The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “Take the money while you can get it,” I warned the proprietor, with the petulance of a tired man. “With luck you’ll next hear of me from the inside of a padded cell. Now!” I said to the driver, “listen very carefully. I’m about as angry as a man can be. Here are two sovereigns for yourself; take them, and say nothing, whatever language you may hear me use. I want you to drive along the Bath Road until you see a young man in a grey tweed suit walking along with his eyes on the ground. You’re to keep him in sight wherever he goes. He’s mad, and I’m mad, and everybody’s mad. Follow him, and address a remark to me at your peril. I’ve been up all night, I’ve walked from London to Slough, and I’m now going to sleep.”

  My orders called forth not so much as the lift of an eyebrow. The difference between eccentricity and madness may be measured in pounds sterling. A rich man is never mad in England, unless, of course, his heirs-at-law cast wistful glances at the pounds sterling. In that case there will be an Inquisition and a report to the Masters.… My driver left me to slumber undisturbed.

  I slept only in snatches. The car would run a mile, pass the Seraph, pull up, wait, start forward and stop again. Once I invited him to come aboard, but he shook his head. I dozed, and dreamed, and woke, asking the driver what had come of our quarry.

  “He’s following, sir,” he told me.

  I was struck with an ingenious idea.

  “At the next cross-roads,” I said, “turn off to the right or left, drive a hundred yards and pull up. If he follows, we’ll lead him round in a circle and draw him back to London.”

  We shot ahead, turned and waited. In time a dusty figure came in sight trudging wearily on. At the cross-roads he came for a moment into full view, and then passed out of sight along the Bath Road without so much as throwing a glance in the direction of the car.

  “Damn you, damn you, damn you, Seraph!” I said, as I ordered the driver to start once more in pursuit.

  At Taplow the dragging feet tripped and brought him down. Through a three-cornered tear in the leg of his trousers I could see blood flowing freely; his hands were cut and his forehead bruised, but he once more rejected my offer of a seat in the car. Opposite Skindles he stumbled again, but recovered himself and tramped on over the bridge, into Maidenhead, and through the crowded, narrow High Street. Passers-by stared at the strange, dusty apparition; he was too absorbed to notice, I too angry to be resentful.

  It was as we mounted Castle Hill and worked forward towards Maidenhead Thicket that I noticed his pace increasing. A steady four miles an hour gave way to intermittent spells of running. I heard him panting as he came alongside the car, and the rays of a July afternoon sun brought beads of sweat to glisten dustily on his lips and forehead.

  “Wait here,” I said to the driver as we came to the fringe of the Thicket. To our right stretched the straight, white Henley Road; ahead of us lay Reading and Bath.

  The Seraph trotted up, passed us without a word or look, and stumbled on towards Reading.

  “Forward!” I said to the driver, and then countermanded my order and bade him wait.

  Twenty yards ahead of us the Seraph had come to a standstill, and was casting about like a hound that has overshot the scent. I watched him pause, and heard the very whimper of a hound at fault. Then he walked back to the fork of the road, gazed north-west towards Henley, and stood for a moment on tiptoe with closed eyes, head thrown back and arms outstretched like a pirouetting dancer.

  I waited for him to fall. I say “waited” advisedly, for I could have done nothing to save him. I ought to have jumped out, called the driver to my aid, tied hands and feet, and borne my prisoner back to London and a madhouse. Throughout the night and morning, well into the afternoon, I had cursed him for one lunatic and myself for another. My own madness lay in following him instead of shrugging my shoulders and leaving him to his fate. His madness … as I watched the strained pose of nervous alertness, I wondered whether he was so mad after all.

  With startling suddenness the rigid form relaxed, eyes opened, head fell forward, arms dropped to the body. He ran fifty yards along the road, hesitated, plunged blindly through a clump of low gorse bushes, and fell prone in the middle of a grass ride.

  “Stop where you are!” I called to the driver as I ran down the road and turned into the bridle-path.

  The Seraph was lying with one foot caught in a tangle of bracken. He was conscious, but breathed painfully. I helped him upright, supported him with an arm round the body, and tried to lead him back to the car.

  “This way!” he gasped, pointing down the ride. Half a mile away I caught sight of a creeper-covered bungalow—picturesque, peaceful, inanimate, but with its eastern aspect ruined by the presence of a new corrugated iron shed. I judged it to be a garage by the presence of green tins of motor spirit.

  “She’s there—Sylvia!” he panted, slowly recovering his breath as we walked down the bridle-path. “Go in and get her. Make them give her up!”

  I looked at his torn, dusty clothes, his white face and dizzy eyes. At the fork of the road I had come near to being converted. It was another matter altogether to invade a strange house and call upon an unknown householder to yield up the person of a young woman who ought not to be there, who could only be there by an implied charge of felonious abduction, who probably was not there, who certainly was not there.… I am at heart conventional, decorous, sensitive to ridicule.

  “We can’t,” I said weakly. “It’s a strange house; we don’t know that she’s there; we might expose ourselves to an action for slander.…”

  He walked to the gate of the garden, freed himself from the support of my arm, and marched up to the front door. I took inglorious cover behind a walnut-tree and heard him knock. There was a pause. A window opened and closed; another pause, and the sound of feet approaching. Then the door opened.

