Austin, who had imparted to him the startling newsin a few words.
He bent over the quiet form, murmuring as he did so: "He is dressed inMr Monkton's clothes, certainly. I might have been deceived at thefirst glance myself."
He unbuttoned the waistcoat and shirt, and laid his stethoscope on thechest of the inanimate body.
"Dead!" he said briefly, when he had made his examination. "One cannot,of course, at present tell the cause of death, although the appearancespoint to heart-failure."
Sheila looked up at him, her lovely eyes heavy with grief andforeboding.
"He spoke a little before you came in," she said. "He seemed to uttertwo names, Molyneux and Mulliner. He repeated them three times."
The kindly old doctor who had brought her into the world looked at herwith compassionate eyes. "The part he bore in this mystery, whether hewas a victim or accomplice, will never be revealed by him. He must havebeen near death when he was put into that taxi. I suppose you did notnotice the number?"
No, neither Grant nor Austin had thought of it. They had been too muchperturbed at the time.
"Well, I have no doubt the driver can be found. Now I must telephonefor the police, and have the body removed."
He drew young Wingate aside for a moment. "You say you have inquired atthe House of Commons. Have you rung up Monkton's clubs? He has onlytwo. No; well, better do so. It is a forlorn hope; I knew the man sowell. He would never keep Sheila waiting like this if he were withmeans of communication. There has been foul play--we can draw no otherconclusion."
It was the one Wingate had drawn himself, and he quite agreed it was aforlorn hope. Still, he would make sure. He rang up the Travellers'and the Carlton. The answer was the same from both places. Mr Monktonhad not been at either club since the previous day.
The police arrived in due course, and bore away the body of the man whowore the clothes of the well-known and popular Cabinet Minister.
And, at their heels, came the inspector of the division, accompanied byMr Smeaton, the famous detective, one of the pillars of Scotland Yard,and the terror of every criminal.
Smeaton was a self-made man, risen from the ranks, but he had themanners of a gentleman and a diplomatist. He bowed gravely to thepale-faced girl, who was so bravely keeping back her tears. With Austinhe had a slight acquaintance.
"I am more than grieved to distress you at such a time. Miss Monkton,but the sooner we get on the track of this mystery the better. Will youtell me, as briefly as you like, and in your own time, what you know ofyour father's habits?"
In tones that broke now and then from her deep emotion, Sheila impartedthe information he asked for. She laid especial emphasis on the factthat, before leaving home in the evening, he outlined to her theprogramme of his movements. If anything happened that altered his planshe invariably telephoned to her, or sent a letter by special messenger.
The keen-eyed detective listened attentively to her recital.
"Can you recall any occasion on which he failed to notify you?" he askedwhen she had finished.
"No," she answered firmly. Then she recollected. "Stay! There was oneoccasion. He was walking home from the House on a foggy night, and wasknocked down by a taxi, and slightly injured. They took him to ahospital, and I was telephoned from there, and went to him."
A gleam of hope shone in Austin's eyes.
"We never thought of that."
The great detective shook his head.
"But _we_ thought of it, Mr Wingate. My friend here has had everyhospital in the radius rung up. No solution there."
There was silence for a long time. It seemed that the last hope hadvanished. Smeaton stood for a long time lost in thought. Then heroused himself from his reverie.
"It's no use blinking the fact that we are confronted with a more thanusually difficult case," he said, at length. "Still, it is our businessto solve problems, and we shall put our keenest wits to work. I wish itwere possible, for Miss Monkton's sake, to keep it from the Press."
"But would that be impossible?" cried Wingate.
"I fear so. If a little servant-maid disappears from her nativevillage, the newspaper-men get hold of it in twenty-four hours. Here,instead of an obscure little domestic, you have a man, popular,well-known to half the population of England, whose portrait has been inevery illustrated paper in the three Kingdoms. I fear it would beimpossible. But I will do my best. The Home Secretary may give certaininstructions in this case."
