"Please get me Stevenish one-three-seven," he said, "it"s a trunk call.
Don"t let them put you off with "No reply." It"s Harkings, and they are expecting me to ring them. I shall be in the writing room."
When, twenty minutes later, Mr. Jeekes emerged from the trunk call telephone box in the club vestibule, his mouth was drooping at the corners and his hands trembled curiously. He stood for an instant in thought tapping his foot on the marble floor of the deserted hall dimly lit by a single electric bulb burning over the hall porter"s box. Then he went back to the writing-room and returned with a yellow telegram form.
"Send a boy down to Charing Cross with that at once, please," he said to the night porter.
Fate which had brought Bruce Wright face to face with Mr. Jeekes gave the kaleidoscope another jerk that night. As Bruce Wright entered the Tube Station at Dover Street to go home to South Kensington, it occurred to him that he would ring up Robin Greve at his chambers in the Temple and give him an outline of his (Bruce"s) talk with Jeekes. Bruce went to the public callbox in the station, but the rhythmic "Zoom-er! Zoom-er!
Zoom-er!" which announces that a number is engaged was all the satisfaction he got. The prospect of waiting about the draughty station exit did not appeal to him, so he decided to go home and telephone Robin, as originally arranged, in the morning.
Just about the time that he made this resolve, Robin in his rooms in the Temple was hanging up the receiver of his telephone with a dazed expression in his eyes. Mr. Manderton had rung him up with a piece of intelligence which fairly bewildered him. It bewildered Mr. Manderton also, as the detective was frank enough to acknowledge.
Mary Trevert had gone to Rotterdam for a few days in company with her cousin, Major Euan MacTavish. Mr. Manderton had received this astonishing information by telephone from Harkings a few minutes before.
"It bothers me properly, Mr. Greve, sir," the detective had added.
"There"s only one thing for it, Manderton," Robin had said; "I"ll have to go after her ..."
"The very thing I was about to suggest myself, Mr. Greve. You"re unofficial-like and can be more helpful than if we detailed one of our own people from the Yard. And with the investigation in its present stage I don"t reely feel justified in going off on a wild-goose chase myself. There are several important enquiries going forward now, notably as to where Mr. Parrish bought his pistol. But we certainly ought to find out what takes Miss Trevert careering off to Rotterdam in this way ..."
"It seems almost incredible," Robin had said, "but it looks to me as though Miss Trevert must have found out something about the letter ..."
"Or found it herself ..."
"By Jove! She was in the library when Bruce Wright was there. This settles it, Manderton. I must go!"
"Then," said the detective, "I"m going to entrust you with that slotted sheet of paper again. For I have an idea, Mr. Greve, that you may get a glimpse of that letter before I do. I"ll send a messenger round with it at once."
Then a difficulty arose. Manderton had not got the girl"s address. They had no address at Harkings. Nor did he know what train Miss Trevert had taken. She might have gone by the 9 P.M. that night. Had Mr. Greve got a pa.s.sport? Yes, Robin had a pa.s.sport, but it was not viseed for Holland.
That meant he could not leave until the following evening. Then Robin had a "brain wave."
"There"s an air service to Rotterdam!" he exclaimed. "It doesn"t leave till noon. A pal of mine went across by it only last week. That will leave me time to get my pa.s.sport stamped at the Dutch Consulate, to catch the air mail, and be in Rotterdam by tea-time! And, Manderton, I shall go to the Grand Hotel. That"s where my friend stopped. Wire me there if there"s any news ..."
Air travel is so comfortably regulated at the present day that Robin Greve, looking back at his trip by air from Croydon Aerodrome to the big landing-ground outside Rotterdam, acknowledged that he had more excitement in his efforts to stir into action a lethargic Dutch pa.s.sport official in London, so as to enable him to catch the air mail, than in the smooth and uneventful voyage across the Channel. He reached Rotterdam on a dull and muggy afternoon and lost no time in depositing his bag at the Grand Hotel. An enquiry at the office there satisfied him that Mary Trevert had not registered her name in the hotel book. Then he set out in a taxi upon a dreary round of the princ.i.p.al hotels.
But fate, which loves to make a sport of lovers, played him a scurvy trick. In the course of his search it brought Robin to that very hotel towards which, at the selfsame moment, Mary Trevert was driving from the station. By the time she arrived, Robin was gone and, with despair in his heart, had started on a tour of the second-cla.s.s hotels, checking them by the Baedeker he had bought in the Strand that morning. It was eight o"clock by the time he had finished. He had drawn a blank.
The sight of a huge, plate-gla.s.s-fronted cafe reminded him that in the day"s rush he had omitted to lunch. So he paid off his taxi and dined off succulent Dutch beefsteak, pounded as soft as velvet and swimming with b.u.t.ter and served in a bed of deliciously browned "earth apples,"
as the Hollanders call potatoes. The cafe was stiflingly hot; there was a large and noisy orchestra in the front part and a vast billiard-saloon in the back--a place of shaded lights, clicking b.a.l.l.s, and guttural exclamations. The heat of the place, the noise and the cries combined with the effect of his long journey in the fresh air to make him very drowsy. When he had finished dinner he was content to postpone his investigations until the morrow and go to bed. Emerging from the cafe he found to his relief that his hotel was but a few houses away.
