The Pauper of Park Lane

“I wonder why! There must be some reason.”

“Of course there is. She is loyal to her friend. But tell me honestly, Charlie. Do you know the Doctor’s whereabouts?”

“I tell you honestly that I haven’t the slightest idea. The affair is just as great a mystery to me as to you.”

“But why have you kept away from me till to-day?” Barclay asked. “It isn’t like you.”

“Well,” answered Rolfe, with a slight hesitation, “to tell you the truth, because I thought your manner had rather changed towards me of late.”

“Why, my dear fellow, I’m sure it never has.”

“But you suspected me of being in that house on the night of the disappearance!”

“Of course, because I saw you.”

“Because you thought you saw me,” Charlie said, correcting him. “You surely would not misjudge me for that.”

“No. But your theory regarding falsehoods has, I must admit, caused some suspicion in my mind.”

“Of what?”

“Well, of prevaricating in order to shield a woman – Maud it may be.”

“I am not shielding her!” he declared. “There is nothing to shield. I love her very dearly indeed, and she loves me devotedly in return. Cannot you imagine, Max, my perturbed state of mind now that she has disappeared without a word?”

“Has she sent you no secret message of her safety?” Max asked, seriously.

“Not a word.”

“And you do not know, then, if she has not met with foul play?”

“I don’t. That’s just it! Sometimes – ” And he rose from his chair and paced the room in agony of mind. “Sometimes – I – I feel as if I shall go mad. I love her – just as you love Marion! Sometimes I feel assured of her safety – that she and her father have been compelled to disappear for political or other reasons – and then at others a horrible idea haunts me that my love may be dead – the victim of some vile, treacherous plot to take from me all that has made my life worth living!”

“Stop!” cried Max, starting to his feet and facing him. “You love her – eh?”

“Better – ah! better than my own life!” he cried in deep earnestness, his troubled face being an index of his mind.

“Then – then upon her honour – the honour of the woman you love – swear to me that you have spoken the truth!”

He looked into his friend’s eyes for a moment. Then he answered:

“I swear, Max! I swear by my love for Maud that I have spoken the truth!”

And Barclay stood silent – so puzzled as to be unable to utter a word.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Which Puts a Serious Question

At last Max spoke, slowly and with great deliberation.

“And you declare yourself as ignorant as I am myself of their whereabouts?”

“I do,” was Rolfe’s response. Then after a second’s hesitation he added in a changed voice: “I really think, Max, that you are scarcely treating me fairly in this matter. Sorely it is in my interests to discover the whereabouts of Maud! I have done my best.”

“Well?”

“And I’ve failed to discover any clue whatever – except one – that – ”

And he broke off, without finishing his sentence.

“What have you discovered? Tell me. Be frank with me.”

“I’ve not yet established whether it is a real clue, or whether a mere false surmise. When I have, I will tell you.”

“But cannot we join forces in endeavouring to solve the problem?” Max suggested, his suspicion of his friend now removed.

“That is exactly what I would wish. But how shall we begin? Where shall we commence?” asked Rolfe.

“The truth that it was not you whom I saw leaving the house in Cromwell Road adds fresh mystery to the already astounding circumstance,” Max declared. “The man who so closely resembled you was purposely made up to be mistaken for you. There was some strong motive for this. What do you suggest it could be?”

“To implicate me! But in what?”

The thought of that blood-stained bodice ever haunted Max. It was on the tip of his tongue to reveal his discovery to his friend, yet on second thoughts he resolved to at present retain his secret. He had withheld it from the police, therefore he was perfectly justified in withholding it from Charlie.

The flat denial of the latter regarding his visit to Cromwell Road caused him deep reflection. He watched his friend’s attitude, and was compelled to admit within himself that now, at any rate, he was speaking the truth.

“The only reason for the visit of the man whom I must have mistaken for yourself, Charlie,” he said, “must have been to open that safe.”

“Probably so.”

Then Max explained, in detail, the position of the safe, and how he had discovered it being open, and its contents abstracted.

“On your first visit, then, the safe was hidden?”

“Yes. But when I went in the morning it stood revealed, the door blown open by some explosive.”

“By an enemy of the Doctor’s,” remarked Charlie.

Max did not reply. The Doctor’s words regarding his friend on the last occasion they had sat together recurred to him at that moment with a queer significance. The Doctor certainly did not like Rolfe. For what reason? he wondered. Why had he taken such a sudden dislike to him?

Hitherto, they had been quite friendly, ever since the well-remembered meeting at the Villa des Fleurs, in Aix-les-Bains, and the Doctor had never, to his knowledge, objected to Maud’s association with the smart young fellow whose keen business instincts had commended him to such a man as old Sam Statham. The Doctor held no doubt, either secret knowledge of something detrimental to Rolfe, or else entertained one of those sudden and unaccountable prejudices which some men form, and which they are unable to put behind them.

“The one main point we have first to decide, Charlie,” he said at last, standing at the window and gazing thoughtfully down into the narrow London street, “is whether or not then has been foul play.”

Rolfe made no reply, a circumstance which caused him to turn and look straight into his friend’s face. He saw a change there.

His countenance was blanched; but whether by fear of the loss of the woman he loved, or by a guilty knowledge, Max knew not.