Kitabı oku: «The Pauper of Park Lane», sayfa 22
Chapter Forty Four.
Tells of a Determination
Entering his chambers in Jermyn Street half an hour later, Rolfe was met by the faithful Green, to whom he gave orders to “ring up” Mr Barclay at Dover Street.
Then he went along to his room to wash and dress.
A few moments later Green came in, saying:
“Mr Barclay left town five days ago, sir. He’s up at Kilmaronock.”
His master made no reply for some moments. Then at last he said:
“Pack my suit-case, and ’phone to Euston to reserve me a seat to Perth on the ten-five to-morrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And to everybody except my sister, if she calls, you don’t know where I’ve gone – you understand?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
And the man set about packing up his master’s traps.
“You may as well put in a dinner-coat Max may have friends,” Rolfe said.
“Very well, sir.”
His master dressed quickly and went alone to the club for a late dinner. Most of his friends were away shooting, therefore he idled alone for an hour over the paper and then returned to his chambers.
Next morning he scribbled a hasty note to Mr Statham, making an excuse for his sudden absence, and directly after ten was seated in the Scotch express travelling out of London.
At eight that evening he stepped out upon the big, dark station at Perth, sent a telegram to the Crown Inn at Kilmaronock village for a “machine,” as a fly is called, and then took the slow branch line that runs by Crieff and skirts Loch Earn to the head of Glen Ogle, where lay the old castle and fine shooting of which Max Barclay was possessor.
A drive of three miles on the road beside Loch Voil brought him to the lodge-gates, and then another mile up through the park he came to the great portico of the castle.
It was nearly midnight. Lights were still in the billiard-room of the fine old castellated mansion, which Max’s father had modernised and rendered so comfortable, and when Charlie rang, Burton, the butler, could not suppress an exclamation of surprise.
In a few moments, however, Charlie burst into the room where Max and five other men were playing “snooker” before retiring.
The host’s surprise was great, but the visitor received a hearty welcome, and an hour later, when the guests had gone to their rooms, the two friends stood alone together in the long old-fashioned drawing-room which, without a woman’s artistic hand to keep things in order, was rapidly going to decay.
A big wood fire blazed cheerfully in the wide old-fashioned grate, for October evenings in the Highlands are damp and chill, and as the two men stood before it they looked at one another, both hesitating to speak.
Across Charlie’s mind flashed those suspicions which had oppressed him in Belgrade. Was the man before him his enemy or his friend?
“Well,” he blurted forth, “I’ve come straight up to see you, Max. I only arrived home last night. I want to see you concerning Marion.”
His companion’s lips hardened.
“Marion!” he exclaimed. “I have done all I can. I’ve left no effort untried. I have sought the aid of the best confidential inquiry agency in London, and all to no avail. She’s disappeared – as completely as Maud has done!”
“Yes, I know,” replied her brother, thrusting his hands deep into the trousers-pockets of his blue serge travelling-suit. “I’ve seen Statham.”
“And so have I. He wrote to Cunnington’s, but the latter has not replied. I saw Cunnington myself.”
“And what did he say?”
“The fellow refused to say anything,” he replied in a hard tone.
Silence again fell between the pair.
The long, old-fashioned room, with its blue china, its chintz coverings, its grand piano, and its bowls of autumn roses, though full of quaint charm, was weird and unsuited to the home of a bachelor. Indeed, Kilmaronock was a white elephant to Max. He received a fair rental from the farms on the estate, but he never went near the place except for sport for six weeks or so each autumn. The old place possessed some bitter memories for him, for his mother had died there quite suddenly of heart disease on the night of a large dinner-party. He was only eighteen then, but he remembered it too well. It was that tragic memory which had caused him to abandon the place except when he invited a few of his friends to shoot over the estate.
“Let’s go into my own room to talk,” he suggested. “It’s more cosy there.” As a man hates all drawing-rooms, so did Max Barclay detest his. It was for him full of recollections of his dear dead mother.
And so they passed along the corridor to Max’s own little den in the east wing of the house, a pleasant little room overlooking the deep shady glen from whence rose the constant music of the ever-rippling burn.
As Charlie sank into the big armchair near the fire Max pushed the cigar-box towards him. Then he seated himself, saying:
“Now, old fellow, what are we to do? Marion must be found.”
“She must. But you’ve failed, you say?”
“Utterly,” he sighed. “She was discharged from Cunnington’s – disgraced!”
“Why?”
Max shrugged his shoulders. Both men knew well that the reason of the girl’s disappearance was the shame of her dismissal. Both men knew also that by lifting his finger Sam Statham could have reinstated her – or could at least have had inquiry made as to the truth of what had really occurred.
