‘It is a very beautiful house,’ he commented.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think it is a perfect little house. All the rooms are as charming as this.’
‘But £2000 is a preposterous rent.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered, shrugging her shoulders and speaking as one to whom money is of very slight importance. ‘It’s the most perfect house…of its kind…in London, and one must pay for perfection.’
Deeply in love though Harding was, he felt considerable pleasure in this evidence of Miss Clive’s wealth.
He remained talking to her for half an hour and then reluctantly rose to leave.
‘A few friends of mine are coming to dinner on Friday at a quarter past eight at the Carlton. I should be delighted if you would come too.’
She thought for a moment, and then said:
‘On Friday, let me see. What day is this? This is Monday. Oh, yes, I shall be delighted. Thank you very much.’
Then he went away and reflected on the question of which of his friends deserved the privilege of meeting Miss Clive. Clifford Oakleigh should have headed the list.
The thought called to his mind his nearness to King Street. He would go and see Reggie and ascertain if there were any news.
Reggie opened the door and received him with enthusiasm.
‘It’s all right, my dear Harding,’ he said. ‘He’s alive, at any rate.’
Harding mistrusted him.
‘I won’t believe it on your evidence alone.’
‘Here’s the evidence of his own handwriting,’ said Reggie, and he produced from his pocket an envelope containing a plain sheet of notepaper. ‘I found it in the letter-box this morning.’
Harding looked at it curiously.
‘Yes,’ he said, as he examined the envelope, ‘it is his handwriting. But do you know it seems to me to lack a certain amount of vigour. It is not so strong, not so bold as his handwriting used to be. Am I to read the letter?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
This is what he read:
‘Monday.
‘Shall be back tomorrow. Say nothing to anybody.
‘CLIFFORD OAKLEIGH.’
‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Harding, with a sigh of relief. ‘At any rate, he is safe. We know he is alive. But beyond question, his handwriting has altered. I should say he must be ill: it is certainly very feeble, for him. And how did the letter come?’
‘It was dropped in the letter-box. I heard a ring.’
‘You know, Reggie,’ said Harding, thoughtfully, ‘this makes the matter even more mysterious than it was before.’
‘You don’t think,’ answered Reggie, ‘that it is possible that this letter is a forgery. That it was done to prevent my going to the police?’
‘I don’t think so,’ the other replied; ‘a forger would have copied the writing exactly or would have made mistakes here and there. This note is clearly written by our friend, but written under circumstances which are unusual. He has never, to my knowledge, had a day’s illness in his life. I’m afraid he is ill now.’
Reggie might have suggested that his master was recovering from a very serious drinking bout. But he made no such suggestion.
The K.C., with a great weight off his mind, but with a far more astonishing problem on his brain, went out of the house.
At ten o’clock the next morning Reggie heard the sound of a latchkey in the door.
With bated breath he listened and darted into the hall.
The door opened and Clifford Oakleigh entered.
A man in the prime of life, strenuous and active, obviously in the most robust health.
The theory of drunkenness fell to the ground.
He closed the door. He nodded to Reggie.
‘Good-morning.’
‘Good-morning, sir.’ answered the valet, every inch a valet.
‘You got my note, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘By the by, what time did you come in from the Covent Garden Ball on Friday night?’
‘I didn’t go to the ball, sir.’
Sir Clifford looked keenly at him.
‘What did you do? When did you get in?’
‘Soon after ten.’
The eminent physician was on the point of putting a question to him, but he stopped, as though suddenly realising that he knew the answer to the question.
‘Pardell,’ he said, speaking very seriously, ‘I am paying you £500 a year not so much for your services as for your silence. You can never ensure, no matter what price you pay, the silence of a real servant. But a gentleman ought to know how to hold his tongue if you buy him a golden gag.’
‘I thought you were dead, murdered perhaps. I found you lying on the floor,’ stammered Reggie.
‘I don’t know what had happened. I was at my wits’ end.’
Clifford’s black eyes glittered.
‘I told you when I engaged you that you were never to tell anybody what happened in this house.’
‘I am very, very sorry, sir, I only told one person.’
‘The dickens you did! And who was it?’
Nervously Reggie answered:
‘I really thought you were dead. I thought there would be an inquest. And so I told Harding—I beg your pardon, sir, Mr Harding.’
Oakleigh whistled.
‘Well, I tell you what you’ve got to do now. You’ve got to go and tell him that the whole thing was an illusion. No, wait a minute. I’ll do it. I’ll tell him that you’re suffering from a serious nervous ailment, and that I am, out of my old friendship, keeping you here in the hope of effecting a cure. You know, Reggie,’ he added kindly, ‘you’ve led such a devil of a life that such an ailment would be but a very slight punishment for your misdeeds. Yes, if everybody had their rights, old chap, you would be dead.’
‘By the by, sir,’ said Reggie, delighted at the good humour with which his master treated his indiscretion, ‘the young person next door who is employed as a housemaid tells me that she saw you in a hopeless condition being put into a four-wheeler by a woman.’
‘The deuce she does, does she?’ answered Clifford.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter what she says. I don’t want you to say anything to her or to anybody else.’
