Читать книгу Jennerton & Co - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 3

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Impatient of the numerous checks which had held up his car all the way from Croydon, Gerald Jennerton let down the window and looked out. London, he realised at once, was swallowing him up. Not the London upon which he had gazed half an hour ago from his earthward-gliding aëroplane—a huge, tumbled chaos of obscurity, with its far-spreading myriads of lights—but an engulfing wilderness of endless streets, through which cars from every direction seemed to be racing to some magnetic centre.

The pavements were thronged with crowds of human beings, multitudinous, innumerable, like drab ants passing before the brilliantly lighted shop windows. Farther northward a deeper red glowed in the misty sky—the reflection of the burning heart of the city. The young man glanced at his watch. After the smooth flying through windless skies, this laboured progress tugged at his nerves. All the time, too, there was that mysterious telegram in his pocket.

Presently, although the crowds grew even denser and the tramway lines more complicated, the thoroughfares became wider, and progress speedier. They passed one of the great railway termini, joined in the slowly moving stream of traffic across the bridge, crawled along the Strand where the December fog was now an actual thing, turned at last into that long, comparatively silent street, which had always seemed to Gerald Jennerton, on his rare visits to it, like the backwater of a turbulent river, and finally pulled up in front of a great stone building from every window of which lights seemed to flash. There were several taxis outside, half a dozen cars parked opposite.

Gerald, descending and entering hastily, passed through a motley little crowd in the corridor on his way to the elevator and mounted to the third floor. He knocked at the door of one of the rooms and was promptly admitted. A large man, of pompous appearance, with grey hair inclined to curliness, and a pince-nez balanced on the end of his long nose, greeted him with apparent satisfaction.

“Ah, Mr. Gerald! Excellent! You can go, Miss Smithson,” he continued, dismissing the secretary to whom he had been dictating some letters. “I will ring for you when I am disengaged.”

The young woman disappeared and Gerald took her place.

“You are here sooner than I had thought possible,” Mr. Brigstock remarked. “Which of my wires found you?”

“I was at San Remo. I caught the first train to Nice, flew to Paris yesterday and here this afternoon. What’s wrong?”

Mr. Brigstock coughed portentously and removed his pince-nez, disclosing red-rimmed eyes of unexpected weakness.

“Something ridiculous,” he confided, “yet something in a way alarming. Your father has disappeared.”

“My father has what?”

“Disappeared—walked out on us—left the place last Tuesday night without a word or a message to any one, and hasn’t been heard of since.”

“Good Lord!” the young man exclaimed. “What have you done about it? Have you let the police know?”

Mr. Brigstock frowned heavily. He leaned back in his chair and toyed negligently with the cord of his glasses.

“My dear Mr. Gerald!” he remonstrated. “Think for a moment. We are Jennerton’s Limited; we are the greatest firm of private detectives the world has ever known—a more important corporation now than even our American rivals. Who are we to go to the police? If we publish what has happened, we shall be the laughingstock of the world. The head of the firm of Jennerton’s tricked and abducted, or a voluntary exile, and his firm unable to discover his whereabouts! Consider the position, I beg of you. We have to be very careful how we move.”

There was a brief silence. A puzzled expression crept into Gerald Jennerton’s handsome, sunburned face. He was young, apparently about twenty-five or twenty-six years of age. His bearing, voice, everything about him, denoted a secure and gentle position in life.

“Have you moved at all in the matter?” he enquired.

“Our disappearance section has made a few cautious enquiries,” Mr. Brigstock replied, “but we are very anxious indeed to keep the matter out of the papers. There is scarcely a soul in this building who knows what has happened.”

“Who saw him last?”

“Harmon, his servant. Your father, as you know, was a man of extraordinarily regular habits. At five o’clock on Tuesday he left his office, went upstairs to his apartment, read the newspapers, had a bath, changed his clothes, and punctually at seven o’clock left here and went around to his club, where he usually dined. He has not returned since, although there are several matters of importance here, awaiting his decision. I suggest now that we go up to the apartment and that you see Harmon.”

The young man, still a little dazed, rose to his feet, and accompanied by his father’s partner, mounted to the top floor of the building where the missing Mr. Jennerton had an apartment. A middle-aged manservant of sombre appearance ushered them into the living room.

“Queer business this, Harmon,” Gerald remarked, as soon as the door was closed.

“A very strange business indeed, sir,” the man said.

“Was the Governor in good health?”

“I have never known him better, sir.”

