The crime code

By William Le Queux

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Title: The crime code

Author: William Le Queux


        
Release date: April 6, 2026 [eBook #78372]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macaulay Company, 1928

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78372

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME CODE ***




 THE CRIME CODE

 BY
 WILLIAM LE QUEUX
 AUTHOR OF “POISON SHADOWS”




 NEW YORK
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY




 [COPYRIGHT]

 Published in England under the title
 “DOUBLE NOUGHT”

 Copyright, 1928, by
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY




 CONTENTS

 I. TO BEG PARDON OF THE READER
 II. THREADS OF IRON
 III. WHAT THE PAPERS SAID
 IV. DEADLY PERIL
 V. HELD BY THE ENEMY
 VI. ILLONA!
 VII. THE AWAKENING
 VIII. THE DOUBLE NOUGHT
 IX. AN ODD MISSION
 X. THE WIND OF CIRCUMSTANCE
 XI. MY FATHER’S STORY
 XII. MISSING
 XIII. AN AFFAIR IN FULHAM
 XIV. SOME CURIOUS FACTS
 XV. A SCRAP OF MUSIC
 XVI. TRICKED
 XVII. ACROSS EUROPE
 XVIII. “A LADY TO SEE YOU, SIR!”
 XIX. ANGELA IS FRANK
 XX. TO-MORROW!
 XXI. I MEET ILLONA
 XXII. “REMEMBER THE NAME!”
 XXIII. THE SIX CIRCLES
 XXIV. SOME PLAIN FACTS
 XXV. I MEET HIS EXCELLENCY
 XXVI. WITHOUT PREJUDICE
 XXVII. THE SHOP-WINDOW CLUE
 XXVIII. THE DARK HOUSE
 XXIX. CONCLUSION




 THE CRIME CODE

 CHAPTER ONE.
 TO BEG PARDON OF THE READER

At the outset I wish to impress on those who read this
straightforward and unembellished narrative of my amazing and often
exciting adventures, that I seek not to hide my own shortcomings, for
they are alas! many; nor do I in the least desire to pose as a
vainglorious hero. At least, I am not one who slops about in the oozy
slime of the sex problem.

From leading the normal life of an ordinary young man about London, I
was, by a strange freak of ill-fortune, and in the space of a single
minute, plunged into a veritable vortex of doubt and misery, compelled
to lead the life of a hunted criminal, and to resort to all sorts of
ruses in order to retain my liberty. And yet, the events which led up
to the sudden change in my life are such as might occur to any man, on
any night, in any big city in the world.

I suppose, in order that I shall be understood right from the outset,
I may as well explain that I am Lionel Hipwell. My old governor is the
Honorable George Hipwell, of Hipwell Hall, near Bulwick,
Northamptonshire, Deputy-Lieutenant for the County, and Member of
Parliament for South-East Rutland. After Eton, I graduated at Oxford,
and then read for the Bar, to which I was called; but I have never
practised. For twenty-one years my father had sat for the same
constituency in the Conservative interest, and it was my ambition also
to sit in the House. With that object, I studied politics keenly,
especially in reference to our relations with foreign countries; and I
often addressed political meetings. I had the satisfaction of being
hailed as sound in argument, with a clear and lucid delivery.
Therefore, the decision of the Conservative party to adopt me as a
candidate at the next election had recently placed me in the seventh
heaven of delight. And, when I told Joan, to whom I was engaged, she
regarded me as a prospective occupant of a seat on the Front Bench.

I have mentioned that I was engaged to Joan Gell, but it was only
informally and secretly.

Joan was the only daughter of the famous King’s Counsel, Mr. John
Gell, the stoutest man who had taken silk. But, unfortunately, he and
my father were bitter enemies, arising out of a political quarrel of a
couple of years before. Hence, both Joan and I thought it discreet to
wait before announcing our engagement, until such time as the quarrel
was patched up.

Nevertheless, we met often--more often than her parents ever guessed.
Indeed, she not infrequently overstepped the bounds of strict
propriety, sometimes coming to my rooms in Sackville Street and taking
a cozy tea, with her feet upon my fender. I adored her, and she, on
her part, reciprocated my affection. We understood each other
perfectly, and though she was highly popular in a smart set, and much
sought after as a dancing-partner, yet I had never any cause for undue
jealousy. The society in which I moved in London--a fairly good one as
judged in these hectic days of night-club dancing--had rather sickened
me. I loved Hipwell, with its hunting with the Cottesmore, its
one-day-a-week beagling, the fishing over our own stream, the walks in
the park in spring, and the interviewing of our tenant-farmers. I had
no use for the night life of London, with the marks that glow red on
the pasty foreheads of callow youths and erotic widows, who rave about
affinities and make the south of Sicily their winter home.

Though having quarreled with my father, the stout old King’s Counsel
was always friendly towards me. Hence, I was frequently invited to his
house at Queen’s Gate, a place noteworthy for the collection of
antique furniture and an unrivaled assortment of ancient snuff-boxes.
Mr. Gell was a connoisseur, and, making a very large income at the
Bar, expended money lavishly on his hobby. His wife, a handsome,
well-preserved, and much-traveled woman, who doted on Joan, gave
frequent parties, and for each I always received a card. In the Temple
it was an open secret that elevation to the Bench had been offered to
“Jelly” Gell--a sobriquet bestowed on him by one of his adversaries on
account of the shaking of his protruding stomach when he grew unduly
excited while addressing a jury. But the famous K.C. had preferred to
remain at the Bar, rather than forego his income and accept the high
responsibility and the rather meagre stipend with which the Government
rewards its judges.

As for myself, I held quite an important position in the Treaty
Department of the Foreign Office, a post which, I confess, carried
with it short hours and little work; for the Government does not make
treaties with foreign powers every day--hence my office was almost a
sinecure. I suppose family influence, that of my uncle, the old Earl
of Whitchurch and ex-Minister of the Crown, whose favorite I was, had
been responsible for my appointment, because from a clerk I had risen
rapidly, being “pushed on” by some unknown hand, a fact, I know, which
had aroused considerable jealousy in the Department.

I said I had no use for the circle in which I was compelled to move.
My _penchant_ for gambling, alas, led to my being hurled into the
maelstrom of mystery. I loved a little “flutter,” and had been at
Deauville, Cannes, Monte Carlo, and other places; and I had played for
modest stakes with the usual varying success.

The night of November the twelfth was one of gloom and rain in London.
It had rained incessantly the whole day, and still poured all the
evening. Joan was down at Cannes with her mother; and, having nothing
better to do, I took a taxi from the club, where I had dined at a
house in Woburn Square, where they played “chemmy” nightly. As a
frequent visitor there, I often had good luck. There were about fifty
players present, most of them known to me by sight, and for a long
time I risked nothing. But the temptation to play soon overcame me and
I won over a hundred pounds.

Afterwards I had a drink, and foolishly returned to the table; for,
not only did I lose all my winnings, but two hundred pounds into the
bargain. Sick at my ill-fortune, I gave a check for my losses, and
left the house in deep despondency, vowing never to return there
again. I felt that gambling was getting the better of me, that I must
give it up. This resolve I made as, heedless of the rain and darkness,
I walked around Bloomsbury Square.

Suddenly I heard shouts. A moment later I came across a man and a
woman having a violent altercation. The man was a burly fellow, and he
was ill-treating a flashily-dressed young woman of the night-hawk
class.

“Look here!” I cried, rushing up to him. “Stop that--quick! You
low-down cur, to strike a woman!”

“And who the ’ell are you, mister?” the fellow asked defiantly. “You
just keep your bloomin’ beak out of what don’t concern you! And take
that for yer pains!” he added, aiming a heavy blow at my face, which I
managed to avoid.

Next moment, however, he struck me full in the chest. In return,
having done a good deal of boxing at Oxford, I landed him one full on
the nose, in self-defence.

I saw his hand go swiftly to his hip-pocket, and next second there was
a glint of steel. In an instant I closed with him, gripped his wrist,
twisted it, and knocked his hand upwards just as he was about to fire.

We both fell. There was an explosion and the bullet went upwards
through his jaw.

In a moment I shook myself free and sprang to my feet; but the man lay
there motionless; the automatic pistol had fallen from his nerveless
fingers and lay in the gutter.

“God! What have you done? You’ve killed my poor Dick!” the dark-eyed
young woman shrieked resentfully, glaring at me.

In a moment I bent and breathlessly made a swift examination. He was
certainly dead! I stood staggered, my senses for the moment being
numbed.

“You’ve killed him!” yelled the woman, frantic in her anger and
distress. “Police! _Police!_”

Only for a second I hesitated. In that instant I realized all that I
had at stake--the ruin of my love for Joan, the extinction of my
political ambitions, and a charge of manslaughter under such
conditions which might easily lead to my social obliteration.

I fled. What would you have done in such circumstances?

I had acted only to protect a defenceless woman, and had closed with
her adversary in self-defence. I hurried away, turned the corner, and
walked quickly to the Russell Square Tube Station, where I took a
ticket to Piccadilly Circus, composing myself as I descended in the
elevator.

Meanwhile, I knew that the unknown woman, who had been so resentful of
my defence, was calling the police and, as the event occurred beneath
a street-lamp, she, no doubt, was giving a minute description of me!
I was in a dinner-jacket and wore a black overcoat. In my soft
shirt-front were two studs of bright green chrysoprases, and these
might have attracted her attention, and so serve to identify me!

In the train were a number of people, therefore I buttoned my coat
tightly to conceal those studs. My brain was in a whirl. Half an hour
before, I was carefree and as full of the joy of living as a man under
thirty should be. The money left me by my Aunt Mary gave me a
comfortable income, and I was not a single penny in debt. Yet, at that
moment, I was fleeing from justice, my description, no doubt, being
circulated by telephone to every police-station in the metropolitan
area.

While in the Tube, I realized that, in order to escape, I must leave
London at once. No time was to be lost if I was to get away that
night. But how? I dare not return to my rooms in Sackville Street,
though I was sorely tempted to. If I dared, I could easily go home,
change my clothes, and reappear differently dressed. But I hesitated,
remembering that Bolland, my man, would greet me, and afterwards might
be questioned. No. It would be best to completely disappear.

When I emerged at Piccadilly Circus, I came face to face with a police
constable. It gave me a great shock, for I fancied he eyed me with
distinct suspicion. Yet, surely, news of the tragedy could not have
traveled so swiftly. Nevertheless, there are always thousands of keen
eyes on the look-out for a wanted man in London.

I recollect that in those moments of terror I dubbed myself a snob. I
like people who know how to behave. To me, the dull, public-school man
or the ruined gentleman is preferable to the declaiming Communist or
the demented lover. To those, life is a dreary business. But, as for
me, I thank my Maker, each day, that I am alive to accept what He, in
His munificence, has given me; though I would beg of you not to think
that I am more pious than any other man. Yet I am strong in my belief.

Haunted by dread and the knowledge that the young woman would most
certainly allege that I deliberately had shot the man because he had
insulted me, I remained on the pavement at the corner of Coventry
Street for some minutes, heedless of the home-going crowd of
theatre-goers, heedless of being frequently jostled by them.

The risk of going to any railway terminus in order to leave London was
too great; for, I knew that the police always keep watch on the
railway-stations on receipt of such warning as had been given. A man
had been shot dead in Bloomsbury Square, and the supposed
murderer--I--was being actively sought for!

Suddenly an idea crashed through my brain, and, turning back, I joined
the throng, entered the Tube station again, and requested a ticket to
Golder’s Green.

In due course, I arrived there, walked out, turned to the left, and
continued along the high-road leading northward.

It was still raining heavily and my coat was soon very wet. I had upon
me, very fortunately, a blank check--for it is my habit always to keep
one with my cigarettes, in case of emergency--as well as about twenty
pounds in Treasury notes, which I had received at the gaming-house as
balance of the check I had given there.

I suppose I had gone about half a mile when I came across a small
public-house, before which stood a heavy lorry marked “Osborne,
Nottingham.” The driver, no doubt, was inside, having a final drink
before starting out on his night drive.

I loitered about until, at last, he emerged, a thin-faced young man,
clad heavily in an old leather motor-coat, evidently a relic of war
days, smoking a cigarette.

“Good evening,” I exclaimed, “May I speak to you a moment?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied politely.

“Well, I want you to do me a favor,” I hastened to say, “You’re going
north, aren’t you?”

“Yes. To Wolverhampton,” he returned.

“Will you let me come with you? I’ll make it worth your while to take
me,” I suggested.

He regarded me suspiciously beneath the light of the street-lamp. I
was in a soaked condition. No doubt he was surprised at being accosted
by a man in rain-sodden evening-clothes, who begged a lift on his
night drive to the Midlands.

I noticed his hesitation and added:

“I’ll tell you the reason on the way. I’ve made a fool of myself and I
want to get away from London. The fact is that I’ve run foul of the
racing crowd--and they’re after me.”

“Ah! I’ve read in the papers how a set of race-course roughs are going
about, trying to ‘do in’ people who object to their ways,” he said.
“Yes, sir, I’ll give you a lift. But you’re a bit wet, ain’t you?”

“A little bit,” I laughed. Whereupon he climbed into the covered lorry
and produced an old overcoat, which he bade me exchange for my wet
one, and a spare cap which I put on in place of my crush hat. In that
moment I was already disguised as a lorry-driver, and a few minutes
later we moved away, along the broad, wet high-road, in the direction
of Barnet.

In the first hour that I sat at his side gossiping, I was ignorant
that we were not alone, until he casually mentioned:

“My mate, Dick, is having a good snooze inside. He drove to London
to-day, and I’m driving back. We do this trip three days a week.”

Then I realized that inside the lorry, which was half-filled with
wooden cases, apparently from the docks, there was lying, upon a heap
of tarpaulin, the figure of a young man, deep in sleep. This was
somewhat disconcerting. I had to reckon with two men keeping their
mouths shut next day when the papers would give an account of the
tragedy in Bloomsbury. On the other hand, I had further design than
that of travel--that of disguise.

As we went along to St. Albans, I related to the driver a fantastic
story of how I had denounced a small bookmaker, and thereby, quite
unconsciously had brought upon myself what I feared was a vendetta. I
had had secret warning that something serious was to happen to me, and
I had thought flight the most discreet course to adopt.

My story was, of course, a very lame one, but the young man, being
fond of racing, listened to me intently, because, fortunately for me,
three members of a racing gang, only a few days before had been given
heavy sentences at the Old Bailey.

We had traveled perhaps forty odd miles when the sleeping Dick
awakened and seemed greatly surprised to find that they had a
passenger. After he had slipped in between us, his friend explained
the reason of my presence, hinting that I had promised a reward for
their assistance.

“Yes,” I said. “For certain reasons I don’t want my friends to know
anything. You may think I’m a crook, but I assure you I’m not. In
these evening-clothes I might be even a cat-burglar.”

Both men laughed.

“Well, I’m not!” I said. “But if you fellows will keep a still tongue,
I’ll give you five pounds each at the end of the run, and if one of
you will sell your clothes to me, I’ll give you money to buy a new
suit--what shall we say--seven pounds?”

A brief silence fell.

“Make it a tenner, guv’nor, and you can have mine,” Dick said. “You’re
about my build.”

“Very well,” I replied. “Let’s both get into the back and change.”

My companion, the driver, laughed heartily as we both crept into the
back among the cases, and there, while we were traveling, we exchanged
clothes.

“What’ll your wife say when you arrive home in the morning dressed as
a gentleman--eh, Dick?” shouted the driver, turning his head back a
moment.

“She’ll think I’ve come into a fortune when I give her a couple o’
quid,” laughed his pal, as he drew off his trousers and handed them to
me in return for mine.

“You fellows won’t utter a word. Promise me!” I shouted.

“Of course we won’t, sir,” both assured me, setting me considerably at
my ease.

Up to that moment I had been full of fear lest the driver, suspecting
me, and desirous of being in the good graces of the police, might pull
up before a constable and express his suspicions. In that case, my
only chance of escape would have gone, with only ruin before me.

While traveling over that interminable wet road in that lumbering
lorry, I had realized the scandal which must ensue if I were hauled
before a magistrate, and the scene with the flashy daughter of the
night described by her! Her enmity, turning upon me as she had done,
would result in a charge of wilful murder!

I thought of dear Joan. What would she think? How would she judge me?

At last I had changed my evening-clothes for the garb of a
lorry-driver, a decent, gray tweed suit of cheap material, fairly good
boots, a thick, well-worn overcoat, and a rather greasy, brown
golf-cap, while, in the uncertain light of the candle-end he had lit,
he presented a grotesque figure in my crumpled shirt, with its two
attractive studs, his black tie awry, and his collar limp with the
rain.

“Pull up and look at me, Teddy!” he shouted to my acquaintance, the
driver.

Teddy slowed down, put on the brakes, and came to a standstill on the
brow of a hill. Then, turning to look in, exclaimed:

“By gum! You look a real treat! Going to the theatre--aw!”

Meanwhile, Dick produced from beneath the tarpaulin upon which he had
been sleeping, two bottles of beer, one of which he handed to me.
Then, after taking a swift draught from the other bottle, he handed it
to his mate.

“I wonder if old boss-eye has left one out for us as usual,” remarked
Teddy, wiping the mouth of the bottle and handing it back to his
fellow-driver. Then, turning to me, he said:

“Old boss-eye keeps the Hen and Chickens, five miles before we gets to
Coventry, and on the nights he knows we’re passing he leaves out a
bottle for us underneath a bush. We’ll take a look and see if it’s
there as we pass.”

Dick and I crawled over the cases and resumed our seats, while Teddy
put in the clutch, and we moved off again.

At the Hen and Chickens the men found the beer and drank it between
them. Day was breaking when at last we rumbled through Coventry, and I
confess I had then had sufficient jolting; for, being accustomed to a
well-sprung car, my limbs ached and I felt very tired.

My companions, however, were a humorous pair. During the night Dick
had assumed my crush hat which he wore jauntily as he took the wheel
for a spell. The effect was humorous. But no policeman on the road
noticed it. For several hours I had been planning the best way to
avoid detection. At length I decided to leave the lorry at Birmingham,
have breakfast, and then make further plans.

Therefore, when we arrived just outside the city, I redeemed my
promise of payment. At the end of New Street they drew up for me to
dismount. Swearing secrecy, they bade me farewell, and drove on to
their destination.

And now relating what actually occurred to me, without concealing
anything, I here lay bare the solemn truth--facts which, I venture to
believe, the readers of this strange chronicle will find
astounding--even amazing.

In any case, they shed light on the calamities that can befall any man
who roams the London streets after nightfall, alone.




 CHAPTER TWO.
 THREADS OF IRON

Bewildered, nerve-wrecked, full of apprehension, I looked around me
that dull, gray morning. The recent events stood out like a horrible
nightmare. At first I wondered if I had not been dreaming. But, alas!
it was only too real.

The truth is, that there was nothing to boast about in the way I had
behaved. I had been an abject, despicable fool, who deserved all the
disastrous consequences of a craven act. And now I was a lorry-driver!
If it were not so tragic it might even be amusing. I was impelled to
laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation. But instead, as I
approached the first policeman, I held my breath. Was he on the
lookout for me?

My first visit was to New Street Station. The London newspapers were
already in, so I bought two and quickly scanned them. There was no
mention of the affair in Bloomsbury. Evidently information regarding
the tragedy had not reached the newspaper offices before they had gone
to press.

At a small coffee-shop behind the station, much used by taxi-drivers,
I ate my humble breakfast, and re-examined the newspapers. Absence of
any hue-and-cry heartened me. Yet was I acting right? Would it not
have been safer to have returned to Sackville Street, changed my
clothes, and obtained a couple of suit-cases? I wondered. I had
changed my identity to that of a working-man, so in future I would be
compelled to keep to that disguise.

When the shops opened I went to several cheap ones and made purchases,
including a ready-made gray suit for Sundays and a new felt hat. These
I had packed together, and, leaving the parcel in the cloak-room at
the station, again sallied forth and bought the cheapest suit-case I
could find. Into it I eventually placed my purchases, together with my
lapis lazuli ring and my gold watch. Such adornments were unsuitable
for a man of the class I had now assumed.

Afterwards I went to the telegraph-office and, in order to allay any
undue suspicion, I wired to Bolland that I had been called to
Birmingham suddenly, that I should be away several days. Another
message I sent to Joan at Cannes, explaining that I was away in the
Midlands. I was often absent on political business, speaking at
meetings on questions arising out of the decisions of the League of
Nations. I thought it a perfectly good explanation of the reason that
I might not be able to write to her.

Just after eleven o’clock I left Birmingham for Euston, where I
arrived at half-past two. My first action was to buy the early edition
of the _Evening News_. And, setting down my suit-case outside the
station, I eagerly looked over its columns.

Yes! It was there!

“Man Murdered in Bloomsbury Square. Escape of the Alleged Assassin,”
greeted my eyes in bold type.

Breathlessly, I read the brief report, which was as follows:


 “Just before midnight, a young woman, Hilda Bennett, living in Castle
 Street, Pimlico, was found, by a constable on duty, half collapsed, in
 Bloomsbury Square, beside the body of a man. She said he was a friend
 of hers named Warwick May, a corn merchant, carrying on business at
 Highbury. Examination showed that the dead man had been shot in the
 jaw, and that the bullet had penetrated the brain.

 “The woman’s story is that she was walking alone, when she was
 accosted by a youngish, dark-haired man in evening-dress, who claimed
 having met her on the previous evening at a night-club. She had no
 knowledge of him and told him so, whereupon he became abusive, and her
 friend--who had been making a call, and was following to catch her
 up--came on the scene. She complained to her man friend and asked his
 protection, when, without a word, the unknown young fellow drew a
 revolver, and, after knocking him down, knelt upon him, banged his
 head several times upon the curb and then deliberately shot him.

 “The woman’s story is apparently corroborated by the fact that a
 constable on duty in the vicinity noticed a young man, in black
 overcoat and opera-hat, running as for the train; but, not having
 heard the shot, and being in ignorance of what had occurred, he did
 not stop him. The police have the fugitive’s description, which has
 been widely circulated.”


Then followed a somewhat minute description of me, even to the
chrysoprase studs, which were, happily, now in the possession of the
cheery Dick at Wolverhampton.

Would my friends of the previous night see that description and read
of the two distinctive studs? If so, what could be more likely than,
in the circumstance of what they would regard as deliberate murder,
that they should impart their experience to the police? The thought of
it was most disconcerting.

As I put the paper into the pocket of my driving-coat, and took up my
cheap suit-case, I encountered the policeman on patrol in the yard of
the Euston Hotel. At once I felt convinced that he regarded me with
suspicious glances.

I had become timid, scenting danger at every turn. Would you not have
done so? My sudden flight after the tragic occurrence, without doubt
had been a fatal mistake. Had I remained and told the truth, that the
man’s death had been in consequence of his own desperate action, I
would most surely have had British justice meted out to me. Even then,
if the woman had told the same tale that she had already done, it was
a most unsavory story, and one that I, surely, had no means of
contradicting.

I felt that I must hide. And I deemed the safest place of concealment
to be in one of the crowded working-class suburbs. Hence, I turned
back into Euston Station and took train over to Waterloo. I had always
understood that Camberwell was a good working-class neighborhood.
Therefore, at Waterloo, I walked along to the London Road where I
bought, at a cheap outfitter’s, a dark-gray overcoat; then I boarded a
motor-bus going to Camberwell Green.

As we were passing along the Camberwell Road, I noticed, on the right,
a drab, depressing street of uniform, unkempt houses, each with its
area and flight of steps to the front door. It was the kind of spot I
was in search of; therefore, I alighted and turned up the
thoroughfare, examining the houses as I went. They were all Victorian,
built after the same plan, none differing from its neighbor save in
its degree of dirt or dinginess. The steps of some were neglected,
others well hearth-stoned by hard-working hands, while on many of the
windows rested the London grime of weeks, with curtains limp and
yellow with fog and damp. It was, I noticed, called Avenue Road, and
it was certainly a very complete specimen of the early jerry-builder’s
art.

In the downstairs front room, on the street level of one of the houses
on the left-hand side of the gloomy, uninviting thoroughfare, a dingy
card announced that “apartments” were to be had. I rang the bell and
waited, even though it went against the grain.

Presently a slatternly slip of a girl about fifteen appeared and, on
inquiry, a stout, full-faced, rather swarthy woman, presumably her
mother, came up behind her.

“Yes, I’ve got a room to let,” she said in a deep bass voice, scanning
me closely, perhaps not without suspicion. “Like to come in and see
it?”

My reply was in the affirmative. And so, depositing my suit-case in
the hall, I followed her up the linoleum-covered stairs to a small,
back room on the first-floor, meagrely-furnished, yet quite clean.

“I’m a journalist,” I said,” and I’ve just come up from Colchester.
Can I also have a room in which to write? I’m usually glued to my
table all day.”

“Of course, you can have the front sitting-room if you like to take
it. We never use it.”

In consequence, I inspected the apartment indicated and after some
conversation, rented the quarters. Depositing my bag in the bedroom,
and, much to the satisfaction of my landlady, Mrs. Bowyer, I paid a
fortnight’s rent in advance, by which I at once earned the distinction
of being “a gentleman.” The name I gave was Edward Paige.

Those dingy, shabby rooms in Camberwell were, indeed, a contrast to my
own cozy chambers in Sackville Street, off Piccadilly, and I remember
how dull and dispirited I felt in the first hours I spent there.

I was asked if I would have a pair of kippers with my tea, and, in
order to keep up the role I had assumed, I accepted, and, indeed, ate
them with a relish. Afterwards, at seven o’clock, I went out in the
darkness into the busy Camberwell Road, where I bought the late
edition of a newspaper, and, taking it back, eagerly read what was
further reported concerning my flight.

Before the fire, I stood beneath the hissing gas-jet reading. And
while I read I held my breath. What I saw was intensely alarming. The
police net was closing about me. It said:


 “A motor-driver named Horbin, living in Wolverhampton, this afternoon
 made a statement to the police to the effect that while he and a
 fellow-driver were on their way with a lorry from London late last
 night, they were accosted by a man in evening-dress, closely
 resembling the man wanted. He begged them to give him a lift, and they
 did so. On the way the stranger bought the clothes and overcoat of his
 companion, so that when he left at Birmingham, he was disguised as a
 motor-driver. Most diligent inquiries are being made. The police are
 of the opinion that the fugitive took train back to London during the
 morning.”


I stood dumb. Surely it was fortunate that I had discarded the old
motor-coat for that ordinary overcoat I had bought in the London Road.
Nevertheless, I realized that I should never be able to go forth in
the daylight, lest I might be recognized.

Therefore, I prepared myself to settle down to a dull, uneventful
life, hourly fearing that my somewhat inquisitive landlady might read
in her newspaper the description of me which had been circulated, and
thus identify me with the man of whom the police were in such active
search. What then?

Next morning I received a surprise; for, on being ushered into the
back room for breakfast, I found that I had as fellow-lodger a slim,
good-looking girl, with soft brown eyes and wavy auburn hair. She was
already at table reading the newspaper when Mrs. Bowyer introduced her
as Miss Lisely Hatten.

I look back upon it all now. Was she to be an instrument of Fate?

When I sat down with her and we began to chat, I learned that she was
a typist, employed in a great insurance office in Cornhill. She was
quietly but smartly dressed, with neat stockings and shoes, and I
confess I rather liked her from the first.

I explained that I was a journalist and worked at home most part of
the day, when suddenly she caused me to start by glancing at the paper
and remarking:

“That’s a very mysterious affair, the murder in the street in
Bloomsbury Square! Have you seen it? What do you think of it?”

I inhaled a deep breath.

“Oh! I suppose it was a crime of jealousy. Don’t you think so? One
sees such scenes in the pictures.”

“I don’t know,” she replied very seriously. “I’d like to see the
murderer arrested. Poor girl! If I were in her place, I’d hunt the
devil down to the bitter end. Why should he shoot her lover in cold
blood--go up and kill him without warning? The poor man had no chance
of self-defence. It was done by some young bounder about town--some
lounge-lizard or good-looking dancing-partner, perhaps.”

“Possibly,” I agreed, thankful that the suspicions of the good-looking
young business girl had not been aroused by the description of myself
which was being everywhere circulated.

“See you this evening,” she said gaily when she rose. “I’ll be in at
about a quarter-past six, and we’ll feed together--if you’re
agreeable. It’ll break the monotony of eating alone.”

“I’ll be delighted,” I replied, rising and bowing.

A moment later she had gone.

She struck me as a frank, outspoken girl of the usual City type, who
carried her luncheon sandwiches in her little leather dispatch-case,
together with her purse, lip-stick, and puff, and who, no doubt, could
hop on or off a bus with that quick agility in which the London girl
excels. I was glad to have her as companion, and yet, as the hours
dragged on, I constantly feared that my description might yet cause
her suspicion. In her speech there was just a slight trace of a
foreign accent, and I wondered if she were English, for Lisely was
certainly not an English name. Not daring to venture forth by daylight
I got Mrs. Bowyer to bring me in a _Times_ when she went out to “do
her errands,” and, after my lonely chop, I made pretence of writing
all the afternoon. As a matter of fact, I copied out one of the
leading articles in the paper, and left it about to convince her, when
I went out, that I really was a journalist.

I had been in hiding for twenty-four hours, and already it seemed an
eternity.

Would my continued absence arouse the anxiety of friends? If so, they
must certainly identify me with the fugitive. What would Joan think in
such a case? What would my own family think? I now realized that,
because of my sudden fear of scandal, I had acted most foolishly in
escaping. Was not my action practically tantamount to an admission of
guilt?

I scented danger--great danger!

Soon after six o’clock Lisely Hatten returned, greeting me merrily
before going upstairs to take off her hat and coat. Later we sat over
the fire in the little back room awaiting our evening meal.

“I’ve had a horribly busy day to-day, and everything went wrong. My
boss has been out of temper because he couldn’t get his golf, and I
made two mistakes in letters for which I got cursed!” she told me.
“One girl has got the sack because she cheeked the old bean. Oh, it’s
been a perfectly wonderful day!” she said.

“So it appears,” I laughed, yet knowing that in my rather ill-fitting,
cheap gray suit I presented a sorry figure. Like most men-about-town,
I rather prided myself on the cut of my clothes, and the neatness of
my tie, socks, and shoes. But, when I looked at my present reflection
in the mirror, I stood horrified.

She took the cigarette I offered her and consumed it, her mind seeming
lazy, with all the gusto of an ardent smoker, and then suddenly she
remarked:

“I see by to-night’s paper that they haven’t found the Bloomsbury
murderer yet. Scotland Yard is sparing no effort to find him. They
were discussing it in the office to-day. The police seem to think that
he’s the man to whom a lorry-driver sold his clothes the night before
last.”

“Well, I hope they’ll find him,” I remarked, bending to take a fresh
cigarette, and thereby to hide my countenance.

Just at that moment I became aware that she had fixed her big, dark
eyes on me with a very curious stare--a bewildered, puzzled, tell-tale
glance. Then, a moment later, she exclaimed in an unusual tone:

“You may think it strange, Mr. Paige, but--but somehow you yourself
are very much like the description of the man they want.”

Surely Fate spins threads of iron.




 CHAPTER THREE.
 WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

Silent, tense, our minds grappled. I succeeded in laughing.

“Do I really resemble the assassin?” I asked, with, I fear, humor,
ill-assumed.

“You are very like the description given in the papers,” she declared.

“Possibly, but, as far as I read, the woman only saw the fellow by the
light of the street-lamp, and the description she gave was, after all,
a vague one.” Then I added, “I hope they won’t arrest me, for I wasn’t
in London. I only came up from Colchester yesterday.”

“So Mrs. Bowyer has told me,” she said. Her words instantly aroused my
suspicion that the pair had already been discussing me in secret.

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t any motive to kill anybody.
I’m engaged to one of the best girls in the world. She lives here, in
London, and that is why I’m up here--to be near her.”

“And yet it is so funny, Mr. Paige,” she remarked, after a brief
pause, looking me in full in the face. “When I read the description of
the man the police want, and look at you, it seems that it really must
be you!”

“It would be most interesting and sensational if you discovered a
murderer--wouldn’t it?” I remarked. “But I’m afraid I can’t give the
poor, distressed girl the satisfaction of identifying me as her
lover’s murderer.”

“I love mysteries,” declared Miss Hatten. “I read all the detective
stories I can get hold of. I hate those sloppy love romances written
for domestic servants. Women writers are the worst offenders.”

“All of your sex love to become amateur detectives,” I remarked
good-humoredly. “But it requires a good deal of training.”

How I wished, in the light of after-events, I had left that final
sentence unuttered.

She paused for a moment, evidently puzzled.

“Yes. Perhaps it is for that reason my suspicions have been aroused
that you are here in hiding.”

“Really, I hope you don’t think so, Miss Hatten,” I said very
seriously. “If so, let us go around to Carter Street Police Station
together, and, if you wish, I’ll give myself up for the crime. I can’t
say more, can I?” And I laughed heartily.

“Don’t be so silly, Mr. Paige. You really wouldn’t like to go to
Carter Street, would you?” the girl said, disarmed at the open
frankness which had caused me so much trepidation. “Of course, it’s
only my fancy. I could not think that you would actually kill a man.”

“There must always be a motive if one kills one’s
fellow-creature--jealousy, gain, hatred, or personal advancement,” I
declared, smiling as I stood before her. “But, if that is lacking,
then it is seldom that a life is taken. According to the newspapers,
the man was shot in cold blood. Hence, there must have been some very
distinct motive. It is that which the police must discover before they
find the assassin.”

We chatted on, and I was intensely relieved to discover that I had
allayed her suspicions. No doubt, my worthy landlady had been
discussing the point with her; and, surely, no person is more
dangerous to a fugitive from justice than a suspicious landlady.

Ah! What an idiot I had been not to remain beside the man’s body, and
brave the consequences! My actions, in themselves, had convicted me.

As I sat opposite her, as we ate our modest meal together, the whole
situation was appalling. Over that thin ice which I was treading, I
knew not to what destination it would lead me. At any moment might
come discovery, exposure, arrest. Women when suspicious, as when they
love, are the most dangerous enemies of mankind. But the smart,
good-looking girl, seated laughing before me in that unpretentious
room in one of London’s crowded suburbs, was a complex problem that I
could not solve.

Was she my friend--or my enemy? I could not decide which. On her
silence my whole future depended.

Hence, was it any wonder that I sat there apprehensive, watchful,
helpless?

Those dark winter days of dread dragged by with terrible monotony in
that stuffy little house. That long street of stucco, uniform
residences, with their flights of steps to the front door, the deep
areas, and the bow-windows, each dingier than its neighbor, was the
most depressing place of residence. And, as day followed day, my only
recreation was to go out after dark, and tread the worst lit
by-streets in the hope of not being recognized.

There was daily a great degree of uncertainty as to whether I really
had allayed the girl Lisely’s suspicions, or whether she was watching
my movements. I strongly suspected the latter. In some confused,
indescribable way, all truth, I felt, was being distorted, probably
because of my own miserable obsession.

Each day the papers reported how active search still was being made,
and how all the ports were being watched. At Dover, a man was arrested
and brought to Bow Street. But, when put up for identification the
girl, Hilda Bennett, failed to recognize him as her lover’s assailant.

The worst feature of the situation was that the papers had taken up
the case strongly, and were daily criticizing the apparent
incompetency of the police, urging them to greater activity.

One journal, after referring to the audacious murder of Mr. Warwick
May and the peril of the streets, made the following comments:


 “During the past few days, a special squad of detectives has been
 searching a number of small hotels and boarding-houses in London,
 where it is believed the man may be in hiding.

 “Scotland Yard believe that the alleged assassin may be receiving
 assistance from a clever woman associate.

 “He is described as about thirty years of age, 5 ft. 9 in. in height,
 fresh complexion, dark-brown hair, hazel eyes with a peculiarity in
 them which suggests a squint. He may be growing a moustache. He is
 well built. He talks in a quiet tone.

 “There are, including the wanted man, seven men at large somewhere in
 the British Isles, for whom Scotland Yard, and the police throughout
 the country, are keeping a day and night vigil.

 “These men are all known to the police--their descriptions, haunts,
 and habits are all recorded in the official records at Scotland Yard.

 “Still, for the time, the mysterious seven are eluding their pursuers.

 “The man most wanted by the authorities is John Hayes, the
 well-spoken, handsome young fellow who is believed to be the brains
 behind the theft of the mail-bags between Southampton and London, last
 July.

 “Hayes, who is in his twenties, was engaged as driver of a royal mail
 van, and was known among his associates as ‘The Gent.’ He always
 dressed well and his speech indicated gentle birth and a good
 education.

 “He is known to have served a term of imprisonment in the United
 States. His photograph has been circulated to every police-station in
 the kingdom. Yet he still evades arrest.

 “‘Good-looking, well-spoken, and young,’ are the main characteristics
 of another suspect. He is the clever, evening-dress burglar who calmly
 let himself into the Curzon Street house of Mr. William Bingham, and
 got away with jewelry valued at £40,000.

 “The police have a very shrewd idea of the man they want. At the
 moment, however, a detailed description of him is not considered
 advisable.

 “The fourth of the elusive seven is the scoundrel who, a fortnight
 ago, shot and wounded a girl named Carlland, outside her house in
 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead.

 “Detectives engaged on the case are anxious to interview a certain man
 in connection with this outrage. But he remains in hiding, and is
 successfully dodging all efforts to run him to earth.

 “There is a distinct clue here, for the man, who is 6 ft. tall, stoops
 and is splay-footed. He is about 40 years of age, of sallow
 complexion. Like the other missing suspects, he is well-dressed,
 usually wearing a well-cut suit, hard felt hat, and brown gloves.

 “‘There is no place like London for hiding,’ said a Scotland Yard
 detective yesterday, ‘and I would wager that all these “wanteds” are
 within a five-mile radius of Charing Cross.’ And yet the police are
 baffled!”


Naturally all this increased my alarm, for the police were being
goaded into activity by adverse public opinion.

Each time I went out at night I did so in fear and trepidation. I used
to purchase my evening paper regularly of a man who stood at the
corner of Beresford Street, and more than once I fancied he eyed me
with suspicion.

One evening I rang up Bolland, my man, pretending to speak from
Reading, saying that I was still detained in the country, and asking
him to send my letters to the Grand Hotel at Eastbourne. Next day I
wrote to the hotel, engaging a room. Two days later, I sent a polite
letter of apology, saying that I was detained, and asking that if any
letters should come for me they might be sent, re-addressed, to the
poste restante at Charing Cross, to which, one dark, wet evening at
half-past five, I ventured to take a taxi, and obtained them.

There were about half a dozen, including two from Joan. In reply to
them I sent her a long wire to Cannes. The others were of no account.
Concerning one matter, I grew greatly troubled--that of finance.
Though I had a fair balance at my bankers, yet I had no check-book,
nor had I anybody whom I could trust to go to the bank and cash a
check. The one check I carried with me on my flight I would be
compelled to send to Bolland for his wages and outgoings. On my long,
lonely walks at night, I tried to devise some plan. I knew that my
father, not hearing from me, would ring up Bolland, who would tell him
that I was away. Yet, looming ahead were a number of political
engagements I had made, and, if I were missing, people might wonder,
and set up inquiries.

This fact caused me to resolve to brave the dangers and see my father
in secret. As the House was sitting, he was, I knew, living at his
flat in Albany. Therefore, I sent him word by registered letter that I
was in hiding in Camberwell, and gave him my address and name as
Paige. I told him that a great misfortune had befallen me, and that it
was imperative that I should see him in secret. I asked him to say no
word to anyone, but to meet me at midnight at the quietest and most
unfrequented spot I had explored, namely, outside Denmark Hill
Station. I asked him to name the night.

To my joy, next evening the post brought me a letter from him,
expressing greatest anxiety concerning me, and appointing the
following night for our rendezvous. He assured me that he was
impatient to see me.

Though I could hardly contain myself at the thought of being able to
confide in the dear old governor, I knew how furious he would be at
the mere thought of besmirching the family honor. In the eyes of both
police and public I was an alleged assassin, and if caught would be
tried as such. A clever counsel in all probability would obtain my
release. But the scandal, in any case, must fall on my honorable
family.

Soon after receipt of that letter, the girl Hatten returned from her
office, and, as we sat together at dinner, she remarked:

“Do you often go to the pictures?”

“Not very often,” I replied, for in her query I surmised that she
wanted me to take her out one evening, to the pictures or a
dance-hall. More than once, indeed, she had insinuated such a course.
But how dare I show my face in a public place when the whole world had
eyes searching for me?

“Whatever do you do when you go out at night?” she asked.

“Usually I take what I have written in the day over to Fleet Street,”
I replied glibly.

“I thought journalists worked all night and slept all day. A friend of
mine who is on a daily paper never gets home before five in the
morning. Yet you are always back by twelve or so. You must have a soft
job. I wish I had one like yours,” she said, adding: “To be cooped up
in an office all day is getting on my nerves. The fogs in the City are
terrible just now. We had the lights on all day to-day.”

“It has been pretty dark here,” I remarked. “We had to light up about
two o’clock.”

Then the subject dropped, and she began to relate how her boss had
fallen in love with one of her fellow-typists, and that he was taking
her to the theatre that evening.

“She’s a silly flapper, and I told her so,” my sprightly companion
said. “He’s got a fearful old hag for a wife. She comes to the office
sometimes, and eyes me up and down, as though I were some new species
of animal. I don’t blame him for wanting to escape from her for an
evening.”

“I suppose he flirts with you--eh?” I laughed tantalizingly.

“Flirt? I’d like to see him try it,” she replied promptly. “He
wouldn’t do it a second time, you bet. He knows I’m not one of that
sort--especially when I have a nice boy of my own.”

“I congratulate you,” I laughed. “Many boys are not exactly nice!”

I always tried to ingratiate myself with her.

Even though she was always so bright and agreeable towards me, I felt,
by intuition, that she had penetrated my disguise, and that, sooner or
later, she would constitute my gravest danger. Therefore, I resolved
to see my father in secret, and, after obtaining funds, change my
quarters.

Yet would not such an action confirm her suspicions and those of the
police? In my frantic fear I was undecided how to act.

Next day it was still rather foggy, but towards evening it grew
thicker, a condition which I welcomed when I went forth to my
rendezvous. I left the house at ten o’clock, and walked slowly in the
murky gloom along the Camberwell Road, where the street-lamps, usually
brilliant, were half hidden in the mantle of one of those “pea
soupers” which the Londoner knows so well. Traffic was nearly at a
standstill, and a strange silence had fallen on the usually busy
thoroughfare. Ascending Denmark Hill, I discovered, not without
difficulty, Champion Park, a turning on the left which led to the
station. It was a quiet thoroughfare of large houses. The fog was not
quite so intense on the hill as in Camberwell below, and, in a few
minutes, I saw my gray-bearded father standing in the booking-office
awaiting me.

He recognized me at the door and came out to meet me.

I saw surprise on his countenance when he realized my disguise.

“My boy!” he whispered, as he gripped my hand affectionately. “This is
terrible! To think that you--that you should be wanted for murder!”

“It is terrible,” I replied, leading the way along the dark, deserted
road towards Grove Lane. I had dreaded lest he should express anger at
my misfortune. He had always been forgiving, and seldom angry with me
at the various peccadilloes and follies of youth. And now most of all,
how welcome was his attitude.

My present position was, that I must sooner or later bring dishonor on
my family, whose good name and esteem my father so carefully guarded.
The Hipwells held a long and honorable record in Northamptonshire ever
since Sir Thomas Hipwell, the treasurer to Henry VIII, built Hipwell,
where the family, several members of which were from time to time
employed in the service of their sovereign, always had lived.

The old governor was a man of few words. He always spoke bluntly and
to the point, in Parliament and out of it.

“You swear that it was an accident?” he asked in a hard, unusual
voice, which betrayed emotion. It was so dark that, beyond the zone of
light from the station entrance, I was unable to see his face.

“I swear it was,” I replied, and then I related exactly what had
occurred on the night of the tragedy, just as I have already
chronicled it in these pages.

He heard me without comment.

“And what do you intend doing now?” he asked, when I had concluded my
story.

“I don’t know,” was my reply.

“Neither do I,” he said in that same strained voice. “You are in a
very precarious position, my boy. And how to help you out of it I am
at my wits’ ends to suggest.”

“I fear arrest because of our honor,” I answered. “Because of that, I
fled.”

“An injudicious course--very injudicious. You have, unfortunately,
prejudiced yourself,” he declared.

“The public are, of course, certain that murder was committed,
especially in face of the lies that woman has told,” I admitted.

