THE CLUB OF MASKS
The Club of Masks
By ALLEN UPWARD
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
_Copyright in Great Britain under the title of The Domino Club_
CONTENTS
I ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE 7
II THE EVIDENCE OF MADAME BONNELL 22
III THE EVIDENCE OF THE DEAD 38
IV THE OPENED SAFE 53
V DR. WEATHERED’S PATIENTS 69
VI THE BOOKS OF THE DOMINO CLUB 84
VII THE CAUSE OF DEATH 99
VIII THE LEOPARD’S CLAWS 111
IX SARAH NEOBARD SPEAKS OUT 125
X THE CASE AGAINST LADY VIOLET 140
XI WHAT THE CIPHER MEANT 154
XII PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 170
XIII THE EARL OF LEDBURY INTERVENES 185
XIV THE UNKNOWN POISON 201
XV THE LADY OF THE LEOPARD SKIN 216
XVI THE RED LIGHT 233
XVII A SINGULAR DISMISSAL 247
XVIII MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 263
XIX THE MEANS TO DO ILL DEEDS 279
XX THE FINGER-PRINT 295
THE CLUB OF MASKS
CHAPTER I
ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE
I had only just let myself into the hall of the quiet house in the
respectable street beside the British Museum when my ear was startled
by the subdued shrilling of the telephone bell overhead. Whether this
was the first time it had sounded, or whether that alarming call was
being repeated for the second or third time, I had no means of knowing,
as I turned hurriedly to fasten the front door behind me. Cautiously,
and yet as swiftly as I dared, I shot the bolts and began speeding
on tiptoe up the two flights of stairs between me and safety from
detection. The night telephone was placed beside my bed on the second
floor, but Sir Frank Tarleton slept on the same landing; and unless
I could reach my room and still that persistent ringing before it
penetrated through his slumber I ran the risk of meeting him coming out
to find why it was not answered. And not for much, not for very much,
would I have had the great consultant see me returning to his house at
an hour when daylight was already flooding the deserted streets of the
still sleeping city.
There was something ominous in the continuous peal that sounded louder
and louder in my ears with every step I made towards it. It seemed as
though the unknown caller must know of my predicament and be bent on
exposing me. I clutched the rail of the banisters to steady myself as I
panted up those interminable stairs in the darkness, and my feet felt
clogged like those of one in a nightmare as I lifted them from step to
step; all the while racking my brains for some excuse to offer for the
breach of duty I had been guilty of in spending the night elsewhere.
For my real excuse, the only one that could have tempted me to betray
my chief’s confidence, could never be disclosed.
The darkness all around me seemed to be vibrating with the merciless
clamour overhead as I toiled through those tense moments. My knees
trembled under me, and my heart well-nigh stopped beating, as my head
reached the level of the last landing and I turned my eyes desperately
to the physician’s door in search of any sign that he had been aroused.
No sign as yet, thank Heaven! Five more stairs, three lightning strides
to my own door, and he would never know of the secret errand that had
taken me away from my post that night.
At last my agony was ended. I stood breathless on the topmost stair,
darted past Sir Frank’s room, not daring to pause and listen for any
movement from within, and clutched the handle of my own door, summoning
all my nerve to open and close it again so rapidly as to permit the
least possible sound to escape. An instant later and I had reached the
telephone and silenced its urgent voice, and was beginning to draw my
breath freely for the first time since I had reached the house.
Then, after a few deep gasps, I hailed the caller.
“Inspector Charles of Scotland Yard speaking,” came grimly over the
wire. “Who is there?”
There was nothing to startle me in the fact that the police were
calling so imperatively. Tarleton was the greatest living authority on
poisons; it was to pursue his researches in their mysterious history
that he lived in the unfashionable neighbourhood of the Museum; and
the Home Office treated him with a confidence which they placed in no
other of their advisers. Neither was there any cause for uneasiness in
the Inspector’s cautious question. Very many of the calls that came to
that unpretending house in that quiet corner of London had a certain
character of furtiveness, and the callers showed the same anxiety to
make sure whom they were speaking with.
My usual response came to my lips mechanically. “This is Dr. Cassilis,
Sir Frank Tarleton’s confidential assistant. The doctor is asleep.”
There was a pause before the caller spoke again. There was nothing
alarming to me in that, either. I had grown accustomed to the pause
during my first few weeks under the roof of the great consultant. Few
of those who needed his services liked to disclose their business to a
deputy.
“Please have him waked immediately. He is wanted as soon as
possible--on His Majesty’s service.”
