Kitabı oku: «The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery», sayfa 2
A third time the groan was repeated, but fainter than before, therefore he began to search in the direction whence the cry came, until, to his surprise, he discovered lying upon the ground at a short distance from the wire fence which divided the wood from the Rectory property, a female form in a neat navy-blue costume, with a small red hat lying a short distance away.
She was in a crouching position, and as the young man shone his light upon her, she again drew a deep sigh and groaned faintly.
“What is the matter?” he cried in alarm, dropping upon his knees and raising the fair head of a young and pretty girl.
She tried to speak, but her white lips refused to utter a sound. At last, by dint of desperate effort, she whispered in piteous appeal:
“Save me! Oh! —save me – do!”
Then next second she drew a deep breath, a shiver ran through her body, and she fell inert into the young fellow’s arms!
Chapter Three
Which Contains Another Mystery
Roddy Homfray, with the aid of his flash-lamp, gazed in breathless eagerness, his strong jaw set, at the girl’s blanched countenance.
As he brushed back the soft hair from the brow, he noted how very beautiful she was.
“Speak!” he urged eagerly. “Tell me what has happened?”
But her heart seemed to have ceased beating; he could detect no sign of life. Was he speaking to the dead?
So sudden had it all been that for some moments he did not realise the tragic truth. Then, in a flash, he became horrified. The girl’s piteous appeal made it only too plain that in that dark wood she had been the victim of foul play.
She had begged him to save her. From what? From whom?
There had been a struggle, for he saw that the sleeve of her coat had been torn from the shoulder, and her hat lying near was also evidence that she had been attacked, probably suddenly, and before she had been aware of danger. The trees were numerous at that spot, and behind any of their great, lichen-covered trunks a man could easily hide.
But who was she? What was she doing in Welling Wood, just off the beaten path, at that hour?
Again he stroked the hair from her brow and gazed upon her half-open but sightless eyes, as she lay heavy and inert in his arms. He listened intently in order to satisfy himself that she no longer breathed. There seemed no sign of respiration and the muscles of her face and hands seemed to have become rigid.
In astonishment and horror the young man rose to his feet, and placing his flash-lamp, still switched on, upon the ground, started off by a short cut to the Rectory by a path which he knew even in the darkness. He was eager to raise the alarm regarding the unexpected discovery, and every moment of delay might mean the escape of whoever was responsible for the crime.
The village police inspector lived not far from the Rectory, and it was his intention first to inform his father, and then run on to the police.
But this intention was never carried out, because of a strange and bewildering circumstance.
Indeed, till long past midnight the Reverend Norton Homfray sat in his rather shabby little study reflecting upon the unwelcome visit of that woman Freda Crisp, and wondering what it portended. Her threatening attitude was the reverse of reassuring. Nevertheless, the rector felt that if Gray and his unscrupulous accomplice really meant mischief, then he, after all, held the trump card which he had so long hesitated to play.
The clock ticked on. The time passed unnoticed, and at last he dozed. It was not until nearly three o’clock in the morning that he suddenly awakened to the lateness of the hour, and the curious fact that Roddy had not been in since he had left church.
The old man rose, and ascending to his son’s room, believing that Roddy might have come in and retired while he slept, found to his surprise that the bed had not been occupied. He walked round the house with the aid of his electric torch. The front door was still unlocked, and it was quite evident that his son had not yet returned.
“This is a night of strange incidents!” he said aloud to himself as he stood upon the staircase. “First that man Gordon Gray rises as though from the tomb, then Freda Crisp visits me, and now Roddy is missing! Strange indeed – very strange!”
He returned to his study, and lighting his green-shaded reading-lamp upon the writing-table, sat down to attend to some letters. He was too wakeful now to retire to rest. Besides, Roddy was out, and he had decided to remain up until his son returned.
Why Roddy should be out all night puzzled the old man greatly. His only intimate friend was the village doctor, Hubert Denton, and perhaps the doctor being called to a patient early in the evening Roddy had gone out in the car with him. Such seemed the only explanation of his absence.
“That woman!” remarked the old rector angrily, as he took some writing paper from a drawer. “That woman intends mischief! If she or Gray attempts to harm me – then I will retaliate!”
And he drew a long breath, his dark, deep-set eyes being fixed straight before him.
“Yet, after all, ought I to do so?” he went on at length. “I have sinned, and I have repented. I am no better than any other man, though I strive to do right and to live up to the teaching of the Prince of Peace. ‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.’ Ah! it is so hard to carry out that principle of forgiveness – so very hard!”
And again he lapsed into silence.
“What if Roddy knew – what if those fiends told him? Ah! what would he think of the other side of his father’s life? No!” he cried again in anguish some minutes later, his voice sounding weirdly in the old-world little room. “No! I could not bear it! I – I would rather die than my son should know!”
Presently, however, he became calmer. As rector of Little Farncombe he was beloved by all, for few men, even ministers of religion, were so upright and pious or set such an example to their fellow-men.
Old Mr Purcell Sandys had been to church on two successive Sunday mornings, and had acknowledged himself greatly impressed by Mr Homfray’s sermons.
“They’re not chanted cant, such as we have in so many churches and which does so much harm to our modern religion,” he had told his daughter as they had walked back to the Towers. “But they are straight, manly talks which do one real good, and point out one’s faults.”
“Yes, father,” Elma agreed. “The whole village speaks exceedingly well of Mr Homfray.” And so it was that the man seated writing his letters in the middle of the night and awaiting the home-coming of his son, had gained the high esteem of the new owner of Farncombe even before he had made his first ceremonial call upon the great City magnate.
That night, however, a cloud had suddenly arisen and enveloped him. As he wrote on, the old rector could not put from him a distinct presage of evil. Where was Roddy? What could have happened that he had not returned as usual to supper after church? The boy was a roamer and an adventurer. His profession made him that, but when at home he always kept regular hours as became a dutiful son.
The bitter east wind had grown stronger, causing the bare branches of the trees in the pleasant old garden to shake and creak, while in the chimney it moaned mournfully.
At last the bell in the ivy-clad church tower chimed the hour of five. The wild winter night was past, and it was morning, though still dark. The old rector drew aside the blind, but the dawn was not yet showing. The fire was out, the lamp burned dim and was smoking, and the room was now cold and cheerless.
“I wonder where Roddy can possibly be?” again murmured the old man.
Then, still leaving the front door unlocked, he blew out the lamp and retired for a few hours’ rest.
At noon Roderick Homfray had not returned, and after sending a message to Doctor Denton and receiving word that he had not seen the young man since the previous morning, Mr Homfray began to be seriously alarmed. He went about the village that afternoon making inquiries, but nobody seemed to have seen him after he had passed through the churchyard after the evening service.
Only Mr Hughes, who kept a small tobacconist’s at the further end of the village, apparently had any information to give.
“I passed along the Guildford road about ten o’clock or so, and I believe I saw Mr Roddy talking to a man – who was a stranger. I noticed the man in church. He sat in one of the back pews,” said old Mr Hughes.
In an instant Norton Homfray became alert.
Could Roddy have been speaking with Gordon Gray?
“Are you quite sure it was my son?” he asked eagerly.
“Well, it was rather dark, so I could not see the young man’s face. But I’m sure that the other was the stranger.”
“Then you are not absolutely certain it was Roddy?”
“No, Mr Homfray, I couldn’t swear to it, though he looked very much like Mr Roddy,” was the old tobacconist’s reply. “My sight isn’t what it used to be,” he added.
Still, the incident aroused suspicions in the rector’s mind. Was it possible that Gray had told Roddy the truth, and the latter had gone off with his father’s enemy? In any case, his son’s absence was a complete mystery.
That evening Mr Homfray called at the village police station and there saw the inspector of the Surrey County Constabulary, a big, burly man named Freeman, whom he knew well, and who frequently was an attendant at church.
