across the dip into the road, and, steadying as it came upon the
straight, began to hum contentedly along the deserted highway.
"We are not going direct?" suddenly inquired Hollyer, after they had
travelled perhaps half-a-dozen miles. The night was bewildering enough
but he had the sailor's gift for location.
"No; through Hunscott Green and then by a field-path to the orchard at
the back," replied Carrados. "Keep a sharp look out for the man with the
lantern about here, Harris," he called through the tube.
"Something flashing just ahead, sir," came the reply, and the car slowed
down and stopped.
Carrados dropped the near window as a man in glistening waterproof
stepped from the shelter of a lich-gate and approached.
"Inspector Beedel, sir," said the stranger, looking into the car.
"Quite right, Inspector," said Carrados. "Get in."
"I have a man with me, sir."
"We can find room for him as well."
"We are very wet."
"So shall we all be soon."
The lieutenant changed his seat and the two burly forms took places side
by side. In less than five minutes the car stopped again, this time in a
grassy country lane.
"Now we have to face it," announced Carrados. "The inspector will show
us the way."
The car slid round and disappeared into the night, while Beedel led the
party to a stile in the hedge. A couple of fields brought them to the
Brookbend boundary. There a figure stood out of the black foliage,
exchanged a few words with their guide and piloted them along the
shadows of the orchard to the back door of the house.
"You will find a broken pane near the catch of the scullery window,"
said the blind man.
"Right, sir," replied the inspector. "I have it. Now who goes through?"
"Mr Hollyer will open the door for us. I'm afraid you must take off
your boots and all wet things, Lieutenant. We cannot risk a single spot
inside."
They waited until the back door opened, then each one divested himself
in a similar manner and passed into the kitchen, where the remains of a
fire still burned. The man from the orchard gathered together the
discarded garments and disappeared again.
Carrados turned to the lieutenant.
"A rather delicate job for you now, Mr Hollyer. I want you to go up to
your sister, wake her, and get her into another room with as little fuss
as possible. Tell her as much as you think fit and let her understand
that her very life depends on absolute stillness when she is alone.
Don't be unduly hurried, but not a glimmer of a light, please."
Ten minutes passed by the measure of the battered old alarum on the
dresser shelf before the young man returned.
"I've had rather a time of it," he reported, with a nervous laugh, "but
I think it will be all right now. She is in the spare room."
"Then we will take our places. You and Parkinson come with me to the
bedroom. Inspector, you have your own arrangements. Mr Carlyle will be
with you."
They dispersed silently about the house. Hollyer glanced apprehensively
at the door of the spare room as they passed it but within was as quiet
as the grave. Their room lay at the other end of the passage.
"You may as well take your place in the bed now, Hollyer," directed
Carrados when they were inside and the door closed. "Keep well down
among the clothes. Creake has to get up on the balcony, you know, and he
will probably peep through the window, but he dare come no farther. Then
when he begins to throw up stones slip on this dressing-gown of your
sister's. I'll tell you what to do after."
The next sixty minutes drew out into the longest hour that the
lieutenant had ever known. Occasionally he heard a whisper pass between
the two men who stood behind the window curtains, but he could see
nothing. Then Carrados threw a guarded remark in his direction.
"He is in the garden now."
Something scraped slightly against the outer wall. But the night was
full of wilder sounds, and in the house the furniture and the boards
creaked and sprung between the yawling of the wind among the chimneys,
the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to
quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a
pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense
waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the bed on
the instant.
"Easy, easy," warned Carrados feelingly. "We will wait for another
knock." He passed something across. "Here is a rubber glove. I have cut
the wire but you had better put it on. Stand just for a moment at the
window, move the catch so that it can blow open a little, and drop
immediately. Now."
Another stone had rattled against the glass. For Hollyer to go through
his part was the work merely of seconds, and with a few touches Carrados
spread the dressing-gown to more effective disguise about the extended
form. But an unforeseen and in the circumstances rather horrible
interval followed, for Creake, in accordance with some detail of his
never-revealed plan, continued to shower missile after missile against
the panes until even the unimpressionable Parkinson shivered.
