I fancy. I am here merely on a vacation.”
“If you do any work at all,” said the policeman coldly, “you’ll look in
at my office, or you’ll wish you had when it’s too late.”
“Of course, of course. I shouldn’t dream of omitting any formality that
may be usual. But I don’t fancy I shall break my vacation. By the way,
one little thing. Have you any objection to my carving a ‘J’ on your
front door?”
The policeman stared.
“On the inside. It won’t show. It’s just a whim of mine. If you have no
objection.”
“I don’t want any of your——” began the policeman.
“You misunderstand me. It’s only that it means paying for a dinner. I
wouldn’t for the world——”
The policeman pointed to the window.
“Out you get,” he said abruptly. “I’ve had enough of you. And don’t you
forget to come to my office.”
Spike, still deeply mistrustful of the bulldog Rastus, jumped at the
invitation. He was through the window and out of sight in the friendly
darkness almost before the policeman had finished speaking. Jimmy
remained.
“I shall be delighted——” he had begun, when he stopped. In the doorway
was standing a girl—a girl whom he recognized. Her startled look told
him that she too had recognized him.
Now for the first time since he had set out from his flat that night in
Spike’s company Jimmy was conscious of a sense of the unreality of
things. It was all so exactly as it would have happened in a dream. He
had gone to sleep thinking of this girl, and here she was. But a glance
at McEachern brought him back to earth. There was nothing of the
dream-world about the police-captain.
The policeman, whose back was towards the door, had not observed the
addition to the company. Molly had turned the handle quietly and her
slippered feet made no sound. It was the amazed expression on Jimmy’s
face that caused him to look towards the door.
“Molly!”
She smiled, though her face was still white. Jimmy’s evening clothes had
reassured her. She did not understand how he came to be there, but
evidently there was nothing wrong. She had interrupted a conversation,
not a conflict.
“I heard the noise and you going downstairs, and I sent the dogs down to
help you, father,” she said. “And then, after a little while, I came
down to see if you were all right.”
Mr. McEachern was perplexed. Molly’s arrival had put him in an awkward
position. To denounce him as a cracksman was impossible. Jimmy knew too
much about him. The only real fear of the policeman’s life was that some
word of his moneymaking methods might come to his daughter’s ears.
Quite a brilliant idea came to him.
“A man broke in, my dear,” he said. “This gentleman was passing and saw
him.”
“Distinctly,” said Jimmy. “An ugly-looking customer!”
“But he slipped out of the window and got away,” concluded the
policeman.
“He was very quick,” said Jimmy. “I think he may have been a
professional acrobat.”
“He didn’t hurt you, father?”
“No, no, my dear.”
“Perhaps I frightened him,” said Jimmy airily.
Mr. McEachern scowled furtively at him.
“We mustn’t detain you, Mr.——”
“Pitt,” said Jimmy. “My name is Pitt.” He turned to Molly. “I hope you
enjoyed the voyage.”
The policeman started.
“You know my daughter?”
“By sight only, I’m afraid. We were fellow-passengers on the
_Mauretania_. Unfortunately I was in the second cabin. I used to see
your daughter walking the deck sometimes.”
Molly smiled.
“I remember seeing you—sometimes.”
McEachern burst out:
“Then you——”
He stopped and looked at Molly. Molly was bending over Rastus, tickling
him under the ear.
“Let me show you the way out, Mr. Pitt,” said the policeman shortly. His
manner was abrupt, but when one is speaking to a man whom one would
dearly love to throw out of the window abruptness is almost unavoidable.
“Perhaps I should be going,” said Jimmy.
“Good night, Mr. Pitt,” said Molly.
“I hope we shall meet again,” said Jimmy.
“This way, Mr. Pitt,” growled McEachern, holding the door.
“Please don’t trouble,” said Jimmy. He went to the window, and, flinging
his leg over the sill, dropped noiselessly to the ground.
He turned and put his head in at the window again.
“I did that rather well,” he said pleasantly. “I think I must take up
this sort of thing as a profession. Good night.”
★ 8 ★
_At Dreever_
In the days before the Welshman began to expend his surplus energy in
playing Rugby football he was accustomed, whenever the monotony of his
everyday life began to oppress him, to collect a few friends and make
raids across the border into England, to the huge discomfort of the
dwellers on the other side. It was to cope with this habit that Dreever
Castle, in Shropshire, came into existence. It met a long-felt want. In
time of trouble it became a haven of refuge. From all sides people
poured into it, emerging cautiously when the marauders had disappeared.
