"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, the sudden revulsion of feeling almost overpowering me. "But do you know what has happened—do you know that Sir Roland Challoner's son I had charge of has—"

"Don't distress yourself, Mr. Berrington," he interrupted reassuringly, "I know everything, and more than you know, but I rather feared that you might see through this disguise. I have been loafing about Paddington station for nearly an hour. The lady I expected to see arrived just after seven, and took up her position under the clock. Then I saw you and the lad arrive; I saw you recognize the woman; I saw you put yourself out of sight behind the pile of trunks, and talk earnestly to the lad for a few moments, and I guessed what you were saying to him. I walked right past you in the sub-way, and intentionally made you miss this train, because it is inexpedient that you should follow those two. I know where they are going, and Mr. Osborne knows too; I needn't trouble to explain to you here how I come to know all this. The thing you have to do now is to come with me to my house off Regent Street, where Mr. Osborne awaits us."

Never in my life, I suppose, have I felt so relieved as I did then, for the mental pain I had endured during these few minutes had been torture. Indeed, I felt almost indignant with Preston for his having made me suffer so; but he explained that he had revealed himself to me the moment he felt justified in doing so. Suddenly a thought occurred to me.

"Do you know," I asked him quickly, "anything of a telegram sent to Eton this morning, apparently by Sir Roland, saying that Miss Challoner had been taken suddenly ill, and requesting that his son might be sent home to Holt at once?"

"Yes, I know, because—I sent it."

"You sent it!"

"Yes—though I didn't write it. Mrs. Stapleton wrote it. She gave it to her chauffeur, who was in the hall at the Rook Hotel, and when she was gone he asked me if I would mind handing it in, as I had intentionally told him I was going to the post office. I was a chauffeur, too, at the time, chauffeur to 'Baron Poppenheimer,' whom I drove down this morning in his car ostensibly to see the beautiful widow. 'Baron Poppenheimer' was, of course, Mr. Osborne. The widow was not at 'The Book' when we arrived—we knew she wouldn't be, and, of course, you know where she was, she was at the house in Hampstead where you found Miss Challoner when you called there this morning; she arrived home about two o'clock, however, and while 'Baron Poppenheimer' was making himself agreeable to her—your friend Mr. Osborne is a most splendid actor, and ought to have been in the detective force—I was making headway with her chauffeur out in the garage. Yes, Mr. Berrington, you can set your mind at rest—Miss Challoner is perfectly well. I wonder if by chance you telephoned to Holt this afternoon."

"I tried to."

"And you couldn't get through? The line was out of order?"

"Yes."

"Good!" Preston exclaimed, his small, intelligent eyes twinkling oddly. "That is as I thought. One of Gastrell's accomplices set the line out of order between three and five this afternoon. When the line comes to be examined the electrician will, unless I am greatly mistaken, find the flaw at some point between Holt Stacey and Holt Manor—if you should happen to hear, you might tell me the exact point where they find that the trouble exists. My theories and my chain of circumstances are working out splendidly—I haven't as yet made a single false conjecture. And now come along to my house, and I'll tell you more on the way."

Osborne sat in Preston's sitting-room, smoking a long cigar. He no longer wore the disguise of "Baron Poppenheimer," or any disguise, and upon our entry he uttered an exclamation.

"By Jove, Mike," he said, "you are the very man we've been wanting all day. Where did you disappear to last night?" And turning to Preston he added, "Were you right? Did he follow the widow and Miss Challoner home last night?"

"Yes," I answered for him, "I did. Did you see Dulcie at Gastrell's last night?"

"I should say so—and we saw you gazing at her. You nearly gave yourself away, Mike; you did, indeed. You ought to be more careful. When we saw you follow them out of the room, we knew, just as though you had told us, that you meant to follow them home. And what about the boy?" he said, addressing Preston. "Did he turn up? And was he met?"

"Yes, just as I expected; but he wasn't met by Sir Roland's butler, of course. He was met by Doris Lorrimer—you have probably noticed her, that dark, demure, quietly dressed girl who was at Connie Stapleton's dinner party at 'The Rook,' and at Gastrell's last night."

"You don't mean to say that she, too, is one of Gastrell's accomplices!" Jack exclaimed. "It seems impossible—looking like that!"

"I have suspected it for some time. Now I am sure. She has taken Dick Challoner to Connie Stapleton's house in Hampstead. It's one of the headquarters of the set, though, of course, the principal headquarters are at 300 Cumberland Place. How furious Lord Easterton would be if he knew! He suspects nothing as yet, I think."

"But how do you know that Doris Lorrimer has taken the boy to that Hampstead house?" Osborne asked quickly; "and why has she taken him?"

"The gang have kidnapped him—it was Connie Stapleton's idea—in order to get the reward they feel sure Sir Roland will offer for his recovery. How I know where Doris Lorrimer has taken him is that Connie Stapleton's chauffeur, with whom I fraternized this afternoon in Newbury, happened to mention that his mistress had told Miss Lorrimer to be under the clock at Paddington at seven-fifteen this evening to meet the man with the parcel,' as she said, and then to take the 'parcel' to her house in Hampstead! I won't tell you until later how I come to know the kidnapping was Mrs. Stapleton's idea; I have a reason for not telling you—yet."

"You certainly are a marvel, George," Jack said, as he blew a cloud towards the ceiling. "We seem to be well on the way now to running these scoundrels to ground. I shall be glad to see them convicted—right glad."

"We are 'on the way'—yes," Preston answered, "but you'll find it a longer 'way' than you expect, if you are already thinking of convictions. You don't know—you can't have any idea of—the slimness of these rogues if you suppose we are as yet anywhere near running them to ground. Just look how clever they have already been: first there is the fire in Maresfield Gardens and the discovery of the stabbed and charred body, for you may depend upon it that fire was meant to conceal some crime, probably murder, by destroying all traces, including that body which ought by rights to have been entirely consumed; then there is the robbery at Holt Manor; then the affair in Grafton Street, with yourself as the victim; then the murder of Sir Roland's gardener, Churchill—all these constitute mysteries, undiscovered crimes, and now comes this business of kidnapping Sir Roland's young son."

We talked at considerable length, discussing past and present happenings, and arranging our future line of action. Preston was immensely interested in the cypher messages unravelled by Dick—I had brought the cuttings with me to show to him and Jack. The reference to the date of the coming of age of Cranmere's son, considered in connection with the questions about Cranmere's seat, Eldon Hall, put to Osborne during his mysterious confinement in Grafton Street, made the detective almost excited. The unravelling of those cyphers was, he said, perhaps the most important discovery as yet made. Indeed, he believed that our knowledge of these messages might simplify matters Sufficiently to lead directly to the arrest of at any rate some members of the gang at a much earlier date than he had previously anticipated.

"It is clear," he said, as he put the cuttings into the envelope again and handed them back to me, "that Gastrell and company contemplate a coup of some sort either on the day Lord Cranmere's son comes of age, or on one day during the week of festivities that will follow. 'Clun Cross.' We must find out where Clun Cross is; probably it's somewhere in Northumberland, and most likely it's near Eldon Hall. I suppose, Osborne, that you are invited to the coming of age, as you know Cranmere so well?"

"Yes, and I mean to go. But Berrington isn't invited; he doesn't know Cranmere."

"He probably knows what he looks like, though," Preston answered, laughing—he was thinking of his impersonation of the Earl, and his wonderful make-up. "I am not invited either, professionally or otherwise, so that Mr. Berrington and I had better go to Bedlington and put our heads together there, for something is going to happen at Eldon Hall, Osborne, you may take my word for that. We mustn't, however, forget that last cypher message: 'Osborne and Berrington suspect; take precautions.' 'Precautions' with such people may mean anything. I am firmly of opinion that poor Churchill's assassination was a 'precautionary' measure. It was on the afternoon before that murder, remember, that Churchill found the paste buckle at the spot where a grey car had been seen, left deserted, on the morning of the robbery at Holt. It was on the afternoon before that murder that he brought the buckle to Miss Challoner, told her about the grey car he had seen, which, he said, led him to suspect something, and asked to have the afternoon off. It was on that same afternoon that Mrs. Stapleton happened to motor over to Holt, and while there was told by Miss Challoner all about the finding of the buckle, also all about Churchill's secret suspicion about the car, and his asking to have the afternoon off, presumably to pursue his inquiries. And what happened after that? Don't you remember? Mrs. Stapleton telephoned from Holt to the Book Hotel in Newbury and talked to someone there—her maid, so she said—for five minutes or more, talked to her in Polish. Now, does anything suggest itself to either of you? Don't you think it quite likely that Mrs. Stapleton, hearing from Miss Challoner all about what had happened, telephoned in Polish certain instructions to somebody in Newbury, most likely one of her accomplices, and that those instructions led, directly or indirectly, to Churchill's being murdered the same night, lest he should discover anything and give information? One thing I am sure of, though—Mrs. Stapleton's chauffeur is an honest man who does not in the least suspect what is going on; who, on the contrary, believes his mistress to be a most estimable woman, kind, considerate, open-handed. I found that out while associating with him to-day as a fellow-chauffeur."

