Chapter Eighteen. I Draw the Impostor.

Having invented a story of a secret business friendship with the Professor, I remained with his pretty daughter for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer.

From her I further learned that Leonard Langton was now back in London, and that Kirk had written her implicit instructions to remain at Broadstairs for the present.

Then I bade her farewell, and walked back along the cliffs, past the Grand Hotel, to the quaint parade of the old-fashioned little watering-place, turning up to the chemist’s shop, which is, at the same time, the post office.

Thence I dispatched a telegram addressed to Professor Greer at the address in Strassburg which his daughter had given me, appending Kirk’s name, and asking for a reply to be sent to the Albion Hotel at Broadstairs, where I intended staying.

Afterwards I strolled to the hotel, ate my luncheon, and idled along the deserted jetty and promenade throughout the bleak, bright afternoon in eager expectation of a response from the impostor. My thought was ever on my dear lost Mabel. Fettered by ignorance and mystery, I knew not in which direction to search, nor could I discern any motive by which we should be thus parted.

My tea I took in the hotel, and afterwards smoked a cigar, until just before six the waiter handed me a message, a brief reply to mine, which read:

“Why are you running risks in Broadstairs, when you should be elsewhere? Be judicious and leave.—Greer.”

I read the message over a dozen times. What risks could Kirk be running by coming to Broadstairs? Was not that telegram essentially a word of warning given by one accomplice to another?

And yet Ethelwynn trusted Kirk just as blindly and foolishly as her father had done.

But was not the truth a strange one? She had concealed from me, as she was concealing from the world, that the Professor had died at the hand of an unknown assassin.

Or was it that she herself was an accomplice?

No, I could never believe that. I refused to give credence to any such suggestion.

I ascended the long hill to Broadstairs Station, and half an hour later left for Victoria. My intention was to go direct to Strassburg and there to discover and unmask the impostor. But ere I reached London the night mail for the Continent had already left Charing Cross, so I took a taxi-cab to my lonely home, where Gwen was awaiting me, still anxious and expectant.

I told her of the fruitlessness of my errand, whereupon she sank back into her chair, staring straight into the fire.

In brief I explained that I had discovered the existence of a person in Strassburg who could probably give me a clue to the whereabouts of Kirk and Mabel. Hence my intention of departing by the first service next morning.

“Cannot you telegraph and ask?” suggested the girl. “We seem, Harry, to be losing so much time,” she added frantically. “You haven’t been to the police.”

“I know, Gwen,” I said in sorrow, “but I can’t do more. To telegraph further might close the channel of our inquiry. No, we must still remain patient.”

Then, after snatching some food which had been left in the dining-room for me, I swallowed a glass of burgundy and entered the small room which I used as my particular den.

From there I rang up Pelham on the telephone, and heard the latest details concerning the business which I was now sadly neglecting. Afterwards I sat down and wrote an advertisement for the Times, an appeal addressed to “Silence” for news of my lost wife, an appeal which at the same time contained a veiled threat of exposure of the affair in Sussex Place.

This I concluded, and, ringing up an express messenger, dispatched it to the advertisement offices of the paper.

Then, with sudden resolve, I went forth to Wimpole Street to call upon Leonard Langton.

I found him in his cosy, well-furnished chambers, busy writing letters, while the round-faced man seated in a big arm-chair by the fire smoking a pipe he introduced as his chum with whom he shared chambers, Doctor Hamilton Flynn.

“Flynn’s a specialist on the nose and throat,” he laughed. “He has his consulting rooms along in Harley Street, and we pig it here together.”

“Jolly comfortable quarters,” I remarked, glancing round. “I called here before, but you were out.”

“Yes, so sorry!” he exclaimed. “Sit down and have a cigar,” and he handed me a box of most excellent weeds.

“Well,” exclaimed the smart young fellow who was the confidential secretary of Sir Albert Oppenheim, “I’m really glad to see you again, Mr Holford. That was a most mysterious incident at Sussex Place the other evening,” he added. “I’m still convinced that somebody was in the house. The Professor’s furnace was alight, you recollect, and the laboratory door stood open.”

“Langton has told me all about it,” remarked the doctor in a deep voice; “very curious, it seems.”

“Most extraordinary,” I declared, “and the more so that Merli, the butler, should have suddenly disappeared. The other day I met him in Rome.”

“Met Antonio!” gasped Ethelwynn’s lover, staring at me in amazement. “Have you been to Italy?”

“Yes. I told him of our search, but he declared himself ignorant of everything, though he admitted having seen you passing through the buffet at Calais-Maritime.”

“What is he doing in Rome?”

“I have no idea; I was there in a vain endeavour to recover my lost wife. She has been misled by a forged telegram purporting to come from myself, and is somewhere on the Continent. Where, however, I cannot tell.”

“You’ve lost your wife, eh?” asked the doctor, glancing strangely across at his companion, I thought. His face was dark and aquiline, his shoulders sloped. He was not a man to be trusted. “You think she’s been tricked?” he added. “Why?”

“Ah, at present I can form no theory as to the motive. If I could I might perchance discover the person responsible for her disappearance,” and I briefly told him of my frantic journey to the Italian capital.

“And now I am going to Strassburg to-morrow,” I added.

