It was growing late, nearly one o'clock, when Morse insisted on having
some bisque soup brought in.
"I think we both want something really sustaining," he said. "Do you
begin and I'll just run up and see my sister-in-law, Senora Balmaceda,
and find out if Juanita is all right."
He left the room, and, happy that all had gone so well, I sipped the
incomparable white essence, and gave myself up to dreams of the future.
I was to see her often. In September, at Sir Walter Stileman's, Morse
was to take me into his fullest confidence. That could only mean one
thing. Within a little less than three months he would give his consent
to my marriage with his daughter. Another opportunity like this of
to-night, and Juanita and I would be betrothed. It would be delightful
to keep our secret until the shooting began. I would follow her through
the events of the season, watch her mood, hear her extolled on every
side, knowing all the time she was mine. A vision came to me of Cowes
week, the gardens of the R. Y. Squadron, Juanita on board of my own
yacht "Moonlight."
I think I must have fallen asleep when I started into consciousness to
find myself staring into the great broken mirror over the mantelpiece
and to find that Mr. Morse had returned and was smiling down upon me.
"She's all right, thank heavens," he said, "and has been asleep for a
long time. And now, as you seem sleepy too, I'll bid you good-night,
with a thousand thanks for your consideration."
It was nearly two o'clock I noticed when I stepped out into the cool air
of Piccadilly and walked the few yards to my flat. I must have been
asleep for quite a long time, and dear old Morse had forborne to waken
me.
I peculiarly remember my sense of well-being and happiness during that
short walk. I was in a glow of satisfaction. Everything had turned out
even better than I had expected. What did the scoop for the paper matter
after all? Nothing, in comparison with the more or less intimate
relations in which I now stood with Gideon Morse. I was to see Juanita
constantly. She was almost mine already, and fortune had been
marvelously on my side. Of course there would be obstacles, there was no
doubt of that. I was no real match for her. But the obstacles in the
future were as nothing to those that had been already surmounted. I
began to smile with conceit at the diplomatic way in which I had dealt
with the great financier; not for a single moment, as I put my key into
the latch, did I dream that I had been played with the utmost skill,
tied myself irrevocably to silence, and that horrible trouble and grim
peril even now walked unseen by my side.
When I got into the smoking-room I found things just as usual. I had
hardly lit a last cigarette when the door opened and Preston entered.
"Good heavens!" I said, "I never told you to wait up for me, Preston.
There was not the slightest need. You ought to have been in bed hours
ago."
"So I was, Sir Thomas," he said looking at me in a surprised sort of
way, and I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a gray flannel
dressing-gown and slippers.
"What do you mean?"
"Until the telephone message came, Sir Thomas."
"What telephone message?"
"Why, yours, Sir Thomas."
"I never telephoned. When do you mean?"
"Not very long ago, Sir Thomas," he said, "I didn't take particular
notice of the time, somewhere between one o'clock and now."
I was on the alert at once, though I could not have particularly said
why.
"Are you quite sure that it was I who 'phoned?"
"But, yes," he answered, "it was your voice, Sir Thomas. You said you
were speaking from the office."
"From the _Evening Special_? I've not been there since late afternoon.
And when have I ever been there so late? There's never more than one
person there all night long until six in the morning. It's not a morning
paper as you know."
Preston seemed more than ever bewildered as I flung this at him.
"All I can say is, Sir Thomas," he said, "that I heard your voice
distinctly and you said you were at the office."
"What did I say exactly?"
"About the young gentleman, Sir Thomas, the young gentleman who has come
to stay for a time. Your instructions were that he should be wakened and
told to come to Fleet Street without the least delay. You also said a
taxicab would be waiting for him, by the time he was dressed, to drive
him down."
"And he went?"
"Certainly, Sir Thomas, he was in his clothes quicker than I ever see a
gentleman dress before, had a glass of milk and a biscuit, and the cab
was just coming as I went down with him and opened the front door."
