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_Title:_ The Adventures of Mr. Joseph P. Cray
_Date of first publication:_ 1925
_Author:_ E. (Edward) Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946)
_Date first posted:_ Jan. 20, 2016
_Date last updated:_ Jan. 20, 2016
Faded Page eBook #20160125
This ebook was produced by: Alex White & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
* * * * *
_The Adventures of Mr. Joseph P. Cray_
* * * * *
───────────────────────────────────────────
_THE NOVELS OF_
_E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM_
───────────────────────────────────────────
THE LESSER SIN
THE TERRIBLE HOBBY OF SIR JOSEPH LONDE, BT.
THE GOLDEN WEB
THE PASSIONATE QUEST
THE INEVITABLE MILLIONAIRES
THE MYSTERY ROAD
MICHAEL’S EVIL DEEDS
THE SEVEN CONUNDRUMS
THE EVIL SHEPHERD
THE AMAZING QUEST OF MR. ERNEST BLISS
NOBODY’S MAN
THE GREAT PRINCE SHAN
THE PROFITEERS
THE DEVIL’S PAW
JACOB’S LADDER
THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. JOCELYN THEW
AARON RODD—DIVINER
AMBROSE LAVENDALE—DIPLOMAT
THE DOUBLE TRAITOR
THE WICKED MARQUIS
MR. LESSINGHAM GOES HOME
THE PAWNS COUNT
HAVOC
THE OTHER ROMILLY
THE LIGHTED WAY
THE TEMPTATION OF TAVERNAKE
THE MISCHIEF MAKER
THE FALLING STAR
THE PLUNDERERS
PETER RUFF
THE BLACK WATCHER
THE BLACK BOX
THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND
THE ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE
───────────────────────────────────────────
_LONDON : HODDER & STOUGHTON LTD._
───────────────────────────────────────────
THE ADVENTURES
OF
MR. JOSEPH P. CRAY
BY
E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
H O D D E R A N D S T O U G H T O N
LIMITED||LONDON
* * * * *
_Printed in Great Britain by_
_Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London, Fakenham and Reading._
_Contents_
I. THE DONVERS CASE
II. THE TWO PHILANTHROPISTS
III. PUSSYFOOT IN MISCHIEF
IV. THE RECKONING WITH OTTO SCHREED
V. THE RIFT
VI. “SATAN AND THE SPIRIT”
VII. MR. HOMOR’S LEGACY
VIII. THE PAST LIFE OF MR. SENN. _Part I._
IX. THE PAST LIFE OF MR. SENN. _Part II._
X. MR. CRAY RETURNS HOME
I The Donvers Case
The long Continental train drew slowly into Victoria Station, and
through a long vista of wide-flung doors a heterogeneous stream of
demobilised soldiers, nurses, “Wrafs,” and other of the picturesque
accompaniments of a concluded war, flowed out on to the platform. The
majority lingered about to exchange greetings with friends and to search
for their luggage. Not so Mr. Joseph P. Cray. Before the train had come
to a standstill, he was on his way to the barrier.
“Luggage, sir?” inquired a porter, attracted by the benevolent
appearance of this robust-looking, middle-aged gentleman in the uniform
of the American Y.M.C.A.
“Checked my baggage right through,” Mr. Cray replied, without slackening
speed. “What I need is a taxi. What you need is five shillings. Let’s
get together.”
Whether he was serving a lunatic or not, the five shillings was good
money and the porter earned it. In exactly two minutes after the arrival
of the train, Mr. Cray was on his way to the Milan Hotel. The streets
were not overcrowded. The driver had seen the passing of that munificent
tip and gathered that his fare was in a hurry. They reached the Milan in
exactly nine minutes. Even then Mr. Cray had the strained appearance of
a man looking into futurity.
He stopped the driver at the Court entrance, fulfilled the latter’s
wildest dreams with regard to emolument, and presented himself eagerly
before the little counter.
“Key of 89, Johnson,” he demanded. “Get a slither on.”
“Why, it’s Mr. Cray!” the hall-porter exclaimed, after a single startled
gaze at the newcomer’s uniform. “Glad to see you back again, sir. Here’s
your key, sent over half-an-hour ago.”
Mr. Cray snatched at it.
“Any packages?” he demanded over his shoulder, as he made for the lift.
“A whole heap of them, sir,” was the reassuring reply. “All in your
room.”
Mr. Cray slipped half-a-crown into the lift-man’s hand, made pantomimic
signs with his palm, and they shot upwards without reference to the slow
approach of a little party of intended passengers. Out stepped Mr. Cray
on the fourth floor, and his face beamed as he recognised the valet
standing before number eighty-nine.
“Hot bath, James,” he shouted. “Set her going.”
“Certainly, Mr. Cray, sir,” the man replied, disappearing. “Glad to see
you back again.”
“Gee, it’s good!” the new-comer exclaimed, dashing into the bedroom.
“Off with the ornaments.”
No convict ever doffed his prison garb with more haste and greater joy
than did Mr. Joseph P. Cray divest himself of the honourable though
somewhat unsuitable garments for a man of his build which he had worn
for the last two years. The absurd little tunic looked shorter still as
it lay upon the bed, his cow-puncher hat more shapeless than ever, his
ample breeches—they needed to be ample, for Mr. Cray’s figure was
rotund—collapsed in strange fashion as they sank shamelessly upon the
floor. Naked as the day on which he was born, Mr. Cray strode unabashed
into the bathroom.
“Get me some clothes ready out of those packages, James,” he directed.
“Bring a dressing-gown and underclothes in here. Get busy.”
Then for a quarter of an hour Mr. Cray steamed and gurgled, splashed and
grunted. His ablutions completed, he dried himself, thrust his legs into
some white silk pants, drew a vest to match over his chest, and trotted
into the next room. He was still in a hurry.
“Dinner clothes, James,” he ordered. “Slip over a white shirt. Speed’s
the one and only.”
“You’re in a hurry, Mr. Cray,” the man observed, smiling, as he handed
him his garments.
“I’ve been in a hurry for twelve months,” was the feeling reply.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Cray left the room. The strained expression was
still in his face. He rang for the lift, descended like a man absorbed
with great thoughts, walked through the grill-room, climbed the stairs,
passed through the smoke-room, and stood before the bar before he
slackened speed.
“Why, it’s Mr. Cray!” one of the young ladies declared.
“Two dry Martinis in one glass,” Mr. Cray directed reverently. “Just a
squeeze of lemon in, no absinthe, shake it till it froths.”
The young lady chatted as she obeyed instructions. Mr. Cray, though a
polite man, appeared suddenly deaf. Presently the foaming glass was held
out to him. He raised it to his lips, closed his eyes and swallowed.
When he set it down, that look had passed from his face. In its place
shone the light of an ineffable and beatific contentment.
“First drink in twelve months,” he explained. “Just mix up another kind
of quietly, will you? I’ll sit around for a bit.”
* * * * *
“Mr. Cray! . . . Mr. Cray! . . . Mr. Joseph P. Cray!”
Mr. Cray, who was engaged in a lively conversation with a little group
of old and new acquaintances, broke off suddenly in the midst of an
animated chapter of reminiscences.
“Say, boy,” he called out, “who’s wanting me?”
The boy advanced.
“Lady to see you, sir, in the hall,” he announced.
“Have you got that right, my child?” Mr. Cray asked incredulously.
“Mr. Joseph P. Cray, to arrive from France this evening,” was the
confident reply.
“That’s me, sure,” the person designated, admitted, rising to his feet
and brushing the ash from his waistcoat. “See you later, boys. The next
round is on me.”
Mr. Cray made his contented but wondering way into the lounge. A tall
and very elegant-looking young woman rose to her feet and came to meet
him. Mr. Cray’s eyes shone and his smile was wonderful.
“Sara!” he gasped. “Gee, this is great!”
“Dad!” she replied, saluting him on both cheeks. “You old dear!”
They went off arm in arm to a corner.
“To think of your being here to welcome me!” Mr. Cray murmured
ecstatically.
“And why not?” the young lady replied. “If ever any one deserved a
welcome home, it’s you. Twelve months’ work in a Y.M.C.A. hut in France
is scarcely a holiday.”
“And never a single drink,” Mr. Cray interrupted solemnly.
“Marvellous!” she exclaimed. “But was that necessary, dad?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess they don’t all know how to
use liquor as I do. Some of the lads out there get gay on nothing at
all. So the day I put the uniform on, I went on the water waggon. I took
it off,” he murmured, with a reminiscent smile of joy, “an hour and a
half ago. . . . Where’s George?”
“Sailed for the States yesterday.”
“You don’t say!”
Sara nodded.
“He’s gone out to Washington on a Government commission. He’d have been
here—sent all sorts of messages to you.”
“Not ashamed of his disreputable old father-in-law, eh?”
“Don’t be silly, dad. We’re all proud of you. George has said often that
he thinks it fine of a man of your age and tastes to go and work like
that. What are you going to do, dad, now?”
“Order dinner for us two, I hope, dear.”
“Just what I hoped for,” she declared. “I think it’s wonderful to have
your first evening together. What are your plans dad—stay over here for
a time?”
“Why, I should say so,” was the prompt reply. “You’ve heard what’s got
the old country?”
“You mean about Wilson?”
“Gone dry!” Mr. Cray exclaimed, in a tone of horror. “All the bars
selling soft drinks. Tea-fights at the saloons, and bad spirits at the
chemist’s. That’s what the old women we left at home did while we were
out fighting.”
“I’m afraid mother was one of them,” Sara observed.
“Your mother’s crazy about it,” Mr. Cray acknowledged. “She’s president
of half-a-dozen prohibition societies. She’s now working the
anti-tobacco stunt.”
“She doesn’t say anything about coming over, I suppose?” the young woman
asked, a little timidly.
“I should say not,” Mr. Cray replied, with a little shiver. “She’s too
busy over there.”
Sara slipped her hand through her father’s arm.
“We’ll have a lovely time for a month or two,” she said. “You know how
happy I am with George, but this English life is just a little cramped.
I suppose I must have some of your wandering spirit in me, dad. Anyhow,
for just these few months let’s see a lot of one another. You’re just as
fond of adventures as ever, aren’t you?”
A slow smile parted Mr. Cray’s lips, a fervid light shone in his eyes.
“Sara,” he whispered, “after the last twelve months I’m spoiling for
some fun. But you, my dear—you’re Lady Sittingbourne, you know. Got
your husband’s position to consider and all that.”
She laughed in his face.
“You can cut that out, dad, for a time,” she said. “Come along, now.
We’ll talk over dinner. I’m nearly starving, and I want to know if
you’ve forgotten how to order.”
As they took their places at a table in the corner of the restaurant,
Sara exchanged friendly greetings with a girl a short distance away, who
was dining alone with a man.
“Lydia Donvers,” she whispered to her father. “Lydia’s rather a dear.
She was at that wonderful school you sent me to at Paris. She’s only
been married a year.”
“They don’t seem to be living on a bed of roses exactly,” Mr. Cray
commented, glancing at the young man. “Seems all on wires, doesn’t he?
Has he had shell-shock?”
Sara shook her head.
“I don’t think he did any soldiering at all,” she replied. “He
volunteered once or twice, I know, but he couldn’t pass the medical
examination. He was in one of the Ministries at home.”
Cray’s interest in the couple evaporated. Without being a gourmand, he
loved good cooking, civilisation, the thousand luxuries of a restaurant
de luxe. He ordered his dinner as he ate it, slowly and with obvious
enjoyment. Nevertheless, he happened to be looking across the room when
a small page-boy in black livery approached the adjoining table and
presented a note to Donvers. He saw the look in the young man’s face as
he received the envelope, tore it open and glanced at the card inside.
Mr. Cray forgot his dinner just then. It was as though tragedy had been
brought into their midst. The young man spoke to the girl, hesitatingly,
almost apologetically. She answered with pleading, at last almost with
anger. Their dinner remained untasted. In the end, the man rose to his
feet and followed the boy from the room. The girl stayed behind.
“Queer little scene, that,” Mr. Cray whispered.
Sara nodded.
“I can’t think what’s the matter with Lydia,” she said.
“Kind of annoyed at having their little feast broken into, I guess,” her
father murmured soothingly.
Sara said nothing and for some moments her father sought and found
oblivion in the slow consumption of a perfectly cooked sole colbert.
“Gee, this fellow is the goods!” he murmured appreciatively. “If you’d
seen what they’ve been giving us over there, good solid tack enough, but
after the first month everything tasted alike. Thought I’d got paralysis
of the palate!”
“And nothing to drink, dad?”
“Not a spot,” declared Mr. Cray, with frenzied exaltation.
“I’m worried about Lydia,” Sara confided.
“She does look struck all of a heap,” Mr. Cray assented.
“I’m going across to speak to her, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray assented, with his eye fixed almost reverently upon the
grouse which the _maître d’hôtel_ was tendering for his inspection.
“Don’t wait for me, dad,” she begged.
“I won’t,” Mr. Cray promised. . . .
Mr. Cray ate his grouse with the deliberate and fervid appreciation of
the epicure, an appreciation unaffected by the fact that within a few
yards his quick sensibility told him that words of tragedy were being
spoken. It was obvious that Sara’s friend was confiding in her, and it
was obvious that the confidence was of tragical interest. In the midst
of it all, the young man who had been called away returned. He had the
look of a man making a strong effort to control his feelings. Mr. Cray,
who had seen much of life during the last two years, recognised the
signs. Not a word was audible, but when Sara, after her friend’s husband
had been presented to her, engaged him in earnest conversation, Mr. Cray
began to understand.
“A little job for me,” he murmured to himself, as he sipped his
champagne. “Pity about Sara’s grouse, though.”
She returned presently, and it was obvious that she had much to say. Mr.
Cray was firm.
“Not a word, Sara,” he insisted, “until you have eaten your portion of
grouse. Charles here has kept it hot for you. Not a word! I’m the stern
father about that bird. What you’ve got to say will keep ten minutes.”
Sara obeyed. She generally obeyed when her father was in earnest. It was
not until she found herself trifling with a _soufflé_, a dish for which
her companion had no respect whatever, that she was permitted to
unburden herself.
“Lydia is in great trouble, dad,” she confided. “There is something
wrong with her husband. She doesn’t know what it is, but he came home, a
fortnight ago, looking as though he had received a shock, and has never
been the same since. This is the third time he has been fetched away
from a restaurant by a page in that same livery.”
“I saw you talking to him when he came back.”
She nodded.
“I asked him right out what was the matter with him, and I told him
about you, dad, told him how clever you were at getting people out of
difficulties, and how you didn’t mind a little risk if there was an
adventure at the back of it. I think I impressed him. He says he can
promise you all the adventure you want, and they are coming here to take
their coffee.”
“If this isn’t some little burg!” Mr. Cray murmured ecstatically. “Just
two hours under the fogs and the wheel begins to turn!”
* * * * *
The arrival of Gerald Donvers and his wife, just as coffee was being
served, did not seem likely to contribute in any way towards the gaiety
of Mr. Cray’s evening. The young man at close quarters seemed more
distraught than ever. He ignored his coffee, but drank two glasses of
liqueur brandy quickly. His wife scarcely took her eyes off him, and
Sara’s attempts to inaugurate a little general conversation were
pitifully unsuccessful. Mr. Cray took the bull by the horns.
“Say, Mr. Donvers,” he began, “Sara here tells me that you’re up against
a snag somewhere. If there’s any way I can be of service, just open out.
You and I are strangers, but anything my daughter says goes, so you can
count on me as though I were an old friend.”
“You are very good,” the young man replied without enthusiasm. “I am in
a very terrible position—through my own fault, too. I am to attend a
sort of investigation to-night, and I am invited to bring any friend I
like who isn’t connected with any of the Services. If you’ll come along,
I’ll be glad, but I tell you frankly that I don’t think the shrewdest
man in the kingdom would be of any service to me.”
“That sounds hard,” Mr. Cray observed, “but if I’m not butting in I’ll
come along, with pleasure. What time is this show down?”
“We shall have to leave in five minutes,” the young man answered, with a
little shiver.
Mr. Cray withdrew the bottle from his companion’s reach.
“Take my advice and leave the strong stuff alone,” he said. “If it’s as
bad as it sounds, you’ll want your head clear.”
Donvers became no more communicative in the taxicab which drove them
presently to a gloomy house in one of the southern squares. They were
admitted by a soldier manservant, who ushered them into a
sombrely-furnished library on the ground floor. A man who was seated at
a desk—a grim, soldierly-looking person in the uniform of a
Colonel—glanced up at their entrance and nodded curtly. Seated in an
arm-chair was a pale-faced young woman in widow’s weeds, who turned her
head away at their entrance.
“You have brought a friend?” the Colonel inquired.
Donvers nodded in spiritless fashion.
“Mr. Joseph Cray—Colonel Haughton. Mr. Cray is an American and has not
been in England for two years.”
Colonel Haughton touched a bell by his side.
“Show the young lady in,” he directed the soldier servant who answered
it. “How much of this affair do you know, Mr. Cray?” he inquired coldly.
“Not a diddle,” was the emphatic reply. “I wanted Mr. Donvers to put me
wise on the way down, but he said he’d rather leave it to you.”
Colonel Haughton made no reply. There was a knock at the door and a
young woman was ushered in. She was fashionably dressed, and her face
was familiar enough to any one studying the weekly papers. Mr. Cray
recognised a compatriot at once. The woman in the chair glanced up at
the girl and then away. Every now and then her shoulders shook. The
Colonel pointed to a chair.
“Will you be seated, Miss Clare?” he said. “You gentlemen, please
yourselves. I propose to recapitulate this unfortunate case for your
benefit, Mr. Cray. I have my own ideas as to the course which Donvers
should adopt.”
“Go right ahead,” Mr. Cray invited genially. “I’m kind of cramped in the
legs with travelling to-day, so I’ll take an easy-chair if there’s no
objection.”
“A year ago,” Colonel Haughton said, speaking in sentences of sharp,
military brevity, “Donvers here held an appointment in a certain British
Ministry. It was his duty frequently to bring dispatches of great
importance to a certain branch of the War Office over which I presided.
On one occasion, Donvers appears most improperly to have broken his
journey at Miss Clare’s flat in Clarges Street.”
“There was no breaking the journey,” Donvers interrupted. “My
instructions were to deliver the dispatches into your own hands, and
when I got to the War Office you were out for an hour. I came up to have
tea with Miss Clare instead of waiting in the Office.”
“Mr. Donvers left his wallet of dispatches hanging in Miss Clare’s
hall,” Colonel Haughton continued, “a disgracefully careless proceeding.
When he found me at the War Office that evening, he handed me two
envelopes instead of three. He said nothing to me about the third, but,
realising the loss, returned to Miss Clare’s and searched his own rooms.
Miss Clare knew nothing about the possibly missing dispatch, Donvers
could discover nothing in his rooms. In the meantime, a prisoner in the
Tower was shot at midnight that night. The contents of the letter which
never reached me, would have saved him.”
The woman in mourning began to sob. Donvers wiped the perspiration from
his forehead.
“Say, that’s bad,” Mr. Cray admitted.
“Owing to information patriotically tendered by Miss Clare,” Colonel
Haughton continued, “a constant visitor to her flat was arrested soon
afterwards and dealt with in the usual way. He admitted having opened
the dispatches which he found in Donvers’ wallet, and made use of their
contents. The one which he could not open he took away, and finding it
of no interest to his cause, destroyed it. The situation, therefore,
amounts to this. Owing to the criminal carelessness of Donvers, a young
American whose innocence was beyond doubt, was shot for a spy.”
The woman in mourning looked up. Her eyes flashed fiercely across the
room.
“My husband!” she sobbed, “All that I had in the world!”
Donvers looked at Cray as though pleading for his intercession. Cray
turned to the young woman.
“Madam,” he said, “may I ask your name?”
“Ellen Saunderson,” was the tearful reply. “My husband was Joe
Saunderson. He was as innocent as you or I. The letter which never
reached Colonel Haughton would have proved it.”
Mr. Cray fingered his chin thoughtfully.
“Shot for a spy, eh,” he ruminated, “and that letter contained reports
which would have saved him. Say, that’s hard! Has any official notice
been taken of this matter?” he continued, turning to the Colonel.
“Mr. Donvers came to me a few days later,” the Colonel said, “and
confessed that he had not delivered to me one of the dispatches
entrusted to him, and explained that he was not in a position to trace
it. A few days later, the contents of that dispatch reached me
officially. I advised Mr. Donvers to tender his resignation, which he
did. Communications have passed in secrecy between a certain department
of the American Secret Service and our own, concerning this unfortunate
mistake. It has been decided, for obvious reasons, that it shall not be
made a Press matter. The question we now have to discuss is the amount
of compensation which shall be offered to Mrs. Saunderson.”
The woman turned away wearily.
“Compensation!” she murmured bitterly. “That won’t give me back Joe.”
“I regret to say,” Colonel Haughton continued, “that I am not able to
procure for Mrs. Saunderson any official recompense. On the evidence
presented, the shooting of Joseph Saunderson was amply justified, and it
is the official view that, if recompense be tendered to the widow, a
mistake is admitted which might later have serious consequences. Mr.
Donvers has made an offer which Mrs. Saunderson rejected with scorn. I
will be perfectly frank to all of you. My interest in this matter is to
see Mrs. Saunderson receive adequate compensation, and further, in the
interests of my Department, to see that this matter is forgotten. If
Mrs. Saunderson is not satisfied, she will probably drag into light a
matter which, not for Donvers’ sake, but for the sake of the Department,
it is my wish to conceal. Mr. Donvers has offered—what was the sum,
Donvers?”
“Five thousand pounds,” the young man replied. “It is half the spare
money I have in the world.”
The woman turned around with a sudden burst of passion.
“You and your spare money!” she exclaimed. “Do you think your spare
money, as you call will bring back Joe—the husband I lost while you
stayed flirting with this hussy here?”
Miss Clare frowned, and her fingers twitched nervously.
“No shadow of blame can be attached to Miss Clare in this matter,” the
Colonel intervened coldly.
“Or to any one, I suppose?” the woman scoffed. “Look here,” she went on,
facing Donvers, “I don’t want your money—I’d rather work my fingers to
the bone than touch a penny of it—but I want to punish you, and if
you’re a poor man, so much the better. Ten thousand pounds I want from
you by midday to-morrow, and if I don’t have it, my story goes to the
newspapers for the world to read.”
There was a silence. Donvers turned towards his companion.
“How are you fixed financially?” Cray asked him.
“That five thousand pounds is my limit,” Donvers replied bitterly. “If I
have to find the rest, it will break up the business I’ve just started
and beggar me altogether.”
“And why shouldn’t you be beggared?” the woman demanded, her hands
working convulsively and her eyes filled with hate. “That’s what I want.
That’s why I say I’ll have ten thousand pounds to-morrow if it means
your last sixpence.”
There was an uneasy silence. Mr. Cray gathered up the threads of the
situation.
“It don’t seem like there’s any more to be said,” he declared. “If
you’ll bring the lady along to my rooms at the Milan Court to-morrow at
twelve o’clock, Colonel, I’ll go into this young man’s affairs in the
meantime and give him the best advice I can.”
The colonel glanced at his engagement book.
“I will come,” he promised, “but it is the last minute I can promise to
give to this unfortunate affair. It must be concluded then, one way or
the other.”
He touched the bell. His soldier servant opened the door. Cray and his
companion hurried off. The latter groaned as they reached the street.
