“You were good enough to obtain for me a post abroad, were you not?”
“I managed to get you a good opening in the diplomatic service, my
boy, and I confess I was sorely hurt and disappointed when you refused
to accept it. I can’t make out your motive even now.”
“Neither can I,” was my reply. “For the first time last night had I
any knowledge of it.”
“What?” cried my father. “What are you saying? For the first time last
night you knew about it? Why, my dear boy, you must be dreaming.”
“I have been dreaming for over two years,” I admitted. “And only now
do I find myself fully awake.”
My father arose and stood erect in front of me.
“Look here, Lionel,” he remarked very seriously, “are you joking? If
so, it is misplaced humor.”
“I am not joking, dad,” I said. “I’m terribly in earnest. And it is
to--to tell you what I know that I am here to-day.”
“What do you know?”
“Of what happened to me on that night you met me at Denmark Hill.”
“You were run down in the Old Kent Road, and narrowly escaped being
killed,” my father replied.
“Has there been any suspicion that I am the man the police wanted for
the affair in Bloomsbury?” I asked eagerly.
“No. You have never been identified. Therefore dismiss the whole
miserable affair from your mind for ever.”
“Ah! That’s just it! I cannot dismiss it because--well, something
happened to me after I left you that night--something very serious, a
mystery even to this moment; something which has connection with the
tragedy in Bloomsbury. For some unknown reason I exist to-day in
deadly peril.”
“Tell me all about it!” my father said anxiously. “In what peril are
you?”
For the next half hour I sat revealing to him the whole truth, just as
I have already written it down in these pages, while he sat staring at
me in surprise, scarcely uttering a word.
Except the facts that I loved Joan Gell and that I had received
letters from the mysterious Illona, who declared herself my wife, I
concealed nothing. I described all that had happened--my strange
awakening in Rome, my meeting with the Little Countess, and the sudden
realization that she was none other than the humble typist, Lisely
Hatten, one of a desperate gang of shop-window jewel-thieves, who had
made that cruel and inhuman suggestion to put out my eyes, so that I
could never identify her or her criminal associates.
“But she must be exposed, my boy,” my father declared. “Now that you
have recognized her, Kingscliffe should be informed at once. Why is
she masquerading in Italy as the daughter of an Italian Count?”
“Ah, that is yet another mystery!” was my reply. “I confess that I am
utterly and completely bewildered.”
“My dear boy, and so am I! If I were you I would see the Foreign
Secretary. Shall I see him for you? He is a great friend of mine, as
you know.”
“No, father. Let me solve the mystery. I will remain alert, and try to
discover what plot is afoot. There must be some great and well
organized conspiracy which takes a girl member of a criminal gang to
become a guest at the Quirinale.”
“Through Sir Richard, you can always have private audience with His
Excellency the Duce,” my father remarked. “But all you tell me
bewilders me, my boy. I can’t make head or tail of it. What can have
happened to you after the girl Lisely gave you that injection?”
“Ah, that I don’t know! From that very moment until I fell beneath the
dining-table at the Embassy, I was entirely unconscious and oblivious
of everything. Yet the girl who gave me the injection--that wild girl
who suggested that I be blinded--was, on my return to my normal
senses, most charming to me. No doubt she had realized that I did not
know her; hence she felt herself safe and sent me upon that
sentimental mission to her lover.”
“The strangest story I have ever heard!” declared my father, who,
after all, was a hard-headed man, a figure in post-war politics. As an
English country gentleman, he was, too, a whole-hearted hater of the
Russian Soviets and all their ways.
“Yes,” I said. “It is all strange, all inconceivable, that I should by
no fault of mine have earned the deadly enmity of those who now pose
as my friends.”
I wondered whether to tell him of the strange communications from
Illona. Surely it were better for the present to keep the matter to
myself!
We had lunch in the big old dining-room, where, around the dark,
paneled walls, were portraits of my ancestors. My father spoke little,
apparently absorbed in the strange story of my misfortune, and my
consequent unconsciousness.
Both of us ate little, being too full of our own perplexed thoughts.
Afterwards, when we smoked over our coffee on the front veranda--which
overlooked the lawn, with its border of lilacs and roses, and the
delightful woods beyond--my father suddenly asked:
“And what do you now propose to do, my boy?”
“I really don’t know, dad.”
