Chapter Sixteen.Antonio Speaks Plainly.“You, Antonio!” I gasped, staring at the fellow who, dressed in a dark grey suit and soft black felt hat, presented an appearance of ultra-respectability.“Yes, signore, I am very surprised to find you here—in Rome,” he replied.“Come,” I said abruptly, “tell me what has occurred. Why did you leave London so hurriedly?”“I had some family affairs to attend to,” he answered. “I had to go to my home at Lucca to arrange for the future of my two nephews whose father is just dead. Pietro joined me there.”“And you were joined also by Mr Kirk?” I said.“Ah, no, signore!” protested the thin-faced Italian with an emphatic gesture. “I have not seen him since I left London.”“Are you quite certain of that, Antonio?” I asked slowly, in disbelief, as I looked straight into his face.“Quite. I know that he came abroad, but have no idea of his present whereabouts.”“Now tell me, Antonio,” I urged, “who and what is Mr Kirk?”The Italian shrugged his shoulders, answering:“Ah, signore, you had better not ask. He is a mystery to me—as to you, and as he was to my poor master.”“He killed your master—eh?” I suggested. “Now tell me the truth—once and for all.”“I do not know,” was his quick reply, with a strange flash in his dark eyes. “If he did, then I have no knowledge of it. I slept on the top floor, and heard nothing.”“Who was the man who went to Edinburgh on the night of the tragedy?”“Ah!Dio mio! Do not reopen all that puzzle!” he protested. “I am just as mystified as you yourself, signore.”I looked straight in the man’s face, wondering if he were speaking the truth. His hard, deep-lined countenance was difficult to read. The Italian is such a born diplomatist that his face seldom betrays his thoughts. He can smile upon you sweetly, even though behind his back he grips a dagger ready to strike you to the heart. And so old Antonio’s face was sphinx-like, as all his race.“You saw Leonard Langton at Calais,” I remarked.“He told you that!” gasped the dead man’s servant, with a start. “What did he say of me?”“Nothing, except what was good. He told me that you were a trusted servant of the Professor.”“Ah, my poor, dear master!” echoed the man, his face turned thoughtfully away towards the afterglow. “If I knew—ah,Madonna mia, if I only knew the truth!”“You suspect Kirk?” I suggested. “Why not tell me more?”“I suspect him no more than I suspect others,” was his calm reply. “Be certain, signore, that there is much more behind that terrible affair than you suspect. There was some strong motive for my poor master’s death, depend upon it! But,” he asked, “where did you meet the Signor Langton?”Briefly I related the circumstances of Kirk’s presence in the house, his escape, and the discovery I afterwards made in the laboratory.“You actually found the evidences of the crime had been destroyed!” cried the man. Yet my sharp vigilance detected that beneath his surprise he breathed more freely when I announced the fact that the body of the Professor was no longer existent.“Yes,” I said, after a slight pause, during which my eyes were fixed upon his. “Destroyed—and by Kershaw Kirk, whom I found alone there, with the furnace burning.”The Italian shook his head blankly. Whether he held suspicion of Kirk or not I was unable to determine. They had been friends. That I well knew. But to me it appeared as though they had met in secret after the tragedy, and had quarrelled.I told the man nothing of my journey to Scotland or of the puzzling discoveries I had made; but in reply to his repeated questioning as to why I was in Rome I explained that I was in search of my wife, telling him of the unaccountable manner in which she had been called away from London by means of the forged telegram.“And you say that the signora knew nothing of the affair at Sussex Place?”“Nothing, Antonio. It was not a matter to mention to a woman.”“You suspect Kirk, of course, because his description is very like the man described as being with her in Florence. What motive could he have in enticing her away from you?”“A sinister one, without a doubt,” I said.“But, Antonio, I beg of you to tell me more concerning that man Kirk. You have known him for a long time—eh?”“Four years, perhaps. He was a frequent visitor at the Professor’s, but young Langton hated him. I once overheard Miss Ethelwynn’s lover telling her father some extraordinary story concerning Kirk. But the Professor declined to listen; he trusted his friend implicitly.”“And foolishly so,” I remarked.“Very, for since that I gained knowledge that Kirk, rather than being my master’s friend, was his bitterest enemy. Miss Ethelwynn was the first to discover it. She has been devoted to her father ever since the death of the poor signora.”“But how do you account for that remarkable occurrence behind those locked doors?” I asked, as we stood there in the corner, with the gay chatter of the society of Rome about us; an incongruous situation, surely. “What is your theory?”“Ah, signore, I have none,” he declared emphatically. “How can I have? It is a complete mystery.”“Yes; one equally extraordinary is the fact that Miss Ethelwynn, who was seen by us dead and cold, is yet still alive.”“Alive!” he gasped, with a quick start which showed me that his surprise was genuine. “I—I really cannot believe you, Signor Holford! What proof have you? Why, both you and Kirk declared that she was dead!”“The proof I have is quite conclusive. Leonard Langton spoke to her on the telephone to Broadstairs, and he is now down there with her.”“Impossible, signore!” declared the man, shaking his head dubiously.“When did you last see her?”“She was lying on the couch in the dining-room, as you saw, but at Kirk’s orders she was removed from the house in a four-wheeled cab. I explained to the cabman that she was unwell, as she had unfortunately taken too much wine. Some man—a friend of Kirk’s—went with her.”“And what was their destination?” I demanded.“Ah, signore, I do not know.”“Now, Antonio, please do not lie,” I said reproachfully. “You know quite well that your master’s daughter was removed to a certain house in Foley Street, Tottenham Court Road.”“Why,” he exclaimed, turning slightly pale, and staring at me, “how did you know that?”I laughed, refusing to satisfy his curiosity. In his excitement his accent had become more marked.“Well,” he said at last, “what does it matter if the signorina is still alive, as you say? For my own part, I refuse to believe it until I see her in the flesh with my own eyes.”“Well,” I remarked, “all this is beside the mark, Antonio. I have understood from everyone that you were the devoted and trusted servant of Professor Greer, therefore you surely, as a man of honour, should endeavour to assist in clearing up the mystery, and bringing the real assassin to justice.”The man sighed, saying:“I fear, signore, that will never be accomplished. The mystery has ramifications so wide that one cannot untangle its threads. But,” he added, after a slight pause, “would you object to telling me how you first became acquainted with Signor Kirk?”Deeming it best to humour this man, who undoubtedly possessed certain secret knowledge, I briefly described the means by which Kirk had sought my friendship. And as I did so, I could see the slight smile at the corner of his tightened lips, a smile of satisfaction, it seemed, at the ingenious manner in which I had been misled by his friend.“Then he brought you to Sussex Place on purpose to show you the dead body of my master?”“He did. I had no desire to be mixed up in any such affair, only he begged me to stand his friend, at the same time protesting his innocence.”“His innocence!” exclaimed the Italian fiercely between his clenched teeth.“You believe him guilty, then?” I cried, quick to notice his lapse of attitude.“Ah, no, signore,” he responded, recovering himself the next second, a bland smile overspreading his dark, complex countenance. “You misunderstand me; I suspect nobody.”“But you had a more intimate knowledge of the household, and of the Professor’s friends, than anyone else. Therefore you, surely, have your own suspicions?”“No; until one point of the mystery, which has apparently never occurred to you, has been cleared up, both you and I can only remain in ignorance, as we are at present.”“Why not be quite frank with me, Antonio?” I urged. “I do not believe you are your master’s assassin; I will never believe that! But you are not open with me. Put yourself in my place. I have been entrapped by Kirk into a network of mystery and tragedy, and have lost my wife, who, I fear, is in the hands of conspirators. I have not been to the police, because Kirk urged me not to seek their aid. So—”“No, signore,” he interrupted quickly, “do not tell the police anything. It would be injudicious—fatal!”“Ah!” I cried, “then you are acting in conjunction with Kirk? You, too, are trying to mislead me!”“I am not, signore,” he protested. “On the tomb of my mother,” he declared, making use of the common Italian oath, “I am only acting in your interests. The disappearance of your signora adds mystery to the affair.”“What do you suggest as my next move? If I find Mabel, I care nothing. The tragic affair may remain a mystery for ever. I leave it to others to discover who killed Professor Greer.”“You actually mean that, signore?” he cried. “You would really refrain from seeking further, providing you rediscover your wife?”I was silent a few seconds. His eagerness was sufficient admission of a guilty conscience.“Yes,” I said. “What matter the affairs of others, so long as the wife I love is innocent and at my side? She is the victim of a plot from which I must rescue her.”The Italian gazed again away across the roofs of the Eternal City, now growing more indistinct in the gathering mists.“I fear, Signor Holford,” he at last exclaimed with a sigh, “that you have a very difficult task before you. You are evidently in ignorance of certain curious facts.”“Concerning what?”“Concerning your wife.”“You would cast a slur upon her good name?” I cried excitedly, my anger rising.“Not at all,” was his calm, polite response, his lips parted in a pleasant smile. “You asked me to assist you, and I was about to give you advice—that is, provided that you have told me the truth.”“About what?”“About Miss Ethelwynn—that she still lives.”“Of that there is no doubt,” I said.“And if you found your signora alive and well, you would undertake to make no further inquiry?” he repeated, with undue eagerness.“Ah! You wish to tie me down to that?” I cried. “You do so because you and your friends are in fear. You realise your own peril—eh?”“No,” declared the man at my side; “you still entirely misunderstand me. You are an Englishman, and you mistrust me merely because I am a foreigner. It is a prejudice all you English have, more or less.”“I entertain no prejudice,” I declared hotly. “But to tell you the truth, Antonio, I am tired of all this mystery, and now that Kirk and his friends have alienated me from my wife, I intend to take action.”“In what manner?” he asked calmly.“I shall go to the Questore here, in Rome, and tell the truth. I happen to know him personally.”“And you will mention my name!” he gasped, well knowing probably the drastic measures adopted by the police of his own country.“I shall not be able to avoid mentioning it,” I responded, with a smile.“Bene!” he answered, in a hard, hoarse voice. “And if you did—well, signore, I can promise that you would never again see your signora alive. Go to the Questore now! Tell him all you know! Apply for my arrest! And then wait the disaster that must fall upon you, and upon your missing wife. An unseen hand struck Professor Greer—an unseen hand will most assuredly strike you, as swiftly, as unerringly.” And then facing me defiantly, a grin upon his sinister face, the fellow added: “Silence, signore, is your only guarantee of safety—I assure you!”
