The club of masks E-Book

Allen Upward

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

I had only just let myself into the hall of the quiet house in the respectable street beside the British Museum when my ear was startled by the subdued shrilling of the telephone bell overhead. Whether this was the first time it had sounded, or whether that alarming call was being repeated for the second or third time, I had no means of knowing, as I turned hurriedly to fasten the front door behind me. Cautiously, and yet as swiftly as I dared, I shot the bolts and began speeding on tiptoe up the two flights of stairs between me and safety from detection. The night telephone was placed beside my bed on the second floor, but Sir Frank Tarleton slept on the same landing; and unless I could reach my room and still that persistent ringing before it penetrated through his slumber I ran the risk of meeting him coming out to find why it was not answered. And not for much, not for very much, would I have had the great consultant see me returning to his house at an hour when daylight was already flooding the deserted streets of the still sleeping city. There was something ominous in the continuous peal that sounded louder and louder in my ears with every step I made towards it. It seemed as though the unknown caller must know of my predicament and be bent on exposing me. I clutched the rail of the banisters to steady myself as I panted up those interminable stairs in the darkness, and my feet felt clogged like those of one in a nightmare as I lifted them from step to step; all the while racking my brains for some excuse to offer for the breach of duty I had been guilty of in spending the night elsewhere. For my real excuse, the only one that could

Leseprobe

The Club of Masks

By ALLEN UPWARD

1926

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383838333

THE CLUB OF MASKS

CHAPTER I ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE

I had only just let myself into the hall of the quiet house in the respectable street beside the British Museum when my ear was startled by the subdued shrilling of the telephone bell overhead. Whether this was the first time it had sounded, or whether that alarming call was being repeated for the second or third time, I had no means of knowing, as I turned hurriedly to fasten the front door behind me. Cautiously, and yet as swiftly as I dared, I shot the bolts and began speeding on tiptoe up the two flights of stairs between me and safety from detection. The night telephone was placed beside my bed on the second floor, but Sir Frank Tarleton slept on the same landing; and unless I could reach my room and still that persistent ringing before it penetrated through his slumber I ran the risk of meeting him coming out to find why it was not answered. And not for much, not for very much, would I have had the great consultant see me returning to his house at an hour when daylight was already flooding the deserted streets of the still sleeping city.

There was something ominous in the continuous peal that sounded louder and louder in my ears with every step I made towards it. It seemed as though the unknown caller must know of my predicament and be bent on exposing me. I clutched the rail of the banisters to steady myself as I panted up those interminable stairs in the darkness, and my feet felt clogged like those of one in a nightmare as I lifted them from step to step; all the while racking my brains for some excuse to offer for the breach of duty I had been guilty of in spending the night elsewhere. For my real excuse, the only one that could have tempted me to betray my chief’s confidence, could never be disclosed.

The darkness all around me seemed to be vibrating with the merciless clamour overhead as I toiled through those tense moments. My knees trembled under me, and my heart well-nigh stopped beating, as my head reached the level of the last landing and I turned my eyes desperately to the physician’s door in search of any sign that he had been aroused.

No sign as yet, thank Heaven! Five more stairs, three lightning strides to my own door, and he would never know of the secret errand that had taken me away from my post that night.

At last my agony was ended. I stood breathless on the topmost stair, darted past Sir Frank’s room, not daring to pause and listen for any movement from within, and clutched the handle of my own door, summoning all my nerve to open and close it again so rapidly as to permit the least possible sound to escape. An instant later and I had reached the telephone and silenced its urgent voice, and was beginning to draw my breath freely for the first time since I had reached the house.

Then, after a few deep gasps, I hailed the caller.

“Inspector Charles of Scotland Yard speaking,” came grimly over the wire. “Who is there?”

There was nothing to startle me in the fact that the police were calling so imperatively. Tarleton was the greatest living authority on poisons; it was to pursue his researches in their mysterious history that he lived in the unfashionable neighbourhood of the Museum; and the Home Office treated him with a confidence which they placed in no other of their advisers. Neither was there any cause for uneasiness in the Inspector’s cautious question. Very many of the calls that came to that unpretending house in that quiet corner of London had a certain character of furtiveness, and the callers showed the same anxiety to make sure whom they were speaking with.

