CHAPTERV.BEHIND THE DOOR.
A tall, slim man of aristocratic appearance, dressed in a tweed suit and with his hat on, stood at the head of the stairs. He had a walking-stick in his right hand, in his left an extinct electric torch.
“I think you will remember me, Madame Lenoir,” he said quietly.
The woman stared hard at him for a moment, then a look of recognition spread over her face.
“Ha, Milord Froissart!” she exclaimed in a tone of relief. “Ha, but you frightened me, you frighten us both. But how did milord come in? And what is it you want so late at night?”
“I want to see your partner, Alix Stothert. Why has he gone downstairs?”
“To see who might be there, milord. We thought we heard somebody in the house, so he go down to search about. And it was only you? Then why did you not say?”
“Because when he opened the door I saw a pistol in his hand, so I thought he might shoot before he recognized me. Listen, I hear him.”
The baize door in the hall had opened and shut again, and Stothert now stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up in amazement.
“Lord Froissart!” he exclaimed. “Well, of all the wonders!”
He came quickly up the stairs, and a minute later the two men and Camille Lenoir were together in the room from which Stothert and his companion had just emerged.
“This is a most perplexing thing,” Stothert said, as he pushed a chair towards the ‘visitor.’ “I wish you would tell me, first of all, how you got in, Lord Froissart.”
“Certainly. I came to see you this afternoon about six o’clock, and when I arrived at the house I found the door open—some workmen were attending to your electric light in the hall. I walked in, meaning to come up to your office, but I went a floor too high, took a wrong turning off the landing, and found myself in a passage along which I wandered until I came to a door which I opened and passed through, still trying to find your office. It is a heavy mahogany door, and as I shut it behind me the handle came off in my hand. While trying to refit the handle I accidentally pushed the metal stem through the socket in the door, and at once I realized I was a prisoner, for the passage led into a room from which there is no other outlet.”
He paused a moment, and then continued:
“When I found it impossible to open the door by any means, I hammered on it with my stick, and shouted. In fact I made all the noise I could, but apparently you didn’t hear me.”
“Certainly we did not,” Stothert answered. “That room is a long way off, and there are several doors between it and the landing. How did you get out eventually?”
Lord Froissart held out his walking stick.
“With the help of this,” he said. “In desperation I finally set to work to grind the ferrule square by rubbing it on the hearthstone in that room—I fear I have disfigured the stone, but that, of course, I will make good. It was a long job, I can assure you—and it ruined my stick. Here, take your torch,” he added with a laugh, as he handed it to him.
Stothert and his companion looked considerably relieved.
“A most unfortunate mishap,” the former remarked, with a quick glance at the woman. “And you gave us quite a fright,” he added. “We thought burglars had broken in.”
“Well, I thought so too, for some minutes,” Froissart said lightly. “Do you always work as late as this, if it is not an impertinent question?” He looked about the room. “I see you have been hard at it.”
“No, we rarely work late, but to-night we had on hand rather an urgent matter. And may I ask, m’lord, what you wished to see me about when you came here this afternoon? Oh, excuse me, you surely must be hungry after your long imprisonment—I feel that indirectly I am to blame for the mishap. Camille,” he turned to the woman, “go and see if you can find something for Lord Froissartto eat. I am afraid m’lord there is not much in the house.”
“Please don’t trouble about food on my account,” Froissart urged. “I really am not hungry, and the blunder was my fault. And now, with regard to the matter I wanted to see you about. You remember, of course, the sad affair of my poor daughter’s death?”
“Quite well. The papers were full of it, which must have caused you pain.”
“It did—great pain. It seems to me that the newspapers have no consideration for people’s feelings—they have no delicacy, no mercy.”
“I fully agree with you.”
“Well now, in spite of the jury’s verdict that my daughter died of shock, it must have been patent to you, and I fear also to others, that the poor child took her life. Why she should have done so has puzzled me ever since, for I can think no reason which might have prompted her to do it. She had, however, a friend, I may say a great friend, of whom it now appears that nobody knows anything except that she is apparently a very well-to-do woman. Strange rumors concerning her have been repeated to me of late, and putting two and two together, it seems to me possible that this friend of hers might, if she wished to, be able to solve the mystery. Now, why won’t she? Can you tell me that?”
“Who is the woman, m’lord?” Stothert asked. “Anything you tell us will, of course, be considered private and confidential.”
“Yes, please consider this private. The woman you will probably know. Her name is Mervyn-Robertson.” Stothert and his companion exchanged a meaning glance. “Ah, I see you do know her,” Lord Froissart said quickly.
“Indeed we do, m’lord, that is to say, by name. We know a lot about her.”
“And is what you know favorable, or is it—er—the other thing?”
“Certainly ‘the other thing.’ More than that we must not say. And so you wish us to find out who and what she is, where she comes from, and so forth?”