“And spirits?”

“Excellent. It was a foggy night on Tuesday, and his last words as he left were, ‘I’m not sure Mr. Gerald hasn’t got the better of us out in Florence.’ ”

“So far as you know his plans were to spend the evening in the usual way?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“What was the report from the club?” Gerald asked his companion.

“We have made the most searching enquiries there, as a matter of course. Your father arrived at his usual time, played several rubbers of bridge, dined; but instead of joining his friends in the cardroom afterwards he put on his hat and overcoat and left the club. The commissionaire fancies that he saw him enter a taxi, but he was too far off to hear him give any address.”

“Had my father any important cases which he was looking after himself?” Gerald enquired.

Mr. Brigstock produced a small notebook from his pocket, divided his coat tails carefully and sat down.

“Your question is a very natural and apposite one,” he remarked approvingly. “There are two affairs to which your father was giving his personal attention. The first one concerns the disappearance of a young lady—Miss Clarice Laurieson, by name—photograph herewith, from one of the most exclusive boarding schools on the south coast. We received, some ten days ago, a most agitated visit from Miss Townley, the principal of the establishment, who pointed out that to appeal to the press or to the police would mean ruin for her, and your father promised to interest himself in every possible way in discovering the young lady’s whereabouts. So far as I know he has not met with any success, but he was without a doubt working on the case.”

“And the other affair?”

“A very bad blackmailing case, put into our hands, I am sorry to say, after the—er—victim, Lord Porleston, had already parted with a considerable amount of money. It seems that his lordship was induced by some one or other to go to a private establishment to take dancing lessons. The full details are in your father’s possession, but one gathers—er—that his lordship was discovered by the blackmailer, connected no doubt with the establishment, in a compromising situation with one of the young ladies. The seriousness of the affair lies principally in the high social and philanthropic position occupied by his lordship.”

“Were these the only two cases on his private book?”

“The only two recent ones, but, as I dare say you know, it has been one of the ambitions of your father’s life to bring about the arrest of Edgar Morris—the Bristol forger and murderer. The police of New York and London have searched Europe for him vainly for three years, and as a firm we were connected with the matter of his last exploit. He has remained undetected so long, however, that until last week interest in the case—‘Murdering Morris’ he was called, by the bye—had faded somewhat into the background.”

“And last week?”

“Your father had a communication,” Mr. Brigstock announced, “the nature of which he apparently did not divulge to any member of the firm—certainly not to me. He sent for all Morris’ records, however, his photographs and the photographs of his fingerprints. He went over to Scotland Yard to see if they had any later information, and for several days he had one of our best men making enquiries in the southwest of London.”

“Where is that man?” Gerald asked quickly.

“Unfortunately, on his way to the States. Your father sent him over to see the Commissioner at New York.”

The house telephone, which connected Mr. Jennerton’s apartment with the offices, rang, and Mr. Brigstock hurried away to keep an appointment. Gerald remained upon the hearth rug, looking around the comfortably furnished library. Mr. Jennerton, Senior, had been a self-made man, but he was a man of taste. The curtains and hangings were harmonious, the few bronzes were excellent, the sporting prints authentic and the furniture Georgian of the best period—a thoroughly comfortable man’s room.

“You have the keys of my father’s drawers, I suppose?” Gerald asked the servant.

“I don’t think there’s a single thing locked, sir,” Harmon replied. “Any valuables or anything to do with the business the master kept in his section of the safe downstairs.”

The young man pulled open the drawers and examined the contents. At the third one he paused.

“So far as I remember, Harmon,” he said, “my father always used to keep a revolver in here.”

“He did, sir. I noticed it last week.”

Gerald searched once more.

“Well, it’s gone,” he announced finally, “and there’s a broken box with six missing cartridges.”

Harmon was puzzled. “I never knew the master to load his revolver in his life, sir,” he confided. “He always used to say that the days had gone by for that sort of thing.”

Gerald nodded. “Old-fashioned stunt he used to call it, I remember, carrying firearms. Did you go through the pockets of the clothes he took off on Tuesday afternoon?”

“You will find everything that was there on the corner of the mantelpiece, sir.”

Gerald glanced over them—a very harmless collection of oddments. There was a torn fragment of thin pasteboard, however, in the cigarette case, which appeared to be the only object of interest. It was a highly glazed portion of what might have been a plain visiting card, and upon it, in characters so faint that he had to take it to the clearer light to trace them, were written the figures 7107 Chelsea.

