“I, Mr. Ratton, am Nemesis. Mr. Isolda, if I may add what seems to be
an unaccustomed prefix, is a worker of wonders; I represent that power
which brings those wonders to naught, proving them to be the poor
antics of a clumsy charlatan.”
Isolda cried, with what he probably meant to be crushing dignity:
“Brayshaw! Put this woman outside at once.”
The command seemed to be addressed to the barrel-shaped person. There
was dignity neither in the manner of his approach nor in the words he
used.
“Now, young woman, out you go; we’ve seen your sort before; we want
none of your nonsense here. Not another word--outside! I don’t want to
touch you, but I shan’t hesitate to do so if you make me.”
I smiled at the barrel-shaped man; the idea of such a creature putting
me out of the room really was too funny.
“I will recommend you, Mr. Brayshaw, not to touch me, unless you wish
to discover what an extremely ugly customer a woman can be.”
He tried to touch me, stretching out his hand with, I fancy, the
intention of taking me by the shoulder; I am quite sure, before he
knew what had struck him, he was on his back on the floor. The others
stared as if they had witnessed some remarkable feat; as a matter of
fact, the man was as incapable of offering resistance to a normally
robust person, who had had even a smattering of physical training, as
if he had been a barrel of lard.
“If you will be advised by me, you will allow me to make the remarks I
intend to make without any interruption, because, in any case, I
intend to make them.”
Mr. Ratton made a movement as if to induce the great Isolda to act on
my advice.
“Let her speak--the lady seems to be a bit of a character. Are any of
these remarks of yours meant for me, or would you rather I went?”
“I would rather you stayed. You, Mr. George Ratton, have conspired
with this--creature against a young girl, whose honour and happiness
it should have been your first duty to guard at the risk of your own.”
Mr. Ratton again went very red in the face--it was queer how red he
did go. “What the dickens do you mean?” he muttered.
“Last Friday afternoon you bribed him to make certain statements to
her, which you hoped would induce and, indeed, practically compel her
to become your wife. A monstrous marriage it would have been!”
I told them what some of these statements were. He was divided between
astonishment and rage.
“How in thunder do you know that I said anything of the kind?” He
turned to Isolda. “Did you tell her? Is that the secret of your
pretending that I gave the show away? If you did----”
He clenched his fists--for the instant it looked as if matters might
be breezy. I interposed.
“Mr. Ratton, God sometimes uses the foolish to confound the wise, and
gives to the weak power to bring the strong to confusion. Your
accomplice charges you with having, to use your own phrase, given the
show away. You attribute to him the same offence; whereas it was I who
gave you both away. I saw what you said; I warned your intended victim
over the telephone. She came to this man armed with a knowledge which
enabled her to convict him of imposture out of his own mouth. The
shame of his detection, and of her plain speaking, rankled. He sent
her a telegram signed by the name of the man whom she intends to
marry, asking her to meet him in Richmond Park. In Richmond Park she
was met by one of this man’s emissaries, who drugged and kidnapped
her. He holds her at present in confinement, and sent this thing just
now to the King’s Restaurant with a proposal to hand her over to you
for a consideration, so that you might practise such vile arts as you
thought proper to force her to become your wife, and use her money to
pay your debts--which are some of them, as you are aware, of a very
peculiar kind, and give you something approaching a respectable
position in society. How the law punishes such offences as yours you
know; I would put it instantly into action were it not that I am
reluctant to allow that ignorant, innocent, unsuspecting child--in
everything that counts she is but a child--to run the risk of becoming
the leading figure in a hideous public scandal. If she is back again
in her own home, sound in mind and body, this evening by seven o’clock
sharp, I may keep silent. If she is not, by a quarter-past, warrants
shall be issued against all three of you; I promise you they shall be
put into execution.”
I turned to the door, and, with the handle in my hand, while they eyed
me as if amazement had deprived them of the power of speech, I
delivered my parting words:
“You understand--for her--home, at seven; or for you--jail, at a
quarter-past.”
