A MESSAGE FROM YOOTHA.
It was seven in the morning when Preston was awakened by his servant,
Tom, and handed a telegram which had just arrived.
Before he opened it he guessed it must be from Yootha. It ran as
follows:
“I am in great trouble. Can you possibly come to me? I am
alone here and ill in bed. Jessica and the others have left
Monte Carlo. Do please telegraph a reply as soon as this
reaches you.”
Preston was not a man to deliberate. He always made up his mind at
once, and acted without hesitation.
“Is the messenger waiting?” he asked Tom, who still stood at his
bedside.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then give me a foreign telegram form.”
Swiftly he scribbled the answer.
“Give that to the boy,” he said, “and sixpence for himself, and tell
him to get back to the post office as quickly as he can. Then come back
to me.”
In a moment the man returned.
“Pack my suit-case, Tom. I am going to Monte Carlo at once.”
“For how long, sir?”
“Pack enough for a fortnight.”
He traveled through to the Riviera without stopping in Paris, and drove
direct to the Hotel X. Upon inquiring for Yootha he was told that
the doctor was with her. The hotel manager looked grave when Preston
inquired how ill she had been.
A moment later the door opened, and a solemn-faced gentleman of
patriarchal aspect entered. The manager at once introduced him to
Preston, and explained who Preston was.
“She has dropped off to sleep at last,” the doctor said. “I had to
give her a mild narcotic. She has been eagerly awaiting your arrival
since she received your wire, and I believe your presence will do her
more good than anything else. She appears to be suffering chiefly from
shock--a mental shock of some sort. Her nerves are greatly upset.”
When some hours later Yootha awoke, her gaze rested upon her lover
seated beside her bed. For a moment she fancied she must still be
dreaming. Then, with a glad cry, she sat up and stretched her arms out
to him.
“Oh, my darling,” she cried, “how good of you to have come to me! Even
when I got your telegram I feared that something might detain you. I
have had a terrible time since last we met--terrible!”
For a minute they remained locked in each other’s arms, the happiest
moments they had spent since that never-to-be-forgotten evening under
the shadow of the Sugarloaf Mountain in Monmouthshire. And then,
perhaps for the first time, Yootha realized to the full the joy of
being truly loved by a man on whose loyalty and steadfastness she knew
she could implicitly depend.
Yootha’s recovery was rapid, and in the following week Preston decided
to take her to Paris, which she was anxious to visit, never having been
there.
“You had better telegraph to your aunt and ask if she can meet us
there, as you say she is well again,” he said. “It wouldn’t do for us
to stay there alone, as long as conventions have to be considered,”
and he smiled cynically. “Which reminds me that Harry Hopford is in
Paris--I had a letter from him yesterday. I am sure he will be glad to
see you.”
And so, some days later, they arrived at the Hôtel Bristol, where they
found Yootha’s aunt awaiting them. She was a pleasant, middle-aged
woman with intelligent eyes and a sense of humor, and she greeted them
effusively.
“You don’t hesitate to make use of me when I am in health,” she said
laughingly to her niece. “I had not the least wish to come to Paris,
but now I am very glad I have come. Yes, I am well again, but I don’t
think you look as if Monte Carlo and its excitement had agreed with
you. By the way, a delightful young man called here yesterday to ask if
you had arrived. He was so pleasant to talk to that I persuaded him to
stay to lunch. He seemed to think a lot of you. His name is Hopford.”
“Harry Hopford! A capital lad. I am glad you met him. He served under
me in France and was quite a good soldier.”
“He told me he had served under you. He wants you to meet him at
an address in Clichy at nine to-morrow night. I have the address
somewhere.”
“A bit of luck for me, your coming to Paris,” Hopford said when
they met on the following night. “I particularly wanted to see you,
Preston. My inquiries and those of these friends of mine,” he had just
introduced to Preston the two Paris detectives, his friend on _Le
Matin_, and Johnson’s friend Idris Llanvar, “have succeeded in making
some astonishing discoveries concerning Jessica and her friends, and
now I am on the way to tracking Alix Stothert to his lair.”
