Mr. Fowler Wright's versatility is not limited to romantic fiction of the "Deluge" and "Island of Captain Sparrow" class, which he writes under his own name, and mystery stories, which, as everybody knows, he publishes under the pseudonym "Sydney Fowler." Even his mystery stories are of really divergent character. "The Secret of the Screen" combines the light vein of "Arresting Delia" with the elements of true mystery fiction. In brief, this novel may be described as containing crime, romance, and a rich spice of humour.
As a recent reviewer remarked: "Mr. Sydney Fowler" is never dull," and it is certainly true that there is not a dull moment in this book.
CHAPTER I
IT was in the August of 1929 that Evelyn Merivale had left Saxton Court to avoid a man whom her brother wished her to marry.
It was in February, 1930, that she returned home, having had an interesting experience as chauffeuse-secretary to Lady Barbara Dillington, inherited a sum of £20,000 under the will of Mr. Wilfrid Ralston; (this being the residue of his brother's ill-gotten, gains, after the provision of an annuity for their mother at Todmorden), and being in possession of a formula of an estimated value of one million pounds.
In addition to these circumstances, she had met the man to avoid whom she had left home, and was inclined to revise her opinion concerning him (but we must not take that too seriously, for a woman may change her mind for a second time just as easily as a first); she had to look forward to the unpleasant ordeal of having some stitches taken out from around the top joint of her little finger; and she was sadly aware that her weight had increased by something over six pounds during her urban experiences, and that her days must now be saddened by the harsh discipline of a healthy appetite, if she were not to allow herself to commence the fatal drift that anchors at last in the port of the heavy-weights - anchors and does not leave.
A consideration of these various circumstances inclined her to the opinion that things might have been worse, and she would have endorsed Browning's optimistic dictum as to the state of creation very readily as she ran the two-seater car (which she had bought last week on the credit of her expectations, and a reference from her solicitor, Mr. Jellipot) up the drive and heard the pigeons cooing on the frosty tiles of the stables.
She was a young lady of active habits, very little likely to become the author of a sonnet on Mutability or anything else, but even she must observe the incessant changes of circumstance which are too gradual to be noticed while we are the centre of their occurrence, but which become disconcertingly prominent when we return from a period of absence, though it be only of a few months. . .
"Where's Foster?" she asked rather sharply of the strange man who came forward to open the garage doors as her car turned into the yard.
"Foster left, Miss, a few weeks ago. I don't know rightly why. I've been here a week come Monday."
"And what's your name?"
"Mitchell, Miss. Ted Mitchell."
"You don't belong to round here?"
"No, Miss. I've come over from Catesby. I was groom there at the Hall, and got sacked when they sold the stud."
"I see. Well, Ted, I shall want Gwen ready tomorrow as soon as breakfast is over. You'd better bring her round about nine."
"Gwen, Miss?" the man said vaguely.
"Yes. Gwen. The grey filly. I suppose she's - - "
"Oh yes, Miss. But we don't call her that. We call her Ailsa. His lordship - - "
"Yes. So he would. But she's Gwen now. She went on to the house, entering by a side door, and meeting Kate, the parlourmaid, as she made her way to the front hall.
"Good afternoon, Kate," she answered the girl's pleased greeting. "Yes. So am I. Have my trunks come?"
"Yes, Miss, they came this morning. Mary's unpacking them now."
She made her way to the stairs, intending to go to her own room, but did not do so without another interruption. The footman, a lengthy youth burdened with the name of Christopher, barred her way respectfully to announce that his lordship was in the library, and had expressed a wish to see her immediately on her arrival.
"Then he'll have to wait till I come down," she answered, with a smiling quietness of voice which discounted the cool abruptness of her decision.
"Yes, Miss Evelyn, I'll tell him you won't be long."
Christopher had first come as boot-boy eight years ago, shortly before her father's death, when she, who was twenty now, had been of about his own age, and Cyril Merivale, now Lord Britleigh, had been ten years older. He was familiar with his master's alert impatiences, and the quiet independence with which from childhood she had always met them.
But she called him back now to say, "But I thought Lord Britleigh was up in town."
"He came back, Miss Evelyn, about half an hour ago."
"Very well. . . What did you say, Chris?"
"There s a telegram for you in the hall, Miss. I thought, you might like to know."
"Very well. Fetch it along."
She wondered who could be communicating with her in such a way almost before she was home. It was only yesterday morning that she had agreed to return. . . But she was interrupted, as she was tearing open the yellow envelope, by her brother's impatient voice at the library door.
"Christopher, I told you to tell Miss Evelyn. . . Oh, that you? Look here, Evelyn, I told him to tell you I wanted a talk as soon as you arrived. . . . And there's someone on the telephone for you now . . . Someone who won't give his name."
"All right, Cyril. There's no need to fuss," she answered coolly, but in a fresh wonder at the atmosphere of excitement around her. She had thought to come back to the quietness of the country isolation of Saxton in the winter months, where she could forget the incidents of which she had been the centre. . . . Not waiting to open the telegram further, she went on to the telephone.
"It's the police-station at Hilton," she said, as she put back the receiver. "Inspector Combridge is coming to see me this evening, and doesn't want me to go out till he arrives, nor to mention whom he is when he calls. He'll be Mr. Smithson. I suppose he didn't mean I was to keep it from you! . . . I wonder why he didn't ring up direct, instead of telling them to do it from Hilton."
"Perhaps he didn't want anyone listening-in. They may do it more to the long-distance calls."
"But he must have called the station up from London."
"Then he must have wanted to speak to them, as well as to get the message to you."
"Yes. I wonder why. There must be something fresh to bring him down here. It looks as though I'd better have stayed where I was. . . ."
"Well, there's something else I want to talk to you about. Vantons have refused to ratify your agreement this morning."
"Yes," she said quietly, "I know that."
"But I've only just come from the board meeting. How on earth . . ."
She looked down at the now open telegram in her hand. "Mr. Jellipot has sent me the information. He is coming here to see me this evening. . . . Why did they turn it down?"
"If you come and sit down - - "
"If you'll have the patience to wait for about a quarter of an hour."
"Very well. But it's an important matter. Reggie says - - "
You know I came back on your promise that you wouldn't mention his name."
"Yes, that was what he proposed himself. But this is business."
"So was the other with you," she answered, smiling. "Everything is. Anyway, this business has got to wait for half an hour. I'd better change while I'm about it, and then I'll talk till dinner-time, if you want to; and, if it's business, I expect you will."
CHAPTER II
"I DON'T usually talk about what goes on at a board meeting when I get outside," Lord Britleigh began, when the conversation was resumed half an hour later, "but you've got a right to know, and, anyway, Jellipot was there most of the time, so you'd get it from him.
"To begin with, Blinkwell reported against it. He said it wouldn't work. The pictures don't last on the screen. He had Nichols with him, and Ramsbottom, and Groves, and they all said the same. The picture blurred and faded out in places almost completely."
"But you knew that, and Mr. Jellipot - and, of course, Professor Blinkwell had heard. We all knew that the screen was a fake of Wilfrid's."
"Yes, so we did, most of us, more or less. Though there's no saying how much each believed. But you see that didn't alter the fact. The demonstration had failed, and we were entitled to turn you down."
"You needn't talk as though it was me."
"Well, it is now. It's all yours under Ralston's will. And the formula's in your hands. . . . You see, we'd done just what the contract required. There's been a scene acted before the screen, and the start of it photographed, and then it was left alone for a week, and they went back, and the key photographs worked well enough, and they picked it up on the screen but after that it came blurred in places, or almost blank."
"Yes. We knew it would. Have they turned it down finally because of that? Aren't they willing for us to show them how it can work?"
"They might be, or not. They didn't all agree on the board. But the point is that it's off now, and you're free to do what you like. . . . And if it's all that you think, I dare say that Reggie and I - - "
"I dare say you could. Did you vote for turning it down?"
"I didn't vote either way. I said that you, being my sister, and it having been left to you, I thought I'd better stand back."
"And you were to have put up a lot of the money if it had come off?"
"Yes. £75,000."
"I see. Cyril, you are clever. . . . What I can't see is why the Professor wanted to turn it down. He knew well enough."
"That's one thing I want to talk to you about. Are you sure he hasn't got the whole thing up his sleeve? Because, if he has, there's only one thing to do, and that's to work through the night and have the papers ready to make an application when the Patent office opens tomorrow morning. . . . of course, he may have done it this afternoon. But I scarcely think he would. He'd prefer it to date from the day after we'd sent the formal letter to Jellipot turning it down, he being in the position he is. It'll look queer enough at the best, but he'll probably say that it's his own improvement, working on Ralston's idea."
"I should think the formula in Wilfrid's handwriting could upset that."
"So it might. I can't say. We should know, one way or other, when the lawyers had finished drawing cheques on us to pay them for finding out. But the first question is, has he got it or not?"
"I don't see how he could. . . . He might hope to find out. . . . But I know that Wilfrid felt sure that no one could. I'm sure he hasn't got anything from me. . . . I won't be rushed, anyway. Wilfrid thought that keeping it secret was better than patenting it till someone was really ready to take it up. . . . I think it ought to be done as he wished. . . . I'm sorry Vantons are turning it down. I should have thought they would have been glad to try it out further."
"I don't think it's any use expecting that."
"You don't want it to be."
"Perhaps not. But I mean what I say, all the same. Nichols wanted to go on, and cut you down in the price if it turned out right. He said a woman thinks a lot of a few thousands. 'Let her see the notes on the table.' That was what he said, before Jellipot came in. And Ramsbottom was inclined to go with him for once, which he doesn't often do. But the chairman - that's Levinstein - put his foot down. He said he'd rather be clear of it, bad or good. It had meant two murders already, and the men who were murdered seemed to be crooks more or less, and those who'd done them in couldn't be any better, and - - "
"But the murders weren't anything to do with it. Not Dudley's, anyway."
"Well, he doesn't know that. No one does, except ourselves and as many as are in the secret at Scotland Yard. And, if you come to think, we don't really know why the Professor shot Wilfrid Ralston, whatever we may guess. . . . And of course Levinstein hasn't the least idea it was he."
"Perhaps he thinks it was I, if he thinks it was because of this formula. I'm the one that's got it now, and the benefit of Wilfrid's will too."
"I don't suppose he thinks that. He's too shrewd. But he doesn't know what to think, and so he draws back. That's how he always would act in such a position. . . . And the matter's too big, even for Vantons, unless we are all agreed. We were putting up half the money from the firm's account, and the rest from among ourselves. The real question now . . ."
The door opened and Christopher appeared to announce that Mr. Smithson had called to see Miss Merivale.
CHAPTER III
THERE were two guests to dinner that night at Saxton. Inspector Combridge was persuaded to stay without difficulty. He mentioned that he had not come socially prepared, and that his car was waiting to take him back, but that was no more than a formality. When he was occupied professionally he did not care a straw how he was dressed, nor how those might be dressed who sat opposite to him. His mind was concerned with the question of how far he should talk to Miss Merivale in her brother s presence, and what opportunities there would be for a privacy which would not be significant in its exclusion, should he decide in that direction.
Mr. Jellipot was more relvctant to stay. He also was conscious of unsuitability of attire, to which he attached greater importance. He wished to be back at business in the morning, and he depended upon the last train from Hilton for his return, which left at 9. 13 p.m.; he wished to see Miss Merivale only, and saw no reason for reticence on that point.
