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The Four Faces: A Mystery

by William Le Queux · English · Gutenberg #9795 · 527,813 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Four Faces: A Mystery

Author: William Le Queux


        
Release date: January 1, 2006 [eBook #9795]
                Most recently updated: August 6, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR FACES: A MYSTERY ***




                             THE FOUR FACES


                               A MYSTERY

                                  BY

                            WILLIAM LE QUEUX


                               AUTHOR OF
                  "THE DEATH DOCTOR," "FATAL THIRTEEN"
                         "LYING LIPS," ETC. ETC.



CONTENTS


CHAPTER
I.      CURIOSITY IS AROUSED
II.     THE ANGEL FACES
III.    A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
IV.     IN FULL CRY
V.      HUGESSON GASTRELL AT HOME
VI.     THE HOUSE IN GRAFTON STREET
VII.    OSBORNE'S STORY
VIII.   MORE SUSPICIONS
IX.     THE SNARE
X.      NARRATES A CONFESSION
XI.     CONCERNS MRS. STAPLETON
XII.    THE BROAD HIGHWAY
XIII.   THE BARON
XIV.    IN THE MISTS
XV.     THE MODERN VICE
XVI.    SECRETS OF DUSKY FOWL
XVII.   IS SUSPICIOUS
XVIII.  CONTAINS ANOTHER SURPRISE
XIX.    "IN THE PAPERS"
XX.     PRESTON AGAIN
XXI.    A CHANNEL MYSTERY
XXII.   THE THIN-FACED STRANGER
XXIII.  RELATES A QUEER ADVENTURE
XXIV.   IN STRANGE COMPANY
XXV.    THE GLITTERING UNDERWORLD
XXVI.   "THAT WOMAN!"
XXVII.  THE FOUR FACES
XXVIII. THE FACES UNMASKED
        CONCLUSION




THE FOUR FACES


CHAPTER I


CURIOSITY IS AROUSED

"I confess I'd like to know somethin' more about him."

"Where did you run across him first?"

"I didn't run across him; he ran across me, and in rather a curious way.
We live in Linden Gardens now, you know. Several of the houses there are
almost exactly alike, and about a month ago, at a dinner party we were
givin', a young man was shown in. His name was unknown to me, so I
supposed that he must be some friend of my wife's. Then I saw that he
was a stranger to her too, and then all at once he became very confused,
inquired if he were in Sir Harry Dawson's house—Sir Harry lives in the
house next to ours—and, findin' he was not, apologized profusely for
his mistake, and left hurriedly."

"Anyone might make a mistake of that kind in some London houses," the
second speaker said. "What is he like? Is he a gentleman?"

"Oh, quite."

"And for how long have you leased him your house in Cumberland Place?"

"Seven years, with option of renewal."

"And you mean to say you know nothing about him?"

"I won't say 'nothin',' but I know comparatively little about him.
Houston and Prince, the house agents, assure me they've made inquiries,
and that he is a rich young man whose uncle amassed a large fortune in
Tasmania—I didn't know fortunes were to be made in Tasmania, did you?
The uncle died six months ago, Houston and Prince tell me, and Hugesson
Gastrell has inherited everything he left. They say that they have
ascertained that Gastrell's parents died when he was quite a child, and
that this uncle who has died has been his guardian ever since."

"That sounds right enough. What more do you want to know?"

"It somehow seems to me very strange that I should have come to know
this man, Gastrell, without introduction of any kind—even have become
intimate with him. On the day after he had come to my house by accident,
he called to fetch a pair of gloves which, in his confusion on the
previous evenin', he had left in the hall. He asked if he might see me,
and then he again apologized for the mistake he had made the night
before. We stayed talkin' for, I suppose, fully half an hour—he's an
excellent talker, and exceedingly well-informed—and incidentally he
mentioned that he was lookin' for a house. From his description of what
he wanted it at once struck me that my Cumberland Place house would be
the very thing for him—I simply can't afford to live there now, as you
know, and for months I have been tryin' to let it. I told him about it,
and he asked if he might see it, and—well, the thing's done; he has it
now, as I say, on a seven years' lease."

"Then why worry?"

"I am not worryin'—I never worry—the most foolish thing any man can do
is to worry. All I say is—I should like to know somethin' more about
the feller. He may be quite all right—I have not the least reason for
supposin' he isn't—but my wife has taken a strong dislike to him. She
says she mistrusts him. She has said so from the beginnin'. After he had
asked to see me that mornin', the mornin' he called for his gloves, and
we had talked about the house, I invited him to lunch and introduced him
to my wife. Since then he has dined with us several times, and—well, my
wife is most insistent about it—she declares she is sure he isn't what
he seems to be, and she wanted me not to let him the house."

"Women have wonderful intuition in reading characters."

"I know they have, and that's why I feel—well, why I feel just the
least bit uneasy. What has made me feel so to-day is that I have just
heard from Sir Harry Dawson, who is on the Riviera, and he says that he
doesn't know Hugesson Gastrell, has never heard of him. There, read
his letter."

Seated in my club on a dull December afternoon, that was part of a
conversation I overheard, which greatly interested me. It interested me
because only a short time before I had, while staying in Geneva, become
acquainted at the hotel with a man named Gastrell, and I wondered if he
could be the same. From the remarks I had just heard I suspected that he
must be, for the young man in Geneva had also been an individual of
considerable personality, and a good conversationalist.

If I had been personally acquainted with either of the two speakers, who
still stood with their backs to the fire and their hands under their
coat-tails, talking now about some wonderful run with the Pytchley, I
should have told him I believed I had met the individual they had just
been discussing; but at Brooks's it is not usual for members to talk to
other members unintroduced. Therefore I remained sprawling in the big
arm-chair, where I had been pretending to read a newspaper, hoping that
something more would be said about Gastrell. Presently my patience
was rewarded.

"By the way, this feller Gastrell who's taken my house tells me he's
fond of huntin'," the first speaker—whom I knew to be Lord Easterton, a
man said to have spent three small fortunes in trying to make a big
one—remarked. "Said somethin' about huntin' with the Belvoir or the
Quorn. Shouldn't be surprised if he got put up for this club later."

"Should you propose him if he asked you?"

"Certainly, provided I found out all about him. He's a gentleman
although he is an Australian—he told Houston and Prince he was born and
educated in Melbourne, and went to his uncle in Tasmania immediately he
left school; but he hasn't a scrap of that ugly Australian accent; in
fact, he talks just like you or me or anybody else, and would pass for
an Englishman anywhere."

Without a doubt that must be the man I had met, I reflected as the two
speakers presently sauntered out of the room, talking again of hunting,
one of the principal topics of conversation in Brooks's. I, Michael
Berrington, am a man of leisure, an idler I am ashamed to say, my
parents having brought me up to be what is commonly and often so
erroneously termed "a gentleman," and left me, when they died, heir to a
cosy little property in Northamptonshire, and with some L80,000 safely
invested. As a result I spend many months of the year in travel, for I
am a bachelor with no ties of any kind, and the more I travel and the
more my mind expands, the more cosmopolitan I become and the more
inclined I feel to kick against silly conventions such as this one at
Brooks's which prevented my addressing Lord Easterton or his friend—men
I see in the club every day I am there, and who know me quite well by
sight, though we only stare stonily at each other—and asking more
about Gastrell.

So Lady Easterton had taken an instinctive dislike to this young man,
Hugesson Gastrell, and openly told her husband that she mistrusted him.
Now, that was curious, I reflected, for I had spoken to him several
times while in Geneva, and though his personality had appealed to
me, yet—

Well, there was something about him that puzzled me, something—I cannot
define what it was, for it was more like a feeling or sensation which
came over me while I was with him—a feeling that he was not what he
appeared to be, and that I saw, so to speak, only his outer surface.

"Hullo, Michael!"

The greeting cut my train of thought, and, screwing myself round in the
big arm-chair, I looked up.

"Why, Jack!" I exclaimed, "I had no idea you were in England. I thought
you were bagging rhinoceroses and things in Nigeria or somewhere."

"So I have been. Got back yesterday. Sorry I am back, to tell you the
truth," and he glanced significantly towards the window. A fine, wetting
drizzle was falling; dozens of umbrellas passed to and fro outside; the
street lamps were lit, though it was barely three o'clock, and in the
room that we were in the electric lights were switched on. The sky was
the colour of street mud, through which the sun, a huge, blood-red disc,
strove to pierce the depressing murk of London's winter atmosphere,
thereby creating a lurid and dismal effect.

Jack Osborne is a man I rather like, in spite of the fact that his sole
aim in life is to kill things. When he isn't shooting "hippos" and
"rhinos" and bears and lions in out-of-the-way parts of the world, he is
usually plastering pheasants in the home covers, or tramping the fields
and moors where partridges and grouse abound.

"Had a good time?" I asked some moments later.

"Ripping," he answered, "quite ripping," and he went on to tell me the
number of beasts he had slain, particulars about them and the way he had
outwitted them. I managed to listen for ten minutes or so without
yawning, and then suddenly he remarked:

"I met a man on board ship, on the way home, who said he knew
you—feller named Gastrell. Said he met you in Geneva, and liked you
like anything. Struck me as rather a rum sort—what? Couldn't quite make
him out. Who is he and what is he? What's he do?"

"I know as little about him as you do," I answered. "I know him only
slightly—we were staying at the same hotel in Geneva. I heard Lord
Easterton, who was in here half an hour ago, saying he had let his house
in Cumberland Place to a man named Gastrell—Hugesson Gastrell. I wonder
if it is the man I met in Geneva and that you say you met on board ship.
When did you land?"

"Yesterday, at Southampton. Came by the _Masonic_ from Capetown."

"And where did Gastrell come from?"

"Capetown too. I didn't notice him until we were near the end of the
voyage. He must have remained below a good deal, I think."

I paused, thinking.

"In that case," I said, "the Gastrell who has leased Easterton's house
can't be the man you and I have met, because, from what Easterton said,
he saw his man quite recently. Ah, here is Lord Easterton," I added, as
the door opened and he re-entered. "You know him, don't you?"

"Quite well," Jack Osborne answered, "Don't you? Come, I'll introduce
you, and then we'll clear this thing up."

It was not until Osborne and Lord Easterton had talked for some time
about shooting in general, and about "hippo" and "rhino" and "'gator"
killing in particular, and I had been forced to listen to a repetition
of incidents to do with the sport that Jack Osborne had obtained in
Nigeria and elsewhere, that Jack presently said:

"Berrington tells me, Easterton, he heard you say that you have let your
house to a man named Gastrell, and we were wondering if he is the
Gastrell we both know—a tall man of twenty-eight or so, with dark hair
and very good-looking, queer kind of eyes—what?"

"Oh, so you know him?" Easterton exclaimed. "That's good. I want to find
out who he is, where he comes from, in fact all about him. I have a
reason for wanting to know."

"He came from Capetown with me—landed at Southampton yesterday,"
Osborne said quickly.

"Capetown? Arrived yesterday? Oh, then yours must be a different man.
Tell me what he is like."

Osborne gave a detailed description.

"And at the side of his chin," he ended, "he's got a little scar, sort
of scar you see on German students' faces, only quite small—doesn't
disfigure him a bit."

"But this is extraordinary," Lord Easterton exclaimed. "You have
described my man to the letter—even to the scar. Can they be twins?
Even twins, though, wouldn't have the same scar, the result probably of
some accident. You say your man landed only yesterday?"

"Yes, we came off the ship together."

"Then he was on board on—let me think—ten days or so ago?"

"Oh, yes."

"It's most singular, this apparent likeness between the two men."

"It is—if they really are alike. When shall you see your man again?"
Osborne inquired.

"I have this moment had a letter from him," Easterton answered. "He asks
me to lunch with him at the Cafe Royal to-morrow. Look here, I'll tell
you what I'll do—I'll say I'm engaged or somethin', and ask him to dine
here one evenin'. Then if you will both give me the pleasure of your
company, we shall at once find out if your Gastrell and mine are the
same—they can't be the same, of course, as your man was in the middle
of the ocean on the day mine was here in London; I mean we'll find out
if he has a twin brother."

"Have you met his wife?" Jack Osborne inquired carelessly, as he lit a
long cigar.

"Phew! Yes. I should say so. One of the most gloriously beautiful women
I have ever seen in my life. She was on board with him, and I believe
everybody on the ship was head over ears in love with her. I know
I was."

"Ah, that settles it," Easterton said. "My man is a bachelor."

Osborne smiled in a curious way, and blew a cloud of smoke towards the
ceiling without saying anything.

"Why, what is it?" Easterton asked, noticing the smile.

"Oh, nothing. A little thought that crept into my brain, that's all."

"Tell us what your Gastrell's wife is like," Easterton pursued.

"Like? What is she not like! Think of all the most lovely girls and
women you have ever set eyes on, and roll them into one, and still you
won't get the equal of Jasmine Gastrell. What is she like? By heaven,
you might as well ask me to describe the taste of nectar!"

"Dark or fair?"

"Both."

"Oh, nonsense."

"It isn't nonsense, Easterton. She has the strangest eyes—they are
really green, I suppose, but they look quite blue in some lights, and in
other lights deep purple. They are the most extraordinary eyes I have
ever seen; a woman with eyes like that must have tremendous intelligence
and quite exceptional personality. It's useless for me to try to
describe the rest of her face; it's too lovely for anything."

"And her hair?" Easterton asked. "Has she dark hair or fair?"

"Both."

"Ah, Jack, stop rottin'," Easterton exclaimed, laughing. "What is the
colour of the hair of this woman who has so set your heart on end?"

"It may be auburn; it may be chestnut-brown; it may be red for all I
know, but I am hanged if I can say for certain which it is, or if it's
only one colour or all three shades. But whatever it is it's perfectly
lovely hair, and she has any amount of it. I wouldn't mind betting that
when she lets it down it falls quite to her feet and hangs all round her
like a cloak."

"I should like to meet this goddess, Jack," Easterton said, his
curiosity aroused. "Though you are so wedded to hippos, and rhinos, and
'gators and things, you don't seem entirely to have lost your sense of
appreciation of 'woman beautiful.' Where are she and her
husband staying?"

"I've not the least idea."

"Didn't they tell you their plans?"

"They said nothing whatever about themselves, though I tried once or
twice to draw them out. In that respect they were extraordinarily
reserved. In every other way they were delightful—especially Mrs.
Gastrell, though I was greatly attracted by Gastrell too, when I came to
know him towards the end of the voyage."




CHAPTER II


THE ANGEL FACES

Hugesson Gastrell had accepted Lord Easterton's invitation to dine at
the club, and the three men were seated near the fire as I entered,
Easterton and Jack Osborne on one of the large settees, their visitor
facing them in an arm-chair, with his back to me. I went towards them
across the big room, apologizing for my unpunctuality, for I was nearly
ten minutes late. To my surprise they remained silent; even Easterton
did not rise, or greet me in any way. He looked strangely serious, and
so did Jack, as a rule the cheeriest of mortals.

"I am dreadfully sorry for being so late," I exclaimed, thinking that my
unpunctuality must have given them offence. I was about to invent some
elaborate excuse to account for my "delay," when the man seated with his
back to me suddenly rose, and, turning abruptly, faced me.

I recognized him at once. It was Gastrell, whom I had met at the Hotel
Metropol in Geneva. As he stood there before me, with his back half
turned to the light of the big bay window, there could be no mistaking
him. Again I was struck by his remarkable appearance—the determined,
clean-cut features, the straight, short nose, the broad forehead, the
square-shaped chin denoting rigid strength of purpose. Once more I
noticed the cleft in his chin—it was quite deep. His thick hair was
dark, with a slight kink in it behind the ears. But perhaps the
strangest, most arresting thing about Gastrell's face was his
eyes—daring eyes of a bright, light blue, such as one sees in some
Canadians, the bold, almost hard eyes of a man who is accustomed to
gazing across far distances of sunlit snow, who habitually looks up into
vast, pale blue skies—one might have imagined that his eyes had caught
their shade. He wore upon his watch-chain a small gold medallion, a
trinket which had attracted my attention before. It was about the size
of a sovereign, and embossed upon it were several heads of chubby
cupids—four sweet little faces.

At first glance at him a woman might have said mentally, "What nice
eyes!" At the second, she would probably have noticed a strange
thing—the eyes were quite opaque; they seemed to stare rather than look
at you, there was no depth whatever in them. Certainly there was no
guessing at Gastrell's character from his eyes—you could take it or
leave it, as you pleased, for the eyes gave you no help. The glance was
perfectly direct, bright and piercing, but there could be absolutely no
telling if the man when speaking were lying to you or not. The hard,
blue eyes never changed, never deepened, nor was there any emotion
in them.

To sum up, the effect the man's personality produced was that of an
extraordinarily strong character carving its way undaunted through every
obstacle to its purpose; but whether the trend of that character were
likely to lean to the side of truth and goodness, or to that of lying
and villainy, there was no guessing.

All these points I observed again—I say "again," for they had struck me
forcibly the first time I had met him in Geneva—as he stood there
facing me, his gaze riveted on mine. We must have stayed thus staring at
each other for several moments before anybody spoke. Then it was Lord
Easterton who broke the silence.

"Well?" he asked.

I glanced at him quickly, uncertain which of us he had addressed. After
some instants' pause he repeated:

"Well?"

"Are you speaking to me?" I asked quickly.

"Of course," he replied, almost sharply. "You don't seem to know each
other after all."

"Oh, but yes," I exclaimed, and I turned quickly to Gastrell,
instinctively extending my hand to him as I did so. "We met in Geneva."

He still stood looking at me, motionless. Then gradually an expression,
partly of surprise, partly of amusement, crept into his eyes.

"You mistake me for someone else, I am afraid," he said, and his voice
was the voice of the man I had met in Geneva—that I would have sworn to
in any court of law, "It is rather remarkable," he went on, his eyes
still set on mine, "that Mr. Osborne, to whom Lord Easterton has just
introduced me, also thought he and I had met before."

"But I am certain I did meet you," Osborne exclaimed in a curious tone,
from where he sat. "I am quite positive we were together on board the
_Masonic_, unless you have a twin brother, and even then—"

He stopped, gazing literally open-mouthed at Hugesson Gastrell, while I,
standing staring at the man, wondered if this were some curious dream
from which I should presently awaken, for there could be no two
questions about it—the man before me was the Gastrell I had met in
Geneva and conversed with on one or two occasions for quite a long time.
Beside, he wore the little medallion of the Four Faces.

Easterton looked ill at ease; so did Osborne; and certainly I felt
considerably perturbed. It was unnatural, uncanny, this resemblance. And
the resemblance as well as the name must, it would seem, be shared by
three men at least. For here was Lord Easterton's friend, Hugesson
Gastrell, whom Easterton had told us he had met frequently in London
during the past month; here was Jack Osborne claiming to be acquainted
with a man named Gastrell, whom he had met on his way home from Africa,
and who, as he put it to us afterwards, was "the dead facsimile" of
Easterton's guest; and here was I with a distinct recollection of a man
called Gastrell who—well, the more I stared at Easterton's guest the
more mystified I felt at this Hugesson Gastrell's declaring that he was
not my Geneva companion; indeed that we had never met before, and that
he had never been in Geneva.

The dinner was not a great success. Gastrell talked at considerable
length on all sorts of subjects, talked, too, in a most interesting and
sometimes very amusing way; yet all the time the thought that was in
Osborne's mind was in my mind also—it was impossible, he was thinking,
that this man seated at dinner with us could be other than the
individual he had met on board ship; it was impossible, I was thinking,
that this man seated at dinner with us could be other than the
individual I had met in Geneva.

Easterton, a great talker in the club, was particularly silent. He too
was puzzled; worse than that—he felt, I could see, anxious and
uncomfortable. He had let his house to this man—the lease was already
signed—and now his tenant seemed to be, in some sense, a man
of mystery.

We sat in the big room with the bay window, after dinner, until about
half-past ten, when Gastrell said he must be going. During the whole
time he had been with us he had kept us entertained by his interesting
conversation, full of quaint reminiscences, and touched with flashes
of humour.

"I hope we shall see a great deal of each other when I am settled in
Cumberland Place," he said, as he prepared to leave. The remark, though
spoken to Easterton, had been addressed to us all, and we made some
conventional reply in acknowledgment.

"And if, later, I decide to join this club," he said presently, "you
won't mind proposing me, will you, Easterton?"

"I? Er—oh, of course, not in the least!" Easterton answered awkwardly,
taken off his guard. "But it will take you a good time to get in, you
know," he added as an afterthought, hopeful that the prospect of delay
might cause Gastrell to change his mind. "Two, even three years, some
men have to wait."

"That won't matter," Gastrell said carelessly, as the hall porter helped
him on with his coat. "I can join some other club meanwhile, though I
draw the line at pot-houses. Well, good night to you all, and you must
all come to my house-warming—a sort of reception I'm going to give. I
ought to be settled into the house in a month. And I hope," he added
lightly, addressing Jack Osborne and myself, "you won't run across any
more of my 'doubles.' I don't like the thought of being mistaken for
other men!"

The door of the taxi shut with a bang. In the hall, where the tape
machines were busy, Osborne and I stood looking at each other
thoughtfully. Presently Osborne spoke.

"What do you make of it?" he asked abruptly. "I am as certain that is
the fellow who was with me on board ship as I am that I am
standing here."