“I have read all about it in the papers, but I never dreamed that it
was for you, my boy, the police were so actively searching,” my father
said brokenly.

“I must still remain hidden,” I remarked.

“For how long? You must, sooner or later, be identified and arrested.
In to-night’s paper I see it stated that the police have a clue.
But--of course--they seem to find a fresh clue every day.”

I told him of the suggestions of my handsome fellow lodger, at which
he expressed increased apprehension.

“You never know what such a girl may do,” he said. “Perhaps she’ll
tell the police her suspicions, just in order to come into the
limelight. Most girls of her type love a little publicity. Have you
seen to-night’s paper?”

I replied in the negative.

“Well, the police have made some interesting discoveries. The
automatic pistol, with which the murder was committed, has been found
to have been stolen with a quantity of goods and jewelry from a house
in Cromwell Road, about a month ago, and, further, the man whose name
was given as Warwick May has been identified by his finger-prints to
be a well-known burglar, named Rodwell, who is wanted for a number of
thefts, his speciality being safe-breaking.”

“That’s very interesting,” I remarked.

“Yes, it is now supposed to be a crime of revenge,” my father went on,
“possibly on the part of one of his friends of the same fraternity,
whom he has betrayed to the police. At least, that is the latest
theory.”

“It does not help me very much--does it?”

“Only that they will be looking for a burglar, and not for my son,” he
said quietly.

“I fear they will be looking for the burglar in just the kind of place
of concealment that I have chosen. You see, I dare not move my
quarters now, or that girl’s suspicions, and those of my landlady,
would certainly be confirmed,” I remarked despondently.

When I spoke of the necessity of having money, he at once produced ten
bank of England notes, each for ten pounds, saying:

“I have brought you this to go on with. But I do wish you would return
to Sackville Street, and allow Bolland to think you have got back from
the country.”

“I would, father, only I dare not leave Avenue Road, for reasons I
have just given. Nor dare I risk the channel crossing, for all the
ports are watched.”

“True. That girl is, unfortunately, your chief danger. Your disguise
is excellent, but your life must be terribly monotonous.”

“Not without its interesting side, though. I am now studying life amid
the working-classes.”

“My dear boy! You were always optimistic and cheerful. I, however,
confess I do not share your optimism at the present moment. These are
dark days for both of us. To-morrow, I’ll see Jesmond, the Home
Secretary, and get out of him what the police are doing in the case.”

“Then I have your forgiveness, father?” I asked him, as we were
retracing our steps toward the station.

“Of course, my boy. Such a tragic adventure as yours might happen to
anybody,” said the dear old fellow. “But your initial mistake was that
you did not remain and face the consequences.”

“I thought of you, dad--of the family,” I replied.

“Well, we must hope for the best,” he said. “We had better hold no
communication with each other. I will go to Sackville Street, see
Bolland, explain your absence, and pay him regularly. You had better
not bother about letters or money. I’ll send you cash from time to
time. When I came to meet you, I intended to urge you to go back to
Sackville Street as though nothing had happened. But I now fully
realize the danger of that girl Hatten. You must do all you can to
dispel her doubts; and continue to live there at least for a time,
until your strange adventures are at an end.”

Then he gripped my hand warmly, and with a final:

“Good-bye, my dear boy! I shall be thinking hourly of you,” the dear
old governor entered the station, leaving me alone.

“Until my strange adventures are at an end!” I repeated aloud, as I
walked back to the main road.

I never dreamed that I was only at the very beginning of a series of
the most remarkable happenings, such as, perhaps, no other man in all
the world, except my own unimportant self, Lionel Hipwell, has lived
to relate!




 CHAPTER FOUR.
 DEADLY PERIL

Down Denmark Hill I went, consoled and gratified that, at least, I
still had one big-hearted and affectionate friend in the world, my
dear old father, who believed my story. But did the world--or would
the jury at the Old Bailey--believe it?

Surely it was, in face of the allegation of that poor woman of the
night, a very thin defence.

I argued within myself as a man who had been called to the Bar and
understood the pros and cons of a criminal case. I saw that, with the
bitter enmity of the woman Bennett who, out of revenge, would swear
that I had attacked her burglar-lover, I should have a great
difficulty to assure any jury of my innocence.

The career of the dead man, his profession as a burglar, the automatic
pistol, and his criminal record would all go in my favor. But, I knew
only too well that counsel instructed by the Public Prosecutor could
make out a deadly case against me, not only of manslaughter, but of
murder.

One detail which I examined, placing myself in the case as counsel for
the prosecution, was that of the pistol. A burglar, having taken such
a weapon from a house in Cromwell Road, would hardly keep it on his
person to provide a hall-mark that he was a thief. On the contrary,
the prosecution, of a certainty, would argue that the particular
weapon--licenses for which go to and fro in every police-station in
Britain, after the abortive General Strike, the most careful record
being taken--could be traced, and suddenly the clue would be at an
end. I might have bought it from somebody--someone unknown--who wanted
to rid himself of the responsibility and the tax for carrying
firearms.

I walked through the fog, now and then narrowly escaping bumping
against half-suffocated people who, on their way home to bed, were
treading through the impenetrable veil. My eyes were watering, my
breath became affected, and I longed to be back again in my shabby
little sitting-room; for, the night was the worst that had been
experienced in London for many years.

My father had heartened me. Jesmond, who was Home Secretary and his
intimate friend, might reveal to him what Scotland Yard was doing, and
that knowledge might allow me a loophole for escape.

In the Camberwell Road the fog, at the lower height, had settled down
to a dense blackness, such as South London experiences now and then in
the course of every few years. Trains, buses, and taxis had ceased
running several hours ago, and the usual busy thoroughfares of the
arterial roads to London, Blackfriars, Waterloo, and Westminister
Bridges were silent, save for the voices of the unseen, or of those
whose passing shadows were weirdly distorted. Only those who have
battled with a thick night fog in London can conceive such atmospheric
traffic, and ocular conditions.

I had trodden the pavement of the Camberwell Road on so many nights,
at all hours, that I was able, after a number of efforts, to find the
turning which took me into Avenue Road. All was dark and mysterious in
that drab, monotonous thoroughfare; the light of the street-lamps had
been blotted out by the fog. There was nothing for me to do but to
creep along, feeling the rows of iron railings beside the deep areas.

Each house was uniform in construction, and, in normal conditions,
easily distinguishable by daylight, or even by the light of the
street-lamps. But that night I became utterly lost. At last, however,
I found the house, as I imagined. But, ascending the steps, I felt a
brass-plate on the lintel of the door; hence the house was not the one
in which I lived.

I tried a second one, but my key did not fit the key-hole. I knew,
then that that, too, was not Mrs. Bowyer’s. So thick was the fog that
only by feeling the railings could I guide myself. Here and there a
red blur in the darkness was visible, but to recognize where I lived
seemed impossible. I tried a dozen different doors, but my key refused
to open any of them.

Then I wondered whether Mrs. Bowyer, believing I had gone to bed, had
let down the catch in the latch, and, therefore, the key refused to
turn! The prospect of spending such a night out of doors was certainly
not a pleasant one, and, though I had a hundred pounds in my pocket, I
dare not seek lodgings in any hotel, even provided I found one.

The night was black and suffocating; many street accidents occurred in
consequence. Except the tubes, all traffic was suspended, save
perhaps, the mail trains, which crawled slowly out of London where,
beyond the greater metropolis, the fog was not quite so thick.

For fully half an hour I endeavored to discover Mrs. Bowyer’s, but
without success, when suddenly it occurred to me that I might have
mistaken the turning, and that I was in the wrong street! I groped my
way back to the main road, and then, to my amazement, established the
fact that I was not in Avenue Road at all. So I went on to the next
turning and, at last, found the familiar grocer’s shop at the corner.
Creeping along by the railings again I counted the flights of steps
until I discovered those leading to Mrs. Bowyer’s.

With a sigh of relief, I turned the key and entered. The light in the
hall had been extinguished as sign to me that Mrs. Bowyer, her
daughter, and her lady lodger had retired. So, having secured the
door, as I always did, I crept noiselessly up to my rooms.

As I did so, a rather unusual perfume greeted my nostrils. Every house
has its own peculiar smell, but one of the women must have been using
some subtle Eastern perfume, sweet and much resembling sandalwood.

Having gained the landing on the first floor, I suddenly heard the
gruff voice of a man, followed by a low, exultant laugh; and then I
saw that from beneath the door came a streak of light. There came a
woman’s high-pitched and rather musical voice, too, followed by that
of a second man. Evidently, Mrs. Bowyer had visitors. Why, however,
had the hall light been extinguished? I stood listening. Several
people were conversing in such low tones that I could not distinguish
what they were saying. Suddenly I heard one word quite distinctly. It
was “police.”

My heart stood still.

The detectives were there waiting for my return to arrest me!

Again I listened, but they were only discussing something in low
whispers. I had walked into the trap set for me.

Having turned, I was about to descend the stairs and creep forth into
the fog again when, of a sudden, I became aware of a strong, heavy
hand clutching my throat. And somebody whom I could not see, blocked
my passage on the stairs.

They had at last discovered me.

What happened during the next exciting moments I can hardly tell.

The man shouted, whereupon the door was flung open, and seven or eight
persons emerged excitedly from the room, while I, in the grasp of two
rough-looking individuals, was hauled unceremoniously into the light.

In a second I realized that the room was furnished quite differently
from that of Mrs. Bowyer. Then it suddenly dawned on me that I had
inadvertently entered the wrong house! Yet I saw standing there,
statuesque and amazed, the handsome figure of my fellow-lodger, Lisely
Hatten. With her was an over-dressed foreign woman, a tall,
fair-haired young Englishman, of the type of a naval officer, and four
beetle-browed, swarthy foreigners, all in a great state of anger and
alarm.

“I found this fellow listening!” cried the very tall, muscular man of
Negroid type, with thick lips and bloodshot eyes, who had seized me on
the stairs. He spoke with a strange accent. “The spy has overheard!”
Whereat the strange nocturnal party stood aghast.

“I heard nothing! I am no spy,” I protested instantly.

“Perhaps not,” exclaimed one of the other men, who was apparently in
authority. “But you have seen!”

Then, next second I became aware that upon the table was a quantity of
old-fashioned jewelry lying in a heap, gems which flashed and
glittered beneath the light, but all in antique settings.

“I have seen nothing,” I assured my captors.

Were they jewel-thieves in the act of dividing their spoils?

“You are a police-spy!” shouted the dark-bearded, undersized foreigner
who had just spoken.

“Yes,” cried the girl who was my fellow-lodger. “I suspected him from
the first. He told me he was a journalist, but nobody knows him in
Fleet Street. He goes out on night duty from Scotland Yard.”

“That is certainly untrue,” I said resentfully. “I am no police-spy,
and your affairs, whatever they may be, are surely no business of
mine.”

The big, dark-faced man, who had made me his prisoner, laughed
mockingly and said:

“Unfortunately for you, we happen to know you. You are Lionel Hipwell.
Why do you come to live here in disguise as Mr. Paige if you are not
acting for the police?”

I was silent. What could I say?

It was plain that the pretty, half-foreign typist had suspected me,
but to my amazement, not as the assassin of Bloomsbury. It was as an
agent of the Criminal Investigation Department I had been suspected.
In that second my whole outlook on life changed.

I saw myself faced with a greater peril than I ever could have
dreamed. By mere mischance, bad fortune following on bad fortune, I
had fallen upon the secret of what was evidently a most desperate gang
of jewel thieves.

In that narrow, shuttered room, with its cheap table piled with gems
of untold value, precious stones that my eyes had never before beheld,
I stood bewildered, and at the mercy of my accusers.

Surely I was innocent of everything concerning them. They knew my
name! They knew, perhaps, that, being interested in criminology, I had
once been able to place the police on the track of one of the greatest
forgers of the present century. They evidently knew me, and, what was
worse--they feared me.

They did not know that I feared them equally. And yet, dared I reveal
why I was in hiding?

I drew a long breath. In a few seconds I passed in review all my
hopes, my life, my fears. At last, however, I blurted out:

“The reason I am here is because the police are hunting me for the
Bloomsbury murder, of which, I swear to you all, I am innocent.”

An ominous silence of a few seconds fell. Then the under-sized little
foreigner, with the black gimlet eyes, laughed derisively and said in
a bad English:

“My friends, we have to deal with a very clever fellow in this Mr.
Hipwell. Certainly he is not the man for whom his police department is
in search. A devilish clever excuse, but when one is faced with
extinction, as he is--for the only way to deal with spies is to close
their blurting lips by death--then any of us would naturally take upon
ourselves any accusation such as he does.”

“I’m innocent! I swear I am!” I shouted, facing the assembly boldly.
“I fled from the police, and only by misadventure have I entered here.
I have heard nothing, neither have I seen anything. I am innocent!” I
cried vehemently.

I could see that they were a desperate gang who, fearing lest I should
betray them, intended to put an end to my existence. Their manner and
their murderous, evil looks showed only too plainly that the threat of
death would be put in execution. Indeed, they were all conversing
excitedly in some language entirely foreign to me.

I implored the girl Hatten, who spoke the tongue as fluently as the
others, to explain to them that I had not been spying, and to assure
them that I would preserve their secret whatever it might be.

But she only turned on me with anger flashing in her eyes, and
replied:

“You are an agent of the police! I suspected it from the first. What
you say about the murder in Bloomsbury is a lie. I only suggested that
you answered to the description which Scotland Yard had circulated in
order to watch your face. The way you answered confirmed my suspicions
that you are a detective! And as you are a spy, we have decided that
you shall pay the penalty.”

I saw that, like her friends, she was fiercely antagonistic and
inexorable. Her face, her manner, her kindly attitude towards me,--all
had entirely changed. From being my friend, she had suddenly become my
worst enemy; and I knew that nothing could save me from the fury of
that desperate gang of foreigners, whose nationality I could not
determine.

I stood there in deadly peril, scarce daring to breathe, watching my
enemies in excited consultation while they decided my fate.

Suddenly the door before me opened and a woman entered.

Our eyes met for an instant. An exclamation froze on my lips.

The newcomer was the woman of the night, Hilda Bennett!




 CHAPTER FIVE.
 HELD BY THE ENEMY

In an instant I saw that the woman Hilda Bennett had not recognized
me. For that I was thankful.

The pale-faced young Englishman, however, was beside her in a moment,
exclaiming:

“This man has spied upon us! We are deciding what shall be done with
him!”

It was plain that the woman was a member of the criminal gang, and, in
all probability, the man who had lost his life while grappling with me
was also one of its members. In any case, the police had identified
him by his finger-prints, taken after death.

“How has he spied? How did he get in here?” inquired the woman in
surprise.

“He evidently has a false key. He is a detective!” said the girl
Hatten. “He lives in the same house with me, and calls himself Paige.
He pretended to come up from the country, but I’ve been watching him.
He only goes out at night--never in the day.”

“And he tells us a ridiculous story that the reason he is in hiding is
because it was he who shot Monkey Dick!” explained the pale-faced
young man.

“Yes!” cried Lisely, turning to Hilda Bennett. “You know who did that!
Is this the man?” she demanded fiercely, pointing at me.

The woman who in her fury had lied to the police against me, regarded
me steadily, and I feared that my faltering gaze might betray me. She
looked straight into my face for some moments, and then she spoke.

Again I held my breath.

“No,” she said decisively. “He’s a liar! This is not the man who
killed Monkey Dick!”

My heart leapt within me at that declaration, which cleared me of
suspicion, but next second the undersized foreigner, who seemed to be
the chief, remarked in his broken English:

“Ah! Then he must be a police-spy from Scotland Yard! So we are
right!”

“I swear I have no connection with Scotland Yard!” I cried in dismay.

All laughed me to derision, hurling at me epithets in their
inexplicable language, which not till long afterwards did I know to be
Roumanian.

“What shall we do with him?” asked the woman Bennett, whose face was
rouged and powdered, and whose lips were almost vermilion. The shabby,
long, old tweed coat she wore had fallen back, revealing her to be
dressed in a gorgeous evening-gown of shell-pink net, covered with
pearly sequins, a Parisian creation that would have attracted
attention in any West End ballroom.

I had escaped the real charge against me, only to face a greater and
more perilous one.

“Let’s put out the spy’s eyes, so that he’ll never be able to identify
us!” suggested the girl who was my fellow-lodger.

“A good idea!” cried the woman Bennett. “He’s a spy in any case.
Monkey Dick always said that it was far safer to prick a spy’s eyes
than to take on his body for disposal. In the latter, a trace is
always left. Let’s serve him as we did that spy Turner. He never spied
again. I saw him last year, tapping with his stick on the curb in
Waterloo Road.”

I stood helpless and horrified.

“Yes, I remember!” declared the stunted little foreigner in his bad
English. “We did well not to kill him--very well! It was far better
so. No police magistrate would accept the evidence of the blind!”

“Then let us prick out his eyes!” cried Lisely, exultant at the
success of her suggestion. “He will then be sufficiently punished for
spying upon us.”

I confess that, defenceless in the hands of that desperate gang, I
became petrified by terror. What use was it to exhibit the boldness
inbred by a brave and ancient family?

I contemplated making a dash for the door. But such action was
forestalled by the two men who had first seized me clapping a pair of
handcuffs upon me ere I could divine their intention. Thus was I
rendered utterly powerless.

The thought that they meant to blind me held me speechless in horror.
I stood there with fettered hands, helpless to raise a finger in
self-defence, utterly paralyzed.

“Let me have the extreme satisfaction of pricking the spy’s eyes!”
cried the girl Lisely who, for some mysterious reason, had turned
entirely against me, and was now my bitterest enemy.

“For God’s sake, don’t!” I shouted in appeal.

“Has anybody got a long pin, or needle?” the girl asked, turning to
her companions, whereat the flashily-dressed woman produced a large,
thick safety-pin which she straightened out and handed to her. The
girl who posed so cleverly as a typist in the City, and yet who was
one of a desperate association of criminals, as proved by the pile of
stolen gems upon the table, seemed to have been suddenly transformed
into a diabolical virago.

“Come, Bertram. You’re at Guy’s. Help me. We’ll perform the operation
together in the other room!”

“No, here!” demanded the woman Bennett. “Let us all witness the
punishment.”

“Let Lisely do as she wishes. It is her affair,” decided the little
man, whose word as leader was law. “She it is who has tracked him down
as a spy!”

I held my shackled hands in front of my face to ward off her attack.
In my ears resounded excited voices speaking that unintelligible
tongue, punctuated by ribald laughter, while the young Englishman
addressed as Bertram, with my fellow-lodger at Mrs. Bowyer’s, and
aided by one of the men, bundled me into the adjoining room, a small,
cheaply-furnished bedroom, lit by a flaring gas-jet, stuffy and full
of the faint, not unpleasant, odor that seemed to fill the house and
mingle with the fog.

“Go back!” ordered the girl. “We will do this alone!” And the man who
had helped to force me into the room against my will, despite my
strenuous struggles--for I assure you I did not give in as a craven
coward--retired, closing the door after him. I stared at Lisely Hatten
in bewildered helplessness.

The instant the door was closed the girl’s attitude changed. She
seemed to half relent, for she said:

“I will spare you as much pain as I can, Mr. Paige--or Mr.
Hipwell--eh?” And she produced from a little case a hypodermic
syringe. “The shock would be too severe without this, but--a few
moments’ sleep, and then all will be darkness.”

“God!” I cried. “Spare me. Are you mad? I’ve done nothing--the story
I’ve told you is true--every word of it. I swear it is!”

“My dear fellow,” said the good-looking young criminal, who was
evidently a medical student. “Don’t let’s argue. You’ve, unfortunately
for yourself, seen us; you know us, and you would be a constant danger
to us. When we discover danger we always remove it as far as possible.
You can congratulate yourself that your body is not in a furnace
to-night. You will live, to think over to-night, and to repent your
intrusion here.”

Meanwhile, the girl had filled the little syringe with some pale-blue
liquid which she held to the light. Then, in a caressing voice, she
said:

“Don’t worry. This will save you much pain in the present, and, Mr.
Paige,” she added in a strange voice full of meaning, “much disability
in the future.”

“Damn you!” I shouted in fury. “What do you hell-fiends intend to do?”

“Hush!” the woman whispered. “Trust us both and don’t worry.”

“Worry? When you are going to blind me?” I yelled, heedless of her
warning.

“You fool!” she cried. And as I raised my fettered hands against my
eyes I felt the sharp prick of the hypodermic needle in my left wrist.
A moment later I felt her finger pressed hard upon the puncture.

What happened immediately afterwards I have no idea. Probably I shall
never know.

I somehow felt myself carried as though in air, lightly, buoyantly,
through space, over a wide, unruffled sapphire sea. I recollect a
feeling that I had discovered the secret of flight; for, I was alone,
skimming the water like a swallow, without fatigue, ever forward in
boundless space. Before me I saw in the far blue distance a range of
snow-capped mountains, raising their glacier-clad peaks into the
clouds, peaks higher than the giant Jungfrau which I had seen in
Switzerland--higher indeed than I had even seen. They rose as a dark,
insurmountable barrier before me, and I was approaching them at what
seemed hundreds of miles an hour.

Suddenly, I came to a great, gray, granite, treeless precipice, and
knew that I must be dashed against it to my death. But, instead, I
again rose in short, rapid spirals, higher and higher and yet still
higher, over a region of eternal snows and ice. And, once more I was
out into the illimitable sunshine, soaring in space, as a bird with
tireless wings, flying in the limitless space, heedless and
intoxicated with the pleasure of a newly-awakened interest in life.

A panorama of busy cities and of great stretches of picturesque
country passed before my vision. Dark forests, placid lakes, green
swards, mighty rivers, babbling brooks, wildly excited crowds of men
on ’Change in cities, the homely comfort of the great country houses
of the rich, all of these passed in rapid review before my distorted
vision.

I beheld scenes which I had never before gazed on. I smelt the perfume
of flowers hitherto unknown to me, strange, wonderful tropical
flowers. Then all those other scenes faded to give place to a great
arid desert, brown, inhospitable, without any sign of vegetable life
as far as my eyes could see.

It was astounding, bewildering. I tried to collect my thoughts; but
they were addled. My brain was not normal. It seemed wrapped in
cotton-wool. Sometimes, over everything was the clear azure light of
evening; at others, the sun shone fiercely, revealing far-distant
objects with great distinctness. Yet, at others, they were half
obscured by an uncertain, blood-red mist.

On I sailed; on through space, reviewing the whole world as I went.
Strange tongues sounded in my ears and stranger scenes greeted me at
every moment. Now upon land, now upon the boundless ocean, and
sometimes in express trains, I sped through a new and unknown world,
bright and brilliant, that knew not darkness or night; for day was
unending.

Distinctly, to-day I remember wondering if I were dead. Had I passed
into the Beyond, into which the modern world is striving so
strenuously to penetrate? Those devils into whose privacy I had so
accidentally stumbled had murdered me, without doubt. They had closed
my lips to prevent my betraying their super-criminal methods.

The face of that innocent, good-looking girl, Lisely Hatten, rose
before me, together with that of the pallid young Englishman whom I
had at first taken for a naval officer, but who was a medical student.
And--why, I know not--I actually welcomed the recollection! No hatred
did I experience of that fiery-tempered girl with the soft brown eyes
and wavy hair, who had begged her companions to allow her to put out
my eyes with that large safety-pin.

My last remembrance was of the prick of the hypodermic needle. At any
rate, the girl had treated me humanely! Perhaps that was the reason I
felt no malice against her.

When, however, I recalled the face of the woman Bennett, I experienced
a fierce revulsion of feeling against her. She was my bitterest enemy,
even in the fact that she had failed to identify me and to
substantiate the story of my meeting with Monkey Dick when he was in
Bloomsbury. That very denial had corroborated the girl Lisely’s
declaration that I was a police-spy. Hence the vengeance which the
gang had taken on my unfortunate self!

Still I sped on in mid air, light as down, now rising, now falling,
tireless as ever, whirling through space, traveling without count of
time, witnessing fresh scenes, meeting fresh people, seeing fresh
faces, yet unable to find tongue to communicate with them.

The whole experience coincided with something I had read about dealing
with life after death.

Was I dead, I wondered?




 CHAPTER SIX.
 ILLONA!

A loud, ringing peal of laughter sounded in my ears, and at that
moment my aerial journey ended. In a flash all became transformed. It
concluded with a sudden shock.

I was conscious of lying upon a polished floor. Around me, apparently,
was a brilliant dinner-party. At the table about thirty persons were
seated and I seemed to have created great consternation; for, two
flunkeys in plush breeches and stockings were helping me to my feet.

I held my breath, aghast.

An elderly man, in evening-dress and wearing decorations, dashed up to
me saying:

“My dear Hipwell! I hope you haven’t hurt yourself! You tilted your
chair and it slipped from under you! By Jove! you gave your head a
nasty bump on the floor! Are you quite all right?” he asked, placing
his hand upon my shoulder with great anxiety.

“Quite all right!” I laughed faintly. “Please forgive me.” And a few
moments later, one of the servants having replaced my chair, I resumed
my seat amid the laughter and congratulations of the others.

“You might have hurt your head very badly!” remarked an elderly,
well-preserved woman who sat on my left. She was very handsomely
dressed and extremely refined.

“It was entirely my own fault,” I said apologetically. “I, of course,
did not know that the floor was so highly polished.”

“I know. I had the same accident last summer in the Danieli Hotel, in
Venice and hurt myself rather badly. Highly-polished floors are always
extremely dangerous. But, if one lives in an Embassy one has to have
such a floor in the State dining-room, as well as in the ballroom.”

“Is this an Embassy?” I inquired, gazing blankly around the handsome
apartment, with its high, gilded ceiling and fine old portraits upon
the paneled walls.

My companion regarded me strangely and said:

“I really hope, Mr. Hipwell, that you haven’t hurt your head!”

Instantly I saw that by betraying ignorance of my surroundings I would
bring on myself suspicion of being slightly deranged.

“No,” I laughed. “I was only joking, really.”

“You quite alarmed me!” exclaimed my companion, and, bending over me,
she addressed the pretty, auburn-haired young girl on my other hand,
saying:

“Contessina! Did you hear that? Mr. Hipwell has just asked me whether
this is an Embassy--as though he had never been in the British Embassy
in Rome before! It’s too funny. He gave me quite a fright. I thought
that his fall had injured his brain!”

“Signor Hipwell is always joking,” laughed the Little Countess,
speaking in Italian, a language which I happened to know. “One can
never take him seriously. He said all sorts of stupid things to my
father a couple of months ago--pretending that he did not know
him--and all that!”

“Forgive me, Contessina,” I said, bowing, not knowing her name or who
she might be. To my knowledge I had never seen her before that moment.
“But I was joking with your father.”

“As you did with His Excellency the Ambassador when you arrived from
London this morning,” laughed the older woman. “His wife, Lady
Kingscliffe, told me about it.” Then, turning to me, she asked, “Are
you really suffering from loss of memory, as His Excellency has been
fearing?”

“His Excellency need have no cause for apprehension,” I reassured the
elderly lady on my left. Then I turned to my other companion, who was
evidently the unmarried daughter of an Italian Count, and we laughed
together.

Meanwhile my bewildered eyes were taking in every detail of that
unfamiliar and unexpected scene.

The last actual recollection I had had was of being helpless and
terrified in the hands of that desperate gang of criminals at
Camberwell. Yet at that moment the whole scene had been suddenly
transformed, and I was guest at an official dinner given by the
British Ambassador in Rome.

At the head of the table sat His Excellency, a rather spare,
grey-haired man in his diplomatic uniform, with a jeweled cross at his
throat and a ribbon across his shirt-front. Nearly all the other men
were also in the uniform of the various countries they represented,
and wearing stars, ribbons, and neat rows of decorations. To my
surprise, I found myself also wearing diplomatic uniform, with a
foreign order.

The women were all smartly dressed, and many wore wonderful jewels,
which glittered and flashed beneath the electric rays. At the opposite
end of the flower-decked table sat Lady Kingscliffe, a distant
relative of ours, whom I had known nearly all my life.

I was guest at the Embassy in Rome. But why?

All was bewildering. Why had I been invited to that stately dinner, at
which I had made such a confounded fool of myself by unbalancing my
chair, and afterwards asking where I was?

To keep my mouth shut and to observe closely was the best course. All
was so strange, so unreal. True, I held a post at the Foreign Office,
but my duties did not take me abroad. Why, therefore, was I a guest at
the same table where, sitting on His Excellency’s right hand, was the
Duce, the Dictator of Italy, the greatest post-war figure in Europe,
Mussolini?

Bull-headed, with his strong, commanding countenance, and wearing
plain evening-dress, he was chatting with a young girl in pale-yellow,
and laughing the while. I recognized him from the many photographs in
the Press, and I remember wondering whether beneath his dress-shirt he
wore his famous coat of mail.

The many attempts to assassinate him had left him so cold that he had
openly defied Fate, declaring that he led such a charmed life, that no
plot could ever cause his undoing or his death. There sat the demigod
of the Fascists at his ease, in the intimacy of the dinner-table!

Was it any wonder that such a scene held me entranced? Was I really
dreaming?

My table companions spoke to me--on one side in English and, on the
other, in Italian. I had not the slightest knowledge of who either of
them was, and what I replied I know not until this day.

At last the State dinner ended, and we passed into a great ballroom
with gilded ceiling and magnificent crystal electroliers. Already a
number of people had assembled, and the entrance of His Brittanic
Majesty’s representative, accompanied by the Duce, was the signal for
much bowing and hand shaking. It was a brilliant, cosmopolitan crowd,
such as, in these post-war days, could only assemble in the Eternal
City.

The long windows of the great salon stood open to a glorious, shady
garden and let in the balmy, flower-scented air, delightfully
refreshing after the rather close atmosphere of the dining-room.

Alone I stood, agape. How came I there? Had I been wafted to Rome upon
the fairy carpet of the Arabian story? Or was it actual reality?

The orchestra struck up a lively fox-trot quite unfamiliar to me. I am
rather fond of dancing, and with Joan as partner, knew most of the
popular tunes. Yet, the one in question was entirely unfamiliar. I
went back to the wall, and, standing near the door, watched the
brilliant spectacle of uniformed and decorated men and bejeweled
women. Diplomatic representatives of nearly every country in the world
were there; and, as always, the reception of the British
representative to the Quirinale was a spectacle perhaps unequaled in
Europe.

I stood astounded amid the brilliant throng, the dance-inspiring
rhythm in my ears, my senses bewildered, watching the cosmopolitan
dancers, yet not knowing a soul except old Dickie Kingscliffe and his
wife.

As members of many of the best dance-clubs in London, Joan and I had
made our peregrinations and knew the qualities of the various floors
from the Florida to the Cosmo. But where was she? The dance orchestra
brought her back vividly to my mind, causing me to reflect on our
meeting the last time I had seen her. As I stood there watching, her
sweet face slowly rose, distinct and lovable, in a pale-grey mist, her
adored countenance with that sweet smile on it. Yet a few seconds
later, before I could realize it, the faint vision faded and the mist
grew darkened into night.

My brain was in a whirl, in an abnormal condition.

A sense of absolute boredom at once overcame me.

The pretty little Contessina, with the brown eyes and shingled
hair--just a trifle too light for an Italian, I thought--was dancing
with the tall French military attaché; while my other table
companion, the elderly Englishwoman, had as partner a somewhat obese
Italian, perhaps a deputy, because of his cross of Cavaliere of the
Order of the Crown of Italy.

My attention was centred on the Little Countess. She presented a smart
figure of perfect line and graceful movement, charming in
pale-fuchsia, with a necklet of pearls and a magnificent bracelet of
rubies and diamonds. Once, as she passed, she caught my eye and smiled
over the shoulder of her elegant and lavishly decorated partner.

While standing there, Her Excellency Lady Kingscliffe approached me
and we stood to gossip. After her husband’s return from the Legation
at Brussels, before my strange adventure in Camberwell, I had known
her ladyship well in London. Dickie Kingscliffe had had a long and
distinguished career at the Foreign Office. He was the kind of man who
had secured rapid promotion by being dumped into any vacancy abroad
that occurred. Before the Sovereign had conferred on him the Knight
Commandership of St. Michael and George, Kingscliffe had spent many
weary years in the Do-nothing Department at Downing Street. Later, he
had been sent out--because he dressed well, entertained well, and was
able to see without seeing, and speak without saying anything,
according to true Foreign Office traditions--first to Constantinople
as second secretary, then to Paris as first secretary, and after the
war he had drifted along as Minister at Lisbon. Later on, again, he
had been sent to Copenhagen and to Brussels, until apparently now he
had fallen into one of the best-paid posts as full-fledged Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the gay Court of the
Quirinale.

“Well, my dear Lionel,” exclaimed Her Excellency, “I hope you don’t
feel too fatigued after your journey from London? It was awfully kind
of you to bring me those things from Bronley’s in the bag. My maid
gave them to me just as I was dressing.”

I bowed, expressing delight at being able to do any little service for
her, yet entirely in ignorance of having brought anything from London,
or of ever traveling to Rome.

“By the way,” she went on, “how is your father? I haven’t seen him for
ages. I see that he often speaks in the House.”

I replied that, as I traveled a great deal, I saw very little of him,
but, as far as I knew, he was quite well. At that instant there
flashed through my brain the memory of that last dramatic midnight
interview in the fog at Denmark Hill station.

What had occurred since then? All was a perfect blank.

Twice the Contessina re-passed me as I stood with Her Excellency, and
each time she gave me a sunny smile of recognition. The pretty girl
intrigued me. There was some curious feature about her; one that I
could no more fathom than the depths of mystery into which I had been
plunged.

Somehow I felt confident that we had met before; but where, I could
not recall. The smile that played about her lips seemed familiar. In a
hazy sort of way I felt that she was my intimate friend and that she
was enjoying my failure to recognize her.

Presently I asked Her Excellency:

“Who is the little lady who sat next to me at dinner? Look! She’s over
there with the French military attaché.”

“Oh, the Contessina! We met her a few weeks ago at the
Spaniard’s”--meaning the Spanish Embassy. “She was with a Baroness
Boin, her chaperon. She seems to be well known and popular, for she
goes everywhere in Rome. Her name is Angela Ugostini, daughter of
Count Ugostini of Ravenna.”

“She is very charming. Don’t you think so, Excellenza?” I said, as my
eyes wandered around the great ballroom after her.

“What!” cried the Ambassador’s wife in feigned protest. “Don’t you
remember once in London you told me that you thought no man who
carried dispatches should ever marry? And yet you are admiring a
pretty girl. Well, my dear Lionel, I’m really surprised! I admit that
you held that opinion before you knew Joan.”

Joan! The name stirred highly strung chords within my memory. Joan! My
beloved! Though torn by emotion, I strove frantically to remain
unconcerned.

“Two years ago I first met her--at your house, Lady Kingscliffe,” I
remarked. “My declaration was made before that.”

“My dear Lionel, your idea of time is most erratic! Why, what are you
thinking of? Are you dreaming? We’ve been here in Rome nearly two
years. It must have been over four years ago.”

I remained silent. If what Her Excellency said was correct, then I had
lost all knowledge of about two years of my life--of where I had been,
of what acts I had committed, or of what friendships or enmities I had
made. I had a blank in my life of two whole years to fill.

“You know nowadays, my dear boy, you are always a little vague on some
points. Joan has told me so. I wonder why it is? Perhaps so much
traveling is affecting you,” she remarked.

“What has Joan said?” I asked, wondering what had happened to me
during those lost two years.

“Oh, she’s such a sweet girl, Lionel, I really wonder that you treat
her as you do,” said Lady Kingscliffe reproachfully. “But there, I
suppose it is no affair of mine, so let’s talk of something else.”

“Will you dance?” I asked.

“I’d rather not,” she declared gracefully. “I’m a trifle tired.
To-morrow night there is the State ball at the Quirinale. You were at
the last one two months ago. I see the Minister of the Household, the
Marquis Visconti, over there! I’ll ask him to send you a command to
the Excelsior.”

I thanked her profusely. She was quite unaware that she had
unconsciously given me information of which I had been sorely in
need--namely, the name of the hotel in which I was staying.

“You recollect that dainty little Marchesa Pozzoli--you had supper
with her at the last State ball--she’s just died very mysteriously in
Palermo--poor little woman! All Rome is talking of it. Foul play is
hinted at. Her husband soon afterwards went off to Paris with La
Fafala the dancer,” she added significantly.

“How very tragic!” I replied. Then, as the name slowly brought forth
memories, I remembered her, for I had known Italy and Switzerland
fairly well. A black-eyed, dark-haired, merry little woman of
twenty-five, she had been a most graceful dancer and a cheery
companion. Before her marriage she had been one of the Strozzis of
Florence; since her union with Pozzoli she had been a particularly
bright personage in Rome society, and her receptions at the Palace
Pozzoli, in the Via Babuno, had been among the most brilliant in the
winter season.

“Do they think Enrico murdered her?” I whispered.

“H’sh!” she whispered in turn, warningly. “One must not dare suggest
such a thing, but I happen to know that Ghelardi, chief of the
Pubblica Sicurézza, is making searching inquiries. The Duce told
Richard so two days ago. Of course, that is strictly _entre nous_,”
she added, bending and speaking in a low tone.

Mussolini strode past, and suddenly halted, laughing, to speak with
the Ambassadress; hence I left her side, and a moment later found the
Little Countess, who had just been conducted back to her seat by a
young attaché who had been her partner.

“Won’t you dance, Contessina?” I asked her in French. With that sweet
smile I seemed to recognize in the misty vista of the past, she
replied gaily in the affirmative.

Conversation was rendered difficult for me because each moment in my
bewilderment I feared making some _faux pas_. Now that I was at her
side, the sweeter and more charming she appeared. To Lady Kingscliffe
I suppose I had unconsciously betrayed an infatuation; for, I
recollected her reproachful words concerning Joan.

Joan! She was only a shadow in the mist, a half-effaced memory of
long-forgotten days. That night, amid the brilliant scene of
jewel-bedecked women and uniformed men, I had awakened to a new
existence and had begun life afresh.

I was infatuated with the Contessina Angela. I confess to it. Her
beauty, her grace, her charm, her soft speech, overwhelmed me.

While we were dancing I complimented her on her steps, which were
indeed new to me, though I found I could dance them. But, among
several things which struck me as curious concerning her was that,
though she spoke Italian, it was with a decided foreign accent.
Neither was the softness of her features that of an Italian; yet
perhaps that might be accounted for if her mother had been a
foreigner. Besides, there are, I argued, many people, brought up
abroad in childhood and youth, who cannot speak their own language
properly.

As I held her while we danced, she greatly intrigued me, especially
after what Lady Kingscliffe had told me. She and her companion, the
Baroness Boin, it seemed, had suddenly appeared in Roman society and,
so charming was the little Contessina, and so cleverly had she
“climbed,” that the exclusive society in the Eternal City had quickly
accepted her.

“I suppose you are going to the Quirinale to-morrow night?” she asked
me just before the fox-trot ended.

I replied in the affirmative and expressed a profound hope that we
should meet there.

“I sincerely trust that we shall,” she replied in a voice which struck
me as extremely curious. “Perhaps before. Who knows?” And she laughed.

“Really, Contessina, I don’t quite understand you!” I said, much
puzzled, as I bowed her to her seat.

“Nowadays you don’t understand many things it appears, Signor
Hipwell,” was her reply as she smiled, turning to greet a newcomer who
came to invite her for the next dance.

Ten minutes later I got my hat and coat. A flunkey had called a taxi,
and I drove to the great _hôtel-de-luxe_ the Excelsior, in which, by
mere chance, I had ascertained I had my temporary abode.

After I had ascended the broad, blue-carpeted marble stairs, not
knowing the number of my room I went to the _concierge_ and asked for
my key.

I was given it, and on it was the number of a second-floor apartment,
large luxurious quarters with all the appointments of a modern hotel
of the first class.

I saw the dark-grey clothes I had unconsciously worn that day, neatly
folded, upon a chair. Upon a stand was a battered suit-case completely
covered with labels of Continental hotels, a small hand-bag was upon a
chair, and upon the writing-table was a letter addressed to me.
Apparently it had been delivered that evening. The stamp was a Swiss
one.

I tore it open. Written in an educated hand, there was a brief letter
dated from an address in Lausanne, Switzerland, as follows:


 “My Adored Lionel,--I have waited hourly for two whole weeks for a
 reply to the urgent message I sent you to London. I can bear the awful
 suspense no longer. I am in grave peril, with enemies surrounding me,
 and am alone and defenseless. Be extremely careful of your dear self
 on your journeys. They will not hesitate to kill you, as I have
 already proved to you. I am leaving for London to-morrow, if I
 consider it safe, and will call on you. Meanwhile, wire me your
 decision to my club in London and also here. I shall then know how to
 act. All my fondest love, dear heart, from your devoted wife,

                                                       “Illona.”


_My wife Illona!!_ Who was she?

In the two years of my unconsciousness I had evidently married!




 CHAPTER SEVEN.
 THE AWAKENING

What could it all mean?

I had suddenly awakened to a new world, one familiar enough to me
before my sudden unconsciousness, but in which two whole years had
been blotted out. Of my life or actions during that lost period I had
absolutely no recollection. My mind was a perfect blank.

As I stood there I tried to recall; but my last remembrance was that
horror when the girl Hatten had taken me, fettered and powerless, into
that shabby little room in order to render me blind.

Happily I could still see. I gazed around the luxurious bedroom, with
its rose-pink carpet, curtains, and handsome toilet fittings. I walked
to the long mirror. But when I saw my reflection, I experienced a
shock. I was certainly myself, but looked fully ten years older than
on that night of my sinister adventure in Bloomsbury when the criminal
known as Monkey Dick--so called because of his agility in climbing to
upper windows--had attacked me and been accidentally shot in our
struggle. I walked to the window and stood upon the balcony. The pale,
pearly dawn was rising over Rome. The great piazza, with its palms,
its ilexes, and flowers, was deserted, and no sound broke the quiet,
save the plashing of the fountain.

Yes, the Eternal City was just the same as I had known it in my youth,
when, with the dear old governor, I had spent nearly a year at the
Russie, afterwards paying several visits to the capital again. I took
a deep breath of the flower-scented air, refreshing after the crowded
ballroom I had left; and then, returning into my room, I made a tour
of it, and with curiosity examined my possessions. They were not many,
scarcely anything I recognized.

On the little finger of my left hand was a fine signet-ring of
lapis-lazuli. Upon it was the crest of the Hipwells--a dragon’s head.
I removed it for examination, and inside found an inscription in
facsimile of the same handwriting as the letter, which read: “From
Illona. 3.8.24.”

The third of August, 1924! What could it commemorate? My marriage to
my unknown wife? Was that possible?--for the date was within my lost
years.

I replaced it upon my finger in utter bewilderment. Then I turned to
the contents of my suit-case, which I emptied upon the bed.

Amid the miscellaneous collection which always accumulates in the kit
of every man who is a constant traveler, almost the first thing that
met my eye was a small leather case. On opening it, I found to my
amazement that it was a drug-taker’s outfit! Surely I was not in the
habit of taking morphine! I closed the little case and tossed it into
the waste-paper basket, hoping that in my newly awakened state I
should never handle it again. A case containing tie-pins and
cuff-links--several sets with diamonds--was the next I opened. Among
the pins was one of two square-cut diamonds with an emerald between,
which I knew Joan had given me for my birthday, and a pair of
red-enameled links with diamond centres were the ones I had long
possessed. But my clothes were all unfamiliar, though they were smart
enough, and, from the tabs, had been made by my usual tailor in
Conduit Street.

In the pocket in the lid of the suit-case were some letters. These I
took out, and, sitting at the writing table, I proceeded to examine
them. There were hotel bills from Madrid, Brussels, and Athens, cities
which I supposed I had visited in the course of my journeying as a
King’s Foreign Service Messenger. That was, no doubt, my position;
for, I had already found my _laisser-passer_ which claimed
international courtesy, so that my luggage was exempt from Customs
examination on all the frontiers of Europe. There was, too, my
official badge, the little silver greyhound.

As, one after the other, I opened the letters, I became the more
puzzled. Three were in French, couched in cryptic language, and dated
from an address in Toulouse, demanding that I should disclose the
identity of “the person to whose name it is needless to refer,” and
apparently containing veiled threats.

Had the threats any connection with the urgent warning contained in
the letter from Illona, my mysterious wife?

I realized that I was powerless to acknowledge receipt of her letter
as I had no knowledge of her address in Lausanne, or of the name of
her club in London. Yet she demanded an urgent response telegraphed to
both addresses. She awaited my decision. On what point?

