IN WHICH A DISCOVERY IS MADE.
It was past four in the morning when Aloysius Stapleton got back to
his flat in Sandringham Mansions, Maida Vale. After remaining with La
Planta nearly an hour, he had gone back to Cavendish Square, where he
found Jessica still unconscious, her symptoms being somewhat similar
to Archie’s, though her brain, while she slept, seemed to be active.
Several times she had, he was told, murmured incoherently, and twice
she had spoken several words. Even when he arrived there her lips kept
quivering at intervals, as if she were dreaming.
“How long ago did the guests leave?” he inquired of her maid.
“The last few of them have not been long gone,” she answered, “not
above twenty minutes.”
“Do you know which were the last to go?”
“I don’t, sir. I only heard them leaving. Ought she not to be put to
bed now, as you don’t wish the doctor to be sent for?”
“Yes, take her upstairs. She will be all right in the morning.”
“I sincerely hope so. She is never taken this way--never.”
The maid spoke almost reproachfully, as though Stapleton were in some
way responsible for her mistress having fainted.
“Send John to me,” he said to her sharply.
When Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had been carried up to her bedroom,
Stapleton took the footman into the dining-room and shut the door.
“Now, tell me,” he said, “who were the last to leave to-night?”
The young footman described them. Yes, he admitted that among them were
the two guests, the man and the woman, who had been with Jessica while
she drank champagne at the sideboard, but he did not know their names.
Stapleton’s brain worked rapidly while he mechanically undressed in his
flat in Sandringham Mansions. There could be no doubt, in his opinion,
that the hand that had drugged La Planta had also drugged Jessica. In
addition, he felt convinced that whoever had done it had been among the
guests at Cavendish Square that evening. But who could it have been,
and with what object had he, or she, committed the despicable act?
After ascertaining by telephone next morning that both Archie and
Jessica had recovered and were once more in their right senses, he
drove in his car first to the Albany.
Archie, wrapped in an elaborate dressing-gown of Japanese corded
silk, was having breakfast in his bedroom. He looked unusually pale,
Stapleton thought directly he entered, and there were dark marks under
his eyes.
“I wish you would tell me, Louie,” Archie said, “what happened to me
last night, and how I managed to come away from the Alhambra without
my hat. I might have imagined I had drunk too much--had there been
anything to drink.”
“I can tell you nothing, because I know nothing,” Stapleton answered,
and went on to explain how they had suddenly missed him from the box,
and what had happened afterwards.
“Who was it brought the message for Jessica, and why did you leave the
box without delivering it to her?” he ended.
His friend drew his hand across his forehead then pressed his fingers
on his eyes, as though trying to remember.
“I am sorry, Louie,” he said at last, “but I have not the faintest
recollection of receiving any message, or of leaving the box. I can
remember the ballet, or rather the first part of it. After that my mind
is a blank. The next thing I remember is waking up this morning and
feeling very rotten. I feel at sixes and sevens still.”
Not until lunch time was Stapleton able to see Jessica, and then
she complained of a headache and of feeling utterly limp. When he
questioned her she replied that she had no recollection of drinking
champagne at the sideboard, or even of talking to him after supper. She
remembered her anxiety about Archie, she said, and coming home in the
car, and Stapleton sitting beside her at supper, and _chemin de fer_
and roulette being played. But there her memory stopped.
“That is as I expected,” Stapleton said when she had ceased speaking.
“Your symptoms are similar to Archie’s. I should say, therefore, that
you were both doped with the same drug, one effect of which apparently
is to deaden memory not from the time it is taken, but from a little
while before it is taken. I think it is clear that the individual who
came to the Alhambra with a message for you intended, by some means,
to give you the drug then. But Archie took the message, went out, and
presumably met the person who brought it. Then, having failed to see
you, this person succeeded in drugging Archie, came on here--he, or it
may have been a woman, was evidently among your guests--and actually
drugged you in your own house. Now the question is--why was it done?
and by whom?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Have you missed anything? Is your jewelry intact, and are your other
valuables safe?”
“I hope so. I haven’t looked.”
“Then you had better look at once.”
And then it was the discovery was made that the safe in her boudoir
had been opened and ransacked. It had contained, in addition to a rope
of priceless pearls and a quantity of uncut diamonds, four thousand
five hundred and sixty-eight pounds in Bank of England notes, Treasury
notes, and cash, moneys kept there for banking the roulette and the
other games of chance frequently played at her house. The lot had
vanished, and the safe had been relocked and the key replaced in the
little bag which Jessica always carried concealed about her person.
Unless a duplicate key had been employed, which seemed hardly probable.
Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson was in despair; yet she did not make a scene
or become hysterical as so many women would have done in the
circumstances. On the contrary, she kept her wits about her, and
remained singularly calm.
Just then John, the footman, entered the room with some letters.
“Well, what am I to do about it?” she said to Stapleton, controlling
her voice.
“We can’t do better than consult the Metropolitan Secret Agency,” he
answered. “If they can’t help us I don’t believe anybody can. Have you
the numbers of the notes?”
“No.”
“The Agency may be able to trace the pearls, anyhow. There are only a
few places in England and on the Continent where stolen pearls of that
sort can be disposed of, and Stothert was telling me only the other day
that he knows the whereabouts of every receiver of stolen goods in this
country, and on the Continent, too.”
