THE OPENED SAFE
Inspector Charles, I could see, was deeply impressed by the sagacity
with which Tarleton had solved the riddle of the dead man’s identity.
It was a very simple step, but it is precisely the simple ideas that
generally escape the trained mind of the official.
“Doctor Weathered,” the Captain pronounced slowly. “I suppose there is
no doubt of that being Wilson’s real name.”
“Very little doubt, I should say,” my chief responded. “What do you
think, Cassilis?”
I endeavoured to take a judicial tone.
“I don’t see much room for hesitation. Here is a man without his keys,
and there are the keys without the man. Besides, it all corresponds
with what you said, Sir Frank, about the dead man’s appearance. A
fashionable West End physician is just what I should expect him to be.
And no one would be in a better position to introduce people of good
position to a club of this kind.”
The Inspector’s face had become overcast with doubt while I was
speaking.
“That’s all very well,” he demurred, “but we have been hearing a lot
about Wilson’s being afraid of enemies, and taking precautions about
what he drank; and now it turns out to be a simple case of burglary.”
Tarleton consulted me by a look. I just lifted my shoulders in answer
without speaking. Mine was a difficult part to play just then. On the
one hand, I did not wish my chief to think me wanting in brains; on the
other, I dreaded above all things betraying any previous knowledge of
anything connected with the mystery.
Fortunately he appeared to approve of my reserve. “We may be able to
understand that better when we get to Warwick Street,” he said to
Charles. “The next thing for us to do is to go round there and send
some member of the household here to identify the deceased.”
To this course there could be no opposition. The plain-clothes man was
called in and placed in charge of the corpse with strict instructions
to let no one approach it unless he came with a written authority from
Sir Frank or the Inspector. Then the three of us entered the doctor’s
car and drove towards Cavendish Square.
On the way my chief said to me, “It is curious that I can’t call to
mind ever having heard of a Dr. Weathered. He must have been a man of
high standing in the profession, apparently; probably a consultant; and
yet his name is quite strange to me. Do you happen to have heard it at
any time?”
It was a difficult question for me. I dared not tell a lie which
accident might expose at any moment; but still less dared I tell the
whole truth.
“I have heard the name,” I replied, speaking as slowly as possible to
give myself time to frame the least compromising answer. “Perhaps I
ought to say that I heard it from one of his patients in the course
of a confidential communication, so that I hardly know how far I am
justified in making any use of what I heard.”
Tarleton promptly raised his hand.
“Not another word,” he enjoined to my intense relief. But my relief was
qualified when he proceeded. “A confidence made to a medical man is as
sacred in my view as a confession made to a priest. You will understand
that, Captain Charles, I am sure. We must not ask Dr. Cassilis to tell
us anything more.”
Captain Charles assented rather reluctantly I thought. His original
disapproval of me seemed to revive at the same time. He stole furtive
glances at me now and then, as though he were wondering whether it was
prudent on his part to keep such doubtful company.
The gold repeater in Tarleton’s fingers kept time to his meditations
till the car drew up in front of a smart house in a smart street in
the region most favoured by Court physicians and the big-wigs of the
medical profession, a class for whom I knew that my eccentric chief
felt a very moderate respect. The house was brightly painted, and
the windows were garnished with boxes of scarlet geraniums and blue
lobelias. The brass plate on the door was burnished to shine like
glass, and the steps were a dazzling white. Nothing could have been
further removed from any suggestion of secret practices or unhallowed
consultations.
The man who opened the door to us matched the exterior of the house as
far as his own exterior was concerned. He was young and clean-shaven,
his hair was beautifully brushed, and his neat clothes were as new and
well-fitting as those of the man whom we had left lying in the alcove
at the Domino Club. The face itself was that of a simple, harmless
young man, incapable of suspecting either his master or his master’s
patients. It was impossible to think that he had ever been aware of
anything strange or doubtful in his environment, so innocent and fresh
was his whole aspect. The very nervousness with which he received us
was the nervousness of youth and inexperience finding itself in the
presence of unexpected trouble.
Inspector Charles briefly announced his name and official character,
and those of my chief, not deeming me worthy of individual mention.
Tarleton promptly took the youthful butler in hand.
“Have the police been here before?” was his first question.
Simmons, as he turned out to be named, said that they had. The
constable on the beat had noticed that the front door was ajar about
five o’clock that morning, and had promptly roused the household. He,
Simmons, had been first on the spot, and had begun by supposing that
his master had omitted to make the door fast on his return. He knew
that the doctor had gone out overnight, though he had no idea where.
