CHAPTER XI.

AGAIN--IN PARK LANE

There was something intolerably strained and anxious in the looks of Ventris Blake as he sat that night in his study in Park Lane. As a matter of fact, he had only just left that garret in Queen Victoria Street after his encounter with Eleanor Kaufmann, yet, no sooner had he reached the secrecy of his own room, than the bold aggressive front which he had presented to Paul and Winifred, and later still to the people in the streets as he drove in his carriage through the West End, dropped from him like an ill-fitting mask. Now he crouched over the fire, in the evening clothes which he had hastily donned, a prey to a low but intense nervous excitement.

Every uncommon sound that penetrated the thickly-curtained and carpeted apartment seemed to set his nerves on edge. Again and again he would spring up and advance towards the bell that communicated with his secretary’s office, but each time he would choke down his fears and irresolution, and clenching his teeth hard would grimly set himself to wait.

For what?

Five--ten--fifteen minutes passed thus without the arrival of the expected intelligence.

Finally, strained it appeared almost beyond endurance by the silence and the inaction, he rose, and producing from his watch chain a tiny curiously wrought master key, that at first might be taken for an ordinary gold-charm, he went towards a corner of the room. Here, where certain lines of water-colour paintings that had been let into the wainscot converged was a panel in oils that he had picked up once in Florence, and which formed a study of one of the most gruesome objects in Italian street-life--a member of the misericordia who goes about in a habit like a mediæval Inquisitor, and attends to the sick, the dying, and the dead.

For a time he gazed at this as though this particular figure had some strange inward significance to him. Then a hoarse kind of chuckle broke involuntarily from his lips, and, shrugging his shoulders, he tapped the corners of the panel with a curious movement as though he would thus release some hidden finely wrought spring. Indeed, this was precisely what he was doing, for no sooner had he struck the fourth blow, than the panel fell forward noiselessly, revealing a small iron door, which not more than a foot square, yielded to a turn of the key he was still carrying.

Placing his hand and arm in this safe right up to the shoulder, he groped about for some seconds until at length his fingers closed over the object he sought. Then he withdrew his hand with a tiny book, also heavily locked.

His movements afterwards were quick and decided.

With a touch he shut both door and panel, and then, stepping swiftly across the room, he locked and bolted both the doors that communicated with the rest of the house. The next moment he turned to his desk, and, seating himself thereat, he switched on the light of a small reading lamp, and then unfastened the locks of the volume and eagerly glanced at the entries of the pages which had been made in thick bold characters in red ink.

At first the onlooker would have fancied the different items had been written by some doctor, for the pages had been ruled as though the book were a doctor’s case-book with full information in dates and times as to the progress of various diseases. But, as Ventris Blake feverishly turned over leaf after leaf, and on each stood out in startling distinctness the word “Died,” one saw that he was looking at a register, it was true--a Register of Death! And each page was stamped with a sign--Three Glass Eyes!

Strangely enough, however, he seemed at length fully satisfied with the result of his enquiries, for he closed and locked the book, and leaned back in his chair, thinking deeply, aided by his own watch and some figures which he had extracted from the register and scribbled on the flap of an old envelope.

“I think I’m right,” he muttered to himself at last throwing the paper on the back of the fire. “Twenty minutes is the average time for the thing to work. Then allow the man five minutes to get to the telegraph office; give the telegram itself forty minutes to reach Park Lane. Now if ever I ought to receive the news.” And, replacing the volume in the safe, he went and unlocked the doors again and marched into Israel Sawdry’s room.

Sawdry himself was busily engaged just then writing at a table, but against the walls stood a number of tape telegraph machines which were recording the news of the world, as gathered by the different news agencies, and also any private information which his head man in the City thought it wise to wire through to his principal’s home.

This particular instrument was silent as he approached it, but, as he had previously calculated, he had not to stand there many seconds before it began with a wheeze and a whirr to click out this message to him:

“Grover reports sad affair in Holborn. Outside Gray’s Inn, old friend of the firm, Eleanor Kaufmann, swayed off the pavement into middle of the road, was knocked down by cab, and picked up dead.”

“Picked up dead!”