He, of course, told him nothing of the reappearance of Gordon Gray, but simply related the fact that Roddy had left the church on Sunday night, and with the exception of being seen in the Guildford road two hours later, had completely disappeared.
“That’s peculiar!” remarked the dark-bearded man in uniform. “But I dare say there’s some explanation, sir. You’ll no doubt get a wire or a letter in the morning.” Then he added: “Mr Roddy is young, you know, sir. Perhaps there’s a lady in the case! When a young man disappears we generally look for the lady – and usually we find her!”
“Roddy has but few female friends,” replied the old rector. “He is not the sort of lad to disappear and leave me in anxiety.”
“Well, sir, if you like, I’ll phone into Guildford and circulate his description,” Freeman said. “But personally I think that he’ll come back before to-morrow.”
“Why?”
“Well – I know Mr Roddy. And I agree that he would never cause you, his father, an instant’s pain if he could help it. He’s away by force of circumstances, depend upon it!”
Force of circumstances! The inspector’s words caused him to ponder. Were those circumstances his meeting with Gordon Gray for the first time that night?
Roddy, he knew, had never met Gray. The man’s very existence he had hidden from his son. And Roddy was abroad when, in those later years, the two men had met. The old rector of Little Farncombe felt bewildered. A crowd of difficulties had, of late, fallen upon him, as they more or less fall upon everybody in every walk of life at one time or another. We all of us have our “bad times,” and Norton Homfray’s was a case in point. Financial troubles had been succeeded by the rising of the ghosts of the past, and followed by the vanishing of his only son.
Three eager, breathless, watchful days went by, but no word came from the fine well-set-up young man who had led such a daring and adventurous life in South America. More than ever was his father convinced that old Hughes was correct in his surmise. He had stood upon the pathway of the Guildford road – the old tar-macked highway which leads from London to Portsmouth – and had been approached by Gordon Gray, the man who meant to expose his father to the parishioners. The world of the Reverend Norton Homfray was, after all, a very little one. The world of each of us, whether we be politician or patriot, peer or plasterer, personage or pauper, has its own narrow confines. Our enemies are indeed well defined by the Yogi teaching as “little children at play.” Think of them as such and you have the foundation of that great philosophy of the East which raises man from his ordinary level to that of superman – the man who wills and is obeyed.
The fact that the son of the rector of Little Farncombe was missing had come to the knowledge of an alert newspaper correspondent in Guildford, and on the fourth day of Roddy’s disappearance a paragraph appeared in several of the London papers announcing the fact.
Though the story was happily unembroidered, it caused the rector great indignation. Why should the Press obtrude upon his anxiety? He became furious. As an old-fashioned minister of religion he had nothing in common with modern journalism. Indeed, he read little except his weekly Guardian, and politics did not interest him. His sphere was beyond the sordid scramble for political notoriety and the petticoat influence in high quarters.
His son was missing, and up and down the country the fact was being blazoned forth by one of the news agencies!
Next day brought him three letters from private inquiry agents offering their services in the tracing of “your son, Mr Roderick Homfray,” – with a scale of fees. He held his breath and tore up the letters viciously. Half an hour afterwards Inspector Freeman called. Mrs Bentley showed him into the study, whereupon the inspector, still standing, said:
“Well, sir, I’ve got into trouble about your son. The Chief Constable has just rung me up asking why I had not reported that he was missing, as it’s in the papers.”
The rector was silent for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Freeman, but my anxiety is my own affair. If you will tell Captain Harwood that from me, I shall feel greatly obliged.”
“But how did it get into the papers, sir?”
“That I don’t know. Local gossip, I suppose. But why,” asked the rector angrily, “why should these people trouble themselves over my private affairs? If my son is lost to me, then it is my own concern – and mine alone!” he added with dignity.
“I quite agree, sir,” replied the inspector. “Of course, I have my duty to do and I am bound to obey orders. But I think with you that it is most disgraceful for any newspaper man to put facts forward all over the country which are yours alone – as father and son.”
