‘It is,’ I answered, casually; ‘the latest model. Climbs hills like no other.’ And I feigned to mount and glide off towards Hornberg.
‘Stop a moment, pray, Fräulein,’ my prospective buyer called out. ‘Here, Heinrich, I wish you this new so excellent mountain-climbing machine, without chain propelled, more fully to investigate.’
‘I am going on to Hornberg,’ I said, with mixed feminine guile and commercial strategy; ‘still, if your friend wishes to look——’
They both jostled round it, with achs innumerable, and, after minute inspection, pronounced its principle wunderschön. ‘Might I essay it?’ Heinrich asked.
‘Oh, by all means,’ I answered. He paced it down hill a few yards; then skimmed up again.
‘It is a bird!’ he cried to his friend, with many guttural interjections. ‘Like the eagle’s flight, so soars it. Come, try the thing, Ludwig!’
‘You permit, Fräulein?’
I nodded. They both mounted it several times. It behaved like a beauty. Then one of them asked, ‘And where can man of this new so remarkable machine nearest by purchase himself make possessor?’
‘I am the Sole Agent,’ I burst out, with swelling dignity. ‘If you will give me your orders, with cash in hand for the amount, I will send the cycle, carriage paid, to any address you desire in Germany.’
‘You!’ they exclaimed, incredulously. ‘The Fräulein is pleased to be humorous!’
‘Oh, very well,’ I answered, vaulting into the saddle; ‘If you choose to doubt my word——’ I waved one careless hand and coasted off. ‘Good-morning, meine Herren.’
They lumbered after me on their ramshackled traction-engines. ‘Pardon, Fräulein! Do not thus go away! Oblige us at least with the name and address of the maker.’
I perpended—like the Herr Over-Superintendent at Frankfort. ‘Look here,’ I said at last, telling the truth with frankness, ‘I get 25 per cent on all bicycles I sell. I am, as I say, the maker’s Sole Agent. If you order through me, I touch my profit; if otherwise, I do not. Still, since you seem to be gentlemen,’ they bowed and swelled visibly, ‘I will give you the address of the firm, trusting to your honour to mention my name’—I handed them a card—‘if you decide on ordering. The price of the palfrey is 400 marks. It is worth every pfennig of it.’ And before they could say more, I had spurred my steed and swept off at full speed round a curve of the highway.
I pencilled a note to my American that night from Hornberg, detailing the circumstance; but I am sorry to say, for the discredit of humanity, that when those two students wrote the same evening from their inn in the village to order Manitous, they did not mention my name, doubtless under the misconception that by suppressing it they would save my commission. However, it gives me pleasure to add per contra (as we say in business) that when I arrived at Lucerne a week or so later I found a letter, poste restante, from Mr. Cyrus Hitchcock, inclosing an English ten-pound note. He wrote that he had received two orders for Manitous from Hornberg; and ‘feeling considerable confidence that these must necessarily originate’ from my German students, he had the pleasure of forwarding me what he hoped would be the first of many similar commissions.
I will not describe my further adventures on the still steeper mountain road from Hornberg to Triberg and St. Georgen—how I got bites on the way from an English curate, an Austrian hussar, and two unprotected American ladies; nor how I angled for them all by riding my machine up impossible hills, and then reclining gracefully to eat my lunch (three times in one day) on mossy banks at the summit. I felt a perfect little hypocrite. But Mr. Hitchcock had remarked that business is business; and I will only add (in confirmation of his view) that by the time I reached Lucerne, I had sown the good seed in fifteen separate human souls, no less than four of which brought forth fruit in orders for Manitous before the end of the season.
I had now so little fear what the morrow might bring forth that I settled down in a comfortable hotel at Lucerne till Elsie’s holidays began; and amused myself meanwhile by picking out the hilliest roads I could find in the neighbourhood, in order to display my steel steed’s possibilities to the best advantage.
By the end of July, Elsie joined me. She was half-angry at first that I should have forced the ticket and my hospitality upon her.
‘Nonsense, dear,’ I said, smoothing her hair, for her pale face quite frightened me. ‘What is the good of a friend if she will not allow you to do her little favours?’
‘But, Brownie, you said you wouldn’t stop and be dependent upon me one day longer than was necessary in London.’