On that I went, leaving them to make such comments on their visitor as
they might think most appropriate. More than once, during the
intervening two or three hours, I wondered if I had been wise; if, for
the girl’s sake, I ought not to have taken more active steps to bring
them to a proper sense of what the situation required. It was with
feelings which were distinctly mixed that I alighted from the taxi-cab
which drew up at the door of the house in Hyde Park Gate a few minutes
before eight. The moment, however, that the door was opened, I knew
that my knowledge of masculine human nature had not been at fault, and
that my fears, at least in one direction, had been baseless. As I
entered the hall I saw May’s dainty face peeping over the staircase.
When she saw who it was she came rushing down the stairs, two or three
at a time, and tore towards me. When she was, to all intents and
purposes, in my arms, she said, in what was intended as a whisper for
my ear alone:
“Oh, Miss Lee, Miss Lee, Lucille has come home. Do come upstairs and
see her.”
I went upstairs, and on the threshold of the drawing-room there stood
a tall, slim maiden, dressed in some wonderful concoction of
cornflower blue, with flaxen hair, in which there was a natural waving
ripple, which was parted in the middle and brushed close to her
well-shaped head. I thought of what her sister had told me; in a sense
she certainly did look as if butter would not melt in her mouth--all
the same, as May had admitted, I felt sure that it would; there was
that light and laughter in her eyes which, when one is very young,
goes hand in hand with mischief.
“I am Lucille Godwin; it was you who sent me that telephone message; I
put an advertisement in the paper asking whoever it was to communicate
with me. It is just as well you did, because I meant to put it again
and again, until you did; I might have been almost ruined if I had had
to keep on putting it in for years.”
“Have you anything to do,” asked May, “with her being here now?”
“There have been certain incidents since I saw you this morning. I
don’t know if there will be time to speak of them before dinner is
ready.”
“Dinner won’t be ready till at least half-past eight, so just you tell
us everything. Please--please! I’m simply boiling over with wanting to
know.”
I told them what had happened since the morning. Their excitement was
amusing. They interrupted me with interjections, ejaculations,
exclamations of horror and surprise. When I had finished, Lucille
clasped her hands in front of her with what might almost have been the
rapt enthusiasm of a medieval saint; she looked the character too.
“Oh, it’s just simply wonderful. Listening to you sends little thrills
all up and down my back. Do you know you’re a miracle worker, Miss
Lee?”
“Should I be intruding myself upon your confidence if I asked where
you have been since last Tuesday?” I replied.
“That’s just it--I don’t know. Isn’t it awful? But I tell you what I
do know. I took a cab up to Richmond Park Gate. Instead of Jack, who I
was dying to see, a dapper little man, in a grey overcoat and a grey
felt hat----”
“The same man,” interposed May, “it must have been--who brought her
card this morning, and wanted her jewel-case and things.”
“I saw that grey overcoat and grey felt hat this afternoon,” I
observed.
“He said that Jack was waiting with a motor down by the Penn Ponds.
Something had happened to the engine, and he was waiting to see it put
right. Would I mind walking down to him? I thought it rather odd, but
I didn’t see what else I could do, so I walked down. As we went--I
remember we were right off the road, close to a plantation--the man
took a box out of his pocket, and said Mr. Upcott had told him to give
it to me. When I opened it, there were chocolates inside. Of course,
Jack knows how fond I am of chocs, and I supposed he sent them to
beguile the way. I put one in my mouth and I bit it in half. It seemed
to be full of some queer tasting liqueur, which I had swallowed before
I knew it, and--that’s all I remember.”
“What do you mean by ‘that’s all you remember’?”
“I mean what I say. The next thing I do remember is that I had rather
a headache, and was feeling stupid, and couldn’t make out where I was.
Then, all at once, I realized that I was in a railway carriage which
was standing at a platform, and that an official of some sort was
standing at the open door of the compartment, looking at me as if he
wondered what was wrong. ‘Your ticket, please, miss. Isn’t that it in
your hand?’ There was something in my hand; I held it out to him; he
took it, and off he went, so I suppose it was my ticket, but how it
got there, or where it was from I have not the vaguest notion.
Presently the train stopped again. I asked a porter who came to the
door what station it was. ‘Waterloo, miss--any luggage?’ I told him
that I had no luggage, but I wanted him to get me a taxi-cab. He got
me one. I told the driver to drive me home; he did; and here I am.
That’s every bit I know about it. Who’s that at the front door? It
can’t be----”
Who it could not be she did not say. These were lively young ladies.
