Chapter FOURTEEN: Some Curious Facts

I read the _Evening News_ at eight o’clock and at once Bruce called up Teddy to come and see me.

In half an hour he stood in my room. He, too, had read it.

“Now our only course is to go to Queen’s Gate, see Joan’s father, and tell him of our knowledge of the gentleman with such a pretty name, Mr. Roddy Owen--a name well known in sporting circles twenty years ago. He will see the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and put matters in trim. Evidently the police are pleased that the young scoundrel Tuggy Wilson is dead, but they are groping about for the truth. And on this we certainly can enlighten them.”

I concurred with him that we could.

Together we drove down to Queen’s Gate, and, seated in Mr. Gell’s cozy library, Teddy told him of his night’s adventure and showed him the report in the _Evening News_.

“This fellow Owen imposed on you, Lionel,” the stout old K.C. said, turning to me. “You know him. We must go down to the Yard at once and see Cunningham Lee.”

He took up the telephone on his table, and a few moments later was speaking with the Assistant Commissioner at his house.

“Right! We’ll come along now. I must see you to-night, Lee. We can tell you something.”

Twenty minutes later we were all three ushered into a back sitting-room, luxuriously furnished, in Onslow Square, and instantly Mr. Cunningham Lee entered, greeting us warmly.

“Of course, Mr. Gell, I’m only too delighted to see you at any hour. You’ve heard nothing regarding your daughter, or you would have told me. Well now, what is it you know about this murder of a cat-burglar at Fulham? Very interesting case. We’ve been months trying to get at the truth. Some masterhand is at work controlling the whole organization. Duprez, the chief inspector of the Sûreté in Paris, was over here last week, and we had a long conference on it. The organizer, whoever he is, no doubt must be a genius!”

“Well,” said Joan’s father, “we know something which will be undoubtedly of interest to you. Hipwell’s friend here--Mr. Edward Day--had a most interesting experience last night. He will tell you about it.”

As the Assistant Commissioner listened, Teddy told him of the secret observation which he had kept of the wealthy young bachelor of Harrington Court, his movements, and his association with the young fellow whose finger-prints had revealed him to be London’s most alert and expert cat-burglar.

“Let us go down together to the Yard,” Mr. Lee suggested at last. “We can look up the record, and probably we may be able to see further into the matter than we can at the moment.”

Half an hour later we were in the police official’s private room, with one of the famous inspectors of the finger-print department exhibiting to us the prints taken at Gloucester, in comparison with those taken from the dead man’s hand.

To the folio with the finger-prints upon it was attached the criminal’s name, his past record as far as was known, his date of conviction, with the date of discharge. I noticed that following the latter record were the words “Conduct good.”

If he were the star criminal of an expert organization, who was it that had killed him in cold blood as he had ascended to the unoccupied house?

I pointed out the fact that, even if the house were empty, there must have been some motive for both men to visit it. Why? And, if so, then the assassin must have concealed himself behind the front door ready to greet the visitor with a fatal bullet.

That the young man Owen and Tuggy Wilson were accomplices appeared proved up to the hilt. But in what manner? That remained to be seen.

In our presence the Assistant Commissioner ordered full inquiry to be made into Owen’s antecedents, how he derived his income, and that surveillance be kept on him. He was not to be approached, and no question asked of him concerning his friendship with the dead ex-convict.

“The affair is probably a matter of revenge,” said Mr. Cunningham Lee. “Possibly they believed him to have turned informer, a circumstance which, in criminal circles, accounts for many mysterious deaths.”

The revelation regarding the bona fides of the rich young bachelor of Harrington Court was gratifying to me, but it carried us no nearer the solution of the mystery of Joan’s whereabouts. Nevertheless, I somehow experienced a vague belief that, in view of Owen’s alliance with my secret enemy, it was really he who had last been seen with Joan.

I hoped against hope that we should eventually discover her, and I remained on the alert, with the assistance of my good friend Teddy.

The result of the police investigations concerning the unoccupied house in Fulham, in front of which young Wilson had been shot dead by an unknown hand, was forthcoming two days later, and was full of interest.

It appeared that a man named Dufour and his wife had rented it about ten months before, that they sometimes took in lodgers. Dufour was understood to be a waiter at a restaurant in the West End. He came home very late always, and sometimes parties of men of his own class were held there until early morning. The two lodgers were waiters like himself; but, according to the neighbors, they sometimes had mysterious callers, men and women, well dressed and obviously not of their own class.

The many parties, at which a gramophone was played and the guests drank and danced throughout the night, caused the neighbors to watch the place with unusual keenness. And, according to a statement by a Mrs. Richmond, wife of a draper’s assistant, who lived next door, she heard, on several occasions, a woman’s shrill scream for help. She put it down to the fact that Dufour was knocking his English wife about, until one day she saw the woman go out, and almost immediately afterwards she heard the same frantic screams for help.

This puzzled her. But, it being no affair of hers, she merely told her husband, and they resolved to take no notice.

Three nights before the tragedy in the street, Mr. and Mrs. Richmond were awakened at about one o’clock by noises outside, and Richmond, on looking between the blinds, saw that the furniture was being hurriedly removed. He saw Dufour in conversation with a police constable on duty, and then returned to bed.

When they awoke again the house next door was empty and closed.

It is the duty of the police to note removals of furniture, especially at night, and, the records having been looked up, it was found that Police Constable Shayler, on duty near the spot, saw the removal van and went to inquire. A foreigner, who gave the name of Dufour, informed him that that afternoon his wife had eloped with one of his lodgers, and that he had resolved to clear out the furniture, which was his property, and sell it at an auction room in Goldhawk Road, Shepherd’s Bush. The statement was confirmed by the auctioneer next day, but the whereabouts of the foreign waiter could not be traced.

