The Mysterious Three

“How! Really, my dear Dick, your intelligence resembles a child’s. You send a messenger for my luggage. Acting on your instructions, he brings it from Brighton to Clapham Junction by train, then hails a taxi, and brings the luggage on it direct to this hotel. Paulton is told by my mother in Brighton, that a messenger from London called for the luggage. All he has to do, is to ring up the messenger offices, until he finds the one where you engaged your messenger. Having found that out, he ascertains from the messenger the address to which he took the luggage in the taxi, and at once he comes and finds me.”

“But,” I said quickly, “Paulton is not in Brighton.”

“How can that matter? He can easily find out who took my luggage. I tell you, dear, if Paulton finds me, worse still, if he finds me with you, the result will be terrible for all of us. You should yourself have gone to Clapham, met the messenger-boy there, and yourself have brought the luggage here.”

I felt crushed. I had believed my plan had been laid so cleverly. At the same time, my admiration for Vera’s foresight increased, though I did not tell her so.

We went back to the hotel at once, took away the luggage with us, and by ten o’clock that night she was comfortably settled in another small hotel, within a stone’s throw of Hampstead Heath.

My sweet-faced, well-beloved told me many things I wanted to know, but alas! not everything, and all the time we conversed, I had to bear in mind the important fact that she believed me to be familiar with Sir Charles’ secret – the secret that had led to his sudden flight from Houghton with her mother, herself and the French maid. I mistrusted that French maid – Judith. I had disliked the tone in which she had addressed Vera, when she had called her away from me that night at Houghton, and told her that Lady Thorold wanted her. I had noticed the maid on one or two previous occasions, and from the first I had disliked her. Her voice was so smooth, her manner so artificially deferential, and altogether she had seemed to me stealthy and cat-like. I believed her to be a hypocrite, if not a schemer.

The man who had called himself Davies, Vera told me, in the course of our long conversation that evening, was not named Smithson at all. That was a name he had adopted for some motive which, she seemed to take it for granted, I must be able to guess. Mexican by birth, though of British-Portuguese parentage, he had spoken to her, perhaps, half-a-dozen times. He appeared to be a friend of her father, she said, though what interest they had in common she had never been able to discover.

Speaking of Paulton, she said, her soft hand resting in mine, that he had known her mother longer than her father, and he had, she believed, been introduced by her mother to Sir Charles, since which time, the two men’s intimacy had steadily increased.

She gave no reason for the dismay the sight of the framed panel portrait of “Smithson” had created, or for the sudden dismissal that night of all the servants at Houghton, and the subsequent flight. I could not quite decide, in my mind, if she took it for granted that I, knowing Sir Charles’ secret – as she supposed – knew also why he had left Houghton thus mysteriously, or whether she intentionally refrained from telling me. But certainly she seemed to think there was no reason to tell me who had done poor James, the butler, to death, or who had fired the rifle shots from the wood, and killed the chauffeur. At the inquest on the butler, the jury had returned an open verdict.

Could he have been drowned by Paulton, and drowned intentionally? Or was Davies responsible for his death? That it must have been one of those two men I now felt certain – supposing he had not committed suicide, or been drowned by accident.

Another thing Vera clearly took for granted was, that I must have known why the man hidden in the wood had fired those shots at me. I had guessed, of course, from the first, that the bullet that had killed the driver had been meant for me; though why anybody should wish to do me harm I had not the remotest idea.

Of some points, of course, my love was ignorant as myself.

On the subject of the flask with the gelsiminum – a very potent poison distilled from the root of the yellow jasmine – that had been picked up on the drive at Houghton, just outside the front door, Vera said nothing. Indeed, though I referred to it more than once, she each time turned the conversation into a different channel, as though by accident.

“By the way, darling,” I said, as our lips met again in a long, lingering caress, when we had been talking a long time, “why did you ring me up to tell me you were in trouble and needed my help, and why did you call with Davies at my chambers?”

Several times during the evening I had been on the point of asking her these questions, but on each occasion she had diverted my intention. It seemed odd, too, that though I had more than once asked her to tell me Davies’ true name, she had each time turned the conversation without satisfying me. And at last she had point-blank refused to tell me.

Why? I wondered.

She looked at me steadily for some moments.

“It seems almost incredible, Dick,” she said at last, speaking very slowly, and drawing herself away, “that knowing my father’s secret, you should ask those questions. Tell me, how did you come to make the terrible discovery about my father? How long have you known everything? Who told you about it?”

Chapter Ten

Relates a Strange Incident

Vera’s very direct questions took me aback, though I had expected them sooner or later. “Who told me?” I said, echoing the words in order to gain time for thought, my arms still about her. “Oh, I’m sure I can’t remember. I seem to have known it a long time.”

“It can’t have been such a very long time,” she answered, still looking at me in that queer way that made me feel uncomfortable. “Surely you must remember who told you. It is hardly the sort of thing one would be told every day – or even twice in one’s life, is it?”

