The Judge laughed.
‘I’m afraid he had great difficulty in persuading his wife that he had not lost his memory on purpose.’
He rather resented the behaviour of this beautiful girl who deliberately told him fairy tales.
‘Do you know, Miss Clive, I’ve heard a lot of stories of that sort from my friend, Sir Clifford Oakleigh. He believes firmly in the possibility of a dual identity. I fancy he would like to be two people, but I doubt whether even two identities would satisfy him.’
‘He ought surely to be content with being Sir Clifford Oakleigh,’ said Mrs Onslow-Parker, ‘I can imagine no more delightful position than his. Enormously successful, very rich, hugely popular, and unmarried. What does a man want more?’
Harding replied:
‘Clifford wants everything. I don’t think he will ever be satisfied. You see, it is impossible in this world to be Pope of Rome and also Emperor of Germany.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Miss Clive. ‘Sir Clifford Oakleigh is an absolutely contented man…a perfectly contented person.’
‘You know him?’ inquired Harding.
‘Only by reputation,’ she answered quickly, ‘and, of course, I have seen pictures of him. That man must be perfectly happy.’
The Judge interposed:
‘My dear young lady, no man in this world with a gleam of intelligence can be perfectly happy. In every house there is a skeleton in the cupboard: the handsomer the cupboard the more terrible is the skeleton.’
‘I’ll tell you a very curious thing about Clifford,’ said Harding. ‘You know I have known him all his life…pretty well, that is. I knew his people when he was a boy, and I knew him at Oxford. Well, you wouldn’t say there is anything effeminate about him, would you?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ answered the Judge.
‘As a matter of fact,’ continued the barrister,
‘he was intensely athletic at Oxford: good at all games, keen on all sports. And yet he has told me not once, but twenty times, that he always regretted that he wasn’t a woman, for he held that women occupy the best position both in life and in love.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to regret,’ sighed Mrs Onslow-Parker. ‘Being a woman is bad luck. No, it is even worse than that. Being a woman is a curse. Have you ever come across a woman, a sensible woman, not the ordinary ridiculous creature who spends her entire life in talking about appendicitis and kitchen-maids, who would not give her soul to be a man? No, no, there is no fun in being a woman: it is simply bad luck.’
Lashbridge expressed surprise at what Harding had said.
‘You see, Oakleigh is so very fond of women, has had such wonderful success with them, that he must know them well enough to understand that being a woman is not…well, not worth while. You really ought to meet him, Miss Clive. Will you come to lunch with me on Sunday week at my house and I will ask him to meet you?’
‘On Sunday week,’ she reflected. ‘Where are we now? Oh, this is Friday. I’m afraid,’ she said slowly, ‘that I shall be out of town on Sunday week.’
‘Miss Clive,’ interrupted Harding, ‘is always out of town. She has only just returned. By the way, Miss Clive, where have you been to?’
‘I have been staying with friends,’ she answered in a tone that prevented him from pursuing the matter further.
‘Some other day,’ persisted Lashbridge. ‘May I drop you a line?’
‘By all means,’ she smiled.
Harding felt jealous. What did Lashbridge mean by admiring her? It was obvious that he did admire her. And he was a Peer. The barrister scented danger. However, as he put her into her motor-car, he fancied that she returned the pressure of his hand.
In the hall his other guests plied him with questions. Who was Miss Clive? Where did she come from?
But it irritated him considerably to be unable to supply any particulars beyond the fact that she had taken Sir Clifford Oakleigh’s house in Pembroke Street, and that she did not know her landlord to speak to.
CHAPTER XIV
THE EVIDENCE OF NELLIE
ONE evening as Reggie was leaving No. 34 he heard a low whistle, and, on turning round, saw Nellie, the under-housemaid, in the next door area. She was dressed for ‘going out’ and ran rapidly up the steps.
‘Hi, you mister,’ she cried, ‘I want a word with you.’
