William Le Queux

“ More than ever was his father convinced that old Hughes was correct in his surmise. He had stood upon the pathway of the Guildford road—the old tar-macked highway which leads from London to Portsmouth—and had been approached by Gordon Gray, the man who meant to expose his father to the parishioners. The world of the Reverend Norton Homfray was, after all, a very little one. The world of each of us, whether we be politician or patriot, peer or plasterer, personage or pauper, has its own narrow confines. ”

“ I know he would never mislead me, dad!” And she fondled Tweedles, who, barking for recognition, had placed his front paws upon her knees.
“Of course,” said Mr Sandys, humouring her, “you love Roddy and, of course, believe in him. It is after all but natural, my child.”
“Yes, dad. You know that I love him. He is so honest, so upright, so true, that I feel confident, though the evidence seems against him, that he has not told a lie. He is the victim of circumstances,” the slim girl said, as she stood before the fire with the little dog in her arms. ”

“ He knew the nature of Real Self, as every strong man does. He knew the power of the Will, which power underlies the entire teachings of Raja Yogi, and he was master of his Real Self. The great strong men through all the ages have studied the Yogi science perhaps unconsciously. Even as Purcell Sandys stood there, a ruined man in that millionaire’s palace in Park Lane, he spoke aloud and repeated the mantrams or affirmations of the candidates presenting themselves to the Yogi masters for their first lesson. ”

“ The Wednesday night entertainments of Purcell Sandys were unique. Nobody in all the world was so lavish upon music or upon floral decorations. The grey-bearded old man, who usually wore a rather shabby suit, and habitually smoked a pipe, gave his guests the very best he could, for he loved flowers—as his great range of hot-houses at Farncombe Towers and at Biarritz testified—while good music always absorbed his senses. ”

“ The scandals in politics and in society prove it every day.”
“Yes. And let us—both of us—now that we love each other, be forewarned of the mysterious evil that threatens.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell. Yet I have a vague premonition that though the sun shines to-day, that all is bright and glorious, and that the clear horizon of our lives is speckless, yet very soon a darkness will arise to obscure further the mystery of that night in Welling Wood.”
“I sincerely hope not. Let us leave the affair to Inspector Fuller,” said Elma. ”

“ This he declared to Elma in a tone of deep and poignant sorrow.
“No, Roddy dear,” she exclaimed, her hand tenderly placed on his shoulder. “You must strive to bear your loss, great as it is. I know how you loved your dear father, but the parting must always come for all of us. The blow is great—to us all, to the village—and to you more especially, but you must not allow it to interfere with your future interests.” ”

“ But let’s hope for the best—eh, Freda?”
“Yes,” laughed the handsome woman carelessly—the adventuress who was so well known each winter at Cannes or at Monte Carlo, or in summer at Aix or Deauville. In the gayer cosmopolitan world Freda Crisp was known wherever smart society congregated to enjoy itself.
The pair of crooks afterwards dined at that well-known restaurant the Basso-Brégaillon, on the Quai de la Fraternité, a place noted for its “bouillabaisse”—that thick fish soup with the laurel leaves and onions and coloured with saffron, which is the great delicacy of the city. ”

“ As he refuses to come here and deliver his ultimatum in person, I will, in return, deliver my ultimatum to him. Go back and tell him that I defy him. Tell him that if either he or you lift a finger against me, then the truth concerning the death of young Hugh Willard will be known to Scotland Yard, and the affair of Hyde Park Square will be cleared up by the arrest of the assassin. Tell him that though he thinks there was no witness, yet one still exists—one who will come forward with indisputable proof. You know his name. Gordon Gray and I were friends until to-night. But we are no longer so. ”

“ Miss Elma, I want to tell you that I sympathise very much with your father in his great misfortune, the secret of which I happen to know—though as yet the world suspects nothing. But I fear it soon will, unless your father can come forward with some big and lucrative scheme. I have it in my power to help him with the mining concession in Morocco. ”

