The Golden Face: A Great 'Crook' Romance

CHAPTER I

PRIVATE AND PERSONAL

In order to ease my conscience and, further, to disclose certain facts which for the past year or two have, I know, greatly puzzled readers of our daily newspapers, I have decided to here reveal some very curious and, perhaps, sensational circumstances.

In fact, after much perplexity and long consideration, I have resolved, without seeking grace or favor, to make a clean breast of all that happened to me, and to leave the reader to judge of my actions, and either to condemn or to condone my offenses.

I will begin at the beginning.

It has been said that service in the Army has upset the average man’s chances of prosperity in civil life. That, I regret, is quite true.

When I, George Hargreave, came out of the Army after the Armistice, I found myself, like many hundreds of other ex-officers, completely at a loose end, without a shilling in the world over and above the gratuity of between two and three hundred pounds to which my period of commissioned service entitled me.

Grown accustomed during the war, however, to fending for myself and overcoming difficulties and problems of one sort and another, I at once set to work to look about for any kind of employment for which I fancied I might be fitted. After answering many advertisements to no purpose, I one day happened upon one in The Times which rather stirred my curiosity.

It stated that a gentleman of good position, who had occasion to travel in many parts of the world, would like to hear from a young man with considerable experience in motor driving. The applicant should not be over thirty, and it was essential that he should be a gentleman and well educated, with a knowledge of foreign languages if possible; also that he should be thoroughly trustworthy and possessed of initiative. The salary would be a very liberal one.

Application was to be made by letter only to a certain box at the office of The Times.

I wrote at once, and received some days later a reply signed “per pro Rudolph Rayne,” asking me to call to see the advertiser, who said he would be awaiting me at a certain small hôtel-de-luxe in the West End at three o’clock on the following afternoon.

I arrived at the highly aristocratic hotel at five minutes to three, and was conducted to a private sitting-room by a page who, on ushering me in, indicated a good-looking, middle-aged man seated near the window, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar.

The gentleman looked up as I approached, then put down his paper, rose, and extended his hand.

“Mr. George Hargreave?” he inquired in a pleasant voice.

“Yes. Mr. Rudolph Rayne, I presume?”

He bowed, and pointed to a chair close to his own. Then he sat down again, and I followed his example.

“I have received hundreds of replies to my advertisement,” was his first remark, “and the reason why your application is one of the few I have answered is that I liked the frank way in which you expressed yourself. Can you sing?”

“Sing?” I exclaimed, startled at the unexpected question.

“Sing,” he repeated.

“Well, yes, I do sing occasionally,” I said. “That is to say, I used to at the sing-songs in France at sergeants’ messes, and so on. But perhaps you mightn’t consider it singing if you heard me,” I ended lightly.

“Very good, very good,” he observed absent-mindedly. “And you can drive a Rolls?”

“I can drive a Rolls and several other cars as well,” I answered. “I was a driver in the R. A. S. C. early in the war.”

Suddenly he focused his gaze upon me, and his keen, penetrating gray eyes seemed to pierce into my soul and read my inmost thoughts. For perhaps half a minute he remained looking at me like that, then suddenly he said shortly:

“You are engaged, Mr. Hargreave. Your salary will be six hundred pounds a year, paid monthly in advance, in addition to your living and incidental expenses. I leave for Yorkshire by the midday train from King’s Cross to-morrow, and you will come with me. Good afternoon, Mr. Hargreave. By the way, you might take this suit-case with you, and bring it to the station to-morrow,” and he pointed to a small suit-case of brown leather on the floor beside his chair.

The whole interview had not lasted three minutes and I went away obsessed by a feeling of astonishment. Mr. Rayne had not cross-questioned me, as I naturally had expected him to do, nor had he asked for my credentials. In addition he had fixed my salary at six hundred pounds, without even inquiring what wages I wanted.

Obviously a character, an oddity, I said to myself as I passed out of the hotel.

Had I suspected then that Mr. Rudolph Rayne was the sort of “oddity” I later found him to be, I should have refused to accept the situation even had he offered me two thousand a year.

