The Sign of the Stranger
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As I entered and crossed the hall, Slater, the old butler, approached, saying —
“His lordship would like to see you, sir. He’s in the library.”
So I turned and walked up the corridor of the east wing to that fine long old room with its thousands of rare volumes that had been the chief delight of the white-headed old peer who had spent the evening of his days in study.
“I say, Woodhouse!” cried the young Earl, springing from his chair as I entered, “what does this murder in the park last night mean?”
“It’s a profound mystery,” I replied. “The murdered man has not yet been identified.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I went down to the inn with Pink this morning and saw him. And, do you know, he looks suspiciously like a fellow who followed me about in town several times last season.”
“That’s strange!” I exclaimed, much interested. “Yes, it is. I can’t make it out at all. There’s a mystery somewhere – a confounded mystery.” And the young Earl thrust his hands deeply into his trousers pockets as he seated himself on the arm of a chair.
Tall, dark, good-looking, and a good all-round athlete, he was about thirty, the very picture of the well-bred Englishman. A few years in the Army had set him up and given him a soldierly bearing, while his face and hands, tanned as they were, showed his fondness for out-door sports. He kept up the Stanchester hounds, of which he was master, to that high degree of efficiency which rendered them one of the most popular packs in the country; he was an excellent polo player, a splendid shot, and a thorough all-round sportsman. In his well-worn grey flannels, and with a straw hat stuck jauntily on his head, he presented the picture of healthy manhood, wealthy almost beyond the dreams of avarice, a careless, easy-going, good-humoured man-of-the-world, whose leniency to his tenants was proverbial, and whose good-nature gave him wide popularity in Society, both in London and out of it.
By the man-in-the-street he was believed to be supremely content in his great possessions, his magnificent mansions, his princely bank balance, his steam yacht and his pack of hounds, yet I, his confidential friend and secretary, knew well the weariness and chagrin that was now eating out his heart. Her ladyship, two years his junior, was one of the three celebrated beauties known in London drawing-rooms as “the giddy Gordons,” and who, notwithstanding her marriage, still remained the leader of that ultra-smart set, and always had one or two admirers in her train. She was still marvellously beautiful; her portraits, representing her yachting, motoring, shooting or riding to hounds, were familiar to every one, and after her marriage it had become the fashion to regard the Countess of Stanchester as one of the leaders of the London mode.
All this caused her husband deep regret and worry. He was unhappy, for with her flitting to and from the Continental spas, to Rome, to Florence, to Scotland, to Paris and elsewhere, he enjoyed little of her society, although he loved her dearly and had married her purely on that account.
Often in the silence of his room he sighed heavily when he spoke of her to me, and more than once, old friends that we were, he had unbosomed himself to me, so that, knowing what I did, I honestly pitied him. There was, in fact, affection just as strong in the heart of the millionaire landowner as in that of his very humble secretary.
“I had the misfortune to be born a rich man, Willoughby,” he had once declared to me. “If I had been poor and had had to work for my living, I should probably have been far happier.”
At the present moment, however, he seemed to have forgotten his own sorrows in the startling occurrence that had taken place within his own demesne, and his declaration that the man now dead had followed him in London was to me intensely interesting. It added more mystery to the affair.
“Are you quite certain that you recognise him?” I inquired a few moments later, wondering whether, if this were an actual fact, I had not also seen him when walking with the Earl in London.
“Well, not quite,” was my companion’s reply. “A dead man’s face looks rather different to that of a living person. Nevertheless, I feel almost positive that he’s the same. I recollect that the first occasion I saw him was at Ranelagh, when he came and sat close by me, and was apparently watching my every movement. I took no notice, because lots of people, when they ascertain who I am, stare at me as though I were some extraordinary species. A few nights later on, walking home from the Bachelors’, I passed him in Piccadilly, and again on the next day he followed me persistently through the Burlington. Don’t you remember, too, when Marigold held that bazaar in the drawing-room in aid of the Deep Sea Mission? Well, he came, and bought several rather expensive things. I confess that his constant presence grew very irritating, and although I said nothing to you at the time, for fear you would laugh at my apprehension, I grew quite timid, and didn’t care to walk home from the club at night alone.”