“You, Antonio!” I gasped, staring at the fellow who, dressed in a dark grey suit and soft black felt hat, presented an appearance of ultra-respectability.
“Yes, signore, I am very surprised to find you here—in Rome,” he replied.
“Come,” I said abruptly, “tell me what has occurred. Why did you leave London so hurriedly?”
“I had some family affairs to attend to,” he answered. “I had to go to my home at Lucca to arrange for the future of my two nephews whose father is just dead. Pietro joined me there.”
“And you were joined also by Mr Kirk?” I said.
“Ah, no, signore!” protested the thin-faced Italian with an emphatic gesture. “I have not seen him since I left London.”
“Are you quite certain of that, Antonio?” I asked slowly, in disbelief, as I looked straight into his face.
“Quite. I know that he came abroad, but have no idea of his present whereabouts.”
“Now tell me, Antonio,” I urged, “who and what is Mr Kirk?”
The Italian shrugged his shoulders, answering:
“Ah, signore, you had better not ask. He is a mystery to me—as to you, and as he was to my poor master.”
“He killed your master—eh?” I suggested. “Now tell me the truth—once and for all.”
“I do not know,” was his quick reply, with a strange flash in his dark eyes. “If he did, then I have no knowledge of it. I slept on the top floor, and heard nothing.”
“Who was the man who went to Edinburgh on the night of the tragedy?”
“Ah!Dio mio! Do not reopen all that puzzle!” he protested. “I am just as mystified as you yourself, signore.”
I looked straight in the man’s face, wondering if he were speaking the truth. His hard, deep-lined countenance was difficult to read. The Italian is such a born diplomatist that his face seldom betrays his thoughts. He can smile upon you sweetly, even though behind his back he grips a dagger ready to strike you to the heart. And so old Antonio’s face was sphinx-like, as all his race.
“You saw Leonard Langton at Calais,” I remarked.
“He told you that!” gasped the dead man’s servant, with a start. “What did he say of me?”
“Nothing, except what was good. He told me that you were a trusted servant of the Professor.”
“Ah, my poor, dear master!” echoed the man, his face turned thoughtfully away towards the afterglow. “If I knew—ah,Madonna mia, if I only knew the truth!”
“You suspect Kirk?” I suggested. “Why not tell me more?”
“I suspect him no more than I suspect others,” was his calm reply. “Be certain, signore, that there is much more behind that terrible affair than you suspect. There was some strong motive for my poor master’s death, depend upon it! But,” he asked, “where did you meet the Signor Langton?”
Briefly I related the circumstances of Kirk’s presence in the house, his escape, and the discovery I afterwards made in the laboratory.
“You actually found the evidences of the crime had been destroyed!” cried the man. Yet my sharp vigilance detected that beneath his surprise he breathed more freely when I announced the fact that the body of the Professor was no longer existent.
“Yes,” I said, after a slight pause, during which my eyes were fixed upon his. “Destroyed—and by Kershaw Kirk, whom I found alone there, with the furnace burning.”
The Italian shook his head blankly. Whether he held suspicion of Kirk or not I was unable to determine. They had been friends. That I well knew. But to me it appeared as though they had met in secret after the tragedy, and had quarrelled.
I told the man nothing of my journey to Scotland or of the puzzling discoveries I had made; but in reply to his repeated questioning as to why I was in Rome I explained that I was in search of my wife, telling him of the unaccountable manner in which she had been called away from London by means of the forged telegram.
“And you say that the signora knew nothing of the affair at Sussex Place?”
“Nothing, Antonio. It was not a matter to mention to a woman.”
“You suspect Kirk, of course, because his description is very like the man described as being with her in Florence. What motive could he have in enticing her away from you?”
“A sinister one, without a doubt,” I said.
“But, Antonio, I beg of you to tell me more concerning that man Kirk. You have known him for a long time—eh?”
“Four years, perhaps. He was a frequent visitor at the Professor’s, but young Langton hated him. I once overheard Miss Ethelwynn’s lover telling her father some extraordinary story concerning Kirk. But the Professor declined to listen; he trusted his friend implicitly.”
“And foolishly so,” I remarked.
“Very, for since that I gained knowledge that Kirk, rather than being my master’s friend, was his bitterest enemy. Miss Ethelwynn was the first to discover it. She has been devoted to her father ever since the death of the poor signora.”
“But how do you account for that remarkable occurrence behind those locked doors?” I asked, as we stood there in the corner, with the gay chatter of the society of Rome about us; an incongruous situation, surely. “What is your theory?”
“Ah, signore, I have none,” he declared emphatically. “How can I have? It is a complete mystery.”
“Yes; one equally extraordinary is the fact that Miss Ethelwynn, who was seen by us dead and cold, is yet still alive.”
“Alive!” he gasped, with a quick start which showed me that his surprise was genuine. “I—I really cannot believe you, Signor Holford! What proof have you? Why, both you and Kirk declared that she was dead!”
“The proof I have is quite conclusive. Leonard Langton spoke to her on the telephone to Broadstairs, and he is now down there with her.”
“Impossible, signore!” declared the man, shaking his head dubiously.
“When did you last see her?”
“She was lying on the couch in the dining-room, as you saw, but at Kirk’s orders she was removed from the house in a four-wheeled cab. I explained to the cabman that she was unwell, as she had unfortunately taken too much wine. Some man—a friend of Kirk’s—went with her.”
“And what was their destination?” I demanded.
“Ah, signore, I do not know.”
“Now, Antonio, please do not lie,” I said reproachfully. “You know quite well that your master’s daughter was removed to a certain house in Foley Street, Tottenham Court Road.”
“Why,” he exclaimed, turning slightly pale, and staring at me, “how did you know that?”
I laughed, refusing to satisfy his curiosity. In his excitement his accent had become more marked.
“Well,” he said at last, “what does it matter if the signorina is still alive, as you say? For my own part, I refuse to believe it until I see her in the flesh with my own eyes.”
“Well,” I remarked, “all this is beside the mark, Antonio. I have understood from everyone that you were the devoted and trusted servant of Professor Greer, therefore you surely, as a man of honour, should endeavour to assist in clearing up the mystery, and bringing the real assassin to justice.”
The man sighed, saying:
“I fear, signore, that will never be accomplished. The mystery has ramifications so wide that one cannot untangle its threads. But,” he added, after a slight pause, “would you object to telling me how you first became acquainted with Signor Kirk?”
Deeming it best to humour this man, who undoubtedly possessed certain secret knowledge, I briefly described the means by which Kirk had sought my friendship. And as I did so, I could see the slight smile at the corner of his tightened lips, a smile of satisfaction, it seemed, at the ingenious manner in which I had been misled by his friend.
“Then he brought you to Sussex Place on purpose to show you the dead body of my master?”
“He did. I had no desire to be mixed up in any such affair, only he begged me to stand his friend, at the same time protesting his innocence.”
“His innocence!” exclaimed the Italian fiercely between his clenched teeth.
“You believe him guilty, then?” I cried, quick to notice his lapse of attitude.
“Ah, no, signore,” he responded, recovering himself the next second, a bland smile overspreading his dark, complex countenance. “You misunderstand me; I suspect nobody.”
“But you had a more intimate knowledge of the household, and of the Professor’s friends, than anyone else. Therefore you, surely, have your own suspicions?”
“No; until one point of the mystery, which has apparently never occurred to you, has been cleared up, both you and I can only remain in ignorance, as we are at present.”
“Why not be quite frank with me, Antonio?” I urged. “I do not believe you are your master’s assassin; I will never believe that! But you are not open with me. Put yourself in my place. I have been entrapped by Kirk into a network of mystery and tragedy, and have lost my wife, who, I fear, is in the hands of conspirators. I have not been to the police, because Kirk urged me not to seek their aid. So—”
“No, signore,” he interrupted quickly, “do not tell the police anything. It would be injudicious—fatal!”
“Ah!” I cried, “then you are acting in conjunction with Kirk? You, too, are trying to mislead me!”
“I am not, signore,” he protested. “On the tomb of my mother,” he declared, making use of the common Italian oath, “I am only acting in your interests. The disappearance of your signora adds mystery to the affair.”
“What do you suggest as my next move? If I find Mabel, I care nothing. The tragic affair may remain a mystery for ever. I leave it to others to discover who killed Professor Greer.”
“You actually mean that, signore?” he cried. “You would really refrain from seeking further, providing you rediscover your wife?”
I was silent a few seconds. His eagerness was sufficient admission of a guilty conscience.
“Yes,” I said. “What matter the affairs of others, so long as the wife I love is innocent and at my side? She is the victim of a plot from which I must rescue her.”
The Italian gazed again away across the roofs of the Eternal City, now growing more indistinct in the gathering mists.
“I fear, Signor Holford,” he at last exclaimed with a sigh, “that you have a very difficult task before you. You are evidently in ignorance of certain curious facts.”
“Concerning what?”
“Concerning your wife.”
“You would cast a slur upon her good name?” I cried excitedly, my anger rising.
“Not at all,” was his calm, polite response, his lips parted in a pleasant smile. “You asked me to assist you, and I was about to give you advice—that is, provided that you have told me the truth.”
“About what?”
“About Miss Ethelwynn—that she still lives.”
“Of that there is no doubt,” I said.
“And if you found your signora alive and well, you would undertake to make no further inquiry?” he repeated, with undue eagerness.
“Ah! You wish to tie me down to that?” I cried. “You do so because you and your friends are in fear. You realise your own peril—eh?”
“No,” declared the man at my side; “you still entirely misunderstand me. You are an Englishman, and you mistrust me merely because I am a foreigner. It is a prejudice all you English have, more or less.”
“I entertain no prejudice,” I declared hotly. “But to tell you the truth, Antonio, I am tired of all this mystery, and now that Kirk and his friends have alienated me from my wife, I intend to take action.”
“In what manner?” he asked calmly.
“I shall go to the Questore here, in Rome, and tell the truth. I happen to know him personally.”