In the whole history of the castle there is but one instance recorded of
a bandit attempting to take the place by storm, and the attack was an
emphatic failure. On receipt of a ladleful of molten lead, aimed to a
nicety by one John, the Chaplain—evidently one of those sporting
parsons—this warrior retired, done to a turn, to his mountain
fastnesses, and is never heard of again. He would seem, however, to have
passed the word round among his friends, for subsequent raiding parties
studiously avoided the castle, and a peasant who had succeeded in
crossing its threshold was for the future considered to be “home” and
out of the game.
Such was Dreever in the olden times. To-day the Welshman having calmed
down considerably, it had lost its militant character. The old walls
still stood, grey, menacing, and unchanged, but they were the only link
with the past. The castle was now a very comfortable country-house,
nominally ruled over by Hildebrand Spencer Poyns de Burgh John Hannasyde
Coombe-Crombie, twelfth Earl of Dreever (“Spennie” to his relatives and
intimates), but in reality the possession of his uncle and aunt, Sir
Thomas and Lady Julia Blunt.
Spennie’s position was one of some embarrassment. At no point in their
history had the Dreevers been what one might call a parsimonious family.
If a chance presented itself of losing money in a particularly wild and
futile manner, the Dreever of the period had invariably sprung at it
with the vim of an energetic bloodhound. The South Sea Bubble absorbed
£200,000 of good Dreever money, and the remainder of the family fortune
was squandered to the ultimate farthing by the sportive gentleman who
had held the title in the days of the Regency, when Watier’s and the
Cocoa Tree were in their prime, and fortunes had a habit of disappearing
in a single evening. When Spennie became Earl of Dreever there was about
eighteenpence in the old oak chest.
This is the point at which Sir Thomas Blunt breaks into Dreever history.
Sir Thomas was a small, pink, fussy, obstinate man, with a genius for
trade and the ambition of a Napoleon, probably one of the finest and
most complete specimens of the
came-over-Waterloo-Bridge-with-half-a-crown-in-my-pocket-and-now-look-at-me
class of millionaire in existence. He had started almost literally with
nothing. By carefully excluding from his mind every thought except that
of making money, he had risen in the world with a gruesome persistence
which nothing could check. At the age of fifty-one he was chairman of
Blunt’s Stores, Ltd., a member of Parliament, silent as a wax figure,
but a great comfort to the party by virtue of liberal contributions to
its funds, and a knight. This was good, but he aimed still higher; and,
meeting Spennie’s aunt, Lady Julia Coombe-Crombie, just at the moment
when, financially, the Dreevers were at their lowest ebb, he had
effected a very satisfactory deal by marrying her, thereby becoming as
one might say, the chairman of Dreever, Ltd. Until Spennie should marry
money, an act on which his chairman vehemently insisted, Sir Thomas held
the purse, and, except in minor matters ordered by his wife, of whom he
stood in uneasy awe, had things entirely his own way.
One afternoon, a year after the events recorded in the preceding
chapter, he was in his private room, looking out of the window. The view
from that window was very beautiful. The castle stood on a hill, the
lower portion of which, between the house and the lake, had been cut
into broad terraces. The lake itself, with its island with the little
boathouse in the centre, was a glimpse of Fairyland.
But it was not altogether the beauty of the view that had drawn Sir
Thomas to the window. He was looking at it more because the position
enabled him to avoid his wife’s eye; and, just at the moment, he was
rather anxious to avoid his wife’s eye. A somewhat stormy board meeting
was in progress, and Lady Julia, who constituted the board of directors,
had been heckling the chairman. The point under discussion was one of
etiquette, and in matters of etiquette Sir Thomas felt himself at a
disadvantage.
“I tell you, my dear,” he said to the window, “I am not easy in my
mind.”
“Nonsense!” snapped Lady Julia. “Absurd! Ridiculous!”
Lady Julia Blunt, when conversing, resembled a Maxim gun more than
anything else.
“But your diamonds, my dear?”
“I can take care of them.”
“But why should you have the trouble? Now, if we——”
“It’s no trouble.”
“When we were married there was a detective——”
“Don’t be childish, Thomas. Detectives at weddings are quite customary.”
“But——”
“Bah——”
“I paid twenty thousand pounds for that rope of pearls,” said Sir Thomas
obstinately. Switch things on to a cash basis and he was more himself.
“May I ask if you suspect any of our guests of being criminals?”
inquired Lady Julia, frostily.
