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- Herausgeber: GAEditori
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Michael Berrington is a bachelor leading a quiet life in London. Overhearing a conversation at his club one day, he becomes interested in a discussion regarding a man named Gastrell. Gastrell is somewhat of a mystery to the club members in spite of his renting a house from one of them. Berrington’s interest in Gastrell intensifies as his fiancé, Dulcie Challoner, befriends a wealthy widow, Mrs. Connie Stapleton who evidently has some type of relationship with Gastrell.
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Indice dei contenuti
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FOUR FACES
GAEditori
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CHAPTER I
CURIOSITY IS AROUSED
“I confess I’d like to know somethin’ more about him.”
“Where did you run across him first?”
“I didn’t run across him; he ran across me, and in rather a curious way. We live in Linden Gardens now, you know. Several of the houses there are almost exactly alike, and about a month ago, at a dinner party we were givin’, a young man was shown in. His name was unknown to me, so I supposed that he must be some friend of my wife’s. Then I saw that he was a stranger to her too, and then all at once he became very confused, inquired if he were in Sir Harry Dawson’s house—Sir Harry lives in the house next to ours—and, findin’ he was not, apologized profusely for his mistake, and left hurriedly.”
“Anyone might make a mistake of that kind in some London houses,” the second speaker said. “What is he like? Is he a gentleman?”
“Oh, quite.”
“And for how long have you leased him your house in Cumberland Place?”
“Seven years, with option of renewal.”
“And you mean to say you know nothing about him?”
“I won’t say ‘nothin’,’ but I know comparatively little about him. Houston and Prince, the house agents, assure me they’ve made inquiries, and that he is a rich young man whose uncle amassed a large fortune in Tasmania—I didn’t know fortunes were to be made in Tasmania, did you? The uncle died six months ago, Houston and Prince tell me, and Hugesson Gastrell has inherited everything he left. They say that they have ascertained that Gastrell’s parents died when he was quite a child, and that this uncle who has died has been his guardian ever since.”
“That sounds right enough. What more do you want to know?”
“It somehow seems to me very strange that I should have come to know this man, Gastrell, without introduction of any kind—even have become intimate with him. On the day after he had come to my house by accident, he called to fetch a pair of gloves which, in his confusion on the previous evenin’, he had left in the hall. He asked if he might see me, and then he again apologized for the mistake he had made the night before. We stayed talkin’ for, I suppose, fully half an hour—he’s an excellent talker, and exceedingly well-informed—and incidentally he mentioned that he was lookin’ for a house. From his description of what he wanted it at once struck me that my Cumberland Place house would be the very thing for him—I simply can’t afford to live there now, as you know, and for months I have been tryin’ to let it. I told him about it, and he asked if he might see it, and—well, the thing’s done; he has it now, as I say, on a seven years’ lease.”
“Then why worry?”
“I am not worryin’—I never worry—the most foolish thing any man can do is to worry. All I say is—I should like to know somethin’ more about the feller. He may be quite all right—I have not the least reason for supposin’ he isn’t—but my wife has taken a strong dislike to him. She says she mistrusts him. She has said so from the beginnin’. After he had asked to see me that mornin’, the mornin’ he called for his gloves, and we had talked about the house, I invited him to lunch and introduced him to my wife. Since then he has dined with us several times, and—well, my wife is most insistent about it—she declares she is sure he isn’t what he seems to be, and she wanted me not to let him the house.”
“Women have wonderful intuition in reading characters.”
“I know they have, and that’s why I feel—well, why I feel just the least bit uneasy. What has made me feel so to-day is that I have just heard from Sir Harry Dawson, who is on the Riviera, and he says that he doesn’t know Hugesson Gastrell, has never heard of him. There, read his letter.”
Seated in my club on a dull December afternoon, that was part of a conversation I overheard, which greatly interested me. It interested me because only a short time before I had, while staying in Geneva, become acquainted at the hotel with a man named Gastrell, and I wondered if he could be the same. From the remarks I had just heard I suspected that he must be, for the young man in Geneva had also been an individual of considerable personality, and a good conversationalist.
If I had been personally acquainted with either of the two speakers, who still stood with their backs to the fire and their hands under their coat-tails, talking now about some wonderful run with the Pytchley, I should have told him I believed I had met the individual they had just been discussing; but at Brooks’s it is not usual for members to talk to other members unintroduced. Therefore I remained sprawling in the big armchair, where I had been pretending to read a newspaper, hoping that something more would be said about Gastrell. Presently my patience was rewarded.
“By the way, this feller Gastrell who’s taken my house tells me he’s fond of huntin’,” the first speaker—whom I knew to be Lord Easterton, a man said to have spent three small fortunes in trying to make a big one—remarked. “Said somethin’ about huntin’ with the Belvoir or the Quorn. Shouldn’t be surprised if he got put up for this club later.”