It was nearly nine o'clock before we went out into Soho to dine. Preston told us that he had arranged to call at Willow Road for Dick between ten and half-past. The three of us were to go to Hampstead and represent ourselves as being instructed by Sir Roland to take the boy away. Preston himself would, he said, represent himself as being an Eton master, and Doris Lorrimer was to be closely cross-questioned as to who had authorized her to meet the boy and take him to Hampstead and—

Well, Preston had thoroughly thought out his plan of action down to the smallest detail, and during dinner in the little restaurant in Gerrard Street, to which he had taken us, he explained it to us fully. Briefly, his intention was to frighten Doris Lorrimer half out of her senses by threatening instant prosecution if she did not, then and there, make certain disclosures which would help on our endeavour to bring to justice the whole gang with which she was evidently associated.

"But supposing," I hazarded, "we don't see Doris Lorrimer. Supposing we see only a servant, who assures us that we are mistaken, and that Dick isn't there. Supposing that Mrs. Stapleton, or even Gastrell, should confront us. What then?"

"I have carefully considered all those possibilities," Preston answered lightly as he refilled my glass, then Jack's, and then his own. "If anything of that kind should happen I shall simply—but there, leave it to me and I think you will be satisfied with the outcome. You must remember, Mr. Berrington, that I have been at this sort of thing over twenty years. Well, here's luck to our enterprise," and, raising his glass, he clinked it against our glasses in turn, then emptied it at a draught.

"And now," he said, preparing to rise, "we must be moving. We have rather a ticklish task before us, though I have no fear whatever as to its sequel, provided you leave most of the talking to me. In any case there must be no violence, remember. The only thing I regret is that the lad will most likely be asleep, so that we shall have to awaken him."

Punctually at half-past ten our taxi drew up outside the house numbered 460 Willow Road, Hampstead.



CHAPTER XVIII

CONTAINS ANOTHER SURPRISE

Lights were in most of the windows, as though a party were in progress.

Preston rang the bell. It was answered at once by a maid who had answered it in the morning, and before Preston had time to speak the maid asked us if we would come in. This time she showed us into a room a good deal larger than the one in which I had been interviewed by Gastrell in the morning. Very beautifully furnished, on all sides what is termed the "feminine touch" was noticeable, and among a number of framed photographs on one of the tables I recognized portraits of well-known Society people, several with autograph signatures, and one or two with affectionate inscriptions. I wondered to whom they had been presented, and to whom the affectionate inscriptions were addressed.

We waited a few minutes, wondering what would happen next, and who would come in to see us, for the maid had not even asked our names, though I saw that she had recognized me. For a moment it occurred to me that we ought to have changed into evening clothes, and I was about to tell Preston so when the door opened and Jasmine Gastrell entered, accompanied, to my amazement, by Dulcie Challoner.

I think even Preston was taken aback—and it took a great deal to astonish Preston. Osborne, I could see, was dumbfounded. Jasmine Gastrell was the first to speak, and she addressed me without looking either at Osborne or Preston.

"Good evening, Mr. Berrington," she said, with one of those wonderful smiles of hers which seemed entirely to transform her expression; "this is an unexpected pleasure."

How strangely different she now looked from the way she had looked at me in Cumberland Place when, disguised as Sir Aubrey Belston, I had pretended to read her past life! She turned to Jack, and, raising her eye-brows as though she had only that instant recognized him, "Why," she exclaimed, "it's Mr. Osborne! I had no idea we were to have the pleasure of seeing you here to-night—had you, Dulcie?"

Dulcie, who was standing by quite unconcernedly, turned at once to me without answering Mrs. Gastrell's question.

"Dear old Mike," she said, "how delightful of you to have come. I do hope you have entirely recovered. You looked so ill when you saw me off at Paddington this morning that I felt anxious about you all the way home. What was the matter with you? Have you any idea?"

I was so staggered, first at finding her at this house again, and then at her addressing me in the calm way she did, that for some moments I could not answer. Jack and Preston, now in conversation with Jasmine Gastrell, did not notice my hesitation. At last, collecting my scattered thoughts, I answered:

"I am quite well, Dulcie. There was nothing really much amiss with me this morning—I thought you knew that."

I stopped abruptly. What else could I say?

Under the circumstances I could not well speak about the telegram, and say why we had arrived in this way at such an unusual hour.

"I suppose you have come about Dick," she went on suddenly. "He is asleep now—he was so tired, poor little chap."

"Dulcie," I burst out impetuously under my breath, casting a hurried glance at the other three, who, still in conversation, did not appear to notice us. "Dulcie, what is the meaning of all this? Why are you here? Why is Dick here? I want to see you—I must see you alone as soon as possible—there is so much I want to say to you, want to ask you; such a lot has happened during the past day or two that I can't understand, and that I want to have explained. Tell me, my darling," I went on hurriedly, "when and where can we can meet—alone?"

She gave a delightful little laugh, and tapped me playfully with her fan—she and Jasmine were in evening dress. Then, looking roguishly up into my eyes, she went on:

"So far as Dick is concerned, everything is easily explained. When I got home this morning I felt very unwell. I found father terribly anxious at my absence, and Aunt Hannah in what I call one of her fits of tantrums. I went to lie down, and, while I was asleep, father came and looked at me. For some reason he got it into his head that I looked very ill, and just then Connie arrived in her car—she went to Holt direct from London, as she wanted to explain to father the reason she didn't take me home last night, and at the same time make her apologies for the anxiety she knew she must unintentionally have caused him; father, you know, likes Connie very much. After seeing me in bed he had jumped to the conclusion that I was really very ill and ought to see a doctor at once. Connie said that as she was going straight to Newbury she would, if he liked, send Doctor Claughton out to Holt. Then father said something about letting Dick know I was ill, and Connie volunteered to send a telegram to Eton, signed with father's name, and father said he wished she would. And that is the explanation of the whole affair."

"Explanation!" I exclaimed. "I don't call that half an explanation. What about James being told to meet Dick at Paddington and then not turning up?"

"Oh, that was a mistake of Connie's. James was in town to-day, and Connie understood father to say that he would telegraph to James and tell him to meet Dick at Paddington. After telegraphing to Eton in father's name, from Newbury, she found she had made a mistake, so then she telegraphed to Doris Lorrimer to meet Dick. After the doctor had seen me, he told father there was nothing to be in the least alarmed about; in fact gave father to understand that his imagination had played pranks with him; so then father telephoned to Connie at the Book Hotel, and they decided there was no need for Dick to come home, and Connie suggested Dick's spending the night here and returning to Eton to-morrow."

I did not speak for some moments. At last I said:

"Dulcie, who told you all this?"

"Why, Connie, of course. Father had to attend an important magistrates' meeting in Newbury this afternoon, and, as I seemed quite well again, she got father's leave to bring me up to town again to meet some friends of hers who are here to-night. Now are you satisfied, Mike?"

"No, I am not," I answered bluntly. "Dulcie, have you seen Dick since he arrived here?"

"No, he had gone to bed before I arrived, and Connie said I had better not disturb him."

"My darling," I said a moment later, "I must see you alone. When can I?"

"Would to-morrow morning suit you, dear?" she asked, looking at me with her frank brown eyes. As I returned the gaze I found it impossible to believe that she had wittingly deceived me that morning, or indeed at any time, and yet—

"Yes. Shall we say at twelve o'clock?" I suggested. "And shall I call here for you?"

"That will do beautifully. Oh, Mike, my darling," she said quickly, under her breath, "I hope you still love me just as much as you did; I don't know why, but somehow I sometimes feel that you mistrust me—even that you suspect me of something or other, I don't know what."

"Dulcie!" I exclaimed impulsively, and I made as though to seize her hand, then remembered we were not alone, and refrained. "Dulcie, there are things I want you to explain to me, mysteries that only you can clear up. I don't really mistrust you, my own darling; indeed, indeed I don't; but I mistrust some of the people you mix with and have made friends of, more than that, I happen to know that some of them are no better than adventurers, and I want to get you away from them. What house is this we are in? I mean whose is it and who lives here?"

But at that instant our conversation was interrupted by Jasmine Gastrell.

"Oh, you lovers!" she exclaimed, laughing as she looked across at us. "What heaps and heaps lovers seem to have to tell each other after being parted for a few hours. It reminds me of my own young days," she added archly, for she looked barely seven-and-twenty. "Mr. Osborne has just told me, Dulcie, that he is asked to stay at Eldon Hall for Lord Cranmere's son's coming of age, on the twenty-eighth. I have been invited too; I do wish you were going to be there. Connie has accepted."