“Well, your first effort to discover the truth is to approach this
strange woman, the Little Countess,” he said. “It was she who injected
into your body some drug which caused you that long period of loss of
memory. Still pretend that you do not recognize her, and no doubt you
will discover some clue to the amazing situation in which you find
yourself to-day. At the bottom of it all, you will find that the
friends of the man who accidentally shot himself in Bloomsbury instead
of murdering you, and who was afterwards identified by his
finger-prints as a notorious criminal, have some great interest in
hounding you to your peril.”
“But why?” I asked, puzzled as ever. “I did nothing. I raised no hand
except in self-defense.”
“You saw him--you saw the others associated in that house on that
foggy night. For that reason they fear you; hence their hands are
raised against you. No, my dear boy, you must exercise the greatest
discretion and precaution, or you may still fall their victim.”
I recollected that strange letter penned by my anxious wife, the
mysterious Illona. She held the same opinion as did my dear old
governor, that I was in some deadly and mysterious peril.
Quite late into the afternoon we both sat in the long cane
lounge-chairs drowsily thinking.
“What you have told me to-day explains much, my boy,” my father said
reflectively at last. “Often I have watched you, and wondered in
anxiety at your strangeness of manner and your apparent obliviousness
of the past. Sometimes I grew impatient because I could not follow the
trend of your thoughts. You seemed ridiculously regardless of the
past, and more often than not you made statements which, on the face
of them, were absurd. Look here, my boy,” he said, laying his hand
upon my shoulder with paternal affection, “I confess now to you that I
often wondered if you had really taken leave of your senses. Now, I
know too well that you have not been yourself. Hence I apologize to
you for my shortness of temper.”
“There’s no need for apology, dad,” I declared. “I’ve never been in a
fit state of mind to appreciate even your love for me, or your
suspicions of my demented state--for, after all, I must have been half
mad all these many months.”
“My poor boy, I really think you must have been,” he said, gripping my
shoulder with his tender hand. He and I had always been the firmest
friends ever since the death of my dear, sainted mother, whose pet I
had always been since my Eton days.
I, however, told him nothing of that dark shadow on me--the discovery
that I was married to a woman whom I did not know.
We discussed the curious warning I had had concerning the evil
intended by a blind man, and the sightless individual who had called
on me during my absence.
“You should not meet him, but keep alert and watchful,” he advised.
“When he comes, follow him, and see where he lives and with whom he
associates,” the governor suggested.
That was my idea, for I resolved to leave no stone unturned to solve
the inexplicable mystery.
All was bewildering. The more we discussed it, the deeper seemed the
plot against me. But with what motive? What had I done, save to
stumble on that foggy night into a meeting of crooks who were no doubt
in the act of dividing their spoils prior to distributing them to the
“fences?” Of course they took me to be a “squealer” or a police
informer. For that reason Lisely, whom I had believed to be my friend,
had made that diabolical suggestion of destroying my sight. Yet, in my
powerless position, she had surely administered to me some strange
insidious injection, and allowed my sight to remain normal.
Why?
The effect of that injection had been to make me unconscious of what I
did, of what I said, or even of my life and surroundings, for two
whole years. Had other persons been served the same? I had read in the
newspapers of many cases of complete loss of memory, which had greatly
puzzled medical men, sometimes restored by sudden shock, and I
wondered whether my own case was on a par with others. Had others
fallen into the hands of that desperate gang, and been subjected to
the fatal hypodermic needle as I had been?
Late that afternoon I wandered through the gardens of my old home
accompanied by the governor, who took great interest in his exquisite
cherries grown under glass. Politics and committees occupied his whole
life, but his recreation was a delight in horticulture, and especially
in the rearing of flowers.
Every day in the year old Blake, our head gardener, sent him a basket
of flowers for his rooms in London, and, more often than not, he
appeared in the House wearing a rare orchid grown at Hipwell.
In the fading afterglow we dined together and, in my honor, he opened
a bottle of one of his choicest vintages.
Then, when he had wished me every luck, and had given me many words of
advice which I highly valued, I took my leave, and just before eleven
o’clock alighted again at King’s Cross and drove back to Sackville
Street.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
MISSING
Through two years my enemies had successfully fooled me. I had no
doubt been as clay in their hands, even to the extent that some
adventuress had actually married me!
Was the marriage legal? How could I escape from the hateful bondage?
