The City in the Clouds

I was on the alert at once, though I could not have particularly said why.

"Are you quite sure that it was I who 'phoned?"

"But, yes," he answered, "it was your voice, Sir Thomas. You said you were speaking from the office."

"From the Evening Special? I've not been there since late afternoon. And when have I ever been there so late? There's never more than one person there all night long until six in the morning. It's not a morning paper as you know."

Preston seemed more than ever bewildered as I flung this at him.

"All I can say is, Sir Thomas," he said, "that I heard your voice distinctly and you said you were at the office."

"What did I say exactly?"

"About the young gentleman, Sir Thomas, the young gentleman who has come to stay for a time. Your instructions were that he should be wakened and told to come to Fleet Street without the least delay. You also said a taxicab would be waiting for him, by the time he was dressed, to drive him down."

"And he went?"

"Certainly, Sir Thomas, he was in his clothes quicker than I ever see a gentleman dress before, had a glass of milk and a biscuit, and the cab was just coming as I went down with him and opened the front door."

I rushed out of the room, down the corridor and into that which had been placed at Rolston's disposal. It was as Preston said, the lad was gone. The bed was tumbled as he had left it, but a portmanteau full of clothes, some hair brushes and a tooth brush on the wash-stand remained. Clearly Rolston believed he was obeying orders.

Preston had followed me out of the smoking-room and stood at the door, a picture of uneasy wonder. Let me say at once that Preston had been with me for six years, and was under-butler at my father's house for I don't know how many more. He is the most faithful and devoted creature on earth and, what is more, as sharp as a needle. He, at any rate, had no hand in this business.

"There's something extraordinarily queer about this," I said. "I assure you that I have never been near the telephone during the whole night. I dined with Lord Arthur in Soho and the rest of the evening I have been spending at the Ritz Hotel with Mr. Gideon Morse. You've been tricked, Preston."

"I'm extremely sorry, Sir Thomas," he was beginning when I cut him short.

"It's not in the least your fault, but are you certain the voice was mine?"

He frowned with the effort at recollection.

"Well, Sir Thomas," he said, "if you hadn't told me what you have, I believe I could almost have sworn to it. Of course, voices are altered on the telephone, to some extent, but it's extraordinary how they do, in the main, keep their individual character."

He spoke the truth. I, who was using the telephone all day, entirely agreed with him.

"Well, Preston, it was a skillful imitation and not my voice at all."

"If you will excuse me, Sir Thomas," he replied, "your voice is a very distinctive one. It's not very easily mistaken by any one who has heard your voice once or twice."

"That only makes the thing the more mysterious."

"The more easy, I should say, Sir Thomas. It must be far less difficult to imitate an outstanding voice with marked peculiarities than an ordinary one."

He was right there, it hadn't occurred to me before.

"But who in the office would dare to imitate my voice?"

"That, of course, I could not say, Sir Thomas, but we've only the word of the unknown person who rang me up that he was speaking from the office. For all we know he might have been in the next flat."

That again was a point and I noted it.

"I'm not going to waste any time," I said. "I'll go down to the office at once and see if I can find out anything."

He helped me on with my coat and within five minutes of my entering I was again in Piccadilly.

Already the long ribbon of road was beginning to be faintly tinged with gray. The dawn was not yet, but night was flitting away before his coming. Save for an occasional policeman and the rumble of heavy carts piled with sweet-smelling vegetables and flowers for Covent Garden, the great street was empty. I passed the Ritz Hotel with a tender thought of one who lay sleeping there, and hurried eastwards. I had nearly got to the Circus when a taxi swung out of the Haymarket and I hailed the man. He was tired and sleepy, had been waiting for hours at some club or other, but I persuaded him, with much gold, to take me, and we buzzed away toward the street of ink.

Here was activity enough. The later editions of the morning papers were being vomited out of holes in the earth by hundreds of thousands. Windows were lighted up everywhere as I turned down a side street leading to the river and came to my own offices.

I unlocked the door with my pass key and almost immediately I was confronted by Johns, the night-watchman, who flashed his torch in my face and inquired my business. I was pleased to see the man alert and at his post and asked who was in the building.

"Only Mr. Benson, Sir Thomas; it's his week for night duty."

I went up and very considerably surprised, not to say alarmed, young Mr. Benson, who had the photograph of a lady propped up on a desk before him and was obviously inditing an amorous epistle.

I put him through the most searching possible cross-examination, until I was quite sure that he had never telephoned to my flat. I knew him for a truthful, conscientious fellow, without a glimpse of humor or the slightest histrionic talent. Johns, called from below, was equally emphatic. Certainly no taxi had arrived here during the last three hours, nor had William Rolston come near the office.

