CHAPTER XXVII
MR. WHITE’S METHOD
The policeman spoke first. “Has Jane Harding been here, then?” he said.
His words conveyed no meaning to his hearer.
They were so incongruous, so ridiculously unreasoning, that Bruce laughed hysterically.
“You must have seen her,” cried the detective excitedly. “I know you have learned the truth, and in no other way that I can imagine could it have reached you.”
“Learnt what truth?”
“That Sir Charles Dyke himself is at the bottom of all this business.”
“Indeed. How have you blundered upon that solution?”
“Mr. Bruce, this time I am right, and you know it. It was Sir Charles Dyke who killed his wife. Nobody else had anything else to do with it, so far as I can guess. But if you haven’t seen Jane Harding, I wonder how you found out.”
“You are speaking in riddles. Pray explain yourself.”
“If Sir Charles Dyke had not been out of town, the riddle would have been answered by this time in the easiest way, as I should have locked him up.”
“Excellent. You remain faithful to tradition.”
“Mr. Bruce, please don’t try to humbug me, for the sake of your friend. I am quite in earnest. I have come to you for advice. Sir Charles Dyke is guilty enough.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“To help me to adopt the proper course. The whole thing seems so astounding that I can hardly trust my own senses. I spoke hastily just now. I would not have touched Sir Charles before consulting you. I was never in such a mixed-up condition in my life.”
Whatever the source of his information, the detective had evidently arrived at the same conclusion as Bruce himself. There was nothing for it but to endeavor to reason out the situation calmly and follow the best method of dealing with it suggested by their joint intelligence. Claude motioned the detective to a chair, imposed silence by a look, and summoned Smith. He was faint from want of food. With returning equanimity he resolved first to restore his strength, as he would need all his powers to wrestle with events before he slept that night.
Mr. White, nothing loth, joined him in a simple meal, and by tacit consent no reference was made to the one engrossing topic in their thoughts until the table was cleared.
“And now, Mr. White,” demanded the barrister, “what have you found out?”
“During the last two days,” he replied, “I have been unsuccessfully trying to trace Colonel Montgomery. No matter what I did I failed. I got hold of several of Mrs. Hillmer’s tradespeople, but she always paid her bills with her own cheques, and none of them had ever heard of a Colonel Montgomery. That furniture business puzzled me a lot – the change of the drawing-room set from one flat to another on November 7, I mean. So I discovered the address of the people who supplied the new articles to Mrs. Hillmer – ”
“How?”
“Through the maid, Dobson. Mrs. Hillmer has given her notice to leave, and the girl is furious about it, as she appears to have had a very easy place there. I think it came to Mrs. Hillmer’s ears that she talked to me.”
“I see. Proceed.”
“Here I hit upon a slight clue. It was a gentleman who ordered the new furniture, and directed the transfer of the articles replaced from No. 61 to No. 12 Raleigh Mansions. He did this early in the morning of November 7, and the foreman in charge of the job remembered that there was some bother about it, as neither Mrs. Hillmer nor Mr. Corbett, as Mensmore used to be called, knew anything about it. But the gentleman came the same morning and explained matters. It struck the foreman as funny that there should be such a fearful hurry about refurnishing a drawing-room, for the gentleman did not care what the cost was so long as the job was carried out at express speed. Another odd thing was that Mrs. Hillmer paid for the articles, though she had not ordered them nor did she appear to want them. The man was quite sure that Mensmore’s first knowledge of the affair came with the arrival of the first batch of articles from Mrs. Hillmer’s flat, but he could only describe the mysterious agent as being a regular swell. He afterwards identified a portrait of Sir Charles Dyke as being exactly like the man he had seen, if not the man himself.”
“How did you come to have a portrait of Sir Charles in your possession?”
“That appears later,” said the detective, full of professional pride at the undoubtedly smart manner in which he had manipulated his facts once they were placed in order before him.
“Of course,” he went on, “I jumped at the conclusion that the stranger was this Colonel Montgomery. Then, while closely questioning the maid about the events of November 7, she suddenly remembered that she lost an old skirt and coat about that time. They had vanished from her room, and she had never laid eyes on them since. This set me thinking. I confronted her with the clothes worn by Lady Dyke when she was found in the river, and I’m jiggered if Dobson didn’t recognize them at once as being her missing property. Now, wasn’t that a rum go?”
