in a bedroom which overlooked the Embankment and the Thames beyond, he
turned suddenly to me and exclaimed, still in French:
"I am very troubled and mystified, Monsieur Garfield. When you made
those curious allegations against Monsieur De Gex I confess that I
laughed them to scorn, but I have to-day learned several facts which
put an entirely fresh complexion upon the present circumstances. Last
night Mateo Sanz visited De Gex again. The financier gave a musical
evening, but after the departure of all the guests, Sanz called and
was at once admitted to De Gex's library."
"Ah!" I exclaimed. "I know that room. I have sad cause to remember
it!"
"He remained there till nearly two o'clock in the morning. Then he
returned on foot to his hotel. My information is that on his walk back
he was whistling to himself, as though in high spirits."
"But that is surely no extraordinary circumstance!" I remarked. "Did I
not tell you that De Gex is as friendly with Sanz as he was with
Despujol?"
"I know. But in face of other facts I have learnt, the problem
presented is an amazing one."
As he spoke a tap came upon the door, and a page-boy handed in a card.
"Show the gentleman up," Rivero said in his broken English.
"Here is someone who will relate some very strange facts. He is my
friend Gonzalez Maura, an advocate who practised in Madrid before his
appointment to our Consulate here. I called at the Consulate yesterday
and saw him, when he related to me some curious facts which I have
asked him to repeat to you. He is here for that purpose."
A few moments later the page-boy ushered in a middle-aged,
well-dressed, black-bearded man who bowed elegantly when we were
introduced.
"Now, my dear friend," exclaimed Rivero, when we were all three
seated. "Will you please tell Mr. Garfield what you explained to me
yesterday."
"Certainly. I merely tell you what I know," he replied in very fair
English. "It is like this. Before I left Madrid I was very friendly
with a country lawyer named Ruiz Serrano, who lived at Valladolid. For
some reason the late Count de Chamartin took a great fancy to my
friend, and constituted him his legal adviser, an appointment which
brought him in quite a large income. To the lawyer of a great
financier fees are always rolling in. The Count naturally took Serrano
into his confidence and told him how, years ago, he had married the
daughter of an Englishman in rather humble circumstances, living in
Madrid. A daughter was born to them, but later he divorced his wife,
who died soon afterwards, and then he married a lady of the Madrid
aristocracy, the present widow. Apparently he made a will leaving the
whole of his fortune to his daughter by his first wife--save for a
small annuity to his second wife--and according to the will, on the
death of his daughter the fortune was to go to his trusted partner,
your English financier, Mr. Oswald De Gex."
I sat staring at the stranger, but uttered no word, for I was
reflecting deeply.
"Señor Serrano arrived in London a week ago, and came to consult me
regarding the will, because it seems that the Count's daughter--who
came here to learn English, she having lived in Madrid all her
life--is dead."
"Hence De Gex has inherited the Count's fortune?" I gasped. "What was
the girl's name?"
"Her name was, of course, Chamartin, but in obedience to her father's
wish, after the divorce she took her mother's maiden name, and was
known as Gabrielle Engledue."
"Gabrielle Engledue!" I echoed. "_Gabrielle Engledue!_"
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH
LOVE THE CONQUEROR
The sudden revelation of the motive of the crime at Stretton Street
staggered me.
An hour later I saw the Count's lawyer, Señor Serrano, at his hotel in
Russell Square, and from him learned much more regarding his late
client's disposition of his property. The Count had apparently not
been on very affectionate terms with his second wife, which accounted
for him leaving the bulk of his fortune to his daughter Gabrielle, and
in case of her death, to his partner De Gex, whom he had, of course,
believed to be an honest man.
The Count had died suddenly several months before his daughter. He had
died from orosin, no doubt administered by someone in De Gex's pay.
Then almost before the will could be proved in the girl's favour,
Señor Serrano learned that the girl herself had died in England. Since
then he had been constantly occupied in straightening out his late
client's affairs, and had now come to London for the first time in
order to see Oswald De Gex, who had been constantly pressing for a
settlement of the estate. He had seen him on the previous day, when he
appeared to be anxious that the affair should be cleared up.
"As he spoke of his late partner, and of his daughter, tears came to
his eyes," said the Spanish lawyer, speaking in French.