“If you can.”
“That will not be difficult. Already we can tell you that her birthplace was Australia; also that her parents were sheep farmers in Queensland.”
“Oh! That sounds quite respectable.”
“It sounds respectable, but....”
“Yes?”
“Things, you know, are not always what they sound. Are you likely, m’lord, to attend the big ball to be given at the Albert Hall on the twenty-ninth of this month?”
“I had not heard of it. Who is giving the ball?”
“Mr. Stapleton and Mr. La Planta, though I believe they don’t themselves know who will act as hostess. They are friends of Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, as you probably know.”
“Yes, I have heard of them, though I don’t know them personally. I recollect we happened to speakof them when I came here to consult you about my poor daughter’s death. I hoped then that your wide knowledge of what is happening privately among well-known people soon might succeed in throwing light on the cause of that terrible tragedy, but unfortunately you were not able to do so. And now tell me—why do you wish to know if I am likely to attend this ball? Surely you must know that I never go out now?”
“It might be to your advantage, m’lord, to do so on this occasion, though why it might be I must not tell you yet. More, m’lord. I would, if I may, urge you to attend it.”
“Of course if you think it will serve some good purpose, Stothert.”
“I don’t merely think so, I am almost sure it would. I believe it might indirectly help us in our investigations concerning Miss Froissart’s strange death.”
“In that case I certainly will go.”
“And you will advise us in advance of the costume you will wear? Please don’t fail to do that. A mask and fancy costume are to be obligatory, I hear.”
When Lord Froissart had gone, Stothert and his partner breathed more freely. It was true that their “firm” calling itself the Metropolitan Secret Agency, had obtained a wonderful reputation for getting secret information about people’s private lives, but rumors were rife regarding the methods it employed to achieve its aim. Women of high station, anxious to rid themselves of their husbands;husbands desiring to prove their wives’ alleged infidelity, and many others, now almost invariably went straight to the Metropolitan Secret Agency, or “the house with the bronze face” as Society people too had come to call it, and generally within a week the Agency would put them in possession of enough indisputable evidence to damn the suspected party irrevocably and forever.
Certainly the amount the Agency knew about the private lives and affairs of more than half the peerage was astonishing. How they came by it all was a problem which rival agencies tried in vain to solve, and, having failed to solve it, some would proceed to vent their spleen by spreading false stories concerning the house with the bronze knocker, its inmates, and the way the business carried on there was conducted.
Not that either Stothert or his French partner cared in the least what was said about them. As the former was fond of remarking: “They can say what they like about us, but they can’t prove the truth of even a single statement.”
As Lord Froissart drove homeward in a taxi, his thoughts became centered on the house with the bronze face, and its strange tenants. The Metropolitan Secret Agency had been in existence less than three years, yet already it was looked upon as the premier inquiry agency in London. Though it never advertised, everybody in Society knew of its existence, and the rapidity with which it supplied information, which was invariably accurate, was common talk.
Then, who were Stothert and his companion, Madame Camille Lenoir? He had been told that they had come to London together and started their strange business without friends or introductions. Had they other partners? And if so, who were they? Madame Leonora Vandervelt, the beautiful adventuress who had committed suicide by throwing herself out of an hotel window, had been convicted on each of the three occasions she had appeared in the divorce court on evidence supplied by the Metropolitan Secret Agency. Twice the well-known Society woman, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, had visited the house with the bronze face with reference to thefts of some of her valuable jewelry, and each time the thief had been caught within a fortnight. Then her friend Stapleton when his Fiat car was stolen while he was choosing shirts at Wing’s in Piccadilly—this fact mentioned in Court created some amusement—had gone direct to Bloomsbury and interviewed Alix Stothert, with the result that both car and thief had been traced to Llandudno, and the thief arrested there while actually in the car.
That and a dozen similar examples of the Metropolitan Secret Agency’s amazing efficiency occurred to him, and the more he thought about the Agency, the more he marveled. Another question he asked himself was why the Agency should have rented that big house in Bloomsbury, seeing that their offices in it occupied apparently no more than four rooms, the rest of the house being in consequence empty and waste space. When he had lost himselfin the house that afternoon he must have wandered, he reflected, into a dozen rooms or more, not one of which was even furnished, though nearly all had carpets. On the previous occasion when he had visited the Agency, he had seen six or eight clerks apparently hard at work, but the only people in authority were Stothert and the rather common Frenchwoman.
And the more he thought, the more puzzling the problem seemed to be. Not the least astonishing thing was that the partners should have found it necessary to continue working so late at night after probably working hard all day. He had, like most people, heard rumors about the house, including the story that people were seen to enter it who never came out again, but to such legends he paid no heed. He had just asked himself if it might not be advisable to deal carefully with this man and woman who treated him always with so much deference and outward courtesy, when the taxi drew up at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate.