RGL e-Book Cover 2019
Designed by Terry Walker©
RGL e-Book Cover 2019
Designed by Terry Walker©
"One Clear Call" is a story of love and crime and complication. It is full of sensation—so full that in nearly every column the reader will find a fresh episode of excitement. The narrative centres around the operations of a gang of daring criminals, whose cleverness, matched with the skill of professional and lay detectives, will keep readers in a state of perplexity till the climax of the story is reached. The engrossing history includes the marvellous adventures of a pair of lovers—Dr. Lionel Weedon und a lady of mysterious antecedents, whom he follows with a view of rescuing her from the toils of her enemies. — 29 September 1914.
"OH, doctor, can I help?"
Dr. Lionel Weedon looked up from his patient and met the gaze of a pair of violet-black eyes.
He was kneeling in the gutter, supporting a tattered remnant of humanity, a wretched old woman who had been caught in the whirl of a passing motor-car in a London street. Chance had taken him that way, and professional instinct brought him at once to the rescue when the bundle of rags staggered back on to the pavement. His thoughts were concentrated on his cursory examination, yet that voice arrested his attention.
"It is very kind of you, but I do not think there is much to be done at the moment," he replied. By this time the policeman on the nearest beat reached the spot.
The motor-car which had gone by with a rush, had pulled up further down, and was backing slowly. The woman was shaken rather than hurt, and the doctor saw that the only thing to be done was to order her removal to the hospital.
The policeman produced his big notebook, and entered the time, the number of the car, and turning to the doctor, asked for his name.
"Doctor Lionel Weedon, Forty-one, Woodland-street," he replied mechanically.
His eyes had wandered again to the face of the lady who was standing by.
A crowd began to gather, springing from nowhere, after the manner of a street crowd at any unusual event, and the lady flitted away with a quick, timid movement, as though the presence of so many people had frightened her.
Lionel Weedon turned again to the policeman, and gave him a brief outline of the facts.
The stretcher arrived, the poor derelict, was taken off to the accident ward, and the doctor, having performed this act of charity, wended his way towards the district where he was trying to build up a practice.
The face of the lady haunted him. Something he could not define made him anxious to see it again. There was a lock of sadness over and above the sympathy for the injured woman; soft, appealing timidity in these lovely eyes that had almost impelled him to rush after her and ask if she needed a friend. Away in the Quantocks once, a fawn, entangled in a fence and worried by a stray dog, had looked at him like that when he drove off the mongrel.
Instead of getting back at once to his surgery, he called on his cousin, Stanley Poole, who lived in bachelor quarters which is also used as professional chambers-in Lincoln's Inn.
"I have seen the most beautiful thing in nature today, Stan," he said impetuously. Stanley Poole, who had just come across from the Courts, threw his wig on the table.
"Blonde or brunette?" he asked in a dry tone..
"I said the most beautiful thing in nature. I did not confine my observation to human beings."
"Quite unnecessary, my boy. When a chap of your temperament talks like that he has been caught by a woman. Your turn has come. The fates have overtaken you. You are over the bend of the hill on the downward slope to your doom. Well! may the valley be smiling and happy when you reach it. I say, you had better let me take you out this evening, just to show you what you are giving up. I am going to have a cup of tea; will you have one foretaste of domesticity?"
"No, I won't."
"All right. Then you will be back at eight o'clock. Make it nine if it suits you better."
The sound of Weedon's footsteps pattering down the stairs was the only reply to this.
The doctor hurried back to the surgery, telling himself all the time that Stanley Poole was an insufferable person without a spark of sense for the artistic. His inward condemnation of his cynicism did not drive the sight of that appealing face out of Weedon's mind. His practice was in a comparatively poor district. He was a doctor by disposition as well as by profession, and he preferred to work where people only came to him when they were really ill, rather than to make a living by drawing-room pleasantries among folks who suffered from imaginary ailments.
His patients this evening were not numerous. He attended to them in a small surgery shut off from the modest rooms which he inhabited In bachelor freedom. His surgery was really his study, sitting-room, and workshop, and as the shadows of the evening fell he turned with a sigh of anticipation to some microscopic studies which had been interesting him for some time. He was so engrossed in his work that he did not hear a gentle tap on the door which separated the surgery from the small ante-room.
A few moments later a sense of telepathy told him that he was not alone. He turned round quickly. A woman in a shabby cloak was closing the door with the action of one who fears that she is followed. He saw that she wore a heavy veil.
Accustomed to all kinds of nervous eccentricities he rose and pointed to a chair.
"Won't you sit down?" he said. "I do not think you have been here before. May I ask your name?"
"I hope you will not be annoyed if I do not mention it," she said. "I believe I can trust you and that is why I am here, but—but—"
She stopped suddenly, evidently suffering under severe agitation, but her excitement was calmness itself compared with Dr. Weedon's feelings. It was the voice of the lady who had spoken to him in the afternoon. He could not mistake those soft, musical tones. She was in trouble; he knew she was in trouble, and she had come to him.
"You may trust me," he said vainly endeavouring to be calm, "and although for some reason you do not wish to give me your name, there is no reason for hiding your face. I met you earlier in the day."
"Then you recognise, me? My—"
"Your disguise is perfect," he said, endeavouring to reassure her; "but I remember your voice."
She lifted her veil. The analogy of the terrified fawn was complete. There was the same hunted look now that she turned her beautiful eyes upon him once more.
"I heard you give your address to the constable," she said. "I knew you had a kind heart by the manner in which you came to the aid of that poor creature on the pavement, and I have come to you because I am certain you are a gentleman." She stopped suddenly, as though fearing that she was saying too much, and then assumed a gaiety which Dr. Weedon's professional eye told him was forced. "But, after all," she said, "why should one make so much mystery about it. I suppose all women are vain more or less, and you will put up with my little whim, if whim you think it, although I do not want anybody to know I have been here, or they may chaff me- and I am terribly susceptible to ridicule."
He waited for her to proceed, and with some little hesitation she took off the shabby cloak, revealing a perfect figure in an evening gown cut low and exhibiting in all their beauty a pure white, shapely throat and neck with splendid shoulders. To one of her shoulders she pointed, and Doctor Weedon saw there a small mark which might have been called a disfigurement if it had been possible by a mere tattoo to disfigure so perfect a bust.
"It looks very ugly, doesn't it?" she said with a laugh that had very little real mirth in it, "and, you see, it is such a nuisance. One can't dress properly for the theatre or for a dance without exposing it to everybody's curious gaze."
Dr. Weedon drew his patient nearer the electric light and looked at the mark. It was cleverly done. He examined it under the microscope and saw that it must have been there for many years. It was in the shape of a flower like a forget-me-not.
"How did it come there?" he asked.
"A mere girlish freak to be tattooed like a sailor," she replied with a laugh, and, then suddenly checking herself, she said: "No, I need not deceive you. I suppose you will have seen that it must have been there from birth. It was a cruel joke of a nurse—no, I do not know that it was a nurse—but it is nothing, after all." She said this with a vehemence that betrayed her.
"If there is no other reason for having it cut out," said the doctor, "I may point out to you that a very simple rearrangement of the dress would effectually cover it up. In fact, I notice that if the clothing of this shoulder were exactly the same as that on the other it would not be noticeable."
"Oh, but I want it taken away!" she replied in a passionate, imploring voice. The hunted look in her eyes had become more pronounced.
She impulsively caught his hand and gazed up at him in a way that made his blood rush through his veins.
"You will do what I ask, won't you, and you will keep my visit here a secret? You promise me that—oh, promise me, do!"
If she had asked him to imperil his own life he would have yielded willingly. He was thoroughly in her power, although she was too agitated to realise it. He hesitated before replying, but it was only because he wanted to prolong the joy of holding her hand and looking into her eyes.
"I promise you I will keep your secret whatever happens," he replied.
"And I believe you. I know you will," she said with a great sob of relief.
"But this operation?" he said, gradually returning to the professional frame of mind. "It may be painful, although I do not say it is dangerous. I would rather not do it quite so hurriedly."
"Oh, I do not mind the pain! I want it done at once; please don't waste any time."
She looked at the telephone and lifted off the receiver.
"Don't be angry with me," site said almost like a pleading child, as he made a movement of resentment. "Can anybody come in without your leave? I found the door open myself."
He walked to the outer door and locked it. He had made up his mind to cut out the mark. He believed it could be done without leaving a scar behind, but he was afraid that in the present state of excitement she might become hysterical if he did not calm her fears.
Skilfully and painlessly, by the aid of anaesthetics, he obliterated the strange device and bound up her shoulder, giving her definite instructions how to treat it so that it might heal without leaving a mark. As he drew the shabby cloak around her he suggested that she had better rest, but although her nerves had been well under control since the moment he began the operation she was now again frightened and timid.
"Let me call a cab?" he said, moving towards the door.
"No, no! I will get one at the corner of the street," she replied. As he stood at the door she stepped back and he heard the clink of, money. She opened the door herself very cautiously and looked eagerly up and down the street.
"Won't you leave me your address so that I may call and see how your shoulder is progressing?" he asked almost wistfully.
"No, no! I will come again if it requires further attention," she said hurriedly, and without another word she was gone.
Lionel Weedon's first impulse was to follow her. He hesitated however for a-few moments, and then he lost sight of her as she mingled with the people hurrying along in the gloom of the evening. He went back sadly to the surgery. She had left two guineas on the table. He picked up the coins, looked at them tenderly, and instead of dropping them in the box where he threw his casual fees he put them in his waistcoat pocket.
He turned again to his microscopic studies, but he could find no interest in them. Every now and then he discovered himself standing gazing absently into space. He threw down the instrument at last.
"Why did I let her go like that?" he muttered to himself, and, as though in a wild hope he might yet find her, he crushed his hat on his head.
He reached the surgery door, and his finger was on the electric light switch when a voice in the ante-room said:
"Dr. Lionel Weedon, I think."
Resigning himself to fate, in the supposition that this was a new patient, Weedon came back into the surgery and threw his hat on the table, awaiting the entrance of his new visitor. He was a man of refined appearance, well dressed, and in all outward respects a gentleman.
"You have just come in, I presume?" he said.
Weedon did not reply. He felt that his goings and comings were no affair of this stranger's. The man repeated the question in a more direct form.
"Were you in your surgery half an hour ago? I see your telephone is not working."
He pointed to the instrument with the receiver detached as he spoke.
"I think, perhaps, you had better state what it is I can do for you," said Weedon stiffly.
"If I may say so, you can answer my question," said the man, this time a little aggressively. Weedon was in no mood to bandy words.
"If you require my professional assistance, sir, I am at your disposal," he said, "but my time is valuable and I am about to go out."
"I am willing to pay for your time. I merely want to ask you a few questions about your patients."
"And I never discuss my patients with other people," said Weedon, putting on his hat and moving towards the door. The man put out his hand to detain him. In his present frame of mind the action angered the doctor and he promptly knocked the man's arm down with a quick blow on the muscle. The man's other hand went swiftly to his pocket, and, as it came out, Weedon saw the glittering barrel of a revolver.
LIONEL WEEDON caught his visitor's wrist with a quick grip and the revolver fell on the floor. The man merely smiled.
"You must excuse my quick temper," he said. "You see, I have lived abroad; it is a momentary return to old habits."
"Habits which we do not tolerate in a peaceable country," replied Weedon. "It seems to me the atmosphere of a police cell would be the best cure for your complaint."
He stepped towards the telephone as he spoke, but the man, divining his purpose, darted by him and rushed out into the street without waiting to pick up his revolver.
Weedon replaced the receiver. It was no good running after the man now. He again put on his hat; this time he switched off the electric light. He wandered in the direction of Lincoln's Inn, and in due course reached the chambers of Mr. Stanley Poole.
The complications of a brief had somewhat subdued Poole's breezy humour, but after dinner at a restaurant, his irrepressible spirits revived. He commenced to chaff his cousin again, but Lionel, remembering the solemn promise he had made to the lady, contrived to keep the conversation in another groove, lest he might be tempted to drop a hint that he had seen his vision of beauty again. The subject, however, was uppermost in his mind, and he lapsed into thoughtful silence.
"Buck up, old chap! I say, you have got it baldly. That is the extraordinary thing about you quiet fellows. Up to yesterday, I suppose, you had never even chucked a pretty girl under the chin—now you are simply lost to the world," said Poole, slapping him on the back. "I suppose one will be permitted in due course to look at the angel without the penalty of death. Would it be a desecration of your heart's idol if you brought her round to my chambers to tea? I can invite Doris and her mother at the same time, so that everything will be quite proper. Do you know, I am wondering what Doris would think if I took on like you. Whether she would be flattered or whether she would laugh at me."
"Waiter, bill, please," said Lionel sharply.
His cousin made no further attempt to induce Weedon to confide in him. They dropped in to hear a star turn at a music hall and then strolled towards Lincoln's Inn.
"You are coming in for five minutes, aren't you?" said Poole in a surprised tone, as Lionel halted. This was the invariable programme when the two young men spent an evening together. Weedon always dropped into Poole's chambers before getting back to his own place. Tonight, however, he insisted on going straight hone.
Lionel hailed a passing taxi-cab which in a few minutes took him round to the surgery.
"Has anybody called?" he asked the housekeeper and general servant who listened to the telephone and answered callers.
"Yes, sir, I was going to tell you. A lady, and she appeared very disappointed at not seeing you, that—"
"What did she want?"
"She said she must see you to-night; it was an urgent case, and I told her that I don't know if I did right-I thought you had gone to Mr. Stanley Poole's."
While the housekeeper was speaking, the telephone bell rang, and Weedon heard an agitated voice at the other end.
"I suppose Dr. Weedon has not yet returned?"
"Yes, this is Dr. Weedon."
"Is that you, Lionel?"
"Yes, I came along in a taxi."
"Good. Come round at once. Can't explain over the 'phone, but I want you. For God's sake, hurry up old I chap. Don't waste a moment!"
Weedon rushed to the door and hurried out of the street without another word. There was a tone of horror in his cousin's voice which filled him with grim forebodings. Within a very few minutes of the telephone call he was racing up the steps of the block of chambers in the silent court.
The pallor of Poole's face under the electric light was in striking contrast to his usual merry smile. Weedon's eyes wandered by intuition from his cousin to the body lying on the floor. An old cloak—a cloak he had seen before that very evening—attracted his attention. With frenzied haste he pulled the veil from a white face rigid in death. He lifted the body in his arms and the shabby cloak fell back, exposing the neck and shoulders.
"Light, light, Stan!" he cried, trembling with excitement. "Hold it this way. Look at that shoulder; the right one, tell me what you see there."
"A particularly skilful piece of tattooing in Indian ink—a little blue flower," replied Poole.
"How strange it looks, too, on that lily-white flesh."
"There is something uncanny about this, Stan," said Weedon in a horrified voice. "I cut that very mark out of that very arm only a few hours ago."
"You must be dreaming; it is there beyond a doubt now. Just keep quiet and pull yourself together. I must send for the police. It will be time enough to speak when you are called upon."
To speak! And he had promised not to speak. As Lionel thought of this he asked himself hurriedly whether that promise was not sacred in death as well as in life. In Iris present frame of mind he believed it was. It seemed like a sacrilege to betray the sweet creature who lay there incapable of speaking for herself.
"Stan," he said, jumping up and taking his cousin by the arm as Poole was lifting the telephone to ring up the nearest police station. "I ought not to have said anything about that operation. I promised faithfully; I gave my word as a gentleman that I would not. You must say nothing about it. You must forget that I mentioned it. You will, won't you?"
Poole looked at the frantic man keenly. They had been boys together, playing, fighting, and making pals of each other; they were more than cousins, more than brothers. They were of different temperament and therefore all the closer allied.
The light-headed Stanley Poole knew Lionel Weedon for a deep- thinking student, but experience of the world told him that such men are sometimes easier led than others when their sentiments or passions are touched. He knew now there was some mystery attached to the woman who lay dead on the floor of his chambers. How far was Lionel involved? He wanted to ask him, but yet he dare not. A suspicion of what was passing in Poole's mind occurred to Lionel.
"I give you my word, Stan," he said slowly, "that I know of no reason why I should not have given that promise as an honourable man. Will you accept that from me without any further question?"
"Certainly, I will," said Pole decisively. "I will say nothing about what you have told me until you give me permission. The best thing you can do at the moment, I think, is to get out of this. You are too much distressed to be of any service, and you don't want to answer questions. Get away home, old chap, and I will let you know about developments."
Without another look at the dread sight on the floor, Lionel Weedon staggered out of the room.
Stanley Poole summoned the police. He told them that when he came back to his chambers after leaving his cousin at the corner he stumbled over the body outside his door. No trace of anything that would give a clue as to the name, the address, or the identity of the lady could be found. The body was removed to the mortuary. Nothing more could be done that night. The following day Poole went down to the mortuary and came back with an anxious look upon his face.
"Li," he said, "I am afraid there is something more terrible even than we thought about this case. You know there were no marks of violence on the poor creature; I thought myself, as a layman, it might be heart failure, but the police surgeon, it so happens, is a retired army doctor with a long experience in India. He has discovered evidence of a deadly poison known to certain Indian tribes and to Anglo-Indians who have studied native medicines. He says it can be easily communicated—the slightest scratch, would be sufficient. It is either a case of suicide or murder. Under these circumstances we shall have to consider what is our duty if we are to assist justice. The inquest, you know, must be held, and—well you see, it will be awkward."
The telephone bell rang before Lionel could reply. He picked up the receiver, intending to lengthen out the conversation if possible. He wanted to put off his answer to his cousin. A look of astonishment spread over his face. He listened with intense interest.
"Wait, wait, one moment!" he shouted, in a voice of urgent appeal.
Obviously there was no reply to this. He threw down the receiver.
"Stan," he said, "whistle up a taxi. Don't ask question now but get the taxi and come with me.'"
AT the police mortuary Weedon and Poole were permitted to see the body of the unknown woman.
When the police surgeon, who accompanied them, drew back the sheet that covered the face, Lionel stepped forward eagerly and gazed at the marble-like features. The bright sun forced its way into the gruesome chamber and a strong light was thrown on the upturned features of the dead woman.
"Well, sir?" said the inspector, in a voice of interrogation.
"The woman is a perfect stranger to me," replied Weedon quietly. "I know nothing about her."
With a look of disappointment the inspector turned and led the way out.
"Be careful, Li," whispered Poole as he and Lionel followed behind the police surgeon. "Further questions are sure to be asked; don't try to conceal anything."
Lionel made no reply. When they got back to the police office the inspector again spoke.
"So you cannot help to identify the body?" he remarked. "You never saw the woman alive?"
"Never," replied Dr. Weedon emphatically. Stanley Poole asked Lionel to come to his chambers. He closed the door carefully and stood before the companion of his boyhood.
"I must talk to you quite straight, old chap. You won't mind it, will you, because it has got to be done?" he said.
"Not a bit. Talk away by all means."
"Well, then, you are a quixotic ass, or an accessory in crime. Now, which is it? Let's know the worst, and something may be done. I knew very well yesterday that there was some mysterious bond between you and this lady. By your present attitude you are putting yourself in a deucedly awkward position, and you are dragging me into it as well. I shall have to give evidence at the inquest. What am I to say?"
"Tell the truth exactly as you know it."
"And if I am asked whether I have any idea at all as to the identity of the woman; whether I know anything of her or of any person who knows something of her, what am I to say?"
"You are to say 'No.'"
"And commit perjury. A good beginning for a man whose goal is the Bench."
"You will not commit perjury. What I told the police inspector was the truth. The woman is a stranger to me. I never saw her alive."
"But, good heavens! last night here you knelt by her side and almost wept with grief. Just try to remember what you did and what you said."
"I remember it all, but I was mistaken. It is a strange likeness, a marvellous likeness. Little wonder I was deceived last night—but it is not the same. There is a difference—a slight difference, perhaps unnoticeable to the casual observer, but it is not the same person, and I have other reasons for thinking so. In fact, I am certain, Stanley, I was deceived last night."
"But what brought the woman here?"
"She came to look for me."
"And yet you have never seen her? Oh! this is getting too ridiculous."
Lionel now remembered that in the excitement over night he had forgotten to tell Poole about the woman who called at the surgery whom his housekeeper had test on to the chambers.
"Then the dead woman was masquerading as the living one," remarked Stanley, when Weedon repeated the housekeeper's message. "But why—and what is the explanation of it?"
"There is no explanation that I know of," replied Weedon. "I have now told you everything."
"But who had an interest in killing this unhappy creature?" asked Stanley, half to himself, pacing the room impatiently.
"I cannot imagine, except—" He stopped suddenly and looked searchingly at his cousin.
"Lionel," he said, slowly and seriously, "why are you under an obligation not to mention that your patient yesterday evening came to your surgery to get that mark cut out of her arm?"
"Simply because I promised. That and nothing more. But what are you driving at? Heavens, man! what do you suggest?"
"This is not a time for suggestions. I am anxious for facts. You see, this tragedy has taken place practically in my rooms. There is a moral obligation on me to clear it up."
"Well, I can help you no further than to tell you all I know about the woman—which is nothing."
"Yes; but the other one. Don't you see there must be some connection between the two visits."
"Not necessarily."
"No, but-look here, Lionel. I am putting this to you as between man and man. There is some other reason why you are shielding the other woman."
"Shielding? I don't know what you mean. The lady has come into my life and probably gone out of it again like a flash of a flitting sunbeam."
"And you love her! Oh, yes, Lionel, you may try to deceive yourself if you like, but you are not deceiving me. Whatever be the nature of your acquaintance with this lady, whether you have only seen her twice, as you say, or whether you have seen her a hundred times, you are in love with her. She is all the world to you. You are hers, body and soul. That is how a man like you loves."
A hasty denial was on Lionel's lips, but he did not speak it. His face went pale and he staggered beneath his cousin's penetrating gaze.
"Good God! Stanley, you are right," he gasped. Then he suddenly assumed the aggressive. "And why not?" he asked. "Why not, though I may never see her again?"
"Oh, yes, you will see her again! You will scour the earth, the heavens, and, if necessary, the other place as well till you find her."
"But why do you talk like this.. I tell you, I know, I am certain, she is the purest, as she is the most beautiful woman on earth."
"Of course she is. But if she were not, and if an angel from heaven stood here and told you so it would not matter. I know your loyal nature."
Lionel went back to his surgery with the inspiration which comes to one who has found a new interest in life. Until his cousin had forced the truth upon him he had not confessed to himself that he was irrevocably in love with the woman whom he had only seen twice in his life. As Poole had shrewdly predicted his one dominant ambition now was to meet her again, to find her out, to ask her to confide in him. That she was in trouble, possibly in danger, he knew. It was her voice that spoke to him on the telephone that morning. It was her message that sent him to the police mortuary to assure himself that she was not the dead woman. The words he heard conveyed no information. She did not even announce her name or give him any direct indication that it was she who spoke. The message simply was: "Remember your promise, and don't be misled by anything, however strange, that may happen."
Then the voice had suddenly ceased, and it sounded as though the receiver had been very hurriedly hung up. What had he to go upon? As yet, absolutely nothing. Where she came from, or whither she went, he could not say. Had the danger yet overtaken her? Perhaps at this very moment she needed his help and he was not there to save her.
These maddening thoughts crushed upon him whenever he paused from his duties. He found relief only when he wrestled with death at the bedside of a patient who was seriously ill. In the evening he again turned for refuge to Stanley Poole. He, at all events, understood him. They could talk together, and Stanley would not feel bored by him.
When he arrived at the chambers in Lincoln's Inn, however, he met his cousin coming down the stairs, dressed in evening clothes. Stanley Poole's alert eye saw his look of disappointment.
"I say," he said, pulling on his watch, "suppose you come with me? I am going to the theatre with Doris and her mother. You have just time to dress if you jump a bit. Being a privileged person, I can take the liberty of adding a member to the party."
"Oh, no, certainly not. I can't possibly interfere with your arrangements,"' replied Lionel.
"Rats! You are not going to stop at home moping all night. We'll just scoot round to your place, and I'll wait there till you dress."
In minor matters Stanley always had the last word. Lionel Weedon was a pliable creature where it did not greatly matter. Doris Burwood was just the type of girl to whom a man of Stanley Poole's temperament might be expected to become engaged. A high- spirited, healthy young woman with a bright outlook on life. She always regarded Lionel Weedon with respect, mingled with a certain amount of awe, but when Stanley told her in a few whispered lords that he was in trouble, she readily did her best to entertain him, and under her influence his thoughts were kept fully occupied throughout the evening.
At the door of the theatre Weedon saw the party to a cab and excused himself. He wanted to call on a patient. He was walking slowly away when he stopped at a crossing to avoid a motor-car. Instead of going on, the motor pulled up immediately beside him, and, a tall man in a heavy overcoat dumped out!
"You are a medical man, sir, I believe," said the gentleman in quiet, polished tones. "A lady in the motor car here has suddenly been seized with faintness. I shall be greatly obliged if you can render assistance."
Lionel stepped into the motor, and the big, powerful car immediately glided out of the crowd. A lady wrapped in a rich cloak was leaning back in the corner. The lady's pulse gave no indication of faintness, and Lionel began to suspect it was merely a case of hysteria.
"Have you no light in the car?" he asked, looking round. "It is difficult to see what is the matter with the lady here in this semi-darkness."
"We shall soon be home," replied the gentleman briefly. Weedon did not notice that the man was sitting with his back covering a switch which might have turned on an inside light.
The lady sighed deeply. "You are better now," said Lionel in the most soothing professional tone.
"Oh, don't leave me yet!" she replied, clutching his hand after the manner of a hysterical woman.
"She will be all right for the present, I suppose, doctor," said the gentleman. "When we get home perhaps you will be so kind as to advise us further."
The car went on, skilfully threading through the by-streets till they got well out of the busy thoroughfares, and then its speed increased. Not a word was spoken for some time. Lionel was vainly endeavouring to understand his patient as far as the peculiar circumstances permitted.
"Is she subject to fainting fits?" he asked. The man did not reply. He was looking through the glass, eagerly watching the road in front. They were well out of the busy part of the town, and had reached the Finchley Road. Occasionally the glare from the forelight of a passing motor cast a fitful ray into the gloom, but before Lionel had time to take a good look at the muffled figure beside him it had swept by.
They had left London at that point where it is still possible to be in green lanes within a very short time on a swift car. The meter taking a sharp turn; passed through a pair of heavy gates and drew up at a door, which was opened from within. Lionel assisted his patient to alight. She leaned heavily on him till they were inside the hall, and then suddenly loosened her hold of his arm.
A suspicion which had been forming in his mind now became a conviction. The woman was shamming: it was not even a case of hysteria. She drew aside a curtain, and for just an instant a beautiful figure in a light, evening frock appeared. Weedon had one glimpse of the face before the light went out suddenly. The heavy front door clanged, and in the darkness there was a sound of shooting bolts and bars.
"JUST one moment, doctor," said a voice at Weedon's elbow.
When the light were switched on both ladies had disappeared. Weedon turned angrily to the man who still remained in the hall.
"Are you aware, sir," he shouted, "that a doctor's time is valuable?"
"Oh, you shall be paid for your time," said the man whom Lionel now saw to be a tall, hard-featured, sallow-complexioned person, showing unmistakable evidence of having lived much of his time in a tropical climate.
"That is not the point, sir," said Weedon indignantly. "My own patients who need my help have the first claim on me."
"I beg your pardon, doctor," said the man, bowing. "I had no desire to suggest a mere commercial bargain, but we have another patient in the house whose needs are probably greater than most of those whom you are at present attending."
"But who is your ordinary medical advisor? Why have you not summoned him, instead of bringing me out here?"
"We need not argue the matter. Time may be precious for the patient as well as for yourself; and the sooner it is attended to the better."
The man spoke in a voice of authority, as though he were accustomed to be obeyed without question and, turning towards some folding doors, led the way, taking it for granted that the doctor would follow. An irresistible curiosity impelled Lionel to go with him. During the last forty-eight hours, mystery had seemed to become part of his life, and this one was no worse than the others.
He was taken into a room heavily curtained and dimly lighted. A moan of pain from one corner told him that somebody was there, but at first he could not see.
His host, switching on a light revealed to him, reclining on a couch, a man whose face was covered by a gauzy, eastern shawl, so arranged as to form an effective mask through which a pair of feverish eyes only could be seen. The sick person's arm rested on a small table at the side, and the light was thrown upon it. The tall stranger pointed to the second finger, which was swollen and inflamed at the top, and bound by a tight tourniquet below the second joint.
"The finger must come off!" he said. "I know something of medicine myself, but I an not a surgeon. I have done all that is possible. I have supplied an antidote which can only be effective for a few hours and, as you will see, the flow of blood from the poisoned finger into the rest of the body is temporarily prevented. You will amputate the finger, doctor, at once."
He said this in the same tone of calm authority which he had adopted since they entered the house.
"But I am not accustomed to this kind of thing," protested Weedon. "Who is your ordinary medical man? Who and what is the patient? I must know more about the case."
"Your surgical knowledge must tell you at sight that the finger must be amputated to save a life. We have our own reasons for desiring secrecy, but we call upon you to do your duty. You will amputate that finger without further argument, or—"
"I decline to allow myself to be treated in this manner," said Weedon. He moved towards the door. As he put out his hand to open it, his wrist was caught in a dexterous grip that twisted him round, and the point of a long. Eastern dagger almost touched his throat.
"Don't be a fool, doctor!" said his host. "You are alone; I can summon assistance in a moment. A life is at stake; we cannot allow it to be sacrificed on a mere matter of punctilious professional etiquette."
He loosened his hold of Weedon's wrist, and dropped the point of the dagger, but still kept it in his hand.
"This is an outrage," cried Weedon indignantly. "I will call for the police and give you in charge."
The man laughed.
"And do you suppose a force of police is waiting outside ready to answer your call, even if they heard it? We are not in the centre of London at this moment, doctor. Is it a greater outrage that you should be coerced into doing a necessary act, or that a man should he killed merely because you have a nice sense of medical Trade Unionism?"
A moan from the couch interrupted the conversation, and Lionel's eyes instinctively returned to the diseased hand. His captor quickly perceived the look which came over his face and knew that he had gained his point.
"You see for yourself," he said, "that there is no other way. The finger must come off at once, or the blood poisoning will spread. An hour may make all the difference."
"I have no instruments," said Lionel.
The man fetched a case of instruments from a cupboard, and spread them on the table.
"There are antiseptics, and chloroform," he said. "I have sufficient experience to give you the necessary assistance for administering it." He uncovered the lower part of the patient's face, but still kept the upper part shrouded in the Indian shawl, and proceeded to make preparations for the operation on the assumption that further discussion was unnecessary.
To Lionel the person on the couch had, now become "a case." saving once made up his mind that the man's life must be saved, he waived all other considerations and forgot the indignity to which he had been subjected. It was not a difficult task to a skilled surgeon like himself with such perfect instruments as were provided for him. Silently and effectively he performed the operation. The other man deftly contrived to keep the upper part of the patient's face concealed even when they were getting him comfortably set to rest after the operation.
"And now," said Dr. Lionel Weedon stiffly, as they retired through the folding doors to the other room, "I will ask you to be good enough to telephone for a conveyance, to take me home."
"We are outside London, and it is rather late," replied his imperturbable host. He looked at a clock, richly carved and jewelled, and Lionel then realised that it was well after eleven when he left the theatre, and time had gone on since.
"My own chauffeur has retired to bed. You will hardly be knocking up your patients in town at this hour, and it would be very desirable that you should see your patient here in the morning, I trust you will excuse me if I mention that your fee, of course, will be proportionately high if you wait. May I offer you a bed?"
The suggestion was so reasonable that Lionel would have had no excuse for declining to fall in with it had the previous conduct of his host been less offensive. As it was, after such an exciting day, he did not feel inclined to face a long tramp home, and he had a very vague idea as to what part of the country he had reached. His knowledge of North London was very limited.
"Before deciding, you will have some supper," said his host, leading the way to a dining-room, where a cold spread awaited him.
"First I must ask you whose guest. I am?" said Lionel,
The other man shrugged his shoulders.
"What matter names? I might tell you Jones, Brown, Robinson, any name that first occurred to me, and if I did it with an appearance of speaking the truth, I suppose that would satisfy you. You don't ask your patients to tell you their life's history, or to show you their certificates of baptism and marriage. Why this fetish of a name? If I tell you my name is Fitzgerald, I have no doubt that will satisfy you because it happens to be a little less like an alias than Smith. Come, doctor, I will he quite frank. You may call me Fitzgerald, but it may be my name or it may not. You are too well-bred to cross- examine your host as to personal matters which he would rather not discuss. In all probability we shall not meet again. Let us be pleasant to each other while we are together. I owe you an apology for the manner in which I introduced you to your patient. I ask your pardon fully and humbly, and now let me give you a piece of this cold turkey."
