The Paddington Mystery

by John Rhode

  But Harold had leapt from the arm of his chair and stood confronting her.

  ‘The night you were to have met me!’ he exclaimed. ‘But—that was the very night—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ replied Vere remorsefully. ‘Now you see the fright I had. I thought there must be some connection. Then I went to see the body of the man you found here—the police let me in when I made up some story of a missing uncle—and I found a perfect stranger. It can’t have been anything to do with him, after all.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Harold angrily. ‘It can’t be a coincidence that this fellow, whoever he is, got you to keep me out of the way on the very night I found a man dead in my bed. Look here, Vere, I’ve never asked you any questions, you know, but I’m going to ask them now. You’ve got to tell me who this fellow is. I want a word with him badly.’

  Vere put out a hand and laid it on his arm. ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ she said. ‘What’s the good of making a fuss now? The whole thing’s blown over; the man, whoever he was, died a natural death; it isn’t as if there was any suggestion of you having murdered him. Besides, don’t you see that I’m only free if I keep my—my friend’s name dark? He’d take jolly good care to queer my pitch with you if I let you loose at him.’

  The tone of Vere’s voice, the thinly-veiled implication that she expected him to take advantage of this new freedom of hers, drove Harold to exasperation.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help that,’ he replied. ‘This business has sickened me of all that sort of thing. All I care about now is to clear up this infernal mystery. And as soon as I’ve done that I mean to run straight in future.’

  Vere laughed, harshly and mockingly ‘Run straight!’ she echoed. ‘Merry Devil run straight! That’ll make some of them laugh, won’t it?’

  She flung herself back in her chair, and looked at him tantalisingly. ‘After all,’ she continued, ‘I can’t see that there’s anything to prevent you indulging your new hobby. You might even marry me, you know.’

  ‘Marry you!’ he retorted hotly. ‘Not likely. I don’t propose to continue our acquaintance in future. Tell me the name of the fellow who took such a confounded interest in my movements that night, and we’ll say good-bye.’

  Vere’s eyes flashed dark with anger, but she made no movement, only laughed, more softly this time.

  ‘Oh-h!’ she said slowly. ‘So that’s the game, is it? Get what you want from me, and then chuck me over like a sack of potatoes! My good innocent friend, do you really suppose that I shall fall in with your little plans as quietly as that?’

  ‘I don’t see what the devil you can do,’ replied Harold. ‘If you’ve any claims upon me, I’ll pay them in cash somehow. I’ll pay you for the name of your lover too, if that’s what you want.’

  Vere leaped from her chair and faced him, at last inflamed to fury. ‘Thank you,’ she hissed. ‘Now I know exactly what to do. I fancy you’ll regret this evening’s work for the rest of your life, my friend.’

  She turned from him, and made towards the door, but Harold sprang across the room and put his back to it. ‘No you don’t,’ he exclaimed. ‘Not until you tell me that fellow’s name.’

  Vere leant forward, glaring at him with a tigerish ferocity that revealed the true degradation of her nature. Harold had never seen her like this; she seemed the incarnation of evil, revolting, terrifying him. In spite of himself he shrank from her, as though fearing that she would touch him, and by that touch contaminate him irrevocably.

  ‘Let me go!’ she stormed. ‘Open that door at once, or I’ll shout until there’s a crowd round the house. And a fine story I’ll have for them, too, let me tell you. You’d enjoy a scene like that, coming on top of the one you’ve been through. A charge of that kind would help you to run straight, as you call it, wouldn’t it? Let me go, you damned fool! Help!’

  Her cry, shrill and piercing, rang through Harold’s brain till it seemed to him as though the whole city must hear it. In one vivid instant he pictured April, Professor Priestley, Evan Denbigh, all the friends he had left, shunning him at the stroke of this new disgrace. Beaten, outwitted, he flung the door open. Vere passed him without a word, without a glance. For many seconds he stood irresolute, listening to her footsteps as they passed down the stairs, through the front door, and died away along Riverside Gardens. Then he slammed the door and sank once more into his chair, his head hidden in his hands, despairing.