“Very kind of you to come along, Mr. Cray,” he said, “but you can see
for yourself how hopeless the whole affair is. Not only have I got to go
about all my life with the memory of that poor young man’s death on my
conscience, but if I find that ten thousand pounds I shall be beggared.
There’s only one way out that I can think of.”
Mr. Cray was leaning back in his corner of the taxicab which they had
just picked up, his chin resting upon his folded arms. The young man
watched him furtively. It was not until they neared the Milan, however,
that Mr. Cray spoke.
“There may be another way,” he ventured. “I promise nothing, but be at
my rooms at twelve o’clock to-morrow to meet those people, and in the
meantime don’t make a fool of yourself. You’d better bring me a
statement of just how much you’ve got, five minutes before that time.”
* * * * *
Mr. Cray retired early, thoroughly enjoyed his first night in his
luxurious bedchamber, was up betimes, and spent a busy morning. At five
minutes to twelve, Donvers looking ghastly ill, presented himself and
handed over a folded slip of paper.
“I’ve put down everything I’m worth there,” he said. “If I have to find
a penny more than six thousand pounds, I’m done. I’ve come to the
conclusion,” he went on, “that the fairest way will be to divide all
I’ve got between that woman and my wife, and—disappear.”
“Sit down,” Mr. Cray replied. “I’ll make the bargain for you.”
There was a ring at the bell, a moment or two later, and Mrs. Saunderson
was ushered in. A single glance into her face robbed Donvers of any hope
he might have had. She was still lachrymose, but her face was set in
hard and almost vicious lines. Colonel Haughton arrived a few minutes
later. He received Mr. Cray’s welcome frigidly.
“I desire,” he said, refusing a chair, “as speedy a conclusion to this
affair as possible.”
“Miss Clare not coming?” Mr. Cray inquired, with unabated geniality.
“There is no necessity for her presence that I am aware of,” the Colonel
replied. “The only question that remains to be decided is whether Mr.
Donvers here is prepared to satisfy Mrs. Saunderson’s claims.”
Mr. Cray was suddenly a different man. The smile had left his broad,
good-natured face. His tone was still brisk, but as cold as the
Colonel’s.
“Colonel Haughton,” he said, “you want a show down. Here it is. The
whole thing is a ramp. Joe Saunderson was never shot, and you know it.
Neither was he ever married.”
“What the devil——” the Colonel began.
“Chuck it!” Mr. Cray interrupted. “Miss Clare, as you call her, is
married to one of the worst crooks in the States, although you, Colonel,
seem to have ruined yourself trying to support her for the last few
years. This woman was once her dresser, and a very fair actress still.
Joe Saunderson was in charge of the coffee urn in one of my Y.M.C.A.
huts for over six months, and I heard the story of his detention and
release, a dozen times. Now what are you going to do about it, Donvers?
It’s up to you.”
Donvers suddenly reeled and would have fallen but that Cray caught him
and laid him upon the couch. He forced some brandy between his teeth. In
a minute the young man opened his eyes, the colour came back to his
cheeks. He looked around him. Save for their two selves the room was
empty.
“Mr. Cray!” he gasped. “Is this true?”
“Bible truth,” Mr. Cray declared cheerfully.
“But Colonel Haughton? He’s a well-known man—a D.S.O.—head of his
department.”
“I guessed he was the goods,” Mr. Cray acknowledged. “They do give us
the knock sometimes, you know, these men whom no one would suspect.”
Donvers was on his feet now, going through all the phases of a rapid
recovery to sanity.
“And you actually knew this Joseph Saunderson?” he exclaimed
wonderingly.
“One of my washers-up,” Mr. Cray explained with unabated cheerfulness,
“who was promoted to the coffee urn two months ago. I’ve heard the story
of his arrest half-a-dozen times. . . . What about going and looking for
your wife, eh? I gave the ladies a hint that there might be something
doing in the way of a little luncheon.”
Mr. Cray led the way to the lounge, where Sara and Mrs. Donvers were
seated.
“You go and take your wife off somewhere, Mr. Donvers,” he said, “and
don’t let us see you again for an hour or so. If you wish it, we’ll all
dine together.”
“At eight o’clock, here,” Donvers declared enthusiastically. “I’m host,
and I promise you Jules shall do his best. I’ll try and say the things I
ought to say to you, then, Mr. Cray. I’m going to take Lydia right off
home now.”
Mr. Cray nodded sympathetically, and drew Sara away.
“It’s a long yarn, my dear,” he told her, “but things are fixed up all
right for young Donvers. He hasn’t a worry left in the world. You shall
have the whole story over luncheon.”
Sara grasped her father’s hand.
“Dad,” she exclaimed enthusiastically, “you’re a marvel! And to think
that we have three months together!”
That night, Colonel Haughton, D.S.O., shot himself in his study owing,
it was stated, to financial troubles and general depression, and Miss
Clare accepted a suddenly proffered engagement for the States. Gerald
Donvers’ dinner-party however, was not postponed.
II The Two Philanthropists
After two theatres and a music-hall on three consecutive nights, Mr.
Joseph P. Cray and his daughter Sara decided to spend a quiet evening.
They dined in the restaurant at the Milan, and selected two comfortable
easy-chairs in the lounge afterwards. They watched the people for some
time in silence. Mr. Cray in particular was a little distrait.
“Dad, I believe you’re planning something,” Sara remarked, as she lit
her second cigarette.
“Not guilty,” Mr. Cray assured her.
“Then tell me just what you are thinking of?” she insisted.
Mr. Cray removed his cigar from his lips.
“I was just wondering,” he confessed, “whether it was possible to
combine a little harmless excitement with a certain measure
of—er—pecuniary benefit.”
“But you don’t want money, dad.”
Mr. Cray coughed.
“I’m not qualifying for the poor-house yet awhile,” he admitted, “but at
the same time, if there were shekels about, I should be a willing
collector.”
“Business is all right over in the States, isn’t it?” she inquired.
“Booming,” Mr. Cray acknowledged. “There’s more money coming to me over
there than I should care to think about spending, but it’s like this,
Sara. If I should be cabling for supplies just now, your stepmother
would be wise to the fact that I’ve quit France. She’s a busy woman, but
she might take it into her head to take a quick trip over.”
“Good gracious, dad, don’t suggest such a thing!” Sara exclaimed
hastily. “You can have all the money you want, from me.”
“Nothing doing, my dear,” her father assured her. “I’m a bad hand at
borrowing. All the same it would certainly add a little spice to any
little adventure that might come along, if I were able to supply my
immediate necessities out of it.”
Sara glanced through the glass partitioning at the opulent-looking crowd
who dined, at the women in the lounge with their profusion of jewellery,
the men, many of them with the hard, acquisitive expression of the
day-by-day city man.
“There’s plenty of money about, dad,” she observed.
Mr. Cray thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets and rubbed two
half-crowns together.
“Sure!” he murmured. “Just a touch of inspiration’s all that’s needed.”
Sara left him for awhile, a few minutes later, to go to her room. She
was staying at the hotel whilst her house in Charles Street was being
renovated. Mr. Cray exchanged his cigarette for a fat cigar and
ruminated.
* * * * *
Towards him down the broad, carpeted way, came Mr. Sinclair Smith,
erstwhile of the Stock Exchange, and the Honourable Charles Frinton, of
no occupation. Mr. Sinclair Smith was of florid complexion, with a tight
mouth, narrow eyes, and an _embonpoint_ righteously earned. The
Honourable Charles Frinton, whose capacity for enjoying the good things
of the world was a trifle in excess of his companion’s, was as thin and
pale as a man may be. He, too, however, possessed that slight narrowing
of the eyes and indrawn lips which betokened the professional
money-getter. They were, in fact, birds of a feather.
“It seems a pity,” the Honourable Charles Frinton sighed, as they looked
around for a seat, “that we should be spending money on one another,
Sinny.”
“Your fault,” was the terse reply. “The supply of mugs up west seems to
be running out.”
Arm in arm, they slowly approached the easy-chair in which Mr. Cray was
seated. Frinton pinched his companion’s elbow.
“There’s the type I should like to get hold of,” he said
enviously—“easy, benevolent, opulent. Why can’t you drop a few of those
into the bag, Sinny?”
“Shut up, you fool,” was the muttered reply. “Can’t you see he thinks he
knows us?”
Mr. Cray’s welcoming smile was the bland expression of the lonely and
gregarious man.
“Say, I’m not mistaken, am I?” he said, as the two men came to a
standstill before him. “Met you about two years ago, sir,” he went on,
addressing Sinclair Smith, “at the American Bar with some of the boys.
We had one or two together. Sit down, gentlemen,” Mr. Cray continued,
without waiting for any reply. “My daughter’s chair, that, but we’ll get
another when she arrives. I remember now,” he went on reminiscently, “it
was the night before I put on my uniform.”
“I remember perfectly,” Mr. Sinclair Smith acknowledged, shaking hands.
“Permit me to introduce my friend, the Honourable Charles
Frinton—Mr.—er—dear me, I had your name on the tip of my tongue just
now.”
“Cray,” was the prompt response—“Mr. Joseph P. Cray.”
“So you’ve been serving, sir?” Frinton observed after they had settled
down.
“American Y.M.C.A., sir,” Mr. Cray confided—“a most uncomfortable
uniform for a man of my figure, and at times a very miserable job, but
I’m through with it. I took off my uniform less than a week ago, I went
right into that little paradise of a bar, and I drank my first cocktail
for twelve months. Gee, I can feel the glow of it now!”
“You mean that you were on the water waggon, as I believe your
country-people call it, for all that time?” Sinclair Smith inquired.
Mr. Cray was the epitome of stout and contented virtue.
“Not one drop of hard liquor passed my lips all the time I wore Uncle
Sam’s uniform,” he declared.
Mr. Sinclair Smith summoned a waiter.
“An appreciative Englishman,” he declared, “is going to offer you as
much as you can drink of the best brandy in London.”
As much as Mr. Cray could drink was a pretty tall order, as Mr. Sinclair
Smith was presently to discover. The acquaintance, however, proceeded by
leaps and bounds, and when Sara presently returned she found her father
in his element. He rose to his feet with expansive pride.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’d have you shake hands with my daughter, Lady
Sittingbourne—Mr. Sinclair Smith—the Honourable Charles Frinton.
Gentlemen I met here, dear, before I went to France.”
The little ceremony was pleasantly performed. Mr. Frinton, as became his
position, inaugurated the conversation.
“Any relation to Sir George Sittingbourne in the Blues?” he asked,
deferentially.
“My husband,” Sara explained. “He was wounded in ’15, you know, and
became military A.D.C. at Washington. He’s out there now.”
Secure in his temporary absence, Frinton magnified his slight
acquaintance with Sara’s husband into an intimate friendship. The little
party soon became on the best of terms. Long after Sara’s retirement for
the night, they finished the evening in Mr. Cray’s sitting-room. When
they parted, even the hard-headed Frinton, and Sinclair Smith, a
past-master in the art of avoiding drink, were incapable.
“See you ’morrow, old sport,” Frinton declared, standing on one leg and
balancing himself against the door as he shook hands with their host.
“If you don’t look me up in the city we all meet here at one o’clock,”
Mr. Sinclair said, all in one breath.
Mr. Cray watched them on their tortuous way towards the lift, waved his
hand in farewell, returned to his easy chair, and helped himself to a
final whisky and soda.
“Smart chaps, very, and good company,” he ruminated, “but they take
their liquor poorly for Englishmen.”
Luncheon that next day was a gay and festive meal. Sara was amiable and
brilliant. She spoke of city finance with the bated breath of an
ignoramus, and she was perfectly prepared to accept her two hosts as
prototypes of its genius. Once or twice the thought of what George would
say if he had seen her in such company troubled her slightly, but on the
whole she reflected that he belonged to a different side of her life,
and that she was really only indulging for a very brief period that
unquenched love of adventure in which she had revelled during her
younger days.
“I wish dad would do something in the City while he’s over here,” she
observed, with a little sigh. “Why don’t you, dad? You know you always
have what you call a flutter in Wall Street, when you’re in New York.”
Mr. Cray smiled.
“It’s not so easy to get on to anything worth taking an interest in,
over this side,” he remarked. “Besides, I don’t understand the English
share market.”
The moment appeared to have arrived for which Mr. Sinclair Smith and the
Honourable Charles Frinton had been marking time.
“Do you think your father would really like a little flutter, Lady
Sittingbourne?” Mr. Frinton asked. “Not a big affair, mind, but a
thousand or two profit certain—perhaps a little more later on.”
Mr. Sinclair Smith laid down his knife and fork.
“Charlie,” he exclaimed, “you’re not——”
“Yes, I am! Why not?” his friend interrupted, gazing admiringly into
Sara’s eyes. “Corton’s no pal of mine, and I never gave him a word of
encouragement.”
“But I did,” Mr. Sinclair Smith confessed doubtfully. “I promised to
meet him to-night and let him know how far we could go.”
“You can tell him the whole thing’s off,” the other declared
ruthlessly—“that is to say if Mr. Cray here fancies the proposition.”
“Say, gentlemen, put me wise about this,” the latter begged eagerly.
Mr. Sinclair Smith shrugged his shoulders.
“Mr. Cray,” he said, “you’re a very good fellow, and I quite share
Frinton’s admiration for your charming daughter, but, as a rule, to be
perfectly frank with you, we reserve our little side-shows for our older
friends, especially when the plums are sticking out. However, Frinton’s
said the word and I won’t go back on him. Ever heard of the Idabo Rubber
Plantations?”
“We’re not great on rubber, over the other side,” Mr. Cray replied, “but
I do just know that the Idabo is a sound concern.”
“Ten thousand of the new issue are coming on the market this week,” Mr.
Sinclair Smith confided. “I don’t know how you manage these things over
on the other side, but the directors don’t want the market disturbed,
and they’re handing them out in big blocks. Frinton and I have five
thousand each. There’s another five thousand to be bought for prompt
cash.”
“And the price?”
“Thirty-seven and sixpence,” Sinclair replied. “You can see what they
stand on the market, in this morning’s paper. Forty-one offered.”
“I don’t quite get the hang of this,” Mr. Cray confessed. “Just why are
you offering these shares at three and sixpence less than the market
value?”
“Because the directors don’t want the market price disturbed,” Mr.
Sinclair Smith explained. “They’re taken nearly all the new issue
themselves. These are just a few over which they’ve been handing out to
their friends. If you take this five thousand, you’ll have to pay prompt
cash for them, but they’ll stand you in a profit on to-day’s price of
over two thousand pounds. On the other hand, we shouldn’t expect you to
put them on the market, except in very small lots, for the next
fortnight.”
“And supposing they go down in the meantime?” Sara asked.
Mr. Frinton smiled.
“Your father can get all the information about Idabos he wants to,” he
suggested, “but as a matter of fact, if you like a little gamble
yourself, Lady Sittingbourne, I’ll bet you five hundred that Idabos are
higher sooner than lower in a month’s time.”
“This sounds good to me,” Mr. Cray confessed. “I’ll have a look at the
tape presently.”
“That’s right, no hurry,” Mr. Frinton said. “Sinny, you’re host. I think
another bottle of this Chateau Yquem. And, Lady Sittingbourne, we really
ought to apologise for talking shop.”
“Indeed you needn’t,” Sara protested. “As a matter of fact, it is my
fault entirely. It is nice of you to help dad to make a little money.”
“Perhaps I wasn’t thinking altogether about your father,” the Honourable
Charles Frinton ventured.
“It isn’t money, of course,” Sara went on. “Dad’s got plenty of that.
But it does give him something to do and think about. Men are so much
better when their thoughts are occupied, don’t you think so?”
“That depends,” the young man replied, with an impressive sigh.
“Sometimes a man’s thoughts are rather a hindrance to his day’s work.”
Sara laughed gaily.
“I think you London men are terrible,” she said.
“There’s only one fault about us,” Frinton declared—“we’re too
impressionable.”
Sara looked modestly down at her plate. It was indeed a gala luncheon
for the Honourable Charles Frinton and Mr. Sinclair Smith. After
luncheon, they adjourned to Mr. Cray’s sitting-room, where their host,
with some pride, produced a small portable typewriter, stuck in a sheet
of paper, and hammered out the following document:
_I, Joseph P. Cray, and we, Charles Frinton and William Sinclair
Smith, agree severally, the former to purchase and the latter to
sell, shares to the value of ten thousand pounds in the_——
“How do you spell Idabo?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“I-d-a-b-o,” Mr. Frinton said.
“No ‘r’?”
“No ‘r.’”
—_Idabo Rubber Plantations. Payment in full to be made in cash
on production of the share certificates, and two hundred and
fifty pounds (£250) deposit to be paid by the said Joseph P.
Cray on the signature of this document._
“You Americans know how to tie a thing up tight,” Mr. Sinclair Smith
remarked, laughing, as he signed his name.
“Something of a lawyer, aren’t you, Mr. Cray?” the Honourable Charles
Frinton added, as he too appended his signature. “Do we want a copy of
this?”
“I haven’t any carbons,” Mr. Cray replied, “but I guess my cheque will
do for your half. I’ll just put the document in the drawer here until we
clean the deal up.”
“That will be quite satisfactory,” Mr. Sinclair Smith said, “but there’s
one rather important matter, Mr. Cray—when will it be convenient for
you to clear this business up? Frinton and I paid for our shares
yesterday.”
“As soon as I’ve had time to walk down to the Bank of England, I guess
things can be arranged,” Mr. Cray promised. “I’ve a credit here for
pretty well as much as I should care to draw.”
Their eyes rested upon him almost hungrily. Both for a moment had the
same feeling—they had touched him too lightly, and alas! in all
probability they would have no other opportunity.
“What are you doing this evening, Charles?” Mr. Sinclair Smith asked his
companion in an undertone.
“Dining at Doncaster House,” the other confided. “The Duchess—well, you
understand.”
Mr. Sinclair Smith nodded.
“I promised Joel, too—but there, Charles, I think we ought to clear
this business up. You know what Sir William said—that they might ask us
for these shares back again if they weren’t cleared up within a few
hours. Could you see us between six and seven, Mr. Cray?”
“Sure!” that gentleman replied, rising from the table where he had been
writing a cheque. “Here’s your two hundred and fifty pounds. I’ll get
down to the bank presently, and we’ll all meet and have a cocktail
together, eh? You must let me come down and see you in the city some
day, Mr. Smith. I guess I’d be interested in studying some of your
English methods.”
“We’ll give you a city man’s lunch any day later in the week,” Mr.
Sinclair Smith promised, as he thrust the cheque into his waistcoat
pocket.
“I hope we’ll see your charming daughter again,” the Honourable Charles
Frinton remarked, as they said good-bye.
“Why not fix up a little dinner for this evening?” Mr. Cray invited
hospitably. “Sara’d be tickled to death. We might go to a music-hall
afterwards.”
The Honourable Charles Frinton looked the picture of woe.
“Alas!” he regretted, “not this evening. I have some relatives who are
apt to be a little exacting.”
“And I have an appointment with a very big financial man,” his friend
confided—“a deal in property, I don’t mind telling you, that runs into
a couple of millions or thereabouts.”
“Say, you boys do handle the stuff!” Mr. Cray said, admiringly. “Till
six o’clock, then, and good luck to you. I’ll pay my respects to the old
lady of Threadneedle Street. . . .”
Left to himself, Mr. Cray turned the key in the lock, lest by some
chance one of his guests should return. Then he thrust the piece of
paper once more back into the typewriter, and, adjusting it carefully,
struck a single letter. Afterwards he placed the document in his pocket,
caught up his stick and hat and sauntered out into the Strand. His
journey citywards, however, extended no further east than Somerset
House.
* * * * *
After the _mise en scène_ was set that evening, Mr. Cray’s heart misgave
him.
“I guess you’d better not figure in this show, Sara,” he said to his
daughter, who was occupying an easy-chair in his sitting-room. “There’s
no telling how those two skunks may pan out. They’re soft stuff to look
at, but you never can tell.”
Sara showed not the slightest signs of moving.
“Dad,” she said, “I’ve been with you in some tougher corners than you’ll
find yourself in this evening. And you know what I told you. If I can’t
gratify this morbid craving of mine for a few last glimpses into
Bohemia, I shall never settle down and make George a respectable wife.
Besides, you’ll want me to mix the cocktails, and I want to see whether
Mr. Frinton will remain the perfect gentleman.”
Her father smiled tolerantly.
“I guess there’ll be more tears than blows,” he said. “Stay where you
are if you’re set upon it.”
“I intend to,” Sara declared sweetly. . . .
The two visitors were very punctual indeed. They arrived, indeed, five
minutes before the time. Mr. Sinclair Smith made profuse apologies.
“The fact of the matter is,” he explained, “both Mr. Frinton here and I
are hard pushed this evening. We shall just have to finish our little
piece of business as quickly as we can, and if you, sir,” he added,
turning to Mr. Cray, “and your daughter, will honour us by dining at the
Ritz to-morrow night, we shall be charmed. We can then celebrate this
occasion more adequately.”
“It’s a date, sure,” Mr. Cray promised exuberantly. “No need to keep you
gentlemen over this little business, either. I’ve a packet of notes
here, and I see you’ve got the shares there. Spread them out upon the
table, sir. Let’s have a look at them.”
Mr. Sinclair Smith reverently produced a thick pile of brand-new
copperplate share certificates. They were very clean, very artistically
executed and evidently of recent issue. Mr. Cray, with the notes bulging
from his pocket, began to count. The two men stood over him.
“One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred——” Mr. Cray
stopped short.
“What’s wrong?” Mr. Sinclair Smith asked sharply, trying to keep the
note of anxiety from his voice.
“It’s this durned spelling again,” Mr. Cray explained, with puckered
brows. “These share certificates seem to be spelt without the final
‘r’.”
“That’s the way the plantation’s spelt,” was the sharp reply. “I told
you so when you made out the agreement.”
Mr. Cray stopped his counting and felt in his pocket.
“I don’t seem, somehow, to remember that,” he said pensively.
He spread out the agreement, with its Somerset House stamp, upon the
table. The faces of the two men who stared at the spot to which Mr.
Cray’s fat forefinger pointed, were a study. Without a doubt, the name
of the rubber plantation there was “Idabor,” and below it were their
signatures.
“It was spelt ‘Idabo’ when I signed,” Frinton exclaimed at last.
“I’ll swear it,” Mr. Sinclair Smith echoed. “The agreement’s been
tampered with.”
Mr. Cray returned it reflectively to his pocket.
“I guess you two gentlemen don’t know how to spell your own property,”
he said pleasantly. “Now I’ll just put you both wise as to what made me
so plumb positive. It’s this report from my stockbroker.”
He held a sheet of paper before him and read out its contents:—
_IDABOR RUBBER PLANTATIONS._
_Capital three hundred thousand pounds. A fine commercial
undertaking. Full particulars in Rubber handbook, sent herewith.
Present price of shares round about forty-one. Should recommend
purchase._
_IDABO RUBBER GROUNDS._
_A derelict concern, nominal capital sixty thousand pounds, with
a large number of unissued founders shares. Shares not quoted on
Exchange as property considered valueless._
“I got that from my stockbroker this afternoon,” Mr. Cray explained.
“That’s why I knew for certain that it was Idabor shares and not Idabo
we were dealing in.”
Mr. Frinton had turned very pale. He sank suddenly into an unoccupied
chair. For the purposes of any further controversy, he was down and out.
