Part 16

“It might be addressed to the coroner, or to anyone who tries to find out who he is or what it means, you would say. Well, so it might, sir. Anyhow, that is all.”

“By the way, I suppose he _is_ the man your fellow saw?”

“Everything tallies, Mr Carlyle--length of immersion, place, and so on. Our man thinks he is the same, but you may remember that he didn’t claim to be very positive on this point.”

There seemed nothing else to be learned and Mr Carlyle took his departure. His acquaintance had also finished and their ways lay together as far as Trafalgar Square. Before they parted the inspector had promised to communicate with Mr Carlyle as soon as the dead man was identified.

“And if he has a room anywhere he probably will be, with all this talk about Miss Roscastle. Then we may find something there that will help us,” he predicted. “If he is purely casual the chances are we shall never hear.”

His experience was justified and he kept his promise. Two days later Carlyle heard that the unknown had been identified as the occupant of a single room in a Lambeth lodging-house. He had only occupied it for a few weeks and he was known there as Mr Hay. Tenement gossip described him as a foreigner and credited him with having seen better days--an easy enough surmise in the circumstances. Mr Carlyle had been on the point of turning his attention to a Monte Carlo Miss Roscastle when this information reached him. He set off at once for Lambeth, but at Tubb’s Grove disappointment met him at the door. The landlady of the ramshackle establishment--a female with a fluent if rather monotonous delivery--was still smarting from the unappreciated honour of the police officials’ visit and the fierce light of publicity that it had thrown upon her house. All Mr Carlyle’s bland cajolery was futile and in the end he had to disburse a sum that bore an appreciable relation to a week’s rent before he was allowed to inspect the room and to command conversation that was not purely argumentative.

Then the barrenness of the land was revealed. Mr Hay had been irregular with his rent at the best, and when he disappeared he was a week in arrears. After two days’ absence, with the easy casuistry of her circumstances, the lady had decided that he was not returning and had proceeded to “do out” the room for the next tenant. The lodger’s “few things” she had bundled together into a cupboard, whence they had been retrieved by the police, in spite of her indignant protest. But the lodger’s “papers and such-like rubbish” she confessed to burning, to get them out of the way. Mr Carlyle spent a profitless half-hour and then returned, calling at Scotland Yard on his way back. His friend the inspector shook his head; there was nothing among the seized property that afforded any clue.

It was at this point that Mr Carlyle’s ingenuous mind suggested looking up Carrados, whom he had not seen since the visit to the theatre.

“Max was interested in this case from the first; I am sure he will be expecting to hear from me about it,” was the form in which the proposal conveyed itself to him. The same evening he ran down to Richmond for an hour, after ascertaining that his friend was at home and disengaged.

“You might have brought Enniscorthy with you,” remarked Carrados when the subject had been started. “Nice, genuine young fellow. Evidently deeply in love with the girl, but he is young enough to take the attack safely. What have you told him?”

“He is back in Ireland just now--got an idea that he might learn something from some people there, and rushed off. What I have told him--well”--experience endowed Mr Carlyle with sudden caution--“what would you have told him, Max?”

Carrados smiled at the innocent guile of the invitation.

“To answer that I should have to know just what you know,” he replied. “I suppose you have gone into this Embankment development?”

“Yes.” He had come intending to make some show of his progress and to sound Carrados discreetly, but once again in the familiar room and under the sway of the clear-visioned blind man’s virile personality he suddenly found himself submitting quite naturally to the suave, dominating influence. “Yes; but I must confess, Max, that I am unable to explain much of that incident. It suggests blackmail at the bottom, and if the plain-clothes man was correct and saw Miss Roscastle there last Thursday----”

“It was blackmail; but the plain-clothes man was not correct, though he had every excuse for making the mistake. There is one quiet, retiring personage in this drama who has been signally overlooked in all the clamour.”

“You mean----?”

“I suggest that if Miss Linknorth had been subpœnaed for the inquest and asked to account for her movements after leaving the theatre on Thursday last it might have turned public speculation into another channel--though probably a wrong one.”

“Miss Linknorth!” The idea certainly turned Mr Carlyle’s thoughts into a new channel.