Almost unconsciously the millionaire found himself repeating these words as all at once his demeanour changed completely, the cloud of doubt and suspicion seemed to lift from his face like magic and once again he was the quick alert man of affairs.

“Curious thing those Three Glass Eyes!” he went on in the same monotone. “Somehow, its friends always are picked up dead, but it’s not often they oblige by swaying first against some passing vehicle. Well, well, Eleanor was foolish only to herself this time. I certainly did my best with her, but she would not listen to reason. Now--”

“Now you are safe,” cut in Sawdry, who had crept up unperceived beside him, and had read the message and overheard his half-whispered remarks.

Ventris Blake started, but quickly recovered himself.

“Safe!” he repeated with a little touch of scorn, “Is anybody safe in this cursed London? You know the saying at Scotland Yard, that any man’s life can be taken, sacrificed here, for a sovereign! Well, it’s all very well for us to beat down our enemies like this,” tapping the message on the instrument, “but suppose they try the same tactics on us, what then?”

“They mustn’t,” returned the Jew firmly, “we must not let them.

“Remember,” he proceeded gravely, “your old faith that ‘money can do anything.’ Well, haven’t you proved its truth? Where other great financiers have trusted to bribes and gossip, and failed, you have never waited for news or action second-hand. If you have wanted to know what any man, woman, or child was up to you never inquired from anyone else, you have simply had them watched. Their steps have been dogged, their servants suborned. All they have said and done you have collated so that at the right moment you could strike or hold your hand. Look at Arthur Hudson, for instance, how you are managing him! look at your own huge fortune. No, this secret service idea you struck years ago has, in my opinion, been the secret of your business success--”

“And also The Three Glass Eyes,” put in Blake with a hollow little laugh.

“And The Three Glass Eyes,” echoed Sawdry nervously, but even he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder, as though he were fearful the millionaire had been overheard.

Curiously enough, too, just then there did come an interruption to the conversation. A footman tapped at the door and entered, and announced that Vera Langford had called and wished to see Blake on particular business.

“Shew her into the study,” said Blake, and in a few moments he had followed the man and entered into conversation with Vera.

This time, however, his manner to her was far from cordial. Underneath all his words was a deep tone of resentment against her, as though she had done him some serious injury he was in no sense prepared to overlook.

“What is it now, Miss Langford?” he asked in a quick commanding voice as, ignoring her hand, he thrust forward a chair for her to sit upon, and unpleasantly emphasised the word “now.”

“Something important,” said Vera calmly, although her face was swollen and her eyes were red as with shed tears. “I happened to be in the Belsize Theatre this afternoon when you were talking to Mr. Prendergast about me.”

“Well,” put in the man roughly as though he were anxious to provoke her, “then there is little doubt you heard something you didn’t like.”

“That is quite true,” she rejoined. “I learned the man whom I believed in and loved most ardently was false to me and was intent on marrying quickly, an old woman, a friend of mine, Lady Desborough, so that when some atrocious scandal came out about him in the Divorce Courts he should not be ruined.”

“Well, and what of that? Weren’t you thankful that it wasn’t you he proposed to make a victim of? Weren’t you glad that the friend who was playing you false was going to be ruined and not yourself?”

“No, that didn’t occur to me,” said Vera reflectively, “my feeling was quite different to that.”

“Humph,” growled the millionaire, now seating himself and gazing curiously at Vera. “You girls who are baulked in ruining your lives are odd creatures. Instead of being thankful that you had been saved from social ruin and personal degradation, you turn sometimes on the persons who have saved you, and tear them to tatters. Tell me now--what is your idea? Do you still love this silly, brainless poseur, Prendergast?”

“I hate him,” Vera flashed out.

“‘Scorn! to be scorned by one I scorn.

“‘Is that a matter to make me fret!’” quoted the millionaire, with a sardonic turn of the lip. “Well, and you hate! Good! It’s a nice, healthy, invigorating feeling to have. But what then?”

“I wish to be revenged,” said Vera thickly, and now her eyes filled with tears.

“Revenge!” mused Blake swinging round his chair and looking earnestly into the fire. “Yes, I understand. Revenge! It’s a most powerful force I know in this poor weak tottering human mechanism of ours.

