THE CRYSTAL CLAW

The fatal candle flickered as its heat caused the fragile balloon to expand

The fatal candle flickered as its heat caused the fragile balloon to expand.

title page

THE
CRYSTAL CLAW

BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
AUTHOR OF “MADEMOISELLE OF MONTE CARLO,”
“THE VOICE FROM THE VOID,” ETC.

Frontispiece by
GEORGE W. GAGE

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1924
By THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | PAGE
I | Mid Silent Snows | 9
II | A Temporary Bride | 26
III | The Deadly Foehn | 44
IV | Whispers of Women | 59
V | Establishes Some Curious Facts | 74
VI | The Ham-Bone Club | 88
VII | In the Web | 97
VIII | Doctor Feng’s View | 107
IX | Crooked Paths | 119
X | In Room Number Eighteen | 131
XI | Love vs. Honor | 143
XII | Strange Suspicions | 158
XIII | Spume of the Storm | 171
XIV | In the Night | 191
XV | More Disclosures | 204
XVI | Growing Suspicions | 218
XVII | Plot and Counter-plot | 231
XVIII | Missing | 244
XIX | At Heathermore Gardens | 254
XX | The Child’s Air-Ball | 267
XXI | Who Was Doctor Feng? | 278
XXII | The Secret Disclosed | 298

THE CRYSTAL CLAW

THE CRYSTAL CLAW

CHAPTER I
MID SILENT SNOWS

“Yes, an extremely pretty girl,” remarked old Dr. Feng, bending towards me and speaking softly across the table-à-deux at which we were dining at the Kürhaus hotel at Mürren, high-up in the snow-clad Alps. “A honeymooning couple, no doubt,” he went on—“nice place this for a honeymoon!” and the white-haired old Chinese who—most unusual in one of his race, had a long white beard—smiled as he poured out a tiny glass of white curaçao, the only form of alcohol I ever saw him indulge in.

I glanced across in the direction he indicated and saw seated in a corner, a pretty dark-haired grey-eyed girl of twenty. She wore a flame-colored dance-frock, and was laughing happily as she chatted with a good-looking young man, perhaps six years or so her senior. The young fellow was smart and distinguished-looking and the girl was very handsome, with irregular features, and singularly expressive eyes, but hers was a nervous, restless physiognomy that rather chilled one at first sight. The expression in both their faces told the truth quite clearly. They were, indeed, newly wed, and they had that evening arrived on the funicular railway from Lauterbrunnen, in the valley below, by the service which had left Victoria station the previous afternoon.

“Yes, a very handsome pair,” I agreed. “I wonder who they are?”

“Don’t inquire. When you marry, Yelverton, you won’t like people to be inquisitive. All newly-married people are super-sensitive, you know,” declared my companion.

Dr. Feng Tsu’tong, despite his seventy years, did not look a day more than sixty. Much above the common height for a Chinese he possessed features of the type which seldom show many signs of advancing age. Erect and virile he carried himself like a much younger man and of his activity and endurance I had had ample proof, for, in our frequent long tramps and ski expeditions across the snow, he had shown me more than once that his muscles were equal to my own, despite the great disparity in our ages.

He was a highly-cultured and widely read man. I imagined when I first met him, as I found to be the case when I knew him better, that he must have left China many years before, for he spoke perfect English, though with a slight American accent. His quaint philosophy had made an instant appeal to me. Though he was much older than I, his mental outlook was surprisingly young and we had become constant companions and very firm friends in quite a short time. I have seldom met a man in whom I felt such complete confidence and sympathy as in this old Chinese doctor. We spent much time together, often taking long expeditions afoot or on ski or sometimes as partners in a game of curling of which he was passionately fond.

Our acquaintance as a matter of fact had been a casual one. I had left London blanketed under fog and rain and after a twenty-four hours’ journey by rail had found myself in Mürren—that winter paradise of the young, opposite the towering Jungfrau with its attendant heights, the Monch and the Eiger, high-up in a glittering world of sunshine, snow and silence. The scene looked almost like a typical Christmas card. We were so high up that by day the sun shone brightly from a sky as blue and cloudless as that of Cannes, there were ten feet of powdery snow everywhere and the crystal-clear air was as bright and invigorating as champagne.

Giacomo, the smiling head waiter, had placed me with Dr. Feng at a small table set in the window in the great salle à manger. We had taken to each other at once and had become companions, not only at meals, but on the superb ice-rink which was in perfect condition as was flooded and re-frozen each night. There we skated or curled, or we took excursions on the wonderful rack-railway up to the Allmendhubel, or else over the snow to what is known as the Half-way House, or else down to the Blumen-tal.

Mürren in winter is par excellence a sports centre for young people who indulge in skating, tobogganing, lugeing and skiing, the winter sports that are, in these post-war days, happily eclipsing the exotic pleasures one obtains on the Riviera. There, in the Bernese Oberland, the vice of gambling hardly exists save in the form of occasional bridge as a relaxation after the day’s sport.

Each winter the Kürhaus hotel is a centre for the ever-growing band of enthusiasts who meet there for the bright social life and superb out-door sport which Mürren affords. These are the people who truly enjoy themselves healthfully. Skiing and similar pursuits demand perfect physical fitness and at the Kürhaus one is in the centre of wholesome out-door exercise by day and in the evening of a gay merriment which only seems to round off and complete the pleasures of days spent in the open air on the towering mountain slopes. At Mürren one finds a winter life that cannot be excelled in Europe.

The scene was wonderfully attractive. All around us were the great hills clothed in virgin snow, dotted here and there with merry parties of girls whose bright sports costumes provided startling splashes of color against the white background. Everywhere pretty lips laughed in the sheer joy of young exuberant life. Everywhere merry conversation rang out from dawn to dusk, everybody seemed to be active, healthy and happy.

But beneath all the fun and frivolling I had found a deeper, more serious note. It was struck for me by Dr. Feng.

More and more I found myself falling under the spell of the old man’s mentality. More and more I realized how much we had in common. A native of Yunnan, he had left China when about thirty—chiefly, I gathered, on account of political troubles. The range and variety of his knowledge was encyclopædic: there seemed to be hardly a subject on which he could not talk brilliantly if he chose to exert himself. And we had one great bond of sympathy—both of us loved music. Feng was a brilliant pianist. I was passionately devoted to the violin and we spent many hours over the works of the great composers. Like most other young men I had a fairly good opinion of myself, but compared with Dr. Feng, I was a mere child in musical knowledge. Our music, however, made us both popular and it had become quite a regular evening custom for us to play to the Kürhaus guests in the great ball-room.

There was, however, a still deeper side to our intercourse. Feng had initiated me into the first principles of the little-known Yogi philosophy—the doctrine that the real man is not the visible body, that the immortal “I,” of which each human being is conscious to a greater or lesser extent, merely occupies and uses the corporal transient flesh. The Yogis believe that the body is but as a suit of clothes which the Spirit puts on and off from time to time, and they insist that the body must be brought under the perfect control of the mind—that the instrument must be finely tuned so as to respond to the touch of the hand of the master.

Feng had made a deep study of the Yogi teaching and was, in himself, living evidence of a man virile and rejuvenated in both body and mind. People stood astounded when they were told his actual age, and I, admiring him, was now endeavoring in my own way to follow his footsteps. The doctrine he urged with such compelling eloquence and powers had taken a deep hold of my mind—how deep I never realized until I found myself flung suddenly into dangers and temptations which were to try my physical and mental fortitude to their very depths.

It was the arrival of Stanley Audley and his bride that, suddenly and unexpectedly, changed the entire current of my life. And as I sit here placing on record this chronicle of bewildering events, I wonder that I came safely through the maze of doubt, mystery and peril in which I found myself so suddenly plunged. I can only believe that a man, profoundly influenced, as I very speedily was, by the splendid philosophy of Yogi and buoyed up by a consuming love for a pure and beautiful woman, will face dangers before which others might well quail,—will even, as the saying goes, “throw dice with the devil” if need be.

To make my story clear, I had better formally introduce myself. My name is Rex Yelverton, my age at present moment twenty-eight and the astounding incidents I am about to relate happened just over three years ago, so that I was under twenty-five at the time.

My father had died when I was twenty-three and had left me a small estate near Andover. I had been brought up to the law and had been admitted a solicitor just before my father’s death. I could not afford to live on the estate, so had cosy chambers on the top floor of an old-fashioned house in Russell Square and having entered into partnership with a solicitor named Hensman, practiced with him in Bedford Row.

Hensman’s hobby was golf and for that reason he took his holiday in the summer. I loved the winter life of Switzerland and for some years had made it my rule to get away in the winter. In addition to my music I was deeply interested in wireless, and had fitted up quite a respectable wireless station in a room in Russell Square. I had a transmitting license and with my two hobbies found my spare time so fully occupied that I mixed but little in ordinary society.

On that never-to-be-forgotten night when I first saw Stanley Audley and his handsome bride, the Doctor retired early, as was his habit. So, strolling into the ball-room of the Kürhaus opposite the hotel, I watched the pair dancing happily together, the cynosure of all eyes, of course, though the room was not very full, as the season had only just begun.

Like all other honeymoon couples, they were trying to pretend that they had been married for years and, like all other honeymoon couples, they were failing lamentably! The truth was, as ever, palpable to every onlooker. Like every one else I admired them, though like every one else, I smiled at their pretty pretense. As they had arrived by the night train from Calais, I guessed they had been married in London about thirty hours before and had come straight through to Mürren. This, in fact, proved to be the truth.

In my admiration of the beautiful young bride I was not alone, for a middle-aged, grey-bearded invalid, name Hartley Humphreys, with whom I often played billiards before going to bed, also remarked upon her beauty, and expressed wonder as to who they were. It was then that another man in the room, also evidently interested, told us that their name was Audley.

Next morning, on coming downstairs, I found little Mrs. Audley dressed in winter-sports clothes and looking inexpressibly sweet and charming.

She wore a pale grey Fair Isle jersey, with a bright jazzy pattern, with a saucy little cap to match, and over the jersey a short dark brown coat with fur collar and cuffs, and around her waist a leather belt. Brown corduroy breeches, and heavy well-oiled boots and ski-anklets completed one of the most sensible ski-outfits I have ever seen. That she was no novice at skiing was evident from the badge, a pair of crossed skis, she wore in her cap. It was the badge of the Swiss Ski Club—the same as that worn by the Alpine guides themselves.

Naturally I was surprised. I had, on the previous night, believed her to be simply a handsome young bride who had come to spend her honeymoon amid the winter gayety of Mürren, but now it was clear she was no beginner.

She had already breakfasted and was smoking a cigarette and laughing gayly with an American girl she had met on the previous night, and apparently awaiting her husband.

In a few moments the husband, in a wind-proof ski-suit and wearing one of those peaked caps of blue serge which nobody dare wear save the practiced ski-runner, came down with a word of apology.

“I broke my boot-lace, dearest. I apologize.”

“Oh! That’s all right, Stan,” she laughed, “John has got the food in his rucksack.”

Then I saw that John von Allmen, the intrepid and popular young guide, was waiting outside for them. They were going on a skiing excursion up the Schelthorn. Certainly they were no novices! I soon afterwards discovered they had both passed their “tests” in previous winters at Wengen and Pontresina.

The sun was shining brightly upon the newly fallen snow, although it was not yet nine o’clock, and as I watched the happy young couple adjust the ski-bindings to the boots and take their ski-sticks, those iron spiked poles of cherry wood with circular ends of cane to prevent sinking where the snow is soft, I noted how merry and blissful they were.

Suddenly the tall, lithe, young Alpine guide in his neat blue serge skiing suit drew on his leather mitts, hitched on his rucksack and the little party slid swiftly away over the snow.

It was clear the girl was an expert—her every movement showed it. Those who go skiing well know the difficulty of keeping their balance on the long, narrow planks turned up in front which constitute ski. But the bride had long ago passed through the initial stages. As I found out later she had been year after year to winter sports and had long passed the period when she practiced her “telemarks” and “stemmings” on the “Nursery Slopes.” Her lithe swift movements were delightful to watch and it was clear she was enjoying to the full the keen exhilaration born of the swift gliding over the crisp snow.

As I stood watching the swift progress of the Audleys and their guide, old Dr. Feng spoke behind me.

“A pretty sight, Yelverton. It is good, indeed, to be young. There’s an example of the fate lying before you: you’ll have to marry some day, you know.”

“No sign of it yet, doctor,” I laughingly replied.

As a matter of fact, matrimony had so far made no appeal to me: I had never met a girl who had stirred me deeply. I had many friends—or at least acquaintances—of my own sex, but I was deeply absorbed in my hobbies and, not seeking society for society’s sake, I had hardly any woman friends. Sometimes I fancied that the opposite sex found in me something antipathetic and uncongenial: at any rate, I made little progress with them and, perhaps for that reason, was quite content to remain a bachelor and keep my father’s old housekeeper, Mrs. Chapman, to “mother” me as she did when I was a boy and manage my flat in Russell Square.

I suppose I was no better and no worse than thousands of other fellows of my age. Men coming down from Oxford and flung into the whirl of London life are not usually Puritans or ascetics. I suppose I was much like them. Life was young in me, and fortune had been kind. If I had few friends, I had no enemies: I had an income ample for my wants and I enjoyed myself in my own way. My work kept me busy during the day: my evenings were filled with music, my “wireless,” an occasional dance, or theatre and I was always merry and happy. Nothing had occurred to make me, a careless youngster, realize that there was something in life deeper and dearer than anything I know. I was not given to self-analysis or overmuch introspection and that a storm of love might some day shatter my complacent existence to bits never crossed my mind. My music and my experiments in radio-telephony were about the only serious side of my life. So Dr. Feng’s good humored badinage left me quite unmoved.

We strolled together to the curling rink for a match.

Old Mr. Humphreys, a grey-faced financier from the near East, and a very charming and refined old fellow, sat in his invalid chair watching us. The ice was in perfect condition and very fast, so that the game was as good as could be obtained, even in Scotland itself. The orchestra was playing gay music for the skaters, some of whom were waltzing, laughter sounded everywhere and the bright sunny morning was most enjoyable.

We lost the match, mostly, I fear, through several very bad stones that I played, and our lack of energy in sweeping. Curling is a very difficult game to play well, for, unlike golf or tennis, one can get such little practice at home.

However, we all afterward retired to the bar, and over our cocktails old Mr. Humphreys who, being a confirmed invalid, wheeled himself about in his chair, chatted merrily. He had arrived about a week after I had come. He seldom, if ever, left his chair during the day. His guidance and management of the chair was wonderful and he could even play billiards while seated. He and the doctor were great friends and often joined a bridge party together, while I took my skis up the cable railway to the Allmendhubel and swept back down the slopes.

The following afternoon, while passing along the terrace of the big chalet which overlooks the rink, I found Major Harold Burton, here the secretary of the Mürren Bob-sleigh Club, and at home an officer in the Tank Corps, chatting with the Audleys.

“I say, Yelverton!” he exclaimed, “will you join us on a test on the bob-run presently? Mr. and Mrs. Audley are coming. Let me introduce you.”

I raised my ski-cap and bowed.

“Thanks,” I replied, “I’ll be delighted to make a fourth. You’re the only man I’d trust to take me down. It’s too fast for me!” I added with a laugh.

“Is it really a fast run?” asked the bride, smiling.

“Well, you will see for yourself,” I replied.

Laughing gayly we went over the snow, past the bend at the village shop where one can obtain anything from a Swiss cuckoo clock, to a paper of pins, and whose elderly proprietor is one of the best ski instructors in the canton. Paying our fare, we ascended by the rack-railway up the snowy heights of the Allmendhubel.

On the truck was our heavy “bob,” with its steel frame and runners, and its delicate controls. At the summit the attendants pushed it along the flat to the narrow entrance of the bob-run which a hundred hands had, a few weeks before, constructed in the snow, digging it all out and making many banked-up hair-pin bends down the side of the mountain for two and a half miles back into Mürren.

Those curves are scientifically calculated for speed, but it takes an expert to negotiate them successfully. The crew of a “big bob” must know the course, and be alert to the command of the driver to bend over “right,” “left,” or “up.” One’s first trip in a “bob” on a fast run is an experience never to be forgotten. But both the bride and bridegroom revealed that they had done such things before.

At the “gate” of the run—a narrow cut eight feet deep in the snow—a smiling Swiss stood beside the telephone, which gave “clear passage.” Burton, as an expert, who took no chances, had the “bob” turned over, and examined the brakes and controls, which sometimes get clogged with snow.

We all got in and set our feet forward on the rests, I being behind to act as brakesman, and to “brake” at the instant order of Burton.

“Everybody all right?” he asked, as we settled ourselves behind each other on the big bob.

We responded that we were, then four men pushed us off down the narrow icy slope.

Slowly we went at first. Then, suddenly gathering speed, we saw a dead end in front of us.

“Right!” cried Burton, and all of us leaned over to the right and thus negotiated the corner.

“Left!” was the order, and round we went every moment gathering speed.

“Careful!” he cried, “in a minute we shall have a right and left quickly. Now—! Right! Left! Up! Quick!”

By this time we were flying down the side of the mountain, showers of particles of ice every now and then being thrown up and cutting our faces. Now and again we swept through clouds of snow. We held our breath and screwed up our eyes until we could only just see.

“Left! Right! Up! Left—again! Right!” shouted Burton, and each of us alert and quick, obeyed. We were traveling at a furious speed and any fault might mean a serious accident, such as that in which one of the British Bob-sleigh team for the Olympic Sports broke both his legs during a run at Chamonix.

“Straight!” we heard Burton shout as we flew along, still down and down. “Right in a few moments,” he cried. “Be careful. Then a big bump and we’re down. Steady!—steady! Now-w-w! Right!—Look out! Bump! Good!” and he steered us down a straight path past where the watcher stood at the other end of the telephone.

“Well?” he shouted to the time-keeper, as he pulled up, “what is it?”

“Four minutes, eight and a half seconds, sir,” replied the tall, thin-faced Swiss peasant, speaking in French.

“Good! Fairly fast! But we’ll try to do it in better time tomorrow.”

I had sat behind little Mrs. Audley who, turning to me, her face reddened by the rush of frosty air, exclaimed,—

“Wasn’t it glorious! I’ve been to Switzerland three times before. I passed my third test in skiing two years ago, but have never been on a big bob-run. That last double turn was most exciting, wasn’t it?”

I agreed, and we all four strolled together back to the hotel to tea.

Afterward, as I walked in the twilight upon the snowy path leading to the station of the funicular railway, I found myself surrounded by groups of young men and girls returning from skiing on the Grütsch Alp, and other places. But even these cheerful greetings and joyous conversations could not remove from my mind a new and entirely strange feeling of fascination that I felt was exercised over me by pretty Mrs. Audley. It was something magnetic, something indescribable, and, to me, wholly weird and uncanny. I had only spoken to her a few casual words. Yet I knew instinctively that into my careless and care-free life a new and disturbing element had entered.

CHAPTER II
A TEMPORARY BRIDE

Though I was not, as a rule, fond of society, it was impossible to resist the infection of the merry-making spirit at Mürren and in consequence I joined heartily in all the fun that was going forward. The night of the bob-sleigh trip found me playing the drum in the amateur jazz band—a dance-orchestra formed among the visitors each year, to carry on the dancing after midnight. Mrs. Audley and her husband came into the dance-hall of the Kürhaus just as the merriment began, and they danced together while I sat behind the drum with a little comic, flat-brimmed hat in imitation of George Robey, upon my head.

“Really your amateur band is more amusing than the professional one,” declared Audley, during the interval. “Last night we watched you. It seems that the visitors wait until you start up.”

“Well,” I laughed. “We try and keep things humming along until two, or even three o’clock. We like to play and the others like to dance.”

“My wife loves it,” he declared. “She’s only just been saying that she would like to join you.”

“Right!” I said, laughing. “She shall be our pianist tomorrow—if she will.”

But the bride hesitated. “I’m afraid, Mr. Yelverton,” she said, “that I’m not so good as the American girl you’ve got. She’s a professional, surely.”

As a matter of fact she was studying the piano in Paris, and was in Mürren for the winter holiday.

And then we struck up again and the crowd danced merrily till nearly three o’clock.

The following day was a Saturday. I spent a large part of the morning gossiping with old Mr. Humphreys, whose chief pleasures as an invalid seemed to be to play bridge and to smoke his pipe. Though his was rather a thoughtful disposition, as his deep-sunken eyes and shaggy brows suggested, yet he was always a cheerful and entertaining companion.

“I sometimes stay with my sister at Weybridge, in Surrey,” he explained, as I walked beside him while he wheeled his chair over the snowy road which leads out of the village along the edge of the deep precipice overlooking Lauterbrunnen in the misty valley far below. While we were in the bright keen air high-up above the clouds, with the sun shining brilliantly over a white picturesque world, below, in the valley, it was dark dull winter. “Very soon,” added my friend, “very soon I’ll have to go back to Constantinople, where I have a good many interests. But I shall only be there a few weeks. All this political trouble makes things very difficult financially. Have you ever been in Turkey?”

I replied in the negative, but added that it had long been my desire to go there, and see the beauties of the Bosphorus.

“Yes,” he said, “You ought to go. You’d find lots to interest you. Life in the Turkish capital and Turkish life is quite different from life in Europe. The Turk is always a polished gentleman and, moreover, the foreigner is now better protected in every way than the Turk himself, thanks to the laws made years ago.”

“That, I suppose, is why Constantinople before the war was such a hot-bed of European sharks, swindlers and bogus concession-hunters,” I remarked, with a smile, for I had heard much of the “four-flush” crowd from a friend who had interests in the Ottoman Empire.

“Exactly,” he laughed. “It is true that in Pera we have a collection of the very worst crooks in all Europe. But it is hoped that, under the new conditions, Turkey will expel them and begin a new and cleaner regime.”

As he spoke we turned a sharp corner, and Stanley Audley and his pretty wife, smart in another sports suit of emerald green that I had not before seen her wearing, shouted simultaneously the warning, “Achtung!”

Next second, recognizing us, they greeted us cheerily as they slid swiftly past upon their skis.

“A very charming pair—eh?” remarked old Humphreys. “The more I see of them the more interesting they become. What do you think of the girl? You are young, and should be a critic of feminine beauty,” he added, with a smile.

“I agree. She is very charming,” I said, “Audley is, however, rather too serious, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do. She’s too go-ahead for him—she’s a modern product as they call it. If a man marries he ought to have a comrade, not a cushion. A woman, to be a perfect wife, should not be too intellectual. A knowledge of literature, art and science does not necessarily make for domestic happiness. In a wife you want heart more than brains. Yet a giddy, brainless wife is even a worse abomination.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Audley,” I asked.

“Not in the least,” he replied quickly. “I don’t think she is either brainless or giddy. I am only giving you my idea of the perfect wife. The real wife would be a mate—the term is used by the lower classes and expresses the ideal perfectly. It sums up the whole thing. And I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Audley are really mated, though at present they are evidently very much in love with one another. I think they married in a hurry.”

This was a new line of thought for me, and, naturally, I was astonished. But I kept silence. Old Humphreys had seen far more of the world than I had and I had a good deal of respect for his judgment.

When we got back to the hotel Dr. Feng was waiting for me and we went in to lunch together. We were late and the big dining room was almost empty. After we had finished our meal Feng went to his room and I strolled into the lounge intending to have a cup of coffee there and then go to my room to write some letters.

To my surprise—for I thought they were out skiing—I found Audley and his wife seated on a settee. Both were obviously upset and the bride’s eyes showed unmistakable traces of tears.

To this day I cannot imagine what prompted me, but I think it must have been sheer nervous bravado for, without passing, I stepped across to them, and with a laugh exclaimed,—

“Well—and what is the matter now?”

Both stared at me in natural resentment. I could have bitten my tongue out in my vexation at having perpetrated such a banality. I started a stumbling apology.

“Oh, all right, Yelverton,” said Audley, his resentment vanishing, “the fact is we are in a difficulty and I don’t quite know what to do.”

“Can I help you anyhow?” I asked.

“I’m afraid not. But I’ll tell you how things are. We were married in London only four days ago and now I have to go back and Thelma doesn’t like it. I’m an electrical engineer at the head offices in Westminster of Gordon & Austin, the big combine which holds concessions for the supply of electricity to about forty towns in England. I’ve just had a wire calling me to attend a meeting of the directors on Monday morning. It is proposed to promote me to be manager of the power works at Woolwich, which means a big lift that will be a great thing for me in the future.”

“Well, of course, you’ll go,” I said.

“I suppose I must,” he replied. “But according to the papers there’s a big gale in the Channel and only the little boat is crossing from Boulogne. Thelma doesn’t want me to leave her and she is such a bad sailor that if she came with me she would certainly be very seriously ill. The last time she was seasick she collapsed very dangerously. She cannot possibly make the crossing.”

The girl was obviously on the edge of a flood of tears.

“But surely,” I said to her husband, “Mrs. Audley will be all right here for a few days. If you care to trust me so far I shall be delighted to look after her and so, I am sure, will Dr. Feng and Mr. Humphreys. She could be with us. You ought to be back by Wednesday evening.”

“It’s awfully kind of you, Yelverton,” said Audley, “but it rather looks like taking advantage of your good nature.”

“Nonsense,” I said, “we shall all be delighted. If you catch the Boulogne express from Interlaken tonight you will be in Victoria tomorrow evening in good time for your appointment on Monday. You can leave again on Tuesday and be up here on Wednesday. We will keep Mrs. Audley amused until then.”

Both expressed their thanks and we went to the telephone to get on to the Sleeping-car Company in Interlaken and reserve a berth.

I arranged to leave with them at four o’clock that afternoon and descend by the funicular into Lauterbrunnen, where Audley would take train for Interlaken to catch the night-mail for Boulogne.

Thus, having fixed things up, I left them and went up to the Doctor’s room where I told him what had occurred.

The old fellow at first laughed immoderately and declared I was extremely foolish to intrude. However, he was sympathetic enough.

“Poor little girl!” he said. “Of course she would be very lonely. We must have her to sit at our table, Yelverton, and of course, my dear boy, you must entertain her. Poor little girl!—she has only one honeymoon, and to think that it should be so interrupted! Yes. You did quite the right thing,—quite right!”

At six o’clock I stood on the snowy platform at Lauterbrunnen station with “The Little Lady,” as I called her, and we watched her husband wave us farewell as the train left. It was dark, damp and dreary down there. A thaw had set in and it was sloppy under foot. Lauterbrunnen is not a pleasant place in winter. Suddenly she turned to me and with a merry laugh exclaimed:

“Well, Mr. Yelverton, I suppose I am now your temporary bride—eh?”

We laughed together, and then crossed back to the little station of the funicular railway and slowly ascended until, just in time for dinner, we were back again in Mürren.

Naturally, the fun-loving guests at the hotel made the best of the news that Stanley Audley had had to dash off to London and had left his pretty wife in my charge. Chaff and banter flew freely, practical jokes were played on us by the score and the excitement helped to chase away Mrs. Audley’s depression. And, perhaps, wisely, she sought to get rid of her natural sorrow by flinging herself into the whirl of the Kürhaus life. She danced, laughed and even flirted mildly with one or two young fellows in a way she certainly would not have dreamed of doing had Stanley Audley been present. But it was all very innocent and above-board and not even the strictest moralist would have found fault with this gay abandon which, I fancy, was half assumed. For, disguise it how she would, she was quite clearly devoted to her husband and longed only for his return.

Next day she lunched with Dr. Feng and myself and in the afternoon we put on our skis and I took her out over the snow to the Grütsch Alp by a way which commanded a magnificent view of the high Bernese Alps. We took our cameras with us and, on my table, as I write there is a snap-shot I took of her as, in her smart winter sports kit, she sped swiftly down a steep slope with her ski-sticks held behind her in real professional style.

She proved a delightful companion. She was, I found, a Londoner born and bred, and she had all the genuine shrewdness and good humor of the town girl. She was well educated, a perfect encyclopædia of books and plays, and she was, as I knew, a splendid dancer. Her mother, the widow of an ex-naval officer named Shaylor, lived at Bexhill. Of her father she remembered very little: he had been on the China Station for many years and his visits home had been infrequent. He had died in China the year before.

The humor of my position struck me forcibly. Here was I, a young bachelor fairly well off and sufficiently good-looking, left in charge of a beautiful young girl who was a bride of only a few days! In England, of course, such a position would have been unthinkable. It did not seem so strange in the free and easy camaraderie of Mürren where the free and easy sporting life bred a harmless unconventionality and where even the British starchy reserve was very early sloughed off. Everybody made a joke of the whole affair and Dr. Feng and old Mr. Humphreys laughed like boys at this novel status I had acquired.

Of course there was some malice: there always is in a mixed company. After we had glided some miles across the snow, we halted and I poured out some tea from the vacuum flask I carried. Just as Mrs. Audley was drinking a party of men and girls from the hotel passed. Noticing us, one of the girls made some remark. What it was I did not hear, but it produced a burst of ill-mannered laughter and my companion turned scarlet.

“They’re horrid, aren’t they?” she said and I agreed. “But it is really delightful here,” she said, looking up into my face. “You are most awfully kind to us, Mr. Yelverton. Stanley and I shall never forget it. If he gets the position of manager at Woolwich it will mean so much to us—and it will greatly please my mother.”

“Was your mother—er—against your marriage?” I inquired.

“Well—yes, she was. She thought I was too young. You see I’m not nineteen yet, though people think I’m older,” she confessed with a charming little moue. “Stanley is an awfully good boy, and I love him so very much.”

“Naturally, and I hope you always will,” I said. “Of course, I’m older than you, but our position here today is really a bit unconventional, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she laughed, “I wonder how you like being bothered with a temporary bride?”

“I’m not bothered, but most charmed to have such a delightful companion as yourself, Mrs. Audley,” I declared.

We returned to dinner after an enjoyable afternoon amid those wild mountains and snowy paths, and when she came to table she provided one of us, at any rate, with a startling surprise.

We had taken our seats at our table and were waiting for her. Seated with my back to the door I did not see her enter the room, but I saw Dr. Feng, who was facing me, suddenly stiffen in his chair and not even his Chinese impassivity could disguise the look of amazement, almost of fear, which leaped suddenly into his eyes.

“Whatever is the matter, doctor?” I jerked out in amazement.

Instantly the old man had himself in hand again. But that glimpse of his vivid emotion had startled me. Before I could say anything he had risen and was greeting Thelma Audley. I sprang to my feet.

Mrs. Audley was wearing a dainty gown of ivory silk—her wedding dress, she told us later, put on in compliment to the old doctor. She looked very sweet and girlish in it. But Dr. Feng, I could plainly see, had no eyes for the dress: his attention was concentrated on the extraordinary pendant which Mrs. Audley wore on her bosom, suspended from a thin platinum chain round her neck.

“Look what I have had sent me!” she cried as she called our attention to it. “Did you ever see anything so quaint?” And she took it off and handed it to the doctor. He took it from her with what, had the brooch been some sacred emblem, I should have thought was an expression of deep reverence, and examined it closely.

It was a sufficiently striking ornament to have attracted attention anywhere. It was fashioned in the form of a peacock’s foot, about three inches long. The shank, at the end of which was a tiny ring through which the platinum chain was passed, was of rough gold studded with small diamonds and each of the claws was composed of a single crystal, cut to the natural shape of the claw. The jewels blazed in the glare of the electric lights. The pendant was of exquisite workmanship and was quite obviously enormously valuable.

“Why, wherever did you get that, Mrs. Audley?” I exclaimed. “It’s really wonderful.”

“Isn’t it pretty?” she said. “It came by registered post this evening and I found it waiting for me when I went up to dress. Mother had sent it on from Bexhill. I don’t know who sent it—there was no letter—but perhaps I shall find out when I get home.” It was evident she had not the least idea of the value of this quaint jewel.

I was keenly watching Dr. Feng. For some reason I could not explain, I connected the crystal claw with the unmistakable agitation he had shown as he caught sight of Mrs. Audley entering the room.

“Did you say there was no letter with it? Perhaps you have kept the packing,” he asked, gravely regarding the jewel as it lay in the palm of his hand.

“Oh, it came from some foreign place,” Mrs. Audley said. “I could not make out the name, but I will fetch the wrapper, perhaps you can tell,” and she darted from her seat.

Feng sat silent, turning the claw over and over in his hand and closely examining it. He seemed to have forgotten me entirely in his abstraction.

A few moments later Mrs. Audley returned with a small box and some peculiar paper in which it had been wrapped. The whole had been rewrapped in brown paper in England and the original address—“Miss Thelma Shaylor, care of Mrs. Shaylor, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England,” was undamaged. It was a queer cramped handwriting, evidently that of a foreigner.

Dr. Feng glanced at it. “This was posted in Pekin,” he said, “Have you any friends out there, Mrs. Audley?”

“No, certainly not,” was the startling reply. “I have never known anyone in China. Are you sure it is from Pekin?”

Dr. Feng smiled. “You forget I am a Chinese, Mrs. Audley,” he said. “You can be quite sure that package came from Pekin. It is wrapped in Chinese rice paper as you will see, and the address was written by a Chinese.”

Mrs. Audley looked puzzled. “Well,” she said at last, “someone who knows me must have gone to China. But it’s very pretty, and I wish I knew who sent it.”

“You must take great care of it,” said Dr. Feng. “It is very valuable, apart from sentimental considerations.”

Then our talk drifted to other topics and the crystal claw, for the moment, was apparently forgotten. But I noticed that Dr. Feng could not keep his eyes off it for long, and he was unusually silent and abstracted during the meal.

Tired from her ski excursion Mrs. Audley left us early and went to bed. The old doctor and I were sitting in the lounge drinking coffee when I made up my mind to ask him about the crystal claw.

“What does the crystal claw mean, Doctor?” I said quietly, shooting the question at him suddenly in an interval of our chat.

He glanced at me keenly. “What do you mean?” he asked. “What makes you think I know anything about it?”

“All right, Doctor,” I laughed. “I happened to be looking at you when Mrs. Audley came into the dining room and saw your face. Also I saw you looking at the claw afterward. Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about it. Remember I’m a lawyer.”

The old man laughed. “You’re right enough, my boy,” he said pleasantly. “I know a good deal about the crystal claw. But what I don’t know is why it was sent Mrs. Audley—or rather to Miss Shaylor.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Not by any means,” he rejoined quickly. “That claw was sent to Miss Shaylor—to Miss Shaylor,” he repeated emphatically. “The fact that she is Mrs. Audley has nothing whatever to do with it. She thinks it is a wedding present. It is nothing of the kind. The man who sent her the crystal claw could not have known of her wedding, anyhow.”

“Tell me all about it, Doctor,” I begged.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I don’t suppose it will do any harm if I do. But you had better keep what I tell you to yourself, at any rate for the present.

“The crystal claw,” he went on, “is the badge or sign of the Thu-tseng, a powerful Manchu secret society. There is nothing illegal about the society; it simply works for the political regeneration of China. Hsi-yuan himself is one of its leading lights—you know of him, of course. The claw is given, so far as outsiders are concerned, only to those who have rendered some signal service to the society. Now, I cannot see how Mrs. Audley, by any conceivable stretch of the imagination, can have helped the Thu-tseng. Excepting myself, she has probably never spoken to a Chinese in her life.”

“Did you know her father was a naval officer and was for many years on the China Station?” I asked.

Feng started violently, “Is that so?” he asked quickly.

“Yes,” I replied, “she told me so only today.”

The old man sank back into his chair and pondered deeply.

“That may explain it,” he said slowly. “It is just possible the claw has been sent to her in recognition of something her father did. But, if so, it must have been something of very great importance. How long has her father been dead?”

“About a year,” I replied.

“Well,” he said, after another period of thought, “there must have been some reason why the sending of the claw was delayed. But,” he went on with growing animation, “you can take it from me she has powerful friends. With that claw in her possession she could ask almost anything she liked in any part of China today. It would be a magic talisman there.”

Of course, I was as completely bewildered and amazed as Dr. Feng. But I could only assume that his solution of the mystery was correct. Mrs. Audley apparently knew next to nothing of her father’s life abroad: certainly she would and could know nothing of his political activities there. But Feng was confident he had somehow been associated with powerful members of the Thu-tseng.

“I will send some cables tomorrow,” he said, as we parted for the night. “I am deeply interested in this affair. China is the land of mysteries, and this is beyond me. The last time I saw the crystal claw was when I was in Tibet twenty years ago. It was worn by a monk of a Buddhist monastery there. But, of course, I could never find out why he got it.”