Sir Thomas looked out of the window. At the moment the sternest censor
could have found nothing to cavil at in the movements of such of the
house-party as were in sight. Some were playing tennis, some clock golf,
and others were smoking.
“Why not,” he began.
“Of course. Absurd! Quite absurd!”
“But the servants. We have engaged a number of new servants lately.”
“With excellent recommendations.”
Sir Thomas was on the point of suggesting that the recommendations might
be forged, but his courage failed him. Julia was sometimes so abrupt in
these little discussions. She did not enter into his point of view. He
was always a trifle inclined to treat the castle as a branch of Blunt’s
Stores. As proprietor of the stores he had made a point of suspecting
everybody, and the results had been excellent. In Blunt’s Stores you
could hardly move in any direction without bumping into a gentlemanly
detective efficiently disguised. For the life of him Sir Thomas could
not see why the same principle should not obtain at Dreever. Guests at a
country house do not as a rule steal their host’s possessions, but then
it is only an occasional customer at a store who goes in for shop
lifting. It was the principle of the thing, he thought. Be prepared
against every emergency. With Sir Thomas Blunt suspiciousness was almost
a mania. He was forced to admit that the chances were against any of his
guests exhibiting larcenous tendencies, but, as for the servants, he
thoroughly mistrusted them all except Saunders, the butler. It had
seemed to him the merest prudence that a detective from a private
inquiry agency should be installed at the castle while the house was
full. Somewhat rashly he had mentioned this to his wife, and Lady
Julia’s critique of the scheme had been terse and unflattering.
“I suppose,” said Lady Julia sarcastically, “you will jump to the
conclusion that this man whom Spennie is bringing down with him to-day
is a criminal of some sort?”
“Eh? Is Spennie bringing a friend?”
There was not a great deal of enthusiasm in Sir Thomas’s voice. His
nephew was not a young man whom he respected very highly. Spennie
regarded his uncle with nervous apprehension, as one who would deal with
his shortcomings with vigour and severity. Sir Thomas, for his part,
looked on Spennie as a youth who would get into mischief unless he had
an eye fixed on him. So he proceeded to fix that eye.
“I had a wire from him just now.”
“Who is his friend?”
“He doesn’t say. He just says he’s a man he met in London.”
“H’m!”
“And what does ‘H’m!’ mean?” demanded Lady Julia.
“A man can pick up strange people in London,” said Sir Thomas
judicially.
“Nonsense.”
“Just as you say, my dear.”
Lady Julia rose.
“As for what you suggest about the detective, it is, of course,
absolutely absurd.”
“Quite so, my dear.”
“You mustn’t think of it.”
“Just as you say, my dear.”
Lady Julia left the room.
What followed may afford some slight clue to the secret of Sir Thomas
Blunt’s rise in the world. It certainly suggests singleness of purpose,
which is one of the essentials of success.
No sooner had the door closed behind Lady Julia than he went to his
writing-table, took pen and paper, and wrote the following letter:
“To the Manager, Wragge’s Detective Agency, Holborn Bars, London, E.C.
“Sir,—With reference to my last of the 28th ult., I should be glad if
you would send down immediately one of your best men. Am making
arrangements to receive him. Kindly instruct him to present himself at
Dreever Castle as applicant for position of valet to myself. I will see
and engage him on his arrival, and further instruct him in his
duties.—Yours faithfully, Thos. Blunt.
“P.S.—I shall expect him to-morrow evening. There is a good train
leaving Paddington at 2.15.”
He read it over and put in a couple of commas, then placed it in an
envelope, and lit a cigar with the air of one who can be checked—yes,
but vanquished, never.
★ 9 ★
_A New Friend and an Old One_
On the night of the day on which Sir Thomas Blunt wrote his letter to
Wragge’s, Jimmy Pitt was supping at the Savoy.
If you have the money and the clothes, and do not object to being turned
out into the night just as you are beginning to enjoy yourself, there
are few things pleasanter than supper at the Savoy Hotel, London. But as
Jimmy sat there, eyeing the multitude through the smoke of his
cigarette, he felt, despite all the brightness and glitter, that this
was a flat world and that he was very much alone in it.
A little over a year had passed since the merry evening at
Police-Captain McEachern’s. During that time he had covered a good deal
of new ground. His restlessness had reasserted itself. Somebody had
mentioned Morocco in his hearing, and a fortnight later he was in Fez.
