Chapter Three
The Name of “Smithson.”
A man was kneeling, facing me, on the outskirts of the wood on the hill, not a hundred yards away. His face was in shadow, and partly hidden by a slouch hat, so that I could hardly see it. The rifle he held was levelled at me – he was taking steady aim – his left arm extended far up the barrel, so that his hand came near the muzzle – the style adopted by all first-class shots, as it ensures deadly accuracy.
I am bound to confess that I completely lost my nerve. I sprang to one side almost as he fired. I had just enough presence of mind left to pick up the driver in my arms – even at the risk of my life I couldn’t leave him there – lift him into the car, and slam the door. Then I jumped on to the driving-seat, put in the clutch – in a perfect frenzy of fear lest I myself should be shot at the next instant – and the car flew down the avenue.
Twice I heard reports, and with the second one came the sound of a whistling bullet. But it went wide of the mark.
The lodge came quickly into view. It was well out of sight of the wood on the hill where the shots had been fired. I uttered an exclamation as I saw that the big white gate was shut. It was hardly ever shut.
Slowing down, I brought the car to a standstill within a few yards of the lodge, jumped out, and ran forward to open the gate.
It was fastened with a heavy chain, and the chain was securely padlocked.
Shouting failed to bring any one out of the lodge, so I clambered over the gate and knocked loudly at the door. But nobody answered, and, when I tried to open the door, I found it locked.
There seemed to be but one way out of the difficulty. I have said that I am strong, yet it needed all my strength to lift that heavy gate off its hinges. It fell with a crash back into the road, and I managed to drag it away to one side. Then starting the engine again, I set off once more for Oakham “all out.”
I went straight to the hospital, but a brief examination of the poor fellow sufficed to assure the doctors that the man was already dead. Then I went to the police-station and told them everything I knew – how a man giving the name “Smithson” had called at Houghton Park to see Sir Charles Thorold; how Thorold had repudiated all knowledge of the man; how Sir Charles and Lady Thorold and their daughter, and Lady Thorold’s maid, Judith – I did not know her surname – had suddenly left Houghton, and mysteriously disappeared; how I had, that afternoon, found the house shut up, though I had seen a man disappear from one of the windows; how I had discovered the butler’s body in the lake; how my driver had been shot dead by some one hidden in a wood upon a hill, and how other shots had been fired at me by the assassin.
At first the police seemed inclined to detain me, but when I had convinced them that I was what they quaintly termed “a bona fide gentleman,” and had produced what they called my “credentials,” – these consisted of a visiting card, and of a letter addressed to me at Houghton Park – and given them my London address and telephone number, they let me go. I found out afterwards that, while they kept me talking at the station, they had telephoned to London, in order to verify my statements that I had a flat in King Street and belonged to Brooks’s Club.
The coffee room of the Stag’s Head Hotel that night was crowded, for it was the night of the Hunt Ball, and every available bed in the hotel had been engaged some days in advance. Those dining were all strangers to me, most of them young people in very high spirits.
“I’ve kept this table for you, sir,” the head waiter said, as he conducted me across the room. “It is the best I could do; the other place at it is engaged.”
“And by a beautiful lady, I hope,” I answered lightly, for I knew this waiter to be something of a wag.
“No, sir,” he answered with a grin, “by a gentleman with a beard. A charming gentleman, sir. You’ll like him.”
“Who is he? What is he like?”
“Oh, quite a little man, sir, with a nervous, fidgetty manner, and a falsetto voice. Ah,” he added, lowering his voice, “here he comes.”
There was a twinkle of merriment in the waiter’s eyes, as he turned and hurried away to meet the giant who had just entered the room. I don’t think I had ever before seen so tall and magnificent-looking a man. He must have stood quite six feet four, and was splendidly built. His dark, deep-set eyes peered out with singular power from beneath bushy brows. He had a high, broad forehead, and thick black hair. His beard, well-trimmed, reached just below his white tie, for of course he was in evening clothes.
