“Only from what he saw of him.”
“Struck, I suppose, by the remarkable fact that the passenger wore a hat
and a tie--as shown in the picture; or inspired to notice him closely by
something indescribably suggestive in the passenger’s way of giving up
his ticket? It may be all right, Beedel, I admit, but I heartily
distrust the weight of importance that these casual identifications are
being given on vital points nowadays. Are you satisfied with this
yourself?”
“Only as corroborative, sir. Until we find the girl or some trace of her
we’re bound to make casts in the hope of picking up a line. Well, then
there’s the letter Mrs Severe received.”
“Have you that with you?”
The Inspector took up the wallet that he had not yet returned to his
pocket and selected another enclosure.
“It’s a very unusual form,” he commented as he handed the envelope to Mr
Carrados and waited for his opinion.
The blind man passed his finger-tips across the paper and at once
understood the point of singularity. The lines were printed, but not in
consecutive form, every letter being on a little separate square of
paper. It was evident that they had been cut out from some other sheet
and then pasted on the envelope to form the address.
“London, E.C., 5.30 P.M., 15th May,” read Carrados from the postmark.
“The day of the kidnapping. There is a train from Swanstead arriving at
Lambeth Bridge at 4.47,” remarked Beedel.
“What was your porter doing when that left?”
“He was off duty, sir.”
Carrados took out the enclosure and read it off as he had already done
the envelope, but with a more deliberative touch, for the print was
smaller. The type and the paper were suggestive of a newspaper origin.
In most cases whole words had been found available.
“Do not be alarmed,” ran the patchwork message. “The girl is in good
hands. Only risk lies in pressing search. Wait and she will return
uninjured.”
“You have identified the newspaper?”
“Yes; it is all cut from _The Times_ of May the 13th. The printing on
the back of the words fixes it absolutely. Premeditated, Mr Carrados.”
“The whole incident points to that. The date of the newspaper means
little, but the deliberate selection of words, the careful way they have
been cut out and aligned, taken in conjunction with the time the child
disappeared and the time that this was posted--yes, I think you may
assume premeditation, Inspector.”
“Stationery of the commonest description; immediate return to London,
and the method of a man who used this print because he feared that under
any disguise his handwriting might be recognised.”
Carrados nodded.
“Severe cannot hope to retain the child, of course,” he remarked
casually. “What motive do you infer?”
“Mrs Severe is convinced that it is to distress her, out of revenge.”
“And this letter is to reassure her?”
The Inspector bit his lip as he smiled at the quiet thrust.
“It might also be to influence her towards suspending search,” he
suggested.
“At all events I dare say that it has reassured her?”
“In a certain way, yes, it has. It has enabled us to establish that the
act is not one of casual lust or vagabondage. There is an alternative
that we naturally did not suggest to her.”
“And that is?”
“Another Thelby Wood case, Mr Carrados. The maniacal infatuation of
someone who would be the last to be suspected. Some man of good
position, a friend and neighbour possibly, who sees this beautiful young
creature--the school friend of his own daughters or sitting before him
in church it may be--and becomes the slave of his diseased imagination
until he is prepared to risk everything for that one overpowering
object. A primitive man for the time, one may say, or, even worse, a
satyr or a gorilla.”
“I wonder,” observed Carrados thoughtfully, “if you also have ever felt
that you would like to drop it and become a monk, Inspector. Or a
stylite on a pole.”
Beedel laughed softly and then rubbed his chin in the same contemplative
spirit.
“I think I know what you mean, sir,” he admitted. “It’s a black page.
But,” he added with wholesome philosophy, “after all, it _is_ only a
page in a longish book. And if I was in a monastery there’d be one or
two more things done that I’ve helped to keep undone.”
“Including the cracking of my head, Inspector? Very true. We must take
the world as we find it and ourselves as we are. And I wish that I could
agree with you about Severe. It would be a more endurable outlook: spite
and revenge are at least decent human motives. Unfortunately, the only
hint I can offer is a negative one.” He indicated the printed cuttings
on the sheet that Beedel had submitted to him. “This photo-mountant
costs about sixpence a pot, but you can buy a bottle of gum for a
penny.”