“Rather a pity you didn’t point him out to me,” I remarked, very much puzzled. “I, too, have a faint idea that I’ve seen him somewhere. It may have been that when I’ve walked with you he has followed us.”
“Most likely,” was the young Earl’s reply. “He evidently had some fixed purpose in watching my movements, but what it could be is an entire mystery. During the last fortnight I was in town I always carried my little revolver, fearing – well, to tell you the truth, fearing lest he should make an attack upon me,” he admitted with a smile. “The fact was, I had become thoroughly unnerved.”
This confession sounded strange from a resolute athletic man of his stamp whom I had hitherto regarded as utterly fearless and possessing nerves of iron.
“And now,” he went on, “the fellow is found murdered within half a mile of the house! Most extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Very remarkable – to say the least,” I said reflectively. “The police will probably discover who and what he is.”
“Police!” he laughed. “What do you think such a fellow as Redway could discover, except perhaps it were a mug of beer hidden by a publican after closing-time? No, I agree with Pink, we must have a couple of men down from London. It seems that Pink has found the print of a woman’s shoe at the spot, while in the dead man’s hand was grasped a piece of white fur. The suspicion is, therefore, that some woman has had a hand in it. I think, Willoughby, you’d best run up to London and get them to send down some smart man from the Criminal Investigation Department. Go and see my friend Layard, the Home Secretary, and tell him I sent you to obtain his assistance. He’ll no doubt see that some capable person is sent.”
I suggested that he should write a note to Sir Stephen Layard which I would deliver personally, and at once he sat down and scribbled a few lines in that heavy uneven calligraphy of his, for he had ever been a sad penman.
The net seemed to be slowly spreading for Lolita, yet what could I do to prevent this tracking down of the woman I loved?
The mystery of the man’s movements in London had apparently thoroughly aroused the young Earl’s desire to probe the affair to the bottom. And not unnaturally. None of us care to be followed and watched by an unknown man whose motive is utterly obscure.
So I was compelled to take the note and promise that I would deliver it to Layard that same evening.
“I mean to do all I can to find out who the fellow was and why he was killed,” the Earl declared, striding up and down the room impatiently. “I’ve just seen Lolita, who seems very upset about it. She, too, admits that she saw the man watching me at Ranelagh, at the bazaar, and also at other places.”
“I wonder what his motive could have been,” I remarked, surprised that her ladyship should have made such a statement.
“Ah! That we must find out. His intentions were evil ones, without a doubt.”
“But he didn’t strike you as a thief?” I asked.
“Not at all. He was always very well-dressed and had something of a foreign appearance, although I don’t believe he was a foreigner.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I heard him speak. His voice had rather a Cockney ring in it, although he appeared to ape the Frenchman in dress and mannerisms, in order, I suppose, to be able to pass as one.”
“An adventurer – without a doubt,” I remarked. “But we shall know more before long. There are several facts which may afford us good clues.”
“Yes, in the hands of an expert detective they may. That’s why we must have a man down from London. You go to town and do your best, Willoughby, while I remain here and watch what transpires. The inquest is fixed for to-morrow at three, I hear, so you had better be back for it. The Coroner will no doubt want your evidence.” And with that we both walked out together into the park, where the constabulary were still making a methodical examination of the whole of the area to the left of the great avenue.
I had intended to obtain another interview with Lolita, but now resolved that to keep apart from her for the present was by far the wisest course, therefore I accompanied the Earl as far as the fateful spot, and then continued my way home in order to lunch before driving to Kettering to catch the afternoon express to St. Pancras.
In the idle half-hour after my chop and claret, eaten by the way with but little relish, I lounged in my old armchair smoking my pipe, when of a sudden there flashed upon me the recollection of the ring I had secured from the dead man’s hand. I ran up to my room, and taking it from the pocket of my dress-waistcoat carried it downstairs, where I submitted it to thorough and searching examination.