Though, during the interview, my attention had been more or less concentrated on Mr. Rayne, I had not been so deeply engrossed as to fail to notice an exceptionally beautiful, dark-eyed girl, who had entered while we had been speaking and who was seated on a settee a little way off. She, too, had stared very hard at me.

Mr. Rayne was accompanied on that journey to Yorkshire by the pretty dark-eyed girl who was his daughter Lola, and by his valet, a very silent, stiff-necked, morose individual, whose personality did not attract me. He seemed, however, to be an exceptionally efficient person, so far as his duties were concerned, and on our arrival at the little wayside station about twelve miles beyond Thirsk, where we had changed trains, he proceeded to take charge of the luggage, all but the suit-case which I still carried.

Outside the little station a magnificent Rolls limousine, colored a dull gray, awaited us, and when the luggage had all been put on it, Mr. Rayne surprised me by asking me to take the wheel then and there.

“My chauffeur left last week, but Paul will show you the road,” he said, as the valet seated himself beside me. “Overstow is about ten miles off.”

I don’t know why it was, but that girl’s dark eyes seemed to haunt me. She was just behind me with her father, and twice when I had occasion to look round to ask Mr. Rayne some question or other, I found her gaze fixed on mine, which, foolishly I will admit, disconcerted me.

Mr. Rayne himself addressed me only once of his own accord during the drive, and that was to ask me again if I sang.

“Why the dickens does he want to know if I sing?” was my mental comment when I had replied that I sang a little, without reminding him that he had put the same question to me on the previous day. For an instant the thought flashed across me that perhaps my new employer had some kink in his brain to do with singing; and yet, I reflected, that seemed hardly likely to be the case with a man who in all other respects appeared to be so exceptionally sane.

I was still cogitating this, when the car sped round a wide curve in the road and beyond big lodge gates a large imposing mansion of modern architecture came suddenly into view about half a mile away, partly concealed by beautiful woods sloping down to it from both sides of the valley. Slackening speed as we came near the lodge, I was about to stop to let Paul alight to open the gates, beyond which stretched the long winding avenue of tall trees, when a man came running out of the lodge and made haste to throw the gates open.

My first surprise on our arrival at Overstow Hall – and I was to have many more surprises before I had been long in Mr. Rayne’s service – was at finding that though my employer had quite a large staff of servants, there was not a woman amongst them! Several guests were staying in the house, including a middle-aged lady, called Madame, whose position I could not exactly place, though she appeared to be in charge of the establishment, in charge also of Lola.

Towards ten o’clock next morning the footman came to tell me that Mr. Rayne wanted to see me at once in the library.

“He’s in one of his queer moods this morning,” the young man said, “so you had better be careful. His letters have upset him, I think.”

I thanked the lad for his hint, but on my way to the library, a room I had not yet been in, I missed my bearings, entered a room under the impression that it might be the library, and had hardly done so when the sound of men’s voices in a room adjoining came to me – the door between the rooms stood partly open.

“Are you certain, Rudolph,” one of the men was saying, “that this new chauffeur of yours is the man for the job?”

“Have I ever made a mistake in summing up a man?” I heard Rayne answer. “I always trust my judgment when choosing a new hand.”

Where, before, had I heard the first speaker’s voice? I knew that voice quite well, yet, try as I would, I could not for the life of me place it.

“Yes,” the first speaker replied; “but, remember, in this case we are running an enormous risk. If the least hitch should occur – ”

They lowered their voices until their talk became inaudible, and presently I heard one of them go out of the room. After waiting a minute longer I left the room and went along the short passage, which I now knew must lead to the room where I had heard them talking.

Rayne was alone, standing on the hearthrug with his back to the big, open firegrate.

“Did you send for me, sir?” I inquired.

“I did, Hargreave,” he replied in a friendly tone. “I sent for you because I want you to go to Paris to-night. You will take with you the suit-case you still have in your possession, and as you will go by a trading steamer from Newcastle, the voyage will take you some days. The suit-case contains valuable documents, so you must on no account let it out of your sight, even for a minute, from the time you leave here until you hand it over personally to the gentleman I am sending you to – Monsieur Duperré. He is staying at the Hôtel Ombrone, that very smart and exclusive place in the Rue de Rivoli. He will give you a receipt, which you will bring back to me here at once, coming then by the ordinary route. You won’t go by train to-day to Newcastle; you will drive yourself there in the Fiat. Paul will go with you and drive the car back.”