“Well, sir,” said Beedel, “I did think of having that examined, but I
waited for you to see the letter as it stood. After all, it didn’t
strike me as a point one could put much reliance on.”
“Quite right,” assented Mr Carrados, “there is nothing personal or
definite in it. It may suggest a photographer, amateur or professional,
but it would be preposterous to assume so much from this alone. Severe,
even, may have----There are hundreds of chances. I should disregard it
for the moment.”
“There is nothing more to be got from the letter?”
“There may be, but it is rather elusive at present. What has been done
with it?”
“I received it from Mrs Severe and it has been in my possession ever
since.”
“You haven’t submitted it to a chemist for any purpose?”
“No, sir. I gave a copy of the wording to some newspaper gentlemen, but
no one but myself has handled it.”
“Very good. Now if you care to leave it with me for a few days----”
Inspector Beedel expressed his immediate willingness and would have
added his tribute of obligation for Mr Carrados’s service, but the blind
man cut him short.
“Don’t rely on anything, Inspector,” he warned him. “I am afraid that
this resolves itself into a game of chance. Just one touch of luck may
give us a winning point, or it may go the other way. In any case there
is no reason why I should not motor round by Swanstead one of these days
when I am out. If anything fresh turns up before you hear from me you
had better telephone me. Now exactly where did this happen?”
The actual facts surrounding the disappearance of Marie Severe
constituted the real mystery of the case. Arling Avenue, Swanstead, was
one of those leisurely suburban roads where it is impossible to imagine
anything happening hurriedly from the delivery of an occasional telegram
to the activity of the local builder. Houses, detached houses each
surrounded by its rood or more of garden, had been built here and there
along its length at one time or another, but even the most modern one
had now become matured, and the vacant plots between them had reverted
from the condition of “eligible sites” into very passable fields of
buttercups and daisies again, so that Arling Avenue remained a pleasant
and exclusive thoroughfare. One side of the road was entirely unbuilt on
and afforded the prospect of a level meadow where hay was made and real
animals grazed in due season. The inhabitants of Arling Avenue never
failed to point out to visitors this evidence of undeniable rurality. It
even figured in the prospectus of Homewood, the Arling Avenue day school
for girls and little boys which the Misses Chibwell had carried on with
equal success and inconspicuousness until the Severe affair suddenly
brought them into the glare of a terrifying publicity.
Mrs Severe’s house, The Hollies, was the first in the road, as the road
was generally regarded--that is to say, from the direction of the
station. Beedel picked up a loose sheet of paper and scored it heavily
with a plan of the neighbourhood as he explained the position with some
minuteness. Next to The Hollies came Arling Lodge. After Arling Lodge
there was one of the vacant plots of ground before the next house was
reached, but between the Lodge and the vacant plot was a broad grassy
opening, unfenced towards the road, and here the Inspector’s pencil
underlined the deepest significance, culminating in an ominous X about
the centre of the space. Originally the opening had doubtless marked the
projection of another road, but the scheme had come to nothing.
Occasionally a little band of exploring children with the fictitious
optimism of youth pecked among its rank and tangled growth in the
affectation of hoping to find blackberries there; once in a while a
passing chair-mender or travelling tinker regarded it favourably for the
scene of his midday siesta, but its only legitimate use seemed to be
that of affording access to the side door of Arling Lodge garden. The
Inspector pencilled in the garden door as an afterthought, with the
parenthesis that it was seldom used and always kept locked. Then he
followed out the Avenue as far as the school, indicating all the houses
and other features. The whole distance traversed did not exceed two
hundred yards.
A few minutes before two o’clock on the afternoon of her disappearance
Marie Severe set out as usual for Miss Chibwell’s school. Since the
incident of the unfortunate encounter with her former husband Mrs Severe
had considered it necessary to exercise a peculiar vigilance over her
only child. Thenceforward Marie never went out alone; never, with the
exception of the short walk to school and back, that is to say, for in
that quiet straight road, in the full light of day, it was ridiculous to
imagine that anything could happen. It was ridiculous, but all the same
the vaguely uneasy woman generally walked to the garden gate with the
little girl and watched her until the diminished figure passed, with a
last gay wave of hand or satchel, out of her sight into the school-yard.
