“There is a belief that, on the night of Joan’s disappearance, she was
at the Florida dance-club with a fair-haired young man closely
resembling Owen. Have you any knowledge of it?”
“Not in the least,” she said. “I know nothing more than what he told
me.”
“It is strange that Joan never mentioned him,” I remarked. But I
inwardly reflected that their acquaintance was during my period of
ignorance.
I longed to reveal my knowledge to the clever criminal who sat there
before me, and to demand from her the meaning of that piece of music
she had sent me.
I felt it wiser, however, not to show my hand. That she was playing
some very deep game was apparent. By pretending loss of memory, then,
and giving her the impression that I was still her cats-paw, I might
discover much more than by denouncing her.
“Well, Contessina,” I said, addressing her by the name which I was
confident misled her into a sense of security. “I have told you all I
know about your friend Mr. Owen. Now--explain your knowledge of Joan.”
For a few moments she remained silent. Her eyes were fixed on mine
with a distinctly suspicious look. She was still uncertain, I think,
whether I had penetrated her true identity, though I had strained
every nerve in pretence of ignorance. I still treated her as the
Little Countess, beside whom I had had my ridiculous tumble under the
British Ambassador’s table in Rome.
“I can tell you very little, Signor Hipwell,” she replied. “I fear
that you regard both Mr. Owen and me, as your enemies, rather than
your friends. Now tell me truthfully, is not that so?” and she crossed
her legs, leaned her chin upon her hand, and smiled up at me.
“Now that you tell me what I never dreamt before--that Joan was
acquainted with Roddy Owen--I confess I begin to suspect that he has
some hand in her disappearance. And the more so, because certain
people have stated that she danced with him at the Florida on the
night she was lost.”
“All rubbish,” she laughed. “Depend upon it that Roddy has had nothing
to do with Miss Gell’s disappearance. It is a case of revenge and
retaliation. That is my view.”
“How?”
“Has it never occurred to you that her father, Mr. Gell, the famous
prosecutor for the Crown, has been instrumental in sending dozens of
crooks, of various sorts and ages, for long stretches on the Moor? And
what more natural than the crooks themselves have had their own back
on him?”
I paused and looked at her. Though she spoke with the pretty foreign
accent that I cannot here attempt to reproduce--the same accent which
had charmed me when we used to breakfast in our unpretending lodgings
in Camberwell--yet was not that word “stretches” criminal slang for
terms of penal servitude, and “the Moor” for His Majesty’s Penal
Institution at Dartmoor?
“Do you really think that Joan’s disappearance is due to revenge for
some conviction or other, which her father has secured at the Old
Bailey?” I asked, eager to learn her views.
“Without a doubt,” was her reply. “That is why I came here in order to
tell you my candid opinion!”
“Well--and what can I do?” I asked, in blank dismay. Her theory was
one which had suddenly gripped me.
“Discover what serious conviction her father has of late obtained,”
she replied, in a low, intense voice.
She was posing as my friend, yet I knew instinctively, and with no
better proof than the trickery in Kensington Gardens, that she was my
fierce, subtle enemy.
Oh, how I longed to turn on her, and demand an explanation of her
masquerade as daughter of an Italian count, and why she had sent me
that sheet of puzzling manuscript music!
But I managed to remain unperturbed. How I accomplished it I know not.
“Then your theory is that Joan is the victim of enemies of her
father--criminals whom he, as prosecutor for the Crown, has sent to
penal servitude?”
“Of that I am convinced,” she said. Then, after a moment’s pause, she
added frankly: “What you have told me about Tuggy Wilson has revealed
much to me, Signor Hipwell. I had never dreamt of that!”
“Neither have I ever imagined that Joan’s disappearance is due to her
father’s success as a criminal lawyer.”
“Well, there you are,” said the woman, who had two years before
suggested I should be blinded, so that I could never identify her
accomplices. “We exchanged promises, and we have fulfilled them. What
more can be done?”
“You will seek Owen, eh?”
“Of course I shall. I must find him. And you--you must discover your
fiancée, Joan Gell.”
“Ah! If I only could!” I cried. “The weeks go on, yet Scotland Yard
are ever at fault. After being seen at the Florida she vanished
completely.”