But he had refused. Therefore both were indignant and angry. During the next half-hour they discussed the matter fully and seriously, and were agreed upon one main point, that Statham had acted against them both in refusing his aid to clear the unfortunate girl.
“Whatever fault she has committed,” declared Max, “the truth should be told. I went to him acknowledging my love for her and beseeching his aid. And yet he has refused.”
“Then let us combine, Max, in trying to discover the truth,” her brother suggested. “Marion shall not be cast aside into oblivion by these drapery capitalists who gain fat profits upon the labour and lives of women.”
“You may imperil your position with Statham if you act without discretion,” remarked Max warningly.
“I shall do nothing without full consideration, depend upon it. Statham refused his assistance, therefore we must act for ourselves.”
“How? Where shall we begin?” asked Max.
His friend raised his palms in a gesture of bewilderment.
“Look here, Charlie,” said the other in a confidential tone. “Has it not occurred to you that there may be a method in old Statham’s eccentricity regarding that house of his. Now tell me, what do you know of its interior? Let’s be frank with each other. You have lost both your sister and the woman you adored, while I have lost Marion, my well-beloved. Let us act together. During these past weeks I’ve been thinking deeply regarding the mystery of that house in Park Lane.”
“So have I, many times. I only know the ground floor and basement. I have never ascended the stairs, through that white-enamelled iron door concealed by the one of green baize.”
“Where does old Levi sleep?”
“In a room at the back of the kitchen – when he sleeps at all. He’s like a watch-dog, on the alert always for the slightest sound.”
Max paused for a moment before making any further remark. Then he said in a quiet voice:
“There are some very queer stories afloat concerning that place, Charlie.”
“I know. I’ve heard them – about mysterious people who enter there at night – and don’t come forth again. But I don’t believe them. Old Sam has earned a reputation for being eccentric, and his enemies have tacked on all sorts of sensational fictions.”
“But I’ve heard lately from half a dozen sources most extraordinary stories. Up at the Moretouns’ at Inversnaid the night before last, they were talking of it at dinner. They were unaware that I knew Statham.”
“Just as the gossips are unaware that the persons who come and go so mysteriously at the Park Lane mansion are secret agents of the great financier,” Rolfe said. “Of course it would not do to say so openly, but that’s who they are. The allegation that they don’t come forth again is, I feel confident, mere embroidery to the tale.”
“But,” exclaimed Max with some hesitation, “has it not ever occurred to you somewhat curious that, so deeply involved in Servian finance, Statham has never sought to solve the mystery of the doctor’s disappearance? Remember, they knew each other. The doctor, when he was in power at Belgrade, was probably the old man’s cat’s-paw. Is it not therefore surprising that he has never expressed a desire to seek out the truth?”
Rolfe held his breath as a new and terrible suspicion arose within him. He had never regarded the affair in that light. Was it possible that his master knew well all the circumstances which had led the doctor to disappear in that manner so extraordinary? Had he really had a hand in it?
Was he the “friend” of whom Sir Charles had spoken in Belgrade?
But no! He would not believe such a thing. Sam Statham was always honest in his dealings – or, at least, as honest as any millionaire can ever be. The man who habitually deals in colossal sums must now and then, of necessity ruin his opponents and wreck the homes of honest men. And strange it is that the world is ever ungrateful. If a very wealthy man gave every penny of his profits to the poor he would only be dubbed a fool or an idiot for his philanthropy.
He recollected that afternoon when, at work in old Sam’s room, he had mentioned the doctor’s sudden departure, and how deftly the old man had turned the conversation into a different channel.
Until two days ago he would hear no word nor believe any ill against the man who had befriended him. But the man’s refusal to assist him to discover the truth concerning the charge against Marion or to order her to be reinstated had turned his heart.
He was now Sam Statham’s enemy, as before he had been his friend.
The two men seated together discussed the matter carefully and seriously for the greater part of the night, and when they parted to go to their rooms they took each other’s hands in solemn compact.
“We will investigate that house, Rolfe,” Max declared; “and we’ll lay bare the mystery it conceals!”
Chapter Forty Five.
The Impending Blow
Four nights later Max and Charlie alighted from the Scotch express at Euston on their return to London to make investigation.
