THE CLUB OF MASKS

The Club of Masks

By ALLEN UPWARD

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company
Printed in U. S. A.

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

Copyright in Great Britain under the title of The Domino Club

CONTENTS

THE CLUB OF MASKS

CHAPTER I
ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE

I had only just let myself into the hall of the quiet house in the respectable street beside the British Museum when my ear was startled by the subdued shrilling of the telephone bell overhead. Whether this was the first time it had sounded, or whether that alarming call was being repeated for the second or third time, I had no means of knowing, as I turned hurriedly to fasten the front door behind me. Cautiously, and yet as swiftly as I dared, I shot the bolts and began speeding on tiptoe up the two flights of stairs between me and safety from detection. The night telephone was placed beside my bed on the second floor, but Sir Frank Tarleton slept on the same landing; and unless I could reach my room and still that persistent ringing before it penetrated through his slumber I ran the risk of meeting him coming out to find why it was not answered. And not for much, not for very much, would I have had the great consultant see me returning to his house at an hour when daylight was already flooding the deserted streets of the still sleeping city.

There was something ominous in the continuous peal that sounded louder and louder in my ears with every step I made towards it. It seemed as though the unknown caller must know of my predicament and be bent on exposing me. I clutched the rail of the banisters to steady myself as I panted up those interminable stairs in the darkness, and my feet felt clogged like those of one in a nightmare as I lifted them from step to step; all the while racking my brains for some excuse to offer for the breach of duty I had been guilty of in spending the night elsewhere. For my real excuse, the only one that could have tempted me to betray my chief’s confidence, could never be disclosed.

The darkness all around me seemed to be vibrating with the merciless clamour overhead as I toiled through those tense moments. My knees trembled under me, and my heart well-nigh stopped beating, as my head reached the level of the last landing and I turned my eyes desperately to the physician’s door in search of any sign that he had been aroused.

No sign as yet, thank Heaven! Five more stairs, three lightning strides to my own door, and he would never know of the secret errand that had taken me away from my post that night.

At last my agony was ended. I stood breathless on the topmost stair, darted past Sir Frank’s room, not daring to pause and listen for any movement from within, and clutched the handle of my own door, summoning all my nerve to open and close it again so rapidly as to permit the least possible sound to escape. An instant later and I had reached the telephone and silenced its urgent voice, and was beginning to draw my breath freely for the first time since I had reached the house.

Then, after a few deep gasps, I hailed the caller.

“Inspector Charles of Scotland Yard speaking,” came grimly over the wire. “Who is there?”

There was nothing to startle me in the fact that the police were calling so imperatively. Tarleton was the greatest living authority on poisons; it was to pursue his researches in their mysterious history that he lived in the unfashionable neighbourhood of the Museum; and the Home Office treated him with a confidence which they placed in no other of their advisers. Neither was there any cause for uneasiness in the Inspector’s cautious question. Very many of the calls that came to that unpretending house in that quiet corner of London had a certain character of furtiveness, and the callers showed the same anxiety to make sure whom they were speaking with.

My usual response came to my lips mechanically. “This is Dr. Cassilis, Sir Frank Tarleton’s confidential assistant. The doctor is asleep.”

There was a pause before the caller spoke again. There was nothing alarming to me in that, either. I had grown accustomed to the pause during my first few weeks under the roof of the great consultant. Few of those who needed his services liked to disclose their business to a deputy.

“Please have him waked immediately. He is wanted as soon as possible—on His Majesty’s service.”

The request was peremptory, nevertheless I was not inclined to give way to it at once. The police formula made no difference to me. I was His Majesty’s servant as much as my chief, and it was for me, and not for the Inspector, to decide which of us was to take the case. At the same time I began casting off my clothes so as to be ready to go in and rouse Tarleton if it became necessary; and one hand was busy with my necktie and collar while the other held the telephone mouthpiece to my lips.

“My instructions are not to disturb Sir Frank unless I am satisfied that the case is urgent, and that I can’t deal with it myself,” I said firmly. “I must ask you to tell me something more.”

There was another pause before the caller spoke again, and I took advantage of it to wrench off my collar and throw my waistcoat after my coat onto the floor. When the wire buzzed again the first words that reached my ear nearly caused me to drop the tube from my fingers.

“I am speaking from the Domino Club, Vincent Studios, Tarifa Road, Chelsea. There was a masked dance here this night, and one of the dancers has been found dead, apparently poisoned.”

And now I might well find myself trembling all over, and have to lean against the wall to recover myself. I only just succeeded in keeping back a cry of consternation. For it was to go to that underground club, with its dark reputation, and its strange character of mingled fashion and depravity, that I had been tempted to quit my post that night. I had been one of those masked dancers, jostling with I knew not whom under the shadowy lights and in the curtained recesses of the pretended studio in London’s nearest approach to a Quartier Latin. I could recall the scene in the after-midnight hours, the sea of black silk-covered faces thronging under the crimson lamp-shades, the bizarre confusion of costumes, monks and Crusaders, columbines and queens, the swish of silk and tinkling of swords and bracelets, and the incessant flood of whispers that had made me think of the scene in Milton’s pandemonium when the assembly of fallen angels are suddenly deprived of speech and changed into hissing serpents.

I had used the greatest precautions in coming and going. I had no reason to think that there was any real likelihood of my presence there being discovered. But a cold fear laid hold of me as I steadied my nerves to deal with the Police Inspector who had so unexpectedly conjured up a spectre on the scene of that past revelry. It was doubly imperative now that I should make no mistake, and above all that I should get rid of every sign that I had not passed the night in my own bed.

I was fast unbuttoning my shirt as I spoke again to the waiting police officer.

“I’m afraid I can’t awake Sir Frank for that. It seems to be a case that he will expect me to attend myself. Is there anything peculiar about the medical symptoms? What does your local surgeon say?”

Inspector Charles at last revealed the true reason for his persistence in demanding the attendance of my chief.

“I haven’t called in our local surgeon. There doesn’t seem anything mysterious about the cause of death. It looks to me like a simple case of opium-poisoning, very likely a suicide. But the case must be disposed of in camera if possible, for the sake of the people in high places connected with the club. My information is that there was a royalty present at this dance, the Crown Prince of——”

Whether purposely or not, the speaker let his voice drop so low that I failed to catch the final word. But I had heard enough. There could be no more doubt that Tarleton must be informed. It was a bare possibility that the victim might prove to be the foreign Royal Highness himself. Failing that, it might at least be someone who had been mistaken for him by the assassin. In any case I could thank my stars for the intimation that the case was likely to be hushed up on his account. Provided that I could efface every sign of my nocturnal expedition, I ought to have nothing now to dread.

I bade the officer wait, and tore off my remaining garments, slipped into my sleeping-suit and dressing-gown, and rumpled my hair to give myself the look of one just roused from sleep. Then and not before, I ventured out upon the landing to face my chief.

As I did so I was chilled by another shock. I saw a thin line of light under the door in front of me. Sir Frank Tarleton was awake.

I don’t think I can be accused of cowardice for feeling as I did during those desperate moments. It was not only my worldly fortune that was at stake; there were peculiar circumstances which made it doubly shameful on my part to be false to the trust put in me by the great specialist. They went back to the day when I began to attend his lectures on forensic medicine at the University College in Gower Street. I had already taken my medical degree in the University of London with a view to becoming a public analyst, and I had been anxious to profit by the Professor’s unique knowledge of poisons. From the first I had attracted his favourable notice; my papers had won his praise; and he had invited me to call on him, and admitted me to his friendship. Then, at the end of the year’s course, he had overwhelmed me by an offer so much beyond my hopes that I could scarcely yet believe in my good luck.

I can see him now, the whole scene is clear before me, the brisk figure with its face of intense thought, crowned by a shock of unkempt gray hair, standing over me on the hearth-rug of his dingy consulting-room on the ground floor in Montague Street. He was following his quaint habit of swinging his magnificent gold repeater in front of him by its shabby scrap of ribbon, while he gave me the amazing news.

“I’ve decided to take an assistant, Cassilis. I have passed my sixtieth birthday, and though my work interests me as much as ever, I mean to spare myself a little more in future. I don’t intend to turn out in the middle of the night because a bilious duchess fancies that someone has bribed her French maid to poison her. And I’ve told them at the Home Office—I suppose you know I’m their principal consultant—that I won’t be sent down to Cornwall one day and to Cumberland the next every time a coroner lets himself be puzzled by a simple case of strychnine or arsenic. It’s work for a younger man.”

He waved the watch towards me as he went on.

“Sir James Ponsonby—that’s the Permanent Under Secretary—has consented to my having a deputy, and I’m submitting your name.”

I recall my sensations as he stopped abruptly and bent his keen eyes on me from beneath their bushy roof of eyebrow to see how the proposal struck me. I had gasped for breath then as I was gasping now. At the age of twenty-five, only just qualified for my profession, I was to be lifted at one step out of the struggling crowd into a position which was already success, and which I should only have to make proper use of to attain in time the same eminence as my patron.

My answer must have been incoherent. But Tarleton interrupted it with a jerk of his gold repeater, which, I can remember, almost made me duck my head.

“I’m paying you what most of the men in our profession would consider a doubtful compliment when I tell you that you seem to me to be a young man with imagination, Cassilis. And that is what’s wanted in my work. It isn’t doctor’s work really so much as detective’s. It’s not only symptoms I have to look for, but motives. There was a touch in your very first paper that showed me you could think for yourself, and speculate. And speculation is the master key of science, although all your second-rate men decry it. It’s the old fable of the fox who had lost his tail. Not having any imagination themselves, they would like to forbid it to everyone. The Trade Unions rule the world to-day, and they are all trying to reduce the intelligence of mankind to the lowest common denominator.”

He had spoken with a certain bitterness which it was easy for me to understand. Eminent as he was, unquestioned as his authority had now become, I knew that Tarleton was not popular with the medical profession. His baronetcy had been given late, and given grudgingly. Perhaps he had recognized in me something that reminded him of his own youth, and had taken a generous resolution to help me in consequence. Certainly his treatment of me since had been more like that of a father than an employer.

He had said a good deal more that I hadn’t forgotten and that I was least likely to forget just then. His manner had been very grave as he dwelt upon the confidential character of a great deal of his work.

“If you are to assist me in my most important cases, and to qualify yourself for succeeding me later on, as I hope you will, you must learn to be more discreet than in almost any other line of life. You will find yourself in possession of secrets that compromise the honour of great families; men in the highest positions will hold their reputations at your mercy; the safety of the State itself may sometimes depend on your silence. I know of at least one man sitting in the House of Lords who owes his peerage to an undiscovered murder; and what is more, he knows of my knowledge. I make it a rule if possible never to go into any company where he is likely to be present, and he takes the same care to avoid me. But if he ever thought it necessary to his safety, that man would no more hesitate about taking my life than he did about taking his nephew’s—a boy twelve years old.”

No doubt Tarleton had gauged my disposition pretty well before he chose me for his assistant, and he knew that I should be more attracted than repelled by such hints as that. My blood tingled at the prospect opening before me. The days of Richard III and the Bloody Tower seemed to have come again. And I was to be behind the scenes tracing the midnight assassin at his work in the heart of modern London, and in the very purlieus of her palaces. It was enough to sate the greediest imagination.

“I mustn’t conceal from you,” my kindly chief had gone on to tell me, “that I have had to overcome strong objections to your appointment. Sir James Ponsonby considers that you are very young to be entrusted with such serious responsibilities. You can’t wonder if the Home Office has taken some precautions. I submitted your name a month ago, and I only received permission to make you the offer yesterday. I have very little doubt that you have been under observation most of the time between.”

This was the part of the conversation that had come back to me most vividly that night when I was struggling frantically towards the accusing bell.

For the whole sting in the communication that my memory thrust so pitilessly before me was in the last condition, the very condition I had been driven to break that night.

I had been less dismayed than most men of my age perhaps—particularly most medical students—would have been by learning that my life had been under the microscope for a month. I had nothing very serious to reproach myself with. The memory of a secret love affair, an unhappy one, alas! had served to keep me clear of the most dangerous of all the snares that life sets for youth. It was my good luck never to have tasted, and never to have felt the wish to taste, anything in the way of alcohol, and to be able to sit with nothing stronger than a cup of strong coffee in front of me in the midst of the most riotous company. I believe it was this exceptional merit that turned the scale in my favour with Sir James Ponsonby. Gambling had equally little appeal for me, and I took no interest whatever in that noble animal the horse. My real vice was love of excitement for its own sake. One prize-fight had more attraction for me than a hundred cricket-matches. It was in search of sensation that I was drawn into the night life of London. I was haunted by the mystery of silent streets and shadowed courts. Like Stevenson, I felt that life ought to be a series of adventures beginning in Leicester Square. The Press Club and the Chelsea Art Club were the two poles of my romantic sphere, and I revelled in the society of men who seemed to me to be leading lives more mysterious than mine.

It appeared that this was the weakness which stood in my way with the Government Department I was to serve. Tarleton had ceased to swing his watch, and had given me a very meaning glance as he came to the decisive point.

“Sir James has made it a condition of your appointment that it shall be a resident one. You will have to take up your quarters with me. I shall have a telephone installed in your room for you to take the night calls. And I shall depend on you not to trouble me with them unless I am really wanted.”

My face must have fallen as I listened to this stipulation, for I saw an answering shade on the doctor’s brow. I felt that a good deal of the gilt would be taken off the gingerbread if I had to surrender my personal freedom and abandon my favourite haunts to lead a regular life under my employer’s roof, and under his surveillance; for, of course, that was what it came to. My chief inducement to take up the career of an analyst instead of a general practitioner had been the greater freedom I should enjoy. I had dreaded the idea of having to settle in a provincial town or a prim residential suburb, where I should have to keep regular hours, go to church in a black coat on Sundays, act as sidesman, and generally put on all the airs of respectability. It would be almost as great a wrench to give up my artist and journalist friends, in whose company I had had such jolly times, and go to bed every night just as the real day was beginning, under the watchful eyes of my chief.

I fancy Sir Frank himself felt some sympathy with me, though he was too wise to express it.

“A man must expect to be judged to some extent by the company he keeps,” he had hinted. “You can’t expect the head of a Department like the Home Office to feel easy at the idea of entrusting important secrets to a young man who spends his nights, I won’t say in disreputable company, but at all events in circles where a good many adventurers are found. These people”—the bitter note came back into his voice—“these people hate the shoulders on which they have climbed. They govern the empire which the Raleighs and the Clives have gained for them, but they don’t want any more Clives and Raleighs. They threw Burton away; they wouldn’t use Gordon till it was too late—Faugh!” He swallowed his disgust with an effort, and became almost stern. “Now, my boy, this is a great opportunity for you, and you must take it. You must forget that you are a genius, and put your neck into the collar for a few years. At the end of that time you will have a reputation, and you can do what you like within reasonable limits. I expect you to trust yourself to me.”

And, of course, I had. He had taken me to the Home Office and formally presented me to the Under Secretary, and I found myself appointed an Assistant Medical Adviser, detailed for duty under the orders of Sir Frank Tarleton, with a salary that seemed riches in advance.

Perhaps I had found my work a little disappointing since. The night calls had not been numerous, and they had grown fewer after the first month or two, as though Tarleton’s clients or patients, I hardly know which to call them, had found out that it was no use expecting him to turn out any longer, if the case was one that I could deal with. Most of my time was passed in the laboratory in Montague Street, carrying out analyses under his directions, and improving my knowledge of rare poisons, of which he had formed what was probably the finest collection in the world. But of really sensational cases, involving criminal suspicion and mystery, there had not been one before that fateful summons from the Domino Club.

But I dared not hesitate longer in delivering it. Every moment now would only make matters worse. I crossed the landing and knocked firmly on the closed door.

The answer was instantaneous—“Come in!”

I obeyed, to find myself in the full glare of the electric light over the bed, in which Tarleton was sitting upright, his beloved repeater in one hand, while he gazed at me questioningly from beneath his knitted brows.

“I first heard the telephone nine minutes ago. You have taken some time to answer it.”

CHAPTER II
THE EVIDENCE OF MADAME BONNELL

Instead of excusing myself I thought it the best plan to plunge into the account of what had taken place at the Domino Club, in the hope that it would absorb his mind. The alert physician made only one comment as I finished.

“A case for Inspector Charles is pretty sure to be a case for me; but you didn’t know that.” He was out of bed the next moment.

“Please tell him I am coming at once, and order round my car. And be ready yourself as soon as you can.”

I needed no injunction to make haste. I was in a fever to be back at the scene of that masked revel, and find out what had happened there. I congratulated myself on the care I had taken to cover my own tracks. I had left the doctor’s house and returned to it in my ordinary clothes. Not a soul in the Domino Club, except the member from whom I had obtained a ticket of admission, could have the least idea of my identity. So far as I could see I was absolutely secure from discovery. But it had been a dangerous game to play, and Tarleton was a dangerous man to play against. With all his kindness for me I trembled at the thought of coming within the range of his uncanny powers of detection.

As soon as I had dispatched his messages, and put a pot of coffee on to boil over a little spirit stove, I sluiced my head in cold water, and got into my clothes again as quickly as I had got out of them. I was ready with a steaming cup of coffee for my chief as he came out of his room, and was rewarded by the heartiness with which he gulped it down. His square leather bag, fitted with everything likely to be needed for the treatment of a poisoning case, was always kept ready in his bedroom, and he had it in his hand. I relieved him of it not presuming to bring my own; and we found the car waiting for us when we opened the front door.

As we rolled through the streets, just beginning to show signs of life, Tarleton acquainted me with the personality of Inspector Charles.

“He’s a retired Army man; he likes to be called Captain Charles. He’s also the younger son of a peer but he doesn’t like that noticed. His family are silly enough to object to his being in the police, and he drops the Honourable on their account. But of course it’s known in the Yard, and he gets most of the society jobs in consequence. I suppose they think he’s more likely to know his way about among the big people. But if you ask me, I think an experienced valet knows ten times more. You’ll find Charles straight, and you’ll find him thorough, but you needn’t expect him to see an inch beyond his own nose.”

This was comfortable for me. But the next words of my chief gave me an awkward jar.

“By the way, you ought to be able to tell me something about the place we’re going to—what is it?—the Domino Club. It sounds like the sort of night haunt the Home Office objected to so much when I asked for you as my assistant.”

I had to make up my mind in a hurry. To tell the truth was out of the question. It was not only my own honour and safety that were at stake; there was another for whose sake my presence at that fatal dance must be concealed. I was on the point of denying all knowledge of the club when it struck me that I might be betrayed into some unconscious movement in going through the premises, or some thoughtless remark, which would reveal to a keen intelligence like Tarleton’s that I had been there before.

I made an effort to seem as if I had been searching my memory.

“Yes,” I said slowly, “now you speak of it I remember having been there. But I am not sure that I am free to say anything about it. My impression is that there was an implied pledge of secrecy. Everyone wore a mask and a disguise of some sort. It was supposed to be a place where people in very high positions could let themselves go in security. I was told there were sometimes judges present, and I rather think Cabinet Ministers, as well as peeresses, and so forth.”

The specialist nodded gravely. “I expect the authorities knew what they were doing when they told Charles to call for me. We shall see whether he has found out who the man is that has been poisoned.”

“He didn’t say it was a man,” I ventured to suggest.

Sir Frank pursed his lips, but made no answer. He took out his gold repeater and began swinging it slowly, a sure sign that he was following out some train of thought.

In another quarter of an hour the car drew up in one of the old-fashioned streets of Chelsea between King Street and the Fulham Road, at the entrance to the curious building or group of buildings that bore the name of Vincent Studios.

The place resembled a rabbit warren. A short flight of steps led down from the street pavement into a dark, cavernous hall with doors opening out of it on three sides. Behind most of these doors were the studios of artists—one or two of them known to me—studios as cavernous if not as dark as the hall, and ending in glass doors that opened on mysterious gardens or garden yards overgrown with nasturtiums and other plants that seem to love the grime and cinders of suburban London. In the background one was aware of gray piles of timber, as of a mountain range closing a landscape. Some forgotten builder, perhaps, had died, leaving those stacks behind him, and his heirs had never discovered their existence, so that they had been left to the possession of the rats.

At the far end of the entrance cavern two doors side by side still bore the name of artists, one of whom had lately blossomed into an Academician and been transplanted to the sunnier region of Bedford Park, while the other had exchanged the brush for some more promising weapon in what, I fear, had been a losing fight with Fortune. Only the initiated knew that the door still bearing the name of J. Loftus, A.R.A., was now that of the Domino Club; while its companion, from which the name of Yelverton had been roughly effaced, served as a back door for the use of the tradesmen and servants of the club, and also for such members as had reasons of their own for not coming through the streets in fancy costume. For their benefit a row of small dressing-rooms had been fitted up, in which they could transform themselves from sober moths into bright artificial butterflies and back again.

In front of the club entrance an officer in plain clothes was stationed who recognized Sir Frank with a respectful salute.

“You will find Inspector Charles inside, sir,” he said, opening the door for us.

We found ourselves in a dark narrow passage empty of everything but cloak- and hat-pegs. A door at the further end opened straight into the dancing-room.

The former studio had been decorated in a fashion evidently meant to recall the Arabian Nights Entertainment. Vistas of Moorish arches and fountains playing among palms and oleanders had been painted on the walls. At intervals wooden columns had been set up to support curtains of gauze embroidered so as to afford a half concealment to the nooks that they enclosed. The whole place was still suffused with the lurid glow of a series of red lanterns hanging from the roof. But a glass door at the further end had been thrown open to admit the daylight, and where it reached the crimson glow became haggard and spectral and the whole place had the air of an old woman’s face from which the paint had peeled in streaks, revealing the wrinkles and sharp bones beneath.

Inspector Charles, tall, upright, and looking the personification of law and order, stood beside one of the curtained alcoves close to the garden door, and invited us with a solemn gesture to approach.

This was the moment I had been dreading. I endeavoured to keep my face passive, and give no sign of recognition, as I came behind my chief and took my first glance at the spectacle the Inspector had to show us.

Within the curtains, stretched at full length on a low divan, was a figure attired as an Inquisitor. The black robe was folded carefully round him, but the peaked hood with its two eye-slits had been thrust back over the head, so that the face was fully exposed. It was a striking face in every way, the face of a man of fifty or thereabout in the full possession of his powers. The forehead was intellectual; the eyes, wide open but glazed in the death stare, must have been full and penetrating in life; the nose and chin were strongly carved; only the lips showed a certain looseness, as of over-ripened fruit, that seemed to hint at something evil underlying the dignity and strength manifested in the rest of the face.

I scanned that prostrate figure with painful curiosity. The costume was only too familiar; I had had ample opportunity of observing it during the night that had just elapsed. But the face was as strange to me as it was to either of the other two who stood and gazed beside me. Even the eyes, unnaturally dilated by the drug, seemed to bear little likeness to those that had peered through the holes in the black hood when I last looked on the sombre shape in life.

The Inspector spoke briefly, addressing himself to my companion.

“This is how he was found when they came in to put out the lights after everyone was gone as they supposed. They thought at first that he was in a drunken sleep, and tried to rouse him by shaking. When they failed, they went to bring Madame Bonnell, the proprietress of the club. They dared not uncover the face without her authority; the rules of the club are so strict on that point. She laid back the hood herself, and saw at once that he was dead. After that she rang us up, and saw that the body was not touched till I got here. I thought it best not to touch it myself till you came.”

Clear, succinct, containing the bare facts and nothing more, such was the report of Inspector Charles. It was evident that no better man could have been put in charge of an affair in dealing with which prudence was the most essential requisite.

The great physician received the statement with a nod of satisfaction.

