Читать книгу The Stolen Statesman: Being the Story of a Hushed Up Mystery - Le Queux William - Страница 3

Austin Wingate approached the unconscious man, and scrutinised the white, drawn features closely. When Grant had uttered those words, he could hardly believe his ears. Had the shock been too much for the old man’s reason?

But as he gazed intently, the conviction grew upon him that Grant was right. There was a little resemblance between the Cabinet Minister and the insensible man lying there. Their figures were much the same, and in the half-light a mere cursory glance could not have detected them apart.

But to those who, like Grant and Austin, knew Reginald Monkton intimately, there were striking points of difference at once apparent.

Wingate drew a deep sigh of relief.

“You are right. Grant, it is not your master! He looks ghastly, doesn’t he? The driver said that he was drunk, but I don’t believe it. The man, whoever he is, seems to me as if he were dying.”

At that moment, Sheila, her cheeks pale, her hand trembling so that she spilled the glass of water she was carrying, came into the sitting-room.

Austin rushed towards her and, taking the glass from her, pressed her trembling hand. At a moment of acute tension like that, he knew she would not resent the action.

“Sheila, for God’s sake keep calm. It is not what we thought. The man we carried in here is not your father. He is a stranger, wearing your father’s clothes. Look for yourself, and you will see where the likeness ends.”

“Not my father?” she repeated mechanically, and flung herself down beside Grant. A moment’s inspection was enough to convince her. She rose from her knees.

“Thank God!” she cried, fervently. It had cut her to the heart to think that the father whom she so loved and revered should be brought home in such a condition. She was grateful that none but those three had been present.

But to her gratitude succeeded a sudden wave of fear, and her face went paler than before.

“But, Austin, there must be some terrible mystery behind this. Why is this man wearing father’s clothes? And why – ” she broke suddenly into a low wail – “is father not home?”

Austin could make no answer; the same thought had occurred to him.

“My poor child, there is a mystery, but you must summon all your courage till we can discover more,” he murmured soothingly. “Now I must go and ’phone for the doctor. In my opinion, this man is not suffering from excess, as that driver led us to believe. He appears to be in a dying state.”

When he had gone to ring up the family doctor, who lived close by in Curzon Street, Sheila again knelt down beside the prostrate form.

Presently the man’s lips began to move and faint sounds issued from them. He seemed trying to utter a name, and stumbling over the first syllable.

They strained their ears, and thought they caught the word “Moly” repeated three times.

There was silence for a few seconds, and then the muttering grew louder and they thought they heard the name “Molyneux.”

“Oh, if only he could wake from his sleep or lethargy!” Sheila exclaimed impatiently. “If he could only throw some light upon this awful mystery?”

He relapsed into silence again, and then presently recommenced his mutterings. This time, he pronounced the syllables even less clearly than before. And now they fancied the name was more like “Mulliner.”

Would he come back to consciousness and be able to answer questions, or would those be his last words on earth? They could not tell. His form had relapsed into its previous rigidity and his face had grown more waxen in its hue.

What was the explanation of his being dressed in her father’s clothes? Sheila was sure they were the same Reginald Monkton had won on setting out that evening.

A sudden thought struck her. She inserted her hand gently in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a gold watch. It was her father’s; she had given it to him on his last birthday. She felt in the breast pocket of his coat, but it was empty. That told her little, for she did not know if he had taken any papers with him.

She felt in his pockets one by one, but only discovered a little loose silver. It was her father’s habit always to carry a few banknotes in a leather case. If he had done so to-night these had been abstracted. But if the money had been taken, why not the watch? And then she recollected it was inscribed with his name.

While she was pondering these disturbing queries. Doctor Macalister entered the room with Austin, who had imparted to him the startling news in a few words.

He bent over the quiet form, murmuring as he did so: “He is dressed in Mr Monkton’s clothes, certainly. I might have been deceived at the first glance myself.”

He unbuttoned the waistcoat and shirt, and laid his stethoscope on the chest of the inanimate body.

“Dead!” he said briefly, when he had made his examination. “One cannot, of course, at present tell the cause of death, although the appearances point to heart-failure.”

Sheila looked up at him, her lovely eyes heavy with grief and foreboding.

“He spoke a little before you came in,” she said. “He seemed to utter two names, Molyneux and Mulliner. He repeated them three times.”

The kindly old doctor who had brought her into the world looked at her with compassionate eyes. “The part he bore in this mystery, whether he was a victim or accomplice, will never be revealed by him. He must have been near death when he was put into that taxi. I suppose you did not notice the number?”

No, neither Grant nor Austin had thought of it. They had been too much perturbed at the time.

“Well, I have no doubt the driver can be found. Now I must telephone for the police, and have the body removed.”

