To his surprise the maid returned with the information that, though Mr. Smale had not long since risen, he would be pleased to see Mr. Vereker. Ushered into a tidily furnished and scrupulously clean little drawing-room, Vereker was met by Smale attired in his dressing-gown and looking fresh and roseate after a hot bath. There was no touch of uneasiness in his cherubic countenance, no hesitation or awkwardness or hint of annoyance in the manner of his reception of Vereker.
“Good morning,” he began, “I’m afraid you’ve caught me before I’m quite ready to face the world, Vereker, but, if you don’t mind, I’m sure I don’t. How on earth did you dig me out? I didn’t know you were acquainted with my address.”
“I happened to find it out quite by accident,” replied Vereker. “In fact, I saw you enter by sheer chance. As I had something about Bygrave’s affairs on which I wished to consult you, I took the opportunity of calling on you first thing this morning. You must pardon the hour.”
“I’m glad you did, as I’m only staying here temporarily and might be off again to-day. I’m waiting to hear from my people with regard to my going abroad and expect to have an interview with the guv’nor to-day on the subject, an interview to which I do not look forward with pleasure. Having once settled the business, I was going to drop you a line privately and let you know that I was relinquishing my post at Bygrave Hall.”
“We wondered what had become of you,” remarked Vereker quietly. “You left without letting anyone know your destination or plans.”
He shot a keen and challenging glance at Smale; but that glance, which Vereker hoped might prove awkward in its frank provocativeness, was answered by a cheerful, gurgling laugh.
“I bet you did some thinking, Vereker,” he replied gaily. “Put all sorts of sinister constructions on my behaviour, ascribed damning motives to my perfectly innocent actions, eh? Ah, well, you can’t be an amateur detective without acquiring the private inquiry agent’s mind; a cesspool of suspicion. If there’s anything you want to know I’m at your service.”
The tone of Smale’s reply nettled Vereker: it was exasperatingly confident, either from a consciousness of superior astuteness, and an ability to measure swords favourably with his antagonist, or from a knowledge of his innocence. Vereker had been so convinced that Smale’s sudden disappearance from Bygrave Hall had been intimately connected with the matter of the bearer bonds, the receipt for which Mrs. Cathcart had alleged to be a forgery, that he was considerably shaken. Not for a moment, however, did he disclose by facial expression anything that was passing in his mind, and with characteristic resilience he met the situation with reciprocal urbanity.
“Well, Smale, I can assure you my thoughts weren’t too flattering at first, but after pondering the matter I came to the conclusion that I must see you and get some explanation before condemning your action in any way. It’s on this very subject I have come to see you this morning. You can possibly give me the information I’m seeking and set my mind at rest on the whole business forthwith.”
“Only too glad to do so, Vereker, but it’s entirely a personal matter, and I must ask you to treat what I tell you as strictly confidential.”
“Certainly.”
“Well, I suppose you want to know, in the first place, why I left Bygrave Hall without giving any information as to my destination or intentions? I can do so very briefly; but, as I have said, the matter is a private and rather unpleasant one for me. It has nothing whatever to do with Bygrave.”
“You may count on my treating the information confidentially,” interrupted Vereker.
“I’m sure I may,” added Smale, “and I shall not hesitate to let you know the inner truth of what I may call a crisis in my life. I am in serious trouble.”
“Financial, I suppose?” commented Vereker.