“You suggested to Dr. Cassilis over the wire that it looked like a case of opium-poisoning,” was his first remark.

Captain Charles favoured me with a cautious glance, in which I read some disapproval of my youthful appearance.

“I thought an opiate must have been the cause of death, Sir Frank, because there was no sign of a struggle nor of any suffering. He seemed to have died in his sleep.”

Again the consultant gave an approving nod. All this time he had not once removed his eyes from the pallid face on which a leaden tinge had become visible. Now he turned to me.

“What do you say, Cassilis?”

I shook my head. There was something in the case that puzzled me.

“I agree with Captain Charles to some extent. The appearances are consistent with opium-poisoning. But——” I turned to the Inspector—“can you tell us the hour at which the body was found with life extinct?”

Captain Charles consulted his watch. Tarleton’s fingers were already pinching the shabby ribbon of his repeater, and it was going to and fro with the slow movement of a pendulum.

“It is now half-past six. I got here soon after five. It must have been about half-past four when the body was found.”

I looked questioningly at the great specialist.

“Unless the opiate was given very early, in which case the effect would surely have been noticed by someone, it must have been a very powerful dose to produce death so soon. I should be inclined to suspect some weakness in the heart, or some other derangement, to account for such rapid action. I don’t like the colour of the skin.”

“Ah! You see that?” Tarleton bent over the dead face in grave scrutiny for some moments. Then he straightened himself up.

“And now, who is this man?” he asked the Inspector.

“His name is Wilson, so the proprietress says. But she seems to know very little about him.”

“Wilson?” The doctor repeated the name with a sceptical intonation. “That is the sort of name that man would be likely to give himself in a place of this kind, I should think. Can I see the proprietress?”

Captain Charles went out in quest of her. He was no sooner gone than my chief whispered quickly in my ear, “Not another word about the cause of death before anybody else. I blame myself for asking your opinion. I underrated your powers of observation. Hush!”

I looked round to see a capable middle-aged Frenchwoman dressed in black silk, emerging from a portière across the room. Very capable and businesslike she looked, with her well-arranged hair and commanding black eyes, and well-preserved face and figure, and that amazing air of respectability which only a Frenchwoman can keep up in an atmosphere charged with evil. In Madame Bonnell’s presence vice was deprived of its impropriety, and even murder took on the character of a business mischance about which the less fuss made the better.

Madame had obviously employed her time since the discovery of this particular mischance in making the best of her personal appearance. She greeted us with affability.

Even Tarleton, I thought, was softened by her graceful and yet dignified deportment. In a moment we seemed to become four friends engaged in a confidential talk over a matter of common interest. It was Madame who induced me to sit down.

“You understand, no doubt, Madame, that we are not here with any hostile purpose,” the representative of the Home Office began. “If it is possible to dispose of this matter privately, without involving you or your establishment in any scandal, I shall be glad.”

The explanation seemed unnecessary. Madame Bonnell by her manner refused to perceive the possibility of her being involved in scandal, or in anything else inconsistent with the character of a respectable business woman.

“You have identified the deceased, I understand, by the name of Wilson. Have you any idea whether that was his real name, or an assumed one?”

Madame Bonnell had no idea. Madame Bonnell was desolated by having no idea, since the amiable Sir Frank seemed to wish her to have one. Monsieur the late Wilson had introduced himself to her originally under that name, and she had never inquired if he had any other.

Madame succeeded in conveying to us that she was not in the habit of inconveniencing her patrons by inquiries of any sort, or of distracting her own mind by curiosity on any subject except their ability to pay her.

Under the polished surface of indifference I nevertheless thought I could detect in the proprietress of the Domino Club a consciousness that she was being examined by the representatives of the law about a serious business, and that it would not be prudent on her part to withhold any material information. It must have been clear to her that candour was her best policy, up to a certain point at all events.

To Tarleton’s next question, how she came to make the acquaintance of the dead man, she made a pretty full reply. Monsieur Wilson had introduced himself to her a year or two before, when she was managing a small restaurant in Soho, in a street in which there is more than one small restaurant, and the restaurants are patronized by more than one class of customers. It was Monsieur Wilson who had proposed to her that she should exchange her position there for the more profitable one of proprietress of a fashionable night club. Monsieur had offered to provide the funds required for starting such a club, and had undertaken to make it fashionable, and in both respects he had kept his word. All the first members of the club had been brought by him, and he had gone on introducing others since. Madame avowed that she was under a debt to Monsieur Wilson, which she could not easily repay. She made an effort to repay it, as she spoke, with tears for his fate, but the dividend forthcoming did not strike me as a heavy one. By this time, doubtless, the Domino Club was fairly on its feet, and in no great need of the dead man’s further support.

Madame Bonnell’s evidence so far had only served to deepen the mystery instead of lightening it. Who was this unknown Wilson? Why should he have wanted to start a night club, and what was the influence that had enabled him to fill it with so many members drawn from the highest social ranks? The chief part in the examination had been taken by the physician, Inspector Charles intervening mostly to secure dates and addresses for his note-book after the meticulous fashion of the law. At length I took advantage of a break to put a question which had been in my mind for some time.

“These people whom Wilson, if that was his name, brought into the club must have been his friends, apparently. So far as one can see the club was entirely composed of his personal friends and other friends of theirs. Doesn’t that make it more probable that he took poison himself than that anyone else gave it to him?”

I threw out the suggestion generally, and my three companions all turned and stared at me as though it took them by surprise, although it was an obvious alternative. The physician said nothing, but the compression of his brows told me plainly that he had rejected such a theory. Captain Charles made a fatal objection.

“After he had founded the club and done everything to make it a success, why should he have come to it to commit suicide—the very thing that would damage it most?”

Madame Bonnell became genuinely agitated for the first time.

“But of course that will not be known!” she exclaimed sharply. “You sir,” she appealed to Tarleton, “you will know how to contrive that this unfortunate shall be taken elsewhere. Think of the scandal if it should be known that a crime was committed in the presence of the Crown Prince!”

Evidently His Royal Highness was a strong card in Madame’s estimation, and one which she could rely on to win her game. Perhaps it was not the first time in her business experience that she had found the police disposed to shut their eyes to awkward incidents in which great personages were involved.

The consultant of the Home Office looked by no means yielding.

“I have not yet decided what course I shall recommend the authorities to take,” he said. “Have you anything to say in answer to Dr. Cassilis? Is he right in assuming that everyone present here last night must have been Wilson’s friend?”

Thus pressed, Madame Bonnell presented the appearance of an unwilling witness, who hesitates to speak for fear of the consequences to himself.

“As long as I believe that no proceedings will be taken against the Club, which is my property, everything I know, my suspicions even, are at the service of the police,” she replied cautiously.

It was a bargain which the astute Frenchwoman was proposing openly to the authorities. Tarleton shrugged his shoulders. He was the last man to commit himself to anything of the kind.

“The moment I am satisfied that you are withholding any information that bears on the case I shall advise the police to close this place, and apply for your deportation as an alien, Madame Bonnell.”

The capable Frenchwoman saw that she had made a false step. She retracted it immediately in admirable distress.

“But Monsieur must pardon me! I am bewildered by the situation in which I find myself. I do not understand the Britannic law. I am ready to throw myself on Monsieur’s consideration. What is it that he would have me say?”

The physician looked at his watch.

“I am waiting for your answer to Dr. Cassilis.”

Madame Bonnell gave me an appealing look, of which I thought it best to take no notice. I had seen nothing of her during the time I had spent at the dance, and I was confident that she was quite ignorant of my presence at it. She found herself compelled to speak without assistance.

“The Doctor Cassilis is mistaken,” she said at last, with an air of weighing each word before she uttered it. “Monsieur Wilson was acquainted with the people whom he introduced here, undoubtedly, but they were not all his friends. On the contrary, some of them were his enemies, and he went in fear of them. Even in mortal fear.”

It was the revelation Tarleton seemed to have been anticipating. He gave the short, satisfied nod I knew so well.

“Go on,” he commanded. “Explain how you knew this.”

“In effect I knew it because he told me so himself. He took me into his confidence in order to ask for my protection. He feared this very thing that has happened. He instructed me to pour out everything he was to drink with my own hands, and to send it to him by the waiter he thought he could trust—Gerard.”

“Now I think we have some real information,” the specialist observed. “Be good enough to send for Gerard, if you please.”

CHAPTER III
THE EVIDENCE OF THE DEAD

At this point I began to feel a touch of nervousness. I had faced the proprietress of the Domino Club without any, because she had not seen me even in my disguise. But the waiters had been going to and fro throughout the night. I had given orders once or twice, and I could not feel certain that my voice would not be recognized. I told myself that my fear was fanciful, and that the last thing that could occur to anyone’s mind was that a representative of the Home Office, engaged in the investigation, had himself been present on the scene of the crime, if crime it was. But none the less I resolved to do nothing to attract the waiter’s notice, if I could help it.

I saw Tarleton frown as Madame Bonnell returned with her servant. He gave her an authoritative nod.

“Thank you, Madame. I won’t detain you while I am questioning this man.”

The prudent Frenchwoman concealed any vexation she may have felt, and instantly retired, leaving Gerard alone with us.

He was as much the type of the discreet waiter as Madame was of the discreet manageress. If he had only possessed side-whiskers he would have been the perfect waiter of the French stage. But he was a good deal younger than Madame, and showed less self-possession. His eyes searched us nervously in turn as though he were looking for someone to propitiate. The physician read his rather white face with one swift glance, and came to his relief.

“You are not under any suspicion, Gerard. Provided you tell the truth, you have nothing to fear.”

The waiter braced himself up with a visible effort. Not, I fancied, that he had any objection to tell the truth, but that it was a rather novel exercise for him. From that moment he neglected the Inspector and me to concentrate his efforts to propitiate on Sir Frank.

“I hear that the man who is dead trusted you. Did he trust you with his real name?”

“Never, sir.” Gerard spread out his two hands to show their emptiness of knowledge. “I knew nothing of him except what I learned from Madame.”

“And that was?”

The waiter looked apprehensive. No doubt the idea crossed his mind that it might be awkward if his account contradicted hers.

“That was very little indeed, sir. She told me to treat him as proprietor. He never paid for what he consumed. I supposed that he was Madame’s partner.”

“Were you the only man who waited on him?”

“For the last four months or six months, yes, sir. He made it his request to Madame and to me that I should bring him everything he ordered.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“Yes, he said to me that I was to carry his glass of wine or his cup of coffee very carefully. ‘See that you do not spill it, and see that nothing is spilled into it by the way’—those were his words, sir, as nearly as I can recollect.”

“What did you think when he said that?”

Gerard’s expressive hands mutely protested that it was not their business to think.

“I do what I am ordered to do, sir, without thinking too much. But Monsieur Wilson himself explained his motive to me. He said, ‘I do not like to have practical jokes played on me, and I fancy there are some practical jokers in the cercle.’”

“Did he say cercle or club?”

“Monsieur, he always spoke to me in French. He had spent much time in Paris, he told me once. I believe——” Gerard interrupted himself, as though doubtful whether his belief would be acceptable as evidence. It struck me that he had been a witness in a court of law at some time or other.

Tarleton threw him a friendly nod. “Go on; tell me what you believe.”

“I think,” Gerard corrected himself, “that perhaps Monsieur Wilson founded this club in order to escape the necessity for going to Paris to amuse himself.”

The examiner moved his head doubtfully.

“You think he had some business, then, which made it necessary for him to remain in London.”

“But I am sure of it!” The waiter’s tone became confident. “Business that assisted him in establishing the club, even. The great people who came here were his customers rather than his personal friends; such is my idea.”

Tarleton turned an approving face to us.

“I think that this man knows what he is talking about. We are dealing with something very daring and very dark. Did you ever guess what the business was?”

The question was darted out suddenly. But the little Frenchman manifested no uneasiness. The doctor’s praise seemed to have given him confidence.

“I supposed sometimes that it was not a lawful business, sir.” He lowered his voice a little and glanced behind him as if to make sure that his employer was not within hearing. “I fancied that Monsieur Wilson might be the proprietor of an establishment for the reception of ladies who did not wish to become mothers.”

I could not resist a slight shudder as the gruesome hint came glibly from the lips of the pasty-faced waiter. He did not look the kind of man who would have made any objection to a post in such an establishment.

“Some of the ladies whom he introduced here had the air of being afraid of him, I thought,” Gerard added by way of confirmation.

Inspector Charles had begun to take notes of this evidence. He now straightened himself up, and looked at Tarleton.

“Wouldn’t it be well to search his clothes, Sir Frank? We might find an address, perhaps?”

“In another minute. Is there any question you would like to put, Cassilis?”

I had to make a call on my courage, as Gerard faced towards me in readiness to be addressed. His figure was not less familiar to me than that of the masked Inquisitor had been. I was now to see whether my voice would sound familiar to him. I dared not modify my usual tone with Tarleton’s keen ears listening.

“We have heard that a royal personage was here last night,” I said slowly and distinctly, and then paused to note the effect.

At my first words Gerard’s watery eyes grew wider for an instant and I feared the worst. Some note must have been struck in the echoing cells of his memory. But the next moment reassured me. Out of the many hundred voices with which a waiter’s memory must be stored, how should he be able to identify one which he had heard say scarcely a dozen words? The man’s face was a perfect blank again before I went on.

“Can you tell us if there were any other strangers present?” I asked boldly. And turning to my chief and the Inspector, I explained, “It seems to me just possible that an attempt may have been planned on the life of the Crown Prince, and that this man may have been mistaken for him.”

Tarleton did not reject this suggestion so decidedly as the theory of suicide. I saw a thoughtful expression come on his face, as though he was engaged in trying to adjust the idea with another one previously in his mind. Captain Charles took up the scent quite eagerly.

“Do you know what disguise His Royal Highness was wearing?” he demanded.

The waiter hesitated and then shook his head.

“I had my suspicion, sir, but Madame can tell you for certain.”

The Inspector was satisfied with the answer. But Tarleton’s voice rang out sharply.

“Let us have your suspicion, please.”

Gerard had the air of a man who had committed himself, and regrets it.

“Milor,”—he had been sharp enough to notice the Inspector’s use of a title in addressing the consultant—“I particularly noticed one person who appeared to me a stranger who did not very well know his way about the club, and who appeared to have some business with Monsieur Wilson.”

“Ah!” Tarleton’s deep breath told me that he felt himself on a real trail. “And how was this person disguised?”

“The disguise was an extraordinary one, milor. It was that which first attracted my notice. It was at once the costume of a man and of a woman. That is to say, the upper part was that of a warrior in armour, and the lower part was a woman’s skirt.”

“Joan of Arc,” exclaimed Charles.

The Frenchman shrank in horror. “But, monsieur, it could not have been Sainte Jeanne! For instance, the helmet was Roman.”

“Neither did she wear a skirt with her armour,” the physician added quietly. “It must have been meant for Zenobia.”

The Inspector’s face showed so clearly that he had never heard of the famous Queen of Palmyra that I should have been amused if I had not been on the rack of suspense. Fortunately, Tarleton was now engrossed in his new line of inquiry.

“In spite of this feminine disguise, in spite of the skirt, you recognized that this stranger was a man, it seems?”

The eloquent hands protested again. “But no, milor; I said I had my suspicion, that is all. Madame——”

The doctor cut him short.

“You thought this person, Zenobia, had some business with Wilson. Tell me, how many persons knew that Wilson wore that disguise last night?”

He turned and pointed to the dead body which lay full in view from where we were seated. Gerard let his eyes follow the gesture and withdrew them with a sickly twinge.

“Everyone knew it, I think. It was the disguise he wore invariably in the club. It was as if he came here to meet his clients, and it was necessary for them to know that they were speaking to him.”

Sir Frank Tarleton nodded more than once this time. He evidently felt himself to be getting a firm grip on the problem. I admired the sagacity he had shown in transferring his examination from the proprietress of the club to the waiter. Gerard was proving a much easier witness to deal with than Madame Bonnell. He had not so much at stake.

“And now,” the consultant pursued, “perhaps you can tell us if there were any other persons who showed a desire to meet Wilson last night?”

Gerard brightened up visibly.

“But certainly, milor. There was one in particular who never seemed to take her eyes off him. She danced with him time after time, and when she was not dancing with him herself she watched those who did.”

“And how was she dressed?”

“Milor, she was hardly dressed at all.” Gerard may have feared another irreverent guess from Captain Charles, for he added quickly: “I heard Monsieur address her as Salome.”

The Inspector was again busy with his note-book. But Sir Frank struck me as not being quite so deeply interested in Salome as he had been in Zenobia.

“And there was also a lady whose costume it is not easy to describe.” Gerard was going on of his own accord now, as though his interest had been kindled in the inquiry. “Part of it was a leopard skin. And she wore a necklace composed of claws of the same beast, as I imagined. In my own mind I called her the Leopardess. Without doubt, her costume was that of an East Indian princess.”

Tarleton’s interest seemed to revive again at the description of the Leopardess. Yet it was impossible to be sure that he was not playing a part to conceal his true opinion of all this from the witness.

“And this lady, did she dance much with Wilson?”

Gerard gave his head an emphatic shake.

“She did not dance with him at all, although he asked her more than once. I am sure of it. I was surprised, for it was not often that he was refused. I saw him speaking to her very earnestly, even threateningly, but it was no use. And she left early, long before the dance was over.”

The examiner shrugged his shoulders. I wondered that he did not point out to the man that a woman who had left early could hardly have played any part in the tragedy. But I was beginning to grasp that it was his method to listen much and speak little when he was face to face with a mystery.

The next moment he had dismissed Gerard abruptly, and risen to his feet. He crossed over to the corpse, followed by Charles and myself, and gazed intently on the exposed face. The slight leaden tinge I had remarked was more noticeable already, and in addition there was a slight roughness of the skin which I understood still less. I took care this time not to make any remark on it.

The specialist’s attention was concentrated on the features and expression of the dead man. After a moment or two he slowly shook his head.

“No,” he pronounced, “that is not the face of a man degraded enough for such a business as the waiter supposed. It is not the face of an adventurer. This was a man of the world, in a good position, able to meet with the people whom he brought to this place on a footing of equality. His motives were not sordid, perhaps, in the first place. We are dealing with a Tiberius rather than a Tigellinus, I think.”

I don’t fancy those names had much more meaning for Captain Charles than Zenobia’s. But he acquiesced respectfully in the judgment.

“From all that we have heard about the Domino Club at Scotland Yard there has never been the slightest suggestion of crime about it,” he observed. “One of the judges of the High Court is a member of it. He has the reputation of being pretty fond of women, but he certainly wouldn’t be mixed up with anything shady.”

“Shaded, but not shady, eh?” Tarleton returned with a curl of the lip. “But come, it is time to see if the dead has any evidence to give about himself.”

Thrusting his gold repeater carelessly into his pocket, he deftly stripped the body of its long Inquisitor’s robe. Underneath was revealed an evening suit of fine material and faultless cut with a white silk waistcoat and soft-fronted shirt. They were the clothes of a man of good position, as Sir Frank had said, and a man accustomed to respect himself. A Bohemian would scarcely have troubled to dress himself so carefully beneath a domino.

Captain Charles viewed this correct attire with the approval of a military man. “A gentleman as you guessed, Sir Frank.”

“As I inferred,” the doctor responded sharply, “I never guess.” His capable fingers were already exploring the pockets of the corpse. Most of them seemed to be empty, but presently he extracted a silver matchbox from the waistcoat, and opened it. A low sound like a suppressed whistle came from his tight lips as he shook out on the palm of his hand two pellets the size of small peas.

Of all my experiences on that eventful night, or rather morning, this was the most amazing. Only by a strong effort was I able to keep my astonishment within due bounds. Although I had thrown out the suggestion of suicide, the last thing I had expected was to find poison on the dead man’s person.

My chief passed me one of the pellets, and put the other first to his nostrils and then to the tip of his tongue.

“Well?” He motioned to me to imitate his action.

There could be no doubt about the result of the test. “Opium in a highly concentrated form, and soluble,” I whispered hoarsely.

We exchanged looks of intense surprise. The Inspector on his part was evidently surprised by our attitude.

“Then Dr. Cassilis was right after all,” he said, staring at us. “It was suicide?”

The great consultant smiled at him indulgently.

“I am sure that this discovery has made Dr. Cassilis renounce that theory,” he answered. “A man who was accustomed to take opium in such doses as these would have to take a terrible quantity to kill himself. And this box, is nearly full.”

My brain was buzzing while he spoke. Utter darkness seemed to be settling down on my mind. I gazed at my chief in stupefaction greater than the Inspector’s.

“The problem for Dr. Cassilis and myself is this,” he continued, addressing his explanation to Captain Charles, although I realized that he was speaking at least as much for my benefit. “The corpse shows all the usual symptoms of poisoning by opium. But if the deceased had accustomed his system to opium it is not easy to understand how anyone could have given him enough to produce death. The dose must have been enormous, and he must have detected the taste at once in any ordinary medium such as a cup of coffee.”

I just managed to nod my head with assent.

“The inference I am inclined to draw at the moment,” the specialist concluded, “is that Wilson was not a taker of the drug and that these pellets were not intended for himself. I think it is more probable that he carried them as weapons of self-defense. Perhaps Salome would have been given one last night if her jealousy had carried her too far, perhaps Zenobia. And perhaps the Leopardess left so early because she had been given one.”

My brain seemed to resume its normal clearness as the doctor spoke. There was really nothing very extraordinary in the coincidence, if he was right. After all, opium was the drug which it was natural for anyone to use in such circumstances. It was practically tasteless, its effects were easily mistaken for those of alcohol even by the victim, till it was too late for him to resist them. And the character of the Domino Club was such, and its members came to it in such secrecy, that one of them might be carried home in a narcotic sleep, and die before wakening from it, without his death ever being traced to the place where he had been.

While these reflections were coming to compose my mind Tarleton was renewing his investigation of the dead man’s pockets. This time the result was negative, so far as I could see. It gave a start to me and to the Inspector when the doctor suddenly raised himself with a look of triumph and exclaimed, “I see it!”

Charles bent forward with a bewildered gaze. I held my breath. The next sentence was decisive.

“There are no keys—not even a latchkey. Whoever drugged him took his keys, and took them for a purpose.” He turned on the startled Inspector, and issued his commands like a general on a battlefield ordering an advance all along the line. “Ring up your people and find out if they have received a report of any house being entered during the night or early this morning. And ask them to send a man round the theatrical costumiers to find out if any of them have supplied costumes lately of a Zenobia and a Salome and an Eastern one with a leopard skin. Though I doubt if you will hear anything about the last. It sounds like one made up privately. Meanwhile we will ask Madame Bonnell to give us some breakfast.”

Madame was charmed to give us breakfast. Gerard’s report of his examination must have impressed her favourably. It was clear by this time that the great Sir Frank Tarleton could be trusted to conduct the investigation with prudence, and not to bring any unnecessary publicity on the Domino Club. She beamed satisfaction when he informed her that he hoped to learn Wilson’s address within the next few minutes, and to have the body removed thither for the inquest. In her absence he added to his instructions to Charles:

“I think, Captain Charles that it will be well if you can go yourself to the Foreign Office and ascertain through them if this Crown Prince actually was present last night. They will feel more confidence in you than in one of the ordinary police.”

The Honourable Captain looked pleased. “Do you think it is possible that his life was aimed at, after all, Sir Frank?” he added with deference.

Sir Frank shook his head. “That possibility is disposed of by the abstraction of the keys. The solution of the mystery lies there. But it is just possible that the thief chose his occasion; that he relied on the Prince’s presence to screen him from too close an inquiry. At all events I find it difficult to accept too many coincidences in the case.”

I thought I might venture to raise a different point.