"And I am equally positive," I answered, "he's the man I met in Geneva.
It's impossible there could be two individuals so absolutely
identical—I tell you it's not possible."

Osborne paused for some moments, thinking.

"Berrington," he said suddenly.

"Yes? What?" I asked, taken aback at his change of tone.

He took a step forward and laid his hand upon my shoulder.

"Berrington," he repeated—and in his eyes there was a singular
expression—"I have an idea."

He turned to a page who was standing near.

"Boy," he said sharply, "what address did that gentleman who has just
gone tell you to give to his driver?"

"He told the driver himself, sir," the boy answered, "but I heard the
address he gave, sir."

"What was it?"

"Three forty, Maresfield Gardens, sir. It's near Swiss Cottage—up
Fitzjohn's Avenue on the right."

Osborne turned to me quickly.

"Come into this room," he said. "There is something I want to ask you.
The place is empty, and we shall not be disturbed."

When he had closed the door, and glanced about him to make sure that we
were alone, he said in a low voice:

"Look here, Mike, I tell you again, I have an idea: I wonder if you will
fall in with it. I have watched that fellow Gastrell pretty closely all
the evening; I am rather a good judge of men, you know, and I believe
him to be an impostor of some kind—I can't say just yet of what kind.
Anyway, he is the man I met on the _Masonic_; he can deny it as much as
he likes—he is. Either he is impersonating some other man, or some
other man is impersonating him. Now listen. I am going to that address
in Maresfield Gardens that he gave to his taxi-driver. I am going to
find out if he lives there, or what he is doing there. What I want to
know is—Will you come with me?"

"Good heavens, Jack!" I exclaimed, "what an extraordinary thing to do.
But what will you say when you get there? Supposing he does live
there—or, for that matter, supposing he doesn't—what reason will you
give for calling at the house?"

"Oh, I'll invent some reason quick enough, but I want someone to be with
me. Will you come? Will you or won't you?"

I glanced up at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes to eleven.

"Do you mean now? Do you intend to go at this time of the night?"

"I intend to go at once—as fast as a taxi will take me there," he
answered.

I paused, undecided. It seemed such a strange thing to do, under the
circumstances; but then, as I knew, Jack Osborne had always been fond of
doing strange things. Though a member of Brooks's, he was unconventional
in the extreme.

"Yes, I will," I said, the originality of the idea suddenly appealing to
me. In point of fact I, too, mistrusted this man Gastrell. Though he had
looked me so straight in the eyes when, two hours before, he had calmly
assured me that I was mistaken in believing him to be "his namesake in
Geneva," as he put it; still, as I say, I felt convinced he was the
same man.

"Good," Osborne answered in a tone of satisfaction. "Come, we will start
at once."

A strange feeling of repressed excitement obsessed me as our taxi passed
up Bond Street, turned into Oxford Street, then to the right into
Orchard Street, and sped thence by way of Baker Street past Lord's
cricket ground and up the Finchley Road. What would happen when we
reached Maresfield Gardens? Would the door be opened by a stolid footman
or by some frigid maidservant who would coldly inform us that "Mr.
Gastrell was not at home"; or should we be shown in, and, if we were
shown in, what excuse would Jack Osborne make for calling so late at
night? I cannot say that I felt in the least anxious, however, for
Osborne is a man who has knocked about the world and seen many queer
sides of life, and who never, under any circumstances, is at a loss
how to act.

I glanced at my watch as our taxi turned into Maresfield Gardens. It was
ten minutes past eleven. At the house indicated half-way up the hill the
taxi suddenly pulled up.

Osborne got out and pressed the electric bell-push. As I looked up at
the windows, I noticed that nowhere was any light visible. Nor was there
a light in the ground-floor windows.

"I believe everybody is in bed," I said to him, when the bell remained
unanswered. Without replying, he pressed the push again, and kept his
finger on it.

Still no one came.

"We'd better call to-morrow," I suggested, when he had rung a third time
with the same result.

The words had hardly left my lips, when we heard the door-chain rattle.
Then the bolts were pulled back, and a moment later the door was
carefully drawn open to the length of its chain.

Inside all was darkness, nor was anybody visible.

"What do you want?" a woman's voice inquired.

The voice had a most pleasant _timbre_; also the speaker was obviously a
lady. She did not sound in the least alarmed, but there was a note of
surprise in the tone.

"Has Mr. Gastrell come home yet?" Osborne asked.

"Not yet. Do you want to see him?"

"Yes. He dined at Brooks's Club this evening with Lord Easterton. Soon
after he had left, a purse was found, and, as nobody in the club claimed
it, I concluded that it must be his, so I have brought it back."

"That is really very good of you, Mr. Osborne," the hidden speaker
answered. "If you will wait a moment I will let you in. Are you alone?"

"No, I have a friend with me. But who are you? How do you know my name?"

There was no answer. The door was shut quietly. Then we heard the sound
of the chain being removed.

By the time Jack Osborne had paid our driver, and dismissed the taxi,
the door had been opened sufficiently wide to admit us. We entered, and
at once the door was shut.

We were now in inky blackness.

"Won't you switch on the light?" Osborne asked, when a minute or so had
elapsed, and we remained in total darkness.

Nobody answered, and we waited, wondering. Fully another minute passed,
and still we stood there.

I felt Osborne touch me. Then, coming close to me, he whispered in my
ear:

"Strike a match, Mike; I haven't one."

I felt in my pockets. I had not one either. I was about to tell him so
when something clicked behind us, and the hall was flooded with light.

Never before had I beheld, and I doubt if I shall ever behold again, a
woman as lovely as the tall, graceful being upon whom our eyes rested at
that instant. In height quite five foot nine, as she stood there beneath
the glow of the electrolier in the luxurious hall, in her dinner dress,
the snowy slope of the shoulders and the deep, curved breast, strong,
yet all so softly, delicately rounded, gleamed like rosy alabaster in
the reflection from the red-shaded light above her.

Our eyes wandered from exquisite figure to exquisite face—and there was
no sense of disappointment. For the face was as nearly perfect as a
woman's may be upon this earth of imperfections. The uplift of the brow,
the curve of the cheek to the rounded chin, the noble sweep of delicate,
dark eyebrows were extraordinarily beautiful. Her hair was "a net for
the sunlight," its colour that of a new chestnut in the spring when the
sun shines hotly upon it, making it glow and shimmer and glisten with
red and yellow and deepest browns. Now it was drawn about her head in
shining twists, and across the front and rather low down on the brow was
a slim and delicate wreath of roses and foliage in very small diamonds
beautifully set in platinum. The gleam of the diamonds against the
red-brown of the wonderful hair was an effect impossible to
describe—yet one felt that the hair would have been the same miracle
without it.

"Mrs. Gastrell! Why, I didn't recognize your voice," I had heard Osborne
exclaim in a tone of amazement just after the light had been turned on.
but my attention had been so centred upon the Vision standing there
before us that I had hardly noticed the remark, or the emphasis with
which it was uttered. I suppose half a minute must have passed before
anybody spoke again, and then it was the woman who broke the silence.

"Will you show me the purse?" she asked, holding out her hand for it and
addressing Osborne.

On the instant he produced his own and gave it to her. She glanced at
it, then handed it back.

"It is not his," she said quietly. Her gaze rested steadily upon
Osborne's face for some moments, then she said:

"How exceedingly kind of you to come all this way, and in the middle of
the night, just to find out if a purse picked up at your club happens to
belong to the guest of a friend of yours."

In her low, soft voice there was a touch of irony, almost of mockery.
Looking at her now, I felt puzzled. Was she what she appeared to be, or
was this amazing beauty of hers a cloak, a weapon if you will, perhaps
the most dangerous weapon of a clever, scheming woman? Easterton had
told us that Gastrell was a bachelor. Gastrell had declared that he had
never before met either Jack Osborne or myself. Yet here at the address
that Gastrell had given to the taxi-driver was the very woman the man
calling himself Gastrell, with whom Osborne had returned from Africa,
had passed off as his wife.

"My husband isn't in at present," she said calmly, a moment later, "but
I expect him back at any minute. Won't you come in and wait for him?"

Before either of us could answer she had walked across the hall,
unlocked and opened a door, and switched on the light in the room.

Mechanically we followed her. As we entered, a strange, heavy perfume of
some subtle Eastern scent struck my nostrils—I had noticed it in the
hall, but in this room it was pungent, oppressive, even overpowering.
The apartment, I noticed, was luxuriously furnished. What chiefly
attracted my attention, however, were the pictures on the walls.
Beautifully executed, the subjects were, to say the least, peculiar. The
fire in the grate still burned brightly. Upon a table were two syphons
in silver stands, also decanters containing spirits, and several
tumblers. Some of the tumblers had been used. As I sank, some moments
later, into an easy chair, I felt that its leather-covered arms were
warm, as if someone had just vacated it.

And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had
arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house,
and the front door had been chained and bolted.

"Make yourselves quite at home," our beautiful hostess said, and, as she
spoke, she placed a box of cigars, newly opened, upon the table at my
elbow. "I am sorry," she added, "that I must leave you now."

There was a curious expression in her eyes as she smiled down at us, an
expression that later I came to know too well. Then, turning, she swept
gracefully out of the room, closing the door behind her.

I looked across at Osborne. For some moments neither of us spoke. The
mysterious house was still as death.

"Well, Jack," I said lightly, though somehow I felt uneasy, "what do you
make of it, old man?"

"It is just as I thought," he answered, taking a cigar out of the box
and beginning to trim it.

"How do you mean—'just as you thought'?" I asked, puzzled.

"Gastrell is an impostor, and—and that isn't his wife."

He did not speak again for some moments, being busily occupied in
lighting his long cigar. Presently he leaned back, then blew a great
cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.

Suddenly we heard a click, like the wooden lid of a box suddenly shut.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed suddenly, "what's that?"

"What's what?"

"Why! Look!" he gasped.

His gaze was set upon something in the shadow of a small table in a
corner of the room—something on the floor. In silence, now, we both
stood staring at it, for Osborne had risen suddenly. Slowly it moved. It
was gradually gliding along the floor, with a sound like paper being
pushed along a carpet. Whence it came, where it began and where it
ended, we could not see, for the shadow it was in was very deep. Nor was
its colour in the least discernible.

All we could make out was that some long, sinuous, apparently endless
Thing was passing along the room, close to the wall farthest from us,
coming from under the sofa and disappearing beneath the table.

All at once Osborne sprang towards me with an exclamation of alarm, and
I felt his grip tighten upon my arm.

"Good God!" he cried.

An instant later a broad, flat head slowly reared itself from beneath
the red table-cover which hung down almost to the floor, rose higher and
higher until the black, beady, merciless eyes were set upon mine, and in
that brief instant of supreme suspense my attention became riveted on
the strange, slate-grey mark between and just behind the reptile's cruel
eyes. Then, as its head suddenly shot back, Osborne dashed towards
the door.

Once, twice, three times he pulled frantically at the handle with all
his force.

"Good God! Berrington," he cried, his face blanched to the lips, "we're
locked in!"

Almost as he spoke, the serpent with head extended swept forward towards
us, along the floor.

I held my breath. Escape from its venomous fangs was impossible.

We had been trapped!




CHAPTER III


A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY

With a shriek of alarm I leapt to the further side of the table which
stood in the middle of the room, and at that moment hurried footsteps
became audible.

Our wild shouts for help had evidently been heard, for someone was
hurrying down the bare oak stairs into the hall.

"Hang this confounded lock—it catches!" we heard a voice exclaim as the
handle turned. Then an instant later the door was flung open, and
Gastrell stood before us.

"I am dreadfully sorry, you fellows," he said apologetically, "that you
should have been alarmed in this way, because I can assure you that my
tame cobra, 'Maharaja,' is quite harmless—look at him now," and we saw
that the horrid reptile had swung round the instant its master had
entered, and was sliding towards his feet. "He's a pet of mine—I
brought him home with me, and he follows me like a dog—no, you needn't
be in the least nervous," he added quickly, seeing that I instinctively
edged away as the reptile passed. "I'm awfully sorry to have kept you
waiting. I must apologize, too, for that confounded door—I myself got
locked in here the other day. My wife told you I was out, but I was not.
I came in by the side door, and she didn't know I was back, because I
went straight upstairs. If you'll wait a moment I'll take our friend
'Maharaja' out."

He left the room, and the snake slid rapidly along the floor after him,
almost, as he had said, like a dog following his steps.

"A nice cheerful pet to keep," I remarked, annoyed at my experience; but
at that moment the mysterious Gastrell bustled in alone.

"So sorry," he said, and, after thanking us for coming out so far to
ascertain if he had lost his purse, he pulled up a chair, seated himself
between us, lit a big cigar, and helped us to whiskey from a
silver tantalus.

"You had better add the soda yourselves," he said. "And now there is
something I want to say to you both. You must have been surprised at my
declaring so emphatically this evening that I had not met either of you
before—eh?"

"I can answer for myself," Osborne exclaimed quickly. "Are you going to
admit, after all, that you were on the _Masonic_?"

"Of course! Who else could it have been? Any more," he added, addressing
me, than it could have been someone other than me whom you met
in Geneva?"

"Then why did you deny it?" Osborne said rather irritably, looking hard
at him with an expression of disapproval and mistrust, while my eyes
wandered to that little gold medallion upon his chain.

"Because I had to,—that is, it was expedient that I should," was his
reply. "I have a reason for not wanting it to be generally known that I
am married,—least of all did I want Easterton, whose house I have just
leased, to know me to be a married man; indeed, I told him some weeks
ago that I was a bachelor—I had to, for reasons which I can't reveal
at present."

He stopped speaking, and we watched him narrowly.

"Still," I remarked, "I don't see how you could have been on board ship
in the middle of the ocean, and at the same time in London."

"I didn't say I was. I wasn't. I was in London a fortnight ago, and
spent some hours with Lord Easterton. On the same day I sailed for
Madeira, where I joined my wife on the homeward-bound _Masonic_. Think,
Mr. Osborne," he ended, his curious gaze set on my companion's face,
"think when we first met on board. It was not before the ship reached
Madeira, surely."

Jack Osborne reflected.

"By Jove, no!" he suddenly exclaimed. "How odd I should all along have
thought you had embarked at Capetown with the rest of us. But Mrs.
Gastrell came from the Cape, surely?"

"She did, and the name 'Mr. Gastrell' was also in the passenger list,
because a cousin of mine should have been on board. At the eleventh hour
he was prevented from sailing, and it was upon receipt of a cable from
him that I decided to catch the next boat to the Canaries and there
meet my wife."

I admit that, as he paused, I felt rather "small"; and I believe Osborne
felt the same. We had driven from the club right out here to Swiss
Cottage, and on the way we had conjured up in our imaginations all sorts
of mysterious happenings, even possible intrigues; and now the whole
affair proved to have been "quite ordinary," with a few commonplace
incidents to relieve its monotony—notably the incident of the
giant cobra.

True, there was the mystery of the locked door. But then, had it really
been locked? I had not myself tried to open it, and now as I thought
about it, it seemed to me quite possible that Jack Osborne might, in the
excitement of the moment, have failed to turn the handle sufficiently,
and so have believed that the door was locked when it was not. Again we
had Gastrell's assurance that he had found himself locked in one day. As
for his declaration to Easterton that he was not the Gastrell whom
Osborne had met on the _Masonic_, it was clear now that he had some
secret reason for wishing to pass in London as a bachelor, and as
Osborne had told Easterton that the Gastrell on the _Masonic_ had told
him that he had met me in Geneva, naturally Gastrell had been driven—in
order to conceal his identity—to maintain that he had never before met
me either.

Our host insisted upon our taking another of his very excellent cigars
before we left,—it was close upon one o'clock when we rose to go. He
rang up a taxi for us, helped us on with our coats, accompanied us to
the door, and shook hands with each of us most cordially.

"What do you make of it, Michael?" Osborne asked, when we had remained
silent in the swift-travelling taxi for five minutes or more, and were
approaching Marlboro' Road Station."

"Nothing," I answered bluntly. "I don't know what to make of it."

"Suspect anything?"

"Yes—and no."

"That's just how I feel, and yet—"

"Well?"

"I mistrust him. I don't know why, but I do. I mistrust them both.
There's something queer happening in that house. I am certain there is."

"You can't be certain, as you don't know."

"My suspicions are so strong that they amount to convictions."

"So I think, too. And those dirty tumblers on the tray, and the hot
arm-chair I sat down in—Jack, I believe there were a lot of people in
that house, hidden away somewhere, all the time we were there. I believe
Gastrell admitted his identity only because he was obliged to. Our
calling like that, so unexpectedly, and being admitted by his wife—if
she is his wife—disconcerted him and took him unawares. I can't think
why she admitted us—especially I can't think why she kept us so long in
the dark in the hall before she switched on the light. By Jove! What a
stunning woman!"

"She is—but crafty. I thought that when I met her on board ship. And
those eyes of hers. Phew! They seem to read right into one's soul, and
discover one's secret thoughts." He stopped for an instant, then added,
meditatively, "I wonder what makes Gastrell keep that horrible cobra
as a pet."

I yawned, and we relapsed into silence. Then gradually my thoughts
drifted—drifted away from London, far from crowds and hustle, the
rumble of motor 'buses and the hootings and squawkings of ears, to a
peaceful, rural solitude.

I was in Berkshire. Down in the picturesque valley into which I gazed
from the summit of a wooded slope stood a Manor house, ivy-grown, old,
very beautiful Facing it an enormous plateau, hewn out of the Down, had
been converted to various uses—there were gardens, shrubberies, tennis
lawns. Lower came terrace after terrace of smoothly mown grass, each
with its little path and borders of shrubs, interspersed with the finest
Wellingtonias in the county, tapering gracefully to heaven,
copper-beeches and grand oaks.

The house itself was very long and low, its frontage white, mellowed
with age, and broken up by old-fashioned, latticed windows which gleamed
blue and grey in the translucent, frosted air. The roof of the Manor
boasted a mass of beautiful red-brown gables, many half hidden from
sight by the wealth of ivy; last summer also by a veritable tangle of
Virginia creeper and crimson rambler, now sleeping their winter sleep.

My thoughts wandered on. They travelled with extraordinary rapidity, as
thought does, picture after picture rising into the vision of my
imagination like the scenes in a kaleidoscopic cinema.

Now I was seated in the old Manor. I could see the room distinctly. It
was a small boudoir or ante-room opening into the large drawing-room—a
cosy, homely place, its low, latticed windows, divided into four,
opening outwards on to garden and terraces, its broad, inviting
window-seat comfortably cushioned. Nearly all the furniture was quite
old, dark oak, elaborately carved—writing-table, high-backed chairs, an
old French "armoury" in the corner; but near the hearth there were two
or three deep, modern armchairs of peculiarly restful character, covered
with exquisite flowered chintzes.

This vision deepened. I started. The door of the quiet room had suddenly
opened, and, humming a gay little French air, a young girl had
entered—fresh, exquisite, like a breath of early Springtime itself in
the midst of Winter. With her deep eyes, so soft and brown, her skin of
a healthy olive pallor, the cheeks just flushed with crimson, and her
nimbus of light brown hair through which the golden threads strayed so
charmingly, she made a perfect picture standing there in her long gown
of sapphire-blue velvet.

The soft contours of her young face were outlined against a tall screen
embroidered gorgeously with silken peacocks, before which she stopped to
lay down upon a small table the sheaf of red and brown and golden
chrysanthemums which she carried in her arms.

My pulses throbbed as they always did in her presence, or when, indeed,
she so much as crossed my daydreams, as at this moment. For this girl
was Dulcie Challoner—the woman who was fast becoming the one woman in
the world to me, and thus had I seen her enter that very room when last
I had spent a week-end at Holt Manor, four miles from the little village
of Holt Stacey—and that happened to have been only three weeks from the
present moment.

The taxi stopped abruptly, shattering my dreams. We had reached the
club. Some letters were awaiting me. My spirits rose as I recognized the
handwriting on one of them.

Dulcie wrote to say that her father hoped, if I were not "already
booked," I would spend Christmas with them.

I was "already booked." I had accepted an invitation a month before to
dine on Christmas Day with an hysterical aunt from whom I had
expectations. Well, the expectations must take their chance. Then and
there I sat down and wrote a long letter to Dulcie saying what joy the
contents of her letter had given me, and a brief line to my aunt
explaining that "unavoidable circumstances had arisen" which
necessitated my cancelling my promise to come to her, much as I
regretted doing so.

Snow was falling slowly and persistently, as it had done all the
afternoon, when, about ten days later, I arrived at the little station
of Holt Stacey, the nearest to Holt Manor. The motor brougham awaited
my rather late train, and I was quickly installed among the fur rugs in
its cosy interior and being whirled along the silent whiteness of the
narrow lanes between the station and my destination. The weather was
very cold, and I saw through the windows of the car that every branch
and twig had its thick covering of pure white snow, while the thatched
roofs of the tiny cottages we passed were heavily laden. By four o'clock
in the afternoon most of the cottage windows were lit up, and the glow
of the oil lamps shining through tiny panes on to the gleaming carpet of
snow without, produced a most picturesque effect.

Now we were purring up the hilly drive; then rounding the sweep to the
hall door. The man did not have to ring. Before he could get off the box
I heard heavy footsteps leaping down the stairs three at a time and
flying across the hall. The door was flung open, and a wild war-whoop
from Dick announced my arrival to whoever cared to know of it.

