Chapter Twenty
Concerns a Mysterious Light
London – the dear, dirty old city of delight – looked gloomy enough as we passed out of Charing Cross yard, and made our way around the corner to the Grand Hotel. It was a damp, raw evening, and after the crisp atmosphere and bright sunshine of the Riviera, seemed to us more than ordinarily depressing.
By wire we had engaged rooms at the Grand for Vera and Violet, overlooking Trafalgar Square, and we now began to wonder what our next step ought to be. I wanted, if possible, to get into communication with Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, for I was anxious not to delay my marriage any longer, and Vera, though she had promised to become my wife as soon as possible, refused to do so until she had seen her parents.
But where were her parents?
She had no idea, neither had I. We had telegraphed to the address in Brighton where they had been staying, but an intimation had come from the Post Office that the message had not been delivered, the addressee having left.
As for Faulkner, he was distrait. Something seemed to be on his mind, and I thought I knew what it was. He was engaged to be married to Gladys Deroxe, of whom Vera had, during the past day or two, let drop certain things.
Gladys Deroxe, she had confided to me among other things, was one of the most jealous women she had ever met. Her jealousy amounted almost to an obsession. When I heard this I breathed a fervent hope that Faulkner might never marry her, for I have seen something of jealous wives among my friends. What was weighing upon Faulkner’s mind, of course, was that he had brought Violet to London with him, and that, as Miss Deroxe lived in Mayfair, she might at any moment get to hear of this, and then?
Another thought occurred to me now, for the first time. Had my unemotional, phlegmatic friend fallen in love with Violet de Coudron, the foundling?
She was pretty and fascinating enough for any one to fall in love with. Personally, I thought Faulkner would do well to marry her in preference to Gladys, who I gathered to be something of a schemer, with an eye to the main chance. Vera had come to know Miss Deroxe quite by accident. At first she had liked her, but soon she had begun to discover her true character. Violet on the contrary, she liked immensely. Yet girls form strange prejudices.
Thus a week of anxiety passed. The two girls remained at the Grand, while I stayed at my rooms, and Faulkner slept at his club. Though he did not tell me, I knew he had not informed Gladys of his return to town. Therefore he must have felt somewhat perturbed, though, as was his wont, he completely hid his feelings, when one morning as I was walking with him up Hamilton Place a taxi swept up behind us, stopped beside the kerb, and a rather florid-looking girl, leaning out of the cab window, called in a loud, querulous voice —
“Frank! Frank!”
Before he presented me to her I had guessed her identity, and I saw at a glance that she was none too well pleased at his being in London without her knowing it.
“I was calling upon my uncle Henry,” she said presently, “and chanced to look out of the window, when I saw you go by. I was amazed. I thought you were on the Riviera still. So I hurried out, hailed a taxi, and pursued you. Why didn’t you tell me you were back?”
He invented on the spot some excellent reason – I forget what it was – and it seemed to satisfy her. And then, feeling that my presence was not needed, I made an excuse, raised my hat, and left them.
“I am only glad,” I remembered saying mentally and ungrammatically, “it is Faulkner, and not I, who is to marry that girl.”
Next day, I took my well-beloved in the car down to Virginia Water, where we lunched, and returned in the afternoon. That evening I, as usual, scanned the personal columns of the Morning Post. I have a habit of doing this, as some of the announcements one sees there are not devoid of humour.
That day the personal columns were singularly dull. The advertisements of money-lenders masquerading as private gentlemen, and as ladies anxious to be philanthropic, occupied a good deal of the space. There was the widow of twenty-three who implored “some kind-hearted gentleman” (sic) “to lend her twenty pounds to save her from the bailiffs;” a “lady of high social standing, closely related to an Earl,” who touted for the chaperonage of débutantes, willing to pay for the privilege of being surreptitiously smuggled into Society; a crack-brained inventor advertising for some one to finance a new torpedo for destroying German bands, or something of the kind, and so on. There was nothing at all exciting. Why, I can’t say, but quite a commonplace line at the foot of the second column interested me. It ran —
“Meet me 2.”