“Madame Bonnell had ample time to search the body and remove anything she pleased before Captain Charles came.”

My chief shook his head good-naturedly.

“I haven’t too high an opinion of Madame’s ethical code, but I think sufficiently well of her intelligence to feel pretty sure that if she had had any use for her partner’s keys they would have been back in his pocket before Captain Charles heard that he was dead.”

The remark was unanswerable as far as I was concerned. A moment later the expected message came through from Scotland Yard.

The house of Doctor Weathered, of Warwick Street, Cavendish Square, had been entered during the night, and his safe had been found open, with his bunch of keys in it. And the doctor himself was missing.

CHAPTER IV
THE OPENED SAFE

Inspector Charles, I could see, was deeply impressed by the sagacity with which Tarleton had solved the riddle of the dead man’s identity. It was a very simple step, but it is precisely the simple ideas that generally escape the trained mind of the official.

“Doctor Weathered,” the Captain pronounced slowly. “I suppose there is no doubt of that being Wilson’s real name.”

“Very little doubt, I should say,” my chief responded. “What do you think, Cassilis?”

I endeavoured to take a judicial tone.

“I don’t see much room for hesitation. Here is a man without his keys, and there are the keys without the man. Besides, it all corresponds with what you said, Sir Frank, about the dead man’s appearance. A fashionable West End physician is just what I should expect him to be. And no one would be in a better position to introduce people of good position to a club of this kind.”

The Inspector’s face had become overcast with doubt while I was speaking.

“That’s all very well,” he demurred, “but we have been hearing a lot about Wilson’s being afraid of enemies, and taking precautions about what he drank; and now it turns out to be a simple case of burglary.”

Tarleton consulted me by a look. I just lifted my shoulders in answer without speaking. Mine was a difficult part to play just then. On the one hand, I did not wish my chief to think me wanting in brains; on the other, I dreaded above all things betraying any previous knowledge of anything connected with the mystery.

Fortunately he appeared to approve of my reserve. “We may be able to understand that better when we get to Warwick Street,” he said to Charles. “The next thing for us to do is to go round there and send some member of the household here to identify the deceased.”

To this course there could be no opposition. The plain-clothes man was called in and placed in charge of the corpse with strict instructions to let no one approach it unless he came with a written authority from Sir Frank or the Inspector. Then the three of us entered the doctor’s car and drove towards Cavendish Square.

On the way my chief said to me, “It is curious that I can’t call to mind ever having heard of a Dr. Weathered. He must have been a man of high standing in the profession, apparently; probably a consultant; and yet his name is quite strange to me. Do you happen to have heard it at any time?”

It was a difficult question for me. I dared not tell a lie which accident might expose at any moment; but still less dared I tell the whole truth.

“I have heard the name,” I replied, speaking as slowly as possible to give myself time to frame the least compromising answer. “Perhaps I ought to say that I heard it from one of his patients in the course of a confidential communication, so that I hardly know how far I am justified in making any use of what I heard.”

Tarleton promptly raised his hand.

“Not another word,” he enjoined to my intense relief. But my relief was qualified when he proceeded. “A confidence made to a medical man is as sacred in my view as a confession made to a priest. You will understand that, Captain Charles, I am sure. We must not ask Dr. Cassilis to tell us anything more.”

Captain Charles assented rather reluctantly I thought. His original disapproval of me seemed to revive at the same time. He stole furtive glances at me now and then, as though he were wondering whether it was prudent on his part to keep such doubtful company.

The gold repeater in Tarleton’s fingers kept time to his meditations till the car drew up in front of a smart house in a smart street in the region most favoured by Court physicians and the big-wigs of the medical profession, a class for whom I knew that my eccentric chief felt a very moderate respect. The house was brightly painted, and the windows were garnished with boxes of scarlet geraniums and blue lobelias. The brass plate on the door was burnished to shine like glass, and the steps were a dazzling white. Nothing could have been further removed from any suggestion of secret practices or unhallowed consultations.

The man who opened the door to us matched the exterior of the house as far as his own exterior was concerned. He was young and clean-shaven, his hair was beautifully brushed, and his neat clothes were as new and well-fitting as those of the man whom we had left lying in the alcove at the Domino Club. The face itself was that of a simple, harmless young man, incapable of suspecting either his master or his master’s patients. It was impossible to think that he had ever been aware of anything strange or doubtful in his environment, so innocent and fresh was his whole aspect. The very nervousness with which he received us was the nervousness of youth and inexperience finding itself in the presence of unexpected trouble.

Inspector Charles briefly announced his name and official character, and those of my chief, not deeming me worthy of individual mention. Tarleton promptly took the youthful butler in hand.

“Have the police been here before?” was his first question.

Simmons, as he turned out to be named, said that they had. The constable on the beat had noticed that the front door was ajar about five o’clock that morning, and had promptly roused the household. He, Simmons, had been first on the spot, and had begun by supposing that his master had omitted to make the door fast on his return. He knew that the doctor had gone out overnight, though he had no idea where. He went out pretty often, and was generally rather late in coming home. However, the policeman had insisted on his going to see if Dr. Weathered was upstairs; and he had found his room empty and the bed undisturbed.

On that, the officer had come in to search the premises, beginning with the doctor’s consulting-room, in which there was a safe. There the first sight that met their eyes was the door of the safe standing wide open. The key was in the keyhole, with the whole bunch, including the latchkey, dangling from it.

“And what had been taken from the safe?” Tarleton asked, calling my attention with a significant glance.

“Nothing,” was the surprising answer. “I mean nothing as far as we could see. We opened the drawers in which the doctor used to put his fees till he paid them into the bank, and they were full, one full of notes and the other of silver. The doctor’s lowest fee was three guineas,” the doctor’s man added with some pride.

“Take us to that room,” my chief commanded.

Simmons obeyed without hesitation. My heart was beating so loudly in my ears that I could not overcome the childish fear that it might be heard by others, in spite of my medical knowledge to the contrary. I fell back and let my companions go into the room without me while I collected myself before joining them.

Yet there was nothing in Dr. Weathered’s professional sanctum to inspire dismay.

The room in which he received his patients was as bright and as well appointed as everything else in the establishment. A handsome walnut writing-table was lightly strewn with medical books and papers, relieved by a handsome china bowl full of roses. The patient’s chair was luxuriously cushioned with yellow silk, and the doctor’s own chair was a handsome one upholstered in tooled morocco leather. There was only one bookcase, and its appearance was more suited to a drawing-room than a professional man’s study. The frame was richly inlaid with ornamental woods, and the glass doors were protected by gilt wires. A small marble group of Eros and Psyche stood on the top, flanked by Chinese dragons. Elsewhere the walls of the room were hung with charming water-colours, most of them of a rather sensuous description, depicting youths and maidens bathing in pools, and scenes of love and jealousy.

Tarleton took in every detail with one of those swift, searching looks of his which seemed to penetrate to some inner meaning beneath the surface of all he saw. Finally, his eye rested on the corner in which a safe about three feet high, painted to look like oxydized silver, was clamped on a supporting stand of ebony.

“You have locked the safe, I see. Where are the keys?”

The sudden demand agitated the nervous butler.

“Miss Sarah has them,” he stuttered. “At least she took them away when she locked up the safe. Perhaps she’s given them to her mother—to Mrs. Weathered.”

Sir Frank opened his eyes. I think we all did. Somehow it seemed incongruous that the founder of the Domino Club should be a married man.

“Is there a Mrs. Weathered then?”

“Why, yes, sir.” Simmons showed as much surprise as we had. “Would you like to see her, Sir Frank?” He seemed rather eager to get away and fetch his mistress to deal with us.

The consultant restrained him by an imperative gesture.

“One moment, if you please. You haven’t told us what happened after you had found the safe open. Did you go to call Mrs. Weathered?”

“I should have gone, sir, but Miss Sarah came down and found us looking into the safe. So I left it to her.”

Again the man made a movement as if to escape, and again the specialist arrested him.

“What brought her down? Did she know what had happened?”

Simmons seemed honestly confused. “I really can’t tell you, sir. I suppose one of the servants must have gone upstairs and told her. They were all about.”

Tarleton nodded. “Go on. When she came in what did she do?”

“She was rather angry sir, at first. She thought the doctor had come home in a great hurry to fetch something for someone who was ill, and had rushed off again, and forgotten to lock the safe and take his keys. She said we had no business to look inside in his absence. And she locked the safe herself, and sent the policeman away, saying no doubt Dr. Weathered would be back again presently. But that was more than four hours ago, and there’s been no sign of him yet, sir.”

It was evident that Simmons considered his young mistress had been over-confident. We, who knew it so much better than he did could only sympathize with his feelings. Sir Frank made no further effort to detain him.

“Very well. You can let Mrs. Weathered know we are here, and say that I shall be glad to speak with her as soon as possible.”

When the butler had gone he turned to me.

“What do you make of this room, Cassilis? What sort of diseases do you think were treated here?”

I thought it best to glance at the pictures and the marble group before expressing my opinion.

“Not very serious ones I should say,” I answered lightly.

My chief frowned.

“And yet one of them has proved pretty serious in its consequences,” he observed. “You don’t agree with Miss Weathered that it was her father who left that bunch of keys in the door of the open safe?”

I did my best to control myself as I shook my head.

“Rather curious that she should have interfered, though, instead of her mother,” Captain Charles put in with an air of sagacity.

Tarleton threw himself into the doctor’s own chair, and taking out his watch, began to swing it gently.

“I expect to meet with more than one curious circumstance in the course of this inquiry,” he said lazily. “It is just possible that Weathered’s daughter knew more about him than his wife did.” He sat up suddenly. “But I am wasting your valuable time, Captain Charles. There is nothing here that Cassilis and I cannot deal with. It is simply a question of having the body identified, and brought round here, if the authorities decide to keep the case private. You had better lose no time in communicating with the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and letting me know their decision. And don’t forget there are the costumes to be traced.”

The Captain was already on the move. I fancied he was not sorry to be released. Tarleton was too big a personality for anyone else to find himself much more than a dummy in his company, and the Inspector’s sense of self-importance must have suffered as long as he was in the physician’s train.

My chief was good enough to offer me a private explanation as soon as we were alone.

“I have every confidence in Charles’s honesty, but very little in his tact. And this is a case that calls for very careful handling. These people won’t tell us more than they can help if they are afraid of a public scandal. And, on the other hand, if they know that the whole affair is going to be hushed up they won’t tell us anything at all.” Tarleton let his eyes rove round the walls of the room as he proceeded. “I don’t want Charles to see the direction in which I am feeling my way. You see, he is not my subordinate. He isn’t responsible to me for his actions. He is quite at liberty to go to the Chief Commissioner behind my back, and tell him whatever is in his mind, and the Commissioner can go to Sir James Ponsonby in the same way. We must walk warily Cassilis.”

I tried in vain to catch the doctor’s eye while he was speaking. How much did he mean to convey by that singular warning? Was he referring to my admission that I had heard Dr. Weathered’s name before, and cautioning me to make no more such admissions in the Inspector’s hearing? I felt a sick apprehension which I dared not show.

Sir Frank seemed quite unconscious of my distress. “You and I,” he went on in a confidential way, “know that it wasn’t Weathered who crept into this room last night, and crept out again, leaving the keys behind. And we also know that whoever came here didn’t come for money. I think we can both guess what he did come for—he or she.”

He darted a sudden glance at me as he uttered the last word, and he must have seen me start. But at that instant the door opened, and we both rose to our feet to receive the ladies coming in.

There were two of them. Mrs. Weathered was a woman of about the same age as the man whom we had left lying in the Domino Club, but of a very different social type. She was not vulgar in any offensive sense of the word, but her appearance and manner were those of a woman such as one would expect to meet in the back parlour of a shop in a provincial town, rather than in a West End drawing-room. Her features were plain as well as homely; her gray hair showed no trace of a skilful maid’s art, and her fashionable dress only exposed her unfitness to wear it. Such a wife could only be a serious handicap to an ambitious man making his way upward in London society. It was possible to at least understand one of the doctor’s temptations to lead a secret life which brought him into more congenial company than his homely wife’s. Yet there was something touching in her pale, worn face; and her mild blue eyes searched our faces with a pitiful anxiety that convinced me that her husband still had a hold on her affection.

Her daughter was as little like her as it was possible to be. Young enough in years—I put her down as little more than twenty—her face and figure were those of a ripe woman. Both were queenly. Her sombre crown of hair and flashing eyes made me think of Judith and the tragic heroines of old who were driven to avenge themselves on the men who had done them wrong. She betrayed none of her mother’s anxiety. Stern, self-possessed and courageous, she faced Sir Frank and myself with the demeanour of the accuser rather than the accused.

Mrs. Weathered was the first to speak. Although addressing my chief as the elder of us two, I found her turning her eyes towards me as though more hopeful of sympathy from my youth. Her daughter on the contrary kept her intent gaze fixed on Tarleton and seemed barely conscious of my presence in the room.

“Have you any news for me, sir? Dr. Weathered hasn’t come back yet—not since he was here in the early morning, and left his keys behind.”

The physician shook his head with a grave air.

“I am not sure that you are right in thinking that it was your husband who came here and left those keys. Before I say anything more I should like to look inside the safe.”

Mrs. Weathered turned a wondering look on her daughter, who frowned in return.

“Why?” She demanded. “Nothing has been taken. I looked myself, and the money was all there untouched. No burglar would have gone away without helping himself to it, surely?”

“Perhaps it was not a burglar. It was someone who had been in your father’s company, or he could not have obtained possession of his bunch of keys.”

The girl drew herself up in wrath.

“Dr. Weathered is not my father sir. My mother has only been married to him five years. My name is Neobard.”

A glimmering of the true situation came to me. The dead man had married a widow, an unattractive one, with a daughter old enough to resent her mother’s action and show it. There could be no reasonable doubt that she must have had money, probably a good deal, and that her daughter’s fortune had gone to enrich the step-father. I could pretty well guess the whole story. A provincial doctor with more brains than wealth had courted his rich patient to obtain the means of coming to London and setting up as a consultant in the West End. That was why neither Tarleton nor I had heard of him as a man distinguished in the profession. He had risen, not by scientific merit, but by the possession of money and an imposing manner. There were too many such cases in the medical world.

By this time Mrs. Weathered had sat down and invited us to do the same. But Miss Neobard remained standing, still with the same air of suppressed indignation. Tarleton appeared not to be aware of anything strange in her manner.

“Your step-father, then,” he corrected himself amiably. “Dr. Cassilis and I are better acquainted with the usual contents of a doctor’s safe than you are, I expect; and perhaps we shall be better able to judge if anything has been taken than you.”

“I don’t think he kept any drugs in it, if that’s what you’re thinking of,” the girl said obstinately. It was clear that she resented our being there and was disposed to help us as little as possible.

“Indeed!” The specialist turned to Mrs. Weathered, whose face showed some bewilderment at her daughter’s attitude. “Perhaps you can tell me, ma’am, if your husband specialized in any particular disease, or class of diseases.”

The pale widow glanced at her daughter as though for permission to answer, and was met by a smile of scorn.

“I know that he takes nervous cases,” Mrs. Weathered said with a certain hesitation. “He is a psychological expert.”

She pronounced the phrase in the tone of a person who had learnt it by heart, and expected us to understand it better than she did herself. Miss Neobard’s gall overflowed at the sound.

“He called himself that to begin with,” she put in sharply. “Now it is a psychical analyst. Women come and tell him their secrets as if he were a priest.”

A quiver in the eyelashes told me that this was the information my chief had been expecting to receive. But his tone showed no animation when he spoke.

“In that case I dare say Miss Neobard may be right about the drugs. However, I must ask you to be good enough to let me have Dr. Weathered’s keys.”

The mother was evidently divided between fear of us and fear of her daughter to whom she appealed with another helpless look.

“By what right do you ask for them, Sir Frank? My mother is not entitled to give up her husband’s keys without his consent. He may be back at any moment—and then you can ask him.”

At last it was necessary to speak out. The girl’s position was perfectly right if she was ignorant of her step-father’s fate.

“I am deeply sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Tarleton said to the widow. “I’m afraid you must prepare yourself to hear the worst.” He paused for a moment. The ready tears that began to stream from the poor woman’s eyes showed that she had not been altogether unprepared, and the swift flash of silent exultation in her daughter’s told plainly who it was that had prepared her. I was pleased to see her throw a caressing arm round her mother’s neck before she spoke again.

“You mean that Dr. Weathered is dead?”

“A body has been found on certain premises in Chelsea which there is reason to fear is his. It is part of our business here to find someone to come round and identify him.”

A moan from the widow drew her daughter’s arm more tightly round her. She thrust her free hand into a pocket and drew out a bunch of keys.

“Take these. And excuse me. I must take my mother to her room. I will come back in a few minutes and go round with you to the Club.”

I was quick to open the door as the strange girl supported her mother out of the room. I had no sooner closed it again than my chief repeated her last words.

“The Club!—I fancy that young woman could tell us a good deal about her step-father if she chose. And now!”

He stepped towards the safe, found the right key, and threw open the door.

“What do you say has been taken, Cassilis?”

There could be no doubt as to the answer, although I went through the form of looking carefully inside before I gave it.

It was the doctor’s case-book that was missing, the book containing the secrets of the women.

CHAPTER V
DR. WEATHERED’S PATIENTS

My chief made a swift search through the safe. The cash drawers were empty, and he gave me a significant nod.

“Miss Sarah has been through the safe since the policeman left. A remarkable girl that, Cassilis! How did she come to know of the Domino Club?”

I was as little able to answer the question as he was. Still, I had formed a vague theory in my own mind.

“She rather gave me the impression of hating her step-father on her mother’s account,” I threw out. “Mightn’t she have watched him on her mother’s behalf?”

“That is a possible explanation, certainly,” my chief was good enough to respond. “We are dealing with one of those family tragedies which so seldom come to light. The ambitious man has married for money, as the girl has seen from the first, and the woman won’t see. Then he has found his wife in the way, and begun to neglect her. She, poor thing, has tried to hide the situation from her child, but Sarah has found it out for herself, and resented it. She has tried to open her mother’s eyes, and failed; or rather the mother has concealed the fact that she is no longer blind. Then in desperation, perhaps, the girl has gone secretly to work to obtain proof of her step-father’s infidelity, proof that will leave her mother no excuse for keeping her eyes shut any longer; that will compel her to leave the man....”

The speech trailed off into a soliloquy, which became a silent one. Suddenly he stood up grasping in his hand a square glass bottle half full of pellets like those we had found on the corpse.

“No need for further evidence of identity than this!” he exclaimed in triumph. “But this must be between you and me, Cassilis; I don’t think Charles can have been altogether satisfied with the theory that Weathered only carried these pellets to give to his enemies and this discovery makes it still less probable. He may have administered them for other purposes.”

I shuddered at the hint. The Domino Club took on a darker shade in my imagination and I scarcely dared ask myself what horrors might have been concealed by those embroidered curtains that screened its Moorish alcoves.

Tarleton slipped the glass bottle into his coat pocket, and locked the safe. Then he turned to survey the doctor’s table.

“Now let us reconstruct the crime provisionally,” he said. “A patient of Weathered finds that he is in the doctor’s power and finds that Weathered is disposed to take some base advantage of him. He has seen the doctor recording his confession in a book, and he determines to release himself by getting hold of that book and destroying it. He is a member of the Domino Club; most likely he has been tempted or compelled to join it by Weathered. He may or may not know of these pellets and the purpose for which they are used. At all events he conceives the plan of drugging Weathered, obtaining his keys, and coming here to destroy the incriminating record. He carries out his purpose successfully, so far. But in his haste and excitement he overlooks one thing. And it is here.”

For the life of me I could not repress a start as the consultant brought his hand down sharply on a small book that lay beside the inkstand on the writing-table. Little need to say what it was! The moment after Weathered’s appointment-book was lying open, and my chief’s keen eyes were rapidly searching the pages.

I ought not to have felt so intensely anxious as I watched those bushy eyebrows knitting themselves over a meagre list of names and dates. The dead man’s patients had been numerous, and most of them no doubt had come and gone without the least suspicion of anything irregular in the doctor’s practice, and without compromising themselves by any indiscrete confidences. What evidence could such a book afford against anyone? Still, I was uneasy. My instinct warned me that Tarleton would find some information that he needed in those pages. And my observation told me presently that he had found it.

“Listen, Cassilis. Most of these appointments seem to be perfectly innocent and normal. But there are certain names occurring more than once that have numbers attached to them. What do you make of this?—Sir George Castleton, 17; he has been coming once a fortnight. Mrs. Worboise, 21; about once a month. Miss Julia Sebright, 8; she seems to have dropped off. Colonel Gravelinas, 26; h’m. Mrs. Baker, 35; rather more recent than the others. Lady Violet Bredwardine—what is the matter?”

I jerked myself round towards the door of the room. “I thought I heard someone outside.”

By a stroke of good luck someone was. The door opened as I spoke, and Sarah Neobard appeared with a hat on ready to go out.

Tarleton quietly closed the book and placed it in his pocket under her eyes.

“I am taking Dr. Weathered’s appointment-book, Miss Neobard. I shall have to make inquiries about some of his patients.”

The stately Sarah’s eyes flashed vindictively. “You are welcome to any information I can give you about them, Sir Frank. One of them is at the bottom of this crime, you may be sure.”

Tarleton lifted his eyebrows. “We don’t yet know that it is a crime—in that sense,” he said with an air of doubt. “Dr. Weathered seems to have been drugged by someone who wanted to get his keys. But whoever did it may not have meant to give a fatal dose.”

I listened anxiously. I was puzzled to understand the specialist’s theory. Did he consider that Weathered had succumbed to a dose that would not have killed a man in ordinary health? And if so, was his death due to some organic weakness, as I had myself suggested when we were viewing the corpse? Or was it possible that Weathered was in the habit of taking the pellets found upon him, after all, and that he had just absorbed such a quantity of the poison into his system that the extra dose proved mortal in consequence? My experience was not enough to enable me to form a decided opinion of my own on either of these alternatives.

While these thoughts were passing through my mind Miss Neobard was scrutinizing my companion’s face with suspicion.

“You are not saying what you really think, Sir Frank,” she pronounced boldly. “He has been murdered, and you know it, but you are afraid of shocking me by saying so outright. You needn’t mind. I look on this as a judgment, and I have seen it coming.”

The physician gazed at her as steadily as she was gazing at him.

“Have you any objection to telling me why?”

“No. Now that my mother isn’t here I don’t care what I tell you. Dr. Weathered never loved her, but she loved him. She wouldn’t believe anything bad of him while he was alive, and now he’s dead I don’t want her to hear anything that would grieve her for nothing.” She seemed to consider for a moment what to say next. “You mustn’t think he was altogether wicked, at all events at first. He was very clever, and he knew that he could do well in London with my mother’s money. And he was really interested in science. He had studied psychology for years before he started as a nerve specialist. I believe that he meant to practise quite respectably when he began here. It was the women who led him astray.”

A singular statement to be made by the step-daughter who had so much reason to hate him, and who every now and then gave me the impression that she had hated him.

“Half the women who came to consult him, I believe, had nothing the matter with them except a craving for excitement. He told us that himself, though, of course, he didn’t say what kind of excitement they craved for. He used to talk about his practice at first, and tell us the names of some of his patients, when they were big people. One was a duchess, another was a famous author. But after a time he stopped talking about them. That was when he began to fall under their influence. They sent him invitations to dinner without inviting my mother. And he accepted them.”

One could see, as it were, the rift opening, and this keen-eyed, strong-minded girl taking precocious notice of everything and watching her step-father’s downward progress.