“Should you propose him if he asked you?”
“Certainly, provided I found out all about him. He’s a gentleman although he is an Australian—he told Houston and Prince he was born and educated in Melbourne, and went to his uncle in Tasmania immediately he left school; but he hasn’t a scrap of that ugly Australian accent; in fact, he talks just like you or me or anybody else, and would pass for an Englishman anywhere.”
Without a doubt that must be the man I had met, I reflected as the two speakers presently sauntered out of the room, talking again of hunting, one of the principal topics of conversation in Brooks’s. I, Michael Berrington, am a man of leisure, an idler I am ashamed to say, my parents having brought me up to be what is commonly and often so erroneously termed “a gentleman,” and left me, when they died, heir to a cosy little property in Northamptonshire, and with some �80,000 safely invested. As a result I spend many months of the year in travel, for I am a bachelor with no ties of any kind, and the more I travel and the more my mind expands, the more cosmopolitan I become and the more inclined I feel to kick against silly conventions such as this one at Brooks’s which prevented my addressing Lord Easterton or his friend—men I see in the club every day I am there, and who know me quite well by sight, though we only stare stonily at each other—and asking more about Gastrell.
So Lady Easterton had taken an instinctive dislike to this young man, Hugesson Gastrell, and openly told her husband that she mistrusted him. Now, that was curious, I reflected, for I had spoken to him several times while in Geneva, and though his personality had appealed to me, yet—
Well, there was something about him that puzzled me, something—I cannot define what it was, for it was more like a feeling or sensation which came over me while I was with him—a feeling that he was not what he appeared to be, and that I saw, so to speak, only his outer surface.
“Hullo, Michael!”
The greeting cut my train of thought, and, screwing myself round in the big armchair, I looked up.
“Why, Jack!” I exclaimed, “I had no idea you were in England. I thought you were bagging rhinoceroses and things in Nigeria or somewhere.”
“So I have been. Got back yesterday. Sorry I am back, to tell you the truth,” and he glanced significantly towards the window. A fine, wetting drizzle was falling; dozens of umbrellas passed to and fro outside; the street lamps were lit, though it was barely three o’clock, and in the room that we were in the electric lights were switched on. The sky was the colour of street mud, through which the sun, a huge, blood-red disc, strove to pierce the depressing murk of London’s winter atmosphere, thereby creating a lurid and dismal effect.
Jack Osborne is a man I rather like, in spite of the fact that his sole aim in life is to kill things. When he isn’t shooting “hippos” and “rhinos” and bears and lions in out-of-the-way parts of the world, he is usually plastering pheasants in the home covers, or tramping the fields and moors where partridges and grouse abound.
“Had a good time?” I asked some moments later.
“Ripping,” he answered, “quite ripping,” and he went on to tell me the number of beasts he had slain, particulars about them and the way he had outwitted them. I managed to listen for ten minutes or so without yawning, and then suddenly he remarked:
“I met a man on board ship, on the way home, who said he knew you—feller named Gastrell. Said he met you in Geneva, and liked you like anything. Struck me as rather a rum sort—what? Couldn’t quite make him out. Who is he and what is he? What’s he do?”
“I know as little about him as you do,” I answered. “I know him only slightly—we were staying at the same hotel in Geneva. I heard Lord Easterton, who was in here half an hour ago, saying he had let his house in Cumberland Place to a man named Gastrell—Hugesson Gastrell. I wonder if it is the man I met in Geneva and that you say you met on board ship. When did you land?”
“Yesterday, at Southampton. Came by the Masonic from Capetown.”
“And where did Gastrell come from?”
“Capetown too. I didn’t notice him until we were near the end of the voyage. He must have remained below a good deal, I think.”
I paused, thinking.
“In that case,” I said, “the Gastrell who has leased Easterton’s house can’t be the man you and I have met, because, from what Easterton said, he saw his man quite recently. Ah, here is Lord Easterton,” I added, as the door opened and he re-entered. “You know him, don’t you?”
“Quite well,” Jack Osborne answered, “Don’t you? Come, I’ll introduce you, and then we’ll clear this thing up.”
It was not until Osborne and Lord Easterton had talked for some time about shooting in general, and about “hippo” and “rhino” and “‘gator” killing in particular, and I had been forced to listen to a repetition of incidents to do with the sport that Jack Osborne had obtained in Nigeria and elsewhere, that Jack presently said:
“Berrington tells me, Easterton, he heard you say that you have let your house to a man named Gastrell, and we were wondering if he is the Gastrell we both know—a tall man of twenty-eight or so, with dark hair and very good-looking, queer kind of eyes—what?”