CHAPTER III
THE DEADLY FOEHN

Next day, while old Humphreys remained in his invalid chair to write some business letters to his agents in the Near East, and Doctor Feng had a match at curling, I took “The Little Lady” out upon the other side of the deep valley to the popular winter sports resort at Wengen, which lies up the mountain on the opposite side of the valley. We lunched at the splendid Regina Hotel, where every one goes, and afterwards took some snap-shots. Later we took the train up to the Schiedegg and came down on our skis, a glorious run back to Wengen, the snow conditions being perfect. In everything she was interested, admiring the scenery and thoroughly enjoying the run, until we returned in the darkness up the mountain side again to Mürren.

I had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Audley had been a London business girl, for she told me she knew shorthand and typewriting, and she was evidently familiar with business affairs. The old invalid had become even more interested in her. He studied her as the type of the modern girl and she certainly was always bright and vivacious when with us. Dr. Feng, however, though he was invariably polite to her, seemed to have become, for some reason, decidedly antagonistic. It is true the position was decidedly unconventional and irregular, but I could not reconcile his present attitude with his earlier and very obvious liking for Mrs. Audley. He now disagreed utterly with my quixotic offer to look after her and did not hesitate to say so.

“You are playing with fire,” he declared. “You are both young and she is a very pretty girl. The best thing you can do will be to clear out.”

I laughed, of course, and told him I had only accepted this responsibility in order to help a man out of a difficulty.

He shook his head. “You don’t know either of them, and you don’t know what you may have let yourself in for.”

I wondered, naturally, whether he had been influenced by the arrival of the crystal claw, and asked him bluntly if this were the case.

“Not at all,” he assured me. “The crystal claw has nothing whatever to do with it.”

In spite of all he said I would not take his advice. In the headstrong way of youth I put him down as a thoroughly conventional old fogey, a survival of the Victorian era when girls were compelled to go about with chaperons and the smoking of a cigarette was a vice to be indulged only in the strictest privacy. So Mrs. Audley and I continued to enjoy ourselves, skating each morning on the rink and skiing together in the afternoon over the freshly fallen snow.

With a view to throwing additional light on the mystery of the crystal claw I tried as delicately as I could to “pump” her about her father. But it was evident she knew little or nothing beyond what she had told me. “He was a naval officer on the China Station for many years,” seemed to sum it all up and I wondered whether, for some reason I could not divine, further knowledge had been deliberately withheld from her. Of Eastern political affairs she obviously knew nothing.

Of her husband she said little, though I saw she was devoted to him.

“When we get back, Stanley and I hope to get a flat at Hampstead,” she said one day when we were resting after a swift run on skis close to the Half-way House—which is on the electric railway line which runs from Mürren along the edge of the precipice, before one changes into the rack-railway to descend to the valley.

That night at dinner there was a strange incident. Mrs. Audley came down in a gown which was the envy of many girls in the hotel. It was made of ciré tissue, and the yoke and hem were of silver lace. The front panel was ornamented with pin tucks and finished with a chou of flowers. It was a charming frock. On her breast the crystal claw winked and blazed in the light of the lamps.

Old Humphreys, contrary to his usual custom, had come into the dining room for dinner and was seated in his wheeled chair at the same table as Mrs. Audley, Dr. Feng and myself.

I shall never forget the look that came over his face when he caught sight of the crystal claw! Rage, fear and amazement mingled together until the old man looked positively demoniacal. Luckily, Mrs. Audley was talking to Dr. Feng and neither of them noticed him.

It was a moment or two before the old invalid could control himself. Then his face resumed its usual expression. But I had caught a glimpse of the hell that, for a brief moment, must have raged in the old man’s mind and once again the crystal claw seemed to be associated with something sinister and dangerous.

“That’s a pretty new brooch you have, Mrs. Audley,” said the old fellow in a grating voice which showed that even now he had hardly recovered himself.

“Yes,” she laughed merrily, “isn’t it sweet? It came by post, sent to me from Pekin. I haven’t any idea who sent it for there was no name. It has been forwarded from London, and is no doubt a wedding present from somebody who has forgotten to enclose a card.” And she turned over the crystal claw so that he could admire it.

Afterwards we crossed the snowy road to the Kürhaus, where in the spacious ball-room we danced together. She also danced with two or three other admiring partners. Old Mr. Humphreys wheeled his chair into the dancing room as was his habit each evening. It was pathetic to see the grey-haired thin-faced man who seemed so active in every other sense, deprived of the power of locomotion. When he left his chair he managed to hobble along and with great difficulty up the stairs with the aid of rubber-capped sticks. Mostly, however, the porters carried his chair upstairs to the first floor and he wheeled himself along the corridor to his room.

On the following morning, according to arrangements made over-night, we started at nine o’clock and taking with us John, the smart, ever-smiling guide, we started out on our skis to ascend the Schwarzbirg, nine thousand feet high, by way of the Bielen-Lücke. The ascent we found extremely interesting, but the weather, even when we started, was grey and threatening. Now and then snow clouds drifted quickly across, and that dangerous and mysterious Alpine wind, the Foehn, ever and anon grew gusty. It was clear a storm was threatening.

“A little blizzard, perhaps,” remarked the slim, agile John, in his soft English, as he slid along over the snow.

Weather conditions in the Alps change with every moment. A blizzard may succeed brilliant sunshine within five minutes—a blizzard that whips the face with its icy blast, piles snow deep, and freezes one to the marrow. In the glacier regions of the higher Alps, the weather cannot be depended upon for a few minutes together.

Thelma, that day, wore the ski kit in which I had first seen her—the Fair Isle jazzy patterned jersey, and over it the short little wind-proof jacket trimmed with fur, and her corduroy breeches and stockings. It was in every way serviceable.

Presently when she had, to my surprise, executed what is known as an “open Christiania,” and we were skiing together across a great plateau of snow far above the tree-line, with John fifty yards ahead of us, she suddenly exclaimed—

“Do you know, Mr. Yelverton, I’ve heard nothing from Stanley except a telegram sent from Victoria at six o’clock on Sunday night, announcing his arrival. I’ve wired, but I’ve got no reply. I’m worried about him, but I don’t want to bother you.”

“That’s curious,” I remarked. “To where have you sent your wire?”

“To his office in Westminster.”

“Well, you ought to have had a reply. But never mind,” I said. “He’s due back tomorrow night. We’ll go down to Lauterbrunnen and meet him—eh?”

The sky had suddenly become darkened and a strong tearing wind had sprung up. We had left the plateau and upon our skis were following John “herring-boning” up the side of the mountain. When one starts “herring-boning” one faces the incline and points the skis outwards at a considerable angle to each other—then the slope can be mounted by lifting the skis forward alternately and placing them in the snow on the inner edges, the angle between them remaining the same.

It was a steep slope, so we made wider angles between our skis to prevent them slipping backwards.

We were lurching heavily from side to side in order to throw the weight of one ski while lifting the other, when John suddenly shrieked the warning, “Achtung!”

Next second I heard a soft hissing sound overhead, then a loud rumbling which increased to thunder. I instinctively seized Mrs. Audley. The next moment we were struck violently in the back, covered by a blanket of snow, and hurled down the mountain side amid an avalanche of snow, stones and rocks.

When, very slowly, I awakened to a sense of things about me, I found I had bitten my tongue badly and felt a severe pain at the back of my skull where, I suppose, I must have struck a rock. Mrs. Audley was still in my arms and unconscious, her bleeding face white as marble. Both of us were deeply imbedded in the snow, but our heads fortunately lay clear, otherwise we must certainly have been suffocated. The avalanche had swept us down, but as I had instinctively grasped my dainty companion, we had been held together.

Blood was flowing freely from the wound in my head, and Mrs. Audley’s face was cut and bleeding. As quickly as possible I disengaged myself from the heavy weight of snow upon me, and strove to rouse her from her swoon. The thought that she might be dead drove me well-nigh frantic.

I seized her by the shoulders and shook her violently. Then with trembling fingers I tore open her jacket, jersey and silk blouse, and bent my head to listen. Her heart was beating faintly.

My vacuum flask of hot tea was battered and broken but in an inside pocket I had, providentially, a small flask of brandy which was undamaged. I forced a few drops of the spirit between her pallid lips.

Her lips moved. A moment later she opened her big grey eyes and asked me in a whisper:

“Where am I?”

“You are safe,” I assured her, holding her in my arms. “Don’t worry. We’ll be out of this very soon.”

“But where are we?” she asked gazing around upon the snowy surroundings. “Where is John? Tell me!”

I told her briefly what had happened.

“But where is John?” she queried. “I hope he is all right. It was very foolish for us to venture up here after the warm Foehn of yesterday,—wasn’t it?”

“I expect John is all right,” I said. “He warned us, and no doubt took precautions.” Guides in the Alps seldom fail.

With difficulty we wriggled out of the snow and stood up. Even in our shaken condition we could not but admire the panorama of the Eiger, the Jungfrau and the Wetterhorn, across the darkening valley before us. But haste was imperative: the light was fading quickly and we were a long way from Mürren.

I had lost one of my skis, which had been torn from its strong Huitfeldt binding in our fall. Mrs. Audley’s, however, were intact, and we started to descend. She soon recovered in the keen Alpine air, and was able to help me, lame dog that I was. Repeatedly we gave the six shouts recognized as the regular Alpine distress call, but there was no reply.

It was quite dark when we struggled back, to find that our guide, having happily escaped, had arrived before us and sent out a search-party. By shouts and flashing signals, this was soon recalled.

At the hotel they put Thelma to bed at once, while after the Swiss doctor had seen to my head, I sat in the bar recounting my experience and drinking a strong whiskey and soda.

Dr. Feng and Humphreys were both most eager to know the details of our adventure. But later the doctor said—

“I think you are very foolish, Yelverton! You ought never to have had anything to do with the bride, she will only bring trouble upon you. Humphreys agrees with me. You’re a young fool!”

“Probably I am,” I replied laughing! “I very nearly lost my life over it today.”

“You are a regular Don Quixote,” he said. “Well, I admire you after all. You would be a fine young fellow, if you were just a little more cautious.”

“Cautious!” I laughed, facing the old doctor, “I’m young. You are old. You weren’t cautious when you were my age, were you?”

“No,” he answered. “I suppose not—I suppose not.”

The night-mail train from Boulogne arrives at the little station at Lauterbrunnen each evening about five o’clock. The next afternoon therefore Mrs. Audley, who had quite recovered from her accident on the previous day, accompanied me down into the valley by the cable railway. She was all excitement, for her husband, before his departure, had promised to return by that train, and had, indeed, booked his sleeping-berth by it.

At last the train came slowly in from Interlaken, where the change is made from the wagon-lit. A number of hurrying English visitors descended but Stanley Audley was not among them.

Bitter disappointment was written upon the girl’s face.

“He must have missed the train at Victoria,” she declared.

“Well,” I said, “There is not another through train until tomorrow—unless he travels by Paris and Bâle.”

The station master, however, informed us that the service from Paris would not arrive till early next morning, so that we were compelled to reascend to Mürren.

Audley’s failure to telegraph or write to his wife, struck me as uncommonly strange.

While we were in the narrow little compartment of the cable railway, I ventured to put several questions to her concerning him. But she would give only evasive replies.

Next day she went to the little wood-built post office alone and despatched several telegrams to various addresses, but the replies she received gave no news of her husband. Evening came again, but Stanley Audley was not among the arrivals from London, though I was with Thelma on the arrival of the mountain train at Mürren station.

“I cannot make it out,” she said as we sped back to the hotel on our skis. “Surely he must be delayed. Perhaps he has telegraphed to me and the message has gone astray!”

“That may be,” I agreed in order to reassure her, but personally I felt much mystified.

Next day I telegraphed to the managing director of Gordon & Austin, the electrical engineers in George Street, Westminster, asking for news of Stanley Audley, and in response about five o’clock in the evening came a reply which read: “Stanley Audley is not employed by us and is unknown to us.”

I said nothing to Thelma, but finding Dr. Feng alone, showed him the telegram.

The old doctor grunted with dissatisfaction.

“Something wrong somewhere,” he remarked. “One should always be very careful of hotel acquaintances. I warned you at the time that you were indiscreet to offer to look after the bride of a man you don’t know.”

“I admit that! But the whole affair is very mysterious. He told me a deliberate lie when he said he was employed by Gordon & Austin.”

“Yes. He’s a mystery, and evidently not what he pretended to be. What does his wife think?”

“I haven’t shown her the telegram.”

“Don’t. Try and discover what you can from her.”

“You don’t seem to like her, Doctor,” I said bluntly.

“No. I don’t like either of them,” the old man admitted. “There’s too much mystery about the pair. I was discussing them with Humphreys this morning, and he agrees.”

“It is not Thelma’s fault,” I said.

“It may be. She evidently knows more about her husband than what she has told you.”

“Well, she’s told me nothing,” I replied.

“There you are! She is concealing the truth. Go and find out all you can. And don’t be indiscreet. Your present position is dangerous. Perhaps he’s left her deliberately and palmed her off upon you, hoping that you will both fall in love, and he can free himself of her at your expense. Such things are not unknown, remember!”

“I don’t believe it,” I declared. “I undertook a trust—foolishly if you like—and it is up to me to carry it out to the best of my ability.”

“Ah! my dear boy, your eyes are closed very often,” the old doctor said. “The lookers-on see most of the game, and I’ve seen one or two little things which show that your temporary bride is not adverse to a little secret flirtation.”

“How?” I asked quickly.

“Well, she’s on quite friendly terms with that young fellow, Harold Ruthen.”

“Ruthen!” I echoed. “I didn’t know they were acquainted. I’ve never seen them speak.”

“No, not when you are about,” replied the old man laughing. “But I’ve often seen them chatting together.”

This surprised me. Harold Ruthen was a rather foppish, fair-haired man about my own age, whose airs were of the superior type. His interest in Thelma had not escaped me, but I had never seen them speaking together. He was, I understood, an ex-officer, and he was a very good skater. But at first sight I had taken an instinctive dislike to him and, that he should have made Thelma’s acquaintance in secret, greatly annoyed me.

I felt myself responsible to Stanley Audley, even if he had deceived me.

Now I found myself in a difficulty. Only at that moment I recollected how, on the morning before Thelma’s husband had announced his forced return to London, I had seen Ruthen walking with the doctor up a narrow path with high snow-banks close to the hotel. They were deep in conversation, and old Feng seemed to be impressing some point upon Ruthen while he listened very attentively.

Did Dr. Feng know more than he admitted?

I must say that I did not like his hostile attitude towards the newly wedded pair, an attitude which now seemed to be shared by old Mr. Humphreys.

That night, when Thelma came to table, she was wearing a charming gown of almond green, that we had not seen before. Though she looked beautiful, her face was more serious than usual, and I suspected that I saw traces of tears.

As we sat together I fell to wondering who was Stanley Audley? Why had he deceived his young wife, and then deserted her, leaving her in my charge?

Had I fallen into a clever trap?

CHAPTER IV
WHISPERS OF WOMEN

Two days passed, yet Stanley Audley did not return.

On the afternoon of the second day, old Mr. Humphreys spoke to me in confidence while we sat at tea, which is almost a religious ceremony in Mürren.

“Funny about that young fellow Audley,” he said. “Have you discovered anything further?”

“No,” I replied, “the fact is I don’t like to be too inquisitive.”

“Of course, but the girl is left in your charge, and you certainly have a right to know the truth,” declared the old invalid. “Personally, I don’t like the situation at all. I shall go back to London in a few days, but do let me know how you get on, for I am interested. You can always write to me, care of the Ottoman Bank in London.”

I promised, and finding Thelma, who had just come in from the rink, where there had been an ice-hockey match, I greeted her in the hall as she went downstairs to tea.

Later we went for a stroll together and as we passed out into the grey twilight, young Ruthen held open the door for us, bowing, but not speaking. Before me the pair posed as strangers.

“I don’t like that fellow!” I remarked, as we walked along the snowy road out of the village.

“Neither do I,” was her quick response.

“But, if I’m not mistaken, Mrs. Audley, you are acquainted with him,” I remarked.

“Well—yes—and no,” she said. “It is true that he thrusts himself upon me whenever he has the chance, and your back is turned. I’ve snubbed him a dozen times, but he is always lurking about.”

“Then you are not friendly with him?”

“On the contrary. I confess I don’t like him,” she answered quite frankly. Whereupon I resolved to try and catch him speaking with her and tell him what I thought of him.

“He’s a cad!” I declared. “He pretends to be a gentleman, but he does not behave like one.”

“You speak as though you are annoyed, Mr. Yelverton,” and she laughed lightly.

“I am. You are left in my care, Mrs. Audley. Your husband would be very angry if he knew that the fellow pestered you with his unwanted attentions, would he not?”

“I suppose he would,” she faltered.

“I wonder why we hear nothing from Stanley?” I said. “It is all very mysterious. Do you know that he is not employed by that electrical firm in Westminster? They know nothing of him!”

She halted, held her breath and stared at me.

“What!” she cried. “But surely he is at Gordon & Austin’s? I left him at their offices one day just before our marriage and he went in there.”

“They know nothing of him,” I assured her, telling her of their reply to my inquiry.

“I really can’t believe it,” she said in a voice of despair. “Stanley could not have lied to me like that.”

“Have you ever met his parents?”

“No. They are in India—at Lucknow.”

“But what do you know about him? Where did he live before you married him?”

“He had rooms in Half Moon Street. I went there once or twice,” and she told me the number.

“How long had you known him before you married?” I inquired.

“About six months, but he was mostly away in Paris, on business for his firm.”

“That is the story he told you, but it is now proved to be incorrect. The firm have no knowledge of him.”

“There must be some mistake,” she said, much puzzled.

“Did you introduce him to your mother?”

“Yes, he came home to Bexhill once and stayed the week-end at the Sackville. Mother liked him awfully, but at the same time she thought I was too young to marry.”

“Then during the time of your engagement he was mostly away—eh? Did you ever meet any of his relatives?”

“No,” she replied—rather hesitatingly. I thought then she endeavored to change the topic of our conversation.

I, however, pursued it. A suspicion forced itself on my mind that she really knew a good deal more than she would tell me. But though I persisted for some time she would tell me nothing more and naturally I began to be annoyed. I did not wish to think hardly of her, but it was impossible to stifle entirely the suspicions that insisted on forcing themselves upon my mind. Had I been caught in some carefully prepared trap or had I merely made a colossal fool of myself?

Ten minutes later, my companion, bursting into tears she could no longer control, blurted out—

“I’ve been foolish, Mr. Yelverton—so very foolish! The fact is I—I’ve married a man—a man—I did not know!”

“Did not know,” I gasped in turn. “Is that really the truth?”

“It is,” she said sobbing. “I—I believed all that he told me, but now I have found out that what he said was false. And—and already he has deserted me!”

“But you love him,” I said, full of sympathy for her in her obviously genuine distress. “Perhaps, after all, we are misjudging him. Something has occurred which prevents his return. I will wire at once to Half Moon Street and see whether we can get any news.”

“Yes, do,” she urged. “Mr. Belton is the man who keeps the chambers. I recollect the name.”

So we turned back to the chalet post office whence I sent a reply-paid telegram. Next evening came the answer. “Mr. Audley left for abroad about two months ago—Belton.”

That was all. We had at least one person who knew him and who might place us in possession of more facts than we had at present.

After dinner that night Dr. Feng asked me to go with him to his room.

“I have had some telegrams from China,” he said, when he had established me comfortably in an easy chair with a whiskey and soda at my hand.

“Any news about Thelma?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied: “it’s a very curious story. Of course, I have no details and I am afraid we shall never get any. But there is enough information to show, as I expected, that the crystal claw was sent to Mrs. Audley in recognition of services rendered by her father to a powerful member of the Thu-tseng. Have you ever heard of Sung-tchun?”

I nodded. “Wasn’t he the chap who escaped from Siberia under rather extraordinary circumstances in the early years of the war—about 1916 or 1917? There was a lot about him in the papers, I remember, but I never saw any reason given for his imprisonment.”

“No public explanation ever was given,” said Dr. Feng, “but, as a matter of fact, he was arrested on Russian territory north of China on a trumped-up charge. As a matter of fact his party stood in the way of certain Russian ambitions in China and he was quietly removed. Incidentally I can tell you that after his escape the Russian government paid very handsome compensation and apologized. But all that was kept private.

“Now the interest to us is this: Sung-tchun’s escape was planned and directed, from start to finish, by Mrs. Audley’s father. Of course, he was not actively engaged in the actual rescue: he could not leave his ship. But he organized and financed the whole thing. Sung-tchun was a really important figure in China—far more important than the outside world realized—and to have done them such a service would have been ample to earn the undying gratitude of the Thu-tseng, who never forget a friend or a foe. That is all the information my friends can get, and I fancy it is all we shall ever get. What Captain Shaylor’s motive was and how he was dragged into or embarked upon the affair and where he obtained the huge sums of money the rescue must have cost, we shall never know.”

“But why,” I cried, “has the crystal claw only just arrived? Thelma’s father died over a year ago.”

“That is one of the questions I asked,” replied Dr. Feng. “Sung-tchun died only last year and I imagine he must have kept very closely the secret of his escape. In all probability the sending of the claw was a kind of death-bed gift from him to the man who had helped him—or rather to his daughter. That would be quite in accordance with Sung-tchun’s known character.”

“Then the crystal claw does not imply a threat or any danger?” I exclaimed.

“Certainly not,” declared Dr. Feng. “It is an expression of the very utmost good will. Any member of the Thu-tseng would be bound by the most solemn obligation to help in every way in his power the owner of the crystal claw.”

“Well,” I said as I rose to say good-night, “at any rate, I am glad there is no danger about it. But I don’t see how the Thu-tseng can ever help Thelma.”

Old Feng gave me a queer look. “You can never tell,” he said slowly. “Most people want help badly at some time in their lives. Mrs. Audley, for instance, is in a position of considerable difficulty at the moment and may be in a worse one very soon. And remember this, my boy—the Thu-tseng has an arm longer than you dream of.”

As the days slipped by I became more and more concerned about Thelma. Feng’s antagonism to herself and her husband became daily more apparent, and I was glad when, the day after old Humphreys had departed, he left for London. However, we parted good friends. He was going to London first and then to the Riviera and he gave me his solicitor’s address so that I might write to him.

Before he left I mentioned to him the effect the sight of the crystal claw had had on old Humphreys. “Does he know all about the crystal claw?” I asked, half banteringly.

Feng was not even mildly interested. “He spent some years in China, I know,” he remarked indifferently, “but I fancy you must have been mistaken. All his interests were in trade and finance—not in politics. Probably what you took for an expression of rage and fear was the result of the terrible spasms of pain that seize him occasionally.”

The explanation seemed so reasonable that I accepted it without hesitation. After all, it was extremely unlikely that old Humphreys could have been mixed up with the Thu-tseng and Feng, I thought, could hardly have been so unmoved had he really thought there was anything in my suspicions.

But I was to learn months later that the astute Chinese had completely hoodwinked me. I had made no mistake at all. The information I had given him was to prove of supreme importance in the game Dr. Feng was playing, so we learned when the final move had been played. The man must have had nerves of iron. He was off his guard when the crystal claw arrived, it is true, but the news—of tremendous import, as events showed—that Humphrey’s had good reason to fear the Thu-tseng did not cause even the quiver of an eyelash. There are few things in nature so utterly impassive as the face of the cultured Chinese!

Thelma passed day after day in tense anxiety for news of Stanley. To fill time we made frequent skiing excursions to the Schelthorn or the Seeling furen but every evening at half-past five we were at the little shed-like station, breathlessly awaiting the train bringing up travelers from England.

And each evening we hurried away disappointed.

In the hotel, on the ski-fields, and on the bob-run the fun was fast and furious, but the laughter and the dance music jarred upon the nerves of both of us. And, to make matters worse, many visitors were beginning to look askance at Thelma, now that young Audley did not return.

Questions were asked of Thelma on all sides, and to them she was compelled to give evasive, and sometimes, untrue, answers.

Ten days after young Audley should have returned, I had, late at night, left the ball-room at the Kürhaus opposite the hotel after a couple of hours of strenuous drumming in the jazz orchestra.

Thelma had retired early, and, though in no mood for gaiety, I had been compelled to help my brother amateur bandsmen. So at two o’clock we had closed down and the dancers were all crossing the snowy road back to the hotel.

The moon was shining brilliantly over the towering glaciers, transforming the silent snow-clad mountains and forests into a veritable fairyland. Such a clear, frosty night was inviting for a stroll and many couples wrapped in coats had put on their “gouties”—or snow-shoes—and were going for walks before turning in.

I turned into the hotel gardens where the trees were heavily laden with freshly fallen snow, and entered a path where the snow was piled six feet on either side. My footsteps fell noiselessly on the fresh snow and suddenly I heard voices in the path that ran parallel with mine—the voices of a man and a woman.

Instantly I recognized the woman’s voice as Thelma’s and I stood in surprise that she should be out of doors at such an hour.

“Now, for the last time I ask you, Thelma, where Stanley is,” I heard a man’s voice say. “You had a telegram from him today. Where is he? I want to see him very urgently.”

The voice, beyond any possibility of mistake was Ruthen’s. Thelma had assured me she disliked him, that he pestered her with unwelcome attentions. Yet here she was talking to him at two o’clock in the morning, three hours after she had said good-night and, apparently, gone to bed!

“I tell you it is no business of yours,” came her reply in a hard, resolute voice. “He is my husband and if he tells me to keep silence I shall do so.”

“Then you refuse to let me see the wire?” he asked. “I arranged ten days ago that I should know if you received a telegram. It was delivered to your room at five o’clock tonight—and you know where Stanley is, though to everybody, including that fool Yelverton, you pretend ignorance and shed crocodile’s tears!”

“Oh! let me get back,” cried the girl. “I won’t be insulted! Mr. Yelverton does not know the truth, but he is at least kind and considerate towards me.”

“And takes Stanley’s place in your heart—eh?” the fellow sneered. “Now, I ask you once again if you will tell me where I can find Stanley. Every hour is of the greatest importance to both of us. If you tell me, then your husband may be saved, after all!”

“Mr. Ruthen, if I could trust you, I would reply. But I don’t!” was her plain answer.

I held my breath as I listened to that strange conversation.

“But surely you know me well enough, Thelma, to know that I am acting only in your interest! Yelverton is a very good fellow, but happily he is in ignorance, and his devotion to his duty as your guardian makes it all the easier for us. Now, don’t be a little fool. Where can I get into communication with Stanley?” he asked.

“I refuse to tell you!” replied the girl. “I know a little more than you think, and I would rather trust Stanley than you—even though I have to make pretence of ignorance to Mr. Yelverton.”

“To fool him, you mean!” laughed the man superciliously.

“Well, and if I have to fool him, it is for my benefit, not yours,” she said defiantly.

“And suppose I told him all that I know?” said Ruthen. “I know that he is your admirer—that Stanley ought never to have left you in his charge, and—well it is patent to everybody that you are fonder of Rex Yelverton than of your newly-married husband.”

“How dare you say such a thing!” she cried in fierce anger.

“Because it is true, my dear young lady,” was the cool reply. “I did not come out here for nothing. Stanley has disappeared, and this afternoon you had a telegram from him telling you, in secret, of his hiding-place. I want to know it!”

“And I refuse to tell you. He has cut himself adrift from you forever.”

The man laughed jeeringly.

“That would be more difficult than you imagine,” he said. “You are treading upon very dangerous ground now, Thelma. Tell me what I want to know, and I will help both Stanley and yourself. You must know he is in serious danger.”

“I refuse!” she said. “I will not betray Stanley.”

“Betray him! It is not a case of betrayal. He is already betrayed. It is a matter of saving him.”

“From what?”

“You know. Don’t pretend ignorance, my dear Thelma! Surely we know each other well enough to be friends when Stan’s safety is concerned! He doesn’t know I’m here in Mürren, or he would have wired me his whereabouts, so that I could go straight to him.”

I listened amazed to this extraordinary conversation. I had never dreamed that the tall fair-haired young man who posed as a stranger to my temporary bride, was, after all, an intimate friend of her husband’s.

“Remember,” he went on. “Yelverton is highly inquisitive—and very naturally. He has been bamboozled from the very first. I wonder he hasn’t smelt a rat long ago. But, of course, he is your admirer. But we can’t waste time—we’ve been out here too long now. Tell me where I can find Stanley.”

“I refuse,” was her firmly repeated reply.

“In that case I shall act as I have already warned you.”

“I do not intend that you should meet him again. I know sufficient concerning your friendship—too much indeed,” she said determinedly. “I am not blind to the fact that you are my enemy and Stanley’s. He has hidden himself from his enemies, of whom you are one, and it is not likely I shall tell you,” she added.

“Very well, then—take the consequences. I shall tell what I know,” the man said.

“In which case I shall also tell what I know—which, I venture to think you will find a trifle awkward for yourself. So think it over,” she said defiantly in a low clear voice. “Good-night.”

Her footsteps were muffled in the soft snow as she made her way back to the hotel, alone. Ruthen followed a few minutes later: no one would have guessed that they had been out together.

I went to my room more puzzled than ever.

CHAPTER V
ESTABLISHES SOME CURIOUS FACTS

When I met Thelma next morning I noticed that she was pale and obviously nervous and ill at ease. I longed to question her, but to do so would have been to reveal the fact that—unintentionally, it was true—I had been eavesdropping.

It was now plain that the man Ruthen, whom I had thought to be a mere hotel acquaintance of Stanley Audley’s, was, in truth, something more, whether friend or enemy I was still not quite sure. Thelma’s attitude, it was true, suggested the latter, though Ruthen had professed friendly motives. His attitude towards her thoroughly incensed me. But I realized that there must be some reason, unknown to me, why Thelma never acknowledged him when I was present. It was evident too that she hated and possibly feared him and that she, at any rate, regarded him as her husband’s enemy.

She made no mention of the telegram from her husband that Ruthen had referred to and, as she had not denied having received it, I assumed that Ruthen’s information was correct. It might have been, of course, a reassuring message, but if this was so there was no apparent reason why she should not have told me about it and her obvious anxiety and nervousness seemed entirely to contradict the suggestion that it could have contained any good news.

That morning we took our skis up the cable railway to the Allmendhubel, a thousand feet further up the mountain side, and thoroughly enjoyed our sport on the steep snowy incline above the village. A ski-jumping competition had been arranged for the afternoon and we spent an hour watching the competitors “herring-boning” and “side-stepping” as they climbed over the snow up the distant heights in readiness for the swift descent ending with the high jump that only experts can accomplish.

Thelma seemed silent and distraite all the morning. At length I asked her what was troubling her.

“I really didn’t know I was glum!” she replied. “Forgive me, Mr. Yelverton, won’t you? I am awfully worried about Stanley. I really think it is useless for me to remain here in Mürren any longer. I had better go home to Bexhill.”

The suggestion seemed to confirm my suspicion that she knew her husband’s whereabouts, and felt it useless to await any longer for him.

“My time is growing short, too,” I said. “I fear I must be back at my office on Monday. My partner writes that he is very busy.”

“Then you will go on Saturday—the day after tomorrow, I suppose? If so—may I travel with you?”

“Certainly,” I said. And as she had not booked a sleeping-berth on the Interlaken-Boulogne express, I promised that I would see after it during the afternoon.

Later that day I found that Audley had left her with only about a hundred francs, and she was compelled to allow me to settle her hotel bill.

As we came up into the hall after dinner the concierge handed Thelma a note, saying—“Mr. Ruthen has left, miss, and he asked me to give you this!”

She held it in her hand for a second, and then, after glancing at me, moved away and tore it open.

The words she read had an extraordinary effect upon her. Her face went as white as the paper, and she held her breath, her eyes staring straight before her. Then she crushed the flimsy paper in her hand.

She reeled against a small table, and would have fallen had she not, with a supreme effort, recovered herself, and quickly stood erect again.

“Forgive me, Mr. Yelverton,” she managed to ejaculate. “I’m not feeling very well. Excuse me, I—I’ll go to my room!”

And she turned and ascended the stairs, leaving me astonished and mystified.

What, I wondered, did that farewell note contain.

I saw her no more till next day. She sent me a message by the chambermaid to say that she was not coming down again and I passed the evening gossiping with Major Burton and two other “bobbing” enthusiasts.

By this time I had pretty thoroughly wearied of the eternal round of pleasure. Thelma’s obvious distress and the extraordinary mystery into which I had stumbled occupied all my thoughts and I could no longer take the slightest pleasure in the gay life which seethed and bubbled around me. It was therefore with a feeling of genuine relief that I found myself at last in the restaurant car of the Boulogne express, slowly leaving Interlaken for the long night run across France by way of Delle and Rheims. Already we had left behind us the crisp clear air of the mountains. The snow everywhere was half melted and slushy and the train pushed its way onward through a dense curtain of driving sleet.

We ate our dinner amid a gay crowd of holiday makers returning, not only from Mürren but from Grindelwald, Wengen, Adelboden, Kandersteg, and other winter sports centres. The talk was gay and animated, merry laughter resounded through the long car. Yet Thelma sat pale, silent and nervous and her tired eyes told their own tale of sleeplessness and anxiety. She gave me the impression that she had been crushed by some sudden and unexpected shock and though more than once I fancied she was on the edge of confiding in me, she remained almost dumb and was clearly disinclined to talk.

We arrived at Victoria on Sunday afternoon and I drove with her in a taxi to Charing Cross. On the way she suddenly seized my hand and looking straight into my eyes said—

“I really do not know how to thank you, Mr. Yelverton, for all your great kindness towards me. I know I have been a source of great worry to you—but—but—” she burst into tears without concluding the sentence.

I drew her towards me and strove to comfort her, declaring that I would continue to act as her friend and leave no stone unturned in my efforts to trace Stanley.

At last, as we went down the Mall, she dried her eyes and became more tranquil. We were approaching the terminus whence she was to travel to Bexhill.

“Now—tell me truthfully,” I said to her at last, “do you, or do you not, know where Stanley is?”

She started, her lips parted, and she held her breath.

“I—I deceived you once, Mr. Yelverton. I—I did once know where he was. But I do not now.”

“Then you wish me to discover him?” I asked.

“Yes. But—but, I fear you will never succeed. He can never return to me—never!”

“Never return to you? Why? Was he already married?” I gasped.

“No. Not that. Not that! I love Stanley, but he can never come back to me.”

The taxi had stopped, and a porter had already opened the door. I asked her to explain, but she only shook her head in silence.

Ten minutes later, I grasped her hand in farewell, and she waved to me as the train moved off to the pleasant little south-coast resort where her mother was living. Thelma Audley’s was surely a sad home-going.

Back in my rooms high-up in gray and smoky Russell Square, I found old Mrs. Chapman, with her pleasant face and white hair, had prepared everything for my comfort. The night was cold and rainy, and the London atmosphere altogether depressing and unpleasant after that bright crisp climate of the high Alps.

I looked through a number of letters which had not been sent on and, after a wash, ate my dinner, Mrs. Chapman standing near and gossiping with me the while. My room was warm and cozy, and with the familiar old silhouettes and caricatures upon its walls, the side-board with some of the Georgian plate belonging to my grandfather, and a blazing fire, had that air of homelike comfort, which is always refreshing after hotel life.

After I had had my coffee, and my trusted old servant had disappeared, I threw myself into my big arm chair to think over the amazing tangle in which I had allowed myself to become involved.

Was I falling in love with Thelma—falling in love foolishly and hopelessly with a girl who was already married? I tried hard to persuade myself that my feeling towards her was nothing but a deep and honest affection, born of her sweet disposition and the queer circumstances that had thrown us together. Stanley Audley, whatever the explanation of his amazing conduct might be, had trusted me and I fought hard in my own mind against a temptation which I realized would, in normal circumstances, be a gross betrayal of confidence. I had been brought up in a public school where “to play the game” was the one rule of conduct that mattered and hitherto I had prided myself on my punctiliousness in all the ordinary matters of life. Was I to fail utterly in the first great temptation that life had brought me?

I could not disguise from myself, try how I would, that even an honest admiration for Thelma had its perils. As Dr. Feng had said, it was dangerous. We were both young. I had hitherto escaped heart-whole, Thelma was not only more than ordinarily beautiful but she possessed a degree of charm and fascination—for me, at any rate—that was well-nigh irresistible.

For a long time I paced my room in indecision. To act as Dr. Feng had suggested would be to break off our acquaintanceship, treating it merely as the passing incident of a pleasant holiday. But that, I argued, was impossible. I had promised Audley to look after his wife when everything seemed plain and straightforward: to desert her now when she was clearly in difficulty and distress was unthinkable. Yet to go on might—probably would—spell utter disaster to my peace of mind, and make shipwreck of my honor.

Hour after hour passed and I seemed to draw no nearer to a conclusion. But at length the glimmerings of a solution of the problem began to draw in my mind. If I could but find Stanley Audley I could cut myself adrift from the mystery and try to forget Thelma as speedily as possible. This I determined honestly to try to do, and I think I felt better and happier for the resolution. What I failed to realize was the strength of the feelings that had me in their grip. And ever and anon, like an inducement of hope, came the resolution of Thelma’s declaration that Stanley could never return to her. In that case—but I resolutely tried to push away from me the thoughts that crowded into my mind.