"Good old sport!" shouted Dick, snatching the travelling-rug from my
arm, after telling the footman behind him to "take Mr. Berrington's
things to the green room in the west wing," and almost pushing me into
the hall. "Good old sport! You're awfully late. We've all done tea."

I told him we had been quite half an hour after the scheduled time in
starting from Paddington, and that the crowds had been enormous.

"Just what I told Dulcie," he exclaimed. "You don't want to see her, I
suppose? What a beastly long time it seems since you were here! Three
weeks, isn't it, since I was home, ill?"

In vain I endeavoured to quiet Dick's ringing voice as a girlish, lithe
figure appeared between the curtains which divided the stairs from the
hall, a figure clad in soft rosy silk with a little lacy tea-jacket over
it, and with golden-brown hair waving naturally about a broad, white
forehead, with starry brown eyes full of welcome. Taking my hand in hers
quietly for an instant, Dulcie asked me what sort of journey I had had,
and presently led me across the hall to the drawing-room.

"You will like to see father," she said. "He and Aunt Hannah are in the
drawing-room; they've looked forward so much to your coming."

With a heart beating faster than usual I followed Dulcie. Her father I
was always glad to see, and we were exceedingly good friends, having
much in common. Of a good old county family, Sir Roland Challoner had
succeeded late in life to the title on the sudden death in the hunting
field of his father, Sir Nelson Challoner.

Dulcie's mother had died just after the birth of Dick, and Sir Roland
had tried to make up the loss to Dulcie by getting his only and elderly
sister Hannah—"Aunt Hannah" as she was inevitably called by all who
stayed at Holt Manor, and in fact by everybody who had seen her more
than twice—to come and live with him. And there at Holt she had, in her
eccentric way, ever since superintended domestic arrangements and
mothered his beautiful little girl and her only brother, by this time an
obstreperous boy of fourteen, at Eton and on his way to Oxford.

Aunt Hannah was, as Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing."
But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her
sayings were at times so downright—not to say acrid—that many stood in
terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked
Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I
happened not to have done anything so far to incur her displeasure,
which she was never backward in expressing forcibly, or, as Dick the
schoolboy brother put it, "in no measured terms." Still, as it is the
unexpected that always happens, I knew there might yet come a day when I
should be called upon to break a lance with Aunt Hannah, and I must say
I devoutly hoped that in the event of so deplorable an occurrence,
heaven would vouchsafe me the victory. Steeped in intrigue up to her old
ears, Aunt Hannah had, I believed, several times laid deep plans
touching her niece's future—plans mysterious to the last degree, which
seemed to afford her the liveliest satisfaction. None of these schemes,
however, had succeeded up to the present, for Dulcie seemed with
delightful inconsistence consistently to "turn down" the admirable
suitors whom Aunt Hannah metaphorically dangled before her eyes. Yet so
cleverly did she do this that, in some wondrous way known only to
herself, she continued to retain them all in the capacity of firm
friends, and apparently no hearts were ever permanently bruised.

As I say, I quite liked Aunt Hannah, and she had afforded me a good deal
of innocent amusement during my not infrequent visits at Holt Manor.
Certainly on these occasions I had managed to adopt, if not actually a
brotherly, at any rate an almost brotherly demeanour towards Dulcie
whenever the sharp-eyed old lady chanced to be in the vicinity. As a
result, after much careful chaperonage, and even astute watching, of my
manner towards her niece, Aunt Hannah had "slacked off" delightfully,
evidently regarding me as one of those stolid and casual nonentities
who, from lack of much interest in anything can safely be trusted
anywhere and under the most trying circumstances.

"Here is a telegram for you, Mike," Dulcie said to me one morning, when
I had been several days at Holt and the slow routine of life was
beginning to reassert itself in the sleepy village after the excitement
created by Christmas. The sight of the envelope she handed to me sent my
thoughts back to London, the very existence of which I seemed to have
entirely forgotten during the past delightful days in this happy,
peaceful spot. My gaze was riveted upon Dulcie, standing there before
me, straight and slim in her dark violet breakfast gown, with its
ruffles of old lace at neck and wrists, the warm light from the fire
turning her fluffy brown hair to gold, as I mechanically tore open the
envelope, then pulled the telegram out.

"You don't seem in a hurry to read it," she exclaimed lightly, as I sat
there looking at her still, the telegram open in my hands.

I glanced down. It was from Osborne, and ran:

"Read report to-day's papers about Maresfield Gardens fire. Write me
what you think about it.

"JACK OSBORNE."

I read it through again, then looked up at Dulcie, who still stood there
before me.

"Have the papers come?" I asked.

She glanced up at the clock.

"They won't be here just yet," she answered. "We don't get them before
midday, you know, and during these days they haven't arrived until lunch
time, owing to Christmas."

"You can read it if you like," I said, handing her the telegram, for I
had seen her glance at it inquisitively. "It will interest you
enormously."

She made a little grimace when she had read it.

"'Interest me enormously,'" she said contemptuously, crumpling up the
paper and tossing it into the grate. For some moments she did not speak.

"What fire was there at Maresfield Gardens?" she inquired suddenly, "and
why does he ask you what you think about it?"

"Ah, so it does interest you a little," I exclaimed, taking hold of her
hand and drawing her towards me, for as she stood there looking down at
me she seemed somehow to magnetize me. "Sit by me, here, and I'll
tell you."

I told her of the conversation at the club, of Lord Easterton's dinner,
of Osborne's queer suggestion, of our visit to the house at Maresfield
Gardens in the middle of the night, of our being admitted by the strange
woman, including, of course, the incident of the serpent.

When I had finished, she looked at me seriously for some moments without
speaking.

"I don't think I like that adventure," she said at last.

For a moment she paused.

"Don't go to that house again, Mike," she suddenly exclaimed. "Promise
me you won't."

I was deliberating what reply I should make to this request, though I
did not think it likely I should want to go to the house again, when our
attention was distracted by the footman entering with the morning
papers—we were sitting in the big hall, before the fire of
blazing logs.

Dulcie sprang up and snatched the papers from the man, and Dick,
bouncing in at that instant, exclaimed with mock solemnity:

"Oh fie! 'Thou shalt not snatch,' Dulcie, you are 'no lady.'"

"Thank heaven for that," she retorted quickly, then began to tantalize
me by holding the papers just beyond my reach.

At last she gave me two, and Dick one, opened one herself, and sat upon
the rest. They made quite a pile, for Sir Roland was one of those
broad-minded men who like to read both sides on questions of any
importance.

I soon found the report I sought. It occupied a prominent position, and
was headed:

HAMPSTEAD FIRE MYSTERY
BODY FOUND STABBED
POLICE PUZZLED

The disastrous fire at Number 340 Maresfield Gardens, on Christmas Eve,
has given rise to an interesting sequel.

I had not been aware that a fire had occurred there, and I read on:

It was confidently hoped that no lives had been lost, but about midday
yesterday the charred body of a woman was discovered among the _debris_.

Upon careful examination it was ascertained beyond doubt that the body
had been several times stabbed, apparently with some sharp weapon or
instrument. All the wounds were in the breast, and it is stated that any
one of them might have caused death.

The police are instituting searching inquiries, and a sensational
announcement will most likely be made shortly. The origin of the
conflagration remains a mystery. Apparently nobody occupied the house
when the fire broke out, the sub-tenants, whose identity is veiled in
obscurity, having left some days previously.

"Have you read the account in your paper?" I asked, turning to Dulcie as
I put mine down.

"Yes," she answered, "I have just finished it. Isn't it terrible?"

"I have a theory," a boy's voice exclaimed suddenly. Dick, seated on the
floor, tossed aside the newspaper I had thrown to him.

"That woman whose body has been found may have been stabbed, but I
believe that big cobra had something to do with her death. I don't know
why I think that, but I do. It's instinct, I suppose. Michael, I believe
you were spoofed by that man Gastrell, whoever he is—absolutely spoofed."

"Good heavens, Dick!" I exclaimed in dismay, "how do you come to know
what I have just told to Dulcie in confidence?"

"Oh, ask me another, old sport!" he cried out, and burst into laughter.
"If you will 'exchange confidences'—isn't that the phrase?—with
Dulcie, and be so engrossed that you don't notice me in the room—well,
what can you expect?"




CHAPTER IV


IN FULL CRY

Riding to hounds is one of the few forms of sport which appeal to me,
and I should like it better still if no fox or other creature
were tortured.

On that point Dulcie and I had long been agreed; it was one of many
questions upon which we saw eye to eye, for on some subjects our
views differed.

"It seems to me grotesque," I remember her saying to me once, "that we
English should hold up our hands in horror at the thought of
bull-fights, while so many of us take pleasure in the hateful business
of the kill in fox-hunting."

In reply I had explained to her that the art of diplomacy lies in seeing
the beam in the other man's eye and drawing attention to it, while
blinding oneself to the mote in one's own, and if possible convincing
the other man that the mote does not exist. Dulcie, however, had her
full share of intelligence, with the result that, in modern slang, she
"wasn't taking any."

"In that case," she had retorted, "you should feel thankful that you are
not a diplomat, Mike. You have your points, but tact and logic are not
among them, you know!"

Sir Roland always mounted me when I stayed at Holt Manor in the hunting
season, and already I had enjoyed two capital days' sport. Pressed to
do so—and it had not needed great persuasion—instead of returning to
town on the second Saturday after Christmas, I had stayed over the
Sunday, for on the Monday hounds were to meet at the Manor House. All
the other guests, with the exception of two cousins of Sir Roland's, had
left on the Saturday, so that we were a family party to all intents; in
secret I was determined that before the dawn of spring I should be a
member of the family in reality.

Mounted on a well-shaped chestnut three parts thoroughbred, Dulcie had
never, I thought, looked so wholly captivating as she did on that Monday
morning; I overtook her, I remember, while the chattering cavalcade
trotted from the meet at Holt Manor to the first cover to be drawn.

The first cover proved to be tenantless. So did a small, thickly
underwooded copse. So did a stretch of bracken. So did a large pine wood
some miles from Holt Manor, which was usually a sure find.

"You may say what you like," Dulcie exclaimed as the notes of the
huntsman's horn warned us that the pack was once more being blown out of
cover, "I maintain still that a drag hunt has advantages over a fox
hunt—your red herring or your sack of aniseed rags never disappoint
you, and you are bound to get a run."

As we turned out of the lane into a broad meadow, then broke into a hand
canter across the soft, springy turf, to take up our position at a point
where we could easily slip forward if hounds should find, I told Dulcie
jokingly that if her father preserved foxes as carefully as he always
said he did, these covers on his estate would not have been drawn blank.

She turned her head sharply.

"Father always says," she exclaimed, "that—"

But what he always said I never heard, for at that instant a piercing
"Tally-ho!" rent the air, and, looking up, we saw a long, yellow,
lean-bodied fox which apparently had jumped up within a hundred yards of
the pack, lolloping unconcernedly towards a hedge near by. He reached
the fence, paused, cast a single glance behind him at the fifteen or so
couple of relentless four-footed pursuers, then popped calmly through a
gap in the fence, and disappeared.

A few moments later hounds had settled to the line, and were streaming
out across the broad, undulating pasture which spread away before us in
the distance, cut here and there by thorn fences, a winding stream
marked by pollards, and several post-and-rails. From all directions came
the field, galloping at top speed for the only gate in the thick hedge,
fifty yards ahead of us, crowding and jostling one another in their
anxiety to get through. Six or eight horsemen had cleared the fence at
the few places where it was jumpable. Others were preparing to follow
them. The music of the flying pack grew less distinct.

"Come along, Mike!" Dulcie called to me, turning her horse abruptly in
the direction of the hedge, "we shall get left if we hang about here."

She was thirty yards from the hedge now—twenty—ten. Timing his stroke
to a nicety her horse rose. An instant later he had cleared the fence,
with a foot or more to spare. I followed, and almost as my mare landed I
saw Dulcie lower her head and cast a backward glance.

Now we were sailing side by side over the broad, undulating pastures
which form a feature of that part of Berkshire. A hundred yards ahead of
us the pack tore ever onward, their sterns and noses mostly to the
ground, their music rising at intervals—a confused medley of sound in
various cadences, above which a single, deep, bell-like note seemed ever
prominent, insistent.

"That's Merry Boy," Dulcie exclaimed as she began to steady her mount—a
stiff post-and-rails was fifty yards in front of us. "I know his voice
well. Dan always declares that Merry Boy couldn't blunder if he
tried"—I knew Dan to be the huntsman.

On and on the pack swept, now heading apparently for a cover of dark
pines visible upon a hill to the left of us, away against the skyline.
In front of us and to right and left horses were clearing fences, which
here were very numerous, some jumping well and freely, some blundering,
some pecking on landing, a few falling. Yet, considering the size of the
field, there was very little grief.

"Who is the girl in the brown habit?" I asked Dulcie, soon after we had
negotiated a rather high-banked brook. I had noticed this girl in the
brown habit almost from the beginning of the run—tall, graceful, a
finished horsewoman, mounted on a black thoroughbred, and apparently
unaccompanied, even by a groom.

"That?" Dulcie exclaimed, bringing her horse a little nearer, so that
she need not speak too loud. "Oh, she is something of a mystery. She is
a widow, though she can't be more than twenty-four or five. She lives at
the Rook Hotel, in Newbury, and has three horses stabled there. She must
have been there a couple of months, now. A few people have called upon
her, including my father and Aunt Hannah, but nobody seems to know
anything about her, who she is or was, or where she comes from. Doesn't
she ride well? I like her, though as yet I hardly know her. She's so
pretty, too, and has such a nice voice. I'll introduce you, if you like,
if I get a chance later."

I remembered that this widow in the brown habit had been one of the
first to arrive at the meet, but she had not dismounted. Dulcie also
told me that she had dined at Holt once, and evinced great interest in
the house. She had brought with her an old volume containing pictures of
the place as it was in some early century, a book Sir Roland had never
seen before, and that he had read with avidity, for everything to do
with the past history of his house appealed to him. Mrs. Stapleton had
ended by making him a present of the book, and before she had left, that
night Sir Roland had shown her over the whole house, pointing out the
priests' hiding-hole—a curious chamber which fifty years before had
come to light while repairs were being made in the great hall
chimney—also a secret door which led apparently nowhere.

"I think my father was greatly attracted by her," Dulcie said, "and I am
not surprised. I think she is quite lovely, though in such a curious,
irregular way; but besides that there is something awfully 'taking'
about her. She doesn't, however, seem to 'go down' very well with the
people about here; but then you know what county society is. She seems
to have hardly any friends, and to live an almost solitary life."

Though I had spared her as much as I could, and though I ride barely ten
stone seven, my mare was beginning to sob. Unbuttoning my coat and
pulling out my watch as we still galloped along, I found that hounds had
been running close on forty minutes without a moment's check.

"Dulcie," I said, coming up alongside her again, "my mare is nearly
beat. Have you a second horse out?"

She told me she had not—that my mount would have been her second horse
had she been out alone.

"Look," she exclaimed suddenly, "they have turned sharp to the right.
Oh, I hope they won't kill! I feel miserable when they kill, especially
when the fox has shown us such good sport."

I answered something about hounds deserving blood: about the way
the farmers grumbled when foxes were not killed, and so on; but,
woman-like, she stuck to her point and would listen to no argument.

"I hope they'll lose him in that cover just ahead," she exclaimed.
"Hounds may deserve blood, but such a good fox as this deserves to get
away, while as for the farmers—well, let them grumble!"

Half a minute later the pack disappeared into the dense pine wood. Then
suddenly there was silence, all but the sound of horses galloping still;
of horses blowing, panting, sobbing. From all directions they seemed
to come.

"Whoo-whoop!"

The scream, issuing from the depths of the wood, rent the air. An
instant later it came again:

"Whoo-whoo-_whoop_!"

There was a sound of cracking twigs, of a heavy body forcing its way
through undergrowth, and the first whip crashed out of the cover, his
horse stumbling as he landed, but recovering himself cleverly.

"Have they killed?" several voices called.

"No, worse luck—gone to ground," the hunt servant answered, and Dulcie,
close beside me, exclaimed in a tone of exultation:

"Oh, good!"

I had dismounted, loosened my mare's girths, and turned her nose to the
light breeze. Sweat was pouring off her, and she was still blowing hard.

"Shall I unmount you, Dulcie?" I asked.

She nodded, and presently she stood beside me while I attended to her
horse.

"Ah, Mrs. Stapleton!" I heard her exclaim suddenly.

I had loosened the girths of Dulcie's horse, and now I looked up.

Seated upon a black thoroughbred, an exceedingly beautiful young woman
gazed down with flushed face and shining eyes.

It was a rather strange face, all things considered. The features were
irregular, yet small and refined. The eyes were bright and brown—at
least not exactly brown; rather they were the colour of a brilliant
red-brown wallflower, and large and full of expression. Her skin, though
extremely clear, was slightly freckled.

Dulcie had exchanged a few remarks with her. Now she turned to me.

"Mike," she said, "I want to introduce you to Mrs. Stapleton. Mrs.
Stapleton, do you know Mr. Berrington?"

The beautiful young widow, gazing down at me as I looked up at her and
raised my hat, presently made some complimentary remark about my mount
and the way she jumped, then added:

"I noticed her all through the run—she's just the stamp of animal I
have been looking for. Is she for sale, by any chance, Mr. Berrington?"

I replied that the mare was not mine, that she must ask Miss Challoner
or Sir Roland. For the instant it struck me as odd that, hunting
regularly with this pack, she should not have recognized the animal,
for I knew that Dulcie rode it frequently. Then I remembered that some
people can no more recognize horses than they can recognize their casual
friends when they meet them in the street, and the thought faded.

There was talk of digging out the fox—an operation which Dulcie and I
equally detested—and that, added to the knowledge that we were many
miles from Holt, also that our horses had had enough, made us decide to
set out for home.

Looking back, for some reason, as we walked our horses away from the
cover-side towards the nearest lane, I noticed the young widow seated
erect upon her black horse, staring after us. I turned to shut the gate,
after we had passed into the lane; she was still sitting there, outlined
against the wood and apparently still staring in our direction.

Why, I don't know, but as I trotted quietly along the lane, to overtake
Dulcie, whose horse was an exceptionally fast walker, I felt uneasy.

Presently my thoughts drifted into quite a different channel. All
recollection of the day's sport, of the pretty widow I had just talked
to, and of the impression she had left upon my mind, faded completely. I
was thinking of someone else, someone close beside me, almost touching
me, and yet—

Neither of us spoke. It was nearly four o'clock. The afternoon was
quickly closing in. Away beyond the woods which sloped upward in the
western distance until they touched the sky, the sun's blood-red beam
pierced the slowly-rising mist rolling down into the valley where the
pollards marked the winding course of the narrow, sluggish stream. Over
brown woods and furrowed fields it cast a curious glow.

Now the light of the winter's sun, sinking still, fell full on my
companion's face, I caught the outline of her profile, and my pulses
seemed to quicken. Her hair was burnished gold. Her eyes shone
strangely. Her expression, to my eyes, seemed to be entirely
transformed. How young she looked at that instant, how absolutely, how
indescribably attractive! Would she, I wondered, ever come to understand
how deeply she had stolen into my heart? Until this instant I myself
seemed not fully to have realized it.

Presently she turned her head. Her gaze rested on mine. Gravely,
steadily, her wonderful brown eyes read—I firmly believe—what was in
my soul: how madly I had come to love her. Without meaning to, I
started. A sensation of thrilling expectancy took possession of me. I
was approaching, I felt, the crisis of my life, the outcome of which
must mean everything to both of us.

"You are very silent, Mike," she said in a low, and, as I thought,
rather strained voice. "Is anything the matter?"

I swallowed before answering.

"Yes—something is the matter," I said limply.

"What?"

I caught my breath. How could she look into my eyes like that, ask that
question—such a foolish question it seemed—as though I were naught to
her but a stranger, or, at most, some merely casual acquaintance? Was it
possible she realized nothing, suspected nothing, had no faint idea of
the feeling I entertained for her?

"What is the matter?" she asked again, as I had not answered.

"Oh, it's something—well, something I can't well explain to you under
the circumstances," I replied awkwardly, an anxious, hot feeling
coming over me.

"Under what circumstances?"

"What circumstances!"

"Yes."

"This is our gap," I exclaimed hurriedly, as we came to a broken bank by
the lane-side—I was glad of the excuse for not answering. I turned my
mare's nose towards the bank, touched her with the spur, and at once she
scrambled over.

Dulcie followed.

Around us a forest of pines, dark, motionless, forbidding, towered into
the sky. To right and left moss-grown rides wound their way into the
undulating cover, becoming tunnels in the distance as they vanished into
blackness, for the day was almost spent.

Slowly we turned into the broader of the two rides. We still rode side
by side. Still neither of us spoke. Now the moss beneath our horses'
hoofs grew so thick and soft that their very footfalls became muffled.

Ten minutes must have passed. In the heart of the dense wood all was
still as death, save for a pheasant's evening crow, and the sudden rush
of a rabbit signalling danger to its companions.

"What circumstances, Mike?" Dulcie repeated. She spoke in a strange
tone. Her voice was very low, as though she feared to break the silence
which surrounded us.

Taken aback, I hesitated. We were very close together now—my leg
touched her horse. Already, overhead in a moonless sky, the stars shone
brightly. In the growing gloom her face was visible, though
partly blurred.