My usual response came to my lips mechanically. “This is Dr. Cassilis, Sir Frank Tarleton’s confidential assistant. The doctor is asleep.”

There was a pause before the caller spoke again. There was nothing alarming to me in that, either. I had grown accustomed to the pause during my first few weeks under the roof of the great consultant. Few of those who needed his services liked to disclose their business to a deputy.

“Please have him waked immediately. He is wanted as soon as possible—on His Majesty’s service.”

The request was peremptory, nevertheless I was not inclined to give way to it at once. The police formula made no difference to me. I was His Majesty’s servant as much as my chief, and it was for me, and not for the Inspector, to decide which of us was to take the case. At the same time I began casting off my clothes so as to be ready to go in and rouse Tarleton if it became necessary; and one hand was busy with my necktie and collar while the other held the telephone mouthpiece to my lips.

“My instructions are not to disturb Sir Frank unless I am satisfied that the case is urgent, and that I can’t deal with it myself,” I said firmly. “I must ask you to tell me something more.”

There was another pause before the caller spoke again, and I took advantage of it to wrench off my collar and throw my waistcoat after my coat onto the floor. When the wire buzzed again the first words that reached my ear nearly caused me to drop the tube from my fingers.

“I am speaking from the Domino Club, Vincent Studios, Tarifa Road, Chelsea. There was a masked dance here this night, and one of the dancers has been found dead, apparently poisoned.”

And now I might well find myself trembling all over, and have to lean against the wall to recover myself. I only just succeeded in keeping back a cry of consternation. For it was to go to that underground club, with its dark reputation, and its strange character of mingled fashion and depravity, that I had been tempted to quit my post that night. I had been one of those masked dancers, jostling with I knew not whom under the shadowy lights and in the curtained recesses of the pretended studio in London’s nearest approach to a Quartier Latin. I could recall the scene in the after-midnight hours, the sea of black silk-covered faces thronging under the crimson lamp-shades, the bizarre confusion of costumes, monks and Crusaders, columbines and queens, the swish of silk and tinkling of swords and bracelets, and the incessant flood of whispers that had made me think of the scene in Milton’s pandemonium when the assembly of fallen angels are suddenly deprived of speech and changed into hissing serpents.

I had used the greatest precautions in coming and going. I had no reason to think that there was any real likelihood of my presence there being discovered. But a cold fear laid hold of me as I steadied my nerves to deal with the Police Inspector who had so unexpectedly conjured up a spectre on the scene of that past revelry. It was doubly imperative now that I should make no mistake, and above all that I should get rid of every sign that I had not passed the night in my own bed.

I was fast unbuttoning my shirt as I spoke again to the waiting police officer.

“I’m afraid I can’t awake Sir Frank for that. It seems to be a case that he will expect me to attend myself. Is there anything peculiar about the medical symptoms? What does your local surgeon say?”

Inspector Charles at last revealed the true reason for his persistence in demanding the attendance of my chief.

“I haven’t called in our local surgeon. There doesn’t seem anything mysterious about the cause of death. It looks to me like a simple case of opium-poisoning, very likely a suicide. But the case must be disposed of in camera if possible, for the sake of the people in high places connected with the club. My information is that there was a royalty present at this dance, the Crown Prince of——”

Whether purposely or not, the speaker let his voice drop so low that I failed to catch the final word. But I had heard enough. There could be no more doubt that Tarleton must be informed. It was a bare possibility that the victim might prove to be the foreign Royal Highness himself. Failing that, it might at least be someone who had been mistaken for him by the assassin. In any case I could thank my stars for the intimation that the case was likely to be hushed up on his account. Provided that I could efface every sign of my nocturnal expedition, I ought to have nothing now to dread.