“ On the previous night at eight o’clock the two partners had met alone in Lombard Street, and Sir Charles had confessed that he had been gambling heavily in Paris, at Deauville, at Aix, at Madeira, at the Jockey Club, at Buenos Ayres, as well as at a private gambling-hell called Evans’ in West Kensington, and that the result had been that he had lost everything. He could not face the music.
So he had made his bow to the world and ended his life. Purcell Sandys was left to bear the brunt of the whole of the gigantic liabilities of them both! ”

“ I am ruined through no fault of my own, I trust—ruined by a gambling partner who cared for nothing save his obsession with regard to games of chance. Let us say no more about it. Rutherford may take his concession elsewhere, and I will face the music. I have my comfort in my Yogi teaching—in those two words ‘I am.’ I have done my best in life, and to my knowledge have never injured anyone. I have tried to act up to my Yogi teachers, with their magnificent philosophy of the East. ”

“ The congregation had dispersed into the winter darkness, wandering slowly and piously through the churchyard and out by the old lych-gate and down the hill, and old Morley, the verger, had already turned out the lights.
“Yes,” murmured the old clergyman, “he sat in the last pew yonder listening to me as I preached! Surely he cannot have risen from the grave, for I heard that he died at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York eighteen months ago! Forget him? Ah!” he sighed. “How can I ever forget? Why is he here in Little Farncombe, I wonder?” ”

“ He pushed them aside with trembling hands.
“You know to what they refer, Mr Homfray—to your appearance under another name!” sneered Freda Crisp. “You are the highly respected rector of this picturesque, though obscure, little parish, but if your parishioners knew the truth I fancy that they and your bishop would have something to say about it. Is it just to the public that a man such as yourself should dare to wear a surplice and have the audacity to preach sermons?”
The Rector of Little Farncombe remained silent. His face was deathly white, his hands trembled, and his eyes were staring. ”

“ But both master and man were crooks, clever cultured men who could delude anybody, who could adapt themselves to any surroundings, who knew life in all its phases, and could, with equanimity, eat a portion of oily fried fish-and-chips for their dinner or enjoy a Sole Colbert washed down with a glass of Imperial Tokay.
The pair, with a man named Arthur Porter, known to his criminal friends as “Guinness”—whom, by the way, Roddy had seen entering Mr Sandys’ house in Park Lane—and the handsome woman Freda Crisp were indeed parasites upon London society. ”

“ He is rich,” he said softly and very sadly. “And, after all, I am only an adventurer.”
“What are you saying?” cried the girl.
“I know the truth,” he replied bitterly. “If you ever loved me you would one day repent, for I have nothing to offer you, Elma. I ought to be content with my life—it is good enough in its way, though nameless and fruitless also, perhaps. Yes, it is foolish of me to object to the attentions which Mr Rutherford pays you. He returned from Paris specially last Wednesday to be at your party.” ”

“ The inspector’s words caused him to ponder. Were those circumstances his meeting with Gordon Gray for the first time that night?
Roddy, he knew, had never met Gray. The man’s very existence he had hidden from his son. And Roddy was abroad when, in those later years, the two men had met. The old rector of Little Farncombe felt bewildered. A crowd of difficulties had, of late, fallen upon him, as they more or less fall upon everybody in every walk of life at one time or another. We all of us have our “bad times,” and Norton Homfray’s was a case in point. ”

“ The footman who opened the door answered that neither his master nor Miss Elma was at home.
“Are they at Farncombe?” asked Roddy, much disappointed.
“No, sir. They are in town. But I do not think they will be back till very late.”
Roddy, who was a shrewd observer, could tell that the man had received orders to say “not at home.”
“Not at home” to him? Why? He stood upon the wide doorstep filled with wonder and chagrin. He wanted to tell Mr Sandys of the second disappearance of Edna Manners, and most of all to see the girl he so fondly loved. ”

