Читать книгу The Golden Beast - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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Inspector Rodes, one morning about a month after the disappearance of Ernest Fernham, looked at his notebook and found himself down for a consultation with the chief of his department. He made his way to the latter's office at the time appointed, and accepted the chair to which he was motioned. The two men sat facing one another on either side of a plain office table.

"I wanted to talk to you, Rodes, about this Fernham disappearance," Major Lorton, the Assistant Chief Commissioner, commenced.

The Inspector indulged in a slight grimace. There was no subject at the present time more utterly distasteful to him. He waited in silence to hear what his chief had to say.

"Of course I know," the latter continued, "that a case is a case to you, and that you'd work as hard on it for nothing as for the five thousand pounds reward which has just been offered. There's more than the matter of the reward to it, however. The efficiency of our whole department is being questioned. A young man in evening clothes, without an overcoat or hat, with apparently a blameless past, is spirited away from his family mansion in Norfolk and not even a trace of the message which summoned him has been discovered. On the face of it, the thing seems incredible!"

"It is incredible," Rodes admitted.

"What about his daily life?" the Assistant Commissioner asked. "You went into that thoroughly, of course. Was there no weak spot in it at all?"

"Not one," was the confident reply. "The young man—like so many of his race—seems to have been exceptionally domesticated. His father had offered him rooms of his own but he preferred to live at home. He dined out often at the Ritz and Claridge's, but always with his sister or friends in her circle. He had some acquaintance with a few young ladies in the theatrical profession, but they are quite the best of their type and he was very seldom in their company. He had a large allowance and a large income, and, although he seems to have been fairly liberal, he was quite unable to spend either. His private balance at his bank to-day stands at over fifteen thousand pounds, and he owns a quarter of a million pounds' worth of shares in the Fernham business. He lived a pleasant, harmless life, and never seems to have committed a single action which might produce enmity on any one's part. He was rather particular about his men friends and he has never been seen with one of those whom we have upon our doubtful list as probable blackmailers. You can rule out the possibility of financial embarrassment, intrigue of any sort with a woman, enmity on the part of any one whom he may have wronged, or blackmailing threats."

"That," the Assistant Commissioner remarked, "does not leave us much to go on."

"It leaves us nothing," the other assented.

Major Lorton frowned.

"We can't sit down under this, you know, Rodes," he said. "Let us leave the inner springs of the thing for a minute or two and come to the few details we have."

"I went over the whole of the ground myself," Rodes declared, "starting from the gun room at the back of the house where he was last seen. He must have left the house by a certain back door, as otherwise he would have met servants or passed the main kitchens. There were slight indications in the drive of some one lightly shod having passed along as far as a gate about a hundred yards from the house, which leads on to a very rough road, chiefly used for carting timber. I found faint traces of a motor tyre in the ruts here, but I subsequently learned that both Lord Honerton's agent and the merchant who comes to buy the timber use that road in their cars. Naturally every possible enquiry as to strange automobiles in the vicinity has been pressed home—without the slightest result, however. Neither has a description of the young man himself produced any credible story."

"Then there was the telephone call," Major Lorton observed. "What about that?"

"I have visited the telephone exchange at Fakenham and the head office at Norwich," Rodes replied. "The young woman who took the call declares that it came from a call office, but she was very busy and made no note of its exact source. The company has made every effort to discover this for me, without result. The smashing of the line afterwards was without doubt an accident. They were felling timber in a plantation around which the wire comes, and one of the trees on which they had started had been left till the following morning half sawn through. It had been a perfectly still day and the tree itself seemed absolutely safe. A sudden wind sprang up that evening, however, and the tree fell, cutting the branch wire to Honerton Chase and another one to a house beyond. It was a cruel coincidence but nevertheless it was a coincidence."

"We learnt nothing, then, from the telephone call, except that the young man is still alive," Major Lorton remarked.

"Nothing."

"And there we are."

"And there we are," Rodes echoed gloomily.

"You will admit, I presume," the Commissioner went on, after a moment's silence, "that the situation is extremely unsatisfactory."

"I admit it most heartily," his subordinate agreed.

"Have you any theory on the subject whatsoever?"

"I have worn myself out with theories," Rodes acknowledged. "In the end only the shell of one remains, and that's too vague to be of any value or interest."

"All the same," Major Lorton urged gently——

"It comes to this," Rodes interrupted. "I defy any one to explain the disappearance of this young man by any ordinary means. He hadn't an enemy in the world and he's one of the richest young men in the country. The one possibility left is that he has been abducted for the sake of a ransom—or possibly for the sake of the reward if his people can be induced to open their mouths wide enough. But when you come to ask me by what means he was induced to leave the house that night and to place himself in the power of any one, all I can say is that, considering the affair on the basis of everything that is known to us at present, it is absolutely inexplicable."

"I note your reservations," the other observed. "Continue, please."

"If I do," Rodes sighed, "I wander straight into the realms of nonsense. Science, however, is making fools of us every day, and I ask myself this question: is there any fresh discovery pending which might have been anticipated perhaps by some criminal brain before it has been announced to the world? If science won't help us here, what will? After all, why shouldn't a man be able to make himself invisible, for instance? Maskeleyne and Cook have done it, or produced the same effect."

