On Tuesday afternoon, when Juliet, having hung up the telephone through
which she had been conversing with Lord Ashiel, hurried out to see what
Bond Street could provide her with, a little man was sitting writing in a
luxuriously furnished room in a flat in Whitehall. He was small and thin,
and possessed a pair of extraordinarily bright and intelligent brown
eyes, which saw a good deal more of what happened around him than perhaps
any other eyes within a radius of a mile from where he sat. He was, in
other words, observant to a very high degree; and, what was more
remarkable, he knew how to use his powers of observation. There was not a
criminal in the length and breadth of the country who did not wonder
uneasily whether he had really left the scene of his crime as devoid of
clues as he imagined, when he heard that the celebrated detective,
Gimblet, had visited the spot in pursuit of his investigations.
For this was the man, who, in a few years, had unravelled more apparently
insoluble mysteries, and caused the arrest of more hitherto evasive
scoundrels, than his predecessors had managed to secure in a decade. The
name of Gimblet was known and detested wherever a coiner carried on his
forbidden craft, or a blackmailer concocted his cowardly plans; burglars
and forgers cursed freely when he was mentioned, and there was hardly an
illicit trade in the country which had not suffered at one time or
another from his inquisitive habit of interesting himself in other
people's affairs. Scotland Yard officials were never too proud to call
upon him for help, and many a difficulty he had helped them out of,
though he refused an offer of a regular post in the Criminal
Investigation Department, preferring to be at liberty to choose what
cases he would take up. Above all things he loved the strange and
inexplicable. Gimblet had not always been a detective. Indeed, he often
smiled to himself when he thought of the extraordinary confidence which
the public now elected to repose in him.
No one was more conscious than himself that he was far from being
infallible; in fact, his admirers appeared to him to be wilfully blind to
that elementary truth; so that when he failed to bring a case to a
successful issue people were apt to show an amount of disappointment that
he, for his part, thought very unreasonable. It was, perhaps, in the
nature of things that the puzzles he solved correctly received so much
more publicity than was given to his mistakes; but he often could not
avoid wishing that less were expected of him, and that his reputation had
not grown so tropically on what he could but consider insufficient
nourishment.
In early days, after leaving Oxford, he had gone into an architect's
office and had flourished there; till one day an accident had turned his
energies in the direction they had since taken.
A crime had been committed during the erection of a house he was
building, and, when the police were at a loss to know how to account for
the somewhat peculiar circumstances, the young architect, going his
ordinary rounds of inspection, had seen in a flash that there was
something unusual in the disposal of a portion of the building material;
which observation, with certain deductions following thereon, had led to
the detection and arrest of the criminal. From that time on he had been
more and more drawn to the fascination of tracing events to their
causes, when these appeared connected with deeds of violence and fraud,
till of late years he had completely dropped the study of the carrying
powers of wood and stone for the more interesting lessons to be derived
from the contemplation of the strange vagaries indulged in by his fellow
human beings.
He kept, however, a strong taste for art and all that appertained to it;
more especially he was devoted to the collection of old and rare
bric-à-brac. There was not a curiosity shop in London that did not know
him, and he was equally happy when he had discovered some dust-hidden
treasure in the back regions of a secondhand furniture shop, or when he
was engaged in running to earth some human vermin who up till then had
lain snug in his own particular back region of crime, straining his ears,
in a mixture of contempt and anxiety, as the sounds of the hunt went by.
Having finished his letter, Gimblet put his stylo in his pocket, and
turned round to look at the clock.
"Twenty minutes to four," he said half-aloud. "I wish to goodness people
would keep their appointments punctually, or else not come at all."
Five more minutes passed, and he got up and went into the hall.
"Higgs," he called, and his faithful servant and general factotum came
out of the pantry.
"I am going out," said his master, taking up his straw hat. "If anyone
calls, say I could not wait any longer. Ah, there's the front-door bell.
Just see who it is."
