"Selina! The time has arrived to impartThe covert design of my passionate heart.No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast,No common ambition deprives me of rest....My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublimeAs ever was carved on the tablets of time.To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ringThe echo and crash of a notable thing.I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb,Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...Hither to the rescue, ladies!Let not fear your spirits vex.On the plan by me that made isHangs the future of your sex...Shall she then be left to mourn herIsolation and her shame?Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner,Every true Belgravian dame."
"Selina! The time has arrived to impartThe covert design of my passionate heart.No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast,No common ambition deprives me of rest....My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublimeAs ever was carved on the tablets of time.To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ringThe echo and crash of a notable thing.I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb,Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...Hither to the rescue, ladies!Let not fear your spirits vex.On the plan by me that made isHangs the future of your sex...Shall she then be left to mourn herIsolation and her shame?Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner,Every true Belgravian dame."
Sir George Otto Trevelyan: "The Modern Ecclesiazusæ."
I ought to have known better than to go round to Cadogan Square next morning. Bereaved families, like swarming bees, are best left alone; and I knew beforehand that I could render no assistance. At the same time, I felt it would be unfriendly to treat Sylvia's disappearance as part of the trivial round and common task, especially after my overnight conversation with Philip. And if I could bring back any news to the Seraph, I knew I should be more than compensated for my journey.
Save for its master and mistress, I found the house deserted. Philip had organised himself into one search party, Robin into another: Nigel Rawnsley appeared to be successfully usurping authority at Scotland Yard, and from Sloane Street and Chiswick respectively Gartside and Culling paced slowly to a central place of meeting. Every shopkeeper, loafer, postman, and hawker along the route was subjected to searching inquisition: the car, its passenger, and black-bearded driver were described and re-described. My two detective friends from Henley, as I afterwards found out, passed a cheerful day at headquarters, drinking down unsweetened reprimands and striving to explain the difficulties of protecting a young woman who refused to be shadowed.
I admired the way Arthur Roden took punishment. When armchair critics scoff at a generation of opportunist politicians, I think of him—and of Rawnsley, who suffered first and longest. Their public pronouncements never wavered; the Suffrage must be opposed and defeated on its own merits or demerits, and no attacks on property, no menaces to person could shake them from what they regarded as a national duty. Even if I chose to think old Rawnsley's mechanical, cold-blooded inhumanity extended to the members of his own family, it would be impossible to charge Jefferson with indifference to his only child, or Roden with want of affection towards his only daughter. I know of no girl who exacted as much admiring devotion from the members of her own family as Sylvia: or one who repaid the exaction so generously.
Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound.I admit I expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated, I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter, uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations. Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender, Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their wives' bodies.
"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is what I have received."
He threw me a typed sheet of paper.
"We shall be glad to knowwithin the next ten days(expiring Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is enjoyed by men."
"How are you answering this?" I asked.
"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and will go forward in due course."
"And Sylvia?"
"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand pounds reward...."
"Are you making the whole thing public?"
"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've advertisedthemselves by broad hints in theNew Militant; the gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing theTimes, and you'll have the whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story comes out."
The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved his sagacity as a prophet.
"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I asked.
"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these women, very clever."
"No clue?"
"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look for the perpetrators."
"You've no suspicions?" I ventured to ask.
"Oh, suspicions, certainly." He looked at me shrewdly and with a spice of disfavour. "Candidly, I suspect your friend Miss Davenant."
"Why her in particular?" I asked carelessly.
"By a process of exclusion. The old constitutional agitators, the Blacks and the Campions and that lot, are out of the question; they've publicly denounced the slightest breach of the law. I acquit the Old Militants, too—the Gregorys and Haseldines and Ganons. They're too stupid, for one thing; they go on burning houses and breaking windows in their old fatuous way. And for another thing they haven't the nerve...."
"There are a good many Hunger-Strikers among them," I interposed, probably with the dishonest intention of spreading his suspicions over the widest possible area.
"Less than before," he answered. "And their arch-Hunger-Striker, the Haseldine woman, carried meat lozenges with her the last time she visited Holloway. No, they're cowards. If you want brain and courage you must look to a little group of women who detached themselves from the Old Militant party. Mrs. Millington was one and Miss Davenant was another."
"The eminently moderate staff of the ultra-constitutionalNew Militant," I said as I prepared to leave.
"If you've any influence with either of those women and want to save them a long stretch of penal servitude, now's your time to warn them."
"Good Heavens! you don't suppose I'm admitted to their counsels!"
"You could advise them as a friend."
"When you tell me there's not enough suspicion to carry into court? I fear they wouldn't listen."
"They might prefer to stop play before their luck turns," he answered as he accompanied me to the door. "Their quiescent state is the most significant, most suspicious, most damning thing about them. If a house-breaker opened a religious bookshop, you might think he had reformed. Or you might think he was preparing an extra large coup. Or you might think he sold sermons by day and cracked cribs by night."
"What cynics you public men are!" I exclaimed as I ran down the steps and turned in the direction of Chester Square.
I have said that "Providence" is not one of my starrôles, and I had every reason to know that my eloquence was unavailing when set to the task of converting Joyce from her militant campaign. However, I have seen stones worn away by constantdripping.... And in any case I had not been near the house for nearly two days.
"I'm afraid you can't see Joyce," Elsie told me as we shook hands. "She wouldn't go to bed when the doctor told her, and now she's really rather bad."
I was more upset by the news than I care to say, but Elsie hastened to assure me.
"It's nothing much so far," she said. "But she's got a temperature and can't sleep, and worries a good deal."
"Can't we get her away?" I exclaimed impatiently.
Elsie shook her head.