“Has it occurred to you what an extraordinary act of self-effacement it must have been on the part of this young unknown actress to allow her well-earned success to be credited to another? As Enniscorthy reminded us, ladies of the profession are rather keen on their chances.”

“Yes; but Stokesey, you remember, insisted on keeping it dark.”

“I am not overlooking that. But although it was to Stokesey’s interest to keep up the fiction, and also to the interest of everyone else about the theatre--people who were merely concerned in the run of the piece--it would have richly paid the Linknorth to have her identity established while the iron was hot, whatever the outcome. A paragraph to the Press the next day would have done it. There wasn’t a hint. I am not overlooking the fact that Miss Linknorth’s name now appears on the programme, but that is an unforeseen development so far as she is concerned, and her golden opportunity has gone by. With the exception of the first row of the pit and of the gallery you won’t find that one per cent. of the house now really knows who created ‘Mary Ryan’ or regards the Linknorth as anything but a makeshift.”

“Then what was the incentive?”

“Suppose it has been made worth Miss Linknorth’s while? It is not necessarily a crude question of money. Friendship might make it worth her while, or ambition in some quarter we have not looked for, or a dozen other considerations--anything but the box-office of the Argosy Theatre, which certainly did not make it worth her while.”

“Yes, that is feasible enough, Max, but how does it help us?”

“Do you ever have toothache, Louis?” demanded Carrados inconsequently.

“No, I am glad to say,” admitted Mr Carlyle. “Have you got a turn now, old man? Never mind this confounded ‘shop.’ I’ll go and then you can----”

“Not at all,” interposed Carrados, smiling benignly at his friend’s consideration; “and don’t be too ready to condemn toothache indiscriminately. I have sometimes found it very stimulating. The only way to cure it is to concentrate the mind so terrifically that you forget the ache. Then it stops. I imagine that a mathematician could succeed by working out a monumental problem. I have frequently done it by ‘discovering’ a hoard of Greek coins of the highest art period on one of the islands and classifying the find. On Monday night I thought that I was in for a devil of a time. I at once set myself to discover a workable theory for everyone’s conduct in this affair, one, of course, that would stand the test of every objection based on fact. The correct hypothesis must, indeed, be strengthened by every new circumstance that came out. At twelve o’clock, after two hours’ mental sudation, I began to see light--excuse the phrase. By this time the toothache had gone, but I was so taken up with the idea that I called out Harris and drove to Scotland Yard then and there on the chance of finding Beedel or one of the others I know.... Why on earth didn’t you let me have that ‘Fool!’ message, Louis?”

“My dear fellow,” protested Mr Carlyle, “I can’t beat up for advice on every day of my life.”

“At all events it might have saved me an hour’s strenuous thinking.”

“Well, you know, Max, perhaps that would have left you in the middle of the toothache. Now the message----?”

“The message? Oh, that settled it. You may take it as assured, Louis, that although Miss Roscastle’s departure from the theatre was hurried, in order to allow her to catch the boat-train from Charing Cross, she had enough time to think out the situation and to secure Miss Linknorth’s allegiance. Whether Stokesey knows any more than he admits, we need not inquire. The great thing is that Miss Roscastle had some reason--some fairly strong reason--for not wanting her absence from the cast to become public. We agreed, Louis, that a better engagement would alone satisfactorily explain her defection. What better engagement would you suggest--it could scarcely be a theatrical one?”

“A brilliant marriage?”

“Our minds positively ident, Louis. ‘A brilliant marriage’--my exact expression. One, moreover, that suddenly becomes possible and cannot be delayed. One--here we are on difficult ground--one that may be jeopardised if at that early stage Miss Roscastle’s identity in it comes to light, or if, possibly, her absence from London is discovered. That sign-post,” said Carrados, with his unseeing eyes fixed on the lengthening vistas that rose before his mind, “points in a good many directions.”

“The blackmailer?” hazarded Carlyle.

“I gave a good deal of attention to every phase of that gentleman’s presence,” replied Carrados. “It corroborates, but it does not entirely explain. I would say that he merely intervened. In my view, Miss Roscastle would have acted precisely as she did if there had been no Mr Hay. At all events he _did_ intervene and had to be dealt with.”