He went out pretty often, and was generally rather late in coming
home. However, the policeman had insisted on his going to see if Dr.
Weathered was upstairs; and he had found his room empty and the bed
undisturbed.
On that, the officer had come in to search the premises, beginning with
the doctor’s consulting-room, in which there was a safe. There the
first sight that met their eyes was the door of the safe standing wide
open. The key was in the keyhole, with the whole bunch, including the
latchkey, dangling from it.
“And what had been taken from the safe?” Tarleton asked, calling my
attention with a significant glance.
“Nothing,” was the surprising answer. “I mean nothing as far as we
could see. We opened the drawers in which the doctor used to put his
fees till he paid them into the bank, and they were full, one full
of notes and the other of silver. The doctor’s lowest fee was three
guineas,” the doctor’s man added with some pride.
“Take us to that room,” my chief commanded.
Simmons obeyed without hesitation. My heart was beating so loudly in
my ears that I could not overcome the childish fear that it might be
heard by others, in spite of my medical knowledge to the contrary. I
fell back and let my companions go into the room without me while I
collected myself before joining them.
Yet there was nothing in Dr. Weathered’s professional sanctum to
inspire dismay.
The room in which he received his patients was as bright and as well
appointed as everything else in the establishment. A handsome walnut
writing-table was lightly strewn with medical books and papers,
relieved by a handsome china bowl full of roses. The patient’s chair
was luxuriously cushioned with yellow silk, and the doctor’s own chair
was a handsome one upholstered in tooled morocco leather. There was
only one bookcase, and its appearance was more suited to a drawing-room
than a professional man’s study. The frame was richly inlaid with
ornamental woods, and the glass doors were protected by gilt wires.
A small marble group of Eros and Psyche stood on the top, flanked
by Chinese dragons. Elsewhere the walls of the room were hung with
charming water-colours, most of them of a rather sensuous description,
depicting youths and maidens bathing in pools, and scenes of love and
jealousy.
Tarleton took in every detail with one of those swift, searching looks
of his which seemed to penetrate to some inner meaning beneath the
surface of all he saw. Finally, his eye rested on the corner in which a
safe about three feet high, painted to look like oxydized silver, was
clamped on a supporting stand of ebony.
“You have locked the safe, I see. Where are the keys?”
The sudden demand agitated the nervous butler.
“Miss Sarah has them,” he stuttered. “At least she took them away when
she locked up the safe. Perhaps she’s given them to her mother--to Mrs.
Weathered.”
Sir Frank opened his eyes. I think we all did. Somehow it seemed
incongruous that the founder of the Domino Club should be a married man.
“Is there a Mrs. Weathered then?”
“Why, yes, sir.” Simmons showed as much surprise as we had. “Would you
like to see her, Sir Frank?” He seemed rather eager to get away and
fetch his mistress to deal with us.
The consultant restrained him by an imperative gesture.
“One moment, if you please. You haven’t told us what happened after you
had found the safe open. Did you go to call Mrs. Weathered?”
“I should have gone, sir, but Miss Sarah came down and found us looking
into the safe. So I left it to her.”
Again the man made a movement as if to escape, and again the specialist
arrested him.
“What brought her down? Did she know what had happened?”
Simmons seemed honestly confused. “I really can’t tell you, sir. I
suppose one of the servants must have gone upstairs and told her. They
were all about.”
Tarleton nodded. “Go on. When she came in what did she do?”
“She was rather angry sir, at first. She thought the doctor had come
home in a great hurry to fetch something for someone who was ill, and
had rushed off again, and forgotten to lock the safe and take his keys.
She said we had no business to look inside in his absence. And she
locked the safe herself, and sent the policeman away, saying no doubt
Dr. Weathered would be back again presently. But that was more than
four hours ago, and there’s been no sign of him yet, sir.”
It was evident that Simmons considered his young mistress had been
over-confident. We, who knew it so much better than he did could only
sympathize with his feelings. Sir Frank made no further effort to
detain him.
“Very well. You can let Mrs. Weathered know we are here, and say that I
shall be glad to speak with her as soon as possible.”
When the butler had gone he turned to me.
“What do you make of this room, Cassilis? What sort of diseases do you
think were treated here?”
I thought it best to glance at the pictures and the marble group before
expressing my opinion.
“Not very serious ones I should say,” I answered lightly.