"I've tried, but she simply won't leave town."
"But what's to keep her?"
"There's the paper every week."
It always annoys me to find any one thinking the world will come to an end unless run on his or her own favourite lines.
"If she died, some one else would have to edit it," I pointed out. "Who's doing it now?"
"Mrs. Millington. I'm afraid it's no use telling people that till theyaredead."
"And then it's a little late in the day," I answered irritably.
Elsie proceeded to give me the real reason for Joyce's obstinacy.
"When you're dead you don't have to take responsibility for your deputy's mistakes."
"That's it, is it? Mrs. Millington setting the Thames on fire?"
"Her zeal sometimes outruns her discretion," said Elsie with a smile. "That's what's chiefly worrying Joyce."
I picked up my hat and stick and moved towards the door.
"And Joyce is losing her nerve?" I hazarded.
"She's not up to her usual form," was all Elsie would answer.
"Give her my love," I said at the door, "and best wishes for a quick recovery. If she isn't well in two days' time, I shall carry her off by main force and put her into a nursing home."
Then I went off to lunch at the Club, and found fault with the food, the wine, the cigars and all creation. Paddy Culling opened a subscription list to buy me a box of liver pills. The Seraph—after I had been two minutes at Adelphi Terrace—said he was sorry Joyce was no better.... I thanked him for his sympathy, and sat down to read the current copy of theNew Militant.
In my careless, hot-blooded youth I made a collection of inanimate journalistic curiosities. It was my sole offence against the wise rule that to collect anything—from wives up to postage stamps—is a mark of incipient mental decay. There was thePunch, with the cartoon showing the relief of Khartoum; and I remember I had a copy of the suppressed issue of theTimes, when the compositors usurped control of Empire and edited one of Harcourt's Budget speeches on lines of their own. There was also a pinkPall Mall Gazette, bought wet from the machine at a shilling the copy, when paper ran out and they borrowed the pink reserve rolls of theGlobe. I had a copy of another journal that described in moving language the massacre of the Peking Legations. The Legations were, in fact, never massacred, but they should have been on any theory of probability, and, for aught I know, the enterprising journalist may have believed with Wilde that Nature tends to copy Art.
I also had several illustrated weekliesdepicting—by the pen of Our Special Artist—that first Coronation Ceremony of Edward the Seventh, and the verbal account of it given by "A Peeress" who had been present. More lately I acquired the original American paper which sent theTitanicto her grave with the band playing "Nearer, my God, to Thee."...
I am half sorry the collection is dispersed. I should have liked to add the one historic number of theNew Militantthat appeared under Mrs. Millington's fire-and-brimstone editorship. To the collector it is curious, as being the last issue of the paper; by the mental pathologist it is regarded as an interesting example of what is by common consent called "Militant Hysteria." The general public will remember it as the documentary evidence which at last enabled the police to secure a warrant of arrest against the "proprietors, printers and publishers of the newspaper called and known as theNew Militant," to raid the printing office in Clerkenwell, and lay bare the private memoranda of the New Militant organisation.
My own copy did not survive my departure from England, and I could not do Mrs. Millington the injustice of trying to reproduce her deathless periods. I remember there was a great deal of "Where is Miss Rawnsley? Where is Master Jefferson? Where is Miss Roden?" Such questions implicated no one, and only annoyed inconsequential persons like myself, who detest being set conundrums of which I do not know the answer by some one who obviously does. The practice is futile and vexatious.
The incriminating words came heavy-typed in the last paragraph of the leading article, and contained an unmistakable threat that the policy of abduction would continue until female suffrage had been secured.
After dinner that night I strolled round to the Club to hear what people were saying.
"They've done for themselves this time," Gartside told me with much assurance when I ran across him in the hall. "Don't ask me where I got it from, and don't let it go any further, but there's a warrant out against some one."
I was conscious of a very uncomfortable sensation of hollowness.
"Is it indiscreet to ask who?"
"I can't tell you, because I don't know. I fancy you proceed against the whole lot, printers included."
"They've not wasted much time," I said.
It was Tuesday night. TheNew Militantwent to press at midday and was on sale next morning throughout the country. In London, of course, it could be obtained overnight, and I had secured an early copy by calling at the office itself.
I stood in the middle of the hall wondering exactly what I could do to prevent the arm of the law stretching out and folding Chester Square in its embrace. I was still wondering when Paddy Culling bounded up the steps and seized Gartside and myself by either hand.
"It's yourself should have been there," he panted, momentarily releasing my arm in order to mop a red, dripping forehead. His broken collar and caved-in hat suggested a fight: his brogue reminded me that the offer of a golden throne in heaven will not avail to keep an Irishman out of a brawl. "Down Clerkenwell way ut was, the War of the Woild Women. The polis...."
He was settling down to a narrative of epic proportions. The Irish are this world's finest raconteurs as they are its finest fighters, riders and gentlemen. It was an insult, but I could not wait.
"Have they raided the place, Paddy?" I asked.
"They have." His eyes reproached me for my interruption. "The polis...."
"Did they get any one?"
"Am I telling ye or am I not? Answer me that."
"I know, Paddy," I said with all the contrition at my command. "But I've got to go, and I just wanted the main outline...."
"They got Mrs. Millington," he began again, "and she fighting the way ye'd say she'd passed her born days being evicted. There was one had the finger bitten off him and another scratched in the face till the gutters ran blood. Five strong men held her down and stamped out the life of her, and five more dragged her down the road by the hair of her head and droppit her like a swung cat over the railings of the common mortuary. The vultures...."
"Did they get any one else?" I interrupted.
"It's the fine tale ye're spoiling," he complained.
"But just tell me that," I pleaded.
