"Who is this Colonel Simpson?" she asked. "Could not he be exposed in the Press? Could not he be held up to execration? Could not you, Mr.
Goodrick," she said, flashing upon the editor, who had hitherto remained in the background and said no word, "could not you tell the world of the wickedness of this Colonel Simpson?"
The little man with the straw-coloured moustache and the keen eyes smiled.
"Miss Marriott," he said, "you realise very little as yet. You do not know what the forces of capitalism and monopoly mean. Day by day we are driving our chisels into the basis of the structure, and some day it will begin to totter; some day, again, it will fall, but not yet, not yet. Mr. Simpson is a mere n.o.body. He is a machine. His object in life is to get as much money as he can out of the vast properties which he controls for another. He is an agent, nothing more."
"Then who does this really belong to? Who is really responsible?" Mary asked.
Fabian Rose looked at her very meaningly.
"Once more," he said, "I will p.r.o.nounce that ill-omened name--the Duke of Paddington."
"Let us go away," Mr. Conrad said suddenly. He noticed that Mary"s face was very pale, and that she was swaying a little.
They went out into the hall and stood there for a moment undecided as to what to do.
Mary seemed about to faint.
Suddenly from the back of the hall, steps were heard coming towards them, and in a moment more the face of a clean-shaven man appeared. He was mounting from the stairs that led down into what had once been the kitchens or cellars of the old house.
Just half of his body was visible, when he stopped suddenly, as if turned to stone.
As he did so the bearded Inspector Brown stepped quickly forward and caught him by the shoulder.
"Ah, it is you, is it?" he said. "Come up and let us have a look at you."
The man"s face grew absolutely white, then, with a sudden eel-like movement, he twisted away from under the inspector"s hand and vanished down the stairs.
In a flash the inspector and his companion were after him.
"Come on!" they shouted to the others, "come on, we shall want you!"
Rose and Conrad dashed after them. Mary could hear them stumbling down the stairs, and then a confused noise of shouting as if from the bowels of the earth.
She was left alone, standing there with Mr. Goodrick, when she suddenly became aware that the staircase leading to the upper part of the house had become crowded with noiseless figures, looking down upon what was toward with motionless, eager faces.
"What shall we do?" Mary said. "What does it all mean?"
"I am sure I don"t know," Goodrick answered, "but if you are not afraid, don"t you think we had better follow our friends? I suppose the inspector is after some thief or criminal whom he has just recognised."
"I am not afraid," Mary said.
"Come along, then," he answered, and together they went to the end of the hall and stumbled down some greasy steps.
A light was at the bottom, red light through an open door, and they turned into a sort of kitchen.
There was n.o.body there, but one man who crouched in a corner and a fat, elderly Jewish woman, whose mouth dropped in fear, and whose eyes were set and fixed in terror, like the eyes of a doll.
Through an open door in a corner of the kitchen beyond there came strange sounds--oaths, curses--sounds which seemed even farther away than the door suggested that they were.
The sounds seemed to rise up from the very bowels of the earth, from some deeper inferno even than this.
Then Mary, for the first time, began to be in real terror. She clung to the imperturbable little editor.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried. "What does it all mean?"
The Jewess turned round with an almost crouching att.i.tude and peered fearfully into the dimly lit gloom through the doorway. Then, quite suddenly, without any warning, she fell back against the wall of the kitchen and began to shriek and wail like a lost soul. As she did so, and through her piercing shrieks, Mary heard the distant noises were becoming louder and louder.
She reeled in the hot and filthy air of this dreadful place and pressed her hand against the wall for support. Even as she did so she saw the two police inspectors stagger into the room, bearing a burden between them, the burden, as it seemed, of a dead man.
Then everything began to sway, the place was filled with a louder and louder noise, the whole room grew fuller and fuller of people, and Mary Marriott fainted dead away.
CHAPTER XII
AT THE BISHOP"S TOWN HOUSE
The library was a n.o.ble one for a London house. The late sun of the summer afternoon in town poured into the place and touched all the golden and crimson-laden shelves in glory. From floor to roof the great tomes winked and glittered in the light.
Here the sun fell upon the glazed-fronted cabinets, which held the priceless first editions of modern authors. There it illuminated those cabinets which confined and guarded the old black-letter editions of the bishop"s famous collection of medieval missals. It was a dignified home of lettered culture and ease.
Lord Camborne was sitting in a great armchair of green leather. In his own house he smoked a pipe, and a well-seasoned briar was gripped in his left hand as he leaned forward and looked at his son. On the opposite side of the glowing fireplace, on each side of which stood pots of great Osmunda ferns, which glistened in the firelight as if they had been cunningly j.a.panned, Lord Hayle was sitting. His face was quite white, his att.i.tude one of strained attention, as he listened to the wordy and didactic utterances of the earl.
"I don"t know what to make of it, my dear Gerald," the bishop said.
"Upon my soul, I don"t know what to make of it! Such a thing has never happened before in all my experience. Indeed, I don"t suppose that such an occurrence has ever been known."
"You are quite right, father," Lord Hayle replied; "but that is not the question. The question is: Where is my poor friend? Where is John?"
The bishop threw out two shapely hands with a curious gesture of indecision and bewilderment. "Gerald," he said, "if I could answer that question I should satisfy the press of Europe and put society at rest."
"But it is the most extraordinary thing, father," Lord Hayle said. "Here is John involved in this terrible railway accident. As far as we know--as far as we can know, indeed--he was rescued from the debris of the broken carriage perfectly unhurt. That young Doctor Jenkins was perfectly certain that the man whom he rescued and told to lie down for half an hour, to avoid the nervous effects of the shock, must have been the Duke of Paddington. He has a.s.sured me, he has a.s.sured Colonel Simpson, he has a.s.sured everybody in short that it was certainly the duke! In three-quarters of an hour he goes back to find his patient, and, meanwhile meeting Colonel Simpson, who had come down the line in frightful anxiety about the duke, there--where John had been--was n.o.body at all! Do you suppose that, as the _Pall Mall Gazette_ has hinted, that John was temporarily deranged by the shock and walked away and lost himself? There seems to be no other explanation."
"But that is impossible," the bishop replied. "If he had done so would he not have been found in an hour or two?"
"I suppose he would," Lord Hayle answered. "I suppose he would, father."
"Then, all I can say," the bishop said, with an air of finality, "all I can say is that the thing is as black and mysterious as anything I have ever known in the whole course of my experience. There we were, you and myself and your sister, lunching at Paul"s with the duke, when the news came of the outrage in Piccadilly. The duke went up to town by the six o"clock train. The accident occurred, and now the whole of society is trembling in suspense to know what has happened to your friend. I cannot tell you, Gerald, how it has distressed me; and," the bishop continued, with a slight hesitation in his voice, "your sister also is very much upset."
"Well, naturally, Connie would be," Lord Hayle returned. "But think what it must be to me, father! It is worse for me than for anybody. You have met the duke, Connie has met him; but I have been his intimate friend for the whole of the time we have been up at Oxford together, and I am at a loose end, I am simply heart-broken."
"My dear Gerald," said the splendid old gentleman from the armchair, with some unctiousness, "G.o.d ordains these things, these trials, for all of us; but be sure that, in His own good time, all will come right. We must be patient and trust in the Divine Will."
The young man looked at his father with a curious expression upon his face. He was very fond of his distinguished parent, and had a reverence for his abilities, but somehow or other at that moment the bishop"s adjuration did not seem to ring quite true. Youth is often intolerant of the pious complacency of late middle-age!
It was about seven o"clock. At nine o"clock there was a small dinner party. The Home Secretary was to be there.