‘That was different,’ I cried. ‘That was Me! This is You! I am a great, strong, healthy thing, fit to fight the battle of life and take care of myself; you, Elsie, are one of those fragile little flowers which ’tis everybody’s duty to protect and to care for.’
She would have protested more; but I stifled her mouth with kisses. Indeed, for nothing did I rejoice in my prosperity so much as for the chance it gave me of helping poor dear overworked, overwrought Elsie.
We took up our quarters thenceforth at a high-perched little guest-house near the top of the Brünig. It was bracing for Elsie; and it lay close to a tourist track where I could spread my snares and exhibit the Manitou in its true colours to many passing visitors. Elsie tried it, and found she could ride on it with ease. She wished she had one of her own. A bright idea struck me. In fear and trembling, I wrote, suggesting to Mr. Hitchcock that I had a girl friend from England stopping with me in Switzerland, and that two Manitous would surely be better than one as an advertizement. I confess I stood aghast at my own cheek; but my hand, I fear, was rapidly growing ‘subdued to that it worked in.’ Anyhow I sent the letter off, and waited developments.
By return of post came an answer from my American.
‘Dear Miss—By rail herewith please receive one lady’s No. 4 automatic quadruple-geared self-feeding Manitou, as per your esteemed favour of July 27th, for which I desire to thank you. The more I see of your way of doing business, the more I do admire at you. This is an elegant poster! Two high-toned English ladies, mounted on Manitous, careering up the Alps, represent to both of us quite a mint of money. The mutual benefit, to me, to you, and to the other lady, ought to be simply incalculable. I shall be pleased at any time to hear of any further developments of your very remarkable advertising skill, and I am obliged to you for this brilliant suggestion you have been good enough to make to me.—Respectfully,
‘Cyrus W. Hitchcock.
‘What? Am I to have it for nothing, Brownie?’ Elsie exclaimed, bewildered, when I read the letter to her.
I assumed the airs of a woman of the world. ‘Why, certainly, my dear,’ I answered, as if I always expected to find bicycles showered upon me. ‘It’s a mutual arrangement. Benefits him; benefits you. Reciprocity is the groundwork of business. He gets the advertisement; you get the amusement. It’s a form of handbill. Like the ladies who exhibit their back hair, don’t you know, in that window in Regent Street.’
Thus inexpensively mounted, we scoured the country together, up the steepest hills between Stanzstadt and Meiringen. We had lots of nibbles. One lady in particular often stopped to look on and admire the Manitou. She was a nice-looking widow of forty-five, very fresh and round-faced; a Mrs. Evelegh, we soon found out, who owned a charming chalet on the hills above Lungern. She spoke to us more than once: ‘What a perfect dear of a machine!’ she cried. ‘I wonder if I dare try it!’
‘Can you cycle?’ I asked.
‘I could once,’ she answered. ‘I was awfully fond of it. But Dr. Fortescue-Langley won’t let me any longer.’
‘Try it!’ I said dismounting. She got up and rode. ‘Oh, isn’t it just lovely!’ she cried ecstatically.
‘Buy one!’ I put in. ‘They’re as smooth as silk; they cost only twenty pounds; and, on every machine I sell, I g
et five pounds commission.’
‘I should love to,’ she answered; ‘but Dr. Fortescue-Langley——’
‘Who is he?’ I asked. ‘I don’t believe in drug-drenchers.’
She looked quite shocked. ‘Oh, he’s not that kind, you know,’ she put in, breathlessly. ‘He’s the celebrated esoteric faith-healer. He won’t let me move far away from Lungern, though I’m longing to be off to England again for the summer. My boy’s at Portsmouth.’
‘Then, why don’t you disobey him?’
Her face was a study. ‘I daren’t,’ she answered in an awe-struck voice. ‘He comes here every summer; and he does me so much good, you know. He diagnoses my inner self. He treats me psychically. When my inner self goes wrong, my bangle turns dusky.’ She held up her right hand with an Indian silver bangle on it; and sure enough, it was tarnished with a very thin black deposit. ‘My soul is ailing now,’ she said in a comically serious voice. ‘But it is seldom so in Switzerland. The moment I land in England the bangle turns black and remains black till I get back to Lucerne again.’
When she had gone, I said to Elsie, ‘That is odd about the bangle. State of health might affect it, I suppose. Though it looks to me like a surface deposit of sulphide.’ I knew nothing of chemistry, I admit; but I had sometimes messed about in the laboratory at college with some of the other girls; and I remembered now that sulphide of silver was a blackish-looking body, like the film on the bangle.