"Why not stop here a moment?" I said, hardly knowing that I spoke, or
why I spoke. My mouth had grown suddenly dry. The _timbre_ of my voice
somehow founded different. Without answering she shortened her reins,
and her horse was still.

Why had we stopped? Why had I suggested our stopping? I saw her, in the
darkness, turn her face to mine, but she said nothing.

"Dulcie!" I exclaimed suddenly, no longer able to control myself.
Without knowing it I leant forward in my saddle. I could see her eyes,
now. Her gaze was set on mine. Her lips were slightly parted. Her breast
rose and fell.

Some strange, irresistible force seemed all at once to master me,
deadening my will, my brain, my power of self-restraint. My arm was
about her; I was drawing her towards me. I felt surprise that she should
offer no resistance. My lips were pressed on hers....

       *       *       *       *       *

She was kissing me feverishly, passionately. Her whole soul seemed to
have become suddenly transformed. Her arms were about my neck—I could
not draw away.

"Oh, Mike! Mike!" she gasped, "tell me you really mean it—that you are
not just playing with me—flirting with me—tell me you ... oh, I love
you so, dearest. Ah, yes. I love you so, I love you so!"

It was very dark by the time we had made our way through the extensive
wood—a short cut to Holt Manor—and were once more in the lanes, I
felt strangely happy, and yet a curious feeling which I could neither
explain nor account for obsessed me.

Our joy was so great—would it last? That was the purport of my
sensation, if I may express it so. I longed at that moment to be able to
look into the future. What had the Fates in store for me—for us both?

Perhaps it was as well I didn't know.

We had entered the park gates, and were half-way up the long avenue of
tall elms and stately oaks, when I saw a light approaching through the
darkness. It came nearer, and we guessed it must be a man on foot,
carrying a lantern.

Now he was quite close.

"Is that Miss Dulcie? a voice inquired out of the blackness, as the
light became stationary.

"Yes. That you, Churchill?" Dulcie called back.

Churchill was the head gardener. Born and bred on the estate, there were
few things he loved better than to recall to mind, and relate to anybody
sufficiently patient to listen to him, stories and anecdotes of the
family. Of "Miss Dulcie" he would talk for an hour if you let him,
telling you how he remembered her when she was "not so high," and of the
things she had done and said as a child.

"What do you want, Churchill?" she called to him, as he remained silent.

Still for some moments he did not speak. At last he apparently plucked
up courage.

"There's been sad doings at the house," he said, and his voice was
strained.

"Sad doings!" Dulcie exclaimed in alarm. "Why, what do you mean?"

"There's been a shocking robbery, Miss Dulcie—shocking. You'll hear
all about it when you go in. I thought it best to warn you about it. And
Master Dick—"

He stopped abruptly.

"Good heavens, Churchill!" she cried out in great alarm, "quick, tell me
what has happened, tell me everything. What about Master Dick?"

"He's been served shocking, Miss. Oh, it's a terrible affair. The whole
house looted during the hunt breakfast this, morning, and Master Dick—"

"Yes! Yes!"

"Treated something crool."

"Dick! They haven't hurt Dick. Oh, don't say they have done him some
injury!"

The tone of agony in her voice was piteous.

"He's come round now, Miss Dulcie, but he's been unconscious for hours.
They put chloroform or something on him—Sir Roland himself found him in
one of the upstairs rooms, lying on the floor just like dead."

"Oh, heavens, how awful! How is he now?"

"The two doctors are with him still, Miss, and as I come away, not ten
minutes ago, they telled me he was goin' on as well as could be
expected. It was at lunch time Sir Roland found him, and then the
robbery was discovered. Every bit of jewellery's been stolen, 'tis said,
and a whole chest-full of plate—the plate chests were open all the
morning as some of the old silver had been used at the breakfast. The
robbery must have took place during the meet, when the hall and rooms
downstairs was full of people and all the servants as busy as could be.
There was lots of cars there as you know, Miss, and the police think the
thieves must have come in a car and gone into the house as if they were
hunting-folk. But nobody don't seem to have seen any stranger going
upstairs—the police say there must have been several thieves on the
job. Master Dick may be able to tell something when he's hisself again,
pore young gentleman."

We didn't wait to hear more, but set our horses into a smart trot up the
avenue to the house.




CHAPTER V


HUGESSON GASTRELL AT HOME

A week had passed since Dulcie had promised to become my wife, and since
the amazing robbery in broad daylight at Holt Manor.

I had been five days back in town, where I had some estate business to
attend to. It was the evening of Hugesson Gastrell's house-warming
reception in his newly furnished mansion in Cumberland Place, and the
muster of well-known people was extraordinary.

Peers and peeresses, prosperous City financiers, celebrities of the
drama and of the operatic stage, luminaries of the law, diplomats, and
rich retired traders who had shed the "tradesman" and blossomed into
"gentleman," jostled one another in the rooms and on the stairs. It is
surprising how people will rush to the house of a wealthy man. At least
one Duke was present, a Cabinet Minister too, also a distinguished Judge
and two Archbishops, for I noticed them as I fought my way up into the
room where music was being performed, music the quality of which the
majority of the listeners gauged by the fees known to be paid to the
artists engaged, and by the amount of newspaper publicity those artists'
Press agents had succeeded in securing for them.

Nor were journalists lacking at this "interesting social function," as
some of them afterwards termed it in their papers. In London I move a
good deal in many kinds of society, and now I noticed, mingling in the
crowd, several men and women I was in the habit of meeting frequently,
though I did not know them to speak to—Press representatives whose
exclusive duty I knew it to be to attend social gatherings of this
description. As I edged my way through the dense throng I could hear my
favourite composition, Dvorak's "Humoresque," being played on the violin
by Beatrice Langley, who I had been told was to appear, and for a few
brief minutes the crowd was hushed. To my chagrin the music ended almost
as I succeeded in forcing my way into the room, so that I was in time
only for the applause.

Now the hall and the large rooms where the guests were, were filled with
the buzz of conversation. In two of these rooms supper was in progress,
a supper in keeping with the sumptuousness, the luxury and the general
extravagance noticeable everywhere.

For this house in Cumberland Place which he had rented from Lord
Easterton lent itself admirably to Hugesson Gastrell's distorted ideas
as to plenishing, at which some people laughed, calling them almost
Oriental in their splendour and their lavishness. Upon entering, the
idea conveyed was that here was a man who had suddenly found himself
possessed of a great deal more money than he had ever expected to come
by, and who, not being accustomed to wide means, had at once set to work
to fling his fortune broadcast, purchasing, wherever he went, everything
costly that took his fancy.

For after mounting some steps and entering under a wide portico, one
found oneself in a spacious, lofty vestibule where two flights of warmly
tinted marble steps, shallow and heavily carpeted, ran up to right and
left to a wide gallery on three sides of the hall. The marble was so
beautiful, the steps were so impressive to look upon, that one was
forcibly reminded of the staircase in the Opera House in Paris, of
course in miniature. On the lowest step on either side were carved
marble pillars supporting nude figures of great size and bearing each an
electric lamp gold-shaded to set off the yellow-tinted marble and the
Turkey carpets of gold and of richest blue. In one corner stood a
Mongolian monster, a green and gold dragon of porcelain resting on a
valuable faience pedestal—a bit of ancient Cathay set down in the heart
of London.

In their magnificence the reception rooms excelled even this hall,
boasting, as they did, a heterogeneous collection of rare antiques, of
valuable relics, and of _articles de virtu_ from practically the world
over. Everywhere they lay in strange confusion—on the mantelpieces,
tops of cupboards, on shelves, angle brackets, and on almost every
table. Here was a delicate lute of jade, used by Chinese lovers of a
thousand years ago. There stood silver lamps, carved most marvellously
and once trimmed by vestal virgins, lamps from the temples of
Herculaneum, of Rome and of Pompeii. Shadowy gods and goddesses,
dragons, fetishes of more or less hideous mien, glared everywhere at one
another in a manner most unpleasant. Porcelains; wonderful
blue-patterned plates from Pekin; willow-patterned dishes from Japan;
ancient hammered beer tankards from Bavaria and the Rhine; long-stemmed
Venetian glasses of iridescent hues, were scattered everywhere in
bewildering profusion. In an ante-room was a priceless crucifix in three
different woods, from Ober-Ammergau; on the mantelpieces of three of the
reception rooms were old French gilt clocks—the kind found nowadays
only in secluded and old inns of the Bohemian Quartier Latin, inns
which the tourist never sees, and where "collectors" are to all intents
unknown. Set upon this landing of polished oak upon the first floor was
a very ancient sundial, taken from some French chateau, a truly
beautiful _objet d'art_ in azure and faded gold, with foliated crest
above, borne long ago, no doubt, by some highly pompous dignitary. Here
and there, too, were suits of armour of beaten steel—glittering
figures, rigid and erect and marvellously inlaid with several different
metals. Two rooms of the building, I was told by a guest with whom I had
entered into conversation, were set aside entirely as an armoury.

Hardly had I finished observing all this, and a great deal more besides,
when a voice at my elbow exclaimed:

"Good evening, Mr. Berrington. I wonder, now, if you'll remember
me—eh?"

As I turned, I instantly recognized the speaker.

"Of course I recollect you—Mrs. Stapleton," I exclaimed, looking into
her eyes with, I am afraid, rather unconcealed admiration, for I don't
pretend that I am not of a very susceptible nature. "I have met many
people I know, this evening," I continued, "but this is an unlooked-for
pleasure. I was told in Berkshire that you never came to town."

"Were you really?" she exclaimed with a ripple of merry laughter. "They
seem, down there, to know more about one's movements than one
knows oneself."

For an instant she paused.

"And how is your lovely and delightful friend—Dulcie Challoner?" she
inquired presently. "Is she here to-night?"

"No," I said, wondering for the moment if she knew or suspected my
secret, for our engagement had not yet been announced. "The Challoners
don't know our host, though, judging by the people here to-night, he
seems to know nearly everybody."

"Do you know him well? Have you known him long?" she inquired
carelessly, letting her gaze rest on mine.

I told her that our acquaintanceship was very slight, that I had made
his acquaintance in Geneva, and met him once afterwards in London.

"I don't know him well, either," she observed, then added with some
emphasis, "He strikes me as being a most charming young man."

Naturally I agreed with her, though I had been unable to make up my mind
whether, upon the whole, I liked him or not. I thought that upon the
whole I didn't, seeing what strange things had happened.

"By the by," I said suddenly, "have you had supper?"

She answered that she had not, and added that she was "starving."
Several people were emerging from one of the supper rooms, and thus it
came that I presently found myself seated _tete-a-tete_ with the
beautiful widow, and at last beginning to enjoy an evening which until
now I had found rather dull.

It was natural that we should presently speak of Berkshire and of Holt
Manor, and soon we were discussing at length the subject of the robbery.

"And have the police as yet no clues?" Mrs. Stapleton suddenly asked.

"None, apparently. I suppose you have heard all about what happened, and
the statements made by Sir Roland's little son, Dick Challoner."

"I know nothing beyond what I read in the newspapers," she replied. "The
papers mentioned that Sir Roland's boy had been chloroformed by the
thief or thieves—that was all so far as I remember."

"Yes," I answered, "he was chloroformed, but he need not have been
according to his own account—and as he is extremely truthful and never
boasts, I think we may believe his story. He had his head and shoulders
in a big oak chest in his father's bedroom, where his father had sent
him to find a hunting apron to lend to somebody, and when he stood
upright again he heard two men talking, upon the opposite side of the
screen which hid the oak chest.

"The voices were those of strangers, and the boy naturally supposed that
the speakers were some friends of Sir Roland's. He was about to show
himself, when he heard one of the men say:

"'She says this drawer has money in it: give me your key.'

"He heard a key being pushed into a drawer lock, the drawer pulled out,
the chink of coin and the crackle of bank-notes. Then he heard the other
man suddenly say:

"'Hurry up. They'll have got the plate by this time and be waiting for
us.'

"The boy was awfully frightened, of course, but he didn't lose his head.
Knowing that his presence must be discovered in a moment, he sprang out
from behind the screen, intending to dash past the men and downstairs
and give the alarm. Unfortunately he rushed right up against one of
them, who instantly gripped him and clapped his hand over his mouth
while the other man pressed his hand over his eyes—presumably to
prevent Dick's being afterwards able to identify them. Dick says that
one of the men twisted his arm until he couldn't stir without extreme
pain, then told him that he must show them where the key of Sir
Roland's safe was—a little safe in the wall in his bedroom. Dick knew
where the key was—Sir Roland keeps it, it seems, in a drawer of his
dressing-table—but he refused to tell, though the man screwed his arm
until he nearly broke it—he strained it badly, and the poor little chap
has it still in a sling. Then, finding that they could do nothing with
him, and that nothing would make him 'peach,' as he says—though he says
they threatened to hit him on the head—one of them pressed something
over his mouth and nose, which seemed to suffocate him. What happened
after that he doesn't know, as he lost consciousness."

"What a brave little boy," my beautiful companion exclaimed in a tone of
admiration. "Did he say at all what the men were like?"

"He didn't catch even a glimpse of their faces, they pounced on him so
quickly. But he says that both wore hunting kit, and he thinks both were
tall. One wore pink."

"It was a carefully planned affair, anyway," Mrs. Stapleton said
thoughtfully, as I refilled her glass with Pol Roger. "What was the
actual value of the things stolen?"

"Sir Roland puts it at twelve or fourteen thousand pounds, roughly. You
see, he had a lot of jewellery that had belonged to Lady Challoner and
that would have been Miss Challoner's; most of that was stolen. It
should have been in the safe, of course, but Sir Roland had taken it out
the week before, intending to send it all to London to be thoroughly
overhauled and cleaned—he was going to give it to Dulcie—to Miss
Challoner on her twenty-first birthday; she comes of age next month, you
know. It was in one of the drawers that the thieves unlocked, and they
took most of it. They would have taken the lot, only some of it was in
a back partition of the drawer, and they apparently overlooked it."

"But how did they manage to steal the plate? I read in some paper that a
lot of plate was stolen."

"Heaven knows—but they got it somehow. The police think that other men,
disguised probably as gentlemen's servants, must have made their way
into the pantry during the hunt breakfast, while Sir Roland's servants
were up to their eyes in work, attending to everybody, and have slipped
it into bags and taken it out to a waiting motor. Strangers could easily
have gone into the back premises like that, unnoticed, in the middle of
the bustle and confusion. If Dick had told the men who bullied him what
they wanted to know, Sir Roland's safe would have been ransacked too,
and several thousands of pounds more worth of stuff stolen, most likely.
He is a little brick, that boy."

"He is, indeed. How long did he remain unconscious?"

"Until Sir Roland himself found him, just before lunch. The ruffians had
pushed him under the bed, and if Sir Roland had not happened to catch
sight of his foot, which protruded a little, the boy might have been
left there until night, or even until next day, and the whole household
have been hunting for him."

Mrs. Stapleton sipped some champagne, then asked:

"Is anybody suspected?"

"That's difficult to say," I answered. "Naturally the police think that
one or other of the servants at Holt must know something of the affair,
even have been an actual accomplice—but which? None of the servants has
been there less than four years, it seems, and several have been in Sir
Roland's service ten and fifteen years—the old butler was born on the
estate. Sir Roland scouts the idea that any of his servants had a hand
in the affair, and he told the police so at once. Even the fact that one
of the thieves had, according to Dick, referred to some woman—he had
said, '_She_ says this drawer has money in it'—wouldn't make Sir Roland
suspect any of the maids.

"The police then asked him in a roundabout way if he thought any of his
guests could have had anything to say to it. Phew! How furious Sir
Roland became with them! You should have seen him—I was with him at the
time. Then suddenly he grew quite calm, realizing that they were, after
all, only trying to do their duty and to help him to trace the thieves.

"'Up to the present I have not, so far as I am aware,' he said in that
cold, dignified way of his, 'entertained criminals at Holt Manor or
elsewhere. No, my man,' he ended, turning to the sergeant, or the
inspector, or whatever he was, 'the men who have stolen my property were
not any of my guests. You may set your minds at rest on that point.'"

Conversation drifted to other topics. Several times during supper I
endeavoured to lead my beautiful companion on to talk about herself, but
on each occasion she cleverly diverted conversation to some other
subject. I confess that when she casually questioned me concerning my
own affairs I was less successful in evading her inquiries; or it may
have been that I, in common with most of my sex, like to talk freely
about "self" and "self's" affairs, especially when the listener is a
beautiful woman who appears to be sympathetic and deeply interested in
all one has to say about oneself.

During that brief half-hour our intimacy grew apace. There are people
with whom one seems to have been on terms of friendship, almost as
though one had known them for years, within ten minutes after being
introduced to them; others who, when one has known them quite a long
time, seem still to remain comparatively strangers. Mrs. Stapleton
belonged to the first group, although she spoke so little about herself.
Yet I was not in the least attracted by her in the way Dulcie Challoner
attracted me. I found her capital company; I could imagine our becoming
great friends; I could think of her in the light of a _bonne camarade_.
But that was all. As for feeling tempted to fall in love with her—but
the bare thought was grotesque.

"What a charming, delightful girl that is—I mean Miss Challoner," Mrs.
Stapleton exclaimed suddenly, when, after talking a great deal, we had
been silent for a few moments. "And how exquisitely pretty," she added
after an instant's pause.

I hardly knew what to say. I know enough of women to be aware that no
woman is particularly anxious, save in exceptional cases, to listen to a
panegyric on the charms and the physical attractions of some other
woman. Therefore, after a moment's reflection, I answered with affected
indifference:

"I think I agree with you. I have known her a number of years. Her
father was a great friend of my father's."

"Indeed?" she replied, raising her eyebrows a little, then letting her
gaze rest full on mine. "That is interesting. I am a believer in
platonic friendships. I wonder if you are."

"Oh, of course," I said quickly. "It is ridiculous to suppose that a man
and woman can't be friends without—without—"

"Yes?" she said encouragingly.

"Oh, well—I suppose I mean without falling in love with each other."

She smiled in a way that puzzled me a little, but said nothing.

"Do you mean in all cases?" she suddenly inquired.

"In most cases, anyway."

"And when would you make an exception?"

This was a problem I felt I could not solve. However, I made a dash at
it.

"In the case of people of abnormally susceptible temperament," I said,
"I suppose such people couldn't be friends without soon
becoming—well, lovers."

"Ah, I see," she observed thoughtfully.

She was toying with a strawberry ice, and her lowered eyelids displayed
the extraordinary length of their lashes. Certainly I was talking to an
interesting and very lovely woman—though again here, as before in the
hunting field in Berkshire, I found myself wondering in what her beauty
consisted. Not a feature was regular; the freckles on nose and forehead
seemed to show more plainly under the glare of the electric lights; the
eyes were red-brown. But how large they were, and how they seemed to
sparkle with intelligence!

She looked up suddenly. Her expression was serious now. Up to the
present her eyes, while she talked, had been singularly animated, often
full of laughter.

"Mr. Berrington, have you ever been in love?"

I was so surprised at this question, from a woman to whom I was
practically a stranger, that I thought it best to treat it as a jest.

"Yes, a dozen times," I answered. "I am in love at this moment," I added
lightly, as if joking.

"You need not have told me that," she said, serious still. "I knew it
the moment I saw you both together. I asked—but only to hear what you
would say."

"But—but—" I stammered, "I—you—that is I don't quite catch your
meaning. When did you see 'us' both together—and who is the other
person you are thinking of?"

She had finished her ice.

"Please give me some more champagne," she said.

I picked up the half-empty bottle, refilled her glass, then my own. She
held out her glass until it clinked against mine.

"Here is health and long life to your friend on the chestnut," she
exclaimed, smiling again, "and to you too. I only hope that your married
life will be happier than—"

She checked herself. Her tongue had run away with her, and, as our lips
touched our glasses, I mentally finished her sentence.

But who, I wondered, had her husband been?

People were still flocking into the room. Others were moving out. From a
distance there came to us above the noise and the buzz of conversation
the words of a song I love:

     "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix
     Comme s'ouvre les fleurs
     Aux baisers de l'aurore,
     Mais O! Mon bien aime
     Pour mieux secher mes pleurs
     Que ta voix parle encore,
     Dis moi qu'a Dalila
     Tu reviens pour jamais.
     Redis a ma tendresse
     Les serments d'autrefois
     Les serments que j'aimais.
     Ah, reponds a ma tendresse,
     Ah, verse-moi l'ivresse!"

"How gorgeous!" I exclaimed, straining my ears in a vain attempt to hear
better. "Who is it?"

"Kirkby-Lunn," my companion answered quickly. "Are you fond—"

She stopped. Her face was partly turned. I saw a glance of recognition
flash into her eyes and vanish instantly. Following the direction of her
glance, my gaze rested upon the strange, striking woman I had seen but
once but could not possibly forget. Mrs. Gastrell had just entered, and
with her, to my astonishment, Jack Osborne. It was Jasmine Gastrell with
whom my companion had exchanged that momentary glance of recognition.

"Are you fond of music?" Mrs. Stapleton asked, looking at me again.

"Very," I answered absently, "of music that is music."