May rushed to the door and listened. Footsteps were heard ascending
the staircase. May threw the door wide open and a tall young man came
in, his countenance wreathed in smiles.
“Oh, Jack!” cried Miss Lucille Godwin. “Oh, you darling, darling
Jack!”
Almost before I knew it, and quite regardless of my presence, she was
in the new-comer’s arms. He seemed a hearty young man.
“You are a nice sort,” he told her. “Directly after I wrote you that
note from Nice I won a handful at the tables; with it I bought a
necklace, which I felt bound to bring you straight away. So here I am,
and here’s the necklace.”
He held out to her a string of gleaming stones which he had taken from
a flat leather case.
“Oh, Jack, what a beautiful necklace! What a treasure you are! Please
will you put it on.”
As we watched he fastened it round her lovely neck; for all they
seemed to care, May and I might not have been present. The girl said
to him, with a look of the demurest malice:
“Now, Jack, I forgive you. If you only knew what a wretch I’ve felt,
and how I’ve wanted you!”
“Well, you won’t have to want any longer.”
As the young man was saying this in what I take was his heartiest
manner, a footman appeared at the door to inform us that dinner was
served. Jack took me down, the two girls following arm in arm behind.
I have seldom spent a livelier evening.
The next morning, when I went to Bond Street, I found that Isolda was
missing, as I had anticipated might be the case. It seems possible
that he had kept that helpless girl unconscious for two whole days by
means of repeated injections of one of the numerous preparations of
morphine, as doctors nowadays keep patients in the later stages of
cancer oblivious of their sufferings sometimes for weeks; nor might it
have been the first time he had tried the same villainous trick. He
probably still practises on feminine credulity elsewhere, but, so far
as I know, he has not reappeared in London. Nothing has been seen
either of him or of his barrel-shaped friend. Lucille Upcott--she has
not long been back from her honeymoon--told me the other day, with
that demure air which, where she is concerned, may mean anything, that
she had recently heard that Mr. George Ratton had established himself
on a ranch in Argentina. Whether Mr. Upcott has been made acquainted
with the various passages which marked a certain week I cannot say;
whenever I see him he seems to radiate happiness.
VIII.
WAS IT BY CHANCE ONLY?
It is not easy to determine what part accident plays in the affairs
of daily life. I have not been able to decide where, so far as I was
concerned, it began, and where it ended, in what was known to the
public as the Fulham Mystery. Who can say, for instance, that it was
not by design--the design of a force beyond our ken--that I entered
that tea-shop in the Brompton Road? It was full of people, as at that
hour of the day, I take it, it generally is. Was it by chance that two
persons were seated at the table next to mine? Was there not an
intention even in that? Anyhow, there they were--a dark-haired girl
and a red-headed youth.
The girl was, after a fashion, good-looking; it was not a fashion I
care for. Her nose was too thin; her eyes, though undoubtedly fine
ones, were, to my mind, too big--I have seldom seen larger ones. They
were what I call roving eyes. One felt that they were taking in half a
dozen things at once. I had not the slightest doubt that she noticed
me, but she took it for granted that since she and her companion spoke
in whispers, so that their words were only audible to themselves, my
watching them was of no consequence at all.
What first attracted my attention towards their table was not only the
singularity of their appearance--and the fiery-headed youth, with his
thin face, high cheek-bones, small eyes, deep-set in a web of
freckles, presented an even more remarkable appearance than the girl;
what really in the original instance caught my eye was the pantomime
the girl was going through. She had a handkerchief in her hand, with
which she was going through some quite singular evolutions. Her lips,
which were very red, were rather prominent; the sort of lips which,
from my point of view, when she was speaking, were as easy to read as
large print. I was not the only person who was watching her evolutions
with the handkerchief--I fancy she rather liked attracting
attention--but I was the only person who, because of the key I had to
the words which formed on her lips, had any notion what she was after.
I saw her say to the red-headed youth, in a whisper which was so faint
that I am sure it only just reached his ears:
“There are all sorts of ways of signalling; you can signal with
anything; soldiers have found out that. You can signal with a blind;
almost any information can be conveyed to a passer-by by the way in
which you draw it up. Now, take your case; it’s impossible to meet you
again. I’m only meeting you now by a tremendous risk.”