She was his client, and with her brother he had no business at all. It was only when he found that Evelyn had the Inspector already on her hands, and that gentleman, who saw the position, and had his own reasons for the proposal, offered to run him back in his own car, that he reluctantly gave way. They were both too cautious to touch on the subjects that held their minds till the dinner was over and coffee had been served in the lounge. There had been an unwary word from Evelyn during the dinner, when she had addressed the Inspector by that title, which might have meant some gossip in the servants' hall, but he had met the position with an instant adroitness, answering that he should be called an examiner rather than an inspector, and giving an impression that the title which she had been attributing to him was that of an Inspector of Schools.
But though there had, so far, been no direct allusion to the circumstances which had brought them together, the delay had not been fruitless, and these four protagonists of a drama that was behind them and in all their minds, and of another that was before them which they could not guess, were disposed to a larger measure of confidence than would have been the case without that preliminary intercourse.
Inspector Combridge, for one, had made up his mind that what he had to say to Evelyn Merivale might well be said also to her solicitor, and to a brother who, whatever difference might have divided them recently, could still be counted on (he thought) to put his sister's safety before any question of business interests, and her business interests second only to his own. He began immediately that they were freed from the danger of overhearing.
"You'll easily understand, Miss Merivale, that we learn things at Scotland Yard that we can't use, and sometimes in such ways that we can't say how we've learnt them at all, and if I'm rather vague in the warning that I've come down to give you tonight, I don't want you to take it less seriously on that account."
"Perhaps you'd rather speak to me alone? If so - - "
"No, I don't think there's any need for that. What I say may be just as well heard by these gentlemen here; it's not much more than reminding you of things that you know already, and asking you to see what they mean.
"You know, because everyone knows, that we've arrested more people over the world in connection with the drug traffic - and more important people - in the last ten days than in the ten years before, and most people think we've been able to pull this off because of the work of the League of Nations, and the credit goes to Geneva, and we're content to let it, but Miss Merivale knows the truth. She knows that it all comes of what happened in an upstairs room at Number Thirty, Bell Street, about a fortnight ago, and that it's happening through information we're receiving from a gentleman we won't name, though I've no doubt you all know who I mean. It's a thing we can't talk about, and there aren't more than three of us at the Yard, except the Commissioner himself, who know all the facts. I don't mean that they don't know at the Home Office - of course they do; and at the Foreign Office, more or less; but what I'm really meaning is this: We can't speak, but Miss Merivale knows what happened that night, and I expect she's told both of you gentlemen, and, if so, you'll understand what I mean without my saying more than I should."
"My client," Mr. Jellipot answered with his usual precision, "has, I have good reason to believe, given me her entire confidence."
"It's one lower than that for me," Lord Britleigh followed, "but I'm not quite in the dark."
"Very well," the Inspector went on, choosing his words slowly, "then you can understand this. When a man's lost a large part of his income - when he made it in criminal ways, and when he gave it up to save himself from jail or the rope - and when he sees a bigger thing than the one he's giving up almost under his hand, he's not likely to stick at a trifle to pull it in. . . . And you'll understand this too, that while a man's giving us information - and going on doing so - that's enabling us to lay the strongest gang of international criminals in the world by the heels, we can't act toward him just as we might like to do, even if we know he's a murderer (though I don't say we could have proved it in Court, even if things hadn't been as they are), and we don't want anything to happen that forces us to run him in, nor that makes it look as though we're letting him run loose to do anything he likes. . . . It's not quite an ordinary position. You're not in the dark as to where the danger lies. We all know well enough who shot Wilfrid Ralston, though we may have to guess, more or less, as to just why it was done, and we know that he would have treated Miss Merivale here in the same way. . . . He made that clear enough."
"Yes," Evelyn answered, looking at her damaged finger, "he was quite clear about that."
"Well, he's not likely to have changed; and though he wouldn't do a thing like that quite openly, or send us cards for the stalls, he's quite cunning and bold enough to calculate that we couldn't easily move against him, everything being as it is, unless we had very clear proof. You've got to deal with a man who has wealth, ability, exceptional scientific qualifications, and no scruples at all."
"I have already," Mr. Jellipot remarked, "put this aspect of the position before my client, and it was the main purpose of my hurried visit here to night. I felt - and I have no doubt that you will agree - that the refusal of Vantons, Ltd., to complete the purchase, and the fact that Professor Blinkwell advised them to that effect, produces an acute and urgent position, where there was previously no more than a potential danger. But we may surmise, may we not, that there is some more specific reason for the warning which you have felt it necessary to give?"
"I am sorry," Inspector Combridge answered, "that I cannot be more definite; but I may tell you that when I telephoned that I would be here tonight I was not aware of the result of the board meeting this morning, though it is what I should have anticipated would occur. . . . Would you tell us, Miss Merivale, confidentially, where the formula now is? If it were known that it has been securely deposited - - "
"It isn't deposited anywhere," Evelyn answered, "except in my own head. I've argued that over with Mr. Jellipot till we were both tired out. . . . It was Wilfrid's own way, and he wasn't a fool."
"Still," said her brother, "he got shot. You don't want - - "
"Not because of that. . . . You see, I've got the paper that he gave me - it's here in this bag now - and I've made a copy in case it got stolen or lost; but it'd be of no use to anyone without his explanations, which are not written at all."
"You mean," Lord Britleigh asked, "it's a kind of cipher? There aren't many of them that can't be read when there's a million at stake. . . . I've told Miss Merivale, Mr. Jellipot, that the proper thing to do is to get a patent agent working on this through the night, and be ready to lodge the papers when the office opens tomorrow. I wish you could persuade her. She never would listen to me. If we did that, we should know where we are."
"It isn't exactly a cipher, Cyril. It's simpler than that, and a bit cleverer."
"Can I see it?"
"Yes."
She took from her bag a small piece of folded paper, a leaf torn from a pocket-book, on which there was a column of five letters, with a corresponding one of figures beside them.
The three men passed it round in silence.
"Professor Blinkwell had this in his hands for some minutes?" the Inspector asked.
"Yes, he did."
"Long enough for him to have memorized it completely?"
"Yes, I dare say. I couldn't have done it. It wasn't exactly a quiet time. But he may have been feeling differently."
The three men looked at each other doubtfully. It would have been an unusual feat of memory, but the Professor was an exceptional man. If he had remembered it, and had solved the problem, it would explain his attitude at the morning's meeting. It might make Evelyn's personal position more secure in exact proportion to the hazard at which the invention lay.
"You say it isn't a cipher, Evelyn?"
"No, not exactly. There are some things there that don't belong, and some that are in the wrong order; and some ought to be there that aren't. I should think it would be millions to one against anyone getting it all right. Probably lots more than that."
"And the key's only in your own head?"
"Yes. That's the place."
"And if you were to die, this thing, and all that it means, would be lost for ever?"
"I'm feeling quite well, thank you, Cyril."
"I dare say you are; but you've heard the Inspector warn you of the risk - the absolutely needless risk - that you're running. I should have thought, after what you'd been through - - "
"Yes. You might. But, you see, it didn't work out like that. It was more like an insurance policy. If I'd had it all down on the sheet I'm not sure that I should be here now, even with Reggie turning up when he did and knocking the Professor flat with his shadow. I never thought bankers had any brains before that. . . . You know, Cyril, while I've got this thing in my head even you might take a little more care to see that I don't go without my tea."
"There is a good deal of force in Miss Merivale's argument," Mr. Jellipot conceded. "The trouble is, as I've put it to her already, that it gets us no further forward. However safe the formula may be where it is now, it can't be turned into anything useful till it's known to those who can handle it."
"I don't want to keep it where it is," Evelyn answered. "I only want to be sure that I shall be making it known in the right way. It seemed simple enough till we'd got Vantons' decision. If they agreed to complete, I'd got to give it to them, and I meant to keep it in the safest way in the meantime. But I don't know what's best to do now, and I'm willing to listen."
"I don't really come into the discussion," the Inspector interposed, "except so far as the question of Miss Merivale's personal safety is at stake. On that issue I am bound to advise her to rid herself of the custody of the secret as promptly as possible, in whatever form, and in such a way that it will be known that she has done so in all interested directions. In the meantime, I can only tell you that they will take such precautions as are possible at the Hilton Station, and that I am always available. I strongly advise, Miss Merivale, that you should not go out alone in the meantime, and that you sleep in a room which is more than usually well secured. It might be advisable to have the grounds watched in the night, but, in that case, you should inform Sergeant Merritt of any patrol which I may be made by your own servants. . . . I can't say more than that, and, if you'll excuse me now, I'll be getting back . . . or I can wait ten minutes if Mr. Jellipot has anything further that he wants to say to you tonight."
It appeared that Mr. Jellipot had. Mr. Jellipot had come over with the conviction that prompt action should be taken now that Vantons' decision had been given. He did not like being rushed. He was anxious to be back in town, but this was not a matter to be discussed while the Inspector was, so to speak, standing waiting at the door. Besides that, there was his promise to Sir Reginald. That gentleman had rung him up and had been urgent and explicit in the statement of his views on the position. Sir Reginald was an important man. Very important indeed. He could send enough business into Mr. Jellipot's office to keep him occupied for the rest of his life. While he hesitated in his reply, Lord Britleigh, whose thoughts moved in the same groove, interposed:
"I don't think we can spare Mr. Jellipot tonight, Inspector. I'm going to ask him to be kind enough to stay the night with us, and I'll run him up to town in good time tomorrow. . . . You see, Jellipot. I want to come to business terms with Miss Merivale without any delay, and when a man's dealing with his own sister, and in a matter like this - well, you'll probably agree that her legal adviser ought to be somewhere about."
Mr. Jellipot said that he thought perhaps he had better stay.
CHAPTER IV
"I WANT you to understand, Mr. Jellipot," Lord Britleigh began at once, when the Inspector had taken his leave, "that if this invention is all that it seems I am willing to see it through, and to find any money that may be needed. If it's any good at all it must be worth a huge sum - a sum hard to estimate at this stage. It is only necessary to put through some preliminary demonstrations, and we might be in a position to get almost anything from the public that we care to ask. Sir Reginald Crowe wants to come in on the ground floor with me, and I've told him he can if you consent."
"So I have understood."
"Well, we reckon we're strong enough together to do all that's necessary; and to protect our own interests if any infringement should be attempted. As to terms, I look on it as a family matter, and I'm not talking to you just as I should if it wasn't my sister's. You must tell me what you think fair, and there mayn't be much difficulty over that. Not if we're both reasonable.
"But there's one thing we've got to face, which may have been rather overlooked, though it was behind a good. deal that was said at Vantons' meeting this morning.
"We know that the demonstration proved a partial failure. It showed that Ralston had made a most interesting - indeed, an amazing - discovery, but it failed to show that it has the commercial possibilities that he claimed.
"Well, we know he said he meant it to be a fake, and he gave a good enough reason. We accept that. Personally, I believe it's going to prove all that he claimed. But we've got to face the fact that it isn't proved, and we've got to remember that he was one of the trickiest men that I ever met.
"We don't even know that he told Miss Merivale the truth, and we don't know that, even if his discovery was all that he claimed, that it hasn't gone to the grave with him."
"I agree with all that you say," Mr. Jellipot answered. "I have warned Miss Merivale that we may be dealing with something which will lead only to disappointment. But this consideration has led me to a rather different conclusion from that which you appear to have reached.
"I'm not alluding to any terms of purchase or option, to which I suppose you were referring just now. I hope we shall agree on those without undue difficulty, and I should advise Miss Merivale that she could not have her interests in better hands than in Sir Reginald's and yours.
"But when you propose an immediate patent application which involves a public disclosure of the formula as Miss Merivale had it communicated to her, I feel great difficulty in agreeing.
"If it should prove to be defective or incomplete in some adjustable way, we are simply inviting the successful competition of those who will be working upon it within a few hours of it being on the file.
