CHAPTER XXIITHE SECRET DISCLOSED
“Butwhat was the mystery of Audley’s disappearance?” I asked Feng, in breathless eagerness, now that the enigma was in course of solution.
“Well, Humphreys at first did his level best to prevent the marriage, but finding that impossible he went very cleverly to work. Audley, who was a young man of means—though he pretended that his profession was that of electrical engineer—had, Humphreys discovered, fallen into the hands of a man named Graydon, a friend of his, who lived in the same house as Audley and who was one of a gang of note forgers.
“By clever means this gang had used Audley for their own purposes, even to the extent of sometimes inducing him to assume Graydon’s identity. Harold Ruthen was one of Graydon’s accomplices in passing spurious notes, hence old Humphreys knew of Audley’s connection with the forgers. After Thelma’s marriage which he had tried in vain to prevent, it was highly necessary for the furtherance of Humphreys’ sinister plan, to get her husband away. Hetherefore caused to be sent to him at Mürren a veiled message that the police were making inquiries in London and that he had better at once efface himself, even from his wife. This he did, leaving Thelma in your care.”
“But was Stanley really a forger?” I asked.
“At first I thought so, but later I found that the poor fellow had acted in all innocence. He was being blackmailed by the gang and thus forced to assist them, until he received that warning and fled,” replied Feng. “I was all the time watching the very deep game played by the wily old crook who posed as an invalid. With Audley out of the way he expected that it would be easy to complete his plans. Instead, to his great chagrin, you came forward as the bride’s companion and protector. It was then that he determined, if you still continued to watch over the girl, from whose husband he had contrived to part her, that your activities should be suppressed. It then became my active duty to keep guard over both of you, which I did to the best of my ability.
“It was, of course, a difficult task. Had he been in New York you would both have been watched night and day by men of the Thu-tseng. The Chinese make the finest ‘shadowers’ in the world and in New York they are so very numerous that I could employ them with impunity. In London they are tooconspicuous. It was really through this that Humphreys nearly beat me at the finish.
“But I will give you an instance of how narrowly you escaped. Do you remember one night when we all had supper with Humphreys at a Chinese restaurant near Piccadilly Circus?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
“And you remember that I signalled to you not to eat the cold soup that was served?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I thought you meant it was something I should not like.”
“You would have been dead in five days if you had eaten it,” said Feng grimly. “It was by a miracle of luck that I saw Humphreys drop into it a tiny pellet as he reached his hand out for some bread. The Chinese waiter took your soup away. Humphreys did not notice the Chinese remark I made to the waiter, but that soup was preserved and analyzed. It contained a virulent culture of the germs of typhoid fever. The Chinese waiter, of course, was an agent of the Thu-tseng. I daresay you will meet him some day. He happens to be a doctor and a great friend of mine. He analyzed the soup for me. If you had taken a spoonful of it while Humphreys was telling the funny stories at which you were laughing, you would have been dead in five days—of perfectly natural causes.”
“But, Thelma. Did you know anything of allthis?” I asked turning to her, astounded and muddled.
“Some of the facts I knew, but not all,” she replied. “I hope you will forgive me, but I acted all along upon Doctor Feng’s instructions. At Mürren I knew nothing, and was entirely unsuspicious of the plot against us both.”
“Humphreys had degenerated into perhaps the cleverest financial crook in Eastern Europe,” said Feng. “The way in which he held Audley aloof from his wife while his friends Graydon and Ruthen were at the same time terrorizing him and compelling him to assist in passing their spurious notes, was a most remarkable feature of the case. He acted with such caution and pre-arranged things so cunningly, that I confess I was more than once misled and befogged.
“It was he who sent you those warnings from Hammersmith and North London in an endeavor to frighten you off. He certainly had a sort of superstitious fear of you. My chief fear for Thelma was that she might be secretly poisoned in a similar manner to the attempt upon yourself. Therefore I insisted that she should never take her meals in a restaurant alone.”
“And I was in ignorance,” I exclaimed.
“I deemed it best. I did not wish to alarm either of you, and indeed it is only since the narrow escapeyou both had at Heathermoor Gardens that I revealed to Thelma the motive of the plot. I did not suspect that terrible death-trap, but as soon as Thelma was missing I naturally felt that she must have fallen into the hands of one or other of the gang. Judge my surprise when I discovered that she surreptitiously, at Audley’s request, rejoined him in hiding at a small private hotel in Gloucester Road, Kensington. Audley was in constant dread of the police, an apprehension kept alive by Ruthen and Graydon, and for that reason he destroyed his clothes and some false notes before escaping from the room at Lancaster Gate. He turned the key from the outside, in order further to mystify those whom he believed to be his pursuers.”