“Well, that has been a concomitant of all my earthly worries, and I am so used to it that it troubles me no more now than harness does a horse. No, it is more poignant than a question of the wherewithal to live—it’s a matter of the heart. I’m an unlucky man, Vereker. Let me compare life for a moment to a revolving door. You cannot negotiate a revolving door except by taking a compulsorily uniform step—the ‘everybody’s doing it’ method. A hop, skip and a jump, though admirable in themselves, would end in disaster. Now, though I have never wished to get through this revolving door in any but the orthodox method—the civilized step, if I may put it so—I’ve stumbled and got mixed up badly with the contraption. A year or so ago I was still idealist enough to fall desperately in love with a barmaid. I made all sorts of foolish protestations and promises. If she had been a good woman I should doubtless have carried matters through, but she is an utterly worthless woman. Having acquired a little discretion of late I have not the slightest intention of marrying her. She threatens to sue me. I have tried to buy her off; but no—she’s tired of working, and wants a husband to keep her and supply her with money to have a good time on. She knows I have prospects and she is banking on that fact. Having no desire for combat, for I’m a man of peace, I have come to the conclusion that the best way of meeting the situation is by running swiftly away from it. In the words of an old music hall song, ‘I’ve made up my mind to sail away.’ As a matter of fact, I intend to leave by aeroplane—but that’s a mere question of despatch. You have my story in a nutshell.”
For some moments Vereker sat silent and pensive. Passing his long fingers across his brow he suddenly looked up at Smale to encounter a pair of frank, blue eyes from which he had temporarily removed the distorting lenses of his spectacles. The latter he was meticulously wiping with a silk handkerchief.
“I see the difficult situation in which you are placed, Smale. Having had little experience of the crises which arise in the affairs of the heart I must run mute, so to speak. Naturally, I had no cognizance of this secret trouble of yours, and you will have to pardon me for ascribing your sudden disappearance from Bygrave Hall to a vastly different cause. This was inevitable in the circumstances. Now, I am going to be brutally frank with you as to the reason of my call on you this morning. It is no use my mincing matters. I have here in my pocket the receipt, now in fragments, which Mrs. Cathcart gave Lord Bygrave for the £10,000 worth of bearer bonds and which you found for me in the secret drawer of his bureau. I confronted that lady with the receipt and she angrily proclaimed it an impudent forgery. In a paroxysm of rage she tore it in pieces. She tells me she had an interview with you at Glendon Street which doesn’t quite conform with your story to me that you had only seen her once and that for a few seconds only. Will you be utterly frank, Smale, and tell me what was the nature of that interview and how came Lord Bygrave by this receipt for £10,000 worth of bearer bonds.”
Smale drew himself upright in his chair and his face, now deeply flushed, bore an air of perplexity.
“H’m,” he muttered, “it is difficult for me to know where to begin and how much I ought to divulge of this matter. In the first place my interview at Glendon Street was with regard to a furnished bungalow at Shoreham which Lord Bygrave offered to the lady rent free during her stay in England, and which she refused. As you know, Vereker, I was Lord Bygrave’s confidential secretary, and have felt all along that my lips ought to be sealed with regard to his private affairs. I feel much in the same position as a doctor or priest called upon for evidence. It’s against my principles—I have little conscience left, but still a few principles—to reveal anything about Lord Bygrave’s hidden life, on which I have been honourably paid to keep silence. You see my position?”
“The present circumstances, I think you will agree, Smale, warrant your departing from those principles. It may be a very serious matter for you not to do so.”
“Yes, yes. I have weighed all that up long ago, and don’t feel the least bit afraid of any consequences on account of my reticence, or even prevarication, provided I do my duty to Bygrave.”
“I know, of course, that Bygrave was married many years ago to the present Mrs. Cathcart, if that removes an
obstacle in the way of your revealing to me more of the matter of this receipt,” interrupted Vereker bluntly.
Smale gave an involuntary start at this information.
“The devil you do!” he exclaimed. “I suppose she told you so?”
“She did,” replied Vereker.
“And she says this receipt for the bonds is a forgery?” queried Smale with real or well-feigned surprise.
“She stoutly affirms that it is.”
“Well, I’m damned! Either she’s a consummate economist where truth is concerned or I have been neatly fooled,” replied Smale, his brow deeply furrowed, his eyes staring fixedly at the pattern on the carpet at his feet.
“How did Lord Bygrave come by the receipt?” queried Vereker quietly.
“Although I never saw the correspondence, Bygrave told me she posted it to him on the receipt of the money.”
“Were you aware of the transaction?”