My chief frowned.
“And yet one of them has proved pretty serious in its consequences,” he
observed. “You don’t agree with Miss Weathered that it was her father
who left that bunch of keys in the door of the open safe?”
I did my best to control myself as I shook my head.
“Rather curious that she should have interfered, though, instead of her
mother,” Captain Charles put in with an air of sagacity.
Tarleton threw himself into the doctor’s own chair, and taking out his
watch, began to swing it gently.
“I expect to meet with more than one curious circumstance in the course
of this inquiry,” he said lazily. “It is just possible that Weathered’s
daughter knew more about him than his wife did.” He sat up suddenly.
“But I am wasting your valuable time, Captain Charles. There is nothing
here that Cassilis and I cannot deal with. It is simply a question of
having the body identified, and brought round here, if the authorities
decide to keep the case private. You had better lose no time in
communicating with the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and letting
me know their decision. And don’t forget there are the costumes to be
traced.”
The Captain was already on the move. I fancied he was not sorry to be
released. Tarleton was too big a personality for anyone else to find
himself much more than a dummy in his company, and the Inspector’s
sense of self-importance must have suffered as long as he was in the
physician’s train.
My chief was good enough to offer me a private explanation as soon as
we were alone.
“I have every confidence in Charles’s honesty, but very little in his
tact. And this is a case that calls for very careful handling. These
people won’t tell us more than they can help if they are afraid of a
public scandal. And, on the other hand, if they know that the whole
affair is going to be hushed up they won’t tell us anything at all.”
Tarleton let his eyes rove round the walls of the room as he proceeded.
“I don’t want Charles to see the direction in which I am feeling my
way. You see, he is not my subordinate. He isn’t responsible to me for
his actions. He is quite at liberty to go to the Chief Commissioner
behind my back, and tell him whatever is in his mind, and the
Commissioner can go to Sir James Ponsonby in the same way. We must walk
warily Cassilis.”
I tried in vain to catch the doctor’s eye while he was speaking. How
much did he mean to convey by that singular warning? Was he referring
to my admission that I had heard Dr. Weathered’s name before, and
cautioning me to make no more such admissions in the Inspector’s
hearing? I felt a sick apprehension which I dared not show.
Sir Frank seemed quite unconscious of my distress. “You and I,” he
went on in a confidential way, “know that it wasn’t Weathered who
crept into this room last night, and crept out again, leaving the keys
behind. And we also know that whoever came here didn’t come for money.
I think we can both guess what he did come for--he or she.”
He darted a sudden glance at me as he uttered the last word, and he
must have seen me start. But at that instant the door opened, and we
both rose to our feet to receive the ladies coming in.
There were two of them. Mrs. Weathered was a woman of about the same
age as the man whom we had left lying in the Domino Club, but of a very
different social type. She was not vulgar in any offensive sense of
the word, but her appearance and manner were those of a woman such as
one would expect to meet in the back parlour of a shop in a provincial
town, rather than in a West End drawing-room. Her features were plain
as well as homely; her gray hair showed no trace of a skilful maid’s
art, and her fashionable dress only exposed her unfitness to wear
it. Such a wife could only be a serious handicap to an ambitious man
making his way upward in London society. It was possible to at least
understand one of the doctor’s temptations to lead a secret life which
brought him into more congenial company than his homely wife’s. Yet
there was something touching in her pale, worn face; and her mild blue
eyes searched our faces with a pitiful anxiety that convinced me that
her husband still had a hold on her affection.
Her daughter was as little like her as it was possible to be. Young
enough in years--I put her down as little more than twenty--her face
and figure were those of a ripe woman. Both were queenly. Her sombre
crown of hair and flashing eyes made me think of Judith and the tragic
heroines of old who were driven to avenge themselves on the men who
had done them wrong. She betrayed none of her mother’s anxiety. Stern,
self-possessed and courageous, she faced Sir Frank and myself with the
demeanour of the accuser rather than the accused.
Mrs. Weathered was the first to speak. Although addressing my chief as
the elder of us two, I found her turning her eyes towards me as though
more hopeful of sympathy from my youth. Her daughter on the contrary
kept her intent gaze fixed on Tarleton and seemed barely conscious of
my presence in the room.
“Have you any news for me, sir? Dr. Weathered hasn’t come back yet--not
since he was here in the early morning, and left his keys behind.”
The physician shook his head with a grave air.