“Oh, so you know him?” Easterton exclaimed. “That’s good. I want to find out who he is, where he comes from, in fact all about him. I have a reason for wanting to know.”
“He came from Capetown with me—landed at Southampton yesterday,” Osborne said quickly.
“Capetown? Arrived yesterday? Oh, then yours must be a different man. Tell me what he is like.”
Osborne gave a detailed description.
“And at the side of his chin,” he ended, “he’s got a little scar, sort of scar you see on German students’ faces, only quite small—doesn’t disfigure him a bit.”
“But this is extraordinary,” Lord Easterton exclaimed. “You have described my man to the letter—even to the scar. Can they be twins? Even twins, though, wouldn’t have the same scar, the result probably of some accident. You say your man landed only yesterday?”
“Yes, we came off the ship together.”
“Then he was on board on—let me think—ten days or so ago?”
“Oh, yes.”
“It’s most singular, this apparent likeness between the two men.”
“It is—if they really are alike. When shall you see your man again?” Osborne inquired.
“I have this moment had a letter from him,” Easterton answered. “He asks me to lunch with him at the Caf� Royal to-morrow. Look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll say I’m engaged or somethin’, and ask him to dine here one evenin’. Then if you will both give me the pleasure of your company, we shall at once find out if your Gastrell and mine are the same—they can’t be the same, of course, as your man was in the middle of the ocean on the day mine was here in London; I mean we’ll find out if he has a twin brother.”
“Have you met his wife?” Jack Osborne inquired carelessly, as he lit a long cigar.
“Phew! Yes. I should say so. One of the most gloriously beautiful women I have ever seen in my life. She was on board with him, and I believe everybody on the ship was head over ears in love with her. I know I was.”
“Ah, that settles it,” Easterton said. “My man is a bachelor.”
Osborne smiled in a curious way, and blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling without saying anything.
“Why, what is it?” Easterton asked, noticing the smile.
“Oh, nothing. A little thought that crept into my brain, that’s all.”
“Tell us what your Gastrell’s wife is like,” Easterton pursued.
“Like? What is she not like! Think of all the most lovely girls and women you have ever set eyes on, and roll them into one, and still you won’t get the equal of Jasmine Gastrell. What is she like? By heaven, you might as well ask me to describe the taste of nectar!”
“Dark or fair?”
“Both.”
“Oh, nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense, Easterton. She has the strangest eyes—they are really green, I suppose, but they look quite blue in some lights, and in other lights deep purple. They are the most extraordinary eyes I have ever seen; a woman with eyes like that must have tremendous intelligence and quite exceptional personality. It’s useless for me to try to describe the rest of her face; it’s too lovely for anything.”
“And her hair?” Easterton asked. “Has she dark hair or fair?”
“Both.”
“Ah, Jack, stop rottin’,” Easterton exclaimed, laughing. “What is the colour of the hair of this woman who has so set your heart on end?”
“It may be auburn; it may be chestnut-brown; it may be red for all I know, but I am hanged if I can say for certain which it is, or if it’s only one colour or all three shades. But whatever it is it’s perfectly lovely hair, and she has any amount of it. I wouldn’t mind betting that when she lets it down it falls quite to her feet and hangs all round her like a cloak.”
“I should like to meet this goddess, Jack,” Easterton said, his curiosity aroused. “Though you are so wedded to hippos, and rhinos, and ‘gators and things, you don’t seem entirely to have lost your sense of appreciation of ‘woman beautiful.’ Where are she and her husband staying?”
“I’ve not the least idea.”
“Didn’t they tell you their plans?”
“They said nothing whatever about themselves, though I tried once or twice to draw them out. In that respect they were extraordinarily reserved. In every other way they were delightful—especially Mrs. Gastrell, though I was greatly attracted by Gastrell too, when I came to know him towards the end of the voyage.”
CHAPTER II
THE ANGEL FACES
Hugesson Gastrell had accepted Lord Easterton’s invitation to dine at the club, and the three men were seated near the fire as I entered, Easterton and Jack Osborne on one of the large settees, their visitor facing them in an armchair, with his back to me. I went towards them across the big room, apologizing for my unpunctuality, for I was nearly ten minutes late. To my surprise they remained silent; even Easterton did not rise, or greet me in any way. He looked strangely serious, and so did Jack, as a rule the cheeriest of mortals.
“I am dreadfully sorry for being so late,” I exclaimed, thinking that my unpunctuality must have given them offence. I was about to invent some elaborate excuse to account for my “delay,” when the man seated with his back to me suddenly rose, and, turning abruptly, faced me.
