Chapter VII: Part 7

“Keep trying; something must give,” said his master encouragingly. “Here, let me----” He threw his weight into the balance and for a moment they hung like a group poised before action. Then, somewhere, something did give and the sheathing plunger “drew.”

“Now like blazes till the bath is empty. Then you can tell the others to stop hammering.” Parkinson, looking round to acquiesce, found himself alone, for with silent step and quickened senses Carrados was already passing down the dark flights of the broad stone stairway.

It was perhaps three minutes later when an excited gentleman in the state of disrobement that is tacitly regarded as falling upon the _punctum cæcum_ in times of fire, flood and nocturnal emergency shot out of the door of No. 7 and bounding up the intervening flights of steps pounded with the knocker on the door of No. 9. As someone did not appear with the instantaneity of a jack-in-the-box, he proceeded to repeat the summons, interspersing it with an occasional “I say!” shouted through the letter-box.

The light above the door made it unconvincing to affect that no one was at home. The gentleman at the door trumpeted the fact through his channel of communication and demanded instant attention. So immersed was he with his own grievance, in fact, that he failed to notice the approach of someone on the other side, and the sudden opening of the door, when it did take place, surprised him on his knees at his neighbour’s doorstep, a large and consequential-looking personage as revealed in the light from the hall, wearing the silk hat that he had instinctively snatched up, but with his braces hanging down.

“Mr Tupworthy of No. 7, isn’t it?” quickly interposed the new man before his visitor could speak. “But why this--homage? Permit me to raise you, sir.”

“Confound it all,” snorted Mr Tupworthy indignantly, “you’re flooding my flat. The water’s coming through my bathroom ceiling in bucketfuls. The plaster’ll fall next. Can’t you stop it? Has a pipe burst or something?”

“Something, I imagine,” replied No. 9 with serene detachment. “At all events it appears to be over now.”

“So I should hope,” was the irate retort. “It’s bad enough as it is. I shall go round to the office and complain. I’ll tell you what it is, Mr Belting: these mansions are becoming a pandemonium, sir, a veritable pandemonium.”

“Capital idea; we’ll go together and complain: two will be more effective,” suggested Mr Belting. “But not to-night, Mr Tupworthy. We should not find anyone there. The office will be closed. Say to-morrow----”

“I had no intention of anything so preposterous as going there to-night. I am in no condition to go. If I don’t get my feet into hot water at once I shall be laid up with a severe cold. Doubtless you haven’t noticed it, but I am wet through to the skin, saturated, sir.”

Mr Belting shook his head sagely.

“Always a mistake to try to stop water coming through the ceiling,” he remarked. “It will come, you know. Finds its own level and all that.”

“I did not try to stop it--at least not voluntarily. A temporary emergency necessitated a slight rearrangement of our accommodation. I--I tell you this in confidence--I was sleeping in the bathroom.”

At the revelation of so notable a catastrophe Mr Belting actually seemed to stagger. Possibly his eyes filled with tears; certainly he had to turn and wipe away his emotion before he could proceed.

“Not--not right under it?” he whispered.

“I imagine so,” replied Mr Tupworthy. “I do not conceive that I could have been placed more centrally. I received the full cataract in the region of the ear. Well, if I may rely on you that it has stopped, I will terminate our interview for the present.”

“Good-night,” responded the still tremulous Belting. “Good-night--or good-morning, to be exact.” He waited with the door open to light the first flight of stairs for Mr Tupworthy’s descent. Before the door was closed another figure stepped down quietly from the obscurity of the steps leading upwards.

“Mr Belting, I believe?” said the stranger. “My name is Carrados. I have been looking over the flat above. Can you spare me a few minutes?”

“What, Mr Max Carrados?”

“The same,” smiled the owner of the name.

“Come in, Mr Carrados,” exclaimed Belting, not only without embarrassment, but with positive affection in his voice. “Come in by all means. I’ve heard of you more than once. Delighted to meet you. This way. I know--I know.” He put a hand on his guest’s arm and insisted on steering his course until he deposited him in an easy-chair before a fire. “This looks like being a great night. What will you have?”

Carrados put the suggestion aside and raised a corner of the situation.

“I’m afraid that I don’t come altogether as a friend,” he hinted.

“It’s no good,” replied his host. “I can’t regard you in any other light after this. You heard Tupworthy? But you haven’t seen the man, Mr Carrados. I know--I’ve heard--but no wealth of the imagination can ever really quite reconstruct Tupworthy, the shoddy magnifico, in his immense porcine complacency, his monumental self-importance. And sleeping right underneath! Gods, but we have lived to-night! Why--why ever did you stop?”

“You associate me with this business?”

“Associate you! My dear Mr Carrados, I give you the full glorious credit for the one entirely successful piece of low comedy humour in real life that I have ever encountered. Indeed, in a legal and pecuniary sense, I hold you absolutely responsible.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Carrados, beginning to laugh quietly. Then he continued: “I think that I shall come through that all right. I shall refer you to Mr Carlyle, the private inquiry agent, and he will doubtless pass you on to your landlord, for whom he is acting, and I imagine that he in turn will throw all the responsibility on the ingenious gentleman who has put them to so much trouble. Can you guess the result of my investigation in the flat above?”

“Guess, Mr Carrados? I don’t need to guess: I _know_. You don’t suppose I thought for a moment that such transparent devices as two intercepted pipes and an automatic gas-lighter would impose on a man of intelligence? They were only contrived to mystify the credulous imagination of clerks and porters.”

“You admit it, then?”

“Admit! Good gracious, of course I admit it, Mr Carrados. What’s the use of denying it?”