As he sat at breakfast the next morning, enjoying the admirable Dutch coffee, he reviewed the situation very calmly but very thoroughly. He told himself that he had no indication as to Mary Trevert"s business in Rotterdam save the supposition that she had found the van der Spyck letter and had come to Rotterdam to investigate the matter for herself.
He realized that the hypothesis was thin, for, in the first place, Mary could have no inkling as to the hidden significance of the doc.u.ment, and, in the second place, she was undoubtedly under the impression that Hartley Parrish was driven to suicide by his (Robin"s) threats.
But, in the absence of any other apparent explanation of the girl"s extraordinary decision to come to Rotterdam, Robin decided he would accept the theory that she had come about the van der Spyck letter. How like Mary, after all, he mused, self-willed, fearless, independent, to rush off to Holland on her own on a quest like this! Where would her investigations lead her? To the offices of Elias van der Spyck & Co., to be sure! Robin threw his napkin down on the table, thrust back his chair, and went off to the hotel porter to locate the address of the firm.
The telephone directory showed that the offices were situated in the Oranien-Straat, about ten minutes" walk from the hotel, in the business quarter of the city round the Bourse. Robin glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes to ten. The princ.i.p.als, he reflected, were not likely to be at the office before ten o"clock. It was a fine morning and he decided to walk. The hotel porter gave him a few simple directions: the gentleman could not miss the way, he said; so Robin started off, hope high in his breast of getting a step nearer to the elucidation of the mystery of the library at Harkings.
A brisk walk of about ten minutes through the roaring streets of the city brought him to a big open square from which, he had been instructed, the Oranien-Straat turned off. He was just pa.s.sing a large and important-looking post-office--he remarked it because he looked up at a big clock in the window to see the time--when a man came hastily through the swing-door and stopped irresolutely on the pavement in front, glancing to right and left as a man does who is looking for a cab.
At the sight of him Robin could scarcely suppress an expression of amazement. It was Mr. Jeekes.
CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW FACE
In a narrow, drowsy side street at Rotterdam, bisected by a somnolent ca.n.a.l, stood flush with the red-brick sidewalk a small clean house. Wire blinds affixed to the windows of its ground and first floors gave it a curious blinking air as though its eyes were only half open. To the neat green front door was affixed a large bra.s.s plate inscribed with the single name: "Schulz."
A large woman, in a pink print dress with a white cloth bound about her head, was vigorously polishing the plate as, on the morning following her departure from London, Mary Trevert, Dulkinghorn"s letter of introduction in her pocket, arrived in front of the residence of Mr.
William Schulz. Euan MacTavish had, on the previous evening, seen her to her hotel and had then--very reluctantly, as it seemed to Mary--departed to continue his journey to The Hague, his taxi piled high with white-and-green Foreign Office bags, heavily sealed with scarlet wax.
Mary Trevert approached the woman, her letter of introduction, which Dulkinghorn, being an unusual person, had fastened down, in her hand.
"Schulz?" she said interrogatively.
"_Nicht da_," replied the woman without looking up from her rubbing.
"Has he gone out?" asked Mary in English.
"_Verstehe nicht_!" mumbled the woman.
But she put down her cleaning-rag and, breathing heavily, mustered the girl with a leisurely stare.
Mary repeated the question in German whereupon the woman brightened up considerably.
The _Herr_ was not at home. The _Herr_ had gone out. On business, _jawohl_. To the bank, perhaps. But the _Herr_ would be back in time for _Mittagessen_ at noon. There was beer soup followed by _Rindfleisch_ ...
Mary hesitated an instant. She was wondering whether she should leave her letter of introduction. She decided she would leave it. So she wrote on her card: "Anxious to see you as soon as possible" and the name of her hotel, and gave it, with the letter, to the woman.
"Please see that Herr Schulz gets that directly he comes in," she said.
"It is important!"
"_Gut, gut_!" said the woman, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. She took the card and letter, and Mary, thanking her, set off to go back to her hotel.
About twenty yards from Mr. Schulz"s house a narrow alley ran off. As Mary turned to regain the little footbridge across the ca.n.a.l to return to the noisy street which would take her back to the hotel, she caught sight of a man disappearing down this alley.
She only had a glimpse of him, but it was sufficient to startle her considerably. He was a small man wearing a tweed cap and a tweed travelling ulster of a vivid brown. It was not these details, however, which took her aback. It was the fact that in the glimpse she had had of the man"s face she had seemed to recognize the features of Mr. Albert Edward Jeekes.
"What an extraordinary thing!" Mary said to herself. "It _can"t_ be Mr.
Jeekes. But if it is not, it is some one strikingly like him!"
To get another view of the stranger she hurried to the corner of the alley. It was a mere thread of a lane, not above six yards wide, running between the houses a distance of some sixty yards to the next street.
But the alley was empty. The stranger had disappeared.
Mary went a little way down the lane. A wooden fence ran down it on either side, with doors at intervals apparently giving on the back yards of the houses in the street. There was no sign of Mr. Jeekes"s double, so she retraced her steps and returned to her hotel without further incident.