‘Well, you can’t have it,’ he answered brusquely, ‘I’m busy.’
‘You look it,’ she replied, ‘you look dressed for being busy. I never see such a walking-out kit on any valet as you’ve got. Why, bless my heart,’ she added, as she stared him up and down from the top of his shiny hat to the tips of his brilliant boots,
‘I never see such a toff in all my born days. And we receive good company next door, in spite of the fact that master is only a stockbroker. But missus did come of a good family, and she don’t let us forget it, even when she forgets it herself.’
‘Really, the manners and customs of one’s neighbours are of no particular interest.’
‘Oh, ain’t they?’ she chipped in. ‘The manners and customs of your house axe the talk of every servants’ hall in the street.’
‘I don’t wish to talk about them,’ he said coldly, attempting to close the episode.
But she persisted.
‘I suppose you can walk a yard or two, in spite of your boots,’ she sneered, ‘or perhaps my lord has to take a cab, has he?’
Several times Reggie had noticed that the girl had tried to get into conversation with him. Evidently she had something to say that she obviously would find an opportunity of saying. He was not conceited enough to imagine that she had fallen in love with him, although, in very truth, were he to give her the slightest encouragement, Nellie’s heart would have been at his feet…or anywhere he needed it. Was he not the Prince of Valets? Had he not the softest of all jobs? On the whole, it would be better to let her say what she had to say and have done with it.
‘I’m in a great hurry, my dear young lady. But as you seem anxious to have a talk I can spare you a few minutes.’
‘My word!’ she exclaimed, ‘this is the proudest day of my life. The footman at No. 37 saw us through the dining-room blinds. It will be all over the street that you and me are walking out.’
She threw a leering glance up at his face. ‘I hope I haven’t turned your head.’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘what have you got to say?’
‘I take an interest in you,’ she began. ‘Oh, no, mister, not in you only so much as in No. 34.’
‘No. 34?’ he queried.
‘No. 34 King Street,’ she said definitely. ‘No. 34 King Street, May fair. Everything that goes on in No. 34 King Street interests me and interests all the other girls. You’ve got hold of the rummest job I’ve ever heard of.’
‘What,’ he asked angrily, ‘has No. 34 King Street got to do with you?’
‘Rightly speaking,’ she replied, ‘it ain’t got nothing to do with me. But, as a human being and not a cabbage, I naturally take an interest in next door. It wouldn’t be neighbourly not to.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about being neighbourly,’ said Reggie. ‘You do your duty in your menial capacity…’
She hitched up her face at the words ‘menial capacity.’
‘Menial or no menial,’ she snapped, ‘it’s better than being valet to a mystery. “The Mayfair Mystery” we call No. 34.’
Reggie tried to awe her by stating sententiously:
‘You are not good at giving nicknames above your station. You’ve been reading a penny novelette; that’s what you’ve been doing.’
She was quick in her retort:
‘Your home beats any penny novelette I’ve ever struck. What do you make of a gentleman—Sir Clifford Oakleigh, oh, yes, I know his name; there ain’t so many Sir Cliffords about but what by putting two and two together one can find out who he is—well, what do you make of a gentleman who keeps only one servant, and that servant himself a gentleman, or I don’t k
now what I’m talking about, which I do, and has a charwoman in by the day, and sometimes never leaves the house for a week?’
She stopped to take breath. Then she continued:
‘What do you make of a gentleman who sometimes comes in when he has never gone out?’
Reggie stared at her in astonishment.
‘Why the dickens don’t you attend to your own business?’ he inquired. His eyes nervously sought the faces of the passers-by. It would be an awkward thing if anybody saw him walking out with a palpable housemaid.
That was what he was doing…‘walking out’.
‘Oh, I intend to mind my own business right enough,’ she replied, ‘and this may be business that will mean money for little Nellie, and a pretty tidy sum. Now, look here,’ she added, fumbling with a small imitation Russian leather bag which she carried in her hand. She produced a newspaper cutting. ‘Come here and look at this.’
