THE HOUSE IN GRAFTON STREET
One afternoon, some days later, I was sitting in my flat in South Molton
Street, smoking a pipe and carelessly skimming an evening paper, when my
man brought me some letters which had just arrived.
Several I tossed aside unopened—I recognized the handwritings and was
in no haste to absorb the contents of epistles from acquaintances whose
company, at the best of times, "bored me stiff," as some Americans say.
But the letter was there that I had expected in the morning, and at once
I tore it open.
Dulcie wrote chiefly about herself—which was all I wanted to
hear—about her father and "Aunt Hannah," while two pages she devoted to
her little brother Dick, of whom she was inordinately fond.
Dick, she said, had shown the utmost pluck and endurance throughout his
painful convalescence after his rough-and-tumble with the burglars. She
told me how he had from the first sat up in bed with his "honourable
wounds" upon him, bandaged and swathed, joking and making light of the
occurrence now, as perhaps only the best breed of English schoolboy
knows how. One thing still puzzled both little Dick and herself, and for
that matter the whole family, she said—who could the woman be to whom
the thieves had alluded? No word, added Dulcie, had as yet been
forthcoming as to the whereabouts of any of the valuables stolen on that
memorable day, either family jewels or plate, and the detectives at
Scotland Yard acknowledged that so far matters were at a deadlock.
Further on in her newsy letter Dulcie made mention of the fascinating
widow staying at the Rook Hotel in Newbury, and of her wish to know her
better. She added incidentally that Mrs. Stapleton had been away since
the day after the meet at Holt Manor, and that no one knew where she was
staying. She hoped she would soon be back, she said, as she wished so
much to renew her acquaintance, and to strengthen it. Dulcie then spoke
of her Aunt Hannah, who had been particularly amusing and crochety of
late, but added that she was really such a "dear" at heart that people
all loved her when they came to know her well. "My dear," she wrote,
"Aunt Hannah has surpassed herself lately. You know what vigorous likes
and dislikes she takes, all of a sudden? Well, now Auntie has conceived
an inordinate aversion for poor Mrs. Stapleton, and seems inclined not
only to give her the cold shoulder, but to hound her down by saying the
nastiest things about her, just as the other people in the county did
when she first came to live among us. I rather believe that she had this
feeling all along, more or less, but now she seems positively to hate
her—though she confesses that she doesn't know why she does! Isn't that
like Auntie? And now she has been asking me never to notice Mrs.
Stapleton, and not to speak to her again when she returns, in fact to
drop the acquaintance entirely—and that just as we have called, and
I've tried to be nice to her out hunting, and we've had her to dine; I
told you how taken father was with her, and how he took her all over the
house and showed her simply everything. I really don't see why I should
draw back now. Nor does father. As a matter of fact, I don't see how we
can—it has gone too far—and just to satisfy one of dear old Auntie's
whims! She has a good many, as you know, Mike. There is just this one
thing, however, that sometimes one of her unaccountable whims or
dislikes turns out to have been well grounded."
My darling then went on to speak of her father and of the happiness our
engagement afforded him, happiness tempered, as she could not help
knowing, by the sorrow her leaving him would bring to him, for the most
wonderful confidence and companionship existed between father and
daughter. This sadness, Dulcie went on, came out almost pathetically in
her father's even added tenderness to her—he whose tenderness and
affection had always been such a wonderful thing to her since her
earliest childhood. But now, she said, her father sometimes followed her
about the house and grounds when she had been absent from him for a
short time, seeking occasion for talks with her, giving her his
confidence, and consulting her wishes on matters about the gardens and
stables in a way that was quite touching. It was as though, now that the
parting was so soon to take place, he could not get enough of his only
daughter's company, as if the old man clung to her more than
ever before.
The closely-written sheets dropped from my hand on to my knee. "Ah, my
own little girl," I thought, "who wouldn't miss you—sadly, yes,
terribly? Your delightful presence, the truth and honour that seem to be
manifest in your smallest gesture, in every glance from your clear eyes;
the companionship of your fearless intellect cutting through
conventionalities like a knife, arriving at the right point with the
unerring instinct of a woman, yet with the _naivete_ of a child."
