular knife--a knife such as
that I had often seen lying upon the old-fashioned, walnut what-not in
the corner of the room I was just about to enter. I had known it lying in
the same place for years.
Was it still there?
Purposely, because I felt that it could no longer be there, I had
refrained from calling upon my love, and now, when I paused and turned
the handle of the drawing-room door, I hardly dared to cast my eyes upon
that antiquated piece of furniture.
Phrida, who was sitting with her hat and coat already on, jumped up gaily
to meet me.
"Oh, you really are prompt, Teddy!" she cried with a flush of pleasure.
Then, as I bent over her mother's hand, the latter said--
"You're quite a stranger, Mr. Royle. I expect you have been very upset
over the curious disappearance of your friend. We've searched the papers
every day, but could find nothing whatever about it."
Phrida had turned towards the fire, her pretty head bent as she buttoned
her glove.
"No," I replied. "Up to the present the newspapers are in complete
ignorance of the affair. But no doubt they'll learn all about it before
long."
Then, crossing the room to pick up a magazine lying upon a chair, I
halted against the old walnut what-not.
Yes, the mediæval poignard was still lying there, just as I had always
seen it!
Had it been used, and afterwards replaced?
I scarcely dared to glance at it, lest I should betray any unusual
interest. I felt that Phrida's eyes were watching me, that she suspected
my knowledge.
I took up the magazine idly, glanced at it, and, replacing it, returned
to her side.
"Well," she asked, "are you ready?"
And then together we descended to the car.
All the way up to Abbey Road she hardly spoke. She seemed unusually pale
and haggard. I asked her what was the matter, but she only replied in a
faint, unnatural voice--
"Matter? Why nothing--nothing, I assure you, Teddy!"
I did not reply. I gazed upon the pretty, pale-faced figure at my side in
wonder and yet in fear. I loved her--ah! I loved her well and truly, with
all my soul. Yet was it possible that by means of that knife lying there
so openly in that West-End drawing-room a woman's life had been
treacherously taken.
Had my friend Digby, the fugitive, actually committed the crime?
When I put the whole matter clearly and with common-sense before myself,
I was bound to admit that I had a strong belief of his innocence.
What would those finger-prints reveal?
The thought held me breathless. Yes, to satisfy myself I would
surreptitiously secure finger-prints of my well-beloved and then in
secret compare them with those found in Sir Digby's rooms.
But how? I was reflecting as the car passed by Apsley House and into the
Park on its way to St. John's Wood.
Was I acting honestly? I doubted her, I quite admit. Yet I felt that if I
took some object--a glass, or something with a polished surface--that she
had touched, and submitted it to examination, I would be acting as a
sneak.
The idea was repugnant to me. Yet with that horrible suspicion obsessing
me I felt that I must do something in order to satisfy myself.
What inane small talk I uttered in the Leslies' big, over-furnished
drawing-room I know not. All I remember is that I sat with some insipid
girl whose hair was flaxen and as colourless as her mind, sipping my tea
while I listened to her silly chatter about a Cook's tour she had just
taken through Holland and Belgium. The estimable Cook is, alas!
responsible for much tea-table chatter among the fair sex.
Our hostess was an obese, flashily-dressed, dogmatic lady, the wife of
the chairman of a big drapery concern who, having married her eldest
daughter to a purchased knighthood, fondly believed herself to be in
society--thanks to the "paid paragraphs" in the social columns of certain
morning newspapers. It is really wonderful what half-guineas will do
towards social advancement in these days! For a guinea one's presence can
be recorded at a dinner, or an at home, or one's departure from town can
be notified to the world in general in a paragraph all to one's self--a
paragraph which rubs shoulders with those concerning the highest in the
land. The snobbery of the "social column" would really be amusing were it
not so painfully apparent. A good press-agent will, for a fee, give one
as much publicity and newspaper popularity as that enjoyed by a duke, and
most amazing is it that such paragraphs are swallowed with keen avidity
by Suburbia.
The Leslies were an average specimen of the upper middle-class, who were
struggling frantically to get into a good set. The old man was bald,
pompous, and always wore gold pince-nez and a fancy waistcoat. He carried
his shop manners into his drawing-room, retaining his habit of rubbing
his hands in true shop-walker style when he wished to be polite to his
guests.
His wife was a loud-tongued and altogether impossible person, who, it was
said, had once served behind the counter in a small shop in Cardiff, but
who now regarded the poor workers in her husband's huge emporium as mere
money-making machines.
By dint of careful cultivation at bazaars and such-like charitable
functions she had scraped acquaintance with a few women of title, to whom
she referred in conversation as "dear Lady So and So, who said to me the
other day," or "as my friend Lady Violet always says."
She had buttonholed me at last, though I had endeavoured to escape her,
and was standing before me like a pouter-pigeon pluming herself and
endeavouring to be humorous at the expense of a very modest little
married woman who had been her guest that afternoon and had just left
after shaking my hand.
Women of Mrs. Leslie's stamp are perhaps the most evil-tongued of all.
They rise from obscurity, and finding wealth at their command, imagine
that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women
who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the
reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the
invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness.
At last I got rid of her, thanks to the arrival of an elegant young man,
the younger son of a well-known peer, to whom, of course, she was at once
all smiles, and, presently, I found myself out in the hall with Phrida. I
breathed more freely when at last I passed into the keen air and entered
the car.
"Those people are impossible, dearest," I blurted out when the car had
moved away from the door. "They are the most vulgar pair I know."
"I quite agree," replied my well-beloved, pulling the fur rug over her
knees. "But they are old friends of mother's, so I'm compelled to go and
see them sometimes."
"Ah!" I sighed. "I suppose the old draper will buy a knighthood at this
year's sale for the King's Birthday, and then his fat wife will have a
tin handle to her name."
"Really, Teddy, you're simply awful," replied my companion. "If they
heard you I wonder what they would say?"
"I don't care," I replied frankly. "I only speak the truth. The
Government sell their titles to anybody who cares to buy. Ah! I fear that
few men who really deserve honour ever get it in these days. No man can
become great unless he has the influence of money to back him. The
biggest swindler who ever walked up Threadneedle Street can buy a
peerage, always providing he is married and has no son. As old Leslie
buys his calicoes, ribbons and women's frills, so he'll buy his title. He
hasn't a son, so perhaps he'll fancy a peerage and become the Lord
Bargain of Sale."
Phrida laughed heartily at my biting sarcasm.
Truth to tell, though I was uttering bitter sentiments, my thoughts were
running in a very different direction. I was wondering how I could best
obtain the finger-prints of the woman who held my future so irrevocably
in her hands.
I had become determined to satisfy myself of my love's innocence--or--can
I write the words?--of her guilt!
And as I sat there beside her, my nostrils again became filled by that
sweet subtle perfume--the perfume of tragedy.
CHAPTER VII.
FATAL FINGERS.
Two days passed.
Those finger-prints--impressions left by a woman--upon the glass-topped
specimen table in Sir Digby's room and on the door handle, were puzzling
the police as they puzzled me. They had already been proved not to be
those of the porter's wife, the lines being lighter and more refined.
According to Edwards, after the finger-prints had been photographed,
search had been made in the archives at Scotland Yard, but no record
could be found that they were those of any person previously convicted.
Were they imprints of the hand of my well-beloved?
I held my breath each time that black and terrible suspicion filled my
mind. I tried to put them aside, but, like a nightmare, they would recur
to me hourly until I felt impelled to endeavour to satisfy myself as to
her guilt or her innocence.
I loved her. Yes, passionately and truly. Yet, somehow, I could not
prevent this ever-recurring suspicion to fill my mind. There were so many
small points to be elucidated--the jingle of the golden bangles, and
especially the perfume, which each time I entered her presence recalled
to me all the strange and unaccountable happenings of that fatal night.
Again, who was the poor, unidentified victim--the pale-faced, pretty
young woman who had visited Digby clandestinely, and gone to her death?
Up to the present the police notices circulated throughout the country
had failed to establish who she was. Yet, if she were a foreigner, as
seemed so likely, identification might be extremely difficult; indeed,
she might ever remain a mystery.
It was nearly ten o'clock at night when I called at Cromwell Road, for I
had excused myself for not coming earlier, having an object in view.
I found Phrida in the library, sweet and attractive in a pale blue gown
cut slightly _décolletée_. She and her mother had been out to dinner
somewhere in Holland Park, and had only just returned.
Mrs. Shand drew an armchair for me to the fire, and we all three sat down
to chat in the cosiness of the sombre little book-lined den. Bain, the
old butler, who had known me almost since childhood, placed the tantalus,
a syphon and glasses near my elbow, and at Phrida's invitation I poured
myself out a drink and lit a cigarette.
"Come," I said, "you will have your usual lemonade"; and at my suggestion
her mother ordered Bain to bring a syphon of that harmless beverage.
My love reached forward for one of the glasses, whereupon I took one and,
with a word of apology, declared that it was not quite clean.
"Not clean!" exclaimed Mrs. Shand quickly.
"There are a few smears upon it," I said, and adding "Excuse my
handkerchief. It is quite clean," I took the silk handkerchief I carried
with me purposely, and polished it with the air of a professional waiter.
Both Phrida and her mother laughed.
"Really, Mr. Royle, you are full of eccentricities," declared Mrs. Shand.
"You always remind me of your poor father. He was most particular."
"One cannot be too careful, or guard sufficiently against germs, you
know," I said, handling the clean glass carefully and pouring out the
lemonade from the syphon.
Phrida took the glass from my hand, and laughing happily across its edge,
drank. Her fingers were leaving tell-tale impressions upon its surface.
And yet she was unconscious of my duplicity. Ah! yes, I hated myself for
my double dealing. And yet so filled was I now by dark and breathless
suspicion, that I found myself quite unable to resist an opportunity of
establishing proof.
I watched her as she, in all innocence, leaned back in the big saddle-bag
chair holding her glass in her hand and now and then contemplating it.
The impressions--impressions which could not lie--would be the means of
exonerating her--or of condemning her.
Those golden bangles upon her slim white wrist and that irritating
perfume held me entranced. What did she know concerning that strange
tragedy in Harrington Gardens. What, indeed, was the secret?
My chief difficulty was to remain apparently indifferent. But to do so
was indeed a task. I loved her, aye, with all my strength, and all my
soul. Yet the black cloud which had fallen upon her was one of
impenetrable mystery, and as I sat gazing upon her through the haze of my
cigarette smoke, I fell to wondering, just as I had wondered during all
those hours which had elapsed since I had scented that first whiff of
Parfait d'Amour, with which her chiffons seemed impregnated.
At last she put down her empty glass upon the bookshelf near her. Several
books had been removed, leaving a vacant space.
Mrs. Shand had already risen and bade me good-night; therefore, we were
alone. So I rose from my chair and, bending over her, kissed her fondly
upon the brow.
No. I would believe her innocent. That white hand--the soft little hand I
held in mine could never have taken a woman's life. I refused to believe
it, and yet!
Did she know more of Sir Digby Kemsley than she had admitted? Why had she
gone to his flat at that hour, lurking upon the stairs until he should be
alone, and, no doubt, in ignorance that I was his visitor?
As I bent over her, stroking her soft hair with my hand, I tried to
conjure up the scene which had taken place in Sir Digby's room--the
tragedy which had caused my friend to flee and hide himself. Surely,
something of a very terrible nature must have happened, or my
friend--impostor or not--would have remained, faced the music, and told
the truth.
I knew Digby better than most men. The police had declared him to be an
impostor; nevertheless, I still believed in him, even though he was now a
fugitive. Edwards had laughed at my faith in the man who was my friend,
but I felt within me a strong conviction that he was not so black as
pigheaded officialdom had painted him.
The Council of Seven at Scotland Yard might be a clever combination of
expert brains, but they were not infallible, as had been proved so many
times in the recent annals of London crime.
Phrida had not referred to the tragedy, and I had not therefore mentioned
it.
My sole object at the moment was to obtain possession of the empty glass
and carry it with me from the house.
But how could I effect this without arousing her suspicion?
She had risen and stood with her back to the blazing fire, her pretty
lips parted in a sweet smile. We were discussing a play at which she had
been on the previous evening, a comedy that had taken the town by storm.
Her golden bangles jingled as she moved--that same light metallic sound I
had heard in the darkness of the staircase at Harrington Gardens. My
eager fingers itched to obtain possession of that glass which stood so
tantalisingly within a couple of feet of my hand. By its means I could
establish the truth.