The request was peremptory, nevertheless I was not inclined to give
way to it at once. The police formula made no difference to me. I was
His Majesty’s servant as much as my chief, and it was for me, and not
for the Inspector, to decide which of us was to take the case. At the
same time I began casting off my clothes so as to be ready to go in and
rouse Tarleton if it became necessary; and one hand was busy with my
necktie and collar while the other held the telephone mouthpiece to my
lips.
“My instructions are not to disturb Sir Frank unless I am satisfied
that the case is urgent, and that I can’t deal with it myself,” I said
firmly. “I must ask you to tell me something more.”
There was another pause before the caller spoke again, and I took
advantage of it to wrench off my collar and throw my waistcoat after my
coat onto the floor. When the wire buzzed again the first words that
reached my ear nearly caused me to drop the tube from my fingers.
“I am speaking from the Domino Club, Vincent Studios, Tarifa Road,
Chelsea. There was a masked dance here this night, and one of the
dancers has been found dead, apparently poisoned.”
And now I might well find myself trembling all over, and have to lean
against the wall to recover myself. I only just succeeded in keeping
back a cry of consternation. For it was to go to that underground
club, with its dark reputation, and its strange character of mingled
fashion and depravity, that I had been tempted to quit my post that
night. I had been one of those masked dancers, jostling with I knew
not whom under the shadowy lights and in the curtained recesses of the
pretended studio in London’s nearest approach to a Quartier Latin. I
could recall the scene in the after-midnight hours, the sea of black
silk-covered faces thronging under the crimson lamp-shades, the bizarre
confusion of costumes, monks and Crusaders, columbines and queens, the
swish of silk and tinkling of swords and bracelets, and the incessant
flood of whispers that had made me think of the scene in Milton’s
pandemonium when the assembly of fallen angels are suddenly deprived of
speech and changed into hissing serpents.
I had used the greatest precautions in coming and going. I had no
reason to think that there was any real likelihood of my presence
there being discovered. But a cold fear laid hold of me as I steadied
my nerves to deal with the Police Inspector who had so unexpectedly
conjured up a spectre on the scene of that past revelry. It was doubly
imperative now that I should make no mistake, and above all that I
should get rid of every sign that I had not passed the night in my own
bed.
I was fast unbuttoning my shirt as I spoke again to the waiting police
officer.
“I’m afraid I can’t awake Sir Frank for that. It seems to be a case
that he will expect me to attend myself. Is there anything peculiar
about the medical symptoms? What does your local surgeon say?”
Inspector Charles at last revealed the true reason for his persistence
in demanding the attendance of my chief.
“I haven’t called in our local surgeon. There doesn’t seem anything
mysterious about the cause of death. It looks to me like a simple
case of opium-poisoning, very likely a suicide. But the case must be
disposed of _in camera_ if possible, for the sake of the people in high
places connected with the club. My information is that there was a
royalty present at this dance, the Crown Prince of----”
Whether purposely or not, the speaker let his voice drop so low that I
failed to catch the final word. But I had heard enough. There could be
no more doubt that Tarleton must be informed. It was a bare possibility
that the victim might prove to be the foreign Royal Highness himself.
Failing that, it might at least be someone who had been mistaken
for him by the assassin. In any case I could thank my stars for the
intimation that the case was likely to be hushed up on his account.
Provided that I could efface every sign of my nocturnal expedition, I
ought to have nothing now to dread.
I bade the officer wait, and tore off my remaining garments, slipped
into my sleeping-suit and dressing-gown, and rumpled my hair to give
myself the look of one just roused from sleep. Then and not before, I
ventured out upon the landing to face my chief.
As I did so I was chilled by another shock. I saw a thin line of light
under the door in front of me. Sir Frank Tarleton was awake.
I don’t think I can be accused of cowardice for feeling as I did during
those desperate moments. It was not only my worldly fortune that was at
stake; there were peculiar circumstances which made it doubly shameful
on my part to be false to the trust put in me by the great specialist.
They went back to the day when I began to attend his lectures on
forensic medicine at the University College in Gower Street. I had
already taken my medical degree in the University of London with a view
to becoming a public analyst, and I had been anxious to profit by the
Professor’s unique knowledge of poisons. From the first I had attracted
his favourable notice; my papers had won his praise; and he had invited
me to call on him, and admitted me to his friendship. Then, at the end
of the year’s course, he had overwhelmed me by an offer so much beyond
my hopes that I could scarcely yet believe in my good luck.