Next morning Rolfe went as usual to Park Lane, and spent some hours attending to the old man’s correspondence. The excuse Charlie made for his absence was that he had been away in an endeavour to find his sister, whereat the millionaire merely grunted in dissatisfaction. Both Charlie and Max were full of sorrow and anxiety on Marion’s behalf. What had befallen her they dreaded to guess. She had left Oxford Street, and from that moment had been swallowed in the bustling vortex of our great cruel London, the city where money alone is power and where gold can purchase everything, even to the death of one’s enemy. Perhaps the poor girl had met with some charitable woman who had taken her in and given her shelter; but more probable, alas! she was wandering hungry and homeless, afraid to face the shame of the dastardly charge against her – the charge that to neither her brother nor her lover none would name.
That morning Charlie wrote on, mechanically, speaking little, with the old man seated near him sucking the stump of a cheap cigar. His mind was too full of the action he was about to execute – an action which in other circumstances would have indeed been culpable.
Both he and his friend had carefully considered all ways and means by which they might enter those premises. To get in would be difficult. Old Levi bolted the heavy front door each night at eleven, and then retired to his room in the basement, where he slept with one ear and his door open to catch the slightest sound.
And even though they obtained access to the hall and study there was the locked iron door at the head of the staircase – the door through which they must pass if their investigation of the house was to be made.
That morning he made excuse to leave the old man seated in his study, saying that he wanted to speak to Levi and give him a message for one of the clerks from Old Broad Street. Outside in the hall he sprang noiselessly up the stairs, and, pulling open the baize-covered door, swiftly examined the great iron fireproof door so carefully concealed and secured. His heart failed when he recognised the impossibility of passing beyond. The door was enamelled white like the panelling up the stairs, only over the small keyhole was a flap of shining brass bearing the name of a well-known safe-maker. At imminent peril of discovery by Levi, who often shuffled in noiseless slippers of felt, he lifted the flap and peered eagerly beyond. He could, however, see nothing. The hole did not penetrate the door.
Then, fearing that he might be discovered, he slipped downstairs again, and went to examine the front door. The bolts were long and heavy, and the chain was evidently in use every night.
In the kitchen he found Levi, preparing his master’s frugal meal, which usually consisted of a small chop, a piece of stale bread, and one glass of light claret. His visit below gave him an opportunity of examining the fastenings of the windows. They were all patent ones, and, besides, the whole were protected from burglars by iron bars.
Patent fastenings were also upon the windows of the study, looking forth upon Park Lane, while often at night the heavy oaken shutters were closed and barred. He had never before noticed how every precaution had been taken to exclude the unwelcome intruders.
Through the whole morning his brain was actively at work to discover some means by which an entry might be effected, but there seemed none.
The secret, whatever it might be, was certainly well guarded.
He went across to the club to lunch, and returned again at three o’clock. About four he rose, asking old Sam, who was seated writing, for a document from the safe, the key of which was upon his watch-guard. The millionaire took out his watch and chain and handed them to his secretary, as he so often did, while the latter, crossing the room, opened the safe and fumbled about among some papers in one of the drawers.
Then he re-locked the safe, handed back the watch and chain, and re-seated himself at the table. Those few brief moments had been all-sufficient, for upon the bunch was the latch-key of the front door, an impression of which he had taken with the wax he had already prepared. The duplicate key could, he knew, be filed out of the handle of an old spoon, and such was his intention.
He had hoped to find upon the bunch the key to the iron door on the stairs, but it was not among them. He knew each key by sight. The old man evidently kept it in a safer place – some place where the hand of none other might be placed upon it.
Where did he keep it?
Its hiding-place must be somewhere handy, Charlie reflected, for at least half a dozen times a day the old man passed that iron barrier which shut off the upper part of the mansion. He wondered where he could find that key, but remained wondering.
That evening he took the impression of the latchkey to Dover Street, and with Max’s help tried to fashion a key to that pattern, but though they tried for hours it was in vain. So they gave it up. Next day Max took train to Birmingham, and handed the impression to a locksmith he chanced to know. The latter, having looked at it, shook his head, and said:
“This impression is no use, sir. It’s what they call a paracentric lock, and you must have impressions of both sides, as well as the exact width back and front before I can make you a duplicate.”
The man showed how the impressions should be taken. Max, of course, concocting a story as to why it was wanted, and then back to London he travelled that same night to consult with his friend.
The outcome of this was that two days later complete impressions were taken of the small latchkey, and within three days came the duplicate by post.
Max bought two electric torches, two pairs of felt slippers, a piece of thin but very strong rope, screwdriver, chisel, and other implements, until he had a full burglar’s equipment. The preparations were exciting during the next few days, yet when they came down to bed-rock fact there was that locked door which stood between them and the truth.