Hunger is a convincing reasoner, and having eaten very little during the excitement of the day, Dr. Lionel Weedon was by this time unable to resist the appeals of cold turkey. Moreover, having gone so far, he had an adventurous desire to see this thing through.
He wanted to know more about this strange house. The glimpse of that face before the light was turned out on his arrival made him anxious to remain.
Mr. Fitzgerald, as he now called his host, took supper with him and talked to him with all the ease of a well-educated and much-travelled man. The barrier which Lionel had endeavoured to set up rigidly between himself and the man who had taken such liberties with him gradually disappeared.
Mr. Fitzgerald produced some cigars of a particularly fine flavour, and Lionel ultimately found himself getting into in comfortable room, almost willing to believe that "Fitzgerald wasn't half, a bad sort of chap." In fact, he muttered this as he stood on a rich rug of real tiger skin beside the bed. The next moment he looked at the head of the tiger which had been preserved and fitted with a pair of glass eyes.
"Yes, you look pretty enough, too, now that you are not on the prowl," he thought. "I wonder if you and your master have anything in common."
By this time he was tucking himself in bed, and in a few minutes he had lost all interest in Mr. Fitzgerald or his tiger.
He woke up with a feeling that he had slept too long. The noonday sun was shining in upon him. He bumped out of bed to put on his clothes, and to his astonishment could not find them. Probably they had been taken away to be brushed.
He picked up a rich dressing-gown that was hanging over a chair, and as he was wrapping himself in it a sound broke upon his ear that made him listen with tense eagerness. It was the sound of a woman's voice—a voice he knew.
He tried to open the door in order that he might hear more clearly. The door was locked, He turned to the window. It looked out on to a private garden and away in the distance were woods and fields. He could throw up the sash, but outside there were strong iron bars. He hammered the door with his fists, and only knocked the skin off his knuckles.
WEEDON looked round more calmly for what he should have sought before—the button of an electric bell beside the mantelpiece. He pressed this with his finger, and sat on the bed. Before he expected it, the door opened slightly. He sprang forward, but it was closed again after a bundle had been pushed in.
He picked up the bundle and angrily shook it out. It was a serge suit. He remembered now that he had come to the house in evening clothes. Hurriedly running through the pockets, he found that his money had been returned. He had no papers on him overnight except a letter or two, but these had been also returned. Clean linen had been, thrust in with the suit of clothes. There was a hip bath and plenty of water in the room, and he proceeded to dress himself, because he could think of nothing better to do under the circumstances. The voice which had startled him was now silent. He heard it no more. He rang the bell again, and this time the door was thrown open. He rushed to it, and found himself in an anteroom, through which he dimly remembered passing the previous night.
The door leading from this apartment closed before he could reach it. He looked round and saw food on the table. His captor did not intend to starve him, but he saw the window of this room also was barred. The two rooms looked out on to the previous gardens round which there was a high fence. The woods and fields he could only see in the distance. He was trapped like a caged animal, although his captors appeared to treat him not unkindly. He ate his breakfast and then his natural indignation began to grow more acute. He rang the bell violently. This time there was no reply.
The hours went on, but nobody came near him. He amused himself as best he could by searching all over the rooms for something that would identify the strange people among whom he found himself, but not a single scrap of evidence could he discover. There were no papers left about; the bed linen and table linen had no marks upon it. Even the tailor's name on the suit of clothes that had been lent him was cut out. This diversion occupied him for some time; then, feeling that there was little to be done by cunning, he again resorted to force, banging the door, and in desperation threw a teacup at the window. All around him, however, was silent. He craned his neck out of the window as far as the bars would permit. He could see nothing but the badly- kept garden with its thick shrubs and undergrowth, and he estimated that the wall of the private grounds was so far off that even if there had been people working in the fields beyond he could not attract their attention.
He strained his ears for some sound of the voice he had heard—a voice that was music to him. It was some consolation to be under the same roof. And so his thoughts varied between anger and resignation, till suddenly the door was thrown open and he leapt forward to face his host standing there smiling upon him.
"Oh, doctor, I have to apologise for the stupidity of my too faithful servant. I left home this morning before you were up, and gave instructions that you were not to be disturbed, and that you were to have the sole use of these rooms. I find that he has interpreted those orders to mean that you were to be compelled to remain in the rooms till I returned. It is rather unfortunate, but I hope you have been comfortable."
Lionel had a notion that the man was lying, and he wanted to tell him so; but Mr. Fitzgerald was so apologetically suave that the impudence of the thing staggered him.
"Perhaps after you have seen your patient again you would like to take a cup of tea in the drawing-room. We shall be dining later, and I trust you will join us."
"But, Mr. Fitzgerald, I must get back to my work. You seem to imagine I have only one patient."
"Not at all. I took the liberty, on your behalf, this morning, of conveying a message to a legal friend of yours—the gentleman who accompanied you to the theatre last night— asking him to install a locum tenens. I have no doubt the gentleman would obtain all information from your visiting book."
"You communicated with Stanley Poole? Did you tell him where I was?"
"Quite unnecessary, surely, so long as your work is properly looked after."
"But this is a most astounding piece of impudence, sir. I tell you, Mr. Fitzgerald, I have had enough of tills nonsense. You bring me here under false pretences, and threaten my life; you make a prisoner of me, and now you take it upon yourself to manage my practice for me. Why we might be somewhere in those heathen lands you talk about instead of in civilised England. You will have to be taught, sir, that this kind of thing is not permitted in a Christian country."
"People do many worse things in a Christian country, Mr. Weedon, than saving a fellow creature's life. Perhaps if you knew everything, you would not he so ready to condemn people who are acting for the best."
"And how long is this to go on?"
"First visit your patient."
Still fascinated by a desire to see the thing through. Lionel followed his host down the softly-carpeted stairs. At one of the landings he found it rather dark on account of the heavy curtains which shut off a corridor leading to another wing. As he stumbled past the curtain a soft hissing noise like a person whispering "hush" came from the other side of the curtain close to his ear, and at the same moment he felt something slipped into his hand.
Mr. Fitzgerald turned round at the moment, and Lionel put his hand in his pocket.
"Be careful at this point," said his host, waiting for him a few steps down. Without another word, and without finding time to look at what had been put in his hand, he followed to the room where his patient lay. Still the man's face was covered up.
Lionel looked at the finger and found that it was progressing well. The other part of the hand was all right. Mortification had not set in—the operation was just in time. "You see the wisdom of prompt action, doctor; and now for tea," Mr. Fitzgerald remarked. Again following his host, Weedon was led towards the drawing-room.
"May I wash my hands?" he asked with a sudden inspiration.
"Certainly. It is hardly necessary to go back to your room. You will find what you require here."
In the lavatory he found an opportunity of just one glance at the piece of paper in his packet. The words written on it were simply, "Be on your guard, make no sign, destroy this."
He pushed the slip of paper down the escape-pipe and turned on the water before dropping in the plug. Mr. Fitzgerald, who had come with him, was not looking at the moment, and the action escaped his notice. As they entered the drawing-room a lady, slightly younger than his host, rose to greet him, and he recognised his shamming patient of the previous night.
"This," said Mr. Fitzgerald, "is Mrs. Fitzgerald, and—" He paused a few moments, and added with a slight emphasis: "Miss Fitzgerald," keenly watching the doctor's face as he spoke.
The young lady who had been bending over a book, rose languidly in response to this introduction, and bowed very slightly. Lionel clenched his teeth and bowed also. He felt the searching eyes of Fitzgerald fixed upon him, but with a supreme effort he mastered himself. It was indeed an embarrassing task. The lady who stood before him was the girl of mystery.
He remembered his promise; it was a sacred trust. They talked as strangers. It was impossible to snatch even a look that would not be intercepted. Lionel felt the absurdity of the position. They conversed as though he were a visitor instead of a prisoner. He submitted to the indignity, and professed to be satisfied at the suggestion that he should remain another night for the sake of his patient, now that his work was in proper hands at home. To test his captor he said he would like a walk before dinner.
"I was about to suggest that we might smoke a cigarette in the grounds," replied Mr. Fitzgerald. "There is just time to see them before it gets dark; they are somewhat neglected, I fear."
It was obvious that on some pretext or the other he would be prevented from going out into the open, and Lionel by this time had formed a dim idea that by humouring his host he might all the more easily discover that which he most desired to know. His own clothes awaited him in his room, and in the pocket was a big sum of money as a fee.
On coming down to dinner he found himself facing Miss Fitzgerald, with Mr. Fitzgerald sitting at a point where he could observe every moment. Her beauty entranced him; he addressed her on all kinds of topics; merely for the pleasure of listening to her soul-inspiring voice.
The one remarkable feature of the meal was that there were no servants to wait on them. The dinner was perfect, and excellently cooked. The dishes remained at the side ready to hand. The ladies were dressed for dinner, and Lionel noticed that Miss Fitzgerald's gown was so arranged that the tattooed part of the arm did not show.
Never by a single glance did she behave otherwise than as a lady of the household dining with a gentleman whom she had never met before. The ladies retired, and again Mr. Fitzgerald entered into a long and entertaining talk of his travels. He so skilfully turned the conversation as to get Lionel talking about his own experiences.
"I suppose you have some curious patients at times?" he asked, "especially among ladies." Lionel was on his guard, however. He made a few general observations about lady patients, but quickly changed the subject. While they were talking there was a gentle tap at the door.
"Excuse me. I will be back shortly," said Mr. Fitzgerald. "I usually see the grounds closed myself."
Lionel waited a while after he had gone, and then cautiously opened the door. There was nobody in the hall. He moved softly across to the room where he had left his patient. He heard the sound of heavy breathing; the man was evidently asleep. He stepped forward cautiously, turned on the light, and gently lifted the covering from the face.
At that moment a pair of arms were thrown around him from behind. His head 'was forced back, and he felt his throat in the grip of strong fingers which were slowly choking the breath out of him.
"WELL, how do you feel now?"
Lionel Weedon rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms, looked around him with a wondering expression, and pressed his hands to his forehead. "Yes, I imagine that is just about how you do feel! Wait a minute, I will make a strong cup of tea. Perhaps you might-be able to manage a bit of dry toast with an effort, but I expect that is about your limit at the present moment." Stanley Poole looked down upon his cousin with e. deprecatory smile, and spoke with an attempt to be very stern.
"But where am I?" asked the doctor wildly.
"Oh, is it as bad as that, is it? Then I'm afraid a cup of tea will have to be superseded by a pick-me-up."
"But I don't understand. What has happened?"
"Well, I only know that most tranquil part of the proceedings," replied Stanley. "I should think the earlier stages must have been fairly boisterous. Oh! you quiet men when you do break out, whether it is love or whether it is riot, there is no keeping you within bounds."
"What on earth are you talking about, Stanley?" said, Lionel, raising himself on his elbow and looking round the living-room of the barrister's chambers. "Where is Mr. Fitzgerald and Mrs. Fitzgerald and—"
"All the little Fitzgeralds? Well, I should imagine if Mr. Fitzgerald was keeping pace with you he will be at the police court by this time. It was lucky Somebody had the good sense to bring you here. Had they taken you home, your faithful housekeeper would have given notice this morning and there would have been a scandal among the patients of the eminently respectable Dr. Weedon."
"Will you stop talking rot and tell me how I got here?"
"That is more than I can say. The kind friend who brought you did not stop to give particulars, although he needn't have been so shy at a bachelor's chambers. He adopted the old trick of hammering on the door, propping you against it, and allowing you to tumble into my arms when I opened it. It was not quite such a shock as I got the other night, and had it been anybody else but you I might have regarded it as one of the incidents of a frivolous world—but you, of all men, Lionel! Why, I suppose you have never been on the rampage since that night in our student days, when we helped to burn the don in effigy."
"But I don't understand. What was the matter with me?"
"In plain, vulgar language, understood by the people, Lionel, you were drunk; and from your general appearance I should imagine you had also been what the orthodox policeman would describe in court as very disorderly. My man helped me to put you to bed. I am afraid the weight of evidence is against you, Lionel. We both handled you, and the smell of brandy was overpowering. I suppose it had been champagne earlier on? There seems to have been a method in your madness, too. You must have had a kind of premonition that you were going to make an ass of yourself when you sent that message to me about putting in a locum tenens. I managed to find you a chap—Harvey, who was at college with us. I do not know what he is at pill-making; he was a decent fellow in other respects, so I suppose as the medical council give him a diploma he can kill people about as pleasantly as any other doctor."
Stanley Poole rattled on in his irrepressible way, endeavouring to make light of his cousin's escapade. He had an uneasy suspicion that Lionel had given way to despair, and that hopeless love had robbed him of his power of self-control.
Lionel drank the tea and ate the toast which was brought to him, vainly endeavouring while he did so to recall something of what occurred to him over night, but it was useless. He remembered being clutched by the throat at the bedside of his patient in Mr. Fitzgerald's house. From that moment all was blank. He had not the slightest recollection of anything except that he felt the life going out of him as the fingers of his unseen assailant closed on his wind pipe.
A shower bath, a vigorous rub-down with a rough towel by Stanley's handyman, who had been in the Navy, brought him sufficiently to his senses to give a coherent account of what happened to him after he left the theatre. Stanley listened with a mind wavering between sympathy and incredulity Lionel was wearing an old smoking jacket and other garments from Stanley's wardrobe. The evening clothes being "fumigated" in the kitchen. "They literally stank of alcohol,", said Stanley.
"Let me see them," said Lionel peremptorily, and when they were brought to him he looked at his cousin almost with an air of contempt.
"Surely you are not so simple as to be deceived like this?" he said. "Don't you see what has happened; when they had drugged me they douched me with brandy to deceive innocent people like you who are always ready to jump at conclusions. Stanley, we must find that house; there is some thing uncanny about it all."
"Shall we ask the police to assist us? You will have to tell them everything, of course."
"No, no. I don't want the police. I want first to know for myself."
"Quite right, too. Time enough to call in the police when you feel sure you are on safe ground. The police, you know, take very prosaic views of things, and the lady might to them appear as one of the—"
"No, no! It is impossible. What ever villainy is going on she is not a party to it. I swear to you, Stanley. I sat in the same room with her yesterday, sat near her, looked at her, heard her talk. Oh, if I could only have had just one word with her alone!"
"One word? One hour you mean, which would have seemed to you one minute when it was over. Now, don't get angry, Lionel. I am not going to chaff you, because I know how deeply you feel on this matter, but I want you to get your spirits up. Things may not be so bad, after all."
"But she is there, I am certain against her wish, with those ruffians. I tell you I will hunt them out. Stanley, you don't know what she is to me!"
"Well, I have a kind of glimmering of an idea about it, anyway; and that is sufficient for me to give you all the help I can. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not in court to-day, so first let us endeavour to find out the geographical position. You say the car went along the Finchley Road. You lost count of the landmarks after you turned round by Lord's Cricket Ground?"
"Yes. That's as far as I have ever gone in that direction."
"Well, then, you must either have gone past Swiss Cottage on to Golders Green and Finchley or you swung round to the left and got into Edgware or Harrow district. It is a fairly wide field to hunt, and you have not much of a scent to start on, but it so happens that I have tramped a good deal in that district myself, and Doris knows it better than I do. She has relatives out there; they ought to know something of this strange house. By-the-by, are you willing to bring her into our councils?"
"You remember my promise," said Lionel.
"Yes, and that is the trouble. I shall have to lie harder than I know how and a deucedly lot more skilful than I have been accustomed to if I get out of telling Doris the old story. Logically, of course, you have not told me because you told me under stress of agitation of mind. You ought not to have told me, and I promised that I would forget you had told me. I have forgotten it—technically, and so well, there you are. Meantime, I will ask Doris to come for a motor drive with us, and we will say we have some particular interest in discovering the house for professional reasons. If that satisfies her curiosity, well, the days of miracles are not yet over. But we'll try it, anyway. We must have her assistance. Hullo! that sounds like a telegram. Excuse me!"
I opened the door at the sound of the loud rat-tat of the London telegraph messenger and looked at the little bluff envelope.
"It is for you," he said, handing the message to Lionel. The doctor opened the telegram hastily, and a sigh of despairing rage shook his frame as he read the words.
"What is the matter?" asked his cousin.
"Everything is the matter. Hurry up that motor. Telephone the garage. Hire it for the day for the week, till we have done with it. Come with me if you like or stop behind. I will not rest a moment. Read that."
Stanley took the telegram from him. It had no signature, no address. It read:
FAREWELL. DON'T FOLLOW. KNOWLEDGE IS DANGEROUS!
"What do you suppose this means?" asked Stanley?
"There is but one meaning She is in danger and in her sweetness of soul she would rather suffer than that I should be in peril."
"Yes, yes, it might mean that possibly," said Poole, scratching his chin with his thumb. "But, however, let us get the motor round."
He instructed his clerk to telephone to the garage for a motor for the day.
"Seems to me this telegram is a blind," he said judicially. "I do not think it comes from the lady, fair, but from somebody else who wants to put you off the scent. It is a bit of a bungle from that point of view, because if you notice they have tried to be clever; they have doubtless skipped the nearest village post- office and taken the trouble to go on to Harrow to hand it in. That gives us our starting point. Now, I, am going to tell Doris to be ready when we call for her. By that time the motor will be here. We can run round to your surgery if you like and see that Harvey is keeping the practice going with diligence and economy."
"Oh, hang the practice! What do I care for the practice? What is anything to me at this moment? Let us get on the spot at once. Every minute may mean more danger with such devils as these."
"Very well. Andrew has looked you out a suit of clothes that will fit you more or less. I can lend you a coat for this motor."
Stanley took the precaution, while Lionel was dressing himself, to ring up the surgery and discover from Harvey, who happened to be in, that there was nothing that required Weedon's immediate attention.
"It was a cute move of yours, Mr. Fitzgerald," he remarked as they settled themselves in the car, "to send that message to me about engaging a locum tenens. It prevented the hue and cry which your absence from your work might have occasioned. We have some clever people to deal with, Li. I have a notion the police would like to get hold of them."
Lionel did not reply. He had a terror of introducing the police into the matter. In spite of his protestations to Poole, a vague fear which he thrust aside in anger continually forced itself upon him.
DORIS was ready when they called. They drove straight to Harrow, and from this point began their wanderings. They had dispensed with a chauffeur. Poole, who was a first-class motorist, himself took the steering wheel.
"You didn't go through Harrow, or you would have noticed it," he said. "There are some out-of-the-way villages and by-roads still in this district which have not been invaded by the onward march of the suburban builder. I think I have an idea in my head as to a likely spot for people who want a house in its own grounds away from the prying eyes of the passing public."
Making various excuses they called at one house after another, but saw nothing that gave any indication of, occupation by any other than ordinary easy-going, well-to-do English people, whose only romance in life is an occasional wedding after a formal engagement of some members of the family.
Lionel was becoming desperate when Poole insisted on drawing up by a country hostelry for refreshment. A chance observation by a labourer in the inn caught Stanley's ear. He drew Doris aside, allowing his arm to wander further round her waist than was absolutely necessary for the mere purpose of attracting her attention and whispered softly to her.
"Why did I not think of it before," he said. "We have not tried the old doctor's house. You remember the place that was once a kind of monastery, and has been a school, a private hospital, and many things by turn."
"But Harrow is not near that. It is much further out.."
"Of course it is not. They are not so simple as I thought them. Don't say a word yet to Li, or he would insist on starting without food, and I am starving."
Under the influence of lunch Doris became more charmingly nice than ever with Stanley. She nestled up close to him on the front seat of the car, leaving Lionel to his own musings behind. His hungry eyes watched them eagerly. The instinct of lose, the desire for affection, had been roused, and the passion came upon him with all the greater force by reason of his former loneliness of soul.
They drove at a rapid pace out of the area which they had hitherto been covering. A feeling that he was in familiar surroundings began to steal over Lionel. The rock of the car, the twistings and the curvings recalled his mysterious ride of two nights ago. Stanley stowed down in a by-lane, and Lionel leapt from his seat.
"That is the place." he said, pointing ahead excitedly. "I recognise those gates. Drive into them; knock them down if they won't open them."
"Steady, steady! We are not in the Middle Ages, and we are not taking a castle under arms. We'll first give them a chance to be civil," said Stanley, bringing the motor-car to a stop.
"And if they are not," asked Lionel, "what are we to do then?"
"Well, up to now we have been following out the good old adage—first catch your hare. Now we know where the hare is we had better hold a domestic council as to how we shall cook."
"And as cooking is a woman's business, allow me to take the lead," said Doris. "We will go in to pay a long deferred visit to Mrs. Doctor Harding who used to live here, and whom I knew slightly. If they have taken over the old servants my name will be recognised."
They opened the gates, drove the motor inside, and then formally presented themselves at the door. To their astonishment the man who opened it, a stolid-faced person, nodded assent when Doris asked for Mrs. Harding, and led the way into a room which Lionel recognised as the drawing-room where he had tea.
When Doris gave her name, the man merely bowed and disappeared. They waited a long time but nobody came.
"This is getting intolerable," said Lionel jumping up. "I am going to make inquiries. Hullo! what is that? Somebody else coming in a motor."
The drawing-room main window looked on a small, ill-kept lawn, separated from the garden by a thick hedge. There was a small side-window looking to the front, and as Lionel passed near this he had stopped at the sound of the throb of a motor-engine.
"Quick, quick, Stan! They are stealing our car."
The two men rushed out to the door, pulled it open; and jumped down the steps just a minute too late. The gates were already open and the car passed through them. They ran into the road, hoping to catch it as it turned, but the driver had got on the straight just in the nick of time, and within a few seconds left them hopelessly behind.
"What is to be done?" said Lionel, livid with rage.
"Done! We can only go back to the house and demand an explanation.. To chase the car is imbecility itself. See, he is on to the main road already."
They ran back to the house, through the door which they had left partly open and burst into the drawing-room. Then they stood still and stared at each other in terrified amazement. Doris had disappeared!
"Doris, Doris, where are you?" shouted Stanley, rushing out into the hall. His voice echoed through the rooms, end then there was an uncanny silence. The place had that peculiar stillness which one notices even in a furnished house when the people have gone out.
Now it was Stanley's turn to feel the spurs of terrified love.
"What is to be done?" he cried, turning to Lionel. "We must search the house from top to bottom. She is sure to be here somewhere."
He seized a heavy sword which happened to be hanging on the wall.
"We'll stand no nonsense. We'll bash out the brains of the first man who opposes us, but we'll search every room," he said.
The two rooms divided by folding doors were practically as Lionel remembered them, except that his patient had gone. The dining-room was undisturbed. They explored the other rooms on the ground floor and penetrated into the kitchen. There were evidences here of recent cooking, but not a living soul was to be seen. They rushed upstairs; Lionel had hopes of the rooms in which he was imprisoned. They suggested likely places for securing another captive, but they were exactly as he had left them the day before.
Stanley followed him shouting "Doris, Doris!" at the top of his voice, and each time the echo of his own words was the only mocking answer. Rushing down to the landing, Lionel dragged aside the heavy curtain. The rooms here bore evidence of having been occupied by ladies. They went through room after room till they reached the top of the house, and then looked at each other in bleak despair.
"Vanished, vanished," said Stanley, pressing his hands to his temples.
"Great heavens! are we in England within thirty miles of London? How can a living girl be spirited away in broad daylight in this fashion? She must be here, here, somewhere. I will pull the place down brick by brick."
It was Lionel's turn now to soothe an Impatient lover. "We must make a more careful search," he said. "We have simply run through the rooms. Perhaps there is a cupboard or a secret door or something, or a trace of a struggle of some sort."
"A struggle! You don't think—"
"No, no. I don't suppose any violence has been done to Doris. They sent me back to you all right, and they have more to fear from me than from her. Remember my telegram, 'Knowledge is dangerous.' They are only seeking to prevent her from obtaining knowledge. They have probably shut her up somewhere quietly and cleared off themselves on the assumption that the game is up."
"But what became of the man who showed us in? Can't we find him and wring his neck if he won't tell us anything?"
"My opinion is, he was the man who drove off the car. He had time to throw on a coat and a cap after he left the drawing-room. Remember, we were kept waiting quite a long time."
"Yes; but they seem to have got Doris away in a few minutes. Why, man, we simply ran out and back again. They could not have brought her even into the hall in the time."
"That's an idea. Let's explore the drawing-room; we only gave a very cursory glance at it."
They returned to the drawing-room. Its placid neatness seemed to mock them. It was incredible that anything tragic could have occurred in this quietly but elegantly furnished room. Lionel remembered Doris was sitting near the side window and stood up to watch them as they ran out of the house. He placed Poole at that point and tried to recall the view of the room as it was overnight. There was a difference-a screen with weird Eastern figures on it had been moved. It revealed the lower part of a piece of tapestry.
Lionel noticed also that the edge of tills at one point stood out a little from the wall. He tugged at it, and it rolled back.
"There is a door behind this," he said; "but it is locked. They have gone through this for a certainty."
Stanley hacked at the door with the heavy old sword, splintering away the wood near the handle. He put his hand through the aperture and shot back the lock.
THE two men stepped into a bare corridor which only led them to the kitchen. They saw their own panic-stricken faces grinning back at them from the shining utensils, and that was all the evidence of human occupation.
"There is no help for it. We must bring in the police," said Stanley at last.
Lionel shuddered at the thought of this; but he could not suggest any other course now. Stanley had an Interest in the matter which he could not deny.
"I suppose," he said, "the proper plan is to appeal to the local constable."
"Yes; you go and fetch him. Tell him as much or as little as you like about the other affair; but, at all events; let him help us to find Doris. Heavens! how am I to face her mother?"
"You prefer to wait here till I come back?" asked Lionel.
"Yes. I am not going to leave this place while there is a chance of finding Doris. But I do not like leaving you alone. They may have some devilish tricks to play yet."
"Well, if you like, I will watch from the gate. Perhaps I may be able to intercept some passer-by who will assist me to watch the place till you return."
Lionel left Stanley outside the house, and went off at a run for the village..
He met the constable talking to a man dressed like a small farmer.
"Officer," he said excitedly, "Come down to the house standing in its own grounds at once! Something has happened there! A lady has disappeared."
The Constable looked at him with a suspicious eye. Weedon could see that the man of the law thought he had been drinking.
"I should think if there was anything wrong at this house," he said, "somebody who belongs there would be looking for me. Are you a visitor at there?"
"No no! I called there with some friends and a member of our party has mysteriously disappeared. The house is empty. We can't find her anywhere."
The two men looked at him incredulously.
"Why, the Colonel is away," said the farmer.
"No, there were some lights there two nights ago; so I suppose he had company," said the constable.
"But whose house is it? Do you know the people?" asked Lionel breathlessly.
"Know the people? Why, it is Colonel Bloomer's house. Leastways, he took it over from Dr. Harding."
"A tall man, iron grey hair, and greyish moustache?" said Lionel.
"No, that's not him," replied the policeman, turning half away and watching the doctor out of the corner of his eye.
"Has he a wife, tall and dark, and a daughter?"
"Well, not so far as we know," said the farmer; "but he entertains a bit, and perhaps you're mixing him up with some of his friends."
"No. The man I described is the master of the house. I was there myself two nights ago, so I know," persisted Weedon.
"Well, if you know, there's no good asking us, is there, sir?" said the policeman. "But what is this you say about a lady? Who is the lady, and what Is she doing there?"
"Oh, come down and see! I can explain it to you better on the spot," replied Lionel.
The two men came with him. He said nothing about his experience with the lady in his surgery, nothing about his operation at the house, and did not mention the mysterious murder at Poole's chambers. He had a tormenting suspicion that Doris' disappearance was part of his maze of mysteries, but his immediate purpose was to find her. When they approached the house he was astonished to find that Stanley was not on guard at the gate. But the gate was open and so was the front door. They went into the house, from which sounds of angry altercation were proceeding, and there standing by the broken door, pointing angrily at it and vehemently protesting was a smart, military- looking man, whom the policeman respectfully saluted.
"I do not know whether I ought not to give you in charge for house-breaking," spluttered the red-faced man.
"Of course, Colonel Bloomer, if you say so it shall be done," said the-constable.
"You have the appearance of a gentleman," said the Colonel, looking at Stanley Poole. "What on earth do you mean by this outrage?"
"Are you Colonel Bloomer, sir?" said Lionel, stepping forward.
"Yes, sir, that is my name," replied the Colonel, drawing himself up stiffly.
"Then, sir, as this house belongs to you, we appeal to you to help us in discovering the lady who most mysteriously disappeared from this very room less than an hour ago. We have searched for her everywhere, and finding this door locked we suspected she had been forcibly carried through it. That is why we burst it open."
"Yes, yes; I have explained all that," said Stanley. "But I cannot get this gentleman to realise the importance of the matter."
"Not realise the importance of having the door of my drawing- room smashed? I have long since realised that, sir," said the Colonel; "and as for your extraordinary story about the disappearing lady, will you have the goodness to tell me who was the lady and what she was doing in my house during my absence?"
"The lady called to see Mrs. Harding," said Poole.
"Mrs. Harding! If the lady were a friend of Mrs. Harding's she ought to know that Mrs. Harding no longer occupies this house. When I took it over, I certainly did not understand that people claiming acquaintance with the former occupant were entitled to invade it at their will."
"But I don't understand," said Weedon. "You were not here the other evening."
"Hang it all!" retorted the Colonel. "You people talk as though I were the person from whom explanations are due. You are putting yourselves in the wrong position altogether. It is the most impudent thing I ever heard in my life."
"But I came to this house two nights ago," protested Weedon. "I am a medical man, and I was brought here to attend a patient."
"Then, sir, if that is your recollection of what occurred two nights ago," replied the Colonel bluntly, "you must have been drunk."
Stanley looked at Lionel with a furtive glance of suspicion. Had his cousin then really been under the influence of drink as he at first thought, and was this story of his the muddled recollection of some yarn that had been told him in his cups. He came to the conclusion that the better plan would be to leave out Lionel's alleged experiences and concentrate on the effort to discover Doris.
"I must admit, sir, that our action seems strange," he said; "and if you will permit me to explain I am sure you will be disposed to help us."
"Well, well," said the Colonel with an air of reluctant resignation, "will you be as brief as possible and deal with facts."
He looked meaningly at Lionel as he said this.
The doctor was about to protest, but Stanley, more intent on discovering Doris than on settling any grievance which Lionel might have against the householder brushed him aside.
"My name, sir," he said, "is Stanley Poole, a member of Lincoln's Inn. My friend and cousin is Doctor Lionel Weedon. We called here this afternoon with Miss Doris Burwood, daughter of the late General Burwood, who formerly knew Mrs. Harding, but had not seen her for some time and assumed she was still living here. We were shown into this room. My friend and I went into the grounds—we were away a few moments only—leaving Miss Burwood here. When we returned she had gone. We searched the house from top to bottom, but could find no servants, nor could we discover any trace of Miss Burwood."
"You searched the house from top to bottom. Did it occur to you to look in the garden. You will notice that this French window opens on to the garden and that it is unlatched."
The Colonel gently pushed the window as he spoke, and it swung open.
"I should imagine," he continued, "that a lady who called unbidden with such confidence would not hesitate to walk in the garden by herself."
Stanley rushed out through the open window shouting loudly for Doris. He came to a thick hedge which separated the lawn from the garden and tried to burst through it.
"I say, steady there! You might go through the proper way. The condition of the garden is bad enough without breaking down the only decent fence."
As he said this the angry gentleman pointed to a clearing to the right, and Stanley now noticed that there was a narrow opening through the hedge. He went through it with a bound, and then with a shout of triumph brought the others running after him.
"There is some trace of her here, at all events," he said, picking up a gauntleted motor glove. "Do you recognise this, Lionel?"
"It's either one she was wearing or marvellously like it," said Weedon.
"I do not see any cause for excitement," said the Colonel; "unless you are ashamed of your previous suggestions, and intend to apologise for them. It is perfectly obvious that this lady is walking somewhere in the grounds with that freedom which seems to characterise her particular circle of friends, or she has gone out of the grounds by another way, and is occupying her time according to her own devices after the manner of independent young women of these degenerate modern days."
Desperately hoping that the Colonel might be right, Stanley walked rapidly through the extensive grounds. He shouted loudly for Doris, but there was no reply.
STANLEY POOLE, followed by a procession of Lionel Weedon, Colonel Bloomer, the policeman, and the farmer, passed through thick bushes which had been allowed to grow without pruning, on into a small wood from which a path led to a door in a high wall. The door happened to be unlocked.
"It is as I supposed," said the Colonel, when, panting with exertions, he managed to catch up on Stanley by the open door.
"The lady had taken it into her head to wander forth by herself."
"If she has, her action is wholly unintelligible to me," said Poole. "And therefore quite in keeping with the ordinary conduct of young ladies of this period," observed the Colonel; "and now, sir, perhaps you may think it in keeping with your position as a gentleman to express some word of regret for your unwarrantable conduct, and to give me an assurance that this kind of thing will not occur again."