"Well, Teddy," my beloved said at last, as she glanced at the chiming
clock upon the mantelshelf. "It's past eleven, so I suppose I must go to
bed. Mallock is always in a bad temper if I keep her up after eleven."
"I suppose that is only natural," I laughed. "She often waits hours and
hours for you. That I know."
"Yes," she sighed. "But Mallock is really a model maid. So much better
than Rayne."
Personally, I did not like the woman Mallock. She was a thin-nosed,
angular person, who wore pince-nez, and was of a decidedly inquisitive
disposition. But I, of course, had never shown any antagonism towards
her; indeed, I considered it diplomatic to treat her with tact and
consideration. She had been maid to the oldest daughter of a well-known
and popular countess before entering Phrida's service, and I could well
imagine that her principal topic of conversation in the servants' hall
was the superiority of her late mistress, whose service she had left on
her marriage to a wealthy peer.
"I'm glad she is an improvement upon Rayne," I said, for want of
something else to say, and, rising, I took her little hand and pressed it
to my lips in farewell.
When she had kissed me I said:
"I'll just finish my cigarette, and I can let myself out."
"Very well. But look in to-morrow, dear, won't you?" she replied, as I
opened the door for her to pass. "Better still, I'll ring you up about
three o'clock and see what you are doing. Oh! by the way, mother wants to
remind you of your promise to dine with us on Wednesday night. I quite
forgot. Of course you will--eight o'clock as usual."
"Wednesday!" I exclaimed vaguely, recollecting the acceptance of Mrs.
Shand's invitation about a week previously. "What date is that?"
"Why, the fourteenth."
"The fourteenth!" I echoed.
"Yes, why? Really, you look quite scared, Freddy. What's the matter. Is
anything terrible going to happen on that date?" she asked, looking at me
with some concern.
"Going to happen--why?" I asked, striving to calm myself.
"Oh--well, because you look so horribly pale. When I told you the date
you gave quite a jump!"
"A jump? Did I?" I asked, striving to remain calm. "I didn't know, but,
really, I'm filled with great disappointment. I'm so sorry, but it will
be quite impossible for me to dine with you."
"Another engagement?" she said in a rather irritated tone. "Going to some
people whom you like better than us, of course. You might tell the truth,
Teddy."
"The truth is that I have a prior engagement," I said. "One that I cannot
break. I have to fulfill faithfully a promise I gave to a very dear
friend."
"Couldn't you do it some other time?"
"No," I answered. "Only on the evening of the fourteenth."
"Then you can't come to us?" she asked with a pout.
"I'll look in after," I promised. "But to dine is entirely out of the
question."
I saw that she was annoyed, but next moment her lips parted again in a
pretty smile, and she said:
"Very well, then. But remember, you will not be later than ten, will
you?"
"I promise not to be, dearest," I answered, and kissing her, she ascended
to her room.
The fourteenth! It was on that evening I had to carry out the promise
made to Digby and meet the mysterious lady at the Piccadilly Circus Tube
Station--the person whose initials were "E. P. K." and who would wear in
her breast a spray of mimosa.
I returned to the library, and for a second stood thinking deeply. Would
I, by that romantic meeting, be placed in possession of some further fact
which might throw light upon the mystery? Ah! would I, I wondered?
The empty glass caught my eye, and I was about to cross and secure it
when Bain suddenly entered. Seeing me, he drew back quickly, saying: "I
beg pardon, sir. I thought you had gone. Will you take anything more,
sir?"
"No, not to-night, Bain," was my reply.
Whereupon the old servant glanced around for the missing glass, and I saw
with heart-sinking that he placed it upon the tray to carry it back to
the servants' quarters.
The link which I had been so careful in preparing was already vanishing
from my gaze, when of a sudden I said:
"I'll change my mind, Bain. I wonder if you have a lemon in the house?"
"I'll go to the kitchen and see if cook has one, sir," replied the old
man, who, placing down the tray, left to do my bidding.
In an instant I sprang forward and seized the empty tumbler, handling it
carefully. Swiftly, I tore a piece off the evening paper, and wrapping it
around the glass, placed it in the pocket of my dinner jacket.
Then, going into the hall, I put on my overcoat and hat, and awaited
Bain's return.
"I shan't want that lemon!" I cried to him as he came up from the lower
regions. "Good-night, Bain!" and a few moments later I was in a taxi
speeding towards Albemarle Street, with the evidence I wanted safe in my
keeping.
That finger-prints remained on the polished surface of the glass I knew
full well--the prints of my beloved's fingers.
But would they turn out to be the same as the fingers which had rested
upon the glass-topped specimen-table in Digby's room?
Opening the door with my latch-key, I dashed upstairs, eager to put my
evidence to the proof by means of the finely-powdered green chalk I had
already secured--the same as that used by the police.
But on the threshold of my chambers Haines met me with a message--a
message which caused me to halt breathless and staggered.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONTAINS FURTHER EVIDENCE.
"Sir Digby Kemsley was here an hour ago, sir. He couldn't wait!" Haines
exclaimed, bringing himself to attention.
"Sir Digby!" I gasped, starting. "Why, in heaven's name, didn't you ring
me up at Mrs. Shand's?" I cried.
"Because he wouldn't allow me, sir. He came to see you in strictest
secrecy, sir. When I opened the door I didn't know him. He's shaved off
his beard and moustache, and was dressed like a clergyman."
"A clergyman!"
"Yes, sir. He looked just like a parson. I wouldn't have known him in the
street."
"An excellent ruse!" I exclaimed. "Of course, Haines, you know
that--well--that the police are looking for him--eh?"
"Perfectly well, but you can trust me, sir. I'll say nothing. Sir Digby's
a friend of yours."
"Yes, a great friend, and I feel that he's falsely accused of that
terrible affair which happened at his flat," I said. "Did he promise to
call again?"
"He scribbled this note for you," Haines said, taking up a letter from my
blotting-pad.
With trembling fingers I tore it open, and upon a sheet of my own
notepaper read the hurriedly written words--
"Sorry you were out. Wanted to see you most urgently. Keep your
promise at Piccadilly Circus, and know nothing concerning me. My
movements are most uncertain, as something amazing has occurred
which prevents me making explanation. I will, however, send you
my address in secret as soon as I have one. I trust you, Teddy,
for you are my only friend.
"Digby."
I read the note several times, and gathered that he was in hourly fear of
arrest. Every corner held for him a grave danger. Yet what could have
occurred that was so amazing and which prevented him speaking the truth.
That I had not been in when he called was truly unfortunate. But by the
fact that he was in clerical attire I surmised that he was living in
obscurity--perhaps somewhere in the suburbs. London is the safest city in
the world in which to hide, unless, of course, creditors or plaintiffs
make it necessary to seek peace "beyond the jurisdiction of the Court."
Many a good man is driven to the latter course through no fault of his
own, but by the inexorable demands of the Commissioners of Income Tax, or
by undue pressure from antagonistic creditors. Every English colony on
the Continent contains some who have fallen victims--good, honest
Englishmen--who are dragging out the remainder of their lives in
obscurity, men whose names are perhaps household words, but who conceal
them beneath one assumed.
Digby would probably join the throng of the exiled. So I could do naught
else than wait for his promised message, even though I was frantic in my
anxiety to see and to question him regarding the reason of the presence
of my well-beloved at his flat on that fatal night.
Imagine my bitter chagrin that I had not been present to receive him! It
might be many months before I heard from him again, for his promise was
surely very vague.
Presently I took the glass very carefully from my pocket, unwrapped it
from its paper, and locked it in a little cabinet in the corner of my
room, until next morning I brought it forth, and placing it upon a
newspaper powdered it well with the pale green chalk which revealed at
once a number of finger-marks--mine, Bain's, and Phrida's.
I am something of a photographer, as everybody is in these days of photo
competitions. Therefore, I brought out my Kodak with its anastigmat
lens,--a camera which I had carried for some years up and down Europe,
and after considerable arrangement of the light, succeeded in taking a
number of pictures. It occupied me all the morning, and even then I was
not satisfied with the result. My films might, for aught I know, be
hopelessly fogged.
Therefore, with infinite care, I took the glass to a professional
photographer I knew in Bond Street, and he also made a number of
pictures, which were duly developed and enlarged some hours later, and
showed the distinctive lines and curves of each finger-print.
Not until the morning of the day following was I able to take these
latter to Edwards, and then a great difficulty presented itself. How was
I to explain how I had obtained the prints?
I sat for an hour smoking cigarettes furiously and thinking deeply.
At last a plan presented itself, and taking a taxi I went down to
Scotland Yard, where I had no difficulty in obtaining an interview in his
airy, barely-furnished business-like room.
"Hulloa, Mr. Royle!" he exclaimed cheerily as I entered. "Sit down--well,
do you know anything more of that mysterious friend of yours--eh?"
I did not reply. Why should I lie? Instead, I said:
"I've been doing some amateur detective work. Have you the photographs of
those finger-prints found on the specimen-table in Sir Digby's room?"
"Yes, of course," was his prompt reply, and going over to a cupboard he
brought out a pile of papers concerning the case, and from it produced a
number of photographic prints.
My heart stood still when I saw them. Were either of them exactly similar
to any of those I carried with me? I almost feared to allow comparison to
be made.
Edwards, noticing my hesitation, asked in what quarter my efforts had
been directed.
"I've been getting some finger-prints, that's all," I blurted forth, and
from my pocket drew the large envelope containing the prints.
The detective took them across to the window and regarded them very
closely for some time, while I looked eagerly over his shoulder.
The curves and lines were extremely puzzling to me, unaccustomed as I
was to them. Edwards, too, remained in silent indecision.
"We'll send them along to Inspector Tirrell in the Finger-print
Department," my friend said at last. "He's an expert, and will tell at a
glance if any marks are the same as ours."
Then he rang a bell, and a constable, at his instructions, carried all
the prints to the department in question.
"Well, Mr. Royle," exclaimed the inspector when the door had closed; "how
did you obtain those prints?"
I was ready for his question, and a lie was at once glibly upon my lips.
"Sir Digby, on the night of his disappearance, returned to me a small
steel despatch box which he had borrowed some weeks before; therefore,
after the affair, I examined it for finger-prints, with the result I have
shown you," I said.
"Ah! but whatever prints were upon it were there before the entrance of
the victim to your friend's rooms," he exclaimed. "He gave it to you when
you bade him good-night, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"And you carried the box home with you?"
"Yes," I repeated; in fear nevertheless, that my lie might in some way
incriminate me. Yet how could I tell him of my suspicion of Phrida. That
secret was mine--and mine alone, and, if necessary, I would carry it with
me to the grave.
Edwards was again silent for some minutes.
"No, Mr. Royle, I can't see that your evidence helps us in the least. If
there should be the same prints on your despatch box as we found upon the
specimen-table, then what do they prove?--why, nothing. If the box had
been in the room at the time of the tragedy, then it might have given us
an important clue, because such an object would probably be touched by
any malefactor or assassin. But----"
"Ah!" I cried, interrupting. "Then you do not suspect Sir Digby, after
all--eh?"
"Pardon me, Mr. Royle, but I did not say that I held no suspicion," was
his quiet answer. "Yet, if you wish to know the actual truth, I, at
present, am without suspicion of anyone--except of that second woman, the
mysterious woman whose finger-prints we have, and who was apparently in
the room at the same time as the unidentified victim."
"You suspect her, then?" I asked breathlessly.
"Not without further proof," he replied, with a calm, irritating smile.
"I never suspect unless I have good grounds for doing so. At present we
have three clear finger-prints of a woman whom nobody saw enter or leave,
just as nobody saw the victim enter. Your friend Sir Digby seems to have
held a midnight reception of persons of mysterious character, and with
tragic result."
"I feel sure he is no assassin," I cried.
"It may have been a drama of jealousy--who knows?" said Edwards, standing
erect near the window and gazing across at me. "Your friend, in any case,
did not care to remain and explain what happened. A girl--an unknown
girl--was struck down and killed."
"By whom, do you think?"
"Ah! Mr. Royle, the identity of the assassin is what we are endeavouring
to discover," he replied gravely. "We must first find this man who has so
successfully posed as Sir Digby Kemsley. He is a clever and elusive
scoundrel, without a doubt. But his portrait is already circulated both
here and on the Continent. The ports are all being watched, while I have
five of the best men I can get engaged on persistent inquiry. He'll try
to get abroad, no doubt. No doubt, also, he has a banking account
somewhere, and through that we shall eventually trace him. Every man
entrusts his banker with his address. He has to, in order to obtain
money."