“It had occurred to me, Max, whether it was Miss Linknorth’s job to impersonate the other?”

“It may have been originally. If so, it failed, for Hay proceeded with his demand. His price was five hundred pounds in English or French gold--an interesting phase of your ordinary blackmailer’s antipathy to paper--merely an _hors d’œuvre_ to the solid things to come, of course. But he was not dealing with a fool. Whether Miss Roscastle frankly had not five hundred pounds just then, or whether she was better advised, we cannot say. She temporised, the Linknorth being the intermediary. Then the dummy pieces? Hay _was_ a menace and had to be held off. At one point there may well have been the pretence of handing over the cash and then at the last moment some specious difficulty, necessitating a short delay, is raised. That would account for the otherwise unnecessary detail of the lead counterfeits, for there is no need of them on Thursday. Then, when the danger is past, when the tricked scoundrel has lost his sting, _then_ there is no attempt at evasion or compromise. ‘Fool! What does it matter now?’ is the contemptuously unguarded message and the five hundred doits are pressed upon him to complete his humiliation. Why doesn’t it matter, Louis? Is there any other answer than that Miss Roscastle is safely married?”

“It certainly looks like it,” agreed Mr Carlyle. “But if there was anything so serious as to have compromised the marriage, surely Hay could still have held it over her, as against her husband?”

“If it was as against the husband before--yes, perhaps. But suppose the chink in the armour was the good grace of some third person whose consent was necessary? This brilliant marriage.... Well, I don’t commit myself any further. At any rate, in the lady’s estimation she is safe, and if she had deliberately sought to goad Hay into suicide she couldn’t have done better. He read the single line that shattered his greedy dreams and its disdainful triumph struck him like a whip. He had spent literally his last penny on pressing his unworthy persecution, and now he stood, beggared and beaten, on the Embankment at midnight--‘he, a gentleman.’ ... It doesn’t matter how he took it. He went over, and the muddy waters of the Thames closed over the last page of his rotten history.”

“Max!” exclaimed Mr Carlyle with feeling. “Remember the poor beggar, with all his failings, is dead now. Not that I should mind,” he added cheerfully, “but I saw him afterwards, you know. Enniscorthy had the sense to keep away. And, by Gad! Max, that reminds me that this is rather rough on my confiding young client--running up a bill to have a successful rival sprung upon his hopes. Have you any idea who he is?”

“Yes,” admitted Carrados, “I have an idea, but to-day it is nothing more than that. When does Enniscorthy return?”

“He ought to be back in London on Friday morning.”

“By then I should know something definite. If you will make an appointment with him for Friday at half-past eleven I will look in on my way through town.”

“Certainly, Max, certainly.” There was a note of faithful expectation in Mr Carlyle’s voice that caused his friend to smile. He crossed the room to his most-used desk and opened one of the smaller drawers.

“For this simple demonstration, Louis, I require only two appliances, neither of which, as you will see, is a rabbit or a handkerchief. In other and saner words, there are only two exhibits. That is from _The Morning Mail_; this is from the Westminster street refuse tip.”

“This” was a small brown canvas bag. Traces of red sealing-wax still marked the neck and across it were stamped the words:

BANQUE DE L’UNION CLAIRVAUX

Mr Carlyle looked inside. It was empty, but a few specks of dull grey metal still lodged among the cloth. He turned to the other object, as Carrados had indicated an extract from the daily Press. It was a mere slip of paper and consisted of the following paragraph:

“From Clairvaux, in the Pas de Calais, France, where he purchased a country estate when he was driven into exile, it is reported that ex-King Constantine of Villalyia has been lying dangerously ill for the past week.”

“Quite so, quite so,” murmured Carlyle, quietly turning over the cutting to satisfy himself that he was reading the right side.

* * * * *

“I see that you haven’t anything very hopeful to report,” said Mr Enniscorthy--he and Max Carrados had entered Mr Carlyle’s office within a minute of each other two days later--“but let me have it out.”

