The Four Faces: A Mystery

by William Le Queux

  CHAPTER VII

  OSBORNE'S STORY

  "Good heavens, Dulcie!" I exclaimed, hurrying across to her, "whateverare you doing here? And you, Aunt Hannah?"

  At the sound of my voice Dulcie started up in her chair, and Aunt Hannahturned quickly. To my amazement they both looked at me without uttering.Dulcie's eyes were troubled. She seemed inclined to speak, yet afraidto. The expression with which Aunt Hannah peered at me chilled me.

  "What is the meaning of this, Mr. Berrington?" she asked coldly, after abrief pause. Even in that moment of tense anxiety it struck me that AuntHannah looked and spoke as though reproving a naughty schoolboy.

  "Meaning of what?" I said stupidly, astonishment for the momentdeadening my intelligence.

  "Of your bringing us up to London to find--this."

  "Bringing you up? What do you mean, Miss Challoner?" I exclaimed,mystified.

  In spite of my deep anxiety, a feeling of annoyance, of resentment, hadcome over me. No man likes to be made to look ridiculous, and here was Istanding before a lot of constables, all of them staring in inquisitiveastonishment at my being thus addressed by the old lady.

  "Is this Mr. Berrington, madam?" an immensely tall, bull-necked,plain-clothes policeman, of pompous, forbidding mien, suddenly asked.

  "Yes, officer, it is," she snapped. During all the time I had known herI had never seen her quite like this.

  "See here," he said, turning to me, "I want your address, and for thepresent you will stay here."

  I am considered good-tempered. Usually, too, I can control my feelings.There is a limit, however, to the amount of incivility I can stand, andthis fellow was deliberately insulting me.

  "How dare you speak like that to me!" I burst out. "What has this affairto do with me? Do you know who I am?"

  "Aren't you Mr. Michael Berrington?" he inquired more guardedly,apparently taken aback at my outburst of indignation.

  "I am."

  "Then read that," he said, producing a telegram and holding it outbefore me.

  It was addressed to:

  "Miss Dulcie Challoner, Holt Manor, Holt Stacey," and ran:

  "The police have recovered property which they believe to have beenstolen from Holt Manor. Please come at once to 430 Grafton Street, BondStreet, to identify it. Shall expect you by train due Paddington 12:17.Please don't fail to come as matter very urgent.

  "MICHAEL BERRINGTON."

  It had been handed in at the office in Regent Street at 9:30 thatmorning, and received at Holt Stacey village at 9:43.

  "How absurd! How ridiculous!" I exclaimed. "My name has been forged, ofcourse. I never sent that telegram; this is the first I have seen orheard of it."

  "That you will have to prove," the detective answered, with officialstolidity.

  "Surely, Aunt Hannah," I almost shouted--so excited did I feel--as Iagain turned to her, "you can't think I sent that telegram?"

  "I certainly think nothing else," she replied, and her eyes were likeshining beads. "Who would send a telegram signed with your name but you,or someone instructed by you?"

  I saw that to argue with her in the frame of mind she was then in wouldbe futile--my presentiment at Holt that some day I should fall foul ofher had come true! I turned to the officer.

  "I must see the original of that telegram," I said quickly, "and shallthen quickly prove that it was not sent by me. How soon can I gethold of it?"

  "Oh, we can see about it at once, sir," he answered much more civilly,for, pretending to look for something in my pocket, I had intentionallypulled out my leather wallet, containing two hundred pounds or more innotes, and opened it for an instant. There is nothing like the sight ofpaper money to ensure civility from a policeman disposed to beimpertinent--I should like, in justice, to add that most policemenare not.

  Also Easterton had come over and spoken to me, and of course pooh-poohedthe idea of my having sent the telegram, which had just been shown tohim. Dulcie stared at me with large, pathetic eyes, and I knew that, butfor Aunt Hannah's so-to-speak mounting guard, she would have asked meendless questions instead of sitting there mute.

  "You had better come with me and hear Jack Osborne's story," Eastertonsaid some moments later. "The Inspector tells me he is upstairs, andstill rather weak from the effect of the treatment he has received."

  I had seen a puzzled look come into Aunt Hannah's eyes while Eastertonwas speaking, but she remained sour and unbending.