“It certainly was,” said Bruce, who was piecing together the story of the murder in his mind as each additional detail came to light.
“Naturally I thought harder than ever after that. It then occurred to me that Jane Harding must have had some powerful reasons for so suddenly shutting up about the identification of her mistress’s underclothing. She was right enough, as we know, in regard to the skirt and coat, but she admitted to me that the linen on the dead body was just the same as Lady Dyke’s. Curiously enough, it was not marked by initials, crest, or laundry-mark, and I ascertained months ago that owing to some fad of her ladyship’s, all the family washing was done on the estate in Yorkshire. This explained the absence of the otherwise inevitable laundry-mark.”
“Thus far you are coherence itself.”
“Well,” said Mr. White complacently, “I was a long time getting to work, Mr. Bruce, and had it not been for your help I should probably never have got at the truth, but I flatter myself that, once on the right track, I seldom leave it. However, as I was saying, I felt that Jane Harding knew a good deal more than she would tell, except under pressure, so I decided to put that pressure on.”
“In what way?”
“I frightened her. Played off on her a bit of the stage business she is so fond of. This afternoon I placed a pair of handcuffs in my pocket and went to her place at Bloomsbury, having previously prepared a bogus warrant for her arrest on a charge of complicity in the murder of Lady Dyke.”
“It was a dangerous game!”
“Very. If it had gone wrong and reached the ears of the Commissioner or got into the papers, I should have been reduced or dismissed. But what is a policeman to do in such cases? I was losing my temper over this infernal inquiry and never obtaining any real light, though always coming across startling developments. It had to end somehow, and I took the chance. The make-believe warrant and the production of handcuffs for a woman – they are never used, you know, in reality – have often been trump-cards for us when everything else failed.”
“This time, then, the ‘properties’ made up the ‘show,’ as Miss Harding would put it?”
“They did, and no mistake. I gave her no time to think or act. I found her sitting with her mother, admiring a new carpet she had just laid down. I said, ‘Is your name Jane Harding, now engaged at the Jollity Theatre, under the alias of Marie le Marchant, but formerly a maid in the service of Lady Dyke?’ She grew very white, and said ‘Yes,’ while her mother clutched hold of her, terrified. Then I whipped out the warrant and the cuffs. My, but you should have heard them squeal when the bracelets clinked together. ‘What has my child done?’ screamed the mother. ‘Perhaps nothing, madam,’ I answered; ‘but she is guilty in the eyes of the law just the same if she persists in screening the guilty parties.’ Jane Harding was trembling and blubbering, but she said, ‘It is very hard on me. I have done nothing.’ I trembled myself then, as I feared that she might offer to come with me to the police station, in which case I should have been dished. But the mother fixed the affair splendidly. ‘I am sure my daughter will not conceal anything,’ she said, ‘and it is a shame to disgrace her in this way without telling what it is you want to know.’ I took the cue in an instant. ‘I am empowered,’ I said, ‘to suspend this warrant, and perhaps do away with it altogether, if she answers my questions fully and truthfully.’ ‘Why, of course she will,’ said the mother, and the girl, though desperately upset, whimpered her agreement. With that I got the whole story.”
“Sir Charles Dyke inspired her actions, I suppose.”
“From the very beginning almost. At first Jane Harding herself believed, when she gave evidence at the inquest, that the body she saw was not that of Lady Dyke; but afterwards she changed her opinion, especially when she recalled the exact pattern and materials of the underclothing. Then my inquiries put her on the scent. Being rather a sharp girl, she jumped to the conclusion that Sir Charles knew more about the matter than he professed. In any case, her place was gone, and she would soon be dismissed, so she resolved on a plan even bolder than mine in threatening to lock her up. She watched her opportunity, found Sir Charles alone one day, and told him that from certain things within her knowledge, she thought it her duty to go to the police-station. He was startled, she could see, and asked her to explain herself. She said that her mistress had been killed, and she might be able to put the police on the right track. He hesitated, not knowing what to say; so she hinted that it would mean a lot of trouble for her, and she would prefer, if she had £500, to go to America, and let the matter drop altogether. He told her that he did not desire to have Lady Dyke’s name brought into public notoriety. Sooner than to allow such a thing to occur he would give her the money. An hour later he handed her fifty ten-pound notes.”