Suddenly I saw Joan’s familiar handwriting on an envelope addressed to
“Lionel Hipwell, Esq., care of His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy,
Madrid,” and, taking out the letter, I observed that it had been
written from Queen’s Gate on the fifteenth of March.

When I had obtained my key from the _concierge_ I had seen by the big
calendar hanging in his bureau that the date was the twenty-third of
April. Hence a little more than a month ago I must have been in
Madrid, and there received the letter from my adored one.

It was sad and full of reproaches.


 “You were in London two whole days after your return from Athens,” she
 wrote. “Yet you had no time to come and see me, or to ring me up. You
 seem so taken up with your new friends, and especially with another
 woman, that you have no time for me nowadays. I saw you with my own
 eyes dining with her at the Berkeley. I watched you both, but you did
 not see me. Next morning I called at Sackville Street, but your new
 man told me you had left again for Madrid half an hour before.

 “Is this treatment fair to me, Lionel? I do not upbraid you if you
 have transferred your love to this Woman from Nowhere and find her
 more attractive than myself. Probably she is. Anyhow, she appeared to
 be very amusing and witty. But at least tell me the truth. Do not
 continue to mislead me into the belief that you are still mine, I beg
 of you. A woman’s heart may suffer much, but there is a breaking
 strain--and mine is very near it!

 “You wired from Vienna promising to come and see me instantly on your
 arrival, yet, instead, you prefer the society of your newly-found
 charmer. I know that while you are absent we cannot meet and discuss
 the future. If you wish to break our engagement, please tell me so. Do
 not be afraid. I can stand the shock, for I am now inured to your
 neglect and indifference. I shall know when you return from Madrid,
 and if you do not come to see me then I shall regard your silence as
 breaking our engagement, and that I myself shall be free, with only
 the bitter memory of one whom I have loved and still devotedly love.

                                             “Your broken-hearted
                                             “Joan.”


Twice I re-read the letter, and divined in it the poignant suffering
of a woman’s soul.

What foolish act had I committed? Was I actually wedded to the
mysterious Illona, the husband of a woman I could not remember? In my
lost existence I had evidently enacted certain follies of which I held
no recollection. What were they? One--the inexcusable vice of
drug-taking--I had established beyond doubt. How many other
ill-advised and irresponsible acts had I performed? Of how many
foolish indiscretions had I been culpable?

In my perplexity I stood confused, perhaps half deranged.

Vainly I sought to disentangle the astounding situation, but the more
I strove to remember, the darker and more inscrutable the past became.
The mystery of it all was incomprehensible. For over two years I had
evidently been leading a normal life, with few suspecting that my
brain had become unbalanced or that my memory of the past was a blank.
I had resolved on mental reservation from the first moment when the
shock of my fall in the Embassy dining-room had aroused me to a sense
of consciousness of things about me. I dared not make inquiry
concerning anything lest my friends should believe me to be mad.

Without doubt the fearful horror of that never-to-be-forgotten night
at Camberwell was responsible for the inconceivable state of my mind.

Already some unfortunate facts were only too clear. I had not replied
to Joan’s appeal. Hence by my silence our engagement, I supposed, had
been broken. But in what circumstances had I married the mysterious
Illona, of whose address I was in ignorance and whom I had never seen?
I must have married in secret, for Joan had not mentioned it, though
she had watched me dining with someone at the Berkeley. Could the
woman have been my wife?

What excuse could I make to Joan, tender memories of whom had arisen
within me, and whom I loved with all my soul? How could I explain my
marriage and my cruel betrayal? The complications were so many that I
was frantic with uncertainty and bewilderment.

I renewed the search among my papers. There was a letter dated from
Sackville Street signed “Edward Bruce.” Its servile tone showed it to
be from my “new man,” as Joan called him. What was he like, I
wondered? I pictured a tall, thin, grey-haired servant in morning-coat
and grey trousers, very obsequious and discreet. What had become of
the faithful Bolland?

Another paper was an account in my own handwriting of some expenses or
other amounting to about ninety pounds, while my check-book showed
that I had been spending a considerable sum of money, of late, with
some furnishing firm in Paris.

Was it possible that I had set up an apartment for my unknown wife,
Illona?

I subjected every object I possessed to the most careful scrutiny.
Most things puzzled me. Even my clothes I had never set eyes on
before. Yet the memoranda I had were written in a firm handwriting,
evidently my own.

My brain was, indeed, in a whirl. I felt myself going mad. Therefore,
I put on my clothes again, with a light coat over them, and,
descending, went out into the silent, deserted street, past the great
fountain, the waters of which awakened the echoes, until I found
myself at last in that long, straight street, one of the greatest
thoroughfares in the world, the famous Corso.

I detected it in the pale-grey light of the morning. The big electric
lights were still flaring, and as I passed a silent policeman he
politely wished me _buon giorno_.

I wandered past the Hôtel Russie, and higher up the hill till Rome
lay at my feet. It was growing lighter every moment--a pearly-grey
light tinged with rose-pink. At last, after my wanderings, I stood--as
one day in my long-past youth--upon the site of the ancient Torris
Maecentis in the beautiful garden of the Palazzo Colonna and looked
around on the extensive view of the towers and cupolas, the palaces
and monuments, which, on the seven hills, are modern Rome.

Suddenly I recollected that my father had taken me to that spot when I
was about eighteen, to see Rome at dawn.

Again I stood there, to wonder and to think. Below me, bathed in the
pale-gold of the rising sun, lay the red roofs of the Eternal City,
picturesque, mysterious, the capital of a kingdom. It was a city
which, from half effacement consequent on war, led by an
ex-revolutionary, had risen to grandeur and prosperity, to a powerful
place in Europe. I gazed on the wonderful dome of St. Peter’s, and
beside it the colossal tower of Sant’ Angelo, with the winding Tiber
and its bridges--Rome--the changeless city since the Christian era.

I knew Rome, but not with the superficiality that the tourist knows
it. The modern traveler, swept from his home upon a _voyage à
forfait_ by a tourist agency, enjoys the best views, experience, and
comfort in the six days allotted to him--often four, alas!--and yet to
see Rome even superficially it takes a month. Some, of course, care
nothing for ancient monuments, the Coliseum, the Forum, the catacombs,
or the haunts of Nero or Tiberius. They like, rather, to take their
_apéritif_ at the Aregno, their lunch out at Tivoli, and dine and
dance a their hotel, for too often sightseeing is a bore, and one does
not believe in the throwing of coppers into the fountain.

Rome is Rome, after all, always the most impressionable capital of
Europe. And, it will continue to be that, through all the ages.

In my state of mind these thoughts ran through my bewildered brain.
Why, I know not.

If I had forsaken Joan Gell, what had occurred? I realized that, with
my father’s fierce hatred of her father, it had been impossible to
openly declare my love. We had both agreed on this, and our actions,
until that fatal night in Camberwell, had been the acme of discretion.
Yet I had indisputable evidence that I had married somebody named
Illona; and further, my check-books showed heavy payments to form a
home for the latter.

The one part, however, which gripped my brain and dulled my senses,
was my admiration for the girl Angela. I knew that we had met before,
and, further, I was conscious that she held me as clay in her hands.
Her beauty was in my eyes diabolical, her laugh that of a Bacchante,
and yet she was entirely irresistible. She was drawing me towards her
as surely as a magnet draws a needle.

And I had promised to meet her at the State ball, at the Quirinale,
that night.

I tried to resist; but, poor fool that I was, it was useless. Perhaps
I may be forgiven on account of the unstable condition of my
disordered brain. My mind, I think, had awakened, as I stood there
leaning over that lichen-covered stone parapet, gazing across the
Eternal City, over which was rising the pale rose and gold of morning.
But my soul was still asleep. I was as yet as a man half drugged by a
long sleep, in which two years of consciousness had been entirely
blotted out.

It was seven o’clock in the morning before I returned to my bedroom at
the Excelsior. Without taking off my evening-clothes, I sank upon the
bed to sleep, tired and worn, with my brain wrapped still in
cotton-wool.

At eleven I was awakened by the telephone ringing; and I answered it.

I heard Lord Kingscliffe’s voice.

“Is that you, Hipwell?” he asked. And when I had replied in the
affirmative, he said: “I thought I’d let you know that you’ll have to
leave for London to-morrow night. Sorry, Lionel. But you know in the
service we are not our own masters.”

“Quite all right,” I replied, wondering why his voice seemed so
sympathetic and apologetic.

“I shall see you at the Quirinale to-night. _Addio_,” His Excellency
said.

And I hung up the receiver.

So my visit to Rome was to be cut short. Perhaps, after all, it was
better so.




 CHAPTER EIGHT.
 THE DOUBLE NOUGHT

I spent the day wandering about the broad, handsome streets of
Rome--Rome under Mussolini. I noted where cobbled piazzas had been
bare and dusty there were now bright flower-beds, shady trees, and
often refreshing fountains. Around me on every side arose great
palatial buildings worthy of the proudest city in the world.

I watched the tourists feeding the pigeons, and took several
_apéritifs_ at the popular cafés.

The idea of the State ball, for which I had already received a card
from the Minister of the Royal Household, nauseated me. I was in no
mood for brilliant throngs, Court etiquette, or dance-music. Yet the
Little Countess attracted me. I felt absolutely certain that we had
once been friends, but to what extent, or in what circumstances, I was
in entire ignorance. My memory concerning her was also a complete
blank.

At ten o’clock that night I put on my uniform, and taking my cocked
hat and gloves, drove to the Palace, where I passed across the red
carpet, and along the great, brilliantly-lit corridor lined by the
Royal servants, and the Guards in their brilliant uniforms. With me
entered several foreign diplomats with their ladies, including Grant,
the secretary of the United States Embassy, whom I recognized as an
old friend I had known in Paris.

Assembled in the great salon with five hundred others, we awaited the
coming of their Majesties. I gazed eagerly around to discover the
Contessina, but was sorely disappointed. She was not present! And yet
she herself had pressed me to come and dance with her.

Of a sudden there came the three resounding bangs upon the great gilt
double doors. The Marshal of the Court, an aged Duke with snow-white
hair and heavy moustache, threw them open, and the King in the
full-dress uniform of a General, walking with the Queen, whose
diamonds flashed with a thousand fires, entered, smiling at the bowing
and curtsying assembly.

Their Majesties, accompanied by the Prince of Savoy and other members
of the Italian Royal Family, made a slow tour of the great gilt
chamber, with its hundred crystal electroliers; and then, after they
had ascended their dais, the dance commenced.

It was not until that moment that, amid the crowd of Roman nobility
and the diplomatic circle, I caught sight of the charming girl I
sought.

She was dressed in a cloth of silver, the skirt embellished with a
broad band of diamanté and pearl embroidery, which reflected the
light from a thousand angles--one of the most striking costumes at the
Court. I saw her accept a tall, slim attaché of the French Embassy as
her partner. Her face, slightly flushed, was as beautiful as the angel
of Lanfranco upon the wall of Sant’ Andrea. Afterwards, as I watched,
I saw her elegant cavalier, in his gold-braided uniform, hand her over
to a well-dressed and rather stiff-looking lady of middle-age; and
presently I noticed her chatting merrily with the Princess
Pallavicini, the Queen’s principal lady-in-waiting.

Later on, as though quite accidentally, I met her, and bowed low over
her hand.

She smiled at me, and expressed satisfaction that we should meet
again. Her attitude was much more cordial than on the previous night.

“Lady Kingscliffe told me that you are always traveling,” she said in
French, as we stood against the wall together watching the dancers. “I
love traveling, but----” And she raised her shoulders expressive of
disappointment.

“You do not travel very much?” I asked in the same language.

“Alas! no,” she replied, with a smile. “I want to see London and New
York--and Athens.”

“Well, if you traveled as constantly as I do, you would, I fear, grow
very tired of trains, Contessina,” I said, noting the exquisite taste
of her gown.

“You have been in Rome before, I suppose?” I remarked.

“Yes. Once before. I go out daily with the tourists to see the
monuments. It is such great fun--I assure you! But, oh! I do so want
to see your London.”

She spoke with an air of greatest refinement, and her eyes, as she
looked at me, seemed so childlike and innocent.

“Yet when one is not one’s own mistress, what can one do?” she added.

“Some young ladies become defiant of parents and chaperons,” I
laughed. “But I would not advise such a course. Will you honor me with
a dance, Contessina, and let us forget all our troubles, eh?”

She accepted my invitation, and a few moments later, we were waltzing
together, while Lady Kingscliffe, who, I knew, had been watching,
turned away with an amused smile.

Angela charlestoned beautifully. As a dancer myself I had been to many
balls, and had had some splendid partners. But this brown-eyed girl of
mystery eclipsed them all.

The Baron de Carbonnel, Ambassador of France, who was dancing with the
young Princess di Forano, daughter of the Duchess di San Donato,
passed us, and I noticed that he smiled at my partner in recognition.

Later, after an enjoyable hour, during which I endeavored, by all the
means in my power, to discover more concerning the mysterious girl, I
took her in to supper, where we sat down to a _tête-à-tête_ repast.

Around us were many people I recognized, for very slowly my memory was
returning. Rospigliosi, with his wife, the Minister Sonnino, Caetani
and his daughter, the pretty Donna Stella, and the ever-popular
Princess Odescalchi with her wonderful emeralds.

From the chatter of the Little Countess it was apparent that she moved
in high circles and was acquainted with many officials.

Later, I led her back to the ballroom.

“M’sieur Hipwell,” whispered the Little Countess just as we were about
to dance, “I wonder if you--well, if I dare ask you to do a very great
favor for me?”

“Most certainly I will,” was my eager reply.

“Well, I cannot tell you here. Could you meet me--to-morrow? I will be
alone.”

“Where?” I asked.

She reflected a moment.

“In the Church of Sant’ Agnese, in the Piazza Navona,” she replied in
a low voice. “Would eleven o’clock suit you?”

“Certainly. I will be there.”

And thus it was arranged.

Punctually at the hour she had named I entered the great, domed
church, with its huge columns of Cottanello, built upon the spot where
Saint Agnes suffered martyrdom. The silent interior was quite dark
after the glare of the sun in the piazza outside; but in a few moments
I saw a slim figure in a neat navy-blue street-suit, which I instantly
recognized as the Contessina’s, standing before the antique statue of
San Sebastian. A whispered, timorous greeting and a warm handshake,
whereupon she suggested in a low voice:

“Let us talk here. If we go outside somebody who knows you may see
us.”

“_Bien!_” I replied. “There are chairs yonder.” And we crossed to
several rush-bottomed chairs near one of the side-altars, before which
the light was burning in its red-glass shade. It was evident that she
meant to preserve the strictest secrecy, and this very fact increased
my interest in her.

“Last night you told me that I could trust you, M’sieur Hipwell,” she
said in a low voice, though we were alone in the great church. “I am a
mystery to you, I know that.”

“But we have met before. Have we not?” I asked, fixing my eyes on her.
She gave vent to a little hysterical laugh.

“You know. But perhaps you have forgotten. You forget many things.”

“But I could never forget you, Contessina!” I declared. “Will you not
enlighten my darkness of mind? You tell me that I forget many things.”

“In life there are many things that are surely best forgotten,” she
remarked, with a slight sigh.

I paused, not being able to follow her meaning.

She was aware that she puzzled me, and, next instant, with a sweet
smile, she went on: “I told you, M’sieur Hipwell, that I trust you.
Will you not also take me on trust and do me a little favor
which--which will be of the greatest assistance to me--relieve me
perhaps of a great peril which threatens to overwhelm me?”

“Peril!” I echoed, staring at her. “In what peril are you? Please be
more explicit. I know that we were friends in the past, just as we are
friends now. Cannot you give me a single hint which may form a
connecting link in my mind between the past and the present?”

“The past is of the past, and matters not,” replied the girl in a
serious, philosophic mood. “It is the present and the future which
concern both of us--yourself more perhaps than you ever dream.”

She saw perplexity on my face.

“I know that in your present half-consciousness of the past I must be
a complete enigma to-day,” she added. “For the present it must be so.”
Then her hand slowly stole into mine, and she asked: “Are you willing
to do me this one little favor?”

“I will, Contessina, most certainly,” I said at once. “What is it?”

“Not a very difficult mission,” she replied in French, her manner
instantly changing. “Now we thoroughly understand each other, eh? You
are going to London. Would you take a verbal message for me--to
someone----” And she paused. “Ah!” she went on, “I see you wonder why
I do not write. But there are times when writing is an indiscretion.
Well, this is an instance. True, I could write, but I should most
probably seriously jeopardize myself if I did so. I am in a great
difficulty--and that is why I venture to ask you to help me.”

“I will assist you willingly,” I repeated.

“Very well, then. When you get to London will you write and make an
appointment to meet Mr. Roddy Owen, who lives at Harrington Court,
Park Lane?”

“Just a moment,” I interrupted. “I’ll write down the address.” And in
the dim light I scribbled it upon my shirt-cuff. I knew Harrington
Court as a great block of new and expensive bachelor chambers. “Yes;
and when I see him what shall I say?”

“Give him this. It will be your credential, and by it he will know you
come from me.” And she pressed something hard and flat into my hand.

I looked at it, and saw that it was a piece of exquisitely carved
stone, about two inches long, and with a gold ring in it--a pendant of
clear blue aquamarine. It was square, perforated, and carved in
antique design, with two circles, the figures double nought--an unique
ornament of crystalline beauty.

“Give it to him,” she whispered to me in a strange, hard voice, “and
tell him--tell him that--that it is all impossible, and that he must
forget. That----”

And she hesitated, trembling, drawing a long breath.

“That it is all impossible--and that he must forget,” I repeated
slowly.

“Yes. Impress upon him that he must not write again to me, because it
would place me in very grave danger.”

I looked into her beautiful face, much puzzled. In the faint light I
saw that my companion’s countenance was now pale and hard, as though
what she had said was against her will, and that she was much
perturbed.

“That he must not write again,” I repeated. “Yes, I understand. You
wish him to break off all communication with you--I take it?”

Again she drew a long breath.

“Yes. Alas! It must be so,” she answered hoarsely. “But tell him that
it is not my fault--not my fault. I am acting under compulsion. He--he
will understand.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing,” she answered in a low, despondent whisper.

Then, after a pause, she added:

“I know, M’sieur Hipwell, that all this must seem very mysterious to
you. But when one day you know the truth, you will also know what a
great and invaluable service you have rendered one who--well, one who
is very, very unhappy!”

“I can see that, Contessina,” was my reply. “Can I do nothing further
to assist you? Of course, I do not desire to pry into your private
affairs,” I added.

She shook her head sorrowfully, saying:

“No. It is really extremely kind of you to do me this service--one
which I value very highly. And after all the--the unpleasantness that
has passed. If we ever meet again, which I doubt----”

“But we shall!” I interrupted. “I shall see you and report the result
of my interview with Mr. Owen.”

“I don’t know,” was her dubious reply. “I am not staying much longer
in Rome.”

“Where will you go?”

“Just where my fancy leads me. Probably to the Italian lakes--possibly
to Garda--I love it.”

“And where may I write to you?” I asked eagerly.

For some time she reflected. At last she said:

“Address me: ‘Ferma in Posta, Gardone--Lake of Garda.’”

“Gardone!” I exclaimed. “I was once there! How beautiful it is! The
big white hotel, the palms and the flowers, the tiny village, and the
blue lake stretching away to the mountains.”

“Yes. It is very charming. I shall probably go there.”

“And your home?” I ventured to ask.

“No, M’sieur Hipwell. You said you did not desire to inquire into my
private affairs, so the whereabouts of my home is a secret. Treat me
still as a mystery--just a mystery, that is all!”

I was sorely disappointed. It had been within my experience that
certain girls loved to assume an air of mystery in order to further
interest men; but in Angela’s case it was different. There was some
deep, underlying motive for it all. Her intense seriousness impressed
me with an air of romantic tragedy, while her admission of
unpleasantness between us in the past drove me to desperation.

I tried again to learn her true nationality and where she lived. I
felt certain that Lady Kingscliffe knew, but that for some reason she
was preserving the secret. Adventuresses are not received at table in
any British Embassy abroad, though some, who could be named, have
dined with Cabinet Ministers at home.

My suggestion that we should take a taxi and go for a run in the
sunshine out to Tivoli she would not accept.

“I am very sorry. But for certain reasons I am compelled to be
discreet. I have an appointment for luncheon at twelve,” she said.
“No. We must say adieu here. It is really most generous of you to
convey my message.”

“I will write to you, Contessina,” I promised, “and when I am next in
Italy--perhaps in a month’s time--I will make a point of seeing you,
and telling you the result of my interview.”

“There can be no result,” she exclaimed blankly. Just then a noisy
party of British tourists entered the church with their guide.

“But I shall see you, nevertheless,” I declared. Whereat she smiled.

Then at the door I took her gloved hand, and watched her
neatly-dressed figure cross the sun-blanched piazza. Afterwards I
sauntered out myself, strolling back to the Excelsior, more puzzled
than ever.




 CHAPTER NINE.
 AN ODD MISSION

On the following Monday afternoon I alighted at Calais Maritime from
the dusty _wagon-lit_ of the Rome express, glad to stretch my legs
after the long journey. On board the Dover boat the wind blew fresh
and the crossing, to me, was pleasant; but to many others I fear, it
was the reverse.

In due course, after tea in the Pullman, I arrived at Victoria, and in
consequence of my official _laisser-passer_ I was soon in a taxi and
away to Downing Street, to deliver my dispatches from Sir Richard
Kingscliffe. Then, re-entering the cab, I drove to Sackville Street.
To my knowledge I had not set foot in my rooms for two whole years.

A complete stranger, who I supposed was Edward Bruce, my new man,
Bolland’s successor, threw open the door, bowing me a rather stiff
welcome. And then, taking my bags from the taxi-man, he followed me
into my small but rather cosy sitting-room. Bruce was quite unlike
what I had pictured him, rather tall, young, and slim, with immaculate
clothes that fitted him well--evidently a well-trained servant.

“Miss Gell has rung up three times to-day, sir, to inquire if you have
returned. She wishes you to speak to her as soon as you possibly can,”
he said, handing me about a dozen letters.

I paused for a second. What could I say to Joan?

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Your father called yesterday, sir. He thought you were back. I think
he has written to you.”

“Any other callers?” I asked, as he helped me off with my coat.

“Only the blind young gentleman, sir.”

“Blind young gentleman!” I exclaimed, surprised. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know his name, sir. But he continually calls to know when you
will be back. He says he knows you, sir.”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“Oh, he’s a young gentleman who wears black glasses. But, poor fellow,
he’s stone blind. He finds his way up all right, but I always have to
lead him down the stairs and out into the street, till he finds the
curb, and taps along it with his stick.”

“I wonder who he is,” I remarked aloud to myself.

“I don’t know, sir. I thought you knew him. He gave me that
impression,” Bruce replied. “Will you be at home to him the next time
he calls?”

I pondered. The fact that the caller was sightless reminded me of my
mysterious and inexplicable escape from the sentence of blindness
passed on me by that girl criminal, Lisely Hatten, in Camberwell.

“I will see him if he comes again,” I replied. And then, seating
myself at my old bureau which I well remembered--for, indeed, all my
belongings now became as familiar to me as though I had never been
absent or lost an hour of my life--I turned my attention to the
accumulation of letters. Many of them were tradesmen’s bills.

One was a rather heavy account for wine supplied a year before, and as
I seldom drink wine, it surprised me. Possibly my friends had drunk
the three dozen of champagne. I certainly had not. With it was an
account for expensive cigars, and, as I had never smoked anything but
cigarettes in my life, I knew that I had not been the consumer of such
luxuries.

“Bruce!” I called to my man. “How long have you been with me now?”

“Nine months next Thursday, sir. By the way, sir, I hear that Bolland
hasn’t got anything to do since you discharged him for dishonesty.”

Dishonesty! So I had found out Bolland as a thief, and surely here was
good testimony that he had ordered things on my account, and had
probably disposed of them in secret.

“If a man is dishonest he must be punished,” I said abruptly. Bruce
then asked whether I intended to dine at home. I answered negatively
and he returned to his pantry.

The first private letter I opened was in a handwriting now familiar to
me, and signed, “Your ever affectionate wife, Illona.”

Illona! My wife. The woman on whom I had never set eyes.

Dated from Lausanne a fortnight before, it had been addressed to
“Lionel Hipwell, Esq., King’s Foreign Service Messenger, care of His
Britannic Majesty’s Embassy, Madrid,” and then it had been sent back
to Sackville Street.


 “My Adored Husband,” wrote the mysterious Illona. “Do, I beg of you,
 take the greatest care of yourself. Every hour I fear for your safety.
 You know their secret, and there is a desperate plot against you, I
 know. Always go armed and never relax vigilance when you travel.
 Beware of a trap, and if you meet a blind man, be careful to avoid
 him. Come back to me at the earliest moment you can. I await you,
 darling. Do not delay. Every hour that passes increases my anxiety
 regarding your dear self.”


I re-read the strange warning. “Beware of a trap, and if you meet a
blind man, be careful to avoid him.”

Was he the blind stranger who so persistently called? And the trap?
Was my strange mission at the request of the Little Countess the trap
of which my unknown wife warned me?

I pursed my lips and pondered deeply.

An instant later the telephone, upon my table, rang. Involuntarily, I
took up the receiver and answered.

“Hulloa, Lionel!” cried Joan, whose merry voice I recognized
instantly. “I got your excuse for not writing and I forgive you. So
you’re back at last! You were due from Rome two days ago. Are you
seeing me to-night, or are you too tired?”

“Tired! I am never too tired to see you, dearest,” I cried, in as
gallant a manner as my poor, perturbed brain would allow. “Where shall
we meet?”

“Mother and father are going to the Lord Chancellor’s reception at ten
o’clock. Come here at half-past, eh?”

“Very well,” I replied. “I’ll dine at the club, and come on after ten
o’clock.”

“Did you have a good journey?” she asked. “I hope you won’t be in one
of your moods, you know. The last time you came to see me you were
horrible. But I know, dear, you won’t be to-night, will you--for my
sake?”

“I was really unconscious of being horrible,” I laughed, “so do
forgive me. I’ll try and behave better to-night.”

“Righto! And don’t forget your promise--eh?” laughed the girl I so
dearly loved. Then she rang off.

Another mystery! What quarrel had ensued between us? Of what bad
behavior had I been unconsciously guilty--and when?

After two years I was to see Joan again! And yet, I was already
married--married to a woman I had never consciously seen.

Imagine my feelings as I sat that evening eating my dinner alone in
the St. James’s Club, torn by a thousand apprehensions of having
betrayed my best friends by making undesirable acquaintances, and,
furthermore, by contracting a hazardous and incomprehensible marriage.

What was I to say to Joan?

A little soup, and I could eat nothing more. It was half-past eight,
and, in order to carry out my promise to the Contessina, I went into
the hall and rang up Mr. Roddy Owen, at Harrington Court.

A man who spoke with a foreign accent and who was evidently a servant
answered, and asked who I was. My reply was that I desired to speak
with Mr. Owen himself.

In a few moments a man’s gruff voice said, “Owen speaking. What do you
want?”

“I want to see you this evening,” I replied. “You do not know me, but
I am bearer of a verbal message to you--from a friend of yours in
Rome.”

“Rome?” he echoed. “Oh, yes, thanks. I’ll be delighted to meet
you--what name?”

“Hipwell,” I replied. “May I call--say in half an hour?”

“Certainly,” he replied. “I’ll wait in for you, Mr. Hipwell. Thanks
for taking the trouble to find me. About nine o’clock, eh? Good-bye.”

And I hung up the receiver.

With memory of my unknown wife’s warning, I had put my Browning into
my pocket, and resolved always to keep it there. Yet surely there
could be no plot in my rather quixotic promise to help a young girl in
distress.

I felt in my waistcoat-pocket. My passport, the beautiful little
pendant of carved and pierced aquamarine, was there. So I took my
coffee and cigarette, and just after nine a taxi set me down before
Harrington Court, that great block of flats in Park Lane.

The elevator took me to the fourth-floor. When the elevator-man
pressed the bell at one of the doors, an elderly servant bowed me in.

Next moment, a tall, rather fair-haired man of about thirty, in
dinner-jacket, advanced to meet me with a welcoming smile. He was a
clean-limbed young man of athletic build, and somewhat hatchet-faced,
without much color, but with an eye like a gimlet.

“Mr. Hipwell, I presume,” he said. “Come along in.” And he conducted
me to a fine and beautifully furnished sitting-room, with soft lounge
chairs and several precious works of art. “You have come from Rome,”
he said, offering me a cigarette from a large silver box. “And you are
good enough to call on me. At the outset I thank you very sincerely.”
He spoke with great refinement, his speech being reminiscent of
Oxford, where I myself had been.

“I am carrying out a promise which I made to a lady who is our mutual
friend,” I explained.

I looked around the handsome apartment, but could see no evidence of
the plot of which I had been so mysteriously forewarned.

“From Angela, I suppose,” he said, in a low, intense voice, his manner
altering instantly. “You have seen her, eh?”

“I have,” I replied, and taking out the little pendant of clear, blue
stone, I handed it to him. “She told me to give you this.”

He took it in his trembling fingers and gazed intently at it. So
strange was the look in his eyes that it almost seemed as though sight
of the innocent looking little pendant with its two figure noughts
entwined, horrified, or even terrified him!

At that moment, something happened in my confused brain. What it was I
know not. A great weight seemed lifted from it. In a flash an
astounding truth dawned on me, and my lost consciousness became
suddenly restored.

Angela’s face had been familiar to me from the first moment I had
found myself seated at her side in Rome. Now, in a second, I realized
that the girl I knew as Angela Ugostini, “the Little Countess,” was
the same auburn-haired girl who had been so eager to put out my eyes
with a pin on that fateful night in Camberwell!

The discovery held me dumb. I had actually, in my ignorance, been
attracted by my worst enemy, Lisely Hatten, the criminal who worked as
a City typist. She had put me to the test in Rome. And finding that I
had not recognized her, she had sent me on that strange mission with
the piece of carved blue aquamarine.

I tried to remain calm, wondering whether the man I was visiting knew
the truth concerning me.

“I have a message to you from the Contessina,” I said. “She tells you
that she cannot write. The message is that it is all impossible, and
that you must forget.”

What was the nature of the romance, I wondered?

The face of the man addressed, standing in the centre of the room with
the little piece of blue shining stone in his hand, went pale as
death.

“Impossible!” he echoed breathlessly. “What--what in heaven’s name
does she mean? Why has she not written? Forget? How--how can I ever
forget?”

“That is the message. Of its meaning I am in ignorance,” I declared.
“The lady wishes to impress on you the serious peril in which she will
be placed if you write to her again. You must not write.”

“Not write!” he gasped despairingly. “Then she has ended it
all--_ended it_!”

“Not of her own free will,” I assured him. “She told me so. Of course,
I know nothing whatever of the circumstances, but she impressed on me
that it is necessary, in both your interests, to break off all
communication with you.”

“And Lisely desires it so?” he asked, in a low strained voice, his
lips trembling.

“Yes. She desires it so,” was my reply. “You call her Lisely. I know
her as Angela!” I said.

A long silence fell between us. At last Owen spoke.

“Her real name does not matter,” he said slowly, in a voice full of
emotion. “You will guess--and you will understand. A blow--a great
blow, the greatest of all my life--has fallen upon me!” Then, after a
a pause, he added: “I was a fool--all men are fools where women are
concerned. But--but I ought to have known. My own common sense ought
to have prevented me from--from----”

He swallowed, with an effort, a lump that had arisen in his throat,
and put out his hand to me, saying:

“Thank you, for bringing this message to me. But--but it is a blow
from which I can never recover--never! Instinctively I know that you
are my friend. All cosmopolitans, like you and myself, are friends.
You will know and will understand. I cannot explain the facts, because
exposure would place our mutual lady friend in serious jeopardy. I can
only thank you--yet--yet what you have told me has in a moment swept
away all my future.”

“You, no doubt, know more than I can gather from the bald, rather
cryptic message that I have brought you. I mean that it conveys to you
much more,” I said, bewildered at the discovery that Angela, the
Little Countess, and the girl criminal were one and the same. But I
kept my own counsel and allowed him to know nothing.

“Yes, much. I know exactly what she means.” Then he eagerly inquired
about her and the circumstances in which we had met. To all his
questions I replied quite frankly. So dejected and despairing was the
young fellow that I felt sorry for him. Surely he could not be acting!

I knew that I was Cupid’s messenger, yet the whole circumstances were
so romantic and mysterious that I felt an intense interest in them
all. The one thing that really puzzled me most was the reason Lady
Kingscliffe had preserved the secret of the girl’s identity.

The young man Owen had sunk into a chair, and was sitting with his
eyes fixed across the room, seeing nothing.

“I am absolutely forbidden to write to her, eh?” he asked, utterly
crushed.

“That was the message I was to deliver to you. She dare not write--and
she will be in peril if you send her a letter. She said that you would
quite understand.”

“Understand?” he cried suddenly, his eyes gleaming. “Understand? Yes,
I understand. I--I understand--only--too--well,” he added, with the
bitterness of despair in his voice. “Forgive me, Mr. Hipwell,” he
craved next second. “I--I’m much obliged to you for troubling to come
here. If you knew--knew what all this means to both of us--if you knew
the truth, you would understand.”

“But can’t you tell me? I’m so completely in the dark,” I said,
absolutely mystified and full of eagerness to obtain a clue to the
mystery.

“No,” he replied in a low voice. “I have to respect the wishes of
Lisely.” Then after a pause, he muttered to himself:

“So she is in Italy! Why, in heaven’s name, did she venture there? It
was foolish--very foolish and dangerous! But I suppose there is some
motive for it. There is always a motive in a woman’s fancies.”

“Remember,” I said, “that in sending you that message she is acting
against her will.”

“I know. I pity her. Poor Lisely! She is acting under compulsion. Some
people are born to despair. We are of those. And she is in Rome! I
wonder why? I was there with her a year ago when--when I thought--I
believed--I dreamed----”

He clenched his fists fiercely and, springing from his chair, crossed
to the window.

“Forgive me, Mr. Hipwell,” he said again.

And soon afterwards I left.




 CHAPTER TEN.
 THE WIND OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Reader, I beg of you to put yourself for a moment in my place. My
unfortunate position, as a straw blown upon the adverse wind of
circumstance, had become intolerable.

As I sat back in the taxi which took me down Knightsbridge towards
Queen’s Gate, I felt myself bordering on madness, aroused by the sea
of perplexity and doubt into which I found myself plunged.

What could I say in explanation to Joan? She was my fiancée. And yet
I had a mysterious “wife” who, from her letters, “adored” me, and was
living in Lausanne!

She had warned me against a man who was blind.

And a sightless man had been a constant caller at Sackville Street.
Was his presence part of a plot against me?

On reflection, I could discern no reason or motive why I should be
followed and done to death by the obscure plotters of whom the unknown
Illona had warned me. Her letters were missives full of affection, and
apparently she loved me. At least, she showed herself keenly
solicitous of my welfare. Yet, as the taxi sped along amid the lights
of London, I found myself smiling that there was a woman who, against
my knowledge and inclination, was able to pose before the world as
Mrs. Lionel Hipwell!

What an interesting tangle for the President of the Admiralty and
Divorce Division!

I alighted at the big, deep portico at Queen’s Gate, and, on ringing
the bell, old Forbes, the faithful servant of the eminent King’s
Counsel, admitted me, saying:

“Glad to see you back, sir. I hope you’ve had a nice journey.”

“Thanks, Forbes, yes. Is Miss Joan upstairs?”

“In the drawing-room, sir,” replied the white-headed old man, taking
my hat and coat, and leaving me to ascend the broad flight of thickly
carpeted stairs.

“My darling Lionel!” cried my fiancée, rushing up to meet me as I
opened the door of the long, handsome room. “Oh! I’m so glad you are
back again safely!” and placing her soft, bare arms around my neck,
she drew down my head, and kissed me fondly upon the lips, as I
reciprocated. She was in a sleeveless dress of plain black which
enhanced the whiteness of her chest and arms.

“Come and sit in our usual corner,” she said, inviting me to a cozy
nook near one of the windows. “Poor dear! You must be horribly tired
after your long journey. I telephoned to the inquiry office at
Victoria, and they told me that the boat train was late because of
heavy weather in the Channel.”

“Bad weather very fortunately does not affect me,” I laughed. “I only
suffer from delay, not from _mal-de-mer_, or I’d not be doing
messenger work for the Foreign Office, I suppose!”

“Darling, you ought to have taken that post of attaché at Madrid
which was offered you. I can’t understand why you refused it.”

I remained silent. Never to my knowledge had such a post been offered
to me. What could I, in my ignorance, reply?

“I suppose the governor was furious--eh?” I laughed nervously.

“Your father was extremely angry. He had arranged everything, and you
would have started on a very fine diplomatic career; yet, to his great
disappointment, you blankly refused.”

“It would have ended all my ambitions to sit in Parliament,” I said,
for want of any other explanation to offer.

“But has not your present position as King’s Foreign Service
Messenger--highly responsible as it certainly is--ended your chance of
putting up for election?” she asked, her white soft arm still clinging
around me.

As I looked into her wonderful, fathomless eyes, all my lost passion
for her instantly returned. Yes, I was still as deeply in love with
her as I had been before that night of my lost consciousness. Yet what
had occurred between us while I had been in that vague and incompetent
state of mind?

I wondered. Because of my bewilderment I spoke little, leaving my
beloved to talk, and hoping to glean from her words the secret of the
past void in my life. What else could I do?

She gave me a cigarette from her pretty mother-of-pearl case, lit one
herself, and then, leaning back upon the crimson silk couch, looked up
into my eyes and chattered on. At first she told me how she had spent
the last fortnight at a country house down in Devonshire, and
afterwards with the Mellors, who had, as usual, a gay house-party. She
spoke of many people whose names I vaguely remembered, and told me
how, in the long vacation, her father had promised to take her to
Norway.

“We go first to Copenhagen, then to Stockholm, then by train to Oslo,
and up to Bergen, where we catch the steamer right up the fiords to
Tromsö, and back to Hull. Won’t it be delightful? I do wish you could
come with us.”

“I wish I could, darling, but I fear that while others are by the sea
this summer, I shall be upon the railways of Europe, half stifled in
those trains of luxury, as they are termed. I agree that they are
luxury for one night only, but when one is doomed to spend half one’s
days in them, life becomes horribly tedious, with the same faces of
the brown-uniformed attendants, the same fleeting landscape that you
have seen a hundred times, and the never-changing restaurant menu,
gobbled down by a rambling host of summer tourists. Certainly there is
the _cabane diplomatique_--the two-berth compartment reserved on every
_train-de-luxe_ across the Continent--but days and nights alone in it
are very tedious and monotonous, I assure you,” I said.

“I know what it must be,” my darling responded with sympathy, “but you
must remember that you chose your life yourself after your unfortunate
accident.”

Accident? I knew of no accident! What, I wondered, could have happened
to me?

“Yes,” I faltered. “I know. But I’m not quite clear, even now, as to
what actually happened.”

“Well, you very nearly lost your life. That is quite evident,” Joan
said. “And ever since, Lionel, permit me to say so, you have not been
the same, either to your father, to me, or to any of your friends.”

“I really didn’t know that,” I laughed faintly.

“I know you don’t. You’ve told me so a dozen times. But the fact
remains. You don’t even remember what happened,” she said. “All we
know is, that one very foggy night two years ago you were seen
stumbling along the Old Kent Road, and suddenly you left the pavement,
evidently in an attempt to cross the road. Your gait was very uneven,
according to a woman who saw you, and she believed you to be drunk.
Next moment a taxi, creeping along through the fog, caught you. The
wing hit you and flung you some distance, and when you were picked up,
you were unconscious. You were seriously injured, and the police took
you to Guy’s Hospital, where I saw you, as soon as we got back from
the Riviera a month later. You were there six weeks, and when you were
discharged, darling, you seemed to me to be a changed man.”

“I suppose I really am changed,” I said in all sincerity. What she had
revealed to me was entirely new. I had certainly no knowledge of any
such occurrence on that night of horror.

“You puzzled all the doctors as well as us. How came you dressed as a
working-man, and what could possibly have taken you to such a poor
quarter of London? Do tell me, Lionel. I’ve asked you dozens of times,
and you have never told me the truth.”

“Because I myself am unaware of what really happened,” I assured her.
“I know no more how I came to be in the Old Kent Road that night than
you do.”

I paused in the manner of one groping for something more convincing to
add.

“Really, darling, that sounds most absurd. You surely know what caused
you to assume the clothes of a working-man, and the motive of your
visit to South London.”

I paused before replying.

“I suppose I must have had some motive,” I said vaguely. “But I really
forget.”

“There you are--evading my questions, just as you always do!”

I placed my hand upon her bare shoulder, and looking earnestly into
her beautiful eyes, asked:

“Joan, will you believe me when I tell you frankly and honestly, that
I have no knowledge of what happened to me?”

“Perhaps not after you were knocked down. But, darling, you surely
know why you went to South London that foggy night?”

I paused.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I had a motive. It concerned a secret.”

“Of what?” she asked, instantly interested.

“A diplomatic secret,” I replied, hoping to extricate myself from an
_impasse_.

She smiled disbelievingly. I saw it in her face. No man can deceive
the woman who loves him. Only fools try it, fools of any age and in
any sphere of life. Woman’s brain is far more acute than man’s, as
every man knows. She has an amazing sense of intuition of the truth
which a man always lacks, a somehow keener sense of actual happenings,
and is never misled as a man can be.

Man, in his superiority over the gentler sex, always believes himself
invulnerable in matters of wits or subterfuge. But woman, with her
quiet, finer, and more developed instincts, always wins in such
struggles.

And I knew that my beloved Joan held the advantage.

“You Foreign Office people have strange secrets, it seems. During the
war I could have believed that there might be spies in South London.
But now that there is peace, what plotting can there possibly be?”

“We always have internal plots in England, formed by the dissatisfied
party--whatever it may be from time to time--according to the
criticisms of the Press,” I laughed, in an endeavor to lead her away
from her actual point. But it was useless. Yet how could I confess to
her my craven cowardice on that night when the well-known criminal met
his death in Bloomsbury?

No one had connected me with the tragedy--not even the woman who loved
him. She had declared, that night when I had come upon that criminal
gang, that I was not the man her lover had attacked on the curb. That
had certainly saved me from arrest as an alleged murderer. But, it had
brought the awful consequences of that foggy night.

I loved Joan with all my heart and with all my soul. She was my
affinity, without her presence and her sweet affection I could not
live; and yet, behind it all was that demoniacal shadow on me--that
frightful nightmare of my newly awakened existence--Illona, my wife.

In the darkness of the past night, as the great express had roared and
rocked across the P.L.M. from Rome to Calais, I had lain in my narrow
sleeping-berth, confused and wondering, dreading to meet my beloved,
because I knew not what explanation to give.

What would you have done, my reader of this strange adventure, had you
been an ordinary man like myself? Put yourself in my place. I loved
_sub rosa_ and in secret--because of the anger of my father--one of
the most popular and charming girls in all London, and yet, after two
years, I had found myself still as a straw drifting on the wind, still
in fear lest she should learn the truth.

I could well see that she doubted me. Was it any wonder? All my
explanations were terribly lame, I knew. And, worse still, on it all
lay that heavy fact that I had betrayed her love, that I was already
married.

It was on my tongue to make a clean confession of the whole affair, as
I suppose I really ought to have done. However, I hesitated, because I
felt that before I could reveal the whole story, I must seek the truth
concerning my union with a woman of whom I knew nothing--Illona.

She questioned me, but I fear I was too engrossed in my own thoughts
to respond intelligibly.

“You see, you never tell me the real truth, Lionel,” she exclaimed at
last. “You are always so very reticent, so strange as compared with
your old self. I never can understand you nowadays.”

“I haven’t been well,” I replied in excuse.

“Yet you do your service for the Foreign Office, constantly traveling
to the capitals. You are robust, and hearty, and never ail for a
moment.”

“Since my--my accident, I fear I have not been the same, dearest,” I
said, taking her soft hand and caressing it. “Do forgive me. It is not
all my fault. You must trust me, Joan dear.”

She turned her sweet face towards me, and our lips met.

“Of course, my darling. I know I’m hard on you sometimes, but when I
sit at home here, and think, during the days you are abroad, I--well,
I can’t describe my feelings, except that it seems to me that you are
never frank with me--that you are concealing something very important
from me.”

“I certainly am not,” I responded, with a vain attempt to be bold
beneath my love’s searching gaze.

