The Four Faces

"Good God!" I exclaimed. "How did they identify him?"

"He was not unconscious. The police want me to go there at once. Come."

We walked up to Grafton Street, as it was such a little way, also Easterton wanted to tell me more. The Inspector who had just spoken to him had not told him what had led to the police entering the house in Grafton Street, or if anybody else had been found upon the premises. He had only told him that Scotland Yard had for some weeks had the house under surveillance—they had suspected that something irregular was going on there, but they did not know what.

"I expect they have a pretty shrewd idea," Easterton added, as we crossed Piccadilly, "but they won't say what it is. Hello! Just look at the crowd!"

Up at the end of Dover Street, where Grafton Street begins, the roadway was blocked with people. When we reached the crowd we had some difficulty in forcing our way through it. A dozen policemen were keeping people back.

"Are you Lord Easterton?" the officer at the entrance asked, as Easterton handed him his card. "Ah, then come this way, please, m'lord. This gentleman a friend of yours? Follow the constable, please."

We were shown into a room on the ground floor, to the right of the hall. It was large, high-ceilinged, with a billiard table in the middle. Half a dozen men were standing about, two in police uniform; the remainder I guessed to be constables in plain clothes.

Suddenly I started, and uttered an exclamation.

Seated in a big arm-chair was Dulcie Challoner, looking pale, frightened. Beside her, with her back to me, stood Aunt Hannah!

CHAPTER VII

OSBORNE'S STORY

"Good heavens, Dulcie!" I exclaimed, hurrying across to her, "whatever are you doing here? And you, Aunt Hannah?"

At the sound of my voice Dulcie started up in her chair, and Aunt Hannah turned quickly. To my amazement they both looked at me without uttering. Dulcie's eyes were troubled. She seemed inclined to speak, yet afraid to. The expression with which Aunt Hannah peered at me chilled me.

"What is the meaning of this, Mr. Berrington?" she asked coldly, after a brief pause. Even in that moment of tense anxiety it struck me that Aunt Hannah looked and spoke as though reproving a naughty schoolboy.

"Meaning of what?" I said stupidly, astonishment for the moment deadening my intelligence.

"Of your bringing us up to London to find—this."

"Bringing you up? What do you mean, Miss Challoner?" I exclaimed, mystified.

In spite of my deep anxiety, a feeling of annoyance, of resentment, had come over me. No man likes to be made to look ridiculous, and here was I standing before a lot of constables, all of them staring in inquisitive astonishment at my being thus addressed by the old lady.

"Is this Mr. Berrington, madam?" an immensely tall, bull-necked, plain-clothes policeman, of pompous, forbidding mien, suddenly asked.

"Yes, officer, it is," she snapped. During all the time I had known her I had never seen her quite like this.

"See here," he said, turning to me, "I want your address, and for the present you will stay here."

I am considered good-tempered. Usually, too, I can control my feelings. There is a limit, however, to the amount of incivility I can stand, and this fellow was deliberately insulting me.

"How dare you speak like that to me!" I burst out. "What has this affair to do with me? Do you know who I am?"

"Aren't you Mr. Michael Berrington?" he inquired more guardedly, apparently taken aback at my outburst of indignation.

"I am."

"Then read that," he said, producing a telegram and holding it out before me.

It was addressed to:

"Miss Dulcie Challoner, Holt Manor, Holt Stacey," and ran:

"The police have recovered property which they believe to have been stolen from Holt Manor. Please come at once to 430 Grafton Street, Bond Street, to identify it. Shall expect you by train due Paddington 12:17. Please don't fail to come as matter very urgent.

"MICHAEL BERRINGTON."

It had been handed in at the office in Regent Street at 9:30 that morning, and received at Holt Stacey village at 9:43.

"How absurd! How ridiculous!" I exclaimed. "My name has been forged, of course. I never sent that telegram; this is the first I have seen or heard of it."

"That you will have to prove," the detective answered, with official stolidity.

"Surely, Aunt Hannah," I almost shouted—so excited did I feel—as I again turned to her, "you can't think I sent that telegram?"