Had I not been warned by the mysterious Illona? Mysterious truly, for
not even her address was known to me; hence I could not communicate
with her.
The mystery of it all was driving me out of my mind. That accursed
drug that Lisely injected into my veins had changed me entirely,
sweeping from me all recollection of the present, but allowing me all
the horror of the past.
I had awakened to a new sense of life, but after all, when I quietly
considered everything while I smoked interminable cigarettes alone, I
realized that I was not entirely myself. Moreover, I was appalled at
the great responsibility resting on me as the official courier of His
Majesty’s Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Why I had accepted
such a position was amazing. I was fond of travel, for I had been up
and down Europe with my father in every vacation from the ’Varsity.
During each recess, the governor always went abroad in search of
information to use in the House, which he often did with much damning
effect.
Illona! Who was she? Where was she? I was frantic to see her, and
obtain from her further facts concerning the serious plot against me.
But how?
Next day I took Joan out to lunch at Ciro’s and afterwards we went to
a matinée. Tea at the Carlton followed. Therefore, it was not before
half-past six that I arrived back at Sackville Street.
“The blind man called again this afternoon, sir,” my man Bruce
informed me as I passed into the sitting-room.
“The blind man!” I echoed. “What did you tell him?”
“That you were still away, sir. But he seemed to know that you had
returned.”
“He knows, eh?”
“Well, sir, he seemed to know. For he only grinned and said, ‘Your
master will be in to meet me next time I call. Please tell him that
from me.’ His manner was quite insulting, sir.”
“You showed him out, of course?”
“No, sir, I sent him down in the elevator and allowed him to tap
himself out. I told him frankly that if he could find his way up here,
he could just as easily find his way out again.”
“Excellent, Bruce,” I said approvingly. “But when he calls next time,
say I’m out and let me know instantly. I’ll follow him, and see if
he’s blind, or not.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s as blind as a bat,” my man declared.
“He may be only pretending,” I suggested. “But describe him to me as
minutely as you can.”
“Well, sir, he’s a youngish man, dressed always in a shabby grey suit,
a soft collar, and an old, frayed black tie. He has a rather
sharp-pointed nose and thickish lips.”
The description was rather vague, but was it possible that the man who
had posed to me as a romantic lover was the blind man against whom my
unknown wife had so seriously warned me?
The thought gripped me, for I saw myself surrounded by secret enemies
who--perhaps realizing that, as I had returned to my senses, I was a
peril to them--were determined to close my lips.
I concealed my agitation from Bruce and went to my room to dress for
the evening. I had promised to go out with Teddy Day, an old college
chum who now held a dry-as-dust post in the Treasury--an inspector or
something or other. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a room of his
own--a sure sign of a do-nothing job. Our great Government offices are
full of civil servants who are, alas! too often uncivil if you ask
about their particular job. They are all the deep growths of
officialdom which even inter-departmental committees cannot uproot. In
one case, for example, an old friend of mine was an inspector of the
purchase department of the Admiralty for naval wireless installations.
He knew no more of radio than the merest schoolboy, cared less, and
was passing accounts amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds
yearly. Such are some of the drones which Whitehall still hives even
in these days of the post-war “axe.”
Teddy Day was a cheery, round-faced man-about-town, essentially a
ladies’ man, and a confirmed bachelor. With his hostesses he was a
favorite, for he was an excellent dancer, and always fell into a
vacancy, as some men appear born to do. We dined at the Piccadilly,
and, after coffee at the Travellers’, went on to a dance-club, where
we glided over the floor with partners hardly known to us.
Not until half past one in the morning did I get back home, and then I
was so tired that I undressed hastily, and soon fell asleep.
Suddenly I heard my telephone bell ring, and I sprang up to find it
was already morning.
“Hulloa?” I asked in response to the call.
“Is that you, Lionel?” asked a voice which I instantly recognized as
that of Joan’s father. “Is Joan with you?”
“Joan! No. I haven’t seen her since last evening,” I replied.
“But she went out to meet you at eight o’clock for dinner,” said the
deep-voiced King’s Counsel.
“She never met me. I had no appointment with her.”
“But you sent a messenger with an appointment. I was here when it
came!”
“I sent no messenger, Mr. Gell,” I declared. “I went out with a
college friend, and got back about half past one.”
“What! Do you mean to say that you’ve not seen Joan?” he asked.