He retreated to his sitting-room while Higgs went to the door of the
flat. A minute or two later Lord Ashiel was ushered in.
"I'm very sorry I'm late," said he, as the door closed behind him, "but
you know what kept me."
"Not the young lady, surely," said Gimblet; "you were to see her at
twelve o'clock this morning, weren't you?"
"Yes, but she telephoned to me after lunch. By Jove, Gimblet, I believe
you have got hold of the right girl this time." Lord Ashiel's tone was
enthusiastic. "If she turns out to be half as nice as she looks, I shall
be ever grateful to you for routing her out."
"Indeed, I am very glad to hear it," replied the detective. "And do you
observe a resemblance in her to your family; do you feel satisfied that
she is your daughter?"
"I can't say I do see much likeness," Lord Ashiel confessed rather
reluctantly. "I thought at one moment, when she smiled, that she was like
her mother; but otherwise she did not strike me as resembling either of
us, I am sorry to say."
"Did she know her history at all?" asked Gimblet. "Did she claim you
as father?"
"No, she had never heard of me, as far as I could make out. And she
assured me that Sir Arthur Byrne has no idea whose child she is."
"That certainly seems very improbable," Gimblet commented.
"Yes, it does. Still, I feel sure she was speaking the truth. Why,
indeed, should she not do so? It seems that Byrne has married again, and
that his wife has already three daughters of her own; so, as she says, he
would probably be glad enough to get the fourth one off his hands, as
they are not well off."
"Yes," said Gimblet. "I knew that. No, there seems no reason why Sir
Arthur Byrne should not have told her about you if he knew she was your
child. What is odd, is that he should not have known it."
"He had promised his first wife not to make any inquiries, it seems,"
said Lord Ashiel.
"Well, he is an uncommon kind of man if he kept that promise,"
Gimblet remarked.
"He was devoted to his first wife, this girl told me," said Lord Ashiel.
"You never knew Lena Meredith, Gimblet, or you would not be surprised
that people kept their promises to her. She was my wife's friend, as I
told you, and I only saw her once, but I don't think I shall ever forget
her. It was just after my wife's death, and I was too heart-broken to
take much notice of anyone, but she was the sort of woman who sticks in
your memory, and I can quite understand a man being infatuated about her,
even to the point of curbing his curiosity for a lifetime on any subject
she wished him to leave alone. I went to see her, you know, about the
baby. I remember, as if it was yesterday, how I told her the whole story.
I told her how I had met Juliana two years before, and how, from the
first, we had both known we should never care for anyone else. I told her
about my old grandfather, from whom I had such great expectations, and
who wouldn't hear of my marrying anyone except the cousin, still in the
schoolroom, whom he had picked out as my future wife.
"It was his wish that we should be married when I was twenty-five and
the girl eighteen; but I was not yet twenty-two, so that there were at
least three years of grace before he could begin to try and impose his
design upon us. And he was old and ill, and I had heard that the doctors
didn't give him more than a year or two, at most, to live. I thought
that if Juliana and I were married secretly he would die before the
question of my marriage had time to become one of practical politics;
and I persuaded her to agree to a private marriage, which we would
announce to the world as soon as my eccentric old grandfather was safely
out of it. There was no possible obstacle to our marriage except the old
man's domineering temper. Juliana Sandfort was my superior in every
possible sense, worldly or otherwise; but I came of a good family, was
to inherit an old name and title, and a more than sufficient fortune so
long as I kept on the right side of the old Lord, and we both knew that
there was no objection to be feared from her relations or from any other
one of mine. In short, much as she disliked doing things in that
hole-and-corner sort of way, and ashamed as I was at heart of asking her
to, we neither of us could see much actual harm in the idea, and we were
married accordingly at a registry office in London. Everything would
have been well, and all would have gone as we hoped, but for the one
unforeseen and horrible calamity. My wife died six months before my
grandfather, on the day her baby was born."
