AN EFFACED IDENTITY.
The telegram was signed with the initial "D."--Digby!
The words I read were--"Have discovered T suspects. Exercise greatest
care, and remember your promise. We shall meet again soon."
The message showed that it had been handed in at Brussels at one o'clock
that afternoon.
Brussels! So he was hiding there. Yes, I would lose no time in crossing
to the gay little Belgian capital and search him out.
Before giving him up to the police I would meet him face to face and
demand the truth. I would compel him to speak.
Should I retain possession of the message? I reflected. But, on
consideration, I saw that when I had left, Phrida might return to recover
it. If I replaced it where I had found it she would remain in ignorance
of the knowledge I had gained.
So I screwed it up again and put it back among the cinders in the grate,
afterwards leaving the house.
Next morning I stepped out upon the platform of the great Gare du Nord in
Brussels--a city I knew well, as I had often been there on business--and
drove in a taxi along the busy, bustling Boulevard Auspach to the Grand
Hotel.
In the courtyard, as I got out, the frock-coated and urbane manager
welcomed me warmly, for I had frequently been his guest, and I was shown
to a large room overlooking the Boulevard where I had a wash and changed.
Then descending, I called a taxi and immediately began a tour of the
various hotels where I thought it most likely that the man I sought might
be.
The morning was crisp and cold, with a perfect sky and brilliant
sunshine, bright and cheerful indeed after the mist and gloom of January
in London.
Somehow the aspect, even in winter, is always brighter across the channel
than in our much maligned little island. They know not the "pea-souper"
on the other side of the Straits of Dover, and the light, invigorating
atmosphere is markedly apparent directly one enters France or Belgium.
The business boulevards, the Boulevarde Auspach, and the Boulevard du
Nord, with their smart shops, their big cafés, and their hustling crowds,
were bright and gay as my taxi sped on, first to the Métropole, in the
Place de Brouckere.
The name of Kemsley was unknown there. The old concierge glanced at his
book, shook his head, and elevating his shoulders, replied:
"Non, m'sieur."
Thence I went to the Palace, in front of the station, the great new hotel
and one of the finest in Europe, a huge, garish place of gilt and luxury.
But there I met with equal success.
Then I made the tour of the tree-lined outer boulevards, up past the
Botanical Gardens and along the Rue Royale, first to the Hotel de France,
then to the Europe, the Belle Vue, the Carlton in the Avenue Louise, the
new Wiltscher's a few doors away, and a very noted English house from the
Boulevard Waterloo, as well as a dozen other houses in various parts of
the town--the Cecil in the Boulevard du Nord, the Astoria in the Rue
Royale, and even one or two of the cheaper pensions--the Dufour, De
Boek's, and Nettell's, but all to no purpose.
Though I spent the whole of that day making investigations I met with no
success.
Though I administered judicious tips to concierge after concierge, I
could not stir the memory of a single one that within the past ten days
any English gentleman answering the description I gave had stayed at
their establishment.
Until the day faded, and the street lamps were lit, I continued my
search, my taxi-driver having entered into the spirit of my quest, and
from time to time suggesting other and more obscure hotels of which I had
never heard.
But the reply was the same--a regretful "Non, m'sieur."
It had, of course, occurred to me that if the fugitive was hiding from
the Belgian police, who no doubt had received his description from
Scotland Yard, he would most certainly assume a false name.
But I hoped by my minute description to be able to stir the memory of one
or other of the dozens of uniformed hall-porters whom I interviewed. The
majority of such men have a remarkably retentive memory for a face, due
to long cultivation, just as that possessed by one's club hall-porter,
who can at once address any of the thousand or so members by name.
I confess, however, when at five o'clock, I sat in the huge, noisy Café
Métropole over a glass of coffee and a liqueur of cognac, I began to
realise the utter hopelessness of my search.
Digby Kemsley was ever an evasive person--a past master in avoiding
observation, as I well knew. It had always been a hobby of his, he had
told me, of watching persons without himself being seen.
Once he had remarked to me while we had been smoking together in that
well-remembered room wherein the tragedy had taken place:
"I should make a really successful detective, Royle. I've had at certain
periods of my life to efface myself and watch unseen. Now I've brought it
to a fine art. If ever circumstances make it imperative for me to
disappear--which I hope not," he laughed, "well--nobody will ever find
me, I'm positive."
These words of his now came back to me as I sat there pensively smoking,
and wondering if, after all, I had better not return again to London and
remain patient for the additional police evidence which would no doubt be
forthcoming at the adjourned inquest in a week's time.
I thought of the clever cunning exercised by the girl whom I so dearly
loved and in whose innocence I had so confidently believed, of her blank
refusal to satisfy me, and alas! of her avowed determination to shield
the scoundrel who had posed as my friend, and whom the police had
declared to be only a vulgar impostor.
My bitter reflection maddened me.
