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Title: Dorcas Dene, detective
Her adventures
Author: George R. Sims
Release date: November 16, 2025 [eBook #77243]
Language: English
Original publication: London: F.V. White & Co, 1897
Credits: Payton D. Cooke
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DORCAS DENE, DETECTIVE ***
Dorcas Dene, Detective
Her adventures
by George R. Sims
Table of Contents
I. THE COUNCIL OF FOUR
II. THE HELSHAM MYSTERY
III. THE MAN WITH THE WILD EYES
IV. THE SECRET OF THE LAKE
V. THE DIAMOND LIZARD
VI. THE PRICK OF A PIN
VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MILLIONAIRE
VIII. THE EMPTY HOUSE
IX. THE CLOTHES IN THE CUPBOARD
X. THE HAVERSTOCK HILL MURDER
XI. THE BROWN BEAR LAMP
-----
_I. THE COUNCIL OF FOUR_
When I first knew Dorcas Dene she was Dorcas Lester. She came to me
with a letter from a theatrical agent, and wanted one of the small
parts in a play we were then rehearsing at a West End theatre.
She was quite unknown in the profession. She told me that she wanted
to act, and would I give her a chance? She was engaged for a
maid-servant who had about two lines to speak. She spoke them
exceedingly well, and remained at the theatre for nearly twelve
months, never getting beyond "small parts," but always playing them
exceedingly well.
The last part she had played was that of an old hag. We were all
astonished when she asked to be allowed to play it, as she was a
young and handsome woman, and handsome young women on the stage
generally like to make the most of their appearance.
As the hag, Dorcas Lester was a distinct success. Although she was
only on the stage for about ten minutes in one act and five minutes
in another, everybody talked about her realistic and well-studied
impersonation.
In the middle of the run of the play she left, and I understood that
she had married and quitted the profession.
It was eight years before I met her again. I had business with a
well-known West End solicitor. The clerk, thinking his employer
alone, ushered me at once into his room. Mr. ---- was engaged in
earnest conversation with a lady. I apologised. "It's all right,"
said Mr. ----, "the lady is just going." The lady, taking the hint,
rose, and went out.
I saw her features as she passed me, for she had not then lowered
her veil, and they seemed familiar to me.
"Who do you think that was?" said Mr. ---- mysteriously, as the
door closed behind his visitor.
"I don't know," I said; "but I think I've seen her before somewhere.
Who is she?"
"That, my dear fellow, is Dorcas Dene, the famous lady detective.
_You_ may not have heard of her; but with our profession and with
the police, she has a great reputation."
"Oh! Is she a private inquiry agent, or a female member of the
Criminal Investigation Department?"
"She holds no official position," replied my friend, "but works
entirely on her own account. She has been mixed up in some of the
most remarkable cases of the day--cases that sometimes come into
court, but which are far more frequently settled in a solicitor's
office."
"If it isn't an indiscreet question, what is she doing for you? You
are not in the criminal business."
"No, I am only an old-fashioned, humdrum family solicitor, but I
have a very peculiar case in hand just now for one of my clients. I
am not revealing a professional secret when I tell you that young
Lord Helsham, who has recently come of age, has mysteriously
disappeared. The matter has already been guardedly referred to in
the gossip column of the society papers. His mother, Lady Helsham,
who is a client of mine, has been to me in the greatest distress of
mind. She is satisfied that her boy is alive and well. The poor lady
is convinced that it is a case of cherchez la femme, and she is
desperately afraid that her son, perhaps in the toils of some
unprincipled woman, may be induced to contract a disastrous
mésalliance. That is the only reason she can suggest to me for his
extraordinary conduct."
"And the famous lady detective who has just left your office is to
unravel the mystery--is that it?"
"Yes. All our own inquiries having failed, I yesterday decided to
place the case in her hands, as it was Lady Helsham's earnest desire
that no communication should be made to the police. She is most
anxious that the scandal shall not be made a public one. To-day
Dorcas Dene has all the facts in her possession, and she has just
gone to see Lady Helsham. And now, my dear fellow, what can I do
for you?"
My business was a very trifling matter. It was soon discussed and
settled, and then Mr. ---- invited me to lunch with him at a
neighbouring restaurant. After lunch I strolled back with him as far
as his office. As we approached, a hansom cab drove up to the door
and a lady alighted.
"By Jove! it's your lady detective again," I exclaimed.
The lady detective saw us, and came towards us.
"Excuse me," she said to Mr. ----, "I want just a word or two
with you."
Something in her voice struck me then, and suddenly I remembered
where I had seen her before.
"I beg your pardon," I said, "but are we not old friends?"
"Oh, yes," replied the lady detective with a smile; "I knew you
at once, but thought you had forgotten me. I have changed a good
deal since I left the theatre."
"You have changed your name and your profession, but hardly your
appearance--I ought to have known you at once. May I wait for you
here while you discuss your business with Mr. ----? I should like
to have a few minutes' chat with you about old times."
Dorcas Lester--or rather Dorcas Dene, as I must call her now--
gave a little nod of assent, and I walked up and down the street
smoking my cigar for fully a quarter of an hour before she
reappeared.
"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting a long time," she said pleasantly,
"and now if you want to talk to me you will have to come home with
me. I'll introduce you to my husband. You needn't hesitate or think
you'll be in the way, because, as a matter of fact, directly I saw
you I made up my mind you could be exceedingly useful to me."
She raised her umbrella and stopped a hansom, and before I quite
appreciated the situation, we were making our way to St. John's Wood
as fast as a very bad horse could take us.
On the journey Dorcas Dene was confidential. She told me that she
had taken to the stage because her father, an artist, had died
suddenly and left her and her mother nothing but a few unmarketable
pictures and the unpaid tradesmen's bills to settle.
"Poor dad!" she said. "He was very clever, and he loved us very
dearly, but he was only a great big boy to the last. When he was
doing well he spent everything he made and enjoyed life--and when
he was doing badly he did bills and pawned things, and thought it
was rather fun. At one time he would be treating us to dinner at
the Café Royal and the theatre afterwards, and at another time he
would be showing us how to live as cheaply as he used to do in his
old Paris days in the Quartier Latin, and cooking our meals himself
at the studio fire.
"Well, when he died I got on to the stage, and at last--as
I daresay you remember--I was earning two guineas a week. On
that I and my mother lived in two rooms in St. Paul's-road,
Camden Town.
"Then a young artist, a Mr. Paul Dene, who had been our friend and
constant visitor in my father's lifetime, fell in love with me. He
had risen rapidly in his profession, and was making money. He had no
relations, and his income was seven or eight hundred a year, and
promised to be much larger. Paul proposed to me, and I accepted him.
He insisted that I should leave the stage, and he would take a
pretty little house, and mother should come and live with us, and
we could all be happy together.
"We took the house we are going to now--a sweet little place
with a lovely garden in Oak Tree-road, St. John's Wood--and for
two years we were very happy. Then a terrible misfortune happened.
Paul had an illness and became blind. He would never be able to
paint again.
"When I had nursed him back to health I found that the interest
of what we had saved would barely pay the rent of our house. I did
not want to break up our home--what was to be done? I thought
of the stage again, and I had just made up my mind to see if I
could not get an engagement, when chance settled my future for me
and gave me a start in a very different profession.
"In the next house to us there lived a gentleman, a Mr. Johnson,
who was a retired superintendent of police. Since his retirement
he had been conducting a high-class private inquiry business, and
was employed in many delicate family matters by a well-known firm
of solicitors who are supposed to have the secrets of half the
aristocracy locked away in their strong room.
"Mr. Johnson had been a frequent visitor of ours, and there was
nothing which delighted Paul more in our quiet evenings than a chat
and a pipe with the genial, good-hearted ex-superintendent of
police. Many a time have I and my husband sat till the small hours
by our cosy fireside listening to the strange tales of crime, and
the unravelling of mysteries which our kind neighbour had to tell.
There was something fascinating to us in following the slow and
cautious steps with which our kindly neighbour--who looked more
like a jolly sea captain than a detective--had threaded his way
through the Hampton Court maze in the centre of which lay the
truth which it was his business to discover.
"He must have thought a good deal of Paul's opinion, for after a
time he would come in and talk over cases which he had in hand--
without mentioning names when the business was confidential--and
the view which Paul took of the mystery more than once turned out
to be the correct one. From this constant association with a
private detective we began to take a kind of interest in his work,
and when there was a great case in the papers which seemed to defy
the efforts of Scotland Yard, Paul and I would talk it over
together, and discuss it and build up our own theories around it.
"After my poor Paul lost his sight Mr. Johnson, who was a widower,
would come in whenever he was at home--many of his cases took him
out of London for weeks together--and help to cheer my poor boy up
by telling him all about the latest romance or scandal in which he
had been engaged.
"On these occasions my mother, who is a dear, old-fashioned,
simple-minded woman, would soon make an excuse to leave us. She
declared that to listen to Mr. Johnson's stories made her nervous.
She would soon begin to believe that every man and woman she met
had a guilty secret, and the world was one great Chamber of Horrors
with living figures instead of waxwork ones like those of Madame
Tussaud's.
"I had told Mr. Johnson of our position when I found that it would
be necessary for me to do something to supplement the hundred a
year which was all that Paul's money would bring us in, and he had
agreed with me that the stage afforded the best opening.
"One morning I made up my mind to go to the agent's. I had dressed
myself in my best and had anxiously consulted my looking-glass. I
was afraid that my worries and the long strain of my husband's
illness might have left their mark upon my features and spoilt my
'market value' in the managerial eye.
"I had taken such pains with myself, and my mind was so concentrated
upon the object I had in view, that when I was quite satisfied with
my appearance I ran into our little sitting-room, and, without
thinking, said to my husband, 'Now I'm off! How do you think I
look, dear?"
"My poor Paul turned his sightless eyes towards me, and his lip
quivered. Instantly I saw what my thoughtlessness had done. I flung
my arms round him and kissed him, and then, the tears in my eyes,
I ran out of the room and went down the little front garden. When
I opened the door Mr. Johnson was outside with his hand on the bell.
"'Where are you going?' he said.
"'To the agent, to see about an engagement.'
"'Come back; I want to talk to you.'
"I led the way back to the house, and we went into the dining-room
which was empty.
"'What do you think you could get on the stage?' he said.
"'Oh, if I'm lucky I may get what I had before--two guineas
a week. You see, I've never played anything but small parts.'
"'Well then, put off the stage for a little and I can give you
something that will pay you a great deal better. I've just got a
case in which I must have the assistance of a lady. The lady who
had worked for me for the last two years has been idiot enough to
get married, with the usual consequences, and I'm in a fix.'
"'You--you want me to be a lady detective--to watch
people?' I gasped. 'Oh, I couldn't!'
"'My dear Mrs. Dene,' Mr. Johnson said gently, 'I have too much
respect for you and your husband to offer you anything that you
need be afraid of accepting. I want you to help me to rescue an
unhappy man who is being so brutally blackmailed that he has run
away from his broken-hearted wife and his sorrowing children. That
is surely a business transaction in which an angel could engage
without soiling its wings.'
"'But I'm not clever at--at that sort of thing!'
"'You are cleverer than you think. I have formed a very high opinion
of your qualifications for our business. You have plenty of shrewd
common sense, you are a keen observer, and you have been an actress.
Come, the wife's family are rich, and I am to have a good round sum
if I save the poor fellow and get him home again. I can give you
a guinea a day and your expenses, and you have only to do what I
tell you.'
"I thought everything over, and then I accepted--on one condition.
I was to see how I got on before Paul was told anything about it.
If I found that being a lady detective was repugnant to me--if I
found that it involved any sacrifice of my womanly instincts--
I should resign, and my husband would never know that I had done
anything of the sort.
"Mr. Johnson agreed, and we left together for his office.
"That was how I first became a lady detective. I found that the work
interested me, and that I was not so awkward as I had expected to
be. I was successful in my first undertaking, and Mr. Johnson
insisted on my remaining with him and eventually we became partners.
A year ago he retired, strongly recommending me to all his clients,
and that is how you find me to-day a professional lady detective."
"And one of the best in England," I said, with a bow. "My friend
Mr. -- has told me of your great reputation."
Dorcas Dene smiled.
"Never mind about my reputation," she said. "Here we are at my
house--now you've got to come in and be introduced to my husband
and to my mother and to Toddlekins."
"Toddlekins--I beg pardon--that's the baby, I suppose?"
A shade crossed Dorcas Dene's pretty womanly face, and I thought
I saw her soft grey eyes grow moist.
"No--we have no family. Toddlekins is a dog."
* * * * * * *
It was difficult for me to imagine, as I glanced around the
delightful little drawing-room and noted everywhere the evidences
of artistic simplicity and refinement, that I was in the house of
the famous lady detective. I had not been introduced to the blind
husband many minutes before I felt that we were old friends. Paul
Dene, the blind artist, interested me at once. A handsome man, well
above the medium height, with a mass of fair waving hair; there was
something in the blind, gentle face that riveted your attention and
claimed your sympathy at once. He rose as his wife entered the room,
a questioning look upon his face, for my footstep was unfamiliar to
him. Dorcas Dene took his hand and led him towards me. "Paul, dear,"
she said, "this is an old friend of mine. This is the gentleman who
gave me my first chance as an actress."
We chatted together for a few minutes, and then a buxom, grey-haired
lady came bustling into the room, followed by a big brindle bulldog,
wagging the whole of his body. He ran to his mistress with a little
snort of joy, stood up on his hind-legs, and licked her hands
affectionately, and then turned and looked at me inquiringly.
"Friends, Toddlekins," said his mistress. Then turning to me, she
added with a smile, "You can pat him quite safely now I have
introduced you."
"He would come in, Dorcas," exclaimed the middle-aged lady, "and I
didn't know you had company."
"This is Mr. Saxon, the dramatist, mother."
The old lady gave me a rather distant bow, and eyed me somewhat
suspiciously. "I've heard of you, sir," she said, "and I know how
good you were to my daughter years ago, but I don't hold with
melodramas, and I never shall; and how Christian people can pay
money to see their fellow-creatures blown up with dynamite, and
murdered, and condemned to death for what they never did, and
turned out of house and home to die in the snow, is what I shall
never understand."
I suppose I looked slightly uncomfortable, for Dorcas Dene broke in
with a merry little laugh. "Mother doesn't mean any harm, Mr. Saxon,
it's only her funny little way; she puts us all right here--don't
you mother dear?"
"I always say what I think," replied the old lady. "It's
old-fashioned I dare say, but I'm one of the old-fashioned sort.
But I'd better take the dog out--Mr. Saxon's afraid of him."
"No, no, I assure you," I exclaimed, reddening, "I--I _love_ dogs,"
and I stooped down and timidly patted Toddlekins, who was sniffing
suspiciously at my calves.
"You needn't be ashamed of being afraid of Toddlekins," the old
lady exclaimed, with evident disbelief in my disclaimer. "Most
people are at first. He hates strangers coming to the place."
I saw a shade of annoyance pass over the blind artist's gentle
face. "An old friend of my wife's won't be a stranger here very
long," he said quietly, then gave a little whistle, and the bulldog
ran quickly across the room and laid his great head on his
master's knee.
"Well, I suppose I'm wrong as usual!" exclaimed the old lady,
tossing her head, "but all the same, Mr. Saxon may just as well
know that the dog nearly killed a man once, and I'm as certain as I
am that I'm alive that one day he'll kill another if he's ever left
alone with that young man that comes to wind up the clocks. He's
taken a dislike to that young man, has Toddlekins, and, Dorcas, my
dear, don't say I haven't warned you. When it does happen, don't
expect me to interfere; I was never brought up to bite bulldogs'
tails to make them leave go, and it's not the sort of thing you can
ask a respectable servant to do." And with that, the old lady turned
upon her heel and sailed out of the room, and her daughter followed
her, evidently to pacify her.
"You mustn't mind Mrs. Lester," said Paul Dene, as the door closed
behind them. "She's a dear, good soul, really, and I don't know what
we should do without her; but she has an idea that she is the only
person in the house who has any sense, and she has a mania for
speaking what she calls 'her mind.' The dog's as gentle as a lamb,
but he _did_ once nearly kill a man, and that is how my wife came by
him. He was reared from a puppy by a rough at the East End. This man
was constantly ill-using his wife, to whom the dog was devotedly
attached. One day the man, in a drunken frenzy, knocked his wife
down. As she lay on the floor, he bent over her, and was about to
strike her with a poker, when the dog suddenly sprang at him, and
seized him by the throat, and held him till the neighbours rushed
in. The dog had saved the woman's life, but the man was terribly
injured, and it was a question with the police of having the dog
killed, when my wife, who had heard the story, asked the officer in
charge of the case to let her have him; and Toddlekins has been our
faithful friend and guardian ever since."
I looked at Toddlekins, who had curled himself up at his master's
feet and was sleeping with one eye open, and I made up my mind that
when I said "Good-bye" to Dorcas Dene, I would put out my hand in a
manner that should not admit of the slightest misinterpretation,
and I was rather relieved when Paul Dene turned the conversation on
to another topic.
He presumed I was aware of his wife's present profession. I
explained how I had met her at the solicitor's, and that she had
told me I might be of use to her in the case on which she was
present engaged. Had he heard the particulars?
He said he had not, as his wife had only received her instructions
that day, but in all business matters she invariably consulted him.
"You see," he said, "my blindness is a very valuable quality. Seeing
nothing physically, my mental vision is intensified. I can think a
problem out undisturbed by the surroundings which distract people
who have their eyesight. When people want 'a good think,' as they
call it, they often shut themselves in a room and close their eyes.
I am a man who is always thinking with closed eyes. In all her
difficulties my wife comes to me, and generally we hold a council
of four."
"Of four?"
"Yes, the council consists of myself, Dorcas, her mother, and
Toddlekins."
I was obliged to give a little laugh. "I should hardly have thought
that Mrs. Lester could have been of much service in unravelling
a mystery."
"That is where you are wrong. Mrs. Lester often hits the right nail
on the head before either of us. We are building up an elaborate
theory, and she takes a plain, straightforward, matter-of-fact,
common-sense view, and it turns out to be the right one. Detectives
are only human, you know, and, like the rest of the world, they
frequently go looking about in every direction for something that
lies close to their hand all the time."
At that moment the door opened, and I started up in astonishment. A
dark-skinned old gipsy woman, such as one meets on the racecourses,
had come into the room.
I gave a nervous look at the bulldog, expecting him to spring at the
intruder. But he only opened his eyes and wagged his tail, and then
the truth suddenly flashed upon me.
It was Dorcas Dene. "Mr. Saxon," she said, "they are playing a gipsy
play at the theatre; I want you to go with me to the manager, and get
him to let me go on with the gipsy crowd at the end of the third
act." And then she added with a little laugh, "I told you you would
be useful to me."
"But I thought you were going to investigate the mysterious
disappearance of young Lord Helsham?" I stammered.
"Exactly--that's why I want to get behind the scenes of the
------ Theatre. Unless I am very much mistaken, that is where
'the lady in the case' is most likely to be found."
"But we can't go together through the street with
you--ahem!--like that."
Dorcas Dene laughed. "No, I want you to meet me outside the theatre
at eight o'clock, and get me engaged at once as a real gipsy super.
I'm sure you can manage that for me. I thought, before you left, you
had better see me exactly as I shall meet you to-night. And now, good
afternoon and au revoir."
"You think you will find Lord Helsham, then? You have a clue to the
mystery already?"
"I may find Lord Helsham to-night if you get me behind the scenes,
but as to the clue to the mystery of his disappearance, that is
quite another matter. And now I rely upon you. Until eight o'clock
this evening, au revoir."
I shook hands cordially with Dorcas Dene and her blind husband, and
patted Toddlekins respectfully. A minute afterwards, I was out in
the quiet little road trying to think out the mystery for myself.
Here was a young nobleman, his own master, and free to do as he
chose, and yet he had deliberately left his mother a prey to the
greatest anxiety as to his whereabouts. There was no necessity for
him to "disappear," to carry on an intrigue, or even to contract an
undesirable marriage.
Not even in the days of my youthful romance had I waited so eagerly
for the hour and the lady, as I waited that evening for eight
o'clock and Dorcas Dene.
_II. THE HELSHAM MYSTERY_
I sat in the stalls watching the third act of the great gipsy drama,
which had drawn all London to the ------ Theatre. I had persuaded the
manager, with whom I was on friendly terms, to allow Dorcas Dene, the
famous lady detective, to have the use of his stage for her own
purposes, disguised as a gipsy super.
But she had so far refused to tell me the name of the actress through
whom she expected to run young Lord Helsham to earth that evening,
or at least to be able to learn why he had disappeared.
It had been agreed between us that after the third act was over I
should go behind, and she would then be able to communicate with me.
Directly the curtain was down the manager joined me, and took me
through the private door and left me on the stage. The old gipsy
woman was waiting about for me in a quiet corner.
"What success?" I asked eagerly.
Without replying to my question, Dorcas Dene gripped me excitedly
by the arm.
"Get a hansom to the stage-door," she said. "I want you to come with
me somewhere."
I glanced hesitatingly at her costume.
"Don't be afraid," she said. "The cloak I brought with me will cover
all this, and I have a thick veil in my pocket."
I went out to get a hansom, and it was barely at the door before
Dorcas Dene was by my side. She sprang lightly in and motioned me to
follow, telling the cabman to drive to Grosvenor Square.
"You are going to see Lady Helsham?" I said.
"Yes, I must. Lord Helsham is on the point of committing suicide."
"How on earth have you found that out?" I gasped.
"By a very simple process. Lady Helsham, in our interview this
morning, gave me a photograph which she had found among her son's
papers. It was the photograph of a very beautiful girl taken in stage
costume. On the back of it was written, 'To dearest Bertie, from
Nella.' The photographer was Alfred Ellis, of Baker Street, who--it
being a theatrical photograph taken for public sale--had printed
beneath it, 'Miss Nella Dalroy, in "The Gipsy Wife."'"
"Ah, now I understand why you wanted to get behind the scenes
to-night. You wanted to see Nella Dalroy."
"Exactly. Lord Helsham's name is Bertie. Now a girl who puts 'To
dearest Bertie, from Nella,' is either engaged to him, or, for the
sake of her morals, ought to be. You understand?"
"Yes--I begin to understand."
"To-night I was able to watch Miss Dalroy narrowly. I could see that
she was prey to some great anxiety. Once she nearly broke down, and
went on with her part with the greatest difficulty. I was sure then
that young Lord Helsham's disappearance was not to the advantage of
Nella Dalroy.
"During the second act she had to wait, and she stood at the wings.
One of the young ladies of the company, evidently her friend, came
and talked to her, and I managed to overhear a little of the
conversation.
"'Haven't you heard anything more?' said her friend.
"'Yes--to-night just as I left home--a letter telling me that he sees
no way out of his trouble, and that I must forget him, and that we
shall never meet again--and--and'--here her voice quivered--'he says
he has left me all that he has a right to leave me. Oh, what can he
mean by that?'
"At that moment Miss Dalroy's cue came, and she went on the stage.
It was fortunate for her that it was a tearful scene she was playing,
or her agitation must have been noticeable."
Dorcas Dene leant back in the hansom, lost in thought.
After a moment's silence I ventured to ask her how she arrived at
the conclusion that Lord Helsham contemplated suicide.
"What else can it mean?" she answered, half speaking to herself.
"'I have left you all I have a right to leave.' If he thought of
himself in the future as a _living_ man, he would have said, 'I
will _give_ you all.'"
I shook my head, and murmured that I really couldn't see any possible
reason why a wealthy young nobleman who was his own master should put
an end to his life after making a will in favour of a pretty actress
who was deeply in love with him.
"Nor I," replied Dorcas Dene. "But I am engaged to restore her son to
Lady Helsham, and it is my duty to restore him alive if possible. But
here we are at Grosvenor Square."
I got out and assisted Dorcas Dene to alight. "May I wait for you?"
I said.
"Not here. But you will do me a great service if you will take the
cab and go on to Oak Tree Road, and tell my husband I shall be home
some time to-night."
* * * * * * *
It was past midnight when Dorcas Dene joined the little family circle
at Oak Tree Road. Paul Dene, the blind artist, had invited me to
stay and keep him company until his wife returned.
A few minutes later, the lady detective, divested of her war-paint,
was leaning back in the arm-chair and "stating her case," in order
that she might have the opinion of her husband and her mother
upon it.
Briefly and concisely Dorcas Dene put her "points."
"Here is the case so far as I've gone," she said. "Lord Helsham left
Grosvenor Square last week after a 'few words' with his mother. What
those 'words' were about, she will not tell me. 'Family matters' is
all the explanation I can get from her. He has not been to his club
or to his country house, or any hotel in his right name, because
inquiries in these directions had been exhausted before I was called
in. He is in great distress of mind about something, because he has
written a heart-broken letter to the girl he probably intended to
marry. She is evidently still devoted to him, so that love has
nothing to do with his mental condition. If love is not the cause of
his extraordinary behaviour, what _can_ be?"
The blind artist, who had sat silently listening, turned his
sightless eyes towards his wife. "Mr. Saxon has told us, Dorcas, that
you had an idea the poor fellow contemplated suicide, and he has told
us how you arrived at that conclusion. If you reject love and
insanity there is only one other thing that will drive a man to
deliberate suicide."
"And that is?"
"Fear."
Dorcas laid her hand gently on her husband's arm. "Yes, your thought
is mine, dear," she said softly, "but what does he fear?"
"What did his mother say to-night, when you told her what your
discoveries had led you to believe?"
"Although, of course, she was horrified, and for a time upset, she
really seemed--how shall I put it?--rather relieved in her mind!"
"Relieved to hear her son was likely to kill himself!" exclaimed
Mrs. Lester indignantly.
"Well, perhaps relieved is hardly the word. She has seemed to me all
along to be in a state of nervous terror as to something _dreadful_
being likely to happen, and when I suggested suicide it seemed as
though _that_ was not the worst that she had contemplated. That's
what I meant by its being a relief to her."
"Whatever is it that Lord Helsham fears," murmured the blind artist,
"it is evident that his mother fears it also. No other theory would
account for her being 'relieved'--as you call it--by the idea
that he has suicide in his mind."
"Yes," said Dorcas Dene, "and she can only feel that relief for two
reasons--either that his death would prevent his arrest for some
crime, or would prevent the discovery of something which would bring
terrible consequences to him."
"Or to her," said Paul, quietly.
Dorcas Dene started.
"Yes!" she cried, springing to her feet, "that's it--that would
account for everything."
"What sort of person is this Lady Helsham?" I asked, venturing to
join in the council.
Dorcas Dene drew her notebook from her pocket. "Here is the family
history as I got it from Mr. ---- when I took up the case. The late
Lord Helsham married a young Scotch lady who was a member of a
travelling opera troupe."
"Heredity again!" murmured Paul. "The son falls in love with an
actress."
"Two years after their marriage the Earl was killed by a fall from
his horse in the hunting-field. The next heir was the Earl's younger
brother, the Hon. John Farman, but the peerage had to remain in
abeyance pending the accouchement of Lady Helsham, an event which
occurred prematurely a month later."
"And the child born a month after its father's death was the present
Lord Helsham?"
