The Mysterious Three

Chapter Five

Puts Certain Questions

Rarely have I felt more put out, or more bitterly disappointed, than I did when I hurried into my flat, expecting to come face to face with Vera, my beloved, and longing to take her in my arms to kiss and comfort her.

Instead, I was confronted by a spinster aunt of Vera’s whom I had met only three times before, and to whom I had, the first time I was introduced to her – she insisted upon never remembering me either by name or by sight, and each time needing a fresh introduction – taken an ineradicable dislike.

“Ah, Mr Ashton, I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said without rising. “I have called to talk to you about a great many things – I daresay you can guess what they are – about all this dreadful affair at Houghton.”

Now the more annoyed I feel with anybody of my own social standing, the more coldly polite I invariably become. It was so on this occasion.

“I should love to stay and talk to you, Miss Thorold,” I answered, after an instant’s pause, “but I have just been sitting at the bedside of a sick friend. To-day is the first day he has been allowed to see anybody. The doctor said he ought not to have allowed me in so soon, and he warned me to go straight home, take off every stitch of clothing I have on, and send them at once to be disinfected.”

“Oh, indeed?” she said rather nervously. “And what has been the matter with your friend?”

It was the question I wanted.

“Didn’t I tell you?” I said. “It was smallpox.”

My ruse proved even more successful than I had anticipated. Miss Thorold literally sprang to her feet, gathered up her satchel and umbrella, and with the hurried remark: “How perfectly monstrous – keep well away from me!” she edged her way round the wall to the door, and, calling to me from the little passage: “I will ring you on the telephone,” went out of the flat, slamming the door after her.

But where was Vera? How could I discover her? I was beside myself with anxiety.

The Houghton affair created more than a nine days’ wonder. The people of Rutland desperately resent anything in the nature of a scandal which casts a disagreeable reflection upon their county. I remember how some years ago they talked for months about an unpleasant affair to do with hunting.

“Even if it were true,” some of the people who knew it to be true said one to another, “it ought never to have been exposed in that way. Think of the discredit it brings upon our county, and what a handle the Radicals and the Socialists will be able to make of it, if ever it is discovered that it really did occur.”

And so it came about that, when I was called back to Oakham two days later, to attend the double inquest, many of the people there, with whom I had been on quite friendly terms, looked at me more or less askance. It is not well to make oneself notorious in a tiny county like Rutland, I quickly discovered, or even to become notorious through no fault of one’s own.

Shall I ever forget how, at the inquest, questions put to me by all sorts of uneducated people upon whom the duty devolved of inquiring into the mysterious affair connected with Houghton Park?

I suppose it was because there was nobody else to question, that they cross-examined me so closely and so foolishly.

Their inquiries were endless. Had I known the Thorolds long? Could I name the date when I first became acquainted with them? Was it a fact that I rode Sir Charles’ horses while I was a guest at Houghton? About how often did I ride them? And on how many days did I hunt during the fortnight I spent at Houghton?

All my replies were taken down in writing. Then came questions concerning my friendship with Miss Thorold, and these annoyed me considerably. Was the rumour that I was engaged to be married to her true? Was there any ground for the rumour? Was I at all attached to her? Was she attached to me? Had we ever corresponded by letter? Was it a fact that we called each other by our Christian names? Was it not true, that on one evening at least, we had smoked cigarettes together, alone in her boudoir?

It was. This admission seemed to gratify my cross-questioners considerably.

“And may I ask, Mr Ashton,” asked a legal gentleman with a most offensive manner, as he looked me up and down, “if this took place with Sir Charles’ knowledge?”

“Oh, yes it did. With his full knowledge and consent!”

“Oh, really. And you will pardon my asking, was Lady Thorold also aware that you and her daughter sat alone together late at night, smoking cigarettes and addressing each other by your Christian names?”

Now I am fairly even-tempered, but this local solicitor’s objectionable insinuations ended by stirring me up. This, very likely, was what he desired that they should do.

“My dear sir,” I exclaimed, “will you tell me if these questions of yours have any bearing at all upon the matter you are inquiring into, and if your very offensive innuendoes are intended as veiled, or rather as unveiled, insults to Miss Thorold or to myself?”