Ten minutes later, as the three of us sauntered slowly along Willow Road, we realized—at least I can answer for myself—that in spite of our careful scheming, and our complete confidence in the success of our plan, we had been cleverly outwitted. Not for a moment had Preston, or Jack Osborne, believed the long story that Jasmine Gastrell had related to them while Dulcie and I had been engrossed in conversation, a story it is unnecessary to repeat, though it had been told apparently with a view to leading them to think that Mrs. Gastrell was shortly to make a tour round the world. In the same way I had not been deceived by the ingenious tissue of implications and falsehoods that Connie Stapleton had poured into Dulcie's ear, and that Dulcie had innocently repeated to me. What most astonished me, however, was the rapidity with which Connie Stapleton and Jasmine Gastrell seemed able to concoct these ingenious and plausible narratives to account for anything and everything that happened on any occasion. A single discrepancy, for instance, in the story that Dulcie had just repeated to me would have brought the whole fabric of what appeared to be true statements—though I believed them to be false—crumbling to the ground. But there had been no such discrepancy. Everything that had occurred during the afternoon in relation to Dick, the telegram sent to Eton, Doris Lorrimer's meeting him in place of Sir Roland's butler, had been accounted for simply and quite rationally. And yet I felt firmly convinced the statements must in the main be a series of monstrous untruths, a belief in which Preston, with all his experience, concurred. Only two points puzzled me. Neither Jasmine Gastrell nor Connie Stapleton, nor, indeed, anybody else, could by any possibility have known that Preston, Jack, and I contemplated calling at the house in Willow Road that evening. How came it, then, that everything had been so skilfully arranged with a view to disarming our suspicions when we did call? That, I confess, was a problem so complicated that it formed the one and only argument in favour of the story that Dulcie had repeated to me being in part true. The other puzzling point was Dulcie's being at that house that night, and her knowing that Dick was there. Surely if Connie Stapleton and her accomplices had intended to kidnap Dick for the purpose of extorting money from Sir Roland, they would not intentionally have let Dulcie know what was happening. And, arguing thus with myself, I began at last to wonder if, after all, I had been mistaken; if, after all, Mrs. Stapleton had not invented that story, but had told Dulcie the truth. I confess that the more I thought it all over and the harder I tried to sift possible facts from probable fiction the more hopelessly entangled I became. Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of my theory that we were being cleverly and systematically hoaxed lay in Dick's discovery of the cypher messages in the Morning Post. There could, at any rate, be no getting away from the cypher message which had appeared on the previous day and that ran: "Osborne and Berrington suspect. Take precautions"

Then I thought again of Dulcie. It was appalling, almost incredible, that she should be allowed to associate with men and women whom we practically knew to be adventurers, and who might be not merely adventurers, but criminals masquerading as respectable members of Society. Yet I was impotent to prevent her; it was, of course, Sir Roland's duty to forbid her to mix with these people, but then Sir Roland, from being powerfully attracted by the young widow Connie Stapleton, was, as I had long ago guessed, becoming deeply enamoured of her; so that, far from preventing Dulcie from associating with her—Dulcie, with her strange infatuation for the woman—he deliberately encouraged the intimacy. Well, next morning, at any rate, I should see Dulcie alone, I reflected, with a feeling of satisfaction, and then I would have it out with her and go into the whole affair thoroughly, speaking to her with brutal frankness—even at the risk of hurting her feelings and incurring her displeasure I would tell her everything I knew and all that I suspected. Something must be done, and at once, to put an end to her absurd attachment to the widow—I had thought it all over quite long enough; it was now time to act. And Dick too; I must get hold of him and question him narrowly to find out if his story of what happened from the time he left me on Paddington platform and went and stood beside Doris Lorrimer under the clock, and his arrival at Willow Road, Hampstead, tallied with the story that Connie Stapleton had told Dulcie, and that Dulcie had related to me—for I somehow fancied that the two narratives might differ to some extent, if only in their minor details.

We were approaching Hampstead Tube station when Preston, turning to me from Jack Osborne, with whom he had been in close conversation, inquired:

"Has Sir Roland lately said anything to you, Mr. Berrington, that interested you particularly? Has he thrown out any hint of any sort?"

I reflected.

"Nothing that I can recollect," I said. "Have you reason to suppose that he has something of special interest that he wants to say to me?"

"I have, but until he speaks it is not for me to make any comment."

We had reached the Tube station. Jack booked to Russell Square; Preston to Piccadilly Circus; and I took a ticket to Bond Street, those being the stations nearest to our respective destinations.

"Are you aware," Preston said soon after the train had started, "that since we left my house and went to dine in Soho, we have been followed? I wanted to be perfectly certain before telling you, but I see now that I was right in my suspicion. Look to your left presently, one at a time, and at the end of the compartment you'll see quite an ordinary-looking man, apparently a foreigner, smoking a cheroot—the man seated alone, with a lot of hair on his face."

"You wouldn't notice him if he passed you in the street, would you?" he said after we had looked, "but I have noticed him all the evening. He was in Warwick Street when we all came out of my house; he followed us to Soho; he was in Gerrard Street, awaiting us, when we came out of the restaurant after dining; he came after us to Hampstead; he has followed us from Willow Road to the Tube station, and he is in this compartment now for the purpose of observing us. I want you each not to forget what he is like, and in a few minutes, when we all separate, I shall be curious to see which of us he follows—to know which of us he is really shadowing."

Jack was the first to alight. He bade us each a cheery good night, after reminding us that we were all three to meet on the following afternoon, and hurried out. The hairy man with the cheroot remained motionless, reading his newspaper.

My turn came next—at Oxford Circus station. As I rose, I noticed the man carelessly fold up his newspaper, cram it into his coat pocket, and get up. Rather to my surprise I did not, after that, see him again. He was not with me in the carriage of the train I changed into, nor was he, apparently, on the platform at Bond Street station when I got out. As I pushed my latch-key into the outer door of South Molton Street Mansions, I glanced quickly up and down the street, but, so far as I could see, there was no sign of the man.

However, a surprise awaited me. Upon entering my flat I noticed a light in the sitting-room at the end of the little passage—the door stood ajar. Entering quickly, I uttered an exclamation of amazement. For in the big arm-chair in front of the fire—the fire burned as though it had lately been made up—Dick lay back fast asleep, his lips slightly parted, his chest rising and falling in a way that showed how heavily he slept.

Recovering from my amazement, I stood for a minute or two watching him. How delightful he looked when asleep like that, and what a strong resemblance he bore to Dulcie. But how came he to be here? And how came Dulcie to have told me, less than an hour before, that he was in the house at Hampstead, and asleep there? Gazing down upon him still, I wondered what really had happened since I had last seen him that evening, and what story he would have to tell me when he awoke.

My man had gone to bed, for it was now past midnight. Considering where I had better put Dick to sleep, my glance rested upon some letters lying on the table. Mechanically I picked them up and looked at the handwritings on the envelopes. Nothing of interest, I decided, and I was about to put them down again, unopened, when I noticed there was one from Holt that I had overlooked. The handwriting was Sir Roland's. Hastily tearing open the envelope, I pulled out the letter. It was quite short, but its contents sent my heart jumping into my mouth, and had Dick not been asleep close by in the chair I believe I should have used some almost unprintable language.

"Oh, the fool—the silly, doddering, abject old fool!" I exclaimed aloud as I flung the open letter down on to the table and began to pace the room in a fury of indignation. "'No fool like an old fool'—oh, those words of wisdom—the man who first uttered them should have a monument erected to his memory," I continued aloud; then suddenly, as Dick stirred in his sleep, I checked myself abruptly.

The letter Sir Roland Challoner had written to me ran as follows:

"My dear Mike,—As you and Dulcie are engaged, I dare say you will be interested, and you may be surprised, to hear of another engagement. I have asked Dulcie's beautiful friend, Mrs. Stapleton, to become my wife, and she has done me the honour of accepting my proposal. Write to congratulate me, my dear Mike, and come down again soon to stay with us.

"Yours affectionately,

"ROLAND CHALLONER."



CHAPTER XIX

"IN THE PAPERS"

Dick was sleeping so heavily that he hardly stirred when I picked him up, carried him into my bedroom, laid him on my bed and loosened his clothes; I had decided to sleep on the settee in the room adjoining. Soon after seven next morning I was awakened by hearing him moving about. He had made himself quite at home, I found, for he had had a bath and used my towels and hair-brushes and found his way into a pair of my slippers.

"I hope you don't mind," he said apologetically, after telling me what he had done. "And now shall I tell you how I come to be here, Mike?" he added, clambering up on to my bed and lying down beside me.

I told him I wanted to know everything, and at once, and, speaking in his rapid, vivacious way, he went on to explain exactly what had occurred.

It seemed that when he went and stood by Doris Lorrimer under the clock at Paddington station, she had, as I had told him she probably would, asked him if he were Dick Challoner. Upon his telling her that he was, she said that she had been sent to meet him, and asked him to come with her. She had not told him where they were going, but when she got out at Baker Street station and he got out after her, a man had suddenly come up to her and said he wished to speak to her privately. She had told Dick to wait, and had then walked a little way away with the man, and for about ten minutes they had stood together, conversing in undertones.

"What was the man like?" I interrupted.