I recognized him at once. It was Gastrell, whom I had met at the Hotel Metropol in Geneva. As he stood there before me, with his back half turned to the light of the big bay window, there could be no mistaking him. Again I was struck by his remarkable appearance—the determined, clean-cut features, the straight, short nose, the broad forehead, the square-shaped chin denoting rigid strength of purpose. Once more I noticed the cleft in his chin—it was quite deep. His thick hair was dark, with a slight kink in it behind the ears. But perhaps the strangest, most arresting thing about Gastrell’s face was his eyes—daring eyes of a bright, light blue, such as one sees in some Canadians, the bold, almost hard eyes of a man who is accustomed to gazing across far distances of sunlit snow, who habitually looks up into vast, pale blue skies—one might have imagined that his eyes had caught their shade. He wore upon his watch-chain a small gold medallion, a trinket which had attracted my attention before. It was about the size of a sovereign, and embossed upon it were several heads of chubby cupids—four sweet little faces.
At first glance at him a woman might have said mentally, “What nice eyes!” At the second, she would probably have noticed a strange thing—the eyes were quite opaque; they seemed to stare rather than look at you, there was no depth whatever in them. Certainly there was no guessing at Gastrell’s character from his eyes—you could take it or leave it, as you pleased, for the eyes gave you no help. The glance was perfectly direct, bright and piercing, but there could be absolutely no telling if the man when speaking were lying to you or not. The hard, blue eyes never changed, never deepened, nor was there any emotion in them.
To sum up, the effect the man’s personality produced was that of an extraordinarily strong character carving its way undaunted through every obstacle to its purpose; but whether the trend of that character were likely to lean to the side of truth and goodness, or to that of lying and villainy, there was no guessing.
All these points I observed again—I say “again,” for they had struck me forcibly the first time I had met him in Geneva—as he stood there facing me, his gaze riveted on mine. We must have stayed thus staring at each other for several moments before anybody spoke. Then it was Lord Easterton who broke the silence.
“Well?” he asked.
I glanced at him quickly, uncertain which of us he had addressed. After some instants’ pause he repeated:
“Well?”
“Are you speaking to me?” I asked quickly.
“Of course,” he replied, almost sharply. “You don’t seem to know each other after all.”
“Oh, but yes,” I exclaimed, and I turned quickly to Gastrell, instinctively extending my hand to him as I did so. “We met in Geneva.”
He still stood looking at me, motionless. Then gradually an expression, partly of surprise, partly of amusement, crept into his eyes.
“You mistake me for someone else, I am afraid,” he said, and his voice was the voice of the man I had met in Geneva—that I would have sworn to in any court of law, “It is rather remarkable,” he went on, his eyes still set on mine, “that Mr. Osborne, to whom Lord Easterton has just introduced me, also thought he and I had met before.”
“But I am certain I did meet you,” Osborne exclaimed in a curious tone, from where he sat. “I am quite positive we were together on board the Masonic, unless you have a twin brother, and even then—”
He stopped, gazing literally open-mouthed at Hugesson Gastrell, while I, standing staring at the man, wondered if this were some curious dream from which I should presently awaken, for there could be no two questions about it—the man before me was the Gastrell I had met in Geneva and conversed with on one or two occasions for quite a long time. Beside, he wore the little medallion of the Four Faces.
Easterton looked ill at ease; so did Osborne; and certainly I felt considerably perturbed. It was unnatural, uncanny, this resemblance. And the resemblance as well as the name must, it would seem, be shared by three men at least. For here was Lord Easterton’s friend, Hugesson Gastrell, whom Easterton had told us he had met frequently in London during the past month; here was Jack Osborne claiming to be acquainted with a man named Gastrell, whom he had met on his way home from Africa, and who, as he put it to us afterwards, was “the dead facsimile” of Easterton’s guest; and here was I with a distinct recollection of a man called Gastrell who—well, the more I stared at Easterton’s guest the more mystified I felt at this Hugesson Gastrell’s declaring that he was not my Geneva companion; indeed that we had never met before, and that he had never been in Geneva.
The dinner was not a great success. Gastrell talked at considerable length on all sorts of subjects, talked, too, in a most interesting and sometimes very amusing way; yet all the time the thought that was in Osborne’s mind was in my mind also—it was impossible, he was thinking, that this man seated at dinner with us could be other than the individual he had met on board ship; it was impossible, I was thinking, that this man seated at dinner with us could be other than the individual I had met in Geneva.
Easterton, a great talker in the club, was particularly silent. He too was puzzled; worse than that—he felt, I could see, anxious and uncomfortable. He had let his house to this man—the lease was already signed—and now his tenant seemed to be, in some sense, a man of mystery.
We sat in the big room with the bay window, after dinner, until about half-past ten, when Gastrell said he must be going. During the whole time he had been with us he had kept us entertained by his interesting conversation, full of quaint reminiscences, and touched with flashes of humour.