I heard some one near me murmur, “Hear, hear,” at the back of the room. The comment encouraged me.

“You will not address me in that fashion again, please,” my interlocutor answered hotly, reddening.

“In what fashion?”

“You will not call me ‘your dear sir.’ I object. I strongly object.”

A titter of amusement trickled through the room. My adversary’s fingers – for he had become an adversary – twitched.

“I was under the impression,” he remarked pompously, “that I was addressing a gentleman.”

I am not good at smart retorts, but I got one in when I answered him.

“A gentleman – I?” I exclaimed blandly. “I assure you, my dear sir, that I don’t pose as a gentleman. I am quite a common man – just like yourself.”

Considerable laughter greeted this remark, but it was at once suppressed. Still, I knew that this single quick rejoinder had biased “the gallery” in my favour. Common people enjoy witnessing the discomfiture of any individual in authority.

Two days later, I left Oakham and returned to London, feeling like a schoolboy going home for Christmas.

The days went by. On the following week I again went to Oakham to attend the adjourned inquest. In the case of the butler, an open verdict was returned, but in the case of the driver, one of murder by some person unknown.

Of Vera I had had no news.

“Twenty-six Upper…” That might be in London, or in Brighton. It might even be in some other town. I thought it probable, however, that the address she had been about to give was a London address, so I had spent the day before the inquest in trying the various London “Uppers” contained in “Kelly’s Directory.”

Heavens, what an array! When my eyes fell upon the list, my heart sank. For there were no less than fifty-four “Uppers” scattered about the Metropolis. Some, obviously, might be ruled out at once, or so I conjectured. Upper Street, Islington, for instance, close to the Angel, did not sound a likely “residential locality” – as the estate agents say – for people of Sir Charles and Lady Thorold’s position to be staying in. Nor did Upper Bland near the Elephant and Castle, nor Upper Grange Road, off the Old Kent Road; nor Upper Chapman Street, Shadwell. On the other hand, Upper Brook Street; Upper George Street, Sloane Square; Upper Grosvenor Street, Park Lane; even Upper Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, seemed possible spots, and these and many other “Uppers” I tried, spinning from one to another in a taxi, until the driver began to look at me as though he had misgivings as to my sanity.

“Twenty-six don’t seem to be your lucky number, sir,” he said jocularly, when he had driven me to thirty-seven different “Uppers” and called in each at the house numbered twenty-six. “It wouldn’t be twenty-six in some ‘Lower’ Street, or Place, or Road, or Gardens, would it, sir?”

He spoke only half in jest, but I resented his familiarity, and I told him so. His only comment, muttered beneath his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, was —

“Lummy! the cove’s dotty in ’is own ‘upper,’ that’s what ’ee is.”

On my return from Oakham I went to Brighton, wandering aimlessly about the streets and on the esplanade, hoping against hope that some fortunate turn in the wheel of Fate might bring me unexpectedly face to face with my sweet-faced beloved, whose prolonged and mysterious absence seemed to have made my heart grow fonder. Alas! fate only grinned at me ironically.

Vera had vanished with her family – entirely vanished.

But not wholly ironically. I had been distressed to find that the little silver flask picked up at Houghton had been mislaid. For hours I had hunted high and low for it in my flat. John had turned out all my clothes, and pulled the pockets inside out, and I had bullied him for his carelessness in losing it, and almost accused him of stealing it.

It was while in the train on my way back to London, after my second futile visit to Brighton, that I sat down on something hard. Almost at once I guessed what it was. Briefly, there had been a hole in the inside breast-pocket of my overcoat. It had been mended by John’s wife – whose duty it was to keep all my clothes in order – before I knew of its existence. Therefore, when I had naturally enough suspected there being a hole in one of my pockets, and sought one, I had found all the pockets intact. The woman had mended the hole without noticing that the little flask, which had dropped through it, lay hidden in the bottom of the lining.

I ripped open the lining at once, and pulled out the flask, delighted at the discovery. And, as soon as I reached town, I took the flask to a chemist I knew and asked him to analyse its contents. He would do so without delay, he said, and let me know on the following morning the result of his analysis.