I returned to Piccadilly, utterly baffled and without a single ray of light in my mind.

CHAPTER FIVE

On the morning of the fourteenth of September I met Captain Pat Moore and Lord Arthur Winstanley at Liverpool Street station. We were all three of us asked to Cerne as guests of that fine old sportsman, Sir Walter Stileman. A special carriage was reserved for us and our servants filled it with luncheon baskets and gun cases.

It was almost exactly three months since my eventful night at the Ritz with Gideon Morse, and the disappearance of little William Rolston.

What had passed since that time I can set out fully in a very few words. First of all the position in which I stood with regard to Juanita. It was somewhat extraordinary, satisfactory, and yet unsatisfactory, utterly tantalizing. Morse had kept his promise. I had seen a great deal of his daughter. At Henley, at Cowes – on board the millionaire's wonderful yacht or on my own, in the sacred gardens of the R. Y. S., where we met and met again. Yet these meetings were always in public. Juanita was surrounded by men wherever she went. She was the reigning beauty of her year. Her minutest doings were chronicled in the Society papers with a wealth of detail that was astounding. I used to read the stuff, including that of my own Miss Easey, with a sort of impotent rage. Some of it was true, a lot of it was lies and surmise, but to me it was all distasteful. Juanita lived in the full glare of the public eye, and a royal princess could hardly have been more unapproachable. Of course I used stratagems innumerable, and more than once she went half-way to meet me, but the long desired tête-à-tête never came to pass. It was not only because of the troop of admirers that crowded round her, of which I was only one, but there was an extraordinary adroitness, "a hidden hand" at work somewhere, to keep us apart. I was quite certain of this, yet I could not prove it, though even if I had it would have been of little use. Old Señora Balmaceda, who overwhelmed me with kindness and attention, was simply wonderful in her watch over Juanita.

As for Gideon Morse, he would talk to me by the hour – and his talk was well worth listening to – but somehow or other he was always in the way when I wanted to be alone with his daughter. Of course I sometimes thought I was exaggerating, and that I was so hard hit that I saw things in a jaundiced or prejudiced light. Yet certainly Juanita was often alone for a short time with other men than I, notably with the young and good-looking Duke of Perth, whom I hated as cordially as I knew how.

Then, in August, I had a nasty knock. The Morses went off to Scotland for the grouse shooting as guests of the Duke, and I wasn't asked, or ever in the way of being asked if it comes to that, to join the "small and select house-party" that the papers were so full of. I had to content myself with pictures on the front page of the Illustrated Weeklies depicting Juanita in a tweed skirt and a tam o' shanter, side by side with Perth, wearing a fatuous smile and a gun. I had one crumb of consolation only and that was, when saying good-by to Juanita, I felt something small and hard in the palm of her hand. It was a little tightly folded piece of paper and on it was one word, "Cerne."

That of course helped a great deal. It was obvious what she meant. When we met at Sir Walter Stileman's, then at last my opportunity would come.

And now about the little journalist and his extraordinary disappearance. I made every possible inquiry, engaging the most skilled agents and sparing no money in the quest, but I found out nothing – absolutely nothing. The red-headed lad with the prominent ears had vanished into thin air, had flashed into my life for a moment and then gone out of it with the completeness of an extinguished candle. He had been, he was no more. Poor Miss Dewsbury, on whom the disappearance had a marked effect, discussed the matter with me a dozen times. We broached theory after theory only to reject them, and at last we ceased to talk about the matter at all. I remember her words on the last time we talked of it. They were prophetic, though I did not know it then.

"All I can say is, Sir Thomas, that voices, not my own, whisper constantly in my ear that the shadow of the three giant towers upon Richmond Hill lies across your path."

Poor thing, she was almost hysterical in those times, and I paid little heed to her words. As for the scoop, no other paper had even hinted at Rolston's revelation. I had faithfully kept my word to Morse, not forgetting that he had promised to explain everything – in September.

As the train swung out of Liverpool Street and Pat and Arthur were ragging each other as to who should have the Times first, I experienced a sense of mental relief. Only a few hours now and the great question of my life would be settled, once and for all. No more doubts, no more uncertainties.

During the last three months, Arthur and Pat had left me very much to myself. They had behaved with the most perfect tact and kindness, Arthur, as I have said, having obtained for me the invitation to Cerne. Now, after we had traveled for a couple of hours and the luncheon baskets had been opened, old Pat lit a cigar and looked across at me. His big, brown face was grave, and he played with his mustache as if in some embarrassment.

He and Arthur glanced at each other, and I understood what was in their minds.

"Look here, you fellows," I said, "about the sacred Brotherhood – what is it in Spanish?"

"Santa Hermandad," said Arthur.