That was all – no name, no address, no date. Why I had noticed it at all, I could not imagine. I concluded it must be the extreme brevity of the advertisement that had caught my fancy.
Next morning, it being dry and fine, I called at the Grand Hotel, and took Vera for a run in the car to Hatfield, returning by St. Albans. We lunched at Pagani’s – one gets so tired of the sameness of the ordinary restaurants – and after that I left Vera at the hotel, and sent my car to the garage.
Somehow I felt in a restless mood, and the atmosphere of well-bred respectability pervading the club oppressed me, as it so often does. I am afraid that the older I grow the more Bohemian I become, and the less willing to bend to convention. It seems to me farcical, for instance, that in this twentieth century of ours, a rule made fifty years ago to the effect that “pipes shall not be smoked in this club,” should still be enforced. Plenty of the younger members of the clubs where this rule obtains have endeavoured to rebel, but in vain. The Committee have solemnly pointed out to such free-thinking and independent spirits that their fathers and grandfathers got on quite well without smoking pipes in the club, and that if their fathers and their grandfathers did without pipes, they ought to be able to do without pipes too – in the club. Oh, yes, they were at liberty, if they liked, to smoke cigarettes at five a penny all over the house, but never tobacco in a pipe, even if they paid half-a-crown an ounce for it.
The conversation of the only two occupants of the smoking-room – try as I would, I could not help listening to it – wearied me so intensely that I got up at last and went out. I strolled aimlessly up the street to Piccadilly, then turned to the left. Many thoughts filled my mind as I rambled along, and when, presently, I found myself at Hyde Park Corner, I decided I would stroll down into Belgravia and see if a new caretaker had been installed at the house in Belgrave Street in place of poor old Taylor.
To my surprise the house was boarded up. Nearly every window was boarded, even the top-floor windows. It looked like a house in which people have died of some plague.
I found the policeman on the beat, and questioned him. Inclined at first to be sullen and uncommunicative, he became cordial and confidential soon after my fingers had slipped a coin into his hand.
“So you haven’t heard anything about number a hundred and two,” he said some moments later. “About here it’s causin’ a bit o’ talk.”
“Indeed? In what way?”
He paused, as though reflecting whether he ought to tell me.
“Well, sir, it’s like this,” he said at last. “The ’ouse is, as you’ve seen, boarded up, and there’s nobody living there but – ”
“Yes? But what?”
“Well, for the last eight nights there’s been a light in a window on the first floor.”
“A light? But how could you see a light if there were one, with the windows boarded up?”
“Oh, it can be seen right enough, through the chinks between the boards.”
“Who has seen it?”
“I have – and others also.”
“Is it always in the same window?”
“Not always in the same window, but always on the same floor. Ah, no! On two nights there was a light on the second floor too.”
“And at what time is it seen?”
“Very late – not before two in the morning, as a rule.”
“And how long does it remain?”
“Sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes as much as half-an-hour, or more. Three nights ago two windows were lit up at one-twenty and remained lit until two-fifty-five.”
“And do you mean to say nobody goes into the house or comes out of it?”
“Nobody. Nobody at all. It’s being watched front and back. Twice we’ve been in and hunted the place all over – we got leave to do this – but there was nothing, nor no one nowhere.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed incredulously, “that is a ridiculous thing to say. If a light really appears and disappears, there must be somebody in the house. Probably there’s a secret entrance of which you know nothing about.”
“There are only three entrances,” he answered quickly, “and one of ’em can’t rightly be called an entrance. There’s the front door, and the back door for the tradesmen, and then there’s a queer little way out into Crane’s alley – we can’t think why that entrance was ever made.”
The “queer little way out” I at once guessed to be the dark, underground, narrow little stone cellar-passage through which Vera had led me when we had escaped together on the day I had discovered her hidden in the house.
“And are the entrances all locked?” I asked.