"The last act," whispered Carrados, a moment after the throwing had
ceased. "He has gone round to the back. Keep as you are. We take cover
now." He pressed behind the arras of an extemporized wardrobe, and the
spirit of emptiness and desolation seemed once more to reign over the
lonely house.
From half-a-dozen places of concealment ears were straining to catch the
first guiding sound. He moved very stealthily, burdened, perhaps, by
some strange scruple in the presence of the tragedy that he had not
feared to contrive, paused for a moment at the bedroom door, then opened
it very quietly, and in the fickle light read the consummation of his
hopes.
"At last!" they heard the sharp whisper drawn from his relief. "At
last!"
He took another step and two shadows seemed to fall upon him from
behind, one on either side. With primitive instinct a cry of terror and
surprise escaped him as he made a desperate movement to wrench himself
free, and for a short second he almost succeeded in dragging one hand
into a pocket. Then his wrists slowly came together and the handcuffs
closed.
"I am Inspector Beedel," said the man on his right side. "You are
charged with the attempted murder of your wife, Millicent Creake."
"You are mad," retorted the miserable creature, falling into a desperate
calmness. "She has been struck by lightning."
"No, you blackguard, she hasn't," wrathfully exclaimed his
brother-in-law, jumping up. "Would you like to see her?"
"I also have to warn you," continued the inspector impassively, "that
anything you say may be used as evidence against you."
A startled cry from the farther end of the passage arrested their
attention.
"Mr Carrados," called Hollyer, "oh, come at once."
At the open door of the other bedroom stood the lieutenant, his eyes
still turned towards something in the room beyond, a little empty bottle
in his hand.
"Dead!" he exclaimed tragically, with a sob, "with this beside her. Dead
just when she would have been free of the brute."
The blind man passed into the room, sniffed the air, and laid a gentle
hand on the pulseless heart.
"Yes," he replied. "That, Hollyer, does not always appeal to the woman,
strange to say."
THE CLEVER MRS STRAITHWAITE
Mr Carlyle had arrived at The Turrets in the very best possible spirits.
Everything about him, from his immaculate white spats to the choice
gardenia in his buttonhole, from the brisk decision with which he took
the front-door steps to the bustling importance with which he had
positively brushed Parkinson aside at the door of the library,
proclaimed consequence and the extremely good terms on which he stood
with himself.
"Prepare yourself, Max," he exclaimed. "If I hinted at a case of
exceptional delicacy that will certainly interest you by its romantic
possibilities----?"
"I should have the liveliest misgivings. Ten to one it would be a jewel
mystery," hazarded Carrados, as his friend paused with the point of his
communication withheld, after the manner of a quizzical youngster with a
promised bon-bon held behind his back. "If you made any more of it I
should reluctantly be forced to the conclusion that the case involved a
society scandal connected with a priceless pearl necklace."
Mr Carlyle's face fell.
"Then it _is_ in the papers, after all?" he said, with an air of
disappointment.
"What is in the papers, Louis?"
"Some hint of the fraudulent insurance of the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite's
pearl necklace," replied Carlyle.
"Possibly," admitted Carrados. "But so far I have not come across it."
Mr Carlyle stared at his friend, and marching up to the table brought
his hand down on it with an arresting slap.
"Then what in the name of goodness are you talking about, may I ask?" he
demanded caustically. "If you know nothing of the Straithwaite affair,
Max, what other pearl necklace case are you referring to?"
Carrados assumed the air of mild deprecation with which he frequently
apologized for a blind man venturing to make a discovery.
"A philosopher once made the remark----"
"Had it anything to do with Mrs Straithwaite's--the Hon. Mrs
Straithwaite's--pearl necklace? And let me warn you, Max, that I have
read a good deal both of Mill and Spencer at odd times."
"It was neither Mill nor Spencer. He had a German name, so I will not
mention it. He made the observation, which, of course, we recognize as
an obvious commonplace when once it has been expressed, that in order to
have an accurate knowledge of what a man will do on any occasion it is
only necessary to study a single characteristic action of his."
"Utterly impracticable," declared Mr Carlyle.
"I therefore knew that when you spoke of a case of exceptional interest
to _me_, what you really meant, Louis, was a case of exceptional
interest to _you_."