Lord Ashiel paused, and sat gazing before him, over Gimblet's shoulder.
There was a look on his face which showed that for the moment he was
blind to the scene that lay in front of him, and that he saw in place of
the bureau which stood opposite to him, and of the Oriental china which
was the detective's special pride, and on which his eyes seemed to be
fixed, some vision of the past which was far more real than the
unsubstantial present. Presently he went on talking in a reflective
undertone:
"All this I told Mrs. Meredith, and a great deal besides, for I was still
in the first violence of bitter, self-reproachful grief. I wanted to be
rid of the child, the cause of the catastrophe, whom I hated as
vehemently as I had loved its mother, and I begged Mrs. Meredith to help
me to dispose of it in such a fashion that, to me at least, the little
one should be to all intents and purposes as dead as she was. Babies, I
knew, had not a very strong hold on life, and I hoped, as a matter of
fact, that it might really die, but this I did not dare to say aloud.
Mrs. Meredith was kind to me. I remember well how good and sympathetic
she was. She had heard most of the story from Juliana, whose friend she
was, and it was at her house that the child was born. We had confided in
no one else. She sat silently for a while after I had finished what I had
to say, till at last she turned to me and tried to persuade me to alter
my intention of disowning the baby. But I repeated doggedly that unless
she had some alternative way to suggest of getting rid of it, I meant to
leave the little girl at the door of one of the foundling hospitals, and
that I would take her that very night.
"At length, seeing that I was resolved, she said she thought she could
manage better than that. She had a friend, she said, an elderly Russian
lady, who was a widow and childless. This lady was anxious to adopt a
little English girl, and had lately written to ask her to find her a baby
whom she could bring up as her own child. There was no reason why
Juliana's baby should not be the one. She would write at once and suggest
it. I was greatly relieved at this idea. Although I had been determined
to do as I proposed, whatever opposition I might meet with, my conscience
had not been willing to let me leave my child on a doorstep without
protesting, and, little though I heeded its condemnation, I was glad to
be able to get my own way and at the same time to silence the voice of my
inward critic.
"The plan seemed simplicity itself. My wife, as I have told you, had no
parents living. Her brothers and sisters, who were all married and
living in different parts of the country, had been led to believe that
her death was the result of an accident. Mrs. Meredith had even managed
to prevail on the doctor to lend himself to this fiction; for, my
grandfather being yet alive, there was still every reason not to declare
our marriage, while there seemed to be none in favour of doing so, and I
shrank from the questionings and scenes which publicity now would not
fail to bring upon me. Before I left Mrs. Meredith we had agreed that
she should at once communicate with her Russian friend, whose name I
refused to let her tell me.
"I have told you before to-day, Gimblet, of all that has happened since.
How I took passionately to books as a refuge from my sorrow; how, at my
grandfather's suggestion, I had been by way of working for the
Diplomatic Service; of how I now worked in good earnest, and in course
of time, and after my grandfather's death, found myself attached to our
embassy at Petersburg. During the two years I spent there I made the
acquaintance of Countess Romaninov. One day when I was talking to her
she happened to mention that she had once known an English lady, Mrs.
Meredith, and I came to the conclusion that the little girl who lived
with her must be none other than my own child. As you know, I could not
stand living in the same town as she did, and for that, and for other
reasons, I left the Diplomatic Service and returned to England, where I
have lived a quiet life on my place in Scotland ever since. Eight years
ago, as you know, I married for the second time, and after a few years
of comparative happiness, found myself again a widower, my second wife
and her child dying within a few months of each other, when my boy was
only four years old.
