Missing or Murdered (24 page)

“I don't,” replied Vereker, glancing at his friend apprehensively.

“He'd gone!”

“Oh, Ricky, you don't mean to say you lost sight of him,” queried Vereker dejectedly.

“Most indubitably. He'd gone—vanished like a spook. I was staggered—I mean apart from the copious libations I had poured out to the gods—‘This is a pretty kettle of fish,' I said and, seizing my hat and coat, I simply shot out into the street to see if I could get a glimpse of him.”

“Not a vestige of him did you see, I suppose,” commented Vereker resignedly.

“Not a vestige, but I was tapped gently on the arm and reminded by one of the waiters at Jacques' that I hadn't paid the bill. This fairly put the lid on matters. Instead of dashing around at once and picking up the trail I had simply to go back into Jacques' and waste time by paying a footling bill: really a detective shouldn't be asked to pay bills at critical moments. You can imagine how I swore, using every known term of the vocabulary of bad language to little purpose. It failed to relieve me and only incensed the waiter. Once again in the street I glanced round. No sign of Smale. I might as well have looked in the gutter for a golden sovereign. A feeling akin to real grief overcame me—I was sorry for you, old man, for having leaned so stoutly on a broken reed like myself. I thought how foolish it was of you to have trusted me so implicitly with money and a task at the same time. My dazed eyes flitted around in a glassy stare, seeing nothing clearly until they alighted on the words ‘saloon bar' on the opposite of the street. This brought me to a rational frame of mind; those words admirably matched the texture of my thoughts, and offered me purpose instead of weltering indecision. What more fitting than to drown grief and blow the rest of your cash; never had the offensive words ‘saloon bar' seemed so imbued with a sense of ministering comfort—they caught some shadow of the divine—”

“And you promptly went in and stayed there till closing time,” added Vereker with a suspicion of curtness.

“Don't descend to bathos like that, Vereker. I've had an adventure and if I unconsciously compose in the narration it is simply instinctive. The true inwardness of events has lit up my imagination, every moment of my evening has been touched with the magic of a certain sublime inevitableness—Fate, you may call it—which has put its very commonplace incidents on a plane which is rarely visited even in moments of the highest artistic exaltation.”

“It wasn't the wine, I presume?”

“Wine—no, certainly not. It wasn't wine that led me into the saloon bar of Billy's opposite and brought me shoulder to shoulder again with Mr. Smale!”

“Good Lord, was he in there too?”

“He was. Mere chance, eh? A blundering and careless Ricardo is thus waited on by that inscrutable thing we call chance.”

“You followed him up this time?”

“I did. I was closer to him than his shadow. I followed him until he disappeared into some mean purlieu of Soho, where he disappeared down into an unsavoury den where human faces appeared inhuman—they were the faces of fauns. From this I was promptly ejected by a super-faun who said I was not a member of the club. I feigned intoxication and blundered back to decency.”

“So you lost him there. Do you remember the street?”

“I didn't lose him there. Remembering that I had been once favoured by the capricious goddess, Chance, I was not going to beg at her feet again in a hurry. I patrolled that street until Mr. Smale once more emerged. I was remorseless; I was cunning; hours mattered not to my firm resolve. Had he journeyed to Cathay I would have trudged unflinchingly after him—the Polar wastes would not have sheltered him. As a matter of fact it took just five minutes to reach his digs. They were round the corner of the same street. I know them well—pal of mine suffered there for over a year.”

“Good, Ricky. Well, that's an accomplishment—by Jove, we've got him.”

“The balance out of your money is elevenpence halfpenny, old man, and I'm off to bed.”

Finishing his whisky, Ricardo rose from his chair, sought out a heavy khaki overcoat, relic of his army career, and disappeared into Vereker's studio with a somnolent “Good night, Sherlock.”

“Good night, Ricky,” replied Vereker with a faint smile, “I'm greatly indebted to you for the night's work.”

Flinging the butt of his cigar in the fire Vereker sat thinking over his plans for the morrow.