"Unless he draws his money out in cash and then goes to a tourist agency
and gets a letter of credit."
"Ah, yes, that's often done," my friend admitted. "The tourist agencies
are of greatest use to thieves and forgers. They take stolen notes,
change them into foreign money, and before the numbers can be circulated
are off across the Channel with their booty. If we look for stolen notes
we are nearly certain to find them in the hands of a tourist agency or a
money-changer."
"Then you anticipate that you may find my friend Digby through his
bankers?"
"Perhaps," was his vague answer. "But as he is your friend, Mr. Royle, I
perhaps ought not to tell you of the channels of information we are
trying," he added, with a dry laugh.
"Oh, I assure you I'm entirely ignorant of his whereabouts," I said. "If
I knew, I should certainly advise him to come and see you."
"Ah! you believe in his innocence, I see?"
"I most certainly do!"
"Well,--we shall see--we shall see," he said in that pessimistic tone
which he so often adopted.
"What are you doing about those letters--that letter which mentions the
fountain?" I asked.
"Nothing. I've dismissed those as private correspondence regarding some
love episode of the long ago," he replied. "They form no clue, and are
not worth following."
At that moment the constable re-entered bearing the photographs.
"Well, what does Inspector Tirrell say?" Edwards asked quickly of the
man.
"He has examined them under the glass, sir, and says that they are the
same prints in both sets of photographs--the thumb and index-finger of a
woman--probably a young and refined woman. He's written a memo there,
sir."
Edwards took it quickly, and after glancing at it, handed it to me to
read.
It was a mere scribbled line signed with the initials "W. H. T.," to the
effect that the same prints appeared in both photographs, and concluded
with the words "No record of this person is known in this department."
I know I stood pale and breathless at the revelation--at the
incontestable proof that my well-beloved had actually been present in
Digby's room after my departure on that fatal night.
Why?
By dint of a great effort I succeeded in suppressing the flood of
emotions which so nearly overcame me, and listened to Edwards as he
remarked:
"Well, after all, Mr. Royle, it doesn't carry us any further. Our one
object is to discover the identity of the woman in question, and I think
we can only do that from your absconding friend himself. If the marks are
upon your despatch-box as you state, then the evidence it furnishes
rather disproves the theory that the unknown woman was actually present
at the time of the tragedy."
I hardly know what words I uttered.
I had successfully misled the great detective of crime, but as I rode
along in the taxi back to my rooms, I was in a frenzy of despair, for I
had proved beyond a shadow of doubt that Phrida was aware of what had
occurred--that a black shadow of guilt lay upon her.
The woman I had loved and trusted, she who was all the world to me, had
deceived me, though she smiled upon me so sweetly. She, alas! held within
her breast a guilty secret.
Ah! in that hour of my bitterness and distress the sun of my life became
eclipsed. Only before me was outspread a limitless grey sea of dark
despair.
CHAPTER IX.
DESCRIBES THE YELLOW SIGN.
The night of my mysterious tryst--the night of January the
fourteenth--was dark, rainy, and unpleasant.
That afternoon I had taken out the sealed letter addressed to "E. P. K."
and turned it over thoughtfully in my hand.
I recollected the words of the fugitive. He had said:
"On the night of the fourteenth just at eight o'clock precisely, go to
the Piccadilly Tube Station and stand at the first telephone box numbered
four, on the Haymarket side, when a lady in black will approach you and
ask news of me. In response you will give her this note. But there is a
further condition. You may be watched and recognised. Therefore, be
extremely careful that you are not followed on that day, and, above all,
adopt some effective disguise. Go there dressed as a working man, I would
suggest."
Very strange was that request of his. It filled me with eager curiosity.
What should I learn from the mysterious woman in black who was to come to
me for a message from my fugitive friend.
Had he already contemplated flight when he had addressed the note to her
and made the appointment, I wondered.
If so, the crime at Harrington Gardens must have been premeditated.
I recollected, too, those strange, prophetic words which my friend had
afterwards uttered, namely:
"I want you to give me your promise, Royle. I ask you to make a solemn
vow to me that if any suspicion arises within your mind, that you will
believe nothing without absolute and decisive proof. I mean, that you
will not misjudge her."
By "her" he had indicated the lady whose initials were "E. P. K."
It was certainly mysterious, and my whole mind was centred upon the
affair that day.
As I stood before my glass at seven o'clock that evening, I presented a
strange, uncanny figure, dressed as I was in a shabby suit which I had
obtained during the day from a theatrical costumier's in Covent Garden.
Haines, to whom I had invented a story that I was about to play a
practical joke, stood by much amused at my appearance.
"Well, sir," he exclaimed; "you look just like a bricklayer's labourer!"
The faded suit, frayed at the wrists and elbows, had once been grey, but
it was now patched, brown, smeared with plaster, and ingrained with white
dust, as was the ragged cap; while the trousers were ragged at the knees
and bottoms. Around my neck was a dirty white scarf and in my hand I
carried a tin tea-bottle as though I had just returned from work.
"Yes," I remarked, regarding myself critically. "Not even Miss Shand
would recognise me--eh, Haines?"
"No, sir. I'm sure she wouldn't. But you'll have to dirty your face and
hands a bit. Your hands will give you away if you're not careful."
"Yes. I can't wear gloves, can I?" I remarked.
Thereupon, I went to the grate and succeeded in rubbing ashes over my
hands and applying some of it to my cheeks--hardly a pleasant face
powder, I can assure you.
At a quarter to eight, with the precious letter in the pocket of my
ragged jacket, I left Albemarle Street and sauntered along Piccadilly
towards the Circus. The rain had ceased, but it was wet underfoot, and
the motor buses plashed foot passengers from head to foot with liquid
mud. In my walk I passed, outside the Piccadilly Hotel, two men I knew.
One of them looked me straight in the face but failed to recognise me.
Piccadilly Circus, the centre of the night-life of London, is unique,
with its jostling crowds on pleasure bent, its congestion of traffic, its
myriad lights, its flashing, illuminated signs, and the bright façade of
the Criterion on the one side and the Pavilion on the other. Surely one
sees the lure of London there more than at any other spot in the whole of
our great metropolis.
Passing the Criterion and turning into the Haymarket, I halted for a
moment on the kerb, and for the first time in my life, perhaps, gazed
philosophically upon the frantic, hurrying panorama of human life passing
before my eyes.
From where I stood I could see into the well-lit station entrance with
the row to the telephone boxes, at the end of which sat the smart young
operator, who was getting numbers and collecting fees. All the boxes
were engaged, and several persons were waiting, but in vain my eyes
searched for a lady in black wearing mimosa.
The winter wind was bitterly cold, and as I was without an overcoat it
cut through my thin, shabby clothes, causing me to shiver. Nevertheless,
I kept my watchful vigil. By a neighbouring clock I could see that it was
already five minutes past the hour of the appointment. Still, I waited in
eager expectation of her coming.
The only other person who seemed to loiter there was a thin, shivering
Oriental, who bore some rugs upon his shoulder--a hawker of shawls.
Past me there went men and women of every grade and every station. Boys
were crying "Extrur spe-shull," and evil-looking loafers, those foreign
scoundrels who infest the West End, lurked about, sometimes casting a
suspicious glance at me, with the thought, perhaps, that I might be a
detective.
Ah! the phantasmagora of life outside the Piccadilly Tube at eight
o'clock in the evening is indeed a strangely complex one. The world of
London has then ceased to work and has given itself over to pleasure,
and, alas! in so many cases, to evil.
In patience I waited. The moments seemed hours, for in my suspense I was
dubious whether, after all, she would appear. Perhaps she already knew,
by some secret means, of Sir Digby's flight, and if so, she would not
keep the appointment.
I strolled up and down the pavement, for a policeman, noticing me hanging
about, had gruffly ordered me to "Move on!" He, perhaps, suspected me of
"loitering for the purpose of committing a felony."
Everywhere my eager eyes searched to catch sight of some person in black
wearing a spray of yellow blossom, but among that hurrying crowd there
was not one woman, young or old, wearing that flower so reminiscent of
the Riviera.
I entered the station, and for some moments stood outside the telephone
box numbered 4. Then, with failing heart, I turned and went along to the
spacious booking-hall, where the lifts were ever descending with their
crowds of passengers.
Would she ever come? Or, was my carefully planned errand entirely in
vain?
I could not have mistaken the date, for I had made a note of it in my
diary directly on my return from Harrington Gardens, and before I had
learned of the tragedy. No. It now wanted a quarter to nine and she had
not appeared. At nine I would relinquish my vigil, and assume my normal
identity. I was sick to death of lounging there in the cutting east wind
with the smoke-blackened tin bottle in my hand.
I had been idly reading an advertisement on the wall, and turned, when my
quick eyes suddenly caught sight of a tall, well-dressed woman of middle
age, who, standing with her back to me, was speaking to the
telephone-operator.
I hurried eagerly past her, when my heart gave a great bound. In the
corsage of her fur-trimmed coat she wore the sign for which I had been
searching for an hour--a sprig of mimosa!
With my heart beating quickly in wild excitement, I drew back to watch
her movements.
She had asked the operator for a number, paid him, and was told that she
was "on" at box No. 4.
I saw her enter, and watched her through the glass door speaking
vehemently with some gesticulation. The answer she received over the wire
seemed to cause her the greatest surprise, for I saw how her dark,
handsome face fell when she heard the response.
In a second her manner changed. From a bold, commanding attitude she at
once became apprehensive and appealing. Though I could not hear the words
amid all that hubbub and noise, I knew that she was begging the person at
the other end to tell her something, but was being met with a flat
refusal.
I saw how the black-gloved hand, resting upon the little ledge, clenched
itself tightly as she listened. I fancied that tears had come into her
big, dark eyes, but perhaps it was only my imagination.
At last she put down the receiver and emerged from the box, with a
strange look of despair upon her handsome countenance.
What, I wondered, had happened?
She halted outside the box for a moment, gazing about her as though in
expectation of meeting someone. She saw me, but seeing only a labourer,
took no heed of my presence. Then she glanced at the tiny gold watch in
her bracelet, and noting that it was just upon nine, drew a long
breath--a sigh as though of despair.
I waited until she slowly walked out towards the street, and following,
came up beside her and said in a low voice:
"I wonder, madame, if you are looking for me?"
She glanced at me quickly, with distinct suspicion, and noting my dress,
regarded me with some disdain.
Her dark brows were knit for a second in distinct displeasure, even of
apprehension, and then in an instant I recollected my friend's injunction
that I might be watched and followed. In giving her the message the
greatest secrecy was to be observed.
She halted, as though in hesitation, took from her bag a tiny lace
handkerchief and dabbed her face, then beneath her breath, and without
glancing further at me, said:
"Follow me, and I will speak to you presently--when there is no danger."
Upon that I moved away and leisurely lit my pipe, as though entirely
unconcerned, while she still stood in the doorway leading to the
Haymarket, looking up and down as though awaiting somebody.
Yes, she was a distinctly handsome woman; tall, erect, and well
preserved. Her gown fitted her perfectly, and her black jacket, trimmed
with some rich dark fur, was a garment which gave her the stamp of a
woman of wealth and refinement. She wore a neat felt hat also trimmed
with fur, white gloves, and smart shoes, extremely small, even girlish,
for a woman so well developed.
Presently she sauntered forth down the Haymarket, and a few moments
afterwards, still smoking and carrying my bottle, I lounged lazily after
her.
At the corner, by the Carlton, she turned into Pall Mall, continuing
along that thoroughfare without once looking back. Opposite the United
Service Club she crossed the road, and passing across the square in
front of the Athenæum, descended the long flight of steps which led into
the Mall.
There in the darkness, beneath the trees, where there were no
onlookers--for at that hour the Mall is practically deserted, save for a
few loving couples and a stray taxi or two--she suddenly paused, and I
quickly approached and raised my cap politely.
"Well?" she asked sharply, almost in a tone of annoyance. "What is it?
What do you want with me, my man?"
CHAPTER X.
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME.
I confess that her attitude took me aback.
I was certainly unprepared for such a reception.
"I believed, madame, that you were in search of me?" I said, with polite
apology.
"I certainly was not. I don't know you in the least," was her reply. "I
went to the Tube to meet a friend who did not keep his appointment. Is it
possible that you have been sent by him? In any case, it was very
injudicious for you to approach me in that crowd. One never knows who
might have been watching."
"I come as messenger from my friend, Sir Digby Kemsley," I said in a low
voice.