“It isn’t quite a matter of being hopeful or the reverse,” replied the blind man. “It is merely final to your ambition. You know Prince Ulric of Villalyia?”

“I have been presented. He hunted in Ireland last season.”

“He knew Miss Roscastle?”

“They were acquainted, she has told me.”

“It went deeper than you imagined. Miss Roscastle is Princess Ulric of Villalyia to-day.”

“Una! Oh,” cried Enniscorthy, “but--but that is impossible! You don’t mean that she----”

“I mean exactly what I say. They were married within a week of her disappearance from London.”

Enniscorthy’s pained gaze went from face to face. The fatal presentiment that had always just robbed him of the heroic--the fear that he might be making an ass of himself--again assailed him.

“But isn’t Ulric in the line of succession? They couldn’t be really married without the king’s consent. Of course Villalyia is a republic now, but----”

“But it may not be to-morrow if the expected war breaks out? Quite true, Mr Enniscorthy. And in the meanwhile the forms and ceremonies are maintained at the exile Court of Clairvaux. Yet the king gave his consent.”

“Gave his consent! For his son to marry an actress?”

“Ah, there was a little sleight of hand there. He only knew Miss Roscastle as Miss Eileen O’Rourke, the last representative of a line of Irish kings. She was a Miss O’Rourke?”

“Yes. Roscastle was only her stage name. The O’Rourkes were a very old but impoverished family.”

“Royal, we may assume. This business was the outcome of one of the interminable domestic squabbles that the Villalyia Petrosteins seemed to wage in order to supply the Continental comic papers with material. Ex-King Constantine recently quarrelled simultaneously and irrevocably with his eldest son Robert and his first cousin Michael. Robert, who lives in Paris, has respectably married a robust minor princess who has presented him with six unattractive daughters and now, by all report, stopped finally. Hating both son and cousin almost equally, old Constantine, who had fumed himself into a fever, sent off for his other son, Ulric, and demanded that he should at once marry and found a prolific line of sons to embitter Robert and cut out the posterity of Michael. Prince Ulric merely replied that there was only one woman whom he wished to marry and she was not of sufficiently exalted station, and as she refused to marry him morganatically--yes, Mr Enniscorthy--there was no prospect of his ever marrying at all. The king suddenly found that he was very ill. Ulric was obdurate. The constitution allowed the reigning monarch to sanction such an alliance, provided there were no religious difficulties, and I understand that Miss Roscastle is a Catholic. Constantine recognised that if he was to gratify his whim he must consent, and that at once, as he was certainly dying. As things were, Ulric would probably renounce and marry ignominiously or die unmarried and the hated Michaels would step in, for, once king, the conventional Robert would never give his consent to such an alliance. Besides, it would be a ‘damned slap in the face’ to half the remaining royalty of Europe, and Constantine had always posed as a democratic sovereign--that was why his people ran him out. He coughed himself faint and then commanded the lady to be sent for.”

“If only Una had confided in me I would--yes, I would willingly have flown to serve her.”

“I think that Miss Roscastle was well qualified to serve herself,” responded Carrados dryly. “Now you can put together the whole story, Mr Enniscorthy. Many pages of it are necessarily obscure. What the man Hay knew and threatened--whether it was with him in view or the emissaries of the hostile Robert and Michael that she took the sudden chance of concealing her absence and cloaking her identity--what other wheels there were, what other influences at work--these are only superfluities. The essential thing is that, in spite of cross-currents, everything went well--for her, and perhaps for you; the lady’s married and there’s an end of it.”

“I hope that she will be as happy as I should have tried to make her,” said Enniscorthy rather shakily. “I shall always think of her. Mr Carrados, I will write to thank you when I am better able to express myself. Mr Carlyle, you know my address. Good-morning.”

“A very manly way of taking it and very properly expressed--very well indeed,” declared Mr Carlyle with warm approval as the door closed. “Max, that is the outcome of good blood--blood and breeding.”

“Nonsense, you romantic old humbug,” said Carrados with affectionate contempt. “I have heard exactly the same words in similar circumstances once before and they were spoken by a Canning Town bricklayer’s labourer.”