"I certainly think nothing else," she replied, and her eyes were like shining beads. "Who would send a telegram signed with your name but you, or someone instructed by you?"

I saw that to argue with her in the frame of mind she was then in would be futile—my presentiment at Holt that some day I should fall foul of her had come true! I turned to the officer.

"I must see the original of that telegram," I said quickly, "and shall then quickly prove that it was not sent by me. How soon can I get hold of it?"

"Oh, we can see about it at once, sir," he answered much more civilly, for, pretending to look for something in my pocket, I had intentionally pulled out my leather wallet, containing two hundred pounds or more in notes, and opened it for an instant. There is nothing like the sight of paper money to ensure civility from a policeman disposed to be impertinent—I should like, in justice, to add that most policemen are not.

Also Easterton had come over and spoken to me, and of course pooh-poohed the idea of my having sent the telegram, which had just been shown to him. Dulcie stared at me with large, pathetic eyes, and I knew that, but for Aunt Hannah's so-to-speak mounting guard, she would have asked me endless questions instead of sitting there mute.

"You had better come with me and hear Jack Osborne's story," Easterton said some moments later. "The Inspector tells me he is upstairs, and still rather weak from the effect of the treatment he has received."

I had seen a puzzled look come into Aunt Hannah's eyes while Easterton was speaking, but she remained sour and unbending.

Osborne was sitting up in a chair, partly undressed—he still wore his evening clothes—cotton wool bound round his ankles and one wrist. He smiled weakly as we entered, and the policeman who sat at his bedside immediately rose. It was easy to see that Jack had suffered a good deal; he looked, for him, quite pale, and there were dark marks beneath his eyes. Nor was his appearance improved by several days' growth of beard—he was usually clean-shaven.

His story was quickly told, and points in it gave food for thought, also for conjecture.

It seemed that, while he was at supper with the woman I knew as "Mrs. Gastrell," at Gastrell's reception, two men, unable to find a vacant table, had asked if they might sit at his table, where there were two vacant seats. Both were strangers to him, and apparently to "Mrs. Gastrell" too. They seemed, however, pleasant fellows, and presently he had drifted into conversation with them, or they with him, and with his fair companion—Jack, as I have said, is extremely cosmopolitan, and picks up all sorts of acquaintances. I could well believe that at a reception such as Gastrell's he would waive all formality of introduction if he found himself with companionable strangers.

Supper over, the four had remained together, and later, when Jack had seen his fair friend safely into a cab, he had rejoined the two strangers, becoming gradually more and more friendly with them. The reception had not ended until past one in the morning, and he and his two acquaintances had been among the last to leave. Having all to go in the same direction, they had shared a taxi, and on arriving at the chambers which the strangers had told him they shared—these chambers were in Bloomsbury, but Jack had not noticed in what street—one of the strangers had suggested his coming in for a few minutes before returning to the Russell Hotel, where he had his rooms, which was close by.

At first disinclined to do this, he had finally yielded to their persuasion. He had a whiskey-and-soda with them, he said—he mentioned that the chambers were comfortable and well furnished—and one of them had then suggested a game of cards. They had all sat down to play, and—

Well, he remembered, he said, seeing cards being dealt—but that was all he did remember. He supposed that after that he must have fainted, or been made unconscious; he now suspected that the drink he had taken had been drugged.

When he recovered consciousness he had no idea where he was, or how long he had been insensible. The room was unfamiliar to him, and everything about him strange. He was stretched upon a bed, in an apartment much larger than the one he was now in, with hands and feet tightly tied. The two windows faced a blank wall, the wall apparently of the next house; later he came to know, by the sound of Big Ben booming in the night, that he was still in London.

The door of the room was at the back of the bed; he could not see it from where he lay, and, bound as he was, could not even turn, but was forced to lie flat upon his back.

He had not long been conscious, when the light of day began to fade. Soon the room was in pitch darkness. Then it was he became aware that someone was in the room. He listened attentively, but could hear nothing; nevertheless the presence of a man or woman made itself "felt" beyond a doubt. He judged the time of day to be about six o'clock in the evening, when suddenly somebody touched him—a hand in the darkness. He started, and called out; but there was no answer. Some minutes later a man spoke.