Mr. Sinclair Smith made as good a showing as could reasonably have been
expected.
“Mr. Cray,” he confessed, “the shares we meant to plant you with were
the Idabo Rubber Shares. Frinton here and I were had with them, cost us
a cool ten thousand. We were the mugs that time. We made up our minds to
pass them on if we could to another mug. We selected you.”
“That seems to have been a little unfortunate,” Mr. Cray observed, with
a bright smile.
“You’ve tumbled to it and there’s nothing more doing,” Sinclair Smith
continued. “Here’s your two hundred and fifty pounds deposit,” he added,
throwing the cheque upon the table. “Come on, Frinton.”
“Stop a minute,” Mr. Cray called out.
The two men, who were well on their way to the door, paused.
“I can’t see my way through quite to the end of this little matter yet,”
Mr. Cray explained. “By this document here you seem bound to deliver to
me five thousand Idabor shares at thirty-seven and six, to-day’s price
forty-one, profit to me eight hundred and seventy-five pounds.”
Mr. Sinclair Smith stared at Mr. Cray for several moments without
speech. Once he opened his lips, glanced at Sara and closed them again.
Mr. Frinton’s rejoinder was on the weak side.
“Those were Idabos and you know it,” he muttered.
Mr. Cray shook his head and tapped his breast-pocket.
“Idabos doesn’t sound reasonable,” he protested gently. “They could be
bought by the thousand for fourpence a share, and you were proposing to
sell them to me for thirty-seven and sixpence. I feel sure that no one
would believe it possible that you two gentlemen would make such a
suggestion as that. Idabors my agreement says, and Idabors I want—or
eight hundred and seventy-five pounds.”
Then both men forgot the presence of a lady and began to talk. Sara
leaned back in her chair with the air of a pleased and gratified
audience. Mr. Cray, too, showed not the slightest signs of wishing to
interrupt the dual stream of eloquent abuse. When the two men were
silent at last through lack of breath, he make his first remark.
“I am not a bargainer, gentlemen,” he said. “There seems to have been a
little mutual misunderstanding in this deal, but the fact remains that I
am entitled to the delivery of five thousand Idabor shares from you at
thirty-seven and sixpence, or the profit on them—eight hundred and
seventy-five pounds. I am not a hard man. I will take five hundred
pounds cash.”
A secondary burst of eloquence was less original but more abusive.
“You’re a damned sharper!” Mr. Frinton wound up.
“A low confidence trick man,” Mr. Sinclair Smith finished, with a glance
at Sara, “you and your——”
Mr. Cray took a step forward. Mr. Sinclair Smith did not finish his
sentence. He took a step backwards towards the door. Mr. Cray threw it
open and stood there. He was still smiling, but his smile had qualities.
“At nine o’clock,” he said, “my solicitor is looking me up for a
friendly chat. A cheque for five hundred pounds any time before that
hour will see you through this trouble. You’ll find the lift round to
the right. So long, boys!”
Mr. Cray returned to the room with beaming face.
“Sara,” he invited, looking towards the sideboard, “give her a shake.”
* * * * *
At a quarter to nine that evening, while Mr. Cray and his daughter were
dining at a corner table in the grill-room, a note was brought to him.
He tore open the envelope. Inside was a cheque for five hundred pounds.
He thrust it into his waistcoat pocket, produced the one which he had
written for two hundred and fifty pounds and passed it to Sara.
“Your share, my dear,” he said. “Let us drink the health of those two
philanthropists.”
“You dear, clever father!” she murmured enthusiastically.
III Pussyfoot in Mischief
The meeting between Mr. Cray and Mr. Edward P. Wallin of Seattle, was a
touching and wonderful thing. It took place on the pavement of the
Strand, about fifty yards from the entrance to the Milan, the occasion
being a gentle stroll on the part of Mr. Cray towards one of the
reopened hotels in Northumberland Avenue, which was reputed to possess a
wizard in the art of cocktail mixing. They recognised one another about
ten yards off, and their greetings were vociferous and idiomatic.
“If it isn’t Ed!” Mr. Cray exclaimed, in great excitement. “Welcome to
the gay little burg!”
“Joe, old sport, if this isn’t bully!” was the prompt and hearty
response. “Put it there, my son of the Stars and Stripes. Why, I thought
you were handing doughnuts to the boys out in Cologne.”
“Demobbed two months ago,” was the cheerful reply. “I had twelve months
of it steady.”
“Gee, but you’re a wonder! I guess the Milan’s the nearest.”
Arm in arm, the two men swung along the pavement, Mr. Wallin a somewhat
smaller and plumper edition of his old friend. Their faces exuded
good-humour and goodwill. Both were filled with the joy of meeting a
friend and fellow-countryman in a strange city.
“Ed,” Mr. Cray observed, “they’ve hit it up for us on the other side.”
“It’s a sure Hell!” the other groaned. “You have to have a pain in your
stomach and drop in at the drug store to get a drop of rye or Scotch,
and even then you feel like hiding behind the show-case. And I tell you,
Joe, to see the boys lapping up soft drinks and getting gloomier all the
time is just one over the limit. No one’s gotten used to it yet. We go
about kinder dazed.”
Mr. Cray glanced at his watch as they reached the Milan Bar. He led the
way to two easy-chairs and beckoned to a waiter.
“Two Scotches and soda, Tim,” he ordered, “and in a quarter of an hour
see that Coley hits us up two dry Martinis with some stick in.
Afterwards we’ll have a bite of luncheon in the grill-room.”
The programme was approved and carried out. About half-way through the
meal, Mr. Cray asked a momentous question.
“Say what’s brought you over, Ed?”
Mr. Wallin laid down his knife and fork and groaned. His eyes were fixed
with an indescribable expression upon the figure of a woman a short
distance away.
“That,” he replied,—“her!”
Mr. Cray turned in his chair. A smartly attired young woman, who had
paused upon the threshold looking around the room as though in search of
some one, was now approaching their table.
“Why, Mr. Wallin,” she exclaimed, as she shook hands, “I had no idea
that you were staying here!”
“I’m not,” he replied. “I’m just having a bite with a friend. I’d like
you to know Mr. Joseph P. Cray—Miss Nora Medlicott.”
Mr. Cray rose at once to his feet and shook bands with Miss Medlicott.
She was very good-looking, her expression was pleasing and her manner
friendly.
“I’m glad to know you, Mr. Cray,” she said. “Are you by any chance
related to Mrs. Georgina Cray, the Vice-President of the Women’s
Kill-the-Drink-League?”
“My wife,” Mr. Cray faltered.
Miss Medlicott shook hands with him again.
“I am proud to know you, sir,” she declared. “Your wife has done a great
work in Oregon.”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray murmured, his tone singularly lacking in conviction.
“I’ve been kind of out of things for the last two years.”
“Mr. Cray has been over in France, doing Y.M.C.A. work,” his friend
explained.
“Exactly what I should have expected from Mrs. Cray’s husband,” the
young lady declared approvingly.
“You’ll sit down and have some lunch with us, Miss Medlicott,” Mr.
Wallin begged.
The young lady appeared to hesitate. She glanced once more around the
room.
“I promised to lunch with some of the crowd,” she said “but——”
Her eyes suddenly fell upon the bottle of Scotch Whisky which Mr. Wallin
had vainly tried to conceal behind a newspaper. Her manner stiffened.
“We’ll send this right away,” the offender promised eagerly. “I’m not
accustomed to it in the middle of the day, but Mr. Cray here has a touch
of rheumatism.”
“Touch of what!” Mr. Cray asked blankly, and received a kick on the
shins for his obtuseness.
Miss Medlicott smiled gravely at him.
“You mustn’t think I’m over-prejudiced, Mr. Cray,” she said, “but I am a
great believer in total abstinence. I have many friends, however, who do
not share my views, amongst them Mr. Wallin here. I do not, however, sit
down at a table, if I can help it, where alcoholic liquors are being
consumed.”
“We’ll soon make that all right if you’ll join us,” Mr. Cray promised,
pushing the bottle heroically away.
“In any case,” Miss Medlicott replied, smiling, “there are my friends.
Good-bye, Mr. Cray! You will come and call, won’t you, Mr. Wallin?”
“Sure!” that gentleman assented eagerly.
“I’ll be round to-morrow afternoon.”
The young lady departed. Mr. Cray looked after her regretfully.
“Say, that’s a pity, Ed!” he said. “A real stunner, if ever I spoke to
one, and a bee in her bonnet like that!”
Mr. Wallin groaned.
“And I love her, Joe,” he confided. “I’ve asked her to marry me six
times, and I’ve come over here because I couldn’t bear to think of her
in London and these foreign places and me back in Seattle. Sometimes I
think I’ll have to take the pledge.”
Mr. Cray coughed. He found advice difficult.
“It’s a serious step, Ed. Men at our time of life ought to be careful
how we trifle with our constitutions.”
Mr. Wallin helped himself to whisky.
“You’re right, Joe,” he agreed, “but I do sure love that girl.”
“How do you stand with her?” his friend inquired.
“All right, I guess, except for this craze of hers,” was the doleful
reply. “I can’t see that it’s her fault. Her father and mother are mad
about it. She’s been brought up in the atmosphere.”
“She seems a nice girl, too,” Mr. Cray sighed.
“If she’d only leave off trying to convert me,” Mr. Wallin murmured.
Mr. Cray finished his whisky and soda, and displayed an interest in the
waiter’s suggestion as to liqueurs. The matter having been
satisfactorily dealt with, he proceeded to the reconsideration of his
friend’s dilemma.
“Ed,” he said, “have you ever tried to convert the young lady?”
“Will you tell me how to start about it?” Mr. Wallin asked drearily.
“The poor girl doesn’t know the taste of wine or liquor. Nothing of the
sort has ever been allowed in the house since she was born. I’d as soon
think of offering her a cocktail as of handing her poisoned chocolates,
and I guess she’d feel the same about it.”
“What sort of a crowd is she with over here?” Mr. Cray enquired.
“Why, there’s her father and mother, a reverend gentleman, two elderly
men, and Hiram Croft, the Senator. I guess he’s in the same boat that I
am.”
“A rival, eh?” Mr. Cray observed.
His friend assented dolefully.
“And looks like landing the goods. There they all are, over at the round
table.”
Mr. Cray studied them thoughtfully.
“Lot of dead-heads,” he declared. “Why, Miss Medlicott is the only live
figure there. She don’t belong Ed.”
“It’s a cruel hobby, that water drinking,” Mr. Wallin remarked. “Seems
to link them together, though.”
“You mean to tell me that sandy-haired, melancholy-looking dyspeptic is
your rival?” his host went on. “Gee, Ed, you ought to put it over on
him!”
“He’s the big noise when he’s on the platform.”
“Sure, but the girl isn’t going to live with him on a platform! What are
they all doing over here, Ed?”
“Some fool’s stunt,” Mr. Wallin replied. “They’re collecting recipes of
temperance drinks. The idea is, when they find one that goes, to form a
company to manufacture it. Something that’s cool and thirst-quenching in
summer, and warm and vitalising in winter—see the ads, that Hiram Croft
is always drawing up.”
“A new soft drink, eh?” Mr. Cray said thoughtfully.
“That’s the idea. They’re going round the English manufacturers, and if
they can’t find anything they’re going on the Continent.”
“A new soft drink, eh?” Mr. Cray repeated. “There’s money in that, Ed.”
“Sure,” Mr. Wallin assented, “or Hiram Croft wouldn’t be in it. He’s
some water drinker, and he cuts out the hard stuff all right, but his
nose follows the dollars all the time. Pa and ma Medlicott know that,
too. My little pile isn’t much by the side of his.”
“Ed,” his friend said firmly, “if you let a whimple-faced,
anæmic-looking weed like that rob you of a fine girl like Miss
Medlicott, I’ve sure done with you.”
“Do you think I want him to have her?” Mr. Wallin asked almost
indignantly. “Do you think I’ve followed her over here for nothing? Say,
you always were a slick sort of chap, Joe. Do you think you could help
me?”
Mr. Cray stretched a pudgy, but muscular hand across the table.
“I do think so and I will, Ed,” he declared. “Put it there.”
* * * * *
The Hiram Croft-cum-Medlicott party occupied a large round table in a
corner of the restaurant. Mr. Wallin and his companion paused before it
on their way out.
“I want you all to know my friend Mr. Joseph P. Cray,” the former said,
with his hand on Hiram Croft’s shoulder. “Mr. Cray has just returned
from a year with the Young Men’s Christian Association out at the
Front.”
Mr. Hiram Croft shook hands. The introduction was made general.
“Any relation, may I ask,” Mrs. Medlicott began, adjusting her
pince-nez——
“My friend Mr. Cray,” Mr. Wallin interrupted proudly, “is the husband of
Mrs. Cray, the Vice-President of the Kill-the-Drink-League.”
Mr. Hiram Croft shook hands with him again.
“This is a privilege, Mr. Cray,” he said.
Every one seemed pleased and happy. A chair was brought for Mr. Cray,
who looked round at the table with its four goblets of iced water, with
an inward shiver. There was a good deal of general conversation, which
Mr. Cray dexterously brought up to a certain point.
“Mr. Croft,” he said, “I am one of those men who before the war had been
used to use liquor in moderation.”
Mr. Cray in the eyes of everybody became a very black sheep indeed.
Everybody’s manner stiffened perceptibly. It was hard to connect an even
moderate use of strong drink with the husband of such an inspired dry
prophetess as Mrs. Cray.
“When I took up my post for the Y.M.C.A.,” Mr. Cray continued, “I cut it
right out. During my year in France not a drop of liquor of any sort
passed my lips. Being naturally of a somewhat thirsty disposition, I
developed a strong interest in temperance drinks.”
“Sure!” Mr. Hiram Croft murmured with returning tolerance.
“The subject of temperance drinks,” Mr. Medlicott announced, “is one
which is at the present time engaging a large share of our attention.”
“So I understand from my friend Mr. Wallin, here,” Mr. Cray said. “I
gathered that you were over here looking out for a thoroughly
satisfactory recipe for a non-alcoholic beverage.”
“Do you know of one, Mr. Cray?” Miss Medlicott asked with a smile.
“Madam,” the gentleman addressed replied solemnly, “I do.”
“Say, this is very interesting,” the Senator remarked. “Can we be
introduced to it, sir?”
Mr. Cray drew his chair a little closer up to the table.
“Mrs. Medlicott and gentlemen,” he said, “it is, in a sense, a most
extraordinary thing that I should have come into touch with you. I claim
to have discovered the most wonderful, refreshing, thirst-quenching, and
exhilarating beverage the world has ever known. I hold the recipe of it,
and I value that recipe at a good many million dollars.”
“Large figures,” Mr. Croft murmured.
“If the beverage,” Mr. Cray proceeded solemnly, “stood on the market
according to my directions and sold at even a moderate profit, its sales
throughout the world would be colossal. But,” he went on, “all this is
talk. I am prepared to prove my words. I ask you, Mrs. Medlicott and
gentlemen, have you yet discovered a satisfactory non-alcoholic
beverage?”
“We have not,” Mrs. Medlicott admitted.
“We were inclined to favour a certain brand of dry ginger-ale,” Mr.
Croft observed, “but we have come to the decision that its after-effects
are deleterious.”
“A sense of inflation,” one of the old gentlemen murmured.
“A tendency towards pains in the lower regions,” Mr. Medlicott admitted
frankly.
“In short,” Mr. Cray summed up, “you have not yet found what you are
looking for. Now I have brought my recipe back from France, and although
I have not yet sold a single bottle, been near the advertisers, or
mentioned it to a soul, I have a plant near London and I shall be
starting out shortly to manufacture on a very small scale. I invite you,
ladies and gentlemen, to dine with me at the restaurant of this hotel at
eight o’clock next Wednesday night, when my daughter, Lady
Sittingbourne, will be proud to be your hostess. You shall then test my
beverage, and if you find it what you are looking for, there shall be no
question of dollars between us. I will give you the recipe.”
Mr. Hiram Croft shook hands with Mr. Cray for the third time.
“Sir,” he said, “if you are not led away by the enthusiasm of the
discoverer, you are one of the world’s benefactors.”
“You have spoken, sir,” Mrs. Medlicott declared, “as the husband of Mrs.
Cray should speak.”
“In short,” Mr. Medlicott declared, “we accept your invitation.” . . . .
Mr. Cray received his guests on the appointed day, in the sitting-room
of his suite. He presented them to his daughter, and as soon as they
were all assembled he stood by his little sideboard and addressed them
all.
“Mrs. and Miss Medlicott and gentlemen,” he said, “I can assure you that
I feel it a very great honour to entertain you all to-night, but I do
not want you to lose sight for a moment of the fact that in a sense this
is an educational and I trust you will find it a deeply interesting
gathering. I am going to disprove everything that has ever been written
about alcohol.”
“Hear, hear!” Mr. Hiram Croft murmured.
“Now,” Mr. Cray continued, smiling, “you are all doubtless aware of a
long-established habit amongst our country-people of taking a cocktail
before dinner. However one looks upon it, the habit itself is without
doubt a pernicious one.”
“Deplorable!” Mrs. Medlicott murmured.
“Unhygienic,” one of the old gentlemen echoed.
Mr. Cray signified his unqualified assent.
“Still,” he continued, “one function of this cocktail is on the surface
a pleasant one. A little party of friends, such as this, meets, tired
with the day’s toil, shy, perhaps, from an imperfect acquaintance with
each other, depressed with business worries, physically and mentally
weary. Alcohol in the shape of a cocktail has its functions upon such an
occasion. We have heard the hearty laugh, we have seen the lightning
change, the smile of relief, a spirit, perhaps, of good-fellowship,
incited by this evil means. Now, my friends, I propose to show you how
something of the same sort can be incited without recourse to this bane
of our days, alcohol.”
Mr. Cray lifted a napkin from the top of a dozen or so of glasses which
stood upon a silver salver upon the sideboard. The glasses were filled
with a pale amber liquid, on the top of which was floating a small piece
of lemon. Very proudly indeed Mr. Cray handed a glass to each of the
little company. They all accepted it with a smile of pleased interest.
“Now this,” Mr. Cray announced, “is the subject of my first recipe. It
is, I claim, pleasant to the taste, stimulating, refreshing and entirely
harmless. It is quite inexpensive to produce, and if you share my
enthusiasm for the beverage of which you will presently partake, the
recipe for this slight appetiser shall also be yours, Mrs. Medlicott
. . . Miss Medlicott . . . gentlemen!”
They all tasted critically, tasted again, and set down their glasses
empty. Then they all looked at one another. Mr. Wallin was the only
unenthusiastic person.
“I’m afraid I’m all for a Dry Martini, Joseph,” he admitted, “although I
must admit that this is a pleasant little appetiser so far as soft
drinks go.”
“Your taste, sir,” Mr. Hiram Croft said severely, “is vitiated. The
beverage of which we have just partaken, Mr. Cray,” he added, looking
hard at the sideboard to see if there was any more, “represents, I
consider, a remarkable discovery. I find it exceedingly pleasant, and,
if I may say so, stimulating, without the noxious after-taste of
alcohol.”
“I think it is perfectly delicious,” Miss Medlicott pronounced.
“Most soothing,” Mrs. Medlicott agreed.
“Mr. Wallin’s criticism,” Mr. Medlicott said, looking hard at him, “only
proves how a taste for the really good and pure beverages of life may be
destroyed by reckless indulgence in alcohol. I consider this beverage
which you have offered us, Mr. Cray, a most marvellous discovery. I
offer you my congratulations. I am impatient to become acquainted with
your other and main discovery.”
“I am most gratified,” Mr. Cray declared, beaming. “If you will follow
me, then, we will now get along to the restaurant. . . .”
The little party made their way down the corridor to the lift and thence
to the restaurant. There was not the slightest doubt that the truth of
Mr. Cray’s contentions was already becoming evident. The two old
gentlemen, who brought up the rear arm in arm, looked a great deal less
like college professors, and surveyed the gay scene in the foyer with
critical and appreciative eyes. Mr. Hiram Croft talked the whole of the
way. He was even genial to his rival, Mr. Wallin.
“It is my belief, sir,” he said, “that your very interesting friend Mr.
Cray has made a marvellous discovery. I have suffered from dyspepsia all
my life. Meals have been a trouble to me instead of a pleasure. I have
seldom anticipated the partaking of food except with dread. To-night I
have quite a new feeling. I am hungry. I am looking forward to my
dinner. If this sensation lasts, I shall hail Mr. Cray as one of the
benefactors of his generation, and I shall make it my business, too, as
a Senator and a man of some note, Mr. Wallin, in our great country, to
see that your friend’s discovery brings him the fame to which he is
entitled.”
Mr. Wallin listened with respect to his companion’s eulogy. Mrs.
Medlicott, who walked at Mr. Cray’s right hand, talked to him all the
time with marked graciousness. She did not once raise her pince-nez to
gaze with disapproval at the somewhat exotic evening dresses of the
other guests in the foyer. Her mouth had lost its severe curve, and she,
too seemed full of pleasurable anticipation. Miss Medlicott, who walked
on the other side of their host, was inclined to be a little thoughtful.
She, too, however, was in the best of spirits, and a little cry of
admiration escaped her lips when, escorted by many bowing waiters, they
were ushered to a private room opening out of the main restaurant in the
centre of which was a large table, beautifully decorated with great
clusters of red roses, and with a little American flag rising from a
fancy edifice in the middle. There was a general murmur of interest
when, as they sat down, gold-foiled bottles, one to every two persons,
were discovered around the table.
“So this is the great discovery?” Mrs. Medlicott said, smiling. “The
bottle presents a most attractive appearance.”
“I am glad that it meets with your approval,” Mr. Cray replied. “I have
instructed the waiter not to open any of it until after the soup, as the
contents are slightly aerated.”
Mr. Hiram Croft looked a little disappointed. He ate his oysters and
swallowed his soup with almost tumultuous eagerness. A little murmur of
deep interest escaped from every one when, with the serving of the fish,
a dark-visaged potentate dexterously opened one or two of the bottles,
and glasses were filled.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Cray said, “this may be an epoch-making
dinner in the history of American temperance. If you approve of this
beverage, as I trust you will do, there may soon come a time when it
will become a familiar feature upon the sideboard and dinner-table of
every self-respecting American citizen. My best wishes to all of you!”
Glasses were clinked all round the table. Mr. Cray drank with Mrs.
Medlicott and Miss Medlicott, Mr. Wallin drank with Mr. Medlicott, the
two old gentlemen drank with one another, Mr. Hiram Croft drank with
everybody. When he set down his glass, it was empty. His words reflected
the expression of pleasure on every one’s face.
“Mr. Cray,” he pronounced, “there can be no manner of doubt about the
qualities of this remarkable beverage. I hail you, sir, as one of the
greatest discoverers of the age, one of the greatest friends American
temperance has ever had.”
“Let us drink,” Mrs. Medlicott purred, “to Mrs. Cray. What would she not
give to be with us to-night!”
“To Mrs. Cray,” the Senator assented, waving his refilled glass,
“Vice-President of the Kill-the-Drink League. Also to her worthy
husband, Mr. Joseph P. Cray,” he added, bowing to his host.
The toast was duly honoured, and the conversation continued on cheerful
and optimistic lines. After his first glass, Mr. Cray turned to Mrs.
Medlicott.