Of the principals in that night’s drama he had seen nothing more. It was
only when walking home on air, rejoicing over the strange chance which
had led to his finding and having speech with the lady of the
_Mauretania_—he had reached Fifty-Ninth Street—that he realised that he
had also lost her. It suddenly came home to him that not only did he not
know her address, but was also ignorant of her name. Spike had called
the man with the revolver “boss” throughout—only that and nothing more.
Except that he was a police captain, Jimmy knew as little about him as
he had done before their meeting. And Spike, who held the key to the
mystery, had vanished. His acquaintances of that night had passed out of
his life like figures in a waking dream. As far as the big man with the
pistol was concerned, this did not distress him. He had only known that
massive person for about a quarter of an hour, but to his thinking that
was ample. Spike he would have liked to have met again, but he bore the
separation with fortitude. There remained the girl of the ship, and she
had haunted him with unfailing persistence during every one of the three
hundred and eighty-four days which had passed since their meeting.
It was the thought of her that had made New York seem cramped. For weeks
he had patrolled the more likely streets, the Park, and Riverside Drive
in the hope of meeting her. He had gone to the theatres and restaurants,
but with no success. Sometimes he had wandered through the Bowery on the
chance of meeting Spike. He had seen red heads in profusion, but none
that belonged to his young disciple in the art of burglary. In the end
he had wearied of the search, and, to the disgust of Arthur Mifflin and
his other friends of the Strollers’, had gone out again on his
wanderings. He was greatly missed, especially by that large section of
his circle which was in a perpetual state of wanting a little to see it
through till Saturday. For years Jimmy had been to these unfortunates a
human bank on which they could draw at will. It offended them that one
of those rare natures which are always good for two dollars at any hour
of the day should be allowed to waste itself on places like Morocco and
Spain—especially Morocco, where, by all accounts, there were brigands
with almost a New York sense of touch.
They argued earnestly with Jimmy. They spoke of Raisuli and Kaid
Maclean. But Jimmy was not to be stopped. The gadfly was vexing him, and
he had to move.
For a year he had wandered, realising every day the truth of Horace’s
philosophy for those who travel—that a man cannot change his feelings
with his climate, until finally he had found himself, as every wanderer
does, at Charing Cross.
At this point he had tried to rally. This running away, he told himself,
was futile. He would stand still and fight the fever in him.
He had been fighting it now for a matter of two weeks, and already he
was contemplating retreat. A man at lunch had been talking about Japan——
Watching the crowd, Jimmy had found his attention attracted chiefly by a
party of three a few tables away. The party consisted of a girl, rather
pretty; a lady of middle-age and stately demeanour, plainly her mother;
and a light-haired, weedy young man in the twenties. It had been the
almost incessant prattle of this youth and the peculiarly high-pitched,
gurgling laugh which shot from him at short intervals which had drawn
Jimmy’s notice upon them. And it was the curious cessation of both
prattle and laugh which now made him look again in their direction.
The young man faced Jimmy; and Jimmy, looking at him, could see that all
was not well. He was pale. He talked at random.
Jimmy caught his eye. There was a hunted look in it.
Given the time and the place, there were only two things which could
have caused that look. Either the light-haired young man had seen a
ghost, or he had suddenly realised that he had not enough money to pay
the bill.
Jimmy’s heart went out to the sufferer. He took a card from his case,
scribbled the words, “Can I help?” on it, and gave it to a waiter to
take to the young man, who was now in a state bordering on collapse.
The next moment the light-haired one was at his table, talking in a
feverish whisper.
“I say,” he said, “it’s frightfully good of you, old chap; it’s
frightfully awkward. I’ve come out with too little money. I hardly like
to——. You’ve never seen me before——”
“Don’t rub in my misfortunes,” pleaded Jimmy. “It wasn’t my fault.”
He placed a £5 note on the table.
“Say when,” he said, producing another.
“I say, thanks fearfully,” the young man said. “I don’t know what I’d
have done.” He grabbed at the note. “I’ll let you have it back
to-morrow. Here’s my card. Is your address on your card? I can’t
remember. Oh, by Jove, I’ve got it in my hand all the time.” The
gurgling laugh came into action again, freshened and strengthened by its
rest. “Savoy Mansions, eh? I’ll come round to-morrow. Thanks frightfully
again, old chap. I don’t know what I should have done.”
“It’s been a treat,” said Jimmy deprecatingly.