  It was some long time before he could bring himself to think coherently and then at last he realised to the full what a fool he had been. He had lost his temper, had demeaned himself to Vere’s own level in a battle of abuse, in which he had got distinctly the worst of it. The maddening thought that Vere held what was almost certainly the clue to the mystery tortured him. The clue had been within his grasp, and by his own senseless folly he had allowed it to escape him!

  His first impulse was to leap up and follow Vere to her rooms, to persuade her somehow to disclose the identity of this mys-terious friend or lover of hers. But a moment’s reflection convinced him that this would be worse than useless. In Vere’s present mood the only thing that could appease her would be complete surrender, and that involved more than he cared to contemplate. He had been fond of her once, had even, at times, wondered whether love had not coloured his passion. Now he knew that it was passion alone that had attracted him, that anything further between them was impossible, horrible to contemplate. If she were indeed free, free from what sordid bond he neither knew nor cared, he was bound—by the intangible bonds of an unattainable dream, if you will—to a far higher ideal. No, he must leave Vere to go her own way, with her sinister knowledge, her parting threats. There could be no hope of salvation through her.

  Thus Harold, in the mood of exaltation which followed his outburst of temper. The image of April still haunted him, although he felt the hopelessness of any endeavour to return to the intimacy he had so wilfully cast away. Apart from anything else, there was Evan Denbigh, just the sort of fellow who would naturally appeal to her; clever, promising, with a fund of talent denied to himself. Oh, yes, they were admirably suited to one another. Take one small detail, for instance. April was an ardent lover of the stage, a love which found expression in her frequent appearance in amateur theatricals. Her face, her voice, her figure, all suited her appearance in any role she cared to study. Denbigh, he knew, was equally keen, a really capable actor, who had won warm commendation from competent critics. There were a thousand things these two had in common. Harold searched his brain for a single instance where he could shine in April’s eyes. His writing? She had admitted that Aspasia had amused her. But—well, Aspasia was Vere, not April.

  His reverie was interrupted by a heavy footfall on the stairs, and by a thundering knock in which he recognised the hard knuckles of his landlord. He opened the door, and Mr Boost entered unceremoniously.

  ‘I haven’t heard no more about that bale of mine,’ he began abruptly. ‘I’m beginning to think there’s some hanky-panky about the whole business. More in it than what the eye sees, I mean.’

  Harold made no reply, and Mr Boost puffed at his pipe, surrounding himself with an area of smoke through which his eyes gleamed darkly.

  ‘Old Szamuelly ’ll be getting more’n he likes one o’ these days,’ he continued. ‘It’s my belief this illness o’ his is all my eye. He don’t care to go outside his own place, I reckon.’

  ‘Why, what has he done?’ enquired Harold encouragingly.

  ‘Done? Why I don’t suppose he’s done anything. He hasn’t the pluck,’ replied Mr Boost. ‘But some o’ the comrades’ secrets has been getting about lately. The blasted bourgeois and their police have got hold of a thing or two that’s made things awkward for some. Somebody’s been giving the game away, and I shouldn’t be surprised to find it was that old swine. I’ve a good mind to go and have a word with him, sick or not sick.’

  ‘And tell him you’ve lost that bale?’ suggested Harold maliciously.

  ‘Bale be blowe
d!’ replied Mr Boost. ‘I’ve got to be away over the week-end. But on Monday evening I’ll run over to Camberwell and have a little talk to Samuels and that blasted nephew of his. I’ll learn ’em a lesson, you mark my words.’

  A sudden idea struck Harold. The disappearance of the bale haunted him, and here might be an opportunity of hearing more about it.

  ‘I’ll come too, if I may,’ he said quietly.

  Mr Boost regarded him in astonishment. ‘Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d like to know whether you told the truth about that other evening. But you’ll have to stop outside while I have my little talk.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t intrude for the world,’ replied Harold lightly. ‘I’ll keep Isidore in play while you have it out with the old man, if you like.’