"From him?" she gasped eagerly. "I--ah! I expected him. Is he prevented
from coming? It was so very important, so highly essential, that we
should meet," she added in frantic anxiety as we stood there in the
darkness beneath the bare trees, through the branches of which the wind
whistled weirdly.
"I have this letter," I said, drawing it from my pocket. "It is addressed
'For E. P. K.'"
"For me?" she cried with eagerness, as she took it in her gloved hand,
and then leaving my side she hurried to a street lamp, where she tore it
open and read the contents.
From where I stood I heard her utter an ejaculation of sudden terror. I
saw how she crushed the paper in one hand while with the other she
pressed her brow. Whatever the letter contained it was news which caused
her the greatest apprehension and fear, for dashing back to me she asked:
"When did he give you this? How long ago?"
"On the night of January the sixth," was my reply. "The night when he
left Harrington Gardens in mysterious circumstances."
"Mysterious circumstances!" she echoed. "What do you mean? Is he no
longer there?"
"No, madame. He has left, and though I am, perhaps, his most intimate
friend, I am unaware of his whereabouts. There were," I added, "reasons,
I fear, for his disappearance."
"Who are you? Tell me, first."
"My name is Edward Royle," was my brief response.
"Ah! Mr. Royle," the woman cried, "he has spoken of you many times. You
were his best friend, he said. I am glad, indeed, to meet you, but--but
tell me why he has disappeared--what has occurred?"
"I thought you would probably know that my friend is wanted by the
police," I replied gravely. "His description has been circulated
everywhere."
"But why?" she gasped, staring at me. "Why are the police in search of
him?"
For a few seconds I hesitated, disinclined to repeat the grave charge
against him.
"Well," I said at last in a low, earnest voice, "the fact is the police
have discovered that Sir Digby Kemsley died in South America some months
ago."
"I don't follow you," she said.
"Then I will be more plain. The police, having had a report of the death
of Sir Digby, believe our mutual friend to be an impostor!"
"An impostor! How utterly ridiculous. Why, I myself can prove his
identity. The dead man must have been some adventurer who used his name."
"That is a point which I hope with your assistance to prove," I said.
"The police at present regard our friend with distinct suspicion."
"And I suppose his worst enemy has made some serious allegation against
him--that woman who hates him so. Ah! I see it all now. I see why he has
written this to me--this confession which astounds me. Ah! Mr. Royle,"
she added, her gloved hands tightly clenched in her despair. "You do not
know in what deadly peril Sir Digby now is. Yes, I see it plainly. There
is a charge against him--a grave and terrible charge--which he is unable
to refute, and yet he is perfectly innocent. Oh, what can I do? How can I
act to save him?" and her voice became broken by emotion.
"First tell me the name of this woman who was such a deadly enemy of his.
If you reveal this to me, I may be able to throw some light upon
circumstances which are at the present moment a complete mystery."
"No, that is his secret," was her low, calm reply. "He made me swear
never to reveal the woman's name."
"But his honour--nay, his liberty--is now at stake," I urged.
"That does not exonerate me from breaking my word of honour, Mr. Royle."
"Then he probably entertains affection for the woman, and is hence loth
to do anything which might cause her pain. Strangely enough, men often
love women whom they know are their bitterest enemies."
"Quite so. But the present case is full of strange and romantic
facts--facts, which if written down, would never be believed. I know many
of them myself, and can vouch for them."
"Well, is this unnamed woman a very vengeful person?" I asked,
remembering the victim who had been found dead at Harrington Gardens.
"Probably so. All women, when they hate a man, are vengeful."
"Why did she hate him so?"
"Because she believed a story told of him--an entirely false story--of
how he had treated the man she loved. I taxed him with it, and he denied
it, and brought me conclusive proof that the allegation was a pure
invention."
"Is she young or middle-aged?"
"Young, and distinctly pretty," was her reply.
Was it possible that this woman was speaking of that girl whom I had seen
lying dead in my friend's flat? Had he killed her because he feared what
she might reveal? How dearly I wished that I had with me at that moment a
copy of the police photographs of the unidentified body.
But even then she would probably declare it not to be the same person,
so deeply had Sir Digby impressed upon her the necessity of regarding the
affair as strictly secret.
Indeed, as I walked slowly at her side, I saw that, whatever the note
contained, it certainly had the effect upon her of preserving her
silence.
In that case, could the crime have been premeditated by my friend? Had he
written her that secret message well knowing that he intended to kill the
mysterious woman who was his deadliest enemy.
That theory flashed across my brain as I walked with her, and I believed
it to be the correct one. I accepted it the more readily because it
removed from my mind those dark suspicions concerning Phrida, and, also,
in face of facts which this unknown lady had dropped, it seemed to be
entirely feasible.
Either the unsuspecting woman fell by the hand of Digby Kemsley or--how
can I pen the words--by the hand of Phrida, the woman I loved. There was
the evidence that a knife with a triangular blade had been used, and such
a knife had been, and was still, in the possession of my well-beloved;
but from what I had learned that night it seemed that, little as I had
dreamed the truth, my friend Digby had been held in bondage by a woman,
whose tongue he feared.
Ah! How very many men in London are the slaves of women whom they fear.
All of us are human, and the woman with evil heart is, alas! only too
ready to seize the opportunity of the frailty of the opposite sex, and
whatever may be the secret she learns, of business or of private life,
she will most certainly turn it to her advantage.
It was similar circumstances I feared in the case of dear old Digby.
I was wondering, as I walked, whether I should reveal to my
companion--whose name she had told me was Mrs. Petre--the whole of the
tragic circumstances.
"Is it long ago since you last saw Digby?" I asked her presently, as we
strolled slowly together, and after I had given her my address, and we
had laughed together over my effective disguise.
"Nearly two months," she replied. "I've been in Egypt since the beginning
of November--at Assuan."
"I was there two seasons ago," I said. "How delightful it is in Upper
Egypt--and what a climate in winter! Why, it is said that it has never
rained there for thirty years!"
"I had a most awfully jolly time at the Cataract. It was full of smart
people, for only the suburbs, the demi-monde, and Germans go to the
Riviera nowadays. It's so terribly played out, and the Carnival gaiety is
so childish and artificial."
"It amuses the Cookites," I laughed; "and it puts money in the pockets of
the hotel-keepers of Nice and the neighbourhood."
"Monte is no longer _chic_," she declared. "German women in blouses
predominate; and the really smart world has forsaken the Rooms for Cairo,
Heliopolis, and Assuan. They are too far off and too expensive for the
bearer of Cook's coupons."
I laughed. She spoke with the nonchalant air of the smart woman of the
world, evidently much travelled and cosmopolitan.
But I again turned the conversation to our mutual friend, and strove
with all the diplomatic powers I possessed to induce her to reveal the
name or give me a description of the woman whom she had alleged to be his
enemy--the woman who was under a delusion that he had wronged her lover.
To all my questions, however, she remained dumb. That letter which I had
placed in her hand had, no doubt, put a seal of silence upon her lips.
At one moment she assumed a haughtiness of demeanour which suited her
manner and bearing, at the next she became sympathetic and eager. She
was, I gauged, a woman of strangely complex character. Yet whom could she
be? I knew most, perhaps even all, of Digby's friends, I believed. He
often used to give cosy little tea parties, to which women--many of them
well known in society--came. Towards them he always assumed quite a
paternal attitude, for he was nothing if not a ladies' man.
She seemed very anxious to know in what circumstances he had handed me
the note, and what instructions he had given me. To her questions I
replied quite frankly. Indeed, I repeated his words.
"Ah! yes," she cried. "He urged you not to misjudge me. Then you will
not, Mr. Royle--will you?" she asked me with sudden earnestness.
"I have no reason to misjudge you, Mrs. Petre," I said, quietly. "Why
should I?"
"Ah! but you may. Indeed, you most certainly will."
"When?" I asked, in some surprise.
"When--when you know the bitter truth."
"The truth of what?" I gasped, my thoughts reverting to the tragedy in
Harrington Gardens. Though I had not referred to it I felt that she must
be aware of what had occurred, and of the real reason of Digby's flight.
"The truth which you must know ere long," she answered hoarsely as we
halted again beneath the leafless trees. "And when you learn it you will
most certainly condemn me. But believe me, Mr. Royle, I am like your
friend, Sir Digby, more sinned against than sinning."
"You speak in enigmas," I said.
"Because I cannot--I dare not tell you what I know. I dare not reveal the
terrible and astounding secret entrusted to me. You will know it all soon
enough. But--there," she added in a voice broken in despair, "what can
matter now that Digby has shown the white feather--and fled."
"He was not a coward, Mrs. Petre," I remarked very calmly.
"No. He was a brave and honest man until----" and she paused, her low
voice fading to a whisper that I did not catch.
"Until what?" I asked. "Did something happen?"
"Yes, it did," she replied in a hard, dry tone. "Something happened which
changed his life."
"Then he is not the impostor the police believe?" I demanded.
"Certainly not," was her prompt reply. "Why he has thought fit to
disappear fills me with anger. And yet--yet from this letter he has sent
to me I can now see the reason. He was, no doubt, compelled to fly, poor
fellow. His enemy forced him to do so."
"The woman--eh?"
"Yes, the woman," she admitted, bitter hatred in her voice.
Then, after a pause, I said: "If I can be of any service to you, Mrs.
Petre, for we are both friends of Digby's, I trust you will not fail to
command me."
And I handed her a card from my case, which I had carried expressly.
"You are very kind, Mr. Royle," she replied. "Perhaps I may be very glad
of your services one day. Who knows? I live at Park Mansions."
"And may I call?"
"For the present, no. I let my flat while I went abroad, and it is still
occupied for several weeks. I shall not be there before the first week in
March."
"But I want to find Digby--I want to see him most urgently," I said.
"And so do I!"
"How can we trace him?" I asked.
"Ah! I am afraid he is far too elusive. If he wishes to hide himself we
need not hope to find him until he allows us to," she replied. "No, all
we can do is to remain patient and hopeful."
Again a silence fell between us. I felt instinctively that she wished to
confide in me, but dare not do so.
Therefore I exclaimed suddenly:
"Will you not tell me, Mrs. Petre, the identity of this great enemy of
our friend--this woman? Upon information which you yourself may give,
Digby's future entirely depends," I added earnestly.
"His future!" she echoed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean only that I am trying to clear his good name of the stigma now
resting upon it."
The handsome woman bit her lip.
"No," she replied with a great effort. "I'm sorry--deeply sorry--but I am
now in a most embarrassing position. I have made a vow to him, and that
vow I cannot break without first obtaining his permission. I am upon my
honour."
I was silent. What could I say?
This woman certainly knew something--something which, if revealed, would
place me in possession of the truth of what had actually occurred at
Harrington Gardens on that fatal night. If she spoke she might clear
Phrida of all suspicion.
Suddenly, after a pause, I made up my mind to try and clear up one
point--that serious, crucial point which had for days so obsessed me.
"Mrs. Petre," I said, "I wonder if you will answer me a single question,
one which does not really affect the situation much. Indeed, as we are, I
hope, friends, I ask it more out of curiosity than anything else."
"Well, what is it?" she asked, regarding me strangely.
"I want to know whether, being a friend of Digby's, you have ever met or
ever heard of a certain young lady living in Kensington named Phrida
Shand."
The effect of my words was almost electrical. She sprung towards me, with
fire in her big, dark eyes.
"Phrida Shand!" she cried wildly, her white-gloved hands again clenched.
"Phrida Shand! You know that woman, eh? You know her, Mr. Royle. Is she a
friend of yours?--or--or is she your enemy? Your friend, perhaps,
because she is pretty. Oh, yes!" she laughed, hysterically. "Oh, yes! Of
course, she is your friend. If she is--then curse her, Mr. Royle--invoke
all the curses of hell upon her, as she so richly deserves!"
And from her lips came a peal of laughter that was little short of
demoniacal, while I stood glaring at her in blank dismay.
What did she mean? Aye, what, indeed?
CHAPTER XI.
IN WHICH AN ALLEGATION IS MADE.
I stood aghast at her words.
I strove to induce her to speak more openly, and to tell me why I should
not regard Phrida as my friend.
But she only laughed mysteriously, saying:
"Wait, and you will see."
"You make a distinct charge against her, therefore I think you ought to
substantiate it," I said in a tone of distinct annoyance.
"Ah! Mr. Royle. Heed my words, I beg of you."
"But, tell me, is Miss Shand the same person as you have denounced as
Digby's enemy?" I asked in breathless apprehension. "Surely you will tell
me, Mrs. Petre, now that we are friends."