“Honestly,” I said with quick decision, “I can’t tell you how I came to know it.”

“Your ‘cannot’ means ‘will not,’” she said, and her lip twitched in the curious way that I knew meant she was nettled.

However, after that she dropped the subject, and I felt relieved. I hated deceiving her, yet I was compelled. I am not an adept in the art of what Lamb calls “walking round about a truth,” at least, not for more than a minute or two at a time, and my love had such quick intelligence that it is no easy matter – as I had several times discovered, to my discomfiture – to mislead her.

For the first time since we had met in the house in Belgrave Street, our conversation became purely personal.

I had almost feared the events of the past weeks might have altered her regard for me, and it afforded me intense relief to find I was mistaken. For I was desperately in love with her, more so than I cared to admit even to myself. And now I found to my joy that my love for her was apparently fully reciprocated.

And yet why should she care for me? This puzzled me, I confess, though I know as a thoroughgoing man of the world and as a cosmopolitan that women do take most curious likes and dislikes. I am neither clever, good-looking nor amusing, nor, I believe, even particularly “good company” as it is called. There are scores upon scores of men just like myself. You meet them everywhere, in town and in the country. Society teems with them, and our clubs are full of them. Men, young and middle aged, who have been educated at the public schools and Universities, who have comfortable incomes, are fond of sport, who travel up and down Europe, who have never in their lives done a stroke of work – and don’t intend ever to do one if they can help it – who live solely for amusement and for the pleasure of living.

What do women see in such men, women who have plenty of money and therefore do not need to marry in order to secure a home or to better themselves? What did – what could Vera Thorold see in me to attract her, least of all to tempt her to wish to marry me?

“Vera, my dearest,” I said, when we had talked of each other’s affairs for a considerable time, “why not marry me now? I can get a special licence! Then you will be free of all trouble, and nobody will be able to molest you. I shall have a right to protect you in every way possible.”

“Free of all trouble if I marry you, Richard?” she answered, reflectively, evading my question, and looking at me queerly.

“And why not?” I asked. I felt rather hurt, for her words seemed to imply some hidden meaning. “Don’t you think I shall be good to you and treat you properly?”

“Oh, that would be all right,” she answered, apparently amused at my misconstruing her meaning. “I am sure, Dick, that you would be good to any girl. I have already heard of your spoiling two or three girls, and giving them presents they had no right to accept from you – eh?” she asked mischievously.

I am afraid I turned rather red, for, to be candid, I am something of a fool where women are concerned. At the same time I was surprised at her knowing the truth, and I suppose she guessed this, for, before I had time to speak again, she went on —

“You must not forget that I am a modern girl, my dear old Dick. I know a great deal that I suppose I have no business to know, and when I hear things I remember them. Don’t for a moment flatter yourself that I think you perfect. I don’t. My frank opinion of you is that you really are an awfully good sort, kind, sympathetic, unselfish – singularly unselfish for a man – generous to a fault, and extravagant. In short, I like you far, far better than any man I have ever met, and I love you very much, you dear old boy – but there it ends.”

“I should rather say it did!” I answered. “If you really think all that of me, I am more than satisfied.”

“On the other hand,” she continued quickly, “I don’t pretend to think – and you needn’t think I do – that you are not just like most other men in some respects, in one respect in particular.”

“What is the one respect?”

“You are dreadfully susceptible – oh, yes, Dick, you are! There is no need for any one to tell me that. I can see it in your face. Your eyes betray you. You have what I once heard a girl friend of mine call, ‘affectionate eyes.’ She said to me: ‘Never trust a man who has “affectionate eyes,” and I never have trusted one – except you.’”

“I am flattered dear. Then why not do what I suggest?” I asked, raising her soft hand to my lips.

“It wouldn’t be safe, Dick, it really wouldn’t. We must wait until – until Paulton is dead.”

“Until Paulton – is – until he – is dead!” I gasped. “Good Heavens! that may not be for years!”

She smiled oddly.

“He may live for years, of course,” she answered drily.

“What do you mean?” I asked, staring at her in amazement.

“I mean,” she said, looking straight at me, and her voice suddenly grew hard, “that when he is dead, the world will be rid of a creature who ought never to have been born.”

Her eyes blazed.

“Ah! Dick – Ah! Dick!” she went on with extraordinary force, sighing heavily, “if you only knew the life that man has led – the misery he has caused, the horrors that are traceable to his vile diabolical plots. My father and mother are only two of his many victims. He is a man I dread. I am not a coward, no one can call me that, but – but I fear Dago Paulton – I fear him terribly.” She was trembling in my arms, though whether through fear, or only from emotion, I could not say. Nor could I think of any apt words which might soothe her, except to say —

“Leave him to me, dearest. Yet from what you tell me,” I said after a pause, “I can only suppose that some one is – how shall I put it? – going to encompass Paulton’s death.”

“Who knows?” she asked vaguely, looking up into my eyes.