Chapter Twenty Five. A Plot Fails.

What actually occurred was this. I had risen from the table when Annie entered with a telegram which, on opening, I found to be an urgent message from Langton, at Broadstairs, begging me to go there at once, as he had some important information to communicate to me.

From the time-table I found that a fast train left Victoria in an hour, and full of excitement I bade good-bye to Gwen, promising to wire her the result of the interview.

Soon after noon I strode down the steep street of the quiet little watering-place so beloved by Dickens. On that February day it was very chilly, and very deserted, but gaining the parade I crossed the footbridge, and, continuing past the Grand Hotel, went along the top of the cliffs beyond the town, to where stood the late Professor’s seaside red-brick home.

In the small but pretty drawing-room I was greeted by Ethelwynn and her lover, who were standing talking near the fire as I entered. The girl looked delightfully sweet in a pale blue blouse and dark brown skirt, her splendid hair dressed in a style that suited her admirably, while he, on his part, presented the appearance of the typical clean-limbed, well-bred Englishman. They were, indeed, a handsome pair.

“It’s very good of you, Mr Holford, to come down so quickly!” the girl exclaimed, as she took my hand. “Leonard wants to have a serious chat with you.”

And yet this was the girl who was privy to her father’s tragic end. Was it possible that her lover also knew the truth?

Langton invited me to a chair, and commenced by haltingly apologising for bringing me down from London.

“We, however, considered it necessary,” he went on; “necessary in the interests of us all that there should exist a clear and perfect understanding between us.”

“In what manner?” I asked Langton.

“Well,” he said, “it has come to our knowledge that you have been relating a most extraordinary story regarding Ethelwynn’s father. You declare that he died under suspicious circumstances.”

“Whatever I’ve said is the truth—the plain and absolute truth,” I declared openly. “Mr Kirk introduced me into the house in Sussex Place, where I saw the poor Professor lying dead in his laboratory.”

“Ah!” cried the girl quickly, her manner suddenly changing. “Then you are a friend of Kirk’s—not of my father?”

“That is so,” I admitted. “And in Kirk’s company I saw your father lying dead through violence.”

“And you’ve dared to put forward this story as an absolute fact!” Langton cried. “Do you happen to know who Kershaw Kirk really is?”

“No; I’d very much like to know,” I said, full of anxiety. “Who is he?”

“If you knew, you would, I think, have hesitated before you went to the police with such a fairy tale as yours.”

“It is no fairy tale, Mr Langton!” I declared very earnestly. “I have with my own eyes seen the Professor lying dead.”

“But you forget that my father went to Edinburgh on that night, and wired me from there next day,” the girl pointed out, fixing her splendid eyes on mine with unwavering gaze.

“I forget no point of the remarkable affair, Miss Greer,” I said quietly. “As a matter of fact, I followed the man believed to be your father to Scotland.”

“You—you followed him?” gasped Langton, while the girl’s cheeks grew paler. “Did you see him? Did you speak with him?”

“No; but I discovered some rather interesting facts which, when the time arrives, I intend to put forward as proof of a very remarkable subterfuge.”

The pair exchanged meaning glances in silence. The girl was seated in an arm-chair opposite to me, near the fire, while Langton stood upon the hearthrug, with his hands thrust with feigned carelessness into his pockets.

“The whole affair was no doubt most cleverly-planned, thanks to the ingenuity of Kirk. The servants were all in ignorance of anything unusual—all save Antonio, who, as you know, has escaped to the Continent.”

“Escaped!” The pretty girl laughed uneasily. “The last I heard of him was that he was with my father, travelling in Hungary.”

“When?”

“Four days ago.”

“How can I find them? What is the Professor’s address?” I asked.

“He has no fixed abode. My last letter I sent to the Poste Restante in Buda-Pesth.”

In this I saw an intention still to preserve the secret of the impostor’s whereabouts.

“But it was not my intention in asking you down, Mr Holford, to go into details of what may, or may not, have happened. We—that is, Ethelwynn and myself—know the truth.”

“Then tell it to me—relieve this burden of a crime which is oppressing me?” I begged. “Let me know the truth, and let me at least regain my lost wife.”

“Well? And if we did?” asked Ethelwynn, after a pause. “We should only lay ourselves open to an unjust retaliation.”

Were not those the words of a woman who possessed some guilty knowledge, if not herself guilty of parricide? I saw their frantic desire to close my mouth, so I let them proceed, smiling within myself at their too apparent efforts to avoid the revelations which must inevitably result.

“I do not follow your meaning,” I said. “Why should I retaliate, if you are not responsible for my wife’s absence?”

She glanced uneasily across to her lover, who exclaimed:

“As far as I see, the whole thing lies in a nutshell, Mr Holford. You have been misinformed, and have made a ridiculous and quite unfounded statement concerning Professor Greer—one which seriously reflects upon his daughter, his household, and his friends. Therefore—”

“Then does his daughter actually deny having seen him, as I saw him, lying dead in the laboratory?” I interrupted.

“I have never seen my father lying dead!” declared the girl in a low, faltering tone which in itself showed her to be uttering an untruth. “Your story is entirely unfounded.”

“Then let me tell you one thing more, Miss Greer,” I said plainly. “I myself knelt at your side with Kirk when we found you in the dining-room lying, as we thought, lifeless. There was a white mark upon your face. See! It has hardly disappeared yet; there are still traces—a slight red discoloration!”

The girl held her breath at this allegation. That mark upon her cheek condemned her. Even her lover, for a moment, could not reply.

“Ah,” he said at last, “the loss of Mrs Holford has upset you, and causes you to make all sorts of wild and ridiculous statements, it seems. Kirk says they would not listen to you at Scotland Yard—and no wonder!”