“Oh, you may take that from me,” he replied. “They are locked right enough, and nobody don’t get the keys, neither.”
At that moment, oddly enough, the thought of the curious-looking brown stain in the corner of the ceiling on the first floor, that I had noticed on the day I had explored the unoccupied house, came suddenly back into my mind.
I must have talked to the policeman for fully fifteen minutes, and had asked him many questions. Before the end of that time I had, however, discovered that he was of a superstitious nature, and that he did not at all like what was happening.
I pondered for a little while, then I said —
“Look here, officer” – if you want to please a policeman always call him “officer” – “I am going to peep into that room, and you must help me.”
“Me, sir?”
“Yes, you. What are policemen for, except to help people? Now listen. I can’t, of course, get into the house, but I am going to arrange for a ladder to be brought here to-night that will reach to the first-floor windows. This street is, I’m sure, quite deserted in the small hours of the morning. The ladder will be hoisted up by the men who bring it, you will keep an eye up and down the street to see that nobody comes along to interrupt us. Then I shall crawl up the ladder and peer in at the window. If there is space between the boards wide enough to admit light, the space must be wide enough to enable me to peep into the room.”
“It’s a bit risky, sir.”
“Risky? Not the slightest. I’ll make it worth your while to undertake what risk there is. So that is understood. You are on duty here to-night at two o’clock?”
“Oh, yes, sir, but – ”
“There is no ‘but.’ I shall see you later, then.”
I returned to King Street. My man John had a friend who worked for a builder, he told me. This friend of his would, he said, arrange everything, and be delighted to. Oh, yes, he had a ladder. He had several ladders. He could bring along single-handed, a ladder the length I wanted, and set it in position.
This was satisfactory. I went to a theatre in order to kill time, for I felt excited and terribly impatient. I had not told Vera of my plan, or Faulkner, or indeed anybody but the policeman.
The builder’s man was punctual to the minute. He had concealed the ladder in Crane’s Court before dark, thinking suspicion might be aroused were he to be seen carrying a ladder through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Two o’clock had just struck, when he crept stealthily into Belgrave Square with the ladder over his shoulder. Acting upon my instructions, he laid it flat upon the pavement. Impatiently I waited. A quarter-past two chimed on some far-distant clock. Still the windows remained in darkness.
Twenty minutes passed… Twenty-five… I began to feel anxious. Would this mysterious visitor not come to-night? That would indeed be a bitter disappointment. Ah!
The light had appeared. It was on the first floor. Now it percolated feebly between the boards covering two windows.
At a signal from me the man picked up the ladder, raised it to a vertical position, then let it rest, without a sound, against the window-sill.
“All right, sir,” he whispered to me.
Restraining my excitement, I began slowly, cautiously, to creep up the rungs.
Chapter Twenty One
Contains a Further Surprise
The boards covering the windows were about an inch thick, but, with the slovenliness unfortunately too common among British workmen, they had been nailed up “anyhow,” and between the two boards immediately facing me was a space an inch or more. Through that, I saw the weak light, as of a candle.
Two rungs higher up I climbed, leant forward, and endeavoured to glue my eye to this crack, in order to peer into the room.
It was by no means easy to see more than a narrow strip of the room, and that strip was empty. Guessing, however, that something I should be able to see must soon happen in the room, I decided to wait. I suppose I must have waited about five minutes – it seemed like a quarter of an hour – my eye was beginning to ache, and I had a crick in my neck, when of a sudden a shadow fell across the bare boards – the strip of floor that I could see – and then a second shadow. A moment later a man stood in the room, his back to the window, a light in his hand. At once I recognised the man by his colossal stature.
It was the dark giant I knew as Davies.
What was he doing? I could not see. Some one was beside him, also with his back turned. I started. This second man was Sir Charles Thorold, undoubtedly. They were conversing, but I could not, of course, catch their words.
Sir Charles was bending down. He seemed to be on all fours. Now Davies was on all fours too. They were both crawling on all fours about the floor, as though searching for something.
