London--the dear, dirty old city of delight--looked gloomy enough as we
passed out of Charing Cross yard, and made our way around the corner to
the _Grand Hotel_. It was a damp, raw evening, and after the crisp
atmosphere and bright sunshine of the Riviera, seemed to us more than
ordinarily depressing.
By wire we had engaged rooms at the _Grand_ for Vera and Violet,
overlooking Trafalgar Square, and we now began to wonder what our next
step ought to be. I wanted, if possible, to get into communication with
Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, for I was anxious not to delay my marriage
any longer, and Vera, though she had promised to become my wife as soon
as possible, refused to do so until she had seen her parents.
But where were her parents?
She had no idea, neither had I. We had telegraphed to the address in
Brighton where they had been staying, but an intimation had come from
the Post Office that the message had not been delivered, the addressee
having left.
As for Faulkner, he was distrait. Something seemed to be on his mind,
and I thought I knew what it was. He was engaged to be married to
Gladys Deroxe, of whom Vera had, during the past day or two, let drop
certain things.
Gladys Deroxe, she had confided to me among other things, was one of the
most jealous women she had ever met. Her jealousy amounted almost to an
obsession. When I heard this I breathed a fervent hope that Faulkner
might never marry her, for I have seen something of jealous wives among
my friends. What was weighing upon Faulkner's mind, of course, was that
he had brought Violet to London with him, and that, as Miss Deroxe lived
in Mayfair, she might at any moment get to hear of this, and then?
Another thought occurred to me now, for the first time. Had my
unemotional, phlegmatic friend fallen in love with Violet de Coudron,
the foundling?
She was pretty and fascinating enough for any one to fall in love with.
Personally, I thought Faulkner would do well to marry her in preference
to Gladys, who I gathered to be something of a schemer, with an eye to
the main chance. Vera had come to know Miss Deroxe quite by accident.
At first she had liked her, but soon she had begun to discover her true
character. Violet on the contrary, she liked immensely. Yet girls form
strange prejudices.
Thus a week of anxiety passed. The two girls remained at the _Grand_,
while I stayed at my rooms, and Faulkner slept at his club. Though he
did not tell me, I knew he had not informed Gladys of his return to
town. Therefore he must have felt somewhat perturbed, though, as was
his wont, he completely hid his feelings, when one morning as I was
walking with him up Hamilton Place a taxi swept up behind us, stopped
beside the kerb, and a rather florid-looking girl, leaning out of the
cab window, called in a loud, querulous voice--
"Frank! _Frank_!"
Before he presented me to her I had guessed her identity, and I saw at a
glance that she was none too well pleased at his being in London without
her knowing it.
"I was calling upon my uncle Henry," she said presently, "and chanced to
look out of the window, when I saw you go by. I was amazed. I thought
you were on the Riviera still. So I hurried out, hailed a taxi, and
pursued you. Why didn't you tell me you were back?"
He invented on the spot some excellent reason--I forget what it was--and
it seemed to satisfy her. And then, feeling that my presence was not
needed, I made an excuse, raised my hat, and left them.
"I am only glad," I remembered saying mentally and ungrammatically, "it
is Faulkner, and not I, who is to marry that girl."
Next day, I took my well-beloved in the car down to Virginia Water,
where we lunched, and returned in the afternoon. That evening I, as
usual, scanned the personal columns of the _Morning Post_. I have a
habit of doing this, as some of the announcements one sees there are not
devoid of humour.
That day the personal columns were singularly dull. The advertisements
of money-lenders masquerading as private gentlemen, and as ladies
anxious to be philanthropic, occupied a good deal of the space. There
was the widow of twenty-three who implored "some kind-hearted gentleman"
(sic) "to lend her twenty pounds to save her from the bailiffs;" a "lady
of high social standing, closely related to an Earl," who touted for the
chaperonage of debutantes, willing to pay for the privilege of being
surreptitiously smuggled into Society; a crack-brained inventor
advertising for some one to finance a new torpedo for destroying German
bands, or something of the kind, and so on. There was nothing at all
exciting. Why, I can't say, but quite a commonplace line at the foot of
the second column interested me. It ran--
"_Meet me_ 2."
That was all--no name, no address, no date. Why I had noticed it at
all, I could not imagine. I concluded it must be the extreme brevity of
the advertisement that had caught my fancy.