“Then I hope you will explain to your Chief Constable, who, no doubt, as is his duty, has reproached you for lack of acumen. Tell him that I distinctly asked you to refrain from raising a hue and cry and circulating Roddy’s description. When I wish it I will let the Chief Constable of Surrey know,” he added.
That message Inspector Freeman spoke into the ear of the Chief Constable in Guildford and thus cleared himself of responsibility. But by that time the whole of Little Farncombe had become agog at the knowledge that the rector’s tall, good-looking son was being searched for by the police.
Everyone knew him to be a wanderer and an adventurer who lived mostly abroad, and many asked each other why he was missing and what allegation there could possibly be against him – now that the police were in active search of any trace of him.
Chapter Four
Lost Days
It was a bright, crisp afternoon on the seventh day of Roddy’s disappearance.
The light was fading, and already old Mrs Bentley had carried the lamp into Mr Homfray’s study and lit it, prior to bringing him his simple cup of tea, for at tea-time he only drank a single cup, without either toast or bread-and-butter.
He was about to raise his cup to his lips, having removed his old briar pipe and laid it in the ash-tray, when Mrs Bentley tapped and, re-entering, said:
“There’s Miss Sandys to see you, sir.”
The rector rose and, rather surprised, ordered his visitor to be shown in.
Next moment from the square stone hall the pretty young girl, warmly clad in furs, entered the room.
She met the eyes of the grey old man, and after a second’s pause said:
“I have to apologise for this intrusion, Mr Homfray, but – well, I have seen in the paper that your son is missing. He went out on Sunday night, it is said, and has not been seen since.”
“That is so, Miss Sandys,” replied the old man, offering her a chair beside the fire. “As you may imagine, I am greatly concerned at his disappearance.”
“Naturally. But I have come here, Mr Homfray, to speak to you in confidence,” said the girl hesitatingly. “Your son and I were acquainted, and – ”
“I was not aware of that, Miss Sandys,” exclaimed the rector, interrupting her.
“No. I do not expect that he told you. My father does not know either. But we met quite casually the other day, and last Sunday we again met accidentally after church and he walked home with me. I suppose it was half-past nine when we parted.”
“There was no reason why he should not return home, I suppose?” asked Mr Homfray eagerly.
“None whatever. In wishing me good-bye he told me that he might be leaving here very soon, and perhaps we might not have another opportunity of meeting before he went. I thanked him for walking so far with me, and we parted the best of friends.”
“He said he would be leaving Little Farncombe very soon, did he?” remarked the rector thoughtfully.
“Yes. I understood from him that he was obtaining, or had obtained, a concession to prospect for a deposit of emeralds somewhere in the Atlas Mountains, in Morocco.”
“That is true. Some ancient workings are known to exist somewhere in the wild Wad Sus region, and through a friend he has been in treaty with the Moorish Government, with the hope of obtaining the concession. If he found the mine which is mentioned by several old Arabic writers it would no doubt bring him great fortune.”
“Yes. But where can he be?”
“Who knows, Miss Sandys!” exclaimed the distracted father blankly.
“He must be found,” declared the girl. “He left me to return home. What could possibly have occurred to prevent him from carrying out his intention?”
What indeed, reflected the old man, except perhaps that he met Gordon Gray and perhaps left for London with him? He was now more than ever inclined to believe the rather vague story told by the village tobacconist.
“Yes, Miss Sandys, he must be found. I have now asked the police to circulate his description, and if he is alive no doubt he will be discovered.”
“You surely don’t suspect that something tragic has happened to him – for instance, that he has met with foul play?” cried the girl.
“It certainly looks like it, or he would no doubt have set my mind at rest by this time,” replied his father.
By the girl’s anxiety and agitation he saw that she was more than usually concerned regarding his son’s whereabouts. He had had no idea that Roddy was acquainted with the daughter of the great financier who had purchased Lord Farncombe’s estates. Yet, after all, he reflected, Roddy was a fine, handsome boy, therefore what more natural than the pair should become attracted by each other.