Mr Carlyle's sudden thoughtful silence seemed to admit that possibly
there might be something in the point.
"By applying, almost unconsciously, the same useful rule, I became aware
that a mystery connected with a valuable pearl necklace and a beautiful
young society belle would appeal the most strongly to your romantic
imagination."
"Romantic! I, romantic? Thirty-five and a private inquiry agent! You
are--positively feverish, Max."
"Incurably romantic--or you would have got over it by now: the worst
kind."
"Max, this may prove a most important and interesting case. Will you be
serious and discuss it?"
"Jewel cases are rarely either important or interesting. Pearl necklace
mysteries, in nine cases out of ten, spring from the miasma of social
pretence and vapid competition and only concern people who do not matter
in the least. The only attractive thing about them is the name. They are
so barren of originality that a criminological Linnaeus could classify
them with absolute nicety. I'll tell you what, we'll draw up a set of
tables giving the solution to every possible pearl necklace case for the
next twenty-one years."
"We will do any mortal thing you like, Max, if you will allow Parkinson
to administer a bromo-seltzer and then enable me to meet the officials
of the Direct Insurance without a blush."
For three minutes Carrados picked his unerring way among the furniture
as he paced the room silently but with irresolution in his face. Twice
his hand went to a paper-covered book lying on his desk, and twice he
left it untouched.
"Have you ever been in the lion-house at feeding-time, Louis?" he
demanded abruptly.
"In the very remote past, possibly," admitted Mr Carlyle guardedly.
"As the hour approaches it is impossible to interest the creatures with
any other suggestion than that of raw meat. You came a day too late,
Louis." He picked up the book and skimmed it adroitly into Mr Carlyle's
hands. "I have already scented the gore, and tasted in imagination the
joy of tearing choice morsels from other similarly obsessed animals."
"'Catalogue des monnaies grecques et romaines,'" read the gentleman.
"'To be sold by auction at the Hotel Drouet, Paris, salle 8, April the
24th, 25th, etc.' H'm." He turned to the plates of photogravure
illustration which gave an air to the volume. "This is an event, I
suppose?"
"It is the sort of dispersal we get about once in three years," replied
Carrados. "I seldom attend the little sales, but I save up and then have
a week's orgy."
"And when do you go?"
"To-day. By the afternoon boat--Folkestone. I have already taken rooms
at Mascot's. I'm sorry it has fallen so inopportunely, Louis."
Mr Carlyle rose to the occasion with a display of extremely gentlemanly
feeling--which had the added merit of being quite genuine.
"My dear chap, your regrets only serve to remind me how much I owe to
you already. _Bon voyage_, and the most desirable of Eu--Eu--well,
perhaps it would be safer to say, of Kimons, for your collection."
"I suppose," pondered Carrados, "this insurance business might have led
to other profitable connexions?"
"That is quite true," admitted his friend. "I have been trying for some
time--but do not think any more of it, Max."
"What time is it?" demanded Carrados suddenly.
"Eleven-twenty-five."
"Good. Has any officious idiot had anyone arrested?"
"No, it is only----"
"Never mind. Do you know much of the case?"
"Practically nothing as yet, unfortunately. I came----"
"Excellent. Everything is on our side. Louis, I won't go this
afternoon--I will put off till the night boat from Dover. That will give
us nine hours."
"Nine hours?" repeated the mystified Carlyle, scarcely daring to put
into thought the scandalous inference that Carrados's words conveyed.
"Nine full hours. A pearl necklace case that cannot at least be left
straight after nine hours' work will require a column to itself in our
chart. Now, Louis, where does this Direct Insurance live?"
Carlyle had allowed his blind friend to persuade him into--as they had
seemed at the beginning--many mad enterprises. But none had ever, in the
light of his own experience, seemed so foredoomed to failure as when, at
eleven-thirty, Carrados ordered his luggage to be on the platform of
Charing Cross Station at eight-fifty and then turned light-heartedly to
the task of elucidating the mystery of Mrs Straithwaite's pearl necklace
in the interval.