"I see your point about Professor Blinkwell having had the document in his hands for some minutes, but I doubt that he could have memorized it in the time. I doubt very much that he attempted to do so, things being as they were, and it seems to be extremely improbable that it would be of any use to him if he did.
"There is another consideration that falls into the same scale. We've had a plain warning from Inspector Combridge that Miss Merivale is in danger at the present moment. That would be - I won't say impossible, but very much less likely if the Professor had got from her all that he wanted to have."
Lord Britleigh, an alert and impulsively restless man in most of the relations of life, had trained himself to a disciplined self-control and to keep his judgment cool in the business issues which were for him of an almost sacred character. He said only, "What do you advise?"
"I suggest that the formula - the full correct formula as Miss Merivale believes it to be - should be written down by her, and sealed immediately. No one else need see it at all. It should be placed without delay in a bank strong-room, or in the care of a safe-deposit company. A reporter from one of the press agencies might be invited to be present. We want a publicity which will make it certain that everyone will know that she has relieved herself of its custody.
"Meanwhile, she will privately communicate it also, under suitable guarantees, to Sir Reginald Crowe and yourself, and you will subject the formula to such secret tests or demonstrations as shall be conclusive as to its value and qualities, after which you can continue to use it as a secret process, or (more probably, if Mr. Ralston's opinion was sound) patent it simultaneously throughout the world."
Mr. Jellipot spoke quietly, as one who suggested rather than urged. Lord Britleigh, a good judge of men in such connections, renewed the opinion of his capacity which he had formed in the course of the Vantons, Ltd., negotiations. A good man. Not brilliant, perhaps. Not impressive. But careful, logical, sound. One who kept his head. A very good man.
He considered the proposal in a short silence which was long for him. He adjusted his mind to accept it. He said, "I dare say it's the best way. Anyway, if that's what you advise, I don't suppose I could talk Miss Merivale over. Not before morning. . . . There'd be one thing to the good. We could prove the date of the sealing, and if it were stolen in any way we might make it awkward for anyone who patented it after that. I don't know what the legal position would be, but it would be a card in our pack. . . . What do you say, Evelyn?"
Evelyn yawned, "I'll agree to anything that means we can go to bed now."
CHAPTER V
MR. JELLIPOT, mild of manner and speech, and capable of eating a musty egg rather than dispute its age with his landlady, had been a man of war from his youth up. But he did not fight with his hands, living as he did by a law which was unfriendly to such methods of altercation. He was not used to giving battle on the physical plane, and the energetic precautions taken by Lord Britleigh to guard against a night assault upon his sister's security gave him a feeling of actual nervousness such as he would not have experienced had a client's fortune and reputation (and he valued the fortunes and reputations of his clients almost as his own) been staked upon his instant decision at some unforeseen development in the conduct of a legal action. In the atmosphere of the law courts, which most men hate or fear, he moved with the assurance of familiarity. Even of a High Court Judge he had no actual awe. His deference was the etiquette of routine. But the excitement which Lord Britleigh communicated to the hurrying servants, the clanking of door-chains, and the squealing of seldom-used, superfluous bolts gave a sense of reality and imminence to the danger which Inspector Combridge had thought sufficiently serious to occasion his hurried journey to Saxton. . . . It is astonishing, in a large country-house, how many points of insecurity may be discovered, how many people it contains who may be suspect.
Lord Britleigh left nothing to chance. He must see the fastenings of every window. He must question butler and housekeeper as to every servant that the house contained.
As to that, assurances were ready enough. Most of the servants had been there since his parents died eight - ten - years ago. He was generous in expenditure, and had the male lack of supervision which English servants prefer. So long as there was a surface efficiency, and his comforts were not neglected, they could waste almost as they would, and an Englishwoman desires to waste as a Frenchwoman to save. No, they said, there was no one lately engaged, except Ted Mitchell, who slept outside, over the garage.
Over the garage? outside the house? That was so much to the good. When did he come? only this week? What references did he have? From Catesby, was he? Well, it was not too late to get through. Lord Britleigh must ring up Catesby Hall, getting little satisfaction there-from. Sir George Rigglesworth was in town. There was no one there who could, or would, say definitely whether a man named Mitchell had been in employment there. It was a large establishment. Many men had been dismissed when the stud had been sold following Lady Rigglesworth's accident. Probably it was right. Anyway, would Lord Britleigh kindly ring up again tomorrow? Lord Britleigh would. Meanwhile, we must take satisfaction from the fact that the only servant of whom we are not sure is sleeping outside. Inside, we are safe enough. Dogs are brought from the kennels to roam through the house during the night, or to sleep on what mat they will. Christopher is to sleep at Miss Merivale's door. Would she like one of the maids in her room? No, she would not. Not even Mary. She is emphatic on that. She wants to go to bed, without all this fuss, which seems rather absurd.
Still, being alone in her room, and securing the window-bolts, she is reminded by a careless movement of the state of a finger which is still bandaged. Perhaps she is glad to feel that her room will be watched during the night - both inside and out. She admits that Cyril is thorough, but she does wish that he wouldn't fuss. She can hear him now at the conservatory door, giving orders that the ladders are to be padlocked together.
It is no wonder that Mr. Jellipot, getting into a suit of Lord Britleigh's pyjamas, feels as though he were in a beleaguered castle destined for storm and massacre in the midnight hours.
He is wakened more than once by the sound of footsteps on the gravel path under the window. But there is nothing furtive or aggressive in the ponderous tread of P.C. Gunn, and he goes to sleep reassured, to wake to the fact that there is the faint light of a winter morning without, and that he, at least, has survived the night. Today they will motor up to town, and the dangerous secret will be placed where such things should be. Thinking contentedly of this, he dozed off again, and waked late (for he had asked not to be called, preferring to avoid the unfamiliar ministrations of the household staff), and came down late to breakfast to find Lord Britleigh (who had risen almost equally late) in a worse excitement than the night before. Miss Merivale had got up much earlier, and had gone out riding almost as soon as it was light. Not alone, surely? No, the new groom had ridden with her, or had followed her. It was not certain which. It was, he said, an old habit of hers to ride before breakfast. "Even in winter?" Mr. Jellipot asked, in some surprise. Yes, if the weather were fine and mild. But she would not be out for more than half an hour. She ought to have got back ten minutes ago. Confound all women. Meanwhile, it was no use not to have some breakfast themselves. The devilled kidneys, Mr. Jellipot would find, were quite good.
CHAPTER VI
THERE are three methods of slimming which are reliable in their results, though in reverse proportion to their desirability. The first, which is infallible, is to encourage a quarrelsome temper. The second is to shun food, which is almost equally effectual, if it be done resolutely, and without those distressing lapses which we hope that Nature may be sufficiently good-natured to overlook. The third is to take vigorous exercise.
It is the least certain method of the three, and its effect is, unfortunately, to render us incapable of practising the two which are more so, but it is by far the most pleasant, and it was that upon which Evelyn Merivale had always depended to resist the adipose tendency which she inherited from a somewhat corpulent father. A horse and a tennis-racket had been the weapons with which she had fought her foe, with no worse than a drawn battle as yet, though she must envy the unconscious ease with which her brother's restless energy maintained a figure to which he attached less importance than to the market fluctuation of his least investment.
She came down early, to resume the habit of the morning ride which had been broken by her five months' absence in London, and was delayed and annoyed to find that the new groom had saddled an ancient pony in place of the more skittish animal that she had ordered on the previous day.
"I didn't think Ailsa - - "
"Gwen, Ted."
"Yes, Miss. I didn't think she'd be very safe to ride this morning. She hasn't been out much lately. She's not one that - - "
"Oh yes, she is. . . . I'm not going to look silly going out on an old pony that I used to ride when I was ten. Besides, I want a good gallop. You'll just saddle my own horse as quick as you can. It's almost time to be back for breakfast now."
The man still hesitated, and she looked at him with more attention than she had done previously. He was obviously a groom. Obviously a man familiar with horses. Few men can live among them without their faces becoming somewhat equine in consequence. It cannot be observed that horses are equally influenced by their human companions. Their faces remain unchanged. If it be deduced that they are of the stronger or more independent character, it seems a reasonable conclusion.
But if Mitchell were an obvious groom, she yet felt that he was not quite an ordinary one. He spoke with respect, but with a tone which implied an equality which it did not assert. He had a control of grammar unusual among his kind, which was the more significant because he spoke without affectation, using the colloquialisms of the stable-yard. A rather small, spare man. One of habitually leisurely movements, as such men are, but looking of a potential activity. Not otherwise conspicuous. Neither young nor old. Neither dark nor light. He might have been a jockey once and have allowed himself an extra stone or two since he had retired from that ascetic occupation.
Now he went reluctantly to obey her order, while she followed him to the stable, where she was annoyed again to find him saddling a powerful, evil-tempered hunter which her brother sometimes rode, but which was never lent to a guest without warning of the reputation which it had acquired.
"What on earth . . .!" she began. "You don't think I'm going to ride that brute, do you?"
"No, Miss. I thought I'd better come with you."
"Then you thought wrong. Can't you understand that I know how to ride my own horse? . . . If she's a bit fresh, I'll take her up to the downs by Millett's Hill."
The man made no further protest, and she was soon out on the road. The morning was fine, but dull. There was a slight mist. The road was soft and wet, but there was a white frost on the grass. She held Gwen in with difficulty till she had taken the turn to Millett's Hill, and then let her go as she would, confident in the steepness of the ascent which was before them.
Five minutes later, looking back from the height of the downs upon the roofs of Saxton, half-hidden by the pine-wood which lay between, and well content with her mastery of a now-disciplined horse, she was annoyed to see that Mitchell was following up the hill. He had been distanced for a time by the mad gallop to which she had loosed the filly on the lower slope, but was now only a short distance behind, though he did not see her as she looked down upon him from where the road bent westward on the level height.
The man's persistence annoyed her. What was it to him? Did he think her a child? The obstinacy which underlay her habitual serenity hardened a resolution that he should not interfere in this manner. If she could get over the next two hundred yards before he reached the top of the hill she would be out of sight, and it would be strange if she could not dodge him successfully and be home again while he was still following an empty way. She knew the downs so well, every dip and curve. All that was needed was that first short burst of speed.
There was no difficulty about that. Gwen had been brought to a momentary docility by the steepness of Millett's Hill, but she had by no means exhausted the energy that had been accumulating during the last ten days in the Saxton stables. Finding to her own astonishment that her youthful exuberance was suddenly encouraged rather than checked, she raced forward over the open land, and it was only when Evelyn would have turned her left-hand, where the ground fell slightly, to take the homeward path at which she aimed that she realized she had roused that which she could no longer rein.
Well, let her have her gallop out I What did it matter on this open land? But suddenly she had realized that the old gravel-pit, deep with the excavations of centuries, for gravel is hard to find in the chalk downs, was straight ahead, less than two hundred yards away. At the thought she struggled desperately, if she could not check her, to turn the filly from the peril upon which she ran. But though she pulled at the left-hand rein with all the strength that she might, and beat at the obstinate head, she did no more than rouse her mount to a swifter rush.
But Gwen had been that way before. She knew the gravel-pit as well as her mistress, and had no intention of going over the edge just because she felt like a gallop in the cold, keen wind. Had Evelyn understood what was in her horse's mind she might have saved herself, for she was a good rider enough. But she was occupied in her useless efforts to impose her own will on the rebellious animal. When Gwen swerved round at full gallop on the very edge of the pit she shot her rider into the air, and clear over the edge.
