Chapter Twenty Two. A Savant at Home.

“Why should I not ask your cousin?” I inquired earnestly. “I see by your manner that you are in sore need of a friend, and yet you will not allow me to act as such.”

“Not allow you!” she echoed. “You are my friend. Were it not for you I should have died last night.”

“Your recovery was due to Hoefer, not to myself,” I declared.

I longed to speak to her of her visit to Whitton and of her relations with the Major, but dare not. By so doing I should only expose myself as an eavesdropper and a spy. Therefore, I was held to silence.

My thoughts wandered back to that fateful night when I was called to the house with the grey front in Queen’s-gate Gardens. That house, she had told me, was the home of “a friend.” I remembered how, after our marriage, I had seen her lying there as one dead, and knew that she had fallen the victim of some foul and deep conspiracy. Who was that man who had called himself Wyndham Wynd? An associate of the Major’s, who was careful in the concealment of his identity. The manner in which the plot had been arranged was both amazing in its ingenuity and bewildering in its complications.

And lounging before me there in the low silken chair, her small mouth slightly parted, displaying an even set of pearly teeth, sat the victim—the woman who was unconsciously my wedded wife.

Her attitude towards me was plainly one of fear lest I should discover her secret. It was evident that she now regretted having told me of that strange, dreamlike scene which was photographed so indelibly upon her memory, that incident so vivid that she vaguely believed she had been actually wedded.

“So you are returning to Atworth again?” I asked, for want of something better to say.

“I believe that is Nora’s intention,” she responded quickly, with a slight sigh of relief at the change in our conversation.

“Have you many visitors there?”

“Oh, about fifteen—all rather jolly people. It’s such a charming place. Nora must ask you down there.”

“I should be delighted,” I said.

Now that I had money in my pocket, and was no longer compelled to toil for the bare necessities of life, I was eager to get away from the heat and dust of the London August. This suggestion of hers was to me doubly welcome too, for as a visitor at Atworth I should be always beside her. That she was in peril was evident, and my place was near her.

On the other hand, however, I distrusted her ladyship. She had, at the first moment of our meeting, shown herself to be artificial and an admirable actress. Indeed, had she not, for purposes known best to herself, endeavoured to start a flirtation with me? Her character everywhere was that of a smart woman—popular in society, and noted for the success of her various entertainments during the season; but women of her stamp never commended themselves to me. Doctors, truth to tell, see rather too much of the reverse of the medal—especially in social London.

“When did you return from Wiltshire?” I inquired, determined to clear up one point.

“The day before yesterday,” she responded.

“In the evening?”

“No, in the morning.”

Then her ladyship had lied to me, for she had said they had arrived in London on the morning of the day when the unknown woman in black had called. Beryl had told the truth, and her words were proved by the statement of Bob Raymond that he had seen her pass along Rowan Road.

Were they acquaintances? As I reflected upon that problem one fact alone stood out above all others. If I had been unknown to Wynd and that scoundrel Tattersett, how was it that they were enabled to give every detail regarding myself in their application for the marriage licence? How, indeed, did they know that I was acting as Bob’s locum tenens? Or how was the Tempter so well aware of my penury?

No. Now that my friend had betrayed himself, I felt convinced that he knew something of the extraordinary plot in which I had become so hopelessly involved.

“The day before yesterday,” I said, looking her straight in the face, “you came to Hammersmith to try to find me.”

She started quickly, but in an instant recovered herself.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I walked through Rowan Road, expecting to find your plate on one of the doors, but could not.”

“I have no plate,” I answered. “When I lived there I was assistant to my friend. Doctor Raymond.”

“Raymond!” she exclaimed. “Oh yes, I remember I saw his name; but I was looking for yours.”

“You wished to see me?”

“Yes; I was not well,” she faltered.

“But your cousin knew that I had lived with Raymond. Did you not ask her?”

“No,” she answered, “it never occurred to me to do so.”

Rather a lame response, I thought.

“But last night she found me quite easily. She called upon Doctor Raymond, who gave her my new address.” And, continuing, I told her of my temporary abode.

“I know,” she replied.

“Have you ever met my friend Raymond?” I inquired with an air of affected carelessness.

“Not to my knowledge,” she answered quite frankly.

“How long ago did Hoefer leave?” I asked.

