The Mysterious Three

“Well? Why so terrible! Tell me!” I exclaimed.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

“That tube contained a cultivation of pneumonic plague,” he exclaimed huskily, “one of the deadliest microbes known. The blood-serum in which I had grown the germs fell upon his hands. Not suspecting the danger, he actually wiped it off with his handkerchief! I did not return until a quarter of an hour afterwards. The evil was then beyond remedy. He became infected!”

“Phew! What will happen now?”

“Happen? In a few days at most he will be dead! There are no recoveries from pneumonic plague – that most terrible contagious disease so well-known in Eastern Siberia and Japan. There is no hope for him. None. You hear – none!”

“By Gad!” I gasped, horrified. “You can’t mean it. Where is Thorold now?”

“In isolation at St. George’s hospital. I sent him there at once. Oh! Heaven, it is too terrible to think of – and my fault, all my fault for leaving the tube there!”

I tried to calm him, but he was quite beside himself.

I halted, astounded at the gravity of the situation.

Chapter Twenty Five

Towards the Truth

Though I hated to cause pain to Vera, I realised that I must immediately tell her. The thought of breaking the terrible news to her upset me, yet the thing had to be faced.

Never shall I forget those awful moments. I had tried to break the news gently, but how can such tragic news be broken “gently”? That conventional word is surely a mockery when used in such a connexion.

She was devoted to her parents. What seemed to trouble her now more than anything else, was the fact that we did not know her mother’s whereabouts, and so could not inform her of the frightful contretemps.

“Try not to worry, dearest,” I said, placing my hand tenderly upon her shoulder, and kissing her upon the lips in an endeavour to soothe her. “We are bound very soon to find out where she is.”

“Yes,” she retorted bitterly, “and by that time – by that time poor father may be dead!”

She was silent for a few moments, then she said —

“The only thought that comforts me, dear, a little, is that, if he should die, the living lie will die with him. He is so good, so kind, so self-sacrificing, that I think he would be quite ready to die if he thought his death would relieve us of the fearful tension of these last horrible years. My dear, dear father! Ah, how stormy has his life been! Does he know what you have just told me – I mean, that he cannot live?”

“No,” I replied.

She began to weep bitterly again, and I did my best to calm her, and kissed her again. I told her he did not know the danger, which was the truth. Agnew had only told him the germs would probably make him very ill for awhile.

The house-physician at the hospital had not broken the actual truth to him – the truth that, infected with such deadly germs he was doomed to death. Perhaps I ought not to have told Vera the whole ghastly truth. Yet, upon carefully considering the matter, I had decided that frankness would be better.

“I will telephone to St. George’s,” I said, a little later, “and ask for the latest news. You’d better not go to see him until the house-physician gives you leave. He asked me to tell you that.”

The reply was satisfactory. Sir Charles was not in pain, the hall-porter said. He was slightly feverish. That was all. What grim consolation!

Two eager days passed. Still Lady Thorold showed no sign of life. I had telephoned to Messrs Spink and Peters. Also I had telegraphed to Houghton Park, as it was said Lady Thorold intended to return there. But to no purpose. One thing that surprised me was that Whichelo had not been to the hospital. Where was he during these days? Had he, too, not heard of the calamity?

“You have not heard the exciting news,” I said to Faulkner, when I met him outside the Devonshire on the way to his club.

“What exciting news?” he inquired, in his cool phlegmatic way. “You get excited so easily, Dick, if you will forgive my saying so.”

He listened with interest to the news, and when I had done talking, he said quite calmly —

“Curious to relate, I saw the Baroness, Paulton and Henderson not ten minutes ago.”

“Saw them!” I gasped. “Where?”

“In Piccadilly, not thirty yards from here. They turned up Dover Street, and went down in the tube lift.”

“Are you positive?”

“Quite. I couldn’t well forget them. They were walking together, laughing and chatting as though nothing were amiss. I admire that kind of nerve.”

Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of the remarkable discovery of the mummified man in Sir Charles Thorold’s house in Belgrave Street. The hole cut in the ceiling gave rise to all sorts of wild surmises.

It did not, however, occur to any of the reporters that the body might have been hidden between the ceiling and the floor.

What the newspapers worried about most was the mummy’s age. Experts put their heads together, and put on their spectacles. Some were of the opinion that it must be centuries old. Sir Charles, the one man who might have thrown some light upon it could not, of course, be questioned. Only one medical expert, an old professor, differed from his confrères. A wizened little man, himself not unlike a mummy, he maintained, in the face of scientific ridicule, that the mummy found in Belgrave Street had been dead “less than twenty years.” Further, he pronounced that the method of embalming was a process uncommon in this country or in Egypt, but still in vogue in China and in Mexico. He believed the body to be, he said, that of a man of middle-age, a Spaniard, or possibly a Mexican.

The news of Sir Charles’ condition was more satisfactory that evening, inasmuch as the sister at the hospital told me, when I called, that he was still no worse. Perhaps, after all, Dr Agnew had been mistaken. Oh, how I hoped he had been, for my own sake, almost as much as for my darling’s.

“I think,” I said to Vera, whose spirits rose a little when she heard my report, “that to-morrow morning I will run down to Oakham, to have another look at Houghton.”

“What on earth for?” she exclaimed, in a tone of surprise. “I intended asking father to-day, when I saw him at the hospital, if the report that he intended returning to Houghton were true. He seemed so hot and restless however, that I decided not to ask him until to-morrow. I do believe he is going to get better, don’t you? But now, tell me what good do you think you will do by going out to Houghton?”

“Good?” I answered. “I don’t expect or intend to do good. No, it is merely that something – I can’t tell you what – prompts me to go again to see the place.”

“How silly!” Vera declared, as I thought rather rudely. Modern girls are so dreadfully outspoken. I do sometimes wish we were back in the days when a matron would raise her hands in dismay and exclaim: “Oh, fie!” or “Oh, la!” when a young girl did aught that seemed to her “unladylike.”

Yet, in spite of Vera’s remonstrance, I caught a train to Oakham early next morning. Sir Charles had had a restless night, the hospital porter told me on the telephone, before I started, but his condition was surprisingly satisfactory.

Then I rang up Dr Agnew.

“Don’t you think he may, after all, recover?” I inquired eagerly.

In reply the doctor said he “only hoped and trusted that he might.” More than that, he would not tell me. I gathered, therefore, that he still had serious fears.

I arrived at the Stag’s Head, in Oakham, in time for lunch. Directly after lunch I started out for Houghton in a hired car.

What a lot had happened, I reflected, as in the same car in which the chauffeur had been shot, we purred down the main street, since I had last set out along that road. What a number of stirring incidents had occurred – incidents crowded into the space of a few weeks. But at last they seemed to be coming to an end. That thought relieved me a good deal. Ah, if only – if only Thorold would recover!

The drive to Houghton from Oakham was a pretty one, past woods and rich grazing pastures until suddenly, turning into the great lodge-gates, we went for nearly a quarter of a mile up the old beech avenue to where stood the old Elizabethan house, a large, rambling pile of stone, so full of historic associations.

On pulling up at the ancient portico, I found to my surprise, the front door ajar. I pushed it open and entered. There was nobody in the big stone hall – how well I remembered the last day when we had all had tea there after hunting, and that fateful message from the butler that “Mr Smithson” had called to see Sir Charles. I made my way into the drawing-rooms, then into the morning-room, and afterwards into the dining-room. The doors were all unlocked, but the rooms were empty. It was while making my way towards the kitchen quarters that I heard footsteps somewhere in the house.

They were coming down the back stairs.

I waited at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight. They were firm, heavy footfalls. A moment later, a tall man stood facing me.