“What a wretched mistake,” cried Bruce involuntarily. This unmasking of his unfortunate friend’s duplicity was the most painful feature of all to him.
“Perhaps it was,” replied the detective, “but the thing is not yet quite clear to me. That is why I am here. But to continue. The girl admitted that she lost her head a bit. Instead of leaving the house openly, without attracting comment, she simply bolted, thus giving rise to the second sensational element attending Lady Dyke’s disappearance. But she resolved to be faithful to her promise. When you found her she held her tongue, and even wrote to Sir Charles to assure him that she had not spoken a word to a soul. He sent for her, and pitched into her about not going to America, but took her address in case he wished to see her again.”
“He recognized her letter-writing powers, no doubt.”
“Evidently. She was surprised last Thursday week to receive a telegram asking her to meet him at York Station. When she arrived there he asked her to write the letter he handed to you and to post it in London on Saturday evening. He explained that his action was due to his keen anxiety to shield his wife’s name, and that this letter would settle the affair altogether. As he handed her another bundle of notes, and promised to settle £100 a year on her for life, she was willing enough to help him. During your interview with her you guessed the reason why she wrote Lady Dyke’s hand so perfectly. She had copied it for three years.”
“All this must have astonished you considerably?”
“Mr. Bruce, astonished isn’t the word. I was flabbergasted! Once she started talking I let her alone, only rattling the handcuffs when she seemed inclined to stop. But all the time I felt as if the top of my head had been blown off.”
“I imagine she had not much more to tell you?”
“She pitched into you as the cause of all the mischief, and went so far as to say that she was sure it was not Sir Charles who killed Lady Dyke, but you yourself.”
Bruce winced at Jane Harding’s logic. Were he able to retrieve the past three months the mystery of Lady Dyke’s death would have remained a mystery forever.
“Now about the photograph,” said the detective. “After I had left Jane Harding with a solemn warning to speak to no one until I saw her again, I made a round of the fashionable photographers and soon obtained an excellent likeness of Sir Charles. I showed it to Dobson, and she said: ‘That is Colonel Montgomery.’ I showed it to the foreman of the furniture warehouse, and he said: ‘That is the image of the man who ordered Mrs. Hillmer’s suite.’ Now, what on earth is the upshot of this business to be? I called at Wensley House, but was told Sir Charles was not in town. Had he been in, I would not have seen him until I had discussed matters with you.”
“That is very good of you, Mr. White. May I ask your reason for showing him this consideration?”
The policeman, who was very earnest and very excited, banged his hand on the table as he cried:
“Don’t you see what all this amounts to? I have no option but to arrest Sir Charles Dyke for the murder of his wife.”
“That is a sad conclusion.”
“And do you believe he killed her?”
“Strange as it may seem to you, I do not.”
“And I’m jiggered if I do either.”
“I – I am greatly obliged to you, White.”
Claude bent his head almost to his knees, and for some minutes there was complete silence. When he again looked at the detective there were tears in his eyes.
“What can we do to unravel this tangled skein without creating untold mischief?” he murmured.
“It beats me, sir,” was the perplexed answer. “But when I came in I imagined that Jane Harding or some one had been to see you. Surely, you had learned something of all this before my arrival?”
“Yes, indeed. I had reached your goal, but by a different route. Unfortunately, my discovery only goes to confirm yours.”
Bruce then told him of his visit to the lawyer’s office, and its result. Mr. White listened to the recital with knitted brows.
“It is very clear,” he said, when the barrister had ended, “that Lady Dyke was killed in Mrs. Hillmer’s flat, that Sir Charles knew of her death, that he himself conveyed the body to the river bank at Putney, and that ever since he has tried to throw dust in our eyes and prevent any knowledge of the true state of affairs reaching us.”
“Your summary cannot be disputed in the least particular.”
“Well, Mr. Bruce, we must do something. If you don’t like to interfere, then I must.”
“There is but one person in the world who can enlighten us as to the facts. That person obviously is Sir Charles Dyke himself.”
“Unquestionably.”
Bruce looked at his watch. It was 10.30 P.M. He rose.
“Let us go to him,” he said.
