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[Illustration: "Enid Drew Back In Terror"
(_The Doctor of Pimlico_)]
THE DOCTOR OF PIMLICO
Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime
BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with The Macaulay Company
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
_Printed in the U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH CERTAIN SUSPICIONS ARE EXCITED 9
II. THE COMING OF A STRANGER 21
III. INTRODUCES DOCTOR WEIRMARSH 32
IV. REVEALS TEMPTATION 47
V. IN WHICH ENID ORLEBAR IS PUZZLED 56
VI. BENEATH THE ELASTIC BAND 66
VII. CONCERNING THE VELVET HAND 78
VIII. PAUL LE PONTOIS 88
IX. THE LITTLE OLD FRENCHWOMAN 97
X. IF ANYONE KNEW 107
XI. CONCERNS THE PAST 114
XII. REVEALS A CURIOUS PROBLEM 125
XIII. THE MYSTERIOUS MR. MALTWOOD 134
XIV. WHAT CONFESSION WOULD MEAN 145
XV. THREE GENTLEMEN FROM PARIS 157
XVI. THE ORDERS OF HIS EXCELLENCY 168
XVII. WALTER GIVES WARNING 177
XVIII. THE ACCUSERS 187
XIX. IN WHICH A TRUTH IS HIDDEN 199
XX. IN WHICH A TRUTH IS TOLD 207
XXI. THE WIDENED BREACH 217
XXII. CONCERNING THE BELLAIRS AFFAIR 227
XXIII. THE SILENCE OF THE MAN BARKER 234
XXIV. WHAT THE DEAD MAN LEFT 245
XXV. AT THE CAFÉ DE PARIS 255
XXVI. WHICH IS "PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL" 265
XXVII. THE RESULT OF INVESTIGATION 274
XXVIII. THE SECRET OF THE LONELY HOUSE 285
XXIX. CONTAINS SOME STARTLING STATEMENTS 292
XXX. REVEALS A WOMAN'S LOVE 303
XXXI. IN WHICH SIR HUGH TELLS HIS STORY 310
XXXII. CONCLUSION 321
THE DOCTOR OF PIMLICO
_Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime_
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH CERTAIN SUSPICIONS ARE EXCITED
A GREY, sunless morning on the Firth of Tay.
Across a wide, sandy waste stretching away to the misty sea at Budden,
four men were walking. Two wore uniform--one an alert, grey-haired
general, sharp and brusque in manner, with many war ribbons across his
tunic; the other a tall, thin-faced staff captain, who wore the tartan of
the Gordon Highlanders. With them were two civilians, both in rough
shooting-jackets and breeches, one about forty-five, the other a few
years his junior.
"Can you see them, Fellowes?" asked the general of the long-legged
captain, scanning the distant horizon with those sharp grey eyes which
had carried him safely through many campaigns.
"No, sir," replied the captain, who was carrying the other's mackintosh.
"I fancy they must be farther over to the left, behind those low mounds
yonder."
"Haven't brought their battery into position yet, I suppose," snapped the
old officer, as he swung along with the two civilians beside him.
Fred Tredennick, the taller of the two civilians, walked with a gait
decidedly military, for, indeed, he was a retired major, and as the
general had made a tour of inspection of the camp prior to walking
towards where the mountain battery was manoeuvring, he had been chatting
with him upon technical matters.
"I thought you'd like to see this mountain battery, Fetherston,"
exclaimed the general, addressing the other civilian. "We have lots of
them on the Indian frontier, of course, and there were many of ours in
Italy and Serbia."
"I'm delighted to come with you on this tour of inspection, General. As
you know, I'm keenly interested in military affairs--and especially in
the reorganisation of the Army after the war," replied Walter Fetherston,
a dark, well-set-up man of forty, with a round, merry face and a pair of
eyes which, behind their gold pince-nez, showed a good-humoured twinkle.
Of the four men, General Sir Hugh Elcombe and Walter Fetherston were,
perhaps, equally distinguished. The former, as all the world knows, had
had a brilliant career in Afghanistan, in Egypt, Burmah, Tirah, the
Transvaal, and in France, and now held an appointment as inspector of
artillery.
The latter was a man of entirely different stamp. As he spoke he
gesticulated slightly, and no second glance was needed to realise that he
was a thorough-going cosmopolitan.
By many years of life on the Continent he had acquired a half-foreign
appearance. Indeed, a keen observer would probably have noticed that his
clothes had been cut by a foreign tailor, and that his boots, long,
narrow and rather square-toed, bore the stamp of the Italian boot-maker.