“Madam,” he said, “I trust that it will not offend your susceptibilities
in any way if Mr. Wallin and I, who you know are not abstainers, take a
glass of champagne?”
Mrs. Medlicott shook her head at him, but her expression as well as her
tone was kind and genial.
“Why, you must please yourself, Mr. Cray,” she replied. “I am thankful
to say that I am not a prejudiced woman.”
Mr. Cray bowed, and the waiter filled his glass and Mr. Wallin’s with
champagne of a well-known vintage. Mrs. Medlicott sighed.
“Every one to his taste,” she said, “but it does astonish me, Mr. Cray,
that when you have a harmless and non-alcoholic beverage of such
marvellous properties as the one which we are now drinking, that you
should prefer to drink wine and face the after-consequences.”
“Wine doesn’t disagree with me, madam,” Mr. Cray declared mildly.
Mrs. Medlicott squeezed his arm in friendly fashion.
“Joseph Cray,” she said, “I take an interest in you because I know your
wife.”
Mr. Cray sighed.
“I suppose Amelia has to be in it,” he murmured.
Mrs. Medlicott shook her head playfully.
“Why, Mr. Cray,” she exclaimed, “you are getting me all confused! Now
listen to me, there’s a dear man. Statistics——”
Mr. Hiram Croft’s sonorous utterance suddenly descended upon them like a
mill-stream, sweeping away the froth of lighter conversation. One hand
fondly embraced the stem of his wine-glass, with the other he beat time
upon the table.
“Statistics,” he interrupted, “have proved to the conviction of every
thinking man the evil and the horror of indulgence in alcoholic
beverages of any sort. Mr. Joseph P. Cray here has swept away the last
excuse of the wine-drinker. He has provided us with a beverage generous
in its qualities, exhilarating in its after-effects, delicious to the
palate. This beverage,” he continued, looking earnestly at the bubbles
in his glass, “has none of the thin acidity of most temperance drinks.
It hash none ofsh—I beg your pardon,” he said, holding his hand before
his mouth and correcting himself with preternatural gravity. “It has
none of the thin limpidity of the aerated waters in ge—general use. If
I were to search through my vocabulary for a single adjective, or,
rather, epithet, to apply to this wonderful refreshment, I should call
it—inspired.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed the two old gentlemen from the other end of the
table.
“How eloquent you are, Mr. Croft!” Miss Medlicott murmured.
Mr. Croft dived for her hand under the table and very nearly lost his
balance. The young lady drew a little further away.
“What I should like to know,” Mr. Medlicott demanded, “is what can
alcohol give us that we do not find in this simple beverage?”
“What indeed?” Mr. Cray murmured, under his breath.
The Senator straightened his tie, which he was surprised to find had
gone round to the back of his neck.
“Mr. Cray,” he declared, “is the world’s greatest benefactor. He has dug
a grave for alcohol, he has signed the doom of hard drinks. You agree
with me, gentlemen?” he asked, leaning over and addressing the two
gentlemen with strained politeness.
“Sure!” they exclaimed with one breath.
“I am glad to hear that,” Mr. Croft said severely. “For a moment I
fancied that you were not in sympathy with our enthusiasm.”
“That’s where you were dead wrong, then, Croft,” one of them replied.
Mr. Croft looked round the table.
“If any one has anything to say against this beverage,” he continued,
with the air of one spoiling for a fight——
“I thought it a little insipid,” Mr. Wallin commented. “I was glad to
get a glass of champagne afterwards.”
“Inshipid?” Mr. Croft repeated severely. “Mr. Wallin, you surprise me.”
“Not nearly so much as you’re surprising me,” that gentleman replied. “I
haven’t seen you look so well or talk so well for ages.”
Mr. Croft smiled. He looked steadily at Miss Medlicott’s hand, as though
meditating another dive. She promptly withdrew it, and moved her chair a
little nearer to Mr. Wallin’s.
“It was a pleasing custom in my younger days,” Mr. Croft said presently,
as the wonderful repast drew to a finish, “to—er—shing shongs . . . I
beg your pardon . . . to sing songs at the conclusion of a feast of this
description—college songs generally. Can any one oblige?”
Every one seemed willing to oblige at once. Mr. Cray struck the table
with his fist, however, and demanded silence for Mrs. Medlicott, and
Mrs. Medlicott, interrupted with little bursts of laughter which
necessitated her stopping sometimes to wipe the tears from her eyes,
warbled a strange ditty in which the moonlight, a coloured gentleman of
amorous propensities, and a chicken, seemed inextricably mixed. Mr. Cray
roared a buccaneering ditty, and Mr. Croft, in a reedy falsetto, essayed
a well-known darkey melody. Presently Mrs. and Miss Medlicott retired
into the little withdrawing-room opening out from the suite, Mr. Croft,
supporting himself by the back of the chair, throwing amorous kisses at
the latter’s retreating figure. His eyes returned to the sideboard and
rested there with marked satisfaction.
“Two more bottles,” he declared. “We’ll give thish beverage a thorough
tesht, Mr. Cray.”
Mr. Cray signed to the waiter. Then he rose to his feet. Miss Medlicott
was standing on the threshold of the withdrawing-room, beckoning
imperatively to him.
“If you will excuse me for one moment, gentlemen,” he begged.
“For one moment but never a life-time,” warbled Mr. Croft. “Come back
shoon, old dear.”
Mr. Cray approached Miss Medlicott with some apprehension. She drew him
inside the little room. Mrs. Medlicott was lying on the couch with her
eyes closed, and snoring melodiously.
“Dear host,” Miss Medlicott began.
Mr. Cray saw that the young lady’s eyes were dancing with humour, and he
felt relieved.
“Will you give me the recipe of your temperance beverage, please?” she
said.
“I will if you promise to marry Mr. Wallin,” he replied.
She laughed softly.
“He hasn’t asked me lately,” she said.
“If he asks you to-night?” Mr. Cray persisted.
She looked back into the room. The two old gentlemen were sitting arm in
arm, telling one another stories. Mr. Medlicott, with a cigar in the
corner of his mouth and a beatific expression upon his face, was leaning
forward in his chair, listening to Mr. Hiram Croft telling a story in a
confidential and suggestive undertone. Mr. Wallin, pink and white and
wholesome, was looking a little bored.
“I agree,” she whispered.
Mr. Cray drew a paper from his pocket.
“You take four bottles of old champagne, one pint of brandy,” he
began——
“No more,” she interrupted. “Take my advice and tear it up. Fetch Mr.
Wallin.”
“Ed,” Mr. Cray called out softly, “will you step this way?”
IV The Reckoning with Otto Schreed
Mr. Joseph P. Cray followed the usual routine observed by members of the
“Americans in London” Society on the occasion of their weekly lunches.
He left his coat and hat in the cloak-room, and deposited the ticket
which he received in exchange in his waistcoat pocket. Afterwards he
slipped into the ante-room, where a little crowd of men were thronging
around a narrow counter, exchanging hearty greetings, and indulging in
various forms of pre-luncheon nourishment. Mr. Cray, who had a mesmeric
way of getting served over the shoulders of waiting throngs, disposed of
a small cocktail in a matter of seconds, made his way to the
reception-room, where the guest of the day stood by the side of his
host, exchanging platitudes and handshakes with the little streams of
arrivals, and a few minutes later wandered into the luncheon-room, where
he discovered the round table for four at which he was placed, exchanged
friendly greetings with the two men who were already in their seats,
recognised the fact with a little sigh that they were not kindred
spirits, and glanced with curiosity at the vacant place on his right
hand, no claimant to which had as yet arrived.
It was a crowded gathering, and it takes some time for six hundred men
to take their places and be seated. Mr. Cray studied the menu with mild
approval, glanced through the wine list, and decided to postpone for the
moment his decision as to liquid refreshment, and finally, yielding to
an impulse of not unnatural curiosity, he raised the card which reposed
upon the table-cloth opposite the vacant chair on his right, and read
it:—
_Mr. Otto M. Schreed._
The four walls of the banqueting-room faded away. The pleasant hum of
voices, the clatter of crockery and the popping of corks, fell upon deaf
ears. Mr. Cray’s blue eyes were set in a steady stare. Gone his
morning-coat, his irreproachable linen and carefully-tied tie, his
patent boots and well-creased trousers. He was back in the tight,
ill-fitting khaki of months ago, a strange, sober figure, in the midst
of the bustle of life, yet living under the shadow of death. He stood at
the door of the canteen and he saw them marching by, a long, snake-like
procession, some singing, some shouting cheery greetings, some pale and
limping. Back to the opening in the hill he could trace them, the hill
which had once been a forest and now seemed as though a cataclysm had
smitten it, a nightmare of bare stumps, of shell and crater holes. The
whole horizon seemed streaked with little puffs of smoke. The sound of
the guns was incessant. There were times when even the ground beneath
his feet shrunk. The boys were on their way to the mess tents after a
stiff twelve hours. Mr. Cray stepped back into the canteen, tasted the
coffee in the great urn, ran through the stock of extra provisions,
looked carefully round to see that all was ready for the hordes of his
customers who would presently throng the place. . . . They came much
sooner than they should have done, a little sullen, many of them
cursing, pushed and struggled for a place at the counter, swept him
clear of the whole of his stock of extra provisions. He could hear their
voices.
“More of that filthy tack!”
“Say, there’s some of those chaps at Washington deserve to swing!”
“What is it to-day, boys?” Mr. Cray asked.
There was a string of lurid adjectives. Mr. Cray looked as concerned as
he felt.
“More of that stinking beef, eh?” he asked sympathetically.
He was met with a chorus of groans. A score or more had left the counter
already, ill before they could swallow their coffee. He heard the curses
of further hordes struggling to get in. Then the scene faded away. He
walked down the great impromptu annexe to the hospital and spoke to one
of the doctors. The doctor’s adjectives made the words of his patients
sound like the babbling of children.
“More cases of that bad beef,” was the plain English of what he said.
“We are just in the one corner of the line, too, where we can’t rely on
stores for a few days. Curse the man whoever made the stuff, and the
Government inspector who passed it.” . . .
There was a little movement by Mr. Cray’s side. He glanced up. A tall,
well-built man of early middle-age was taking his seat. The two men
exchanged greetings.
“Mr. Otto Schreed?” Mr. Cray observed.
The man winced a little but acknowledged his identity.
“And your name?” he asked.
“Mr. Joseph P. Cray,” Mr. Cray replied. “We seem to be neighbours, Mr.
Schreed. Will you join me in a bottle of wine?”
“That’s a great idea,” was the hearty response.
So Mr. Cray did what those few months ago he would have deemed
impossible—he fraternised with Mr. Otto Schreed of Chicago, exporter of
tinned beef. They talked together of many subjects. Their conversation
was the conversation of two patriotic and high-minded Americans, with
the obvious views of the well-meaning man. Mr. Schreed, encouraged
towards the end of the meal by his companion’s friendliness, and warmed
a little by the wine he had drunk, became confidential.
“Say, it’s a hard question I’m going to put to you, Mr. Cray,” he said,
lowering his voice a little, “but does my name suggest anything to you?”
Mr. Cray took up the card and looked at it.
“Can’t say that it does,” he replied, “except that your front name reads
German.”
“That ain’t it,” the other observed. “My father was a German all right,
but I was born in Chicago and I am a good American citizen. It isn’t
that. I was one of the unlucky devils that got into some trouble with
the Government contractors.”
“And I was one of those,” Mr. Cray mused, “who spent a hundred dollars
cabling to the head of the Y.M.C.A. in the States exactly my opinion of
you.” But aloud, Mr. Cray’s words betrayed nothing of this fact.
“Say, that was hard luck!” he admitted. “How did it happen?”
“Just as those things do happen,” the other explained, “however almighty
careful you may be. We were canning night and day, with Government
officials standing over us, and Washington wiring all the time—‘Get a
move on. Get a move on. We want the stuff.’ I guess some of the foremen
got a bit careless. I was worn out myself. The weather was moist and
hot, and a load or two of stuff got in that shouldn’t. Not but what I
always believed,” Mr. Schreed went on, “that the complaints were
exaggerated, but any way the Y.M.C.A. busybodies over yonder took it up,
and they got me before the Court.”
“Did it cost you much?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“They fined me fifty thousand dollars,” the other replied, “and I had to
sell out. Just at the time, too,” he went on gloomily, “when one was
making money just so that you couldn’t count it.”
It was precisely at this moment that Mr. Cray was on the point of
raising his voice and of speaking words which without doubt would have
led to his neighbour’s precipitate ejection from the room. And then
something struck him. There was something more than the natural
humiliation of a punished man in Mr. Schreed’s drawn face and furtive
expression. There was something beyond the look of the man who has done
wrong and has borne an unacceptable punishment. There was still fear,
there was still terror of some unnamed possibility. Mr. Cray saw this
and he held his peace. He took his thoughts back a few months to the
little conversation he had had with the doctor in that impromptu
hospital. He recalled the latter’s impassioned words and he choked down
certain rebellious feelings. He decided to offer the right hand of
fellowship to the unfortunate Mr. Otto Schreed.
* * * * *
Mr. Otto Schreed was alone and friendless in a strange city, with the
shadow of disgrace resting upon his unattractive name. He was more than
disposed, therefore, to accept the advances of this genial and
companionable new acquaintance. He was not by disposition a gregarious
person, but he was too uncultured to find any pleasure in books or
pictures; the newspapers of London were an unknown world to him, and a
certain measure of companionship became almost a necessity. It appeared
that he was staying at the Milan Hotel, and it was quite natural,
therefore, that he should see a great deal of his new friend during the
next few days. He was not at first disposed to be communicative. He said
very little about his plans, and he asked a great many personal
questions, some of which Mr. Cray evaded, and others of which he
answered with artless candour. Mr. Cray’s connection with the Y.M.C.A.
and his work in France was not once alluded to.
“Say, what’s keeping you over here?” Mr. Schreed asked one day. “You’ve
nothing against the other side?”
“Haven’t I!” Mr. Cray replied. “That’s where you’re making the mistake
of your life. I am not a drunkard,” he went on, warming to his subject,
“but I am a man who loves his liberty, and I hate a country where the
bars are crowded out with soft drinks, and where the damned waiters wink
and jerk their thumbs round the corner towards the apothecary’s shop
when you want a drop of Scotch. I am over here, Schreed, my lad, till
the United States comes to its senses on the liquor question, and over
here I mean to stop until then. . . . What about yourself?”
Mr. Schreed had been exceedingly close-mouthed about his own movements,
but this morning he spoke with more freedom of his plans.
“I am not so strong as you on the liquor question,” he admitted, “but I
feel I have been hardly done with over there by the Government, and I’m
not hurrying back yet awhile. I thought some,” he went on, after a
moment’s pause, glancing sideways at Mr. Cray as though to watch the
effect of his words, “of taking a little tour out to the battle-fields
of France.”
“That’s quite an idea,” Mr. Cray admitted with interest.
His companion looked around to make sure that they were alone.
“I don’t mind confiding to you, Cray,” he said, “that I have another
reason for wanting to get out there. When the Stores Department
discovered that something was wrong with those few thousand tins of beef
of mine, they burnt the lot. They sent a certificate to Washington as to
its condition, upon which I was convicted and fined, although I was well
able to prove that the week the defective canning must have been done, I
was taking a few days’ vacation. However, that’s neither here nor there.
I made inquiries as to whether any of it was still in existence, and I
was told that before any had been opened, a matter of fifty tins or so
had been doled out in some French village where the peasants hadn’t got
any food. Nothing was ever heard about these.”
“I see,” Mr. Cray murmured, and there was nothing in his face to
indicate that he had found the intelligence interesting.
“I kind of thought,” Mr. Schreed continued, “that I’d like to look
around over there, and if any of these tins were still in existence I’d
buy them up and destroy them, so as to avoid any further trouble. You
see, they all have my name and trade-mark on the outside. The Government
insisted upon that.”
“Rather like looking for a needle in a hay-stack,” Mr. Cray remarked.
“Not so much,” the other replied. “I know the name of the place where
our men were billeted when they opened the stuff, and the name of the
village to which they sent fifty tins. I thought I’d just look around
there, and if there are no traces of any—well, I’ve done the best I
could. Then I thought some of coming home by Holland.”
“Business in Holland, eh?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“Not exactly business—or rather, if it is, it wouldn’t take more than
an hour or two,” Mr. Schreed announced.
“When did you think of going?”
“Next week. They tell me they’re running some tours from Paris out to
the battle-fields. The one that goes to Château Thierry would serve my
purpose. The worst of it is I can’t speak a word of the lingo.”
“It’s dead easy,” Mr. Cray observed. “I’ve been going to Paris too many
years not to have picked up a bit.”
“You wouldn’t care about a trip out with me, I suppose,” Mr. Schreed
suggested, “just in a friendly fashion, you understand, each paying his
own dues?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Cray replied cautiously. “Next week did you say you
were going?”
“I’m fixing it up to leave on Wednesday.”
“It’s some trip,” Mr. Cray said thoughtfully.
“A day or two in Paris wouldn’t do us any harm,” Mr. Schreed remarked,
with a slow smile which degenerated into a leer.
“We’ll take a bite together at seven o’clock to-night,” Mr. Cray
decided, “and I’ll let you know. I don’t know as I can see anything to
prevent my going, providing I can get accommodation. I might be able to
help you with the language, too. Finish up in Holland, you said, eh?”
“I don’t know as you’d care to go up that far with me,” Mr. Schreed
said, doubtfully. “I shan’t be stopping there, either. You might wait in
Paris.”
Mr. Cray smiled beatifically.
“Paris,” he murmured. “Gee, I think I’ll go, Schreed!”
* * * * *
Mr. Otto Schreed was both surprised and gratified at his companion’s
proficiency in the French language, and his capacity for making
travelling endurable. Their journey to Paris was accomplished under the
most favourable circumstances, and by dint of a long argument and great
tact, the very inferior accommodation which had been secured for them
was cancelled, and rooms with a small _salon_ and bathrooms _en suite_
provided at a well-known hotel. As a guide to Paris itself, except to
the American bars and the restaurants pure and simple, Mr. Cray was
perhaps a little disappointing, but his companion himself, during those
first few days, was restless and eager to be off on their quest. On the
third day, Mr. Cray announced their imminent departure.
“Say, I’ve done better for you than these Cook’s char-à-bancs,” he
announced triumphantly “I’ve engaged a private car, and we can get out
to Château Thierry, see the whole of that part of the line, visit the
village you were speaking of, and get back before nightfall. Some
hustle, what?”
“Fine!” Mr. Schreed declared, showing every impatience to depart. “Does
the man speak any English?”
“I don’t know as he does,” Mr. Cray admitted, “but that don’t matter
any, I guess, as long as I’m around all the time.”
Mr. Schreed seemed a little disappointed.
“How about making the inquiries in these small grocers’ shops or what
you call them?”
“I shall be along,” Mr. Cray reminded him. “You can stand by my side and
hear what they say.”
So the pilgrimage started. Mr. Cray felt a great silence creep over him
as he stood once more on well-remembered ground. It was a bright day in
early October, and the familiar landmarks for many miles were visible.
Behind that remnant of wood, a thousand Americans had been ambushed. On
the hillside there, a great mine had been sprung. Down in the valley
below, the corpses of his countrymen had lain so thick that Mr. Cray
found himself remembering that one awful night when every spare hand, he
himself included, had been pressed into the stretcher-bearers’ service.
He grew more and more silent as they neared their journey’s end. Mr.
Schreed appeared to be a trifle bored.
“Lutaples is the name of the village we want,” he announced, as they
began to pass a few white-plastered cottages.
Mr. Cray nodded.
“I know,” he said reminiscently. “Our canteen was in the hollow, just at
the bottom there.”
“Our canteen?” Mr. Schreed repeated.
“The American canteen,” Mr. Cray explained. “I’ve been making inquiries
for you. So far as I can gather, there was only one shop in Lutaples at
the time and it’s up at this end of the village. However, we’ll soon
find out all about it now.”
They stopped at a small _estaminet_, and here trouble nearly came, for
no disguise could conceal from the warm-hearted little landlord, the
kindly, absurd fat man in tight uniform, who had fed him and his wife
and children and left them money to make a fresh start. Fortunately,
however, Schreed had lingered behind, making a vain attempt to converse
with the chauffeur, and Cray had time, in a few rapid sentences, to put
a certain matter before his friend Pierre. So that when Schreed returned
and took his seat by Cray’s side before the marble table in the village
street, Pierre was able to serve them with liqueurs and speak as though
to strangers. Mr. Cray conversed with him for some time.
“Well, what does he say?” Schreed asked eagerly, when he had gone in.
“There was only one grocer’s shop in the village at the time we were in
occupation,” Mr. Cray explained, “and the majority of the stores
presented by the Americans were handed over to him for distribution.
There’s the place, plumb opposite—_Henri Lalarge. Epicier._”
“That mean ‘grocer’?” Otto Schreed asked.
“Some of it does. Let’s be getting along.”
Mr. Cray led the way across the cobbled street. Monsieur Lalarge was
short, fat, and black-whiskered. As they entered his shop, the landlord
from the _estaminet_ opposite issued from the back quarters.
“What’s he been doing over here?” Schreed demanded suspiciously.
Mr. Cray shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose these fellows all live on one another’s doorsteps,” he
observed.
The result of the landlord’s visit, however, was that although the tears
of welcome glistened in the eyes of the warm-hearted Monsieur Lalarge,
he greeted the two men as strangers. Mr. Cray, having satisfied himself
as to his companion’s absolute ignorance of the language, talked
fluently to the grocer in rapid French. Presently he appeared satisfied
and turned to Schreed.
“He says he had fifty tins,” he explained, “but they were distributed
half an hour after he received them. The complaint was made from some of
the villagers, and the unopened tins were returned and burned. There is
a chemist’s shop at the further end of the village where it would be as
well to make inquiries. The chauffeur might take you there, and I will
explain to him what you want to ask for. Meanwhile, I will see the
_curé_.”
Mr. Schreed saw nothing to object to in the arrangement, and drove off
with the chauffeur. Monsieur Lalarge, with the tears streaming down his
cheeks, threw his arms around Mr. Cray and kissed him.
“Heaven has brought you back!” he exclaimed. “Our deliverer—our Saint!
But how thin—how wasted!”
“Simply a matter of clothes, Jean, my boy,” Cray assured him. “Uncle Sam
used to pinch us a bit tight about the loins. And now how goes it, eh?”
“Thanks to the benevolence of monsieur, everything prospers,” Monsieur
Lalarge declared. “His little loan—but give me time to write the
cheque—it can be paid this moment.”
“Not on your life,” Mr. Cray replied vigorously. “Not a franc, Jean. We
both did good work, eh, when those guns were thundering and dirty Fritz
was skulking behind the hills there. Finished, Jean. I am a rich man,
and what you call a loan was my little thank-offering. We did our best
together for the poor people, you know.”
“But, monsieur,” the little grocer sobbed——
“About those tins,” Mr. Cray interrupted. “You have two?”
“I kept them, monsieur,” the man explained, “because I read in the paper
that some day inquiry might be held into all these matters.”
“And an inquiry is going to be held,” Mr. Cray declared. “What you have
to do, Jean, is to pack those two tins securely and to send them to me
by registered post to the Ritz Hotel, Paris.”
“It shall be done, monsieur.”
“Were there any who died after eating the stuff?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“Two,” the grocer answered. “They are buried in the civic cemetery. One
has talked but little of these things. The Americans came as saviours,
and this was an accident.”
