The Red Room

“You say that the Professor was in Strassburg?” I said. “Is he still there?”

“As far as I know,” she replied, twisting her rings nervously around her thin white finger.

“Could I telegraph to him?” I ventured to suggest.

“Certainly, if you have business with him,” she responded. “I’ll go and get the address.” And she swiftly left the room, leaving on the air a sweet breath of violets, a bunch of which she wore in her belt.

A few minutes later she returned with a letter in her hand.

“His address is Kronenburger Strasse, number fifteen,” she exclaimed. “Do you know Strassburg? It’s just at the corner, by the bridge over the canal.”

“I have never been in Strassburg,” was my reply. “But I have important business with the Professor, so, with your permission, I will telegraph to him from here.”

“Most certainly,” she said. “He tells me that his affairs are likely to keep him abroad for a considerable time. But – ” and she paused. At last she added: “I have never heard him speak of you as a friend, Mr – Mr Holford.”

“Perhaps not,” I said quickly. “The fact is, I’m a confidential friend of his, as well as of Mr Kershaw Kirk.”

“A friend of Mr Kirk!” she cried, staring at me with a startled expression, half of fear and half of surprise.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe Mr Kirk is an intimate friend both of your father and yourself. Is not that so?”

“Certainly. He’s our very best friend. Both Dad and I trust him implicitly,” replied the girl. “Indeed, during my father’s absence he is left in charge of my affairs.”

For a moment I remained silent.

“He is your friend – eh?”

“Certainly. Why do you ask?”

“Well, because I feared that he was not your friend,” I answered. “Do you happen to know his whereabouts?”

“He’s abroad somewhere, but where I don’t know.”

“Ah!” I laughed lightly, in pretence of careless irresponsibility. “He has always struck me as a strange figure, ever mysterious and ever evasive. Who and what is he?”

“You probably know as much of him, Mr Holford, as I do,” was the girl’s answer. “I only know him to be an intimate friend of my father, and the ideal of an English gentleman. Of his profession, or of his past, I know nothing. My father, who knows him intimately, is always silent upon that point.”

I noted that she spoke in the present tense, as though to preserve the fiction that her father was still alive. Ah! this girl with the innocent eyes and the wonderful hair, the beloved of young Leonard Langton, was an admirable actress, without a doubt. Without the tremble of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle of the mouth, she had actually declared to me that Professor Greer was still alive!

“To me, Kirk is a mystery,” I declared, my gaze fixed straight into her eyes as I stood near the window where the wintry sunlight from across the sea fell full upon her; “at times I doubt him.”

“And so does Mr Langton,” she responded. “But I think that the fears of both of you are quite groundless. Mr Kirk is a little eccentric, that’s all.”

“When did you first know him?” I inquired.

“Oh, when I came back from Lausanne, where I had been at school, I found him to be my father’s most trusted friend. They used to spend many evenings together in the study, smoking and discussing abstruse points of foreign politics in which I, a woman, have no interest.”

“And has he always showed friendship towards you, Miss Greer?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, and to Leonard also, though of late I fear there has been some little unpleasantness between them.”

At this I pricked my ears. I recollected that young Langton had, to me, pretended ignorance of the very existence of Kershaw Kirk! What was the meaning of his attitude towards the man whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape, and who had repaid my friendship by inducing my wife to travel upon a fool’s errand, and, as I feared, fall into a fatal trap laid open for her?

Antonio had covertly threatened me, and I knew instinctively that my well-beloved Mabel was now in direst peril. Ah! that wild fevered life I was now leading was one continuous whirl of dread, of suspicion, and of dark despair.

“You have actual knowledge that Mr Langton has quarrelled with Kirk?” I asked at last.

“Yes, and I much regret it, for Mr Kirk has been our very good friend throughout. It was he who urged my father to allow Mr Langton to pay court to me,” she added. “It was he who made the suggestion that we might be allowed to marry. Such being the case, how can I think ill of the eccentric old fellow?”

“Of course not,” I said, “but is your trust really well founded, do you think? Are you quite certain that he is your friend, or only your pretended ally?”

“I am quite certain,” she declared, “I have had proof abundant of it.”

“Your father did not, I believe, tell you of his projected visit to Germany before leaving?”

“No,” was her reply. “He went up to Edinburgh, but after having left me was suddenly compelled to alter his plans. He crossed to the Hook of Holland, travelling from York to Harwich without returning to London.”

“This he has told you?”

“Yes, in a letter he wrote from Cologne. I wanted to join him, but he would not allow me, and ordered me to come down here. He is very busy concerning one of his recent discoveries.”

“Ah!” I sighed. “He would not allow you to go to him, eh?”

“No; he made excuse that the weather was better just now in Broadstairs than in Southern Germany, and said that his future movements were very uncertain, and that he could not be hampered by a woman.”

In that reply I recognised an evasiveness which was natural. The Professor himself was dead, and this mysterious person posing as him was, of course, disinclined to meet Ethelwynn face to face.

Yet that even surely did not affect the girl’s amazing attitude? She herself had seen her father dead, yet was now actually assisting the impostor to keep up the fiction that he was still alive!

Chapter Eighteen

I Draw the Impostor

Having invented a story of a secret business friendship with the Professor, I remained with his pretty daughter for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer.

From her I further learned that Leonard Langton was now back in London, and that Kirk had written her implicit instructions to remain at Broadstairs for the present.

Then I bade her farewell, and walked back along the cliffs, past the Grand Hotel, to the quaint parade of the old-fashioned little watering-place, turning up to the chemist’s shop, which is, at the same time, the post office.

Thence I dispatched a telegram addressed to Professor Greer at the address in Strassburg which his daughter had given me, appending Kirk’s name, and asking for a reply to be sent to the Albion Hotel at Broadstairs, where I intended staying.

Afterwards I strolled to the hotel, ate my luncheon, and idled along the deserted jetty and promenade throughout the bleak, bright afternoon in eager expectation of a response from the impostor. My thought was ever on my dear lost Mabel. Fettered by ignorance and mystery, I knew not in which direction to search, nor could I discern any motive by which we should be thus parted.

My tea I took in the hotel, and afterwards smoked a cigar, until just before six the waiter handed me a message, a brief reply to mine, which read:

“Why are you running risks in Broadstairs, when you should be elsewhere? Be judicious and leave. – Greer.”

I read the message over a dozen times. What risks could Kirk be running by coming to Broadstairs? Was not that telegram essentially a word of warning given by one accomplice to another?