Loveday read aloud this report, with her feet on the fender of the Lynch Court office.
“Accurate, as far as it goes,” she said, as she laid down the paper.
“But we want to know a little more,” said Mr. Dyer. “In the first place, I would like to know what it was that diverted your suspicions from the unfortunate Sisters?”
“The way in which they handled the children,” answered Loveday promptly. “I have seen female criminals of all kinds handling children, and I have noticed that although they may occasionally—even this is rare—treat them with a certain rough sort of kindness, of tenderness they are utterly incapable. Now Sister Monica, I must admit, is not pleasant to look at; at the same time, there was something absolutely beautiful in the way in which she lifted the little cripple out of the cart, put his tiny thin hand round her neck, and carried him into the house. By-the-way I would like to ask some rapid physiognolmist how he would account for Sister Monica’s repulsiveness of feature as contrasted with young Lee’s undoubted good looks—heredity, in this case, throws no light on the matter.”
“Another question,” said Mr. Dyer, not paying much heed to Loveday’s digression: “how was it you transferred your suspicions to John Murray?”
“I did not do so immediately, although at the very first it had struck me as odd that he should be so anxious to do the work of the police for them. The chief thing I noticed concerning Murray, on the first and only occasion on which I saw him, was that he had had an accident with his bicycle, for in the right-hand corner of his lamp-glass there was a tiny star, and the lamp itself had a dent on the same side, had also lost its hook, and was fastened to the machine by a bit of electric fuse. The next morning as I was walking up the hill towards Northfield, I was accosted by a young man mounted on that self-same bicycle—not a doubt of it—star in glass, dent, fuse, all three.”
“Ah, that sounded an important keynote, and led you to connect Murray and the younger Lee immediately.”
“It did, and, of course, also at once gave the lie to his statement that he was a stranger in the place, and confirmed my opinion that there was nothing of the north-countryman in his accent. Other details in his manner and appearance gave rise to other suspicions. For instance, he called himself a press reporter by profession, and his hands were coarse and grimy as only a mechanic’s could be. He said he was a bit of a literary man, but the Tennyson that showed so obtrusively from his pocket was new, and in parts uncut, and totally unlike the well-thumbed volume of the literary student. Finally, when he tried and failed to put my latch-key into his waistcoat pocket, I saw the reason lay in the fact that the pocket was already occupied by a soft coil of electric fuse, the end of which protruded. Now, an electric fuse is what an electrical engineer might almost unconsciously carry about with him, it is so essential a part of his working tools, but it is a thing that a literary man or a press reporter could have no possible use for.”
“Exactly, exactly. And it was no doubt, that bit of electric fuse that turned your thoughts to the one house in the neighbourhood lighted by electricity, and suggested to your mind the possibility of electrical engineers turning their talents to account in that direction. Now, will you tell me, what, at that stage of your day’s work, induced you to wire to Gunning that you would bring your invisible-ink bottle into use?”
“That was simply a matter or precaution; it did not compel me to the use of invisible ink, if I saw other safe methods of communication. I felt myself being hemmed in on all sides with spies, and I could not tell what emergency might arise. I don’t think I have ever had a more difficult game to play. As I walked and talked with the young fellow up the hill, it became clear to me that if I wished to do my work I must lull the suspicions of the gang, and seem to walk into their trap. I saw by the persistent way in which Wootton Hall was forced on my notice that it was wished to fix my suspicions there. I accordingly, to all appearance, did so, and allowed the fellows to think they were making a fool of me.”
“Ha! ha! Capital that—the biter bit, with a vengeance! Splendid idea to make that young rascal himself deliver the letter that was to land him and his pals in jail. And he all the time laughing in his sleeve and thinking what a fool he was making of you! Ha, ha, ha!” And Mr. Dyer made the office ring again with his merriment.
“The only person one is at all sorry for in this affair is poor little Sister Anna,” said Loveday pityingly; “and yet, perhaps, all things considered, after her sorry experience of life, she may not be so badly placed in a Sisterhood where practical Christianity—not religious hysterics—is the one and only rule of the order.”
A PRINCESS’S VENGEANCE
“The girl is young, pretty, friendless and a foreigner, you say, and has disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened to receive her,” said Miss Brooke, making a résumé of the facts that Mr. Dyer had been relating to her. “Now, will you tell me why two days were allowed to elapse before the police were communicated with?”
“Mrs. Druce, the lady to whom Lucie Cunier acted as amanuensis,” answered Mr. Dyer, “took the matter very calmly at first and said she felt sure that the girl would write to her in a day or so, explaining her extraordinary conduct. Major Druce, her son, the gentleman who came to me this morning, was away from home, on a visit, when the girl took flight. Immediately on his return, however, he communicated the fullest particulars to the police.”
“They do not seem to have taken up the case very heartily at Scotland Yard.”