“Then he took up with this psycho-analysis, pretending he could cure people of their troubles and change their dispositions by encouraging them to talk to him freely. I knew he didn’t really believe in it. He had sneered at it often enough when it first came up. He took to it simply because it was the way to make money. I fancy the other doctors looked down on him because of it. At all events they seemed to boycott him. None of them ever came here, and their wives left off calling on us. I soon saw there was something wrong.

“I tried to get my mother to do something, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t. She had no influence over him apart from her money, and he was making so much that he was independent of her. And she wouldn’t leave him. She had no legal grounds, of course. Whatever went on was carefully concealed from her. He couldn’t have afforded an open rupture. That would have frightened off his patients.”

Sarah paused for breath, and my chief and I exchanged looks. It was a curious revelation, and the strangest part of it was the manner in which it was being made. The accuser seemed to be also the defender. There was a very thoughtful wrinkle on Tarleton’s brow, as though he was listening to more than the words that reached his ear.

All this time there had been no reference to the Domino Club. I think we were both rather eager to learn something about that. But Miss Neobard didn’t appear to need prompting. She came to the subject of her own accord.

“At last we almost ceased to see anything of him. He went out night after night, and didn’t come home till the early morning. He was a strong man, but his health began to suffer, and I think he was taking to drink latterly. At one time he kept nothing in the house, but lately there was brandy in a cupboard, and I have seen him going to it in the morning as soon as he came down. This was after he had gone to that abominable club.”

“The Domino Club?” my chief put in quietly.

“Yes, I dare say you wonder how I came to know of it. Perhaps you think I oughtn’t to have taken any notice of what was going on. It was my mother’s business, really, but she was determined to see nothing, and I had to protect her.”

The explanation was given with a touch of defiance. Was it the true one? Was it solely zeal on her mother’s behalf that had inspired the girl of nineteen or twenty to play the part of a detective? Or had other motives mingled with the avowed one? A touch of feminine curiosity, perhaps? A subtle temptation to look down into the gulf in which the man was disappearing? Or else?...

She saw no need to tell us how she had obtained her knowledge, apparently. I didn’t think her the kind of girl to employ an agent. She was quite capable, I felt sure, of searching her step-father’s papers, or following him secretly. Her object, as far as we were concerned, was evidently to inculpate his patients even more than himself.

“It was the women,” she repeated with bitterness, “who dragged him into it. They wanted a place in which they could have all the excitement of a night club without the risk of meeting low-class people. There was a Mrs. Worboise——” I glanced at my chief as I recalled the No. 21 of the appointment-book, but his lips were firmly compressed——“I feel convinced that she provided some of the money. But there were others, too, plenty of them.”

I was thankful that she stopped there without mentioning more names. My chief also seemed to think that she had said enough for the present.

“Very well, Miss Neobard. I am sure that you have acted for the best in giving me this information, and I’m very much obliged to you. Now suppose we drive round to the Club for you to identify the body.”

The sight of Evans, the doctor’s chauffeur, in front dried up the girl’s flow of speech, and the drive was a silent one. Arrived at Vincent Studios I noticed that Tarleton stood back to let the young lady go in front, and that she took her way without hesitation towards the door bearing the name of Loftus, A.R.A. The policeman we had left in charge opened the door to us, and my chief again tested Miss Neobard’s knowledge by waiting for her to precede us. But this time the test failed.

“Where is the body?” she asked in a whisper, coming to a stand in the narrow passage.

“This way.” Sir Frank gravely took the girl’s arm in his own and led her straight to the spot. Whether she quivered as they approached the alcove I could not tell, but there was no mistaking her agitation when she caught sight of the stiff form and pallid face. A stifled cry escaped her lips. She leaned forward impulsively, almost as if she had been going to embrace the corpse, and then straightened herself up with a shudder.

“How dreadful he looks!” she gasped.

There was some excuse for the exclamation, out of place as it seemed at such a moment, and from her lips. The leaden tinge that had struck my attention earlier in the day had deepened and spread over the face and neck, and had become noticeable in the hands as well. The roughness was also accentuated, giving the skin the look of crude parchment in need of scraping before it could be written on. My experience was not enough to tell me whether these were unusual symptoms, and remembering the caution my chief had given me, I was careful to make no remark on them. I watched the great expert’s face, but I might as well have watched the dead man’s for any information it gave me. He had drawn out his golden mascot, as it were unconsciously, and was swinging it with more than usual deliberation as he scanned the ghastly features with an air of the deepest abstraction.

Sarah Neobard was less successful in hiding her emotions. In spite of the constraint she was evidently putting on herself I detected a tear edging its way down her cheek. Perhaps her memories of the dead were not all bitter ones. Perhaps there had been a time when he had treated her with kindness. Perhaps—but my speculations were cut short by a self-assertive step behind us.

All three of us turned round to see Captain Charles striding down the deserted room. By this time the red lights had been put out. The daylight reached everywhere, and gave the whole place an inexpressibly dreary, discomforting look. The gauze curtains showed bare and shabby, and the cushioned divans and couches revealed wine and coffee stains. The floor was dusty and discoloured. A comparison occurred to me between the dismal scene of revelry and the feelings of the revellers themselves as they awoke next day with jaded nerves and scorched palates and guilty recollections of their orgy.

Captain Charles was bursting with self-importance.

“I have just come from the Foreign Office,” he began, when Sir Frank pulled him up rather peremptorily.

“Be good enough to wait a moment, Inspector.” He turned to the distressed girl. “You identify this as the body of your step-father, Dr. Weathered?”

She bowed faintly. “Yes—though it is fearfully changed!”

“That is sufficient. Do you feel able to go back by yourself, or would you rather have someone to escort you?”

“I would rather be alone,” she murmured.

“Very well; then I need not keep you.” He looked away towards the outer door of the room, but the girl stood hesitating.

“Will it—shall you—the body?” she inquired in a broken voice.

“The body must be removed to my house first for me to ascertain the cause of death,” Tarleton said kindly. “After that I hope to arrange for it to be buried from your house privately. Meanwhile, the less you say to anyone the better.”

She bent her head gratefully, and I took her as far as the door of the studios, and saw her walk away. When I got back the Inspector was in the full flood of his report.

“I have never seen the Foreign Office more upset about anything,” he was saying. “And the Slavonian Embassy is in a regular turmoil. It appears that the Ambassador had no idea of where His Royal Highness was last night. He slipped out quietly without saying anything, with the Chancellor of Legation, Baron Novara. Baron Novara is a member of the Domino Club; he has always looked on it as a perfectly reputable place, a fashionable resort—in fact, like Hurlingham or the Prince’s skating-rink; and he had no idea that he was risking anything in bringing the Crown Prince here. At least so he says. The Ambassador is furious and has ordered him to go home by to-night’s express and explain matters to the King, if he can.”

My chief listened to the excited Charles with a good deal of indifference, I thought.

“The sum and substance of it all is that they want the affair hushed up, I suppose?”

I listened for the Inspector’s answer with an eagerness which I did my very best to hide. I am not sure that I did hide the relief with which I heard it.

“It must be hushed up,” he cried with positive indignation. “The Chancellor was fool enough to put in the official circular to the Press of the Crown Prince’s movements that he was present at a dance at the Domino Club last night.”

“That will be good news for Madame Bonnell,” the consultant observed dryly. “Is there any idea at the Embassy that the Prince’s life was aimed at?”

Captain Charles glanced round cautiously and lowered his voice.

“That’s the worst of it. The Bolsheviks are working their hardest to upset the monarchy in Slavonia, and it is believed that one of their agents in this country obtained admission to the club last night disguised as a woman.”

“Zenobia!” I could no more keep in the ejaculation than I could still the beating of my heart as I gave it vent.

My two companions turned sharply and looked at me, the Inspector with a certain grudging respect, my chief with a slight frown of something very like disdain. I bit my tongue too late.

“Zenobia seems to have made a bad guess at the Prince’s identity,” Tarleton said mercilessly. “Unless His Royal Highness wore an Inquisitor’s costume, too?”

The Captain’s face fell as he responded to the question.

“I didn’t inquire about that, Sir Frank,” he admitted. “I’ll go round again and find out.”

“Do, please. It will be time enough to consider Zenobia’s part in the mystery when we have heard from the theatrical costumiers. One moment——” Captain Charles had taken a step towards the exit—“I should like you to wait till I have put a question to Madame Bonnell.”

He touched the nearest bell-push as he spoke, and the Inspector and I looked at each other with curiosity as to his purpose. The bell was promptly answered by Gerard, and within a few moments the proprietress of the club sailed into the room.

She was decidedly more at ease than she had been when we interviewed her first. Touches of mourning had been added to her elegant dress, and her whole manner had been toned down to that of a dignified lady in distress. Tarleton appeared to meet this assumption by an added roughness in addressing her.

“Will you be good enough to tell me the rules of the Domino Club as to the admission of visitors?”

Madame Bonnell put her head on one side for a moment, giving herself the air of a person who was considering whether to grant a favour.

“I see no objection to that, Sir Frank. You are Sir Frank Tarleton, are you not?”

The question was almost impudent. The physician ignored it with a sharp “Well?”

“Every member was entitled to one card of admission for a friend for each dance. He was required to enter the name of the friend, and the costume he was coming in, in the club register.”

“Let me see the register, please.”

Madame had evidently expected this demand. She drew herself up.

“The register is confidential. It contains the names of all the members. I keep it for my private information, and I can’t show it to anyone else.”

Tarleton turned to the Police Inspector with a shrug. “I must ask you to do your duty, after all, I’m afraid.”

The Frenchwoman turned red with excitement.

“But what does this mean? Have you seen the papers?” She produced an evening paper from her dress, one of those evening papers that come out early in the forenoon. “Here it is announced that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Slavonia honoured me by his presence here last night. My club is under royal patronage, you see, gentlemen. This is not an affair for the police.”

My chief had described Captain Charles as thorough. He showed his quality as soon as the angry woman had spoken. First setting a whistle to his lips, he stepped forward and placed a firm hand on her arm.

“I arrest you in the King’s name.”

CHAPTER VI
THE BOOKS OF THE DOMINO CLUB

It was at once evident that Sir Frank Tarleton had taken the measure of his opponent accurately. As soon as she felt the police officer’s touch Madame Bonnell’s confidence deserted her, and she collapsed in a state of mingled panic and bewilderment.

“Mon Dieu! But what have I done? What is it that I am accused of?” She looked imploringly from Charles to Tarleton and from him to me.

It was the Inspector who answered.

“Obstructing the officers of the law in the course of their duty is the charge at present. There may be others later on. Meanwhile I have to caution you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”

Madame’s reception of the stereotyped warning convinced me that this was the first occasion on which she had come into collision with the English law. It appeared to impress her favourably, and to dispel her first terrors.

“But there is some mistake,” she protested. “I did not understand. I have no wish to resist the law. I thought there was an understanding that this misfortune should not be dealt with by the police.”

“Nonsense,” my chief interjected roughly. “It is being dealt with by the police. They have been in possession of these premises since five o’clock this morning—since you called them in yourself. Do you intend to produce the register, or must we search for it?”

Madame Bonnell gave a last sigh of reluctance. Then she was all submission. She led the way out of the dancing-hall into the adjoining premises. Her private apartment was between the kitchen and the row of dressing-rooms for the accommodation of the dancers who preferred to assume their costumes on the spot. Drawn curtains on one side concealed what was no doubt Madame’s bed; the rest of the room having the aspect of a business man’s parlour, furnished with a roll-top desk, a typing machine and shelves for books and correspondence. In one corner was a cupboard with a stout door which the proprietress unlocked with a show of eagerness, and threw open for our inspection.

The contents of the cupboard seemed innocent enough. A private ledger, a file of accounts, a cash-box into whose contents Tarleton forbore to pry, and, more important for our purpose, two thin volumes bound in black leather, one of which was labelled “Members” and the other “Visitors.” It would have been unchivalrous to speculate as to the contents of certain little bottles and boxes on a lower shelf which had a look of feminine elegance.

My chief pointed to the two black-bound volumes.

“Will you take charge of these books, Cassilis. We can examine them at our leisure.”

The Frenchwoman uttered a faint groan as I stretched out my hand to obey. I could have groaned in sympathy with her. And yet I was not in any fear on my own account. I had no reason to think that my name would be found in the Visitors’-book. I had been too careful for that. But there was another name which I had only too much reason for expecting to see in the other volume. And I cursed the proprietress in my heart for not destroying the dangerous record while it was in her power. She had fancied herself secure, and had cared nothing for the security of her patrons. What did it matter to her who might be incriminated, as long as her livelihood was not threatened? True, she had done her best at the last moment to prevent the authorities from gaining access to these books. But it was easy to see her self-interest in that. Those records were part of her stock-in-trade. They gave her a hold on the members of the club, who might be disposed to forsake it as soon as any hint of the tragedy got abroad. In that case she had only to say to them, “Leave the club, throw me over, and I take my books to the newspaper offices, and sell them for what they will fetch.”

Such was the situation, so far as I could see it. Either the reputation of the Domino Club was to be saved, and all was to go on as before; or it would be for Madame’s benefit that the scandal should be as widespread as possible, and that every member and visitor should pay heavily for having his or her name kept out of it. In parting with these two volumes she was parting with her most valuable weapons as a blackmailer.

Whether any such considerations as these influenced my chief, I could not tell. Outwardly he seemed to have only one end in view—the tracing of the crime to its perpetrator. As soon as I had possessed myself of the two books he made a sign to Captain Charles.

“It will be as well for you to lock this cupboard and keep the key for the present. Unless there is anything that Madame Bonnell particularly wishes to remove first.”

Madame glanced longingly at the row of mysterious little boxes and bottles, but she prudently shook her head.

“Merci, monsieur. I will take nothing. I wish to have no secrets from the police. I prefer to replace my perfumes from the shop.”

Tarleton smiled with a grudging respect. This was an adversary after his own heart, one who knew every point in the game, and knew when to play for safety. The Inspector locked the door and pocketed the key with the same wooden precision with which he would have taken the number of a taxi or arrested the Crown Prince of Slavonia.

“Is Madame Bonnell still under arrest?” he inquired stolidly.

“Not as far as I am concerned,” the physician said lightly. “My business with Madame is over. All I have to do now is to make the medical examination, and to wait for the result of your inquiries elsewhere.”

A significant nod conveyed to the Inspector that there was no occasion to let the Frenchwoman know of the search that had been set on foot among the costumiers. It was not unlikely that the proprietress of the club could have thrown some light on the identity of Salome and the mysterious Leopardess, and could have told us whether the Crown Prince had masqueraded as Zenobia, if she had chosen. But it was a good deal more likely that any question put to her on the subject would result in the parties being privately warned.

Inspector Charles formally released his prisoner who affected to take the step as a matter of course. I had remarked, however, a light of intense gratification in her black eyes when Sir Frank announced that he had dismissed her from the case. She impressed me as the sort of woman who could never breathe quite easily in the near neighbourhood of the police.

The arrangements for the removal of the body were soon made. A covered police-van was requisitioned to convey it to the retired house in Montague Street, and the consultant and I drove on in advance, taking the black-covered volumes with us. He talked to me quite cheerfully on the way.

“An interesting woman, that. Her mind would be a curious study for a psychologist—a real one, I mean, not a charlatan like this wretched Weathered. The words right and wrong have no meaning at all for her, I should say. She must find it difficult to understand our point of view. In her opinion, I expect, the only thing that matters is that the name of the Crown Prince should be kept clear of scandal. If he has chosen to commit a murder, all that is necessary is that the King of Slavonia should send me the Order of Saint Somebody or other, and of course the investigation will be dropped.”

We reached the house in good time for lunch, and my kindly chief pressed me to make a good meal.

“You are looking fagged,” he observed. “If you weren’t a teetotaller I should prescribe a half-bottle of Burgundy. Our work is only beginning. As soon as lunch is over I am going through the Members’-book, comparing the names in it with those in Weathered’s appointment-book. In that way we may get a key to the mysterious numbers.”

I did my best to conceal the apprehension with which I heard of this intention. I could see the search narrowing by degree, and gradually isolating a few names among which I had too much reason to fear that one would be found which I would have given all I possessed to exclude. I made an effort to brighten up and eat the good things before me. The doctor knew how to make the best of life, and an excellent digestion enabled him to enjoy the lobster mayonnaise and the tender cutlets provided by his accomplished cook. He drank nothing stronger than claret, but it was such claret as is not often found in private cellars, and its perfume reached my nostrils across the table like the breath of roses.

As soon as I thought he was sufficiently warmed and cheered to relax a little I ventured to put the question that had been trembling on my lips for hours.

“Is it too soon to ask if you have formed any opinion as to the cause of death, Sir Frank?”

He looked at me rather sharply, and his bushy eyebrows drew together.

“I can form no opinion till I have made an autopsy. If you mean have I made any conjecture, I have made several, any one of which may be right or may be wrong. Up to a certain point I am inclined to agree with your theory.”

“With my theory!” I was surprised into repeating.

“Yes. If you recollect, you suggested that whoever administered opium to Weathered had no intention of causing death. The object seems to have been to send him off into a state of unconsciousness so as to obtain possession of his keys; and we know what the keys were wanted for.”

“To suppress the evidence against some patient, you mean?” I faltered.

“That is one view. Another possible view is that the person who stole the case-book wanted to obtain evidence for his own purposes. He may have wanted to put pressure on some patient—or patients.”

“Oh, no!” The protest escaped from me almost unawares. A slight lifting of Tarleton’s brows caused me to qualify it the next moment. “I mean that wasn’t my theory.” I pulled myself together as I went on. “Putting together everything we learnt from Madame Bonnell and from the waiter and from Miss Neobard, I suspect that Weathered had become a thorough scoundrel. My view is that he was taking advantage of the confessions made to him as a medical man to blackmail his patients, and that one of them was driven to desperation. She thought she could deliver herself by obtaining access to his safe, and destroying the documents. But she never dreamed that she was giving him a fatal dose.”

“I needn’t tell you that would be no defence in the eye of the law if it actually was fatal,” the specialist put in grimly. “So you think it was the work of a woman, do you?”

“The evidence, Gerard’s evidence, is to that effect, surely? He described three women in connection with the masked Inquisitor—not one man.”

“He described one woman as being rather like a man. He suspected Zenobia of being His Royal Highness.”

I hardly knew what to say. If there were any chance of the waiter’s theory being adopted by my chief, the relief to me would be as great as to Madame Bonnell herself. But dare I hope anything of the kind? The situation was so critical that I feared to commit myself one way or the other. I fell back on the other point in doubt.

“Do you consider it possible, sir, that an otherwise harmless dose of morphia might prove fatal if the person to whom it was given had already saturated his system with opium?”

Again the specialist’s voice had a note of surprise.

“I should have thought your own knowledge was amply sufficient to answer that question, Cassilis. In ordinary circumstances, no; quite the contrary, the dose would fail even to produce the effect intended; it would hardly render the victim insensible. But suppose that he had just taken his maximum dose, and the extra quantity was administered immediately after, then the effect might be very serious, indeed.”

Somehow I felt that I was being fenced with. Tarleton must have perceived a lack of candour on my part in discussing the problem, and decided to withhold his confidence for the time being. I had to remind myself of the admissions I had been driven to make in the course of the morning. My chief knew that I had been a visitor to the Domino Club on one occasion. He knew that I had heard something of Dr. Weathered, and heard it in confidence, as he supposed, or affected to believe, from a patient of my own. He must have put two and two together by this time. Some inkling of the truth must be in his mind. It did not call for very much acuteness on his part to see in me the confidential adviser of one of Weathered’s patients—perhaps one of his victims—possibly of the very one who had administered the fatal dose, and carried off the incriminating book.

I resolved to hold my tongue for the future. I would make no more attempts to sound Sir Frank, and would trust to his respect for professional secrecy to protect me from any awkward questions from him. The resolution was easier to take than to keep.

As soon as lunch was over the consultant led the way upstairs to his study. It appeared that the autopsy was to be postponed; the first business was to be the examination of the books that Madame Bonnell had been so unwilling to give up.

The physician seated himself at his massive bureau, a combination of desk and cabinet, and drew the volume labelled “Members” in front of him, while I placed myself respectfully on a chair at the side.

“The list of members isn’t a very large one,” was his first observation. “One could hardly expect it to be. The Domino Club has more the character of a secret society than a club; a society for the pursuit of illicit pleasures, let us say. Whom have we here?” He opened the book as he spoke, and ran his eye slowly down the first page. “The Duke of Altringham—I am not surprised at seeing his name; General Sir Francis Uppingham, K.C.B.; the Countess of Eardisley; Honourable Janet Wilbraham; Mrs. Worboise; Sir George Castleton, Bart.—h’m, we are beginning to come across some of the names in the appointment-book, but I don’t see anything to account for the numbers attached to them. And I shall be very much surprised if those numbers don’t contain the true key to the mystery.”

He paused in reflection, and took Weathered’s diary from his pocket. “The first thing, it seems to me, is to make out a list of the members who were also patients, and to underline the names of those who had a number as well. It is among them that we may expect to find Zenobia and Salome and possibly the Leopardess as well, though her behaviour suggests that she can hardly have been a patient. She may have been one formerly.”

I listened anxiously. Every moment I was expecting the name which I foresaw too surely would be found in the final list of suspects. Suddenly Tarleton turned to me with an unexpected order.

“While I am comparing these two books you can go through the Visitors’-book It may interest you to find the entry of your own name.”

I could not tell whether my dismay was visible to the gray eyes that seemed to look at me with such perfect indifference. My dilemma was truly critical. I knew, of course, that my name did not appear in the volume I was required to search. And if I pretended to look for it I should land myself in a series of traps. My chief would want some explanation of its absence; and what explanation could I give? If I said that I had been present under a false name he would naturally expect me to tell him that name. And he would expect me to tell him at once, before I opened the book and began the mock search. I had barely a second in which to make up my mind. If only my own reputation, or even my own life, had been at stake, I think I should have thrown myself on his mercy, and come out with the whole truth. But I was held as in an iron vice. The knowledge that the police were actively engaged in tracing the purchasers of the costumes which had been described to us by Gerard haunted my consciousness. I was driven in despair to tell my first direct falsehood to my chief.

I opened the volume hurriedly as I spoke.

“I don’t think I shall find my own name here.”

“Why not?” The question came instantly, though it came in a quiet, friendly tone.

“My recollection is that I gave some other name. I am trying to remember what. I was rather doubtful about the character of the place, and didn’t want to run the risk of it being known that I had been there. I considered the name didn’t matter; I thought it was merely a form.” I was glancing feverishly through the pages as I talked, trying to pick out some name too common to be easily identified. “Ah, yes, I remember now—Carter.”

I placed my finger on an entry nine months old. A Mr. Robert Carter had been introduced on that date by a Captain Smethwick.

Much to my relief Tarleton accepted the explanation readily.

“I dare say a good many of the names in that book are equally fictitious,” he said with good humour. “Look and see what name the Crown Prince took last night.”

It was easily found. A Count Donau had been introduced by the Chancellor of the Slavonian Embassy.

“Any other visitors?” the consultant asked lightly.

I read aloud one or two masculine names, but he pulled me up.

“Any ladies?”

There were two lady visitors. I read out both their names without misgiving. One was a Lady Greatorex, the other a Mrs. Antrobus, both of them assumed names for aught I knew.

The specialist paid little attention for the moment. He was busy with his duplicate list. I watched him with increasing anxiety as he ticked off name after name. At the end of half an hour he had completed his task for the time being.

“I have here thirty-eight names of people who were both patients of Weathered and members of the Domino Club. And all of them, without exception, were patients first. It is clear that he started the club for their benefit, at once to keep them under his influence, and to confirm them in the very inclinations he pretended to relieve them from. The man was a moral monster. If ever Satan had an active instrument on earth this Weathered was the man. And I doubt if the law could have touched him.”

