‘What reason have you for suspecting that Mr Atherton has seen this individual of whom you speak,—has he told you so?’
‘Practically,—yes.’
‘I know Atherton well. In his not infrequent moments of excitement he is apt to use strong language, but it goes no further. I believe him to be the last person in the world to do anyone an intentional injustice, under any circumstances whatever. If I go to him, armed with credentials from you, when he understands the real gravity of the situation,—which it will be my business to make him do, I believe that, spontaneously, of his own accord, he will tell me as much about this mysterious individual as he knows himself.’
‘Then go to him at once.’
‘Good. I will. The result I will communicate to you.’
I rose from my seat. As I did so, someone rushed into the outer office with a din and a clatter. Andrews’ voice, and another, became distinctly audible,—Andrews’ apparently raised in vigorous expostulation. Raised, seemingly, in vain, for presently the door of my own particular sanctum was thrown open with a crash, and Mr Sydney Atherton himself came dashing in,—evidently conspicuously under the influence of one of those not infrequent ‘moments of excitement’ of which I had just been speaking.
CHAPTER XXXV
A BRINGER OF TIDINGS
ATHERTON DID NOT WAIT to see who might or might not be present, but, without even pausing to take breath, he broke into full cry on the instant,—as is occasionally his wont.
‘Champnell!—Thank goodness I’ve found you in!—I want you!—At once!—Don’t stop to talk, but stick your hat on, and put your best foot forward,—I’ll tell you all about it in the cab.’
I endeavoured to call his attention to Mr Lessingham’s presence,—but without success.
‘My dear fellow—’
When I had got as far as that he cut me short.
‘Don’t “dear fellow” me!—None of your jabber! And none of your excuses either! I don’t care if you’ve got an engagement with the Queen, you’ll have to chuck it. Where’s that dashed hat of yours,—or are you going without it? Don’t I tell you that every second cut to waste may mean the difference between life and death?—Do you want me to drag you down to the cab by the hair of your head?’
‘I will try not to constrain you to quite so drastic a resource,—and I was coming to you at once in any case. I only want to call your attention to the fact that I am not alone.—Here is Mr Lessingham.’
In his harum-scarum haste Mr Lessingham had gone unnoticed. Now that his observation was particularly directed to him, Atherton started, turned, and glared at my latest client in a fashion which was scarcely flattering.
‘Oh!—It’s you, is it?—What the deuce are you doing here?’
Before Lessingham could reply to this most unceremonious query, Atherton, rushing forward, gripped him by the arm.
‘Have you seen her?’
Lessingham, not unnaturally nonplussed by the other’s curious conduct, stared at him in unmistakable amazement.
‘Have I seen whom?’
‘Marjorie Lindon!’
‘Marjorie Lindon?’
Lessingham paused. He was evidently asking himself what the inquiry meant.
‘I have not seen Miss Lindon since last night. Why do you ask?’
‘Then Heaven help us!—As I’m a living man I believe he, she, or it has got her!’
His words were incomprehensible enough to stand in copious need of explanation,—as Mr Lessingham plainly thought.
‘What is it that you mean, sir?’
‘What I say,—I believe that that Oriental friend of yours has got her in her clutches,—if it is a “her;” goodness alone knows what the infernal conjurer’s real sex may be.’
‘Atherton!—Explain yourself!’
On a sudden Lessingham’s tones rang out like a trumpet call.
‘If damage comes to her I shall be fit to cut my throat,—and yours!’
Mr Lessingham’s next proceeding surprised me,—I imagine it surprised Atherton still more. Springing at Sydney like a tiger, he caught him by the throat.
‘You—you hound! Of what wretched folly have you been guilty? If so much as a hair of her head is injured you shall repay it me ten thousandfold!—You mischief-making, intermeddling, jealous fool!’