“Precisely. I am glad you see that. And yet you seem far from being a mere practical joker. Does your confidence extend to the length of letting me into your object?”

“Between ourselves,” replied Mr Belting, “I haven’t the least objection. But I wish that you would have--say a cup of coffee. Mrs Belting is still up, I believe. She would be charmed to have the opportunity----No? Well, just as you like. Now, my object? You must understand, Mr Carrados, that I am a man of sufficient leisure and adequate means for the small position we maintain. But I am not unoccupied--not idle. On the contrary, I am always busy. I don’t approve of any man passing his time aimlessly. I have a number of interests in life--hobbies, if you like. You should appreciate that, as you are a private criminologist. I am--among other things which don’t concern us now--a private retributionist. On every side people are becoming far too careless and negligent. An era of irresponsibility has set in. Nobody troubles to keep his word, to carry out literally his undertakings. In my small way I try to set that right by showing them the logical development of their ways. I am, in fact, the sworn enemy of anything approaching sloppiness. You smile at that?”

“It is a point of view,” replied Carrados. “I was wondering how the phrase at this moment would convey itself, say, to Mr Tupworthy’s ear.”

Mr Belting doubled up.

“But don’t remind me of Tupworthy or I can’t get on,” he said. “In my method I follow the system of Herbert Spencer towards children. Of course you are familiar with his treatise on ‘Education’? If a rough boy persists, after warnings, in tearing or soiling all his clothes, don’t scold him for what, after all, is only a natural and healthy instinct overdone. But equally, of course, don’t punish yourself by buying him other clothes. When the time comes for the children to be taken to an entertainment little Tommy cannot go with them. It would not be seemly, and he is too ashamed, to go in rags. He begins to see the force of practical logic. Very well. If a tradesman promises--promises explicitly--delivery of his goods by a certain time and he fails, he finds that he is then unable to leave them. I pay on delivery, by the way. If a man undertakes to make me an article like another--I am painstaking, Mr Carrados: I point out at the time how exactly like I want it--and it is (as it generally is) on completion something quite different, I decline to be easy-going and to be put off with it. I take the simplest and most obvious instances; I could multiply indefinitely. It is, of course, frequently inconvenient to me, but it establishes a standard.”

“I see that you are a dangerous man, Mr Belting,” remarked Carrados. “If most men were like you our national character would be undermined. People would have to behave properly.”

“If most men were like me we should constitute an intolerable nuisance,” replied Belting seriously. “A necessary reaction towards sloppiness would set in and find me at its head. I am always with minorities.”

“And the case in point?”

“The present trouble centres round the kitchen sink. It is cracked and leaks. A trivial cause for so elaborate an outcome, you may say, but you will doubtless remember that two men quarrelling once at a spring as to who should use it first involved half Europe in a war, and the whole tragedy of _Lear_ sprang from a silly business round a word. I hadn’t noticed the sink when we took this flat, but the landlord had solemnly sworn to do everything that was necessary. Is a new sink necessary to replace a cracked one? Obviously. Well, you know what landlords are: possibly you are one yourself. They promise you heaven until you have signed the agreement and then they tell you to go to hell. Suggested that we’d probably broken the sink ourselves and would certainly be looked to to replace it. An excellent servant caught a cold standing in the drip and left. Was I to be driven into paying for a new sink myself? Very well, I thought, if the reasonable complaint of one tenant is nothing to you, see how you like the unreasonable complaints of fifty. The method served a useful purpose too. When Mrs Belting heard that old tale about the tragedy at No. 11 she was terribly upset; vowed that she couldn’t stay alone in here at night on any consideration.

“‘My dear,’ I said, ‘don’t worry yourself about ghosts. I’ll make as good a one as ever lived, and then when you see how it takes other people in, just remember next time you hear of another that someone’s pulling the string.’ And I really don’t think that she’ll ever be afraid of ghosts again.”

“Thank you,” said Carrados, rising. “Altogether I have spent a very entertaining evening, Mr Belting. I hope your retaliatory method won’t get you into serious trouble this time.”

“Why should it?” demanded Belting quickly.

“Oh, well, tenants are complaining, the property is being depreciated. The landlord may think that he has legal redress against you.”

“But surely I am at liberty to light the gas or use the bath in my own flat when and how I like?”

A curious look had come into Mr Belting’s smiling face; a curious note must have sounded in his voice. Carrados was warned and, being warned, guessed.

“You are a wonderful man,” he said with upraised hand. “I capitulate. Tell me how it is, won’t you?”

“I knew the man at 11. His tenancy isn’t really up till March, but he got an appointment in the north and had to go. His two unexpired months weren’t worth troubling about, so I got him to sublet the flat to me--all quite regularly--for a nominal consideration, and not to mention it.”

“But he gave up the keys?”

“No. He left them in the door and the porter took them away. Very unwarrantable of him; surely I can keep my keys where I like? However, as I had another.... Really, Mr Carrados, you hardly imagine that unless I had an absolute right to be there I should penetrate into a flat, tamper with the gas and water, knock the place about, tramp up and down----”

“I go,” said Carrados, “to get our people out in haste. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr Carrados. It’s been a great privilege to meet you. Sorry I can’t persuade you....”

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VI

The Missing Actress Sensation

First nights are not what they were, even within the memory of playgoers who would be startled to hear anyone else refer to them as “elderly.” But there are yet occasions of exception, and the production of _Call a Spade----_ at the Argosy Theatre was marked by at least one feature of note. The play itself was “sound,” though not epoch-making. The performance of the leading lady was satisfactory and exactly what was to be expected from her. The leading gentleman was equally effective in a part which--as eight out of twelve dramatic critics happily phrased it on the morrow--“fitted him like a glove”; and on the same preponderance of opinion the character actor “contrived to extract every ounce of humour from the material at his disposal.” In other words, _Call a Spade----_ might so far be relied upon to run an attenuating course for about fifty nights and then to be discreetly dropped, “pending the continuance of its triumphal progress at another West End house--should a suitable habitation become available.”

