The Mayfair Mystery

by Frank Richardson

  Of course, there were many cases in which Sir Clifford did not effect cures. A patient would often come, attended by his or her medical attendant, and after the doctor had heard a complete description of the matter in hand he would state frankly that he could not deal with it. He, unlike the great majority of medical men, did not take a fee for acknowledging his inability to produce beneficial results.

  This course of conduct caused many practitioners in the Harley Street and Cavendish Square district to fall foul of him. The major portion of their incomes was due to cases which they left in statu quo.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ they exclaimed, ‘if a man is going to state baldly that he can do no good to a patient (and not to make a charge for same) what, in the name of the Pharmacopoeia, is the profession coming to?’ They took umbrage also at the fact that he only worked three days a week. They called him a charlatan. ‘If a man could work three days a week,’ said they, ‘he could work six.’ That was their point of view. Yet he was working too much as it was. His success was a severe blow to almost all other medical men. Everybody wanted to see Clifford Oakleigh. No one wanted to see any other doctor.

  ‘Surely,’ said sensible people—and even in the twentieth century in Merrie England there exists a large number of sensible people—‘it is infinitely better to pay a hundred guineas and be cured in half an hour than to pay Heaven knows how many sums of two guineas to consume the devil knows what preparations and to be sent the dickens knows where to drink waters for the term of one’s natural life without any appreciable difference in one’s health.’

  Anything, however, that the medical profession could allege against him was seized with avidity.

  Had the editor of the Stethoscope thought that an attack on him for his three-days-a-week system would compel him to work longer hours, he certainly would not have penned it. But the article was written with intense skill. Between the lines could be read a sinister innuendo. So delicately was the insinuation conveyed that an action for libel would not have succeeded. But everybody who read this number of the Stethoscope with intelligence—and nobody paid sixpence for the Stethoscope who had not the ability to read it with intelligence—understood the point of the attack. Clifford Oakleigh was a morpho-maniac. That was the innuendo. When under the influence of the drug, he acquired marvellous hypnotic powers. But after three days there came a collapse.

  Still, during the three days that he worked, and sometimes these three days included a Sunday, he worked with astonishing vigour…for astonishing fees.

  A man writing from an address in the East-end, under the name of J. H. Nelson, had procured an appointment. He had arrived ragged and unkempt. He had said to Reggie that with the greatest difficulty, assisted by kind friends, he had scraped together the sum of two guineas. Reggie had looked him up and down.

  ‘Nelson,’ said he, ‘is a well-known name. It’s a name well known and respected. It is a terrible thing to think that a man of that name should be hard up for a couple of guineas. I’m quite sure that Sir Clifford Oakleigh would willingly treat a man called Nelson for nothing.’

  Mr Nelson flung his arms wide in delight.

  ‘You tink so, mein friend?’ he queried eagerly.

  ‘You tink dat he will cure me of cancer for noding?’

  ‘Oh, no, not you,’ answered Reggie, ‘you are Mr Hans Nasalheimer of Park Lane. I don’t think he will cure you of anything…for anything. Out you go.’

  At last, the stress of his labours began to tell on Clifford.

  At six o’clock one evening he said that he could see no more patients that day, no matter who was waiting: no matter though appointments had been arranged up till midnight. Telegrams must be despatched: telephone messages must be sent.

  But this arbitrary decision of his to stop work caused a great deal of inconvenience. If a man had expected to be cured of cancer at half-past ten, it drove him well-nigh mad to be told at six-thirty that his appointment was postponed sine die.

  One day, when he had suddenly applied the closure at seven o’clock, he said to Reggie:

  ‘Do you know, I’m sick of the whole thing. I’m absolutely tired. There is no amusement in it.’

  ‘Amusement?’ queried Reggie.

  ‘In all genuine amusements,’ he replied, ‘there must be something of the gambling element. The only charm in loving a woman is in knowing that she may be unfaithful to you. You can’t imagine how tedious it is, Reggie, for me to see a stream of complete strangers: unsympathetic people, tedious people, impossible people. And to cure them. There’s no trouble about it. I either cure them or I don’t undertake their cases. But I am beginning to hate them all. Most of them are not worth curing.’

  But Reggie protested.

  ‘It must be a marvellous thing to exercise this power. To know that you can do what no one has ever been able to do.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he replied wearily, ‘that is, it isn’t…now. When I cured my first patient it was the most marvellous sensation in the world. To discover the North Pole can be nothing compared with the discovery of the cure for cancer. The North Pole was there all the time. We have always known that it was there. But we didn’t know whether or not there was a cure for cancer. Now, the whole thing is so commonplace, so stale, so flat, so unprofitable.’

  ‘Unprofitable?’ interposed the other.

  ‘My dear chap, I don’t require money. I’ve got all the money I want. What I want is sensation.’ Here a sudden smile played about his lips. ‘I am getting almost all the sensations I need.’

  At that moment, the door opened and his secretary entered with a lengthy telegram.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry me now,’ said Clifford.

  ‘But this is very important, sir, very important indeed.’

  He took the telegram and glanced at it.

  Then he gave a whistle.