The youth said something. He had his hand up to his face, so that I
could not see what it was, but I guessed it was something tender. His
whole attitude was that of an adoring lover. The girl went on.
“Of course I care for you. You know I care for you. Should I ask you
to do this for me if I didn’t?”
Again the youth said something which again I lost; and again the girl
went on, with a sigh which I would have bet anything was a pretence.
“My dear Dan, if you only knew how, when you talk like that, you make
me quiver. But we mustn’t speak of such things now--there isn’t time;
there really isn’t time enough for me to try to make you understand,
so pay particular attention. You want to know when the coast is clear,
don’t you?”
What he answered I could not say. She continued:
“If you want to do this thing for me--and if you care for me as you
say you do, you must want to--it must be done at the first opportunity
which offers. And as I may not be able to get at you in any other
way----”
He took his hand away from his mouth, so that I could see what he
said.
“Couldn’t you write?” he asked.
“My dear Dan!” She looked shocked. “Think of the danger. Do you want
me to place myself in your hands as I have done in his? Of course I
know I can trust you--you needn’t fly out; but I shall never be easy
in my mind again. No, no, no, writing is out of the question. We must
try some other way, so pay attention to me. You know the window of my
room?”
“I’ve looked at it often enough.”
He still had his hand away from his mouth. I thought, as I saw him
speak, what an odd mouth it was, and how his curiously saturnine face
was lighted up by his smile.
“Then look at it more carefully than ever each time you pass. If the
blind is drawn right down or right up it will mean nothing; if it is
half-drawn, a little crooked, at an angle like this”--she demonstrated
with her handkerchief--“it will mean--Meet me here, at this tea-shop,
this afternoon at four. I have taken it for granted that you will pass
at the usual hour, so that you will have plenty of time.”
“Of course I shall pass at the usual hour. I hope that tell-tale blind
of yours will be at that angle to-morrow. I’ve got it well fixed in my
mind’s eye.”
“If--now pay particular attention--if it’s drawn up more than
half-way, and is crooked on the other side, like this, that will mean
that the coast will be clear, and the angle at which the blind is set
will tell you the day and the hour. Now, just you notice very
carefully.”
She was going to manipulate her handkerchief, and I was watching with
some curiosity to see how she was going to do it, when, considerably
to my surprise, she changed the subject altogether. With the corners
of the handkerchief still between her fingers, and with exactly the
same expression on her face, she said:
“There’s the girl at the table next to you staring at us in a way
which I don’t quite like. Of course she can’t hear, and she wouldn’t
understand if she did, but I think I’ll just wait and see how long
she’s going to stay. In the meantime I think I’ll have another cake.
Don’t look round; she’ll know I’ve noticed her.”
Of course I understood that the reference was to me, and I was not
exactly pleased. Apart from the question of good manners, I do not
wish to let anyone be aware that they have been observed by me.
Clearly I had been staring at them more intently than I supposed. So I
called the waitress, paid for my tea, and went. I had no wish to
intrude upon their confidence, nor to give them ground for comment on
my breeding.
Two days afterwards I went to lunch with some friends near The
Boltons. When I left them I walked to the Fulham Road, meaning to
catch a motor-bus. On my way I passed down a street of rather
shabby-looking houses, in which there was only one other pedestrian
besides myself--a man who was approaching, on the same side, from the
other end. As he came nearer I recognized, with some amusement, that
it was the red-headed youth of the tea-shop in the Brompton Road. I
doubt if he noticed me at all; his glance was fixed on the houses on
the other side of the way. When he was twenty or thirty feet away from
me, stopping short, he stared harder than ever. There was something in
his attitude and in the way he stared which suggested considerable
agitation. I looked to see what could have caused it.
Immediately facing him was a house which was like its fellows, but
rather less shabby perhaps, as if it had been more recently painted.
My eyes, passing over its front, rested on one of the windows of the
upper floor--on the other side of which was a very crooked blind. That
blind quite startled me, especially when I coupled it with the young
man’s evident emotion. I thought of the girl with the handkerchief,
how she had explained how one could signal with a blind. Did she live
in the house at which he was staring, or who did live there? Was some
one signalling to him with that crooked blind?
