The Secret House, Edgar Wallace [epub read online books TXT] 📗

moment her eyes fell upon it. The letter she held in her shaking hand ran:


"I command you to marry Frank Doughton within seven days. My whole fortune and my very life may depend upon this."


It was signed "Gregory Farrington," and heavily underlined beneath the signature were the words, "Burn this, as you value my safety."

* * * * *

T. B. Smith stepped briskly into the office of his chief and closed the door behind him.

"What is the news?" asked Sir George, looking up.

"I can tell you all the news that I know," said T. B., "and a great deal that I do not know, but only surmise."

"Let us hear the facts first and the romance afterwards," growled Sir George, leaning back in his chair.

"Fact one," said T. B. drawing up a chair to the table, and ticking off his fact on the first finger of his hand, "is that Gregory Farrington is alive. The man whose body was picked up in the Thames is undoubtedly the gentleman who was shot in the raid upon the Custom House. The inference is, that Gregory was the second party in the raid, and that the attempt to secure the trunk of the admirable Dr. Goldworthy was carefully conceived. The box apparently contained a diary which gave away Gregory to one who had it in her power to do him an immense amount of harm."

"You refer to Lady Constance Dex?" asked the chief, interestedly.

T. B. nodded.

"That is the lady," he said. "Evidently Farrington has played it pretty low down upon her; was responsible for the death of her lover, and, moreover, for a great deal of her unhappiness. Farrington was the man who told George Doughton about some scandal of her youth, and Doughton, that high-spirited man, went straight off to Africa without communicating with the lady or discovering how far she was guilty in the matter. The documents in the box would, I surmise, prove this to Lady Dex's satisfaction, and Farrington, who was well informed through his agents on the Coast, would have every reason for preventing these letters getting into the hands of a woman who would be remorseless in her vengeance."

"Is that fact established?" asked the chief.

"Pretty well," said T. B.

He took some papers out of his pocket and laid them on the desk before him.

"I have now got a copy of the letter which the dead lover wrote to Lady Constance. I need not say," he said lightly, "how I obtained possession of this, but we in our department do not hesitate to adopt the most drastic methods----"

"I know all about that," said the chief, with a little smile; "there was burglary at the rectory two days ago, and I presume your interesting burglar was your own Private Sikes."

"Exactly," said T. B. cheerfully. "Fact number two," he went on, "is that Gregory Farrington and the international blackmailer named Montague Fallock are one and the same person."

The chief looked up.

"You do not mean that?"

"I do indeed," said T. B. "That interesting paragraph in the will of the late Mr. Farrington confirms this view. The will was especially prepared to put me off the scent. Letters which have been received by eminent personages signed 'Montague Fallock' and demanding, as usual, money with threats of exposure have recently been received and confirm this theory."

"Where is Montague Fallock now?"

"Montague Fallock is an inmate of the Secret House," said T. B.

"It seems pretty easy to take him, does it not?" asked Sir George, in surprise. "Have you moved in the matter?"

T. B. shook his head.

"It is not so easy as you imagine," he said. "The Secret House contains more secrets than we can at present unravel. It was built, evidently and obviously, by a man of extraordinary mechanical genius as Farrington was, and the primary object with which it was built was to enable him on some future occasion to make his escape. I am perfectly certain that any attempt to raid the house would result immediately in the bird flying. We have got to wait patiently."

"What I cannot understand," said his chief, after awhile, "is why he should make a dramatic exit from the world."

"That is the easiest of all to explain," smiled T. B. "He was scared; he knew that I identified him with the missing Fallock; he knew, too, that I strongly suspected him of the murder of the two men in Brakely Square. Don't you see the whole thing fits together? He imported from various places on the Continent, and at various periods, workmen of every kind to complete the house at Great Bradley. Although he began his work thirty years ago, the actual finishing touches have not been made until within the last few years. Those finishing touches were the most essential. I have discovered that the two men who were shot in Brakely Square, were separately and individually employed in making certain alterations to the house and installing certain machinery.

"One was a young architect, the other was a general utility man. They were unknown to each other; each did his separate piece of work and was sent back to his native land. By some mischance they succeeded in discovering who their employer was, and they both arrived, unfortunately for them, simultaneously at the door of Fallock or Farrington's house with the object of blackmailing him. Farrington overheard the conversation; he admitted as much.