"It is more than a year, now," continued Lord Ashiel, after a pause,
"since the girl Julia Romaninov came to my sister in London, with a
letter of introduction from our ambassador in Russia. It was not until my
sister invited her down to Scotland that I heard anything about her. Not,
in fact, till the day before she arrived, for I always tell my sister to
ask any girls she pleases to Inverashiel, and she very seldom bothers me
about it. You can imagine my feelings when I heard that Julia Romaninov
was expected within a few hours, and had indeed already started from
London. It was too late to try and stop her, and my first impulse was
flight. But on second thoughts I changed my mind, and stayed. Time had
dulled the feelings with which I had contemplated her share in the
tragedy that attended her birth, and I was not without a certain
curiosity to see this young creature for whose existence I was
responsible.
"I waited; she came; she stayed six weeks. You know the result. My sister
liked her; my nephews, my other guests, every one, except myself, was
charmed with her. And I, for some reason, could never stand the girl. I
told myself over and over again that it was mere prejudice; the remains
of the violent opposition I felt towards her when she was unknown to me;
a survival, unconscious and unwilling, of the hatred I had allowed myself
to nourish for the baby of a day old, which had made it impossible that
she and I should inhabit the same town when she was no more than a child
in pinafores. But I could not reason myself out of my dislike, and it
culminated a few weeks ago when I found that my sister was anxious to
have her with us in the North again this autumn. As you remember, I came
to you, and told you the facts. I made you understand how repulsive it
was to me to think that this girl might be my child, and begged you to
sift the matter as far as was possible, and to find out if there were not
a chance that I was mistaken in thinking it was Countess Romaninov who
had been Lena Meredith's friend."
"Yes," said Gimblet, "and all I could discover at first was that the two
ladies had indeed been acquainted. It is difficult to get at the truth
when both of them have been dead for so many years, and when you will not
allow me so much as to hint that you feel any interest in the matter.
People are shy of answering questions relating to the private affairs of
their friends when they think they are prompted by idle curiosity, and in
this case it seems very doubtful whether anyone even knows the answers.
But in the course of my inquiries I soon discovered the fact that Mrs.
Meredith herself had adopted a child, and it certainly seems more than
possible that it may have been yours and her friend's. As far as I can
find out, both these young ladies are of about the same age, but no one
seems to know exactly when either of them first appeared on the scene. If
we can only get hold of the nurses! But at present I can find no trace of
them, and you won't let me advertise."
"Gimblet, I shall be ever grateful to you," repeated Lord Ashiel. "I had
no idea that Mrs. Meredith had adopted a child. I never saw her again, as
I have told you, and only heard vaguely that she had married and was
living abroad. I purposely avoided asking for news of her. I wished to
forget everything that was past. As if that had been possible!"
"I hoped," said Gimblet, "that you would have seen some strong likeness
in this young lady to yourself, or to your first wife. That would have
clinched the matter to all intents and purposes. But, as things are, I
shouldn't build too much on the hope that she is your daughter. It may
turn out to be the girl adopted by Countess Romaninov."
"I hope not, I hope not," said Lord Ashiel earnestly. "I have got her to
promise to come to Scotland, and in a few days I may get some definite
clue as to which of them it is. It is a very odd coincidence that both
the girls bear names so much like that of my poor wife's." He paused
reflectively, and then added, "In the meantime you will go on with your
inquiries, will you not?"
"I will," said Gimblet. "And I hope for better luck."
A silence followed. Lord Ashiel half rose to go, then sat down again.
Evidently he had something more to say, but hesitated to say it. At
last he spoke:
"When I was at St. Petersburg, twenty years ago, I was aroused to a
state of excitement and indignation by the social and political evils
which were then so much in evidence to the foreigner who sojourned in the
country of the Czars. I was young and impressionable, impulsive and
unbalanced in my judgments, I am afraid; at all events I resented certain
seeming injustices which came to my notice, and my resentment took a
practical and most foolish form. To be short, I was so ill-advised as to
join a secret society, and have done nothing but regret it ever since."
"I can well understand your regretting it," said the detective. "People
who join those societies are apt to find themselves let in for a good
deal more than they bargained for."