“But why should you come to me about it?” he turned again and snapped--“You have already made nearly £10,000 out of me. I have let you do it--for what? That you should make Winifred Pontifex mine! How have we fared over that? The girl left your flat and went to that old toady of mine at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, it is true, but she has just slipped off from there, and now we’re worse off than before.”

“But I can go after her and find her. I can persuade her to live with me again,” protested Vera eagerly. “I always could manage her. I have got the knack of appealing to what people call ‘the better feelings’ in her. I can turn her round my little finger with a show of tears, and an appeal to her loyalty and unselfishness.”

“Could you at a pinch bring her and come yourself, to live here in this house,” said Blake suddenly, but hardened scoundrel as he was, even he dared not look at the other girl fully in the face.

“Yes,” replied Vera unblushingly, “but I repeat--I must have revenge.”

“Oh, that is easy enough,” returned Blake rising and facing his companion. “The day Winifred Pontifex comes to live here with you, that day Jules Prendergast and Lady Desborough will begin to rue the day they were led to play you false.”

“Then it shall be this very day,” cried Vera, “if you will set to work and will find out at once where Winifred is!”

And she returned home to find two surprises--one that Winifred had arrived already, and the other that Paul Renishaw too had called and had gone.

Now, as a matter of fact, Paul was painfully anxious to be alone--to get time to think. A quick passage of arms with Langford had aroused a new source of interest in him, no other than the identity of the man who had a better reason for seeing Aimée Blake removed from his path than had Arthur Hudson. Even indeed as he had launched this chance shot at Russell Langford, one name of a possible assassin had hammered itself at his brain clamouring as it were for consideration, although it seemed so impossible a clue that he had not dared even in imagination to follow it up.

Now, however, he was alone. There, in the whirl of London’s ceaseless traffic, his thoughts could not stray and move either in treason to the man he suspected, or fatally suggestive to the release of his own friend. Then--and only then, did he seriously ask himself a series of questions which he realised that once put to himself in that form, he could never rest until it was settled beyond all doubt or hesitation.

(1) Did Ventris Blake, by some foul strategy, gain possession of the Register of Marriages at Peterborough, and place within it pages a false dummy page containing an entry of a ceremony that had never occurred?

(2) Or had he absolutely personated Arthur Hudson years ago in that quaint old Northamptonshire city, and been found out by his wife, and made to take his proper name and place in their married life?

(3) And had he, when his mind was fired with that wild, insane passion for Winifred Pontifex, again personated Arthur Hudson, and luring the poor woman, first to Scarborough, and then off to the Filey Road, cruelly fallen on her and beaten her to death with a hedge stake?

Like a man in a dream Paul paid his driver and taking his ticket for Scarborough, climbed into a first-class carriage and found himself quickly whisked along the Great Northern Main Line in the direction of Grantham, the first stoppage, and Doncaster. To a wonderful degree he had, by the aid of his work as a sub-editor, sharpened his power of concentration; and so for nearly two hours his face made no sign of the terrible mental processes he was passing through, from doubt to hesitation, from half conviction to theories to be tested and worked on.

None the less, all that time he was marshalling all that he knew about this strange case of Arthur Hudson’s. Fact by fact he pieced the truth together--not as it might seem to prejudiced parties like the Scarborough police or to Mr. Russell Langford, but as it might be presented to the mind of a trained expert who was perfectly impartial. And in the end he was bound to confess to himself that, after all, this man of millions with the coarse mind of an American ranchman yet the touch of a Monte Christo, was the one person for the defence to suspect--to inquire about--and, if necessary, to bend every energy they possessed to convict!

Exhausted by the conflict, Paul fell asleep, and not until he was roused at York by the guard, and told that he must change there and cross to another platform to get into a North-Eastern train for Scarborough, did he pursue the matter further. Then, finding he had an hour or so to spare, he went into the refreshment rooms, and only over a steaming hot supper, in which some fragrant draughts of perfectly made coffee figured prominently, did he go back to the problem: Was Ventris Blake the real criminal?