The head office of the Direct and Intermediate Insurance Company proved
to be in Victoria Street. Thanks to Carrados's speediest car, they
entered the building as the clocks of Westminster were striking twelve,
but for the next twenty minutes they were consigned to the general
office while Mr Carlyle fumed and displayed his watch ostentatiously. At
last a clerk slid off his stool by the speaking-tube and approached
them.
"Mr Carlyle?" he said. "The General Manager will see you now, but as he
has another appointment in ten minutes he will be glad if you will make
your business as short as possible. This way, please."
Mr Carlyle bit his lip at the pompous formality of the message but he
was too experienced to waste any words about it and with a mere nod he
followed, guiding his friend until they reached the Manager's room.
But, though subservient to circumstance, he was far from being
negligible when he wished to create an impression.
"Mr Carrados has been good enough to give us a consultation over this
small affair," he said, with just the necessary touches of deference and
condescension that it was impossible either to miss or to resent.
"Unfortunately he can do little more as he has to leave almost at once
to direct an important case in Paris."
The General Manager conveyed little, either in his person or his manner,
of the brisk precision that his message seemed to promise. The name of
Carrados struck him as being somewhat familiar--something a little
removed from the routine of his business and a matter therefore that he
could unbend over. He continued to stand comfortably before his office
fire, making up by a tolerant benignity of his hard and bulbous eye for
the physical deprivation that his attitude entailed on his visitors.
"Paris, egad?" he grunted. "Something in your line that France can take
from us since the days of--what's-his-name--Vidocq, eh? Clever fellow,
that, what? Wasn't it about him and the Purloined Letter?"
Carrados smiled discreetly.
"Capital, wasn't it?" he replied. "But there is something else that
Paris can learn from London, more in your way, sir. Often when I drop in
to see the principal of one of their chief houses or the head of a
Government department, we fall into an entertaining discussion of this
or that subject that may be on the tapis. 'Ah, monsieur,' I say, after
perhaps half-an-hour's conversation, 'it is very amiable of you and
sometimes I regret our insular methods, but it is not thus that great
businesses are formed. At home, if I call upon one of our princes of
industry--a railway director, a merchant, or the head of one of our
leading insurance companies--nothing will tempt him for a moment from
the stern outline of the business in hand. You are too complaisant; the
merest gossip takes advantage of you.'"
"That's quite true," admitted the General Manager, occupying the
revolving chair at his desk and assuming a serious and very determined
expression. "Slackers, I call them. Now, Mr Carlyle, where are we in
this business?"
"I have your letter of yesterday. We should naturally like all the
particulars you can give us."
The Manager threw open a formidable-looking volume with an immense
display of energy, sharply flattened some typewritten pages that had
ventured to raise their heads, and lifted an impressive finger.
"We start here, the 27th of January. On that day Karsfeld, the Princess
Street jeweller, y'know, who acted as our jewellery assessor, forwards a
proposal of the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite to insure a pearl necklace against
theft. Says that he has had an opportunity of examining it and passes it
at five thousand pounds. That business goes through in the ordinary way;
the premium is paid and the policy taken out.
"A couple of months later Karsfeld has a little unpleasantness with us
and resigns. Resignation accepted. We have nothing against him, you
understand. At the same time there is an impression among the directors
that he has been perhaps a little too easy in his ways, a little
too--let us say, expansive, in some of his valuations and too
accommodating to his own clients in recommending to us business of
a--well--speculative basis; business that we do not care about and which
we now feel is foreign to our traditions as a firm. However"--the
General Manager threw apart his stubby hands as though he would shatter
any fabric of criminal intention that he might be supposed to be
insidiously constructing--"that is the extent of our animadversion
against Karsfeld. There are no irregularities and you may take it from
me that the man is all right."
"You would propose accepting the fact that a five-thousand-pound
necklace was submitted to him?" suggested Mr Carlyle.
"I should," acquiesced the Manager, with a weighty nod. "Still--this
brings us to April the third--this break, so to speak, occurring in our
routine, it seemed a good opportunity for us to assure ourselves on one
or two points. Mr Bellitzer--you know Bellitzer, of course; know _of_
him, I should say--was appointed _vice_ Karsfeld and we wrote to certain
of our clients, asking them--as our policies entitled us to do--as a
matter of form to allow Mr Bellitzer to confirm the assessment of his
predecessor. Wrapped it up in silver paper, of course; said it would
certify the present value and be a guarantee that would save them some
formalities in case of ensuing claim, and so on. Among others, wrote to
the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite to that effect--April fourth. Here is her
reply of three days later. Sorry to disappoint us, but the necklace has
just been sent to her bank for custody as she is on the point of leaving
town. Also scarcely sees that it is necessary in her case as the
insurance was only taken so recently."
