The Stowmarket Mystery by Louis Tracy (best classic books of all time TXT) 📕

“If I had my fingers round his windpipe—” began David.

“You would be a dead man a few seconds later,” said the barrister. “If we three, unarmed, had him in this room now, equally defenceless, I should regard the issue as doubtful.”

“There would be a terrible dust-up,” smirked Winter.

“Possibly; but it would be a fight for life or death. No half measures. A matter of decanters, fire-irons, chairs. Let us return to the hotel.”

Whilst Hume went to summon the others, Brett seated himself at a table and wrote:

“A curious chapter of accidents happened in Northumberland Avenue yesterday. Early in the morning, Mr. Robert Hume-Frazer quitted his hotel for a stroll in the West End, and narrowly escaped being run over in Whitehall. About 8 p.m. his cousin, Mr. David Hume-Frazer, was driving through the Avenue in a hansom, when the vehicle upset, and the young gentleman was thrown out. He was picked up in a terrible condition, and is reported to be in danger of his life.”

The barrister read the paragraph aloud.

“It is casuistic,” he commented, “but that defect is pardonable. After all, it is not absolutely mendacious, like a War Office telegram. Winter, go and bring joy to the heart of some penny-a-liner by giving him that item. The ‘coincidence’ will ensure its acceptance by every morning paper in London, and you can safely leave the reporter himself to add details about Mr. Hume’s connection with the Stowmarket affair.”

The detective rose.

“Will you be here when I come back, sir?” he asked.

“I expect so. In any case, you must follow on to my chambers. To-night we will concert our plan of campaign.”

Margaret entered, with Helen and the two men. Robert limped somewhat.

“How d’ye do, Brett?” he cried cheerily. “That beggar hurt me more than I imagined at the time. He struck a tendon in my left leg so hard that it is quite painful now.”

Brett gave an answering smile, but his thoughts did not find utterance. How strange it was that two men, so widely dissimilar as Robert and the vendor of newspapers, should insist on the skill, the unerring certainty, of their opponent.

“Mrs. Capella,” he said, wheeling round upon the lady, “when you lived in London or on the Continent did you ever include any Japanese in the circle of your acquaintances?”

“Yes,” was the reply.

Margaret was white, her lips tense, the brilliancy of her large eyes almost unnatural.

“Tell me about them.”

“What can I tell you? They were bright, lively little men. They amused my friends by their quaint ideas, and interested us at times by recounting incidents of life in the East.”

“Were they all ‘little’? Was one of them a man of unusual stature?”

“No,” said Margaret

The barrister knew that she was profoundly distressed.

“If she would be candid with me,” he mused, “I would tear the heart from this mystery to-night.”

One other among those present caught the hidden drift of this small colloquy. Robert Frazer looked sadly at his cousin. Natures that are closely allied have an electric sympathy. He could not even darkly discern the truth, but he connected Brett’s words in some remote way with Capella. How he loathed the despicable Italian who left his wife to bear alone the trouble that oppressed her—who only went away in order to concoct some villainy against her.

Margaret could not face the barrister’s thoughtful, searching gaze. She stood up—like the others of her race when danger threatened. She even laughed harshly.

“I have decided,” she said, “to leave here to-morrow morning. Helen says she does not object Our united wardrobes will serve all needs of the seaside. Robert’s tailor visited him to-day, and assured him that the result would be satisfactory without any preliminary ‘trying on.’ Do you approve, Mr. Brett?”

“Most heartily. I can hardly believe that our hidden foe will make a further attack until he learns that he has been foiled again. Yet you will all be happier, and unquestionably safer, away from London. Does anyone here know where you are going?”

“No one. I have not told my maid or footman. It was not necessary, as we intended to remain here a week.”

“Admirable! When you leave the hotel in the morning give Yarmouth as your destination. Not until you reach King’s Cross need you inform your servants that you are really going to Whitby. Would you object to—ah, well that is perhaps, difficult. I was about to suggest an assumed name, but Miss Layton’s father would object, no doubt.”

“If he did not, I would,” said Robert impetuously. “Who has Margaret to fear, and what do David and I care for all the anonymous scoundrels in creation?”

“Is there really so much danger that such a proceeding is advisable?” inquired the trembling Nellie.

“To-day’s circumstances speak for themselves, Miss Layton,” replied Brett. “Neither you nor Mrs. Capella run the least risk. I will not be answerable for the others. Grave difficulties must be surmounted before the power for further injury is taken from the man we seek. In my professional capacity, I say act openly, advertise your destination, make it known that Mr. Hume escaped from the wreck of the hansom unhurt. Should the would-be murderer follow you to Whitby he cannot escape me. Here in London he is one among five millions. But speaking as a friend, I advise the utmost vigilance unless another Hume-Frazer is to die in his boots.”

It was not Helen but Margaret who wailed in agony:

“Do you really mean what you say? Have matters reached that stage?”

“Yes, they have.”

His voice was cold, almost stern.

“Kindly telegraph your Whitby address to me,” he said to Hume. Then he walked to the door, leaving them brusquely.

For once in his career he was deeply annoyed.