His words almost invited me to say, “In that case the law can very well afford to shut its eyes to his fate.”

The adviser of the Home Office shook his head. “That depends. The law must first know what was his fate. It looks to me as though we were as far off from knowing that as ever. We know neither how he died, nor at whose hands, nor the motive of the assassin at present.”

“Doesn’t everything point to his death being more or less an accident?” I ventured to plead.

“On the contrary, I should say that everything points to its being a deliberate and deeply-planned murder.”

I gave a horrified gasp. Before I could collect myself sufficiently to take in this formidable judgment I was saved from exposing myself by the familiar sound of the telephone bell.

In our hasty departure from the house that morning I had neglected to disconnect the receiver in my bedroom, and connect the one downstairs. I sprang out of the room and upstairs, thankful for the interruption. I was destined to receive a second shock, though a less unnerving one. The call again came from Inspector Charles, who had just received a report from one of his subordinates engaged on the case.

The costumier who had supplied the dress of Salome had just been found. The costume had been delivered two days before to Miss Sarah Neobard, Warwick Street, Cavendish Square.

CHAPTER VII
THE CAUSE OF DEATH

I waited with sickening apprehension for a few instants.

“And the others?—the Zenobia costume, has that been traced?” I was driven to ask.

“Not yet. There are several more places to be visited.”

The respite gave me time to breathe. As I slowly descended the stairs, my mind became absorbed in pondering the news I had just received, and the use to which it might be put.

The figure of Salome came before me as I had seen her the night before, pursuing the hooded Inquisitor, luring him to dance with her, and keeping a jealous eye on his movements when he was engaged with other partners. Astounded as I was to learn that the mysterious dancer was no other than the dead man’s step-daughter, it did not take me long to reconcile the intelligence with her remarkable character, as revealed in the course of the morning’s investigations.

I began to see depths in the strange girl’s nature of which she herself had hardly been aware. It was not only indignation on her mother’s behalf that had prompted her to trace her step-father’s doings. It was not merely curiosity that had brought her to the Domino Club to watch his movements. Her fierce denunciation of the women patients whom she had accused of depraving him had been inspired by a secret feeling of which she was herself unconscious. The man had fascinated her unawares. Without knowing it she had been jealous on her own account as well as her mother’s. In a strange ignorance of her own feelings which was yet a natural result of the relationship in which she had been brought up, she had continued to believe herself his enemy. She had imagined that hatred was the passion that inspired her to disguise herself and come to watch him, to dance with him time after time, and to pursue him with restless vigilance when he transferred his attentions to anyone else.

Meanwhile it seemed to me that this discovery offered me a chance of diverting inquiry from myself and from one in whom I was far more deeply interested than in Sarah Neobard. I must try to concentrate Sir Frank Tarleton’s suspicions on Salome, and induce him to pass over the other characters to whom his attention had been drawn by the evidence of the waiter Gerard and the entries in the books.

I entered his study again to find him engaged in drawing up a list of names. I let my eye steal towards the paper as I approached and my heart sank as I read the one just written—“Lady Violet Bredwardine.”

“The mystery is solved, apparently,” I announced in a tone of confidence. “The Salome costume has been traced to Miss Neobard.”

To my discomfiture the consultant merely gave the nod of one who hears what he expected.

“Poor girl; I was afraid of it.”

He went on writing without further remark, while I dropped into a chair and looked on with sickly apprehension. At last he looked up.

“Listen, Cassilis. I have made a complete list of the names which appear in the members’ roll and also in the appointment-book with numbers attached to them. We have still to find out what the numbers mean, of course. Have you formed any theory on that point?”

I shook my head. I was honestly ignorant, and if I had been able to make any guess I should have refrained, for fear of leading Tarleton in the very direction I was anxious to turn him away from.

“All I can conjecture at this stage is that the numbers refer to pages in the book that has been abstracted from the safe,” the physician said thoughtfully. “But I confess that that explanation doesn’t satisfy myself. My instinct tells me that these names are the names of persons with whom Weathered had some peculiar relation, perhaps financial, perhaps....” He paused and shook his head. “At all events, if Madame Bonnell told us the truth in saying that he went in mortal fear of some of his fellow-members, I am convinced that the names of those whom he feared are in this list.”

He passed it over to me. Of the dozen names it contained more than half were those of women. But I had no eyes for more names than one. I was racking my brain for some convincing argument against the course which my chief was evidently bent on following.

“Miss Neobard’s name is not in this list,” I objected. “And yet we know now that she was present last night, and passed more time in Weathered’s company than anyone else. And she had very strong motives for regarding him with hatred.”

Again Tarleton exhibited signs of surprise, almost of impatience.

“It seems to me, Cassilis, that you have a good deal to learn in the analysis of human nature, or at all events of feminine nature, if you consider that hatred was the motive that inspired that young woman to follow her step-father to the Domino Club last night. Hatred of the other women who were there, if you like, but certainly not hatred of him.”

It was difficult for me to keep up the pretence of believing in a theory which my own judgment had already discarded. I fell back on another point.

“What strikes me, sir, that all the persons whose names appear in your list were old frequenters of the club. They had had many previous opportunities of drugging Weathered. Last night was the first occasion on which his step-daughter was present, and last night was the first time he was attacked.”

Tarleton accepted this argument more amicably.

“Now you have made a real point. It might be a good point if there were no other suspicious features in the case. But it is open to this objection that your argument cuts both ways. Sarah Neobard lived in her step-father’s house, and had every opportunity of administering drugs to him there. Why should she have chosen the Domino Club for such a purpose? And if her object was to obtain his keys, she might have managed that when he was asleep at home far more easily than anywhere else. That’s the one point we mustn’t lose sight of in this affair—that the motive was to gain access to Weathered’s safe. Revenge was a secondary consideration.”

I felt myself fairly cornered. Prudence compelled me to assent to my chief’s reasoning.

“I will ask you to make a copy of this final list and send it round to Captain Charles,” he went on to say. “The police may be able to find out something about these twelve persons which will narrow the inquiry down to one or two.”

I held out a hand that almost trembled for the paper, and hastened to fold it up and slip it into my pocket. The thought had instantly occurred to me that I might omit one name in the copy to be sent to the police without much risk. If the omission were discovered it would be put down to carelessness, and meanwhile time would have been gained.

Tarleton had risen to his feet.

“And now it is time to examine the body,” he said gravely.

I followed him out of the room and into the laboratory, where the corpse lay stretched on a marble slab, ready for the surgical knife. The sight distracted me for a time from my other anxiety. I was profoundly puzzled by the symptoms I have described already. The grayness I had remarked had grown deeper, and the whole surface of the skin was corrugated by tiny wrinkles, so that it presented the appearance of a mummy dried by the embalmer. It was impossible to attribute these signs to the action of opium in any quantity of which I had experimental knowledge. My heart sank as I remembered the ominous pronouncement of my chief. If he were right, and another drug, more deadly than opium, had been administered by an unknown hand to the masked Inquisitor during last night’s revel, the situation would be terrible indeed. The murder, the deeply-planned murder, as Sir Frank had termed it in advance, would be attributed to the same hand that had abstracted the keys and carried off the case-book from the safe.

The proceedings in which I had now to play the part of assistant were of too gruesome a nature to be described in anything but a medical report. It is enough to say that the general result was negative as far as my medical knowledge went. There was no sign of any organic injury. There was nothing in the condition of the heart to explain the fatal event. The internal symptoms corresponded closely with the external ones. Everything pointed to death having been brought about by the action of a poison similar in some of its effects to opium, yet having a peculiar influence on the interior membranes as well as on the outer cuticle. But what that poison was I was at a loss to tell.

The specialist seemed to be as completely baffled as myself. He pursued the examination almost in silence, only speaking from time to time to ask me to hand him the different reagents used in testing for poisons. It was quickly evident that none of the common poisons was present. Anything like strychnine or arsenic was out of the question from the first. The rapidity with which death had taken place eliminated the possibility of germs. More subtle agents, such as belladonna and aconite, were tested for in vain. In the midst of my overpowering anxiety I was moved to admiration by the expert’s extraordinary skill. All kinds of tests of which I had never heard were brought to bear; drugs unknown to me even by name were called into requisition; minute discolorations were examined by a powerful microscope; a galvanic battery was applied to one organ, and the X-ray to another. And still there was no positive result.

Hours passed away unnoticed in the laborious search. It was nearly dinner-time when Tarleton at length straightened himself up with a look of finality, walked across the room, and began washing his hands.

“I have now tried for every agent known to the British Pharmacopœia that might possibly have produced death with such symptoms as those, and not one is present,” he said with extreme gravity.

I felt myself shivering. If anyone else had been speaking I should have thought he was attributing the death to a supernatural cause.

“There are only two possibilities left, so far as I can see,” he continued. “One is that I am dealing with a murderer whose knowledge of poisons is more extensive than my own.”

I shook my head in protest.

“In that case,” Tarleton went on deliberately, “he must be a foreigner. And we must be prepared to find that the life of the Crown Prince was aimed at, after all. The Bolsheviks are in close relation with a party among the Chinese. It may well be that the Chinese possess the secret of treating opium in such a way as to make it produce effects unknown to Western science. I shall have to ask Charles to find out what costume the Prince wore last night, and to learn a little more about the Chancellor of the Slavonian Legation.”

He broke off for a few moments, and I breathed more freely than I had done for many hours. He finished drying his hands before he spoke again.

“There is a second possibility. There is one drug known to me which does in fact produce appearances exactly like those we have seen. But it is a drug not mentioned in the Pharmacopœia, and I had every reason to believe that I was the only person in this part of the world who had any of it in his possession. I keep it in a sealed bottle in my private safe, and I am now going to see if that bottle has been tampered with, and any of the poison is missing.”

The consultant was facing me as he spoke, and his keen gray eyes were fixed on me with an expression which might have been merely meant to impress me with the gravity of the situation. But my conscience took the alarm. For the first time a sickening conviction seized me that I was being watched. I told myself that my chief had noticed signs of confusion and dread in my behaviour, and had begun to entertain a suspicion that I knew more about the tragedy than I had chosen to reveal.

Now it seemed his suspicion had gone deeper. He was actually asking himself if I had taken advantage of my opportunities as an inmate of his house to search for a more subtle drug than morphia, and had stooped to rob him. And although I knew myself to be innocent of any such action, I trembled at the idea. If the bottle or any of its contents should be missing, how could I possibly hope to exculpate myself?

I dared not to open my lips. Tarleton, with something like a sigh, went towards the cabinet in which his drugs were stored, took out his bunch of keys and applied one of them to a small steel safe on an inner shelf. I held my breath as the door swung open. He put in his hand, took out a square glass bottle of the size known to chemists as four-ounce, and held it up to the light.

The bottle appeared to be full of a gray powder. The glass stopper was covered with black sealing-wax, and he bent his head over it, minutely scrutinizing the edges of the wax, and the impression of a seal on the flat top.

“Thank Heaven!”

I echoed the ejaculation in my thoughts as he raised his head and looked round at me with a smile of unmistakable relief.

“It is exactly as I left it I sealed it with my own signet ring.” He extended his little finger for me to see. “The seal is intact. If this was the poison used, it wasn’t obtained here.”

I had reason to feel satisfied. I knew my chief’s generous nature well enough to feel sure that he would feel remorse for his momentary suspicion of me, and would be disposed to atone for it by shutting his eyes to whatever else might point to my being concerned in the case. In fact he now proceeded to give me a short holiday.

“I shan’t want you for the rest of the day, Cassilis, if you want to go out. I think we have done all we can till we hear further from the police. I am now going to think quietly over the problem as it stands.”

I was thankful to be released. I had certain pressing business to attend to. But first of all I went to my own room and made a copy of the list of names I had been charged to send to Inspector Charles. And although the paper entrusted to me contained twelve names, the one which I posted to Scotland Yard only contained eleven.

My own business took me to a little street within a stone’s throw of Piccadilly Circus in which I had rented a room ever since I had taken up my abode with Sir Frank Tarleton. It was my private retreat in which I kept up a few friendships that I did not want my chief to know of; an asylum in which I could resume my independence for a few hours when I was tired of the regular life I was compelled to lead under my senior’s eye. I had taken the room under my Christian name of Bertrand for greater security. It was from this room that I had gone in disguise to the Domino Club, and it was here that I had dropped my disguise again, little dreaming that before twelve hours had passed it would have become a precious possession.

Luckily I had taken the precaution to leave it under lock and key in an old suit-case that I kept under the bed. As soon as I had let myself into the room and fastened the door securely, I dragged out the case and opened it with feverish haste. So far all was well. The costume lay exactly as I had left it. And now what was to be done with it?

I thought out the problem carefully. I followed out in imagination the search of the police among the theatrical costumiers. At any moment they might come to a certain little Jew in Wardour Street, and force him to disclose the name and address to which this very costume had been sent more than a year ago. And the next step would surely be for them to inquire what had become of it.

I thought then, and I think now, that I took the most prudent course in the circumstances. I first wrote a letter. Then I locked up the case again, labelled it, and carried it up Shaftesbury Avenue to the post office.

CHAPTER VIII
THE LEOPARD’S CLAWS

Inspector Charles presented himself at the house in Montague Street while Sir Frank and I were at breakfast the next morning. My chief ordered him to be shown in to us.

The Inspector’s manner struck me as rather more reserved than it had been yesterday. It very quickly appeared that he was acting under instructions not received from the medical adviser of the Home Office.

“The Chief Commissioner is anxious to know if you have any report to make as to the cause of death in this Domino Club affair,” he began by saying, as soon as he had sat down.

Tarleton frowned slightly. Then he laid down his knife and fork and faced the Inspector.

“I don’t expect to complete my report for some time yet. I have certain inquiries to make which may take anything from a few days to several months.”

Captain Charles looked astonished, as he well might.

“Then it isn’t a simple case of opium-poisoning?”

“It isn’t a simple case, certainly. I don’t say that opium was not administered. By the way, I should be glad if you could find out for me what disguise the Crown Prince was wearing when he went to the Club.”

The Captain drew himself up.

“I ascertained that yesterday. He wore a plain black domino with a hood.”

“Ah! Rather like Weathered’s costume, then?”

I could have answered that question better than Charles, I thought. There had been more than one black domino worn at the fatal dance, but none that had any real semblance to Weathered’s remarkable costume. The pointed peak with the two eye-slits in the cloth instead of a mask had plainly distinguished the founder of the Club from everyone else present. Of course I dared not offer my testimony as a witness. I did not think it prudent even to make a remark. Tarleton might have an object in putting forward this particular view.

It quickly appeared what his object was.

“I don’t think the Commissioner is much inclined to follow up that clue,” Captain Charles said coldly. “They seem to think in the Foreign Office that it would do harm to let any idea get abroad that the Crown Prince was aimed at. It would look as if London wasn’t a safe place for foreign royalties to visit.”

The physician shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“That has nothing to do with me, Captain Charles. It will be time enough for the Foreign Office to make their view prevail when we have something definite to go upon. At present I am dealing with the cause of death. I want the police, if they can, to find out if the Bolshevik authorities have ever resorted to poison, and if so, what poison they use. I imagine they have no restrictions on opium, and I should be particularly glad to get hold of samples of the opium that is coming into Russia from China just now.”

The Inspector pulled a long face.

“I’ll tell the Commissioner what you say, Sir Frank, of course. But I’m afraid he won’t much like the idea of the inquiry being dragged out. His theory is that death was accidental, the only object being to get hold of the keys of the safe. And if there isn’t going to be any public prosecution, he wants to close the Club as soon as possible, and send the woman Bonnell out of the country.”

For once I saw Tarleton really angry.

“I trust Sir Hercules will recognize that it is for me to decide whether the death was accidental, and that he will take no such steps until he has received my report through the Home Office. Unless you can undertake that he will hold his hand for the present I must communicate with Sir James Ponsonby at once.”

Charles gave way instantly.

“There’s no need for that, Sir Frank, I’m sure. Sir Hercules McNaught wouldn’t think of acting contrary to your opinion without consulting you first. It doesn’t look to him as if the case could be carried much further; that’s all.”

“We are only at the beginning of the inquiry,” was the firm answer. “You haven’t yet completed your search among the costumiers.”

The Inspector shook his head despondently.

“We have pretty well exhausted the list of costumiers, and there is nothing worth reporting, sir. At least the Commissioner thinks it absurd to attach any importance to Miss Neobard’s presence. He says she would have had much better opportunities of getting hold of her step-father’s keys at home.”

My chief glanced at me. It was the same objection that he had made himself.

“We can’t hear anything of a leopard skin,” Charles pursued. “You may remember, sir, that you expressed the opinion that the leopardess costume would turn out to be a private one. And the only Zenobia costume we can trace was furnished a year ago.”

I stole a glance at the consultant. His keen eyes were no longer on me.

“To whom was it furnished?” he asked quietly.

The Inspector took out a note-book and opened it.

“To the Lady Violet Bredwardine, Grosvenor Place.”

At last the name had been pronounced, the name that I had so much dreaded to hear on the lips of the police. Fortunately I had known that it was coming. I had braced my nerves to meet the shock, and I managed to preserve an air of complete indifference while I faced the speaker.

“Well?”

Tarleton spoke a little sharply. Captain Charles looked at him in mild wonder.

“Well?” the specialist repeated impatiently. “What have you ascertained about Lady Violet Bredwardine?”

Charles was plainly put out by the question.

“Her ladyship is the daughter of the Earl of Ledbury. She is quite young—hardly of age. Sir Hercules McNaught has met her in society.” His manner conveyed that there was some impropriety in making Lady Violet’s name the subject of discussion. The day before I had been inclined to feel some contempt for the worthy Captain, but now I was only grateful for his stolid front.

My chief took a very different view, unfortunately.

“And is that all you have thought it worth while to find out? A peerage would have told us as much as that. I have no doubt that Sir Hercules has met many members of the Domino Club in society. It doesn’t follow that they are to be excluded from the investigation.”

This time the Inspector did not attempt to conceal his mortification.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Frank. Do you mean that Lady Violet Bredwardine is a member of the Domino Club? I hadn’t the slightest reason to suppose so.”

It was the consultant’s turn to show surprise. He stared at me.

“Surely her name was on the list I asked you to furnish to Captain Charles? I have a distinct recollection of it.”

I received the question, for which I had been waiting, with perfect coolness.

“I seem to recollect it too, sir.”

The Inspector was already turning over the pages of his note-book. He looked up at us in triumph.

“I made a copy of the list exactly as I received it, Sir Frank, and the name is not here. I am prepared to swear that her ladyship’s name was not included.”

Tarleton turned to me.

“Will you be good enough to bring me the list I gave you to copy. It looks as though some slip had been made.”

I had not ventured to destroy the document. To have done so would have been to expose myself to a serious rebuke, without serving any useful purpose. Tarleton was not the man to forget such a name as Lady Violet’s—one of the first that had attracted his attention among those that appeared in Weathered’s appointment-book with a number attached to them. All I had hoped to do was to keep the police off her track for a few hours, and that object had now been achieved.

The list was actually in my breast pocket, but I went up to my room as though to fetch it, and returned, carrying it in my hand. I put on an apologetic air as I handed it to my chief.

“The name is certainly here, sir. I can only suppose that I must have left it out of the copy I made for Captain Charles.”

Tarleton let me off more lightly than I expected.

“Either you or the Captain left it out, that’s clear,” he said gruffly. “The point is that Lady Violet was not only a member of the Club; she was also one of Weathered’s patients, which means that she may have been in his power, and she was one of those to whom he had given a special number for some reason that we have still to find out. Perhaps she may be able to tell us.”

I could scarcely suppress a shiver. This point had never occurred to me. I pictured to myself the question being put to the unhappy girl, and tortured myself with wondering what would be her reply.

The Inspector’s attitude had undergone a considerable change as he listened to Tarleton’s information. Evidently he realized that the police authorities had been rather hasty in coming to the conclusion that the inquiry was at an end.

“What you tell me makes a great difference, sir,” he observed regretfully. “I’ve no doubt the Commissioner will see the necessity of going further into the case, on this evidence.”

“There are many reasons for going into it further,” the specialist returned. “You may tell the Commissioner from me that I suspect a book has been taken from Dr. Weathered’s safe containing the names and confidential confessions of his patients, and it is of the utmost importance that that book should be traced. Until we know that it is destroyed the reputations of innocent people will be in danger. You may also tell him that there is grave reason to fear that some unscrupulous person in London is in possession of a supply of deadly poison, unknown to science at present; and unless that person can be discovered and the poison taken out of his or her possession, it may be used to commit more murders than one.”

Captain Charles’s expression was almost humble.

“You may rely on the Commissioner’s giving you all the assistance in his power, Sir Frank, I’m certain. I’ll follow up Lady Violet Bredwardine without delay, if that will meet your views.”

“Thank you. There are two things I should like you to report to me the moment you know them: Lady Violet’s present address, and where she was yesterday night.”

The Inspector scribbled two lines in his note-book, and hurried off.

Meanwhile my position was becoming more difficult every hour. I had to look on and see the toils closing round one whom I would have given my life to protect, without daring to show the least sign of personal interest in her fate. My own peril, serious as it was, affected me but little in comparison with hers. I can honestly say that I should have been ready to draw suspicion on myself if I could have screened her by so doing. But the very reverse was the case, as I knew too well. The only course open to me was to hold my tongue, to keep a strict guard on myself, and to watch for any chance that might present itself of diverting suspicion from either of us.

I was afraid to commit myself by any expression of opinion on the case as it stood against Lady Violet, but I thought I might venture to remind my chief that she was not the only person implicated. He had dismissed Sarah Neobard altogether from the inquiry, or so it seemed, but the mysterious Leopardess remained to be identified. I ventured on a question.

“Do you think, Sir Frank, there is any chance of the police getting on the trail of the woman who wore the leopard skin? According to the waiter’s evidence she was the one who showed most hostility to Weathered. She refused to dance with him, you may remember. Somehow Gerard gave me the impression that she was his only real enemy.”

I was gratified by Tarleton’s quick response.

“You are perfectly right, Cassilis. That is the very point I was considering before you spoke. In my opinion there is very little likelihood of Charles tracing that woman. I think you and I must try our hand.”

I need scarcely say how delighted I was at this prospect. At last I should be able to devote myself to serving my chief without any dread of the result.

“Will it be possible to trace the leopard skin?” I asked. “There are not many taxidermists in London, are there? I have only heard of one. We might go round to them, and find out if any skins have passed through their hands recently. What strikes me is that all the skins I have seen have been mounted as rugs. I shouldn’t think that unmounted skins could be very common—skins that could be made part of a costume.”

My chief had punctuated these suggestions with a series of approving nods. At the close he spoke.

“Very good indeed, Cassilis. You have the makings of a detective, I can see. And now let me explain to you where I see a chance of success. You may put the taxidermists on one side. Leopard skins are such perishable things, and the climates in which leopards are killed are so treacherous, that the skins have to be roughly cured on the spot if they are to be preserved. And they are too common to be the object of much care afterwards as a rule. The chances are against any particular skin having passed through the hands of a taxidermist in London unless it was to be mounted as a rug.”

I felt very small as I listened to this reduction of my ideas to nothing. The specialist had not done.

“I don’t think it would be at all hopeful to try to trace the skin, therefore. But I think it quite possible to trace something else. Do you remember what else about the costume the man Gerard described?”

“Do you mean the necklace—of leopard’s claws?” I responded in doubt.

