Chapter III

The man in the corner paused in his narrative. I could see that he was coming to the palpitating part of the story, for his fingers fidgeted incessantly with that bit of string.

“Hubert Turnour, as you may imagine,” he continued after a while, “did not take his final discomfiture very quietly. He was a very violent-tempered young man, and it was certainly enough to make any one cross. According to Mrs. Brackenbury’s servants he used most threatening language in reference to Count Collini; and on one occasion was with difficulty prevented from personally assaulting the Count in the hall of Mrs. Brackenbury’s pretty Kensington house.

“Count Collini finally had to threaten Hubert Turnour with the police court: this seemed to have calmed the young man’s nerves somewhat, for he kept quite quiet after that, ceased to call on Mrs. Brackenbury, and subsequently sent the future Countess a wedding present.

“When the Count and Countess Collini, accompanied by Mrs. Brackenbury, arrived at the Lord Warden, Alice found a letter awaiting her there. It was from Hubert Turnour. In it he begged for forgiveness for all the annoyance he had caused her, hoped that she would always look upon him as a friend, and finally expressed a strong desire to see her once more before her departure for abroad, saying that he would be in Dover either this same day or the next, and would give himself the pleasure of calling upon her and her husband.

“Effectively at about eight o’clock, when the wedding party was just sitting down to dinner, Hubert Turnour was announced. Every one was most cordial to him, agreeing to let bygones be bygones: the Count, especially, was most genial and pleasant towards his former rival, and insisted upon his staying and dining with them.

“Later on in the evening, Hubert Turnour took an affectionate leave of the ladies, Count Collini offering to walk back with him to the Grand Hotel, where he was staying. The two men went out together, and—well! you know the rest!—for that was the last the young Countess Collini ever saw of her husband. He disappeared as effectually, as completely, as if the sea had swallowed him up.

“‘And so it had,’ say the public,” continued the man in the corner, after a slight pause, “that delicious, short-sighted, irresponsible public is wondering, to this day, why Hubert Turnour was not hung for the murder of that Count Collini.”

“Well! and why wasn’t he?” I retorted.

“For the very simple reason,” he replied, “that in this country you cannot hang a man for murder unless there is proof positive that a murder has been committed. Now, there was absolutely no proof that the Count was murdered at all. What happened was this: the Countess Collini and Mrs. Brackenbury became anxious as time went on and the Count did not return. One o’clock, then two in the morning, and their anxiety became positive alarm. At last, as Alice was verging on hysterics, Mrs. Brackenbury, in spite of the lateness of the hour, went round to the police station.

“It was, of course, too late to do anything in the middle of the night; the constable on duty tried to reassure the unfortunate lady, and promised to send word round to the Lord Warden at the earliest possible opportunity in the morning.

“Mrs. Brackenbury went back with a heavy heart. No doubt Mr. Turnour’s sensible letters from Reading recurred to her mind. She had already ascertained from the distracted bride that the Count had taken the strange precaution to keep in his own pocket-book the £80,000, now converted into French and Italian banknotes, and Mrs. Brackenbury feared not so much that he had met with some accident, but that he had absconded with the whole of his girl-wife’s fortune.

“The next morning brought but scanty news. No one answering to the Count’s description had met with an accident during the night, or been conveyed to a hospital, and no one answering his description had crossed over to Calais or Ostend by the night boats. Moreover, Hubert Turnour, who presumably had last been in Count Collini’s company, had left Dover for town by the boat train at 1.50 a.m.

“Then the search began in earnest after the missing man, and primarily Hubert Turnour was subjected to the closest and most searching cross-examination, by one of the most able men on our detective staff, Inspector Macpherson.

“Hubert Turnour’s story was briefly this: He had strolled about on the parade with Count Collini for a while. It was a very blustery night, the wind blowing a regular gale, and the sea was rolling gigantic waves, which looked magnificent, as there was brilliant moonlight. ‘Soon after ten o’clock,’ he continued, ‘the Count and I went back to the Grand Hotel, and we had whiskies and sodas up in my room, and a bit of a chat until past eleven o’clock. Then he said good-night and went off.’

“‘You saw him down to the hall, of course?’ asked the detective.

“‘No, I did not,’ replied Hubert Turnour. ‘I had a few letters to write, and meant to catch the 1.50 a.m. back to town.’

“‘How long were you in Dover altogether?’ asked Macpherson carelessly.

“‘Only a few hours. I came down in the afternoon.’

“‘Strange, is it not, that you should have taken a room with a private sitting-room at an expensive hotel, just for those few hours?’

“‘Not at all. I originally meant to stay longer. And my expenses are nobody’s business, I take it,’ replied Hubert Turnour, with some show of temper. ‘Anyway,’ he added impatiently, after a while, ‘if you choose to disbelieve me, you can make inquiries at the hotel, and ascertain if I have told the truth.’

“Undoubtedly he had spoken the truth; at any rate, to that extent. Inquiries at the Grand Hotel went to prove that he had arrived there in the early part of the afternoon, had engaged a couple of rooms, and then gone out. Soon after ten o’clock in the evening he came in, accompanied by a gentleman, whose description, as given by three witnesses, _employés_ of the hotel, who saw him, corresponded exactly with that of the Count.

“Together the two gentlemen went up to Mr. Hubert Turnour’s rooms, and at half-past ten they ordered whisky to be taken up to them. But at this point all trace of Count Collini had completely vanished. The passengers arriving by the 10.49 boat train, and who had elected to spend the night in Dover, owing to the gale, had crowded up and filled the hall.

“No one saw Count Collini leave the Grand Hotel. But Mr. Hubert Turnour came down into the hall at about half-past eleven. He said he would be leaving by the 1.50 a.m. boat train for town, but would walk round to the station as he only had a small bag with him. He paid his account, then waited in the coffee-room until it was time to go.

“And there the matter has remained. Mrs. Brackenbury has spent half her own fortune in trying to trace the missing man. She has remained perfectly convinced that he slipped across the Channel, taking Alice Checkfield’s money with him. But, as you know, at all ports of call on the South Coast, detectives are perpetually on the watch. The Count was a man of peculiar appearance, and there is no doubt that no one answering to his description crossed over to France or Belgium that night. By the following morning the detectives on both sides of the Channel were on the alert. There is no disguise that would have held good. If the Count had tried to cross over, he would have been spotted either on board or on landing; and we may take it as an absolute and positive certainty that he did not cross the Channel.

“He remained in England, but in that case, where is he? You would be the first to admit that, with the whole of our detective staff at his heels, it seems incredible that a man of the Count’s singular appearance could hide himself so completely as to baffle detection. Moreover, the question at once arises, that if he did not cross over to France or Belgium, what in the world did he do with the money? What was the use of disappearing and living the life of a hunted beast hiding for his life, with £80,000 worth of foreign money, which was practically useless to him?

“Now, I told you from the first,” concluded the man in the corner, with a dry chuckle, “that this strange episode contained no sensational incident, nor dramatic inquest or criminal procedure. Merely the complete, total disappearance, one may almost call it extinction, of a striking-looking man, in the midst of our vaunted civilisation, and in spite of the untiring energy and constant watch of a whole staff of able men.”