"It was so, at all events so far as I am concerned," said Lord Ashiel, "I
had, you may be sure, only the wildest idea of what serious and extremely
unpleasant consequences my unreflecting action would entail. Withdrawal
from these political brotherhoods is to all intents and purposes a
practical impossibility; but, in a sense, I withdrew from all
participation in its affairs as soon as I realized to what an extent the
theories of its leaders, as to the best means to adopt by which to
rectify the injustices we all agreed in deploring, differed from my own
ideas on the subject. And I should not have been able to withdraw, even
in the negative way I did, if accident had not put into my hand a weapon
of defence against the tyranny of the Society."
Lord Ashiel paused hesitatingly, and Gimblet murmured encouragingly:
"And that was?"
"No," said Lord Ashiel, after a moment's silence, "I must not tell you
more. We are, I know, to all appearances, safe from eavesdroppers or
interruption; but, if a word of what I know were to leak out by some
incredible agency, my life would not be worth a day's purchase. As it is,
I am alarmed; I believe these people wish for my death. In fact, there is
no doubt on that subject. But they dare not attempt it openly. I have
told them that if I should die under suspicious circumstances of any
sort, the weapon I spoke of will inevitably be used to avenge my death,
and they know me to be a man of my word. For all these years that threat
has been my safeguard, but now I am beginning to think that they are
trying other means of getting me out of the way."
"It is a pity," said Gimblet, "that you do not speak to me more openly. I
think it is highly probable, from what I know of the methods resorted to
by Nihilists in general, that you may be in very grave danger. Indeed, I
strongly advise you to report the whole matter to the police."
"I wish I could tell you everything," said Lord Ashiel, "but even if I
dared, you must remember that I am sworn to secrecy, and I cannot see
that because I have, by doing so, placed myself in some peril, that on
that account I am entitled to break my word. No, I cannot tell you any
more, but in spite of that, I want you to do me a service."
"I am afraid I can't help you without fuller knowledge," said Gimblet.
"What do you think I can do?"
"You can do this," said Lord Ashiel. He put his hand in his pocket and
Gimblet heard a crackling of paper. "I am thinking out a hiding-place
for some valuable documents that are in my possession, and when I have
decided on it I will write to you and explain where I have put them,
using a cipher of which the key is enclosed in an envelope I have here
in my pocket, and which I will leave with you when I go. Take charge of
it for me, and in the course of the next week or so I will send you a
cipher letter describing where the papers are concealed. Do not read it
unless the occasion arises. I can trust you not to give way to
curiosity, but if anything happens to me, if I die a violent death, or
equally if I die under the most apparently natural circumstances, I want
you to promise you will investigate those circumstances; and, if
anything should strike you as suspicious in connection with what I have
told you, you will be able to interpret my cipher letter, find the
document I have referred to, and act on the information it contains.
Will you undertake to do this for me?"
"I will, certainly," Gimblet answered readily, "but I hope the occasion
will not arise. I beg you to break a vow which was extorted from you by
false representations and which cannot be binding on you. Do confide
fully in me; I do not at all like the look of this business."
"No, no," replied Lord Ashiel, smiling. "You must let me be the judge of
whether my word is binding on me or not. As you say, I hope nothing will
happen to justify my perhaps uncalled-for nervousness. In any case it
will be a great comfort and relief to me to know that, if it does, the
scoundrels will not go unpunished."
"They shall not do that," said Gimblet fervently. "You can make your mind
easy on that score, at least. But I advise you to send your documents to
the bank. They will be safer there than in any hiding-place you can
contrive."
"I might want to lay my hand upon them at any moment," said Lord
Ashiel, "and I admit I don't like parting with my only weapon of
defence. Still, I dare say you are right really, and I will think it
over. But mind, I don't want you to take any steps unless you can
satisfy yourself that these people have a hand in my death. Please be
very careful to make certain of that. My health is not good, and grows
worse. I may easily die without their interference; but I suspect that,
if they do get me, they will manage the affair so that it has all the
look of having been caused by the purest misadventure. That is what I
fear. Not exactly murder; certainly no violent open assault. But we are
all liable to suffer from accidents, and what is to prevent my meeting
with a fatal one? That is more the line they will adopt, if, as I
imagine, they have decided on my death."
