The Stretton Street Affair

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

FACING THE MUSIC

“Do you seriously mean to say that you have no knowledge of me?” I demanded angrily, looking the millionaire straight in the face.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. “I seriously mean what I say. But, tell me,” he demanded resentfully, “why are you here to claim acquaintance with me?”

“Do you really deny you have ever seen me before?” I asked, astounded at his barefaced pretence of ignorance.

“Never to my knowledge,” replied the sallow-faced man whose countenance I so well recollected.

“Then you forget a certain night not so long ago when I was called into your house in Stretton Street, and you chatted confidentially with me – about your wife and your little son?”

“My dear sir!” he cried. “Whatever do you mean? I have never seen you at Stretton Street; and I have certainly never discussed my wife with you!”

I stood aghast at his continued denial.

“But you did,” I asserted. “And there was another matter – a matter about which I must question you – the – ”

“Ah! I see!” he interrupted. “You’re here to blackmail me – eh? Well – let me hear the worst,” and across his rather Oriental face there spread a mocking, half amused smile.

“I am not a blackmailer!” I protested angrily. “I want no money – only to know the truth.”

“Of what?”

“Well, the truth concerning the death of Miss Gabrielle Engledue.”

“The death of Miss Gabrielle Engledue!” he cried. “I really don’t understand you, Mr. – Mr. Garfield!”

At mention of the name I saw that he started, but almost imperceptibly. The man was certainly a most perfect actor, and his protestations of ignorance were, indeed, well-feigned.

“Then you actually deny all knowledge of the young lady!” I said.

“I know no lady of that name.”

“But she is your niece.”

“I have only one niece – Lady Shalford.”

“And how old is she?”

He hesitated for a few moments. Then he answered.

“Oh! She must be about thirty-five. She married Shalford about ten years ago, and she lives at Wickenham Grange, near Malton, in Yorkshire.”

“And you have no other niece?”

“None – I assure you. But why do you ask such a question? You puzzle me.”

“Not more than you puzzle me, Mr. De Gex,” I replied with pique. “It would be so much easier if you would be frank and open with me.”

“My dear sir, you seem to me to have a bee in your bonnet about something or other. Tell me, now, what is it?”

“Simply that you know me very well, but you deny it. You never thought that I should make this unwelcome reappearance.”

“Your appearance here as a mad-brained person is certainly unwelcome,” he retorted. “You first tell me that you visited me at Stretton Street. Well, you may have been in the servants’ quarters for all I know, and – ”

“Please do not be insulting!” I cried angrily.

“I have no intention of offering you an insult, sir, but your attitude is so very extraordinary! You speak of a girl named Engledue – that was the name, I think – and allege that she is my niece. Why?”

“Because the young lady is dead – she died under most suspicious circumstances. And you know all about it!” I said bluntly.

“Oh! perhaps you will allege that I am a murderer next!” he laughed, as though enjoying the joke.

“It is no laughing matter!” I cried in fury.

“Why not? I find all your allegations most amusing,” and across his dark handsome face there spread a good-humoured smile.

His was a face that I could never forget. At one moment its expression was kindly and full of bonhomie, the next it was hard and unrelenting – the face of an eccentric criminal.

“To me they are the reverse of amusing,” I said. “I allege that on the night of Wednesday, November the seventh last, I was passing your house in Stretton Street, Park Lane, when your man, Horton, invited me inside, and – well, well – I need not describe what occurred there, for you recollect only too vividly – without a doubt. But what I demand to know is why you asked me in, and what happened to me after you gave me that money?”

“Money! I gave you money?” he cried. “Why, man alive, you’re dreaming! You must be!”

“I’m not dreaming at all! It is a hard fact. Indeed, I still have the money – five thousand pounds in bank notes.”

Oswald De Gex looked at me strangely. His sallow face coloured slightly, and his lips compressed. I had cornered him. A little further firmness, and he would no doubt admit that we had met at Stretton Street.

“Look here, Mr. Garfield,” he said in a changed voice. “This is beyond a joke. You now tell me that I presented you with five thousand pounds.”