CHAPTER VII
LORD BRITLEIGH was at the telephone. It was an hour now since Evelyn had ridden out, and he had forgotten the devilled kidneys in a real and rapidly increasing anxiety. He got through to Catesby Hall again, and was answered with better courtesy and fuller knowledge than had been the case on the previous night. Ted Mitchell had been employed there for about three months. Nothing was known against him except that he had not been popular with the other men. Sir George might know more when he returned. He had engaged the man himself. Lord Britleigh was conscious of some carelessness of his own. He should have made enquiry before. He had had the man nearly a week now. But he had applied so opportunely, just as Foster went. Someone had been needed to superintend the stables at once, and he had been very busy at the time. Probably it was all right. But why did Evelyn not return? He rang up the police.
It was an abortive activity, neither Lord Britleigh's worrying, nor the police, making any difference to what had occurred either for good or evil, and we may be better occupied than in observing him further if we transfer our attention to the quiet luxury of the Mayfair flat where Professor Blinkwell is still sitting at his own breakfast-table, though the meal is over.
His niece, Myra, is with him Mrs. Blinkwell does not get up for breakfast), and they are engaged in a conversation too much of which we may have missed already.
The Professor liked talking to Myra. She was his only confidant. Even he was not always sure how much she understood, or what her thoughts might be, but she always listened with a pose of interest, seldom failed to reply with the right word, and could be trusted not to divulge anything that she heard. She was invariably good-humoured. Absolutely without conscience or honour. Extravagant almost to the point of insanity, even for a woman. Entirely dependent upon the Professor. Entirely confident that he would succeed in anything that he undertook, though there were a hundred against him, and largely competent to carry out anything which he might require of her to assist his plans.
"I don't see," she was saying, in a voice of enquiry rather than criticism, "why you should have let Inspector Combridge get alarmed if you're really doing nothing. It must make it more dangerous later on."
"No, I don't think it will. I think we can provide for that. I wonder whether you've heard the tale of the lion that roars in such a way that the deer don't know from which direction the danger threatens, and so run round till they fall into his jaws. I don't say how far it's true, but it's quite a good plan."
Myra Blinkwell showed no sign of interest in this illustration. She said: "I see they've got Burton now. There won't be many left. Not of those that count. I suppose it means a big loss to us, but I'm glad that that bank business is over."
"Yes," the Professor answered, "there's an end of that. It ought never to have begun. It is such silly subterfuges that cause suspicion ant confirm it when enquiry is made. But they would have it their own way." He smiled slightly at his own thoughts. It was certain that he would never be under their direction again. A knife in the ribs, if they ever learnt the truth, was a more likely thing. But the danger was not great, and the jails of Europe are strong. He went on: "You needn't worry about the loss. It's only a stoppage of what I've been picking up, at the worst. I don't lose all that I've got. . . . I reckon I shall be the richest man in Europe in about three years."
The words were said with a quiet confidence, and Myra knew him too well to doubt that it would be as he said.
"I suppose you're thinking of this screen invention?"
"Well," he answered, "perhaps. But not only of that. Don't you see that the drug traffic must start again, and everyone in it that had any brains cleared out from Tokyo to New York? . . . Don't you see that all the connecting-links have been broken away? Those that are left are just running round like a headless fowl."
"You mean you'll be the head of it all when the present trouble dies down?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "I think I may. There are things less likely than that. . . . I am going to see Simpson today. I want a new overcoat for the spring."
Having finished breakfast, he spent a short time in his private laboratory - which was on the floor above that of the residential flat which he occupied - and then a somewhat longer period with his confidential secretary in an office on the floor below. It was a peculiarity of his business habits that these apartments were entirely separate. His laboratory was in charge of a chemist of international repute and unimpeachable character, but who had never entered office or residence, nor been encouraged to any intimacy with the secretary, whose 'confidential' position, while appearing absolute, even to himself, was of a very circumscribed character. He had charge of the Professor's investments and financial operations. He knew his principal as a man of somewhat unusually trustful character, who had made large sums by always following the advice of his business associates, who gave it in gratitude for the brilliance of the Professor's scientific assistance to their common objects. He dealt also with the Professor's correspondence and obligations in connection with the directorships and other offices which he held. He knew his master as a forgetful man who would often overlook his appointments if he were not reminded of them.
Having dealt with the morning's correspondence, or, more accurately, having ascertained that there was nothing with which the secretary could not deal for him, and having left that gentleman dictating rapidly to his stenographer, the Professor took a taxi to Oxford Street and called upon his tailors, Messrs. Burrows and Simpson, to order the overcoat which he would need in the coming spring.
He was received by Mr. Simpson (Mr. Burrows had died of acute alcoholism about three years ago) with the deference due to one of his most affluent customers, and was asked if he would kindly step upstairs to the private fitting-room which Mr. Simpson reserved for those who had the honour of his personal services.
Being alone there, the manners of both men changed. The Professor said briskly: "You'll understand, Mr. Simpson, I've come to order an overcoat. Put the measurements down as they were last year, and cut it to that. I'll call in next week to have it fitted, and you can make any adjustments then. I shall be about ten minutes. Not longer. Don't go down, or let anyone come up, in the meantime."
The Professor knew that he could trust Mr. Simpson, who was indebted to a certain gentleman of his introduction for a sum of five thousand pounds which it had become suddenly very urgent to find when the premature decease of the generous and careless Burrows had caused enquiry by unsympathetic executors into the partnership accounts. Mr. Simpson paid the quarterly interest on the loan with punctuality. He knew that it could be called in at any time at a month's notice, and would be difficult to find. Perhaps difficult is hardly the word. The matter had never been mentioned between him and the Professor since he had come to his rescue with such opportune liberality. The Professor ordered his clothes from him, and settled promptly, not questioning the charges made. He bought quite a lot of clothes. He was a man who dressed carefully. When he ordered clothes, he usually came upstairs and passed into a small closet at the back of the fitting-room. The end of this closet was a door. Having closed and locked the one behind him, the Professor inserted a key into this one, and entered an office, the address of which was 17, Bruton Street, and which was occupied by Messrs. Tonbridge and Wilkinson, turf commission agents. If this firm had attracted the notice of the police (which it never did) it might have been observed that it had a considerable correspondence, but no callers. Its business was conducted entirely by post. If the firm preferred to work with its doors locked under these circumstances there was no law to prevent it. In fact, no one knew.
The doors were locked against the possibility of the Professor's unexpected appearance from a cupboard-door, which might have occasioned astonishment: to a casual visitor. The four occupants of the double office which constituted the first floor of 17, Bruton Street worked in the constant knowledge that the actual owner of the firm might appear at any moment in that unusual manner. They knew that when he did so he expected to find an exact order in the arrangement of the correspondence, an accurate summary of all that had occurred since his last visit, which was to be written up at least three times daily or immediately that there should be anything of importance to record, and that it was quite likely he might appear among them only to glance over his report, and to retire in a space of minutes, perhaps without a word of enquiry or recognition to those who served him.
But on this occasion the four men observed his presence without interrupting the game of bridge at which they were occupied. His own desk, where the report should have lain, was bare. A heap of about fifty letters were piled on a side-table unopened.
The Professor observed these indications of inactivity without surprise or dissatisfaction. He went straight to the heap of letters and turned them over rapidly.
"James," he said, "you can go over these now, but don't answer anything. I don't care what it is, or from whom, I'm not going to get you caught in this trap, any more than I mean to find myself in it. But you needn't lose any more time - no, don't stop the game, there's no hurry - but I want you to start a new index of the men who are still free - that ought to mean those who've got more brains than the rest - and when you've done that you can destroy all the old records; we shan't need them again."
"Do you mean the cash ledgers, sir?" asked Billy Stitson, a slight, pale-eyed man, who had been a bank clerk until it was found that mysterious deficiencies of cash occurred in his vicinity as naturally as a dog barks.
"Yes. Everything. After a new index is made."
"What about the current account, sir?"
"What is the balance now?"
"Six hundred and thirty-two pounds four shillings and sixpence."
"You can divide that. Let me have the cheque book."
The Professor wrote some figures at the right-hand foot of the cheque. After that, they knew that their four signatures would be sufficient to withdraw the balance. The figures were always different, and they could not discover the cipher, if such it were. They had signed an instruction to the bank, which had been in blank, and which the Professor had afterwards completed. They could not guess that it had not been sent to the bank at all - that the Professor had destroyed it within an hour. He had no intention of being connected with the account in any way, and he knew, in any event, that what they signed they could cancel. But there had been tens of thousands of pounds going through the account of a business of which they were represented as the sole partners. He had calculated accurately that they were not of the kind to agree Upon a perilous course. The mystery served its end. They had been like prisoners confined by an open door which they believed to be barred, but which they dare not try.
Now, with the papers announcing fresh arrests every week of the members of the international gang of which they were four among hundreds of subordinate tools, they believed, perhaps rightly, that they owed their safety to the promptness with which the Professor had shut off all communications with other members of the gang; and they supposed that he had secured himself by the exercise of the same measure of astuteness. Now he evidently thought that the storm would soon have spent its force, and that preparations should be made for the time when operations could be resumed. . . . on what basis, or under what superior controls, they were not likely to ask, and it was very certain that he would not say.
CHAPTER VIII
TO sit on a short and slanting trunk of a thorn that juts out of the side of a cliff about ten feet below the edge is an uncomfortable thing to do; it is particularly so when you are able to look down upon a sand-pit bottom thirty feet lower, and it is a discomfort which does not diminish as the hours pass; yet it is not so bad as sitting precariously among the thorny branches that project therefrom.
As the hours passed, Ted Mitchell became an authority upon the first of these experiences, and Evelyn Merivale gained an exceptional competency to expound the second.
It is due to Ted Mitchell's chivalry to observe that he had descended voluntarily to the position he occupied, whereas that of Miss Merivale had been thrust upon her. Whether he would have proved of a sufficient generosity to accept the thornier seat must remain a conjecture only, I for the exchange was too perilous to attempt.
When the groom had looked over the edge, and had observed Miss Merivale to be suspended precariously in mid-air, in an attitude too undignified to be more than vaguely indicated here, it is due to him to observe that he slid down to her rescue without considering the possibilities of recovering his own position. Having bestrode the trunk, he had succeeded, with sufficient difficulty, in assisting her to a comparative safety, but to do more was impossible.
Regaining her mental, almost as soon as her material, balance, Evelyn had endured the discomforts of her position for the first hour in the expectation of a speedy rescue. She remembered with some satisfaction that her absence could not fail to be promptly observed, and to excite an exceptional alarm, for which the formula would be responsible, however little it might have to do with her actual predicament. Search, she concluded, would be swift and thorough. The horses would return to the stable, with an obvious inference. She had a good voice, which she alternated with that of her companion in announcing her location.
But the hours passed, and nothing else did, till the midday sun looked down upon a most uncomfortable pair, the monotony of whose position was only broken by an occasional creaking sound from about the thorn-tree roots, or a little scatter of soil from the same place, suggesting that it might be inadvisable to put the strain of movement upon a support which already considered itself sufficiently burdened.
Two circumstances combined to produce this unfortunate interlude. The scene of consternation and bustle at Saxton Hall was all that Evelyn could imagine or desire. The horses had returned in the way that horses are expected to do under such circumstances. The fact that no one had observed the direction in which she had ridden would not have long delayed the exploration of Millett's Hill and of the downs beyond. The trouble was that William Pickthorn had (or was almost sure he had) observed a lady riding upon the London road. Or it might have been a man. And whichever it was would fit the case, and he was quite willing to concede that there might have been another man (or woman) either before or after. Very likely indeed.
Added to this, Lord Britleigh recalled to mind the suspicion that he had already felt regarding the character of Ted Mitchell. Had he not remarked the sinister cast of his countenance to - well, perhaps not aloud, but certainly to himself? The suspicious circumstances of his too-recent too-careless engagement were very naturally remembered. Lord Britleigh recalled a man with similar eyebrows who was of a very active dishonesty.