“Have you ever heard my father ring up that number, Harmon?”

“Never, sir,” the man replied. “As a matter of fact, the master never rang up a number himself. He hated the telephone.”

Gerald placed the torn piece of pasteboard carefully in his pocket. “I can stay here, I suppose, Harmon?”

“Your room is always ready, sir.”

There was a knock at the door and Mr. Brigstock made his reappearance.

“Know anything about this telephone number?” Gerald enquired, producing the card.

Mr. Brigstock studied it through his pince-nez. “Never heard of it,” he announced.

“Could you find out who owns the number?”

“We have a special department for dealing with that sort of thing—a matter of five minutes at the most.” He spoke through the house telephone and gave a brief order. “No other discovery I suppose, Mr. Gerald?”

“Only one thing, and that I don’t quite like the look of,” Gerald confided gravely. “My father appears to have taken his loaded revolver with him on Tuesday.”

Mr. Brigstock was seriously concerned. “That,” he observed, “seems to carry out the idea that your father had got on the track of ‘Murdering Morris’, though why he should have kept it to himself I can’t imagine. I have been with the firm, as I dare say you know, for nineteen years, and there’s never been a time yet when he hasn’t told me if there was anything serious looming. I don’t understand it—I don’t understand it at all.”

“Neither do I,” Gerald agreed gloomily.

“Your father and I are past the age for deeds of violence,” his partner continued, pulling down his waistcoat a little over what was an undoubted protuberance. “There are members of our staff who are trained in the use of firearms, jujitsu, and all means of self-defence, but we ourselves have for years been concerned only with the civil side of the business. Our personalities, too,” Mr. Brigstock concluded, “after all these years, are too well known for us to engage with any likelihood of success in what I might—er—call the rough stuff. Your father’s action, therefore, becomes the more—er—unaccountable.”

There was a knock at the door, and a clerk entered, bearing a typewritten slip of paper. Mr. Brigstock, after a glance at it, passed it over to Gerald:

Number 7107 Chelsea is the telephone address of Miss Vera Cassan, Number 19a, Walmer Street, Chelsea.

Mr. Henry Wenderby, on that same evening, holding an umbrella over his head and, with due regard to his dancing shoes, avoiding the puddles en route, crossed the street and rang the bell of Number 19a, Walmer Street, Chelsea. A trim-looking maidservant promptly answered his summons and ushered him into a comfortable little sitting room on the ground floor.

“Mr. Wenderby,” she announced.

The girl upon the sofa raised herself and nodded. She was very young and attractive in a queer sort of way—pale, with rather square features, and large, wonderfully coloured eyes of a changing shade of hazel. Her delicately marked eyebrows, light brown hair shingled in the latest mode and the entire absence of cosmetics of any sort gave her an air of peculiar distinction. She welcomed her visitor with a lazy smile.

“Sit down for a moment, Mr. Wenderby,” she invited him. “Help yourself to some coffee and bring your chair up here.”

Mr. Wenderby obeyed without hesitation. He was a man a little past middle age apparently, stout but with a well-knit figure, a healthy complexion, a humorous mouth and keen grey eyes. His hostess watched him thoughtfully as he poured out the coffee.

“For an Australian, Mr. Wenderby,” she remarked, “you have very nice hands.”

“It’s because of my slack days in London,” he confessed. “Somehow or other I don’t know how to pass the time, so I just drop in and have a manicure.”

“Always at the same place?”

Mr. Wenderby coughed and seemed for a moment embarrassed.

“No fool like an old fool, you know,” he observed good-humouredly. “I don’t know many folks in London, and I must say I like sitting down and talking to a pleasant-looking young woman sometimes.”

She indulged in a little grimace. “You don’t pay much attention to me,” she remarked.

“You’re a bit above my mark, ma’am,” Mr. Wenderby declared bluntly. “You’ve too many swell friends around for a plain fellow like me. Look at you, all togged out to-night,” he went on admiringly. “I bet you’re off somewhere later on.”

She laughed softy. “You’re overmodest, Mr. Wenderby,” she said. “You are not old, and you are rich, and there are too many girls in the world. You might choose whomever you wished. The truth is, I do not believe that I am your style.”

Mr. Wenderby appeared a little uneasy. “I’m half colonial and half British,” he admitted, “and I was never much of a one for the foreign ladies—beautiful and delicate-looking though they are.”