The footman, having delivered the letters, retired, closing the door
behind him.
Stapleton and Jessica looked at each other oddly.
“Let us go and find Archie,” she said, preparing to rise. “You say he
told you he might remain at home?”
But at that moment the door opened, and the footman, entering again,
announced:
“Captain Preston and Mr. Blenkiron.”
Jessica bit her lip. Then, as the visitors came in, she received them
with her dazzling smile.
“How glad I am to see you after all this time,” she exclaimed. “Mr.
Stapleton was speaking of you not five minutes ago, and I asked him
what had become of you both--I thought you must have left town.”
“I am rarely in town,” Blenkiron said. “I live in the country, you
know.”
“So you do. I had forgotten. But you, Captain Preston, I never see you
anywhere. Don’t you live in town?”
“Yes, but I rarely go about; my leg is such a handicap, you see. We
happened to be passing, so I suggested our calling on the chance
of finding you at home. I have not been here since you gave that
delightful musical At Home--eight or nine months ago it must have
been--but I shall never forget the way your friend sang Tchaikowsky’s
‘None but the Weary Heart.’ It was too gorgeous.”
“Are you so fond of music? You are not like most soldiers.”
“The one thing I love.”
“The _one_ thing?” she laughed mischievously. “That I can hardly
believe!”
For an instant their eyes met. Hers were laughing, mischievous still.
His had grown suddenly hard.
“Some one told me the other day,” Blenkiron happened to remark, “that
you lived at one time in Queensland, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson. I have
been a great deal in Australia. Was it long ago?”
“Longer than I like to think about,” she answered. “I was a girl when
my parents sent me home.”
“You mean to England?”
“Yes.”
“What town were you in, or near, when you lived in Queensland?”
“Monkarra--if one can call it a town,” she answered.
“Indeed! I know Monkarra. I have been there several times. I wonder I
never met you or your people.”
“Australia is a big place, Mr. Blenkiron.”
“But its population is small, and Monkarra, as you say, is only a
hamlet. Some one told me your father’s name was Robertson.”
“People seem to have been talking a lot to you about me,” she said
quickly.
“And can you be surprised?”
The words conveyed two meanings, and Jessica turned the conversation.
“As you are fond of music,” she said to Preston, “you must honor me
again with your company the next time I have any. Men, for the most
part, are such Philistines. The only ‘music’ they seem to care for is
comic opera and ragtime.”
She talked more or less mechanically, for all the while her thoughts
were running on the loss she had just sustained. One by one her guests
of the previous night passed in review through her mind. Each was in
turn carefully considered, then dismissed as being above suspicion in
connection with the theft.
Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, she thought of Cora
Hartsilver, and of her husband who had killed himself. Quickly Yootha
Hagerston followed--she rose into the vision of her imagination with
extraordinary distinctness. Both women she disliked, she reflected;
and she was sure that they disliked her. And now she remembered being
told--yes, Archie La Planta had told her--that Captain Preston admired
the girl. Archie had said that Preston “admired her extremely.”
And that girl, and Preston himself, also Cora Hartsilver, had been
trying--this Archie had also told her--to extract information from him
concerning herself and her past. Could it be mere coincidence that
Preston and his friend Blenkiron had called unexpectedly like this--the
first time they had ever called--and that Blenkiron should have asked
her questions about Australia? Who could have told him, she wondered,
that her father’s name was Robertson?
“Talking of Australia,” Blenkiron’s voice held her, “your father has
been dead a good many years, I suppose?”
“Ten years,” she heard herself saying; and unconsciously she wondered
why she said it.
“And your mother?”
“I was quite a child when she died.”
“And they lived at Monkarra?”
“My father did. My mother died in Charleville.”
“Strange,” Blenkiron was speaking to himself, “I should not have met
your father, or your mother, during the years I was in Queensland.”
“But why should you have met them? What were you doing in Australia?”
“I did all sorts of things there. I prospected for gold for some
years; and for years I was working on a railway--engineering work, you
understand; and then for a time I was sheep farming out there. It is,
in my opinion, the one country on earth.”
“And yet you have settled in England.”
“Because my interests are all in England now. The war made such a
change.”
Suddenly Preston rose.
“I must be going, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson,” he said. “I hope you will
invite me the next time you have music.”
“Indeed I shall not forget--that is, if I have your address. Shall I
write it down?”
She went over to the escritoire, and he followed her.
“Thirty-three, Q., Fig Tree Court, Temple,” he said, and she made a
note of it.
He limped slowly down the stairs, supporting himself on his stick, and
Blenkiron followed.
As they made their way into Oxford Street, Blenkiron spoke.
“A clever woman--a damned clever woman,” he said. “And what a presence!
What a personality! Did you notice that to every question I put to
her she had an answer--pat! Yet I don’t believe a word she said, or
that she or her parents were ever in Australia. There is some mystery
about that woman, and about that fellow Stapleton who is always in her
pocket.”
They had turned into Oxford Street, when Blenkiron suddenly caught his
companion by the sleeve.
“Look,” he said, “there goes young La Planta, on his way to see our
friends. That lad, too, I have grave doubts about!”