“I am not sure that you are right in thinking that it was your husband
who came here and left those keys. Before I say anything more I should
like to look inside the safe.”
Mrs. Weathered turned a wondering look on her daughter, who frowned in
return.
“Why?” She demanded. “Nothing has been taken. I looked myself, and the
money was all there untouched. No burglar would have gone away without
helping himself to it, surely?”
“Perhaps it was not a burglar. It was someone who had been in your
father’s company, or he could not have obtained possession of his bunch
of keys.”
The girl drew herself up in wrath.
“Dr. Weathered is not my father sir. My mother has only been married to
him five years. My name is Neobard.”
A glimmering of the true situation came to me. The dead man had married
a widow, an unattractive one, with a daughter old enough to resent
her mother’s action and show it. There could be no reasonable doubt
that she must have had money, probably a good deal, and that her
daughter’s fortune had gone to enrich the step-father. I could pretty
well guess the whole story. A provincial doctor with more brains than
wealth had courted his rich patient to obtain the means of coming
to London and setting up as a consultant in the West End. That was
why neither Tarleton nor I had heard of him as a man distinguished
in the profession. He had risen, not by scientific merit, but by the
possession of money and an imposing manner. There were too many such
cases in the medical world.
By this time Mrs. Weathered had sat down and invited us to do the
same. But Miss Neobard remained standing, still with the same air of
suppressed indignation. Tarleton appeared not to be aware of anything
strange in her manner.
“Your step-father, then,” he corrected himself amiably. “Dr. Cassilis
and I are better acquainted with the usual contents of a doctor’s safe
than you are, I expect; and perhaps we shall be better able to judge if
anything has been taken than you.”
“I don’t think he kept any drugs in it, if that’s what you’re thinking
of,” the girl said obstinately. It was clear that she resented our
being there and was disposed to help us as little as possible.
“Indeed!” The specialist turned to Mrs. Weathered, whose face showed
some bewilderment at her daughter’s attitude. “Perhaps you can tell me,
ma’am, if your husband specialized in any particular disease, or class
of diseases.”
The pale widow glanced at her daughter as though for permission to
answer, and was met by a smile of scorn.
“I know that he takes nervous cases,” Mrs. Weathered said with a
certain hesitation. “He is a psychological expert.”
She pronounced the phrase in the tone of a person who had learnt it by
heart, and expected us to understand it better than she did herself.
Miss Neobard’s gall overflowed at the sound.
“He called himself that to begin with,” she put in sharply. “Now it is
a psychical analyst. Women come and tell him their secrets as if he
were a priest.”
A quiver in the eyelashes told me that this was the information my
chief had been expecting to receive. But his tone showed no animation
when he spoke.
“In that case I dare say Miss Neobard may be right about the drugs.
However, I must ask you to be good enough to let me have Dr.
Weathered’s keys.”
The mother was evidently divided between fear of us and fear of her
daughter to whom she appealed with another helpless look.
“By what right do you ask for them, Sir Frank? My mother is not
entitled to give up her husband’s keys without his consent. He may be
back at any moment--and then you can ask him.”
At last it was necessary to speak out. The girl’s position was
perfectly right if she was ignorant of her step-father’s fate.
“I am deeply sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Tarleton said to the
widow. “I’m afraid you must prepare yourself to hear the worst.” He
paused for a moment. The ready tears that began to stream from the poor
woman’s eyes showed that she had not been altogether unprepared, and
the swift flash of silent exultation in her daughter’s told plainly
who it was that had prepared her. I was pleased to see her throw a
caressing arm round her mother’s neck before she spoke again.
“You mean that Dr. Weathered is dead?”
“A body has been found on certain premises in Chelsea which there is
reason to fear is his. It is part of our business here to find someone
to come round and identify him.”
A moan from the widow drew her daughter’s arm more tightly round her.
She thrust her free hand into a pocket and drew out a bunch of keys.
“Take these. And excuse me. I must take my mother to her room. I will
come back in a few minutes and go round with you to the Club.”
I was quick to open the door as the strange girl supported her mother
out of the room. I had no sooner closed it again than my chief repeated
her last words.
“The Club!--I fancy that young woman could tell us a good deal about
her step-father if she chose. And now!”
He stepped towards the safe, found the right key, and threw open the
door.
“What do you say has been taken, Cassilis?”
There could be no doubt as to the answer, although I went through the
form of looking carefully inside before I gave it.
It was the doctor’s case-book that was missing, the book containing the
secrets of the women.