A Mysterious Disappearance

Had Bruce been a woman he must have fainted.

As it was, the shock of the intelligence nearly paralyzed him. Sir Charles Dyke! – Montgomery! – The house at Putney the property of his mother! What new terror did not this frightful combination suggest?

Why did his friend conceal from him these most important facts? Why did he pretend ignorance not only of the locality but of his mother’s maiden name? Like lightning the remembrance flashed through Bruce’s troubled brain that he had only heard of the earlier Lady Dyke as a daughter of the Earl of Tilbury. A suspicion – profoundly horrible, yet convincing – was slowly mastering him, and every second brought further proof not only of its reasonableness, but of its ghastly and inflexible certainty.

Again the lawyer’s voice reached his ears, dully and thin, as though it penetrated through a wall.

“Surely, you feel ill? Let me get you some brandy.”

“No – no,” murmured the barrister. “It is but a momentary faintness. I – I think I will go out into the fresh air. Are you – quite sure – that Mr. Childe bought the property from Lady Helen Montgomery’s trustees?”

“Quite sure. If you wait even a few moments I will show you the title-deeds.”

“No, thank you. I will call again. Pray excuse me.”

Somehow Bruce crossed the quiet square of the Inn, and plunged into the turmoil of the street. Amid the bustle of Holborn he had a curious sensation of safety. The fiend so suddenly installed in his consciousness was less busy here suggesting strange and maddening thoughts.

Why – why – why – fifty questions beat incessantly against the barrier of agonized negation he strove to set up, but the noise of traffic made the attack confused. Each incautious bump against a passer-by silenced a demand, each heavy crunch of a ’bus on the gravel-strewed roadway temporarily silenced a doubt.

He was so unmanned that he felt almost on the verge of tears. He absolutely dared not attempt to reason out the fearful alternative which had so fiercely thrust itself upon him.

At last he became vaguely aware that people were staring at him. Fearful lest some acquaintance should recognize and accost him he hailed a hansom and drove to Victoria Street.

All the way the heavy beat of the horse’s feet served to distract his thoughts. He forced himself to count the quick paces, and tried hard to accommodate the numerals of two or more syllables to the rapidity of the animal’s trot. He failed in this, but in the failure found relief.

Nevertheless, though the horse was willing and the driver eager to oblige a fare who gave a “good” address, the time seemed interminable until the cab stopped in front of his door.

Once arrived there, he slowly ascended the stairs to his own flat, told Smith to pay the cabman half-a-crown and to admit no one, and threw himself into a chair.

At last he was face to face with the troublous demon who possessed him in Lincoln’s Inn, struggled with him through the crowd, and travelled with him in the hansom. Phyllis Browne should have her answer sooner than he had expected.

The man who murdered Lady Dyke was her own husband.

“Oh, heavens!” moaned Bruce, as he swayed restlessly to and fro in his chair, “is it possible?”

He sat there for hours. Smith entered, turned on the lights and suggested tea, but received an impatient dismissal.

After another long interval Smith appeared again, to announce that Mr. White had called.

“Did you not say I was out?” said Claude, his hollow tones and haggard air startling his faithful servitor considerably.

“Yes, sir – oh yes, sir. But that’s no use with Mr. White. ’E said as ’ow ’e were sure you were in.”

“Ask him to oblige me by coming again – to-morrow. I am very ill. I really cannot see him.”

Smith left the room only to return and say: “Mr. White says, sir, ’is business is of the hutmost himportance. ’E can’t leave it; and ’e says you will be very sorry afterwards if you don’t see ’im now.”

“Oh, so be it,” cried Bruce, turning to a spirit-stand to seek sustenance in a stiff glass of brandy. “Send him in.”

Quite awed by circumstances, Smith admitted the detective and closed the door upon the two men, who stood looking at each other without a word of greeting or explanation.

CHAPTER XXVII

MR. WHITE’S METHOD

The policeman spoke first. “Has Jane Harding been here, then?” he said.

His words conveyed no meaning to his hearer.

They were so incongruous, so ridiculously unreasoning, that Bruce laughed hysterically.

“You must have seen her,” cried the detective excitedly. “I know you have learned the truth, and in no other way that I can imagine could it have reached you.”

“Learnt what truth?”

“That Sir Charles Dyke himself is at the bottom of all this business.”

“Indeed. How have you blundered upon that solution?”

“Mr. Bruce, this time I am right, and you know it. It was Sir Charles Dyke who killed his wife. Nobody else had anything else to do with it, so far as I can guess. But if you haven’t seen Jane Harding, I wonder how you found out.”

“You are speaking in riddles. Pray explain yourself.”

“If Sir Charles Dyke had not been out of town, the riddle would have been answered by this time in the easiest way, as I should have locked him up.”

“Excellent. You remain faithful to tradition.”

“Mr. Bruce, please don’t try to humbug me, for the sake of your friend. I am quite in earnest. I have come to you for advice. Sir Charles Dyke is guilty enough.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“To help me to adopt the proper course. The whole thing seems so astounding that I can hardly trust my own senses. I spoke hastily just now. I would not have touched Sir Charles before consulting you. I was never in such a mixed-up condition in my life.”

Whatever the source of his information, the detective had evidently arrived at the same conclusion as Bruce himself. There was nothing for it but to endeavor to reason out the situation calmly and follow the best method of dealing with it suggested by their joint intelligence. Claude motioned the detective to a chair, imposed silence by a look, and summoned Smith. He was faint from want of food. With returning equanimity he resolved first to restore his strength, as he would need all his powers to wrestle with events before he slept that night.

Mr. White, nothing loth, joined him in a simple meal, and by tacit consent no reference was made to the one engrossing topic in their thoughts until the table was cleared.

“And now, Mr. White,” demanded the barrister, “what have you found out?”

“During the last two days,” he replied, “I have been unsuccessfully trying to trace Colonel Montgomery. No matter what I did I failed. I got hold of several of Mrs. Hillmer’s tradespeople, but she always paid her bills with her own cheques, and none of them had ever heard of a Colonel Montgomery. That furniture business puzzled me a lot – the change of the drawing-room set from one flat to another on November 7, I mean. So I discovered the address of the people who supplied the new articles to Mrs. Hillmer – ”

“How?”

“Through the maid, Dobson. Mrs. Hillmer has given her notice to leave, and the girl is furious about it, as she appears to have had a very easy place there. I think it came to Mrs. Hillmer’s ears that she talked to me.”

“I see. Proceed.”

“Here I hit upon a slight clue. It was a gentleman who ordered the new furniture, and directed the transfer of the articles replaced from No. 61 to No. 12 Raleigh Mansions. He did this early in the morning of November 7, and the foreman in charge of the job remembered that there was some bother about it, as neither Mrs. Hillmer nor Mr. Corbett, as Mensmore used to be called, knew anything about it. But the gentleman came the same morning and explained matters. It struck the foreman as funny that there should be such a fearful hurry about refurnishing a drawing-room, for the gentleman did not care what the cost was so long as the job was carried out at express speed. Another odd thing was that Mrs. Hillmer paid for the articles, though she had not ordered them nor did she appear to want them. The man was quite sure that Mensmore’s first knowledge of the affair came with the arrival of the first batch of articles from Mrs. Hillmer’s flat, but he could only describe the mysterious agent as being a regular swell. He afterwards identified a portrait of Sir Charles Dyke as being exactly like the man he had seen, if not the man himself.”