Standing under a lamp in Mount Street she held up a somewhat crude woodcut representing a young girl in spectacles.
‘Ever seen her?’ she asked, looking curiously at Reggie.
His face was a blank.
‘Never,’ he answered, ‘and I don’t know that I should pay any very large sum for the privilege.’
‘Give over,’ she said, nudging him, a process which he resented.
‘Well, I’ve seen her,’ she continued very firmly.
‘My dear girl,’ he answered, shrugging his shoulders, ‘I can’t help your troubles.’
‘There’s no trouble about this, leastways, not for me. This is a stroke of good luck for me. There’s £50 offered for any information about this young girl. This young girl is Miss Mingey, what’s disappeared.’
‘That’s just the sort of girl who might disappear and whose disappearance wouldn’t be regretted. I have rarely seen such an unnecessary-looking girl in my life.’
‘Oh, chuck it,’ she rejoined, in no little irritation. ‘This cutting is out of the Weekly Dispatch of last Sunday, and there is £50 reward offered for any information leading to the discovery of this Miss Mingey. Well,’ she continued impressively, ‘I’ve seen her, and, what is more, so have you. At any rate, she has been in No. 34.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘None o’ your lip. I see her coming out. She was the creature who helped your governor into a four-wheeler the night he was toxy.’
‘I really can’t listen to any more of this rubbish.’
‘It’s not rubbish,’ she cried indignantly, ‘it’s gospel truth, and I can swear to it. And if you was not such a fool of a gent who has sunk down, no doubt owing to being a disgrace to his people or the fool of the family or what not, you would say to me, “Nellie,” you would say, “come into the Running Footman and have a glass of fruity port, and we’ll talk things over.” That’s what you’d say.’
‘I can’t imagine,’ he replied, in a chilly tone, ‘my making any such proposition.’
‘Oh, you’re a chump-head,’ she sneered, ‘you know more about it than I do, and if we was to go to the police-station together we could bust up the mystery in No. 34 and get fifty of the brightest and best to divide.’
He did not know what manner to assume. He impersonated the heroic servant.
‘If there was anything I knew against my governor, do you think that I should give him away?’
‘Oh, stop it, mister. You’re fresh and soft, aren’t you!’
He pleaded guilty.
‘Well, I’m not. Look here, come into the Running Footman and stand me a glass of fruity port, and we’ll talk a bit.’
There was something in the girl’s demeanour that convinced him of her earnestness. She evidently believed that the picture in the Weekly Dispatch represented the girl—or creature, as she had called her—who had helped Clifford into the four-wheeler on the night of the mysterious occurrence.
Hastily looking up and down the street to see that there was no one of his acquaintance in the neighbourhood, he took her by the arm and drew her into the saloon bar of the Running Footman. There he gave her a glass of fruity port. So pleased was she with its fruitiness that she consumed another. The wine made her talkative, and he hoped for further details. He plied her with all sorts of questions and affected to disbelieve her tale.
‘Look here, my girl,’ he said, ‘how can you swear that these two are one and the same? One dowdy girl in spectacles looks very much like another dowdy girl in spectacles.’
Nellie nodded her head.
‘Oh, no, that’s just it. She wasn’t wearing spectacles when she put him into the cab. It makes it all the more remarkable, doesn’t it, my recognising her?’
‘Very much more remarkable. So remarkable that it’s almost incredible.’
Then suddenly he remembered the pair of woman’s spectacles that Harding had discovered on the mantelpiece.
He whistled softly to himself.
‘That’s curious,’ he said, ‘devilish curious.’
CHAPTER XV
INSPECTOR JOHNSON
AS the result of his interview with Nellie, Reggie was more puzzled than ever. He had thought of going to Harding and consulting him on the matter, but on reflection it seemed to him that the wisest course would be to place the whole story before Clifford Oakleigh.