There was a noticeable lull in the buzz of conversation as the newcomer appeared, and all eyes were set upon him as he strolled with an easy, swinging gait across the room towards my table. I saw dowagers raise their lorgnettes and scrutinise him with great curiosity, mingled with approval, as he went along.
Instinctively I rose as he approached. I don’t know why I did. I should not have risen had any ordinary stranger been brought over to my table to occupy a vacant seat. The man looked down at me, smiled – it was a most friendly, captivating smile – nodded genially, and then seated himself facing me. I am a bit of a snob at heart – most of us are, only we won’t admit it – and I felt gratified at the reflected interest I knew was now being taken in me, for many people were staring hard at us both, evidently thinking that this remarkable-looking stranger must be Somebody, and that, as we were apparently acquainted, I must be Somebody too.
The waiter’s eye caught mine, and I heard him give a low chuckle of satisfaction at the practical joke he had played upon me.
“I suppose you are also going to the ball, sir,” the big man said to me in his great, deep voice, when he had told the waiter what to bring him.
“No, I’m not. I rather wish I were,” I answered. “Unfortunately, however, I have to return to town to-night. Are you going?”
“To town?”
“No, to the ball.”
He hesitated before answering.
“Yes – well, perhaps,” he said, as he began his soup. “I am not yet certain. I want to go, but there are reasons why I should not,” and he smiled.
“That sounds rather curious.”
“It is very curious, but it is so.”
“Do you mind explaining?”
“I do.”
His eyes were set on mine. They seemed somehow to hold my gaze in fascination. There was in them an expression that was half ironical, half humorous.
“I believe this is the first time we have met,” he said, after a pause.
“I’m quite sure it is,” I answered. “You will forgive my saying so, but I don’t think any one who had once met you could very well forget it.”
He gave a great laugh.
“Perhaps you are right – ah! perhaps you are right,” he said laughing, wiping his moustache and mouth with his napkin. “Certainly I shall never forget you.”
I began, for the first time, to feel rather uncomfortable. He seemed to talk in enigmas. He was evidently what I believe is called “a character.”
“Do you know this part of the country well?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.
“Yes – and no,” he answered slowly, thoughtfully.
This was getting tiresome. I began to think he was trying to make fun of me. I began to wish the waiter had not put him to sit at my table.
Presently he looked again across at me, and said quite suddenly —
“Look here, Mr Ashton, let us understand each other at once, shall we?”
His eyes looked into mine again, and I again felt quite uneasy. He knew my name. I felt distinctly annoyed at the waiter having told him my name without first asking my permission, as I concluded he must have done. It was a great liberty on his part, I considered – an impertinence, more especially as he had not mentioned this stranger’s name to me.
“I shall not be at the ball – and yet I shall be there,” the big man continued, as I did not speak. “Tell me, do you return to Houghton after going to London?”
“You seem to know a good deal about me, Mr – ” I said, rather nettled, but hoping to draw his name from him.
He did not take the hint.
“Sir Charles is well, I hope? And Lady Thorold?” he went on. “And how is their charming daughter, Miss Vera? I have not seen her for some days. She seems to be as fond as ever of hunting. I think it a cold-blooded, brutal sport. In fact I don’t call it ‘sport’ at all – twenty or so couples of hounds after one fox, and the chances all in favour of the hounds. I have told her so more than once, and I believe that in her heart she agrees with me. As a matter of fact, I’m here in Oakham, on purpose to call on Sir Charles to-morrow, on a matter of business.”
I was astounded, also annoyed. Who on earth was this big man, who seemed to know so much, who spoke of Vera as though he knew her intimately and met her every day, and who apparently was acquainted also with Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, yet whom I had never before set eyes on, though I was so very friendly with the Thorolds?
The stranger had spoken of my well-beloved!
“You will forgive my asking you, I am sure,” I said, curiosity getting the better of me, “but – well, I have not the pleasure of knowing your name. Do you mind telling me?”