"I am very sorry for any damage I have caused," said Stanley, hardly knowing what attitude to adopt; "and, of course, the door will be repaired at my expense."
"Expense be hanged! The whole thing is an outrage; I don't want your interference any further. I will do the repairs to my own property. And now, gentlemen, perhaps you may have come to the conclusion that your departure will not be deeply regretted."
"But what of our motor?" asked Weedon. "One of your men drove it away."
"One of my men drove your motorcar away?"
"Yes, we left it outside the door when we came into the house."
"If you leave motor-cars where ally passers-by may jump into them by coming through the gates which apparently you opened yourselves, that is not my affair," said the Colonel. There was no answer to this; they had no proof that the man who drove the car off was connected with the house.
"You will observe that there is a motor standing in the other gate to the wood," said the Colonel. Weedon and Poole hurried up to the spot not many yards off, and there indeed was their motor.
"I suppose the explanation is that the whole thing is a silly practical joke," said the Colonel. "The motor was brought round from the front of the house. The lady went for a spin in it by herself, while you were demolishing my drawing-room door. She has sent it hack, and is now on her way home, if she has not already arrived there."
"But Doris would never do that, surely?" said Lionel looking at Stanley.
"Well, it's the only explanation I can offer, and I do not see any responsibility even for doing that. At all events, young man, will you clear off my property," the Colonel added sharply.
"Don't you think you had better charge them, Colonel?" said the constable. "It's a case of very strong suspicion."
"No; I think it will be sufficient if we let them go now," replied the Colonel. "No doubt, this is the continuation of Some ridiculous rag. Go and play with your own playmates, and don't let me see either of you again!"
He shouted this after them as they climbed into the motor, and then he turned through, the wood towards the house. The only hope—an exceedingly slender one-was to make for home.
"Perhaps it's all a dodge to get rid, of us," suggested Weedon. "Doris may have been invited into the garden while we were out after the motor, and some story might have been concocted to induce her to drive off when the motor came round to that back gate. Possibly we shall find her at home when we get there."
Stanley Poole did not reply. With clenched teeth he drove along the straight road at a pace which utterly disregarded the regulations. The speed precluded further conversation. When they arrived at Mrs. Burwood's house there was nobody at home except the servants. Mrs. Burwood was out, and in reply to Stanley's excited inquiries, a maid informed him that Miss Doris had not returned.
"I must wait here until she does return or until Mrs. Burwood comes in," said Stanley, looking at Lionel in despair.
"You must," replied Weedon. "Meantime, I must prosecute enquiries in another direction. Near the door in the garden I found this scrap of paper. I did not call attention to it naturally while these peopled were about, It may mean something or nothing. It is an address of a house in Paris. It looks like the bottom part of a telegram of which the top has been torn off. You will see the words 'Be safe here,' and then follows the address."
"Heavens! You don't suggest they have taken Doris there?"
"No, I merely suggest that-we should not let any of the gang out of our sight if we can help it. I will catch the boat-train; I can just do it. Send me a wire to the train at Dover if anything happens, but I must he off at once. There is no time to argue."
He hailed a taxi-cab and drove straight to Charing Cross. He was just able to get his ticket and jump in the nearest carriage. The train was already on the move when a lady stepped through the still open door.
The guard with one hand slammed the door, and with the other pushed off a man who was attempting to follow the lady.
"Relief train in a few minutes catches the same boat!" shouted the official.
With a gasp of terror the lady sank into the seat. She was closely veiled.
"Your friend will meet you on the boat," said Weedon.
The lady did not reply.
"They run two trains, one after the other when they are busy," remarked: another passenger. The lady shivered, but did not make any observation. She leaned back in her seat and remained silent until the train was nearing Dover.
"You are quite sure the boat will not go before the next train arrives?" she asked suddenly, turning to the passenger who had backed up Weedon's information. With the thrill of mingled hope and fear Lionel recognised the voice, although she had spoken in a very low tone.
"Quite sure," replied the passenger whom she addressed. "You may calm your fears on that point, madam."
Lionel Weedon congratulated himself on having caught the boat- train, He must spare this lady in the presence of others, but before she left England it was clearly his duty to discover more about her. He had a right to demand it now.
At Dover a telegraph messenger ran along the train shouting "Dr. Weedon."
Lionel took the wire before the train had actually halted and tore it open. It read:
"Doris back. Stanley."
With boundless satisfaction he read these words. This at all events took a grave responsibility off his shoulders. He stepped out on the platform, and waited for the veiled lady to alight. She stood by him hesitatingly, as the other passengers hurried off the platform.
"Are you waiting here for your friend?" he asked, determined to open the conversation. "May I be of any assistance to you until he arrives?"
"My friend!" she said in a terrified whisper. "He is my bitterest enemy."
"Then why not confide is a friend?" asked Lionel gently. "You know you can trust us."
"Yes, I feel I can trust you, Dr. Weedon,'" she said. "Fate has once more thrown us together. Dare I ask another favour of you?"
"You may not only ask; you may command," he said. "Confide everything to me."
"Hush, not here! We cannot speak in this public place," she said. "But why should I deceive you," she added quickly; "neither here nor elsewhere can I tell you anything. It is better that you should not know."
"But what do you wish me to do? We must act quickly."
"I want to escape the man you saw on the platform at Charing Cross. If you can tell me of some way to do that; if you will help me now and pass out of my life, I shall be for ever grateful."
The people had now gone off the platform and were on their way to the boat.
"Must you cross over to-night?" asked Weedon.
"No. I cannot cross with him on board, and dare not remain here. They will watch the boat to-morrow."
"There is a very simple way of avoiding them," said Weedon. "You must let me take you to Folkestone by road."
The plan pleased him. It gave him a long drive with her, during which an opportunity must arise of discovering more about her. He led the way out of the station and looked for a conveyance. There was no motor-cab in sight, and it was essential that they should start at once. He hired an old-fashioned four- wheeler.
The pace was painfully slow as they jogged through the town and up the log hill towards Folkestone. When they reached the open country the lady looked out of the window at the hills which rose like black clouds to their left. He made several efforts to open a general conversation, but she did not reply. The silence grew intolerable.
"Don't you think you ought to trust me a little more?" he said. "In the most terrible tragedies of life we all of us need the sympathy that comes from true and complete confidence."
"Why did I bring you into my life at all?" she said in a choking voice.
"Because it was Fate—your Fate and mine. As well struggle against it as seek to prevent the sun from shining," he said, taking her hand in his.
"Remember our compact," she said, freeing herself as he tried to draw her closed to him.
The embarrassment of a man who has been repulsed by a woman was new to him. For a few moments ne was completely silent. After a while she spoke to him again in a strained voice.
"I know," she said, "you have done for me more than I have a right to expect. I throw myself on your generosity. I ask you not to seek any further knowledge whatever concerning me. Do not speak to me more than is absolutely necessary; only on these conditions can I accept your kindness."
"I would do anything, for you," he replied, "and ask for no reward:" Then as their eyes met in the dim light an irresistible desire to pour out his soul to her overmastered him.
"I well tell you; I must tell you," he murmured, seizing her in his arms. "I love you."
She opened her lips to reply. There was a wild shout from the driver, a fierce glare of light, and then a crash.
THE terrified horse plunged and reared, but the driver, who had managed to retain his seat on the box, pulled it up with exhortations to "Wo back!" mingled with furious inquiries as to why the motor-car which had caught his hind wheel had not sounded a hooter.
"If I hadn't just seen your lights in time, and pulled the old mare into the side of the road, you would have knocked us to pieces instead of grazing our hind wheel," he shouted. "What's your number? I'll see that you get done in for this."
Weedon had a confused idea of somebody bending over him, somebody who caressed his forehead tenderly. Then the hand was torn away and he heard a piercing scream. He felt faint and dazed.
A motorcar which had suddenly come round a bend from behind had sped along without sounding a siren and, as the cabman explained in his forcible fashion, it was making direct for the centre of the cab when the glare of the light on the side of the road gave warning of its approach. The brakes had been suddenly applied and it caught the wheel on the side where Lionel was sitting.
As he stepped out of the cab and steadied himself by holding on to the hood at the back he saw his companion struggling with two men, one of whom sat in the body of the car after they had lifted her in, while the other sprang to the driving seat. The cab man, who had now steadied his horse, jumped off the box, but the driver of the motor started the engines.
"I shall run you down if you do not stand out of the way!" he shouted. The cabman hesitated a moment, and the car glided past him, but only for a few yards. The front wheel had caught something sharp at the back of the cab and was effectually punctured. The driver drew it in to the side of the road, and walking calmly up to the cabman addressed him in a tone of authority.
"Watch that car until we return," he said. "I want to borrow your cab meanwhile. This lady is under our authority. You will be paid for the use of your cab; if you don't assist us it will be the worse for you."
The man scratched his head in doubt and looked at Weedon. The doctor was again feeling faint and dizzy. Strange sounds were buzzing in his ears. He had a dim idea of what was being said, but he was unable to answer. He loosened his hold of the cab and staggered back into the hedge.
The man in the body of the car lifted up his prisoner, and the fact that she allowed herself to be carried to the cab without protest seemed to warrant what the other man had said. Her captor took his place beside her. The cabman caught at the bridle, but the other man threw him to the ground and mounted the box. Under the lash of the whip the affrighted horse went off at a gallop. The cabman struggled to his feet and shook his fist helplessly. Weedon with a supreme effort pulled himself together.
"Where is she?" he shouted. "What have they done with her? You have not let them drive her off?"
"Let 'em! They took 'er," growled the cabman. "Their motor is done in, and I wish all the rest of that infernal traffic was, too," he added in a tone of desperate exultation at the disaster to the rival method of traction.
"Do you mean it's punctured? Take off that rear lamp and bring it round. Hurry yourself!" said Weedon, now almost roused to normal strength in his excitement. He threw the light on to the spare wheel.
"Put the lamp over there so that it throws the light here, and help me," he said. Weedon had sufficient knowledge of motors to fix on a Stepney.
"I suppose you want to go after your cab?" he said. "Jump up beside me, and if I seem to be going off faint just put your arm round me and keep me from falling."
"And where do I come in, mister? The car will go its own road."
"That's all right," replied Weedon. "You can stop the car if you place your foot on this lever."
He was not quite sure when the reaction after this special spurt would come on, but he took the steering wheel and drove off at a pace that startled his new assistant. As the telegraph posts seemed to be rushing past them the cabman held to his seat with both hand and anxiously watched the face of the fare who had turned driver.
"We shall get them before they get into Folkestone, I believe," shouted Lionel.
The fascination of speed was upon him, added to the grim determination of the chase. The biting wind which the pace of the car created cleared his brain. He now felt none of the effects of his shock. He kept his eyes on the centre of the road, looking fiercely into the space lit up by the motor lamps. The cabman did not reply. His thoughts were of hospitals and accident wards.
"Do you think we shall catch them? How many miles have we to go?" yelled Weedon, still keeping his eyes on the lighted road.
"We shall be up on 'em in a few minutes if we don't break our necks," growled the cabman. "Watch for the bond at the top of the hill; for God's sake, mister, watch that! It is a good way off, but we shall be soon on it."
Weedon nodded. He knew the road fairly well and remembered the steep hill a little outside Folkestone..
The car went swiftly on. Nothing more was said until on the edge of the triangular light on the roadway there appeared a dark mass at the side of the road. Weedon put on the brakes; the car plunged and grated and drew up just past the object. The back light shone on a cab drawn in under the edge. The reins were thrown over the back of the horse, and the tired animal was standing with drooping head content to be left at peace.
Now that the engines of the motor had stopped they could hear the sound of horses' hoofs on the road in front, and they saw the sidelights of another cab moving slowly in the distance.
"They have gone on in that other cab; it must have been in front of us all the time, and they have caught it up." said Weedon. He turned, expecting to find the cabman at his elbow, but his former driver and erstwhile passenger was patting the neck of his own horse.
"Come along, we must follow them. We shall catch them up in a few minutes," said Lionel.
"Beg pardon, mister; but I'm not going to leave my old mare again now I have got her," said the cabman decisively.
"But we can come back. Quick, man, I shall want some help. I will give you a fiver for yourself."
"My mare's worth more than a fiver, and I am not trusting her out of my sight again," responded the man. "Wo, up!"
He drew the horse out of the ditch, and as the lamp grazed the side of the hedge, something attracted Weedon's attention. He lifted off the back lamp from the motor and turned it full on to the spot.
"False track," he muttered quietly, pointing to the cab now in the distance. "They heard us coming; they saw this cab in front of them and thought we would follow it."
There was a gap in the hedge, and on one of the bushes hung a shred of a gauzy shawl which he recognised. Shielding the lamp he stepped very carefully through the hedge and listened. At that moment there was a rustle in the bushes and a dark form leapt towards him. He drew the lamp from under his coat and its rays fell with a blinding glare upon the face of a man a few feet off.
Lionel Weedon took a step forward and straight from the shoulder he drove a crashing blow on to the upturned chin as the man instinctively threw back his head when the light shone in his eyes. The fellow went down like a boxer knocked out.
Throwing the light rapidly round, Weedon saw a few yards off another man dragging the form of a woman across the field. The rapidly-devised plan evidently was for one of the men to intercept and probably disable him while the other carried off their prisoner in the darkness.
"Hi! come over here quickly, all of you, and arrest this man," shouted Weedon.
The ruse was successful. As the cabman stumbled through the hedge to see what had happened the man, expecting that more help was at hand, left his burden and ran swiftly across the fields.
Weedon dropped on his knees beside the woman on the grass. She was unconscious.
Giving the lamp to the cabman, who was in some doubt which side he ought to take in this strange struggle for the possession of a lady, Lionel carried his travelling companion slowly back towards the gap in the hedge.
"Could you drive the motor if I look after the lady," he asked, when they paused for a few moments before reaching the hedge.
"No, I could not!" said the cabman decisively, in a tone which he might have employed if he had been asked to murder his grandmother.
"Then we shall have to take the cab, I suppose. In any case we could not have left that standing here-but it is terribly slow!" said Weedon.
The sound of a motor engine in action solved the problem.
The man who was carrying the lady off had ventured back to the gap in the hedge; by the light which Weedon had freely used he could see the two men bending over the woman and had taken the risk. Beside the hedge he stumbled over his confederate just recovering from his knock-out blow, and assisted him to the motor. The car went off towards Folkestone. The cabman helped the lady to the cab, and then taking his seat on the box, swung the horse round in the direction of Dover.
"I am taking no more chances," he said. "He is waiting on the Folkestone road to bash into us again, and if he gets another chance he won't miss us. I am taking my mare to stable."
Weedon saw that the man was right. The men in the motor car were not likely to give up without making another attempt, otherwise they would have gone straight back to Dover instead of pushing on along the Folkestone road.
Suddenly the cabman drew the horse into the hedge. "They are after us again. Look out!" he cried.
THE cabman, seeing an enemy behind every motor light to-night, had not taken note of the fact that the car the now observed was coming from the opposite direction. It sounded a hooter as it came near, and slowed down as the driver observed the stationary cab at the side of the road.
"An accident?" asked the man in the car. "Do you want any help?"
"Surely I know that voice?" said Weedon. "It's Deane, of Folkestone?"
"Quite correct. Hullo, Weedon! have you thrown up London and come down here, too? Is that a patient you have there?"
"Well, not exactly, although we are badly in need of assistance. It's rather a strange case. I should like to bring her to your surgery, if I may."
Arthur Deane did not worry his old fellow-student with further questions. He lifted the unconscious lady into the car, and then Weedon turned to the cabman.
"I am afraid you have had rather a tough night," he said. "Perhaps you have heard of my friend here; if not, any doctor here can tell you about him, and that will be some guarantee to you that I am all right. I don't like leaving you here at the mercy of those scoundrels."
"And I think I have about had enough of them, guv'nor," said the man. "If we can knock them up at this inn a little further back I have a mind to put up the mare and wail till daylight."
The idea was excellent. Weedon had already seen the danger of leaving the man on the road to be overtaken and cross-examined by his pursuers.
"You had better put up the mare and come to Folkestone with us in the car," he said, "and then there's no danger of their interfering with you at all. We will find you a bed, and in the morning you can come out and get your cab."
The landlord of the inn was knocked up, and there was very little difficulty in getting the cab and the horse safely out of sight. The substantial sum in advance was a sufficient guarantee of good faith. The cabman knew the Folkestone doctor by name and reputation, and any reluctance which he might have had in mounting next the driver of a motor-car was thus overcome.
"Have you a spare cap for him, instead of that bowler?" asked Weedon.
His brother medico, still wondering what strange game old Weedon was up to, fumbled under the seat for a cap which he put on when he was attending to a break-down and handed it to the cabman, who thus transformed as to his headgear, and with the collar of his coat pulled well up, bore no resemblance in a casual glance to the man who had been mounted on the box-seat of the cab. He muttered an imprecation, deep, long, and lurid, as they drove past a car which was moving slowly, as though the occupants were carefully searching their way. It was obvious that they had grown impatient and suspicious when the cab did not appear in sight, and, the knocked-out man having recovered from his blow, they were steering slowly back, intent on searching the road until they found their quarry.
It was a quick run in Dr. Deane's car into Folkestone, and then came the necessity for explanations. First a bed was found for the cabman, who received a generous tip in advance with a promise of a further settlement of all claims on the morrow. Weedon wanted to keep this man under observation so long as they were in the neighbourhood. He knew the enemy would be seeking to make him talk, and he had asked his friend to see to this while he himself endeavoured to revive the lady.
"Now then, what's the matter with the patient?" asked Deane as he came into the surgery.
"Chloroform," replied Weedon shortly, "but I can't get the restoratives to work."
His confrere bent over the recumbent figure on the couch, and was silent for several minutes. "Are you sure it is chloroform? Did you administer it yourself?"
"No, I did not; but I saw the lady in full possession of all her senses not long ago. She has been dragged about considerably since, and she must have had a very powerful dose."
"Anyway, it is not a dose of chloroform—of that I am certain," said the other doctor decisively. "Who administered it?"
"I don't know: that is to say, I know nothing of the identity of the person except that it was administered for the purpose of reducing the lady to a state of helplessness. It is a quaint story altogether, old chap, and for certain reasons I can't tell you much about it. I can assure you that my part in the transaction is strictly honourable."
"No need of that assurance from you,'" said Dr. Deane, still carefully examining the patient. "You can tell me this: was the man who attended the lady by any chance a Hindu doctor?"
The incident at the police mortuary immediately recurred to Weedon. He had lost sight of his friend for a few years, and knew that during that time he had been travelling abroad. Was this another poison—slower, but equally deadly, to that administered to the unhappy lady who was found in Stanley Poole's chambers?
"What do you mean?" he asked, clutching his friend's arm. "For heaven's sake, tell me. What is the matter?"
The words had slipped out unthinkingly. Deane turned upon him with surprise, and then a look of understanding came into his eyes.
"It is nothing very dangerous," he said quickly, "but I am afraid that is about all I can tell you and frankly I don't know what is to be done. There is a knowledge of drugs and herbs possessed by Eastern people which very few Europeans understand. I have only seen one case which in any way resembled this, and then I had not the opportunity, of watching its development, nor do I know the antidote. The old Hindu told me it was harmless but very effective."
"But can nothing be done at all?" asked Lionel.
"We can only let things take their course. You will notice that the patient is now breathing naturally as though in an ordinary sleep. I will get a nurse to look after her for the night, and you must get some sleep yourself. I need not tell you that you are overdoing it, old chap. You have been at high tension for a long time by the look of you. The lady can come to no harm, so get to bed. This is a bachelor establishment as yet, but we'll manage to make you comfortable."
Weedon was thoroughly worn out, and Nature asserted herself.
IN THE MORNING, when he got up, Deane came into his room aglow with excitement.
"The patient has come round miraculously," he said. "The sleep has done it. I did not waken you before because I knew you wanted rest."
"Do you mean that she is herself again? Exactly as she was when we were at Dover?"
"Well, I didn't see her at Dover, but she is now perfectly normal so far as I can judge. She gave me a most circumstantial account of your injury in the cab, just as you told me yourself. She is anxious to be assured that you are not injured. You had better go and talk to her yourself."
Weedon leapt out of bed, and for a man who was dressing in a hurry was somewhat particular about his toilette.
"You are quite sure you are not hurt?" asked Miss Fitzgerald, anxiously, when he joined her in the sitting room.
"Quite. I was shaken by the accident to the cab, that was all. You know, of course, what happened. The motorcar containing your attentive friends tried to run us down, and they endeavoured to carry you off."
"Yes, yes, I remember. They dragged me away from you, and I suppose I, too, must have been stunned. I understand I am in Folkestone. I must catch the mid-day boat if I can do so."
"And I will come with you," said Weedon.
She shook her head decisively.
"No, I go alone. I must thank you once again for all you have done for me, and implore you to let me go my way. Try to put all that has happened between us out of your thoughts."
"But that is impossible. I cannot put you out of my thoughts, and I know that you cannot put me out of yours. Nothing can drive me from you-nothing, I say, nothing!" He stepped forward and took her hand. With a deep sob she turned away from him. He followed her across the room as she retreated to the bay window.
She stopped and turned towards him. He fondly hoped this was a surrender, but it was terror that he now saw in her violet eyes. She hid herself behind the curtain, and without a word pointed through the window. Lionel followed the direction of her finger, and saw a man, whose face he dimly recognised, walking on the other side of the road.
The lady hurried from the room. Weedon heard her speak to the nurse who, having completed her duties, was on the point of leaving. They went upstairs together, and Weedon, sheltering himself behind the curtains, watched the man outside.
It was quite evident that the fellow was satisfied he had found the right house, and was watching it. He continued to hang about in the neighbourhood, never losing sight of the door. He was joined by another man with his hands in the pockets of a loose coat and his hat drawn down over his eyes, who leaned against the railings as though he were an ordinary lounger, and chatted for a few moments as though with a casual acquaintance.
Weedon saw he and the lady were prisoners. They cared not move out of the house. There was nothing for it but to pass the time and think hard for some way out.
He was induced to take some breakfast, in which he was joined by the lady and the nurse, who appeared to understand each other.
After they rose from the table the now healthy patient went to the sitting room with the bay window and, walking across the room, deliberately looked out on to the street.
"They are still watching,', said Weedon anxiously.
"I know," she replied. "And I want them to see me."
Satisfied that they had seen her, she drew a chair towards the window and only partly shielding it with the curtain, she sat down with her face turned towards the room. "Once more I need your aid," she said, "and this must be the last service I can ask of you, There is one chance left. If that fails I abandon hope."
"I HAVE induced the nurse to impersonate me after I have been sitting here for some time," said Miss Fitzgerald. "I shall go out of the room shortly, and apparently come back. You will notice that this chair is so arranged that one may slip into it without one's face being observed from the outside. The nurse-will wear this dress and also this gay mantilla that I have over my head. You must stay here and talk to her."
"But what of you?"
"In the nurse's uniform I shall leave by another way, and catch the boat. Don't place any obstacle in the way, I pray you! I assure you it is my only chance. You must remain here talking to the nurse while I escape."
Weedon could do nothing but acquiesce, while these men dogged her footsteps. He must remain there talking to her as though he were but a casual friend, and he must allow her to depart without knowing when and where he would ever see her again..
After a while she rose and walked towards the door.
"No, you must remain here, keeping well in sight until the nurse's return," she said, as he held the door open for her and was about to fellow her.
"But what will happen to you in Paris?"
"If I can get there without being followed I am safe for the present, at all events," she said. "I can't explain more-there is no time."
She closed the door and left him. A few moments afterwards the nurse opened the door and, walking to the window, on the side of the room shaded by the curtain, glided into the chair. She was dressed exactly in every detail as her late patient had been dressed. From the outside it was impossible for anybody to distinguish the difference, sitting as she was with her back to the window.
The man continued to walk up and down, and Weedon chatted casually to the nurse. She was a lady with a touch of romance in her disposition, despite the fact that on duty she was a matter- of-fact person. The other lady had obviously won her over.
Dr. Deane's house stood at the corner of the street, just off the Lees. The direct way to the quay was down through the town, but carefully instructed by the nurse, the disappearing lady passed through a small garden at the back and out into a back street which led on to the top of the Lees. From there she descended the lift dressed in the nurse's uniform, and thus reached the quayside. She passed through the turnstile and out to the pier to the mail boat.
The nurse entertained Weedon by describing the course that she would take, and Lionel mentally followed every movement. He saw her taking her ticket like a casual passenger, and going on board. He heard the whistle from the engine, and looking at his watch, he knew that the boat had by this time cast her moorings. And all the while the watchers outside were slowly patrolling the street, fixing an eye each time they passed the window on the figure sitting there, and the doctor talking to her.
There was nothing to keep Weedon at Folkestone now, but in order to be on the safe side, he decided to remain in the house until the later boat had gone.
STANLEY POOLE was waiting at the chambers for him when he reached London.
"Doris had an extraordinary tale to tall," he said. "When we rushed out after the motor, she was seized from behind by somebody, and from that point she remembers nothing until she found herself in a cottage some distance from the place apparently in charge of a kindly old woman who told her a plausible story about having found her fainting by the roadside.
"She came home as quickly as she could from the nearest railway station, knowing that her mother would be anxious, It was about two hours after we arrived. I found I had just time to telephone a wire through the G.P.O. to you, so reckoning the time we spent in the house and garden, which, come to think of it, was pretty considerable, she must have been under the drug about two or three hours."
"We must see the old woman," said Lionel.
"No good—she has already departed. The cottage is a weekend place generally shut up, and only occasionally occupied by some people who do not at all answer to the description of the genial old lady."
"Stanley, we have some clever rogues to deal with," said Weedon.
"But what on earth their game is I haven't the faintest idea," replied Poole. "Apparently Doris has been quite well taken care of. She was not robbed; there wasn't so much as a bruise upon her; but the strangest thing of all I have kept to the end. It seems to connect up your affair with the incident somehow. On her arm is a mark exactly similar to that little blue flower which we have both seen."
"Tattooed? That would be impossible in the time."
"Well, at all events, it is there quite plainly, and it won't yield to coals. Doris has a hazy recollection of the old lady doing something to it when she woke up."
"I must see this mark," said Weedon. "Is it too late to call?"
"Not at all. Doris will be only too anxious to tell you her own story. She is bearing up like a brick. The incident has not upset her at all. But be careful with Mrs. Burwood. We have made light of the affair to her, though she insisted on calling in the family doctor as soon as Doris came home."
"And what does he think of the mark?"
"Doris didn't call his attention to it specially, and apparently it was too trifling a matter for him to notice."
They called on the Burwood's after Weedon had made a hurried visit to his surgery. On the way he told Poole of his adventures. He examined the blue flower under the microscope, and produced some acid which he had brought with him.
"Dear me, there is a smell now similar to that which I remember noticing when I woke up," said Doris, as he drew the glass stopper.
"Yes, apparently you woke up just a little earlier than was expected," he said shrewdly, as he patted her shoulder with cotton-wool steeped in the acid. "This is a remarkably clever piece of work. It is so well painted that no ordinary inspection would distinguish it from a tattoo mark."
"But why was it put there?" asked Doris.
"I would give much to know myself," replied Weedon gravely; "but at present the whole business is a horrible mystery."
Poole remained behind a few minutes after Weedon lead gone, and then caught him up.
"What is to be the next step?" he asked "Are you still going off to Paris?"
"I daren't," replied Weedon sadly. "I should be followed. I have no doubt they're watching the boats for that. I must give the girl a fair start. So long as I remain here they may imagine she is still in England. We must find out something more about that house to-morrow."
"There is nothing more to be found, I'm afraid. I have ferreted out the agents who sold the place to Colonel Bloomer. They know nothing more about him than that he paid the money and, naturally that is all they want to know, about him."
"But surely the fact that Doris was attacked and drugged!"
"What is the evidence? She admits she didn't see the face of her assailant. We can't arrest Colonel Bloomer, because we know ourselves that he was not in the house at the time. I have seen him again, you may depend. I have spent the whole day on it, going from one place to another. He sticks to it that Doris must have grown hysterical and wandered off by herself through the garden. As for your part in this business, he still laughs at it and declares that if there is anything in what he is pleased to term your fantastic story, you must have mistaken the house."
"But the rooms, the furniture, I could swear to it all."
"That won't help us much. You have no corroboration; you admit that you were driven to the place in the dark. Besides, do you want to call in the police for your share? remember, you will have to tell them everything."
"But can nothing be done?"
"There is just one chance of finding out something. Engage a private inquiry agent to watch the house, and be may find out something. Which reminds me that I had a confidential note from one named Ketterington this morning offering to take up the case. Of course, he has seen it in the newspapers, and imagined that I would like to solve the mystery. These people are smart fellows, and lose few opportunities of advertising."
Weedon at first repelled the idea of calling in any further aid, but on second thoughts agreed it might be useful to know more about Colonel Bloomer's house. He could tell the agent as much or as little as he cared.
The private detective happened to be at his chambers, although it was very late. He listened to Weedon's instructions, and put a few searching questions which the doctor found it difficult to evade. The man seemed to know he was keeping something back, but he did not unduly press him for information.
"And may I ask how you connect this house with the tragedy which occurred in Poole's chambers?" he asked.
"Oh, I have not come to see you about that particularly," said Weedon hastily.
"My immediate interest is confined to the house in Middlesex, and Colonel Bloomer's movements. The letter that you sent to Mr. Poole on the other matter suggested your name to me."
"I am much obliged to Mr. Poole for the recommendation," said the detective politely. "If you could make it convenient to call again, say, tomorrow, I may be able to tell you something."
The following day Weedon returned. The agent received him with a subdued, kindly manner.
Weedon felt a sinking at the heart. In his own profession this signified unpleasant news. He had adopted that manner often himself.
"This inquiry promises developments of a somewhat remarkable character," said the agent, "and before I go further I feel it my duty to warn you that you may not wish the subject pursued."
MR. KETTERLINGTON waited for his client to speak, but Weedon by his silence intimated that he wished to know more before he ventured an opinion.
"I take It, that Colonel Bloomer is not a friend of yours?" said the detective at length. "Are you by any chance interested in a lady who has been living in the house?"
"Yes, yes; what of her?"
"I see I am right," said Mr. Ketterington. "May I ask If you know whether this lady has any desire to conceal her identity; if she has attempted to leave the country or to remain out of sight?"
"My immediate purpose," said Weedon, evading the question, "is to discover all that can possibly be known concerning Colonel Bloomer."
The inquiry agent took no apparent notice of the tone of impatience in his client's voice.
"Perhaps I may be permitted to ask," he went on, in the same quiet way, "whether it would be a great shock to yon to know that very serious consequences—consequences, I may say, of the very gravest possible character—might result if you were instrumental in bringing any record of the lady's movements into public notoriety? If you are aware of this, and still wish me to go on, I will do so."
Lionel Weedon silently watched the private detective as he leaned back in his chair, and waited for the doctor to speak. Weedon dreaded to hear anything that might destroy his idol, yet he must know more now that so much had been said.
"This is a matter between ourselves, of course?" he said in a halting tone.
"You are my client—I am your agent," replied Mr. Ketterington.
"Then what do you know?"
"I will assume you are interested in a certain lady," said Mr. Ketterington in a quiet tone, still speaking in the soothing manner that portended so much.
"We will say, for the sake of argument, that she is known to you as Miss Fitzgerald."
"Is that, then, really her name after all?" asked Weedon. Mr. Ketterington held up his hand with a gesture that respectfully but firmly demanded silence. "She is known to you, I say, as Miss Fitzgerald; but like her friends she is not narrow or prejudiced in favour of any one name. You met her by chance and you have seen much of her since. You have seen her, I take it, in the very house which we are discussing. She has told you very little about herself. I expect. Again, I ask you before I go any farther, do you really wish to know more about her than she herself has thought fit to tell you. Is there any special reason why you should desire to know more? Have you any prospect of meeting her again, or is there a reasonable opportunity of severing the acquaintance, honourably? If so, would it not be better to do so?"
"What do you mean?" shouted Weedon impetuously. "There is every reason why I should desire to know more. As for severing the acquaintance, the lady herself—" He paused awkwardly, and the detective allowed just a suspicion of a smile to cross his features.
"The lady herself, perhaps, has suggested that the acquaintance had better cease! Is she very insistent on this point? We are alone, talking confidentially, Mr. Weedon. Was that desire on her part a genuine one?"
"It was, but—"
"But you believed that if circumstances were favourable she would desire to continue, and to improve this acquaintance. In fact doctor, If I may venture to speak plainly there is a certain affection on both sides. You will contradict me if I am wrong. If I am right, of course there is no occasion to day more on that point except this that it imposes an extremely painful duty upon me."
Weedon made no reply.