He shook Sydney as if he had been a rat,—then flung him from him headlong on to the floor. It reminded me of nothing so much as Othello’s treatment of Iago. Never had I seen a man so transformed by rage. Lessingham seemed to have positively increased in stature. As he stood glowering down at the prostrate Sydney, he might have stood for a materialistic conception of human retribution.
Sydney, I take it, was rather surprised than hurt. For a moment or two he lay quite still. Then, lifting his head, he looked up his assailant. Then, raising himself to his feet, he shook himself,—as if with a view of learning if all his bones were whole. Putting his hands up to his neck, he rubbed it, gently. And he grinned.
‘By God, Lessingham, there’s more in you than I thought. After all, you are a man. There’s some holding power in those wrists of yours,—they’ve nearly broken my neck. When this business is finished, I should like to put on the gloves with you, and fight it out. You’re clean wasted upon politics,—Damn it, man, give me your hand!’
Mr Lessingham did not give him his hand. Atherton took it,—and gave it a hearty shake with both of his.
If the first paroxysm of his passion had passed, Lessingham was still sufficiently stern.
‘Be so good as not to trifle, Mr Atherton. If what you say is correct, and the wretch to whom you allude really has Miss Lindon at her mercy, then the woman I love—and whom you also pretend to love!—stands in imminent peril not only of a ghastly death, but of what is infinitely worse than death.’
‘The deuce she does!’ Atherton wheeled round towards me. ‘Champnell, haven’t you got that dashed hat of yours yet? Don’t stand there like a tailor’s dummy, keeping me on tenter-hooks,—move yourself! I’ll tell you all about it in the cab.—And, Lessingham, if you’ll come with us I’ll tell you too.’
CHAPTER XXXVI
WHAT THE TIDINGS WERE
THREE IN A HANSOM CAB is not, under all circumstances, the most comfortable method of conveyance,—when one of the trio happens to be Sydney Atherton in one of his ‘moments of excitement’ it is distinctly the opposite; as, on that occasion, Mr Lessingham and I both quickly found. Sometimes he sat on my knees, sometimes on Lessingham’s, and frequently, when he unexpectedly stood up, and all but precipitated himself on to the horse’s back, on nobody’s. In the eagerness of his gesticulations, first he knocked off my hat, then he knocked off Lessingham’s, then his own, then all three together,—once, his own hat rolling into the mud, he sprang into the road, without previously going through the empty form of advising the driver of his intention, to pick it up. When he turned to speak to Lessingham, he thrust his elbow into my eye; and when he turned to speak to me, he thrust it into Lessingham’s. Never, for one solitary instant, was he at rest, or either of us at ease. The wonder is that the gymnastics in which he incessantly indulged did not sufficiently attract public notice to induce a policeman to put at least a momentary period to our progress. Had speed not been of primary importance I should have insisted on the transference of the expedition to the somewhat wider limits of a four-wheeler.
His elucidation of the causes of his agitation was apparently more comprehensible to Lessingham than it was to me. I had to piece this and that together under considerable difficulties. By degrees I did arrive at something like a clear notion of what had actually taken place.
He commenced by addressing Lessingham,—and thrusting his elbow into my eye.
‘Did Marjorie tell you about the fellow she found in the street?’ Up went his arm to force the trap-door open overhead,—and off went my hat. ‘Now then,
William Henry!—let her go!—if you kill the horse I’ll buy you another!’
We were already going much faster than, legally, we ought to have done,—but that, seemingly to him was not a matter of the slightest consequence. Lessingham replied to his inquiry.
‘She did not.’
‘You know the fellow I saw coming out of your drawing-room window?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, Marjorie found him the morning after in front of her breakfast-room window—in the middle of the street. Seems he had been wandering about all night, unclothed,—in the rain and the mud, and all the rest of it,—in a condition of hypnotic trance.’
‘Who is the—gentleman you are alluding to?’
‘Says his name’s Holt, Robert Holt.’
‘Holt?—Is he an Englishman?’