“Mind telling you my name?” he exclaimed, with a look of surprise. “Why, not in the least. My name is – well – Smithson – if you like. Any name will do?”
He must have noticed my sudden change of expression, for he said at once —
“You seem surprised?”
“I – well, I am rather surprised. But you merely are not Smithson,” I answered awkwardly. I was staring hard at him, scrutinising his face in order to discover some resemblance to the portrait which at that moment lay snugly at the bottom of my valise. The portrait showed a clean-shaven man, younger than this strange individual whom I had met, as I believed, for the first time, barely a quarter of an hour before. Age might have wrought changes, and the beard might have served as a disguise, but the man in the picture was certainly over thirty-four, and my companion here at dinner could not have been less than forty-five at most. Even the eyes, those betrayers of disguised faces, bore no resemblance that I could see to the eyes of the man in the picture. The beard and moustache of the man facing me were certainly not artificial. That I could see at a glance.
“Why are you surprised?” the man asked abruptly.
“It would take a long time to explain,” I answered, equivocating, “but it is a curious coincidence that only yesterday I almost met a man named Smithson. I was wondering if he could be some relation of yours. He was not like you in face.”
“Oh, so you know Smithson?”
“No, I don’t know him. I have never met him. I said I almost met him.”
“Have you never seen him, then?”
“Never in my life.”
“And yet you say he is ‘not like me in face.’ How do you know he is not like me in face if you have never seen him?”
The sudden directness of his tone disconcerted me. For an instant I felt like a witness being cross-examined by a bullying Counsel.
“I’ve seen a portrait of him.”
“Indeed?”
My companion raised his eyebrows.
“And where did you see a portrait of him?” he inquired pointedly.
This was embarrassing. Why was he suddenly so interested, so inquisitive? I had no wish to make statements which I felt might lead to my being dragged into saying all sorts of things I had no wish to say, especially to a stranger who, though he had led me to believe that he was acquainted with the Thorolds, apparently had no inkling of what had just happened at Houghton Park.
No inkling! I almost smiled as the thought occurred to me, and was quickly followed by the thought of the sensation the affair would create when the newspapers came to hear of what had happened, and began to “spread themselves” upon the subject, as they certainly would do very soon.
My companion’s voice dispelled my wandering reflections.
“Where did you see the portrait of this other Smithson?” he asked, looking at me oddly.
“In a friend’s house.”
“Was it at Houghton Park?”
“In point of fact, it was.”
His eyes seemed to read my thoughts, and I didn’t like it. He was silent for some moments. Then suddenly he rose.
“Well, Mr Ashton,” he said quite genially, as he extended his hand, “I am glad that we have met, and I trust we shall meet again. ‘In point of fact,’ to use your own phrase, we shall, and very soon. Until then – good-bye. I have enjoyed our little conversation. It has been so – what shall I say – informal, and it was so unexpected. I did not expect to meet you to-night, I can assure you.”
He was gone, leaving me in a not wholly pleasant frame of mind. The man puzzled me. Did I like him, or did I not? His personality attracted me, had done so from the moment I had set eyes on him framed in the doorway, but I was bound to admit that some of his observations had annoyed me. In particular, that remark: “We shall meet again, and very soon;” also his last words: “I did not expect to meet you to-night, I can assure you,” caused me some uneasiness in the face of all that had happened. Indeed all through dinner his remarks had somehow seemed to bear some hidden meaning.
Chapter Four
Further Mystery
I had to go up to London that night. My lawyers had written some days previously that they must see me personally at the earliest possible moment on some matter to do with my investments, which they controlled entirely, and the letter had been left lying at my flat in King Street before being forwarded. And as the Oakham police had impressed upon me that my presence would be needed in Oakham within the next day or two, I had decided to run up to London, see my lawyers and get my interview with them over, and then return to Rutland as soon as possible.