For my attention had become suddenly distracted. How came this woman to
be here, this woman who called herself Gastrell's wife? Lord Easterton
was somewhere about, for I had seen him in the crowd. Such a striking
woman would be sure to attract his attention, he would inquire who she
was, he might even ask Gastrell, and then what would happen? What would
Gastrell say? Was the woman actually his wife, or was she—

Mechanically I conversed with my companion for a minute or two longer,
then suddenly she suggested that we should go.

"And let some of these starving people take our table," she added, as
she prepared to rise.

Osborne and his singularly lovely companion were now seated at a table
only a few yards off. His back was turned to us, and I had not caught
Mrs. Gastrell's glance.

"D'you know who that is, that woman who has just come in?" I inquired
carelessly, indicating her as I rose.

"That?" Mrs. Stapleton answered, looking full at her, and this time
their eyes met in a cold stare. "No, I have no idea."

I confess that this flat untruth, spoken with such absolute
_sang-froid,_ somewhat disconcerted me. For I could not be in the least
doubt that I had distinctly seen the two women greet each other with
that brief glance of mutual recognition.




CHAPTER VI


THE HOUSE IN GRAFTON STREET

One afternoon, some days later, I was sitting in my flat in South Molton
Street, smoking a pipe and carelessly skimming an evening paper, when my
man brought me some letters which had just arrived.

Several I tossed aside unopened—I recognized the handwritings and was
in no haste to absorb the contents of epistles from acquaintances whose
company, at the best of times, "bored me stiff," as some Americans say.
But the letter was there that I had expected in the morning, and at once
I tore it open.

Dulcie wrote chiefly about herself—which was all I wanted to
hear—about her father and "Aunt Hannah," while two pages she devoted to
her little brother Dick, of whom she was inordinately fond.

Dick, she said, had shown the utmost pluck and endurance throughout his
painful convalescence after his rough-and-tumble with the burglars. She
told me how he had from the first sat up in bed with his "honourable
wounds" upon him, bandaged and swathed, joking and making light of the
occurrence now, as perhaps only the best breed of English schoolboy
knows how. One thing still puzzled both little Dick and herself, and for
that matter the whole family, she said—who could the woman be to whom
the thieves had alluded? No word, added Dulcie, had as yet been
forthcoming as to the whereabouts of any of the valuables stolen on that
memorable day, either family jewels or plate, and the detectives at
Scotland Yard acknowledged that so far matters were at a deadlock.

Further on in her newsy letter Dulcie made mention of the fascinating
widow staying at the Rook Hotel in Newbury, and of her wish to know her
better. She added incidentally that Mrs. Stapleton had been away since
the day after the meet at Holt Manor, and that no one knew where she was
staying. She hoped she would soon be back, she said, as she wished so
much to renew her acquaintance, and to strengthen it. Dulcie then spoke
of her Aunt Hannah, who had been particularly amusing and crochety of
late, but added that she was really such a "dear" at heart that people
all loved her when they came to know her well. "My dear," she wrote,
"Aunt Hannah has surpassed herself lately. You know what vigorous likes
and dislikes she takes, all of a sudden? Well, now Auntie has conceived
an inordinate aversion for poor Mrs. Stapleton, and seems inclined not
only to give her the cold shoulder, but to hound her down by saying the
nastiest things about her, just as the other people in the county did
when she first came to live among us. I rather believe that she had this
feeling all along, more or less, but now she seems positively to hate
her—though she confesses that she doesn't know why she does! Isn't that
like Auntie? And now she has been asking me never to notice Mrs.
Stapleton, and not to speak to her again when she returns, in fact to
drop the acquaintance entirely—and that just as we have called, and
I've tried to be nice to her out hunting, and we've had her to dine; I
told you how taken father was with her, and how he took her all over the
house and showed her simply everything. I really don't see why I should
draw back now. Nor does father. As a matter of fact, I don't see how we
can—it has gone too far—and just to satisfy one of dear old Auntie's
whims! She has a good many, as you know, Mike. There is just this one
thing, however, that sometimes one of her unaccountable whims or
dislikes turns out to have been well grounded."

My darling then went on to speak of her father and of the happiness our
engagement afforded him, happiness tempered, as she could not help
knowing, by the sorrow her leaving him would bring to him, for the most
wonderful confidence and companionship existed between father and
daughter. This sadness, Dulcie went on, came out almost pathetically in
her father's even added tenderness to her—he whose tenderness and
affection had always been such a wonderful thing to her since her
earliest childhood. But now, she said, her father sometimes followed her
about the house and grounds when she had been absent from him for a
short time, seeking occasion for talks with her, giving her his
confidence, and consulting her wishes on matters about the gardens and
stables in a way that was quite touching. It was as though, now that the
parting was so soon to take place, he could not get enough of his only
daughter's company, as if the old man clung to her more than
ever before.

The closely-written sheets dropped from my hand on to my knee. "Ah, my
own little girl," I thought, "who wouldn't miss you—sadly, yes,
terribly? Your delightful presence, the truth and honour that seem to be
manifest in your smallest gesture, in every glance from your clear eyes;
the companionship of your fearless intellect cutting through
conventionalities like a knife, arriving at the right point with the
unerring instinct of a woman, yet with the _naivete_ of a child."

Memories crowded in upon me, memories of all my happy days with Dulcie
in the country—in the hunting field, in the gardens about her home, of
afternoons spent among the books and prints and pictures in her father's
quiet, book-lined library at Holt, of the evenings in the drawing-room
at the piano, of hours of pleasant talk in the beautiful conservatories
and on the grassy terraces, and by the lake-side below the tennis lawn.
What, I thought, would life be like when at last I had her always with
me, brightening my life, filling my own home—our home—with laughter
and with the music of her voice! Again and again she rose to my
enthralled vision, and ever she was Youth and Love, the vision crowned
with the wonder of her nebulous, brown-gold hair as she gazed at me out
of her sweet, clear eyes in which I seemed still to read unfathomable
purity and truth.

It is a terrible thing to be in love. Some savage races there are which
hold to the belief that the spirits of lovers changing places, give rise
to the feverish mental upheaval which we prosaically term "falling in
love," the spirits being restless at their enforced imprisonment and
unsatisfied until they have returned each to its appointed sphere. Now
that I have recovered from the affliction I sometimes wonder if it might
not with advantage be treated as ordinary maladies and some passions
are—with the aid of drugs. Perhaps some day it will be. Certainly it
soon will be if the eugenists get their way.

And, thinking of the letter I had just read, which now lay folded in my
pocket, my memory drifted backward. For since the day I had met Jack
Osborne at Brooks's on his return from Nigeria, many incidents had
occurred which puzzled me. Trifling incidents individually, no doubt,
yet significant when considered in the concrete. There was the incident,
for instance, of Sir Harry Dawson's declaring in a letter written to
Lord Easterton from the Riviera that he had never met Gastrell, never
heard of him even, though Lord Easterton had Gastrell's assurance that
he knew Sir Harry Dawson and had intended to call upon him on the
evening he had unwittingly entered Lord Easterton's house, which was
next door.

Then there was something not quite normal in Gastrell's posing one day
as a married man, the next as a bachelor; also in his pretending at one
moment that he had never seen Osborne and myself before, yet admitting
at the next that he had met us. True, he had advanced an apparently
sound reason for this _volte-face_ of his, but still—

The affair, too, in Maresfield Gardens. That surely was an "incident"
which bordered on a mystery. I felt I should never forget our
extraordinary reception that night—the "black out" house, as stage
managers say; our repeated ringing the door bell; the slow unlocking and
unbolting the door; the cautious inquiry; our wait in the darkness after
our admission; the discovery of that horrible serpent with its chilling
eyes; the locked door; the sudden entry of Gastrell, and his odd
conversation.

Then the conflagration which had occurred a few days later, and the
subsequent discovery among the _debris_ of a body, charred and stabbed;
the apparent ignorance of everybody as to whose body it was; the
statement made by the police that none knew the names of the sub-tenants
who had occupied that house when the fire had broken out, or what had
since become of them—the actual tenant was in America. Without a
doubt, I reflected as I knocked the ashes out of my pipe into the grate,
something "queer" was going on, and I had inadvertently got myself
mixed up in it.

The last "incident" to puzzle me had been that momentary glance of
mutual recognition exchanged between the woman I knew only as "Mrs.
Gastrell"—or "Jasmine Gastrell," as Osborne always spoke of her—and
Mrs. Stapleton, and their subsequent apparent entire lack of
recognition. That, certainly, had been most odd. What could have been
the cause of it? Why, knowing each other, did they all at once feign to
be strangers? And the extraordinarily calm way Mrs. Stapleton had,
looking me full in the eyes, assured me that she had never before even
seen the woman she had just smiled at. Lastly—though this was of less
consequence—how came Jack Osborne to be dancing attendance upon the
woman I knew as "Mrs. Gastrell," when he had assured me as we drove away
in the taxi from Maresfield Gardens that night that though he admired
her he mistrusted her?

I had filled my pipe again, and, as I puffed at it to set it going, one
more thought occurred to me. And this thought, I must say, perplexed me
as much as any.

Hugesson Gastrell was said to have spent the whole of his life, until
six months previously, in Australia and Tasmania. If that were so, then
how did he come to have so large a circle of friends, or at any rate of
acquaintances—acquaintances, too, of such distinction and high
position? Was it possible he could in a few months have come to know all
these peers and peeresses and baronets and knights, distinguished
musicians and actors and actresses, leading members of the learned
professions, and all the rest of the Society crowd who had thronged his
house that evening?

Suddenly something I had been told at the club an hour or so before
flashed back into my mind. Another club member besides Easterton had, it
seemed, become acquainted with Gastrell through Gastrell's calling at
the wrong house—by mistake.

A coincidence? Possibly. And yet—

I sucked meditatively at my pipe.

Suddenly the telephone rang. Easterton was speaking.

"What!" I exclaimed, in answer to the startling information he gave me.
"When did he disappear?"

"Where was he last seen?"

"No, he has not been here. I haven't seen him since Gastrell's
reception."

"Oh, yes, I saw you there."

"Yes, very extraordinary."

"No."

"Oh, no."

"Good. I'll come to you at once. Are you at Linden Gardens?"

"Very well, I'll come straight to the club."

Mechanically I hung up the receiver. Curious thoughts, strange
conjectures, wonderings, arguments, crowded my brain in confusion. Five
days had passed since the date of Gastrell's reception, when I had seen
Jack Osborne at supper with the woman he had said he mistrusted. Since
that evening, according to what Easterton had just told me, nobody had
seen or heard of him. He had not been to his chambers; he had not left
any message there or elsewhere; he had not written; he had neither
telegraphed nor telephoned.

Where was he? What was he doing? Could some misfortune have befallen
him? Had he—

I did not end the sentence my mind had formed. Instead I went out,
hailed a taxi, and in a few minutes was on my way to Brooks's.

Outside a house in Grafton Street a group of people stood clustered
about the door. Others, on the pavement opposite, stared up at the
windows. Two policemen upon the doorstep prevented anyone from entering.

Leaning forward as my taxi sped by, I peered in through the open door of
the house, then up at the windows, but there was nothing out of the
ordinary to be seen. Further down the street we passed three policemen
walking briskly along the pavement in the direction of the house.

"What's the commotion in Grafton Street?" I inquired of my driver as I
paid him off at Brooks's.

"I've no idea, sir," he answered. "Looks as though there was trouble of
some sort." Another fare hailed him, so our conversation ended.

I found Easterton awaiting me in a deserted card-room.

"This may be a serious affair, Berrington," he said in a tone of anxiety
as I seated myself in the opposite corner of the big, leather-covered
settee. "Here five days have gone by, and there isn't a sign of Jack
Osborne, though he had not told anybody that he intended to absent
himself, had not even hinted to anybody that he had any idea of
doing so."

"You say he has not been seen since Gastrell's reception?"

"Not since then—five days ago. The fellows here at the club are getting
quite alarmed about him—they want to advertise in the newspapers for
news of his whereabouts."

"That means publicity, a shoal of inquiries, and maybe a scandal," I
answered thoughtfully. "If Jack has intentionally disappeared for a day
or two and all at once finds himself notorious he will be furious."

"Just what I tell them," Easterton exclaimed; "I wish you would back me
up. You see, Jack hasn't any relatives to speak of, and those he has
live abroad. Consequently the fellows here consider it is what the
Americans call 'up to them' to institute inquiries, even if such
inquiries should necessitate publicity."

I pondered for a moment or two.

"You know," I said, "Jack is a curious fellow in some ways—some call
him a crank, but he isn't that. Still, he is something of a 'character,'
and absolutely unconventional. I remember his making a bet, once, that
he would punch out a boastful pugilist at the National Sporting
Club—no, it wasn't at the N.S.C., it was at a place down
East—'Wonderland,' they call it."

"And did he do it?" Easterton asked.

"Did he? By heaven, the poor chap he tackled was carried out unconscious
at the end of the second round—Jack's bet was with Teddy Forsyth, and
he pocketed a couple of ponies then and there."

"Did he really? Capital! And Teddy's such a mean chap; he didn't like
partin', did he?"

"Like it? He went about for the rest of the night with a face like a
funeral mute's."

"Capital!" Lord Easterton repeated. "But to return to the point, Jack's
eccentricities and vagaries can have nothin' to do with his
disappearance."

"Why not? How do you know?"

"Well, why should they? I only hope he hasn't gone and made a fool of
himself in any way that'll make a scandal or get him into trouble. In a
way, you know, we are connections. His mother and mine were second
cousins. That's really why I feel that I ought to do somethin' to find
out what has happened to him. Do you—do you think he can have got mixed
up with some woman?"

"I won't say that I actually think so, but I think it's more than
possible."

"No! Why? What woman?"

At that instant I remembered that the woman I had in my mind was the
woman who on board the _Masonic_ had, so Jack had told me, called
herself Hugesson Gastrell's wife, and called herself his wife again at
the house in Maresfield Gardens. But Gastrell had told Easterton, or at
any rate led him to suppose, he was unmarried. How, then, could I refer
to this woman by name without causing possible friction between
Easterton and his tenant, Gastrell?

"I am afraid I can't tell you, Easterton," I said after an instant's
hesitation. "I don't want to make mischief, and if what I think is
possible is not the case, and I tell you about it, I shall have made
mischief."

Easterton was silent. For some moments he remained seated in his corner
of the settee, looking at me rather strangely.

"I quite understand what you mean, Berrington," he said at last. "Still,
under the circumstances I should have thought—and yet no, I dare say
you are right. I may tell you candidly, though, that I can't help
thinkin' you must be mistaken in your supposition. Jack doesn't care
about women in that way. He never has cared about them. The only thing
he cares about is sport, though, of course, he admires a pretty woman,
as we all do."

To that observation I deemed it prudent to make no reply, and at that
moment a waiter entered and came across the room to us.

"Your lordship is wanted on the telephone," he said solemnly.

"Who is it?" Easterton asked, looking up.

"Scotland Yard, my lord."

"Oh, say, hold the line, and I'll come down."

"Have you informed the police, then?" I asked quickly, when the servant
had left the room.

"Yes. I went to Scotland Yard this mornin', but I told them not to let a
word about the disappearance get into the newspapers, if they could help
it, until they heard further from me, and they promised they would
respect my wish. You had better come down with me. They may have found
out something."

I waited outside the glass hutch, which effectually shut in all sound,
watching Lord Easterton's face below the electric light. His lips moved
rapidly, and by the way his expression suddenly changed I judged that he
was hearing news of importance. After talking for a minute or two he
hung up the receiver, pushed open the door and came out. His face
betrayed his emotion.

"Come over here," he said in a curious tone. "I have something to tell
you."

I followed him a little way down the passage which led to the
card-rooms. When we were out of sight and earshot of the club servants
he stopped abruptly and turned to me.

"Jack has been found," he said quickly. "He was found gagged and bound
in a house in Grafton Street half an hour ago. He is there now, and the
police are with him."

"Good God!" I exclaimed. "How did they identify him?"

"He was not unconscious. The police want me to go there at once. Come."

We walked up to Grafton Street, as it was such a little way, also
Easterton wanted to tell me more. The Inspector who had just spoken to
him had not told him what had led to the police entering the house in
Grafton Street, or if anybody else had been found upon the premises. He
had only told him that Scotland Yard had for some weeks had the house
under surveillance—they had suspected that something irregular was
going on there, but they did not know what.

"I expect they have a pretty shrewd idea," Easterton added, as we
crossed Piccadilly, "but they won't say what it is. Hello! Just look at
the crowd!"

Up at the end of Dover Street, where Grafton Street begins, the roadway
was blocked with people. When we reached the crowd we had some
difficulty in forcing our way through it. A dozen policemen were keeping
people back.

"Are you Lord Easterton?" the officer at the entrance asked, as
Easterton handed him his card. "Ah, then come this way, please, m'lord.
This gentleman a friend of yours? Follow the constable, please."

We were shown into a room on the ground floor, to the right of the hall.
It was large, high-ceilinged, with a billiard table in the middle. Half
a dozen men were standing about, two in police uniform; the remainder I
guessed to be constables in plain clothes.

Suddenly I started, and uttered an exclamation.

Seated in a big arm-chair was Dulcie Challoner, looking pale,
frightened. Beside her, with her back to me, stood Aunt Hannah!




CHAPTER VII


OSBORNE'S STORY

"Good heavens, Dulcie!" I exclaimed, hurrying across to her, "whatever
are you doing here? And you, Aunt Hannah?"

At the sound of my voice Dulcie started up in her chair, and Aunt Hannah
turned quickly. To my amazement they both looked at me without uttering.
Dulcie's eyes were troubled. She seemed inclined to speak, yet afraid
to. The expression with which Aunt Hannah peered at me chilled me.

"What is the meaning of this, Mr. Berrington?" she asked coldly, after a
brief pause. Even in that moment of tense anxiety it struck me that Aunt
Hannah looked and spoke as though reproving a naughty schoolboy.

"Meaning of what?" I said stupidly, astonishment for the moment
deadening my intelligence.

"Of your bringing us up to London to find—this."

"Bringing you up? What do you mean, Miss Challoner?" I exclaimed,
mystified.

In spite of my deep anxiety, a feeling of annoyance, of resentment, had
come over me. No man likes to be made to look ridiculous, and here was I
standing before a lot of constables, all of them staring in inquisitive
astonishment at my being thus addressed by the old lady.

"Is this Mr. Berrington, madam?" an immensely tall, bull-necked,
plain-clothes policeman, of pompous, forbidding mien, suddenly asked.

"Yes, officer, it is," she snapped. During all the time I had known her
I had never seen her quite like this.

"See here," he said, turning to me, "I want your address, and for the
present you will stay here."

I am considered good-tempered. Usually, too, I can control my feelings.
There is a limit, however, to the amount of incivility I can stand, and
this fellow was deliberately insulting me.

"How dare you speak like that to me!" I burst out. "What has this affair
to do with me? Do you know who I am?"

"Aren't you Mr. Michael Berrington?" he inquired more guardedly,
apparently taken aback at my outburst of indignation.

"I am."

"Then read that," he said, producing a telegram and holding it out
before me.

It was addressed to:

"Miss Dulcie Challoner, Holt Manor, Holt Stacey," and ran:

"The police have recovered property which they believe to have been
stolen from Holt Manor. Please come at once to 430 Grafton Street, Bond
Street, to identify it. Shall expect you by train due Paddington 12:17.
Please don't fail to come as matter very urgent.

"MICHAEL BERRINGTON."

It had been handed in at the office in Regent Street at 9:30 that
morning, and received at Holt Stacey village at 9:43.

"How absurd! How ridiculous!" I exclaimed. "My name has been forged, of
course. I never sent that telegram; this is the first I have seen or
heard of it."

"That you will have to prove," the detective answered, with official
stolidity.

"Surely, Aunt Hannah," I almost shouted—so excited did I feel—as I
again turned to her, "you can't think I sent that telegram?"

"I certainly think nothing else," she replied, and her eyes were like
shining beads. "Who would send a telegram signed with your name but you,
or someone instructed by you?"

I saw that to argue with her in the frame of mind she was then in would
be futile—my presentiment at Holt that some day I should fall foul of
her had come true! I turned to the officer.

"I must see the original of that telegram," I said quickly, "and shall
then quickly prove that it was not sent by me. How soon can I get
hold of it?"

"Oh, we can see about it at once, sir," he answered much more civilly,
for, pretending to look for something in my pocket, I had intentionally
pulled out my leather wallet, containing two hundred pounds or more in
notes, and opened it for an instant. There is nothing like the sight of
paper money to ensure civility from a policeman disposed to be
impertinent—I should like, in justice, to add that most policemen
are not.

Also Easterton had come over and spoken to me, and of course pooh-poohed
the idea of my having sent the telegram, which had just been shown to
him. Dulcie stared at me with large, pathetic eyes, and I knew that, but
for Aunt Hannah's so-to-speak mounting guard, she would have asked me
endless questions instead of sitting there mute.

"You had better come with me and hear Jack Osborne's story," Easterton
said some moments later. "The Inspector tells me he is upstairs, and
still rather weak from the effect of the treatment he has received."

I had seen a puzzled look come into Aunt Hannah's eyes while Easterton
was speaking, but she remained sour and unbending.

Osborne was sitting up in a chair, partly undressed—he still wore his
evening clothes—cotton wool bound round his ankles and one wrist. He
smiled weakly as we entered, and the policeman who sat at his bedside
immediately rose. It was easy to see that Jack had suffered a good deal;
he looked, for him, quite pale, and there were dark marks beneath his
eyes. Nor was his appearance improved by several days' growth of
beard—he was usually clean-shaven.