When he made any humorous remark he had the habit of slightly closing the
left eye in order to emphasise it, while he usually walked with his left
hand behind his back, and was hardly ever seen without a cigarette. Those
cigarettes were one of his idiosyncrasies. They were delicious, of a
brand unobtainable by the public, and made from tobacco grown in one of
the Balkan States. With them he had, both before the war and after, been
constantly supplied by a certain European sovereign whose personal friend
he was. They bore the royal crown and cipher, but even to his most
intimate acquaintance Walter Fetherston had never betrayed the reason
why he was the recipient of so many favours from the monarch in question.
Easy-going to a degree, full of open-hearted _bonhomie_, possessing an
unruffled temper, and apparently without a single care in all the world,
he seldom, if ever, spoke of himself. He never mentioned either his own
doings or his friends'. He was essentially a mysterious man--a man of
moods and of strong prejudices.
More than one person who had met him casually had hinted that his
substantial income was derived from sources that would not bear
investigation--that he was mixed up with certain financial adventurers.
Others declared that he was possessed of a considerable fortune that had
been left him by an uncle who had been a dealer in precious stones in
Hatton Garden. The truth was, however, that Walter Fetherston was a
writer of popular novels, and from their sale alone he derived a handsome
income.
The mystery stories of Walter Fetherston were world-famous. Wherever the
English language was spoken this shrewd-eyed, smiling man's books were
read, while translations of them appeared as _feuilletons_ in various
languages in the principal Continental journals. One could scarcely take
up an English newspaper without seeing mention of his name, for he was
one of the most popular authors of the day.
It is a generally accepted axiom that a public man cannot afford to be
modest in these go-ahead days of "boom." Yet Fetherston was one of the
most retiring of men. English society had tried in vain to allure him--he
courted no personal popularity. Beyond his quiet-spoken literary agent,
who arranged his affairs and took financial responsibility from his
shoulders, his publishers, and perhaps half a dozen intimate friends, he
was scarcely recognised in his true character. Indeed, his whereabouts
were seldom known save to his agent and his only brother, so elusive was
he and so careful to establish a second self.
He had never married. It was whispered that he had once had a serious
affair of the heart abroad. But that was a matter of long ago.
Shoals of invitations arrived at his London clubs each season, but they
usually reached him in some out-of-the-world corner of Europe, and he
would read them with a smile and cast them to the winds.
He took the keenest delight in evading the world that pressed him. His
curious hatred of his own popularity was to everyone a mystery. His
intimate friends, of whom Fred Tredennick was one, had whispered that,
in order to efface his identity, he was known in certain circles abroad
by the name of Maltwood. This was quite true. In London he was a member
of White's and the Devonshire as Fetherston. There was a reason why on
the Continent and elsewhere he should pass as Mr. Maltwood, but his
friends could never discover it, so carefully did he conceal it.
Walter Fetherston was a writer of breathless mystery--but he was the
essence of mystery himself. Once the reader took up a book of his he
never laid it down until he had read the final chapter. You, my reader,
have more than once found yourself beneath his strange spell. And what
was the secret of his success? He had been asked by numberless
interviewers, and to them all he had made the same stereotyped reply: "I
live the mysteries I write."
He seemed annoyed by his own success. Other writers suffered from that
complaint known as "swelled head," but Walter Fetherston never. He lived
mostly abroad in order to avoid the penalty which all the famous must
pay, travelling constantly and known mostly by his assumed name of
Maltwood.
And behind all this some mystery lay. He was essentially a man of
secrets.
Some people declared that he had married ten years ago, and gave a
circumstantial account of how he had wedded the daughter of a noble
Spanish house, but that a month later she had been accidentally drowned
in the Bay of Fontarabia, and that the tragedy had ever preyed upon his
mind. But upon his feminine entanglements he was ever silent. He was a
merry fellow, full of bright humour, and excellent company. But to the
world he wore a mask that was impenetrable.
At that moment he was shooting with his old friend Tredennick, who lived
close to St. Fillans, on the picturesque Loch Earn, when the general,
hearing of his presence in the neighbourhood, had sent him an invitation
to accompany him on his inspection.
Walter had accepted for one reason only. In the invitation the general
had remarked that he and his stepdaughter Enid were staying at the
Panmure Hotel at Monifieth--so well known to golfers--and that after the
inspection he hoped they would lunch together.