Dick described him rather minutely—he said he had taken special notice of his appearance "because he was such a hairy man"—and before he had done I felt practically certain the man who had met Doris Lorrimer was the foreign-looking man who had shadowed Preston, Jack, and myself the night before.

"I think," Dick went on, "the lady altered her plans after meeting that man; because for some moments after he had gone she seemed undecided what to do. Finally she went out of the station, hailed a taxi in Baker Street, told me to get into it, and then said something to the driver that I couldn't hear. We went straight down Baker Street, down Orchard Street—I noticed the names of both streets—then turned to the right and stopped at a house in Cumberland Place. As you had disappeared, I was beginning to feel a bit frightened, Mike,—I didn't much like the woman, who had spoken hardly a word to me all the time,—so just as she got out of the taxi on the left side, I quickly opened the door on the right side, popped out while her back was still turned, and ran away as hard as I could, leaving my suit-case in the taxi. It was very dark, and I believe that until after she had paid the driver she can't have missed me, as nobody came after me."

"Well, and what did you do then?"

"As soon as I had got well away, I went up to a policeman and asked him the way to South Molton Street. He explained clearly, and I came straight on here and asked for you. Your man, Simon, said you weren't in, and that he didn't know when you would be, so I asked if I might come in and wait, as I said I had something important to say to you. Of course he knew me by sight from seeing me with you sometimes, so he said 'Certainly,' and put me into your sitting-room. It was past eight when I got here. I was awfully hungry, so I ate all the cake and all the biscuits I found in the sideboard in your dining-room, and then I sat down in your big chair to wait for you—and I suppose I then fell asleep."

This report interested me a good deal, and I was still pondering it when my man came in with my letters and the newspaper, which he always brought to me before I got up. After reading my letters I picked up the newspaper, telling Dick to lie still and not disturb me until I had glanced through it. I had read the principal items of news, when suddenly my attention became centred upon an article which was headed:

AMAZING SERIES OF ROBBERIES POLICE COMPLETELY BAFFLED

The article made up nearly a column of closely set type, and ran as follows:

Within a brief period of three months, that is to say since the beginning of December last, no less than eleven great robberies have been committed in various parts of Great Britain. Up to the present, however, no clue of any sort has been obtained that seems likely to lead to the discovery of the perpetrators of any one of these crimes. The victims of these robberies are the following:

Here followed a list of names of eleven well-known rich people; the names of the houses where the robberies had been committed; a brief description of the method employed by the thieves; and the value, approximately, of the property stolen in each case. The houses were for the most part large country mansions situated in counties far apart, and "Holt Manor, Sir Roland Challoner's seat in Berkshire," figured in the list. The article then continued:

When eleven such serious robberies, as we may rightly term them, are committed in comparatively rapid succession, and our police and detective force, in spite of their vaunted ability, prove themselves unable to effect a single arrest, what, we have a right to ask, is amiss with our police, or with their methods, or with both?

Questioned upon the subject, a well-known Scotland Yard Inspector yesterday informed our representative that official opinion inclines to the belief that the crimes mentioned have one and all been effected by a group of amazingly clever criminals working in combination. "How many members the gang consists of," he said, "how they obtained the special information they must have possessed to enable them to locate so accurately the exact whereabouts of the valuables they seized, and how they succeeded in securing those valuables in broad daylight, we have not the remotest notion. The theory held at present," he continued, "is that a number of expert thieves have by some means succeeded in becoming intimate with the owners of the houses that have been robbed. We repudiate entirely the theory that servants in the different houses must have been accomplices in the robberies either directly or indirectly."

The article then proceeded to advance a number of apparently plausible theories to account for the non-discovery of the thieves, and finally ended as follows:

If, then, our police and detectives would retain, or rather regain, their prestige, it is incumbent upon them at once to take steps to prevent any further outrages of this kind. Otherwise the police of Great Britain will run a grave risk of becoming the laughing-stock of Continental countries, where, we make bold to state, such a series of robberies, all more or less of the same nature, and involving a loss of, in the aggregate, approximately L50,000, would not thus have been committed with impunity.

I handed Dick the paper. When he had carefully read the article right through, he looked up abruptly.

"By Jove," he exclaimed, "I have an idea!"

I waited. For some moments he was silent. Then he continued:

"Do you remember the account of the robbery at Thatched Court, near Bridport? It's one of the robberies mentioned in this list."

"I can't say I do," I answered. "I don't read the newspapers very carefully. Why?"

"I happened to read that account, and remember it rather well. The robbery took place about five weeks ago—the house was entered while everybody, including some of the servants, was at a race-meeting. Among the things stolen was a pair of shot-guns made by Holland and Holland."

"But what on earth has that to do with anything? Where does the 'idea' come in?"

"It doesn't come in—there. It comes in later. You know that every shot-gun has a number on it, and so can be identified. Now, if these thieves are people who are pretending to be gentlemen—how do you put it? There's a word you use for that, but I've forgotten it."

"Do you mean masquerading as gentlemen?"

"Masquerading—that's the word I was thinking of; if they are masquerading as gentlemen they'll probably keep good guns like that to shoot with—they can do that, or think they can, without running much risk, whereas if they sold them they'd run rather a big risk of being caught, because I happen to remember that the numbers of the stolen guns were mentioned in the newspaper account of the robbery. They said the guns were in a case, and almost new. Now, this is where my idea 'comes in,' as you put it. I heard you tell Dulcie only the other day that you wanted a pair of guns by a tip-top maker. Just afterwards I happened to hear her talking to Mrs. Stapleton about her wedding—by the way, Mike, have you fixed the date yet?"

"Not yet. But what about Mrs. Stapleton?"

"Well, Dulcie spoke about wedding presents, just casually in course of conversation, and I heard her tell Mrs. Stapleton that you had said you hoped among your wedding presents there would be a good gun, 'or, better still, a pair,' I heard her say that you said. Mrs. Stapleton didn't answer at once, but I noticed a queer sort of expression come on to her face, as if she'd just thought of something, and presently she said: 'I have a good mind, darling, to give him a pair of guns that belonged to my poor husband. They are quite new—he can't have used them more than once or twice, if that. They were made by a Bond Street gun-maker he always went to, one of the best in London.' Mike, is Holland and Holland's shop in Bond Street?"

"Yes," I answered, "at the top of Bond Street. Oh, but there are several good gun-makers in Bond Street. Besides, why should Mrs. Stapleton give me such a present as that? I really hardly know her."

"Wait until I've finished, Mike, you always jump at conclusions so. Dulcie said almost at once: 'Oh, don't do that, Connie. Mike wouldn't expect such a present as that from you. He mightn't like to take it; you see, you hardly know him really'—just what you have this moment said. Then Dulcie said: 'I tell you what I wish you would do, Connie—let me buy them from you to give to him. What shall I give you for them?' I believe that was what Mrs. Stapleton had been driving at all the time—she wanted to sell the guns without running any risk, for of course you would never think of noticing the numbers on them, and nobody would ever suppose that guns given to you by Dulcie, apparently new guns, were guns that had been stolen. In the end Dulcie said she would give Mrs. Stapleton eighty pounds for the pair, and that was agreed upon, so that Dulcie has practically bought them for you, in fact she may have paid Mrs. Stapleton for them already. Now look here, I'll get hold of that newspaper that gave the numbers of the guns, and I bet you when Dulcie gives you those guns you'll find they're marked with the numbers of the stolen guns."

"Dick," I said thoughtfully, after a moment's pause, "were you eavesdropping when you heard all this?"

"Why, no, of course not!" he exclaimed indignantly. "I was in the room, reading a book, and I couldn't help hearing all they said, though they were talking in undertones."

I turned over in my bed, and looked into his eyes for an instant or two.

"Would you be surprised to hear, Dick," I said slowly, watching to see what effect my words would have upon him, "would you be surprised to hear that Dulcie gave me a pair of guns, as her wedding present, only last week?"

Dick sprang up in the bed.

"Did she?" he cried out, clapping his hands. "Oh—Mike, tell me, are they Holland guns?"

I nodded.

Dick jumped off the bed and began to caper about the room.

"Have you got them here?" he exclaimed at last, as his excitement began to subside.

"They are in the next room. You shall see them after breakfast."

I had difficulty in calming Dick's excitement and inducing him to eat his breakfast, and directly breakfast was over I took him into the next room, produced the gun-case, pulled out the two pairs of barrels, and together we examined the numbers stamped upon them. Dick wrote the numbers down in the little notebook he always carried in his trousers pocket, and a little later we drove down to Fleet Street to look up the file of the newspaper in which Dick had, he declared, read the report of the robbery at Thatched Court, near Bridport.

I confess that I had not placed much faith in Dick's theory about the numbers. I had taken him down to Fleet Street chiefly because he had so earnestly entreated me to. When, therefore, after turning up the report, Dick discovered, with a shout of triumph, that the numbers on my guns were actually identical with the numbers mentioned in the newspaper as those of the stolen guns, I was not merely greatly astonished, but also considerably perturbed.

