A man-servant answered my summons.
"Mrs Anson?" I inquired.
"Mrs Anson is out of town, sir," answered the man. "The house is let."
"Furnished?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is your mistress at home?" I inquired.
"I don't know, sir," answered the man, diplomatically.
"Oh, of course!" I exclaimed, taking out a card. It was the first I
found within my cigarette-case, and was intentionally not my own. "Will
you take this to your mistress, and ask her if she will kindly spare me
a few moments. I am a friend of Mrs Anson's."
"I'll see if she's at home, sir," said the man, dubiously; and then,
asking me into the entrance-hall, he left me standing while he went in
search of his mistress.
That hall was the same down which I had groped my way when blind. I saw
the closed door of the drawing-room, and knew that within that room the
young man whose name I knew not had been foully done to death. There
was the very umbrella stand from which I had taken the walking-stick,
and the door of the little-used library, which I had examined on that
night when I had dined there at Mrs Anson's invitation--the last night
of my existence as my real self.
The man returned in a few moments and invited me into a room on the
left--the morning-room, I supposed it to be--saying:
"My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you."
I had not remained there more than a couple of minutes before a youngish
woman of perhaps thirty or so entered, with a rather distant bow. She
was severely dressed in black; dark-haired, and not very prepossessing.
Her lips were too thick to be beautiful, and her top row of teeth seemed
too much in evidence. Her face was not exactly ugly, but she was by no
means good-looking.
"I have to apologise," I said, rising and bowing. "I understand that
Mrs Anson has let her house, and I thought you would kindly give me her
address. I wish to see her on a most pressing personal matter."
She regarded me with some suspicion, I thought.
"If you are a friend of Mrs Anson's, would it not be better if you
wrote to her and addressed the letter here? Her letters are always
forwarded," she answered.
She was evidently a rather shrewd and superior person.
"Well, to tell the truth," I said, "I have reasons for not writing."
"Then I must regret, sir, that I am unable to furnish you with her
address," she responded, somewhat stiffly.
"I have been absent from London for six years," I exclaimed. "It is
because of that long absence that I prefer not to write."
"I fear that I cannot assist you," she replied briefly.
There was a strange, determined look in her dark-grey eyes. She did not
seem a person amenable to argument.
"But it is regarding an urgent and purely private affair that I wish to
see Mrs Anson," I said.
"I have nothing whatever to do with the private affairs of Mrs Anson,"
she replied. "I merely rent this house from her, and, in justice to
her, it is not likely that I give the address to every chance caller."
"I am no chance caller," I responded. "During her residence here six
years ago I was a welcome guest at her table."
"Six years ago is a long time. You may, for aught I know, not be so
welcome now."
Did she, I wondered, speak the truth?
"You certainly speak very plainly, madam," I answered, rising stiffly.
"If I have put you to any inconvenience I regret it. I can, no doubt,
obtain from some other person the information I require."
"Most probably you can, sir," she answered, in a manner quite unruffled.
"I tell you that if you write I shall at once forward your letter to
her. More than that I cannot do."
"I presume you are acquainted with Miss Mabel Anson?" I inquired.
She smiled with some sarcasm.
"The Anson family do not concern me in the least, sir," she replied,
also rising as sign that my unfruitful interview was at an end. Mention
of Mabel seemed to have irritated her, and although I plied her with
further questions, she would tell me absolutely nothing.
When I bowed and took my leave I fear that I did not show her very much
politeness.
In my eagerness for information, her hesitation to give me Mrs Anson's
address never struck me as perfectly natural. She, of course, did not
know me, and her offer to forward a letter was all that she could do in
such circumstances. Yet at the time I did not view it in that light,
but regarded the tenant of that house of mystery as an ill-mannered and
extremely disagreeable person.
In despair I returned to St James's Street and entered my club, the
Devonshire. Several men whom I did not know greeted me warmly in the
smoking-room, and, from their manner, I saw that in my lost years I had
evidently not abandoned that institution. They chatted to me about
politics and stocks, two subjects upon which I was perfectly ignorant,
and I was compelled to exercise considerable tact and ingenuity in order
to avoid betraying the astounding blank in my mind.
After a restless hour I drove back westward and called at old Channing's
in Cornwall Gardens in an endeavour to learn Mabel's address. The
colonel was out, but I saw Mrs Channing, and she could, alas! tell me
nothing beyond the fact that Mrs Anson and her daughter had been abroad
for three years past--where, she knew not. They had drifted apart, she
said, and never now exchanged letters.