He drew young Wingate aside for a moment. “You say you have inquired at the House of Commons. Have you rung up Monkton’s clubs? He has only two. No; well, better do so. It is a forlorn hope; I knew the man so well. He would never keep Sheila waiting like this if he were with means of communication. There has been foul play – we can draw no other conclusion.”

It was the one Wingate had drawn himself, and he quite agreed it was a forlorn hope. Still, he would make sure. He rang up the Travellers’ and the Carlton. The answer was the same from both places. Mr Monkton had not been at either club since the previous day.

The police arrived in due course, and bore away the body of the man who wore the clothes of the well-known and popular Cabinet Minister.

And, at their heels, came the inspector of the division, accompanied by Mr Smeaton, the famous detective, one of the pillars of Scotland Yard, and the terror of every criminal.

Smeaton was a self-made man, risen from the ranks, but he had the manners of a gentleman and a diplomatist. He bowed gravely to the pale-faced girl, who was so bravely keeping back her tears. With Austin he had a slight acquaintance.

“I am more than grieved to distress you at such a time. Miss Monkton, but the sooner we get on the track of this mystery the better. Will you tell me, as briefly as you like, and in your own time, what you know of your father’s habits?”

In tones that broke now and then from her deep emotion, Sheila imparted the information he asked for. She laid especial emphasis on the fact that, before leaving home in the evening, he outlined to her the programme of his movements. If anything happened that altered his plans he invariably telephoned to her, or sent a letter by special messenger.

The keen-eyed detective listened attentively to her recital.

“Can you recall any occasion on which he failed to notify you?” he asked when she had finished.

“No,” she answered firmly. Then she recollected. “Stay! There was one occasion. He was walking home from the House on a foggy night, and was knocked down by a taxi, and slightly injured. They took him to a hospital, and I was telephoned from there, and went to him.”

A gleam of hope shone in Austin’s eyes.

“We never thought of that.”

The great detective shook his head.

“But we thought of it, Mr Wingate. My friend here has had every hospital in the radius rung up. No solution there.”

There was silence for a long time. It seemed that the last hope had vanished. Smeaton stood for a long time lost in thought. Then he roused himself from his reverie.

“It’s no use blinking the fact that we are confronted with a more than usually difficult case,” he said, at length. “Still, it is our business to solve problems, and we shall put our keenest wits to work. I wish it were possible, for Miss Monkton’s sake, to keep it from the Press.”

“But would that be impossible?” cried Wingate.

“I fear so. If a little servant-maid disappears from her native village, the newspaper-men get hold of it in twenty-four hours. Here, instead of an obscure little domestic, you have a man, popular, well-known to half the population of England, whose portrait has been in every illustrated paper in the three Kingdoms. I fear it would be impossible. But I will do my best. The Home Secretary may give certain instructions in this case.”

Then turning to Sheila he said:

“Good-night, Miss Monkton. Rely upon it, we will leave no stone unturned to find your father, and bring him back to you.”

He was gone with those comforting words. But with his departure, hope seemed to die away, and Sheila was left to confront the misery of the present.

The faithful Grant, who had been hovering in the background, came forward, and spoke to her in the coaxing tone he had used when she was a child.

“Now, Miss Sheila, you must go and rest.”

“Oh, no!” she cried wildly. “What is the use of resting? I could not sleep. I can never rest until father comes back to me.” She broke into a low wail of despair.

Grant looked at Wingate, with a glance that implored him to use his influence. The faithful old man feared for her reason.

“Sheila, Grant is right,” said Austin gravely. “You must rest, even if you cannot sleep. You will need all your strength for to-morrow, perhaps for many days yet, before we get to the heart of this mystery. Let the servants go back to bed. Grant and I will wait through the night, in case good news may come to us.”

There were times when, as the old butler remembered, she had been a very wilful Sheila, but she showed no signs of wilfulness now. The grave tones and words of Austin moved her to obedience.

“I will do as you tell me,” she said in a hushed and broken voice. “I will go and rest – not to sleep, till I have news of my darling father.”

Through the weary hours of the night, the two men watched and dozed by turns, waiting in the vain hope of word or sign of Reginald Monkton.

None came, and in the early morning Sheila stole down and joined them. Her bearing was more composed, and she had washed away the traces of her tears.

“I intend to be very brave,” she told them. “I have roused the maids, and I am going to give you breakfast directly, after your long vigil.”

Impulsively she stretched out a hand to each, the youthful lover and the aged servitor. “You are both dear, good friends, and my father will thank you for your care when he comes back to me.”

Moved by a common impulse the two men, the young and the old, bent and imprinted a reverent kiss on the slender hands she extended to them.

It was a moment of exquisite pathos, the fair, slim girl, resplendent yesterday in the full promise of her youth and beauty; to-day stricken with grief and consumed with the direst forebodings of the fate of a beloved father.