Again and again, as the night express tore through the darkness towards St. Pancras, Vera’s fair face and appealing eyes floated like a vision into my thoughts. I must see her again, at once – but how could I find her, and where? Would the police try to find her, and her father and mother? But why should they? After all, perhaps Sir Charles and Lady Thorold’s flight from Houghton did not mean that they intended to conceal themselves. What reason could they have for concealment?
Then, all at once, an idea occurred to me. I smiled at my stupidity in not thinking of it before. There was the Thorolds’ house in Belgrave Street. It had been shut up for a long time, but perhaps for some reason they had suddenly decided to go back there. On my arrival at St. Pancras I would at once ring up that house and inquire if they were there.
But I was doomed to disappointment. While the porter was hailing a taxi for me, I went to the station telephone. There were plenty of Thorolds in the telephone-directory that hung inside the glass door, but Sir Charles’ name was missing.
Determined not to be put off, I told the driver to go first to Belgrave Street. The number of the Thorolds’ house was, I remembered, a hundred and two. By the time we got there it was past midnight. The house bore no sign of being occupied. I was about to ring, when a friendly constable with a bull’s-eye lantern prevented me.
“It’s empty, sir,” he said; “has been for months and months, in fact as long as I can remember.”
“But surely there is a caretaker,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, there’s a caretaker, a very old man,” he answered with a grin. “But you won’t get him to come down at this time of night. He’s a character, he is.”
There had been nothing in the newspapers that day, but, on the morning after, the bomb burst.
AMAZING STORY
WELL-KNOWN FAMILY VANISH
BUTLER’S BODY IN THE LAKE
Those headlines, in what news-editors call “war type,” met my eyes as I unfolded the paper.
I was in bed, and my breakfast on the tray beside me grew cold while I devoured the three columns of close-set print describing everything that had occurred from the moment of Sir Charles’ disappearance until the paper had gone to press.
I caught my breath as I came to my own name. My appearance was described in detail, names of my relatives were given, and a brief outline of my father’s brilliant career – for he had been a great soldier – and then all my movements during the past two days were summarised.
I had last been seen, the account ran, dining at the Stag’s Head Hotel with a gentleman, a stranger, whom nobody seemed to know anything about. He had come to the Stag’s Head on the evening of Monday, April 1, engaged a bedroom and a sitting-room in the name of Davies, and he had left on the night of Wednesday, April 3. He had intended, according to the newspaper, to sleep at the Stag’s Head that night, but between ten and eleven o’clock he had changed his mind, packed his suit-case, paid his bill, and left. Where he had come from, none knew; where he had gone, or why, none knew. How he had spent his time from his arrival until his departure, nobody had been able to discover.
“All that is known about him,” ran the newspaper report, “is that he was a personal friend of Mr Richard Ashton, and that he dined at the Stag’s Head Hotel with Mr Ashton on the Wednesday evening, his last meal in the hotel before his hurried departure.”
This was horrible. It seemed to convey indirectly the impression that I knew why the Thorolds had disappeared, and where they had gone. More, a casual reader might easily have been led to suppose that I was implicated in some dark plot, involving the death of the butler. I appeared in the light of a man of mystery, the friend of a man who might, for aught I knew, be some criminal, but whose name – this certainly interested me – he apparently intended should remain secret.
I turned over the page. Good heavens – my portrait! And the one portrait of myself that of all others I detested. Anybody looking at that particular portrait would at once say: “What a villainous man; he looks like a criminal!”
I remembered now, rather bitterly, making that very observation when the proofs had been sent to me by the photographer, and how my friends had laughed and said it was “quite true,” and that it resembled a portrait in a Sunday paper of “the accused in Court.”
There were also portraits of Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, and a pretty picture of Vera, the best that had ever been taken of her. But the one portrait that I felt ought to have been reproduced, though it was not, was one of the bearded giant, who had given his name as Davies.
Thoroughly disgusted, I turned without appetite to my tepid breakfast. I had hardly begun to eat, when the telephone at my bedside rang.
Was that Mr Richard Ashton’s flat? asked a voice. Might the speaker speak to him?