“Alix Stothert!” Preston exclaimed. “What has he to do with it?”
“A good deal, apparently. To begin with, he appears to be a friend of
Stapleton’s, for a friend of mine in London has, at my request, been
watching Stapleton’s house near Uckfield, called The Nest. Stothert
goes there frequently, it seems; my friend believes he calls there for
letters. And the other day some fellow arrived there, knocked and rang,
and then, getting no answer, went and hid in the undergrowth in the
wood close by, and remained watching the house. While he was watching,
Stothert arrived and was met by a girl who, my friend says, is employed
by Stothert secretly, and the two went into the house. When the fellow
who had lain concealed in the wood--and been himself watched by my
friend--went back to Uckfield, my friend followed him on a bicycle, and
finally shadowed him back to London and to an hotel--Cox’s in Jermyn
Street. But, though afterwards he made inquiries at the hotel, he was
unable to find out who the fellow was.”
“George Blenkiron, when in town, generally stays at Cox’s,” Preston
said reflectively.
“Does he? Then he may know who the man is, and his name. I’ll write to
him to-morrow. It is such a small hotel.”
Hopford had also a good deal to say about Mrs. Timothy Macmahon and
her intimacy with the late Lord Froissart; about Marietta Stringborg
and her husband; about Fobart Robertson, whose whereabouts, he said,
he was likely soon to discover; and about Alphonse Michaud, proprietor
of the Metropolitan Secret Agency at the house with the bronze face.
One important fact he had already established--Michaud was intimately
acquainted with Jessica and Stapleton. Yet at the Royal Hotel in
Dieppe, Preston had told him, Jessica, Stapleton and La Planta had
openly stated that they knew Michaud only by name.
“Which confirms the suspicion I have for some time entertained,”
Hopford went on, “that Jessica and her friends are in some way
associated with the house with the bronze face.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” Preston said. “In view of all that has
happened, such a thing seems to me incredible. Why, we used to consult
the Secret Agency concerning Jessica and her past history, don’t you
remember? And they found out for us several things about her.”
“Several things, yes, but not one of the things they ‘found out’ was of
importance. It is the Agency’s business, to my belief, to hunt with the
hounds and run with the hare, and they do it successfully. Surely you
recollect Mrs. Hartsilver’s telling us how she and Miss Hagerston had
been shown by Stothert what he declared to be the actual pearl necklace
belonging to Marietta Stringborg, and saying the necklace stolen from
her at the Albert Hall ball and afterwards found in Miss Hagerston’s
possession, was made of imitation pearls? Well, I can prove that on
that occasion, as well as at other times, Stothert intentionally lied.”
“Then what is your theory?”
“That in some way, yet to be discovered, Jessica and her gang--for
they are a gang--and the Metropolitan Secret Agency, are playing each
other’s game and have played it for a long time. Incidentally I have
found out, too, that La Planta once represented an insurance company
in Amsterdam, of which Lord Froissart was chairman or director, and
that----”
“Forgive my interrupting you, Hopford,” Preston cut in, “but what
you say reminds me that I too was told, by a Major Guysburg I met in
Dieppe. He is a man you ought to meet; he was leaving for America when
we parted, but ought soon to be back, and he promised to look me up in
town on his return. And he can tell you a lot about Alphonse Michaud,
who, he assured me, at one time ran a most disreputable haunt in
Amsterdam.”
Hopford produced his notebook.
“How do you spell the major’s name?” he asked quickly, and Preston told
him.
“And where does he stay when in town?”
“At Morley’s Hotel, I believe,” and Hopford wrote that down too.
“Now for heaven’s sake don’t say ‘how small the world is,’ Preston,”
Hopford observed lightly as he replaced his notebook in his pocket,
“because that is a platitude which makes me see red. I must see
Guysburg directly he arrives in London. Certainly we are getting on. I
suppose Guysburg didn’t speak about a diamond robbery in Amsterdam from
a merchant living in the Kalverstraat, which took place some years ago?
The thief was never caught.”
Preston laughed.