“But, Lionel, you are--and you know quite well you are,” she replied.
“You have something on your mind that I ought to know, and yet you
will never reveal it. All you Foreign Office people are the most
secretive persons on earth. Sir George, Jack Denham, and Tommie
Tennant are all the same. I was in love with Jack once, as you know,
and he was just the same as you are--spoke in enigmas and smiled
mysteriously if I asked him to explain.”

“My dear Joan,” I said, “one of the first lessons one learns at
Downing Street is never to allow one’s left hand to know what one’s
right hand does.”

“And you’ve evidently learnt that lesson well, my dear Lionel,” said
the girl, with that quiet philosophy that became the daughter of the
eminent King’s Counsel.

“My darling,” I said, placing my arm about her waist and kissing her
upon the lips, “we are here alone to-night after my journey to Rome.
Why not let us enjoy this evening rather than allow ourselves to be at
cross-purposes? I love you, Joan!” I cried passionately, kissing her
again and again. “To me, you are my world, my all. Can I say more?”

She drew herself slowly but deliberately from my embrace, and in a
low, changed voice said:

“Yes, darling. You can tell me the truth if you like.”

“Of what?” I cried, with affected concern.

My feigned bewilderment did not impress her. With her woman’s clever
intuition she saw instantly that my assumed ignorance was mere
pretence.

“What has arisen to be a bar against our happiness?” she asked in a
low, hard voice. “You know what it is. If you are an honest man,
Lionel, you will tell me the truth!”

The truth! How could I tell my dearest, when I knew not the truth
myself?




 CHAPTER ELEVEN.
 MY FATHER’S STORY

While I was still sitting in argument with Joan, her father--stout,
hale, and hearty--returned.

“Hulloa, Lionel!” he exclaimed, greeting me in his usual cheery
manner. “Back again, eh? Joan said you’ve been to Rome. How are things
there? We were there at the Grand two years ago. I had to appear in a
bank case, and I went over to get some information.”

“Oh, Rome is always Rome, you know,” I laughed. “Sir Richard
Kingscliffe and Lady Betty are well. We spoke of you.”

“He wrote me a month ago, saying they were coming over on leave in a
few weeks. My wife has invited them to stay with us, instead of going
to a hotel.”

“Lady Kingscliffe told me so.”

“I expect Sir Richard finds his post pretty difficult under the
Mussolini régime, eh?” remarked the great King’s Counsel, whose name
was so well known throughout the land. A stout, clean-shaven,
bald-headed man, with a somewhat arrogant manner when in Court, he was
a terror as a cross-examiner. From the Recordership of Reading, he had
been invited twice by the Lord Chancellor to accept a judgeship, but
had refused on both occasions. He had told me that a judicial seat did
not appeal to him after his constant work at the Bar, for his briefs
were among the most highly marked of any man in the Temple.

To become a judge meant a loss of quite fifteen to twenty thousand a
year. Hence, the reason was not far to seek. One often regrets that
English judges are so poorly paid, and that when they attain the plums
of the legal profession they are given a rather worthless knighthood,
and receive only a living wage, considering the dignity they are
compelled to support So, often the greatest legal men prefer to remain
at the Bar, while others of fewer mental attainments wear judicial
robes.

Everyone knew John Gell. He dined out a great deal, his ponderous
personality being a most lovable one. He had the habit of smoking
unusually large cigars, and when he laughed his stomach rose and fell,
until his hilarity became contagious. In all London no after-dinner
speaker was more witty. The reporters were ever on the alert for some
_bon mot_ from his lips.

He took me from Joan’s side into the dining-room and compelled me to
have a night-cap with him--a gin and soda with half a lemon squeezed
into it, and a chunk of ice.

Suddenly he turned to me, and asked:

“Do you feel better than you did, my boy? Before you left you
complained of bad pains in the head. Joan has been very anxious about
you.”

“I feel better,” I replied. “But I suppose it is the result of my
accident.”

“You certainly had a very narrow squeak,” replied the great lawyer.
“When I heard you were at Guy’s I went down at once to see you.
Bellamy, the surgeon, had very little hope of your recovery. Still,
that’s all over, and you seem fit enough, or you wouldn’t be able to
do the long journeys to the capitals.”

How I wished I dared confide in him all that had happened to me, and
my strange awakening in Rome. I thought it best, however, to confide
in no one except my own father.

I had rung him up before dinner and learnt that he had gone down to
Bulwick on the previous day.

Therefore, early on the following morning I left King’s Cross, and at
noon the car met me and took me up through the park to my old home.

The spacious old Tudor mansion, with its tall, twisted chimneys and
castellated turret, was unchanged, though for over two years, to my
knowledge, I had not seen it. The dear old governor, in his gardening
suit and faded straw hat, came out to greet me.

In town he was always well dressed, even dandified, a well-known
figure in the Park on Sundays, and often declared to be one of the
smartest of the elderly brigade in the House. But at home he always
enjoyed the ease of old clothes, with the comfort of old slippers in
the evening.

“Well, my boy!” he cried. “I’m so glad to get you home again. You
seldom come down here nowadays. But there! You surely have sufficient
traveling.”

We walked through the open French windows of the old-fashioned
morning-room, with its cool chintz covers--the room which my poor
mother had so dearly loved. In the centre of the polished table stood
a great bowl of yellow, sweet-scented roses, while upon a side-table
stood a blue china bowl of pot-pourri.

We threw ourselves into deep arm-chairs opposite each other, and then
I exclaimed:

“The reason I’ve come home is because I want to speak seriously with
you, dad.”

“My dear boy. Just say what you like. If you wish to confide anything
to me, you know that I am always discreet in your interests.”

I paused, hardly knowing how to begin.

“You were good enough to obtain for me a post abroad, were you not?”

“I managed to get you a good opening in the diplomatic service, my
boy, and I confess I was sorely hurt and disappointed when you refused
to accept it. I can’t make out your motive even now.”

“Neither can I,” was my reply. “For the first time last night had I
any knowledge of it.”

“What?” cried my father. “What are you saying? For the first time last
night you knew about it? Why, my dear boy, you must be dreaming.”

“I have been dreaming for over two years,” I admitted. “And only now
do I find myself fully awake.”

My father arose and stood erect in front of me.

“Look here, Lionel,” he remarked very seriously, “are you joking? If
so, it is misplaced humor.”

“I am not joking, dad,” I said. “I’m terribly in earnest. And it is
to--to tell you what I know that I am here to-day.”

“What do you know?”

“Of what happened to me on that night you met me at Denmark Hill.”

“You were run down in the Old Kent Road, and narrowly escaped being
killed,” my father replied.

“Has there been any suspicion that I am the man the police wanted for
the affair in Bloomsbury?” I asked eagerly.

“No. You have never been identified. Therefore dismiss the whole
miserable affair from your mind for ever.”

“Ah! That’s just it! I cannot dismiss it because--well, something
happened to me after I left you that night--something very serious, a
mystery even to this moment; something which has connection with the
tragedy in Bloomsbury. For some unknown reason I exist to-day in
deadly peril.”

“Tell me all about it!” my father said anxiously. “In what peril are
you?”

For the next half hour I sat revealing to him the whole truth, just as
I have already written it down in these pages, while he sat staring at
me in surprise, scarcely uttering a word.

Except the facts that I loved Joan Gell and that I had received
letters from the mysterious Illona, who declared herself my wife, I
concealed nothing. I described all that had happened--my strange
awakening in Rome, my meeting with the Little Countess, and the sudden
realization that she was none other than the humble typist, Lisely
Hatten, one of a desperate gang of shop-window jewel-thieves, who had
made that cruel and inhuman suggestion to put out my eyes, so that I
could never identify her or her criminal associates.

“But she must be exposed, my boy,” my father declared. “Now that you
have recognized her, Kingscliffe should be informed at once. Why is
she masquerading in Italy as the daughter of an Italian Count?”

“Ah, that is yet another mystery!” was my reply. “I confess that I am
utterly and completely bewildered.”

“My dear boy, and so am I! If I were you I would see the Foreign
Secretary. Shall I see him for you? He is a great friend of mine, as
you know.”

“No, father. Let me solve the mystery. I will remain alert, and try to
discover what plot is afoot. There must be some great and well
organized conspiracy which takes a girl member of a criminal gang to
become a guest at the Quirinale.”

“Through Sir Richard, you can always have private audience with His
Excellency the Duce,” my father remarked. “But all you tell me
bewilders me, my boy. I can’t make head or tail of it. What can have
happened to you after the girl Lisely gave you that injection?”

“Ah, that I don’t know! From that very moment until I fell beneath the
dining-table at the Embassy, I was entirely unconscious and oblivious
of everything. Yet the girl who gave me the injection--that wild girl
who suggested that I be blinded--was, on my return to my normal
senses, most charming to me. No doubt she had realized that I did not
know her; hence she felt herself safe and sent me upon that
sentimental mission to her lover.”

“The strangest story I have ever heard!” declared my father, who,
after all, was a hard-headed man, a figure in post-war politics. As an
English country gentleman, he was, too, a whole-hearted hater of the
Russian Soviets and all their ways.

“Yes,” I said. “It is all strange, all inconceivable, that I should by
no fault of mine have earned the deadly enmity of those who now pose
as my friends.”

I wondered whether to tell him of the strange communications from
Illona. Surely it were better for the present to keep the matter to
myself!

We had lunch in the big old dining-room, where, around the dark,
paneled walls, were portraits of my ancestors. My father spoke little,
apparently absorbed in the strange story of my misfortune, and my
consequent unconsciousness.

Both of us ate little, being too full of our own perplexed thoughts.

Afterwards, when we smoked over our coffee on the front veranda--which
overlooked the lawn, with its border of lilacs and roses, and the
delightful woods beyond--my father suddenly asked:

“And what do you now propose to do, my boy?”

“I really don’t know, dad.”

“Well, your first effort to discover the truth is to approach this
strange woman, the Little Countess,” he said. “It was she who injected
into your body some drug which caused you that long period of loss of
memory. Still pretend that you do not recognize her, and no doubt you
will discover some clue to the amazing situation in which you find
yourself to-day. At the bottom of it all, you will find that the
friends of the man who accidentally shot himself in Bloomsbury instead
of murdering you, and who was afterwards identified by his
finger-prints as a notorious criminal, have some great interest in
hounding you to your peril.”

“But why?” I asked, puzzled as ever. “I did nothing. I raised no hand
except in self-defense.”

“You saw him--you saw the others associated in that house on that
foggy night. For that reason they fear you; hence their hands are
raised against you. No, my dear boy, you must exercise the greatest
discretion and precaution, or you may still fall their victim.”

I recollected that strange letter penned by my anxious wife, the
mysterious Illona. She held the same opinion as did my dear old
governor, that I was in some deadly and mysterious peril.

Quite late into the afternoon we both sat in the long cane
lounge-chairs drowsily thinking.

“What you have told me to-day explains much, my boy,” my father said
reflectively at last. “Often I have watched you, and wondered in
anxiety at your strangeness of manner and your apparent obliviousness
of the past. Sometimes I grew impatient because I could not follow the
trend of your thoughts. You seemed ridiculously regardless of the
past, and more often than not you made statements which, on the face
of them, were absurd. Look here, my boy,” he said, laying his hand
upon my shoulder with paternal affection, “I confess now to you that I
often wondered if you had really taken leave of your senses. Now, I
know too well that you have not been yourself. Hence I apologize to
you for my shortness of temper.”

“There’s no need for apology, dad,” I declared. “I’ve never been in a
fit state of mind to appreciate even your love for me, or your
suspicions of my demented state--for, after all, I must have been half
mad all these many months.”

“My poor boy, I really think you must have been,” he said, gripping my
shoulder with his tender hand. He and I had always been the firmest
friends ever since the death of my dear, sainted mother, whose pet I
had always been since my Eton days.

I, however, told him nothing of that dark shadow on me--the discovery
that I was married to a woman whom I did not know.

We discussed the curious warning I had had concerning the evil
intended by a blind man, and the sightless individual who had called
on me during my absence.

“You should not meet him, but keep alert and watchful,” he advised.
“When he comes, follow him, and see where he lives and with whom he
associates,” the governor suggested.

That was my idea, for I resolved to leave no stone unturned to solve
the inexplicable mystery.

All was bewildering. The more we discussed it, the deeper seemed the
plot against me. But with what motive? What had I done, save to
stumble on that foggy night into a meeting of crooks who were no doubt
in the act of dividing their spoils prior to distributing them to the
“fences?” Of course they took me to be a “squealer” or a police
informer. For that reason Lisely, whom I had believed to be my friend,
had made that diabolical suggestion of destroying my sight. Yet, in my
powerless position, she had surely administered to me some strange
insidious injection, and allowed my sight to remain normal.

Why?

The effect of that injection had been to make me unconscious of what I
did, of what I said, or even of my life and surroundings, for two
whole years. Had other persons been served the same? I had read in the
newspapers of many cases of complete loss of memory, which had greatly
puzzled medical men, sometimes restored by sudden shock, and I
wondered whether my own case was on a par with others. Had others
fallen into the hands of that desperate gang, and been subjected to
the fatal hypodermic needle as I had been?

Late that afternoon I wandered through the gardens of my old home
accompanied by the governor, who took great interest in his exquisite
cherries grown under glass. Politics and committees occupied his whole
life, but his recreation was a delight in horticulture, and especially
in the rearing of flowers.

Every day in the year old Blake, our head gardener, sent him a basket
of flowers for his rooms in London, and, more often than not, he
appeared in the House wearing a rare orchid grown at Hipwell.

In the fading afterglow we dined together and, in my honor, he opened
a bottle of one of his choicest vintages.

Then, when he had wished me every luck, and had given me many words of
advice which I highly valued, I took my leave, and just before eleven
o’clock alighted again at King’s Cross and drove back to Sackville
Street.




 CHAPTER TWELVE.
 MISSING

Through two years my enemies had successfully fooled me. I had no
doubt been as clay in their hands, even to the extent that some
adventuress had actually married me!

Was the marriage legal? How could I escape from the hateful bondage?

Had I not been warned by the mysterious Illona? Mysterious truly, for
not even her address was known to me; hence I could not communicate
with her.

The mystery of it all was driving me out of my mind. That accursed
drug that Lisely injected into my veins had changed me entirely,
sweeping from me all recollection of the present, but allowing me all
the horror of the past.

I had awakened to a new sense of life, but after all, when I quietly
considered everything while I smoked interminable cigarettes alone, I
realized that I was not entirely myself. Moreover, I was appalled at
the great responsibility resting on me as the official courier of His
Majesty’s Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Why I had accepted
such a position was amazing. I was fond of travel, for I had been up
and down Europe with my father in every vacation from the ’Varsity.
During each recess, the governor always went abroad in search of
information to use in the House, which he often did with much damning
effect.

Illona! Who was she? Where was she? I was frantic to see her, and
obtain from her further facts concerning the serious plot against me.
But how?

Next day I took Joan out to lunch at Ciro’s and afterwards we went to
a matinée. Tea at the Carlton followed. Therefore, it was not before
half-past six that I arrived back at Sackville Street.

“The blind man called again this afternoon, sir,” my man Bruce
informed me as I passed into the sitting-room.

“The blind man!” I echoed. “What did you tell him?”

“That you were still away, sir. But he seemed to know that you had
returned.”

“He knows, eh?”

“Well, sir, he seemed to know. For he only grinned and said, ‘Your
master will be in to meet me next time I call. Please tell him that
from me.’ His manner was quite insulting, sir.”

“You showed him out, of course?”

“No, sir, I sent him down in the elevator and allowed him to tap
himself out. I told him frankly that if he could find his way up here,
he could just as easily find his way out again.”

“Excellent, Bruce,” I said approvingly. “But when he calls next time,
say I’m out and let me know instantly. I’ll follow him, and see if
he’s blind, or not.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s as blind as a bat,” my man declared.

“He may be only pretending,” I suggested. “But describe him to me as
minutely as you can.”

“Well, sir, he’s a youngish man, dressed always in a shabby grey suit,
a soft collar, and an old, frayed black tie. He has a rather
sharp-pointed nose and thickish lips.”

The description was rather vague, but was it possible that the man who
had posed to me as a romantic lover was the blind man against whom my
unknown wife had so seriously warned me?

The thought gripped me, for I saw myself surrounded by secret enemies
who--perhaps realizing that, as I had returned to my senses, I was a
peril to them--were determined to close my lips.

I concealed my agitation from Bruce and went to my room to dress for
the evening. I had promised to go out with Teddy Day, an old college
chum who now held a dry-as-dust post in the Treasury--an inspector or
something or other. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a room of his
own--a sure sign of a do-nothing job. Our great Government offices are
full of civil servants who are, alas! too often uncivil if you ask
about their particular job. They are all the deep growths of
officialdom which even inter-departmental committees cannot uproot. In
one case, for example, an old friend of mine was an inspector of the
purchase department of the Admiralty for naval wireless installations.
He knew no more of radio than the merest schoolboy, cared less, and
was passing accounts amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds
yearly. Such are some of the drones which Whitehall still hives even
in these days of the post-war “axe.”

Teddy Day was a cheery, round-faced man-about-town, essentially a
ladies’ man, and a confirmed bachelor. With his hostesses he was a
favorite, for he was an excellent dancer, and always fell into a
vacancy, as some men appear born to do. We dined at the Piccadilly,
and, after coffee at the Travellers’, went on to a dance-club, where
we glided over the floor with partners hardly known to us.

Not until half past one in the morning did I get back home, and then I
was so tired that I undressed hastily, and soon fell asleep.

Suddenly I heard my telephone bell ring, and I sprang up to find it
was already morning.

“Hulloa?” I asked in response to the call.

“Is that you, Lionel?” asked a voice which I instantly recognized as
that of Joan’s father. “Is Joan with you?”

“Joan! No. I haven’t seen her since last evening,” I replied.

“But she went out to meet you at eight o’clock for dinner,” said the
deep-voiced King’s Counsel.

“She never met me. I had no appointment with her.”

“But you sent a messenger with an appointment. I was here when it
came!”

“I sent no messenger, Mr. Gell,” I declared. “I went out with a
college friend, and got back about half past one.”

“What! Do you mean to say that you’ve not seen Joan?” he asked.

“I swear that I have not seen her, or sent her any message since I
left her at six o’clock last night,” was my astonished reply.

“Then what the devil can have happened to her?” asked her father.

I dressed hastily, and took a taxi to Queen’s Gate, to find both Mrs.
Gell and her husband in a state of frantic anxiety.

The statement of Hughes, the lady’s maid, was to the effect that, at
about half past seven on the previous evening a telegraph-boy arrived
with a note for Miss Joan.

On receiving it she dressed hurriedly, remarking to the maid that she
had to meet me, and later went off in a taxi, saying:

“Tell mother I’m out with Lionel.”

From that moment she had not been seen. Her father came in from a
dinner of the Fishmongers’ Company in the City, at a quarter to two in
the morning. But she had not returned.

Thinking she was at a night club with me, he went to bed, leaving the
door on the latch. But, finding at early morning she had not returned,
he had made the inquiry over the ’phone, and surely not without
reason. It was perplexing, mystifying. What could it mean?

The knowledge that some desperate plot had been formed against me by
certain unknown enemies, made it quite apparent that the conspiracy
extended to my well-beloved. I said but little to Mr. Gell, but I
became all the more convinced that she had fallen innocently into
hostile hands, as the message to her, of course, was a false one. The
express messenger had delivered to Joan a written note. She knew my
handwriting. Who, therefore, had forged my message?

The unknown Illona had warned me not without reason. What could she
possibly know?

“We’ll wait till noon, and if we hear nothing, we’ll go down and see
Cunningham Lee, the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard,” said the
King’s Counsel, whose work at the Old Bailey brought him into intimate
touch with the head of the police.

Three anxious hours passed, but the telephone did not ring, nor was
there any explanatory message from the girl I so dearly loved. She was
lost to me as to her friends. There had been some devil’s work
somewhere! When I recalled my own experience in the hands of that
desperate gang, I trembled for her. And yet, her only offense,
apparently, had been her great love for me.

I longed to find Illona and demand the truth from her. What could she
know? Could she tell me something to give a clue to Joan’s sudden
disappearance? Or was it due to the fierce jealousy of the woman I had
unconsciously wedded?

Very probably it was due to the latter! If so, then my efforts to
learn the truth, and to rescue Joan, must be unavailing.

Joan’s mother, naturally, was in tears.

“My girl would never of her own will remain away all night!” she
cried. “An accident may have happened, John,” she said to her husband.
“Inquiry must be made at all the hospitals.”

The maid was called, and described the dress, coat, and hat which Joan
had put on before going out.

“She had two one-pound Treasury notes in her bag as well as some
silver, madam,” the girl said. “Miss Joan always carries them in her
little purse in case of emergency.”

“Did she seem surprised when you gave her the letter?” asked Mr. Gell,
assuming his habitual manner of cross-examination.

“Well, just a trifle, I think, sir.”

“What causes you to say a trifle? Explain it.”

“Well,” replied the neatly-dressed maid, rather confused at her
master’s hard, legal glance, “when she opened and read the letter, she
exclaimed, ‘Oh, how strange--how very interesting! I must go at once.
Mr. Hipwell is waiting for me.’”

“She did not say where?”

“No, sir. She bustled me about to get out her dress and shoes, and
while she put on her hat I went out to call a taxi.”

“You were at the door when she went out?”

“Yes, sir. I heard her tell the man to drive to Wardour Street, but I
could not catch the number.”

“She might have gone to the Cosmo Club. That is in Wardour Street. We
are both members,” I remarked.

“Then the rendezvous might have been at the club,” remarked Mr. Gell,
who, turning to the maid, asked:

“What, as far as you can tell, was the exact time she left the house?”

“About eight o’clock, sir.”

“Why did she not come to me and tell me she was going out?” asked her
mother. “Always when she goes out late she tells me. Girls to-day are,
alas! not like they were when I was a girl, John. They run such risks,
and yet they are so self-reliant that one can’t help liking the modern
girl, after all.”

“But where is our girl?” asked Mr. Gell, bewildered.

The ’phone rang from his chambers in the Temple. He was due to appear
at the London Sessions, to prosecute in a case of stolen motor-cars,
but in a few brief sentences he told his clerk that he was indisposed,
he regretted, and asked his junior associate to carry on the case in
his absence.

“Mr. Fortescue knows the whole story,” he went on. “The case is quite
simple, Matthews. Both prisoners have been previously convicted. Tell
Mr. Fortescue to apologize for my enforced absence, and let me know
the result over the ’phone. I expect they will get three years each,
unless Bowden puts up an alibi. He may--who knows?”

And he rang off.

Till noon we remained at Queen’s Gate. I rang up Bruce, but he had
heard nothing. Half a dozen of Joan’s friends were rung up by her
mother, but nobody had seen or heard of her. From the moment the taxi
had left the curb outside she had disappeared into space.

“We must advertise for the taxi-driver,” I suggested. “He may tell us
where he left her.”

“Yes. But the notice cannot appear till to-morrow morning,” replied
her father excitedly. Mr. Gell, usually such a calm, composed man,
whom no circumstance, however untoward, could ruffle, was now beside
himself at Joan’s disappearance.

“Who could possibly have imitated your handwriting?” he asked blankly.

We both went to her empty bedroom and searched her waste-paper basket
for evidence of the plot. But, she had apparently taken the note with
her. There had been no fire in the room, therefore she could not have
burned it, as she might have done in winter.

At noon the car took us down to Scotland Yard, where, without delay,
we were ushered into the bare, official room of the Assistant
Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, Mr. Cunningham Lee.

The tall, thin-faced official rose to greet the famous K.C., and then,
reseating himself, listened to the story which the bereaved father
related.

“This is Mr. Lionel Hipwell of the Foreign Office,” he said,
indicating me. “The letter my daughter received purported to come from
him, but he never sent any message, either written or verbal.”

“Then your daughter was decoyed away last night, Mr. Gell, eh?”

“No doubt. Or--or perhaps an accident has occurred to her, and she may
be in one of the hospitals.”

“The receipt of the note rather points to her being decoyed, does it
not?” said the Assistant Commissioner very seriously, as he touched an
electric button.

“Send Mr. Nicholas to me,” he said to the clerk who answered his
summons. “And--and send Mr. Hayes also.”

In a few minutes the two officers of the Criminal Investigation
Department entered. To them the eminent lawyer, who was so well known,
gave a detailed description of Joan, together with the clothing she
had worn, and described the curious circumstances under which she had
left home in a taxi for Wardour Street, about eight o’clock.

Both detectives made some scribbled notes, when Hayes, a round-faced,
middle-aged man, who had to his credit the arrest of the
bungalow-murderer Collins, hanged only a couple of months before,
asked:

“Excuse me, Mr. Gell, but do you think the motive might be vengeance,
because you have successfully prosecuted one or other of the recent
gangs? You remember the Pittard crowd--the ‘cat’ burglars whom you
prosecuted for the Treasury. Don’t you recollect that after they were
sentenced by the Recorder they vowed vengeance against you?”

John Gell laughed, his usual hearty laugh.

“My dear Mr. Hayes, every advocate who prosecutes for the Treasury has
hundreds of threats and anonymous letters of abuse and warning! I’m
not alone. I received two yesterday morning.”

“That is so, Mr. Gell,” admitted the Assistant Commissioner, “but Mr.
Hayes is perfectly within his right to suggest a motive.”

“Of course! of course!” said the stout lawyer. “But I leave the matter
entirely in your hands to do your best to restore my daughter to me.”

“Every effort shall be made, I assure you,” said Mr. Cunningham Lee.
“We will send to all the hospitals and ambulance stations, and we will
get hold of the taxi-man without delay.” Then after a pause the high
official of Scotland Yard turned to me, and in a strange,
half-suspicious manner, asked:

“You are quite certain that you sent no note to Miss Gell last night?”

“I certainly did not,” I replied. “But I have reason to believe that
Miss Gell has fallen the victim to some deeply laid and desperate
plot. Some clever forger has been at work who sent her a message of
greatest urgency, for I had been with her only an hour and a half
before she received the mysterious message which caused her to change
hurriedly and rush out to Wardour Street.”

“Yes,” remarked the Assistant Commissioner, “I agree entirely. The
young lady, I fear, has fallen victim to some plot, the motive of
which is at present entirely obscure.”




 CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
 AN AFFAIR IN FULHAM

What could we do save to leave the matter in the hands of the
police?

In a couple of hours every police-constable in greater London would
hear the description read over before going on duty, while search
would be made of every hospital and every ambulance post.

We afterwards drove along to the offices of _The Times_ and _Morning
Post_ in which we placed advertisements, begging the taxi-driver, who
took a young lady from Queen’s Gate at eight o’clock on the evening in
question to communicate at once with the nearest police-station.

There was no more to be done save to wait in patience.

How that day passed, or what I did, I cannot tell. My wife Illona
might be in London as she said she intended. I re-read the letter I
had found in Rome, in which she told me that if she dared she would
call on me. If she dared? What could that mean?

She asked me to write to her at her club in London. But what club? In
neither of her letters had she given me any address save that vague
one “Lausanne.”

I knew the tree-lined city on the hill above the blue Lake of Geneva.
But it was a large place in which to search for anyone. Yet if she
were a traveler, as it seemed, she would no doubt be at one of the
fifty or more hotels. And if she had assumed my name I might be able
to discover her in the visitors’ list.

My first impulse was to go to Lausanne, but I remembered that she had
stated her intention of coming to me in London. Hence I decided to
wait.

Four days went by, but we could gather nothing concerning Joan. She
had completely disappeared, and, like myself, her parents were beside
themselves with grief.

In my excited state of mind I called on my friend Teddy Day and told
him of Joan’s disappearance, though I withheld from him the secret of
Illona’s existence. I told him of my romantic mission from the Little
Countess to Roddy Owen, though I gave him no inkling of who the
charming lady really was.

“She’s an adventuress, no doubt, old boy,” he declared, as he
stretched his long legs out upon the hearthrug, and smoked his
cigarette. “If she is received at the Embassy in Rome and elsewhere,
she ought to be exposed. You ought not to allow her and her chaperon
to go further.”

I discussed the situation from every angle. It was difficult to write
to Sir Richard Kingscliffe. I could only wait until my duties took me
again into Italy. Meanwhile, I knew that something very serious must
have happened to Joan, and that I myself remained in some mysterious
but deadly peril.

I was, I think, no coward; yet I had enemies on every hand. Since that
never-to-be-forgotten night in Bloomsbury, when, because I tried to
rescue a defenseless woman from the hands of a brute, I brought upon
myself dire disaster, I seemed to have been hounded out of life.

When I reflected, I saw visions of the face of Lisely Hatten distorted
horribly by hate, when she had made that brutal proposal to put out my
eyes. And yet I was perfectly innocent, and, moreover, I was her
friend.

Was it because of my friendship that she had spared me? Did she
continue, by some subtle means, to evade doing what she and that man
friend of hers had suggested? Had she relented, and allowed me to go
with my eyesight unimpaired? Still, the effect on me of that unknown
drug had remained, blotting out my consciousness for two whole years.
Nevertheless, I had led another life, energetic, manly, tireless, as I
sped hither to and fro between Downing Street and the capitals of
Europe. I had once or twice contemplated consulting a doctor about it.
But, like most young men, I had a silly terror of the medical
profession, refusing medical aid, unless, perhaps, I had a touch of
fever that sent me to bed.

Teddy was sympathetic and full of suggestions. Meanwhile, Mr. Gell,
with all his influence in police circles, was daily active in
searching for Joan.

Happily we had managed to keep the affair out of the papers save for
the advertisement addressed to the taxi driver. But that told the
public nothing.

On the fourth day after her disappearance a taxi driver named Cowley,
living at Streatham Common, called at the Brixton Police Station and
made a statement.

He had been passing along Queen’s Gate when a young lady had come out
of a house and ordered him to drive to Wardour Street. At the door of
the Cosmo Club a fair-haired young man, in evening dress, was waiting
to meet her. They had had a short and very excited discussion,
whereupon the young man had entered the taxi and told the man to drive
to the Florida Club. There he set them down. And he knew nothing more.

This story was told to me by Mr. Gell, who ’phoned me to come over to
Queen’s Gate at once. Together we went to Bruton Street, where we saw
the commissionaire on duty, who apparently had no recollection of the
incident. In the book was Joan’s signature as a member.

In the broad light of day the popular night haunt of society looked
horribly tawdry and bizarre. Princes and nobles danced upon the glass
floor, drank their wines, and ate rich foods at night beneath the
glamor of shaded lights, while listening to the soft, seductive music
of the highest paid orchestra in London. Yet the club looked strange
and unreal as we interviewed the manager, while several foreign
baize-aproned waiters were arranging choice flowers upon the tables
for the coming night.

We failed to discover anything further than the signature of Joan as
she had entered. The Florida was most exclusive. There was no
subterfuge of membership, as there is in so many London
dance-clubs--no joining by immediate payment of a subscription. Each
member was an approved person, passed by the committee at its monthly
meeting, just as at any other West End club. There were, indeed, men
and women on the waiting list; hence it was a club almost as exclusive
as the Carlton, White’s, the Travelers’, or the Devonshire.

We drew blank--a disappointing blank. We could discover nothing
further than her rather faintly written signature--“Joan Gell”--in the
big membership book, held by the old, white-moustached military
commissionaire. Underneath her signature was that of a world-famous
explorer, and above it was the scribble of a rather reckless young
peer.

I wondered whether the explorer had known or had ever seen her. He was
a member of the Junior United Service Club, so I called on him.

Alert, erect, and full of genuine bonhomie, the elderly traveler told
me that he knew Joan by sight, that he had but a faint recollection of
seeing her that evening.

“I have an idea I saw her dancing with a young, fair-haired man,” he
told me as we sat together in the club. “He struck me as a young,
empty-headed fool, but he was a very good dancer. They charlestoned
well. That’s all I know. I left the Florida about half past one and
went to the Travelers’ with Janning Chase, the stockbroker, for a
final drink.”

That was all we could gather.

A dozen times I consulted with Teddy, but our conversation carried us
no further.

Who, we wondered, was her fair-haired dancing-partner? Was it my enemy
who pretended blindness?

Scotland Yard could obtain no clue. The most diligent inquiries were
made of the staff of the Florida as regards the fair young man who was
such an excellent dancer. But his identity could not be fixed. All the
signatures of both members and their visitors on that night were
carefully verified, but there was no fair-haired young man among those
registered.

Yet Anthony Marsh, the explorer, whom I saw on two different occasions
afterwards, remained certain that he had seen her with the young
fellow whom he described.

The description struck me as very like that of Roddy Owen! If the
latter was acquainted with my enemy, the woman Lisely Hatten, then
might he not be one of the conspirators against me? Since I had
realized my foolish failure to recognize the Little Countess, I held
the romantic young bachelor in great distrust.

My first impulse was to call on him and demand an explanation of the
events of that night when Joan was decoyed by the message purporting
to come from me. But Teddy suggested remaining watchful, and I agreed
with him.

“He doesn’t know me. Therefore I’ll follow him and see where he goes
and what company he keeps,” he said. “I’ll watch to-night.”

And he did.

I went down to Queen’s Gate to hear if any news had been received, but
there was nothing. A week had gone by, and my love was either held in
some hateful bondage or was dead. The number of women and girls who
disappear weekly in London is incredible; drugs and the white-slave
traffic, alas! being responsible for many deserted homes.

We all entertained the worst fears, and yet we were powerless.

I got back to Sackville Street just after midnight, and, after smoking
an hour over the evening paper, as was my habit, I was about to retire
when Teddy entered.

“There’s some mystery about that fellow Owen,” he said, throwing
himself into a chair wearily. “I don’t exactly know what has happened,
but we ought to know something in the morning.”

“What do you mean?” I gasped.

“Well, I waited for an hour and a half outside Harrington Court until
I saw him come out. He was in evening clothes, with a crush hat, and
walked leisurely along down Grosvenor Place, where he made a call. But
evidently the person he wanted was out.

“He then came back along Piccadilly to Scott’s, where he met a man
accidentally, and they both had a meal down below. I sat in the next
compartment to them. But their conversation was so low that I could
not distinguish what they said. His friend was a big, round-faced,
overdressed fellow, and they were evidently discussing something of an
extremely confidential nature. After that they had coffee, then both
strolled along Shaftesbury Avenue to Ham Yard, where they entered a
little obscure club, which I know to be the resort of West End thieves
and undesirables. It was pointed out to me once as one of the plague
spots of London. Both of them went upstairs and remained there for
over an hour. Then Owen came out accompanied by an ill-dressed, thin
young fellow in dark clothes and a cap, who might have been a
pickpocket--evidently a fellow of evil repute. Both got into a taxi in
Shaftesbury Avenue, and I followed them in another taxi down to
Rutland Gate. The young man left the taxi, and while it went on
farther down the road, he sauntered along alone, his attention being
fixed on an upper window of one of the largest houses.

“I stood back under a portico, so that he did not see me,” Teddy went
on. “At last, after quite ten minutes, loitering near the house, he
moved on, and rejoined Owen at the end of the road. Afterwards, they
drove down to Fulham where, in a dark street, they descended. I dared
not go near them. But my taxi driver, who was a discreet young fellow,
and had entered into the spirit of the adventure, drew up so that they
did not know they were being followed. I had just got to the corner of
the street when I saw the flash of a pistol fired from a doorway at a
figure that was ascending the steps. The shot rang out, and the figure
reeled. But, not wishing to be mixed up with the affair, I stepped
back into the taxi and drove with all speed to Sloane Square, where I
left the vehicle. ‘There’s been murder done, I think, sir,’ said the
taxi driver as I alighted, ‘and we’re far better out of it!’”

“Well,” I remarked, when he had finished his strange story, “there
will surely be something in the papers about it to-morrow.”

“I think it is proved beyond all doubt that your friend Owen is an
associate of undesirables. That club in Ham Yard has been several
times raided by the police when in search of criminals,” Teddy said.
“From what happened in Fulham they seem to be a pretty desperate lot!”

It was two o’clock before my watchful friend left, and I turned in.

Next morning I scanned the paper eagerly, but found nothing regarding
the affair at Fulham.

The _Evening News_ that night, however, contained the following:


 “Shortly before midnight a constable, on passing the Fulham
 Almshouses, heard the sound of a shot coming from Finlay Street, which
 runs down to the Fulham Football Ground. He hastened to the spot, but
 at first found nothing, though he heard the sound of a taxi being
 driven rapidly away, apparently in Bishop’s Park Avenue, which borders
 on the grounds of Fulham Palace.

 “After a rapid search, in which he was joined by several passers-by,
 and by one or two alarmed residents in Finlay Street, the body of a
 young man was discovered at the foot of the steps leading up to the
 front door of the house number 246. A rapid examination by the light
 of the constable’s torch showed that he had received a bullet in the
 heart and was quite dead.

 “The identity of the person who had fired the shot cannot, at present,
 be ascertained. The constable naturally at once made demand at the
 house as to its occupants; but the place proved to be empty and to
 let. As far as can be gathered, the man was shot by some unknown hand,
 and the affair is one of London’s mysteries of the night.

 “The body was taken to the Fulham mortuary, and as result of police
 inquiries, and the taking of the dead man’s finger-prints, it has been
 definitely affirmed that he was in active association with the
 desperate gang of cat-burglars who have for a considerable time
 terrorized the West End of London, and constituted a great trouble to
 the police.

 “It has been proved that the dead man’s name is Henry Wilson, alias
 ‘Tuggy,’ an ex-naval seaman, whose cat-like climbing had first earned
 him recognition with his mates. He returned from the Navy, and
 utilized his powers of climbing, by entering bedrooms in West End
 houses while their occupants were below at dinner or out for the
 evening, securing, in that way, enormous quantities of jewelry and
 other valuables. According to the finger-prints he left two months ago
 in a bedroom in one of the biggest houses in Park Lane, he
 appropriated thirty thousand pounds’ worth of jewelry, as well as
 fifty thousand pounds’ worth of negotiable securities, which he found
 in the unlocked safe of the wife of one of the most notable of British
 financiers.

 “So clever was he in association with a great and most desperate
 criminal gang which had long troubled Scotland Yard, that only once
 was he convicted. He was sentenced at the Gloucester Assizes to three
 years’ imprisonment for a cat-burglary, with violence, at a big
 mansion at Leckhampton. Since his discharge the police are aware that
 he has been the catspaw of others, and responsible for many clever
 thefts which were amazing in their audacity.

 “The identity of his assailant is being actively searched for, and the
 police are satisfied that, through certain channels already known, the
 murderer will be discovered.”




 CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
 SOME CURIOUS FACTS

I read the _Evening News_ at eight o’clock and at once Bruce called
up Teddy to come and see me.

In half an hour he stood in my room. He, too, had read it.

“Now our only course is to go to Queen’s Gate, see Joan’s father, and
tell him of our knowledge of the gentleman with such a pretty name,
Mr. Roddy Owen--a name well known in sporting circles twenty years
ago. He will see the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and put
matters in trim. Evidently the police are pleased that the young
scoundrel Tuggy Wilson is dead, but they are groping about for the
truth. And on this we certainly can enlighten them.”

I concurred with him that we could.

Together we drove down to Queen’s Gate, and, seated in Mr. Gell’s cozy
library, Teddy told him of his night’s adventure and showed him the
report in the _Evening News_.

“This fellow Owen imposed on you, Lionel,” the stout old K.C. said,
turning to me. “You know him. We must go down to the Yard at once and
see Cunningham Lee.”

He took up the telephone on his table, and a few moments later was
speaking with the Assistant Commissioner at his house.

“Right! We’ll come along now. I must see you to-night, Lee. We can
tell you something.”

Twenty minutes later we were all three ushered into a back
sitting-room, luxuriously furnished, in Onslow Square, and instantly
Mr. Cunningham Lee entered, greeting us warmly.

“Of course, Mr. Gell, I’m only too delighted to see you at any hour.
You’ve heard nothing regarding your daughter, or you would have told
me. Well now, what is it you know about this murder of a cat-burglar
at Fulham? Very interesting case. We’ve been months trying to get at
the truth. Some masterhand is at work controlling the whole
organization. Duprez, the chief inspector of the Sûreté in Paris,
was over here last week, and we had a long conference on it. The
organizer, whoever he is, no doubt must be a genius!”

“Well,” said Joan’s father, “we know something which will be
undoubtedly of interest to you. Hipwell’s friend here--Mr. Edward
Day--had a most interesting experience last night. He will tell you
about it.”

As the Assistant Commissioner listened, Teddy told him of the secret
observation which he had kept of the wealthy young bachelor of
Harrington Court, his movements, and his association with the young
fellow whose finger-prints had revealed him to be London’s most alert
and expert cat-burglar.

“Let us go down together to the Yard,” Mr. Lee suggested at last. “We
can look up the record, and probably we may be able to see further
into the matter than we can at the moment.”

Half an hour later we were in the police official’s private room, with
one of the famous inspectors of the finger-print department exhibiting
to us the prints taken at Gloucester, in comparison with those taken
from the dead man’s hand.

To the folio with the finger-prints upon it was attached the
criminal’s name, his past record as far as was known, his date of
conviction, with the date of discharge. I noticed that following the
latter record were the words “Conduct good.”

If he were the star criminal of an expert organization, who was it
that had killed him in cold blood as he had ascended to the unoccupied
house?

I pointed out the fact that, even if the house were empty, there must
have been some motive for both men to visit it. Why? And, if so, then
the assassin must have concealed himself behind the front door ready
to greet the visitor with a fatal bullet.

That the young man Owen and Tuggy Wilson were accomplices appeared
proved up to the hilt. But in what manner? That remained to be seen.

In our presence the Assistant Commissioner ordered full inquiry to be
made into Owen’s antecedents, how he derived his income, and that
surveillance be kept on him. He was not to be approached, and no
question asked of him concerning his friendship with the dead
ex-convict.

“The affair is probably a matter of revenge,” said Mr. Cunningham Lee.
“Possibly they believed him to have turned informer, a circumstance
which, in criminal circles, accounts for many mysterious deaths.”

The revelation regarding the bona fides of the rich young bachelor of
Harrington Court was gratifying to me, but it carried us no nearer the
solution of the mystery of Joan’s whereabouts. Nevertheless, I somehow
experienced a vague belief that, in view of Owen’s alliance with my
secret enemy, it was really he who had last been seen with Joan.

I hoped against hope that we should eventually discover her, and I
remained on the alert, with the assistance of my good friend Teddy.

The result of the police investigations concerning the unoccupied
house in Fulham, in front of which young Wilson had been shot dead by
an unknown hand, was forthcoming two days later, and was full of
interest.

It appeared that a man named Dufour and his wife had rented it about
ten months before, that they sometimes took in lodgers. Dufour was
understood to be a waiter at a restaurant in the West End. He came
home very late always, and sometimes parties of men of his own class
were held there until early morning. The two lodgers were waiters like
himself; but, according to the neighbors, they sometimes had
mysterious callers, men and women, well dressed and obviously not of
their own class.

The many parties, at which a gramophone was played and the guests
drank and danced throughout the night, caused the neighbors to watch
the place with unusual keenness. And, according to a statement by a
Mrs. Richmond, wife of a draper’s assistant, who lived next door, she
heard, on several occasions, a woman’s shrill scream for help. She put
it down to the fact that Dufour was knocking his English wife about,
until one day she saw the woman go out, and almost immediately
afterwards she heard the same frantic screams for help.

This puzzled her. But, it being no affair of hers, she merely told her
husband, and they resolved to take no notice.

Three nights before the tragedy in the street, Mr. and Mrs. Richmond
were awakened at about one o’clock by noises outside, and Richmond, on
looking between the blinds, saw that the furniture was being hurriedly
removed. He saw Dufour in conversation with a police constable on
duty, and then returned to bed.

When they awoke again the house next door was empty and closed.

It is the duty of the police to note removals of furniture, especially
at night, and, the records having been looked up, it was found that
Police Constable Shayler, on duty near the spot, saw the removal van
and went to inquire. A foreigner, who gave the name of Dufour,
informed him that that afternoon his wife had eloped with one of his
lodgers, and that he had resolved to clear out the furniture, which
was his property, and sell it at an auction room in Goldhawk Road,
Shepherd’s Bush. The statement was confirmed by the auctioneer next
day, but the whereabouts of the foreign waiter could not be traced.

The mention of the presence of a mysterious, unseen woman in the house
aroused my interest. If Owen had been with Joan at the Florida, then
it might have been my beloved who was held in hateful bondage in that
house!

Had I not been warned of the intended machinations of my enemies, by
my mysterious wife, Illona?