"Yes," said Dorcas Dene, "that is so. Here are some further
particulars. Lady Helsham some years later adopted her sister's
little girl, a child of the same age as her son, and the children
were brought up together until lately, when her ladyship endeavoured
to bring about a marriage between the two. But his lordship informed
his mother that the idea was entirely repugnant to him, and
eventually the young lady left the family mansion and went back to
reside with her real mother in Scotland. Mr. ---- said he gave me
these particulars as it was possible, though not probable, that
ill-feeling had come between the mother and son through this young
lady. And it was concerning her that the 'words' occurred which
preceded Lord Helsham's departure from his home."
"And that view of the case you have not thought out at all, Dorcas?"
asked Paul Dene.
"No, I thought it better to look for the girl Lord Helsham was
likely to go after than for the one he was likely to avoid.
But----" Dorcas Dene rose and began to pace the room. No one
spoke a word. Suddenly she came up to me and held out her hand.
"Good-night," she said. "I am so much obliged to you for all your
help to-day. Come and see us again soon, won't you?"
"But I should like to know more about this case," I said; "I am
much interested in it, you know."
"Yes, I quite understand that," replied the lady detective, "but
I am afraid it will turn out a far more difficult business than I
imagined when I undertook it. Good-night."
There was nothing for me to do but shake hands all round and make as
dignified an exit as was possible under the circumstances.
* * * * * * *
A few days afterwards business called me to Paris, and it was quite
a fortnight later that sitting one evening outside the Café de
la Paix reading the "Daily Telegraph" the name of Lord Helsham
caught my eye, and I turned eagerly to an article headed, "A Mystery
Cleared Up," and read the following:
"The mystery surrounding the strange disappearance of Lord Helsham
has at last been elucidated. His lordship's clothes and watch and
scarf-pin have been found in a small cave on the coast near Cromer.
It is supposed that his lordship, who must have been staying in the
neighbourhood incognito, and who was an expert swimmer, had gone out
early in the morning to bathe from the shore. The supposition is that
he was seized with cramp and sank unobserved, that part of the coast
being a secluded and lonely one. It is not probable after this lapse
of time that the body will be recovered. The missing nobleman was
traced, and the discovery made, by the famous lady detective
Mrs. Dorcas Dene. Lord Helsham is succeeded by his uncle, the
Hon. John Farman, who is unmarried."
Immediately on my return to town I hastened to call at Oak Tree
Road. Dorcas Dene was out in the pretty little garden at the back
reading to her husband, who was sitting under the trees in a great
wicker chair. Toddlekins, the bulldog, was lying stretched out in
the sunshine.
As I looked at the little group from the dining-room window, I could
not help thinking how far removed the loving and tender wife devoting
herself to the blind husband seemed from the woman who had unravelled
the mystery of the tragic fate of young Lord Helsham.
The servant took my card to her mistress, and Dorcas Dene came in
smiling and happy, and gave me a sweet, womanly welcome.
"Won't you come into the garden? Paul will be so pleased," she said.
I shook my head. "Presently. But first I want to know about the
Helsham case. I think you ought to tell me, because once--just for
a little time--we were partners in this business, you know."
Dorcas Dene's gentle face became suddenly grave. "Yes," she said
thoughtfully, "I suppose I ought to tell you. Sit down and you shall
hear the story of what happened after you left that night in as few
words as possible, for I want to get back to the book I am reading
to Paul. It's a sweet book, and we're just in the middle of it. You
ought to read it. It is 'The Man who was Good.'"
"Never mind about the man who was good, I want to hear about the
woman who was clever. How did you find poor Lord Helsham, and what
was the cause of his unhappy fate?"
"You remember our conversation the night we parted," said Dorcas
Dene. "The next morning at nine o'clock I went straight to the
residence of the Hon. John Farman, the person who would succeed to
the title if anything happened to Lord Helsham. He had heard of the
disappearance, but concluded it was some temporary feminine
entanglement. I showed him how necessary it was that he should be
one of the earliest to know of his nephew's fate, and begged him to
tell me anything that would assist me in my enquiries. Having
already certain ideas in my head, I asked him if he knew where Lord
Helsham was born, and he told me that Lady Helsham was confined at
the house of her sister, the wife of a captain in the merchant
service, who had at the time just sailed for Australia. This sister
was residing in Scotland, and Lady Helsham had gone to her in the
early days of her widowhood. Mr. Farman himself was absent from
England at the time on a hunting expedition in the Rockies, and it
was not until a later period that he received the news of his
brother's death and the birth of an heir.
"'Had the child been a girl you would have inherited everything?'
"'With the exception of the income secured to Lady Helsham, yes. As
it was a boy--'
"'You accepted the situation. And when Lady Helsham returned to
London she brought her child with her, of course?'
"'Yes. I arrived a few days after her return. We were not friendly
during my brother's lifetime, but I desired to show every courtesy
I could to the widow.'
"'And as the child grew up you saw him----'
"'Frequently. He was very much attached to me, and latterly my nephew
and myself have been on very friendly terms.'
"'But you have not assisted in any way in endeavouring to find him?'
"'No. I called on Lady Helsham, and she declared there was no cause
for alarm. It was an entanglement. She begged me to do nothing for
fear of making a scandal. That is why I am rather astonished to
learn that she has employed professional assistance' (he bowed to me)
'and let me know nothing about it.'
"'And Lady Helsham's sister and the captain?'
"'The sister is the mother of the little girl Lady Helsham afterwards
adopted. I understood when this young lady left Grosvenor Square, she
had gone back to her mother, who is now a widow.'
"'And now will you tell me what sort of a young man Lord Helsham was.
Was he flighty, weak-minded, dissipated, cunning?'
"'Oh, no,' replied Mr. Farman, 'he was a most lovable and amiable
young fellow--highly strung, and sensitive to a degree--romantic
undoubtedly, but the soul of honour.'
"I bade Mr. Farman good-day, promising him the earliest information,
and went to the ------ Theatre. There I ascertained the address
of Miss Dalroy, and at once sought an interview with her, telling
her frankly that I was trying to find her lover and restore him to
his friends.
"With tears in her eyes she offered to give me any assistance she
could. She told me Lord Helsham had promised to marry her, and she
showed me the letters she had had since his disappearance. They all
spoke of a great shock he had received, and one of them of 'a
terrible discovery which must separate them for ever.' It was not
concerning her, but a matter relating to his own family.
"By this time I was convinced that the idea which had come to me
when I so rudely asked you to take your departure was the key to the
mystery. I _knew_ after reading those letters what the skeleton
in the Helsham family cupboard was, and I understood the dilemma in
which the high-spirited and honourable young man suddenly found
himself.
"I asked Miss Dalroy to let me see the last envelope she had
received. Fortunately she had kept the letter in it, and showed it
to me.
"The letter had been posted in Dunkeld. Dunkeld was in Scotland.
That was where Lady Helsham's adopted daughter was--that was where
Lady Helsham's sister lived, the sister in whose house Lord Helsham
had been born. It was there that I should probably get the latest
news of him.
"I went home, and flinging a few things into a Gladstone bag, caught
the first train North. Twelve hours later I was in Dunkeld. A few
hurried inquiries of the railway porters at the station, and the
solitary flyman outside, and at the little station hotel, told me
that I was, as they say in the sensational detective stories, 'on the
track.' A young gentleman answering the description I have of Lord
Helsham had come there a few days previously. The flyman had driven
him to the house of Mrs. ----, the merchant captain's widow, which
was nearly five miles from the station, and nothing had been seen of
him since.
"When the flyman had deposited me at the house, I made my way up the
pathway with a fluttering heart, for in spite of my profession, I
have still that feminine weakness in moments of excitement. The door
was opened by an old Scotch servant. I asked for Mrs. ----, and
without waiting for an answer walked straight into a room where I
could hear voices.
"An elderly spectacled man was talking with a widow lady. As I
entered I caught one sentence--but that was music in my ears.
"'There's not the slightest danger--it's a feverish cold--but the
poor young fellow is very low and nervous. I should note leave him
alone.'
"It was a doctor who was speaking. I didn't want to guess twice who
the poor young gentleman was.
"The widow lady started as I entered and angrily asked me what
I wanted.
"'A few words with you alone,' I answered. The doctor bowed and
left us together.
"'Who are you?' exclaimed the widow, betraying her nervous agitation
in her manner, 'and what do you want with me?'
"'My name is Dorcas Dene--I come from Lady Helsham with a message
for her son.
"'You know----!' gasped the widow.
"'That he is here and upstairs ill--yes. This _terrible discovery_
has been a severe shock to him.'
"At the words 'terrible discovery' the widow lady reeled and caught
a chair for support.
"'You know that--Lady Helsham has told you?'
"'I had to know,' I answered, evading the question. 'Now for the sake
of everybody we must decide what is the best to be done to avoid
scandal. He talks of killing himself, but that is cowardly. What do
_you_ think can be done?'
"It was a trap and the woman fell into it.
"'I don't know,' she gasped. 'Bertie declares that if he lives he
will not retain the title or the property. He says that his death is
the only thing that can save me and my sister from--from----' She
hesitated; then with a sudden terror that she had betrayed too much,
she cried, 'But if you know--tell me _what_ you know.'
"'Only what I was bound to know to be of any use in the case,' I
said, quietly. 'That the child which Lady Helsham bore in this house
was not the child she returned to London with as the heir. He has
discovered that he has unwittingly dispossessed another of the title
and estates, and he refuses to be a party to the fraud any longer.
The only way in which he can restore them is by dying. To publish the
truth now would be to put Lady Helsham in the dock, and, as you say,
you also, for you were a party to the imposture.'
"'It was my sister who persuaded me--who took my baby boy from me
and left the girl at home with me. My husband was away. Only the old
servant you have just seen was with me, and she cannot read or write.
It was so simple and--and----'
"'And the doctor?'
"She hesitated. 'Why do you ask these questions of me? If you know
all Lady Helsham must have told you.'
"'I have come from Lady Helsham to find her son--the rest I have
learned for myself. Now you must tell me everything or I cannot
help you. If I abandon the case it will be taken up by the police.'
"I succeeded at last in showing the unhappy woman that she must make
a clean breast of it, and she confessed everything. There was no idea
of fraud at first. Lady Helsham came to her sister, who was alone and
expecting her confinement. It was the coincidence of her own child
being born prematurely, and within twenty-four hours of her sister's,
that made Lady Helsham grasp at the idea. Had she confessed that her
child was a girl she would have had to give up everything--except her
allowance under the will--to her husband's brother. The captain's
wife was attended by a local midwife. The doctor from the nearest
town sent for to Lady Helsham was away at a consultation, and only
returned twenty-four hours after the premature birth of her child.
When he arrived he simply saw that his patient was doing well. The
sisters had by that time agreed on the fraud with the assistance of
the midwife, who received a good allowance from Lady Helsham for her
assistance. The doctor left, fully assured that Lady Helsham had
given birth to a son, and from that hour the fraud became a simple
one. The only person who might have betrayed them was the simple
Scotch servant, who probably was too ignorant to understand what had
been done or too terrified to open her mouth afterwards, for fear of
being looked upon as an accomplice.
"This was the Helsham mystery. Lady Helsham had, it seems, in her
rage at her supposed son's refusal to marry her real daughter, whom
she loved and desired to benefit, involuntarily revealed her secret,
threatening the young fellow with the loss of everything if
he refused.
"Thereupon he quitted the house, but he feared to tell the truth,
because he would be giving up his own mother to a long term of penal
servitude. In his overwrought frame of mind he saw only one
loophole--suicide. His death would allow the title and estates to
pass to the rightful owner without the fraud being discovered and
the guilty parties punished.
"He had gone to bid his mother--whom he had hitherto only regarded
as his aunt--farewell, and tell her what he intended to do, had
broken do, had broken down, and had been unable to leave the house
again."
"But he committed suicide after all!" I exclaimed.
Dorcas Dene smiled. "No, I arranged that. I knew that for the young
man's sake the real Lord Helsham would spare the guilty mother if
possible. I persuaded the young man to let me take his watch and
clothes. I selected a place as far away from the hiding place of the
missing man as possible, and decided on the Norfolk coast, near
Cromer. I found the clothes where I put them."
"And the real Lord Helsham knows?"
"Everything. No good purpose would have been served by prosecuting
the two women. The new Lord Helsham insisted on a written confession
from all concerned, which he retains for his own protection. As I
was employed by one of the guilty parties, it would have been
unprofessional of me to give them to justice."
"And the young man himself?"
"Is rapidly recovering from his illness in that quiet and lonely
little house in his identity. Lord Helsham has behaved handsomely.
He wishes his 'nephew' to marry in his real name the girl he loves,
and the young couple will presently go by separate routes to America,
and there be united, and, as they love each other, will be able to
live happily on the income Lord Helsham will allow them. Of course
if any difficulty should arise with regard to the succession the
truth will have to be known. Until then it is 'our' secret. In the
meantime Lady Helsham has wisely decided to live abroad, and only
her solicitor is aware of her address.
"And now you know all about the Helsham mystery. Come into the
garden and see Paul, and tell me what you think of the new collar
I've bought Toddlekins for his birthday."
"But," I exclaimed, "the new Lord Helsham is compounding a felony,
and--well, is it wise of him, seeing that the young man _is_
still alive?"
Dorcas Dene shrugged her shoulders. "My dear Mr. Saxon," she said,
"if everybody did the legal thing and the wise thing, there would be
very little work left for a lady detective."
_III. THE MAN WITH THE WILD EYES_
I had become a constant visitor at Oak Tree Road. I had conceived a
great admiration for the brave and yet womanly woman who, when her
artist husband was stricken with blindness, and the future looked
dark for both of them, had gallantly made the best of her special
gifts and opportunities and nobly undertaken a profession which was
not only a harassing and exhausting one for a woman, but by no means
free from grave personal risks.
Dorcas Dene was always glad to welcome me for her husband's sake.
"Paul has taken to you immensely," she said to me one afternoon,
"and I hope you will call in and spend an hour or two with him
whenever you can. My cases take me away from home so much--he cannot
read, and my mother, with the best intentions in the world, can never
converse with him for more than five minutes without irritating him.
Her terribly matter of fact views of life are, to use his own
expression, absolutely 'rasping' to his dreamy, artistic
temperament."
I had plenty of spare time on my hands, and so it became my custom
to drop in two or three times a week, and smoke a pipe and chat with
Paul Dene. His conversation was always interesting, and the gentle
resignation with which he bore his terrible affliction quickly won
my heart. But I am not ashamed to confess that my frequent journeys
to Oak Tree Road were also largely influenced by my desire to see
Dorcas Dene, and hear more of her strange adventures and experiences
as a lady detective.
From the moment she knew that her husband valued my companionship she
treated me as one of the family, and when I was fortunate enough to
find her at home, she discussed her professional affairs openly
before me. I was grateful for this confidence, and frequently I was
able to assist her by going about with her in cases where the
presence of a male companion was a material advantage to her. I had
upon one occasion laughingly dubbed myself her "assistant," and by
that name I was afterwards generally known. There was only one
drawback to the pleasure I felt at being associated with Dorcas Dene
in her detective work. I saw that it would be quite impossible for
me to avoid reproducing my experiences in some form or other. One
day I broached the subject to her cautiously.
"Are you not afraid of the assistant one day revealing the
professional secrets of his chief?" I said.
"Not at all," replied Dorcas (everybody called her Dorcas, and I
fell into the habit when I found that she and her husband preferred
it to the formal "Mrs. Dene"); "I am quite sure that you will not be
able to resist the temptation."
"And you don't object?"
"Oh, no, but with this stipulation, that you will use the material
in such a way as not to identify any of the cases with the real
parties concerned."
That lifted a great responsibility from my shoulders, and made me
more eager than ever to prove myself a valuable "assistant" to the
charming lady who honoured me with her confidence.
* * * * * * *
We were sitting in the dining-room one evening after dinner.
Mrs. Lester was looking contemptuously over the last number of the
"Queen", and wondering out loud what on earth young women were
coming to with their tailor-mades and their bicycle costumes. Paul
was smoking the old briar-root pipe which had been his constant
companion in the studio when he was able to paint, poor fellow, and
Dorcas was lying down on the sofa. Toddlekins, nestled up close to
her, was snoring gently after the manner of his kind.
Dorcas had had a hard and exciting week, and had not been ashamed to
confess that she felt a little played out. She had just succeeded in
rescuing a young lady of fortune from the toils of an unprincipled
Russian adventurer, and stopping the marriage almost at the altar
rails by the timely production of the record of the would-be
bridegroom, which she obtained with the assistance of M. Goron, the
head of the French detective police. It was a return compliment.
Dorcas had only a short time previously undertaken for M. Goron a
delicate investigation, in which the son of one of the noblest
houses in France was involved, and had nipped in the bud a scandal
which would have kept the Boulevards chattering for a month.
Paul and I were conversing below our voices, for Dorcas's measured
breathing showed us that she had fallen into a doze.
Suddenly Toddlekins opened his eyes and uttered an angry bark. He
had heard the front gate bell.
A minute later the servant entered and handed a card to her
mistress, who, with her eyes still half closed, was sitting up on
the sofa.
"The gentleman says he must see you at once, ma'am, on business of
the greatest importance."
Dorcas looked at the card. "Show the gentleman into the dining-room,"
she said to the servant, "and say that I will be with him directly."
Then she went to the mantel-glass and smoothed away the evidence of
her recent forty winks. "Do you know him at all?" she said, handing
me the card.
"Colonel Hargreaves, Orley Park, near Godalming." I shook my head,
and Dorcas, with a little tired sigh, went to see her visitor.
A few minutes later the dining-room bell rang, and presently the
servant came into the drawing-room. "Please, sir," she said,
addressing me, "mistress says will you kindly come to her at once?"
When I entered the dining-room I was astonished to see an elderly,
soldierly-looking man lying back unconscious in the easy chair, and
Dorcas Dene bending over him.
"I don't think it's anything but a faint," she said. "He's very
excited and over-wrought, but if you'll stay here I'll go and get
some brandy. You had better loosen his collar--or shall we send for
a doctor?"
"No, I don't think it is anything serious," I said, after a hasty
glance at the invalid.
As soon as Dorcas had gone I began to loosen the Colonel's cravat,
but I had hardly commenced before, with a deep sigh, he opened his
eyes and came to himself.
"You're better now," I said. "Come--that's all right."
The Colonel stared about him for a moment, and then said,
"I--I--where is the lady?"
"She'll be here in a moment. She's gone to get some brandy."
"Oh, I'm all right now, thank you. I suppose it was the excitement,
and I've been travelling, had nothing to eat, and I'm so terribly
upset. I don't often do this sort of thing, I assure you."
Dorcas returned with the brandy. The Colonel brightened up directly
she came into the room. He took the glass she offered him and
drained the contents.
"I'm all right now," he said. "Pray let me get on with my story.
I hope you will be able to take the case up at once. Let me
see--where was I?"
He gave a little uneasy glance at me. "You can speak without reserve
before this gentleman," said Dorcas. "It is possible he may be able
to assist us if you wish me to come to Orley Park at once. So far you
have told me that your only daughter, who is five-and-twenty, and
lives with you, was found last night on the edge of the lake in your
grounds, half in the water and half out. She was quite insensible,
and was carried into the house and put to bed. You were in London at
the time, and returned to Orley Park this morning in consequence of
a telegram you received. That is as far as you had got when you
became ill."
"Yes--yes!" exclaimed the Colonel, "but I am quite well again now.
When I arrived at home this morning shortly before noon I was
relieved to find that Maud--that is my poor girl's name--was quite
conscious, and the doctor had left a message that I was not to be
alarmed, and that he would return and see me early in the afternoon.
"I went at once to my daughter's room and found her naturally in a
very low, distressed state. I asked her how it had happened, as I
could not understand it, and she told me that she had gone out in
the grounds after dinner and must have turned giddy when by the edge
of the lake and fallen in."
"Is it a deep lake?" asked Dorcas.
"Yes, in the middle, but shallow near the edge. It is a largish lake,
with a small fowl island in the centre, and we have a boat upon it."
"Probably it was a sudden fainting fit--such as you yourself have
had just now. Your daughter may be subject to them."
"No, she is a thoroughly strong, healthy girl."
"I am sorry to have interrupted you," said Dorcas; "pray go on, for
I presume there is something behind this accident besides a fainting
fit, or you would not have come to engage my services in the matter."
"There is a great deal more behind it," replied Colonel Hargreaves,
pulling nervously at his grey moustache. "I left my daughter's
bedside devoutly thankful that Providence had preserved her from such
a dreadful death, but when the doctor arrived he gave me a piece of
information which caused me the greatest uneasiness and alarm."
"He didn't believe in the fainting fit?" said Dorcas, who had been
closely watching the Colonel's features.
The Colonel looked at Dorcas Dene in astonishment. "I don't know how
you have divined that," he said, "but your surmise is correct. The
doctor told me that he had questioned Maud himself, and she had told
him the same story--sudden giddiness and a fall into the water. But
he had observed that on her throat there were certain marks, and
that her wrists were bruised.
"When he told me this I did not at first grasp his meaning. 'It must
have been the violence of the fall,' I said.
"The doctor shook his head and assured me that no accident would
account for the marks his experienced eye had detected. The marks
round the throat must have been caused by the clutch of an assailant.
The wrists could only have been bruised in the manner they were by
being held in a violent and brutal grip."
Dorcas Dene, who had been listening apparently without much interest,
bent eagerly forward as the Colonel made this extraordinary
statement. "I see," she said. "Your daughter told you that she had
fallen into the lake, and the doctor assures you that she must have
told you an untruth. She had been pushed or flung in by someone
else after a severe struggle."
"Yes!"
"And the young lady, when you questioned her further, with this
information in your possession, what did she say?"
"She appeared very much excited, and burst into tears. When I
referred to the marks on her throat, which were now beginning to
show discoloration more distinctly, she declared that she had
invented the story of the faint in order not to alarm me--that she
had been attacked by a tramp who must have got into the grounds, and
that he had tried to rob her, and that in the struggle, which took
place near the edge of the lake, he had thrown her down at the
water's edge and then made his escape."
"And that explanation you _do_ accept?" said Dorcas, looking at the
Colonel keenly.
"How can I? Why should my daughter try to screen a tramp? Why did
she tell the doctor an untruth? Surely the first impulse of a
terrified woman rescued from a terrible death would have been to
have described her assailant in order that he might have been
searched for and brought to justice."
"And the police, have they made any inquiries? Have they learned if
any suspicious persons were seen about that evening?"
"I have not been to the police. I talked the matter over with the
doctor. He says that the police inquiries would make the whole thing
public property, and it would be known everywhere that my daughter's
story, which has now gone all over the neighbourhood, was untrue.
But the whole affair is so mysterious, and to me so alarming, that I
could not leave it where it is. It was the doctor who advised me to
come to you and let the inquiry be a private one."
"You need employ no one if your daughter can be persuaded to tell
the truth. Have you tried?"
"Yes. But she insists that it was a tramp, and declares that until
the bruises betrayed her she kept to the fainting-fit story in order
to make the affair as little alarming to me as possible."
Dorcas Dene rose. "What time does the last train leave for
Godalming?"
"In an hour," said the Colonel, looking at his watch. "At the
station my carriage will be waiting to take us to Orley Court. I
want you to stay beneath my roof until you have discovered the key
to the mystery."
"No," said Dorcas, after a minute's thought. "I could do no good
to-night, and my arrival with you would cause talk among the
servants. Go back by yourself. Call on the doctor. Tell him to say
his patient requires constant care during the next few days, and
that he has sent for a trained nurse from London. The trained nurse
will arrive about noon to-morrow."
"And you?" exclaimed the Colonel, "won't you come?"
Dorcas smiled. "Oh, yes; I shall be the trained nurse."
The Colonel rose. "If you can discover the truth and let me know
what it is my daughter is concealing from me I shall be eternally
grateful," he said. "I shall expect you to-morrow at noon."
"To-morrow at noon you will expect the trained nurse for whom the
doctor has telegraphed. Good evening."
I went to the door with Colonel Hargreaves, and saw him down the
garden to the front gate.
When I went back to the house Dorcas Dene was waiting for me in the
hall. "Are you busy for the next few days?" she said.
"No--I have practically nothing to do."
"Then come to Godalming with me to-morrow. You are an artist, and I
must get you permission to sketch that lake while I am nursing my
patient indoors."
* * * * * * *
It was past noon when the fly, hired from the station, stopped at
the lodge gates of Orley Park, and the lodge-keeper's wife opened
them to let us in.
"You are the nurse for Miss Maud, I suppose, miss?" she said,
glancing at Dorcas's neat hospital nurse's costume.
"Yes."
"The Colonel and the doctor are both at the house expecting you,
miss--I hope it isn't serious with the poor young lady."
"I hope not," said Dorcas, with a pleasant smile.
A minute or two later the fly pulled up at the door of a picturesque
old Elizabethan mansion. The Colonel, who had seen the fly from the
window, was on the steps waiting for us, and at once conducted us
into the library. Dorcas explained my presence in a few words. I was
her assistant, and through me she would be able to make all the
necessary inquiries in the neighbourhood.
"To your people Mr. Saxon will be an artist to whom you have given
permission to sketch the house and the grounds--I think that will
be best."
The Colonel promised that I should have free access at all hours to
the grounds, and it was arranged that I should stay at a pretty
little inn which was about half a mile from the park. Having received
full instructions on the way down from Dorcas, I knew exactly what
to do, and bade her good-bye until the evening, when I was to call
at the house to see her.
The doctor came into the room to conduct the new nurse to the
patient's bedside, and I left to fulfil my instructions.
At "The Chequers," which was the name of the inn, it was no sooner
known that I was an artist, and had permission to sketch in the
grounds of Orley Park, than the landlady commenced to entertain me
with accounts of the accident which had nearly cost Miss Hargreaves
her life.
The fainting-fit story, which was the only one that had got about,
had been accepted in perfect faith.
"It's a lonely place, that lake, and there's nobody about the
grounds, you see, at night, sir--it was a wonder the poor young
lady was found so soon."
"Who found her?" I asked.
"One of the gardeners who lives in a cottage in the park. He'd been
to Godalming for the evening, and was going home past the lake."
"What time was it?"
"Nearly ten o'clock. It was lucky he saw her, for it had been dark
nearly an hour then, and there was no moon."
"What did he think when he found her?"
"Well, sir, to tell you the truth, he thought at first it was
suicide, and that the young lady hadn't gone far enough in and had
lost her senses."
"Of course, he couldn't have thought it was murder or anything of
that sort," I said, "because nobody could get in at night--without
coming through the lodge gates."
"Oh! yes, they could at one place, but it'ud have to be somebody
who knew the dogs or was with someone who did. There's a couple of
big mastiffs have got a good run there, and no stranger 'ud try to
clamber over--it's a side gate used by the family, sir--after they'd
started barking."
"Did they bark that night at all, do you know?"
"Well, yes," said the landlady. "Now I come to think of it,
Mr. Peters--that's the lodge-keeper--heard 'em, but they was quiet
in a minute, so he took no more notice."
That afternoon the first place I made up my mind to sketch was the
Lodge. I found Mr. Peters at home, and my pass from the Colonel
secured his good graces at once. His wife had told him of the
strange gentleman who had arrived with the nurse, and I explained
that there being only one fly at the station and our destination
the same, the nurse had kindly allowed me to share the vehicle
with her.