“A reprisal on the part of her father’s enemies,” she remarked. “By
revealing to me what you have, concerning Roddy’s friendship with
young Wilson, and the latter’s murder, you have done me a very good
service. If I can assist you in any way to find Joan Gell, I will. I
think I may have my own channel of inquiry.”
“I thank you heartily, Contessina,” I replied quickly, suspicious at
once of her reference to her own channel of inquiry. She knew much
more than she would reveal to me. Of that I felt certain.
The strong incentive within me at that moment was to seize the
guilty-faced crook by the throat and wring the truth from her lips.
But I hesitated again, still feeling that only by watchfulness could I
hope to cope with the plot against me, of which I had been warned by
the mysterious Illona.
The Contessina knew her and feared her. Evidently she intended that we
should never meet.
In the drawer in my writing-table lay the letter I had written to
Illona, enclosing the sheet of music which Lisely had sent me. How I
longed to present it to the woman who thought she was so cleverly
tricking me, and who, after all, had set up in my mind a new theory as
to the cause of Joan’s absence.
She took up the little red morocco handbag and rose to leave, rather
reluctantly it seemed to me.
“Is there anything else I can do to assist you, Contessina?” I asked,
with studied politeness.
“Nothing, I fear, Signor Hipwell. Except,” and she paused, “except,
when we next meet, I hope you will believe in my sincerity a little
more strongly than you do to-day,” she added with a strange, meaning
smile.
“Sincerity!” I echoed. “Why, of course, we are friends,
Contessina--Hence, I certainly believe in your sympathy,” I said, in
an endeavor to assure her further of my continued ignorance of her
true identity.
But she only gave way to a little hysterical laugh. As we shook hands
I asked her where I could write to her.
“To Cook’s Office in Berkeley Street,” she replied. “Letters sent
there always find me sooner or later.”
And then she went out, Bruce seeing her into the elevator.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
TO-MORROW!
As soon as she had gone, I rang up Mr. Gell at his chambers. But he
was still at the Old Bailey, and would not return to the Temple. So I
rang up Queen’s Gate, and asked his man to let me know instantly that
he would return home.
About seven o’clock the bell rang and I found myself talking to the
famous lawyer.
“I want to see you at once,” I said. “I’m taking a taxi along to you.”
“All right, Lionel. But I have a dinner of the Silk and Stuff Club at
eight. Come along with me. You’ll be interested, I think.”
I thanked him, slipped into a dinner-jacket, and made all haste
possible down to Queen’s Gate.
The stout old gentleman, already dressed, was sitting in his den
poring over a brief of many folios when I entered.
He greeted me cordially, as he usually did. But, noting my gravity of
manner, he asked what was the matter.
Without disclosing the source of my inspiration as to the cause of
Joan’s fate, I asked:
“Among all the criminals you have lately prosecuted do you think you
have many enemies?”
“Well, that’s rather a strange question,” he replied, looking up at me
in some surprise. “I don’t fancy any prisoner against whom I secure a
conviction really likes me. The majority of habitual crooks, however,
are good sportsmen. If they are unfortunate enough to make a slip, and
fall into the hands of the police, they usually blame themselves for
not being smart enough.”
“Have you ever had threats uttered against you?”
“Sometimes,” he laughed, in his hearty way.
“But aren’t prisoners often incensed at what counsel says against
them?” I queried.
“Counsel’s instructions are precise, and to the point. He has the
statement of the prosecutor, and uses it to the full. To the jury he
is impartial--unlike counsel for the defence, whose moving appeal may
soften the hearts of the men sitting, to decide on the prisoner’s
innocence or guilt. The work of counsel for the prosecution is a
cut-and-dried job into which he puts no acrimony or sentiment. He is
simply the mouthpiece of the Crown.”
“And, as such, you think that he never incurs the malice of the
accused’s friends?”
“I won’t go so far as to say that,” Mr. Gell replied at once. “Of
course, in the case of one member of a gang being convicted, the
others, unknown and unidentified, might easily wreak private vengeance
on counsel.”
“Mr. Gell,” I said, looking straight into his round, clean-shaven
face, “has it never occurred to you that Joan’s disappearance might be
due to such private spite?”
“God, Lionel!” cried the man, springing from his chair. “I believe you
are right, after all! You’re right!” he shouted. “You’re right! I’m
sure you are! As you say, it is the devil’s work of some gang.”