Mr Ashton was speaking.
“Oh, this was the office of The Morning. The editor would greatly appreciate Mr Ashton’s courtesy if he would receive one of his representatives. He would not detain him long.”
I gulped a mouthful of tea, then explained that I would sooner not be interviewed. I was extremely sorry, I said, that my name had been dragged into this extraordinary affair.
The news-editor was persistent. I was firm. I always am firm when I am at the end of a telephone, but rarely on other occasions. Finally I rang off.
A brief interval. Then another ring. Well, what?
“The editor of the – ”
“No,” I answered as politely as I could. “I am extremely sorry. You see, I have just refused to be interviewed by The Morning, and it would hardly be fair to that journal if… Oh, The Morning was a paper of no consequence, was it? That made a difference, of course, but still… no… no… I was really sorry… I could not… I…”
I hung up the receiver. As I did so my man entered. There were four gentlemen downstairs, also a photographer. They wanted to know if —
“Tell them,” I interrupted, “that I cannot see them. And, John – ”
“Sir?”
“I am not at home to anybody – anybody at all. You understand?”
“Quite, sir.”
I noticed that his tone was not quite as deferential as usual. I knew the reason. Of course he had seen this odious paper, or some paper more odious still. Probably he and the other servants in the building had been discussing me, and hazarding all sorts of wildly improbable stories about me.
The telephone bell rang again. I forget what I said. I think it was a short prayer, or an invocation of some kind. My first impulse was not to answer the ’phone again at all, but to let the thing go on ringing. It rang so persistently, however, that in desperation I pulled off the receiver.
“Who the dickens is it? What do you want?” I shouted.
I gasped.
“What! Vera? Where are you? I want to see you. I must see you at once!”
My love was in dire distress. I could hear emotion in her voice. My heart beat quickly in my eagerness.
“Oh, come to me – do come to me!” she was saying hurriedly in a low tone, as though fearful of some one overhearing her. “I’m in such trouble, and you alone can help me. Tell me when you will come. Tell me quickly. At any moment someone may catch me talking on the telephone.”
“Where are you? Give me your address, quickly,” I answered, feverishly. I was madly anxious to meet her again.
“We are in London – but we go to Brighton – to-day – this afternoon – ”
“Your address in London, quick.”
“Twenty-six Upper – ”
There was a sudden clatter. The receiver had been put back. Some one had interrupted her.
I tapped the little lever of the instrument repeatedly.
“Number, please,” a monotonous voice asked.
“What number was I talking to this instant?” I said, almost trembling with anxiety.
“I’m sure I don’t know. What number do you want?”
“The number I’ve been talking to.”
“I tell you I don’t know it,” replied the female operator.
“Can’t you find it out?”
“I’ll try. Hold the line, please.”
After a brief interval, the voice said —
“It may have been double-two two two Mayfair. Shall I ring them for you?”
“Please do.”
I waited.
“You’re through.”
“Hello, what is it?” a beery voice asked.
“I want to speak to Miss Vera Thorold?”
“Vera ’oo?”
“Thorold.”
“Theobald? He’s out.”
“Thorold, Miss Vera Thorold,” I shouted in despair.
“Oh, we ain’t got no Veras here,” the beery voice replied, and I could picture the speaker’s leer. “This ain’t a ladies’ seminary; it’s Poulsen’s Brewery Company, Limited. You’re on the wrong number. Ring off.”
And again the instrument was silent.
Vera had been cut off just at the moment she was about to reveal her whereabouts.
Almost beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in order to devise some means of discovering Vera’s whereabouts and getting into immediate communication with her. I even went to the telephone exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his best to help me, he could not trace the number.
I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was impotent to help her.
Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin, and jerked out the sentence between his teeth —
“There’s a lady here to see you – a Miss Thorold.”
“Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here?” I exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.
“About ten minutes. She’s up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew her, and she’d wait till you came back.”
“Vera!” I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with impatience.
At last. She was there – in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!