I rushed out of the room, down the corridor and into that which had been
placed at Rolston's disposal. It was as Preston said, the lad was gone.
The bed was tumbled as he had left it, but a portmanteau full of
clothes, some hair brushes and a tooth brush on the wash-stand remained.
Clearly Rolston believed he was obeying orders.
Preston had followed me out of the smoking-room and stood at the door, a
picture of uneasy wonder. Let me say at once that Preston had been with
me for six years, and was under-butler at my father's house for I don't
know how many more. He is the most faithful and devoted creature on
earth and, what is more, as sharp as a needle. He, at any rate, had no
hand in this business.
"There's something extraordinarily queer about this," I said. "I assure
you that I have never been near the telephone during the whole night. I
dined with Lord Arthur in Soho and the rest of the evening I have been
spending at the Ritz Hotel with Mr. Gideon Morse. You've been tricked,
Preston."
"I'm extremely sorry, Sir Thomas," he was beginning when I cut him
short.
"It's not in the least your fault, but are you certain the voice was
mine?"
He frowned with the effort at recollection.
"Well, Sir Thomas," he said, "if you hadn't told me what you have, I
believe I could almost have sworn to it. Of course, voices are altered
on the telephone, to some extent, but it's extraordinary how they do, in
the main, keep their individual character."
He spoke the truth. I, who was using the telephone all day, entirely
agreed with him.
"Well, Preston, it was a skillful imitation and not my voice at all."
"If you will excuse me, Sir Thomas," he replied, "your voice is a very
distinctive one. It's not very easily mistaken by any one who has heard
your voice once or twice."
"That only makes the thing the more mysterious."
"The more easy, I should say, Sir Thomas. It must be far less difficult
to imitate an outstanding voice with marked peculiarities than an
ordinary one."
He was right there, it hadn't occurred to me before.
"But who in the office would dare to imitate my voice?"
"That, of course, I could not say, Sir Thomas, but we've only the word
of the unknown person who rang me up that he was speaking from the
office. For all we know he might have been in the next flat."
That again was a point and I noted it.
"I'm not going to waste any time," I said. "I'll go down to the office
at once and see if I can find out anything."
He helped me on with my coat and within five minutes of my entering I
was again in Piccadilly.
Already the long ribbon of road was beginning to be faintly tinged with
gray. The dawn was not yet, but night was flitting away before his
coming. Save for an occasional policeman and the rumble of heavy carts
piled with sweet-smelling vegetables and flowers for Covent Garden, the
great street was empty. I passed the Ritz Hotel with a tender thought of
one who lay sleeping there, and hurried eastwards. I had nearly got to
the Circus when a taxi swung out of the Haymarket and I hailed the man.
He was tired and sleepy, had been waiting for hours at some club or
other, but I persuaded him, with much gold, to take me, and we buzzed
away toward the street of ink.
Here was activity enough. The later editions of the morning papers were
being vomited out of holes in the earth by hundreds of thousands.
Windows were lighted up everywhere as I turned down a side street
leading to the river and came to my own offices.
I unlocked the door with my pass key and almost immediately I was
confronted by Johns, the night-watchman, who flashed his torch in my
face and inquired my business. I was pleased to see the man alert and at
his post and asked who was in the building.
"Only Mr. Benson, Sir Thomas; it's his week for night duty."
I went up and very considerably surprised, not to say alarmed, young Mr.
Benson, who had the photograph of a lady propped up on a desk before him
and was obviously inditing an amorous epistle.
I put him through the most searching possible cross-examination, until I
was quite sure that he had never telephoned to my flat. I knew him for a
truthful, conscientious fellow, without a glimpse of humor or the
slightest histrionic talent. Johns, called from below, was equally
emphatic. Certainly no taxi had arrived here during the last three
hours, nor had William Rolston come near the office.
I returned to Piccadilly, utterly baffled and without a single ray of
light in my mind.