“ Mr Richard Allen lived very quietly and respectably in his little white villa on the Corniche road. He was known everywhere along the Riviera from Hyères to Mentone. That he was a wireless amateur many people also knew. But of his real and very lucrative profession of blackmail nobody ever dreamed. Yet of the women who flock to the Riviera each year who dreams that the nice amiable, middle-aged man whom one meets at hotels or at the Casino, and who may offer to dance, is a blackmailer? ”

“ They found nothing when they searched the wood for you.”
“Perhaps they didn’t look in the right spot,” remarked his son. “Elma will be here at ten, and we’ll go together—alone—you don’t mind, father?”
“Not in the least, my boy,” laughed the old man. “Miss Sandys seems deeply distressed concerning you.”
“Does she?” asked Roddy, with wide-open eyes. “Do you really think she is? Or is it the mystery of the affair which appeals to her. Mystery always appeals to women in a greater sense than to men. Every mystery case in the newspapers is read by ten women to one man, they say.” ”

“ Half an hour later Roddy walked back along Lombard Street, that bustling thoroughfare of bankers and financiers, full of grave reflections. If he could only recollect what had happened during that period of half-oblivion, then he would be able to act with fearlessness and come to grips with his enemies.
He remembered that on the previous night he had learnt where Freda Crisp lived—a house called Willowden, on the high road beyond Welwyn. Therefore after a sandwich at the refreshment bar at King’s Cross station he took train, and half an hour later alighted at Welwyn station. ”

“ It is a glorious stone, finer, they say, than any that have ever come from the Urals into the treasury of the Romanoffs.”
“Emeralds and rubies are the most precious stones of to-day,” Roddy declared. “Diamonds do not count. They are unfashionable in these post-war days of the ruined aristocracy and the blatant profiteer. A big emerald worn as a pendant upon a platinum chain is of far greater notoriety than a diamond tiara. Nobody wears the latter.”
It was eleven o’clock, and His Excellency rang for a cup of black coffee, while Barclay and Roddy each took a glass of French vermouth. ”

“ What have I done?” cried the girl, looking straight at him. “No, surely I can have no enemies.”
“We all have enemies, darling. Ah! you do not yet realise that in our life to-day falsehoods are daily food and that a lie is small coinage in which the interchange of the world, francs, marks, dollars, or diplomacy, is carried on to the equal convenience of us all. Lying lips are no longer an abomination. They are part of our daily existence.”
“You are horribly philosophic, Roddy!” ”

“ For fully a quarter of an hour he remained in the vicinity, his eyes strained on every side, and gradually recovering his normal memory.
When, however, he tried to recall that night when he had acted under the overbearing influence of the woman Crisp he, alas! failed—failed utterly. Perhaps if he could get sight of the interior of the room in which he was victimised he might remember, but strive how he would all he could recall was but misty and unreal. ”

“ Though in the garage her father had two big cars, and she had her own smart little two-seater in which she frequently ran up to London and back, yet she enjoyed her cycle, which she used with a fearlessness begotten of her practice during the war when she had acted as a driver in the Air Force at Oxford—one of the youngest who had taken service, be it said.
As soon as she arrived she helped Roddy into his coat, and both went down the Rectory garden, climbed the fence, walked across the paddock, and at last entered the wood with its brown frosted bracken and thick evergreen undergrowth. ”

“ Who are you, Freda? Please tell me who you are! Roddy Homfray, 3.X.Q., is well, but I fear he may not be listening. Can I relay any message, Freda?” asked the voice.
“Curse you!” cried the man. “You’ve actually given your name broadcast over the whole country! What the devil do you mean?” he cried, glaring at her. “All wireless amateurs know 3.X.Q. as old Homfray’s son. They will inquire after Freda, and then old Homfray will know! Gad! You’ve made an unholy mess of things now! ”

“ Gordon Gray glanced keenly at the old rector with his shrewd dark eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
“Homfray, you are a fool?” he declared. “Why can’t we arrange matters? I came here to put a little proposition to you—that I should join your son in that mining concession he is obtaining from the Moorish Government.”
“Join my son!” shrieked the old man. “I would rather that Roddy grasped hands with Satan himself than with you! ”