The Ashiel Mystery, Mrs. Charles Bryce [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

"Though I must say

Ince agrees with you, and is always at me about the poor man. Some day I

hope you will both see his sterling qualities."

 

"I am afraid you must think I have given you a great deal of trouble for

very little reason," Lord Ashiel said to Juliet. "But perhaps there will

be more result than at present can seem clear to you. I may go so far as

to say that I hope so most sincerely. But, if the secret of which I spoke

just now is ever to be confided to you, it will be necessary for you and

me to know each other a little better. I have a proposal to make to you,

which I fear you may think our acquaintance rather too short and

unconventional to justify."

 

He paused with a trace of embarrassment, and Juliet wondered what could

be coming.

 

"It is not convenient for me to stay in London just now," he went on

after a minute, "and I am sure you must find it very disagreeable at this

time of the year; and yet it is very important that I should see more of

you. It is, in fact, part of the conditions under which I may be able to

reveal these family secrets of yours to you. That is to say, if they

should turn out to be indeed yours. I came up from the Highlands last

night. I have a place on the West Coast, where at this moment I have a

party of people staying with me for shooting. My sister is entertaining

them in my absence, but I must get back to my duties of host. What I want

to suggest is that you should pay us a visit at Inverashiel."

 

"Thank you very much," said Juliet doubtfully. "I should love to, but--I

don't know whether my father would allow me."

 

"Your father?" exclaimed Lord Ashiel and Mr. Findlay in one breath.

 

"Sir Arthur Byrne, I mean," she corrected herself.

 

"You might telegraph to him," urged Lord Ashiel. "And I, myself, will

write. You might mention my sister to him. I think he used to know her.

Mrs. John Haviland. But, indeed, it is very important that you should

come, more important than you think, perhaps."

 

He seemed extraordinarily anxious, now, lest she should refuse.

 

"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Findlay, "Miss Byrne would like to think over

the idea, and let you know later in the day."

 

"A very good plan," said Lord Ashiel. "Yes, of course you would like to

think it over. Will you telephone to me at the Carlton after lunch?

Thanks so much. Good-bye for the present."

 

He seized his hat and stick and darted to the door. "You talk to her,

Findlay!" he cried, and disappeared.

 

Juliet and Mr. Findlay were left confronting one another.

 

"That will be the best plan," the lawyer repeated. "Think it over, Miss

Byrne. I am sure you would enjoy the visit to Scotland. Inverashiel is a

most interesting old place, both historically and for the sake of its

beautiful scenery. A week or two of Highland air could not fail to be of

benefit to your health, even if nothing further came of it, so to speak."

 

"I should love it," Juliet said again. "But, Mr. Findlay, I don't know

Lord Ashiel, or hardly know him. How can I go off and stay with someone I

never met before to-day?"

 

"The circumstances are unusual," said the lawyer. "I fancy Lord Ashiel is

anxious to lose no time. He is in bad health, poor fellow. I am afraid he

will worry himself a good deal if you cannot make up your mind to go."

 

"You see," said Juliet, troubled, "I know nothing about him. I don't know

what my father--I mean, Sir Arthur would say."

 

"I am sure your father would have no objection whatever to your making

friends with Lord Ashiel," Mr. Findlay assured her. "He is one of the

most respectable, the most domesticated of peers. Not very cheerful

company, perhaps, but no one in the world can justly say a word against

him in any way. He has had a sad time lately; his wife and only child

died within a month of each other, only two or three years ago. They had

been married quite a short time. Since then, his sister, Mrs. Haviland,

keeps house for him; but he does not entertain much, I am told, except

during the autumn in Scotland. You need have no hesitation in accepting

this invitation, Miss Byrne. I am a married man, and the father of a

family, and I should only be too delighted if one of my daughters had

such an opportunity."

 

"Well," said Juliet, "I think I will risk it, and go. I am old enough to

take care of myself, in any case." This she said haughtily, with her nose

in the air. And then, with a sudden drop to her usual manner, she

exclaimed in a tone of gaiety, "What fun it will be!"

 

"I am sure you will not regret your decision," repeated Mr. Findlay, as

she got up to go. "You won't forget to let Lord Ashiel know, will you?"

 

"No, I will telephone to him at once. But I will telegraph home too,

of course."

 

Excitement over this new plan had almost dispelled the earlier

disappointment, and if Juliet's spirits, as she drove back to Jermyn

Street, were not quite as overflowingly high as when she had started

out, they were good enough to make her smile to herself and to every one

she met during the rest of the day, and to hum gay little tunes when no

one was near, and altogether to feel very happy and pleased and

possessed by the conviction that something delightful was about to

happen. She sent off her telegram to Sir Arthur, spending some time over

it, and spoiling a dozen telegraph forms, before she could find

satisfactory words in which to convey her plans with an appearance of

deference to authority. Then she called up the Carlton Hotel on the

telephone, and was much put out when she heard that Lord Ashiel was not

staying there, or even expected.

