AT HEATHERMOOR GARDENS
That night the newspapers contained a paragraph repeating what had
appeared in the morning concerning Mrs. Audley’s disappearance, and
stating that no trace of her had been discovered after she had left
Bexhill.
Her secret visit to old Feng, accompanied by Stanley, three days
before, added to the mystery. Feng knew of my search for Audley. Then,
why had he not told me the truth? With what motive was I being misled
and befooled by a conspiracy of silence?
I began to realize that that motive, whatever it was, must be far
stronger than I had previously suspected. And in my heart, I confess,
I was dismayed by the knowledge that Stanley Audley was still alive:
it showed that the goal upon which I had set my heart would never be
reached. My distress and dismay as I sat late into the night in my
silent bachelor room, may well be imagined.
Had Thelma purposely gone into hiding with her husband, and with the
connivance of Feng--or had she since met with foul play? Her failure
to take her mother into her confidence seemed to me to suggest the
latter.
I was strongly tempted to go to Scotland Yard and tell the police all
I knew about the missing girl. But after long consideration I decided
that I could do little, if any, good. The police were pursuing their
own methods and what I could tell them would not help matters much. In
addition I am afraid I did not want the police to get hold of Stanley
Audley. If, as I strongly suspected, he was engaged in the nefarious
trafficking in forged bank-notes, anything I did could only bring fresh
distress upon Thelma. And I could not force myself to believe that her
husband would be sufficiently callous and cold-blooded to allow any
serious harm to befall her. In the long run it proved I was right. The
issue was in other hands than those of Scotland Yard.
I was trying to fix my mind upon my work at the office next day, when
my telephone rang and I heard the cheery voice of old Mr. Humphreys.
“Look here, Yelverton, I’ve been meaning to ring you up for some
days past. Can you come and dine with me tonight? I’m in my place
at Hampstead at last--moved up here a week ago. Will you take the
address--14, Heathermoor Gardens--up at the top end of Fitzjohn’s
Avenue.”
I scribbled the address on my blotting-pad.
“You’ll easily find it,” he went on. “Come at eight, won’t you? The
best way is to go to Hampstead Heath tube, and walk. It’s only two
minutes.”
I gratefully accepted, for I wanted to discuss with him Thelma’s
mysterious disappearance.
“Have you seen Doctor Feng lately?” I asked him, before he rang off.
“No; I think he must be in Paris. He told me he was going over,” was
the reply.
About a quarter to eight that night I emerged from the lift at
Hampstead station, and having inquired for Heathermoor Gardens, walked
through the rain to a highly respectable road of large detached houses,
each wherein dwelt prosperous city men, merchants, barristers and the
like. The night was dark, and even though the street lamps shone, it
was with some difficulty that I found Number Fourteen.
The house proved to be a large corner one, of two stories and
double-fronted. Certainly it was the largest and best of them all and
had big bay windows, and possessed an air of prosperity akin to that of
my friend, the Anglo-Turkish financier.
The door was opened by a round-faced clean-shaven young man-servant
who asked me into the spacious lounge-hall in which a wood fire burned
brightly, and after taking my hat and coat, ushered me into a small
cozy library on the left, where old Mr. Humphreys rose from the
fireside, greeting me merrily.
“I’m awfully glad you could come, Yelverton,” was his greeting, “I
haven’t asked anybody to meet you, for I thought we’d just have a quiet
hour together, so that I can show you round my new home, and we can
have a gossip. Sit down. Dinner will be ready in a moment.”
Then he pressed the bell and a moment later the man appeared bearing
a tray with two cocktails. We raised our glasses and drank. Mine
was delicious. I gazed around the sumptuously furnished room and
congratulated him upon it.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve tried to make it as cozy as I can. I thought I
would bring my furniture from Constantinople, but on second thought,
decided it was too oriental and heavy and would hardly have been in
keeping with an English house. So I sold it and have bought this place
and furnished it.”
“It is really charming,” I said, noting the taste displayed.
“Yes, I didn’t want it to appear too new, so some of the stuff
is second-hand. I hate a place which looks like the palace of a
war-profiteer, don’t you?” he laughed.
The room was just my ideal of a man’s den, lined as it was with books
with a soft-lined Turkish carpet, a big carved writing table and
several deep saddle-bag chairs. The atmosphere was heavy with the
scent of his exquisite Turkish tobacco--that my host smuggled--the only
way to get the first grade of tobacco-leaf.
He referred to it as he handed me a thin cigarette.