Obviously, he had led his mistress into a kidnapping trap upon the London road. A moment's holding of her rein . . . a rush of men from the hedge . . . perhaps the threat of a gun, if she should call for help . . . the waiting car into which she would be so quickly hustled . . . she might be already at the destination which Professor Blinkwell had prepared for her undoing. At the best, it must mean the surrender of the formula, and the loss of the fortune which he regarded as at least likely to be hidden therein. At the worst - Evelyn could be a very obstinate girl - torture or even death might be the conclusion of this, lawless outrage. Best and worst are not the actual words that entered Lord Britleigh's mind. He was a brother, not without natural affection; but a fortune, vague but possibly enormous, cannot be regarded lightly, even in comparison with the well-being of a young woman of the same parentage as oneself. Her death would, of course, be the occasion of sorrow, and (if possible) of vengeance also, but if she should prove to be of so exemplary a fortitude, well - must not there be some satisfaction in a villain's overthrow? - in a great stake saved? Saved? Are we sure of that? Is not the formula in her head, and there alone? Oh, folly of woman! . . . Most reckless folly that would go riding with such a stake in hand after the warning of the night before!
Folly, also, Lord Britleigh owned, not sparing himself, that had failed to guard her with a bolted door, that had failed to watch Ted Mitchell until he should have established his integrity. . . . Now, if Evelyn disappeared, or were coerced or outraged in whatever form, it might well be, as Inspector Combridge had so plainly hinted, that the Professor would not appear in it at all, or that the proof would be too weak to justify action by police who were in such difficult relations with him already.
From all these maddening thoughts what conclusion could there be? Cyril Britleigh was a business man. He was not one to let emotion become a hindrance to action, or its futile substitute.
The London road must be searched, and every cross-road, every by-way, every coppice that might shelter a potential crime, every vacant house and barn and hovel, for fifty miles along its course, and for twenty on either side! Never before, perhaps, had such activity been roused so swiftly and over so wide an area as was waked that morning, as the news flew by 'phone and wire, stimulated from Saxton on the one hand by the one thousand pounds reward which Lord Britleigh offered, with a seeming recklessness of amount, for his sister's rescue, and on the other by the urgency of a Home office that realized the importance of preventing that which might develop into a particularly embarrassing crime.
Such was the position when, at 11.12 a.m., Sir Reginald Crowe's car ran up the long chestnut drive which is the front approach to Saxton Hall (we have not seen it in daylight previously, except from the stable side), and Sir Reginald himself disappeared into the house, and came out again three minutes later, looking grave enough, but with an obvious purpose of his own, as he jumped back into his seat and said curtly, "Millett's Hill, Piper, and let her out," and it was just thirty-three minutes after that that the car returned with two additional and exhausted occupants.
"I knew you were barking under the wrong tree," Sir Reginald said, in simple explanation, as soon as he was assured that Evelyn was receiving the attention that she needed in the comfort of her own room, and Lord Britleigh had given the necessary instructions for calling off the hunt which had been aroused by his misdirected energy, "when I heard that your theory was that Mitchell had led Miss Merivale into a trap - - "
"I don't see how you could tell that. The man seems to have done well enough, and I suppose I've got to give him something besides the sack, though he'll get that for sure. I don't see how he could claim the full reward - - "
"Meaning the thou? No, you'll give that to me."
Lord Britleigh gazed at his friend in a moment of astonished silence. He hadn't thought of that. He didn't like the idea at all. But he knew Reggie Crowe well enough to be aware that if he'd made up his mind to have that cash he himself would waste brain-tissue in vain to oppose the sacrifice. He actually pulled a cheque-book from a drawer at his hand. He wrote rapidly as he said, "Oh, well, if you look at it like that."
The Chairman of the London and Northern Bank said that he certainly did. "It's the right way, isn't it? It'll just come in handy for Evelyn and me when we start furnishing."
"When you . . .? I thought we'd agreed that that idea shouldn't even be mentioned to her again?"
"Well, I'm not mentioning it to her, am I? I thought she might mention it to me next for a change. . . . But why have you got your knife into Mitchell so deep that you can't pull it out when you find you're cutting up the wrong carcase?"
"Because of what I learnt not fifteen minutes ago while you were up Millett's Hill. It appears that he's no better than a hired spy. They found out after he left Catesby that he'd been stationed at Catesby Hall by Billington's Agency - you know, the firm that specializes in divorce cases - to watch a guest who often visits there. You can guess what he's doing here."
"So I can. He's been costing me just eight pounds a week to Billington's since he came. I fixed that as soon as I knew that Evelyn might be coming down here, and had him on the spot ready for any help he could give."
"If you'd only told me!"
"Yes, I suppose you can say that. But in these cases the fewer who know, the less chance there is that they'll tell where they should'nt. Anyway, that's the man. So, you see, I knew that he wouldn't lead her into any trap, and I knew she wouldn't choose the London road. She always rides for the downs. So I saw that, though it might be as bad as anything you could fear, it couldn't be just how you supposed, and I went the right way to find out what it was."
Sir Reginald folded the cheque and pocketed it as he spoke. "You should give a pony to Mitchell. He's earned that, and he'll think he's been well paid. He doesn't think in thousands like you and I."
Mr. Jellipot, during this time, had stood somewhat aside from a drama in which he could take no leading part, but in which he was too directly interested to leave till the curtain fell. The morning engagements at his London office, which had seemed so imperative the night before, received no better attention than the facilities of the telephone would allow, leaving a distracted clerk to instruct counsel as best he could upon the defence of a procedure summons while the essential papers which he required were locked securely in Mr. Jellipot's private safe. But with the knowledge that Miss Merivale was rescued, and had retired for renovation and rest to the peaceful securities of bath and bedroom, the urgency of these matters resumed their routine prominence in his mind, and inclined him to Sir Reginald's side of an argument which followed the pocketing of Lord Britleigh's cheque, and in which both these gentlemen appealed to him for support.
"I tell you, Cyril, Evelyn's shown more sense than any of us in this matter more than once already, and when she says that it's quite safe in her own head it s no more than we ought to see without being told.
"I dare say Blinkwell's rather a slimy snake, and I've no doubt he'd steal it from her if he could, and if he thinks it's as good as we hope it is. But I should think he's got his plate about full enough just now with this trouble with the police, and having gone as near as he has to getting a rope round his own neck. I shouldn't think he puts his collar on now without feeling a bit choked.
"You've all got the idea that he's a kind of superman because he's been part of a big gang, but I've met his sort before in commercial deals, and when you've pricked them, and let the conceit out, it's surprising how small they look. I should say he's busy saving his own skin, and finds it a full-time job. . . . Look at all the nonsense this morning, and that thousand quid that this fussing's cost you now; besides that it might have been Evelyn's life as well if you'd left her much longer there while you were combing the London Road."
"It's always a mistake," Lord Britleigh replied, "to underrate your opponent. Evelyn says she's not really hurt. It couldn't do her much harm to be run up in your car, and we should get the thing done and know we'd left nothing to chance. Inspector Combridge gave us a hint that her life isn't oversafe, and that's more important than feeling a bit fagged."
"Look here, Cyril, we're not going to quarrel. I hope we've both got too much sense for that. But it isn't any fear of Evelyn's life that's making you propose this. It's a fear that we're risking a million-pound invention a bit more than we need. . . . I don't under-rate anybody. I showed that when I hired Mitchell to be ready to look after her if she came down here, and I had a bigger difficulty than you might think getting Foster to give up his job to make way for him. I don't believe in running any risk you can avoid, and when I take a thing up at all I've got rather a habit of seeing it through. But I'm not going to say a word to persuade Evelyn to come to London this afternoon after the morning she's had. . . . I'll run Jellipot up, and we can talk business on the way, and 'phone you in the morning, when we've all had time to think things over and quieten down, and then we'll decide what to do."
"And meanwhile, Evelyn's here, and all the responsibility's left on me."
"Oh, no, it's not. She's quite old enough to take care of herself. Besides, you can lock her up in her room if you like and watch the door and windows, and the chimney-pot too, if you want to make it a thorough job, and telephone Hilton police-station if anything bigger than a sparrow comes within fifty yards. . . . And, besides that, you've got her solicitor here, and you can take his advice, and I'm not sure that that isn't the best thing we can do! I'll tell you what, Cyril, we'll let Jellipot decide this. He's the right one to speak for her, and if he says he thinks we ought to take her to London this afternoon I won't say a word more."
Lord Britleigh agreed to this, seeing it to be the best bargain he was likely to make, for if Mr. Jellipot were against him also he knew that his own influence over Evelyn (assuming it to exist at all) would be powerless against the united opposition of his two guests.
Mr. Jellipot hesitated in his reply. He had very urgent business awaiting his return to town, which must be neglected further if he were to give his time that afternoon to the semi-public depositing of Miss Merivale's formula, according to the programme on which Lord Britleigh's heart was set. He was anxious to conciliate Sir Reginald Crowe, whose position as Chairman of the London and Northern Bank rendered him of enormous potential importance to a solicitor of good reputation, but only moderately successful practice, and he was honestly doubtful of his client's fitness for the expedition after the physical and mental ordeal through which she had passed. He hesitated in a scrupulous mind as to how far the first two of these considerations might deflect his judgment. But their weight remained, to which was added a doubt as to whether Lord Britleigh, in his anxiety to get the formula deposited in somewhere other than his sister's brain, might not exaggerate the immunity to herself which might result from that course of action.
"I doubt," he said cautiously, "whether we shall lose anything by leaving this till tomorrow. As a matter of fact, we have not obtained my client's consent to the course which we are now proposing.
"I gave this matter a good deal of thought during the night, before our minds were disturbed by what seemed to be the evidence of very sudden hostile action, which we now know to have been otherwise occasioned, and I came to the conclusion that nothing but a full and public disclosure of the secret formula could bring any real security to my client.
"This would have to be through the medium of the Patent Office, or otherwise it would involve the abandoning of any monopoly or control of the invention, and its value would be substantially, if not entirely, lost. We agreed last night that it might be a mistake - that is, a commercial mistake - to patent it unless or until we have demonstrated its possibilities to our own satisfaction, and can feel some confidence that the patent for which we shall apply will be sufficient in description and accuracy of detail to give it the full protection which an invention of such importance requires.
"To this extent, it appears to me that my client's financial interests are in opposition to those of her personal safety, and that that position will continue, even though the formula be deposited in other hands, so long as it remains an unprotected secret which she may be supposed to have memorized accurately.
"Feeling this as I do, I feel also that these arguments should be placed before her without haste, and when she is in a condition to consider them coolly, and the decision as to whether there be an immediate application for a provisional patent must be left entirely to her."
As Mr. Jellipot thus formulated his own conclusions for the hearing of others, they became more decisive in his own mind, and his hesitation ceased.
"And that," Lord Britleigh commented, with his usual brisk cheerfulness, "is one in the eye for me, if not two; and I'm not sure that you're wrong. So we'll let Evelyn rest, and order the car."
CHAPTER IX
THERE was a short space of silence as Sir Reginald's limousine glided swiftly forward on to the London road with the silent smoothness guaranteed by the four-figure cheque which had changed hands when it had been purchased a few months before.
Mr. Jellipot, elderly, precise, learned in law, and entirely master of himself, felt that it was for the banker to commence conversation, or to remain in the quietude of his own thoughts. He looked with respect upon a man who had come by a succession of able audacities to a position of wealth and power while he was still young. He knew - all the world knew the tale in one form or another - how he had made a fortune in the Lancashire cotton boom, quarrelled with his bankers, and then obtained control of a majority of their shares, by which means he had become the Chairman of the Board. And in that position he had extended the operations of the bank in a spirit of audacious enterprise, until it had become one of the leading powers in the financial world. Those who discussed the powers of the English banks had ceased to speak of the big five. It was the big six today. And he had not reached this position by following in the footsteps of his predecessors. He had introduced a new spirit to the banking world. . . .