Strangely enough, the more that he pondered over this theory, the more convinced was he of its probable truth. For one thing, the motive so supplied was obvious. At the stroke an impediment was removed in the shape of a wife, and a rival was taken off in the person of Arthur Hudson. The whole plot of the crime, of course, seemed more than human--fiendish in fact--but then, as Paul had often observed from the comparative quiet seclusion and remoteness of the office of a responsible newspaper, men who dabbled in City finance were never men who stuck at trifles. There seemed something in the handling of huge sums of money that contaminated--unless the virus were let off by bewildering outbursts of quixotism, philanthropy, or speculative pomp and foolishness--and, as he knew, Ventris Blake had never spent a copper except for his own aggrandisement and personal satisfaction, and then he had never stuck at thousands.

“Altogether this idea is well worth following up,” said he as the slow local train rumbled off at break of day towards the coast: “I am sure to have two or three days to spare in Scarborough waiting for the inquest to finish and the police-court proceedings to be adjusted, and I am certain that I can’t do better than to start an inquiry of my own into the crime, not with the intention of proving Arthur innocent, that will be the business of Mr. Spencer Holmes, his lawyer, but with the hope that I can show Mr. Ventris Blake is the real criminal. After all, my mind has not quite forgotten its cunning when I had to write special accounts of mysterious crimes about which the police would vouchsafe no line of information. I can, I do believe, see as far as most detectives: and in this I should be sharpened by my affection for the poor old fellow they have got in their clutches!” And again his face grew hard and stern, for, manlike, he would not even admit to himself how cut to the heart he was by Arthur’s miseries.

His close mental review of the case had, however, reminded him of one omission. That was the report from the private inquiry agency who had been instructed to watch the Charltons when they removed from the garret in Queen Victoria Street, and particularly to learn the antecedents of the wife--Rebecca Charlton--who was supposed to have witnessed the marriage at Peterborough. He now saw how vital these investigations might prove, and, blaming himself for his own foolishness in not getting possession of the documents before, he hurried out of the carriage directly the train stopped at Scarborough, and went to the platform telegraph office and wired to Arthur’s inquiry clerk, Perkins, with whom he had a nodding acquaintance:--

“Please have all Mr. Hudson’s letters opened. Send on to me any bearing on this dreadful charge, particularly the report of the private detectives who are engaged in watching the caretakers, named Charlton. Register, as matter is important.

“Paul Renishaw, “Crown Hotel, Scarborough.”

Arthur’s solicitor, Spencer Holmes, was the first man Paul met as he stepped out of the station into the bleak, eager, January air, fresh from the Yorkshire sea and moors.

“Ah!” said he, warmly grasping his hand, “I thought somehow you would catch this train, so I got the boots of my hotel to call me early and hurried up to meet you.”

“No fresh news, I suppose?” asked Paul, throwing back his shoulders and marching out sturdily in the direction of the South Cliff, where he was told his hotel would be found.

His companion’s face clouded.

“I don’t know exactly what you mean by ‘fresh,’” said he, with a nervous little cough. “Only things could not be well darker than they are. That wretch Blake, not content with the evidence he’s got, has actually imported the cleverest detective they have in New York--a man who happened to be seeing him on business in London--a loud-mouthed, boastful, and aggressive Yankee, who answers to the name of Silas Q. Pinkerton.”

“Well, and what has he accomplished?” queried Paul lightly. “I should have thought the cut of his clothes, to say nothing of the vile character of his accent, would have paralysed every decent Yorkshireman!”

“Not a bit of it,” returned Holmes, sharply, but catching sight of a man in the distance he stopped. “Ah, as I guessed. He’s shadowed me. The fact is, he has done little else since I’ve been down here now. I’ll introduce you to him, and then you’ll know him and his ugly carriage, and you’ll be able to steer clear of him.” And raising his voice he shouted, “Pinkerton! Pinkerton!”

The man stopped, pretended to fumble with a boot-lace, then came towards them. As he drew nearer and his features became more distinct, Paul started violently, muttered something, then caught Holmes excitedly by the arm.

“Here,” he cried in a hoarse whisper, “who did you tell me that was?”

“Why, Silas Q. Pinkerton, the great New York detective,” responded the solicitor.

“Rubbish,” energetically returned Paul. “Why, I know that man as well as I know myself, and he’s no more a New Yorker or a detective, or a creature named Pinkerton, than he is His own Most Gracious Majesty, King Edward the VII.”