Charlie’s object in obtaining a duplicate latchkey was to enter noiselessly one night shortly before eleven, and secrete, themselves somewhere until Levi bolted the door and retired. They must take their chance of making any discovery they could. Both were well aware of Levi’s vigilance, and his quickness of hearing. Therefore they would be compelled to work without noise, and also to guard against any hidden electric burglar alarms which might be secreted in the sashes of windows or in lintels of doors.
Investigation by Charlie had not revealed the existence of any of these terrors to thieves; yet so many were the precautions against intruders that the least suspected contrivance for their detection was to be expected.
Nearly a fortnight passed before all arrangements were complete for the nocturnal tour of investigation. Daily Rolfe, though attentive to his duties as the old man’s secretary, was always on the alert to discover the existence of that key to the iron door. By all manner of devices he endeavoured to compel Statham to unwittingly reveal its whereabouts. He made pretence of mistaking various keys to deed boxes and nests of drawers, in order that the old man should produce other keys. But he was too wary, and never once did he fall into the trap.
Yet often he left the study, passed up the stain, and through the door swiftly, until the younger man began to suspect that it might be opened by means of some secret spring.
Standing below, he could not obtain sight of the old fellow as he opened the door, and to follow him half-way up was too dangerous a proceeding. He had risked a good deal, but he dare not risk the old man’s wrath in that.
Still that he passed the door quickly and without hindrance was plainly shown. He had a key secreted somewhere – a key which, when applied, turned quickly, with ease and without noise, to admit the owner of the great mansion to the apartments where his secret was so successfully hidden.
Sometimes he would descend pale, haggard, and agitated, his hand upon his heart, as though to recover his breath. At others he was flushed and angry, like a man who had a moment before taken part in a heated discussion which had ended in a serious difference.
Charlie watched all this, and wondered.
What secret could possibly be hidden in those upper storeys that were at times so brilliantly lit?
Each evening he called on Max at Dover Street, and with closed door, so that the man should not hear, they discussed the situation.
Of Jean Adam nothing further had been seen. Neither had the hunchback engineer, Leonard Lyle, been at all it evidence. Ever since Max had given the Frenchman his decision not to go to Constantinople Adam had held aloof from him. They had parted perfectly good friends, but Max could detect the bitter chagrin that his reply had caused.
One evening as the two sat together Charlie related his curious experience of the short, dark, good-looking girl who had met him in Paris and talked so strangely of Maud in the Tuileries Gardens.
Max sat smoking his cigar listening to every word.
“Curious – very curious!” he ejaculated. “Didn’t she tall you her name?”
“She gave it as Lorena.”
“Lorena!” gasped the other, starting up. “Lorena – why, it must have been Lorena Lyle – old Lyle’s daughter?”
“His daughter! I never knew he had one.”
“No; perhaps not. He doesn’t often speak of her, I believe. I saw her once, not long ago.”
“They have quarrelled – father and daughter!” exclaimed Rolfe. “And that accounts for her exposure of the plot against Statham to compel him to commit suicide rather than to face exposure. Remember, she would not betray who was Adam’s associate in the matter. Because it is her own father, without a doubt.”
“She alleged that Statham committed a secret crime, by which he laid the foundation of his great fortune,” Max remembered. “And, further, that confirmation of the charge brought by Adam will be found beyond that locked door?”
“Yes,” said his companion, in a hollow voice; “I see it all. The girl wishes to exclude her father from the business. Yet she knows more than she has told me.”
“No doubt. She probably knew Maud also, for she has lived for years – indeed, nearly all her life – in Belgrade,” Barclay remarked. “She quarrelled with her father, and went on the stage as a dancer in the Opera at Vienna. She is now in Paris in the same capacity. If I remember aright she was here at Covent Garden last season. They say she has great talent and that she’s now being trained in Paris for the part of première danseuse.”
“She alleged that there still live two witnesses of Statham’s crime, whatever it was,” Charlie went on.
“And they are probably Adam and her hunchback father – both men who have lived the life of the wilds beyond the fringe of civilisation – both men who are as unscrupulous as they are adventurous.”
“But from all I knew of Lyle he was a most highly respectable person. In Belgrade they still speak of him with greatest respect.”
“Leonard Lyle in Belgrade, my dear chap, may have been a very different person to Leonard Lyle in other countries, you know,” was his friend’s reply.
“But why has his daughter given me this warning, at the same time taking care to conceal her identity.”
“She was a short, dark-haired girl, rather good-looking, except that her top teeth protruded a little; about nineteen or so – eh?”
“Exactly.”
“And depend upon it that she has warned you at Maud’s request, in order that you may be forearmed against the blow which the pair are going to strike.”
“And which we – you and I, Max – are going to assist – eh?” added the other, grimly.