  “I have come for Miss Roden,” I heard him say.

  “Roden? Miss Roden? No one of that name lives here.”

  The voice was that of a woman, and I tried to catch sight of the face. I had heard that voice before, or one suspiciously like it.

  “I will give you two minutes to produce Miss Roden.”

  The answering voice quivered with sudden indignation.

  “You must be intoxicated. Take your foot out of the door and go away, or I’ll call a man and have you given in charge.”

  The voice, rising in shrill, tremulous excitement, would have added something more, but was silenced by a fit of coughing. I left my walnut-tree, pushed open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck of bright red froth.

  “Miss Draper, I believe?” I said.

  She looked at me in surprise.

  “That is my name.”

  “We met at Miss Davenant’s house in Chester Square. Don’t apologize for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your name. We have called.…”

  “Is this person a friend of yours?” she asked, pointing a contemptuous finger at the Seraph.

  “He is. We have called for Miss Roden.”

  “She is not here.”

  “One minute gone,” said the Seraph, watch in hand.

  Miss Draper turned her head and called to some one inside the house. I think the name was “John.”

  “I am armed,” I warned her.

  She paid no attention.

  “One minute and a half,” said the Seraph.

  I put my hand out to cover the watch, and addressed Miss Draper.

  “I don’t think you appreciate the strength of our position,” I began. “You are no doubt aware that the office of the New Militant has been raided; your friend Mrs. Millington has been arrested, and there is a warrant out against your other friend, Miss Davenant.”

  “They haven’t caught her,” said Miss Draper, defiantly.

  I
could almost forgive her when I saw the look of doglike fidelity that the mention of Joyce’s name brought into her eyes.

  “Do you know where she is?” asked the Seraph.

  “I shan’t say.”

  “I think it probable that you do not know,” I answered. “Miss Davenant is critically ill, and is lying at the present time in my friend’s flat.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not. The flat is already suspected and watched.”

  “Why don’t they search it?”

  “Because England is a corrupt country,” I said, boldly inventing. “I have what is called a friend at Court. Miss Davenant’s sister—Mrs. Wylton—is an old friend of mine, and I wish to spare her the pain of seeing Miss Davenant arrested—in a critical condition—if it can be avoided. My friend at Court has been persuaded to suspend the issue of a search-warrant, if Miss Roden and the others are restored to their families before midnight tonight. I may say in passing that if Miss Davenant were arrested, tried and imprisoned, it would be no more than she richly deserved. However, I do not expect you to agree with me. Out of regard to Mrs. Wylton we have come down here. I need not say how we found Miss Roden was being kept here—”

  “She is not.”

  I sighed resignedly.

  “You wish Miss Davenant to be given up?”

  “You don’t know where Miss Davenant is, and I do.”

  It was bluff against bluff, but we could go on no longer on the old lines. I produced my revolver as a guarantee of determination, pocketed it once more, pushed my way past her as gently as I could, waited for the Seraph to follow, and then closed the door.

  “I am now going to search the house,” I told Miss Draper. “This is your last chance. Tell me where Miss Roden is, and I will compound a felony, and let you and every one else in the house escape. Put a single obstacle in my way, and I will have the lot of you arrested. Which is it to be?”

  She started to tell me again that Sylvia was not there. I made a step across the room and saw her cover her face with her hands. The battle was over.

  “Where is she?” I demanded, thanking God that it has not often been my lot to fight with women.

  Miss Draper pointed to a door on the left of the hall; the key was in the lock.

  “No tricks?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You had better make yourself scarce.”

  Even as I put my hand to the door she vanished into the back of the house. I heard the sound of an engine starting, and rushed out to see if I had even now been outwitted. The garrison was driving out hatless and coatless, stripped of all honours of war; in the driving-seat sat my friend the bearded priest of the Orthodox Church, his beard somewhat awry. Miss Draper was beside him; there was no one else.

  I returned to the hall—where the Seraph was sleeping upright against the wall—opened the door and entered a darkened room. As my eyes grew accustomed to the subdued light, I traced the outline of a window, and drew back the curtains. The sun flooded in, and showed me that I stood in a bedroom. A table with an untasted meal stood against one wall; by the other was a camp bedstead. At length on the bed, fully dressed but blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot, lay Sylvia Roden.

  I cut the cords, tore away the bandages, and watched her rise stiffly to her feet. Then I shut the door and stood awkwardly at the window, while she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  It was soon over, but she was the better for it. I watched her drink three tumblers of water and seize a crust of dry bread. It appeared that she had conducted a hunger-strike of her own for the last twenty-four hours; and I think she looked it. Her face was white with the whiteness of a person who has been long confined in a small, dark room. A bruise over one temple showed that her captors had had to deal with a woman of metal, and her wrists were chafed and cut with the pressure of the cords. Worst of all was her change of spirit; the voice had lost its proud ring of assurance, the dark eyes were frightened. Sylvia Roden was almost broken.

  “You didn’t expect to see me, Sylvia,” I said, as I buttered the stale crusts to make them less unappetizing.

