“I wanted a word or two with you, Mr. Brown,” he said, “concerning one of your employees.”
“Well, which one? Who’s been doing wrong now?”
“No one, I hope,” was the soothing reply. “It is a Mr. Horace Florestan I came to make enquiries about.”
“Florestan, eh?” the merchant repeated with an air of relief. “One of the best men we have on our staff and one of the most respectable. What about him?”
“Has he been to business to-day?”
“How the devil should I know? We have twenty-two travellers and buyers for England alone. I can’t tell you whether he’s out on the road, or gone on a buying expedition, or sitting in his office.”
“Perhaps you would be kind enough, then, to make enquiries,” Cheshire suggested.
Mr. Brown shouted down a speaking tube, pressed bells, spoke on the telephone. In a few minutes an elderly man, a little flurried, a girl and a youth appeared from different parts of the premises.
“Here, Mr. Fitch,” his employer called out, addressing the older man. “Where’s Florestan to-day?”
“He’s due in Newcastle to-day or to-morrow, sir. I’m not sure whether he has left yet. Hammond here might know.”
The youth came forward.
“Mr. Florestan has not been in to-day, sir,” he announced. “I have been making up some of his accounts for him.”
“What about the young lady?” Cheshire ventured.
“I am Mr. Florestan’s secretary, sir,” she confided. “He told me before he left on Saturday that his arrangements for this week were very uncertain. He gave me some price lists to copy in case he was not here to-day.”
“Leave any address—say where he was going to?” Mr. Brown asked.
The girl shook her head.
“Not with me, sir.”
“Mr. Florestan is very methodical, sir,” Hammond intervened. “He will probably be in sometime during the day. He has an appointment in Antwerp on Thursday.”
“If he comes in, let me know at once,” Mr. Brown directed, waving them away. “You see sir,” he added, turning to his visitor, “we allow our trusted employees a great deal of liberty. Mr. Florestan buys and sells for the firm. He often takes an unexpected journey if he hears of any transactions likely to be profitable. Now, what business have you that concerns him, I should like to know? What is it that you want to find out?”
“I will explain, if you will give me an opportunity,” Cheshire answered drily. “Mr. Florestan lives in Colville Terrace, Kensington.”
“First time I’ve ever heard of the place,” Mr. Brown declared. “I don’t know where any of the people live. I live in Berkeley Square, myself, but it’s all spoilt with building, now. Can’t recognise the place. Well, go on. What about Florestan?”
“Mr. Florestan, it has been reported to Scotland Yard,” Cheshire continued, “was disturbed at supper time last night in the dining room of his home in Colville Terrace by a telephone summons. He left the room to answer the call. When he failed to return, his wife alleges that they went in search of him and found that he had disappeared, also that the garage doors were open. He had apparently gone away in the car.”
“Without a word to anyone?”
“Without a word to anyone. Furthermore, he is not only still missing, but soon after midnight his car was discovered unattended outside St. George’s Hospital with a man inside on the point of death.”
“God bless my soul!” Mr. Brown exclaimed. “What can have become of him?”
“You’re asking me!” was the terse reply. “That is what I’ve come to find out. No one has seen him since he left 137, Colville Terrace at eight o’clock last night.”
“But you say he drove his car to St. George’s Hospital.”
“No, I didn’t say that,” Cheshire pointed out. “I said that his car was discovered there unattended with the engine still running and a man inside who was on the point of death. The matter naturally is in the hands of the police. We want to know what has become of Mr. Florestan.”
Mr. Brown clasped his head between his hands.
“My God!” he exclaimed. “You are not suspecting Florestan of committing an act of personal violence, are you?”
“We are not suspecting Mr. Florestan, or anybody else, of anything at the present moment,” was the patient reply. “What we want to know is what has become of him. You say that he has not reported here in any way. That seems strange.”
“What was the matter with the man who was on the point of death in the car?” the other asked with apparent irrelevance.
“He has a bullet still in his chest which passed within a sixteenth of an inch of his heart.”
Mr. Brown seemed on the point of collapse.
“Nothing to do with Florestan,” he declared firmly. “One of the mildest men you ever met. I don’t believe he would know which end of a gun to hold. Say, Admiral Cheshire, have you found out—do you know who the man was, or is, with the bullet in his chest?”
Cheshire nodded curtly.
“Yes, we know,” he answered. “So would you, probably, if you saw him—that is, if you ever look at an illustrated paper. There are four doctors working to save his life and for the sake of his country we only hope that they will succeed.”
“An Englishman?”
“I came here to ask questions, not to answer them,” Cheshire said a little impatiently. “Will you tell me this, sir. Are there any branches of your business with which Mr. Florestan might come in touch which are of a dangerous nature?”
“Dangerous?”
“That is the word I used. Does Mr. Florestan, for instance, travel in countries not favourably disposed towards our own? Is he likely to be carrying on a correspondence of a treasonable kind?”
“What—Florestan?” Mr. Brown exclaimed. “Look here, Admiral, you’ve got poor Horace Florestan all wrong. He’s one of the simplest men breathing.”