He walked down to Arthur’s, spent an hour or two playing Bridge, and then returned to King Street.
Soon after his arrival, he heard the eminent physician’s key in the door. He went out into the hall to receive him.
‘May I have a few words with you, sir?’
‘Come into the sitting-room.’ Clifford smiled.
‘You’re not going to give notice, I hope?’
‘No, sir, I’m not going to give notice, but I have just heard something that I think you ought to know.’
Clifford shot a keen glance at him.
‘Who did you hear it from?’
‘From Nellie, the under-housemaid next door.’ His master smiled.
‘Ah, Pardell, Pardell,’ he said with mock gravity,
‘I can’t have you flirting with the neighbours’ servants. What is it?’
Reggie told him the story of his meeting with Nellie, the episode of the fruity port and the account which she had given of the mysterious visitor.
The other listened attentively. Then he suddenly dropped, as he very often did, the relation of master and servant.
‘Sit down, old fellow,’ he said.
The two sat opposite one another by the fireside.
Reggie lighted a cigarette and began.
‘The whole thing’s devilish odd…’
‘I admit that. But the precise degree of oddity that the affair has reached would surprise even you. I don’t say it’s the oddest thing that has ever occurred. But it’s one of the oddest. That I can say without improper pride.’
‘My dear chap,’ replied Reggie, ‘the affair is so odd that it’s on the point of being brought to the notice of the police. You see, this is a very peculiar position for me. You are doing something extraordinary. You always were an extraordinary man, and obviously I seem to be mixed up in it. But what am I mixed up in? That’s what I want to know.’
Very gravely the other replied.
‘That’s what you never will know. It’s not necessary for you to know it.’
‘But look here, my dear Clifford, of course, you and I have always been pals, and you’ve given me a devilish good job over this matter. But I think I’m entitled to some information as to what the game is. Here are you, one of the leading physicians of the day. You build a house in King Street; you furnish a small portion of it. You employ, I think I may say without undue conceit, a gentleman, at any rate an ex-gentleman, to act as your valet. You keep no other servant in the house. You vanish mysteriously for three days. You take away no clothes. You, the inventor of “Baldo”, return in evening-dress, wearing the same shirt that you went out in, and the shirt is perfectly clean. But you have a three days’ growth of beard. That’s peculiar en
ough in all conscience. Still, that is only a drop in the bucket. A girl mysteriously disappears. The day of her disappearance she is seen helping you, who are blind to the world, into a four-wheeler. You have always been an intensely temperate man, and yet you, in a hopeless state of intoxication, are helped into a four-wheeler by a girl for whom all London is looking.’
‘Not so fast, Reggie,’ interposed Clifford. ‘The girl is identified by a servant, an under-servant, from a rough woodcut in a weekly paper. A rough woodcut in a weekly paper as a rule looks like anybody except the person for whom it is intended, if it looks like anything at all.’
‘Yes, I admit that,’ answered Reggie, ‘but there is one very curious thing about this girl. In the picture she wore spectacles. On the mantelpiece in this room on that night Harding and I found a pair of woman’s spectacles. They seem to have been hastily put down, as though the owner had just taken them off.’
Clifford smiled at him:
‘How on earth could you tell that they were a woman’s spectacles?’
‘Harding thought so, from the size. They were smaller than a man’s.’
‘Smaller than a small man’s?’ inquired the physician.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
The query baffled Reggie, but he pursued the matter.
‘Anyhow, they were made of plain glass. It’s an extraordinary thing that anyone should wear spectacles of plain glass, except, of course, for purposes of disguise.’
‘That knocks your theory on the head,’ replied Clifford. ‘Miss Mingey, apparently, was always in the habit of wearing spectacles. Do you assume that she was always in the habit of being disguised?’ Reggie shrugged his shoulders.
‘I can only place the facts before you and ask you to give me, in a spirit of ordinary fairness, some information as to the business.’
Clifford rose.
The Mayfair Mystery Page 7