Tears in the eyes of Oswald De Gex! I smiled at the thought.
As for Rivero he now became just as puzzled as I was myself.
To me the motive of poor Gabrielle Engledue's death was now quite
apparent, and, moreover, it seemed that the reason De Gex required a
forged death certificate was because he was not exactly certain
whether by a post-mortem examination any trace of the drug could be
found. He was not quite sure that one or other of the great London
pathologists might not identify orosin. With the Count's death on the
Continent he had taken the risk, well knowing that any ordinary doctor
would pronounce death as being due to heart failure, as indeed it was.
In London, however, he felt impelled to take precautions, and they
were very elaborate and cunning ones, as I now knew.
With the motive thus apparent, I felt myself on the verge of triumph.
Yet without full knowledge of what occurred to my poor beloved on that
night how could I denounce the arch-criminal whose favours were now
being sought by the great ones of the land.
I was still in a quandary. I had established to my own satisfaction
that Tito Moroni, the doctor of the Via Cavezzo, was the person who
had distilled the orosin, and who had no doubt introduced it to his
wealthy but unscrupulous patient as a means of ridding himself of
unwanted persons and enriching himself at the same time. Indeed, these
facts were eventually proved up to the hilt.
The motives for the deaths of the Conde de Chamartin, his daughter,
and the philanthropic Dutch financier, were all quite plain, but, of
course, I had said nothing to Rivero, or to anybody else, regarding my
acceptance of a bribe to assist De Gex in the committal of a crime.
I confess that on that night of horror I had no suspicion of foul
play, for knowing the great financier as a person of very high
standing, I naturally believed the story of his niece's sudden death.
It was not until I found myself in the hospital at St. Malo that I
realized how cleverly I had been tricked. The drug had been
administered to me in just sufficient dose to ensure that my brain
should be affected, and that any story I might afterwards tell should
be discredited.
Happily, however, I had now nearly completely recovered. I was the
third person known to return to their normal senses after a dose of
orosin. Would there be a fourth?
Three further days went past, watchful, anxious days. De Gex was still
at Stretton Street, apparently quite unconscious that his hireling
Sanz was being kept under close surveillance. Another plot was in
progress, without a doubt. Twice again had the elusive Spaniard, who
was such a close friend of the notorious Despujol, visited Stretton
Street.
It seemed, too, that De Gex, though anxious to return to Italy, still
remained in London in the hope that Señor Serrano would arrange for
the immediate transfer of the Count's property.
One could scarcely take up a newspaper without finding that Oswald De
Gex had attended this function or that, for he was apparently courting
the favours of certain high political personages, no doubt with a view
to a place in the next Honours List.
I smiled within myself as I read of all the great man's doings, of his
vast financial interests, of his estates in England and in Italy, and
his assistance to the Ministry of Finance of Spain. Often indeed when
at home I discussed the situation with Hambledon, yet without the
evidence of Gabrielle Tennison we could not act.
Nearly a week had passed since my first meeting with the Spanish
lawyer Serrano. Tito Moroni had apparently returned to Italy, for he
had not been again to Stretton Street. His last visit there had no
doubt resulted in a quarrel with his wealthy client, whom I had
suspicions he was blackmailing, for such would undoubtedly be the
procedure of a blackguard of his calibre. More than once Rivero seemed
anxious to secure the arrest of Mateo Sanz, but I constantly urged him
to remain patient. He frequently begged me to reveal the true extent
of my knowledge, but I always evaded his questions because I was not
yet in a position to make a triumphant coup, and avenge poor
Gabrielle.
Daily, hourly indeed, was she in my thoughts. The letters I received
from Lyons were the reverse of hopeful. The last one indeed reported
that little or no progress had been noted during the weeks she had
been under the care of the kindly old professor.
One evening, on returning from the office, I found upon the hall-table
a note in Mrs. Tennison's well-known hand. It had been written from
Longridge Road a few hours before, and in it she asked me to call that
evening as they had returned from France.
Naturally I lost no time in dashing over to Earl's Court, and with
failing heart I entered the well-remembered artistic little
drawing-room where Gabrielle herself, in a cool frock of cream washing
silk trimmed with narrow edgings of jade green, rose smiling to greet
me.
Her face was changed, for her countenance was now bright and
vivacious, and her eyes merry and sparkling. The hard set expression
had gone, and she looked very alert and indescribably sweet.