"The circular of the firm was sent to Mr. Poole because it was assumed that he might be interested in obtaining information concerning the tragedy which occurred in his chambers," continued the detective. "I find that the subject concerning which you have desired information is very closely associated with that occurrence. The lady who died under such strange circumstances was intimately connected with another lady, and she also went under the name of Miss Fitzgerald. The other Miss Fitzgerald has not been heard of since the night of the tragedy. The question is, why does she not come forward and identify her sister?"
"She may not yet know of the death."
"There is just that possibility and thus it may be desirable to leave her to act for herself. The only other course is to persist in these inquiries to endeavour to discover her whereabouts, and her antecedents."
The emphasis which the man laid on the last word chilled Weedon's blood.
"What do you know of her antecedents?" he asked.
"Things that might lead to revelations if followed up. A certain gentleman who calls himself Fitzgerald was a guest of Colonel Bloomer. That was not the name under which he met the Colonel, but it is the name under which some people with whom he has had dealings would like to hear of him again. He knew the house well, and took the liberty of occupying it while the Colonel and the servants were away, and introducing there with him certain other people, including two young ladies who, with charming manners, had proved useful in providing the victims for gambling parties and other negotiations that brought a good profit to the family. A certain timidity and simplicity were the favoured means of deceiving some people. At other times in atmosphere of mystery and romance was thrown over the friendship. By one means or another people have been induced to take quite a tender interest in the ladies. They were both admirable actresses. There is reason to suppose, however, that they feared the detection. The one may have committed suicide; the other may have disappeared, or the one who disappeared may have—"
"No, no, I don't believe it. That Is too horrible to contemplate."
"If I had any direct evidence that the lady who disappeared was directly responsible for the death of the other it would, of course, be my duty to give it to the police," said Mr. Ketterington, "but I have not, and so—"
"How did you find out that they are what you say—a—"
"Crowd of common swindlers?" said the detective, filling up the blank. "That is rather a matter of professional secrecy. I can only give you the result of my investigations, and I do so in the usual method of police evidence by saying 'from information received.' If you wish me to go farther and give you explicit proof, of course that can only be clone in one way. If you desire evidence, it will be a lengthy matter, and only the proper authorities can compel it."
"You mean the police, of course?"
"Yes. I have no doubt that sooner or later such members of the gang as are left will be caught. These people generally go too far at some time, and then my story to you will be corroborated. Meantime, assuming that a lady who disappeared has, shall we say, had some experience which has touched a tender chord in her better nature—and she desires to be quit of the old business for ever. Would it not be more desirable to leave her to a better life in another country? If she comes back here, retribution is certain. If her associates get into trouble, they will see that she is dragged down with them."
For several minutes Weedon sat gazing at the detective, who leaned back in his chair as though awaiting further instructions. His first impulse was to denounce the cold, calculating man on the other side of the table as slanderer and a liar; but he had no proof of the lady's innocence. He would seek her out. He would learn the truth from her own lips at any cost. His love was unquenched. Even if she were all this man said, he would rescue her. This should be his mission.
Mr. Ketterington did not interrupt his thoughts, but sat there sphinx-like, looking at the ceiling, while the doctor's eyes were fixed upon him.
Weedon had told him nothing about the mark on the girl's arm, or his operation for its removal. He longed to ask him by some roundabout question whether he knew anything of the significance of the blue flower. The information came without any special request from him.
"There is one small detail which I have not yet mentioned." said Mr. Ketterington, speaking as though he merely wished to break the embarrassing silence. "The mark by which members of the gang know each other is a small blue flower. It is used in many forms, but it is a passport whenever two of the confederacy meet. They are a numerous band, with allies all over Europe, and in other lands as well. They work together; their common enemy is respectable and law-abiding society. The mark was found, as you possibly may have noticed, or have heard, on the arm of the dead woman, and the mention of it has a conspicuous place in the details which the police have circulated inviting identification of the body."
Weedon made no comment on this. Whatever happened, he was determined to keep his promise.
"And now, sir," said Mr. Ketterington, rising from his chair, "may I ask if you have any further instructions for me? I am at your service of course, and you will perceive that it is to my interest that the inquiry. Shall continue. I do not presume to advise you, however. I have simply stated the facts as far as I know them, or as far as I believe they will reveal themselves if investigations are pursued."
"I will let you know if you can be of any further help to me," said Weedon.
He went into the busy street with one fixed determination. A woman's soul was to be saved. He wandered into the West-End club, of which he was a member, and entered the small writing-room. He lit a cigar, which he allowed to go out, and then flung it at the fireplace. It was a bad shot, and the charred weed dropped on the rug.
He walked over and picked it up, and as he threw it inside the fender, a row of books on the mantel-piece attracted his attention. He took one down and turned over the leaves mechanically. He ran his fingers down the index list, and then bent his head over the pages. A new light came into his eyes as he read, and suddenly closing the book with a snap, he rushed out of the club.
LIONEL WEEDON burst in upon Stanley Poole just as the young barrister came back from the inquest on the dead woman.
"Well, the inquiry is adjourned," said Poole. "They have failed to get the body identified, and the police are not satisfied. I have an idea they know something."
"Have they any suspicions of any particular persons in view?" asked Weedon.
"They gave no indication whatever. They merely asked for an adjournment, and the Coroner granted it. But you seem particularly excited about something. Has your interview with the private inquiry agent revealed nothing?"
"Nothing that I have cause to rejoice over," replied Weedon bitterly; "but I have found out something myself which may be of some importance. It is about Colonel Bloomer."
"Well, what of him?"
"I have been looking up the Army List. There is no such person as Colonel Bloomer."
"He may have retired."
"No. I have examined the retired list as well as the active list. The man masquerading under a false title, possibly under a false name. He would assume, no doubt, that there must be somebody in the Army of that name; it is remarkable when one looks over the list to notice that there is hardly a name in ordinary use that is not in the Army List."
"I don't suppose he gave the matter a thought. If what you say is correct. It is strange now, I didn't think of looking him up, but it has been such a wild rush during the last day or so that there seems to have been no time for anything. The question is, how does this help us? Have you pointed it out to the inquiry agent, or did he point it out to you?"
"I looked it up myself in the club after I left him. As a matter of fact, although my definite instructions to the agent were that he should find out all he could about Colonel Bloomer and his house; he told me very little concerning the Colonel except that the Fitzgeralds had made use of the house during the owner's absence."
"That is precisely what the Colonel told me. It is difficult to connect him up with them, but the fact that he is assuming a position to which he has no right of itself looks suspicious. The explanation may be that he is an American, although he does not seem like one. Of course, you had in mind the Territorials?"
"The Territorials, as you know, are included in the list, and he is not amongst them. The fact is, the man is a fraud in the minor if not in the major degree, and I am going to tackle him about it."
"No, no, don't do that! You will simply put him on his guard. If there is anything shady about him, we cab gain more by keeping an eye upon him. Your inquiry agent is the man for that. By-the- by, what did he tell you?"
Weedon hesitated before replying. He could not easily bring himself to the point of repeating even to Stanley Poole the hideous suspicions of Ketterington.
Relief from his embarrassment came in a knock at the outer door, and the appearance of a well-dressed man whom Stanley Poole greeted with the genial familiarity that usually exists between the Bar and the Police. The Scotland Yard officer looked at Weedon before he spoke.
"This is Doctor Lionel Weedon, my cousin." said Poole. "They may have told you at the mortuary that he was there with me a day or two ago. Would you rather he retired now?"
"No. Mr. Poole, I think there is no occasion for that," replied the officer. "No doubt you already have discussed this matter with him, and very likely he was the gentleman with you when you had some little trouble with Colonel Bloomer. It is about that I have called."
Weedon felt his heart thumping against his side. How much did this man know? he asked himself.
"The local constable," continued the officer, "saw a description of the body and the clothing, which was in due course posted at the police station in the country. He has been down to the mortuary to-day, and he recognises the woman as a lady whom he has seen among the visitors at Colonel Bloomer's house. He has told us about a lady being said to be missing at the house by two gentlemen who called there two days after the affair that we have in hand, and he remembers that one of them told the Colonel he was Mr. Poole of Lincoln's Inn."
There was no opportunity for any private consultation between Poole and Weedon. They were faced with the necessity of explaining matters to the officer. Poole told him exactly what had occurred when they called at the house: of Doris' extraordinary disappearance and her still more extraordinary return.
"According to the constable's story, the Colonel's friends were in the habit of using his house when he was away," said the officer.
"Do you know anything about this Colonel Bloomer? What is he Colonel in?"
"We have just discovered," said Poole, cutting in before Weedon could interpose, "that there is grave doubt as to whether he is a Colonel at all. We have casually looked up the Army List, and do not find him there."
"Thank you." said the officer, turning to go. "There is one thing I want to ask you, Mr. Poole, and your friend—don't say any more about this until I see you again."
The man was hot on a new scent, and did not wait a moment longer. When he had gone, Stanley Poole lit a cigarette and blew a few clouds very thoughtfully.
"You see how things are shaping, Lionel?" he said. "We shall have to tell a lot more than we have told already. Scotland Yard will soon be on Colonel Bloomer's track, and they will be on the track of his visitors also."
"We gave the man all the information he asked," said Weedon rather lamely.
"We gave him as much as was immediately necessary to give him his new line. Don't deceive yourself, old chap; I have had that gentleman in the box, and I know something of him. He is quite aware that he struck in us a source of information; he knows, moreover, he has not tapped it all. He will got the rest in his own good time. Once again let me urge upon you that it is better to be candid and tell the whole story. By keeping anything back you only create suspicion."
As his cousin thus expressed in plain language the hard facts of the situation, Lionel saw the hopelessness of his attempt to shield the woman he loved. He tried hard to come to a swift decision for the best. His cousin watched him as he paced the room with agitated steps.
"You have not yet told me what you heard from Ketterington," he said at length.
Instead of replying, Weedon picked up the railway A B C.
"There is only one thing for it," he said, half to himself. "I must go to Paris at all costs. I can't tell you any more till I return. I have just thought of a way of outwitting my pursuers. They will be watching Dover and Folkestone: I will go from Waterloo to Southampton, and cross by the night boat."
He took the tube to London Bridge, as though going to Folkestone; then in the crowd went down into the underground station and from there went on to Euston, changed into the Hampstead Tube, got out at Tottenham Court Road, walked along Shaftesbury Avenue, and through the short streets about Soho. Satisfied that he was not followed, he then hailed a taxi-cab and drove to Waterloo in time to catch his train. He had made up his mind that he must see Miss Fitzgerald. His future actions must be guided by what passed between them.
The berths were all occupied by people who had booked in advance, and Weedon found it necessary to spend the night on deck. He stretched himself in a canvas chair, and endeavoured to sleep; but recent events had chased away all hope of sleep. The pleading face, with all its purity and innocence, rose out of the mists of the night; whenever he closed his eyes the girl he so passionately loved stood before him looking up at him as she did that night in his surgery, pleading with him, asking him not to believe ill of her.
He tried to assure himself that she was still the same artless and trusting girl who had thrown herself upon his generosity, but the cold, business-like report of the inquiry agent thrust itself upon his thoughts. He had heard that it was a common practice of an adventuress to seem more innocent than the rest of her sex, when she was weaving the web around her victim.
Unable to endure his musings, he jumped up from the chair with an unexpected movement, and collided with a man who was standing close by. He murmured an apology, and hurried past towards the saloon, where he vainly endeavoured to interest himself in an evening paper which he had crushed into his pocket at Waterloo. A heading—"The Lincoln's Inn Mystery"—caught his eye. and he glanced at the sub-heading: "Foul Play Suspected."
It was an account of the brief proceedings at the adjourned inquest. He threw the paper aside, and merely for something to occupy his thought, took out the leather case which he usually carried in his hip pocket, containing cards and addresses, clippings of interest, and other oddments. Among them was the slip of paper with the address in Paris. He looked at this for some time and tried to recall the neighbourhood. He knew Paris fairly well, but not sufficiently to remember the exact position of this residential quarter.
Again his thoughts began to wander in vain dreams. He found, himself brooding over the scrap of paper, and once more he attempted to divert himself from the engrossing subject. He put the slip back into the leather case, and rose from the sent. As he walked down the saloon he put his arm round to replace the wallet in his hip pocket. It was whisked out of his fingers sharply.
He made a grip with his left hand, but failed to reach the wrist of the thief. The thing was done in an instant. He turned towards two or three men who happened to be casually walking past. One of the men had his hands in his overcoat pockets. Weedon, without a moment's hesitation, leapt upon him. The ship rolled, and the two men fell heavily to the floor. The other fellow was muscular and active. Recovering from the first fierce onslaught, he gripped his assailant with his disengaged arm. Weedon intent on recovering his papers, held to the wrist of the arm that was in the pocket. The women who witnessed the occurrence began to scream: passengers from all parts rushed towards the spot, and there was grave danger of a panic. An officer promptly summoned a couple of sailors, and pushing his way through the crowd caught the man, whom Weedon had attacked, and who was now on top, by the collar of his coat while the stewards and sailors endeavoured to push back the rest of the passengers.
The officer wrenched away the man's hold of Weedon, but Weedon clung to the arm that was in the pocket like a bull terrier that has got its grip. When they were both lifted to their feet he still held the arm.
"Now then, what is the matter here?" said a voice of authority at the entrance to the saloon.
Several people, all talking at once, began to explain matters to the captain, who brushed them all aside and came to the officer who still held his man by the coat collar with the British instinct of protecting the under dog.
"This man has my leather case," panted Weedon. "He snatched it out of my hand. It is here in his pocket."
As he said this he tugged at the man's arm and it came quickly out of his pocket. The captain put his hand in the loose pocket of the overcoat And turned it inside out. It was absolutely empty.
"You blackguard! What do you mean by assaulting me and slandering me in this way?" said the owner of the pocket in an angry tone.
"You have made away with it somehow," shouted Weedon, thoroughly convinced that he had spotted the right man. The other passengers now began to express their views on the fracas, and the sailors had a difficulty in keeping a ring for the main parties to the argument.
"Do you charge this gentleman with stealing your letter-case?" asked the captain. "You had better both come to my cabin and not create a commotion here."
Way was made for them through the crowd. The man whom Weedon had attacked went willingly, and when they were inside the small room he voluntarily took off his overcoat and handed it to the captain to search.
"You may search the rest of my pockets if you like," he said with quiet dignity. "You may also examine those letters, which will show you who and what I am. As for this person, whether he is drunk or dreaming I know not. When he has sufficiently recovered his senses, perhaps he would like to see the letters also."
The captain glanced at the letters and showed them to Weedon. They proved conclusively that the suspected person was a well- known solicitor, whoso name was a guarantee of sound reputation. As Weedon was stammering his apologies a steward knocked at the door.
"Is this the case the gentleman was talking about, sir?" he asked. "I have just found it on the saloon floor."
Weedon, with loud expressions of thanks, grasped the leather wallet. He hurriedly examined the contents and with a cry of dismay spread them out on the table.
"SO I suppose the truth of it is you dropped the case on the floor and created all this commotion because of your own carelessness," said the captain severely.
"No, it was snatched out of my hand," replied Weedon. "I am absolutely certain of that, and it was taken for a purpose. There is something missing—a piece of paper more important than anything else."
"I hope you don't suppose that in a fraction of a second I was able by a trick of legerdemain to extract the document and dispose of the case," said the other gentleman with cultured satire.
"Certainly not," replied Weedon. "I am afraid I have not yet apologised sufficiently to you, sir, but if you only knew the circumstances you would understand my anxiety. Perhaps it will be enough if I tell you that the person who has taken this piece of paper is a remorseless enemy of a lady whom I am endeavouring to shield. Much depends perhaps on which of us will reach her first, and the paper discloses her present address in Paris."
The captain was with him at once. A race for a woman appealed to the sailorman's sense of romance, and the other gentleman was sufficiently consoled to forgive the indignity which had been inflicted upon him.
"If you could point out the man you suspect," said the captain, "we might do something for you; but we can't handicap him otherwise. The train will be awaiting for the boat and every passenger has an equal chance of getting on board her. You will have to start scratch at Paris. I wish you good luck, and now I must get back to the bridge, gentlemen. You had better settle your differences over a friendly drink. I should think you need one, both of you. Sorry I have not time to give you one here."
The captain emphasised the hint by opening the cabin door. His two passengers stepped out and made their way to the saloon. The other passengers who were standing about the deck marvelled at the way in which the captain had made peace between two men who a few minutes before were at each other's throats. There was obviously no further sport in this direction, and the tired onlookers went back to their deck-chairs.
"I have heard my cousin speak of you, Mr. Milford," remarked Weedon. "You were good enough to give him a chance soon after he was called."
The solicitor knew Stanley Poole, and thus there was an indirect introduction between them.
"Yes. I knew the man in whose chambers he read, and I like to see men get a start," he said. "By-the-by, can I help you at all in the matter which seems to be worrying you. Do you know Paris well enough to get to your destination quickly?"
Although Weedon had lost the precious slip of paper, he had read it so often that the names and the number were impressed upon his mind. He was furious with himself now for not having destroyed it.
"Your best plan is to drive there direct," said Mr. Milford when he repeated the address. "We will travel together to Paris, and I will give your chauffeur directions."
At Cherbourg they left the boat together and walked into the Customs.
As the officer was approaching him, Weedon heard a whispered remark from somebody in front of him, whose baggage had already been examined. He did not catch the words, but the officer nodded, and instead of casually passing and marking his small handbag, insisted on opening it out and going through it very carefully. Still unsatisfied, he asked him again if he had anything to declare. Weedon somewhat impatiently said "No!" again, but the officer told him to stand aside. He fastened up his bag and angrily tried to push his way through, but he was thrust back by the gendarme.
"You had better humour them,'" said Mr. Milford in English, and then turning to the officer he explained to him in French that it was very important that his friend should catch the Paris train. Weedon, however, was shown into a searching-room, and a long argument took place over a box of matches larger than a man would ordinarily carry for immediate purposes, which was found in his overcoat pocket. Weedon was certain that he had not put the matches there himself. They must have been slipped in by somebody as they came down the gangway.
Matches are a Government monopoly in France, and the customs are very severe on people who endeavour to smuggle them in. Mr. Milford, who had followed him into the searching-room, again endeavoured to hurry the officials, but they insisted on taking their time.
"I will make sure of a seat in the train," said the solicitor. "Is there any message I can carry to that address for you if you miss it?"
"Say I am on my way hearing very important news, and Miss Fitzgerald must on no account leave the house until she has seen me," he replied. "I will supplement this by a wire from here."
Fortunately, Weedon had brought plenty of money with him, and ultimately the matter was settled, but not before the train had left for Paris. He sent his telegram and endeavoured to curb his impatience as the lagging time rolled on.
He had no doubt now that he had been closely watched and followed. The matches had been placed in his pocket for a purpose, and information that he had contraband on him had been given to the revenue officers. The lucky mistake of assaulting Mr. Milford, however, had given him hope. If he could speak with Miss Fitzgerald he might yet warn her in time to break from her associates. Doubtless, they were speeding to her with some plot that would bring her again within their power and probably drag her down with them as Ketterington had suggested they might.
As the train steamed into Paris he put his head out of the window and watched the people on the platform. He saw a face which he thought he recognised, but the train had not yet come to a stop and there was no chance of a second glance. As he stepped out of the carriage Mr. Milford came up to him.
"It is really good of you to meet me," he said gratefully.
"I wish I had better news for you," replied the solicitor gravely.
"Were you too late, then?" asked Weedon with a sinking heart.
"No, I drove direct; and if any other person was on a similar errand I must have been there first, but I failed to accomplish your purpose. There is nobody answering to the name of Miss Fitzgerald there-and, indeed, the flat is empty."
"And the people have left no address?" asked Weedon eagerly.
"They have not. The concierge was not to be found, and in any case I could give him no description of the lady."
"Then there is nothing to be done," said Weedon in despair.
"Nothing at present, except that you had better come with me to my hotel. I have no particular business to do today, although I have an important appointment early in the morning. If you wish I can put you in touch with my Paris agents, who, through their private detectives, will be able to discover any information that can be obtained by any possible means. As you are under observation, judging from what occurred at Cherbourg and on the boat, it would be as well if you did not appear in the matter at present."
They drove to his hotel, and there Weedon interviewed the resourceful French lawyer.
"I understand," he said, "that monsieur wishes the inquiries to be made with secrecy."
"With the utmost secrecy," said Weedon promptly. "On no account must you appeal to—" He hesitated. The circle of his confidants was growing dangerously wide.
The Frenchman smiled indulgently. "I think I understand," he said. "A little romance, an affair of the heart too sacred for interference by the police. You need have no fear. I never employ people who make mistakes."
An hour or two later the alert man returned. "The lady who lived at the flat was a quiet, genteel person, of whom her neighbours knew little. Another lady, a younger lady arrived two days ago, and they left together the same evening. No address was given to the concierge, but a messenger has called for letters to-day at noon and is expected to call again to-morrow. If monsieur would like one of my men to follow the messenger, it shall be done."
"But time is going on," said Weedon impatiently. "It is a matter of urgency."
"Then you had better go yourself accompanied by one of my men tomorrow. You have done wisely, I think, in not proceeding there yourself to-day. Nobody knows for whom our inquiries were made, and others have since been making inquiries. The concierge was warned in time."
"Can you describe the men who made inquiries?"
"My information is that they appear to be gentlemen. The right hand of one was bound up as though he had recently sustained an accident. He kept it in the pocket of his loose overcoat most of the time."
"The patient at Colonel Bloomer's house!" muttered Weedon. "We are indeed thick on the field."
The following morning a dapper young man, quietly dressed, called for the doctor. They went together to the set of flats and were accommodated by the concierge in the small room where he dozed while waiting for late-comers. About mid-day a girl, who looked like an ordinary servant, arrived and asked if there were letters for Madame Marcelle. The concierge detained her for several minutes, during which time Weedon and his attendant left the building by another door. The woman made her way slowly towards the tramcar that went to Versailles, sauntering past the shop windows, evidently quite oblivious to the fact that she was being followed. Weedon and his companion stepped on to the car after her and followed her when she left it at Versailles. She wandered away for a mile or two through the picturesque woods and gaily answered the chaff of a group of soldiers who were sitting at a wayside café. One of them rose to offer her a place, but she brushed by them and made her way into the house.
"Quick, follow her in there while I talk to these men," whispered Weedon's companion.
The girl passed along the passage to a small room at the end. Weedon followed immediately after her. With a gesture of annoyance she waved him back and tried to close the door in his face, but she was too late. He had already got his foot inside, and pushing the door open he stepped boldly into the room.
A LADY with silvery grey hair and refined features rose with dignity from a chair. Lionel Weedon glanced hastily round the small room, and with a very confused manner and indifferent French apologised for his intrusion. There was nobody else in the room but the lady and the servant. The lady made no reply, but bowed very stiffly in response to his apology, and waited for him to go. There was an awkward pause, and then Weedon, without venturing on any further remark, retired.
Hardly knowing what to do, he returned to the front of the café, where the attendant was making merry with the soldiers over a glass of beck. The man looked up sharply and allowed his eye to rest on the crestfallen face of his employer for a moment. Then he turned again to the soldiers. Taking this as a hint not to join the company Weedon took a seat aside and called for a cup of coffee.
The man, with an apology to the soldiers, came over to him, and standing respectfully at the table asked in a loud tone if he had any orders for him, adding in an undertone, "Tell me not at present."
Receiving his instructions as advised, the little man went back to the table on which his newly-found companions were sitting. He called for more bock and chaffed the girl who came to serve him. The soldiers left one by one, and he remained talking to the waitress. The girl was called away, and he came over to Weedon. Still standing at the table as though waiting instructions, he looked at Weedon, who motioned him to a seat, which he took with an air of deference.
"You are an English grand seigneur and I am your courier," he said. "The girl we saw at the flat is a servant of the café. She goes into Paris for Madame's letters and Madame meets her here. Madame has quite recently come to stay at a house in the woods, and there is a young lady with her, but she never comes to the café with Madame. One of the soldiers has a sweetheart who is a servant at the house. He has seen Mademoiselle playing with the children. She takes them into the woods every afternoon. If you follow the path to the left along the road you will come to a place in the woods where they are very likely to be playing just now. I will await you here."
Weedon sprang up from his seat.
"Gently, gently! Drink your coffee first and then give me orders to await here. Say you desire to walk alone in the woods," said the courier in a rapid whisper.
Weedon finished his coffee and walked slowly down the road till he came to the path. Then, quickening his footsteps, he passed through a lovely avenue of trees which led to a small clearing. The sound of children's voices broke upon his ear, and standing at the opening to the delightful glade he saw a small boy and a girl clambering over the trunk of a huge tree, where a lady was sitting gazing at a book which obviously she was net reading. A large hat covered her face and hair, and her back was towards him. He took one step forward. A figure rose as though from the ground. He was startled by the apparition of a gaudy mantilla, a face of copper, and glittering black eyes that looked at him with the fury of an enraged panther. The children screamed with laughter at his discomfiture. The lady, at a warning hiss from the Indian woman, rose and walked away without turning her face towards him.
"Don't stop me; I am a friend," said Weedon. At the sound of his voice the lady hesitated. Weedon rushed past the ayah, and amid the laughter of the children ran towards the retreating figure. The lady turned as he approached, and once more he staggered back dismayed. The hat, as he now saw, covered not the beautiful brown hair he knew so well, but a wealth of bright red. The eyebrows were the same colour; complexion of face were typically French.
"Pardon, Madame," said Weedon, lifting his hat. "I fear I have made a mistake."
The lady smiled and bowed. The children came running up followed by the Indian woman, to whom the lady said something in a language utterly foreign to Weedon. The woman hesitated a moment, and then taking the children by the hand led them a little distance away.
"So you are seeking some one?" said the lady in perfect French. The words of the inquiry agent flashed through Lionel Weedon's brain—"they are perfect actresses." The voice had betrayed her to him, at all events, and one look from her eyes recalled everything. To a less keen observer she was a true French lady, and no casual acquaintance would have suspected for one moment that this was the woman who came to his surgery on that eventful evening. "I think you know whom I am seeking, Miss Fitzgerald," he said in English, and In a tone of deep reproach. The frightened lady stepped farther into the open so that no person standing among the trees could hear what was said.
"You must not mention that name here," she said in a low, earnest voice.
"Why have you come?"
"For your sake," he replied. "I could not rest till I had seen you. I want you to tell me everything, everything; and I assure you I will remain your friend."
"I have told you many times," she said in a low voice, "that it will be better that we should part. Why do you follow me so. I want you to forget the past. I am trying to begin again."
"But you can at least tell me the truth."
"It would only add to the bitterness," she said sadly.
"But surely things are not so bad as they seem: If only you can cut your friends, or rather your enemies, is it not possible that we may hope, you may hope and I may hope—"
"No, no," she replied hastily; "there is no hope of that. It is impossible—impossible!' She said this as if she were pronouncing her own doom, and turned away as though she feared to meet his eyes.
"Why impossible?" he said impetuously. "I know more than you think; but it makes no difference to me. I tell you again I love you with a love that nothing can kill: no, not even," he said in a hoarse whisper now lost to every other thought save his unquenchable passion for the woman who stood before him, "not even though it were true that you are responsible for the death of your own sister."
"The death of my sister! What do you mean?" she gasped. "My sister is not dead. She was alive after I left; I have information to that effect."
"But had you another sister, one almost exactly like yourself—one who had the same mark on her shoulder?"
"That is my only sister, and I am assured that she is still alive."
"The lady whom I have described," said Weedon gravely, "was found dead at the chambers of my cousin, Stanley Poole. The police believe she was murdered, and they are searching for the culprit."
With a low moan of infinite pain the lady clasped her hands. Weedon put out his arm in time, otherwise she would have fallen to the ground. Her head rested on his shoulder just as the Indian woman leapt upon him and dragged her away. With a supreme effort she steadied herself as the ayah whispered some excited words in her own tongue, and half-pushing, half-leading, drew her towards a by-path down when they both hurried, followed by the children. Weedon walked after them till they came to a gate in the wall, which was open.
The children ran through and the two women followed. Weedon stepped forward, and it suddenly occurred to him that she might at least like to know where he was staying. He mentioned the name of his hotel just as the gate clanged in his face. With bowed head and deep in thought be retraced his footsteps. There was joy mingled with despair in his heart. At all events, the woman he loved was not a murderess. What, then, was this horrible mystery that surrounded her? He must discover it, whatever happened. The fires within him were rekindled tenfold. He realised that life was impossible without her.
Engrossed with his own thoughts he walked across the clearing to the wood. He had almost reached the path whence he had come from the road when he saw two men standing in front of him. One of the men, white faced with a black moustache twisted at the ends, stepped forward and struck him across the face with a glove. Weedon clenched his fist, but the other man stepped nimbly to his side and caught his arm.
"You are not in an English tavern, monsieur," said the man who held him. "My friend wishes to meet you as a gentleman. He has every right to protect the lady whom you insulted.
"Insulted! It was no insult," replied Weedon.
"That may be a matter of opinion," replied the stranger. "At all events, the honour of French family life does not permit a man to take a lady in his arms with impunity. We saw you, and we also saw the lady rescued by the faithful nurse. Instead of thrashing you like a dog as you deserve we are willing to take you for what you profess to be—an English grand seigneur We heard that you had insulted one member of our family by forcing your presence on her at the café, under pretence of having made a mistake. We came prepared to deal with you for that. We have now a double insult to avenge." As he said this the man picked up from the foot of a tree a case from which he drew two rapiers.
"If you are not a fencer, and you prefer pistols, we can provide them also," he said.
As a matter of fact, one of Weedon's hobbies was fencing. The man who had struck him over the face took off his coat. "I presume," said the other man, "monsieur has sufficient chivalry in him not to desire a public scandal, and will accept me as second for both:" Weedon had read of these French duels. There would be a contest-of skill concluding with a scratch and mutual expressions of satisfied honour on the first spilling of blood. It would be easier to fence at once than to explain. Something familiar In a movement of the second attracted his attention as the rapiers measured, and a moment later when he parried two fierce thrusts in succession he saw murder in his adversary's eyes. He threw all his skill and all his energy into the contest. An ejaculation of astonished rage made it clear that his opponent had expected a swift victory. Weedon forced the pace and played hard to disarm his assailant. He knew now that he was fighting for his life.
THE man who professed to be acting as second gave instructions to his friend in hoarse undertones, and Lionel Weedon realised that he was singlehanded in this lonely wood against two merciless enemies. They had counted on his being a poor fencer, and the more skilful of the two had been selected to despatch him. The instinct of self-preservation quickened his resources.
He pressed his man but he chose his ground so that the second should not get behind him and gradually changed the position until he got his back towards a big tree. The alleged second observed this, and also noticed that his friend was acting on the defensive.
Weedon retreated a pace or two until his shoulders were almost touching the tree; his adversary made a swift lunge and lost his guard. Weedon for Just an instant had him at his mercy, but the third man stepping forward distracted his attention and the opportunity was missed. Once more the challenger took the defensive, and in response to a muttered instruction from his second endeavoured to lure the doctor into the open.
Weedon, however, was now convinced that his only chance lay in keeping both men in front of him. The other man perceiving that this was his intention again pressed vigorously, and Weedon found that he required every ounce of effort to counter this sudden spurt. The thing that he had been expecting happened, but he was unable to cope with it.
The bogus second drew a knife and rushed in upon him. Fortunately, it was on the left side, and lunging out with his disengaged fist he struck the man in the chest and sent him staggering backwards, but in so doing he lost his balance, and only in the very nick of time parried a thrust which would have ended all things had it gone home.
The man with the knife quickly recovered himself and rushed in. It was now only a question of moments. The events of the past few days had taken a great deal out of the doctor. He was not in his best form physically, and he felt himself growing terribly fagged. The hand that held the knife was raised above him. The crack of a revolver rang out in the woods. The arm fell and Weedon instinctively jerked his head and shoulders aside. The knife glanced against the tree, but the hand fell so heavily on his shoulder that the doctor staggered to his knees. The two men sprang into the bushes just as several other shots were fired in quick succession.
"Is monsieur hurt?" shouted the little detective, lifting Weedon to his feet.
"No, no. After those fellows! Bring them down if you can!" replied the doctor. The agent dashed into the woods, but the fugitives had gained a good start. They evidently know the woods, and had found a path hidden by the thick trees. A few minutes afterwards there was a sound of a throbbing motor-engine. They had obviously prepared themselves for a quick flight.
"It was a bad shot, monsieur," said Weedon's protector. "I was compelled to fire into the air or my bullet would have gone through the other man and struck you as well."
"You were just on time," said Weedon dropping down on the tree trunk and panting for breath. "You saved my life; accept my thanks for it."
"I should have come sooner. I started as soon as I heard that certain men had been making inquiries about monsieur. They have escaped us now. We can only wait until monsieur has recovered himself. Has monsieur met the lady?"
Weedon nodded. The man knew his business. He had found the person his client wished to see and he did not ask further questions.