Fortunately, I had received no orders to go abroad on my official
duties. But orders sometimes came unexpectedly, notwithstanding the
rota, according to which I was not due to go on another journey for
nearly a month. More than once I had been rung up in the night with
orders to leave Victoria with some important dispatch at nine o’clock
next morning. I waited in vain for some sign from Illona, who I knew,
would explain much that was an entire enigma. But I was always in
suspense, fearing that at any moment I might be called away.

As the days went by, the vigilance of the police, as far as Owen was
concerned, was unrewarded. The young fellow who was reported to be
living the idle life of a man-about-town, was a member of a good club,
and had a very substantial bank balance at the Midland. His money
appeared to come through the Crédit Lyonnais in Paris, probably from
investments in France. I learnt that one evening both he and his man
were seen to go out, when the police entered his rooms in secret and
thoroughly searched them, but found nothing. Yet it remained quite
certain that he was an associate of expert thieves.

Had it not been that the girl I loved so fondly and devotedly was
missing, I should have left London and gone in search of that woman
who had shown herself my bitterest enemy on that night in
Camberwell--the girl criminal who was posing as the daughter of an
Italian count.

At all costs her activity must be stopped. With what motive was she
moving in diplomatic circles in Italy? I felt that--knowing what I
did, and having awakened to the truth, while she still believed my
memory to be destroyed, as a result of the drug she had given me--it
was my duty to warn those whom she was so cleverly deceiving.

It occurred to me that the reason she was moving in that smart circle
of Italian society, where so many women wore their magnificent jewels,
was some ingenious plot afoot on the part of her confederates to make
a big coup. A panic might be created at one or other of the diplomatic
receptions, the ballroom placed in darkness, and the well-dressed
bandits, tearing off the jewels from the women, might escape.

This feeling obsessed me. Lisely Hatten was, like her associates, as
desperate a criminal as her friend Hilda Bennett, who had on that
night in Bloomsbury Square so glibly accused me of murdering her
lover, but had later declared I was not the man. Was Tuggy Wilson,
too, a member of the wide-spread criminal association?

One morning I received an urgent telephone message from Mr. Gell which
took me down to his dingy chambers in Fig Tree Court, in the Temple.
He was at his brief-piled table in an ancient brown room, paneled and
filled with musty law books, anxiously awaiting me.

“They have at last found that fellow Dufour!” he exclaimed. “He has
been taken to Bow Street, and I’ve been there. It seems that, after
leaving Fulham, he went to Southampton and took a passage for Cape
Town. The boat sailed yesterday, but when he presented himself on
board, a detective, who had traced him down there, detained him and
brought him up to London this morning. He will be charged this
afternoon with being concerned in the murder of John Wilson, alias
Dale.”

“Ah, then we shall now get at some facts,” I said. “He must be made to
explain who was the woman who lived in the house in Finlay Street. We
must ascertain whether it was really Joan!”

“My boy, I hardly suspect it is she,” was the famous lawyer’s reply.
“We’ve not yet actually established whether that fellow Owen was with
Joan at the Florida. If she went out to meet you, it is hardly
understandable why she went to the dance-club without you.”

“Except that she might have gone there expecting to meet me!” I
argued. “The false message might have said that I was awaiting her
there.”

“True, but I don’t think so,” exclaimed Mr. Gell, shaking his head
dubiously. “This foreign waiter, no doubt, will make some statement in
order to save himself. The prosecution may allege that it was he who
fired the shot from his front door, and then left the empty house by
the back premises; for the landlord says that he still retains the
key.”

We ate a frugal lunch together at The Cock in Fleet Street, and at two
o’clock were at Bow Street Police Court, Mr. Gell sitting without his
robe and wig at the table set aside for the bar, while I sat in a
public seat.

Sir Humbert Perry, the white-haired chief magistrate, was on the bench
when a short, ferret-eyed, little, black-haired foreigner, shabbily
dressed, was put into the dock and the formal charge read over to him.
After a first glance round, he appeared quite unconcerned.

Speaking with a strong accent, he declared that he was not guilty.

“_Dieu!_ I know nothing! I was not there!” he cried, as though
suddenly realizing his serious position.

Formal evidence of arrest was given, when the magistrate, scarcely
looking up, scribbled something, and said:

“Remanded in custody for a week.” And the prisoner was hurried away.

I walked back to the Temple with Joan’s father, who expressed
satisfaction at the man’s arrest.

“He knows something,” he said, for his keen eyes had scanned the
accused’s face from the first moment he had entered the dock. “If he
did not fire the shot, he knows who did. We shall learn more before
long.”

We did, within half an hour; for, suddenly Mr. Gell’s clerk entered
the room saying that his master was wanted urgently on the telephone.

“Scotland Yard wishes to speak to you, sir,” he added.

The ponderous man rose and rushed into the adjoining room.

A few minutes later he rejoined me in a state of great excitement.

“That fellow Owen has slipped through the fingers of the police! He
apparently knew that he was being watched, and was also aware of
Dufour’s arrest. He’s in fear, and managed to get away early this
morning. His man says he gave his bag to a man who called for it last
night, and when he went to his master’s room he found that he had
left.”

“But the police!” I cried in dismay.

“They knew he was in bed, and did not resume their surveillance until
seven o’clock this morning. At noon, as he did not emerge and walk to
the Ritz for a cocktail, as was his habit, they made discreet inquiry,
only to find that he had eluded them and gone!”




 CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
 A SCRAP OF MUSIC

The mystery increased hourly. Though Scotland Yard had to its credit
the arrest of the fugitive foreign waiter, there was practically no
evidence to show that he was even acquainted with the dead young
criminal, Tuggy Wilson.

That the latter had dealings with Owen was known by Teddy, who had
watched them go in company to Fulham. Further, the fact that Owen had
fled was sufficient proof of his guilty connection with the affair.

The enigma was rendered the more insoluble by a circumstance which
happened on the following day. I had been out to lunch and spent the
afternoon at my club, when on my return Bruce said:

“The blind man called on you an hour ago! He says he must see you.”

“You were friendly towards him this time, I hope,” I said, annoyed
that I should have been absent.

“Yes, sir. I watched him go out, slipped on another coat, put on my
glasses, and went down after him,” replied my man. “He tapped his way
into Piccadilly and right along to the Circus, where he was met by
another man, an elderly, rather well-dressed, person with a grey
beard. They spoke together for about five minutes, and then the old
man hailed a taxi, and they drove away. I dared not follow them, sir,
as I didn’t know if you had your latch-key.”

“I wish you had watched them,” I said. “Next time don’t worry about
me, as long as you run the blind man to his home. You are sure he was
blind? I mean, he used his stick all the time?”

“Yes, sir. And he kept on his glasses. I noticed how his friend led
him to the taxi.”

I was wondering whether it was not Owen who had appeared in the guise
of the blind man against whom I had been warned.

It was a day of irritating surprises, for not the least occurred just
after ten o’clock that night. I was sitting reading, Bruce being out
for the evening, when my telephone rang, and, on answering it, I heard
a man’s voice, with which I was not familiar, asking if I were
speaking.

I replied in the affirmative, when the stranger said in rather refined
tones:

“I have to apologize to you, Mr. Hipwell. I am unknown to you, but I
have just arrived at Victoria from the Continent, and have an urgent
message to you from a lady--your wife. I am sorry that I cannot
deliver it personally, as I am only passing through London to
Liverpool to catch a steamer.”

“From my wife!” I gasped. “Yes.”

“There were reasons, she says, that she has neither written nor
telegraphed to you; but she did not know whether you were in London.
She asks you to meet her next Friday afternoon at four o’clock in
Kensington Gardens, at the third seat on the right up the Broad Walk
from Palace Gate.”

“Thank you very much,” I replied, my heart giving a great bound. Then
I repeated the appointment: “At the third seat on the right up the
Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens, on Friday at four o’clock.”

“Yes. That is the message. I am glad I have been able to deliver it
safely, Mr. Hipwell. You are, please, to remember that your meeting is
a secret one. _Au revoir._”

“But would you do me one great favor?” I asked. “Will you tell me my
wife’s address?”

I listened for a reply. But there was none! He had rung off hurriedly,
in all probability to catch his train.

In frantic appeal I spoke to the clerk at the exchange, who instantly
set to work to discover the source of the call. At last I heard her
say:

“I’m afraid I can’t get them for you. The call was from the public
booth on Victoria Station.”

Thus again were my efforts, to discover the whereabouts of Illona,
thwarted.

The day was Wednesday. Hence I must wait till Friday. If Illona was
still in Lausanne, she was evidently following closely on the
footsteps of the mysterious bearer of that message to me.

I told no one. I could not confide in either Mr. Gell or Teddy; for I
had revealed nothing about my mysterious wife. I could only wait until
Friday.

Ah, how those interminable hours dragged by! I thought much of Joan,
wondering where she was and into what pitfall she had fallen, for I
loved her with my whole soul, and I was distracted with anxiety and
grief. Yet, when I met Illona, no doubt, she would explain to me the
deep conspiracy against me, and put me on my guard against my enemies.

That she feared lest her meeting with me should result in some fatal
reprisal seemed palpable, because of the precautions she was taking to
meet me in secret. She evidently dared not call at Sackville Street,
but preferred to meet me as though casually, by an appointment made
verbally, so that none should know.

All was romantic, all so strange, that I sometimes felt myself
doubting whether I was not still in that state of mental unreality in
which I had existed for two whole years.

All the amazing circumstances were, alas! solid facts. Joan, my Joan,
whom I loved with every fibre of my soul, had been decoyed away, and
was in the hands of my enemies.

Yet why had unknown persons formed a plot against me? To my knowledge
I had neither harmed nor wronged anyone, neither man nor woman. That
misadventure in Camberwell, surely, was not of my own seeking, if,
indeed, that criminal gang were still bent on reprisals because I had
inadvertently entered into their midst.

How can I adequately describe the long, weary, never-ending night
before Friday dawned? Sleep would not come to my eyes. I tossed upon
my bed, hot and weary, my brain muddled by the thousand and one
inexplicable facts that had arisen since my sudden awakening in Rome.

At last I arose and dressed but found it to be a grey, sunless day,
with threatening rain. Indeed, the atmosphere was heavy and there was
every indication of a coming storm.

I lunched at the club with Teddy, spent an hour in the smoking-room
chatting with several friends, whiling away the intervening time
until, soon after half-past three, I hailed a taxi in St. James’s
Street--after getting rid of Teddy by the way--and drove to Palace
Gate. A slight shower had just fallen sufficiently to freshen up the
pretty gardens, and had sent in the usual crowds of nursemaids with
children. Hardly a soul was astir in the Broad Walk, but I found the
seat, dried it well with my raincoat, and, sitting down, lit a
cigarette, waiting on tenterhooks for the arrival of my unknown wife.

Those moments, I think, were the most tense in my whole life. Imagine
yourself waiting for the woman you had unconsciously married and had
never seen!

I pictured her in all sorts of guises, from a young and beautiful
foreign woman, with all the _chic_, charm, and daintiness of the true
Parisienne, to the flat-footed, thick-ankled, and ponderous _frau_ of
Teutonic breed, a type I particularly detested. Of her age I knew
nothing, of her voice or features I knew as little, and as I waited
there in patience, the grim humor of the situation struck me as
ridiculous.

The hour of four chimed solemnly from the tower of St. Mary Abbot,
followed almost instantly by the low booming of Big Ben. But, glancing
each way up the broad, graveled promenade, I saw only two elderly men
approaching.

Five more minutes passed, and I grew restless. Was I being fooled?

I was always suspicious of telephone messages. And that had been a
swift and anonymous one. Was there still another trap set for me?

Surrounded as I seemed to be with enemies, I viewed every circumstance
with suspicion, and perhaps scented danger where none existed.

Here I venture to beg pardon of the reader. This narrative is only a
plain and straightforward one of what actually occurred to
me--adventures which might easily happen to any man of my age and
temperament in London, New York, Paris, or in any other great city,
for that matter. I seek to repress no ill deed of my own. I am no
better than other men. Yet, unlike others, I discovered myself, in
astounding circumstances, married--or alleged to be married--to
somebody whose name was Illona, and on whom my eyes had never
consciously gazed. If you can realize this, you can well imagine my
feelings as I sat there upon a public seat, in a public park,
expecting my wife to claim me.

But what if her allegations were untrue? Suppose she were only my
self-styled wife? If I had been legally married to her under British
law, wherever the ceremony had been performed, a record of it would be
found at Somerset House.

I had once or twice intended to go there in order to make search. But
it was quite possible that my marriage might be in a false name; so I
decided to wait. The whole affair was utterly amazing.

For some reason I was full of suspicion; and, whatever Illona might be
like, I had formed the firm intention of challenging her right to call
me husband. Surely such an attitude would be only natural.

On the other hand, why was she so solicitous of my welfare if I were
nothing more to her than a friend?

Several persons passed and repassed, now that the shower was over;
but, though I could scan the wide pathway for some distance, I could
discern no one who might possibly be the mysterious Illona.

Suddenly a rather pretty, fair-haired girl of about sixteen, wearing a
small, black felt hat and a serviceable dark blue raincoat, came and
seated herself near me, a fact which greatly annoyed me, as I wanted
to be there alone for my romantic meeting with my wife.

She glanced once or twice into my face, and then exclaimed:

“I beg your pardon, but are you Mr. Lionel Hipwell?”

“I am,” I replied in surprise.

“I have been sent by madame to tell you that she is unfortunately
prevented from meeting you to-day. She----”

“Not coming!” I gasped in despair.

“No. There are reasons, she says, why she is obliged to remain away,”
she added in a low voice.

“You know her!” I cried. “Where is she? Where can I find her?”

“I really don’t know,” was her tantalizing response.

“But you must tell me. Much depends on my finding her--perhaps the
life of one I hold dearest. Do tell me something, miss. Every hour’s
delay is dangerous now.”

“I am aware that there is danger--danger to yourself, Mr. Hipwell,”
the girl said in a strange voice. “But perhaps this will explain.” And
she took a large, thin envelope from her handbag and handed it to me.

In eagerness I tore it open, and found within nothing but a sheet of
manuscript music, boldly written and folded in four; but without a
single message, without a single word.

“What does this mean?” I asked, staring at the girl.

“I really don’t know,” she said, looking at the music. “I am just as
much in ignorance as you are.”

I looked at the notes; but, knowing nothing of music, and unable to
read a bar, I felt that some ill-considered trick was being played on
me.

“Where did you see madame?” I demanded of the girl.

“At the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool last night,” she replied. “I am a
manicurist there and she sent me with this message and envelope.”

“Is she staying in the hotel?” I demanded.

“I think so.”

Liverpool! The mysterious man who had rung me up from Victoria had
been on his way to Liverpool. I would go there by the next train, and
by making my name known in the hotel, if still there, she might
venture to approach me.

“Can you tell me nothing else, miss?” I asked persuasively.

“Unfortunately I cannot. The lady simply asked me to come to London
and deliver the message to you. My parents live at Wandsworth.
Therefore, I was glad of an opportunity to see them.”

“What kind of lady gave you the message? Describe her to me.”

She reflected a moment.

“She was under thirty, rather pretty, with auburn hair, and extremely
well dressed. She spoke with an accent, and no doubt, was a foreigner.
She said that I was to mention the word Illona to you. I remember she
wore on her finger one of the finest diamond rings I have ever seen.”

“Had she anyone with her?”

“Not when she spoke to me. Previously I had seen her sitting in the
lounge talking to a rather tall, fair young man, whom I had seen about
the hotel for several days. But,” the girl added, “the lady asked me
particularly to give you no information whence I had come. I ought not
to have told you, only you--well, you seem so distressed.”

“I have only to thank you, miss,” I said. “And if I decide to follow
you back to Liverpool it is no affair of yours, and you cannot help
it, can you?”

The girl smiled, and, noticing her friendliness towards me, I ventured
to slip three one-pound Treasury notes into her gloved hand.

“I am in great trouble,” I told her, “and I want you, if you can, to
assist me.”

“I don’t see how I can, sir,” was her reply. “I have only acted as
messenger for a woman who is a perfect stranger.”

“When are you returning to Liverpool?”

“To-morrow morning.”

“Then I shall go up to-night and remain at the Adelphi. You see, I do
not know this lady Illona, and I want you to point her out to me.”

“Certainly I will, if she is still there.”

“Under what name has she registered?” I asked eagerly.

“Ah, that I do not know!” she replied. “She simply came into our
manicure room, and while I attended her she asked me to go to London,
and, after having obtained leave from my boss, I consented. That is as
much as I know about her,” she concluded.

“I haven’t the pleasure of your name.”

“Moss--Ruby Moss,” she replied.

“Very well, Miss Moss,” I said, rising, “I shall see you at the
Adelphi to-morrow evening, eh?”

“Yes,” she agreed as we walked together to Palace Gate. “About
half-past six I’ll be back. As you say, if you like to follow me to
Liverpool, I can’t prevent it.” And she laughed as she boarded a
passing bus, leaving me to continue my walk alone.

How tantalizing it all was. Instead of meeting the elusive Illona, I
had only received from her a verbal message of regret and a sheet of
music.

As I, unfortunately, knew nothing of music, I hailed a passing taxi,
and took the manuscript to Teddy Day, whom I found at home.

He was a fairly good pianist, so I showed it to him without telling
him how it came into my possession.

I reproduce part of it here:

He opened it, glanced at it for a few moments, and then, looking up to
me, said:

“Who’s playing the fool with you, Lionel? This is only rubbish! There
isn’t any music in it!”

“It looks like music,” I said in surprise.

“Yes. But if you knew anything about music you would see that there is
neither time nor rhythm in it.”




 CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
 TRICKED

That piece of manuscript music was certainly as puzzling as the
manner in which it had been placed in my hands.

“Where did you get it?” asked Teddy, much interested. “It’s been
written by a woman evidently--somebody with a very firm handwriting.”

“Oh, it’s been given to me,” I said evasively. “A fellow knowing my
ignorance of music has played a joke on me. I’ll play him one back
before long.”

And, though I was much perplexed, I managed to laugh it off.

“I’m going up to Liverpool by the next train,” I said. “I’ll be at the
Adelphi if anything turns up regarding Joan. I’ve got a bit of urgent
business to attend to. Bruce will keep in touch with me and I’ll be
back in about a couple of days.”

“Righto,” laughed my old chum. And he offered me a drink; but, because
of my haste, I declined.

An hour later I was in the dining-car express on my way to Liverpool.
I knew the Adelphi, and had no difficulty in getting a room. I arrived
for late dinner, dressed hurriedly, descended to the restaurant, and
read the evening paper over my lonely meal.

In the big, well-lit room there were no women save a girl with her
father and an old, decrepit woman with a young man. The _table
d’hôte_ was over long ago.

Later, I hastened to the big lounge, where many people were taking
coffee, and, finding a corner table, looked around at my
fellow-guests.

In a far corner I discerned a fair young man, of a Scandinavian type,
with a mop of yellow hair, taking coffee with a little, dark-haired,
vivacious woman who was all nerves and gestures. But it became
impressed on me that the woman in question was not Illona, the woman
who sent me false music.

Teddy’s declaration that the music was a fake puzzled and mystified me
more than ever.

What could those false bars, so firmly written, denote? What in the
world could they convey to me? Surely, in all conscience, and through
no fault of mine, I had had enough of mystery without that folded
piece of music being handed to me to still further mislead and mystify
me.

“All silly rot!” Teddy had declared frankly, on reading over the
carefully written notes of music. “Perfect rubbish! Some fool has had
you here, my dear Lionel!”

Through the next hour I wandered about the hotel, trying to fix on
some woman that might be my wife. But I could not discover one who
answered to the description given by the pretty manicurist.

Yet she might be out at the theatre, I thought. Already it was ten
o’clock, so I took up my position at a small table, whence I could
command a view of all who entered the hotel by the big door of the
main entrance. And I kept careful watch on those going to and fro.

One woman, auburn-haired, of middle height, and rather good-looking,
entered about eleven o’clock. She wore a purple, brocaded velvet
evening-coat trimmed with fur, while the man with her was slightly
older, with fair hair, a trifle bald on the crown. They laughed
together as they entered, and I had a faint suspicion that she spoke
with a foreign accent.

She passed me without noticing me and from the _concierge_ they
obtained their keys. Next moment they disappeared into the elevator.

“Who is that lady?” I asked anxiously of the night porter when they
had gone.

For a moment he consulted his register, and then replied:

“That lady, sir, is Madame Stefen.”

Madame Stefen! Could she be Illona?

She was the only woman who in any way answered to the description
given by Ruby Moss.

For yet another hour I waited at my post of vantage, but without
avail. Then, tired out by my adventure in Kensington Gardens, my
journey, and my long vigilance, I ascended to bed.

Next day, though I wandered through the great hotel, I saw nothing of
Madame Stefen; she evidently kept to her room. I spent hours idling
about the Landing Stage, which is always full of interest, and after
tea in the hotel lounge, where again I sat with alert eyes, I awaited
the coming of my little friend, the manicurist.

I entered the toilet saloon of the hotel at a quarter to seven, and
there saw her alone, wearing her long white cotton robe.

She greeted me merrily. Then I suggested to her that, after her duties
had ended, she should join me, and, if possible, point out the lady
who had called herself Illona.

She raised a difficult point, saying that the management would not
allow her to sit with the guests. Such a thing was strictly forbidden.
I realized her argument instantly. But, after some discussion, she
arranged to look into the _table d’hôte_ room and restaurant during
dinner and see if she could recognize the lady in question.

“I’d know her instantly,” she said. “If I can find her I’ll ascertain
her name and the number of her room from the reception clerk. It will
be better for me to carry out my search alone.”

She was insistent on this; hence I allowed her to have her way.

A dozen times during the evening I saw her flit across the lounge, the
waiting-rooms, and the other public apartments, and, though I waited
till about half past ten, she did not approach me.

Where, I wondered, was the elusive woman who, after arranging to meet
me, only fooled me by sending me a sheet of faked music?

The girl met me at last in a quiet corner of the lounge, where I was
seated, waiting expectantly for her.

“I’m very much afraid that the lady must have left, sir,” she said
disappointedly. My spirits instantly dropped.

That Madame Stefen was not the lady in question was proved, because
only five minutes before, she had entered the lounge and passed her on
her way upstairs.

“She may be out,” I said, clinging to the last hope.

“She may. But I fear not. I’ve asked at the bureau, and of the chief
hall-porter. They both think the lady left yesterday afternoon. I’ve
described her, and especially the ring which attracted me so much. Do
you know the name of Ugostini?”

“Ugostini!” I gasped, staring at her blankly. “How do you know that
name?”

“Well, in the reception office they think that was the lady’s
name--Countess Ugostini. I described her to Mr. Fraser, the chief
clerk, and he thinks so.”

I held my breath.

Angela! If that were the truth, then she had posed as Illona, my wife!
Lisely Hatten--or the Contessina as she was known--was my worst enemy.
And yet she had fooled me into that strange meeting with the young
manicurist.

With what motive? Only in order to send me a piece of pretended music!

My brain reeled. Could the thief-girl of Camberwell and Illona be one
and the same?

That was the chief point before me. I went to the reception office and
saw the dapper, clean-shaven chief clerk, in his morning-coat and grey
trousers, who interviewed all newcomers and allotted rooms to them.

“The lady Countess Ugostini arrived three days ago, alone. She has
signed the register as coming from Piacenza, in Italy.”

“Was she alone?” I asked.

“Yes. I received her. She had but little luggage, and mentioned that
she was only passing through Liverpool,” said Mr. Fraser. “That
evening, however, I saw her talking to a fair-haired man who had
arrived early in the morning--an Englishman named Detmold.”

“When did the Countess leave?” I asked.

He turned over the leaves of a book upon the mahogany counter, and
replied:

“At three-eighteen yesterday. She took a taxi to the Landing Stage.”

“You can’t find out which boat she boarded.”

“No,” he replied politely. “I fear I cannot. After she paid her bill
and left, we have no further trace of her. Is she, by chance, a friend
of yours, sir?”

“Yes,” I faltered. “A very great friend. I’ve come down from London to
meet her, but I’m just too late.”

I bade good night to Miss Moss, and thanked her for assisting me. I
went to my room.

I took from my pocket that inexplicable sheet of manuscript music and
cast my eye over it. The notes were Chinese to me. To Teddy Day they
had conveyed nothing. And, hence, to me they were utterly
unintelligible.

I flung myself into a chair to think.

Was Illona, my wife, identical with the Little Countess, my enemy? It
certainly seemed so. I reviewed the facts in their true sequence. That
the little Italian pseudo-aristocrat was an intimate friend of the
fugitive Owen had been proved by me, myself. In Rome she had wilfully
misled me, knowing that in my condition of aberration I did not
recognize her; and, she still believed in her power to impose on me.
So far all was clear. But had she further imposed on me during my two
years of unconsciousness so that I had married her under the
euphonious name of Illona?

Could that be possible?

I rose and paced my narrow room in my fierce agitation of mind.

There were some facts which, when I clearly considered them, gave
color to this idea. First, for some unknown and inconceivable reason,
she had spared me the blindness which in her fury she had suggested.
Why? Was it because she had relented, or because her young man friend
had prevented her? Finding my brain in such a hopeless state owing to
loss of memory caused by the drug she had injected into my veins,
could she have married me pretending herself to be another person
called Illona?

If so, why had she sent me that strange warning concerning the blind
man? If she were my enemy, as she certainly had been, why, then,
should she pose as my friend?

And again, why had she sent me that curious folio of tuneless music?

And now, the thought of Joan’s disappearance, and the utter inability
of the whole police system of England to find the slightest trace of
her, drove me to distraction. I felt myself going mad.

My sole desire was to return to London. I did not undress, for I knew
I could not sleep. Instead, I went down to the night porter, and,
finding that a train left at three o’clock in the morning for London,
I flung my things into my bag, and left by it.

Just before eight o’clock I entered my rooms with my latch-key. Bruce
was about and got me a cup of tea, while I undressed and threw myself
upon my bed.

After drinking the tea I must have fallen asleep, for it was not till
nearly noon, by my little traveling clock at my bedside, that I woke
up in surprise.

Beside my bed were my letters, one of which, by the embossed stamp on
the back, I knew, was from the governor at the House of Commons.


 “I am much worried about you, my dear boy,” he wrote. “Come down and
 see me! Dine with me at the House to-morrow at eight.”


Dear old pater! I knew that his sole thoughts were of me, and of my
future. No man had ever had a better father than mine. My only regret
was the fierce enmity which existed between Joan’s father and him.

Two other letters I opened contained bills, but a third was in a
square envelope, the address written in a bold hand.

It was Illona’s. I opened it instantly in great expectation.

There was neither address nor date, but on a plain card was written:


 “My Adored Husband,--Why did you not keep our appointment in
 Kensington Gardens? I was, alas! half an hour late owing to the
 motor-car breaking down. I thought you would await me. But I fear you
 grew tired, as the rain came on.

 “I have much to tell you. Be very careful of your dear self. You have
 many enemies, just as I have. Ring me up at the club and let us meet
 at the earliest possible instant.

                                           “Your own Illona.”




 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
 ACROSS EUROPE

Then the message from Illona, delivered to me in Kensington Gardens,
had been a false one, sent by the Little Countess in order to mislead
me! Why? With what motive?

Angela, or whatever her true name was, evidently had been aware of
Illona’s appointment with me, and had sent the girl with that
cock-and-bull story so that we should be prevented from meeting.
Possibly the delay in Illona’s arrival was purposely brought about by
the woman who had been my enemy on that night in Camberwell.

Whither had she gone with her man friend who called himself Detmold?

She had driven to the Landing Stage at Liverpool, it was true; but,
she might easily have taken the train to London, instead of embarking
upon a boat.

I was to ring up Illona at her club. Again she had failed to give her
address. However, there seemed to be some object in withholding it.
And she evidently believed me to be well aware of it.

This constant strain had brought me well nigh to craziness. Everywhere
I turned some obstacle arose which prevented my learning the truth. My
memory had returned, but at what cost! Would that I had remained in
the state of mental unbalance in which I had existed until that
evening in Rome; for, now that I had lost Joan, my anxiety and grief
bordered on frenzy.

I spent that morning ringing up the many ladies’ clubs. I had never
believed they were so numerous. What name could I ask for save my
own--Hipwell?

From every one of the various feminine social centres came the same
regretful reply that they had no member of that name. When all that
failed, I rang up a number of bridge-clubs in the West End. But, from
several there came no reply as they were closed at that hour of the
day, and from the rest came the usual negative response.

Five minutes later, Bruce brought in a note that had just been
delivered by hand, the envelope of which bore the familiar words, “On
His Britannic Majesty’s Service.” With eager fingers I tore it open,
to find my orders to leave Victoria at two o’clock with dispatches for
Brussels, Berne, and Vienna.

How could I go, when at any moment Illona might ring me up, or call on
me?

I spoke over the telephone to my friend Gordon at the Foreign Office,
begging him to send somebody else.

“I’m really awfully sorry, old boy,” he replied. “But the whole staff
are traveling. Morton will be the first back, but he can’t be in till
Saturday night. He’s on his way home from Constantinople, by
Bucharest. So there’s nobody else to take your place. I’m so awfully
sorry, old chap. I’d do anything to arrange it for you, as you well
know. I’m afraid you really must do this trip. You’ll be back in five
days,” he added.

Five days! What might not happen in that period? Besides, the man
Dufour would be brought up again at Bow Street.

There was no alternative. Already it was past twelve o’clock; so, I
told Bruce to get out my small suit-case, which he always kept packed
with everything I required for a fortnight. Then, I sat down and wrote
a letter of explanation to Illona regarding the appointment in
Kensington Gardens, and what had occurred there. I asked for her
address, and, enclosing the piece of impossible music, I sealed the
envelope with my lapis-lazuli ring and addressed it: “To Illona.”

“Bruce,” I said very seriously. “While I am away, a lady may call--or
she may ring up. Tell her that I shall be back next Wednesday, and ask
her to kindly give you her Christian name. If the name is Illona, give
this letter to her. It is most urgent and important. Perhaps you may
have difficulty in inducing her to give her name, but use tact, and
tell her exactly what I’ve said to you.”

“Yes, sir. I quite understand,” my man replied in his well-trained
manner. “But what kind of lady will she be--old or young, sir?”

That question completely floored me.

“Well, as a matter of fact, Bruce”--I hesitated lamely--“I’ve never
seen the lady. I only know of her.”

“Very well, sir. I will exercise discretion,” he said. And I dashed
out to the Piccadilly, where I swallowed a hasty lunch in the
grill-room. And, just before two o’clock, I entered a _coupé_ of one
of the Pullmans of the first portion of the Continental train, which
had been reserved for me, and into which a porter placed six little
white canvas bags of dispatches. The Foreign Office bags carried by
King’s Messengers always intrigue the traveling public. They imagine
them to be full of State secrets, whereas their contents are mostly
dull, uninteresting Consular reports, Treasury accounts, memoranda,
and perhaps some private letters for Ambassadors to Downing Street,
marked “Per favour of Foreign Office bag.” If all were stolen they
would not amount to much.

Indeed, there is a tradition in the Foreign Office that before the war
a certain Captain Gordon Smith--that was not his real name--one of the
most cheery and most cosmopolitan of the corps of King’s Messengers,
one day discovered, in a locked cupboard in his rooms, a bag of
dispatches that had been there for four years! His man, who had long
since left his service, had found them among his kit on his return one
night from Madrid and had locked them up for safety! Now every bag is
minutely numbered and signed for, both by the messenger on receiving
it and by the secretary at the Embassy abroad, or the official in
charge of incoming dispatches at Downing Street. Hence it is
impossible for a bag to go astray. Yet in this instance somebody
carelessly signed a receipt for so many incoming bags, with the result
that Gordon Smith had one over. The story goes that rather than get
anybody hauled over the coals for negligence, he cut it open, and made
a bonfire in his sitting-room of the whole of the contents, including
the bag itself.

The “crossed dispatch,” as it is known--the secret instructions
intended only for the eye of the representative of His Majesty the
King abroad--is carried on the person of the messenger, who, like
myself, usually has a very serviceable Browning to defend it from any
possible pilferer.

As I settled myself with a magazine, Crawford, the conductor of the
car, looked in, and, wishing me good afternoon, asked if I were
comfortable, while several travelers glanced in with interest at
seeing my little white bags piled in front of me. I have been taken by
tourists to be of many professions. Some have whispered to each other
that I am a bank clerk taking bags of banknotes to Paris. Others think
I am employed by some bookmaker. Still others have thought me to be a
dress-designer, or the runner of an illegal lottery. Then there have
been those who have seen me piled with thirty or forty bags on the big
round which includes Vienna, the Balkan capitals, Athens,
Constantinople, Bucharest, and back. Those people have thought I was
traveling for some great advertising agency to boom American
corn-flakes, or perhaps a traveling circus!

At Dover Maritime, that ever-genial official of the Southern Railway,
Mr. Harvey Beresford--whom every King’s Messenger and most
distinguished travelers know--that energetic, untiring inspector who
is alert to see every outgoing or incoming boat from Calais, Boulogne,
or Ostend--catching sight of me, rushed up and gripped my hand.

“Hulloa, Beresford,” I exclaimed, greeting the smart, nautical-looking
man, who always wore his peaked cap at an angle.

“A long journey this time?” he asked, as we went through the little
side door and strode down to the boat, where a strong wind was
blowing.

My dispatch bags were locked in a deck cabin. And, I stood outside,
chatting with the cheery friend of King’s Messengers and distinguished
travelers. For, the popular Harvey Beresford is the friend of kings,
princes, diplomats, ministers, and the great ones who visit England.
It is his unique job to receive them or wish them God-speed.

The average traveler to and fro the Continent knows him not. He will
see a pleasant, round-faced naval-looking man, who is chatting with a
railway official, an obtrusive man. But he is perhaps the best-known
person to the great ones of our century.

The siren sounded that the mails were on board and had been duly
counted and checked. Electric cranes were still dumping luggage into
the nets. An invitation for a cocktail had been firmly refused by my
old friend, because he was on duty. The captain came along over the
gangway and passed the time of day with us both.

“Well, so long, Mr. Hipwell,” laughed Beresford. “I’m forever on this
quay, but I’m going over at the end of August on a little run round
Belgium; taking the wife. Just a little quiet trip to take me out of
the five-times-a-day cross-Channel traffic. Oh, the tourist rush which
we’re going to have this season! They tell me that Cook’s have over a
hundred guides with parties going to Switzerland alone this season!
But, my dear Mr. Hipwell, when you travel with that firm, you travel
under a master. People may jeer at tourist agencies; but neither of us
does. A ‘Cookite’ of the stage of the ’nineties with the saying,
‘Follow the man from Cook’s’ was humorous. But ‘Cookites’ who go over
by each boat for their holidays are properly fathered from the moment
they leave London till they’re back at Victoria. We can’t say that for
all the travel agencies, can we--eh?”

“I agree, Beresford--I entirely agree,” I said, laughing. He was
always bluff and outspoken, even though so tactful and courteous.

The warning siren blew again. All the baggage had been stowed, and the
steamer was ready to cast off. Only the one gangway remained down, and
crowded around it stood the usual mixed assortment of travelers, from
_chic_ French actresses in rich furs to the usual thin, be-spectacled
Indian civil servants on their return East, accompanied by their
wives.

“Well, good-bye, my dear Beresford,” I said, gripping his hand. Next
moment he nipped nimbly across the gangway just as it was drawn up,
and the vessel moved away.

It was near midnight when, on alighting at Brussels, I gave over two
of the bags and a special dispatch to Carew, the second secretary of
the Embassy, who had come down to the station in the car to meet me.

Until the Ostend-Bâle night express roared in, I stood on the
platform with him. Then, I entered the single berth that had been
reserved for me in the _wagon-lit_, which was to bear me south to
Bâle. There, again, I would be compelled to change for Berne, the
capital of the peaceful little Swiss confederation.

In that narrow little bed, as the train rocked and rolled throughout
the night, along the valleys of the Ardennes and down to Strasburg,
sleep refused to come to my eyes. My thoughts were ever of Joan, and
of my mysterious wife, who begged me to meet her, yet whose
whereabouts I had no means whatever of ascertaining.

My life had become so perplexing, so full of apprehension, with hourly
dread and a terror of dire disaster pending, that, sleeping or waking,
the mystery of Illona was my one concern.

I took my morning coffee in the big frescoed restaurant at Bâle
station, and presently took train with my bags to Berne. There I
delivered one of them at the Legation. Then, driving back to the
station, I went on to Zürich; and thence, that night, caught the
express to Vienna.

My only object was to fulfil my duties and get back to London with all
haste. On arrival at the big, echoing West Bahnhof at Vienna, I took a
taxi to our fine Embassy in the Metternichgasse, and there delivered
my bags and dispatches over to Charlie Denby, the first secretary.

He invited me to remain to dinner, but I declined, and, as a bag was
ready to go back, I flung it into the taxi. I found that I had time to
spare to catch the Orient Express for Paris, so I drove around the
Ring, that wonderful succession of the finest boulevards in all the
world.

I knew Vienna well. At other times I would have been glad of a couple
of days’ enjoyment and rest there after the dusty journey from London.
But that night I merely took a _capuziner_ outside the Prückel Café
in the Stuben-Ring, and then went along to the Stephans-Keller to have
my evening meal, an exquisitely-cooked _goulasch_ with _paprika_,
followed by deliciously thin _palatschinken_. Usually a King’s
Messenger is well versed in foreign dishes, and I fear I was no
exception.

Just after ten o’clock the great Orient Express thundered into the
station on its way from Constantinople to Calais, a dining-car and
four dusty sleeping-cars. The brown-uniformed conductor, who stepped
out, knew me. He saluted, and soon had me comfortably installed.

But hardly had he done so than Charlie Denby breathlessly entered the
car, saying:

“Glad I’ve caught you, Lionel. We’ve just had a wire from the Foreign
Office altering your route. You are to go by the Paris portion from
Wels instead of by Brussels and Ostend. There are dispatches waiting
for you in Paris.”

“Gosh!” I laughed. “What a life one leads on these gridirons of
railways!”

The express waited twenty minutes, therefore my kit and I were quickly
transferred into the _wagon-lit_ for Paris, and Charlie and I had
cocktails in the _wagon-restaurant_.

I looked around at my fellow-travelers. They were mostly commercial
and financial people from the near East, together with one or two
really nice American families, the sort that we Englishmen love to
meet--smart, well-behaved people, with the neatest luggage in the
world.

American travelers can be picked out of millions by reason of their
pleasant looks and the tidiness of their belongings.

As a constant traveler, wherever I go, I meet Americans fathered by
Cook’s, Raymond & Whitcomb, the American Express, and other tourist
firms, who always look after their clients well.

Only King’s Messengers can be true judges of tourist agencies, the
amazing wonders of their organization, and their few failures.

Modern travel is a most complicated affair. No one knows or sees more
of it than the unobtrusive man in a serviceable traveling-coat. It is
the man who invariably eats a modest sandwich in the smoking-room of a
cross-Channel steamer; the most trusted servant of the State; the
messenger who is directly in the service of his Sovereign.




 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
 “A LADY TO SEE YOU, SIR!”

Fagged and weary, I slept until the conductor brought me my coffee
and biscuits.

“Laroche, m’sieur!” he said. And I knew we were fast approaching
Paris. I pulled aside the blind, and saw the familiar long lines of
poplars and the flat, uninteresting landscape.

I shaved and dressed leisurely, for I had no reason to go to the
Embassy. The dispatches would be brought to me; for the Orient Express
ended its long journey at Calais.

As we ran into Paris, I saw Pallant, one of the attachés, a tall,
well-set-up figure, waiting with his driver, carrying two little white
bags. Through the open window of my sleeping-berth I waved, perhaps
rather wearily. And, in a few moments he joined me, followed by the
chauffeur.

“Glad we got you, Hipwell,” he said. “There’s been a lot of trouble.
All you fellows seem to be traveling just now.”

“Why didn’t Farmer go over to London?” I asked. “He’s always ready for
a couple of days in town.”

“Got the ’flu, my dear fellow. If not, you bet Gerry would be the
first to run over. They told us over the ’phone from Downing Street
that you were in Vienna, so I wired to divert your journey here.”

“Thanks for nothing, my dear Pallant,” I laughed. “Anything special?”
I asked, looking at the two ordinary little white canvas bags.

“Oh! yes,” he said. “I quite forgot,” and from his pocket he took one
of the familiar narrow, blue envelopes with a cross printed on it. And
he presented an official form for my signature, which I scribbled off,
hurriedly.

“Nearly forgot what you came for!” I laughed.

The moment I entered my rooms that evening, Bruce met me on the
threshold, saying:

“Mr. Gell has just rung up. He wants you to go to Queen’s Gate the
moment you arrive.”

“And has the lady Illona called?”

“No, sir,” was his reply, and I saw the note still lying upon my
table.

After a hasty wash, I jumped into a taxi in Piccadilly and drove to
Joan’s father. Had he news of her, I wondered?

The moment we met, I saw that the whereabouts of my beloved was still
a mystery.

“That fellow Dufour has been brought up at Bow Street again this
afternoon,” he said. “The police know that he is an associate of
criminals, but he refused to disclose where his wife was, declaring
that she had left him and he did not know her whereabouts. The proper
course would be to commit him for trial, but I hear the police think
they can learn more if he were discharged. They could then watch his
movements.”

“And allow him to slip through their hands as the fellow Owen has
done?” I laughed.

“That’s just it! They hope to catch both in the end,” said the well
known barrister. “My own idea is, that Dufour shot the young scoundrel
Wilson out of revenge.”

“He surely didn’t run away with Dufour’s wife, eh?” I hazarded.

“By jove! I never thought of that,” he cried. “That might certainly
have been the motive.”

“Yet, in any case, it brings us no nearer the solution of the problem
of poor Joan,” I remarked.

“No,” he said, in a low, despondent tone. “Oh, if we could only find
some clue as to where she really is! The police seem to regard the
matter as hopeless.”

I remained silent. Was she dead, or did she still live? Of one thing I
felt more than ever convinced, that the decoying of her away had been
directed against me. My enemies, of whom Illona had warned me, had
executed a vile and subtle plot in which I felt confident the man Owen
was implicated. If he were the honest man he pretended to be, he would
not have been an associate of the young thief, Tuggy Wilson; nor,
finding himself watched, would he have so cleverly slipped away into
obscurity.

Again, what was his true connection with Lisely Hatten who, with such
amazing success, had imposed on me? And what could be the mysterious
significance of that beautiful piece of clear, blue aquamarine with
the double nought on it? Its receipt, no doubt, was some pre-arranged
signal. In any case, my beloved Joan had fallen helpless and
defenseless into the hands of my enemies.

Next day I heard from Mr. Gell that Dufour had been discharged from
custody, owing to the lack of sufficient evidence. I knew that
Scotland Yard would keep a very wary eye on him in the hope that he
might meet the fugitive Owen.

Two days later, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, I was seated
in my room with Teddy Day discussing the situation, when I heard a
ring, and Bruce entered, saying:

“There’s a lady to see you, sir. She objects to giving her name.”

I rose in quick surprise, whereat Teddy took up his hat, and, making
an excuse, left.

“Show her in,” I said, the instant my friend had gone.

Next moment I could scarce believe my eyes. Upon the threshold stood
Angela--the Little Countess!

In an instant I recovered myself, determined not to allow her to know
that my brain had returned to its normal balance. What could her visit
to me portend?

“My dear Contessina!” I cried, rushing forward to greet her
enthusiastically. “This is a surprise, indeed! Do come in and sit
down.”

She laughed merrily, a dainty figure, in a cool summer gown of
pearl-grey _crêpe-de-chine_.

“I thought I should surprise you, Signor Hipwell,” said the woman who
had successfully prevented me from meeting Illona, and whom I knew to
be my enemy.

It was strange, I could not help thinking, that from the first moment
of the recovery of my senses in Rome, I felt certain that I had met
her somewhere previously. It was strange, too, I contemplated, that
not until I had stood with Owen, had I actually awakened to the fact
that she and the City typist, whose associates were such desperate
criminals, were identical.

“I have first to thank you for carrying out your promise to me,” said
the slim, pretty girl who had so attracted me in Rome, and whose
movements were so suspicious. As she sat in my arm-chair she certainly
did not look like a criminal.

“I found Mr. Owen and delivered to him that pretty cut aquamarine.
What a delightful pendant it was!”

“Yes,” she said carelessly. “Rather pretty. But the reason I’ve dared
to call on you is because my friend Mr. Owen is missing. He
disappeared early one morning, his man tells me, and has not
returned.”

I pretended surprise, at the same time feeling that she was misleading
me with some purpose of her own. I did not forget that she was my
worst enemy. Nevertheless, it still seemed that, from the fact that I
had discovered her at that assembly in Camberwell, she feared lest I
should inform the police.

