Hushed Up! A Mystery of London Part 47

"Ah! I regret, m'sieur, that I do not know," replied the Frenchman.

"And yet," he added, after a second's hesitation, "I do not exactly regret. Perhaps it is best, after all, that I should remain in ignorance. But, Monsieur Biddulph, I would make one request on your wife's behalf."

"On her behalf!" I gasped. "What is it?"

"That you do not prejudge her. She has left you because--well, because she had good reason. But one day, when you know the truth, you will certainly not judge her too harshly."

"I do not judge her harshly," I protested. "How can I, when I love her as devotedly as I do! I feel confident that the misfortunes she has brought upon me were not of her own seeking."

"She very narrowly escaped the vengeance of those two a.s.sa.s.sins,"

Guertin said; "how narrowly, neither you nor she will ever know. For months I have watched them closely, both here and in France and Germany, in order to catch them red-handed; but they have been too clever for me, and we must rely upon the evidence which that back-garden in Porchester Terrace will now yield up. The gang is part of a great criminal a.s.sociation, that society of international thieves of which one member was the man you knew as Harriman, and whose real name was Bell--now at Devil's Island for the murder of the rising young English parliamentary Under-Secretary Ronald Burke. The murder was believed to have been committed with a political motive, and through certain false evidence furnished by the man Pennington, a person named Louis Lessar, chief of the band, was first arrested, and condemned by the a.s.size Court of the Seine. Both were sent to Devil's Island for life, but recently Lessar escaped, and was daring enough to come to England as Mr. Lewis."

"Lewis!" I gasped. "That was the fellow with whom my wife escaped--the man who presided over the secret deliberations of the gang at their a.s.sembly at Stamford!"

"Yes. Once a British officer, he had been leader of the great criminal organization before his arrest. They were the most formidable in Europe, for they always acted on scientific principles, and always well provided with funds. Some of their coups were utterly amazing.

But on his arrest and imprisonment the society dwindled under the leadership of Pennington, a low-bred blackguard, who could not even be loyal to his a.s.sociates."

"Excuse me, sir," remarked the sergeant, again shown into the room by Browning. "Our C.I.D. men have been at work all day in the garden behind that house in Porchester Terrace. A big hole was found dug there, and already they've turned up the remains of two persons--a man and a woman. I ought to have told you that we had it over the telegraph at the station about an hour ago. Superintendent Mayhew and Professor Salt have been there to examine the remains recovered."

"Two victims!" I exclaimed. "The open grave found there was prepared for me!"

"No doubt," exclaimed Guertin. "When I first communicated with your Scotland Yard, they refused to believe my allegations against Reckitt and Forbes. But I had had my suspicions aroused by their actions in Paris, and I was positive. But oh! your police methods are so very painfully slow!"

Then the sergeant again withdrew.

"But of Pennington. Tell me more of him," I urged.

"He was your worst enemy, and Sylvia's enemy also, even though he posed as her father. He wished her to marry Forbes, and thus, on account of her great beauty, remain the decoy of the gang. But she met you, and loved you. Her love for you was the cause of their hatred.

Because of her affection, she risked her life by revealing to me certain things concerning her a.s.sociates, whom she knew were plotting to kill you. The very man who was posing as her father--and who afterwards affected friendship for you--told that pair of unscrupulous a.s.sa.s.sins, Reckitt and Forbes, a fict.i.tious story of how Sonia--for that is her real name--had denounced them. This aroused their hatred, and they decided to kill you both. From what I heard afterwards, they entrapped you, and placed you in that fatal chair beside the venomous reptile, while they also tortured the poor girl with all the horrors of the serpent, until her brain became deranged. Suddenly, however, they became alarmed by discovering a half-witted lad wandering in the garden where the bodies of previous victims lay concealed, and, making a quick escape, left you and her without ascertaining that you were dead. Eventually she escaped and rescued you, hence their fear that you would inform the police, and their frantic efforts to secure the death of both of you. Indeed, you would probably have been dead ere this, had I not taken upon myself the self-imposed duty of being your protector, and had not Louis Lessar most fortunately escaped from Devil's Island to protect his daughter from their relentless hands."

"His daughter!" I gasped, staring at him.

"Yes. Sonia is the daughter of Phil Poland, alias Louis Lessar, the man who was falsely denounced by Pennington as an accomplice in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the young Under-Secretary, Mr. Burke, on the Riviera.

After I had arrested her father one night at the house where he lived down near Andover, Pennington compelled the girl to pa.s.s as his daughter for a twofold reason. First, because he believed that her great beauty would render her a useful decoy for the purpose of attracting young men into their fatal net, and secondly, in order that Forbes should secure her as his wife, for it was realized how, by her marriage to him, her lips would be sealed."

"But they all along intended to kill me."

"Of course. Your life was, you recollect, heavily insured at Pennington's suggestion, and you had made over a large sum of money to Sonia in case of your demise. Therefore it was to the interests of the whole gang that you should meet with some accident which should prove fatal. The theft of the jewels of the Archd.u.c.h.ess delayed the conspiracy from being put into execution, and by that means your life was undoubtedly spared. Ah! monsieur, the gang recently led by Arnold Du Cane was once one of the most daring, the most unscrupulous, and the most formidable in the whole of Europe."

"And my dear wife is actually the daughter of the previous leader of that criminal band!" I exclaimed apprehensively.

"Yes. She escaped with him because she was in fear of her life--because she knew that if she were again beneath her own father's protection, you--the man she loved--would also be safe from injury.

For Phil Poland is a strong man, a perfect past-master of the criminal arts, and a leader whose word was the command of every member of that great international organization, the wide ramifications of which I have so long tried in vain to ascertain."