Next day, after spending a couple of hours at Bedford Row with my partner, Hensman, I set out on my first inquiry regarding Stanley Audley.

I took a taxi to the house in Half Moon Street in which he had lived, and there saw Mr. Belton, the proprietor.

He was a tall, bald-headed man in grey trousers and morning coat and nothing could disguise the fact that he was a retired butler. “Yes, sir,” he said in reply to my inquiry, “Mr. Stanley Audley lived here for nearly two years. But he went abroad a short time ago, as I wired to you, sir.”

“Well, the fact is, Mr. Belton, he’s disappeared,” I said.

“Disappeared!” echoed the ex-butler.

“Yes, I wonder if I may glance at his rooms.”

“Certainly, sir. But they are let again. Colonel Mayhew is out, so we can go up. Mr. Audley sent all his things to store when he left, but I was away at the time, so I don’t know where they went to.” He took me to a well-furnished front sitting-room on the first floor.

“Do you recollect that he had a lady visitor—a tall, handsome, dark-eyed young lady, whose name was Shaylor?”

“Certainly, sir. A young lady came once or twice to tea, but I don’t know her name. And—well to tell you the truth, sir, his movements were often very curious.”

“How?” I asked, with sudden interest.

“Well, he would walk out without any luggage sometimes, and then a week later I would hear from him telling me to send on his letters to some Poste Restante abroad. Once it was in Paris, another time at Geneva and twice in Madrid. It always struck me as very curious that he traveled without any luggage—or if he had any, he never brought it here.”

“Curious,” I said. “Then he was a bit of a mystery?”

“He was, sir. That’s his photograph there, on the mantleshelf,” and he pointed to a photograph in a small oval ebony frame.

To my amazement it was the picture of a man I had never seen in my life.

“But that round-faced man isn’t Stanley Audley!” I exclaimed.

“Excuse me, sir, but it is,” was the ex-butler’s polite assertion. “He lived here nearly two years.”

“He is not the Stanley Audley for whom I am searching, at any rate,” I said.

“Well, he is the only Mr. Audley that my wife and I have had here.”

Suddenly I recollected that in my wallet I had a snap-shot of Thelma on her skis which I had taken up on the Allmendhubel. I drew it out and showed it to him.

“Ah! sir, that’s not the young lady who visited Mr. Audley. That’s a young lady who came twice, or perhaps three times to see Mr. Graydon.”

“What is Mr. Graydon like?” I asked eagerly.

In reply he gave me a very accurate description of Thelma’s husband.

“Who, and what is Mr. Graydon?” I asked. “Tell me, Mr. Belton, for much depends upon the result of this inquiry.”

“He’s a young gentleman very well connected—nephew of a certain earl, I believe. He had the rooms above for about nine months, and was very friendly with Mr. Audley.”

“And did he make mysterious journeys?”

“Yes, sometimes—but not very often.”

“Had he any profession?” I inquired.

“No. I understand that his father, who was a landowner in Cheshire, left him with a very comfortable income. My wife and I liked him, for he was a quiet, rather studious young fellow, though often at Mr. Audley’s invitation he went out of an evening and did not return till the early hours. But now-a-days with those dance clubs going, most young men do that.”

“Well, Mr. Belton, may I see Mr. Graydon’s room?” I asked. In response, he took me up to the next floor, where the sitting-room and bedroom were even cosier and better furnished than the rooms below.

“Mr. Graydon, when he left, laughingly said that he might be married soon, but if he didn’t marry he’d come back to us. He told my wife that he was going on a yachting trip to Norway with some friends, and afterwards he had to go to Montreal to visit some relatives.”

“But the curious fact is that the man I knew as Audley is none other than the man you know as Graydon!” I said.

“That’s certainly very mysterious, sir. Mr. Graydon must have assumed Mr. Audley’s name,” Belton said.

“The whole affair is a complete mystery,” I remarked. “I wish you’d tell me more that you know concerning this Mr. Graydon. What was his Christian name, by the way? And when did you last see him?”

“Philip. He left us last September.”

“And the young lady who came to see him?”

“Oh! She was certainly a lady. Indeed, I rather fancied that I had seen her several years ago, and that with her mother she once came as guest of old Lady Wentbrook, in whose service I was. But I was not quite sure, and I could not, of course, inquire. At any rate, she was a lady, of that there could be no mistake.”

“And Mr. Graydon was a gentleman?”

“Certainly, sir. But I can’t vouch for Mr. Audley. They were friends—and that’s all I know.”

“You had certain suspicions about Audley, and were not sorry when he gave up his rooms?”

“Yes, sir, you’re quite right, I was.”

“And how about Graydon?”

“We were very sorry when he left, sir. My wife liked him immensely. But she always said that he was somehow under the influence of Mr. Audley.”

“Did you ever meet a Mr. Harold Ruthen?” I asked.

And from my wallet I took another snap-shot which showed him with a party of skaters on the rink.

The ex-butler scrutinized it closely and replied:

“Yes. He’s been here. He was a friend of Mr. Audley’s. But I don’t think that was his name. I believe he was called Rutley, or some such name?”

“Did Mr. Graydon know him?”

“No, sir. Not to my knowledge. He came here once and stayed with Mr. Audley while Mr. Graydon was up in Scotland shooting. But we’ll go down below and show the photograph to my wife. She has a better memory than I have.”

So we went into the basement, where I had a long conversation with Mrs. Belton, a typical retired servant of the better class, shrewd and observant.

That conversation definitely established several amazing facts which served to make the mystery of Stanley Audley deeper and more sinister than ever. It was clear—

(1) That Philip Graydon had, for some reason we could not fathom, taken the name of Stanley Audley, while Audley had passed as Graydon.

(2) That the movements of the two men were uncertain and mysterious.

(3) That Harold Ruthen, also known as Rutley, was associated with both Stanley Audley and the man Philip Graydon.

(4) That Thelma had married the man who, passing as Philip Graydon, was really Stanley Audley!

After that amazing revelation I passed along Half Moon Street, in the winter darkness, to Piccadilly in a state of utter bewilderment.

CHAPTER VI
THE HAM-BONE CLUB

A few days later a client of ours named Powell for whom we were conducting a piece of rather intricate business concerning a mortgage of some land in Essex, invited me to join himself and his wife at dinner at the Savoy.

Our table was in a corner near the orchestra and the big restaurant was crowded. Sovrani, the famous maître d’hôtel knew all three of us well and we dined excellently under his tactful supervision. After dinner Mrs. Powell, a pretty young woman, exquisitely gowned, suggested a dance in the room below. We went there and danced until about half-past ten when Powell said:

“Let’s go to the Ham-bone.”

“The Ham-bone,” I echoed. “What on earth is that?”

“Oh!” laughed Mrs. Powell, “it is one of London’s merriest Bohemian dance clubs. The male members are all artists, sculptors or literary men, and the female members are all girls who earn their own living—mannequins, secretaries, artists’ models and girl journalists. It is screamingly amusing. Quite Bohemian and yet high select, isn’t it, Harry?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

“Well, one gets a really splendid dinner there for half-a-crown, though, of course, you get paper serviettes, and for supper after the hours, you men can have a kipper—a brand that is extra special—and a drink with it,” she went on.

“Yes, Leila,” laughed her husband. “The place is unique. Half the people in ‘smart’ society, men as well as women, want to become members, but the Committee, who are all well-known artists, don’t want the man-about-town: they only want the real hard-working Bohemians who go there at night for relaxation. Burlac, the sculptor, put me up.”

The novelty of the idea attracted me, so we went in a taxicab to an uninviting looking mews off Great Windmill Street, behind the Café Monico in Piccadilly Circus. Walking up it, we passed through a narrow swing-door, over which hung a dim feeble light and a big ham-bone!

Up a precipitous flight of narrow stone steps we went until we reached a little door where a stout ex-sergeant of police smiled recognition upon my host, placed a book before him to sign and relieved us of our coats.

In a room above a piano was being played by someone who was evidently an artist and dancing was in progress.

The place might have been a cabaret in the Montmartre in Paris. I thought I knew London’s night clubs fairly well—the Embassy, Ciro’s, the Grafton, the Mayfair, the Royalty, the Twenty, Murray’s, Tate’s, the Trippers, the Dainty, and others—but when I entered the big whitewashed dancing room I found myself looking on a scene that was a complete novelty to me.

The room was long and narrow. The walls were painted in stripes representing oaken beams and set around them were many small tables. The floor was filled with merry dancers, among whom I recognized many people well-known in artistic and social circles. Some of the men wore dinner jackets and many of the women were in beautiful evening dress, but smart clothes evidently were regarded as a non-essential, for a large proportion of the men wore ordinary lounge suits.

As we stood watching the scene a tall, elderly man rose from a table and cried:

“Hulloa! Leila! What a stranger you are!”

My hostess smiled and waved recognition, whereupon her friend—a portrait painter whose reputation was world-wide, bowed over her hand and said:

“Well, only fancy! It is really delightful that you should return to us! We thought we’d lost you after you married!”

“My dear Charlie,” she laughed—for it was a rule in the Ham-bone that every member addressed every one else by his or her Christian name, and “Charlie” was a Royal Academician—“I am an old Hamyardian: I was one of the first lady members.”

“Of course. You’ll find Marigold here. I’ve just been chatting with her. She’s round the corner, over yonder. But she’s funny. What’s the matter with her? Do you know?” he added in a low, serious voice.

“No, I didn’t know there was anything wrong,” replied my hostess.

It was easy to realize that here in this stable converted into a club was an atmosphere and an environment without its like in London or elsewhere. The denizens of that little circle of Bohemia cared for absolutely nothing and nobody outside its own careless world whose boundaries were Chelsea and the Savoy Club.

Ordinary social distinctions were utterly and completely ignored. Gayety was supreme and in the merry throng I caught sight within a few minutes of a well-known London magistrate before whom I had often pleaded as a Solicitor, a famous scientist, the millionaire owner of a great daily paper. Several leading members of the Chancery Bar, an under-secretary of State and quite a sprinkling of young scions of patrician families.

They were men and women of the intellectual type who cared nothing for the vicious joys of the ordinary night club. They came in frank enjoyment of dancing and music and the fried kippers, as custom decreed, in order to comply with the kill-joy law that ordained that they must eat if they wanted a drink! Everything, apparently, was free and easy gaiety. Yet it was at least as difficult to become a member of the Ham-bone as to gain admission to any of the most exclusive clubs along Pall Mall. Money was no sort of passport: only personality, ability or the true inborn spirit of Bohemianism could open the portals of the Ham-bone.

The “master of ceremonies” was a well-known landscape painter, whom every one addressed as “George,” a smart figure in the brown velvet jacket of his profession. He chaffed and joked with every one in French, revealing a side of his nature certainly unsuspected by the general public to whom he usually presented a grave and austere front. But this was the key-note of the Ham-bone: every one seemed to “let himself go” and the stilted social etiquette of our ordinary world seemed as far off as if we had been in Limehouse or Poplar.

I was dancing with Mrs. Powell, when, suddenly, she halted before a small table in a corner where there sat alone a beautiful dark-haired girl in a smartly cut dance-frock of black charmeuse.

“Mr. Yelverton,” she said, “will you let me introduce you to my dearest friend, Marigold Day?” And to the girl she said, “Marigold, this is Mr. Rex Yelverton, the gentleman of whom I recently spoke to you.”

Somberly dressed, her white neck and bare arms in vivid contrast with her dead-black frock, she was almost wickedly beautiful. Her well-dressed hair, across which she wore a bandeau of golden leaves, was dark; her scarlet mouth was like the curling underleaves of a rose, her lips with the true arc-de-cupidon so seldom seen, were slightly apart, and between them showed strong white teeth. Her eyes were large and deeply violet and they held a fascination such as I had seldom before seen.

“We’ll be back presently,” said Mrs. Powell, as we slipped again into the dance. “I want to have a chat with you.”

“Who’s that?” I asked, as soon as we were a few feet away.

“Oh, that’s Marigold. We are fellow-members here. She was in business with me before I married. Isn’t she very good-looking, don’t you think?”

“Beautiful,” I declared.

“Ah, I see,” laughed my partner. “You are like all the other men. They all admire her, and want to dance with her. But Marigold is a queer girl: I can never make her out in these days. Once she was very bright and merry, and always gadding about somewhere with a man named Audley. Now there’s a kink somewhere. She accepts no invitations, keeps herself to herself, and only on rare occasions comes here just to look on. A great change has come over her. Why, I can’t make out. We were the closest of friends before I married, so I’ve asked her the reason of it all, but she will tell me absolutely nothing.”

“Audley,” I gasped. “Where is she at business?”

“At Carille’s, the dressmakers in Dover Street. She’s a mannequin, and I was a typist there,” she replied. “And now Mr. Yelverton, you know what was my business before I married,” she added, with a laugh.

“Pretty boring, I should say, showing off dresses to a pack of unappreciative old cats,” was my remark.

“Boring isn’t the word for it,” Mrs. Powell declared, “I couldn’t have stood her work. You should see our clients—uneducated, fat, coarse, war-rich old hags who look Marigold up and down, and fancy they will appear as smart as she does in one of Monsieur Carille’s latest creations. How Marigold sticks at it so long I can’t make out. She ought to be awarded the prize medal for patience. I could never amble about over that horrid grey carpet and place my neck, my elbows and hands at absurd angles for the benefit of those ugly old tabbies—no matter what salary I was paid!”

At that moment we found ourselves before the table where her husband was seated, smoking and drinking coffee with Sava, the young Serbian who was perhaps the greatest modern caricaturist.

Belgravia is good; Bohemia is better; the combination of both is surely Paradise! Sava’s conversation was as perfect as his caricatures: he had seen life in every capital in Europe and was a born raconteur. For a time he held us engrossed with his witty comments on the men and matters of half-a-dozen countries, all of which he knew to perfection.

Never have I seen so truly fraternal a circle as that little backwater of Bohemianism. Every one was at his ease: there was no such a thing as being a stranger there. The fact that you were there—that some member had introduced you and vouched for you—broke down all barriers and men who had never before met and might never meet again met and chatted as freely as if they were old friends and with an utter disregard of all the vexing problems of wealth, rank, profession and precedence.

Presently my hostess took me back to the mannequin in black whom I new realized must be wearing a copy of one of the famous man-dressmaker’s latest creations.

“Mr. Yelverton wants a partner, Marigold,” my companion exclaimed gayly, whereupon her friend smiled and rising at once, joined me in a fox-trot with an expression of pleasure upon her face. She was a splendid dancer.

“Mrs. Powell has told me of your acquaintance with Mr. Audley,” I said, after a few minutes of the usual ball-room chat. “I wonder if it is the same man I know. He used to live in Half Moon Street.”

She clearly resented the question. “Why do you ask?” she demanded.

“Because I’ve lost sight of my friend of late,” I replied.

“Well, Mr. Audley did live in Half Moon Street, but he has gone away,” she replied. And I thought I detected a hint of tragedy upon her face.

CHAPTER VII
IN THE WEB

As we danced Marigold told me something more about herself. She lived, I found, with three other business girls at a boarding house in Bayswater, going by tube to Dover Street each day. She had met Audley and for a time they had been rather friendly, seeing a good deal of each other. I guessed, though of course she did not tell me, that the friendship bade fair to ripen into something deeper. Then Audley had suddenly disappeared.

As our dance ended Mrs. Powell came up and we all went up the narrow wooden staircase to the balcony where, as we enjoyed our Bohemian supper, we could watch the dancing below.

It was just before midnight, when the fun was fast and furious and the “Hamyardians,” as the merry circle call themselves, were enjoying themselves in the wildest and most nonsensical fashion, that Marigold Day, glancing at her wrist watch, declared that she must go. I went down with her to the door.

“Can’t you tell me some more about Audley?” I asked just before she entered her taxi.

She shook her head. “Don’t ask me, please,” she said and she entered the taxi and was driven away towards Bayswater.

“Well, what do you think of Marigold?” asked Mrs. Powell, as I resumed my seat at the supper table.

“She’s altogether charming, of course,” I replied, “but rather—well, I don’t quite know the word. I should almost say mysterious: at any rate she seems to be troubled about something and trying to hide it.”

“That’s it, exactly,” declared my hostess. “During the past few months she seems to have become an entirely different girl. As you know, we were the closest of friends. She seems to live in constant dread of something, but she absolutely refuses to tell me what it is. Indeed, she declares there is nothing wrong, but that is nonsense. No one who knew her six months ago could fail to realize that something is very wrong indeed.”

“Do you know anything about her friend, Mr. Audley,” I ventured to ask.

“Not very much,” said Mrs. Powell. “Of course, I have met him. Marigold was getting very fond of him, I believe, but she will not talk about him.”

Powell came up and declared it was time to go and I had no opportunity of questioning Mrs. Powell any further, much as I wished to do so. However, I determined to see her again and also to meet Marigold Day and see whether either of them could give me further details about Audley. Was he the real Audley? I wondered, or the man who had taken his name.

A few days later I received a letter from Mrs. Shaylor inviting me to go to Bexhill.

I was in two minds about accepting. I wanted to see Thelma—wanted to help her and certainly did not want to lose touch with her as I might if I refused to go. But was it wise?

Of course, inclination conquered prudence and I went. I found that she and her mother lived in a pretty red-roofed, red-brick detached house, with high gables, and a small garden in front. It stood in Bedford Avenue, close to the Sackville Hotel and facing the sea.

Mrs. Shaylor, a pleasant, grey-haired woman of a very refined type, greeted me warmly and thanked me cordially for what I had done for her daughter in Mürren, while Thelma expressed her delight at seeing me again.

I got a chance during the morning of speaking to Mrs. Shaylor alone and asked her if Thelma had heard anything more of her husband.

“Not a word,” was Mrs. Shaylor’s reply. “It is a most disastrous affair for her, poor girl. The suspense and anxiety are killing her.”

“She does not look so well,” I replied. I had, in fact, been struck by the change in the girl. She was paler and thinner and it was evident the strain was telling on her rather heavily.

“I understand you did not know very much of Mr. Audley,” I said.

“Very little indeed, unfortunately,” was Mrs. Shaylor’s reply. “Thelma met him when she was staying with her aunt at the Majestic at Harrogate, and they became friendly. He appeared to have considerable means for he gave Thelma some very beautiful jewelry. He came down here once, saw me, and asked if he might marry her. He told me certain things about his relations in India, and she seemed so entirely devoted to him that I gave my consent to their marriage in three months. But, judge my surprise when a fortnight later they were married secretly and left next day for Switzerland for their honeymoon.”

“Then you really know very little of him, Mrs. Shaylor?” I asked.

“Very little indeed. It was a most foolish and ill-advised marriage. He seems to have lied to her here and then deserted her.”

“I must say I liked what I saw of him,” I said, “and I wonder whether we are right in thinking that he really deserted her in the ordinary meaning of the word. It looks like it, of course, but it has occurred to me, though I have only very slight grounds to go on, that he is being kept away from her by some influence at which we cannot guess. He really seemed devoted to her and genuinely sorry to have to leave her.”

“Well, she certainly seems devoted to him and will not hear a word against him. But what can one think under the circumstances?”

The drawing-room opened on to a wide verandah and across the promenade we could see the rolling Channel surf beating upon the beach. The winter’s day was dull and boisterous and now and again sheets of flying spray swept across the promenade.

“He pretended to me that he was an electrical engineer,” I remarked, “but I have found out that the firm for whom he said he worked knows nothing of him.”

“That is what he also told me. But I have reason to believe that he is in fact a young man of considerable fortune. Yet, if so, why has he deserted poor Thelma?”

“I am doing my level best to find him, Mrs. Shaylor,” I said. “Some very great mystery enshrouds this affair, and I have, in your daughter’s interest, set myself to solve it.”

“I’m sure all this is extremely good of you,” she said, gratefully. “We are only women, and both of us powerless.”

I paused for a moment. Then I said:

“I really came down here, Mrs. Shaylor, to put several direct questions to you. I wonder if you will answer them and thus lighten my task. I am a solicitor, as perhaps you already know.”

“Certainly. What are they?”

“Has your daughter ever known a man named Harold Ruthen?”

The lady’s face changed, and her brows contracted slightly. “Why do you ask that?” she asked.

“Because it has a direct bearing upon the present situation.”

“Well—yes. I believe she has, or had, a friend of that name. A man who lives in Paris.”

“Was he a friend of Audley’s?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Have you ever heard of a girl named Marigold Day—a mannequin at Carille’s?”

“Never.”

I paused. Then I bent towards her and said, very earnestly, “Has it ever struck you, Mrs. Shaylor, that your daughter knows just a little more concerning Stanley Audley than she has yet told us?”

“Why do you ask that question?” she inquired.

“Well—because somehow it has struck me so,” I said. “And I will go a little further. I believe she knows where her husband is, but—for some reason or other—fears to betray him!”

“Is that your suspicion?” she asked, in a low strained voice.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Mr. Yelverton,” she said very slowly. “I admit that it is mine also! I’ve questioned Thelma time after time, but she will tell me nothing—absolutely nothing!”

“Are there any more facts you can tell me—anything to throw further light upon these strange circumstances?” I asked her.

“No,” was her reply. “I’m afraid I know nothing else. Thelma is worried. I feel terrified lest the real truth—whatever it may be—concerning her husband, be disclosed.”

Thelma came in and we talked of other matters. She made great fun of my position as her “temporary husband” at Mürren and seemed in better spirits than when I came down.

After luncheon we went for a stroll together through the driving health-giving breeze to Cooden Beach, and then back for tea. Thelma wore a serviceable golf suit, thick brogues and carried a stick, while her Airedale “Jock” ran at our side.

On the way I told her of my adventure at the Ham-bone Club. She was much interested in the queer pranks of the Hamyardians and to find out how much she knew, I told her about Marigold Day: in fact I deliberately “enthused” about her. I watched her closely, but it was evident Marigold’s name meant nothing to her. Then I went on the more open tack and tried to get some further facts from her. It was in vain: she seemed as determined to keep her knowledge to herself as I was to get at the truth.

At last, as we neared the house, I made a direct attack.

“Now look here, Thelma,” I said, “do be frank. You know where Stanley is, don’t you?”

She went pale: it was evident that it had never struck her that I might guess at the truth.

“Why do you say that?” she asked sharply.

“Because I am certain Stanley has enemies and wants help.”

“Enemies!” she said, with an attempt to laugh “why should he have enemies? What do you mean?”

“All that I have said. Cannot you trust me? If your husband is in hiding for some unknown reason I should not betray him.”

“I have promised to say nothing,” she said blankly. “I cannot break my promise.”

“Why does he not return to you?”

“There is a reason—he never can. We must live apart in future.”

“Why?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and after a few moments of hesitation replied—

“There are certain facts, Mr. Yelverton, that I am forbidden by Stanley to disclose. I have told you that we cannot be united again. That is all. Please make no further inquiries.”

“But I will. You have been left in my care,” I asserted.

“If you do!—if you do it—it may be at your peril,” she declared, in a hard unnatural voice, looking curiously at me as she opened the gate. “Recollect, Mr. Yelverton, that my words are a warning.”

“But why?” I cried.

“I—I unfortunately cannot tell you,” was her reply, and we re-entered her charming home together.

I returned to London more mystified than ever. The dual personality of Stanley Audley, combined with the fact that his wife undoubtedly knew of his whereabouts; her steadfast determination not to disclose one single fact, and the strange threats I had heard Ruthen utter, all combined to puzzle me beyond measure.

For a couple of days I did my best to attend to business, but constantly I found my mind dwelling on the mystery of Stanley Audley. I could not concentrate on legal problems and most of my work fell on Hensman’s shoulders.

On the third night, after my visit to Bexhill, when I returned to my rooms from the office, I found, lying upon my table, a typewritten note which had been delivered that afternoon. It bore the Hammersmith postmark.

Tearing it open I read some lines of rather indifferent typing, as follows:—

“You have formed a friendship with Mrs. Thelma Audley. I warn you that such friendship, if continued, will be at the cost of your own life. Divert your love-making into another direction. I have no personal animosity against you but you are placing yourself in the way of powerful interests, and you will be removed if necessary.”

I read and re-read this strange message. Thelma’s warning leaped to my mind. Was there, then, a real risk to myself in the strange coil?

Then something—sheer obstinacy I suppose—came to my help and I declared to myself that I would go ahead with my self-imposed task; that nothing—least of all mere cowardice—should induce me to give it up.

CHAPTER VIII
DOCTOR FENG’S VIEW

I am not going to deny that at first that strange warning perturbed me a good deal. After all, I make no claim to be a hero and not even a hero likes threats of death, even though they be anonymous. At the same time, I never proposed, even in thought, to give up my quest. For, whether I wished it or not, I could not shake myself free of Thelma’s influence: my day-dreams were themselves on the fancy that some day, in some way, she would be free. More and more I began to think that she had married Audley so suddenly under an overwhelming girlish impulse; perhaps her mind had been made up by some story he had told her to justify haste and secrecy. If this were really so, would her love survive desertion and a separation which she herself apparently regarded as permanent? It would be strange, indeed, if it did.

So, through the dark March days that followed, I worked at the office half the day, while the remainder I devoted to seeking traces of the mysterious young man who had lived in Half Moon Street under the name of Graydon.

Mrs. Powell and her husband had been suddenly called abroad. But Marigold Day was an obvious source of possible information and to make further inquiry of her I wrote asking her to dine with me one evening at the Cecil.

She accepted, and we ate our dinner at one of the tables set in the window of the big grill-room overlooking the Embankment. She again wore her plain black dress which enhanced the whiteness of her arms and shoulders and laughed merrily at me across the table as we chatted over dinner.

I hesitated to refer to Audley directly after the conversation of our previous meeting, but I asked her suddenly whether she happened to know a man named Harold Ruthen.

“Harold Ruthen?” she echoed, “Yes, but why do you ask?”

“Because he was a friend of Audley’s,” was my reply. “Do you happen to know him?”

“Certainly. I saw him only a few days ago. He’s looking for Audley—he believes he is in Paris.”

“Now, I wonder if the Mr. Audley you know is the same man as my friend. Will you describe him?”

She did so, and the description made it clear that he was indeed Thelma’s husband.

“Yes,” I said. “He is no doubt the same.”

“He was well-known at the Ham-bone, where every one called him Stanley,” she said. “But I can’t think why he disappeared and has never written to me. A girl told me that he’d married. But I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“For the simple reason that he had asked me to marry him,” was the startling reply.

“Was Ruthen on very friendly terms with him?”

“Yes. But Stanley did not like him. He used to tell me that Ruthen was not straight, and I know he avoided him whenever he could. I suppose we all hate most those we fear most.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked in some surprise at her philosophy.

“Well,” she said, “I always had a suspicion that Stanley went in fear of Ruthen. Why, I don’t know.”

“That’s curious. What made you think so?”

“From certain remarks he once let drop.”

“Then Audley may be hiding purposely from that fellow?” I exclaimed, as I recollected that queer conversation between Ruthen and Thelma.

“I have thought that possible, but even then, he could easily write to me in confidence, and tell me where he is,” said the girl.

“Where does Ruthen live?” I enquired.

“In Whitehall Court,” and she gave me the number.

“You have no idea what his profession may be?”

“Like Stanley—he is independent.”

“Audley is a rich man, isn’t he?” I asked.

“No doubt. When we first met he gave me some very expensive presents merely because I happened to look after a girl he knew who was suffering from pneumonia. He’s an awfully generous boy, you know.”

“The fact is, Miss Day, I am doing all I can to discover Stanley Audley. Can you tell me any other facts—anything concerning his other friends?”

“He had another friend named Graydon, living at the same chambers in Half Moon Street, a rather stout, round-faced man. But he has also left London, I understand.”

“Graydon!” I ejaculated. So it seemed that the pair exchanged names when occasion required. At Half Moon Street Audley was Graydon, but outside, he took the name of the man who lived on the floor below!

What could have been the motive?

I afterwards took my pretty companion to the theatre, and, later, she took me to Ham-Bone Club, where we danced till nearly two.

From members there, I gleaned several facts concerning Stanley Audley. He was apparently a rich young “man-about-town,” but surrounded, as all wealthy young men are, by parasites who sponged upon his generosity. Of these Harold Ruthen was undoubtedly one.

Days passed, and although I went hither and thither, making inquiries in all likely quarters, I could obtain no further knowledge. Stanley Audley had disappeared. I felt more convinced than ever that Thelma possessed knowledge she feared to disclose.

In my perplexity, I thought, at last, of old Dr. Feng. Perhaps he would be able to help me. I wrote to him in care of his solicitor and received a prompt reply asking me to go and see him at an address in Castlenau, Barnes.

The house was just across Hammersmith Bridge. The anonymous letter I had received had been posted, I remembered, at Hammersmith. It was a queer coincidence.

Doctor Feng’s house, I found, was of a large, old-fashioned detached residence which, a century ago, had probably been the dwelling-place of some rich City Merchant who drove each morning into London in his high dog-cart, his “tiger” with folded arms seated behind him.

A maid conducted me to the front sitting-room, a large, well-furnished apartment, where a big fire blazed.

“Well, Yelverton!” exclaimed the old doctor, rising, and putting out his hand. “And how are you? I went to see my sister down at Mentone, but the weather on the Riviera was simply abominable—a mistral all the time. So I came back and took up my quarters here. Comfortable—aren’t they? Sit down. It’s real good to see you again!”

I stretched myself in a deep comfortable chair beside the fire, and we chatted for a time about Mürren.

“I wonder where Humphreys is?” he remarked. “He wasn’t a bad sort, was he? And how about your temporary bride—the ‘Little Lady,’ as you called her!”

“Well, doctor,” I said, “that is really what I came to see you about. The whole affair is a tangle and I wondered if you could help me. I have found out a lot of things about Stanley Audley that are certainly most disconcerting and mysterious.”

He passed a box of cigars. “Have a smoke over it,” he said, “if I can help you I will. But first tell me what happened after I left Mürren.”

“A lot,” I replied. “You know Thelma’s husband left for London. Well, he never came back.”

“The young cad,” said the doctor. “But, after all, I more than half expected it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, hesitatingly, “shall we say his sudden departure was rather suspicious? To put it plainly the excuse was a bit thin. Would any firm let an employee start on a honeymoon and three days later find he was the man for an important appointment such as Audley spoke of? Of course, such a thing might happen, but a more probable excuse would have carried more conviction. To me it suggested a story made up suddenly, in default if anything better, to explain a departure forced upon him by some much less welcome reason. However, I had no reason for saying this at the time and, after all, I might have been wrong. But as things have turned out it seems I was right and I am very sorry for his wife. After all, whatever her husband may be, she is a charming girl—much too good for him, anyhow. But go on, tell me what you have found out.”

I frankly told him, and as he smoked he sat back listening thoughtfully without a word of comment.

At last, when I had concluded, he asked—

“Have you seen Harold Ruthen?”

“Not yet. He is an enemy of Thelma’s.”

“What makes you think that?” he asked, whereupon I told him of the curious conversation I had overheard.

He bit his lip and smiled mysteriously, but said nothing. It was, however, plain that what I had described greatly interested him.

“And little Mrs. Audley will tell you nothing—eh? She refuses. She is evidently hiding some secret of her husband’s. Don’t you think so?”

“To me, she seems in deadly fear lest I should discover her husband.”

“Oh! I quite agree, Yelverton,” the old man said. “There’s more behind this curious affair than we’ve hitherto suspected. A man doesn’t leave his young wife in the hands of a stranger without some strong and very doubtful motive. Depend upon it that you were marked down as the victim.”

“Not by Thelma!” I protested.

“No, she has been your fellow victim.”

“But the motive of it all?” I asked in dismay. “What is your opinion, doctor?”

“The same that I formed when you first told me of your offer of help—that you’ve been a silly idiot, Yelverton. Didn’t I point out at the time the risks you were running?”

“Yes, you did,” I replied, “but I still intend—at all hazards—to get to the bottom of the affair.”

Feng hesitated, and then, looking me straight in the face, said very seriously—

“If you take my advice you will drop the whole affair.”

“Why?” I asked, in surprise.

“Because those men who lived at Half Moon Street and their friends are evidently a very queer lot. In any case you ought to cease visiting Mrs. Audley.”

I paused, recollecting that strange warning I had received, of which I had not told him.

“But, after all,” I protested, “we are very good friends. Surely I ought to help her by finding her husband?”

“When she probably knows where he is all the time!” scoffed Feng. “I don’t see what good you will do that way.”

“Anyhow,” I said shortly, “I’m not going to see her left in the lurch like this if I can help it.”

“Really, Yelverton, I don’t see what good you think you can do. We both believe she knows where he is. If that is so why should you interfere? Of course, what you tell me about the girl Day is very interesting and may throw a good deal of light on Stanley Audley’s character. But, after all, men change their minds and if Audley preferred Thelma to Marigold, there was no reason why he should not have asked her to marry him.”

“None the less, take my advice, drop the whole thing. You haven’t the shadow of a legal right to interfere. The men who lived in Half Moon Street, quite obviously a shady lot, have fled, evidently frightened of something and apparently your temporary bride is as frightened as they are. I don’t see why you should run any risk in the matter.”

“But what earthly risk do I run?” I asked. “Surely I am capable of looking after myself.”

“Considerably more risk than you imagine, unless I am very much mistaken,” he replied gravely.

I wondered for a moment whether my mysterious warning had come from the doctor himself. But what could he know about the affair? I could not read anything in his inscrutable face, but his manner certainly suggested that he was in deadly earnest, and, to my intense surprise, he suddenly let fall a remark, quite unintentionally, I believed, that, I realized with a curious suspicion, showed that he knew Thelma and her mother were living at Bexhill. Here was indeed a new complication. I made no sign that I had noticed his slip, but sat as if thinking deeply, as indeed I was.

How, and for what purpose, had he obtained that information. He had professed not to know what had happened after he had left Mürren.

The idea flashed through my mind that he and Thelma were acting in collusion to “call me off,” but this seemed so absurd that I dismissed it at once.

“Now, look here, Yelverton,” he said presently. “You’ve not told me everything.”

“Yes I have,” I protested.

“You haven’t told me that you’ve fallen deeply in love with little Mrs. Audley. That is why I warned you—and still warn you—of rocks ahead.”

“I did not think that necessary,” I said with some heat. “That is surely my own affair!”

“Certainly,” he said, dryly, in the paternal tone he sometimes assumed. “But remember my first view of the situation was the correct one. I thought you extremely indiscreet to accept the trust you did. It was a highly dangerous one—for you.”

“But you agreed afterwards that I did the right thing,” I argued.

“You acted generously in the Little Lady’s interests, but you have certainly fallen into some extraordinary trap. That’s my point of view,” he answered. “In any case, you are in love with a wife whose husband is absent. That is quite enough to constitute a very grave danger to both of you. So, if I were you I’d keep away from her. Take my advice as an old man.”

His repeated warning angered me, and I fear that I did not attempt to conceal my impatience. At any rate I took my leave rather abruptly, and as I walked in the direction of Hammersmith Bridge I felt more than ever puzzled at his attitude, and more than ever determined not to deviate from the course upon which I had embarked.

CHAPTER IX
CROOKED PATHS

One cold evening I returned from the office after a heavy day which had been devoted to the successful settlement of a very complicated and serious action for libel against a provincial newspaper which we represented.

As I entered my room, Mrs. Chapman, in her spotless black dress—just as she always wore when my father was alive—followed me in, saying—

“Oh! Mr. Rex. A gentleman called about three o’clock. He wouldn’t leave a card. He gave his name as Audley—Mr. Stanley Audley. He repeated it three times, and told me to be sure to recollect the name. He said he was extremely sorry you were not at home, but you were not to worry about him in the least.”

I started, staring blankly at her.

“Wouldn’t leave a card? Wouldn’t he call again?”

“He seemed to be in a very great hurry, sir. He said he had come from abroad to see you, but couldn’t wait and said he was very sorry. Only I was to give you his urgent message.”

“What was he like?”

“Well, sir, he was a round, rather red-faced gentleman. He was evidently greatly disappointed at not meeting you, but he impressed upon me the message that he was all right, and that you were not to worry about him.”

This was indeed a surprise.

It was evident that my caller was the man who had lived on the first floor in Half Moon Street, and was the friend of the Stanley Audley who had married Thelma!

What did that amazing visit portend? It worried me. Why should a reassuring message be given to me by a man who was not the person in whom I was interested, and whom I had never met? The whole affair was becoming more and more obscure and mysterious. As a solicitor I had been brought into contact with more than one queer affair, but the Audley mystery was beyond anything in my experience.