I bade the officer wait, and tore off my remaining garments, slipped into my sleeping-suit and dressing-gown, and rumpled my hair to give myself the look of one just roused from sleep. Then and not before, I ventured out upon the landing to face my chief.

As I did so I was chilled by another shock. I saw a thin line of light under the door in front of me. Sir Frank Tarleton was awake.

I don’t think I can be accused of cowardice for feeling as I did during those desperate moments. It was not only my worldly fortune that was at stake; there were peculiar circumstances which made it doubly shameful on my part to be false to the trust put in me by the great specialist. They went back to the day when I began to attend his lectures on forensic medicine at the University College in Gower Street. I had already taken my medical degree in the University of London with a view to becoming a public analyst, and I had been anxious to profit by the Professor’s unique knowledge of poisons. From the first I had attracted his favourable notice; my papers had won his praise; and he had invited me to call on him, and admitted me to his friendship. Then, at the end of the year’s course, he had overwhelmed me by an offer so much beyond my hopes that I could scarcely yet believe in my good luck.

I can see him now, the whole scene is clear before me, the brisk figure with its face of intense thought, crowned by a shock of unkempt gray hair, standing over me on the hearth-rug of his dingy consulting-room on the ground floor in Montague Street. He was following his quaint habit of swinging his magnificent gold repeater in front of him by its shabby scrap of ribbon, while he gave me the amazing news.

“I’ve decided to take an assistant, Cassilis. I have passed my sixtieth birthday, and though my work interests me as much as ever, I mean to spare myself a little more in future. I don’t intend to turn out in the middle of the night because a bilious duchess fancies that someone has bribed her French maid to poison her. And I’ve told them at the Home Office—I suppose you know I’m their principal consultant—that I won’t be sent down to Cornwall one day and to Cumberland the next every time a coroner lets himself be puzzled by a simple case of strychnine or arsenic. It’s work for a younger man.”

He waved the watch towards me as he went on.

“Sir James Ponsonby—that’s the Permanent Under Secretary—has consented to my having a deputy, and I’m submitting your name.”

I recall my sensations as he stopped abruptly and bent his keen eyes on me from beneath their bushy roof of eyebrow to see how the proposal struck me. I had gasped for breath then as I was gasping now. At the age of twenty-five, only just qualified for my profession, I was to be lifted at one step out of the struggling crowd into a position which was already success, and which I should only have to make proper use of to attain in time the same eminence as my patron.

My answer must have been incoherent. But Tarleton interrupted it with a jerk of his gold repeater, which, I can remember, almost made me duck my head.

“I’m paying you what most of the men in our profession would consider a doubtful compliment when I tell you that you seem to me to be a young man with imagination, Cassilis. And that is what’s wanted in my work. It isn’t doctor’s work really so much as detective’s. It’s not only symptoms I have to look for, but motives. There was a touch in your very first paper that showed me you could think for yourself, and speculate. And speculation is the master key of science, although all your second-rate men decry it. It’s the old fable of the fox who had lost his tail. Not having any imagination themselves, they would like to forbid it to everyone. The Trade Unions rule the world to-day, and they are all trying to reduce the intelligence of mankind to the lowest common denominator.”

He had spoken with a certain bitterness which it was easy for me to understand. Eminent as he was, unquestioned as his authority had now become, I knew that Tarleton was not popular with the medical profession. His baronetcy had been given late, and given grudgingly. Perhaps he had recognized in me something that reminded him of his own youth, and had taken a generous resolution to help me in consequence. Certainly his treatment of me since had been more like that of a father than an employer.

He had said a good deal more that I hadn’t forgotten and that I was least likely to forget just then. His manner had been very grave as he dwelt upon the confidential character of a great deal of his work.

“If you are to assist me in my most important cases, and to qualify yourself for succeeding me later on, as I hope you will, you must learn to be more discreet than in almost any other line of life. You will find yourself in possession of secrets that compromise the honour of great families; men in the highest positions will hold their reputations at your mercy; the safety of the State itself may sometimes depend on your silence. I know of at least one man sitting in the House of Lords who owes his peerage to an undiscovered murder; and what is more, he knows of my knowledge. I make it a rule if possible never to go into any company where he is likely to be present, and he takes the same care to avoid me. But if he ever thought it necessary to his safety, that man would no more hesitate about taking my life than he did about taking his nephew’s—a boy twelve years old.”