But a very different note came into the reviews when the writers passed to the achievement of another member of the company--a young actress described on the programme as Miss Una Roscastle. Miss Roscastle was unknown to London critics and London audiences. She had come from Dublin with no very great dramatic reputation, but it is to be presumed that the quite secondary part which she had been given on her first metropolitan appearance was peculiarly suited to her talent. No one was more surprised than the author at the remarkable characterisation that “Mary Ryan” assumed in Miss Roscastle’s hands. He was the more surprised because he had failed to notice anything of the kind at rehearsals. Dimly he suspected that the young lady had got more out of the part than he had ever put into it, and while outwardly loud in his expression of delight, he was secretly uncertain whether to be pleased or annoyed. The leading lady also went out of her way to congratulate the young neophyte effusively on her triumph--and then slapped her unfortunate dresser on very insufficient provocation; but the lessee manager spoke of his latest acquisition with a curious air of restraint. At the end of the second act Miss Roscastle took four calls. After that she was only required for the first few minutes of the last act, and many among the audience noted with surprise that she did not appear with the company at the fall of the curtain--she had, in fact, already left the house. All the same the success of the piece constituted a personal triumph for herself. Thenceforth, instead of, “Oh yes, you might do worse than book seats at the Argosy,” the people who had been, said, “Now don’t forget; you positively _must_ see Miss Roscastle in _Call a Spade----_,” and as the Press had said very much the same, the difference to the box-office was something, but to the actress it was everything. Miss Roscastle, indeed, had achieved that rare distinction of “waking to find herself famous.” Nothing could have seemed more assured and roseate than her professional future.

About a week later Max Carrados was interrupted one afternoon in the middle of composing an article on Sicilian numismatics by a telephone call from Mr Carlyle. The blind man smiled as he returned his friend’s greeting, for Louis Carlyle’s voice was wonderfully suggestive in its phases of the varying aspects of the speaker himself, and at that moment it conveyed a portrait of Mr Carlyle in his very best early-morning business manner--spruce and debonair, a little obtuse to things beyond his experience and impervious to criticism, but self-confident, trenchant and within his limits capable. In its crisp yet benign complacency Carrados could almost have sworn to resplendent patent boots, the current shade in suède gloves and a carefully selected picotee.

“If you are doing nothing better to-night, Max,” continued the inquiry agent, “would you join me at the Argosy Theatre? I have a box, and we might go on to the Savoy afterwards. Now don’t say you are engaged, there’s a good fellow,” he urged. “You haven’t given me the chance of playing host for a month or more.”

“The fact is,” confessed Carrados, “I was there for the first night only a week ago.”

“How unfortunate,” exclaimed the other. “But don’t you think that you could put up with it again?”

“I am sure I can,” agreed Carrados. “Yes, I will join you there with pleasure.”

“Delightful,” crowed Mr Carlyle. “Let us say----” The essential details were settled in a trice, but the “call” had not yet expired and the sociable gentleman still held the wire. “Were you interested in Miss Roscastle, Max?”

“Decidedly.”

“That is fortunate. My choice of a theatre is not unconnected with a case I have on hand. I may be able to tell you something about the lady.”

“Possibly we shall not be alone?” suggested Carrados.

“Well, no; not absolutely,” admitted Carlyle. “Charming young fellow, though. I’m sure you’ll like him, Max. Trevor Enniscorthy, a younger son of old Lord Sleys.”

“Conventional rotter, between ourselves?” inquired Max.

“Not a bit of it,” declared Mr Carlyle loyally. “A young fellow of five and twenty is none the worse for being enamoured of a fascinating creature who happens to be on the stage. He is----Oh, very well. Good-bye, Max. Eight-fifteen, remember.”

They were all punctual. In fact, “If Mr Enniscorthy could have got me along we should have been here before the doors opened,” declared Mr Carlyle when the blind man joined them. “Now why are there no programmes about here, I wonder?”

“I hardly fancy they anticipate their box-holders arriving twenty minutes before the curtain rises,” suggested Carrados.

“There are some,” exclaimed Mr Enniscorthy, dashing out as an attendant crossed the circle. He was back in a moment, and standing in the obscurity of the box eagerly tore open the programme. “Still in,” he muttered, coming forward and throwing the paper down for the others to refer to. “Oh, excuse my impatience,” he apologised, colouring. “I am rather----” He left them to supply the rest.

“Mr Enniscorthy has given me permission to explain his position, Max,” began Mr Carlyle, but the young man abruptly cut short the proposition stated in this vein of deference.

“I’d rather put it that if Mr Carrados would help me with his advice I should be most awfully grateful,” he said in a very clear, rather highly pitched voice. “I suppose it’s inevitable to feel no end of an ass over this sort of thing, but I’m desperately in earnest and I _must_ go through with it.”

“Admirable!” beamed Mr Carlyle’s inextinguishable eye, and he murmured: “Very natural, I am sure,” in the voice of a man who has just been told to go up higher.

“Perhaps you know that there is a Miss Roscastle put down as appearing in this piece?” went on Enniscorthy. “Well, I knew Miss Roscastle rather well in Ireland. I came to London because----I followed her here.”

“Engaged?” dropped quietly from Carrados’s lips.