‘All right, sir.’
‘Now help me off with my coat.’
As Reggie removed it, he noticed that the dress suit was uncrumpled, that the shirt and white waistcoat were entirely fresh; the collar and tie were in perfect condition. These were not the clothes of a man who, in a drunken state, had been bundled into a cab by a woman.
But upon his face was three days’ growth of beard. His cheeks were like the wheel of a musical box. It struck Reggie as an astounding thing that the inventor of ‘Baldo’ should not take the trouble to remove this repulsive growth. Ever since he had known him Clifford Oakleigh had always been exact in his habits.
Why, in Heaven’s name, had he not taken the trouble to remove his surplus fittings?
CHAPTER X
THE MINGEY MYSTERY
‘THE disappearance of Miss Mingey’ occupied a large portion of the papers. Every possible and impossible hypothesis was suggested to account for it. Mr Mingey was interviewed; Mrs Mingey was interviewed; pictures of the Mingey home were reproduced in the press. A verse, not altogether in the best taste, was sung at one of the musical comedy theatres. One enterprising journal offered a prize of a life’s subscription to that journal for the most probable solution sent in by one of its readers on a detachable coupon.
The police also helped the press to elucidate the mystery. Everybody talked about the matter. Some people even went so far as to buy Mingey postcards embellished with the portrait of ‘The latest vanishing lady’.
From the details furnished with regard to the inner life of the Mingey home there were those who maintained that in all probability the unfortunate Sarah, bored to death by her dull, drab surroundings, her funereal father, her entirely uninteresting mother, and
the pseudo-religious atmosphere in which she lived, had committed suicide. Several men, presumably not remarkable for the robustness of their intellect wrote her letters proposing—in the event of her not being dead—that she should become their wives. Some of these letters came from Scotland. One was from an upholsterer in Aberdeen. He stated that his name was MacTavish (which in all probability was only too true): he affirmed that his business was in a flourishing condition, and stated that he had fallen in love with her picture at first sight. He would dearly like to meet her and make her his. At the same time, he protected himself in a postscript wherein he reserved the right of withdrawing his offer in the event of the explanation of her disappearance not being satisfactory to his ‘mither’.
In this way Mingey acquired a certain amount of fame. He was spoken of by the other clerks in the Temple as the father of the vanishing lady.
This was not a subject suitable for chaff, but the melancholy and austere demeanour of Mingey had made him unpopular in the neighbourhood of the Law Courts. The feeling among his brethren was that, whatever had happened to his daughter, her present position could not be anything but an improvement on her life in the Mingey home circle.
Harding, obsessed by his great love, only gave his clerk perfunctory sympathy.
On Wednesday he telephoned to Pembroke Street. In his mind he had only the vaguest idea of what he would say to the lady. But he received a reply, presumably from a servant, to the effect that she was out of town.
‘When would she be back?’ he had asked.
But he received no definite answer.
The situation was intolerable to him. Desperately in love, he naturally felt an intense yearning for the society of the girl. He regarded it as a personal slight that she should have left town suddenly. He spent his entire time in thinking about her. But beyond her own personality he had little scope for reflection. As to her mode of life, or indeed her social status, he knew nothing. She was simply the ideal woman, that was all. And indeed the only question that remained for solution was ‘Would she regard him as the ideal man?’ He knew he was not the ideal man. No reasonable man could possibly maintain that he himself could be the ideal man in the eyes of any reasonable woman. But he devoutly hoped that, with luck and tact, he might behave in such a manner as to present to her imagination a colourable imitation of ideality.
That same evening he dined at the Gridiron with a view to picking up some cheery companion who would accompany him to a theatre or a music-hall.
Greatly to his annoyance, he found that at the long table there was no one who would afford agreeable companionship under the tension from which he suffered. There was Colonel Cazanova, a popular favourite, puffy, adipose and alcoholic, an authority on no subjects except the causes which were sending the Service to the dogs. There was Peplowe-Price, one of the leading non-actors of our day, always eager to explain to an uninterested public the faults in other people’s Hamlets. And the rest were worse.
He had just finished his oysters when he found himself patted on the back.
He looked up.
Beaming down upon him was Clifford Oakleigh. In his surprise he dropped his glass.
Then Clifford sat down by his side. A smile of amusement played about his lips.
‘My dear George, you’re suffering from nerves, eh?’
Harding had no answer ready. He simply stared vaguely at the newcomer.
Then Oakleigh burst out laughing.
‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘you are the limit, the absolute limit! Did you actually think I was dead? I believe you did. Looking at your face now, you are expressing that surprise which one would expect to see on the face of a man who saw, or thought he saw, a ghost. I suppose, really, you barristers can believe in any old thing. When a man has schooled himself to believe in the law, any other feat of credulity is child’s play, isn’t it?’
‘My dear Clifford,’ protested Harding.
But the other would not allow him to proceed.