It was with some difficulty that Vereker roused the somnolent Ricardo at seven o'clock next morning; but once awake his irrepressible friend was soon busy helping to prepare breakfast, or rather taking the onus of that operation entirely on himself. Over the meal Vereker ascertained the exact whereabouts of the lodging-house into which Smale had retreated on the previous night and, leaving Ricardo busy rolling cigarettes and drinking strong coffee, paid an unusually early call on Lord Bygrave's secretary. It was with a considerable feeling of suppressed excitement that he informed the maid who answered his ring of the object of his visit. Would Smale, he wondered, resort to the subterfuge of being absent or inaccessible? He might take such a course and create a rather difficult situation for the time being.

To his surprise the maid returned with the information that, though Mr. Smale had not long since risen, he would be pleased to see Mr. Vereker. Ushered into a tidily furnished and scrupulously clean little drawing-room, Vereker was met by Smale attired in his dressing-gown and looking fresh and roseate after a hot bath. There was no touch of uneasiness in his cherubic countenance, no hesitation or awkwardness or hint of annoyance in the manner of his reception of Vereker.

“Good morning,” he began, “I'm afraid you've caught me before I'm quite ready to face the world, Vereker, but, if you don't mind, I'm sure I don't. How on earth did you dig me out? I didn't know you were acquainted with my address.”

“I happened to find it out quite by accident,” replied Vereker. “In fact, I saw you enter by sheer chance. As I had something about Bygrave's affairs on which I wished to consult you, I took the opportunity of calling on you first thing this morning. You must pardon the hour.”

“I'm glad you did, as I'm only staying here temporarily and might be off again to-day. I'm waiting to hear from my people with regard to my going abroad and expect to have an interview with the guv'nor to-day on the subject, an interview to which I do not look forward with pleasure. Having once settled the business, I was going to drop you a line privately and let you know that I was relinquishing my post at Bygrave Hall.”

“We wondered what had become of you,” remarked Vereker quietly. “You left without letting anyone know your destination or plans.”

He shot a keen and challenging glance at Smale; but that glance, which Vereker hoped might prove awkward in its frank provocativeness, was answered by a cheerful, gurgling laugh.

“I bet you did some thinking, Vereker,” he replied gaily. “Put all sorts of sinister constructions on my behaviour, ascribed damning motives to my perfectly innocent actions, eh? Ah, well, you can't be an amateur detective without acquiring the private inquiry agent's mind; a cesspool of suspicion. If there's anything you want to know I'm at your service.”

The tone of Smale's reply nettled Vereker: it was exasperatingly confident, either from a consciousness of superior astuteness, and an ability to measure swords favourably with his antagonist, or from a knowledge of his innocence. Vereker had been so convinced that Smale's sudden disappearance from Bygrave Hall had been intimately connected with the matter of the bearer bonds, the receipt for which Mrs. Cathcart had alleged to be a forgery, that he was considerably shaken. Not for a moment, however, did he disclose by facial expression anything that was passing in his mind, and with characteristic resilience he met the situation with reciprocal urbanity.

“Well, Smale, I can assure you my thoughts weren't too flattering at first, but after pondering the matter I came to the conclusion that I must see you and get some explanation before condemning your action in any way. It's on this very subject I have come to see you this morning. You can possibly give me the information I'm seeking and set my mind at rest on the whole business forthwith.”

“Only too glad to do so, Vereker, but it's entirely a personal matter, and I must ask you to treat what I tell you as strictly confidential.”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I suppose you want to know, in the first place, why I left Bygrave Hall without giving any information as to my destination or intentions? I can do so very briefly; but, as I have said, the matter is a private and rather unpleasant one for me. It has nothing whatever to do with Bygrave.”

“You may count on my treating the information confidentially,” interrupted Vereker.

“I'm sure I may,” added Smale, “and I shall not hesitate to let you know the inner truth of what I may call a crisis in my life. I am in serious trouble.”

“Financial, I suppose?” commented Vereker.

