The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  Sylvia smiled with a shy wistfulness he had not seen on her face before.

  “I wish you wouldn’t dream we were going to quarrel,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”

  “You won’t. Some day I shall be able to help you, when you want help badly.”

  Almost imperceptibly her mouth hardened its lines, and her eyes recovered their disdainful, independent fire.

  “Why should I want help?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” was all he could answer. “You will.”

  Their canoe had drifted to the Rollers. The Seraph landed, helped Sylvia out of the boat, and stood silently by while it was hauled up and lowered into the water on the other side. As they paddled slowly through Mesopotamia neither was able—perhaps neither was willing—to pick up the threads of the conversation where they had been dropped. In silence they passed the Magdalen Bathing Place, through the shade of Addison’s Walk, under the Bridge and alongside the Meadows. Sylvia’s mind grappled uneasily with the half-comprehended words he had spoken.

  “Do we meet and make it up?” she asked with assumed lightness of tone as the canoe passed through the scummy, winding mouth of the Cher and shot clear into the Isis.

  “We meet.”

  “And make it up?” she repeated.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Sylvia!”

  “What will you do?”

  “If we don’t?” The Seraph sat motionless for a moment, and then began paddling the boat alongside the barges. “I shall go abroad. I’ve never been to India. I want to go there. And then I shall go on to Japan, and from Japan to some of Stevenson’s islands in the South Seas. I’ve seen everything else that I want to see.”

  “And then?”

  He raised his eyebrows and shook his head uncertainly.

  “Burial at sea, I hope.”

  “Seraph, if you talk like that we shall quarrel now.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “There’d be nothing more in life?”

  “Not if we quarrelled and never made it up.”

  “But if we did—”

  “Ah, that’ud make all the difference in the world.”

  For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes: then Sylvia’s fell.

  “I don’t want to quarrel,” she said. “I don’t believe we shall, I don’t see why we need. If we do, I’m prepared to make it up.”

  “I wonder if you will be when the time comes,” he answered.

  We were, with a single, noteworthy exception—a subdued party that night at dinner. Philip and Gladys had much to occupy their minds and little their tongues: Sylvia and the Seraph were silent and reflective: I, too, in my unobtrusive middle-aged fashion, had passed an eventful night and morning. The exception was Robin, who furnished conversational relief in the form of Stone Age pleasantries at the expense of his brother in particular, engaged couples in general, and the whole immemorial institution of wedlock. I have forgotten some of his more striking parallels, but I recollect that each fresh dish called forth a new simile.

  “Pity oysters aren’t in season, Toby,” he remarked. “Marriage is like your first oyster, horrid to look at, clammy to touch, and only to be swallowed at a gulp.” “Clear soup for me, please. When I’m offered thick, I always wonder what the cook’s trying to hide. Thick soup is like marriage.” “Why does dressed crab always remind me of marriage? I suppose because it’s irresistible, indigestible, and if carelessly mixed, full of little pieces of shell.” “Capercailzie is symbolical of married life: too much for one, not enough for two.” “Matrimony is like a cigarette before port: it destroys the palate for the best things in life.”

  No one paid any attention to Robin as he rambled on to his own infinite contentment: he would probably still be rambling but for the arrival of an express letter directed to me in Arthur Roden’s writing. We were digesting dinner over a cigar in the hall, and after reading the letter I took Sylvia and the Seraph aside, and communicated its contents. By some chance it was included in a miscellaneous bundle of papers I packed up before leaving England, and I have it before me on my table as I write.

  “Private and Confidential,” it began—

  “My Dear Toby,”

  “If this arrives in time, I shall be glad if you will send me a wire to say all is well with Sylvia and the others. We are a good deal alarmed by the latest move of the Militants. You will have seen that Rawnsley got up in the House the other day and moved to appropriate all Private Members’ time till the end of the Session, in this way frustrating all idea of the Suffrage coming up in the form of a Private Member’s Bill.

  “The Militants have made their counterstroke without loss of time. Yesterday morning Jefferson’s only child—a boy of seven—disappeared. We left J. out when we were running over likely victims at Brandon: he was away in the Enchantress inspecting Rosyth at the time, and I suppose that was how we forgot him. We certainly ought not to have done so, as he has been one of the most outspoken of the anti-militants.

  “The child went yesterday with his nurse to Hyde Park. The woman—like all her damnable kind—paid no attention to her duty, and allowed some young guardsman to sit and talk to her. In five minutes’ time—she says it was only five minutes—the child had disappeared. No trace of him has been found. Jefferson, of course, is in a great state of worry, but agrees with Rawnsley that no word of the story must be allowed to reach the Press, and no effort spared to convince the electorate of the utter impossibility of considering the claims at present put forward by the Militants. I am arranging a series of meetings in the Midlands and Home Counties as soon as the House rises.

  “And that reminds me. Rawnsley received a second letter immediately after the abduction of J.’s boy, telling him his action in respect of Private Members’ time had been noted, and that he would be given till the end of the month [June] to foreshadow an autumn session. There may be an autumn session—that depends on the Committee Stage of the Poor Law Bill—but the Suffrage will not come up during its course, and Rawnsley is purposely withholding his announcement till the month has turned.