"If ever there were a case in which prevention is better than cure," said
Gimblet, "I think you will own that we have it here. If I had some hint
of the quarter from which you expect danger, I might at least suggest
some rudimentary precautions. What kind of 'accident' do you imagine
likely to occur?"
"That I can't tell," replied Lord Ashiel. "I only know that these enemies
of mine are resourceful people, who are apt to make short work of anyone
whose existence threatens their safety or the success of their designs. I
am, by your help, taking a precaution to ensure that I shall not die
unavenged. They must be taught that murder cannot be committed in this
country with impunity. And I am very careful not to trust myself out of
England. If I crossed the Channel it would be to go to my certain death.
Otherwise I should have gone myself to see Sir Arthur Byrne. But in this
island the man who kills even so unpopular a person as a member of the
House of Lords does not get off with a few years' imprisonment, as he may
in some of the continental countries; and the Nihilists, for the most
part, know that as well as I do."
Gimblet followed Lord Ashiel into the hall with the intention of showing
him out of the flat, but the sudden sound of the door bell ringing made
him abandon this courtesy and retreat to shelter.
He did not wish to be denied all possibility of refusing an interview to
some one he might not want to see.
So it was Higgs who opened the door and ushered out the last visitor, at
the same time admitting the newcomer.
This proved to be a small, slight woman dressed in deepest black and
wearing the long veil of a widow, who was standing with her back to the
door, apparently watching the rapid descent of the lift which had brought
her to the landing of No. 7.
She did not move when the door behind her opened, and Lord Ashiel,
emerging from it in a hurry to catch the lift before it vanished, nearly
knocked her down. She gave a startled gasp and stepped hastily to one
side into the dark shadows of the passage as he, muttering an apology,
darted forward to the iron gateway and applied his finger heavily to the
electric bell-push. But the liftboy had caught sight of him with the tail
of his eye, and was already reascending.
His anxiety allayed, Lord Ashiel turned again to express his regrets to
the lady he had inadvertently collided with, but she had disappeared into
the flat, of which Higgs was even then closing the door.
Ashiel stepped into the lift and sat down rather wearily on the
leather-covered seat.
Although, to some extent, the relief of having unburdened his mind of
secrets that had weighed upon it for so many years produced in him a
certain lightness of heart to which he had long been a stranger, yet
the very charm of the impression made upon him by Juliet Byrne, during
his first meeting with her that morning, led him to suspect uneasily
that his hopes of her proving to be his child were due rather to the
pleasure it gave him to anticipate such a possibility than to any more
logical reason.
He was so entirely engrossed in an honest endeavour to adjust correctly
the balance of probabilities, as to remain unconscious that the lift had
stopped at the ground floor, and it was not until the boy who was in
charge had twice informed him of the fact, that he roused himself with an
effort and left the building.
Still absorbed in his speculations and anxieties, he walked rapidly away,
and, having narrowly escaped destruction beneath the wheels of more than
one taxi, wandered down Northumberland Avenue on to the Embankment. He
crossed to the farther side, turned mechanically to the right and walked
obliviously on.
It was not until he came nearly to Westminster Bridge that he remembered
the cipher that he had prepared for Gimblet, and that he had, after all,
finally left without giving it to him. It was still in his pocket, and
the discovery roused him from his abstraction.
He took a taxi and drove back to the flats. A motor which had been
standing before the door when he had come out was still there when he
returned; so that, thinking it probably belonged to the lady he had met
on the landing, and guessing that if so the detective was still occupied
with her, he did not ask to see him again, but handed the envelope over
to Higgs when he opened the door, with strict injunctions to take it
immediately to his master.