“I hope we shall see a great deal of each other when I am settled in Cumberland Place,” he said, as he prepared to leave. The remark, though spoken to Easterton, had been addressed to us all, and we made some conventional reply in acknowledgment.
“And if, later, I decide to join this club,” he said presently, “you won’t mind proposing me, will you, Easterton?”
“I? Er—oh, of course, not in the least!” Easterton answered awkwardly, taken off his guard. “But it will take you a good time to get in, you know,” he added as an afterthought, hopeful that the prospect of delay might cause Gastrell to change his mind. “Two, even three years, some men have to wait.”
“That won’t matter,” Gastrell said carelessly, as the hall porter helped him on with his coat. “I can join some other club meanwhile, though I draw the line at pot-houses. Well, good night to you all, and you must all come to my house-warming—a sort of reception I’m going to give. I ought to be settled into the house in a month. And I hope,” he added lightly, addressing Jack Osborne and myself, “you won’t run across any more of my ‘doubles.’ I don’t like the thought of being mistaken for other men!”
The door of the taxi shut with a bang. In the hall, where the tape machines were busy, Osborne and I stood looking at each other thoughtfully. Presently Osborne spoke.
“What do you make of it?” he asked abruptly. “I am as certain that is the fellow who was with me on board ship as I am that I am standing here.”
“And I am equally positive,” I answered, “he’s the man I met in Geneva. It’s impossible there could be two individuals so absolutely identical—I tell you it’s not possible.”
Osborne paused for some moments, thinking.
“Berrington,” he said suddenly.
“Yes? What?” I asked, taken aback at his change of tone.
He took a step forward and laid his hand upon my shoulder.
“Berrington,” he repeated—and in his eyes there was a singular expression—“I have an idea.”
He turned to a page who was standing near.
“Boy,” he said sharply, “what address did that gentleman who has just gone tell you to give to his driver?”
“He told the driver himself, sir,” the boy answered, “but I heard the address he gave, sir.”
“What was it?”
“Three forty, Maresfield Gardens, sir. It’s near Swiss Cottage—up Fitzjohn’s Avenue on the right.”
Osborne turned to me quickly.
“Come into this room,” he said. “There is something I want to ask you. The place is empty, and we shall not be disturbed.”
When he had closed the door, and glanced about him to make sure that we were alone, he said in a low voice:
“Look here, Mike, I tell you again, I have an idea: I wonder if you will fall in with it. I have watched that fellow Gastrell pretty closely all the evening; I am rather a good judge of men, you know, and I believe him to be an impostor of some kind—I can’t say just yet of what kind. Anyway, he is the man I met on the Masonic; he can deny it as much as he likes—he is. Either he is impersonating some other man, or some other man is impersonating him. Now listen. I am going to that address in Maresfield Gardens that he gave to his taxi-driver. I am going to find out if he lives there, or what he is doing there. What I want to know is—Will you come with me?”
“Good heavens, Jack!” I exclaimed, “what an extraordinary thing to do. But what will you say when you get there? Supposing he does live there—or, for that matter, supposing he doesn’t—what reason will you give for calling at the house?”
“Oh, I’ll invent some reason quick enough, but I want someone to be with me. Will you come? Will you or won’t you?”
I glanced up at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes to eleven.
“Do you mean now? Do you intend to go at this time of the night?”
“I intend to go at once—as fast as a taxi will take me there,” he answered.
I paused, undecided. It seemed such a strange thing to do, under the circumstances; but then, as I knew, Jack Osborne had always been fond of doing strange things. Though a member of Brooks’s, he was unconventional in the extreme.
“Yes, I will,” I said, the originality of the idea suddenly appealing to me. In point of fact I, too, mistrusted this man Gastrell. Though he had looked me so straight in the eyes when, two hours before, he had calmly assured me that I was mistaken in believing him to be “his namesake in Geneva,” as he put it; still, as I say, I felt convinced he was the same man.
“Good,” Osborne answered in a tone of satisfaction. “Come, we will start at once.”
A strange feeling of repressed excitement obsessed me as our taxi passed up Bond Street, turned into Oxford Street, then to the right into Orchard Street, and sped thence by way of Baker Street past Lord’s cricket ground and up the Finchley Road. What would happen when we reached Maresfield Gardens? Would the door be opened by a stolid footman or by some frigid maidservant who would coldly inform us that “Mr. Gastrell was not at home”; or should we be shown in, and, if we were shown in, what excuse would Jack Osborne make for calling so late at night? I cannot say that I felt in the least anxious, however, for Osborne is a man who has knocked about the world and seen many queer sides of life, and who never, under any circumstances, is at a loss how to act.
I glanced at my watch as our taxi turned into Maresfield Gardens. It was ten minutes past eleven. At the house indicated half-way up the hill the taxi suddenly pulled up.
