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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
The Sage of Tyburn by Fred M. White is a thrilling dive into a world of high-stakes mystery and historical intrigue. Set against the backdrop of Victorian London, the story follows the enigmatic figure of the Sage, a mysterious and wise man whose predictions and insights have captivated and bewildered those around him. When a string of seemingly unrelated crimes begins to plague the city, the Sage's cryptic warnings become the key to unraveling a larger, more sinister conspiracy. As the stakes rise and danger looms, the Sage must use his unparalleled intellect to decipher the clues and expose the truth. Can he solve the mystery before it's too late, or will his own secrets be his undoing? Dive into this captivating novel and uncover the secrets of the Sage of Tyburn.
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Table of Contents
The Sage of Tyburn
THE CHRONICLE OF THE YELLOW GIRL
CHAPTER I. — THE YELLOW GIRL
CHAPTER II. — THE FIRST STAGE
CHAPTER III. — THE SECOND STAGE
CHAPTER IV. — THE JOURNEY'S END
THE CHRONICLE OF THE BLUE-EYED SYNDICATE
CHAPTER I. — THE BLUE-EYED SYNDICATE
CHAPTER II. . — THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE SYNDICATE
CHAPTER III. — THE GOSPEL OF DULNESS
CHAPTER IV. — THEIR HOUSEHOLD GODS
THE CHRONICLE OF THE INCONSEQUENT PRINCESS
CHAPTER I. — THE INCONSEQUENT PRINCESS
CHAPTER II. — A DEAL IN DIAMONDS
CHAPTER III. — A MIDNIGHT CALL
THE CHRONICLE OF THE ELDERLY ADONIS
CHAPTER I. — THE ELDERLY ADONIS
CHAPTER II. — THE SECOND VOLUME
CHAPTER III. — THE BLIGHTED ROMANCE
THE CHRONICLE OF THE LIBELLED VELASQUEZ
CHAPTER I. — THE LIBELLED VELASQUEZ
CHAPTER II. — THE HAND OF THE SERVANT
CHAPTER III. — THE UPPER HAND
THE CHRONICLE OF THE COMPLEAT LETTER-WRITER
CHAPTER I. — THE COMPLEAT LETTER-WRITER
CHAPTER II. — THE UNATTACHED HUSBAND
CHAPTER III. — THE CUP THAT CHEERS
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Sage of Tyburn
THE CHRONICLE OF THE YELLOW GIRL
First published in The London Magazine, Vol. XV, No. 85, Aug 1905, pp 35-49
Collected in Paul the Sage, Ward Lock & Co, London, 1910
CHAPTER I. — THE YELLOW GIRL
THE door of No. 1, Tyburn Square, was painted black, with bell, letter-box, and massive knocker enamelled in vivid scarlet. In a few weeks' time this portal had passed from the limbo of conventional thresholds into the picturesque popularity of evening newspaper records. This spells fame in an age when genius means an infinite capacity for making money.
In less than two months all that was best and brightest in society had passed beyond the flare of lampblack and vermilion. Beyond was a hall, paved and lined with white marble, filled with lemon-trees. Beyond this again was a large room, the walls unpapered, the white boards absolutely bare, and containing no furniture beyond a couple of saddlebag armchairs. The big bay window at the far end was fitted with cathedral glass.
In this primitive fashion Paul Beggarstaff received his clients. At all times and seasons a good fire burned upon the hearth. Ladies came here to have their fortunes expounded, their lines of life vigorously told, and to get advice upon everything, from the selection of a servant to the backing of a horse.
And yet, two months ago, nobody had heard of Paul Beggarstaff. He did not come in clouds of mystery, there was no flavour of the East about him, his very name had an Anglo-Saxon suggestiveness. He merely claimed certain occult powers, and seldom did he promise in vain.
Beggarstaff was a young man, with pale, scholarly features, an aquiline nose supporting gold-threaded pince-nez, and a drooping blonde moustache. There were no magic circles, no black cats, no anything. The very novelty of the thing was one of its great attractions. Surely nobody but a very strong man could afford to dispense with the properties.
Beggarstaff had made his reputation over that case of Lady Summerbright's. The affair is woven into the diaphanous fabric of history by this time. Her ladyship, the loveliest and silliest woman in London, had lost her diamond necklace. Truth will tell you that the gaud has a bloody history of its own. Commercially, the stream of light would have ransomed quite a number of mediaeval kings.
Lord Summerbright, whose literary ability had been throttled by patrician ties, could suggest nothing better than a visit to Beggarstaff, whose original doorway had arrested his cynical attention. With the sublime creed that folly follows, her ladyship went.
She returned with a wonderful story. She was quite certain she had had the dubious delight of an interview with the devil, clad in frock-coat, mathematically pressed trousers, and glasses rimmed with gold. Also her ladyship was quite certain that the father of lies was a graduate of one of our universities.
"James," she declared, "the man is a marvel. He told me everything I had done on that fatal night. Things that happened in my bedroom!"
"Lucky—er—devil," Summerbright murmured.
"No; but really, James. He motioned me into a chair, he actually knew why I came, and then he began to tell me things. I never was so frightened in my life. And he says I dropped my necklace close here as I was getting out of my carriage, and that the same will be found down the drain which is opposite the door."
Summerbright smiled. When a man laughs at a woman in that irritating way she is generally inspired to new and dazzling heights of folly.
"I am going to have that drain searched at once," said her ladyship. And she did.
The necklace was found as Beggarstaff predicted. Within a week the name of Paul Beggarstaff was known from one end of England to another. This was notoriety. But when the Purple Pill King and the greatest Soap Emperor worked the incidents into full-page advertisements, fame followed.