No doubt Tarleton had gauged my disposition pretty well before he chose me for his assistant, and he knew that I should be more attracted than repelled by such hints as that. My blood tingled at the prospect opening before me. The days of Richard III and the Bloody Tower seemed to have come again. And I was to be behind the scenes tracing the midnight assassin at his work in the heart of modern London, and in the very purlieus of her palaces. It was enough to sate the greediest imagination.

“I mustn’t conceal from you,” my kindly chief had gone on to tell me, “that I have had to overcome strong objections to your appointment. Sir James Ponsonby considers that you are very young to be entrusted with such serious responsibilities. You can’t wonder if the Home Office has taken some precautions. I submitted your name a month ago, and I only received permission to make you the offer yesterday. I have very little doubt that you have been under observation most of the time between.”

This was the part of the conversation that had come back to me most vividly that night when I was struggling frantically towards the accusing bell.

For the whole sting in the communication that my memory thrust so pitilessly before me was in the last condition, the very condition I had been driven to break that night.

I had been less dismayed than most men of my age perhaps—particularly most medical students—would have been by learning that my life had been under the microscope for a month. I had nothing very serious to reproach myself with. The memory of a secret love affair, an unhappy one, alas! had served to keep me clear of the most dangerous of all the snares that life sets for youth. It was my good luck never to have tasted, and never to have felt the wish to taste, anything in the way of alcohol, and to be able to sit with nothing stronger than a cup of strong coffee in front of me in the midst of the most riotous company. I believe it was this exceptional merit that turned the scale in my favour with Sir James Ponsonby. Gambling had equally little appeal for me, and I took no interest whatever in that noble animal the horse. My real vice was love of excitement for its own sake. One prize-fight had more attraction for me than a hundred cricket-matches. It was in search of sensation that I was drawn into the night life of London. I was haunted by the mystery of silent streets and shadowed courts. Like Stevenson, I felt that life ought to be a series of adventures beginning in Leicester Square. The Press Club and the Chelsea Art Club were the two poles of my romantic sphere, and I revelled in the society of men who seemed to me to be leading lives more mysterious than mine.

It appeared that this was the weakness which stood in my way with the Government Department I was to serve. Tarleton had ceased to swing his watch, and had given me a very meaning glance as he came to the decisive point.

“Sir James has made it a condition of your appointment that it shall be a resident one. You will have to take up your quarters with me. I shall have a telephone installed in your room for you to take the night calls. And I shall depend on you not to trouble me with them unless I am really wanted.”

My face must have fallen as I listened to this stipulation, for I saw an answering shade on the doctor’s brow. I felt that a good deal of the gilt would be taken off the gingerbread if I had to surrender my personal freedom and abandon my favourite haunts to lead a regular life under my employer’s roof, and under his surveillance; for, of course, that was what it came to. My chief inducement to take up the career of an analyst instead of a general practitioner had been the greater freedom I should enjoy. I had dreaded the idea of having to settle in a provincial town or a prim residential suburb, where I should have to keep regular hours, go to church in a black coat on Sundays, act as sidesman, and generally put on all the airs of respectability. It would be almost as great a wrench to give up my artist and journalist friends, in whose company I had had such jolly times, and go to bed every night just as the real day was beginning, under the watchful eyes of my chief.

I fancy Sir Frank himself felt some sympathy with me, though he was too wise to express it.