“About an hour, I think. He has locked the door of the morning-room and taken the key with him,” she added, laughing.

She presented a pretty picture, indeed, in that half-darkened room, leaning back gracefully and smiling upon me.

“He announced no fresh discovery?”

“He spoke scarcely a dozen words.”

“But this mystery is a very disagreeable one for you who live here. I presume that you live with your cousin always?”

“Yes,” she responded. “After my father’s death, some years ago, I came here to live with her.”

So her father was dead! The Tempter was not, as I had all along suspected, her father.

I longed to take her in my arms and tell her the truth, that I was actually her husband and that I loved her. Yet, how could I? The mystery was so complicated, and so full of inscrutable points, that to make any such declaration must only fill her with fear of myself.

We chatted on while I feasted my eyes upon her wondrous beauty. Had she, I asked myself, ever seen young Chetwode since her return to London? Did she really love him, or was he merely the harmless but necessary admirer which every girl attracts towards herself as a sort of natural instinct? The thought of him caused a vivid recollection of that night in Whitton Park to arise within me.

Where was Tattersett—the man who had laughed at her when she had declared her intention of escaping him by suicide? Who was he? What was he?

It occurred to me, now that I had learned some potent facts from her own lips, that my next course should be to find this man and investigate his past. By doing so I might elucidate the problem.

Her ladyship, with a cry of welcome upon her lips, entered the room and sank, hot and fatigued, into a cosy armchair.

“London is simply unbearable!” she declared. “It’s ever so many degrees hotter than at Atworth, and in the Stores it is awfully stuffy. In the provision department butter, bacon, and things seem all melting away.”

“You’ll be glad to get back again to Wiltshire,” I laughed.

“Very. We shall go by the night-mail to-morrow,” she answered. “Why don’t you come up and visit us, Doctor? My husband would be charmed to meet you I’m sure.”

“That’s just what I’ve been saying, dear,” exclaimed Beryl. “Do persuade Doctor Colkirk to come.”

“I am sure you are both very kind,” I replied, “but at present I am in practice.”

“You can surely take a holiday,” urged Beryl. “Do come. We would try to make it pleasant for you.”

Her persuasion decided me, and, after some further pressing on the part of her ladyship, I accepted the invitation with secret satisfaction, promising to leave in the course of a week or ten days.

Then we fell to discussing the curious phenomena of the previous night, until, having again exhausted the subject, I rose to take my leave.

“Good-bye, Doctor Colkirk,” Beryl said, looking into my eyes as I held her small hand. “I hope we shall soon meet down in Wiltshire, and, when we do, let us forget all the mystery of yesterday.”

“I suppose you have given Hoefer permission to visit, the room when he wishes to pursue his investigations?” I said, turning to her ladyship.

“Of course. The house is entirely at his disposal. One does not care to have a death-trap in one’s own house.”

“He will do his best—of that I feel quite sure,” I said.

And then again promising to visit her soon, I shook her hand, bade them both adieu, and with a last look at the frail, graceful woman I loved, went out into the hot, dusty street.

In order to celebrate my sudden accession to wealth I lunched well at Simpson’s, and then took a hansom to old Hoefer’s dismal rooms in. Bloomsbury. To me, so gloomy and severe is that once-aristocratic district that, in my hospital days, I called it Gloomsbury.

Hoefer occupied a dingy flat in Museum Mansions, and, as I entered the small room which served him as laboratory, I was almost knocked back by the choking fumes of some acid with which he was experimenting. A dense blue smoke hung over everything, and through it loomed the German’s great fleshy face and gold-rimmed spectacles. He was in his shirt-sleeves, seated at a table, watching some liquid boiling in a big glass retort. Around his mouth and nose a damp towel was tied, and as I entered he motioned me back.

“Ach! don’t come in here, my tear Colkirk! I vill come to you. Ze air is not good just now. Wait for me there in my room.”

Heedless of his warning, however, I went forward to the table, coughing and choking the while. I took out my handkerchief, when suddenly he snatched it from me, and steeped it in some pale yellow solution. Then, when I placed it before my mouth, inhaling it, I experienced no further difficulty in respiration.

The nature of the experiment on which he was engaged I could not determine. From the retort he was condensing those suffocating fumes, drop by drop, now and then dipping pieces of white, prepared paper into the liquid thus obtained. I stood by watching in silence.