I made elaborate pencil marks and notes in my new sketching book,
telling Mr. Peters I was only doing something preliminary and
rough, in order to conceal the amateurish nature of my efforts,
and keep the worthy man gossiping about the "accident" to his
young mistress.
I referred to the landlady's statement that he had heard dogs bark
that night.
"Oh, yes, but they were quiet directly."
"Probably some stranger passing down by the side gate, eh?"
"Most likely, sir. I was a bit uneasy at first, but when they quieted
down I thought it was all right."
"Why were you uneasy?"
"Well, there'd been a queer sort of a looking man hanging about that
evening. My missus saw him peering in at the lodge gates about
seven o'clock."
"A tramp?"
"No, a gentlemanly sort of man, but he gave my missus a turn, he had
such wild, staring eyes. But he spoke all right. My missus asked him
what he wanted, and he asked her what was the name of the big house
he could see, and who lived there. She told him it was Orley Park,
and Colonel Hargreaves lived there, and he thanked her and went
away. A tourist, maybe, sir, or perhaps an artist gentleman, like
yourself."
"Staying in the neighbourhood and examining its beauties perhaps."
"No; when I spoke about it the next day in the town I heard as he'd
come by the train that afternoon; the porters had noticed him, he
seemed so odd."
I finished my rough sketch and then asked Mr. Peters to take me to
the scene of the accident. It was a large lake and answered the
description given by the Colonel.
"That there's the place where Miss Maud was found," said Mr. Peters.
"You see it's shallow there, and her head was just on the bank here
out of the water."
"Thank you. That's a delightful little island in the middle. I'll
smoke a pipe here and sketch. Don't let me detain you."
The lodge-keeper retired, and obeying the instructions received from
Dorcas Dene, I examined the spot carefully.
The marks of hobnailed boots were distinctly visible in the mud at
the side, near the place where the struggle, admitted by
Miss Hargreaves, had taken place. They might be the tramp's--they
might be the gardener's; I was not skilled enough in the art of
footprints to determine. But I had obtained a certain amount of
information, and with that, at seven o'clock, I went to the house
and asked for the Colonel.
I had, of course, nothing to say to him, except to ask him to let
Dorcas Dene know that I was there. In a few minutes Dorcas came to
me with her bonnet and cloak on.
"I'm going to get a walk while it is light," she said; "come
with me."
Directly we were outside I gave her my information, and she at once
decided to visit the lake.
She examined the scene of the accident carefully, and I pointed out
the hobnailed boot marks.
"Yes," she said, "those are the gardener's probably--I'm looking
for someone else's."
"Whose?"
"These," she said, suddenly stopping and pointing to a series of
impressions in the soil at the edge. "Look--here are a woman's
footprints, and here are larger ones beside them--now close to--now
a little way apart--now crossing each other. Do you see anything
particular in these footprints?"
"No--except that there are no nails in them."
"Exactly--the footprints are small, but larger than Miss Hargreaves'
--the shape is an elegant one, you see the toes are pointed, and
the sole is a narrow one. No tramp would have boots like those.
Where did you say Mrs. Peters saw that strange-looking gentleman?"
"Peering through the lodge gates."
"Let us go there at once."
Mrs. Peters came out and opened the gates for us.
"What a lovely evening," said Dorcas. "Is the town very far?"
"Two miles, miss."
"Oh, that's too far for me to-night."
She took out her purse and selected some silver.
"Will you please send down the first thing in the morning and buy me
a bottle of Wood Violet scent at the chemist's. I always use it, and
I've come away without any."
She was just going to hand some silver to Mrs. Peters, when she
dropped her purse in the roadway, and the money rolled in every
direction.
We picked most of it up, but Dorcas declared there was another
half-sovereign. For fully a quarter of an hour she peered about in
every direction outside the lodge gates for that missing
half-sovereign, and I assisted her. She searched for quite ten
minutes in one particular spot, a piece of sodden, loose roadway
close against the right-hand gate.
Suddenly she exclaimed that she had found it, and, slipping her
hand into her pocket, rose, and, handing Mrs. Peters a five-shilling
piece for the scent, beckoned me to follow her, and strolled down
the road.
"How came you to drop your purse? Are you nervous to-night?" I said.
"Not at all," replied Dorcas, with a smile. "I dropped my purse that
the money might roll and give me an opportunity of closely examining
the ground outside the gates."
"Did you really find your half-sovereign?"
"I never lost one; but I found what I wanted."
"And that was?"
"The footprints of the man who stood outside the gates that night.
They are exactly the same shape as those by the side of the lake.
The person Maud Hargreaves struggled with that night, the person who
flung her into the lake and whose guilt she endeavoured to conceal
by declaring she had met with an accident, was the man who wanted
to know the name of the place, and asked who lived there--_the man
with the wild eyes._"
_IV. THE SECRET OF THE LAKE_
"You are absolutely certain that the footprints of the man with the
wild eyes, who frightened Mrs. Peters at the gate, and the
footprints which are mixed up with those of Miss Hargreaves by the
side of the lake, are the same?" I said to Dorcas Dene.
"Absolutely certain."
"Then perhaps, if you describe him, the Colonel may be able to
recognise him."
"No," said Dorcas Dene, "I have already asked him if he knew anyone
who could possibly bear his daughter a grudge, and he declares that
there is no one to his knowledge. Miss Hargreaves has scarcely
any acquaintances."
"And has had no love affair?" I asked.
"None, her father says, but of course he can only answer for the
last three years. Previously to that he was in India, and Maud--who
was sent home at the age of fourteen, when her mother died--had
lived with an aunt at Norwood."
"Who do you think this man was who managed to get into the grounds
and meet or surprise Miss Hargreaves by the lake--a stranger to her?"
"No; had he been a stranger, she would not have shielded him by
inventing the fainting fit story."
We had walked some distance from the house, when an empty station
fly passed us. We got in, Dorcas telling the man to drive us to the
station.
When we got there, she told me to go and interview the porters and
try and find out if a man of the description of our suspect had
left on the night of the "accident."
I found the man who had told Mr. Peters that he had seen such a
person arrive, and had noticed the peculiar expression of his eyes.
This man assured me that no such person had left from that station.
He had told his mates about him, and some of them would be sure to
have seen him. The stranger brought no luggage, and gave up a single
ticket from Waterloo.
Dorcas was waiting for me outside, and I gave her my information.
"No luggage," she said; "then he wasn't going to an hotel or to stay
at a private house."
"But he might be living somewhere about."
"No; the porters would have recognised him if he had been in the
habit of coming here."
"But he must have gone away after flinging Miss Hargreaves into the
water. He might have got out of the grounds again and walked to
another station, and caught a train back to London."
"Yes, he might," said Dorcas, "but I don't think he did. Come, we'll
take the fly back to Orley Park."
Just before we reached the park Dorcas stopped the driver, and we
got out and dismissed the man.
"Whereabouts are those dogs--near the private wooden door in the
wall used by the family, aren't they?" she said to me.
"Yes, Peters pointed the spot out to me this afternoon."
"Very well, I'm going in. Meet me by the lake to-morrow morning
about nine. But watch me now as far as the gates. I'll wait outside
five minutes before ringing. When you see I'm there, go to that
portion of the wall near the private door. Clamber up and peer over.
When the dogs begin to bark, and come at you, notice if you could
possibly drop over and escape them without someone they knew called
them off. Then jump down again and go back to the inn."
I obeyed Dorcas's instructions; and when I had succeeded in climbing
to the top of the wall, the dogs flew out of their kennel, and
commenced to bark furiously. Had I dropped I must have fallen
straight into their grip. Suddenly I heard a shout, and I recognised
the voice--it was the lodge-keeper. I dropped back into the road and
crept along in the shadow of the wall. In the distance I could hear
Peters talking to someone, and I knew what had happened. In the act
of letting Dorcas in, he had heard the dogs, and had hurried off to
see what was the matter. Dorcas had followed him.
* * * * * * *
At nine o'clock next morning I found Dorcas waiting for me.
"You did your work admirably last night," she said. "Peters was in a
terrible state of alarm. He was very glad for me to come with him. He
quieted the dogs, and we searched about everywhere in the shrubbery
to see if anyone was in hiding. That man wasn't let in at the door
that night by Miss Hargreaves; he dropped over. I found the
impression of two deep footprints close together, exactly as they
would be made by a drop or jump down from a height."
"Did he go back that way--_were there return footprints_?"
I thought I had made a clever suggestion, but Dorcas smiled, and
shook her head. "I didn't look. How could he return past the dogs
when Miss Hargreaves was lying in the lake? They'd have torn him
to pieces."
"And you still think this man with the wild eyes is guilty? Who can
he have been?"
"His name was Victor."
"You have discovered that!" I exclaimed. "Has Miss Hargreaves been
talking to you?"
"Last night I tried a little experiment. When she was asleep, and
evidently dreaming, I went quietly in the dark and stood just behind
the bed, and in the gruffest voice I could assume, I said, bending
down to her ear, 'Maud!'
"She started up, and cried out, 'Victor!'
"In a moment I was by her side, and found her trembling violently.
'What's the matter, dear?' I said, 'have you been dreaming?'
"'Yes--yes,' she said. 'I--I was dreaming.'
"I soothed her, and talked to her a little while, and finally she
lay down again and fell asleep."
"That's something," I said "to have got the man's Christian name."
"Yes, it's a little, but I think we shall have the surname to-day.
You must go up to town and do a little commission for me presently.
In the meantime, pull that boat in and row me across to the fowl
island. I want to search it."
"You don't imagine the man's hiding there," I said. "It's too small."
"Pull me over," said Dorcas, getting into the boat.
I obeyed, and presently we were on the little island.
Dorcas carefully surveyed the lake in every direction. Then she
walked round and examined the foliage and the reeds that were at
the edge and drooping into the water.
Suddenly pushing a mass of close overhanging growth aside, she
thrust her hand deep down under it into the water and drew up a
black, saturated, felt hat.
"I thought if anything drifted that night, this is where it would
get caught and entangled," said Dorcas.
"If it is that man's hat, he must have gone away bareheaded."
"Quite so," replied Dorcas, "but first let us ascertain if it is
his. Row ashore at once."
She wrung the water from the hat, squeezed it together and wrapped
it up in her pocket-handkerchief and put it under her cloak.
When we were ashore, I went to the lodge and got Mrs. Peters on to
the subject of the man with the wild eyes. Then I asked what sort of
a hat he had on, and Mrs. Peters said it was a felt hat with a dent
in the middle, and I knew that our find was a good one.
When I told Dorcas she gave a little smile of satisfaction.
"We've got his Christian name and his hat," she said; "now we want
the rest of him. You can catch the 11.20 easily."
"Yes."
She drew an envelope from her pocket and took a carte de visite
from it.
"That's the portrait of a handsome young fellow," she said. "By the
style and size I should think it was taken four or five years ago.
The photographers are the London Stereoscopic Company--the number of
the negative is 111,492. If you go to Regent Street, they will
search their books and give you the name and address of the
original. Get it, and come back here."
"Is that the man?" I said.
"I think so."
"How on earth did you get it?"
"I amused myself while Miss Hargreaves was asleep by looking over the
album in her boudoir. It was an old album, and filled with portraits
of relatives and friends. I should say there were over fifty, some
of them being probably her school-fellows. I thought I _might_ find
something, you know. People have portraits given them, put them in
an album, and almost forget they are there. I fancied Miss Hargreaves
might have forgotten."
"But how did you select this from fifty? There were other male
portraits, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, but I took out every portrait and examined the back and
the margin."
I took the photo from Dorcas and looked at it. I noticed that a
portion of the back had been rubbed away and was rough.
"That's been done with an ink eraser," said Dorcas. "That made me
concentrate on this particular photo. There has been a name written
there or some word the recipient didn't want other eyes to see."
"That is only surmise."
"Quite so--but there's a certainty in the photo itself. Look closely
at that little diamond scarf-pin in the necktie. What shape is it?"
"It looks like a small V."
"Exactly. It was fashionable a few years ago for gentlemen to wear
a small initial pin. V. stands for Victor--take that and the erasure
together, and I think it's worth a return fare to town to find out
what name and address are opposite the negative number in the books
of the London Stereoscopic Company."
* * * * * * *
Before two o'clock I was interviewing the manager of the Stereoscopic
Company, and he readily referred to the books. The photograph had
been taken six years previously, and the name and address of the
sitter were "Mr. Victor Dubois, Anerley Road, Norwood."
Following Dorcas Dene's instructions, I proceeded at once to the
address given, and made enquiries for a Mr. Victor Dubois. No one
of that name resided there. The present tenants had been in
possession for three years.
As I was walking back along the road I met an old postman. I thought
I would ask him if he knew the name anywhere in the neighbourhood.
He thought a minute, then said, "Yes--now I come to think of it
there was a Dubois here at No. --, but that was five years ago or
more. He was an oldish, white-haired gentleman."
"An old gentleman--Victor Dubois!"
"Ah, no--the old gentleman's name was Mounseer Dubois, but there
was a Victor. I suppose that must have been his son as lived with
him. I know the name. There used to be letters addressed there for
Mr. Victor most every day--sometimes twice a day--always in the same
hand-writing, a lady's--that's what made me notice it."
"And you don't know where M. Dubois and his son went to?"
"No, I did hear as the old gentleman went off his head, and was put
in a lunatic asylum; but they went out o' my round."
"You don't know what he was, I suppose?"
"Oh, it said on the brass plate, 'Professor of Languages.'"
I went back to town and took the first train to Godalming, and
hastened to Orley Court to report the results of my enquiries
to Dorcas.
She was evidently pleased, for she complimented me. Then she rang
the bell--we were in the dining-room--and the servant entered.
"Will you let the Colonel know that I should like to see him?"
said Dorcas, and the servant went to deliver the message.
"Are you going to tell him everything?" I said.
"I am going to tell him nothing yet," replied Dorcas. "I want him
to tell me something."
The Colonel entered. His face was worn, and he was evidently
worrying himself a great deal.
"Have you anything to tell me?" he said eagerly. "Have you found
out what my poor girl is hiding from me?"
"I'm afraid I cannot tell you yet. But I want to ask you a
few questions."
"I have given you all the information I can already," replied the
Colonel a little bitterly.
"All you recollect, but now try and think. Your daughter, before
you came back from India, was with her aunt at Norwood. Where was
she educated from the time she left India?"
"She went to school at Brighton at first, but from the time she was
sixteen she had private instruction at home."
"She had professors, I suppose, for music, French, etc.?"
"Yes, I believe so. I paid bills for that sort of thing. My sister
sent them out to me to India."
"Can you remember the name of Dubois?"
The Colonel thought a little while.
"Dubois? Dubois? Dubois?" he said. "I have an idea there was such a
name among the accounts my sister sent to me, but whether it was a
dressmaker or a French master I really can't say."
"Then I think we will take it that your daughter had lessons at
Norwood from a French professor named Dubois. Now, in any letters
that your late sister wrote you to India, did she ever mention
anything that had caused her uneasiness on Maud's account?"
"Only once," replied the Colonel, "and everything was satisfactorily
explained afterwards. She left home one day at nine o'clock in the
morning, and did not return until four in the afternoon. Her aunt
was exceedingly angry, and Maud explained that she had met some
friends at the Crystal Palace--she attended the drawing class
there--had gone to see one of her fellow students off at the
station, and sitting in the carriage, the train had started before
she could get out and she had had to go on to London. I expect my
sister told me that to show me how thoroughly I might rely upon her
as my daughter's guardian."
"Went on to London?" said Dorcas to me under her voice, "and she
could have got out in three minutes at the next station to Norwood!"
Then turning to the Colonel, she said, "Now, Colonel, when your wife
died, what did you do with her wedding ring?"
"Good heavens, madam!" exclaimed the Colonel, rising and pacing the
room, "what can my poor wife's wedding ring have to do with my
daughter's being flung into the lake yonder?"
"I am sorry if my question appears absurd," replied Dorcas quietly,
"but will you kindly answer it?"
"My wife's wedding ring is on my dead wife's finger in her coffin in
the graveyard at Simla," exclaimed the Colonel, "and now perhaps
you'll tell me what all this means!"
"To-morrow," said Dorcas. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll take a
walk with Mr. Saxon. Miss Hargreaves' maid is with her, and she will
be all right until I return."
"Very well, very well!" exclaimed the Colonel, "but I beg--I pray of
you to tell me what you know as soon as you can. I am setting spies
upon my own child, and to me it is monstrous--and yet--and yet--
what can I do? She won't tell me, and for her sake I must know--I
must know."
"You shall, Colonel Hargreaves," said Dorcas, going up to him and
holding out her hand. "Believe me, you have my sincerest sympathy."
The old Colonel grasped the proffered hand of Dorcas Dene.
"Thank you," he said, his lips quivering.
* * * * * * *
Directly we were in the grounds Dorcas Dene turned eagerly to me.
"I'm treating you very badly," she said, "but our task is nearly
over. You must go back to town to-night. The first thing to-morrow
morning go to Somerset House. You will find an old fellow named Daddy
Green, a searcher in the inquiry room. Tell him you come from me, and
give him this paper. When he has searched, telegraph the result to
me, and come back by the next train."
I looked at the paper, and found written on it in Dorcas's hand:
"_Search wanted._
Marriage--Victor Dubois and Maud Eleanor Hargreaves--probably
between the years 1890 and 1893--London."
I looked up from the paper at Dorcas Dene.
"Whatever makes you think she is a married woman?" I said.
"This," exclaimed Dorcas, drawing an unworn wedding-ring from her
purse. "I found it among a lot of trinkets at the bottom of a box
her maid told me was her jewel-case. I took the liberty of trying
all her keys till I opened it. A jewel-box tells many secrets to
those who know how to read them."
"And you concluded from that----?
"That she wouldn't keep a wedding-ring without it had belonged to
someone dear to her or had been placed on her own finger. It is
quite unworn, you see, so it was taken off immediately after the
ceremony. It was only to make doubly sure that I asked the Colonel
where his wife's was."
* * * * * * *
I duly repaired to Somerset House, and soon after midday Daddy
Green, the searcher, brought a paper and handed it to me. It was
a copy of the certificate of the marriage of Victor Dubois,
bachelor, aged twenty-six, and Maud Eleanor Hargreaves, aged
twenty-one, in London, in the year 1891. I telegraphed the news,
wording the message simply "Yes," and the date, and I followed my
wire by the first train.
When I arrived at Orley Park I rang several times before anyone
came. Presently Mrs. Peters, looking very white and excited, came
from the grounds and apologised for keeping me waiting.
"Oh, sir--such a dreadful thing!" she said--"a body in the lake!"
"A body!"
"Yes, sir--a man. The nurse as came with you here that day, she was
rowing herself on the lake, and she must have stirred it pushing
with her oar, for it come up all tangled with weeds. It's a man,
sir, and I do believe it's the man I saw at the gate that night."
"_The man with the wild eyes!_" I exclaimed.
"Yes sir! Oh, it is dreadful--Miss Maud first, and then this.
Oh, what can it mean!"
I found Dorcas standing at the edge of the lake, and Peters and two
of the gardeners lifting the drowned body of a man into the boat
which was alongside.
Dorcas was giving instructions. "Lay it in the boat, and cover it
with a tarpaulin," she said. "Mind, nothing is to be touched till
the police come. I will go and find the Colonel."
As she turned away I met her.
"What a terrible thing! Is it Dubois?"
"Yes," replied Dorcas. "I suspected he was there yesterday, but I
wanted to find him myself instead of having the lake dragged."
"Why?"
"Well, I didn't want anyone else to search the pockets. There might
have been papers or letters, you know, which would have been read at
the inquest, and might have compromised Miss Hargreaves. But there
was nothing--"
"What--you searched!"
"Yes, after I'd brought the poor fellow to the surface with the
oars."
"But how do you think he got in?"
"Suicide--insanity. The father was taken to a lunatic asylum--you
learned that at Norwood yesterday. Son doubtless inherited tendency.
Looks like a case of homicidal mania--he attacked Miss Hargreaves,
whom he had probably tracked after years of separation, and after he
had as he thought killed her, he drowned himself. At any rate,
Miss Hargreaves is a free woman. She was evidently terrified of her
husband when he was alive, and so--"
I guessed what Dorcas was thinking as we went together to the house.
At the door she held out her hand. "You had better go to the inn and
return to town to-night," she said. "You can do no more good, and
had better keep out of it. I shall be home to-morrow. Come to Oak
Tree Road in the evening."
* * * * * * *
The next evening Dorcas told me all that had happened after I left.
Paul had already heard it, and when I arrived was profuse in his
thanks for the assistance I had rendered his wife. Mrs. Lester,
however, felt compelled to remark that she never thought a daughter
of hers would go gadding about the country fishing up corpses for
a living.
Dorcas had gone to the Colonel and told him everything. The Colonel
was in a terrible state, but Dorcas told him that the only way in
which to ascertain the truth was for them to go to the unhappy girl
together, and attempt, with the facts in their possession, to
persuade her to divulge the rest.
When the Colonel told his daughter that the man she had married had
flung her into the lake that night, she was dumbfounded, and became
hysterical, but when she learned that Dubois had been found in the
lake she became alarmed and instantly told all she knew.
She had been in the habit of meeting Victor Dubois constantly when
she was at Norwood, at first with his father--her French master--and
afterwards alone. He was handsome, young, romantic, and they fell
madly in love. He was going away for some time to an appointment
abroad, and he urged her to marry him secretly. She foolishly
consented, and they parted at the church, she returning to her home
and he going abroad the same evening.
She received letters from him clandestinely from time to time. Then
he wrote that his father had become insane and had to be removed to
a lunatic asylum, and he was returning. He had only time to see to
his father's removal and return to his appointment. She did not hear
from him for a long time, and then through a friend at Norwood who
knew the Dubois and their relatives she made enquiries. Victor had
returned to England, and met with an accident which had injured his
head severely. He became insane and was taken to a lunatic asylum.
The poor girl resolved to keep her marriage a secret for ever then,
especially as her father had returned from India, and she knew how
bitterly it would distress him to learn that his daughter was the
wife of a madman.
On the night of the affair Maud was in the grounds by herself. She
was strolling by the lake after dinner, when she heard a sound, and
the dogs began to bark. Looking up, she saw Victor Dubois scaling
the wall. Fearful that the dogs would bring Peters or someone on the
scene, she ran to them and silenced them, and her husband leapt down
and stood by her.
"Come away!" she said, fearing the dogs might attack him and begin
to bark again, and she led him round by the lake which was out of
sight of the house and the lodge.
She forgot for the moment in her excitement that he had been mad.
At first he was gentle and kind. He told her he had been ill and in
an asylum, but had recently been discharged cured. Directly he
regained his liberty he set out in search of his wife, and
ascertained from an old Norwood acquaintance that Miss Hargreaves
was now living with her father at Orley Park, near Godalming.
Maud begged him to go away quietly, and she would write to him. He
tried to take her in his arms and kiss her, but instinctively she
shrank from him. Instantly he became furious. Seized with a sudden
mania, he grasped her by the throat. She struggled and freed herself.
They were at the edge of the lake. Suddenly the maniac got her by
the throat again, and hurled her down into the water. She fell in
up to her waist, but managed to drag herself towards the edge, but
before she emerged she fell senseless--fortunately with her head on
the shore just out of the water.
The murderer, probably thinking that she was dead, must have waded
out into the deep water and drowned himself.
Before she left Orley Park Dorcas advised the Colonel to let the
inquest be held without any light being thrown on the affair by him.
Only he was to take care that the police received information that a
man answering the description of the suicide had recently been
discharged from a lunatic asylum.
We heard later that at the inquest an official from the asylum
attended, and the local jury found that Victor Dubois, a lunatic,
got into the grounds in some way, and drowned himself in the lake
while temporarily insane. It was suggested by the coroner that
probably Miss Hargreaves, who was too unwell to attend, had not
seen the man, but might have been alarmed by the sound of his
footsteps, and that this would account for her fainting away near
the water's edge. At any rate, the inquest ended in a satisfactory
verdict, and the Colonel shortly afterwards took his daughter
abroad with him on a Continental tour for the benefit of her health.
But of this of course we knew nothing on the evening after the
eventful discovery, when I met Dorcas once more beneath her
own roof-tree.
Paul was delighted to have his wife back again, and she devoted
herself to him, and that evening had eyes and ears for no one
else--not even for her faithful "assistant."
_V. THE DIAMOND LIZARD_
I had received a little note from Dorcas Dene, telling me that Paul
and her mother had gone to the seaside for a fortnight, and that
she was busy on a case which was keeping her from home, so that it
would not be of any use my calling at Oak Tree Road at present, as
I should find no one there but the servants and whitewashers.
It had been a very hot July, but I was unable to leave town myself,
having work on hand which compelled me to be on the spot. But I got
away from the close, dusty streets during the daytime as frequently
as I could, and one hot, broiling afternoon I found myself in a
brown holland suit on the terrace of the "Star and Garter" at
Richmond, vainly endeavouring to ward off the fierce rays of the
afternoon sun with one of those white umbrellas which are common
enough on the Continent, but rare enough to attract attention in a
land where fashion is one thing and comfort another.
My favourite "Star and Garter" waiter, Karl, an amiable and voluble
little German, who, during a twenty years' residence in England, had
acquired the English waiter's love of betting on horse-races, had
personally attended to my wants, and brought me a cup of freshly-made
black coffee and a petit verre of specially fine Courvoisier,
strongly recommended by Mr. James, the genial and obliging manager.
Comforted by the coffee and overpowered by the heat, I was just
dropping off into a siesta, when I was attracted by a familiar voice
addressing me by name.
I raised my umbrella, and at first imagined that I must have made a
mistake. The voice was undoubtedly that of Dorcas Dene, but the lady
who stood smiling in front of me was to all outward appearance an
American tourist. There was the little courier bag attached to the
waist-belt, with which we always associate the pretty American
accent during the great American touring season. The lady in front
of me was beautifully dressed, and appeared through the veil she was
wearing to be young and well-favoured, but her hair was silvery grey
and her complexion that of a brunette. Now Dorcas Dene was a blonde
with soft brown wavy hair, and so I hesitated for a moment,
imagining that I must have fallen into a half doze and have dreamed
that I heard Dorcas calling me.
The lady, who evidently noticed my doubt and hesitation, smiled and
came close to the garden seat on which I had made myself as
comfortable as the temperature would allow me.
"Good afternoon," she said. "I saw you lunching in the restaurant,
but I couldn't speak to you then. I'm here on business."
It _was_ Dorcas Dene.
"I have half an hour to spare," she said. "My people are at the
little table yonder. They've just ordered their coffee, so they
won't be going yet."
She sat down at the other end of the garden seat, and, following a
little inclination of her parasol, I saw that the "people" she
alluded to were a young fellow of about three-and-twenty, a handsome
woman of about five-and-thirty, rather loudly dressed, and a
remarkably pretty girl in a charming tailor-made costume of some
soft white material, and a straw hat with a narrow red ribbon round
it. The young lady wore a red sailor's-knot tie over a white shirt.
The red of the hat-band and the tie showed out against the whiteness
of the costume, and were conspicuous objects in the bright sunlight.
