Tell them, I interrupted, that I cannot see them. And, John
Sir?
I am not at home to anybody anybody at all. You understand?
Quite, sir.
I noticed that his tone was not quite as deferential as usual. I knew the reason. Of course he had seen this odious paper, or some paper more odious still. Probably he and the other servants in the building had been discussing me, and hazarding all sorts of wildly improbable stories about me.
The telephone bell rang again. I forget what I said. I think it was a short prayer, or an invocation of some kind. My first impulse was not to answer the phone again at all, but to let the thing go on ringing. It rang so persistently, however, that in desperation I pulled off the receiver.
Who the dickens is it? What do you want? I shouted.
I gasped.
What! Vera? Where are you? I want to see you. I must see you at once!
My love was in dire distress. I could hear emotion in her voice. My heart beat quickly in my eagerness.
Oh, come to me do come to me! she was saying hurriedly in a low tone, as though fearful of some one overhearing her. Im in such trouble, and you alone can help me. Tell me when you will come. Tell me quickly. At any moment someone may catch me talking on the telephone.
Where are you? Give me your address, quickly, I answered, feverishly. I was madly anxious to meet her again.
We are in London but we go to Brighton to-day this afternoon
Your address in London, quick.
Twenty-six Upper
There was a sudden clatter. The receiver had been put back. Some one had interrupted her.
I tapped the little lever of the instrument repeatedly.
Number, please, a monotonous voice asked.
What number was I talking to this instant? I said, almost trembling with anxiety.
Im sure I dont know. What number do you want?
The number Ive been talking to.
I tell you I dont know it, replied the female operator.
Cant you find it out?
Ill try. Hold the line, please.
After a brief interval, the voice said
It may have been double-two two two Mayfair. Shall I ring them for you?
Please do.
I waited.
Youre through.
Hello, what is it? a beery voice asked.
I want to speak to Miss Vera Thorold?
Vera oo?
Thorold.
Theobald? Hes out.
Thorold, Miss Vera Thorold, I shouted in despair.
Oh, we aint got no Veras here, the beery voice replied, and I could picture the speakers leer. This aint a ladies seminary; its Poulsens Brewery Company, Limited. Youre on the wrong number. Ring off.
And again the instrument was silent.
Vera had been cut off just at the moment she was about to reveal her whereabouts.
Almost beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in order to devise some means of discovering Veras whereabouts and getting into immediate communication with her. I even went to the telephone exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his best to help me, he could not trace the number.
I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was impotent to help her.
Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin, and jerked out the sentence between his teeth
Theres a lady here to see you a Miss Thorold.
Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here? I exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.
About ten minutes. Shes up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew her, and shed wait till you came back.
Vera! I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with impatience.
At last. She was there in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!
Chapter Five
Puts Certain Questions
Rarely have I felt more put out, or more bitterly disappointed, than I did when I hurried into my flat, expecting to come face to face with Vera, my beloved, and longing to take her in my arms to kiss and comfort her.
Instead, I was confronted by a spinster aunt of Veras whom I had met only three times before, and to whom I had, the first time I was introduced to her she insisted upon never remembering me either by name or by sight, and each time needing a fresh introduction taken an ineradicable dislike.
Ah, Mr Ashton, Im so glad youve come, she said without rising. I have called to talk to you about a great many things I daresay you can guess what they are about all this dreadful affair at Houghton.
Now the more annoyed I feel with anybody of my own social standing, the more coldly polite I invariably become. It was so on this occasion.
I should love to stay and talk to you, Miss Thorold, I answered, after an instants pause, but I have just been sitting at the bedside of a sick friend. To-day is the first day he has been allowed to see anybody. The doctor said he ought not to have allowed me in so soon, and he warned me to go straight home, take off every stitch of clothing I have on, and send them at once to be disinfected.
Oh, indeed? she said rather nervously. And what has been the matter with your friend?
It was the question I wanted.
Didnt I tell you? I said. It was smallpox.
My ruse proved even more successful than I had anticipated. Miss Thorold literally sprang to her feet, gathered up her satchel and umbrella, and with the hurried remark: How perfectly monstrous keep well away from me! she edged her way round the wall to the door, and, calling to me from the little passage: I will ring you on the telephone, went out of the flat, slamming the door after her.
But where was Vera? How could I discover her? I was beside myself with anxiety.
The Houghton affair created more than a nine days wonder. The people of Rutland desperately resent anything in the nature of a scandal which casts a disagreeable reflection upon their county. I remember how some years ago they talked for months about an unpleasant affair to do with hunting.
Even if it were true, some of the people who knew it to be true said one to another, it ought never to have been exposed in that way. Think of the discredit it brings upon our county, and what a handle the Radicals and the Socialists will be able to make of it, if ever it is discovered that it really did occur.
And so it came about that, when I was called back to Oakham two days later, to attend the double inquest, many of the people there, with whom I had been on quite friendly terms, looked at me more or less askance. It is not well to make oneself notorious in a tiny county like Rutland, I quickly discovered, or even to become notorious through no fault of ones own.
Shall I ever forget how, at the inquest, questions put to me by all sorts of uneducated people upon whom the duty devolved of inquiring into the mysterious affair connected with Houghton Park?
I suppose it was because there was nobody else to question, that they cross-examined me so closely and so foolishly.
Their inquiries were endless. Had I known the Thorolds long? Could I name the date when I first became acquainted with them? Was it a fact that I rode Sir Charles horses while I was a guest at Houghton? About how often did I ride them? And on how many days did I hunt during the fortnight I spent at Houghton?