“Couldn’t he call again, Mrs. Chapman?” I asked.

“No, sir. He said he had come to see you just for a moment, and that he was sorry that he couldn’t wait. He had a taxi outside.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Chapman. I’m sorry I was not at home to see him. Did you give him my office address?”

“I did, sir. But he said he had no time to go round to Bedford Row, and that you would no doubt understand.”

Understand! What could I understand? I was more bewildered than ever.

Next day I called again upon Belton, in Half Moon Street, and questioned him more closely about his recent “Box and Cox” tenants. But he could tell me nothing more than he had already. Mr. Graydon and Mr. Audley were close friends. That was all.

“Tell me something about their visitors,” I asked. “Did Mr. Graydon, the gentleman who lived above, have many?”

“No, sir. Very few. Several of them I knew quite well when I was in service—gentlemen from the clubs. One a Canadian millionaire, came often, but Mr. Graydon never had any lady visitors except that young lady we spoke about a short time ago—the lady whose photograph you showed me, Miss Shaylor.”

“And Mr. Audley, who lived below?”

“Oh, he had quite a lot of callers—both ladies and gentlemen. He was older than Mr. Graydon, and seemed to have quite a big circle of acquaintances. They used to play bridge a lot.”

“Now, tell me, Mr. Belton. What is your private opinion about your tenants?”

“Well, sir, as you are a solicitor”—he had gained that knowledge from my card,—“I can speak quite frankly. Now that they are gone I don’t mind saying I held them both in suspicion. They had plenty of money and paid well, but I don’t think they were on the straight. That’s my firm opinion and my wife thinks the same.”

“What first aroused your suspicion?”

“Their card parties. They weren’t always square. I’m sure of it. Mr. Audley had an invalid friend, an old man named Davies, who came about three times, and when he came woe betide those who played. I kept my eyes and ears open when I served their drinks, and I’m sure I am not mistaken.”

“An invalid!” I exclaimed. “What kind of man was he?”

“Oh! he was very lame, was Mr. Davies, sir. An old man, but as keen as mustard on poker.”

“Did Mr. Graydon play?” I asked.

“Very little, sir.”

“Did he ever meet this Mr. Davies?”

“I think not, sir. Because on the first occasion Mr. Davies came I recollect that Mr. Graydon was away in Norway. The next time he came, Mr. Graydon was away in Paris. No,” he went on, “as far as I can recollect Mr. Graydon never met Mr. Davies.”

“Then this Mr. Davies was a person to be avoided?” I suggested.

“Distinctly so, sir. He was a shrewd and clever gambler, and I feel certain that he was in league with Mr. Audley. Indeed, I know that on the morning after one of their sittings they divided up a thousand pounds between them. It had been won from a man named Raikes, a manufacturer from Sheffield.”

“So they shared the spoils?” I said. “But tell me more about this interesting invalid.”

“Well, sir. He was a grey-bearded man of about sixty I should think, and he walked with difficulty with two sticks. He seemed to lisp when he spoke.”

It struck me at once that the ex-butler’s description would have fitted old Mr. Humphreys very closely, except that Humphreys did not lisp. I had no reason for thinking that Humphreys could have known Graydon, but he might have done so and he certainly was a very keen poker player.

“Had he a rather scraggy, pointed beard and did he wear in his tie a blue scarab pin?” I asked.

“No,” was Belton’s prompt reply, “he had a round beard and I never saw him wearing a scarab pin.”

Now old Mr. Humphreys always wore an antique pin of that description; I never saw him without it. He was immensely proud of it and used to declare it was a mascot that brought him good luck. He had a wonderful story of how he obtained it from some old Egyptian tomb. So the chance of Mr. Davies and old Humphreys being identical seemed a coincidence almost too peculiar to be true. Yet I could not get rid of a suspicion that they were one and the same person.

“You are quite certain that he never met the young gentleman you knew as Mr. Graydon?” I asked Belton.

“I’m quite certain of that, sir. One day Mr. Audley asked me not to say that Mr. Davies had been there, and asked that I would keep his visits a secret from young Graydon as he did not wish them to meet. There was, I remember, a lady named Temperley, who sometimes came with Mr. Davies. She was a stout, dark-eyed, over-dressed woman whom I put down as a retired actress. She had a young, thin rather ugly daughter, a girl with a long face, and protruding teeth. Both mother and daughter seemed to be on terms of close friendship with Mr. Davies.”

“Davies was an invalid. How did he get up these stairs?”

“With difficulty, sir. I used to help him up, and sometimes Mr. Audley helped me,” was the ex-butler’s reply. “At poker he was marvelous. I’ve seen poker played in several families in whose service I’ve been, but I never saw a finer player. He was more like a professional than an ordinary player for amusement.”

“And your tenant, Mr. Audley?”

“He was a fine player, of course. He used to have friends in at night and sometimes they would play till dawn.”

“And did Mr. Graydon never play?” I asked.

“Very seldom; the parties usually took place when he was away.”

It was quite evident that Stanley Audley, alias Graydon, was a person of mystery and his friends were as mysterious as himself. After a moment’s reflection I decided to take Belton fully into my confidence and tell him the whole story.

“Now, look here, Belton,” I said, “you may be able to help me considerably. I will tell you the whole story so far as I know it, and perhaps you will be able to remember further facts that may help.”

So I related to him everything that had happened since I first met Stanley Audley and his bride at Mürren.

Belton listened in silence. When I had finished he asked me one or two questions.

“Well, sir,” he said at last, “I think you had better see my wife. She may know something more.”

He fetched Mrs. Belton and briefly outlined to her the facts I had given him.

“You see, Ada,” he said, “the gentleman who called himself Audley here, was not the Mr. Audley who married the daughter of Commander Shaylor. Mr. Graydon is her husband. Isn’t it a puzzle?”

“It is,” replied his wife. Then, after I had made my explanation I begged her to tell me any further fact which might be of service in my inquiry. She hesitated for a moment and at last said:

“Don’t you recollect, Jack, that Mr. Graydon, before he came to us, lived at Seton’s, in Lancaster Gate. He was very friendly with Mr. Seton, who you remember was butler to old Lord Kenhythe at Kenhythe, in Kirkcudbrightshire. You went there one shooting season from Shawcross Castle, to oblige his lordship.”

“Oh! yes, of course!” exclaimed her husband. “Really, Ada, you’ve a long memory!”

“Well, I was head-housemaid once at Shawcross Castle. You forget that! But, don’t you recollect that young Mr. Graydon was very friendly with Mr. Seton. I don’t know why he left there and came to us, but I fancy it was because there was such a row at a party he had there, and he wouldn’t apologize, or something like that.”

“Ah! I remember it all now, of course, Ada,” exclaimed the woman’s husband. “Yes, you’re right—perfectly right! If there’s one man in London who knows about Mr. Graydon it’s Mr. Seton.”

He gave me the address of Lord Kenhythe’s ex-butler, and an hour later I called at a large private hotel facing Hyde Park, near Lancaster Gate, with a scribbled card from Belton.

The man who received me was a tall, very urbane person with small side-whiskers. He took me into his private parlor in the basement, where I told him the object of my visit.

“Yes, sir. I know Mr. Philip Graydon. A very estimable young gentleman.”

“Who is he?”

“Well, his father was the great Clyde shipbuilder, whose works are at Port Glasgow—the firm of Graydon and Hambling. When his father died, about two years ago, he left him a quarter of a million.”

“You know him well?”

“I did, sir. His father used to shoot with his lordship regularly, and Mr. Philip often came with him.”

I briefly told him that I was making inquiries into certain very curious circumstances, and said—

“I want your private opinion, Mr. Seton. Is there anything peculiar concerning Mr. Graydon? I ask this because on his marriage he took the name of Audley.”

“His marriage! I didn’t know he’d married, sir.”

“Yes. And he is missing. It is on behalf of his wife, who is a friend of mine, that I’m making these inquiries.”

“Mr. Graydon married!” he repeated. “Pardon me, sir, but whom did he marry?”

“A young lady named Shaylor.”

“Ah!” he ejaculated. “Yes, I know. He was very fond of her—very fond! Her mother is a widow in very straitened circumstances, I’ve heard. But do you say he’s missing?”

“Yes. He disappeared while they were on their honeymoon in Switzerland.”

“And where is his wife now?”

“With her mother in Bexhill. But tell me, Mr. Seton, Mr. Graydon as you call him, was with you for some months, wasn’t he?”

“For nearly a year and a half, sir.”

“And during that time did a man named Audley ever visit him?”

“Yes, a round-faced man who lived at Belton’s. He visited Mr. Graydon first about six weeks before he left me to go and live at Belton’s.”

“Why did he leave you?”

“Well, he had a bachelor party one night—they were very noisy and I remonstrated with him, and—well, he’s only young, sir—and the fact is he insulted me. So I gave him notice. But we’re still the best of friends,” said the ex-butler.

And then Seton sprang on me perhaps the greatest surprise of my life.

“Now I know your reason for wanting to see Mr. Graydon,” he said. “I may as well tell you he is here now.”

“Here!” I gasped excitedly, “do you mean he is staying here?”

“Yes, sir,” was the reply, “he’s in number eighteen. He came here yesterday quite unexpectedly.”

At last I had run Thelma’s mysterious husband to earth!

“He came in half-an-hour ago,” Seton went on, “and I gave him a letter which came for him by express messenger. I know he’s upstairs. If you would like to see him, I will send up.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “Under the circumstances I think I would prefer to go up unannounced if you have no objection.”

“Not in the least,” replied Seton. “Number Eighteen is on the second floor.”

So I eagerly ascended the wide, thickly-carpeted stairs. I had no very clear idea as to how I should approach the man I had known as Stanley Audley, but I was determined to demand an adequate explanation of why he had married Thelma under an assumed name and so cruelly deserted her, and, if necessary, to back my demand by a threat of legal proceedings.

CHAPTER X
IN ROOM NUMBER EIGHTEEN

On the second landing I rapped at the door of room Number 18, feeling considerable pleasure at the thought of giving my whilom friend an unwelcome surprise.

There was no reply, but I fancied I heard a movement inside. I listened eagerly.

I knocked again. Yes. I felt sure someone was within, but my knock met with no response.

A third time I knocked and more loudly, but to no avail. I tried the door—it was locked.

Five times I hammered with my fist, but there being no answer I descended the stairs and found Mr. Seton.

“But he must be up there if his door is locked,” he said. “He never takes his key but always leaves it on the peg here,” and he indicated a board on the wall in a little box-like room off the hall where visitors left their keys. To each key was attached a bulky ball of wood, in order that the key should not be carried away accidentally in the pocket.

With the landlord I reascended the stairs and Seton knocked at the door, calling his guest by name. But there was still no response.

“Do you know, I believe I heard somebody inside when I first knocked,” I remarked.

Seton bent and peered through the keyhole.

“At any rate the door is locked on the inside,” he said.

Then he thundered at the door, after which we both listened. There was no sound, but I thought I detected the smell of burning paper.

All the other guests were apparently out at the time, for the noise we made attracted only the servants.

“Baker!” Seton cried to a man who was in his shirtsleeves and wore an apron of green baize, “we must force this door. There’s a crow-bar down in the cellar. Go and get it.”

As the man addressed ran downstairs, the ex-butler turned to me with a scared expression upon his face, saying——

“This is very peculiar, sir. Why has he locked himself in like this? Did you really hear a noise?”

“Yes. I am sure I did, yet with the roar of the traffic out in the road, I really couldn’t quite swear to it,” was my reply.

“What I heard was like a man bustling about hurriedly, and yet trying to make no noise.”

“Surely he can’t have fainted--or--or committed suicide!” Seton remarked.

For a few minutes we stood outside the door utterly mystified, until the porter brought us a rusty bar of iron about three feet long, curved and flattened at the end—a very serviceable crow-bar.

This, Seton inserted between the door and the jamb, close to the lock, and then drew it back slowly. The woodwork groaned, creaked and cracked and with a sudden jerk the wood round the mortice lock tore away and the door flew open.

We stood amazed. The room was empty.

In a few seconds we had searched the big old-fashioned wardrobe and had looked beneath the bed and behind the curtains. But nobody was there. And, moreover, while the key was still in the door on the inside the window was closed and latched!

The fireplace was a small one with a flue through which not even a small boy could pass. In the grate were smoldering ashes of something, apparently a coat that had been hastily burned. There was an odor of consumed petrol, and it occurred to me at once that some clothing had been hurriedly saturated from a bottle of motor-spirit and set fire to—for the room was still heavy with smoke.

Seton crossed to the window and saw at once that it had not been opened. I glanced out and down. From the narrow window-sill there was a sheer drop to the paved basement forty or fifty feet below with not even a stackpipe by which an active man might have escaped.

“Well, this is extraordinary,” cried Seton. “How could Mr. Graydon possibly get out of the room and leave it still locked on the inside?”

Seton bent suddenly over the fireplace. “Well, we may as well see what he was burning,” he said as he picked up a half charred piece of paper that had apparently been crumpled up hastily and thrown into the grate. He smoothed it out and looked at it in amazement.

It was a portion of a fifty-pound Bank of England note! It was partly burned but quite enough was left to identify it without any possibility of a mistake.

“Well,” I exclaimed, “burning fifty-pound notes is certainly a new kind of pastime. What on earth can it mean?”

“I can’t imagine,” replied Seton. “And how can Mr. Graydon have gone? Certainly not through the door or the window.”

“And before he went,” I added, “he burnt a coat or something of the kind and a fifty-pound note!”

In front of the window was a small early Victorian escritoire. Upon it were several loose sheets of paper from a new writing-pad, an ink-stained envelope, and a couple of bills from a local chemist.

Seton opened two or three of the drawers and from one of them drew a folded wad of papers. “More notes!” he ejaculated, as he felt with his fingers the crisp familiar crackle.

There were three notes for fifty pounds each, obviously quite new. Clearly Graydon, in his hurry, had forgotten that they were there.

“It seems to me,” I said to Seton, “that Graydon must have been frightened by something and had to get away quickly.”

“Frightened, but of what?” Seton asked. “I saw him only half-an-hour before you came, and he seemed all right then.”

“Do you think my visit might have frightened him?” I asked.

“Well, sir, I don’t know. But why did he burn a fifty-pound note and how did he get out? That’s what puzzles me. I could have understood it if he had locked his door on the outside.”

“It beats me, anyhow,” I said, looking round the room. I noticed Graydon’s two suitcases stood open and some of his clothes were hanging in the wardrobe. Why, and above all how had he vanished so suddenly? But for the fact that he had actually called to see me—showing that he certainly was not afraid of meeting me—I might well have thought that he would be alarmed on recognizing my voice. But he had evidently not done so and must have thought I was someone else whom he urgently desired to avoid.

Those fifty-pound notes puzzled Lord Kenhythe’s ex-butler as completely as they did myself. Men do not usually go about burning fifty-pound notes. We knew that the young fellow who, in Switzerland, had posed as a hard-working electrical engineer welcoming the prospect of a “rise,” was on the contrary, a rich young man. But that he should burn bank-notes of such value or leave them discarded as he had done, was simply inexplicable on any hypothesis we could frame.

I was deeply chagrined. I had come within an ace of capturing the truant bridegroom and yet he had eluded me. Could it really, I asked myself, have been the same man? Again I carefully described to Seton the man I had known as Stanley Audley. He was emphatic in his assertion that it was Philip Graydon, the man who had been in that very room barely half-an-hour before. And as if to make assurance doubly sure, I found on one of his suitcases a label of the Kürhaus Hotel at Mürren and another put on at Mürren station, registering this case through to Victoria.

There could not be the slightest doubt as to the mystery man’s identity as Thelma’s husband.

“Look here!” said Seton, suddenly, as he held up a towel he had taken from the rail. It was stained with blood. The hand basin was half full of water deeply tinged with blood.

“Evidently he had cut himself badly,” was Seton’s comment.

“Perhaps,” I said, “but is this his own blood or someone else’s?”

“Surely, sir, you don’t suspect he has been guilty of a crime?” gasped Seton.

I pointed to the charred fragments of the coat. “It might be so,” I rejoined.

A few moments later, however, on making a closer search of the room we found in the waste-paper basket a broken medicine bottle and on the edge of a piece of glass was a blood stain. It told its own tale—he had cut his hand upon the glass. Further, close beside the dressing-table were three or four dark spots. I touched one, and found it to be blood.

“I wonder why he destroyed his coat?” Seton remarked. “He’s gone away leaving everything behind.”

“But how did he get out?” I persisted. “The door and window were both fastened and there is no fanlight.”

We again carefully examined the lock. It was intact, it had been locked from the inside and the key was still there.

Together we went carefully through the fugitive’s belongings, but found nothing of interest. They were merely clothes of good quality or the wardrobe of a fashionable young man. From the pocket of the suitcase that bore the label “B. O. B.”—or Bernese Oberland Bahn—I took out three one-pound Treasury notes. But we found not a scrap of writing of any sort. There was some burnt paper in the fireplace, suggesting that with the coat he had destroyed all documents that might give a clue to his identity. The broken bottle smelt of petrol and apparently he had kept the spirit ready for use if he wanted quickly to destroy anything.

Our search concluded, Seton had all the things removed to an unoccupied room and locked the door.

“The Bank will pay the halfnote,” said Seton. “I shall pay the lot in and hold the money until Mr. Graydon turns up again. He has plenty of money, of course, and may not have missed it. There is no doubt some explanation. I cannot believe, knowing Mr. Graydon as I did, that there can be anything very seriously wrong.”

“But why should the note be burned?” I queried.

“It might have been accidentally among the other papers he destroyed, sir. Don’t you think so?”

This, of course, was possible. For a long time we sat in Seton’s room discussing the strange affair. At first Seton thought he ought to tell the police, but I urged him not to do so. It would get into the papers, I argued, and that was the last thing desirable for a high-class private hotel such as his. I did not want a public scandal that must involve Thelma in most unpleasant publicity.

“I wonder whether he had an inkling that you’d called, sir?” suggested Seton. “Perhaps he saw you from one of the front windows and then rushed up and prepared to bolt.”

“But why should he? I have acted towards him only as a friend and I see no reason why he should take such extreme steps to avoid me. Besides, he actually called at my flat.”

“Yes, I had forgotten that,” Seton admitted. “But still, I think something must have frightened him—and frightened him badly, too. He wouldn’t have cut his hand in opening the bottle of petrol, burned his clothes and papers, and got away so swiftly if there wasn’t some very strong motive for doing so. What’s your opinion?”

“The same as yours, Seton,” I answered. “But the affair is full of remarkable circumstances. How did he get out of that locked room? He was certainly in there when I first knocked.”

“My own belief,” said Seton, “is that he must have started to destroy his things as soon as you knocked. He was certainly in a great hurry for he smashed the neck of the petrol bottle when he found he could not get the cork out—it’s still in the neck of the broken bottle—and cut his hand in doing so.”

“But there wouldn’t have been time,” I said, impatiently.

“I think so,” said Seton. “The coat was a light one and saturated with petrol, it would burn very quickly. You stood at the door probably for ten minutes before you called me and it was certainly another quarter of an hour, or even more, before I forced the door. That coat would burn in that time.”

“Yes, perhaps, but that doesn’t explain how he got away from the locked room, or where he went to.”

Lord Kenhythe’s ex-butler shrugged his broad shoulders and with a mystified look upon his clean-shaven face, replied—

“How he got out, sir, and where he has gone to, is to me a complete mystery. But I feel sure he’ll come back, or he’ll write and tell me about it. Besides, he’s not a gentleman to leave without settling his bill.”

“Well,” I said, laughing, “you won’t lose much. He’s left you two hundred odd pounds.”

I left, promising to call again on the following afternoon. This I did, eager to know whether he had any further news of his missing guest.

As I entered the room, I saw that the man’s face was graver and more puzzled than before.

“Well, Mr. Seton?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

“Happened, sir. Those bank-notes. When I took them to the bank this morning the manager called me into his room and questioned me very closely. They’re forgeries!”

“Forged notes!” I gasped, staring at him.

“Yes, sir. The manager told me that all banks here and abroad had been warned about six months ago that a quantity of spurious five and fifty-pound Bank of England notes were in circulation. They’ve been printed in Argentina. The police made a raid on the factory, seized the printing press and plates and six men were arrested. All of them have been sent to prison for long terms, but at the trial it came out that they were in league with certain confederates in Paris, Madrid and London who were engaged in circulating them—mostly the five-pound ones.”

“And what did you say?” I asked.

“Well, sir, I told the whole story. The manager took the notes, and I believe he’s sent them to the Bank of England.”

“Then the police will start inquiries!” I cried, dismayed, for the situation was becoming daily more complicated.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. “I understood from the manager that they will!”

CHAPTER XI
LOVE VS. HONOR

Here was a new and extraordinary complication.

Why was Stanley Audley, alias Philip Graydon, in possession of forged notes from the notorious factory in South America? Why had he attempted to destroy one of them, while leaving the others in a drawer?

In the hope, though it was but faint, of getting further information about Audley, I telephoned to Marigold Day and asked her to dine with me at the Piccadilly Hotel.

She promptly accepted, and during the meal I brought the talk round to Audley, telling her of his remarkable disappearance from the room in Seton’s Hotel in Lancaster Gate.

“But are you really certain it was Mr. Audley?” she asked.

“Quite,” I replied. “Seton’s description of him bears no possible room for doubt. Besides, he had known Audley for a long time and there is no possibility that he can have made a mistake.”

“It is an extraordinary thing if he has been in London that he did not let me know,” she said, frowning and evidently puzzled.

“Yes, that is so, but we have to remember that for some unaccountable reason he seems to have decided to completely efface himself.”

“Harold Ruthen believes that he is hiding in Paris,” she said.

“But from whom should he be hiding, and why?” I questioned. “Do you think that he can possibly be hiding from the police?”

“I don’t know what to think,” she replied with a sigh, “but why do you suggest the police.”

“Well,” I answered, “I think you ought to know that a very strange thing happened at Lancaster Gate. When we searched the room we found in the grate a half-burned Bank of England fifty-pound note. In a drawer were three others. And all of them have been found to be forgeries.”

“Ah, then you know,” said the girl with a queer, hard look that I had never seen in her eyes before.

“That is all I know,” I said, “and I wondered whether you could tell me any more. Is it on account of these forged notes that he is hiding? It certainly looks very like it, and I have no doubt whatever that that will be the view of the police. What does Ruthen say?”

“He hasn’t told me anything, but I remember one queer incident. Once when we were out together he paid for supper with a five-pound note and we were about to go out when the manager of the restaurant came back and declared it to be a forgery. Stanley apologized profusely, and gave the man another in its place, explaining that he had cashed a cheque at his club and they had given it to him with four others. Apparently the others he had were genuine. I did not think much of it at the time—such a thing, of course, might easily have happened—but after what you have told me I don’t know what to believe.”

It was difficult to believe that the young fellow who had married Thelma and for whom I had formed a genuine liking, could be the ally of a gang of bank-note forgers, yet the evidence was becoming overwhelming.

“But I thought you told me Audley was well off,” I said. “Well-to-do people don’t usually descend to dealing in forged notes.”

“He always appeared to be,” was Marigold’s reply, “but possibly that was how he made his money. As a matter of fact I really did not know very much about him. I met him through intimate friends and I suppose I more or less took him for granted. He was quite obviously a gentleman and one can’t enquire closely into the antecedents of every man one meets.”

I wondered whether the girl had in some way stumbled upon the truth. If this were the case, the shock of finding that the man she undoubtedly was beginning to love was involved in such infamous practices as the passing of forged notes would be quite sufficient to explain the strange change Mrs. Powell had noticed and commented on. It was quite clear, from what Mrs. Powell had said, that she had suffered some blow which had utterly upset her. On the other hand, the knowledge that Audley had married Thelma would have been an equally satisfactory explanation.

In answer to a question, Marigold told me she had seen Ruthen at Rector’s Club three nights before and had chatted with him. He had then told her that he was still in search of Stanley and that he had been looking for him in Paris. But, although she had questioned him, he would not tell her his motives.

We went to a revue together and later I saw her into a taxi on her way home. Though I questioned her as closely as I could, and she seemed quite willing to help, she could not, or would not, tell me any more.

I walked home to Russell Square utterly bewildered and spent a sleepless night racking my brain for a solution of the mystery. Here we were in April and so far as I could tell I was as far off as ever from finding the key to the enigma.

I decided next day to take my partner, Hensman, fully into my confidence. He was five years older than I, and a keen, practical business man for whose judgment I had considerable respect.

He heard me in silence. At first he was inclined to be amused but as I went on his thin, clean-shaven face assumed a very serious expression.

“Well,” I asked when I had finished, “what do you think of it all?”

“Intensely interesting, Rex—but extremely complicated,” was my partner’s reply, as he sat back in his chair. “On the face of it Audley is a crook hiding from the police. Evidently he has not attempted to get abroad, but is still somewhere in London. That’s my view.”

“But what causes his wife to tell me that he can never return to her?” I asked. “What is your opinion of that?”

“I cannot tell that. But I believe she must hear from him and that she knows his whereabouts from time to time. The telegram he received calling him back from Mürren was, no doubt, a message of warning.”

“I quite agree,” I said. “But why did he escape so rapidly from Lancaster Gate?”

“Probably he thought you were a detective.”

“But if he saw me enter the place he would have recognized me at once.”

“True. I never thought of that,” said Hensman. “No. He took fright at something, and thought he’d destroy all the bank-notes. His escape, I admit, was an ingenious one. He evidently slipped out while you had gone downstairs to call Seton, and leaving the key on the inside of the door, re-locked it.”

“How could he?”

“If the end of the key protruded, as it does in many cases, it would be quite easy to turn with a pair of pincers,” Hensman replied. “If he is a crook he most probably carries a pair, for by that means locked doors are frequently opened by thieves.”

This explanation, simple though it was, appeared perfectly adequate and I was chagrined that neither Seton nor myself had hit upon it. Later, when I again examined the door, I had no doubt at all about it. The end of the key projected beyond the surface of the door and as the lock was well-oiled and went very easily, it was easy, I found, to turn the key from the outside with a pair of pliers.

It was clear that Audley had been alarmed by something, whether it was my knock at his door that had disturbed him, we could not tell. Whatever it was, he had evidently slipped out when he heard me walk away from the door, locked the door behind him and hidden in one of the other rooms. Then his movements, masked by the noise made in breaking open the door, he had calmly walked out and disappeared.

“My advice, Rex, is to have nothing further to do with the affair,” my partner argued. “Leave it all severely alone. There is no sort of reason why you should allow yourself to be dragged into any police-court business. Suppose Audley is arrested, as no doubt he will be eventually, then you’ll be called for the prosecution. And you don’t want that.”

I demurred. It was the same advice that old Feng had given me. And yet, try how I could, I could not bring myself to desert Thelma in her distress.

Three days later I received a note from her from the Hotel Reubens, in Buckingham Palace Road, saying that her mother and she were staying there for a few days and asking whether I could see her.

I called that evening, and was invited to stay to dinner. She was very charming, but I saw she was pale and anxious. She seemed overwrought and nervous, her slim fingers ever fidgeting with her wedding ring.

After dinner we were taking coffee in the lounge when Thelma, seeing a girl she knew, rose and left us to speak to her.

“Well, Mrs. Shaylor,” I asked quickly, “has Thelma had any further news of her husband?”

“Not a word,” was the reply. “But several times a man, a stranger to me, has been to see her, and they have gone out together. His name, I believe, is Ruthen or Ruthven.”

“Harold Ruthen! He was at Mürren.”

“So I believe. But he seems to pester her to death,” replied her mother. “Each time he comes she seems very upset, and I know she cries bitterly after he has gone. He seems to hold some extraordinary hold over her, but she will not say anything about it.”

“She does not like him?”

“I don’t know. She always receives him gladly. But she may not feel what she pretends.”

“Curious if that fellow really has some hold over her,” I said, recollecting that strange conversation in the night at Mürren. “My opinion is that Thelma is in fear of him, and in order to cloak her fear from you she pretends to welcome him, whereas his presence is really hateful to her.”

“You think so?” asked the widow, stirring her coffee and looking straight into my face. “All she has told me is that the man is a friend of her husband’s.”

“I believe that is true,” was my reply.

“And he is in search of Stanley, just as you are, Mr. Yelverton,” she added.

I drew a long breath, but made no reply, for at that instant Thelma rejoined us, exclaiming:

“Only fancy, mother, I haven’t seen Sybil Deighton since I left school. And now she’s married. That’s her husband she’s with. Rather a nice boy, isn’t he?”

And she threw herself into the lounge-chair next to me.

Not until an hour later when Mrs. Shaylor had bidden us good-night and we had retired into one of the cosy corners that I ventured to speak of Stanley.

“No, Mr. Yelverton,” she said shaking her beautiful head sadly, and raising her big gray eyes to mine. “I have heard nothing—not a word. If Stanley is still alive he would surely send me a reassuring word. I—I begin to think that he must be dead!”

Stanley Audley dead! If that were so I should be free to love her and to win her if I could. The very thought caused my heart to leap. I even found myself cherishing the wish that it might be true. Yet a moment later I began to despise myself for entertaining such an unworthy thought. It was not “playing the game” according to the right traditions of the school in which I had been brought up. And so far, at any rate, I had tried to conform to the code of personal honor that, with many men, is a far more powerful rule of conduct than most forms of religious belief.

Though I led the conversation several times in the direction of Harold Ruthen, Thelma said nothing of his visits to Bexhill. I was irritated because she would not be frank with me. At length I thought it would be best to speak plainly and told her of my adventure in Lancaster Gate, of course without mentioning the discovery of the forged bank-notes.

“But, surely it could not have been Stanley!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Why should he want to avoid you, of all men? He could not imagine you as anything else but a friend!”

“Equally so, why does he not let you know his whereabouts?” I asked in turn.

She shook her head in dismay.

Then suddenly, with an expression of despair in her eyes, she put out her thin white hand with the wedding ring upon it, and pointing to it, said in a low voice—

“Think what—what a mockery this is to me!”

What could I reply? Here was a girl not yet twenty, married only a few days and then deserted. Her distress was very real and very pitiful. It had been on the tip of my tongue to tax her with her concealment from me of Ruthen’s visits, but in view of what she was suffering I could not bring myself to pain her further. Either she loved her husband, in spite of his apparently callous desertion of her, or, for some inexplicable reason she was playing a part with a skill that many an actress would envy.

More and more I was tortured by my growing love for her. Hitherto I had kept it within bounds, and, so far as I knew, I had never—intentionally, at any rate—given a hint of it to Thelma herself. But as I look back, I can see now that such a restraint could not be maintained. A crash was bound to come. It came, very swiftly and very suddenly a few days later.

Thelma and her mother had promised to come and have tea with me in my rooms at Russell Square. At the last moment Mrs. Shaylor was called to Watford to see her sister who had been taken ill, and Thelma came alone. She was in comparatively good spirits and after my old housekeeper had served us with tea, we spent a couple of delightful hours. Thelma, an accomplished musician, sang to me, accompanying herself on my piano, and as I sat watching and listening to her I realized more fully than ever how handsome and lovable she was and my anger against Stanley Audley became almost unbearable.

“Poor mother!” she exclaimed presently as she re-seated herself by the fire, after singing a gay song from one of the latest revues, “She’s awfully worried. That’s why we are up in town. The securities which my father left are depreciating in value, and one of the companies in which he invested most of his money has now gone into liquidation. She came up to see my uncle, who is her trustee. Yes, Mr. Yelverton, the war spelt ruin to us, as it did to so many others, and yet the Stock Exchange speculators made fortunes out of it—out of lives of men.”

It was sad news she had told me, but I had not been blind to the fact that Mrs. Shaylor was, like so many other gentlewomen of today, keeping up a brave appearance, with but small funds at her disposal.

I longed to mention Harold Ruthen, but did not dare to do so lest I should betray what her mother had told me in confidence. But I was angry that the fellow dared to seek her at Bexhill and cause her worry. It, however, proved one fact, that he, at any rate, was not aware of Stanley’s whereabouts, and, for the moment, could not do him the harm that I believe he fully intended.

How one’s most momentous actions depend at times upon the merest trivialities! I little guessed that a trifle was to rouse in me a gust of emotion destined to sweep away the last vestige of the iron self-control I had honestly tried to set upon myself.

Thelma was the wife of another man: that fact I had tried to keep always before my mind. I was to learn now that there are, in each one of us, forces too strong to be enchained by any man-made codes of conduct.

Thelma had seated herself in a low chair and was gazing sadly into the fire. Either her gaiety had been a pretense or the thought of her unhappy position had again overcome her.

“It’s very hard lines on you, Thelma,” I said softly.

She made no reply, but her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She put out her hand as if in acknowledgment of my sympathy and I took it in mine.

Its touch seemed to pour liquid fire through every pore of my being. I forgot all my good resolutions, all my pride of tradition and, in a second, I was kneeling beside her, pouring out a flood of impassioned words. What I said I have not the faintest idea. I was beside myself in a passion of love that broke all bounds and defied restraint.

Thelma rose quickly from her chair, crossed the room to the window and, burying her face in her hands, burst into a torrent of tears.

That brought me to my senses. I saw, too late, how unutterably foolish I had been. How utterly inexcusable was my conduct. Yet I had no regrets; rather I was thrilled with a savage joy that she should know the truth at last.

“Stanley had no right to leave you as he has done, without cause, or explanation after a few days only of marriage!” I cried. “It is harsh and cruel. It is not the act of a man of honor.”

But she held up her hand as though to stay my further words.

“I—I’m sorry I came here, Mr. Yelverton,” she said, suddenly, quite earnest and calm. “I thank you for all your efforts on my behalf but I think we must not meet in the future.”

“Then you still love the scoundrel who has deserted you!” I cried, unable to restrain myself.

“I will have no word said against him,” she replied gently. “Perhaps, after all, we have misjudged him. It is time I went back to the Hotel. Mother is taking me to see some friends tonight, and—and we return to Bexhill tomorrow.”

That last sentence was equivalent to telling me not to call again upon her.

“Why, I thought you were here for some days,” I exclaimed in dismay.

“I think mother has decided to return tomorrow,” was her significant reply.

I saw her home to Buckingham Palace Road and there bade her farewell, cursing myself for my frantic outburst. I had acted like a fool. Yet the regret I knew I ought to feel would not come.

Next morning among my letters on the breakfast table was one addressed in typewriting, which I instantly recognized. It was from Hammersmith, having been sent by express messenger instead of being posted as the other had been.

I recognized the uneven typing—and tore it open. The words I read were:

“Will you never take warning! You yesterday entertained Stanley Audley’s wife at your rooms. As you have disregarded the caution already given you, the consequences will be upon your own head. If you value your life, you will relinquish the search for a man who is already dead. To continue is at your own peril. This is the last warning——”

I had a new and insistent problem to face. Who was my mysterious correspondent and why was he sufficiently interested to threaten me with death in case I refused to abandon my search for Stanley Audley?

CHAPTER XII
STRANGE SUSPICIONS

Try as I would I could not dismiss from my mind that old Doctor Feng, if he was not actually the writer of the strange warnings I had received, was in some way associated with the sender.

But what possible motive could he have? I could see none. I had no sort of reason for thinking that he had any interest in Stanley Audley and did not want him discovered, or that he had the smallest antipathy to me personally: in fact he had invariably been extremely friendly. I had, it was true, sensed a kind of latent hostility to Thelma, but this appeared to be due more to the idea that I might make a fool of myself, rather than to any active dislike of her. And I could see no kind of reason why he should attempt to scare me by means of an anonymous letter. Yet the suspicion stuck in my mind and refused to be dismissed.

Could the sender be Stanley Audley himself? Was he alive, yet for some reason unable to come forward openly? He might have learnt something, and suspected more, of my friendship with Thelma, and, in a fit of jealousy, taken this means of trying to put a stop to it. This was a possibility I could not ignore, yet I never, for a moment, really believed it. On the other hand, I could not imagine anyone who could possibly feel towards me the rancorous hate betrayed by the sending of the letters.

I had worked myself into such a state that any real concentration upon business had become impossible and at length my partner, quite justifiably, took a strong line.

I had been engaged on an important right-of-way case in Derbyshire. A committee of villagers had begun an action against a local Council and I had been preparing instruction for the defense. Exasperated and distracted by the evil shadow that had fallen across my life I was bungling the business badly and at length had to turn it all over to Hensman.

“Really, Rex,” he said, impatiently, “this can’t go on. I cannot possibly do the whole work of the office.”

I handed him the second warning letter. He read it slowly, frowning deeply the while.

“My dear Rex,” he said, “this thing is getting on your nerves. Cut it, old man. Go up to Cromer and play golf for a week and think no more of the girl, or the elusive bridegroom. Don’t mix yourself up with the affair any more—unless—”

“Unless—yes, I know what you’re going to say. Unless I’m in love with Thelma,” I replied. “She has a suspicion—only a suspicion, that her husband is dead.”