“There is more than suspicion that Joan was with that fellow Owen on
the night of her leaving home,” I pointed out. “We know that Owen was
at least on friendly terms with an expert thief. And, further we know
that he made himself scarce as soon as he suspected that he was under
the eye of the police!”
“True!” cried the distressed man. “The brutes have my poor girl in
their clutches--if she is still alive.”
“They know you are seeking her, and that Scotland Yard intends to find
her, dead or alive.”
“Ah, she may be dead! Their vengeance is perhaps complete!” he said
brokenly.
“But whose vengeance?” I queried. “Go over your recent cases, and
discover if, in any one of them, either Owen, Wilson, or Dufour was
implicated.”
“I wonder,” he said reflectively. “I wonder!”
He pointed out that, if a man were charged with a crime, the police
would perhaps know his associates, but their names would not be given
to him. His duty was simply to prosecute, and bring upon the culprit
the just and legal sentence of the law.
In view of Lisely’s connection with that mysterious gang in
Camberwell--who were sharing out those priceless jewels when I
inadvertently entered the room--and her friendship with Owen, I asked:
“Have you of late prosecuted, say, any gang of jewel-thieves?”
“Not recently,” he replied, thinking deeply. “But about a year ago I
had a case at the Old Bailey--a rather curious case, I remember--and
one which caused me to suspect the existence of a gang, who had in
secret given a woman away to the police, and who afterwards made
themselves scarce. The woman made a statement--a wild allegation, it
seemed.”
“What was the woman’s name?” I asked, much interested.
“I can’t remember. I’ll look it up.” And he took down a diary from a
shelf, and after turning over many pages, exclaimed: “Here it is!
Before the Recorder in April of last year. The prisoner’s name was
Hilda Bennett, alias May, and she was charged with complicity in a
jewel-robbery at Dover Marine Station.”
“Hilda Bennett!” I repeated astounded.
“Yes. You probably read of the affair,” he went on. “She stole the
jewel-case of the wealthy Baroness d’Armenonville, wife of the Paris
banker, who was on her way to London. There was a rope of pearls worth
fifty thousand pounds, and a quantity of other jewels. The lady, no
doubt, was followed by the thieves in the Golden Arrow train from the
Gare du Nord in Paris. And, at Dover the prisoner, a big, well-built
woman, snatched the case from the Baroness’s hand after she had passed
the Customs. Then, with the connivance of her confederates, she
succeeded in getting away in a motor-car. The alarm was given, and the
Dover police, knowing that the thief would not attempt to go by train
to London, telephoned along the roads. A car had been seen going
swiftly towards Folkestone. Outside the latter town the car was
stopped, and the prisoner was arrested, with the jewels in a big false
pocket. The case had been thrown away into a hedge, where it was found
next day.”
“Hilda Bennett!” I repeated, for across my brain passed the horrible
recollection of that fatal night in Bloomsbury.
“Yes. The case was of more than usual interest, because of a statement
given by the police after the jury had pronounced a verdict of guilty.
It was given in evidence that the woman was present in Bloomsbury
about fourteen months previously, when her lover, a man named Rodwell,
was shot dead by a man unknown. The pistol was found to have been
stolen by burglars from a house in Cromwell Road, and his
finger-prints taken after death showed the man to be one of the most
expert jewel-thieves, who was wanted by the police of half Europe.
This man Rodwell, alias May, lived quite respectably in a nice house
in Fitz-John’s Avenue, Hampstead, and was ostensibly a corn merchant,
in a big way of business, at Highbury. His finger-prints, however, had
been identified as Monkey Dick’s, one of a desperate gang of motor
bandits who had operated in and around Riga, on the Russian border.
Indeed, I myself saw the report from the police of Riga asking for any
information concerning the English bandit. But he was dead, and a
report was sent to them to that effect.”
“But the prisoner? What sort of woman was she? Interesting, no doubt?”
I asked, keeping my information to myself.
“I recollect her as a smart, rather overdressed, attractive woman,
full of alertness, but with that sly expression beneath the eyes that
we legal men as prosecutors always look for. Few of us, at the
Criminal Bar, make mistakes. I have prosecuted persons whom I have
realized at once are innocent, and about whom I have agreed with my
learned friend for the defence. No innocent man or woman has guilt
written on the countenance. But the guilty have, and the sense of
crime is such in a practised advocate, that he can himself separate
the guilty from the innocent.”