“Certainly. She wrote to him saying that she was practically destitute, and he confided in me with regard to the whole situation. He told me that she was his wife and wanted to divulge that fact in a book of her reminiscences. This he was most eager to avoid, and to put her on her feet and evade any further trouble with her he said he had sent her the money.”
“Then why should she deny that she gave this receipt for the money? She swears that she never received a penny from Lord Bygrave.”
“I suppose because the transaction bordered very dangerously on blackmail. In any case a woman’s pride is enough to urge her to such a denial.”
“Did you handle the money at any time?” asked Vereker somewhat pointedly.
An angry flush lit Smale’s eye for a moment, but swiftly vanished. “Rather a pertinent question, Vereker, prompted no doubt by my sudden departure subsequently from Bygrave Hall. I see the trend of your thoughts: the situation gave me an opportunity for a lively little swindle. To cover it I possibly had a hand in Bygrave’s disappearance—it would be a distinctly opportune disappearance for me, eh? Well, I’m pleased to state that at no time did I handle the bonds. Bygrave simply gave me the receipt and asked me to conceal it in the secret drawer of his bureau. Think for a moment, Vereker; were I dishonourably implicated in this transaction of bonds, should I have been such a fool as to discover the receipt for you? I hardly think I’m a congenital idiot.”
“Quite so, Smale; even as a piece of bluff it would have been unduly risky,” replied Vereker pensively. “The whole affair begins to assume a bewildering complexion.”
“As far as I can judge—though I don’t know the lady—I should say she’s an accomplished liar, much as I dislike saying that of any woman,” added Smale as he turned up the collar of his dressing-gown.
“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” remarked Vereker. “I have met the lady and, if she has designedly deceived me, she must be a great artist. I can hardly believe it of her.”
“She is a most prepossessing woman,” said Smale, closing his eyes. “Beauty is a very dangerous weapon in the armoury of deceit. Believe me, I have been already wounded by the self-same weapon. You must be alertly on guard,” he added warningly.
Vereker sat silent, buried in his own thoughts.
“She may be utterly innocent of the whole affair,” he suggested at length.
“That is quite possible, Vereker,” confirmed Smale, “anything is possible in this tangled business. I wonder what odds a psychological bookmaker would lay on the possibility of her not being innocent at all.”
At this juncture Vereker rose from his chair. “I’m sorry to have troubled you about this affair, Smale, but I hope you understand the reasons which actuated me. I’m trying to get at the truth. You must also pardon the directness of my interrogation; it would have been a waste of time beating about the bush.”
“Don’t apologize, Vereker,” replied Smale pleasantly. “I hope I’ve cleared the air somewhat, though at the moment it looks as if I had begotten a fog. If you want any further information, you had better write to me and address the letter to my home address. I shall not be there, but I shall eventually receive your correspondence. I must keep in touch with the guv’nor. I’m bound to the old home by the chain of pecuniary circumstance—at least until I can get on my feet abroad. Australia is the land of my choice. My only regret is that I can’t offer dear old London a first-class ticket to accompany me.”
He extended a friendly hand which Vereker, in spite of the many doubts in his mind, shook warmly.
“God speed,” he said. “I hope you’ll have good luck.”
A few seconds afterwards he was in the street making his way slowly back to his flat. A look of weariness and dejection was on his lean, handsome face. His hands were clasped behind his back as he walked in his long-striding, leisurely manner.
“Drawn blank again,” he muttered to himself, and added as an afterthought: “At least it appears so at the moment. I must go and see Mrs. Cathcart. She has something to disclose according to her last letter to me. Perhaps she can now shed a further ray of light on my darkness.”
He arrived to find Ricardo washing up dishes and whistling an air from “Rigoletto” very much out of tune. At the sound of his footsteps Ricardo came at once into the studio, tea-towel and dripping plate in his hands.
“Well, Sherlock or Thorndike, or whatever you like to picture yourself, what of the interview? Did you singe the beard of the elusive Smale?”
“He was in, and I had a long chat with him,” returned Vereker.
“Sounds quite mild. With satisfactory results, may I ask?”