Then turning to Sheila he said:
"Good-night, Miss Monkton. Rely upon it, we will leave no stoneunturned to find your father, and bring him back to you."
He was gone with those comforting words. But with his departure, hopeseemed to die away, and Sheila was left to confront the misery of thepresent.
The faithful Grant, who had been hovering in the background, cameforward, and spoke to her in the coaxing tone he had used when she was achild.
"Now, Miss Sheila, you must go and rest."
"Oh, no!" she cried wildly. "What is the use of resting? I could notsleep. I can never rest until father comes back to me." She broke intoa low wail of despair.
Grant looked at Wingate, with a glance that implored him to use hisinfluence. The faithful old man feared for her reason.
"Sheila, Grant is right," said Austin gravely. "You must rest, even ifyou cannot sleep. You will need all your strength for to-morrow,perhaps for many days yet, before we get to the heart of this mystery.Let the servants go back to bed. Grant and I will wait through thenight, in case good news may come to us."
There were times when, as the old butler remembered, she had been a verywilful Sheila, but she showed no signs of wilfulness now. The gravetones and words of Austin moved her to obedience.
"I will do as you tell me," she said in a hushed and broken voice. "Iwill go and rest--not to sleep, till I have news of my darling father."
Through the weary hours of the night, the two men watched and dozed byturns, waiting in the vain hope of word or sign of Reginald Monkton.
None came, and in the early morning Sheila stole down and joined them.Her bearing was more composed, and she had washed away the traces of hertears.
"I intend to be very brave," she told them. "I have roused the maids,and I am going to give you breakfast directly, after your long vigil."
Impulsively she stretched out a hand to each, the youthful lover and theaged servitor. "You are both dear, good friends, and my father willthank you for your care when he comes back to me."
Moved by a common impulse the two men, the young and the old, bent andimprinted a reverent kiss on the slender hands she extended to them.
It was a moment of exquisite pathos, the fair, slim girl, resplendentyesterday in the full promise of her youth and beauty; to-day strickenwith grief and consumed with the direst forebodings of the fate of abeloved father.
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE MAN WHO KNEW.
Three days had gone by, and the mystery of Reginald Monkton'sdisappearance remained as insoluble as ever. Well, it might be so,since there did not seem a single clue, with the exception of the namemuttered by the dying man, which at first had sounded like Molyneux, andafterwards like Mulliner. Neither Sheila nor Grant, who had listened tothose faint sounds issuing from the dying lips, could be certain whichof the two was correct.
Wingate had seen Smeaton twice, and that astute person assured him thatthe keenest brains at Scotland Yard were working on the case. But hewas very reticent, and from his manner the young man was forced to drawthe conclusion that the prospects of success were very slight.
If it had been simply a case of disappearance, uncomplicated by othercircumstances, many theories could have been formed. There were plentyof instances of men whose reason had become temporarily unhinged, andwho had lost consciousness of their own identity.
Again, men have disappeared voluntarily because they have beenthreatened with exposure of some shameful secret of the past, and willwillingl
y pay the penalty of separation from their own kith and kin toavoid it.
But no such theories seemed tenable in this instance. Monkton's life,in the opinion of all who knew him, had been a well-ordered andblameless one. He had been a devoted husband; and he was a devotedfather, wrapped up in his charming daughter, the sole legacy of thathappy marriage.
In the case of such a man, with so stainless a record, it wasunthinkable that anything could leap to light from the past which couldshame him to such an extent that he would, of his own act, abandon hisoffice, and isolate himself from his child.
Even granting such an hypothesis for a moment, and brushing aside allthe evidences of his past life and all the knowledge of him gainedthrough years by his relatives and intimate friends, how did such atheory fit in with the appearance on the scene of the stranger now dead?
"You fear the
The Stolen Statesman: Being the Story of a Hushed Up Mystery Page 5