"He stood at the door, saw them flourishing their pistols and thought it was an excellent opportunity to rid himself of a very serious danger. He shot them from the doorway, closed the doorway behind him, and returned the revolver to its drawer in his study, and came down in time to meet the policeman with energetic protestations of his terror. I smelt the powder when I went into the house; there is no mistaking the smell of cordite fired in so confined a place as the hallway of a house. And Lady Dex was also there; she must have witnessed the shooting."

"Why did she come?" asked the chief.

"My conjecture is that she came either to confront Farrington with evidence of his complicity, which is unlikely, or else to secure confirmation of the story her lover told in his last letter."

"But why shouldn't Farrington disappear in an ordinary way--or why need he disappear at all?" asked Sir George. "He had plenty of credit in the city. He had the handling of his niece's fortune. He could have blocked out your suspicion; he is not the kind of man to be scared of a little thing like that."

"That is where I am at sea," said T. B. "I must confess his disappearance is not consistent with his known character. He certainly had the fortune of the girl, and I have no doubt in my mind that he has a very genuine affection for his niece. Her inheritance, by the way, falls due next month; I do not suppose that had anything to do with it. If he had robbed her of it, or he had dissipated this money which was left in his care, one could have understood it, but the fact that he is dead will not restore the fortune if it is gone."

"What are you doing?" asked the chief.

"About Farrington?" asked T. B. "I am having the house kept under observation, and I am taking whatever precautions I can to prevent our friend from being scared. I am even attempting to lure him into the open. Once I can catch him outside of the Secret House, I think he will be a clever man to escape."

"And Poltavo?"

"He is in town," said T. B. "I think he will be a fairly easy man to circumvent; he is obviously acting now as the agent of our friend Farrington, and he is horribly proud of himself!"


CHAPTER XIV


As T. B. had said, Poltavo had returned from his brief sojourn in Great Bradley, and emerged into society a new and more radiant being than ever he had been before.

There had always been some doubt as to the Count's exact financial position, and cautious hostesses had hesitated before they had invited this plausible and polished man to their social functions. There were whispers adverse as to his standing; there were even bold people who called into question his right to employ the title which graced his visiting cards. There were half a dozen Poltavos in the _Almanack De Gotha_, any one of whom might have been Ernesto, for so vague is the Polish hierarchy that it was impossible to fix him to any particular family, and he himself answered careless inquiries with a cryptic smile which might have meant anything.

But with his return to London, after his brief absence, there was no excuse for any hostess, even the most sceptical, in refusing to admit him to social equality on the ground of poverty. The very day he returned he acquired the lease of a house in Burlington Gardens, purchased two motor-cars, paying cash down for an early delivery, gave orders left and right for the enrichment of his person and his domicile, and in forty-eight hours had established himself in a certain mode of living which suggested that he had never known any other.

He had had his lesson and had profited thereby. He had experienced an unpleasant fright, though he might not admit it to Dr. Fall and his master; it was nevertheless a fact that, realizing as he did that he had stood face to face with a particularly unpleasant death, he had been seized by a panic which had destroyed his ordinary equilibrium.

"You may trust me, my friend," he muttered to himself, as he sorted over the papers on his brand-new desk in his brand-new study, in a house which was still redolent of the painter's art and presence. "You may trust me just so long as I find it convenient for you to trust me, but you may be sure that never again will I give you the benefit of my presence in the Secret House."

He had come back with a large sum of money to carry out his employer's plans. There were a hundred agents through the country, particulars of whom Poltavo now had in his possession. Innocent agents, and guilty agents; agents in high places and active agents in the servants' hall. Undoubtedly _Gossip's Corner_ was a useful institution.

Farrington had not made a great deal of money from its sale; indeed, as often as not, it showed a dead loss every year. But he paid well for contributions which were sent to him, and offered a price, which exceeded the standard rate of pay, for such paragraphs as were acceptable.

Men and women, with a malicious desire to score off some enemy, would send him items which the newspapers would publish if they concerned somebody who might not be bled. Many of these facts in an amended form were, in fact, printed.

But more often than not the paragraphs and articles which came to the unknown editor dealt with scandal which it was impossible to put into print. Nevertheless, the informant would be rewarded. In some far-away country home a treacherous servant would receive postal orders to his or her great delight, but the news she or he had