“Yes. I see you don’t grasp the significance of the claws. I must tell you that the natives of the countries where leopards are found look upon the claws as having a magical virtue. They place a great value on them, and take them from the dead leopard at the first opportunity they find. It is almost impossible for the white man who shoots a leopard to secure the claws. I doubt if more than one entire set of claws comes to England in a year. Now you see that in my opinion we have a very much greater chance of tracing the claws than the skin.”

I was fairly puzzled. I could follow Tarleton’s reasoning, of course, but I could not imagine how he meant to proceed.

“These claws must have been brought home, according to my idea, by a sportsman and traveller of experience, who knew the ways of the natives, and was able to baffle them. Men of that class are not very numerous, and most of them have published books of their travels. I am going to spend the rest of the morning in going to the libraries and publishers; and I want you to spend it in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington.”

There was no occasion for me to express the admiration I sincerely felt for my chief’s knowledge and resource. I waited in silent wonder for his instructions.

“I am not an expert in zoölogy,” he said modestly. “I know, of course, that leopards, or animals closely resembling leopards, are found along the tropical zone. They are called jaguars in South America, I believe, and panthers elsewhere. At all events their skins are sufficiently like the true leopard’s to be called leopard skins by an ignorant man like Gerard. What I want you to do is to ascertain if such animals occur in the East Indian archipelago, and particularly in the Island of Sumatra.”

It was a curious direction. What was there in the circumstances of the case to turn Sir Frank’s mind to one part of the tropics rather than another, and to one particular island? Perhaps it showed some dullness on my part; I can only confess that I had not the least idea of his motive.

“Sumatra,” he repeated in a meditative tone, “almost the largest island in the world, and yet the least known. Nominally it is a Dutch possession, but the Dutch have never subjugated it. They have never thoroughly penetrated the interior. The natives have been too fierce for them to subdue. They occupy one or two points on the coast, I fancy, but that is all. There was a Sultan of Acheen who fought with them at one time. I don’t think he was really conquered. A very interesting field for an explorer willing to take his life in his hand.”

And still I failed to grasp the mysterious connection between the vast unknown island lying on the Equator and the tragedy I had all but witnessed in a night club of London.

“You can take my card,” the specialist added. “You will find the people at the Museum most obliging. If they have the information they will give it to you willingly.”

I took the card, and the Piccadilly Tube from Russell Square soon landed me at South Kensington. As Sir Frank Tarleton had foretold, the staff of the Natural History Museum received it with all respect, and showed themselves ready to give all the information they possessed. The gentleman who took me in hand was confident that there were leopards in Sumatra; nevertheless, when it came to the question of positive evidence he found some difficulty in putting his hand on any.

“You have struck the least-known area in the world, you see,” he pointed out. “We know the fauna of the Malay Peninsula, and of Java and all the other East Indian islands as far as the Philippines, and one has always taken it for granted that the fauna of Sumatra corresponded with that of the neighbouring area north of the Wallace line. But if you ask me for an official declaration that leopards are to be found in the island I don’t think I can give it off-hand. We might be able to get the information by writing to The Hague. Or you might find it in some book of travels in the British Museum Library.”

“Sir Frank Tarleton is searching in the Library at this moment, I believe,” I said incautiously.

My guide opened his eyes.

“You surprise me. I had no idea that Sir Frank was so much interested in natural history. I have always associated his name with toxicology.”

The light burst on me at last. I understood the true reason for my chief’s extreme interest in following up the clue of the leopard’s claws, and for his turning his special attention to the region of the earth least known to science. He had perceived a connection overlooked by me between the rare necklace worn by the unknown woman in the Domino Club and the gray powder contained in the small glass bottle in his private safe. He was on the search for some other product of Sumatra besides its leopards. He expected to trace the secret drug whose presence the effects of the opium had concealed.

CHAPTER IX
SARAH NEOBARD SPEAKS OUT

When I returned to Montague Street to lunch, my host was still out, and I had to sit down to the meal without him. No uncommon incident this, in the case of any member of the medical profession, and especially one liable to be summoned at any moment to cases of the most desperate nature. Yet I was uneasy at losing sight of the great man for so long just then. The investigation had reached a point at which I was desperately anxious to follow his every move, in order that I might guard the threatened girl towards whom so many signs already seemed to point.

My lunch was nearly over when I was summoned to the telephone. I answered the call with the expectation that Captain Charles had obtained the information he had been asked for; and I was not disappointed.

“You can tell Sir Frank that Lady Violet Bredwardine is down in Herefordshire at her father’s seat, Tyberton Castle. She left London for the Castle the day before yesterday by the noon train, so that she can’t have been present at the Domino Club.”

I was careful to receive this intelligence as though it were news to me. I even asked the Inspector if he was perfectly sure that his informants were to be trusted.

“I’m perfectly sure as far as this end is concerned,” he answered in a tone of surprise. “There is no doubt that she left by that train, and that she hasn’t returned. And her letters are being forwarded to Tyberton Castle. But, of course, I can’t answer for her being there without sending someone down to make inquiries on the spot. Would Sir Frank like me to do that?”

I hesitated. I had no reason to fear the result of such inquiries, but I distrusted the tact of Charles and his men, and felt afraid lest their proceedings should come to Lady Violet’s ears and frighten her. On the whole, I thought it best to apply the brake.

“Sir Frank is out just now. I will let him have your report as soon as he comes in, and let you know what he says. I shouldn’t think he would want you to do anything more. It looks as though Lady Violet had a complete alibi.”

“Oh, but——” the voice through the wire objected, “but Sir Frank’s instructions were that I was to follow up Lady Violet. The police were to follow up everyone on the list you sent me, and find out all they could about them. I have a man detailed for each already. We have ascertained that Julia Sebright is dead. Sir George Castleton is abroad; he was last heard of in Naples, in very queer company....”

This was the sort of thing I had dreaded. At all risks I must try to call the hounds off the trail of Violet Bredwardine’s past.

“That’s all right, so far,” I interrupted. “Of course, Sir Frank wishes you to follow them all up as long as there is any possibility of their being involved in the case. But when they are clearly out of it I feel sure he wouldn’t think it right to pry into their private lives for nothing. It would be taking an improper advantage of information obtained from the books of their doctor. Medical etiquette is very strict on that point, I can assure you. Sir Frank Tarleton himself might get into trouble if it were known that he had made use of Dr. Weathered’s books for such a purpose.”

“What is that about Sir Frank Tarleton getting into trouble?” said a voice in my ear.

The receiver fell from my hand. I looked round to see my chief standing at my elbow. I am a poor dissembler, I fear. I was conscious of a deep flush as I lowered my eyes before the reproachful look in those keen gray ones beneath their frowning brows.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I stammered. “I was trying to explain to Inspector Charles that it wouldn’t do to annoy Weathered’s patients with inquiries into their private lives unless there were some grounds for suspicion against them.”

Tarleton stepped to the telephone.

“You have heard what Dr. Cassilis said? He is perfectly right. We have no concern with any patient of Weathered’s who is not implicated in the murder. The moment we can dismiss them from the case they must be let alone.”

I hardly know whether I was more astonished or delighted at this handsome endorsement of my words. But I was not yet out of the wood. My chief made the Inspector repeat the information he had just given to me, and Charles naturally took the opportunity to defend himself.

Apparently the Inspector explained to Tarleton that I had not seemed satisfied at first with his report about Lady Violet having gone to Herefordshire before the night of the dance.

It was the physician’s turn to show surprise.

“Why did you question Lady Violet Bredwardine’s alibi, Cassilis?”

It gratified me to feel that the Inspector had done me a good turn unawares.

“I merely thought it right to ask Captain Charles if he was quite satisfied before I took the responsibility of reporting the alibi to you. He offered to send a man down to make inquiries at Lord Ledbury’s seat, and I asked him to take no further steps without your sanction.”

My chief smiled with the utmost amiability.

“Dr. Cassilis has exactly understood my views,” he said through the telephone. “There is not the least necessity for you to trouble yourself further about Lady Violet for the present. The person in whom I am interested just now is Captain Armstrong, R.A. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a well-known traveller and explorer. I shall be glad if you can let me have his present address.”

There was a brief pause. It was evident that the Inspector had been consulting his note-book, for his reply, which I failed to catch, provoked Tarleton to say testily, “I know, I know. He is not on the books of the Club. I want to get in touch with him for another reason. I think he may be of help in enabling me to decide on the cause of death.”

As soon as Captain Charles had been disposed of, the physician came to the luncheon table and made a hasty meal. I reported my failure to obtain any definite proof of the existence of leopards in Sumatra, and found that the point had lost its importance in his eyes.

“I have been to the British Museum Reading Room,” he told me. “I met Captain Armstrong about two years ago, after reading his book on Sumatra, but I had forgotten his name, and I had to look through the subject index under the head of Sumatra to find it. Then I got out his book, Across Sumatra, and saw from the title-page that he had also written a book on West Africa, where everyone knows there are leopards, so that he had plenty of opportunities of procuring skins and claws.”

The situation was becoming clearer and clearer. There was no need for me to ask the specialist where he had procured the contents of the glass bottle. I could see what must have happened. The explorer’s narrative must have contained some account of an unknown poison peculiar to the Island of Sumatra; the expert’s attention had been drawn to it; he had approached the author, found that he had some of the poison in his possession, and induced him to part with it. His object now must be to find out whether Armstrong had kept any himself, or allowed it to get into other hands.

I was so relieved at the turn the investigation was taking that I had ceased to worry about my own connection with the tragedy. It gave me a disagreeable shock to be reminded that there were other points to be cleared up, when my chief spoke again.

“I think our next step now must be to interview Sarah Neobard. I doubt if she has told us all she knows about Weathered and his woman patients. She may be able to throw some light on the mysterious numbers.”

The numbers in the appointment-book were as mysterious to me as they were to him. I had been able to form no theory as to their significance; nevertheless, I felt that danger lay in that direction. I could not forget that a number had been attached to Violet Bredwardine’s name, and I dreaded to learn why.

The physician was provided with a good excuse for presenting himself again at the house in Warwick Street. It was necessary to make arrangements for the interment of the body. He had decided, he told me, to give a certificate that would dispense with the necessity for an inquest, and permit of the funeral taking place without delay. For that purpose the body was to be conveyed to the house in the small hours when nobody was likely to be about.

It was a strong thing to do before it had yet been determined whether the murder was to be made the subject of a public prosecution, and the murderer brought to justice. So far as I could see, the authorities both of the Home Office and the Foreign Office were placing entire confidence in my chief, and had given him a free hand. I hoped accordingly that his decision to let the funeral proceed quietly meant that he had made up his mind against any public exposure. But on that point he had been careful not to commit himself, and I was afraid to show too much curiosity.

He took me round with him in the car to Warwick Street, and asked to see Mrs. Weathered. The youthful butler eyed us with the utmost apprehension, and showed us into the patients’ waiting-room. There we were joined presently by the widow and her daughter.

Mrs. Weathered was in deep black. Her manner showed that she was resigned to her husband’s fate by this time, but she was evidently in a state of extreme nervousness, as she well might be while the mystery was unsolved. Sarah, on the other hand, at the beginning of the interview, was as cold and self-possessed as though her part was over, and she had ceased to feel any personal interest in the sequel.

“I have called on you,” Tarleton explained, “to let you know officially that I have examined into the cause of Dr. Weathered’s death, and am prepared to certify that it was due to heart failure.”

I stared. In one sense, of course, almost every death may be said to be due to heart failure. The question generally is what has caused the heart to fail; and I knew perfectly well that the burial certificate would have to be more explicit. But Mrs. Weathered showed herself quite satisfied.

“Then it was a natural death, after all?” she exclaimed in relief.

“There is no reason why you shouldn’t regard it so,” was the answer. “I should advise you to accept that view, and refrain from discussing the matter with anyone. I wish to spare you the trouble and unpleasantness of an inquest, if possible. I propose to have the body brought round here some time to-night, or rather in the early morning; and you can then make your own arrangements for the funeral.”

The widow clasped her hands in gratification.

“That is good of you, Sir Frank. I don’t know how to thank you.” She looked up at her daughter, whose face was overcast. “My dear, we couldn’t have asked for anything better. I have been dreading the inquest more than I can say.”

Sarah’s expression was troubled. She tried to return her mother’s pleading look with one of sympathy. Then she lifted her head, and let her eyes rest on the consultant with quiet scorn.

“My mother has every reason to be grateful to you, Sir Frank,” she said ungraciously. “But you haven’t told us what caused the heart to fail.”

Tarleton returned her gaze with quiet forbearance. It was in his power to crush her with an allusion to her presence at the Domino Club in the character of Salome, but he generously refrained from doing so in her mother’s hearing. Already the poor woman’s face was downcast again, and she glanced anxiously from her daughter to us.

“That is a question which Mrs. Weathered is entitled to raise if she pleases,” the doctor said gravely. “You have just heard me advise her not to do so. At the same time if you would like to go into the question with me privately I am quite willing.”

“Oh, no, no!” The protest broke from the widow’s lips. She caught hold of her daughter’s hand. “Don’t say anything more, dear. I’m sure Sir Frank Tarleton knows best. We must do what he tells us.”

The girl compressed her lips with a strong effort. Her eye sought Tarleton’s and I thought a signal was exchanged between them. Then he rose to his feet.

“Very well, ma’am. I think you are acting wisely. By the way, there is one question which you may be able to answer. In looking through Dr. Weathered’s diary of appointments with his patients I have noticed that some of their names are followed by numbers, and I should like to know what that means.”

The widow received the question with an air of complete surprise. It was impossible to doubt her declaration that she had no idea of the existence of the curious ciphers, much less of their use. But Sarah gave the questioner a quick look, and again I thought a secret understanding was established between them.

The first words uttered by my chief, when we were in the car driving away, told me what the understanding was.

“That girl means to come and see me. She isn’t satisfied; and she won’t be without vengeance on the woman she hates.”

The prediction was promptly fulfilled. The girl must have found some excuse for leaving the house within a few minutes after us. We had been back less than half an hour when she was announced. She burst in upon us like a fury.

“Sir Frank Tarleton, what does this mean? My step-father was murdered, and you know it. You are trying to hush up the case, I suppose, because some of the people involved in it are so high up that the police want to let them off. There seems to be one law for the rich and another for the poor. It’s the high-up people, the people with titles, who are the worst. I’ve seen those numbers in the diary, and I can guess pretty well what they mean. They’re the guilty patients, the ones who were in his power, and had the greatest motive to murder him. If you want to know more you had better apply to Lady Violet Bredwardine.”

It was an appalling shock. Just as I had reached the comforting conclusion that Lady Violet’s alibi had put an end to the investigation as far as she was concerned, this passionate girl had launched a denunciation that threatened to drag everything to light. I turned in consternation to my chief.

He had taken out his gold repeater and begun to swing it to and fro at the end of its scrap of ribbon in a way that told me he was pondering deeply on this new development of the case. He made a motion with his hand towards me.

“Dr. Cassilis, here, can tell you that you are mistaken in thinking that the police are trying to hush up the case, or to screen anyone connected with it. Tell Miss Neobard what they reported to you.”

The indignant Sarah faced me in some surprise. My own surprise was greater than hers. I was at a loss to understand Tarleton’s motive for handing over the vindication of the police to me. Did he expect my word to carry more weight with the excited girl than his own? Or was he simply testing my ability to deal with a critical situation? And if so, how far did he mean me to go? Was I to let the accuser know that the police had been on her track as well as Lady Violet’s? I spoke in some confusion.

“The police have made full inquiries about Lady Violet Bredwardine. She was a patient of Dr. Weathered’s and a member of the Domino Club, apparently. But they have ascertained that she wasn’t in London on the night when he met his death. She was down at her father’s place in Herefordshire.”

“I don’t believe it,” was the angry reply. “I don’t mean that you are trying to deceive me, but the police haven’t told you the truth. I am as certain that she was there that night as I am that I am in this room. She was with him in the very alcove where he was found dead.”

In her wrath she had given herself away. Her statement almost amounted to saying that she had seen them together. I looked at my chief in the hope that he would pounce on the admission, but he contented himself with nodding to me to go on.

“You speak very positively, Miss Neobard. May I ask you how you know that?”

The question plainly disconcerted her. It must have opened her eyes to the fact that she was saying too much.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” she answered stubbornly. “You can ask anyone who was there. Ask them if they saw someone wearing a Roman helmet and breastplate with a skirt underneath. That was her disguise.”

I was staggered. The girl’s persistence irritated me, and I spoke sharply.

“You can’t possibly know that, when she was more than a hundred miles away at the time. Did you speak to her—to whoever it was that was wearing that costume?”

It appeared that I had let myself go too far this time. I saw Tarleton frown disapprovingly. Sarah Neobard gazed at me in alarm.

“I speak to her?” she echoed. “What do you mean? I wasn’t—I’m not a member of the Club.”

A warning glance from my chief stopped the retort that was on my lips. I was longing to tell the accuser that she had been under suspicion herself, but I saw that in Tarleton’s opinion I was taking the wrong line. My indignation on Violet Bredwardine’s behalf had betrayed me into showing our cards too soon.

The girl herself seemed to feel that some explanation was needed for her confident assertions.

“If you want to know who was wearing that disguise, ask Madame Bonnell. She is the manager of the Club, and she can tell you everything that went on there.”

A swift movement of the physician’s eyebrows told me that this was the sort of admission he had been watching for. He intervened, I had little doubt, to prevent my drawing attention to it.

“I think Miss Neobard ought to be told that the wearer of the Zenobia costume was not the only one whose movements attracted attention on that night.”

I was eager to take the cue. It was time to give Lady Violet’s enemy a taste of her own medicine.

“Yes,” I said sternly, “the dancer who was seen oftenest in company with Dr. Weathered that night wore the costume of Salome. Can you tell us anything about her?”

For an instant Salome blanched. She was quite intelligent enough to see the red light. She didn’t need to be told that if her movements had attracted the notice of the police her identity could hardly fail to come out before very long, if it hadn’t come out already. Yet she struggled against what was coming.

“She had nothing to do with the crime. She was a friend of Dr. Weathered’s. Her only motive for being there was to protect him from the other women.” She spoke almost in a whisper.

“To protect him from being poisoned, do you mean? Or do you mean that she was jealous, and wanted to prevent him from dancing with anyone but herself?”

At last Tarleton had fired the shot which he had had in preparation. Its effect was startling indeed. A dark red flood overspread the girl’s face; for a moment she fought with her emotions, and the next she broke down in a flood of tears.

“You know it was I,” she sobbed out. “You have been playing with me. You think I am a bad woman, I suppose. But I’m not. I take Heaven to witness that I only meant to do what was right. I never dreamed that I had any feeling for him that—that wasn’t—that wasn’t right. I was angry with him for the way he treated my mother. When he began to neglect her and go after other women, pretending that they were only his patients, I hated them. I never thought of anything else. I thought I was doing my duty to my mother in watching him. But he found me out. He knew everything about women. He saw that I was jealous on my own account as well; and he set himself to soothe me. He could fascinate any woman if he tried. He pretended to confide in me. He told me about his patients, and complained that they wouldn’t leave him alone. Sometimes I believed him, and thought it was their fault, and then I thought it was his. I didn’t know what to think at last. I went there that night to see if I could find out....”

The broken utterance ended in a wail of grief.

CHAPTER X
THE CASE AGAINST LADY VIOLET

I felt honestly sorry for the poor girl in spite of the vindictive attitude she had taken up just before. I had no doubt that she was quite sincere, and that she had unconsciously deceived herself as to her real feelings up to the last moment.

Tarleton remained calm in the face of her outburst; when he spoke again his tone was courteous but businesslike—perhaps the most considerate one to adopt in the circumstances.

“You have told Dr. Cassilis and me very little that we weren’t prepared to hear, and nothing that we aren’t able to understand and allow for. But now we have to ask you for some information. In the first place I should like to know how you obtained admission to the Domino Club.”

Sarah made an effort to collect herself. As far as I could judge she was telling the truth, up to a certain point at all events.

“I bought a ticket of admission from Madame Bonnell.”

We both started and exchanged looks of surprise.

“Do you mean to say that anybody could get in by paying?” the consultant asked.

Sarah shook her head.

“I don’t know that anybody could. But there didn’t seem to be much difficulty. I think it was pretty well known, in Chelsea and in Kensington, that you could buy a ticket from Madame Bonnell. She made a great favour of it, but I expect that was only to keep up the price.”

“What was the price?”

“Five pounds. She entered your name in a book, and the name of some member of the Club who was supposed to be introducing you; but whether it was a real name or not I don’t know.”

Tarleton smiled grimly.

“I’m beginning to understand why Madame made so much fuss over giving up her books. She must have made a good thing out of the Club in one way and another. Did she know who you were?”

“Oh, no! At least, I didn’t tell her. I gave my name as Mrs. Antrobus.”

“I remember that name in the Visitors’-book,” I put in.

My chief nodded. “Did she say anything to you about the disguise you were to come in?”

“Yes. She asked me what I was going to wear. I told her I hadn’t made up my mind, and she recommended me to go to a place in Coventry Street where I should be able to see some costumes.”

“Another little side line,” the shrewd examiner commented. “There’s not much doubt she got a commission there. She struck me as a good woman of business.” His face became grave once more. “And now, Miss Neobard, I must ask you to tell us what you know about Lady Violet Bredwardine?”

It was the question I had been dreading. I dreaded the answer still more.

The accuser flushed. “I know that she was more than a patient,” she said in a low voice. “I know that he met her away from the house, at other places besides the Club.”

“I’m afraid I must ask you to tell us more than that. You have practically accused her of poisoning him. I think you must see that I am entitled to know whether you have any grounds for throwing suspicion on her beyond personal ill-will.”

The answer came slowly. It was with a painful effort that the girl confessed how far her jealousy had carried her.

“I knew that he was neglecting my mother for other women. I had known that for some time. He was almost always out at night, and he never told us where he had been. I wanted my mother to apply for a separation, and I thought I ought to get evidence. I followed him.”

She stopped short, her face burning and her eyes lowered towards the ground.

“Yes? You have told us already that you followed him to the Club that night. But you must have seen them together at other places before?”

The girl nodded. “I have seen them walking in Regent’s Park. And I have seen them dining together at....” She whispered the name of a restaurant in a little side street not far from Piccadilly, which is well known to Londoners as a place to which men more often take other people’s wives and daughters than their own.

Tarleton prudently refrained from asking his witness anything about her own proceedings. It looked to me as though she must have placed herself in the hands of a private inquiry agent, but if so it was evident that she had insisted on going with him on the trail.

“Didn’t that seem as if they were friends?” was the next question.

“No!” The denial was emphatic. “He was making love to her, anyone could see that, but she was resisting him. You could see that she hated him.”

“And yet she went about with him.”

“It was against her will, I am certain of it. She had the air of a prisoner.”

Poor, unhappy Violet! It was hard work to control myself as I listened, and pictured her sitting in that doubtful resort, tormented by the vile wooing of the monster who had her in his power, while her jealous rival, with a hired spy in attendance, gloated over her distress.

The merciless accuser went on.

“That night they dined together. I saw him try to slip a bracelet on to her wrist. She snatched her hand away so fiercely that it fell on the floor, and he dropped his napkin over it so as to pick it up without the waiter seeing.”

The scene was as vividly before me as though it was passing on the screen. The eyes of jealousy had been sharper than the waiter’s.

“Well, let us come to yesterday night. We knew before you told us that one of the dancers wore the dress you have described. What makes you so confident that she was Lady Violet?”

And now indeed I had reason to listen with all my ears. If this girl convinced my chief that she was right, the position would be one of deadly danger.

Sarah Neobard didn’t seem to understand the doubt in his mind.

“Madame Bonnell told me so.”

Tarleton gave me a stare which I returned with interest. In my excitement I was rash enough to speak.