"Well, Mr. Garfield!" she cried merrily, shaking my hand in warm
welcome, so different from her usual apathetic attitude towards me.
"You see we're back again! Mother has just gone round to Aunt Alice's
in Cromwell Road, but she told me that you would call."
"Well, Miss Tennison!" I exclaimed, holding her soft little hand in
mine, and looking into her eyes. "I hope--I hope that you feel better.
Indeed, you look quite changed!"
"Yes. I can recollect everything now! All the past has come back to
me, thanks to the old Professor. He was so very kind, and so patient
that I can never thank him sufficiently--or you, Mr. Garfield, for
discovering him. I feel quite myself again. And it was all so sudden.
At first, the treatment gave me no relief, my brain seemed so muddled,
but quite suddenly one day I found that I could recollect the
past--all that happened to me on that terrible night. And in three
days the Professor announced that I had quite recovered!"
My heart leapt with joy! She was cured!--cured!
"Tell me all that you recollect regarding the events of that night," I
urged breathlessly as we sat together in the little London
drawing-room. I looked at her countenance and realized now that it was
full of life and animation, how very beautiful she was. How different
from when I had seen her half dragged along the streets of Florence by
her pretended friend Moroni.
But justice was at hand. So I urged her to tell me exactly what
happened. I give it to you, my reader, in my love's own words, just as
she related it to me.
"Well," she said, drawing a long breath. "One night about twelve
months ago I was at a private dance at the house of a friend in
Holland Park, when I was introduced to a young married woman named
Cullerton, the wife of a man on the Stock Exchange. I rather liked
her, and as she invited me to a small dance which she gave a week
later we soon became friends. One day, while we were walking together
in Bond Street we met Mr. De Gex, the great financier, to whom she
introduced me. His car was standing at the kerb, so he took us back to
tea at his house in Stretton Street. While we were at tea a tall, dark
Spanish-looking girl came in and was introduced to us as Gabrielle
Engledue. As we sat at tea we laughed over the similarity of our
names, and she told me that though her mother had been English she had
lived all her life in Madrid, and had been over here for the purpose
of studying English. She had been staying with a family somewhere in
Essex, but was now at an hotel in London, for she was returning to
Madrid in a few days. I rather liked her, and as Mr. De Gex was
charming to us both, I accepted his invitation to dine there a few
days later. I did not tell mother about this, for I feared that being
rather old-fashioned she might disapprove of my new friendships. We
had a delightful dinner, and Mr. De Gex took us all three to the
theatre afterwards, and drove each of us home. I was the first, and he
put me down at the corner of Earl's Court Road.
"On the night of November the seventh at very short notice Mr. De Gex
had again invited Miss Engledue and myself through Mrs. Cullerton to
dinner, for she was leaving for Madrid next day, her luggage having
already been sent to the station cloak-room, she told me. We
understood that Mr. and Mrs. Cullerton were also coming. We did not
put on dinner-dresses as Mr. De Gex said he intended to take us to a
show at Olympia afterwards. I was, I know, foolish not to tell mother
where I was going, but the reason for it I have already explained.
When I arrived at Stretton Street, after my dancing lesson, Gabrielle
Engledue was already there chatting with Mr. De Gex in the library. He
told me that he had just received a telephone message from Mr.
Cullerton saying that his wife had been taken rather unwell and
therefore could not come. So we three sat down, the only other guest
being a man I now recollect as one who afterwards proved my friend,
Doctor Moroni.
"The meal was quite a merry one for Mr. De Gex was quite a lady's man
when his wife was absent. At that time I understood that Mrs. De Gex
was remaining in Italy. The meal was served by a man whom the great
financier addressed as Horton, and just before coffee was brought in I
recollect that Moroni left the table and went to the telephone. Then,
on his return, the man Horton brought in the cups which were already
filled. The man put down a cup before me, but De Gex noticing that it
was a little too full, politely exchanged his for mine.
"We were chatting, and Mr. De Gex had just said that it was about time
we were off to Olympia, when I sipped my coffee. I noticed that both
Doctor Moroni and our host glanced at me curiously. The coffee tasted
unusually sweet, and also it seemed to be slightly perfumed, I
remember, almost like _pot-pourri_. I had just replaced the cup upon
the table when I felt a most violent pain in my head, and cried out.