“And you will mention my name!” he gasped, well knowing probably the drastic measures adopted by the police of his own country.
“I shall not be able to avoid mentioning it,” I responded, with a smile.
“Bene!” he answered, in a hard, hoarse voice. “And if you did—well, signore, I can promise that you would never again see your signora alive. Go to the Questore now! Tell him all you know! Apply for my arrest! And then wait the disaster that must fall upon you, and upon your missing wife. An unseen hand struck Professor Greer—an unseen hand will most assuredly strike you, as swiftly, as unerringly.” And then facing me defiantly, a grin upon his sinister face, the fellow added: “Silence, signore, is your only guarantee of safety—I assure you!”
Chapter Seventeen.Ethelwynn Speaks.I looked into the closely-set, crafty eyes of the old Italian, and saw both determination and desperation.Was he the man who killed Professor Greer?“I require no guarantee of safety from you, Antonio,” I answered quickly. “I am now solely in search of my wife. Where is she?”“Caro signore, I have no idea,” was the old fellow’s bland reply, as he exhibited his palms. “I have not the pleasure of the signora’s acquaintance.”“But you know where Kirk is hiding, and she is with him, assisting him in discovering my whereabouts, I believe!” I cried.“That the Signor Kirk crossed from Dover to Calais I am well aware, but of his movements afterwards I assure you I am in complete ignorance.”What could I do further?He professed to be equally mystified with myself regarding my wife’s disappearance, declaring his readiness and anxiety to assist me if it were possible.Then, in the falling twilight, we slowly descended the road together, he giving me his address in the Via Tordinona, a side street close to the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, which I noted on my shirt-cuff. At the Porto del Popolo we parted, and I returned to the hotel to dine with Gwen, whom I found awaiting me in feverish expectation. I told her briefly of my meeting with a man I knew, but explained nothing of his connection with the house in Sussex Place, nor of the secret tragedy that had been enacted.Next day was the fifth of February, the day of Santa Agata. How well I recollect it, for at noon we bade farewell to the Eternal City, and as the train roared on across those wide, dreary marshes of the Maremma on our journey northward, I sat in the corner of the compartment and made up my mind to go direct and seek Ethelwynn, the girl whom I had seen dead, and who was yet alive.I recalled all Antonio’s ominous statements; how that he had expressed a doubt whether the professor’s assassin would ever be brought to justice, and how he had threatened that, if I betrayed the truth to the police, I should never again meet Mabel alive. Did not those words of his conclusively prove complicity in the affair? Why did he command my silence at peril of my dear wife’s life. He had lied when he told me that he was ignorant of her whereabouts; but if he were the actual assassin, or even one of the accomplices, I saw that I could hope for no assistance from him. It was that conclusion which caused me to resolve to invoke the aid of the girl whom I had seen lying upon the floor, cold and lifeless.From Rome to Broadstairs is a far cry, but two days later we alighted at Victoria, and on the morning of the third day I found myself at the door of a pretty newly-built red-roofed house standing in its own ground high upon the cliffs between the Grand Hotel at Broadstairs and Dumpton Gap.A neat maid opened the door, and, on inquiring for Miss Greer, I was shown across a square, ample hall to a small cosy sitting-room overlooking the sea, facing direct upon the treacherous Goodwins.The maid who took my card returned to say that her mistress would be with me in a few moments. And then I stood at the window, gazing along at the quaint old-world harbour of Broadstairs, with “Bleak House” standing high beyond, full of keen anxiety as to the result of the interview.She came at last, a tall, slim figure, in a dark stuff skirt and cream silk blouse, relieved by a touch of colour at the throat, a sweet-faced, fair-haired, delicate girl, whose large blue eyes wore a look of wonder at the visit of a stranger. She whom I had seen a corpse was certainly alive, and living here in the flesh!“I must apologise for this intrusion, Miss Greer,” I began, for want of something better to say, “but I may introduce myself as an acquaintance of Mr Langton—an acquaintance under somewhat romantic and curious circumstances.”“Mr Langton has already told me how he met you—when he believed there were burglars in our house in Sussex Place,” she said, with a brightening smile.“Yes,” I replied. “I—well, I was put there on guard, but Mr Langton’s suspicions fortunately proved to be unfounded.”“Ah!” she said, with just the slightest suspicion of a sigh. “I’m glad of that—very glad!”“The reason of my visit, Miss Greer, is,” I explained after a brief pause, “to ask you whether you are aware of the whereabouts of my friend, your father?” And I fixed my eyes straight upon hers.“My father went to Scotland,” she replied, without wavering. “At present he’s in Germany. The last I heard of him was three days ago, when he was in Strassburg.”“He wrote to you?” I gasped, staring at her in amazement that this ready lie should be upon her lips.She noted my surprise, and said:“Yes, why shouldn’t he?”What reply could I give? Could I tell her that the Professor, her father, had been cruelly done to death, and his body cremated in his own experimental furnace? Had I not given my word of honour to that weird will-o’-the-wisp, Kershaw Kirk, that I would preserve silence? Besides, my only thought was for my own dear wife, whose face now rose ever before me.“Well,” I stammered. “I—well—I believed that you were unaware of his whereabouts, Miss Greer. At least, I understood so from your father’s butler, Antonio.”She smiled, regarding me quite calmly. She was either in ignorance of what had occurred, or else she was a most perfect actress.Yet how could she feign ignorance? Had not Kirk told me that she had thrown herself upon her knees before her father’s body, vowing a fierce, bitter vengeance upon his assassin? Perhaps Kirk had lied, of course, yet I recollected that the discovery had been made while the dead man’s daughter was in the house, and that after the astounding incident she had removed with Morgan, her maid, to Lady Mellor’s, while the other servants—unaware of what had occurred—had either been sent away down to Broadstairs, or else discharged. In secret, this handsome girl before me—the girl with that perfect dimpled face and innocent blue eyes—had returned, and we had found her lying apparently dead in the dining-room.Ethelwynn’s present attitude of pretended ignorance of her father’s fate struck me as both amazing and culpable.“You say that the Professor was in Strassburg?” I said. “Is he still there?”“As far as I know,” she replied, twisting her rings nervously around her thin white finger.“Could I telegraph to him?” I ventured to suggest.“Certainly, if you have business with him,” she responded. “I’ll go and get the address.” And she swiftly left the room, leaving on the air a sweet breath of violets, a bunch of which she wore in her belt.A few minutes later she returned with a letter in her hand.“His address is Kronenburger Strasse, number fifteen,” she exclaimed. “Do you know Strassburg? It’s just at the corner, by the bridge over the canal.”“I have never been in Strassburg,” was my reply. “But I have important business with the Professor, so, with your permission, I will telegraph to him from here.”“Most certainly,” she said. “He tells me that his affairs are likely to keep him abroad for a considerable time. But—” and she paused. At last she added: “I have never heard him speak of you as a friend, Mr—Mr Holford.”“Perhaps not,” I said quickly. “The fact is, I’m a confidential friend of his, as well as of Mr Kershaw Kirk.”“A friend of Mr Kirk!” she cried, staring at me with a startled expression, half of fear and half of surprise.“Yes,” I said. “I believe Mr Kirk is an intimate friend both of your father and yourself. Is not that so?”“Certainly. He’s our very best friend. Both Dad and I trust him implicitly,” replied the girl. “Indeed, during my father’s absence he is left in charge of my affairs.”For a moment I remained silent.“He is your friend—eh?”“Certainly. Why do you ask?”“Well, because I feared that he was not your friend,” I answered. “Do you happen to know his whereabouts?”“He’s abroad somewhere, but where I don’t know.”“Ah!” I laughed lightly, in pretence of careless irresponsibility. “He has always struck me as a strange figure, ever mysterious and ever evasive. Who and what is he?”“You probably know as much of him, Mr Holford, as I do,” was the girl’s answer. “I only know him to be an intimate friend of my father, and the ideal of an English gentleman. Of his profession, or of his past, I know nothing. My father, who knows him intimately, is always silent upon that point.”I noted that she spoke in the present tense, as though to preserve the fiction that her father was still alive. Ah! this girl with the innocent eyes and the wonderful hair, the beloved of young Leonard Langton, was an admirable actress, without a doubt. Without the tremble of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle of the mouth, she had actually declared to me that Professor Greer was still alive!“To me, Kirk is a mystery,” I declared, my gaze fixed straight into her eyes as I stood near the window where the wintry sunlight from across the sea fell full upon her; “at times I doubt him.”“And so does Mr Langton,” she responded. “But I think that the fears of both of you are quite groundless. Mr Kirk is a little eccentric, that’s all.”“When did you first know him?” I inquired.“Oh, when I came back from Lausanne, where I had been at school, I found him to be my father’s most trusted friend. They used to spend many evenings together in the study, smoking and discussing abstruse points of foreign politics in which I, a woman, have no interest.”“And has he always showed friendship towards you, Miss Greer?” I asked.“Oh, yes, and to Leonard also, though of late I fear there has been some little unpleasantness between them.”At this I pricked my ears. I recollected that young Langton had, to me, pretended ignorance of the very existence of Kershaw Kirk! What was the meaning of his attitude towards the man whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape, and who had repaid my friendship by inducing my wife to travel upon a fool’s errand, and, as I feared, fall into a fatal trap laid open for her?Antonio had covertly threatened me, and I knew instinctively that my well-beloved Mabel was now in direst peril. Ah! that wild fevered life I was now leading was one continuous whirl of dread, of suspicion, and of dark despair.“You have actual knowledge that Mr Langton has quarrelled with Kirk?” I asked at last.“Yes, and I much regret it, for Mr Kirk has been our very good friend throughout. It was he who urged my father to allow Mr Langton to pay court to me,” she added. “It was he who made the suggestion that we might be allowed to marry. Such being the case, how can I think ill of the eccentric old fellow?”“Of course not,” I said, “but is your trust really well founded, do you think? Are you quite certain that he is your friend, or only your pretended ally?”“I am quite certain,” she declared, “I have had proof abundant of it.”“Your father did not, I believe, tell you of his projected visit to Germany before leaving?”“No,” was her reply. “He went up to Edinburgh, but after having left me was suddenly compelled to alter his plans. He crossed to the Hook of Holland, travelling from York to Harwich without returning to London.”“This he has told you?”“Yes, in a letter he wrote from Cologne. I wanted to join him, but he would not allow me, and ordered me to come down here. He is very busy concerning one of his recent discoveries.”“Ah!” I sighed. “He would not allow you to go to him, eh?”“No; he made excuse that the weather was better just now in Broadstairs than in Southern Germany, and said that his future movements were very uncertain, and that he could not be hampered by a woman.”In that reply I recognised an evasiveness which was natural. The Professor himself was dead, and this mysterious person posing as him was, of course, disinclined to meet Ethelwynn face to face.Yet that even surely did not affect the girl’s amazing attitude? She herself had seen her father dead, yet was now actually assisting the impostor to keep up the fiction that he was still alive!