  She shook her head without answering.

  “Did you think no one was ever coming?”

  She looked at me still with the frightened expression in her eyes.

  “No.”

  The uncertainty of her tone made me wonder whom she had been expecting. My question was answered before I could ask it.

  “How did you find me?”

  “The Seraph brought me here.”

  Her pale cheeks took on a tinge of colour.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Outside.”

  “I must go to him!” she exclaimed, jumping up and then swaying dizzily.

  I pressed her back into her chair.

  “Wait till you’ve had some food,” I said, “and then I’ll bring him in.”

  “But I don’t want any more.”

  “Sylvia,” I said firmly, “if you’re not a good girl we shan’t rescue you another time.”

  She ate a few slices of bread and butter while I gave her an outline of our journey down from London. Then we went out into the hall. The Seraph had collapsed from his upright position, and was lying in a heap with his head on the floor. I carried him out of the hall and laid him on the bed in Sylvia’s prison. His heart was beating, but he seemed to have fallen into a deep trance. Sylvia bent down and kissed the dusty forehead. Then her eyes fell on a faint red mark running diagonally from one cheek-bone, across the mouth, to the point of the chin. She had started crying again when I left the room in search of brandy.

  I stayed away as long as I thought necessary to satisfy myself that there were no other prisoners in the house. When I came back, the tears were still wet on her cheeks, and she was bathing his face and waiting for the eyes to open.

  “Your prison doesn’t run to brandy,” I told her. “We must get him to Maidenhead, and I’ll give him some there. I’ve got a car waiting about half a mile away. Will you look after him while I fetch it?”

  “Don’t be long,” she said, with an anxious look at the white, still face.

  “No longer than I can help. Here’s a revolver in case any one wants to abduct either of you. It’s loaded, so be careful.”

  I placed the revolver on the table and picked up my hat.

  “Sylvia!” I said at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you be trusted to look after him properly?”

  She smiled for the first time since her release from captivity.

  “I think so,” she said. Then the voice quavered and she turned away. “He’s rather precious.”

  The car was brought to the door, and the driver—who, after all, had been paid not to be surprised—looked on unemotionally as we carried the Seraph on board. I occupied an uncomfortable little seat backing the engine, while Sylvia sat in one corner and the Seraph was propped up in the other.

  On the way back I was compelled to repeat in extenso the whole story of our search, from the hour we left Adelphi Terrace to the moment when Miss Draper bolted with the Orthodox Church priest and I forced my way into the darkened prison cell.

  Sylvia’s face was an interesting study in expression as the narrative proceeded.

  “But how could he know?” she asked in a puzzled tone when I had ended. “You must explain that. I don’t see how it’s possible.”

  “Madam, I have provided you with a story,” I replied in the manner of Dr. Johnson; “I am not obliged to provide you with a moral.”

  As a matter of fact I had reversed the natural order, and given the moral before the story. The moral was pointed when I drank a friendly cup of tea in Cadogan Square; the day before she marked his cheek with its present angry wale.

 
Of course, if you point morals before there’s a story to hang them from, you must expect to see them disregarded.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Or the Obvious Alternative

  “If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman—always a rash thing to do—he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The one thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself.… The inherited stupidity of the race—sound English common sense.…”

  —Oscar Wilde

  The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  If the Seraph’s quest for Sylvia was one of the strangest experiences of my life, I count our return to London among its pleasantest memories. Almost before I had time to cut the cords round her wrists and ankles, I was telling myself that Joyce now lay free from the menace of an inquisition at Adelphi Terrace. Thursday afternoon. She had eight days to pick up sufficient strength for Maybury-Reynardson to say I might smuggle her to Southampton and convey her on board the S.Y. Ariel.… I hope I was not heartless or ungrateful in thinking more of her than of the white, unconscious boy in front of me; there was nothing more that I could do, and if there had been, Sylvia would have forestalled me.

  I count the return a pleasant memory for the light it threw on Sylvia’s character. Passion and pride had faded out of her dark eyes; I could no longer call her Queen Elizabeth; but she was very tender and remorseful to the man she had injured. This was the Sylvia of an Oxford summer evening; I could recognise her from the Seraph’s description. I treasure the memory because it was the only glimpse I ever caught of this side of her character; when next we met—before her last parting from the Seraph—she had gone back to the earlier hard haughtiness, and though I loved Sylvia at all times, I loved her least when she was regal.

  And lastly I dwell on this memory for the way she talked to me when my tale was done. It was then she showed me the reverse side of her relations with the Seraph, and filled in those spaces that the manuscript narrative in Adelphi Terrace left blank. I remember most of what she told me; their meetings and conversations, her deepening interest, rising curiosity, growing attachment.… I had watched the Sixth Sense as a spectator; she gave me her own curiosity—uneasiness—belief and disbelief—ultimate uncertainty. I realised then what it must have meant to such a girl to find a man who was conscious of her presence at a distance and could see the workings of her mind before they were apparent to herself in any definite form. I learned to appreciate the thrill she must have experienced on discovering a soul in sympathy with her own restless, volatile, hungry spirit.