The Stretton Street Affair

“Ah! yes,” he exclaimed, when at last he found the notes he had made upon the case. “I saw the young lady on the twenty-eighth of November. A most peculiar case – most peculiar! Leicester and Franklyn both saw her, but they were just as much puzzled as myself.”

And through his big round horn spectacles he continued reading to himself the several pages of notes.

“Yes,” he remarked at last. “I now recall all the facts. A very curious case. The young lady disappeared from her friends, and was found some days later wandering near Petersfield, in Hampshire, in an exhausted condition. She could not account for her disappearance, or the state in which she was. Her memory had completely gone, and she has not, I believe, yet recovered it.”

“No, she has not,” I said. “But the reason I have ventured to call, Sir Charles, is to hear your opinion on the case.”

“My opinion!” he echoed. “What opinion can I hold when the effect is so plain – loss of memory?”

“Ah! But how could such a state of mind be produced?” I asked.

“You ask me for the cause. That, my dear sir, I cannot say,” was his answer. “There are several causes which would produce a similar effect. Probably it was some great shock. But of what nature we cannot possibly discover unless she herself recovers her normal memory so far as to be able to assist us. I see that I have noted how she constantly repeats the words ‘red, green and gold.’ That combination of colours has apparently impressed itself upon her mind to such an extent that it has become an obsession. Often she will utter no other words than those. She was seen by a number of eminent men, but nobody could suggest any cause other than shock.”

“Is it possible that some drug could have been administered to her?”

“Everything is possible,” Sir Charles answered. “But I know of no drug which would produce such effect. In brief, I confess that I have no idea what can have caused the sudden mental breakdown.”

I felt impelled to relate to him the whole story of my own adventures, but I hesitated. As a matter of fact I feared that he might regard it, as he most probably would have done, as a mere chimera of my own imagination.

A girl I had seen dead – or believed I had seen dead – was now living! And she was Gabrielle Tennison.

Of that I had no doubt, for the dates of our adventures corresponded.

And yet a girl also named Gabrielle had died and her body had been cremated!

The whole affair seemed to be beyond human credence. And yet you, my reader, have in this record the exact, hard and undeniable facts.

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

SOME INTERESTING REVELATIONS

Next day I went to the office of Francis and Goldsmith, and after a consultation with both principals, during which I briefly outlined the curious circumstances such as I have here related, I was granted further leave of absence.

Yet I entertained a distinct feeling that old Mr. Francis somewhat doubted the truth of my statements. But was it surprising, so extraordinary had been my adventures?

“Perhaps you do not credit my statements, gentlemen,” I said before leaving their room. “But one day I hope to solve the enigma, and you will then learn one of the most extraordinary stories that any man has lived to tell.”

Afterwards I went round to the Carlton and inquired for Monsieur Suzor. To my surprise he was in.

Therefore I was ushered up to his private sitting-room, where he greeted me very warmly – so frankly welcome did he make me, indeed, that I wondered whether, after all, he had detected me following him, or whether he had entered and escaped from that house in the Euston Road with some entirely different motive.

“Ah, my dear friend!” he cried in his excellent English. “I wondered what had become of you. I called at Rivermead Mansions three days ago, but I could get no reply when I rang at your flat. The porter said that both you and your friend were out, and he had no idea when you would return. I go back to Paris to-morrow.”

“Shall you fly across this time?” I asked.

“No. I go by train. I have a lot of luggage – some purchases I have made for my friend the Baroness de Henonville.”

It was then about five o’clock, so he ordered some tea, and over cigarettes we chatted for nearly an hour.

The longer I conversed with him the more mysterious he appeared. Why had he crossed from Paris to London with me in order to meet clandestinely the poor girl who was the rich man’s victim? That was one point which arose in my mind.

But the main question was the reason of his supposed chance meeting with me in the express between York and London.

During our chat I feared to refer to Gabrielle lest he should suspect that I knew of his subtle intrigue. I could see that he was congratulating himself upon his cleverness in misleading me, therefore I chuckled inwardly.

What I desired most at that moment was to establish the connexion between the elegant cosmopolitan Frenchman and Oswald De Gex with his wily accomplice Moroni. That the latter was a man of criminal instinct I had long ago established. He was a toady to a man of immense wealth – a clever medical man who, by reason of his callous unscrupulousness, was a dealer in Death in its most insidious and least-looked-for form. The hand of death is ever at the command of every medical man, hence mankind has to thank the medical profession – one of the hardest-worked and least recognized in the world – for its honesty, frankness and strict uprightness. In every profession we have black sheep – even, alas! in the Church. But happily unscrupulousness in those who practise medicine in Great Britain is practically an unknown quantity.