He went on to give me one or two minor instructions, and then ended: “That’s all, Hargreave.”

I was walking back along the passage when Rayne’s pretty daughter Lola came out of the room I had first entered. She must have come out expressly to meet me, because when close to me she stopped abruptly, glanced to right and left, and then asked me quickly in an undertone:

“Is my father sending you on any journey, Mr. Hargreave?”

Again her wonderful dark eyes became fixed upon mine, as they had done on the previous day during the drive from the railway station.

“Don’t try to deceive me,” she said earnestly. “You will find it far better to confide in me.”

The words so astonished me that for the moment I could not reply. Then, all at once, a strange feeling of curiosity came over me. Why all this secrecy about the suit-case? I mentally asked myself. And what an odd idea to send me to Paris by that long roundabout sea route! What could be the reason?

“I am not deceiving you, Miss Rayne,” I said.

She only smiled and turned abruptly away.

Then, for the first time, I found myself wondering what could be these precious documents Rayne had told me the suit-case contained? That the suit-case was locked, I knew! He had not unlocked it since he had placed it in my charge in London two days before.

My employer gave me some money, and I started two hours later in the Fiat. As I sped along the broad road from Thirsk south towards York, with Paul beside me silent as ever, I could not get thoughts of Lola out of my mind.

Once more I saw her gazing up at me with that peculiar, anxious expression I had noticed when we had met in the passage, and I regretted that I had not prolonged our conversation then, and tried to find out what distressed her.

Several times I spoke to Paul, but he answered only in monosyllables.

We reached Newcastle in plenty of time, for the boat was not due to sail before early next morning, and I felt relieved at being at last rid of my uncongenial companion.

I had an evening paper in my pocket, and, to while away the time, I lay in my narrow berth and began to read. Presently my glance rested upon a paragraph which stated that two days before a dressing-case belonging to Lady Norah Kendrew disappeared in the most extraordinary manner from the hotel in London where she was staying. Exactly what happened had been related to the enterprising reporter by Lady Norah herself.

“My dressing-case containing all my jewelry was locked and on a table near my bed,” she said. “I went out of the room soon after half-past ten this morning, my maid, who has been with me eight years, remaining in the room adjoining to put some of my things away – the door between the rooms remained ajar, she says. Whether or not the jewel-case was still there when she herself went out to lunch at about one o’clock she cannot say, as she did not go into my bedroom again. She shut the door behind her when she went out of the sitting-room into the corridor, and locked it. I first missed the jewel-case when I returned to my room at about a quarter past three in the afternoon. The contents are worth twenty thousand pounds. It seems hardly possible that anybody could have entered the bedroom unheard while my maid was in the sitting-room with the door between the two rooms ajar, so my belief is that it must have been stolen between the time she went to lunch and the time I returned. I am offering a big reward for the return of the jewel-case with its contents intact.”

The paragraph interested me because of the hotel where the robbery – if robbery it was – had taken place, and the fact that I had happened to be in that hotel on the very day of the robbery!

“Ah, well,” I remember saying to myself, “if women will be so careless as to leave valuable property like that unguarded they must expect to take the consequences.”

Then my thoughts wandered from the newspaper, and I found myself wondering what Lady Norah Kendrew might be like – if she were young or old, plain or pretty, married or unmarried. And I suppose naturally that train of thought brought Lola once more into my imagination. I had, remember, to all intents, hardly seen her, and she had spoken to me only twice. Yet her personality literally obsessed me. That I was foolish to let it I fully realized. But how many of us can completely master our moods, our impulses and our emotions on all occasions?

The weather at sea remained fine, yet I found that long, slow voyage most tedious. I had nothing to do but read, for I could not disregard Mr. Rayne’s strict instructions that I must on no account let the suit-case out of my sight, and in consequence I could not leave my cabin.

