The Mysterious Three Part 31

Paulton's significant remark returned to me--the remark he had made that night in the room in Chateau d'Uzerche, when I had said something about not revealing Sir Charles Thorold's secret.

Could there be some hidden connexion between this discovery I had made, Thorold's secret, and the charge upon which Paulton was "wanted?"

I spent some time in examining the room and its contents. Then I explored other parts of the house.

Was I now gradually approaching the solution of Sir Charles Thorold's secret?

I believed it more than likely that I might now at last be well on my way to solving the mystery of Houghton Park and the Thorolds' sudden flight. That Sir Charles and his big friend would not return that night I fully believed. They might, or might not, be superst.i.tious, but there could be no doubt I had terrified them thoroughly. If they returned at all it would be in the daytime, I conjectured.

What was to be done? How should I act?

I decided that the only thing to do would be to go out into the street and inform the constable of all that had happened. I had told him I would not stay long in the house in any case, and my prolonged absence might be making him feel uneasy.

I left by the front door--which I found securely bolted and chained on the inside--and there found the constable flashing his bull's-eye lantern upon the door, and with his truncheon ready drawn.

"Hush!" I whispered, and he smiled upon seeing me, and at once replaced his truncheon.

"I was beginning to feel very anxious on your account, sir," he said.

"I 'arf wondered who might be a-comin' out. Well, sir, did you see anything?"

"I should say so," I answered, and then, as briefly as I could, I told him nearly everything.

I persuaded him to come in then and there.

"Well, look at that, now!" he said, as I showed him first the mummified body, then the sacks of gold, and pointed out to him the great hole cut in the ceiling. "Well, look at that, now!" he repeated.

"The awkward part of the affair is this," I said at last. "Who is going to lodge information? I don't care to, for, if I do, inquiries will be made as to how I came to be on the premises at all, and how I managed to get in, and it won't look well if I am proved, on my own showing, to have entered the place secretly in the middle of the night. Again, I don't want to lodge information against Sir Charles Thorold. Why should I? He has always been my friend. Nor, for that matter, do I want to prefer any sort of charge against Whichelo. So far as the body is concerned, we may be quite wrong in conjecturing that there has been foul play. Indeed, there is no actual proof that the mummy was hidden in the ceiling of the room, though personally I think it must have been.

Everything points to it. And you, Bennett, can't very well give information either without compromising yourself as well as me. Your inspector would want to know how you managed to get into the house, and what right you had to enter it."

I paused, considering, while he removed his helmet and scratched his head.

"I'll tell you what I think we had better do," I said at last.

"Well, sir, what?" he inquired eagerly.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Go back to your beat. I'll bolt and chain the front door when you're gone. Then I'll put out the light in this room, and make my way out of the house by the way I entered it."

"But the two men," the policeman said quickly. "Where can they have got to? They can't have left the premises."

"You may depend upon it they have," I answered. "I feel pretty sure there must be some secret entrance to this house, that they alone know.

The back door, too, is bolted and chained on the inside, and they can hardly have entered the way I did--ugh!" and I shuddered again at the thought of those horrible, hairy-legged spiders scampering over my bare flesh.

"_Meet me_ 2."

Again that odd little advertis.e.m.e.nt arose in my thoughts. I would watch the front page of the _Morning Post_ for a day or two. Perhaps another advertis.e.m.e.nt might appear that would help me.

Early next day I went and told Vera everything. I found her seated in the lounge on the right of the hall.

She listened eagerly, and I saw at once that the news excited her a good deal, yet to my surprise she made no comment, but changed the subject of conversation by remarking--

"Violet brought Frank Faulkner here yesterday evening. He is engaged to be married to her. He has broken off his engagement to Gladys Deroxe, and I am very glad he has," she declared.

"Really," I exclaimed. "Well, frankly I'm not surprised, for I believe he has been in love with Violet from the moment he first met her. But how did Miss Deroxe take it? Was there a dreadful scene?"

"Scene? There was no scene at all, it appears. What happened was simply this. Gladys discovered that Frank had brought Violet over from the Riviera, that she was staying here at his expense, and that he seemed to be extremely attentive to her. Now, a sensible girl would have asked her future husband, in a case of that sort, to come to see her and explain everything. That, certainly, is what I should have done."

"And what did Miss Deroxe do?"

"Do? Good Heavens, she sat down then and there and wrote him a letter-- oh! such a letter! He showed it to me. I have never in my life read anything so insulting. She ended by telling him in writing that she had never really cared for him, and that she hoped she would never see him again. In one place she wrote: `I might have guessed the kind of man you are by the kind of company you keep. I know all about your friend, Richard Ashton. He a.s.sociates with dreadful people. I am only glad I have found you out before it was too late!' Those were her words. So you see the kind of reputation you have acquired, my dear d.i.c.k."

I laughed--laughed uproariously. I, "the a.s.sociate of dreadful people,"

I, a member of that hot-bed of conventions and of respectability, Brooks's Club. The whole thing was delicious.

"When will Frank and Violet be here again?"

I asked presently, after we had ascended together to the private sitting-room.

"I've invited Frank to lunch. I told them you were coming. Frank has something important to tell you, he said."

"Did he tell you what?"

"No. At least it had reference, he said, to the Chateau d'Uzerche, or to something that has been found there. To tell the truth, I was thinking of something else when he told me."

"Dearest," I said, some minutes later, my arm about her waist, "you remember my telling you I had taken a few of the coins I found in your father's house. Well, yesterday I had them tested. They are not counterfeits. They are genuine."

She looked at me curiously. Then, after a pause, she said--

"What made you think they might be counterfeit?"

"What made me think so? Seeing that I discovered with them a number of implements, etc, used apparently in the manufacture of base coin, my inference naturally was that the coins must have been false."

Still she looked at me. Gradually her expression hardened.

"d.i.c.k," she said at last, "you are deceiving me. You have deceived me all along. You told me you knew my father's secret. Now you don't know it--do you?"

"Indeed you are mistaken, quite mistaken, dearest," I exclaimed quickly.

"I know it well enough, but I don't, I admit, know that part of it which bears upon these coins. I never pretended to know that part."

It was a wild shot, but I felt I must say something in my defence.

I hated deceiving Vera in this way, as, indeed, I should have hated to deceive her in any way, but, playing a part still, I was driven to subterfuge. After all, I had never said I knew her father's secret.

She had jumped to the conclusion that I knew it, that day I had found her locked in the upper room in the house in Belgrave Street, and I had not disillusioned her. That was all.

The door of the sitting-room opened at that moment, we sprang apart as Faulkner and Violet entered. The pretty girl, in a blue serge coat and skirt, looked radiantly happy, and the happiness she felt seemed to increase her great beauty. I confess I had not before fully realised what a lovely girl she was.

"Ah, d.i.c.k, my dear fellow," Faulkner exclaimed, grasping me by the hand, "I want you to congratulate me, old chap."

"Oh, I do, of course," I said at once. "I congratulate you doubly--on becoming engaged, and on breaking off your engagement."