"Ah! but are we friends?" she asked, looking at me strangely beneath the
light of the street-lamp in that deserted thoroughfare, where all was
silence save the distant hum of the traffic. The dark trees above stood
out distinct against the dull red night-glare of London, as the
mysterious woman stood before me uttering that query.
"Because we are mutual friends of Sir Digby's. I hope I may call you a
friend," I replied, as calmly as I was able.
She paused for a moment in indecision. Then she said:
"You admit that you are friendly with the girl Shand--eh?"
"Certainly."
"More than friendly, I wonder?" she asked in a sharp tone.
"Well--I'll be perfectly frank," was my answer. "I am engaged to be
married to her."
"Married," she gasped, "to her! Are you mad, Mr. Royle?"
"I think not," I answered, greatly surprised at her sudden attitude.
"Why?"
"Because--because," she replied in a low, earnest voice, scarce above a
whisper, "because, before you take such a step make further inquiry."
"Inquiry about what?" I demanded.
"About--well, about what has occurred at Harrington Gardens."
"Then you know!" I cried. "You know the truth, Mrs. Petre?"
"No," she replied quite calmly. "I know from this letter what must have
occurred there. But who killed the girl I cannot say."
"Who was the girl they found dead?" I asked breathlessly.
"Ah! How can I tell? I did not see her."
In a few quick words I described the deceased, but either she did not
recognise her from the description, or she refused to tell me. In any
case, she declared herself in ignorance.
The situation was galling and tantalising. I was so near discovering the
truth, and yet my inquiries had only plunged me more deeply into a
quagmire of suspicion and horror. The more I tried to extricate myself
the deeper I sank.
"But whoever the poor girl may have been, you still maintain that Phrida
Shand was Digby's most deadly enemy?" I asked quickly, setting a trap for
her.
I took her unawares, and she fell into it.
"Yes," was her prompt response. An instant later, however, realising how
she had been led to make an allegation which she had not intended, she
hastened to correct herself, saying: "Ah, no! Of course, I do not allege
that. I--I only know that Digby was acquainted with her, and that----"
"Well?" I asked slowly, when she paused.
"That--that he regretted the acquaintanceship."
"Regretted? Why?"
The woman shrugged her shoulders. All along she had been cognisant of the
tragedy, yet with her innate cleverness she had not admitted her
knowledge.
"A man often regrets his friendship with a woman," she said, with a
mysterious air.
"What!" I cried fiercely. "Do you make an insinuation that----"
"My dear Mr. Royle," she laughed, "I make no insinuation. It was you who
have endeavoured to compel me to condemn her as Digby's enemy. You
yourself suggested it!"
"But you have told me that his fiercest and most bitter enemy was a
woman!"
"Certainly. But I have not told you that woman's name, nor do I intend to
break my vow of secrecy to Digby--fugitive that he may be at this moment.
Yet, depend upon it, he will return and crush his enemies in the dust."
"I hope he will," was my fervent reply. "Yet I love Phrida Shand, and
upon her there rests a terrible cloud of suspicion."
She was silent for a moment, still standing beneath the lamp, gazing at
me with those big, dark eyes.
At last she said:
"The way out is quite easy."
"How?"
"If you have any regard for your future put your love aside," was her
hard response.
"You hate her!" I said, knitting my brows, yet recollecting the proof I
had secured of her presence in Digby's flat.
"Yes," was her prompt response. "I hate her--I have cause to hate her!"
"What cause?"
"That is my own affair, Mr. Royle--my own secret. Find Digby, and he
will, no doubt, tell you the truth."
"The truth concerning Phrida?"
"Yes."
"But he knew I was engaged to her! Why did he not speak?"
"And expose her secret?" she asked. "Would he have acted as a gentleman
had he done so? Does a man so lightly betray a woman's honour?"
"A woman's honour!" I gasped, staring at her, staggered as though she
had struck me a blow. "What do you mean?"
"I mean nothing," was her cold reply. "Take it as you may, Mr. Royle,
only be warned."
"But if Digby knew that she was worthless, he would surely have made some
remark to arouse my suspicion?" I exclaimed.
"Why should he?" she queried. "A true gentleman does not usually expose a
woman's secret."
I saw her point, and my heart sank within me. Were these scandalous
allegations of hers based upon truth, or was she actuated by ill-feeling,
perhaps, indeed, of jealousy?
We walked on again slowly until we reached St. James's Palace, and passed
out into the end of Pall Mall, where it joined St. James's Street. Yet
her attitude was one of complete mystery. I was uncertain whether the
admission she had so unconsciously made regarding Phrida--that she was
Digby's worst enemy--was the actual truth or not.
One thing was plain. This Mrs. Petre was a clever, far-seeing woman of
the world, who had with great ingenuity held from me her knowledge of the
crime.
A problem was, therefore, presented to me. By what means could she be
aware of it? First, she had expected to meet Digby that evening;
secondly, the letter I had brought was written before the assassination
of the unknown girl.
How could she have obtained knowledge of the affair if it were not
premeditated and hinted at in the letter I had so faithfully delivered?
Half way up St. James's Street my companion suddenly exclaimed:
"I must be going! Would you please hail me a taxi, Mr. Royle?"
"I will--when you have answered my question," I said, with great
politeness.
"I have already replied to it," was her response. "You love Phrida Shand,
but if you have any self-respect, any regard for your future, break off
Whatever infatuation she has exercised over you. If you are Digby's
friend, you will be a man, and act as such!"
"I really don't follow you," I said, bewildered.
"Perhaps not. But surely my words are plain enough!"
"Is she the enemy of Digby, of whom you have spoken?"
"That question I am not permitted to answer."
I was silent a few seconds. Then I asked earnestly:
"Tell me openly and frankly, Mrs. Petre. Is she the person you suspect of
having committed the crime?"
She gave vent to a short dry laugh.
"Really, Mr. Royle," she exclaimed, "you put to me the most difficult
riddles. How can I possibly suspect anyone of a crime of which I know
nothing, and of which even the papers appear to be in ignorance?"
"But you are not in ignorance," I said. "How, pray, did you learn that a
tragedy had occurred?"
"Ah!" she laughed. "That is my secret. You were very careful not to tell
me the true cause of poor Digby's flight. Yes, Mr. Royle, I congratulate
you upon your ingenuity in protecting the honour of your friend. Rest
assured he will not forget the great services you have already rendered
him."
"I look for no reward. He was my friend," was my reply.
"Then, if he was your friend and you are still his, heed my warning
concerning Phrida Shand."
"But tell me what you know?" I cried, clutching her arm as we walked
together. "You don't understand that you are making allegations--terrible
allegations--against the woman I love dearest in all the world. You have
made an assertion, and I demand that you shall substantiate it," I added
in frantic anxiety.
She shook off my hand angrily, declaring that nothing more need be said,
and adding that if I refused to heed her, then the peril would be mine.
"But you shall not leave me until you have furnished me with proof of
these perfidious actions of my love!" I declared vehemently.
"Mr. Royle, we really cannot use high words in the public street," she
replied in a low tone of reproof. "I am sorry that I am not permitted to
say more."
"But you shall!" I persisted. "Tell me--what do you know? Is Digby the
real Sir Digby?"
"Of course he is!"
"And what are his exact relations with Phrida?"
"Ah!" she laughed. "You had better ask her yourself, Mr. Royle. She will,
no doubt, tell you. Of course, she will--well, if you are to marry her.
But there, I see that you are not quite responsible for your words this
evening. It is, perhaps, natural in the circumstances; therefore I will
forgive you."
"Natural!" I echoed. "I should think it is natural that I should resent
such dastardly allegations when made against the woman I love."
"All I repeat is--go and ask her for yourself," was the woman's quiet
response as she drew herself up, and pulled her fur more closely about
her throat. "I really can't be seen here talking with you in that garb,"
she added.
"But you must tell me," I persisted.
"I can tell you no more than I have done. The girl you love will tell you
everything, or--at least, if you have a grain of ingenuity, as you no
doubt have--you will find out everything for yourself."
"Ah! but----"
"No, not another word, please, Mr. Royle--not to-night. If after making
inquiry into the matter you care to come and see me when I am back in
Park Mansions, I shall be very happy to receive you. By that time,
however, I hope we shall have had news of poor Digby's whereabouts."
"If I hear from him--as I expect to--how can I communicate with you?" I
asked.
For a few seconds she stood wondering.
"Write to me to Park Mansions," she replied. "My letters are always
forwarded."
And raising her umbrella she herself hailed a passing taxi.
"Remember my warning," were her final words as she gave the man an
address in Regent's Park, and entered the conveyance. "Go and see Phrida
Shand at once and tell her what I have said."
"May I mention your name?" I asked hoarsely.
"Yes," she replied. "Good-night."
And a moment later I was gazing at the red back-lamp of the taxi, while
soon afterwards I again caught a glimpse of the same lonely seller of
shawls whom I had seen at the Tube station, trudging wearily homeward,
there being no business doing at that hour of the evening.
CHAPTER XII.
PHRIDA MAKES CONFESSION.
I sat in my rooms in Albemarle Street utterly bewildered.
My meeting with the mysterious woman who wore the spray of mimosa had,
instead of assisting to clear up the mystery, increased it a hundredfold.
The grave suspicions I had entertained of Phrida had been corroborated by
her strangely direct insinuations and her suggestion that I should go to
her and tell her plainly what had been alleged.
Therefore, after a sleepless night, I went to Cromwell Road next morning,
determined to know the truth. You can well imagine my state of mind when
I entered Mrs. Shand's pretty morning-room, where great bowls of
daffodils lent colour to the otherwise rather dull apartment.
Phrida entered, gay, fresh, and charming, in a dark skirt and white
blouse, having just risen from breakfast.
"Really, Teddy," she laughed, "you ought to be awarded a prize for early
rising. I fear I'm horribly late. It's ten o'clock. But mother and I went
last night to the Aldwych, and afterwards with the Baileys to supper at
the Savoy. So I may be forgiven, may I not--eh?"
"Certainly, dear," I replied, placing my hand upon her shoulder. "What
are you doing to-day?"
"Oh! I'm quite full up with engagements," she replied, crossing to the
writing-table and consulting a porcelain writing tablet.
"I'm due at my dressmaker's at half-past eleven, then I've to call in
Mount Street at half-past twelve, lunch at the Berkeley, where mother has
two women to lunch with her, and a concert at Queen's Hall at
three--quite a day, isn't it?" she laughed.
"Yes," I said. "You are very busy--too busy even to talk seriously with
me--eh?"
"Talk seriously!" she echoed, looking me straight in the face. "What do
you mean, Teddy? Why, what's the matter?"
"Oh! nothing very much, dearest," was my reply, for I was striving to
remain calm, not withstanding my great anxiety and tortured mind.
"But there is," she persisted, clutching at my hand and looking eagerly
into my face. "What is amiss? Tell me," she added, in low earnestness.
I was silent for a moment, and leaving her I crossed to the window and
gazed out into the broad, grey thoroughfare, grim and dispiriting on that
chilly January morning.
For a moment I held my breath, then, with sudden determination, I walked
back to where she was standing, and placing both hands upon her
shoulders, kissed her passionately upon the lips.
"You are upset to-day, Teddy," she said, with deep concern. "What has
happened? Tell me, dear."
"I--I hardly know what's happened," I replied in a low voice. "But,
Phrida," I said, looking straight into her great eyes, "I want to--to ask
you a question."
"A question--what?" she demanded, her cheeks paling slightly.
"Yes. I want you to tell me what you know of a Mrs. Petre, a----"
"Mrs. Petre!" she gasped, stepping back from me, her face pale as death
in an instant. "That woman!"
"Yes, that woman, Phrida. Who is she--what is she?"
"Please don't ask me, Teddy," my love cried in distress, covering her
pretty face with her hands and bursting suddenly into tears.
"But I must, Phrida--I must, for my own peace of mind," I said.
"Why? Do you know the woman?"
"I met her last night," I explained. "I delivered to her a note which my
friend Digby had entrusted to me."
"I thought your friend had disappeared?" she said quickly.
"It was given to me before his flight," was my response. "I fulfilled a
confidential mission with which he entrusted me. And--and I met her. She
knows you--isn't that so?"
I stood with my eyes full upon the white face of the woman I loved,
surveying her coldly and critically, so full of black suspicion. Was my
heart at that moment wholly hers? In imagination, place yourself, my
reader, in a similar position. Put before yourself the problem with
which, at that second, I found myself face to face.