I looked into the closely-set, crafty eyes of the old Italian, and saw both determination and desperation.
Was he the man who killed Professor Greer?
“I require no guarantee of safety from you, Antonio,” I answered quickly. “I am now solely in search of my wife. Where is she?”
“Caro signore, I have no idea,” was the old fellow’s bland reply, as he exhibited his palms. “I have not the pleasure of the signora’s acquaintance.”
“But you know where Kirk is hiding, and she is with him, assisting him in discovering my whereabouts, I believe!” I cried.
“That the Signor Kirk crossed from Dover to Calais I am well aware, but of his movements afterwards I assure you I am in complete ignorance.”
What could I do further?
He professed to be equally mystified with myself regarding my wife’s disappearance, declaring his readiness and anxiety to assist me if it were possible.
Then, in the falling twilight, we slowly descended the road together, he giving me his address in the Via Tordinona, a side street close to the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, which I noted on my shirt-cuff. At the Porto del Popolo we parted, and I returned to the hotel to dine with Gwen, whom I found awaiting me in feverish expectation. I told her briefly of my meeting with a man I knew, but explained nothing of his connection with the house in Sussex Place, nor of the secret tragedy that had been enacted.
Next day was the fifth of February, the day of Santa Agata. How well I recollect it, for at noon we bade farewell to the Eternal City, and as the train roared on across those wide, dreary marshes of the Maremma on our journey northward, I sat in the corner of the compartment and made up my mind to go direct and seek Ethelwynn, the girl whom I had seen dead, and who was yet alive.
I recalled all Antonio’s ominous statements; how that he had expressed a doubt whether the professor’s assassin would ever be brought to justice, and how he had threatened that, if I betrayed the truth to the police, I should never again meet Mabel alive. Did not those words of his conclusively prove complicity in the affair? Why did he command my silence at peril of my dear wife’s life. He had lied when he told me that he was ignorant of her whereabouts; but if he were the actual assassin, or even one of the accomplices, I saw that I could hope for no assistance from him. It was that conclusion which caused me to resolve to invoke the aid of the girl whom I had seen lying upon the floor, cold and lifeless.
From Rome to Broadstairs is a far cry, but two days later we alighted at Victoria, and on the morning of the third day I found myself at the door of a pretty newly-built red-roofed house standing in its own ground high upon the cliffs between the Grand Hotel at Broadstairs and Dumpton Gap.
A neat maid opened the door, and, on inquiring for Miss Greer, I was shown across a square, ample hall to a small cosy sitting-room overlooking the sea, facing direct upon the treacherous Goodwins.
The maid who took my card returned to say that her mistress would be with me in a few moments. And then I stood at the window, gazing along at the quaint old-world harbour of Broadstairs, with “Bleak House” standing high beyond, full of keen anxiety as to the result of the interview.
She came at last, a tall, slim figure, in a dark stuff skirt and cream silk blouse, relieved by a touch of colour at the throat, a sweet-faced, fair-haired, delicate girl, whose large blue eyes wore a look of wonder at the visit of a stranger. She whom I had seen a corpse was certainly alive, and living here in the flesh!
“I must apologise for this intrusion, Miss Greer,” I began, for want of something better to say, “but I may introduce myself as an acquaintance of Mr Langton—an acquaintance under somewhat romantic and curious circumstances.”
“Mr Langton has already told me how he met you—when he believed there were burglars in our house in Sussex Place,” she said, with a brightening smile.
“Yes,” I replied. “I—well, I was put there on guard, but Mr Langton’s suspicions fortunately proved to be unfounded.”
“Ah!” she said, with just the slightest suspicion of a sigh. “I’m glad of that—very glad!”
“The reason of my visit, Miss Greer, is,” I explained after a brief pause, “to ask you whether you are aware of the whereabouts of my friend, your father?” And I fixed my eyes straight upon hers.
“My father went to Scotland,” she replied, without wavering. “At present he’s in Germany. The last I heard of him was three days ago, when he was in Strassburg.”
“He wrote to you?” I gasped, staring at her in amazement that this ready lie should be upon her lips.
She noted my surprise, and said:
“Yes, why shouldn’t he?”
What reply could I give? Could I tell her that the Professor, her father, had been cruelly done to death, and his body cremated in his own experimental furnace? Had I not given my word of honour to that weird will-o’-the-wisp, Kershaw Kirk, that I would preserve silence? Besides, my only thought was for my own dear wife, whose face now rose ever before me.
“Well,” I stammered. “I—well—I believed that you were unaware of his whereabouts, Miss Greer. At least, I understood so from your father’s butler, Antonio.”
She smiled, regarding me quite calmly. She was either in ignorance of what had occurred, or else she was a most perfect actress.
Yet how could she feign ignorance? Had not Kirk told me that she had thrown herself upon her knees before her father’s body, vowing a fierce, bitter vengeance upon his assassin? Perhaps Kirk had lied, of course, yet I recollected that the discovery had been made while the dead man’s daughter was in the house, and that after the astounding incident she had removed with Morgan, her maid, to Lady Mellor’s, while the other servants—unaware of what had occurred—had either been sent away down to Broadstairs, or else discharged. In secret, this handsome girl before me—the girl with that perfect dimpled face and innocent blue eyes—had returned, and we had found her lying apparently dead in the dining-room.
Ethelwynn’s present attitude of pretended ignorance of her father’s fate struck me as both amazing and culpable.
“You say that the Professor was in Strassburg?” I said. “Is he still there?”
“As far as I know,” she replied, twisting her rings nervously around her thin white finger.
“Could I telegraph to him?” I ventured to suggest.
“Certainly, if you have business with him,” she responded. “I’ll go and get the address.” And she swiftly left the room, leaving on the air a sweet breath of violets, a bunch of which she wore in her belt.
A few minutes later she returned with a letter in her hand.
“His address is Kronenburger Strasse, number fifteen,” she exclaimed. “Do you know Strassburg? It’s just at the corner, by the bridge over the canal.”
“I have never been in Strassburg,” was my reply. “But I have important business with the Professor, so, with your permission, I will telegraph to him from here.”
“Most certainly,” she said. “He tells me that his affairs are likely to keep him abroad for a considerable time. But—” and she paused. At last she added: “I have never heard him speak of you as a friend, Mr—Mr Holford.”
“Perhaps not,” I said quickly. “The fact is, I’m a confidential friend of his, as well as of Mr Kershaw Kirk.”
“A friend of Mr Kirk!” she cried, staring at me with a startled expression, half of fear and half of surprise.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe Mr Kirk is an intimate friend both of your father and yourself. Is not that so?”
“Certainly. He’s our very best friend. Both Dad and I trust him implicitly,” replied the girl. “Indeed, during my father’s absence he is left in charge of my affairs.”
For a moment I remained silent.
“He is your friend—eh?”
“Certainly. Why do you ask?”
“Well, because I feared that he was not your friend,” I answered. “Do you happen to know his whereabouts?”
“He’s abroad somewhere, but where I don’t know.”
“Ah!” I laughed lightly, in pretence of careless irresponsibility. “He has always struck me as a strange figure, ever mysterious and ever evasive. Who and what is he?”
“You probably know as much of him, Mr Holford, as I do,” was the girl’s answer. “I only know him to be an intimate friend of my father, and the ideal of an English gentleman. Of his profession, or of his past, I know nothing. My father, who knows him intimately, is always silent upon that point.”
I noted that she spoke in the present tense, as though to preserve the fiction that her father was still alive. Ah! this girl with the innocent eyes and the wonderful hair, the beloved of young Leonard Langton, was an admirable actress, without a doubt. Without the tremble of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle of the mouth, she had actually declared to me that Professor Greer was still alive!
“To me, Kirk is a mystery,” I declared, my gaze fixed straight into her eyes as I stood near the window where the wintry sunlight from across the sea fell full upon her; “at times I doubt him.”
“And so does Mr Langton,” she responded. “But I think that the fears of both of you are quite groundless. Mr Kirk is a little eccentric, that’s all.”
“When did you first know him?” I inquired.
“Oh, when I came back from Lausanne, where I had been at school, I found him to be my father’s most trusted friend. They used to spend many evenings together in the study, smoking and discussing abstruse points of foreign politics in which I, a woman, have no interest.”
“And has he always showed friendship towards you, Miss Greer?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, and to Leonard also, though of late I fear there has been some little unpleasantness between them.”
At this I pricked my ears. I recollected that young Langton had, to me, pretended ignorance of the very existence of Kershaw Kirk! What was the meaning of his attitude towards the man whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape, and who had repaid my friendship by inducing my wife to travel upon a fool’s errand, and, as I feared, fall into a fatal trap laid open for her?
Antonio had covertly threatened me, and I knew instinctively that my well-beloved Mabel was now in direst peril. Ah! that wild fevered life I was now leading was one continuous whirl of dread, of suspicion, and of dark despair.
“You have actual knowledge that Mr Langton has quarrelled with Kirk?” I asked at last.
“Yes, and I much regret it, for Mr Kirk has been our very good friend throughout. It was he who urged my father to allow Mr Langton to pay court to me,” she added. “It was he who made the suggestion that we might be allowed to marry. Such being the case, how can I think ill of the eccentric old fellow?”
“Of course not,” I said, “but is your trust really well founded, do you think? Are you quite certain that he is your friend, or only your pretended ally?”