Osborne got out and pressed the electric bell-push. As I looked up at the windows, I noticed that nowhere was any light visible. Nor was there a light in the ground-floor windows.
“I believe everybody is in bed,” I said to him, when the bell remained unanswered. Without replying, he pressed the push again, and kept his finger on it.
Still no one came.
“We’d better call to-morrow,” I suggested, when he had rung a third time with the same result.
The words had hardly left my lips, when we heard the door-chain rattle. Then the bolts were pulled back, and a moment later the door was carefully drawn open to the length of its chain.
Inside all was darkness, nor was anybody visible.
“What do you want?” a woman’s voice inquired.
The voice had a most pleasant timbre; also the speaker was obviously a lady. She did not sound in the least alarmed, but there was a note of surprise in the tone.
“Has Mr. Gastrell come home yet?” Osborne asked.
“Not yet. Do you want to see him?”
“Yes. He dined at Brooks’s Club this evening with Lord Easterton. Soon after he had left, a purse was found, and, as nobody in the club claimed it, I concluded that it must be his, so I have brought it back.”
“That is really very good of you, Mr. Osborne,” the hidden speaker answered. “If you will wait a moment I will let you in. Are you alone?”
“No, I have a friend with me. But who are you? How do you know my name?”
There was no answer. The door was shut quietly. Then we heard the sound of the chain being removed.
By the time Jack Osborne had paid our driver, and dismissed the taxi, the door had been opened sufficiently wide to admit us. We entered, and at once the door was shut.
We were now in inky blackness.
“Won’t you switch on the light?” Osborne asked, when a minute or so had elapsed, and we remained in total darkness.
Nobody answered, and we waited, wondering. Fully another minute passed, and still we stood there.
I felt Osborne touch me. Then, coming close to me, he whispered in my ear:
“Strike a match, Mike; I haven’t one.”
I felt in my pockets. I had not one either. I was about to tell him so when something clicked behind us, and the hall was flooded with light.
Never before had I beheld, and I doubt if I shall ever behold again, a woman as lovely as the tall, graceful being upon whom our eyes rested at that instant. In height quite five foot nine, as she stood there beneath the glow of the electrolier in the luxurious hall, in her dinner dress, the snowy slope of the shoulders and the deep, curved breast, strong, yet all so softly, delicately rounded, gleamed like rosy alabaster in the reflection from the red-shaded light above her.
Our eyes wandered from exquisite figure to exquisite face—and there was no sense of disappointment. For the face was as nearly perfect as a woman’s may be upon this earth of imperfections. The uplift of the brow, the curve of the cheek to the rounded chin, the noble sweep of delicate, dark eyebrows were extraordinarily beautiful. Her hair was “a net for the sunlight,” its colour that of a new chestnut in the spring when the sun shines hotly upon it, making it glow and shimmer and glisten with red and yellow and deepest browns. Now it was drawn about her head in shining twists, and across the front and rather low down on the brow was a slim and delicate wreath of roses and foliage in very small diamonds beautifully set in platinum. The gleam of the diamonds against the red-brown of the wonderful hair was an effect impossible to describe—yet one felt that the hair would have been the same miracle without it.
“Mrs. Gastrell! Why, I didn’t recognize your voice,” I had heard Osborne exclaim in a tone of amazement just after the light had been turned on. but my attention had been so centred upon the Vision standing there before us that I had hardly noticed the remark, or the emphasis with which it was uttered. I suppose half a minute must have passed before anybody spoke again, and then it was the woman who broke the silence.
“Will you show me the purse?” she asked, holding out her hand for it and addressing Osborne.
On the instant he produced his own and gave it to her. She glanced at it, then handed it back.
“It is not his,” she said quietly. Her gaze rested steadily upon Osborne’s face for some moments, then she said:
“How exceedingly kind of you to come all this way, and in the middle of the night, just to find out if a purse picked up at your club happens to belong to the guest of a friend of yours.”
In her low, soft voice there was a touch of irony, almost of mockery. Looking at her now, I felt puzzled. Was she what she appeared to be, or was this amazing beauty of hers a cloak, a weapon if you will, perhaps the most dangerous weapon of a clever, scheming woman? Easterton had told us that Gastrell was a bachelor. Gastrell had declared that he had never before met either Jack Osborne or myself. Yet here at the address that Gastrell had given to the taxi-driver was the very woman the man calling himself Gastrell, with whom Osborne had returned from Africa, had passed off as his wife.
“My husband isn’t in at present,” she said calmly, a moment later, “but I expect him back at any minute. Won’t you come in and wait for him?”
Before either of us could answer she had walked across the hall, unlocked and opened a door, and switched on the light in the room.