Memories crowded in upon me, memories of all my happy days with Dulcie
in the country—in the hunting field, in the gardens about her home, of
afternoons spent among the books and prints and pictures in her father's
quiet, book-lined library at Holt, of the evenings in the drawing-room
at the piano, of hours of pleasant talk in the beautiful conservatories
and on the grassy terraces, and by the lake-side below the tennis lawn.
What, I thought, would life be like when at last I had her always with
me, brightening my life, filling my own home—our home—with laughter
and with the music of her voice! Again and again she rose to my
enthralled vision, and ever she was Youth and Love, the vision crowned
with the wonder of her nebulous, brown-gold hair as she gazed at me out
of her sweet, clear eyes in which I seemed still to read unfathomable
purity and truth.
It is a terrible thing to be in love. Some savage races there are which
hold to the belief that the spirits of lovers changing places, give rise
to the feverish mental upheaval which we prosaically term "falling in
love," the spirits being restless at their enforced imprisonment and
unsatisfied until they have returned each to its appointed sphere. Now
that I have recovered from the affliction I sometimes wonder if it might
not with advantage be treated as ordinary maladies and some passions
are—with the aid of drugs. Perhaps some day it will be. Certainly it
soon will be if the eugenists get their way.
And, thinking of the letter I had just read, which now lay folded in my
pocket, my memory drifted backward. For since the day I had met Jack
Osborne at Brooks's on his return from Nigeria, many incidents had
occurred which puzzled me. Trifling incidents individually, no doubt,
yet significant when considered in the concrete. There was the incident,
for instance, of Sir Harry Dawson's declaring in a letter written to
Lord Easterton from the Riviera that he had never met Gastrell, never
heard of him even, though Lord Easterton had Gastrell's assurance that
he knew Sir Harry Dawson and had intended to call upon him on the
evening he had unwittingly entered Lord Easterton's house, which was
next door.
Then there was something not quite normal in Gastrell's posing one day
as a married man, the next as a bachelor; also in his pretending at one
moment that he had never seen Osborne and myself before, yet admitting
at the next that he had met us. True, he had advanced an apparently
sound reason for this _volte-face_ of his, but still—
The affair, too, in Maresfield Gardens. That surely was an "incident"
which bordered on a mystery. I felt I should never forget our
extraordinary reception that night—the "black out" house, as stage
managers say; our repeated ringing the door bell; the slow unlocking and
unbolting the door; the cautious inquiry; our wait in the darkness after
our admission; the discovery of that horrible serpent with its chilling
eyes; the locked door; the sudden entry of Gastrell, and his odd
conversation.
Then the conflagration which had occurred a few days later, and the
subsequent discovery among the _debris_ of a body, charred and stabbed;
the apparent ignorance of everybody as to whose body it was; the
statement made by the police that none knew the names of the sub-tenants
who had occupied that house when the fire had broken out, or what had
since become of them—the actual tenant was in America. Without a
doubt, I reflected as I knocked the ashes out of my pipe into the grate,
something "queer" was going on, and I had inadvertently got myself
mixed up in it.
The last "incident" to puzzle me had been that momentary glance of
mutual recognition exchanged between the woman I knew only as "Mrs.
Gastrell"—or "Jasmine Gastrell," as Osborne always spoke of her—and
Mrs. Stapleton, and their subsequent apparent entire lack of
recognition. That, certainly, had been most odd. What could have been
the cause of it? Why, knowing each other, did they all at once feign to
be strangers? And the extraordinarily calm way Mrs. Stapleton had,
looking me full in the eyes, assured me that she had never before even
seen the woman she had just smiled at. Lastly—though this was of less
consequence—how came Jack Osborne to be dancing attendance upon the
woman I knew as "Mrs. Gastrell," when he had assured me as we drove away
in the taxi from Maresfield Gardens that night that though he admired
her he mistrusted her?
I had filled my pipe again, and, as I puffed at it to set it going, one
more thought occurred to me. And this thought, I must say, perplexed me
as much as any.