It was a ring of no ordinary pattern, the flat golden scarabaeus being set upon a swivel, while the remaining part of the ring was oval, so as to fit the finger. I put it on, and found that the scarabaeus being movable, it adapted itself to all movements of the finger, and that it was a marvellously fine specimen of the goldsmiths’ art, and no doubt, as I had already decided, a copy of an antique Etruscan ornament.
The thickness of the golden sacred beetle attracted me, and I wondered whether it could contain anything within. Around the bottom edge were fashioned in gold the folded hairy legs of the insect just showing beneath its wings, and on examining them I discovered, to my surprise, that there was concealed a tiny hinge.
Instantly I took a pen-knife and gently prised it open, when I discovered that within it was almost like a locket, and that behind a small transparent disc of talc was concealed a tiny photograph – a pictured face the sight of which held me breathless. I could not believe my eyes.
Revealed there was a portrait of Lady Lolita Lloyd, the woman I loved, which the dead man had worn in secret upon his finger!
Chapter Eight
Wherein I Make Certain Discoveries
Alas! how I had, in loving Lolita, quaffed the sweet illusions of hope only to feel the venom of despair more poignant to my soul.
During the journey up to London my thoughts were fully occupied by the discovery of what that oddly-shaped ring contained. That portrait undoubtedly linked my love with the victim of the tragedy. But how? I believed myself acquainted with most, if not with all, of her many admirers, and if this unknown man were an actual rival then I had remained in entire and complete ignorance.
As the express rushed southward I sat alone in the compartment calmly examining my own heart and analysing my own feelings. Hope gilded my fancy, and I breathed again. I found that I loved, I reverenced woman, and had sought for a real woman to whom to offer my heart. Inherent in man is the love of something to protect; his very manhood requires that his strongest love should be showered on one who needs his strong arm to shelter her from the world, with all its troubles, all its sorrows, and all its sins. I wanted a companion, pure, loving, womanly; one who would complete what was wanting in myself; one whom I could reverence – and in Lady Lolita I had found my ideal.
Yet the difference of our stations was an insurmountable barrier in the first place, and in the second, if the young Earl knew that I, his secretary, had had the audacity to propose to his favourite sister, my connexion with the Stanchesters would, I knew, be abruptly severed. Nevertheless, I had with throbbing heart confessed my secret to my love, and being aware of my deep and honest affection she allowed me to bask in the sunshine of her beauty, and she was trusting in me to extricate her from a peril which she had declared might, alas! prove fatal.
Poor Stanchester! I pondered over his position, too – and I pitied him. Awakened from the temporary aberration which made him take as wife Lady Marigold Gordon, the racing girl and smart up-to-date maiden; conscious that the camaraderie of the billiard-room, the stable, and the shooting-party and the card-room was after all but a poor substitute for the true companionship of a wife. The young Countess, well-versed in French novels of doubtful taste, accomplished in manly sports, a good judge of a dog, capable of talking slang in and out of season, inured to cigarettes and strong drinks, had been an excellent “chum” for a short time, but she now preferred the freedom of her pre-matrimonial days, and drifted about wherever she could find pleasure and excitement. Indeed, she seemed to have more admirers now that she was the wife of the Earl of Stanchester than when she had been merely one of “the giddy Gordon girls.”
The smoky sunset haze had settled over the Thames as I crossed Westminster Bridge in search of the pawnbroker’s whose voucher had been found in the dead man’s pocket, and a copy of which I had obtained before leaving Sibberton. It had been a blazing August day and every Londoner who could afford to escape from the city’s turmoil was absent. Yet weather or season makes no appreciable difference to those hurrying millions who cross the bridges each evening to rush to their ’buses, trams or trains.
At six o’clock that summer’s evening the crowd was just as thick on Westminster Bridge as on any night in winter. The million or so of absent holidaymakers are unnoticed in that wild desperate fight for the daily necessaries of life.
Without difficulty I found the shop where a combined business of jeweller’s and pawnbroker’s was carried on, and having sought the proprietor, a fat man in shirt-sleeves, of pronounced Hebrew type, I requested to be allowed to see the pledge in question.