“And this woman Bennett was guilty?” I asked, staggered by his
statement.
“Of course. It seemed to me that she had been implicated with Rodwell,
the cosmopolitan motor bandit, who had a hand in certain amazing
thefts. Who killed her lover will probably never be known. In any
case, the jury found her guilty, and she left the dock shrieking when
the Recorder sentenced her to five years.”
“Five years. So she is in prison now?” I remarked.
“Yes. But I think the jury were certain that the woman was more sinned
against than sinning. She declared most vehemently that one of her
enemies had deliberately murdered Rodwell, and that the same enemy had
betrayed her to the police.”
I said nothing. My thoughts were full. I saw now what I had never seen
before--the reason of Joan’s disappearance. The friends of that woman
of the night, whose evil face was ever impressed on my memory, had
wrought vengeance on the man who had secured her conviction.
I recalled that, at that crucial moment in Camberwell, she had failed
to recognize me as her lover’s antagonist. Perhaps it was because of
Lisely’s declaration that I was a police informer. Still, I owed my
life to her, just as I owed my eyesight to the woman who had so
cleverly mystified me.
“Well,” I exclaimed at last. “Doesn’t this case of the woman Bennett
throw some light on the present position, Mr. Gell? Don’t you think
that her friends, proved as they were by the police to be a desperate
cosmopolitan gang, might not have retaliated by decoying Joan?”
“It certainly seems so,” he said. “I might admit that I have not
thought so until now. I have now to see Scotland Yard, and endeavor to
trace who were her friends, and if the gang now exists, as no doubt it
does.”
Then, glancing at the old-fashioned marble clock upon the mantelshelf,
he remarked:
“By jove! We must be off. We’re very late, Lionel. I only wish I could
escape to-night. I’m in no mood for a humorous speech. But that’s the
worst of popularity, my boy. You must always give the public what they
expect, or you go under in their estimation like a dead dog attached
to a stone.” He stretched his arms above his head, yawned wearily, and
then said, “Come along. Let’s go. The car is outside.”
Through the busy London streets, where the lights were twinkling, we
drove, but he spoke little. His one obsession, like my own, was the
fate of poor Joan. Yet we both felt that we were on the eve of
discovery, and that the future held for us some amazing disclosures.
What he had told me about that woman Hilda Bennett astounded me. I
never dreamt that, due to his cold, hard accusation in court, she was
now languishing in a female convict prison--that woman who had
declared to the police that I had deliberately killed her lover, yet
well knowing that it was he who had drawn the weapon on me.
To her false allegations had been due my flight, my trouble, my
ill-fortune, and now the loss of the woman whom I loved so dearly. To
her had been due the loss of two of the best years of my life, thrown
as I had been within that time, into a maelstrom of uncertainty and
despair.
To her was due my amazing marriage with the unknown and elusive
Illona, whoever she might be. That she was my friend was plain, but
who she was, her age, her beauty, or ugliness, I knew not.
Sometimes I pictured her as a smart, young, up-to-date girl with
well-chosen clothes and smart stockings and shoes--just those
differences which attract or repel a man. Nothing repels the modern
young man, used as he is to _chic_ and dancing, so much as cheap,
ill-fitting stockings and shoes. The modern girl may be smart on her
feet, if dowdy above. But nobody forgives the laddered stocking,
however well darned, or the shoe which has the slightest turn-over at
the heel.
We have all changed, not only the gentler sex to whom, guided by the
fashion pages of our daily journals, we all allow changes of mode. Yet
even the mere male who puts on his multi-colored abomination and plus
fours is still relegated to his funereal black at night. Men are still
replicas of undertakers and waiters, I daresay more than one of my
male readers, like myself, has been “asked the way” in a crush, being
taken for the man from the caterers.
Life to-day is a succession of problems--terrible problems which few
care to face.
Alas, that it is so! But the truth must be confronted. The divorce
courts are daily examples of man’s perfidy and woman’s weakness. They
are examples under which the judges writhe, and yet have their duty to
perform. They are examples, too, in which the King’s Proctor is daily
bamboozled, and the decree nisi, like a Rolls Royce, is open to
anybody who deals in daily commodities and “makes money” in any form
whatever.