“I swear that I have not seen her, or sent her any message since I
left her at six o’clock last night,” was my astonished reply.
“Then what the devil can have happened to her?” asked her father.
I dressed hastily, and took a taxi to Queen’s Gate, to find both Mrs.
Gell and her husband in a state of frantic anxiety.
The statement of Hughes, the lady’s maid, was to the effect that, at
about half past seven on the previous evening a telegraph-boy arrived
with a note for Miss Joan.
On receiving it she dressed hurriedly, remarking to the maid that she
had to meet me, and later went off in a taxi, saying:
“Tell mother I’m out with Lionel.”
From that moment she had not been seen. Her father came in from a
dinner of the Fishmongers’ Company in the City, at a quarter to two in
the morning. But she had not returned.
Thinking she was at a night club with me, he went to bed, leaving the
door on the latch. But, finding at early morning she had not returned,
he had made the inquiry over the ’phone, and surely not without
reason. It was perplexing, mystifying. What could it mean?
The knowledge that some desperate plot had been formed against me by
certain unknown enemies, made it quite apparent that the conspiracy
extended to my well-beloved. I said but little to Mr. Gell, but I
became all the more convinced that she had fallen innocently into
hostile hands, as the message to her, of course, was a false one. The
express messenger had delivered to Joan a written note. She knew my
handwriting. Who, therefore, had forged my message?
The unknown Illona had warned me not without reason. What could she
possibly know?
“We’ll wait till noon, and if we hear nothing, we’ll go down and see
Cunningham Lee, the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard,” said the
King’s Counsel, whose work at the Old Bailey brought him into intimate
touch with the head of the police.
Three anxious hours passed, but the telephone did not ring, nor was
there any explanatory message from the girl I so dearly loved. She was
lost to me as to her friends. There had been some devil’s work
somewhere! When I recalled my own experience in the hands of that
desperate gang, I trembled for her. And yet, her only offense,
apparently, had been her great love for me.
I longed to find Illona and demand the truth from her. What could she
know? Could she tell me something to give a clue to Joan’s sudden
disappearance? Or was it due to the fierce jealousy of the woman I had
unconsciously wedded?
Very probably it was due to the latter! If so, then my efforts to
learn the truth, and to rescue Joan, must be unavailing.
Joan’s mother, naturally, was in tears.
“My girl would never of her own will remain away all night!” she
cried. “An accident may have happened, John,” she said to her husband.
“Inquiry must be made at all the hospitals.”
The maid was called, and described the dress, coat, and hat which Joan
had put on before going out.
“She had two one-pound Treasury notes in her bag as well as some
silver, madam,” the girl said. “Miss Joan always carries them in her
little purse in case of emergency.”
“Did she seem surprised when you gave her the letter?” asked Mr. Gell,
assuming his habitual manner of cross-examination.
“Well, just a trifle, I think, sir.”
“What causes you to say a trifle? Explain it.”
“Well,” replied the neatly-dressed maid, rather confused at her
master’s hard, legal glance, “when she opened and read the letter, she
exclaimed, ‘Oh, how strange--how very interesting! I must go at once.
Mr. Hipwell is waiting for me.’”
“She did not say where?”
“No, sir. She bustled me about to get out her dress and shoes, and
while she put on her hat I went out to call a taxi.”
“You were at the door when she went out?”
“Yes, sir. I heard her tell the man to drive to Wardour Street, but I
could not catch the number.”
“She might have gone to the Cosmo Club. That is in Wardour Street. We
are both members,” I remarked.
“Then the rendezvous might have been at the club,” remarked Mr. Gell,
who, turning to the maid, asked:
“What, as far as you can tell, was the exact time she left the house?”
“About eight o’clock, sir.”
“Why did she not come to me and tell me she was going out?” asked her
mother. “Always when she goes out late she tells me. Girls to-day are,
alas! not like they were when I was a girl, John. They run such risks,
and yet they are so self-reliant that one can’t help liking the modern
girl, after all.”
“But where is our girl?” asked Mr. Gell, bewildered.
The ’phone rang from his chambers in the Temple. He was due to appear
at the London Sessions, to prosecute in a case of stolen motor-cars,
but in a few brief sentences he told his clerk that he was indisposed,
he regretted, and asked his junior associate to carry on the case in
his absence.