"Is Mabel married?" I inquired as carelessly as I could, although in
breathless eagerness.
"I really don't know," she responded. "I have heard some talk of the
likelihood of her marrying, but whether she has done so I am unaware."
"And the man whom rumour designated as her husband? Who was he?" I
inquired quickly.
"A young nobleman, I believe."
"You don't know his name?"
"No. It was mentioned at the time, but it has slipped my memory. One
takes no particular notice of teacup gossip."
"Well, Mrs Channing," I said confidently, "I am extremely desirous of
discovering the whereabouts of Mabel Anson. I want to see her upon a
rather curious matter which closely concerns herself. Can you tell me
of any one who is intimate with them?"
"Unfortunately, I know of no one," she answered. "The truth is, that
they left London quite suddenly; and, indeed, it was a matter for
surprise that they neither paid farewell visits nor told any of their
friends where they were going."
"Curious," I remarked--"very curious!"
Then there was, I reflected, apparently some reason for the present
tenant at The Boltons refusing the address.
"Yes," Mrs Channing went on, "it was all very mysterious. Nobody knows
the real truth why they went abroad so suddenly and secretly. It was
between three and four years ago now, and nothing, to my knowledge, has
since been heard of them."
"Very mysterious," I responded. "It would seem almost as though they
had some reason for concealing their whereabouts."
"That's just what lots of people have said. You may depend upon it that
there is something very mysterious in it all. We were such very close
friends for years, and it is certainly strange that Mrs Anson has never
confided in me the secret of her whereabouts."
I remembered the old colonel's strange warning on that evening long ago,
when I had first met Mabel at his table. What, I wondered, could he
know of them to their detriment?
I remained for a quarter of an hour longer. The colonel's wife was full
of the latest tittle-tattle, as the wife of an _ex-attache_ always is.
It is part of the diplomatic training to be always well-informed in the
sayings and doings of our neighbours; and as I allowed her to gossip on
she revealed to me many things of which I was in ignorance. Nellie, her
daughter, had, it appeared, married the son of a Newcastle shipowner a
couple of years before, and now lived near Berwick-on-Tweed.
Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I asked whether she knew Miss
Wells or the man Hickman, who had been my fellow-guests on that night
when I had dined at The Boltons.
"I knew a Miss Wells--a very pronounced old maid, who was a friend of
hers," answered Mrs Channing. "But she caught influenza about a year
ago, and died of it. She lived in Edith Villas, Kensington."
"And Hickman, a fair man, of middle age, with a very ugly face?"
She reflected.
"I have no recollection of ever having met him, or of hearing of him,"
she answered. "Was he an intimate friend?"
"I believe so," I said. Then, finding that she could explain nothing
more, I took my leave.
Next day and the next I wandered about London aimlessly and without
hope. Mabel and her mother had, for some unaccountable reason, gone
abroad and carefully concealed their whereabouts. Had this fact any
connexion with the mysterious tragedy that had been enacted at The
Boltons? That one thought was ever uppermost in my mind.
A week passed, and I still remained at the _Grand_, going forth each
day, wandering hither and thither, but never entering the club or going
to places where I thought it likely that I might be recognised. I could
not return to the life at Denbury with that angular woman at the head of
my table--the woman who called herself my wife. If I returned I felt
that the mystery of it all must drive me to despair, and I should, in a
fit of desperation, commit suicide.
I ask any of those who read this strange history of my life, whether
they consider themselves capable of remaining calm and tranquil in such
circumstances, or of carefully going over all the events in their
sequence and considering them with logical reasoning. I tried to do so,
but in vain. For hours I sat within the hotel smoking and thinking. I
was living an entirely false life, existing in the fear of recognition
by unknown friends, and the constant dread that sooner or later I must
return to that hated life in Devonshire.
That a hue-and-cry had been raised regarding my disappearance was plain
from a paragraph which I read in one of the morning papers about ten
days after my departure from Denbury. In the paragraph I was designated
as "a financier well known in the City," and it was there stated that I
had left my home suddenly "after betraying signs of insanity," and had
not since been heard of.
"Insanity!" I laughed bitterly as I read those lines supplied by the
Exeter correspondent of the Central News. The police had, no doubt,
received my description, and were actively on the watch to trace me and
restore me to my "friends."