“It’s a mixture of gelsiminum and ether,” he said, as soon as I entered his shop next day.

“Poison, of course,” I remarked.

He smiled.

“Well, I should rather think so,” he answered drily. “A few drops would send a strong man to sleep for ever, and there is enough of the fluid here to send fifty men to sleep – for ever. Therefore one wouldn’t exactly take it for one’s health.”

So here was a clue – of a sort. The first clue! My spirits rose. My next step must be to discover the owner of the flask, presumably some one with initials “D.P.,” and the reason he – or she – had carried this fluid about.

I lunched at Brooks’s, feeling more than usually bored by the members I met there. Several men whom I had not seen for several weeks were standing in front of the smoking-room fire, and as I entered, and they caught sight of me, they all grinned broadly.

”‘The accused then left the Court with his friends,’” one of them said lightly, as I approached. ”‘He was granted a free pardon, but bound over in his own recognisances to keep the peace for six months.’”

“You have been getting yourself into trouble, Dick, and no mistake,” observed his neighbour – I am generally called Dick by my friends.

“Into trouble? What do you mean?” I retorted, nettled.

“Why – you know quite well,” he answered. “This Houghton affair, the scandal about the Thorolds, of course. How came you to get mixed up in it? We like you, old man, but you know it makes it a bit unpleasant for some of us. You know what people are. They will talk.”

“I suppose you mean that men are judged by the company they keep, and that because I happened to be at Houghton at the time of that affair, and was unwillingly dragged into prominence by the newspapers, therefore that discredit reflects on me.”

“Well, I should not have expressed it precisely in that way, but still – ”

“Still what?”

“As you ask me, I suppose I must answer. I do think it rather unfortunate you should have got yourself mixed up in the business, and both Algie and Frank agree with me – don’t you, Algie?” he ended, turning to his friend.

“Awe – er – awe – quite so, quite so. We were talking of you just as you came in, my dear old Dick, and we all agreed it was, awe – er – was – awe – a confounded pity you had anything to do with it. Bad form, you know, old Dick, all this notoriety. Never does to be unusual, singular, or different from other people – eh what? One’s friends don’t like it – and one don’t like it oneself – what?”

Their shallow views and general mental vapidity, if I may put it so, jarred upon me. After spending ten minutes in their company, I went into the dining-room and lunched alone. Then I read the newspapers, dozed in an armchair for half-an-hour, and finally, at about four o’clock, returned to my flat in King Street. John met me on the stairs.

“Ah! there you are, sir,” he exclaimed. “Did you meet them?”

“Meet whom?”

“Why, they haven’t been gone not two minutes, so I thought you might have met them in the street, sir. They waited over half-an-hour.”

“But who were they? What were their names?” I asked, irritated at John for not telling me at once the names of the visitors.

“A young lady and a gentleman – there’s a card on your table, sir; I can’t recall the names for the moment,” he said, wrinkling his forehead as he scratched his ear to stimulate his memory. “The gentleman was extremely tall, quite a giant, with a dark beard.”

I hurried up the stairs, for the lift was out of order, and let myself into my flat with my latch key. On the table, in my sitting-room, was a lady’s card on a salver.

“Miss Thorold.”

In Vera’s handwriting were the words, scribbled in pencil across it —

“So sorry we have missed you.”

Chapter Six

The House in the Square

I admit that I was dumbfounded.

Vera and her mysterious friend were together, calling in the most matter-of-fact way possible, and just as though nothing had happened! It seemed incredible!

All at once a dreadful thought occurred to me that made me catch my breath. Was it possible that my love was an actress, in the sense that she was acting a part? Had she cruelly deceived me when she had declared so earnestly that she loved me? The reflection that, were she practising deception, she would not have come to see me thus openly with the man with the black beard, relieved my feelings only a little. For how came she to be with Davies at all? And again, who was this man Davies? Also that telephone message a fortnight previously, how could I account for it under the circumstances?