"Dick," I said thoughtfully, when I had to some extent recovered from my surprise, "I really think we shall have to make a private detective of you. Would you like me to take you now to one of the most famous detectives in London—a man who was connected with Scotland Yard for twenty years, who is helping Mr. Osborne to try to discover who the thieves are who robbed Holt Manor, and who it was who killed poor Churchill?"

"Do you mean Mr. Preston?" the boy asked quickly, peering up at me out of his intelligent brown eyes.

"Yes. I suppose you have heard Mr. Osborne and me speak of him."

"Of course I have, and I should love to see him. Are you going to see him now?"

"I am going straight to him to tell him of your discovery of these numbers. He already knows all about your having deciphered the newspaper cyphers; in fact, he has the cuttings at this moment, and your translation of them. He told me the other day that he would like to meet you."

Preston was at home at his house in Warwick Street, off Recent Street. In a few words I had explained everything to him, and at once he grew serious.

"The unfortunate part," he said at last, "is that in spite of this young man's sharpness in making this discovery, it really leaves us almost where we were, unless—"

"Unless what?" I asked, as he paused, considering.

"Well, Mr. Berrington, it's like this," he said bluntly. "You are engaged to be married to Miss Challoner, and she gives you a wedding present—a pair of new guns; at least they are to all intents new, and naturally she expects you to think they are, and might be vexed if she thought you had found out that she picked them up as a bargain. Now, it all turns on this: Have you the moral courage to tell your fiancee that you believe the wedding present she has given you is part of the plunder secured in a recent robbery, indeed that you know it is, and that therefore you and she are unwittingly receivers of stolen goods? I have never myself been in love, so far as I can recollect, but if I were placed as you are I think I should hardly have the courage to disillusion the young lady."

I am bound to admit that until he put this problem to me it had not occurred to me to look at the matter in that light, and now I felt much as Preston declared he would feel if he were in my place. Dulcie might not mind my having discovered that she had picked up the guns as a bargain—indeed, why should she? But when it came to hinting—as I should have to do if I broached the matter at all—that I believed that her great friend Connie Stapleton knew, when she sold the guns to her, that they had been stolen—Connie Stapleton, who was about to become her stepmother—

No, I shouldn't have the pluck to do it. I shouldn't have the pluck to face the storm of indignation that I knew my words would stir up in her—women are logical enough, in spite of all that the ignorant and unthinking urge to the contrary, but in this particular case Dulcie would, I felt perfectly certain, "round" upon me, and, in the face of evidence, no matter how damning, declare that I was, to say the least, mistaken. She would go at once to Connie Stapleton and tell her everything, and immediately Connie Stapleton would invent some plausible story which would entirely clear her of all responsibility, and from that moment onward I should probably be her bitterest enemy. No, I thought; better, far better, say nothing—perhaps some day circumstances might arise which would of themselves lead to Mrs. Stapleton's, so to speak, "giving herself away." Indeed, in face of the discovery, I now decided not to make certain statements to Sir Roland that I had fully intended to make. After all, he was old enough to be my father, and if a man old enough to be my father could be so foolish as to fall in love with an adventuress, let him take the consequences. I should not so much have minded incurring Sir Roland's wrath, but, knowing him as well as I did, I felt positive that anything I might say would only strengthen his trust in and attachment to this woman he had decided to wed. He might even turn upon me and tell me to my face that I was striving to oppose his marriage because his marrying must, of course, affect my pecuniary position—an old man who falls in love becomes for the time, I have always maintained, mentally deranged.

Preston conversed at considerable length with Dick Challoner, and, by the time I rose to leave—for I had to call at Willow Street for Dulcie at noon—the two appeared to have become great friends.

"I shall take you with me to call for Dulcie," I said to Dick as we went out. "Then we shall drive you to Paddington, put you in the train for Windsor, and leave you to your own devices."

"I wish I hadn't lost my suit-case," Dick observed ruefully. "I bet anything it's in that house in Cumberland Place where the taxi stopped—unless the woman who met me at Paddington intentionally left it in the taxi when she found I had jumped out and run away. We ought to inquire at Scotland Yard, oughtn't we?"

We arrived at Willow Road, Hampstead, at ten minutes to twelve. Telling Dick to remain in the taxi, I got out and rang the bell. The door was opened by a maid I had not seen before, and when I inquired for Miss Challoner she stared at me blankly—indeed, as I thought, suspiciously.

"Nobody of that name lives here," she said curtly. Quickly I glanced up at the number on the door. No, I had not mistaken the house.

"She is staying here," I said, "staying with Mrs. Stapleton."

"With Mrs. who?"

"Mrs. Stapleton."

"You have mistaken the house. There's nobody of that name here."

"Well, Mr. Gastrell, then," I said irritably. "Ask Mr. Gastrell if I can see him."

"I tell you, sir, you've come to the wrong house," the maid said sharply.

"Then who does live here?" I exclaimed, beginning to lose my temper.

The maid looked me up and down.

"I'm not going to tell you," she answered; and, before I could speak again, she had shut the door in my face.



CHAPTER XX

PRESTON AGAIN

I had seen Dick off at Paddington, after asking the guard to keep an eye on him as far as Windsor, and was walking thoughtfully through the park towards Albert Gate, when a man, meeting me where the paths cross, asked if he might speak to me. Almost instantly I recognized him. It was the man who had followed Preston, Jack, and myself on the previous night, and been pointed out to us by Preston.

"I trust," he said, when I had asked him rather abruptly what he wanted to speak to me about, "that you will pardon my addressing you, sir, but there is something rather important I should like to say to you if you have a few minutes to spare."

"Who are you?" I inquired. "What's your name?"

"I would rather not tell you my name," he answered, "and for the moment it is inadvisable that you should know it. Shall we sit here?" he added, as we came to a wooden bench.

I am rather inquisitive, otherwise I should not have consented to his proposal. It flashed across me, however, that whereas there could be no harm in my listening to what he wished to say, he might possibly have something really of interest to tell me.

"You are probably not aware," he said, when we were seated, "that I followed you last night from a house in Warwick Street, Regent Street, to a restaurant in Gerrard Street, Soho; thence to Willow Road, near Hampstead Station; and thence to South Molton Street Mansions. Two gentlemen were with you."

"And may I ask why you did that?" I said carelessly, as I lit a cigarette.

"That is my affair," he replied. "You have lately been associating with several men and women who, though you may not know it, belong to a gang of exceedingly clever criminals. These people, while mixing in Society, prey upon it. Until last night I was myself a member of this gang; for a reason that I need not at present mention I have now disassociated myself from it for ever. To-day my late accomplices will discover that I have turned traitor, as they will term it, and at once they will set to work to encompass my death," he added. "I want you, Mr. Berrington, to save me from them."

I stared at him in surprise.

"But how can I do that, and why should I do it?" I said shortly. "I don't know who you are, and if you choose to aid and abet criminals you have only yourself to thank when they turn upon you."

"Naturally," he answered, with what looked very like a sneer; "I don't ask you to do anything in return for nothing, Mr. Berrington. But if you will help in this crisis, I can, and will, help you. At this moment you are at a loss to know why, when you called at Willow Road an hour or so ago, the woman who opened the door assured you that you had come to the wrong house. You inquired first for Miss Challoner, then for Mrs. Stapleton, and then for Hugesson Gastrell—am I not right?"

"Well, you are," I said, astonished at his knowledge.

"I was in the hall when you called, and I heard you. Gastrell, Mrs. Stapleton, and Miss Challoner were also in the house. They are there now, but to-night they go to Paris—they will cross from Newhaven to Dieppe. It was to tell you they were going to Paris that I wished to speak to you now—at least that was one reason."

"And what are the other reasons?" I asked, with an affectation of indifference that I was far from feeling.

"I want money, Mr. Berrington, that is one other reason," the stranger said quickly. "You can afford to pay for information that is worth paying for. I know everything about you, perhaps more than you yourself know. If you pay me enough, I can probably protect myself against these people who until yesterday were my friends, but are now my enemies. And I can put you in possession of facts which will enable you, if you act circumspectly, presently to get the entire gang arrested."

"At what time do the three people you have just named leave for Paris?" I asked, for the news that Connie Stapleton and Dulcie were going to France together had given me a shock.

"To-night, at nine."

"Look here," I exclaimed, turning upon him sharply, "tell me everything you know, and if it is worth paying for I'll pay."

In a few minutes the stranger had put several startling facts into my possession. Of these the most important were that on at least four occasions Connie Stapleton had deliberately exercised a hypnotic control over Dulcie, and thus obtained even greater influence over her than she already possessed; that Jack Osborne, whom I had always believed to be wholly unsusceptible to female influence, was fast falling in love, or, if not falling in love, becoming infatuated with Jasmine Gastrell—the stranger declared that Mrs. Gastrell had fallen in love with him, but that I could not believe; that an important member of this notorious gang of criminals which mixed so freely in Society was Sir Roland's wastrel brother, Robert, of whom neither Sir Roland nor any member of his family had heard for years; and that Mrs. Stapleton intended to cause Dulcie to become seriously ill while abroad, then to induce Sir Roland to come to France to see her, and finally to marry him on the other side of the Channel in the small town where she intended that Dulcie should be taken ill. There were reasons, he said, though he would not reveal them then, why she wished to marry Sir Roland on the Continent instead of in England, and she knew of no other way of inducing him to cross the Channel but the means she intended to employ.