Miss Engledue was at my side in an instant, but I felt a sensation of
giddiness, and next moment I knew nothing more."
I remained silent for a few seconds, thinking deeply over her
remarkable story.
"Then Miss Engledue was quite well at the time?" I asked.
"Quite, she sprang to my assistance."
"Then you were taken ill before she became similarly affected?"
"Was she? I did not know that!" said my beloved in surprise.
"Yes. You were rendered unconscious by a drug which produced all the
symptoms of death, but Miss Engledue was afterwards deliberately
killed."
Gabrielle stared at me as though she believed that I was bereft of my
senses.
"Was Gabrielle Engledue killed?" she gasped. "Surely she was not!"
"She was," I replied. "And her body was afterwards cremated!"
My beloved gave vent to a shriek of horror--and what more natural? She
now realized, for the first time, that she had been the victim of a
clever and amazing plot.
"I recollect," she said, "that just at the moment of my sudden seizure
I seemed to become fascinated by the gorgeous Spanish shawl which
Gabrielle Engledue had around her shoulders. It was a most beautifully
embroidered silk shawl with long, heavy fringe, and flowers worked in
red, green and gold upon a silk fabric. I had been admiring it all the
time I sat at the table, but the colours seemed so dazzling as to
bewilder me, to muddle my senses--red, green and gold."
How often had those words of hers puzzled me! Now I knew the truth!
That magnificent Spanish shawl had stood out in her recollection as
the last object she had seen before the deadly orosin had done its
work.
Then I told her my own story.
"I was inveigled by a specious story into that house soon after you
had sipped your coffee--perhaps even before," I said. "The library was
filled with a curious, overpowering perfume of _pot-pourri_ which
overcame me, and then De Gex gave me a liqueur glass of brandy into
which there had been introduced that most baneful of all drugs orosin!
It took immediate effect upon me, and a few moments later I was shown
you lying upon the bed, as though you were dead! Indeed, I believed
you to be dead, and in the muddled state of my brain I actually gave
a certificate with which that fiend De Gex had already provided
himself. I declared that you had died of heart disease, a malady for
which I had for some months treated you!"
"But I knew nothing more until I was found on the road in Hampshire,"
she said.
"And I knew nothing more until I found myself in a hospital over at
St. Malo," I went on. "The drug orosin in small doses destroys the
memory; in large doses it produces an effect of death, and in still
larger ones--like that administered to your friend the Anglo-Spanish
girl Miss Engledue--causes instant death, with no symptoms that the
post-mortem can distinguish other than the natural cause of sudden
heart failure."
"Was I given the drug deliberately?" asked Gabrielle, looking at me
with her wonderful wide-open eyes--eyes so different from those dulled
fixed ones which I had seen in the Duomo in old Florence, when she had
raised herself from praying in her half-demented state while the
sinister Italian doctor stood behind her.
"Yes," I said. "De Gex passed his coffee cup to you, smiling and
without compunction, well knowing the effect it must have upon you, at
the same time his intention being to kill your friend Miss Engledue by
administering a stronger dose. This must have been accomplished by the
infection of some wound or slight abrasion of the skin so that the
drug should be introduced directly into the system and not by the
mouth. Such a method would cause almost instant death."
"But did Gabrielle Engledue die?" she asked excitedly.
"Yes. She did. And by her death De Gex inherits the fortune of her
father, a rich Spaniard, the Conde de Chamartin."
She looked at me utterly bewildered, and well the poor girl might be.
She now realized that she had been the victim of an amazing plot
conceived by a master criminal, who was at the same time immensely
wealthy, yet who cared nothing for human life so long as he amassed a
colossal fortune.
"All this, Mr. Garfield, is most astounding!" she declared, gazing
with bewilderment around the room. "It seems incredible!"
"Yes, Miss Tennison, I know it does," I replied. "But have patience,
and I will prove to you the true depth of the villainy of our mutual
enemy and his well-paid sycophants."
Then, of a sudden, I grasped her soft hand in mine and for a few
seconds held it. I looked steadily into her wonderful eyes, and then
slowly I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it.