“Oh, come to me – do come to me! I am in such trouble,” my love had cried so piteously, and then had added: “You alone can help me.”

Some one else, apparently, must have helped her. Could it have been this big, dark man?

And was he, in consequence, supplanting me in her affection? The thought held me breathless.

At times I am something of a philosopher, though my relatives laugh when I tell them so, and reply, “Not a philosopher, only a well-meaning fellow, and extremely good-natured” – a description I detest. Realising now the uselessness of worrying over the matter, I decided to make no further move, but to sit quiet and await developments.

“If you worry,” I often tell my friends, “it won’t in the least help to avert impending disaster, while if what you worry about never comes to pass, you have made yourself unhappy to no purpose.”

A platitude? Possibly. But two-thirds of the words of wisdom uttered by great men, and handed down as tradition to a worshipping posterity, are platitudes of the most commonplace type, if you really come to analyse them.

Time hung heavily. It generally ends by hanging heavily upon a man without occupation. But put yourself for a moment in my place. I had lost my love, and those days of inactivity and longing were doubly tedious because I ached to bestir myself somehow, anyhow, to clear up a mystery which, though gradually fading from the mind of a public ever athirst for fresh sensation, was actively alive in my own thoughts – the one thought, indeed, ever present in my mind. Why had the Thorolds so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared?

Thus it occurred to me, two days after Davies and Vera had called at my flat, to stroll down into Belgravia and interview the caretaker at 102, Belgrave Street. Possibly by this time, I reflected, he might have seen Sir Charles Thorold, or heard from him.

When I had rung three times, the door slowly opened to the length of its chain, and I think quite the queerest-looking little old man I had ever set eyes on, peered out. He gazed with his sharp, beady eyes up into my face for a moment or two, then asked, in a broken quavering voice —

“Are you another newspaper gen’leman?”

“Oh, no,” I answered, laughing, for I guessed at once how he must have been harassed by reporters, and I could sympathise with him. “I am not a journalist – I’m only a gentleman.”

Of course he was too old to note the satire, but the fact that I wore a silk hat and a clean collar, seemed to satisfy him that I must be a person of some consequence, and when I had assured him that I meant him no ill, but that, on the contrary, I might have something to tell him that he would like to hear, he shut the door, and I heard his trembling old hands remove the chain.

“And how long is it since Sir Charles was last here?” I said to him, when he had shown me into his little room on the ground floor, where a kettle purred on a gas-stove. “I know him well, you know; I was staying at Houghton Park when he disappeared.”

He looked me up and down, surprised and apparently much interested.

“Were you indeed, sir?” he exclaimed. “Well, now – well, well!”

“Why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable, my old friend,” I went on affably. I drew forward his armchair, and he sank into it with a grunt of relief.

“You are a very kind gen’leman, you are, very kind indeed,” he said, in a tone that betrayed true gratitude. “Ah! I’ve known gen’lemen in my time, and I know a gen’leman when I sees one, I do.”

“What part of Norfolk do you come from?” I asked, as I took a seat near him, for I knew the Norfolk brogue quite well.

He looked at me and grinned.

“Well, now, that’s strange you knowing I come from Norfolk! But it’s true. Oh, yes, it is right. I’m a Norfolk man. I was born in Diss. I mind the time my father – ”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, “we’ll talk about that presently,” for I could see that, once allowed to start on the subject of his relatives and his native county, he would talk on for an hour. “What I have come here this afternoon to talk to you about is Sir Charles Thorold. When was he last here?”

“It will be near two years come Michaelmas,” he answered, without an instant’s hesitation. “And since then I haven’t set eyes on him – I haven’t.”

“And has this house been shut up all the time?”

“Ay, all that time. I mind the time my father used to tell me – ”

I damned his father under my breath, and quickly stopped him by asking who paid him his wages.

“My wages? Oh, Sir Charles’ lawyers, Messrs Spink and Peters, of Lincoln’s Inn, pays me my wages. But they are not going to pay me any more. No. They are not going to pay me any more now.”

“Not going to pay you any more? What do you mean?”

“Give me notice to quit, they did, a week ago come Saturday.”

“But why?”