“But he is not in London.”
“He is. I expect you will find that he gave orders for no one to be admitted, and told the servants to say he had left town to make the denial more emphatic.”
“It will be a terrible business, I fear, Mr. Bruce.”
“I dread it – on my soul I do. But I cannot shirk this final attempt to save my friend. My presence may tend to help forward a final and full explanation. No matter what the pain to myself, I must be present. Come, it is late already!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
SIR CHARLES DYKE’S JOURNEY
The streets were comparatively deserted as they drove quickly up Whitehall and crossed the south side of Trafalgar Square. It is a common belief, even among Londoners themselves, that the traffic is dense in the main thoroughfares at all hours of the night until twelve o’clock has long past.
But to the experienced eye there is a marked hiatus between half-past nine and eleven o’clock. At such a time Charing Cross is negotiable, Piccadilly Circus loses much of its terror, and a hansom may turn out of Regent Street into Oxford Street without the fare being impelled to clutch convulsively at the brass window-slide in a make-believe effort to save the vehicle from being crushed like a walnut shell between two heavy ’buses.
Such considerations did not appeal to the barrister and his companion on this occasion.
For some inexplicable cause they both felt that they were in a desperate hurry.
A momentary stoppage at the turn into Orchard Street caused each man to swear, quite unconsciously. Now that the supreme moment in this most painful investigation was at hand they resented the slightest delay. Though they were barely fifteen minutes in the cab, it seemed an hour before they alighted at Wensley House, Portman Square.
In response to an imperative ring a footman appeared. Instead of answering the barrister’s question as to whether Sir Charles was at home or not, he said: “You are Mr. Bruce, sir, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Sir Charles is at home, but he retired to his room before dinner. He is not well, and he may have gone to bed, but he said that if you came you were to be admitted. I will ask Mr. Thompson.”
“Better send Thompson to me,” said Bruce decisively; and in a minute the old butler stood before him.
“I hear that Sir Charles has retired for the night,” said Claude.
Thompson had caught sight of the detective standing on the steps. A few hours earlier he had himself told him that the baronet was out of town. It was an awkward dilemma, and he coughed doubtingly while he racked his brains for a judicious answer.
But Bruce grasped his difficulty. “It is all right, Thompson. Mr. White quite understands the position. Do you think Sir Charles is in bed?”
“I will go and see, sir. He was very anxious that you should be sent upstairs if you called. But that was when he was in the library.”
Bruce and the detective entered the hall, the butler closed the door behind them, and then solemnly ascended the stairs to Sir Charles Dyke’s bedroom, which was situated on the first floor along a corridor towards the back of the house.
They distinctly heard the polite knock at the door and Thompson’s query, “Are you asleep, Sir Charles?”
After a pause, there was another knock, and the same question in a slightly louder key.
Then the butler returned, saying as he came down the stairs:
“Sir Charles seems to be sound asleep, sir.”
Bruce and the detective exchanged glances. The barrister was disappointed, almost perturbed, but he said:
“In that case we will not disturb him. Sir Charles does not often retire so early.”
“No, sir. I have never known him to go to his room so early before. He told me not to serve dinner, as he wasn’t well. He would not let me get anything for him. He just took some wine, and I have not seen him since.”
“Since when?”
“About 7.30, sir.”
Bruce turned to depart, but Thompson, with the privilege of an old servant when talking to one whom he knew to be on familiar terms with his master, whispered:
“That there blessed maid turned up again this afternoon, sir.”
The barrister started violently.
“Not Jane Harding, surely?”
“Yes, sir. She came at four o’clock and asked for Sir Charles, as bold as brass.”
“Did he see her?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“Do you hear that, White?”
The detective nodded.
“She must have reached the house about half-an-hour before me,” he said, addressing the butler.
“That’s about right, sir.”
“But I understood,” went on Bruce, “that Sir Charles was not at home to ordinary callers?”
Thompson shuffled about somewhat uneasily. He wished now he had held his tongue.
“I had my orders, sir,” he murmured, in extenuation of his apparently diverse actions.
“Tell me what your orders were,” persisted Bruce.
The man hesitated, not wishful to offend his master’s friend, but too well trained to reveal the explicit instructions given him by Sir Charles Dyke.
