Chapter XXX: Dope

“It happened on my seventeenth birthday,” she went on in a lifeless voice. “I had discovered something about the doctor; he had been guilty of a most heartless fraud. I was acting as his secretary at the time, and I detected him in the act of forging a document which transferred property to him of an old man who was his patient. I didn’t know then why he did it, but he insisted that I should marry him right away. I was terrified, until he had promised me that, if I agreed, he would let me live by myself somewhere. Like a fool, the chance of gaining my liberty at the expense of such a bondage was so alluring that I agreed, and we were married before the registrar. The same day I moved into the rooms which I have occupied off and on ever since.”

“He doesn’t love you?”

She shook her head.

“He made that clear on the day of our wedding, and he has taunted me many times since that I trapped him into the marriage. The truth was that he feared a criminal prosecution would follow the discovery of the forgery, and he married me to keep my mouth shut, knowing that a wife may not give evidence against her husband.”

Clive Lowbridge sat motionless.

“I never guessed,” he said simply.

“Of course, I can divorce him, and I should do that if”--she shrugged her shoulders--“if there were any excuse. But, Clive, he has given me nothing; his life is austere; he has never been really cruel to me--not cruel enough to secure a divorce in England. I’m just shelved until he dies.”

“The old devil!” he whispered.

A soft knock on the panel of the door. He turned with a start as Benson came in, carrying a silver tray.

“Mr. William Holbrook is below, sir.”

“Here? What does he want?” said Clive in surprise. “Ask him up, Benson, and put another cup for him.”

Bill looked white and drawn.

“You been in the wars, too, Holbrook?” asked Clive good-humouredly.

“Somewhat,” was the laconic reply. “How do you do, Miss Stone? I didn’t expect to find you here.”

Her lips twitched at the “Miss Stone.”

“You ought to be in hospital.”

“I really ought to be in an insane asylum,” said Holbrook as he sat down. “Have you seen your respected relative?”

“He hasn’t deigned to call upon me,” she said, “and I am not very sorry.”

Bill grunted something.

“The doctor is--strange,” he said aloud, and she felt that he was showing admirable restraint.

Clive was wondering what was the object of the reporter’s call, until Bill Holbrook caught his eye, then, taking advantage of Betty’s discreet retirement to admire the window-boxes, they walked out of the room.

“I want to put a question to you, Lord Lowbridge. Do you know anything about the Sons of Ragousa?”

“I know something, yes, as much as most people know. It is a friendly society, is it not?”

“Hardly that,” said Bill, grimly. “But are you aware that Laffin holds a very high position in the order?”

“No, that is news to me,” said the other frankly. “In fact, it is so incredible that I take leave to doubt----”

“It’s a fact,” interrupted Bill. “He is the head of the Twenty-Third Degree.”

“The news is surprising, and yet not surprising,” said Lowbridge, after a pause. “His eccentricities are proverbial. Was it to tell me this that you called?”

“Partly,” said Bill, “and partly to ask you whether you saw anything of him the night Miss Carew disappeared?”

Lowbridge shook his head.

“He could not possibly have had anything to do with the abduction,” he said. “He was on the telephone to me at midnight, and asked me to go round to his place to see him about an impoverished property of mine in which he is interested. Of course, I did not go.”

“He was establishing an alibi?” suggested Holbrook.

“I hardly think so. It was not remarkable in him to call me up at that hour, for the doctor has no idea of time. As you are probably aware, he does not sleep like a normal man, but has those queer ten-minute intervals of unconsciousness which seem to satisfy all his needs. I saw him the following day; he called here on the same matter, and I’ll swear that he was in town that same night, for I went to his place and stayed with him for the greater part of an hour…” he hesitated. “I ought to tell you that his great scheme of transferring my land had the elements of trickery in it that annoyed me most intensely. I only discovered it last night. You probably noticed, when you came to Camden Road, that I was rather heated? The man has no conscience and no scruples. He puzzles me sometimes, at other times he fills me with despair. For under his eccentricities, there is something about him that I like, and I shall not, of course, forget our earlier association, when he gave me his time and his genius to educate me. But what do you mean about the Sons of Ragousa? That seems a fairly inoffensive association. Do you think they were concerned in the kidnapping of Miss Carew?”

“I don’t think so, I am certain,” said Bill vigorously. “Laffin may not have been a member of the party, but I’ll swear he directed operations.”

Clive came back alone, to Betty Carew’s surprise.

“Where is the tireless Mr. Holbrook?” she asked.

“Gone. He’s on Laffin’s track, and is obsessed with the idea that the old man was responsible for your kidnapping, and, upon my word, he’s almost convinced me! Betty, do you remember--can you concentrate your mind upon the forty-eight hours you disappeared? Can you recall any single incident which would help us?”

“Yes, I think I can,” she said quietly. “The incidents are beginning to sort themselves out, and whilst I recognise that most of them are absurd and fantastical, the chapel and the masked men----”

“Chapel?” he said quickly. “What do you mean?”

She laughed softly.

“In a day or two I shall probably realise that these are fantasies also. But I have a recollection of being taken into a chapel--a tiny little place, with men who looked like monks, sitting in the stalls on each side of the altar; and I’m sure I heard the voice of the man who came to me at the store for the message. He gave me something, a book--I am certain it was a book--and called me the ‘Long Desired.’ Before and after that, my memory is a confusion of impossible happenings. But of that time I am certain. I am going to write it down to-night for Mr. Bullott.”

He strode up and down the room, his hands behind him, his brow knit in thought. Then he rang the bell, and, to Benson, who appeared immediately:

“Get me all the evening newspapers that are on the streets,” he said. “You may have to go to Piccadilly for the _Globe-News_, but get it.”

“Why?” she asked in surprise, after Benson had disappeared.

“I have a theory. It is only a theory, and I think it can be tested by the information that has already been published.”

“Clive, you’re a bundle of nerves!”

“Have I reason?” he asked. “I’ve had the misery of your abduction, and on top of it all, the terrific news you have given me about Laffin. You’ll get the marriage annulled, of course?”

“Excuse me, sir.”

It was Benson, who had come in noiselessly.

“When you said all the newspapers, did your lordship mean the Socialistic journals?” he asked. “Your lordship has forbidden those newspapers to be brought into the house.”

“Of course, I mean them all,” said Clive, with a touch of asperity.

When the man had bowed himself out:

“Why the dickens did he come back?”

“Nerves again!” she laughed. She took up her cup. “Is it cigarettes or this insidious little cup?”

“Both,” he said, and swallowed the hot tea with a wry face.

In a much shorter time than he had expected, Benson returned and laid the newspapers at his master’s elbow. Clive opened one at random, skimmed the news, opened another and a third, and finally threw the journals on the floor in disgust.

“There’s nothing new here at all,” he said.

He spoke a little thickly. She looked at him in alarm; his face had gone white, his eyes had a queer, glazed appearance, and when he rose to his feet he stumbled, and would have fallen if she had not assisted him.

“What is the matter, Clive?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He passed his hand across his forehead. “Something queer,” he muttered.

She pressed the bell, and Benson came in almost immediately, and together they laid Lowbridge upon a sofa. His eyes were closed, his breathing was heavy, and when she spoke to him he did not answer.

“What is the matter, Benson?” she asked in alarm.

Benson stooped, lifted the eyelids of the unconscious man.

“I think he has been drugged, Madam,” he said blandly.