I was convinced not only that he understood what the signal was, but
that its meaning occasioned him something like actual distress. He
stood staring, as if unwilling to credit his eyes. Then, as if
conscious of my approach, he broke again into movement, and,
quickening his pace, went past me at a speed which was very nearly a
run. He never glanced at me; I doubt if he realized whether I was a
man or a woman.
Here was a pretty problem on which I had stumbled--ought I to write by
chance? Who lived in that house? Who was responsible for the position
of that blind? What was the meaning it was intended to convey? I will
not say that I puzzled over these things; that would be to speak too
strongly; but, as I have a trick of doing, I kept them, as it were, in
some pigeon-hole in my mind. The next day the papers were full of what
came to be known as the Fulham Mystery.
George Ryder had been murdered in a house in Helena Grove, Fulham, not
very far from the road in which I had met that red-headed youth. At
first it looked like a commonplace murder--if a murder ever is
commonplace. It was afterwards that features began to appear which
caused it to occupy so prominent a place in the public interest.
George Ryder was a young man of thirty-seven. Not long before he had
been knocked down, at night, presumably by some sort of motor vehicle.
He was picked up near Barnes Common insensible; he had concussion of
the brain. When, several days afterwards, consciousness returned, he
could only say that he had been crossing to the other side of the
street at a point where four roads met, and that a car, coming round
one of the corners, had knocked him down. It was afterwards shown that
he had been spending the evening with some bachelor friends, and that
he was not perhaps so sober as he might have been, so that the fault
was not altogether with the car; but that was no reason that it should
have gone on and left behind it no sign by which it could be
identified.
He had nearly recovered from the effects of this accident when he was
murdered--at five o’clock on an April afternoon. He was alone in the
house--by what really seemed to be a most curious chance. It was the
servant’s afternoon out; his nurse, who had charge of his case, had
gone out to take tea with a friend; his wife and four-year-old child
were left at home. Just before five a telegram was brought to his
wife, informing her that her mother, who lived at Hampstead, had had
another attack, and was dying; if she wished to see her alive she must
go at once. Only a week before her mother, who suffered from a weak
heart, had had an attack from which she had only by a miracle
recovered. Mrs. Ryder showed the telegram to her husband. Both the
maid and the nurse were to be back at six. He declared that he wished
to rest, that he would be all right till they returned, and that she
was to go without delay to see her mother. She left the house between
a quarter and twenty past five, taking, at her husband’s request, her
little girl with her. The nurse, whose name was Verrion, returned
before her appointed time. As was her custom, she entered the house
with a latch-key at about a quarter to six. She was going into her
bedroom, when, struck by the silence of the house, she opened the door
of Mr. Ryder’s room, to see how her patient was. He was lying on the
floor, dead--some one had struck him a heavy blow on the temple with
an electro-plated candlestick which lay beside him.
The whole tragedy had taken place inside twenty minutes--the twenty
minutes which intervened between Mrs. Ryder’s going out and Nurse
Verrion’s coming in. Nurse Verrion brought in a doctor who lived on
the other side of the street, who gave his opinion that Mr. Ryder had
been dead about a quarter of an hour--so that the murder must have
been committed probably not more than ten minutes after his wife went
out.
Just before seven a taxi-cab drew up in front of the house, and Mrs.
Ryder came rushing out of it; that telegram which had reached her just
before five had been a hoax. She had found her mother, if anything, in
better health than usual. Amazed, wondering what the thing meant,
oppressed by a consciousness that her husband might still be alone in
the house, she had rushed back home, to find her husband dead.
This, succinctly, was the Fulham Mystery, as it was presented to the
public. Not a trace of the murderer was discovered. There was nothing
to show that anyone, except Mr. Ryder, had been in the house during
those fatal twenty minutes. Suicide was out of the question, as well
as accident. It was shown conclusively that neither by accident nor
design could he have dealt himself that fatal blow. There were those
who suspected both the wife and the nurse. It was, however, made
perfectly clear that husband and wife were on excellent terms; there
was, besides, the almost unconscious testimony of the intelligent
four-year-old child, who told how her father had gone to the door to
see them off, and kissed her before she started; so that he must have
been alive when his wife went out. Nurse Verrion, on her part,
established two facts--she was accompanied by a friend to the house,
who only left her as she opened the door, and that within three
minutes she was at the doctor’s on the other side of the way. George
Ryder had certainly not been killed within those three minutes.