The mention of the presence of a mysterious, unseen woman in the house aroused my interest. If Owen had been with Joan at the Florida, then it might have been my beloved who was held in hateful bondage in that house!

Had I not been warned of the intended machinations of my enemies, by my mysterious wife, Illona?

Fortunately, I had received no orders to go abroad on my official duties. But orders sometimes came unexpectedly, notwithstanding the rota, according to which I was not due to go on another journey for nearly a month. More than once I had been rung up in the night with orders to leave Victoria with some important dispatch at nine o’clock next morning. I waited in vain for some sign from Illona, who I knew, would explain much that was an entire enigma. But I was always in suspense, fearing that at any moment I might be called away.

As the days went by, the vigilance of the police, as far as Owen was concerned, was unrewarded. The young fellow who was reported to be living the idle life of a man-about-town, was a member of a good club, and had a very substantial bank balance at the Midland. His money appeared to come through the Crédit Lyonnais in Paris, probably from investments in France. I learnt that one evening both he and his man were seen to go out, when the police entered his rooms in secret and thoroughly searched them, but found nothing. Yet it remained quite certain that he was an associate of expert thieves.

Had it not been that the girl I loved so fondly and devotedly was missing, I should have left London and gone in search of that woman who had shown herself my bitterest enemy on that night in Camberwell--the girl criminal who was posing as the daughter of an Italian count.

At all costs her activity must be stopped. With what motive was she moving in diplomatic circles in Italy? I felt that--knowing what I did, and having awakened to the truth, while she still believed my memory to be destroyed, as a result of the drug she had given me--it was my duty to warn those whom she was so cleverly deceiving.

It occurred to me that the reason she was moving in that smart circle of Italian society, where so many women wore their magnificent jewels, was some ingenious plot afoot on the part of her confederates to make a big coup. A panic might be created at one or other of the diplomatic receptions, the ballroom placed in darkness, and the well-dressed bandits, tearing off the jewels from the women, might escape.

This feeling obsessed me. Lisely Hatten was, like her associates, as desperate a criminal as her friend Hilda Bennett, who had on that night in Bloomsbury Square so glibly accused me of murdering her lover, but had later declared I was not the man. Was Tuggy Wilson, too, a member of the wide-spread criminal association?

One morning I received an urgent telephone message from Mr. Gell which took me down to his dingy chambers in Fig Tree Court, in the Temple. He was at his brief-piled table in an ancient brown room, paneled and filled with musty law books, anxiously awaiting me.

“They have at last found that fellow Dufour!” he exclaimed. “He has been taken to Bow Street, and I’ve been there. It seems that, after leaving Fulham, he went to Southampton and took a passage for Cape Town. The boat sailed yesterday, but when he presented himself on board, a detective, who had traced him down there, detained him and brought him up to London this morning. He will be charged this afternoon with being concerned in the murder of John Wilson, alias Dale.”

“Ah, then we shall now get at some facts,” I said. “He must be made to explain who was the woman who lived in the house in Finlay Street. We must ascertain whether it was really Joan!”

“My boy, I hardly suspect it is she,” was the famous lawyer’s reply. “We’ve not yet actually established whether that fellow Owen was with Joan at the Florida. If she went out to meet you, it is hardly understandable why she went to the dance-club without you.”

“Except that she might have gone there expecting to meet me!” I argued. “The false message might have said that I was awaiting her there.”

“True, but I don’t think so,” exclaimed Mr. Gell, shaking his head dubiously. “This foreign waiter, no doubt, will make some statement in order to save himself. The prosecution may allege that it was he who fired the shot from his front door, and then left the empty house by the back premises; for the landlord says that he still retains the key.”

We ate a frugal lunch together at The Cock in Fleet Street, and at two o’clock were at Bow Street Police Court, Mr. Gell sitting without his robe and wig at the table set aside for the bar, while I sat in a public seat.

Sir Humbert Perry, the white-haired chief magistrate, was on the bench when a short, ferret-eyed, little, black-haired foreigner, shabbily dressed, was put into the dock and the formal charge read over to him. After a first glance round, he appeared quite unconcerned.

Speaking with a strong accent, he declared that he was not guilty.

“_Dieu!_ I know nothing! I was not there!” he cried, as though suddenly realizing his serious position.

Formal evidence of arrest was given, when the magistrate, scarcely looking up, scribbled something, and said:

“Remanded in custody for a week.” And the prisoner was hurried away.

I walked back to the Temple with Joan’s father, who expressed satisfaction at the man’s arrest.

“He knows something,” he said, for his keen eyes had scanned the accused’s face from the first moment he had entered the dock. “If he did not fire the shot, he knows who did. We shall learn more before long.”

We did, within half an hour; for, suddenly Mr. Gell’s clerk entered the room saying that his master was wanted urgently on the telephone.

“Scotland Yard wishes to speak to you, sir,” he added.

The ponderous man rose and rushed into the adjoining room.

A few minutes later he rejoined me in a state of great excitement.

“That fellow Owen has slipped through the fingers of the police! He apparently knew that he was being watched, and was also aware of Dufour’s arrest. He’s in fear, and managed to get away early this morning. His man says he gave his bag to a man who called for it last night, and when he went to his master’s room he found that he had left.”

“But the police!” I cried in dismay.

“They knew he was in bed, and did not resume their surveillance until seven o’clock this morning. At noon, as he did not emerge and walk to the Ritz for a cocktail, as was his habit, they made discreet inquiry, only to find that he had eluded them and gone!”