"Jellipot" - Sir Reginald broke the silence with deliberation - "I want you to tell me what this invention is, and I want your honest opinion as to whether it's a genuine proposition. I want you to talk frankly, and you needn't be afraid of damaging your client's interests. You know what my feeling to Miss Merivale is, because you've been informed of why she left home, and the conditions under which she had come back. Perhaps you realize that she is destined to become Lady Crowe rather more clearly than she does herself. But, quite apart from that, we are going to give the thing a thorough try-out, and if it proves a success it won't make any difference what you may have said to me now."
"Well, Sir Reginald, I think you know the facts up to this point about as well as anyone does who's left alive, except perhaps Professor Blinkwell. Of course, I can give you a personal opinion for what it's worth."
"But that's where you make a mistake. I know practically nothing. You must remember that the help I gave the police was in connection with the Professor's drug-dealing activities. I'm not one of the Vanton crowd. All I've heard about this invention is from Lord Britleigh and Miss Merivale, and - just general talk. I never met either of the Ralstons. I want you to explain it just as though you were putting the proposition before me for the first time on Miss Merivale's behalf, and had made up your mind that it would be best to take me into confidence without reservation."
"If I were in that position," Mr. Jellipot answered, "I should have to commence by asking you to adjust your mind to accept the possibility of an invention which sounds enormously improbable - almost as much so as the idea of wireless telegraphy must have been to those who were first approached to support it with the capital which was essential to its demonstration."
"Consider that done."
"Mr. Wilfrid Ralston claimed that he had invented a substance the surface of which retained an impression of everything that was reflected upon it, such impressions not being normally visible - indeed, how could that be when so much would be reflected upon it? - but anyone who first had a picture before his eyes of the commencement of anything which had been previously exposed before it could then watch upon its surface the development of the scenes that followed.
"Subject to two conditions - the cost of production, and the permanence of the records - it is evident that such an invention must be of enormous commercial value. It opens the possibility of the same screen offering a number of different films simultaneously to one audience, and it would make it possible for people who entered at different times each to begin at the commencement of the one in which they were interested."
"It is just that point," Sir Reginald interrupted, "that makes the whole idea sound so fantastically improbable. How could it be possible that a number of people, gazing at the same surface at the same time, should see different pictures? Do you tell me that one man would see a continuous picture upon the screen, and that another, who had entered a few minutes later, would be seeing an earlier stage of the same picture following the first?"
"I confess," Mr. Jellipot replied, "that the same idea occurred to myself as demonstrating the absurdity of Mr. Ralston's claim when he first consulted me, but on that, as on other points, he was able to give me a simple and convincing answer. Indeed, it was one that warned me against the folly of a too-confident scepticism, by showing me that an equal wonder becomes no more than a common-place when we are familiarized with it. He pointed out that there is exactly this quality in the reflections of common glass. It is not merely that we can look into a mirror, and see, as it were, round the corner, but that two people, standing in different positions, do, in fact, see different pictures on the same part of the surface; just as a man looking down on a dark stream at night will see the shining reflection of the moon making a line of dancing silver upon the waves, while to another man, standing twenty yards away, the water which is bright to him would be dark and invisible, and that which was dark to the first would be of a shining beauty to the second."
"There is, of course, no exact parallel - - "
"No. It is no more than an illustration which warns us to be cautious in scepticism. . . . Mr. Ralston gave Vantons an option to purchase outright for a million pounds, one of the conditions being that he should demonstrate his invention to the satisfaction of one of their directors, Professor Blinkwell, which he partially did, but with the important qualification that the impressions received by the screen which he erected at his brother's house in Bell Street were not of an enduring character. His own statement, before his death, was that this limitation was deliberate, and arose from the fact that he had less than entire confidence in Professor Blinkwell s good faith, on which point we cannot say that his distrust was without cause.
"As it was, the screen retained a record of the events which took place before it sufficiently long, and fulfilled the conditions under which they could be recovered, sufficiently to enable Miss Merivale to discover the manner of Wilfrid Ralston's death.
"Speaking with the frankness for which you asked, I can say no more than that, and that the formula which he placed in Miss Merivale's hands was explicitly represented by him to be one which, when placed with the apparatus he had constructed in the hands of a sufficiently qualified chemist, would ensure that his invention would not be destroyed by his own death.
"There remain the questions of whether he was misleading Miss Merivale, which I think unlikely, or was deceiving others, and perhaps himself, as to whether the impressions which the surface of his invented substance receives are of a permanent character or will fade away within a short period.
"In the latter case, I suppose - subject to the correction of others who may see possibilities which I have overlooked - the invention may be little more than a very curious toy."
Sir Reginald had not listened to this lucid statement so closely that his mind had been incapable of any separate activity. He was a man of bold and rapid decisions, or he would not have reached the position which he now held. As Mr. Jellipot concluded his statement, he gave his verdict upon it, and the programme of future action on which he had resolved.
"That's quite straight, Jellipot, and quite clear. I agree with you that we shouldn't patent anything at present till we know better what we can do, and how.
"I don't attach so much importance as Lord Britleigh does to this idea of his that the formula should be publicly deposited, but it can't do any harm, and we'll let him have his own way about that.
"Miss Merivale had better come up to town for that tomorrow, and we'll have something about it in the evening papers that Blinkwell won't overlook. I don't think we've really got much cause to worry about him, or at least I shouldn't but for Inspector Combridge's warning, which we can't disregard.
"In any case, it's foolish to run any risk that we can avoid, and she'd better stay quietly at Saxton, and not go out alone till we've got a valid patent, or let all the world know that we've thrown it up.
"The really urgent thing is for us to have a first-rate man that we can trust on the job, and for her to communicate the formula to him, so that he can get to work. I can find the right one for that.
"As to Miss Merivale's interest, you can arrange the terms of sale with Lord Britleigh, and I'll agree. I'm taking a half-share. But I know that you and Britleigh'll fix up a fair deal, and I never waste time. . . . You look after Miss Merivale's interests and you'll please me. And I dare say you can make a guess that you'll have no cause to regret that. . . . And here we are, and when Piper's dropped me here he can run you on to your own office."
Sir Reginald extended a hasty hand, and was out of his car and up the steps of the bank before Mr. Jellipot had commenced what would doubtless have been a suitable and assenting answer.
CHAPTER X
DURING the following week Sir Reginald Crowe had opportunity for congratulating himself both upon the accuracy of his judgment and the soundness of the business programme which he had outlined to Mr. Jellipot.
Evelyn had been motored to London by her brother, with a police-car following a hundred yards in the rear, and had returned with the same escort after depositing a copy of the formula, with its solution, in the safe deposit vaults in Porchester Street. She had been unmolested, as he had foretold, and though the precautions which Lord Britleigh adopted for her security may have been in themselves sufficient to guarantee her immunity, they did not alter the fact that no one appeared concerned to disturb it.
They barred doors which no one attempted to force; they patrolled roads and examined ditches which were empty of human life, except the harmless aborigines that the district knew.
And meanwhile, in the laboratory that Sir Reginald had secured from certain customers of his bank (with an over-draft sufficiently serious to ensure a willing subordination to their banker's wishes), one of the best chemists in Europe was studying the apparatus and materials which had been removed from the room which Wilfrid Ralston had occupied in Bell Street in the light of the formula with which Miss Merivale had supplied him.
The agreement which had been negotiated by Mr. Jellipot between his client and her brother had been as satisfactory a document as Sir Reginald had anticipated. Everything went according to plan, and Professor Blinkwell gave no sign of being further interested in the invention which he had advised Vantons to decline to buy.
The police, who continued to give the Professor's movements a fatherly, if not a friendly, oversight, could not observe that he was engaged in any nefarious activity. He was living a leisurely, well-ordered life, spending much of his time in the domesticity of his own flat, with regular visits to his laboratories, and to his secretarial offices on the lower floor: he attended occasional board-meetings at Vantons, and at the premises of some other firms in which he was financially interested. But these firms were of good reputation His telephone calls were recorded, and proved to be of a similar innocence. His correspondence was examined, and contained nothing of a suspicious character, either from his pen, or addressed to him.
The secret information which he had supplied had led to the arrest of the heads of an illicit drug organization which had spread its tentacles to the limits of the civilized world, and the seizure of their stocks to an estimated value of nearly two million pounds; but even in the reports of these arrests, and the prosecutions which were following at several foreign capitals, he appeared to have lost interest. He was observed, at a public restaurant at which he dined, to turn indifferently from a report of such proceedings which was a prominent feature of the newspaper which he had requisitioned, to the pages of sporting and financial news.
It seemed that, having abandoned the perilous means by which he had profited in the past, and escaped the fate which had fallen upon so many of his associates by his own secret betrayal, he had made a wise decision to live a quiet, law-respecting life, content with the ample means which he had accumulated and the honourable business activities with which that wealth, and his genuine scientific attainments, had contrived to provide him.
In this peaceful condition of mind it was not surprising that he spent some time with an obsequious tailor when he called to have an overcoat fitted. It was known that he had always been particular about his clothes.
CHAPTER XI
"I THINK," Evelyn said with decision, "it's rather worse than being in jail."
"If you knew a bit more about jails than you're ever likely to do," Lord Britleigh answered, "you wouldn't say anything quite so silly as that."
"It's rather worse, because it's a jail I needn't be in if I'd got enough sense or enough courage to open the door, but I'm letting myself be cooped up here - - "
"Well, you can't blame me for that. I'd have got it patented right away, and there'd have been nothing in your head that the whole world didn't know."
"I didn't say I was blaming you. But I'm not going to stand it any longer for anyone. I've stayed about the house now for nearly three weeks, never moving anywhere without two or three people hanging round, and if I go into the grounds there'll be Mitchell following ten yards behind and P.C. (iunn looking over the hedge. If I go on this way for another week I shall make an elephant look slim."
Lord Britleigh was unmoved by his sister's petulance. His restless energy enabled his natural slimness to remain in friendly concord with the indulgence of a good appetite. He helped himself to another egg as he answered: "I'm glad to hear they haven't dozed off. I thought things might be getting a bit slack. But if you're so keen on getting thin, you'd find a jail's the right place for that too."
"Well, I'm not going to stand it any longer. I'm going to ride over to see the Priestleys tomorrow. I think it's all been a silly farce from the first."
"I don't think I should do that. From what Reggie told me yesterday we're very near the point when we shall know whether it's a washout or not. I dare say another week will see it through."
"I dare say it will, but I'm going out tomorrow whether or not."
Her brother looked his annoyance, but a long experience had told him that he could not turn her when she used that tone. Besides, he did not really think that there could be much danger in such an expedition. The quietude of the last three weeks had not been without its influence on himself also. It did seem that "Much Ado About Nothing" might be the proper title for the elaborate precautions which he had organized for her protection. All the same, it was silly to run a risk. Just Evelyn's usual obstinacy.
"I suppose," he said, "you won't go alone? You'll take Mitchell at least? It wouldn't be quite fair to Crowe not to do that, seeing what he's paying him to keep you in sight."
"Very well," she said, half reluctantly; "if you put it like that, I suppose I'd better take him along."
"And don't tell everyone for ten miles round what you're meaning to do."
"Cyril, I'm not quite such a fool as that."
Evelyn strolled away to practise cannons in the solitude of the billiard-room, and Lord Britleigh hurried out to his car, for he had a board-meeting in the City which he would have trouble to reach with his usual punctuality.