He called his assistant, and after the lapse of a few minutes the latter descended the stairs carrying a small well-worn leather jewel-case which he placed upon the counter. The instant I saw it I held my breath, for upon it, stamped in gold, was the coronet and cipher of Lady Lolita Lloyd!
The pawnbroker opened it, and within I saw a necklet of seed pearls and amethysts which I had seen many times around my love’s throat, an old Delhi necklace which her father had bought for her when in India years ago. In her youth it had been her favourite ornament, but recently she had not worn it.
Was it possible that it had been stolen – or had she made gift of it to him?
I took up the familiar necklet and held it in the hollow of my hand. I recollected how Lolita, with girlish pride, had shown it to me when she had received it as a present on her eighteenth birthday, and how, on occasions at parties and balls at Government House afterwards, it had adorned her white neck and its rather barbaric splendour had so often been admired.
“It’s unredeemed, you know,” remarked the black-haired Jew. “You shall have it for twenty pound – dirth cheap.”
Ought I to secure it? The police would, no doubt, soon institute inquiries, and finding the coronet and cipher upon the case would at once connect my love with the mysterious affair. But I had by good fortune forestalled them, therefore I saw that at all hazards I must secure it.
I pretended to examine it in the fading light at the window, lingering so as to gain time to form some plans. I had not twenty pounds in my pocket; to give a cheque would be to betray my name, and the banks had closed long ago.
At last, after some haggling, more in order to conceal my anxiety to obtain it than anything else, I said, with affected reluctance —
“I haven’t the money with me. It’s a pretty thing, but a trifle too dear.” And I turned as though to leave.
“Well, now, ninetheen pound won’t hurt yer. You shall ’ave it for ninetheen pound.”
“Eighteen ten, if you like,” I said. “What time do you close?”
“Nine.”
“Then I’ll be back before that with the money,” I answered, and I saw the gleam of satisfaction in the Hebrew’s eyes, for it had been pawned for five pounds. He, however, was not aware that it was I who was getting the best of the bargain.
I drove in a cab back to the Constitutional Club, where I had left my bag for the night, and the secretary, a friend of mine, at once cashed a cheque, with the result that within an hour I had the necklet and deposited it safely in my suit-case, gratified beyond measure to know that at least I had baffled the police in the possession of this very suspicious piece of evidence.
From the Jew I had endeavoured to ascertain casually who had pledged the ornament, but neither he nor his assistant recollected. In that particularly improvident part of London with its floating population of struggling actors and music-hall artistes, each pawnbroker has thousands of chance clients, therefore recollection is well-nigh impossible.
Having successfully negotiated this matter, however, a second and more difficult problem presented itself, namely, how was I to avoid delivering the letter to Sir Stephen Layard, the Home Secretary – the Earl’s request that the Criminal Investigation Department should hound down the woman I adored?
My duty was to go at once to Pont Street and deliver the Earl’s note, but my loyalty to my love demanded that I should find some excuse for withholding it.
I stood on the club steps in Northumberland Avenue watching the arrivals and departures from the Hotel Victoria opposite, hesitating in indecision. If I did not call upon Sir Stephen, then some suspicion might be aroused, therefore I resolved to see him and during the interview nullify by some means the urgency of the Earl’s request.
The Cabinet Minister, a middle-aged, clean-shaven man with keen eyes and very pronounced aquiline features, entered the library a few minutes after I had sent in my card. He was in evening clothes, having, it appeared, just dined with several guests, but was nevertheless eager to serve such a powerful supporter of his party as the Earl of Stanchester.
We had met before, therefore I needed no introduction, but instead of delivering the letter I deemed it best to explain matters in my own way.
“I must apologise for intruding at this hour, Sir Stephen,” I commenced, “but the fact is that a very curious and tragic affair has happened in the Earl of Stanchester’s park down at Sibberton, and he has sent me to ask your opinion as to the best course to pursue in order to get the police at Scotland Yard to take up the matter.”
“What, is it a mystery or something?” inquired the well-known statesman, quickly alert.
I described how the body of the unknown man had been discovered, but added purposely that the inquest had not yet been held, and there that were several clues furnished by articles discovered in the dead man’s pockets.