One famous divorce judge, in his memoirs, has said with truth:
“Nobody in my court ever tells the truth. I listen to a hundred
perjuries a day!”
And this is in our modern post-Soviet England!
The dinner of the Silk and Stuff Club proved a long affair, its
principal speaker being its famous president, Mr. John Gell, K.C. Many
were the jokes and many the toasts, yet I knew that Joan’s father like
me, had a heavy heart amid all the hilarity.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning before I opened the door of
my chambers. Bruce, awakened by my entrance, rose from a chair in
which he had been waiting for me.
“Oh, sir,” he said sleepily. “I tried to get you at Mr. Gell’s and at
the club, but was unable. About ten o’clock the lady called.”
“The lady. Who?” I cried.
“The lady for whom you left a note some time ago--Madame Illona. She
waited half an hour to see if I could find you, but she had to go. And
she left word that she would call to-morrow!”
To-morrow!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
I MEET ILLONA
The enigma was increasingly bewildering. Ever since the moment when
that woman of the night, Hilda Bennett, had declared that I was not
her lover’s assailant, and in consequence of which I had been punished
as a police-spy, I had existed in an atmosphere of excitement, doubt,
and mystery.
Daily, mystery piled upon mystery, as a natural sequence. And through
it all I experienced an intense agony of mind because of Joan’s
disappearance.
The fact that Joan’s father had represented the Treasury at the
prosecution of the woman Bennett, whose accusation had led me into
that maelstrom of adversity, certainly pointed to a motive of
vindictiveness on the part of the woman’s criminal friends. But I felt
myself up against a blank wall. With all the energy and spirit I
possessed I had chased the phantom of hope. Each time, however, it had
eluded me.
Illona was but a will o’ the wisp. Was she a fraud? Did she really
exist? Was she some unknown woman whom I had married during that long
period of my other self, when I lived in another world, created by
that baneful drug injected into my veins by the girl typist who had
been my fellow-lodger?
The discovery that this same young and good-looking, soft-eyed
criminal, whom I had known as Lisely Hatten, was masquerading as the
Contessina Angela Ugostini, a popular figure in diplomatic circles in
Rome, had staggered me. And whenever I had searched for the truth, I
had only drawn blank. Yet, I remained patient with one fixed object;
to discover the whereabouts of my beloved Joan, and to punish those
who had harmed her.
And if she were dead? Then I would have a life for a life.
That night I suffered from insomnia, as I had done frequently, through
the most silent hours. From three to five in the morning I wandered
the streets of London.
No one has really seen our wonderful metropolis who has not stood upon
Westminster Bridge by the long façade of the Houses of Parliament,
when Big Ben has boomed forth half-past three on a summer’s morning.
At that hour the dawn is pale, the great highway with its thundering
traffic is silent and deserted, save for an occasional constable who
looks askance at any loiterer upon the bridge. There is a solitary
taxi upon the stand, and the fine statue of Boadicea and her horses
stands out against the eastern sky by the faint flush of the rising
sun. That has long been my favorite spot when I cannot sleep. From my
point of vantage I can look down to the dome and steeples of the gray
mysterious City, and up stream along the Terrace to St. Stephen’s
Tower, and the bend of the Thames at Battersea, with its trees and
Park. A silent, sleeping, quaint London--our marvelous capital around
which civilization revolves--lies unconscious of the slowly awakening
world. The air is fresh; man and machine are resting from their
labors. For an hour one can enjoy rest, and reflect on many things,
the things which, united, we call life. In two hours more London will
awaken to its activity. Hordes of men and women will be scurrying to
business; cars, motor-buses and trams will be roaring increasingly
across the bridge which Boadicea is guarding. And Babylon will once
more be plunged into its greed for gain, its sins, and its incessant
iniquities. And, peer and politician, magnate and mechanic, lawyer and
laborer, patrician and prostitute, criminal and charlatan will vie
with each other to make money, which is the heart’s blood of London’s
life.
Yet where was Joan?
I returned to Sackville Street about seven, and Bruce served my
breakfast. Then, I washed and read the newspaper, each moment
impatient for the return of my elusive “wife” Illona.
Just before eleven I was startled by the electric bell, and, a few
moments later, my man ushered in a strange, stunted female figure, who
rushed forward to welcome me with the breathless words:
“Lionel dear! At last!” Then, turning to see if Bruce had closed the
door, she gripped my hand and in a low intense whisper asked, “Have
you heard anything further?”