“A man must expect to be judged to some extent by the company he keeps,” he had hinted. “You can’t expect the head of a Department like the Home Office to feel easy at the idea of entrusting important secrets to a young man who spends his nights, I won’t say in disreputable company, but at all events in circles where a good many adventurers are found. These people”—the bitter note came back into his voice—“these people hate the shoulders on which they have climbed. They govern the empire which the Raleighs and the Clives have gained for them, but they don’t want any more Clives and Raleighs. They threw Burton away; they wouldn’t use Gordon till it was too late—Faugh!” He swallowed his disgust with an effort, and became almost stern. “Now, my boy, this is a great opportunity for you, and you must take it. You must forget that you are a genius, and put your neck into the collar for a few years. At the end of that time you will have a reputation, and you can do what you like within reasonable limits. I expect you to trust yourself to me.”

And, of course, I had. He had taken me to the Home Office and formally presented me to the Under Secretary, and I found myself appointed an Assistant Medical Adviser, detailed for duty under the orders of Sir Frank Tarleton, with a salary that seemed riches in advance.

Perhaps I had found my work a little disappointing since. The night calls had not been numerous, and they had grown fewer after the first month or two, as though Tarleton’s clients or patients, I hardly know which to call them, had found out that it was no use expecting him to turn out any longer, if the case was one that I could deal with. Most of my time was passed in the laboratory in Montague Street, carrying out analyses under his directions, and improving my knowledge of rare poisons, of which he had formed what was probably the finest collection in the world. But of really sensational cases, involving criminal suspicion and mystery, there had not been one before that fateful summons from the Domino Club.

But I dared not hesitate longer in delivering it. Every moment now would only make matters worse. I crossed the landing and knocked firmly on the closed door.

The answer was instantaneous—“Come in!”

I obeyed, to find myself in the full glare of the electric light over the bed, in which Tarleton was sitting upright, his beloved repeater in one hand, while he gazed at me questioningly from beneath his knitted brows.

“I first heard the telephone nine minutes ago. You have taken some time to answer it.”

CHAPTER II THE EVIDENCE OF MADAME BONNELL

Instead of excusing myself I thought it the best plan to plunge into the account of what had taken place at the Domino Club, in the hope that it would absorb his mind. The alert physician made only one comment as I finished.

“A case for Inspector Charles is pretty sure to be a case for me; but you didn’t know that.” He was out of bed the next moment.

“Please tell him I am coming at once, and order round my car. And be ready yourself as soon as you can.”

I needed no injunction to make haste. I was in a fever to be back at the scene of that masked revel, and find out what had happened there. I congratulated myself on the care I had taken to cover my own tracks. I had left the doctor’s house and returned to it in my ordinary clothes. Not a soul in the Domino Club, except the member from whom I had obtained a ticket of admission, could have the least idea of my identity. So far as I could see I was absolutely secure from discovery. But it had been a dangerous game to play, and Tarleton was a dangerous man to play against. With all his kindness for me I trembled at the thought of coming within the range of his uncanny powers of detection.

As soon as I had dispatched his messages, and put a pot of coffee on to boil over a little spirit stove, I sluiced my head in cold water, and got into my clothes again as quickly as I had got out of them. I was ready with a steaming cup of coffee for my chief as he came out of his room, and was rewarded by the heartiness with which he gulped it down. His square leather bag, fitted with everything likely to be needed for the treatment of a poisoning case, was always kept ready in his bedroom, and he had it in his hand. I relieved him of it not presuming to bring my own; and we found the car waiting for us when we opened the front door.

As we rolled through the streets, just beginning to show signs of life, Tarleton acquainted me with the personality of Inspector Charles.

“He’s a retired Army man; he likes to be called Captain Charles. He’s also the younger son of a peer but he doesn’t like that noticed. His family are silly enough to object to his being in the police, and he drops the Honourable on their account. But of course it’s known in the Yard, and he gets most of the society jobs in consequence. I suppose they think he’s more likely to know his way about among the big people. But if you ask me, I think an experienced valet knows ten times more. You’ll find Charles straight, and you’ll find him thorough, but you needn’t expect him to see an inch beyond his own nose.”

This was comfortable for me. But the next words of my chief gave me an awkward jar.

“By the way, you ought to be able to tell me something about the place we’re going to—what is it?—the Domino Club. It sounds like the sort of night haunt the Home Office objected to so much when I asked for you as my assistant.”