“She told you so? Why? How could she know herself?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah looked a little puzzled. “I suppose she knew everything that went on in the Club. Before selling me the ticket she asked if I knew any member. I thought the question was only put for form’s sake, and I gave Lady Violet’s name. Afterwards I asked her if Lady Violet was likely to be there, and if she knew what costume she was likely to wear. She told me that she was pretty sure to come, and that she always wore the same costume. She made me give her an extra guinea for telling me. I could see she was the sort of woman who would do anything for money.”

There could be no doubt that this last opinion was sound. Unfortunately it was too late for me to act on it. I held my tongue again, and let my chief put the next question.

“You watched her, I suppose, during the night? Did you notice nothing peculiar about her? One of the waiters seems to have thought it was a man.”

“A man!” The girl’s surprise was unmistakable. Her jealousy had blinded her that time as much as it had sharpened her sight the other. “No, I never thought of noticing anything of that sort. I hadn’t any reason for it. I believed what I was told. And she behaved just like Lady Violet. And he certainly believed it was she. I tried to keep them apart, but it was no use. I saw him make her come into the alcove. She went unwillingly, just as I should have expected. I got near, and watched them through the curtain. He ordered coffee for both....”

She seemed to pull herself up. Was she telling a carefully framed story, and hesitating at the last fatal point? Or was she only shrinking from uttering the words that might condemn a fellow creature to death?

“And?” the physician breathed gently.

Sarah braced herself up with a visible effort.

“I saw her drop something into his cup.”

I believed it was a lie. To this hour I believe it. Sarah Neobard and I are never likely to meet again on this earth, and I may do her an injustice. Yet on her showing, if she was to be believed, she had looked on at what must have seemed to her an attempt to murder, and had not lifted a finger to save the life of the man she half hated and half loved.

Meanwhile the charge had been made, a charge which the adviser of the Home Office was bound to act upon, as the look he gave me clearly showed. I seized on it as an invitation to speak.

“Did you believe that the person, whoever it was, meant to poison him?” I asked, trying to suppress my indignation.

“What else could I believe?” She gave the answer almost rudely, so as to show that she resented my presuming to question her.

“And you did nothing? You didn’t interfere?”

The accuser flushed angrily. She stumbled over her reply.

“What could I do? If I had made a scene she would have denied it, and he would have taken her part. Besides, it was all over in a moment. He had drunk his coffee before I had time to do anything.”

“Think again,” I said earnestly. “You are not on your oath. Are you certain of what you saw? Remember that you are bringing a charge of murder against a fellow creature, a young woman who has done you no wrong, who, you admit yourself, was your step-father’s innocent victim.”

“I didn’t say that. I said she hated him. She can’t be innocent if she poisoned him.”

“If she poisoned him,” I repeated with emphasis. “You have heard that she was more than a hundred miles away, according to the police evidence. But the same evidence shows that you were there, and you have told us as much.”

“What?” The girl almost leaped from her seat “Are you suggesting that I had anything to do with it?”

I glanced at my chief for permission to go on. He was lying back on his chair, his timepiece twisting between his fingers, apparently listening with the detachment of an impartial judge.

“You compel me to point out to you the situation you are in, Miss Neobard,” I continued. “A death has taken place, the police have inquired into it, and they have found cause for suspicion against certain persons. Lady Violet Bredwardine was one of those persons; you were another. Her innocence has now been proved. Yours only rests on your own assertion—or rather it may rest, because so far you haven’t actually asserted it. Therefore, you have the strongest possible motive for trying to throw suspicion on someone else; and you have been doing so all along. Now at last you have made a direct charge, and backed it up by stating what you say you saw through a curtain. I ask you again if you are certain of what you say, and I ask you to be careful.”

Sarah Neobard’s face underwent a succession of changes while she listened, from amazement to wrath and from wrath to abject fear. Tarleton put the crown on her discomfiture.

“Although we are not policemen, and this is not a formal charge, Dr. Cassilis is right to caution you,” he said firmly. “I shall feel at liberty to report whatever you say to the police.”

The tables were completely turned. The triumphant accuser found herself all at once standing in the dock. She gave us both a long deep look of despairing hatred and dread. Then, with lips tightly closed, she got up and walked out of the room and out of the house.

My chief gratified me with a nod and smile of approval.

“You did that very well, Cassilis; I congratulate you. I think that young woman’s teeth have been drawn pretty effectually. It would never have done for her to be going about accusing the police of trying to hush up the case. She would have got some paper to take up her story, and there would have been the devil to pay.”

“Do you think there is any chance that she was mixed up in the business?” I asked with hesitation.

Evidently the specialist was displeased by the question.

“It is not my practice to speculate, as I think I have told you. I prefer to confine myself to reasoning on the evidence before me. At present the evidence points to this death being due to a certain drug, which must have been administered during the dance by some person who was present, and who had a motive for rendering Weathered insensible—the death may have been due to his or her ignorance of the power of the drug. We now have direct evidence, which may be true, that the drug was put into his coffee by the dancer disguised as Zenobia, and we have further evidence that that costume was supplied to Lady Violet Bredwardine about a year ago, and was regularly worn by her in the Domino Club.

“Add to that the appearance of her name in the list of suspects compiled from Weathered’s diary and the Club register, and the story we have just heard of her being pursued by Weathered and persecuted with attentions which she resented. It is a case on which very few juries would hesitate to convict.

“Against that we have nothing but an idle suspicion on the part of a waiter that the wearer of the Zenobia costume on this particular night was a man, and the police information that Lady Violet left London by a midday train. Of course she may have got out anywhere, and been back long before night.”

What was I to say? What ought I to do? Had the time come for me to make the confession I had held back even more for Violet Bredwardine’s sake than for my own? I shuddered at the thought that what I had to tell might not exonerate her—that it might deepen the suspicion against her, if it were believed. And suppose it should not be believed? What excuse could I make for having put it off so long? Would not Sir Frank Tarleton have every right to doubt me, and to think that my story was a false one invented at the eleventh hour to save the true culprit?

There was one slender plank to cling to. I was confident that Lady Violet’s alibi was genuine. If the question of her guilt or innocence could be made to depend on that, I had no fear of the result.

“In that case, sir, wouldn’t it be best for the police to go down to Herefordshire, and make sure whether she was there or not?”

To my surprise Tarleton raised the objection that had held me back before.

“I think not. Captain Charles isn’t a particularly tactful man himself, and we can’t trust to his employing a very tactful agent. Whether Lady Violet is innocent or guilty she ought not to be alarmed. It seems to me far the best course for me to go down myself, and call on her openly.”

I was startled by the proposal. I hardly knew whether to welcome it or not. Certainly the consultant was less likely to frighten Violet than the police were, but on the other hand he was much more likely to find out whatever was to be found.

“Won’t that come to the same thing?” I objected feebly. “If she knows you have come to question her about Weathered’s death?”

“I may not have to question her about his death,” the specialist put in sharply. “Have you forgotten the numbers in the appointment-book? I propose to ask Lady Violet if she can explain what they signify!”

I was silenced. I could think of no possible objection to such a course. It was clear that the explanation must be obtained from someone, and equally clear that Lady Violet was most likely to be able to give it. My chief’s plan was worthy of his shrewdness. He would be killing two birds with one stone,—gaining information he needed, and at the same time quietly testing the information of the police.

Tarleton gave me no time for further reflection.

“Just look up the trains for Hereford,” he said briskly.

I hastened to obey. “Am I coming with you, sir?”

I put the question almost without hope. I was overjoyed by the answer.

“Why, yes, I think you ought to, in fairness to the poor girl. You have defended her very well from her enemy. I look on you as her advocate. I think you ought to be present and help her if you can.”

He spoke with a mixture of seriousness and playfulness that left me in doubt whether he had really noticed anything to suggest that I took a personal interest in Lady Violet’s defence. I was glad to feel that in any case he had no animosity against her. Even if he thought her guilty of Weathered’s death, it was probable that he saw some excuse for the deed.

Nothing more passed between us on the subject till we were in the train for Hereford. During a great part of the journey the consultant sat silent in his corner seat, with his golden pendulum swinging softly in his hand, to the evident astonishment of the solitary passenger who shared our compartment.

I sat opposite him, filled with bitter-sweet reflections and memories that became more intense as we neared the little city on its rushing river beyond the Malvern Hills. How every feature in the landscape recalled the passionate days of yore, when I had made that journey for the first time! Then I had travelled third-class with a knapsack on my back, and the hopes of youth in my heart, on my way to explore the romantic hills and vales of the borderland, the Golden Valley and the untrodden Beacons that looked down on Breconshire. I recalled every step of the way, from the morning on which I had turned my face to the west and tramped out towards the wooded slopes of Blakemere, to the hour when I had encountered in its romantic setting that figure which became for me all that Queen Guinevere had been for Lancelot.

Less than four years had passed since then, and now I was returning to the scene of my wrecked romance, my unforgotten secret agony; returning in official dignity as a representative of the law charged to examine the partner of my secret on a fearful accusation from which perhaps only I could save her, and only at the cost of my own life.

That night I did not sleep. I passed it in wrestling with the problem, as I tossed from side to side on my bed in the hotel where we had put up. But before retiring for the night I had managed to escape from my chief’s observation for a few minutes, just long enough to scribble a brief note and despatch it to Tyberton Castle. It ran:

Be out to-morrow morning when Sir Frank Tarleton arrives. The barn at twelve if possible. Zenobia.

CHAPTER XI
WHAT THE CIPHER MEANT

Tyberton Castle was less than an hour’s drive from Hereford by motor. I had to conceal my knowledge of the neighbourhood from Tarleton, who left the arrangements in my hands, and question the man who waited on us at breakfast as if I were entirely ignorant of where the Castle lay, and how to reach it.

“No breakfast, no man,” was a favourite maxim of the physician’s, and he did full justice to the fresh trout, the kidneys and bacon, and the new-laid eggs put before us, while I had to force myself to swallow a few mouthfuls. However, the meal was over at last, and at ten o’clock we were seated in the car provided by the hotel, speeding along the road I had last trodden backward with despair in my heart.

It seemed to me that every tree was eloquent and that every cottage on the way remembered me, and wondered at my coming back. As we came near the village I was tempted to shrink back in my corner of the car and hide my face, lest the villagers should recognize it and greet me. I had to tell myself that the real test would come presently. I had never crossed the threshold of the Castle; I had never ventured into the park in the daytime; but there is no such thing as privacy on the country-side; every hedge has eyes and ears; and it was certain that my comings and goings had been watched, and that every child on the Earl of Ledbury’s estate and every servant in his house knew more about me than his lordship did.

Tarleton was delighted with the scenery. What pleased him still more was the absence of all traffic. We did not meet one vehicle in the road, except a farmer’s cart.

“This is the least-known beauty spot in England,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Those hills yonder must be in Radnorshire, a county whose existence I have always doubted. This is the old Welsh March, where the Britons stayed the Saxon advance at last, and kept their freedom in Wild Wales. What a contrast between this and Tarifa Road, Chelsea!”

The reminder came just in time. I had been on the point of telling him that King Arthur’s tomb stood on the crest of one of the hills that overlooked the Golden Valley. I bit my lip, thankful that I hadn’t betrayed myself.

We went through the sleepy village, bringing out one or two women with babies in their arms to their garden gates. Then we turned into the park and saw the rabbits scampering to the right and left as we crossed the fern-covered slopes.

“This is a true ‘haunt of ancient peace,’” murmured the consultant wistfully. “This is the sort of place I want to end my days in. And we have come to disturb it, perhaps to bring disaster and disgrace. I should be glad if we could turn back now and go away again.”

I turned to him expectantly. His words had echoed my own thoughts so closely that I half hoped to find him ready to act upon them. But the frown on his brow and the stern set of his mouth told me that I was deluding myself.

The car drew up at the main entrance to the Castle. The ivy-clad ruins to which the building owed its name were almost screened from view by the huge red-brick front of a dull edifice dating from the reign of George the Second. The mansion had been put up out of ostentation at a cost from which the estate had never recovered, and every Earl of Ledbury since had cursed his ancestor’s extravagance. I know that the present Earl found it hard to pay the interest on his mortgages, and that he lived in one corner of the vast house, leaving long corridors and whole suites of rooms to the spiders and rats.

We got out, and Sir Frank Tarleton gave his card and mine to the man who came down the steps to receive us. His suit of black was threadbare, and his coat looked as if it had been thrust on hastily at the sound of our approach.

“Please take our cards to Lady Violet Bredwardine, and ask her ladyship if we can see her in private, on urgent business.”

The servant stared at the message. His eyes wandered from Tarleton to me, and I thought there was a vague recognition in them when they met mine. But his manner was respectful and demure.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I believe her ladyship is out. I will inquire if you wish.”

He seemed to be hesitating whether to ask us inside. Sir Frank seized on the opening.

“I shall be glad if you will find out when she is likely to be in. Her ladyship is staying in the Castle, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” The answer was given readily.

“We have come down from London on purpose to see her. They told us at Grosvenor Place that her ladyship had come here—I think it was on Wednesday.”

The man bowed. “That is quite right, sir. Her ladyship arrived on Wednesday evening.”

I stole an anxious glance at my chief. It was a complete confirmation of the Inspector’s report. If Lady Violet had arrived at the Castle in the evening, she could not have been back in town the same night. The alibi stood firm.

Tarleton drew out his watch as though to consult it before deciding what to do next. Suddenly he snapped out, “There is no mistake, I suppose? Her ladyship couldn’t have been in London on Wednesday night?”

The man was taken off his guard, and if he had been lying he could hardly have failed to show some confusion. But the only feeling he manifested was one of resentment at the question.

“I’m positive of what I say, sir. But her ladyship hasn’t authorized me to answer questions about her movements.”

The consultant put on the air of a man who has made a slip.

“No, no; of course not. I meant to ask her ladyship herself.” He turned to me. “What do you say, Cassilis? Shall we wait inside, or shall we go for a stroll and come back again?”

I had laid my plans in the expectation that Lady Violet would be out, and I was ready with a suggestion. I made it with my heart in my mouth.

“I think one of us ought to wait here, Sir Frank. The other might walk round the park, and perhaps meet Lady Violet.”

Sir Frank seemed to find the proposal quite natural.

“Very good. I shall be glad to stretch my legs for an hour, so I’ll leave you here and come back again.”

This was an unforeseen check. I had been so sure of being the one to go out into the grounds, if I could effect the separation, that I hadn’t thought of the alternative. My only chance now was to slip out as soon as Tarleton’s back was turned. I looked at the servant, and fancied that his eye rested on me with a more friendly air than on my companion.

“Would you like to wait inside, sir?” he asked.

I hesitated. But I had to choose between trusting him and trusting the chauffeur who had driven us out from Hereford; and he had impressed me favourably. I followed him into the Castle, while Tarleton moved off down an avenue of beeches in the park.

The servant brought me through a dreary hall full of old suits of armour and ancient high-backed chairs, but lacking in those little touches of modern comfort that are needed to make such a place home-like and attractive to the eye. He opened a door towards the inner end, and ushered me into a gloomy library, fitted up with great bookcases that looked as if they were never opened, stuffed with huge leather-bound volumes of the kind that no human being any longer wants to read. The whole room reminded me of the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. It seemed to breathe of the eighteenth century, as though its life had been arrested then, and no one had trodden the faded carpet or taken down one of the dusty tomes for a hundred long years since.

The manservant had taken up a silver plate as we passed through the hall, and laid our cards on it. He now asked, “Shall I take these cards to his lordship, sir?”

He must have seen me start at the question. I put my hand into my pocket, searching his face carefully the while.

“There is no occasion for that,” I said. “Our business with her ladyship is private, and she may not wish his lordship to be troubled with it.” I took out a note before adding, “Perhaps you remember my face?”

The man looked pleased. His chances of adding to his wages can’t have been very many in that lonely mansion. It seemed to me, moreover, that he was genuinely attached to his young mistress.

“Why, yes, sir. I did have a thought as I had seen you here before. You were staying at the Moorfield Farm, if I rec’lect rightly, sir, three years ago or might be four.”

I nodded, and the piece of paper passed silently from my hand to his.

“I’ve come to do a service to Lady Violet, if I can,” I told him. “Her ladyship knows I am coming, and she has gone out to meet me. I want you to let me out at the back of the Castle, so that I can join her; and say nothing to the friend who has come with me, or anybody else.”

He gave me a quick look of intelligence. “I understand, sir.”

He led the way out of the library again, and along a corridor still more deserted and dismal than the hall. It ended at a locked and barred door which he unfastened with some effort.

“This is the way into the ruins,” he explained. “You can pass out from them into a path that leads through the home meadows up to the Moorfield Farm. It’s a public footpath, and if anyone sees you they’ll think you’ve been exploring the ruins from outside.”

Nothing could have suited better with my plans. I knew the path, and knew that at a certain point another diverged from it and led through a well-remembered wood to the barn where I had asked Violet Bredwardine to meet me.

I passed out into the Castle grounds and clambered over the crumbling walls and fallen stones till I found myself on the path. And now every step became tragical. I was treading on the ashes of the fire in which two hearts had been scorched and branded with a mark that could never be effaced. The grass beside the narrow footway seemed to be stained with blood. I drew my breath in pain as I mounted the slope towards the lonely little farm-house in which I had passed the most glorious and the most miserable hours of my life. When I came to the gate into the wood, I stopped and leant upon it panting, and hardly able to proceed.

The wood was haunted by ghosts more dreadful to me than any spirits of the dead; the ghosts of passion and of pain, the ghosts of love and hatred, of that most terrible of all hatred which is born of love betrayed.

I shuddered as I thrust open the gate and stepped beneath the trees. A sombre fir drooped like a weeping willow over one spot where the way was crossed by a trickling spring that plunged and disappeared down a steep gully choked with brambles and dark ferns. But there was a worse point than that to pass. A tall beech sent out its roots on to the path, and on the smooth rind of its trunk were cut two initial letters entwined—a V and B. The very knife that had scored them there lay in my pocket; I had never parted with it. What madness had tempted me to blazon our secret to the inquisitive country-side? I had used one precaution: I had cut the proclamation of our love on the side of the trunk that was hidden from the public way. Now, when I reached the tree, I forced a passage through the undergrowth to see how time and weather had dealt with that vain memorial. A bitter shock awaited me. Every vestige of the monogram had been destroyed by deep cuts and slashes in the bark. Only a confused web of scars and scratches marked the place. The tree’s wounds seemed to reproduce the wounds upon two hearts.

My head drooped as I dragged myself up the rest of the ascent, and came out of the wood on the open hillside. The view was exquisite. The hills of three fair counties stretched away to the horizon, and at their feet the silver Wye clasped the rich cornfields and pastures in its shining arms. But the whole prospect was darkened over for my eyes by an invisible cloud. I turned to the spot where, scarcely a hundred yards away, there rose out of the bracken the high gray walls of the forsaken barn.

Its desolation seemed symbolical. When it was built centuries ago the surrounding land had borne crops worth harvesting instead of the thin grass and waste of bracken that now surrounded it on all sides. Tradition spoke of a time not remote when the hill swarmed with folk engaged in tilling the hard soil. Their ruined cottages still lined the lanes that crept along the crest, and peeped out of the sheltered nooks. The virgin prairies of the New World had tempted some of them away; others had migrated to the mining valleys whose smoke could almost be seen from where I stood.

So the gray ancient barn stood empty, its wooden doors dangling helpless from their rusty staples, and the wind whistling through the narrow slits that showed like the arrow holes of a Norman keep. I made my way across the standing bracken that rose up to my shoulders, and gained the open doorway. But there was no one within. A solitary sheep started up from the litter of chaff that strewed the floor, and bounded out through an opening in the opposite wall, leaving me alone.

And now I began to repent that I had named as the meeting-place the spot where we had parted in such misery those three years ago. I turned with a pang from the scene, and advanced slowly towards the brow of the hill. Just below the crest, seated on a moss-covered stone beside a spring, I found her.

Violet Bredwardine rose and stood where she was, more like a statue than a living woman. Her light ringlets, breaking from beneath a quaint straw helmet, surrounded her face like a halo, and made it seem more than ever like the face of the child angel she had seemed to me when I saw her first. Even then there had been a wistful look in her innocent blue eyes, as though the child angel had lost her way in this troubled earth of ours, and was seeking pitifully for some escape. And I dreamt—in my madness I had dreamt—that I could offer her the help she needed, and change the sadness of her life into joy.

I strode towards her, all the old, passionate impulses of the past flooding my heart like wine, and cried, “Violet!”

She shrank back as if I had struck her and the soft eyes flashed with anger.

“How dare you! How dare you ask me to meet you like this?”

I stopped ashamed. In an instant my sudden emotion was chilled. I felt myself a criminal facing my judge.

“Forgive me,” I stammered. “I was obliged to speak to you before you saw Sir Frank Tarleton. I had to explain to you who he was and what he was going to ask you.”

She interrupted me with a gesture of scorn. She pointed to the roof of the barn, just visible over the crest of the slope from where we stood.

“How dared you ask me to meet you there? Was there no other place?” Her voice shook. “How could you be so brutal? To remind me! To drag me back to the one spot on earth that I was trying to forget!”

The reproach pierced me like a knife. She was right. What was I but a brute? What else is any man in dealing with the mystery of a woman’s heart—with those delicate fibres which our rude touch so often bruises and rends unawares?

I could have thrown myself at her feet and begged her to trample the life out of me. But there would have been no reparation in that; there was none in anything that I could think of doing. It was a case of least said soonest mended. I had to leave the wound I had given her to heal itself, and meanwhile try to render her the only service that was in my power.

“You can say nothing to me that I don’t deserve, nothing that is severe enough,” I answered. “I can only plead that I was distracted by anxiety, on your account.”

The indignation in her face turned to terror.

“What do you mean? You wrote to me that I had nothing more to fear.”

“I said, nothing more to fear from Dr. Weathered. That was all I thought it safe to put in a letter. And when I wrote it I hoped that I could protect you from any further trouble. But other things have happened since. There are complications in the case that I couldn’t explain without seeing you, and Sir Frank Tarleton has come down here to see if you can throw light on them.”

“Sir Frank Tarleton? Who is he?”

“He is the principal medical adviser to the Home Office. I am his assistant.”

“But I don’t understand!” She stared at me in natural wonder. “Why should he be mixed up in it? Have you told him anything?”

“Nothing; you may be assured of that. But I must tell you what has happened. Weathered is dead.”

“Dead.” The blue eyes expanded for a moment in a gleam of relief, almost of exultation. The instant after they froze dreadfully. “Bertrand! You killed him!” she whispered.

I shook my head earnestly.

“No. I should have killed him, if there had been no other way to save you from him. And I don’t believe any honest man or woman would have blamed me if I had. But it wasn’t necessary. My only object was to destroy the record of your confession, the statement that had placed you in his power. All I did was to drug him enough to make him insensible, and take his keys. When I left the Club at three o’clock in the morning he was still alive. He was found dead where I left him two hours afterwards.”

Violet hardly seemed to be listening. Her eyes were still fixed on me like two blue stones.

“You did it,” she repeated dully. “You killed him—for my sake!”

Even in the midst of the intense strain those last three words thrilled me with secret joy. Heaven forgive me for wishing for an instant that they were true. I could have brought myself to accept the terrible possibility which had been haunting me ever since the voice of Inspector Charles had told me through the telephone that Weathered was a corpse, the possibility that I had administered a fatal dose. But I saw that Violet was on the verge of breaking down. For her sake, far more than for my own, I must banish that theory from the field.

“No,” I assured her again. “That is out of the question. Sir Frank Tarleton is the greatest living authority on poisons, and he has been engaged for the last three days in trying to ascertain the cause of death. I have been by his side the whole time, assisting him, and I know that his suspicions point in another direction altogether.”