‘Very much so,—City quill-driver out of a shop,—stony broke absolutely! Got the chuck from the casual ward,—wouldn’t let him in,—house full, and that sort of thing,—poor devil! Pretty passes you politicians bring men to!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of what?’
‘Are you sure that this man, Robert Holt, is the same person whom, as you put it, you saw coming out of my drawing-room window?’
‘Sure!—Of course I’m sure!—Think I didn’t recognise him?—Besides, there was the man’s own tale,—owned to it himself,—besides all the rest, which sent one rushing Fulham way.’
‘You must remember, Mr Atherton, that I am wholly in the dark as to what has happened. What has the man, Holt, to do with the errand on which we are bound?’
‘Am I not coming to it? If you would let me tell the tale in my own way I should get there in less than no time, but you will keep on cutting in,—how the deuce do you suppose Champnell is to make head or tail of the business if you will persist in interrupting?—Marjorie took the beggar in,—he told his tale to her,—she sent for me—that was just now; caught me on the steps after I had been lunching with Dora Grayling. Holt re-dished his yarn—I smelt a rat—saw that a connection possibly existed between the thief who’d been playing confounded conjuring tricks off on to me and this interesting party down Fulham way—’
‘What party down Fulham way?’
‘This friend of Holt’s—am I not telling you? There you are, you see,—won’t let me finish! When Holt slipped through the window—which is the most sensible thing he seems to have done; if I’d been in his shoes I’d have slipped through forty windows!—dusky coloured charmer caught him on the hop,—doctored him—sent him out to commit burglary by deputy. I said to Holt, “Show us this agreeable little crib, young man.” Holt was game—then Marjorie chipped in—she wanted to go and see it too. I said, “You’ll be sorry if you do,”—that settled it! After that she’d have gone if she’d died,—I never did have a persuasive way with women. So off we toddled, Marjorie, Holt, and I, in a growler,—spotted the crib in less than no time,—invited ourselves in by the kitchen window—house seemed empty. Presently Holt became hypnotised before my eyes,—the best established case of hypnotism by suggestion I ever yet encountered—started off on a pilgrimage of one. Like an idiot I followed, leaving Marjorie to wait for me—’
‘Alone?’
‘Alone!—Am I not telling you?—Great Scott, Lessingham, in the House of Commons they must be hazy to think you smart! I said, “I’ll send the first sane soul I meet to keep you company.” As luck would have it, I never met one,—only kids, and a baker, who wouldn’t leave his cart, or take it with him either. I’d covered pretty nearly two miles before I came across a peeler,—and when I did the man was cracked—and he thought me mad, or drunk, or both. By the time I’d got myself within nodding distance of being run in for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, without inducing him to move a single one of his twenty-four-inch feet, Holt was out of sight. So, since all my pains in his direction were clean thrown away, there was nothing left for me but to scurry back to Marjorie,—so I scurried, and I found the house empty, no one there, and Marjorie gone.’
‘But, I don’t quite follow—’
Atherton impetuously declined to allow Mr Lessingham to conclude.
‘Of course you don’t quite follow, and you’ll follow still less if you will keep getting in front. I went upstairs and downstairs, inside and out—shouted myself hoarse as a crow—nothing was to be seen of Marjorie,—or heard; until, as I was coming down the stairs for about the five-and-fiftieth time, I stepped on something hard which was lying in the passage. I picked it up,—it was a ring; this ring. Its shape is not just what it was,—I’m not as light as gossamer, especially when I come jumping downstairs six at a time,—but what’s left of it is here.’
Sydney held something in front of him. Mr Lessingham wriggled to one side to enable him to see. Then he made a snatch at it.
‘It’s mine!’
Sydney dodged it out of his reach.
‘What do you mean, it’s yours?’
‘It’s the ring I gave Marjorie for an engagement ring. Give it me, you hound!—unless you wish me to do you violence in the cab.’