I had to make up my mind in a hurry. To tell the truth was out of the question. It was not only my own honour and safety that were at stake; there was another for whose sake my presence at that fatal dance must be concealed. I was on the point of denying all knowledge of the club when it struck me that I might be betrayed into some unconscious movement in going through the premises, or some thoughtless remark, which would reveal to a keen intelligence like Tarleton’s that I had been there before.

I made an effort to seem as if I had been searching my memory.

“Yes,” I said slowly, “now you speak of it I remember having been there. But I am not sure that I am free to say anything about it. My impression is that there was an implied pledge of secrecy. Everyone wore a mask and a disguise of some sort. It was supposed to be a place where people in very high positions could let themselves go in security. I was told there were sometimes judges present, and I rather think Cabinet Ministers, as well as peeresses, and so forth.”

The specialist nodded gravely. “I expect the authorities knew what they were doing when they told Charles to call for me. We shall see whether he has found out who the man is that has been poisoned.”

“He didn’t say it was a man,” I ventured to suggest.

Sir Frank pursed his lips, but made no answer. He took out his gold repeater and began swinging it slowly, a sure sign that he was following out some train of thought.

In another quarter of an hour the car drew up in one of the old-fashioned streets of Chelsea between King Street and the Fulham Road, at the entrance to the curious building or group of buildings that bore the name of Vincent Studios.

The place resembled a rabbit warren. A short flight of steps led down from the street pavement into a dark, cavernous hall with doors opening out of it on three sides. Behind most of these doors were the studios of artists—one or two of them known to me—studios as cavernous if not as dark as the hall, and ending in glass doors that opened on mysterious gardens or garden yards overgrown with nasturtiums and other plants that seem to love the grime and cinders of suburban London. In the background one was aware of gray piles of timber, as of a mountain range closing a landscape. Some forgotten builder, perhaps, had died, leaving those stacks behind him, and his heirs had never discovered their existence, so that they had been left to the possession of the rats.

At the far end of the entrance cavern two doors side by side still bore the name of artists, one of whom had lately blossomed into an Academician and been transplanted to the sunnier region of Bedford Park, while the other had exchanged the brush for some more promising weapon in what, I fear, had been a losing fight with Fortune. Only the initiated knew that the door still bearing the name of J. Loftus, A.R.A., was now that of the Domino Club; while its companion, from which the name of Yelverton had been roughly effaced, served as a back door for the use of the tradesmen and servants of the club, and also for such members as had reasons of their own for not coming through the streets in fancy costume. For their benefit a row of small dressing-rooms had been fitted up, in which they could transform themselves from sober moths into bright artificial butterflies and back again.

In front of the club entrance an officer in plain clothes was stationed who recognized Sir Frank with a respectful salute.

“You will find Inspector Charles inside, sir,” he said, opening the door for us.

We found ourselves in a dark narrow passage empty of everything but cloak- and hat-pegs. A door at the further end opened straight into the dancing-room.

The former studio had been decorated in a fashion evidently meant to recall the Arabian Nights Entertainment. Vistas of Moorish arches and fountains playing among palms and oleanders had been painted on the walls. At intervals wooden columns had been set up to support curtains of gauze embroidered so as to afford a half concealment to the nooks that they enclosed. The whole place was still suffused with the lurid glow of a series of red lanterns hanging from the roof. But a glass door at the further end had been thrown open to admit the daylight, and where it reached the crimson glow became haggard and spectral and the whole place had the air of an old woman’s face from which the paint had peeled in streaks, revealing the wrinkles and sharp bones beneath.

Inspector Charles, tall, upright, and looking the personification of law and order, stood beside one of the curtained alcoves close to the garden door, and invited us with a solemn gesture to approach.

This was the moment I had been dreading. I endeavoured to keep my face passive, and give no sign of recognition, as I came behind my chief and took my first glance at the spectacle the Inspector had to show us.