“Well, that has been a concomitant of all my earthly worries, and I am so used to it that it troubles me no more now than harness does a horse. No, it is more poignant than a question of the wherewithal to live—it's a matter of the heart. I'm an unlucky man, Vereker. Let me compare life for a moment to a revolving door. You cannot negotiate a revolving door except by taking a compulsorily uniform step—the ‘everybody's doing it' method. A hop, skip and a jump, though admirable in themselves, would end in disaster. Now, though I have never wished to get through this revolving door in any but the orthodox method—the civilized step, if I may put it so—I've stumbled and got mixed up badly with the contraption. A year or so ago I was still idealist enough to fall desperately in love with a barmaid. I made all sorts of foolish protestations and promises. If she had been a good woman I should doubtless have carried matters through, but she is an utterly worthless woman. Having acquired a little discretion of late I have not the slightest intention of marrying her. She threatens to sue me. I have tried to buy her off; but no—she's tired of working, and wants a husband to keep her and supply her with money to have a good time on. She knows I have prospects and she is banking on that fact. Having no desire for combat, for I'm a man of peace, I have come to the conclusion that the best way of meeting the situation is by running swiftly away from it. In the words of an old music hall song, ‘I've made up my mind to sail away.' As a matter of fact, I intend to leave by aeroplane—but that's a mere question of despatch. You have my story in a nutshell.”

For some moments Vereker sat silent and pensive. Passing his long fingers across his brow he suddenly looked up at Smale to encounter a pair of frank, blue eyes from which he had temporarily removed the distorting lenses of his spectacles. The latter he was meticulously wiping with a silk handkerchief.

“I see the difficult situation in which you are placed, Smale. Having had little experience of the crises which arise in the affairs of the heart I must run mute, so to speak. Naturally, I had no cognizance of this secret trouble of yours, and you will have to pardon me for ascribing your sudden disappearance from Bygrave Hall to a vastly different cause. This was inevitable in the circumstances. Now, I am going to be brutally frank with you as to the reason of my call on you this morning. It is no use my mincing matters. I have here in my pocket the receipt, now in fragments, which Mrs. Cathcart gave Lord Bygrave for the £10,000 worth of bearer bonds and which you found for me in the secret drawer of his bureau. I confronted that lady with the receipt and she angrily proclaimed it an impudent forgery. In a paroxysm of rage she tore it in pieces. She tells me she had an interview with you at Glendon Street which doesn't quite conform with your story to me that you had only seen her once and that for a few seconds only. Will you be utterly frank, Smale, and tell me what was the nature of that interview and how came Lord Bygrave by this receipt for £10,000 worth of bearer bonds.”

Smale drew himself upright in his chair and his face, now deeply flushed, bore an air of perplexity.

“H'm,” he muttered, “it is difficult for me to know where to begin and how much I ought to divulge of this matter. In the first place my interview at Glendon Street was with regard to a furnished bungalow at Shoreham which Lord Bygrave offered to the lady rent free during her stay in England, and which she refused. As you know, Vereker, I was Lord Bygrave's confidential secretary, and have felt all along that my lips ought to be sealed with regard to his private affairs. I feel much in the same position as a doctor or priest called upon for evidence. It's against my principles—I have little conscience left, but still a few principles—to reveal anything about Lord Bygrave's hidden life, on which I have been honourably paid to keep silence. You see my position?”

“The present circumstances, I think you will agree, Smale, warrant your departing from those principles. It may be a very serious matter for you not to do so.”

“Yes, yes. I have weighed all that up long ago, and don't feel the least bit afraid of any consequences on account of my reticence, or even prevarication, provided I do my duty to Bygrave.”

“I know, of course, that Bygrave was married many years ago to the present Mrs. Cathcart, if that removes an obstacle in the way of your revealing to me more of the matter of this receipt,” interrupted Vereker bluntly.

Smale gave an involuntary start at this information.

“The devil you do!” he exclaimed. “I suppose she told you so?”

“She did,” replied Vereker.

“And she says this receipt for the bonds is a forgery?” queried Smale with real or well-feigned surprise.

“She stoutly affirms that it is.”

“Well, I'm damned! Either she's a consummate economist where truth is concerned or I have been neatly fooled,” replied Smale, his brow deeply furrowed, his eyes staring fixedly at the pattern on the carpet at his feet.