“I do – and I repeat it.”

“But why should I give you this sum?”

“Because I assisted you in the commission of a crime.”

“That’s a lie!” he declared vehemently. “Forgive me for saying so, but I can only think that you are not quite in your right mind.”

“I have not been in my right mind for a month or more – thanks to your deep plotting,” I retorted sharply. “Further, I am telling the truth – as I shall later on tell it before a court of law. I intend to solve the mystery of the death of Gabrielle Engledue.”

“Well – I will not hinder you,” he laughed grimly.

“You mean that you will not assist me?”

“I mean that I have no knowledge of any such person; nor have I any knowledge of you,” he said. “A perfect stranger, you come here, present your card, and at once start a series of most serious allegations against me, the chief of them being that I gave you five thousand pounds for some assistance which you refuse to describe.”

“If I tell you, you will only deny it, Mr. De Gex,” I exclaimed bitterly. “So what is the use?”

“None. In fact I don’t see that any object is to be gained in prolonging this interview,” was his quick retort. “If, as you say, I gave you five thousand – which I certainly never did – then what more can you want? I however, suspect that the five thousand exists only in your own imagination.”

“But I have the sum intact – in a drawer at my home in London.”

“It would be of interest to see it. Are they the same notes which you say I gave you?”

“The same,” I answered, and then I went on to tell him how I had awakened to find myself in St. Malo, and how the French police had taken possession of the money found upon me.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at last. “It all seems quite clear now. You’ve had a bad illness, my dear fellow! Your brain has become unbalanced, and you are now subject to hallucinations. I regret my hard words, Mr. Garfield,” he added in a kindly tone. “I also regret that your mental state is what it is.”

“I desire no sympathy!” I protested, raising my voice angrily. “All I want to know is the truth.”

“I have already told you that, as far as I am personally concerned.”

“No. You have denied everything, and now you try to treat me as one demented!” I declared in a fury. “The existence of the bank notes you gave me are sufficient evidence against you.”

“I think not. First, I doubt if they exist anywhere save in your imagination; secondly, if they do, then someone else may have given them to you.”

“You did. I would recognize you among ten thousand men. On the night in question you wore a dinner jacket, and now you are in grey. That is all the difference.”

“Well, have it your own way,” he replied smiling, though I could see that he had become palpably perturbed by my allegations. Whatever had been administered to me – some dope or other, no doubt – it had been intended that I should be cast adrift on the Continent as a semi-imbecile.

It was that fact which maddened me. The poor girl might not have been his niece, of course, but whoever she had been, this man had had some very strange and distinct motive in getting rid of her.

What it was I had vowed to discover.

It was apparent that De Gex was anxious to get rid of me. Indeed, as we stood together in that fine old room, across the marble floor of which strayed long beams of sunlight, the door opened and a pretty woman came in. She was dressed to go out, and asked:

“Will you be long, dear?”

It was the beautiful Mrs. De Gex! In an instant I recognized her by the many photographs I had seen in the picture papers.

“No. I’ll be with you in a minute, dear. Is the car there?” he asked.

“It’s been there a quarter of an hour, and if we don’t go now we shall be late in meeting Hylda at the station,” she said, glancing at me with undisguised annoyance.

Then she left, closing the door after her.

Across my brain ran strange thoughts. I recollected his words in Stretton Street regarding his spiteful wife when I had been called in to listen to his matrimonial troubles. But husband and wife now appeared to be on quite amicable and even affectionate terms.

I confess that I was still bewildered, as you, my reader, in whom I am here reposing confidence, would, I believe, have been, had you found yourself in similar circumstances.

“I see that your wife is eager to go out,” I said. “But I fear I must, before I go, press for a direct answer to my questions, Mr. De Gex.”

“My dear sir, I have answered them. What more can I say?” he exclaimed with affected dismay.

“A very great deal. You can tell me the truth.”

“I have,” he snapped. “Who this girl Engledue is I have not a ghost of an idea. Are you certain she is dead?”

“Positive. I saw her lying dead in the room which adjoins your library.”