He saw that the girl was uneasy, and was not surprised when she said:
“I trust, Mr Homfray, that you will treat what I have told you in entire confidence. My father does not approve of my making chance acquaintances. I got into an awful row a little time ago about it. I know he would not object to my knowing your son if we had been properly introduced. But, you see, we were not!” she laughed.
“I quite understand,” said the old rector, smiling. “One day I hope you will be properly introduced to my son when we find him.”
“We must, Mr Homfray. And we will!” cried the pretty young girl determinedly.
“Ah!” exclaimed the old man, his thin fingers clasped before him. “If we only could. Where can my boy be?”
Elma Sandys rose a few moments later, and taking the old man’s hand urged patience and courage, and then walked down the hill and back to the Towers full of grave reflections.
She was the last person to see and speak with the alert, athletic young man who had so suddenly and strangely come into her life. At Park Lane she met many young men-about-town, most of them wealthy and all of them idlers, but no second thought had she given to a single one of them. As she walked she examined her own mind, and was compelled to admit that thoughts of Roddy Homfray now absorbed her.
The mystery of his disappearance after bidding her farewell had gripped her, heart and soul.
During the two days that followed the description of Roderick Homfray, the young mining engineer, was circulated to every police station in the country, and all constables in London and the great cities had had that description read out to them before going on duty. There was scarcely a police constable in the United Kingdom who did not know it by heart, with the final words of the official notice: “The missing man is greatly interested in wireless telephony, of which he has a deep and scientific knowledge.”
That sentence had been added by the Surrey County Constabulary in case the young man might be hiding from his friends, and might betray himself by his expert knowledge of radio science.
Of the woman Freda Crisp, or of Gordon Gray, old Mr Homfray had heard nothing. The whole village sympathised with him in his distress, and, of course, all sorts of rumours – some of them cruel indeed – were afloat. Fortunately Elma’s name was not coupled with Roddy’s, for with the exception of the rector nobody knew of their acquaintance. Yet some ill-natured gossip, a low-bred woman at the end of the village, started a story connecting Roddy with a young married woman who had left her husband a fortnight before, gone to London, and disappeared.
This cruel story was not long in reaching Elma’s ears, and though she disbelieved it, nevertheless it naturally caused her both wonder and anger.
On the afternoon of the third day after the circulation of the description of the missing young man, a stout, pleasant-faced lady named Boydon chanced to read it in the paper, and then sat staring before her in wonderment.
Then, after a few moments, she rose, crossed the room, and rang the telephone.
A few seconds later she was speaking with a Mr Edwards, and asked him to come along to see her upon an important matter, to which he at once consented.
Now Miss Boydon was the matron of the Cottage Hospital at Pangbourne, a pretty Thames-side village well known to river folk as being one of the prettiest reaches in Berkshire, and Mr Edwards was the local police sergeant of the Berks. Constabulary, and lived at the other end of the long wide village street which led out upon the Reading road.
Ten minutes later Edwards, a portly, rather red-faced man, arrived on his bicycle, and on entering the matron’s room, his helmet in his hand, was shown the description.
“By jove, miss?” he exclaimed. “I believe it’s him! We’ve had the notice at the station, but I never connected him with it!”
“Neither did I – until now,” declared the stout Miss Boydon. “He only became conscious this morning – and now he tells us a rambling and altogether incoherent story. Personally I think he’s slightly demented. That’s what the doctor thought when he saw him at noon. He’s waiting to see his condition to-night.”
“Well, the description is exactly like him,” declared the sergeant, re-reading it. “When he was brought into the station the other night I took him to be intoxicated. Then when Doctor Maynard saw him, he ordered him here.”
“The doctor thinks he is suffering from drugs,” said the matron. “He has been unconscious ever since he was brought here, nearly a week ago, and now he certainly has not regained his senses. He talks wildly about a girl who was murdered in a wood and died in his arms. Apparently he is suffering from delusions.”