The man hardly stopped speaking when I sprang to my feet.

"How much do you want for the information you have given me?" I exclaimed, hardly able to conceal the intense excitement I felt.

He named a high figure, and so reckless did I feel at that instant that I told him I would pay the amount to him in gold—he had stipulated for gold—if he would call at my flat in South Molton Street at five o'clock on the following afternoon.

His expressions of gratitude appeared, I must say, to be most genuine.

"And may I ask," he said, "what you propose to do now?"

"Propose to do!" I cried. "Why, go direct to Willow Road, of course, force an entrance, and take Miss Challoner away—by force, if need be."

"You propose to go there alone?"

"Yes. For the past fortnight I have somehow suspected there might be some secret understanding between Mr. Osborne and Mrs. Gastrell—they have been so constantly together, though he has more than once assured me that his intimacy was only with a view to obtaining her confidence. I don't know why I should believe your word, the word of a stranger, in preference to his, but now you tell me what you have told me I remember many little things which all point to the likelihood of your statement that he is in love with Mrs. Gastrell being true."

"I wouldn't go alone, Mr. Berrington," the stranger said in a tone of warning. "You don't know the people you have to deal with as I know them. If you would like to come to Paris with me to-night I could show you something that would amaze you—and you would come face to face there with Connie Stapleton and Miss Challoner, and others. Be advised by me, and do that. I am telling you to do what I know will be best for you. I don't ask you to pay me until we return to England."

I paused, uncertain what to decide. Thoughts crowded my brain. Supposing, after all, that this were a ruse to entrap me. Supposing that Dulcie were not going to Paris. But no, the man's statements seemed somehow to carry conviction.

"If we cross by the same boat as they do," I said suddenly, "we shall be recognized."

He smiled grimly.

"Not if you disguise yourself as you did at Hugesson Gastrell's the other night," he said.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "how do you know that?"

He looked to right and left, then behind him. Nobody was near. Then, raising his hat, like lightning he pulled off his wig, eyebrows and moustache, whiskers and beard, crammed them into his jacket pocket, and, with his hat on the back of his head, sat back looking at me with a quiet smile of amusement.

"Preston!" I gasped. "Good heavens, man, how do you do it?"

Producing his cigarette case, in silence he offered me a cigarette. Then he spoke—now in his natural voice.

"I always test my 'impersonations' when I get a chance of doing so," he said, "upon people who know me well, because if one can completely deceive one's friends it gives much confidence when one comes to serious business. Mr. Berrington, all I have just told you is absolute truth. I have found it all out within the last eleven hours. More than that, I am myself now one of the gang, and if I 'turn traitor' I shall be done to death by them just as certainly as I am sitting here. I flatter myself that I have arranged it all rather cleverly—I have succeeded in placing in confinement that man who shadowed you last night, without any member of the gang's knowing anything about his arrest or in the least suspecting it, and I have literally stepped into his shoes, for these clothes and boots that I am wearing are his. I believe the end of this abominable conspiracy is now within sight. To-night you must come with me to Paris on the boat that Miss Challoner, the woman Stapleton, Gastrell, and one or two others will cross by. I shall assume the disguise I have just removed. You will become once more Sir Aubrey Belston, we shall travel from Victoria in separate compartments, and on board the boat I shall casually mention to my 'friends' that Sir Aubrey Belston is on board. In Paris we ought to find out a lot—I have a friend there named Victor Albeury, who already knows a lot about this affair—and we shall, unless I am greatly mistaken. Now I must go home and get some hours of sleep, for I have been busy since we parted in the 'Tube' at Oxford Circus at midnight last night."

"But tell me," I exclaimed, my brain a whirl, "is what you told me really true: that Osborne has become a victim to the wiles of Jasmine Gastrell?"

"Absolutely. I have suspected as much for several weeks, and last night I discovered it to be an absolute fact. Mr. Berrington, when Osborne left us last night at Russell Square station he didn't return to his hotel. Would you believe it, he had an assignation with the woman, and kept it? But what is more curious still is what you wouldn't believe when I told it to you some minutes ago—Jasmine Gastrell has fallen madly in love with Osborne! Isn't it astonishing? To think that an amazingly clever woman like that should let her heart get the better of her head. But it's not the first case of the sort that I have known. I could tell you of several similar instances of level-headed women of the criminal class letting their hearts run away with them, and some day I will. But now I really must leave you. Go back to your place, pack as much luggage as you will need for a week or ten days—for we may be away that long—write Sir Aubrey Belston's name on the luggage labels in a disguised handwriting; send it to Victoria by messenger—not by your own man, as we must take no risks whatever—and come to me not later than six, and I will then again disguise you as Sir Aubrey Belston. You won't be followed by any member of the gang, for the man I am impersonating is supposed to be shadowing you. Connie Stapleton expects Alphonse Furneaux—that's the man who followed you last night, and whom I am now impersonating—to meet her at Victoria at a quarter past eight to-night. You will get there a little later, and of course we must appear to be total strangers. Keep out of sight of the woman, and of Gastrell, and of anyone else you may see whom you remember seeing at Cumberland Place the other night. You can speak to anybody you like once we are on board the boat, but not before. The train leaves at nine. My! I am disappointed with Osborne, more disappointed and disgusted than I can tell you. And to think that if I had not made this discovery about him he might unwittingly have brought about some fearful tragedy so far as you and I are concerned! But I must really go," and, with a friendly nod, he rose and strolled away.

He had spoken rapidly, with hardly a pause, and as I watched him pass out of the park I wondered how he had managed to ingratiate himself with this gang of scoundrels. Only a day or two before we had discussed the advisability of informing Easterton of what was taking place nightly in the house in Cumberland Place which he had leased to Hugesson Gastrell, but we had come to the conclusion that no good end would be served by telling him, for were any complaint to be made to Gastrell he would of course declare that the people who gambled in the house were personal friends of his whom he had every right to invite there to play.

I returned to my flat, told my man what to pack, then went out again and walked aimlessly about the streets. A feeling of restlessness was upon me, which I could not overcome. Many strange things had happened since Christmas, but this, surely, was the strangest thing of all, that Jack Osborne, who had persuaded me to help him in his self-imposed task of tracking down these people, should actually have come under the spell of Jasmine Gastrell's beauty and undeniable fascination. I recollected now his saying, when, weeks before, he had spoken of Jasmine Gastrell for the first time, that everybody on board the ship had fallen in love with her, and that he himself had been desperately attracted by her. But I had thought that he spoke in jest; it had not occurred to me that he really thought seriously about the woman. Of late, however, his manner towards her had certainly been different, and I knew that night after night the two had spent the evening together, ending up with supper at one of the fashionable restaurants.

Then my thoughts drifted to Dulcie. What had come over her since she had formed this violent attachment for Connie Stapleton? In some ways she seemed unchanged, yet in other respects she was completely altered. For a brief ten days after we had become engaged I had seemed to be all in all to her. But from then onward she had appeared to come more and more under the influence of her friend, who seemed, in a sense, to be supplanting me in her affection. And now Preston had told me that several times Connie Stapleton had intentionally hypnotized Dulcie, no doubt for the purpose of obtaining greater control over her and still further bending her will to hers. I could not, under the circumstances, wholly blame Dulcie for what I had at first believed to be a change in her attitude towards me. Far more readily could I blame her father for his monstrous infatuation for the widow.

And what could be the meaning of this sudden flitting to Paris? Preston had given the reason, had explained it in detail, but his theory was so horrible that I refused to believe it. Connie Stapleton might be, and obviously was, an adventuress, but surely a woman of such beauty, with such charm of manner and personality, and apparently so refined, could not actually be the monster Preston would have had me believe. The view I held was that Connie Stapleton and some of her accomplices for some reason found it expedient to forsake England for a little while— Preston had assured me that they meant to remain upon the Continent for several weeks at least—and that the woman thought that by taking Dulcie with her she would be better able to persuade Sir Roland to cross the Channel, a thing he had done only once in his life, and that I had heard him declare he would never do again, so ill had he been on that occasion.

One of the first men I saw upon my arrival at Victoria in my disguise was Preston disguised as Alphonse Furneaux. With him were Connie Stapleton, Dulcie, Gastrell, and one or two men I did not remember having seen before. Doris Lorrimer was also there.

Obsequious officials were hurrying about doing their bidding, in anticipation of generous largesse. Here and there little groups of passengers stood staring at them, obviously under the impression that they must be people of some importance. Acting upon Preston's instructions I kept well out of sight until within a minute or two of nine o'clock, by which time the widow and her companions had entered their saloon carriage.