“It has left me more bemused than ever, Ricky. Smale revealed himself to-day as cherubic; he was frankness and innocence personified; he was a thing of light. I ventured to his digs with the intention of extorting something amounting to a confession of guilt from him, armed, as I believed I was, with the deadly weapon of a forged receipt. I was nearly certain that he had forged that receipt. Under his self-possession and coolness and readiness to supply any information that I required, I saw the portentous mountains of my suspicions dissolve and slide away over the horizon and leave a smiling plain of trust and good faith. It was simply miraculous!”
“That chap would be worth his weight in gold as a company promoter, barrister or politician,” remarked Ricky, hanging the tea-towel on a peg of Vereker’s easel.
“I’m not sure yet whether he is innocent or not,” said Vereker, thrusting his hands deep in his pockets and gazing blankly out of the window. If he is, it casts a very sinister light on Mrs. Cathcart—she is then a liar and a blackmailer.”
“Which, of course, you don’t believe for a moment?” said Ricardo, smiling.
“True, Ricky, perfectly true. Can you suggest anything?”
“Nothing more helpful than that you should rely, in the good old English fashion, on the spin of a coin.”
Vereker disdained further conversation and still stood gazing out of the window, lost in thought.
“I wonder if I should go and see Mrs. Cathcart again,” he soliloquized aloud.
“For God’s sake do, Vereker. I know you’re dying to,” said Ricardo earnestly. “You remember my solution to the mystery of her last letter asking for an interview with you? You want to go and fall a victim to her charms. You can’t deceive me, you know. Your absence will give me a chance of completing the next chapter of my dramatic story with some sort of verve. If you stay here I’ll compose an ode to death or a lost soul, or—”
“I’m going to have a rest, Ricky,” said Vereker, suddenly interrupting his friend. “My brain is tired and I’m depressed. Wake me about five o’clock, like a good chap, and have a cup of tea ready. I’ll go down to Farnaby and see Mrs. Cathcart to-night.”
“Very good, sir, and what suit of clothes will you wear this evening, sir? Brown shoes or black, white, brown or grey spats, sir? And the tie is most important.”
Vereker’s bedroom door closed quietly on Ricardo’s flippant chatter, and he disappeared without further comme
nt.
“By all the saints!” exclaimed Ricardo with a troubled look, “I’ll write something on this and call it ‘From painter to sleuth: the story of an unhappy metamorphosis.’” He strolled slowly back into the kitchen and gravely resumed his dish washing.
Chapter Seventeen
When Vereker arrived at Farnaby it was dark, and without wasting time he made his way to the narrow and deeply rutted lane that led to Bramblehurst. On leaving the main road he plunged into Cimmerian darkness, for there were no lamps, and progress became difficult and slow. Every now and then he sank ankle-deep in muddy pools, and heartily wished that he had brought a flash-lamp with him. At length he discerned the dark silhouette of a house against the lighter tone of the night sky, and knew he had reached his destination. Opening the gate and advancing a few paces up the gravelled approach, he was at once confronted with the disturbing fact that there were no lights in any of the windows of the dwelling.
All day long he had been in an unpleasant and depressed frame of mind, and the discovery that his journey had possibly been in vain did not tend to brighten his sombre outlook.
“Surely they cannot have turned in,” he muttered to himself; “it’s too early. They may, of course, be out, or perhaps they are using some room at the back of the house.”
For some seconds he stood hesitant, deliberative, and then, striking a match, approached the front door and pressed the bell-push. He heard the bell ring shrilly in the profound stillness, but waited in vain for any answer to his summons.
“This fairly ices the cake,” he ejaculated bitterly, and was about to depart when a sound of some movement within fell on his acute ears. He waited expectantly, hoping ardently that his hearing had not been at fault; but all again was as silent as the grave.
“A window rattling in a gust of wind,” he soliloquized. This surmise, however, hardly convinced him, for he was aware that the night was profoundly still, and not a twig of tree or bush stirred to disturb the uncanny hush.
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