Hugo, Arnold Bennett [the false prince TXT] 📗

good conduct are allowed, and each mark means so many days deducted from the term.'

'I didn't know,' said Camilla simply. 'How should I know a thing like that?'

'I have no doubt that young Powitt is already free. And if he is--'

'You think that Mr. Ravengar's suicide may not have been a suicide?'

Hugo hesitated.

'Yes,' he said, and lapsed into reflection.

* * * * *


'I shall see you home,' he said.

'I am going to walk,' she replied. 'And I have to get my things from the cloak-room.'

'I will walk with you,' he said.

'What style the woman has!' he thought, enraptured.

They proceeded southwards in silence. Then suddenly she asked how he had left Mr. Darcy, and they began to talk about Darcy and Paris. Hugo encouraged her. He wished to know the worst.

'Except my father,' she said, 'I have never met anyone with more sense than Mr. Darcy, or anyone more kind. I might have been dead now if it hadn't been for Mr. Darcy.'

'Mr. Darcy is a very decent fellow,' Hugo remarked experimentally.

She turned and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest fraction of a look, but it withered him up.

'She loves him!' he thought. 'And what's more, if she hadn't made up her mind to marry him, she wouldn't be so precious easy and facile and friendly with me. I might have guessed that.'

They passed Victoria Station, and came into Horseferry Road. She had informed him that she had taken a furnished room in Horseferry Road. The high and sinister houses appeared unspeakably and disgracefully mean to him in the wintry gloom of the gaslights. She halted before a tenement that seemed even more odious than its neighbours. Was it possible that she should exist in such a quarter? The idea sickened him.

'Which floor?' he questioned.

'Oh,' she laughed, 'the top, the fifth. Good-night, Mr. Hugo.'

He pictured the mean and frowsy room, and shuddered. Yet what could he do? What right had he to interfere, to criticise, to ameliorate?

'Good-night,' she repeated, and in a moment she had opened the door with a latchkey and disappeared. He stood staring at the door. He had by no means finished saying all that he meant to say to her. He must talk to her further. He must show her that he could not be dismissed in that summary fashion. He mounted the two dirty steps, and rang the bell in a determined manner. He heard it tinkle distantly.

She was divine, adorable, marvellous, and far beyond the deserts of any man; but she had not shaken hands with him, and she had treated him as she might have treated one of the shopwalkers. Moreover, the question of to-morrow had to be decided.

There was no answer to the bell, and he rang again, with an increase of energy.

Then he perceived through the fanlight an illumination in the hall. The door opened cautiously, as such doors always do open, and a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown stood before him. In the background he descried a small table with a candle on it, and the foul, polished walls of the narrow lobby--a representative London lodging-house.

'I want to see Mrs. Tudor,' said Hugo.

'Well, she ain't in at the moment,' replied the man.

'Excuse me,' Hugo corrected him, 'I saw her enter a minute ago with her latchkey.'

'No, you didn't,' the man persisted. 'I'm the landlord of this house, and I've been in my room at the back, and nobody's come in this last half-hour, for I can see the 'all and the stairs as I sits in my chair.'

'Wait a moment,' said Hugo; and he retreated to the kerb, in the expectation of being able to descry Camilla's light in the fifth story.

'Oh, you can look,' the landlord observed loftily, divining his intention; 'I warrant there's no light there.'

And there was not.

'Perhaps you'll call again,' said the landlord suavely.

'I suppose you haven't got a room to let?' Hugo demanded, fumbling about in his brain for a plan to meet this swift crisis.

'I can't tell you till my wife comes home.'

'And when will that be?'

'That'll be to-morrow.'

The door was banged to. Hugo rang again, wrathfully, but the door remained obstinate.


CHAPTER XXV


CHLOROFORM

'Come in,' said Simon grandly, in response to a knock.

He was seated in his master's chair in the dome, which was lit as though for a fete. The clock showed the hour of nine.

Albert entered.

'Oh, it's you, is it?' exclaimed Albert. 'Where's the governor?'

'I don't know where he is. He was in his office at something to seven, having an interview with Mrs. Tudor. Since then--'

Simon raised his eyebrows, and Albert expressed a similar sentiment by means of a whistle.

'Then, you've been telephoning on your own for me to come up?'

'Yes.'

'It's like your cheek!' Albert complained, calmly perching himself on the top of the grand piano.

'Perhaps it will be. I regret to tear you from your fireside, Alb, but I wish to consult you on a matter affecting the governor.'

'Go ahead, then,' said Albert. 'There's been enough talk about the governor to-day downstairs, I should hope.'

'You mean in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance?'

'Yes.' Albert imitated Simon's carefully enunciated periods. 'I do mean in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance. By the way, what the deuce are you burning all these lights for?'

'I was examining this photograph,' said Simon, handing to his brother a rather large unmounted silver-print photograph which had lain on his knees.