“I cannot say that we were actually engaged,” was the admission, “but it--well, you know how these things stand. At all events she knew what I felt towards her and she did not discourage my hopes.”

“Did your people know of this, Mr Enniscorthy?”

“I had not spoken to my father or to my stepmother, but they might easily have heard something of it,” replied the young man. “Miss Roscastle, although she did not go about much, was received by the very best people in Dublin. Of course for many things I did not like her being on the stage; in fact I detested it, but she had taken the step before I knew her, and how could I object? Then she got the offer of this London engagement. She was ambitious to get on in her profession, and took it. In a very short time I found it impossible to exist there without seeing her, so I made an excuse to get away and followed.”

“Let me see,” put in Mr Carlyle ingenuously; “I forget the exact dates.”

“Miss Roscastle came on Monday, October the 4th,” said Enniscorthy. “The piece opened on the following Thursday week--the 14th. I left Kingstown by the early boat yesterday. At this end we were nearly an hour late, and after going to my hotel, changing and dining, I had just time to come on here and bag the last stall. I thought that I would send a note round after the first act and ask Una to give me a few minutes afterwards. But it never came to that. Instead I got a very large surprise. ‘Mary Ryan’ came on, and I looked--and looked again. I didn’t need glasses, but I got a pair out of the automatic box in front of me and had another level stare. Well, it wasn’t Miss Roscastle. This girl was like her. I suppose to most people they would be wonderfully alike, and her voice--although it wasn’t really Irish--yes, her voice was similar. But to me there were miles of difference. I saw at once that she was an understudy, although ‘Miss Una Roscastle’ was still down in the programme, and I began to quake at the thought of something having happened to her.

“I slipped out into the corridor--I had an end seat--and got hold of a programme girl.

“‘Do you know why Miss Roscastle is out of the cast to-night?’ I asked her. ‘Is she indisposed?’

“She took the programme out of my hand and pointed to a name in it.

“‘She’s in all right,’ she replied--stupidly, I thought. ‘There’s her name.’

“‘Yes, she is on the programme,’ I replied, ‘but not on the stage. Look through the glass there. That is not Miss Roscastle.’

“She glanced through the glazed door and then turned away as though she suspected me of chaffing her.

“‘It’s the only Miss Roscastle I’ve ever seen here,’ she said as she went.

“I wandered about and interrogated one or two other attendants. They all gave me the same answer. I began to get frightened.

“‘They must be misled by the resemblance,’ I assured myself. ‘It really is wonderful.’ I went back to my seat and then remembered that I had got no further with my original inquiry, which was to find out whether Una was ill or not. I couldn’t remain. I kept my eyes fixed on ‘Mary Ryan’ every time she was on the stage, and every time I became more and more convinced. Finally I got up again and going round sent in my card to the manager.”

“Stokesey?” asked Carrados.

“Yes. I didn’t know who was technically the right man, but he, at any rate, had engaged Miss Roscastle. He saw me at once.

“‘I have come across from Dublin to see Miss Roscastle,’ I told him, ‘and I am very disappointed to find her out of the cast. Can you tell me why she is away?’

“‘Surely you are mistaken,’ he replied, opening a programme that lay before him. ‘Do you know Miss Roscastle by sight?’

“‘Very well indeed,’ I retorted. ‘Better than your staff do. The “Mary Ryan” to-night is not Miss Roscastle.’

“‘I will inquire,’ he said, walking to the door. ‘Please wait a minute.’

“He was rigidly courteous, but instinct was telling me all the time that it was sheer bluff. He had nothing to inquire. In a moment he was back again.

“‘I am informed that the programme is correct,’ he said with the same smooth insincerity, standing in the middle of the room for me to leave. ‘Miss Roscastle is on the stage at this moment. The make-up must have deceived you, Mr Enniscorthy.’

“I had nothing to reply, because I did not even know what to think. I simply proceeded to walk out.

“‘One moment.’ I had reached the door when Mr Stokesey spoke. ‘You are a friend of Miss Roscastle, I suppose?’

“‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I think I may claim that.’

“‘Then I would merely suggest to you that to start a rumour crediting her with being out of the piece is a service she would fail to appreciate. Good-evening.’

“I left the theatre because I despaired of getting any real information after that, and it occurred to me that I could do better elsewhere. Although Una and I did not correspond, I had begged her, before she left, to let me know that she arrived safely, and she had sent me just half-a-dozen lines. I now took a taxi and drove off to the address she had given--a sort of private hotel or large boarding-house near Holborn.

“‘Can you tell me if Miss Roscastle is in?’ I asked at the office.

“‘Roscastle?’ said the fellow there. ‘Oh, the young lady from the theatre. Why, she left us more than a week ago--nearer two, I should say.’

“This was another facer.

“‘Can you give me the address she went to?’ I asked.

“‘Couldn’t; against our rule,’ he replied. ‘Any letters for her were to be sent to the theatre.’

“I didn’t think it would be successful to offer him a bribe, so I thanked him and walked away. As the hall porter opened the door for me I dropped him a word. In two minutes he came out to where I was waiting.

“‘A Miss Roscastle left here a week or two ago,’ I said. ‘They won’t give me her address, but you can get it. Here’s a Bradbury. I’ll be here again in half-an-hour and if you’ve got the address--the house, not the theatre--there’ll be another for you when I’ve verified it.’

“He looked a bit doubtful. Evidently a decent fellow, I thought.

“‘It’s quite all right,’ I assured him. ‘We are engaged, but I’ve only just come over.’

“He was waiting for me when I returned. The first thing he did was to tender me the note back again--a piece of superfluous honesty that prepared me for the worst.

“‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s no go,’ he explained. ‘The young lady left no address beyond the theatre.’

“‘You called a cab for her when she went?’ I suggested.

“‘Yes, sir, but she gave the directions while I was bringing out her things. I never heard where it was to go.’”

“And that is as far as we have got up to this moment, Max,” struck in Mr Carlyle briskly.

“I’m afraid it is,” corroborated Enniscorthy. “I got round to the stage door here in time to see most of the people leave, but neither Miss Roscastle nor the girl like her were among them.”

“She is off half-an-hour before the piece finishes,” explained Carrados. “And of course she might not leave by the stage door.”

“In any case it is an extraordinary enough business, is it not, Mr Carrados?” said Enniscorthy, rather anxious not to be set down a blundering young idiot for his pains. “What does it mean?”

“So far I would describe it as--curious,” admitted Carrados guardedly. “Investigation may justify a stronger term. In the meanwhile we need not miss the play.”

By this time the theatre had practically filled and the orchestra was tuning up for the overture. With nothing to occupy his attention, Mr Enniscorthy began to manifest an unhappy restlessness that increased until the play had been proceeding for some few minutes. Then Carrados heard Mr Carlyle murmur, “Charming! Charming!” in a tone of mature connoisseurship; there was a spontaneous round of applause and “Mary Ryan” was on the scene.

“The understudy again,” Enniscorthy whispered to his companions.

“Well,” remarked Mr Carlyle when the curtain descended for the first interval, “you are still equally convinced, Mr Enniscorthy?”

“There isn’t the shadow of a doubt,” he replied.

Carrados had been writing a few lines on one of his cards. He now summoned an attendant.

“Mr Stokesey is in the house?” he asked. “Then give him this, please--when you next go that way.”

Before the curtain rose the girl came round to the box again.

“Mr Carrados?” she inquired. “Mr Stokesey told me to say that he would save you the trouble by looking in here during the next interval.”

“Shall I remain?” asked Enniscorthy.

“Oh yes. Stokesey is a most amiable man to do with. I know him slightly. His attitude to you was evidently the outcome of the circumstances. We shall all get along very nicely.”

The second act was the occasion of “Mary Ryan’s” great opportunity and again she carried the enthusiasm of the audience. After the curtain the young actress had to respond to an insistent call. In the darkness Mr Stokesey entered the box and stood waiting at the back.

“Glad to see you here again, Mr Carrados,” he remarked, shaking hands with the blind man as soon as the lights were up. Then he looked at the other occupants. “My word, I have put my head into the lion’s den!” he continued, his smile deepening into a good-natured grin. “Don’t shoot, Mr Enniscorthy; I will climb down without. I see that the game is up.”

“What are you going to tell us?” asked Carrados.

“Everything I know. The lady who has just gone off is not Miss Roscastle. Mr Enniscorthy was quite right; she wasn’t here last night either.”

“Then why is her name still in the programme, and why do you and your people keep up the fiction?” demanded Enniscorthy.

“Because I hoped that Miss Roscastle might have returned to the cast to-night, and, failing to-night, I hope that she will return to-morrow. Because we happen to have a substitute in Miss Linknorth so extraordinarily like the original lady in appearance and voice that no one--excluding yourself--will have noticed the difference, and because I have a not unreasonable objection to announcing that the chief attraction of my theatre is out of the cast. Is there anything very unaccountable in that?”

Mr Carlyle nodded acquiescence to this moderate proposition; Enniscorthy seemed to admit it reluctantly; it remained for Carrados to accept the challenge.

“Only one thing,” he replied with some reluctance.

“And what is that?”

“That Miss Roscastle will not return to the cast and that you are well aware why she never can return to it.”

“I--what?” demanded the astonished manager.

“Miss Roscastle cannot _return_ to the cast because she has never been in it.”

Stokesey wavered, burst into a roar of laughter and sat down.

“I give in,” he exclaimed heartily. “That’s my last ditch. Now you really do know everything that I do.”

“But why has she not been in?” demanded Enniscorthy.

“Better ask the lady herself. I cannot even guess.”

“I will when I can find her.” Not for the first time the young man was assailed by a horrid fear that he might have been making a fool of himself. “Where in the meantime is she?”

“The Lord alone knows,” retorted Mr Stokesey feelingly. “Don’t annihilate me, Mr Enniscorthy; I don’t mean a member of the peerage. But, I’ll tell you, the lady put me in a very deuced fix.”

“Won’t you take us into your confidence?” suggested Carrados.

“I will, Mr Carrados, because I want a consideration from you in return. I can put it into a very few words. Twenty minutes before the curtain went up on the first night a note was sent in to Miss Roscastle. She read it, put on her hat and coat and went out hurriedly by the stage door.”

“Well?” said Carlyle encouragingly.

“That is all. That is the last we saw of her--heard of her. She never returned.”

“But--but----” stammered Enniscorthy, and came up short before the abysmal nature of the prospect confronting him.

“There are a good many ‘buts’ to be taken into consideration, Mr Enniscorthy,” said the manager, with a rather cryptic look. “Fortunately we had Miss Linknorth, and the first costume, as you know, is immaterial. Up to the last possible moment we hung on to Miss Roscastle’s return. Then the other had to go on.”

“With not very serious consequences to the success of the play, apparently,” remarked Carrados.

“That’s the devilment of it,” exclaimed Stokesey warmly. “Don’t you see the hole it has put me into? If ‘Mary Ryan’ had remained a negligible quantity it wouldn’t have mattered two straws. But for her own diabolical vanity Miss Linknorth made a confounded success of the part. Of course it was too late to have any alteration printed on the first night and now Miss Roscastle is the draw of the piece. People come to see Miss Roscastle. Miss Roscastle _is_ the piece.”

