CONTAINS ANOTHER SURPRISE
Lights were in most of the windows, as though a party were in progress.
Preston rang the bell. It was answered at once by a maid who had
answered it in the morning, and before Preston had time to speak the
maid asked us if we would come in. This time she showed us into a room a
good deal larger than the one in which I had been interviewed by
Gastrell in the morning. Very beautifully furnished, on all sides what
is termed the "feminine touch" was noticeable, and among a number of
framed photographs on one of the tables I recognized portraits of
well-known Society people, several with autograph signatures, and one or
two with affectionate inscriptions. I wondered to whom they had been
presented, and to whom the affectionate inscriptions were addressed.
We waited a few minutes, wondering what would happen next, and who would
come in to see us, for the maid had not even asked our names, though I
saw that she had recognized me. For a moment it occurred to me that we
ought to have changed into evening clothes, and I was about to tell
Preston so when the door opened and Jasmine Gastrell entered,
accompanied, to my amazement, by Dulcie Challoner.
I think even Preston was taken aback—and it took a great deal to
astonish Preston. Osborne, I could see, was dumbfounded. Jasmine
Gastrell was the first to speak, and she addressed me without looking
either at Osborne or Preston.
"Good evening, Mr. Berrington," she said, with one of those wonderful
smiles of hers which seemed entirely to transform her expression; "this
is an unexpected pleasure."
How strangely different she now looked from the way she had looked at me
in Cumberland Place when, disguised as Sir Aubrey Belston, I had
pretended to read her past life! She turned to Jack, and, raising her
eye-brows as though she had only that instant recognized him, "Why," she
exclaimed, "it's Mr. Osborne! I had no idea we were to have the pleasure
of seeing you here to-night—had you, Dulcie?"
Dulcie, who was standing by quite unconcernedly, turned at once to me
without answering Mrs. Gastrell's question.
"Dear old Mike," she said, "how delightful of you to have come. I do
hope you have entirely recovered. You looked so ill when you saw me off
at Paddington this morning that I felt anxious about you all the way
home. What was the matter with you? Have you any idea?"
I was so staggered, first at finding her at this house again, and then
at her addressing me in the calm way she did, that for some moments I
could not answer. Jack and Preston, now in conversation with Jasmine
Gastrell, did not notice my hesitation. At last, collecting my scattered
thoughts, I answered:
"I am quite well, Dulcie. There was nothing really much amiss with me
this morning—I thought you knew that."
I stopped abruptly. What else could I say?
Under the circumstances I could not well speak about the telegram, and
say why we had arrived in this way at such an unusual hour.
"I suppose you have come about Dick," she went on suddenly. "He is
asleep now—he was so tired, poor little chap."
"Dulcie," I burst out impetuously under my breath, casting a hurried
glance at the other three, who, still in conversation, did not appear to
notice us. "Dulcie, what is the meaning of all this? Why are you here?
Why is Dick here? I want to see you—I must see you alone as soon as
possible—there is so much I want to say to you, want to ask you; such a
lot has happened during the past day or two that I can't understand, and
that I want to have explained. Tell me, my darling," I went on
hurriedly, "when and where can we can meet—alone?"
She gave a delightful little laugh, and tapped me playfully with her
fan—she and Jasmine were in evening dress. Then, looking roguishly up
into my eyes, she went on:
"So far as Dick is concerned, everything is easily explained. When I got
home this morning I felt very unwell. I found father terribly anxious at
my absence, and Aunt Hannah in what I call one of her fits of tantrums.
I went to lie down, and, while I was asleep, father came and looked at
me. For some reason he got it into his head that I looked very ill, and
just then Connie arrived in her car—she went to Holt direct from
London, as she wanted to explain to father the reason she didn't take me
home last night, and at the same time make her apologies for the anxiety
she knew she must unintentionally have caused him; father, you know,
likes Connie very much. After seeing me in bed he had jumped to the
conclusion that I was really very ill and ought to see a doctor at
once. Connie said that as she was going straight to Newbury she would,
if he liked, send Doctor Claughton out to Holt. Then father said
something about letting Dick know I was ill, and Connie volunteered to
send a telegram to Eton, signed with father's name, and father said he
wished she would. And that is the explanation of the whole affair."