“Well, the Northampton police are surely able to take up such a plain, straightforward case as that!” he remarked. “If not, they are not worth very much, I should say.”
“But his lordship has not much faith in the intelligence of the local constabulary,” I ventured to remark with a smile.
“Local constables are not usually remarkable for shrewdness or inventiveness,” he laughed. “But surely at the headquarters of the county constabulary they have several very experienced and clever officers. With such clues there can surely be little difficulty in establishing the man’s identity.”
“Then you think it unnecessary to place the matter in the hands of the Criminal Investigation Department?” I remarked.
“Quite – at least for the present,” was his reply, which instantly lifted a great weight from my mind. “We must allow the coroner’s jury to give their verdict, and, at any rate, give the local police an opportunity of making proper inquiries before we take the matter out of their hands. I much regret being unable to assist the Earl of Stanchester in the matter, but at present I am really unable to order Scotland Yard to take the matter up. If, however, the local police fail, then perhaps you will kindly tell him that I shall be very pleased to reconsider the request, and, if possible, grant it.” This was exactly the reply I desired. Indeed, I had put my case lamely on purpose, and had gradually led him to this decision.
“Of course,” I said, “I will explain to his lordship the exact position and your readiness to order expert assistance as soon as such becomes absolutely imperative. By the way,” I added, “he gave me a note to you.” And I then produced it, as though an after-thought.
He glanced over it and laid it upon his table, repeating his readiness to render the Earl all the assistance he could when the proper time came – the usual evasive reply of the Cabinet Minister.
Then he shook hands with me, and I left him, reassured that I had at least prevented the introduction of any of those clever experts in criminal investigation. The suspicions against Lolita grew darker every hour, yet even though they were well-grounded I was determined to save her.
That broad-shouldered man with whom I had seen her strolling in the early morning after the tragedy puzzled me greatly. Had I only obtained sight of him, I should, perhaps, have learnt the truth. Yet when I reviewed the whole of the mysterious circumstances my brain became awhirl. They were bewildering, for the mystery had become even more inscrutable than it at first appeared.
That my love had some connexion with the affair, I could not for a moment disguise. Her manner, her very admissions in themselves convicted her. Therefore I felt that with the facts of which I was already in possession I had greater chance than the most expert detective of pursuing my own inquiries to a successful issue.
On leaving Sir Stephen Layard’s about nine o’clock, I resolved to ascertain what kind of house was number ninety-eight in Britten Street, Chelsea, the place where lived the Frenchwoman, Lejeune. I recollected the desperate words of my love on the previous night and wondered whether the death of the unknown man might not have altered the circumstances. Somehow I had a distinct suspicion that it might, hence I resolved not to reveal my presence at the place until I had again consulted Lolita.
The darkness was complete when I alighted from the cab in the King’s Road, Chelsea, and turned down the rather dark but respectable street of even two-storied, deep-basemented houses that ran down towards the Embankment. It was one of those thoroughfares like Walpole Street and Wellington Square, where that rapacious genus, the London landlady, flourishes and grows sleek upon the tea, sugar and bottled beer of lodgers. In the night the houses seemed most grimy and depressing, some of them half-covered by sickly creepers, and others putting forward an attempt at colour with their stunted geraniums in window-boxes.
The double rap of the postman on his last round sounded time after time, by which I knew he was approaching me, therefore I retraced my steps into the King’s Road and awaited him.
He had, I noticed, finished his round, therefore a cheery word and an invitation to have a drink at the flaring public-house opposite soon rendered us friendly, and without many preliminaries I explained my reason for stopping him.
“Oh!” laughed the man, “we’re often stopped by people who make inquiries about those who live on our walks. Number ninety-eight Britten Street – a Frenchwoman? Oh, yes. Name of Lejeune. She doesn’t have many letters, but they’re mostly foreign ones.”
“What kind of people live there?” I inquired, whereupon he eyed me rather strangely, I thought, and asked —
“You’re not a friend of theirs, I suppose?”
“Not at all. I don’t know them.”