I can see him now, the whole scene is clear before me, the brisk figure
with its face of intense thought, crowned by a shock of unkempt gray
hair, standing over me on the hearth-rug of his dingy consulting-room
on the ground floor in Montague Street. He was following his quaint
habit of swinging his magnificent gold repeater in front of him by its
shabby scrap of ribbon, while he gave me the amazing news.
“I’ve decided to take an assistant, Cassilis. I have passed my sixtieth
birthday, and though my work interests me as much as ever, I mean to
spare myself a little more in future. I don’t intend to turn out in the
middle of the night because a bilious duchess fancies that someone has
bribed her French maid to poison her. And I’ve told them at the Home
Office--I suppose you know I’m their principal consultant--that I won’t
be sent down to Cornwall one day and to Cumberland the next every time
a coroner lets himself be puzzled by a simple case of strychnine or
arsenic. It’s work for a younger man.”
He waved the watch towards me as he went on.
“Sir James Ponsonby--that’s the Permanent Under Secretary--has
consented to my having a deputy, and I’m submitting your name.”
I recall my sensations as he stopped abruptly and bent his keen eyes
on me from beneath their bushy roof of eyebrow to see how the proposal
struck me. I had gasped for breath then as I was gasping now. At the
age of twenty-five, only just qualified for my profession, I was to be
lifted at one step out of the struggling crowd into a position which
was already success, and which I should only have to make proper use of
to attain in time the same eminence as my patron.
My answer must have been incoherent. But Tarleton interrupted it with a
jerk of his gold repeater, which, I can remember, almost made me duck
my head.
“I’m paying you what most of the men in our profession would consider
a doubtful compliment when I tell you that you seem to me to be a
young man with imagination, Cassilis. And that is what’s wanted in my
work. It isn’t doctor’s work really so much as detective’s. It’s not
only symptoms I have to look for, but motives. There was a touch in
your very first paper that showed me you could think for yourself, and
speculate. And speculation is the master key of science, although all
your second-rate men decry it. It’s the old fable of the fox who had
lost his tail. Not having any imagination themselves, they would like
to forbid it to everyone. The Trade Unions rule the world to-day, and
they are all trying to reduce the intelligence of mankind to the lowest
common denominator.”
He had spoken with a certain bitterness which it was easy for me to
understand. Eminent as he was, unquestioned as his authority had
now become, I knew that Tarleton was not popular with the medical
profession. His baronetcy had been given late, and given grudgingly.
Perhaps he had recognized in me something that reminded him of his own
youth, and had taken a generous resolution to help me in consequence.
Certainly his treatment of me since had been more like that of a father
than an employer.
He had said a good deal more that I hadn’t forgotten and that I was
least likely to forget just then. His manner had been very grave as he
dwelt upon the confidential character of a great deal of his work.
“If you are to assist me in my most important cases, and to qualify
yourself for succeeding me later on, as I hope you will, you must
learn to be more discreet than in almost any other line of life.
You will find yourself in possession of secrets that compromise the
honour of great families; men in the highest positions will hold their
reputations at your mercy; the safety of the State itself may sometimes
depend on your silence. I know of at least one man sitting in the House
of Lords who owes his peerage to an undiscovered murder; and what is
more, he knows of my knowledge. I make it a rule if possible never to
go into any company where he is likely to be present, and he takes
the same care to avoid me. But if he ever thought it necessary to his
safety, that man would no more hesitate about taking my life than he
did about taking his nephew’s--a boy twelve years old.”
No doubt Tarleton had gauged my disposition pretty well before he chose
me for his assistant, and he knew that I should be more attracted
than repelled by such hints as that. My blood tingled at the prospect
opening before me. The days of Richard III and the Bloody Tower seemed
to have come again. And I was to be behind the scenes tracing the
midnight assassin at his work in the heart of modern London, and in
the very purlieus of her palaces. It was enough to sate the greediest
imagination.
“I mustn’t conceal from you,” my kindly chief had gone on to tell me,
“that I have had to overcome strong objections to your appointment. Sir
James Ponsonby considers that you are very young to be entrusted with
such serious responsibilities. You can’t wonder if the Home Office has
taken some precautions. I submitted your name a month ago, and I only
received permission to make you the offer yesterday. I have very little
doubt that you have been under observation most of the time between.”
This was the part of the conversation that had come back to me most
vividly that night when I was struggling frantically towards the
accusing bell.
For the whole sting in the communication that my memory thrust so
pitilessly before me was in the last condition, the very condition I
had been driven to break that night.