I had hardly stepped into my first-class compartment, which was some way behind the saloon, and settled myself comfortably for the journey to Newhaven, when a lady, the only other occupant, suddenly exclaimed:

"Aubrey, don't you recognize me, or are you intentionally cutting me?"

I glanced across at her. She was a woman of middle age, obviously a lady, well dressed, but not good-looking. Hastily recovering my presence of mind, I answered quickly:

"I beg your pardon. Please don't think me rude; I was worrying about a trunk of mine that I think has been left behind, and for the moment I didn't see you"—she was seated on the opposite side, in the corner farthest from me.

"Of course I don't think you rude, you foolish boy," she exclaimed gaily. "How could I? And how are you, dear? and where are you going? I had no idea you had already returned from your travels."

"I got back only last week," I said, feeling my way cautiously. "How well you are looking. Let me see, when was it we last met?"

She broke into a ripple of laughter.

"Oh, Aubrey," she exclaimed, "what a wag you are! When are you going to grow up, I wonder. Now, do be serious and answer that question I put to the last night we were together."

This was awful. The train had only just started, and here I was face to face with a woman evidently an intimate friend of Sir Aubrey Belston's, who for aught I knew might insist on talking to me and cross-questioning me all the way to Newhaven. I decided to take the bull by the horns.

"Look here," I exclaimed, becoming suddenly serious, "don't let us talk about that any more. The answer I gave you that night was final. I have thought the whole thing over carefully, and, much as I should like to, I can't change my mind."

She stared at me, evidently dumbfounded. I thought she looked rather frightened. Her lips parted as if she were going to speak again, then shut tightly. A minute or more passed, during which time she kept her head averted, gazing out into the darkness. And then all at once, to my horror, she burst into tears, and began sobbing hysterically.

The sight of a woman in tears always affects me strangely. I rose from my seat and went over to her, and, now seated facing her, endeavoured by every means I could think of to soothe her.

"Don't cry—oh, please don't," I said sympathetically. "It isn't my fault, you know; I would do anything I could for you, I am sure you know that, but what you ask is impossible."

"But why is it impossible?" she suddenly burst out impetuously, looking up into my face with tear-stained eyes. "Give me a good reason for your refusal and I won't say a word more."

Oh, if only I knew what it was she had asked Sir Aubrey that night—what it was she wanted him to do. Never in my life before had I been in such an awful predicament. And then suddenly it flashed upon me that some day she would for certain meet the real Sir Aubrey Belston again, and what would happen then when she referred to this meeting in the train and he stoutly denied—as of course he would—meeting her at all? What mischief might I not unwittingly be doing? What havoc might I not be creating? If only I could discover her name it might in some way help me to get out of this terrible tangle.

The train was slowing down now. Presently it stopped. We were at Croydon. The door opened and other travellers entered our compartment. Putting some of my belongings on to my seat, I passed into the corridor and entered a smoking compartment.

The man seated opposite me was buried in a newspaper. Some moments after the train had started again, he lowered it, and I saw his face. At once he raised his eyebrows in recognition; then, extending his hand, greeted me most cordially.

I was face to face again with Hugesson Gastrell!



CHAPTER XXI

A CHANNEL MYSTERY

Nobody could have seemed more friendly or more thoroughly pleased to see me again than Hugesson Gastrell as he grasped me heartily by the hand, expressing surprise at our meeting so unexpectedly.

On the night I had talked to him at Cumberland Place, when I was masquerading for the first time as Sir Aubrey Belston, I had experienced a growing feeling of revulsion against him, and now as he took my hand the same feeling returned and I could not dispel it, for the thought had flashed in upon me: could it be that I was shaking hands with a man whose hand was stained with blood? I had, of course, no proof that Gastrell had committed murder, but in face of what Harold Logan had told Sir Roland Challoner and myself upon his death bed, added to other things I knew, it seemed well within the bounds of possibility that—

"And are you crossing to France?" he inquired, cutting my train of thought.

"Yes," I answered mechanically.

"Going to Paris?"

"Yes."

"Why, how capital!" he exclaimed. "You must make one of our party on the boat, and when we land. Connie Stapleton will be delighted to meet you again, Sir Aubrey; she is on this train, and so are other mutual friends. Connie was speaking of you not half an hour ago."

"Indeed?" I said, feeling that I must say something.

"Why, yes. Try one of these cigars, Sir Aubrey," he added, producing a large gold case from his inside breast pocket.

I had to take one, though I hated doing it. I tried to look him in the face as I did so, but I couldn't. It was not that I feared he might recognize me, for I did not—experience had proved to me that my disguised appearance and voice were most effectual. But there was something about the man that repelled me, and I hated meeting his gaze.

The noise of the train caused us presently to relapse into silence, and, picking up my newspaper, I tried to read. My thoughts were too deeply engrossed, however, to allow me to focus my attention on the printed page. Could it really be possible, was what I kept wondering, that this smooth-spoken, pleasant-mannered man was actually a criminal? Again Harold Logan's dying eyes stared into mine; again I saw him struggling to speak; again I heard those ominous words, almost the last words he had spoken before his spirit had passed into Eternity:

"Hugesson Gastrell—don't forget that name, Sir Roland. You may some day be glad I told it to you."

I shuddered. Then I remembered Preston's warning and the part I had to play. Up to the present, Gastrell suspected nothing—of that I felt positive; but let the least suspicion creep into his brain that I was not the man he believed he had been speaking to—

Instantly I pulled myself together. For Dulcie's sake even more than for my own I must exercise the utmost care. Her life as well as mine might depend upon the skill and tact I must exercise during the next few hours, possibly during the next few days. I felt I would at that moment have given much to be able to look into the future and know for certain what was going to happen to me, and, most of all, to Dulcie, before I returned to England.

Well it was for my peace of mind that that wish could not be gratified.

On board the boat, rather to my surprise in view of what had happened and of what Gastrell had just said to me, I saw nothing of Gastrell or of any of his companions, including Preston. Apparently one and all must have gone to their cabins immediately upon coming on board.

It was a perfect night in the Channel. Stars and moon shone brightly, and a streak of light stretched away across the smooth water until it touched the sky Hue far out in the darkness. For a long time I stood on deck, abaft the funnel, smoking a cigar, and thinking deeply. I had turned for a moment, for no particular reason, when I thought I saw a shadow pass across the deck, then vanish. I saw it again; and then again. Stepping away from where I stood, hidden by a life-boat, I distinctly discerned three figures moving noiselessly along the deck, going from me. Curiosity prompted me to follow them, and to my surprise I saw them disappear one after another down the hatchway leading to the steerage. As they must, I felt certain, have come out through the saloon door, this rather puzzled me.

It was past midnight when, at last, I went below. The saloon, smoking-room and alleyways were deserted and almost in darkness. No sound of any sort was audible but the rhythmic throbbing of the engines. The boat still travelled without the slightest motion.

Hark!

I stopped abruptly, for I had heard a sound—it had sounded like a gasp. Hardly breathing, I listened intently. Again I heard it—this time more faintly. It had seemed to come from a cabin on my left, a little further forward.

I stood quite still in the alleyway for several minutes. Then, hearing nothing more, I went on to my own cabin.

But somehow, try as I would, I could not get to sleep. For hours I lay wide awake upon my bunk. What had caused that curious sound, I kept wondering, though I tried to put the thought from me. And who had those men been, those three silent figures passing like spectres along the deck, and what had they been doing, and why had they gone down into the steerage?

I suppose I must at last have fallen asleep, for when I opened my eyes the sea had risen a good deal, and the boat was rolling heavily. Pulling my watch from beneath my pillow, I saw that it was nearly four—we were due into port at Dieppe before four. The timbers of the ship creaked at intervals; the door of my cabin rattled; I could hear footsteps on deck and in the alleyway beside my door.

"Have you heard the dreadful news, sir?" a scared-looking steward said to me as I made my way towards the companion ladder half an hour later—I had taken care to adjust my disguise exactly in the way that Preston had taught me to.

"No—what?" I asked, stopping abruptly.

"A saloon passenger has hanged himself during the night."

"Good God!" I exclaimed. "Who is it?"

"I don't know his name. He was in number thirty-two—alone."

"Thirty-two! Surely that was a cabin in the alleyway where I had heard the gasp, not far from my own cabin."

"Are you certain it was suicide?" I asked.

"Oh, it was suicide right enough," the steward answered, "and he must have been hanging there some hours—by a rope. Seems he must have brought the rope with him, as it don't belong to the boat. He must have come aboard intending to do it. My mate—he found him not half an hour ago, and it so scared him that he fainted right off."

"Have you seen the poor fellow? What was he like?"

"Yes. Most amazing thing, sir," the steward continued volubly, "but it seems he'd disguised himself. He'd got on a wig and false moustache and whiskers."

All the blood seemed to rush away from my heart. Everything about me was going round. I have a slight recollection of reeling forward and being caught by the steward, but of what happened after that, until I found myself lying on a sofa in the saloon, with the ship's doctor and the stewardess standing looking down at me. I have not the remotest recollection.