“What! My wife’s room!” he cried. “Oh, come – let us finish all this silly talk.”

“When you are, at least, frank with me!”

“I am.”

“But do you deny that the young lady, Gabrielle Engledue, died there? Do you not recollect that we both stood at her death-bed?”

“Don’t talk such piffle!” De Gex snapped, no doubt believing in the end that he would convince me of his ignorance of the whole tragedy.

Whatever had happened on that November night was, no doubt, to the distinct advantage of the wealthy man who stood before me. Yet I was faced with a difficulty. He had uttered that most ugly word “blackmail.” Suppose he called the police and accused me of it! His word – the word of a wealthy financier – would, no doubt, be taken by a jury before my own!

On the other hand, I had up my sleeve a trump-card – the death and cremation of the mysterious Gabrielle Engledue. Probably the poor victim was poisoned – hence the object of her cremation to remove all traces of it! Yet, opposed to that, there still remained my own most serious offence of posing as a medical man and giving a forged certificate concerning the cause of death.

Yes. I was only too keenly alive to my own very precarious position. Yet I was emboldened by De Gex’s agitation, and the pallor in his sallow cheeks.

He was, no doubt, feeling very uneasy. And even a millionaire can feel uneasy when faced with a witness of his own offence.

“Mr. De Gex, I am not talking rubbish,” I said in all seriousness. “You appear to forget that night when your wife deserted your son in Westbourne Grove, and then laughed at you over the telephone from a public call-office.”

He looked at me very straight with those deep-set eyes of his.

“Really,” he exclaimed. “That is quite a new feature in the affair. Let me see, what did I tell you?”

“Your man, Horton, invited me, a mere passer-by, into your house in Stretton Street. He said you were very much worried and asked if I would meet you. Why? I cannot imagine. When we met you were very vague in your statements, and at first I could not for the life of me discover why I had been asked to meet you. But soon you confided to me the fact that your wife, being spiteful towards you, had abandoned your heir, little Oswald, in Westbourne Grove, and had then rung up from a call-office telling you to find him.”

“Bosh! My dear fellow! Bosh!” was his reply. “First, you were never there; and secondly, I’ve never complained of my wife’s behaviour to anyone; certainly not to a stranger.”

“You did to me. I certainly am not dreaming.”

“But you have already admitted that you’ve been in hospital in St. Malo suffering from loss of memory.”

“My memory has now fortunately been restored,” I replied.

“Distorted – without a doubt. You would never travel all the way from London to relate these absolutely silly stories to me if you were in your right senses, my dear Mr. Garfield,” he said.

“They’re not silly stories, but hard, indisputable facts!” I declared resentfully.

The millionaire had assumed an air of nonchalance, for leaning against a big old buhl table he took out a cigarette from his gold case and slowly lit it, after which he said:

“You must, I think, really excuse me. We have to go down into Florence to meet my sister-in-law, who is coming from London. I’m afraid, Mr. Garfield, that I cannot help you any further.”

“You mean you won’t!”

“Not at all. If I knew anything of this young lady who, you said, died in my wife’s bedroom in Stretton Street, and at whose bedside you and I stood together, I would tell you. But I really don’t.”

He tossed his cigarette hastily out of the open window.

“No,” he added. “I won’t hear any more. I haven’t the time or the inclination to listen to the wanderings of any insane person. I’ve had enough!”

“And so have I!” I retorted. “You are trying to mislead me by affecting ignorance of my very existence, but I don’t intend that you shall escape!” I added, again raising my voice.

“Hush, please,” he said in a calmer tone. “My wife may overhear.”

“I don’t care!” I cried in desperation. “You never dreamed that I should arise against you, as I have. You are not fair towards me! If you revealed to me in confidence the reason you gave me that bribe of five thousand pounds, then I, on my part, would have played the straight game.”

“My dear sir, play whatever game you like. It is immaterial to me whether straight or crooked. I don’t know anything about what you have been talking, and you have only wasted your breath and got out of temper for nothing.”

