The Pauper of Park Lane

“I do not always obey his orders when it is to his own interest that I should disregard them,” he replied enigmatically.

“Then you had a reason for not going to Servia?”

“I had – a very strong one.”

“Connected with Maud Petrovitch?”

“In no way whatever. It was a purely personal motive.”

“And you thought fit to disregard Statham’s injunctions in order to attend to your own private business!”

“It was his business, as well as mine,” declared Charlie, who, after a pause, asked: “Now tell me, Max, why are you cross-examining me like a criminal lawyer? What do you suspect me of?”

“Well – shall I be frank?”

“Certainly. We are old enough friends for that.”

“Then I’m sorry to say, Charlie, that I suspect you of telling a lie.”

“Lies are permissible in certain cases – for instance, where a woman’s honour is at stake,” he replied, fixing his eyes steadily upon those of his friend.

“Then you admit that what you have just told me is not the truth?”

“I admit nothing. I only repeat that I was not in Cromwell Road on the evening in question.”

“But my eyes don’t deceive me, man! I saw your face, remember.”

“If it was actually my face, it was not in Cromwell Road. That’s quite certain?” laughed old Statham’s secretary. “But it was your face.”

“It was, I repeat, somebody who resembled me,” he declared. “But you haven’t told me what the person was doing in the empty house.”

“That’s just what I don’t know,” Barclay replied. “I only know this: When I entered that night I saw nothing of a safe let into the wall. But on going there the next day the safe stood revealed, the door was open, and it was empty.”

“And so you charge me with being a thief!” cried Rolfe, his cheek flushing.

“Not at all. You asked me for the truth, and I’ve told you.”

“Well, it’s evident that you suspect me of sneaking into the house, breaking open the Doctor’s safe, and taking the contents,” he said plainly, annoyed.

“The Doctor may have returned himself in secret,” Max replied. “But such could hardly be the case, for the door had been blown open by explosives.”

“That would have created a noise,” Charlie remarked quickly. “Shows that whoever did it was a blunderer.”

“Exactly. That’s just my opinion. What I want to establish is the motive for the secret visit, and who made it.”

“Well, I can assure you that I’m in entire ignorance of the existence of any safe in the Doctor’s house.”

“And so was I. It was concealed by the furniture until my second visit, on the following morning.”

“Curious,” Rolfe said. “Very curious indeed. The whole thing is most remarkable – especially how both father and daughter got away without leaving the least trace of their flight.”

“Then you don’t anticipate foul play?” Max asked quickly.

“Why should one?”

“The Doctor had a good many political enemies.”

“We all have enemies. Who has not? But they don’t come and murder one and take away one’s household goods.”

“Then I am to take it that it was not you I saw at Cromwell Road, Charlie?” asked his friend in deep earnestness, at the same time filled with suspicion. He felt that his eyes could not deceive him.

“In all seriousness,” was the other’s reply. “I was not there. This personation of myself shows that there was some very clever and deeply-laid scheme.”

“But you’ve just declared that a falsehood was permissible where a woman’s honour was concerned?”

“Well, and will not every man with a sense of honour towards a woman hold the same opinion? You yourself, Max, for instance, are not the man to give a woman away?”

“I know! I know – only – ”

“Only what? Surely you do not disagree with me!”

“In a sense I don’t, but I’m anxious to clear up this matter as far as you yourself are concerned.”

Rolfe saw that he had shaken his friend’s fixed belief that he had seen him in Cromwell Road. Max was now debating in his mind whether he had not suspected Charlie unjustly. It is so easy to suspect, and so difficult to satisfy one’s self of the actual truth. The mind is, alas! too apt to receive ill-formed impressions contrary to fact.

“It is already cleared up,” Rolfe answered without hesitation. “I was not there. You were entirely mistaken. Besides, my dear chap, why should I go there when I had been particularly asked by Maud not to visit the house?”

“When did she ask you?”

“Only the night before. That very fact is, in itself, curious. She urged me that whatever might occur, I was not to go to the house.”

“Then she anticipated something – eh?”

“It seems as though she did.”

“And she told Marion something on the night when she and her father disappeared.”

“I know.”

“You know what she told her?”

“No. Marion refuses to tell me, I wish I could induce her to speak. Marion knows the truth – that’s my firm belief.”

“And mine also.”

“The two girls have some secret in common,” Rolfe said. “Can’t you get Marion to tell you?”

“She refuses. I’ve asked her half a dozen times already.”