Next morning, it being dry and fine, I called at the _Grand Hotel_, and
took Vera for a run in the car to Hatfield, returning by St. Albans. We
lunched at Pagani's--one gets so tired of the sameness of the ordinary
restaurants--and after that I left Vera at the hotel, and sent my car to
the garage.
Somehow I felt in a restless mood, and the atmosphere of well-bred
respectability pervading the club oppressed me, as it so often does. I
am afraid that the older I grow the more Bohemian I become, and the less
willing to bend to convention. It seems to me farcical, for instance,
that in this twentieth century of ours, a rule made fifty years ago to
the effect that "pipes shall not be smoked in this club," should still
be enforced. Plenty of the younger members of the clubs where this rule
obtains have endeavoured to rebel, but in vain. The Committee have
solemnly pointed out to such free-thinking and independent spirits that
their fathers and grandfathers got on quite well without smoking pipes
in the club, and that if their fathers and their grandfathers did
without pipes, they ought to be able to do without pipes too--in the
club. Oh, yes, they were at liberty, if they liked, to smoke cigarettes
at five a penny all over the house, but never tobacco in a pipe, even if
they paid half-a-crown an ounce for it.
The conversation of the only two occupants of the smoking-room--try as I
would, I could not help listening to it--wearied me so intensely that I
got up at last and went out. I strolled aimlessly up the street to
Piccadilly, then turned to the left. Many thoughts filled my mind as I
rambled along, and when, presently, I found myself at Hyde Park Corner,
I decided I would stroll down into Belgravia and see if a new caretaker
had been installed at the house in Belgrave Street in place of poor old
Taylor.
To my surprise the house was boarded up. Nearly every window was
boarded, even the top-floor windows. It looked like a house in which
people have died of some plague.
I found the policeman on the beat, and questioned him. Inclined at
first to be sullen and uncommunicative, he became cordial and
confidential soon after my fingers had slipped a coin into his hand.
"So you haven't heard anything about number a hundred and two," he said
some moments later. "About here it's causin' a bit o' talk."
"Indeed? In what way?"
He paused, as though reflecting whether he ought to tell me.
"Well, sir, it's like this," he said at last. "The 'ouse is, as you've
seen, boarded up, and there's nobody living there but--"
"Yes? But what?"
"Well, for the last eight nights there's been a light in a window on the
first floor."
"A light? But how could you see a light if there were one, with the
windows boarded up?"
"Oh, it can be seen right enough, through the chinks between the
boards."
"Who has seen it?"
"I have--and others also."
"Is it always in the same window?"
"Not always in the same window, but always on the same floor. Ah, no!
On two nights there was a light on the second floor too."
"And at what time is it seen?"
"Very late--not before two in the morning, as a rule."
"And how long does it remain?"
"Sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes as much as half-an-hour,
or more. Three nights ago two windows were lit up at one-twenty and
remained lit until two-fifty-five."
"And do you mean to say nobody goes into the house or comes out of it?"
"Nobody. Nobody at all. It's being watched front and back. Twice
we've been in and hunted the place all over--we got leave to do this--
but there was nothing, nor no one nowhere."
"Oh," I exclaimed incredulously, "that is a ridiculous thing to say. If
a light really appears and disappears, there must be somebody in the
house. Probably there's a secret entrance of which you know nothing
about."
"There are only three entrances," he answered quickly, "and one of 'em
can't rightly be called an entrance. There's the front door, and the
back door for the tradesmen, and then there's a queer little way out
into Crane's alley--we can't think why that entrance was ever made."
The "queer little way out" I at once guessed to be the dark,
underground, narrow little stone cellar-passage through which Vera had
led me when we had escaped together on the day I had discovered her
hidden in the house.
"And are the entrances all locked?" I asked. "Oh, you may take that
from me," he replied. "They are locked right enough, and nobody don't
get the keys, neither."
At that moment, oddly enough, the thought of the curious-looking brown
stain in the corner of the ceiling on the first floor, that I had
noticed on the day I had explored the unoccupied house, came suddenly
back into my mind.
I must have talked to the policeman for fully fifteen minutes, and had
asked him many questions. Before the end of that time I had, however,
discovered that he was of a superstitious nature, and that he did not at
all like what was happening.