  Mr Boost grunted, knocked his pipe out into the fireplace, and left the room abruptly. Harold was once more left to his own thoughts and his own longings.

  CHAPTER VIII

  SATURDAY passed uneventfully. Much as Harold longed for the atmosphere of Westbourne Terrace, he felt that he dared not go there without some reasonable excuse to see the Professor. Besides, it was the week-end, when Evan Denbigh might reasonably be expected to be free from his labours. And, hopeless though he knew his own cause to be, he felt no desire to see April and Denbigh together.

  He had for a moment wondered whether he should tell the Professor about Vere and the strange clue she held. But his mind revolted from the idea. Any mention of Vere must necessarily lead to a confession he shrank from making, a confession which could only lower him in the Professor’s eyes without bringing any corresponding advantage. If this clue were to be traced, it was he himself who must do it. He, alone and unaided, must find this man who had an interest in his absence from his rooms on the fatal night. He spent the day wandering disconsolately about London, seeing in every glance an accusation, in every passer-by a potential unbeliever in his innocence.

  Mrs Clapton rested from her labours on Sundays, and as a rule Harold was undisturbed until such time as he chose to boil a kettle for himself. On this particular Sunday morning he slept late after a nightmare-ridden night. But his sleep was rudely broken by a persistent knocking. He rose wearily and opened the door to admit Mr Boost, stern-faced, and bearing in his hand the ample pages of The Weekly Record.

  ‘Look here,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’d like to know what this means, if you don’t mind.’

  Harold took the paper from him and looked at it dully. The Weekly Record owed its enormous circulation to its graphic and sensational reports of crime, violence and frailty, duly introduced with appropriate headlines. The page Mr Boost held open for his inspection was headed ‘The Mysterious Disappearance of Mr Sharp,’ and beneath was a heavily leaded paragraph: ‘The Weekly Record is fortunate in having secured the services of a well-known writer, who prefers to hide his identity under the pseudonym of “W.” This gentleman is a keen student of crime, and in the following story he suggests a solution to a type of unsolved mystery such as has frequently puzzled the authorities. Readers of The Weekly Record will understand that, though W.’s deductions are dressed in the garb of pure fiction, they are nevertheless the result of earnest study of actual facts. It is scarcely necessary to add that all names and places mentioned are purely fictitious.’

  Harold read this without interest. ‘What the devil has all this got to do with me?’ he asked impatiently. ‘I can’t say I am particularly interested in sensational crime stories.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ replied Mr Boost. ‘I’m not so sure. You read this one and see.’

  Something in Mr Boost’s manner sent an uncomfortable thrill down Harold’s back and he turned to the paper once more with a foreboding interest.

  W’s story, though told as fiction, was, in fact, a reconstruction of the ‘Paddington Mystery’, as it had come to be known, as imagined by the writer. The principal figure in the story was a young man of dissolute habits, who had constructed a liaison with the daughter of a clerk engaged in a garage. The girl, abandoned by this heartless seducer, took to the streets as a means of earning her livelihood, but not before an unguarded word had revealed to her broken-hearted parent the name and address of the man who had betrayed her. The father, rendered desperate by his failure to obtain an interview with the latter, determined to secure access to his rooms during his absence and confront him upon his return. To do this it was necessary to swim a river and break open a window. He accomplished the feat successfully, but his efforts proved too much for a delicate constitution, and he collapsed on his enemy’s bed.

  The hero of the story was a young man, equipped with the mental apparatus of the usual detective of fiction. Starting from the assumption that although no actual crime had been committed, a great injustice had been done, he sought for the cause of the unknown man’s entry to the villain’s rooms, and by a series of coincidences, came into contact with the girl, who was in ignorance of her father’s death. The story ended with a scene in which the girl and her seducer were brought together. The latter was overcome by remorse before the irrefutable logic of the amateur detective, and made an offer of honourable marriage which was gratefully accepted.

  The whole thing was admirably calculated to appeal to the sentiment of the readers of The Weekly Record, but there was far more in it than that. The events to which it referred were as perfectly obvious as they were doubtless intended to be, and few people reading the story could have resisted the impression that it was a remarkably plausible theory to account for the Paddington mystery. That Mr Boost regarded it as such was palpable.

