CHAPTERXVIII.WHAT DOCTOR JOHNSON KNEW.
There had been several rather startling suicides during the season which was now ending, of men and women of social standing, and in every case the usual verdict had been returned. The events had created a certain amount of interest; theories to account for the tragedies had been advanced; then the nine days’ wonder had subsided and London life had gone on again as usual.
When, however, no less than seven men and five women of high rank and apparently without a care in the world had ended their lives within the first three weeks of July, the newspapers had begun to agitate to know the reason of this epidemic of suicides which exceeded even the epidemic of 1918, when Lord Hope-Cooper, Viscount Molesley, the Honorable Vera Froissart, Madame Leonora Vandervelt, Sir Stephen Lethbridge, Henry Hartsilver, and others, had died by their own hand.
In Society, too, everybody had begun to talk. The mystery of Lord Froissart’s suicide comparatively recently, when his body had been found at the foot of the cliffs at Bournemouth, had never been solved. Now the hot weather was held by some to be responsible for the series of tragedies, but this theory was not general. Interviewed onthe subject of the “epidemic” several eminent psychologists and scientists expounded their views in more or less complex language, the meaning of which most people failed to grasp.
Indeed, the majority of those interviewed endeavored to convince the public that the series of tragedies was due to whatever cause they themselves happened to be interested in. Thus the spiritualists had theories concerning “souls” and “vampires” and the vengeance of people long dead; ecclesiastics were perfectly certain the prevalence of suicide was due to men’s, and especially to women’s, sinful way of living; followers of certain unconventional physicians’ views on eugenics attributed the outbreak to the effects of “unwholesome environment,” though in what way the dead people’s environment had been unwholesome they did not explain; while advocates of early Victorianism were ready to “prove” that the tragedies would have been unthinkable in their young days.
All such speculation of course led nowhere, and served only to increase anxiety as well as alarm. The theory which enlisted most adherents was that folk lavishly endowed with this world’s goods were in the habit of exercising so little self-control that eventually their minds became affected, and finally unbalanced. This was, to some extent, the view held by Doctor Johnson, and he told Blenkiron as much when, happening to meet him one day at his club, their conversation drifted to the prevalent topic.
“I am anxious about our common friend, Charlie Preston,” Blenkiron said presently. “Have you seen him lately?”
“Not since Henley week,” Johnson replied. “What is the matter with him?”
“I am certain he has something on his mind; he appears to me to have changed enormously within the last week or so.”
“In what way?”
“All the ‘vim’ seems to have gone out of him. He seems to be always preoccupied, always thinking—thinking. Often when I speak to him he doesn’t answer; in fact I don’t believe he hears. He used not to be like that.”
“He is engaged to be married.”
“I know, but I am positive that isn’t the reason. If it is, heaven prevent my ever becoming engaged!” and Blenkiron smiled rather grimly.
“Then to what do you attribute it?”
“I don’t attribute it. There is nothing to which I can attribute it. But I tell you this in confidence, Johnson—if I heard that Charlie Preston had become another victim to the suicide epidemic I should not be surprised.”
“You don’t say so! He is one of the last men I should have thought capable of that. When could I see him, I wonder? I should like to have a talk with him, after what you say.”
“Why not ask him to lunch one day? Oddly enough, Johnson, Miss Hagerston, whom he is to marry, has greatly changed too. This is not imagination on my part, I can assure you.”
But before Johnson could invite Preston to lunch, something happened.
This was a visit which Johnson received from Cora Hartsilver; she had become acquainted with him about the time when Yootha was in trouble regarding the pearl necklace.
Cora had made an appointment by telephone, and during the afternoon she called.
“I have come to see you,” she said, “about my friend, Miss Hagerston, who tells me she had the pleasure of meeting you at Henley.”
“Yes, and I had the pleasure of congratulating her upon her engagement. She is not indisposed, I hope?”
“Indeed she is, seriously indisposed, though not in the way you mean. She is mentally indisposed, if I may put it so.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Can you give me a few particulars?”
“Well, she is staying with me at present, and has been since Henley week. She asked me if she might come to stay with me because she could no longer sleep at night in her flat—she got frightened and had terrible nightmares, she said. That she has something on her mind I am absolutely convinced; yet though we are such intimate friends she positively refuses to tell me anything, though she as good as admits that she is worried. So I thought I would take the liberty of asking your advice without telling her.”
“Hadn’t I better see her?”
“I think not, at least not yet. Your calling tosee her would arouse her suspicion, because I have asked her once or twice to let me ask a doctor to call, and each time she has strongly opposed the suggestion.”