Again I looked him straight in the face. There was no doubt that the strain of his clever denials was telling upon him. His dark complexion had paled; in his eyes there was a fierce, haunted look as that of a man who was straining every effort to remain calm under the gravest circumstances.

“I have no game to play,” I declared. “I only demand the truth. Why was I invited into your house in Stretton Street to be present as witness at the poor girl’s death?”

“I don’t know. Find out for yourself, my dear Mr. Garfield,” laughed the rich man. “I have no time to discuss this silly affair further. I’m sorry you have troubled to come out from London to see me. But really yours has been a fool’s errand,” and he turned towards the door.

“A fool’s errand!” I echoed. “I am no fool and my errand is in deep earnestness. You may try to befool me, but I tell you that I will leave no stone unturned to solve the problem which you alone can explain.”

“Well, get along with your work,” he laughed in open defiance. “I have no further time to waste,” and glancing at his watch he opened the door and abruptly left me.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE CITY OF THE LILY

Full of indignation I remained for a few further moments in that wonderful old room, the room of faded tapestries with the marvellous painted ceiling.

From the window was afforded a glorious view over the gardens where, even in winter, tangled masses of flowers ran riot, while beyond lay the picturesque old red-roofed Tuscan city. Fiesole is distinctly a village of the wealthy, for the several colossal villas, built in the days of the Medici and even before, are now owned by rich foreigners, many of them English.

Oswald De Gex was one of them.

He had certainly foiled me. I gritted my teeth and vowed that, come what might, I would compel him to accept the inevitable and reveal to me the truth. I left the room and found my way alone across the great marble entrance hall, and out to where my taxi awaited me.

I drove back to Florence, where, at the station, I obtained my bag, and then went to the Savoy Hotel in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, where I engaged a room.

For a long time I sat at my window gazing down upon the busy square below, one of the centres of Florentine life. The bell of the Duomo was ringing, the shops were mostly closed, and all Florence was out in the streets, it being the Festa of the Befana, one of the greatest of all the ever-recurring festas of Florence. Street urchins were parading the thoroughfares with horns and wildly shouting, and there was an exchange of presents on every hand. At the Befana everyone in Firenze goes mad with good intentions.

The artistic side of the ancient Lily City did not interest me. I knew it of old. I had strolled on the Lung Arno, I had long ago with my father on a winter tour looked into the little shops of the coral and pearl merchants on the Ponte Vecchio, and I had taken my apératif at Doney’s or at Giacosa’s. I was no stranger in Florence. My mind was fully occupied by the deep mystery of Gabrielle Engledue’s death, and of the millionaire’s flat denial that we had ever met before.

As I sat gazing across the square my anger and indignation increased. That De Gex should have dared to affect such entire ignorance surpassed belief.

I tried to form a scheme for further action, but could think of no way by which to force him to acknowledge our previous meeting. That the beautiful girl had died, and that her body had been cremated upon the false certificate I had given, was beyond all doubt. But what had been the rich man’s motive?

How very perturbed and anxious he was I had noticed, though he put such a very brave face upon it and appeared so imperturbable. That he could treat such a serious matter as a joke utterly amazed me. Nevertheless, I recollected that he had long earned the reputation of being highly eccentric.

That afternoon I spent in wandering about the sunny streets of Florence. In the evening I dined at Bonciani’s, in the Via Panzani, an unpretentious place at which I well remembered having eaten famously when on my last visit to Florence. Afterwards, having nothing to do, I went to a variety show at the Alhambra.

Florence was full of French and English visitors, as it always is in winter, so next day I formed a plan, and in pretence of desiring to rent a furnished flat, I called at the office of a well-known English house-agent in the Via Tornabuoni. My real object was to ascertain some facts concerning Oswald De Gex.

The English clerk became quite enthusiastic when I mentioned him.

“Mr. De Gex is greatly respected here,” he hastened to tell me. “Since he bought the Villa Clementini outside Fiesole he has lived here for about eight months out of the twelve. Italians love rich people, and because of his wealth he is most popular. I see a good deal of him, for we act as agents for his property in Italy. He has quite a large estate – mostly wine-growing.”