Once he placed a drop of that liquid upon a glass slide, dried it for crystallisation, and, placing it beneath the microscope, examined it carefully.

He grunted. And I knew he was not satisfied.

Then he added a few drops of some colourless liquid to that in the retort, and the solution at once assumed a pale green hue. He boiled it again for three minutes by his common, metal watch, then, having drained it off into a shallow glass bowl to cool, blew out his lamp, and I followed him back into his small, cosy, but rather stuffy little den.

“Well?” he inquired. “You have called at her ladyship’s—eh?”

“Yes,” I replied, stretching myself in one of his rickety chairs; “but you were there before me. What have you discovered?”

“Nothing.”

“But that experiment I have just witnessed? Has it no connexion with the mystery?”

“Yes, some slight connexion. It was, however, a failure,” he grunted, still speaking with his strong accent.

“You experienced the same sensation there to-day, I hear?” I said.

“H’m, yes; but not so strong.”

“And the same injection cured you?”

“Of course. That, however, tells us nothing. We cannot yet ascertain how it is caused.”

“Or find out who was that unknown woman in black,” I added.

“If we could discover her we might obtain the key to the situation,” he responded.

“I have been invited by her ladyship to visit them in Wiltshire,” I said suddenly, as I lit a cigarette, “and I have accepted. Have I done right, do you think?”

“You would have done far better to stay here in London,” grunted the old man. “If we mean to get at the bottom of this mystery we must work together.”

“How?”

“In this affair, my dear Colkirk,” he exclaimed, with a sudden burst of confidence, “there is much more than of what we are aware. There is some motive in getting rid of Miss Wynd secretly and surely. I feel certain that she knows who her mysterious visitor was, but dare not tell us.”

“I am going down to Atworth,” I said. “Perhaps I shall discover something.”

“Perhaps?” he sniffed dubiously. “But, depend upon it, the key to this problem lies in London. You haven’t yet told me who this Miss Wynd is.”

“A lady who, her father being dead, went to live with Sir Henry Pierrepoint-Lane and his wife.”

“Ach! then she has no home? I thought not.”

“Why? What made you think that?”

“I fancied so,” he said, continuing to puff at his great pipe. “I fancied, too, that she had a lover—a young lover—who is a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment.”

“How did you know?”

“Merely from my own observations. It was all plain last night.”

“How?”

But he grinned at me through his great ugly spectacles without replying. I knew that he was a marvellously acute observer.

“And your opinion of her ladyship?” I inquired, much interested.

“She, like her charming cousin, is concealing the truth,” he answered frankly. “Neither are to be trusted.”

“Not Beryl—I mean Miss Wynd?”

“No; for she knows who her visitor was, and will not tell us.”

Then he paused. In that moment I made a sudden resolve; I asked him whether he had read in the newspapers the account of the Whitton tragedy.

“I read every word of it,” he responded—“a most interesting affair. I was not well at the time, otherwise I dare say I might have gone down there.”

“Yes,” I said, “from our point of view it is intensely interesting, the more so because of one fact, namely, that her ladyship was among the visitors when the Colonel was so mysteriously assassinated.”

“At Whitton!” he exclaimed, bending forward. “Was she at Whitton?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“And her cousin, Miss Wynd?”

“Of that I am not quite sure. All I know is that she was there on the afternoon previous to the tragedy. Sir Henry’s wife is Mrs Chetwode’s bosom friend.”

The old fellow grunted, closed his eyes, and puffed contentedly at his pipe.

“In that case,” he observed at last, “her ladyship may know something about that affair. Is that your suspicion?”

“Well, yes; to tell the truth, that is my opinion.”

“And also mine,” he exclaimed. “I am glad you have told me this, for it throws considerable light upon my discovery.”

“Discovery?” I echoed. “What have you discovered?”

“The identity of the woman in black who visited Miss Wynd last night.”

“You’ve discovered her—already?” I cried. “Who was she?”

“A woman known as La Gioia,” responded the queer old fellow, puffing a cloud of rank smoke from his heavy lips.

“La Gioia?” I gasped, open-mouthed and rigid. “La Gioia! And you have found her?”

“Yes; I have found her.”