“Mr. Fortescue knows the whole story,” he went on. “The case is quite
simple, Matthews. Both prisoners have been previously convicted. Tell
Mr. Fortescue to apologize for my enforced absence, and let me know
the result over the ’phone. I expect they will get three years each,
unless Bowden puts up an alibi. He may--who knows?”
And he rang off.
Till noon we remained at Queen’s Gate. I rang up Bruce, but he had
heard nothing. Half a dozen of Joan’s friends were rung up by her
mother, but nobody had seen or heard of her. From the moment the taxi
had left the curb outside she had disappeared into space.
“We must advertise for the taxi-driver,” I suggested. “He may tell us
where he left her.”
“Yes. But the notice cannot appear till to-morrow morning,” replied
her father excitedly. Mr. Gell, usually such a calm, composed man,
whom no circumstance, however untoward, could ruffle, was now beside
himself at Joan’s disappearance.
“Who could possibly have imitated your handwriting?” he asked blankly.
We both went to her empty bedroom and searched her waste-paper basket
for evidence of the plot. But, she had apparently taken the note with
her. There had been no fire in the room, therefore she could not have
burned it, as she might have done in winter.
At noon the car took us down to Scotland Yard, where, without delay,
we were ushered into the bare, official room of the Assistant
Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, Mr. Cunningham Lee.
The tall, thin-faced official rose to greet the famous K.C., and then,
reseating himself, listened to the story which the bereaved father
related.
“This is Mr. Lionel Hipwell of the Foreign Office,” he said,
indicating me. “The letter my daughter received purported to come from
him, but he never sent any message, either written or verbal.”
“Then your daughter was decoyed away last night, Mr. Gell, eh?”
“No doubt. Or--or perhaps an accident has occurred to her, and she may
be in one of the hospitals.”
“The receipt of the note rather points to her being decoyed, does it
not?” said the Assistant Commissioner very seriously, as he touched an
electric button.
“Send Mr. Nicholas to me,” he said to the clerk who answered his
summons. “And--and send Mr. Hayes also.”
In a few minutes the two officers of the Criminal Investigation
Department entered. To them the eminent lawyer, who was so well known,
gave a detailed description of Joan, together with the clothing she
had worn, and described the curious circumstances under which she had
left home in a taxi for Wardour Street, about eight o’clock.
Both detectives made some scribbled notes, when Hayes, a round-faced,
middle-aged man, who had to his credit the arrest of the
bungalow-murderer Collins, hanged only a couple of months before,
asked:
“Excuse me, Mr. Gell, but do you think the motive might be vengeance,
because you have successfully prosecuted one or other of the recent
gangs? You remember the Pittard crowd--the ‘cat’ burglars whom you
prosecuted for the Treasury. Don’t you recollect that after they were
sentenced by the Recorder they vowed vengeance against you?”
John Gell laughed, his usual hearty laugh.
“My dear Mr. Hayes, every advocate who prosecutes for the Treasury has
hundreds of threats and anonymous letters of abuse and warning! I’m
not alone. I received two yesterday morning.”
“That is so, Mr. Gell,” admitted the Assistant Commissioner, “but Mr.
Hayes is perfectly within his right to suggest a motive.”
“Of course! of course!” said the stout lawyer. “But I leave the matter
entirely in your hands to do your best to restore my daughter to me.”
“Every effort shall be made, I assure you,” said Mr. Cunningham Lee.
“We will send to all the hospitals and ambulance stations, and we will
get hold of the taxi-man without delay.” Then after a pause the high
official of Scotland Yard turned to me, and in a strange,
half-suspicious manner, asked:
“You are quite certain that you sent no note to Miss Gell last night?”
“I certainly did not,” I replied. “But I have reason to believe that
Miss Gell has fallen the victim to some deeply laid and desperate
plot. Some clever forger has been at work who sent her a message of
greatest urgency, for I had been with her only an hour and a half
before she received the mysterious message which caused her to change
hurriedly and rush out to Wardour Street.”
“Yes,” remarked the Assistant Commissioner, “I agree entirely. The
young lady, I fear, has fallen victim to some plot, the motive of
which is at present entirely obscure.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
AN AFFAIR IN FULHAM
What could we do save to leave the matter in the hands of the
police?
In a couple of hours every police-constable in greater London would
hear the description read over before going on duty, while search
would be made of every hospital and every ambulance post.