After a time Evelyn went out to the stable-yard, seeking Mitchell, who appeared with his usual watchful celerity.
"Ted," she said, "I may want Gwen tomorrow. I'm thinking of riding out in the afternoon."
The man looked startled, but did not venture to voice the protest which was in his eyes. "Yes, Miss," he said; "about what time will it be? I suppose you'll want me to come along?"
"I don't think I'll say what time till I'm ready to go. . . . Yes, you'd better come, though I don't suppose I shall go over a cliff again."
The man said no more, but the next day, as lunch was over and she was getting ready to go, she received a message that Mitchell wanted to speak to her. He said that Gwen had gone lame.
Evelyn descended to discover the truth for herself in a natural scepticism, remembering Mitchell's previous reluctance to saddle the filly for her use. She found a little group from garage and stable-yard surrounding Gwen, and a veterinary surgeon who had been summoned to examine the injury.
It appeared that the horse had been turned out into a paddock during the morning for exercise, with two others of more sedate character, and had received a kick from one of them whose moroser musings had been disturbed by her friskiness. There appeared to be no doubt that this was a genuine account. A boy testified that he had seen the event. The vet did not doubt that the injury had been caused in that way. He was emphatic that the animal could not be ridden.
Evelyn said, "Then I'll take the car." A chauffeur went to prepare it.
Ted Mitchell looked worried. "May I come, Miss?" he asked.
Evelyn was about to refuse. She could drive her car without help, and, besides, Mitchell belonged to the stables, not the garage. But she remembered that Sir Reginald was paying for this man to guard her - more, in fact, than he was receiving for the stable duties that he performed. She knew that Reggie felt a concern for her safety probably greater than that of her brother, and with a larger responsibility, because it was he who had supported Mr. Jellipot's arguments for delaying the patent application, from which her danger (if it had any reality) continued. She knew that he would be annoyed, under any circumstances, by the escapade on which she was resolved. She asked, "Do you understand cars?"
"Yes, Miss. Well enough."
"Well, it doesn't matter. I shan't want you to drive. You can come along."
The day was fine. The sun shone in a sky of misty blue. A south wind was soft and warm with the promise of spring. The road ran high over the downs, and then dipped into a long hollow, with a firwood close and dark along the left-hand side and rough unfenced land rising upon the other. It was a lonely road at this time of year.
Evelyn stayed with her friends, with whom we have no concern, for a couple of hours, being longer than she had meant to do, but the enticements of tea and talk were too powerful to be resisted until she saw that it was becoming dusk without. She had resolved to be back before dark. She rose resolutely, and a few minutes later was driving rapidly home.
The car was the open two-seater in which she had arrived at Saxton a few weeks earlier. Mitchell sat at her side. When they came to the long low dip in the road, where the firwood was now on their right hand, the sun had set, though the sky was still red over the open land on their left.
At a point where there was a gate that entered the wood, an empty lorry stood across the road, as though waiting to enter. As it stood, there was not sufficient space to pass behind it, and Evelyn slowed and hooted as she approached. The driver backed the lorry, swinging it half round, so that there was room for her to get by.
As they passed, Mitchell gave a casual glance at the driver, whose face was turned from him, and the next moment he became alert and watchful. He half rose in his seat to look back. He saw the lorry resume its position across the road.
"What's the matter, Ted?"
"I'd go careful if I were you, Miss. There's something I don't like, but I may be wrong."
"Fast or slow?"
"Not too fast to see what's ahead."
His hand went to his hip-pocket, and Evelyn saw a pistol across his knee. His glance swept the rough rising ground on their left hand. Evelyn's eyes followed his, but there was no sign of life, for which she supposed he had looked.
His sharp exclamation brought her eyes back to the road. Several men stood across it.
Her hand went to the horn, giving a warning blast as her foot pressed the accelerator. She meant to drive through. It seemed the best chance to her.
Mitchell gripped the hand-brake without ceremony. "Steady, Miss!" he said sharply. "There's a cable across the road."
So there was; a strong cable, which would have wrecked them, and perhaps cost their lives, had they rushed upon it. But their assailants did not seek to wreck them. Hence the cordon in front of an impediment which was intended to hold them up.
"We'd better try the side, Miss. It's the one chance. There's no going back." As he spoke the men were no great distance away. They saw the car stop, and began to run forward.
"Do you think we could?" she asked. She had never driven a car over such land as that. But she did not wait for an answer. The car swung round as she spoke, and, as she did so, there came a shot, and then another, from the five men who were running up.
"Be quick, Miss. It's not us, it's the tyres they want." He looked as though he would have liked to have the wheel in his own hands, but there was no time to change seats.
The car bumped over a ditch which was not wide enough to detain its wheels. It lurched up the bank. It jerked and tumbled its way over ground as unlevel as the sand-dunes of a stormy coast, and with a rougher, harder surface than they. Every moment Evelyn expected to overset the car. It was impossible to make any great speed, or to guess what it might be. Ted Mitchell saw the speedometer needle swinging madly backward and forward around the dial.
The men had left the road when they saw the way by which the car sought to escape. They were running toward them at a slant.
The ground became more level as they advanced, looking to the eye to rise with a gentle smoothness. There was nothing smooth about the way that they bumped and swung and were thrown about as the car put on speed, but they had less fear of being overtaken. Their pursuers were close on their track now, but may also have concluded that there would be little chance of shortening that separating distance if they should continue to rely on their own legs. They stopped, and began to fire again. Louder than the shots there came the sound of a bursting tyre.
"We've got to run for it now, Miss." As he spoke Mitchell stood up in the car. He fired three times, taking deliberate aim. It was a long range for such a weapon as his, but a loud exclamation of pain told that one bullet had found its mark.
They jumped down, and began to run up the slope. But there was no further pursuit. The men appeared to accept defeat and disappeared.
Half a mile of a pace that varied from a quick walk to a run brought them to the main road, where they were soon able to solicit successfully the hospitality of a passing car. But Ted had expressed a confident opinion that the danger was over before that.
"They had to be careful how they shot, Miss. They didn't want to hurt you. They'd have had orders to get you alive. They mightn't think it was good enough when they found I was shooting back. But it wouldn't be only that. When they found we hadn't been caught in the trap they'd be in a hurry to get clear away. They'll know they won't have much time before the roads 'll be watched for that lorry for a long way round. I wish I'd noted the number, but I expect they'll be altering that."
Mitchell had been able to describe the lorry well, and it was easily identified with one which was found next morning abandoned in a coppice ten miles away. It had been bought for cash at an auction in Birmingham a fortnight before, and its transfer had not been registered. A keen-eyed constable observed a bloodstained stone, which confirmed the fact that one of the assailants had received a wound; another picked up the bullet which had punctured the tyre - or it may have been one that had missed its mark. But these clues led to nothing.
The episode was of no final importance, except in the further proof it gave that Ted Mitchell was a man to trust, which had been sufficiently demonstrated previously. Sir Reginald gave him a cheque for one hundred pounds, and was not sure that he had not been rather mean. Ted gave the police a very accurate account of all that had occurred. He said, with truth, that he had not seen any of the men with sufficient clearness to describe them, nor to identify them if they were caught. The light had not been good. He had thought that the lorry-driver had deliberately kept his face turned away, as was likely enough.
He sent a similar report to the principal of his own Agency, but he added a postscript thereto:
P.S. - I thought the driver of the lorry was very like Wally Piler, but I may have made a mistake. I always thought he was a man we could trust. I expect I was wrong, but I thought you ought to know. Anyway, I thought of Wally when I saw him, and that'll tell you the kind of man that he was.
Mr. Billington acknowledged the receipt of this report, but about the postscript he made no comment. It does not follow that it was undigested in his own mind.
CHAPTER XII
"IT looks," Sir Reginald said, "like an audacious effort at compromise."
"It's about the most confounded cheek that I ever heard," Lord Britleigh commented.
Inspector Combridge did not dispute these opinions, but the document interested him in its criminal aspects rather than in those of commerce or manners. He said that it was blackmail, thinly veiled, but of an unmistakable quality.
Mr. Jellipot hesitated to agree. He took up the letter which Sir Reginald had received, and which had brought the four men together at the banker's office, and read it again with a care that weighed the implications of every word:
Dear Sir,
I understand that Lord Britleigh and yourself are now interested in the development of the Ralston invention, which was refused by Vantons, Ltd., on my recommendation, and with Lord Britleigh's approval, we both being members of the board of that company.
It seems reasonable to assume that Lord Britleigh has received later information which has caused him to alter his opinion of the nature or genuineness of the discovery which Wilfrid Ralston claimed to have made, or of the possibilities of its commercial exploitation.
Following my own lines of investigation, I will say, frankly, that I have seen reason to modify my views in the same direction.
I also consider that it is in Miss Merivale's personal interest that the invention should be patented at the earliest possible date.
I am prepared to join forces with Lord Britleigh and yourself to achieve the objects indicated by the expression of my views in the above paragraphs, on the terms that the patents shall be taken out in our joint names, and that I shall own a moiety of such patent rights as we shall acquire. On these terms I am prepared to give you the benefit of my own experiments, and the support of my continued advice and assistance, for which, as you know, I am accustomed to receive very substantial fees.
Should you reject this offer, I would ask you to bear in mind that it has been made, and that it may, or may not, still be open to you in fourteen days from this date.
Yours faithfully,
Elihu Blinkwell.
Sir Reginald Crowe, Bt., O.B.E.,
London & Northern Bank, Ltd.,
Head Offices, E.C.4.
"I don't quite see," Mr. Jellipot said cautiously, "how you can call it a blackmailing letter. It was sent quite openly to Sir Reginald. It wasn't even marked private. And it is capable of quite innocent constructions."
"Yes," Sir Reginald replied, "and the other kind. And since Miss Merivale was attacked last week in that dastardly way, and we all know by whose agents - - "
"But," Mr. Jellipot reminded him, "we have no proof whatever."
"It's a lie," Lord Britleigh interpolated, "to say that I approved his report. I declined to vote either way. And, besides, I hadn't his responsibility. I hadn't undertaken to investigate and report to the board."
"It certainly goes beyond the fact on that point," Mr. Jellipot agreed, with his usual precision.
"It seems to me, gentlemen," the Inspector said, "that the most important point to consider is the object of sending such a letter. There's one thing certain. Professor Blinkwell isn't a fool, and, not being a fool, he couldn't have thought that you'd agree."
"You mean," Lord Britleigh suggested, "that he wrote it so that it could be produced, perhaps to clear himself, at a later date?"
"Yes, perhaps. Or it might be that he wanted you to remember it later, when it wouldn't be equally safe to send. He's looking forward to a future position, when he thinks you may be more in a mood to deal, so that you'll know in advance what his terms are, and you'll be going to him, instead of him coming to you, which it might be dangerous to do then without implicating himself."
"That would be such a position as he might anticipate if he were to be successful in kidnapping Miss Merivale at a second attempt?" Sir Reginald asked, his mind being more concerned for Evelyn's safety than for the commercial or criminal aspect of the matter. "You don't think this letter means that he wants to abandon more violent methods and come to a business deal? You read it in an opposite way?"
The Inspector did not reply directly. He said: "We've got to remember that Professor Blinkwell's a very clever and subtle man. He didn't write that letter with the idea that Mr. Jellipot would be sending a draft agreement round for his signature by this time tomorrow."
"I suppose, Cyril," Sir Reginald asked, "you're quite sure that Evelyn's safe now?"
"She was quite safe when you got this letter. She was quite safe when I left Saxton two hours ago. It'll be her own fault if she isn't now."
"You don't think she'll try going out again?"