“And then?” he asked. “And then I suppose you’d marry her—the widow of a crook—”

“How do we know he is a crook?” I asked. “We have no proof of it.”

“Well, forged notes are pretty good evidence, aren’t they?” asked my partner. “In any case you are quite unfit for work and it isn’t fair on me—or you, either, for that matter.”

“But who can be sending me these threatening messages?” I asked him.

“Probably the wily husband himself. Wants a divorce, possibly. Perhaps he will come to Hensman & Yelverton to file the petition!”

“You’re not serious!” I exclaimed pettishly. “You don’t see what all this means to me—the upsetting of my life and of my profession.”

“I’m perfectly serious, anyhow, in saying this has got to end. We can’t go on with one partner a passenger: things are getting behind. Cut the whole affair. Your friend Feng, as any man of sense would have been, was against it from the first. And how about that old invalid from Constantinople? Have you heard from him?”

“Not a word. That’s a reminder. I’ll write to the Ottoman Bank and see whether he is back again. But I don’t see how he can help.”

“He was back in London three days ago. Look!” Hensman said, passing me over a cutting from the Times. “I cut it out intending to give it to you.”

I took the narrow little strip and read the words:

“Mr. Hartley Humphreys has returned from Constantinople to the Carlton Hotel.”

“By Jove! I’ll call and see him,” I said. “The paragraph escaped me. Thanks.”

“Well, Rex,—do be careful. This obsession about your bride in distress is interfering seriously with business. It’s all very well, but we—the firm—have to get on and to live.”

His reproach, I felt, was amply justified. I might have quarreled with another man in my present state of mind, but Hensman and I had been friends for many years and I had a real and deep liking and respect for him. He was the last man on earth with whom I could wish to quarrel.

“You’re quite right, old man,” I said at last. “It’s not fair on you. I’ll try to pull myself together. You don’t want us to part company?”

“Don’t be an ass, Rex,” he replied with a laugh. “It isn’t so tragic as all that. But you are playing with fire. Suppose Audley turns up all right? You are getting yourself tied up in a hopeless knot and my advice to you, once for all, is to cut yourself adrift from the whole business and have nothing more to do with it. After all, Mrs. Audley is not in actual want and whatever may have happened at Mürren she has no shadow of claim on you any further. Certainly there is no kind of reason why you should run yourself into any danger for her sake. I can’t help thinking that there is more behind the matter than we know and that those letters are meant seriously. If you were in any way legitimately involved I would not suggest you should show the white feather—indeed, I would come in with you myself to the limit. But put the question to yourself: is there any real reason, apart from your infatuation for the girl—herself a married woman, why you should continue to take a hand in a very perplexing and unprofitable business. If we knew Audley was dead and you are really fond of the girl, it would be, I quite admit, a different thing.”

I could not pretend that there was any flaw in his logic. Yet I was still restless and dissatisfied. I went home with him that night and dined with his wife and himself in their quaint little cottage home at Hampton. As I sat in that small low-pitched room—for the house was composed of two old-world cottages knocked into one—I envied my partner his domestic happiness.

When I got back to Russell Square I sat down before the big fire old Mrs. Chapman had left me and for the thousandth time went over the affair from the beginning seeking to recall any trivial circumstance that might throw some light upon it. As to the personal threat, I recklessly made up my mind that I would not allow it to influence me at all: I would not run the risk of being fooled by a practical joke on the one hand, or, on the other, weakly run away if there were any real danger.

I decided that, in any case, I would see Dr. Feng, show him the letters and, if necessary, ask him bluntly whether he were the sender.

So at eleven o’clock next morning the maid at the comfortable house in Barnes showed me into the Doctor’s sitting-room, and a few seconds later Feng, with a smile of welcome, entered with outstretched hand.

“Well, Yelverton, so pleased to see you,” he said, inviting me to a chair. “And how are things going with you?”

“Oh, pretty much as usual,” I replied rather moodily.

I hesitated a moment and then I took from my pocket the second letter of warning.

“Look, Doctor,” I said, “I’ve received this. What do you think of it?”

As he read it I watched him closely. It was evident he was keenly interested. It struck me, too, that he was unmistakably surprised and my suspicion that he might have been the writer faded instantly.

“I wonder who could have sent you that?” he exclaimed. “Somebody who is jealous of your attentions to little Mrs. Audley.”

His eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a curious look of mystery in them.

“I thought it possible that you might have been the sender,” I said, with a laugh.

“Me!” he replied, starting. “Whatever causes you to suspect that? Ah!” he added a second later. “I notice the postmark is that of Hammersmith—just across the bridge! No, my dear boy, I assure you that I am not the sender.”

By his manner it was plain that he was telling the truth.

“I remember your many warnings, Doctor. That is why I suspected,” I said apologetically.

“Well, I hope you don’t believe that I’m guilty of sending you such silly nonsense. Personally, if I received such a letter I should take no notice of it. You’re not alarmed, surely? It’s only some silly joke, perpetrated, perhaps, by one of Audley’s mysterious and undesirable associates.”

“I wish I knew whether Audley were alive or dead!” I said bitterly. “His wife has heard that he is dead, yet I can find no evidence at all that this is so.”

“She told you that he could never return to her,” Feng remarked.

“Yes; but that is another puzzle upon which she refused to throw any light,” I replied.

“Oh! by the way,” Feng exclaimed suddenly. “You recollect old Hartley Humphreys at Mürren? He wrote to me a few days ago and I went to dine with him at the Carlton. He’s just back from Constantinople, and do you know, his lameness is quite cured. He’s been to some German specialist who has put him right. He was enquiring about you.”

“I’d like to see him again,” I said. “He is quite a pleasant old fellow.”

“Go and call. He’d like to see you, I’m sure. He was interested in your romance, and asked me how it had ended. I pretended ignorance, for I did not know how much you would like him to learn. I never care to obtrude in other people’s affairs.”

“I will certainly go and see him,” I said. “It’s good news that he is cured.”

“Yes. He walks without a stick and seems rejuvenated.”

Next day I went to the Carlton and sent up my card, after which I was conducted to a handsome private sitting-room on the second floor. As I approached the door, I saw disappearing along the corridor, the back of a man whom I could have sworn was Harold Ruthen. I recognized him mainly by his walk, his grey felt hat, the well-cut brown suit and the drab spats. But he had turned the corner and disappeared before I could make sure.

In the room old Mr. Humphreys rose to meet me.

“Well, Mr. Yelverton! This is indeed a pleasure! I was asking the Doctor about you only the other day. I had mislaid your address. I’m so glad you’ve called.”

“The Doctor told me you were here,” I said.

“Excellent! Sit down. Have one of these Turkish cigarettes. They are real Turkish, for I brought them home with me. You can get no first-class Turkish cigarettes except in Turkey itself. As you know, the export of the best tobacco leaves is forbidden. The second quality only goes to Europe.”

I took one of the thin little rolls of golden tobacco, and lighting it pronounced it to be exquisite.

“Well, and what you have been doing since I left Mürren—carrying on in your profession, I suppose? And how about that charming little bride? Did her husband come back?”

“No,” I replied. “He has not yet returned to her.”

“What!” cried the old man, opening his eyes widely. “Not back! Then he deserted her and left her upon your hands!” he added. “A rather dangerous situation for a young man—eh?”

I smiled.

“It is a tragedy,” I said, a few moments later. “The poor broken-hearted girl is back with her mother at Bexhill.”

“And you see her sometimes, I expect.”

“Very rarely,” I answered. “But I am still seeking for traces of the missing man.”

“Curious that he didn’t come back. He seemed quite a nice young fellow and devoted to his wife. There is a mystery somewhere. I wonder what really happened.”

“It is impossible to conjecture—unless he is keeping out of the way for some unexplained reason.”

A moment later the door opened and Dr. Feng walked in. I was rather surprised at his coming up unannounced. When he saw me he looked annoyed for a moment, but only for a moment. Then he laughed and said—

“Well, I didn’t expect to find you here, Yelverton!”

“We were discussing little Mrs. Audley and her missing husband,” Humphreys explained.

“Yes, some silly ass who is jealous has sent Yelverton two letters of warning, threatening him with death if he continues his search for Audley or his acquaintanceship with his wife,” the doctor said.

Humphreys laughed, and exclaimed—

“What rubbish! The letters must be a joke.”

“I think they are meant in earnest,” I said.

In the meantime the doctor had taken a chair before the fire, and proceeded to light his pipe. It struck me suddenly that, so far from being, as I had believed, mere hotel acquaintances, these two were great friends.

This surprised me. The doctor had told me that he had made a formal call in response to a letter, but as we sat there it was plain they were on terms of close intimacy.

“I’ve had the agent round this morning about that house in Hampstead I told you about,” Humphreys said. “Ruthen is seeing after it for me. I fancy I can get it a bit cheaper than they want. As I’ll be in London for quite a year now, I prefer a house to hotel life.”

Mention of the name of Ruthen caused me to prick up my ears. I had no idea that the young man who so constantly pestered Thelma with his questions was acquainted with Humphreys.

“Yes,” agreed the doctor. “I think you will be better off in a house than in hotels. I always find the latter very wearisome and restless.”

“It’s quite a nice place,” Humphreys remarked. “A bit big perhaps, but I shall often have some relatives staying with me. Ruthen is quite of my opinion that it would just suit me.”

“So he told me yesterday,” said the doctor. “I met him at lunch with Andrews.”

Here was another surprise. I learned that three men whom I had believed to be practically strangers to each other were on terms of intimate friendship.

I remained for about an hour and then left the pair together. Old Humphreys begged me to call upon him again.

Two days later he rang me up at the office and asked me to dine with him. I accepted and we had dinner together in the Savoy restaurant, and afterwards watched the dancing in the room below. The old fellow, always a pleasant companion, had certainly become rejuvenated since the winter at Mürren.

“Isn’t it splendid!” he remarked when I referred to his cure. “Old Professor Goltman, in Dresden, has worked a miracle. I can now get about quite well, and I feel quite twenty years younger.”

“You look it,” I declared, for he certainly seemed an entirely different man from the decrepit invalid who wheeled himself in his chair, and had often to be carried upstairs.

Thoughts of Mürren reminded me that Harold Ruthen had been there for a few days at the same time as the invalid. Evidently they must have met there and their acquaintance must have been renewed in London, where Ruthen was now acting on Humphreys’ behalf in regard to the house.

It struck me too, that if I mentioned Ruthen I might be thought too inquisitive. But I decided to watch closely, for I was beginning to grow distrustful of both the doctor and his friend: of Ruthen I had never been anything else. My suspicions were greatly strengthened by a curious circumstance which occurred about a week later.

Though I had struggled against it I had decided to go down and see Thelma again, and put to her certain other questions which I hoped would induce her to give me her entire confidence. The fact was that I could not keep away from her, try how I would.

I little dreamed of the consequences that visit was to have!

CHAPTER XIII
SPUME OF THE STORM

It was evening when I alighted from the train at the clean, spick-and-span little town of Bexhill, which in summer and autumn is so animated, yet in spring and winter is practically deserted.

Darkness had already fallen and a rough easterly wind caused the leafless boughs of the trees to crack and sway. A heavy gale was blowing in the Channel that night and the boiling surf swept in upon the shingle.

As I walked towards Bedford Avenue, that quiet select thoroughfare of detached red-brick houses which lies close to the sea, I noticed, on the opposite side of the way, two persons—a man and a girl—walking slowly in the direction which I was taking.

As they passed beneath a street-lamp, I had a good view of them. It was Thelma walking with old Doctor Feng!

I halted amazed, and instinctively drew back into the shadow of a hedge which formed the boundary of a garden. They were walking engrossed in conversation, in the direction of Mrs. Shaylor’s house.

I had no idea that they were on terms of friendship, and their apparently clandestine meeting was a complete surprise to me. Feng was bending to her, talking earnestly in an undertone, while she appeared to be listening attentively.

There flashed across my memory a moment in Mürren when I had seen the Doctor and Ruthen walking together in secret up a narrow snow-piled lane, though we all believed they were strangers. What could it possibly mean?

I allowed the pair to go ahead of me, following them at a distance and watching.

I thought I heard the girl cry “No! No!” in a distressed tone. But it might have been merely my fancy.

They walked together very slowly until they reached the corner of Bedford Avenue. Here they halted, and again I drew back into the shadow. From where I stood I could see them very plainly, for a lamp shone full upon them. No other person was in the vicinity. I could plainly see old Feng’s face and beard as he spoke evidently in deep earnest, while Thelma, wrapped in her smart squirrel coat and wearing the little fur toque which I had admired so much, stood listening.

Suddenly she appeared to utter some appeal. But the old man shook his head relentlessly. He had apparently told her something which had staggered her.

I watched, scarcely daring to draw breath, in a mist of uncertainty, jealousy and dread.

How long they stood there I could not say, but it seemed a long time. I was utterly amazed at the sight of Thelma keeping what was clearly a secret appointment with this old fellow who had often warned me against a dangerous friendship. Were both of them, I wondered, in some plot to delude and play with me. Was Thelma, after all, in league with her husband and his mysterious friends. Was old Feng for some sinister reason a member of the same queer coterie?

At last he took her hand and held it in his for a long time. Then he raised his hat and bade her farewell. She seemed glad to get rid of his presence, for she turned away and flew towards her mother’s house at the seaward end of the silent road, while he turned on his heel and strode in the direction of the station.

Rather than go direct to Mrs. Shaylor’s I followed the Doctor at a distance up the town until I saw him hurry into the station yard. Here he had unbuttoned his overcoat and glanced at his watch. Evidently a train was due.

So I turned back, and a little later I opened the garden gate, walked up the path and rang the bell. “Jock,” Mrs. Shaylor’s Airedale barked loudly, and in a few moments the neat maid opened the door.

In the artistic little hall Thelma, who had divested herself of coat and hat, came forward exclaiming gladly—

“Well, Mr. Yelverton! Whoever expected to see you tonight? Come in. Mother is out at a friend’s playing bridge, I think, and I am all alone.”

She helped me off with my coat, took my hat, and ushered me into the charming drawing-room overlooking the sea.

She switched on more lights and handed me her cigarette case, then threw herself into a big chair before the fire opposite me.

“Now, tell me what you’ve been doing,” she asked. “It is a real surprise to see you tonight.”

She was, of course, ignorant that I knew of her secret meeting with old Feng, and I felt annoyed and mistrustful.

“Well,” I said, “I have very little news and none of any importance. I came down hoping that you might have something more to tell me. My only news is that the other day I met another of our friends—Mr. Hartley Humphreys. You remember the old invalid at Mürren?”

“Oh yes, of course. He often spoke to me—a charming old boy. I recollect him perfectly. How is he?”

“Better. His lameness is cured, and he’s quite young again.”

“And you have no other news for me,” she remarked meaningly.

“You mean about Stanley. No—nothing,” I said regretfully.

She sighed, and I saw again that hardening at the corners of her mouth which seemed to come with every mention of her husband.

As for myself, my brain was in a whirl: my good resolutions, so easy to make when I was away from her, vanished like smoke. At the same time the suspicion I had felt when I saw her talking to Feng in the dark, lonely road, melted like mist before the sun. She was so frankly innocent and unspoiled; there was about her no trace of coquetry or desire to provoke admiration. The impression grew stronger and stronger as we sat chatting freely in that pretty drawing-room, with the roar of the sea and wind sounding faintly through the curtained windows that, whatever appearances might suggest, this child-bride of a few days was actually alone—more hopelessly alone in her wedded life than if she were in a convent. I saw myself looking into the depths of a soul unsullied, and for the first time, I truly believe, I began to understand dimly some of the feelings and desires that must be tearing at her heart.

“My husband can never return to me!” Over and over again her significant sentence beat itself upon my brain. I could not understand it—I had not the key to the riddle it contained. Yet, for some inexplicable reason it seemed to fill my mind with hope, even though I knew that, so long as Stanley Audley lived, my love for his wife could never be more than a tormenting dream. Try to disguise it how I would, the girl held me, for good or ill; she had fascinated me utterly and completely, not by the purposeful acts of the courtesan, but by her own innate sweetness and modesty. What I had seen that night puzzled me beyond measure, but in the hour I spent with her I became assured that nothing on earth could shake my conviction that in every essential she was true and good and sweet. Time, I felt, would solve the riddle sooner or later.

So I sat there, foolish and fascinated, unable to bring myself to put any serious question to her for fear of causing her sorrow or anxiety. I knew, I felt, that I was indeed walking upon thin ice, that my honor was wearing thin. Yet, I realized that Thelma was not as many other women are, and I dared not again allow the feelings that ran riot in my heart and sweep over me and submerge once more my self-control. So I steeled my heart as best I could.

She said no word of her meeting with the old doctor, who had no doubt come down from London to consult her, and had caught the last train back to Victoria.

Presently she asked—

“Can you get back tonight, Mr. Yelverton?”

“No,” I replied, “I sent my bag to the Sackville. But now tell me, have you heard anything else regarding Stanley?”

She gazed at me through the haze of her cigarette smoke, and, after a pause, replied—

“No, I’ve heard nothing.”

“But, now, do be frank with me, Thelma. What am I to think? This affair is growing serious, and I know you are worried more even than I am.”

“Mr. Yelverton, I’m absolutely bewildered. All I hear or find out only increases the mystery. But I tell you quite plainly that I begin to think—more and more—”

“What?” I asked, placing my hand upon her shoulder.

“I—I really can hardly believe it—but from what I have been told, I think Stanley is dead!”

“Who told you that?” I demanded, for it crossed my mind that Feng had done no less—that that was the reason for his visit. And yet as I watched her I saw no signs of distress. Was she merely repeating something she had been told to say. Did she, in fact, hold the key to the mystery?

“What proof have you?” I asked quickly, as she had not replied to my question.

“I have no proof, only what has been told me.”

“By whom?” I demanded.

“By a friend.”

“May I not know his name?”

She hesitated. Then she replied with narrowed brows—

“No. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. I am under a promise of secrecy.”

“You seem to have been under some such promise all along,” I remarked rather petulantly I fear. Yet, as Thelma stood there before me under the soft shaded glow of the electric lamps she touched even a softer nerve in me. Something that was all tenderness and half regret smote me as I gazed upon her lithe graceful figure like a garden lily standing alone in the glow of a summer sunset. More and more I realized my love for her and again, insistent and not to be denied, the thought arose within me that if her husband were indeed dead, I should be free to offer her my hand! And the thought of what might be merge into the wish that it should be? Was I, indeed, a murderer at heart?

I hope that I am neither inhuman nor heartless. Once, in my early youth I used to be quickly touched by any kind of feeling; but before I met the pale handsome girl who now stood before me, life had seemed to me cold and profitless. Thelma Audley was the one woman in all the world for me.

That is why I hesitated to press her more closely concerning her informant. She was dry-eyed; could she really believe that Stanley was dead?

I began to suspect that the clever old Doctor had, all along, for some reason I could not even guess at, misled me into a belief that he was antagonistic towards her, while he was, in fact, secretly her friend. She, who had fondly imagined that the riotous and exuberant happiness that had commenced in Mürren was permanent, had been sadly disillusioned by a man’s love that had only blossomed like the almond or the may.

She handed me her big silver box of cigarettes, for she, like many modern girls, was an inveterate smoker. I took one and she lit it for me with a gay expression in her eyes which seemed to belie the tragic news she had imparted to me.

That well-warmed room was indeed cozy and comfortable, for outside it was a wild night in the Channel. The heavy roar of the waves as they beat upon the beach reached us, while through the window—for the curtains had not been drawn—could be seen the regular flashes of the Royal Sovereign Lightship warning ships from the perilous rocks off Beach Head, and here and there in the blackness were tiny points of light showing that the fishing fleet were out from Rye and Hastings. The very atmosphere seemed to be changed with the wild spin-drift of the stormy sea.

I felt that though she was holding back certain facts concerning her husband—dead or alive. Perhaps she was doing so out of consideration to us both. Try as I would, I could get no further information from her. She would tell me no more concerning her suspicion of Stanley’s death, and later that night as I trudged along the storm-swept promenade to the hotel close by, I confess that I felt both baffled by Feng’s visit and annoyed at Thelma’s dogged persistence in refusing to tell me anything.

Next afternoon, while I was sitting in my office in Bedford Row, the telephone rang and a woman’s voice asked whether I was Mr. Yelverton. I took it to be a client and replied in the affirmative, whereupon the speaker said:

“I’m Marigold Day. Can I come along and see you, Mr. Yelverton?”

“Certainly,” I said. “I’ll be in till five. Is it anything important?”

“Yes. It is rather, I’ll come along in a taxi,” and she rang off hurriedly.

About a quarter of an hour later my clerk showed in the pretty mannequin from Carille’s, and when she was seated and we were alone, she said—

“I—I want to tell you something about Mr. Audley. They say the poor boy is dead!”

“Who says so?” I asked.

“Harold Ruthen. I met him in the Piccadilly Grill Room last night with a girl friend of mine, and he called me aside and told me.”

“What exactly did he tell you?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, he said that Audley had met with a motor accident somewhere in Touraine, and had been taken to the hospital at Saumur, where he had lingered for four days, and died there. He asked me to keep the matter a secret. Why—I don’t know. But if the poor boy is dead I really can’t see any object in keeping the matter a secret, do you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Well, I thought you, being his friend, would like to know,” said the girl, sadly. She made a pathetic figure, for she had been fond of Audley, and I knew that under her merry careless Bohemian ways she was capable of deep feeling.

I took her out to tea and questioned her further about Ruthen, and the story he had told her.

She had no knowledge of old Mr. Humphreys, or of Doctor Feng, but she was convinced by Ruthen’s manner that what he had told her was the truth. Besides, as the young fellow had been in such active search for his friend there seemed no motive why he should declare that he had died.

Was it from Harold Ruthen that Thelma had gained the news? Or had Ruthen told old Mr. Humphreys, who in turn, had told Feng, who had gone to Bexhill and given her the report?

But was it really true?

I expressed my doubts.

“Well, Mr. Yelverton. I’ve only told you exactly what Harold told me. He added the words: ‘After all, poor Stanley’s death will prevent a good deal leaking out. His lips are closed, and it means security to several persons.’ I wonder what he meant?”

“I wonder! He must have been in possession of some secret which closely affected certain persons,” I said. “And probably Ruthen is one of those who now feel secure.”

“Perhaps. Who knows?” the girl remarked reflectively as she crushed her cigarette-end into the ash tray and rose to leave. “At any rate, I thought you would like to know, as you seem so interested in Stanley.”

I thanked her, and left her at the corner of Chancery Lane in order to return to my office.

Saumur! I knew that it was an old-world town—the center of a wine-growing country—somewhere on the broad Loire.

I searched among my books, looked it up, and found that it was two hundred and seventy miles from Paris by the Orleans Railway, and that if I traveled by the through express, I could go direct by way of St. Pierre-des-Corps and Savonnières. I resolved to make a swift journey out there and enquire for myself.

Next morning I left London and in the afternoon of the following day I entered a small hotel, the Budan, at the end of the long stone bridge which spans the Loire at Saumur. I lost no time in making my inquiries in the old Huguenot town, famed for its sparkling wines. At the Prefecture of Police I saw the Prefect himself, a brisk little man with a stubble of white hair, most courteous and attentive.

An automobile accident, and fatal? He would have the records examined, if I would return next morning.

I dined, spent the evening in the Café de la Paix adjoining the Post Office, and next morning returned to the Prefect.

Again he received me most courteously in his barely furnished office, and when I was seated he rang his bell, whereupon an inspector in plain clothes entered with some papers in his hand.

“It is, I find, true, monsieur, that an Englishman named Audley, christian name Stanley, native of London, was motoring with two men named Armand Raves and Henry Chest on the road between Langeais and Cinq-Mars, when, in turning a sharp corner, they ran into a wall, and the Englishman was injured. He was brought to the St. Jean Hospital here, put to bed unconscious and died four days later. In his pocket was found a wallet containing a number of notes of the Banque d’Angleterre of five pounds and fifty pounds. They were sent by us to the Banque de France to hold for any claim by relatives, but curious enough, they were at once recognized as forgeries!”

“Forgeries!” I gasped, pretending ignorance.

“Yes, Monsieur,” said the Prefect of Police, while the Inspector spread out his papers on his Chief’s desk.

“This telegram, Monsieur, is from the Bank of England, in London, sent through Scotland Yard, and says, ‘Numbers of notes reported in telegram of 5th are part of South American forgeries. Kindly send them to us for record.’ They have been sent to London,” he added.

“But the men who were in the car with Mr. Audley. Where are they?”

“Ah! Monsieur! We do not know,” replied the shrewd old French official. “We only know the names and addresses they gave to the agent of police.”

“The addresses they gave proved false, Monsieur le Prefect,” remarked the inspector. “But we photographed them all—including the dead man,—and we have a hue-and-cry out for them.”

“You have a photograph of the dead man!” I cried.

“Yes, Monsieur. It is on file among our photographs.”

“Cannot I see it?” I asked.

“Tomorrow, when we shall have further prints. Ours have been sent on to Paris.”

“I would very much like to see it,” I said. “I am a lawyer from London, and my inquiry concerns a strange string of circumstances. This fact that forged bank-notes were found upon the man who died is truly amazing.”

“It may be amazing, but it is nevertheless a fact,” declared the old official.

“But did the injured man make any statement before he died?” I asked.

The inspector adjusted his pince-nez and searched the dossier.

“I think he did,” he said. “Ah! yes! Here we are,” and he took out a sheet of paper. “On the morning before he died he spoke to Soeur Yvonne, and uttered these words in English, ‘I am very sorry for all I have done. I would never have done the bad turns to Harry or to George unless it had been to gain money. But I could not resist it. They made me join in the scheme of printing false bank-notes, though I warned them of the peril. I know I must die, for the doctor told me so this morning. My only wish is that little Thelma may be made happy. That is my only wish. Let her discover the truth!’ Who ‘little Thelma’ may be, monsieur, we have, of course, no means of knowing.”

“And was that the only statement made by Stanley Audley immediately before he died,” I asked.

“Yes, monsieur. He died three hours later,” replied the inspector.

“He said nothing else—nothing more concerning Thelma?” I asked anxiously.

“Those words were the only ones he uttered, monsieur,” replied the inspector. “It is fortunate that Soeur Yvonne knows English, having been a nursing sister in London. Of course, there is no doubt that all three men were making a tour of France distributing spurious English notes, for, within a few days of the accident, many forged notes were brought to the notice of the police in Nantes, Orleans, Marseilles and Bordeaux. All of them had been changed into French notes, and no doubt in that car was a large sum of money.”

“Was nothing else of interest found in the dead man’s possession?”

“Nothing except a card-case, a silver cigarette case, a wallet containing 220 francs, the return half of a first-class ticket from Brussels to Marseilles and a tram-ticket taken in Barcelona.”

I left, promising to call again next day, and wandered out upon the broad bridge that spans the Loire and affords such a splendid view up the broad valley. What could the dying man have meant by that reference to Thelma?

I spent a very anxious day, trying to idle away the time in the little museum in the Hotel de Ville and inspecting the treasures of the ancient church of St. Pierre. In the afternoon I watched the training of a number of cavalry officers on the exercise ground, and after dinner went to a cinema.

Next morning I returned eagerly to the Prefect and the inspector appeared with several photographs. One showed the wrecked car at the scene of the accident and beside it stood two men.

“They are the men Raves and Chester,” remarked the inspector.

“Who is the one leaning against the car. The one with the cap in his hand?” I asked.

“That is the Englishman, Chester.”

And I had recognized him instantly as Harold Ruthen!

“And the dead man?”

He showed me a picture of a man taken with his head upon a pillow. But it was not that of Stanley Audley, but of a round-faced man with a small moustache—evidently the man who, when home in Half Moon Street had assumed the name of Audley, while the real Audley lived as Mr. Graydon.

Sight of those photographs staggered me. What message did the false Audley wish to convey to Thelma? Was it concerning the whereabouts or movements of her husband?

So Ruthen had been one of the rapidly moving party which had gone to France in order to pass the spurious notes, and with such disastrous results. It was true that Stanley Audley had been killed, but he was not the man of whom I was in such diligent search, not the man to whom Thelma had been married!

That afternoon I sent a telegram to Thelma at Bexhill, assuring her that her husband was not dead, and that same evening I left Saumur for London.

Next evening when I arrived at Russell Square, I saw upon my table one of those now familiar envelopes. It had been sent by express messenger from Crouch Hill, and not from Hammersmith. On tearing it open I read—

“You are still beating the wind! As you will not heed any warning and are still trying to meddle with affairs that do not concern you, do not be surprised if you receive a sudden shock. Your visit to Saumur was a perilous one for more reasons than one. The truth is too deeply hidden for you ever to discover it. Why court death as you are daily doing?”

So my enemies already knew of my rapid journey to the Loire, though I had not told a soul, except my partner Hensman! Evidently a close watch was being kept upon my movements.

Ruthen was back in town, glad I suppose to escape from a very embarrassing position, for it was clear that both men had immediately made themselves scarce, leaving their friend to his fate.

At the office next day I told Hensman of what I had discovered, and showed him the note that I had received on the previous night.

“Really, Rex, the puzzle seems to grow more and more complicated every day, doesn’t it? The change of names, from one man to the other seems so very curious. And yet, of course, Audley must have married in his own name.”

“But that remark about Little Thelma,” I said. “The fellow just before he died expressed a hope that she might be happy and that was his only wish. ‘Let her discover the truth,’ he said.”

“Which plainly shows that, whatever we may surmise, Thelma does not know the truth,” my partner remarked, leaning back in his writing chair.

With that I agreed. Yet our discovery threw no light on the friendship between the two men who had met at Mürren, the Doctor and old Humphreys; their friendship with the foppish young fellow who was a friend of Stanley’s and was now proved to be one of a gang of forgers, and on Thelma’s secret friendship with old Feng.

I rang up Bexhill half-an-hour later, and over the ’phone told Thelma that I had ascertained definitely that the man fatally injured in the motor accident in France was not her husband.

She drew a long sigh of relief.

“It is really awfully good of you, Mr. Yelverton, to take such a keen interest in me and go to all that trouble.”

“I know the truth as far as the report of Stanley’s accident goes—not the whole truth, Mrs. Audley,” I said. “I only wish I did. Won’t you give me the key to the situation.”

I heard her laugh lightly, a strange hollow laugh it was.

“Ah! I only wish—I only wish I dare,” she replied. Then she added, “Good-bye. What you have told me relieves my mind greatly and also places a new complexion upon things. Good-bye, Mr. Yelverton—and a thousand thanks. Mother is here and sends her best wishes.”

I acknowledged them, and we were then cut off.

CHAPTER XIV
IN THE NIGHT

Autumn was approaching. The long vacation had begun, and London lay sweltering beneath a heat-wave in the early days of August. Legal business was nearly at a stand-still, and Hensman with his wife had gone for three weeks to that charming spot amid the Welsh mountains, the Oakwood Park Hotel, near Conway in North Wales. Half the clubs were enveloped in holland swathings for their annual cleaning. Pall Mall and St. James’s Street were deserted, for the world of the West End seemed to be in flight, northward bound for the “Twelfth,” or crossing to the French coast.

At the office I was simply “carrying on” with such occasional matters as demanded immediate attention. But legal business was almost dead, half the staffs in London, our own included, were away. The time hung heavily on the heads of those left in town. I found life insupportably dull and had no energy, when the day’s scant duties were over, to do more than crawl back to my dull room in Russell Square and sit sweltering in the torrid heat.

In accordance with the usual arrangement, I had taken my holiday in the winter and was looking after the office while Hensman was away. He was one of the “sun-birds”; the delights of snow and frost had no attraction for him, while to me the hot weather was trying in the highest degree. Heat for him—cold for me!

Bedford Row in August is indeed a sorry place. The great wheels of the law machine almost cease their slow remorseless grinding; lawyers and clients seem able to forget their troubles and worries for a brief spell. I lounged my days away, heartily wishing myself elsewhere, but, with the help of the only lady secretary left, perfunctorily getting through such work as could not be shelved.

Late one afternoon, after an unusually busy day—for I had instructed counsel to appear for a client who was to be charged with a serious motoring offence at Brighton—I had risen from my chair and was about to take my hat and leave, when the telephone rang.

On answering I found a trunk call had come through from a village called Duddington, near Stamford, in Lincolnshire. The speaker was a young man who gave his name as Edward Pearson, the son of one of our oldest clients, a large landowner in the district.

Having told me his name he said:

“I wonder if you could come to Stamford tonight, Mr. Yelverton? My father is ill and has expressed his wish to add a codicil to the will you made for him three years ago.”

“Is it a matter of urgency?” I asked. “My partner is away, and it is a little difficult for me to leave London.”

“Yes. I fear it is urgent,” replied my client’s son. “My father had a stroke about three days ago on his return from London. The Doctor declares it to be a serious matter. Of course I won’t ask you to come over to Duddington tonight, but you could get to Stamford tonight, and sleep at the Cross Keys. I’ll call for you in the car at nine tomorrow morning. I’d be so grateful if you can do this. Will you?”

I hesitated.

“You can catch a convenient train from King’s Cross tonight. Change at Essendine. It takes about three hours,” he added.

“Is your father in grave danger?” I asked.

“He was, but he seems a trifle better now. He is asleep, and the Doctor says he is not to be awakened. So we’ll see how he is in the morning.”

“Did he express a wish to make the codicil?” I asked.

“Yes. He wants to leave the Gorselands to my brother Alfred, instead of to mother,” was the reply.

“Very well,” I said, rather reluctantly, for as a matter of fact I had been looking forward to dining with old Mr. Humphreys that evening. “I’ll meet you at the Cross Keys at Stamford in the morning. Good-bye, Mr. Pearson.”

Having put down the receiver I resolved to ring up Hartley Humphreys at the Carlton, and did so.

“I’m sorry you’re called away,” the old financier replied. “But in any case come along now, and have a cocktail. You won’t leave London till after dinner.”

I took a taxi along to the hotel and found him alone in his private sitting-room. Together we took dry martinis, and while I smoked one of his exquisite Turkish cigarettes I explained the reason for my sudden visit to Lincolnshire.

“Well,” he laughed. “It all means costs to you, I suppose. And after all I believe you have a dining car to Peterborough, so the journey is not a very difficult one.”

“No. But I wanted to keep my appointment with you tonight,” I said.

The cheery old fellow laughed, saying:—

“My dear Yelverton, don’t think of that where business is concerned. Come and dine another night—the night after tomorrow. Feng is coming. We’ll have dinner at the Ritz for a change, and go to a show afterwards. Any further news of your little bride?”

“None,” I replied.

“Heard nothing?” he asked, looking at me curiously, as though he held me in some suspicion I thought. Did he know of my visit to Saumur and my discovery concerning his factotum, Harold Ruthen?

“Nothing,” was my reply. His attitude was always curious whenever he made any reference to Thelma.

In reply to a further question as to when I should return, I told him that I must be back in London by four o’clock on the morrow as I had an important appointment regarding the transfer of some London property—a side of the business which Hensman usually looked after.

I smoked a second cigarette and rose. He gripped my hand warmly before I left and repeated his invitation.

“Feng is very fond of you,” he added, “and we’ll have a real pleasant evening together.”

Back again at Russell Square I looked at the time-table, dressed leisurely and packing a suitcase, took the evening train from King’s Cross and having had my dinner between London and Peterborough arrived at the ancient little town of Stamford in the late evening.

It was, I found, a place of quaint crooked streets and old churches, dim alleyways and a curious square with an ancient Butter Market close by the old-world hotel, the Cross Keys, once one of the famous posting-houses on the Great North Road.

Beyond three or four motorists and commercial travelers, I seemed to be about the only person in the hotel, a roomy comfortable place with many paneled rooms, and polished floors. About it was that air of cozy comfort and cheery welcome such as one finds to perfection in the too few old English posting-inns. The coffee-room was bounded by huge mahogany buffets laden with silver, and the drawing-room was devoid of that gimcrack furniture which one finds in most modern hotels.

My room, too, was big and spacious, with a window looking out upon the great courtyard into which the stage-coaches on their way from London to Edinburgh used to lumber before the days of motors. Yet even there I saw a row of stables and was informed by the “boots” that in winter a good many London gentlemen stabled their hunters there.

In the twilight, having nothing better to do, I strolled out of the town along a path which led through meadows beside the Welland river where many people seemed to be enjoying the fresh air after the unusual heat of the day, while many anglers sat patiently upon the banks.

It was dark when I returned to the hotel, and passing into the smoking-room I found several men there, unmistakably commercial travelers. I chatted with one of them, a tall, rugged-faced, sharp-nose man in tweeds who spoke with a full Yorkshire burr, and whose business was undoubtedly “woolens.”