However, at the time I thought no more about it.
By dint of stopping and talking, we soon got quite intimate with Mrs. Evelegh. As always happens, I found out I had known some of her cousins in Edinburgh, where I always spent my holidays while I was at Girton. She took an interest in what she was kind enough to call my originality; and before a fortnight was out, our hotel being uncomfortably crowded, she had invited Elsie and myself to stop with her at the chalet. We went, and found it a delightful little home. Mrs. Evelegh was charming; but we could see at every turn that Dr. Fortescue-Langley had acquired a firm hold over her. ‘He’s so clever, you know,’ she said; ‘and so spiritual! He exercises such strong odylic force. He binds my being together. If he misses a visit, I feel my inner self goes all to pieces.’
‘Does he come often?’ I asked, growing interested.
‘Oh, dear, no,’ she answered. ‘I wish he did: it would be ever so good for me. But he’s so much run after; I am but one among many. He lives at Château d’Oex, and comes across to see patients in this district once a fortnight. It is a privilege to be attended by an intuitive seer like Dr. Fortescue-Langley.’
Mrs. Evelegh was rich—‘left comfortably,’ as the phrase goes, but with a clause which prevented her marrying again without losing her fortune; and I could gather from various hints that Dr. Fortescue-Langley, whoever he might be, was bleeding her to some tune, using her soul and her inner self as his financial lancet. I also noticed that what she said about the bangle was strictly true; generally bright as a new pin, on certain mornings it was completely blackened. I had been at the chalet ten days, however, before I began to suspect the real reason. Then it dawned upon me one morning in a flash of inspiration. The evening before had been cold, for at the height where we were perched, even in August, we often found the temperature chilly in the night, and I heard Mrs. Evelegh tell Cécile, her maid, to fill the hot-water bottle. It was a small point, but it somehow went home to me. Next day the bangle was black, and Mrs. Evelegh lamented that her inner self must be suffering from an attack of evil vapours.
I held my peace at the time, but I asked Cécile a little later to bring me that hot-water-bottle. As I more than half suspected, it was made of india-rubber, wrapped carefully up in the usual red flannel bag. ‘Lend me your brooch, Elsie,’ I said. ‘I want to try a little experiment.’
‘Won’t a franc do as well?’ Elsie asked, tendering one. ‘That’s equally silver.’
‘I think not,’ I answered. ‘A franc is most likely too hard; it has base metal to alloy it. But I will vary the experiment by trying both together. Your brooch is Indian and therefore soft silver. The native jewellers never use alloy. Hand it over; it will clean with a little plate-powder, if necessary. I’m going to see what blackens Mrs. Evelegh’s bangle.’
I laid the franc and the brooch on the bottle, filled with hot water, and placed them for warmth in the fold of a blanket. After déjeûner, we inspected them. As I anticipated, the brooch had grown black on the surface with a thin iridescent layer of silver sulphide, while the franc had hardly suffered at all from the exposure.
I called in Mrs. Evelegh, and explained what I had done. She was astonished and half incredulous. ‘How could you ever think of it?’ she cried, admiringly.
‘Why, I was reading an article yesterday about india-rubber in one of your magazines,’ I answered; ‘and the person who wrote it said the raw gum was hardened for vulcanising by mixing it with sulphur. When I heard you ask Cécile for the hot-water-bottle, I thought at once: “The sulphur and the heat account for the tarnishing of Mrs. Evelegh’s bangle.”’
‘And the franc doesn’t tarnish! Then that must be why my other silver bracelet, which is English make, and harder, never changes colour! And Dr. Fortescue-Langley assured me it was because the soft one was of Indian metal, and had mystic symbols on it—symbols that answered to the cardinal moods of my sub-conscious self, and that darkened in sympathy.’
I jumped at a clue. ‘He talked about your sub-conscious self?’ I broke in.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘He always does. It’s the key-note of his system. He heals by that alone. But, my dear, after this, how can I ever believe in him?’
‘Does he know about the hot-water-bottle?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes; he ordered me to use it on certain nights; and when I go to England he says I must never be without one. I see now that was why my inner self invariably went wrong in England. It was all just the sulphur blackening the bangles.’