  ‘The Emperor Augustus has summoned me to Badschwerin at once. It seems he is in a very bad way.’

  ‘Well, that’s a sensation, isn’t it?’ said Reggie, ‘that’s a new sensation, isn’t it? To go to Badschwerin to cure an emperor?’

  Dropping the telegraph-form to the ground he answered:

  ‘Yes, it would be a new sensation…to go. But…I’m not going.’

  CHAPTER XXIV

  UNPOPULARITY

  THE announcement that Clifford Oakleigh had refused to go to Badschwerin and attend the Emperor produced a very bad impression. Every man’s tongue was against him; every man’s pen commented adversely on his conduct.

  Here was a physician of intense affluence to whom an Emperor had turned for succour. It might well be that even a great European monarch would not offer him terms which would compensate him for the loss of his London practice during such few days as he would be compelled to absent himself from England. True, we have pleaded guilty to being a nation of shopkeepers, but even a shopkeeper should be a patriot. It is not necessary that the shopkeeper should remain eternally at home. Where indeed would the insular shopkeeper be without commercial travellers?

  The Emperor Augustus was in sore straits. The brilliant physicians of his capital, men who had for years taken the lead in medical science, were powerless to deal with his case. It was a national compliment to us that he should have asked an Englishman to come to his rescue. Should he, a notoriously hostile potentate, be cured by the skill of an Englishman, that Englishman’s skill would probably form a potent factor in the direction of peace.

  To everybody it was incredible that Clifford Oakleigh should decline so brilliant an offer. Could it be, urged some, that he had so little confidence in his own powers that he hesitated to face the practitioners of Badschwerin? Might it not be that he was only a charlatan after all, and that he dreaded the fierce light which the most eminent medical men in Europe would throw on his treatment of a Crowned Head?

  There is for the public no greater pleasure than to place a man on a pinnacle for one day and then to drag him into the gutter the next. Such a procedure gives them two immense
sensations. To discover a god is a delightful emotion, but to find that he has feet of clay is a pleasure that is infinitely more acute. In this case the pleasure that the public took in attacking Clifford Oakleigh was unbounded. Everybody felt that he was behaving in an unpatriotic manner. Either he was…well, almost a traitor, or he was a quack. Were it in his power to save the life of the Emperor, England would have a sort of moral lien upon that Sovereign’s good-will. If an Englishman saved his life, surely, surely he would not devote that life to the subjugation of England?

  To all questions there are, as a rule, two sides. But as to Clifford Oakleigh’s conduct in this matter there was but one opinion. Everybody expressed opinions that were firmly anti-Oakleigh. Even Harding, when approached by friends, failed to invent any satisfactory explanation of the physician’s conduct. The matter worried him hideously. The only thing to do would be to interview the man himself. Therefore he went round one afternoon about five o’clock to Harley Street.

  The pompous butler informed him that Sir Clifford Oakleigh was out of town.

  Harding moved aggressively into the hall.

  ‘Look here, Odgers,’ he said, ‘I want to know where Sir Clifford Oakleigh is.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘I want to see him on a matter of the greatest possible importance.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How can I communicate with him?’

  ‘I can’t say, sir.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Good Heavens!’ exclaimed Harding, losing his patience, ‘do you mean to say that you don’t know?…or do you mean to say that your instructions are not to tell?’

  Stolidly the butler replied:

  ‘I don’t know when he will return, sir…I think tomorrow.’

  ‘You think tomorrow, do you?’

  As though weighing his words, Odgers answered:

  ‘I don’t think, sir, I have no reason for thinking, no definite reason for thinking, but judging from…well, judging generally, if one may say so, sir, I think he will come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Are there appointments for tomorrow?’

  ‘I think not, sir. The first appointment that I know of is for eight o’clock in the morning…the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Then he will be coming back some time tomorrow night?’

  ‘Some time tomorrow, sir, I’ve no doubt.’

  Before the stolid, treble-chinned face of the adipose butler Harding stood motionless for a second or two. He looked curiously at the deep-set black eyes, honest in spite of their smallness. He felt convinced that Odgers was an entirely faithful servant to his master. Though Odgers knew well that Harding and Oakleigh were great friends, Odgers would be firmly pro-Oakleigh in all matters. Harding could go to the deuce for all he cared.

  The K.C. tried a different tack. He became confidential.

  ‘Look here, Odgers,’ he said, ‘I am particularly anxious to see your master. I think he is making a very, very grave mistake. Of course you’ve heard of the fuss that all the papers are making about his refusal to attend the Emperor.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ continued Harding, ‘I’m sure that he is very ill advised. If it ever became known that he is…out of town…for purposes of his own when he might perform a great national service, it is quite on the cards that he may have his windows broken.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You don’t think by any chance that he is at King Street, do you?’

  The question came quickly, suddenly, craftily. He sprang upon Odgers his knowledge of that mysterious house. He had no conception whether or not Odgers knew of its existence. The stolid, muffin-like face of the butler was illegible. Harding could read neither knowledge nor ignorance. The eyes blinked: that was all.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’ he inquired.

  The barrister repeated the question.

  ‘Don’t know, I’m sure, sir. I understood he was going out of town.’