"They did not," he answered with ill-concealed disgust. "Unless ye'd be calling a printer's devil one of God's fine men and women. But the polis...."
I hurried down the steps and jumped into a taxi. I thought first of calling to warn them at Chester Square. Then I decided to communicate by telephone. If Joyce had not already been arrested, and if I was to be of any assistance later on, I could not afford to be discovered in the incriminating neighbourhood of her house.
I gave the Seraph the heads of my story as I looked up the number and waited for my call.
"You're through," the Exchange told me after an interminable delay.
"Hallo, hallo!" I kept calling, for what seemedlike half an hour. "Will you give another ring, please, Exchange?"
A further age dragged its course, and I was told that there did not seem to be any one at the other end.
"Now will you tell me what we're to do, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
We sat and stared at each other for the best part of five minutes. Then the decision was taken out of our hands. I saw him prick up his ears to catch a sound too faint for my grosser senses.
"Some one coming upstairs," he whispered. "It's a woman, and she's coming slowly. Now she's stopped. Now she's coming on again."
I rose from my chair and tiptoed across the room.
"Can it be Joyce?" I asked, sinking my own voice to a whisper.
"She's going on to the next floor," he answered with a shake of the head; and then with sudden excitement, "Now she's coming back."
"She mustn't ring the bell," I cried, running out into the hall.
"It's all right, there's nobody here but ourselves," he called out as I opened the door and ran out onto the landing.
Ten feet in front of me, leaning back against the banisters, stood Joyce Davenant. One hand covered her eyes and the other was pressed to her heart. She was trembling with fever and panting with the exertion of climbing four flights of stairs. A long fur coat stretched down to bare feet thrust into slippers, her head was covered by a shawl, though the hair fell loosely inside her coat. At the neck I could see the frilled collar of a nightdress.
"Joyce!" I exclaimed.
She uncovered her face and showed eyes preternaturally bright, and white cheeks lit by a single spot of brilliant colour.
"I said I'd come when there was a warrant out," she panted with game, gallant attempt at a smile. Then I caught her in my arms as she fell forward, and carried her as gently as I could inside the flat.
I left it to the Seraph to take off her coat and lay her in his own bed. He did it as tenderly as any woman. Then we went to the far side of the room and held a whispered consultation. I am afraid I could suggest nothing of value, and the credit of our arrangement lies wholly at his door.
"We must get a nurse," he began. "Elsie mustn't be seen coming near the place or the game's up. What about that woman who helped you bring Connie Matheson home from Malta this spring? Can you trust her? Have you got her address? Well, you must see if you can get her to-night. No, not yet. We want a doctor. Her own man? No! It would give us away at once. Look out Maybury-Reynardson's address in the telephone book, somewhere in Cavendish Square. He's a sportsman; he'll do it if you say it's for me. You must go and see him in person; we don't want the Exchange-girls listening. Anything more? I'll square my man and his wife when they come in. Oh, tell your nurse the condition this poor child's come in; say it's a bachelor establishment and we haven't got a stitch of anything, and can't send to Chester Square for it. Tell her to bring...."
He paused to listen as heavy feet ascended the stairs. The noise was loud enough even for me this time. There was a ring at the door.
"Wine cellar. Locked. Haven't got key," hewhispered turning out the light and locking himself inside the room with Joyce.
I opened the front door and found myself faced with the two Roden detectives I had corrupted with bottled beer at Henley.
"Why, this is like old times!" I said. "Have you been able to find any trace of Miss Roden?"
They had not, and I see now that my question was singularly tactless. They bore no resentment, however, and told me they had called on other business. There was a warrant out against Miss Davenant. She was not to be found at the Clerkenwell printing office, and while Chester Square was being searched, a woman had slipped out of the house by a side door, entered a car and driven away.
"Could you follow her?" I asked, with all the Englishman's love of the chase.
That, it appeared, had been difficult, as the number of the car seemed to have been wilfully obscured.
"That's an offence, isn't it?" I asked.
It was, and the driver—if traced—would find himself in trouble. They had followed a likely-looking car and seen it turn southward out of the Strand. When they reached Adelphi Terrace, however, there was only one car in sight, drawn up outside our door and presenting a creditably clear number-plate. Its driver had vaguely seen another car, but had not particularly noticed it. They called on chance, as this was the only suite with lights in it. Had I seen or heard anything of the car or a woman getting out of it?
"I've only just come in myself," I told them. "Half an hour, to be exact. That was possibly my taxi you saw outside. I didn't notice the number. How long ago did you see your suspected car turninto Adelphi Terrace? Ten minutes? Oh, then I should have seen any one who came up here, shouldn't I? Would you like to look round to make sure?"
The senior man stepped back and glanced up at the name painted over the door.
"It's Mr. Aintree's flat," I explained. "I'm staying with him."
The man hesitated uncertainly.
"I haven't any authority," he began.
"Oh, hang the authority!" I said. "Mr. Aintree wouldn't mind. Dining-room, wine-cellar, library.... Won't you come in? Not even for a drink? Sure? Well, good-night. Oh, it's no trouble."
Detectives—or such few of them as I have met—remind me of Customs-house officials: if you offer your keys and go out of your way to lay bare your secrets before their eyes, they will in all probability let you through without opening a single trunk. They are perverse as women—and simple as children.
I tapped at the Seraph's door and told him I had disposed of the police without uttering a single falsehood. It was almost the last time I was able to make that boast. We gave our friends ten minutes' start, and I then set out in search of nurse and doctor. Joyce looked shockingly ill when I left, but her breathing was peaceful. Occasionally she moved or moaned in her sleep; as I turned at the door for a last look, the Seraph was rearranging her pillow and smoothing the hair back from her face.
