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The Seven Secrets
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
_Author of "The Gamblers," "The Under-Secretary," "Whoso findeth
a Wife," "Of Royal Blood," etc._
_Second Edition_
London:
HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
1903
A. C. FOWLER,
PRINTER,
MOORFIELDS, LONDON.
WILLIAM LE QUEUX'S NOVELS.
"As a recounter of stories of mingled mystery and adventure, Mr.
William Le Queux is certainly among the best living writers."--_The
Athenaeum._
"It is interesting that Queen Alexandra is a great reader of novels of
mystery and adventure, and that she is one of Mr. Le Queux's most
ardent admirers. Long ago, when his 'Zoraida' was issued, she gave an
order to a well-known Piccadilly bookseller for all Mr. Le Queux's
books, past and future, and an early copy of each of that writer's
books reaches her."--_The Queen._
"The name of William Le Queux is well known to novel-readers as that
of one who can weave the most wonderful mysteries and elaborate the
most thrilling plots that are to be met with in the fiction of to-day.
His books are read with the avidity of intense curiosity, for the
string of events described are of the kind that demand attention until
the end is reached and everything made clear."--_Literary World._
"Mr. William Le Queux's name is favourably known to all readers of
sensational fiction. He elaborates the most wonderful plots, and holds
his reader breathless to the end, for it is only quite at the end that
light is allowed to break through the entanglement of circumstance, or
the perplexities brought about by the shock of temperament."--_Daily
News._
"Mr. William Le Queux's novels are one of my chief foibles. I can
always read his stories greedily, and 'Free Lancers' should buy his
books."--Mr. CLEMENT SCOTT in the _Free Lance._
_Crown 8vo, 6s._
THE UNDER-SECRETARY. Third Edition.
THE GAMBLERS. Second Edition.
OF ROYAL BLOOD. Third Edition.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCES AMBLER JEVONS 9
II. "A VERY UGLY SECRET" 15
III. THE COURTENAYS 20
IV. A NIGHT CALL 27
V. DISCLOSES A MYSTERY 33
VI. IN WHICH I MAKE A DISCOVERY 43
VII. THE MAN SHORT AND HIS STORY 54
VIII. AMBLER JEVONS IS INQUISITIVE 65
IX. SHADOWS 76
X. WHICH PUZZLES THE DOCTORS 87
XI. CONCERNS MY PRIVATE AFFAIRS 98
XII. I RECEIVE A VISITOR 109
XIII. MY LOVE 119
XIV. IS DISTINCTLY CURIOUS 128
XV. I AM CALLED FOR CONSULTATION 139
XVI. REVEALS AN ASTOUNDING FACT 150
XVII. DISCUSSES SEVERAL MATTERS 162
XVIII. WORDS OF THE DEAD 173
XIX. JEVONS GROWS MYSTERIOUS 183
XX. MY NEW PATIENT 194
XXI. WOMAN'S WILES 203
XXII. A MESSAGE 215
XXIII. THE MYSTERY OF MARY 226
XXIV. ETHELWYNN IS SILENT 236
XXV. FORMS A BEWILDERING ENIGMA 249
XXVI. AMBLER JEVONS IS BUSY 256
XXVII. MR. LANE'S ROMANCE 274
XXVIII. "POOR MRS. COURTENAY!" 281
XXIX. THE POLICE ARE AT FAULT 290
XXX. SIR BERNARD'S DECISION 298
XXXI. CONTAINS THE PLAIN TRUTH 306
THE SEVEN SECRETS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCES AMBLER JEVONS.
"Ah! You don't take the matter at all seriously!" I observed, a trifle
annoyed.
"Why should I?" asked my friend, Ambler Jevons, with a deep pull at
his well-coloured briar. "What you've told me shows quite plainly that
you have in the first place viewed one little circumstance with
suspicion, then brooded over it until it has become magnified and now
occupies your whole mind. Take my advice, old chap, and think nothing
more about it. Why should you make yourself miserable for no earthly
reason? You're a rising man--hard up like most of us--but under old
Eyton's wing you've got a brilliant future before you. Unlike myself,
a mere nobody, struggling against the tide of adversity, you're
already a long way up the medical ladder. If you climb straight you'll
end with an appointment of Physician-in-Ordinary and a knighthood
thrown in as makeweight. Old Macalister used to prophesy it, you
remember, when we were up at Edinburgh. Therefore, I can't, for the
life of me, discover any cause why you should allow yourself to have
these touches of the blues--unless it's liver, or some other internal
organ about which you know a lot more than I do. Why, man, you've got
the whole world before you, and as for Ethelwynn----"
"Ethelwynn!" I ejaculated, starting up from my chair. "Leave her out
of the question! We need not discuss her," and I walked to the
mantelshelf to light a fresh cigarette.
"As you wish, my dear fellow," said my merry, easy-going friend. "I
merely wish to point out the utter folly of all this suspicion."
"I don't suspect her," I snapped.
"I didn't suggest that." Then, after a pause during which he smoked on
vigorously, he suddenly asked, "Well now, be frank, Ralph, whom do you
really suspect?"
I was silent. Truth to tell, his question entirely nonplussed me. I
had suspicions--distinct suspicions--that certain persons surrounding
me were acting in accord towards some sinister end, but which of those
persons were culpable I certainly could not determine. It was that
very circumstance which was puzzling me to the point of distraction.