“Do not be afraid. I will explain everything to Sir Charles personally. We cannot best judge what to do – whether to wake him or not – unless we know the position,” went on the barrister.
Thus absolved from blame, Thompson took from his waistcoat pocket a folded sheet of notepaper.
“I don’t pretend to understand the reason, sir,” he said, “but Sir Charles wrote this himself, and told me to be careful to obey him exactly.”
The barrister eagerly grasped the note and read:
“If Mr. Bruce, Jane Harding, or Mrs. Hillmer should call, admit any of them immediately. To all others say that I have left town – some days ago, should they ask you.
“C. D.”
White, round-eyed and bullet-headed, gazed with goggle orbs over Bruce’s shoulder.
“That settles it, Mr. Bruce,” he said. “We must see him.”
“Thompson,” said Bruce, “does Sir Charles usually lock his door?”
“Never, sir.”
“Very well. Knock again, and then try the door. We will go with you.”
Something in the barrister’s manner rather than his words sent a cold shiver down the old butler’s spine.
“I do hope there’s nothing wrong, sir,” he commenced; but Bruce was already half-way up the stairs. Both he and White guessed what had happened. They knew that poor Thompson’s repeated summons at the bedroom door would remain forever unanswered – that the unfortunate baronet had quitted the dread certainties of this world for the uncertainties of the next.
They were not mistaken. A few minutes later they found him listlessly drooping over the side of the chair in which he was seated, partly undressed, and seemingly overcome at the moment when he was about to take off his boots.
On a table near him were two bottles, both half-emptied, and an empty wineglass. Each of the bottles bore the label of a well-known chemist. One was endorsed “Sleeping-draught,” the other “Poison,” and “Chloral.”
The three men were pale as the limp, inanimate form in the chair while they silently noted these details. Bruce raised the head of his friend in the hope that life might not yet be extinct. But Sir Charles Dyke had taken his measures effectually. Though the rigor mortis had not set in, he had evidently been dead some time.
Thompson, quite beside himself with grief, dropped to his knees by his master’s side.
“Sir Charles!” he wailed. “Sir Charles! For the love of Heaven, speak to us. You can’t be dead. Oh, you can’t. It ain’t fair. You’re too young to die. What curse has come upon the house that both should go?”
Bruce leaned over and shook the old butler firmly by the shoulder.
“Thompson,” he said impressively, for now that the crisis he feared had come and gone, he exercised full control over himself. “Thompson, if you ever wished to serve Sir Charles you must do so now by remaining calm. For his sake, help us, and do not create an unnecessary scene.”
Governed by the more powerful nature, the affrighted man struggled to his feet.
“What shall I do?” he whimpered. “Shall I send for a doctor?”
“Yes; say Sir Charles is very ill. Not a word to a soul about what has happened until we have carefully examined the room.”
At that instant Mr. White caught sight of a large and bulky envelope, which had fallen to the floor near the chair on which Sir Charles was seated.
Picking it up, he found it was addressed, “Claude Bruce, Esq. To be delivered to him at once.”
“This will explain matters, I expect,” said the detective.
“Whatever could have come to my master to do such a thing?” groaned Thompson, turning to reach the door.
“Come back,” cried Bruce sharply. “Now, look here, Thompson,” he went on, placing both his hands on the butler’s shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes, “it is imperative that you should pull yourself together. That sort of remark will never do. Sir Charles has simply taken an over-dose of chloral accidentally. He has slept badly ever since Lady Dyke’s death, you understand, and has been in the habit of taking sleeping-draughts. Now, before you leave the room tell me exactly what has happened, in your own language.”
“I can’t put it together now, sir, but I won’t say anything to anybody. You can trust me for that. Why, I loved him as my own son, I did.”
“Yes, I know that well. But remember. An over-dose. An accident. Nothing else. Do you follow me?”
“Quite, sir. Heaven help us all.”
“Very well. Now send for the doctor, without needlessly alarming the other servants.”
Bruce placed the envelope in the pocket of his overcoat, saying to the detective:
“We will examine this later, White. Just now we must do what we can to avoid a scandal. The case between Lady Dyke and her husband will be settled by a higher tribunal than we had counted upon.”
“It certainly looks like an accident, Mr. Bruce,” was the answer, “but it all depends upon the view the doctor takes. And you know, of course, that I shall have to report the actual facts to my superiors.”