  “For the next ten days, therefore, we may hope to be spared any fresh attack. After that they will begin again, and as my Midland campaign is being announced in the course of this week, it is more than probable that the blow may be aimed at me.

  “Please shew this letter to Sylvia and the boys, and explain as much of the Rawnsley affair as may be necessary to make it clear to her. At present she has been told that Mavis is ill in London and may have to undergo an operation. Tell her to use the utmost care not to stir in public without some competent person to escort her. Scotland Yard is increasing its bodyguards, and everything must be done to assist them.

  “You will, of course, see the necessity of keeping this letter private.

  “Ever yours,

  “ARTHUR RODEN.”

  As I gave the letter to Sylvia and the Seraph to read, I will admit that my first feeling was one of unsubstantial relief that Joyce had been in Oxford when the abduction took place in London. I did not in any way condone the offence, I should not have condoned it even had I known that she was mainly responsible for the abduction. Independently of all moral considerations, I found myself being glad that she was out of town at the time of the outrage. The consolation was flimsy. I concede that. But it is interesting to me to look back now and review my mental standpoint at that moment. I had already got beyond the point of administering moral praise and blame: my descent to active participation in crime followed with incredible abruptness.

  I felt the “Private and Confidential” was not binding against the Seraph, as he had been present when Rawnsley described the disappearance of Mavis. While he expounded her father’s letter to Sylvia, I gave its main points to Philip and Robin. The comments of the family were characteristic o
f its various members. Philip shook a statesmanlike head and opined that this was getting very serious, you know. Robin inquired plaintively who’d want to abduct a little thing like him.

  “I don’t want any ‘competent escort,’” Sylvia exclaimed with her determined small chin in the air.

  “For less than twenty-four hours,” I begged. “I’m responsible for your safety till then. After that you can fight the matter out with your father.”

  “But I can look after myself even for the next twenty-four hours.”

  I assumed my severest manner.

  “Have you ever seen me angry?” I said.

  “Do you think you could frighten me?” she asked with a demure smile.

  “I’m quite sure I couldn’t,” I answered helplessly. “Seraph, can you do anything with her?”

  “Nobody can do anything with her.…”

  “Seraph!”

  “…against her will.”

  “That’s better.”

  I struck at a propitious moment.

  “When we leave here,” I said to the Seraph, “you’re to take her hand and not let go till you’re back in the hotel again. I give her into your charge. Treat her.…”

  I hesitated, and Sylvia interrogated me with a King’s Ransom smile.

  “Treat her as she deserves,” I said. “If she were my wife, ward or daughter, I should slap her and send her to bed. So would you, so would any man worthy of the name.”

  “Would you, Seraph?”

  He was helping her into her cloak and did not answer the question. Suddenly she turned round and looked into his eyes.

  “Would you, Seraph?” I heard her repeat.

  “I shall treat you—as you deserve to be treated,” he answered slowly.

  “That’s not an answer,” she objected.

  “What’s the good of asking him?” I said as the rest of our party joined us.

  In the absence of Joyce I spent large portions of a dull and interminably long night smoking excessive cigarettes and leaning against a wall to watch the dancers. Towards three o’clock I discovered an early edition of an evening paper and read it from cover to cover. Canadian Pacifics were rising or falling, and some convulsion was taking place in Rio Tintos.

  The only other news of interest I found in the Cause List. I remember the case of Wylton v. Wylton and Sleabury was down for trial one day towards the end of that week.

  CHAPTER VII

  A Cause Célèbre

  “Conventional women—but was not the phrase tautological?”

  —George Gissing

  “Born in Exile.”

  I always look back with regret to our return to London after Commemoration. Our parting at the door of the Rodens’ house in Cadogan Square was more than the dispersal of a pleasant, youthful, light-hearted gathering; it marked out a definite end to my first careless, happy weeks in England, and foreshadowed a period of suspense and heart-burning that separated old friends and strained old alliances. As we shook hands and waved adieux, we were slipping unconsciously into a future where none of us were to meet again on our former frank, trustful footing.

  I doubt if any of us recognised this at the time—not even the Seraph, for a man is notoriously a bad judge in his own cause. Looking back over the last six months, I appreciate that the seeds of trouble had already been sown, and that I ought to have been prepared for much that followed.

  To begin with, the astonishing acrimony of speech and writing that characterised both parties in the Suffrage controversy should have warned me of the futility of trying to retain the friendship of Joyce Davenant on the one hand and the Rodens on the other. Bitter were their tongues and angry their hearts in the old, forgotten era of demonstrations and hecklings; the bitterness increased with the progress of the arson campaign, and its prompt, ruthless reprisals; but I remember no political sensation equalling the suppressed, vindictive anger of the days when the abduction policy was launched, and no clue could be found to incriminate its perpetrators. I suffered the fate of most neutral powers, and succeeded in arousing the suspicions of both belligerents.