“I am quite certain,” she declared, “I have had proof abundant of it.”
“Your father did not, I believe, tell you of his projected visit to Germany before leaving?”
“No,” was her reply. “He went up to Edinburgh, but after having left me was suddenly compelled to alter his plans. He crossed to the Hook of Holland, travelling from York to Harwich without returning to London.”
“This he has told you?”
“Yes, in a letter he wrote from Cologne. I wanted to join him, but he would not allow me, and ordered me to come down here. He is very busy concerning one of his recent discoveries.”
“Ah!” I sighed. “He would not allow you to go to him, eh?”
“No; he made excuse that the weather was better just now in Broadstairs than in Southern Germany, and said that his future movements were very uncertain, and that he could not be hampered by a woman.”
In that reply I recognised an evasiveness which was natural. The Professor himself was dead, and this mysterious person posing as him was, of course, disinclined to meet Ethelwynn face to face.
Yet that even surely did not affect the girl’s amazing attitude? She herself had seen her father dead, yet was now actually assisting the impostor to keep up the fiction that he was still alive!
Chapter Eighteen.I Draw the Impostor.Having invented a story of a secret business friendship with the Professor, I remained with his pretty daughter for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer.From her I further learned that Leonard Langton was now back in London, and that Kirk had written her implicit instructions to remain at Broadstairs for the present.Then I bade her farewell, and walked back along the cliffs, past the Grand Hotel, to the quaint parade of the old-fashioned little watering-place, turning up to the chemist’s shop, which is, at the same time, the post office.Thence I dispatched a telegram addressed to Professor Greer at the address in Strassburg which his daughter had given me, appending Kirk’s name, and asking for a reply to be sent to the Albion Hotel at Broadstairs, where I intended staying.Afterwards I strolled to the hotel, ate my luncheon, and idled along the deserted jetty and promenade throughout the bleak, bright afternoon in eager expectation of a response from the impostor. My thought was ever on my dear lost Mabel. Fettered by ignorance and mystery, I knew not in which direction to search, nor could I discern any motive by which we should be thus parted.My tea I took in the hotel, and afterwards smoked a cigar, until just before six the waiter handed me a message, a brief reply to mine, which read:“Why are you running risks in Broadstairs, when you should be elsewhere? Be judicious and leave.—Greer.”I read the message over a dozen times. What risks could Kirk be running by coming to Broadstairs? Was not that telegram essentially a word of warning given by one accomplice to another?And yet Ethelwynn trusted Kirk just as blindly and foolishly as her father had done.But was not the truth a strange one? She had concealed from me, as she was concealing from the world, that the Professor had died at the hand of an unknown assassin.Or was it that she herself was an accomplice?No, I could never believe that. I refused to give credence to any such suggestion.I ascended the long hill to Broadstairs Station, and half an hour later left for Victoria. My intention was to go direct to Strassburg and there to discover and unmask the impostor. But ere I reached London the night mail for the Continent had already left Charing Cross, so I took a taxi-cab to my lonely home, where Gwen was awaiting me, still anxious and expectant.I told her of the fruitlessness of my errand, whereupon she sank back into her chair, staring straight into the fire.In brief I explained that I had discovered the existence of a person in Strassburg who could probably give me a clue to the whereabouts of Kirk and Mabel. Hence my intention of departing by the first service next morning.“Cannot you telegraph and ask?” suggested the girl. “We seem, Harry, to be losing so much time,” she added frantically. “You haven’t been to the police.”“I know, Gwen,” I said in sorrow, “but I can’t do more. To telegraph further might close the channel of our inquiry. No, we must still remain patient.”Then, after snatching some food which had been left in the dining-room for me, I swallowed a glass of burgundy and entered the small room which I used as my particular den.From there I rang up Pelham on the telephone, and heard the latest details concerning the business which I was now sadly neglecting. Afterwards I sat down and wrote an advertisement for theTimes, an appeal addressed to “Silence” for news of my lost wife, an appeal which at the same time contained a veiled threat of exposure of the affair in Sussex Place.This I concluded, and, ringing up an express messenger, dispatched it to the advertisement offices of the paper.Then, with sudden resolve, I went forth to Wimpole Street to call upon Leonard Langton.I found him in his cosy, well-furnished chambers, busy writing letters, while the round-faced man seated in a big arm-chair by the fire smoking a pipe he introduced as his chum with whom he shared chambers, Doctor Hamilton Flynn.“Flynn’s a specialist on the nose and throat,” he laughed. “He has his consulting rooms along in Harley Street, and we pig it here together.”“Jolly comfortable quarters,” I remarked, glancing round. “I called here before, but you were out.”“Yes, so sorry!” he exclaimed. “Sit down and have a cigar,” and he handed me a box of most excellent weeds.“Well,” exclaimed the smart young fellow who was the confidential secretary of Sir Albert Oppenheim, “I’m really glad to see you again, Mr Holford. That was a most mysterious incident at Sussex Place the other evening,” he added. “I’m still convinced that somebody was in the house. The Professor’s furnace was alight, you recollect, and the laboratory door stood open.”“Langton has told me all about it,” remarked the doctor in a deep voice; “very curious, it seems.”“Most extraordinary,” I declared, “and the more so that Merli, the butler, should have suddenly disappeared. The other day I met him in Rome.”“Met Antonio!” gasped Ethelwynn’s lover, staring at me in amazement. “Have you been to Italy?”“Yes. I told him of our search, but he declared himself ignorant of everything, though he admitted having seen you passing through the buffet at Calais-Maritime.”“What is he doing in Rome?”“I have no idea; I was there in a vain endeavour to recover my lost wife. She has been misled by a forged telegram purporting to come from myself, and is somewhere on the Continent. Where, however, I cannot tell.”“You’ve lost your wife, eh?” asked the doctor, glancing strangely across at his companion, I thought. His face was dark and aquiline, his shoulders sloped. He was not a man to be trusted. “You think she’s been tricked?” he added. “Why?”“Ah, at present I can form no theory as to the motive. If I could I might perchance discover the person responsible for her disappearance,” and I briefly told him of my frantic journey to the Italian capital.“And now I am going to Strassburg to-morrow,” I added.“Why to Strassburg?” inquired Doctor Flynn, regarding me fixedly with those keen eyes of his.“Because Professor Greer is there, and I have an idea that he can tell me something.”“The Professor is no longer there,” was Langton’s quick interruption. “Half an hour ago I spoke to Ethelwynn on the telephone, and she told me that she had just heard by telegraph from her father that he had left for Linz on his way to Hungary.”My heart fell within me. Evidently my telegram signed Kirk had scared the man passing himself off as the Professor.“But I might go on to Linz, or catch him up somewhere in Hungary,” I suggested.“It would be futile, my dear fellow,” said Langton.“Why?”“Well, just at present Professor Greer wishes to be left entirely alone by his friends.”“But there must be some reason,” I cried, for there seemed on every hand to be a conspiracy of silence again me.“There is a reason,” replied the young man in a low, calm voice, “one which, however, seems mysterious.”“Ah!” I cried. “Then even you are mystified by these strange happenings?”“Yes,” he replied, knocking the ash from his cigar, “I have had certain suspicions aroused, Holford—vague suspicions of something wrong in the Professor’s household. Antonio is absent, the servants have all been paid and dispersed, the house in Sussex place is closed, and—”“And the Professor is a fugitive, fleeing towards Hungary,” I added. “Has not Miss Ethelwynn told you anything?”“What she has told me has been in complete confidence. It has caused me a great deal of surprise and apprehension, Holford, and this surprise has been increased by what you have told me this evening—that your wife has been enticed away, and is missing.”“But what connection can my wife possibly have with any occurrence at the house of Professor Greer?” I demanded. “She was in ignorance of everything. She was not even acquainted with Greer. I might tell you that to-day I have been down to Broadstairs and seen Miss Ethelwynn,” I added.“Ethelwynn did not seem to remember ever having met you when I told her of our encounter at the door, and the subsequent events.”“I am a friend of the Professor’s, not of his daughter,” I hastened to explain. “But are you absolutely certain that a journey to Strassburg to-morrow would be useless?”“Absolutely. If Greer consented to see his friends I would be the first to see him.”“And he has refused even you, eh?” I asked, smiling within myself at the superior knowledge I possessed.“He has. He refuses, too, to allow his daughter to go to him.”“But why?” I asked.“For reasons known, I suppose, to himself.”“Does he give none?”“He vaguely answers that certain matters concerning a great scientific discovery he has made compel him at present to hold aloof from both family and friends. He fears, I think, that someone who has discovered his secret may betray it.”“But surely Ethelwynn would not?” I cried. “I desire to see the Professor because I feel confident he can, if he will, explain the motive of the trap into which my wife has fallen.”“If he refuses to see his own daughter he will hardly see you,” remarked the dark-faced doctor. “Under exactly what circumstances has Mrs Holford disappeared?”I briefly explained, at the same time regarding the round-shouldered specialist with some antagonism. To me, it appeared as though he were erecting an invisible barrier between myself and the knowledge of the truth. He seemed entirely Langton’s friend, corroborating his every word.And the more curious became his attitude when at last I remarked with firm and resolute air:“Well, if Professor Greer refuses to see me, then I shall invoke the aid of the police. They will probably very soon discover him, wherever he may be.”“I hardly think that would be a wise policy,” remarked Flynn, tossing his cigar-end into the fire, and rising quickly from his chair, “unless, of course, you could make some direct charge against him.”I was silent for a moment.“And if I did? What then?” I asked, speaking boldly in a clear voice, my eyes fixed upon his, for remember I was fighting for knowledge of my dear wife’s whereabouts.“Well—if you did,” was his deliberate reply, “it would be you yourself that would suffer, Mr Holford, and no one else.”Was it not astounding, startling?This doctor, the bosom friend of Ethelwynn’s lover, had given me exactly the same threatening reply as Antonio had given me on the Pincian in Rome.What could it mean? The reason why the false Professor was avoiding friends and enemies alike was, of course, sufficiently plain to me. But for what reason was my well-beloved Mabel, the loving wife whom I adored, held in the unscrupulous hands of those who killed Professor Greer?And why was every effort of mine to discover her met only by threats of impending disaster?I gazed at the two men before me in silent defiance.If it cost me my own life I intended to discover her and hold her dear form once again in my arms.She was mine—mine before God and before man; and these persons seeking for some mysterious motive to shield the false Professor should not further stand in the way of justice.“You think I dare not go to the police!” I cried at last. “Very well, if you care to come with me to Scotland Yard now—for I am going straight there—I will, in the presence of both of you, unfold a strange tale which they’ll be very much surprised to hear.”“You believe you know the truth!” laughed Langton. “No, my dear Holford. Don’t be such a fool! The police cannot help in this affair, for the mystery is far too complicated. Keep your own counsel.”“Yes,” I sneered, “and depend upon the man of whom you have denied all knowledge—the man Kershaw Kirk.”“Kershaw Kirk!” gasped the doctor, and I saw that he went pale, his dark eyes starting from his head. “Do you know him? Is he—is he your friend, Mr Holford—or—or your enemy?”