“Why to Strassburg?” inquired Doctor Flynn, regarding me fixedly with those keen eyes of his.

“Because Professor Greer is there, and I have an idea that he can tell me something.”

“The Professor is no longer there,” was Langton’s quick interruption. “Half an hour ago I spoke to Ethelwynn on the telephone, and she told me that she had just heard by telegraph from her father that he had left for Linz on his way to Hungary.”

My heart fell within me. Evidently my telegram signed Kirk had scared the man passing himself off as the Professor.

“But I might go on to Linz, or catch him up somewhere in Hungary,” I suggested.

“It would be futile, my dear fellow,” said Langton.

“Why?”

“Well, just at present Professor Greer wishes to be left entirely alone by his friends.”

“But there must be some reason,” I cried, for there seemed on every hand to be a conspiracy of silence again me.

“There is a reason,” replied the young man in a low, calm voice, “one which, however, seems mysterious.”

“Ah!” I cried. “Then even you are mystified by these strange happenings?”

“Yes,” he replied, knocking the ash from his cigar, “I have had certain suspicions aroused, Holford—vague suspicions of something wrong in the Professor’s household. Antonio is absent, the servants have all been paid and dispersed, the house in Sussex place is closed, and—”

“And the Professor is a fugitive, fleeing towards Hungary,” I added. “Has not Miss Ethelwynn told you anything?”

“What she has told me has been in complete confidence. It has caused me a great deal of surprise and apprehension, Holford, and this surprise has been increased by what you have told me this evening—that your wife has been enticed away, and is missing.”

“But what connection can my wife possibly have with any occurrence at the house of Professor Greer?” I demanded. “She was in ignorance of everything. She was not even acquainted with Greer. I might tell you that to-day I have been down to Broadstairs and seen Miss Ethelwynn,” I added.

“Ethelwynn did not seem to remember ever having met you when I told her of our encounter at the door, and the subsequent events.”

“I am a friend of the Professor’s, not of his daughter,” I hastened to explain. “But are you absolutely certain that a journey to Strassburg to-morrow would be useless?”

“Absolutely. If Greer consented to see his friends I would be the first to see him.”

“And he has refused even you, eh?” I asked, smiling within myself at the superior knowledge I possessed.

“He has. He refuses, too, to allow his daughter to go to him.”

“But why?” I asked.

“For reasons known, I suppose, to himself.”

“Does he give none?”

“He vaguely answers that certain matters concerning a great scientific discovery he has made compel him at present to hold aloof from both family and friends. He fears, I think, that someone who has discovered his secret may betray it.”

“But surely Ethelwynn would not?” I cried. “I desire to see the Professor because I feel confident he can, if he will, explain the motive of the trap into which my wife has fallen.”

“If he refuses to see his own daughter he will hardly see you,” remarked the dark-faced doctor. “Under exactly what circumstances has Mrs Holford disappeared?”

I briefly explained, at the same time regarding the round-shouldered specialist with some antagonism. To me, it appeared as though he were erecting an invisible barrier between myself and the knowledge of the truth. He seemed entirely Langton’s friend, corroborating his every word.

And the more curious became his attitude when at last I remarked with firm and resolute air:

“Well, if Professor Greer refuses to see me, then I shall invoke the aid of the police. They will probably very soon discover him, wherever he may be.”

“I hardly think that would be a wise policy,” remarked Flynn, tossing his cigar-end into the fire, and rising quickly from his chair, “unless, of course, you could make some direct charge against him.”

I was silent for a moment.

“And if I did? What then?” I asked, speaking boldly in a clear voice, my eyes fixed upon his, for remember I was fighting for knowledge of my dear wife’s whereabouts.

“Well—if you did,” was his deliberate reply, “it would be you yourself that would suffer, Mr Holford, and no one else.”

Was it not astounding, startling?

This doctor, the bosom friend of Ethelwynn’s lover, had given me exactly the same threatening reply as Antonio had given me on the Pincian in Rome.

What could it mean? The reason why the false Professor was avoiding friends and enemies alike was, of course, sufficiently plain to me. But for what reason was my well-beloved Mabel, the loving wife whom I adored, held in the unscrupulous hands of those who killed Professor Greer?

And why was every effort of mine to discover her met only by threats of impending disaster?

I gazed at the two men before me in silent defiance.

If it cost me my own life I intended to discover her and hold her dear form once again in my arms.

She was mine—mine before God and before man; and these persons seeking for some mysterious motive to shield the false Professor should not further stand in the way of justice.

“You think I dare not go to the police!” I cried at last. “Very well, if you care to come with me to Scotland Yard now—for I am going straight there—I will, in the presence of both of you, unfold a strange tale which they’ll be very much surprised to hear.”

“You believe you know the truth!” laughed Langton. “No, my dear Holford. Don’t be such a fool! The police cannot help in this affair, for the mystery is far too complicated. Keep your own counsel.”

“Yes,” I sneered, “and depend upon the man of whom you have denied all knowledge—the man Kershaw Kirk.”

“Kershaw Kirk!” gasped the doctor, and I saw that he went pale, his dark eyes starting from his head. “Do you know him? Is he—is he your friend, Mr Holford—or—or your enemy?”