“About what?” I asked, looking into her narrow, drawn face, utterly
staggered.
“About the Avignon affair?”
“The Avignon affair? I don’t understand you,” I replied.
“What?” she cried. “Come, Lionel, you are joking. You know the great
risk I have run in coming to you to-day. I called last night and you
were out.”
She paused in the manner of expecting an explanation.
“You had my note?”
“Yes--and the evidence of treachery,” she said. “We will talk of that
later. But, Lionel,” she added, gazing into my face with a puzzled
expression, “you are not yourself, dear. Why? What has happened?”
I stood before the queer, undersized little woman, utterly bewildered.
Not more than five feet in height, her head and hands seemed
abnormally large. She was well and fashionably dressed in a
beige-colored gown, with hat to match. And she carried in her hand an
expensive bag of pale-green lizard skin. Her features once had been
attractive, perhaps, but the bloom of youth had long passed, and vain
endeavors had been made to efface the havoc of time by the application
of toilet requisites, and especially of lip-stick.
And this ugly, ill-formed woman with the rouged face was Illona--my
secret wife whom I imagined to be young, sweet, enticing!
“No,” I managed to reply, “I am not myself.”
“I don’t wonder, after your recent narrow escape.”
“Where?”
“In Kensington Gardens. They evidently knew that I intended to meet
you, and sent you that message so that you should not wait for me.”
“And the piece of music,” I added. “What did that signify?”
“Why, you know,” she said in an intensely earnest and refined voice.
“But was there any motive in preventing our meeting?” I demanded
quickly.
“Of course, they have done all in their power to prevent us coming
together again,” said Illona. “That is why I risk so much in coming
here to see you.”
“Risk!” I echoed. “I don’t follow you.”
“Ah! don’t you think, knowing what I do, and the relentlessness of our
mutual enemies, I am not ready to take any risk to save you,
Lionel--you--my husband?” she said in a voice full of emotion.
Words failed me. That she had a right to call me husband I certainly
would challenge. It required all my self-restraint to refrain from
doing so at that moment. Yet I saw that by my resentment I might
easily lose my chance of learning the truth.
Truly, I was in an amazing predicament, for of what follies I had been
culpable during my period of unconsciousness I knew not. Hence I saw
that the best course was to hold my tongue, and allow my supposed wife
to explain.
“I know that you have warned me against my enemies, and especially
against a blind man,” I said.
“Has he been here?” she asked breathlessly.
“On several occasions.”
“Ah! Then they contemplate carrying out their threat!” she cried.
“Lionel, dear, you are in great danger! You must fly--anywhere.”
“But why?” I asked, standing aghast. “I’ve done nothing!”
“Not in our eyes. But in the eyes of the police,” she declared. “Ever
since you became one of us they have always suspected you. You surely
know that!”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “How did I become ‘one of us,’ as you put
it? I don’t understand.”
The middle-aged dwarf with the made-up countenance smiled and said:
“Ah! I see you are not yourself, poor dear!” And she placed her
well-gloved hand tenderly upon my shoulder. “So much traveling upsets
your nerves, no doubt. I expected you to come and see me at Lausanne,
for you often passed to and fro on the Simplon route to Italy and the
Balkans. Yet you never broke your journey. Again, I expected you to
meet me one night at Pretty’s Club in Wardour Street, where we are all
members.”
“You told me to make an appointment, but as a matter of fact I’d
forgotten the name of your club,” I declared, very lamely, I fear.
“Ah, my dear! Your memory was always faulty. I’ve noticed it ever
since you married me at the Kensington Registry Office. Do you
remember that morning--the morning after poor Hilda was sentenced?
Poor girl! I wonder how she is.”
Hilda! She meant Hilda Bennett, the woman who was the cause of all my
present troubles and incertitude, the woman who had been prosecuted by
Joan’s father.
“Hilda was one of us, eh?” I hazarded.
“Of course. But she was game and fortunately gave nobody away.”
“And Lisely Hatten?” I asked, for it seemed by her remarks that I was
in some way still allied with the gang who had captured me on that
foggy night in Camberwell.