“You ought not to think me foreign,” she said reprovingly. “I was at school in England. I have lived here all my life. However, it does not matter. I have given you up. I see that I make no impression upon you. To-night you shall have your lesson from my little protégée. She is sweet and English and just out of boarding school. Only you must promise me if I leave you alone with her that you will behave yourself.”

“I’ll try,” he agreed, setting down his cup. “I can’t say more than that. It depends upon the young lady a bit, too, doesn’t it?”

Miss Vera Cassan rose gracefully. “I will take you to the studio,” she said. “Afterwards I must go out. Come, my friend.”

Mr. Wenderby held open the door in approved fashion, followed his guide down the hall, out of a side entrance, along a tiled passage and up four steps into a large studio, the door of which she opened with a key she was carrying. There was a phonograph at the farther end of the room, and against it a girl was leaning. She looked at Mr. Wenderby with frightened eyes.

“This is Mr. Wenderby, Clarice,” Miss Cassan announced. “You are going to give him a lesson this evening. He is getting on nicely, but he wants to learn the tango.”

“I’ll do my best,” the girl said doubtfully. “But I am not good enough to give a lesson.”

“You are very foolish to say that,” her friend declared coldly. “You dance very nicely. Do not hurry, Mr. Wenderby. Try and get on with Clarice. She is a dear girl really, but shy. And mind, Mr. Wenderby,” she added, turning away with a mocking little smile, “remember all I have told you.”

“Vera——” the girl began hastily.

“You can come to my room and talk to me when I get home,” the other interrupted. “Have a good lesson, Mr. Wenderby. I may be back before you leave.”

She nodded her farewells and departed, closing the door behind her. Mr. Wenderby glanced at his companion with a little inward chuckle of satisfaction. He was comparing her with the photograph in his pocket.

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out, young lady,” he said cheerfully, “if you’re going to teach me the tango.”

She affected to busy herself with one of the records. Then she leaned towards him.

“Please do this,” she whispered. “Please go away. It is for your own sake.”

He waited for a moment whilst she started the phonograph. “Hold on a bit till I tie my shoelace,” he begged.

He pushed back the curtains which divided the dancing floor from the small anteroom, and put his foot upon an easy-chair. The girl followed him.

“I can’t explain,” she went on eagerly, “but please go. There is still time. If you call out to Vera, she will come back.”

Mr. Wenderby smiled at her and it was a smile of soothing and infinite protection. His shoelace was tied now and he held out his arms, prepared for the dance.

“Don’t you worry, little girl,” he whispered. “Henry Wenderby wasn’t born yesterday.... Start with my right foot, do I? Here goes!”

It was about half an hour later when Gerald Jennerton, acting upon a somewhat hazy impulse, stepped out of a taxicab and rang the bell at Number 19a, Walmer Street. There was nothing in the least unusual, he realised at once, about the appearance of the place. It was a pretty green and white painted house with window boxes of chrysanthemums and cheerful suggestions of warmth and light through the chinks of the curtains. The door was opened almost at once by a trim-looking parlourmaid. She glanced at Gerald with an air of pleasant enquiry, but as soon as she recognised him the smile left her face as though by magic.

“Don’t come in here, Mr. Gerald,” she begged. “I wouldn’t.”

He looked at her in astonishment. Then he recognized her—the late parlourmaid of some rather intimate friends of his.

“So it’s you, is it, Susan?” he exclaimed. “Why can’t I come in?”

She looked nervously over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t,” she insisted. “You don’t want dancing lessons, and if you did you’d best not take them here.”

There was the sound of the opening of a door upstairs. The girl suddenly stiffened. Gerald pushed gently past her into the hall.

“Will you be so kind as to tell your mistress that a gentleman is here? No need to mention my name,” he added, in a lower tone.

The girl made no further protest. She ushered him into the comfortable little sitting room where a bright fire was burning in the grate. Anything less sinister in the way of a living room could scarcely be imagined, yet Gerald from the moment of his entrance was conscious of a sense of unaccountable disturbance. The room was small, and there were no communicating doors with any other apartment, yet he had the feeling that he might at any time be called upon to face a crisis.

He was ashamed of the sudden quickening of his pulses as he heard light footsteps in the hall. Then the door opened and Miss Vera Cassan entered. She came slowly towards him, no smile upon her lips, only a slight expression of enquiry. Her walk was graceful, her attractiveness impressive. Gerald was inclined to believe in those first few minutes that she had been a professional dancer.

“You wish to see me?” she enquired. “My name is Vera Cassan.”