“In these days of Turkey’s trials--thanks to her German betrayers,
one no longer gets a little of the tobacco reserved for the Yildiz as
it used to be. The Sultan grew his own tobacco in Anatolia--the most
delicious of all tobacco and the second grade was sold to Europe as
the finest. But the best was always kept for the Yildiz and for His
Majesty’s ministers and his harem. I fear the few cigarettes I have
left are the last of the Imperial tobacco.”
My cosmopolitan host was a prominent and powerful figure on the
Bosphorus. I knew what he had said was the truth, and I smoked the
delicious cigarette with intense enjoyment.
“Dinner, sir!” announced the smooth, round-faced man.
Crossing the hall I found myself in a long, sumptuously furnished
dining room with shaded pink lights and at a small table set in the big
window covers were laid for two.
A big dining table of polished rosewood, which could seat a dozen
persons or more, stood in the middle of the room. In its centre was
an oblong piece of Chinese embroidery and upon it was set a great
apricot-colored bowl of autumn flowers.
“I eat at this little table,” he laughed as we sat down. “One has to
have a larger table, but I shall only use it when I have guests.”
The room was a very handsome one with several fine old portraits on
the green-painted walls, while a cozy wood fire burned upon huge
old-fashioned “dogs,” sending out a fragrant scent and a glowing warmth
which was comforting on that chilly autumn night.
“It is most artistic,” I declared when I was seated.
“Yes, but somehow I miss the oriental sumptuousness of my house at
Therapia, down on the Bosphorus. Still, when one is forced to live in
London, one must adopt London’s ways.”
The man had served us with excellent clear soup and had left the room
when my host suddenly looked up at me and said:--
“Oh, by the way, what is the latest concerning your little friend of
Mürren and her husband?”
“Well, Mr. Humphreys,” I said, “the fact is she’s disappeared. That is
what I want to consult you about.”
“Disappeared!” he exclaimed, staring at me. “Then she’s followed her
husband into oblivion--eh?”
“It certainly appears so,” I said.
“Very curious! I didn’t see it in the paper,” he declared. “Tell me
what you know.”
“Well--what I know only puzzles me the more,” was my reply. “She
simply left her mother at Bexhill, saying she was going to London, and
disappeared. But one very curious fact I’ve discovered is that a few
days ago she and her husband called upon Doctor Feng.”
“Called on Feng!” he cried, starting up. “You--you’re mistaken, surely!
Audley has called on Feng--impossible!”
“Why?” I asked, surprised to see how perturbed he was. He saw my
surprise and the next instant concealed his keen anxiety. But it had
struck me as very unusual. I knew that Feng and he were close friends.
I suspected the former of knowing more than he had revealed to me,
and it seemed now that old Mr. Humphreys was equally annoyed that his
friend had concealed Audley’s visit from him.
“It seems incredible that the missing husband and his wife should
call upon Feng,” he said. “How do you know this, Yelverton? I am much
interested--so tell me. The whole affair has certainly been amazing.
You say they saw Feng a few days ago?”
“Yes, at his house at Castlenau,” I said. “But I thought the Doctor
would certainly tell you, as you and he are such friends.”
“He’s told me nothing. I saw him only two days ago and we spoke of you.
He was going to Paris. He declared the whole affair to be a romantic
mystery--and the unfortunate feature of it was--well, that you had
fallen in love with Audley’s wife.”
“I believed that Audley was dead,” I said, in haste to excuse myself.
The old man stroked his scraggy beard with his thin hand, and smiled.
“Ah! my dear Yelverton, you’re young yet,” he said. “Nobody will blame
you. She’s uncommonly good-looking, and in her distress you, no doubt,
pitied her and then the usual thing happened. It always does. She was
alone and unprotected, and you stood as her champion--eh?”
I only laughed. I suppose his words accurately described the situation.
But I could see that what I had told him concerning this visit of the
missing man to Feng had somehow disturbed him deeply. Indeed, his very
countenance had changed. He was no longer the well-preserved, hale and
hearty old man he usually looked. He had suddenly become pale and wan,
and he questioned me, with obvious anxiety, as to how I had gained
knowledge of what I alleged.
Quite frankly I repeated almost word for word what I have already told
concerning my visit to Castlenau and what old Mrs. Martin, the Cockney
housekeeper, had revealed to me.
Humphreys only frowned, grunted in dissatisfaction and remarked:
“I can’t think that Feng would have seen the missing young fellow and
say nothing to me.”