“The very thing he did tell me,” he answered. “The stones had been
insured by Michaud, to whom the insurance money was paid under protest
because the idea had got about that Michaud himself, or some person
employed by him, had stolen them.”
Hopford turned to the French woman-detective, and raised his eyebrows.
“You hear that?” he said to her in French. “Isn’t it strange how
small--no, I won’t say it! Mademoiselle was employed,” he addressed
Preston again, “on that very case in Amsterdam, and feels as convinced
to-day as she did then that Michaud, aided by La Planta, spirited
away the stones. Yet nothing could be proved. There were not even
sufficient clues to justify the arrest of either of the two men. By
the way, I am trying to get mademoiselle to return to London with
me, and she hopes she will be able to. Also I have forgotten to tell
you that Idris Llanvar is a famous mental specialist practicing here
in Paris--isn’t that so, Llanvar? Years ago he was Johnson’s _locum
tenens_ in Shanghai, when Johnson practiced in Hong Kong. It was
Johnson who kindly gave me an introduction to him, when he and I met in
Jersey. Aren’t you glad, Preston, that Johnson is going to marry Mrs.
Hartsilver? I think she is such a charming woman, though I don’t know
her very well. But I met the late Henry Hartsilver once or twice--a
typical profiteer, and, I thought, a most offensive person. She was
well rid of him. Did you know Sir Stephen Lethbridge?”
Preston looked at Hopford oddly.
“What makes you suddenly ask that?” he said. “What was your train of
thought?”
“I had no train of thought, so far as I am aware,” Hopford replied.
“But there is a vague rumor in London that someone, a woman, a friend
of Stothert’s, holds certain letters written by Mrs. Hartsilver to Sir
Stephen Lethbridge, or by Sir Stephen to her, and that this woman is
trying to sell them to Mrs. Hartsilver. Incidentally, Preston, your
name has been whispered in relation to the affair, which leads me to
suspect that Mistress Jessica may not be wholly unassociated with
this latest attempt at blackmail. Llanvar had a letter from Johnson
yesterday, who is still in Jersey, and in it he alluded to the rumor,
but in very guarded language.”
Preston did not answer. His lips were tightly closed. Then, as if to
distract attention from what Hopford had just said, he produced his
cigar case and passed it round.
* * * * *
Yootha was very anxious to see, as she put it, “everything in Paris
worth seeing,” from the Bastille to the Ambassadeurs and the Cascade,
and from the Louvre to the Palais de Versailles, so during the next
few days Preston devoted himself to her entirely. The art galleries
in particular appealed to her, also the Quartier Latin with its
queer little streets of cobble stones and its stuffy but picturesque
old-world houses of which she had so often heard. Exhibitions like the
Grand Guignol and the Café de la Mort, on the other hand, she detested.
Hopford and Llanvar had dined with them once, and afterwards Hopford’s
friend on _Le Matin_ had piloted them all to various interesting
night-haunts of which English folk visiting Paris for the most part
know nothing. He had also taken them into curious caverns below the
Rue de la Harpe and streets in its vicinity, and shown them the houses
there propped up from below with enormous wooden beams where the arches
built over those old quarries have given way.
“But how come there to be quarries here at all?” Yootha had asked in
surprise.
The representative of _Le Matin_ had evidently expected the question,
for at once he had entered into a long explanation about how, when
Paris was first built, stones for building purposes had been quarried
out in the immediate neighborhood; how the City had gradually reached
the edge of those quarries, and how, in order to be able to continue to
extend the City, it had been necessary to arch the quarries over and
then erect buildings on the arches themselves.
“Of course the good folk who live in those houses above our heads,”
he laughed as he pointed upward, “have no idea that their houses are
propped up from below, and some day they may get the surprise of their
lives by finding themselves and their houses suddenly swallowed up in
the bowels of the earth.”
It was late when finally they had all separated. Then Hopford, on
arriving at Rue des Petits Champs, had found a blue telegram awaiting
him. It came from his chief, who said Hopford must return at once.
“I have most important news for you,” the message had ended.