"I should like to know something more about Madame Marcelle if you can obtain the information privately," said Weedon.
"I will tell monsieur at his hotel later," replied the agent.
They made their way slowly back to the café, and were able to engage a conveyance back to Versailles. On the way Weedon related the story of his adventures after he met the two men.
"The duel in a lonely wood is a useful device," remarked his companion quietly. "If monsieur had been killed in fair fight that would have been their defence if anybody had witnessed the incident. They had prepared to make themselves safe under any circumstances, and the motor-car was there for the purpose."
"I suppose I ought to have called you in as a second?"
The agent smiled. "You would not have had the opportunity, monsieur," he replied. "Some reason would have been found for attacking you, and even if they had not found a reason, that would not matter."
When they got back to the hotel Mr. Milford was out, and the faithful courier was doubtful about leaving his client until he had handed him over safely to his employer's principal.
"Monsieur must be very careful," he said. "These are not common criminals: they will have many devices."
"Oh, I shall be all right!" said Weedon, who had now recovered his nerve, "and, by-the-by, there is a man over there I know. I will go back and talk to him."
"And you will not move out of the hotel till Monsieur Milford returns? You are certain of that, monsieur?" said the courier, watching him earnestly.
"Oh, yes, I will be careful about that. Bring me back some information about Madame Marcelle as soon as you can. But, meantime, I want you by some way which, no doubt, you can contrive, to send a message to the young lady staying in the house in the wood."
He walked to a writing-table and scribbled a note warning Miss Fitzgerald to be careful and informing her that their mutual enemies knew of her address.
"It shall be delivered," said the man. "I have already established lines of communication there."
Weedon walked over to a person who was sitting in the lounge reading an English newspaper.
"And what brings you to Paris? Business or pleasure, Mr. Ketterington?" he asked.
The London inquiry agent put down his paper and rose from his seat.
"May I answer the question by putting a similar one to yourself?" he said familiarly but respectfully.
"Well, perhaps I ought not to have asked a gentleman of four profession such a question," replied Weedon with a laugh. "I presume you know Paris quite well?"
"Yes, my professional engagements often bring me this way."
"Well, I hope you are not particularly busy at the moment because I have nothing to do for a little while, and with the usual Englishman's prejudice I don't like talking to people in French if I can find somebody who speaks English."
"I shall be delighted to offer you my services in that respect," said Ketterington, resuming his seat as Weedon took a chair beside him. "I have just had an interesting experience," said Weedon. "I have had the pleasure of fighting a duel. It was lucky for me I took up fencing at college."
"Then you won in this little affair of honour?" observed Mr. Ketterington. "And your opponent?"
"Escaped," replied Weedon; "otherwise there would have been trouble. It was not a fair fight."
"Indeed! I trust it was no quixotic adventure on account of certain persons of whom we were speaking in our business conversation yesterday?"
Weedon felt that by a sidelong glance Mr. Ketterington was watching him narrowly. He was not prepared to discuss Miss Fitzgerald again with this man of cold suspicions.
"Just a little quarrel with a cheating Frenchman," he replied. "That is not to-day's paper, I take it?"
Mr. Ketterington accepted the hint and changed the conversation. He talked of Paris with intimate knowledge, and as though by accident mentioned Versailles.
"Yes. I have been there this morning," said Weedon.
"To see the lovely Palace grounds?"
"No, I saw them years ago when I first came to Paris. To-day I explored the woods some mile or two out."
"Ah, a pleasant walk, but not so nice unless one has interesting company."
Again the quiet man shot a sidelong glance at his client. This time Weedon did not observe it.
"I found plenty to do there." he replied with a laugh, "and am lucky to have got out of it alive."
"And was it worth the risk?" said Mr. Ketterington, leaning back in his chair and blowing a cloud of smoke from his cigarette as he kept his eyes fixed on the doctor. Weedon was now looking in another direction, and Mr. Ketterington turning his head slowly rose from his chair and murmuring "Excuse me!" went after a waiter who was passing.
"Ah, doctor!" said Mr. Milford who had just arrived. "Back before me I see. Have you had a successful time?"
"I have had a most exciting time," replied Weedon. "Indeed, you must come up to my room and tell me all about it. Hope I am not disturbing you. Your friend seems to have left you rather quickly."
"Oh, it's all right. We were just chatting together— nothing in particular. I suppose you do not happen to know him. The name is Ketterington and he is by the way of being a private detective in London. Rather a smart man I should think."
"Ketterington! That is not Ketterington. I know the cute old boy very well. He has often executed delicate commissions for me. But come upstairs, I have a private sitting-room there."
"You say that man is not Ketterington?" said Weedon, following him into the sitting-room. "Are you certain of that?"
"I could swear to it."
"But I was in his office in the West End only the day before yesterday. In fact, I employed him to make some very confidential inquiries for me, and he was very prompt about it."
"Then that settles the matter conclusively. Ketterington has not been at those offices for a week. I happen to know that."
"Then this man is acting for him?"
"I very much doubt it. Ketterington never works by deputy, and he certainly would not allow anybody to take his name. I should like to know more about your friend."
Mr. Milford went down to the office and afterwards took a careful look round the lounge. "He has signed the visitors' book Ketterington right enough, but it is not the real Ketterington's writing, and moreover the gentleman who was with you is not at present in the lounge. I have a notion that I have seen him before, and I think it is tolerable certain that he has seen me before by the manner in which he has made himself scarce. I hope you leave not told him too much."
There was a knock at thee door before Weedon could reply. A servant entered with a telegram for Mr. Mitford. The solicitor glanced at it and nodded to the man that it was all right.
The waiter had hardly closed the door when it was burst open again and as quickly shut. As the two men looked up in astonishment at this intrusion they saw a heavily-veiled woman, trembling with agitation, standing in the room.
"WOULD monsieur look into the corridor quickly and see if anybody is watching," said the lady. "No, not you, that monsieur," she added as Weedon moved towards the door. Weedon shot an appealing glance at Mr. Milford, who, shrugging his shoulders, stepped into the corridor.
"No, there is nobody there," he said when he came back. "Perhaps, Madame, you would like to take a seat You appear to be a little nervous."
The lady sank into the chair offered her and lifted her veil. "You will recognise me, monsieur," she said in soft tone. "You entered my apartments unbidden at the café. You will therefore excuse me if I also have intruded."
It was Madame Marcelle, the lady with the grey hair, who received the letters at the café. She looked at Weedon as she spoke and then turned her sad eyes on to Milford.
"I have to despatch a telegram," said the solicitor, "and a letter to answer. If you want me I am in the writing room opposite."
He carefully closed the door as he went out.
Madame Marcelle waited a few moments before she spoke again.
"I have been informed of your self-sacrificing loyalty," she said, "and I hope I can speak to you as a friend?"
"For the sake of everything I hold dear in this world, Madame, you may," replied Weedon enthusiastically. He felt that the chance had come at last to solve the mystery. His words apparently did not meet with quite perfect approval from Madame Marcelle.
"I trust, sir, you will not make my task harder than it is." She spoke in English now. Weedon saw that her object was to make her meaning perfectly clear to him.
"You have been very kind to one whom I love very dearly," she continued. "You have risked much, although you have been told that it may end disastrously for you. I have come to see you at great risk. Possibly I have been followed, but I felt I must see you at once. Had I known who you were when you came into the room at the café, I should have spoken then."
"I wish I had made myself known to you," said Weedon, "but I was embarrassed. One hardly knows whom one can trust, and I expected to find someone else there."
"I understand," said the lady. "I have heard much about you, and the telegram which you sent to the flat yesterday was delivered to me. I have a request to make which I know will seem cruel, but believe me, I make it for the best. It is that you will return immediately to England, and that you will think no more of the strange things that have happened to you during the past week."
"Return to England, Madame, at this stage! That is impossible. I must not go back; I dare not go back until I know more about your—" He paused, expecting her to supply the word, but she made no response. She was sitting with down-turned eyes, in deep thought.
"And if I told you that the life of one whom you desire to protect may depend on your doing as I ask you, would that make no difference," she said.
"But how am I to be satisfied with that?" he asked. "You may be mistaken. Perhaps her only safety depends on the help which I can give her. At least, I am entitled to know more. I have given you proof that I may be trusted."
The lady shook her head sorrowfully.
"Will you tell me this?" said Weedon impetuously: "What is her reason for concealing her identity? Is it the mere fear of those who should be her friends, or is it that she dreads the hand of justice?"
Madame Marcelle stood up. She was a handsome woman, her grey hair added a charm to her soft complexion. Indignation had chased the sadness from her eyes.
"You have no right to ask such a question." she said in a tremulous voice. "I have told you that we wish you to leave us alone."
"And if I tell you, Madame," said Weedon, now goaded to anger in his turn, "that on the answer to the question I have asked depends my future action, would the question not be justified? In a few days I may be called upon to obey the laws of my country. I have given a certain promise; what that promise is, you either know from the lady, or you must obtain knowledge of it from her. Till now I have sacredly kept my trust, and I shall not repeat the promise, even to you. If the lady has sent you here, tell her that it may be I shall have to break that promise or perjure myself. The only other alternative is that I banish myself from my own land, and this even I am prepared to do for her if she will trust me."
"I don't understand," said Madame Marcelle. "You speak in riddles."
"And am I the only one who does that?" said Weedon bitterly. "Have you seen the young lady since we met in the café?"
"No. I heard from the Indian nurse that a gentleman had spoken to them in the woods and that he had told her the name of his hotel. I assumed you would be the gentleman. She also told me that others had witnessed the interview. I came at once to warn you, to implore you, to leave Paris before it is too late."
"Then you are probably not aware, Madame, of a certain tragic event in London! The news of it has been carefully kept from your niece, who obviously does not read the newspapers, or has been too busy to do so."
He took up the Paris edition of a London newspaper, which Mr. Milford had brought in. He knew there would be something in it under the heading, "The Lincoln's Inn Mystery."
"Has this matter not been brought to your notice?" he asked. "I live a secluded life," she said. "The affairs that go to make up the ordinary newspaper do not interest me. The tragedies I never read."
"This one, I think, will interest you," said Weedon. He read down the article, in which the news investigator had suggested many theories in explanation of the Lincoln's Inn affair. Then came a paragraph which Weedon read eagerly.
It stated that the police were now searching for another lady, presumed to be a sister of the murdered woman who had disappeared mysteriously. The local constable, then, had remembered that there were two ladies, end Scotland Yard had deemed it prudent to let the information that they were seeking the other one go far and wide in the hope, no doubt, that somebody who had seen her would come forward.
"I am afraid this matter affects you very deeply," said Weedon, as he handed the paper to Madame Marcelle, and pointed specially to the paragraph. "The murdered lady referred to in this paragraph is the sister of the lady whom I have known as Miss Fitzgerald."
"Impossible! impossible!" she said. "She has been seen alive by one whom I can trust since this date."
A light dawned upon Weedon.
"Do you mean," he said, "that one whom you can trust saw the lady and identified her by a mark on her shoulders—someone, perhaps, who had not seen her since she was a child, and who remembered her by this mark?"
"How do you know this?" asked Madame Marcelle eagerly.
"I know it by certain facts which have come under my own observation," he said. "I grieve to tell you, Madame, that the lady whom your friend saw was not the lady whom you suppose her to be. She was a girl whom I know very well, who was drugged temporarily and marked for this purpose."
"Are you sure of this? You are not deceiving me?" said Madame Marcelle, clutching the chair for support.
"I am absolutely certain of this—that a lady was taken away by force, drugged, and kept in the custody of people who call themselves Fitzgeralds for several hours, and when she came back to her friends there was a blue flower painted on her arm so skilfully as to resemble a tattoo mark. I know also that there was no mark on her arm when she was taken away, and I myself washed off the mark when she came back."
Madame Marcelle dropped into the chair, and covered her face with her hands. As she sat there, choking with sobs, Weedon maintained a respectful silence. Gradually she dried her eyes and rose slowly from the chair. Weedon was astounded at the change that had come over her. The sadness in her eyes when she first lifted her veil had gone. The indignation with which she met his question a few moments ago had disappeared. In its place there was a hard look, as of one who had come to a new determination.
"As you say, Dr. Weedon," she remarked In a very quiet tone. "You have given me grave news. Another situation has arisen which I shall not hesitate to face."
"Then you withdraw your request to me? You will take me fully into your confidence?" asked Weedon earnestly.
"No, no! I do not think any good purpose can be served by that."
There was a scuffle outside the door, and Madame Marcelle looked swiftly around the room.
"Is there no way from here but through that door?" she said, dropping her veil. "Do not let any person enter the room while I am here. What is that door?"
She pointed to a door which led off the sitting-room to Mr. Milford's bedroom.
"You had better go in there for the present, and I will see what this trouble is about," said Weedon.
She went into the inner room, and Weedon hurriedly pulled the screen in front of the door. Then he flung open the door of the sitting-room and saw Mr. Milford holding a struggling man by the collar of the coat.
"What do you mean by listening at the door of my private room?" he was saying. "Who the deuce are you, and what is your business?"
As Weedon opened the door, the two men in their struggle stumbled into the room. He shut the door behind them, and Mr. Milford let his man go. It was Ketterington, the private inquiry agent, or the man whom Weedon had known by that name.
"So your business in Paris was to pry into my affairs unbidden, Mr. Ketterington?" said Weedon sarcastically. "It is rather unfortunate for you there happens to be a gentleman here who knows the real Mr. Ketterington."
"And equally unfortunate for you, perhaps, Dr. Lionel Weedon, that you did not known me in time. You have been very clever, but there are other people equally clever—a thing which men like you are apt to forget."
"What is all this about?" said Mr. Milford. "If you are not Ketterington, who the dickens are you, and what are you doing here?"
"I am an English police officer, Mr. Milford, and I am here to arrest Dr. Lionel Weedon for complicity in the murder of a woman at his cousin's fiat in Lincoln's Inn."
THE man who called himself Ketterington stepped up to Lionel Weedon as he spoke.
"I am quite aware," he said, interrupting Mr. Milford, who was about to speak, "that you are going to say I cannot arrest a man here, but do not suppose I have not seen to the necessary formalities. The Paris police are within call, and there is little chance of Mr. Weedon getting out of this hotel except in lawful custody."
"But this is absurd!" said Lionel. "I can account for every minute of my time on the day and night of the tragedy in Lincoln's Inn."
"Well, we won't discuss that now," retorted Ketterington. "I want, also, the lady who was talking to you in this room. Oh, yes, there is a lady,'" he added quickly, as Weedon made a gesture of resentment. "There were two voices, and one was a lady's. I could hear that, although I could not hear what you said."
"The lady has nothing to do with you, sir," said Weedon hotly.
"I am the best judge of that," replied the alleged inquiry agent. "She is somewhere in these rooms, and I want to know where she is. Where does this door lead to?"
"That, sir, is my bedroom," said Mr. Milford, stepping between the man and the door. "You have no right in there without my permission."
"Quite so; quite so. I don't wish to create a scandal. If I call up the French police and the hotel manager, you know that they will insist on searching the rooms, and if the other prisoner Is found there, that is not my fault."
"The other prisoner! You are talking nonsense," said Weedon. "The lady—"
Mr. Milford stopped him with a warning sign. "I am entitled to have something to say in this," he said, "and now I ask Mr. Ketterington, as I presume you still intend to call yourself, what is your authority for acting in this irregular manner."
"My desire is to save you inconvenience. If you insist on it, well, then I shall have no option but to call in assistance. You had better let me look in that room. If the person there is not somebody whom I want there need be no further trouble, and I shall ask this gentleman to come willingly with me to the police office."
"In which case I come with him, of course," said the solicitor. "Oh, as you will, sir. If you insist on bringing yourself into the business I can't help it—But, at least, let me see that room first. Otherwise, I shall have to do as I have said."
Mr. Milford opened the door and looked into the room. Nobody was there. Ketterington pushed his way in.
"Ah! I see what has happened," he said. "There is another door leading into the corridor. While you have been holding me up, she has gone; but I will stop her yet."
He rushed across the room, opened the other bedroom door and ran swiftly down the stairs. He slammed the door after him, and Mr. Milford who followed tried to open it but found that the handle was being held on the other side. No person was in the corridor when at last the door was pulled open.
Weedon and Milford ran downstairs, but Ketterington had gone. They could see nothing of him.
"I wonder if anything is known about this gentleman at the booking office," said Milford. All the information was that the gentleman had booked in the name of Ketterington, giving an address in London. He had brought no luggage, and paid a deposit in advance. There was a small balance due to him.
Mr. Milford asked to see the manager, and induced him to take them to the room occupied by the gentleman who signed himself Ketterington. There was nothing to indicate that he intended to come back. Toilet requisites, which might be bought in any general shop and carried in the pockets, were all his possessions.
"He is a man who knows how to travel without encumbrances," remarked Weedon. "Has he gone to fetch his Parisian colleagues, do you suppose?"
The solicitor smiled. "I don't think we shall hear much of his Parisian colleagues," he remarked, leading the way back to the sitting room. "One must pay him the compliment, however, of admitting that he is a person of resource."
"You mean that he adopted the role of a private inquiry agent for the purpose of seeking information for police purposes?"
"He may be a private inquiry agent—very private, I should imagine—but he is certainly not a police officer. I was a bit of a fool to allow him to get ahead of me like that."
"And what was his object in pretending to be a policeman?"
"His object was perfectly plain. It was his only way out, and he was smart enough to think of it on the instant. When we grabbed him and pulled him into the room he naturally assumed that as he was masquerading in time character of another man we might want to know something more about him before we let him go, and he had to explain at once when you told him I knew he was not old Ketterington. He had a double object in view, I should imagine. He wanted to see the lady and also to watch his opportunity of slipping out. The lady was too quick for him and he was too quick for us. However, I don't suppose we could have done much in any case."
"But he knew you apparently; do you know him?"
"There is an old saying that more people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows," replied the solicitor with a modest smile. "Both you and the captain of the ship recognised my name. As I am pretty much in the public eye professionally, in addition to being a member of Parliament, it Is not surprising that this man should have seen me and heard of me before, and as he seems by some means to have got into Ketterington's chambers he will be aware probably that I had business with Ketterington."
"I understood you to say you thought you had seen him before?"
"Yes, I recollect now; he was on the train that you missed from Cherbourg. Evidently, he was on the boat, but managed to keep out of your sight."
"And who held the door here?"
"Oh! that could be easily managed by bribing a servant who would disappear into one of the other rooms. By-the-by, what do you suppose suggested to him the idea of accusing you of complicity in the Lincoln's Inn tragedy? Of course, I have no right to ask you that, but—"
"You have every right to know something more of one in whom you have taken so kindly an interest," said Weedon. "The lady, as you may have read in the papers, was found dead at my cousin's chambers when he came home after having been out to dinner with me. I went with him the next day to the mortuary, and I suppose those facts are generally known."
Weedon was in doubt as to how much more he ought to say. The paragraph he had just seen in the newspaper made it clear that some strenuous efforts would be made to discover the whereabouts of the lady whom he still knew only as Miss Fitzgerald.
Mr. Milford either was satisfied or deemed it correct to be satisfied with what Weedon had already told him, and merely asked if he had received all the assistance he required from the Paris agents. As proof of their efficiency the man who had accompanied Weedon to Versailles was already waiting to see him.
His information about Madame Marcelle was comparatively little. She was presumed to be a widow. She had occupied a flat in Paris and apparently lived on her means. The occupant of the house at Versailles was her son. He was a merchant of some standing. He had lived in India, where he met his wife; he returned to Europe when the first child was born, and his wife brought with her an Indian nurse, who was very devoted to the family and to the children.
"You conveyed my message?" said Weedon. "You have warned the lady?"
"Yes; I contrived to do that, and now perhaps comes my most interesting piece of information. The family-are preparing to move. The ladies will leave for England to-night. They have booked a carriage on the train and a cabin on the boat."
"Then I have little time to lose," said Weedon, looking at his watch. "Time is rushing along since my adventures this morning."
"Monsieur will go to England?"
"Certainly; I will be off at once. Where is Mr. Milford?"
The solicitor had again withdrawn from the room when the agent came in. Weedon found him in the writing-room, and told him of his intended departure. "Well, in any case, I should think your safest place is in England at the present time," remarked the solicitor.
"I would advise you, by the way, to look up the Ketterington when you arrive."
"Your agents here, of course, must be paid before I go."
"No occasion for that, Mr. Weedon. I'll settle with them and an account will reach you In due course. I am sorry I cannot come to the station with you. I am expecting a client, but you had better take our alert friend, Frentice, there with you."
"I think monsieur is not armed?" asked Frentice before they left the room. "You must take this in your pocket. You may have occasion to use it."
He handed him a neat little revolver of an up-to-date pattern which slipped easily into a pocket. At the station they saw a closed motor-car drive up, which Frentice recognised.
"That is the motor-car belonging to Monsieur Marcelle," he whispered, "I saw him drive home in it this afternoon."
Two closely-veiled ladies went direct from the motor to an engaged compartment. To Weedon's surprise Frentice came in the train and remained in after it started.
"It is better that I come to Dover with monsieur," he whispered. "Others beside us know that the ladies are travelling, and they are on the train. Could monsieur warn the ladles?"
Weedon made his way along the corridor till he came to the engaged carriage. He' tapped gently and then knocked loudly. The blinds were down and there was no response. The corridor at that moment was empty and there was no time to stand on ceremony. He opened the door and stepped inside. The occupants had removed their veils. Miss Fitzgerald was not there—only Madame Marcelle and the Indian nurse.
WEEDON stepped back into the corridor and collided with a man who was apparently strolling leisurely from compartment to compartment He hastily apologised and stood aside in order that the gentleman might pass him.
This brought the person against whom he had cannoned in full view of the occupants of the reserved compartment. The ayah threw her veil over her face and shrank back in the corner. Madame Marcelle rose haughtily and walked to the door. An official happened to appear and she motioned to him.
"I must ask that this compartment shall be kept reserved," she said. "I wish to be quiet myself, and my nurse is not accustomed to European travelling. We cannot be disturbed in this way."
"Madame will ring the bell if she wishes the door opened," said the conductor, bowing politely. He closed the door, and locked it, then, twirling his moustache, glared with a challenging eye at the two men, who, separating, went each in a different direction.
Lionel found Frentice smoking a cigarette and chatting amiably with some fellow-passengers. The agent in his effective way contrived to convey with a look an intimation that his principal had better sit down and say nothing.
Endeavouring to appear unconcerned, Weedon also lit a cigarette and listened with some impatience to the small talk with which his fellow-passengers passed the time. A crowd of French students were occupying some compartments nearer the end of the train. Their shouts of laughter and the choruses which they sang in strange harmony soon began to drown conversation, and the older passengers, with the indulgent smile of men who have been young themselves, leaned back in silence.
Frentice still kept his eyes averted from Weedon until there was a movement among the students who came out into the corridor to indulge in a form of pastime with which travellers on the French railways are fairly familiar. The oldest student placed himself at their head, the next man put his two hands on his shoulders, the rest did the same thing, one behind the other, and thus formed a continuous line which effectually monopolised the corridor. To the tune of a swinging chorus they marched along from one end of the train to the other and then back again, clearing all before them. When the snake-like line wound itself round the corner and into the next coach, where the corridor was on the opposite side, Frentice rose and walked into one of the compartments which they had left empty. Weedon followed him a few minutes afterwards.
"We have just a minute or two until they return," said the detective. "The other passengers will all remain in their seats until the march is finished. Do you see the ladies?"
"Yes. But there is something wrong. Miss Fitzgerald is not there; this journey is useless. I must go back to Paris. Madame has only, brought the Indian nurse with her."
"Does anybody else know that?" asked Frentice sharply.
"Another man looked into the compartment just as I came out, but in the excitement I did not notice him. I could not say whether he had any more than a casual interest in the incident."
"Which way did he go?"
"That way; the way the students have gone. I only saw his back as he turned, and then came to your carriage at this end."
"Good! Let us hope the young men keep up their sport-in which case he will remain at that end."
At this moment there was a sound of shouting and general commotion farther on in the train. Frentice jumped up and ran along the corridor. As Weedon followed him through two or three coaches he saw a man protesting angrily against the attentions of the students, who were thrusting him forward until, to escape the toes of the foremost student upon his heels, he broke into an undignified run, followed by screams of laughter.
With a satisfied smile Frentice, after a few casual inquiries from passengers who were looking on from the compartments, led Weedon back to the rear part of the train.
"Did the back of the gentleman suggest anything?" he asked.
"I think it is the man whom I encountered in the corridor when I came out of Madame's compartment," said Weedon.
"Precisely; and he was endeavouring to play the spy by peeping through when the young men caught up on him."
"Which explains, I suppose, why the other passengers were amused instead of being indignant at their treatment of him?" remarked Weedon.
"At all events, they have settled an interesting point for us," said Frentice. "As I told you before there are others on the train besides ourselves interested in Madame's movements."
"And like us, they will be disappointed," remarked Weedon bitterly. "How soon can I get back to Paris?"
"Monsieur will pot go back to Paris. He will go on board the boat and follow Madame to London, but I shall go back to Paris. Remember that, monsieur, whatever happens. Take no notice of anything I may say or do after this. Go on board the boat, though I should tell you not to. You understand?"
"But my interest is not in Madame Marcelle," protested Weedon. "I have no concern with her. I tell you I must return to Paris."
"Monsieur must not return to Paris," said the detective decisively. "Listen! The young men are returning this way. We must leave carriage and we shall probably have no opportunity of conversing privately again. I ask, monsieur, the question-have I advised him wrongly or failed to carry out his wishes hitherto?"
"No, Frentice, you have done remarkably well, I must admit that."
"Then take my advice. I give it for the best. It is impossible to say another word now. Go on board the boat whatever happens." The murmur of the students' chorus in the distance had now become a loud shout. They had already reached the end of the coach, and Frentice left their compartment followed by Weedon.
The young men returned to their carriage and rested awhile before starting out on another pilgrimage.
At Calais, Frentice kept near Weedon without speaking to him. They saw Madame Marcelle and the ayah alight from the carriage. The Indian woman at first was not veiled, and after moving slowly along the platform with her mistress she covered her face as though nervous in the presence of so many white people. They went on board the boat. As they passed up the gangway some men who were standing there stepped aside to allow them to pass, and then stood as' though undecided while the other passengers hurried on board. Frentice, by gently pulling Weedon's coat, held him back until all the people had embarked and then stepped in front of his client.
"Very well, monsieur," he said in a loud tone. "I will do as you direct. The luggage shall be sent back to Paris, and I will engage a room at the hotel for the night. Monsieur will return to Paris in the morning?"
He moved away as he spoke and Weedon followed him. The two men standing at the gangway came after them. The students who were not going farther than Calais were crowding round wishing their late fellow passengers bon voyage, and looking for more opportunities to play practical jokes.
"Take your chance now," whispered Frentice to Weedon.
The detective lurched against one of the students and knocked him into the arms of one of the men who had been standing by the gangway. With a gesture of impatience the man pushed the youth away, using more force than was necessary. He was recognised as the person who had been endeavouring to peep into the private carriage, and he and his companion were immediately surrounded by protesting young men who pushed them backwards and forwards like a couple of shuttle-cocks. When the fracas was at its height Weedon slipped out of the crowd and leapt upon the gangway just as the sailors were on the point of pulling it up. The whistle blew, the steamer got under way, and Weedon went off in the hope of securing a berth.
The incident on the quayside attracted the attention of other passengers. They leaned over the side and watched the small moving mass under the flickering lights. Lionel was therefore first among those who had not already reserved berths, and got a much-needed rest. He knew the ladies would be in their reserved cabin and felt comfortably certain that their pursuers had now been left behind. This thought, however, was mingled with consternation that the enemy would return to Paris and seek out Miss Fitzgerald. He half regretted that he had not remained behind, but Frentice was so insistent and he had acquired a deep feeling of respect for the judgment of the little man in their brief acquaintance.
As the passengers assembled on deck in the early morning ready to disembark at Dover, Weedon singled out Madame Marcelle standing by herself. The nurse was evidently remaining in the cabin until the last moment.
He lifted his hat and Madame Marcelle responded with a very stiff and formal bow.
"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked in a soft tone. "We are now nearing my own country, where, perhaps, I am better acquainted with the things that matter than yourself."
"Monsieur is very kind, but our arrangements are complete," she replied in a cold though not unfriendly voice.
"But you will at least tell me where I can communicate with you in case of accidents?" he said.
Madame Marcelle shook her head and looked beyond him out to sea. "I have nothing to add to what I said yesterday," she replied. "It will be better, far better, that monsieur should return to his own work."
The passengers were now crowding towards this part of the ship, anti there was no opportunity for further conversation.
"At least, you will take my address," said Weedon handing the lady his card; "and I do implore you not to keep me in ignorance if anything happens."
She took the card without comment and turned away to meet the Indian woman, who wore a loose cloak over her picturesque dress. Madame Marcelle stood between her and Weedon, as though suspicions that he might try to speak to her. The woman walked before her mistress towards the gangway, and then having made sure of her foothold, guided by Madame Marcelle, dropped her veil over her swarthy face. Weedon followed them down the gangway. Again they entered a reserved compartment.
As Weedon watched them, he became conscious that another man who had been standing on the platform was taking a keen interest in them. He caught one glimpse of the all too familiar face and dashed after the man who, suddenly observing him, mingled hurriedly among the porters and passengers.
"BY your leave, please," shouted a porter angrily as Lionel Weedon bumped against him.
"Out of the way," retorted the doctor, grappling with the man; but in addition to the weight of the porter himself there were many pounds of baggage to be moved.
"What's the matter? Have yer gone balmy?" growled the fellow, staggering under his load. One of the packages, a heavy dressing- case, fell on Weedon's toes. With a howl of pain and rage he leapt over the bag and through the opening thus created. He saw the iron-grey hair of Mr. Fitzgerald in the distance, and without knowing exactly what he would do when he caught up on him he followed in hot pursuit.
Passengers who have just landed from a night's voyage are not usually in the best of tempers, and the excited doctor met with fierce resistance as he tried to push his way through the crowd. In spite of his efforts they swept him in the opposite direction to that in which he wished to go.
He waited until they had taken their seats, and then ran along the platform peering into every carriage, looking in vein for the face he sought.
"Seat here, sir," said the official, holding a door open. Weedon took no notice, but again resumed his journey backwards and forwards.
"Oh, all right, if you don't want to go," said the official, slamming the door. "Keep off there, you are too late now!" he added, brushing Weedon aside as the train slowly steamed out of the station.
The doctor paid no heed to the remonstrances of the official who wanted to know "what he was playing at," but hurried from one to the other of the He tried the waiting-room and the few people who were still standing on the platform.
He tried the waiting-room and the refreshment-room, and regretfully came to the conclusion that whether Fitzgerald had gone by the train or remained-at Dover he had missed him. He had also lost any further opportunity of speaking to Madame Marcelle, and thus cursing his luck he found himself completely checkmated.
There was no help for it but to wait for the next train up. This landed him at London at a time when ordinary business people were finishing their breakfast, and he got to Lincoln's Inn just as Stanley Poole was stretching himself in bed and shouting to his man-servant for his letters. With the usual intolerance of the man who happens by chance to be up earlier than his neighbours, Weedon bounded into his cousin's bedroom. "Not up yet?" he asked in a tone of patronising surprise.
"Do you think I rise in the middle of the night or that I have something on my conscience?" said the young barrister with a yawn. "I suppose the necessity of getting off a boat has propelled you out of your natural sleep. What brings you back so soon?"
"Has anything happened since I have been away?" asked Weedon, without answering his cousin's question.
"That is all right, Andrew," said Poole, taking the letters from his man. "You had better get breakfast for two."
He waited until Andrew had retired and discreetly closed the door.
"Nothing much has happened at this end," he said, "except that the police are watching Colonel Bloomer's house, and so far as I know at present, the gallant officer has not ventured to return. But whet about yourself? It may be the voyage, but, frankly, old chap, you don't look like a man who is quite happy."
In a hasty summary he told Poole what had happened from his leaving Waterloo to his arrival that morning.
"It's a good thing you dropped across Milford, anyway," remarked Poole. "He obviously saved you from getting into a very tight corner yourself, but in the light of some development I do not know how far he may insist on knowing more about this lady whom you went to succour. Have the English papers reached you? By-the-by, I wonder if there is anything fresh this morning?"
He threw the morning paper over to Lionel as he spoke.
"Run through that," he said, "while I get my tub. You look as though a shave would do you good. You will find everything here—or, wait, I will send Andrew along if he has not gone too far with the breakfast, to shampoo you. He has a fine prescription for cooling the head in the morning."
By this time Poole had put on his dressing-gown and was making for the door.
Weedon hastily scanned the columns of the paper and found only a paragraph with guarded references to possible clues to the Lincoln's Inn mystery, ending up with the confident assertion that the police had expectation of further developments shortly. He submitted himself to the ministrations of the faithful Andrew, and by the time Poole returned to complete his toilet, felt a little fresher and more comfortable.