“Why?” I asked, perhaps unwisely.
“Why--well, that’s my own affair,” he snapped. “I have reasons for
saying so,” he almost snarled.
At that moment the man-servant came to take our soup plates and served
the fish with almost religious ceremony--“sole Morny” it was.
Suddenly my host laughed, a deep, rippling laugh.
“Well, after all, Yelverton, you’ve been badly bamboozled, haven’t
you? You thought young Audley was dead, and that dainty little woman
was free to marry you. But he’s evidently turned up again. Yes--I
realize the disappointing situation from your point of view. Absolutely
rotten!” and he laughed merrily. He had apparently recovered his usual
self-possession.
But the change I had noted had set every nerve in my body keenly on
the alert. I remembered how his face had changed, the sudden, sullen
contraction of his brows, his anxiety that was obvious no matter how he
tried to hide it. Of course I could not understand his sudden mistrust
of his friend, Feng. Perhaps, after all, the old doctor had some
hidden motive for concealing the fact that bride and bridegroom had
met again after those many months of inexplicable separation, and that
his silence was not merely accidental. Still, it was clear Humphreys
did not think so.
“I thought that the doctor would certainly have told you of Audley’s
reappearance,” I remarked. “Indeed, when you rang me up I was at
once extremely anxious to see you and hear your opinion of the whole
situation.”
“You want my opinion,” he said in a hard tone--a voice quite changed.
“Well, as you know, I thought you a fool from the first. You ought
never to have had anything to do with the affair. It was far too
dangerous.”
“But why dangerous? Tell me.”
“Well--it was--that’s all. You told me of the warning and of the
attempt upon you. But tell me more of Feng--of what his housekeeper
told you,” he urged, rising, taking a bottle of white wine from the big
carved side-board and pouring out a glass for me and for himself. “This
is very interesting.”
I described my telephone chat with Mrs. Shaylor and my call at
Castlenau in further detail.
“Strange!” he remarked, reflecting deeply. “Really, I had no idea that
Audley had ventured to be seen again.”
“Ventured!” I echoed. “Why did he disappear?” His remark betrayed
certain knowledge that he had never divulged to me.
“My dear fellow,” he laughed. “He disappeared, as you know, but I
assure you I haven’t the slightest knowledge of either his motive or
his intention. I believed Feng to be as much in the dark as I am. But
it is evident that he knows and has held back his knowledge from me. I
can’t understand it,” he added, his countenance clouding again.
Then, after a moment’s reflection he said with a smile:
“But, after all, why should I, or you worry, my dear Yelverton?
You have surely cut the little woman out of your heart. If you
haven’t--you’re a fool.”
“I haven’t,” I replied frankly.
“You still love her?” he asked, looking keenly at me as I sipped my
wine.
I nodded.
“Then you are still a fool! I should have thought that after all your
experience of being misled, duped and ridiculed, you would have seen
how impossible it was.”
“Why impossible?” I asked. “Mr. Humphreys, I believe you know far more
than ever you will reveal to me,” I said earnestly. “Do tell me what
you know. I don’t conceal the fact from you that I love Thelma.”
“You needn’t. I’ve known that all along. So has Feng. You’ve worn
your heart on your sleeve for everybody to see. Ah! how very foolish
you have been, my boy. But tell me--are you still determined to solve
the mystery concerning Audley’s disappearance?” And again he looked
straight into my eyes.
“I am,” I replied, “nothing will deter me from seeking the truth.”
“Nothing?” he asked, with an inscrutable smile.
“No,” I said firmly. “I love Thelma and I mean to clear this mystery up
at all hazards.”
The man seated before me drew a long sigh, and I saw that his brows
were knit.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I repeat that you have been foolish--very
foolish, my dear young fellow, and I am afraid that you will regret it
when--when too late.”
What I had told him regarding Audley’s meeting with Feng had evidently
caused him great anxiety, and I noticed that he had left his wine
untouched.
Again he spoke, but his words sounded so faint that I did not catch
them. At the same moment I thought I heard in the distance a shrill
scream--the scream of a woman!
I listened. The scream was repeated!
I saw Humphreys spring from his chair in sudden alarm.
“Hark!” I cried, breathlessly. “What was that?”
But as I spoke the room seemed suddenly to revolve about me rapidly.
Then everything faded from my sight: and I felt paralyzed.
Again that shrill scream of terror fell upon my ears with increased
distinctness.
Next second consciousness left me and everything was abruptly blotted
out.