For reasons which I can hardly define, I took more interest in the
Fulham Mystery than I generally do in matters of the kind. Of course
it was the merest coincidence, but it did strike me as odd that I
should have met the red-haired youth that same afternoon, and have
been puzzled by the agitation he showed as he stared at the signalling
blind. I suppose I met him, so far as I could judge, at about
half-past three, some two hours before the murder took place within a
quarter of a mile of where I saw him. I recalled what the girl had
said at the tea-shop--that her object was to let him know, as I took
it, by means of a signal conveyed by the blind in her room, when the
“coast was clear.” Two hours afterwards the coast had been cleared in
Helena Grove in a truly singular manner. However, I told myself, the
thing was the merest coincidence; the puzzle of the signalling blind
remained, and, more or less vaguely, I continued to wonder.
Whether, again, the second chapter of this strange story owed its
inception to mere chance, he would be a bold person who ventured
positively to affirm. I was spending the week-end on the cliff at
Boscombe. George Ryder had been dead two years; the Fulham Mystery,
still unsolved, had practically slipped from the public mind. I
arrived on the Friday, and had to leave on the Monday afternoon. On
Monday morning, since rather a cold wind was blowing, I enjoyed the
open air in the pretty, sheltered public gardens, from which the cliff
on either side keeps off the wind. I occupied a chair under a tree. On
the other side of the path, perhaps a dozen yards from where I sat, a
lady was the sole occupant of a seat. We were both of us reading. An
exclamation caused me to glance up from the page of my book. A lady,
holding a child by each hand, had come along the path; at sight of her
the occupant of the seat had sprung up; the two women were staring at
each other as if each saw in the other a ghost.
The woman with the two children seemed to be the more amazed; it was
she who had uttered the exclamation. I judged her to be perhaps thirty
years of age, but she looked so worn and worried that she might have
been younger than she seemed. Her clothing was worn and shabby--I
noticed that she wore old black cotton gloves; it was not easy, from
her appearance, to judge to what station of life she belonged.
The person who had risen from the seat was the first to speak; though
I could not hear her, I could see distinctly what she said. Her
expression was one of sheer bewilderment, as if she were still in
doubt of the other’s identity.
“Annie!--It is you!--Have you tumbled from the sky? Where have you
been hiding? What are you doing here? And who are these?--these two
young people? Where is your own small daughter? Surely this is not
she.”
The woman addressed as Annie seemed to be so overcome by the other’s
unexpected appearance as to be almost incapable of speech. She seemed
to be positively frightened, giving nervous glances on this side and
that, as if afraid of she alone knew what. When she spoke, although I
heard nothing, I could see from the twitching of her lips that her
voice was tremulous. Agitation made her stammer.
“Laura, I--I never expected to see you; I--I can’t stop now, but I--I
want to speak to you very much; I would like to speak to you. I--I’ve
got to take these two children to a friend’s, just--just over there;
but I’ll be back in--in ten minutes, if you’ll wait for
me--here.--Laura, say you’ll wait for me.”
She seemed to me to be gasping for breath, as if the strength of
feeling which she put into the appeal that the other would stay for
her was almost more than she could bear. Her friend’s bewilderment
seemed to be growing. The expression in her eyes showed clearly that
she could not make the speaker out.
“Stay for you?” She smiled, as if to reassure her. “Of course I’ll
stay for you, ten minutes, or as long as you like. Only--don’t forget
I’m waiting.”
The woman, with her two charges, hurried off. I hardly knew whether to
go or stay. Where I was I was partially screened from the occupants of
the seat by a big rhododendron; I could probably see them better than
they could see me. I was perfectly comfortable where I was; I really
saw no reason why I should move, so I stayed where I was.
I imagine that it was nearer twenty than ten minutes before the other
returned; when she came she was nearly running. When she sat down
beside her friend her breath was coming in little gusts.
“They--they kept me longer--than I thought they would. I--I couldn’t
get away. I--I’m not my own mistress, and--and when people want me to
stay--I have to.”