The Mysterious Mr. Miller

by William Le Queux

lieutenant coming from his friend,Blenkap's room, ten minutes before my return with the doctor. The manhad left the main door of the hotel ajar in order to admit us, and itwas evident that by that means the thief got away unnoticed.

  The robbery had been an ingenious and audacious one, and showed theclever cunning of a master-hand.

  As you have, no doubt, already guessed, the man who so cleverly got holdof Blenkap's money, and who had escaped so swiftly, I now recognised asthe affable Lieutenant Shacklock, the intimate friend and guest of JamesHarding Miller.

  Was not his presence in that house sufficient to convince me that whathad been suspected of Miller was more than a mere surmise? It had beendeclared that Lucie's father, though a county gentleman, was also headof the most daring association of criminals in Europe. It seemed to methat Gordon-Wright, alias Shacklock, was one of his ingeniouslieutenants whom he was entertaining in his cosy retreat--planning somenew scheme perhaps--and who was, at the same time, an ardent admirer ofthe beautiful girl whose unhappiness and deadly peril was so great amystery.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  PLIGHT AND PURSUIT.

  I left the Manor with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with asickening pain. I moved down the road without quite well knowing whereI went.

  My well-beloved had again escaped me. It was my duty to follow her, tolearn the truth, to save her--my duty to her, as well as to myself.

  Mystery followed upon the back of mystery. In those brief days, sincethe advent of the fugitive Italian at Shepherd's Bush, I had becomeenmeshed in a veritable web of entangled events which seemed to growmore extraordinary and more inexplicable every hour.

  My meeting with the man Shacklock proved, beyond doubt, the source ofMr Miller's income. Finding Lucie's father such an affable andgentlemanly man, I had entirely refused to credit Sammy's story.Nevertheless, Lucie herself had corroborated it, inasmuch as she haddescribed her love at Enghien and its tragic sequel; while I, myself,had recognised in Gordon-Wright the clever international thief who haddecamped with Blenkap's valuables. And this man was actually Miller'smost intimate friend!

  To Lucie I made no mention of my intention, but half an hour later I wasin a dogcart hired from the "Lion," driving at a furious pace over theBallard Down into Swanage, where, at the hotel I had previously visitedon my arrival, I inquired for Miss Murray.

  "The lady left with a party in a motor-car an hour ago," was the replyof the young person in black satin, whose duty appeared to be to keepthe books and order about the waiters.

  "Gone!" I ejaculated. "Where?"

  "Well, when people go off in a car we don't generally know theirdestination. Motor-cars are so very uncertain, you see."

  "Did they arrive here on the car?" I inquired eagerly. "No. MrMurray and his daughter came over by boat from Bournemouth. The motorarrived last night with a gentleman, a lady and the chauffeur."

  "Pardon me," exclaimed a man's voice at my elbow--the hotel proprietorwho had overheard all our conversation. "Are you a detective?" heasked, in a rather low, confidential tone.

  "No. Why?"

  "Well--" he hesitated. "Only because there seemed to be somethingrather funny about Mr Murray--that's all."

  "Something funny about him? How?"

  "Well, from the moment he came here, till the moment he went away, henever came out of his room. And when he did, he was wearing amotor-coat with the collar turned up around his chin and goggles whichentirely disguised him."

  "Not at all a suspicious circumstance, surely?" I remarked, thoughinwardly much interested. "On these white dusty roads every one mustwear goggles."

  "Of course. But when people come to Swanage they generally go out andlook about the town and the bay. Mr Murray, however, shut himself upand saw nobody, while his daughter drove over to Studland, where shestayed the night and returned about an hour before the motor started."

  "I'm going to follow that motor. I have a reason," I said. "Don't youthink the chauffeur might have told one of the stable-hands orgarage-men--if you have a garage here--as to his destination? There's akind of freemasonry among chauffeurs, by which all of them know eachother's roads."

  "I'll see," replied the obliging proprietor. "Come with me."