With breathless interest I watched them. They had passed out of my range of vision, though a pair of feet were still visible. The feet remained in sight for quite a long time, ten minutes or more. Then they too disappeared.
“What on earth are they about?” was my mental comment. “What can they be seeking?”
It had seemed obvious that they had been trying to find something.
Still on the ladder I waited, hoping that something more might happen, but I saw nothing more, and presently the light was extinguished. I judged that some one had carried the candle into another room. Apparently there was no object in waiting longer on the ladder, so I cautiously descended to the ground again.
I felt satisfied, and yet dissatisfied, with the result of my observation.
It was satisfactory to know who the people were who visited the house in this mysterious way in the small hours. But it was unsatisfactory not to have found out why they went there at that time of night, and thus secretively – or why they went there at all.
Just as I reached the ground, thought of the advertisement I had noticed in the Morning Post floated back into my mind —
“Meet me 2.”
Could there be any connexion between that advertisement and these mysterious visits at two in the morning? It seemed unlikely, and yet it was somewhat curious.
I did not tell the expectant constable more than I deemed it good that he should know. I told him I thought I had discovered the presence of two men in the house, but I did not say they were men I knew and could identify.
He was pleased with the half-sovereign I gave him, and hinted clearly that he would always be glad to render me any service in his power. It always interests me to observe how readily the milk of human kindness comes oozing out where one least expects it, provided the “source” whence it springs is “handled” in the right way.
As he had said this, I determined to take him at his word. I had seen enough to excite my curiosity and to stimulate in me a keen desire actually to enter the house. But how could this be arranged?
Everything is possible of accomplishment, I find, if you set about it in the right way. I had obtained from the policeman his private address in Rodney Street, Walworth Road, and, on the following evening, when he was off duty, I looked in to see him.
Rarely have I been more welcomed by anybody than I was by that policeman and his wife, or more hospitably entertained. Plenty of men of about my own social standing would, I know, think me quite mad if I told them I had hobnobbed with “a common policeman.” The club would have been shocked. “My dear fellah,” I can hear them saying, “you really should draw the line somewhere, don’t you know. A gentleman is a gentleman, and a policeman is – well, is a policeman – eh, what? He may be an exceedingly good and honest fellah, and all that sort of thing, don’t you know, but, after all, we must keep to people in our own station of life, or we shall be dining with each other’s valets next, and one’s friend’s butler will be asking one to lunch with him at his club. I’m cosmopolitan myself, up to a point, but really one must keep the classes distinct, we must keep ourselves aloof from the common people, or where will it end, don’t you know? As I say, a gentleman is a gentleman, and a man who isn’t a gentleman, well, he isn’t a gentleman – you can’t get away from that.”
To which my only reply would be that, to my knowledge, there are plenty of “gentlemen” who are not gentlemen, and quite a sensible proportion of the men we do self-complacently term “bounders” who are men of high ideals and of great refinement.
During supper, to which he had asked me half-apologetically, the constable entertained me with many good stories, for he had been seventeen years in the Metropolitan Police, and had seen much of life in London during that time. I waited until we had finished supper, and his wife had retired, before submitting for his approval the proposal I had come to make.
Mine was quite a simple proposal, though not devoid of risk, yet the plan could not well be carried out without his help. Briefly, I was determined to force an entrance to the house in Belgrave Street on the following night, and the way I had decided to get in was through the dark cellar-passage which opened on to Crane’s Alley.
During the afternoon I had visited the Alley, and examined the lock of the gate at the end of the iron railings which topped the wall of the little yard, also the lock of the small door that led into the black cellar-passage which ultimately led into the house. Both, I saw, could easily be forced. Indeed, there would be no need to force the lock of the iron gate. I could climb over the gate, as I had done that day. All this I told the constable, and he calmly nodded.
“And you want me to abet you in this crime,” he said at last, with a grin, as he loaded his pipe anew.
