"A young girl named Edna Manners has mysteriously disappeared. You know something concerning the affair! Tell me, what do you know?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY.
In an instant Roddy recovered himself. He saw that if he repeated the story of finding the girl in Welling Wood he would not be believed. And if Mr Sandys did not believe the strange truth, he would likewise not believe in his _bona fides_ concerning the hoped-for concession in Morocco. He therefore pursued a rather injudicious policy of evasion.
"I know no girl named Edna Manners," he replied.
The old gentleman moved uneasily and grunted in dissatisfaction.
"You did not tell me the truth last night concerning your disappearance," he said severely. "Why?"
"The less known about my strange adventure the better, Mr Sandys," was the young man"s reply.
"Then you did have a curious adventure, eh? I"ve heard some rather strange rumours."
"Rumours which I suppose are more or less true," Roddy admitted. "But, pardon me, Mr Sandys, the affair is now all over. I was ill at the time, but now I am quite well again, and I have no desire to recall the past. It upsets me. Therefore I know that you will forgive me."
"Certainly, certainly, my dear young friend. I quite understand. I"ve heard that you"ve been suffering--well--from a nervous breakdown, they say. Denton had a specialist down to see you. Of course I"m wrong in trying to question you when you are not in a fit state. I admit it. It is I who should ask your forgiveness, Homfray." The young man smiled, glad to have extricated himself from a rather delicate situation.
"There is nothing to forgive," he answered. "But one day, and very soon perhaps, I shall require your a.s.sistance, Homfray," the grey-bearded financier said, looking at him very earnestly. "I shall want you to help me to discover what has become of that young girl. You tell me you don"t know. But perhaps you may be aware of facts which may give us a clue to what actually happened to her."
Those words of his made it clear that it was not Elma who had told him about the tragic discovery in Welling Wood. He had learnt it from some other source--possibly from the current village gossip. In any case, Elma had not told her father the strange truth, and for that Roddy was indeed thankful.
Those words of Purcell Sandys", however, struck him as very strange; certainly they showed that his questioner believed that he knew more about the mysterious Edna Manners--whoever she had been--than he had admitted.
"I take it that you are deeply interested in the young lady who is missing?" Roddy remarked, hoping to elicit something concerning the girl, especially as Elma had the girl"s photograph in her possession.
"Yes, I am," was the other"s abrupt reply. "She must be found--and at all hazards, for much depends upon it."
"Where was she last seen?"
"On the platform at Waterloo Station on a Sunday morning--the day when you also disappeared. She was with a gentleman whose description I have, and whom we must find. I have already a very reliable firm of private inquiry agents at work, and that much they have already discovered. Whether the pair took train from Waterloo is not known."
And taking a paper from a drawer which he unlocked he read a minute description of a middle-aged, clean-shaven, well-dressed man, to which Roddy listened.
"Ah!" he said at last. "I know of n.o.body who answers to that description." And he spoke the truth.
The fact, however, that Elma"s father had engaged detectives was rather perturbing. They might discover the secret of his love for Elma! That secret both were determined, for the present, to conceal.
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.
Directed by a butcher"s boy, he walked for about a mile along the broad high road until he came to the house--a large old-fashioned one standing back amid a clump of high fir trees, with a tennis lawn and large walled garden on the left. The green holland blinds were down, and apparently the place was temporarily closed, a fact which gave him courage to approach nearer.
As he did so the chords of his memory began to vibrate. He could remember at last! He recollected quite distinctly walking on the lawn.
In a flash it all came back to him! There was a gate which led into a small rose garden. He looked for it. Yes! There it was! And the grey old sundial! He recollected the quaint inscription upon it: "I mark ye Time; saye Gossip dost thou so." Yes, the weather-beaten old dial was there beside a lily pond with a pretty rock garden beyond.
He stood peering eagerly through a crack in the old moss-grown oak fence, his vista being limited. But it sufficed to recall to his be-dimmed memory some details, sharp and outstanding, of the interior of that old Georgian house, its plan and its early Victorian furnishings.
In the days he had spent there he had wandered aimlessly in and out. He knew that the two French windows, which he could see, opening on to a veranda and giving out upon the leaf-strewn lawn, were those of the drawing-room. The old-fashioned furniture he remembered was covered with glazed chintz with a design of great red roses and green peac.o.c.ks.
In the centre was a large settee upon which the Woman of Evil had often sat beside him, holding his hand and talking to him in domineering tones, while her elderly male companion sat in a high-backed "grandfather" chair beside the fire, smoking and smiling.