The jingle and chatter of that noisy café, full to overflowing at that
hour, for rain had commenced to fall outside in the boulevard, irritated
me. From where I sat in the window I could see the crowds of business
people, hurrying through the rain to their trams and trains--the
neat-waisted little modistes, the felt-hatted young clerks, the obese and
over-dressed and whiskered men from their offices on the Bourse, the
hawkers crying the "Soir," and the "Dernière Heure," with strident
voices, the poor girls with rusty shawls and pinched faces, selling
flowers, and the gaping, idling Cookites who seem to eternally pass and
re-pass the Métropole at all hours of the day and the night.
Before my eyes was there presented the whole phantasmagoria of the life
of the thrifty, hard-working Bruxellois, that active, energetic race
which the French have so sarcastically designated "the brave Belgians."
After a lonely dinner in the big, glaring salle-à-manger, at the Grand, I
went forth again upon my quest. That the fugitive had been in Brussels on
the previous day was proved by his telegram, yet evasive as he was, he
might have already left. Yet I hoped he still remained in the capital,
and if so he would, I anticipated, probably go to one of the music-halls
or variety theatres. Therefore I set out upon another round.
I strolled eagerly through the crowded promenade of the chief music-hall
of Brussels--the Pole Nord, the lounge wherein men and women were
promenading, laughing, and drinking, but I saw nothing of the man of whom
I was in search.
I knew that he had shaved off his beard and otherwise altered his
appearance. Therefore my attention upon those about me was compelled to
be most acute.
I surveyed both stalls and boxes, but amid that gay, well-dressed crowd I
could discover nobody the least resembling him.
From the Pole Nord I went to the Scala, where I watched part of an
amusing revue; but my search there was likewise in vain, as it was also
at Olympia, the Capucines, and the Folies Bergères, which I visited in
turn. Then, at midnight, I turned my attention to the big cafés,
wandering from the Bourse along the Boulevard Auspach, entering each café
and glancing around, until at two o'clock in the morning I returned to
the Grand, utterly fagged out by my long vigil of over fifteen hours.
In my room I threw off my overcoat and flung myself upon the bed in utter
despair.
Until I met that man face to face I could not, I saw, learn the truth
concerning my love's friendship with him.
Mrs. Petre had made foul insinuations, and now that my suspicions had
been aroused that Phrida might actually be guilty of that terrible crime
at Harrington Gardens, the whole attitude of my well-beloved seemed to
prove that my suspicions were well grounded.
Indeed, her last unfinished sentence as she had rushed from the room
seemed conclusive proof of the guilty secret by which her mind was now
overburdened.
She had never dreamed that I held the slightest suspicion. It was only
when she knew that the woman Petre had met me and had talked with me that
she saw herself betrayed. Then, when I had spoken frankly, and told her
what the woman had said, she saw that to further conceal her friendship
with Digby was impossible.
Every word she had spoken, every evasive sentence, every protest that she
was compelled to remain silent, recurred to me as I lay there staring
blankly at the painted ceiling.
She had told me that she was unaware of the fugitive's whereabouts, and
yet not half an hour before she had received a telegram from him.
Yes, Phrida--the woman I trusted and loved with such a fierce, passionate
affection, had lied to me deliberately and barefacedly.
But I was on the fellow's track, and cost what it might in time, or in
money, I did not intend to relinquish my search until I came face to face
with him.
That night, as I tossed restlessly in bed, it occurred to me that even
though he might be in Brussels, it was most probable in the circumstances
that he would exercise every precaution in his movements, and knowing
that the police were in search of him, would perhaps not go forth in the
daytime.
Many are the Englishmen living "under a cloud" in Brussels, as well as in
Paris, and there is not a Continental city of note which does not contain
one or more of those who have "gone under" at home.
Seedy and down-at-heel, they lounge about the cafés and hotels frequented
by English travellers. Sometimes they sit apart, pretend to sip their cup
of coffee and read a newspaper, but in reality they are listening with
avidity to their own language being spoken by their own people--poor,
lonely, solitary exiles.
Every man who knows the by-ways of the Continent has met them often in
far-off, obscure towns, where they bury themselves in the lonely
wilderness of a drab back street and live high-up for the sake of fresh
air and that single streak of sunshine which is the sole pleasure of
their broken, blighted lives.
Yes, the more I reflected, the more apparent did it become that if the
man whom Inspector Edwards had declared to be a gross impostor was still
in the Belgian capital, he would most probably be in safe concealment in
one or other of the cheaper suburbs.
But how could I trace him?
To go to the bureau of police and make a statement would only defeat my
own ends.
No; if I intended to learn the truth I must act upon my own initiative.
Official interference would only thwart my own endeavours.
I knew Digby Kemsley. He was as shrewd and cunning as any of the famous
detectives, whether in real life or in fiction. Therefore, to be a match
for him, I would, I already realised, be compelled to fight him with his
own weapons.
I did not intend that he should escape me before he told me, with his own
lips, the secret of my well-beloved.