Cray glanced down the street. His companion was still interviewing the
chemist.
“One _petit verre_, Monsieur Lalarge,” he said, “for the sake of old
times.”
Monsieur Lalarge threw aside his apron.
“And to drink to the great goodness of monsieur,” he responded.
* * * * *
Mr. Otto Schreed was in high good-humour that evening, on the way back
to Paris. He insisted upon paying for a little dinner at the
Ambassador’s, and a box at the Folies Bergeres. He spent money freely,
for him, and drank far more wine than usual. As he drank, he expanded.
“It is like a nightmare passed away,” he confided to his companion. “I
know now that no one else in the world will ever suffer because of that
terrible mistake. There is not a single tin of the condemned beef in
existence.”
“A load off your mind, eh?” Mr. Cray murmured.
Mr. Schreed smiled a peculiar smile.
“For more reasons than you know of, my friend,” he confided. “Now my
little trip to Holland, and after that I am a free man.”
“When are you off there?” his companion inquired.
“The day after to-morrow—Thursday,” was the prompt reply. “And,
Cray——”
“Something bothering you?” the latter remarked, as Schreed hesitated.
“Just this, old fellow. My little trip to Holland is unimportant in its
way, and in another sense it’s a trip I want to do alone. Do you get
me?”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray replied. “I am no butter in. There are some of the boys
in this gay little burg I haven’t had the time to look up yet. When
shall you be back?”
“Monday,” was the eager reply—“Monday sure. I’ll go alone, then, Cray.
I guess it would be better. But look here. Get together a few of your
friends, and we’ll have a little dinner the night of my return. At my
expense, you understand. You’ve been very useful to me over here and I
should like to make you some slight return. Ask any one you please, and
take a couple of boxes for any show you fancy. It isn’t the way I live
as a rule, but I’ve a fancy for making a celebration of it.”
“That’s easy,” Mr. Cray declared. “It shall be some celebration, I can
tell you. We’ll dine in the hotel here, and I promise there shall be one
or two people you’ll be interested to meet.”
So on the following morning Mr. Otto Schreed started for Holland, and
Mr. Joseph P. Cray, with a brown paper parcel under his arm, set out to
pay a few calls in Paris.
* * * * *
When Mr. Otto Schreed made his punctual appearance in the hotel _salon_
on Monday evening at a few minutes before eight, he found Mr. Cray and
three other guests awaiting him. Mr. Cray was busy mixing cocktails, so
was unable to shake hands. He looked around and nodded.
“Glad you’re punctual, Schreed,” he said. “Pleasant trip?”
“Fine!”
“Business turn out all right?”
“Couldn’t have been better. Won’t you introduce me to these gentlemen,
Cray?”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray replied. “Gentlemen, this is Mr. Otto Schreed of
Chicago—Colonel Wilmot of the American Intelligence Department, Mr.
Neville of the same Service, and Doctor Lemarten.”
“Delighted to meet you all, gentlemen,” Mr. Schreed declared.
His outstretched hand was uselessly offered. Neville and Colonel Wilmot
contented themselves with a military salute. The Frenchman bowed. Mr.
Schreed from the first moment was conscious of a vague feeling of
uneasiness. He turned towards Cray, who was approaching with a little
tray upon which were four cocktails.
“Hope you’ve ordered a good dinner, Cray,” he said, “and that these
gentlemen are ready to do justice to it. Why, you’re a cocktail short.”
Colonel Wilmot, Mr. Neville, and Doctor Lemarten had each accepted a
wine-glass. Mr. Cray took the other one.
“And dash it all, the table’s only laid for four!” Schreed continued, as
he gazed with dismay at the empty silver tray. “Is this a practical
joke?”
Mr. Cray shook his head.
“One of us,” he confided, “is not having a cocktail. One of us is not
dining. That one, Otto Schreed, is you.”
Schreed was suddenly pale. He moved a little towards the door, gripping
the back of a chair with his hand.
“Say, what the devil does this mean?” he demanded.
“You just stay where you are and you shall hear,” Mr. Cray replied,
setting down his empty glass. “I worked out at that little village of
Lutaples for the last year of the war—ran an American canteen there for
the Y.M.C.A. I was there when your filthy beef was unloaded upon the
boys. I saw their sufferings.”
“God!” Schreed muttered beneath his breath. “And you never told me?”
“I never told you,” Cray assented, “although I came pretty near telling
you with an end of my fist that day at the luncheon club. Glad I didn’t
now. When I tumbled to it that you were scared about any more of those
tins being in existence, I began to guess how things were. I came over
with you to be sure you didn’t get them. I got two tins from Monsieur
Jean Lalarge, and a nice tale he had to tell me about the rest. Doctor
Lemarten here analysed them and prepared a report. He’s here to tell you
about it.”
“The beef was poisoned,” the Frenchman said calmly. “My report has been
handed to Colonel Wilmot.”
“It’s a lie!” Schreed declared, trembling. “Besides, this matter has
been dealt with. I have paid my fine. It is finished.”
“Not on your life,” Mr. Cray replied. “Ten thousand tins of your bully
beef, Otto Schreed, contained poison. No wonder you were glad to get out
of it, as you thought, with a fine. Now we’ll move on a step. You’ve
just come back from Holland.
“You may not have known it, but Mr. Neville, here, of the American
Intelligence Department, was your fellow-passenger. You cashed five
drafts at the Amsterdam Bank, amounting in all to something like five
hundred thousand dollars of American money. Half of that went to your
credit in London, the other half you’ve got with you. Blood money, Otto
Schreed—foul, stinking blood money!”
Schreed was on the point of collapse.
“You have employed spies to dog me?” he shouted.
“We don’t call the officers of the American Intelligence Department
spies,” Mr. Cray observed coldly.
“Otto Schreed,” Colonel Wilmot said, speaking for the first time, “I
have a warrant for your arrest, and an extradition warrant from the
French Government. You will leave for Cherbourg to-night and be taken
back to New York!”
“On what charge?” Schreed faltered.
“Political conspiracy—perhaps murder.”
Colonel Wilmot walked to the door and called in two men who were waiting
outside. Schreed collapsed.
“I’ve two hundred and fifty thousand dollars here,” he shrieked. “Can’t
we arrange this? Cray! Colonel Wilmot!”
The two men were obliged to drag him out. Mr. Cray moved to the window
and threw it open.
“What we want,” he muttered, “is fresh air.” Colonel Wilmot smiled.
“He was a poisonous beast, Cray,” he said, “but you’ve done a fine
stroke of business for the United States Government, and we’re anxious
to drink your health.”
Two waiters, followed by a _maître d’hôtel_, were already in the room.
The latter came forward and bowed.
“_Monsieur est servi_,” he announced.
V The Rift
Mr. Cray, newly arrived from Paris, sat in the lounge of the Milan,
talking to his daughter, Lady Sittingbourne. The latter was a little
distressed.
“I am worried about George, dad,” she confided. “When did you say the
_Mauretania_ arrived?”
“Docked in Liverpool midday yesterday,” Mr. Cray replied. “The special
arrived in London last night.”
“George cabled me from New York that he was sailing on her,” Sara
continued, “and I have heard nothing since. I sat at home all last
night, and all to-day up till four o’clock. Then I telephoned the Cunard
Steamship Company, and they told me that he was on board. They knew
nothing else, of course.”
Mr. Cray admitted to being a little perplexed himself.
“I suppose he’d have to go to Downing Street first,” he observed.
“I thought I’d allowed plenty of time for that . . . Why, Dad——”
Mr. Cray was leaning forward in his chair. He, too, was staring in some
bewilderment at the tall, good-looking man who had just descended the
steps, and with a companion by his side was making his way towards the
restaurant. There was not the slightest doubt that the man was Sir
George Sittingbourne, or that his companion was an extremely
good-looking woman of somewhat flamboyant type.
“George!” Sara exclaimed breathlessly. “What on earth does this mean?”
She rose impulsively to her feet. Her husband turned and glanced in
their direction. He took not the slightest notice either of his wife or
his father-in-law. The woman by his side plucked at his arm to ask him a
question, and he smiled into her face as he leaned down.
“Gee!” Mr. Cray murmured. “This is bad!”
“It’s disgraceful—horrible!” Sara cried. “So this is why George hasn’t
been home!”
Mr. Cray pulled himself together.
“George isn’t that sort, my dear,” he declared. “There’s something queer
about it. Let’s sit and think for a moment.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” Sara declared. “I shall go straight in
and confront him. I will let him know that I saw him with my own eyes.”
“If your ladyship will excuse me!”
Both Mr. Cray and his daughter turned round. Standing behind their
settee was a small, dark man of unobtrusive manners, dressed in an
unobtrusive dinner-suit, and with a faintly deprecating smile upon his
lips.
“I regret so much,” he went on, “being compelled to make my little
explanation here. I called in Curzon Street but found that your ladyship
had just left. I wish to have a word with you in reference to your
husband.”
“My husband?” Sara repeated blankly. “Who are you?”
“My name is King,” the young man replied. “I am connected with the
Intelligence Department.”
Neither Sara nor her father felt capable of any comment. The situation
so suddenly disclosed had taken their breath away.
“Your husband,” Mr. King continued smoothly, “after a very successful
visit to the States, has met with one of those misadventures on his
homeward journey to which we are all of us sometimes subject. An
autograph letter which he was conveying from a certain person in
Washington to the Prime Minister, and to obtain which was the object of
his mission, was stolen from his person during the last day of his
voyage home.”
“What has that to do with my husband’s presence here with that—that
woman?” Sara demanded.
“Sir George sought the aid of my department by wireless,” Mr. King
replied. “I boarded the steamer in the Mersey and at once realised the
probable thief. The woman whom he is dining with to-night, sat at his
table and occupied the next stateroom to his. She is an Austrian. It
will be sufficient if I tell you that if she had been found in any of
the allied countries during the war, she would have been shot at once as
a spy.”
“What is her name?” Sara demanded, a little irrelevantly.
“She has many,” Mr. King answered. “She calls herself at present Mrs.
Jacob Wieller from Chicago.”
“And why is she dining alone with my husband?”
Mr. King smiled inscrutably.
“Even the most successful Secret Service agents in the world,” he said,
“have their weak point. Mrs. Wieller, although she must be forty years
old, preserves a romantic disposition. From my inquiries on the ship, I
learned that she has pursued your husband with attentions from the day
the steamer left Sandy Hook, attentions which I might add were obviously
undesired. It was my advice at once that your husband should not lose
sight of the lady. I may tell you that while he engages her attention at
dinner, her rooms are being thoroughly searched by our agents.”
“Say, this affair becomes interesting!” Mr. Cray declared, his natural
instincts asserting themselves. “I guess you are satisfied now, Sara?”
“I suppose so,” she admitted, with a shade of doubt still in her tone.
“Then let’s just have a word or two more about this matter,” Mr. Cray
went on. “Searching the lady’s rooms is all very well, but can’t she
have sent the letter away somewhere?”
“It is impossible that she should have parted with it,” Mr. King
pronounced. “I myself left the steamer by her side, I travelled in the
same compartment from Liverpool. I did not move a yard away from her on
Euston platform. Sir George escorted her here in a taxicab, from which I
watched her myself alight in the entrance hall of the Milan, and went up
in the lift with her to her room. Since then she has been surrounded by
a cordon of our best agents. She has posted three absolutely harmless
letters to personal friends, each of which has been read.”
“What about her person?” Mr. Cray demanded. “Surely she would carry a
letter as important as that about with her?”
“An agent of ours,” Mr. King explained, “at once took the place of the
chamber-maid on her floor, and has rendered her since her arrival the
most intimate personal services. The letter is not concealed upon her
person.”
“How large a thing is it?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“It is a bulky document,” Mr. King replied. “There are eighteen pages of
ordinary letter paper enclosed in a long envelope. It is altogether a
packet of some bulk.”
“The stewardess on the ship——” Mr. Cray began.
Mr. King smiled.
“We make our mistakes,” he interrupted, “but in our way we are thorough.
Every person with whom she came in contact during the last day of her
voyage has been dealt with. Excuse me for a moment.”
Mr. King sauntered across the foyer to where a recently-arrived
prototype of himself had lit a cigarette and was ordering a cocktail.
There was a few minutes’ casual conversation between the two men, after
which Mr. King returned.
“The search of Blanche Wieller’s room,” he announced, “has revealed
nothing. I think, under the circumstances, Lady Sittingbourne,
disappointing though it may be to you, the best thing you can do is to
return home. We will send your husband after you as soon as we can spare
him.”
Sara made a little grimace.
“I don’t see what good he can do if your agents have failed to discover
the document,” she observed, rising reluctantly to her feet, “and in any
case I haven’t had any dinner yet.”
Mr. Cray took his daughter by the arm.
“We’ll go straight into the grill-room and have a bite, Sara.
Afterwards, if I could have a word with you, Mr. King, I’d be glad,” he
went on. “I am naturally interested in this affair, and it is just
possible that I might be of some slight assistance.”
King looked a little doubtful. Mr. Cray pushed back his coat, revealing
a small medal attached to his waistcoat. The other’s manner altered at
once.
“For services rendered the American Intelligence Department,” Mr. Cray
explained. “I’ll look for you about here, eh, in three-quarters of an
hour?”
“I shall be very glad of your help, sir,” was the quiet reply.
* * * * *
The dinner in the grill-room was rather a dull meal. Sara was several
times on the verge of tears, and her father, although fully sympathetic,
was inclined at times to let his attention wander a little.
“It seems positively hateful,” the former declared, “to think that I
should be up here dining alone with you, and George, who has been away
from me for months, is in the Restaurant, dining with another woman! Of
course, I am sorry that the letter was stolen from him, but I’m sure he
took every care of it. I don’t see what he can possibly do now towards
getting it back.”
“It’s hard luck,” Mr. Cray murmured soothingly, “but I guess you’ve got
to remember this, Sara. In diplomacy and all intelligence business,
judgment goes only by results. George was entrusted with that letter,
and he allowed it to be stolen from him. The fault might not have been
his. On the other hand, if he don’t get it back again the black mark’s
there.”
“I call it unfair,” Sara protested. “He was so successful with all the
rest of his business. They ought to take that into account.”
“We’ll soon fix that up all right,” Mr. Cray promised.
Sara sighed.
“I know how clever you are, dad,” she said, “but I really don’t see what
you can do here.”
“What I should like to do,” Mr. Cray remarked thoughtfully, “is to turn
a slight disaster into an absolute triumph. Blanche Wieller, eh? Well,
well! The wife of Jacob N. Wieller of Chicago, eh?”
“Do you know something about her, dad? Have you ever seen her before?”
Sara inquired.
Mr. Cray smiled mysteriously.
“I think I know as much about the lady as our friend, Mr. King,” he
said. “I was at Amiens when she was in charge of a French
field-hospital. She was asked to leave, the day after she arrived—no
excuse—not a word of explanation—just her railway pass to Paris, and a
hint. She simply faded away. I knew her before that, though. I remember
when she had what they call a _salon_ in Washington, some seven years
ago.”
“You really are rather a wonderful person,” Sara observed.
“Nothing wonderful about it,” Mr. Cray replied modestly. “I have a good
memory and I never forget a face.”
Sara sighed as her father paid the bill.
“Well, I suppose I’d better go home,” she said. “Will you put me in a
taxi, dad, and let me know as soon as there’s any news?”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray promised. “I’ll telephone.”
Mr. Cray found his new friend studying the tape in the upper hall.
“Say, I’d like to be presented to this Mrs. Wieller,” the former said,
after they had stood side by side for several moments, both apparently
deeply interested by the news.
Mr. King shook his head.
“I am keeping under cover,” he replied.
“Shan’t be butting in,” Mr. Cray asked, “if I find my own way there?”
Mr. King considered the point for a moment.
“Not at all,” he decided. “You’re Sir George’s father-in-law. Quite
natural for you to speak to him.”
Whereupon Mr. Cray descended into the foyer, and after glancing around
for a moment as though in search of someone, approached Sir George. His
right hand was held out in cordial recognition to Mrs. Wieller. She
looked up at him pleasantly but evidently puzzled.
“George my boy, glad to see you safely back again,” Mr. Cray said.
“And—surely I’m not mistaken—aren’t you Mrs. Jacob N. Wieller of
Chicago?”
“That is my name,” the lady admitted, “but——”
“Why, my dear lady,” Mr. Cray interrupted, “your husband and I were at
school together, same class at Princetown, and before his marriage we
roomed together in New York. Kinder shame I only met you once—out at
the Country Club—the Shore Country Club, you know. Luke Hamer was
there, and all the crowd.”
“Of course I remember,” the lady acknowledged, with a sweet smile.
“Is Jacob along?” Mr. Cray asked eagerly.
“Not this time.”
Mr. Cray remained for a few more minutes chatting on general subjects.
Then he took a somewhat hurried departure, recognising an acquaintance
in a distant part of the foyer.
“A dear, friendly person,” Mrs. Wieller murmured, toying with one of the
stones of her long amber necklace. “To tell you the truth, though, I
don’t remember him in the least. . . .”
Mr. Cray touched King on the arm as he passed him in the upper hall, and
led him into the bar. He ordered two Scotch whiskies and sodas and shook
his head gravely at his companion.
“Say, Mr. King,” he began, “I don’t want to seem to be rubbing it in,
but you fellows ain’t all that smart. You can reckon on handling that
letter any time you choose.”
Mr. King started a little. His eyes narrowed. He looked at his companion
appraisingly. He could not make up his mind whether this was a bluff or
whether there was something underneath.
“Where is the letter, then?” he asked.
Mr. Cray smiled.
“I’ve had a few words with the lady,” he went on thoughtfully. “I talked
to her of her husband who never existed, and of a meeting which never
took place. She fell to it admirably, and while we talked I looked for
that letter. It wasn’t so difficult to locate, either.”
“Look here,” Mr. King said, “that letter consists of eighteen sheets of
rather thick note-paper, secured in a long legal envelope. It must weigh
at least six ounces. Now one of our own women attended Mrs. Wieller from
the moment she stepped out of the bath, helped her on with her garments,
and never left her for a single second. From the moment she left the
room she was shadowed by one of our men, and I took the business up at
the bottom of the lift. Now how can you make out that she has a packet
of that description concealed upon her person?”
“Dead easy,” Mr. Cray replied. “The only question is do you want to help
yourself to the letter at once, or——”
“Or what?”
“Do you want to find out whose game she’s playing? In other words, do
you want to find out who’s paying her to get that letter?”
Mr. King drew a little breath. He was beginning to be impressed.
“There isn’t much doubt about that, I fancy, Mr. Cray,” he said.
“Think not?”
“Why, the woman’s an Austrian by birth,” Mr. King pointed out. “She was
under suspicion many times during the war. We had evidence only the
other day,” he continued, dropping his voice a little, “of the renewed
activities of the German Secret Service. This woman is directly
connected with one of the new chiefs.”
“Ah!” Mr. Cray murmured.
“I am treating you with every confidence, you see,” his companion
proceeded. “It would naturally be of the utmost importance to Germany to
know exactly how America stands with reference to the ratification of
the Treaty. The matter is urgent, too. I have been expecting her to make
some attempt to dispose of her information this evening. That is why we
are here in such force. That is why we want to keep Sir George by her
side as long as we can.”
“The game seems clear enough, certainly,” Mr. Cray observed.
“Now tell me where that letter is?” Mr. King asked eagerly.
Mr. Cray knocked the ash from his cigar.
“That wouldn’t do any good,” he declared. “When I say that I know where
the letter is, you can figure it out that I’m making a pretty strong
guess. If I tell you and I’m wrong, you may lighten up on the job and
let the blamed thing go through. You keep her in the net until she
attempts to leave the hotel or send a parcel away. We’ll have her both
ways then. We’ll find the letter and we’ll find out the agent with whom
she is dealing.”
“I think I can lay my hands on him,” Mr. King observed calmly. “We’re
watching him, too, just as closely as we are the woman. If anything
passes between those two without being detected—well, I’d resign my
post to-morrow.”
“Capital!” Mr. Cray murmured approvingly. “Well, I guess I’ll turn in. I
like my eight hours when I can get ’em.”
“You’re not going to tell me where the letter is, then?” Mr. King asked.
“Do you believe I know where it is?” Mr. Cray answered.
His companion smiled.
“To tell you the truth,” he admitted, “I don’t.”
“Then I shan’t disappoint you if we let things stay as they are until
to-morrow,” Mr. Cray decided.
Mr. Cray found his son-in-law waiting for him in his rooms. Sir George
was standing on the hearthrug with his hands in his pockets, whistling
moodily.
“Where’s Sara?” he asked eagerly.
“Gone home an hour ago. We had a bite together in the grill-room.”
“She understood, I hope?”
“More or less,” Mr. Cray assured him. “You know what these women are.
She may make a bit of a fuss for the sake of making it up afterwards.
Are you off duty now?”
Sir George nodded.
“I’ve done the best I can,” he confessed. “The woman’s too clever for
me. If she’s really got the letter, she must have swallowed it.”
“Did you suspect her at all during the voyage?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“I suspected everybody,” his son-in-law replied. “I made no friends. I
didn’t speak a dozen words to anybody—until that last day. I had some
coffee in the smoking-room which made me feel drowsy, and afterwards I
dozed in my steamer-chair. When I woke up, she was in the next chair to
mine and the packet had gone from the inner pocket of my coat, where it
was sewn in. All the stitches had been cut.”
“You didn’t feel like having her arrested and searched?” Mr. Cray asked
thoughtfully.
“That was my first thought,” Sir George confessed. “Then I looked at my
watch and saw that I’d been asleep for an hour, so she’d had plenty of
time to hide it. I sent the wireless to King, but otherwise I pretended
not to have discovered the theft.”
“And you can’t make anything of her?” Mr. Cray queried.
“Nothing at all,” Sir George replied. “I’ve given the job up and I’m
going home. The rest of my mission,” he went on, “was completely
successful, and I am not the first man in the Intelligence Department
who has been robbed. I saw you talking to King,” he continued. “Have you
any theories?”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray assented cheerfully. “We’ll get that letter back all
right, and before any mischief’s been done. Not only that, but we’ll
carry the war into the enemy’s camp. We’ll find out for whom she was
working.”
Sir George looked at his father-in-law with something of that wondering
admiration he had more than once in his lifetime felt for him.
“Are you in earnest?” he asked breathlessly.
“Sure thing,” Mr. Cray replied. “I’ll lay ten to one I could put my hand
on the letter to-night. You get home to Sara now. By-the by, are you
seeing Mrs. Wieller again?”
“I promised to lunch to-morrow,” Sir George replied moodily. “I don’t
see that there’s any use in it, and I’m a clumsy hand at this sort of
flirtation.”
“Good boy,” Mr. Cray murmured approvingly. “Get along with you now,
then. I’ll telephone Sara that you’re coming.”
Whereupon Sir George departed and his father-in-law went to bed.
At eleven o’clock the next morning there was a slight stir amongst the
silent army of watchers who were gathered around the purlieus of the
Milan Hotel. Messages came from upstairs, and, somewhat to Mr. Cray’s
surprise, Mrs. Wieller descended from the lift, talked for a moment with
one of the reception clerks, and, passing through the swing doors, asked
for a taxi. She was on the point of driving off when King sauntered
across to where Mr. Cray had risen from his seat in some perturbation.