Having invented a story of a secret business friendship with the Professor, I remained with his pretty daughter for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer.
From her I further learned that Leonard Langton was now back in London, and that Kirk had written her implicit instructions to remain at Broadstairs for the present.
Then I bade her farewell, and walked back along the cliffs, past the Grand Hotel, to the quaint parade of the old-fashioned little watering-place, turning up to the chemist’s shop, which is, at the same time, the post office.
Thence I dispatched a telegram addressed to Professor Greer at the address in Strassburg which his daughter had given me, appending Kirk’s name, and asking for a reply to be sent to the Albion Hotel at Broadstairs, where I intended staying.
Afterwards I strolled to the hotel, ate my luncheon, and idled along the deserted jetty and promenade throughout the bleak, bright afternoon in eager expectation of a response from the impostor. My thought was ever on my dear lost Mabel. Fettered by ignorance and mystery, I knew not in which direction to search, nor could I discern any motive by which we should be thus parted.
My tea I took in the hotel, and afterwards smoked a cigar, until just before six the waiter handed me a message, a brief reply to mine, which read:
“Why are you running risks in Broadstairs, when you should be elsewhere? Be judicious and leave.—Greer.”
I read the message over a dozen times. What risks could Kirk be running by coming to Broadstairs? Was not that telegram essentially a word of warning given by one accomplice to another?
And yet Ethelwynn trusted Kirk just as blindly and foolishly as her father had done.
But was not the truth a strange one? She had concealed from me, as she was concealing from the world, that the Professor had died at the hand of an unknown assassin.
Or was it that she herself was an accomplice?
No, I could never believe that. I refused to give credence to any such suggestion.
I ascended the long hill to Broadstairs Station, and half an hour later left for Victoria. My intention was to go direct to Strassburg and there to discover and unmask the impostor. But ere I reached London the night mail for the Continent had already left Charing Cross, so I took a taxi-cab to my lonely home, where Gwen was awaiting me, still anxious and expectant.
I told her of the fruitlessness of my errand, whereupon she sank back into her chair, staring straight into the fire.
In brief I explained that I had discovered the existence of a person in Strassburg who could probably give me a clue to the whereabouts of Kirk and Mabel. Hence my intention of departing by the first service next morning.
“Cannot you telegraph and ask?” suggested the girl. “We seem, Harry, to be losing so much time,” she added frantically. “You haven’t been to the police.”
“I know, Gwen,” I said in sorrow, “but I can’t do more. To telegraph further might close the channel of our inquiry. No, we must still remain patient.”
Then, after snatching some food which had been left in the dining-room for me, I swallowed a glass of burgundy and entered the small room which I used as my particular den.
From there I rang up Pelham on the telephone, and heard the latest details concerning the business which I was now sadly neglecting. Afterwards I sat down and wrote an advertisement for theTimes, an appeal addressed to “Silence” for news of my lost wife, an appeal which at the same time contained a veiled threat of exposure of the affair in Sussex Place.
This I concluded, and, ringing up an express messenger, dispatched it to the advertisement offices of the paper.
Then, with sudden resolve, I went forth to Wimpole Street to call upon Leonard Langton.
I found him in his cosy, well-furnished chambers, busy writing letters, while the round-faced man seated in a big arm-chair by the fire smoking a pipe he introduced as his chum with whom he shared chambers, Doctor Hamilton Flynn.
“Flynn’s a specialist on the nose and throat,” he laughed. “He has his consulting rooms along in Harley Street, and we pig it here together.”
“Jolly comfortable quarters,” I remarked, glancing round. “I called here before, but you were out.”
“Yes, so sorry!” he exclaimed. “Sit down and have a cigar,” and he handed me a box of most excellent weeds.
“Well,” exclaimed the smart young fellow who was the confidential secretary of Sir Albert Oppenheim, “I’m really glad to see you again, Mr Holford. That was a most mysterious incident at Sussex Place the other evening,” he added. “I’m still convinced that somebody was in the house. The Professor’s furnace was alight, you recollect, and the laboratory door stood open.”
“Langton has told me all about it,” remarked the doctor in a deep voice; “very curious, it seems.”
“Most extraordinary,” I declared, “and the more so that Merli, the butler, should have suddenly disappeared. The other day I met him in Rome.”
“Met Antonio!” gasped Ethelwynn’s lover, staring at me in amazement. “Have you been to Italy?”
“Yes. I told him of our search, but he declared himself ignorant of everything, though he admitted having seen you passing through the buffet at Calais-Maritime.”
“What is he doing in Rome?”
“I have no idea; I was there in a vain endeavour to recover my lost wife. She has been misled by a forged telegram purporting to come from myself, and is somewhere on the Continent. Where, however, I cannot tell.”
“You’ve lost your wife, eh?” asked the doctor, glancing strangely across at his companion, I thought. His face was dark and aquiline, his shoulders sloped. He was not a man to be trusted. “You think she’s been tricked?” he added. “Why?”
“Ah, at present I can form no theory as to the motive. If I could I might perchance discover the person responsible for her disappearance,” and I briefly told him of my frantic journey to the Italian capital.
“And now I am going to Strassburg to-morrow,” I added.
“Why to Strassburg?” inquired Doctor Flynn, regarding me fixedly with those keen eyes of his.
“Because Professor Greer is there, and I have an idea that he can tell me something.”
“The Professor is no longer there,” was Langton’s quick interruption. “Half an hour ago I spoke to Ethelwynn on the telephone, and she told me that she had just heard by telegraph from her father that he had left for Linz on his way to Hungary.”
My heart fell within me. Evidently my telegram signed Kirk had scared the man passing himself off as the Professor.
“But I might go on to Linz, or catch him up somewhere in Hungary,” I suggested.
“It would be futile, my dear fellow,” said Langton.
“Why?”
“Well, just at present Professor Greer wishes to be left entirely alone by his friends.”
“But there must be some reason,” I cried, for there seemed on every hand to be a conspiracy of silence again me.
“There is a reason,” replied the young man in a low, calm voice, “one which, however, seems mysterious.”
“Ah!” I cried. “Then even you are mystified by these strange happenings?”
“Yes,” he replied, knocking the ash from his cigar, “I have had certain suspicions aroused, Holford—vague suspicions of something wrong in the Professor’s household. Antonio is absent, the servants have all been paid and dispersed, the house in Sussex place is closed, and—”
“And the Professor is a fugitive, fleeing towards Hungary,” I added. “Has not Miss Ethelwynn told you anything?”
“What she has told me has been in complete confidence. It has caused me a great deal of surprise and apprehension, Holford, and this surprise has been increased by what you have told me this evening—that your wife has been enticed away, and is missing.”
“But what connection can my wife possibly have with any occurrence at the house of Professor Greer?” I demanded. “She was in ignorance of everything. She was not even acquainted with Greer. I might tell you that to-day I have been down to Broadstairs and seen Miss Ethelwynn,” I added.
“Ethelwynn did not seem to remember ever having met you when I told her of our encounter at the door, and the subsequent events.”
“I am a friend of the Professor’s, not of his daughter,” I hastened to explain. “But are you absolutely certain that a journey to Strassburg to-morrow would be useless?”
“Absolutely. If Greer consented to see his friends I would be the first to see him.”
“And he has refused even you, eh?” I asked, smiling within myself at the superior knowledge I possessed.
“He has. He refuses, too, to allow his daughter to go to him.”
“But why?” I asked.
“For reasons known, I suppose, to himself.”
“Does he give none?”
“He vaguely answers that certain matters concerning a great scientific discovery he has made compel him at present to hold aloof from both family and friends. He fears, I think, that someone who has discovered his secret may betray it.”
“But surely Ethelwynn would not?” I cried. “I desire to see the Professor because I feel confident he can, if he will, explain the motive of the trap into which my wife has fallen.”
“If he refuses to see his own daughter he will hardly see you,” remarked the dark-faced doctor. “Under exactly what circumstances has Mrs Holford disappeared?”
I briefly explained, at the same time regarding the round-shouldered specialist with some antagonism. To me, it appeared as though he were erecting an invisible barrier between myself and the knowledge of the truth. He seemed entirely Langton’s friend, corroborating his every word.
And the more curious became his attitude when at last I remarked with firm and resolute air:
“Well, if Professor Greer refuses to see me, then I shall invoke the aid of the police. They will probably very soon discover him, wherever he may be.”
“I hardly think that would be a wise policy,” remarked Flynn, tossing his cigar-end into the fire, and rising quickly from his chair, “unless, of course, you could make some direct charge against him.”
I was silent for a moment.
“And if I did? What then?” I asked, speaking boldly in a clear voice, my eyes fixed upon his, for remember I was fighting for knowledge of my dear wife’s whereabouts.
“Well—if you did,” was his deliberate reply, “it would be you yourself that would suffer, Mr Holford, and no one else.”
Was it not astounding, startling?
This doctor, the bosom friend of Ethelwynn’s lover, had given me exactly the same threatening reply as Antonio had given me on the Pincian in Rome.
What could it mean? The reason why the false Professor was avoiding friends and enemies alike was, of course, sufficiently plain to me. But for what reason was my well-beloved Mabel, the loving wife whom I adored, held in the unscrupulous hands of those who killed Professor Greer?
And why was every effort of mine to discover her met only by threats of impending disaster?