I had to walk into the Strand to find a taxi. Outside the Vaudeville I met my brother and his wife, and was bidden to sup with them at the Savoy. I refused for many reasons, the first being that a man who starts a career of crime at the age of forty-two must not for very decency be seen eating in companywith a judge of the High Court. My meeting did good in giving me the idea of establishing a succession ofalibis. When I had made the necessary arrangements with Maybury-Reynardson and the nurse, I looked in once more at the Club.
Culling, Gartside and Nigel Rawnsley had the north smoking-room to themselves. They seemed to be discussing some plan of campaign, and the rescue of Sylvia was its object. Perhaps I should not say "discussing": Nigel was holding forth in a way that made me think he must have been a Grand Inquisitor in some previous incarnation. The ruthlessness of a Torquemada was directed by Napoleonic statecraft and brought down to date by the terrorism of a brow-beating counsel. The combination was highly impressive; his own contribution consisted in an exquisite choice of epithets.
"Talk to the Chief," I heard him say in summary of his plan of campaign. "Get him to arrange for Merivale, J., to try the case, and you'll find the woman Millington will exhibit surprising celerity in imparting whatever information she may have gathered in respect of the whereabouts of Mavis and Sylvia and the Jefferson boy."
"King's Evidence, d'you mean?" asked Gartside. "Not she!"
"Inconceivably less ornate than that. I agree with you that she might withhold her consent. It is therefore more expedient to coax her into the confessional without implicating her fellow conspirators. If you were being tried by Merivale and saw seven years' penal servitude stretching in pleasing prospect before you, you'd want to start the day on terms of reasonable amity with your judge. If you knew Merivale's daughter was engaged to marry a man whose sister had been spirited away, would younot strive to acquire merit in the eyes of your judge's family by saying where the sister could be found? It is approximately equivalent to a year's reduction of sentence."
Paddy Culling scratched his head thoughtfully with a paper knife.
"If Miss Davenant's afther hiding herself in one of the coops where the other little chicken's stored away...." he began.
"She's not," Nigel interrupted decisively. "The risk's too considerable; she wouldn't want to betray herself and her hostages at the same moment. She's in London...."
"Is she?" asked Gartside.
"She was to-day at lunch-time, because her doctor called at the house. Of course, the police in their infinite sagacity must needs start searching at the wrong end and afford her opportunities of escape."
"Out of London if she wanted to," persisted Gartside.
"Not by train," said Nigel. "Every station's watched...."
"By car."
"By airship, equally. The woman's seriously ill; you'd kill her."
Paddy Culling looked at his friend a little enviously.
"You know a lot about the inside of that house," he said.
"By the simple expedient of the sovereign in season to the kitchen-maid, who, like the rest of her class, was unquestionably loyal, but more unquestionably impecunious. The woman Davenant's in London, and they'll find her in three days. Where she is, I can't tell you. I may know more when I've seen the officers' reports to-morrow morning.Sylvia I'll undertake to find within a week. The woman Millington will give her away, and if she doesn't, the woman Davenant will have to."
"When you've caught her," said Culling quietly.
"Not even when you've caught her," said Gartside with greater knowledge. "I know the breed. It's pedigree stock."
Nigel lit a cigarette with ostentatious elaboration.
"Even pedigree stock has its less spirited moments," he said. "For example, when it's seriously ill. I fancy I could make the woman Davenant tell me all I wanted in three minutes."
The tone was extraordinarily sinister. I seemed to realise in a flash why Sylvia, with a woman's quicker, deeper insight, kept the speaker at a distance.... However, I had come to the Club to establish analibi, not to reflect on the character of Sylvia's admirers. And I wanted to get back to Adelphi Terrace as soon as my purpose was effected.
"I was sorry to run away in the middle of your story, Paddy," I said. "I'd promised to meet a man, and I was rather late as it was. You'd got as far as the disposal of Mrs. Millington's body in the common mortuary and the arrest of a poor, mean printer's devil. What happened then? Was any one else caught?"
Paddy looked at me almost with affection, his eyes alight with oratorical fire.
"It's yourself should have been there to see it," he began, grasping my arm with one hand and making his points with the other. "The polis and red coats was there, and the newspaper men in their thousands, and the gravediggers in their tens of thousands...."
"My mind ... rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.... I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world ... the only unofficial consulting detective.... I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection.... I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward."—Sir A. Conan Doyle: "The Sign of Four."
"My mind ... rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.... I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world ... the only unofficial consulting detective.... I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection.... I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward."—Sir A. Conan Doyle: "The Sign of Four."
Premonitions—so far as my gross person is concerned—are a matter of digestion, nerves and liver. If I woke up on the morning after Joyce's flight to Adelphi Terrace with a dull sense of impending disaster, I ascribe it to the fact that I had passed a more than ordinarily hideous night. Unlike the Seraph, who never went to bed, I had sufficient philosophy to turn in when the doctor had left and the nurse was comfortably established. It had been made clear to me that I could do no manner of good by staying up and getting in people's way....
I started in my own room, but quickly took refuge in the library. If there are two sounds I cannot endure, one is that of a crying child, and the other of a woman—or man for that matter—moaning in pain. Even in the library I could hearJoyce suffering. Maybury-Reynardson had told us she was all right, and there is no point in calling in experts if you are going to disbelieve them. But I do not want to experience another night of the same kind.
And in the morning the papers were calculated to heighten the horror of the worst premonitions I could experience. I opened theTimes, noted in passing that Gartside had fulfilled popular expectation by being appointed to the Governorship of Bombay, and turned to the account of the Clerkenwell raid. Culling was right in saying Mrs. Millington's had been the only arrest of importance; but he had left the battlefield at the end of the fighting, and had not waited to see the conquerors march into the citadel.