“It’s all right,” the former announced smoothly. “She was dressed again
by our woman, who also packed that wooden box she is carrying with her.”
“What’s in the wooden box?” Mr. Cray asked.
“Only the amber necklace she was wearing last night. Something wrong
with the clasp. She is taking it to the goldsmith’s and silversmith’s.”
“Any one following her?” Mr. Cray, who was half-way towards the door,
demanded.
King shook his head.
“She hasn’t got the letter with her,” he replied. “We don’t want to make
her suspicious if we can help it . . . Here! Where are you off to?”
Mr. Cray had already accosted a taxicab driver waiting in the courtyard.
He whispered a word or two to the man and jumped in.
“Come along if you want to be in at the death,” he invited King.
The latter obeyed with a little protest.
“I don’t see what’s the use of following her,” he declared. “We know
where she’s gone.”
“Gee, but you’re dead off it this time!” Mr. Cray remarked pityingly.
“Bet you a dime she doesn’t go near the goldsmith’s and silversmith’s,
and I bet you another dime she’s got the letter with her.”
King was dubious, but his companion’s confidence somewhat perturbed him.
“Mr. Cray,” he said, “couldn’t you be a little more explicit?”
“Well, I’ll show you one thing, at any rate,” was the calm reply.
“There’s Mrs. Wieller’s taxi ahead of us, and, as you observe, we’re in
Piccadilly, not Regent Street.”
“That’s so,” King observed uneasily.
“Don’t bother me for explanations for a moment,” Mr. Cray advised. “I
want to keep my eye on that taxi. . . . Yes, I thought so!”
They turned into a well-known thoroughfare, and stopped at a
comparatively small jeweller’s about half-way down. The traffic was
somewhat blocked, and she had entered the shop while they were still
some distance behind. Mr. Cray half rose in his seat. He was a little
anxious.
“Say, has she spotted you yet?” he asked his companion.
King shook his head.
“No, I’ve been in the background all the time.”
“Follow me into the shop, then,” Cray directed. “You can ask for
something or other. We can’t afford to hang about.”
Mr. Cray stepped on to the pavement, crossed it with incredible
swiftness, and entered the shop. Mrs. Wieller was the only customer
present. Before her on the counter was stretched her amber necklace,
just drawn from the box. The shopman appeared to be examining the catch.
Mr. Cray passed on to the further end of the shop, but suddenly seemed
to recognise Mrs. Wieller and came towards her cheerfully.
“Say, you’ve soon begun to set the Chicago dollars spinning, Mrs.
Wieller!” he said with a broad smile. “How are you feeling after the
trip, eh?”
Mrs. Wieller was not enthusiastic in her response.
“I am very well indeed, thank you, Mr. Cray,” she said. “As a matter of
fact, I am not here to buy anything at all. I was just having the catch
of my amber necklace examined. I have rather a quaint fancy for this
sort of thing,” she added, touching the beads carelessly.
The jeweller, who had been examining the catch through a
magnifying-glass, made his report just as Cray inquired of his assistant
for some plain gold safety-pins. King, too, entered at that moment and
waited at the further end of the place.
“The catch, madam,” the jeweller announced, “is in perfect order, and
will stand any reasonable strain. If, as you suggest, it slipped, it
must have been imperfectly fastened. If you take care to drive it home,
so,” he added, “you will never have any difficulty.”
Mrs. Wieller smiled and picked up her gold bag. She bought some trifle
of jewellery while Cray was selecting his safety-pins.
“Can I send the necklace anywhere for you, madam?” the man asked.
“If you wouldn’t mind, a gentleman will call for it in about
half-an-hour,” she answered. “I am going shopping and it is really quite
bulky to carry about.”
“Certainly, madam,” the man assented. “What name will it be?”
“Mr. Gerald Thornassen.”
Mrs. Wieller received the change from her purchase, looked around as
though to nod to Mr. Cray, but found him absorbed in the examination of
some waistcoat buttons. She left the shop and passed out into the
street. King for the first time spoke.
“You are letting her go?”
Mr. Cray smiled.
“The letter is here,” he said.
A little exclamation broke from King’s lips. Mr. Cray moved down to
where the jeweller was packing up the necklace.
“May I be allowed to have a look at that?” he asked. “Very fine amber,
isn’t it?”
“The necklace does not belong to us,” the jeweller replied, proceeding
with his task. “We cannot allow clients’ property to be examined.”
Mr. Cray turned towards his companion, and King leaned against the
counter. He whispered a word or two to the jeweller, who was suddenly
pale.
“I—I really don’t understand,” he stammered.
“Don’t try,” was the brusque reply. “I have told you who I am. If you
doubt my word, you can ring up the Department or call in the two
plain-clothes officers who are outside by this time. Here is my
warrant.”
Mr. King drew a small gold medal from his pocket. The jeweller bowed.
“I am quite satisfied, sir,” he said. “Pray proceed as you think fit.”
Mr. Cray took up the necklace in his hands and felt each of the stones.
A beatific smile parted his lips.
“It is as I supposed,” he murmured. “See here.”
He pressed a hidden catch amongst the links, and one of the stones flew
open upon a concealed hinge. There was a small hollow space, about an
inch long and half an inch deep. In it was folded a wad of paper.
“The letter,” Mr. Cray observed, “has been cut into symmetrical pieces,
each one numbered, and can of course be easily put together.”
King nodded apprehendingly.
“We will examine it more carefully in a few minutes,” he said. “In the
meantime,” he added, “wrap the nearest necklace you have to it into this
box, tie it up, and address it to Gerald Thornassen, Esq. The other
necklace I will take care of.”
“You are aware that this is a great financial responsibility, sir?” the
jeweller observed nervously.
“My department will secure you from any loss,” King assured him, with a
slight smile. “Better hurry. This man may be here at any moment.”
The jeweller obeyed orders. Cray and his companion postponed the
examination of Mrs. Wieller’s necklace and entered into an exhaustive
scrutiny of the whole stock of waistcoat buttons. In about twenty-five
minutes the shop door was pushed open and a tall, dark man, wearing a
single eyeglass, and fashionably attired, entered the place. King, with
the celerity of a cat, disappeared behind a screen.
“I have called for a parcel for Mrs. Jacob Wieller,” the man announced.
A package was handed to him and nonchalantly received.
“Anything to pay?”
“Nothing at all,” the jeweller replied. “No repair was necessary.”
The man left the shop. King glided out of his concealment. His eyes were
bright with excitement.
“This is more interesting than I thought,” he muttered. “Come along,
Cray.”
The jeweller leaned forward.
“If this is a criminal affair,” he said tremblingly, “I trust that you
will see we are entirely innocent of complicity of any sort.”
King scarcely glanced towards him.
“I shall make up my mind about that,” he replied, “when I see whether
Mr. Thornassen, as he calls himself, has been warned.”
* * * * *
Sir George Sittingbourne and his wife arrived at Mr. Cray’s sitting-room
at a few minutes before one. They found their prospective host with a
gum brush in his hand and a number of sheets of paper before him. He
welcomed them triumphantly.
“George,” he announced, “your letter, a little damaged, I am afraid, but
there it is—quite readable, signature and all. It’s taken me over an
hour to piece it together.”
“My dear man!” Sir George exclaimed thankfully. “Where in God’s name did
you get it from?”
Mr. Cray smiled, opened a drawer, and threw a necklace upon the table.
“From Mrs. Wieller’s amber necklace, of course.”
“Dad,” Sara murmured, throwing her arms round his neck, “You’re
wonderful!”
“Sir,” Sir George exclaimed, in a voice choked with emotion. “You’re a
brick. . . .”
They were still lingering over their cocktails before descending to
luncheon, when King was ushered in. He closed the door behind him. For
such an unruffled person his appearance was almost remarkable. His eyes
were bright, there was a look of concern in his face.
“You’ve pieced it together? Has it come out?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Mr. Cray replied. “You can read it for yourself—that is
if Sir George gives permission. What about Thornassen?”
King drew in a little breath. For a moment he made no reply.
“A German emissary, eh?” Mr. Cray asked.
King shook his head gravely. Already, in his agile brain, the great
problems of the future were shaping themselves. He saw the new danger.
“Thornassen,” he said gravely, “deposited the sham necklace—at an
embassy—which I must not name.”
“An Embassy?” Sir George exclaimed.
“The Embassy of one of our allies,” King groaned. “May I assume that
that last cocktail is for me, Mr. Cray? Your very good health. Will you
allow me to express my acknowledgments, and to say that I am only sorry
that that little symbol which you carry was not struck at our mint
instead of at Washington.”
Mr. Cray smiled benevolently.
“That needn’t trouble you any, King,” he said. “I guess we’re all
pulling in the same boat.”
VI “Satan and the Spirit”
There was not the slightest manner of doubt but that Mr. Joseph P. Cray
was thoroughly enjoying himself. He sat on the ledge of his box at
Covent Garden, his legs dangling in mid-air, a paper cap with streamers
upon his head, and the full joy of living in his blood. At times he
played weird ditties upon a tin whistle. At others he threw with unusual
skill, streamers of gaily coloured paper half-way across the floor. His
cheery good-natured face aglow with happiness. He exchanged greetings
right and left with perfect strangers. He was at once a notable and a
popular figure.
“Yankee Doodle bought a poodle,” shouted the Shah of Persia, as he
passed with the Queen of Sheba.
“Har, har, har! Var, var, var! Rah, rah, rah!” yelled Mr. Cray.
A little peal of musical laughter close to his ear, startled him so that
he nearly lost his balance. A filmy grey figure, masked so that only her
eloquent dark eyes were visible, was leaning by his side. She seemed to
be enveloped by floating billows of misty tulle which at no place
betrayed the dressmaker’s art—a human body moving in a filmy cloud. Her
eyes, upturned to his, gave the only clue as to her age and sex, and Mr.
Cray found them wonderful.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he asked, “were you laughing at me?”
“Of course I am,” a soft mysterious voice answered.
“Guess I’m making some noise,” he reflected.
“I like it,” was the whispered reply. “Are you very happy?”
Mr. Cray was a little taken aback.
“Just trying to make the thing go a bit,” he explained, with a wave of
his hand. “Nothing like a noise at a show of this sort. I’m a dandy hand
at throwing these streamers. Have a try.”
The figure shook her head slightly but crept a little nearer to him. Mr.
Cray was both attracted and intrigued.
“What might you represent?” he asked diffidently.
“I am a spirit,” she confided. “This moment you see me—a moment later I
shall have vanished.”
“Don’t hurry,” Mr. Cray begged anxiously. “What about a bite of supper?”
“Spirits never eat,” was the reproachful reply.
“Or drink?” he suggested. “I’ve got a few bottles of Mumm 1906 in here.
There’s some _pâté_, too.”
Mr. Cray’s attention was momentarily distracted by the passing of some
temporary acquaintances, with whom he indulged in a few vociferous
amenities. When he had finished, he found to his dismay that his
companion had vanished in a most mysterious fashion. He was conscious of
a momentary pang of disappointment.
“Some voice, that,” he ruminated, “and gee, her eyes! Guess I’ll get
down and look for some of the crowd.”
He was on the point of descending when a soft tapping at the door of the
box caused him to change his mind. Somehow or other, the tapping seemed
to him as distinctive as the voice. He swung around and opened the door
eagerly. The Spirit stood there.
“Come right in, ma’am,” he invited cordially. “Say, this is fine! Take a
chair and I’ll open some champagne.”
She floated in and seated herself, looking more than ever like a grey
mist. Her eyes remained upon him while he served her with supper. There
was a sort of subdued rapture in her expression, as though she found
something almost worshipful in the portly and corpulent figure of her
host.
“How’s that seem, young lady?” he asked finally. “A wing of chicken,
_pâté_ and biscuits on the small plate, and a glass of the boy, eh?”
“It is very kind of you,” the Spirit replied. “I did not come here to
eat. I came to be near you.”
“Say, that sounds good,” Mr. Cray murmured, a little embarrassed—he was
scarcely used to such complete conquests.
“You are so full of life,” she sighed, “so full of splendid and actual
vitality. You remind me—Ah!”
She broke off and attacked her chicken. She also sipped and apparently
approved of her wine. Mr. Cray cheered up. The Spirit business had been
getting a little upon his nerves, and he welcomed these signs of
indubitable humanity. He filled his own glass and raised it.
“Here’s health, wealth and happiness!” he ventured, in the words of a
popular song. “Chin-chin!”
The Spirit sighed but drank. Then she toyed pensively with her empty
glass, which her host promptly filled.
“Health, wealth and happiness!” she repeated, her eyes becoming mistier
than ever. “I will drink with you because you wish it, but these things
are not for me.”
Mr. Cray, adopting the rôle of a man of respectful gallantry, possessed
himself of her hand. He was ashamed to realise how relieved he was to
find it warm and soft and human.
“See here,” he remonstrated, “aren’t you overdoing this Spirit business
a little? This is a dance, not a funeral. What about a turn on the floor
when you’ve finished that? I’m not a great performer, but I guess there
are others.”
She looked at him sadly. Her fingers still rested in his comfortable
hand.
“I can only dance with one,” she sighed, “and you are not he.”
“That’s too bad,” he protested, “especially on a night like this.
Husband, eh? Lover?”
She shook her head more mournfully than ever.
“It is some one who claims me,” she declared, “who seldom lets me wander
far out of his sight. He terrifies me—but I belong to him. Listen!”
Mr. Cray obeyed.
“I don’t know as I can hear anything unusual,” he confessed. “Music and
laughter and popping of corks sounds a pretty good chorus to me. Come,”
he went on glancing at his watch, “it’s close on midnight—what about
taking that mask off, eh.”
He stretched out his hand but she eluded him, flitting away into a
corner of the box. Once more she was listening.
“Can’t you hear—a sound like the rushing of the angry wind, like
footsteps upon wool up in the hills? A voice—listen! Seboa! Seboa!”
There certainly was a voice, although what it was saying was
undistinguishable. A masked Satan, in brilliant scarlet, was standing in
front of the box. Mr. Cray addressed him affably.
“Were you looking for a Spirit, sir?” he inquired. “She’s in here. Step
right up and have a glass of wine. I guess this is your friend,” he
added, turning round to his guest.
Satan made no reply. His eyes were fixed upon the shrinking figure in
the corner of the box. As though in obedience to his unspoken command,
she passed out and joined him. A moment later they were gliding across
the floor, their feet moving to the music—a strange almost sinister
combination. Mr. Cray mopped his forehead, poured himself out and drank
another glass of wine, and, stepping out on to the floor, passed his arm
round the waist of the first disengaged damsel he came across, and
plunged into the revels. But nowhere could he see any signs of Satan and
the Spirit.
It was one of the most successful masked balls of the season, and after
midnight the fun waxed fast and furious. Mr. Cray found many friends and
entertained hospitably. His curiosity concerning his acquaintance of the
early part of the evening, however, remained unabated, and he scanned in
vain every one of the boxes and searched every corner of the dancing
floor for a sign of her smoke-grey draperies or the more easily
distinguishable scarlet of her companion. He came to the conclusion at
last that they must have left early and he was puzzled to find that side
by side with his disappointment was mingled a certain feeling of relief.
Mr. Cray was an ardent materialist and he had no faith in spirits. Her
soft voice, with its strange suggestion of coming from some greater
distance, and the aroma of mystery by which she had contrived to
surround herself, repelled just as much as it had attracted him. He
could not make up his mind, therefore, whether he was relieved or
disappointed when, during his first period of rest for some hours in the
temporarily deserted box, he heard her voice just below the ledge.
“Are you alone?” she asked softly.
“Sure!” Mr. Cray replied. “Come right up.”
Once more she disappeared for a moment and then drifted through the
doorway, curiously impersonal, her draperies concealing with matchless
art all suggestion of the human figure. She still retained her mask.
“Say, that’s against regulations!” he declared, pointing to it. “Masks
should come off at midnight. Just let me fix it for you.”
She shrank away.
“My mask must not come off,” she murmured.
He made a pretence at insisting. She pushed him back. She seemed nervous
and terrified, her eyes shone.
“I am in earnest, please,” she begged. “Just let me sit here and be near
you. Don’t speak to me. Don’t take any notice of me.”
She sank into a secluded corner, and Mr. Cray poured out a glass of
champagne, after which he scratched his chin and sat watching her
thoughtfully. Her partiality for his society coupled with her aloofness,
puzzled him. Mr. Cray hated to be puzzled.
“I don’t quite get you,” he admitted. “You don’t seem looking for any
fun like all the others. What made you come to such a place as this, any
way?”
“Don’t ask me, please . . . If you must know, I came because another
wished it.”
“Chap in scarlet?” he suggested genially.
She shook her head.
“It was not he—it was Seboa,” she told him, in a whisper which scarcely
reached his ears.
“Don’t know the lady—or gentleman,” Mr. Cray admitted, “but, any way,
what made you come back to me again? It isn’t the wine, because you’re
not drinking it. You don’t seem to want to talk, either.”
“It’s your vitality,” she told him nervously. “You are full of
life—strong human life. It warms me.”
Mr. Cray edged a little further away.
“I guess this is a stunt I’m not up in,” he murmured weakly.
“Of course you don’t understand,” she went on after a moment’s pause. “I
seem to you like other women, because I eat and drink and dance—but I
am not. My life all ebbed out long ago. I belong—somewhere else.”
Mr. Cray moved to the further end of the box. He thrust one leg over its
ledge.
“Guess I’ll go and collect some of the crowd,” he muttered. “You make
yourself quite comfortable and stay just as long as you like.”
“Don’t go,” she begged. “Don’t leave me.”
Mr. Cray hesitated. He was a good-natured man, and the little quiver in
her voice sounded very human.
“I’ll stay if you take your mask off,” he suggested, “and leave off
getting at me.”
“You shall see me without my mask within a few hours,” she promised,
“but not here—not now. Please—please stay. This is my dangerous hour.”
“Is it!” Mr. Cray murmured, making this time for the door. “If you’ll
excuse me, I’ll just——”
“Dangerous to me, I mean—not to you,” she interrupted. “Please do not
go. I am afraid of drifting off—of losing myself. My hold upon this
frail body is so slight.”
“Drink up your wine,” Mr. Cray suggested a little helplessly. “Let me
give you a sandwich.”
“Oh, you don’t understand!” she moaned.
“I’m with you there,” he assented heartily. “I don’t.”
“How can I explain!”
“I’m not particular how you do it,” Mr. Cray replied, “but I’ve kinder
got the idea that you’re playing some game on me and if you’re not
feeling like putting me wise, I’d just as soon without wishing to seem
inhospitable, that you quit it.”
She began to tremble.
“But I don’t want to go,” she protested.
“Then stay right where you are,” he replied, “and I’ll take an amble
round myself and see how things are looking.”
“Would it help you to understand,” she asked “if I told you who I really
am?”
“I guess so,” he assented. “My name’s Cray—Joseph P. Cray of Seattle,
when I’m at home—and I don’t take any stock in spooks.”
She leaned a little forward. Her eyes glowed as though with wonder of
her words.
“I am Seboa,” she whispered,—“Christine Seboa. . . . Ah, how horrible!”
The box was suddenly and riotously invaded by a horde of a dozen or more
revellers. The duties of hospitality for a few moments absorbed Mr.
Cray’s whole attention. When he looked around, the chair in the corner
was empty.
“Hello! Anyone seen my little cloud drift out?” he demanded.
There was a peal of laughter.
“He means his little sunshine,” a fluffy-haired Columbine declared,
passing her hand through his arm. “I’m here, dear. No cloud shall ever
come between us.”
“Say, that’s a comfort, anyhow,” Mr. Cray acknowledged. “But honest,
didn’t you see anyone here when you came in—a small person in kind of
grey, billowy muslin, or floating stuff of some sort?”
There was a moment’s blank silence, then a roar of laughter.
“Cray, old bean, you’re seeing things,” hiccoughed a young scion of the
Stock Exchange, temporarily gorgeous in ruffles and lace.
“The box was empty save for your gracious self,” a flushed and
bedraggled Hamlet declared, with his mouth full of sandwich. “To that we
can all attest.”
“Anyone ever hear the name of Christine Seboa?” Mr. Cray enquired,
keeping a tight hold upon himself.
“Christine Seboa?” a monk, who had hitherto been silent, repeated. “She
was a wonderful Danish medium, who nearly sent New York crazy last
year.”
“And where is she now?” Mr. Cray asked.
“She died last November,” the monk replied.
Mr. Cray poured himself out a glass of wine, spilling a few spots upon
the table cloth.
“Here’s confusion to all spooks!” he exclaimed, drinking it off. “Now,”
he added, snatching up his trumpet, “let’s get outside and make a
noise.”
They sallied out. The monk, however, detained his host for a moment
after the others had departed. He looked around as though to be sure
that they were alone in the box.
“Mr. Cray,” he said, “you flatter my disguise.”
“Not for one second, Inspector,” Mr. Cray replied, with a smile. “I’m
not quite fresh enough, though, to go bawling ‘Scotland Yard’ all over
the place.”
“I apologise,” the monk declared.
“Anything special on?”
The monk shook his head.
“There are always one or two of us at these affairs,” he said. “I’ve
spotted a couple of well-known thieves already, but there’s nothing
particular doing. They know we’re here all right. I was interested in
that name I heard—Christine Seboa.”
Mr. Cray looked uneasily around.
“She kinder got me guessing,” he confessed.
“Christine Seboa,” the monk went on, “was not only a very wonderful
medium, but she was also a great collector.”
“Of what?”
“Jewellery—anything she could lay her hands on,” the inspector replied.
“It was not until after her death that she was even suspected. They say
that she must have got away with a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of
diamonds from New York alone.”
“You’re not taking any stock from the fact that she called herself a
medium, I suppose?” Mr. Cray inquired.
The monk scratched his chin.
“Men like you and me, Mr. Cray, sir,” he said, “who take an interest in
crime, are bound to be materialists. Still, I’ve learnt in my profession
never to be obstinate about anything. There are a good many intelligent
and well-informed people who believe in spooks, and I am telling you
frankly that this Christine Seboa had, without doubt, some exceptional
gifts. They say that she could hypnotise a strong man in three minutes.”
“You’re sure she’s dead,” Mr. Cray asked.
“So far as our information goes,” the monk replied, “she died in New
York last November.”
“Then I don’t mind telling you,” Mr. Cray confided, “that this little
bit of grey cloud, who’s rather got on my nerves this evening—some eyes
she’s got, but she kept on behaving like a half-baked spook—told me
just before you all came in that her name was Christine Seboa.”
“That’s interesting,” the monk acknowledged. “Let’s have a stroll round
and see if we can see anything of her.”
Three times the two men made the circuit of the hall, in vain. The
Spirit had disappeared.
* * * * *
Mr. Cray stood on the steps of the Albert Hall at four o’clock that
morning, paused for a moment to take a breath, and sent a mighty volume
of raucous sound quivering through the early stillness.
“Rah, rah, rah! Hah, hah, hah! Rah, rah, rah!”
There was a little commotion amongst the unfortunate bystanders. A
pleasant-faced officer in uniform, who was standing on the step below
Mr. Cray, with a muffled-up form upon his arm, started as though he had
been shot and nearly dropped the kit-bag which he was carrying.
“For God’s sake,” he exclaimed, looking over his shoulder, “what are you
making that noise for?”
“I want my automobile,” Mr. Cray explained, cheerfully. “I’ve got an
American chauffeur who knows the old college call. I guess he’s heard
me.”