“No, they have as good as dropped it. They advised Major Druce to place the matter in my hands, saying that they considered it a case for private rather than police investigation.”
“I wonder what made them come to that conclusion.”
“I think I can tell you, although the Major seemed quite at a loss on the matter. It seems he had a photograph of the missing girl, which he kept in a drawer of his writing-table. (By-the-way, I think the young man is a good deal ‘gone’ on this Mdlle. Cunier, in spite of his engagement to another lady.) Well, this portrait he naturally thought would be most useful in helping to trace the girl, and he went to his drawer for it, intending to take it with him to Scotland Yard. To his astonishment, however, it was nowhere to be seen, and, although he at once instituted a rigorous search, and questioned his mother and the servants, one and all, on the matter, it was all to no purpose.”
Loveday thought for a moment.
“Well, of course,” she said presently “that photograph must have been stolen by someone in the house, and, equally of course, that someone must know more on the matter than he or she cares to avow, and, most probably, has some interest in throwing obstacles in the way of tracing the girl. At the same time, however, the fact in no way disproves the possibility that a crime, and a very black one, may underlie the girl’s disappearance.”
“The Major himself appears confident that a crime of some sort has been committed, and he grew very excited and a little mixed in his statements more than once just now.”
“What sort of woman is the Major’s mother?”
“Mrs. Druce? She is rather a well-known personage in certain sets. Her husband died about ten years ago, and since his death she has posed as promoter and propagandist of all sorts of benevolent, though occasionally somewhat visionary ideas; theatrical missions, magic-lantern and playing cards missions, societies for providing perpetual music for the sick poor, for supplying cabmen with comforters, and a hundred other similar schemes have in turn occupied her attention. Her house is a rendezvous for faddists of every description. The latest fad, however, seems to have put all others to flight; it is a scheme for alleviating the condition of ‘our sisters in the East,’ so she puts it in her prospectus; in other words a Harem Mission on somewhat similar, but I suppose broader lines than the old-fashioned Zenana Mission. This Harem Mission has gathered about her a number of Turkish and Egyptian potentates resident in or visiting London, and has thus incidentally brought about the engagement of her son, Major
Druce, with the Princess Dullah-Veih. This Princess is a beauty and an heiress, and although of Turkish parentage, has been brought up under European influence in Cairo.”
“Is anything known of the antecedents of Mdlle. Cunier?”
“Very little. She came to Mrs. Druce from a certain Lady Gwynne, who had brought her to England from an orphanage for the daughters of jewellers and watchmakers at Echallets, in Geneva. Lady Gwynne intended to make her governess to her young children, but when she saw that the girl’s good looks had attracted her husband’s attention, she thought better of it, and suggested to Mrs. Druce that Mademoiselle might be useful to her in conducting her foreign correspondence. Mrs. Druce accordingly engaged the young lady to act as her secretary and amanuensis, and appears, on the whole, to have taken to the girl, and to have been on a pleasant, friendly footing with her. I wonder if the Princess Dullah-Veih was on an equally pleasant footing with her when she saw, as no doubt she did, the attention she received at the Major’s hands.” (Mr. Dyer shrugged his shoulders.) “The Major’s suspicions do not point in that direction, in spite of the fact which I elicited from him by judicious questioning, that the Princess has a violent and jealous temper, and has at times made his life a burden to him. His suspicions centre solely upon a certain Hafiz Cassimi, son of the Turkish-Egyptian banker of that name. It was at the house of these Cassimis that the Major first met the Princess, and he states that she and young Cassimi are like brother and sister to each other. He says that this young man has had the run of his mother’s house and made himself very much at home in it for the past three weeks, ever since, in fact, the Princess came to stay with Mrs. Druce, in order to be initiated into the mysteries of English family life. Hafiz Cassimi, according to the Major’s account, fell desperately in love with the little Swiss girl almost at first sight and pestered her with his attentions, and off and on there appear to have passed hot words between the two young men.”
“One could scarcely expect a princess with Eastern blood in her veins to be a quiet and passive spectator to such a drama of cross-purposes.”
“Scarcely. The Major, perhaps, hardly takes the Princess sufficiently into his reckoning. According to him, young Cassimi is a thorough-going Iago, and he begs me to concentrate attention entirely on him. Cassimi, he says, has stolen the photograph. Cassimi has inveigled the girl out of the house on some pretext—perhaps out of the country also, and he suggests that it might be as well to communicate with the police at Cairo, with as little delay as possible.”
“And it hasn’t so much as entered his mind that his Princess might have a hand in such a plot as that!”
“Apparently not. I think I told you that Mademoiselle had taken no luggage—not so much as a hand-bag—with her. Nothing, beyond her coat and hat, has disappeared from her wardrobe. Her writing-desk, and, in fact, all her boxes and drawers, have been opened and searched, but no letters or papers of any sort have been found that throw any light upon her movements.”