Within the curtains, stretched at full length on a low divan, was a figure attired as an Inquisitor. The black robe was folded carefully round him, but the peaked hood with its two eye-slits had been thrust back over the head, so that the face was fully exposed. It was a striking face in every way, the face of a man of fifty or thereabout in the full possession of his powers. The forehead was intellectual; the eyes, wide open but glazed in the death stare, must have been full and penetrating in life; the nose and chin were strongly carved; only the lips showed a certain looseness, as of over-ripened fruit, that seemed to hint at something evil underlying the dignity and strength manifested in the rest of the face.

I scanned that prostrate figure with painful curiosity. The costume was only too familiar; I had had ample opportunity of observing it during the night that had just elapsed. But the face was as strange to me as it was to either of the other two who stood and gazed beside me. Even the eyes, unnaturally dilated by the drug, seemed to bear little likeness to those that had peered through the holes in the black hood when I last looked on the sombre shape in life.

The Inspector spoke briefly, addressing himself to my companion.

“This is how he was found when they came in to put out the lights after everyone was gone as they supposed. They thought at first that he was in a drunken sleep, and tried to rouse him by shaking. When they failed, they went to bring Madame Bonnell, the proprietress of the club. They dared not uncover the face without her authority; the rules of the club are so strict on that point. She laid back the hood herself, and saw at once that he was dead. After that she rang us up, and saw that the body was not touched till I got here. I thought it best not to touch it myself till you came.”

Clear, succinct, containing the bare facts and nothing more, such was the report of Inspector Charles. It was evident that no better man could have been put in charge of an affair in dealing with which prudence was the most essential requisite.

The great physician received the statement with a nod of satisfaction.

“You suggested to Dr. Cassilis over the wire that it looked like a case of opium-poisoning,” was his first remark.

Captain Charles favoured me with a cautious glance, in which I read some disapproval of my youthful appearance.

“I thought an opiate must have been the cause of death, Sir Frank, because there was no sign of a struggle nor of any suffering. He seemed to have died in his sleep.”

Again the consultant gave an approving nod. All this time he had not once removed his eyes from the pallid face on which a leaden tinge had become visible. Now he turned to me.

“What do you say, Cassilis?”

I shook my head. There was something in the case that puzzled me.

“I agree with Captain Charles to some extent. The appearances are consistent with opium-poisoning. But——” I turned to the Inspector—“can you tell us the hour at which the body was found with life extinct?”

Captain Charles consulted his watch. Tarleton’s fingers were already pinching the shabby ribbon of his repeater, and it was going to and fro with the slow movement of a pendulum.

“It is now half-past six. I got here soon after five. It must have been about half-past four when the body was found.”

I looked questioningly at the great specialist.

“Unless the opiate was given very early, in which case the effect would surely have been noticed by someone, it must have been a very powerful dose to produce death so soon. I should be inclined to suspect some weakness in the heart, or some other derangement, to account for such rapid action. I don’t like the colour of the skin.”

“Ah! You see that?” Tarleton bent over the dead face in grave scrutiny for some moments. Then he straightened himself up.

“And now, who is this man?” he asked the Inspector.

“His name is Wilson, so the proprietress says. But she seems to know very little about him.”

“Wilson?” The doctor repeated the name with a sceptical intonation. “That is the sort of name that man would be likely to give himself in a place of this kind, I should think. Can I see the proprietress?”

Captain Charles went out in quest of her. He was no sooner gone than my chief whispered quickly in my ear, “Not another word about the cause of death before anybody else. I blame myself for asking your opinion. I underrated your powers of observation. Hush!”

I looked round to see a capable middle-aged Frenchwoman dressed in black silk, emerging from a portière across the room. Very capable and businesslike she looked, with her well-arranged hair and commanding black eyes, and well-preserved face and figure, and that amazing air of respectability which only a Frenchwoman can keep up in an atmosphere charged with evil. In Madame Bonnell’s presence vice was deprived of its impropriety, and even murder took on the character of a business mischance about which the less fuss made the better.

Madame had obviously employed her time since the discovery of this particular mischance in making the best of her personal appearance. She greeted us with affability.