“I suppose I ought first to apologise for coming,” he said, feeling inwardly grateful for Susan’s hint. “The fact is, I saw you dancing somewhere the other night, and I heard that occasionally you gave lessons. I wondered whether you’d have me for a pupil.”

She looked at him curiously. Gerald, fortunately for his success in this and various other episodes in life, was a very good-looking young man. His features were well cut, his head well shaped, and his frame the frame of an athlete. The girl looked him over, and it seemed obvious that she approved of him.

“Who told you that I gave lessons?” she asked.

“A man of the party I was with that night. I don’t remember his name. I don’t think I ever heard it. There were rather a lot of us.”

“Are you such a bad dancer that you need lessons?”

“One is never good enough nowadays. Besides,” he went on, with a faintly apologetic smile, “from the right person I thought that lessons might be rather agreeable. You see I have been out of England for some time—haven’t found many of my friends yet.”

She motioned him to a chair, pushed a box of cigarettes towards him and helped herself. Then she sank back among the cushions of the divan and looked at him thoughtfully.

“You cannot have a lesson this evening, if that is what you were thinking about,” she confided. “The studio is engaged.”

“Bad luck!” he murmured.

“If you want to dance very much,” she went on, “you can do so. Some friends with whom I was going out have disappointed me. You can take me to the Embassy if you like.”

“It will give me great pleasure,” he replied.

She rose lightly to her feet.

“What is your name?” she asked.

Gerald, who loved the truth for its own sake and also usually spoke truth as a policy, abandoned it with regret.

“My name is Robinson,” he confided—“Gerald Robinson. I live mostly in Florence.”

“Mr. Gerald Robinson,” she repeated, with a slight contraction of the eyebrows. “And all you know of me is that one of your acquaintances whose name you do not remember told you that I gave dancing lessons. I wonder who he was! There are not many people who know so much. We do not advertise. I give lessons only to people who are worth while.”

“I shall think myself very favoured,” Gerald assured her.

“Wait,” she enjoined. “I will get my cloak.”

She left him alone again, more at his ease now, but disposed to speculate as to whether this expedition to the Embassy was wise. Without a doubt, though, he must pursue his acquaintance with this girl. 7107 Chelsea! What did his father know about the place? And the girl? She was no ordinary dancing mistress.

So far as he could, he made a further examination of the little room. There were several newspapers and magazines lying about, printed in a language which he failed to recognise, half a dozen French novels, a copy of L’Illustration, and a few English newspapers. The atmosphere of the room, taken in conjunction with its mistress, notwithstanding its simplicity, was perplexing. He wandered restlessly about. Suddenly he received a shock.

By the side of an easy-chair, half underneath it, in fact, was a man’s hat. The longer Gerald stared at it, the more intense grew his sense of familiarity. Mr. Jennerton, Senior, was on the whole an exceedingly well-dressed man. He possessed one eccentricity, with regard to headgear—an inordinate affection for a broad-brimmed black felt Homburg rather like a Spanish sombrero. It was an unusual form of head covering, and practically unmistakable.

Gerald crossed the room towards the door and listened. There was not a sound from the stairs. He turned the hat lightly over with his foot, caught an illuminating glance at the “J” monogrammed inside, and kicked it a little farther under the chair. When, a moment or two later, Vera Cassan came back wrapped in a sable coat, he was standing in much the same attitude as when she had left.

“I have telephoned for a taxicab,” she announced. “It will be here directly.”

“Could we have a look at your studio while we wait?” he suggested.

Again there was that slight contraction of the forehead, the gleam in her eyes, half of question, half of suspicion. Gerald’s expression, fortunately for him, was an ingenuous one, and he survived the scrutiny.

“The studio is occupied for the evening,” she told him coldly. “You can see it another day—if I decide to give you lessons.”

“If you decide?” he repeated disconsolately. “I thought that was already a promise.”

She was standing very close to him, and he realised once more her subtle attractiveness.

“I only give lessons,” she confided, “to those people whom I like. I am not sure whether I shall like you. I think I may. You are nice to look at, but I prefer to know everything about people whom I receive here. I have a guardian, too, who is very particular. You must tell me more of yourself.”

“We will exchange confidences,” he proposed. “You are not English, are you?”

“I am thankful to say that I am not,” she agreed. “I am a mixture of Polish, Russian, with perhaps a little German—my mother was half English—that is why I speak the language without difficulty.”