  Osborne was sitting up in a chair, partly undressed--he still wore hisevening clothes--cotton wool bound round his ankles and one wrist. Hesmiled weakly as we entered, and the policeman who sat at his bedsideimmediately rose. It was easy to see that Jack had suffered a good deal;he looked, for him, quite pale, and there were dark marks beneath hiseyes. Nor was his appearance improved by several days' growth ofbeard--he was usually clean-shaven.

  His story was quickly told, and points in it gave food for thought, alsofor conjecture.

  It seemed that, while he was at supper with the woman I knew as "Mrs.Gastrell," at Gastrell's reception, two men, unable to find a vacanttable, had asked if they might sit at his table, where there were twovacant seats. Both were strangers to him, and apparently to "Mrs.Gastrell" too. They seemed, however, pleasant fellows, and presently hehad drifted into conversation with them, or they with him, and with hisfair companion--Jack, as I have said, is extremely cosmopolitan, andpicks up all sorts of acquaintances. I could well believe that at areception such as Gastrell's he would waive all formality ofintroduction if he found himself with companionable strangers.

  Supper over, the four had remained together, and later, when Jack hadseen his fair friend safely into a cab, he had rejoined the twostrangers, becoming gradually more and more friendly with them. Thereception had not ended until past one in the morning, and he and histwo acquaintances had been among the last to leave. Having all to go inthe same direction, they had shared a taxi, and on arriving at thechambers which the strangers had told him they shared--these chamberswere in Bloomsbury, but Jack had not noticed in what street--one of thestrangers had suggested his coming in for a few minutes before returningto the Russell Hotel, where he had his rooms, which was close by.

  At first disinclined to do this, he had finally yielded to theirpersuasion. He had a whiskey-and-soda with them, he said--he mentionedthat the chambers were comfortable and well furnished--and one of themhad then suggested a game of cards. They had all sat down to play, and--

  Well, he remembered, he said, seeing cards being dealt--but that was allhe did remember. He supposed that after that he must have fainted, orbeen made unconscious; he now suspected that the drink he had taken hadbeen drugged.

  When he recovered consciousness he had no idea where he was, or how longhe had been insensible. The room was unfamiliar to him, and everythingabout him strange. He was stretched upon a bed, in an apartment muchlarger than the one he was now in, with hands and feet tightly tied. Thetwo windows faced a blank wall, the wall apparently of the next house;later he came to know, by the sound of Big Ben booming in the night,that he was still in London.

  The door of the room was at the back of the bed; he could not see itfrom where he lay, and, bound as he was, could not even turn, but wasforced to lie flat upon his back.

  He had not long been conscious, when the light of day began to fade.Soon the room was in pitch darkness. Then it was he became aware thatsomeone was in the room. He listened attentively, but could hearnothing; nevertheless the presence of a man or woman made itself "felt"beyond a doubt. He judged the time of day to be about six o'clock in theevening, when suddenly somebody touched him--a hand in the darkness. Hestarted, and called out; but there was no answer. Some minutes later aman spoke.

  The voice was not that of either of the men he had met at Gastrell'sreception; he could swear to that, he said. Yet he seemed to recognizethe voice, indeed, to have heard it recently. He racked his brains toremember where, but to no purpose.

  The man spoke in a low tone, and its _timbre_ and i
nflection betrayedwhat is called the voice of a gentleman, he said.

  "You have been brought here," the man said, "to give certaininformation, and to reveal certain secrets. If you do this, you will bereleased at once--you will be taken away from here in an unconsciousstate, just as you were brought here, and set down in the night not farfrom your hotel. If you refuse, you will be taken out during the night,and dropped into the Thames."

  The man had then gone on to question him. The questions he had asked hadbeen numerous, and one and all had had to do with persons of highstation with whom Jack was on terms of intimacy--all of them richpeople. What most astonished him, he said, was that his unseeninterlocutor should know so much about him--his questions and remarksshowed how much he knew--and that he should apparently know who all hisfriends were.

  Jack could not remember all the questions he had been asked, but herepeated some of them. Whereabouts did the Duchesse de Montparnasse keepher jewels in her chateau on the Meuse? The questioner said he knew thatOsborne could tell him, because he knew that Osborne, just before goingto Nigeria, had, while staying at that chateau, been shown by theDuchesse herself her priceless jewellery--one of the finest collectionsin the world, chiefly valuable owing to its interesting historicassociations.