“Is she unhappy at the thought of her approaching marriage?”
“Indeed no! She is terribly in love. In fact, I tremble to think what would happen to her if any mishap befell Captain Preston. So strongly do I feel on that point that sometimes I wonder if she has some secret cause to believe that some mishap may befall him. He seems greatly worried too.”
“So I understand.”
“Why, who told you?”
“His great friend, Blenkiron.”
“Well, Doctor Johnson, what do you suggest?”
For a minute the doctor did not answer.
“You say the change in Miss Hagerston dates from Henley Regatta?” he said at last.
“From the morning of the third day. She went to the Regatta on the second day only. She went with Captain Preston.”
“That was the day I met them both on Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s house-boat. They were then both in the best of spirits, apparently, and looked radiantly happy.”
Again he pondered, his brow slightly contracted.
“Where did Miss Hagerston sleep that night?” he asked suddenly.
This was a question Cora had not expected. She colored violently. Then she said awkwardly:
“Oh, at her flat in Knightsbridge, I suppose.”
“You don’t know for certain?”
“No. How should I?”
“You say that you and Miss Hagerston are great friends, Mrs. Hartsilver, so I thought that probably you would know. She did not, I suppose, spend the night on Preston’s house-boat?”
“How could she, Doctor Johnson, alone with him!”
The doctor looked at her keenly, but she would not meet his gaze.
“Why not be frank with me, Mrs. Hartsilver,” he said, lowering his voice. “She did spend the night on the boat with him, and you know it.”
Cora looked terribly alarmed.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, doctor,” she exclaimed, “don’t let anybody know! Think what would be said, the inference that would be drawn, especially as they are engaged. I will be frank with you, then. I was with friends at Henley, and Yootha was to have met me at ten o’clock at night, and we were to have returned to town together. But she did not meet me, and I, thinking she must have gone back to London alone, returned with my friends. As soon as I got home I rang up her flat, and her maid said she had not come in; the maid was sitting up, awaiting her. I was dreadfully upset, and blamed myself for having missed her.
“Next morning, about noon, she came to my house, looking very ill and worried. She said that she and Captain Preston had forgotten all aboutthe time until it was too late to meet me, also by then the last train had gone. Captain Preston tried everywhere to find a bed for her, but there was not one to be had. Finally there was nothing for it but for her to return with the captain to his house-boat, where he gave her his bed and slept himself in his servant’s bed, while his servant slept outside in a deck-chair. That is what she told me, and I believe every word, because she couldn’t lie to me. There was no harm in it at all, believe me, there was not, but of course it would not do for people to know. Nobody knows but you and Captain Preston’s servant, a man absolutely to be trusted not to talk.”
“And Miss Hagerston’s maid. At least she knows that her mistress did not come home.”
Johnson began to pace the room.
“Of course I shall treat what you have just told me as strictly confidential,” he said, “but the fact remains that we don’t know what happened during the time Preston and Miss Hagerston left Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s house-boat, and the time, late at night, when they returned to his own house-boat.”
“What do you imply?” Cora asked sharply, drawing herself up.
“Forgive me if I have conveyed a wrong impression,” Johnson said, stopping in his walk. “I assure you I did not mean to imply what you think. Nothing was further from my mind. No, my thoughts were traveling in quite a different channel. Tell me, Mrs. Hartsilver, are Miss Hagerston andCaptain Preston now on terms of intimacy with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson? They appeared to be the other day, and I was surprised, because I was under the impression that their acquaintanceship with her had for some time past been, how shall I put it—rather strained?”
“Indeed it was more than rather strained,” Cora answered quickly. “Mrs. Robertson detests Yootha almost as much as she detests me, and I think I am safe in saying that she bears Captain Preston no love at all. As we are speaking in confidence I may as well tell you that Miss Hagerston, Captain Preston, myself, and one or two others have for some months past suspected Jessica Mervyn-Robertson and her friends, Mr. Aloysius Stapleton and Mr. Archie La Planta, of being impostors of some sort, if nothing worse; we have reasons for suspecting this. Consequently we have been making private inquiries about them of the Metropolitan Secret Agency and other sources, and this, I think, they have got to know. Captain Preston and Yootha accepted their invitation to tea on their house-boat chiefly out of curiosity, I believe, and were greatly surprised at the exceptionally friendly reception accorded them. I think they made a mistake in associating with Mrs. Robertson at all in the circumstances.”
Johnson smiled.
“As that is so, Mrs. Hartsilver, perhaps you will admit me to your little group which suspects ‘Mrs. Jessica’ and her two satellites of not being allthat they seem to be. Tell me, wasn’t Captain Preston in Shanghai at one time?”