‘Say no more about it,’ he said. ‘I admit that you have insulted me grossly. I can imagine no more terrible insult than to assume a man is dead, except perhaps to meet the man and behave as though he was a ghost. You are an eminent K.C. Good heavens, old chap, to think that on the evidence of Reggie Pardell you came to the conclusion that I was dead! I can forgive a man anything except the presumption that I am dead. Great Scott! if the idea got about among my patients it would do me a deuce of a lot of harm. There is one thing a doctor can’t be. and that is dead.’
Harding justified himself. He described his interview with Reggie. He described it with great accuracy and the other listened keenly. At the conclusion he said:
‘There it is. I have told you exactly what occurred. Is Reggie mad, or is he not? How much of this is true and how much is invention?’
‘In the first place,’ Clifford replied, ‘I am not dead. That is clear. Mind you, I can’t prove that I’m not dead. And I won’t labour the point. You must form your own conclusion. My own idea is that I am not dead. But, after all, we know so little about death that it is quite probable that when we are absolutely defunct we shall not be able to grasp the fact. Perhaps that is the explanation of ghosts. It may well be that it will take some time before people become convinced that they are extinct. As a rule, ghosts are more or less contemporary. At most, they have only been dead two or three hundred years. You never hear nowadays of the appearance of a ghost dating from the time of the Caesars. I expect that a man of ordinary intelligence after ten years of decease takes the knock—if I may use the expression—with regard to so serious a matter. He gives up trying to behave as a living man.’
Harding was nonplussed at his levity.
‘Don’t you worry,’ he said, ‘you are not a ghost. If you were a ghost, it would be almost impossible to account for the disappearance of the steak which you are eating with such intense rapidity. A ghost never eats, or, indeed, does anything useful. Joking apart,’ he added, ‘was all this an hallucination of Reggie’s? Mind you, he swore to me that he had seen you lying dead on the floor in King Street. He told me that he had touched your face and it was cold. What are you going to do about it?’
‘Do about it? Why, nothing! What can one do about it? Is it worth while doing anything about it?’
‘Perhaps not, but what about Reggie? If he gets into the habit of making these statements, he will be a deuce of a nuisance, won’t he? Anyhow, if he is liable to see corpses on carpets, there must be something awfully wrong with him. You, a physician, an expert in nerve diseases, must grasp the fact that his is a very bad case.’
Slowly the great physician answered him.
‘Do you know that a man who is only insane on one subject is the exception? Most of us are mad on half a dozen subjects. Some of us are so devoid of all sense of proportion that we are mad about practically everything. Of course, Reggie’s brain is not normal. He has led a devil of a life, a much worse life than mine. I have been able to stand it. He has not. But mind you, I don’t think he will come to any evil owing to his trouble. It doesn’t matter what he says about me. I shan’t bring an action for slander against him. And on all other points he is completely sane. But with regard to me he can’t tell the truth; his vision is distorted; he sees everything wrong. When you meet him again, old chap, it will be better not to mention the matter, because he has probably forgotten all about it by now. Of course, he has forgotten all about it by now.’
He gave a low chuckle.
‘Really, one ought not to laugh at this sort of thing, but I suppose one gets case-hardened. And when all is said and done, this is not serious at all. Anyhow, I am looking after him properly.’
‘And he is actually your valet?’ asked Harding.
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes, that’s true. He is perfectly safe under my care.’
‘And you pay him £500 a year?’
‘Yes, poor chap.’
‘You’re a devilish good fellow, Clifford.’
> ‘Oh, yes I am,’ remarked the other, ‘and I’m not only a devilish good fellow but I’m having a devilish good time. I doubt whether anybody in the world is having such a devilish good time as I am.’
‘If you are not doing anything tonight, Clifford, what do you say to going to a music-hall?’
The physician shook his head.
‘My dear sir, I’m having such a devilish good time that I’m not going to waste a minute on a music-hall. I am going home.’
‘Stop. This is a singularly curious thing about my clerk’s daughter, Sarah Mingey, that I sent to you.’
Clifford thought for a moment.
‘Yes, yes. There was nothing much the matter with her. I had no trouble with her. I cured her at once.’
‘You cured her so thoroughly that she’s vanished off the face of the earth.’
Clifford laughed.
‘That is, indeed, a complete cure for all mortal ills.’
CHAPTER XI
‘PURE BROMPTON ROAD’
‘BEFORE you go home,’ said Harding, in his voice a trace of nervousness, ‘I want to ask you one or two questions.’
Graciously Clifford nodded permission.
‘I met an awfully charming woman on Saturday night at the Savoy. I dined with old Mudge. The girl was a Miss Clive. It seems that she has taken your house in Pembroke Street. By the by, why did you keep the fact that you had a house in Pembroke Street and, for the matter of that, a house in King Street, a complete secret from your friends?’
The other’s eyes twinkled.
‘I say, George, did you ever hear the story of the man who made a large sum of money…by attending to his own business?’
Harding affected not to grasp the personal allusion.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have heard the story, but I never believed a word of it. Now about Miss Clive?’
Clifford looked at him sideways.
‘So you take an interest, eh?’
‘I don’t take…an interest.’
‘Then you are only asking out of curiosity?’
‘Out of interested curiosity,’ he replied.
Mischievously the other spoke.
The Mayfair Mystery Page 5
