In the afternoon he was beginning to feel a little better and to hope that after all things were going right for him somehow, when at the eleventh hour Mr. Gimblet made his appearance upon the scene. From the moment when Bert understood who he was and what was his business, he gave himself up for lost. Some unsuspected gleam of courage came to his aid now, however—a sort of phantom of the real thing, found, it may be imagined, in the brandy bottle—and he made up his mind that, if he must be taken, it should not be due, at all events, to any revelation of his own.
The agony of mind endured during the hours which followed is not to be described in mere words. The dread, the suspense, the feeling of physical weakness which nearly overcame him as he witnessed the detective’s search, and the final horrible moment when he saw the body of the poor lady drawn from the grave where he had thought it hidden for ever from his own, if not from every other eye, would have strained the nerve of any man. It was, indeed, a heaping of horror upon horror.
What unthinkable clairvoyance, what supernatural omniscience had led Gimblet to pick out that house, of all the dwellings in the great city and its suburbs, for his investigations, was as much beyond Bert’s imagination as the means by which he himself succeeded in refraining from revealing, then and there, the part he had taken in the ghastly business.
To his almost incredulous astonishment no one seemed to suspect him, and instead of being removed in irons, as he expected, he found himself free to return to his lodgings, there to recuperate from the shocks he had sustained, in a deep, brandy induced sleep.
The next morning he was out early, and the first poster gave him the news that Mrs. Vanderstein was found, and staying at Boulogne. He bought the paper, and, even as he read the paragraph in which the news was related, made up his mind to spend the holiday given him by Mr. Ennidge in running over to Boulogne to see Madame Querterot. He had no definite idea in doing so. But his rage at her treatment of her daughter was still red-hot, and now was added to it a furious resentment at her departure from the conduct they had agreed she should observe. What possessed her not to stay quietly in her room? It was madness to have gone out; yes, actually to have gone to the Casino, the place of all others where she was most likely to be seen by some acquaintances of Mrs. Vanderstein’s. Did she want to lose them all by her folly and recklessness?
And in any case he could not rest till he had told her what he thought of her.
He went out to a pawnbroker’s, and by pawning his watch and some odds and ends of jewellery that had belonged to his mother collected enough money for the return journey. Then he took a taxi for the first time in his life, and drove to Whitehall. He had seen Gimblet’s address on the card he sent in to Mr. Ennidge.
Higgs told him, in answer to his inquiries, that the inquest would not be till the next day, so that there was nothing to prevent him from taking the ten o’clock train from Charing Cross. There was time before it started to put on his false beard, in an empty waiting-room, and to gulp down a strong dose of brandy at the bar of the refreshment-room. He felt safer when he had taken these precautions, for he had been haunted by an uneasy feeling that Higgs might have followed him from the flat.
The journey was uneventful, the sea as smooth as a pond. He hardly knew how the time passed before they arrived at Boulogne pier.
He walked round the harbour, asking the way by the simple repetition of the words “Hôtel de Douvres,” and following the direction in which the fingers of those who answered him were pointed.