  He waited until Harold had read it through, then, as their eyes met, laughed harshly.

  ‘You’re a nice young fellow, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I’ve seen that girl come in here with my own eyes, I have. Pretty scrape you’ve got yourself into with a bit of skirt, too. What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘What the devil do you mean?’ replied Harold angrily. ‘You don’t suppose there’s a word of truth in all this trash, do you? I tell you I didn’t know the man who was found dead in here from Adam.’

  Mr Boost puffed at his pipe, wholly unconvinced. ‘Where’s that girl you used to bring in here?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘I don’t know, and I’m damned if I care,’ replied Harold with considerable heat.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Boost, glancing significantly at the paper, which lay in a disordered heap on the floor. ‘You don’t know, eh? Perhaps she had a father, had she?’

  The question of Vere’s parentage had never occurred to Harold. ‘Father?’ he repeated. ‘I’m blest if I know; I never asked her.’

  ‘If that’s so you wouldn’t have known him from Adam if he had come and died on that there bed!’ declared Mr Boost, triumphantly. ‘Looks to me as if you’d have a job to prove that yarn weren’t true.’

  ‘It’s all nonsense, I tell you,’ began Harold angrily, but Mr Boost stopped him with uplifted hand.

  ‘Well, you can’t put up a better tale, anyhow,’ he said. ‘Oh, I don’t give a cuss whether it’s true or not, it’s not my business, and one bourgeois more or less is neither here nor there. I shouldn’t be sorry if it was true, for I don’t mind telling you I’ve had my doubts that you know more about that missing bale of mine than you cared to say. Well, I’ll leave you the paper; I thought that it might do you good to see it.’

  He stumped out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Harold, confronted with this new development, sat for a while as if stunned. Who could have written this horrible libel (for such it was)? In whose interest could it be to drag the whole matter to light again, and to brand him with an infamous character in the process? The introduction of the girl into the case was an entirely new factor. Could the thing have been written by someone who knew of his intimacy with Vere? He racked his brains to think who, of his acquaintances of the Naxos Club, could have thought it worth while to make such a suggestion. It could have been nobody else; the existence of Vere he
had always hidden carefully from the more respectable of his friends.

  For a moment he wondered whether this solution of the mystery were correct, whether Vere really had a father, whether, if so, this man had come to remonstrate with him for his intimacy with her. But no, it could not be. Vere had seen the body, and had said herself that the man was an utter stranger to her, and this before they had quarrelled, and when she would have had nothing to gain by concealing the truth. No, the story was a fabrication, but it was none the less a fresh burden thrust upon him. He realised that April and the Professor must certainly see this loathsome calumny—The Weekly Record, though not circulating upstairs at Westbourne Terrace, was eagerly devoured by Mary in the seclusion of her pantry. And even if she refrained from telling the news, the circulation of the infernal rag was so extensive that some mutual acquaintance was bound to bring it to notice. In which case, how was he to clear himself without divulging the part Vere had played in his life?

  Despairingly he picked up the paper once more, striving to find some glaring error in the story on which he could base his defiance. The infernal cleverness of the thing impressed itself upon him with greater force the more he read it. The process of deduction was merciless in its logic; it might have been the Professor himself who had penned it. The hero dealt with the man’s disappearance almost in the Professor’s own words. The very distinction which the Professor had drawn between ‘natural causes’ in the medical and the logical sense, was repeated and elaborated. The detective in the story had sought for a likely cause for a man of the deceased’s type to force an entrance into the villain’s rooms and had found it. So plausible was his theory, that it was practically certain to be believed, unless Harold himself produced witnesses to prove its falsity. And the only possible witness was Vere, whose mere appearance would damn him for ever in the eyes wherein he most sought justification. And Vere; Vere had given him a glimpse of the lengths to which she was prepared to go in the virulence of her fury. Almost her last words to him had been a threat; what, if she were to perjure herself and testify to the truth of the story?