'What of it?' Albert asked, glancing at it. 'Medical and Pharmaceutical Department, isn't it? Not bad.'

'We're having a new series of full-plate photographs done for the next edition of the General Catalogue,' said Simon, 'and this is one of them. It contains forty-five figures. It was taken yesterday morning by that Curgenven flashlight process that we're running. Look at it. Don't you see anything?'

'Nothing special,' Albert admitted.

Simon rose and came towards the piano.

'Let me show you,' he said superiorly. 'You see the cash-desk to the left. There's a lady just leaving the cash-desk. And just behind her there's an oldish man. You can't see all of his face because of her hat. He's holding his bill in his hand--you can see the corner of it--and he's got some sort of a parcel under his arm. See?'

'Yes, Mr. Lecoq.'

'Well, doesn't he remind you of somebody?'

'He's rather like old Ravengar, perhaps,' said Albert dubiously.

'You've hit it!' Simon almost shouted. 'It is Ravengar.'

'This man's got no beard.'

'That comes well from a detective, that does!' said Simon scornfully. 'It needn't have cost him more than threepence to have his beard shaved off, need it?'

'And seeing that this photograph was taken yesterday morning, and Ravengar fell off a steamer into the Channel more than a week ago!'

'But did he fall off a steamer more than a week ago?'

'He was noticed on board the steamer before she started, and he wasn't on board when she arrived.'

'Couldn't he have walked on to the steamer with his luggage, and then walked off again and let her start without him?'

'But why?'

'Suppose he wanted to pretend to be dead?'

'Why should he want to pretend to be dead?' Albert defended his position.

Simon, entirely forgetful of that dignity which usually he was at such pains to preserve, sprang on to the piano alongside Albert.

'I'll tell you another thing,' said he. 'When I came in with the governor's tea this morning he was just dozing and half-dreaming like--he'd had a very bad night--and I heard him say, "So they think you are at the bottom of the Channel, Louis? I wish you were!" What do you think of that, my son?'

'Then the governor must know Ravengar didn't commit suicide in the Channel? The governor never said a word to me!'

'You don't imagine the governor tells you everything, do you?' said Simon cruelly.

'Have you shown him the photo?' Albert asked.

'No,' said Simon, with a certain bluntness.

'Why not?'

'Well, for one thing, I've had no chance, and for another I wanted to find out something more first. I'd just like the governor to see that I'm not an absolute idiot.... Though I should have thought he might have found that out before now.'

'He doesn't think you're an absolute idiot,' said Albert.

'He acts as if he did,' said Simon. The Paris trip still rankled.

A pause followed.

'Another thing,' Albert recommenced. 'Even supposing Ravengar's alive, it's not very likely he'd venture here, of all places.'

'Why not?' Simon argued. 'Scarcely anybody knows Ravengar by sight. He's famous for keeping himself to himself. He's one of the least known celebrities in London. He'd be safe from recognition almost anywhere. Moreover, supposing he wanted to buy something peculiar?'

'He might,' Albert admitted. 'But don't forget this is all theory. I suppose you've been making your own inquiries in the Medical Department?'

'Yes,' said Simon rather apologetically. 'But I couldn't find anyone among the staff who remembers serving such a man, or even seeing him. He may have had an accomplice, you know, on the staff. What makes it more awkward is that there were two photographs taken, one about eleven, and another about half-past, and the photographer got the plates mixed up, and doesn't know whether this one is the first or the second. You see, the clock doesn't show in the picture; otherwise, we might have pieced things together.'

'Pity!' Albert murmured.

'However,' said Simon, with an obvious intention to be dramatic, 'I thought of Lecoq, and I hit on something. You see the lady just leaving the cash-desk with her receipt? Can you read the number of her receipt?'

Albert peered.

'No, I can't,' he said.

'Neither could I,' Simon agreed. 'But I've had that part of the photograph enlarged to-night.'

'The deuce you have!' Albert opened his eyes.

'Yes, the deuce I have! And here it is.'

Simon took a photographic print from his pocket, showing the lady's hand and part of the receipt, very blurred and faint, with some hieroglyphic figures mistily appearing.

'Looks like 6,706,' said Albert.

'It's either 6,706 or 6,766,' Simon concurred. 'Now, Ravengar's receipt must be numbered next to hers. Consequently, if we go and look at the counterfoils and duplicates--'

'Yes,' said Albert, thoughtfully sliding down from the piano.

'We may be able to find out something very interesting,' Simon finished, descending also.

'Now?'

'Now. That's what I wanted you for. You've got your pass-keys and everything, haven't you?'

'Yes.'

'Then run down and search.'

'Aren't you coming too?'

'I was only thinking, suppose the governor came back and wanted me?'

Albert gazed contemptuously at this exhibition of timidity--the cowardice of a born valet, he deemed it.

'Oh, of course,' he exclaimed, 'if you--'

'I'll come,' said Simon boldly. 'If he wants me he must wait, that's all.'

They descended together