I gazed at the two men before me in silent defiance.
If it cost me my own life I intended to discover her and hold her dear form once again in my arms.
She was mine—mine before God and before man; and these persons seeking for some mysterious motive to shield the false Professor should not further stand in the way of justice.
“You think I dare not go to the police!” I cried at last. “Very well, if you care to come with me to Scotland Yard now—for I am going straight there—I will, in the presence of both of you, unfold a strange tale which they’ll be very much surprised to hear.”
“You believe you know the truth!” laughed Langton. “No, my dear Holford. Don’t be such a fool! The police cannot help in this affair, for the mystery is far too complicated. Keep your own counsel.”
“Yes,” I sneered, “and depend upon the man of whom you have denied all knowledge—the man Kershaw Kirk.”
“Kershaw Kirk!” gasped the doctor, and I saw that he went pale, his dark eyes starting from his head. “Do you know him? Is he—is he your friend, Mr Holford—or—or your enemy?”
Chapter Nineteen.Gwen Reveals Something.It struck me that this keen-eyed, crafty-faced, round-shouldered specialist in diseases of the throat intended to profit by information derived from me regarding the mysterious Kirk. Why, I did not know. We all of us have at times a strange intuition of impending evil, one that we cannot account for and cannot describe.Recollect, I was only just an ordinary man, a hard-working industrious dealer in motor-cars, a man who made a fair income, who was no romancer, and was entirely devoted to his wife, who had, ever since his marriage, been his best friend and adviser.The Professor was a scientist, I remembered, and this man Hamilton Flynn was apparently a doctor of some note. Could there be any connection between the pair, I wondered. Flynn, Langton’s most intimate friend, was no doubt aware of much, if not all, that transpired in the Professor’s household. That he knew Kershaw Kirk was apparent by his surprise when I mentioned his name.“Kirk is a mere acquaintance of mine,” I responded, after a brief pause; “whether he is my friend, or my enemy, remains to be seen.”“He’s your enemy, depend upon that, Mr Holford,” declared Flynn emphatically. “He is a marvellously clever schemer, and the friend of few.”I bit my lip. Well did I know, alas! that the fellow whose asides to his pet “Joseph” were so entertaining was not my friend.It was upon my tongue to explain how the description of that man who was travelling with my wife in search of me tallied with that of my strange neighbour who had, with such subtle cunning, drawn me into that mysterious tragedy. But next second I hesitated. This man Flynn I mistrusted. My impression was that he was not playing a straight game, either with myself or with his friend Leonard Langton.A thousand questions I had to ask those men—and Langton especially—but I saw by their attitude that their intention was rather to mislead me than to reveal anything. When I presently bade them farewell neither of them offered to assist me in my search for Mabel.Therefore I went forth into the darkness and silence of Wimpole Street—for it was now near midnight—and walked down into Oxford Street ere I could find a taxi-cab to convey me back to my now cheerless home.Lying awake that night, I decided to postpone my journey to Germany. It was evident that the impostor passing himself off as the Professor had taken my telegram purporting to come from Kirk as a warning, and had escaped. I had been a fool to telegraph. I should have gone there instead. His reason for keeping up the fiction that the Professor was alive was, of course, obvious, for while he did so there would be no inquiry into the whereabouts of the missing man.I had made a promise to Kershaw Kirk, yet now that he had so grossly deceived me, why should I keep it? Why should I not tell the truth?I reflected; there were, I saw, three reasons why I should still preserve silence. The first was because, after that lapse of time, I should be suspected, perhaps arrested, as an accomplice and dragged through a criminal court. The second was that Ethelwynn herself was, for some amazing reason, pretending that her father still lived; and the third was by reason of the strange threat of Mabel’s death uttered by the evil-faced Italian, and repeated by that Harley Street specialist who was Leonard Langton’s closest friend.The assassins were actually holding my dear wife as hostage against any revelation I dared to make! That, in a word, was the true position.I paced my room that night in the agony of despair. Of nothing did I think but the dear, sweet-faced woman so suddenly enticed away from my side by reason of her eagerness to meet me. She was a woman of high ideals and of lofty sentiments; a womanly woman who, though fond of a little gaiety and of the theatre, realised that her place was in her own home, where she reigned supreme.Before my marriage my father, as fathers will, had looked upon her with considerable misgiving. She was a little too flighty, too fond of dress, of dinners, and dances, he had said. But after our wedding and our honeymoon spent in a car touring up in Scotland, she had settled down, and never for a single instant had I regretted my choice. Few men could say that.Indeed, up to that day when Kershaw Kirk called to inspect the Eckhardt tyre, I was one of the happiest men in all London; prosperous in my business, and contented in my love.Now, alas! all had changed. I was obsessed by the knowledge of a great and startling secret, and at the same time I had lost all that to me was most dear and cherished.Next morning Gwen, fresh in her clean cotton blouse, and the big black bow in her hair, sat in her accustomed place at the breakfast table, but after greeting me lapsed into a thoughtful silence.At last she asked: “Have you packed your things, Harry?”“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” I exclaimed. “I’m not going to-day. I’ve changed my mind.”“Not going? Why, I thought you intended to see the Professor in Strassburg?” she cried.“He has left,” I sighed; “I learned last night that he is on his way to Hungary.”“And will you not follow?” asked the girl in reproach. “Will you not try to discover where Mabel is?”“I’ve tried, Gwen—and failed,” I answered despairingly.“You have not told me all, Harry,” she said, looking across at me. At the head of the table was Mabel’s empty place. “You have concealed something from me,” she declared.“It is nothing that you should know,” was my quick reply. “My own private business does not concern you, Gwen—or Mabel either.”“But surely I ought to know the truth? Mabel has been decoyed away abroad, and there must be some motive for it,” she replied in bitter complaint.“Of course, my dear girl, but even I, in the knowledge of what has passed, cannot discern what the motive can be. If I could, all would be plain sailing, and we would soon recover her,” I said.“Who is this Professor of whom you have spoken?” she asked, leaning her elbows upon the table, and gazing straight into my eyes.“Professor Greer, the well-known chemist.”“Greer?” echoed the girl, staring at me strangely.“Yes, why?”But she hesitated, as though disinclined to tell me something which was upon her mind.“You know the Professor, eh, Harry?”“I’ve met him once,” I replied, which was perfectly true.“And only once?” she asked.“Only once,” was my quick response.“That’s curious.”“Why?”“Well—well, I suppose I ought not to tell you, for, of course, Harry—it’s no business of mine,” remarked the girl, “but as Mabel is now missing, no fact should be concealed, and I think you really ought to know that—”“That what?” I cried. “Tell me quickly, Gwen! Conceal nothing from me!”“Well, that Mabel one morning received a note delivered by express messenger, and I asked her whom it was from. She seemed unusually flurried, and told me that it was from Professor Greer.”“But she never knew him!” I gasped. “What day was that?”“The day before you returned from Glasgow.”“The same day on which she received that telegram from Italy purporting to be signed by me!”I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before, Gwen?”“Mabel’s affairs have nothing to do with me. I am not interested in her correspondents, Harry,” she replied. “Surely it is not my place to carry tales to you, is it?”“No; pardon me,” I said, hastening to excuse myself, “but in this affair the truth must be told.”“Then why haven’t you told it to me?” asked the girl. “Why are you so carefully hiding other facts?”“Because they are of concern only to myself—a secret which is mine, and mine alone.”“And it does not concern Mabel?” she demanded.“No,” I replied hoarsely, “except that her acquaintance with the Professor has placed a new phase upon the mystery. Tell me all that happened concerning that note.”“It came about eleven o’clock in the morning,” she said. “I saw a telegraph-boy come up the steps, and believed he had a message from you. Annie took the note and brought it here into the dining-room, where Mabel signed for it. She read it through, and I saw that it caused her a great shock of surprise. Her hands were trembling. I inquired what was the matter, but she made some evasive reply. I demanded to know whom it was from, and she replied that her correspondent’s name was Greer. ‘He ought never to have written to me,’ she added. ‘Men are sometimes most injudicious.’ Then she rose and placed the letter in the flames, watching it until it had been burned.”“And is that all?” I demanded, astounded at the girl’s story.“Yes, except that for some hours afterwards she seemed very upset. To me it appeared as though she had received word of some unusual occurrence. At noon she called a taxi by telephone, and went out. She did not return for luncheon, so I was alone. At three she came back, and I saw that she looked pale and distressed, while her eyes were red, as though she had been crying. But I attributed that to our ignorance of where you were. You know, Harry, how upset she is if when you are away you don’t write or wire to her every day,” added the girl.The story held me utterly speechless. That Mabel was acquainted in secret with the Professor astounded me. But it had been the false Professor who had written to her. Possibly the fellow was already in London while I was searching for him in Glasgow, and, if so, what was more probable than that she should have met him by appointment?Not one single instant did I doubt Mabel’s truth and love. If she had met this impostor, then she had been the victim of some cleverly-planned plot. I was incensed only against the perpetrators of that foul crime in Sussex Place, not against the sweet, soft-spoken woman who was so near my heart. Mabel was my wife, my love, my all-in-all.Poor Gwen, watching my face intently, believed that she had acted as a sneak towards her sister, but I quickly reassured her that it was not so. Her revelations had sent my thoughts into a different channel.“The telegram summoning her to Italy came after her return?” I asked.“Yes, she was upset, and would eat no tea,” the girl answered. “Her conversation was all the time of you. ‘Harry is in danger,’ she said several times. ‘Something tells me that he is in the greatest danger.’ Then, when the message came, she became almost frantic in her anxiety for your welfare, saying, ‘Did I not tell you so? My husband is in peril. He is the victim of a plot!’”“You never heard her speak of the Professor before?” I inquired.“Never, Harry; and, truth to tell, I was surprised that she should receive a letter from a man who she admitted to me was unknown to you.”“She told you that?” I cried.“She said that you were not acquainted with the Professor, and that you might object to him writing to her, if you knew.”“Then she was in fear of discovery, eh?” I asked in a husky voice.“Yes,” faltered the girl. “It—it almost seemed as though she was. But really, Harry, I—I know I’ve done wrong to tell you all this. I—I’m quite ashamed of myself. But it is because I am in such great fear that something has happened to my sister.”“You have done quite right, Gwen,” I assured her. “The circumstances have warranted your outspokenness. Some men might perhaps misjudge their wives in such a case, but I love Mabel, and she loves me. Therefore I will believe no ill of her. She is the innocent victim of a plot, and by Heaven!” I cried fiercely, “while I live I’ll devote my whole life to its exposure, and to the just punishment of any who have dared to harm her!”