"How beautiful the river is from here," said Dorcas, after I had
inquired how Paul was, and had learnt that he was at Eastbourne in
apartments with Mrs. Lester, and that the change had benefited his
health considerably.
As she spoke Dorcas drew a small pair of glasses from her pocket,
and appeared very much interested in a little boat with a big white
sail, making its way lazily down the river, which glistened like a
sheet of silver in the sunlight.
"Yes," I said, "it's a scene that always delights our American
visitors, but I suppose you're not here to admire the beauties
of the Thames?"
"No," said Dorcas, laughing. "If I had leisure for that I should
be at Eastbourne with my poor old Paul. I've a case in hand."
"And the _case_ is yonder--the young man, the lady, and the pretty
girl with the red tie?"
Dorcas nodded assent. "Yes--she is pretty, isn't she? Take my
glasses and include her in the scenery, and then, if you are not too
fascinated to spare a glance for anybody else, look at the
young gentleman."
I took the hint and the glasses. The young lady was more than
pretty; she was as perfect a specimen of handsome English girlhood
as I had ever seen. I looked from her to the elder lady, and was
struck by the contrast. She was much too bold-looking and showy to
be the companion of so modest-looking and bewitching a damsel.
I shifted my glasses from the ladies to the young gentleman.
"A fine, handsome young fellow, is he not?" said Dorcas.
"Yes. Who is he?"
"His name is Claude Charrington. He is the son of Mr. Charrington,
the well-known barrister, and I am at the present moment a
parlour-maid in his stepmother's service."
I looked at the silver-haired, smart American lady with astonishment.
"A parlour-maid! Like that!" I exclaimed.
"No; I've been home and made up for Richmond. I have a day out. I
should like you to see me as a parlour-maid at the Charringtons--the
other servants think I can't have been in very good places; but they
are very kind to me, especially Johnson, the footman, and
Mrs. Charrington is quite satisfied."
"Does she know you are not really a parlour-maid?"
"Yes. It was she who engaged me to investigate a little mystery
which is troubling her very much. I had to be in the house to make
my inquiries, and she consented that I should come as a parlour-maid.
It is a very curious case, and I am very interested in it."
"Then so am I," I said, "and you must tell me all about it."
"About ten days ago," said Dorcas, "just as I had arranged to have a
fortnight at the seaside with Paul, a lady called on me in a state
of great agitation.
"She told me that her name was Mrs. Charrington, that she was the
second wife of Mr. Charrington, the barrister, and that she was in
great distress of mind owing to the loss of a diamond and ruby
bracelet, a diamond and ruby pendant, and a small diamond lizard,
which had mysteriously disappeared from her jewel case.
"I asked her at once why she had not informed the police instead of
coming to me; and she explained that her suspicions pointed to a
member of her own family as the thief, and she was terrified to go
to the police for fear their investigations would be a terrible one.
"I asked her if she had informed her husband of her loss, and if the
servants knew of it, and she told me that she had only just
discovered it, and had not said a word to anyone but her own family
solicitor, who had advised her to come to me at once, as the matter
was a delicate one. Her husband was away in the country, and she
dreaded telling him until she was quite sure the person she suspected
was innocent, and she had not yet said anything to the servants, as,
of course, if she did they would have a right to insist on the matter
being investigated in order that their characters might be cleared.
It was a most unpleasant situation, apart from the loss of the
valuable jewels, which had been given to her a few days previously
as a birthday present. She was in the position of being compelled to
conceal her loss for fear of bringing the guilt home to a member of
her family."
"And whom does she suspect?" I asked.
"The young gentleman who is paying such marked attention yonder to
the pretty girl in the red tie--her stepson, Mr. Claude Charrington,"
answered Dorcas, picking up her glasses and surveying the "scenery."
"Why does she suspect him?" I asked, following her gaze.
"Mrs. Charrington tells me that her stepson has lately caused his
father considerable anxiety owing to his extravagance and
recklessness. He has just left Oxford, and is going to the Bar, but
he has been very erratic, and lately has evidently been pressed for
money. Mrs. Charrington is very fond of him, and he has always
appeared to return her affection, and has frequently come to her
with his troubles. Mr. Charrington is an irritable man, and inclined
to be severe with his son, and the stepmother has frequently acted
as peacemaker between them. She has always endeavoured to make
Claude look upon her as his own mother.
"A few days before the robbery was discovered Claude laughingly told
her that he was 'in a devil of a mess' again, and that in order to
get a little ready money to carry on with he had had to pawn his
watch and chain for ten pounds. His father had recently given him
a sum of money to satisfy some pressing creditors, but had insisted
on deducting a certain amount monthly from his allowance until it
was paid. Claude showed Mrs. Charrington the ticket for the watch
and chain, and jokingly said that if things didn't get better with
him he would have to give up all idea of the Bar and go to South
Africa and look for a diamond mine. He had told her that he hadn't
dared tell the Governor how much he owed, and that the assistance
had only staved off the more pressing of his creditors.
"Mrs. Charrington urged him to make a clean breast of everything
on his father's return. He shook his head, and presently laughed the
matter off, saying perhaps something would turn up. He wasn't going
to the Governor again if he could possibly help it.
"That was the situation of affairs two days before the robbery was
discovered. But two days after he had let his stepmother see the
ticket for his watch and chain, Claude Charrington was in funds
again. Mrs. Charrington discovered it quite accidentally. Claude
took out a pocket-book at the breakfast table to look for a letter,
and in taking out an envelope he pulled out a packet of banknotes.
He said, 'Oh, I've had a stroke of luck,' but he coloured up and
looked confused. That evening Mrs. Charrington--who, by the bye, I
should tell you was in mourning for her brother, who had just died
in India--went to her jewel case, and to her horror discovered that
a diamond and ruby bracelet, a diamond and ruby pendant, and a
diamond lizard had disappeared. The cases were there, but empty.
"Instantly the idea occurred to her that Claude, knowing she was in
mourning, and not likely to wear the jewels for some time, had
abstracted them and pawned them--perhaps intending to put them back
again as soon as he could get the money.
"She was strengthened in her suspicion by his acquisition of
banknotes at a time when, according to his own account, he had
pawned his watch to tide over until his allowance became due; his
confusion when she noticed the banknotes; and finally by her
suddenly remembering that two evenings previously after she had
dressed for dinner and was in the drawing-room, she had gone
upstairs again to fetch her keys, which she remembered having left
on the dressing-table. Outside her room she met Claude with his dog,
a fox-terrier, at his heels.
"'I've been hunting all over the place for Jack, Mater,' he said,
'and I heard him in your room. The little beggar was scratching away
at the wainscoting like mad. There must be rats there. I had to go
in to get him away--I was afraid he'd do some damage.'
"Mrs. Charrington found her keys on the dressing-table, and thought
no more of Claude and his explanation until she missed the jewellery.
Then it occurred to her that Claude had been in her room and had had
an opportunity of using her keys, which not only opened the drawer
in which she kept her jewel case, but the case itself."
Dorcas finished her story, and I sat for a moment gazing at the young
fellow, who seemed supremely happy. Could it be possible that if he
were guilty his crime could trouble him so little?
"The circumstances are very suspicious," I said, presently, "but
don't you think Mrs. Charrington ought at once to have taxed her
stepson, and given him an opportunity of clearing himself?"
"He would naturally have denied the charge under any circumstances.
But presuming him to be innocent, the bare idea that his stepmother
could have thought him guilty would have been most painful to him.
That is the sort of mistake one can never atone for. No,
Mrs. Charrington did the wisest thing she could have done. She
decided, if possible, to be sure of his guilt or innocence before
letting anyone--even her husband--know of her loss."
"And how far do your investigations go in other directions?"
"So far, I am still in the dark. I have had every opportunity of
mixing with the servants and studying them, and I don't believe for
a moment that they are concerned in the matter. The footman bets,
but is worried because he has not paid back a sovereign he borrowed
last week to put on a 'dead cert.,' which didn't come off. The
lady's maid is an honourable, high-minded girl, engaged to be
married to a most respectable man who has been in a position of
trust for some years. I cannot find the slightest suspicious
circumstances connected with any of the other servants."
"Then you are inclined to take Mrs. Charrington's view?"
"No, I am not. And yet----Well, I shall be able to answer more
definitely when I have found out a little more about that young lady
with the red tie. I have had no opportunity of making inquiries
about her. I found out that Claude Charrington was coming to the
'Star and Garter' this morning when Johnson came downstairs with a
telegram to the manager, 'Reserve window table for two o'clock'; and
when I got here the little party were already at luncheon."
"But the young lady may have nothing to do with the matter. When a
young man pawns someone else's jewellery to provide himself with
ready money, surely the last person he would tell would be the young
lady he is entertaining at the 'Star and Garter.'"
"Quite so," said Dorcas, "but I have seen the young lady rather more
closely than you have. I sat at the next table to them in the
restaurant. Let us take a little stroll and pass them now."
Dorcas rose, and with her parasol shading her face strolled down on
the terrace, and I walked by her side.
As we passed quite close to Claude Charrington and his friends I
looked at the young lady. The end of her red necktie was fastened
to the shirt _with a diamond lizard._
"Good heavens!" I said to Dorcas when we were out of hearing, "is
that part of the missing jewellery?"
"If it is not, it is at least a curious coincidence. Claude
Charrington has access to his stepmother's room and the keys of her
jewel case. Jewellery is missing. One of the articles is a diamond
lizard. He is here to-day with a young lady, and that young lady has
on jewellery which exactly answers the description of one of the
missing articles. Now you know why I am going to find out a little
more concerning that young lady and her female companion."
"Do you want an 'assistant'?" I said eagerly.
Dorcas smiled. "Not this time, thank you," she said; "but if I do
later I will send you a wire. Now I think I must say good-day, for
my 'people' look like making a move, and I mustn't lose them."
"Can't I see you this evening?"
"No, this evening I expect I shall be back at Mrs. Charrington's--
you forget I am only a parlour-maid with a day out."
Dorcas nodded pleasantly, and I took the hint and left her.
A few minutes later I saw the Charrington party going back into the
hotel, and Dorcas Dene following them at a respectful distance.
I sat down once again on my old seat and fell into a reverie, which
was interrupted by Karl the waiter, who came ostensibly to know if
there was anything he could get me, but really to have a few
minutes' chat on his favourite subject--the Turf. Did I know
anything good for to-morrow at Sandown?
I told Karl that I did not, and then he told me that he had had a
good tip himself--I ought to get on at once. I shifted the
conversation from the Turf to general gossip, and then quite
innocently I asked him if he knew who the people were who had
lunched at the window table and had just left the terrace.
Oh, yes, he knew the young gentleman. That was Mr. Claude
Charrington.
He was a frequent customer and had often given Karl a good tip.
Only a few days ago he had given him a horse at long odds and it
had come off.
"And the young lady with the red tie?"
Karl wasn't quite sure--he had seen her only once or twice before.
He thought the young lady was an actress at one of the Comic Opera
theatres. The elder lady used to be often there years ago, but she
hadn't been for some time until to-day. He remembered her when she
was one of the handsomest women of the day.
I lit a cigarette and said carelessly that I supposed they came with
Mr. Charrington.
"No," said Karl; "they were here when he came, and he seemed rather
surprised to see the elder lady. I suppose," said Karl, with a grin,
"the young gentleman had only invited the younger lady to lunch, and
he thought that two was company and three was none, as your English
proverb says."
A white napkin waved from the balcony of the restaurant summoned
Karl back to his duties, and looking at my watch I found that it was
four o'clock, and time for me to make a start for town, where I had
an appointment at six.
I thought of nothing but the mystery of the Charrington jewellery
in the train, but when I got out at Waterloo I was still unable to
find any theory which would satisfactorily reconcile the two opposing
difficulties. If Claude Charrington had stolen his stepmother's
jewellery to raise money on it he wouldn't have given it away; and
if he had given it away it could have nothing to do with his sudden
possession of a bundle of banknotes, which his stepmother considered
one of the principal proofs of his guilt.
* * * * * * *
Two days later I received a telegram just before noon:
"Marble Arch, four o'clock. --DORCAS."
I was there punctually to the time, and a few minutes later Dorcas
joined me, and we turned into the park.
"Well," I said, "you've found out who the young lady is. You've
traced the jewellery--and I suppose there can be no doubt that
Claude Charrington is the culprit?"
"I've found out that the young lady is a Miss Dolamore. She is a
thoroughly good girl. Her mother, the widow of a naval officer, is
in poor circumstances and lives in the country. Miss Dolamore,
having a good voice, has gone on the stage. She is in lodgings in
Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy Square. The house is kept and let out in
apartments by an Italian, one Carlo Rinaldi, married to an English
woman--the English woman is the woman who was with Miss Dolamore
at the 'Star and Garter' that day."
"Then the elder woman was her landlady?"
"Yes."
"And Claude Charrington is in love with Miss Dolamore!"
"Exactly. They have been about together a great deal. He calls
frequently to see her and take her out. It is understood in the
house that they are engaged."
"How have you ascertained all this?"
"I visit the house. The second floor was to let and I took it
yesterday morning for a friend of mine and paid the rent in advance.
I am getting little odds and ends and taking them there for her.
There is a delightfully communicative Irish housemaid at the
Rinaldi's."
"Then of course it's quite clear that Claude Charrington gave
Miss Dolamore that diamond lizard. Have you found out if she has
the bracelet and the pendant too? If she hasn't, the lizard may be
merely a coincidence. There are plenty of diamond lizards about."
"The bracelet and the pendant are at Attenborough's. They were
pawned some days ago by a person giving the name of Claude
Charrington and the Charringtons' correct address."
"By Claude Charrington, of course?"
"No; whoever the guilty party is it is not Claude Charrington."
"_Not Claude Charrington!_" I exclaimed, my brain beginning to whirl
"What do you mean? The jewels were in Mrs. Charrington's case--she
misses them--one article is in the possession of Claude's sweetheart,
a young lady who is on the stage, and the others are pawned in the
name of Claude Charrington, and yet you say Claude Charrington had
nothing to do with it. Whatever makes you come to such a strange
conclusion as that?"
"One fact--and one fact alone. On the very day that we were at
Richmond Mr. Charrington, the barrister, returned to town. He
arrived in the afternoon, and seemed worried and out of sorts. His
wife had made up her mind to tell him everything, but he was so
irritable that she hesitated.
"Yesterday she had an extraordinary story to tell me. When her
husband had gone to his chambers in the morning she began to worry
about not having told him. She felt that she really ought to do so
now he had come back. She went to her jewel case to go over everything
once more in order to be quite sure nothing else was missing before
she told him her trouble, and there, to her utter amazement, was all
the missing property, the bracelet, the pendant, and the diamond
lizard."
"Then," I said with a gasp, "Claude Charrington must have redeemed
them and put them back!"
"Not at all. The diamond lizard is _still_ in Miss Dolamore's
possession, and the diamond bracelet and pendant are _still at
Attenborough's._"
I stared at Dorcas Dene for a moment in dumb amazement. When at last
I could find words to speak my thoughts I exclaimed: "What does this
mean? What can it mean? We shall never know now because
Mrs. Charrington has her jewels again and your task is ended."
"No--my task is a double one now. Mrs. Charrington engaged me to
find out who stole her jewels. When I can tell her that I shall be
able to tell her also who endeavoured to conceal the robbery by
putting a similar set back in their place. This is no common case
of jewel stealing. There is a mystery and a romance behind it--
a tangled skein which a Lecoq or a Sherlock Holmes would have been
proud to unravel--_and I think I have a clue._"
_VI. THE PRICK OF A PIN_
When Dorcas told me that she had a clue to the mystery of the
Charrington jewels, I pressed her to tell me what it was.
"All in good time," she said; "meanwhile you can help me if you
will. There is a club in ------- Street, Soho, of which most of the
members are foreigners. It is called 'The Camorra.' Carlo Rinaldi,
the landlord of the house in which Miss Dolamore is staying, spends
his evenings there. It is a gambling club. Visitors are admitted,
and the members are by no means averse to female society. I want
you to take me there to-morrow night."
"But, my dear Dorcas--I--I'm not a member."
"No, but you can be a visitor."
"But I don't _know_ a member."
"Oh, nonsense," said Dorcas, "you know a dozen. Ask your favourite
waiter at any foreign restaurant, and he will be pretty sure to be
able to tell you of one of his fellow-employés who can take you."
"Yes," I said, after I had thought for a moment. "If that is so, I
think I can arrange it."
"That's a bargain, then," she said. "I will meet you and your friend
the member outside Ketner's, in Church Street, to-morrow night at
ten o'clock. Till then, good-bye."
"One question more," I said, retaining the hand that was placed in
mine. "I assume that your object in going to this club is to watch
Miss Dolamore's landlord; but if you have taken his second floor,
won't he recognise you and be suspicious?"
Dorcas Dene smiled. "I'll take care there is no danger of his
recognising the lady of the second floor at the Camorra to-morrow
night. And now, good afternoon. The Charringtons dine at eight, and
I have to wait at table to-night."
Then, with a little nod of adieu, she walked quickly away and left
me to think out my plans for capturing a member of the Camorra.
* * * * * * *
I had very little difficulty in finding a waiter who was a member.
He turned up in a very old acquaintance, Guiseppe, of a well-known
Strand café and restaurant. Guiseppe easily obtained an evening off,
but he demurred when I told him that I wanted him to introduce a
lady friend of mine as well as myself to the club. He was nervous.
Was she a lady journalist? I pacified Guiseppe, and the preliminaries
were satisfactorily arranged, and at ten o'clock, leaving Guiseppe
round the corner, I strolled on to Ketner's, and looked for Dorcas
Dene.
There was no trace of her, and I was beginning to think she had been
detained, when a stout, rather elderly-looking woman came towards me.
She was dressed in a black silk dress, the worse for wear, a shabby
black velvet mantle, and a black bonnet, plentifully bedecked with
short black ostrich plumes, upon which wind and weather had told
their tale. At her throat was a huge cameo brooch. As she came into
the light she looked like one of the German landladies of the
shilling table d'hôte establishments in the neighbourhood. The woman
looked at me searchingly, and then asked me in guttural broken
English if I was the gentleman who had an appointment there with
a lady.
For a moment I hesitated. It might be a trap.
"Who told you to ask me?"
"Dorcas Dene."
"Indeed," I said, still suspicious, "and who is Dorcas Dene?"
"_I am,_" replied the German frau. "Come, do you think Rinaldi will
recognise his second floor?"
"My dear Dorcas," I gasped, as soon as I had recovered from my
astonishment, "why _did_ you leave the stage?"
"Never mind about the stage," said Dorcas. "Where's the member of
the Camorra?"
"He's waiting at the corner."
I had all my work to keep from bursting into a roar of laughter at
Guiseppe's face when I introduced him to my lady friend,
"Mrs. Goldschmidt." He evidently didn't think much of my choice of
a female companion, but he bowed and smiled at the stout,
old-fashioned German frau, and led the way to the club. After a few
rough-and-ready formalities at the door, Guiseppe signed for two
guests in a book which lay on the hall table, and we passed into a
large room at the back of the premises, in which were a number of
chairs and small tables, a raised platform with a piano, and a bar.
A few men and women, mostly foreigners, were sitting about talking
or reading the papers, and a sleepy-looking waiter was taking orders
and serving drinks.
"Where do they play cards?" I said.
"Upstairs."
"Can I play?"
"Oh, yes, if I introduce you as my friend."
"May ladies play?"
Guiseppe shrugged his shoulders. "If they have money to lose--
why not?"
I went to Dorcas. "Is he here?" I whispered.
"No; he's where the playing is, I expect."
"That's where we are going," I said.
Dorcas rose, and she and I and Guiseppe made our way to the upstairs
room together.
On the landing we were challenged by a big square-shouldered Italian.
"Only members pass here," he said, gruffly.
Guiseppe answered in Italian, and the man growled out, "All right,"
and we entered a room which was as crowded as the other was empty.
One glance at the table was sufficient to show me that the game was
an illegal one.
Dorcas stood by me among a little knot of onlookers. Presently she
nudged my elbow, and I followed her glance. A tall, swarthy Italian,
the wreck of what must once have been a remarkably handsome man, sat
scowling fiercely as he lost stake after stake. I asked her with my
eyebrows if she meant this was Rinaldi, and she nodded her head
in assent.
A waiter was in the room taking orders, and bringing the drinks up
from the bar below.
"Order two brandies and sodas," whispered Dorcas.
Then Dorcas sat down at the end of the room away from the crowd,
and I joined her. The waiter brought the brandies and sodas and put
them down. I paid unchallenged.
A dispute had arisen over at the big table, and the players were
shouting one against the other. Dorcas took advantage of the din,
and said, close to my ear, "Now you must do as I tell you--I'm going
back to the table. Presently Rinaldi will leap up; when he does,
seize him by the arms, and hold him--a few seconds will do."
"But----"
"It's all right. Do as I tell you."
She rose, taking her glass, still full of brandy and soda, with her.
I wondered how on earth she could tell Rinaldi was going to jump up.
The stout old German frau pushed in among the crowd till she was
almost leaning over Rinaldi's shoulder. Suddenly she lurched and
tilted the entire contents of her glass into the breast pocket of
his coat. He sprang up with a fierce oath, the rest of the company
yelling with laughter. Instantly I seized him by the arms, as though
to prevent him in his rage striking Dorcas. The German woman had
her handkerchief out.
She begged a thousand pardons, and began to mop up the liquid which
was dripping down her victim. Then she thrust her hand into his
inner pocket.
"Oh, the pocket-book! Ah, it must be dried!"
Quick as lightning she opened the book, and began to pull out the
contents and wipe them with her handkerchief.
Carlo Rinaldi, who had been bellowing like a bull, struggled from me
with an effort, and made a grab at the book. Dorcas, pretending to
fear he was going to strike her, flung the book to him, and, giving
me a quick glance, ran out of the room and down the stairs, and I
followed, the fierce oaths of Rinaldi and the laughter of the members
of the Camorra still ringing in my ears.
I hailed a cab and dragged Dorcas into it.
"Phew!" I said, "that was a desperate game to play, Dorcas. What did
you want to see in his pocket-book?"
"What I found," said Dorcas quietly. "A pawnticket for a diamond and
ruby bracelet and a diamond and ruby pendant, pawned in the name of
Claude Charrington. I imagined from the description given me at the
pawnbroker's that the man was Rinaldi. Now I know that he pawned
them on his own account, because he still has the ticket."
"How did he get them? Did Claude Charrington give them to him or sell
them to him, or----"
"No. The person who gave them to Rinaldi is the person who put the
new set back in their place."
"Do you know who that is?"
"Yes, now. The fact of Rinaldi having the ticket in his possession
supplied the missing link. You remember my telling you how Mrs.
Charrington discovered just as she was going to tell her husband of
her loss that the jewels were no longer missing."
"Yes; she found them the day after her husband's return."
"Exactly. Directly she told me I asked her to let me examine the
drawer in which the jewel-case was kept. It lay at the bottom of the
left-hand top drawer of a chest of drawers near the bed. It was
locked, and the keys were carried about by Mrs. Charrington and put
on the dressing-table at night after the bedroom door had been
bolted.
"As soon as possible I went with Mrs. Charrington to the bedroom.
Then I took the keys and opened the drawer. The box she told me was
where it was always kept, at the bottom of the drawer underneath
layers of pocket-handkerchiefs and several cardboard boxes of odds
and ends which she kept in the drawer.
"I turned the things over carefully one by one, and on a
handkerchief which lay immediately on the top of the jewel-case
I saw something which instantly attracted my attention. It was a
tiny red spot, which looked like blood. Opening the jewel-case, I
carefully examined the jewellery inside, and I found that the pin
of the diamond lizard extended slightly beyond the brooch and was
very sharp at the point.
"I then examined the keys, and upon the handle of the key of the
jewel-box I found a tiny red smear. What had happened was as clear
as noonday. Whoever had put the jewels back had pricked his or her
finger with the pin of the lizard. The pricked finger had touched
the handkerchief and left the little blood-mark. Still bleeding
slightly, the finger had touched the key in turning it in the lock
of the jewel-case.
"Saying nothing to Mrs. Charrington, who was in the room with me,
I cast my eyes searchingly in every direction. Suddenly I caught
sight of a tiny mark on the sheet which was turned over outside the
counterpane. It was a very minute little speck, and I knew it to be
a blood-stain.
"'Who sleeps on this side near the chest of drawers?' I asked
Mrs. Charrington, and she replied that her husband did.
"'Did he hear no noise in the night?'
"'In the night!' she exclaimed with evident astonishment. 'Good
gracious! no one could have come into the room last night without
our hearing them. Whoever put my jewels back did it in the daytime.'
"I didn't attempt to undeceive her, but I was certain that Mr.
Charrington himself had replaced the jewels. He had probably done
it in the night when his wife was fast asleep. A night-light burnt
all night--she was a heavy sleeper--he had risen cautiously--the
matter was a simple one. Only he had pricked his finger with the
brooch-pin."
"But what was his motive?" I cried.
"His motive! That was what I wanted to make sure to-night, and I did
so when I found the pawnticket in the name of Claude Charrington in
the pocket-book of Carlo Rinaldi--Claude Charrington is the father's
name as well as the sons."
"Then you think Rinaldi pawned the original jewels for Mr.
Charrington? Absurd!"
"It _would_ be absurd to think that," said Dorcas, "but my theory is
not an absurd one. I have ascertained the history of Carlo Rinaldi
from sources at my command. Rinaldi was a valet at the West End. He
married a rich man's cast-off mistress. The rich man gave his
mistress a sum of money as a marriage portion. He gave her up not
only because he had ceased to care for her, but because he had
fallen in love and was about to marry again. He was a widower. He
lost his first wife when their only child, a son, was a few months
old, and he was himself quite a young man. The mistress was Madame
Rinaldi, the rich man was Mr. Claude Charrington."
"Well, where does that lead you?"
"To this. During the time that Mrs. Charrington is sure that the
jewels were not in her case I trace them. I find the diamond lizard
in the possession of a young lady who lodges in the house of Madame
Rinaldi. I find the pendant and bracelet at Attenborough's, and
to-night I have seen the pawnticket for them in the possession of
Madame Rinaldi's husband. Therefore, there is no doubt in my mind
that whoever took the jewels out of Mrs. Charrington's case gave
them to the Rinaldis. I have proved by the prick of the finger and
the blood-stain that Mr. Charrington put a similar set of jewels to
those abstracted back into the empty cases in his wife's jewel-box,
therefore he must have been aware that they were missing.
Mrs. Charrington has not breathed a word of her loss to anyone but
myself, therefore he must have been privy to their abstraction, and
it is only reasonable to conclude that he abstracted them himself."
"But the lizard in Miss Dolamore's possession must have been given
her by Claude, her sweetheart, and he was suddenly flush of money
just after the theft--remember that!"
"Yes; I have ascertained how he got that money. Johnson, the footman,
told me that the young fellow had given him a tip for the Leger.
'And he gets good information sometimes from a friend of his,' said
Johnson. 'Why, only last week he backed a thirty-three to one chance,
and won a couple of hundred. But don't say anything to the missis,'
said Johnson. 'She might tell the governor, and Mr. Claude isn't in
his good books just at present.'"