  Again, the Wylton divorce proved—if proof were ever needed—that when English Society has ostracised a woman, her sympathisers gain nothing for themselves by championing her cause. They had better secure themselves greetings in the market-place by leading the chorus of moral condemnation. Elsie Wylton would scarcely have noticed the two added voices, and the Seraph and I might have spared ourselves much unnecessary discomfort. He was probably too young to appreciate that Quixotism does not pay in England, while I—well, there is no fool like a middle-aged fool.

  Lastly, I ought to have seen the shadow cast by Sylvia’s tropical intimacy with the Seraph at Oxford. She was unquestionably intriguée, and I should have seen it and been on my guard. Resist as she might, there was something arresting in his other-world, somnambulant attitude towards life; for him, at least, his dreams were too real to be lightly dismissed. And his sensitive feminine sympathy was something new to her, something strangely stimulating to a girl who but half understood her own moods and ambitions. I have no doubt that in their solitary passage back to Oxford she had unbent and revealed more to him than to any other man, had unbent as far as any woman of reserve can ever unbend to a man. Equally, I have no doubt that in cold retrospect her passionate, uncontrolled pride exaggerated the significance of her conduct, and magnified the moment of unaffected friendliness into an humiliating self-betrayal.

  The Seraph—it is clear—had not responded. I know now—indeed, I knew at the time—that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism. Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. It never occurred to him that Sylvia could forget his relative poverty, obscurity, and their thousand points of conflict; it never dawned on her that he could be held back by honourable scruples from accepting what she had shown herself willing to offer. The Seraph came back from Oxford absorbed and pre-occupied with haunting memories of Sylvia; with his curious frankness he told her in so many words that she possessed his mind to the exclusion of every other thought. There he had stopped short—for no reason she could see, and it was not possible for her to go further to meet him. Next to the Capitol stands the Tarpeian Rock. I ought to have remembered that with Sylvia it was now crown or gibbet, and that there was no room for platonic admirers.

  With his genius for the unexpected the Seraph disappeared from our ken for an entire week after our return to London. Gladys and I were always running over to the Rodens’ or receiving visits from Sylvia and Philip; it appeared that he had forsaken Cadogan Square as completely as Pont Street, and the unenthusiastic tone in which the information was volunteered did not tempt me to prosecute further inquiries. On about the fifth day I did pluck up courage to ask Lady Roden if he had yet come to the surface, but so far from receiving an intelligible answer I found myself undergoing rigorous examination into his antecedents. “Who is this Mr. Aintree?” I remember her asking in her lifeless, faded voice. “Has he any relations? There used to be a Sir John Aintree who was joint-master of the Meynell.”

  After a series of unsuccessful inquiries over the telephone, I set out to make personal investigation. Sylvia had carried Gladys off to Ranelagh, and as Robin offered his services as escort to the girls, I felt no scruples in resigning my ward to her charge. For Sylvia, I am glad to say, my responsibility had ceased, and I was at liberty to proceed to Adelphi Terrace, and ascertain why at any hour of the day or night I was met with the news that Mr. Aintree was in town, but away from his flat, and had left no word when he would be back. I called in at the club before trying his
flat. The Seraph was not there, but I found the polyglot Culling explaining for Gartside’s benefit certain of the more obvious drolleries of the current “Vie Parisienne.”

  “Where did ye pick up yer French accent, Bob?” I heard him inquire with feigned admiration. “In Soho? I wonder who dropped it there?” Then he caught sight of me, and his face assumed an awful solemnity. “‘Corruptio optimi pessima!’ I wonder ye’ve the courage to show yerself among respectable men like me and Gartside.”

  I inquired if either of them knew of the Seraph’s whereabouts, but the question appeared to add fuel to Culling’s indignation.

  “Where is the Seraph?” he exclaimed. “Well ye may ask! His wings are clipped, there’s a dint in his halo, and his harp has its strings broken. The Heavenly Choir—” He paused abruptly, seized a sheet of foolscap and resumed his normal tone. “This’ll be rather good—the Heavenly Choir and our Seraph flung out like a common drunk same as Gartside here.

  ‘To bottomless perdition, there to dwell—

  Why can’t the club afford a decent pen?

  You’re our committeeman, Bob, you’re to blame.

  I always use blank verse for my complaints.—

  To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

  In adamantine chains and penal fire.’”

  —John Milton

  “Paradise Lost, Liber One.”

  I watched the Heavenly Choir being sketched. In uniform and figure the Archangel Gabriel presented a striking resemblance to any Keeper of the Peace at any Music Hall. An official braided coat bulged at the shoulders with the pressure of two cramped wings, his peaked cap had been knocked over one eye, and his halo—in Culling’s words—was “all anyhow.” As the artist insisted on a companion picture to show the Seraph’s reception in Bottomless Perdition, I turned to Gartside for enlightenment.

  “It’s been going on long enough to be getting serious,” I was told. “A solid week now.”

  “What’s been going on?” I exclaimed in despair. “Where are we? Above all, where’s the Seraph?”