The parlourmaid announced the arrival of the taxicab and followed them out, carrying her mistress’ bag. As she stood away from the door for Gerald to enter, her lips moved; the faintest of whispers reached him—“Don’t come back.”

Mr. Jennerton, Senior, who seemed by some miraculous means to have assumed the clothes and personality of Mr. Wenderby, went puffing and blowing around the studio to the strains of a jazz tune with a nimbleness and vigour which bespoke previous efforts in a similar direction. Once or twice he glanced curiously at his instructress—a very young girl with red-gold hair, slim, pale, with a curious look of disturbance in her eyes and expression. As they reached the far end of the room, she spoke for almost the first time.

“I should like to say something to you,” she whispered.

Mr. Jennerton gave no signs of having heard, but he paused, mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and picked up some records.

“Let’s sit down in the alcove here and look through these,” he suggested, in a loud voice.

They passed behind the curtained space and seated themselves upon a divan. The girl suddenly gripped his wrist.

“This is a horrible place,” she confided. “I want you to go away, to leave me—you will be in trouble if you don’t go away.”

“And leave you here?”

“Take me with you if you will,” she went on, her voice shaking with agitation. “I had no idea what it was going to be like when Vera—she was our dancing mistress at school—sent for me and said what a wonderful time we would have. And, Mr. Wenderby, I want you to leave at once. If you don’t there will be trouble. I didn’t understand the first time when Lord Porleston was here. I know now. If you don’t take me away, I shall get away as soon as I can.”

Mr. Jennerton smiled. “My dear,” he assured her, “you don’t need to worry about me. I want to see this thing through. I’m here to find out what’s wrong with the place.”

Her face lightened. “You mean it?”

He nodded. “What’s the programme?” he enquired.

“In five or ten minutes,” she whispered, “I bring you in here to rest, and then a horrible man who has a room here—he seems to be in hiding—creeps in and makes a disturbance. You are supposed to be frightened——”

“I understand,” Mr. Jennerton interrupted. “We’ll see whether we can’t turn the tables for once and frighten him, eh? Come along.”

They danced again; the girl this time almost joyously. With the terrified expression gone from her eyes, she was remarkably attractive-looking. Mr. Jennerton glanced at the clock. The hour had arrived.

“Would you like to rest?” the girl faltered.

He nodded. They made their way once more to the divan and sat down. Mr. Jennerton lighted a cigarette. Suddenly he leaned forward. His quick ear had caught the sound of stealthy footsteps coming across the room.

“Ought to give ’em a run for their money, put my arm round your waist or something,” he whispered, smiling. “Let’s have a look.”

He tiptoed to the chink in the curtain. A man was crossing the room, dressed in dark clothes, a man with a long, worn face, hollow eyes and closely cropped black hair streaked with grey. He might very well have passed muster as a schoolmaster, or a respectable pedagog in any walk of life. Mr. Jennerton, however, after his first glance of curiosity, suddenly stiffened through all his ample frame. His eyes flashed, his good-natured face was set in lines of steel. One hand slipped into his pocket; with the other he drew back the curtain.

“Put ’em up, Morris,” he shouted—“put ’em up—quicker!”

For the first and last time during his career a master in his profession lost his nerve, and paid the penalty.

At the Embassy, which Vera Cassan entered with the air of an habituée, they found a corner table, and as it was barely half-past ten, decided to sup a little later. Gerald ordered wine and they danced. She nodded as they sat down.

“You will be worth giving lessons to,” she admitted.

They drank a glass of wine. Neither the dancing nor the champagne brought any access of colour into her cheeks, or any increased warmth into her tone, but somehow or other he was conscious of a change. Her fingers lingered upon his hand once. Her eyes called him a little closer to her.

“It is agreed,” she whispered. “I shall give you those lessons.”

They danced again and again, until presently some people came in whom she appeared to know—a big man who was treated everywhere with much respect, and two younger companions. They took a table at the farther end of the room, and Gerald’s dancing partner showed signs of restlessness.

“There is some one with whom I must speak,” she confided. “Will you wait for me?”

He stood up and moved the table to allow her to pass. After she had gone he sat, not watching her, but looking at the half-opened platinum and gold bag she had left behind. In one corner, just visible, were two long keys, fastened together with a small gold chain. He recalled Susan’s murmured words on the pavement as she had dropped them in—“The keys of the side door and the studio, miss.” The studio, occupied for the evening! By whom? For what purpose, if she were the dancing instructress? And why locked?