"Explanation!" I exclaimed. "I don't call that half an explanation. What
about James being told to meet Dick at Paddington and then not
turning up?"
"Oh, that was a mistake of Connie's. James was in town to-day, and
Connie understood father to say that he would telegraph to James and
tell him to meet Dick at Paddington. After telegraphing to Eton in
father's name, from Newbury, she found she had made a mistake, so then
she telegraphed to Doris Lorrimer to meet Dick. After the doctor had
seen me, he told father there was nothing to be in the least alarmed
about; in fact gave father to understand that his imagination had played
pranks with him; so then father telephoned to Connie at the Book Hotel,
and they decided there was no need for Dick to come home, and Connie
suggested Dick's spending the night here and returning to Eton
to-morrow."
I did not speak for some moments. At last I said:
"Dulcie, who told you all this?"
"Why, Connie, of course. Father had to attend an important magistrates'
meeting in Newbury this afternoon, and, as I seemed quite well again,
she got father's leave to bring me up to town again to meet some friends
of hers who are here to-night. Now are you satisfied, Mike?"
"No, I am not," I answered bluntly. "Dulcie, have you seen Dick since he
arrived here?"
"No, he had gone to bed before I arrived, and Connie said I had better
not disturb him."
"My darling," I said a moment later, "I must see you alone. When can I?"
"Would to-morrow morning suit you, dear?" she asked, looking at me with
her frank brown eyes. As I returned the gaze I found it impossible to
believe that she had wittingly deceived me that morning, or indeed at
any time, and yet—
"Yes. Shall we say at twelve o'clock?" I suggested. "And shall I call
here for you?"
"That will do beautifully. Oh, Mike, my darling," she said quickly,
under her breath, "I hope you still love me just as much as you did; I
don't know why, but somehow I sometimes feel that you mistrust me—even
that you suspect me of something or other, I don't know what."
"Dulcie!" I exclaimed impulsively, and I made as though to seize her
hand, then remembered we were not alone, and refrained. "Dulcie, there
are things I want you to explain to me, mysteries that only you can
clear up. I don't really mistrust you, my own darling; indeed, indeed I
don't; but I mistrust some of the people you mix with and have made
friends of, more than that, I happen to know that some of them are no
better than adventurers, and I want to get you away from them. What
house is this we are in? I mean whose is it and who lives here?"
But at that instant our conversation was interrupted by Jasmine
Gastrell.
"Oh, you lovers!" she exclaimed, laughing as she looked across at us.
"What heaps and heaps lovers seem to have to tell each other after being
parted for a few hours. It reminds me of my own young days," she added
archly, for she looked barely seven-and-twenty. "Mr. Osborne has just
told me, Dulcie, that he is asked to stay at Eldon Hall for Lord
Cranmere's son's coming of age, on the twenty-eighth. I have been
invited too; I do wish you were going to be there. Connie has accepted."