“Confound all women!” he muttered in anger. “They nurse some petty little secret, some childish love affair, and deem its preservation more important than their own happiness, or the lives of their best friends. They are all alike—duchess or scullery-maid. Their fluttering hearts are all the world to them, and everything else chaos. If that woman only chose—”

“Mr. Brett!” came a clear voice along the corridor.

It was Margaret. She came to him hastily

“Why do you suspect me?” she exclaimed brokenly. “I am the most miserable woman on earth. Suffering and death environ me, and overwhelm those nearest and dearest. Yet what have I done that you should think me capable of concealing from you material facts which would be of use to you?”

The barrister was tempted to retort that what she believed to be “material” might indeed be of very slight service to him, but the contrary proposition held good, too.

Then he saw the anguish in her face, and it moved him to say gently:

“Go back to your friends, Mrs. Capella. I am not the keeper of your conscience. I am almost sure you are worrying yourself about trifles. Whatever they may be, you are not responsible. Rest assured of this, in a few days much that is now dim and troublous will be cleared up. I ask you nothing further. I would prefer not to hear anything you wish to say to me. It might fetter my hands Good-bye!”

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“There!” he said to himself, as he passed downstairs, “I am just as big a fool as she is. She followed me to make a clean breast of everything, and I send her back with a request to keep her lips sealed. Yet I am angry with her for the risk she is taking!”

He reached the hall and was about to cross the foyer when he caught the words, “Gentleman thrown out of a cab,” uttered by a handsome girl, cheaply but gaudily attired, who was making some inquiry at the bureau.

He stopped and searched for a match. Then he became interested in the latest news, pinned in strips on the baize-covered board of a “ticker.”

The girl explained to an official that she had witnessed an accident that evening. She was told that a gentleman who lived in the hotel was hurt. Was he seriously injured?

The hotel man, from long practice, was enabled to sum up such inquirers rapidly.

“Do you know the gentleman?” he inquired.

“No—that is, slightly.”

“Well, madam, if you give me your card I will send it to his friends. They will give you all necessary information.”

She became confused. She was not accustomed to the quiet elegance of a great hotel. The men in evening dress, the gorgeously attired ladies passing to elevator or drawing-room, seemed to be listening to her. Why did the bureau keeper speak so loudly? Then the assurance of the Cockney came to her aid.

“I don’t see why there should be such a fuss about nothing,” she said. “I don’t know his people. I saw the gentleman pitched out of a cab and was sorry for him, so I just called to ask how he was.”

She angrily tossed her head, and stared insolently at an old lady who came to inquire if there were any letters for the Countess of Skerry and Ness.

“No letters, your ladyship,” said the man. “And you, miss, must either send a personal message or see the manager.”

The young woman bounced out in a fury, and Brett followed her, silently thanking the favouring planets which had sent him down the stairs at the very moment when the girl was proffering her request to the clerk.

Fortunately, the weather was better now. There was a clear sky overhead, and the streets looked quite cheerful after the steady downpour, London’s myriad lamps being reflected in glistening zigzags across the wet pavement.

The girl did not head towards the busy Strand, but walked direct to Charing Cross station on the District Railway.

The barrister thought she intended to go somewhere by train. He quickened his pace in order to be able to rapidly obtain a ticket and thus keep up with her. Herein he was lucky. To his surprise, she passed out of the station on the embankment side.

He followed, and nowhere could he see her. Then he remembered the steps leading to the footpath along the Hungerford Bridge. Running up these steps he soon caught sight of the young woman, who was walking rapidly towards Waterloo.

A man of the artisan class stared at her as she passed, and said something to her. She turned fiercely.

“Do you want a swipe on the jaw?” she demanded.

No, he did not. What had he done, he would like to know.

“You mind your own business,” she said. “Where am I goin’, indeed. What’s it got to do with you?”

The episode was valuable to the listening barrister. It classified the anxious inquirer after Hume’s health.

Her abashed admirer hung back, and the girl resumed her onward progress. The man was conscious that the gentleman behind him must have heard what passed. He endeavoured to justify himself.

“She’s pretty O.T., she is,” he grinned.

“Do you know her?” said Brett.

“I know her by sight. Seen her in the York now an’ then.”

“She can evidently take care of herself.”

“Ra—ther. Don’t you so much as look at her, mister, or off goes your topper into the river. She’s in a bad temper to-night.”

Brett laughed and walked ahead. On reaching the Surrey side the girl made for the Waterloo Road. There she mounted on top of a ’bus. The barrister went inside. He thought of the “man with black, snaky eyes,” who “took penn’orths” all the way from the Elephant to Whitehall.

And now he, Brett, took a penn’orth to the Elephant. The ’bus reached that famous centre of humanity, passing thence through Newington Butts to the Kennington Park Road.

In the latter thoroughfare the girl skipped down from the roof, and disdaining the conductor’s offer to stop, swung herself lightly to the ground. The barrister followed, and soon found himself tracking her along a curved street of dingy houses.

Into one of these she vanished. It chanced to be opposite a gas-lamp, and as he walked past he made out the