I felt myself growing chilled and old as I read of the discoveries in the printing office. Mrs. Millington would stand charged with incitement to crime and public threat of abduction; serious enough, if you will, but her debt was discharged as soon as she had paid the penalty for a single article in a single paper. Her threats were embryonic, not yet materialised. Joyce stood to bear the burden of the three abductions carried out to date....
I am no criminologist, and can offer neither explanation nor theory of the mental amblyopia that leads criminals to leave one weak link, one soft brick, one bent girder, to ruin a triumph of design and construction. They always do—men and women, veterans and tiros—and Joyce was no exception. When the police broke open the safe in her editorial office, the first document they found was the half sheet of Chester Square notepaper that the journalists agreed to christen "The Time Table."
It was written in Joyce's hand, and her writingcould be identified by a short-sighted illiterate at ten yards' distance. I have forgotten the dates by this time, and can only guess at them approximately; words and names have been added in full where Joyce put only initials. This was the famous Time Table:—
500, Chester Square, S.W.May 8. Rejection of W. (women's) S. (suffrage) Amendment.May 9. M.R. (Mavis Rawnsley) letter R. (Rawnsley).June 17. P.—(private) M. (members') Day.[This was ruled through.]June 16. R.'s (Rawnsley's) Time Table.June 17. P. (Paul) J. (Jefferson) Letters R. and J. (Rawnsley and Jefferson).June 30. R. (Rawnsley) to decide re A.S. (Autumn Session).July 2. R. (Rawnsley) in H. (House). No A.S. (Autumn Session).July 9. S. (Sylvia) R. (Roden). Letters R. (Rawnsley) & R. (Roden).July 19. R. (Rawnsley) to reply re facilities.July 20. W.G. [I am not sure whether this refers to Walter Greatorex, the ten-year-old son of the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, or Lady Winifred Gaythorne, daughter of the Marquis of Berwick—of the India Office. Both Greatorex and Berwick were opposed to the franchise, but in a mild, unoffending fashion. The invariable typed challenge does not help me to decide, as only one letter was to be sent, the usual Letter R. (Rawnsley)].
500, Chester Square, S.W.
May 8. Rejection of W. (women's) S. (suffrage) Amendment.
May 9. M.R. (Mavis Rawnsley) letter R. (Rawnsley).
June 17. P.—(private) M. (members') Day.[This was ruled through.]
June 16. R.'s (Rawnsley's) Time Table.
June 17. P. (Paul) J. (Jefferson) Letters R. and J. (Rawnsley and Jefferson).
June 30. R. (Rawnsley) to decide re A.S. (Autumn Session).
July 2. R. (Rawnsley) in H. (House). No A.S. (Autumn Session).
July 9. S. (Sylvia) R. (Roden). Letters R. (Rawnsley) & R. (Roden).
July 19. R. (Rawnsley) to reply re facilities.
July 20. W.G. [I am not sure whether this refers to Walter Greatorex, the ten-year-old son of the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, or Lady Winifred Gaythorne, daughter of the Marquis of Berwick—of the India Office. Both Greatorex and Berwick were opposed to the franchise, but in a mild, unoffending fashion. The invariable typed challenge does not help me to decide, as only one letter was to be sent, the usual Letter R. (Rawnsley)].
"So far the police have been unable to discover the whereabouts of Miss Davenant," the article concluded. That was the sole, poor consolation I couldoffer to a white, tired Seraph as I threw him the paper and went back to my gloomy premonitions.
As he read, I thought over my lastalibiin the north smoking-room at the Club. I wondered what story my friends, the Henley detectives, were concocting in their report, and what action Nigel Rawnsley would take when he had digested it.
It is not entirely my "wisdom after the event" that made me select Nigel as our most formidable opponent, nor altogether my memory of the lead he had taken in the discussion overnight; I was beginning to appreciate his character. When he is Prime Minister of England, like his father before him, it will be in virtue of the same qualities. A brain of steel and a ruthless, iron resolution will force theοἱ φύσει ἀρχόμενοιto follow and obey him. He will be feared, possibly even hated, but the hatred will leave him indifferent so long as power is conceded him. I have met no young man so resolute or successful in getting his own way; few who give me the impression of being so ruthless and, perhaps, unscrupulous in their methods. He is still preserved from active mischief by his astonishing self-consciousness and lack of humour; when he has outgrown these juvenilities, he will be really formidable. His wife—when she comes—will have my sympathy, for what that is worth; but there will be many women less discerning than Sylvia to strive for the privilege.
It was noon before the Amateur Detective invaded us. The Seraph's man—who had already been admitted to our secret, and would at any time have been crucified head-downwards for his master—flung open the library door with the words—
"Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, Lord Gartside, Mr. Culling, Mr. Philip Roden."
The Seraph rose and offered chairs. You couldto some extent weigh and discriminate characters by the various modes of entry. Nigel refused to be seated, placed his hat on the table and produced a typewritten transcript of the two detectives' reports in the traditional manner of a stage American policeman—which in passing, I may say, is nothing like any American policeman I have ever met anywhere in America or the civilised world. Philip and Gartside were self-conscious and uncomfortable; Culling strove to hide his embarrassment by more than usual affability.
"It's ill ye're looking, Seraph," he remarked, as he accepted a cigarette. "And has this great ugly brute Toby been slashing the face off you?"
Then the inquiry began, with Philip as first spokesman.
"Sorry to invade you like this, Seraph," he began, "but it's about my sister. You know she's disappeared? Well, we were wondering if you could help us to find her."