Hugesson Gastrell was said to have spent the whole of his life, until
six months previously, in Australia and Tasmania. If that were so, then
how did he come to have so large a circle of friends, or at any rate of
acquaintances—acquaintances, too, of such distinction and high
position? Was it possible he could in a few months have come to know all
these peers and peeresses and baronets and knights, distinguished
musicians and actors and actresses, leading members of the learned
professions, and all the rest of the Society crowd who had thronged his
house that evening?
Suddenly something I had been told at the club an hour or so before
flashed back into my mind. Another club member besides Easterton had, it
seemed, become acquainted with Gastrell through Gastrell's calling at
the wrong house—by mistake.
A coincidence? Possibly. And yet—
I sucked meditatively at my pipe.
Suddenly the telephone rang. Easterton was speaking.
"What!" I exclaimed, in answer to the startling information he gave me.
"When did he disappear?"
"Where was he last seen?"
"No, he has not been here. I haven't seen him since Gastrell's
reception."
"Oh, yes, I saw you there."
"Yes, very extraordinary."
"No."
"Oh, no."
"Good. I'll come to you at once. Are you at Linden Gardens?"
"Very well, I'll come straight to the club."
Mechanically I hung up the receiver. Curious thoughts, strange
conjectures, wonderings, arguments, crowded my brain in confusion. Five
days had passed since the date of Gastrell's reception, when I had seen
Jack Osborne at supper with the woman he had said he mistrusted. Since
that evening, according to what Easterton had just told me, nobody had
seen or heard of him. He had not been to his chambers; he had not left
any message there or elsewhere; he had not written; he had neither
telegraphed nor telephoned.
Where was he? What was he doing? Could some misfortune have befallen
him? Had he—
I did not end the sentence my mind had formed. Instead I went out,
hailed a taxi, and in a few minutes was on my way to Brooks's.
Outside a house in Grafton Street a group of people stood clustered
about the door. Others, on the pavement opposite, stared up at the
windows. Two policemen upon the doorstep prevented anyone from entering.
Leaning forward as my taxi sped by, I peered in through the open door of
the house, then up at the windows, but there was nothing out of the
ordinary to be seen. Further down the street we passed three policemen
walking briskly along the pavement in the direction of the house.
"What's the commotion in Grafton Street?" I inquired of my driver as I
paid him off at Brooks's.
"I've no idea, sir," he answered. "Looks as though there was trouble of
some sort." Another fare hailed him, so our conversation ended.
I found Easterton awaiting me in a deserted card-room.
"This may be a serious affair, Berrington," he said in a tone of anxiety
as I seated myself in the opposite corner of the big, leather-covered
settee. "Here five days have gone by, and there isn't a sign of Jack
Osborne, though he had not told anybody that he intended to absent
himself, had not even hinted to anybody that he had any idea of
doing so."
"You say he has not been seen since Gastrell's reception?"
"Not since then—five days ago. The fellows here at the club are getting
quite alarmed about him—they want to advertise in the newspapers for
news of his whereabouts."
"That means publicity, a shoal of inquiries, and maybe a scandal," I
answered thoughtfully. "If Jack has intentionally disappeared for a day
or two and all at once finds himself notorious he will be furious."
"Just what I tell them," Easterton exclaimed; "I wish you would back me
up. You see, Jack hasn't any relatives to speak of, and those he has
live abroad. Consequently the fellows here consider it is what the
Americans call 'up to them' to institute inquiries, even if such
inquiries should necessitate publicity."
I pondered for a moment or two.
"You know," I said, "Jack is a curious fellow in some ways—some call
him a crank, but he isn't that. Still, he is something of a 'character,'
and absolutely unconventional. I remember his making a bet, once, that
he would punch out a boastful pugilist at the National Sporting
Club—no, it wasn't at the N.S.C., it was at a place down
East—'Wonderland,' they call it."
"And did he do it?" Easterton asked.
"Did he? By heaven, the poor chap he tackled was carried out unconscious
at the end of the second round—Jack's bet was with Teddy Forsyth, and
he pocketed a couple of ponies then and there."
"Did he really? Capital! And Teddy's such a mean chap; he didn't like
partin', did he?"
"Like it? He went about for the rest of the night with a face like a
funeral mute's."
"Capital!" Lord Easterton repeated. "But to return to the point, Jack's
eccentricities and vagaries can have nothin' to do with his
disappearance."