His story was quickly told, and points in it gave food for thought, also
for conjecture.

It seemed that, while he was at supper with the woman I knew as "Mrs.
Gastrell," at Gastrell's reception, two men, unable to find a vacant
table, had asked if they might sit at his table, where there were two
vacant seats. Both were strangers to him, and apparently to "Mrs.
Gastrell" too. They seemed, however, pleasant fellows, and presently he
had drifted into conversation with them, or they with him, and with his
fair companion—Jack, as I have said, is extremely cosmopolitan, and
picks up all sorts of acquaintances. I could well believe that at a
reception such as Gastrell's he would waive all formality of
introduction if he found himself with companionable strangers.

Supper over, the four had remained together, and later, when Jack had
seen his fair friend safely into a cab, he had rejoined the two
strangers, becoming gradually more and more friendly with them. The
reception had not ended until past one in the morning, and he and his
two acquaintances had been among the last to leave. Having all to go in
the same direction, they had shared a taxi, and on arriving at the
chambers which the strangers had told him they shared—these chambers
were in Bloomsbury, but Jack had not noticed in what street—one of the
strangers had suggested his coming in for a few minutes before returning
to the Russell Hotel, where he had his rooms, which was close by.

At first disinclined to do this, he had finally yielded to their
persuasion. He had a whiskey-and-soda with them, he said—he mentioned
that the chambers were comfortable and well furnished—and one of them
had then suggested a game of cards. They had all sat down to play, and—

Well, he remembered, he said, seeing cards being dealt—but that was all
he did remember. He supposed that after that he must have fainted, or
been made unconscious; he now suspected that the drink he had taken had
been drugged.

When he recovered consciousness he had no idea where he was, or how long
he had been insensible. The room was unfamiliar to him, and everything
about him strange. He was stretched upon a bed, in an apartment much
larger than the one he was now in, with hands and feet tightly tied. The
two windows faced a blank wall, the wall apparently of the next house;
later he came to know, by the sound of Big Ben booming in the night,
that he was still in London.

The door of the room was at the back of the bed; he could not see it
from where he lay, and, bound as he was, could not even turn, but was
forced to lie flat upon his back.

He had not long been conscious, when the light of day began to fade.
Soon the room was in pitch darkness. Then it was he became aware that
someone was in the room. He listened attentively, but could hear
nothing; nevertheless the presence of a man or woman made itself "felt"
beyond a doubt. He judged the time of day to be about six o'clock in the
evening, when suddenly somebody touched him—a hand in the darkness. He
started, and called out; but there was no answer. Some minutes later a
man spoke.

The voice was not that of either of the men he had met at Gastrell's
reception; he could swear to that, he said. Yet he seemed to recognize
the voice, indeed, to have heard it recently. He racked his brains to
remember where, but to no purpose.

The man spoke in a low tone, and its _timbre_ and inflection betrayed
what is called the voice of a gentleman, he said.

"You have been brought here," the man said, "to give certain
information, and to reveal certain secrets. If you do this, you will be
released at once—you will be taken away from here in an unconscious
state, just as you were brought here, and set down in the night not far
from your hotel. If you refuse, you will be taken out during the night,
and dropped into the Thames."

The man had then gone on to question him. The questions he had asked had
been numerous, and one and all had had to do with persons of high
station with whom Jack was on terms of intimacy—all of them rich
people. What most astonished him, he said, was that his unseen
interlocutor should know so much about him—his questions and remarks
showed how much he knew—and that he should apparently know who all his
friends were.

Jack could not remember all the questions he had been asked, but he
repeated some of them. Whereabouts did the Duchesse de Montparnasse keep
her jewels in her chateau on the Meuse? The questioner said he knew that
Osborne could tell him, because he knew that Osborne, just before going
to Nigeria, had, while staying at that chateau, been shown by the
Duchesse herself her priceless jewellery—one of the finest collections
in the world, chiefly valuable owing to its interesting historic
associations.

Then, in which apartment in Eldon Hall, in Northumberland, the seat of
the Earl of Cranmere, was the large safe that Lord Cranmere had bought
ten months before from an American firm, the name of which was given? He
said that he, Osborne, must know, because he was a guest at Lord
Cranmere's when the safe arrived—which was the truth. He also wanted to
know if there were a priests' hiding-hole in Eldon Hall, as was the case
in so many of the large country mansions built about the same period,
and, if so, its exact whereabouts in the house.

As Jack Osborne said this, my thoughts flashed away to Berkshire, to
Holt Manor, to the dark, depressing hiding-hole there that I had peered
down into more than once. Who had spoken to me of that hiding-hole only
recently? Why, Dulcie, of course. She had mentioned it whilst telling me
about Mrs. Stapleton, and about Sir Roland's showing the young widow
over the house. Dulcie had mentioned it specially, because Mrs.
Stapleton had evinced such evident interest in it.

I checked my train of thought, focussing my mind upon that single
incident.

Mrs. Stapleton, the "mysterious widow" of whom nobody appeared to know
anything, had been strangely interested in that hiding-hole and in all
that Sir Roland had said about it—Dulcie had told me that. The
hiding-hole was in close proximity to Sir Roland's bedroom, and to one
other room from which valuable jewellery had been stolen. Mrs. Stapleton
had left the neighbourhood on the day after the robbery, had been absent
ever since—that of course might be, and probably was, merely a
coincidence. At supper at Gastrell's reception in Cumberland Place Mrs.
Stapleton had acknowledged "Mrs. Gastrell's" smile of recognition, and
an instant later the two women had stared at each other stonily, and
Mrs. Stapleton had assured me that she did not know the other woman,
that she had "never seen her before." Then those two men, of whom
Osborne had just spoken, had of their own accord joined him and "Mrs.
Gastrell" at supper, and eventually he had gone with the men to their
flat in Bloomsbury. And now here was an unseen man, evidently a
scoundrel, inquiring the whereabouts of a safe in a country house
belonging to a nobleman known to be extremely rich, and asking in
particular if the house possessed a priests' hiding-hole, and if so,
exactly where it was located—a man who threatened evil if the
information were withheld. Could all this, I could not help wondering,
be mere coincidence? Then on the top of it came that extraordinary
telegram sent to Dulcie from London, with my name attached to it.

Jack, however, had not done relating his adventures, so I turned again
to listen to him.

"A third thing the fellow asked," he said, "was the name of Hugo
Salmonsteiner's bankers—Salmonsteiner the millionaire timber-merchant
whose son was out big-game shooting with me a year ago. It seemed an
absurd question, for surely it must be easy to find out who any man's
bankers are, but still he asked me, and appeared to be most anxious
that I should tell him. Oh, but there were scores of other questions,
all much on the same lines, and tending to extract from me information
of a peculiar kind."

"Did you answer any of them?" Easterton asked.

"Answer them? Why, of course—all of 'em. I didn't want to remain here
in durance vile an hour longer than I could help, I can assure you. But
naturally my answers were—well, 'inaccurate,' to say the least. I had
to word them very carefully, though, or the fellow would have caught me
out. He suspected that I might be misleading him, I think, for once or
twice he put questions which might have unmasked me if I had not been on
my guard when answering them. Really we pitted our brains and cunning
against each other's all the time, and, if I may say so without
boasting, I think my cunning won."

"Then why were you not released?" I said.

"I was to have been, to-night—_so he said_. Do you think, though, he
would, whoever he was, have let me go after questioning me like that? He
said not a word about my not giving information to the police, or
warning the people he had questioned me about. Do you think he would
have let me go? I don't.

"Every day food and drink were left by me—set on a table within reach
of me, while the room was in inky blackness, for the man who had touched
me in the dark had also released my right arm and left it so. Several
times I tried to free my other arm, and my feet, but I couldn't manage
it. I have been lying here with both feet and one arm bound for four
nights and three days, to my knowledge, without seeing anybody, and, of
course, without shaving or washing. I can't tell you what these days and
nights have been like—they have been like a long, awful nightmare;
even the house has all the time been as still as death. My God, what a
relief it was to hear the door bell ringing this afternoon, and the
knocker going as though the place was on fire!

"And when the police did force an entrance it seems they found nobody
but me!"




CHAPTER VIII


MORE SUSPICIONS

Women are extraordinary—a platitude, of course, for everybody who has
mixed with women and who possesses a gleam of intelligence knows that
they are extraordinary, just as he knows, or ought to know, that if they
were not _bizarre_ and mystifying, complex and erratic, they would be
less insidiously captivating than they are.

There are, however, exceptions to most rules—some misguided _savant_ of
a bygone epoch formulated a maxim which says that "the exception proves
the rule," obviously an absurd statement, for if one man has no nose on
his face it is no proof that all other men have noses on theirs. Aunt
Hannah constituted an exception to the rule that women are rendered
additionally attractive through being extraordinary. Had she been less
extraordinary she would have been more lovable. As it was she came near,
at this time, to being the reverse of lovable, or so it struck me when,
upon my endeavour to talk calmly and rationally to her after hearing all
that Jack Osborne had just told us, and striving to induce her to listen
to reason, she remained prejudiced, illogical.

I should not have cared a button, naturally, had it not been for Dulcie
and the estrangement between us that the foolish old lady's behaviour
created. Dulcie thought no end of her aunt, respected her views and
sentiments—she had been brought up to do so, poor child—and, I knew,
really loved her. "Well," I said to myself tartly, "she will now have to
choose between Aunt Hannah and me," and feeling cock-sure, after all
that had occurred between us, that I should be the favoured one and that
Aunt Hannah would be metaphorically relegated to the scrap-heap, I
decided to approach Dulcie at once.

No, first I must see the original of that telegram, I reflected.
Accompanied, therefore, by the police officer, I made my way to the post
office in Regent Street. Having explained that I wanted to see the
original of the telegram "because," as I said, "I think a mistake has
been made in transcribing it," I was presently confronted by the
postmaster, a most courteous, obliging person.

"Why, certainly," he said, when I had repeated my untruth. "You shall
see it at once."

I waited in anxious expectancy, chatting lightly with the policeman,
while the postmaster looked through the file of the day's messages.

"This is it, I think," he said presently—we were in his private room.
"But," he went on, glancing from the message that had been sent to the
original, "your original message is unsigned. Is that the alleged
mistake of which you complain?"

"Unsigned!" I exclaimed, taking both papers from him. "Why yes, so it
is! Then how does that message that was sent off come to be signed?"

The original message was type-written. The wording was exactly the same
as that in the telegram received, with this exception—the telegram
received was signed "Michael Berrington," the typed message had no
signature.

"How do you account for this discrepancy?" I asked quickly.

"If you will kindly wait a moment," he answered, "I will inquire into
this."

He left the room. The policeman, to whom I had handed both messages,
was still contemplating them with a look of perplexity in his round
eyes, when the postmaster returned, bringing with him an
intelligent-looking girl.

"This," he said, "is the young lady who transmitted the message."

I am afraid I smiled. How long, I wonder, will post-office assistants,
and shop girls, bar tenders, and others continue to be "young ladies,"
while ladies in the correct sense of the word never think, when talking
of one another, of using terms more distinctive and dignified than
"girl" and "woman"?

"Do you remember my sending this telegram this morning?" I asked,
looking her full in the eyes.

"I remember taking in the message, but I'm afraid I don't remember your
face, sir," she answered nervously, evidently afraid that I was about to
get her into trouble. "You see, we see so many people, and most of them
only for a few moments. I recall rather clearly taking in that message,
because it was typed, which most telegrams are not. And—and I thought
it was handed in by a lady, and not by a gentleman. In fact I feel sure
it was. Was it really you who gave it to me to send off?"

"No, it was not," I answered quickly. "A lady? Can you remember what she
was like?"

"I can. She was, I think, really the most beautiful lady I have ever
seen. She was quite tall, as tall as a man, and she had a lovely figure.
It did seem to set off her beautiful clothes so well. Then her face was
lovely too—long, dark eyebrows she had, if I remember rightly, and her
eyes were large. Oh, and she had a lot of auburn hair—red you might
almost call it—I don't know which it was really, but I never saw
such hair."

"Good!" I exclaimed.

I turned to the policeman.

"She has described beyond doubt a woman I know; a woman you will
probably soon know something about too."

"Indeed, sir?" he said, interested.

"But about this signature," I went on, again addressing the operator.
"How does this telegram you sent off come to be signed if the original
was not signed?"

"It was signed, sir. It must have been. Otherwise the name wouldn't have
been telegraphed. Ah—I remember!"

"Remember what?"

"The signature was in pencil. Just after the telegram had been
despatched, the lady came in again and asked if she might see the
message again just for a moment—she was not sure if she had said
something she had meant to say, she said. I got it and gave it to her,
and a moment or two afterwards she gave it back to me, thanking me very
much for having let her see it. She must have rubbed off the signature
then. She could do it easy with a damp finger. Of course, I ought to
have looked, but I didn't think to."

"I think we have now solved the mystery—in part," I exclaimed
triumphantly. "This is some abominable conspiracy, and I am going to get
to the bottom of it. My name was evidently signed, telegraphed, and then
purposely obliterated."

After thanking the postmaster for his extreme courtesy and for the
trouble he had taken, and impressing upon him that under no
circumstances was the bright-eyed little operator to be censured, or
allowed to get into any trouble, I returned with the policeman, who was
now quite apologetic, to the house in Grafton Street. The door was
locked. A constable standing by, however, told us that Osborne and
Easterton had driven away together in a car—"his lordship's car, which
his lordship had telephoned for," he said, and that "the two ladies had
gone to the Ritz for tea"—he had heard them say, as they walked away,
that they were going there.

Alone I followed them. I know my way about the Ritz as though I lived
there, being there so often with friends, and I soon found Aunt Hannah
and Dulcie. They were alone in a cosy private tea-room leading out of
one of the large rooms which is but seldom used, having tea.

I saw Aunt Hannah stiffen as I approached. I saw too—and this disturbed
me far more—that Dulcie had been weeping. Her eyes were still
quite moist.

"What do you wish, Mr. Berrington?" Aunt Hannah inquired starchily,
sitting bolt upright in her chair as I approached.

I detest the use of the word "wish" in place of "want"; I don't know
why, but I always associate it with prim, prudish, highly-conventional
old ladies.

"I have come to explain everything, and to set your mind at rest," I
said, trying to speak lightly, and intentionally saying "mind" instead
of "minds," for I did not want Dulcie to suppose that I thought she
shared her aunt's grotesque belief in this matter—the belief that I
actually had sent that hateful telegram.

"I hope you will succeed," Aunt Hannah observed, then shut her lips
tightly.

She did not offer me a cup of tea, but I feigned not to notice this
paltry affront, and proceeded briefly to relate what had just taken
place at the post office. At last, when I had, as I thought, completely
cleared my character, I stopped speaking. To my surprise the old lady
remained as unbending as ever.

"I don't know why I've gone to the trouble of telling you all this," I
said, hiding the mortification I felt, "but you see, at any rate, that I
_had_ an explanation to offer, though I grant you that at present it can
only be a partial one. That is no fault of mine, however."

"'Partial'—yes, it certainly is that," muttered the old lady.

Aunt Hannah has small green eyes, and they seemed to snap. She still sat
up stiffly, her entire aspect rigid.

"This," I thought, "is the limit. Decidedly the moment of battle has
arrived"—indeed, the initial encounter had already taken place. I don't
mind confessing that my spirit quailed—for an instant. Then, realizing
that I was "up against it," my courage returned. My engagement to Dulcie
hung in the balance. I must face the music.

Perhaps at first I overdid it, but something is to be conceded to
nervousness. Aunt Hannah kept tapping her teaspoon against her saucer
with nervous little taps. The constant "small noise" was very
irritating. Determined to stop it, I leant suddenly forward across the
little table, till my face was close to Aunt Hannah's. Anger boiled in
my heart. Sympathy for Dulcie rose up and flooded my mind. Though I
allowed my most charming "boudoir" smile to overspread my face, it was
all I could do not to seize hold of that old lady and shake her.
Inwardly I craved to grasp her lean wrists in a firm grip, and force her
to listen to reason. "A dear" Dulcie had sometimes called her. "A dear"
she might be when in a nice mood, but in the peevish vein she was now
in, her obstinacy held a particularly maddening quality.

"You know," I said, still smiling hypocritically, "you are really
_trying_ to disbelieve me now. You are trying to make mischief between
Dulcie and me—and you enjoy it," and I glanced in the direction of my
darling, whose eyes were shining strangely. "Why don't you answer?" I
went on, as Aunt Hannah remained silent; I could hear her gulping with
rage. At last she spoke:

"What impudence—what unwarrantable impudence!" The words were shot from
between her teeth. "You—you dare to speak to me like this—you—you—"

"After all, Miss Challoner," I cut in, "it's true. I no more sent that,
or any telegram, to Dulcie than I am flying over the moon at this
moment. And if you still disbelieve me, at least tell me why. Yes, I
must know. Don't evade an answer. You have something else in your mind,
I can see that, and I am not going to rest until I know what that
something is."

"Oh, you very rude young man," she burst out. "Yes, you shall know what
it is! If, as you say, the telegram was not sent by you—and I suppose I
must believe you—why was it not sent to Sir Roland? Such a telegram
should have been sent to him, and not to his daughter—if the stolen
property had been found, it was for him to come to Town, or even for me
to, but certainly it was not Dulcie's place to go gallivanting about in
London. Now, I maintain it was sent to Dulcie because the sender knew
Sir Roland to be away from home—and who, but you, knew him to be away?
He left only yesterday, and he should return to-night. You knew
because, so my niece tells me, she told you in a letter that he was to
leave home for a day."

"My niece!" Really, Aunt Hannah was qualifying for _opera bouffe!_ Just
then she knocked her spoon so loudly against her cup that it
startled me.

"Don't worry, Dulcie," I said, seeing how distressed she looked. "You
believe I didn't send it, anyway—I don't mind what anybody else
thinks," I added spitefully. "The mystery will be cleared up sooner or
later, and 'he laughs longest ...' you know the rest. Only one thing I
wonder," I ended, again facing Aunt Hannah, "if you thought that, why
did you bring Dulcie up to town? Why didn't you leave her at Holt, and
come up alone?"

"I will tell you why," she snapped back. "Because, wilful and
disobedient as she has always been, she refused to stay at Holt and let
me come up alone."

Dulcie looked at me without answering, and I read love and confidence in
her eyes. That was all I really cared to know, and the look afforded me
immense relief.

I felt there was no good purpose to be served by remaining there longer,
so after shaking hands warmly with Dulcie—to the manifold disapproval
of Aunt Hannah, who stared at me frigidly and barely even bowed as I
took my leave—I sauntered out into Piccadilly.

My thoughts wandered. They were not, I must say, of the happiest.
Obviously there was an enemy somewhere—it might be enemies. But who
could it be? Why should I have, we have—for Dulcie suffered equally—an
enemy? What reason could anyone have for wishing to make Dulcie, or me,
or any of the Challoners, unhappy? Everybody I knew who knew them seemed
to love them, particularly the tenantry. Sir Roland was looked up to
and respected by both county people and villagers for miles around Holt
Stacey, while Dulcie was literally adored by men and women alike, or so
I believed. True, old Aunt Hannah sometimes put people out owing to her
eccentricities and her irascible temper, but then they mostly looked
upon her as a rather queer old lady, and made allowances for her, and
she had not, I felt sure, an enemy in the country-side.

As for myself, well, I could not recollect ever doing any particularly
bad turn—I had my likes and dislikes among the people I knew,
naturally. Then suddenly a thought struck me—my engagement to Dulcie.
Could that be—

I smiled as I dismissed the thought—it seemed too grotesque. No; once
and for all I decided that the whole affair could have nothing to do
with any kind of personal animosity. Criminals were at work, desperate
criminals, perhaps, and Osborne and Dulcie and I had chanced to prove
very useful as pawns in some scheme of theirs for securing plunder. I
glanced at my watch. It was just five o'clock. Concluding that Jack
Osborne must now be at his rooms, I drove to the Russell Hotel. Yes, he
particularly wanted to see me; would I please go up at once, the clerk
said when he had telephoned up my name and my inquiry if Mr. Osborne
were at home to anybody.

Easterton was with him still; a doctor was on the point of leaving as I
entered the room where Jack sat in his dressing-gown in a big chair,
drinking a cup of soup. Already he looked better, I thought, than when I
had seen him at the house in Grafton Street, barely two hours before.

After exchanging a few remarks with him, and being assured by Easterton
that the doctor had said that Jack might now see anyone he pleased, I
came straight to the question of the telegram, repeating to him almost
word for word what I had told Aunt Hannah.

For nearly a minute after I had stopped speaking he did not utter. He
appeared to be thinking deeply, judging by the way his brows were knit.
Then, suddenly looking straight at me, he said:

"Mike, I don't like this business—I don't like it at all. There's
something radically wrong about the whole thing. Now, look here, you
know that when I say a thing I mean it. Therefore I tell you this—I am
going to set to work, as soon as I have quite recovered from the
nightmare I have been through, to discover what is happening. I am going
to solve every detail of this mystery, and if there is some gang of
scoundrels at work committing burglaries and what not—because I feel
quite sure this affair is in some way connected with the robbery at
Holt—I am going to get them convicted. The doctor tells me I shall be
perfectly all right in a couple of days. I have nothing to do. You have
nothing to do. Will you join me in this attempt I am going to make to
track these men down? I hear it said that you are engaged to be married
to Dulcie Challoner. If that's so, then you should be even more anxious
than I am to get this gang arrested—the police say it must be a gang.
They have looted some thousands of pounds' worth of jewellery which
practically belonged to Dulcie Challoner. Think what it will mean to her
if through your efforts all that is restored to her. Besides, she will
think you a hero—I mean an even greater hero than she already considers
you, most likely; I confess I don't agree with her, old man. You are a
very good chap—but a hero? No. Say, then, will you help me in this
search? It may prove exciting too; on the other hand, it may not."