“But if you explained that Miss Linknorth was really the creator of the part----” suggested Mr Carlyle.

Stokesey rattled a provocative laugh at the back of his throat.

“You run a theatre for a few seasons, my dear fellow, and then talk,” he retorted. “You can’t explain; you can’t do anything; you can only just sit there. People cease to be rational beings when they set out for a theatre. If you breathe on a howling success it goes out. If you move a gold mine of a piece from one theatre to another, next door, everyone promptly decides to stay away. Don’t ask me the reasons; there are none. It isn’t a business; it ought to come under the Gaming Act.”

“Mr Stokesey is also faced by the alternative that after he had announced Miss Linknorth, Miss Roscastle might appear any time and claim her place.”

The manager nodded. “That’s another consideration,” he said.

“But could she?” inquired Mr Carlyle. “After absenting herself in this way?”

“Oh, goodness knows; I dare say she could--agreements are no good when it comes to anything happening. At any rate here am I with an element of success after a procession of distinct non-stops. If we get well set, whatever happens will matter less. Now I haven’t gone to any Machiavellian lengths in arranging this, but I have taken the chance as it came along. I’ve told you everything I know. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t do us all a good turn by keeping it strictly to yourselves?”

“I don’t know that I particularly owe you any consideration, Mr Stokesey, or that you owe me any,” announced Mr Enniscorthy. “Just now I am only concerned in discovering what has become of Miss Roscastle. You know her address?”

“In Kensington?”

“Well, yes.”

“74 Westphalia Mansions.”

“You sent there of course?”

“Heavens, yes! The various forms of messages must be six inches deep all over the hall by now. Last Friday I had a man sitting practically all day on her doorstep.”

“But she has someone there--a housekeeper or maid?”

“I don’t think so. She told me that she was taking a little furnished flat--asked me if the neighbourhood was a suitable one. I imagine there was something about a daily woman until she found how she liked it. We’ve had no one from there anyway.”

“Then it comes to this, that for a week there has been absolutely no trace of Miss Roscastle’s existence! Do you quite realise your responsibility, Mr Stokesey?” demanded Enniscorthy with increased misgivings.

The manager, who had turned to go, caught Mr Carlyle’s eye over the concerned young man’s shoulder. “I don’t think that Miss Roscastle’s friends need have any anxiety about her personal safety,” he replied with expression. “At all events I’ve done everything I can for you; I hope that you will not fail to meet my views. If there’s anything else that occurs to you, Mr Carrados, I shall be in my office. Good-night.”

“Callous brute!” muttered Mr Enniscorthy. “He ought to have put it in the hands of the police a week ago.”

Mr Carlyle glanced at Carrados, who had transferred his interest to the rendering of the last musical item of the interval.

“Possibly Miss Roscastle would prefer a less public investigation if she had a voice in the matter,” said the professional man.

“If she happens to be shut up in some beastly underground cellar I imagine she would prefer whatever gets her out the soonest. I dare say it sounds fantastic, but such things really do happen now and then, you know, and why not?”

“You don’t know of any threats or blackmailing letters?”

“No,” admitted the young man; “but I do know this, that if Una was at liberty she would never allow another actress to take her place and use her name in this way.”

“A very significant suggestion,” put in Carrados from his detached attitude. “Mr Enniscorthy has given you a really valuable hint, Louis.”

“I don’t mean that Miss Roscastle is really out-of-the-way jealous,” Enniscorthy hastened to add, “but in her profession----”

“Oh, most natural, most natural,” agreed the urbane Carlyle. “Everyone has to look after his own interest. Now----”

“I don’t suppose that you are particularly keen on this act,” interposed the blind man. “Are you, Mr Enniscorthy?”

“I’d much rather be doing something,” was the reply.

“I was going to suggest that you might go round to Westphalia Mansions, just to make sure that there is no one there now. Then if you would find your way to our table at the Savoy we could hear your report.”

“Yes, certainly. I shall be glad to think that I can be of some assistance by going.”

Mr Carlyle’s optimistic temper was almost incapable of satire, but he could not refrain from, “You can--poor beggar!” on Enniscorthy’s departure. “I suppose,” he continued, turning to his friend, “I suppose you think that Stokesey may----? Eh?”

“I fancy that in the absence of our young friend he may be induced to become more confidential. He may have some good ground for believing that the missing lady will not upset his ingenious plan. He, at all events, discounts the ‘underground cellar.’”

“Oh, that!” commented Carlyle with an indulgent smile. “But, after all, what is the answer, Max? Enniscorthy is a thoroughly eligible young fellow and this was the first chance of her career. What is the inducement?”

“That much we can safely emphasise. What, in a word, would induce an ambitious young lady to throw up a good engagement, Louis?”

“A better?” suggested Mr Carlyle.

“Exactly,” agreed Carrados; “a better.”

It is unnecessary to follow the course of Mr Carlyle’s inquiry on the facts already disclosed, for, less than twenty-four hours later, the whole situation was changed and Mr Stokesey’s discreet prevarication had been torn into shreds. The manager had calculated in vain--if he had calculated and not just accepted the chance that presented itself. At all events the fiction proved too elaborate to be maintained and late in the afternoon of the following day all the evening papers blazed out with the

“SENSATIONAL DISAPPEARANCE OF
POPULAR LONDON ACTRESS”

The event was particularly suited to the art of the contents bill, for when the news came to be analysed there was little else to be learned beyond the name of the missing actress and the fact that “at the theatre a policy of questionable reticence is being maintained towards all inquiry.” That phrase caused two men at least to smile as they realised the embarrassment of Mr Stokesey’s dubious position.