"I'll do anything I can...." the Seraph started.
"Do you know where she is?" Nigel cut in.
"I'm afraid I don't."
"Do you know any one who does?" Philip asked.
"I don't know that I do."
Philip hesitated, started a sentence, and closed his lips again without completing it. Nigel took up the examination.
"You know Miss Davenant, I believe?"
"Yes."
"Does she know where Sylvia and Mavis are?"
"I have no idea. You must ask her."
"I propose to."
The Seraph turned to Philip, glancing at the clock as he did so.
"I'm afraid the limits of my utility are soon reached. If there's anything I can do...."
"You can tell us where Miss Davenant is hiding," said Nigel.
"Can I?"
"You can and will."
The Seraph treated him to a long, unhurried scrutiny, starting from the boots and working up to the freckled face and sandy hair. Then he turned away, as though the subject had no further interest for him.
Nigel tried to return the stare, but broke into a blush and took refuge in his typewritten transcripts.
"I have here," he said, "a copy of the reports of the two detectives who watched Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square last night. They saw a woman, with her hair loose, and a long coat over whatever clothes she was wearing, jump into a car and drive to Adelphi Terrace."
"They were certain of the identity of the car?" I asked.
"Perfectly."
"They weren't when I talked to them last night," I said. "No number—no nothing. They thought it was the same car and called in on chance, as there was a light here, to see if we knew anything. I offered to show them round, but they wouldn't come in, so we prayed for mutually sweet dreams and parted."
Nigel tapped his papers.
"I have here their sworn statement that the car which left Chester Square was the car that turned into Adelphi Terrace."
"Perjury—like joy—cometh in the morning," I observed.
"That is as may be. I happen to know that Miss Davenant is seriously ill; I imagine, wherever she hasgone, she has not gone far. The number of houses within easy reach of Chester Square—houses that would take her in when there's a warrant out for her arrest—is limited. These considerations lead me to believe that the statement of these men is not perjured."
"I will apologise when next we meet," I said. When a young man like Nigel becomes stilted and dignified, I cannot repress a natural inclination to flippancy.
Philip intervened before Nigel could mature a crushing repartee.
"Look here, Seraph," he began. "Just as a favour, and not because we have any right to ask, will you say whether Miss Davenant's anywhere in this flat? If you say she is, I'm afraid we shall have to tell the police; if you say she isn't, we'll go away and not bother you any more."
"You must speak for yourself," Nigel interposed, before the Seraph could answer.
We sat for a moment in silence. Then Nigel continued his statement with unmistakable menace in his tone.
"If once the police intervene, the question becomes more serious and involves any one found harbouring a person for whom a warrant of arrest has been issued. I naturally do not wish to go to extremes." He turned to me: "You offered to show the detectives round these rooms last night; will you make me the same offer?"
I pointed to the Seraph.
"They aren't my rooms. I'm only a guest. I took it upon myself to make the offer in the Seraph's absence."
He repeated his request in the proper quarter, but was met with an uncompromising refusal.
"May I ask your reason?" he said.
"It is a question of manners," answered the Seraph.
"Then you wish me to apply for a search-warrant?"
"I am entirely indifferent. If you think it worth while, apply for one. As soon as it is presented, the police—are—welcome—to—any— discoveries—they—may—make."
The Seraph spoke with the quiet scorn of injured innocence. I saw a shadow of uncertainty settle on Nigel's face. The Seraph must have seen it, too; we preserved a strategic silence until uncertainty had matured into horrid doubt. I felt sorry for Nigel, as I feel sorry for any successful egoist in the toils of anticipated ridicule.
"It would be quicker to clear the matter up now," he said.
"My whole day is at your disposal."
"But mine is not. What is that room?"
"A spare bedroom, now occupied by Toby, if you ask for information."
Nigel started to cross the room.
"I like to check all verbal information," he remarked.
The Seraph had shorter distance to cover, and was standing with his back to the door when Nigel got there.
"I allow no unauthorised person to search my rooms without my leave," he said.
"You cannot always prevent it."
"I can in this case."
"We are four to one."
"You are one to two."
"My mistake, no doubt." He waved a hand round the room to indicate his allies.
"Assuredly your mistake, if you think Toby will stand by and let you search my rooms without my leave, or that any one of the others would raise a finger to help you."
Not one of his three allies had moved a step to support him. Nigel was impressed. Without retreating from his position he tried the effect of bluff.
"You forget the circumstances are exceptional. My sister has been spirited away, and so has Phil's. If we think you know the whereabouts of the woman who kidnapped them, we shall neither of us hesitate to employ timely physical force on you, perhaps inflict salutary physical pain."
"You may try, if you like."
"If I try, I shall succeed."
"You don't really think that, you know."
Gartside felt it was time to restore the peace. Walking up to Nigel, he led him firmly back to his place at the table and motioned the Seraph to his old position in the armchair by the fireplace. There was a long, awkward silence. Then Culling crossed the room, and sat on the arm of the Seraph's chair.
"Ye're white and ill, Seraph," he said, "and ye know I'm not the man would badger you. We're in a hole, and maybe ye can give us a hoist out of it. Do ye, or do ye not, know where Miss Davenant's hiding herself?"
The Seraph looked him steadily in his eyes.
"Yes."
"Well, is she, or is she not, in these rooms?"
"Wouldyoulike to search them?"
"Damn it, no, man! Give us yer word, and that's enough."
For a fraction of time the Seraph gazed at the faces of Culling, Philip and Gartside, weighing the characters and measuring the men.
"It's not enough for Rawnsley," he said.
"It'ull have to be."
"He likes to check all verbal information."