“That is obvious. Yet no harm is done at this early stage in taking such steps as may finally render undue publicity needless. It may be impossible; but on the other hand, until we have heard Sir Charles’s version, contained, I suppose, in this letter to me, it is advisable to sustain the theory of an accidental death.”
“Anything I can do to help you will be done,” replied the detective. With that they dropped the subject, and more carefully scrutinized the room.
To all intents and purposes Sir Charles Dyke might, indeed, have brought about the catastrophe inadvertently. The sleeping-draught bore the ledger number of its prescription, and there is nothing unusual in a patient striving to help the cautious dose ordered by a physician by the addition of a more powerful nostrum.
His partly dressed state, too, argued that he had taken the fatal mixture at a time when he contemplated retiring to rest forthwith. A fire still burned in the grate. On the mantelpiece – in a position where the baronet must see it until the moment when all things faded from his vision – was a beautiful miniature of his wife.
The detective, with professional nonchalance, soon sat down. There was nothing to do but await the arrival of the doctor, and, having heard his report, go home.
In the quietude of the room, with the strain relaxed, Bruce was profoundly moved by the spectacle of his dead friend. Whatever his logical faculties might argue, he could not regard this man as a murderer. If Lady Dyke met her death at his hand then it must have been the result of some terrible mistake – of some momentary outburst of passion which never contemplated such a sequel.
Poisons which kill by stupefaction do not distort their victims as in cases where violent irritants are used. Sir Charles Dyke seemed to live in a deep sleep, exhausted by toil or pain – sleep the counterfeit of death – while the bright colors and speaking eyes of the miniature counterfeited life. Standing between these two – both the mere images of the man and the woman he had known so well – the barrister insensibly felt that at last they had peace.
It was his first experience of the tremendous change in the relationship established by death. It utterly overpowered him. No mere words could express his emotions. Between him and those that had been was imposed the impenetrable wall of eternity.
A bustle in the hall beneath aroused him from his grief-stricken stupor, and Mr. White’s commonplace tones sounded strange to his ears.
“Here’s the doctor.”
A well-known physician hastened to the room. Thompson had carefully followed instructions. The doctor was not prepared for the condition of affairs that a glance revealed to his practised eye.
“Surely he is not dead?” he cried, looking from the form in the chair to the two men.
Bruce answered him:
“Yes, for some hours, I fear, but we wanted to avoid spreading unnecessary rumors until – ”
“I understand. My poor friend! How came this to happen?”
The skilled practitioner merely lifted one of the dead man’s eyelids, and then turned to examine the bottles on the table.
“My own prescription,” he said, after tasting the contents of one phial. “Ah, this was bad; why did he not consult me?” and he sadly shook his head as he tasted the remaining liquid in the second.
“What do you make of it?” said Bruce.
He looked the other steadily in the face and the doctor interpreted the cause of his anxiety.
“A clear case of accidental poisoning,” he replied. “Sir Charles has consulted me several times during the past week on account of his extreme insomnia. I specifically warned him against overdoing my treatment. Change of air, exercise, and diet are the true specifics for sleeplessness, especially when induced, as his was, by a morbid state of mind.”
“You mean – ”
“That Sir Charles has never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death. I did not know of it myself until it was announced recently, and I gathered from him that the manner of her demise was partly unaccounted for. Altogether, it is a sad business that such a couple should be taken in such a manner.”
Mr. White was industriously taking notes the while, and the doctor regarded him with a questioning look.
“This gentleman is in the police,” explained Bruce.
“Indeed!”
“Yes. We came here by mere accident. Mr. White and I were engaged in an important inquiry – the cause of Lady Dyke’s disappearance, in fact – and we hurried here at a late hour to consult with Sir Charles. Hence our presence and this discovery.”
“How strange!”
“There is no reason now,” broke in the detective, “why the body should not be moved?”
Claude shuddered at the phrase. It suggested the inevitable.
“Not in the least. I am quite satisfied as to the cause of death.”
The despatch of telegrams and other necessary details kept Bruce busily employed until two o’clock. Not until he reached the privacy of his own library was he able to break the seal of the packet left for him as the final act and word of the late Sir Charles Dyke.