I remembered that it was she who had suggested that horrible
punishment of putting out my eyes, and yet she had not carried out her
brutal suggestion. Why? And why, instead, had she given me a drug that
had paralyzed certain cells of my brain?

“Is there any reason why Mr. Owen should have disappeared?” I asked,
with feigned ignorance.

“Not in the least, as far as I know,” she replied, unaware that I knew
of her visit to Liverpool, and how she had tricked me by sending the
young manicurist to Kensington Gardens. “Of course, he may have gone
to Turin, expecting to find me there.”

“He knew you were in Turin?” I asked.

“Yes. I let him know that. He had begged to see me,” she replied, with
her slight foreign accent.

Then, in order to change the subject, and to allow her to reveal the
true reason of her visit to me, I asked:

“And how are all our mutual friends in Rome? How did you leave them?”

She shifted uneasily. Did she suspect that I had recognized her? I
hoped not, for I strove to pretend ignorance; to pretend to know her
only as the Contessina Angela Ugostini.

“Oh! Most of them have left Rome--all who can. It is getting hot
there. But the staffs of the Embassies have to remain. Some of them
have gone to the Tuscan mountains, the French Ambassador and his wife
are at Vallombrosa, and the Spanish is at Montecatini for the cure,
while the Ruspolis are at the sea at Livorno, and my aunt is at Santa
Margherita.”

“And the political situation?” I asked, handing her a cigarette and
lighting it. I felt that she was hesitating to reveal the true object
of coming to me. Perhaps by putting her at her ease, I might yet
disarm her.

Through the rising tobacco smoke, she regarded me strangely, with
half-closed eyes. And, after a brief pause, she spoke:

“You know, Signor Hipwell, quite as much as I do of the seriousness of
the situation--much more, no doubt.”

Her manner had strangely changed, and it surprised me.

“It is growing worse, eh?” I asked.

“You have not been again to Italy since the morning we met in the
church?” she asked.

“No, Contessina,” I replied. “Had I been, I should surely have
endeavored to find you.”

She smiled contentedly, for my polite words made it appear that I
still believed her to be the aristocratic character she had assumed,
and that, even now, my mind remained sufficiently disordered not to
associate her with the virago in Camberwell.

“I should have been very delighted indeed to have met you again,
Signor Hipwell,” she said, looking at me lazily through the smoke of
her cigarette. “After Rome I went to the Lake of Garda, then back to
Florence and Venice. Then to Milan, and here.”

“And the Contessina is as well known and popular in all those places
as in Rome,” I added smiling.

“On the contrary,” she declared. “Only in Florence I went out once or
twice into society. But I found it not nearly such a nice,
cosmopolitan, and friendly circle as in the capital. I have an uncle
living up at Fiesole.”

“A delightful quarter,” I remarked. “I had a relative living there a
few years ago.”

“Ah, yes!” she sighed, as though in regret. “Italy is very beautiful
and full of charm. It is only one’s bitter memories that sometimes
rise to mar its recollections.”

“That can be said of all countries, Contessina,” I remarked.

“Yes. I suppose you, on your constant travels, meet with many amorous
adventures which cause you to ponder on your return, and sometimes
regret, eh?” she laughed.

“I don’t plead guilty to amorous adventures,” I said, fencing with
her, and wondering still if the object of her call was to satisfy
herself that my memory was not yet restored. “My whole life was
wrapped up in political aspirations until I got dumped into my present
official position.”

“A very responsible one--one of the most responsible surely,” said the
neat little lady who, in her Paris gown, looked so _chic_ and unlike
the skirted and bloused City typist, as I had first known her.

Two and a half years had wrought a marvelous change in her. The
chrysalis of a working-class world had evolved into a gay butterfly of
fashion. When I recalled our humble breakfasts together, and her rush
to the office, I could scarcely believe it possible that she was one
and the same.

Yet, as you may well imagine, it exercised all my tact and will power
still to make pretense of ignorance of the past.

The girl was my enemy--my bitterest enemy. Why then should she come
there to my rooms and pose as my friend? Why should she whine to me
over the disappearance of her lover of the euphonious name of Roddy
Owen--the name of a great and popular sportsman of the ’nineties?

I handed her another cigarette; for, she had settled herself
comfortably in my big bachelor chair. Her neat, silk-encased legs, and
smart, well-fitting shoes which so perfectly matched her stockings,
were stretched out in perfect relaxation.

I managed to keep my head, in the strained circumstances of knowing
full well that my pretty visitor was only posing as my friend.

It was nearly four o’clock; so, finding that I could discover nothing
further, I suggested that we should stroll round to the Carlton lounge
for tea. Together we went along Piccadilly, down the Haymarket, into
the palm court where we sat at one of the little well-known tables.
And she poured out tea for me.

The Carlton teas differ not at all from the teas served in other
_hôtels-de-luxe_ in any part of the world with their orchestras--the
_bêtes noires_ of every constant world-traveler.

At last, with trepidation, I ventured to say:

“Haven’t we had enough of this, Angela?”

“I agree. I hate these tea-dancings.” Then, after a few moments’
pause, in which she looked straight into my eyes--the first time she
had ever been straightforward to me--she added:

“Will you take me back to your rooms, Signor Hipwell? I--I--well, I
want to speak very confidentially and openly to you.”




 CHAPTER NINETEEN.
 ANGELA IS FRANK

When we were back again at Sackville Street and she was reseated, I
stood upon the hearth-rug and gazed at her expectantly.

I knew well she was testing me in order to reassure herself that
memory of the past had not returned to me, that I still failed to
recognize her. By dint of great effort I had kept up the fiction. Yet
it was difficult to pretend friendship when I knew her to be my most
dangerous enemy.

I wanted to ask her why she had interfered with my meeting with
Illona, and why she had sent me that scrap of false music. Yet how
could I do so without disclosing what I knew?

“Well,” I said at last. “What have you to say to me, Angela?” And I
waited for lies to fall from her lips.

“I want to speak to you of something that closely concerns both of
us,” she said, in a quiet, changed voice. “You know that Roddy is
missing, and I am extremely anxious to find him. Have you the
slightest idea why he should be missing, or of the motive?”

And she fixed her eyes straight upon mine.

“How should I?” my surprise at her question was genuine, but at the
same time I realized her cleverness in trying to trick me into
admitting secret knowledge of her friend.

“I thought you were friendly with him.”

“Only in consequence of the interview I had with him on your behalf,”
was my reply.

“I thought he knew a lady friend of yours--a Miss Gell,” she said, as
though speaking to herself.

“Did he know her?” I cried, in quick anxiety.

“I have heard so,” she answered. “So I thought you might know
something concerning his mysterious disappearance. Has Miss Gell told
you nothing?”

“No, nothing.”

“Ah! That is curious,” my visitor said.

“No, not curious in the least,” I blurted forth. “Miss Gell is also
missing and cannot be found.”

The Little Countess started.

“Miss Gell also missing!” she gasped. “Then they might both have gone
away together, eh?”

“I think not, because Joan disappeared some time before Owen.”

The girl masquerading as daughter of an Italian count paused for some
time, her eyes upon the empty grate.

“Look here, Signor Hipwell,” she said at last. “Let us be frank with
each other.”

“I am entirely frank,” I ventured.

“I mean, let us act in each other’s interests. Each of us has a friend
who seems to have dissolved into space. Why cannot we help each other
and tell the truth as far as we know it?” Then, after another pause,
she looked at me strangely and added, “I can tell you something if you
tell me what you know concerning Roddy.”

“Do you know anything about Joan?” I asked eagerly. “Tell me.”

“When you have told me what you know about Roddy,” was her firm reply.
“That is a bargain.”

“But I know so little,” I declared with truth. “I only heard that
early one morning he left his flat and has not been seen since.”

“That I know. But who informed you?”

I hesitated a moment. There was an agreement between us that we should
each tell what we knew.

“I was told by the police,” I said.

“The police!” she cried, starting up in genuine alarm. “Are they after
him?”

“I think so.”

“For what reason?” she asked breathlessly. “Tell me all you know about
the affair. Remember our compact.”

“Your friend Owen, I believe, was on terms of friendship with a young
man known in certain circles as Tuggy Wilson.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, Owen and the latter were in Fulham one night when Wilson was
shot dead by somebody unknown.”

“Tuggy dead!” she cried, staring at me in astonishment.

“Yes. It was in the papers.”

“I was in Italy and saw nothing of it. Surely they didn’t suspect
Roddy of murdering him?”

“No. A man named Dufour, a foreign waiter, was arrested; but, there
being no evidence, he was discharged.”

“Dufour!” she echoed. “But of what did the police suspect Roddy?”

“Of being an accomplice of Wilson, whose finger-prints, taken after
death, proved him to be an expert thief, well known to the police.”

“Impossible that Roddy should be an associate of such people!”
declared the girl, whom I knew herself to be a member of a most
desperate international gang.

“Now Wilson was, to your knowledge, a thief?” I asked, whereupon she
replied:

“I have heard so. Do they suspect the man Dufour?”

“Yes. He tried to escape abroad from Southampton, but was arrested.”

“And he has been discharged,” she said, in a tone of relief.

“Yes. There was no evidence,” I replied, but I did not tell her that
his every movement was being carefully watched.

“I cannot understand why the police should suspect Roddy,” said the
pretty woman, seated with her hands lying idly in her lap.

“Because it was known that he was a friend of the dead man.”

“But he would never have slipped away from the police. There could be
no motive.”

“Not if he were innocent of any hand in the affair,” I ventured to
remark.

“Then you think he had a hand in Tuggy’s murder?” she exclaimed,
regarding me resentfully.

“Not at all,” I assured her. “I only follow the police views that he
discovered they were watching, and grew frightened.”

“But he might have fallen a victim of his enemies just as your girl
friend has done,” she said.

“What do you know about Joan?” I asked quickly. “Tell me. I have told
all I know about Owen.”

“What you have told me concerning him, Signor Hipwell, has made plain
to me many things that were mysterious. It has opened my eyes, and
given me a clue to much that was perplexing. I can only thank you for
it,” she said, in a quiet, strained voice. “I quite see what fear
would fall upon Roddy when young Wilson was killed by some unknown
person. The reason of his disappearance is now quite clear to me. I
only hope that the police will relax their vigilance in due course,
and that he will be able to escape abroad without further trouble. He
is, I am sure, quite innocent.”

“You mentioned that he was a friend of Joan’s; this is entirely new to
me. How did you know that?”

“He wrote me a long time ago, saying he had met her, and that she was
your fiancée.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh, quite a year now.”

I reflected that I was at that time in my unconscious state.

“There is a belief that, on the night of Joan’s disappearance, she was
at the Florida dance-club with a fair-haired young man closely
resembling Owen. Have you any knowledge of it?”

“Not in the least,” she said. “I know nothing more than what he told
me.”

“It is strange that Joan never mentioned him,” I remarked. But I
inwardly reflected that their acquaintance was during my period of
ignorance.

I longed to reveal my knowledge to the clever criminal who sat there
before me, and to demand from her the meaning of that piece of music
she had sent me.

I felt it wiser, however, not to show my hand. That she was playing
some very deep game was apparent. By pretending loss of memory, then,
and giving her the impression that I was still her cats-paw, I might
discover much more than by denouncing her.

“Well, Contessina,” I said, addressing her by the name which I was
confident misled her into a sense of security. “I have told you all I
know about your friend Mr. Owen. Now--explain your knowledge of Joan.”

For a few moments she remained silent. Her eyes were fixed on mine
with a distinctly suspicious look. She was still uncertain, I think,
whether I had penetrated her true identity, though I had strained
every nerve in pretence of ignorance. I still treated her as the
Little Countess, beside whom I had had my ridiculous tumble under the
British Ambassador’s table in Rome.

“I can tell you very little, Signor Hipwell,” she replied. “I fear
that you regard both Mr. Owen and me, as your enemies, rather than
your friends. Now tell me truthfully, is not that so?” and she crossed
her legs, leaned her chin upon her hand, and smiled up at me.

“Now that you tell me what I never dreamt before--that Joan was
acquainted with Roddy Owen--I confess I begin to suspect that he has
some hand in her disappearance. And the more so, because certain
people have stated that she danced with him at the Florida on the
night she was lost.”

“All rubbish,” she laughed. “Depend upon it that Roddy has had nothing
to do with Miss Gell’s disappearance. It is a case of revenge and
retaliation. That is my view.”

“How?”

“Has it never occurred to you that her father, Mr. Gell, the famous
prosecutor for the Crown, has been instrumental in sending dozens of
crooks, of various sorts and ages, for long stretches on the Moor? And
what more natural than the crooks themselves have had their own back
on him?”

I paused and looked at her. Though she spoke with the pretty foreign
accent that I cannot here attempt to reproduce--the same accent which
had charmed me when we used to breakfast in our unpretending lodgings
in Camberwell--yet was not that word “stretches” criminal slang for
terms of penal servitude, and “the Moor” for His Majesty’s Penal
Institution at Dartmoor?

“Do you really think that Joan’s disappearance is due to revenge for
some conviction or other, which her father has secured at the Old
Bailey?” I asked, eager to learn her views.

“Without a doubt,” was her reply. “That is why I came here in order to
tell you my candid opinion!”

“Well--and what can I do?” I asked, in blank dismay. Her theory was
one which had suddenly gripped me.

“Discover what serious conviction her father has of late obtained,”
she replied, in a low, intense voice.

She was posing as my friend, yet I knew instinctively, and with no
better proof than the trickery in Kensington Gardens, that she was my
fierce, subtle enemy.

Oh, how I longed to turn on her, and demand an explanation of her
masquerade as daughter of an Italian count, and why she had sent me
that sheet of puzzling manuscript music!

But I managed to remain unperturbed. How I accomplished it I know not.

“Then your theory is that Joan is the victim of enemies of her
father--criminals whom he, as prosecutor for the Crown, has sent to
penal servitude?”

“Of that I am convinced,” she said. Then, after a moment’s pause, she
added frankly: “What you have told me about Tuggy Wilson has revealed
much to me, Signor Hipwell. I had never dreamt of that!”

“Neither have I ever imagined that Joan’s disappearance is due to her
father’s success as a criminal lawyer.”

“Well, there you are,” said the woman, who had two years before
suggested I should be blinded, so that I could never identify her
accomplices. “We exchanged promises, and we have fulfilled them. What
more can be done?”

“You will seek Owen, eh?”

“Of course I shall. I must find him. And you--you must discover your
fiancée, Joan Gell.”

“Ah! If I only could!” I cried. “The weeks go on, yet Scotland Yard
are ever at fault. After being seen at the Florida she vanished
completely.”

“A reprisal on the part of her father’s enemies,” she remarked. “By
revealing to me what you have, concerning Roddy’s friendship with
young Wilson, and the latter’s murder, you have done me a very good
service. If I can assist you in any way to find Joan Gell, I will. I
think I may have my own channel of inquiry.”

“I thank you heartily, Contessina,” I replied quickly, suspicious at
once of her reference to her own channel of inquiry. She knew much
more than she would reveal to me. Of that I felt certain.

The strong incentive within me at that moment was to seize the
guilty-faced crook by the throat and wring the truth from her lips.
But I hesitated again, still feeling that only by watchfulness could I
hope to cope with the plot against me, of which I had been warned by
the mysterious Illona.

The Contessina knew her and feared her. Evidently she intended that we
should never meet.

In the drawer in my writing-table lay the letter I had written to
Illona, enclosing the sheet of music which Lisely had sent me. How I
longed to present it to the woman who thought she was so cleverly
tricking me, and who, after all, had set up in my mind a new theory as
to the cause of Joan’s absence.

She took up the little red morocco handbag and rose to leave, rather
reluctantly it seemed to me.

“Is there anything else I can do to assist you, Contessina?” I asked,
with studied politeness.

“Nothing, I fear, Signor Hipwell. Except,” and she paused, “except,
when we next meet, I hope you will believe in my sincerity a little
more strongly than you do to-day,” she added with a strange, meaning
smile.

“Sincerity!” I echoed. “Why, of course, we are friends,
Contessina--Hence, I certainly believe in your sympathy,” I said, in
an endeavor to assure her further of my continued ignorance of her
true identity.

But she only gave way to a little hysterical laugh. As we shook hands
I asked her where I could write to her.

“To Cook’s Office in Berkeley Street,” she replied. “Letters sent
there always find me sooner or later.”

And then she went out, Bruce seeing her into the elevator.




 CHAPTER TWENTY.
 TO-MORROW!

As soon as she had gone, I rang up Mr. Gell at his chambers. But he
was still at the Old Bailey, and would not return to the Temple. So I
rang up Queen’s Gate, and asked his man to let me know instantly that
he would return home.

About seven o’clock the bell rang and I found myself talking to the
famous lawyer.

“I want to see you at once,” I said. “I’m taking a taxi along to you.”

“All right, Lionel. But I have a dinner of the Silk and Stuff Club at
eight. Come along with me. You’ll be interested, I think.”

I thanked him, slipped into a dinner-jacket, and made all haste
possible down to Queen’s Gate.

The stout old gentleman, already dressed, was sitting in his den
poring over a brief of many folios when I entered.

He greeted me cordially, as he usually did. But, noting my gravity of
manner, he asked what was the matter.

Without disclosing the source of my inspiration as to the cause of
Joan’s fate, I asked:

“Among all the criminals you have lately prosecuted do you think you
have many enemies?”

“Well, that’s rather a strange question,” he replied, looking up at me
in some surprise. “I don’t fancy any prisoner against whom I secure a
conviction really likes me. The majority of habitual crooks, however,
are good sportsmen. If they are unfortunate enough to make a slip, and
fall into the hands of the police, they usually blame themselves for
not being smart enough.”

“Have you ever had threats uttered against you?”

“Sometimes,” he laughed, in his hearty way.

“But aren’t prisoners often incensed at what counsel says against
them?” I queried.

“Counsel’s instructions are precise, and to the point. He has the
statement of the prosecutor, and uses it to the full. To the jury he
is impartial--unlike counsel for the defence, whose moving appeal may
soften the hearts of the men sitting, to decide on the prisoner’s
innocence or guilt. The work of counsel for the prosecution is a
cut-and-dried job into which he puts no acrimony or sentiment. He is
simply the mouthpiece of the Crown.”

“And, as such, you think that he never incurs the malice of the
accused’s friends?”

“I won’t go so far as to say that,” Mr. Gell replied at once. “Of
course, in the case of one member of a gang being convicted, the
others, unknown and unidentified, might easily wreak private vengeance
on counsel.”

“Mr. Gell,” I said, looking straight into his round, clean-shaven
face, “has it never occurred to you that Joan’s disappearance might be
due to such private spite?”

“God, Lionel!” cried the man, springing from his chair. “I believe you
are right, after all! You’re right!” he shouted. “You’re right! I’m
sure you are! As you say, it is the devil’s work of some gang.”

“There is more than suspicion that Joan was with that fellow Owen on
the night of her leaving home,” I pointed out. “We know that Owen was
at least on friendly terms with an expert thief. And, further we know
that he made himself scarce as soon as he suspected that he was under
the eye of the police!”

“True!” cried the distressed man. “The brutes have my poor girl in
their clutches--if she is still alive.”

“They know you are seeking her, and that Scotland Yard intends to find
her, dead or alive.”

“Ah, she may be dead! Their vengeance is perhaps complete!” he said
brokenly.

“But whose vengeance?” I queried. “Go over your recent cases, and
discover if, in any one of them, either Owen, Wilson, or Dufour was
implicated.”

“I wonder,” he said reflectively. “I wonder!”

He pointed out that, if a man were charged with a crime, the police
would perhaps know his associates, but their names would not be given
to him. His duty was simply to prosecute, and bring upon the culprit
the just and legal sentence of the law.

In view of Lisely’s connection with that mysterious gang in
Camberwell--who were sharing out those priceless jewels when I
inadvertently entered the room--and her friendship with Owen, I asked:

“Have you of late prosecuted, say, any gang of jewel-thieves?”

“Not recently,” he replied, thinking deeply. “But about a year ago I
had a case at the Old Bailey--a rather curious case, I remember--and
one which caused me to suspect the existence of a gang, who had in
secret given a woman away to the police, and who afterwards made
themselves scarce. The woman made a statement--a wild allegation, it
seemed.”

“What was the woman’s name?” I asked, much interested.

“I can’t remember. I’ll look it up.” And he took down a diary from a
shelf, and after turning over many pages, exclaimed: “Here it is!
Before the Recorder in April of last year. The prisoner’s name was
Hilda Bennett, alias May, and she was charged with complicity in a
jewel-robbery at Dover Marine Station.”

“Hilda Bennett!” I repeated astounded.

“Yes. You probably read of the affair,” he went on. “She stole the
jewel-case of the wealthy Baroness d’Armenonville, wife of the Paris
banker, who was on her way to London. There was a rope of pearls worth
fifty thousand pounds, and a quantity of other jewels. The lady, no
doubt, was followed by the thieves in the Golden Arrow train from the
Gare du Nord in Paris. And, at Dover the prisoner, a big, well-built
woman, snatched the case from the Baroness’s hand after she had passed
the Customs. Then, with the connivance of her confederates, she
succeeded in getting away in a motor-car. The alarm was given, and the
Dover police, knowing that the thief would not attempt to go by train
to London, telephoned along the roads. A car had been seen going
swiftly towards Folkestone. Outside the latter town the car was
stopped, and the prisoner was arrested, with the jewels in a big false
pocket. The case had been thrown away into a hedge, where it was found
next day.”

“Hilda Bennett!” I repeated, for across my brain passed the horrible
recollection of that fatal night in Bloomsbury.

“Yes. The case was of more than usual interest, because of a statement
given by the police after the jury had pronounced a verdict of guilty.
It was given in evidence that the woman was present in Bloomsbury
about fourteen months previously, when her lover, a man named Rodwell,
was shot dead by a man unknown. The pistol was found to have been
stolen by burglars from a house in Cromwell Road, and his
finger-prints taken after death showed the man to be one of the most
expert jewel-thieves, who was wanted by the police of half Europe.
This man Rodwell, alias May, lived quite respectably in a nice house
in Fitz-John’s Avenue, Hampstead, and was ostensibly a corn merchant,
in a big way of business, at Highbury. His finger-prints, however, had
been identified as Monkey Dick’s, one of a desperate gang of motor
bandits who had operated in and around Riga, on the Russian border.
Indeed, I myself saw the report from the police of Riga asking for any
information concerning the English bandit. But he was dead, and a
report was sent to them to that effect.”

“But the prisoner? What sort of woman was she? Interesting, no doubt?”
I asked, keeping my information to myself.

“I recollect her as a smart, rather overdressed, attractive woman,
full of alertness, but with that sly expression beneath the eyes that
we legal men as prosecutors always look for. Few of us, at the
Criminal Bar, make mistakes. I have prosecuted persons whom I have
realized at once are innocent, and about whom I have agreed with my
learned friend for the defence. No innocent man or woman has guilt
written on the countenance. But the guilty have, and the sense of
crime is such in a practised advocate, that he can himself separate
the guilty from the innocent.”

“And this woman Bennett was guilty?” I asked, staggered by his
statement.

“Of course. It seemed to me that she had been implicated with Rodwell,
the cosmopolitan motor bandit, who had a hand in certain amazing
thefts. Who killed her lover will probably never be known. In any
case, the jury found her guilty, and she left the dock shrieking when
the Recorder sentenced her to five years.”

“Five years. So she is in prison now?” I remarked.

“Yes. But I think the jury were certain that the woman was more sinned
against than sinning. She declared most vehemently that one of her
enemies had deliberately murdered Rodwell, and that the same enemy had
betrayed her to the police.”

I said nothing. My thoughts were full. I saw now what I had never seen
before--the reason of Joan’s disappearance. The friends of that woman
of the night, whose evil face was ever impressed on my memory, had
wrought vengeance on the man who had secured her conviction.

I recalled that, at that crucial moment in Camberwell, she had failed
to recognize me as her lover’s antagonist. Perhaps it was because of
Lisely’s declaration that I was a police informer. Still, I owed my
life to her, just as I owed my eyesight to the woman who had so
cleverly mystified me.

“Well,” I exclaimed at last. “Doesn’t this case of the woman Bennett
throw some light on the present position, Mr. Gell? Don’t you think
that her friends, proved as they were by the police to be a desperate
cosmopolitan gang, might not have retaliated by decoying Joan?”

“It certainly seems so,” he said. “I might admit that I have not
thought so until now. I have now to see Scotland Yard, and endeavor to
trace who were her friends, and if the gang now exists, as no doubt it
does.”

Then, glancing at the old-fashioned marble clock upon the mantelshelf,
he remarked:

“By jove! We must be off. We’re very late, Lionel. I only wish I could
escape to-night. I’m in no mood for a humorous speech. But that’s the
worst of popularity, my boy. You must always give the public what they
expect, or you go under in their estimation like a dead dog attached
to a stone.” He stretched his arms above his head, yawned wearily, and
then said, “Come along. Let’s go. The car is outside.”

Through the busy London streets, where the lights were twinkling, we
drove, but he spoke little. His one obsession, like my own, was the
fate of poor Joan. Yet we both felt that we were on the eve of
discovery, and that the future held for us some amazing disclosures.

What he had told me about that woman Hilda Bennett astounded me. I
never dreamt that, due to his cold, hard accusation in court, she was
now languishing in a female convict prison--that woman who had
declared to the police that I had deliberately killed her lover, yet
well knowing that it was he who had drawn the weapon on me.

To her false allegations had been due my flight, my trouble, my
ill-fortune, and now the loss of the woman whom I loved so dearly. To
her had been due the loss of two of the best years of my life, thrown
as I had been within that time, into a maelstrom of uncertainty and
despair.

To her was due my amazing marriage with the unknown and elusive
Illona, whoever she might be. That she was my friend was plain, but
who she was, her age, her beauty, or ugliness, I knew not.

Sometimes I pictured her as a smart, young, up-to-date girl with
well-chosen clothes and smart stockings and shoes--just those
differences which attract or repel a man. Nothing repels the modern
young man, used as he is to _chic_ and dancing, so much as cheap,
ill-fitting stockings and shoes. The modern girl may be smart on her
feet, if dowdy above. But nobody forgives the laddered stocking,
however well darned, or the shoe which has the slightest turn-over at
the heel.

We have all changed, not only the gentler sex to whom, guided by the
fashion pages of our daily journals, we all allow changes of mode. Yet
even the mere male who puts on his multi-colored abomination and plus
fours is still relegated to his funereal black at night. Men are still
replicas of undertakers and waiters, I daresay more than one of my
male readers, like myself, has been “asked the way” in a crush, being
taken for the man from the caterers.

Life to-day is a succession of problems--terrible problems which few
care to face.

Alas, that it is so! But the truth must be confronted. The divorce
courts are daily examples of man’s perfidy and woman’s weakness. They
are examples under which the judges writhe, and yet have their duty to
perform. They are examples, too, in which the King’s Proctor is daily
bamboozled, and the decree nisi, like a Rolls Royce, is open to
anybody who deals in daily commodities and “makes money” in any form
whatever.

One famous divorce judge, in his memoirs, has said with truth:

“Nobody in my court ever tells the truth. I listen to a hundred
perjuries a day!”

And this is in our modern post-Soviet England!

The dinner of the Silk and Stuff Club proved a long affair, its
principal speaker being its famous president, Mr. John Gell, K.C. Many
were the jokes and many the toasts, yet I knew that Joan’s father like
me, had a heavy heart amid all the hilarity.

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning before I opened the door of
my chambers. Bruce, awakened by my entrance, rose from a chair in
which he had been waiting for me.

“Oh, sir,” he said sleepily. “I tried to get you at Mr. Gell’s and at
the club, but was unable. About ten o’clock the lady called.”

“The lady. Who?” I cried.

“The lady for whom you left a note some time ago--Madame Illona. She
waited half an hour to see if I could find you, but she had to go. And
she left word that she would call to-morrow!”

To-morrow!




 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
 I MEET ILLONA

The enigma was increasingly bewildering. Ever since the moment when
that woman of the night, Hilda Bennett, had declared that I was not
her lover’s assailant, and in consequence of which I had been punished
as a police-spy, I had existed in an atmosphere of excitement, doubt,
and mystery.

Daily, mystery piled upon mystery, as a natural sequence. And through
it all I experienced an intense agony of mind because of Joan’s
disappearance.

The fact that Joan’s father had represented the Treasury at the
prosecution of the woman Bennett, whose accusation had led me into
that maelstrom of adversity, certainly pointed to a motive of
vindictiveness on the part of the woman’s criminal friends. But I felt
myself up against a blank wall. With all the energy and spirit I
possessed I had chased the phantom of hope. Each time, however, it had
eluded me.

Illona was but a will o’ the wisp. Was she a fraud? Did she really
exist? Was she some unknown woman whom I had married during that long
period of my other self, when I lived in another world, created by
that baneful drug injected into my veins by the girl typist who had
been my fellow-lodger?

The discovery that this same young and good-looking, soft-eyed
criminal, whom I had known as Lisely Hatten, was masquerading as the
Contessina Angela Ugostini, a popular figure in diplomatic circles in
Rome, had staggered me. And whenever I had searched for the truth, I
had only drawn blank. Yet, I remained patient with one fixed object;
to discover the whereabouts of my beloved Joan, and to punish those
who had harmed her.

And if she were dead? Then I would have a life for a life.

That night I suffered from insomnia, as I had done frequently, through
the most silent hours. From three to five in the morning I wandered
the streets of London.

No one has really seen our wonderful metropolis who has not stood upon
Westminster Bridge by the long façade of the Houses of Parliament,
when Big Ben has boomed forth half-past three on a summer’s morning.
At that hour the dawn is pale, the great highway with its thundering
traffic is silent and deserted, save for an occasional constable who
looks askance at any loiterer upon the bridge. There is a solitary
taxi upon the stand, and the fine statue of Boadicea and her horses
stands out against the eastern sky by the faint flush of the rising
sun. That has long been my favorite spot when I cannot sleep. From my
point of vantage I can look down to the dome and steeples of the gray
mysterious City, and up stream along the Terrace to St. Stephen’s
Tower, and the bend of the Thames at Battersea, with its trees and
Park. A silent, sleeping, quaint London--our marvelous capital around
which civilization revolves--lies unconscious of the slowly awakening
world. The air is fresh; man and machine are resting from their
labors. For an hour one can enjoy rest, and reflect on many things,
the things which, united, we call life. In two hours more London will
awaken to its activity. Hordes of men and women will be scurrying to
business; cars, motor-buses and trams will be roaring increasingly
across the bridge which Boadicea is guarding. And Babylon will once
more be plunged into its greed for gain, its sins, and its incessant
iniquities. And, peer and politician, magnate and mechanic, lawyer and
laborer, patrician and prostitute, criminal and charlatan will vie
with each other to make money, which is the heart’s blood of London’s
life.

Yet where was Joan?

I returned to Sackville Street about seven, and Bruce served my
breakfast. Then, I washed and read the newspaper, each moment
impatient for the return of my elusive “wife” Illona.

Just before eleven I was startled by the electric bell, and, a few
moments later, my man ushered in a strange, stunted female figure, who
rushed forward to welcome me with the breathless words:

“Lionel dear! At last!” Then, turning to see if Bruce had closed the
door, she gripped my hand and in a low intense whisper asked, “Have
you heard anything further?”

“About what?” I asked, looking into her narrow, drawn face, utterly
staggered.

“About the Avignon affair?”

“The Avignon affair? I don’t understand you,” I replied.

“What?” she cried. “Come, Lionel, you are joking. You know the great
risk I have run in coming to you to-day. I called last night and you
were out.”

She paused in the manner of expecting an explanation.

“You had my note?”

“Yes--and the evidence of treachery,” she said. “We will talk of that
later. But, Lionel,” she added, gazing into my face with a puzzled
expression, “you are not yourself, dear. Why? What has happened?”

I stood before the queer, undersized little woman, utterly bewildered.
Not more than five feet in height, her head and hands seemed
abnormally large. She was well and fashionably dressed in a
beige-colored gown, with hat to match. And she carried in her hand an
expensive bag of pale-green lizard skin. Her features once had been
attractive, perhaps, but the bloom of youth had long passed, and vain
endeavors had been made to efface the havoc of time by the application
of toilet requisites, and especially of lip-stick.

And this ugly, ill-formed woman with the rouged face was Illona--my
secret wife whom I imagined to be young, sweet, enticing!

“No,” I managed to reply, “I am not myself.”

“I don’t wonder, after your recent narrow escape.”

“Where?”

“In Kensington Gardens. They evidently knew that I intended to meet
you, and sent you that message so that you should not wait for me.”

“And the piece of music,” I added. “What did that signify?”

“Why, you know,” she said in an intensely earnest and refined voice.

“But was there any motive in preventing our meeting?” I demanded
quickly.

“Of course, they have done all in their power to prevent us coming
together again,” said Illona. “That is why I risk so much in coming
here to see you.”

“Risk!” I echoed. “I don’t follow you.”

“Ah! don’t you think, knowing what I do, and the relentlessness of our
mutual enemies, I am not ready to take any risk to save you,
Lionel--you--my husband?” she said in a voice full of emotion.

Words failed me. That she had a right to call me husband I certainly
would challenge. It required all my self-restraint to refrain from
doing so at that moment. Yet I saw that by my resentment I might
easily lose my chance of learning the truth.

Truly, I was in an amazing predicament, for of what follies I had been
culpable during my period of unconsciousness I knew not. Hence I saw
that the best course was to hold my tongue, and allow my supposed wife
to explain.

“I know that you have warned me against my enemies, and especially
against a blind man,” I said.

“Has he been here?” she asked breathlessly.

“On several occasions.”

“Ah! Then they contemplate carrying out their threat!” she cried.
“Lionel, dear, you are in great danger! You must fly--anywhere.”

“But why?” I asked, standing aghast. “I’ve done nothing!”

“Not in our eyes. But in the eyes of the police,” she declared. “Ever
since you became one of us they have always suspected you. You surely
know that!”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “How did I become ‘one of us,’ as you put
it? I don’t understand.”

The middle-aged dwarf with the made-up countenance smiled and said:

“Ah! I see you are not yourself, poor dear!” And she placed her
well-gloved hand tenderly upon my shoulder. “So much traveling upsets
your nerves, no doubt. I expected you to come and see me at Lausanne,
for you often passed to and fro on the Simplon route to Italy and the
Balkans. Yet you never broke your journey. Again, I expected you to
meet me one night at Pretty’s Club in Wardour Street, where we are all
members.”

“You told me to make an appointment, but as a matter of fact I’d
forgotten the name of your club,” I declared, very lamely, I fear.

“Ah, my dear! Your memory was always faulty. I’ve noticed it ever
since you married me at the Kensington Registry Office. Do you
remember that morning--the morning after poor Hilda was sentenced?
Poor girl! I wonder how she is.”

Hilda! She meant Hilda Bennett, the woman who was the cause of all my
present troubles and incertitude, the woman who had been prosecuted by
Joan’s father.

“Hilda was one of us, eh?” I hazarded.

“Of course. But she was game and fortunately gave nobody away.”

“And Lisely Hatten?” I asked, for it seemed by her remarks that I was
in some way still allied with the gang who had captured me on that
foggy night in Camberwell.

“She is my worst enemy, Lionel. She ascertained your family
connections, as you know, and intended to marry you. To her, you no
doubt owe your eyesight, for I know that she only pretended to blind
you, because you and she had been friends. His Excellency never
suspected it, or you would not be alive now.”

“His Excellency?” I queried.

“Oh dear, Lionel! How dense you are!” she said, throwing her bag upon
the table, and sinking into a chair beside the fireplace. “You
remember Felix Zuroff, the little black-haired Russian, who presided
at the meeting into which you so unfortunately tumbled. We call him
His Excellency, as he is the representative of others.”

I remembered distinctly the beetle-browed foreigner, apparently head
of that criminal gang, who at the moment of my innocent intrusion were
dividing their spoils.

“Yes, I know,” I ejaculated. “But is His Excellency still in power?”

“Most certainly. And his right hand is Lisely Hatten--or the
Contessina, as she is just now known. It is almost time the great coup
was brought off. Everything is arranged for it.”

“The woman who prevented our meeting in Kensington Gardens.”

“Ah! I suspected as much,” said my undersized visitor--the woman who
called me husband.

According to her story, I had married her at the Kensington Registry
Office. I intended to confirm that, for it would not be in the least
difficult.

“Tuggy Wilson, who was recently shot, was one of us--was he not?” I
asked her.

“Of course. Dufour killed him, we know. There was, however, a good
reason. It’s most fortunate that he has got clear.”

“What was the reason?” I inquired eagerly.

“Oh, a quarrel over a woman, I hear.”

“A woman? Who?” I asked.

“Some girl with whom young Owen fell in love.”

“What was her name?”

“I don’t know. You see, I’ve been out of England for months--ever
since I came to you after the Avignon affair and we made our compact.
The police have searched Europe for the packet, but they’ve never
found it. And they are not likely to, eh?” she asked, with a knowing
look.

“It’s not my affair,” I declared.

“Well, who knows where it is if you don’t?” laughed the mysterious
Illona.

“I really don’t follow you,” I answered her.

She rose, and, standing determinedly before me, said:

“Now look here, Lionel. I’ll be really angry with you in a minute, if
you pretend all this silly ignorance.”

“It’s not pretence. I don’t know,” I protested.

“What?” she cried angrily. “When I risk everything to come here to see
and talk to you, you mean to stand there and tell me you are in
ignorance of the great coup we effected on the road outside Avignon
just after midnight? We had two cars traveling towards
Aix-en-Provence. The first, in which you were, overtook the car with
two men, and deliberately ran into it, completely wrecking it. His
Excellency, Owen, Lisely, and myself were in the second car, and, on
coming up, offered assistance. It was accepted. But while the damage
was being examined Owen managed to get hold of two big cases filled
with fine jewels belonging to Bonnard Frères, of the Rue de la Paix,
in Paris--some of their most expensive stock--which were being taken
for the winter season to their branch shop at Monte Carlo. The firm’s
manager, Monsieur Perrin, realizing his loss, shouted, but was shot
dead for his pains by His Excellency; the chauffeur was drugged, while
the clerk accompanying Monsieur Perrin was attended by Lisely, who
used a hypodermic needle upon him. In five minutes all was finished.
The two cars locked together in the smash, with the dead man and the
other unconscious, we left blocking the road, while the chauffeur of
the first car, who was really Tuggy Wilson, joined us, and we turned
and were swiftly on our way to Geneva.”

Without uttering a word, I listened to the description of their daring
exploit. She had alleged that I, as a member of that gang of motor-car
bandits, was party to that deliberate theft and murder. It was
impossible, and I told her so. The calm way in which she had related
the attack, and the part she herself had played in it, horrified me.

“My dear Lionel!” she laughed. “You are certainly not yourself to-day.
What utter rot you are talking.”

“I am speaking the truth!” I protested.

“Do you mean that you deny all knowledge of the fine haul we made that
night?”

“My dear lady,” I said, “I certainly do. I have never even heard of
the affair.”

“Really, Lionel, I think you have taken leave of your senses,” she
exclaimed familiarly. “What is the use of trying to bamboozle me--of
all women?” And she stood staring at me for a few moments. Then she
said, “If you are really in such innocent ignorance as you declare,
how about the check you received from His Excellency last Thursday,
the first of the month, for over eight thousand pounds as your share
of a certain other little bit of crooked business? Examine your
pass-book now, and see if I tell the truth!”




 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
 “REMEMBER THE NAME!”

I acted as she suggested.

From my writing-table I took out my pass-book which had only been sent
by the bank the day before. And there, to my surprise, I saw that she
was correct.

On the second of the month, two days before, my account had been
credited with eight thousand three hundred and forty pounds! On my
table there lay a letter from the bank which had only arrived on the
previous morning, and which I had not opened, so preoccupied had I
been. I tore it open, and found the usual formal notice that the check
in question had been received from a mysterious Mr. Charles Davis.

“Well!” laughed the stunted little woman, “am I not correct?”

I nodded. What could I say? Evidently I was actually in association
with that desperate gang of bandits, and from them derived a
substantial income. The thought held me appalled. I, a trusted servant
of the Foreign Office, and son of one of the best known
parliamentarians in the kingdom, a member of a gang of jewel-thieves!

I saw she was much puzzled at my attitude; for, of course, she had no
knowledge that I had been at last extricated from that long,
trance-like stupor in which I had existed ever since that terrible
night. How could she know that, at length, I had been rescued from
that precarious state of a period concerning which I had no
recollection of the foolish actions I might have committed, perchance.
Little could she imagine that I had been released from the obscurity
of memory of the two years that I had been within the grip of the low,
beetle-browed man whom I so well remembered--the man they called His
Excellency who, according to Illona’s statement, had shot dead the
jeweler’s manager.

“You surely cannot now deny the truth, Lionel!” said the woman
somewhat severely. “It is really amusing that you should deny all
knowledge of association with us. You must remember your own little
escapade--how cleverly you pinched Lady Rathgormly’s famous
twenty-thousand-pound rope of pearls, as she came out of the Garrick
Theatre.”

“Lady Rathgormly’s pearls!” I echoed. “What do you mean, Illona? Are
you mad?” I cried. “Whatever I may be, I’m no thief.”

A queer, sarcastic laugh escaped the woman’s lips. It irritated me so
much that I could have forcibly ejected her from my room.

“Most excellent acting, Lionel dear. But with me it really won’t
wash!”

“I swear I have no knowledge of any woman’s pearls!” I cried. “I’m not
a thief.”

“Then shall I give you proof of it?” she asked in a hard voice. “Since
you deny everything, you must be made to produce the evidence of your
guilt yourself.”

Then, crossing to the opposite wall, which was faced with books
arranged on shelves to the height of seven feet from the floor, she
ran her eye along the many volumes until she came upon an old brown
leather-backed and frayed one--an eighteenth-century copy of Voltaire
in French, as its faded gilding denoted.

“Will you please take that out?” Illona commanded, placing her finger
upon it.

I obeyed wonderingly. Of late I had read hardly anything, and of the
several hundred books I possessed--perhaps indeed a thousand
volumes--I had for years taken no heed of them.

I took it out--a stout little volume in an old calf binding--and held
it in my hand.

“Open it,” she ordered. And I did so. There were fifty or so old
pages, stained yellow by damp and age, but beyond was a cavity. The
remainder of the pages of the book had been securely stuck together
each to the next, hardened, and then the whole centre had been cut out
neatly.

My eyes fell on a packet in white paper, secured by a piece of thin
blue string.

“Open it!” she demanded.

Utterly astounded, I moved to the table, pulled at the string hard,
and next moment a magnificent rope of pearls fell into my hands!

“There!” she laughed. “You still have her ladyship’s pearls intact in
your possession, though the police of Europe have been hunting for
them. But His Excellency knows they are safe enough in your custody,
for you have never been and never will be suspected--unless you are
given away by your enemies,” she added meaningly.

“My enemies? You mean Lisely?” I remarked.

“And Owen,” she added. “Blind Roddy is not your friend, even if you
think he is. As I warned you, beware of him. He intends evil against
you.”

“But he has fled,” I remarked.

“I know,” she said. “He was with Tuggy when he was shot.”

“But why does Owen hate me so intensely?” I asked her.

“Because of Lisely. It was she who saved your eyesight--she who
defended you against them all. Again, she chose you as bearer of the
Double Nought to him in London--a beautiful piece of pierced
aquamarine, which in the fifteenth century adorned the neck of the
Queen of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and which His Excellency
annexed three years ago from the Art History Museum in Vienna.”

“Then the Double Nought has some serious significance?” I remarked,
eager for information.

“As you well know, it is of very great and serious meaning among us,”
she replied. “Into whose hands it is given, the command of His
Excellency must be obeyed without question. You, Owen’s rival in
Lisely’s affections, brought it to him from Rome. And since that he
has vowed vengeance upon you.”

I again took up the stolen pearls. The rope was certainly a glorious
one, graduated to a splendid diamond, emerald, and platinum clasp, and
a delicate safety-chain, which was broken. Each pearl shone with a
brilliant lustre and iridescence in the daylight, so different from
the white, silvery-looking imitations so commonly worn. On each pearl
was that wonderful sheen which can be very closely imitated, but can
be detected even by the non-expert eye.

I had never held such a magnificent string of pearls in my hands
before. I ran them through my fingers and examined them, afterwards
placing them upon the polished table.

“I am no thief, Illona,” I said quietly. “I shall return them to their
owner anonymously.”

“You’d better not,” she cried.

“Why? It is surely the easiest way out of the difficulty.”