“I come here four times a year,” he told me. “This hotel is one of the best in the Midlands. The Bell at Barnby Moor is excellent, but a bit out of the way for us. We have to stay in Doncaster. Half our game is to know where to go, and how to live. A commercial’s life is a pretty tough one now-a-days, with high prices in traveling and cut prices in the trade.”

He seemed a particularly affable person, though his manner possessed that business-like briskness which characterizes all men “on the road.” I set him down as a man who could sell a tradesman nearly anything, whether he desired it or not—one of those particularly “smart” men found as travelers in every trade, shrewd, clever and far-seeing, yet suave ambassadors of commerce who are invaluable to wholesalers and manufacturers.

“I’ve had bad luck here today,” he said. “I was kept over-night in Peterborough and got here at eleven o’clock. Started out and forgot that it is their early-closing day. So I’m compelled to be here tomorrow instead of getting on to Bourne. One can work this town well in a whole day—not less.”

I noticed that his face was scarred and furrowed. He had no doubt led a hard life, and from his erect bearing I thought that he might possibly have risen to the rank of sergeant-major during the war. His keen black eyes seemed to search everywhere, while his nose was almost hawk-like. His cravat too, attracted me. It was of soft black silk, neatly tied, but in it was an onyx scarf-pin, oval and dark with a thin white line around the edge. It reminded me most forcibly of a miniature human eye.

As we sat together he gossiped about the bad state of trade, the craze for cheap dress materials and the consequent low prices.

“Things are horribly bad in Bradford,” he declared. “Most of the mills are only working half-time. In the cotton trade it is just the same. Oldham has been very hard hit, now that the boom has passed. Why, when that boom in cotton-mills was at its height, men became semi-millionaires in a single week. I know a man who was a clerk living in a seven-room house and keeping no servants who made a clear profit of a quarter of a million within six weeks, and he made a further hundred thousand in the same year. He’s just bought a pretty estate in Devonshire. And now the slump has come and other people are bearing the burden which the lucky ones unloaded on them.”

He took a cigarette case from his pocket and offered me one. I took it and for a further quarter of an hour we smoked.

“Yes,” he said. “This is a pretty comfortable place. I’ve known it for twenty years—and it’s always been the same. Old Brimelow, who used to be the landlord, was a queer old fellow. He’s dead now. He used to make us some wonderful rum-punch in the commercial room at Christmas-time. His father kept the place before him, and he could remember the stage-coaches, the York coach, the Lincoln coach, the Birmingham coach and the Edinburgh coach, and tell tales of all of them.”

“Of highwaymen?” I asked laughing.

“No. Not exactly that,” he said merrily. “But sometimes he told us tales of hold-ups that he had heard from his father. Why, King George the Third once got snowed up at the Colly Weston cross-roads and slept there. Oh! this is a very historic old place.”

After lighting another of his cigarettes I left my entertaining companion and ascended the broad oak staircase to my room, which was on the first floor.

It was a fine old apartment, three sides of which were paneled in dark oak. The floor, on which a few rugs were strewn, was of polished oak and creaked as I entered, while through the open window the moon cast a long white beam.

After a glance out upon the silent courtyard I half closed the window, drew down the blind and lit the gas. Then, having turned the key in the door, I undressed and retired.

At first I could not sleep because I heard the scuttling of a mouse or rat behind the paneling. I lay thinking of Thelma. A momentary wish, wicked as a venomous snake, and swift as fire darted through my thoughts. I wished that Stanley Audley were dead. With such thoughts uppermost in my mind I suddenly experienced a heavy drowsiness and I must have at last dozed off.

I was awakened by feeling something cold upon my mouth. I struggled, only to find that I was breathless and helpless. I tried to cry out, but could not. My breath came and went in short quick gasps. Was it possible that I had left the gas turned on and was being asphyxiated!

I struggled and fought for life, but the cold Thing, whatever it was, pressed upon my mouth.

In the darkness I strove to shout for help, but no sound escaped my lips, while my limbs were so paralyzed that I could not raise my hands to my face.

I recollect struggling frantically to free myself from the horrible and mysterious influence that was upon me. I tried frantically to extricate myself from that deadly embrace, but was helpless as a babe. I thought I heard the sound of heavy breathing, but was not quite sure. Was I alone—or was someone in the room?

My lips seemed to burn, my brain was on fire, a wild madness seized me and then the cold Thing left my lips.

I must have fainted, for all consciousness was suddenly blotted out.

When I came to myself I heard strange faint whisperings around me. Before my eyes was a blood-red haze and I felt in my mouth and throat a burning thirst.

I breathed heavily once or twice, I remember, and then I lapsed again into unconsciousness. How long I remained, I know not. I must have been inert and helpless through many hours. Then I became half conscious of some liquid being wafted into my face, as though by a scent-spray, and once I seemed to hear Thelma’s soft, sweet voice. But it was faint and indistinct, sounding very far away.

I fell back into a dreamy stupor. Yet before my eyes was always that scarf-pin like a tiny human eye which had been worn by my commercial friend. It had attracted me as we had gossiped, and as is so often the case its impression had remained upon my subconscious mind.

I lay wondering. Things assumed fantastic shapes. I could still hear that scuttling of rats behind the old paneling, and I recollected the narrow streak of moonlight which fell across the room from between the blind and the window-frame. I recollected too, the sharp brisk voice of my commercial friend, and moreover I once more saw, shining before me, that tiny gem like a human eye.

After a lapse of quiet I tried again to rouse myself. The room was still dark, and I listened again for the scuttling of the rats behind the paneling, but the only sounds I heard seemed to be faint whisperings. Then suddenly I seemed to hear drowsy sounds of bells, like the sweet beautiful carillon that I had heard from the tower at Antwerp.

I lay there bewildered and alarmed. I thought of Thelma—thoughts of her obsessed me. I did not know whether to believe in her or not. Was I a fool? In those dreamy moments I remembered my last visit to Bexhill when I had questioned her. She had trembled, I remember, and her lustrous eyes had scanned me with what now seemed to my tortured brain a remorseless and merciless scrutiny.

I recollected too, her words:—

“I am sorry, but I can’t tell you. I am under the promise of secrecy.”

The whole enigma was beyond me: in my half conscious state, the pall of a great darkness upon me, I felt my sense strung to breaking point.

CHAPTER XV
MORE DISCLOSURES

Ten minutes later I grew conscious of unfamiliar surroundings.

I was no longer in that dark old room at the Cross Keys, but in a bright airy little room enameled in white. I was lying upon a narrow iron bedstead and my nostrils were full of the pungent odor of some disinfectant—I think it was iodoform.

As I looked up I saw four faces peering anxiously down into mine. The first was that of a grey-bearded man in gold-rimmed spectacles, the second was that of an elderly nurse in uniform, the third I recognized as old Feng—and the fourth—I could scarce believe my eyes—was Thelma herself!

“Thelma!” I cried eagerly, raising my hand towards her.

“No! Keep quiet!” ordered the spectacled man who seemed to be a doctor. “Listen! Can you understand me. Do you hear what I say?” he asked in a harsh voice.

“Yes, I—I do,” I faltered.

“Then keep quiet. Sleep, and don’t worry about anything—if you want to get well. You’re very ill—and you’ve been very foolish. But if you obey me you will soon be all right again.”

“But—but Thelma—Mrs. Audley,” I asked eagerly.

“She’s here—by your side. Don’t worry, Mr. Yelverton, go to sleep and you’ll be quite right again soon—quite right!”

I looked at his great gold-rimmed spectacles. They seemed to be magnified in my abnormal sight.

“But,” I asked boldly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Denbury—Doctor Denbury,” was the old fellow’s reply.

“But why are you here with me in Cross Keys?”

“You’re not in the Cross Keys now. You are in the Burghley Hospital. The police brought you here, and sent for me.”

“The police!” I gasped, staring at those large round spectacles, whilst next moment I shifted my gaze upon Feng. “Look here Doctor Feng,” I said addressing him. “What does all this mean?”

“Well, Yelverton, it is all a puzzle to us. Why did you come here to Stamford and attempt to commit suicide?”

“What?” I cried in fierce indignation despite my weakness. “What are you saying? Suicide—why, such a thing never entered my mind!”

Feng’s face wore a strange, cynical smile. Suddenly I felt he was not my friend; for the moment I hated him.

“Well, the facts are all too apparent,” he said dubiously. “Whatever could have possessed you? You’ve had a very near squeak of it, I can tell you.”

“Yes, Mr. Yelverton,” said Thelma, bending over me till I saw her dear face peering eagerly into mine. “Yes. They thought you were dead. Why did you do it? Why? Tell us.”

“Do it?” I gasped astounded. “I did nothing. I—I only slept at the Cross Keys before going out to Duddington to see a client.”

“But why did you come to Stamford,” asked the girl, bending over me till I could feel her breath upon my cheek.

“No! I forbid any further questions,” exclaimed the bearded old doctor in the gold spectacles. “Enough! He must rest, Mrs. Audley.”

Then I thought I caught sight of another man—a policeman in uniform!

A few moments passed when suddenly the doctor pressed a glass to my lips.

“Come. Take this,” he persuaded. “It will put you to sleep again, and you’ll awake a new man.”

That strange cold pressure on my lips recalled the Thing which had gripped me in the darkness, and I shut my mouth resolutely. But he spoke so kindly, declaring that it would do me good, that inert and almost helpless as I was, I obeyed him. The draught tasted of cloves, but was terribly bitter.

“Water!” I gasped, and immediately he held some to my fevered lips. I took a great gulp with avidity. Then I felt drowsy, and again lapsed into unconsciousness.

When once more I opened my eyes my senses seemed quite normal. I could see clearly, and I could think and reason.

I found Thelma and old Feng again bending over me, gazing very earnestly into my face.

“Where am I,” I asked eagerly. “What has happened?”

“Surely you know what has happened,” replied Thelma, “why did you attempt such a thing?”

“Attempt what?” I demanded.

“To take your life as we have already told you. You took poison, and you’ve only been saved in the very nick of time!”

“It’s a lie,” I declared angrily. “I never took anything. What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Feng. “You were found in the morning with your door locked, and as you didn’t appear at noon they broke it open and you were discovered insensible with the empty bottle beside you and a note.”

“A note!” I cried utterly bewildered.

“Yes. You shall see it later on. It is addressed to the Coroner, apologizing for your act!”

I held my breath.

“But, really,” I declared astounded, “you’re joking! I never wrote a note, and I certainly did not attempt to commit suicide!”

“Well, there are the facts,” said Thelma. “The police brought you here and they found your name on your cards, and in the letter you left. The affair got into the papers, and I saw it. So I telegraphed to Doctor Feng, and we both came here at once.”

“He must not be excited,” said the medical man in glasses.

“Keep quiet, Yelverton,” urged Feng. “You shall know all that has happened in due course. You owe your life to Doctor Denbury’s efforts. He gave you an antidote just in time!”

“But I did not write a letter, and I did not take any poison,” I protested impatiently.

“Keep quiet,” old Feng urged. “It will all be explained in due course.”

“It is so utterly mysterious!” I cried, half raising myself.

“Yes, I agree,” said Feng. “The doctor has found that you are also suffering from the after-effects of some drug.”

“Does your head pain you very much now?” inquired the doctor.

“Not so much,” was my reply. “But my throat is very bad.”

“I expect so,” he said, and he crossed the room, returning with a draught which, on being swallowed, proved soothing. “Yes,” he went on, “you’ve had a very narrow escape. I caught you just in time. I presume that you must have swallowed the stuff about three o’clock on the morning before last. When I first saw you I gave you up as hopeless. But by sheer luck I was able to diagnose what you were suffering from. Funnily enough it was the drug you took first that saved you. But,” he added coaxingly, “go to sleep again, and when you wake up tell us all about it. Your mind will then be quite clear.”

“Yes,” said Thelma, whose beautiful face peered anxiously into my own. “Go to sleep now, Mr. Yelverton. You must not exert yourself too much.” And her soft cool hand smoothed my brow.

I remained silent and a few minutes later I had again fallen asleep.

It was night when I found myself listening to an astounding story. What Thelma told me was to the effect that, on the door of my room being forced, it was found that I had swallowed something from a bottle which was lying on the floor, while on the dressing-table lay a note addressed to the Coroner and signed, “Rex Yelverton.”

Feng showed me the note. It was upon half a sheet of the hotel note-paper, but written in an unfamiliar and rather uneducated hand.

“I never wrote that!” I protested, feeling now quite better, after I had swallowed a glass of milk. “And I certainly did not take any poison.”

“I knew it was not in your handwriting!” Feng said, quietly. “As soon as Mrs. Audley telegraphed to me I at once met her and we came on here together. But, tell me, how did it come about that you swallowed that stuff? It hasn’t been analyzed yet, so Doctor Denbury is not quite certain what it is. He, however, has made a guess, because of its smell. But apparently you were drugged also. Tell me exactly what you recollect about it. I want to know everything, Yelverton.”

I tried to compose myself and reflect.

Presently, while he and Thelma sat side by side, I told them pretty much as I have written here, exactly what had happened since my arrival at the Cross Keys.

Feng listened very attentively without uttering a word. Now and then he grunted, but whether owing to uncertainty or satisfaction I could gain no idea. His attitude puzzled me sorely. I could not reconcile his secret friendship with Thelma, with his pretended hostility. Even now, in spite of the care he was taking of me, I wondered whether he was my friend, and in summing up all the past circumstances I came to the conclusion that he was not to be trusted.

The effort of thinking out all this proved too much for me, weakened as I was by the poison—whatever it was—and, again feeling drowsy, I once more closed my eyes, and slept.

I was conscious of a prick in my arm, and I know now that Doctor Denbury gave me an injection.

Not until noon on the following day was I able to get up and dress, and then, accompanied by Feng and Thelma, I managed to walk round to the Cross Keys which was only a short distance from the hospital.

The brisk, bald-headed manager invited me into his private room and with many inquiries about my health and expression of amazement, asked me to relate what had actually happened. But what could I tell him? I did not myself know.

Up till that morning I had—I now discovered—been practically under arrest as having attempted suicide, but now that it was clear that I had been a victim of a plot, the red-faced constable whom I had noticed idling about the room, had been withdrawn. The papers had got hold of the story, and had made a “mystery” out of it, to Hensman’s intense disgust. On seeing the newspaper reports he had hurried from North Wales to see me.

“You’ve been an infernal fool, Rex!” he said. “I’ve telephoned to old Pearson at Duddington. He is quite well. His son never rang you up, and he doesn’t want to add a codicil to his will. You’ve been had—my dear fellow! You ought to have heeded those warnings concerning that little married lady!”

That was all the sympathy I got from him!

I told the bald-headed hotel-manager of my chat with the rugged-faced commercial traveler from Bradford, who was a constant guest at the hotel and who had worn that curious onyx tie-pin like a little human eye—that pin that I had seen in my strange nightmare.

“Describe him again,” he said looking into my face rather puzzled.

I did so, whereupon he replied:—

“I recollect seeing him at dinner. He was in Number Thirty-Four, the room immediately above yours. But he was a complete stranger. I’ve never seen him here before. I don’t think he was a commercial. At least he had no samples. The only commercial travelers we had were Mr. Sharp from London, Mr. Watson from Manchester and Mr. Evans from Thomas’s, the flannel manufacturers of Welshpool. I had a long chat with Mr. Evans in the commercial room before we went to bed. He remarked that there were only three travelers that night—for it was unusual. We generally have eight or nine here, all of them known to us—except at the week-end.”

“Then the man who told me about old Mr. Brimelow was evidently not a commercial!” I remarked.

“Old Mr. Brimelow. Who is he?”

“The man from Bradford told me that he was once proprietor here a few years ago.”

“Never,” laughed the manager. “This house has belonged to the Yates family for the past seventy years. The man evidently told you some fine fairy stories.”

“Evidently he did,” interposed old Feng. “You say that the man had a room over Mr. Yelverton’s. That is interesting. May we see it?”

“Certainly,” was the reply, and all of us ascended to a small, stuffy little single room on the second floor—the window of which was exactly over that of the room I had occupied.

I told them of that cold thing that I had felt pressed to my lips, but I could see that they were all incredulous—the hotel-manager most of all. Everybody who runs a hotel has a horror of any untoward happenings there, for, of course, they are apt seriously to prejudice business. In this case I was supposed to have attempted suicide, leaving a letter of apology to the Coroner. And I felt sure that the hotel-manager believed that I had attempted my life, even though he seemed to humor me and pretend to credit my story.

We had no police-officer with us. Feng had seen to it that we had gone to the hotel unaccompanied.

The Doctor showed an inquisitive eagerness quite unusual with him. He leaned out of the window in order to ascertain whether he could see inside the room below. Then from his pocket he took a piece of string and lowered it to the upper sash of the window of my room and made a knot in it. Afterwards he examined the window-sill very minutely.

“Has this window been cleaned since?” he asked the manager. “But there,” he added. “I see it hasn’t by its condition. Not for a fortnight—I should think—eh?”

“They were all cleaned about three weeks ago,” replied the bald-headed man.

“Now we will go down to the room in which Mr. Yelverton was found,” he said.

A few moments later we stood in the room wherein I had been attacked. The manager pointed out the table upon which the letter incriminating me had been found, and I gazed wonderingly around.

“The bottle was found on the floor beside the bed,” he said. “When I first saw you I believed you were dead. Your mouth was discolored and your face was as white as paper. Ada, the head chambermaid, went into hysterics.”

“Yes. That’s all very well,” I answered. “But what could have really happened? I only remember that funny sensation of breathlessness and the cold thing pressed to my lips—a bottle I suppose it must have been.”

“Well, to me, it is plain that your entertaining friend from Bradford was not exactly what he represented himself to be,” said Feng, busying himself, and examining the room with the closest attention to every detail. Suddenly he seemed to bristle with excitement, and turning to the manager he asked:—

“Did the man—what is his name—arrive here before Mr. Yelverton?”

“No,” was his reply. “He arrived just after. He gave his name as Harwood and particularly asked for the room he occupied. He seemed to know his way about the hotel quite well. He had no luggage, except a small handbag, therefore he paid for his room on arrival.”

“And when did he leave?”

“I cannot find out. The night-porter says that he did not see him. He must have left very early, but there is no train leaving here in the morning before the 7.49.”

“So he got away by car, no doubt—a car that was waiting for him somewhere,” Feng remarked quickly with his gray brows knit. “Is his bag still here?”

“No. He took it.”

“And none of the servants have ever seen him before?”

“No. I asked the three commercial gentlemen who were here that night, and they all declared him to be a stranger. Commercial travelers always know each other on the road.”

“Well,” I remarked. “It seems to me that my entertaining friend must have known which room I occupied, got down from his window to mine and entered this room while I was asleep.”

“I think so, Yelverton,” said the old Doctor. “It seems to me that entering by the window that you left open, he first ascertained that the cigarettes he gave you—which obviously were drugged—had sent you to sleep. Then he pressed the little bottle to your lips, forcing you to drink part of its contents—you recollect the cold thing you felt upon your lips—and then, not knowing how much you had swallowed, because in the darkness he could not distinguish, he threw down the bottle and leaving everything to make it appear that you had committed suicide, he clambered back to his own room and afterwards escaped.”

“Do you think so?” asked Thelma.

“I do,” old Feng replied briskly. “Let us go upstairs again and see what we can find.”

We did so. And on examining the outside woodwork of the window which the affable man from Bradford had occupied, we found a large freshly bored hole into which, no doubt, a stout hook had been screwed. To this he must have attached a rope, which enabled him easily to reach my window-sill.

Truly the plot of my enemies had been a well thought out and ingenious one. The threat that if I continued my search for Stanley Audley I should pay for my disobedience with my life, had not been made without the full intention to carry it out!

CHAPTER XVI
GROWING SUSPICIONS

I had been fortunate enough in my life to escape many of the shadows that lie in wait for most men. No serious betrayal of friendship had come to make me bitter or cynical: I did not—as even my profession might have taught me to do—look upon men with suspicion and distrust. I preferred to give them my confidence.

But in spite of this I found myself growing more and more distrustful of old Feng, more suspicious of his motives, more convinced that, for some reason I could not fathom, he was playing a double game.

I knew that he was on a footing with Thelma quite different from what he allowed me to believe. So much their secret interview at Bexhill had shown me. And his attitude towards the attempt made upon my life went to increase my distrust.

Had it not been that the handwriting of the note left beside my bed differed so completely from my own—why no attempt to imitate my hand had been made completely puzzled me—I should undoubtedly have been charged with attempted suicide. The local police if not very brilliant, were keen enough on the affair. I wanted to give them a detailed account of everything that had led up to the attack on me—to tell them the whole amazing story. To have done this would have shown them that there was far more behind the affair than they could possibly imagine. They, of course, looked upon the matter as being within a very narrow circle. I knew, as Feng knew, that much more complicated issues were involved.

Feng, however, strenuously opposed my proposal to tell the police anything more than the barest facts, which, indeed, could not be concealed. I wondered why, and asked him.

“It will serve no good purpose,” he argued. “These local policemen have already confessed their ignorance of the man from Bradford. He was not seen to leave by train, and as, from your description of him his appearance was rather striking, I think, we may assume he did not go that way. Probably he had a car in readiness and escaped unnoticed. If you tell the police more than they know already you must inevitably drag Mrs. Audley and her husband’s affairs into a very unpleasant publicity. No, let us keep our own counsel.”

I remained in hospital two days longer. Thelma and Feng visited me each day and I could not help noticing the queer bond of understanding that seemed to have grown up between them. Not a word was said by either of them to indicate that they were more than mere friends but—perhaps my growing suspicions were responsible—I seemed to see or to imagine evidence that their association implied very much more than I was intended to believe. Feng had always opposed my association with Thelma—had seemed, indeed, decidedly hostile to her. His hostility, at least, had apparently evaporated. Yet I found he was as strongly as ever opposed to the continuance of my intimacy with her.

Did he fear for me? Did he fear for her? Did he fear for both of us?

I could not tell. But there was no mistaking the advice he gave.

“Look here, Yelverton,” he said to me a few hours before I was to leave the hospital, “you have had a very narrow escape. You owe your life to the merest chance and you may not be so lucky in the future.”

“In the future!” I echoed. “Surely you don’t think there will be another attempt to get me out of the way?”

“Indeed, I do,” he replied very gravely. “I don’t pretend to understand the reason, but I should think it must be perfectly clear that your friendship with Mrs. Audley is involving someone in a danger so grave that they will not stick at trifles to avert it.”

“But how on earth can my friendship with Thelma affect anyone else to such a degree as that?” I demanded, with some heat. “Stanley Audley might perhaps object, but even he could hardly imagine that it was a cause for murder. And even if he did the rather elaborate plot evolved by someone would hardly have been the line he would have chosen.”

Feng shook his head. “You can rule Stanley Audley, as the husband, out of your reckoning. But what about Stanley Audley, the bank-note forger. Suppose he and his associates know that your constant efforts to find him might mean bringing the whole gang to justice? Desperate men would not hesitate at murder when the stakes involved are so great. My own belief is they fear that by your continued friendship with Mrs. Audley you will pick up a hint that will set you—and the police—on the right track. Probably they think that is your real motive. Take my advice—I mean it very seriously—and cut yourself adrift from the whole thing. Go back to London, take up your work afresh—and forget Thelma ever existed.”

“I can’t and I won’t,” I declared passionately. “I’m going to try to get the man who attacked me, and I’m going to try to find Stanley Audley. Thelma thinks he is dead. I’m going to leave no stone unturned to find out the truth. If he is really alive and returns to her—well, I should have to keep away. In the meantime I want to discover the man who tried to murder me.”

“He will be discovered some day, you can be quite certain,” was Feng’s reply.

His tone surprised me completely: there was in it a curious ring of certainty entirely unexpected. It was as if he knew with certainty and positive conviction.

I glanced at him sharply. “You seem very certain of it,” I said.

“Well, I am pretty certain,” was his reply, with a curious expression on his usually inscrutable face. And once again came to my mind the uncanny conviction that the old fellow really knew a great deal more than he would tell me. My suspicions of him redoubled.

“Drop it, my boy,” he said kindly enough. “If you had taken my advice at first this would never have happened.”

Then for the twentieth time he went over with me every detail of the description of the mysterious stranger from Bradford. What motive lay behind the ceaseless questioning I could not imagine. Feng was not a policeman, he strongly opposed telling the police any more than we could help, yet he discussed the man from Bradford as though he expected to meet him in the street next day and arrest him on the instant.

But for what I had seen myself, but for the unmistakable “human eye” scarf-pin that I had unmistakably seen when in the throes of what was so nearly my death agony, I should have hesitated to believe that the mysterious man from Bradford could have been concerned in the attack on me. Anyone less like a criminal it would be difficult to conceive. His keen, cheery countenance, indelibly stamped on my recollection; his frank, engaging manner; his open, goodfellowship and gay-hearted discussion of any and every subject of interest that cropped up, all tended to give the lie to the suggestion that he would be a murderer in intent if not in fact. But that scarf-pin! It could not be mistaken. There could not by any stretch of coincidence be two such pins in that Stamford hotel on the same night. And upon that pin I had undoubtedly looked during that awful night when I so nearly lost my life.

Another thought had flashed upon my mind. Young Mr. Pearson had driven from Duddington to see me. I had never spoken to him before and instantly I knew that his was not the voice I had heard upon the telephone. Then I knew whose voice had come to me over the wire. It was that of the man from Bradford. I wondered I had not thought of it before. But I was sure my recollection was right.

On that last afternoon, when the hospital doctor pronounced me fit to travel back to London, I took a walk with Thelma through the town, and out along the pretty road which leads to Great Casterton. We soon left the road by a footpath which took us up the hillside and into some delightful woods, part of the ancient far-reaching Rockingham Forest. There we rested together on the trunk of a big fallen elm.

Around us the sun’s rays slanting through the foliage, fell upon the gray lichen of the huge forest trees and the light green of the bracken, while the damp sweet smell of the woods greeted our nostrils—that delightful perfume which seems peculiar to rural England in summer.

“Mr. Yelverton,” exclaimed my pretty companion, gazing suddenly into my eyes. “I—I want to ask you to forgive me. This wretched affair has happened all through me. I alone am to blame for it.”

“Blame!” I echoed, as I took her hand—“what do you mean? You are certainly not to blame. It seems I have a secret enemy who tried to kill me—I don’t know why; I have done no one any harm that I know of. But to say you are to blame is absurd.”

“Doctor Feng says you should have taken heed of the warning that was sent you concerning myself,” she replied. “He thinks, too, that another attempt will probably be made upon you—so do be careful.”

“But why? Tell me why,” I demanded.

She spread out her hands in a little gesture of helplessness and drew her cream-colored sports coat more closely around her. She looked very sweet and dainty in a close fitting little pull-on hat of cherry color in fine pliable straw, a summer frock of pale gray silk striped with cherry to match her hat, and gray suede shoes and stockings.

It never struck me at the time that if she really believed Stanley to be dead she would have worn mourning.

“Doctor Feng is very concerned about you,” she declared. “Has he told you anything?”

“No,” was my reply.

“Well, he seems very upset about something. I can’t make it out.”

“Neither can I!” I replied. “The whole affair of Stanley’s flight and the subsequent happenings are beyond my comprehension, Thelma.”

“His flight!” she exclaimed in a startled voice. “You surely don’t think that he has left me intentionally?”

“Then why doesn’t he write to you or return?” I asked pointedly.

“Perhaps,” she suggested gently, “there are circumstances that prevent him doing either.” I had thought she would have been offended.

“No,” I said, “he is your husband. His duty is clearly to tell you where he is and why he has not returned. I am sure he would if he really loved you,” I added recklessly.

She was plainly startled now. Whatever she knew—and I was sure she knew more than she would tell me—the idea that her husband did not really care for her was clearly new and overwhelming. She gazed at me white-faced and wide-eyed.

“If he really cares for me!” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

I could not bear this. “Of course he cares for you,” I said with a laugh meant to reassure her, “but he ought to write to you anyhow. Perhaps he has done so.”

I gazed at her as she sat at my side on that glorious afternoon. Above us a pair of wood doves were softly cooing, while a thrush annoyed at our presence, uttered his clattering alarm-note to his mate. Village chimes sounded somewhere across the Welland valley, together with the shrill whistle of a railway engine.

“Thelma,” I whispered at last. “Do tell me the real and actual truth.” I looked into her grey eyes. They were as unclouded, her cheeks as cool, her candor and serenity as undisturbed as when, on that winter’s day amid the high-up snows she had shyly thanked me for offering to look after her during her husband’s absence. I, on the other hand, felt like a fool. My heart, though I had done my best to steel it to endurance, was torn by a thousand conflicting feelings. Wild ideas rushed through my brain. Was it possible that in her secret heart she was not altogether sorry to be rid of Stanley Audley? Had she married him hastily in an outburst of girlish passion, only to find out her mistake when desertion and solitude brought her opportunity for reflection? Was this the real explanation of her mysterious declaration that her husband would never return to her? And if so was there still a chance for me?

“Thelma,” I said softly, taking her hand in mine. “I want to speak to you, but—but I hardly know how to say it. Since you left Mürren you have never been frank with me—never confided in me—never told me the truth.” Then, after a pause I went on. “Remember I took upon myself a sacred trust, to see after you. I have carried out my promise to Stanley as any honest man should carry it out, but it seems that by doing so, I have brought a deadly hatred upon myself. Why? I ask you, Thelma—why?”

She drew a long breath, her hand trembled in mine and her eyes grew troubled.

“Mr. Yelverton,” she said at last in a trembling voice. “The question you ask me is very, very difficult for me to answer. There are, I confess to you at once, some things which I am bound for my husband’s sake to conceal, and therefore I know you will not ask me to divulge them. I can’t tell you more. You nearly lost your life because of me. I was to blame and I am very sorry.”

“But why?” I demanded. “Why ‘because of you?’ How do you come into it? Neither of us has done any harm.”

“I—I don’t know. Dr. Feng says you have secret enemies and that it is because of me. That is all I know.”

“But where is Stanley?”

“I don’t know; if I did he would be here. But I believe he is dead.”

“But have you any fresh evidence?” I asked, eagerly. “You know the man who was killed in France was not Stanley.”

“I know only what I have been told.”

“But who told you?” I persisted.

“A friend. For certain reasons the strictest secrecy has been imposed upon me. Please do not question me further. You have been my dearest and kindest friend and it is very hard to have to prevaricate with you.”

“Thelma,” I said. “I have all along striven to be your friend, though circumstances have been so much against me. I made a promise to Stanley, and I have endeavored to keep it.”

“And at what a cost!” she exclaimed. “Yes! I thank you awfully, for you have been the best and dearest friend any girl has ever possessed. Yet you have narrowly escaped losing your own life because of your chivalry!” and her face flushed slightly.

For the second time my discretion went to the winds.

“Thelma!” I cried, “don’t talk of chivalry. Can’t you see the real reason? Can’t you realize that I love you? Can’t you love me a little in return.”

Her cheeks grew hot. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “It wouldn’t be right. I am married already.”

The girl’s transparent innocence was amazing. Not a shadow of a thought of wrong crossed her mind. She gazed at me as candidly and sweetly as if she had been my sister.

“But Thelma,” I pleaded, “suppose Stanley is really dead; could you care for me a little?”

For a few seconds she sat silent, then she answered in a low voice broken by emotion. “Before I can answer that we must learn the truth.”

My heart gave a great leap. There was hope for me.

“I will find out,” I declared, “whatever the cost.”

“But, Mr. Yelverton, please be careful,” she said. “Dr. Feng is terribly apprehensive. He evidently thinks you are in great danger and doesn’t want me to see you.”

“But why should he be?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I cannot make him out at all. Sometimes I think he knows more than he will ever admit about Stanley.”

But I cared nothing for Feng. My heart was singing. Thelma’s words acted as a spur to my decision to continue my investigations. I determined once more and for all to play for the biggest stake. If I lost I must accept my fate philosophically. If I won—!

CHAPTER XVII
PLOT AND COUNTER-PLOT

Next day, Feng having left for Edinburgh to visit some friends, Thelma and I traveled to London together. At King’s Cross I saw her into a taxi, for she was going to Highgate to spend a few days with a girl cousin, and myself went across to Russell Square.

Mrs. Chapman was greatly excited at my return, and was eager to know exactly what had happened, for already Hensman had been round and told her of my accident.

“Yesterday, about four o’clock, a gentleman called, sir,” my old servant went on. “He was very anxious to see you, and seemed worried that you were away. I told him I expected you back today. Then, after hesitating a little, he asked leave to come in and write a note for you. He’s left it on your table, sir.”

“Who was he?”

“I’ve never seen him before, sir. He was a tall man with a long hooked nose, and a thin face deeply lined.”

It sounded very like a description of my affable friend from Bradford!

“Did you notice his tie-pin?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. It was a funny one—like a little eye.”

I dashed into my room where upon my blotting-pad lay a letter. This I tore open and read. It was written in the same handwriting as that mysterious letter to the Coroner, and upon a sheet of my own note-paper.

“Do you refuse to be warned?” it read. “Drop your search for Stanley Audley, or next time steps will be taken to prevent you from escaping. It is known that you love Thelma, and that is forbidden, for Stanley Audley still lives, and is watching you!”

There was no signature. I took from my pocket the strange letter left in my bedroom and compared them. The writing was exactly similar.

“How long was the man here?” I asked of Mrs. Chapman, on entering the little kitchen of the flat.

“Oh! about ten minutes, sir. He seemed very busy writing, so I left him.”

“Ten minutes!” I echoed. “Six lines of writing could not take that time!”

Clearly there must be another reason why my home should have been so boldly entered, so I dashed back to my room and on opening the drawers of my roll-top desk I found three of them in disorder, as though they had been hurriedly searched.

At once I realized what had gone. All the letters I had received from Thelma I had kept tied up with pink tape because of my legal training, I suppose. They had been lying in the bottom drawer on the right hand side. It was not my habit to lock up anything from my old and trusted servant, hence the desk had not been closed down. Had it been, the drawers would have locked themselves automatically.

The letters were no longer there! The mysterious visitor had evidently sought for and found them. Was the intention to place them in the hands of the missing man? Or was it blackmail?

Every incident in the queer tangle of events seemed to add a further puzzle to the mystery of Stanley Audley and his associates. An intention to levy blackmail might explain the theft of the letter, though they were innocent enough. But they did not explain the attack on myself and the constant espionage to which I was subjected. Why should I be marked down for assassination? That I had made a foolishly romantic promise to act as guardian and protector of a pretty bride, was not enough to answer that question.

Each day that passed since that fateful afternoon amid the silent Alpine snows had increased the mystery which surrounded Stanley Audley. Was he a crook, an associate of an unscrupulous international gang of forgers—or was he after all, an honest man? If only Thelma would speak! But it was obvious her lips were sealed, and I felt convinced they were sealed by fear. Someone, it was obvious, had some hold over her which enabled him to command her silence. It was her duty as a wife, she claimed, to preserve her husband’s secrets inviolable. But what was the secret?

I returned to the office next day depressed and puzzled to the last degree. I was hardly conscious of what I was doing. As in a waking dream I lived through the agony I had gone through at Stamford. Time and again I seemed to feel that cold thing on my lips; the small, evil-looking eye I had seen in my half-consciousness seemed to glare balefully at me even in the broad daylight. And time after time, as I sat in my office striving wearily to read letters and dictate coherent replies, Thelma’s exquisite face appeared to float in the air before me. Distraught and overwrought I realized at last that work was hopeless and hurriedly left the office.

For hours I tramped the London pavements, tormented by thoughts of Thelma, racking my brain for some possible way out of the horrible position in which I found myself. It must have been far into the morning before—quite automatically—I staggered homeward and flinging myself, dressed as I was, upon my bed, fell into the deep stupor of utter exhaustion.

Four days after my return to London I happened to be passing along Pall Mall, when a sudden fancy took me to call upon old Humphreys. There another surprise awaited me.

“Mr. Humphreys is away, sir—in Edinburgh,” the fair-haired clerk at the key-office informed me.

Edinburgh! Old Feng had left me suddenly to go there! Was it a coincidence, or were they meeting in Scotland for some purpose?

“We expect him back tomorrow night,” the young man added.

So I turned away.

Next day, knowing that Thelma was going shopping with her cousin in the West End, I spent the afternoon wandering in Regent Street in the hope of meeting them. I had telephoned to Highgate with the intention of making an appointment and taking them to tea, but they had already left. Thelma’s aunt, who spoke to me, had mentioned several shops they intended visiting, and I had spent nearly an hour and a half in search of them, when suddenly near the Oxford Circus end of Regent Street, I noticed a rather shabbily dressed old man standing at a window, examining the jewelry displayed.