The boat was rolling and pitching a good deal, and I remember hearing someone say that we were lying off Dieppe until the sea should to some extent subside. Then, all at once, a thought came to me which made me feel sick and faint. While I had been unconscious, had the fact been discovered that I too was disguised? I looked up with a feeling of terror, but the expression upon the faces of the ship's doctor and of the stewardess revealed nothing, and my mind grew more at ease when I noticed that the few people standing about were strangers to me.

I saw nothing of any member of the group of criminals I now felt literally afraid to meet until the Paris express was about to start. More than once I had felt tempted to alter my plans by not going to Paris, or by returning to England by the next boat. But then Dulcie had risen into the vision of my imagination and I had felt I could not leave her alone with such a gang of scoundrels—I might be leaving her to her fate were I to desert her now. No, I had started upon this dangerous adventure, and at all costs I must go through with it, even though I no longer had poor Preston to advise me.

"Ah, Sir Aubrey, we have been looking for you."

I turned sharply, to find at my elbow Connie Stapleton and Doris Lorrimer. The latter stood beside her friend, calm, subdued; Mrs. Stapleton was in her usual high spirits, and greeted me with an effusive hand-shake.

"Hughie told us you were on board," she said, "and he says you are going to stay at our hotel. I am so pleased. Now, you must dine with us to-night—no, I won't take a refusal," she added quickly, as I was about to make some excuse. "We shall be such a cheery party—just the kind of party I know you love."

There was no way of escape, at any rate for the moment. Later I must see what could be done. My desire now was to keep, so to speak, in touch with the gang, and to watch in particular Dulcie's movements, yet to associate on terms of intimacy with these people as little as possible. We had not been long in the train, on our way to Paris, when someone—it was Dulcie who first spoke of it, I think—broached the subject which had created so much excitement on board—the suicide of the disguised stranger.

"I wonder if his act had any bearing upon this robbery which is said to have been committed on board between Newhaven and Dieppe," a man whom I remembered meeting at Connie Stapleton's dinner party, presently observed—I suddenly remembered that his name was Wollaston.

"Robbery?" I exclaimed. "I have heard nothing about it. What was stolen? and who was it stolen from?"

"Well," he answered, "the stories I have heard don't all tally, and one or two may be exaggerated. But there is no doubt about the robbery of Lady Fitzgraham's famous diamonds, which I have always heard were worth anything between thirty and forty thousand pounds. She was coming over to stay at the Embassy, and had them with her, it seems, in quite a small dressing-bag. I am told she declares she is positive the stones were in the bag, which was locked, when she went on board at Newhaven; yet early this morning they were missing, though the bag was still locked. The theory is that during the night someone must by some means have forced an entrance to the cabin—they declare the cabin door was locked, but of course it can't have been—in which she and her maid slept, have unlocked the bag and extracted the jewels. Lady Fitzgraham was travelling alone with her maid, I am told," he ended, "but Sir Aubrey Belston travelled with her part way from London to Newhaven."

"You are talking to Sir Aubrey at this moment," Connie Stapleton said quickly. She turned to me: "Sir Aubrey, let me introduce Mr. Wollaston."

"I beg your pardon," Wollaston stammered, "I had no idea—I know you by name, of course, but I have not before, I believe, had the pleasure of meeting you. It was Hughie Gastrell, whom I expect you know, who told me he had seen you in Lady Fitzgraham's compartment on the way to Newhaven. I suppose Lady Fitzgraham didn't, by any chance, speak to you of her jewels—say she had them with her, or anything of that kind?"

"She didn't say a word about them," I answered. "Is she on this train?"

"Yes. Gastrell has gone to suggest to her that she should stay with us at the 'Continental,' and—"

"Sir Aubrey has just decided to stay there," Mrs. Stapleton interrupted, "and I have proposed that to-night we should all dine together."

Conversation then reverted to the suicide and the robbery, and as Connie Stapleton's friends who shared the private car entered it, she introduced them to me. They seemed pleasant people enough, and, as the subject of conversation did not change, one after another they propounded ingenious theories to account for the way the robbery might have been committed. I noticed that they spoke less about the alleged suicide, and that when the subject was broached they confined their remarks chiefly to the question of the dead man's disguise, suggesting reasons which they considered might have prompted him to disguise himself. They ended by deciding there was no reason to suppose that the suicide and the robbery had any bearing on each other.

The run from Dieppe to Paris by express takes about three hours, and we were about half-way through the journey when Wollaston, who had been absent at least half an hour, re-entered our compartment in conversation with my recent travelling companion, whom I now knew to be Lady Fitzgraham. She hardly acknowledged my look of recognition, and out of the tail of my eye I saw Connie Stapleton glance quickly at each of us in turn, as though Lady Fitzgraham's unmistakable stiffness surprised her.

Now the train was running at high speed across the flat, uninteresting stretch of country which lies about thirty miles south of Rouen. Presently the Seine came in sight again, and for some miles we ran parallel with it. We had just rushed through a little wayside station beyond Mantes, the train oscillating so severely as it rattled over the points that Dulcie, Connie Stapleton and Lady Fitzgraham became seriously alarmed, while other occupants of the car glanced apprehensively out of the windows.

"This car wants coupling up," Gastrell exclaimed suddenly. "At our next stopping place I'll complain, and get it done."

The words had scarcely passed his lips when the swaying increased considerably. All at once the brakes were applied with great force, the train began to slacken speed, and a moment later we knew that we had left the metals.

To this day it seems to me extraordinary that any of us should have escaped with our lives. We probably should not have done so had the land not been on a dead level with the rails at the point where the train jumped the track. As a result, the cars did not telescope, as is usual on such occasions, nor did they capsize. Instead, the locomotive dashed forward over the flat, hard-frozen meadow, dragging the cars behind it, then came gradually to a standstill owing to the steam having been shut off.

My first thought as soon as the train had stopped was for Dulcie. As I crawled along the car—for we had all been flung on to the ground—I came upon her suddenly. Pale as death, and trembling terribly, she stared at me with a scared expression, and so great was the wave of emotion which swept over me at that instant that I all but forgot my disguise in my wild longing to spring forward and take her in my arms and comfort her.

"Are you hurt?" I gasped, retaining only with the utmost difficulty the artificial tone I had adopted from the first, the tone poor Preston had coached me in until my accents, so he had assured me, exactly resembled those of Sir Aubrey Belston.

"No—no," came her answer, in a weak voice, "only shaken—but oh, the thirst this shock has given me is fearful. Is there anything I can drink?"

I looked about me. On all sides was a litter of hand-baggage that the accident had hurled pell-mell about the car. Beside me was a large dressing-bag lying on its side, partly open, the force of the blow as it was flung up against the woodwork having burst the lock. Thinking there might be something in it that I could give to Dulcie to relieve her burning thirst, I set the bag upright, and pulled it wide open.

As my gaze rested upon the contents of that bag, astonishment made me catch my breath. For the bag was half filled with jewellery of all descriptions jumbled up as if it had been tossed in anyhow—there had been no attempt at packing. During the brief moments which elapsed before I shut the bag, I noticed rings, brooches, bracelets, scarf pins, watches, hair combs and three large tiaras, all of them, apparently, set in precious stones—mostly emeralds, rubies and diamonds.

Hastily closing the bag, and fastening the clips to keep it shut, I left it where I had found it and was about to go in search of water, when the sight I saw made my heart nearly stop beating.

For at the end of the car, standing motionless, and looking straight at me, was Alphonse Furneaux! Almost as I returned his dull gaze the truth seemed to drift into my brain. Furneaux must have escaped from Preston's house, from the room where Preston had confined him. He must have discovered that Preston was impersonating him. He must have followed him from London, followed him on to the boat—

I dared not let my thoughts travel further. Horrible suspicions crowded in upon me. Could the man standing there staring at me be Preston's murderer? Was he aware of my identity too, and, if so, had he designs upon my life as well? Had he told the gang I was now mixed up with of my disguise, and had they entrapped me in order to wreak vengeance? And that hoard of jewellery I had so unwittingly discovered—had the man now standing there before me seen me looking at it?



CHAPTER XXII

THE THIN-FACED STRANGER

I pretended not to notice him as I pushed past him and presently returned with water. Lady Fitzgraham, Connie Stapleton, and several others also clamoured for water to moisten their parched lips, and when I had attended to Dulcie I gave them some. For the next two hours everything was confusion. All the passengers had been severely shaken, and some were seriously hurt, but fortunately not one had been killed. Our extraordinary escape I shall always attribute to the fact that we travelled in a Pullman, a car that has most wonderful stability.

A large crowd had assembled at Gare St. Lazare to witness the arrival of the special with the passengers who had travelled in our ill-fated train. Now that I had collected my scattered thoughts once more I was resolved at the earliest possible moment to inform Lady Fitzgraham of the discovery I had made, for I had come to the firm conclusion that some, at any rate, of the jewellery that bag contained must be hers, some of the jewellery which had been stolen on board the boat.