We afterwards drove along to the offices of _The Times_ and _Morning
Post_ in which we placed advertisements, begging the taxi-driver, who
took a young lady from Queen’s Gate at eight o’clock on the evening in
question to communicate at once with the nearest police-station.
There was no more to be done save to wait in patience.
How that day passed, or what I did, I cannot tell. My wife Illona
might be in London as she said she intended. I re-read the letter I
had found in Rome, in which she told me that if she dared she would
call on me. If she dared? What could that mean?
She asked me to write to her at her club in London. But what club? In
neither of her letters had she given me any address save that vague
one “Lausanne.”
I knew the tree-lined city on the hill above the blue Lake of Geneva.
But it was a large place in which to search for anyone. Yet if she
were a traveler, as it seemed, she would no doubt be at one of the
fifty or more hotels. And if she had assumed my name I might be able
to discover her in the visitors’ list.
My first impulse was to go to Lausanne, but I remembered that she had
stated her intention of coming to me in London. Hence I decided to
wait.
Four days went by, but we could gather nothing concerning Joan. She
had completely disappeared, and, like myself, her parents were beside
themselves with grief.
In my excited state of mind I called on my friend Teddy Day and told
him of Joan’s disappearance, though I withheld from him the secret of
Illona’s existence. I told him of my romantic mission from the Little
Countess to Roddy Owen, though I gave him no inkling of who the
charming lady really was.
“She’s an adventuress, no doubt, old boy,” he declared, as he
stretched his long legs out upon the hearthrug, and smoked his
cigarette. “If she is received at the Embassy in Rome and elsewhere,
she ought to be exposed. You ought not to allow her and her chaperon
to go further.”
I discussed the situation from every angle. It was difficult to write
to Sir Richard Kingscliffe. I could only wait until my duties took me
again into Italy. Meanwhile, I knew that something very serious must
have happened to Joan, and that I myself remained in some mysterious
but deadly peril.
I was, I think, no coward; yet I had enemies on every hand. Since that
never-to-be-forgotten night in Bloomsbury, when, because I tried to
rescue a defenseless woman from the hands of a brute, I brought upon
myself dire disaster, I seemed to have been hounded out of life.
When I reflected, I saw visions of the face of Lisely Hatten distorted
horribly by hate, when she had made that brutal proposal to put out my
eyes. And yet I was perfectly innocent, and, moreover, I was her
friend.
Was it because of my friendship that she had spared me? Did she
continue, by some subtle means, to evade doing what she and that man
friend of hers had suggested? Had she relented, and allowed me to go
with my eyesight unimpaired? Still, the effect on me of that unknown
drug had remained, blotting out my consciousness for two whole years.
Nevertheless, I had led another life, energetic, manly, tireless, as I
sped hither to and fro between Downing Street and the capitals of
Europe. I had once or twice contemplated consulting a doctor about it.
But, like most young men, I had a silly terror of the medical
profession, refusing medical aid, unless, perhaps, I had a touch of
fever that sent me to bed.
Teddy was sympathetic and full of suggestions. Meanwhile, Mr. Gell,
with all his influence in police circles, was daily active in
searching for Joan.
Happily we had managed to keep the affair out of the papers save for
the advertisement addressed to the taxi driver. But that told the
public nothing.
On the fourth day after her disappearance a taxi driver named Cowley,
living at Streatham Common, called at the Brixton Police Station and
made a statement.
He had been passing along Queen’s Gate when a young lady had come out
of a house and ordered him to drive to Wardour Street. At the door of
the Cosmo Club a fair-haired young man, in evening dress, was waiting
to meet her. They had had a short and very excited discussion,
whereupon the young man had entered the taxi and told the man to drive
to the Florida Club. There he set them down. And he knew nothing more.
This story was told to me by Mr. Gell, who ’phoned me to come over to
Queen’s Gate at once. Together we went to Bruton Street, where we saw
the commissionaire on duty, who apparently had no recollection of the
incident. In the book was Joan’s signature as a member.
In the broad light of day the popular night haunt of society looked
horribly tawdry and bizarre. Princes and nobles danced upon the glass
floor, drank their wines, and ate rich foods at night beneath the
glamor of shaded lights, while listening to the soft, seductive music
of the highest paid orchestra in London. Yet the club looked strange
and unreal as we interviewed the manager, while several foreign
baize-aproned waiters were arranging choice flowers upon the tables
for the coming night.