"Gabrielle," I whispered, bending to her in deep earnestness. "My
triumph over your enemies is yours--_yours_! Wait, and I will reveal
to you the whole facts--facts more astounding than have ever been
conceived in the most sensational pages of modern fiction."
She did not withdraw her hand, and by her inert attitude, I realized
with indescribable joy that she really reciprocated my love!
I am not an emotional man, neither am I an ideal lover. I am only a
mere man-of-the-world. Hence perhaps the reader will forgive me if I
fail to describe all the ecstasy of affection which I experienced at
that moment.
I loved Gabrielle Tennison with all my soul, and I now knew that she
loved me. That surely was all-sufficient!
With Gabrielle I had been a fellow-victim of a deeply laid and most
foul plot. That I had been purposely marked down with the aid of De
Gex's accomplice and sycophant, Gaston Suzor, was made more than plain
as I pursued my inquiries.
The plot by which De Gex had hoped to secure his partner's fortune was
indeed worthy the evil ever-scheming mind of the mystery-man of
Europe; the man whose unseen influence made itself felt in every great
political move on the Continent--the man whose hundred agents were
ready in secret to do his bidding and perform any dirty work for
payment.
After the Conde de Chamartin had been secretly attacked in the train
on his way to Paris and had died in the hospital at San Sebastian,
Oswald De Gex suddenly found to his dismay that whatever claim he made
upon his late partner's estate, practically the whole would go to his
daughter. Therefore, while being a little apprehensive lest orosin
could be detected in a body after death by an expert pathologist, he
resorted to that elaborate and remarkable plot in order to exhibit to
me what I presumed to be the body of Gabrielle Engledue, and induce me
to forge a death certificate in the name of a doctor whose surname was
the same as my own.
The fact that he had actually provided himself with a genuine sheet of
the doctor's notepaper, and that--as I now learnt for the first
time--Moroni was actually in the house when the drug was given to
Gabrielle and myself prior to the death of the chief victim, showed
the utter callousness of the crime. Indeed, Gabrielle Engledue was
actually witness of my beloved's mysterious seizure, little dreaming
that in a short hour she herself would fall victim to the cupidity of
that relentless poisoner who, by his crimes, hoped to amass one of the
most colossal fortunes in the world.
I sat with Gabrielle discussing the amazing affair until darkness
slowly fell. I told her of my own astounding adventures, and my narrow
escape from death in Madrid, to all of which she listened with
breathless interest.
Then, rising, I took her hand again, and with whispered words I
pressed my lips to hers for the first time in a long but sacred
caress.
She sighed. I felt her quiver as I pressed her to me, and then to my
delight I felt her sweet warm lips cling at last affectionately to
mine.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH
ANOTHER PLOT
Among my letters on the following morning was a small packet which I
opened. Within was a tablet of dark-brown toilet-soap bearing the name
of a well-known firm of manufacturers. With it was a typewritten
letter upon dark-blue commercial paper with a printed heading. I was
addressed as "H. Granfield, Esq.," and the letter proved to be a
polite intimation that as the firm in question was putting on to the
market a new brand of toilet-soap, they begged me to accept with their
compliments the enclosed sample. I was also informed that, if I liked
it, I could purchase it of their agents, a certain firm of chemists in
King Street, Hammersmith.
"Looks rather decent soap!" remarked Harry as I passed it to him, and
then I re-wrapped it in its paper and placed it aside.
At eleven o'clock I sat with Rivero, Gabrielle and Harry Hambledon in
the dull reception-room at Scotland Yard, that same room wherein I had
given information concerning the whereabouts of Mateo Sanz.
The Superintendent who received us was a well-dressed courtly man,
rather stout and elderly, who became intensely interested when I
related the whole story, much as I have set it down in the foregoing
pages.
The consultation was a momentous one. Rivero sat amazed when I
described my chance meeting with Gaston Suzor, and the clever manner
in which I had been inveigled into De Gex's house in Stretton Street.
Indeed, on comparing Gabrielle's story with my own, I now saw that at
the time I entered the house both she and the girl Engledue were in
their normal health. The coffee had not then been served though Moroni
had gone out of the room, no doubt to put the drug into the cup which
was to be offered to Gabrielle Tennison, and which apparently was
placed by mistake before the mystery-man himself. Or else the changing
of the cups was to allay any suspicion that might arise in the mind of
the other victim, which was perhaps most likely.