“Then why,” Cheshire asked, and his very bright eyes looked as if they were trying to bore a way into the back of the other’s brain, “why did he leave the supper table at home to answer the telephone, lock the door of the dining room behind him, drive off in his car and disappear? Why, too, is he in the habit of receiving letters at a post office in the name of Henry Copeland?”
Mr. Brown appeared to be either exasperated or to be gaining a larger amount of composure. He leaned across the desk.
“Will you tell me the sense, Admiral,” he demanded, “of coming here and asking damn’ foolish questions like that? How do I know? How could I know? Florestan is a salesman and a buyer for this firm and he does, let me tell you, an immense business. Beyond that we know nothing of him, except that a man never breathed who is less likely to be involved in any of these things you are talking about. Directly he turns up, when we hear from him, we will let you know right away. You shall know everything that we know, but for heaven’s sake don’t sit there asking me silly questions. You are used to crime and runaway cars and dying men, I suppose. I’m not. No more is Horace Florestan. Anything more I can do for you, Admiral?”
Cheshire picked up his hat and buttoned his coat.
“I see that I have been making a mistake, Mr. Brown,” he said quietly. “It is my business to discover what has become of Horace Florestan and I shall probably succeed better by approaching the matter in a different sort of way.”
Mr. Brown banged the bell in front of him.
“It’s no good your making nasty insinuations,” he cried. “You are like a good many others who have any connection at all with Scotland Yard. You are obstinate. You have started on a wrong line and you haven’t sense enough to see it. Go where you please—my warehouses are at your disposal, my employees’ time is yours. See if you can find out any more about Horace Florestan than I have told you.”
Cheshire made no immediate reply. There was a curious smile upon his lips, however, as he lingered for a moment looking down at the angry little man in the chair.
“It is just
possible, of course, Mr. Brown,” he said slowly, “that you are as simple as you seem, although personally I am inclined to doubt it. At any rate, you can take this from me. I represent an important branch of the Admiralty besides having also the authority of Scotland Yard behind me. We are taking out a warrant within an hour of this minute for the arrest of Horace Florestan. The next you see of him will probably be in the prisoner’s dock, if he hasn’t already slipped out of the country.”
“But—but what do you mean?” Mr. Brown gasped. “Florestan a criminal? Such rubbish! You don’t know your job, sir, whoever you may be. Why, he is the backbone of our business. A warrant out against Florestan? On what charge?”
“Attempted murder, sabotage and espionage,” Cheshire declared coolly. “There may be a few other counts to add later on. Good morning, Mr. Brown.”
The head of the firm of Brown, Shipman & Co. very nearly collapsed in his chair. He gripped its sides and called out almost beseechingly after Cheshire’s retreating figure.
“Hi, stop a minute, Admiral—stop a minute, sir! Look here, you are not in earnest?”
“Very much so,” was the quiet reply.
“I will telephone to Mr. Leonard, if you will wait or come back again,” the other spluttered out. “Don’t go away, sir. I’ll have him here in half an hour. He must hear what you say.”
“No necessity,” Cheshire assured him. “The only thing you can do for yourself and for your business credit, Mr. Brown, is to find out where Horace Florestan has got to and communicate with us. You will find me at the Admiralty any time. Ask for XYZ branch.”
He made his own way out. Mr. Brown dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief held in his right hand. With his left he grabbed the telephone receiver.
“Give me the Sunningdale Golf Club,” he demanded.
CHAPTER XI
Table of Contents
The maid with the flaxen fringe and the somewhat flamboyant appearance opened the door of 137, Colville Terrace to Cheshire shortly after seven that evening. She seemed to accept his visit as a matter of course and stood on one side to allow him to enter.
“Your mistress at home?”
“Madam is expecting you, sir,” she announced. “She told me to say that she would be down in ten minutes.”
“Are you English?” he enquired.
She looked at him with a broad smile.
“What else do you suppose I am?” she retorted. “A Londoner bred and born, and never been further away from home than Southend. The master, he hates foreigners. He wouldn’t look at one of them Austrian girls who came here from the registry office after a job.”
“That’s queer,” Cheshire remarked. “I rather thought Mr. Florestan himself might be a foreigner. Are you sure he isn’t?”
“You make me tired,” she snapped. “That’s the worst of the police, whether they’re dressed like their betters or whether they’re in uniform—they’re always wanting to know something. It was the same when I was in my last place.”
“Where was that?”
“More questions!” she sighed. “However, I’m not ashamed of the truth. It was the Sparrow’s Nest Roadhouse down below Mitcham.”
“A little livelier than this job, I should think,” he remarked, smoothing his hair in front of the small glass.
“It may have been and it may not,” she replied. “At any rate, when we had your sort down there asking questions we knew what they wanted. There’s no drinking after hours in this house, anyway.”
She showed him into the back parlour. As he passed the dining room he noticed that the table was laid for two.
“Master expected home?”
“Mind your own business,” was the curt but good-natured reply.
He chuckled.
“From a nice-looking girl like you,” he complained, “that’s not a pretty answer. I expect you had plenty of admirers down at the Sparrow’s Nest.”
“I can find all the admirers I want, wherever I go,” she answered, looking at him with bold eyes.