All my replies were taken down in writing. Then came questions concerning my friendship with Miss Thorold, and these annoyed me considerably. Was the rumour that I was engaged to be married to her true? Was there any ground for the rumour? Was I at all attached to her? Was she attached to me? Had we ever corresponded by letter? Was it a fact that we called each other by our Christian names? Was it not true, that on one evening at least, we had smoked cigarettes together, alone in her boudoir?
It was. This admission seemed to gratify my cross-questioners considerably.
And may I ask, Mr Ashton, asked a legal gentleman with a most offensive manner, as he looked me up and down, if this took place with Sir Charles knowledge?
Oh, yes it did. With his full knowledge and consent!
Oh, really. And you will pardon my asking, was Lady Thorold also aware that you and her daughter sat alone together late at night, smoking cigarettes and addressing each other by your Christian names?
Now I am fairly even-tempered, but this local solicitors objectionable insinuations ended by stirring me up. This, very likely, was what he desired that they should do.
My dear sir, I exclaimed, will you tell me if these questions of yours have any bearing at all upon the matter you are inquiring into, and if your very offensive innuendoes are intended as veiled, or rather as unveiled, insults to Miss Thorold or to myself?
I heard some one near me murmur, Hear, hear, at the back of the room. The comment encouraged me.
You will not address me in that fashion again, please, my interlocutor answered hotly, reddening.
In what fashion?
You will not call me your dear sir. I object. I strongly object.
A titter of amusement trickled through the room. My adversarys fingers for he had become an adversary twitched.
I was under the impression, he remarked pompously, that I was addressing a gentleman.
I am not good at smart retorts, but I got one in when I answered him.
A gentleman I? I exclaimed blandly. I assure you, my dear sir, that I dont pose as a gentleman. I am quite a common man just like yourself.
Considerable laughter greeted this remark, but it was at once suppressed. Still, I knew that this single quick rejoinder had biased the gallery in my favour. Common people enjoy witnessing the discomfiture of any individual in authority.
Two days later, I left Oakham and returned to London, feeling like a schoolboy going home for Christmas.
The days went by. On the following week I again went to Oakham to attend the adjourned inquest. In the case of the butler, an open verdict was returned, but in the case of the driver, one of murder by some person unknown.
Of Vera I had had no news.
Twenty-six Upper That might be in London, or in Brighton. It might even be in some other town. I thought it probable, however, that the address she had been about to give was a London address, so I had spent the day before the inquest in trying the various London Uppers contained in Kellys Directory.
Heavens, what an array! When my eyes fell upon the list, my heart sank. For there were no less than fifty-four Uppers scattered about the Metropolis. Some, obviously, might be ruled out at once, or so I conjectured. Upper Street, Islington, for instance, close to the Angel, did not sound a likely residential locality as the estate agents say for people of Sir Charles and Lady Thorolds position to be staying in. Nor did Upper Bland near the Elephant and Castle, nor Upper Grange Road, off the Old Kent Road; nor Upper Chapman Street, Shadwell. On the other hand, Upper Brook Street; Upper George Street, Sloane Square; Upper Grosvenor Street, Park Lane; even Upper Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, seemed possible spots, and these and many other Uppers I tried, spinning from one to another in a taxi, until the driver began to look at me as though he had misgivings as to my sanity.
Twenty-six dont seem to be your lucky number, sir, he said jocularly, when he had driven me to thirty-seven different Uppers and called in each at the house numbered twenty-six. It wouldnt be twenty-six in some Lower Street, or Place, or Road, or Gardens, would it, sir?
He spoke only half in jest, but I resented his familiarity, and I told him so. His only comment, muttered beneath his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, was
Lummy! the coves dotty in is own upper, thats what ee is.
On my return from Oakham I went to Brighton, wandering aimlessly about the streets and on the esplanade, hoping against hope that some fortunate turn in the wheel of Fate might bring me unexpectedly face to face with my sweet-faced beloved, whose prolonged and mysterious absence seemed to have made my heart grow fonder. Alas! fate only grinned at me ironically.
Vera had vanished with her family entirely vanished.
But not wholly ironically. I had been distressed to find that the little silver flask picked up at Houghton had been mislaid. For hours I had hunted high and low for it in my flat. John had turned out all my clothes, and pulled the pockets inside out, and I had bullied him for his carelessness in losing it, and almost accused him of stealing it.
It was while in the train on my way back to London, after my second futile visit to Brighton, that I sat down on something hard. Almost at once I guessed what it was. Briefly, there had been a hole in the inside breast-pocket of my overcoat. It had been mended by Johns wife whose duty it was to keep all my clothes in order before I knew of its existence. Therefore, when I had naturally enough suspected there being a hole in one of my pockets, and sought one, I had found all the pockets intact. The woman had mended the hole without noticing that the little flask, which had dropped through it, lay hidden in the bottom of the lining.
I ripped open the lining at once, and pulled out the flask, delighted at the discovery. And, as soon as I reached town, I took the flask to a chemist I knew and asked him to analyse its contents. He would do so without delay, he said, and let me know on the following morning the result of his analysis.
Its a mixture of gelsiminum and ether, he said, as soon as I entered his shop next day.
Poison, of course, I remarked.
He smiled.
Well, I should rather think so, he answered drily. A few drops would send a strong man to sleep for ever, and there is enough of the fluid here to send fifty men to sleep for ever. Therefore one wouldnt exactly take it for ones health.
So here was a clue of a sort. The first clue! My spirits rose. My next step must be to discover the owner of the flask, presumably some one with initials D.P., and the reason he or she had carried this fluid about.
I lunched at Brookss, feeling more than usually bored by the members I met there. Several men whom I had not seen for several weeks were standing in front of the smoking-room fire, and as I entered, and they caught sight of me, they all grinned broadly.
The accused then left the Court with his friends, one of them said lightly, as I approached. He was granted a free pardon, but bound over in his own recognisances to keep the peace for six months.