“I was his pursuer,” I remarked.
“True. But he was avoiding you, as well as the police,” Feng said. “He was told that you were making inquiries concerning him on his wife’s behalf and would, if you gained the truth, reveal it to her. Naturally, he had no desire that Thelma should know that the police were wanting him upon grave charges of forgery.”
“But why did he not openly defy those men into whose hands he fell before his marriage?” I asked. “Surely, he could have cleared himself and have given information to the police.”
“Ah! Humphreys, the criminal with the master-mindtook very good care that he was so deeply implicated that he dare not utter a word,” my friend pointed out. “Recollect his determination was that Thelma, alone and without friends except her mother, should meet with an untimely end in order that the Sung-tchun fortune should pass to him.
“First, however, she married unexpectedly, and, secondly, you came upon the scene as her protector. It was for that reason an attempt was first made to poison you, and then that clever plot at Stamford whereby you were drugged by that final cigarette given you by the supposed commercial traveler, who afterwards entered your room, forced against your lips a bottle containing a deadly drug, and made it appear as though you had committed suicide. Humphreys believed that you knew too much, so he intended that you should die before the girl over whom you were so carefully watching. He had no idea, however, of the part I was playing—until the police went to arrest him.”
“But could you not have told me the truth long ago—and given me warning?” I asked.
“That was impossible,” he replied. “Remember I warned you repeatedly. You would only have laughed had I told you Humphreys was your enemy: you were already deeply prejudiced against me. Thelma, too, tried to induce you to give the whole thing up, but you refused. Had Humphreys knownthat you suspected him he would have had you both murdered out of hand and chanced detection. But as things were he elected to wait until he could devise a plot that would be absolutely safe. So long as Stanley Audley was out of the way there was no need for him to do anything rash. And by his patience he nearly won in the end.”
“But he very nearly lost,” I said. “Suppose Thelma and I had been burnt to death. We could never have been identified and Humphreys could not have proved Thelma’s death. That meant he could not have inherited her fortune at any rate until sufficient time had elapsed for the Courts to presume her death.”
“You are a lawyer, Yelverton, and of course that point would occur to you. But it also occurred to Humphreys—another instance of his amazing foresight—and he took steps accordingly. Thelma, show Mr. Yelverton your locket.”
With a smile Thelma took from her pocket a heavy locket attached to a chain and handed it to me. I was astonished at its massiveness and weight, until I saw both locket and chain were of platinum. On the front of the locket was deeply engraved the inscription, “Thelma Audley—from Stanley.”
“Platinum; you see, Yelverton!” said old Feng.
I gasped in astonishment at the realization of Humphreys’ cleverness.
“Of course,” I said, “it would resist the fire, the locket would be found in the débris and Thelma’s disappearance would be explained, in part at any rate.”
“Yes,” rejoined Feng, “the locket would account for Thelma and what more natural than the conclusion that the remains of the man found with her were those of her husband?”
“But what has become of Stanley?” I asked, wondering why Thelma was here without him.
“Stanley Audley is dead,” said Feng very gently, and I noticed the slow tears begin to trickle down Thelma’s face. “He died like a hero. It was he who rescued Thelma from the blazing room. By some extraordinary chance the fire seems to have spread mainly in your direction and Thelma escaped with the loss of most of her clothing and her hair which was almost burnt off. But poor Stanley was so terribly burned that he died three days later in the hospital. There is no doubt he loved Thelma deeply and utterly regretted the trouble he had brought upon her.”
Stanley Audley dead! I held my breath! Then Thelma was free! Such was my involuntary reflection.
Thelma was weeping softly. I hardly dared look at her. But I put out my hand and clasped hers. She turned her head away and gazed in silence atthe golden glow in the west across the sea. But she did not withdraw her hand and a great wave of joy flooded through me.
“But how did we escape?” I asked Feng.
“We were only in the nick of time,” he replied. “When Thelma disappeared from her husband in Gloucester Road I felt certain that she had been decoyed away. She was—by a message purporting to come from her husband asking her to call at Heathermoor Gardens. She did so and fell into the hands of the man who intended she should die. Yet so clever was old Humphreys, that, though I kept him under close observation, I could not discern that he was acting at all suspiciously. I did not know of course, of his plot to burn you alive. But we were watching him very closely. That night Stanley and I tracked him to the house at Hampstead. We saw you arrive later, but we little dreamed that Thelma was held there a drugged and helpless prisoner. She screamed twice, apparently, and you heard her, but some accomplice of Humphreys’ gave her a hypodermic injection—we found the mark afterwards on her arm.