“That’s how it would have been on this occasion,” narrated Beedel, “only
just as they got to the garden gate a tradesman whom Mrs Severe wanted
to speak with drove up and passed in by the back way. The lady looked
along the avenue, and as it happened at that moment Miss Chibwell was
standing in the road by her gate. No one else was in sight, so it isn’t
to be wondered at that Mrs Severe went back to the house immediately
without another thought.
“That was the last that has been seen of Marie. As a matter of fact,
Miss Chibwell turned back into her garden almost as soon as Mrs Severe
did. When the child did not appear for the afternoon school the mistress
thought nothing of it. She is a little short-sighted and although she
had seen the two at their gate she concluded that they were going out
together somewhere. Consequently it was not until four o’clock, when
Marie did not return home, that the alarm was raised.”
Continuous narration was not congenial to Inspector Beedel’s mental
attitude. He made frequent pauses as though to invite cross-examination.
Sometimes Carrados ignored the opening, at others he found it more
convenient to comply.
“The inference is that someone was waiting in this space just beyond
Arling Lodge?” he now contributed.
“I think it is reasonable to assume that, sir. Premeditated, we both
admit. Doubtless a favourable opportunity was being looked for and there
it was. At all events there”--he tapped the X as the paper lay beneath
Carrados’s hand--“there is the very last trace that we can rely on.”
“The scent, you mean?”
“Yes, Mr Carrados. We got one of our dogs down the next morning and put
him on the trail. We gave him the scent of a boot and from the gate he
brought us without a pause to where I have marked this X. There the line
ended. There can be no doubt that from that point the girl had been
picked up and carried. That is a very remarkable thing. It could
scarcely have been done openly past the houses. The fences on all sides
are of such a nature that it is incredible for any man to have got an
unwilling or insensible burden of that sort over without at least laying
it down in the process. If our dog is to be trusted, it wasn’t laid
down. Some sort of a vehicle remains. We find no recent wheel-marks and
no one seems to have seen anything that would answer about at that
time.”
“You are determined to mystify me, Inspector,” smiled Carrados.
“I’m that way myself, sir,” said the detective.
“And I know you too well to ask if you have done this and that----”
“I’ve done everything,” admitted Beedel modestly.
“Is this X spot commanded by any of the houses? Here is Arling
Lodge----”
“There is one window overlooking, but now the trees are too much out for
anything to be seen. Besides, it’s only a passage window. Dr Ellerslie
took me up there himself to settle the point.”
“Ellerslie--Dr Ellerslie?”
“The gentleman who lives there. At least he doesn’t live altogether
there, as I understand that he has it for a week-end place. Boating, I
believe, sir. His regular practice is in town.”
“Harley Street? Prescott Ellerslie, do you know?”
“That is the same, Mr Carrados.”
“Oh, a very well-known man. He has a great reputation as an operator for
peritonitis. Nothing less than fifty guineas a time, Inspector.” Perhaps
the fee did not greatly impress Mr Carrados, but he doubtless judged
that it would interest Inspector Beedel. “And this house on the other
side--Lyncote?”
“A retired Indian army colonel lives there--Colonel Doige.”
“I mean as regards overlooking the spot.”
“No; it is quite cut off from there. It cannot be seen.”
Carrados’s interpreting finger stopped lightly over a detail of the plan
that it was again exploring. The Inspector’s pencil had now added a line
of dots leading from The Hollies gate to the X.
“The line the dog took,” Beedel explained, following the other’s
movement. “You notice that the girl turned sharply out of the avenue
into this opening at right angles.”
“I was just considering that.”
“Something took her attention suddenly or someone called her there--I
wonder what, Mr Carrados.”
“I wonder,” echoed the blind man, raising the anonymous letter to his
face again.
Mr Carrados frequently professed to find inspiration in the surroundings
of light and brilliance to which his physical sense was dead, but when
he wished to go about his work with everyone else at a notable
disadvantage he not unnaturally chose the dark. It was therefore night
when, in accordance with his promise to Beedel, he motored round by
Swanstead, or, more exactly, it was morning, for the clock in the square
ivied tower of the parish church struck two as the car switchbacked over
the humped bridge from Middlesex into Surrey.