"Why not? How do you know?"
"Well, why should they? I only hope he hasn't gone and made a fool of
himself in any way that'll make a scandal or get him into trouble. In a
way, you know, we are connections. His mother and mine were second
cousins. That's really why I feel that I ought to do somethin' to find
out what has happened to him. Do you—do you think he can have got mixed
up with some woman?"
"I won't say that I actually think so, but I think it's more than
possible."
"No! Why? What woman?"
At that instant I remembered that the woman I had in my mind was the
woman who on board the _Masonic_ had, so Jack had told me, called
herself Hugesson Gastrell's wife, and called herself his wife again at
the house in Maresfield Gardens. But Gastrell had told Easterton, or at
any rate led him to suppose, he was unmarried. How, then, could I refer
to this woman by name without causing possible friction between
Easterton and his tenant, Gastrell?
"I am afraid I can't tell you, Easterton," I said after an instant's
hesitation. "I don't want to make mischief, and if what I think is
possible is not the case, and I tell you about it, I shall have made
mischief."
Easterton was silent. For some moments he remained seated in his corner
of the settee, looking at me rather strangely.
"I quite understand what you mean, Berrington," he said at last. "Still,
under the circumstances I should have thought—and yet no, I dare say
you are right. I may tell you candidly, though, that I can't help
thinkin' you must be mistaken in your supposition. Jack doesn't care
about women in that way. He never has cared about them. The only thing
he cares about is sport, though, of course, he admires a pretty woman,
as we all do."
To that observation I deemed it prudent to make no reply, and at that
moment a waiter entered and came across the room to us.
"Your lordship is wanted on the telephone," he said solemnly.
"Who is it?" Easterton asked, looking up.
"Scotland Yard, my lord."
"Oh, say, hold the line, and I'll come down."
"Have you informed the police, then?" I asked quickly, when the servant
had left the room.
"Yes. I went to Scotland Yard this mornin', but I told them not to let a
word about the disappearance get into the newspapers, if they could help
it, until they heard further from me, and they promised they would
respect my wish. You had better come down with me. They may have found
out something."
I waited outside the glass hutch, which effectually shut in all sound,
watching Lord Easterton's face below the electric light. His lips moved
rapidly, and by the way his expression suddenly changed I judged that he
was hearing news of importance. After talking for a minute or two he
hung up the receiver, pushed open the door and came out. His face
betrayed his emotion.
"Come over here," he said in a curious tone. "I have something to tell
you."
I followed him a little way down the passage which led to the
card-rooms. When we were out of sight and earshot of the club servants
he stopped abruptly and turned to me.
"Jack has been found," he said quickly. "He was found gagged and bound
in a house in Grafton Street half an hour ago. He is there now, and the
police are with him."
"Good God!" I exclaimed. "How did they identify him?"
"He was not unconscious. The police want me to go there at once. Come."
We walked up to Grafton Street, as it was such a little way, also
Easterton wanted to tell me more. The Inspector who had just spoken to
him had not told him what had led to the police entering the house in
Grafton Street, or if anybody else had been found upon the premises. He
had only told him that Scotland Yard had for some weeks had the house
under surveillance—they had suspected that something irregular was
going on there, but they did not know what.
"I expect they have a pretty shrewd idea," Easterton added, as we
crossed Piccadilly, "but they won't say what it is. Hello! Just look at
the crowd!"
Up at the end of Dover Street, where Grafton Street begins, the roadway
was blocked with people. When we reached the crowd we had some
difficulty in forcing our way through it. A dozen policemen were keeping
people back.
"Are you Lord Easterton?" the officer at the entrance asked, as
Easterton handed him his card. "Ah, then come this way, please, m'lord.
This gentleman a friend of yours? Follow the constable, please."
We were shown into a room on the ground floor, to the right of the hall.
It was large, high-ceilinged, with a billiard table in the middle. Half
a dozen men were standing about, two in police uniform; the remainder I
guessed to be constables in plain clothes.
Suddenly I started, and uttered an exclamation.
Seated in a big arm-chair was Dulcie Challoner, looking pale,
frightened. Beside her, with her back to me, stood Aunt Hannah!