“But what would His Excellency say? All our spoils belong to him. You
are only keeping them in safe custody, until they can be split up, and
distributed in New York, Paris, Brussels, and Buenos Aires,” she
remarked. “No pearls pass from us in the form of the string, as they
come to us. Fresh strings are often made by old Hartley, who lives out
at Streatham Common, out of pearls from a dozen other lots of various
sources. Fresh clasps are put on, and their owners could never
recognize them again. As you know, there are dozens of such strings
which have come through our hands, and are now displayed in the
windows of smart jewelers in Paris and New York.”

“But I can’t keep it there!” I cried, again handling the beautiful
rope.

“You must. You surely don’t want to risk His Excellency’s
displeasure,” she said. “You have enough enemies already.”

“Suppose they were traced to me?” I said.

“Suppose pigs could fly,” laughed Illona carelessly, “how long would a
porker take to cross the Atlantic? No, my dear Lionel,” she went on
affably, “you must keep them as they are till His Excellency wants to
sell them. Then you will get your share--a decent one, considering it
was you who pinched them. The good lady is a friend of yours and you
were one of the theatre party. Dotty Lewis taught you the delicate
trick how to touch pearls.”

I stood staggered.

“When will His Excellency relieve me of them?” I asked at last.

“Any day now. They were mentioned at the meeting last Friday, and so
were the Edendon sparklets. They’re going over to Antwerp next week
packed in Turkish delight, to be re-cut. Balling’s kid is taking them
over. He loves Turkish delight on the journey, and the Custom House
noseys never dream that there’s anything wrong with the little round
box he holds in his chubby hand. And if they did examine the stuff,
they’d never believe that in each square of the sticky sweetmeat there
reposed a diamond or two.”

“What game has Lisely been playing in Rome?” I asked suddenly.

“Oh, a little fifteen-thousand-pound deal,” laughed this queer little
woman. “The wife of the French Ambassador in Rome firmly believes her
rubies to be secure in their case in the safe in her room. But when
she comes to wear them next, she’ll find that they have been
transformed into bits of red glass! Ah, my dear Lionel, from us no
jewels are safe. We are too wide-spread, and are invincible, so long
as we do not quarrel among ourselves.”

That the spoils they gained were of enormous value I had seen, indeed,
with my own eyes. How I had received instruction from an expert thief,
and emulated his practices, was the most appalling of thoughts.

From Illona--whoever she might be; my lawful wife or otherwise--I had
learned more in one half hour than I had in all the weeks of my
consciousness. What she had revealed to me gave a clue to many things.

“You have said that in order to come here to me you have run serious
risks,” I remarked presently. “How?”

“They wish to prevent us meeting because they are afraid I may tell
you certain things which may give you a whiphand over them. That is
why I have all along feared that some plot was afoot, led by the man
who so cleverly pretends blindness--the man to whom you carried the
Double Nought.”

“I really don’t understand,” I declared, honestly puzzled. All was so
amazing, so dramatic, and so tragic, now that I found myself--the son
of an ancient and honorable family serving His Majesty’s Foreign
Office--tricked into acting as an expert jewel-thief.

As I looked again into the woman’s painted face, I felt intense
repulsion. Surely she could not actually bear my name. What would the
dear old governor or my friends say?

At that second Teddy, ever merry and buoyant, burst into the room,
saying:

“Look here, old chap, what about a spot of lunch?”

Next second, realizing that I had a visitor, he exclaimed: “Awfully
sorry! Do forgive me.” And, turning, he left, closing the door after
him.

“Who’s that fellow?” asked Illona in quick suspicion.

“Oh, only a good pal of mine--Teddy Day. He’s a bit of an ass,
perhaps, but quite all right.”

“I don’t appreciate such interruptions, Lionel,” she said very coldly.

“Neither do I,” I agreed, suddenly aware that the stolen pearls were
lying openly upon the table. Bruce had no doubt let him in, and he had
rushed past him into my room, as was his habit. If he had noticed the
pearls, what then?

From everybody I had withheld the existence of that mysterious,
deformed woman who called me her husband, and I had no great desire to
reveal the fact to even my most intimate friend.

My greatest concern at the moment was how to rid myself of the stolen
pearls. I repeated my intention to return them anonymously to the
owner, but Illona instantly waxed furious, warning me of His
Excellency’s wrath if I dared to do so.

“I will have nothing to do with the affair!” I cried angrily.

“That’s really amusing!” she laughed. “Don’t forget that it was you
who pinched them--just as you did that woman Carslake’s emeralds at
Biarritz. My dear Lionel, you are getting very squeamish nowadays.
Why?”

“Because, whatever I may have done in the past--according to your
statements--I’m leading an honest life in future.”

“And accepting the checks of Mr. Charles Davis,” she said, with biting
sarcasm.

“Not knowingly,” I declared. “I shall return the money,” I added, in
ignorance, however, of the person to whom I should send it.

“And quarrel openly with His Excellency!” she cried. “My dear Lionel,
that would be utter madness. No! Do as I suggest. Lie low and remain
inactive. I have your interests at heart, as you surely know! Have I
not warned you of your enemies, and I will stick by you, as you stuck
by me in the Tyrell affair. In that we both narrowly escaped going for
a stretch.”

“The Tyrell affair! What was that?”

“Oh, Lionel, you are getting on my nerves with all this affected
ignorance of yours. Surely you know how Tuggy climbed up to the window
of that old ivy-covered country house of the Tyrell’s, near
Worcester--an easy job. He passed me the contents of the woman’s
jewel-case, while the party were feeding below, and you and I escaped
in a motor car. A constable of the Bath police stopped us, but you
biffed him one in the face and laid him out. Then we went on to
Gloucester, where we abandoned the car and returned to Paddington by
train as two perfectly respectable citizens. But for your prompt
action we should now each be doing three years or so. By Jove! you hit
that copper a knock-out blow!” she added triumphantly.

What she had disclosed was certainly staggering. Surely I could not be
the lawful husband of such an object as she was!

At that moment the telephone bell rang and I was compelled to attend
to it.

The message was from the Foreign Office. Lord Oxenwood, His Majesty’s
Foreign Minister, had left to take the cure at Evian-les-Bains, the
quiet little watering-place on the Lake of Geneva, and urgent
dispatches would have to be sent to him. Would I call for them on the
morning of the day after to-morrow, and leave London by the eleven
o’clock boat-train for Paris?

The request was a command; so, with a sigh, I replied in the
affirmative. Then I rang up the Sleeping Car Company’s office in Pall
Mall, and reserved a compartment on the Orient Express from Calais to
Lausanne.

“So you have to be off again, dear,” the woman remarked, overhearing
the conversation. “Strange that you are going to Lausanne. Of course,
you will cross the lake from there direct to Evian.”

“It is the quickest way,” I remarked, for few men perhaps had a wider
knowledge of Continental travel than I had.

“You will probably call upon His Excellency, eh?” she said. “He will
be extremely pleased if you do, and further, it will place you in his
good books. Though the police of Europe are ever in active search of
him, he lives just now in Lausanne--one of the most cosmopolitan and
most pleasant towns in Europe.” And she gave me an address in the
Avenue de la Gare, a handsome, tree-lined thoroughfare which I knew
quite well.

“And under what name is he known there?” I asked with considerable
interest; for it seemed that the wide-spread gang of criminals was
controlled from Switzerland.

“It is a secret to all but us. As one of us I can tell you, if you
really don’t know it already. Felix Zuroff is now Nicholas Sarasti.
Remember the name, and keep it strictly confidential. His Excellency
never forgives those who betray a secret.”

“I shall certainly not forget it,” I replied. “Nicholas Sarasti.”




 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
 THE SIX CIRCLES

The woman Illona, by this time, had made herself thoroughly at home
in my rooms, for she had passed into my bedroom, where she had
powdered her face and settled her hat. And now, on her return, she
took one of my cigarettes, lit it, and again cast herself into the
arm-chair, saying:

“What cozy quarters you have here, Lionel! I expect when on your long
journeys in those stuffy sleeping-cars you often wish you were in your
own rooms, eh?”

“Sometimes,” I said, with a laugh. “The conductors on the cars make
night traveling as comfortable as they can for me. Most of them know
me, and bring me a cup of coffee at the early morning stopping-place.
Frequently I am unable to sleep, especially on that ill-laid line
between Calais and Bâle, or between Paris and Irun, so I spend the
night reading a book, while long journeys from Calais to
Constantinople I usually spend in bed, except to get up for meals.”

“It must be terribly monotonous for you, poor dear,” she said in a
tone of affection.

“Oh, but it has its brighter side,” I declared. “A couple of days at
Evian just now, for instance, will not be amiss, except that I have so
much to attend to here at home.”

I was about to replace Lady Rathgormly’s pearls in the hollowed volume
of Voltaire when I saw within a folded paper, which I drew forth with
interest. The paper was thick, and of good texture, and as I opened it
I saw six circles drawn one within the other, as three double
noughts--a circle of musical notes, outside of which were letters in
bold Roman capitals, each against a drawn section, and each
corresponding with a particular musical note.

In order that the reader may follow my discovery I give here a
reproduction of the piece of cartridge paper which I found in the old
volume in which the pearls had been concealed.

 [image caption: THE DIAGRAM WITH THE PEARLS.]

As will be noticed, the partitions were drawn at different angles, and
apparently the curious design had been made by a woman’s hand.

“The key!” she cried, the second I opened it. “I could not read the
message Lisely sent you to Kensington Gardens because I foolishly left
my key in Lausanne. Let us read it if you have not already done so.”

“I surely have not,” I alleged, astonished at the find. “Is this the
key to that imitation music?”

“Oh, how foolish you are, Lionel! Of course it is.” And she snatched
the piece of paper from my hands.

From her handbag she drew forth the piece of music which the girl
Lisely had sent me, by the hands of the manicurist, to Kensington
Gardens. She calculated for a few seconds. Then, with the pencil from
her bag, she quickly deciphered the secret message, placing a letter
beneath each musical note.

As she wrote, I read the message as follows:


 “_Illona will betray you to the police. She is coming to London with
 that object. Beware of her! Trust in me._--Lisely.”


“The infernal liar!” cried the woman in fierce resentment, her hands
clenched in fury. “What does she mean? Why has she sent you this,
except in order to deceive you, and draw you into still further
entanglements?”

“What entanglements?” I demanded. “Surely there has been enough
mystery already. Through no fault of mine, save my fear of scandal, I
have been compelled to take part in the nefarious operations of an
accursed gang.”

“To your own profit, Lionel dear,” she remarked, with a quiet smile.
“And, besides, His Excellency declares that you’re the most expert
dipper for stones he has ever known--you’ve got such a marvelously
light touch.”

“I certainly didn’t know I have that,” I declared, staring at her.

The discovery of the musical code used by the wide-spread gang
astounded me. It was certainly a marvel of ingenuity, and could be
varied in numberless ways. The “time” shown on the message was one of
the easiest. But any message might be marked with figures of addition,
or subtraction, which would render the message utterly unintelligible,
even though it might be suspected by others, into whose hands it might
fall.

The use of secret inks, combinations of figures and letters, or other
means of confidential correspondence, surely faded into insignificance
as compared with this latest creation of a criminal’s brain.

That distinct warning given me by Lisely made her furious.

“She intends to betray me. That I know!” she declared. “She thinks
that, on account of a slip which Tuggy Wilson made in Paris, I have
been the means of drawing the attention of the police to her lover,
Owen. But,” she added, in a voice full of hatred, “Dufour is not
ignorant of what she has done, and he will see that she gets her just
deserts.” A silence fell between us.

“Look here, Illona,” I said at last, “you have sworn to be my friend,
as well as my wife. Will you assist me? I beg of you to do so.”

“Assist you? Have I not all along tried to warn you?” she asked. “What
do you require of me?”

“I want you to help me out of the strange predicament in which I now
find myself--a tool of that man known as His Excellency.”

“How can I release you?” she asked in dismay. “You have for two years
or more accepted payment, and His Excellency is always inexorable. You
are one of us, my dear, and one of us you will remain,” said the woman,
regarding me with those strange, deep-set eyes. “Only His Excellency
himself can free you from your bond.”

“Whatever promise I made was made while I was unconscious of the
truth,” I affirmed vehemently. “That drug given to me by Lisely Hatten
destroyed my self-will, and rendered me inert, helpless, ignorant of
my true existence.”

The woman smiled grimly.

“Yes, I know,” she replied. “You are not the only one. For over two
years I myself remained in a state of mental lethargy, and only six
months ago I recovered to a true sense of my position. Like yourself,
I have acted involuntarily as the tool of others who held me
irrevocably in their power. But Lisely was at least your friend on
that night when you were discovered eavesdropping. She saved your
eyesight at risk of punishment upon herself.”

“Then she is really my friend, notwithstanding what you say,” I
remarked.

“She was then--not now.”

“Why?” I asked, remembering our romantic meeting in the deserted
church in Rome, and how in my ignorance I had admired her, and carried
that wonderful piece of aquamarine to Roddy Owen.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows?” she asked. “Women sometimes
contract strange hatreds.”

“How can I rid myself of these pearls?” I begged of her.

“Why do you wish to do that? You are not suspected. Besides, His
Excellency may demand them at any moment.”

“Is it not possible to return them to Lady Rathgormly?” I suggested.

“You could do so. But it would be extremely risky to incur His
Excellency’s displeasure. Don’t you think so? To him alone they
represent eight or nine thousand pounds profit.”

“And he used me as his cat’s paw. My hands stole them--for him, eh?”

“His Excellency never does a job himself. Like all leaders of men, he
pays others to do his dangerous work,” she laughed. “Both of us are
his agents.”

“His slaves, you mean!” I cried angrily, flinging the pearls
heedlessly back into the hollow book.

Then she rose quietly, and, taking the little calf-bound volume,
replaced it among the many others upon the shelf, saying:

“Let it remain there for the present--until wanted.”

“And if any secret enemy of mine denounces me, the pearls will be
found in my possession!” I cried. “No, I shall return them to their
owner.”

“Not before seeing His Excellency,” she urged. “Call upon him in
Lausanne, and explain your position. He may relent; who can tell? In
any case, he will have sufficient confidence in you, if you give your
word of honor to remain silent.”

“He would not accept my word on that night in Camberwell,” I said.

“Because you were a stranger, and you were denounced as a police-spy,
which he naturally believed you to be.”

“But I can’t allow the pearls to remain here in my possession! My man
might discover them. Perhaps he already has!”

“He’s not likely to read Voltaire,” she laughed. “But if you prefer
it, why don’t you deposit the string in your bank?”

“An excellent idea!” I cried enthusiastically. “I’ll take them to-day.
But, Illona, I want you to help me in another matter,” I said, leaning
against the table, and lighting the fourth cigarette she had just
taken from my box.

“Get me a drink before we go on, will you dear?” she asked
caressingly.

Immediately I rang for Bruce, who at once mixed us a couple of
cocktails.

“Really,” she remarked, sipping hers, “your man is truly an artist.
One gets such awful concoctions everywhere except at restaurants.”

“Yes,” I laughed, when the man had left, “Bruce knows his business, I
think.”

“Well, what is the other matter?” she asked, lazily watching her
cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling.

After a moment, I asked with suppressed eagerness:

“Have you ever heard of a girl called Joan Gell, the daughter of old
Mr. Gell, the King’s Counsel?” I paused, looking straight into her
rouged and powdered face.

“The girl whom you promised to marry before you married me?” she
sneered. “Of course. She found out that you were a crook and refused
to become your wife.”

“What!” I gasped, dumbfounded. “She found out that I was a thief?”

“Of course she did. You surely remember the quarrel between you?”

“I remember no quarrel,” I declared. “But how did she find me out?”

“Why, you related the incident to me with your own lips. You were
sitting together side by side in her father’s drawing-room when she
felt something in the pocket of your dinner-jacket, and, playfully
putting her hand in, brought out a very fine diamond and emerald
bracelet, which you had that evening pinched from the Countess of
Edendon. You had been dining at Berkeley Square, and, making an
excuse, had left the table, slipped upstairs, and taken it from her
dressing-table.”

“Impossible!” I cried breathlessly.

“Ask her! You yourself told me how, on discovery of it, she became
mystified, and how three days later she saw in the papers a sketch of
the stolen bracelet, with an offer of three hundred pounds reward for
its return.”

“Then she knows I’m a thief,” I cried despairingly, for surely the
strain of it all was sending me mad.

“Of course she does,” answered the woman, with a triumphant jeer. I
realized the reason, for apparently I had married her while still
remaining engaged to Joan.

Was she lying to me? Did Joan--my Joan--actually know that I was a
crook? Had she accidentally found stolen jewelry in my possession?
Could it be possible?

The woman’s mocking laugh ringing in my ears bewildered me. In any
case, Joan had been engaged to me until the moment she vanished, and
certainly she had never mentioned the matter since I had awakened from
my long period of involuntariness, that spell of fatality, with
actions over which I had had no control. If I had really been a thief,
as Illona alleged, then at least I had acted automatically and
blindly, led by a master-hand--the hand of the man Felix Zuroff, who
now called himself Nicholas Sarasti.

Since that night at Camberwell I had been the shuttlecock of
circumstance, a creature of blind impulses, unwilling and unconscious.
If Joan had actually discovered the shameful truth, it certainly had
made no difference in her affection. What excuse had I given her? I
wondered. How had I explained the presence of the stolen bracelet in
my pocket?

“You mentioned Hilda Bennett a short time ago,” I remarked suddenly.
“She’s in prison now, and her conviction was secured by Joan’s
father.”

“Yes, and some of them swore at the time that the fat old lawyer, who
is paid such big fees by the Treasury for prosecuting people, should
suffer. Hilda’s stretch was far too long. They say the Recorder
overdid it. You see, the police brought up the nasty fact that Hilda
was with Monkey Dick when he was shot in Bloomsbury. Dicky had a
pretty murky record, but I wonder who shot him? I’ve always suspected
Roddy Owen,” said the woman, her sunken eyes set on mine.

Possibly I flinched; but apparently she did not notice it.

“It was revenge, I suppose,” I ventured to remark.

“But did not you admit that it was suspected that you shot him? Hilda
told me so.”

I pretended to treat the matter as a joke, and hastened to assure her
that, as an accusation had been leveled against me that I was in the
employ of the police, I had endeavored to clear myself by declaring I
was suspected, and thus gain time.

“I know,” she said. “Hilda did not recognize you as Dicky’s assailant.
She acted foolishly. When he was shot she ought to have bunked, and
they’d never have known that she was one of us.”

“Well, Illona,” I said, “I suppose you know that Joan has been missing
for weeks, and that her parents are frantic?”

“I heard something about it the other day,” she replied in a rather
cold tone.

“Do you think that her disappearance is due to the threat made against
her father?”

“Possibly,” she responded, in a manner which made me suspect that she
knew more about it than she pretended.

“Look here, Illona,” I cried, “do be honest with me! Do you know
whether Joan is still alive?”

“I should think she most probably is,” was her brief reply, as her
thin lips closed almost with a snap.

“You know something!” I exclaimed, advancing towards her determinedly.
“Tell me at once what it is!”

She merely laughed sarcastically, and answered:

“Don’t upset yourself, my dear Lionel. Joan’s father did us a bad
turn. I suppose it is only tit for tat, eh?”

“Then she is actually in the hands of the--the gang----”

“Of which you are one, remember!” she interrupted sharply.

“But won’t you tell me what you know, Illona?” I begged of her,
grasping her hand and looking imploringly into her face.

She, however, remained obdurate. Her manner instantly changed, as she
said in a hard, sarcastic tone:

“I am your wife, Lionel. Is it at all likely that I should assist you
to find the girl with whom you are so desperately in love?”

I appealed to her in the name of humanity to give me a clue, however
slight, to the girl’s whereabouts. But she flatly and blankly refused.

Her attitude was so irritating that I could have struck her. I felt
that I could place my hands around her neck and wring from her the
truth, so goaded had I become in those weeks of uncertainty and
mystery.

Her manner and her words told me that she was well aware of Joan’s
fate, but because of her jealousy she refused to utter a word, save to
say:

“I never betray my friends!”

For a further half hour we argued, and high words arose between us. I
fear I was very impolite towards her. But presently, when I saw that
she did not intend to reveal anything more, my agitation grew less,
and I resolved on a policy of silence and watchfulness.

“Well,” she exclaimed at last, dabbing her face with her powder-puff,
and gathering up her gloves and bag ready for departure, “I see you do
not intend to invite me out to lunch, eh?”

“Because you are the reverse of friendly, even though you may be my
wife!” was my cutting retort.

“And when are we to be together again?” she asked, with a faint smile
on her made-up countenance.

“Not until you have told me the truth concerning your knowledge of
Joan,” was my firm reply.

“Then I assure you, my dear husband, that will never be!” she
answered, as she walked out, leaving me standing upon the hearthrug.




 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
 SOME PLAIN FACTS

I ate a hasty sandwich, drank a glass of sherry at the club, and
then took a taxi to a small, rather shabby office in a narrow street
off High Street, Kensington, the registry of marriages for the
district.

The affable clerk whom I saw was disappointing, however.

“If you call at the registry at Somerset House, you can obtain a copy
of the entry made here, sir,” he replied.

As I went in, I had been followed by two couples about to be wedded,
attended by two witnesses. Both were of the working class, happy young
men with their smiling brides. I glanced around, but to me the
cheerless surroundings were entirely unfamiliar. I did not remember
ever having been there before.

An hour later I was at Somerset House, amid a bustling throng of
solicitors’ clerks and curiosity-mongers, to whom every now and then a
blue slip of paper was handed out, a certified copy of a marriage,
birth, or death. Every such event occurring in Great Britain, on the
high seas, or abroad, in which a British-born subject is concerned, is
registered in those ponderous volumes preserved there.

In accordance with the directions, I filled up a form, paid the
nominal fee, and awaited the result.

Imagine the tension of those moments. It was to be decided once and
for all if Illona was actually my wife!

Full of keen anxiety I could hardly contain myself, as I paced up and
down before the long window looking out on the great paved courtyard.
It was growing late, and the office was soon closing, hence a dozen or
so clerks, obviously from lawyers’ offices, being known to the
officials, asked favors familiarly.

At last my name was called, and the dark blue slip handed to me--the
copy of the registry of my marriage.

I scanned it breathlessly as I turned away from the counter. It was
certified to be a true copy of an entry made in the marriage register
of the Borough of Kensington on April the eighteenth, the year before,
in which I had apparently described myself as:


 “_Lionel George Chetwynd Hipwell, bachelor, age 29_, of Sackville
 Street, Piccadilly, son of Charles Augustus Chetwynd Hipwell,
 gentleman.”


on the occasion of my marriage to


 “_Elizabeth Mary Illona Patrick, spinster, age 39_, of Stafford Road,
 Notting Hill, daughter of William Henry Patrick, grocer, deceased.”


So my wife was the daughter of a tradesman, who followed the honorable
calling of grocer, and her age was now forty, just ten years older
than my own. Her abode, as given, was not altogether a salubrious
quarter, for Stafford Road, I knew, was on the border of a wretched
slum. Perhaps it was her hiding-place from the police!

I read and re-read that confounding document many times. There was no
doubt. There it was in black and white to hold in any court of law.

Illona was my legal wife!

My hands were tied. In every quarter I looked, I could see no way out
of the _impasse_. All my efforts on Joan’s behalf were unavailing. And
further, how could I confess myself a thief to Mr. Gell, or even to my
father?

Back at Sackville Street I took the piece of manuscript music from the
drawer into which I had thrown it. Lisely had sent me warning, it was
true. But which was my real friend, Lisely or my unpresentable wife?

That point I had to decide. I sat in the chair where Illona had sat,
and pondered until darkness fell. Within my sight was the
unsuspicious-looking old leather-bound volume containing Lady
Rathgormly’s pearls. Again I took them out and re-examined them. They
were certainly magnificent. I looked at the key to that ingenious
musical cipher, and saw how cleverly it was arranged, so that each day
or each week it could be altered according to arrangement. And who
would suspect a roll of manuscript music passing through the post,
from hand to hand, to be a communication between members of a criminal
association?

Teddy Day looked in just as I was dressing and eagerly inquired who
the “old bird” was that he found me entertaining. “A bit of a
has-been, wasn’t she?” he laughed in his good-humored way, as he sat
on the side of my bed and watched me manipulating my tie.

“Yes,” I said. “She’s a woman I met in Vienna some months ago. She’s
looking for a missing friend and called to ask my advice.”

And with that explanation he was satisfied. Then he forced me to dine
at the Piccadilly with him, and we went to a revue afterwards, though
so little interested in the latter was I that I don’t remember the
name of the piece or the theatre where it was played.

My own thoughts were of Joan. The hateful woman who called herself my
wife knew the truth; but for spite she had refused to reveal a single
fact. In that, she had not shown herself as my friend, hence could
Lisely’s secret warning be actually true? Was it for that reason that
she had succeeded in preventing my meeting Illona?

This theory struck me as the correct one. Yet, when I reflected that I
had all unconsciously received training, and had become an expert
purloiner of women’s jewels, I was staggered. Suppose possession of
those pearls was traced to me, what explanation could I offer?

Such a scandal would be appalling, more especially in regard to my
high official capacity as a servant of His Majesty’s Foreign Ministry.

The more I pondered, the more dangerous the situation became. I had
foes without doubt, and how did I know from hour to hour that I might
not be anonymously denounced? I had not even the opportunity to pay my
enemies the price of their silence.

That night when I returned, Bruce having retired, I again took out the
pearls, and found a small cardboard box without any mark upon it. I
placed them inside, and, having made a neat packet, sealed it with
plain black wax, and was about to address them to their owner, when an
idea suddenly struck me. Instead of doing so, and risking the
displeasure of the man of mystery they called His Excellency, I would
take them to Lausanne with me, and make them an excuse for calling on
him.

My diplomatic valise being immune from Customs examination at Calais,
or at the Swiss frontier at Vallorbe, nobody would know that I had
taken them out of the country, and if I deposited them with Nicholas
Sarasti, as he called himself, my responsibility would then be at an
end.

Next day I rang up Mr. Gell, as usual. He had heard nothing of Joan,
though he had another appointment at Scotland Yard at noon. I dined
with my father at the House that night, and afterwards spent an hour
in the Lobby with my friend Cecil Duncombe, Parliamentary Secretary to
the Foreign Office, retiring early; for I had to be up and on my
journey on the morrow.

At eleven next morning I left Victoria Station by the Simplon-Orient
service, which runs daily by way of Calais, Paris, Lausanne, and up
the Rhône Valley to Brigue, and thence on to Italy--Milan, Venice,
Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, to Stamboul--that hot and dusty three day
journey which I knew so well. There were few passengers beyond Paris.
After eating my dinner in the _wagon-restaurant_, I retired to bed, to
be awakened by the conductor at the Swiss frontier, at half-past five
in the morning.

Soon after six o’clock I alighted into the great new station of
Lausanne--one of the finest and cleanest in all Europe, to find that
the little steamer across the beautiful Lake of Geneva would not leave
for another hour. With its fringe of high mountains, whereon still
remained the snows of the past winter, the lake lay blue and sparkling
in the sunlight. I went into the big buffet, and took my morning
coffee. Afterwards I took a taxi and drove down to the little
landing-stage at Ouchy, surrounded as it is by shady trees and pretty
gardens, so well known to the summer tourist.

Soon the small white steamer, which traverses the lake, to and fro, to
the French shore half a dozen times a day, set out. I found the
morning air gloriously fresh after the oppressive heat of the narrow,
rolling sleeping-car.

As we left the Swiss shore, to cross the eight mile stretch of water,
coming down from the Rhône, I could just discern, far away in the
grey distance on the left, the grim walls and turret of the historic
Castle of Chillon, while the white clusters of houses on the lake-side
showed Vevey, and the popular English resort, Montreux. The morning
was beautiful, the sky was cloudless, and on every side, the Alps
stood forth in all their rugged grandeur--a panorama of lake and
mountain, perhaps one of the finest in all Europe.

Shortly afterwards we reached the little landing-stage of
Evian-les-Bains, world-famed for its mineral springs, and for its fine
Casino which, under the same management as the Municipal Casino at
Nice, is devoted to baccarat. Unlike the garish, uproarious town of
Nice, Evian is a rural, select resort, where people go for repose and
for the cure. Upon the green hill-side, half hidden in the trees, the
great white façades of the _hôtels-de-luxe_ could be seen, each
over-looking the quiet little town, and the wide expanse of placid
water beyond.

Up to one of them, the Hôtel Royal, I took a taxi, and, after
inquiring of the _concierge_, I soon discovered Lord Oxenwood, a
grey-haired, aristocratic figure in a drab lounge suit, taking his
coffee _al fresco_ beneath a tree, upon the wide flower-embowered
terrace. With him sat my friend Bob Ludlow, his private secretary.

“Hulloa, Hipwell!” exclaimed the Foreign Secretary, with a laugh. He
was one of Britain’s leading statesmen, who had arisen since the war,
to uphold the nation’s prestige abroad. And he had done so,
notwithstanding all the insidious political intrigues of certain of
the Powers.

Outwardly he was a most charming and unassuming man. But in politics
he was stern, unbending, and relentless, as the League of Nations well
knew.

“Up early this morning, eh?” he laughed meaningly. And after I had
handed him the dispatch box, secured by a great black seal which bore
the bold arms of Great Britain, he invited me to join him at coffee.

It was a delightful spot. In the trees the birds were loud in their
songs, while beyond the stone balustrade there stretched the broad,
placid lake, opalescent at that early hour, its waters unflecked, save
for the sail of a stone-barge, and a little streak of distant smoke
showing the steamer on its way up from Geneva to Montreux, and on to
Bouveret, at the head of the sixty-mile-long stretch of waters.

As I chatted with Bob Ludlow I inhaled with delight the fresh air of
the French lake-side after the stuffiness of Piccadilly. Each time I
traveled, I enjoyed the change of air, whether the invigorating
atmosphere of Paris, the _dolce far niente_ of Rome, the fun-impelling
air of Vienna, or the keen mountain air of Berne.

While I chatted with Ludlow, the great statesman opened the dispatch
box with his key, adjusted his gold pince-nez, and slowly digested the
contents of the papers, one after another.

The waiter had brought me my coffee, and as I smoked, Lord Oxenwood,
with the gold pencil attached to his watch chain, scribbled from time
to time remarks in the margin of the documents he was perusing.

“We must write a dispatch to Paris presently, Ludlow,” he remarked
suddenly. “And you must take it by the mail to-night, Hipwell,” he
said, turning to me.

“I’ll come back from Lausanne at six, sir,” I said, “and I can catch
the Orient back to Paris.”

“Yes, do. You’re a living time-table of Continental travel,” laughed
the grey-haired Foreign Secretary. “What a wonderful tourist conductor
you’d make!”

“Yes, Lionel,” said my friend Ludlow. “You’d make quite a success of a
round-the-world trip, I’m sure.”

“Well, I only know my routes and times, as every one of my corps knows
them. It is part of our training to travel to a given point in the
quickest possible time, isn’t it?” And, turning to Lord Oxenwood, I
added, “If I had had the dispatch in Lausanne a couple of hours ago, I
could have been in Paris to-night.”

“It is not quite so urgent,” was the great Englishman’s reply. “If you
leave to-night, you will be at the Paris Embassy in the morning. That
will be quite early enough for Lord Thornbury to receive my
instructions.”

And he sipped his coffee, gazing thoughtfully across the lake to the
peaks of the distant Jura in the haze. The man whose shoulders bore
the heavy burden of Britain’s complications with the Powers in those
days of sedition and revolution, sighed wearily. And then, after a few
moments, he scribbled some further memoranda on the back of a
document. He was there for rest and recreation, but alas! his brain
was ever at work. Intricate questions of policy and evasion reached
him daily from the representatives of His Majesty at the various
capitals; hence he was practically as busy as when he was at the
Foreign Office, except for those daily conferences, and the approval
of the answers given to questions put in the House.

On glancing at my watch I saw that in a quarter of an hour the boat
would leave on the return journey to Lausanne and, making my excuse, I
caught it.

Just after eleven o’clock I walked up the hill from the railway
station along the Avenue de la Gare, in search of the house where, in
secret, lived the notorious criminal, Felix Zuroff, known in his
hiding-place as Nicholas Sarasti.




 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
 I MEET HIS EXCELLENCY

A steep, tree-lined boulevard of hotels and private residences, upon
the hill-side overlooking Ouchy and the lake, the Avenue de la Gare is
one of the principal streets of the clean, cosmopolitan town of
Lausanne.

The yellow trams pass by incessantly, and there is a never-ending
stream of motor traffic. With my precious little packet of pearls in
my pocket, I went up the thoroughfare of plane-trees in the morning
sunshine, past the Eden, the Jura, and the Mirabeau Hotels, in search
of the house of the notorious but mysterious criminal beneath whose
hateful thraldom I had fallen.

The numbers of the houses became difficult, and the one I sought was
_bis_. I presently found myself in a small _cul-de-sac_ on the right,
with high blocks of modern flats standing in spacious gardens full of
lilacs, magnolias, roses, and geraniums. Flowers grow profusely in
that mild climate, and in the remote, refined corner, I noticed the
brass-plates of many famous doctors.

Entering a pretty garden, I came to the door of a handsome building,
from a window of which floated the strains of a piano, played by
someone with exquisite touch. Examining the row of letter-boxes in the
hall, I found one marked: “Sarasti, 2me Étage.”

Full of excitement and curiosity I ascended to the second floor, and
at the door, which bore a neat bronze tablet, I rang the bell. A
smart, shrewd-eyed young foreigner answered.

I noticed that before I spoke, he surveyed me swiftly.

“I wish to see Monsieur Sarasti,” I said in French.

“Monsieur Sarasti is not at home,” was the young man’s prompt, but
polite, reply.

“I wish to see him on very pressing business,” I urged. “I have
traveled from London to see him,” I went on, and handed him my card.

He glanced at it, regarded me inquiringly for a second, and then,
excusing himself for closing the door in my face, said he would go and
consult his master’s secretary.

In a few moments he returned, saying briefly, “Monsieur will see you,”
and conducted me down a long passage into a spacious, rather
barely-furnished room, which had the appearance of a doctor’s
waiting-room. There were a number of chairs and a quantity of
magazines upon the centre table.

Then I was left alone. The big windows gave a picturesque view over
the gardens, the lake, and the Alps beyond. As I stood gazing out, I
heard someone behind me; and turning, I faced a tall, thin,
lantern-jawed man, immaculately dressed, and smiling benignly.

“Will you please walk this way?” he said, and I followed his footsteps
into a large, luxuriously-furnished salon where, in a deep arm-chair
of crimson silk damask, sat the dark-faced little man whom I so well
remembered on that night in Camberwell.

He nodded coldly and invited me to a chair opposite him. Upon the
tables were great bowls of yellow roses, the perfume of which was
overpowering. I loved roses. But, in that room their scent was, to me
at the moment, quite nauseous.

“Well, and to what do I owe the honor of this visit, Monsieur
Hipwell?” he asked coldly, speaking with a strong foreign accent. His
appearance might have been that of an under-servant at an hotel. He
was uncouth and unwashed. His finger-nails were uncared for and dirty,
and his black beard ragged and untrimmed. And yet, this man, with his
active and ingenious brain, controlled one of the most daring and
successful gangs of motor-bandits in Europe.

And I was one of the few who knew his true identity, a secret that the
police of Europe would give much to learn. I recollect that the drama
of the situation caused me to hesitate.

“I have called to see you on several urgent matters,” I said. “I wish
to be quite frank and open with you, without any unfriendliness, but
rather as one of your friends and assistants.”

“_Bien!_ That is well,” he grunted approvingly, stirring quickly in
his great crimson chair, in which he sat as though he were a judge.
“We are friends--_bien! trés bien!_ And now further. Continue.”

“First, I wish to hand you these,” I said bluntly, drawing out the
string of fine pearls.

He took them in his hands, ran them slowly through his fingers, and
again grunted approbation.

“Afraid to keep them any longer, eh?” he laughed, with a sarcastic
curl of his lips. “Well, I’m really not surprised. In your position it
would be a bit awkward for your family, and for your Foreign Office at
Downing Street, wouldn’t it--_hein?_”

“That is just my point, monsieur,” I said quickly. “As you well know,
I quite inadvertently stumbled into your private affairs on that foggy
night, and you very naturally believed that girl Hatten’s allegation
that I was a police-spy. By now, however, you surely have established
my innocence--that just by a freak of circumstance I blundered in on
you. Have you yet forgiven me?” I asked very seriously.

“Most certainly I have. I am always just, Monsieur Hipwell. None of
those who were under me have ever accused me of either parsimony or
injustice. We are united to make war upon society, and as comrades we
all share each other’s perils and profits,” he replied quite openly,
in very fair English which had just a trace of Russian accent in it.

His countenance had altered but little since I had seen him in that
small stuffy room in Camberwell, with that great heap of wonderful
jewels piled upon the table before him.

As he spoke, he still held Lady Rathgormly’s graduated pearls
caressingly in his fingers, while now and then his expert eye fell on
the larger ones. To me it was amazing that Felix Zuroff, the notorious
criminal, whom his followers called “His Excellency,” was living in
genteel and luxurious surroundings, unsuspected in a foreign city.
Many stories have been afloat of master-criminals living at their
ease, while others in their pay took the risks consequent upon
malpractices. But in my case, I was the actual cat’s-paw of the most
daring and cunning motor-bandit in Europe.

“I have come here, Monsieur Sarasti, to make an appeal to you, to
release me in return for my oath of silence,” I blurted forth at last.

“Release you, monsieur!” he cried, raising himself, and staring
straight at me. “And pray, why should I? You are a very excellent
asset to us. And, besides, you are an expert where women’s necklaces
are concerned. You move in good society in England; hence you are a
very valuable indicator.”

“Indicator!” I echoed, not knowing what he meant.

“You can always indicate where fine jewels are to be found, and at the
same time you can pinch a little yourself off your lady friends you
take out to dances--as you have done so often. Why, I ask, in such
circumstances should I release you?”

For some moments I remained silent. His reply nonplussed me. Then I
found tongue boldly.

“Well--as a matter of fact, Monsieur Sarasti, the drug given to me by
that girl Hatten has lost its potency. I am my true self again!”

“Ah! That is most unfortunate for you,” he remarked, with a light
laugh. “The influence of the injection usually lasts about four years.
Possibly she gave you an underdose. If so, it was unwise of her.” Then
after a second’s pause, he added: “At least the girl proved herself
your good friend. She did not blind you, as we all believed she had
done.”

“No. I have to thank her for leaving my sight unimpaired,” I said with
a sigh of relief. “But I confess to you that the mystery and
uncertainty of my present position is now driving me mad.”

“I can’t see how there can be any mystery, except what you make of it
yourself.”

“I will tell the truth from the very beginning,” I declared. “On that
night Dicky Rodwell attacked me in Bloomsbury, and in the struggle he
shot himself. Yet that woman Hilda Bennett vowed that I was not the
man. She lied to you, for I swear that--I was! For that very reason I
was hiding from the police in Avenue Road, Camberwell, as I told you
that night, in the same house where Lisely Hatten lived. She believed
me to be a police-spy, never dreaming that I was fleeing from the
police.”

The desperate motor-bandit looked into my eyes with his.

“Is this really true, Monsieur Hipwell?” asked the man, rising from
his chair, evidently suddenly intrigued.

“I declare on my oath that every word I have said is the absolute
truth!” I cried.

“Then you shot Rodwell?”

“No. He tried to kill me, and in doing so shot himself,” I asserted.
“I am no murderer! He was ill-treating the woman, and because I
interfered, as any man would, he attacked me. That’s all!”

The low-browed man passed his big sallow hand down his dark beard, and
held it for a few seconds in thought.

“Rodwell was a damned cur!” he blurted forth at last. “I have since
discovered that on the night in question he was on his way to Vine
Street Police Station to give me away. We had had, that afternoon, a
little difference about a set of fine stones we got from outside the
Ritz in Paris. He struck me in the face and I swore that I would never
forgive him. Hilda knew his intentions, and, as they walked together,
she was trying to dissuade him from defying me and giving me away to
the police. Then you suddenly appeared upon the scene, and through
you, he, fortunately for me, closed his own lips!”

The bandit hesitated for a second, and then in sudden enthusiasm he
put out his hand, exclaiming warmly:

“Monsieur Hipwell, in that case it is to you I owe my narrowest
escape! Now let us talk further. Please explain exactly what occurred
on that night.”

I did so, relating the whole tragic occurrence, just as I have already
related it in the opening of this narrative of fact.

With his hairy chin upon his hand, he listened without uttering a
word. I recalled how that thin, claw-like hand would instantly draw an
automatic and shoot any adversary without compunction. Indeed, I knew
only too well what a desperate malefactor he was, and how, in the many
brushes he had had with the French police five years before, he had
always managed to escape after showing desperate fight. In one affair
near Tours, he had killed a _gendarme_ and wounded two others,
afterwards getting safely away. So elusive was he, such an adept at
disguises, and so loyal were his accomplices, that he had always
escaped arrest.

I spoke of the atmosphere of mystery in which I was compelled to live,
as I glanced round his pleasant, sunlit room. “I am sorely puzzled to
discriminate between my enemies and my friends. Can you help me?” I
asked him.

“Surely it is not difficult, Monsieur Hipwell. I fear that your worst
enemy is your wife,” he said, calmly looking into my face.

“Illona! Is she actually my enemy?” I gasped, astounded at his words.

“I should safeguard myself against her if I were you,” was his quiet
reply. “I happen to know that she has evil intentions towards you. As
you have served me well, I tell you in strict confidence the plain
truth.”

“But with what object?” I demanded. “As far as I know I have done
nothing against her. Indeed, it is only two days ago I realized that
she was actually my wife.”

“If you are not careful she will give you away to the police,” said
the master-criminal. “It is therefore very fortunate for you that you
decided to bring the pearls here, or they might have been found in
your possession, or at your bank.”

“But why is it that this woman hates me?”

“She is jealous of a girl named Joan Gell, whom they say you promised
to marry before you married her.”

“Joan has disappeared, so I take it that she has had a sinister hand
in it?”

“I know nothing of the details, but I certainly should suppose so,”
was the great crook’s reply.

“I am here to beg for your assistance, Monsieur Sarasti. How can I
find her?” I implored of the low-browed, dark-faced scoundrel.

He shook his head gravely. Though a criminal and an assassin, he was,
however, in no way antagonistic towards me. Perhaps it was on account
of Rodwell’s death.

“I fear I can give you no help. The matter is private vengeance on
your wife’s part. In such circumstances I cannot interfere.”

“Joan’s father, a barrister, prosecuted Hilda Bennett,” I remarked.
“Is it because of that the girl has been spirited away from her home?”

“I think not, for I have knowledge that Illona uttered threats against
you both six months ago. She has apparently carried out her threat
against your girl friend, and now she intends to betray you.”

“And I am helpless!” I cried in despair. “What reply can I make to the
charges she may bring against me?”

Felix Zuroff was silent for a few moments.

“Perhaps it is the woman’s intended revenge that your friend Mr. Gell
shall appear in court, and actually prosecute his daughter’s fiancé!”
he remarked at last.

“But do give me advice,” I begged of him. “What can I do in order to
save myself?”

The desperate bandit again reflected for a few moments.

“If she carried her threat into execution, then your arrest would, in
all probability, place us all in peril,” he remarked slowly, as though
speaking to himself. “No, she must remain silent. Lisely Hatten is
your good friend, and has always been. You may trust her.”

“But how can I defy Illona?” I demanded eagerly.

The man’s dark face changed. I saw a hard, stern look on his
countenance.

“I will see to it,” he muttered, and, crossing to the writing-table,
he unlocked a drawer, and took out a well-worn little wallet,
withdrawing from it a piece of folded cartridge paper upon which I saw
was drawn a circle of musical notes, the three double noughts similar
to my own.

Taking out a scrap of music paper, he rapidly wrote several bars of
music, after referring carefully to the key. At the end, he drew a
peculiar sign, evidently a mark well known to his accomplices, and
then, folding it, told me to deliver it to her in London at the
earliest moment.

“Alas, I have no knowledge of her address,” I said in dismay.

He referred to the wallet into which he had replaced the circular
musical design, and a moment later said:

“She stays with a man named Owen when in London. At present he is
lodging with Bob Whittaker at Beverley Villa, Sheen Lane, close to
Mortlake Station, and she is no doubt there also.”

I scribbled the address upon my shirt-cuff, and taking the precious
piece of music, which I knew to be an order which the woman dare not
disobey, folded it and placed it securely in my pocket-book.

“If the man Owen is Roddy Owen, then he was the last man seen with
Joan,” I remarked.