  Then, in which apartment in Eldon Hall, in Northumberland, the seat ofthe Earl of Cranmere, was the large safe that Lord Cranmere had boughtten months before from an American firm, the name of which was given? Hesaid that he, Osborne, must know, because he was a guest at LordCranmere's when the safe arrived--which was the truth. He also wanted toknow if there were a priests' hiding-hole in Eldon Hall, as was the casein so many of the large country mansions built about the same period,and, if so, its exact whereabouts in the house.

  As Jack Osborne said this, my thoughts flashed away to Berkshire, toHolt Manor, to the dark, depressing hiding-hole there that I had peereddown into more than once. Who had spoken to me of that hiding-hole onlyrecently? Why, Dulcie, of course. She had mentioned it whilst telling meabout Mrs. Stapleton, and about Sir Roland's showing the young widowover the house. Dulcie had mentioned it specially, because Mrs.Stapleton had evinced such evident interest in it.

  I checked my train of thought, focussing my mind upon that singleincident.

  Mrs. Stapleton, the "mysterious widow" of whom nobody appeared to knowanything, had been strangely interested in that hiding-hole and in allthat Sir Roland had said about it--Dulcie had told me that. Thehiding-hole was in close proximity to Sir Roland's bedroom, and to oneother room from which valuable jewellery had been stolen. Mrs. Stapletonhad left the neighbourhood on the day after the robbery, had been absentever since--that of course might be, and probably was, merely acoincidence. At supper at Gastrell's reception in Cumberland Place Mrs.Stapleton had acknowledged "Mrs. Gastrell's" smile of recognition, andan instant later the two women had stared at each other stonily, andMrs. Stapleton had assured me that she did not know the other woman,that she had "never seen her before." Then those two men, of whomOsborne had just spoken, had of their own accord joined him and "Mrs.Gastrell" at supper, and eventually he had gone with the men to theirflat in Bloomsbury. And now here was an unseen man, evidently ascoundrel, inquiring the whereabouts of a safe in a country housebelonging to a nobleman known to be extremely rich, and asking inparticular if the house possessed a priests' hiding-hole, and if so,exactly where it was located--a man who threatened evil if theinformation were withheld. Could all this, I could not help wondering,be mere coincidence? Then on the top of it came that extraordinarytelegram sent to Dulcie from London, with my name attached to it.

  Jack, however, had not done relating his adventures, so I turned againto listen to him.

  "A third thing the fellow asked," he said, "was the name of HugoSalmonsteiner's bankers--Salmonsteiner the millionaire timber-merchantwhose son was out big-game shooting with me a year ago. It seemed anabsurd question, for surely it must be easy to find out who any man'sbankers are, but still he asked me, and appeared to be most anxiousthat I should tell him. Oh, but there were scores of other questions,all much on the same lines, and tending to extract from me informationof a peculiar kind."

  "Did you answer any of them?" Easterton asked.

  "Answer them? Why, of course--all of 'em. I didn't want to remain herein durance vile an hour longer than I could help, I can assure you. Butnaturally my answers were--well, 'inaccurate,' to say the least. I hadto word them very carefully, though, or the fellow would have caught meout. He suspected that I might be misleading him, I think, for once ortwice he put questions which might have unmasked me if I had not been onmy guard when answering them. Really we pitted our brains and cunningagainst each other's all the time, and, if I may say so withoutboasting, I think my cunning won."

  "Then why were you not released?" I said.

  "I was to have been, to-night--_so he said_. Do you think, though, hewould, whoever he was, have let me go after questioning me like that? Hesaid not a word about my not giving information to the police, orwarning the people he had questioned me about. Do you think he wouldhave let me go? I don't.

  "Every day food and drink were left by me--set on a table within reachof me, while the room was in inky blackness, for the man who had touchedme in the dark had also released my right arm and left it so. Severaltimes I tried to free my other arm, and my feet, but I couldn't manageit. I have been lying here with both feet and one arm bound for fournights and three days, to my knowledge, without seeing anybody, and, ofcourse, without shaving or washing. I can't tell you what these days andnights have been like--they have been like a long, awful nightmare;even the house has all the time been as still as death. My God, what arelief it was to hear the door bell ringing this afternoon, and theknocker going as though the place was on fire!

  "And when the police did force an entrance it seems they found nobodybut me!"