"Ah!" I replied. "That's the worst of it. I know that the whole affair
seems quite absurd, but I must admit that I can't fix suspicion upon
anyone in particular."
Jevons laughed outright.
"In that case, my dear Boyd, you ought really to see the folly of the
thing."
"Perhaps I ought, but I don't," I answered, facing him with my back to
the fire. "To you, my most intimate friend, I've explained, in
strictest confidence, the matter which is puzzling me. I live in
hourly dread of some catastrophe the nature of which I'm utterly at a
loss to determine. Can you define intuition?"
My question held him in pensive silence. His manner changed as he
looked me straight in the face. Unlike his usual careless self--for
his was a curious character of the semi-Bohemian order and Savage Club
type--he grew serious and thoughtful, regarding me with critical gaze
after removing his pipe from his lips.
"Well," he exclaimed at last. "I'll tell you what it is, Boyd. This
intuition, or whatever you may call it, is an infernally bad thing for
you. I'm your friend--one of your best and most devoted friends, old
chap--and if there's anything in it, I'll render you whatever help I
can."
"Thank you, Ambler," I said gratefully, taking his hand. "I have told
you all this to-night in order to enlist your sympathy, although I
scarcely liked to ask your aid. Your life is a busy one--busier even
than my own, perhaps--and you have no desire to be bothered with my
personal affairs."
"On the contrary, old fellow," he said. "Remember that in mystery I'm
in my element."
"I know," I replied. "But at present there is no mystery--only
suspicion."
What Ambler Jevons had asserted was a fact. He was an investigator of
mysteries, making it his hobby just as other men take to collecting
curios or pictures. About his personal appearance there was nothing
very remarkable. When pre-occupied he had an abrupt, rather brusque
manner, but at all other times he was a very easy-going man of the
world, possessor of an ample income left him by his aunt, and this he
augmented by carrying on, in partnership with an elder man, a
profitable tea-blending business in Mark Lane.
He had entered the tea trade not because of necessity, but because he
considered it a bad thing for a man to lead an idle life.
Nevertheless, the chief object of his existence had always seemed to
be the unravelling of mysteries of police and crime. Surely few men,
even those professional investigators at Scotland Yard, held such a
record of successes. He was a born detective, with a keen scent for
clues, an ingenuity that was marvellous, and a patience and endurance
that were inexhaustible. At Scotland Yard the name of Ambler Jevons
had for several years been synonymous with all that is clever and
astute in the art of detecting crime.
To be a good criminal investigator a man must be born such. He must be
physically strong; he must be untiring in his search after truth; he
must be able to scent a mystery as a hound does a fox, to follow up
the trail with energy unflagging, and seize opportunities without
hesitation; he must possess a cool presence of mind, and above all be
able to calmly distinguish the facts which are of importance in the
strengthening of the clue from those that are merely superfluous. All
these, besides other qualities, are necessary for the successful
penetration of criminal mysteries; hence it is that the average
amateur, who takes up the hobby without any natural instinct, is
invariably a blunderer.
Ambler Jevons, blender of teas and investigator of mysteries, was
lolling back in my armchair, his dreamy eyes half-closed, smoking on
in silence.
Myself, I was thirty-three, and I fear not much of an ornament to the
medical profession. True, at Edinburgh I had taken my M.B. and C.M.
with highest honours, and three years later had graduated M.D., but my
friends thought a good deal more of my success than I did, for they
overlooked my shortcomings and magnified my talents.
I suppose it was because my father had represented a county
constituency in the House of Commons, and therefore I possessed that
very useful advantage which is vaguely termed family influence, that I
had been appointed assistant physician at Guy's. My own practice was
very small, therefore I devilled, as the lawyers would term it, for my
chief, Sir Bernard Eyton, knight, the consulting physician to my
hospital.
Sir Bernard, whom all the smart world of London knew as the first
specialist in nervous disorders, had his professional headquarters in
Harley Street, but lived down at Hove, in order to avoid night work or
the calls which Society made upon him. I lived a stone's-throw away
from his house in Harley Street, just round the corner in Harley
Place, and it was my duty to take charge of his extensive practice
during his absence at night or while on holidays.
I must here declare that my own position was not at all disagreeable.
True, I sometimes had night work, which is never very pleasant, but
being one of the evils of the life of every medical man he accepts it
as such. I had very comfortable bachelor quarters in an ancient and
rather grimy house, with an old fashioned dark-panelled sitting-room,
a dining-room, bedroom and dressing-room, and, save for the fact that
I was compelled to be on duty after four o'clock, when Sir Bernard
drove to Victoria Station, my time in the evening was very much my
own.
Many a man would, I suppose, have envied me. It is not every day that
a first-class physician requires an assistant, and certainly no man
could have been more generous and kindly disposed than Sir Bernard
himself, even though his character was something of the miser. Yet all
of us find some petty shortcomings in the good things of this world,
and I was no exception. Sometimes I grumbled, but generally, be it
said, without much cause.
Truth to tell, a mysterious feeling of insecurity had been gradually
creeping upon me through several months; indeed ever since I had
returned from a holiday in Scotland in the spring. I could not define
it, not really knowing what had excited the curious apprehensions
within me. Nevertheless, I had that night told my secret to Ambler
Jevons, who was often my visitor of an evening, and over our whiskies
had asked his advice, with the unsatisfactory result which I have
already written down.