Next second my heart gave a bound. It was Doctor Feng, but so well disguised was he that I was compelled to look twice in order to reassure myself that I was not mistaken. Gone was the erect alert figure I knew so well. The man before me stooped heavily, with his chin kept well down; Doctor Feng’s usually well-cut and well-tended clothing had given place to garments utterly frayed and shabby, while the old felt hat on his head was badly stained and worn.

Instantly I drew back in astonishment, not wishing to reveal myself. For what reason was he idling there in that garb? He presented a broken-down appearance, as if he were a professional man who had fallen on evil times.

It was clear that his interest in the jewelry was only feigned, and before long I saw he was keenly watching the entrance to a well-known milliner’s, though from such a position he was not likely to attract the notice of anyone emerging.

I stood there watching the watcher, for perhaps ten minutes. Then Thelma and her cousin came out and turned towards Piccadilly Circus. Feng at once moved slowly on, following their movements. I was within a few yards of him, but so intent was his watch upon the two girls that he never once turned round. Otherwise he would almost certainly have seen me, for I knew his eyesight was remarkably good.

He watched them enter two shops, keeping himself well away from observation. At last they entered a tea-shop. Then having apparently satisfied himself that they had seated themselves, he strolled away.

In about a quarter of an hour he returned, and so suddenly did he re-appear that I was half afraid that he must have seen and recognized me. A few minutes later, however, it became clear that he had not, for again he stood idly looking into a neighboring shop window.

When Thelma and her cousin came out they crossed the road, and walked to Piccadilly Circus, where they entered a well-known draper’s. It was then after five o’clock.

Again old Feng lounged outside while I, fearing recognition, remained on the opposite side of the road near the entrance to the Café Monico.

The time passed slowly. The hurrying home-going crowds focussed upon the Tube station where all had become bustle, and already half-an-hour had passed. I watched the old man peer into the big shop every now and then curiously impatient and anxious. It was plain that he could not see the pair. He must have thought they were making extensive purchases, for nearly three quarters of an hour elapsed ere it seemed to dawn upon him that there were two exits from the shop into Piccadilly!

His chagrin could be plainly seen. Ignorant, of course, that they were being watched, the two girls had unwittingly eluded his vigilance and calmly left by the other entrance.

He hurried round the corner amid the crowd awaiting the motor buses, and then sped back again. It was plain that he was annoyed, and I thought very considerably perturbed.

Realizing at last that they had eluded him he crossed the Circus and entered a motor bus which would take him home to Barnes. Then, having watched his departure, I turned away and walked thoughtfully back to Russell Square.

On leaving the office early next afternoon, I called upon Hartley Humphreys, at the Carlton. A page took me up in the lift and knocked at the door. But before he did so I distinctly heard voices within and recognized them as those of Humphreys and Feng. They were laughing loudly together. When they heard the page knock, they instantly ceased talking. I heard a door communicating with the adjoining room close, and then Humphreys gave permission to enter.

The old financier sat alone and was most effusive in his welcome.

“So glad to see you, Yelverton!” he cried, grasping my hand. “Sit down,” and he touched the bell for the waiter. “I’ve been north and only got back last night. Next week I hope to move into that house at Hampstead that I’ve bought. I’m sick to death of hotels. You must come and see me there; come and dine one night.”

I thanked him and expressed great pleasure at his invitation.

Why, I wondered, had Feng hurriedly disappeared? He had passed into that adjoining room which was a bedroom, and thence, I supposed, out into the corridor. Or perhaps he was in the next apartment listening to our conversation.

Over a whiskey and soda I told Humphreys of the desperate attempt that had been made upon my life, and described all the circumstances. Somehow I felt confidence in him, even though he had Harold Ruthen in his employ. I suspected Feng the more because of the manner in which he had kept secret watch upon Thelma.

“By jove!” said Humphreys, when I had finished. “You certainly had a very narrow escape.”

“Yes. But fortunately the dose given was not fatal, though the doctor has told me that had I swallowed a few more drops I should certainly have died.”

“But the letter to the Coroner!” remarked the old man. “Your enemy took care to complete the picture of suicide, didn’t he?”

“I should have had some difficulty in disproving the charge of attempted suicide if it were not for the handwriting,” I said. “The assassin did not reckon on the chance that I should escape and prove the letter to be a forgery!”

Then I told him of the visit paid to my rooms and the theft of Thelma’s letters.

“Ah!” he said. “It is your association with that little lady which has brought you into danger. Depend upon it there is some secret connected with Audley that, at all hazards, has to be kept—even if it involves plotting your death. You have had a pretty severe warning and if I were you I should certainly heed it. Whatever the secret may be—and it clearly must be something very serious—it evidently does not concern you personally and if you drop the whole affair you will be safe enough. Surely there is no reason why you should run any further risk?”

“It concerns Thelma,” I said doggedly, “and for her sake I have determined, no matter at what risk to myself, and no matter who threatens me, to elucidate the mystery of Audley’s dual rôle, and his curious disappearance. For the future at least I shall be forearmed.”

The old man, with knit brows, shrugged his shoulders dubiously.

“Of course I can quite understand, Yelverton,” he said at last with a smile. “You have fallen in love with her. Oh! it is all very foolish—very foolish, indeed. I suppose you have discovered a good many things concerning Stanley Audley?”

“Yes, many curious facts which require explanation,” I said.

“Really?” he asked, interested. “What are they?”

In response, I told him one of two strange things I had discovered concerning the missing man, at which he expressed himself utterly astounded.

“I really don’t wonder that the remarkable affair has bewildered you,” he said at last. “I had no idea that Audley was such a man of mystery. I thought he had merely left his bride and hidden himself because he grew tired of her.”

“No. He is hiding because of his fear of somebody—that is my opinion.”

“Have you any idea where he is?”

“Not in the least,” I replied frankly, at the same time recollecting that his friend, Ruthen, whom I so disliked, was also in search of Thelma’s husband.

“But don’t you think that his wife knows his whereabouts?” he asked.

“I cannot form a decided opinion,” was my reply. “Sometimes I think she does; then at others I feel sure that she firmly believes that he is dead.”

“You do not believe they hold communication in secret?”

“I think not.”

“What causes her to believe that he is dead, I wonder?”

“Because she obtains no news from him and somebody has told her so,” was my reply, reflecting that Feng might be listening to our conversation.

Slowly he placed his cigarette-end in the ash tray at his elbow and drained his glass.

“Well, Yelverton,” said the calm old cosmopolitan who was once such a confirmed invalid and whose lameness had happily been restored, “after all, I don’t see how Audley’s movements concern you—except for one thing—your indiscreet affection for his wife. Of course the position does not please you—it is natural that it should not please you—but if I were you I would drop it all. I agree with Feng that for you to continue can only lead to unhappiness. More than that you run a great risk at the hands of some unknown persons whose desperation is already proved by what happened at Stamford. Something more serious may yet happen. Therefore,” he added, regarding me very seriously, “were I in your place I would run no further risk.”

“I know your advice is well meant, Mr. Humphreys,” I declared. “But I have made up my mind to solve this mystery, and I will never rest until I have done so.”

“For Thelma’s sake—eh?” he asked, or rather snapped impatiently.

“Perhaps.”

“Then, of course, you must make up your mind to take the consequences. You have asked my advice, and I have given it. But if you pursue an obstinate course,” he said, stroking his thin gray beard as though in thought, “if you are so foolishly obstinate you will have yourself alone to blame should disaster fall upon you. I honestly believe that if you continue, you are a doomed man!”

His tone of voice struck me as highly peculiar: he might almost have been passing sentence of death upon me!

I had no reason to doubt his friendliness, yet his intimate acquaintance with Feng, whom I distrusted, puzzled me more than ever.

“What causes you to think that another attempt may be made upon me,” I asked again, looking very straight at my companion.

“Has not the past proved the existence of some mysterious plot against you—that some person or persons are determined that you shall never learn their secret?” he asked again very seriously. “Complaisance is always the best policy before anything we cannot alter.”

I saw the force of his argument, of course, but with firmness replied—

“Nothing shall deter me from solving this mystery, Mr. Humphreys. Nothing.”

CHAPTER XVIII
MISSING!

A week later I was engaged one morning dictating letters to my typist when Hensman rushed into my room, evidently in a state of great agitation.

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” he asked. He was pale and agitated.

At a sign from me the girl left the room. “What’s wrong, old man?” I said.

“Have you seen the paper this morning?” he asked.

“No, not yet. Why?”

“Then you haven’t seen this,” he said, handing me his copy of the Times which, as most solicitors do, he was in the habit of scanning before he began his day’s work.

What I read staggered me. It was as follows:

Missing Lady

“The police are actively in search of Mrs. Thelma Audley, aged 20, daughter of Mrs. Shaylor, widow of Lieutenant-Commander Cyril Shaylor, R.N., who left her home at Bexhill-on-Sea on the morning of the 18th inst. after the receipt of an urgent telegram calling her to London.

“She did not show the message to anyone, but its receipt apparently caused her great excitement, for she hurriedly packed a bag, telling her mother that she would be staying at the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria and would return next day.

“Nothing has since been seen or heard of her. She did not arrive at the hotel, and it is an open question whether she actually ever went to London.

“Inquiries show that she did not travel by the train she intended. But as there are two lines of railway from Bexhill to London the lady may have taken the second route, by a train leaving half-an-hour later, which brought a good many returning excursionists to London, so that she may easily have passed unnoticed.

“One curious feature of the case is that Mrs. Audley, on receipt of the telegram, apparently burned it by applying a match, as the tinder was found in the fireplace of her bedroom. Another most curious feature is that her mother Mrs. Shaylor received on the following day a telegram handed in at Waterloo Station, with the words, ‘Am all right, do not worry. Back soon—Thelma.’

“Mrs. Audley and her mother are well-known in Bexhill, where they have lived for two years. The young lady married early in the New Year, but her husband being called abroad, she has remained at home during the summer. Any information concerning the missing lady will be gladly received by her mother, and can be given to any police station. Her description which was circulated yesterday is as follows:—”

Then followed a very minute description of Thelma, and of the clothes she wore when she left Bexhill.

Thelma had disappeared! Did that mysterious message emanate from her husband? Had she gone to join him in hiding?

Why had she been so careful to destroy that message which called her to London? If it were from Stanley, as I felt certain it was, then what more natural than that she would have told her mother and explained that she was rejoining him?

She was elated at receipt of the message! Why?

“This is even more amazing than the past events,” I declared to Hensman when, at last I found my tongue. “What do you think of it?”

“I don’t know what to think of it, old chap,” was my partner’s reply, “except that it makes the whole affair more mysterious than ever. It is quite clear she has disappeared of her own free will. Possibly she has some motive, as her husband undoubtedly had, for effacing himself, and I should think it quite possible she has gone to join him, wherever he is.”

I put in a telephone call to Mrs. Shaylor at once. Her strained voice clearly betrayed acute distress and anxiety. When I told her I had read the account of Thelma’s disappearance, she said:

“Oh! Mr. Yelverton, I am so terribly distressed. What do you think of it all? I suppose you know nothing of my girl’s whereabouts.”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said despairingly. “I wrote to her some days ago, but had no reply.”

“Your letter is here. It came on the night she left. I recognized your handwriting. I believe she is in London, and that she sent me that reassuring telegram from Waterloo, but the police do not believe it. They doubt that she ever went to London.”

“Who says so? The local police?”

“One of the two detectives who came down from London yesterday to see me.”

“But that telegram which she burned,” I asked. “Who was the sender. Have you any suspicion?”

“I feel quite certain that it was from Stanley.”

“Then if she is with her husband, why should we worry?” I asked.

“Because—well, because I have a strange intuition that there is something seriously wrong. Why, I can’t tell—a mother’s intuition is usually right, Mr. Yelverton.”

“Is that really all you know?” I asked eagerly. “Cannot I be of any service in assisting to trace her?”

“Well, the police are evidently doing their best,” was her reply. “There is one queer circumstance about the affair, namely that on the day before she received the telegram, a stranger called to see her. We had just had dinner when he was announced. He was a tall, thin, fair-haired young man, and he asked to see Thelma. She saw him in the morning-room, and she was alone with him for about ten minutes or so. After he left she seemed to be wonderfully elated. She would tell me nothing, only that some good news had been imparted to her by the stranger. I asked her why she did not confide in me, but she replied that it was her own affair, and that at the moment she was not allowed to divulge it. Later on she would tell me all. Then next day she received the telegram which she had apparently been expecting, and left.

“Oh! Mr. Yelverton! The mystery of it all is driving me to distraction,” the poor lady went on. “If you can do anything to help me I shall thank you forever.”

“Listen, Mrs. Shaylor,” I said over the wire. “Will you kindly repeat the description of that stranger who called to see Thelma on the day previous. It is important—very important!”

She gave a detailed description of the fair-haired young man and the clothes he wore.

“Did she appear to know him?”

“Oh, yes! It was evident that they had met before,” came the voice over the telephone. “He greeted her merrily, and asked to be allowed to speak with her in private. Later, I heard Thelma’s voice raised in exultant laughter.”

“Have you never seen the young man before?” I asked.

“Never. He was a total stranger to me. But Thelma knew him without a doubt. If you can help me to re-discover her it is all I can ask of you, Mr. Yelverton. You can imagine my distress. Why she does not let me hear from her I cannot think.”

“Perhaps Stanley—who is evidently in hiding, forbids it,” I said in an effort to relieve her anxiety, though the fact of her disappearance in itself showed some sinister influence at work.

“Perhaps so, Mr. Yelverton. Yet if that is the case it is surely very unfair to me!”

“Time’s up,” chipped in the voice of the operator at the exchange. “Sorry! Time’s up!”

And the next instant we were cut off.

Hensman had been standing beside me as I had been speaking.

“Well, what shall you do now?” he asked. “You’ve apparently placed yourself in a fine fix, Rex. First you narrowly lose your life, and now the lady is missing. Is it yet another plot?”

“Undoubtedly,” I replied, reflectively. “I must have time to consider what steps to take.”

“If I were you I wouldn’t mix myself up in the affair any further. Take my advice, old man. You haven’t been the same for months. It has got on your nerves,” he declared, as he filled his pipe.

“I know it has, my dear fellow, but when I decide to do a thing, I do it. I mean to solve this enigma.”

“Well, you haven’t been very successful up to the present, have you?” he remarked, a trifle sarcastically, I thought.

“No. But I will not give up,” I said firmly. “This second mystery of Thelma’s disappearance makes me more than ever determined to continue my search.”

“Then forgive me for saying so, Rex—it is perhaps unpardonable of me to intrude in your private affairs—but I think you are acting very foolishly. If the young lady has disappeared, then, no doubt, she has done so with some distinct motive.”

“In that case she would have confided in her mother,” I argued.

“Over the telephone you spoke of some stranger who had visited her.”

“Yes. It is that fact which urges me on to prosecute my inquiries,” I replied. “The young man evidently bore some message, but from whom?”

Hensman’s advice was, of course, sound enough, but he was not in love as I was. He saw things through quite a different pair of spectacles.

An hour later I took a taxi to Castlenau to seek old Doctor Feng, my object being to ascertain whether he had any knowledge of what had occurred.

In answer to my ring the doctor’s housekeeper appeared. She was a sour-faced old woman in a rather soiled apron, whom I had seen before.

“The doctor ’aint in, sir,” she replied, in true Cockney intonation. “I don’t know where ’e is.”

“What time did he go out?” I asked.

“Oh! ’e went out on Tuesday morning, and ’e ’aint been back since. But ’e often goes away sudden like.”

“Does he?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah!” I laughed. “I see you don’t like him.” I hoped to get more out of her.

“I do. The doctor’s real good sort, sir. ’E’s been awfully good to me and my girl, Emily. I don’t know what we should ’ave done this winter if we ’adn’t ’ad this place. ’E’s a bit lonely, is the doctor. But ’e’s been a real good gentleman to me.”

“Do you happen to know a friend of his, a Mr. Harold Ruthen,” I asked suddenly.

“Of course I know ’im, sir. ’E’s often ’ere. ’E’s brought a lady once or twice—a pretty young married lady. I don’t know ’er surname, but the doctor calls ’er Thelma.”

Thelma! I held my breath. In face of what I had learned this was staggering.

“I know the lady,” I said, with an inward struggle to remain unexcited. And I went on to describe her and her dress.

“That’s the lady, sir.”

“When was she last here?”

“Oh! Well, it was about three days ago, sir. She came with another young gentleman whom I’d never seen before—she called ’im Stanley.”

Stanley! Could Stanley Audley have been there?

“Yes,” I said excitedly as I stood within the hall, “and what else? I have reason in asking this. A great deal depends upon what you can tell me.”

“I ’ope I’m not telling anything wrong, sir,” replied the woman. “Only you’ve asked me, and I’ve told you the truth.”

“Thanks very much,” I replied. “This is all most interesting. Describe what this friend of the young lady’s was like.”

She reflected a moment, and then, telling me that he wore a dark blue suit and was a “thorough gentleman”—presumably because he had given her a tip before his departure—she described a young man which was most certainly the missing man, Stanley Audley.

I questioned her, and she became quite frank—after I had placed a couple of half-crowns into her hand—concerning the visit of Thelma and Stanley.

“They came ’ere early in the afternoon,” she said. “They’d a long talk with the doctor—a very serious talk, for when I passed the door they were only a talkin’ in whispers. I don’t like people what whisper, sir. If they can’t talk out loud there is somethin’ wrong—that’s what I always says.”

I agreed. Further, I gathered from her that the conference between Thelma, Stanley and old Feng had been most confidential.

“The young man left ’arf an ’our before the young lady,” she told me. “’E seemed very nervous, I thought. It was dark when ’e went, and as he said good-bye to the doctor, I ’eard ’im say, ‘Remember, I’m dead—as before!’ I wonder what ’e meant? I’ve been thinking over it lots of times. But, of course, sir, wot I’ve told you is all secret. I ought not to ’ave told you anything. I’ve got a good job, and I don’t want to lose it, as things are ’ard in these days, I tell you straight. So you won’t repeat to the doctor what we’ve been talkin’ about, will yer?”

“No!” I said. “Certainly not.”

CHAPTER XIX
AT HEATHERMOOR GARDENS

That night the newspapers contained a paragraph repeating what had appeared in the morning concerning Mrs. Audley’s disappearance, and stating that no trace of her had been discovered after she had left Bexhill.

Her secret visit to old Feng, accompanied by Stanley, three days before, added to the mystery. Feng knew of my search for Audley. Then, why had he not told me the truth? With what motive was I being misled and befooled by a conspiracy of silence?

I began to realize that that motive, whatever it was, must be far stronger than I had previously suspected. And in my heart, I confess, I was dismayed by the knowledge that Stanley Audley was still alive: it showed that the goal upon which I had set my heart would never be reached. My distress and dismay as I sat late into the night in my silent bachelor room, may well be imagined.

Had Thelma purposely gone into hiding with her husband, and with the connivance of Feng—or had she since met with foul play? Her failure to take her mother into her confidence seemed to me to suggest the latter.

I was strongly tempted to go to Scotland Yard and tell the police all I knew about the missing girl. But after long consideration I decided that I could do little, if any, good. The police were pursuing their own methods and what I could tell them would not help matters much. In addition I am afraid I did not want the police to get hold of Stanley Audley. If, as I strongly suspected, he was engaged in the nefarious trafficking in forged bank-notes, anything I did could only bring fresh distress upon Thelma. And I could not force myself to believe that her husband would be sufficiently callous and cold-blooded to allow any serious harm to befall her. In the long run it proved I was right. The issue was in other hands than those of Scotland Yard.

I was trying to fix my mind upon my work at the office next day, when my telephone rang and I heard the cheery voice of old Mr. Humphreys.

“Look here, Yelverton, I’ve been meaning to ring you up for some days past. Can you come and dine with me tonight? I’m in my place at Hampstead at last—moved up here a week ago. Will you take the address—14, Heathermoor Gardens—up at the top end of Fitzjohn’s Avenue.”

I scribbled the address on my blotting-pad.

“You’ll easily find it,” he went on. “Come at eight, won’t you? The best way is to go to Hampstead Heath tube, and walk. It’s only two minutes.”

I gratefully accepted, for I wanted to discuss with him Thelma’s mysterious disappearance.

“Have you seen Doctor Feng lately?” I asked him, before he rang off.

“No; I think he must be in Paris. He told me he was going over,” was the reply.

About a quarter to eight that night I emerged from the lift at Hampstead station, and having inquired for Heathermoor Gardens, walked through the rain to a highly respectable road of large detached houses, each wherein dwelt prosperous city men, merchants, barristers and the like. The night was dark, and even though the street lamps shone, it was with some difficulty that I found Number Fourteen.

The house proved to be a large corner one, of two stories and double-fronted. Certainly it was the largest and best of them all and had big bay windows, and possessed an air of prosperity akin to that of my friend, the Anglo-Turkish financier.

The door was opened by a round-faced clean-shaven young man-servant who asked me into the spacious lounge-hall in which a wood fire burned brightly, and after taking my hat and coat, ushered me into a small cozy library on the left, where old Mr. Humphreys rose from the fireside, greeting me merrily.

“I’m awfully glad you could come, Yelverton,” was his greeting, “I haven’t asked anybody to meet you, for I thought we’d just have a quiet hour together, so that I can show you round my new home, and we can have a gossip. Sit down. Dinner will be ready in a moment.”

Then he pressed the bell and a moment later the man appeared bearing a tray with two cocktails. We raised our glasses and drank. Mine was delicious. I gazed around the sumptuously furnished room and congratulated him upon it.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve tried to make it as cozy as I can. I thought I would bring my furniture from Constantinople, but on second thought, decided it was too oriental and heavy and would hardly have been in keeping with an English house. So I sold it and have bought this place and furnished it.”

“It is really charming,” I said, noting the taste displayed.

“Yes, I didn’t want it to appear too new, so some of the stuff is second-hand. I hate a place which looks like the palace of a war-profiteer, don’t you?” he laughed.

The room was just my ideal of a man’s den, lined as it was with books with a soft-lined Turkish carpet, a big carved writing table and several deep saddle-bag chairs. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of his exquisite Turkish tobacco—that my host smuggled—the only way to get the first grade of tobacco-leaf.

He referred to it as he handed me a thin cigarette.

“In these days of Turkey’s trials—thanks to her German betrayers, one no longer gets a little of the tobacco reserved for the Yildiz as it used to be. The Sultan grew his own tobacco in Anatolia—the most delicious of all tobacco and the second grade was sold to Europe as the finest. But the best was always kept for the Yildiz and for His Majesty’s ministers and his harem. I fear the few cigarettes I have left are the last of the Imperial tobacco.”

My cosmopolitan host was a prominent and powerful figure on the Bosphorus. I knew what he had said was the truth, and I smoked the delicious cigarette with intense enjoyment.

“Dinner, sir!” announced the smooth, round-faced man.

Crossing the hall I found myself in a long, sumptuously furnished dining room with shaded pink lights and at a small table set in the big window covers were laid for two.

A big dining table of polished rosewood, which could seat a dozen persons or more, stood in the middle of the room. In its centre was an oblong piece of Chinese embroidery and upon it was set a great apricot-colored bowl of autumn flowers.

“I eat at this little table,” he laughed as we sat down. “One has to have a larger table, but I shall only use it when I have guests.”

The room was a very handsome one with several fine old portraits on the green-painted walls, while a cozy wood fire burned upon huge old-fashioned “dogs,” sending out a fragrant scent and a glowing warmth which was comforting on that chilly autumn night.

“It is most artistic,” I declared when I was seated.

“Yes, but somehow I miss the oriental sumptuousness of my house at Therapia, down on the Bosphorus. Still, when one is forced to live in London, one must adopt London’s ways.”

The man had served us with excellent clear soup and had left the room when my host suddenly looked up at me and said:—

“Oh, by the way, what is the latest concerning your little friend of Mürren and her husband?”

“Well, Mr. Humphreys,” I said, “the fact is she’s disappeared. That is what I want to consult you about.”

“Disappeared!” he exclaimed, staring at me. “Then she’s followed her husband into oblivion—eh?”

“It certainly appears so,” I said.

“Very curious! I didn’t see it in the paper,” he declared. “Tell me what you know.”

“Well—what I know only puzzles me the more,” was my reply. “She simply left her mother at Bexhill, saying she was going to London, and disappeared. But one very curious fact I’ve discovered is that a few days ago she and her husband called upon Doctor Feng.”

“Called on Feng!” he cried, starting up. “You—you’re mistaken, surely! Audley has called on Feng—impossible!”

“Why?” I asked, surprised to see how perturbed he was. He saw my surprise and the next instant concealed his keen anxiety. But it had struck me as very unusual. I knew that Feng and he were close friends. I suspected the former of knowing more than he had revealed to me, and it seemed now that old Mr. Humphreys was equally annoyed that his friend had concealed Audley’s visit from him.

“It seems incredible that the missing husband and his wife should call upon Feng,” he said. “How do you know this, Yelverton? I am much interested—so tell me. The whole affair has certainly been amazing. You say they saw Feng a few days ago?”

“Yes, at his house at Castlenau,” I said. “But I thought the Doctor would certainly tell you, as you and he are such friends.”

“He’s told me nothing. I saw him only two days ago and we spoke of you. He was going to Paris. He declared the whole affair to be a romantic mystery—and the unfortunate feature of it was—well, that you had fallen in love with Audley’s wife.”

“I believed that Audley was dead,” I said, in haste to excuse myself.

The old man stroked his scraggy beard with his thin hand, and smiled.

“Ah! my dear Yelverton, you’re young yet,” he said. “Nobody will blame you. She’s uncommonly good-looking, and in her distress you, no doubt, pitied her and then the usual thing happened. It always does. She was alone and unprotected, and you stood as her champion—eh?”

I only laughed. I suppose his words accurately described the situation. But I could see that what I had told him concerning this visit of the missing man to Feng had somehow disturbed him deeply. Indeed, his very countenance had changed. He was no longer the well-preserved, hale and hearty old man he usually looked. He had suddenly become pale and wan, and he questioned me, with obvious anxiety, as to how I had gained knowledge of what I alleged.

Quite frankly I repeated almost word for word what I have already told concerning my visit to Castlenau and what old Mrs. Martin, the Cockney housekeeper, had revealed to me.

Humphreys only frowned, grunted in dissatisfaction and remarked:

“I can’t think that Feng would have seen the missing young fellow and say nothing to me.”

“Why?” I asked, perhaps unwisely.

“Why—well, that’s my own affair,” he snapped. “I have reasons for saying so,” he almost snarled.

At that moment the man-servant came to take our soup plates and served the fish with almost religious ceremony—“sole Morny” it was.

Suddenly my host laughed, a deep, rippling laugh.

“Well, after all, Yelverton, you’ve been badly bamboozled, haven’t you? You thought young Audley was dead, and that dainty little woman was free to marry you. But he’s evidently turned up again. Yes—I realize the disappointing situation from your point of view. Absolutely rotten!” and he laughed merrily. He had apparently recovered his usual self-possession.

But the change I had noted had set every nerve in my body keenly on the alert. I remembered how his face had changed, the sudden, sullen contraction of his brows, his anxiety that was obvious no matter how he tried to hide it. Of course I could not understand his sudden mistrust of his friend, Feng. Perhaps, after all, the old doctor had some hidden motive for concealing the fact that bride and bridegroom had met again after those many months of inexplicable separation, and that his silence was not merely accidental. Still, it was clear Humphreys did not think so.

“I thought that the doctor would certainly have told you of Audley’s reappearance,” I remarked. “Indeed, when you rang me up I was at once extremely anxious to see you and hear your opinion of the whole situation.”

“You want my opinion,” he said in a hard tone—a voice quite changed. “Well, as you know, I thought you a fool from the first. You ought never to have had anything to do with the affair. It was far too dangerous.”

“But why dangerous? Tell me.”

“Well—it was—that’s all. You told me of the warning and of the attempt upon you. But tell me more of Feng—of what his housekeeper told you,” he urged, rising, taking a bottle of white wine from the big carved side-board and pouring out a glass for me and for himself. “This is very interesting.”

I described my telephone chat with Mrs. Shaylor and my call at Castlenau in further detail.

“Strange!” he remarked, reflecting deeply. “Really, I had no idea that Audley had ventured to be seen again.”

“Ventured!” I echoed. “Why did he disappear?” His remark betrayed certain knowledge that he had never divulged to me.

“My dear fellow,” he laughed. “He disappeared, as you know, but I assure you I haven’t the slightest knowledge of either his motive or his intention. I believed Feng to be as much in the dark as I am. But it is evident that he knows and has held back his knowledge from me. I can’t understand it,” he added, his countenance clouding again.

Then, after a moment’s reflection he said with a smile:

“But, after all, why should I, or you worry, my dear Yelverton? You have surely cut the little woman out of your heart. If you haven’t—you’re a fool.”

“I haven’t,” I replied frankly.

“You still love her?” he asked, looking keenly at me as I sipped my wine.

I nodded.

“Then you are still a fool! I should have thought that after all your experience of being misled, duped and ridiculed, you would have seen how impossible it was.”

“Why impossible?” I asked. “Mr. Humphreys, I believe you know far more than ever you will reveal to me,” I said earnestly. “Do tell me what you know. I don’t conceal the fact from you that I love Thelma.”

“You needn’t. I’ve known that all along. So has Feng. You’ve worn your heart on your sleeve for everybody to see. Ah! how very foolish you have been, my boy. But tell me—are you still determined to solve the mystery concerning Audley’s disappearance?” And again he looked straight into my eyes.

“I am,” I replied, “nothing will deter me from seeking the truth.”

“Nothing?” he asked, with an inscrutable smile.

“No,” I said firmly. “I love Thelma and I mean to clear this mystery up at all hazards.”

The man seated before me drew a long sigh, and I saw that his brows were knit.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I repeat that you have been foolish—very foolish, my dear young fellow, and I am afraid that you will regret it when—when too late.”

What I had told him regarding Audley’s meeting with Feng had evidently caused him great anxiety, and I noticed that he had left his wine untouched.

Again he spoke, but his words sounded so faint that I did not catch them. At the same moment I thought I heard in the distance a shrill scream—the scream of a woman!

I listened. The scream was repeated!

I saw Humphreys spring from his chair in sudden alarm.

“Hark!” I cried, breathlessly. “What was that?”

But as I spoke the room seemed suddenly to revolve about me rapidly. Then everything faded from my sight: and I felt paralyzed.

Again that shrill scream of terror fell upon my ears with increased distinctness.

Next second consciousness left me and everything was abruptly blotted out.

CHAPTER XX
THE CHILD’S AIR-BALL

When at last I regained consciousness, after an interval I could not measure, my half-opened eyes fell upon a strange scene, one which at first seemed to be fantastic and unreal.

The room was unfamiliar, of good size and well-furnished but dimly lit, only one light showing in the electrolier in the centre. Even by that light I recognized that it was neglected and evidently had been long closed, for a strange close smell greeted my nostrils and I saw that dust lay thickly upon the round polished table in the centre.

Upon the table a small piece of candle was set upon a plate.

I tried to make out where I was and what had happened. But all I could tell was that I was seated in a cramped position, tied hand and foot. My limbs ached intolerably as though I had remained there many hours.

Suddenly I heard a movement in the shadow, the opening and closing of a door, and a moment later I saw silhouetted before me the figure of old Humphreys.

“Well?” he asked in a hard, sarcastic voice, “and how are you getting on now—eh?”

“I—I don’t know,” I replied so faintly that I could scarcely hear my own voice. “Where am I?”

“You are in my hands at last, Rex Yelverton,” he snarled. “You chose to interfere in matters that did not concern you. You have had plenty of warning. But as you refused to heed them I have decided to act.”

“What do you mean?” I cried in dismay. “What harm have I done you?”

The old man merely chuckled exultantly at the way I had fallen into the trap he had so cunningly prepared—with Feng’s aid, no doubt, I thought. I had all along believed the old cosmopolitan financier to be my friend. I sat aghast at the astounding discovery that he was my enemy. For a few seconds I remained speechless.

“Now,” he said in a deep vindictive voice, “there is but little time left. Look over yonder.”

He turned the switch and the room was instantly flooded with light, and as I gazed, dazzled by the sudden brightness, I saw seated in a chair within a few feet of me, a woman’s figure.

It was Thelma!

I shrieked her name, but only a faint sound escaped my lips, for my throat was dry and sore, and I could scarcely raise my voice above a hoarse whisper.

Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes were closed, her face was white as marble, and her head hung inertly on one side. She was clearly unconscious.

It must have been her scream of terror that I had heard while we sat at dinner!

“What does this mean?” I demanded trying to rise. But my hands were secured tightly behind my back with a piece of rope, which had been passed through a hole in the wall behind me and secured upon the opposite side.

I was powerless to move more than six inches from the wall!

“It means that you have only five minutes more to live!” the old man answered slowly, with diabolical grin. “You escaped once by a miracle—but I have taken good care not to fail this time.”

“You assassin!” I cried, glaring at him and yet entirely powerless.

“That’s enough!” he cried, striking me a blow upon the cheek with his open hand.

“But I can’t understand!” I cried. “What harm have I done—or what has Thelma done?”

“It does not matter to either of you,” he laughed. “You love her. You’ve told me so. Well—in five minutes’ time you will be married to her—in death!”

My brain was clearing rapidly as the effect of the drug I had taken wore off and I was cool enough to think keenly to desire some means of escape. But, try as I would, I was powerless. The more I strained at my bonds the more cruelly the rope cut into my tortured wrists.

A flood of questions poured through my mind. What could have happened? Where was Stanley Audley? Was he in the hands of Feng, whom I now looked upon as Humphreys’ fellow conspirator? But, above all, what had I done—what had Thelma done to arouse Humphrey’s diabolical hatred?

Despite the pain I was suffering I made another furious effort to break loose. I strained, till I felt my very wrists must give way, to go to Thelma’s assistance. But I was held in a vise.

Thelma lay white as death. Was she, indeed, dead already at the hands of the bearded fiend who, I now thought, must be a lunatic.

My attention was diverted to Humphreys’ proceedings. I watched him closely, puzzled by what he was doing and utterly unable to comprehend his purpose.

From a cupboard in the room he brought out a tin of petrol. From his pocket he drew a large toy balloon of the kind which enterprising firms use to advertise their goods. It was not inflated, but limp and I remember that even in my bewilderment, I noticed that it was a bright yellow and bore painted upon it the name of a famous West End firm.

Using a small funnel he began very carefully to fill the balloon with petrol. I was surprised at the amount it held. The tin, which had been full, was nearly empty before he had finished.

Then, suddenly, like a flash of lightning, understanding of his horrible purpose burst upon my mind.

“My God!” I gasped, “you surely do not intend to burn us alive.”

“My dear young fellow, you have had every chance to escape, and yet you have refused, because of your silly love for Audley’s wife,” he said in hard, metallic tones. “This house, I may tell you, is ‘to let furnished.’ The board is now hidden in the shrubbery. The dinner served you was provided by a well-known firm of caterers who sent their man, whom I have dismissed. In a few moments this place will be a roaring furnace and a mystery-house to the Fire Brigade of the London County Council.”

Then with diabolical coolness he went on with his preparations.

Above the table was a handsome electrolier. To this, by means of a piece of string, he hung the petrol filled balloon so that it was suspended about a foot above the candle I had noticed on the table.

“You see,” he explained with a grin, “I light the candle and put it just below the balloon. You can spend the time—it might be half-an-hour perhaps—in imagining what is about to happen. The heat from this little candle will cause the petrol slowly to expand until it bursts the balloon. Then down comes the petrol on the candle and the whole house will be a roaring furnace in a couple of minutes. Do you understand?” and he laughed in my face.

I ground my teeth, but made no reply.

“Well, good-bye, Yelverton,” he said in a voice of affected cheeriness, and yet in triumph. “I wish you both a merry journey into the next world. Perhaps you’ll find her your soul-mate there. Who knows?”

Next instant he had switched off all the lights and left us alone.

Only that fatal candle flickered as gradually its heat was causing the fragile yellow balloon to expand to bursting point.

Soon it would explode and then we should both be burned alive. Nothing could possibly save us!

My heart sank. Once again, however, hope revived within me. I strove to tear myself free from my bonds. But it was useless.

I heard the front door close with a bang and then knew that the man who had entrapped us had left. No doubt he would be lurking in the vicinity in order to make sure of the result of his devilish handiwork.

I tried to rouse Thelma by calling to her. Apparently Humphreys had not troubled to bind her and if I could only awaken her she might be able to get help before it was too late. But I could not raise my voice above a hoarse whisper: no shrieks of mine could call assistance. And, I reflected, Thelma, even if she were not dead, must have been heavily drugged and would no doubt remain unconscious for some time. Humphreys would never have run the risk of leaving her free to move if she came to herself.

