THE BRONZE FACE.
Though Archie La Planta had met Cora Hartsilver frequently since the
Armistice, he did not know her intimately, and had therefore been
rather surprised at her asking him to dine. He concluded that she
must be giving a dinner party, so when on the evening Preston had
called to see him, he arrived at the big house in Park Crescent, he
was astonished to find that Yootha Hagerston was to be the only other
guest. Then and there his quick brain began to act and, while carrying
on light conversation with the two ladies, he kept asking himself what
reason Mrs. Hartsilver could have had for inviting him.
She had an excellent cook who had been with her since her marriage,
and the little dinner was irreproachable. La Planta, an epicure to his
fingertips, had realized this at once, and towards the end of the meal
he began to feel at peace with the world at large.
“It is awfully good of you to have invited me to a nice, friendly
little dinner like this,” he remarked presently, looking his hostess
straight in the eyes across the table. “I don’t like big dinner
parties, you know, and was half afraid you might have a lot of people
to-night.”
“I never give big dinner parties if I can help it,” Cora answered,
“though one has to sometimes. Like you, I prefer an informal little
gathering, just one or two friends with whom one can exchange ideas. So
many people are colorless, don’t you find? And dull people bore me to
death. Let me pass you the port.”
It was ’48 port which had belonged to her late husband. La Planta
poured himself out another glass, and presently his gaze became fixed
upon the widow. It had never struck him before, he thought, what a
pretty woman she was.
“When are we going to see your charming friend again?” Yootha presently
said carelessly. “I do think her so attractive.”
“Which charming friend is that?”
“Why, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, of course. Who else could it be?”
At once La Planta was on the alert. The words flashed back into his
partly bemused brain: “Mrs. Hartsilver and her friend Yootha Hagerston
are making inquiries about me now. Do you know that they have gone so
far as to instruct a personal inquiry agency to find out all about me?”
Could that be the reason he had been invited to dine? Were they going
to try to find out from him something about Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson,
though perhaps with greater tact than Preston had displayed?
He pulled himself together, and answered:
“I am sure Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson would like to meet you at any time.”
Then he added as an afterthought: “Though she has many acquaintances,
she has comparatively few friends.”
“Do you think she would dine with me one night if I invited her?” Mrs.
Hartsilver asked quickly. “We have met only casually.”
“I am sure she would. She is not one of those people who stand always
on ceremony. Like most people who have traveled, she takes a broad view
of life.”
“Oh, has she traveled a lot?” Yootha asked. “How interesting. Tell
me--where has she been?”
“Rather you should say, ‘Where has she not been?’ She has been almost
everywhere, I believe.”
“I do think she is lovely, don’t you?” Yootha persisted. “If I were a
man I should be head over heels in love with her.”
“Some men are,” La Planta answered in an odd tone. “But she doesn’t
care about men, I think. I mean in a general way.”
“Did you say she had been in China?” Yootha suddenly asked abruptly.
“I didn’t--but she has been. She was in Shanghai a good while.”
“She is a widow, I am told,” Cora presently hazarded.
“Yes.”
“Did you know her husband?”
“No. He died several years ago.”
“But you have known her a good while?”
“Only a year or two.”
“Is she entirely English? I sometimes think----”
“Yes?”
“I was only going to say she sometimes gives me the impression that she
has a foreign strain.”
“If Australians are ‘foreigners,’” La Planta said lightly, “then she
has a ‘foreign’ strain, because her parents were Australians--they were
sheep farmers in Queensland.”
“You don’t say so. That no doubt accounts for the queer expressions she
sometimes uses. They were rich people, no doubt.”
“Well off, I fancy, but not enormously rich.”
“Then her fortune, I take it, came to her from her husband?”
La Planta had been answering more or less mechanically, for the wine he
had drunk had dulled, to some extent, his ordinarily keen intelligence.
Now, all at once, he seemed to become alive again.