The conditions being favourable, the Missing Actress sensation caught on at once and effectually asphyxiated public interest in all the other sensations that up to that moment had been satisfying the mental requirements of the nation--a “Mysterious Submarine,” an “Eloping Dean” (three wives), and an “Are We Becoming Too Intellectual?” correspondence. Supply followed demand, and it very soon became difficult to decide, not where Miss Roscastle was, but where she was not. Public opinion wavered between Genoa, on the authority of a retired lime and slate merchant of Hull who had had a presentiment while directing a breathless lady to the docks, when a Wilson liner was on the point of sailing; Leatherhead, the suggestion of a booking-office clerk who had been struck by the peculiar look in a veiled lady’s eyes as she asked for a third-class return to Cheam; and Accrington, where a young lady with a marked Irish accent and a theatrical manner had inquired about lodgings at three different houses and then abruptly left, saying that she would come back if she thought any more about it.

Before the novelty was two days old Scotland Yard had been stirred into recognising its existence. A London clue was forthcoming, apparently the wildest and most circumstantial of them all. A plain-clothes constable of the A Division reported that an hour after midnight three days before he had noticed a shabby-genteel man, who seemed to be waiting for someone, loitering on the Embankment near the Boadicea statue. There was nothing in the circumstance to interest him, but when he repassed the spot ten minutes later the man had been joined by a woman. The sharp eyes of the constable told him that the woman was well and even fashionably dressed, although she had made some precaution to conceal it, and the fact quickened his observation. As he shambled past--an Embankment dead-beat for the occasion--he heard the name “Roscastle” spoken by one of the two. He could not distinguish by which, nor the sense in which the word was used, but his notebook, with the name written down under the correct date, corroborated so much. On neither occasion had he seen the face of the man distinctly--the threadbare individual had sought the shadows--but he was able to describe that of the woman in some detail. He was shown half-a-dozen photographs and at once identified that of Miss Roscastle. The crowning touch requisite to make this story entirely popular was supplied by an inspector of river police. According to the newspaper account, the patrol boat was off the Embankment near Westminster Bridge between one and a quarter-past on the night in question when a distinct splash was heard. The crew made for the spot, flashed the lights about and drifted up and down several times, but without finding a trace of any human presence. At once the public voice demanded that the river should be dragged from Chelsea to The Pool, and, pending the result, every shabby wastrel who appeared on the Embankment arrested.

In his private office Mr Carlyle threw down the last of his morning papers with an expression that began as a knowing smile but ended rather dubiously. For his own part he would have much preferred that the disappearance of Miss Roscastle had not leaked out--that he had been left to pursue his course unaided, but, in the circumstances, he carefully read everything on the chance of a useful hint. The Embankment story both amused and puzzled him.

He dismissed the subject to its proper mental pigeonhole and had turned to deal with his most confidential correspondence when something very like an altercation breaking the chaste decorum of his outer office caused him to stop and frown. The next moment there was a hurrying step outside, the door was snatched open and Mr Enniscorthy, pale and distracted, stumbled into the room. Behind him appeared the indignant face of Mr Carlyle’s chief clerk. Then the visitor extinguished the outraged vision by flinging back the door as he went forward.

“Have you seen the papers?” he demanded. “Is there anything dreadful in them?”

“I have seen the papers, yes,” replied the puzzled agent. “I am not aware----”

“I mean the evening papers--just out. No, I see you haven’t. Here, read that and tell me. I haven’t--I dare not look.”

Mr Carlyle took the journal that Enniscorthy thrust under his eyes--it was the earliest _Star_--glanced into his visitor’s face a little severely and then focussed on the column.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, “what is this! ‘MISSING ACTRESS. EMBANKMENT CLUE. BODY FOUND!’”

“Ah!” groaned Enniscorthy. “That was on the bills. Is it----?”

“It’s all right, it’s all right, my dear sir,” reported Mr Carlyle, glancing along the lines. “This is the body of a man ... the man who was seen ... most extraordinary....”

“My God!” was wrung from the distressed young man as he dropped into a chair. “Oh, my God! I thought----” He took out his handkerchief, wiped and fanned his face, and for the next few minutes looked rather languidly on things.

“Very distressing,” commiserated Mr Carlyle when he had come to the end of the report. “Can I get you anything--brandy, a glass of water----? The mere act of sipping, I am medically informed, has a beneficial effect in case of faintness. I have----”

“Nothing, thanks. I shall be all right now. Sorry to have made an ass of myself. You have heard--anything?”

“Nothing definite so far,” was the admission. “But there may be something worth following in this story after all. I shall go down to the mortuary shortly. Do you care to accompany me?”

“No, thanks,” replied the visitor. “I have had enough of that particular form of excitement for one morning.... Unless, of course, there is anything I----”

He was assured that there was nothing to be effected by his presence and half-an-hour later Mr Carlyle made his way alone to the obscure mortuary where the unclaimed dead hold their grim reception.

An inspector of the headquarters investigation staff who had been put on to the case was standing by the side of one of the shells when Carlyle entered. He was a man whom the private agent had more than once good-naturedly obliged in small matters that had come within his reach. He now greeted Mr Carlyle with consideration and stood aside to allow him to approach the body.

“The Embankment case, I suppose, sir?” he remarked. “Not very attractive, but I’ve seen many worse in here.” He jerked off the upper part of the rough coverlet and exposed a visage that caused Mr Carlyle to turn away with a “Tch, tch!” of emotion. Then a sense of duty drew him round again and he proceeded to note the descriptive points of the dead man in his pocket-book.