Poole insisted on his having breakfast.
"You naturally want to go and look up the real Ketterington," he said; "but it is no good going there until the old chap has got to his office and looked through his letters. The whole world has not been on board the night steamer, remember, and it is not ten o'clock yet, otherwise you would not find me here. I am in an interesting case this morning. I saw Harvey last evening; things are going on quite smoothly he tells me at the surgery."
Weedon found an appetite for breakfast under his cousin's genial discipline, and rose to go as a tap came to the door.
"That's my clerk to remind me it is time I went off to the court," said Poole. "When you have seen Ketterington, come along and see me. I shall be in the Lord Chief's court."
Lionel hurried off to the offices in the West-End, where he had seen the person who masqueraded as Mr. Ketterington. The clerk, whose face he did not recognise, took his card and asked him to wait in the ante-room. The real Mr. Ketterington saw him eventually. There was at first sight to a stranger some resemblance between the man who now sat at the table and the person who had interviewed Lionel Weedon a few days before, but a few moments satisfied the doctor that he was now addressing a man whom he had never seen before.
"I have come on rather a strange errand," he said, hardly knowing how to begin.
"Clients do not come to me upon ordinary everyday business," replied Mr. Ketterington, pushing a pile of papers aside and leaning-back in his chair, "Pray proceed, sir."
"I saw another gentleman here who gave me to understand that he was Mr. Ketterington. I have since discovered—"
"I understand," said Mr. Ketterington interrupting. "My valued client and, I think I may call him my friend, Mr. Milford, has been good enough to warn me. I have already made investigations. I find that during my absence on business, which kept me out of town, a person whom should very much like to meet has bribed one of my clerks to permit him to use this office and my name for the purpose of interviewing you."
"Then you know absolutely nothing about the person, and you cannot tell me whether his information was genuine or not. I may say I asked him to make investigations concerning a certain Colonel Bloomer."
"Ah! that supplies the key. I do not usually disclose the name of my clients to anybody, but I may say that the commission which sent me out of town, and which I now have reason to suspect was quite a bogus inquiry, only calculated to waste time, came to me from a certain Colonel Bloomer, who is apparently no Colonel at all," said Ketterington. "He was to have called here yesterday for the result of my investigations. Needless to say, he has not put in an appearance."
"And you know nothing of his friends, of people named Fitzgerald?"
Weedon watched Ketterington anxiously. A feeling of mingled fear and hope prompted him to put the question. The inquiry agent obviously understood.
"You are more interested in the Fitzgeralds than in Colonel Bloomer," he remarked quietly, "and the man gave you the information he thought you desired."
"No, certainly not. He gave me information which if true—" Weedon stopped and drummed his fingers nervously on the table. Then swiftly coming to the conclusion that he might trust the agent, he told him exactly what the false Ketterington had said about the Fitzgeralds.
"A plausible story, and whether true or not, no doubt told with an object. Do you wish me to make further inquiries?"
"I shall be very glad indeed if you will," replied Weedon.
Now that he was sure from his experiences in Paris and Versailles that Miss Fitzgerald was in no way responsible for the death of her sister, he felt at liberty to probe the other mysteries connected with her friends if possible.
"Oh, very well," said Mr. Ketterington, replacing the pile of papers which he had brushed aside. "I will let you know if I have anything to communicate."
Weedon made his way to the Strand and passed up the long hall to the Courts of Justice. At the top of the stairs he saw Poole in his wig and gown talking earnestly to the Scotland Yard man who had visited them in the chambers the other morning.
"Ah, here is my cousin," said the young barrister. "You are just in time, Lionel. Inspector Neal has obtained a warrant to break in and search Colonel Bloomer's house. He has been good enough to ask us to go with him in view of our knowledge of the place and the incident in which Doris had such an unpleasant experience. Luckily, the other side in my case have asked for a further adjournment, and so I am free."
They motored out to the house.
The men who were watching reported that nobody had passed in or out. At Inspector's Neal's instruction an entrance was obtained with a skill which left no trace behind, and the three men stood in the outer room. Poole pointed out the spot where they left Doris.
"She must have been spirited away in less than three minutes," he said. "Where, and how, we have failed to discover."
The door which they had smashed in their search was not repaired, though a piece of board had been screwed over the broken panel. Inspector Neal stepped forward to open it. He had hardly touched the handle when there was a loud roar of crumbling masonry, and he staggered back into Weedon's arms.
SEIZING the officer between them Poole and Weedon ran into the hall. The ground trembled beneath them, but they escaped through the front door without suffering any further injury. In the fresh air Inspector Neal pulled himself together.
"Run to that end of the building, quick!" he shouted to his men. "Stop anybody you see. It's all right, Mr. Poole, I got the shock but not the blows. It threw me off my feet for the moment. I am going back now—you need not come unless you like."
Followed by the two younger men the inspector returned to the outer room, leaving the front door and hall door open. He also threw up the windows and waited a few moments until the draught had blown away the cloud of dust and smoke. A big heap of stones and plaster covered the spot where the fresco had been rolled back. The floor was torn up for some few feet round, and the fallen masonry made an effective barrier to any investigations beyond it.
"We can get round by the kitchen," said Weedon, remembering the passage through which they passed when they were searching for Doris. The explosion, however, had also barred the way here. They examined the rest of the house and apparently no further harm had been done. Only at this spot was there a heap of ruins. The outer wall of the house was not effected.
"Was it a bomb set to go off at a certain time?" asked Poole.
"More likely set to go off when anybody touched the door," suggested Weedon. "The object was to blow us up, I think. What do you say, inspector?"
The officer did not commit himself to any opinion. He went out again and, with his men, closely searched for signs of any person having left the house in another direction. They were positive, however, that there was nobody in the grounds and that none of the other doors had been disturbed.
Coming back to the house Inspector Neal closed the doors and windows carefully, told his men to remain out of sight and went through the whole house, room by room, so far as possible.
It remained just as Weedon remembered it on the night of his strange adventure. Apparently nothing had been left behind that would give any clue to the whereabouts of the former occupants. There were no letters or papers; desks and drawers were all unlocked as though inviting inspection.
"Why, not send for some men and clear away the debris in case there is something underneath it?" suggested Poole.
"I will bear your suggestion in mind, Mr. Poole," said the inspector. "Meantime, perhaps, you gentlemen will say nothing about your visit here to anybody. I am very much obliged to you for your help in the matter."
He said this in a tone that suggested that they should leave him, and moreover he contrived to say it with sufficient emphasis to leave them no option.
They went back to London, Poole highly interested in the exciting developments of the situation, Weedon depressed at the thought that there was now no immediate opportunity for further action.
"I seem to be continually running up a cul-de-sac," he observed to his cousin. "Here I am; I don't know where Colonel Bloomer is; I have lost sight of. Madame Marcelle; the real Ketterington is making inquiries for me about the Fitzgeralds; and for the moment I have nothing on earth to do."
"Might I suggest as a slight diversion that you take a passing interest in your own affairs?" said Poole. "I am sure Harvey is doing his best for you, but isn't it time you picked up the thread of your practice? Remember, you have got to live somehow, even if you remain a bachelor, and I should imagine you have been spending your capital pretty freely during these eventful days."
"I have a bit more left," growled Weedon, with the resentment of a man who thinks he is being lectured.
"Don't be an ass, Lionel," said Poole. "You know very well I am not finding fault with you, even if I wished to claim the privilege of our close intimacy to do so. Perhaps I ought to have put it in another way; by getting back to your own work and giving people the impression that you are doing nothing else, you may have a better chance of putting them off the scent and obtaining further information than if you advertise the fact that you are still pursuing your investigations."
"Forgive me, Stanley. I believe you are quite right, old chap. I will get back to the surgery, although I shall have to ask Harvey to keep by me; I am really doubtful whether I can concentrate my own mind upon my work just now. From what you felt like during those hours that Doris' fate was in doubt, you can understand my mind at this moment is at Versailles rather than in London."
"But your presence there would only make it more dangerous for both of you. Try the waiting game for a bit; slow time them and see how that works. You have honestly given the other course a fair trial."
Weedon went back to his surgery.
The housekeeper, alarmed at the strange "ongoings" of the past few days, was delighted to see him, and as he did not hear a quarter of what she said she enjoyed the relief of talking, at great length and in detail of the trivial matters that had happened while he was away.
A pile of periodicals, papers, and circulars was heaped up on his desk, and carefully placed apart from them were a few personal letters. One of them bore the Paris postmark and the locum tenens had left it unopened.
It was from Frentice, a very short note written in French and evidently very carefully worded in case it might be intercepted. Translated it read: "Advice good; nothing to fear here. Nurse will explain." Weedon pondered over this while the housekeeper talked to her heart's content. He read it and reread it till the words were impressed upon his mind, and then tore the paper to pieces. It was obviously intended to set his mind at rest, and it assumed that he had kept in touch with Madame Marcelle. Was the nurse then on his side, and had her young mistress sent a message through her for him?
"Nothing to fear here."
These words must mean that Miss Fitzgerald was safe and in no danger. What was the message which she had sent to him through the nurse? At all events, he must find out Madame Marcelle, but where to begin and how? They had come to London, and there must be somebody at Charing Cross who remembered two such striking figures alighting from the train. One of the cabmen who regularly plied for hire in the yard must have driven them somewhere. The locum tenens came in as he was thinking out the problem, and insisted on claiming his attention while he discussed some of the most important cases.
"I am awfully obliged to you, Harvey, old man," said Weedon, "for coming in at such short notice. I am still a bit worried, and shall be glad if you can hold on for a time. By the way, do you think it would be an unusual spectacle to see a white lady with a black servant arrive at Charing Cross?"
"Well, I should rather think so. They have not quite as many coloured people on the railway platforms as we have in the college halls," said Harvey, with a laugh. "But why do you ask?"
"Oh, I simply wanted to corroborate an impression I had myself formed. I'll look in again later. Good-bye!"
He went off without another word, leaving his locum tenens watching him with a puzzled air.
At Charing Cross he was astonished to find how easily he got to the first stage of his inquiries. The coloured nurse and the white lady seemed to have created something of a sensation among the taxi-cab drivers.
"You can talk to that chap over there, governor, if you like; but I reckon he's about fed up," said the first man of whom he made inquiries.
The man to whom he was directed was more emphatic.
"Look here, governor, what's the matter with this black woman? I have had another toff trying to get out of me where. I drove her. What's it got to do with you, says I? If it's a case I'll come down to Scotland Yard with you, but I am not going to talk to every Lord and Jack about my fares. Then when I calls to the bobby on duty outside to know if this chap was a 'tec, he makes off, and because I mentions a word about it, all these silly jossers here in the yard has got nothing better to do than to torment me about the black Judy, and what I've been a-doing with her. One of them there—him with the whiskers—starts chipping my missus about it when she brought my dinner. And a fine old time I've had, I give you my word. What with her going on, and ma having to run the risk of losing my license for punching him in the jaw and now there's you. Clear off!"
The man opened the bonnet of the cab, and began working with the machinery, as a clear indication that he did not intend to talk any more. The other drivers had been watching this little encounter with broad smiles on their faces, and Weedon, finding that he would only invite further publicity by making further inquiries, turned away.
As he was walking out of the yard, he heard a loud roar of laughter. Looking back, he saw the infuriated taximan shaking his fist in the face of a person who had come into the yard from the other side. Evidently somebody else was inquiring about the coloured lady.
Weedon remembered that he had some French money in his pocket. This provided an excellent excuse for stepping into the small money-changing office that stands at the gates to the station yard. While the man behind the counter was assessing the value of his coins, Lionel saw the inquirer leave the cabman and walk through the other cabs towards the Hampstead Tube.
Gathering up his money, Lionel followed him, but he was just a second too late. The man had a strip ticket and stepped into the lift just as the gates were clanged. It was useless to follow him by the next lift: there would be a train out before that got down.
The doctor, once more beaten, went back to the surgery.
As he opened the door, a man rose from a chair to meet him.
"Ah, Inspector!" said Weedon. "Any further news of Colonel Bloomer?"
"Not at present, doctor," replied Inspector Neal. "I have called round to see you, as I want to take the liberty of asking you a few questions. You have been out of town since I saw you last?"
"Yes, I had some business in Paris."
"Exactly. And I want you in your own interests, Dr. Lionel Weedon," said the detective, speaking very deliberately and watching every movement of the doctor's face, "to tell me where we may find the lady you went to see in Paris."
LIONEL WEEDON returned the stare of the police officer and endeavoured to read what was passing in Inspector Neal's mind.
"Am I entitled to know," he asked, "for what purpose you ask me that question?"
"I have no power—at present, at all events—to compel you to answer, doctor," replied the officer. "I ask because I have assumed that you are willing to give us every assistance in your power. You have certainly given us to understand you would do so. If you refuse to answer the question—" Inspector Neal paused, and after waiting a moment, took up his hat.
Weedon rapidly and mentally reviewed the situation. Evidently it was known that Miss Fitzgerald was in Paris. How, he was unable to say. He was convinced, now, that she was innocent of any complicity in the death of her sister; as to the other danger—the criminal conspiracy of which the bogus Mr. Ketterington had accused her—a lurking doubt still tortured him. No good purpose could be served by his refusing to answer the officer's question. His promise to her only related to the operation which he had performed on her shoulder the first day they met. That promise, at all events, he still determined to keep. He decided to speak boldly.
"One moment, Mr. Neal," he said, as the inspector rose and moved towards the door. "You will perhaps understand my hesitation when I tell you that the lady whom I went to see in Paris is a patient of mine, and you will doubtless agree with me that, although the law does not establish the same degree of legalised secrecy between doctors and their patients as it does between lawyers and their clients, it does in effect recognise it, and the discipline of my profession encourages it."
"I don't ask you to tell me any professional secrets, Dr. Weedon," replied the inspector. "All I wish to know is where the lady can be found now."
"I assure you," said Weedon in a sudden burst of impetuous loyalty, "that the lady is a victim of relentless enemies and she has the highest and most honourable motives for seeking privacy."
"I am making no charge against the lady, remember, doctor," said the inspector. "I merely want to know where she is. The sooner we find her the better for her, I think."
The officer spoke very quietly, but in a tone that suggested a reserve of knowledge and power. Weedon wanted to discover how he knew of his visit to Paris, but he felt that Inspector Neal was not the kind of man who would be drawn.
"The lady is not in Paris itself," he said, "but at Versailles. I can give you the address."
"Thank you. I don't want that address," said the inspector. "I have already got it. We also know that an Englishman answering your description was there two days ago."
"Yes, I. was there; I have no reason to conceal that fact, although the persons who profess to be serving me had no right to abuse my confidence," replied Weedon hotly.
"You need not blame anybody unjustly," said the inspector. "You may take it for granted that when an Englishman goes into a quiet country spot and there is a sensation with swords and pistols, the French police know about it And they also want to know if the English police have any knowledge of the person. You see, doctor, I am a little more candid with you than you are with me. I am lifting the veil of professional secrecy."
"But why do you accuse me of secrecy?" said Weedon. "I have offered to give you the information, but you say you already possess it."
"The information I desire," said the inspector, "refers to the lady's present address, not to her address two days ago."
"But she has not left that address; at least I, have no knowledge of it. Are you quite sure she has gone?"
Weedon was genuinely alarmed. The possibility of Miss Fitzgerald having been forcibly carried off by the men who returned from Calais to Paris thrust itself upon him. The inspector saw that he was in earnest.
"Then it is news to you that she has left Versailles?" he said.
"It is worse than news," replied Weedon quickly; "it fills me with anxiety. Believe me, you cannot possibly be more desirous of knowing where the lady is at present than I am."
The inspector made no comment for a moment or two.
"Thank you, doctor," he said at length. "I am sorry that my information is unpleasant to you. Perhaps we may be able to assist each other."
He left the surgery before the doctor had time to think of any more questions.
The evening was wearing on, but Weedon could not rest. He went round to Lincoln's Inn. His cousin looked up impatiently from a pile of papers which he was diligently perusing, but at the sight of his unhappy face, his good nature asserted itself.
"Well, what is the matter now, old chap?" he said kindly. "I can see you are even more concerned than you were when you arrived this morning.
"Stanley," replied Weedon, dropping into a chair and covering his face with his hands, "the police are after her."
"Do you mean you have just seen that paragraph that appeared in the newspapers?"
"No, no; I saw that in Paris, but this is official. Inspector Neal has discovered that I went to see her. He knows I am interested in her; how on earth did he suspect that?"
"I told you when he called before that he knew something. You must not suppose, my dear chap, from the yarns you occasionally hear about the more perfect system of police supervision on the Continent that our police here are any less vigilant The difference is that they do not talk about it, and consequently the system is all the more effective. Inspector Neal is a man of the world—he knows that when young men put themselves to so much trouble and excitement for no apparent reward there is generally a woman in the case somewhere, and it was very easy to draw the deduction that the lady was associated with Colonel Bloomer's house. The local constable told them there were two ladies staying there. One is dead. Doris explains my interest in the matter. That leaves you and the other lady to be accounted for."
"But I have not told you the worst of it yet," said Weedon. "Miss Fitzgerald is not at Versailles, although Prentice assures me there is no danger. Neal says she has gone."
"Then the meaning of Frentice's message is that she has gone to some place of safety. By the way, what exactly did he say?"
Weedon repeated the message from the French agent.
"Your next move then is to find the nurse,'" said Poole. "I have tried, but I am completely stuck."
He related the facts of the scene in Charing Cross yard. Poole with difficulty repressed a smile as he described the taxi-cab driver's conduct.
"I am afraid you did not handle that man diplomatically," he said. "I will see what I can do with him in the morning when he has had time to sleep on it. Meantime, I must insist on your having some rest also. It is not often a lawyer has the pleasure of prescribing for a doctor, but the fact is, my dear Lionel, you are simply killing yourself on your feet. You will have to sleep here to-night. If you go back to your own place somebody will be knocking you up. Come out and have some supper first, and after that I am going to tuck you in, my dear boy, and, moreover, between now and to-morrow morning I am not going to allow you to talk another word about your own affairs. I am taking you among some lively company for an hour."
Poole carefully selected the place for supper, and even Weedon found it impossible to brood over his troubles. The following morning they went down to Charing Cross. Weedon pointed out the taxi driver, who happened to be waiting in the yard.
"He hasn't seen us yet," said Poole. "Now you clear off and make yourself as happy as you can at your own surgery until I look you up there."
Poole watched the other cabs go out until it was this particular driver's turn, and then, jumping into the taxi, told the man to drive' him to a well-known hostelry on the outskirts of London. "And I shall want you to wait and bring me back," he said. The cabman pulled down the little flag with a smart click. The prospect of a good long fare and full money for the return journey was a bit of luck. At the hostelry Poole made some imaginary investigations in the hotel and returned.
"I came up for a game of skittles," he said, "but there seems nobody to take me on. Can't you draw the car in a bit out of the way, and give me a game?"'
The taximan wondered whether it was the gentleman's birthday or whether he had been out over night, but a game of skittles with the indicator marking up the twopences all the time certainly was quite in his line. When they had finished the game and the driver was wiping the foaming evidences of his fare's hospitality off his lips with the back of his hand, Poole suggested a cigar.
"I am thinking of luring a friend on to a game of skittles," he said. "I was not quite sure of my form, so wanted a game somewhere on the quiet. If anybody should ask you when we get back where you drove me, you won't give me away, will you?"
"Give you away, governor! I reckon I would not. You ask my pals in the yard what happened to the toffs that wanted to pump me yesterday about that lady I took to King's Cross."
"Do you want a light?" said Poole, as the man held the cigar to his mouth. "I suppose it was the lady's sweetheart or something of that sort who got at you?"
"Sweetheart, no! If she had been young and the other hadn't been black you might have understood it. But my opinion is these chaps were up to no good, and the lady herself was not too anxious to be followed. She almost whispered to the porter when she asked him about the next train for Bradford."
"Ah, well we must be getting back now, I suppose," said Poole looking at his watch. "Hold up there, what's the matter with you?"
The taximan, who trying to light his cigar, which had gone out while he was speaking, made several ineffective attempts to apply the flame to the end of the weed like a semi-intoxicated person. He dropped the cigar on the floor and staggered on to the bench at the side of the skittle-alley. He made several to speak, and pointed to the empty Jug.
"Somebody doc—doc—doctored it; somebody as wants to do me in," he gasped. "I trust you, governor; see me all right." He tried to lift his hand to his head.
His eyes grew dazed, the colour left his face, and with a low moan he fell on to the floor.
POOLE lifted up the recumbent taxi driver and shouted for assistance. The landlord and the barman, followed by two or three customers, rushed into the skittle alley.
"He ain't drunk, leastways not on what he got here," said the barman emphatically.
"No, he is not drunk," said Poole. "Send for a doctor while I loosen his collar. Have you got a sofa somewhere handy that we could lay him on?"
They carried the insensible man into the little parlour at the back of the bar and rested him on the couch. A local doctor agreed that his illness was not entirely alcoholic. He inquired how much and what he had to drink, and Poole satisfied him that when he engaged him at Charing Cross he was absolutely sober. Poole, who had been thinking very hard, motioned the barman into the skittle alley.
"Has anybody been in here while we were playing, any stranger?" he asked.
"Only a gent that drove up in a motor. He was watching you play through that little window there which is curtained off from the side of the bar. He went away just before you shouted to us, and I suppose drove off. His car is not out there now."
"And what did he come in for?" asked Poole, "and why was he interested in us?"
"He'd come in for a drink, I suppose," said the barman. "At first he seemed in a hurry to get one. He grabbed the pot I just drawed for your cabby. 'Here, that's for another customer who spoke first,' I says; first come first served, is my plan, toffs or common folk. He had turned round, to have a good swig at it; he seemed to be thirsty, but he handed it back without touching it."
"Then he held it for a moment or two at all events with his back to you."
"Good Lord, sir, you don't say he doctored it? Come to think of it, he might have done, for I was just looking round to talk to a chap and—why lummy! the chap as spoke to me was in the car with him—the rotters! I have seen that trick played afore. I have known a pinch of snuff dropped into a man's beer that made him as drunk as a lord. It is right enough, sir, snuff will do it; but this ain't a snuff dose. The poor chap won't die, do you think, sir? I say, don't say thing to the governor if he doesn't I wasn't to know, but he'll be down on me for not keeping my eyes open."
"All right, my man, I won't give you away," said Poole; "but I want you to do something for me. Fetch somebody in here to the skittle alley and talk to him. Talk to him about anything while I go into that passage."
The barman motioned a customer and explained to him how they found the driver when they came in. Poole meantime stood at the little window which he now noticed was slightly open and could hear every word that was said. Obviously, then, the man who had been listening had profited by his tricky cross-examination of the taximan. He knew that Madame Marcelle and the nurse had gone to Bradford. He had cleverly timed the "dose" in the beer to loosen the man's tongue and then put him out of action. Possibly, if the barman had not intervened, he would have found an opportunity for "doctoring" the other drink.
Poole returned to the parlour. The taximan was still drowsy, but the doctor declared he was in no danger.
"Where is the telephone here?" Poole asked the landlord. "Can I use it?"
"It is in my own little office there at the back," said the landlord. "I keep it there and not in the bar, because I don't want everybody to listen to my business when I am shouting. You are welcome to use it, sir."
Poole rang up Weedon and in as few words as possible explained the situation.
"Shall I come up and see the man?" asked Weedon.
"No, no! I don't think you can do any good. The other folks will be making for Bradford; their object is to get there first. The man is not in any danger. You had better catch the first train you can. You haven't much to go on, but an Indian nurse on Bradford station will be even more of a novelty than at Charing Cross."
The driver very slowly recovered, and another man was brought up to take him home in the taxi-cab. He wanted to continue his work for the day, but Poole insisted on his going off duty and agreed to compensate him for the loss of his work.
Meantime, Lionel Weedon caught the train for Bradford. It seemed a strange destination for Madame Marcelle, but he had ceased to be surprised at any development in this weird drama. In the Yorkshire hills and dales there might be awaiting him further romances. At all events, he felt more at home among the stout- hearted Yorkshiremen who spoke his own language in their own way than in France.
Profiting by Poole's advice and example he did not rush at the first porter he saw on the platform at Bidford, but spent the evening in the vicinity of the station engaging first the waiters and the other customers in the hotel in general conversation. A prosperous-looking man of the countryside sitting in the lounge proved his best friend. He was one of that breezy type of middle- class Yorkshiremen who like company and chat freely with their neighbours wherever they meet them. The conversation began as usual with the weather and then drifted into the current newspaper topics, including a threatened strike of waiters.
"I don't hold much with foreign waiters myself," said the Yorkshireman, "and they tell me there are folks that have foreign servants in their houses. Some of them say they are brought up better, and my brother-in-law, who is out in India, has a black chap that cooks his food."
"I believe Indian women make very excellent nurses," said Weedon as casually as he could.
"Aye, so they say; there was one through here yesterday with a lady. I was in here getting a bit of something to eat after I had been up to the market. They got some lunch. I saw the woman was a foreigner by her clothes, and she had to pull up her veil to get her food. I suppose I shall hear more of them when I get home. I live a hew miles out, and have been staying in town this last two days for business. I heard her asking about a motor-car to drive them out there. The folks they are going to have taken a house sear me. Rather quiet lot, but decent enough neighbours. I have nothing to say against them. They don't interfere with me."
Restraining his excitement Weedon made guarded inquiries as to the address of the house, professing to be keenly interested in the village life.
He came to the conclusion that there was no way of getting out there that night, and went to bed with the comforting assurance that he was now hot on the scent. He drove out to the village in the morning, and went boldly up to the house.
To his consternation, however, he found it shut up. Inquiries in the neighbourhood told him that he had missed his friend by about half an hour. They had driven into Bradford. He found the people in this part of the world less inclined to rebuff him that the taxi driver at Charing Cross. They assumed that he was a friend of the persons for whom he was inquiring, and the information was easily forthcoming to the effect that they had gone to Arnside in Westmoreland. One interested villager could even remember the name of the house there, which he thought belonged to the gentleman who owned the house here.
Making his way back to Bradford, Weedon just missed one train to Arnside, and was informed that the next one was due between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. He went into the hotel again for some lunch, got a shave and a brush-up at the barber's on the platform and sauntered up to the train generally satisfied that things were taking a slight turn for the better. As he stood with his hand on the open door of one of the carriages a figure in front of him attracted his attention. He stepped into the carriage as the man turned and shielding his own face with a newspaper took a good look at the stranger, who turned out to be no stranger.
It was the man who had posed as Ketterington. He was differently dressed, but Weedon had good reason for remembering him.
His enemies, then, had also discovered where Madame Marcelle had gone. Like him, they had followed her to Bradford, and like him also they had doubtless pursued skilful inquiries in the neighbourhood. The marvel was that they had not clashed with him before.
The train steamed out of the station. It was now a case of their meeting on the same spot. If he could only have warned Madame Marcelle before her pursuers arrived, he was certain she would be grateful. Could nothing be done? He moved restlessly about in his corner, looking out at every station to make sure that the other man did not leave the train, although there was little likelihood of that. A fellow-passenger attempted to get into conversation with him.
"Train seems a bit slow when you're in a hurry, sir?" said the affable gentleman.
"Yes, I suppose there is no other way but to wait," replied Weedon. It was a consolation to express some part of his thoughts to another.
"All depends where you want to get?" suggested the fellow- passenger.
"I want to get to Arnside," said Weedon. "Ah, well, you will have to change at Carnforth. It's rather a slow train; pity you didn't catch the earlier one if you want to get there soon. You see this line curls round after it leaves Wennington, and you stop at every station. You could get across country quicker in a car."
"Do you think so?" asked Weedon eagerly.
"Certain. Why, they'd run you across from Wennington to Arnside in about half an hour. Of course, if it's a serious case and you do want to get there quick it won't run to that much. There's a car to be got just outside Wennington. I sometimes hire it myself. Let's see, I've got the address of the man somewhere here," he said, turning out a huge pocket-book. "You can nip out at the next station, send a wire along, and if the car does not happen to be out, it will meet you at the station. I should make sure about it being there before you left the train, though."
This indeed was an inspiration. Weedon drew off a telegraph form and at the station handed it to the foreman porter. "That'll be all right; he'll send it," said the fellow-passenger. "I know yon man; he's safe enough."
As the train neared Wennington the man, with that cordial interest in a fellow-traveller in distress which warms the heart of the stranger to these parts of England, had a further suggestion.
"I am getting out here, it happens," he said. "I'll just slip out and see if the car is there, and let you know, so that you don't miss your train if it isn't there."
The train stopped at the station.
The man stepped out and made his way through the small crowd on the platform. Lionel Weedon stood at the carriage door and looked eagerly along' the train. The passengers waiting on the platform stepped into the various carriages, those who had arrived went slowly off.
Still there was no sign of the man who had gone to look for the car. Weedon stood with one foot on the step. The porters slammed the doors, the guard lifted his green flag, and put the whistle to his mouth, red of face and panting with the exertion of his self-imposed task the doctor's fellow-passenger pushed on to the platform.
"IT'S all right, don't get in," shouted Weedon's friend as the train began to move. Weedon slammed the door and watched the train glide out of the station with a feeling of triumph. He would have at least twenty minutes' and probably half an hour's start of his rivals in this strange race. "The car is waiting there," said his fellow-passenger. "I was a bit afraid of it at first; it hadn't come up. But I saw it coming along, and made sure it was the right one before I came up to tell you."
"I am very much obliged to you, indeed," said Weedon. "I am afraid I have no right to put you to this trouble."
"Oh, that's all right, mister! I sometimes have to run it close myself when I am travelling about. I didn't want you to get out and find there was no motor there else you would have been in a worse pickle than if you stopped in the train. Well, good-day, mister, I hope you get there in time."
"I almost missed you, I see," said the chauffeur, as Weedon came up to the car. "I was out when your wire came on another job, but came straight along here. Where is it you want to go?"
Weedon gave him the address and added that he had been informed he might save time by going across country instead of going on in the train. The chauffeur assured him that this was correct, and he found himself at the house which stood away among the hills some way back from the coast a long time before any person who had come by train could possibly have driven up from the station, even if the train were strictly punctual.
Up to now Weedon's mind had been centred on the question as to whether he could arrive there before his enemies. He also had in view the one thought that he must obtain an interview with the nurse, and discover from her what Prentice's message meant. But now that he had won the race, he found himself hesitating as to the best moans of accomplishing his mission. He settled with the driver, and stood at the entrance to the grounds of the house hesitating how to proceed. It was now about six in the evening. In another twenty minutes the train would be at the station and his pursuers would be close on his track. He must act at once.
While he was standing at the gate he heard a rustling in the shrubbery and two figures emerged from a side path. One of them was undoubtedly Madame Marcelle, and he walked towards her, lifting his hat. At the sound of the opening of the gate the other lady retreated behind a laurel bush and Madame Marcelle turned towards him with a look of resentment.
"You will pardon my intrusion, Madame," said Weedon. "I assure you I have something to tell you which you would wish to know. Time is of importance. You remember the man who came into my friend's room at the hotel in Paris, the man who was watching outside the door while we were sneaking. He is on his way here. His train arrives at Arnside station very shortly, and there can be little doubt that he is going to visit you."
Madame Marcelle endeavoured to appear calm, but it was obvious that the news had deeply affected her.
"Monsieur is very kind," she said. "It is well to be prepared."
She turned her head slightly towards the laurel bush and said a few words in that language which had been used at Versailles, which Weedon did not understand. There was a movement among the shrubs, and Lionel knew that the other person had gone away.
"You will be in need of some refreshment after your journey," said Madame Marcelle. "I am but a visitor here, but I am sure my friends would wish me to offer you hospitality."
She led the way into the house, an ordinary comfortably- furnished English residence such as would be occupied by fairly well-to-do people of the upper middle-classes. Weedon seized the opportunity gladly.
Refreshments were put before him, and Madame Marcelle sat in the room talking to him. No other member of the household appeared, and his solitary companion kept the conversation to ordinary topics concerning the country through which she had travelled on her journey from Paris. She praised the English scenery, and particularly the Westmoreland district..
"Your lakes are near here?" she remarked.
"And will your stay be long?" asked Weedon.
"I cannot say; circumstances will decide," she replied with a note of sadness.
All Lionel's efforts to divert the conversation to the subjects which he most desired to discuss were cleverly and firmly evaded. The time was going on, and he judged that the visitors who obviously would be unwelcome must very shortly arrive.
"Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?" he asked. "You are apparently living in a very lonely spot. It is some little distance to the village. May I entreat you once more to take me into your confidence. Tell me, at all events, what has become of Miss Fitzgerald. I know she has left Versailles."
"Miss Fitzgerald, I can assure you, is quite safe," she replied. "More than that you must not ask me to say."