"That is dated April the seventh?" inquired Mr Carlyle, busy with pencil
and pocket-book.
"April seventh," repeated the Manager, noting this conscientiousness
with an approving glance and then turning to regard questioningly the
indifferent attitude of his other visitor. "That put us on our
guard--naturally. Wrote by return regretting the necessity and
suggesting that a line to her bankers, authorizing them to show us the
necklace, would meet the case and save her any personal trouble.
Interval of a week. Her reply, April sixteenth. Thursday last.
Circumstances have altered her plans and she has returned to London
sooner than she expected. Her jewel-case has been returned from the
bank, and will we send our man round--'our man,' Mr Carlyle!--on
Saturday morning not later than twelve, please."
The Manager closed the record book, with a sweep of his hand cleared his
desk for revelations, and leaning forward in his chair fixed Mr Carlyle
with a pragmatic eye.
"On Saturday Mr Bellitzer goes to Luneburg Mansions and the Hon. Mrs
Straithwaite shows him the necklace. He examines it carefully, assesses
its insurable value up to five thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds,
and reports us to that effect. But he reports something else, Mr
Carlyle. It is not the necklace that the lady had insured."
"Not the necklace?" echoed Mr Carlyle.
"No. In spite of the number of pearls and a general similarity there are
certain technical differences, well known to experts, that made the fact
indisputable. The Hon. Mrs Straithwaite has been guilty of
misrepresentation. Possibly she has no fraudulent intention. We are
willing to pay to find out. That's your business."
Mr Carlyle made a final note and put away his book with an air of
decision that could not fail to inspire confidence.
"To-morrow," he said, "we shall perhaps be able to report something."
"Hope so," vouchsafed the Manager. "'Morning."
From his position near the window, Carrados appeared to wake up to the
fact that the interview was over.
"But so far," he remarked blandly, with his eyes towards the great man
in the chair, "you have told us nothing of the theft."
The Manager regarded the speaker dumbly for a moment and then turned to
Mr Carlyle.
"What does he mean?" he demanded pungently.
But for once Mr Carlyle's self-possession had forsaken him. He
recognized that somehow Carrados had been guilty of an appalling lapse,
by which his reputation for prescience was wrecked in that quarter for
ever, and at the catastrophe his very ears began to exude embarrassment.
In the awkward silence Carrados himself seemed to recognize that
something was amiss.
"We appear to be at cross-purposes," he observed. "I inferred that the
disappearance of the necklace would be the essence of our
investigation."
"Have I said a word about it disappearing?" demanded the Manager, with a
contempt-laden raucity that he made no pretence of softening. "You don't
seem to have grasped the simple facts about the case, Mr Carrados.
Really, I hardly think----Oh, come in!"
There had been a knock at the door, then another. A clerk now entered
with an open telegram.
"Mr Longworth wished you to see this at once, sir."
"We may as well go," whispered Mr Carlyle with polite depression to his
colleague.
"Here, wait a minute," said the Manager, who had been biting his
thumb-nail over the telegram. "No, not you"--to the lingering
clerk--"you clear." Much of the embarrassment that had troubled Mr
Carlyle a minute before seemed to have got into the Manager's system. "I
don't understand this," he confessed awkwardly. "It's from Bellitzer. He
wires: '_Have just heard alleged robbery Straithwaite pearls. Advise
strictest investigation._'"
Mr Carlyle suddenly found it necessary to turn to the wall and consult a
highly coloured lithographic inducement to insure. Mr Carrados alone
remained to meet the Manager's constrained glance.
"Still, _he_ tells us really nothing about the theft," he remarked
sociably.
"No," admitted the Manager, experiencing some little difficulty with his
breathing, "he does not."
"Well, we still hope to be able to report something to-morrow.
Good-bye."