Mechanically we followed her. As we entered, a strange, heavy perfume of some subtle Eastern scent struck my nostrils—I had noticed it in the hall, but in this room it was pungent, oppressive, even overpowering. The apartment, I noticed, was luxuriously furnished. What chiefly attracted my attention, however, were the pictures on the walls. Beautifully executed, the subjects were, to say the least, peculiar. The fire in the grate still burned brightly. Upon a table were two syphons in silver stands, also decanters containing spirits, and several tumblers. Some of the tumblers had been used. As I sank, some moments later, into an easy chair, I felt that its leather-covered arms were warm, as if someone had just vacated it.
And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house, and the front door had been chained and bolted.
“Make yourselves quite at home,” our beautiful hostess said, and, as she spoke, she placed a box of cigars, newly opened, upon the table at my elbow. “I am sorry,” she added, “that I must leave you now.”
There was a curious expression in her eyes as she smiled down at us, an expression that later I came to know too well. Then, turning, she swept gracefully out of the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked across at Osborne. For some moments neither of us spoke. The mysterious house was still as death.
“Well, Jack,” I said lightly, though somehow I felt uneasy, “what do you make of it, old man?”
“It is just as I thought,” he answered, taking a cigar out of the box and beginning to trim it.
“How do you mean—‘just as you thought’?” I asked, puzzled.
“Gastrell is an impostor, and—and that isn’t his wife.”
He did not speak again for some moments, being busily occupied in lighting his long cigar. Presently he leaned back, then blew a great cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.
Suddenly we heard a click, like the wooden lid of a box suddenly shut.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed suddenly, “what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“Why! Look!” he gasped.
His gaze was set upon something in the shadow of a small table in a corner of the room—something on the floor. In silence, now, we both stood staring at it, for Osborne had risen suddenly. Slowly it moved. It was gradually gliding along the floor, with a sound like paper being pushed along a carpet. Whence it came, where it began and where it ended, we could not see, for the shadow it was in was very deep. Nor was its colour in the least discernible.
All we could make out was that some long, sinuous, apparently endless Thing was passing along the room, close to the wall farthest from us, coming from under the sofa and disappearing beneath the table.
All at once Osborne sprang towards me with an exclamation of alarm, and I felt his grip tighten upon my arm.
“Good God!” he cried.
An instant later a broad, flat head slowly reared itself from beneath the red table-cover which hung down almost to the floor, rose higher and higher until the black, beady, merciless eyes were set upon mine, and in that brief instant of supreme suspense my attention became riveted on the strange, slate-grey mark between and just behind the reptile’s cruel eyes. Then, as its head suddenly shot back, Osborne dashed towards the door.
Once, twice, three times he pulled frantically at the handle with all his force.
“Good God! Berrington,” he cried, his face blanched to the lips, “we’re locked in!”
Almost as he spoke, the serpent with head extended swept forward towards us, along the floor.
I held my breath. Escape from its venomous fangs was impossible.
We had been trapped!
CHAPTER III
A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
With a shriek of alarm I leapt to the further side of the table which stood in the middle of the room, and at that moment hurried footsteps became audible.
Our wild shouts for help had evidently been heard, for someone was hurrying down the bare oak stairs into the hall.
“Hang this confounded lock—it catches!” we heard a voice exclaim as the handle turned. Then an instant later the door was flung open, and Gastrell stood before us.
“I am dreadfully sorry, you fellows,” he said apologetically, “that you should have been alarmed in this way, because I can assure you that my tame cobra, ‘Maharaja,’ is quite harmless—look at him now,” and we saw that the horrid reptile had swung round the instant its master had entered, and was sliding towards his feet. “He’s a pet of mine—I brought him home with me, and he follows me like a dog—no, you needn’t be in the least nervous,” he added quickly, seeing that I instinctively edged away as the reptile passed. “I’m awfully sorry to have kept you waiting. I must apologize, too, for that confounded door—I myself got locked in here the other day. My wife told you I was out, but I was not. I came in by the side door, and she didn’t know I was back, because I went straight upstairs. If you’ll wait a moment I’ll take our friend ‘Maharaja’ out.”
He left the room, and the snake slid rapidly along the floor after him, almost, as he had said, like a dog following his steps.
“A nice cheerful pet to keep,” I remarked, annoyed at my experience; but at that moment the mysterious Gastrell bustled in alone.
“So sorry,” he said, and, after thanking us for coming out so far to ascertain if he had lost his purse, he pulled up a chair, seated himself between us, lit a big cigar, and helped us to whiskey from a silver tantalus.
“You had better add the soda yourselves,” he said. “And now there is something I want to say to you both. You must have been surprised at my declaring so emphatically this evening that I had not met either of you before—eh?”
“I can answer for myself,” Osborne exclaimed quickly. “Are you going to admit, after all, that you were on the Masonic?”