Even Tarleton, I thought, was softened by her graceful and yet dignified deportment. In a moment we seemed to become four friends engaged in a confidential talk over a matter of common interest. It was Madame who induced me to sit down.

“You understand, no doubt, Madame, that we are not here with any hostile purpose,” the representative of the Home Office began. “If it is possible to dispose of this matter privately, without involving you or your establishment in any scandal, I shall be glad.”

The explanation seemed unnecessary. Madame Bonnell by her manner refused to perceive the possibility of her being involved in scandal, or in anything else inconsistent with the character of a respectable business woman.

“You have identified the deceased, I understand, by the name of Wilson. Have you any idea whether that was his real name, or an assumed one?”

Madame Bonnell had no idea. Madame Bonnell was desolated by having no idea, since the amiable Sir Frank seemed to wish her to have one. Monsieur the late Wilson had introduced himself to her originally under that name, and she had never inquired if he had any other.

Madame succeeded in conveying to us that she was not in the habit of inconveniencing her patrons by inquiries of any sort, or of distracting her own mind by curiosity on any subject except their ability to pay her.

Under the polished surface of indifference I nevertheless thought I could detect in the proprietress of the Domino Club a consciousness that she was being examined by the representatives of the law about a serious business, and that it would not be prudent on her part to withhold any material information. It must have been clear to her that candour was her best policy, up to a certain point at all events.

To Tarleton’s next question, how she came to make the acquaintance of the dead man, she made a pretty full reply. Monsieur Wilson had introduced himself to her a year or two before, when she was managing a small restaurant in Soho, in a street in which there is more than one small restaurant, and the restaurants are patronized by more than one class of customers. It was Monsieur Wilson who had proposed to her that she should exchange her position there for the more profitable one of proprietress of a fashionable night club. Monsieur had offered to provide the funds required for starting such a club, and had undertaken to make it fashionable, and in both respects he had kept his word. All the first members of the club had been brought by him, and he had gone on introducing others since. Madame avowed that she was under a debt to Monsieur Wilson, which she could not easily repay. She made an effort to repay it, as she spoke, with tears for his fate, but the dividend forthcoming did not strike me as a heavy one. By this time, doubtless, the Domino Club was fairly on its feet, and in no great need of the dead man’s further support.

Madame Bonnell’s evidence so far had only served to deepen the mystery instead of lightening it. Who was this unknown Wilson? Why should he have wanted to start a night club, and what was the influence that had enabled him to fill it with so many members drawn from the highest social ranks? The chief part in the examination had been taken by the physician, Inspector Charles intervening mostly to secure dates and addresses for his note-book after the meticulous fashion of the law. At length I took advantage of a break to put a question which had been in my mind for some time.

“These people whom Wilson, if that was his name, brought into the club must have been his friends, apparently. So far as one can see the club was entirely composed of his personal friends and other friends of theirs. Doesn’t that make it more probable that he took poison himself than that anyone else gave it to him?”

I threw out the suggestion generally, and my three companions all turned and stared at me as though it took them by surprise, although it was an obvious alternative. The physician said nothing, but the compression of his brows told me plainly that he had rejected such a theory. Captain Charles made a fatal objection.

“After he had founded the club and done everything to make it a success, why should he have come to it to commit suicide—the very thing that would damage it most?”

Madame Bonnell became genuinely agitated for the first time.

“But of course that will not be known!” she exclaimed sharply. “You sir,” she appealed to Tarleton, “you will know how to contrive that this unfortunate shall be taken elsewhere. Think of the scandal if it should be known that a crime was committed in the presence of the Crown Prince!”

Evidently His Royal Highness was a strong card in Madame’s estimation, and one which she could rely on to win her game. Perhaps it was not the first time in her business experience that she had found the police disposed to shut their eyes to awkward incidents in which great personages were involved.

The consultant of the Home Office looked by no means yielding.

“I have not yet decided what course I shall recommend the authorities to take,” he said. “Have you anything to say in answer to Dr. Cassilis? Is he right in assuming that everyone present here last night must have been Wilson’s friend?”