It struck me that this keen-eyed, crafty-faced, round-shouldered specialist in diseases of the throat intended to profit by information derived from me regarding the mysterious Kirk. Why, I did not know. We all of us have at times a strange intuition of impending evil, one that we cannot account for and cannot describe.
Recollect, I was only just an ordinary man, a hard-working industrious dealer in motor-cars, a man who made a fair income, who was no romancer, and was entirely devoted to his wife, who had, ever since his marriage, been his best friend and adviser.
The Professor was a scientist, I remembered, and this man Hamilton Flynn was apparently a doctor of some note. Could there be any connection between the pair, I wondered. Flynn, Langton’s most intimate friend, was no doubt aware of much, if not all, that transpired in the Professor’s household. That he knew Kershaw Kirk was apparent by his surprise when I mentioned his name.
“Kirk is a mere acquaintance of mine,” I responded, after a brief pause; “whether he is my friend, or my enemy, remains to be seen.”
“He’s your enemy, depend upon that, Mr Holford,” declared Flynn emphatically. “He is a marvellously clever schemer, and the friend of few.”
I bit my lip. Well did I know, alas! that the fellow whose asides to his pet “Joseph” were so entertaining was not my friend.
It was upon my tongue to explain how the description of that man who was travelling with my wife in search of me tallied with that of my strange neighbour who had, with such subtle cunning, drawn me into that mysterious tragedy. But next second I hesitated. This man Flynn I mistrusted. My impression was that he was not playing a straight game, either with myself or with his friend Leonard Langton.
A thousand questions I had to ask those men—and Langton especially—but I saw by their attitude that their intention was rather to mislead me than to reveal anything. When I presently bade them farewell neither of them offered to assist me in my search for Mabel.
Therefore I went forth into the darkness and silence of Wimpole Street—for it was now near midnight—and walked down into Oxford Street ere I could find a taxi-cab to convey me back to my now cheerless home.
Lying awake that night, I decided to postpone my journey to Germany. It was evident that the impostor passing himself off as the Professor had taken my telegram purporting to come from Kirk as a warning, and had escaped. I had been a fool to telegraph. I should have gone there instead. His reason for keeping up the fiction that the Professor was alive was, of course, obvious, for while he did so there would be no inquiry into the whereabouts of the missing man.
I had made a promise to Kershaw Kirk, yet now that he had so grossly deceived me, why should I keep it? Why should I not tell the truth?
I reflected; there were, I saw, three reasons why I should still preserve silence. The first was because, after that lapse of time, I should be suspected, perhaps arrested, as an accomplice and dragged through a criminal court. The second was that Ethelwynn herself was, for some amazing reason, pretending that her father still lived; and the third was by reason of the strange threat of Mabel’s death uttered by the evil-faced Italian, and repeated by that Harley Street specialist who was Leonard Langton’s closest friend.
The assassins were actually holding my dear wife as hostage against any revelation I dared to make! That, in a word, was the true position.
I paced my room that night in the agony of despair. Of nothing did I think but the dear, sweet-faced woman so suddenly enticed away from my side by reason of her eagerness to meet me. She was a woman of high ideals and of lofty sentiments; a womanly woman who, though fond of a little gaiety and of the theatre, realised that her place was in her own home, where she reigned supreme.
Before my marriage my father, as fathers will, had looked upon her with considerable misgiving. She was a little too flighty, too fond of dress, of dinners, and dances, he had said. But after our wedding and our honeymoon spent in a car touring up in Scotland, she had settled down, and never for a single instant had I regretted my choice. Few men could say that.
Indeed, up to that day when Kershaw Kirk called to inspect the Eckhardt tyre, I was one of the happiest men in all London; prosperous in my business, and contented in my love.
Now, alas! all had changed. I was obsessed by the knowledge of a great and startling secret, and at the same time I had lost all that to me was most dear and cherished.
Next morning Gwen, fresh in her clean cotton blouse, and the big black bow in her hair, sat in her accustomed place at the breakfast table, but after greeting me lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
At last she asked: “Have you packed your things, Harry?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” I exclaimed. “I’m not going to-day. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Not going? Why, I thought you intended to see the Professor in Strassburg?” she cried.
“He has left,” I sighed; “I learned last night that he is on his way to Hungary.”
“And will you not follow?” asked the girl in reproach. “Will you not try to discover where Mabel is?”
“I’ve tried, Gwen—and failed,” I answered despairingly.
“You have not told me all, Harry,” she said, looking across at me. At the head of the table was Mabel’s empty place. “You have concealed something from me,” she declared.
“It is nothing that you should know,” was my quick reply. “My own private business does not concern you, Gwen—or Mabel either.”
“But surely I ought to know the truth? Mabel has been decoyed away abroad, and there must be some motive for it,” she replied in bitter complaint.
“Of course, my dear girl, but even I, in the knowledge of what has passed, cannot discern what the motive can be. If I could, all would be plain sailing, and we would soon recover her,” I said.
“Who is this Professor of whom you have spoken?” she asked, leaning her elbows upon the table, and gazing straight into my eyes.
“Professor Greer, the well-known chemist.”
“Greer?” echoed the girl, staring at me strangely.
“Yes, why?”
But she hesitated, as though disinclined to tell me something which was upon her mind.
“You know the Professor, eh, Harry?”
“I’ve met him once,” I replied, which was perfectly true.
“And only once?” she asked.
“Only once,” was my quick response.
“That’s curious.”
“Why?”
“Well—well, I suppose I ought not to tell you, for, of course, Harry—it’s no business of mine,” remarked the girl, “but as Mabel is now missing, no fact should be concealed, and I think you really ought to know that—”
“That what?” I cried. “Tell me quickly, Gwen! Conceal nothing from me!”
“Well, that Mabel one morning received a note delivered by express messenger, and I asked her whom it was from. She seemed unusually flurried, and told me that it was from Professor Greer.”
“But she never knew him!” I gasped. “What day was that?”
“The day before you returned from Glasgow.”
“The same day on which she received that telegram from Italy purporting to be signed by me!”
I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before, Gwen?”
“Mabel’s affairs have nothing to do with me. I am not interested in her correspondents, Harry,” she replied. “Surely it is not my place to carry tales to you, is it?”
“No; pardon me,” I said, hastening to excuse myself, “but in this affair the truth must be told.”
“Then why haven’t you told it to me?” asked the girl. “Why are you so carefully hiding other facts?”
“Because they are of concern only to myself—a secret which is mine, and mine alone.”
“And it does not concern Mabel?” she demanded.
“No,” I replied hoarsely, “except that her acquaintance with the Professor has placed a new phase upon the mystery. Tell me all that happened concerning that note.”
“It came about eleven o’clock in the morning,” she said. “I saw a telegraph-boy come up the steps, and believed he had a message from you. Annie took the note and brought it here into the dining-room, where Mabel signed for it. She read it through, and I saw that it caused her a great shock of surprise. Her hands were trembling. I inquired what was the matter, but she made some evasive reply. I demanded to know whom it was from, and she replied that her correspondent’s name was Greer. ‘He ought never to have written to me,’ she added. ‘Men are sometimes most injudicious.’ Then she rose and placed the letter in the flames, watching it until it had been burned.”
“And is that all?” I demanded, astounded at the girl’s story.
“Yes, except that for some hours afterwards she seemed very upset. To me it appeared as though she had received word of some unusual occurrence. At noon she called a taxi by telephone, and went out. She did not return for luncheon, so I was alone. At three she came back, and I saw that she looked pale and distressed, while her eyes were red, as though she had been crying. But I attributed that to our ignorance of where you were. You know, Harry, how upset she is if when you are away you don’t write or wire to her every day,” added the girl.
The story held me utterly speechless. That Mabel was acquainted in secret with the Professor astounded me. But it had been the false Professor who had written to her. Possibly the fellow was already in London while I was searching for him in Glasgow, and, if so, what was more probable than that she should have met him by appointment?
Not one single instant did I doubt Mabel’s truth and love. If she had met this impostor, then she had been the victim of some cleverly-planned plot. I was incensed only against the perpetrators of that foul crime in Sussex Place, not against the sweet, soft-spoken woman who was so near my heart. Mabel was my wife, my love, my all-in-all.
Poor Gwen, watching my face intently, believed that she had acted as a sneak towards her sister, but I quickly reassured her that it was not so. Her revelations had sent my thoughts into a different channel.
“The telegram summoning her to Italy came after her return?” I asked.
“Yes, she was upset, and would eat no tea,” the girl answered. “Her conversation was all the time of you. ‘Harry is in danger,’ she said several times. ‘Something tells me that he is in the greatest danger.’ Then, when the message came, she became almost frantic in her anxiety for your welfare, saying, ‘Did I not tell you so? My husband is in peril. He is the victim of a plot!’”
“You never heard her speak of the Professor before?” I inquired.
“Never, Harry; and, truth to tell, I was surprised that she should receive a letter from a man who she admitted to me was unknown to you.”
“She told you that?” I cried.
“She said that you were not acquainted with the Professor, and that you might object to him writing to her, if you knew.”
“Then she was in fear of discovery, eh?” I asked in a husky voice.
“Yes,” faltered the girl. “It—it almost seemed as though she was. But really, Harry, I—I know I’ve done wrong to tell you all this. I—I’m quite ashamed of myself. But it is because I am in such great fear that something has happened to my sister.”
“You have done quite right, Gwen,” I assured her. “The circumstances have warranted your outspokenness. Some men might perhaps misjudge their wives in such a case, but I love Mabel, and she loves me. Therefore I will believe no ill of her. She is the innocent victim of a plot, and by Heaven!” I cried fiercely, “while I live I’ll devote my whole life to its exposure, and to the just punishment of any who have dared to harm her!”