“At what hour in the day is the girl supposed to have left the house?”
“No one can say for certain. It is conjectured that it was some time in the afternoon of the second of this month—a week ago to-day. It was one of Mrs. Druce’s big reception days, and with a stream of people going and coming, a young lady, more or less, leaving the house would scarcely be noticed.”
“I suppose,” said Loveday, after a moment’s pause, “this Princess Dullah-Veih has something of a history. One does not often get a Turkish princess in London.”
“Yes, she has a history. She is only remotely connected with the present reigning dynasty in Turkey, and I dare say her princess-ship has been made the most of. All the same, however, she has had an altogether exceptional career for an Oriental lady. She was left an orphan at an early age, and was consigned to the guardianship of the elder Cassimi by her relatives. The Cassimis, both father and son, seem to be very advanced and European in their ideas, and by them she was taken to Cairo for her education. About a year ago they ‘brought her out’ in London, where she made the acquaintance of Major Druce. The young man, by-the-way, appears to be rather hot-headed in his love-making, for within six weeks of his introduction to her their engagement was announced. No doubt it had Mrs. Druce’s fullest approval, for knowing her son’s extravagant habits and his numerous debts, it must have been patent to her that a rich wife was a necessity to him. The marriage, I believe, was to have taken place this season; but taking into consideration the young man’s ill-advised attentions to the little Swiss girl, and the fervour he is throwing into the search for her, I should say it was exceedingly doubtful whether—”
“Major Druce, sir, wishes to see you,” said a clerk at that moment, opening the door leading from the outer office.
“Very good; show him in,” said Mr. Dyer. Then he turned to Loveday.
“Of course I have spoken to him about you, and he is very anxious to take you to his mother’s reception this afternoon, so that you may have a look round and—”
He broke off, having to rise and greet Major Druce, who at that moment entered the room.
He was a tall, handsome young fellow of about seven or eight and twenty, “well turned out” from head to foot, moustache waxed, orchid in button-hole, light kid gloves, and patent leather boots. There was assuredly nothing in his appearance to substantiate his statement to Mr. Dyer that he “hadn’t slept a wink all night, that in fact another twenty-four hours of this terrible suspense would send him into his grave.”
Mr. Dyer introduced Miss Brooke, and she expressed her sympathy with him on the painful matter that was filling his thoughts.
“It is very good of you, I’m sure,” he replied, in a slow, soft drawl, not unpleasant to listen to. “My mother receives this afternoon from half past four to half past six, and I shall be very glad if you will allow me to introduce you to the inside of our house, and to the very ill-looking set that we have somehow managed to gather about us.”
“The ill-looking set?”
“Yes; Jews, Turks, heretics and infidels—all there. And they’re on the increase too, that’s the worst of it. Every week a fresh importation from Cairo.”
“Ah, Mrs. Druce is a large-hearted, benevolent woman,” interposed Mr. Dyer; “all nationalities gather within her walls.”
“Was your mother a large-hearted, benevolent woman?” said the young man, turning upon him. “No! well then, thank Providence that she wasn’t; and admit that you know nothing at all on the matter. Miss Brooke,” he continued, turning to Loveday, “I’ve brought round my hansom for you; it’s nearly half past four now, and it’s a good twenty minutes’ drive from here to Portland Place. If you’re ready, I’m at your service.”
Major Druce’s hansom was, like himself, in all respects “well turned out,” and the India rubber tires round its wheels allowed an easy flow of conversation to be kept up during the twenty minutes’ drive from Lynch Court to Portland Place.
The Major led off the talk in frank and easy fashion.
“My mother,” he said, “prides herself on being cosmopolitan in her tastes, and just now we are very cosmopolitan indeed. Even our servants represent divers nationalities; the butler is French, the two footmen Italians, the maids, I believe, are some of them German, some Irish; and I’ve no doubt if you penetrated to the kitchen-quarters, you’d find the staff there composed in part of Scandinavians, in part of South Sea Islanders. The other quarters of the globe you will find fully represented in the drawing-room.”
Loveday had a direct question to ask.
“Are you certain that Mdlle. Cunier had no friends in England?” she said.
“Positive. She hadn’t a friend in the world outside my mother’s four walls, poor child! She told me more than once that she was ‘seule sur la terre.’” He broke off for a moment, as if overcome by a sad memory, then added: “But I’ll put a bullet into him, take my word for it, if she isn’t found within another twenty-four hours. Personally I should prefer settling the brute in t
hat fashion to handing him over to the police.”
His face flushed a deep red, there came a sudden flash to his eye, but for all that, his voice was as soft and slow and unemotional, as though he were talking of nothing more serious than bringing down a partridge.
There fell a brief pause; then Loveday asked another question.
The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective Page 9