 

It was the hall porter of her hotel who came to the rescue, by

suggesting that she should try the Carlton Club, of which she had never

before heard.

 

From the quickness with which Lord Ashiel answered her, he might have

been sitting waiting at the end of the wire, and he expressed great

pleasure at her acceptance of his invitation. Indeed, she could hear from

the tone of his voice that his gratification was no mere empty form. It

was arranged that she should travel down on the following night, Lord

Ashiel promising to engage a sleeping berth for her on the eight o'clock

train. He himself was going North that same evening. He had just been

writing a letter to Sir Arthur Byrne, he told her. He hoped she had some

thick dresses with her; she would want them in Scotland.

 

"I am afraid I haven't," she said. "I only expected to stay in London for

a day or two, you know."

 

"Well," said the voice at the end of the telephone, "perhaps you can get

a waterproof or something, between this and to-morrow night. I am afraid

I don't know the names of any ladies' tailors, but there are lots about,"

he concluded vaguely.

 

"I suppose I had better," said Juliet doubtfully. "I wonder if the

shops here will trust me. The fact is, I haven't got very much extra

money. I think perhaps I'd better wait a day or two till I can have

some more sent me."

 

"My dear child," came the answer in horrified tones, "you must on no

account put off coming. Of course you are not prepared for all this extra

expense. You must allow me to be your banker. I insist upon it. Your

family, in whose confidence I happen to be, would never forgive me if I

allowed you to continue to be dependent on Sir Arthur Byrne."

 

"It is very kind of you," Juliet began. "But suppose I turn out to be

some one different. You know, you said--"

 

"If you do, you shall repay me," he replied. "In the meantime I will

send you round a small sum to do your shopping with. Let me see, where

are you staying?"

 

An hour later a bank messenger arrived with an envelope containing £100

in notes. Juliet had never seen so much money in her life, and thought it

far too much. "I shall be sure to lose it," was her first thought. Her

second was to deposit it with the proprietor of the hotel; after which

she felt safer. Then, in huge delight, she sallied forth again with her

maid, the alluring memory of some of the shop windows into which she had

gazed that morning calling to her loudly; she had never thought to look

at those fascinating garments from the other side of the glass.

Intoxicating hours followed, in which a couple of tweed dresses were

purchased that seemed as if they must have been made on purpose for her;

nor were thick walking shoes, and country hats, and other accessories

neglected. By evening her room was strewn with cardboard boxes, and on

Wednesday more were added, so that a trunk to pack them in had to be

bought as well. The shops were very empty; Juliet had the entire

attention of the shop people, and revelled in her purchases. Time flew,

and she was quite sorry, as she drove to Euston on the following evening,

to think that she was leaving this fascinating town of London.

CHAPTER IV

 

On Tuesday afternoon, when Juliet, having hung up the telephone through

which she had been conversing with Lord Ashiel, hurried out to see what

Bond Street could provide her with, a little man was sitting writing in a

luxuriously furnished room in a flat in Whitehall. He was small and thin,

and possessed a pair of extraordinarily bright and intelligent brown

eyes, which saw a good deal more of what happened around him than perhaps

any other eyes within a radius of a mile from where he sat. He was, in

other words, observant to a very high degree; and, what was more

remarkable, he knew how to use his powers of observation. There was not a

criminal in the length and breadth of the country who did not wonder

uneasily whether he had really left the scene of his crime as devoid of

clues as he imagined, when he heard that the celebrated detective,

Gimblet, had visited the spot in pursuit of his investigations.

 

For this was the man, who, in a few years, had unravelled more apparently

insoluble mysteries, and caused the arrest of more hitherto evasive

scoundrels, than his predecessors had managed to secure in a decade. The

name of Gimblet was known and detested wherever a coiner carried on his

forbidden craft, or a blackmailer concocted his cowardly plans; burglars

and forgers cursed freely when he was mentioned, and there was hardly an

illicit trade in the country which had not suffered at one time or

another from his inquisitive habit of interesting himself in other

people's affairs. Scotland Yard officials were never too proud to call

upon him for help, and many a difficulty he had helped them out of,

though he refused an offer of a regular post in the Criminal

Investigation Department, preferring to be at liberty to choose what

cases he would take up. Above all things he loved the strange and

inexplicable. Gimblet had not always been a detective. Indeed, he often

smiled to himself when he thought of the extraordinary confidence which

the public now elected to repose in him.

 

No one was more conscious than himself that he was far from being

infallible; in fact, his admirers appeared to him to be wilfully blind to

that elementary truth; so that when he failed to bring a case to a

successful issue people were apt to show an amount of disappointment that

he, for his part, thought very unreasonable. It