"Then Poland is a noteworthy man in the world of crime?"

"He is a very prince of thieves. Yet, at the same time, one must regard him with some admiration for his daring and audacity, his wonderful resourcefulness and his strict adhesion to fair play. For years he lived in France, Italy and Spain, constantly changing his place of abode, his ident.i.ty, his very face, and always evading us; yet n.o.body has ever said that he did a mean action towards a poor man.

He certainly suffered an unjust punishment by that false accusation made against him by the man who was apparently jealous of his leadership, and who desired to become his successor."

"Then you are of opinion that my wife left me in order to secure my protection from harm?"

"I am quite certain of it. You recollect my meeting with her at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. She told me several things on that occasion."

"And Pennington very nearly fell into your hands."

"Yes, but with his usual cleverness he escaped me."

"Where is he now? Have you any idea?" I asked.

"I have no exact knowledge, but, with the arrest of four of his accomplices, it will not be difficult to find out where he is in hiding," he laughed.

"And the same may be said of Poland--eh?"

"No; on the contrary, while the man Pennington, alias Du Cane, is hated--and it will be believed by those arrested that he has betrayed them in order to save himself--yet Poland is beloved. They know it was Du Cane who made the false charge connecting Poland with Harriman, and they will never forgive him. The hatred of the international thief is the worst and most unrelenting hatred existing in the whole world.

Before Poland came to live in retirement here in England at Middleton, near Andover, his a.s.sociation consisted only of the most expert criminals of both s.e.xes, and he controlled their actions with an iron hand. Once every six months the members from all over Europe held a secret conference in one capital or another, when various tasks were allotted to various persons. The precautions taken to prevent blunders were amazing, and we were baffled always because of the widespread field of their operations, and the large number of experts engaged. The band, broken up into small and independent gangs, worked in unison with receivers always ready, and as soon as our suspicions were aroused by one party they disappeared, and another, complete strangers, came in their place. Premises likely to yield good results from burglary were watched for months by a constant succession of clever watchers, and people in possession of valuables sometimes engaged servants of irreproachable character who were actually members of the gang. Were their exploits chronicled, they would fill many volumes of remarkable fact, only some of which have appeared in recent years in the columns of the newspapers. Every European nationality and every phase of life were represented in that extraordinary a.s.sembly, which, while under Poland's control, never, as far as is known, committed a single murder. It was only when the great leader was condemned and exiled, and the band fell away, that Pennington, Reckitt and Forbes conceived the idea of extorting money by means of the serpent, allowing the reptile to strike fatally, and so prevent exposure. By that horrible torture of the innocent and helpless they must have netted many thousands of pounds."

"It was you, you say, who arrested Poland down in Hampshire."

"Yes, nearly three years ago. Prior to Harriman's arrest, I went there with my friend Watts, of Scotland Yard, and on that evening a strange affair happened--an affair which is still a mystery. I'll tell you all about it later," he added. "At present I must go to Porchester Terrace and see what is in progress. I only arrived in London from Paris two hours ago."

I begged him to take me along with him, and with some reluctance he consented. On the way, Guertin told me a strange story of a dead man exactly resembling himself at Middleton village on the night of Poland's arrest. Arrived at the house of grim shadows, we found a constable idling outside the gate, but apparently n.o.body yet knew of what was transpiring in the garden behind the closed house. At first the man declined to allow us to enter, but, on Guertin declaring who he was, we pa.s.sed through into the tangled, weedy place where the lights of lanterns were shining weirdly, and we could see men in their shirt-sleeves working with shovel and pick, while others were clearing away the dead rank herbage of autumn.

In the uncertain light I saw that a long trench some four feet in depth had been dug, and into this the men were flinging the soil they carefully removed in their progress in a line backwards.

Beneath a tree, close to where was an open trench--the one prepared for the reception of my body--lay something covered with a black cloth. From beneath there stuck out a hideous object--a man's muddy patent-leather shoe!

Even while I stood amid that weird, never-to-be-forgotten scene, one of the excavators gave an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of surprise, and a lantern, quickly brought, revealed a human arm in a dark coat-sleeve embedded in the soil.

With a will, half-a-dozen eager hands were at work, and soon a third body--that of a tall, grey-haired man, whose face, alas! was awful to gaze upon--was quickly exhumed.

I could not bear to witness more, and left, gratified to know that the two fiends were already safely confined in a French prison.

Justice would, no doubt, be done, and they would meet with their well-merited punishment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

FURTHER REVELATIONS

If you are a constant reader of the newspapers, as probably you are, you will no doubt recollect the great sensation caused next day on the publication of the news of the gruesome find in that, one of the most aristocratic thoroughfares of Bayswater.

The metropolitan police were very reticent regarding the affair, but many of the papers published photographs of the scene of the exhumations, the exterior of the long-closed house, and photographs of the various police officials. That of Guertin, however, was not included. The famous investigator of crime had no wish for the picture of his face, with its eyes beaming benignly through his gold gla.s.ses, to be disseminated broadcast.

The police refused to make any statement; hence the wildest conjectures were afloat concerning the series of tragedies which must have taken place within that dark house, with its secluded, tangled garden.

As the days went by, the public excitement did not abate, for yet more remains were found--the body of a young, fair-haired man who had been identified as Mr. Cyril Wilson, a member of the Travellers' Club, who had been missing for nearly nine months. The police, impelled by this fresh discovery, cut down the trees in the garden and laid the whole place waste, while crowds of the curious waited about in the neighbourhood, trying to catch a glimpse of the operations.