For nearly a fortnight I had been in hiding, and was now on the verge of
desperation. By means of one of the cheques I had taken from Denbury I
succeeded in drawing a good round sum without my bankers being aware of
my address, and was contemplating going abroad in order to avoid the
possibility of being put under restraint as a lunatic, when one evening,
in the dusky, sunset, I went forth and wandered down Northumberland
Avenue to the Victoria Embankment. In comparison with the life and
bustle of the Strand and Trafalgar Square, the wide roadway beside the
Thames is always quiet and reposeful. Upon that same pavement over
which I now strolled in the direction of the Temple I had, in the days
of my blindness, taken my lessons in walking alone. That pavement had
been my practice-ground on summer evenings under the tender guidance of
poor old Parker, the faithful servant now lost to me. My eyesight had
now grown as strong as that of other men. The great blank in my mind
was all that distinguished me from my fellows. During those past
fourteen days I had been probing a period which I had not lived, and
ascertaining by slow degrees the events of my unknown past.
And as I strolled along beneath the plane trees over that broad pavement
I recollected that the last occasion I had been there was on that
memorable evening when I had lost myself, and was subsequently present
at the midnight tragedy in that house of mystery. I gazed around.
In the ornamental gardens, bright with geraniums, some tired Londoners
were taking their ease upon the seats provided by that most paternal of
all metropolitan institutions, the London County Council; children were
shouting as they played at ball and hopscotch, that narrow strip of
green being, alas! all they knew of Nature's beauty outside their world
of bricks and mortar. The slight wind stirred the dusty foliage of the
trees beneath which I walked, while to the left river-steamers belched
forth volumes of black smoke, and barges slowly floated down with the
tide. On either side were great buildings, and straight before the dome
of St Paul's. Over all was that golden, uncertain haze which in
central London is called sunset, the light which so quickly turns to
cold grey, without any of those glories of crimson and gold which those
in the country associate with the summer sun's decline.
That walk induced within me melancholy thoughts of a wasted life. I
loved Mabel Anson--I loved her with all my soul. Now that marriage with
her was no longer within the range of possibility I was inert and
despairing, utterly heedless of everything. I had, if truth be told, no
further desire for life. All joy within me was now blotted out.
At length, at Blackfriars Bridge, I retraced my steps, and some twenty
minutes later, as I took my key from the hotel bureau, the clerk handed
me a note, addressed to "Burton Lawrence, Esquire," the fictitious name
I had given. It had been delivered by boy-messenger.
Then I was discovered! My heart leapt into my mouth.
I tore open the envelope, and read its contents. They were brief and to
the point.
"The undersigned will be obliged," it ran, "if Mr Burton Lawrence will
be present this evening at eight o'clock, in the main-line
booking-office of the Brighton Railway, at Victoria Station. An
interview is of very pressing importance."
The note was signed, by that single word which had always possessed such
mysterious signification, the word "Avel."
Hitherto, in my old life long ago, receipt of communications from that
mysterious correspondent had caused me much anxiety of mind. I had
always feared their advent; now, however, I actually welcomed it, even
though it were strange and unaccountable that the unknown writer should
know my whereabouts and the name beneath which I had sought to conceal
my identity.
I made a hasty dinner in the coffee-room, and went forthwith to
Victoria, wondering whom I should meet. The last time I had kept one of
those strange appointments on that summer evening long ago in Hyde Park,
I had come face to face with the woman I loved. Would that I could meet
her now!
I entered the booking-office, searching it with eager eyes. Two lines
of persons were taking tickets at the pigeon-holes, while a number of
loungers were, like myself, awaiting friends. Beyond, upon the
platform, all was bustle as is usual at that hour, when the belated
portion of business London is bound for the southern suburbs. From that
busy terminus of the West End trains were arriving and departing each
minute.
The big illumined clock showed that it was yet five minutes to the hour.
Therefore I strolled out upon the platform, lounged around the
bookstalls, and presently returned to the spot indicated in the letter.
As I re-entered the booking-office my eager eyes fell upon a figure
standing before me--a well-dressed figure, with a face that smiled upon
me.
An involuntary cry of surprise escaped my lips. The encounter was
sudden and astounding; but in that instant, as I rushed forward to greet
the new-comer, I knew myself to be on the verge of a startling and
remarkable discovery.