Jack's breezy manner and almost boyish enthusiasm appealed to me. After
all, I had, as he said, nothing on earth to do—I often wished I
had—and I was rather keen on anything that might lead to or savour of
adventure. Though I was engaged to Dulcie, there were family reasons why
the marriage could not take place at once, and then I thought again of
what Jack had just said about the stolen jewels—Dulcie was still
greatly upset at their loss, and there was even the possibility, I
thought with a smile, that if I were directly or indirectly responsible
for their recovery Aunt Hannah might eventually deign again to smile
upon me—which would, of course, give me great joy!

"Yes, old chap," I said, "I'll do anything you jolly well like. I'm sick
of doing nothing."

"First rate!" he answered. "Then that's settled. I've all sorts of ideas
and theories about the Holt Manor robbery and this affair of mine, and
that telegram to-day, and other things that have happened—some you know
about, some you don't. I have a friend who was for twenty years at
Scotland Yard—George Preston, wonderful chap, knows London upside-down
and inside-out, and now he's kicking his heels with nothing to do he'll
be only too glad to earn a bit. You might ring him up for me now, and
ask him to come here to-morrow."

Somebody knocked, and I went to the door, Jack having told me that he
did not want to see anybody likely to bore him.

It was only an hotel messenger. The clerk in the office had tried to
ring up the room, he said, but could get no answer. Turning, I saw that
Jack had forgotten to replace the receiver the last time he had spoken.

"What do you want?" I asked.

The messenger said that a "young gentleman" had just called. He wanted
to see "a Mr. Berrington" who was probably with Mr. Osborne.

"What about?" I said. "And didn't he give his name?"

"He wouldn't say what about, sir, though he was asked. He said it was
'most important.' He said to say 'Mr. Richard Challoner.'"

"Dick!" I exclaimed. "Good heavens, what is Dick doing up in London? Oh,
go down," I said to the messenger, "and send him up at once."

"It's Dick Challoner," I said, turning to Osborne and Easterton, "Sir
Roland's boy, the little chap I told you about who behaved so pluckily
when the thieves at Holt got hold of him. I wonder what _he's_ doing in
town, and why he wants to see me."

Then I sat down, lit a cigarette, and waited. I little suspected what an
amazing story I was about to hear.




CHAPTER IX


THE SNARE

Dick's face bore a broad grin as he entered the room. He looked
dreadfully mischievous. Assuming as serious an expression as I could
conjure, I said to him:

"Why, what's the meaning of this, Dick? How do you come to be in town?
Are you with Aunt Hannah?"

"It's all right—brother-in-law," he answered lightly. "No, I am not
with Aunt Hannah, nor is Aunt Hannah with me. I have come up on my own."

"'On your own'? What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you, but—won't you introduce me, Mike?"

"Easterton," I said, "this is Roland Challoner's boy, Dick. Jack, this
is the boy I told you about who was chloroformed by the thieves
at Holt."

Jack's eyes rested on Dick. Then he put out his hand.

"Come here, old chap," he said in his deep voice. For several moments he
held Dick's hand in his while he sat looking at him.

"Yes," he said at last, "I have heard about you—Dick. I heard about
what you did that day those men caught you. Keep that spirit up, my
boy—your family has never lacked pluck, if history is to be
trusted—and you'll become one of the kind of men England so badly
needs. What are you doing in London? Is your father with you?"

"No, I have come up on my own," Dick repeated. "I am going to tell Mike
why, in a moment. Are you Mr. Jack Osborne that Mike is always talking
to my sister about, who took Mike to that house—the house where the
fire was?"

"Yes, I am," Jack answered, laughing. "Why?"

"Oh, because my sister didn't like your taking Mike there, you know—she
didn't like it a bit. She and Mike are going to be married, you know,
and Mike is going to be my brother-in-law."

I pounced upon him to make him be quiet, though Easterton and Osborne
clamoured that he should be left alone and allowed to say anything he
liked, Jack declaring that he wanted to hear "more of this romance."

At last we all became serious, and then Dick said:

"I made a discovery this morning at Holt. There is someone hidden in the
old hiding-hole close to father's bedroom."

"Hidden in it!" I exclaimed. "Oh, nonsense!"

"Your telegram to Dulcie arrived at about half-past ten this morning,"
he went on, not heeding my remark, "and she and Aunt Hannah at once got
ready to go to town—I know what was in the telegram, because Dulcie
told me. About an hour after they were gone, I happened to go up to
father's bedroom to fetch something, and when I came out again I noticed
an odd sound—at first I couldn't think where it came from. It was like
someone breathing very heavily, someone asleep. I stood quite still, and
soon I found that it came from the priests' hiding-hole—you know it,
you have seen it. I went over on tip-toe, got into the angle where the
opening to the hole is, and pressed my ear down on the sliding board. I
could hear the sound quite well then—somebody breathing awfully
heavily. First I thought of sliding back the board and peeping in. Then
I decided I wouldn't do that until I'd got somebody else with me. I
noticed that the sliding board was unbolted—there is a little bolt on
the side of it, you know—so I very quietly pushed forward the bolt and
then went downstairs to look for James or Charles—that's the butler and
the footman, you know," he said to Jack. "Cook told me they had both
gone into Newbury for the day, and of course father's chauffeur was out
with the car—he had taken Aunt Hannah and Dulcie to Holt Stacey to
catch the train to London, and I knew that he would take a day off too,
because he always does when he gets the chance—father isn't expected
back until to-night. So then I went to try to find Churchill, or one of
the other gardeners—goodness knows where they were hiding themselves.
Anyway, I couldn't find them, nor could I find either of the keepers; in
fact, I seemed to be the only man on the place."

"Well, go on," I said, as he paused. "You were the only man on the
place. What did the only 'man' do then?"

"I'll tell you if you'll wait a moment—my brother-in-law is always so
beastly impatient," he said, turning again to Jack. "Don't you find him
like that, Mr. Osborne?"

"I do—always. But go on, old boy, I'm very interested."

"And so am I," Easterton laughed.

"Of course, it was no use telling cook or the maids; they'd have got
what cook calls 'styricks' or something, so then it suddenly struck me
the best thing for me to do would be to come right up to town and find
Aunt Hannah and tell her. I knew where she'd be, because you'd said in
your telegram—four hundred and thirty Grafton Street. I didn't know
where Grafton Street was, but I thought I could find out—I borrowed
money from cook for the railway ticket, though I didn't tell her what I
wanted it for, or she wouldn't have given it to me, and directly after
lunch I bicycled to Holt Stacey station and caught the train.

"I got to Grafton Street all right by a 'bus down Bond Street. There was
a policeman standing near the house in Grafton Street, and when I rang
the bell he came up and asked me what I wanted. I told him, and he said
he thought I'd find 'the two ladies I wanted' at the Ritz Hotel. I knew
where that was, and he showed me the way to get to it, down Dover
Street—of course, if I'd had money enough I'd have taken taxis and got
about much quicker. A giant in livery at the Ritz Hotel told me that
'two ladies answering to the description of the ladies I sought' had
left the hotel about a quarter of an hour before I got there, and he
didn't know where they had gone. Then I went to Brooks's to see if you
were there, but you weren't, though they said you'd been there. That put
the lid on it. I didn't know what to do, and I'd only got tenpence
ha'penny left. I was awfully hungry, so I went and had tea and buns at
the A.B.C. shop at Piccadilly Circus. While I was having tea I
remembered hearing you tell Dulcie that Mr. Osborne lived at the Russell
Hotel. I'd have telephoned to Mr. Osborne and explained who I was and
asked him if he could tell me where I could find you, and I'd have
telephoned too to your flat in South Molton Street to ask if you were
there, but I'd got only fivepence ha'penny left after tea, and you might
both have been out and then I'd have had only a penny-ha'penny and
Paddington seemed an awfully long way to walk to, and I wasn't quite
sure of the way, so I'd have had to keep asking, and that's such a
bore, isn't it?

"So after tea I got on to the tube and came here and asked for Mr.
Osborne. The man downstairs told me 'two gentlemen were with him,' and I
asked him what they were like. He told me as well as he could, and I
guessed from the description one of them must be you, and then just
after the messenger had come up to ask if it was you and to tell you I
was there, another hotel man turned up downstairs, and I talked to him,
and he said he knew a Mr. Berrington was with Mr. Osborne because he,
the man, had telephoned up your name a little while before, and Mr.
Osborne had said to show you up. And so here I am, and that's all."

He stopped abruptly, breathless after his long talk, which had been
delivered without an instant's pause.

"For your age you seem fairly intelligent," Jack said, with a look of
amusement.

"Yes, fairly," Dick retorted. "But my brother-in-law says that 'when he
was my age' the world was a much better and finer place, that the boys
did wonderful things—'when he was my age.' He says, for instance, that
he talked Latin and Greek and German and French and one or two other
languages just as you talk English, Mr. Osborne, 'when he was my age'—
funny how he has forgotten them all, isn't it? My sister told me only
yesterday that Mike talks French fluently, but that his German 'leaves
much to be desired.' Those were her words. Were all the boys wonderful
when you were my age too, Mr. Osborne, can you remember? Another thing
Mike says is that 'when he was my age' all boys were taught to swim by
being taken to the ends of piers and flung into the sea—Mike says he
was taught like that just as the rest were, and that he jolly well had
to swim or he'd have been drowned, which seems pretty obvious, doesn't
it, when you come to think of it? When did the fashion of teaching boys
to swim like that go out, Mr. Osborne? I'm jolly glad it has gone out."

When I had succeeded in checking Dick's flow of talk and quelling his
high spirits, and had questioned him further with regard to the man he
declared to be in hiding at Holt—though without my being able to obtain
from him any further information—I turned to Jack.

"What do you make of it?" I said. "What do you suggest ought to be
done?"

"I think," he answered after a moment's pause, "that it affords an
excellent excuse for you to run down to Holt to-night."

"Oh, good!" Dick exclaimed, jumping with excitement. "And there's a
train at a quarter to seven that we can catch; it gets to Holt Stacey at
five minutes to eight."

Jack glanced up at the clock.

"In three quarters of an hour's time," he said. "That will suit you,
Mike, and you'll be glad, I know, of the excuse to go down to Holt to
see the flowers and—and things. Don't think I suppose for a moment that
you want to see either Dulcie Challoner or the old lady you call 'Aunt
Hannah,' but still if you should see them, and of course you will—"

"Oh, he'll see them right enough," Dick burst out, "especially my
sister. There aren't any flies on my brother-in-law, you bet!"

I boxed Dick's ears, but he didn't seem to mind. Perhaps I didn't box
them very hard, for instead of howling as he ought to have done, he
looked up at me sharply and exclaimed:

"Then you're coming down to Holt now! Hooray! We'll go down
together—how ripping! I'll telephone to say you're coming, and say to
get your room ready," and he sprang across to the instrument by
the bedside.

I stopped him, gripping him by the shoulder, though not before
he had pulled off the receiver and called through to the
operator—"Trunks, please!"

"You'll do nothing of the sort," I said, "and look here, Dick, you are
in Mr. Osborne's rooms, and not in your own play-room, so don't
forget it."

I felt greatly preoccupied as the train sped down to Berkshire—anxious,
too, about many things, not the least of these being how I should be
received. Would Sir Roland have returned? Would Aunt Hannah have told
him everything? If so would he have adopted her view with regard to the
sending of that telegram, and with regard to other matters? And Dulcie,
would she at last have come to think as Aunt Hannah thought? I could not
believe she would have, but still—

As I have said, women are so extraordinary, that there is no knowing
what they may not do, no accounting for what they may do.

Knowing there would be no conveyance obtainable at Holt Stacey, I had
decided to go on to Newbury. On our alighting at Newbury I suddenly
heard Dick's shrill voice calling:

"Why, Mike, there's father!"

Sir Roland had just got out of a compartment further up the train, and
soon we were in conversation. He too had come from London, but whereas
Dick and I had only just caught the train, Sir Roland had, he said,
entered it as soon as it came into the station, which accounted for our
not having seen him at Paddington. As we walked along the Newbury
platform I explained to him very briefly the reason I had come down, and
how it was I had Dick with me, inwardly congratulating myself upon my
good fortune in thus meeting Sir Roland and so being able to explain
everything to him concerning what had happened that day, before he
should meet his sister and hear what she would tell him.

"It was only at the last moment I decided to come by this train," Sir
Roland said as he entered the taxi that a porter had hailed, and I
followed him, while Dick hopped in after us. "How tiresome it is one
can't get a conveyance at Holt Stacey; people are for ever complaining
to me about it. As I have not telegraphed for the car to meet me I had
to come on to Newbury."

"I came to Newbury for the same reason," I said; and then, as the taxi
rolled swiftly along the dark lanes, for we had a twelve miles' run
before us, I gave Sir Roland a detailed account of all that had happened
that day, from the time Easterton had rung me up at my flat to tell me
of Jack Osborne's disappearance and to ask me to come to him at once,
down to the sudden and unexpected arrival of Dick at Jack's rooms at the
Russell Hotel.

Sir Roland was astounded, and a good deal perturbed. Several times
during the course of my narrative he had interrupted in order to put
some question or other to Dick. At first he had reproved him for going
to London on what Dick called "his own"; but when I told him more he
admitted that what the boy had done he had done probably for the best.

"Oh, I haven't told you one thing," Dick suddenly interrupted.

"Well, what?" Sir Roland asked.

"While I was on my way to Holt Stacey this morning, Mrs. Stapleton
passed me in her car. I was on that part of the road, about a mile from
the lodge, where if you look round you can see a long bit of the avenue.
I wondered if Mrs. Stapleton were going to Holt by any chance, so I
bicycled rather slowly for a minute or two, and looked round once or
twice. I had guessed right, because all at once I saw her car going up
the avenue."

"Are you sure it was Mrs. Stapleton?" I asked, suddenly interested.

"Oh, quite. But I don't think she saw me, her car went by so fast."

"Was anybody with her?"

"No, she was alone—the chauffeur was driving."

"And the car that went up the drive, are you sure it was the same?"

"Positive—that long grey car of hers, I'd know it anywhere; you can
recognize it ever so far away."

We were half a mile from the lodge, now. Soon we had shot through the
open gates, and were sliding up the splendid avenue. I felt intensely
excited, also happier than when in the train, for I knew I now possessed
Sir Roland's entire confidence. Delicious was it to think that in a few
minutes I should see Dulcie again, but what excited me—and I knew it
must be exciting Sir Roland too—was the thought of that man—or would
it prove to be a woman?—lying concealed in the hiding-hole. Who could
he be? How long had he been there? How had he got there and what could
he be doing?

I had told Sir Roland of the false conclusion Aunt Hannah had come to
with regard to the sending of that typed telegram, and how bitterly she
had spoken to me about it—I had thought it best to prepare him for the
absurd story that I felt sure Aunt Hannah would proceed to pour into his
ear directly she met him. To my relief he had laughed, appearing to
treat the matter of her annoyance and suspicion as a joke, though the
sending of the telegram he looked upon, naturally, as a very grave
matter. Consequently, upon our arrival at Holt, instead of inquiring for
his sister, and at once consulting her upon the subject of the day's
events, as he would, I knew, have done under ordinary circumstances, he
told Charles, the footman, to send the butler to him at once, and to
return with him.

We were now in the little library—Sir Roland and myself, Dick, the
butler and the footman, and the door was shut. Without any preliminaries
Sir Roland came straight to the point. He told the two servants of
Dick's discovery that morning, told them that presumably the man was
still in hiding where Dick had bolted him down, and that the four of us
were at once going, as he put it, "to unearth the scoundrel."

"And you will stay here, Dick," Sir Roland added. "We shall not need
your services at this juncture."

Dick was, I could see, deeply disappointed at, as he put it to me in an
undertone, "being side-tracked like this by the guv'nor when it was I
who marked the beggar to ground "; but his father's word was law, and
he knew it.

"Never mind, my dear old chap," I said, as I noticed a slight quiver of
the under lip, "directly we've unearthed him and got him safely bagged
I'll come and tell you what he looks like and all about him. You see,
your father doesn't want to run unnecessary risk—you're the only boy
he's got, and this man may be armed. You would be annoyed if the fellow
were to make holes in you, and I should be vexed too; greatly vexed."

Dick laughed at that, and when, a minute later, we left him, he was
happier in his mind.

No sound was audible as we stood above the priests' hole, listening
intently. This hiding-place was oddly situated, and ingeniously
constructed. In an angle formed by two walls with old oak wainscoting
was a sliding floor—in reality it was a single board, but it was made
to resemble so exactly several boards set parallel and horizontally that
none could believe it to be a single board unless they were shown.
Immediately beneath was a room, or closet, not much bigger than a very
large cupboard, which could accommodate three men standing, or two
seated. In olden days this sliding board was covered with tapestry, and
being made in such a way that, when stamped upon or struck, no hollow
sound was emitted, it formed a safe place of concealment for any
outlawed person for whom the emissaries of the law might be in search.
To this day the board slides away into the wall as "sweetly" as it did
in the days of the Reformation; but Sir Roland, owing to an accident
having once occurred through someone leaving the hole uncovered, had
affixed a small bolt to the board and given orders that this bolt should
always be kept pushed into its socket.

When we had all stood listening for fully a minute, Sir Roland said
suddenly:

"Charles, draw the bolt and slide back the board—get back, James!" he
exclaimed sharply to the butler, who in his anxiety to see what would be
revealed was bending forward.

"D'you want to be shot? Whoever the man may be he is pretty sure to be
armed."

An instant later the board had vanished into the wall, and Sir Roland
stood peering down exactly as he had warned his butler not to do.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed.

Casting prudence aside, we all pressed forward and looked down into the
hole. Huddled in a heap at the bottom was a man in hunting kit—white
breeches, top boots and "pink" coat. Sitting along the floor, he was
bent almost double, so that we could not see his face.

"Hello!" Sir Roland called out, "who are you? What are you doing there?"

But the figure didn't move.

At one end of the hiding-hole a ladder was nailed vertically. The feet
of the man touched its lowest rung. Turning, Sir Roland began carefully
to descend.

"Let me, sir!" the butler exclaimed excitedly, "let me—it's not
safe—he may attack you, sir!"

Without answering Sir Roland continued to clamber down. Now he stood
upon the floor of the hiding-hole, at the foot of the figure. We saw him
stoop, raise the man's head, and bend the body upward until the back
rested against the other end of the hole.

An exclamation escaped us simultaneously. The face was that of a man of
twenty-seven or so, though the stubbly beard and moustache, apparently a
week's growth or more, at first gave the idea that he was much older.
The eyes were closed and sunken. The mouth gaped. The face was deathly
pale and terribly emaciated.

"By Gad!" gasped Sir Roland, as he took hold of the wrist and felt for
the pulse. "My Gad, I think he's dead!"




CHAPTER X


NARRATES A CONFESSION

Half an hour later the man found in the hiding-hole lay upon a bed in
one of the spare rooms.

Though not dead, he had, when discovered, been in the last stage of
exhaustion. The doctor telephoned for had at once discovered that what
we already suspected was true—the man's left ankle was very badly
sprained. It must, he said, have been sprained ten or twelve days
previously. In addition, the man was almost like a skeleton.

"You found him not an hour too soon," the doctor said when, after
completing his diagnosis, and giving instructions concerning the
treatment of his patient to the nurse who had just arrived, he rejoined
us in the smoking-room downstairs. "He is in a state of complete
collapse. For days he has evidently not touched food."

He looked at us in turn with an odd expression as he said this. He was
clearly mystified at finding a man at Holt Manor dying of starvation—a
starving man dressed for the chase, a man obviously of refinement, and
undoubtedly to be described as a gentleman.

Sir Roland decided under the circumstances to tell the doctor
everything: how the man's presence had been discovered by Dick, how we
had afterwards found him lying upon the floor of the hiding-hole,
apparently dead, and how, with the help of ropes, we had finally pulled
him out. The doctor had, of course, heard of the robbery at Holt nearly
a fortnight before, and he at once put two and two together.

For two days the stranger quivered between life and death. Two nurses
were in constant attendance, and the doctor called frequently. It was on
the afternoon of the third day that he expressed a desire to talk to Sir
Roland; he had, until then, been allowed to speak only a word or two.

He wanted, he said, "to speak with Sir Roland alone"; but to this Sir
Roland would not agree.

"If you want to speak to me, you can speak quite freely before this
gentleman," he said; I was in the room at the time.

At first the man seemed distressed, but at last, finding that Sir Roland
would make no concession, he said in a weak voice:

"I'm dying, Sir Roland, I feel it, and before I go there are things I
should like to say to you—things that it may be to your advantage
to hear."

His voice, I noticed, had in it the _timbre_ peculiar to the voices of
men of education.

"Say anything you like," Sir Roland answered coldly.