I agreed with Dorcas that that would account for the young fellow's
confusion when his step-mother saw the notes, but I urged there was
still the lizard to get over.
"I think that is pretty clear. The Irish housemaid tells me that
Madame is very friendly with Miss Dolamore. I shouldn't be surprised
if she went down to Richmond with her that day to show Claude the
lizard and get him to buy it for more than it was worth. I know the
Rinaldis were pressed at the time for ready money."
I confessed to Dorcas that her theory cleared Claude Charrington of
suspicion, but it in no way explained why Mr. Charrington, senior,
should send his former mistress his present wife's jewels.
At that moment the cab stopped. We were at Oak Tree Road. Dorcas got
out and put out her hand. "I can't tell you why Mr. Charrington
stole his wife's jewellery," she said, "because he hasn't told me."
"And isn't likely to," I replied with a laugh.
"You are mistaken," said Dorcas. "I am going to his chambers
to-morrow to ask him, and then my task will be done. If you want to
know how it ends, come to Eastbourne on Sunday. I am going to spend
the day there with Paul."
* * * * * * *
The sunshine was streaming into the pretty seaside apartments
occupied by the Denes, the midday Sunday meal was over, and Paul and
Dorcas were sitting by the open window.
I had only arrived at one o'clock, and Dorcas had postponed her
story until dinner was over.
"Now," said Dorcas, as she filled Paul's pipe and lighted it for
him, "if you want to know the finish of the 'Romance of the
Charrington Jewels,' smoke and listen."
"Did you go to Mr. Charrington as you said you would?" I asked as
I lit my cigar.
"_Smoke and listen!_" said Dorcas with mock severity in her tone of
command. "Of course I went. I sent up my card to Mr. Charrington.
"Ushered into his room he gave me a searching glance and his face
changed.
"'This card says 'Dorcas Dene, Detective'?' he exclaimed. 'But
surely--you--you are very like someone I have seen lately!'
"'I had the pleasure of being your wife's parlour-maid, Mr.
Charrington,' I replied quietly.
"'You have dared to come spying in my house!' exclaimed the
barrister angrily.
"'I came to your house, Mr. Charrington, at your wife's request. She
had missed some jewellery which you presented to her a day or two
before you went into the country. Circumstances pointed to your
son Claude as the thief, and your wife, anxious to avoid a scandal,
called me in instead of the police.'
"The barrister dropped into his chair and rubbed his hands together
nervously.
"'Indeed--and she said nothing to me. You are probably aware that
you have been investigating a mare's nest--my wife's jewellery is
not missing.'
"'No, it is not missing now, because when you returned from the
country you put a similar set in its place.'
"'Good heavens, madame!' exclaimed Mr. Charrington, leaping to
his feet, 'what do you mean?'
"'Pray be calm, sir. I assure you that I have come here not to make
a scandal but to avoid one. After you gave your wife the jewellery,
you for some reason secretly abstracted it. The jewellery you
abstracted passed into the possession of Mrs. Rinaldi, whose husband
pawned two of the articles at Attenborough's. As your wife is quite
aware that for many days her jewellery was missing, I am bound to
make an explanation of some kind to her. I have come to you to know
what I shall say. You cannot wish her to believe that your son took
the jewellery?'
"'Of course Claude must be cleared--but what makes you believe
that I put the jewellery back?'
"'On the night you did it you pricked your finger with the pin of
the lizard. You left a small bloodstain on the linen that was in
the drawer, and when you turned down the sheet to get back into bed
again your finger was still bleeding, and left its mark as evidence
against you. Come Mr. Charrington, explain the circumstances under
which you committed this rob-- well, let us say, made this exchange,
and I will do my best to find a means of explaining matters to
your wife.'
"Mr. Charrington hesitated a moment, and then, having probably made
up his mind that it was better to have me on his side than against
him, told me his story.
"At the time that he kept up an irregular establishment he made the
lady who is now Mrs. Rinaldi many valuable presents of jewellery.
Among them were the articles which had resulted in my becoming
temporarily a parlour-maid under his roof. When the lady married
Rinaldi, he provided for her. But the man turned out a rascal,
squandered and gambled away his wife's money, and forced her to pawn
her jewellery for him. He then by threats compelled her to forward
the tickets to her former protector, and implore him to redeem them
for her as she was without ready money to do so herself. The dodge
succeeded two or three times, but Mr. Charrington grew tired, and
on the last occasion redeemed the jewellery and put it in a drawer
in his desk, and replied that he could not return it, as it would
only be pawned again. He would keep it until the Rinaldis sent the
money to redeem it, and then they could have it.
"Then came his wife's birthday, and he wished to make her a present
of some jewellery. He selected a bracelet and a pendant in diamonds
and sapphires and a true-lovers'-knot brooch in diamonds, and ordered
them to be sent to his chambers.
"He was busy when they came, and put them away for safety in a
drawer immediately below the one in which he had some weeks
previously placed the jewellery belonging to Mrs. Rinaldi.
Mrs. Rinaldi's jewellery, each article in its case, he had wrapped
up in brown paper and marked outside 'jewellery,' to distinguish it
from other packets which he kept there, and which contained various
articles belonging to his late wife.
"On the eve of his wife's birthday he found he would have to leave
town for the day without going to his office. He had to appear in a
case at Kingston-on-Thames, which had come on much sooner than he
had expected. Knowing he would not be back till late at night, he
sent a note and his keys to his clerk, telling him to open his desk,
take out the jewellery which had recently been forwarded from
Streeter's, and send it up to him at his house. He wished his wife
many happy returns of the day, apologised for not having his present
ready, but said it would be sent up, and she should have it that
evening.
"The clerk went to the desk and opened the wrong drawer first. Seeing
a neatly tied-up parcel labelled 'jewellery,' he jumped to the
conclusion that it was the jewellery wanted. Not caring to trust it
to a messenger, he went straight up to the house with it, and handed
it to Mrs. Charrington herself, who concluded it was her husband's
present. When she opened the parcel she noticed that the cases were
not new, and supposed that her husband had bought the things
privately. She was delighted with the jewellery--a bracelet and
pendant in diamonds and rubies and a diamond lizard.
"When her husband returned to dinner he was horrified to find his
wife wearing his former mistress's jewellery. But before he could
say a word she kissed him and told him that these things were just
what she wanted.
"He hesitated after that to say a mistake had been made, and thought
that silence was best. The next day Mrs. Charrington received news
of her brother's death, and had to go into deep mourning. The new
jewellery was put away, as she would not be able to wear it for
many months.
"That afternoon at Mr. Charrington's chambers Rinaldi called upon
him. Desperately hard up, he had determined to try and bully
Mr. Charrington out of the jewellery. He shouted and swore, and
talked of an action at law and exposure, and was delighted to find
that his victim was nervous. Mr. Charrington declared that he could
not give him the jewellery back. Whereupon Mr. Rinaldi informed him
that if by twelve o'clock the next day it was not in his possession
he should summon him for detaining it.
"Mr. Charrington rushed off to his jewellers. How long would it take
them to find the exact counterpart of certain jewellery if he
brought them the things they had to match? And how long would they
want the originals? The jewellers said if they had them for an hour
and made a coloured drawing of them they could make up or find a set
within ten days.
"That night Charrington abstracted the birthday present he had given
his wife from her jewel-box. The next morning at ten o'clock it was
in the hands of the jewellers, and at mid-day when Rinaldi called to
make his final demand the jewellery was handed over to him.
"Then Mr. Charrington went out of town. On his return the new
jewellery was ready and was delivered to him. In the dead of the
night while his wife was asleep he put it back in the empty cases.
And that," said Dorcas, "is--as Dr. Lynn, at the Egyptian Hall, used
to say--'how it was done.'"
"And the wife?" asked Paul, turning his blind eyes towards Dorcas;
"you did not make her unhappy by telling her the truth?"
"No, dear," said Dorcas. "I arranged the story with Mr. Charrington.
He went home and asked his wife for her birthday present. She
brought the jewels out nervously, wondering if he had heard or
suspected anything. He took the bracelet and the pendant from the
cases.
"'Very pretty, indeed, my dear,' he said. 'And so you've never
noticed the difference?'
"'Difference?' she exclaimed. 'Why--why--what do you mean?'
"'Why, that I made a dreadful mistake when I bought them and only
found it out afterwards. The first that I gave you, my dear, were
imitation. I wouldn't confess to you that I had been done, so I took
them without your knowing and had real ones made. The real ones I
put back the other night while you were fast asleep.'
"Oh, Claude, Claude,' she cried, 'I am so glad. I did miss them,
dear, and I was afraid there was a thief in the house, and I dared
not tell you I'd lost them. And now--oh, how happy you've made me!'"
* * * * * * *
Two months later Dorcas told me that young Claude Charrington was
engaged to Miss Dolamore with his father's consent, but he had
insisted that she should leave Fitzroy Street at once, and acting
on private information which Dorcas had given him, he assured
Claude that diamond lizards were unlucky, and as he had seen
Miss Dolamore with one on he begged to offer her as his first
present to his son's intended a very beautiful diamond
true-lovers'-knot in its place. At the same time he induced his
wife to let him have her diamond lizard for a much more valuable
diamond poodle with ruby eyes.
So those two lizards never met under Mrs. Charrington's roof, and
perhaps, all things considered, it was just as well.
_VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MILLIONAIRE_
I had received an invitation to spend the evening at Oak Tree Road,
but I had been detained by business, and it was past nine o'clock
when my cabman, making a mistake in the number, pulled up at a house
short of the Denes'. While I was feeling in all my pockets for the
odd sixpence to make up the cabman's fare--as usual with the
fraternity he had no change--the door opened, and an
elegantly-dressed lady came hurriedly out.
She started back nervously as she saw me, and I at once jumped to
the conclusion that it was a lady who was paying her first visit
to a private detective, and was fearful that someone might see her
and recognise her.
She seemed to hesitate for a moment, till she saw me hand the fare
to the cabman, then she hailed him and got in, lifted the trap door,
and said, "Drive to St. John's Wood Chapel."
"She'll tell him where to drive her when she gets to the chapel," I
said to myself, as I stood and watched the cab out of sight.
The lady, in her agitation, had forgotten to pull the door to, so I
entered without ringing, walked up the little garden path, and found
Dorcas waiting for me in the hall with the house door wide open.
"You've been having a good look at my lady visitor, Mr. Saxon," she
said with a smile. "Well, she will probably think you are
another client."
"And pray how do you know that I have been having 'a good look,'
as you call it, at your visitor?" I said laughingly.
"I heard your cab drive up just as I was letting her out; she left
the door ajar, and you would have come in at once if you had not
been otherwise engaged. You didn't even come in, you know, when the
cab drove away, so I conclude that you looked after it for some time,
probably making a mental note of the number."
"You have guessed exactly what passed in my mind. I saw you had an
aristocratic visitor, and a nervous one, and I wondered if there was
anything for me to do this time."
"I don't know yet," said Dorcas, "but come into the drawing-room.
Mother is spending the evening with some friends of hers, and Paul
has been alone for nearly an hour. My new client's first visit has
been rather a long one."
Dorcas led the way to the drawing-room, where Paul was sitting on
the sofa with Toddlekins, the bulldog, stretched out across his
knees.
Paul put the dog gently down, and rising as I entered, held out his
hand. "We expected you two hours ago," he said, "but better late
than not at all. I thought Dorcas's visitor was going to stay for
hours, and that you weren't coming, and that I should really begin
to recognise the value of Mrs. Lester as a conversationalist in my
solitary condition."
"I'm awfully sorry, dear," said Dorcas, taking her husband's arm,
and drawing him gently down on the sofa beside her, "but it's always
the way. Directly I've made up my mind to have a quiet evening with
you, somebody is sure to call."
"Is it a case?" asked Paul.
"Yes, and I'm afraid it will be rather a difficult one; but it won't
take me away from home altogether, thank goodness. At least, I hope
not. But I'll tell you all about it, and see what you think. I
haven't made up my mind yet how to start on my task."
"Oh, it isn't a pressing case, then?" I said. "I was hoping that I'd
arrived just in the nick of time for an 'engagement.'"
"It isn't particularly pressing _now,_" replied Dorcas, looking at
the clock on the mantelpiece, "but it will be at midnight, for at
that hour I have to be under a lamp-post in Berkeley Square."
"Under a lamp-post in Berkeley Square at midnight! Then I'm sure
Paul will agree with me that it _is_ a case for my assistance. I'm
to be under that lamp-post with Dorcas, am I not, Paul?"
Paul smiled. "That's for Dorcas to say, old fellow. She knows her
business better than we do. But we'll leave the lamp-post for
further consideration. Let us have the case, Dorcas."
"It is simple so far," said the famous lady detective, "but none
the less mysterious for that. The lady who has just left me is the
wife of Mr. Judkins Barraclough."
"What--the mysterious millionaire, who three years ago fell
apparently from the clouds and descended on London in a shower of
gold?--the Crœsus who seems to have discovered the royal road to the
perpetual paragraph?"
"The same."
"Then the lady I met at the gate was Lady Anna Barraclough. He
married her about a year ago. She was a young widow. Her first
husband ran through all his money on the turf and left her very
badly off when he died at the age of seven-and-twenty of--let me
see, what did they call it?--typhoid, I think."
"Quite right," said Dorcas, "your account agrees with the short
sketch of her career Lady Anna Barraclough has already given me."
"What could she have married a man like Judkins Barraclough
for?--his money, I suppose. He must be five-and-forty, and he has
all the worst qualities of the ostentatious parvenu. Is it about him
that she has come to you?"
"Yes, poor girl--for she is only five-and-twenty now--she made me
feel quite sorry for her when she told me her story. She has had a
terrible experience of marriage. Her first husband she loved, and
he spent every shilling of her money as well as his own. When
Mr. Judkins Barraclough met her she was dependent on a married
brother, the Earl of Dashton, whose wife detested her. When the
millionaire proposed to her, the poor girl, worried and embittered
by the constant humiliation of her dependent position, accepted his
offer in the recklessness of despair. She didn't expect to be happy
with a man whom she felt it was impossible she could ever love, but
at least she hoped for peace. And now--guess why she has come to me
to-night."
"To get a divorce, I should think. It would be about the best thing
you _could_ get for her, if all I hear of Mr. Judkins Barraclough's
manners and habits is correct. I suppose he married her because he
thought a wife who was a lady of title would be a good advertisement
for him. _Is_ it to get a divorce she has come to you?"
"No, Lady Anna has a haunting suspicion that the man she married
is not her legal husband--that he had a wife living when he
married her."
"Then if she thinks that why doesn't she go to the police?"
Dorcas shook her head. "You forget the man is a millionaire living
in Berkeley Square--the police would hardly take up a charge
against him made by his wife merely because she _suspects._ 'If I am
really this man's wife,' said Lady Anna, 'I have no right to go to
the police, for he is my husband. I have come to you to find out
everything for me first. Oh, if you can only tell me that I am a
free woman, that I owe no further allegiance to this wretch whom I
despise--whom I loathe--you will have done me the greatest service
one woman can do for another!' Poor girl! It was a cry from the
heart. I felt sorry for her, and I promised that I would do anything
I could to ease her mind, or, at any rate, to put an end to the
dreadful state of suspicion and uncertainty in which she is at
present living. Oh!" said Dorcas, with a shudder, "how horrible it
must be, to have to go about before the world with a smiling face
bearing the name of a man you detest--to have to submit alike to the
curses and the caresses of a man whom in your heart you believe to
be the husband of another woman!"
"And what is your idea?" I said, looking scrutinisingly at
Dorcas's face.
"To-night I shall start on my voyage of discovery. I shall see Mr.
Judkins Barraclough, the famous millionaire, and then I shall begin
to trace him back and back until I find out----"
"What?"
"Who he was before he arrived in London from South America and
set up as a millionaire."
"But you say Lady Anna Barraclough suspects her husband of being a
bigamist--what has put such an unpleasant idea into her head?"
"Something that has occurred lately. Mr. Judkins Barraclough, who
has been coarse and cruel for some time past, has suddenly altered
his demeanour. He has lost all his old over-bearing brutality. He
is nervous, and has evidently something on his mind. One night her
ladyship retired late to her own apartment, which is separated from
her husband's by his dressing-room. At two in the morning she heard
the front door close, and a few minutes later she heard her husband
enter the dressing-room. It seemed to her that he must be in pain,
for she distinctly heard him every now and then utter a low groan.
"She rose and went quietly into the dressing-room and found
Mr. Judkins Barraclough washing a wound in his right arm with Condy.
Lady Anna Barraclough saw at once that the wound looked like a
bite--the marks of teeth were distinctly visible.
"Mr. Judkins Barraclough stammered out an explanation. A savage dog
had attacked him as he was coming through a back street on his way
home. He had raised his umbrella to beat it off, and it had flown at
him and fastened its teeth in his arm. Then, somewhat angrily, he
told his wife to go back to her own room; he was all right.
"Instantly Lady Anna Barraclough's suspicions were aroused. If a dog
had bitten him her husband would have gone to a doctor's at once and
had the wound dressed. Why should he come home and attend to it
himself? There was only one solution--that the bite had been received
under circumstances which he would be unable to explain
satisfactorily."
"Ah," said Paul, "it is a woman who bites as a rule, not a man."
"Yes," replied Dorcas, "that was her ladyship's idea. Her husband
had been bitten by a woman, and a woman only bites when she is mad
with rage and her hands are being held.
"Since that night Mr. Judkins Barraclough had been out nearly all
day and has not returned till late. But he has not ordered his
carriage to take or fetch him on one single occasion. These
circumstances aroused her ladyship's suspicions that something was
wrong, and that there was trouble in which a woman was concerned.
Her husband had evidently quarrelled with one who had attacked him.
"The attack--and what else could the bitten arm suggest?--would
hardly be that of a mistress. A millionaire is not so shabbily
treated in his gallantries, because a millionaire of the Judkins
Barraclough type is only attractive on account of his wealth, and
to bite a millionaire's arm is not exactly the way to retain his
good graces. The man's altered demeanour, his evident fear of
_something,_ the bitten arm, the long absences from home, and the
non-employment of the carriages and horses all point, in Lady Anna's
idea, to one thing--the power of some woman to interfere with him,
perhaps to ruin him. Supposing in the old days, before he became
wealthy, this man had a wife whom he had left in poverty, and she
had discovered him, a wealthy bigamist, that would account for
everything. But," said Dorcas, quietly, "supper's ready, and after
supper I must be off."
Paul lifted his sightless eyes to his wife's face.
"There's a little invitation I should like you to give our guest
to-night," he said, "I'm sure he'd like it, and I'm sure he
deserves it."
"And what is that, dear?"
"Mrs. Dorcas Dene requests the pleasure of Mr. Saxon's company at
11.45 for midnight, underneath the lamp-post immediately opposite
the residence of Mr. Judkins Barraclough, in Berkeley Square."
Dorcas laughed quite a ringing little laugh.
"Of course, if _you_ wish it, dear," she said.
Then turning to me with a quick resumption of her former seriousness
of expression, she added:
"Honestly I shall be glad of your company. From what her ladyship
has told me I don't think this South American millionaire is exactly
the sort of wild animal for a woman to hunt alone."
* * * * * * *
It was half-past twelve when a hansom drove up to the door of
No. --, Berkeley Square, and a gentleman with a long, loose summer
overcoat got out and paid the cabman and ran up the steps.
Dorcas had told me that Mr. Barraclough would probably arrive in a
cab, as for several nights recently he had not ordered the carriage
to meet him anywhere, so Lady Anna had informed her.
Mr. Barraclough had let himself in with the latchkey before the
cabman had pocketed his fare and picked up his reins to drive away.
"Now," said Dorcas, "we must find out where that man took
Mr. Barraclough up. It is somewhere he doesn't want known. That is
the reason he doesn't order his carriage to fetch him. It may be
only a street corner. But wherever it is, it is the first step
backwards towards the goal that lies far away in the past."
"But we can't tell the cabman to take us to where he picked his
fare up, can we?" I said, hesitatingly.
"Leave that to me," replied Dorcas. "You call the cabman."
I obeyed, and the cabman turned his horse round and drew up to the
kerb. Dorcas got half way in and then got out again and looked at
the horse.
"You've been driving too fast, cabman," she said; "why, your poor
horse is breathing quite hard."
"Lor' bless you, ma'am!" said the cabman, "that's nothing--that's
his natural breathing! Why, he only come out of the yard half an
hour ago, and I've only had one fare."
"One fare? It must have been a good journey by the look of
the horse."
Then turning to me, she said:
"Don't let us take this cab--we'll get another--the horse is
done up."
"Well, I'm blowed!" exclaimed the cabman. "That's a good one. Why,
how far do you think the horse has come?"
"Oh," said Dorcas, "perhaps from Hampstead or Brixton."
"Hampstead or Brixton!" exclaimed the driver, wrathfully. "This
here horse came out of the yard in St. Pancras just afore twelve
o'clock, and a gent hailed me as was coming out of a house in
Burton Crescent, and I drove him here, and that's all the work my
horse has done to-night."
"Oh, very well," said Dorcas. Then turning to me, she said:
"Give the man a shilling and let him go. I'm not going to ride
behind that horse."
The man took the shilling and drove off, muttering to himself,
and Dorcas and I strolled a little way along.
"He came out of a house in Burton Crescent," she muttered;
"that's something."
"Why didn't you ask him which house?"
"Too risky. The man might think something was up and find
Barraclough to-morrow and tell him, in hope of a reward. But I took
the man's number in case I want him later."
"Very well. What are you going to do now?" I asked. "Are you going
home?"
"No--let us go to Burton Crescent."
"What on earth's the good of that? You can't find out the house
Mr. Barraclough came out of to-night. There's not the
slightest clue."
"There may be. Did you notice that when he put his umbrella up to
stop the cabman he held it in his left hand?"
"Well?"
"When he got out he shifted his umbrella to his right hand, and
felt with his left hand in his left pocket for the silver.
Mr. Judkins Barraclough is still feeling the effects of that bitten
right arm."
"Possibly--probably. But how on earth can his being temporarily
left-handed guide us to the particular house he came out of in
Burton Crescent?"
"I don't say it will--but it may. Let us go."
We took a cab, and got out at the end of Burton Crescent. We walked
entirely round it, Dorcas Dene going up the steps of each house in
turn, and examining them carefully.
Suddenly she uttered a little cry of delight.
"This is the house," she exclaimed. "Look!"
She pointed to three or four rose leaves lying on the steps of
No. ---.
I looked at them bewildered, remembering that when Mr. Barraclough
got out of the cab he had a large rose in the button-hole of his
overcoat.
"I see the leaves," I said. "But what on earth made you imagine
they would be there, and--and where does the left hand come in?"
"It's very simple," replied Dorcas. "I looked at Mr. Judkins
Barraclough very carefully when he got out of the cab, and I noticed
that the rose in his buttonhole was rather dilapidated. It had
evidently been in contact with something, and several of the leaves
were gone. Of course they might have dropped accidentally, but I
instantly evolved a theory to account for the missing leaves. I
glanced inside the cab while I was looking the horse up and down,
there weren't any leaves there, so he hadn't crushed his rose in
getting into it. If he had, some of the leaves would have fallen
on the matting. I noticed that he used his left hand. The
probability was that he hailed the cab with the umbrella in his
left hand. The cabman said he was coming out of the house when he
hailed him, so he would be on the steps at the time. Now, if you
lifted your left hand hurriedly, as if hailing a cab that was
passing, you would probably bring your arm up against the left side
of your overcoat. Your arm would probably brush against a flower if
you had one as large as a rose, and particularly if it projected as
far forward as Mr. Barraclough's did. I said to myself, 'He might
have knocked the leaves off that rose when he hailed the cab on a
door-step in Burton Crescent.' My surmise fortunately turns out to be
correct. Here are the rose leaves, and therefore this is the house."
"It's wonderful!" I said, "but after all, it's just one chance in
a thousand."
"It is that one chance," replied Dorcas, quietly, "that in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred brings the criminal into the hands
of justice. Chance is the most successful detective the world has
ever known."
Dorcas stepped back and looked up at the house.
"There are no lights anywhere," she said, "but we'll see what the
inhabitants are like."
She seized the bell and rang it violently, and then gave a loud
double knock. There was no sound inside the house. We waited a few
minutes, then Dorcas knocked again, this time loud enough to wake up
everybody in the Crescent. Still no one came, and the house remained
in darkness.
"I'll try again," she said. "I'm sure to wake the people up on one
side or other, and they'll think, perhaps, it's their knocker, and
look out of the window."
Dorcas knocked this time for fully a couple of minutes, and at last
she produced the desired effect.
A third floor window in the next house opened, and a woman put her
head out.
"What's the good of your knocking there, a-frightening people out
of their seven senses;" she called out angrily. "What do you want?"
"Mr. Robinson," replied Dorcas. "A relative of his is dying, and I've
come to fetch him."
"You've come to the wrong house, then," said the woman, snappishly.
"There ain't no Mr. Robinson there, 'cos the house is empty.
Leastways, there ain't nobody sleepin' there."
"But Mr. Robinson was here this evening," replied Dorcas, unabashed.
"Oh, you mean the gent as has taken the place and ain't moved in yet,
perhaps--I don't know his name. He ain't there now, I tell you. He
only comes there now and then, and nobody's living there, and the
tradespeople don't call. If you can't believe me, ask a policeman,
only for goodness' sake leave off knocking. You're making yourself
a noosance to the neighbourhood."
Dorcas thanked her informant, and we moved away. "Good-night," said
Dorcas, as we got to the corner. "I'll take a cab and go home now.
Mr. Barraclough is renting an empty house. I must find out why
he does so."
"When shall we do that?"
"The day after to-morrow. I must have a couple of days to myself
now. If you've nothing to do, come to Oak Tree Road in the evening
the day after to-morrow, at ten o'clock."
I assured Dorcas that I should be delighted. I saw her into a cab,
and wished her good-night, and went home, wondering to myself what
on earth a millionaire with a magnificent establishment in Berkeley
Square could want with an empty house in Burton Crescent.
* * * * * * *
During the afternoon of the appointed day I received a telegram--
"Come evening dress. Dorcas."
When I arrived at Oak Tree Road at ten o'clock in the evening, I
found Dorcas busily engaged in trying the wick of a dark lantern,
and on the floor beside her lay an open brown paper parcel filled
with goloshes.
"Good gracious," I exclaimed, "are you going burgling?"
"Something very like it," she replied, lighting the lantern to
satisfy herself that it was all right. "Just try on those goloshes
and see if any of them will fit over your boots."
"But what do I want with goloshes? It's a perfectly dry night."
"You are going burgling with me--that is, of course, if you are not
afraid."
"Burgling in evening dress!" I exclaimed. "I'm not afraid to do
anything that you tell me is right, but I haven't been brought up to
the profession, you know."
I selected a pair of goloshes which I thought likely to suit, and
found they fitted over my boots perfectly.
"That's all right--put them in that bag," said Dorcas, pointing to a
black bag on the sofa. Then she blew the lamp out, and fastening it
to a leather belt, fitted it round her waist.
"You look like a female policeman," I exclaimed, "but you're not
going through the streets with that on!"
"Nobody will see it under my long cloak. Here is a box of silent
matches, put that in the bag too."