Ten minutes later, as the three of us sauntered slowly along Willow
Road, we realized—at least I can answer for myself—that in spite of
our careful scheming, and our complete confidence in the success of our
plan, we had been cleverly outwitted. Not for a moment had Preston, or
Jack Osborne, believed the long story that Jasmine Gastrell had related
to them while Dulcie and I had been engrossed in conversation, a story
it is unnecessary to repeat, though it had been told apparently with a
view to leading them to think that Mrs. Gastrell was shortly to make a
tour round the world. In the same way I had not been deceived by the
ingenious tissue of implications and falsehoods that Connie Stapleton
had poured into Dulcie's ear, and that Dulcie had innocently repeated to
me. What most astonished me, however, was the rapidity with which Connie
Stapleton and Jasmine Gastrell seemed able to concoct these ingenious
and plausible narratives to account for anything and everything that
happened on any occasion. A single discrepancy, for instance, in the
story that Dulcie had just repeated to me would have brought the whole
fabric of what appeared to be true statements—though I believed them to
be false—crumbling to the ground. But there had been no such
discrepancy. Everything that had occurred during the afternoon in
relation to Dick, the telegram sent to Eton, Doris Lorrimer's meeting
him in place of Sir Roland's butler, had been accounted for simply and
quite rationally. And yet I felt firmly convinced the statements must in
the main be a series of monstrous untruths, a belief in which Preston,
with all his experience, concurred. Only two points puzzled me. Neither
Jasmine Gastrell nor Connie Stapleton, nor, indeed, anybody else, could
by any possibility have known that Preston, Jack, and I contemplated
calling at the house in Willow Road that evening. How came it, then,
that everything had been so skilfully arranged with a view to disarming
our suspicions when we did call? That, I confess, was a problem so
complicated that it formed the one and only argument in favour of the
story that Dulcie had repeated to me being in part true. The other
puzzling point was Dulcie's being at that house that night, and her
knowing that Dick was there. Surely if Connie Stapleton and her
accomplices had intended to kidnap Dick for the purpose of extorting
money from Sir Roland, they would not intentionally have let Dulcie know
what was happening. And, arguing thus with myself, I began at last to
wonder if, after all, I had been mistaken; if, after all, Mrs. Stapleton
had not invented that story, but had told Dulcie the truth. I confess
that the more I thought it all over and the harder I tried to sift
possible facts from probable fiction the more hopelessly entangled I
became. Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of my theory that we
were being cleverly and systematically hoaxed lay in Dick's discovery of
the cypher messages in the _Morning Post_. There could, at any rate, be
no getting away from the cypher message which had appeared on the
previous day and that ran: "_Osborne and Berrington suspect. Take
precautions_"
Then I thought again of Dulcie. It was appalling, almost incredible,
that she should be allowed to associate with men and women whom we
practically knew to be adventurers, and who might be not merely
adventurers, but criminals masquerading as respectable members of
Society. Yet I was impotent to prevent her; it was, of course, Sir
Roland's duty to forbid her to mix with these people, but then Sir
Roland, from being powerfully attracted by the young widow Connie
Stapleton, was, as I had long ago guessed, becoming deeply enamoured of
her; so that, far from preventing Dulcie from associating with
her—Dulcie, with her strange infatuation for the woman—he deliberately
encouraged the intimacy. Well, next morning, at any rate, I should see
Dulcie alone, I reflected, with a feeling of satisfaction, and then I
would have it out with her and go into the whole affair thoroughly,
speaking to her with brutal frankness—even at the risk of hurting her
feelings and incurring her displeasure I would tell her everything I
knew and all that I suspected. Something must be done, and at once, to
put an end to her absurd attachment to the widow—I had thought it all
over quite long enough; it was now time to act. And Dick too; I must get
hold of him and question him narrowly to find out if his story of what
happened from the time he left me on Paddington platform and went and
stood beside Doris Lorrimer under the clock, and his arrival at Willow
Road, Hampstead, tallied with the story that Connie Stapleton had told
Dulcie, and that Dulcie had related to me—for I somehow fancied that
the two narratives might differ to some extent, if only in their
minor details.
We were approaching Hampstead Tube station when Preston, turning to me
from Jack Osborne, with whom he had been in close conversation,
inquired:
"Has Sir Roland lately said anything to you, Mr. Berrington, that
interested you particularly? Has he thrown out any hint of any sort?"
I reflected.
"Nothing that I can recollect," I said. "Have you reason to suppose that
he has something of special interest that he wants to say to me?"
"I have, but until he speaks it is not for me to make any comment."