Now, Walter had met Enid Orlebar six months before at Biarritz, where she
had been nursing at the Croix Rouge Hospital in the Hôtel du Palais, and
the memory of that meeting had lingered with him. He had long desired to
see her again, for her pale beauty had somehow attracted him--attracted
him in a manner that no woman's face had ever attracted him before.
Hitherto he had held cynical notions concerning love and matrimony, but
ever since he had met Enid Orlebar in that winter hotel beside the sea,
and had afterwards discovered her to be stepdaughter of Sir Hugh Elcombe,
he had found himself reflecting upon his own loneliness.
At luncheon he was to come face to face with her again. It was of this he
was thinking more than of the merits of mountain batteries or the
difficulties of limbering or unlimbering.
"See! there they are!" exclaimed the general, suddenly pointing with his
gloved hand.
Fetherston strained his eyes towards the horizon, but declared that he
could detect nothing.
"They're lying behind that rising ground to the left of the magazine
yonder," declared the general, whose keen vision had so often served him
in good stead. Then, turning on his heel and scanning the grey horizon
seaward, he added: "They're going to fire out on to the Gaa between those
two lighthouses on Buddon Ness. By Jove!" he laughed, "the men in them
will get a bit of a shock."
"I shouldn't care much to be there, sir," remarked Tredennick.
"No," laughed the general. "But really there's no danger--except that
we're just in the line of their fire."
So they struck off to the left and approached the position by a
circuitous route, being greeted by the colonel and other officers, to
whom the visit of Sir Hugh Elcombe had been a considerable surprise.
The serviceable-looking guns were already mounted and in position, the
range had been found; the reserves, the ponies and the pipers were lying
concealed in a depression close at hand when they arrived.
The general, after a swift glance around, stood with legs apart and arms
folded to watch, while Fetherston and Tredennick, with field-glasses, had
halted a little distance away.
A sharp word of command was given, when next instant the first gun boomed
forth, and a shell went screaming through the air towards the low range
of sand-hills in the distance.
The general grunted. He was a man of few words, but a typical British
officer of the type which has made the Empire and won the war against the
Huns. He glanced at the watch upon his wrist, adjusted his monocle, and
said something in an undertone to the captain.
The firing proceeded, while Fetherston, his ears dulled by the constant
roar, watched the bursting shells with interest.
"I wonder what the lighthouse men think of it now?" he laughed, turning
to his friend. "A misdirected shot would send them quickly to kingdom
come!"
Time after time the range was increased, until, at last, the shells were
dropped just at the spot intended. As each left the gun it shrieked
overhead, while the flash could be seen long before the report reached
the ear.
"We'll see in a few moments how quickly they can get away," the general
said, as he approached Fetherston.
Then the order was given to cease fire. Words of command sounded, and
were repeated in the rear, where ponies and men lay hidden. The guns were
run back under cover, and with lightning rapidity dismounted, taken to
pieces, and loaded upon the backs of the ponies, together with the
leather ammunition cases--which looked like men's suit cases--and other
impedimenta.
The order was given to march, and, headed by the pipers, who commenced
their inspiring skirl to the beat of the drums, they moved away over the
rough, broken ground, the general standing astraddle and watching it all
through his monocle with critical eye, and keeping up a fire of sarcastic
comment directed at the colonel.
"Why!" he cried sharply in his low, strident voice, "what's that bay
there? Too weak for the work--no good. You want better stuff than that.
An axle yonder not packed properly! . . . And look at that black
pony--came out of a governess-cart, I should think! . . . Hey, you man
there, you don't want to hang on that pack! Men get lazy and want the
pony to help them along. And you----" he cried, as a pony, heavily laden
with part of a gun, came down an almost perpendicular incline. "Let that
animal find his way down alone. Do you hear?"
Then, after much manoeuvring, he caused them to take up another position,
unlimber their guns, and fire.
When this had been accomplished he called the officers together and, his
monocle in his eye, severely criticised their performance, declaring that
they had exposed themselves so fully to the enemy that ere they had had
time to fire they would have been shelled out of their position.
The spare ammunition was exposed all over the place, some of the reserves
were not under cover, and the battery commander so exposed himself that
he'd have been a dead man before the first shot. "You must do better than
this--much better. That's all."
Then the four walked across to the Panmure Hotel at Monifieth.
Walter Fetherston held his breath. His lips were pressed tightly
together, his brows contracted. He was again to meet Enid Orlebar.
He shot a covert glance at the general walking at his side. In his eyes
showed an unusual expression, half of suspicion, half of curiosity.
Next instant, however, it had vanished, and he laughed loudly at a story
Tredennick was telling.