"No. We made a deal about that You know Evelyn wants to be present at the demonstration we're to have to prove the success of the invention, which we're expecting to fix for some time next week? Well, I promised her she should come to that if we had to have a regiment lining the road, if she'd promise me she wouldn't leave the house before then. So we fixed that up definitely."
"I expect she's had about enough of going abroad," Sir Reginald suggested. He couldn't easily think that Evelyn would make a bargain of that kind unless it suited herself. Actually, she had as much right to be at the demonstration as any of themselves without asking anyone's leave, so he said.
"It isn't quite like that," Lord Britleigh replied. "She doesn't know anything about where we're experimenting, or when it's likely to be. Mr. Jellipot agreed with me that the less she knew about these matters the better, in case they did get hold of her by any trick, and she agreed that she'd better not know."
"As I, being her legal adviser, was fully informed," Mr. Jellipot began, and Inspector Combridge, who had been listening keenly, broke in rather abruptly to ask, "How many people know about this arrangement?" He knew that the greatest danger was that Miss Merivale should be lured out by some lying tale. But Lord Britleigh was able to reassure him about that.
"No one knows anything except Mitchell, and I've told him confidentially that it won't be till next week, and perhaps not then. Evelyn's promised not to go out without him, and I've told him not to take any written authority, even from myself or one of you. I've told him that he'll hear it from my own mouth, if at all. . . . And if anyone writes or telephones that she's to come at once because her great-aunt's dying, or any nonsense of that sort, she won't go, she'll let the police know at once. . . . After failing the way they did, anyone'd have to get up early to kidnap her now. . . . If you ask me what that letter means, I should say that Blinkwell feels he's been bowled middle-stump, and that's his last squeal. He mayn't have much hope, but a bit's better than none He may think we'll give him a corner so that we can end the strain."
"You certainly seem to have taken all possible precautions," the Inspector agreed. "It isn't easy to see how anyone can get round them. But I'd like a word with Miss Merivale myself, all the same, if you don't mind We mustn't forget that we're dealing with a very clever man."
Sir Reginald gave instructions at once that the telephone operator should get through to Saxton Hall. "Ask for Miss Merivale herself. Say that I - no, just the London and Northern - or say that Mr. Jellipot wants a word with her." He did not wish to alarm her, or whoever might take the message, with the detective's name, and he remembered just in time the condition on which she had returned to Saxton. Would she consider that he had broken it if he should ring her up? He had no intention of exposing himself to such an implication. It was Evelyn's turn to wait for a voice that she would not hear. But, like so many human precautions and ingenuities, it was a wasted wisdom. Christopher answered the call, then Kate, and then Mary, with the same tale that Miss Merivale could not be found. It was only when Christopher's voice answered a second time in response to the urgent impatience of the enquiry that any definite information came through: "Miss Evelyn left, sir, about half an hour ago."
"Left! How do you mean? Did she go by car?"
"I don't know, sir. Peters said she'd gone out."
"Did she go alone?"
"I don't know, sir. Shall I find out?"
Sir Reginald paused with the receiver in his hand. "Britleigh," he said, "you'd better take this on. You know your staff best. All I've been able to learn yet is that Evelyn went out half an hour ago; nobody seems to know where or why."
Lord Britleigh took the receiver in an impatient hand. "That you, Christopher? . . . No, of course you wouldn't I Is Kate there? Then she'd better speak." He turned to the room to say: "She's the only one there with any brains, and they'll never burst her head." But as he did so, he heard her voice. It was evident that the servants were grouped round the telephone at the other end.
"Kate," he said, "send Christopher at once to find out how Miss Evelyn left, and whether anyone was with her. In particular, whether Mitchell went, and, if not, whether he knows anything about it. While he's doing that, ring up Hilton police-station, and tell them Miss Merivale's gone out, and you don't know where. Tell them you've told us, and Inspector Combridge is with us here, at the head office of the London and Northern Bank. Then, when you've got Christopher's report, ring us up again."
Lord Britleigh put down the receiver, after instructing the operator to connect immediately that Saxton came through, and Sir Reginald got the operator again to add that the line was not to be impeded with other calls. "So that," he said, "is what the letter meant."
"Yes," Inspector Combridge answered, "it looks that way. He hasn't lost much time. . . . Can I get through to the Yard on another line?"
Sir Reginald directed him to a telephone in the next room. The three men who were left sat waiting for the further news that the next minutes must bring.
"I can't believe," Lord Britleigh said irritably, "that Evelyn would break her word. Besides that, she wouldn't be such a fool. Not after the lesson she's had. We agreed that whatever message she got she'd treat it as the trap which it would be sure to be. . . . That trick's too old to catch anyone but a mug. . . . Not when you're on your guard. . . . I expect we'll hear it's all right when Kate comes through again."
"Yes," Sir Reginald answered, "I hope we shall." He spoke as one who was engaged with his own thoughts. He remembered how he had rescued Evelyn once before at a moment of deadly peril with no better weapon than a projecting shadow upon the floor. He could not hope that such fortune would come again. Yet, underneath the keenness of his anxiety for the girl he loved, unadmitted to his own mind, an excitement of adventure stirred which was not wholly unpleasant, and a sanguine hope, born rather of his own temperament than the probabilities of the position, that this might be the beginning of such events as would lead him to the end he would . . .
The Inspector was quickly back, having been able to say all that was needed in a few words. He had a rather grim look on his face as he thought of the possibility that he might yet bring Professor Blinkwell to his natural end. He had learnt that his use to Scotland Yard was a finished thing. He had given all the information that was required or expected from him. And the Yard would keep faith. From his past connection with the drug traffic, from the separate incident of Wilfrid Ralston's murder, he had nothing to fear. The wealth he had won, by whatever means, he could enjoy as he would. The past was a closed book. But if he should err again . . . The Yard would close the handcuffs upon his waists with a particularly cheerful click.
As Inspector Combridge entered the telephone-bell rang again, and Sir Reginald picked it up, only to break out impatiently: "New York coming through? Didn't I tell you . . . I don't care what it is. Let Mr. Matthews take it. Yes. Tell him to do what he thinks best. But he's not to disturb me. . . . Yes, sell or hold as he thinks best. . . . Anything over forty-five. . . . It's a Saxton call that I want. . . . Yes. Put it straight through. . . . Here you are, Cyril."
Lord Britleigh took the call. Punctuated with his explosive incredulity, the tale came through clearly, simply, bafflingly enough. Half an hour ago - or a bit longer by now - Miss Merivale had gone away in a large saloon car which had come straight into the yard. She had said nothing to anybody, before or at the time, but she must have been prepared to leave, for she had gone out and got into it as it arrived. It had had no occupant but the driver. Ted Mitchell had got in beside him. It had driven away at once, turning west. There was no doubt about that. There were three witnesses.
Mr. Jellipot's brains had not been idle because he had been content to listen and let other men talk. "It looks," he suggested, "as though they've managed to deceive Mitchell into thinking it's we who have sent."
"Yes," the Inspector agreed, "there's not much doubt about that."
"It may look that way to you, but if you build on it you'll go wrong," Lord Britleigh replied obstinately. "Mitchell couldn't make such a mistake. My instructions were too clear. Besides, he knew that it was at Bastover that the experiments are being tried. He knew where he'd have to drive. And I'd told him he'd have to drive himself. He was the only man I should trust. He'd know something was wrong the second they got out of the gate and turned the wrong way. It isn't as though they weren't all on the alert. . . . No, it's absurd."
"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen . . ." The Inspector rose, and left without further words.
"We'd better go down to Saxton and see what we can find out," Sir Reginald suggested briskly. "There's no need for us to start the hunt. The Inspector will have done that before we could get into the street."
He glanced down at Professor Blinkwell's letter, which was still before him. "I'd better answer this now." He decided that Blinkwell was not a man to be influenced by anything except fear for his own skin. He was not one with whom to make terms.
He took a sheet of his private notepaper from the rack.
Sir Reginald Crowe has received Professor Blinkwell's letter, to which there is no reply. He does not desire to communicate with him now, or at any later time.
Underneath these lines he made a rapid sketch of a gallows from which a man hung in a limp way. He could draw with a facile pen.
Such defiance might not be wise. Inspector Combridge might have advised that the letter be left unanswered. But it was by such audacities that Sir Reginald had come to sit where he did.
CHAPTER XIII
THE events of the fortnight that followed Evelyn's disappearance may be briefly told, being barren of result, however full they may have been of suspense and excitement as the days went by.
The car in which she had left Saxton was traced sufficiently far to disclose that it had not been driven in a direct way, so that there was little clue to its destination Its make and colour were settled with some approach to certainty. Its number, even, had been taken by an alert and half-suspicious constable, and proved (of course) to be false.
The activities of the police-force of the whole county, supported by a populace which had been stimulated with the offer of a reward of one thousand pounds (increased to five thousand at the beginning of the second week), produced nothing but false reports and abortive theories.
Professor Blinkwell may, or may not, have been conscious of the thoroughness of the supervision to which he was subjected, but he gave no sign of disquiet, and no suspicious circumstance could be recorded against him. His correspondence was minutely examined. He was closely and continuously shadowed. He neither received nor issued any letter which was not of a transparently innocent kind. He went out to his usual directors' meetings: he went to his barber's on his usual day. He bought an umbrella. He ordered a new suit for the coming spring. He dined at home. His telephone conversations were few, and of such a character that it was a waste of time to record them. He wrote no more letters to Sir Reginald Crowe. To connect him with Miss Merivale's disappearance under such circumstances appeared to be an impossible thing.
The only person in the United Kingdom who appeared to be unexcited and unalarmed was Mr. Billington, the urbane head of the Agency which had supplied the services of Mitchell to Sir Reginald's order. His confidence in Ted Mitchell was (he said) too great to allow any doubts of Miss Merivale's safety to disturb his mind.
Meanwhile, the demonstration at which Evelyn should have been present was successfully held. A proposal to defer it until she should have been traced was abandoned on Inspector Combridge's advice. He thought that the announcement of that result, and the subsequent patenting of the process, could not be done too promptly, nor be too widely known. It might force Miss Merivale's captors to show their hand. If they had been persecuting her in vain to reveal it, they might even release her, recognizing that it could no longer be of any value to them.
With the taking out of the patents, the whole romantic history of the invention was disclosed to an eager Press, and an enormous publicity resulted. It seemed impossible that, under such circumstances, and in face of a reward of such magnitude, any corner of England could continue to conceal her longer.
It was on the tenth day that the whole story was released to the Press. On the fifteenth, after a prolonged consultation at Scotland Yard, Inspector Combridge telephoned to Professor Blinkwell at 11.30 a.m., and announced his intention of calling upon him during the latter part of the afternoon. The message was so worded as to assume that the Professor would make it convenient to keep the appointment. Its vaguely minatory character, and the interval before it would take place, were intended to create the maximum of uncertainty and, perhaps, fear in Professor Blinkwell's mind. If he were guilty in conscience let him have the pleasure of speculating as to what might have been found out.
CHAPTER XIV
PROFESSOR BLINKWELL received the Inspector with his usual affability, offering him the comfort of a low chair at the fireside of his private study.
Seating himself on the opposite side of the hearth, he opened the conversation without waiting for his visitor to explain the object of his call.
"You know, Inspector Combridge, that I am willing to give the Home Office all the assistance which I undertook, as I have shown already. I might, indeed, as I consider, have done much less, and still left you without cause for complaint. If you have still more to ask you may find that I am prepared to assist you further, but do you think you are treating me quite fairly when you come here in this open way?"
"I haven't called about that matter at all."
"No? . . . Well, of course I'm pleased to hear that, but it doesn't alter the position materially, does it? I mean as to the danger to myself, and the