We failed to discover anything further than the signature of Joan as
she had entered. The Florida was most exclusive. There was no
subterfuge of membership, as there is in so many London
dance-clubs--no joining by immediate payment of a subscription. Each
member was an approved person, passed by the committee at its monthly
meeting, just as at any other West End club. There were, indeed, men
and women on the waiting list; hence it was a club almost as exclusive
as the Carlton, White’s, the Travelers’, or the Devonshire.
We drew blank--a disappointing blank. We could discover nothing
further than her rather faintly written signature--“Joan Gell”--in the
big membership book, held by the old, white-moustached military
commissionaire. Underneath her signature was that of a world-famous
explorer, and above it was the scribble of a rather reckless young
peer.
I wondered whether the explorer had known or had ever seen her. He was
a member of the Junior United Service Club, so I called on him.
Alert, erect, and full of genuine bonhomie, the elderly traveler told
me that he knew Joan by sight, that he had but a faint recollection of
seeing her that evening.
“I have an idea I saw her dancing with a young, fair-haired man,” he
told me as we sat together in the club. “He struck me as a young,
empty-headed fool, but he was a very good dancer. They charlestoned
well. That’s all I know. I left the Florida about half past one and
went to the Travelers’ with Janning Chase, the stockbroker, for a
final drink.”
That was all we could gather.
A dozen times I consulted with Teddy, but our conversation carried us
no further.
Who, we wondered, was her fair-haired dancing-partner? Was it my enemy
who pretended blindness?
Scotland Yard could obtain no clue. The most diligent inquiries were
made of the staff of the Florida as regards the fair young man who was
such an excellent dancer. But his identity could not be fixed. All the
signatures of both members and their visitors on that night were
carefully verified, but there was no fair-haired young man among those
registered.
Yet Anthony Marsh, the explorer, whom I saw on two different occasions
afterwards, remained certain that he had seen her with the young
fellow whom he described.
The description struck me as very like that of Roddy Owen! If the
latter was acquainted with my enemy, the woman Lisely Hatten, then
might he not be one of the conspirators against me? Since I had
realized my foolish failure to recognize the Little Countess, I held
the romantic young bachelor in great distrust.
My first impulse was to call on him and demand an explanation of the
events of that night when Joan was decoyed by the message purporting
to come from me. But Teddy suggested remaining watchful, and I agreed
with him.
“He doesn’t know me. Therefore I’ll follow him and see where he goes
and what company he keeps,” he said. “I’ll watch to-night.”
And he did.
I went down to Queen’s Gate to hear if any news had been received, but
there was nothing. A week had gone by, and my love was either held in
some hateful bondage or was dead. The number of women and girls who
disappear weekly in London is incredible; drugs and the white-slave
traffic, alas! being responsible for many deserted homes.
We all entertained the worst fears, and yet we were powerless.
I got back to Sackville Street just after midnight, and, after smoking
an hour over the evening paper, as was my habit, I was about to retire
when Teddy entered.
“There’s some mystery about that fellow Owen,” he said, throwing
himself into a chair wearily. “I don’t exactly know what has happened,
but we ought to know something in the morning.”
“What do you mean?” I gasped.
“Well, I waited for an hour and a half outside Harrington Court until
I saw him come out. He was in evening clothes, with a crush hat, and
walked leisurely along down Grosvenor Place, where he made a call. But
evidently the person he wanted was out.
“He then came back along Piccadilly to Scott’s, where he met a man
accidentally, and they both had a meal down below. I sat in the next
compartment to them. But their conversation was so low that I could
not distinguish what they said. His friend was a big, round-faced,
overdressed fellow, and they were evidently discussing something of an
extremely confidential nature. After that they had coffee, then both
strolled along Shaftesbury Avenue to Ham Yard, where they entered a
little obscure club, which I know to be the resort of West End thieves
and undesirables. It was pointed out to me once as one of the plague
spots of London. Both of them went upstairs and remained there for
over an hour. Then Owen came out accompanied by an ill-dressed, thin
young fellow in dark clothes and a cap, who might have been a
pickpocket--evidently a fellow of evil repute. Both got into a taxi in
Shaftesbury Avenue, and I followed them in another taxi down to
Rutland Gate. The young man left the taxi, and while it went on
farther down the road, he sauntered along alone, his attention being
fixed on an upper window of one of the largest houses.