I reflected. ‘A middle-aged man?’ I asked. ‘Stout, diplomatic-looking, with wrinkles round his eyes, and a distinguished grey moustache, twirled up oddly at the corners?’
‘That’s the man, my dear! His very picture. Where on earth have you seen him?’
‘And he talks of sub-conscious selves?’ I went on.
‘He practises on that basis. He says it’s no use prescribing for the outer man; to do that is to treat mere symptoms: the sub-conscious self is the inner seat of diseases.’
‘How long has he been in Switzerland?’
‘Oh, he comes here every year. He arrived this season late in May, I fancy.’
‘When will he visit you again, Mrs. Evelegh?’
‘To-morrow morning.’
I made up my mind at once. ‘Then I must see him, without being seen,’ I said. ‘I think I know him. He is our Count, I believe.’ For I had told Mrs. Evelegh and Elsie the queer story of my journey from London.
‘Impossible, my dear! Im-possible! I have implicit faith in him!’
‘Wait and see, Mrs. Evelegh. You acknowledge he duped you over the affair of the bangle.’
There are two kinds of dupe: one kind, the commonest, goes on believing in its deceiver, no matter what happens; the other, far rarer, has the sense to know it has been deceived if you make the deception as clear as day to it. Mrs. Evelegh was, fortunately, of the rarer class. Next morning, Dr. Fortescue-Langley arrived, by appointment. As he walked up the path, I glanced at him from my window. It was the Count, not a doubt of it. On his way to gull his dupes in Switzerland, he had tried to throw in an incidental trifle of a diamond robbery.
I telegraphed the facts at once to Lady Georgina, at Schlangenbad. She answered, ‘I am coming. Ask the man to meet his friend on Wednesday.’
Mrs. Evelegh, now almost convinced, invited him. On Wednesday morning, with a bounce, Lady Georgina burst in upon us
. ‘My dear, such a journey!—alone, at my age—but there, I haven’t known a happy day since you left me! Oh, yes, I got my Gretchen—unsophisticated?—well—h’m—that’s not the word for it: I declare to you, Lois, there isn’t a trick of the trade, in Paris or London—not a perquisite or a tip that that girl isn’t up to. Comes straight from the remotest recesses of the Black Forest, and hadn’t been with me a week, I assure you, honour bright, before she was bandolining her yellow hair, and rouging her cheeks, and wearing my brooches, and wagering gloves with the hotel waiters upon the Baden races. And her language: and her manners! Why weren’t you born in that station of life, I wonder, child, so that I might offer you five hundred a year, and all found, to come and live with me for ever? But this Gretchen—her fringe, her shoes, her ribbons—upon my soul, my dear, I don’t know what girls are coming to nowadays.’
‘Ask Mrs. Lynn-Linton,’ I suggested, as she paused. ‘She is a recognised authority on the subject.’
The Cantankerous Old Lady stared at me. ‘And this Count?’ she went on. ‘So you have really tracked him? You’re a wonderful girl, my dear. I wish you were a lady’s maid. You’d be worth me any money.’
I explained how I had come to hear of Dr. Fortescue-Langley.
Lady Georgina waxed warm. ‘Dr. Fortescue-Langley!’ she exclaimed. ‘The wicked wretch! But he didn’t get my diamonds! I’ve carried them here in my hands, all the way from Wiesbaden: I wasn’t going to leave them for a single day to the tender mercies of that unspeakable Gretchen. The fool would lose them. Well, we’ll catch him this time, Lois: and we’ll give him ten years for it!’
‘Ten years!’ Mrs. Evelegh cried, clasping her hands in horror. ‘Oh, Lady Georgina!’
We waited in Mrs. Evelegh’s dining-room, the old lady and I, behind the folding doors. At three precisely Dr. Fortescue-Langley walked in. I had difficulty in restraining Lady Georgina from falling upon him prematurely. He talked a lot of high-flown nonsense to Mrs. Evelegh and Elsie about the influences of the planets, and the seventy-five emanations, and the eternal wisdom of the East, and the medical efficacy of sub-conscious suggestion. Excellent patter, all of it—quite as good in its way as the diplomatic patter he had poured forth in the train to Lady Georgina. It was rich in spheres, in elements, in cosmic forces. At last, as he was discussing the reciprocal action of the inner self upon the exhalations of the lungs, we pushed back the door and walked calmly in upon him.
The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives Page 140