  He conducted me through to the back of the house, where a largecourtyard had been recently converted into a garage. There were severalcars in the coach-houses around, while in the centre of the yard aclean-shaven young man was turning a hose upon a dark red 16-horse"Fiat."

  "Gibbs, where has that blue car gone to this morning--the one that leftan hour ago?"

  "The 40 `Mercedes,' sir? Gone to some place beyond Exeter, sir.They're on a big tour."

  "You don't know the name of the place?" I asked the man anxiously.

  "The chauffeur did tell me, but it was a funny name, an' I'veforgotten."

  "They've gone direct to Exeter, in any case?"

  "Yes--by Dorchester, Chard and Honiton. 'E asked me about the road."

  "How far is it to Exeter?"

  "About seventy-eight or eighty miles."

  "I could get there by train before they arrived," I remarked.

  "Ah! I doubt it, sir," was the man's reply. "That's a good car they'vegot, and if you went by train you'd 'ave to go right up to Yeovil.They'd be through Exeter long before you got there."

  "That's so," remarked the hotel proprietor. "From here to Exeter byrail is a long cross-country journey."

  "Then could I get a car? Is any one of these for hire?"

  "This one 'ere belongs to Saunders, down in the town. 'E lets it outsometimes," replied Gibbs, indicating the red car he had been cleaning.

  "Then I'll have it--and you'll drive me, eh? We must overtake them."

  "Very good, sir," replied the man, and then I returned to the hotel totelephone to the owner and fix the price.

  Gibbs quickly filled the tank with petrol, poured water into theradiator, examined the tyres, pumping one that he found a little down;then he washed himself, put on his leather jacket and cap, and mountedto the wheel.

  A quarter of an hour after I had first entered the garage I was sittingat the chauffeur's side as the car slowly made its way up the crookedquaint old-fashioned main street of Swanage and out on the big whiteroad that ran up hill and down valley, the picturesque highway toDorchester. Up to Corfe Castle the way was nearly all uphill, but the"Fiat" ran splendidly, and in the narrow winding road where we met manypleasure parties in _chars-a-banc_ Gibbs quickly showed himself acompetent driver.

  Seldom he blew his horn, yet he handled the car with a care that at onceconvinced me that he was a reliable chauffeur.

  As we skirted the great mound upon which stood the cyclopean walls ofCorfe, magnificent relics of the bygone feudal age, and ran again out ofthe little village and up on to Purbeck Hill, he handed me a pair ofgoggles, saying:--

  "You'd better have these, sir. We're going through a lot of dustpresently, and we've a dead head-wind."

  I put them on, and as I did so he increased the speed, remarking:--

  "Fortunately, there ain't any police traps 'ere. We aren't like theyare in Surrey. I got fined a fiver at Guildford a month ago, an' I wasonly goin' fourteen miles an 'our. But it ain't any good defendin'.The police are always in the right," he added, with a sigh.

  "Do you think that we shall overtake them?" I inquired anxiously, forat all hazards I wanted to see and speak again with Ella. What she hadtold me excited my curiosity and aroused my determination that sheshould make no further self-sacrifice.

  "It all depends," was his vague answer. "They've got a `forty,' youknow, an' can do these hills much better than we can. But they may geta puncture or a tyre-burst."

  "But as to speed. They won't go quicker than we are travelling?" Iinquired.

  "Not if they don't want to get 'ad up," he grinned, and I thenrecognised that we were on a wide flat road, travelling at nearly fortymiles an hour, and raising a perfect wall of dust behind us. "There'sone or two
level-crossings, too, that may delay 'em."

  "And us also, eh?"

  "Perhaps," he said. "But what I'm going to do is to go at a greaterspeed than they've gone. We've got nearly an hour and a half to makeup, by some means or other."

  And lowering his head he set his shoulders in his seat and stillincreased the speed until we flew at a pace such as I had never beforetravelled in any motor-car. The engines ticked away with rhythmicalmusic, the machinery hummed