“Then you know Kirk, eh—you who denied all knowledge of him when we first met!” I cried. “It was he who placed the poor Professor’s remains in the furnace in the laboratory, for from the ashes I recovered various scraps of his clothing which are now in my possession.”

“Rubbish, my dear sir!” laughed the young man. “You don’t know Kirk—or who he is!”

“I know him to be an adventurer who has two places of residence,” I said.

“But an adventurer is not necessarily a scoundrel,” Langton replied. “Many a good-hearted wanderer becomes a cosmopolitan and an adventurer, but he still retains all the traits and all the honour of a gentleman.”

“Not in Kirk’s case!” I cried.

“You’ve evidently quarrelled with him,” remarked Langton.

“I’ve quarrelled with him in so far as I mean to expose the secret assassination of Professor Greer and those who, for their own purposes, are making pretence that the dead man is still alive,” I answered boldly.

“By the latter, I take it, you mean ourselves?” observed the dead man’s daughter.

“I include all who lie, well knowing that the Professor is dead and all traces of his body have been destroyed,” was my meaning response.

“What’s this story of yours about Miss Greer presenting an appearance of death?” asked Langton. “Tell me—it is the first time I’ve heard this.” In a few brief sentences I told them of our discovery in the dining-room, and of the removal of the girl in a cab on that foggy night.

At my words both looked genuinely puzzled.

“What do you say to that?” asked her lover.

“I know nothing—nothing whatever of it!” she declared. “I can only think that Mr Holford must be dreaming.”

“Surely not when, with my own hands, I held a mirror to your lips to obtain traces of your breath!” I exclaimed. “Ask Antonio. He will tell you how he and his brother Pietro placed you in a cab at Kirk’s orders.”

“At Kirk’s orders?” echoed the young man. “Ask him for yourself,” I said.

They were both full of surprise and anxiety at what I had alleged.

Was it possible that I had been mistaken in Ethelwynn’s attitude, and that she genuinely believed that her father still lived? But that could not be, for had she not seen him dead with her own eyes? No. The girl, aided by her lover, was carrying out a cunningly-devised scheme effectively to seal my lips.

My wife Mabel had, before her disappearance, been in communication with the impostor whom Ethelwynn had apparently taken under her protection. This was a point that was most puzzling. Could this girl and my wife have been secretly acquainted? If so, then it was more than probable that she might have knowledge of Mabel’s whereabouts.

Again I referred to the loss of my wife, declaring that if I found her I would willingly forgo all further investigation into the Professor’s death.

The handsome girl exchanged glances with her lover, glances which showed me plainly that they were acting in accordance with some premeditated plan. Leonard Langton was a sharp, shrewd, far-seeing man, or he would never have held the appointment of private secretary to Sir Albert Oppenheim.

“Well, Mr Holford,” he said, “why don’t you speak candidly and openly? You are, I take it, eager to make terms with your enemies, eh?”

“But who are my enemies?” I cried blankly. “As far as I’m aware, I’ve made none!”

“A man arouses enmity often without intention,” was his reply. “I cannot, of course, tell who are these enemies of yours, but it is evident from your statement the other day at Wimpole Street that they are responsible for your wife’s disappearance.”

“Well,” I said, “you are right. I am open to make terms if Mabel is given back at once to me.”

“And what are they?” asked Ethelwynn, whose very eagerness condemned her.

“Pardon me, Miss Greer,” I said rather hastily, “but I cannot discern in what manner my matrimonial affairs can interest you.”

“Oh—er—well,” she laughed nervously, “of course they don’t really—only your wife’s disappearance has struck me as very remarkable.”

“No, Miss Greer,” I said, “not really so remarkable as it at first appears. My own inquisitiveness was the cause of her being enticed away, so that I might be drawn off the investigation I had undertaken—the inquiry into who killed Professor Greer.”

Her cheeks went paler, and she bit her lip. Her whole attitude was that of a woman aware of a bitter and tragic truth, yet, for her own honour, she dared not divulge it. She undoubtedly held the secret—the secret of her father’s death. Yet, for some purpose that was yet a complete enigma, she was protecting the impostor who had stepped into the dead man’s shoes.

The pair had brought me down there in order to entrap me—most probably a plot of Kirk’s. Their intention was to mislead and deceive me, and at the same time to secure my silence. But in my frantic anxiety and constant dread I was not easily entrapped. I had seen through the transparency of Kirk’s attitude, and I had likewise proved to my own satisfaction that, however much of the truth Leonard Langton knew, the girl of the innocent eyes was feigning an ignorance that was culpable, for within her heart she knew the truth of her father’s tragic end, even though she calmly asserted that he still lived and was in the best of health.

I had believed on entering that room, the windows of which looked out upon that grey-green wintry sea, that I should learn something concerning my dear wife, that I should perhaps obtain a clue to her whereabouts.

But as I fixed my eyes upon those of Ethelwynn Greer, I saw in them a guilty knowledge, and by it knew that in that direction hope was futile.

True, she had sounded me as to what undertaking I was ready to give, but the whole situation was so horrible and so bewildering that I could not bring myself to make any compact that would prevent Greer’s assassin being exposed.

So, instead, I sat full of chagrin, telling the pair much which held them in fear and apprehension.

It was evident that I knew more than they had believed I did, and that Langton was filled with regret that he had invited me there.

What, I wondered, could possibly be Ethelwynn’s motive in concealing her father’s death? I recollected how the assassin must have brushed past her in the Red Room to enter the laboratory on that fatal night, and that he must have again passed her on leaving.

Did she awake and recognise him, or had she herself been an accomplice in securing her father’s sudden and tragic end? Who could tell? In that startling suggestion I found much food for deep reflection.