“No marks of violence, I suppose?” he asked.

“Nothing beyond the usual abrasions that we always find. A clear case of drowning--suicide--it seems to be.”

“And the things?”

The inspector nodded towards a seedy suit laid out for identification and an overcoat, once rakish of its fashion and now frayed and mouldering, put with it.

“Fur collar too, Mr Carlyle,” pointed out his guide. “‘Velvet and rags,’ isn’t it? ‘Where moth and rust doth corrupt.’ A sermon could be made out of this.”

“Very true; very true indeed,” replied Mr Carlyle, who always responded to the sentimentally obvious. “It is a sermon, inspector. But what have we here?”

Beside the garments had been collected together a heap of metal discs--quite a considerable heap, numbering some hundreds. Carlyle took up a few and examined them. They were all alike--flat, perfectly round and somewhat under an inch in diameter. They were quite plain and apparently of lead.

“H’m, curious,” he commented. “In his pockets?”

“Yes; both overcoat pockets. Very determined, wasn’t he? They would have kept him down till the Day of Judgment. I’ve counted them--just five hundred.”

“Any money?”

The inspector smiled his tragi-comic appreciation--the coin embellished the moral of his unwritten sermon--and pointed.

“A halfpenny!” he replied.

“Poor fellow!” said Mr Carlyle. “Well, well; perhaps it is better as it is. You might pull up the cloth again now, please.... There are no letters or papers, I see.”

The detective hesitated a moment and then recalled the obligation he was under.

“There is a scrap of paper that I have kept from the Press so far,” he admitted. “It was tightly clenched in the man’s right hand--so tight that we had to use a screw-driver to get it out, and the water had barely reached it.” He was extracting a slip of paper from his notebook as he spoke and he now unfolded it. “You won’t put it about, will you, Mr Carlyle? I don’t know that there’s anything tangible in it, but--well, see for yourself.”

“Extraordinary!” admitted the gentleman. He read the words a second time: “‘Fool! What does it matter now?’ Why, it might almost----”

“It might be addressed to the coroner, or to anyone who tries to find out who he is or what it means, you would say. Well, so it might, sir. Anyhow, that is all.”

“By the way, I suppose he _is_ the man your fellow saw?”

“Everything tallies, Mr Carlyle--length of immersion, place, and so on. Our man thinks he is the same, but you may remember that he didn’t claim to be very positive on this point.”

There seemed nothing else to be learned and Mr Carlyle took his departure. His acquaintance had also finished and their ways lay together as far as Trafalgar Square. Before they parted the inspector had promised to communicate with Mr Carlyle as soon as the dead man was identified.

“And if he has a room anywhere he probably will be, with all this talk about Miss Roscastle. Then we may find something there that will help us,” he predicted. “If he is purely casual the chances are we shall never hear.”

His experience was justified and he kept his promise. Two days later Carlyle heard that the unknown had been identified as the occupant of a single room in a Lambeth lodging-house. He had only occupied it for a few weeks and he was known there as Mr Hay. Tenement gossip described him as a foreigner and credited him with having seen better days--an easy enough surmise in the circumstances. Mr Carlyle had been on the point of turning his attention to a Monte Carlo Miss Roscastle when this information reached him. He set off at once for Lambeth, but at Tubb’s Grove disappointment met him at the door. The landlady of the ramshackle establishment--a female with a fluent if rather monotonous delivery--was still smarting from the unappreciated honour of the police officials’ visit and the fierce light of publicity that it had thrown upon her house. All Mr Carlyle’s bland cajolery was futile and in the end he had to disburse a sum that bore an appreciable relation to a week’s rent before he was allowed to inspect the room and to command conversation that was not purely argumentative.

Then the barrenness of the land was revealed. Mr Hay had been irregular with his rent at the best, and when he disappeared he was a week in arrears. After two days’ absence, with the easy casuistry of her circumstances, the lady had decided that he was not returning and had proceeded to “do out” the room for the next tenant. The lodger’s “few things” she had bundled together into a cupboard, whence they had been retrieved by the police, in spite of her indignant protest. But the lodger’s “papers and such-like rubbish” she confessed to burning, to get them out of the way. Mr Carlyle spent a profitless half-hour and then returned, calling at Scotland Yard on his way back. His friend the inspector shook his head; there was nothing among the seized property that afforded any clue.

It was at this point that Mr Carlyle’s ingenuous mind suggested looking up Carrados, whom he had not seen since the visit to the theatre.

“Max was interested in this case from the first; I am sure he will be expecting to hear from me about it,” was the form in which the proposal conveyed itself to him. The same evening he ran down to Richmond for an hour, after ascertaining that his friend was at home and disengaged.

“You might have brought Enniscorthy with you,” remarked Carrados when the subject had been started. “Nice, genuine young fellow. Evidently deeply in love with the girl, but he is young enough to take the attack safely. What have you told him?”

“He is back in Ireland just now--got an idea that he might learn something from some people there, and rushed off. What I have told him--well”--experience endowed Mr Carlyle with sudden caution--“what would you have told him, Max?”

Carrados smiled at the innocent guile of the invitation.

“To answer that I should have to know just what you know,” he replied. “I suppose you have gone into this Embankment development?”

“Yes.” He had come intending to make some show of his progress and to sound Carrados discreetly, but once again in the familiar room and under the sway of the clear-visioned blind man’s virile personality he suddenly found himself submitting quite naturally to the suave, dominating influence. “Yes; but I must confess, Max, that I am unable to explain much of that incident. It suggests blackmail at the bottom, and if the plain-clothes man was correct and saw Miss Roscastle there last Thursday----”