I loved Phrida, and yet had I not obtained proof positive of her
clandestine visit to my friend on that fateful night? Were her
finger-prints not upon the little glass-topped specimen-table in his
room?
And yet so clever, so ingenious had she been, so subtle was her woman's
wit, that she had never admitted to me any knowledge of him further than
a formal introduction I had once made long ago.
I had trusted her--aye, trusted her with all the open sincerity of an
honourable man--for I loved her better than anything else on earth. And
with what result?
With my own senses of smell and of hearing I had detected her presence on
the stairs--waiting, it seemed, to visit my friend in secret after I had
left.
No doubt she had been unaware of my identity as his visitor, or she would
never dared to have lurked there.
As I stood with my hand tenderly upon her arm, the gaze of my
well-beloved was directed to the ground. Guilt seemed written upon her
white brow, for she dared not raise her eyes to mine.
"Phrida, you know that woman--you can't deny knowledge of her--can you?"
She stood like a statue, with her hands clenched, her mouth half open,
her jaws fixed.
"I--I--I don't know what you mean," she faltered at last, in a hard voice
quite unusual to her.
"I mean that I have a suspicion, Phrida--a horrible suspicion--that you
have deceived me," I said.
"How?" she asked, with her harsh, forced laugh.
I paused. How should I tell her? How should I begin?
"You have suppressed from me certain knowledge of which you know I ought
to have been in possession for my friend Digby's sake, and----"
"Ah! Digby Kemsley again!" she cried impatiently. "You've not been the
same to me since that man disappeared."
"Because you know more concerning him than you have ever admitted to me,
Phrida," I said in a firm, earnest voice, grasping her by the arm and
whispering into her ear. "Now, be open and frank with me--tell me the
truth."
"Of what?" she faltered, raising her eyes to mine with a frightened look.
"Of what Mrs. Petre has told me."
"That woman! What has she said against me?" my love demanded with quick
resentment.
"She is not your friend, in any case," I said slowly.
"My friend!" she echoed. "I should think not. She----"
And my love's little hands clenched themselves and she burst again into
tears without concluding her sentence.
"I know, dearest," I said, striving to calm her, and stroking her hair
from her white brow. "I tell you at once that I do not give credence to
any of her foul allegations, only--well, in order to satisfy myself, I
have come direct to you to hear your explanation."
"My--my explanation!" she gasped, placing her hand to her brow and bowing
her head. "Ah! what explanation can I make of allegations I have never
heard?" she demanded. "Surely, Teddy, you are asking too much."
I grasped her hand, and holding it in mine gazed again upon her. We were
standing together near the centre of the room where the glowing fire
shed a genial warmth and lit up the otherwise gloomy and solemn
apartment.
Ah! how sweet she seemed to me, how dainty, how charming, how very pure.
And yet? Ah! the recollection of that woman's insinuations on the
previous night ate like a canker-worm into my heart. And yet how I loved
the pale, agitated girl before me! Was she not all the world to me?
A long and painful silence had fallen between us, a silence only broken
by the whirl of a taxi passing outside and the chiming of the long,
old-fashioned clock on the stairs.
At last I summoned courage to say in a calm, low voice;
"I am not asking too much, Phrida. I am only pressing you to act with
your usual honesty, and tell me the truth. Surely you can have nothing to
conceal?"
"How absurd you are, Teddy!" she said in her usual voice. "What can I
possibly have to conceal from you?"
"Pardon me," I said; "but you have already concealed from me certain very
important facts concerning my friend Digby."
"Who has told you that? The woman Petre, I suppose," she cried in anger.
"Very well, believe her, if you wish."
"But I don't believe her," I protested.
"Then why ask me for an explanation?"
"Because one is, I consider, due from you in the circumstances."
"Then you have set yourself up to be my judge, have you?" she asked,
drawing herself up proudly, all traces of her tears having vanished. I
saw that the attitude she had now assumed was one of defiance; therefore
I knew that if I were to obtain the information I desired I must act with
greatest discretion.
"No, Phrida," I answered. "I do not mistrust or misjudge you. All I ask
of you is the truth. What do you know of my friend Digby Kemsley?"
"Know of him--why, nothing--except that you introduced us."
For a second I remained silent. Then with severity I remarked:
"Pardon me, but I think you rather misunderstood my question. I meant to
ask whether you have ever been to his flat in Harrington Gardens?"
"Ah! I see," she cried instantly. "That woman Petre has endeavoured to
set you against me, Teddy, because I love you. She has invented some
cruel lie or other, just as she did in another case within my knowledge.
Come," she added, "tell me out plainly what she has alleged against me?"
She was very firm and resolute now, and I saw in her face a hard, defiant
expression--an expression of bitter hatred against the woman who had
betrayed her.
"Well," I said; "loving you as intensely as I do, I can hardly bring
myself to repeat her insinuations."
"But I demand to know them," she protested, standing erect and facing me.
"I am attacked; therefore, I am within my right to know what charges the
woman has brought against me."
"She has brought no direct charges," was my slow reply. "But she has
suggested certain things--certain scandalous things."
"What are they?" she gasped, suddenly pale as death.
"First tell me the truth, Phrida," I cried, holding her in my arms and
looking straight into those splendid eyes I admired so much. "Admit
it--you knew Digby. He--he was a friend of yours?"
"A--a friend--" she gasped, half choking with emotion. "A--friend--yes."
"You knew him intimately. You visited him at his rooms unknown to me!" I
went on fiercely.
"Ah!" she shrieked. "Don't torture me like this, Teddy, when I love you
so deeply. You don't know--you can never know all I have suffered--and
now this woman has sought to ruin and crush me!"
"Has she spoken the truth when she says that you visited Digby--at
night--in secret!" I demanded, bitterly, between my teeth, still holding
her, her white, hard-set face but a few inches from my own.
She drew a long, deep breath, and in her eyes was a strange
half-fascinated look--a look that I had never seen in them before.
"Ah! Teddy," she gasped. "This--this is the death of all our love. I
foresee only darkness and ruin before me. But I will not lie to you. No!
I--I----"
Then she paused, and a shudder ran through her slim frame which I held
within my grasp. "I'll tell you the truth. Yes. I--I--went to see your
friend unknown to you."
"You did!" I cried hoarsely, with fierce anger possessing my soul.
"Yes, dear," she faltered in a voice so low that I could scarce catch her
reply. "Yes--I--I went there," she faltered, "because--because he--he
compelled me."
"Compelled you!" I echoed in blank dismay.
But at that instant I saw that the blackness of unconsciousness had
fallen upon my love even as I held her in my embrace.
And for me, too, alas! the sun of life had ceased to shine, and the world
was dead.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FUGITIVE'S SECRET.
Tenderly I placed my love upon the couch, and then rang the bell.
In answer to my summons the young Italian man-servant appeared.
"Send Mallock here quickly," I said. "Miss Shand is not well. But say
nothing of this to your mistress, or to the other servants. You
understand, Egisto?"
"Cer-tainly, sare," replied the smart young Tuscan, and a few moments
later the door re-opened to admit the thin-faced maid in black, wearing
her muslin apron and gold-rimmed glasses.
She dashed across to the couch in an instant, and bent, looking into the
white, immobile face of my well-beloved.
"I fear your mistress has fainted, Mallock, so I thought it best to call
you. I have, unfortunately, imparted to her some news which has upset
her. Will you please see after her?"
"Of course, sir. I'll go and get some smelling salts and some water."
And quickly the girl disappeared. Then, when she had gone, I stood
before the inanimate form of the woman I loved so well, and wondered what
could be the real, actual truth.
Her admission had taken me aback. She had confessed to visiting my
friend, but had alleged that he had compelled her. Was she actually
beneath some mysterious thraldom--was she held in some secret bondage by
the man I had trusted and who was my best friend?
The very suspicion of it filled me with a fierce irresponsible anger, and
I clenched my fists.
Ah! I would find him and face him. I would clutch his throat and force
the truth from his lips.
And if he had betrayed me--if he had exercised any evil influence over
Phrida--then, by heaven! I would take his life!
Mallock bustled in the next moment, and sinking upon her knees began to
apply restoratives.
"Tell your mistress that I will return after luncheon, if she will see
me," I said.
"Yes, sir."
"And--and tell her, Mallock, to remain calm until I see her. Will you?"
"Yes, sir," answered the maid, and then I went out into the hall,
struggled into my overcoat, and left the house.
Out in Cromwell Road the scene, grey, dull and dismal, was, alas! in
accord with my own feelings.
The blow I had feared had fallen. The terrible suspicion I had held from
that moment when, upon the stairs at Harrington Gardens, I had smelt that
sweet, unusual perfume and heard the jingle of golden bangles, had been
proved.
She had actually admitted her presence there--with the man I had believed
to be my friend, the man, whom, up to the present, I had sought to shield
and protect!
I hailed a taxi, and not knowing what I did, drove to the Reform. As I
passed up the steps from Pall Mall the porter handed me my letters, and
then, heedless of where my footsteps carried me, I entered the big,
square hall and turned into the writing-room on the left--a room historic
in the annals of British politics, for many a State secret had been
discussed there by Ministers of the Crown, many a point of the Cabinet's
policy had been decided, and also the fate of many a bill.
The long, sombre room with the writing tables covered with blue cloth,
was empty, as it usually is, and I flung myself down to scribble a
note--an apology for not keeping an appointment that afternoon.
My overburdened heart was full of chagrin and grief, for my idol had been
shattered by a single blow, and only the wreck of all my hopes and
aspirations now remained.
In a week's time the coroner would hold his adjourned inquiry into the
tragedy at Harrington Gardens, and then what startling revelations might
be made! By that time it was probable that the police would be able to
establish the identity of the accused, and, moreover, with Mrs. Petre
vengeful and incensed against Phrida, might she not make a statement to
the authorities?
If so, what then?
I sat with my elbows upon the table staring out into Pall Mall, which
wore such a cold and cheerless aspect that morning.
What could I do? How should I act? Ah! yes, at that moment I sat utterly
bewildered, and trying in vain to discern some way out of that maze of
mystery.
I had not looked at the unopened letters beneath my hand, but suddenly
chancing to glance at them, I noticed one in an unfamiliar feminine
handwriting.
I tore it open carelessly, expecting to find some invitation or other,
when, within, I found three hastily scrawled lines written on the
notepaper of the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street. It read:
"Since I saw you something has happened. Can you meet me again
as soon as possible? Please wire me, Mrs. Petre, Melbourne
House, Colchester."
I gazed at the note in extreme satisfaction. At least, I had the woman's
address. Yes, after I had again seen Phrida I would see her and force
from her lips the truth.
I rose quickly, placed the other letters in my pocket without opening
them, and drove down to the City, where I was compelled to keep a
business appointment.
At half-past three Egisto admitted me to Mrs. Shand's, and in reply to my
question, told me that the "Signorina," as he always called Phrida, was
in the morning-room.
Dressed in a pale grey gown, relieved with lace at the collar and wrists,
she rose slowly from a big armchair as I entered, and came across to me,
her face pale, drawn, and anxious.
"Ah! dearest," I cried. "I'm glad to see you better. Are you quite
yourself again now?"
"Quite, thanks," was her low, rather weak reply. "I--I felt very unwell
this morning. I--I don't know what was the matter." Then clinging to me
suddenly, she added, "Ah! forgive me, Teddy, won't you?"
"There is nothing to forgive, dear," was my reply, as, placing my arm
tenderly about her slim waist, I looked into the depths of those
wonderful dark eyes of hers, trying to fathom what secret lay hidden
there.
"Ah!" she ejaculated. "I know, dear, that though you affect to have
forgiven me--that you have not. How could you possibly forgive?"
"I am not angry with you in the least, Phrida!" I assured her quite
calmly. "Because you have not yet told me the truth. I am here to learn
it."
"Yes," she gasped, sinking into a chair and staring straight into the
fire. The short winter's day was dying, and already the light had nearly
faded. But the fire threw a mellow glow upon her pale, hard-set features,
and she presented a strangely dramatic picture as she sat there with head
bent in shame. "Ah! yes. You are here again to torture me, I suppose,"
she sighed bitterly.
"I have no desire in the least to torture you," I said, standing erect
before her. "But I certainly think that some explanation of your conduct
is due to me--the man whom you are to marry."
"Marry!" she echoed in a blank voice, with a shrug of her shoulders, her
eyes still fixed upon the fire.
"Yes, marry," I repeated. "You made an admission to me this morning--one
of which any man would in such circumstances demand explanation. You said
that my friend had forced you to go to Harrington Gardens. Tell me why?