Culling shook his clenched fists in the air and involved us all in a comprehensive curse. The Seraph lit himself a cigarette, blew out the match with a deliberation Nigel could not have surpassed, and addressed the company.
"We seem to have reached a deadlock," he began. "Shall I offer a solution? The four of you come here and charge me with harbouring the woman who is supposed to have made away with Miss Rawnsley and Miss Roden. Very good. Every man is free to entertain any suspicions he likes, and to ventilate them—provided he doesn't forget his manners. Three of you behaved like gentlemen, the fourth followed his own methods. I should like to oblige those three. Rawnsley, you have menaced me with personal violence, and threatened me with a search warrant. You have done this in my own library. If you will apologise, and undertake not to enter these rooms again or to molest me here or anywhere else, and if you will further undertake not yourself to apply—or incite any one else to apply—for a warrant to search the flat, I shall have pleasure in accompanying Gartside wherever he chooses to go, unlocking any doors that may be locked, and offering him every facility in inspecting every nook and cranny in these rooms. As you may not accept verbal information even from him, I shall have pleasure in extending my offer to Culling. The one will be able to check the other."
He blew three smoke-rings and waited for an answer.
There was another moment of general discomfort. Nigel jibbed at the idea of apologising, Gartside andCulling would have done anything to avoid accepting the offer; from Philip's miserable fidgeting I could see that he had been persuaded into coming against his better judgment. For myself, I waited as a condemned man waits for the drop to fall. It was bound to come in a few seconds' time, but—illogically enough—I had ceased to dread it. My one fear was that Joyce should betray herself by one of those pitiful moans that had mingled with my dreams and vexed my sleep throughout the night. To this hour I can remember thinking how horror-stricken I should be if that sound broke out again. It had begun to get on my nerves.... The discovery itself was inevitable; I could imagine no trick or illusion that would enable the Seraph to steer his inquisitors past one of the principal rooms in the flat.
"I apologise for any offence I may have given, and I undertake all that you ask."
It was not gracefully done, but the Seraph accepted the words for the spirit.
"Come on, and let's get it over!" Culling exclaimed, jumping up and cramming his hat on the back of his head. With sinking heart I saw the three of them framed in the doorway, Gartside's huge form towering over the other two.
"Devilish sorry about the whole business," I heard him begin as the door closed. It was opened again for a moment as the Seraph reminded me where the drinks were kept, and suggested I should compound a cocktail. Then it closed finally.
Outside in the hall Culling added his contribution to the general apology.
"Come quietly," was all the Seraph would answer. "I hope she's sleeping."
Both men paused abruptly and gazed first at the Seraph and then at each other. He returned theirgaze unwaveringly, surprised apparently that they should be surprised. Then he led them wide-eyed with expectation across the hall; wide-eyed they watched him bend and listen, tap and gently open a bedroom door. The nurse rose from her chair at the bedside and placed a finger on her lips—
"Praise God, she's sleeping!" murmured Paddy Culling, with instinctive reverence removing his hat. Gartside looked for a moment at the flushed cheeks and parched lips, then turned away as the Seraph closed the door.
"Mustn't go back yet," he said. "We'd better look at one or two more rooms just to fill in time."
One of the shortest recorded councils of war was held in the bathroom. Culling, with his quick, superficial sympathy had already made up his mind, but Gartside stood staring out of the window with head bent and hands locked behind his back, struggling and torn between an unwillingness to hurt Joyce and a deep hungry desire to bring Sylvia safely out of her unknown hiding-place.
"You'll kill her if you move her," the Seraph remarked, dispassionately but with careful choice of time. Gartside's foot tapped the floor irresolutely. "Toby's engaged to marry her," he added softly.
With a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders Gartside turned to Culling, nodded without speaking, and linked arms with the Seraph.
"You're a good little devil," he said with a forced smile. "When this poor girl's better, get her to say where Sylvia is. She'll tell you. And let me know when the whole damned thing's straightened out. I'm off to Bombay in ten days' time. And it isn't very cheerful going off without knowing where Sylvia is. Now we've been out long enough," he added in firm, normal tones.
All three of us looked up quickly as the door opened. Culling's hat was once more on his head, and he was trying to pull on a pair of gloves and light a cigarette at the same time.
"All over but the cheering," he began abruptly. "High and low we've searched, and not found enough of a woman would make a man leave Eden, and she the only woman in the world."
"You've searched every room?" asked Nigel with a suspicious glance at the Seraph.
"Cellar to garret," answered Culling serenely, "and no living creature but a pair of goldfinches, and one of them dead; unless you'd be counting the buxom matron that the Seraph dashes my hopes by sayin' has a taste for drink like the many best of us, and she married already, and the mother of fourteen brace of twins and a good plain cook into the bargain."
Nigel picked up his papers and turned to Gartside for corroboration.
"We searched every room," he was told, "and Miss Davenant's not here. Seraph, we owe you...."
The apology was cut short, as speaker and listeners paused to catch a sound that floated through the silent hall and in at the open library door. A long, troubled moaning it was, the sound I had heard all night and dreaded all the morning.
"I shall have to check the verbal information after all," said Nigel as he put back his hat and papers on the table.
"Where are you off to?" asked Gartside as he approached the door.
"It seems I must search the house myself."
"You undertook to accept our finding."
"I thought I could trust you."
"I have said Miss Davenant is not in these rooms," said Gartside in a warning voice.
"If you said it a hundred times I should still disbelieve you. Let me pass, please."
He raised a hand to clear himself a passage, but in physical strength he had met more than his match. Seizing both wrists in one hand and both ankles in the other, Gartside carried him like a child's doll across the room to the open library window, thrust him through it, and held him for ninety seconds stretched at arm's length three storeys above the level of the street. The veins stood out on his forehead, and I heard his voice rumbling like the distant mutter of thunder.