I obeyed mechanically.
"Now," said Dorcas. "come to supper. Paul is in the dining-room
waiting for us. We don't start till twelve."
"But where are we going?"
"To look over that empty house in Burton Crescent," replied Dorcas,
quite calmly. "I have seen Lady Anna Barraclough to-day. Her husband
wears his keys on a chain. The chances are that the key he uses to
let himself into Burton Crescent will be on the bunch. He wouldn't
carry it loose for fear of leaving it in his pocket when he changed
his clothes, and perhaps forgetting it just when he wanted it. I
shall have his keys directly he is asleep to-night, so Heaven grant
him sweet repose directly he lays his head on the pillow. I reckon
on having his keys before two o'clock in the morning."
"But how will you manage it?"
"I have arranged it with her ladyship. They occupy, you remember,
two rooms separated by Mr. Barraclough's dressing-room. There he
leaves all his clothes for his valet to brush and attend to in the
morning. After he is asleep, Lady Barraclough will go quietly into
the dressing-room from her room, and detach the keys from the chain,
which is attached to his braces. I shall be on the opposite side of
the square in a four-wheel cab, which will be driven by a cabman
whom I frequently engage and whom I can trust. Sitting in the cab I
shall avoid the attention of the policeman, who might otherwise
wonder why you and I were loitering about so long in one place. But
from the cab I shall be watching the windows of No. --, Berkeley
Square. When I see a corner of the blind pulled up in Lady
Barraclough's room, and a lighted candle shown for a moment, I
shall know she has the keys."
"Yes," I said, "that's all very well. But how is she going to give
you the keys?"
"She isn't--she is going to give them to you."
"To me!" I exclaimed; "where?--when?--how?"
"You will be strolling about smoking a cigar. Being in evening dress
you will not attract the notice of any inquisitive policeman, should
one happen to be about. You will watch for that signal, too, and when
you see it, you will go up the steps of No. -- as if you were going
to ring to be let in.
"Lady Anna will come quietly downstairs, open the door, and give you
the keys. Then you will walk away quietly into Piccadilly. My cab
will follow and stop opposite Walsingham House. Then you will get in
and we shall drive to the top of Burton Crescent. Our cabman will
wait for us round the corner."
"In case of our having to make a run for it?"
"No--because at five o'clock in the morning Lady Anna Barraclough
will creep downstairs again and feel in the letter box."
"What for--a note from you?"
"No--the keys. You will put them there when we have done with them.
Then she will go back into her husband's dressing-room, fasten them
on to the chain on his braces again, and he will get up in the
morning and see them and never dream that they have been having a
'night out.'"
"And suppose the key of the house isn't on the bunch?"
"Then we shall have had our journey for nothing. But the reasonable
supposition is that it will be. Now come to supper, and make a good
one, for we have a rough night's work before us."
* * * * * * *
Two hours later a light flashed in a second floor window of
No. --, Berkeley Square, and with a beating heart I went up the
steps. The door opened quietly, and a woman's hand came cautiously
through the opening and touched mine. I clutched the keys, slipped
them into my pocket, and strode away in the direction of Piccadilly.
When the four-wheel cab stopped I got in and gave the keys to Dorcas.
"So far, so good," she said. "Now with average luck we shall get
into that empty house without attracting attention, and discover the
millionaire's secret."
Dorcas was holding the keys up to the light that came through the
cab window and examining them carefully.
"There are two latchkeys at any rate," she said. "Let us hope that
one of them will unlock the cupboard in which Mr. Judkins Barraclough
keeps his skeleton."
_VIII. THE EMPTY HOUSE_
As the cab made its way towards Burton Crescent I am not ashamed to
confess that I had misgivings as to the success of our enterprise.
Not having been brought up to burglary, I contemplated with something
akin to nervousness my début as a "cracksman," and I pictured to
myself the awkward predicament in which we should find ourselves if
we were discovered by a watchful policeman, creeping about a house
with goloshes over our boots and a dark lantern and silent matches
in our possession.
I put the point to Dorcas. As we had probably the key of the house
in Burton Crescent with us, why should we compromise our position
by taking the implements of burglary with us?
"Because," said Dorcas, "it is better to be over-cautious than
over-bold in my profession. If there _should_ be anyone in the
house I want to _see_ them before they hear me, and that is why
I have taken precautions with our boots and with our light."
"Do you think Mr. Barraclough has visited the house since we
were there?"
"Yes; I watched the house for a short time last evening. A
dark-complexioned, white-haired old gentleman, with a closely
cropped white moustache and gold spectacles, let himself in about
nine o'clock. No such person came out again. But towards midnight
the door was opened, and a gentleman in a long grey overcoat came
out. That person I did not see enter; but of course that is not
conclusive, as I only commenced to watch about eight in the
evening."
"And the person who came out was----?"
"Judkins Barraclough."
"Do you think the dark old man will be in the house to-night?"
"No," said Dorcas, in an emphatic tone, "I don't! But I have some
more interesting information gathered during the last two days round
the neighbourhood. The local tradespeople, who are always on the
watch when the 'To Let' is taken out of the windows of a house, saw
a van at the door delivering goods one day last week. The person who
was superintending the disposal of the goods was an old gentleman
with very white hair and gold spectacles, and a closely-cropped,
white moustache. His face and hands were very dark, and he looked
like a native of India in European clothes. The baker's man, seeing
the door open and cases being delivered, presented his master's card.
The Indian gentleman replied in excellent English that the family
would not be coming in for a month or six weeks."
"Then this Indian gentleman must be the dark man you saw go in. Have
you any clue to his identity?"
"I have ascertained certain particulars concerning him. To find out
who delivered the goods at Burton Crescent was my next object. It
is the general custom for policemen to take the name on a van that
is delivering or removing goods from a house. Many robberies have
been traced in this way. The constable on duty in the neighbourhood
at that time was able to tell me to whom the van belonged. I went at
once to a retired police sergeant whom I frequently employ to make
ordinary private inquiries, and gave him instructions to find out
where the van took the goods from, and if possible what they were.
"In a few hours he sent me his report. The van had brought two cases
of brandy from a firm of wine merchants; hammers, saws, nails, etc.,
from an ironmonger's; half a dozen large indiarubber mats, and
several rolls of wire netting. All these things, it was found, had
been purchased and paid for by a white-haired gentleman in gold
spectacles, having the appearance of a native of India. He gave his
name and address as Mr. Aleem Mohammed, No. ---, Burton Crescent."
"Well, you can soon find out who Mr. Aleem Mohammed is by the
numbers of the notes he paid to the house agents. Banknotes are
always useful clues."
"Mr. Aleem Mohammed has evidently thought of that," replied Dorcas.
"I _have_ traced the notes. They were obtained at a money-changer's
at Charing Cross, by a gentleman answering to our Indian friend's
description. He gave sovereigns for them. I have also been to the
house agents. The house was let to Mr. Aleem Mohammed, who had paid
a year's rent in advance in bank-notes, having no one in this country
to whom he could refer."
"Don't you think," I said, after a pause, "the whole business may be
capable of a very simple explanation? After all, Barraclough hailed
a cab from the doorstep, and the cab drove him direct to his own
residence. Would he, if he were mixed up in any crime in connection
with this house, establish a direct trail?"
"I have been thinking that out myself," replied Dorcas; "but I am
inclined to believe it was one of those slips that very cunning
people do make occasionally. Coming out late at night, there was
nobody about, and he hailed a cab barely thinking what he was doing,
and said, 'Berkeley Square.' He stopped it as his own door with his
umbrella mechanically, as one is in the habit of doing."
"And the Indian gentleman?"
"I believe is Barraclough. He is a dark man, browned with the sun
of South America. He could easily carry a white wig and a false
moustache and a pair of gold spectacles in a Gladstone bag coming
out of the house at night. When he goes into it in the daylight as
the Indian he can have that light overcoat and his flower in the
same bag."
"But the night we saw him he had no bag."
"No; but he might easily have had the wig and moustache in his
overcoat pocket. At any rate, I am pretty sure that Aleem Mohammed
and Judkins Barraclough are the same person."
"That is your theory, but you may be wrong."
"Of course--I am not infallible."
The cab stopped suddenly. We had reached Mabledon Place, where the
man had orders to pull up. We got out and Dorcas gave him instructions
to wait for us where he was, saying we might be a couple of hours
or more.
Taking the black bag with us, we made our way towards the Crescent,
which was quite deserted. Dorcas took her goloshes out of the bag
and put them on, and handed me mine, just as we got close to the
house. Glancing round to see no one was about, she went noiselessly
up the steps and tried the latchkeys. The first did not fit. It was
probably the key of Berkeley Square. The second, to our intense
relief, fitted perfectly. In a moment we were inside the hall and
had closed the door noiselessly behind us.
Dorcas, taking the dark lantern from her belt, struck a silent match
and lighted the wick.
The hall was bare, the stairs were uncarpeted, the whole atmosphere
of the house suggested that it was uninhabited.
The keys were on the outside of the doors of the two rooms on the
ground floor.
We opened the door of the front parlour. It was quite bare. Dorcas
looked about it in every direction.
Then she turned the tap of the gas on. There was no sound.
"Gas cut off and meter taken away when last tenant left," said
Dorcas. "The occupant must have used candles or a lamp."
"There's nothing in that," I said. "A good many people prefer them."
"Quite so. _I_ hope he used candles. But let us have a peep
at the next room."
Dorcas went first and opened the door of the back parlour.
The room was empty.
Dorcas looked carefully round it, then turned the light of the
bull's-eye to the floor. Suddenly she stooped down.
"He's used this room," she said; "see, here is the tallow trail."
She pointed to some small blobs of tallow grease near the doors of
a cupboard, which was in one corner of the room.
"He has used candles here," she said. "The candle has stood some
time on the floor and guttered. That was while the person who had
been carrying it was busy with both hands inside this cupboard."
The cupboard was locked, but the lock was a paltry one, and drawing
a little instrument from the bag Dorcas soon had it open.
"How odd to take the trouble to lock up such rubbish as this!"
exclaimed Dorcas, drawing out a bundle of ragged female clothing.
I stared at the articles as Dorcas held them up.
"Good gracious!" I said. "These are the clothes of some wretched
creature who must have been in the last stage of poverty. The dress
is ragged and mud-stained, the old red flannel petticoat almost in
ribbons, the bonnet battered and black with grease. Faugh!
put the things down."
Dorcas was not inclined to abandon her find so readily, but
presently she put the rags slowly back in the cupboard. "I wonder
what he's done with the body?" she said quietly.
I must confess that when Dorcas said that, I had an uncomfortable,
creepy sensation. Could it be possible that such a wretched creature
as these locked-up rags had once belonged to had been done to death
in an empty house by the millionaire of Berkeley Square?
Dorcas must have divined my thoughts. "Are you wondering if the body
of the woman who wore these things is concealed on the premises?"
she said.
"Something of the sort was in my mind."
"And I don't know what to think," said Dorcas. "If the body is
buried, why on earth were not these accusing rags buried with it?"
We went downstairs, and as we walked through the silent, deserted
passages of the basement, I felt suspiciously uncomfortable. A rat
ran squeaking behind the wainscot, and I am ashamed to say that in
my overwrought nervous condition I couldn't help giving a little
cry of alarm.
I tried to excuse my cowardice to Dorcas, but she stopped me.
"Don't apologise," she said. "I am a great deal more afraid of
rats than I am of human beings."
We had passed into the back kitchen or scullery.
"He has been here," she said.
"How do you know?"
"By the tallow trail. The guttering candle has left its traces here."
She pointed out three blobs of tallow on the edge of the sink, and
turned the light of the bull's-eye full on the trap. Then she passed
her hand carefully over the surface and drew it away. A few
exceedingly small damp atoms of pulpy water adhered to her palm.
Dorcas examined the atoms carefully. "Probably red on one side and
white on the other," she said. "I wonder where the bottles are?"
"What bottles?"
There were two short wooden shelves on each side of the sink. From
the one on the left-hand side Dorcas took a chisel. It was evidently
new, by the handle, but the edge was slightly rusty.
"The bottles that the labels have been scraped from with this
chisel," she said. "The labels have been damped at the sink. It is
the wet on the label that has rusted the chisel."
Suddenly she stooped down, and let the lantern flash round the room.
Something among some rubbish in one corner attracted her attention.
It was a small empty bottle, about the size of the bottles in which
chemists sell toothache tincture. She picked the bottle up and
examined it carefully.
"It has been washed out," she said, "and there is nothing to tell us
what it contained."
"Does it matter?" I exclaimed. "It is hardly likely that Mr. Judkins
Barraclough came here to wash bottles. That may have been done by
the former tenants."
"No, bottles have been scraped here recently. Fragments of the
pulped paper are still in the sink, and that chisel is probably
one of the tools that the Indian gentleman ordered from the
ironmonger's."
"Well, whatever the bottle contained we can't find it out here,"
I said.
"No, let's go into the front kitchen."
In the front kitchen there were two cupboards and a kitchen dresser.
The cupboards were not quite empty--on one shelf was a packet of
coffee and a bag of sugar. On the kitchen dresser was a brown paper
package open at one end. It contained eleven boxes of ordinary
matches--the twelfth half empty, was lying on one of the dresser
shelves.
"The coffee bothers me," said Dorcas, "but the matches show that
this is where the bottle washer lighted his candles of an evening.
The candles themselves can't be far off."
She looked at the dresser drawers. They had round wooden painted
handles. She turned the light of the bull's-eye on to each handle.
Then she touched the handle of the top left-hand drawer.
"This is one he uses," she said.
"How can you tell that?" I said, gazing curiously on the handle, and
failing to see any indication which could have guided Dorcas in
her selection.
"Look at this handle carefully," she said, "and you will see a tiny
atom of paper still adhering to it. The person who washed bottles
has come from the sink with a wet hand and opened that drawer. A
scrap of the label has adhered to his hand and come off on the
drawer handle, as he grasped it to pull it open. And now I am sure
that the person who washed the bottles and opened this drawer was
Mr. Judkins Barraclough."
I stared at Dorcas in amazement. "How can the drawer handle tell
you that?" I exclaimed.
"You remember that Barraclough's right arm was evidently too painful
to use, and he was using his left the night we saw him get out of
the cab. Well, the rusty chisel was thrown after use on the left-hand
side of the sink, and here the drawer has been pulled open with the
left hand."
"Surely a left hand doesn't mark itself on a drawer handle."
"No, but this drawer stuck and was difficult to open. The person
trying it rested one hand--a wet and dirty one--on the dresser. See,
here are five dirty finger-marks on the _right-hand_ side of the
drawer."
I looked where Dorcas had pointed, and indications were undoubtedly
there. Dorcas had some difficulty in pulling the drawer open, and
had to rest her own hand on the dresser. She tried with her left
hand, and her right hand then fell exactly on the finger-marks.
When the drawer at last yielded we looked eagerly inside it. There
were two packets of common candles and back in the corner of the
drawer half a dozen small bottles similar to the one we had found
empty in the sink.
Dorcas drew them out and examined them carefully. "All red labels,
you see, with 'Poison' printed on them, 'Hydrate of Chloral' written
above. They have all been purchased from different chemists--though
one doesn't have to sign for chloral. Mr. Judkins Barraclough is
using chloral for some purpose in this house, and after each bottle
is used he removes the label."
"Why should he do that?"
"Well, he may not think it wise to leave empty labelled chloral
bottles about. He is a cunning man, and is guarding against
contingencies."
"But what can he be doing with chloral here--in an empty house?"
"We may find out before we leave it. At any rate, let us see if he
uses any of the upper rooms."
"We haven't searched the coal cellar yet," I said, suddenly
recollecting the Euston-square mystery, and the discovery of the
corpse of the poor "Canterbury Belle."
"To get to the coal cellar you have to go out into the area in
these houses," replied Dorcas. "He wouldn't do that."
"The wine cellar, then?"
Dorcas shook her head. "I looked at the door of that as we came by.
It was ajar. If there was anything to conceal there it would be
shut and locked."
"But the cases of brandy----"
"May be there--we'll go and see."
The wine cellar was small and filled with old rubbish evidently
left behind by the last tenants.
But the brandy cases were there. One was opened and the lid
off. There were only six bottles left. The straw envelopes of the
other six lay on the floor.
"Where are the empty bottles?" I said. "We ought to look for them."
"Yes--that is what we will do next. I have an idea they are upstairs."
"Why?"
"As we came down the kitchen stairs I noticed a short straw lying on
one of them. When the bottle was being taken out of the straw
envelope in the cellar a loose straw or two caught on the clothes of
the person handling it. As he went up the stairs the straw became
disengaged by the action of walking and fell. We've searched the
parlours carefully--now let us go upstairs to the first floor."
There were two doors on the first floor. We tried the front room one
first and found it unlocked and the room quite empty.
"Now for the back room," said Dorcas.
We went out on to the landing and tried the back room door.
_It was locked._
"If there is anything more to be found it will be here," exclaimed
Dorcas, her face, which had been pale until now, suddenly
flushing with excitement.
"What can we do?--burst the door open?"
"Yes--I came prepared for emergencies."
Dorcas produced an instrument which is technically known as a
"jemmy" from her bag and handed it to me.
I had once burst open a door, but I was not a skilled workman, so it
was a good ten minutes before the door yielded, bursting open with a
crash and tearing away with it a portion of the lock, which fell
with a clatter to the ground.
As the door fell it seemed as though there was an echo of it
downstairs.
"What's that?" exclaimed Dorcas. "It sounded like the front door
shutting."
"Nonsense," I said, "it's the echo--the house is empty."
Dorcas had turned her lantern on the staircase, and was peering
over the balustrade. All was silent as the grave.
"I must have been mistaken," she said. "Good heavens, there can't
have been someone in the house all this time--someone who has
slipped past us and escaped. If I thought that I----"
She paused and uttered a little cry. She had turned the lantern
right round, and it lit up the room, the door of which we had just
burst open.
As the light of the bull's-eye dimly illuminated the apartment an
extraordinary sight met our eyes. The centre of the room was
entirely occupied by what looked like a huge wire cage. Wire netting
nearly six feet high was stretched from side to side of the room on
ropes which were fastened in the walls by iron rings. Across the
inside, at the top and bottom of what was practically a wired-off
passage was wire netting of the same height securely fixed and
lashed firmly in its place, and to prevent the occupant of the cage
from climbing over the top it was roofed in with a double thickness
of coarse sacking securely fastened to the wirework. The floor was
covered with indiarubber mats nailed down to keep them in place.
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "Is it a menagerie, or a cage for some
wild animal, or what?"
Suddenly Dorcas grasped my arm, and put her finger to her lips.
In one corner of the cage, on a rug, covered over by a scarlet
blanket, lay a woman.
"She must be dead!" I exclaimed, starting back with horror. "Only a
corpse could sleep through the crash of that door."
"No," said Dorcas, creeping up close to the wire netting. "She is
breathing--see, the blanket rises and falls."
"What can it mean? Is she some mad woman whom Barraclough is
keeping here?"
Dorcas did not answer. She was gazing earnestly at the face of the
sleeper. It was the face of a woman of about forty--a dark woman
who must once have been strikingly handsome. Dorcas let the light
fall upon it for a minute or two, but the sleeper made no movement.
Her breathing was strangely heavy. Suddenly Dorcas touched my arm
and pointed to an open bottle which stood near the rug.
"Brandy," she said. "That's where the six bottles have gone to."
"Is she in a drunken stupor, do you think?"
"Drunken, perhaps, is hardly the word," replied Dorcas; "you forget
the empty chloral bottles."
"You think that the chloral is for her?"
"Yes; this woman is under the influence of it now. A man or a woman
who takes chloral would sleep through an earthquake. A drunken man
or woman would certainly have been startled by the noise we made
just now. In some mysterious way she has been got into this house,
and is being kept here a prisoner by Mr. Judkins Barraclough. He
probably dissolves a dose of chloral and puts it into each bottle
of brandy he brings to the poor creature."
"What can be the object of that?"
"The chloral is given, I take it, with the same object as this wire
cage has been built around her (probably while she lay helpless and
insensible under the influence of the drug)--to keep her from
making a noise, shouting or beating against the walls, or going to
the windows and attracting the attention of the neighbours. The man
who has got this woman in his power comes here daily, but probably
only after dark, and has to leave her alone at night and for many
hours during the day. She is caged in to keep her from beating the
walls, and she is dosed with chloral in order to keep her from
moving about or making the slightest noise."
"And the object?"
"To let her kill herself with the brandy."
"Then why the chloral?--that sends her to sleep and prevents her
from drinking as much as she would."
"If she were left with the brandy alone she would become violent and
be able to shriek. She might in an access of delirium tear down her
cage and get free. No--kept here without food and with a plentiful
supply of brandy she will die slowly of alcoholic poisoning. But
she must die quietly--hence the chloral."
"What an infamous villain!"
"Yes, and a desperate one. This is the woman who bit him that night.
There must have been a violent struggle after he got her here. This
woman is probably his first wife. There cannot be any other reason
for Mr. Barraclough's mysterious proceedings."
"But now we have found her," I exclaimed, "what do you propose
to do?"
"We must break through this netting, and try to rouse her first,"
replied Dorcas. "Her gaoler doesn't go near her--see here is where
he evidently picks up the corner of the network to put in the
bottles of drugged brandy. The nail has been pulled out and
hammered in again several times."
Dorcas went to the shutters, which were closed, and wrenched off
the iron bar. "Take this," she said, "and break the netting down
sufficiently for us to get in. It will make less noise than
forcing out the staples."
I took the bar, and several violent blows broke the lower portion of
the cage loose from the fastenings in the floor. Then I pulled it up
sufficiently high to allow Dorcas to crawl underneath.
"This must be the woman whose clothes are downstairs in the
cupboard," I said. "Fancy a woman reduced to such poverty as that--
the wife of a millionaire. Why, she must have been a homeless
outcast."
Dorcas had gone to the sleeping woman's side. Gently she turned
down the top of the scarlet blanket. Then she started back in
astonishment. The woman was fully dressed in clothes of the
best quality.
Dorcas lifted the almost lifeless arm from the sleeper's side and
pointed to her fingers. On one was a worn wedding-ring, and above it
a diamond ring. A gold bangle set with jewels was round her wrist.
"What does it mean?" said Dorcas, knitting her brows. "The rags
concealed in the cupboard downstairs never belonged to _this_ woman."
At that moment a church clock struck five.
"Quick!" cried Dorcas, thrusting Mr. Barraclough's keys through the
broken wirework into my hand. "You must go. The cab will be waiting
in Mabledon Place. Go to Berkeley Square at once and put the keys in
the letter-box. I wouldn't have that man suspect anything for all
the money in the world!"
"And you?"
"I shall stay here. Come back as soon as you can. Ring the bell
gently and I will let you in. Ah! wait a moment!"
She tore a leaf from her note-book, and scribbled something in lead
pencil, then folded it, and gave it to me. It was addressed to a
doctor in Endsleigh Gardens.
"It's close by; call there on your way. Ring the doctor up and give
him this. He is an old friend of mine and will come at once. Then
go to Berkeley Square as fast as the horse can take you, and put
the keys in the letter-box."
There was nothing for it but to obey. When I closed the door of
No. --- softly behind me it was broad daylight, and the birds were
singing gaily in the trees.
As I reached the pavement I involuntarily turned back to take a
parting glance at the closely shuttered house in which I had left
Dorcas Dene alone with the caged woman.
As I did so I suddenly became aware of something which rooted me to
the spot, and paralysed me beyond the power of uttering a cry.
Crouching in the shadow of the next doorway was a dark man with
white hair, a closely-cropped white moustache, and gold spectacles.
_IX. THE CLOTHES IN THE CUPBOARD_
I stood for a moment paralysed. Could it be possible that standing
there watching me as I emerged from the house in Burton Crescent was
the mysterious Indian whom Dorcas Dene believed to be no other than
Judkins Barraclough himself? Judkins Barraclough in a false wig and
a moustache and a pair of gold spectacles.
Then suddenly I recollected the sound we had heard as of the
shutting of the front door. Someone _had_ been in the house at the
time. Someone had slipped past when we were in the front room, and
as the door of the room in which the drugged woman lay yielded with
a crash, that person had crept out into the street.
And that person was the man with the white hair and moustache, whose
dark eyes were gleaming at me through his gold spectacles now.
What was I to do? To seize the Indian and call for the police? I
hesitated to do that without Dorcas's authority. I went up the step
of No. ---, and rang the bell gently.
In a moment I heard Dorcas's voice saying, "Who's there?"
"Openly quickly!" I exclaimed. "It is I."
The door opened and I dashed into the hall and gasped out that the
Indian was there--outside--what should I do?
Dorcas frowned. "There was someone in the house, then!" she exclaimed
"Oh, if I had only known it! But go to the doctor at once, and then
get back with those keys."
"And the Indian?"
"Will probably get at Judkins Barraclough at the earliest opportunity
and warn him."
"You don't think the Indian is Barraclough disguised, now, then?"
"No--that's impossible. I've been off the track a little, but
I'm on it right enough now. Get away now, every minute is of value."
Dorcas shut the door and I went down the steps again.
I looked about for the Indian. While I was talking to Dorcas he had
slipped out of the doorway and disappeared. I found the cab waiting,
drove to the doctor in Endsleigh Gardens, left the note, and then
told the cabman to drive me with all speed to the top of Berkeley
Square.
It was half-past five when I slipped the keys quietly into Mr.
Barraclough's letter box. It was six o'clock when the cab stopped
again in Mabledon Place.
There were one or two people passing through the Crescent--people
on the way to work. Outside some of the houses sleepy-looking girls
were shaking the mats and beginning the household duties of the day.
A policeman passed me and bade me good morning. I returned his
salutation and walked past No. --- to the end of the Crescent. When
I looked round he had sauntered away, and I returned and rang the
bell.
Dorcas greeted me with a smile.
"Come along," she said, "come and have some coffee, for you must
be faint."
"But the woman?"
"The doctor is with her and is bringing her round. I hope presently
she will be able to give us a little information."
Dorcas led the way and I followed her. To my astonishment, instead
of going downstairs, where I presumed the coffee would be waiting
for us, she went upstairs to the second floor.
Dorcas opened a door and I found myself in a little back room that
had evidently been inhabited. On a small Oriental table was a French
coffee-making machine, and underneath it a spirit lamp. In the corner
lay a couple of Oriental rugs, and on a small table by the side of it
a box of cigarettes.
"I've taken the liberty of using Mr. Aleem Mohammed's private
apartments," said Dorcas. "He evidently furnished them for himself
before he made his preparations for a lady visitor below."
"Then he was here all the time?"
"I don't think he was here that night when we nearly knocked the
neighbourhood up. But he probably came in later, and he was certainly
here last night when we were examining the house. It was only when we
began to make a noise that he became aware of our presence. When he
heard the locked door of the room on the first floor go, he let
himself out, and kept watch from the outside."
"Why?"
"Probably to see what we were going to do."
"But Judkins Barraclough we know has the key of the house. How did
the Indian get in?"
"That's simple," replied Dorcas. "They had a latchkey each."
I flung myself down on the rugs and drank the coffee which Dorcas
had made.