“This will do, Harris; wait here,” he said a little later. He knew that
there were trees above and wide open spaces on both sides. The station
lay just beyond, and from the station to Arling Avenue was a negligible
step. Even at that hour Arling Avenue might have been awake to the
intrusion of an alien car of rather noticeable proportions.
The adaptable Harris picked out Mr Carrados’s most substantial rug and
went to sleep, to dream of a wayside cycle shop and tea-rooms where he
could devote himself to pedigree Wyandottes. With Parkinson at his elbow
Carrados walked slowly on to Arling Avenue. What was lacking on Beedel’s
plan Parkinson’s eyes supplied; on a subtler plane, in the moist, warm
night, full of quiet sounds and earthy odours, other details were filled
in like the work of a lightning cartoonist before the blind man’s
understanding.
They walked the length of the avenue once and then returned to the
grassy opening where the last trace of Marie Severe had evaporated.
“I will stay here. You walk on back to the highroad and wait for me. I
may be some time. If I want you, you will hear the whistle.”
“Very good, sir.” Parkinson knew of old that there were times when his
master would have no human eye upon him as he went about his work, and
with a magnificent stolidity the man had not a particle of curiosity. It
did not even occur to him to wonder. But for nearly half-an-hour the
more inquiring creatures of the night looked down--or up, according to
their natures--to observe the strange attitudes and quiet persistence of
the disturber of the solitude as he crossed and recrossed their little
domain, studied its boundaries, and explored every corner of its
miniature thickets. A single petal picked up near the locked door to the
garden of Arling Lodge seemed a small return for such perseverance, but
it is to be presumed that the patient search had not been in vain, for
it was immediately after the discovery that Carrados left the opening,
and with the cool effrontery that marked his methods he opened the front
gate of Dr Ellerslie’s garden and made his way with slow but unerring
insight along the boundary wall.
“A blind man,” he had once replied to Mr Carlyle’s nervous
remonstrance--“a blind man carries on his face a sufficient excuse for
every indiscretion.”
It was nearly three o’clock when, by the light of the street lamp at the
corner of the avenue and the highroad, Parkinson saw his master
approaching. But to the patient and excellent servitor’s disappointment
Carrados at that moment turned back and retraced his steps in the same
leisurely manner. As a matter of fact, a new consideration had occurred
to the blind man and he continued to pace up and down the footpath as he
considered it.
“Oh, sir!”
He stopped at once, but betraying no surprise, without the start which
few can restrain when addressed suddenly in the dark. It was always dark
to him, but was it ever sudden? Was he indeed ignorant of the obscure
figure that had appeared at the gate during his perambulation?
“I have seen you walking up and down at this hour and I wondered--I
wondered whether you had any news.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Mrs Severe. My little girl Marie disappeared from here two weeks
ago. You must surely know about it; everybody does.”
“Yes, I know,” he admitted. “Inspector Beedel told me.”
“Oh, Inspector Beedel!” There was obvious disappointment in her voice.
“He is very kind and promises--but nothing comes of it, and the days go
on, the days go on,” she repeated tragically.
“Ida! Ida!” Someone was calling from one of the upper windows, but
Carrados was speaking also and Mrs Severe merely waved her hand back
towards the house without responding.
“Your little girl was very fond of flowers?”
“Oh yes, indeed.” The pleasant recollection dwarfed the poor lady’s
present sense of calamity and for a moment she was quite bright. “She
loved them. She would bury her face in a bunch of flowers and drink
their scent. She almost lived in the garden. They were more to her than
toys or dolls, I am sure. But how do you know?”
“I only guessed.”
“Ida! Ida!” The rather insistent, nasally querulous voice was raised
again and this time Mrs Severe replied.
“Yes, dear, immediately,” she called back, still lingering, however, to
discover whether she had anything to hope from this outlandish visitant.
“Had Marie been ill recently?” Carrados detained her with the question.
“Ill! Oh no.” The reply was instant and emphatic. It was almost--if one
could credit a mother’s pride in her child’s health being carried to
such a length--it was almost resentful.
“Nothing that required the services of a doctor?”
“Marie never requires the services of a doctor.” The tone, distant and
constrained, made it clear that Mrs Severe had given up any expectations
in this quarter. “My child, I am glad to say, does not know what illness
means,” she added deliberately.