Mostly, however, he had spent his time in an upstairs room which had once been a nursery, for it had iron bars at the window. His eyes sought that window--and he found it!
Ah! in that room he had spent many dreary hours; his mind filled with weird and horrible visions--shadowy pictures which seemed bent on driving him to insanity.
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.
At last he turned from the house, half-fearful lest his presence there might be known, yet gratified that the place was shut up.
Had the woman and her companion left? Had they taken fright and flown?
He walked back to the station, but ere he had arrived at King"s Cross he found that his recollection was becoming fainter, until it was just as hazy as before. Only when his eyes were fixed upon the scene of his mysterious bondage did his memory return to him.
Yet he had satisfactorily cleared up one important point. He had fixed the house to which he had been secretly conveyed. Had the girl Edna Manners been taken there also? Perhaps her body had afterwards been concealed. Recollection of his mysterious discovery caused him to shudder. The girl"s appeal to him to save her still sounded in his ears, while the vision of that pale, still countenance often rose before him.
Next day, and the next, he was busy purchasing the wireless set which he had promised to obtain for Mr Sandys--a seven-valve Marconi set with a "double note-magnifier," a microphone relay and a loud-speaking telephone. This, with coils taking every wavelength from one hundred to twenty-five thousand metres, completed one of the best and most sensitive sets that had been invented.
Adjoining the morning-room in the east wing of Farncombe Towers was a small ante-room, and into this he proceeded to instal the apparatus, aided of course by Elma. Mr Sandys had gone to Paris to consult with his partner, therefore the young pair had the place to themselves.
The local builder at Roddy"s orders put up a mast upon the tower immediately above the room they had chosen, and the young man having constructed the double-line aerial a hundred feet long and put many insulators of both ebonite and porcelain at each end, the long twin wires were one morning hoisted to the pole, while the other end was secured in the top of a great Wellingtonia not far from the mansion.
The lead-in cable, known to naval wireless men as the "cow-tail," was brought on to a well-insulated bra.s.s rod which pa.s.sed through the window-frame and so on to the instruments, which Roddy set up neatly in an American roll-top desk as being convenient to exclude the dust.
Making a wireless "earth" proved an amusing diversion to both. Elma, who had read a book about wireless, suggested soldering a wire to the water tap; but Roddy, who had bought his experience in wireless after many months and even years of experiment, replied:
"Yes. That"s all very well for an amateur `earth," but we"ve put up a professional set, and we must make a real `earth.""
The real "earth" consisted, first, of digging three deep holes about four feet deep and three feet long under the aerial. This necessitated the use of a pickaxe borrowed from the head gardener, for they had to dig into chalk.
Elma proved herself an enthusiastic excavator and very handy with the shovel, and after a heavy afternoon"s work she wheeled a barrowful of c.o.ke from the palm-house furnace, and Roddy carefully placed a zinc plate in a perpendicular position into each hole and surrounded it with c.o.ke which, absorbing the moisture, would always keep the zinc damp, and hence make a good earth connexion. These three plates having been put in directly beneath the aerial wires, they were connected by soldered wires, and before darkness set in the earth-wire was brought in and connected up to the set.
Afterwards, in order to make certain of his "earth"--usually one of the most neglected portions of a wireless installation, by the way--he took a large mat of fine copper gauze which he had bought in London, and soldering a lead to it spread it across the gra.s.s, also beneath the aerial.
Elma watched it all in wonderment and in admiration of Roddy"s scientific knowledge. She had read the elementary book upon wireless, but her lover, discarding the directions there set down, had put in things which she did not understand.
"And now will it really work?" asked the girl, as together they stood in the little room where upon the oak writing-desk the various complicated-looking pieces of apparatus had been screwed down.
"Let"s try," said Roddy, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g two pairs of head-"phones upon two bra.s.s terminals on one of the units of the apparatus.
Elma took one pair of telephones, while Roddy placed the others over his ears. His deft fingers pulled over the aerial switch, whereupon the nine little tubular electric lights instantly glowed, each of them three inches long and about the size of a chemical test-tube. They gave quite a pretty effect.
"Thanks, c.o.x!" came a voice, loud and distinct. "I could not get you clearly until now. I understand that your position is about half-way across the Channel and that visibility is rather bad. Le Bourget reported when you left. Righto! Croydon, switching off!"
"Splendid!" Elma cried. "Just fancy, within a day you have fitted up wireless for us, so that we can actually hear telephony on the Paris airway!"