“Of course! Who else could it have been? Any more,” he added, addressing me, than it could have been someone other than me whom you met in Geneva?”
“Then why did you deny it?” Osborne said rather irritably, looking hard at him with an expression of disapproval and mistrust, while my eyes wandered to that little gold medallion upon his chain.
“Because I had to,—that is, it was expedient that I should,” was his reply. “I have a reason for not wanting it to be generally known that I am married,—least of all did I want Easterton, whose house I have just leased, to know me to be a married man; indeed, I told him some weeks ago that I was a bachelor—I had to, for reasons which I can’t reveal at present.”
He stopped speaking, and we watched him narrowly.
“Still,” I remarked, “I don’t see how you could have been on board ship in the middle of the ocean, and at the same time in London.”
“I didn’t say I was. I wasn’t. I was in London a fortnight ago, and spent some hours with Lord Easterton. On the same day I sailed for Madeira, where I joined my wife on the homeward-bound Masonic. Think, Mr. Osborne,” he ended, his curious gaze set on my companion’s face, “think when we first met on board. It was not before the ship reached Madeira, surely.”
Jack Osborne reflected.
“By Jove, no!” he suddenly exclaimed. “How odd I should all along have thought you had embarked at Capetown with the rest of us. But Mrs. Gastrell came from the Cape, surely?”
“She did, and the name ‘Mr. Gastrell’ was also in the passenger list, because a cousin of mine should have been on board. At the eleventh hour he was prevented from sailing, and it was upon receipt of a cable from him that I decided to catch the next boat to the Canaries and there meet my wife.”
I admit that, as he paused, I felt rather “small”; and I believe Osborne felt the same. We had driven from the club right out here to Swiss Cottage, and on the way we had conjured up in our imaginations all sorts of mysterious happenings, even possible intrigues; and now the whole affair proved to have been “quite ordinary,” with a few commonplace incidents to relieve its monotony—notably the incident of the giant cobra.
True, there was the mystery of the locked door. But then, had it really been locked? I had not myself tried to open it, and now as I thought about it, it seemed to me quite possible that Jack Osborne might, in the excitement of the moment, have failed to turn the handle sufficiently, and so have believed that the door was locked when it was not. Again we had Gastrell’s assurance that he had found himself locked in one day. As for his declaration to Easterton that he was not the Gastrell whom Osborne had met on the Masonic, it was clear now that he had some secret reason for wishing to pass in London as a bachelor, and as Osborne had told Easterton that the Gastrell on the Masonic had told him that he had met me in Geneva, naturally Gastrell had been driven—in order to conceal his identity—to maintain that he had never before met me either.
Our host insisted upon our taking another of his very excellent cigars before we left,—it was close upon one o’clock when we rose to go. He rang up a taxi for us, helped us on with our coats, accompanied us to the door, and shook hands with each of us most cordially.
“What do you make of it, Michael?” Osborne asked, when we had remained silent in the swift-travelling taxi for five minutes or more, and were approaching Marlboro’ Road Station.”
“Nothing,” I answered bluntly. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Suspect anything?”
“Yes—and no.”
“That’s just how I feel, and yet—”
“Well?”
“I mistrust him. I don’t know why, but I do. I mistrust them both. There’s something queer happening in that house. I am certain there is.”
“You can’t be certain, as you don’t know.”
“My suspicions are so strong that they amount to convictions.”
“So I think, too. And those dirty tumblers on the tray, and the hot armchair I sat down in—Jack, I believe there were a lot of people in that house, hidden away somewhere, all the time we were there. I believe Gastrell admitted his identity only because he was obliged to. Our calling like that, so unexpectedly, and being admitted by his wife—if she is his wife—disconcerted him and took him unawares. I can’t think why she admitted us—especially I can’t think why she kept us so long in the dark in the hall before she switched on the light. By Jove! What a stunning woman!”
“She is—but crafty. I thought that when I met her on board ship. And those eyes of hers. Phew! They seem to read right into one’s soul, and discover one’s secret thoughts.” He stopped for an instant, then added, meditatively, “I wonder what makes Gastrell keep that horrible cobra as a pet.”
I yawned, and we relapsed into silence. Then gradually my thoughts drifted—drifted away from London, far from crowds and hustle, the rumble of motor ‘buses and the hootings and squawkings of ears, to a peaceful, rural solitude.
I was in Berkshire. Down in the picturesque valley into which I gazed from the summit of a wooded slope stood a Manor house, ivy-grown, old, very beautiful Facing it an enormous plateau, hewn out of the Down, had been converted to various uses—there were gardens, shrubberies, tennis lawns. Lower came terrace after terrace of smoothly mown grass, each with its little path and borders of shrubs, interspersed with the finest Wellingtonias in the county, tapering gracefully to heaven, copper-beeches and grand oaks.