“You seem greatly interested in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s private life,
Mrs. Hartsilver, and you too, Miss Hagerston,” he said suddenly.
“Oddly enough a man you know, in fact it was I who introduced him to
you, called to see me only an hour ago for the express purpose of
cross-questioning me with regard to the same lady. Merely a coincidence
no doubt, but a singular coincidence.”
His tone, as he said this, resembled the tone he had adopted whilst
addressing Preston, though it was not quite so marked. Mrs. Hartsilver
and Yootha Hagerston winced nevertheless, and presently they changed
the subject.
He joined them in the drawing-room about ten minutes later, and half
an hour or so afterwards took his departure rather abruptly. Though he
had drunk more than was good for him, he knew he had not said anything
that he would wish to recall. He walked leisurely down Portland Place
in search of a taxi, then decided to walk home.
In Regent Street, as he passed into the halo of light shed down by a
street lamp, he came face to face with Stapleton.
“Why Archie,” the latter exclaimed, “I was just thinking of you. Aren’t
you dining with Mrs. Hartsilver?”
“I was,” La Planta answered, “but she and Yootha Hagerston rather bored
me, so I came away early.”
“Wasn’t it a dinner party?”
“No, only those two.”
“Only the two! Then why were you invited?”
“I don’t know, but I think I can guess. Come along home with me. There
are one or two things I want to talk to you about.”
At first Stapleton hesitated, alleging that he had an appointment, but
finally he decided to do as his friend suggested.
Two telegrams lay awaiting La Planta in his sitting-room, and after
reading them he handed them to Stapleton.
As Stapleton read the second, he raised his eyebrows.
“Curious, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I think not. I expected as much.”
“Won’t it upset your calculations?”
“Not necessarily.”
A tantalus and syphons stood on the table. Without saying more,
Stapleton mixed himself a brandy and soda. Then he took a cigar from La
Planta’s box.
“One or two things have happened lately,” he said at last, “which
rather puzzle me. And the last is why those women should have asked you
to dine alone with them.”
“No puzzle about that,” Archie answered, then went on to explain how
Mrs. Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston had obviously tried to pick his
brain regarding Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and her past life.
“Strange,” Stapleton said thoughtfully. “That fits in with something
that was said to me within the last hour. You know that little Jew who
lends money to his friends--Levi Schomberg?”
“By name.”
“I know him only slightly, but we walked along Jermyn Street together
just now--he was bound for the Turkish baths--and he warned me to be
on my guard against ‘Hartsilver’s widow’--said she was a ‘designing
woman,’ as I might presently find out, and added that she was trying,
for a reason which he stated, to get a case up against--well, you can
guess whom.”
“What sort of case?”
“A scandalous case. So, putting two and two together, I can only
suppose that Cora Hartsilver is either jealous of our friend, or that
for some reason she bears her a grudge.”
For a little while they continued talking.
And, while they talked, interesting events were in progress not far
away.
“The house with the bronze face,” as it was called by people living
in the neighborhood, was situated in a quiet street just off Russell
Square. It had acquired that curious appellation owing to its front
door being made conspicuous by a huge old Florentine bronze knocker
representing a woman’s laughing face. The face was really that of a
bacchante, and a very wicked-looking bacchante at that, and many were
the stories told about the house in consequence. Some said the woman’s
face possessed a lurid significance, and that within those portals....
Another rumor often credited was that the face could cast a spell
over those who sought to probe its history, and that on more than one
occasion persons who had entered the house had never come out again.
Those were, of course, foolish legends, yet the fact remained that
an atmosphere of mystery surrounded the house with the bronze face.
Obviously at some period it had been a private residence. Now it was
ostensibly the headquarters of a private inquiry agency which had
sprung into existence shortly before the war, and was known to be
patronized by many fashionable and rich people.