What power does that man hold over you?"
"Ah, no! Teddy!" she cried, starting wildly to her feet. "No, no!" she
protested, grasping my hands frantically. "Don't ask that question. Spare
me that! Spare me that, for the sake of the love you once bore for me."
"No. I repeat my question," I said slowly, but very determinedly.
"Ah! no. I--I can't answer it. I----"
For a few moments a silence fell between us.
Then I said in a low, meaning tone:
"You can't answer it, Phrida, because you are ashamed, eh?"
She sprang upon me in an instant, her face full of resentful fire.
"No!" she declared vehemently. "I am not ashamed--only I--I cannot tell
you the reason I went to Harrington Gardens. That's all."
"Yours is, to say the least, a rather thin excuse, is it not?" I asked.
"What else can I say? Simply I can tell you nothing."
"But you admit that you went to Harrington Gardens. Did you go more than
once?" I asked very quietly.
She nodded in the affirmative.
"And the last occasion was on the night when my friend was forced to
fly, eh?" I suggested.
I saw that she was about to elude answering my question. Therefore, I
added:
"I already know you were there. I have established your presence beyond
the shadow of doubt. So you may just as well admit it."
"I--I do," she faltered, sinking again into her chair and resting her
elbows upon her knees.
"You were there--you were present when the crime was committed," I said,
looking straight at her as I stood before her with folded arms.
"Whoever has said that tells wicked lies," was her quick response.
"You were in Digby's room that night--after I left," I declared.
"How do you know."
"Because the police have photographs of your finger-prints," was my quiet
reply.
The effect of my words upon her was electrical.
"The police!" she gasped, her face instantly pale as death. "Do they
know?"
"Inspector Edwards is in possession of your finger-prints," I replied
briefly.
"Then--then they will suspect me!" she shrieked in despair. "Ah! Teddy!
If you love me, save me!"
And she flung herself wildly at my feet, clutching my hands and raising
her face to mine in frantic appeal.
"For that very reason I have returned here to you to-day, Phrida," I
replied in a low tone of sympathy. "If I can save you from being
implicated in this terrible affair, I will. But you must tell me the
whole truth from the start. Then I may be able to devise a plan to
ensure your security."
And I slowly assisted her to her feet and led her back to her chair.
She sat without moving or speaking for some moments, gravely thinking.
Then of a sudden, she said in a hard, hoarse voice:
"Ah! you don't know, Teddy, what I have suffered--how I have been the
innocent victim of a foul and dastardly plot. I--I was entrapped--I----"
"Entrapped!" I echoed. "By whom? Not by Digby Kemsley? He was not the
sort of man."
"He is your friend, I know. But if you knew the truth you would hate
him--hate him, with as deep and fierce a hatred as I do now," she
declared, with a strange look in her great eyes.
"You told me he had forced you to go to his flat."
"He did."
"Why?"
"Because he wanted to tell me something--to----"
"To tell you what?"
"I refuse to explain--I can't tell you, Teddy."
"Because it would be betraying his secret--eh?" I remarked with
bitterness. "And, yet, in the same breath you have told me you hate him.
Surely, this attitude of yours is an unusual one--is it not? You cannot
hate him and strive to shield him at the same moment!"
She paused for a second before replying. Then she said:
"I admit that my attitude towards your friend is a somewhat strange one,
but there are reasons--strong, personal reasons of my own--which prevent
me revealing to you the whole of what is a strange and ghastly story.
Surely it will suffice you to know that I did not conceal all knowledge
of your friend and call upon him in secret all of my own free will. No,
Teddy, I loved you--and I still love you, dear--far too well for that."
"I trusted you, Phrida, but you deceived me," I replied, with a poignant
bitterness in my heart.
"Under compulsion. Because----" and she paused with a look of terror in
her eyes.
"Because what?" I asked slowly, placing my hand tenderly upon her
shoulder.
She shrank from contact with me.
"No. I--I can't tell you. It--it's all too terrible, too horrible!" she
whispered hoarsely, covering her white face with her hands. "I loved you,
but, alas! all my happiness, all the joy of which I have so long dreamed,
has slipped away from me because of the one false step--my one foolish
action--of which I have so long repented."
"Tell me, Phrida," I urged, in deep earnestness, bending down to her.
"Confide in me."
"No," she replied, with an air of determination. "It is my own affair. I
have acted foolishly and must bear the consequences."
"But surely you will not sacrifice our love rather than tell me the
truth!" I cried.
Hot tears welled in her eyes, and I felt her frail form tremble beneath
my touch.
"Alas! I am compelled," she faltered.
"Then you refuse to tell me--you refuse to explain why this man whom I
believed to be my friend, and to whom I have rendered many services, has
held you in his thraldom?" I exclaimed bitterly.
CHAPTER XIV.
REVEALS A FURTHER DECEPTION.
My love paused. She remained silent for a long time. Then, with her head
bowed, she faltered:
"Yes. I--I am compelled to refuse."
"Why compelled?" I demanded.
"I--I cannot tell you," she whispered hoarsely. "I dare not."
"Dare not? Is your secret so terrible, then?"
"Yes. It is all a mystery. I do not know the truth myself," she replied.
"I only know that I--that I love you, and that now, because that woman
has spoken, I have lost you and am left to face the world--the
police--alone!"
"Have I not told you, dearest, that I will do my best to protect and
defend you if you will only reveal the truth to me," I said.
"But I can't."
"You still wish to shield this blackguard who has held you in secret in
his hands?" I cried in anger.
"No, I don't," she cried in despair. "I tell you, Teddy, now--even if
this is the last time we ever meet--that I love you and you alone. I
have fallen the victim of a clever and dastardly plot, believe me, or
believe me not. What I tell you is the truth."
"I do believe you," I replied fervently. "But if you love me, Phrida, as
you declare, you will surely reveal to me the perfidy of this man I have
trusted!"
"I--I can't now," she said in a voice of excuse. "It is impossible. But
you may know some day."
"You knew that I visited him on that fatal night. Answer me?"
She hesitated. Then presently, in a low tone, replied--
"Yes, Teddy, I knew. Ah!" she went on, her face white and haggard. "You
cannot know the torture I have undergone--fearing that you might be aware
of my presence there. Each time I met you I feared to look you in the
face."
"Because your secret is a guilty one--eh?"
"I fell into a trap, and I cannot extricate myself," she declared
hoarsely. "Now that the police know, there is only one way out for me,"
she added, in a tone of blank despair. "I cannot face it--no--I--now that
I have lost your love, dear. I care for naught more. My enemies will
hound me to my death!"
And she burst into a torrent of bitter tears.
"No, no," I answered her, placing my hand tenderly upon her shoulder.
"Reveal the truth to me, and I will protect you and shield you from them.
At present, though the police are in possession of your finger-prints, as
being those of a person who had entered the flat on that night, they have
no knowledge of your identity, therefore, dear, have no fear."
"Ah! but I am in peril!" she cried, and I felt her shudder beneath my
touch. "That woman--ah!--she may tell the police!"
"What woman?"
"Mrs. Petre, the woman who has already betrayed me to you."
"Then she knows--she knows your secret?" I gasped.
She bent her head slowly in the affirmative.
I saw in her eyes a look of terror and despair, such as I had never
before seen in the eyes of any person before--a haunted, agonised
expression that caused my heart to go out in sympathy for her--for even
though she might be guilty--guilty of that crime of vengeance, yet, after
all, she was mine and she possessed my heart.
"Is there no way of closing that woman's lips?" I asked very slowly.
She was silent, for, apparently, the suggestion had not before occurred
to her. Of a sudden, she looked up into my face earnestly, and asked:
"Tell me, Teddy. Will you promise me--promise not to prejudge me?"
"I do not prejudge you at all, dearest," I declared with a smile. "My
annoyance is due to your refusal to reveal to me anything concerning the
man who has falsely posed as my friend."
"I would tell you all, dearest," she assured me, "but it is impossible.
If I spoke I should only further arouse your suspicions, for you would
never believe that I spoke the truth."
"Then you prefer that I should remain in ignorance, and by doing so your
own peril becomes increased!" I remarked, rather harshly.
"Alas! my silence is imperative," was all she would reply.
Again and again I pressed her to tell me the reason of the evil influence
held over her by the man who was now a fugitive, but with the greatest
ingenuity she evaded my questions, afterwards declaring that all my
inquiries were futile. The secret was hers.
"And so you intend to shield this man, Phrida," I remarked at last, in
bitter reproach.
"I am not silent for his sake!" my love cried, starting up in quick
resentment. "I hate him too much. No, I refuse to reveal the truth
because I am compelled."
"But supposing you were compelled to clear yourself in a criminal court,"
I said. "Supposing that this woman went to the police! What then? You
would be compelled to speak the truth."
"No. I--I'd rather kill myself!" she declared, in frantic despair.
"Indeed, that is what I intend to do--now that I know I have lost you!"
"No, no," I cried. "You have not lost me, Phrida. I still believe in your
purity and honesty," I went on, clasping her passionately to my heart,
she sobbing bitterly the while. "I love you and I still believe in you,"
I whispered into her ear.
She heaved a great sigh.
"Ah! I wonder if you really speak the truth?" she murmured. "If I thought
you still believed in me, how happy I should be. I would face my enemies,
and defy them."
"I repeat, Phrida, that notwithstanding this suspicion upon you, I love
you," I said very earnestly.
"Then you will not prejudge me!" she asked, raising her tear-stained eyes
to mine. "You will not believe evil of me until--until I can prove to
you the contrary. You will not believe what Mrs. Petre has told you?" she
implored.
"I promise, dearest, that I will believe nothing against you," I said
fervently, kissing her cold, hard lips. "But cannot you, in return,
assist me in solving the mystery of Harrington Gardens. Who was the girl
found there? Surely you know?"
"No, I don't. I swear I don't," was her quick reply, though her face was
blanched to the lips.
"But Mrs. Petre gave me to understand that you knew her," I said.
"Yes--that woman!" she cried in anger. "She has lied to you, as to the
others. Have I not told you that she is my most deadly enemy?"
"Then she may go to the police--who knows! How can we close her mouth?"
My love drew a long breath and shook her head. The light had faded, and
only the fitful flames of the fire illuminated the sombre room. In the
dark shadows she presented a pale, pathetic little figure, her face white
as death, her thin, delicate hands clasped before her in dismay and
despair.
"Have you any idea where Digby is at this moment?" I asked her slowly,
wondering whether if he were an intimate friend he had let her know his
hiding-place.
"No. I have not the slightest idea," was her faint reply.
"Ah! If only I could discover him I would wring the truth from him," I
exclaimed between my teeth.
"And if you did so, I myself would be imperilled," she remarked. "No,
Teddy, you must not do that if--if you love me and would protect me."
"Why?"
"If you went to him he would know that I had spoken, and then he would
fulfil the threats he has so often made. No, you must not utter a single
word. You must, for my sake, still remain his friend. Will you, dear?"
"After what you have told me!" I cried. "Never!"
"But you must," she implored, grasping both my hands in hers. "If he had
the slightest suspicion that I had admitted my friendship with him, he
would act as he has always declared he would."
"How would he act?"
"He would reveal something--he would bring proofs that even you would
consider irrefutable," she answered in a low, hard whisper. "No, dear,"
and her grip upon my hands tightened. "In any case there only remains to
me one course--to end it all, for in any case, I must lose you. Your
confidence and love can never be restored."
"You must not speak like that," I said very gravely. "I have not yet lost
confidence in you, Phrida. I----"
"Ah! I know how generous you are, dear," she interrupted, "but how can I
conceal from myself the true position? You have discovered that I visited
that man's flat clandestinely, that--that we were friends--and that----"
She paused, not concluding her sentence, and bursting again into tears,
rushed from the room before I could grasp and detain her.
I stood silent, utterly dumbfounded.
Were those words an admission of her guilt?
Was it by her hand, as that woman had insinuated, the unknown girl's life
had been taken?
I recollected the nature of the wound, as revealed by the medical
evidence, and I recalled that knife which was lying upon the table in
the drawing-room above.
Why did Phrida so carefully conceal from me the exact truth concerning
her friendship with the man I had trusted? What secret power did he
exercise over her? And why did she fear to reveal anything to me--even
though I had assured her that my confidence in her remained unshaken.
Was not guilt written upon that hard, white face?
I stood staring out of the window in blank indecision. What I had all
along half feared had been proved. Between my love and the man of whom I
had never had the slightest suspicion, some secret--some guilty
secret--existed.