“Orders from Sir Charles, they said. Would you like to see their letter, sir?”

“I should, if you have it by you.”

It was brief, curt, and brutally frank —

“From Messrs Spink and Peters, Solicitors, 582, Lincoln’s Inn, W.C.

“To William Taylor, Caretaker, —

“102, Belgrave Street, S.W.

“Messrs Spink and Peters are instructed by Sir Charles Thorold to inform William Taylor that owing to his advanced age his services will not be needed by Sir Charles Thorold after March 25. William Taylor is requested to acknowledge the receipt of this letter.”

“They don’t consider your feelings much,” I said, as I refolded the letter and handed it back to him.

He seemed puzzled.

“Feelings, sir? What are those?” he asked. “I don’t somehow seem to know.”

“No matter. Under the circumstances it is, perhaps, as well you shouldn’t know. Now, I want to ask you a few questions, my old friend – and look here, I am going, first of all, to make you a little present.”

I slipped my fingers into my waistcoat pocket, produced a half-sovereign, and pressed it into the palm of his wrinkled old hand.

“To buy tobacco with – no, don’t thank me,” I said quickly, as he began to express gratitude. “Now, answer a few questions I am going to put to you. In the first place, how long have you been in Sir Charles’ service?”

“Sixteen years, come Michaelmas,” he answered promptly. “I came from Diss. I mind the time my father – ”

“How did Sir Charles, or Mr Thorold as he was then, first hear of you?”

“He was in Downham Market. I was caretaker for the Reverend George Lattimer, and Sir Charles, I should say, Mr Thorold, came to see the house. I think he thought of buying it, but he didn’t buy it. I showed him into every room, I remember, and as he was leaving he put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a sov’rin’, and gave it to me, just as you have done. And then he said to me, he said: ‘Ole man,’ he said, ‘would you like a better job than this?’ Those were his very words, ‘Ole man, would you like a better job than this?’”

He grinned and chuckled at the reflection, showing his toothless gums.

“And then he took you into his service. Did you come to London at once?”

“Ay, next week he brought me up, and I’ve been here ever since – in this house ever since. The Reverend George Lattimer wor vexed with Sir Charles for a ‘stealing’ me from his service, as he said. I mind in Diss, when – ”

“Was there any reason why Mr Thorold should engage you in such a hurry? Did he give any reason? It seems strange he should have engaged a man of your age, living away in Norfolk, and brought you up to London at a few days’ notice.”

“Oh, yes there was reason – there was a reason.”

“And what was it?”

“Well, well, it was not p’raps ’xactly what you might call a ‘reason,’ it was what Sir Charles he calls a ‘stipilation.’ ‘I have a stipilation to make, Taylor,’ he said, when he engaged me. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, ‘and what might this, this stipilation be?’ I said. ‘It’s like this, Taylor,’ he said. ‘I’ll engage you and pay you well, and you will come with me to Lundon to-morrow, and you shall have two comfortable rooms in my house,’ those were his very words, sir, ‘and you will have little work to do, ’cept when I am out of Lundon, and you have to look after the house and act as caretaker. But there be a stipilation I must make.’ ‘And what might that stipilation be, sir?’ I asked him. ‘It’s like this,’ he said, a looking rather hard at me. ‘You must never see or know anything that goes on in my Lundon ’ouse, when I am there, or when I am not. If you see or hear anything, you must forget it. Do you understand? Do we understand each other?’ he said. And I have done that, sir, ever since Sir Charles engaged me. Never have I seen what happened in this house, nor have I heard what happened in this house, nor known what happened in this house. I have kep’ the stipilation, and I’ve served the master well.”

“And for serving your master well, and doing your duty, you are rewarded by getting kicked out at a month’s notice because of your ‘advanced age.’”

The old man’s eyes became suddenly moist as I said this, and I felt sorry I had spoken.

“Did you see or hear much you ought to have forgotten?” I hazarded, after a brief pause.

He peered up at me with an odd expression, then slowly shook his head.

“Have you actually forgotten all you saw and heard?” I inquired carelessly, as I lit a cigarette, “or do you only pretend?”