“I don’t wonder at it,” he replied, leaning over and kissing her lightly on the cheek. “I rather wish I had known you when you were at the Sparrow’s Nest.”
“The same old dodge,” she laughed, not unpleasantly but with a note of grimness. “Kisses and a night out in London or one or two of those nice clean white notes—and you almost a gentleman! Why don’t you leave this sort of thing for your Sergeants and that sort?”
“I generally do,” he confided. “You’re not bad, though, you know, Rosa. If you want to combine a little business with pleasure, tell me some more about your master.”
“Ask the mistress. She knows all about him. She will be here in a minute or two. I have a good mind to tell her the kind of lay you’re on.”
“I don’t think it would matter much,” Cheshire observed. “She knows what we want. Either there’s nothing you could tell or there’s nothing worth telling. That’s the reason she trusts you, I suppose.”
The girl smiled. She looked occasionally a little stupid but she was all the time on the qui vive. She had left the door an inch or two open and she was obviously listening.
“The master’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think he will ever end his days in quod. All the same, he’s a deep ’un.”
His hand strayed towards his pocket. She shook her head.
“Not here and not now. I don’t think ever. You are not quite my sort and money isn’t everything. I get good wages here.”
“Take me to your dressmaker’s, next afternoon out,” he suggested.
“Don’t be rash,” she answered.
“Why rash?”
“My afternoon out is to-morrow. Four o’clock at Madame Hortense’s, corner of Beaumont Place and Regent Street, but I don’t think I shall be there,” she went on. “I shall have changed my mind before then, especially if the mistress behaves a little more decently. Still, there you are. Come along and try, if you want to. I might like you better—”
It was curious how, though the silence seemed perfectly unbroken, they were both conscious of the approach of Deborah Florestan.
“I’ll let Madam know that you are here, sir,” the girl said in an altered tone. “Won’t you take a chair?”
“Thank you,” Cheshire replied. “You might take my hat, if you will. I don’t know why I brought it in.”
She accepted it and opened the door wide just as her mistress appeared, entering the room with the same easy, flowing movement, carrying herself with just a shade too much arrogance, diffusing perhaps a shade too much perfume, her large body a little too obvious beneath the close-fitting material of her black gown. She smiled at Cheshire curiously as she offered him her hand. The over-manicured fingers surprised him by their length and coolness.
“Well, you will not have long to wait now,” she remarked, sitting down. “Rosa, you can bring in the sherry.”
“You are spoiling me,” he observed, smiling.
“After all, you are working for the good of the public, I imagine,” she said a trifle insolently. “So you have been making use of your spare time by cross-examining my poor Rosa,” she went on, sinking further back into the corner of the divan. “I suppose you did not lure her into any confessions?”
“She was somewhat taciturn,” he admitted. “Perhaps the next time she may be more communicative.”
“A filthy business, yours,” she remarked, without the ghost of a smile, without any show of interest or emotion.
“Horrible,” he agreed. “As you say, though, it is for the good of the public. Someone has to keep the streets clean.”
“You are not suggesting things about Rosa, I hope?” she queried. “Rosa is quite a good girl although she looks such a sight.”
“There was no double meaning in my words,” he assured her. “Any news of your husband?”
“Not yet. I do not expect any. What I do expect is to hear the car drive into the garage in a few minutes or hear his latch-key in the door.”
“Much good may it do them!” she scoffed. “How is the man with the bullet inside him?”
“Still alive. If he gets through the night he may live.”
“Been chatty yet?”
“Not a word. There’s a police clerk waiting in the ward with book and pencil in his hand.”
“That is thoughtful,” she observed. “They say a man generally has a few minutes’ consciousness before he dies. I expect you will worm it out of the poor fellow who shot him.”
“They will if they can,” Cheshire admitted. “I hope it won’t turn out to be your husband.”
She looked at him critically. Something about his undoubted air of distinction seemed to displease her.
“Why do you not wear uniform, so that everyone knows you are a detective?” she asked. “I suppose you are ashamed of it, really.”
Cheshire smiled.
“No, I can’t say that I’m ashamed of it,” he told her, “but as a matter of fact, I am not a detective. I go to some places, however, and have some work to do where I should not have a chance of success if I were recognisable. Mine is rather a new branch in the Service, you know.”
“H’m. Call yourselves half gentlemen,” she observed.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, “that we go so far as that, but it is a sad fact that the criminal classes to-day consist largely of well-educated and well-brought-up people. They need someone in their own walk of life, you see, to deal with them.”
The maid came in with a decanter of sherry and glasses.
“Set it down somewhere, Rosa,” her mistress ordered. “We will serve ourselves.”
The girl obeyed. Cheshire rose to his feet and walked to the sideboard.
“Will you allow me?” he asked.
“Half a glass, please,” she said carelessly.
She came over to his side as the girl left the room. He felt himself somehow enveloped by that clinging perfume, curiously blended with an odour of bath salts and strongly scented soap. She raised her glass and her lips parted a little in that wonderfully controlled smile which seemed scarcely to indicate so much as mirth, to be indeed only the provocative anticipation of it.
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