And even now, even at risk of losing my affection, she was seeking to
shield him!
My blood boiled within me, and I clenched my fists as I strode angrily up
and down that dark room.
All her admissions came back to me--her frantic appeal to me not to
prejudge her, and her final and out-spoken decision to take her own life
rather than reveal the truth.
What could it mean? What was the real solution of that strange problem of
crime in which, quite unwittingly, I had become so deeply implicated?
I was passing the grate in pacing the room, as I had already done several
times, when my eyes fell upon a piece of paper which had been screwed up
and flung there. Curiosity prompted me to pick it out of the cinders, for
it struck me that it must have been thrown there by Phrida before I had
entered the room.
To my surprise I saw the moment I held it in my hand that it was a
telegram. Opening it carefully I found that it was addressed to her,
therefore she had no doubt cast it upon the fire when I had so suddenly
entered.
I read it, and stood open-mouthed and amazed.
By it the perfidy of the woman I loved, alas! became revealed.
She had deceived me!
CHAPTER XV.
AN EFFACED IDENTITY.
The telegram was signed with the initial "D."--Digby!
The words I read were--"Have discovered T suspects. Exercise greatest
care, and remember your promise. We shall meet again soon."
The message showed that it had been handed in at Brussels at one o'clock
that afternoon.
Brussels! So he was hiding there. Yes, I would lose no time in crossing
to the gay little Belgian capital and search him out.
Before giving him up to the police I would meet him face to face and
demand the truth. I would compel him to speak.
Should I retain possession of the message? I reflected. But, on
consideration, I saw that when I had left, Phrida might return to recover
it. If I replaced it where I had found it she would remain in ignorance
of the knowledge I had gained.
So I screwed it up again and put it back among the cinders in the grate,
afterwards leaving the house.
Next morning I stepped out upon the platform of the great Gare du Nord in
Brussels--a city I knew well, as I had often been there on business--and
drove in a taxi along the busy, bustling Boulevard Auspach to the Grand
Hotel.
In the courtyard, as I got out, the frock-coated and urbane manager
welcomed me warmly, for I had frequently been his guest, and I was shown
to a large room overlooking the Boulevard where I had a wash and changed.
Then descending, I called a taxi and immediately began a tour of the
various hotels where I thought it most likely that the man I sought might
be.
The morning was crisp and cold, with a perfect sky and brilliant
sunshine, bright and cheerful indeed after the mist and gloom of January
in London.
Somehow the aspect, even in winter, is always brighter across the channel
than in our much maligned little island. They know not the "pea-souper"
on the other side of the Straits of Dover, and the light, invigorating
atmosphere is markedly apparent directly one enters France or Belgium.
The business boulevards, the Boulevarde Auspach, and the Boulevard du
Nord, with their smart shops, their big cafés, and their hustling crowds,
were bright and gay as my taxi sped on, first to the Métropole, in the
Place de Brouckere.
The name of Kemsley was unknown there. The old concierge glanced at his
book, shook his head, and elevating his shoulders, replied:
"Non, m'sieur."
Thence I went to the Palace, in front of the station, the great new hotel
and one of the finest in Europe, a huge, garish place of gilt and luxury.
But there I met with equal success.
Then I made the tour of the tree-lined outer boulevards, up past the
Botanical Gardens and along the Rue Royale, first to the Hotel de France,
then to the Europe, the Belle Vue, the Carlton in the Avenue Louise, the
new Wiltscher's a few doors away, and a very noted English house from the
Boulevard Waterloo, as well as a dozen other houses in various parts of
the town--the Cecil in the Boulevard du Nord, the Astoria in the Rue
Royale, and even one or two of the cheaper pensions--the Dufour, De
Boek's, and Nettell's, but all to no purpose.
Though I spent the whole of that day making investigations I met with no
success.
Though I administered judicious tips to concierge after concierge, I
could not stir the memory of a single one that within the past ten days
any English gentleman answering the description I gave had stayed at
their establishment.
Until the day faded, and the street lamps were lit, I continued my
search, my taxi-driver having entered into the spirit of my quest, and
from time to time suggesting other and more obscure hotels of which I had
never heard.
But the reply was the same--a regretful "Non, m'sieur."
It had, of course, occurred to me that if the fugitive was hiding from
the Belgian police, who no doubt had received his description from
Scotland Yard, he would most certainly assume a false name.
But I hoped by my minute description to be able to stir the memory of one
or other of the dozens of uniformed hall-porters whom I interviewed. The
majority of such men have a remarkably retentive memory for a face, due
to long cultivation, just as that possessed by one's club hall-porter,
who can at once address any of the thousand or so members by name.
I confess, however, when at five o'clock, I sat in the huge, noisy Café
Métropole over a glass of coffee and a liqueur of cognac, I began to
realise the utter hopelessness of my search.
Digby Kemsley was ever an evasive person--a past master in avoiding
observation, as I well knew. It had always been a hobby of his, he had
told me, of watching persons without himself being seen.
Once he had remarked to me while we had been smoking together in that
well-remembered room wherein the tragedy had taken place:
"I should make a really successful detective, Royle. I've had at certain
periods of my life to efface myself and watch unseen. Now I've brought it
to a fine art. If ever circumstances make it imperative for me to
disappear--which I hope not," he laughed, "well--nobody will ever find
me, I'm positive."
These words of his now came back to me as I sat there pensively smoking,
and wondering if, after all, I had better not return again to London and
remain patient for the additional police evidence which would no doubt be
forthcoming at the adjourned inquest in a week's time.
I thought of the clever cunning exercised by the girl whom I so dearly
loved and in whose innocence I had so confidently believed, of her blank
refusal to satisfy me, and alas! of her avowed determination to shield
the scoundrel who had posed as my friend, and whom the police had
declared to be only a vulgar impostor.
My bitter reflection maddened me.
The jingle and chatter of that noisy café, full to overflowing at that
hour, for rain had commenced to fall outside in the boulevard, irritated
me. From where I sat in the window I could see the crowds of business
people, hurrying through the rain to their trams and trains--the
neat-waisted little modistes, the felt-hatted young clerks, the obese and
over-dressed and whiskered men from their offices on the Bourse, the
hawkers crying the "Soir," and the "Dernière Heure," with strident
voices, the poor girls with rusty shawls and pinched faces, selling
flowers, and the gaping, idling Cookites who seem to eternally pass and
re-pass the Métropole at all hours of the day and the night.
Before my eyes was there presented the whole phantasmagoria of the life
of the thrifty, hard-working Bruxellois, that active, energetic race
which the French have so sarcastically designated "the brave Belgians."
After a lonely dinner in the big, glaring salle-à-manger, at the Grand, I
went forth again upon my quest. That the fugitive had been in Brussels on
the previous day was proved by his telegram, yet evasive as he was, he
might have already left. Yet I hoped he still remained in the capital,
and if so he would, I anticipated, probably go to one of the music-halls
or variety theatres. Therefore I set out upon another round.
I strolled eagerly through the crowded promenade of the chief music-hall
of Brussels--the Pole Nord, the lounge wherein men and women were
promenading, laughing, and drinking, but I saw nothing of the man of whom
I was in search.
I knew that he had shaved off his beard and otherwise altered his
appearance. Therefore my attention upon those about me was compelled to
be most acute.
I surveyed both stalls and boxes, but amid that gay, well-dressed crowd I
could discover nobody the least resembling him.
From the Pole Nord I went to the Scala, where I watched part of an
amusing revue; but my search there was likewise in vain, as it was also
at Olympia, the Capucines, and the Folies Bergères, which I visited in
turn. Then, at midnight, I turned my attention to the big cafés,
wandering from the Bourse along the Boulevard Auspach, entering each café
and glancing around, until at two o'clock in the morning I returned to
the Grand, utterly fagged out by my long vigil of over fifteen hours.
In my room I threw off my overcoat and flung myself upon the bed in utter
despair.
Until I met that man face to face I could not, I saw, learn the truth
concerning my love's friendship with him.
Mrs. Petre had made foul insinuations, and now that my suspicions had
been aroused that Phrida might actually be guilty of that terrible crime
at Harrington Gardens, the whole attitude of my well-beloved seemed to
prove that my suspicions were well grounded.
Indeed, her last unfinished sentence as she had rushed from the room
seemed conclusive proof of the guilty secret by which her mind was now
overburdened.
She had never dreamed that I held the slightest suspicion. It was only
when she knew that the woman Petre had met me and had talked with me that
she saw herself betrayed. Then, when I had spoken frankly, and told her
what the woman had said, she saw that to further conceal her friendship
with Digby was impossible.
Every word she had spoken, every evasive sentence, every protest that she
was compelled to remain silent, recurred to me as I lay there staring
blankly at the painted ceiling.
She had told me that she was unaware of the fugitive's whereabouts, and
yet not half an hour before she had received a telegram from him.
Yes, Phrida--the woman I trusted and loved with such a fierce, passionate
affection, had lied to me deliberately and barefacedly.
But I was on the fellow's track, and cost what it might in time, or in
money, I did not intend to relinquish my search until I came face to face
with him.
That night, as I tossed restlessly in bed, it occurred to me that even
though he might be in Brussels, it was most probable in the circumstances
that he would exercise every precaution in his movements, and knowing
that the police were in search of him, would perhaps not go forth in the
daytime.
Many are the Englishmen living "under a cloud" in Brussels, as well as in
Paris, and there is not a Continental city of note which does not contain
one or more of those who have "gone under" at home.
Seedy and down-at-heel, they lounge about the cafés and hotels frequented
by English travellers. Sometimes they sit apart, pretend to sip their cup
of coffee and read a newspaper, but in reality they are listening with
avidity to their own language being spoken by their own people--poor,
lonely, solitary exiles.
Every man who knows the by-ways of the Continent has met them often in
far-off, obscure towns, where they bury themselves in the lonely
wilderness of a drab back street and live high-up for the sake of fresh
air and that single streak of sunshine which is the sole pleasure of
their broken, blighted lives.
Yes, the more I reflected, the more apparent did it become that if the
man whom Inspector Edwards had declared to be a gross impostor was still
in the Belgian capital, he would most probably be in safe concealment in
one or other of the cheaper suburbs.
But how could I trace him?
To go to the bureau of police and make a statement would only defeat my
own ends.
No; if I intended to learn the truth I must act upon my own initiative.
Official interference would only thwart my own endeavours.
I knew Digby Kemsley. He was as shrewd and cunning as any of the famous
detectives, whether in real life or in fiction. Therefore, to be a match
for him, I would, I already realised, be compelled to fight him with his
own weapons.
I did not intend that he should escape me before he told me, with his own
lips, the secret of my well-beloved.
CHAPTER XVI.
REVEALS ANOTHER ENIGMA.
"The identity of the victim has not yet been established, sir."
These words were spoken to the coroner by Inspector Edwards at the
adjourned inquest held on January the twenty-second.
Few people were in court, for, until the present, the public had had no
inkling as to what had occurred on that fatal night in Harrington
Gardens. The first inquest had not been "covered" by any reporter, as the
police had exercised considerable ingenuity in keeping the affair a
secret.
But now, at the adjourned inquiry, secrecy was no longer possible, and
the three reporters present were full of inquisitiveness regarding the
evidence given on the previous occasion, and listened with attention
while it was being read over.
Inspector Edwards, however, had dealt with them in his usually genial
manner, and by the exercise of considerable diplomacy had succeeded in
allaying their suspicions that there was any really good newspaper
"story" in connection with it.
The medical witnesses were recalled, but neither had anything to add to
the depositions they had already made. The deceased had been fatally
stabbed by a very keen knife with a blade of peculiar shape. That was
all.
The unknown had been buried, and all that remained in evidence was a
bundle of blood-stained clothing, some articles of jewellery, a pair of
boots, hat, coat, gloves, and a green leather vanity-bag.
"Endeavours had been made, sir, to trace some of the articles worn by the
deceased, and also to establish the laundry marks on the underclothing,"
the inspector went on, "but, unfortunately, the marks have been
pronounced by experts to be foreign ones, and the whole of the young
lady's clothes appear to have been made abroad--in France or Belgium, it
is thought."
"The laundry marks are foreign, eh?" remarked the coroner, peering at the
witness through his pince-nez, and poising his pen in his hand. "Are you
endeavouring to make inquiry abroad concerning them?"
"Every inquiry is being made, sir, in a dozen cities on the continent. In
fact, in all the capitals."
"And the description of the deceased has been circulated?"
"Yes, sir
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