The coffee revived my drooping energies, and set my brain working
again. If the Indian was living in the house and had escaped, what
was there to prove that not he but Barraclough was the person who
was helping the unhappy creature downstairs to her death?
I asked Dorcas.
"There is no doubt in my mind that Barraclough is the principal, and
the Indian only an accomplice," she replied. "But we're not going to
let the Indian escape."
"We have done so."
"No. Scotland Yard has him in hand."
"Scotland Yard?"
"Yes; directly the doctor came, which was almost immediately after
he received my note, I went out and sent a message. Hark! there's a
knock at the door."
Dorcas ran downstairs bidding me follow her. She opened the
front door, and a handsome foreign-looking dark man, of about
eight-and-thirty, stepped into the hall, and politely raised his hat.
"Ah, Mr. Stromberg, I am glad," exclaimed Dorcas, shaking hands
heartily with the new arrival. "I was wondering who would be on
duty. Allow me to introduce my friend Mr. Saxon. Mr. Saxon, this is
Inspector Stromberg, of the Criminal Investigation Department."
The inspector bowed and smiled.
"I am always delighted to work with the famous Dorcas Dene," he said
to me. "My only regret is that she is not one of us." Then turning
to Dorcas, he said, "And now what is the mystery we are to have the
pleasure of unravelling together this time?"
"The mystery is, I hope, already unravelled," replied Dorcas
demurely, "but I must not go any farther with it. It is now a matter
for the police."
"And the particulars?"
Clearly and concisely Dorcas gave the famous detective officer the
details of the great Barraclough mystery.
When she had finished the Inspector rose and grasped Dorcas warmly
by the hand.
"My dear Mrs. Dene," he said, "you have done wonders. Of course, I
must take charge of the case now as it is practically an attempt to
murder, but I shall do nothing without your approval. The woman is
in charge of the doctor still, I presume?"
"Yes. He will call me as soon as she is able to converse coherently."
"And Mr. Judkins Barraclough--what is your idea of the time to
make the arrest?"
"To-night."
"To-night?--but why give him so much law as that?"
"I am very much interested in some ragged feminine garments concealed
in a cupboard here. I want to find out what object Barraclough can
have in keeping them there." She added something in a whisper that I
was evidently not intended to hear. The great man looked grave.
"It is a desperate thing to do," he said.
"I am afraid that unless we find the Indian and get him to turn
Queen's Evidence, the mere fact of Barraclough having a latchkey
will not bring the attempted murder home to him. I like to clear up
my cases thoroughly, and I confess that these pauper rags completely
baffle me. By the bye, you acted on my information with regard to
the Indian?"
"Yes," said the Inspector. "What was your idea in asking me to have
enquiries made at the post-offices you named?"
"They are the only ones within reasonable distance which are opened
before eight in the morning. My idea was that the man would go to a
telegraph office and send a warning wire to Barraclough. You sent a
messenger to the receiving offices near Berkeley Square?"
"Yes; no telegram will be delivered to Barraclough without our
knowledge of its contents."
"That's all right," said Dorcas, "and of course, by some
unaccountable accident, that telegram won't reach Mr. Barraclough."
Inspector Stromberg shrugged his shoulders.
"The Post Office is a sacred institution in this country," he said.
"The police do not tamper with letters and telegrams."
"No," said Dorcas, sweetly, "but sometimes accidents happen--a
careless clerk, for instance, puts a wrong address on the envelope
and that causes somebody else to open the telegram _after_ the boy
has gone."
The Inspector gazed at Dorcas admiringly.
A door on the first floor opened, and a voice called "Mrs. Dene."
Presently she came down again.
"The woman is better and able to talk. But the doctor says that for
many reasons it would be as well to get her to a hospital at once."
"Very well," said the Inspector. "Perhaps your friend will go and
get a four-wheel cab?"
I took the hint and went out. There were plenty of cabs near
St. Pancras, and I was back with one in about five minutes.
Wrapped in a blanket and a rug, which we brought down from the
Indian's room, the doctor, myself, and Stromberg carried the woman,
rescued from a lingering death, out of the house, and got her into
the cab without attracting the attention of anyone but a small boy
who was delivering newspapers. The doctor drove away with his
patient, and we returned to the house, Dorcas taking the Inspector
upstairs to see the cage and the Indian's apartment.
At a quarter to eight a man arrived to see Stromberg and made a
communication to him.
"That's all right," exclaimed the Inspector, and calling Dorcas, he
told her that the Indian had just sent a telegram to Barraclough.
"It won't be delivered till ten minutes past eight. I'll go up to
the receiving office and arrange for that mistake in the address. I
shall be there by eight o'clock, which is the time they open. Stop
here till I come back."
In an hour Stromberg returned radiant. He had the telegram:
"Don't go house. See me at once old place. Important. M."
"That's all right," said Dorcas. "Now I want to send another telegram
to Barraclough." Dorcas tore a leaf from her pocket-book and wrote:
"All over. Come Crescent, ten to-night."
"I understand," said the Inspector. "I'll send it at once. In the
meantime the men who are trying to track the Indian, will, I hope,
succeed. They will bring him straight to the Yard to me. You had
better be there this afternoon at three. There's only one thing
that may upset _your_ plan. Suppose Barraclough comes here this
afternoon, lets himself in, and finds the woman gone."
"I've thought of that," said Dorcas. "But is he likely to in the
daylight? It is easy to make him alter his determination if he does.
Put a special policeman on with instructions to keep his eye on the
door, and directly he sees anyone going towards it let him stroll
up. Barraclough won't risk letting himself in with a latchkey under
the eyes of a policeman. He'll go away again and come after dark
and then we shall be ready for him."
"You're right," said the Inspector. "I'll have the policeman put on.
But there's one thing more--we know what we _want_ Barraclough to
do, but how about the broken-open door--that will rouse his
suspicions at once?
"Send some workmen you can trust to put it right again. He's not
likely to examine it very closely."
"I'll send the workmen at once. You'll have to stay and let them in.
A couple of hours will see them through. But who is going to stay
here to let _us_ in?"
"You'll want help to-night," replied Dorcas. "Send a plain clothes
officer with the men--he can stay on in charge of the house."
"Yes, that will do--and now--Au revoir."
"What is this mysterious plan of yours?" I said to Dorcas, when
the Inspector had gone.
"Oh, I only wanted to see what Barraclough wanted with those old
clothes. Now, I'm going to lie down for an hour in the Indian's
room--I'm tired. You had better go home."
"Aren't you going to let me see the end of it?" I asked eagerly.
"Certainly, if you wish it. I shall be back here at seven
o'clock--come then."
* * * * * * *
At seven o'clock that evening, I rang cautiously at No. ---,
Burton Crescent. The Inspector opened the door to me.
"Mrs. Dene's upstairs," he said, "front room, first floor."
I went upstairs, found the door open and started back in
astonishment. Dorcas was there, sitting on one of the small tables
which had been brought down from the Indian's room, and in the
corner sitting cross-legged and smoking a cigarette was Mr. Aleem
Mohammed. Near him was a man, who was, I concluded the plain
clothes officer from the Yard.
Dorcas beckoned me out on to the landing.
"You see, we've got Aleem," she said.
"Yes, how did you manage it?"
"The Yard promptly ran him down and brought him to Stromberg. The
man, seeing his game is up, has given us every information.
Stromberg has promised that if he helps us to-night he may get
off lightly."
"What has he told you?"
"All we wanted to know. He is a man whom Barraclough employed in
South America, and brought over here with him when he came.
Barraclough made wealth rapidly in South America, and in fact
accumulated a vast fortune equal to two or three millions of money,
but he made the foundation of that fortune by unscrupulous means.
Once in possession of money his natural ability enabled him to
conduct his operations with skill, and his later successes were
legitimate enough. But Aleem knew him in his shady days, so he tells
us, and he didn't mean to be left in South America.
"About a fortnight ago Barraclough went to him--he had a little flat
in Great Russell Street--and offered him £5,000 if he would consent
to get a house and take charge of a woman who was drinking herself
to death. The rest you know. Aleem swears that he only got the house
and the things Barraclough ordered him to, and that he has never
interfered in any way with the woman."
"But who got her here?"
"Barraclough himself--but that we have learned from the woman
herself. Stromberg interviewed her at the hospital. Her name is
Judkins. Twenty years ago she married John Judkins, a clever but
improvident clerk in the employ of a firm of financiers in the City.
Judkins got into debt and difficulties and one day disappeared, and
she never saw him again until lately.
"She managed as well as she could for herself, and being a handsome
woman did fairly well. One evening some weeks ago she was at the
Empire when she heard a gentleman behind her call out 'Hullo,
Judkins!' She turned and saw two gentlemen in evening dress greet
each other. The name Judkins caused her eagerly to scrutinise the
features of the elder of them. She recognised him in a moment as
her husband----"
I interrupted Dorcas with a remark which rose to my lips:
"Why did the gentleman call Mr. Barraclough 'Judkins'?"
"Most of his friends clip his double barrel name to that, I expect.
But let me go on. After the two gentlemen separated, Mrs. Judkins
followed her husband until he was in a quiet part of the promenade
and then touched him on the shoulder and said 'Jack!'
"Judkins started and turned as pale as his bronzed face would let
him. Then he took her arm and they went out into Leicester Square
together. He explained that he had intended to write to his wife
after he decamped, but he had got into fresh trouble and had to
clear out of the country. He had come back some years ago intending
to find his wife, but he was in with a bad set and for his share in
a fraud he had been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. He had
been out for a year, but he was still getting his living by his wits.
"He had promised her he would do what he could for her, and gave her
£50 in bank-notes. He met her by appointment some time after that,
and made her a present of some jewellery and quite won her
confidence, only he was always careful to warn her that he was
still what the fraternity call 'crook,' and the police were keeping
an eye on him.
"One day he said he should have to lie quiet for a bit, and he told
her to come to him where he was staying at No. ---, Burton Crescent.
She was to come at midnight. He would, he hoped, have some money and
jewellery to give her which he wanted her to take care of while he
was away.
"The woman fell into the trap. At midnight her husband let her in.
The house was in darkness. He took her by the hand and led her
upstairs.
"Suddenly the idea came to her that all was not right--she grew
nervous and tried to drag her hand away. The man seized her forcibly
and thrust his arm across her mouth to stop her screaming. She
struggled and bit fiercely into his flesh. He uttered a cry of rage,
and thrust his pocket-handkerchief into her mouth. Then he held
something to her nose, which she supposed must have been chloroform,
for she remembers no more. When she came to herself she felt weak
and unable to move, and was lying in a kind of cage in one of the
rooms. She saw brandy by her side and she drank. The brandy was all
she had, and she drank to drive away her terror. She confesses that
she had been a hard drinker, and that on several occasions when
Judkins met her she had been drinking heavily. It was probably this
discovery which gave him the idea of letting her drink herself to
death quietly, using the chloral as a means to an end."
"And now?" I said as Dorcas finished her narrative.
"And now she is getting round----Well?"
The last word was addressed to Inspector Stromberg, who had come
upstairs.
"Everything is ready," he said. "I've two men posted out of sight
in front, and there's no chance of an escape at the back."
We went into the room all three together.
"Now," said the Inspector to the Indian, "you quite understand what
you are to do?"
"Yes, I understand," replied Mr. Mohammed with a sickly grin.
"And remember you can't save him. If you warn him and he tries to
bolt, my men are outside--so you'll let him come in and do exactly
as he tells you."
"Yes."
"Now, once more you are sure you have no idea to whom those old
clothes in the cupboard belong, nor why Barraclough brought them here!
"No; he must have brought them and put them there when I did not see."
* * * * * * *
At ten o'clock there was the sound of a key turning in the lock
downstairs. The house was in darkness. In the centre of the
first-floor back room the cage, restored to its former condition,
stood as before; only one side had been torn away by Aleem in order
that he might ascertain if the woman was really dead. Covered over
with a scarlet blanket lay something that looked like a human form.
A cloth was flung over the face.
Dorcas and I were sitting with the front room door open when we heard
the key. Stromberg and the plain-clothes officer were nowhere to be
seen.
The Indian had taken down the sacking that formed the roof of the
cage, and flung it into the corner. Through the thin partition that
separated the back and front rooms two gimlet-holes had been bored.
Dorcas knelt down and fixed her eyes to these. We could hear every
word that was spoken.
Barraclough called out softly, "Aleem, Aleem, are you there?"
"I am here," answered Aleem. "Come up--all is over."
Barraclough came quickly up the stairs. Aleem opened the door of
the back room.
"She died this morning early. Now, what are we to do? Bury her here?"
"No; it would look like murder if the body was ever found, and one
never knows. She'll be much safer buried in a cemetery."
"In a cemetery?"
"Yes--after an inquest. We had better let the law establish our
innocence _in case_ of accidents. It's always safer to do the bold
thing, Aleem--I've always found it so. Take this key, go downstairs,
unlock the cupboard in the parlour, and bring me up a bundle of old
clothes you'll find there--and bring a light."
I almost thought I heard Dorcas give a sigh of relief. She had
forgotten that she had burst the cupboard open. Had Barraclough gone
himself he would have noticed it.
Aleem went downstairs, and Dorcas rose quietly, went out softly, and
stopped him as he came up. "Leave the door ajar," she said under her
breath. Aleem evidently obeyed, for she remained outside.
I took her vacant place at the peepholes.
"Now," said Barraclough, as the Indian handed him the bundle and put
the candle on the floor, "you're quicker-fingered than I am--go in
and strip the body."
The Indian hesitated. "Why should I do this?"
"Why? Because you're going to have five thousand pounds. I'm not
going to pay you and do the dirty work myself. Off with every
rag--the jewels you can keep for yourself."
Still the Indian hesitated. "But why should we strip the body?"
he said.
"Why?--to put those rags on it."
"And then?"
"Well, then all we've got to do is wait till there isn't a soul
about and then pop the body outside on the doorstep."
"But the police--they will make inquiries."
"The police will do nothing of the sort. A wretched, ragged outcast
will be found on a doorstep dead. She will be taken to the mortuary
and a post-mortem made. The cause of death will be found to be
starvation and drink, and the body will be buried. The law doesn't
trouble itself about paupers found dead on a doorstep."
"Ah!" exclaimed Aleem, "that is what you wanted with those rags then?"
"Yes. Now, then, let me see what sort of a lady's maid you make."
At that moment the corpse moved slightly under the scarlet blanket.
Barraclough sprang back. "You fool--she's _not_ dead!" he cried.
"No," exclaimed Inspector Stromberg, leaping up and flinging the
blanket from him. "We're all very much alive."
At the same moment the sacking in the corner lifted up, and the
plain-clothes officer slipped from under it, and Dorcas, pushing
the door open, ran into the room.
"Mr. Barraclough," said the Inspector. "I arrest you on a charge of
attempting to murder your wife, Marian Judkins."
The millionaire grasped the situation in a moment.
"You infernal traitor!" he hissed at the mild Mohammed. "I'll--
I'll----"
In a moment the two officers had him by the arms.
"Come along," said the Inspector. "We'll get a four-wheeler to the
door. I presume you haven't got your brougham waiting outside?"
As the men went downstairs with their prisoner, Dorcas nodded
pleasantly to the Inspector.
"Thank you so much," she said, "for helping me to find out what
those clothes in the cupboard were for." Then she turned to me and
said, "You've had twenty-four hours' excitement straight off--you
must be tired. Go home and go to bed."
"And you?"
"I'm going to Berkeley Square to tell the lady this scoundrel
married that she is a free woman, and to offer her my sincere
congratulations."
_X. THE HAVERSTOCK HILL MURDER_
The blinds had been down at the house in Oak Tree Road and the house
shut for nearly six weeks. I had received a note from Dorcas saying
that she was engaged on a case which would take her away for some
little time, and that as Paul had not been very well lately she had
arranged that he and her mother should accompany her. She would
advise me as soon as they returned. I called once at Oak Tree Road
and found it was in charge of the two servants and Toddlekins, the
bulldog. The housemaid informed me that Mrs. Dene had not written,
so that she did not know where she was or when she would be back,
but that letters which arrived for her were forwarded by her
instructions to Mr. Jackson, of Penton Street, King's Cross.
Mr. Jackson, I remembered, was the ex-police-sergeant who was
generally employed by Dorcas when she wanted a house watched or
certain inquiries made among tradespeople. I felt that it would be
unfair to go to Jackson. Had Dorcas wanted me to know where she was
she would have told me in her letter.
The departure had been a hurried one. I had gone to the North in
connection with a business matter of my own on a Thursday evening,
leaving Dorcas at Oak Tree Road, and when I returned on Monday
afternoon I found Dorcas's letter at my chambers. It was written on
the Saturday, and evidently on the eve of departure.
But something that Dorcas did not tell me I learned quite
accidentally from my old friend Inspector Swanage, of Scotland Yard,
whom I met one cold February afternoon at Kempton Park Steeplechases.
Inspector Swanage has a greater acquaintance with the fraternity
known as "the boys" than any other officer. He has attended race
meetings for years, and the "boys" always greet him respectfully,
though they wish him further. Many a prettily-planned coup of theirs
has he nipped in the bud, and many an unsuspecting greenhorn has he
saved from pillage by a timely whisper that the well-dressed young
gentlemen who are putting their fivers on so merrily and coming out
of the enclosure with their pockets stuffed full of bank-notes are
men who get their living by clever swindling, and are far more
dangerous than the ordinary vulgar pickpocket.
On one occasion not many years ago I found a well-known publisher at
a race meeting in earnest conversation with a beautifully-dressed,
grey-haired sportsman. The publisher informed me that his new
acquaintance was the owner of a horse which was certain to win the
next race, and that it would start at ten to one. Only in order not
to shorten the price nobody was to know the name of the horse, as
the stable had three in the race. He had obligingly taken a fiver
off the publisher to put on with his own money.
I told the publisher that he was the victim of a "tale-pitcher," and
that he would never see his fiver again. At that moment Inspector
Swanage came on the scene, and the owner of race horses disappeared
as if by magic. Swanage recognised the man instantly, and having
heard my publisher's story said, "If I have the man taken will you
prosecute?" The publisher shook his head. He didn't want to send his
authors mad with delight at the idea that somebody had eventually
succeeded in getting a fiver the best of him. So Inspector Swanage
strolled away. Half an hour later he came to us in the enclosure and
said, "Your friend's horse doesn't run, so he's given me that fiver
back again for you." And with a broad grin he handed my friend a
bank-note.
It was Inspector Swanage's skill and kindness on this occasion that
made me always eager to have a chat with him when I saw him at a race
meeting, for his conversation was always interesting.
The February afternoon had been a cold one, and soon after the
commencement of racing there were signs of fog. Now a foggy afternoon
is dear to the hearts of the "boys." It conceals their operations,
and helps to cover their retreat. As the fog came up the Inspector
began to look anxious, and I went up to him.
"You don't like the look of things?" I said.
"No, if this gets worse the band will begin to play--there are some
very warm members of it here this afternoon. It was a day just like
this last year that they held up a bookmaker going to the station,
and eased him of over £500. Hullo?"
As he uttered the exclamation the Inspector pulled out his race card
and seemed to be anxiously studying it.
But under his voice he said to me, "Do you see that tall man in a fur
coat talking to a bookmaker? See, he's just handed him a bank-note."
"Where?--I don't see him."
"Yonder. Do you see that old gipsy-looking woman with race cards?
She has just thrust her hand through the railings and offered one
to the man."
"Yes, yes--I see him now."
"That's Flash George. I've missed him lately, and I heard he was
broke, but he's in funds again evidently by his get-up."
"One of the boys?"
"Has been--but he's been on another lay lately. He was mixed up in
that big jewel case--£10,000 worth of diamonds stolen from a
demi-mondaine. He got rid of some of the jewels for the thieves, but
we could never bring it home to him. But he was watched for a long
time afterwards and his game stopped. The last we heard of him he
was hard up and borrowing from some of his pals. He's gone now. I'll
just go and ask the bookie what he's betting to."
The Inspector stepped across to the bookmaker and presently returned.
"He _is_ in luck again," he said. "He's put a hundred ready on the
favourite for this race. By the bye, how's your friend Mrs. Dene
getting on with her case?"
I confessed my ignorance as to what Dorcas was doing at the present
moment--all I knew was that she was away.
"Oh, I thought you'd have known all about it," said the Inspector.
"She's on the Hannaford case."
"What, the murder?"
"Yes."
"But surely that was settled by the police? The husband was arrested
immediately after the inquest."
"Yes, and the case against him was very strong, but we know that
Dorcas Dene has been engaged by Mr. Hannaford's family, who have
made up their minds that the police, firmly believing him guilty,
won't look anywhere else for the murderer of course they are
convinced of his innocence. But you must excuse me--the fog looks
like thickening, and may stop racing--I must go and put my men
to work."
"One moment before you go--why did you suddenly ask me how Mrs. Dene
was getting on? Was it anything to do with Flash George that put it
in your head?"
The Inspector looked at me curiously.
"Yes," he said, "though I didn't expect you'd see the connection. It
was a mere coincidence. On the night that Mrs. Hannaford was murdered
Flash George, who had been lost sight of for some time by our people,
was reported to have been seen by the Inspector who was going his
rounds in the neighbourhood. He was seen about half-past two o'clock
in the morning looking rather dilapidated and seedy. When the report
of the murder came in the Inspector at once remembered that he had
seen Flash George in Haverstock Hill. But there was nothing in it--
as the house hadn't been broken into and there was nothing stolen.
You understand now why seeing Flash George carried my train of
thought on to the Hannaford murder and Dorcas Dene. Good-bye."
The Inspector hurried away and a few minutes afterwards the favourite
came in alone for the second race on the card. The stewards
immediately afterwards announced that racing would be abandoned on
the account of the fog increasing, and I made my way to the railway
station and went home by the members' train.
Directly I reached home I turned eagerly to my newspaper file and
read up the Hannaford murder. I knew the leading features, but every
detail of it had now a special interest to me, seeing that Dorcas
Dene had taken the case up.
These were the facts as reported in the Press:
Early in the morning of January 5 a maid-servant rushed out of the
house, standing in its own grounds on Haverstock Hill, calling
"Murder!" Several people who were passing instantly came to her and
inquired what was the matter, but all she could gasp was, "Fetch a
policeman." When the policeman arrived he followed the terrified
girl into the house and was conducted to the drawing-room, where he
found a lady lying in her night-dress in the centre of the room
covered with blood, but still alive. He sent one of the servants
for a doctor, and another to the police-station to inform the
superintendent. The doctor came immediately and declared that the
woman was dying. He did everything that could be done for her, and
presently she partially regained consciousness. The superintendent
had by this time arrived, and in the presence of the doctor asked
her who had injured her.
She seemed anxious to say something, but the effort was too much for
her, and presently she relapsed into unconsciousness. She died two
hours later, without speaking.
The woman's injuries had been inflicted with some heavy instrument.
On making a search of the room the poker was found lying between the
fireplace and the body. The poker was found to have blood upon it,
and some hair from the unfortunate lady's head.
The servants stated that their master and mistress, Mr. and Mrs.
Hannaford, had retired to rest at their usual time, shortly before
midnight. The housemaid had seen them go up together. She had been
working at a dress which she wanted for next Sunday, and sat up
late, using her sewing-machine in the kitchen. It was one o'clock in
the morning when she passed her master and mistress's door, and she
judged by what she heard that they were quarrelling. Mr. Hannaford
was not in the house when the murder was discovered. The house was
searched thoroughly in every direction, the first idea of the police
being that he had committed suicide. The telegraph was then set to
work, and at ten o'clock a man answering to Mr. Hannaford's
description was arrested at Paddington Station, where he was taking
a ticket for Uxbridge.
Taken to the police-station and informed that he would be charged
with murdering his wife, he appeared to be horrified, and for some
time was a prey to the most violent emotion. When he had recovered
himself and was made aware of the serious position in which he stood,
he volunteered a statement. He was warned, but he insisted on making
it. He declared that he and his wife had quarrelled violently after
they had retired to rest. Their quarrel was about a purely domestic
matter, but he was in an irritable, nervous condition, owing to his
health, and at last he had worked himself up into such a state, that
he had risen, dressed himself, and gone out into the street. That
would be about two in the morning. He had wandered about in a
state of nervous excitement until daybreak. At seven he had gone into
a coffee-house and had breakfast, and had then gone into the park and
sat on a seat and fallen asleep. When he woke up it was nine o'clock.
He had taken a cab to Paddington, and had intended to go to Uxbridge
to see his mother, who resided there. Quarrels between himself and
his wife had been frequent of late, and he was ill and wanted
to get away, and he thought perhaps if he went to his mother for a
day or two he might get calmer and feel better. He had been very much
worried lately over business matters. He was a stockjobber, and the
market in the securities in which he had been speculating was
against him.
At the conclusion of the statement, which was made in a nervous,
excited manner, he broke down so completely that it was deemed
desirable to send for the doctor and keep him under close observation.
Police investigation of the premises failed to find any further clue.
Everything pointed to the supposition that the result of the quarrel
had been an attack by the husband--possibly in a sudden fit of
homicidal mania--on the unfortunate woman. The police suggestion was
that the lady, terrified by her husband's behaviour, had risen in
the night and run down the stairs to the drawing-room, and that he
had followed her there, picked up the poker, and furiously attacked
her. When she fell, apparently lifeless, he had run back to his
bedroom, dressed himself, and made his escape quietly from the
house. There was nothing missing so far as could be ascertained--
nothing to suggest in any way that any third party, a burglar from
outside or some person inside, had had anything to do with the matter.
The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder, and the
husband was charged before a magistrate and committed for trial. But
in the interval his reason gave way, and, the doctors certifying
that he was undoubtedly insane, he was sent to Broadmoor.
Nobody had the slightest doubt of his guilt, and it was his mother
who, broken-hearted, and absolutely refusing to believe in her son's
guilt, had come to Dorcas Dene and requested her to take up the case
privately and investigate it. The poor old lady declared that she was
perfectly certain that her son could not have been guilty of such a
deed, but the police were satisfied, and would make no further
investigation.
This I learnt afterwards when I went to see Inspector Swanage. All
I knew when I had finished reading up the case in the newspapers was
that the husband of Mrs. Hannaford was in Broadmoor, practically
condemned for the murder of his wife, and that Dorcas Dene had left
home to try and prove his innocence.
This history of the Hannafords as given in the public Press was as
follows: Mrs. Hannaford was a widow when Mr. Hannaford, a man of
six-and-thirty, married her. Her first husband was a Mr. Charles
Drayson, a financier, who had been among the victims of the fire at
the Paris Opéra Comique. His wife was with him in a loge that fatal
night. When the fire broke out they both tried to escape together.
They became separated in the crush. She was only slightly injured,
and succeeded in getting out; he was less fortunate. His gold watch,
a presentation one, with an inscription, was found among a mass of
charred, unrecognisable remains when the ruins were searched.
Three years after this tragedy the widow married Mr. Hannaford. The
death of her first husband did not leave her well off. It was found
that he was heavily in debt, and had he lived a serious charge of
fraud would undoubtedly have been preferred against him. As it was,
his partner, a Mr. Thomas Holmes, was arrested and sentenced to five
years' penal servitude in connection with a joint fraudulent
transaction.