The sight of the keys fascinated him. More than once his hand stole out across the tablecloth. Then he was conscious that she was returning to him. He stood up again to let her pass to her seat, but she remained standing.

“Do you mind very much,” she asked, “if I dance with one of those men? He is a Russian—one of my pupils—and——”

“Please do,” Gerald begged. “I shall go and talk for a few minutes to a friend of mine. He has just asked me to have a drink in the bar.”

She left him with a little nod. As soon as she had reached the other end of the room Gerald’s fingers stole again across the tablecloth ... In two minutes he was in a taxicab; in a quarter of an hour, outside the house in Chelsea. The lights were dimmed in the front now, but the moon had risen, and he was able to see what had escaped him before—a long side entrance, and at its farther end another building which had obviously been an artist’s studio. He made his way cautiously towards it.

There were lights visible from behind the drawn curtains, and a phonograph was playing a fox trot. A wave of doubt depressed him. That sense of the mysterious which had buoyed him up to action since the parlourmaid had whispered her warning, seemed suddenly to fade away. There was something banal and ordinary about the music of that fox trot, something which dispelled at once all his vague suspicions. He was conscious of a most chilling conviction that he was making a fool of himself.

Then, as he lingered upon the step, one slight circumstance rekindled his flagging spirit of adventure—the fact that although the phonograph played smoothly on, there was no sound of shuffling footsteps or voices, and before him the door—an unusually solid one—stood fast closed. He took his courage in his hands, fitted one of the keys into the lock, and threw it open.

It was exactly at the same moment that Vera Cassan returned to her place, wondering a little at Gerald’s prolonged absence, and pushing past the table, glanced towards her bag. The cold light of fear stole into her eyes. Her fingers crept into its furthest folds, and searched—in vain. She half rose to her feet, to find the big man with whom she had been talking standing in front of her. He leaned down.

“Where is that man?” he demanded.

“Gone,” she answered. “And my keys—he or some one has taken them.”

The man’s face was black with anger. “You fool!” he exclaimed. “Do you know who he was?”

“Only his name—Gerald Robinson.”

He shivered with some sort of emotion, which might have been anger or fear.

“Every man in this world,” he pronounced, “who reaches the end before his proper time reaches it through a woman’s folly. That was Gerald Jennerton, the son of Jennerton, the detective.”

A brilliantly lighted but empty room, with rows of chairs around the walls—all empty—a phonograph playing apparently for ghosts—and a dead man stretched out upon the shining floor! Gerald looked about him in tragic bewilderment. The curtains at each end of the room were closely drawn; there was no sign or sound of human life. Then a great fear surged in upon him. Surely there was something familiar about the outline of the man who lay doubled up—a shapeless mass—only a few yards away.

Gerald took one faltering step forward, his eyes distended, an agony of apprehension creeping into his heart. One more step—he thrust out his hand—and then darkness!

Gerald, trying to stand upright, found his knees quivering, his heart pounding. Fear, for the first time in his life, had seized upon him. There was blackness, curiously complete. Every light had gone out. The high windows let in not a single gleam of the overhead moon. He could see nothing—not even the shape before him. Only through it all the phonograph played on. The strains of a popular melody rang out through the tragic atmosphere:

“If you knew Susie,

As I know Susie,

Oh, oh, oh, what a girl! ...”

Gerald forgot everything else. An effort of movement seemed to relieve the paralysis of his nerves. He staggered towards the phonograph, threw himself upon it, felt feverishly around its mechanism, found what he sought, touched the switch—and then silence.

He stood there for a moment, making an effort to recover himself. Sanity swept back in waves. He raised his voice.

“Is there any one here?”

There was no reply. The place was obviously empty. He groped his way to the wall, felt along until he came to a switch, tried it without result. From somewhere or other the lights had been turned off. He felt in his pocket. There was a gold match box attached to his chain. He drew it out and opened it. There was one match. Holding this in his fingers, he made his way slowly back to the middle of the room. His feet, shuffling forward, came into contact with something soft.

He sank on his knees and cautiously felt the body of the man, already a little stiff. For a moment his fingers trembled so that he feared to light the match. Then he drew it swiftly across the corrugated portion of his match box. For a single moment the light flared out. He saw the face of the dead man, the eyes unclosed, the mouth twisted in agony—and the face was the face of a stranger....