“We watched until the first man-servant came out and later Humphreys himself left the place and walking in some distance away concealed himself in full view of the house. Then I knew you were left in there, and I became seriously alarmed.
“Fortunately a constable was near, and unseen by the old villain I approached him, told him of my suspicions, and we all three approached the house together. To our rings and knocks there was no answer, therefore we forced the door and rushed in. As we opened the door of the room where you were, we saw the air-ball burst and in a second the room was a furnace.
“Then came a desperate fight for life. Audley dashed to Thelma and succeeded in getting her out into the street at the cost of his own life, while I and the constable cut the rope which secured your wrists, and carried you out terribly burned and insensible. Both the constable and I were also burned, but not very seriously. Before the fire brigade arrived the house had been seriously damaged: but for our early warning it must have been utterly destroyed, as Humphreys intended.
“Meanwhile, Humphreys, who had seen the failure of his plot, made himself scarce and it was not until three days later that Inspector Cayley of Scotland Yard, with two sergeants traced him to a room in Earl’s Court Road, where he was hiding. But the old criminal had locked himself in and before they could break open the door he had put a bullet through his brain. A week ago both Ruthen and Graydon were arrested at the Pavilion Hotel in Boulogne on charges of passing spurious notes invarious towns in France. They will, no doubt, go to hard labor for some years.”
“Well, Yelverton,” the old man concluded, “I think you know everything now. You have both had a very narrow escape from a terrible fate. Only a devil in human form could have devised such an atrocity. But now I’ll leave you alone for a bit: you will have plenty to talk about.”
And with a cheery smile and a loving look at Thelma, the sturdy, bearded old man, to whose watchfulness we both owed our lives, turned on his heel and left the room.
The calm Riviera sunset had deepened into twilight, swiftly as it always does, and the night clouds rising over the pine-clad Esterels cast their long grey shadows across the calm sea. Beneath our window twinkling lights shone and from among the orange graves below came voices and merry laughter.
I had been speaking earnestly to Thelma—pleading with her all the fervor of the love I had so long held in restraint but which, now she was free, poured out with violence that overwhelmed me. She heard me without comment or response. But she made no protest, she allowed me to hold her hand, even when I pressed it tenderly to my lips she did not withdraw it.
The hope that had never quite died rose again inmy heart. I felt Thelma trembling; a beautiful warmth that I had never seen before glowed upon her cheeks, her eyes were lustrous with the brilliancy of tears which welled up into them but did not fall. She stood looking out across the broad Mediterranean towards the African coast which the colors of the sunset paled into the faint splendor of the afterglow.
The light was nearly gone, and still she made no sign. But presently words failed me and I simply stood and held out my arms in a last despairing appeal.
Then my darling came to me, slowly and sweetly, her great grey eyes aflame with a light I had never seen before. And our lips met at last.
We were married in October and spent our honeymoon in Seville and Malaga. Christmas found us at the Hotel Regina at Wengen, a little below Mürren, where we both went skiing daily. We visited Mürren, of course, hallowed to us for all time as the place of that strange first meeting from which all our troubles and all our happiness had sprung.
We are rich, of course, Sung-tchun’s fortune was enormous. But we live very quietly in my old home—my father’s quaint, old-world cottage on the Salisbury road a few miles from Andover. Most of ourincome, apart from our own modest wants, goes to help the slum children of London. Thelma never tires of them and every summer forms a big camp to which hundreds come down for a few days’ glorious holiday. They all seem to worship her and over even the roughest of them she seems to exercise a magical fascination.
Old Doctor Feng, to whom we owe so much, is our chief friend. He comes and goes as he pleases. There is a room reserved for him and always ready. Devoted to Thelma, he spends much of his time with us. He never tires of talking of the Crystal Claw, the magic talisman that saved us for each other. And every now and again, with his inimitable chuckle, he croaks out, “Yelverton, I told you the arm of the Thu-tseng was long!”
It was long indeed. It stretched half across the world to give us—two tiny units caught in a cruel trap—a helping hand in our dire distress. We owe our wealth, our radiant happiness, our very lives to the magical influence of the Crystal Claw.
THE END