“She is my worst enemy, Lionel. She ascertained your family
connections, as you know, and intended to marry you. To her, you no
doubt owe your eyesight, for I know that she only pretended to blind
you, because you and she had been friends. His Excellency never
suspected it, or you would not be alive now.”
“His Excellency?” I queried.
“Oh dear, Lionel! How dense you are!” she said, throwing her bag upon
the table, and sinking into a chair beside the fireplace. “You
remember Felix Zuroff, the little black-haired Russian, who presided
at the meeting into which you so unfortunately tumbled. We call him
His Excellency, as he is the representative of others.”
I remembered distinctly the beetle-browed foreigner, apparently head
of that criminal gang, who at the moment of my innocent intrusion were
dividing their spoils.
“Yes, I know,” I ejaculated. “But is His Excellency still in power?”
“Most certainly. And his right hand is Lisely Hatten--or the
Contessina, as she is just now known. It is almost time the great coup
was brought off. Everything is arranged for it.”
“The woman who prevented our meeting in Kensington Gardens.”
“Ah! I suspected as much,” said my undersized visitor--the woman who
called me husband.
According to her story, I had married her at the Kensington Registry
Office. I intended to confirm that, for it would not be in the least
difficult.
“Tuggy Wilson, who was recently shot, was one of us--was he not?” I
asked her.
“Of course. Dufour killed him, we know. There was, however, a good
reason. It’s most fortunate that he has got clear.”
“What was the reason?” I inquired eagerly.
“Oh, a quarrel over a woman, I hear.”
“A woman? Who?” I asked.
“Some girl with whom young Owen fell in love.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know. You see, I’ve been out of England for months--ever
since I came to you after the Avignon affair and we made our compact.
The police have searched Europe for the packet, but they’ve never
found it. And they are not likely to, eh?” she asked, with a knowing
look.
“It’s not my affair,” I declared.
“Well, who knows where it is if you don’t?” laughed the mysterious
Illona.
“I really don’t follow you,” I answered her.
She rose, and, standing determinedly before me, said:
“Now look here, Lionel. I’ll be really angry with you in a minute, if
you pretend all this silly ignorance.”
“It’s not pretence. I don’t know,” I protested.
“What?” she cried angrily. “When I risk everything to come here to see
and talk to you, you mean to stand there and tell me you are in
ignorance of the great coup we effected on the road outside Avignon
just after midnight? We had two cars traveling towards
Aix-en-Provence. The first, in which you were, overtook the car with
two men, and deliberately ran into it, completely wrecking it. His
Excellency, Owen, Lisely, and myself were in the second car, and, on
coming up, offered assistance. It was accepted. But while the damage
was being examined Owen managed to get hold of two big cases filled
with fine jewels belonging to Bonnard Frères, of the Rue de la Paix,
in Paris--some of their most expensive stock--which were being taken
for the winter season to their branch shop at Monte Carlo. The firm’s
manager, Monsieur Perrin, realizing his loss, shouted, but was shot
dead for his pains by His Excellency; the chauffeur was drugged, while
the clerk accompanying Monsieur Perrin was attended by Lisely, who
used a hypodermic needle upon him. In five minutes all was finished.
The two cars locked together in the smash, with the dead man and the
other unconscious, we left blocking the road, while the chauffeur of
the first car, who was really Tuggy Wilson, joined us, and we turned
and were swiftly on our way to Geneva.”
Without uttering a word, I listened to the description of their daring
exploit. She had alleged that I, as a member of that gang of motor-car
bandits, was party to that deliberate theft and murder. It was
impossible, and I told her so. The calm way in which she had related
the attack, and the part she herself had played in it, horrified me.
“My dear Lionel!” she laughed. “You are certainly not yourself to-day.
What utter rot you are talking.”
“I am speaking the truth!” I protested.
“Do you mean that you deny all knowledge of the fine haul we made that
night?”
“My dear lady,” I said, “I certainly do. I have never even heard of
the affair.”
“Really, Lionel, I think you have taken leave of your senses,” she
exclaimed familiarly. “What is the use of trying to bamboozle me--of
all women?” And she stood staring at me for a few moments. Then she
said, “If you are really in such innocent ignorance as you declare,
how about the check you received from His Excellency last Thursday,
the first of the month, for over eight thousand pounds as your share
of a certain other little bit of crooked business? Examine your
pass-book now, and see if I tell the truth!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
“REMEMBER THE NAME!”