"But, Madame, I must know more! I know not what is your precise relationship to the lady, but—you appear to be her nearest friend and guardian. Can't you not see, has it not occurred to you, that I—"
"Stop!" she said in a tone of mingled entreaty and command. "You must not say more. Oh! why do you not do as I have implored you and as she has asked you? Pass out of her life and do not interfere with matters, which you cannot possibly understand."
"And if I had passed out of her life, if I had not been with her at Dover, at Folkestone, and if I had not followed you here would it have been to your advantage? I do not mention these things, Madame, believe me, with any desire to claim your gratitude, but you must see that there is some power that links our destinies together. I am not a superstitious man and my education has been strictly scientific. But there is something which science cannot explain away in the affinity between two souls."
Instead of convincing the lady, Weedon saw that his words were causing her pain.
"You must not speak like this to me," she said. "Don't think I am heartless. I have been young and full of hope like you I understand! But it would be more than unkind if I did not tell you that there are reasons why you should not speak thus."
Weedon listened with a sad heart to these words, spoken in such mournful and kindly tones. He tried to think of some reply but before he could speak there was a quick though gentle tap at the door. Madame Marcelle left him for a few moments.
"It is not wise that you should remain here any longer now," she said, returning to the room. "I trust you will not think we are lacking in hospitality or in gratitude when I ask you if you will do us the favour of retiring. There is another way through the grounds. I will show it you if you will come with me."
Weedon gathered from this that the other visitors had arrived or were at all events, approaching. Perhaps the lady was right in suggesting, that he should not be seen there. Anyhow, he could not insist on remaining after what she had said. He allowed her to lead him through a side door into a garden, and thence through a gate at the back of the grounds. As she held this open she put out her hand.
"Good-bye, Dr. Weedon," she said, "and accept my heartfelt thanks for all you have done."
He took her hand and lingered over it. He wanted to say something more, but she gently withdrew her fingers from his grasp and softly closed the door. As he stood on the other side of the wall he felt that the gates of hope had been closed upon him. His long journey, his race across country, had resulted in nothing but the satisfaction that he had been able to act as a warning herald..
He could not go away like this. The sincerity of Madame Marcelle he did not for one moment doubt, but as Stanley Poole, who knew his nature so well, had predicted, no power on earth could divert him from obedience to the clear call of love. He belonged to this mysterious lady, body and soul. Prudence, wisdom, good advice, mattered nothing. He must find her; he must go to her.
He had been told by his friend in the train that there was a comfortable hotel in the village. Avoiding the front of the house he made his way down the hill and engaged a room. It was an exceptionally fine evening, and he roamed out into the fresh air again after restlessly moving from the smoke-room to the sitting- room. His footsteps led him towards the house on the hillside. He had hardly realised that he was walking in this direction at first, and even when he knew it he still wandered on. He noticed as he approached the place that while there was a wall round the garden at the back, the shrubbery in front of the house was only divided off by a fence. The evening shadows were now falling fast, and he could walk round the house without being observed through the thick foliage. He hated the idea of prowling where he was not wanted, but there was just the chance he thought that the Indian nurse might still be somewhere in the grounds.
As he sauntered slowly along he heard the sound of voices in the thick shrubs. He would have passed on; but something in the tone of one of the voices attracted him, though he could not hear the words. Forgetting for the moment that he was playing the eavesdropper he stepped over the fence, which was very low at tills point, and carefully followed a beaten path without disturbing the bushes.
"You have descended to brutality and hideous cruelty," the voice was saying in a low tone. "You have forfeited every right to our loyalty; there is no further bond between us. If you force me to it I will denounce you. Go away and never let me see your face again!"
An involuntary movement on Weedon's part disturbed the bushes at his side, and his clothes were caught in a rose-bush. As he released himself carefully, his fingers touched something hard.
It was the revolver which Frentice had given him on the train from Paris. He had instinctively transferred it from one pocket to another when lid had changed his clothes.
"You would denounce us, traitoress!" a man's voice said. "Then—then—"
Weedon did not wait to hear more, but crashing through the shrubbery broke into the clearing from whence the voices proceeded. An infuriated man sprang forward, but stopped suddenly as the cold nose of Frentice's revolver touched his cheek.
"STAND back a couple of paces there into the light where I can see you well, and don't make any other movement whatever, or I will shoot you," said Weedon. The man obeyed without a word.
"If you have any confederate standing by understand that if he attempts to interfere I will shoot you for a start and deal with him as well," said Lionel in a loud voice intended to reach the car of anybody who might be lurking by. He had cleared the shrubbery himself and had taken his position by a fountain, which shielded him from any possible shots from that direction. The only danger that could come to him would be from the house.
"And now. Mr. Ketterington, alias the Scotland Yard detective, I shall want to know more of you before I have done with you," he said. "'You will answer me truthfully a few very pertinent questions, and then I shall decide whether to let you go or hand you over to the local police."
The man laughed softly. "I admit, Dr. Weedon," he said, "that in the language of your cultured cousins of the Anglo-Saxon race you have the drop on me. You need not furtively watch my hands; they are not going into my pocket to feel for a weapon: I shall doubtless have all the vengeance I require from the satisfaction of watching you when I answer the questions which you desire to put to me."
The man spoke with polished irony, in contrast to his semi- homely, semi-professional manner in the character of Mr. Ketterington, the private inquiry agent.
"Well, I am quite ready to begin," he said; folding his arms and watching the doctor with a cynical smile. Before Weedon could frame his first question a strange thing happened. His attention had been so entirely concentrated on his prisoner that he had not noticed who was with him. The voice of the lady speaking he had recognised as that of Madame Marcelle. She, apparently, had gone hurriedly into the house. He heard agitated whispers behind him, and suddenly the Indian nurse rushed forward. With a wild gesture to "Ketterington" to go, she threw herself in front of Weedon. Any shot which he fired must have killed her.
"Good-bye, Dr. Busybody!", said the man, with a mocking laugh. "I suppose you will some day cease to thrust yourself where nobody wants you."
He broke through the bushes, and putting his hand on the fence leapt lightly over. The ayah, having accomplished her purpose, ran back to the house before Weedon could intercept her. Madame Marcelle was standing at the French window through which the nurse had disappeared. He went up to her with indignation in look and manner.
"Why did you connive at that blackguard's escape?" he said. "I came here to warn you against him, and I have protected you from him. You send your servant out to take his side against me. I only wish now I had given him in custody at the railway station and not bothered myself to come all this way to you."
"But why should monsieur give him in custody: how does it become his affair?" said Madame Marcelle in a voice with a suspicion of sarcasm.
"I know that he has been masquerading as a bogus detective, for one thing, and that is an offence against the laws of our country. Moreover, I suspect him of something more; at all events, the police would like to know more about him, I am certain."
"If he has committed any offence towards yourself that, of course, is a matter which you will judge," replied Madame Marcelle; "but we have no wish that you should put yourself to further trouble on our account."
"In other words, now that I have served your purpose, you have no further use for me," replied Weedon.
The words were hardly uttered before he deeply regretted them. "I apologise," he said, lifting his hat, and bowing low as Madame Marcelle drew himself up to her full height and looked over his head. "I ought not to have said that, but you will understand Madame, that for some days now there has been a severe strain on me, and I do feel that you might give me a little more of your confidence. At least, will you tell me this? Is Miss Fitzgerald likely to incur further danger?"
"I have told monsieur that she is safe," replied Madame Marcelle.
"This is as far as your present information goes, Madame," said Weedon; "but events move quickly, and, as you well know, you have been deceived before in the case of her sister."
"I am not deceived now. I can assure you that Miss Fitzgerald is perfectly safe, and I must again ask you to accept that as sufficient. Once more, lest there should be the slightest feeling in your mind that we are ungrateful, let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done."
With a stately bow she turned and walked through the French windows. Weedon took a step forward as though to follow her; she gently closed the windows in his face.
Weedon went back to the hotel; at all events, he must stay there for the night. The morning would bring its own message as to the course he ought now to adopt. He was fast becoming a creature of chance. He had ceased to make plans for more than an hour ahead. At the hotel a note was handed to him.
"A gentleman left this for you," said the waitress. "I think he went on to the station afterwards."
Weedon tore open the note, wondering who in this district would be sufficiently interested to write to him. It was scribbled on a plain sheet of paper as though torn from a notebook. There was no address and no signature, and the words were few.
"Are you not satisfied yet that you are meddling with things you do not understand? You have had many warnings; let this one be sufficient. You can do no good to anybody. You will only reveal to yourself truth that will make life miserable."
There was little doubt about the authorship of this missive. It was another of the bogus Ketterington's attempts to warn him off. The pleadings of the women and the threats of the men ought to have been a sufficient indication to an ordinary man that he was taking upon himself a thankless mission, but in his present mood Lionel Weedon was not an ordinary man. Each rebuff only served to make him more stubborn. He wired his address to Poole in case there had been any developments since his return, and determined to stay on.
The sun shone brightly on the hills when he rose the following morning. He could hardly believe that he had come to this peaceful spot with its quiet picturesque charm to play out a scene in a grimly mysterious drama. He surveyed the house of his overnight adventure, and in the morning light it was just the simple residence of persons with good taste. Discreet inquiries in the neighbourhood gave him very little Information. The house Was occupied by a gentleman and his wife, who apparently used it for holiday purposes. The villagers believed the gentleman was "in business of some sort." Weedon gathered that he paid his bills and dealt fairly with his neighbours, and was generally respected. It was, of course, no unusual thing-for gentlemen from the big towns to take a country house in this part.
Weedon lingered in the neighbourhood of the house for some time, but saw no signs of Madame Marcelle nor of the nurse. As the morning wore on he grew tired of his inaction. Under other circumstances the tranquillity of a day in the country would have appealed to him, but there was a fever in his blood in these times which only the realisation of his desire could cure.
Still he could not leave the spot. There was a fascination about it which he could not explain. Had he known where to find the girl for whom he had sacrificed so much, he would have gone through blood and water. Here there were, at any rate, some associations that reminded him of her, and he did not despair of melting the heart of Madame Marcelle.
A gentleman who looked like an ordinary professional man or merchant from Manchester or Liverpool arrived at the station with a lady during the day and drove to the house. This, obviously, was Madame Marcelle's host. He was a different type of person altogether from Colonel Bloomer, Fitzgerald, and the other men whom Weedon had met since he became involved in this weird affair. They bore the unmistakable stamp of cosmopolitans of the leisured classes. This man had the serious manner that belongs to a regular life set in a fixed groove.
Wandering listlessly about the countryside, Weedon found himself at length watching a hockey match in which the girls from the excellent scholastic institution for which this neighbourhood is noted were playing. With the eye of a doctor he admired the health and refined physical strength of the girls, and grew keenly Interested in the game. The pluck and endurance of the players inspired him. They fought for an ideal—the sporting desire to win for sheer loyalty to the honour of their school. He found himself comparing his own chance of victory with theirs. Accepting it as an omen, good or bad, of his own grim game of life, he followed the varying fortunes of his side and became a desperate keen partisan of the school. Every time the ball as it neared the goal was kept out by the opposing goal-keeper, his heart sank as it had done each time he had himself been baffled. When, at last, by determined combination and a splendid dash the girls scored a winning goal his hat came off and his cheers mingled with theirs. The other spectators, assuming that he was a brother of one of the players, smiled indulgently at his enthusiasm. The attention of a small group of two or three standing aloof was also directed to him, and they hurriedly moved away as he looked round. They turned with the rest as they noticed that, instead of going off the field, the players were standing in a little crowd near the goal post. One of the players in the last rush had hurt her ankle.
Instinctively Weedon pushed his way forward and dropped on his knee beside the injured girl. It was only a slight accident though a temporary disablement. It required a tight binding and then a little rest and care. A handkerchief was hardly sufficient, and he appealed to the small group of spectators for the loan of a scarf.
And then a half-sentence rendered incomplete by a hasty interruption brought back to Dr. Weedon's memory the most momentous incident in his life.
A SCARF was forthcoming, and with it Weedon bound the injured foot. The girl was too plucky to admit she felt any pain, and apparently only regretted that she had not been able to get off the field without being noticed. The bandage kept the foot in place. The joint had been jerked, but not dislocated.
"Just rest a bit, and don't walk on it too much for a day or two, and you will be quite all right again," said Weedon. "You will have a bad foot if you don't keep quiet."
He hardly heard the warm thanks which he received for his assistance, and he somewhat awkwardly made his escape from the field, hoping to catch up the retreating party of spectators. Those few words were ringing in his ears still. They carried him back to that day when he knelt in the London street beside his patient. It was the same voice; he knew it as the bird knows the song of its mate. She was here then; this was the meaning of Madame Marcelle's confidence. She had been here all the time. How and when could she have arrived?
While he had began completing his professional work the small group had separated itself from the other onlookers and disappeared. He had a dim idea that there were three of them, but he had not seen their faces. He knew nothing of their presence until he heard the voice appealing to be allowed to help, and when he looked round they promptly turned away from him.
One of the ladies he remembered had handed a scarf to the girl, and thus it had been passed on to him. He walked fast in the direction of the house where he knew they must be staying, but they had either outdistanced him or gone in another direction. He saw nothing of them. He went back to the hotel, and seizing a time-table endeavoured to work out Miss Fitzgerald's journey.
She must have followed shortly after Madame Marcelle and the nurse had gone forward to draw off their pursuers, and while he was following up on the eastern line to Bradford she had come direct to Arnside. The detour by Bradford was a clever ruse, and Weedon congratulated himself that though the enemy was subtle, there was in Madame Marcelle on the right side one who possessed a strategic mind.
WEEDON WAS UP EARLY the following morning. Now that he knew he was near his heart's desire the countryside had its greater charms for him. Professional courtesy prevented his interfering farther in the matter of the patients there was very little likelihood that the injury would require further surgical attendance, and in any case the injured girl belonged to the visiting team, and the regular medical attendant would, of course, be called in if need be. He had completed his duty by rendering first aid.
Out of the accident, however, a welcome diversion occurred. Orthodox bandages had been substituted for the borrowed scarf and a message had been sent over from the neighbouring village, where the patient lived, with a note of thanks and a suggestion that perhaps the doctor would be able to return the borrowed scarf to its owner. The scarf had nothing on it to identify its owner. It was not the kind of thing which usually is marked even with initials. Still, he told the messenger he would see it returned. It was an excellent excuse for calling again at the house on the hill.
Armed with this valid reason for his intrusion, he made his way there after a brisk walk in the country, carefully arranging the time at a period of the afternoon when the ladies might be expected to be at home to callers. The door was opened by a fresh-complexion country girl. He had put himself perfectly in order by ascertaining the name of the hostess, and he asked for Mrs. Medway.
A lady who looked the part of the well-educated wife of a well-to-do Englishman received him in the drawing-room. He produced the scarf and explained that he had been deputed to call.
"Oh, yes, you are the doctor who so kindly rendered assistance yesterday afternoon," said the lady. "It is very good of you to trouble to return the scarf. I hope you found it useful."
"Then I am quite right in bringing it here," he said; "I was not quite sure from whom I obtained it. One is apt to concentrate one's thoughts on the patient at these moments."
"Quite so. I trust the injury was not a severe one?"
"Oh, not at all, quite a minor accident. There is really no danger in the game. It was a pleasure to watch it. I hope you found it equally interesting?"
Lionel Weedon was not good at small talk, but he laboured on, endeavouring to think of subsidiary topics in the hope of prolonging the call. Mrs. Medway, quite in a natural manner, continued the conversation; there was nothing in her bearing to indicate that she regarded the visit as anything more than it professed to be.
Weedon contrived to pass several minutes in glowing tributes to the beauty of the scenery. He spoke of the railway facilities, and of how it was possible to race the train by cutting across country in a motor. Still there was no sign of impatience on the part of his hostess, but it was becoming quite evident that she intended to regard the call as one paid to herself alone for the purpose of returning the scarf.
Weedon furtively watched the door in the hope that somebody might enter. He commented on the view, and thus made an opportunity of looking through the French windows on to the lawn and shrubbery, but nobody appeared in sight. In despair he rose at last to go. He could think of no further excuse for remaining. Still he felt that he must find some means to discover how much this lady knew about him.
"I fear I owe you an apology," he said. "I intruded here the other evening, and perhaps was somewhat violent. I hope Madame Marcelle was not upset by my conduct?"
"I understand that Madame Marcelle had some visitors," replied the lady, still speaking in a perfectly natural tone. "Unfortunately, when she arrived we were away; my husband and I only came home yesterday morning. We do not occupy this house continuously, but it is very pleasant to come here sometimes and entertain our friends. Madame Marcelle is at present in her rooms: she prefers not to join us. She is accompanied by her own attendant."
"The Indian nurse?" said Weedon. "A very faithful servant indeed, I should think.".
There was no response to this, and Weedon, although he knew that his remarks were now bordering on impertinence, still lingered. "I trust Madame Marcelle's companion, the young lady who was at the match yesterday, is quite well?" he said. He watched Mrs. Medway keenly as he said this. Either she was extremely innocent or she had been prepared for this question.
"There is no other visitor here," she said. "Madame Marcelle and her nurse occupy their own rooms."
"But, there is another lady; if she is not staying here she should be staying here, or, at all events, somewhere under proper protection," persisted Weedon.
"I can only repeat, Dr. Weedon, that there is no other visitor here," said Mrs. Medway in a decisive tone which forbade further retort.
She opened the door as she spoke, and it was impossible to ignore this very direct hint.
"No other visitor!" He repeated the words to himself as he went slowly down the hill. Did that mean that there never had been a third visitor, or that Miss Fitzgerald had left since the previous afternoon? He knew he would not be able to rest in the hotel. He crossed the water and struck into the country on the other side.
The night was closing in when he returned, and discovered that inquiries had been made for him from the school. Apparently, they wished to recognise his timely assistance, and he decided that he ought to call the following day. It was too late now. He strolled into the smoking-room after a hearty meal, for which his days' wanderings created an appetite. This room was used by visitors and ordinary customers alike, and two men were sitting at a table chatting over local topics.
As the doctor sat down they looked at him and their conversation went on in subdued tones after the manner of country people at the arrival of a stranger. One of them a few moments afterwards rose to go. As he passed the small recess which filled the purpose both of office and serving-room, Weedon heard him remark that he had to get the car round for a late job. There was some chaff about having to work for once in a way, and the man went off laughing.
"He's got nothing to grumble at," remarked the other man sitting at the table; half to himself, as though inviting comment from Weedon. "He is a chauffeur, I presume?" said Lionel.
"Yes, looks after a car for Mr. Medway up the hill there. Gentleman drives himself mostly; he won't have any late job to- night, he'll just have to take the car round and leave her."
Weedon could not resist an overmastering desire to watch the departure of this car. He again made his way up the hill to the house, and waiting in the distance until he saw the car brought round to the gate, sauntered by though as by chance.
The chauffeur was dismissed at once, and Mr. Medway himself took the steering-wheel. Two cloaked figures got into the hooded car. Weedon could see this by the light from the front door.
The car swung slowly out of the grounds and proceeded still more slowly as it reached a bend in the road at the top of the hill. Weedon was able to follow it on foot, and was Just behind it when a figure leapt out of the hedge. He saw the gleam of a knife, and springing forward, caught the wrist of a man just as the blade was about to descend on the black tyre.
The car rolled on. The incident had occurred so swiftly that the occupants knew nothing of it They were unaware of the narrow chance that had saved their tyre from being punctured. The man had been taken by surprise; he dropped the knife and threw his assailant off.
Weedon returned to the attack, and somehow a third man got mixed up in the scrimmage. They all struggled together and tell. The contest narrowed itself down to a stiff wrestling bout between Weedon and one of the men: the other slipped out.
Lionel soon discovered that he was in able hands. This was no amateur that got him on his back and planted a knee on his chest. He heard a sharp click. At first he thought it was a revolver, but a bright light told him that it was an electric torch.
As the glare was turned on his face an ejaculation of surprise and disappointment escaped his captor.
THE two men rose from the ground and shook the dust from their clothes. Together they walked out of the shadows into the light of a lamp at the gate. Weedon then saw clearly the features of the man with whom he had been struggling.
"Mr. Neal!" he said, in a tone of astonishment.
"Yes, Dr. Weedon," replied the detective officer, "this is a mutual surprise. I thought I had got the right man; if you had left him to me there would have been no doubt, about it."
"Then you were watching him also? You must admit I collared him just in time."
"Perhaps so," replied Neal enigmatically. "At all events, between us we have let him go."
"You saw what he was up to? He wanted to puncture the tyre, and then when the car stopped further in the darkness of the trees he would doubtless have attacked the people in it."
"And then I should have been ready for him," replied Neal. It began to dawn upon Weedon that Mr. Neal was not particularly glad that the motor had been allowed to go on. No doubt he wanted to see who was inside-added to which if the man who stepped out of the hedge had attempted violence there would have been a definite charge against him. Neal kept his thoughts to himself, but Weedon had an idea of what was passing in his mind.
"I suppose, like myself, you would like to know where that motor is going," he remarked.
"I daresay I shall know that in good time," replied Neal. "I suppose you have no idea who the man is that we have just allowed to go?"
"Only that I am certain he is one of the gang connected with Colonel Bloomer and his friends."
"And you also know, I expect, what brings him to this neighbourhood? I take it you are not here for a holiday yourself, Dr. Weedon?"
"I will be frank with you, Mr. Neal," said Weedon. "After you told me that Miss Fitzgerald had left Paris I was very anxious for her safety. I came here because I believed I should find somebody who could give me some information on that point."
"And you succeeded in discovering her whereabouts?"
"No; the only satisfaction I have got is an assurance that she is safe and well. At this moment, Mr. Neal, I have not the slightest idea where she is."
"Ah! that is rather a pity," said the inspector in a dry tone. "The longer she remains away the worse for her. Are you walking own to the village, doctor?"
The two men descended the hill in silence. Weedon wanted to ask many questions, but he felt that he had no claim to do so, and he also knew that the shrewd man at his side would not be induced to give him any more information than he deemed necessary for his own purposes. They began to talk casually on ordinary topics.
For a town dweller Inspector Neal was particularly interested in the country. He was a farmer's son, and knew nothing of the ways and wiles of criminals until he came away, a big muscular youth, to London. Weedon found him very interesting so long as they were not talking business, but the doctor had an uneasy feeling that the inspector either knew more than he imagined or suspected that he was telling less than he knew.
"Are you staying at the Crown?" asked Weedon. "It's a very comfortable hotel, and they look after you well."
"Yes, I have taken a bed there, but I want to make a call elsewhere. I shall be in shortly," replied Neal.
Although Weedon again rose early he found that his fellow- lodger was out before him. The officer came in fresh and cheery after a walk before breakfast. They sat down together, and he chatted pleasantly about everything but the particular matter which had brought them both to this spot. Mr. Neal was a man of wide experience. His father had given him a good education, and his rise in the police had been rapid. Weedon knew that he had not gone out for the mere sake of getting an appetite for breakfast.
He made one attempt to work the conversation round to the subject on which he most desired information, but the smile on Neal's face at his amateur effort was sufficient to assure him how utterly hopeless it was for him to match himself against his companion. After breakfast a message was brought to Mr. Neal.
He read it and asked for his bill.
"You are leaving?' remarked Weedon.
"Yes, I am going back to London," replied Neal. "I do not presume to advise you, of course; but I should think it possible you will find London more interesting to yourself than the country now."
"You mean you are satisfied there is nothing farther to be got here."
"One can never say there is nothing to be obtained anywhere," said Inspector Neal. "I merely tell you that I ant going back, and if an opinion from me is of any value I certainly do not think you will find it very profitable to remain here. However, that is as you please, of course, doctor."
He paid his bill and went to his room. As Weedon was hesitating what to do, a telegram arrived from Poole asking him when he was likely to return. Evidently things were requiring some attention in London. Possibly by travelling with Neal he might discover something. In this he was doomed to disappointment. The inspector at other times would have been quite an interesting companion for the journey, but he was still uncommunicative as to the result of his inquiries in Westmoreland. When they arrived in London Neal beckoned to a taxi-cab.
"Well, we have had a pleasant journey, doctor," he said. "You know where to find me if I can be of any assistance to you."
"To what extent may I interpret that?" asked Weedon. "You know well now, I think, that there is one point upon which I am anxious for help."
"Quite so, doctor, and I can give you one piece of advice here and now. If ever you want a sound, working partner you must he prepared to pool fair from the start."
He stepped into the taxi-cab as he said this, and waved his hand to the doctor from the window. Weedon took another taxi-cab, and drove to Poole's chambers.
"My telegram seems to have brought you home," said Stanley. "I have just come from the court. You appear to have wandered across country a good deal; I hope you have struck something."
"No, I am afraid the only thing I have struck is a piece of advice from Inspector Neal. I wish I could follow the workings of that man's mind. He seems such a simple, ordinary type, too, when one talks to him on other subjects, but it is impossible to draw him."
"I told you as much when you first met him," said Poole. "You are not the first man who imagined he had a soft thing on when he tried to talk to Neal. And so he has been with you in your journeyings? That is significant."
"I came across him quite by accident. We were both watching the same man, it so happened," replied Weedon. He told Poole the whole of his experiences. The young barrister listened with keen interest, but was most concerned about the part played by Inspector Neal.
"There is something remarkable about this case," he said. "Neal would rot travel from one and of England to the other merely to watch a suspect. All that kind of work is usually done by his subordinates."
"And you think, therefore, the case is of special importance to him?"
"Not only to him, my dear Lionel, Neal occupies a very important position at the Criminal Investigation Department. Don't run away with the impression that this genial farmer's son devotes his attention to common thieves. The cases which he handles have something more in them than ordinary crime. His interests are very much wider—international—worldwide, in fact. I have been puzzling myself ever since he came into the case to know what it means."
"And have you discovered anything?"
"Not as yet. I wired you this morning because the adjourned inquest was to be held to-morrow. I understand, however, that no further evidence is to be offered at present. There is to be a further adjournment. The identification of the body by the local constable was sufficient for an order for burial, and the authorities are now taking their time. The telephone bell rang, and Poole picked up the receiver.
"Yes," he said in reply to some question, "I am at liberty- Yes, Dr. Weedon is here now. Oh yes, he will be quite willing to come with me, I am sure."
He still held the telephone, and turned to his cousin. "You can come out to Colonel Bloomer's house, of course, Lionel?"
"Certainly—yes—what has happened?"
"All right," shouted Poole into the telephone. "We will be there as soon as possible."
"I wonder what Neal his in his mind now," he said, hanging up the receiver. "He is going to clear away the fallen masonry in the house, and he has invited us to come with him."
They were again at the house In Middlesex after a quick drive. Some stalwart young members of the force in their shirt sleeves shovelled away the fallen stones and masonry. For a while it was a monotonous task. Neal and the two young professional men stood by anxiously watching until a huge pile had been removed and they were able to step into the passage. Poole and Weedon turned in the direction which they had gone before towards the kitchen, but Neal's attention was centred on what appeared to be a blind end of the passage, where there was a further mass of fallen masonry. With his own hands he rolled back a huge stone. It brought a whole mass of other loose stuff crumbling to his feet. He stepped back quickly, and with more eagerness than he customarily displayed, called one of the men, who held a pickaxe.
The young constable, who had worked as a quarryman in Dorsetshire before being recruited for the Metropolitan police, brought away the obstruction with a few deft strokes of his pickaxe. Crowbars and shovels completed the work and opened up a tunnel that dipped down at a steep angle. Inspector Neal, followed by Stanley Poole and Weedon, explored the passage carefully, lighting their way with a strong electric torch.
"This explains the absence of papers, and documents in the house," remarked Poole, kicking an iron box.
A couple of men conveyed the box into the light. It opened easily. There were some old envelopes and pieces of tape and stray scraps of paper indicating that it had been cleared in a hurry. Neal returned to the tunnel. He went a few yards, and then came to a sudden stop.
WEEDON and Poole followed Inspector Neal, and found him gazing intently at a blank wall.
"I think it is quite clear," remarked Weedon, "they got out before we began searching, and they thought that by blowing up the whole of this part of the building they could wipe out the evidences of their strong room, thought what they did with Doris I cannot for the life of me understand yet."
"It is very good of you gentlemen to put yourself to all this trouble," said Neal. "You will excuse me not coming back to town with you. I want to see this rubbish put back a little more tidy."
"Another fruitless investigation," remarked Weedon as he and his cousin drove away.
"For us," replied Poole. "And for Neal," said Weedon. "It is curious, too, that he should be so anxious that we should be present when he does anything at this house. I suppose he thinks that with our knowledge of the place we ought to be of some assistance, but I'm afraid we don't help him much. Do you know, I begin to feel after all that he is more candid with me than I deserve."
"Yes, I expect that is just about how he want you to feel. The more he sees of you, the more likely you are to talk, and, on the whole, I think he is certainly doing you a kindness."
"I don't understand what you are driving at."
"My dear chap, surely it is patent to you that nobody except myself can quite accept without further assurance your yarn about the secret and mysterious visit to the house we have just left. Neal is not satisfied as to what are the precise relations between you and the Fitzgeralds. He knows, of course, that you are in love with Miss Fitzgerald, but he is not convinced that this is the full explanation."
"And so he is drawing me out??"
"No, he is giving you a fair opportunity. If you are involved, it is his business to discover the extent to which you are an accessory. If you are not-well, then you have nothing to fear from investigation. That is his way of looking at it."
"But if our friend is as astute as you suggest, why all this delay? You remember, we advised him to clear away the rubbish and see what was behind it-"
"Yes, we wanted navvies and carts and a general exhibition; he left the house just as he found it to all external appearances; and as I gathered from what you have said, he was so far justified in this that he was able to lure one of the gang back to the spot to spy out the land and so get on his track."
"You mean the man whom he followed to Westmoreland?"
"Exactly. You don't suppose he dropped out of the clouds in the Lake District?"
"And, doubtless, he is really very much annoyed with for having baulked his capture?"
"Well, he certainly can't be expected to feel grateful to you for it, but I gather from his manner that he has not entirely drawn blank during his visit to the north. The French police apparently were not quick enough to inform him of Madame Marcelle's arrival in England, but he discovered her by following his man.
"And lost her again because the man failed to puncture the tyre. Another case, I suppose, where the zeal of the amateur foiled the cooler judgment of the professional."
"I don't suppose, my dear Lionel, he has lost the lady at all, or he would not be out in Middlesex. He satisfied himself, you may depend, where the lady has gone before he left Arnside."
"But how? The chauffeur even didn't know where his master was taking the car."
"No, but the car had a number, and these are the days of telegraphy. Does not the fact that Neal has come to London suggest something to you?"
"He certainly got a message which seemed to decide him just before he set out."
"Yes, exactly, and when we get back to my chambers we'll see how railway time-tables will help us."
At Lincoln's Inn Poole ran through the ABC with a copy of the map spread out before him on the table.
"It is quite clear," he said, "that for good reasons your friends did not want to come up to London from the local station from Arnside. Shipley is not a very long run for a motor. As you will observe, there is a midnight train from there to London, and the message which Inspector Neal received from the local police, no doubt, was to the effect that your friends had been seen to hoard the train for London at Shipley."
"But does he know where they are in London?"
"That is more than I can say, although I should think the possibility is that he is hot on the scent."
"Then I can only await developments," said Weedon. "Neal will tell me nothing unless, to use his own expression, I 'pool fair from the start,' and that, as you know, is impossible."
"Yes, I suppose it is, though heaven knows how you will face a cross-examination if Neal should contrive by some means to get you in the box as a hostile witness. The only thing I cannot understand is, that he has not already insisted on bringing you before the coroner; but there are many things about this case which grow more incomprehensible as the days go on."
WEEDON ATTENDED the adjourned inquest. He had a vague hope that something might happen or something be said that would give him a hint of how much Inspector Neal knew. The proceedings were purely formal. The body had already been disposed of, and the coroner readily granted an adjournment for further investigations. Up to now no detailed evidence had been given, and the press were naturally growing insistent. Paragraphs in the early editions of the evening papers plainly hinted at further startling developments.
The brief scene at the inquest was described very fully. It was mentioned that Mr. Stanley Poole, at whose chambers the body of the murdered woman had been found, was present, and that he was accompanied by Dr. Lionel Weedon, with whom he was understood to have been spending the evening on the night of the tragedy. There was a further suggestion that Dr. Weedon would also be called as a witness. This seemed to bear out Stanley Poole's prediction that he would have to stand examination on his knowledge of the parties connected with the case. He wondered if it had been inspired.
He read and re-read the paragraph in his surgery, and endeavoured to frame the replies which he would give to any questions which might be put to him. He remembered an experience when he happened to be in court as a medical witness in a case where the truth was dragged out of an unwilling witness, bit by bit, and he imagined the ordeal to which he himself would be subjected.
"A lady to see you, sir," said his housekeeper, opening the door.