“In any case, miss, I think I ought to telegraph to Guildford that a young man answering the description is here, don’t you think so?”
“I should not be in too great a hurry if I were you, Edwards,” was the reply. “Wait until Doctor Maynard has seen him again. We shall probably know more to-night. I’ve ordered nurse to keep him quite quiet and listen to his stories as though she believes every word.”
“The young man is missing from a place called Little Farncombe, in Surrey,” said the sergeant. “I wonder how he came to be lying on the tow-path at the foot of Whitchurch Bridge? He must have been there all night, for one of the men working on the Thames Conservancy dredger found him when on his way to work at six o’clock on Tuesday morning.”
“All clues to his identity have been removed,” remarked the matron. “His name has been cut out of his shirt collar and underclothing, and the laundry marks removed – all deliberately done as if to efface his identity. Possibly he intended to commit suicide, and that’s why he was on the river bank.”
“But the doctor, when he saw him at the police station, gave his opinion that the man was drugged,” the police sergeant said. “I don’t think he had any intention of suicide.”
“Well, in any case, let us wait till this evening. I will telephone to you after the doctor has seen him,” the matron promised. And with that the sergeant left.
At six o’clock Doctor Maynard, a quiet elderly man who had practised in Pangbourne and district for fifteen years, called again and saw Roddy lying in the narrow little bed.
His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes sunken and weary:
“Well, doctor,” he exclaimed cheerily, “I feel a lot better than I did this morning. I’m able to think now – and to remember. But oh! – my head!”
“That’s good,” declared the white-haired medical man. “Now what is your name, and how did you come here?” he asked, the stout matron standing, watchful, beside him.
“My name is Roderick Homfray, and I’m the son of the Reverend Norton Homfray, rector of Little Farncombe, in Surrey,” the patient replied frankly. “What brought me here I don’t know. What day is it to-day?”
“The fourteenth of December.”
“The fourteenth of December! Well, the last I remember is on the night of the third – a Sunday night. And I shan’t forget it either, I assure you! I was on my way home soon after half-past nine at night, and in Welling Wood, close by the Rectory paddock, I found a girl lying on the ground. She could just speak. She appealed to me to save her. Then she died. I rose and dashed across the wood to my father’s house to raise the alarm, but I had hardly gone a hundred yards when straight in front of me something exploded. I saw what seemed to be a ball of red fire, but after that I know nothing – nothing until I came to my senses this morning and found myself here! Where I’ve been in the meantime, doctor, I have no idea.”
Doctor Maynard, still under the impression that the story of the murdered girl was a delusion, sympathised with the patient and suggested sleep.
“I’ll come to see you to-morrow,” he added. “You’re quite all right, so don’t worry. I will see that a telegram is sent to-night to your father. He’ll be here to-morrow, no doubt.”
At ten o’clock the following morning the rector stood at the bedside of his son and listened to the amazing story of the discovery in Welling Wood and the red ball of fire which Roddy subsequently saw before him.
“Perhaps I was struck by lightning!” Roddy added. “But if that were so I should surely have remained in the wood. No doubt I was struck down maliciously. But why? And why should I have been taken away unconscious and kept so for several days, and then conveyed to the river bank here at Whitchurch?”
“I don’t know, my son,” replied his father quietly, though he stood staggered at the amazing story.
Then he added:
“The police searched Welling Wood and all the neighbouring copses three days after you had disappeared, but found no trace of you.”
“But surely they found the poor girl, father?” cried Roddy, raising himself upon his arm.
“No, my boy, nobody was found,” he replied. “That’s strange!” exclaimed the young man. “Then she must have been taken away with me! But by whom? What devil’s work was there in progress that night, father?”
“Ah! my boy. That I cannot tell!”
“But I mean to ascertain!” cried the young man fiercely. “That girl appealed to me to save her, and she died in my arms. Where is she? And why should I be attacked and drugged so that I nearly became insane? Why? Perhaps it was because I had accidentally discovered the crime!”