I broke off to catch her in my arms as she swayed forward. I was just in time. I laid her gently on the moss and sprinkled her face with water from the spring, the sweet face that I would have given all I possessed to sprinkle with kisses instead. Luckily the collapse was only momentary. While I was still bending over her she opened her lips to say, “Go on. Tell me everything.”

I waited till she had recovered strength enough to sit up. It would have done harm to wait longer. It was necessary for her to know exactly how matters stood.

“Dr. Weathered had other victims beside you, and other enemies beside me. The police are on the trail of some of them and Sir Frank has obtained an important clue which may lead us to the true cause of death. But meanwhile notice has been attracted to the costume in which I went to the Domino Club that night.”

Violet began to look frightened.

“The one I lent you?—you ought to have destroyed it!” she said excitedly.

“It is very fortunate I didn’t,” I returned soothingly. “It has come out that it was the costume you generally wore; and you remember that was why you lent it to me, so that Weathered should think I was you. Anyhow, it has been traced to you, and if you couldn’t produce it you would be called on to account for its disappearance. Do you see that?”

“Yes, I see that. But surely if they know the costume was mine they must believe that I was there that night. My God, do they suspect me of the murder?”

I was agonized by her terror.

“They know you to be innocent. Your innocence has been proved,” I cried out fiercely. “You have what the law calls an alibi; you were more than a hundred miles away when the crime was committed—if there was a crime. Good heavens, Violet, can you believe that I shouldn’t have given myself up to justice the very moment it was necessary to clear you?”

Her expression softened more than I could have hoped.

“I know that, Bertrand,” she said in a low voice. “Only I don’t understand why you are here. What does Sir Frank Tarleton want with me?”

“He wanted two things. One was to make sure that you really were here on Wednesday night. He is now quite satisfied of that. The other is to ask you if you can explain something that has puzzled us in Weathered’s appointment-book. Whenever your name appears it is followed by a number, and we don’t know why.”

Violet lowered her eyes with a frown.

“He gave me that number to sign my letters by when I wrote to him. He told me that it would help me to write more freely if I used a number instead of a name.”

I started in alarm. “But why should you need that? What were the letters about?”

The poor girl’s eyes still refused to meet mine.

“He made me tell him the whole story in letters. He said that was the only way to get it off my mind.”

I clenched my teeth together to keep myself from uttering a word. The doctor’s safe had been opened and his case-book destroyed uselessly.

CHAPTER XII
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

It was one of those moments in which life seems to cast away the mask of convention and spring upon us like a giant fanged and armed for our destruction; one of those moments in which the bravest heart quails and the strongest hope withers to despair.

My crime had been committed for nothing. Whether the death of that despicable villain lay at my door or not, I did not know, and it hardly seemed to matter any longer. Somewhere there was still in existence the weapon with which he had terrorized his unhappy victim, and I could not tell in what hands, nor when it might be employed to ruin her and me together.

Weathered’s cunning scheme stood revealed in its full atrocity. His patients had been divided into two classes. Those who had nothing serious on their consciences, and those whom it was not worth his while to blackmail received the ordinary treatment given to nervous patients by respectable physicians. Those who came to him to be cured of vicious propensities, on the other hand, were encouraged to indulge them under his eye, under the pretence that they would thus be gradually overcome; and those who sought relief from evil memories were bidden to rid their mind of its secret burden in correspondence which could be preserved for future use.

So far as I could judge he had fallen into those evil courses by degrees. Sarah Neobard’s defence of her step-father might not be far from the truth. I thought it likely that such a man as Weathered, with no strong principle to keep him straight, might naturally have deteriorated under the influence of his patients. All the precautions with which the confessional is surrounded in Catholic churches were wanting in this case. The doctor was probably a man without any religious feeling, and without any real scruples on the subject of morality. Instead of curing his patients he had let himself become infected with their disease. The confessions he had listened to had inflamed his own imagination, and made evil familiar to his thoughts. In the end he had come to take a fiendish pleasure in gloating over tales of guilty indulgence and innocence betrayed. He had delighted in the analysis of women’s hearts; he had learned to play upon their sensitive natures like instruments, and draw the notes of passion and pain. The devils in hell must soothe their own torments with such music.

It was torture enough for me to think of my own tragedy, as well as Violet’s, profaned by the coarse curiosity of a blackmailer. If I had sinned—and I never could admit that she had sinned at all—if I had sinned, at least I had not done so wilfully and basely, but swept away on the overpowering flood of that tremendous impulse by which all the planets move in heaven, and all the earth is wrapped in her green garment, and all the birds burst into song, and all the race of man is renewed for ever.

Our sad romance began in the purest innocence. I did not know of her existence on that morning when I set out with a knapsack on my back to explore the old borderland of England and Wales. I had formed no fixed plans; I meant to walk where fancy took me, and stop when I felt inclined; and the last thing I expected was that I should pass all my holiday on one spot. It was not till I reached the village that I heard of the ruins that lay hidden at the back of the Earl of Ledbury’s stately seat, and was persuaded to turn aside and see them.

I was told that a footpath leading from the churchyard up the hill would bring me past them, and, as far as I could make out, his lordship had laid down no absolute rule against strangers going over them. I was young and irresponsible enough to take the risk of being turned out as a trespasser. I climbed over a gate padlocked and fortified with barbed wire, crossed a meadow, and passed through a gap in the outer wall. I had spent half an hour in scrambling over heaps of fallen masonry, and was just beginning to descend a broken stairway up which I had climbed for the sake of the view, when I saw standing on the grass near its foot the loveliest girl I had ever seen.

She was watching me with the shy wonder of a child, and I came down slowly, scarcely daring to breathe, lest she should turn and run away. But no such thought was in her head. I seemed to her a boy, very little older than herself, and it turned out that she had come to take me under her protection.

When I lifted my cap, and expressed a hope that I wasn’t trespassing, she gave me a cordial smile of a comrade in mischief.

“Yes, you are trespassing,” she said frankly, “but they won’t take any notice if they see me speaking to you. I saw you from my window and I came to prevent any of the servants driving you away.”

I hardly knew which was more delicious, the simplicity or the friendliness of the child angel, as she was named already in my thoughts. That night I heard her story from the good mistress of the farm. She had lost her mother as soon as she was born, and, as sometimes happens, she had lost her place in her father’s heart in consequence. He was then a middle-aged man, his wife had been the only woman he had ever cared for, and she had borne him no other child. Life for him was closed. He resigned himself to let the earldom and the encumbered estate pass to his brother, and shut himself up with his grief in the one habitable corner of his desolate house.

Of Violet he took no more notice than he could help. His sense of duty bade him engage a strict governess, and direct that his daughter should be brought up to marry money, since he could leave her none. The governess conceived that the way to attain this end was to keep the girl in absolute seclusion till a suitable bridegroom was found, and then to thrust her into his arms. The result was that her life had actually been very much like that of a princess in a fairy tale who is immured in a tower and kept from the sight of men. And I had been cast unconsciously for the part of the fairy hero who scales the tower and wins the maiden’s heart.

In the first confusion of the meeting I was far more tongue-tied than she. I guessed, of course, that she must be the daughter of Lord Ledbury, and this was the first time I had ever spoken to anyone of her rank. I was in doubt whether to address her with the word ladyship. I think the awe with which her rank inspired me had a great deal to do with what followed. It lifted her so far above me in my own mind, that I was blind to her growing love, and at first mistook my own love for the devotion of a vassal to his queen.

She talked to me about the ruins, holding me there spell-bound till neither of us could find more to say. At last, when I felt obliged to come away, she asked me wistfully where I was going. And I, who had made up my mind already not to go, if I could find any excuse for staying in the neighbourhood, with any chance of meeting her again, answered vaguely that I didn’t know. I was looking, I told her, for some place where I could put up.

Her whole face brightened when I said that, and she cried eagerly, “There is a farm-house on the hill where they take visitors in the summer, and I don’t think they have anyone yet. I often go past it in my walks, and I haven’t seen any strangers about.”

My heart exulted within me. There was to be no walking tour for me that summer. When one has come within the gates of Paradise how can he want to wander more?

And so I took off my knapsack in the honeysuckle porch of the little farm-house, and stayed on. It chanced for our undoing that the strict governess had gone away for her own holiday a day or two before I came, and did not return till it was time for me to exile myself from Eden. Violet was left alone. No callers had come to the Castle for many years. There were no neighbours in her own station of life within many miles. The clergyman was an old bachelor interested only in butterflies and moths, of which he had a wonderful collection, and blind to everything that went on in his parish. If our romance was watched, and I have no doubt that it was watched by many curious eyes unknown to us, none of the watchers dared to carry tales of his daughter to the Earl of Ledbury. Violet saw her father twice a day at meals, and he never dreamed of asking her how she spent her time between.

The golden month rolled by. The first few days each of us made believe that our meetings were accidental. But soon we ceased to pretend that it was chance that had led her steps up the hill and led mine down them to the wood in which we came together. We explored the hills in company, rousing the partridges from the corn and rabbits from the fern. The wood-pigeons cooed and wheeled above our heads; the robins peeped at us from the hedges and the squirrels from the trees. We stood beside the lonely cromlech named after the mythical hero who held the Saxon hosts at bay, and we looked down into the Golden Valley and saw the peaks of the Welsh mountains far away. And we were happy....

Lightly, O lightly, broke upon me the knowledge that she loved me. What I had never hoped for had come to pass. I had been content to worship her in silence. Endymion might so have worshipped Artemis if he had been the first to see her. Bottom, the weaver, might so have worshipped Titania if the magic juice had touched his eyelids before hers. She had been as unapproachable in my eyes as any inhabitant of the moonlit world of sleep. It was with almost a pang, with a strange shrinking of the heart, that I first perceived that she was mortal like myself, and that I had awakened her. I seemed to have broken into a temple and profaned the shrine.

I do not recollect that we said anything. One day when we were walking side by side along a sunken lane that led to a little waterfall I stooped suddenly and kissed her.

From that day we were sweethearts as openly as any rustic pair. To her it was all as natural as the romances she had read, and she can never have had the least suspicion of the misgivings that had vexed my soul. She seemed surprised even when I touched on the social gulf that separated us. She owned sorrowfully that her father would never hear of such a match, but she evidently took it for granted that I should not heed his opposition. I was her knight, and it was for me to overcome every obstacle in the way. Her faith in me was perfect. All affection for her father had been crushed out of her in childhood. She had loved me more easily, and she loved me more passionately, because she had no one else to love.

And what were we to do? I was barely of age. I was not qualified; I had no means of support except a dwindling legacy that would be exhausted by the time I was able to earn my first fee. The knights of old seem never to have been troubled by such hindrances as these; the dragons they vanquished were creatures who could be subdued by strength of arm; they never had to ride into anything worse than an ogre’s castle or a wizard’s cave. The terrors of the bank parlour and the house-agent’s office were unknown to them; and they never had to face a baker or a butcher armed with his weekly bill.

I put off as long as I could the pain of confessing to Violet that these dragons in the way must take years to vanquish. And at first she hardly grasped what it would mean to her. The mere waiting, I could see, would cost her less than me. After all, courtship is the supreme time of womanhood. Then she is queen indeed, and marriage is for her dethronement. Her bridal is like the glorious pyre on which the Hindu widow once expired in religious ecstasy. It was not until she realized that I was going that Violet broke down.

There the burden was shifted to the other side. Delay is the suffering of man, separation the suffering of woman. I had my work to go back to; I had my friends and all the distractions of life in London. She had nothing before her but her remote and solitary prison.

We had fallen into the way of meeting most often in the deserted barn. Its situation assured us of a privacy more secure than that of the lanes and woods. No one could approach us without being seen, and no one ever did approach. No one could see through the openings—a bare two inches wide in the thick wall; and no one could overhear. A pile of bracken made our seat, and there we rested many a long summer afternoon, the battered door thrown wide to let us count the windings of the river far below, while we talked of all the coming years might bring.

So it was there we met on that last afternoon to say good-bye. We had put off till the last moment any consideration of what was to happen next. We had made no plans to meet again. I did not even know that Lord Ledbury had a house in London, to which Violet was taken at rare intervals, when it happened to be without a tenant, but always under strict guard and more for business than for pleasure. We had not even discussed any plans for correspondence, though it was evident that I could not write to her at her father’s house without everything coming out. It was understood between us that my very existence must be kept secret if it were possible. Beyond that we had not found courage to face the situation.

And now we had to face it at last, and it was too much for us to bear. It seemed to both of us like death. It was idle to think that we could part like that, uncertain if ever we should meet again. It was a waste of breath to pronounce the word good-bye when we were clinging to each other in the desperation of young life in travail with its destiny. I dare not try to recall that agony.... I stole across with the footstep of a felon and closed the battered door.

When I had slain my love I understood too late what I had done. Her anguish was a revelation to me of what her utter purity had been. We passed out from that brief frenzy into a strange world. The sun had fallen from our sky, and Joshua could not have called it back again. We were two spectres in each other’s sight. I did not ask her to forgive me—I could not forgive myself. Rather would I have begged her to reproach me. But no such thought was in her mind. Her whole feeling was one of horror at what she had destroyed in herself; and I was only hateful to her as the mirror in which she had seen her unknown self. She moved her lips to implore me never to let her see me again. She shuddered past me, and went down the hill with the stumbling gait of a wounded bird.

I know there are some men, and there may be some women, who will think that I was a fool to let her go. They will tell me that I ought not to have taken her at her word; that if I had waited, in a short time she would have recovered, and the breach might have been patched up, and the wound healed. I cannot tell if they are right; I only know that I obeyed her, and fled from her neighbourhood with no hope of ever coming back.

And so the lonely girl, left to herself with no one to confide in, brooded over her secret till it became like a viper gnawing at her heart. How she came to hear of the charlatan she had not told me. Somehow or other during one of her stays in her father’s house in town, the news reached her of the new science of psycho-analysis, and of the practitioner who undertook to do what Macbeth longed for in vain, to pluck from memory a rooted sorrow, and erase the writing from the tablets of the brain.

She went to him, of course, without consulting those about her, and from that moment she became his helpless prey. What arts he used to beguile her it is easy to guess. At first she believed in him, and when her suspicion began to be aroused she was already in his power, and dared not break with him.

By this time the Earl of Ledbury and the duenna had put their heads together and decided that Lady Violet must pass a season in London, and be seen in the great world. In consequence she had much more liberty. She made some girl friends whom she was allowed to go about with, and among them were not a few who held modern notions on the rights of girlhood, and were ready to encourage and to screen her in the courses into which she was compelled by her taskmaster. Her most intimate comrade willingly became a member of the Domino Club.

But not even to her most intimate friend dared Violet disclose the true situation. While she still trusted in Weathered and believed in his power to heal her soul of sin, she had written the whole story of our love in letters which the scoundrel now refused to give up, except as the price of a far worse surrender. There was only one being in the world whom she could appeal to without the risk of further shame. And thus we met again.

The medical directory gave her my address, and she wrote to me at Sir Frank Tarleton’s. But her letter begged for a strictly private interview in such urgent language that I thought it safer not to let her come there. I asked her to meet me at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, as though by accident, and I took her to the little room which I could call my own.

Nearly four years had gone by since our tragic parting, but when we stood face to face again they did not seem four hours. Violet’s face changed from red to white and back again as she half held out a trembling hand and dropped it woefully; and my hand trembled too as I raised it to my hat. I thought it best to say nothing except the few words necessary to explain where we were going, and she seemed glad to keep silent till we were safely there.

The story she had to tell was so appalling, and the effort of telling it cost her so much, that naturally a good deal was left out. Certainly I quite failed to gather from her that Weathered had induced her to make her confession to him in letters. I supposed that he had taken it down from her lips. It is the familiar practice of West End consultants, who see their patients at long intervals, to make a careful entry of all the particulars of the case for future reference; and I supposed that Weathered had taken advantage of this to make a damning record in his case-book, which would be quite sufficient to enable him to blast his victims’ reputation, although it might not be evidence in a lawyer’s eyes.

The truth is that I was myself too agitated to go into the matter carefully even if Violet had been in a state to be cross-examined. The whole interview resolved itself into a series of wild outbreaks on her part, and attempts to assure her on mine. Indeed, I hardly know that we arrived at any clear understanding of what she was asking of me, or what I was promising her. The one thing clear to me was that the only way to save her would be for me to get at the doctor’s case-book and destroy it. And to do that I must obtain his keys.

What Violet had told me about the Domino Club and their meetings in that accursed place gave me my plan. I would do what I could not ask her to do. All that was necessary was that I should be able to approach Weathered without putting him on his guard. I must disguise myself in a costume with which he was familiar, one which would allure him, and in which I could play the part of the sought rather than the seeker. And so the fatally easy plot took shape.

There was barely an inch between Violet and me in height, and that inch would be concealed by the Zenobia helmet. It would not be too difficult for me to imitate for an hour or two the lighter movements of a woman. Weathered would be quite unsuspicious; the dress, the artificial light, the noise and excitement of the revel would all be in my favour. The doctor, I gathered, drank freely on these occasions; I had only to wait till the night was advanced and the wine had done its work.

I told the distressed girl as little as possible of what I meant to do, or to attempt. I said merely that I must meet Weathered, and that it would be the best way for me to impersonate her for one night. She consented readily enough—what else could she do? She told me the date of the next dance, and undertook to send the mask and costume to my room some days beforehand, so that I should have time to see that it fitted, and to practice moving about with it on.

We did not bid each other any formal farewell. Nothing was said about our next meeting, indeed I felt no confidence that there would be another. She had been driven to appeal to me in her extremity, but she showed no sign of having forgiven me. Rather she seemed to find every moment painful that she passed with me. All the time she was struggling with herself, trying to speak to me as if I were a stranger whom she found herself obliged to trust, but continually faltering and letting her voice die down to a broken whisper.

When I had let her out at the street door she hurried away blindly like an escaping prisoner. And as soon as she was out of sight I hastened round to Montague Street, and locked myself up in Tarleton’s arsenal of poisons.

CHAPTER XIII
THE EARL OF LEDBURY INTERVENES

My first thought, when I knew that Violet’s confession was still undestroyed, was to hide the fact from her. I must spare her the torturing apprehensions that I felt myself. Fortunately she did not seem to be thinking of her own danger; at all events, she put no questions to me about the letters. Perhaps she took it for granted that I had secured them, or that they were no longer in existence. At all events, the possibility that they might be in other hands as dangerous as Weathered’s did not seem to strike her at the moment. The idea that I had murdered Weathered overpowered all her faculties.

Again and again I went over with her all that had happened.

“I don’t believe that I killed him,” I told her with the utmost earnestness. “Surely you can trust me to know what I was doing. I am not an ordinary doctor. I have made a special study of poisons, as the pupil, I may say the favourite pupil, of the greatest expert alive. I am prepared to swear to you or in any court of justice that the dose I gave him would not have killed any man in a normal condition of health. Sir Frank Tarleton and I both observed symptoms that point to some other drug having been administered to Weathered. Remember that you were not his only patient, and you are not likely to have been the only one whose confidence he abused. The Domino Club probably swarmed with his enemies, in fact the manageress as good as told us so. His own step-daughter asserts that there were other women with whom he had mysterious relations——”

“Other women!” She interrupted me with a cry of dismay. “Do you mean—does she know anything about me?”

I recollected Sarah Neobard’s fierce denunciation, and the scene she had described, when she sat with her hired spy in the restaurant watching the persecuted girl. I tried to explain away my unlucky slip.

“No, no; I didn’t mean that for a moment. She told us that her step-father had dealings with some of his women patients, and one of the waiters in the Club described some women who were there that night. He described me among others; that is to say, he described the costume I was wearing. But he suspected that it was worn by a man. He must have keen eyes.”

“Then you are under suspicion!” Her anxiety was instantly diverted from herself to me again.

“Not at all,” I answered. “No one has the least suspicion who the wearer of the costume really was. The police made inquiries, and all they learned was that a similar costume had been supplied to you a year ago. They followed up the clue, and found that you were down here on the night, so that it must have been someone else in the Club. Now you see why I sent it back to you. If Sir Frank Tarleton says anything about it, all you have to do is to say that you remember having such a costume, and offer to find it and show it to him. He and the police will naturally believe that the one worn at the Club that night was a duplicate.”

Violet looked a little uncertain, as she had some excuse for being. I thought I might venture now to ask her to come back to the house to meet my formidable chief.

“Sir Frank will be there by the time that we get down,” I said. “He has gone for an hour’s stroll in the park.”

She put her hand to her head as she stood up and prepared to come with me.

“Will he ask me anything else? What were you going to tell me just now?”

“The numbers,” I reminded her. “He will ask you if you know what they meant.”

“Ah! Must I tell him that? Must he know about the letters? Will everything come out?—O Bertrand!”

Her gasp of anguish wrung my very heart-strings.

“No!” I cried. “Don’t give way to such thoughts. You don’t know Tarleton. He is the soul of honour. He is delicacy itself. He won’t ask you one word more than he can help. You need tell him nothing more than that Weathered gave you a number to use in writing to him. You can trust Sir Frank not to ask you what the letters were about.”

“But he will know—he will know!” she sighed despairingly. And I could say little in reply.

We found the door unlocked that led from the house into the ruins, and we parted in the corridor, Violet going upstairs to her room while I made my way back to the library into which I had been shown at first. Waiting for me outside the door I found my friendly manservant.

“You’ll find the other gentleman inside,” he whispered. “He’s been back about five minutes.”

I went in trying to look unconcerned, and found Tarleton comfortably seated in an armchair engaged in the familiar rite of waving his mascot to and fro as if it were a censer with which he was offering invisible incense to the Sphinx.

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting, sir. I have been taking a look at the ruins of the old Castle.”

“I have had a look at them, too,” was the enigmatic answer. “Twelfth century, I should think. One of the first castles put up by the Normans when they began penetrating South Wales.”

I could only hope that that was the extent of his observations. I could not bring myself to ask.

There was silence between us till Violet came into the room. The change in her amazed me. She was rather pale but perfectly composed. Her manner was full of courteous dignity. It was the first time that I had seen her as the Lady Violet Bredwardine, the daughter of a noble house, conscious of her claims to deference from strangers.

The consultant rose from his seat with every mark of respect and consideration, and I clumsily imitated him. She was the first to speak.

“Sir Frank Tarleton?—I am told that you wish to see me on urgent business. I am sorry that you have been kept waiting, but I had gone out for a walk. Won’t you sit down?”

She included me in the invitation by a slight, distant bow, as she seated herself facing us.

“It is very good of you to see me, Lady Violet.—Dr. Cassilis is my assistant.” Another distant bow. “I have been called in as a physician in the case of another medical man who had the honour to include you among his patients, I believe—Dr. Weathered.”

A bow in the affirmative, still colder, if possible.

“I regret to have to inform you that Dr. Weathered has died—of heart failure.”

A little gasp, natural enough in the circumstances. A gasp of relief in my ears, relief at hearing the death described as natural. A gasp of surprise, I could only hope, in the keen ears of my chief.

“Dr. Weathered’s death was rather sudden. It is desirable for the sake of his family to dispense with an inquest if possible, but it has been necessary to make some inquiries into his affairs, and I have had to go through his appointment-book, the book in which he entered the names of his patients who came to see him, you understand.”

“I understand.” Just a tremor, immediately subdued.

“Naturally your name appears in the book among others. And it happens to be one of several that have numbers attached to them, as if for purposes of identification. If you know, or can suggest, the reason for that, I shall be very much obliged by your telling me.”

Violet straightened herself up and spoke very distinctly. It was clear to me that she had prepared her answer carefully.