I remember looking down at the suit-case protruding from under the berth and thinking it curious that documents should weigh so heavy. There must be a great many of them, I reflected, but even so…

I bent down and pulled the suit-case right out and lifted it.

Indeed it was heavy – very heavy!

Then I began to think of something else.

I had the cabin to myself, which was pleasant, and I spent most of the day stretched out in my bunk. Oh, how I longed every hour for the terribly boring voyage to come to an end!

It was a lovely morning when at last we steamed into the estuary of the Seine, and I shall never forget how beautiful the river and its banks looked as I peered out through my port-hole and we crept up towards Rouen. My meals had all been served in my cabin during the voyage, as I could not well have taken the suit-case with me into the saloon.

Now I felt like a prisoner about to be released.

Mr. Rayne had told me to stop at the post-office in Rouen on my way from the boat to Paris, as I might, he said, find a letter or a telegram awaiting me. I had managed to pass the suit-case through the Customs, and now my heart beat faster as a letter was handed to me, for I recognized Lola’s handwriting; I had seen it only once before – that was on a letter she had asked me to post for her.

I hurriedly tore open the envelope, and this was what I read:

“Private. I have suspicion that the suit-case you have you should get rid of at once. Destroy this!”

Undated and unsigned, the letter bore no address. At once thoughts and conjectures of all sorts came crowding into my mind. Could it be that the suit-case contained stolen jewelry and not documents?

Instantly I guessed why Rayne had sent me to Paris with it by that roundabout route. He must either himself be the thief, I concluded, or an accomplice in the theft, and by placing the stolen property in my charge and smuggling it out of England by a circuitous route…

One reflection led quickly to another. Paul, the valet, no doubt knew about his master’s private life – possibly was in his confidence. And if Rayne had committed the robbery he must be a professional crook. In which case, should the whereabouts of the stolen property be discovered, I should be arrested as an accessory to the crime! Clearly I had no time to lose if I wanted to safeguard myself. Even now the police, with their wonderful acumen, might be on my track!

I reached Paris at last, and as my taxi swung round from the Place Jeanne d’Arc into the Rue de Rivoli I began to feel extremely nervous.

In reply to my inquiry at the bureau of the smart Hôtel Ombrone I was told that I could be given a bed. Monsieur Duperré? Ah, monsieur had just gone out, but would be back soon, most likely.

I had been given the key of my room, and was about to enter the lift, when I noticed seated on a settee in the vestibule a well-dressed woman whose face seemed familiar. And then in a flash I recognized the lady who had been at Overstow Hall on the day I had arrived there!

She did not recognize me, or I concluded she did not, and naturally it was no business of mine to make any sign of recognition.

I had been in my room, I suppose, about two hours when the telephone bell rang.

“That Mr. Hargreave? The bureau speaking. Monsieur Duperré has come in and is coming up to you now.”

A minute later somebody knocked, and I called “Come in!” Then, to my amazement, who should enter but my old company commander in France in the early days of the war – Captain Vincent Deinhard, who later in the war had been court-martialed for misappropriating canteen funds and been subsequently cashiered! Altogether his Army record had been an exceedingly bad one.

Instantly I remembered the voice. It was Deinhard I had heard in conversation with Rayne at Overstow Hall!

He stood stock-still, staring at me.

“Why, Hargreave!” he exclaimed at last. “What in the world are you doing here?”

“I am Mr. Rayne’s chauffeur and general servant now, captain,” I replied. “Mr. Rayne told me to inquire on my arrival here for Monsieur Duperré and hand him that suit-case,” and I pointed to it.

He glanced quickly at the door, to make sure that it was shut, then, looking at me oddly, he said in a low voice:

“I am Duperré, Hargreave. You must forget that my name was ever anything else – I got myself into trouble in the Army, you remember – and you must forget that too – and that we have ever met before. So you are his new chauffeur, eh?” he went on, now talking naturally. “It never occurred to me that ‘Hargreave,’ the new chauffeur, would turn out to be the Hargreave who served under me for two years!” and he laughed dryly.

Then, without a word, he went over to the suit-case and picked it up.

“Come along to my room,” he said.