My brain whirling I gave up the struggle after one more ineffectual attempt to free myself and resigned myself to my fate.

Horror froze the blood in my veins as I gazed in agony first at Thelma, helpless and unconscious in her loveliness, and then at that innocent-looking toy balloon, charged with the deadliest menace, hanging only a few inches above the flickering candle. To my distorted imagination it appeared to be swelling monstrously and hideously. I felt myself stupidly wondering how much larger it would grow until it split and let loose a flood of fire in that silent room.

I realized the devilish ingenuity of the scheme. It was clear that once the balloon burst and the volatile spirit became ignited, the furniture and hangings of the room would burn with terrific violence. The fire could not be seen through the shuttered windows until practically the entire house was ablaze, even if at that late hour a chance passerby should come along. And before help could possibly reach the spot, the house would be a furnace. Every trace of the cause of the fire would be consumed: only our bodies, charred beyond all possible identification, would be found beneath the ruins. Our fate would remain unsolved and the fire would be relegated to the ever-growing list of London’s unsolved mysteries. I found myself dully speculating as to the insurance, realizing that the owner of the house would be duly recompensed, and that the assassin whom I had never even suspected would go scot free.

And above all, even in those swiftly flying moments, I still speculated as to Humphreys’ possible motive in a plot which, I was now convinced, must have been originally formed amid the snows of Switzerland—a plot between the mysterious doctor and the cosmopolitan financier who had posed as my friend. How could Hartley Humphreys, reputed millionaire, benefit by the extinction of two such humble lives as Thelma’s and my own? Murder is seldom or never motiveless, except it be committed by the homicidal maniac. Was Humphreys really insane or was he a cool, calculating, ruthless criminal, working out to its logical end some plan to which I had not the key?

At any rate, so far as we were concerned, we were faced by instant peril. Humphreys had laid his plans well. We had no possible loophole for escape. I was pinned and could not budge from the wall against which I was held. If I had been handcuffed—and handcuffs can be bought of many gun-makers in London—they would have remained as tell-tale evidence amid the débris of the fire. That length of rope showed how cleverly the plot had been devised so that all evidence of the murders would be effaced by the roaring flames.

By the faint light of the candle I could scarcely discern more than the marble face of the girl I had grown to love. My eyes ever and anon wandered to that yellow globe suspended above the table.

At any second it might burst. Then the flames would run rioting through the room and in a moment we should be enveloped.

Again I tried to shout for assistance.

All was silent. The candle flickered and then again grew brighter.

“Thelma!” I shrieked in my agony, but my voice was only a whisper.

“Thelma! Thelma! My God! Thelma!” I cried, trying in vain to arouse her.

But she still remained there with her beautiful head drooped in a manner which showed that either death or unconsciousness had overtaken her.

I realized that death was very close to both of us. For myself I cared little. I could face it. But Thelma! Must I, loving her as I did, watch her die before my eyes?

Those moments of agony seemed like hours. Outside the circle of light thrown by the candle the room seemed dark and cavernous. The smell of motor-spirit hung heavily on the air and the silence was absolute. I could even hear my watch ticking in my pocket. Unless a miracle happened we were doomed. I had become too weak to make more than feeble efforts to free myself and these, of course, were futile.

“How much longer?” I caught myself asking. How long would it be before that innocent-looking globe splits asunder and lets loose its flood of fire. As the slow moments passed the pressure of the vapor within caused the thin film of rubber which held the inflammable spirit to swell larger and larger.

At first, I had noticed, it sagged heavily, dragged down by the weight of the liquid. Now the bright yellow globe was distended until it seemed on the very point of bursting. The white printed words of the advertisement on its sides danced mockingly before my eyes.

Now and again the flame of the candle flickered, caught by some stray breath of air. Then it steadied and grew bright. I noticed that the wax had begun to gutter into the plate. The evil flame fascinated me: held my eyes fixed on it in helpless horror.

By this time the balloon had become distended to twice its original size.

Suddenly the end came. The balloon split apart. A blaze of flame momentarily lit up the room and in its lurid glow I caught a glimpse of Thelma. At the same instant I heard a door open.

Then all was blackness and I knew no more.

CHAPTER XXI
WHO WAS DOCTOR FENG?

I fancied that I heard my name spoken. My ears were strained—

“Rex! Rex! Listen; can’t you hear?” I seemed to hear faintly afar off.

The voice sounded unusual, like a child’s, weak and high-pitched. Surely I was in a dream.

“Rex! Rex! Listen! Can’t you hear?” the voice continued. It seemed like the shrill voice of a tiny girl.

I listened stupidly: in my lethargy I had not the power to reply.

For a long time I listened, in a sort of delirium, I suppose, but did not hear the voice repeated.

Suddenly, how long afterwards I cannot tell, I distinctly saw Doctor Feng’s face grinning into mine. Upon his white-bearded countenance was a look of exultant triumph. His eyes danced with glee. The sight angered and horrified me. I closed my eyes to shut out the features that seemed to me sinister and mysterious.

A strange sense of oppression, of being deprived of air and of my body being benumbed, overcame me. I could not stir a muscle. In my ears there sounded a strange singing like the song of a thousand birds. At the same time I experienced considerable difficulty in moving, for I seemed to be enveloped in something which, weighing upon my limbs, kept them powerless, as though I were still manacled.

I remember that both my wrists pained me very badly, where the rope had cut into them so cruelly. Then, like a flash, came back a hideous memory of those moments of horror and those darting red tongues of flame. The terror of those moments when I faced a horrible death I now lived over again. I lay appalled.

I must have shrieked in my befogged agony, and in shouting I again opened my eyes.

An eager face peered into mine; it was that of a woman in a white linen head-dress—a hospital nurse evidently. She uttered some words that I did not comprehend. I tried to grasp them, but my hearing was so dull that I only heard high-pitched sounds.

No wonder! After a few moments of blank bewilderment I realized that from head to foot I was swathed in oil-soaked cotton wool. There were small openings for my eyes and another small aperture lower which enabled me to breathe.

Now memory surged back upon me in full flood and again the horror of those dreadful moments at Heathermoor Gardens fell upon me.

I recollected everything in detail. But I was alive—alive! after passing through the valley of the shadow of death, through the flames that had licked my face!

But where was Thelma?

I tried to ask. But the calm-faced nurse only shook her head. Was it that she could not understand my muffled words; or was it that Thelma was dead?

Once more I implored her to explain, but she again shook her head, placing her fore-finger upon her lips to enjoin silence.

Then she put some medicine to my lips, and speaking soothingly, compelled me to swallow it.

I lay there stretched upon the bed, my wondering eyes seeing only the whitewashed ceiling of the narrow room. The atmosphere seemed heavily laden with some disinfectant and I noticed, with idle curiosity, how very closely the nurse watched over me.

I believed it to be about mid-day. But my bewildered brain was obsessed by thoughts of those two devilish plotters—Feng and Humphreys—who had been my friends amid the Alpine snows and had later conspired to kill me.

The full purport of what had actually happened I could not understand: I remembered nothing after the flash of flame and the noise of the opening door. Closing my eyes I racked my brain in useless conjecture. Why should the hateful old doctor, of all men, have shot that triumphant glance at me, while I lay there inert and helpless?

After that I must have lapsed into unconsciousness. The injuries I had suffered, coupled with the awful mental agony I had undergone, had brought about, as I learned afterwards, complete loss of memory and many weeks elapsed before I was able to understand what was going on around me.

My awakening to consciousness was a curious experience.

I was utterly unaware of anything that was passing until suddenly, I heard, as from a vast distance, a thin voice calling my name:—

“Rex! Rex! Rex Yelverton!” It came again. Then I seemed suddenly to wake up. There was a blaze of sunlight round me. And there before me, radiant and beautiful in a flimsy white summer gown, stood Thelma, her face positively shining with happiness and tears of joy running down her beautiful face.

I held my breath, scarcely believing I could be awake. Was it a vision? Memory rushed back to me. Again I saw Thelma, limp and helpless, in that hateful room at Hampstead. Was I alive? Had she indeed escaped the awful fate that had threatened her.

There she stood against a background of high feathery palms. Beyond her was a sapphire, sunlit sea, while around were orange trees heavily laden with fruit and a wealth of climbing geraniums and crimson rambler roses.

As my brain slowly cleared I looked around. To my surprise I found myself seated in a low cane lounge-chair upon a well-kept lawn—seemingly a hotel-garden. Not far away some people were strenuously playing tennis; others were seated beneath great orange and emerald colored umbrellas, taking tea.

“Thelma!” I gasped, my burning eyes staring and bewildered.

“Rex! Thank God! At last! At last you know me!” she said, springing forward and grasping both my hands. “You’ve been very ill, my dear, devoted friend.”

I stared at her and saw that she was very pale and worn. But the soft hands that I held were real!

So surprised, so utterly perplexed was I, that I could hardly find my tongue. But after a few moments of silence, the chords of by unbalanced brain, at first unable fully to realize my whereabouts, were touched.

I heard her speak. “You do know me now, Rex—you do, don’t you?” she demanded in tense eagerness.

“Yes,” I replied.

“And you can really recollect?” she asked, softly, bending over me.

“Everything,” was my answer, as I sat there like one dreaming. But, indeed, at that moment, I doubted the reality of it all, for the evil faces of both Feng and Humphreys overshadowed that fair scene of feathery palms and tranquil sea.

“Ah! The doctors were right after all!” she cried joyously. “They advised us to bring you here—to Cannes.”

“What? Am I in Cannes?” I asked astounded.

“Yes,” she said, “This is The Beau Site Hotel. Do you feel well enough to know what has happened?”

I nodded—weakly, I am afraid. I felt well enough physically, but shaken and overwrought.

“Can I have some tea?” I asked limply.

Thelma burst out laughing. “Now, I’m sure you are better,” she bubbled. “Wait a moment and I will have it sent out.”

She disappeared into the hotel and in a few moments a waiter appeared with tea things. He glanced at me and bowed. “I’m glad monsieur is better,” he said simply.

How good that tea tasted! It was glorious to be alive again and I ate and drank with good appetite. I felt better every moment: it was clear I was well on the way to recovery.

“And now, Thelma,” I asked when we had finished. “Tell me what happened. I remember nothing after the fire. Have I been ill long?”

“You must be prepared for a surprise, Rex,” she said gently. “Do you know—of course you cannot—that that was five months ago?”

“Five months!” I echoed stupidly. “Have I been ill all that time?”

“You have been very ill indeed, Rex, and for a time we had very little hope that you would ever recover. You got over the burns fairly quickly in the Hampstead Hospital but your memory gave way. But don’t worry now, the doctors all said you would probably recover yourself quite suddenly and be absolutely yourself again. But they could not say how long it would be and it has been weary waiting.”

“How long have I been here?” I asked.

“About a month. Doctor Feng will be here soon: he will be delighted.”

“Doctor Feng!” I flared out. “Why should he be pleased? Perhaps Humphreys will be pleased too. He was a great friend of Feng’s.”

“Humphreys is dead,” Thelma said gently. “I can’t tell you the full story yet—you are not well enough—but he was traced from the house in Hampstead to some rooms he had in secret in Earl’s Court Road and he shot himself there when the detectives went to arrest him. Now be quiet and don’t bother your head about things. Everything is all right and you shall learn all from Doctor Feng. You can recognize me now and you will soon be yourself.”

“But, Thelma,” I cried, “how did you escape? Were you hurt?”

“Now, don’t trouble about me,” she said lightly. “You will see Doctor Feng soon.”

“I don’t want to see him,” I said snappishly. “He was a friend of Humphreys’ and I believe was in league with him.”

Thelma looked at me, a soft light in her eyes. “No,” she said simply. “You are making a great mistake. You never had a better friend, nor Humphreys a more deadly enemy than Doctor Feng.”

I sat up in amazement. Feng my friend! Had I distrusted the old doctor without reason?

“Here he is!” cried Thelma joyously and I looked up to see Doctor Feng, in a gray summer suit and white felt hat striding briskly across the lawn towards us.

A glance at me was sufficient to tell him the good news; there was no need for Thelma’s excited outburst. The old doctor silently held out his hand, his seamed face alight with obvious pleasure.

I took it in silence and wrung it hard. The scales had fallen from my eyes and I felt thoroughly ashamed of my lack of faith. I had ignored my real friend and had put my trust in the scoundrel who had planned, happily in vain, to send Thelma and myself to a horrible death. At that moment my confidence in my knowledge of men, on which I had been apt to pride myself in bygone days, sank to zero.

Feng was the first to break the silence.

“By jove, Yelverton,” he said, “I’m glad to see you all right again. You’ve had an infernally narrow squeak of it. And it was all my fault. I ought to have been more wary.”

“Your fault!” I stammered. “How?”

“Well, your narrow escape from being burned to death with Thelma, was due in part to me. Owing to my belief in my own foresight I made a big error of judgment.”

“How? I don’t understand. All I know is that Thelma and I were entrapped by your friend Humphreys in that house in Heathermoor Gardens. A most diabolical plot was laid for us both. What happened?”

“Then you recollect it all—eh? Well, that’s an excellent sign,” he said. “You both escaped death by a hair’s breath. The damnable plot was well devised and the plotters never dreamed for an instant that it could fail. Every precaution had been taken, even to the cutting of the wires of the fire-alarm outside Hampstead Station! Yes, you can both thank Providence that you are alive today. But, do rest, my dear fellow,” he added. “You must not tax your brains too quickly. In an hour’s time I’ll tell you more. Till then, I’ll leave you both together. But remember, your conversation must not concern the affair in the least. I forbid it, Thelma! Please recollect that,” he added very seriously.

“Very well,” she said. “We’ll go for a stroll down to the Casino and back,” and I rose and accompanied her.

Thelma chatted as we strolled along. But in obedience to Doctor Feng she would not refer to what had passed. For my own part I felt utterly mystified. Where was Stanley Audley? Why was Feng my friend and Humphreys’ enemy? What was Thelma doing here away from her husband? How had we been saved? These and a hundred other puzzling questions darted through my mind, and I fear my attempts at conversation were poor and spiritless.

But one thing she told me roused my keen interest.

Day after day, she said, she had sat by my side, many times every day, softly calling my name. Doctor Feng was responsible. He had an idea—perhaps because he knew my love for Thelma—that her voice might be the means of rousing me from my stupor. And, thank God, the experiment had succeeded, though Thelma confessed she had almost given up hope after many weary weeks. At last, after hundreds of failures, her call had reached my subconscious mind, the dormant cells of memory had suddenly awakened, my unbalanced mind once again returned to its normal state.

As I looked into her great grey eyes, I saw how filled she was with anxiety concerning me. I gazed at her in silence. The suffering she had undergone seemed to have had no power to mar her great personal beauty. Though her face was colorless it was calm, and her eyes were full of sadness.

One subject alone was uppermost in both our hearts, but old Feng had forbidden us to mention it. Therefore as we strolled along together through the gay streets of Cannes with its well-dressed merry-making throngs, our conversation was but a stilted one.

To me that passing hour seemed a year. Soon I was to learn the truth so long hidden—the secret of the great mystery was to be solved, for I saw from Doctor Feng’s manner that he knew the truth, and would at last disclose it.

When at last the hour passed and we returned to the Beau Site, Thelma took me up in the lift to a comfortable private suite where, in the sitting-room, Feng was standing before the window which gave a wide view of the Mediterranean, calm in the amber glow of late afternoon.

“Let us sit down,” he said, and I noticed how much more marked his slight American accent had become. “What I have to tell you, Yelverton, will take some little time. It will surprise you too, for it is a remarkable and complicated story—an amazing hotchpotch of love, hate, avarice, and a callous, cruel cunning perfectly devilish. I may as well begin at the beginning.”

I took an easy chair and the old man went on with his strange history.

“First of all,” he said, “it is necessary to go back to the days when Thelma’s father was alive and on the China station. You will remember I told you he was able to render a very great service to Sung-tchun, who was one of the leaders of the Thu-tseng. Exactly what that service was we shall never know—the secret would involve too many men who are still alive.

“But whatever it was, it was very important—very much more than a mere matter of organizing the escape of Sung-tchun from Siberia. That, of course, was important, but, after all, it was only a matter of one man’s life. There must have been something far greater, of which we shall probably never learn.

“Do you remember my once saying to you that the arm of the Thu-tseng was long?”

I nodded. I remembered perfectly the old chap’s grave look as he spoke the words. I had little suspected their tremendous import.

“Well,” Feng continued, “you and Thelma have to thank the Crystal Claw for the fact that you are alive today. Had I not been at Mürren when it arrived, had I not know its significance, the devilish plot planned by Humphreys must have succeeded.

“I did not know when I arrived at Mürren any of the facts that soon after came into my possession. That I should have been there was one of the wonderful instances of the working of Providence.

“The arrival of the Crystal Claw fairly staggered me. Never before has it been bestowed upon a European. I knew at once that around Mrs. Audley some tremendous story must hang. I am not unknown in the Thu-tseng and I determined to get at the truth. What I learned in reply to my cables both surprised and alarmed me. It showed me that Mrs. Audley was in terrible danger. It put me at once on my guard with reference to Hartley Humphreys. From that time forward he was under almost incessant supervision.

“Now here are the essential facts. Sung-tchun was an extremely wealthy man—how wealthy no one exactly knew. He made a very remarkable will, in which he left the whole of his vast fortune to Miss Thelma Shaylor.”

Thelma started violently. “Left a fortune to me!” she burst out. “Why I never heard a word about it.”

“No,” said Feng, “there was a proviso in the will that except for some grave reason, of which the trustees were to be the judges, you were not to be told until you reached the age of twenty-one. Sung-tchun was anxious that you should not be exposed to the advances of mere fortune-hunters until you were old enough to have had a reasonable experience of the world.

“Now if the will had contained nothing else there would have been no difficulty: you would have been perfectly safe. Unfortunately Sung-tchun added a codicil which was, as events proved, to bring you into terrible peril.

“That codicil provided that if you died childless the vast bulk of Sung-tchun’s wealth should devolve upon a Chinese named Chi-ho who was living in New York. Now here is a crucial fact. Chi-ho was hopelessly in the power of Hartley Humphreys.

“Humphreys learned of the provisions of Sung-tchun’s will. He had lived in China; he knew the country well and he was very wealthy. By the treachery of an official of the Thu-tseng he learned of that fatal codicil. It was an amazing instance of leakage of information for which the history of the Thu-tseng knows no parallel and the offender has expiated his crime by the forfeit of his life.

“Chi-ho probably never realized the vastness of the sum to which he would be entitled if Thelma died childless. Humphreys, no doubt, only told him part of the truth. Chi-ho, in consideration of getting his freedom from Humphreys made over to the latter, in strictly legal form, all his interests under the will of Sung-tchun. That document was found among Humphreys’ papers after his death, of which Thelma has already told you.

“Very soon after that document was signed Chi-ho died—stabbed to death in what was said to be a tong feud in the Chinatown district of New York. I cannot say with certainty that the whole thing was arranged by Hartley Humphreys but Chi-ho’s death was very convenient to him.

“Now you have this interesting position: only Thelma’s life stood between Hartley Humphreys and the Sung-tchun fortune.

“All these facts came to me by cable—in code, of course, from Canton. I did not think it necessary or desirable to tell you and of course I had no permission to reveal the fact that Thelma was a great heiress. But I was keenly on the watch. My Canton correspondent warned me very specifically to beware of Hartley Humphreys, whose secret record in China—outwardly he was of the highest respectability—was appalling. And the Thu-tseng knew all there was to know about him.

“That will explain to you, Yelverton, Humphreys’ alarm when he saw the Crystal Claw. He knew it might mean anything—for instance that Thelma was being watched over and guarded by the agents of the most powerful secret society in the world. If that were the case, he knew, a single false step would mean his certain ruin—perhaps even his death.”

“You didn’t seem much concerned about his alarm when I told you,” I interrupted.

“No,” said the doctor with a smile, “it wasn’t necessary. I should not have been surprised if the sight of the Crystal Claw had frightened him off his scheme. But his avarice was evidently so unbounded that he was willing to run any risk for the sake of money.

“Now comes a curious part of the story that I think Mrs. Audley had better tell herself.” He turned to Thelma. “Please tell Mr. Yelverton about your marriage,” he said.

“Well,” said Thelma, hesitatingly. “I was introduced to Stanley Audley at a dance at Harrogate. He was an electrical engineer and was apparently also possessed of considerable means. We met frequently. Twice I had tea at his rooms in London and one day at the Savoy he introduced me to Harold Ruthen who, I understood, was a newly formed acquaintance of his.

“Mother rather liked Stanley, who always spoke enthusiastically of his firm, Messrs. Gordon & Austin, the great electrical supply company, and of his eagerness for advancement. When we became engaged mother raised no objection, for he was so keen and enthusiastic in everything. One day he motored me down to a place called ‘Crowmarsh,’ near Wallingford, where I found he possessed a fine old-world house, where we were to live when we married. I was charmed with it and we both spent a glorious day there. Three weeks later we were, as you know, quietly married at St. James’ church in Piccadilly, and went at once out to Switzerland for our honeymoon, where we met you both.

“Then one morning Stanley received a telegram. When he read it he became both confused and alarmed. He did not show me the message, but told me that it was imperative that he should return to London at once. I now recollect that we were in the hall of the Kürhaus when the concierge handed him the message, and seated in his invalid chair, near the big stove on the right, was old Mr. Humphreys, whom I did not then know, but who was no doubt watching us intently.”

“He had followed you to Mürren with a very definite object,” Feng went on. “He must have been watching you for some months beforehand, and I have no doubt your sudden marriage was a severe blow to his plans.

“I had serious difficulty in making friends with him. Of course he knew I was a Chinese and I really believe that he suspected at first that I was an agent of the Thu-tseng. It was only when he found that I had been at Mürren some time before Thelma and Audley arrived—and therefore, he thought, could not be specially interested in them—that I succeeded in getting inside his guard. Of course, by posing as his friend, I was able much more easily to keep track of his movements.

“Do you remember your escape from the avalanche?”

“Rather!” said Thelma and I simultaneously.

“Perhaps you will be surprised to learn that that avalanche was not the unaided work of Nature,” said the doctor. “You did not notice a man some hundreds of feet above you?”

“No,” I said, “but what do you mean?”

“It’s a very easy thing to start an avalanche,” said Feng with a smile. “There was a man above you that day and the avalanche was started deliberately. Your guide John found out the truth afterwards. But the would-be assassin—I have no doubt he was in the pay of Humphreys—was never traced and the matter was hushed up. It would not have done to let Humphreys know that the truth was suspected. As a matter of fact I did suspect it and implored John to investigate.

“But with regard to Stanley Audley I confess I was completely misled. When he received that telegram recalling him to London I believed that the story he had told you about his profession as electrical engineer, was a true one. Only when it was proved to be without foundation did I see that I, like yourself, had been cleverly bamboozled. Until then I had believed Audley to be what he represented himself to be. I never dreamed of the truth. Hartley Humphreys, a crook to his finger tips, possessed a master-mind, obsessed by criminality, and having no idea of my actual purpose he acted with such amazing cunning and forethought that he must be placed among the list of the master-criminals of the world.”

“Of course I had no suspicion,” said Thelma. “I didn’t even know that I was an heiress.”

“And I was fool enough to think that Humphreys was my friend and you were my enemy, Doctor,” I said with some shame as I thought of how completely I had been deceived.

“Well,” laughed Feng, “that’s all over now. But I’m glad I was able to deceive you because it helped me to deceive Humphreys. He was quite aware of your feeling towards me. You are fairly transparent, Yelverton, if you don’t mind my saying so!”

“The position was very extraordinary. Humphreys got Audley out of the way—I will explain that later—and that, he thought, would leave Thelma unprotected. But he never expected your interest in the bride. You became a very unwelcome bit of grit in a very well-oiled machine. You were constantly with Thelma, she was never left alone for a moment—and you were in the way.”

And the shrewd old man smiled mysteriously.

CHAPTER XXII
THE SECRET DISCLOSED

“But what was the mystery of Audley’s disappearance?” I asked Feng, in breathless eagerness, now that the enigma was in course of solution.

“Well, Humphreys at first did his level best to prevent the marriage, but finding that impossible he went very cleverly to work. Audley, who was a young man of means—though he pretended that his profession was that of electrical engineer—had, Humphreys discovered, fallen into the hands of a man named Graydon, a friend of his, who lived in the same house as Audley and who was one of a gang of note forgers.

“By clever means this gang had used Audley for their own purposes, even to the extent of sometimes inducing him to assume Graydon’s identity. Harold Ruthen was one of Graydon’s accomplices in passing spurious notes, hence old Humphreys knew of Audley’s connection with the forgers. After Thelma’s marriage which he had tried in vain to prevent, it was highly necessary for the furtherance of Humphreys’ sinister plan, to get her husband away. He therefore caused to be sent to him at Mürren a veiled message that the police were making inquiries in London and that he had better at once efface himself, even from his wife. This he did, leaving Thelma in your care.”

“But was Stanley really a forger?” I asked.

“At first I thought so, but later I found that the poor fellow had acted in all innocence. He was being blackmailed by the gang and thus forced to assist them, until he received that warning and fled,” replied Feng. “I was all the time watching the very deep game played by the wily old crook who posed as an invalid. With Audley out of the way he expected that it would be easy to complete his plans. Instead, to his great chagrin, you came forward as the bride’s companion and protector. It was then that he determined, if you still continued to watch over the girl, from whose husband he had contrived to part her, that your activities should be suppressed. It then became my active duty to keep guard over both of you, which I did to the best of my ability.

“It was, of course, a difficult task. Had he been in New York you would both have been watched night and day by men of the Thu-tseng. The Chinese make the finest ‘shadowers’ in the world and in New York they are so very numerous that I could employ them with impunity. In London they are too conspicuous. It was really through this that Humphreys nearly beat me at the finish.

“But I will give you an instance of how narrowly you escaped. Do you remember one night when we all had supper with Humphreys at a Chinese restaurant near Piccadilly Circus?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“And you remember that I signalled to you not to eat the cold soup that was served?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I thought you meant it was something I should not like.”

“You would have been dead in five days if you had eaten it,” said Feng grimly. “It was by a miracle of luck that I saw Humphreys drop into it a tiny pellet as he reached his hand out for some bread. The Chinese waiter took your soup away. Humphreys did not notice the Chinese remark I made to the waiter, but that soup was preserved and analyzed. It contained a virulent culture of the germs of typhoid fever. The Chinese waiter, of course, was an agent of the Thu-tseng. I daresay you will meet him some day. He happens to be a doctor and a great friend of mine. He analyzed the soup for me. If you had taken a spoonful of it while Humphreys was telling the funny stories at which you were laughing, you would have been dead in five days—of perfectly natural causes.”

“But, Thelma. Did you know anything of all this?” I asked turning to her, astounded and muddled.

“Some of the facts I knew, but not all,” she replied. “I hope you will forgive me, but I acted all along upon Doctor Feng’s instructions. At Mürren I knew nothing, and was entirely unsuspicious of the plot against us both.”

“Humphreys had degenerated into perhaps the cleverest financial crook in Eastern Europe,” said Feng. “The way in which he held Audley aloof from his wife while his friends Graydon and Ruthen were at the same time terrorizing him and compelling him to assist in passing their spurious notes, was a most remarkable feature of the case. He acted with such caution and pre-arranged things so cunningly, that I confess I was more than once misled and befogged.

“It was he who sent you those warnings from Hammersmith and North London in an endeavor to frighten you off. He certainly had a sort of superstitious fear of you. My chief fear for Thelma was that she might be secretly poisoned in a similar manner to the attempt upon yourself. Therefore I insisted that she should never take her meals in a restaurant alone.”

“And I was in ignorance,” I exclaimed.

“I deemed it best. I did not wish to alarm either of you, and indeed it is only since the narrow escape you both had at Heathermoor Gardens that I revealed to Thelma the motive of the plot. I did not suspect that terrible death-trap, but as soon as Thelma was missing I naturally felt that she must have fallen into the hands of one or other of the gang. Judge my surprise when I discovered that she surreptitiously, at Audley’s request, rejoined him in hiding at a small private hotel in Gloucester Road, Kensington. Audley was in constant dread of the police, an apprehension kept alive by Ruthen and Graydon, and for that reason he destroyed his clothes and some false notes before escaping from the room at Lancaster Gate. He turned the key from the outside, in order further to mystify those whom he believed to be his pursuers.”

“I was his pursuer,” I remarked.

“True. But he was avoiding you, as well as the police,” Feng said. “He was told that you were making inquiries concerning him on his wife’s behalf and would, if you gained the truth, reveal it to her. Naturally, he had no desire that Thelma should know that the police were wanting him upon grave charges of forgery.”

“But why did he not openly defy those men into whose hands he fell before his marriage?” I asked. “Surely, he could have cleared himself and have given information to the police.”

“Ah! Humphreys, the criminal with the master-mind took very good care that he was so deeply implicated that he dare not utter a word,” my friend pointed out. “Recollect his determination was that Thelma, alone and without friends except her mother, should meet with an untimely end in order that the Sung-tchun fortune should pass to him.

“First, however, she married unexpectedly, and, secondly, you came upon the scene as her protector. It was for that reason an attempt was first made to poison you, and then that clever plot at Stamford whereby you were drugged by that final cigarette given you by the supposed commercial traveler, who afterwards entered your room, forced against your lips a bottle containing a deadly drug, and made it appear as though you had committed suicide. Humphreys believed that you knew too much, so he intended that you should die before the girl over whom you were so carefully watching. He had no idea, however, of the part I was playing—until the police went to arrest him.”

“But could you not have told me the truth long ago—and given me warning?” I asked.

“That was impossible,” he replied. “Remember I warned you repeatedly. You would only have laughed had I told you Humphreys was your enemy: you were already deeply prejudiced against me. Thelma, too, tried to induce you to give the whole thing up, but you refused. Had Humphreys known that you suspected him he would have had you both murdered out of hand and chanced detection. But as things were he elected to wait until he could devise a plot that would be absolutely safe. So long as Stanley Audley was out of the way there was no need for him to do anything rash. And by his patience he nearly won in the end.”

“But he very nearly lost,” I said. “Suppose Thelma and I had been burnt to death. We could never have been identified and Humphreys could not have proved Thelma’s death. That meant he could not have inherited her fortune at any rate until sufficient time had elapsed for the Courts to presume her death.”

“You are a lawyer, Yelverton, and of course that point would occur to you. But it also occurred to Humphreys—another instance of his amazing foresight—and he took steps accordingly. Thelma, show Mr. Yelverton your locket.”

With a smile Thelma took from her pocket a heavy locket attached to a chain and handed it to me. I was astonished at its massiveness and weight, until I saw both locket and chain were of platinum. On the front of the locket was deeply engraved the inscription, “Thelma Audley—from Stanley.”

“Platinum; you see, Yelverton!” said old Feng.

I gasped in astonishment at the realization of Humphreys’ cleverness.

“Of course,” I said, “it would resist the fire, the locket would be found in the débris and Thelma’s disappearance would be explained, in part at any rate.”

“Yes,” rejoined Feng, “the locket would account for Thelma and what more natural than the conclusion that the remains of the man found with her were those of her husband?”

“But what has become of Stanley?” I asked, wondering why Thelma was here without him.

“Stanley Audley is dead,” said Feng very gently, and I noticed the slow tears begin to trickle down Thelma’s face. “He died like a hero. It was he who rescued Thelma from the blazing room. By some extraordinary chance the fire seems to have spread mainly in your direction and Thelma escaped with the loss of most of her clothing and her hair which was almost burnt off. But poor Stanley was so terribly burned that he died three days later in the hospital. There is no doubt he loved Thelma deeply and utterly regretted the trouble he had brought upon her.”

Stanley Audley dead! I held my breath! Then Thelma was free! Such was my involuntary reflection.

Thelma was weeping softly. I hardly dared look at her. But I put out my hand and clasped hers. She turned her head away and gazed in silence at the golden glow in the west across the sea. But she did not withdraw her hand and a great wave of joy flooded through me.

“But how did we escape?” I asked Feng.

“We were only in the nick of time,” he replied. “When Thelma disappeared from her husband in Gloucester Road I felt certain that she had been decoyed away. She was—by a message purporting to come from her husband asking her to call at Heathermoor Gardens. She did so and fell into the hands of the man who intended she should die. Yet so clever was old Humphreys, that, though I kept him under close observation, I could not discern that he was acting at all suspiciously. I did not know of course, of his plot to burn you alive. But we were watching him very closely. That night Stanley and I tracked him to the house at Hampstead. We saw you arrive later, but we little dreamed that Thelma was held there a drugged and helpless prisoner. She screamed twice, apparently, and you heard her, but some accomplice of Humphreys’ gave her a hypodermic injection—we found the mark afterwards on her arm.

“We watched until the first man-servant came out and later Humphreys himself left the place and walking in some distance away concealed himself in full view of the house. Then I knew you were left in there, and I became seriously alarmed.

“Fortunately a constable was near, and unseen by the old villain I approached him, told him of my suspicions, and we all three approached the house together. To our rings and knocks there was no answer, therefore we forced the door and rushed in. As we opened the door of the room where you were, we saw the air-ball burst and in a second the room was a furnace.

“Then came a desperate fight for life. Audley dashed to Thelma and succeeded in getting her out into the street at the cost of his own life, while I and the constable cut the rope which secured your wrists, and carried you out terribly burned and insensible. Both the constable and I were also burned, but not very seriously. Before the fire brigade arrived the house had been seriously damaged: but for our early warning it must have been utterly destroyed, as Humphreys intended.

“Meanwhile, Humphreys, who had seen the failure of his plot, made himself scarce and it was not until three days later that Inspector Cayley of Scotland Yard, with two sergeants traced him to a room in Earl’s Court Road, where he was hiding. But the old criminal had locked himself in and before they could break open the door he had put a bullet through his brain. A week ago both Ruthen and Graydon were arrested at the Pavilion Hotel in Boulogne on charges of passing spurious notes in various towns in France. They will, no doubt, go to hard labor for some years.”

“Well, Yelverton,” the old man concluded, “I think you know everything now. You have both had a very narrow escape from a terrible fate. Only a devil in human form could have devised such an atrocity. But now I’ll leave you alone for a bit: you will have plenty to talk about.”

And with a cheery smile and a loving look at Thelma, the sturdy, bearded old man, to whose watchfulness we both owed our lives, turned on his heel and left the room.

The calm Riviera sunset had deepened into twilight, swiftly as it always does, and the night clouds rising over the pine-clad Esterels cast their long grey shadows across the calm sea. Beneath our window twinkling lights shone and from among the orange graves below came voices and merry laughter.

I had been speaking earnestly to Thelma—pleading with her all the fervor of the love I had so long held in restraint but which, now she was free, poured out with violence that overwhelmed me. She heard me without comment or response. But she made no protest, she allowed me to hold her hand, even when I pressed it tenderly to my lips she did not withdraw it.

The hope that had never quite died rose again in my heart. I felt Thelma trembling; a beautiful warmth that I had never seen before glowed upon her cheeks, her eyes were lustrous with the brilliancy of tears which welled up into them but did not fall. She stood looking out across the broad Mediterranean towards the African coast which the colors of the sunset paled into the faint splendor of the afterglow.

The light was nearly gone, and still she made no sign. But presently words failed me and I simply stood and held out my arms in a last despairing appeal.

Then my darling came to me, slowly and sweetly, her great grey eyes aflame with a light I had never seen before. And our lips met at last.

We were married in October and spent our honeymoon in Seville and Malaga. Christmas found us at the Hotel Regina at Wengen, a little below Mürren, where we both went skiing daily. We visited Mürren, of course, hallowed to us for all time as the place of that strange first meeting from which all our troubles and all our happiness had sprung.

We are rich, of course, Sung-tchun’s fortune was enormous. But we live very quietly in my old home—my father’s quaint, old-world cottage on the Salisbury road a few miles from Andover. Most of our income, apart from our own modest wants, goes to help the slum children of London. Thelma never tires of them and every summer forms a big camp to which hundreds come down for a few days’ glorious holiday. They all seem to worship her and over even the roughest of them she seems to exercise a magical fascination.

Old Doctor Feng, to whom we owe so much, is our chief friend. He comes and goes as he pleases. There is a room reserved for him and always ready. Devoted to Thelma, he spends much of his time with us. He never tires of talking of the Crystal Claw, the magic talisman that saved us for each other. And every now and again, with his inimitable chuckle, he croaks out, “Yelverton, I told you the arm of the Thu-tseng was long!”

It was long indeed. It stretched half across the world to give us—two tiny units caught in a cruel trap—a helping hand in our dire distress. We owe our wealth, our radiant happiness, our very lives to the magical influence of the Crystal Claw.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.