“I do,” I said. “And – I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Well, it’s house-breaking, you know,” he observed drily, filling the room with clouds of smoke. “And you know what the sentence for breaking into a house at night is?”
“Never mind about the sentence,” I answered quickly. “I shall have to serve that – and not you! But there won’t be any sentence, because there won’t be any capture – if you help me. And you are going to help me. Oh, yes, you are.”
We both laughed.
“You are a one, sir – an’ no mistake!” he exclaimed. “Well, yes, I’ll do me best and charnce it. I’m a bit of a sport meself when they gives me arf a charnce.”
And so it was settled. It was this policeman’s duty to keep an eye on Crane’s Alley, which was included in his beat. Well, he would for once forget to keep an eye on it, while the sergeant was out of the way. More, he would lend a hand when the time came to force the lock of the door in the little yard. After that he would be at liberty to slip back to Belgrave Street and resume his monotonous tramp.
And all this would happen on the following night, or rather, about two o’clock next morning.
When I left him it was nine o’clock, and, feeling in high spirits, I drove to the Grand to tell Vera my plan, for I felt I must tell somebody. She was alone in the private sitting-room overlooking the thousand lights of Trafalgar Square, and I sat with my arm about her.
“It is madness – sheer madness,” she exclaimed, when I had outlined my scheme, “and if you will take my advice – you know my advice is generally sound – you will at once abandon the idea, Dick. It is very well for you to say that my father is your friend, but you don’t know my father – you don’t know him as I know him. There are two sides to his character. Indeed, I would say he is really two men in one. The man you know is very different from the other man – my father as you have never seen him, and as I hope you never will see him. He can become perfectly savage. He has a temper that is altogether unmanageable when once it gets the better of him. It doesn’t often, but when it does —
“No, don’t do it, dear, don’t, I beg of you. I ask you not to. I beg you not to if you really love me.”
“I must,” I answered, with a firmness that surprised her. “I have gone too far now to draw back, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I am going to see this thing through. I’m going to discover the mystery of that house. I don’t care what risks I take, or what happens, but I am going to see for myself what all this secret business means.”
To my surprise she began to laugh.
“Dick,” she said, “I sometimes wonder if you are quite ‘all there.’ Why on earth can’t you let people alone, and mind your own business? Supposing Whichelo should turn upon you – good Heavens, he could squeeze the life out of you with one hand.”
“Whichelo?” I asked, puzzled, still holding her soft hand in mine.
“Yes. You said when you looked in at the window you saw Whichelo with my father.”
Instantly I put two and two together. So the big, dark giant whom I had known only as Davies was called Whichelo!
At last I had found out!
“And why should this man with the funny name, this Whichelo, want to ‘squeeze the life out of me’ as you so picturesquely put it?” I inquired carelessly, rising and crossing to the window, the blinds of which were not drawn.
“For the simple reason,” she answered, “that of course he won’t allow you to reveal the secret that has been kept so well, and so long. He and my father would stick at nothing to prevent that – believe me. I tell you again, I know my father.”
Somehow, though she spoke calmly, I felt she had some very strong incentive for not wanting me to enter the house and see what was happening there. She seemed to dread my carrying out my plan. Yet apparently she was not anxious on my account. But my mind was now made up. Nothing, I was determined, should stop me. I believed that I was on the eve of making discoveries which would lead to the unravelling of the mystery of Houghton Park, and the mysteries which had followed.
“Good-night, darling,” I said, going back to her. I took her in my arms and kissed her. As I did so, I thought I felt her sob.
“Why, Vera, what is the matter?” I exclaimed, releasing her.
“The matter?” she said, forcing a smile. “Nothing. Oh! nothing at all, dear. Why?”
“You – you seemed worried.”
“Oh, you’re mistaken. Why should I be?” She gave vent to a little hysterical laugh. I kissed her again, and told her to “cheer up.” Then I left her. I did not dare trust myself longer in her presence, lest she should, after all, persuade me to change my mind.