  He would try King Street. He jumped into a hansom and drove there.

  The door was opened by Reggie.

  ‘Clifford in?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose I can come in and have a smoke?’

  ‘Right you are, certainly.’

  The two passed into the study.

  ‘Have a cigar?’ asked Reggie, producing his case, ‘I’ve got some excellent Cortina Moras.’

  But somehow the idea of smoking even a bogus valet’s cigars did not appeal to Harding.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ he answered, ‘but I’m smoking cigarettes these days.’ And he lighted a Mimbroso, a new brand of Turkish cigarette which had just been placed upon the market, and which would be excellent for three months and would then become a mixture of hay-seed and horsehair…after the ordinary manner of the fashionable cigarette.

  ‘Look here, Reggie,’ he said, settling himself on a sofa, ‘what has really happened to Clifford?’

  The other did not look him in the face. He watched the smoke come from his cigar.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Why, about the Emperor.’

  ‘He has declined to attend the Emperor, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, but why? Why, in the name of common sense?’

  ‘I don’t know at all,’ replied Reggie. ‘How should I know? Supposing he made a failure of the Emperor’s case, what then? You see he has everything to lose and not very much to gain.’

  ‘Not very much to gain!’ exclaimed Harding.

  ‘Why, what can he gain?’

  ‘Well, he can gain a peerage. It’s all over the town that the highest influence has been brought to bear on him to go.’

  Reggie closed his eyes.

  ‘It has, has it?’

  ‘Why, man, don’t you see what the position is? Here is Clifford, who has discovered a cure for cancer. The Emperor Augustus is notoriously antipathetic to this country. The Emperor Augustus is dying of cancer. An English physician has it in his power—this fact has been certified by the Faculty—to effect a cure. The English physician declines to go to Badschwerin to see His Majesty. What is the inference? The inference is that it is the desire of the British Government that the Emperor should not survive. You know that the wildest statements are in circulation. There are people who maintain that he has been offered a peerage to cure the Emperor Augustus. There are others who state that if he declines to go to Badschwerin he will be made a peer.’

  Reggie nodded.

  ‘I read the papers and I read between the lines.’

  ‘Damn it!’ cried Harding, ‘I’ve not come here to find out any views that you may have gathered from the papers. I’ve come here to find out the truth from you.’

  He rose and walked up to the other.

  ‘I want to find out from you where Clifford actually is.’

  Slowly the other spoke:

  ‘My dear chap, if I knew where he was, I shouldn’t tell you. I’m perfectly frank with you about the matter. I am Sir Clifford Oakleigh’s servant. I am also Oakleigh’s friend. I am a servant first and a friend after.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not giving you the chronological order, but I’m trying to give you some idea of my dual position and the order in which I am influenced.’

  ‘Confound your dual position! Can’t you talk sense?’

  ‘My dear George, I am talking sense. I should be talking nonsense if I pretended to understand why he declined to attend on the Emperor. Clifford is a big man, a deuced big man, let me tell you. They say that no man is a hero to his own valet. I am not really a valet, and it may well be that he is not really a hero. But he is a big man. In the twentieth century we don’t have heroes, but we have big men: few of them, I admit, but when one does come across a big man one regards him as a deuced sight better than a hero.’

  Then he burst out laughing, and his laughter was inexplicable to Harding.

  ‘You must excuse me, old chap, if I’m loyal to my master.’


  Perfunctorily the K.C. replied, ‘Oh, yes, yes.’

  ‘Don’t imagine, George, that I’m underrating your abilities when I say that I don’t think Clifford really requires anybody’s advice with regard to the conduct of his own affairs.’

  ‘The devil you don’t,’ said Harding, as he moved to the door. ‘Well, I wash my hands of the whole matter.’

  Reggie smiled at him.

  ‘My dear George, your hands have never been near the matter at all.’

  Harding banged the door.

  CHAPTER XXV

  ‘I LOVE YOU’

  FINDING himself so near Pembroke Street he decided to call on Miriam.

  As he walked along the street, his resentment burned deep against Clifford. It seemed to him intolerable that his oldest friend should have committed so grave an error without consulting him. True, he was no medical man, but he nattered himself—or rather he did not flatter himself; he only did himself justice—in thinking that he was a man of the world. He could have given Clifford shrewd counsel, and the shrewd counsel which he would have given him seemed so obvious, that the doctor’s refusal to attend the Emperor struck him almost as an act of lunacy.

  Mentally he attempted to wipe Clifford out of his life. Though the two had for years been inseparable, each devoted to the other, it seemed to him that his old Eton pal had committed an action in its egregious folly fatal to friendship. Automatically he would have strained every nerve on behalf of his friend had the necessity arisen.

  But, somehow, as he stood in front of the door of 69 Pembroke Street, the question of whether the landlord of that house cured the Emperor of cancer mattered little in comparison with the question of whether or not Miriam Clive was in.

  She was.

  Lying on a sofa in her boudoir, a delicate vision of pink and white, caressingly begowned, she received him, and to his annoyance she immediately embarked upon the topic of the moment.

  ‘What do you think of Clifford Oakleigh? Oh, I beg your pardon, will you have some tea? William, some tea, please.’