I mentioned that I had met him in London, and then asked in curiosity:

“Do you happen to know anything of his niece, a tall, very handsome, dark-haired girl, Miss Engledue?”

For a moment he reflected. Then he said:

“I recollect when up at the villa just before he went to London – that was about three months ago – seeing a tall, dark-haired young lady. She came into the library while I was chatting with him. But I don’t know her name.”

“Was she about twenty-one?” I asked eagerly.

“Yes – about that age,” was his reply. “But, of course, I have no idea whether it is the young lady you mean.”

“Had you seen her before?”

“I think so – once before. She was in the car in the Cascine with Mrs. De Gex.”

“I wonder how I could discover more about her?” I asked. “Who would know?”

“Robertson, the butler, or Mr. Henderson, the secretary.”

“The butler would be best,” I said. “How could I approach him, do you think? I don’t want to go up to the villa.”

“It would be easy. He’s often down at the Gambrinus in the afternoon. I frequently meet him there, and we have a drink and a chat.”

“Would he be there this afternoon? I do wish you would introduce me,” I urged. “The matter is an important personal one concerning myself.”

“He might be down this afternoon – about four o’clock,” replied the alert young Englishman who spoke Italian so well. “I’ll look in there at four, if you will be about.”

“I certainly will be there,” I said, and then we went along to Giacosa’s, where we each had that cocktail-like speciality known as a “piccolo.”

At five minutes to four that afternoon I entered the big Gambrinus Café, which was nearly opposite my hotel on the other side of the piazza, and I took a seat just inside the door. The orchestra was playing, and the place was well filled with a gay cosmopolitan crowd, many of them winter idlers.

I looked around, wondering if the butler, Robertson, had arrived, and waited in patience for the coming of my friend.

Punctually at four he appeared, and greeting me, cast his eyes over the many small tables, until suddenly he exclaimed:

“Ah! There he is!”

We walked to a table some distance away, where a stoutish, grey-haired, clean-shaven Englishman was smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper, with a glass of vermouth and seltzer before him.

“Hallo, Arthur!” he exclaimed as he raised his eyes to my friend.

“This is a friend of mine, Mr. Garfield,” my companion said, introducing me, and then we sat down and began to chat. At last I could possess myself in patience no longer, and addressing the millionaire’s butler, told him frankly that I was in search of information concerning the dark-haired young lady who had been guest up at the villa about three months ago.

“Oh! I suppose you mean Miss Thurston – the young American lady, don’t you? But she’s fair-haired!”

“The lady I mean is named Engledue,” I replied.

“Oh! I don’t know anyone of that name,” was his reply. “Miss Thurston has stayed with us in London and down in Cornwall, and has been here several times. I fancy she’s some relation of the mistress’s. She first came to stay about three years ago, when she left school in Paris. Then she went home to America, and after six months came back again to us.”

“You haven’t any idea who her parents are – or where she lived in America?”

“She lived somewhere near Detroit, I believe. That’s all I know about her. I believe her people are motor-car makers and extremely wealthy. At least, somebody said so – and she’s very free with tips to the under-servants.”

“When did she leave here?”

“When the master went to London. I was to go too, but I had influenza and had to remain here.”

“And where was Mrs. De Gex?” I inquired.

“She was already at Stretton Street. She and the little boy went to London early in October, but came back at the end of the month.”

Then I questioned the estimable Robertson concerning the domestic happiness of his master. I said I had heard rumours in London of matrimonial differences.

“Well, that’s a lie,” he replied quickly. “There isn’t a pair in the whole of London Society who are more devoted to each other.”

This greatly surprised me after the words that had fallen from the millionaire’s lips.

Again I referred to the mysterious Gabrielle whom I described as minutely as I was able, and apparently my description fitted that of Rose Thurston, save for the colour of her hair.

“You have no idea where she is, I suppose?”

“Not the slightest. Back in America, perhaps. She seems to come over every year.”

“I wonder if you could find out her address?” I asked. “If you could, it would be of very great service to me,” and I handed him my card, expressing a hope that he would refrain from mentioning the matter to his master.