The young man flitted back to his table, bearing the spoil. Jimmy looked
at the card he had left. “Lord Dreever,” it read, and in the corner the
name of a well-known club. The name Dreever was familiar to Jimmy. Every
one knew of Dreever Castle, partly because it was one of the oldest
houses in England, but principally because for centuries it had been
advertised by a particularly gruesome ghost-story. Every one had heard
of the secret of Dreever, which was known only to the Earl and the
family lawyer, and confided to the heir at midnight on his twenty-first
birthday. Jimmy had come across the story in corners of the papers all
over the States, from New York to Onehorseville, Iowa. He looked with
interest at the light-haired young man—the latest depository of the
awful secret. It was popularly supposed that the heir, after hearing it,
never smiled again: but it did not seem to have affected the present
Lord Dreever to any great extent. His gurgling laugh was drowning the
orchestra. Probably, Jimmy thought, when the family lawyer had told the
light-haired young man the secret, the latter’s comment had been, “No,
really? By Jove, I say, you know!”
Jimmy paid his bill and got up to go.
It was a perfect summer night—too perfect for bed. Jimmy strolled on to
the Embankment, and stood leaning over the balustrade, looking across
the river at the vague, mysterious mass of buildings on the Surrey side.
He must have been standing there for some time, his thoughts far away,
when a voice spoke at his elbow.
“I say. Excuse me, have you—Halloa!”
It was his light-haired lordship of Dreever.
“I say, by Jove! Why, we’re always meeting!”
A tramp on the bench close by stirred uneasily in his sleep as the
gurgling laughter ripped the air.
“Been looking at the water?” inquired Lord Dreever. “I have. I often do.
Don’t you think it sort of makes a chap feel—oh, you know. Sort of—I
don’t know how to put it.”
“Mushy?” said Jimmy.
“I was going to say poetical. Suppose there’s a girl——”
He paused and looked down at the water. Jimmy was with him there. There
was a girl.
“I saw my party off in a taxi,” continued Lord Dreever, “and came down
here for a smoke. Only I hadn’t a match. Have you?”
Jimmy handed over his match-box. Lord Dreever lit a cigar, and fixed his
gaze once more on the river.
“Ripping it looks,” he said.
Jimmy nodded.
“Funny thing,” said Lord Dreever. “In the daytime the water here looks
all muddy and beastly. Damn depressing, I call it. But at night——” He
paused. “I say,” he went on, after a moment, “did you see the girl I was
with at the Savoy?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy.
“She’s a ripper,” said Lord Dreever devoutly.
On the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of a summer morning, there
is no such thing as a stranger. The man you talk with is a friend, and
if he will listen—as, by the etiquette of the place, he must—you may
pour out your heart to him without restraint. It is expected of you.
“I’m fearfully in love with her,” said his lordship.
“She looked a charming girl,” said Jimmy.
They examined the water in silence. From somewhere out in the night came
the sound of oars, where the police-boat moved on its patrol.
“Does she make you want to go to Japan?” asked Jimmy suddenly.
“Eh?” said Lord Dreever, startled. “Japan?”
Jimmy adroitly abandoned the position of confidant and seized that of
confider.
“I met a girl a year ago. Only really met her once, and even then—oh,
well. Anyway, it’s made me so restless that I haven’t been able to stay
in one place for more than a month on end. I tried Morocco, and had to
quit. I tried Spain, and that wasn’t any good either. The other day I
heard a fellow say that Japan was a pretty interesting sort of country.
I was wondering whether I wouldn’t give it a trial.”
Lord Dreever regarded this travelled man with interest.
“It beats me,” he said wonderingly. “What do you want to leg it about
the world like that for? What’s the trouble? Why don’t you stay where
the girl is?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Don’t know?”
“She disappeared.”
“Where did you see her last?” asked his lordship, as if Molly were a
mislaid penknife.
“New York.”
“But how do you mean, disappeared? Don’t you know her address?”
“I don’t even know her name.”
“But dash it all, I say, I mean! Have you ever spoken to her?”
“Only once. It’s rather a complicated story. At any rate, she’s gone.”
Lord Dreever said that it was a rum business. Jimmy conceded the point.
“Seems to me,” said his lordship, “we’re both in the cart.”
“What’s your trouble?”
“Oh, well, it’s only that I want to marry one girl, and my uncle’s dead
set on my marrying another.”
“Are you afraid of hurting your uncle’s feelings?”
“It’s not so much hurting his feelings. It’s—oh, well, it’s too long to
tell now. I think I’ll be getting home. I’m staying at our place in
Eaton Square.”
“How are you going? If you’ll walk I’ll come some of the way with you.”
“Right you are. Let’s be pushing along, shall we?”