The estate of Mr. Drayson went to satisfy the creditors, but
Mrs. Drayson, the widow, retained the house at Haverstock Hill,
which he had purchased and settled on her, with all the furniture
and contents, some years previously. She wished to continue living
in the house when she married again, and Mr. Hannaford consented,
and they made it their home. Hannaford himself, though not a wealthy
man, was a fairly successful stockjobber, and until the crisis, which
had brought on great anxiety and helped to break down his health, had
had no financial worries. But the marriage, so it was alleged, had
not been a very happy one and quarrels had been frequent. Old
Mrs. Hannaford was against it from the first, and to her her son
always turned in his later matrimonial troubles. Now that his life
had probably been spared by this mental breakdown, and he had been
sent to Broadmoor, she had but one object in life--to set her son
free, some day restored to reason, and with his innocence proved to
the world.
* * * * * * *
It was about a fortnight after my interview with Inspector Swanage,
and my study of the details of the Haverstock Hill murder, that one
morning I opened a telegram and to my intense delight found that it
was from Dorcas Dene. It was from London, and informed me that in
the evening they would be very pleased to see me at Oak Tree Road.
In the evening I presented myself about eight o'clock. Paul was
alone in the drawing-room when I entered, but his face and his voice
when he greeted me showed me plainly that he had benefited greatly
by the change.
"Where have you been, to look so well?" I asked. "The South of
Europe, I suppose--Nice or Monte Carlo?"
"No," said Paul smiling, "we haven't been nearly so far as that. But
I mustn't tell tales out of school. You must ask Dorcas."
At that moment Dorcas came in and gave me a cordial greeting.
"Well," I said, after the first conversational preliminaries, "who
committed the Haverstock Hill murder?"
"Oh, so you know that I have taken that up, do you? I imagined it
would get about through the Yard people. You see, Paul dear, how
wise I was to give out that I had gone away."
"Give out!" I exclaimed. "_Haven't_ you been away then?"
"No, Paul and mother have been staying at Hastings, and I have been
down whenever I have been able to spare a day, but as a matter of
fact I have been in London the greater part of the time."
"But I don't see the use of your pretending you were going away."
"I did it on purpose. I knew the fact that old Mrs. Hannaford had
engaged me would get about in certain circles, and I wanted certain
people to think that I had gone away to investigate some clue which
I thought I had discovered. In order to baulk all possible inquirers
I didn't even let the servants forward my letters. They went to
Jackson, who sent them on to me."
"Then you were really investigating in London?"
"Now shall I tell you where you heard that I was on this case?"
"Yes."
"You heard it at Kempton Park Steeplechases, and your informant was
Inspector Swanage."
"You have seen him and he has told you."
"No; I saw you there talking to him."
"_You_ saw me? You were at Kempton Park? I never saw you."
"Yes, you did, for I caught you looking full at me. I was trying to
sell some race cards just before the second race, and was holding
them between the railings of the enclosure."
"What! You were that old gipsy woman? I'm certain Swanage didn't
know you."
"I didn't want him to, or anybody else."
"It was an astonishing disguise. But come, aren't you going to tell
me anything about the Hannaford case? I've been reading it up, but
I fail entirely to see the slightest suspicion against anyone but
the husband. Everything points to his having committed the crime in
a moment of madness. The fact that he has since gone completely out
of his mind seems to me to show that conclusively."
"It is a good job he did go out of his mind--but for that I am
afraid he would have suffered for the crime, and the poor
broken-hearted old mother for whom I working would soon have
followed him to the grave."
"Then you don't share the general belief in his guilt?"
"I did at first, but I don't now."
"You have discovered the guilty party?"
"No--not yet--but I hope to."
"Tell me exactly all that has happened--there may still be a chance
for your 'assistant.'"
"Yes, it is quite possible that now I may be able to avail myself of
your services. You say you have studied the details of this case--
let us just run through them together, and see what you think of my
plan of campaign so far as it has gone. When old Mrs. Hannaford came
to me, her son had already been declared insane and unable to plead,
and had gone to Broadmoor. That was nearly a month after the
commission of the crime, so that much valuable time had been lost.
At first I declined to take the matter up--the police had so
thoroughly investigated the affair. The case seemed so absolutely
conclusive that I told her that it would be useless for her to incur
the heavy expense of a private investigation. But she pleaded so
earnestly--her faith in her son was so great--and she seemed such a
sweet, dear old lady, that at last she conquered my scruples, and I
consented to study the case, and see if there was the slightest
alternative theory to go on. I had almost abandoned hope, for there
was nothing in the published reports to encourage it, when I
determined to go to the fountain-head, and see the Superintendent
who had had the case in hand.
"He received me courteously, and told me everything. He was certain
that the husband committed the murder. There was an entire absence
of motive for anyone else in the house to have done it, and the
husband's flight from the house in the middle of the night was
absolutely damning. I inquired if they had found anyone who had seen
the husband in the street--anyone who could fix the time at which he
had left the house. He replied that no such witness had been found.
Then I asked if the policeman on duty that night had made any report
of any suspicious characters being seen about. He said No, the only
person he had noticed at all was a man well known to the police--a
man named Flash George. I asked what time Flash George had been seen
and whereabouts, and I ascertained that it was at half-past two in
the morning, and about a hundred yards below the scene of the crime,
that when the policeman spoke to him he said he was coming from
Hampstead, and was going to Covent Garden Market. He walked away in
the direction of the Chalk Farm Road. I enquired what Flash George's
record was, and I ascertained that he was the associate of thieves
and swindlers, and he was suspected of having disposed of some
jewels, the proceeds of a robbery which had made a nine days'
sensation. But the police had failed to bring the charge home to him,
and the jewels had never been traced. He was also a gambler, a
frequenter of racecourses and certain night-clubs of evil repute,
and had not been seen about for some time previous to that evening."
"And didn't the police make any further investigations in that
direction?"
"No. Why should they? There was nothing missing from the house--not
the slightest sign of an attempted burglary. All their efforts were
directed to proving the guilt of the unfortunate woman's husband."
"And you?"
"I had a different task--mine was to prove the husband's innocence.
I determined to find out something more of Flash George. I shut the
house up, gave out that I had gone away, and took, amongst other
things, to selling cards and pencils on racecourses. The day that
Flash George made his reappearance on the turf after a long absence
was the day he backed the winner of the second race at Kempton Park
for a hundred pounds."
"But surely that proves that if he had been connected with any crime
it must have been one in which money was obtained. No one has
attempted to associate the murder of Mrs. Hannaford with robbery."
"No. But one thing is certain--that on the night of the crime Flash
George was in the neighbourhood. Two days previously he had
borrowed a few pounds of a pal because he was 'stoney broke.' When
he reappears as a racing man he has on a fur coat, is evidently in
first-class circumstances, and he bets in hundred-pound notes. He is
a considerably richer man after the murder of Mrs. Hannaford than
he was before, and he was seen within a hundred yards of the house
at half-past two o'clock on the night that the crime was committed."
"That might have been a mere accident. His sudden wealth may be the
result of a lucky gamble, or a swindle of which you know nothing. I
can't see that it can possibly have any bearing on the Hannaford
crime, because nothing was taken from the house."
"Quite true. But here is a remarkable fact. When he went up to the
betting man he went to one who was betting close to the rails, and I
pushed my cards in between and asked him to buy one. Flash George is
a 'suspected character,' and quite capable on a foggy day of trying
to swindle a bookmaker. The bookmaker took the precaution to open
that note, it being for a hundred pounds, and examined it carefully.
That enabled me to see the number. I had sharpened pencils to sell,
and with one of them I hastily took down the number of that note----
²ₓ❘35421."
"That was clever. And you have traced it?"
"Yes."
"And has that furnished you with any clue?"
"It has placed me in possession of a most remarkable fact. The
hundred-pound note which was in Flash George's possession on Kempton
Park racecourse was one of a number which were paid over the counter
of the Union Bank of London for a five-thousand-pound cheque over
seven years ago. And that cheque was drawn by the murdered woman's
husband."
"Mr. Hannaford!"
"No; her first husband--Mr. Charles Drayson."
_XI. THE BROWN BEAR LAMP_
When Dorcas Dene told me that the £100 note Flash George had handed
to the bookmaker at Kempton Park was one which had some years
previously been paid to Mr. Charles Drayson, the first husband of
the murdered woman, Mrs. Hannaford, I had to sit still and think
for a moment.
It was curious certainly, but after all much more remarkable
coincidences than that occur daily. I could not see what practical
value there was in Dorcas's extraordinary discovery, because
Mr. Charles Drayson was dead, and it was hardly likely that his wife
would have kept a £100 note of his for several years. And if she had,
she had not been murdered for that, because there were no signs of
the house having been broken into. The more I thought the business
over the more confused I became in my attempt to establish a clue
from it, and so after a minute's silence I frankly confessed to
Dorcas that I didn't see where her discovery led to.
"I don't say that it leads very far by itself," said Dorcas. "But
you must look at _all_ the circumstances. During the night of
January 5 a lady is murdered in her own drawing-room. Round about
the time that the attack is supposed to have been made upon her a
well-known bad character is seen close to the house. That person,
who just previously has been ascertained to have been so hard up
that he had been borrowing of his associates, reappears on the
turf a few weeks later expensively dressed and in possession of
money. He bets with a £100 note, and that £100 note I have traced
to the previous possession of the murdered woman's first husband,
who lost his life in the Opéra Comique disaster in Paris, while on
a short visit to that capital."
"Yes, it certainly is curious, but----"
"Wait a minute--I haven't finished yet. Of the bank-notes--several of
them for £100--which were paid some years ago to Mr. Charles Drayson,
not one had come back to the bank _before_ the murder.
"Indeed!"
"Since the murder _several_ of them have come in. Now, is it not a
remarkable circumstance that during all those years £5,000 worth of
bank-notes should have remained out!"
"It is remarkable, but after all bank-notes circulate--they may
pass through hundreds of hands before returning to the bank."
"Some may, undoubtedly, but it is highly improbable that _all_ would
under ordinary circumstances--especially notes for £100. These are
sums which are not passed from pocket to pocket. As a rule they go
to the bank of one of the early receivers of them, and from that
bank into the Bank of England."
"You mean that is an extraordinary fact that for many years not one
of the notes paid to Mr. Charles Drayson by the Union Bank came back
to the Bank of England."
"Yes, that _is_ an extraordinary fact, but there is a fact which is
more extraordinary still, and that is that soon after the murder of
Mrs. Hannaford that state of things ceases. It looks as though the
murderer had placed the notes in circulation again."
"It does, certainly. Have you traced back any of the other notes
that have come in?"
"Yes; but they have been cleverly worked. They have nearly all been
circulated in the betting ring; those that have not have come in
from money-changers in Paris and Rotterdam. My own belief is that
before long the whole of those notes will come back to the bank."
"Then, my dear Dorcas, it seems to me that your course is plain, and
you ought to go to the police and get them to get the bank to
circulate a list of the notes."
Dorcas shook her head. "No, thank you," she said. "I'm going to carry
this case through on my own account. The police are convinced that
the murderer is Mr. Hannaford, who is at present in Broadmoor, and
the bank has absolutely no reason to interfere. No question has been
raised of the notes having been stolen. They were paid to the man
who died over seven years ago, not to the woman who was murdered
last January."
"But you have traced one note to Flash George, who is a bad lot, and
he was near the house on the night of the tragedy. You suspect Flash
George and----"
"I do not suspect Flash George of the actual murder," she said, "and
I don't see how he is to be arrested for being in possession of a
bank-note which forms no part of the police case, and which he might
easily say he had received in the betting ring."
"Then what _are_ you going to do?"
"Follow up the clue I have. I have been shadowing Flash George all
the time I have been away. I know where he lives--I know who are
his companions."
"And do you think the murderer is among them?"
"No. They are all a little astonished at his sudden good fortune. I
have heard them 'chip' him, as they call it, on the subject. I have
carried my investigations up to a certain point and there they stop
short. I am going a step further to-morrow evening, and it is in
that step that I want assistance."
"And you have come to me?" I said eagerly.
"Yes."
"What do you want me to do?"
"To-morrow morning I am going to make a thorough examination of the
room in which the murder was committed. To-morrow evening I have to
meet a gentleman of whom I know nothing but his career and his name.
I want you to accompany me."
"Certainly; but if I am your assistant in the evening I shall expect
to be your assistant in the morning--I should very much like to
see the scene of the crime."
"I have no objection. The house on Haverstock Hill is at present
shut up and in charge of a caretaker, but the solicitors who are
managing the late Mrs. Hannaford's estate have given me permission
to go over it and examine it."
The next day at eleven o'clock I met Dorcas outside Mrs. Hannaford's
house, and the caretaker, who had received his instructions,
admitted us.
He was the gardener, and an old servant, and had been present during
the police investigation.
The bedroom in which Mr. Hannaford and his wife slept on the fatal
night was on the floor above. Dorcas told me to go upstairs, shut
the door, lie down on the bed, and listen. Directly a noise in the
room attracted my attention, I was to jump up, open the door and
call out.
I obeyed her instructions and listened intently, but lying on the
bed I heard nothing for a long time. It must have been quite a
quarter of an hour when suddenly I heard a sound as of a door
opening with a cracking sound. I leapt up, ran to the balusters,
and called over, "I heard that!"
"All right, then, come down," said Dorcas, who was standing in the
hall with the caretaker.
She explained to me that she had been moving about the drawing-room
with the man, and they had both made as much noise with their feet
as they could. They had even opened and shut the drawing-room door,
but nothing had attracted my attention. Then Dorcas had sent the man
to open the front door. It had opened with the cracking sound that I
had heard.
"Now," said Dorcas to the caretaker, "you were here when the police
were coming and going--did the front door always make a sound like
that?"
"Yes, madam. The door had swollen or warped, or something, and it
was always difficult to open. Mrs. Hannaford spoke about it once
and was going to have it eased."
"That's it, then," said Dorcas to me. "The probability is that it
was the noise made by the opening of that front door which first
attracted the attention of the murdered woman."
"That was Hannaford going out--if his story is correct."
"No; Hannaford went out in a rage. He would pull the door open
violently, and probably bang it too. That she would understand. It
was when the door _opened again_ with a sharp crack that she
listened, thinking it was her husband come back."
"But she was murdered in the drawing-room?"
"Yes. My theory, therefore, is that after the opening of the front
door she expected her husband to come upstairs. He didn't do so,
and she concluded that he had gone into one of the rooms downstairs
to spend the night, and she got up and came down to find him and
ask him to get over his temper and come back to bed. She went into
the drawing-room to see if he was there, and was struck down from
behind before she had time to utter a cry. The servants heard
nothing, remember."
"They said so at the inquest--yes."
"Now come into the drawing-room. This is where the caretaker tells
me the body was found--here in the centre of the room--the poker
with which the fatal blow had been struck was lying between the body
and the fireplace. The absence of a cry and the position of the body
show that when Mrs. Hannaford opened the door she _saw no one_
(I am of course presuming that the murderer was _not_ her husband)
and she came in further. But there must have been someone in the
room or she couldn't have been murdered in it."
"That is indisputable; but he might not have been in the room at the
time--the person might have been hiding in the hall and followed
her in."
"To suppose that we must presume that the murderer came into the
room, took the poker from the fireplace, and went out again in order
to come in again. That poker was secured, I am convinced, when the
intruder heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He picked up the
poker then concealed himself _here._"
"Then why, my dear Dorcas, shouldn't he have remained concealed
until Mrs. Hannaford had gone out of the room again?"
"I think she was turning to go when he rushed out and struck her
down. He probably thought that she had heard the noise of the door,
and might go and alarm the servants."
"But just now you said she came in believing that her husband had
returned and was in one of the rooms."
"The intruder could hardly be in possession of _her thoughts._"
"In the meantime he could have got out at the front door."
"Yes; but if his object was robbery he would have to go without the
plunder. He struck the woman down in order to have time to get what
he wanted."
"Then you think he left her here senseless while he searched the
house?"
"Nobody got anything by searching the house, ma'am," broke in the
caretaker. "The police satisfied themselves that nothing had been
disturbed. Every door was locked, the plate was all complete, not
a bit of jewellery or anything was missing. The servants were all
examined about that, and the detectives went over every room and
every cupboard to prove it wasn't no burglar broke in or anything
of that sort. Besides, the windows were all fastened."
"What he says is quite true," said Dorcas to me, "but something
alarmed Mrs. Hannaford in the night and brought her to the
drawing-room in her nightdress. If it was as I suspect, the opening
of the front door, that is how the guilty person got in."
The caretaker shook his head. "It was the poor master as did it,
ma'am, right enough. He was out of his mind."
Dorcas shrugged her shoulders. "If he had done it, it would have
been a furious attack, there would have been oaths and cries, and
the poor lady would have received a rain of blows. The medical
evidence shows that death resulted from _one_ heavy blow on the
_back_ of the skull. But let us see where the murderer could have
concealed himself ready armed with the poker here in the
drawing-room."
In front of the drawing-room window were heavy curtains, and I at
once suggested that curtains were the usual place of concealment on
the stage and might be in real life.
As soon as I had asked the question Dorcas turned to the caretaker.
"You are certain that every article of furniture is in its place
exactly as it was that night?"
"Yes; the police prepared a plan of the room for the trial, and
since then by the solicitors' orders we have not touched a thing."
"That settles the curtains then," continued Dorcas. "Look at the
windows for yourself. In front of one, close by the curtains, is an
ornamental table covered with china and glass and bric-à-brac; and
in front of the other a large settee. No man could have come from
behind those curtains without shifting that furniture out of his way.
That would have immediately attracted Mrs. Hannaford's attention and
given her time to scream and rush out of the room. No, we must find
some other place for the assassin. Ah!--I wonder if----"
Dorcas's eyes were fixed on a large brown bear which stood nearly
against the wall near the fireplace. The bear, a very fine, big
specimen, was supported in its upright position by an ornamental
iron pole, at the top of which was fixed an oil lamp covered with
a yellow silk shade.
"That's a fine bear lamp," exclaimed Dorcas.
"Yes," said the caretaker, "it's been here ever since I've been in
the family's service. It was bought by the poor mistress's first
husband, Mr. Drayson, and he thought a lot of it. But," he added,
looking at it curiously, "I always thought it stood closer to the
wall than that. It used to--right against it."
"Ah," exclaimed Dorcas, "that's interesting. Pull the curtains right
back and give me all the light you can."
As the man obeyed her directions she went down on her hands and
knees and examined the carpet carefully.
"You are right," she said. "This has been moved a little forward,
and not so very long ago--the carpet for a square of some inches is
a different colour to the rest. The brown bear stands on a square
mahogany stand, and the exact square now shows in the colour of the
carpet that has been hidden by it. Only here is a discoloured
portion and the bear does not now stand on it."
The evidence of the bear having been moved forward from a position
it had long occupied was indisputable. Dorcas got up and went to the
door of the drawing-room.
"Go and stand behind that bear," she said. "Stand as compact as you
can, as though you were endeavouring to conceal yourself."
I obeyed, and Dorcas, standing in the drawing-room doorway, declared
that I was completely hidden.
"Now," she said, coming to the centre of the room and turning her
back to me, "reach down from where you are and see if you can pick
up the shovel from the fireplace without making a noise."
I reached out carefully and had the shovel in my hand without
making a sound.
"I have it," I said.
"That's right. The poker would have been on the same side as the
shovel, and much easier to pick up quietly. Now, while my back is
turned, grasp the shovel by the handle, leap out at me, and raise
the shovel as if to hit me--but don't get excited and do it, because
I don't want to realise the scene _too_ completely."
I obeyed. My footsteps were scarcely heard on the heavy-pile
drawing-room carpet. When Dorcas turned round the shovel was above
her head ready to strike.
"Thank you for letting me off," she said, with a smile. Then her
face becoming serious again, she exclaimed: "The murderer of
Mrs. Hannaford concealed himself behind that brown bear lamp, and
attacked her in exactly the way I have indicated. But why had he
moved the bear two or three inches forward?"
"To conceal himself behind it."
"Nonsense! His concealment was a sudden act. That bear is heavy--the
glass chimney of the lamp would have rattled if it had been done
violently and hurriedly while Mrs. Hannaford was coming downstairs--
that would have attracted her attention and she would have called
out, 'Who's there?' at the doorway, and not have come in looking
about for her husband."
Dorcas looked the animal over carefully, prodded it with her fingers,
and then went behind it.
After a minute or two's close examination, she uttered a little cry
and called me to her side.
She had found in the back of the bear a small straight slit. This
was quite invisible. She had only discovered it by an accidentally
violent thrust of her fingers into the animal's fur. Into this slit
she thrust her hand, and the aperture yielded sufficiently for her
to thrust her arm in. The interior of the bear was hollow, but
Dorcas's hand as it went down struck against a wooden bottom. Then
she withdrew her arm and the aperture closed up. It had evidently
been specially prepared as a place of concealment, and only the most
careful examination would have revealed it.
"Now," exclaimed Dorcas, triumphantly, "I think we are on a straight
road! This, I believe, is where those missing bank-notes lay
concealed for years. They were probably placed there by Mr. Drayson
with the idea that some day his frauds might be discovered or he
might be made a bankrupt. This was his little nest-egg, and his death
in Paris before his fraud was discovered prevented his making use of
them. Mrs. Hannaford evidently knew nothing of the hidden treasure,
or she would speedily have removed it. But _someone_ knew, and that
someone put his knowledge to practical use the night that
Mrs. Hannaford was murdered. The man who got in at the front door
that night, got in to relieve the bear of its valuable stuffing; he
moved the bear to get at the aperture, and was behind it when
Mrs. Hannaford came in. The rest is easy to understand."
"But how did he get in at the front door?"
"That's what I have to find out. I am sure now that Flash George was
in it. He was seen outside, and some of the notes that were concealed
in the brown bear lamp have been traced to him. Who was Flash
George's accomplice we may discover to-night. I think I have an idea,
and if that is correct we shall have the solution of the whole
mystery before dawn to-morrow morning."
"Why do you think you will learn so much to-night?"
"Because Flash George met a man two nights ago outside the Criterion.
I was selling wax matches, and followed them up, pestering them. I
heard George say to his companion, whom I had never seen with him
before, 'Tell him Hungerford Bridge, midnight, Wednesday. Tell him
to bring the lot and I'll cash up for them!'"
"And you think the 'him'----?"
"Is the man who rifled the brown bear and killed Mrs. Hannaford."
* * * * * * *
At eleven o'clock that evening I met Dorcas Dene in Villiers Street.
I knew what she would be like, otherwise her disguise would have
completely baffled me. She was dressed as an Italian street musician,
and was with a man who looked like an Italian organ-grinder.
Dorcas took my breath away by her first words.
"Allow me to introduce you," she said, "to Mr. Thomas Holmes. This
is the gentleman who was Charles Drayson's partner, and was sentenced
to five years' penal servitude over the partnership frauds."
"Yes," replied the organ-grinder in excellent English. "I suppose I
deserved it for being a fool, but the villain was Drayson--he had
all my money, and involved me in a fraud at the finish."
"I have told Mr. Holmes the story of our discovery," said Dorcas. "I
have been in communication with him ever since I discovered the notes
were in circulation. He knew Drayson's affairs, and he has given me
some valuable information. He is with us to-night because he knew
Mr. Drayson's former associates, and he may be able to identify the
man who knew the secret of the house at Haverstock Hill."
"You think that is the man Flash George is to meet?"
"I do. What else can 'Tell him to bring the lot and I'll cash up'
mean but the rest of the bank-notes?"
Shortly before twelve we got on to Hungerford Bridge--the narrow
footway that runs across the Thames by the side of the railway.
I was to walk ahead and keep clear of the Italians until I heard a
signal.
We crossed the bridge after that once or twice, I coming from one
end and the Italians from the other, and passing each other about
the centre.
At five minutes to midnight I saw Flash George come slowly along
from the Middlesex side. The Italians were not far behind. A minute
later an old man with a grey beard, and wearing an old Inverness
cape, passed me, coming from the Surrey side. When he met Flash
George the two stopped and leant over the parapet, apparently
interested in the river. Suddenly I heard Dorcas's signal. She
began to sing the Italian song, "Santa Lucia."
I had my instructions. I jostled up against the two men and begged
their pardon.
Flash George turned fiercely round. At the same moment I seized the
old man and shouted for help. The Italians came hastily up. Several
foot passengers rushed to the scene and inquired what was the matter.
"He was going to commit suicide," I cried. "He was just going to
jump into the water."
The old man was struggling in my grasp. The crowd were keeping back
Flash George. They believed the old man was struggling to get free
to throw himself into the water.
The Italian rushed up to me.
"Ah, poor old man!" he said. "Don't let him get away!"
He gave a violent tug to the grey beard. It came off in his hands.
Then with an oath he seized the supposed would-be suicide by
the throat.
"You infernal villain!" he said.
"Who is he?" asked Dorcas.
"Who is he!" exclaimed Thomas Holmes, "why, the villain who brought
me to ruin--_my precious partner--Charles Drayson!_"
As the words escaped from the supposed Italian's lips, Charles
Drayson gave a cry of terror, and leaping on to the parapet, plunged
into the river.
Flash George turned to run, but was stopped by a policeman who had
just come up.
Dorcas whispered something in the man's ear, and the officer,
thrusting his hand in the rascal's pocket, drew out a bundle of
bank-notes.
A few minutes later the would-be suicide was brought ashore. He
was still alive, but had injured himself terribly in his fall, and
was taken to the hospital.
Before he died he was induced to confess that he had taken advantage
of the Paris fire to disappear. He had flung his watch down in order
that it might be found as evidence of his death. He had, previously
to visiting the Opéra Comique, received a letter at his hotel which
told him pretty plainly the game was up, and he knew that at any
moment a warrant might be issued against him. After reading his name
amongst the victims, he lived as best he could abroad, but after
some years, being in desperate straits, he determined to do a bold
thing, return to London and endeavour to get into his house and
obtain possession of the money which was lying unsuspected in the
interior of the brown bear lamp. He had concealed it, well knowing
that at any time the crash might come, and everything belonging to
him be seized. The hiding-place he had selected was one which
neither his creditors nor his relatives would suspect.
On the night he entered the house, Flash George, whose acquaintance
he had made in London, kept watch for him _while he let himself in
with his latch-key,_ which he had carefully preserved.
Mr. Hannaford's leaving the house was one of those pieces of good
fortune which occasionally favour the wicked.
With his dying breath Charles Drayson declared that he had no
intention of killing his wife. He feared that, having heard a noise,
she had come to see what it was, and might alarm the house in her
terror, and as she turned to go out of the drawing-room he struck
her, intending only to render her senseless until he had secured
the booty.
* * * * * * *
Mr. Hannaford, completely recovered and in his right mind, was in
due time released from Broadmoor. The letter from his mother to
Dorcas Dene, thanking her for clearing her son's character and
proving his innocence of the terrible crime for which he had been
practically condemned, brought tears to my eyes as Dorcas read it
aloud to Paul and myself. It was touching and beautiful to a degree.
As she folded it up and put it away, I saw that Dorcas herself
was deeply moved.
"These are the _rewards_ of my profession," she said.
"They compensate for everything."
_THE END_
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
- Underscores have been used to enclose words and phrases which are,
in the original text, italicized. As in: _Italics_
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