With that insurgent wave of relief came a curious lessening of the nervous tension which had almost deprived him of his senses. He stood up and for the first time found his brain working naturally. Whoever had been in this place had left it and closed the door—had left the dead man here to tell his own story. He groped his way along the wall to the door and shook it. He broke the blade of his penknife against the spring lock, from the outside of which, by some evil chance, he had omitted to remove the key, looked up at the windows ten feet above the floor, groped behind the curtains to find a sort of anteroom; but no windows, no sign of an exit.

He came back again, suddenly stopped and listened. There were steps approaching along the tiled way—light steps and heavier ones—two people. Vera Cassan, perhaps, and a man. He heard them hesitate outside, and then the sound of a key his key—in the lock. He felt a rush of air. He was dimly conscious of two shadowy forms. The girl spoke.

“The lights have been turned off from the house,” she said. “You will find a small switch on the left.”

Then there was light—floods of it—and Gerald, dishevelled, distraught, wild-eyed, as he felt himself and as indeed he was, faced the two newcomers, faced too the wicked-looking cylinder of an automatic which the big man had drawn like lightning from his pocket.

“Who’s this?” he demanded.

The girl sprang forward with a little cry which was half a moan. She was directly in the line of fire. She turned to Gerald.

“Did you do this?”

He shook his head. Just at that moment the power of speech was denied him. The man who had lingered upon the threshold came slowly forward. He was a big, fleshy man, with pendulous cheeks and dark lines under his eyes, but the hand which still gripped the automatic was amazingly steady. Suddenly Gerald felt his voice strong within him.

“I know nothing about it,” he said. “I came in search of my father. I found the place empty.”

The girl laid her hand on the barrel of the automatic. “At least,” she scoffed, “you should be gambler enough to know the folly of forcing a losing game. Jennerton has been here. He has taken Clarice away.”

“This is Jennerton’s son,” the man muttered. “I hate all detectives. I hate the breed.”

The girl stood indifferently between them. “You’d better go,” she advised Gerald.

He moved towards the door. The man was scowling, obviously undecided. An instinct of bravado seized Gerald, as he felt the cold draft of air and freedom.

“Those dancing lessons?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Some day, perhaps.”

Then a dash of falling rain and wind up the passage brought sanity.

Mr. Jennerton, Senior, and a young lady were sharing a bottle of champagne and a plate of sandwiches when Gerald made a somewhat precipitate entrance into the flat.

“Dad!” he exclaimed breathlessly.

Mr. Jennerton held out his hand.

“My lad,” he explained, “Miss Clarice Laurieson. Been looking for me, Gerald? Your friend Susan told me you were round that little shanty in Chelsea. Here, take a drink. You look as though you needed it.”

Mr. Jennerton, Senior, poured out a glass of champagne; Mr. Jennerton, Junior, promptly swallowed it.

“Glad you turned up,” the former continued amiably. “You can take Miss Clarice back to her boarding school to-morrow. By the bye, what made you leave Florence?”

“Brigstock wired me to come—told me when I arrived that you’d disappeared.”

Mr. Jennerton sighed heavily. “I shouldn’t call it a disappearance,” he said. “I changed places with a Mr. Henry Wenderby, an Australian, for a few days. You see, there was this young lady practically held in bondage by an old schoolfellow—very bad lot, I’m afraid, that Miss Vera Cassan; there was poor old Lord Porleston being worried into his grave by a blackmailing hound; and ‘Murdering Morris’—well, I admit ‘Murdering Morris’ was a surprise to me.”

“The man you killed!” the girl gasped.

“My dear,” Mr. Jennerton, Senior, expostulated gently, “if I hadn’t killed him he would have killed us. Every officer in the New York police force, and every one trusted with a revolver from Scotland Yard has had orders to shoot him on first sight for years. So don’t you worry about that.... How are pictures, Gerald?”

“I’ve finished with them,” was the prompt reply. “I’m coming in with you, Dad. This is the life!”

Mr. Jennerton, Senior, beamed. From his capacious pocket he drew out a morocco-bound notebook and handed it to his son.

“Oblige me,” he said, “by beginning your duties at once. You will find the case of Lord Porleston there; place a red cross against it—blackmailer shot. There are three pages on ‘Murdering Morris’—shot. There is the disappearance of Miss Clarice Laurieson—another red cross—returned to her school. It has been the unique experience of my life, Gerald, to finish off three little matters in one night.... Have another sandwich.”

Miss Clarice smiled across the table, and Gerald decided that she was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen.

“I’m glad you’re going to stay in England,” she murmured.