One incident only remains to be added. A month later Mr Carlyle was passing the Kemble Club when he became conscious of someone trying to avoid him. With a not unnatural impulse he made for his acquaintance and insisted on being recognised.

“Ah, Mr Stokesey,” he exclaimed, “_Call a Spade----_ is still going strong, I see.”

“Mr Carlyle, to be sure,” said the manager. “Bother me if I didn’t mistake you for a deadhead who always strikes me for a pass. Good heavens! yes; they come in droves and companies to see the part that the romantic Princess Ulric of Villalyia didn’t create! I’ve had three summonses for my pit queue. Didn’t I tell you it was a gamble? When I have to find a successor--_when_, mind, I say--I’m going to put on _You Never Can Tell_! What?”

VII

The Ingenious Mr Spinola

“You seem troubled, Parkinson. Have you been reading the Money Article again?”

Parkinson, who had been lingering a little aimlessly about the room, exhibited symptoms of embarrassed guilt. Since an unfortunate day, when it had been convincingly shown to the excellent fellow that to leave his accumulated savings on deposit at the bank was merely an uninviting mode of throwing money away, it is not too much to say that his few hundreds had led Parkinson a sorry life. Inspired by a natural patriotism and an appreciation of the advantage of 4½ over 1¼ per cent., he had at once invested in consols. A very short time later a terrible line in a financial daily--“Consols weak”--caught his agitated eye. Consols were precipitately abandoned and a “sound industrial” took their place. Then came the rumours of an impending strike and the Conservative press voiced gloomy forebodings for the future of industrial capital. An urgent selling order, bearing Mr Parkinson’s signature, was the immediate outcome.

In the next twelve months Parkinson’s few hundreds wandered through many lands and in a modest way went to support monarchies and republics, to carry on municipal enterprise and to spread the benefits of commerce. And, through all, they contrived to exist. They even assisted in establishing a rubber plantation in Madagascar and exploiting an oil discovery in Peru and yet survived. If everything could have been lost by one dire reverse Parkinson would have been content--even relieved; but with her proverbial inconsequence Fortune began by smiling and continued to smile--faintly, it is true, but appreciably--on her timorous votary. In spite of his profound ignorance of finance each of Parkinson’s qualms and tremors resulted in a slight pecuniary margin to his credit. At the end of twelve months he had drawn a respectable interest, was somewhat to the good in capital, and as a waste product had acquired an abiding reputation among a small but choice coterie as a very “knowing one.”

“Thank you, sir, but I am sorry if I seemed engrossed in my own affairs,” he apologised in answer to Mr Carrados’s inquiry. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “I hoped that I had finished with Stock Exchange transactions for the future.”

“Ah, to be sure,” assented Carrados. “A block of cottages Acton way, wasn’t it to be?”

“I did at one time consider the investment, but on reflection I decided against property of that description. The association with houses occupied by the artisan class would not have been congenial, sir.”

“Still, it might have been profitable.”

“Possibly, sir. I have, however, taken up a mortgage on a detached house standing in its own grounds at Highgate. It was strongly recommended by your own estate agents--by Mr Lethbridge himself, sir.”

“I hope it will prove satisfactory, Parkinson.”

“I hope so, sir, but I do not feel altogether reassured now, after seeing it.”

“After seeing it? But you saw it before you took it up, surely?”

“As a matter of fact, no, sir. It was pointed out to me that the security was ample, and as I had no practical knowledge of house-valuing there was nothing to be gained by inspecting it. At the same time I was given the opportunity, I must admit; but as we were rather busy then--it was just before we went to Rome, sir--I never went there.”

“Well, after all,” admitted Carrados, “I hold a fair number of mortgage securities on railways and other property that I have never been within a thousand miles of. I am not in a position to criticise you, Parkinson. And this house--I suppose that it does really exist?”

“Oh yes, sir. I spent yesterday afternoon in the neighbourhood. Now that the trees are out there is not a great deal that can be actually seen from the road, but I satisfied myself that in the winter the house must be distinctly visible from several points.”

“That is very satisfactory,” said Carrados with equal seriousness. “But, after all, the title is the chief thing.”