"Oh, isn't Dr. Harvey in? Ask him to see her," replied Weedon. He was in no mood to attend to patients to-day.
"But the lady insists on seeing you, sir."
"Oh, well, show her in," he said wearily.
His visitor held a copy of an evening paper tightly clutched in her hand.
"You gave me your address, Dr. Weedon, at Dover. I admit that at the time I did not think it likely I should require it."
"Madame Marcelle!" exclaimed Weedon, placing a chair for his visitor. "I am indeed glad that you have called. I see you have been reading the newspapers like myself."
"Yes, unhappily it has become necessary now that I should follow them very closely. I understand that you are to give evidence, and you will see by this paper that there is a suggestion that what you say will lead to startling developments."
"The suggestion is quite unauthorised," said Weedon.
"You can at least tell me this, perhaps," said Madame Marcelle in a pleading tone. "Is there anything in the evidence which you are likely to give at this inquiry that means danger to Miss Fitzgerald? I ask it because I fear she will insist, at all costs—"
Madame Marcelle paused suddenly, but Dr. Weedon knew what she was about to say.
"She insists at all costs on seeing me again," he said, "and this errand of yours, Madame, is undertaken for the purpose of keeping us apart. Let me assure you that it is useless. There are others seeking her as well as myself, and in a very short time we shall be face to face in a public court where there can be no opportunity of understanding each other. The arm of the law is long and it is powerful. It is stretched out to draw us together; and it must inevitably succeed."
Madame Marcelle paced the floor of the small surgery with agitated steps. For a long time she said nothing, and then with a sight of despair turned to the doctor.
"Then I suppose it must be," she said. "Will you accompany me?"
The doctor snatched up his hat and shouted for a taxi-cab. Madame Marcelle gave the driver his directions. They drove to a residential quarter in North London and alighted at the corner of the road.
Madame Marcelle led the way through some by-streets, carefully looking round at each turning to see if they were followed. Eventually she let herself into a fairly large house with a latch-key, and entered a set of self-contained apartments on the first floor. With quickened pulses and palpitating heart Weedon followed her into a sitting-room. A figure rose languidly from a deep armchair, and the Indian nurse suddenly dropped her veil. Madame Marcelle gently took the ayah by the arm and led her to another room. There was a whispered conversation and the nurse returned alone.
"Where is your mistress?" said Weedon impatiently.
"I came to see Miss Fitzgerald." The woman slowly lifted her veil, and for the first time since his casual glimpse of her in the Calais train Lionel Weedon looked into her eyes. Then he understood.
"HEAVENS! This is what Madame Marcelle meant when she told me you were safe," said Weedon.
"And this disguise has been effective?" said Miss Fitzgerald anxiously.
"Effective! Yes, even I was deceived although my heart was wiser than my head. I have followed you, and whenever I have been near the Indian nurse something has told me that you were near also: No disguise and no subterfuge can kill the instinct of love."
She stepped back hastily as he tried to take the brown hand in his.
"Don't, I pray you, reopen my wounds!" she said.
"Then the parting was a wound to you?" he said eagerly. "Don't attempt to deny it. Have we not had enough of these futile attempts at deception. You cannot delude yourself: you cannot delude me. You are mine, mine, I say; your own heart has given you to me."
She covered her face with her hands and dropped into a chair. "I entreat you, I implore you, have pity!" she sobbed. The tears ploughed small furrows in the brown stain on her cheeks. She hastily left the room. When she returned she was quite calm, and had removed all trace of her disguise. Her face had resumed its natural beauty.
"I don't think your identity would have been discovered," said Weedon; "but perhaps it was wise. At all events, we have met now. If you will not let me talk of the things which are dearest to me, what is it you wish to say?"
"You give me a promise once, Dr. Weedon. I absolve you from it." She said this as though she were pronouncing her own death sentence.
"And I," retorted Weedon, "decline to be absolved unless you can truthfully assure me that there is no further cause for secrecy."
"No further cause," she repeated mechanically "No, there is no further cause. The struggle is too hard. I give It up."
"But you must not," said Weedon. "No struggle can be too great while I am here to protect you. We have gone through much together, and in small things we have triumphed. Do not consider me. The promise which I gave to you is more sacred to me than life itself. Nothing, nothing, shall drag your secret from me. Even to Madame Marcelle I refused to speak of it without your consent."
"You are faithful Indeed, and I—Oh, I have no right to so much loyalty. Would that I could have foreseen the consequences."
"If you speak of the consequences to me, do not regret them on my account. I would rather have gone through more, far more, than have lost the opportunity of knowing you—of loving you."
A soft light came into her beautiful eyes-a light that shone through Weedon's very soul. It passed, however, and was succeeded with a blank gaze of despair.
"That is the saddest part of all," she said. "To me life contains no greater sorrow, no harsher punishment than the thought that I have led you to speak those words."
"Is it, then, impossible?" he asked.
"Impossible! Impossible!" she replied. "Believe me, it is with an aching heart that I tell you it is best that we should not meet again. It is indeed very unlikely that we shall meet. To- night I leave London. If you are in any danger by keeping our secret, tell all: I shall be many miles away, or—"
"Or what?" asked Weedon. "Tell me, is there further danger? Are you still threatened by those scoundrels? Why do you not put yourself in my hands? Let me denounce them; you know the murderer of your sister—bring him to justice."
"That must be the last resort," she said, "and it would serve no purpose now. The man whom I suspect is well shielded by others; besides, I have no proof. But do not think," she added quickly, "that I am callous; don't suppose that my sister will not be avenged. The laws of your country contain no greater penalty than that which shall surely follow that dark deed."
She spoke with a passionate hate which Weedon had never observed in her before. The bond between herself and her sister must have been very real. He could not have thought her sweet nature capable of so much enmity.
"But you need some help surely in your work," he said. "At least, let me serve you as a favoured henchman if I may not be permitted to look upon you with more than the love which hopes for no reward."
"No, no, you cannot understand. It is not possible."
"And did you send for me only to tell me this?" he asked.
"No, I did not send for you, although I wanted to see you. I know something of your English courts and laws; I have read much about them of late, and when I saw that you were to be called as a witness, I suspected you might be asked questions which, if left unanswered, might harm you in the eyes of your fellow- countrymen, and so I wanted to tell you not to hesitate on my account."
"You are certain that this was your real desire? I feel that it is not. Your desire still is that what occurred when first you came to me should remain unknown to the world, and more particularly to your own friends."
"I admit I had that hope; but I fear it is useless."
"You fear? You are not yet assured? You still have hope if your secret is preserved."
"You press me unfairly. When you look at me like that," she said, "you search my heart—and—"
"And you must tell me the truth," he said. "You ask me to go away; I tell you. I cannot go away. Whatever may be the consequences I cannot. A power that is greater than my own will, stronger than reason, binds me to you. You may go to the utmost ends of the earth, and I shall find you, as I found you in the wild Westmoreland hills. Wherever you are, there I shall follow; guided by unquenchable love, driven by inexorable fate."
Quivering with emotion which she strove vainly to subdue, she again hid her face in her hands. At length she spoke in a hard, unnatural voice.
"Then," she said, "you must know the truth. Perhaps I should have told you before, but each time we met I hoped and believed we should pass out of each other's lives. But since you insist on talking to me as only lovers should speak to each other, I must tell you that I am already married."
"Married!" exclaimed Lionel. "Married, and to one you love?"
"I said married," she replied. "I spoke not of love. Love I never knew until—"
"Until," he repeated, as, in spite of her struggles, he turned her face to his, "until—?"
No further word was necessary. Tears sprang to her eyes as she gently released herself. There was a lump in Weedon's throat which he could not swallow. He felt that all joy in life had departed.
"And your husband?" he said at last.
"What of him?"
"He is husband to me by law, and by law only," she replied. "If I tell you something of my life and do not tell you all, will you believe me, I am not willingly concealing anything?"
"Yes, yes; tell me as much as you can," he replied, hardly knowing what to say.
"My history, then," she said, "is that of many girls of my class: you may have gathered that I am not of your country, although I spoke your language as a child, and therefore do not betray my origin. What I am you may some day know, or you may not; within a very short time now my fate will be decided. I was betrothed when I was scarce in my teens; a legal marriage was solemnised before I was sixteen. My wishes were not consulted; I was not old enough to assert my own independence. My husband left me at the altar; until very recently I did not see him, and then only in the presence of others. I hated him. I have more bitter cause to hate him now, but in law he is still my husband, though I refuse him a wife's love. I may escape the thraldom of my station, but at least he can prevent me from marrying another. Now, will you go?"
"No!" The word rang out with a clearness that startled even Weedon himself. "I will not go; there is something higher and stronger than man-made laws, and though the curse of those laws can make life hopeless for me it cannot prevent my serving you with all the devotion and strength of which I am capable. You are in trouble; you are in danger? Your husband, the man who should be your natural guardian, is your enemy. I know it, you have not said so, but I am sure of it. I promise you that no single word to offend your modesty after what you have told me shall ever pass my lips, but if I have any claim to your gratitude for what I have done in the past, I ask you to let me help you now."
With hands clasped and eyes averted she stood in deep thought before him.
"You are on the brink of some desperate adventure," persisted Weedon; "some new movement is contemplated in the tragic game you are playing. A sense of loyalty to others at the moment restrains you from telling me more. Oh, I can read your thoughts. You need a strong arm and resolute will to aid you."
"If I dared," she murmured.
"Yes, you must dare; there is some mission that I can do for you; some mission that can only be performed by a man, and you are here alone with Madame Marcelle."
"Yes, there is a mission," she said, speaking very softly as though afraid the walls might hear, "a mission on which may hang the issues of life and death, or something worse than death."
"And you will allow me to undertake it for you?" asked Weedon eagerly.
"Hush, not so loud," she said. She opened both doors and then closed them very carefully. "Before I can ask you to do that I must ask you can you thoroughly trust me, even though my conduct may seem inexplicable?"
"I can, and will," replied Weedon.
"Then listen carefully before you decide," she said.
"THERE are some things," said Miss Fitzgerald, speaking in a very soft tone, "that I must still keep from you. I have ties to which I must remain loyal."
Weedon, with an involuntary shudder, thought of the story of the bogus Ketterington, and he dreaded to ask the nature of these ties that bound the woman he loved to her associates.
"When I first met you," she continued, "a dim hope that had been with me for some little time matured suddenly into a definite plan of action. I wished to lose myself in the world of ordinary people, and the first step towards that was to obliterate a certain mark of identity."
"The blue flower on your shoulder?" murmured Weedon.
"Yes, you remember how I came to you. It is not so very many days ago, but much has happened since."
"I shall never forget it; I bless the day for the memories it gives me," said Weedon.
"And curse it perhaps for the disappointments it has created," she observed sadly; "but we must not dwell on that. I assumed that a visit to a doctor whom I could trust, a slight operation and a few days rest would be the end of that part of my story. My plan was then to watch an opportunity of slipping away and living quietly where no one would trouble me. I little thought the incident in your surgery would mean so much. When I got out of the crowd that afternoon when you were attending to your patient in the street, I made a note of the address you had given to the policeman. I did not require it afterwards because I remembered it quite well. I left my little pocket diary on my table. My husband, who had arrived and was enraged at my absence, read it and suspected me."
"Which accounted for the strange visitor I had after you left," said Weedon.
"I was pursued by—one whom I feared, and unhappily when by an accident my return home was delayed. My sister, who had heard inquiries made concerning the address, followed after to warn me."
"And not finding you there, followed me, as she thought, to Stanley Poole's chambers."
"Yes, all this I have managed to discover from scraps of information, although I never saw my sister from the moment I left home."
"But she wore your cloak," interposed Weedon.
"No, we went out occasionally in old cloaks to see something of ordinary life, and vary the terrible monotony of our lives, and our cloaks were exactly similar. In this case the similarity led to a misunderstanding that had terrible consequences for my poor sister. Your surgery must have been watched, and when she came out after visiting it, it was assumed that I had gone back again. The next morning I was told that my sister had left on a visit to some friends during my absence. Then some chance question made me suspect that I had been followed and you will remember I telephoned to you first to your own surgery and then to your cousin's chambers asking you not to be deceived by anything you might hear. I suspected that some device would be adopted for obtaining information from you."
"I remember your message," interposed Weedon. "Even I up to that moment was deceived; I had mistaken your dead sister for you. And when I was brought to Colonel Bloomer's house! Was it by accident or design that I was selected?"
"You came there to attend a patient, but you were also selected in order that they might discover if possible what had passed between us."
"They got very little satisfaction out of that effort; thanks to your timely warning. But who was the man, and who is Colonel Bloomer?"
"These are questions which I cannot answer at this moment, and here it is that I must ask you to trust me," she replied. "I shall have one last hope that I may accomplish my purpose and leave everything behind, but I leave the secret behind also. To tell you would avail nothing; it would not help us."
"I was carefully watched all the day after my return," she continued, "and also the day after you came to the house, and for reasons which I now understand was not even permitted to see a newspaper. I had already telegraphed to Madame Marcelle."
"I found the part of her telegram giving her address by chance," said Weedon.
"It was torn in my hand, and I threw the pieces away," observed Miss Fitzgerald. "They had not time to pick them up, nor had I. They were making hasty preparations to depart, and I contrived to escape. I wandered for some hours in London, hoping I had put them off my track, and then took the boat train at Charing Cross. The rest I think you know. You also know that they followed me to Versailles. I eluded them by taking the part of the faithful ayah, who left in another direction later, but when they discovered that I was not at Versailles they followed Madame Marcelle."
"And you have again outwitted them, I think," said Weedon reassuringly.
"I hope so, but I am not certain. If I knew exactly what they are doing or what they intend to do, I should know how to act."
"And you wish me to find out for you?" said Weedon. "Give me sufficient information to act upon and I will do everything in my power."
"They are fighting a desperate battle," she said. "Up to now they have refrained from more force than was absolutely necessary. They do not want the lives of others on their hands if they can possibly achieve their purpose without, but it is caution not humanity that restrains them. Their lives have been passed amid intrigues and violence."
"Tell me what I can do, and do not consider risks," said Weedon. "Surely, it is better to make one sacrifice if need be, in order to secure your freedom than to live out a hopeless existence in the knowledge that yours is a living death."
She still hesitated. "I ought to remind you," said Weedon, "that the longer you remain associated with these people-the greater is your own danger. The police are already looking for you."
"Yes," she said. "I realise that publicity would spoil my plan."
"And you have no fear for other reasons of being found by the police?" asked Weedon. He could not refrain from putting this question. His mind was still torn with doubt; the whole of the circumstances appeared to suggest that the man who masqueraded as Ketterington was right.
"I don't quite understand what you mean?" she said.
"I may as well be frank," he replied. "The suggestion has been made—it was made to me, I may say, by the man you permitted to escape at Arnside—that your friends and yourself are concerned together in a course of criminal conduct which in this country is known as swindling."
"You mean that we rob and cheat and steal from people? And he told you this? What a liar! what an unscrupulous liar! What could be his purpose?"
"His purpose was to estrange me from you. It was a clever ruse—what we should call a sporting chance. He took the place of a legitimate inquiry agent, and so arranged that I should receive a letter offering his services through my cousin. If I had not responded no harm would have been done, from his point of view. As it was, it proved so far a lucky chance for him. I believed him, and that may explain some of the things I said to you at Versailles."
"And believing this, you have still—"
"Yes, still cherished hopes which now are, alas! but memories."
"And cruel Fate robs me of such devotion," she murmured. The words were spoken to herself, but Weedon heard them.
"It is an unjust Fate, a Fate heaven never intended!" he cried. He took one step towards her. She drew herself up proudly.
"And yet," he added, dropping his head abashed, "it is a Fate which cannot be escaped."
"True, too true!" she said, sinking into a chair and keeping her face from him.
"We must not discuss it. We only invite greater sorrow. Is it not better even now that you should go and hear no more?"
"No, no!" he replied. "Give me something to do; something in which I may honourably work for you, and then let the parting come—if parting there must be."
"The lies told to you," she said, still speaking with her head averted, "have only one foundation. It is true we are engaged in what from some points of view might be called a conspiracy, but it is not one that will bring us within the laws of your country. If it were I would not allow you even indirectly to have any part in it. If I can escape it will fail; now you can understand why they are so anxious to keep me within their circle. They are not criminals. I cannot explain more."
"And my part—what is my part to be?" asked Weedon.
"It may be a very simple part. They meet casually as though they were ordinary strangers in a certain café. If there is any reason for private consultation they there appoint a meeting- place. It is a café where ladies may not go alone. You will hear nothing said there by them more than to arrange a further meeting. There will be four, of them—possibly disguised—and each will ask for vodka from a certain waiter, who will reply that they do not keep it, and then they will ask for absinthe. Apparently by accident they will appear to get into conversation; and if one of them remarks that London is dull and the others agree, there is nothing further to discuss. If one remarks that there is an interesting play at the Court, it means he has news and they will disperse. Each separately will then proceed to a house on the outskirts."
"The house we were in? They will then be captured?" said Weedon.
"No, not there; but at a house in the same neighbourhood. I will give you directions to it. It is quite a small house, and is occupied by a single servant, who appears like an ordinary English country woman. I believe she is true to me. They will reach the house by devious routes. If you go direct you may be there before them. Tell her you come from me; give her this coin as a token. Say I wish to know where and when the next Court will be held."
"And is that all?"
"That is all. Her answer will give me information upon which I call act."
"But you said it was a mission of danger?"
"The danger is not apparent, but it is there. I told you I thought the woman was true to me; if I am deceived she may delude you or entrap you. Then you will have desperate men against you."
There was a gentle but insistent tap at the door through which Madame Marcelle had gone.
"You must go now," said Miss Fitzgerald, holding out her hand to him.
He reverently kissed the tips of her fingers and went on his strange mission.
LIONEL WEEDON had a slight knowledge of the café where he was to meet the gentlemen to whom he intended to direct his close attention. It was patronised by cosmopolitans and by young men whose ambition was to be thought Bohemian. He paid a visit first to a costumier's. He fixed a moustache on his shaven upper lip, covered his black hair with a rich brown wig, and wore a Byronic collar with a negligee bow.
Drinking coffee and idly smoking cigarettes as he read the Continental papers in the restaurant, a man whom he recognised as his antagonist in the duel at Versailles came in and sat near him. As he expected the gentleman asked for vodka, and when the waiter answered that they did not keep it, called for absinthe. Two other men each sitting near by made the same request, and had the same reply. One was older than the other two. Weedon would not have recognised them; evidently they, too, were growing cautious and recognised the need for disguise.
"Strange thing they do not keep vodka in a cosmopolitan place like this," remarked one of the men casually, and the other men smiled assent. After the manner of people who casually meet in restaurants they chatted together on this chance introduction as they sipped their absinthe. They talked of various places of resort in London and of music-halls and theatres, and the older man, as he lit a fresh cigarette, remarked casually as a fourth man strolled by:
"I hear there is an interesting play at the Court."
Without attracting attention Weedon as soon as possible left the café. He hired a taxi and drove to the house indicated by Miss Fitzgerald. The woman held the door a few inches open in reply to his knock until he handed her the foreign coin, and told her that the lady who had given him this wished to know where and when the next Court would be held. The woman beckoned him inside and carefully closed the door.
"I do not know," she said, speaking in English without an accent. "Perhaps I may be able to tell to-night. Will you come back?"
"Yes, perhaps in an hour or two's time," replied Weedon.
"How will you let me know if the coast is clear? Will you put a light in this window here to the right?"
The woman nodded and opened the door. The next moment she closed it again hurriedly, and with a look of terror turned to Weedon.
"It's too late!" she whispered. "You can't go this way, nor that way," she added, pointing to the back door. "One will come in that direction. You must hide. If they should find you here!"
She led him to one of the rooms and pointed to a big cupboard. "Remain in there and do not make a sound," she said. "I would take you to the garret, but there's no time."
She had scarcely shut him in the cupboard and left the room before Weedon heard a peculiar knock on the front door. After that he waited for some time and thought of the warning that the woman might betray him.
He heard the key of the cupboard turned stealthily in the lock. His first inclination was to resent this by bursting open the door, but prudence told him that this would prevent the accomplishment of the object for which he was there.
He had brought a small electric torch with him, and he turned the light on to the cupboard door. The lock was an old-fashioned one that shot into a brass fixture and not into the middle of the opposite door. With a penknife he quietly drew out the screws so that he could slip back the lock with his fingers. An irresistible curiosity compelled him to open the door slightly. He found that the room was in darkness, and he stepped out of the cupboard to stretch his limbs.
He heard sounds from a room opposite and disregarding the woman's advice he crept noiselessly to the door. The voices grew louder. He could not distinguish the words, but he gathered that two of the men were in animated altercation until a third voice speaking in a tone of authority intervened.
Weedon could not overcome the temptation to step out into the passage. The voices were more subdued now, and still he could not hear what the men were saying. There was a sound of hasty footsteps as though one of them were walking towards the door, and Weedon moved into the shadows further down the passage.
The door was not opened, however; the man was evidently only pacing the floor as a relief to his feelings. Weedon, as he stood back in the darkness, was conscious that somebody was near him. He felt his wrist clutched hysterically by a woman's soft hand.
"Why have you come out?" whispered a terrified voice in his ear. Before he could reply the woman placed her other hand over his mouth. She tried to lead him back to the room, but, having in mind the possibility of treachery, he declined to move.
The conversation in the room was renewed, and Weedon then understood why the woman was standing here, and why she wanted him to go away. There was an angle in the wall which screened her from the passage. As his eyes grew accustomed to the semidarkness he saw that there was a narrow opening, covered from the inside by the paper on the wall, and usually concealed from this side by a small wooden bracket, which the woman had temporarily removed.
"Nicholas is quite right," he heard a voice say. "You have wrought infinite mischief by your criminal and foolish jealousy. Your uncontrollable passion, Ivan, is the cause of all our troubles, but it is too late to discuss that. We have to consider the position in the light of circumstances as they now are. I understand, Nicholas, that her Excellency is obdurate?"
"So I was informed," replied the man thus addressed.
"But are we to be baulked in this way?" said a third voice, the voice of a man in anger.
"We must act!"
"But how?" asked the man who had first spoken. "Remember that at present we are shadowed by the English police."
"English police!" responded the other man. "Are we the persons to be subjected to the ordinary police like common people?"
"In this country, yes; moreover, our latest information is that our enemies at home are working through the secret service and the English authorities. Only one thing can save us. We must establish her Excellency at once. That will give us the power how possessed by our opponents-but to do that she must be present."
"Drag her there. Your methods are too gentle. At least give me the right to say what shall be done in a matter where I have some authority."
"It is the insistence on that right that has upset our plans. She must be lured there by some device; let her imagine she is escaping us, and then follow her. Once in the right environment, persuasion will avail. Remember, after all, she is a woman with a woman's natural ambitions."
"Then when is the next Court to be held?" asked the third voice.
Weedon strained his ears, but before there was a reply to this question, he heard a sudden movement in the room as of surprised men springing to alert attention.
"Turn out the light!" the leader of the men said in a sharp whisper.
The woman dragged Weedon behind a heavy curtain. Stealthy footsteps rushed past him, and he followed them through the open door at the back. In the moonlight he saw four figures scatter in different directions. Three dispersed to the front of the house, he followed one of them, and after running for some little time he recognised that they were nearing the back of the grounds of Colonel Bloomer's mansion.
Here the men paused in the darkness of the trees and Weedon drew back under the fence. The fourth man had got there more easily by a shorter cut: The other two men came in sight, and behind them could be heard the heavy beat of footsteps. They had drawn the pursuers off the older man, who had now opened the gate with a key and entered the grounds. He held it for his colleagues and slammed it as they ran through.
Weedon clambered to the top of the fence and peered amongst the tires hi the garden where he and Stanley Poole had made their fruitless search for Doris. The running men reached the thick part of the fence where Doris' glove had been found, and then disappeared. He saw no more of them, nor did he hear their pattering footsteps on the path. They had gone as completely as though the earth has swallowed them up.
The men who had been following the fugitives clambered over the fence and ran among the bushes in the garden, flashing lights as they went. "Here you are, come on!" a man said, stepping out of among the bushes where the others had disappeared.
Weedon recognised the voice; it was Inspector Neal. His men closed round him; and they too disappeared.
"Not so fast there. Come back!" Neal shouted in a warning voice, and Weedon heard a faint rumbling sound as of firearms under the earth. He jumped off the fence and fell among the heavy undergrowth.
"Stop that man," shouted Neal, bending over a man whom his companions had placed on the ground. Weedon took the precaution of tearing off the wig and moustache just before a plain-clothes man leapt upon him.
"It's all right, Mr. Neal," he shouted, "it is I, Dr. Weedon. You have an injured man there, I see. Let me help you."
At a motion from Neal his subordinate released the doctor and he knelt beside the wounded officer. The man was not fatally injured, but it was a nasty wound. While Weedon was attending him another officer came running up from the house.
"They are trying to remove the stones we put back at the other entrance, sir," he said to Neal. "Let them, and wait for them as they come out," replied the inspector. "They cannot, unless we remove them from the outside, sir, and that will warn them."
"Well, set somebody on there, and let us watch from this end. We have them like rats in a trap; Hullo! they are making a dash for it. Now, then, pick your men, boys," he added quickly, as that queer rumbling sound, which people who have ferreted for rabbits know so well, was heard--only much louder.
Weedon was busily attending to his patient. He heard the spiteful snap of revolver shot, and then felt a sharp, stinging pain. From that moment he could remember no more.
DREAMS are said to be one's waking thoughts, and Lionel Weedon's dream was of a caressing hand and a soft face pressed to his own. He opened his eyes and looked round the neat, reposeful room.
"Don't move!" said a voice from a chair at the side of the bed. "You must not disturb the bandages yet."
A pair of eyes looked at him in tender anxiety, and he saw that though now lit up with joy they were weary with watching.
"You are safe?" he said feebly. "I tried my best to complete my mission; but, as you see, I could not come back to you. I have a very confused recollection of what has happened."
"We'll tell you all about that presently," said the lady, whom he still knew as Miss Fitzgerald. "There it plenty of time; I must go and call the doctor and nurse. I promised I would as soon as you woke up."
Before he could restrain her she had left the room.
"Well, you are coming round all right!" said Dr. Harvey, who came in very shortly afterwards. "You've had a narrow shave; it was a ricochet, evidently. Had it been a clean shot it would have killed you."
"But what has happened? I cannot quite remember."
"It was a pretty stiff fight from what I can gather, and yours is the least of the casualties. The Fates have meted out poetic justice for once; the rest won't be missed very badly. But don't talk now. I am going to send the nurse in to look after you. Later on, when we have got you propped up comfortably on a couch we'll have a chat about things.. That other lady is a brick; She has insisted on watching by you all the time."
Weedon patiently submitted to his treatment, and before long he picked up strength, though the bullet that grazed and stunned him had caused a loss, of blood, and he was still rather weak.
"I SHOULD IMAGINE this is the last of your adventures with that crowd?" remarked Stanley Poole when at last he was well enough to get about.
"There is one thing to be said for them. They put up a sporting fight at the finish. They wounded, one or two police officers, and when they found they could not break through they turned their revolvers on each other. One man only survived."
"And he is still alive?" asked Weedon.
"No! He lived only long enough to tell his own story. It could hardly be said that he told it in a way to make peace with his Maker, because it was rather in the nature of a taunt than a confession. He had some rather uncomplimentary things to say about the meddlesome doctor, which proved him an ungrateful brute."
"Was he short of a finger?"
"Yes, that's just it. He was the man whose life you prolonged. The police surgeon was right about the poison. He admitted that he caught the woman at the door of my chambers, and that by scratching her neck with his fingernail he injected the poison, but he seems to have bungled it, and some slight speck--the police surgeon says that as much as a pin prick would set up slow poisoning--get under his own finger nail. You operated just in time. He has gone to his long account now, and the mystery of the murder is cleared up so far as the police are concerned."
"Then there will be no further revelations? Suspicion--"
"Does no longer rest on any other person. The man declined to give any reason for the crime except that the harboured some personal grievance."
"Was Neal injured in the fight?"
"No, he came out all right. He had carefully measured the passage, and had taken the direction and suspected there was a secret opening in the garden. He had the men followed to the place where I understand from Mrs Fitzgerald you tracked them, and so arranged his men that they should be driven in that direction if they bolted. He concealed himself at the spot where he suspected the entrance, and thus watched them run into their own trap. It was a cleverly concealed opening under the stump of a big tree. These people must have had plenty of ingenuity and any amount of money."
"And they had a common purpose. But their real leader--the man in whose interest they were acting--what of him? Is he still to claim?"
Weedon watched Poole eagerly as he asked this. His cousin smiled. indulgently.
"Now you are going into matters that are beyond me, Lionel," he said. "I imagine that somebody else can tell you more about the higher politics of the business than I can. I won't worry you any more, because I think you have had about enough of me for the moment."
He left Lionel still propped among the pillows, and a few moments afterwards returned with Miss Fitzgerald.
"I suppose you could spare me for a few minutes," he said, as he pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch.
Miss Fitzgerald drew a chair near the couch.
"You will soon be strong again," she said. "You have passed through some strange adventures."
"Which have ended for others in a grim tragedy," he said. "But tell me about' yourself; how do these things affect your future?"
"Perhaps," she replied, "I had better tell you the story from the beginning. The time has now come when I must do so. It is impossible you may have heard of an ancient Archduchy in Southern Europe—one that has retained its old powers throughout the changes of time and is still a ruling family. There is at present a Regency. The Salic law does not prevail, and the heiress is a woman who came of age some time ago. They are waiting for her."
"And you are the Archduchess?" said Wooden, "to whom the conspirators referred as 'her Excellency.'"
"Two girls were born to the late Archduke," continued the lady, without directly replying to his question, "and at the birth of the second his wife died. Very shortly afterwards he was killed while hunting tigers during a visit to India, where, having lost his protection, some of his nearest relatives remained in comparative exile. There were fears that an attempt might be made by a rival House to seize the Archduchy, and the young girls were both marked in a certain way in the presence of witnesses in case any question of identification should arise. They were placed under the care of a lady who was partly French and partly English, the daughter of one whom their mother had befriended and who was married to an Anglo-Indian merchant."
"Madame Marcelle?" murmured Weedon.
"Yes, Madame Marcelle was the lady," she replied. "The girls lived for some time in India, and then were sent to Europe In her charge. The elder of the two was married to the son of a neighbouring Archduke with a view to uniting family influence."
"And that marriage," said Weedon, "was the ceremony of which you spoke, the consequences of which you wish to avoid."
"When I first met you," continued the lady, "the time was ripe for asserting the position of the Archduchess. She must either claim her rights then or the claim of her rival would hold good. Her uncle and other members of the family followed her and insisted that she should return to her own country. She shrank from it. There were private means enough to bring her comfort and happiness invested in the care of Madame Marcelle and her son at Versailles, and her daughter's husband in the north of England. Had she disappeared her sister would have succeeded her, but her sister's terrible death made the situation more difficult."
"And when you temporarily eluded them Doris was a most fortunate substitute to meet an emergency?"
"Yes, by a coincidence, a person of high degree had arrived in London. The people were growing anxious, and he demanded to see the heiress. It was a hurried visit, fortunately for their plans. He was told that the lady was temporarily ill, and it might be dangerous to her health to disturb her rest. The mark of identification and the assurance of the uncle of the Archduchess was sufficient."
"And why were there such elaborate preparations at the house of the man known as Colonel Bloomer?"
"They suspected treachery from the rival claimants, and the passage underground was constructed secretly to cope with all emergencies. Colonel Bloomer, as you may suppose, was a mere alias, so was Mr. Fitzgerald. By the aid of the secret passage they were able to go into the house or come out of it either openly or in secret. Four other high-born men were concerned. One, the husband of the Archduchess, who, in a mad passion of jealousy against the woman, who made no secret of her hatred of him, murdered the sister in mistake for her. When he found' that she was still alive his determination to drag his wife, back was all the greater.'"
"But why did you not openly defy them and throw yourself onto the protection of the British law?" asked Weedon.
"There is such a thing." replied the lady, "as duty to one's family. The other men were fiercely and passionately loyal to the House to which they belonged. I loathed the man to whom they had bound me; my desire was to escape him. I had no wish to expose them to ignominy. You know their pride. They perished rather than suffer the indignity of an English prison as accessories to my husband's crime. Now, however, they have paid their debt, and I owe nothing to any living soul. The other minor characters in the grim drama, the lady who brought you to the house, the henchmen who assisted them, have all dispersed, and will readily find new masters in the reigning House. The mystery of the missing Archduchess will never be revealed. I am free."
"Free, free!" repeated Weedon.
"Free to live in England."
"Yes, free to live in England," she said, as she unresistingly allowed him to take her hand in his.
"And free also," he said, "free also to love whom you will?"
For answer she pressed her lips to his.