"When I say a thing, Nigel, you have to believe me. The moon's of green cheese if I tell you to believe it, and when I say Miss Davenant's not in this flat, she's not and never has been, and never will be. You see?"
Stepping back from the window, he dropped his burden on a neighbouring sofa. Nigel straightened his tie, brushed his clothes, and once more gathered up his hat, his papers, and the remains of his dignity.
"Culling says there is no woman but a cook in the house," he began, with the studied tranquillity of an angry man. "He clearly lies. Gartside says Miss Davenant is not in the flat. He probably lies, but it is always possible that the sound we heard may have come from some woman Aintree thinks fit to keep in his rooms. In either event, I do not feel bound by the undertaking I have given." He pulled out a note-book and pretended to consult it. "To-day's Wednesday. If my sister and Sylvia have not been restored to their families by midday on Monday, I shall apply for a warrant to have these rooms searched. They will, of course, be watched inthe interval. If Lord Gartside or any other person presumes to lay a finger on me, I shall summon him for assault."
Pocketing the note-book he passed out of the flat with the air I suspect Rhadamanthus of assuming, when he is leaving the court for the luncheon interval, and has had a disagreeable morning with the prisoners. Culling accompanied him to prevent a sudden bolt at a suspicious-looking door, Philip followed with the Seraph, I brought up the rear with Gartside. All of us were smarting with the Englishman's traditional dislike of a "scene."
"I never congratulated you on the Bombay appointment," I said, with praiseworthy design of scrambling onto neutral territory. "How soon are you off?"
"Friday week," he answered.
"It's little enough time—nine days."
"Oh, I've known for some little while beyond that. It was only made public to-day."
"It's a pleasant post," I said reflectively. "In a tolerably pleasant country. I shall probably come to stay with you; I'm forgetting what India's like."
"I wish you would," he said warmly.
"How are you going? P. and O. I suppose?"
"No, I shall go in my own yacht."
Culling turned round to reprove me for my forgetfulness.
"We Gartsides always take our own yachts when we cross the ocean to take up our new responsibilities of Empire," he explained.
"Where do you sail from?" I ask. "Marseilles?"
"Southampton. Are you coming to see me off?"
"I might. It depends whether I can get away. Half London will be there, I suppose?"
Candidly I cannot say whether my questions were prompted by what the Seraph would call a sub-conscious plan of campaign. Gartside undeniably thought they were, and met me gallantly.
"I'm eating a farewell dinner every night till I sail," he said. Then, sinking his voice, he added, "You know the yacht—she's roomy, and there will be only my two aide-de-camps and myself. No one will be seeing me off, because I haven't told them when I'm sailing. It's the usual route—anywhere in the Mediterranean. But I can't sail before Friday week."
"I see. Well," I held out my hand, "if Idon'tsee you again, I'll say good-bye."
"Good-bye. Best of luck!" he answered, and waved a hand as I walked back and rejoined the Seraph in the hall.
He was so white that I expected every moment to see him faint, and his clothes were wet with perspiration. I, who am not so fine-drawn, had found the last hour a little trying.
"You're going to bed in decent time to-night," I told him. "I'm going to see Nurse, and find out if she knows of any one she can trust to come and help her. And I'm going to keep you out of the sick-room at the point of a bayonet if you've got one."
I had expected a protest, but none came. He sat with closed eyes, resting his head on his hand.
"I suppose that will be best," he assented at last.
"And now you're coming to get something to eat," I said, leading him into the dining-room.
"I'm not hungry," he complained.
"But you're going to eat a great deal," I said, pushing him into his chair and selecting a serviceable, sharp-pronged pickle-fork.
After luncheon I had my usual siesta, prolonged rather beyond my usual hour. It was five o'clock when I awoke, and I found the Seraph playing with a sheet of paper. He had written "Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday" on it, and after "Monday," "12.0 P.M."
"What's all this?" I asked.
"Our days of grace."
I added "Friday week" to the calendar.
"If we can get Joyce well enough to move away from Nigel's damned cordon of police," I said, "and if we can hide her somewhere till Friday week, friend Gartside's yacht is going to solve a good many problems."
"It's not going to find Sylvia," he answered.
That was unquestionably true.
"I don't know how that's going to be managed," I said.
We sat without speaking until dinner-time, and ate a silent dinner. At eleven o'clock he left the room, changed out of his dress clothes into a tweed suit, and put on a hat and brown walking boots.
"Where are you off to?" I asked when he came back.
"I'm going to find Sylvia."
The expression in his eyes convinced me—if I wanted any convincing—that the strain of the last few days had proved too much for him.
"Leave it till the morning," I said in the tone one adopts in talking to lunatics and drunken men.
"She wants me now."
"A few hours won't make any difference," I urged. "You'll start fresher if you have a night's rest to the good."
The Seraph held out his hand.
"Good-bye. You think I'm mad. I'm not. Nomore than I ever am. But Sylvia wants me, and I must go to her."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Then how are you going to find her?"
"I don't know."
"Well, where will you start looking?"
"I don't know."
He was already halfway across the hall. I balanced the rival claims of Joyce and himself. She at least had a doctor and nurse, and a second nurse was coming in the morning. He had no one.
"Damn you, Seraph!" I said under my breath, and then aloud: "Wait a bit and I'll come too."
"Hurry up then!" he answered chafing visibly at the delay.
I spoke a hurried word to the nurse, took a last look at Joyce, changed my clothes and joined him on the landing.
"Which way first?" I asked, and received the answer I might have expected.
"I don't know."