“Yes. He is Roddy Owen and is lying low on account of an unfortunate
affair at Fulham, in which our comrade Tuggy Wilson was shot dead by
some unknown person, who had a secret grudge against him. Dufour was
suspected, but he was innocent, as he was a great friend of Tuggy’s.”

“Can Owen have had any hand in Joan’s disappearance, do you think?”

“Ah! How can we tell?” he replied, with a mysterious grin. “In my
position I can have no interest in the private quarrels of any of my
friends. I order, while they obey. That is all!” and in his dark eyes
shone a strange, evil glint.

Before I took my leave I again begged of him to release me, but his
only reply was:

“I have given you an order for your release from your most dangerous
enemy, Monsieur Hipwell. For the present that must suffice!”




 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.
 WITHOUT PREJUDICE

That afternoon I recrossed the lake to Evian-les-Bains amid a crowd
of English tourists, and after tea at the Royal, Lord Oxenwood gave me
back the well-filled dispatch box to take to Downing Street, saying:

“I expect you’ll have to come out again next week. But I shall be at
Geneva, as I am attending the League of Nations next Friday.”

He also gave me the dispatch for the Ambassador in Paris, and a box of
fresh flowers to take to Lady Oxenwood in Grosvenor Square.

At seven o’clock I was back in Lausanne where I dined at the Café
Central up on the Place St. François. Afterwards I watched the
dancing until eleven o’clock. Leaving then on the homeward bound
Simplon-Orient express, I arrived in Paris next morning, and delivered
the dispatch to a secretary from the Embassy. It was seven o’clock the
next evening when I arrived in London.

The curious fact frequently struck me how, during my period of
unconsciousness, I had been appointed to that highly responsible post
of King’s Foreign Service Messenger. For many months I had traveled
constantly hither and thither, at the same time leading a criminal
life of which I had not the slightest knowledge, except what from time
to time I had been able to gather from my undesirable associates.

What would the world have said if it had been known that the secrets
of Great Britain’s diplomacy were being entrusted to an expert thief
of women’s jewels?

As soon as Bruce opened my door I knew by his scared face that
something was wrong.

“The police were here yesterday, sir,” he said, “and they came again
to-day. They were here at five o’clock.”

“The police!” I gasped, thoroughly taken aback. “Who?”

“Two detectives, sir. They were very anxious to see you. They showed
me a search warrant, and then went over everything. They had all the
books down from the shelves, and opened everything.”

“And what did they find?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir. But it’s queer, isn’t it? Why did they get a search
warrant, I wonder? Do they think you are a thief?”

“How can I tell, Bruce?” I laughed, remembering with satisfaction how,
after taking the pearls from the hollow book, I had destroyed the
latter, and had placed the key to the musical cipher in my
pocket-book.

One serious fact was now quite plain. Illona had forestalled me, and
had already given information to the police, believing that Lady
Rathgormly’s pearls were still in their hiding-place.

The bitter vindictiveness of the woman who called me husband I now
realized, and in fury I at once took the train down to Mortlake.
Without much difficulty I found Beverley Villa, a small detached
modern house, the hall of which was badly lit. My ring was answered by
a slatternly young girl, of whom I asked for Mr. Whittaker. At the end
of the narrow passage appeared a dark, curly-haired man in his
shirt-sleeves, who came forward rather pugnaciously, I thought.

“Mr. Whittaker?” I inquired politely. “I have called to see Illona,” I
added in a low voice: “I have a message from--from His Excellency.”

The man looked me up and down suspiciously.

“Who are you?” he asked, with a distinct Cockney twang.

For answer I took out the paper with the double noughts and musical
notes on it.

Instantly that satisfied him, for he conducted me to a small,
cheaply-furnished back sitting-room on the first floor, where I found
Illona wearing a soiled _négligé_ gown of pale pink silk.

“You!” she gasped, starting up, and staring at me astounded.

“Yes!” I cried anxiously. “So you have already commenced your devil’s
work against me, have you? But two can play at this game. Read that!”

And I pushed into her face the bars of music which His Excellency had
scribbled and signed.

“Here is the key, if you want it,” I laughed gloatingly, placing my
own key into her hand. “Read it, you traitor, and take heed what you
do!”

In a few minutes, by reference to the six circles, she realized what
order the master-criminal had issued; for, I watched her face go pale
as death.

“I--I----”

“I want no explanation,” I cried. “His Excellency has given me that to
convey to you. The future is now your own affair.”

“But, Lionel!” she cried. “I did not mean to----”

“You meant to cause my arrest,” I shouted at her in anger. “But I defy
you! His Excellency will deal with you as he thinks fit, never fear.
Any one of us who betrays the other pays the penalty, and that is upon
you.”

“I swear that I did not mean any harm. I was forced to----” cried the
hideous, distorted woman, white to the lips, and staggering.

“His Excellency, I know, is aware of more concerning you than you ever
dream,” I said, as laughing defiantly in her face, I turned and left
that dark, mysterious abode of thieves.

She darted out after me, and taking my coat-sleeve, pulled me back
into the passage.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “What has His Excellency told you?”

“Only that you are my bitterest enemy, and now you have proved it and
treated me as such,” was my harsh reply. “The police have searched my
rooms.”

“And they have found nothing,” she said. “Therefore why worry
further?”

“I don’t,” I said. “It is for you now to worry, I think. His
Excellency means what he says, remember.”

“But it is too late,” she screamed. “I can’t draw back now. I was a
fool--an accursed fool.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think you were. Good night,” and I left her standing
half fainting in the doorway. Whatever cryptic message Felix Zuroff
had written in that code of music, it had had a most startling and
crushing effect on her. Her face became haggard and drawn, with her
eyes starting wildly out of her head. She appeared to be absolutely
frozen with horror.

Back in Sackville Street an hour later, it then being nearly midnight,
I wondered if I should receive another visit from the police. Nothing
had been found. And, in that case, I could see no reason why they
should arrest me. Nevertheless, the position had become full of
gravest peril. Probably the woman Illona had denounced me by means of
an anonymous letter. If so, Scotland Yard would probably act with both
hesitancy and discretion.

If a statement had been made that Lady Rathgormly’s pearls were
concealed in my room, then naturally the search warrant granted by the
magistrate at Marlborough Street Police Court, allowed them to pry
into my belongings. Quite certain it was that Illona would never dare
to go to the police openly, and denounce me, as it would be far too
dangerous a procedure for her. No, as I sat far into the night
reflecting over the events of the last forty-eight hours, I arrived at
the conclusion that my official position would satisfy the police that
I was no thief.

By my conversation with the most notorious motor-bandit Europe had
known, I had learned one very important fact, namely, the hiding-place
of Roddy Owen, who had so cleverly slipped through the hands of the
police from Harrington Court. At half-past nine next morning, I called
at Queen’s Gate, and told Mr. Gell of the fellow’s address, without,
however, explaining how I had become possessed of it.

“Excellent, my dear Lionel!” he cried enthusiastically. “The
information is most important, for it will enable the C.I.D. to take
up the case again. Come down to Scotland Yard with me.”

This I did. The Assistant Commissioner had not arrived, but we saw
Superintendent Nethersole--one of the “Big Four”--who was an intimate
friend of Mr. Gell’s, and who gave orders which resulted in two
detectives being told off to keep strict observation upon the house in
Sheen Lane, and its fair-haired male lodger.

Superintendent Nethersole’s attitude towards me, however, struck me as
distinctly peculiar. I had never met him before, but he inquired if I
were Mr. Hipwell, the King’s Messenger, and if I lived in Sackville
Street. Was it possible that under his instructions my rooms had been
searched? I felt confident that it was so--hence the situation became
further extremely awkward.

I walked out into Parliament Street with the extreme satisfaction of
knowing that wherever Owen went in the future he would be closely
watched. Mr. Gell continued in his car to the Law Courts, while I
strolled back home across St. James’s Park.

I found a middle-aged, well-dressed man awaiting me in my room. He
introduced himself as Inspector Jerrold of the C.I.D., and he said
apologetically:

“We think, sir, that it is only right to explain the reason we
searched your apartments during your absence the day before yesterday,
and why we also made inquiries at your bank, and examined what you
have there in safe custody. At Scotland Yard a letter posted in Paris
was received, alleging that the pearls, stolen from Lady Rathgormly
some time ago, were in your possession--concealed in a hollow book.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I hope you found them!”

“Of course not, sir,” replied the police officer. “From the first it
was considered a wild and improbable story. But we were compelled to
do our duty and investigate. I have been sent by the Superintendent to
apologize to you.”

“Superintendent who?”

“Superintendent Nethersole at the Yard, sir.”

I smiled. The reason was now plain, why he had evinced such an
interest in me.

“I expect you have some secret enemy sir, eh? Oh, you’ve no idea how
many foolish and unfounded denunciations we receive against perfectly
innocent people,” the inspector said. “There are so many mad people
about nowadays. In every case of murder, we always get dozens of false
accusations against the supposed culprit. In the Bow Road affair last
month, for instance, no fewer than fifty-eight different people were
accused as the assassin--mostly by anonymous letter-writers.”

“As long as I’m not proved to be a jewel-thief, Mr. Jerrold, I think
we may allow the matter to rest, eh?” I said.

“I think so, sir,” he laughed. Then, politely but firmly refusing a
whiskey-and-soda I offered him, he wished me good morning, and I admit
that I felt greatly gratified when the door closed behind him.

Certainly I had had a most narrow escape from arrest. The whole affair
naturally caused a most intense hatred and loathing to arise within me
against my treacherous wife Illona, who, while declaring her extreme
solicitude for me, at the same time had acted as my most bitter and
dangerous enemy. Yet by the drastic action of His Excellency--whatever
it was--her game had now been spoiled. She feared me, I knew. Why? Was
it because she anticipated reprisals?

The one vital point which annoyed me to desperation was, that I had in
my unconscious state actually married such a painted-up freak. I was
wondering whether my marriage could be annulled. I doubted it, for to
all intents and purposes I had been quite sane and of sound mind, when
I had stood before the Registrar. There would be a hundred people to
come forward and declare that I was quite sane and normal. In the
papers I had seen reports of many marriage contracts, which the court
after evidence had declared null and void. But in my own case, I knew
too well that I had been at the time existing in a dream, induced by
that baneful drug which had been injected into my veins, causing me to
become a criminal and a jewel-thief.

If I told my story in the Divorce Court, people would only laugh at
me. And such a thought caused me a deep and most terrible depression.

Even if I succeeded in finding poor Joan alive, I could never marry
her, tied as I was to that ugly, done-up traitor, that habitual
criminal who had proved herself my worst enemy.

Three days went by. I had been out for an afternoon stroll, and had
called on a family named Fleming in Upper Brook Street, where I had
tea when, on returning, Bruce told me that Mr. Gell wished to see me
at the Temple as soon as possible.

I took a taxi to Fleet Street and was soon shown into the dull,
time-dimmed chambers of the eminent King’s Counsel.

“My dear Lionel,” began the burly lawyer, who had just come across
from court, and still wore his silk gown. “Your information has
brought forth fruit. Nethersole found me in court this afternoon, and
tells me that through watching Owen they have found Dufour and his
wife. You remember they fled mysteriously from Finlay Street in
Fulham. They are now in hiding in a house in Windsor Terrace up at
Hoxton, a very low neighborhood, I believe.”

“Dufour is a thief, no doubt.”

“Of course. He was, like Owen, an associate of Tuggy Wilson. The
police are greatly gratified, as they have come across quite a little
nest of men they have long wanted.”

“Ah, if we only could obtain news of poor Joan!” I cried. “To
rediscover Dufour is not of very great interest, is it?”

“No. But to find Owen is. The police have been making a quantity of
diligent inquiries about him and a woman who is lodging at the same
house at Mortlake, and it is quite possible there may be some dramatic
arrests in the immediate future.”

“Arrests?” I gasped, for if Illona were arrested she would attribute
it all to me, and would certainly incriminate me.

In a flash I realized the extreme seriousness of the situation.

“You seem surprised, Lionel,” said Mr. Gell. “But as a matter of fact
I believe arrests are to be made to-night. I have promised to go up to
Hoxton with Nethersole. You’d better come with me. I should be glad to
see Owen in the dock; for, we might then learn something of interest.
I’m meeting Nethersole at the Yard at half past nine. Dress rough, as
I shall, and come along,” he urged.




 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
 THE SHOP-WINDOW CLUE

Dressed in an old suit of Bruce’s, a pair of my oldest shoes, and
wearing a golf cap and a flannel shirt without a collar, I presented a
rough appearance as I entered the paved court before the big building
known as New Scotland Yard, where Mr. Gell, attired in a butcher’s
blue overall, and wearing a battered straw hat, which is the fashion
of vendors of meat, awaited me.

“I think we’re in for some excitement to-night,” he said, in a low
voice. “Nethersole says that if Owen is there and is cornered, he will
probably show fight, so I’ve brought my pistol.”

“So have I,” I replied, feeling my trusty automatic in my hip-pocket.
“I always carried it, too, on my journeys on the Continent.”

“The inquiries the police have made during the past month have proved
that the little coterie in Hoxton are connected with a big gang of
Continental thieves. The woman Bennett was one of them, without a
doubt,” remarked my companion.

“But what is the use of it all if we cannot find Joan?” I asked
despondently, for I must here confess that I trembled to think of the
consequences for me if Illona were arrested and disclosed the truth.

A closed blue Buick stood in the courtyard close by, and a few seconds
later Superintendent Nethersole--whom I had difficulty in recognizing
as a pallid, consumptive-looking, ill-dressed man--together with three
common laborers, emerged. And together we entered the conveyance,
truly a rough looking party of hard-working denizens of the East End.

“O’Gorman, who is on duty, has just telephoned to say that Owen and
Dufour are spending the evening together and that they have gone round
to the bar of the King’s Arms, in the City Road,” Nethersole explained
to Joan’s father as the car swung into Parliament Street. “We ought to
make a good haul to-night. But our chief concern is to clear up the
mystery as to who killed that young expert thief, Tuggy Wilson. Dufour
was discharged, but there are still suspicions. The court dismissed
him on account of insufficient evidence. But he can be arrested again,
if we so decide.”

“Has anyone squealed?” asked Mr. Gell, using the thieves’ expression
for giving information.

“Some woman has--but it was only a woman’s hatred,” he replied,
glancing at me. And I felt very uncomfortable, to say the least.

“I feel certain that Owen knows the whereabouts of Joan Gell, dead or
alive,” I said quickly. “We have to wring the truth from him. Poor
girl! She must have suffered the tortures of the damned in these many
weeks.”

“If Owen knows anything he shall be made to divulge it, I assure you,
Mr. Hipwell,” declared the Superintendent. “Leave that to us,” he
added confidently.

Along Theobald’s Road, the Clerkenwell Road, and Old Street we went
until, at last gaining the busy City Road, we pulled up at the corner
of Shepherdess Walk, not far from the blue lamp denoting the
police-station. Nethersole alighted and, with one of his sergeants,
strolled farther along the City Road to the corner of a narrow
working-class thoroughfare, Windsor Terrace. Presently, from the
shadow emerged a loafer who spoke a few hurried words to the
Superintendent, and then ambled off. The man was Sergeant O’Gorman,
whose duty had been to keep observation upon the house.

Turning back to us, Nethersole said:

“Owen and Dufour are still over there in the public-house. We’ll wait
a bit and surround the house when they go back, as they are sure to do
at closing-time. I’ve got a warrant for Owen charging him with being
an accessory to the murder of Wilson. And we want Dufour because his
description resembles that of the man who broke a pane of glass in the
window of Appleyard’s, the jewelers in Old Bond Street, six months
ago, while another man seized a tray of rings and got away in a car.
They were no doubt working together. The man who took the tray was
noticed by two passers-by, and I have a shrewd suspicion when I put
Mr. Owen up for identification, he will be found to be the thief. They
are all a pretty expert lot.”

Then, leaving us, he meandered away, while the sergeant with him
crossed to the King’s Arms to have a drink and watch the wanted men,
who were all unsuspicious that they had been traced to their humble
hiding-place.

With Joan’s father I paced the streets unnoticed in the crowd of
hurrying passers-by. None of us dared to enter the police-station;
for, in the lower-class neighborhoods there are a hundred suspicious
eyes on the alert for officers of the law in plain clothes.

Windsor Terrace did not bear the best of reputations. Many a thief or
pilferer had been arrested there. Too, it was the abode of more than
one pickpocket known to the police by previous convictions.

An hour full of suppressed excitement went by. At last the burly
sergeant of the C.I.D. emerged from the public-house and went off in
the opposite direction, subsequently doubling back, and meeting us
outside the hospital in the City Road.

“They’re still there, sir,” he reported to his chief. “Another man is
with them; but he is a stranger to me. They’ve just bought a bottle of
whisky, so they’ll be going home with it in a minute.”

“Anything of any womenfolk?” asked Nethersole.

“No, sir. But I’ve overheard something they’ve been discussing. I
believe it’s quite right about Appleyard’s, and that if we search,
we’ll find the stuff at the house.”

“Splendid, Rayner!” declared the Superintendent. “Fade out now, but be
in reach when we go to the house.”

“All right, sir,” replied the man, and he slunk away and quickly
disappeared.

“Rayner is an excellent fellow--and has very long ears,” Nethersole
remarked to us, and as I looked around I saw two of the men whom we
had brought from the Yard waiting for a motor bus. A moment later they
boarded it and went off.

I was surprised, but Nethersole remarked that the pair had evidently
been observed and had gone. Ten minutes later they returned
separately.

Suddenly from where we stood, we noticed another man come out of the
King’s Arms and stand in hesitancy on the curb. As he did so he wiped
his brow with a white handkerchief and then went off.

Nethersole’s quick eyes saw the signal, which told him that the men
they wanted were about to come out.

Two minutes later they did so. I recognized both Owen and Dufour in
the distance. With them was another man, tall and rather older, as far
as I could discern.

At once they were followed at a respectful distance by one of the men
who had exercised the ruse of leaving on the motor bus. We turned and
walked away in the opposite direction. Presently we were overtaken in
the crowd by the man who had come out of the bar and wiped his
forehead. Addressing his chief, he said:

“All O.K., sir! They’re inside, and Sergeant Rayner is on duty. The
third man they call Harry, and I overheard him tell Owen something
about a woman--evidently a friend of theirs--that she might ‘peg out’
very soon.”

“Is the man known?” asked Nethersole quickly.

“No, sir. None of us knows him. He’s got a motor-bike in front of the
house. So he doesn’t live here.”

“He’s evidently a friend of Owen’s. When he gets away on his bike, our
car will follow him. See to that. We may want him.”

“Who is to go, sir?”

“Perry and Denham will go--with Rayner in charge.”

“May I go also?” I asked, eager for a chase. I saw that Owen and
Dufour were to be arrested, and to follow the stranger would certainly
be exciting.

“If you wish, Mr. Hipwell,” replied the pallid-looking man whom none
would recognize as one of the “Big Four” of Scotland Yard.

“And I’ll go too,” said Mr. Gell. “You’ll no doubt deal with Dufour
and his friend.”

Nethersole smiled, and then we turned and made our way back along the
short street of drab, dilapidated old homes known as Windsor Terrace.
As we approached, two other men came to meet us. Signals were given,
and with two other men they retired into the shadows of adjacent
doorways.

Outside the house there stood a fast “Indian” motor-cycle with its
lamp lit, while at the end of the street, where we approached from the
City Road, stood our car with the chauffeur, who had already received
instructions.

While we drew back Nethersole ascended the steps and knocked loudly at
the door, two of his own men standing close behind him. After several
repeated knocks the door was at last opened, and the three men from
Scotland Yard rushed into the dark passage.

Next moment we heard rapid automatic shots and the loud scream of a
woman--probably Dufour’s wife.

In a flash pandemonium was at its height.

At once two other detectives ran into the house and from nowhere there
appeared a constable in uniform guarding the door. The raid had
certainly been well arranged, to the minutest detail.

Already we were near the car when we saw a tall figure exit hurriedly
up the area steps from the basement, mount the motor-cycle, and speed
away. Seeing that our car was turned in the opposite direction, I
cried out that we should lose sight of him.

“No, sir. I don’t think we shall,” replied the well-trained police
chauffeur, who knew all the main roads of London like a map. “He’ll no
doubt get out on to the New North Road and into the country. We shall
overtake him very soon, I think.”

Then, as we all jumped in, the car quickly sped back along the City
Road to the New North Road and was soon traveling at high speed
towards the Holloway Road. We were quickly at Holloway Station, but
had seen no sign of the fugitive. Therefore our chauffeur slackened
speed, saying:

“He won’t think he is being followed. He’ll pass us in a minute or
two, and then he’ll believe us to be an ordinary party on the road.”

His prophecy proved true; for, within a few moments the fast “Indian”
passed us traveling at about thirty miles an hour, and upon it was the
escaping suspect.

In a moment we were after him, allowing him to get well ahead of us.
He accelerated wherever he could. And, as there was but little traffic
on the road at that hour, we soon found ourselves going through St.
Albans and on our way to Dunstable, strangely enough on the same road
over which I had traveled with my two friends, the lorry-drivers, on
the night of my great misfortune. Up the long main street of Dunstable
we passed, and then out on the straight road leading to Fenny
Stratford.

“I wonder where the fellow is bound for,” asked Mr. Gell, as he sat
resignedly in the back of the car at my side.

“And I’m wondering what dirty work has been done in Windsor Terrace,”
I remarked. “Nethersole had an inkling that they would show fight.”

“Oh! Both of them are safe in Shepherdess Walk Police Station by this
time,” he said with a laugh. “Trust Nethersole to take care of himself
and his men. Our chief interest just now is in this fleeing stranger.
Who can he be, and where is he bound for?”

“He may turn off the road,” remarked Sergeant Rayner. “If so we can’t
follow in the car. It would arouse his suspicions and he wouldn’t go
to his destination. If he does that, we must descend and travel on
foot. We shall find his bike outside some house or other.”

“Have you orders to arrest him?” asked Mr. Gell.

“Certainly I have, sir. We only want to know who he is, and where he
lives. That’s why we’re here. My orders are to arrest him on suspicion
of being implicated in the theft at Appleyard’s.”

Suddenly, on arrival at the dark little village of Hockliffe, where
the road from Bedford to Aylesbury crosses the main road from London
to Birmingham, the fugitive turned off to the right towards Woburn.

Noticing this, our driver, an expert in following a car, slowed down.
“This road leads past Battlesden up to Woburn and Northampton,” he
said. “Shall we follow quietly?”

“Yes,” said Rayner, who had been placed in charge. “Put out your
lights and creep along after him.”

This we did, and as we descended a hill, we heard the noise of his
engine. Without slackening, he went on. Indeed, across the brow of the
hill we saw his lights in the distance. Then our driver speeded up,
his eyes keen before him in the chase.

We were afraid lest our turning off the main road after him might not
arouse his suspicions. In that case we should never trace him to his
home.

Proceeding slowly, the driver suddenly exclaimed:

“He’s stopped down in the hollow yonder. Or else he’s had a breakdown.
I think it best if you all got down and took a walk. If he goes on
I’ll follow and pick you up.”

“I agree,” replied the expert detective Rayner. “He can’t get over the
brow of the next hill to Woburn without being heard or seen.”

So, we all alighted and went along at a good pace in the half-light of
the crescent moon. The whole countryside was in silence, save now and
then the hoot of an owl in the oaks by the roadside. From far off came
the sound of heavily-laden lorries, going to and fro, on the main road
to the North.

As we walked, there was a slight breeze. And above us the leaves rose
and fell with a noise as of lazily-lapping waves upon a sandy shore.




 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.
 THE DARK HOUSE

From somewhere a church clock struck midnight as we went together
along the silent country road, lit only by the pale light of the
waning moon.

We conversed in whispers. In the still night air human voices carry
far. Our driver remained behind with the car, and with him Rayner
fixed a rendezvous. If he heard a pistol-shot he was to come instantly
in search of us.

“I’m certain he has stopped somewhere near here,” Rayner said to Mr.
Gell. “We can only hope that he has left his bike outside.”

We climbed the hill eagerly and gazed down the road, but there was,
alas! no light to indicate the presence of a motor-cycle. All was
quiet and deserted. In the far distance we heard the hum of a motor
car on another road. But nothing else disturbed the rural silence.

Quietly we proceeded down the hill when, of a sudden, we came to a
good-sized, detached cottage standing in a small orchard, the only
habitation in the vicinity.

Obeying Rayner, who quickly held up his hand, we halted while he crept
forward, stepping noiselessly over the grass at the roadside.

Five minutes later he returned to us, exclaiming in a low voice:

“He’s here! His bike is under the portico. I can hear voices, but the
place is in darkness. Now, I think the best trick is for you, Dick, to
go there and pretend you’ve lost your way,” he said, addressing his
colleague from the Yard. “You look like an honest working-man,” he
added, with a light laugh. “Get the door open, and we’ll rush it,
light or no light. I’ve got my torch.”

“So have I,” declared the stalwart detective addressed as Dick. “We’ll
get him all right, never fear.”

“There may be a bit of a scrap, sir,” Rayner said, addressing Mr.
Gell. “So you’d better keep out of it. But you, Mr. Hipwell, will give
us a helping hand, won’t you?”

“Rather!” I cried. “I’m with you all right.”

“Good! Then let’s get on,” whispered Sergeant Rayner. “We’ve traced
the old bird to his nest,” he laughed.

Together we trod in silence over the grass, and entered the golden
gate. Then, one by one, we crept noiselessly over the soil to behind
the creeper-covered portico in which stood the still hot motor-cycle.
When all was ready, Rayner’s colleague trod heavily up the
garden-path, stumbled purposely near the door, and rapped upon it.

We could hear a movement within. But no reply was vouchsafed.

Twice he knocked vigorously, until at last we heard a woman’s
querulous voice inquire who was there.

“Only me,” was Dick Perry’s reply. “I’m on the road, and I’ve lost my
way. I’m very sorry to disturb you at this late hour, missus.”

“Where are you going?” inquired the woman.

“Well, I don’t quite know. I want to get to Wavendon,” he said.

A few moments later we heard the bolts drawn, and an elderly woman
stood, an indistinct figure, in the doorway. Next instant she screamed
as, pushing her aside, Rayner and two detectives darted in, followed
by me, while Mr. Gell remained outside to see if anyone escaped by the
window.

The dash was accomplished in a few moments. Rayner and his friends
were adepts at forcibly entering premises.

I heard a man on the stairs give vent to a loud curse, when full into
my face there came a blood-red flash with a loud report, and a bullet
whistled by my head. Next second, however, the man was pinned down by
the two detectives.

Exactly what occurred immediately afterwards I hardly know.

The uncertain light of flash-lamps showed the face of a gray-haired
hag of a woman who, startled and screaming, was being held by a third
plain-clothes man from Shepherdess Walk, who had followed us on a
motor-cycle. Meanwhile the fugitive we had overtaken was struggling
and cursing, held firmly by Rayner and Perry.

The sound of a pistol-shot brought up our car, and into it the two
prisoners were quickly bundled. The man--whose name we afterwards
discovered was “Old Tom” or Booth, and whose fingerprints revealed a
very interesting record as a thief--became very violent, so that
Rayner slipped a pair of handcuffs upon him. Then, leaving him in
charge of his assistant, Dick Perry, he and the other man, Denham,
re-entered the house to search it.

In the downstairs living-room we found a cheap paraffin-lamp and lit
it. Then with Mr. Gell, the detectives ascended the stairs, leaving me
below, pistol in hand, ready to prevent anyone, who might still be in
the house, from leaving.

After a few minutes I heard Joan’s father utter a loud cry, and shout
to me:

“Lionel! Come up here at once!”

Up the two flights of stairs I dashed, to where I saw a light, and
found myself in a low-ceilinged attic. In the centre of a bare,
miserable room was a bed, and upon it a female figure.

Next second I recognized the pallid, wasted face as that of Joan--_my
Joan_!

My love was inert and apparently unconscious. She opened her eyes for
a single second, then closed them again. She recognized neither her
father nor me. Mr. Gell suddenly was aged. A moan escaped him.

“This must be the woman whom the fellow in the public-house said
couldn’t last much longer,” Rayner remarked. “Do you know her, sir?”
he asked of the famous King’s Counsel.

“Know her? Why, she’s my daughter! We must get a doctor at once.”

I stroked my dear one’s hot brow tenderly, and then, realizing that a
medical man must be obtained without delay, rushed downstairs to the
fugitive’s motor-cycle, and, mounting it, dashed at full speed along
the road. After a few miles I entered the dark main-street of a small
country town which proved to be Woburn and, of a sleepy man driving a
cart, I inquired the whereabouts of the doctor’s house.

Ten minutes later I had explained briefly the discovery of the police,
and very shortly the doctor got his car out and followed me back to
where my loved one was lying.

After two hours she was removed to the hospital at Leighton Buzzard.
But it was nearly three weeks before she was able to relate what had
happened to her after being decoyed away by that message purporting to
have been sent by me.

While seated in the drawing-room at Queen’s Gate, still very pale and
weak from the ill-treatment and semi-starvation she had undergone, she
related to us fully her startling adventures.

After going to the Florida Club she had received a second message
saying that I had been the victim of a street accident, that I had
been taken to St. George’s Hospital. The man who told her so was Owen.
And he, having a car outside, offered to take her to the hospital.
Naturally alarmed and eager to be at my side, she accepted, only to
fall into a well-prepared trap!

In the car she had been seized with dizziness, doped, no doubt. But,
on coming to herself, she found to her horror that she was locked in
an upstairs room in a small and dirty house kept by a foreigner, named
Dufour, and his wife.

She was constantly threatened with death if she shouted for help. But
once or twice in her half-demented state she did shout, and her cries
were no doubt those heard in Finlay Street by the neighbor, Mrs.
Richmond, wife of the draper’s assistant.

Of her removal to the country she had no recollection, for she had
again been doped. At Fulham she had been seized with a sudden illness.
Then, later at the hospital, at Leighton Buzzard, the doctors had
found that from time to time drugs had been given her. All of which
had aggravated her condition until she was so ill at the time of her
discovery that she could not have lived another week under such
conditions.

Happily, she was snatched from the grave just in time. After a
fortnight with her mother at Eastbourne she had almost regained her
normal health.

Naturally, I spent all the time I could with her, and my blood boiled
when she related the ill-treatment and insults meted out to her by her
father’s vindictive enemies.

Often, when alone, I held her fondly in my arms and kissed her
passionately upon the lips. Nevertheless, my senses were ever benumbed
by the terrible knowledge of that tell-tale entry at Somerset House.

From her, as indeed from everyone, I preserved strictly the secret of
my marriage. But the appalling fact obsessed me day and night. I dare
not attempt to sue for a divorce for fear of the scandal it must
certainly entail. Illona was my enemy, and if I attempted to free
myself she would, I knew, rise against me and do her worst.

Several weeks went by.

I was compelled to make two journeys abroad--one to Lord Oxenwood at
the League of Nations at Geneva, the other by the Sud Express to
Madrid, returning on the day following my arrival.

Meanwhile, the Press had reported the dramatic arrest of Owen, Dufour,
and Booth. They had been charged at Bow Street with the smash-and-grab
robbery from the shop-window of Appleyard’s, the well-known jewelers
in Old Bond Street. And, after a remand, they had been committed for
trial at the London Sessions. To the intense chagrin of the prisoners,
Mr. Gell, K.C., had been instructed by the Director of Public
Prosecutions to conduct the case against them. Well they knew that
their bitter reprisals against the great lawyer would go against them.
Joan, they were well aware, had been discovered, and had related her
whole sensational story.

As a matter of fact, her father was furious, even though he was
grateful that his daughter had been restored to them. Nevertheless,
his anger against Owen knew no bounds.

As for me, I was in an overwhelming quandary.

My own guilt held me speechless.

Day followed day, yet I constantly feared lest one or another of the
prisoners might give information against me. For indeed, they must
have suspected that I had put the police on the track of the young
scoundrel Owen, with the disastrous results to them.

The police, of course, had no idea that the gang of shop-window
thieves was affiliated with the cosmopolitan gang under the desperate
motor-bandit, Felix Zuroff.

It was only long afterward that I discovered from Lisely Hatten, or
Hattenescu--the Roumanian girl who had always acted as my friend and
who, having cut herself adrift from the gang, married a respectable
banker’s clerk--the truth concerning that well-remembered night in
Camberwell. It seems that the Soviet Government had disposed of about
half the Imperial Russian Crown jewels, together with those filched
from the fashionable jewelers’ shops in Leningrad and Moscow. The
remaining half of the jewels of the Romanoffs was being sent in charge
of a special messenger and two armed guards, to be delivered in
Antwerp to a rich international syndicate which had arranged to
purchase them for two and a half millions sterling.

In fear that the train might be wrecked by robbers, the jewels were
sent by fast motor car from Moscow to the town of Zdolbunow, on the
Polish frontier, whence they were to be conveyed by train across to
Belgium. Twenty miles before the frontier was reached there appeared
suddenly in the night three cars upon the road. In the first was
Zuroff and three men. They ran the Soviet car into a ditch, and, after
a fierce encounter, shot dead the courier, the driver, and the two
guards. Afterwards they made off to Zdolbunow with their booty. The
railway authorities, warned from Moscow of the official courier’s
arrival, and never dreaming of the raid, welcomed the bandits; and
three of them were soon in the train on their way to Warsaw and
Berlin. The others--including Illona, Dufour, and Owen--traveled as
ordinary passengers by the same train. But at Lublin, half way to
Warsaw, they all alighted. Two cars awaited them, and they
disappeared, subsequently arriving at Vienna, and getting to London
via Switzerland, by the Arlberg Express.

On the foggy night in Camberwell they were examining their booty in
that small, stuffy room which was the London meeting-place of the
notorious and elusive gang, and into which I had so unfortunately
stumbled.

At that hour the girl Hatten had taken compassion on me, and, since
her happy marriage, I, on more than one occasion, have thanked her for
allowing me possession of the most precious of the senses--my
eyesight.

Still vividly I remember that old rickety table piled with jewels of
such magnitude that my eyes had been dazzled, and of the dark,
sinister face of the man who had emulated the infamous Bonnot, the
motor bandit, and whose daring crimes had become the terror of the
Continental police.

I compared his imperious appearance in that squalid working-class
house in Camberwell with the luxury and ease in which he lived in
retirement in his flower-embowered flat in Lausanne--the man who in
his great criminal coup had taken the lion’s share of jewels worth two
and a half million pounds.

But all this was of no assistance to me. Two hard facts obsessed me.
The defiant Felix Zuroff, the most notorious motor bandit of the
century and the inventor of the musical code, had not released me from
my unwilling bondage. Neither could I cast off the shackles which
bound me forever to that ugly, ill-formed adventuress who called
herself Illona.

Though occupying one of the most trusted offices at Downing Street, I
was, nevertheless, an expert jewel-thief. Recollections of that
wonderful rope of stolen pearls which had reposed in a hollow book in
my room, held me bewildered. Sometimes with excuses and untruths
forced to my lips by Joan, and the ever-present fear of denunciation
to the police, I felt myself on the verge of madness.

I put the situation plainly to you, my reader. Had you awakened, as
from a trance, to find yourself to be an expert jewel-thief, married
to a rouged and made-up old hag whose criminal record was known, and
yet you were engaged to a sweet, innocent girl whom you adored--how, I
ask, would you--how would you have acted?




 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.
 CONCLUSION

The night was hot and stifling in London.

Everyone who could manage it was away in the country, or at the sea.
The West End was like a deserted desert, and half the clubs, including
my own, were closed for cleaning. We had hospitality at the Royal
Automobile, which I, as a club man, liked only for its cock-and-hen
restaurant.

I had been up at home--for the governor was at Hipwell during the
recess--and had arrived back at Sackville Street only at eight o’clock
that evening. At nine, while I ate my dinner alone at the Automobile,
a waiter called me to the telephone.

It was Joan’s father, who asked me to meet him at the Carlton Club,
close by, in half an hour.

“I must see you, my boy,” he said urgently. “Something has happened. I
can’t tell you over the ’phone. Don’t fail to come over to me.”

Such a message I could not disobey. Punctually I met him in the great
hall of the well-known political club. Forthwith he took me up into
one of the private rooms.

“Look here, Lionel,” he said very seriously. “You’ve never been frank
with me! Now, tell me the whole truth.” And his big dark eyes fixed
themselves on me--the eyes of the greatest legal cross-examiner of his
time.

Under that keen, searching glance of his there had flinched murderers,
and criminals of more or less notoriety who had gone down in the
police annals of Great Britain as notorious cases. As a cross-examiner
no one had ever superseded him at the criminal Bar. The late Sir
Edward Marshall Hall had been acknowledged to be a great criminologist
and a marvelous advocate. But stout old John Gell, with his jelly-like
stomach when he laughed, was declared to be on a par with the dead
pleader who had been such a prominent member of the Crimes Club.

John Gell, K.C., had taken Sir Edward’s place in the public
estimation, and perhaps deservedly so. He had been called to the Bar
on the same day as Sir Hawley Hayes, the Director of Public
Prosecutors, and they had been life-long friends, ever since both were
glad enough to have their briefs marked with two guineas to appear in
County Court cases.

“Joan has gone with her mother to dine with Lady Tickencote,” he said,
glancing at the closed door. “I should have gone, but I wanted to see
you on a matter of extreme urgency.” I noticed on his broad,
clean-shaven face a look of mystery that I had never before seen
there.

“Now, look here, Lionel!” he said again in a hard voice such as he
used towards a hostile witness in court. “Why haven’t you been quite
open with me?”

I sat staring at him, unable to utter a word.

What could he know?

“Ah, I see you hesitate, my boy! And, after all, quite naturally,” he
said, with a faint smile. “Read that!” And he placed in my hands a
typed memorandum headed: “From the Assistant Commissioner,
Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, S.W.”

My eyes fell upon a statement which held me breathless. I sat
staggered, speechless, as one in a dream. The words I read were:


 “The prisoner Dufour, on remand to the London Sessions yesterday, made
 a statement to the Governor of Brixton Prison, that the criminal Tuggy
 Wilson was shot by a jealous woman known as Illona Hipwell, a member
 of the criminal gang. In consequence Superintendent Nethersole this
 afternoon went to the house in Sheen Lane, where the woman was in
 hiding, but before he could arrest her on suspicion she committed
 suicide by swallowing prussic acid. A marriage certificate found in
 the dead woman’s possession shows her to have been the wife of Mr.
 Lionel Hipwell of Sackville Street, Piccadilly, who is well-known to
 you.”


Below was scribbled “C.L.,” the initials of Mr. Cunningham Lee.

The typed words danced before my eyes. Death, the penalty of a crime,
had broken the fetters that bound me to the ill-shapen woman who had
so cleverly deceived and enmeshed me, and I was free--_free to marry
Joan!_

After the first few moments in which I realized all that the tragic
occurrence meant to me, I turned to my love’s father, and in very
lame, halting sentences, I fear, told him of my many strange and
bitter experiences, of the two years’ blank in my life in which I had
become an expert jewel-thief. I told him, too, of my accident in Rome
which had reunited the threads of my lost memory, and brought me to
realize the ghastly truth of my own impossible position.

Without seeking to conceal one single fact concerning either my
follies, my offences, or my undesirable friends, I poured out my soul
to the one man, save my father, in whom I trusted, and begged of him
his advice.

He heard me through, making few comments. At last, after a brief
silence, in which his legal mind worked quickly, he said:

“Lionel, you certainly have been more sinned against than sinning. I
feel certain that the world would forgive you your offences which were
committed while your brain was in an abnormal condition on account of
that drug administered to you with malice aforethought. As regards the
criminal Felix Zuroff, guilty though he is, no doubt, we must
recollect that it was through his warning to you of the woman Illona’s
intentions that we discovered poor Joan, just at the crucial moment
when delay must certainly have resulted in my poor child’s death.”

“But Zuroff has refused to release me!” I pointed out despairingly.
“Already Illona has cast suspicions upon me by denouncing me as being
in possession of Lady Rathgormly’s pearls.”

“Happily the public knows nothing of your connection with these
people, my dear Lionel--neither are they likely to know. Nethersole is
in ignorance that it was the woman now dead who denounced you
anonymously, so why should we disclose anything further?”

“I may be denounced by others,” I remarked despondently.

“Not if you make your peace with Zuroff,” replied the eminent counsel.
“And surely that need not present any great difficulty. He is
apparently living in retirement on his ill-gotten gains. Therefore a
promise of silence on your part will effect a firm compact between
you. Appeal to him again--and I feel you will not do so in vain.”

“I will follow your advice,” I declared promptly, full of heartfelt
thanks for his generous counsel.

“As for myself, knowing all that I do, I shall at once make excuse and
withdraw from the prosecution of the prisoners,” said the well known
King’s Counsel. “I could not act in such circumstances.”

He returned his brief next day.

At the trial on the following Monday, Owen, Dufour, and Booth were all
three found guilty of the smash-and-grab jewel raid at Appleyard’s and
sentenced. The first got five years’ penal servitude. The others got
three years each. While Dufour’s wife and the woman who had held Joan
in bondage--though nothing came out in the trial concerning my love’s
sufferings--each received a sentence of eighteen months as
accomplices.

A few days later I carried dispatches again to Lord Oxenwood at
Geneva. And, after delivering them, went on to Lausanne where, on the
same night, I had a long interview with the notorious bandit Zuroff.

His first words were to congratulate me on my freedom from the woman
who had been my most bitter enemy. Then, after I had begged of him to
release me, pointing out that my further association with him must
inevitably prove a danger to us both, he at last reluctantly consented
to a firm agreement which secured absolute silence for silence. This
we exchanged in writing, but in a very guarded way, of course.

When he handed me what was really my passport to peace and happiness,
I took it, I think, with perhaps the greatest satisfaction I have ever
experienced. Besides, when a few days later I handed it in confidence
to Joan’s father, he unhesitatingly gave his consent to our marriage.

That same night of our public engagement Joan, when alone with me, put
two questions to me which I had much difficulty in answering.
Apparently she had received an anonymous letter telling her of my
marriage with Illona, and she asked me for the truth. The second
question concerned the stolen bracelet she had discovered in my
pocket.

Both were, indeed, matters which I found considerable difficulty in
satisfactorily explaining. However, I called her father into the room,
and before him told her the truth, which he himself corroborated.

Afterwards I held her in my arms and kissed her passionately--the
first kiss since she had received her parents’ consent to our union.

 * * * * * * * *

With greatest pleasure I here record that on the day of our wedding at
St. Mary Abbot, Kensington, my father and my father-in-law became
reconciled, a fact which gave all of us the most supreme satisfaction.

Felix Zuroff, the most daring and desperate jewel-thief Europe has
ever known and whose ramifications ran through the whole Continent,
restored Lady Rathgormly’s pearls to her, at my suggestion. Shortly
after that he died suddenly of heart-failure.

Visitors to the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard, where pieces of
evidence of great crimes are preserved, will find the actual piece of
sparkling aquamarine with the Double Nought upon it, which I carried
from Rome to the man Owen in London. They will find, as well, the
three double noughts of the key to one of the most ingenious of
criminal secret codes ever devised.

 THE END




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. cats-paw/catspaw/cat’s paw,
Jove/jove, motor-bandit/motor bandit, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

[Chapter One]

Change “of Hipwell Hall, near Bulwick, _Northamtonshire_” to
_Northamptonshire_.

[Chapter Two]

“Oh! I suppose it was a crime of _jealously_” to _jealousy_.

“They were discussing it in the office _today_” to _to-day_.

[Chapter Four]

“upon the table was a quantity of old-fashioned _jewelery_” to
_jewelry_.

[Chapter Five]

“held my shackled hands in front of my face to _word_ off her attack”
to _ward_.

[Chapter Seventeen]

“with dispatches for _Brusssels_, Berne, and Vienna” to _Brussels_.

[Chapter Eighteen]

“my signature, which I _scribbed_ off, hurriedly” to _scribbled_.

[Chapter Twenty]

“the thief would not _atempt_ to go by train to London” to _attempt_.

[Chapter Twenty-One]

“And, peer and _politican_, magnate and mechanic, lawyer and laborer”
to _politician_.

“I’ll be really angry _wtih_ you in a minute” to _with_.

[Chapter Twenty-Four]

“we reached the little landing-stage of Evian-les-_Baines_ to _Bains_.

[Chapter Twenty-Five]

“I quite _inadvertantly_ stumbled into your private affairs” to
_inadvertently_.

[Chapter Twenty-Seven]

“My orders are to arrest him on _supsicion_of being implicated” to
_suspicion_.

 [End of text]






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