With complete disregard of the limitations of space,—or of my comfort,—Lessingham thrust him vigorously aside. Then gripping Sydney by the wrist, he seized the gaud,—Sydney yielding it just in time to save himself from being precipitated into the street. Ravished of his treasure, Sydney turned and surveyed the ravisher with something like a glance of admiration.
‘Hang me, Lessingham, if I don’t believe there is some warm blood in those fishlike veins of yours. Please the piper, I’ll live to fight you after all,—with the bare ones, sir, as a gentleman should do.’
Lessingham seemed to pay no attention to him whatever. He was surveying the ring, which Sydney had trampled out of shape, with looks of the deepest concern.
‘Marjorie’s ring!—The one I gave her! Something serious must have happened to her before she would have dropped my ring, and left it lying where it fell.’
Atherton went on.
‘That’s it!—What has happened to her!—I’ll be dashed if I know!—When it was clear that there she wasn’t, I tore off to find out where she was. Came across old Lindon,—he knew nothing;—I rather fancy I startled him in the middle of Pall Mall, when I left he stared after me like one possessed, and his hat was lying in the gutter. Went home,—she wasn’t there. Asked Dora Grayling,—she’d seen nothing of her. No one had seen anything of her,—she had vanished into air. Then I said to myself, “You’re a first-class idiot, on my honour! While you’re looking for her, like a lost sheep, the betting is that the girl’s in Holt’s friend’s house the whole jolly time. When you were there, the chances are that she’d just stepped out for a stroll, and that now she’s back again, and wondering where on earth you’ve gone!” So I made up my mind that I’d fly back and see,—because the idea of her standing on the front doorstep looking for me, while I was going off my nut looking for her, commended itself to what I call my sense of humour; and on my way it struck me that it would be the part of wisdom to pick up Champnell, because if there is a man who can be backed to find a needle in any amount of hay-stacks it is the great Augustus.—That horse has moved itself after all, because here we are. Now, cabman, don’t go driving further on,—you’ll have to put a girdle round the earth if you do; because you’ll have to reach this point again before you get your fare.—This is the magician’s house!’
CHAPTER XXXVII
WHAT WAS HIDDEN UNDER THE FLOOR
THE CAB PULLED UP in front of a tumbledown cheap ‘villa’ in an unfinished cheap neighbourhood,—the whole place a living monument of the defeat of the speculative builder.
Atherton leaped out on to the grass-grown rubble which was meant for a footpath.
‘I don’t see Marjorie looking for me on the doorstep.’
Nor did I,—I saw nothing but what appeared to be an unoccupied ramshackle brick ab
omination. Suddenly Sydney gave an exclamation.
‘Hullo!—The front door’s closed!’
I was hard at his heels.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, when I went I left the front door open. It looks as if I’ve made an idiot of myself after all, and Marjorie’s returned,—let’s hope to goodness that I have.’
He knocked. While we waited for a response I questioned him.
‘Why did you leave the door open when you went?’
‘I hardly know,—I imagine that it was with some dim idea of Marjorie’s being able to get in if she returned while I was absent,—but the truth is I was in such a condition of helter skelter that I am not prepared to swear that I had any reasonable reason.’
‘I suppose there is no doubt that you did leave it open?’
‘Absolutely none,—on that I’ll stake my life.’
‘Was it open when you returned from your pursuit of Holt?’
‘Wide open,—I walked straight in expecting to find her waiting for me in the front room,—I was struck all of a heap when I found she wasn’t there.’
‘Were there any signs of a struggle?’
‘None,—there were no signs of anything. Everything was just as I had left it, with the exception of the ring which I trod on in the passage, and which Lessingham has.’
‘If Miss Lindon has returned, it does not look as if she were in the house at present.’
It did not,—unless silence had such meaning. Atherton had knocked loudly three times without succeeding in attracting the slightest notice from within.
‘It strikes me that this is another case of seeking admission through that hospitable window at the back.’
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