We had reached the Tube station. Jack booked to Russell Square; Preston
to Piccadilly Circus; and I took a ticket to Bond Street, those being
the stations nearest to our respective destinations.
"Are you aware," Preston said soon after the train had started, "that
since we left my house and went to dine in Soho, we have been followed?
I wanted to be perfectly certain before telling you, but I see now that
I was right in my suspicion. Look to your left presently, one at a time,
and at the end of the compartment you'll see quite an ordinary-looking
man, apparently a foreigner, smoking a cheroot—the man seated alone,
with a lot of hair on his face."
"You wouldn't notice him if he passed you in the street, would you?" he
said after we had looked, "but I have noticed him all the evening. He
was in Warwick Street when we all came out of my house; he followed us
to Soho; he was in Gerrard Street, awaiting us, when we came out of the
restaurant after dining; he came after us to Hampstead; he has followed
us from Willow Road to the Tube station, and he is in this compartment
now for the purpose of observing us. I want you each not to forget what
he is like, and in a few minutes, when we all separate, I shall be
curious to see which of us he follows—to know which of us he is really
shadowing."
Jack was the first to alight. He bade us each a cheery good night, after
reminding us that we were all three to meet on the following afternoon,
and hurried out. The hairy man with the cheroot remained motionless,
reading his newspaper.
My turn came next—at Oxford Circus station. As I rose, I noticed the
man carelessly fold up his newspaper, cram it into his coat pocket, and
get up. Rather to my surprise I did not, after that, see him again. He
was not with me in the carriage of the train I changed into, nor was he,
apparently, on the platform at Bond Street station when I got out. As I
pushed my latch-key into the outer door of South Molton Street Mansions,
I glanced quickly up and down the street, but, so far as I could see,
there was no sign of the man.
However, a surprise awaited me. Upon entering my flat I noticed a light
in the sitting-room at the end of the little passage—the door stood
ajar. Entering quickly, I uttered an exclamation of amazement. For in
the big arm-chair in front of the fire—the fire burned as though it had
lately been made up—Dick lay back fast asleep, his lips slightly
parted, his chest rising and falling in a way that showed how heavily
he slept.
Recovering from my amazement, I stood for a minute or two watching him.
How delightful he looked when asleep like that, and what a strong
resemblance he bore to Dulcie. But how came he to be here? And how came
Dulcie to have told me, less than an hour before, that he was in the
house at Hampstead, and asleep there? Gazing down upon him still, I
wondered what really had happened since I had last seen him that
evening, and what story he would have to tell me when he awoke.
My man had gone to bed, for it was now past midnight. Considering where
I had better put Dick to sleep, my glance rested upon some letters lying
on the table. Mechanically I picked them up and looked at the
handwritings on the envelopes. Nothing of interest, I decided, and I was
about to put them down again, unopened, when I noticed there was one
from Holt that I had overlooked. The handwriting was Sir Roland's.
Hastily tearing open the envelope, I pulled out the letter. It was quite
short, but its contents sent my heart jumping into my mouth, and had
Dick not been asleep close by in the chair I believe I should have used
some almost unprintable language.
"Oh, the fool—the silly, doddering, abject old fool!" I exclaimed aloud
as I flung the open letter down on to the table and began to pace the
room in a fury of indignation. "'No fool like an old fool'—oh, those
words of wisdom—the man who first uttered them should have a monument
erected to his memory," I continued aloud; then suddenly, as Dick
stirred in his sleep, I checked myself abruptly.
The letter Sir Roland Challoner had written to me ran as follows:
"My dear Mike,—As you and Dulcie are engaged, I dare say you will be
interested, and you may be surprised, to hear of another engagement. I
have asked Dulcie's beautiful friend, Mrs. Stapleton, to become my wife,
and she has done me the honour of accepting my proposal. Write to
congratulate me, my dear Mike, and come down again soon to stay with us.
"Yours affectionately,
"ROLAND CHALLONER."