But in Europe it is different, for in the dossiers held by the police of Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin criminals who practise medicine are written largely, as witnessed by the evidence in more than one famous trial where the accused has been sentenced to death.

I longed to go to Scotland Yard and tell my story. Yet how could I do so when, in a drawer in my room, there reposed that bundle of Bank of England notes, the price paid to me for being the accomplice of a mysterious crime? I could only seek a solution of the enigma alone and unaided by the authorities. I seemed to be making a little headway, yet each fact I established added complications to the amazing affair.

Further, I must here confess to you that during the past day or two I had found myself actually in love with the beautiful girl whose mentality had been wilfully destroyed by some means which medical science failed to establish. From the first I had been filled with great admiration for her. She was indeed very beautiful, with wonderful eyes and a perfect complexion. There was grace in every movement, save when at times she held herself rigid, with fixed blank eyes as though fascinated, or gripped by some invisible power. More than once I had wondered whether she were under hypnotic influence, but that theory had been completely negatived by Sir Charles Wendover.

Be that as it may, I had now fallen desperately in love with the girl whom I was seeking to rescue from her enemies.

Why had the body of Gabrielle Engledue been cremated if not to destroy all evidence of a crime? Gabrielle Tennison still lived; therefore another woman must have lost her life by foul means – most probably by poison – in face of the pains that were taken by Moroni to efface all trace of the cause of death.

Over our tea the affable French banker told me of a rapid journey to Liverpool which he had taken a few days before, he having some pressing business with a man who was on the point of sailing for New York. The person in question had absconded from Paris owing the bank a large sum of money, and he had that day cabled to the New York police asking for his arrest on landing.

“I shall probably be compelled to go across to America and apply for him to be sent back to Paris,” my friend said, “so I am going back for instructions.”

As he spoke I pondered. Was it possible that he was unaware of the surveillance I had kept upon him during and after his secret interview with Gabrielle? If so, why had he entered that dingy house in the Euston Road and made his exit by the back way? I had established the fact that the house was well-known to thieves of a certain class who used it in order to escape being followed. Several such houses exist in London. One is near the Elephant and Castle, another in the Clapham Road, while there is one in Hammersmith Road, and still another just off Clarence Terrace at Regent’s Park. Such houses serve as sanctuaries for those escaping from justice. The latter know them, and as they slip through they pay a toll, well-knowing that the keeper of the house will deny that they have ever been there.

The “in-and-out” houses of London and their keepers, always sly crooks, form a particular study in themselves. One pretends to be a garage, another a private hotel, a third a small greengrocer’s, and a fourth a boot repairer’s. All those trades are carried on as “blinds.” The public believe them to be honest businesses, but there is far more business done in concealing those wanted by the police than in anything else.

From Suzor’s demeanour I felt that he did not suspect me of having been witness of his entry into that frowsy house near Euston Station. But why had he gone there? He must have feared that he might be watched. And why? The only answer to that question was that he had met Gabrielle clandestinely and feared lest afterwards he might be followed.

But why should he fear if not implicated in the plot?

To me it now seemed plain that I had been marked down as a pawn in the game prior to that day when we travelled together from York to London. I had not altogether recovered from the effect of what had been administered to me. Often I felt a curious sensation of dizziness and of overwhelming depression, which I knew was the after effects of that loss of all sense of my surroundings when I had been taken to the hospital in St. Malo. I had been found at the roadside in France, just as Gabrielle had been found on the highway near Petersfield.

When I reflected my blood boiled.

The affable and highly cultured Frenchman presented a further enigma. He was crossing back to Paris next day. What if I, too, went back to Paris and watched his further movements? As I sat chatting and laughing with him, I decided upon this course.

When, shortly afterwards, I left, I went straight across Hammersmith Bridge and found that Harry Hambledon had just returned from his office.

We sat together at table, whereupon I told him one or two facts I had discovered, and urged him to cross to Paris with me next day.

“You see, you can watch – for you will be a perfect stranger to Suzor. I will bear the expense. I’ve still got a little money in the bank. We can see Suzor off from Charing Cross, then take a taxi to Croydon, fly over, and be in Paris hours before he arrives at the Gare du Nord. There you will wait for his arrival, follow him and see his destination.”

Hambledon, who was already much interested in my strange adventures, quickly saw the point.

“I’ve got one or two rather urgent things on to-morrow,” he replied. “But if you really wish me to go with you I can telephone to my friend Hardy and ask him to look after them for me. We shan’t be away very long, I suppose?”

“A week at the most,” I said. “I want to establish the true identity of this banker friend of mine. I have a distinct suspicion of him.”

“And so have I,” Hambledon said. “Depend upon it, some big conspiracy has been afoot, and they are now endeavouring to cover up all traces of their villainy. I was discussing it with Norah when we were walking in Richmond Park last night.”