"You have been exceedingly kind to me: there are men who, finding me in
concealment as you found me, and after what has happened in this house,
would at once have called in the police. You may believe me or not, but
I am extremely grateful to you. And I want to show my gratitude in the
only way I can."

He paused for nearly a minute, then continued:

"Sir Roland, I will tell you as much as I am justified in telling about
the robbery; but first, has anybody concerned in it been arrested?"

Sir Roland shook his head.

"Nobody—as yet," he answered. "The police have not discovered even the
smallest clue."

"I and another were in your bedroom when your son suddenly sprang from
behind the screen," the stranger went on. "Again you may believe me or
not, but I tried to prevent my companion from doing him any injury. It
was I who put the chloroform on the boy, but I did him no other harm, I
swear, sir."

I saw Sir Roland's eyes blaze. Then, as his glance rested upon the
stranger's starved, almost ashen face—it seemed to be gradually
growing livid—the sternness of his expression relaxed.

"How came you to be in hiding here?" he asked abruptly. "How many
accomplices had you?"

"Seven," the stranger replied, without an instant's hesitation. "The
robbery was carefully planned; it was planned so carefully that it
seemed without the bounds of possibility that it could fail to succeed.
I and others were at your hunt breakfast—"

"Were your accomplices all men?" I interrupted sharply.

The man's stare met mine. He looked at me with, I thought, singular
malevolence.

"They were not," he answered quietly. He turned again to Sir Roland.
"Just after your son had been rendered unconscious, I had the misfortune
to slip up on the polished floor and sprain my ankle badly. No sooner
did my companion realize what had happened, than he snatched from me all
the stolen property I held, in spite of my endeavour to prevent him,
then emptied my pockets, and left me. Dismayed at being thus
deserted—for unless I could hide at once I must, I knew, quickly be
discovered—I crawled out of the room on all fours, and along the
landing as far as the angle where the hiding-place is. The hole was
open—we had opened it before entering your room, lest we might be
surprised and suddenly forced to hide. Almost as I reached it I heard
somebody coming. Instantly I scrambled down and slid the board over
my head."

"How came you to know of the existence and the whereabouts of the
hiding-hole at all?" Sir Roland inquired, eyeing the stranger
suspiciously.

"That I do not wish to tell. I hoped ultimately to be rescued by my
accomplices, and for that reason I made no sound which might have
revealed my presence. My ankle had swollen considerably, and, confined
in my riding-boot, which I couldn't pull off, it gave me intense pain.
To clamber out unaided was consequently an impossibility; so there I
lay, slowly starving, hoping, night after night, that my accomplices
would force an entrance into the house and rescue me, for my companion
who left me must have guessed where I was in hiding—we had agreed, as I
have said, to seek concealment in that hole should either of us be
driven to hide in order to escape detection."

"Was the man who deserted you the man who deliberately strained my boy's
arm by twisting it?" Sir Roland asked.

"Yes."

"What is his name?"

"Gastrell—Hugesson Gastrell, that's the name the brute is known by. He
always was a blackguard—a perisher! I shall refuse to betray any of the
others; they are my friends. But Hugesson Gastrell—don't forget that
name, Sir Roland. You may some day be very glad I told it to you—the
man of The Four Faces!"

He paused. He seemed suddenly to be growing weaker. As we sat there,
watching him, I could not help in a sense feeling pity for the fellow,
and I knew that Sir Roland felt the same. It seemed terrible to find a
man like this, quite young—he was certainly under thirty—a man with
the unmistakable _cachet_ of public school and university, engaged in a
career of infamy. What was his life's story I wondered as I looked at
him, noting how refined his features were, what well-shaped hands he
had. Why had he sunk so low? Above all, who was he? for certainly he was
no ordinary malefactor.

Suddenly he turned on to his back, wincing with pain as he did so; he
had been lying partly on his side.

"I can't betray my friends, Sir Roland," he murmured, "but believe me
when I say I am deeply grateful for your kindness to me. I was not
always what I am now, you know," his voice grew weaker still; "not
always an adventurer—a criminal if you will. Yes, I am a criminal, and
have been for many years; unconvicted as yet, but none the less a
criminal. I was once what you are, Sir Roland; I took pride in being a
gentleman and in calling myself one. Educated at Marlborough and at
Trinity—but why should I bore you with my story—eh, Sir Roland? Why
should I bore you with, with—ah! The Four Faces! The Four Faces!"
he repeated.

His eyes rolled strangely, then looked dully up at the ceiling. What did
he mean by "The Four Faces"? Did he refer to the medallion worn by
Gastrell? His mind was beginning to wander. He muttered and murmured for
a minute, then again his words became articulate.

"Jasmine—oh, Jasmine my darling, I love you so!"

I started.

"Jasmine, if only you would ... oh, yes, that is all I ask, all I want,
my darling woman, all I ... you remember it all, don't you? ... yes ...
oh, it was her fault ... he wouldn't otherwise have killed her ... oh,
no, discovery is impossible, the ... it was quite unrecognizable.... The
Four Faces—ha! ha! ... I myself saw it, black, charred beyond all hope
of recognition ... he did right to ... dear, I should have done
the same...."

Between these scraps of sentences were words impossible to catch the
meaning of, so indistinctly were they uttered, some being said beneath
his breath, some muttered and inarticulate, some little more than
murmurings.

He moved restlessly on the bed. Then his eyes slowly closed, and for a
minute he lay still. And then, all at once, he seemed to spring back
into life.

"Mother!" he shouted suddenly in quite a strong voice.

He started up in bed, and now sat erect and still, his wide-stretched
eyes staring straight before him.

The nurse had, at Sir Roland's request, left the room before the
stranger had begun to speak to him. Now, opening the door quickly, Sir
Roland called to her to return.

The stranger's eyes were fixed. Motionless he sat there glaring, as it
seemed to us, at some figure facing him. Instinctively we followed the
direction of his gaze, but naught was visible to us save the artistic
pattern upon the pink-tinted wall-paper opposite the foot of the bed.

His lips were slightly parted, now. We saw them move as though he spoke
rapidly, but no words came. And then, all at once, he smiled.

"The Four Faces!" he repeated, almost inaudibly.

It was not a vacant smile, not the smile of a man mentally deficient,
but a smile charged with meaning, with intelligent expression; a smile
of delight, of greeting—a smile full of love. It was the first time we
had seen a smile, or anything approaching one, upon his face, and in an
instant it revealed how handsome the man had been.

"Mother!"

This time the word was only murmured, a murmur so low as to be barely
audible. The fellow's pyjama jacket, one Sir Roland Challoner had lent
to him, had become unfastened at the throat, and now I noticed that a
thin gold chain was round his neck, and that from it there depended a
flat, circular locket.

Sir Roland was seated close beside the bed. Almost as I noticed this
locket, he saw it too. I saw him bend forward a little, and take it in
his fingers, and turn it over. I could see it distinctly from where I
sat. Upon the reverse side was a miniature—the portrait of a woman—a
woman of forty-five or so, very beautiful still, a striking face of
singular refinement. Yes, there could be no doubt whatever—the eyes of
the miniature bore a striking likeness to the stranger's, which now
gazed at nothing with that fixed, unmeaning stare.

I had noticed Sir Roland raised his eyebrows. Now he sat staring
intently at the miniature which lay flat upon the palm on his hand. At
last he let it drop and turned to me, while the stranger still sat
upright in the bed, gazing still at something he seemed to see
before him.

"I believe I have discovered his identity," Sir Roland whispered. "I
recognize the portrait in that locket; I couldn't possibly mistake it
seeing that years ago I knew the original well. It's a miniature of
Lady Logan, who died some years ago. Her husband, Lord Logan, was a
gambler, a spendthrift, and a drunkard, and he treated her with
abominable cruelty. They had one child, a son. I remember the son
sitting on my knee when he was quite a little chap—he couldn't at that
time have been more than five or six. He went to Marlborough, I know;
then crammed for the army, but failed to pass; and yet he was
undoubtedly clever. His father became infuriated upon hearing that he
had not qualified, and, in a fit of drunkenness, turned him with curses
out of the house, forbidding him ever to return, in spite of Lady
Logan's pleading on the lad's behalf. The lad had from infancy been
passionately devoted to his mother, though he couldn't bear his father.
The mother died soon afterwards—of a broken heart it was said—and Lord
Logan survived her only a few months, dying eventually of _delirium
tremens_. Upon his death the little money he left was swallowed up in
paying his debts. The son, whose name was Harold, didn't show up even at
the funerals—none knew where he was or what had become of him. It was
generally believed that he had gone abroad, and Logan's executors
thought it probable that the son had not had news of either his mother's
or his father's death. Altogether it was a very sad story and—"

He checked himself, for the stranger had turned his head and was looking
at us—never shall I forget the infinite pathos of his expression at
that moment. There was something in the face which betrayed misery and
dejection so abject that for days afterwards the look haunted me. Again
I saw the lips move, but no sound came.

He had sunk back upon his pillows. Once more his eyes gazed fixedly at
the ceiling. Some moments later the mouth gaped, the lips turned slowly
blue, a dull, leaden hue spread over the pale features.

The nurse hurried forward, but there was nothing to be done. Harold
Logan, Lord Logan's wastrel son, was dead.




CHAPTER XI


CONCERNS MRS. STAPLETON

Ten days had passed since the events I have set down in the previous
chapter, and still no clue of any kind had been obtained to the robbers
at Holt, or the perpetrators of the outrage at the house in Grafton
Street. Nor, indeed, had any light been thrown upon the mystery of the
forged telegram, while the incident of the discovery of the charred body
of a murdered woman among the _debris_ of the house in Maresfield
Gardens destroyed by fire on Christmas Eve had, to all intents, been
entirely forgotten.

In the firelight in a small room leading out of the large library,
Dulcie and I sat and talked. Perched on the broad arm of a giant padded
chair, swinging her small, grey-spatted feet to and fro, she glanced at
me moodily, replying in monosyllables to most of my remarks. Presently I
rose with a gesture of annoyance, and began to pace the floor.

It was not a comfortable atmosphere by any means—metaphorically. In
point of fact, Dulcie and I quarrelled.

We had quarrelled during our afternoon walk over the hard-frozen snow to
a neighbouring hamlet to take a deserving widow a can of soup, and old
"Captain" Barnacle in Wheatsheaf Lane a promising Christmas pudding.

The cause of our quarrel was a curious one. Though Aunt Hannah appeared
to have overcome her belief concerning the telegram she had felt so
certain I had sent, I felt that she was now prejudiced against me—why,
heaven only knew. Her manner towards me, as well as her expression, and
the way she spoke to me, all betrayed this. Women dislike being proved
to be in the wrong even more than men do, and the conclusion I had come
to was that Aunt Hannah would never forgive my having, in a sense, made
her eat her words and look ridiculous. It was on the subject of Aunt
Hannah, then, that Dulcie and I had begun our quarrel, for Dulcie had
stood up for her when I condemned her—that I condemned her rather
bitterly, I admit. From that we had presently come to talk of Mrs.
Stapleton, for whom Dulcie had suddenly developed a most extraordinary
infatuation.

On the morning that Dick, on his way to the station, had passed Mrs.
Stapleton in her car, Mrs. Stapleton had called at Holt and asked to see
Dulcie. At that moment Dulcie was in the train with Aunt Hannah, on her
way to London in response to the telegram. The widow had then asked to
see Aunt Hannah Challoner, and then Sir Roland.

Upon hearing that all three were absent from home, she had asked if she
might come into the house to write a note to Dulcie, and the maid who
had opened the door to her—the butler and footman having, as we know,
gone into Newbury—had politely but firmly refused to admit her,
declaring that she had orders to admit nobody whomsoever.

This refusal had apparently annoyed Mrs. Stapleton a good deal, and on
the same evening she had called again, and again asked to see Dulcie,
who by that time had returned. It was while she was alone with Dulcie
in her boudoir that Sir Roland and Dick and I had returned to Holt, and
that the stranger—whom we now knew to have been Lord Logan's son—had
been discovered in the hiding-hole. Mrs. Stapleton had remained with
Dulcie over an hour, and during that hour it was that she had apparently
cast the spell of her personality over Dulcie. It was on the subject of
this infatuation of Dulcie's that Dulcie and I had ended by quarrelling
rather seriously.

"I won't hear a word said against her," Dulcie suddenly declared
impetuously, kicking her heel viciously against the chair. "I think she
is the most fascinating woman I have ever met, and the more you abuse
her the more I shall stand up for her—so there."

"Abuse her!" I answered irritably. "When did I abuse her? Repeat one
word of abuse that I have uttered against her. You know quite well that
I haven't said a syllable that you can twist into abuse. All I have said
is that I mistrust her, and that I think it a pity you should for ever
be metaphorically sitting on her skirts, as you have been during the
past few days."

"And you don't call that abuse?" Dulcie retorted. "Then tell me what you
do call it."

"I myself like Mrs. Stapleton up to a point," I answered, evading the
question. "She is capital company and all that, but—"

"But what?" Dulcie asked quickly, as I hesitated.

"But who is she? And where does she come from? How is it that nobody
about here, and apparently nobody in town either, knows anything at all
about her? Such an attractive-looking woman, young, apparently well off,
and a widow—surely somebody ought to know something or other about her
if she is quite—well, quite all right. It's most singular that she
shouldn't have any friends at all among our rather large circle of
acquaintance."

"I shall tell her just what you have said about her," Dulcie exclaimed
quite hotly. "I never thought you were that kind, Michael—never. You
pride yourself upon being broadminded—you have often told me so—and
yet because Tom, Dick and Harry don't know all about poor Mrs.
Stapleton—who her husband was, who her parents were, and where she
comes from—you immediately become suspicious, and begin to wonder all
sorts of horrid things about her."

"My dear Dulcie," I said, becoming suddenly quite calm, so anxious was I
to soothe her at any cost, for I hated our falling out like this, "you
put words into my mouth I never spoke, and thoughts into my mind which
never occurred to me. I have said only one thing, and I shall say it
again. I mistrust Mrs. Stapleton, and I advise you to be on your guard
against her."

The door opened at that moment, and Charles, entering, announced:

"Mrs. Stapleton."

"Oh, Connie, how glad I am you've come!" Dulcie burst out, jumping off
the arm of the big chair impetuously, and hurrying forward to meet the
widow, who at once embraced her affectionately. "We were just this
instant talking about you. Isn't that strange?"

"And I hope not saying nasty things, as I have reason to believe some of
my 'friends' do," Mrs. Stapleton answered, with a charming smile,
casting a careless glance at me. "But, of course, I couldn't imagine you
or Mr. Berrington saying anything unpleasant about anybody," she added
quickly; "you are both much—much too nice."

This was heaping coals of fire upon me, and I believe I winced as
Dulcie's eyes met mine for a brief instant and I noticed the look of
scorn that was in them. She did not, however, repeat to Mrs. Stapleton
what I had just said about her, as she had threatened to do. Instead,
she slipped her arm affectionately through the young widow's, led her
over to the big arm-chair, made her sit down in it, and once more
perched herself upon its arm.

"Ring for tea, Mike, like a dear," she said to me. Her tone had
completely changed. Once more she had become her own, delightful self.
This sudden _volte-face_ did not, I must admit, in the least surprise
me, for I knew what a child of moods she was, how impulsive and
impetuous, and I think I loved her the more because she was like that.

We now formed, indeed, quite a merry trio. By the time tea was finished
Connie Stapleton's magnetic personality must, I think, have begun to
affect me to some extent, for I found myself wondering whether, after
all, I had not been mistaken in the opinion I had formed that she was a
woman one would be well-advised not to trust too implicitly—become too
intimate with.

"And your jewels, dear!" she suddenly asked, as though the recollection
of the robbery had but at that instant occurred to her. "Have you
recovered any of them? Have the police found any clue?"

"Yes," Dulcie answered at once, "the police have a clue, though, as yet,
none of the stolen things have been recovered."

"Indeed?" I exclaimed. "Why, Dulcie, you never told me. What is it? What
is the clue?"

"I forgot to tell you; at least, I should have told you, but you've been
so snappy all the afternoon that I thought there was no need," Dulcie
answered equivocally. "Well, the clue is merely this. When
Churchill—that's the head gardener, you know," she said to Mrs.
Stapleton—"was sweeping away the snow in the drive at the back of the
house, that narrow drive which leads down to the lane that joins the
main road to Newbury, just by Stag's Leap, he saw something shining on
the ground. He picked it up and found it was a buckle, set in diamonds,
as he thought, so when he brought it to me of course he was tremendously
excited—he made sure it was one of the stolen bits of jewellery. As a
matter of fact, it was one of a set of very old paste buckles which
belonged to my mother, and those buckles were among the stolen things."

"When did he find it?" Mrs. Stapleton asked, interested.

"Why, only a few hours ago—it was just after lunch when he came to me,
and he had then only just found it. You see, the ground has been covered
with snow ever since the day of the robbery; that was the last day
we hunted."

"Did the gardener say anything else? Has he any theory to account for
the buckle being there?"

Again it was Mrs. Stapleton who put the question.

"None, Connie," Dulcie answered. "At least, yes," she corrected, "he has
a sort of theory, but I don't think much of it. That narrow drive is
rarely used, you know; the gate into the lane is nearly always
locked—it was unlocked and the gate set open the day the hounds met
here in order to save people coming from the direction of Stag's Leap
the trouble of going round by the lodge. I don't think, all the same,
that many people came in that way."

"I don't see much 'theory' in that," I observed drily. Somehow I could
not shake off the feeling of irritability that my quarrel with Dulcie
during the afternoon had created.

"Naturally, because I haven't yet come to the theory part," Dulcie
answered sharply, noticing the tone in which I spoke. "I am coming to it
now. Churchill says he happened to come along that drive between about
eleven o'clock and half-past on the morning of the meet—that would be
just about the time when everybody was at the breakfast—and he
distinctly remembers seeing a car drawn up close to the shrubbery. There
was nobody in it, he says, but as far as he can recollect it was drawn
up at the exact spot where he found the buckle this afternoon. Of
course, there was no snow on the ground then."

"Has he any idea what the car was like?"

As Connie Stapleton made this inquiry I happened to glance at her. I
could only see her profile, but there was, I thought, something unusual
in her expression, something I did not seem to recollect having ever
seen in it before. It was not exactly a look of anxiety; rather it was a
look of extreme interest, of singular curiosity.

"Churchill is most mysterious and secretive on that point," Dulcie
answered. "I asked him to tell me what the car was like, if he had any
idea whose it was. He said it was a grey car, but he wouldn't tell me
more than that. He said he believed he had 'hit the line,' and would
soon be on a 'hot scent.' Try as I would, I couldn't get him to say
another word. He asked if he might have this afternoon off, and gave me
to understand he wanted to go into Newbury. I believe he is going to try
to do a little detective work," she ended, with a laugh; "but, as I say,
I don't put much faith in any theory Churchill may have formed."

"Well, my dear Dulcie, if you succeed in recovering your jewellery you
know I shall be the first to congratulate you," Mrs. Stapleton said,
taking Dulcie's hand and patting it affectionately. "It is too dreadful
to think all those lovely things should have been stolen from you,
things of such exceptional value to you because of their long
association with your family. Oh, how stupid of me," she suddenly said,
interrupting herself, "I have forgotten to tell you what I have come to
see you for. I have some friends from town dining with me to-night—some
of them are going to stay the night at 'The Rook,' the others will
return to town in their cars—and I want you and Mr. Berrington to join
us. It's quite an informal little dinner party, so I hope you will
forgive my asking you in this offhanded way and at such short notice.
The fact is, two people telegraphed at lunch time that they wouldn't be
able to come, so I thought that if I motored over here I might be able
to persuade you to come instead. Will you come, dear? And you, Mr.
Berrington? Do say 'yes.' Don't disappoint me when I have come all this
way out to try to persuade you—if I were not really anxious that you
should join us I should have telephoned or telegraphed!"

"Of course—why, I shall love to come!" Dulcie exclaimed, without a
moment's hesitation. "And, Mike will come—I know he will."

"You mean he won't be able to let you be away from him so long," Connie
Stapleton said mischievously, and there was something very peculiar in
her laugh. It flashed across me at that moment that for an instant or
two she looked a singularly wicked woman.

Dulcie smiled self-consciously, but said nothing. I knew that she rather
disliked any joking allusion being made to our engagement.

"May I use your telephone, darling Dulcie?" Connie Stapleton asked
suddenly. "I want to tell the hotel people that we shall be the original
number. I told them after lunch that we might be two short."

Dulcie had a telephone extension in the little room which adjoined her
boudoir, and some moments later Mrs. Stapleton was talking rapidly into
the transmitter in her smooth, soft voice. She spoke in a tongue that
neither of us understood, and when, after she had conversed for over
five minutes, she hung up the receiver, Dulcie called out to her gaily:

"Why, Connie, what language was that?"

'Polish,' she answered. "Didn't you recognize it? Of course, you know
that I am Russian."

"Russian! Why, no, I hadn't the least idea. I always thought you were
not English, although you speak English perfectly. I remember wondering,
the first time I met you, to what nationality you belonged, and I came
to the conclusion that possibly you were Austrian."

"No, Russian," Mrs. Stapleton repeated. "I have a Polish maid who speaks
hardly any English, and I was talking to her. And now, my dear, I really
must be going. What is the exact time?"

It was five minutes past six. Du

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