"This is very interesting from the point of view of pure speculation," the Commissioner remarked drily, "but it isn't exactly the sort of thing the public are expecting from us."

"We haven't the goods the public want in this case, and they may as well know it," was the blunt reply. "I can't lay claim even to the possession of a clue. If the young man had gone as far as the back door to see his keeper off, one might build up an interesting hypothesis. He didn't, though. The keeper is very positive as to that. Get him as far as that back door and the possibilities have become more interesting. A flash of light in the lane. A call for help. A shadow in the drive. Anything might have tempted him out that little way."

"And when you have him at the gate, what then?" Major Lorton enquired. "He must have gone willingly. There were no signs of any struggle. It was market night and a good many carts were about. A young man in evening dress would have been a somewhat noticeable occupant of any vehicle."

"I am still presuming at the back of my mind," Rodes continued, "the existence of special ways and means for the transportation of this young man and a special influence to control his actions."

"You're harking back to the supernatural again?"

"Supernatural to the vulgar," Rodes objected. "Science to us."

The Commissioner sighed.

"I have to make a report to the Home Secretary on this case," he announced. "You don't suppose that this sort of stuff is any use to me?"

"I am not suggesting that it is," Rodes rejoined. "I was talking to you as man to man, and I still say, although I believe in the supernatural as little as you do, that there are circumstances in connection with the disappearance of Ernest Fernham which cannot be accounted for except by the admission of some new agency."

"What a confession!" Major Lorton groaned. "For heaven's sake, keep it to yourself!"

"You don't suppose I want to talk about it," was the inspector's dogged response. "It's got on my nerves already more than any case I've ever handled in my life."

"You keep on earth sufficiently to admit that you think it's blackmail that's intended—I mean a ransom?"

"There isn't any other conceivable motive," the other agreed. "If the Home Secretary wants sound advice to hand on to Lord Honerton, I should advise him to make the reward twenty thousand pounds, and no questions asked."

"It's a humiliating position for us," the Commissioner grumbled.

"It's worse for me than for any one," Rodes pointed out. "It's my department, my responsibility. I can't even talk intelligently about it, as you've realised. Isn't it the most hopeless confession that an official in my position could possibly make to his chief?—I can't find the young man. I haven't a clue as to the perpetrators of his abduction. I am driven to recommend the offering of a reward of twenty thousand pounds and no questions asked!"

Rodes walked gloomily westward after his interview with the Assistant Commissioner, apparently the same as ever; keen-eyed, watchful, slightly pugnacious. His outward appearance, however, was no index to his feelings. The spirit had gone out of his work. He felt the humiliation of failure, the unspoken censure of his department, acutely. He was depressed and miserable. At the corner of St. James's Street, the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen in his life stepped out of her limousine, glanced at him with recognition in her eyes, and then paused.

"How do you do," she said. "It is Inspector Rodes, isn't it?"

"It is," he assented, "and of course you are Lady Judith Fernham. I have just come from a consultation at Scotland Yard on your brother's case."

"No news yet?" she asked, a little wistfully.

"None," he admitted.

He was prepared to pass on, but, although she did not immediately continue the conversation, she seemed anxious to detain him. Inspector Rodes, worried though he was, permitted himself for a moment or two the pleasure of watching her. She wore a chinchilla coat and hat, the latter a turban with a flash of unexpected colour. He knew very little of such things, but he realised that the geranium scarlet of her lips owed nothing to artifice, that her silky eyebrows, though their very perfection seemed to make them appear unnatural, were untouched by any pencil. The cold had brought a faint flush of colour into her usually ivory-tinted cheeks. Her eyes—almost black they were—fascinated him by their exquisite setting and softness. Her brows were a little knitted. She was evidently pursuing a thought which had crept into her mind.

"Mr. Rodes," she said, "don't think I agree with all those stupid criticisms in the papers, but isn't it rather an astonishing thing that a disappearance like my brother's should be possible nowadays?"

"If we don't clear it up soon, it will be the greatest humiliation of my professional career, Lady Judith," he acknowledged. "I cannot tell you how badly we all feel about it—I, worst of all, because it is my department."

"I am going to say something which may sound foolish, perhaps," she went on, "but you know I am a very imaginative person, and I sometimes think that where logic fails, imagination steps in and helps. Did you ever hear of the incident which happened thirty years ago in that very dining room under precisely similar circumstances?"

"I did, indeed, Lady Judith," the Inspector admitted. "That was even a greater tragedy."

"You've never thought of connecting the two, I suppose?" she asked abruptly.

"Connecting them? Not seriously," he assured her. "Stop a moment, though," he corrected himself. "I made the obvious enquiries, of course. I discovered that the family of Heggs had been extinct in Norfolk for twenty-five years and that your present keeper, Middleton, is a bachelor and a Dorset man."

"That sounds convincing enough," she murmured. "And yet——"

"And yet?" he repeated, after waiting patiently for a few moments.

"Well, you see," she continued, "I have only the imagination to suppose things. I am like the water diviner who taps the ground where other people dig, but if I were you and had come to the end of all my resources, I should discard facts for a little time and try surmises.—Good-bye, Mr. Rodes! Let me hear from you, if you adopt my suggestion and anything comes of it."

She passed on across the pavement and entered a shop. Inspector Rodes continued thoughtfully on his way.