“Ida! Oh, here you are.” The very unromantically accoutred form of a
keen-visaged, middle-aged female, padding heavily in bedroom slippers
along the garden walk, gave its quietus to the situation. “What a scare
you gave me, dearie. Why, whoever----”
“Good-night,” said Mrs Severe, turning from the gate.
Carrados raised his hat and resumed his interrupted stroll. He had not
sought the interview and he made no effort to prolong it, for there was
little to be got from that source.
“A strange flare of maternal pride,” he remarked in his usual detached
fashion as he rejoined Parkinson.
About five o’clock on the same day--five o’clock in the afternoon, let
it be understood--Inspector Beedel was called to the telephone.
“Oh, nothing fresh so far, Mr Carrados,” he reported when he identified
his caller. “I shan’t forget to let you know whenever there is.”
“But I think that possibly there is,” replied Mr Carrados. “Or at least
there might be if you went down to Arling Lodge and insisted on seeing
the child who slept there last night.”
“Arling Lodge? Dr Ellerslie’s? You don’t mean to say, sir----”
“That is for you to satisfy yourself. Dr Ellerslie is a widower with no
children. Marie Severe was drugged by phronolal on some flowers which
she was given. Phronolal is a new anæsthetic which is practically
unknown outside medical circles. She was carried into the garden of
Arling Lodge and into the house. The bunch of flowers was thrown down
temporarily inside the wall, probably while the door was relocked. The
girl’s hair caught on a raspberry cane six yards from the back door
along the path leading there. Ellerslie had previously sent away the two
people who look after the place--a housekeeper and her husband who sees
to the garden. That letter, by the way, was associable with phronolal.
Now you have all that I know, Inspector, and I hope to goodness that I
am clear of it.”
“But, good heavens, Mr Carrados, this is really terrible!” protested
Beedel, moved to emotion in spite of his rich experience of questionable
humanity. “A man in his position! Is he a maniac?”
“I don’t know. To tell you frankly, Inspector, I haven’t gone an inch
further than I was compelled to go in order to be sure. Make use of the
information as you like, but I don’t want to have anything more to do
with the case. It isn’t a pleasant thing to have pulled down a man like
Ellerslie--a callous, exacting machine in the operating-room, one hears,
but a man who was doing fine work--saving useful lives every day. I’m
sick of it, Beedel, that’s all.”
“I understand, sir. Still, there’s the other side, isn’t there, after
all? Of course I’ll keep your name out of it as you wish, but I shall be
given a good deal of credit that I oughtn’t to accept. If you don’t do
anything for a few weeks the papers are always more complimentary when
you do do it.”
“I’m afraid that you will have to put up with that,” replied Carrados
drily.
There was an acquiescent laugh from the other end and a reference to the
speaker’s indebtedness. Then: “Well, I’ll get the necessary authority
and go down at once, sir.”
“Yes. Good-bye,” said Carrados. He hung up the receiver with the only
satisfaction that he had experienced since he had fixed on
Ellerslie--satisfaction to have done with it. The thing was unpalatable
enough in itself, and to add another element of distaste, through one or
two circumstances that had come his way in the past, he had an actual
regard for the surgeon whom some called brutal, but who was universally
admitted to be splendidly efficient. It would have been a much more
congenial business to the blind man to clear him than to implicate. He
betook himself to a tray of Sicilian coins of the autonomous period to
get the taste out of his mouth and swore that he would not read a word
of any stage of the proceedings.
“A Mr Severe wishes to see you, sir.”
So it happened that about an hour after he had definitely shelved his
interest in the case Max Carrados was again drawn into its
complications. Had Severe been merely a well-to-do suppliant, perhaps
... but the blind man had enough of the vagabond spirit to ensure his
sympathy towards one whom he knew, on the contrary, to be extremely
ill-to-do. In a flash of imagination he saw the outcast walking from Red
Lion Street to Richmond, and, denied admission, from Richmond back to
Red Lion Street again, because he hadn’t sixpence to squander, the man
who always bought a little toy....
“It is nearly seven, isn’t it, Parkinson? Mr Severe will stay and dine
with me,” were almost the first words the visitor heard.
“Very well, sir.”
“I? Dine?” interposed Severe quickly. “No, no. I really----”