I had been less dismayed than most men of my age perhaps--particularly
most medical students--would have been by learning that my life had
been under the microscope for a month. I had nothing very serious to
reproach myself with. The memory of a secret love affair, an unhappy
one, alas! had served to keep me clear of the most dangerous of all
the snares that life sets for youth. It was my good luck never to have
tasted, and never to have felt the wish to taste, anything in the way
of alcohol, and to be able to sit with nothing stronger than a cup of
strong coffee in front of me in the midst of the most riotous company.
I believe it was this exceptional merit that turned the scale in my
favour with Sir James Ponsonby. Gambling had equally little appeal for
me, and I took no interest whatever in that noble animal the horse.
My real vice was love of excitement for its own sake. One prize-fight
had more attraction for me than a hundred cricket-matches. It was in
search of sensation that I was drawn into the night life of London.
I was haunted by the mystery of silent streets and shadowed courts.
Like Stevenson, I felt that life ought to be a series of adventures
beginning in Leicester Square. The Press Club and the Chelsea Art Club
were the two poles of my romantic sphere, and I revelled in the society
of men who seemed to me to be leading lives more mysterious than mine.
It appeared that this was the weakness which stood in my way with the
Government Department I was to serve. Tarleton had ceased to swing
his watch, and had given me a very meaning glance as he came to the
decisive point.
“Sir James has made it a condition of your appointment that it shall
be a resident one. You will have to take up your quarters with me. I
shall have a telephone installed in your room for you to take the night
calls. And I shall depend on you not to trouble me with them unless I
am really wanted.”
My face must have fallen as I listened to this stipulation, for I saw
an answering shade on the doctor’s brow. I felt that a good deal of
the gilt would be taken off the gingerbread if I had to surrender my
personal freedom and abandon my favourite haunts to lead a regular life
under my employer’s roof, and under his surveillance; for, of course,
that was what it came to. My chief inducement to take up the career
of an analyst instead of a general practitioner had been the greater
freedom I should enjoy. I had dreaded the idea of having to settle in
a provincial town or a prim residential suburb, where I should have
to keep regular hours, go to church in a black coat on Sundays, act
as sidesman, and generally put on all the airs of respectability. It
would be almost as great a wrench to give up my artist and journalist
friends, in whose company I had had such jolly times, and go to bed
every night just as the real day was beginning, under the watchful eyes
of my chief.
I fancy Sir Frank himself felt some sympathy with me, though he was too
wise to express it.
“A man must expect to be judged to some extent by the company he
keeps,” he had hinted. “You can’t expect the head of a Department
like the Home Office to feel easy at the idea of entrusting important
secrets to a young man who spends his nights, I won’t say in
disreputable company, but at all events in circles where a good many
adventurers are found. These people”--the bitter note came back into
his voice--“these people hate the shoulders on which they have climbed.
They govern the empire which the Raleighs and the Clives have gained
for them, but they don’t want any more Clives and Raleighs. They threw
Burton away; they wouldn’t use Gordon till it was too late--Faugh!” He
swallowed his disgust with an effort, and became almost stern. “Now,
my boy, this is a great opportunity for you, and you must take it. You
must forget that you are a genius, and put your neck into the collar
for a few years. At the end of that time you will have a reputation,
and you can do what you like within reasonable limits. I expect you to
trust yourself to me.”
And, of course, I had. He had taken me to the Home Office and formally
presented me to the Under Secretary, and I found myself appointed an
Assistant Medical Adviser, detailed for duty under the orders of Sir
Frank Tarleton, with a salary that seemed riches in advance.
Perhaps I had found my work a little disappointing since. The night
calls had not been numerous, and they had grown fewer after the first
month or two, as though Tarleton’s clients or patients, I hardly know
which to call them, had found out that it was no use expecting him to
turn out any longer, if the case was one that I could deal with. Most
of my time was passed in the laboratory in Montague Street, carrying
out analyses under his directions, and improving my knowledge of rare
poisons, of which he had formed what was probably the finest collection
in the world. But of really sensational cases, involving criminal
suspicion and mystery, there had not been one before that fateful
summons from the Domino Club.
But I dared not hesitate longer in delivering it. Every moment now
would only make matters worse. I crossed the landing and knocked firmly
on the closed door.
The answer was instantaneous--“Come in!”
I obeyed, to find myself in the full glare of the electric light over
the bed, in which Tarleton was sitting upright, his beloved repeater in
one hand, while he gazed at me questioningly from beneath his knitted
brows.
“I first heard the telephone nine minutes ago. You have taken some time
to answer it.”