“Yes, I have heard him say so.”
“Well, from the middle of 1910 to the end of 1912 I practiced in Hong Kong. Englishmen, as I dare say you know, become very clannish when exiled in places of that sort. I used to visit Shanghai rather frequently, where I had alocum tenens, and if Mrs. Jessica and a notorious young woman named Angela Robertson are not the same—oh, but they are the same, I am perfectly positive they are. Stapleton, too, lived in Shanghai for a while—that must have been in 1911. He made the Astor Hotel his home, remember, and though I only saw him once or twice, and never met him to speak to, mylocum tenenshad all sorts of extraordinary stories about him, and mylocumwas not a man to heed idle gossip.”
“Stapleton and Fobart Robertson—the adventurer whom Mrs. Jessica married—were hand in glove at that time. Then one day Fobart Robertson found Shanghai too hot to hold him—and if you had ever been in Shanghai, Mrs. Hartsilver, you would know how hot that must have been—and left hurriedly, whereupon Stapleton calmly stepped into his shoes and became to all intents Mr. Robertson—at the club they nicknamed him ‘Fobart’s understudy.’ It created something of a scandal amongst the British population, but in the East the morals of most Europeans are on a lower plane than over here, and after a while theliaisoncame to be winked at,so that Angela Robertson was once more received as she had been when living with her husband, and Stapleton, being well-to-do and extremely hospitable, and consequently popular, was no longer cold-shouldered. Other friends of Angela Robertson’s in Shanghai were, I remember, Mrs. Stringborg—yes, the woman whose necklace was removed—and a queer fellow called Timothy Macmahon. It was Macmahon’s widow to whom Lord Froissart left all his property, if you remember. Does all this interest you, Mrs. Hartsilver, or am I boring you?”
“Boring me!” Cora exclaimed. “I am thrilled! Captain Preston knows nothing of all this, I suppose?”
“Not so far as I am aware. Of course it would not do for me to say outside what I have just told you in confidence. Having no evidence in support of my statements I might get myself into serious trouble, to say nothing of ruining my practice.”
“Oh, but you will tell Captain Preston?”
“I would sooner you told him, Mrs. Hartsilver.”
Cora smiled.
“So that if either of us should get into trouble it would not be you?”
“Precisely,” Johnson replied with a laugh. He was silent for some moments.
“And now you may think what I am about to say is strange, Mrs. Hartsilver, but I have rather keen intuition, and something seems to tell me that whatever happened to Preston and Miss Hagerston that evening at Henley, which apparently upsetthem, Angela Robertson and Stapleton had a hand in it. The idea may sound ridiculous, but that is my strong impression.”
“But what can have happened to them, doctor?”
“I have no idea—at present. Can’t you induce Miss Hagerston to tell you? You and she are such friends.”
“I am afraid not, but I will try.”
“Supposing, for instance, that in the ardor of their love for each other they should have been discovered in some apparently compromising, though in reality quite harmless situation—and been blackmailed. Such things happen oftener than you might suppose; not that I suppose you ever think about such things.”
Cora glanced at him with an expression of horror.
“Is that really so?” she asked.
Johnson nodded.
“Almost any man or woman, not excepting the most virtuous, may under certain circumstances get let in for blackmail, and the wonder to me is that more are not blackmailed. Look at this so-called ‘epidemic’ of suicide that everybody is talking about and that the papers are full of. My private opinion is that some, at any rate, are victims of blackmail, who have taken their lives to escape public exposure.”
“But blackmailed by whom?”
“Ah, there you have me. The whole thing reads to me as though the victims, if blackmailed, were charged by the same person, or it may have been by members of some gang, or an organization ofsome sort. Don’t you remember the series of suicides which took place a year ago and that—oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hartsilver. I had quite forgotten.”
“Pray don’t apologize, Doctor Johnson. I am most interested in what you say. I wonder—I wonder if poor Henry——”
“I knew your husband slightly, Mrs. Hartsilver, and I must say I was amazed when I read of the tragedy. The last man—the very last man——”
“So everybody said. Blackmail! Now I wonder if——”
Unconsciously she stopped, for strange thoughts, reflections, memories of little incidents, were crowding in upon her. Then quickly her train of thought shot away into a different channel. The man she had loved so dearly, young Sir Stephen Lethbridge—the whole of the terrible affair came back to her, as though it had happened the day before.
“Exactly the way Molesley made away with himself,” again she heard her husband’s voice, unemotional, cold as ice. And in Viscount Molesley’s room a quantity of burnt papers, she remembered reading, had been found in the grate and scattered beside the body.