“I should say he has if he’s this side of the Strand,” the officer
commented drily.
“He’s not only heard it but here he is,” Mr. Cray observed complacently,
as his limousine stole through the tangle of vehicles and drew up to the
steps. “That’s worth a shout, eh?”
There were many in the waiting crowd who looked wistfully at the car,
for a drizzling rain was falling and taxicabs were scarce. Mr. Cray
looked round at the officer and his companion and addressed the former.
“Can I give you a lift anywhere, sir?” he asked. “I’m going to the Milan
Hotel, but I don’t mind a bit out of my way as long as it isn’t entirely
in the opposite direction.”
The officer stepped forward almost eagerly.
“If you could give my wife and me a lift as far as Moon Street,
Chelsea,” he said, “it would be awfully good of you. I ordered a
taxicab, but I’m afraid he’s gone off with some one else. My wife’s
terribly tired, too.”
“Step right in,” Mr. Cray invited hospitably. “Tell the chauffeur your
number, Captain. Let me give you a cushion ma’am. Pretty tiring—My
God!”
They were all three in the car now, the officer with his head out of the
window, directing the chauffeur. A black domino had up to the present
concealed the whole of the lady’s form, but the eyes, glowing so
steadily into his through the folds of her black lace mantilla were
unmistakable. The faintest of weary smiles played upon her lips as she
gazed into Mr. Cray’s thunderstruck face. The officer withdrew his head
from the window.
“Major Hartopp my name is, sir,” he said. “I can’t tell you how grateful
my wife and I are.”
“Joseph P. Cray is my name,” the other rejoined. “I’ve come across your
good lady before this evening.”
“Yes,” the Spirit murmured sleepily from her corner, “Mr. Cray was very
kind to me. He gave me wine and let me sit down in his box.”
“And I understood you to say that your name was Christine Seboa,” Mr.
Cray observed, too eager for some measure of elucidation to be anything
but ruthless.
“I am Christine Seboa,” was the reply, spoken in a dull hollow tone.
“The whole world knows that.”
Mr. Cray glanced across at his male vis-à-vis. Major Hartopp sighed
slightly and shook his head, with a warning glance towards the figure at
his side, and Mr. Cray, understanding his gesture to mean that his wife
was to be humoured, relapsed into silence. The car turned southward,
passed down Sloane Street, and plunged into the purlieus of Chelsea,
finally pulling up at what was apparently a pleasant, little frequented
thoroughfare.
“You must come in and have a whisky and soda,” the young soldier
insisted hospitably.
Mr. Cray shook his head.
“I guess it’s too late,” he replied. “Besides, I’m just as well without
any more liquor.”
His new acquaintance, however, would take no refusal, and eventually
they all descended from the car and passed through a cheerful little
hall into a small morning room, where a bright fire was burning in the
grate. Decanters of whisky and brandy and several syphons of soda water,
were arranged upon the sideboard. The Spirit came no further than the
threshold of the room. She stood looking at Mr. Cray with strange and
mournful intensity.
“Good-night,” she said. “You have been very kind to me.”
“Say, won’t you take off that mask for a moment before you go?” Mr. Cray
begged. “I’d like to be able to recognise you when we meet again.”
She shook her head very slightly. Her husband frowned across at her in
good-natured annoyance.
“Look here Mina,” he protested, “why don’t you do as Mr. Cray asks? I’m
pretty sick of the damned thing myself.”
“I cannot,” she answered simply. “I have promised.”
“Rubbish!” her husband answered testily. “There isn’t anyone to
promise.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Cray,” she said.
“Good evening, Mrs. Hartopp,” he replied, with a bow. “I’d like it
first-rate if you and your husband could fix it up to take dinner with
me at the Milan one night.”
“You are very kind,” she murmured, and drifted away.
Major Hartopp drew a little breath of undisguised relief at the closing
of the door. He drew up an easy chair to the fire and almost pushed his
guest into it. Then he mixed him a whisky and soda of generous
proportions, served himself also with liberality, and sank down upon a
couch opposite to his guest.
“Mr. Cray,” he confided, “I feel that I owe you an explanation.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” his vis-à-vis replied, “but I must admit
that your good lady puzzled me some.”
“Do you know anything about spiritualism?” Major Hartopp asked.
“Not one darned thing,” Mr. Cray acknowledged.
“Neither do I, but it seems that my wife, before I married her, was a
medium.”
“Holds converse with spirits, and that sort of thing,” Mr. Cray ventured
dubiously.
“Worse!” his companion groaned. “Spirits actually take possession of
her, enter into her body, speak with her tongue, crush out her own
personality and obtrude their own.”
“You don’t say,” Mr. Cray murmured.
“It seems that she has a personality or spirituality which very few
human beings in the world possess,” his companion went on. “Hers, they
tell me, is one of the few bodies in the world accessible to the
sympathetic dead. They seem to have a taste for revelry too. One of them
always weighs in if we are going to a dance or anything of that sort.
Christine Seboa turned up at eight o’clock this evening, just as we were
settling down to dinner. Completely spoilt the whole pleasure of the
dance for me. I hate spooks.”
Mr. Cray studied his vis-à-vis for several moments with half-closed
eyes. Major Hartopp was to all appearance the perfect prototype of the
well-bred, simple-minded, moderately intelligent young British soldier.
He had a slight ruddy moustache which went well with his sunburnt
cheeks, blue eyes, and fair hair inclined to curl. He looked rather like
a spoilt boy who has been defrauded of his evening’s entertainment.
“Do you seriously believe what you are telling me?” Mr. Cray demanded.
“Damn it all, man,” was the irritable reply, “you don’t suppose I should
joke over such an infernal business! Until that dreary Christine hops
it, my wife will be half asleep and as cold as an icicle. To-morrow
she’ll telephone to some of these spooks lunatics, and they’ll haunt the
house then for days until Mina is herself again. I tell you I hate the
whole damned business.”
Mr. Cray turned his cigar round and round in his fingers, sipped his
whisky and soda and pondered. Just inside the room, the kitbag which
they had brought from the Albert Hall, had burst one of its fastenings,
and a glitter of red, the same colour as the flaming costume of
Mephistopheles, showed itself. He opened his lips to ask a question, but
decided to postpone it. Major Hartopp was not in the least the type of a
Mephistopheles. His florid complexion, his ingenuous, if a little
peevish expression stamped him as belonging to a different order of
being altogether. Everything about him proclaimed the sports-loving
young officer, who has done well enough in the army to have attained his
majority and stopped there.
“I can’t make out why Mina seems to have attached herself to you so much
this evening,” her husband ruminated. “She came to see you several
times, didn’t she?”
“She came twice,” Mr. Cray admitted. “She had some supper the first
time.”
“You aren’t psychic or anything of that sort, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” was the cautious reply.
“Says you saw her dancing with Satan—What?”
“I saw that all right,” Mr. Cray admitted. “A weird looking couple they
made, too.”
“Well, no one else did,” her husband declared. “There wasn’t a Satan
there, as a matter of fact.”
Mr. Cray’s eyes rested upon the gaping kit bag. He stroked his chin. His
whole interest in the evening’s adventure was reviving.
“That’s so?” he murmured.
“Not a sign of one,” the young man continued. “According to Mina, that
proves you to be possessed of negative psychic attraction. I don’t know
what it means, old fellow, but you’ve got it. She declares that she was
drawn to you as a trembling leaf blown by the wind.”
Mr. Cray surreptitiously patted his breast pocket, where a slight
protuberance indicated the continued presence of his somewhat bulky
pocket book.
“She did kinder stay round in a weird sort of fashion,” he admitted. “I
thought she was trying to play some joke upon me. I couldn’t seem to
tumble at what she was driving at, half the time.”
“My wife’s all right when she’s herself,” the young man declared. “It
was this infernal Christine Seboa who was trying to rake you into the
spook business. Between you and me, I hate the whole thing. Half of it’s
bunkum, and the other half’s unwholesome. . . . Just one more small
whisky before you go?”
“Only a spot, then,” Mr. Cray assented, holding out his glass. “Not
quite so strong this time.”
“It’s pretty nearly pre-war,” his host remarked, as he resumed his seat.
“Good God!”
Both men glanced towards the door. The Spirit was standing there—a
singular apparition. A white dressing-gown hung loosely about her, she
was still wearing her black mask. Her eyes were fixed upon Mr. Cray.
“You must come,” she begged, speaking very softly yet with almost
singular distinctness. “You must please come. They will not let me
sleep. They call for you all the time.”
“I am sorry,” was the hasty response, “but I’m just off home. I should
have gone before now but your husband’s whisky was too good to leave.”
Mr. Cray rose to his feet with determination. His host followed his
example.
“Mina,” the latter protested, “you really must not worry Mr. Cray now.
You are quite mistaken in him. He’s as much outside all this business as
I am.”
She shook her head. Her eyes still pleaded with Mr. Cray.
“If you are not happy you shall not stay,” she said, “but you must come
or they will give me no peace.”
“I guess there’s some mistake,” Mr. Cray declared coldly. “You’ll have
to excuse me.”
Her distress became almost a paroxysm. She clutched the framework of the
door with either hand, barring their egress. Hartopp drew his guest on
one side.
“Look here, Mr. Cray,” he begged apologetically, “be a good chap and
humour her for two minutes. Just put your head into her little sanctum.
She calls it her temple. Maybe that’ll satisfy her, and you needn’t stay
a minute.”
“Has she got it into her mind that there are spooks there waiting for
me?” Mr. Cray queried.
“Of course, it’s all damned nonsense,” the other rejoined, “but she’ll
never rest now unless you do it. I’ll come along as far as the door
anyway.”
Mr. Cray shrugged his shoulders, and the little procession, led by the
Spirit, passed down the passage by the side of the staircase until they
reached a door at the far end.
“Come,” she whispered, opening it softly.
Mr. Cray stood by her side. There was no light, and the darkness was
impenetrable. It was also very cold, as though the windows were open.
The only visible object was the Spirit standing by his side, a pillar of
white, her eyes like points of fire.
“Say, what’s doing here?” Mr. Cray asked, a little uneasily. “Do your
visitors need to come in through the window? I guess——”
“Please be quiet,” a low voice begged him. “Be silent for one moment.
Listen.”
Mr. Cray listened, and it seemed to him that he heard the door close
behind him. He half turned around. The curtains were shaking as though a
sudden wind was blowing into the room. Then he felt fingers upon the
pulses of his wrist, and immediately it seemed to him that they were
beating as though they would break through his flesh; fingers upon his
temples, and immediately the sense that sledge hammers were beating
there, beating against the nerves of his life. His whole sense of being
had become pandemonium. The roaring of a furnace was in his ears. He
felt himself sinking down and down into space, falling—lower and
lower. . . .
Mr. Cray opened his eyes. There were splashes of daylight in the
sitting-room, which made the electric lights look feeble and dim. On the
lounge opposite, Major Hartopp was still reclining, although he had
changed his uniform dress-coat for a dressing-gown and removed his
collar. He welcomed Mr. Cray’s opening eyes with a little sigh of
relief.
“Feeling the better for your nap?” he asked, glancing suggestively at
the clock.
“My nap?” Mr. Cray repeated vaguely.
His vis-à-vis nodded and stifled a yawn.
“You dropped off like a child,” he said. “I don’t want to seem
inhospitable, but I think you had better wake up now. Your chauffeur has
been in twice and he doesn’t seem in the best of tempers.”
Mr. Cray looked at the extinct cigar which had apparently slipped from
his fingers and lay upon the hearthrug, brushed the cold ashes from his
waistcoat, and rose to his feet.
“What happened to me in that room,” he demanded.
“Which room?” his host asked.
“The one at the end of the passage, where you and I and your wife went
together.”
Major Hartopp looked at his guest, then smiled.
“You’ve been dreaming,” he observed. “You haven’t left that easy-chair
since you arrived, and you certainly haven’t seen anything of my wife.
She went straight to bed directly we got home.”
“Straight to bed?” Mr. Cray repeated, in a dazed tone. “You mean to tell
me that she didn’t come down here in a white dressing-gown and still
wearing a mask, and talk about spooks who were clamouring for me in the
room at the end of the passage?”
Major Hartopp frowned.
“She most certainly did not,” he declared, a little testily. “You’ll
forgive my hurrying you, old chap, won’t you?” he went on, leading the
way towards the door. “To tell you the truth, I’m dying to get to bed.
If I’d had any idea that you were dreaming things, I’d have woke you
up.”
“Dreaming!” Mr. Cray muttered.
“Sounds like some sort of nightmare,” the other observed. “You seemed to
be sleeping so peacefully, though, that I hated to disturb you.”
Mr. Cray felt suddenly for his pocket-book. It was there in its
accustomed place, just as bulky and capacious as ever. Neither had the
kitbag, with its incriminating gleam of scarlet, been removed.
“Not your bag, is it?” Major Hartopp asked carelessly.
“I hadn’t any grip at all,” Mr. Cray answered. “Isn’t it yours?”
Major Hartopp shook his head.
“Mine was practically empty. All I took in it was a couple of bottles of
champagne. I set it down on the steps of the Albert Hall, while we were
waiting and must have picked up this one by mistake. I’ll send it back
presently. . . . Jove, isn’t the air good!” he added, as he opened the
front-door and let in a little of the cool morning breeze. “So long!
Look us up some day. You’ll find us in the telephone book.”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray promised. “Sorry to have kept you up,” he added
mechanically.
The chauffeur darted a reproachful look at his master as he scrambled
down to the starting handle, and in a few minutes they were gliding
through the wet and empty streets. Mr. Cray sat back in the corner of
the car, no longer in the least sleepy, and probably the most puzzled
man in London. He had no headache nor any other sign of ill-being such
as might reasonably have been expected to remain with a man who had been
drugged or otherwise maltreated. The roll of notes remained in his
pocket-book untouched. He knew better than any one else could that he
was and had been all the time perfectly sober. What explanation was
there for the strange experience through which he had passed? Mentally
he tabulated the various questions as they had occurred to him.
1. Was Mrs. Hartopp simply a foolish and hysterical woman who
had imposed even upon her husband, and who had attached herself
to him out of caprice?
2. Was she really a medium and in direct communication with the
world of spirit land, in which up till now he had had no—faith?
3. Was she a clever adventuress with fraudulent designs upon
him? Against that, his pocket-book and jewellery were still
untouched.
4. What was the position of Major Hartopp?
5. Had he really slept in his easy-chair and only dreamed of
that brief period of unconsciousness?
There was something in the early morning atmosphere which encouraged
common-sense. One by one Mr. Cray discarded the suspicions which had
grown up in his mind. By the time he had reached his rooms at the Milan
Court, he had almost forgotten them. With a pleasant sense of
anticipatory luxury, he undressed and plunged into a steaming bath,
lying there for a few minutes with half-closed eyes before stretching
out his hand lazily for the sponge and soap. Suddenly he sat bolt
upright, gazing at the first finger of his right hand. At exactly the
spot where he was in the habit of grasping his fountain-pen, was a deep
smudge of ink. He stared at it in blank and complete amazement, with a
host of new ideas rushing into his brain. For of one thing Mr. Cray was
absolutely and completely certain—there had been no such blemish upon
his finger when he had left his box at the Albert Hall.
* * * * *
Precisely two minutes after the front-doors of the South Audley Street
branch of a well-known bank had been opened, Major Hartopp, smoking a
cigarette and attired in immaculate _mufti_, descended from a taxi,
strolled across the pavement, and, after some fumbling in his pocket,
produced a cheque which he handed across the counter. The manager
glanced at it, glanced at another customer a few feet away, who was
apparently adding up a list of credits, and, leaving the cheque upon the
counter, moved a couple of yards to a position from which he could
command a view of a small private office. He made some undistinguishable
sign, and a moment later Mr. Cray strolled in. Major Hartopp, still
lounging nonchalantly against the counter, greeted him affably.
“Morning, Mr. Cray! Up and about early, what?”
“I might say the same of you,” Mr. Cray remarked pointedly.
“This gentleman has just presented a cheque for a thousand pounds, drawn
by you,” the manager announced. “May I ask if it is in order?”
“It most surely is not,” was the forcible reply.
The customer who was counting the credits, and who bore a strong
resemblance to the monk of the night before, moved a little back from
the counter, standing between Major Hartopp and the door. That
gentleman, however, seemed in no wise embarrassed.
“Cheque for a thousand fiddlesticks!” he scoffed. “Look at it again, my
dear sir.”
The manager glanced at the cheque, frowned in a puzzled manner, and
stood for a few seconds with his mouth open, with the air of one
stricken dumb with astonishment.
“Have a look at it yourself, Mr. Cray,” Major Hartopp continued. “It’s a
silly business, I admit, but my wife got the idea last night that you
were a strong unbeliever. As you know, I’m a bit that way myself, but if
that’s really your signature, this Christine Seboa is a dangerous sort
of a spook.”
The three men gazed together at the cheque. It was clearly enough a
cheque for one sovereign, made out to Christine Seboa or bearer.
“It can’t be my writing,” Mr. Cray declared, “because I never remember
writing it, but it’s the most wonderful imitation I ever saw. Come to
think of it, too,” he went on, in a puzzled manner, “the only thing that
brought me here was some ink on my fingers.”
“Oh, you wrote the cheque all right,” Major Hartopp affirmed. “It’s a
trick of one of her spooks. My instructions were to cash this and to ask
you to dinner.”
The manager for the first time recovered his power of speech. “The most
amazing part of the whole matter is,” he declared, “that I could have
sworn this gentleman presented a cheque for a thousand pounds.”
Major Hartopp smiled.
“I should scarcely have entered into a joke of that sort,” he observed.
“What about that pound?”
“You signed the cheque all right.”
Mr. Cray nodded. His eyes were still fixed upon his indubitable
signature. At a sign from him, the manager passed a pound note across
the counter, which Major Hartopp folded and placed in his coat pocket.
“Dine with us at the Carlton to-night at eight o’clock, Mr. Cray,” he
invited, “and I promise you shall have your pound back with interest.”
“I shall be delighted,” Mr. Cray murmured.
“See you later, then,” the young officer concluded, nodding to the
manager and taking his leisurely departure. “Good morning.”
Major Hartopp left the bank and they heard his taxi drive away. The
manager stood on one side of the counter and Mr. Cray on the other. The
inspector strolled up to them. They all examined the cheque for a
sovereign.
“This gets me,” Mr. Cray confessed. “If that isn’t my signature, I’ll
eat the cheque.”
“And if the cheque he showed me three minutes ago wasn’t for a thousand
pounds, I’ll eat it too,” the manager declared.
The inspector was called into the inner office to answer the telephone.
He was out again in thirty seconds.
“We’re spoofed somehow!” he exclaimed. “Major and Mrs. Hartopp are on
the Continent. Their house in Chelsea has been taken furnished for a
month by a man and woman wanted very badly by the American police. The
man is a great sleight-of-hand thief and one of the most dangerous
adventurers in America. The woman has robbed them in New York of over
fifty thousand pounds on this spook stunt.”
The manager suddenly stooped down, picked up a strip of paper from
underneath the counter, and held it out.
“A cheque for a thousand pounds!” he exclaimed. “I knew it!”
“Simple as A.B.C.” the inspector exclaimed. “Our man saw at once there
was something wrong. He’d got the other cheque ready, changed it, and
slipped the thousand pound one through the hole in the counter there for
pass-books. I’ll lay odds, too, he’s the man who got away with ten
thousand pounds’ worth of jewels last night in the costume of a scarlet
Mephistopheles.”
“I saw him with it,” Mr. Cray groaned.
“Where were the cheques?” the inspector asked.
Mr. Cray produced his pocket-book.
“I always have two or three loose ones with me,” he explained, “although
I’d this roll of notes, as it happened, last night.”
The inspector glanced at the notes and turned towards the door.
“I’m off,” he exclaimed. “Lost too much time already. Ask Mr. Thomson
there to look at your notes.”
Mr. Cray produced them. The manager held one up to the light.
“Faked,” he exclaimed. “They changed your notes, Mr. Cray, and took out
your cheques, but what I can’t understand is—how did they ever get you
to sign them?”
“I’m worrying some about that myself,” Mr. Cray confided.
VII Mr. Homor’s Legacy
Mr. Joseph P. Cray, wandering around the world in his pleasant quest of
adventures, harmless or otherwise, found himself one March morning on
the terrace of the Golf Hotel at Hyères. By his side stood the young man
in irreproachable flannels whom he had just intercepted on his way to
the tennis-courts. It was a somewhat amazing meeting.
“Is it Major Hartopp this time?” Mr. Cray inquired.
The young man signified assent.
“It is only bunglers who keep changing their pseudonyms,” he said. “I am
not a bungler.”
Mr. Cray for once in his life was a little taken aback.
“You are taking this pretty coolly, young fellow, aren’t you?” he
observed. “I suppose you know that for several months the police have
been looking for the man who tried to cash a cheque for a thousand
pounds on my account, and for the scarlet Mephistopheles who scooped up
about ten thousand pounds’ worth of jewels at Covent Garden?”
The young man shook his head gently.
“You exaggerate the position, my dear Mr. Cray,” he expostulated. “In
the first place, the cheque for one thousand pounds you signed, in the
second place, it could never be proved that it was presented, and with
regard to the jewels, not one of them has ever been traced, and there is
not a shred of evidence to connect the scarlet Mephistopheles with these
robberies, or, if it comes to that, me with the scarlet Mephistopheles.”
“There is the matter of your past record in America,” Mr. Cray murmured.
“There I grant you a trick,” the young man interrupted. “If you care to
communicate with the police, I will admit that I might find my position
untenable. Somehow I do not think that you will do so.”
“And why not?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“Come this way and I will show you.”
The pseudo Major Hartopp led his companion along the front of the
terrace to where a little recess formed a shelter secure from the
lightly-moving wind, and where the sun came pouring in, soft and warm
and genial. An invalid chair was drawn up against the wall, and lying in
it at full length was a woman. Mr. Cray felt a little thrill of pity as
the pale, wasted face was turned towards his, and the dark, hollow eyes
lit up for a moment with mingled fear and recognition.
“This is the reason why we are here,” Hartopp explained. “The doctors
told us that nothing but the sun could keep my wife alive. That is why I
accepted the risk.”
Mr. Cray leaned over the chair.
“I am very sorry to see you so ill,” he said.
She smiled at him—a very mirthless effort.
“It was Christine Seboa,” she faltered. “She seems to have torn my heart
to pieces. Now she has gone and I am myself again. She went too late.”
“You must never say that,” Mr. Cray enjoined cheerfully. “This place has
cured more invalids than any spot in the South of France.”
She looked at him mournfully.
“Are we allowed to stay here?” she said.
“So far as I am concerned, yes,” Mr. Cray replied. “I’ve no call to
remember anything I don’t choose, and I won’t. But before we close up
the subject, will you tell me how you got me to sign those cheques?”
“I didn’t do it,” she assured him. “It was Christine Seboa, and she has
gone.”
“No chance of her turning up again, I suppose?” Mr. Cray inquired.
The figure in the chair shook her head wistfully.
“My body is not strong enough to hold her,” she answered.
* * * * *
Mr. Cray settled down to live the everyday life of the little community.