“I stood back under a portico, so that he did not see me,” Teddy went
on. “At last, after quite ten minutes, loitering near the house, he
moved on, and rejoined Owen at the end of the road. Afterwards, they
drove down to Fulham where, in a dark street, they descended. I dared
not go near them. But my taxi driver, who was a discreet young fellow,
and had entered into the spirit of the adventure, drew up so that they
did not know they were being followed. I had just got to the corner of
the street when I saw the flash of a pistol fired from a doorway at a
figure that was ascending the steps. The shot rang out, and the figure
reeled. But, not wishing to be mixed up with the affair, I stepped
back into the taxi and drove with all speed to Sloane Square, where I
left the vehicle. ‘There’s been murder done, I think, sir,’ said the
taxi driver as I alighted, ‘and we’re far better out of it!’”
“Well,” I remarked, when he had finished his strange story, “there
will surely be something in the papers about it to-morrow.”
“I think it is proved beyond all doubt that your friend Owen is an
associate of undesirables. That club in Ham Yard has been several
times raided by the police when in search of criminals,” Teddy said.
“From what happened in Fulham they seem to be a pretty desperate lot!”
It was two o’clock before my watchful friend left, and I turned in.
Next morning I scanned the paper eagerly, but found nothing regarding
the affair at Fulham.
The _Evening News_ that night, however, contained the following:
“Shortly before midnight a constable, on passing the Fulham
Almshouses, heard the sound of a shot coming from Finlay Street, which
runs down to the Fulham Football Ground. He hastened to the spot, but
at first found nothing, though he heard the sound of a taxi being
driven rapidly away, apparently in Bishop’s Park Avenue, which borders
on the grounds of Fulham Palace.
“After a rapid search, in which he was joined by several passers-by,
and by one or two alarmed residents in Finlay Street, the body of a
young man was discovered at the foot of the steps leading up to the
front door of the house number 246. A rapid examination by the light
of the constable’s torch showed that he had received a bullet in the
heart and was quite dead.
“The identity of the person who had fired the shot cannot, at present,
be ascertained. The constable naturally at once made demand at the
house as to its occupants; but the place proved to be empty and to
let. As far as can be gathered, the man was shot by some unknown hand,
and the affair is one of London’s mysteries of the night.
“The body was taken to the Fulham mortuary, and as result of police
inquiries, and the taking of the dead man’s finger-prints, it has been
definitely affirmed that he was in active association with the
desperate gang of cat-burglars who have for a considerable time
terrorized the West End of London, and constituted a great trouble to
the police.
“It has been proved that the dead man’s name is Henry Wilson, alias
‘Tuggy,’ an ex-naval seaman, whose cat-like climbing had first earned
him recognition with his mates. He returned from the Navy, and
utilized his powers of climbing, by entering bedrooms in West End
houses while their occupants were below at dinner or out for the
evening, securing, in that way, enormous quantities of jewelry and
other valuables. According to the finger-prints he left two months ago
in a bedroom in one of the biggest houses in Park Lane, he
appropriated thirty thousand pounds’ worth of jewelry, as well as
fifty thousand pounds’ worth of negotiable securities, which he found
in the unlocked safe of the wife of one of the most notable of British
financiers.
“So clever was he in association with a great and most desperate
criminal gang which had long troubled Scotland Yard, that only once
was he convicted. He was sentenced at the Gloucester Assizes to three
years’ imprisonment for a cat-burglary, with violence, at a big
mansion at Leckhampton. Since his discharge the police are aware that
he has been the catspaw of others, and responsible for many clever
thefts which were amazing in their audacity.
“The identity of his assailant is being actively searched for, and the
police are satisfied that, through certain channels already known, the
murderer will be discovered.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
SOME CURIOUS FACTS
I read the _Evening News_ at eight o’clock and at once Bruce called
up Teddy to come and see me.
In half an hour he stood in my room. He, too, had read it.
“Now our only course is to go to Queen’s Gate, see Joan’s father, and
tell him of our knowledge of the gentleman with such a pretty name,
Mr. Roddy Owen--a name well known in sporting circles twenty years
ago. He will see the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and put
matters in trim. Evidently the police are pleased that the young
scoundrel Tuggy Wilson is dead, but they are groping about for the
truth. And on this we certainly can enlighten them.”