It was nearly midnight, and in a comfortably furnished office in the
middle of the building, so that no light showed in the street outside,
a venerable-looking old gentleman and a handsome young woman, the
latter with a semitic cast of countenance, sat side by side examining
some documents.
A shaded electric reading-lamp on the table gave the only light in the
room, and the documents lay in the ray which it shed immediately in
front of them.
Neither spoke. Both were working rapidly. First the old man would take
a document off the pile, read through it carefully, then pass it to
his companion, who, after quickly scanning its contents, would make
a marginal note or two, and then docket it. Thus they continued in
silence for over half an hour, when the pile of papers came to an end.
The man leant back in his chair, stretched himself, and yawned.
“We have had about enough of this, eh, Camille?” he said, turning with
a curious expression to his companion.
“Not half!” she answered with a foreign accent, which made the slang
sound quaint. “_Après minuit_,” she added, glancing at her wrist-watch.
“I call it crewel.”
“Never mind; it can’t last,” he said. “Or at least it won’t if I have
much to do with it. Give me one of your chipre cigarettes.”
She took a cigarette herself and lit it, then handed him her case.
The room in some respects resembled a boudoir rather than an office,
but hung on its walls were charts marked with colored chalks. In all
there were eight of these charts, and below each was a row of numerals.
At one end of the room the framed portrait of a dark man with curly
hair and a waxed mustache, a man obviously a foreigner, stood on the
overmantle. In a corner near by were stacked twenty or more japanned
tin boxes which might have been deed boxes, though none bore any name,
while at the opposite end, close to the window, were several luxurious
fauteuils, a comfortable settee, some occasional tables and Chippendale
chairs. No sound of any sort found its way into the room.
The man rose in silence, and began slowly to pace the floor. Suddenly
he stopped.
“This case interests me a good deal, Camille,” he said at last. “I feel
sure she must have married the man.”
“_Naturellement_,” the woman answered with a shrug. “And now she
wish--how you say--to be rids of him?”
“Rid of him, not ‘rids.’ But why?”
“_Ma foi_, you ask me one more. He has much money, _hein_?”
“It would seem so, judging by the sums he spends.”
“_Alors naturellement._ What else?”
“But proofs of the marriage have to be obtained, or she doesn’t get the
money.”
“Oh, the proof can be obtained. I obtain him.”
“And what if----”
He stopped abruptly. Both looked quickly towards the door. For some
moments neither spoke. No sound broke the perfect stillness.
“_Qu’est-ce que ca?_” the woman asked in a nervous undertone, putting
her hand on his arm. Both were still staring at the closed door.
“Wait, and I will see.”
He rose, but the woman clutched him.
“No, no,” she exclaimed hoarsely, “you must not go out there!”
“Indeed, I must, and I am going.”
He tried to shake her off, but she only tightened her hold.
“If you must--here,” and as she spoke she produced from under her skirt
a small automatic pistol, pressed forward the safety-bolt, and slipped
the weapon into his hand. Then she released him.
Noiselessly he stepped across the room on the thick carpet, placed his
hand carefully on the door handle, turned it very slowly and gently
drew open the door.
As he did so a streak of light, as if from an electric torch, shone
into the room. The old man hurried out on to the landing with wonderful
agility, but the light had vanished. He switched on the electric lamp
at the head of the stairs. Nowhere was anybody visible.
Glancing quickly in every direction, and with his finger on the trigger
of the automatic, he crept cautiously down the stairs. Presently the
woman, who had now ventured a little way down the stairs after him,
heard him moving in the hall. Soon she heard the spring baize door,
which opened on to a passage leading to the kitchen quarters, open with
a squeak, then shut with a dull thud.
For a minute she waited, hardly breathing. There could be no doubt that
somebody besides themselves must be in the house. Yet how could anybody
have entered, seeing that since early in the evening both front and
back doors had been securely bolted and locked?
She was trying to summon courage enough to follow her companion, when a
sound just behind her made her turn with a cry of alarm.