He played golf in the morning, dozed with a cigar in the sunshine in the
afternoon, and played bridge in the evening. All the time he kept his
eye upon the Hartopps, and by degrees a conviction sprang up in his
mind. Although, to all appearance, Hartopp, who was a fine athlete, was
engrossed by the care of his invalid wife and the sports of the place,
he was in reality at Hyères for some other purpose. He had a habit of
absenting himself sometimes for the whole day, of taking long walks into
the country and returning with moody, downcast expression. He was
_persona grata_ amongst the younger guests, but he took little pains to
ingratiate himself with any one. And just as Mr. Cray watched him, so he
seemed at times to be watching Mr. Cray. But for that wan figure, which
only the sunlight seemed to keep alive, there were times when Mr. Cray
regretted that he had not obeyed his first instinct and sent a wire to
Scotland Yard.
“Say, what’s your husband got on his mind?” he inquired one morning of
Mrs. Hartopp.
She turned her great sunken eyes towards him.
“He is worried about financial matters,” she told him solemnly.
“Hm! I should have thought he’d been set up for a bit,” Mr. Cray
observed.
She shook her head slowly.
“He has some securities,” she explained näively, “but it is too early to
realise upon them yet. You wouldn’t care, I suppose, to make an advance
upon them?”
“God bless my soul, no!” Mr. Cray declared, a little pettishly. “I’m
trafficking with my conscience some, ma’am, if I keep my mouth shut, but
you mustn’t try to rope me in as a partner.”
“You look at these things so unreasonably,” she murmured. “You have
never lost anything worth speaking of by us.”
“Personally, perhaps not, ma’am,” Mr. Cray acknowledged, “but I have a
conscience.”
Then she suddenly saw a bent figure approaching.
“You are a dear thing,” she said, “although sometimes you can be very
hard. Please go now. Here comes Mr. Homor. He wants to speak to me about
his wife.”
“His late wife,” Mr. Cray observed, raising his hat.
“That is a foolish term,” she answered reprovingly.
Mr. Cray glanced at the gaunt, bent figure approaching, noticed the
eager gleam which shone for a moment in the lustreless eyes, and turned
away.
“Hm!” he muttered. “I suppose Mr. Homor can look after himself. . . .”
On the golf links he found Hartopp practising iron shots, and challenged
him to a few holes.
“See here, Hartopp,” he said, as soon as they got started, “I kind of
take an interest in you and your wife, although the Lord knows why. I
guess it’s because she seems sick. What’s the game with Mr. Homor?”
Hartopp was a little irritable.
“My dear friend,” he replied, “there is no game at all. Mr. Homor is
interested in spiritualism and has just lost his wife. Mina is able to
console him.”
“Anything doing in the way of séances?”
Major Hartopp sighed.
“I believe that something of the sort has been arranged for this
evening,” he admitted. “There are two or three women in the hotel, and
one other man, who belong to the cult.”
“Are you going?”
“I am not,” was the firm reply. “I am very much opposed to the whole
business. Besides, I don’t think Mina is strong enough.”
“Why don’t you stop it, then?”
Major Hartopp glanced at his companion almost contemptuously.
“If you know as little of Mina as that,” he said, “you’ve been wasting
your time.”
“I sometimes wonder,” Mr. Cray rejoined, “whether I know as much about
either of you as any person with an ounce of common-sense ought to.”
Major Hartopp played a wonderful approach and watched his ball run to
the hole. Then he turned towards his companion, the flicker of a smile
upon his lips.
“These flashes of super-intelligence, Cray,” he declared, “convince me
that you are really a great man. Do you realise that I am three up to
bogey?”
That afternoon there was only one topic of conversation in the lounge
and on the terrace of the Golf Hotel. It had been privately announced
that a small séance would take place after dinner in Mrs. Hartopp’s
suite, to which various people who had professed themselves interested
had been invited. Mrs. Hartopp herself was invisible, resting for the
exertions of the evening. Major Hartopp, when spoken to upon the
subject, was abrupt and almost rude. It was at this period of his stay
at the Golf Hotel that Mr. Cray first came into contact with Mr. George
Pomfrey, a middle-aged, quiet-looking man of studious habits and a
marked propensity for solitude. He paused before the former’s chair on
the terrace.
“Are you helping your friends this evening, sir?” he inquired.
Mr. Cray was in rather a bad temper and the question annoyed him.
“How in thunder should I be helping them?” he retorted. “I don’t take
any stock in spiritualism, and the Hartopps are only hotel acquaintances
of mine.”
“Is that all?” the other asked quietly.
Mr. Cray felt the keen grey eyes upon his face and found himself at a
disadvantage.
“I met them once in town,” he acknowledged.
“Ah!”
Mr. Pomfrey passed on, stooping a little, as was his wont leaning upon
his stick, and with a general air of introspection which had been
recognised as one of his chief characteristics. Mr. Cray smoked on for
some time and then strolled round the front to the side of the hotel.
The suite allotted to the Hartopps was on the ground-floor for the
convenience of Mrs. Hartopp. Mr. Cray studied it thoughtfully. There
were windows opening on to the gardens in each of the bedrooms and the
sitting-room, and on the other side of the bathroom was a small door,
through which Mrs. Hartopp’s invalid chair generally issued. There were
one or two suggestions which occurred to him as he stood there in a
ruminative frame of mind.
“Maybe,” he decided finally, “I’ll see something of that séance.”
* * * * *
Mr. Cray challenged his friend, Major Hartopp, to a game of billiards
that evening after dinner. The latter, after one game, in which he gave
his opponent a hundred and twenty-five out of two hundred and fifty, and
beat him by sixty, put up his cue and declined to play any more.
“I am going to bed,” he said shortly.
Mr. Cray glanced at the clock.
“Won’t you find the séance a little disturbing?” he asked. “Besides, the
only pleasant thing about these shows is that they are silent. Spooks
don’t seem to care about a noise.”
The two men parted. Mr. Cray also went to his room, but he emerged a few
minutes later by the back entrance and found his way into the grounds.
The night was dark and a slight mistral was blowing from the hills. He
crept silently round until he reached the walk in front of the Hartopps’
suite. Here he made a careful examination of his surroundings. So far as
it was possible to tell, he was the only person who was seeking this
illicit means of obtaining information as to the séance. From the chinks
in the gaily-lit windows of the main building of the hotel came the
sound of the orchestra playing dance-music in the lounge. Every now and
then he could even distinguish fragments of conversation from the
numerous bridge parties. Inside the room, through the inch or two of
gaping blind which was his only means of observation, everything at
first seemed shielded by a wall of deep black. Presently, however, one
by one the white faces of those who sat round the table, blurred and
unrecognisable in detail, still became faintly recognisable. Every now
and then there was a low murmuring, which he had learnt to tabulate in
his mind as the spirit voice of the medium. Every one seemed deeply
stirred, tragically interested. He heard Homor’s raucous, trembling
voice.
“If I am to have comfort, I must see her. . . . Let me see her for one
moment.”
Again there came Mrs. Hartopp’s voice, faint and weary, yet always with
its suggestive, unearthly note.
“I will try. Look away from me, every one, while I try.”
It was at this point that Mr. Cray became vastly interested. From the
direction of the voice, he gathered that Mrs. Hartopp had been lying
upon a couch drawn up close to a screen. Without being able to trace any
movement, the white blur of her face seemed to disappear. An intense
silence followed. The window of the bedroom on the other side of the
door, was softly pushed open. Almost immediately the door itself opened
several inches. Mr. Cray in those moments forgot his wariness. Through
the window stepped an undistinguishable form bearing a bundle on its
arm. Through the door came a shadowy figure. And just then, on the top
of his head, Mr. Cray received a soft, resonant crack. It was
considerably later when he found himself lying on the gravel terrace,
looking up at the stars. . . .
Very slowly he scrambled to his feet. His head was still aching and was
remarkably sore. From the sitting-room window, a few yards away, lights
were now burning, although most of the lights in the hotel had been
extinguished. He struck a match and looked at his watch. It was eleven
o’clock, which meant that he had been lying there for nearly an hour. He
staggered to his feet, shook the dust from his clothes, re-entered the
hotel, and made his way to his room.
* * * * *
It was a very grim Mr. Cray, however, who strolled out on the terrace
the following morning and made his way with a certain ominous
deliberation to the little sunny corner where Mrs. Hartopp usually held
her court. The corner was more crowded than usual, but the lady in
question herself was absent. Mr. Homor was sitting there, however,
surrounded by a little bevy of women. Mr. Homor, without a doubt, was a
very changed man. On the outskirts of the little gathering, the newcomer
paused to regard him with wonder. The hopeless, almost pathetic, misery
of his face was gone. That wistful fear of impending death, which was
always with him, had also passed. He was like a man who on the threshold
of the grave had found new hope. He sat there in the sunshine with a
serene smile upon his lips.
“Where’s the lady this morning?” Mr. Cray asked.
“She is utterly exhausted with the efforts of last night,” one of the
women told him. “It is very doubtful whether she will be up to-day at
all.”
“What sort of a show did you have?” Mr. Cray proceeded curiously.
“It was wonderful,” the woman murmured.
“Marvellous!” another echoed.
“It was without doubt one of the most amazing demonstrations I have ever
seen,” a man declared.
Mr. Cray opened his lips to speak, and at that moment Mr. Homor leaned a
little forward in his chair. He looked straight across at Mr. Cray.
“It was more than anything which has been said,” he insisted. “It was
just a miracle. Mr. Cray, I saw my wife, my dear wife whom I lost many
months ago.”
Mr. Cray held his peace for a moment. Then he ventured a single
question.
“Are you quite sure of that, Mr. Homor?” he asked.
“I am absolutely and entirely sure of it,” was the confident answer.
“She came to me out of the shadows of that room, dressed as I remember
her best, her hair, her little articles of jewellery, the light in her
kind eyes—they were all there. It was unmistakable, and though it
sounded a long way off, I heard her voice.”
“Do you carry any picture of her with you?” Mr. Cray inquired.
“There is a picture of her in my room,” Mr. Homor replied, “but no one
has ever seen it. You are perhaps one of those,” he went on, “who find
it hard to believe. Heaven knows I found it hard enough until last
night! For months I have been carrying with me always the loneliness
which is almost worse than death, and the fear of things to come which
grows with those who have only a short time to live. And now—look at
me. I am a new man. I am content to live or to die. There is no fear
left in me.”
Mr. Cray stood for a moment gazing at that thin streak of the
Mediterranean shining below. All thoughts of exposing the trick which he
felt sure he had seen, passed away. He said nothing of his own accident,
nor did he hint at his own convictions. He nodded his head reverently.
“Say, Mr. Homor, I congratulate you,” he declared, as he moved on.
“Yours was a wonderful experience. It should be helpful to many others.”
“I mean to make it so,” was the enthusiastic reply. . . .
On his mechanical way down to the golf links, Mr. Cray was accosted by
Mr. Pomfrey, his acquaintance of the previous afternoon.
“Been hearing about the manifestation last night?” the latter inquired.
Mr. Cray nodded but kept his own counsel. He would have passed on but
the other detained him.
“I have been wondering, Mr. Cray,” he continued, “whether you could
spare me a moment to discuss a matter of some little importance?”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray assented. “I’m doing nothing. Get right on with it.”
Mr. Pomfrey drew him towards the hotel.
“If you would be so kind,” he begged, “please take me to your room. We
can speak there without any possibility of being overheard.”
Mr. Cray was surprised but acquiescent. Together the two men ascended in
the lift and entered the spacious and very pleasant room which had been
allotted to Mr. Cray. His guest looked around it appreciatively.
“Very nice quarters,” he observed. “Very nice indeed. Now, Mr. Cray,
have you any idea what I want with you?”
“Not the slightest in the world,” was the truthful reply.
Mr. Pomfrey unbuttoned his coat and showed a small medallion on the
inside of his waistcoat.
“In case that does not make things clear to you,” he said “will you
allow me?”
He handed over a card, which Mr. Cray read in amazement:—
_Superintendent George Pomfrey_
_Scotland Yard_
“Well, you amaze me,” Mr. Cray acknowledged. “That’s your job, however.
What can I do for you?”
“I am here,” the detective explained, “in search of certain jewellery
stolen from Covent Garden on the night of the ball in November last.”
Mr. Cray nodded.
“I was there.”
“You were there,” the other continued, “with your friends Major and Mrs.
Hartopp.”
“I don’t know about being with them,” Mr. Cray objected. “I met them
there for the first time.”
Mr. Pomfrey’s fingers caressed his chin thoughtfully.
“For the first time,” he repeated. “Mrs. Hartopp spent a great part of
the evening in your box, and my information is that you left the ball
together.”
“Sure!” Mr. Cray admitted. “I gave them a lift. If you make inquiries at
your headquarters, you will find a little further information concerning
the events of that evening.”
“My immediate business is to do with the jewellery,” was the cautious
reply. “Acting upon certain information, I may tell you that in the
first place I have searched the suite and luggage of Major and Mrs.
Hartopp.”
“Any luck?”
“Not up to the present. With your permission,” the man went on, his eyes
travelling curiously about the room, “I will now proceed further with my
duty.”
A light began to dawn upon Mr. Cray. He gazed at his visitor in
amazement.
“Let me get this,” he exclaimed. “Do I understand that you are here to
search my apartments, that you think I am mixed up in any way with the
Hartopps?”
Mr. Pomfrey smiled.
“We don’t need to go into that,” he said. “You were with them on the
night of the robbery, and you are here staying at the same hotel. I
admit that I have no search-warrant, but if I might offer you my
advice——”
“Search, by all means,” Mr. Cray interrupted, throwing himself into an
easy-chair. “When you’ve finished, I’ll tell you a yarn about the
Hartopps, which you can verify for yourself when you get back to town.”
The detective did not reply. He made a prompt and methodical search of
the whole of Mr. Cray’s baggage. When he had finished he pointed to a
cupboard.
“What is in there?” he inquired.
“Some empty bags,” was the prompt reply. “The door isn’t locked.”
Mr. Pomfrey rummaged about for some minutes. Finally he dragged out into
the room a kit-bag.
“Have you the key of this?” he asked.
Mr. Cray stared at the bag with a puzzled frown.
“That’s not my bag,” he declared.
Mr. Pomfrey’s manner became a little more constrained.
“There is the same label upon it as the rest of your luggage,” he
pointed out, “and written in the same handwriting. Also, as you
perceive, your initials.”
Mr. Cray rose to his feet and examined it in detail. Finally he handed
his keys to the detective.
“You can try,” he said simply, “but I don’t believe I have one which
fits that bag.”
The surmise was correct. After a few minutes manipulation, however, the
detective managed to open it with a master-key which he produced from
his own pocket. Inside was a black tin box at which Mr. Cray stared in
ever-increasing astonishment. Mr. Pomfrey lifted the lid and closed it
again almost immediately. A hurried glimpse was quite enough. The box
was half filled with a miscellaneous assortment of jewellery, in the
midst of which flashed some very fine diamonds.
“Well, I’m damned!” Mr. Cray exclaimed.
“Have you any explanation to offer?” the detective asked.
“None,” was the bewildered reply. “The bag isn’t mine, and I never saw
the jewels before.”
The detective smiled faintly. It was obvious, however, that he, too, was
puzzled.
“Mr. Cray,” he confessed, “I’ll tell you frankly that I came into this
room in the execution of my duty but without the slightest suspicion
that I should find here what I was in search of. I must send in my
report to headquarters and reconstruct the case in my mind. In the
meantime, I don’t wish to do anything which might seem disagreeable. You
have a very comfortable room here, with a pleasant balcony where you can
take the air. If you will give me your parole not to leave it for
twenty-four hours, you shall remain undisturbed.”
“On consideration that you let me send a telegram of my own to Inspector
Johns of Scotland Yard,” Mr. Cray replied, “I agree.”
“I will send off personally any message with which you may entrust me,”
the detective promised.
He left the room, carrying the kit-bag with him. Mr. Cray sat down at
his writing-table and wrote a telegram. After luncheon he wrote more
telegrams. Somehow or other, the day dragged away. On the following
morning, he rose at the usual time, breakfasted, and afterwards walked
restlessly up and down the room, smoking a cigar. There had come for him
no word or message from Mr. Pomfrey. Five minutes after the twenty-four
hours had elapsed, he left his room and descended on to the terrace. He
went at once to the bureau and asked for Mr. Pomfrey.
“Mr. Pomfrey left by the afternoon train yesterday, sir,” the man told
him.
Mr. Cray was dumbfounded.
“Did he leave any note or message for me?” he inquired.
The clerk searched the pigeon-hole and produced a note which Mr. Cray
carried out into the sunshine. Its contents were brief and to the
point:—
_Dear Mr. Cray_,
_I hasten to let you know that, according to instructions
received from headquarters, the matter referred to between us
yesterday will not be further proceeded with._
_Faithfully yours,_
_George Pomfrey._
Mr. Cray wandered mechanically on to the corner where Mrs. Hartopp’s
invalid carriage was usually to be found. There were several people
seated there, but no sign of the person of whom he was in search. An
acquaintance welcomed him.
“Thought you’d left, too, Mr. Cray. Didn’t see anything of you
yesterday.”
“I had a slight headache and stayed in my room,” was the somewhat grim
explanation.
“You haven’t heard the news, then?”
“Nary a thing!”
“First of all, then, the Hartopps left yesterday by the same train as
Mr. Pomfrey.”
“God bless my soul!” Mr. Cray exclaimed.
“She looked terribly ill,” his informant went on. “They had almost to
carry her into the omnibus. . . . Then you haven’t heard about Mr.
Homor, I suppose?”
“Not a thing.”
“His lawyer arrived from London last night. They say that he is much
worse. The doctor announced this morning that he could not live through
the day.”
“Say, that’s bad!” Mr. Cray murmured. “Anything else?”
“There’s a great golf match on this morning—the Costabel pro and a
visitor from Costabel, against Dell and Scott.”
“I’ll stroll down and have a look,” Mr. Cray decided, lighting a cigar
and turning away.
* * * * *
It was very nearly two months later when full elucidation of many
perplexing happenings came to Mr. Cray. Newly arrived in Monte Carlo, he
made his first appearance at the Sporting Club and mingled for some time
with the smartest crowd in Europe. In the act of trying to approach
close to one of the roulette tables, he was suddenly aware of a tall and
elegant woman who had risen from her place at the tables, with her hands
full of notes and plaques which she was carelessly stuffing into a gold
bag. Something about her expression puzzled him. Their eyes met, and a
charming smile of welcome parted her lips.
“Why, Mr. Cray!” she exclaimed. “How delightful!”
Mr. Cray shook hands dumbly with this very beautiful apparition. She
wore a smart afternoon costume of black and white, a wonderful
hat—black with white ospreys. In that very exclusive gathering, her
slim elegance, her air of gracious distinction, singled her out for
universal notice.
“This is quite delightful,” she murmured. “Guy!”
Major Hartopp extricated himself from a little crowd and shook hands
affably. Mr. Pomfrey followed suit.
“Haven’t forgotten me, I hope, Mr. Cray?” he asked, smiling.
Mrs. Hartopp laid her hand lightly upon Mr. Cray’s coat-sleeve.
“Let us all,” she suggested amiably, “go and have a cocktail. If this is
your first visit, Mr. Cray, you must be introduced to Charles.”
They discovered four seats in the little bar. Mr. Cray found himself
seated between Major and Mrs. Hartopp. Mr. Pomfrey strolled away and
gave impressive orders to the white linen-clad celebrity behind the
counter.
“I always felt quite sure that we should meet again,” Mrs. Hartopp
continued smilingly.
“I guess I was counting on it, too,” Mr. Cray, who was beginning to
recover himself, remarked. “What’s that fellow Pomfrey doing here with
you?”
“Guy, dear, you explain,” Mrs. Hartopp suggested amiably. “Tell Mr. Cray
everything.”
Major Hartopp scratched at his stubbly little moustache.
“I expect Mr. Cray has puzzled things out for himself long before this,”
he observed.
“What about that jewellery?”
“Perhaps we took rather a liberty with you,” Major Hartopp went on. “We
got those few trifles out to Hyères quite safely, but Mina and I weren’t
feeling quite comfortable, so we thought they would be safer in your
rooms, in a bag that—er—might have belonged to you.”
Mr. Cray muttered something under his breath and swallowed hard.
“But what about Pomfrey?”
“Ah, yes—Pomfrey!” Major Hartopp repeated. “Good fellow, George
Pomfrey.”
“One of our oldest friends,” Mrs. Hartopp murmured.
“You see, when we made up our minds to leave,” Major Hartopp explained,
“we naturally wanted the jewels back again, the coast being clear, and
all that sort of thing. Pomfrey’s done a few stunts with us before, and
he undertook to get the jewels back and keep you out of the way in case
you were inquisitive at our leaving.”
Mr. Cray held himself back with great difficulty.
“I gather, then,” he said, “that Mr. Pomfrey is not connected with the
detective force?”
“Great Scott, no!” was the emphatic reply. “On the contrary!”
“Just let me get this,” Mr. Cray persisted. “Now that’s a police
commissionaire over there, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” Mrs. Hartopp assented, with a sweet smile. “He’s a
dear friend of ours. Should you like to meet him?”
“I may presently,” Mr. Cray replied significantly. “Where are the
jewels?”
“Safely disposed of long ago,” Mrs. Hartopp assured him.
“This is—er—one of the best markets in the world,” her husband
observed, “for—delicate transactions of that sort. Lump sum down and no
questions asked, you know.”
“I see,” Mr. Cray murmured. “And you are now engaged, I presume, in
spending the proceeds?”
Mrs. Hartopp laughed delightfully.
“My dear man, we don’t need to do that,” she said. “Didn’t you hear
about Mr. Homor?”
“I’ve heard nothing,” Mr. Cray assured them. “I’ve been in Algiers.”
“The dear man left me fifty thousand pounds in order that I might pursue
my marvellous investigations. Wasn’t it perfectly sweet of him?”
Mr. Cray sat quite still. Mr. Pomfrey strolled up, followed by a waiter
bearing on his silver tray four tall glasses, filled with cloudy,
amber-coloured liquid.
“There are only six men breathing,” he announced impressively, “who
could mix this. It’s the finest welcome we could give you to Monte
Carlo, sir.”
Mr. Cray mechanically accepted his glass but made no response. His
attitude remained negative. Pomfrey leaned a little towards him.
“Mr. Cray,” he said, “may I speak a plain word to you? You are one of
those shrewd, amiable gentlemen of independent means who have a natural
taste for adventure and who go muddling about the world, sometimes
interfering a good deal in other people’s business. You get lots of fun
out of it, and from what I know of you, you generally come out on top.
From what I know of you further, I believe you to be a latitudinarian.
The law isn’t always just. The criminal is sometimes a good fellow. Our
friends here have been up against you a bit, but you haven’t come to
much harm. Anything you know that you don’t care about, forget. Be a
sportsman, and don’t look at that glass as though you saw poison
inside.”
Mina Hartopp leaned a little towards him. Her eyes were dancing with
amusement, her smile was irresistible.
“You are really such a dear, Mr. Cray,” she murmured. “You won’t refuse
to drink with me?”
Mr. Cray raised his glass. All four were solemnly clinked together. The
moment of tension had passed. As he set his glass down empty, a beatific
smile parted Mr. Cray’s lips. He made telegraphic signs to the
functionary behind the bar.
“You’ll repeat that with me,” he invited.
“It’s _pax_, isn’t it?” Mina Hartopp whispered in his ear.
“Sure!” Mr. Cray promised.
VIII The Past Life of Mr. Senn
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