CHAPTER II

ROOM NUMBER 88

I accompanied him along the corridor to a private sitting-room at the end, numbered 88, and adjoining which was a bedroom. There he placed the suit-case upon the table, and taking a piece of paper scribbled a receipt.

“Better post that on to Rayne at once,” he suggested. “My wife will be here in a moment. We’ll have lunch later on.”

All that had already happened had so astonished me that I was only slightly surprised at finding a few moments later that the lady I had seen at Overstow Hall, and again a couple of hours before in the vestibule of the hotel, was Duperré’s wife. He must, I think, have told her that we had met before, for she seemed in no way astonished at Mr. Rayne’s chauffeur being presented to her.

I found her a pleasant woman, well-read, well-educated and widely travelled. She was, too, an excellent conversationalist. And yet, all the time we were talking, I could not help thinking of Lola, and wondering why Duperré’s wife should be in such evidence at Overstow Hall, indeed, apparently in authority there, also why Lola seemed to be so afraid of her.

Half an hour later I posted the receipt to Rayne, and later we all three lunched together in the restaurant. We took our coffee upstairs in the private room, when Duperré said, à propos of nothing, suddenly looking across at his wife:

“Hargreave may be of great use to us, Hylda.” Then, addressing me again, he said, lowering his voice and glancing at the door:

“In becoming associated with ‘The Golden Face,’ Hargreave, you are more fortunate than you may think. He’s a man who can, and who will, if he likes, help you enormously in all sorts of ways – you will find that you are more to him than a mere chauffeur. In fact, we can both help you, that is, if you fall in with our plans. Our only stipulation will be that you do what we tell you —without asking any questions. You understand – eh?”

“I suppose,” I said, smiling, “that by ‘The Golden Face’ you mean Mr. Rayne?”

“Yes. He’s called ‘Golden Face’ by his intimates. I forgot you didn’t know. He got the nick-name through going to the Bal des Quatre Arts, here in Paris, wearing a half-mask made of beaten gold.”

By that time I had become convinced that both Rayne and Duperré were men with whom I should have to deal with the utmost circumspection.

The only person I had met since I had engaged myself to Rayne in whom I could, I felt, place implicit confidence, was Lola.

When we had finished our coffee, Duperré excused himself, saying that he had some letters to write, and suggested that his wife should accompany me for a taxi drive in the Bois. This struck us both as a pleasant manner in which to spend the afternoon, therefore Madame retired to her room, reappearing a few moments later wearing a smart cloak and a wonderful black hat adorned with three large handsome feathers.

She proved herself a very amusing companion as we drove out to Armenonville, where we sat out upon the lawn, she sipping her sirop while I smoked a cigarette. She knew Paris well, it seemed, and was communicative over everything – except concerning Rudolph Rayne.

When I put some questions to her regarding my new employer, she simply replied:

“We never discuss him, Mr. Hargreave. It is one of his rules that those who are his friends, as we are, preserve the strictest silence. What we discover from time to time we keep entirely to ourselves, and we even go to the length of disclaiming acquaintanceship with him when it becomes necessary. So it is best not to be inquisitive. If he discovers that you have been making inquiries he will be greatly annoyed.”

“I quite understand, Madame,” I replied with a meaning smile. That she was closely connected with the deep-laid schemes of Rudolph Rayne was more than ever apparent. But why, I wondered, was Lola so palpably beneath her influence?

My companion was about thirty-eight, though she looked younger, with handsome, well-cut features, and possessing the chic of a woman who had traveled much and who knew how to wear her clothes. There was, however, nothing of the adventuress about her. On the contrary, she had the appearance of moving in a very select set. She was English without a doubt, but she spoke perfect French.

I mentioned Lola, but she said:

“Remember what I have just told you about undue inquisitiveness, Mr. Hargreave! You will find out all you want to know in due course. So possess yourself in patience and act always with foresight as well as with discretion.”

I chanced to raise my eyes at that moment, when I noticed that a well-dressed, black-mustached Frenchman, who wore white spats, while passing along the terrace of the fine al fresco restaurant had halted a second to peer into Madame’s face, no doubt struck by her handsome features. She noticed it also but turned her head, and spoke to me of something else. A woman knows instinctively when she is being admired.