Hundreds of fashionable clients flocked to Tyburn Square. The Sage's prices were trebled, but this only served to increase the crush. Nor could it be denied that Beggarstaff was wonderfully successful with his patients, as he chose to call them. To put the matter tersely, Beggarstaff had become an institution.
It was Saturday afternoon, a day when occult science slacked her bow, and Beggarstaff sat alone. In a Sage his occupation was a prosaic one, and not even the most latitudinarian of critics can exactly regard the Sporting Times as literature. The rapid pulse of the electric bell thrilled, and Beggarstaff put the pink sheets aside. A minute later, and a tall figure entered. "I beg your pardon," said the intruder, "but I presume you—"
"Paul Beggarstaff, at your service. You wish to consult me, Sir Peter?"
Sir Peter Mallory looked slightly uncomfortable. He was a handsome young man, with a bronzed face and an eye suggestive of higher things than sighting a choke-bore with a dusky flight of partridge drumming into the September haze. Mallory was a sportsman by environment, an enthusiast and dreamer by instinct.
"If you were a woman," said Beggarstaff, "you could feel more easy. Sit down."
"Woman," Mallory murmured, as he sank into the chair, "can do things sublimely. Honestly, I came here against my better convictions."
"Of course, that's why you do come. Just at present you are out of sorts with common honesty. Believing me to be a thorough-paced humbug you come to me as an antidote. Strychnine is a valuable medicine, and Longman is behaving very badly."
"What do you know about Longman?"
"I know he has disappointed you, and yet his pseudo-Socialism is no more meretricious than yours. He has been robbing you in the name of political humanity."
"Over two thousand pounds," Mallory muttered. "I'm sick of politics. Those fellows are all alike. But I didn't come to talk of that to you."
Beggarstaff smiled slightly.
"No," he said. "You came to discuss a girl. The girl puzzles you."
"How in the name of fortune do you come to know that?"
Beggarstaff gave a lofty wave of his hand. The gesture seemed to imply the triviality of the problem to a mind of wide grasp.
"Suffice it that I do know," the Sage remarked. "The question is: Are you in earnest? Because, if you are not, the matter is likely to lead you into serious trouble. What are your intentions in the matter of the Yellow Girl?"
"Beggarstaff, you are in league with Satan?"
"There are worse syndicates," the Sage said drily. "All the same, you are mistaken. I have no connexion whatever with the firm you mention. Are you serious?"
"I was never more earnest in my life."
"Because you are a clever man, and consequently dilettante. And you were not always serious. Don't be angry. Do you remember Phillpotts, of Jesus? He was an elderly man, and he had a daughter. Wasn't her name Jessie? Then there was the 'Pearl of Price.' She married a butcher at Newmarket subsequently. Then what of 'She of the Dainty Feet'? She in the fulness of time got mixed up—"
"For Heaven's sake, stop!" Mallory cried. "Good God! if I were a man of right mind I should cut my throat after an hour with you! How—how do you—"
The speaker paused, absolutely at a loss to proceed. For the first time in his life he was frightened; a knowledge of nerves had suddenly been thrust upon him.
"The thing is ridiculously easy," Beggarstaff said. "You will perhaps wonder at my asking if you have recovered the Mallory diamonds yet."
"You know they are lost also? Those Scotland Yard people—"
"Have not uttered a word. You lent the family jewels to your sister to attend a Drawing-Room, and the stones disappeared under the most mysterious circumstances. Scotland Yard suggested an absolute secrecy, but you see I know all about it."
"I never felt more hopelessly at sea, never in my life—"
"And yet you are an exceptionally clever fellow, Peter."
Mallory started at the change of voice. With one sweep of his hand Beggarstaff seemed to have entirely altered his features. And yet he had merely removed his glasses, and given the long, saffron moustaches an upward curl.
"As I live," Mallory cried, "it's Paul Clibburn, of Jesus!"
"The same, at your service, Peter. You wonder to find me in this guise."
"Wonder! The feeblest way of putting it. Second Wrangler! A first-class classic! Greek and English verse prizeman. The prettiest bat for a late cut I ever saw. And perhaps the finest comedian ever seen on the banks of the Cam. And to be doing this kind of thing!"
Beggarstaff touched the bell and gave the servant instructions that he was in to nobody. Then he carefully locked the door and produced the cigarettes.
"I gather from your manner that you are slightly disgusted, Peter," he said.
"Well, who wouldn't be? You are masquerading in this cheap- Jack style; you, a man that might have been Lord Chancellor had you liked."
A film of regret dimmed Beggarstaff's eyes. His voice was dominated by it also.
"Unfortunately, all those things require money," said he. "And when I came down from Cambridge not only was I penniless, but I had succeeded in dissipating every penny my poor old father had. He would pay my debts, you see. When he died, two years later, my mother and two sisters were totally unprovided for. But for the thoughtless blackguard who sits before you, they could have had every comfort.
"Mallory, to lead Cambridge by the nose and London by the ear are two cruelly different things. Honestly, I tried my hand at a dozen things: at every one of them I was a ghastly failure. I couldn't afford to wait. There comes the time when cynicism and ungodliness get you down and strangle you. I could play the liar, and humbug, and knave, perched up on cee-springs, building churches and the like. That is why I decided to become a successful humbug also."
"But you had to get a start, Paul."
"Well, didn't that Lady Summerbright business give me a magnificent one?"
"Still, I never believed that there was anything in that thought-reading—"
"Absolute humbug," Beggarstaff interrupted. "To be perfectly candid with you, the thing was arranged between Summerbright and myself. You will remember that we were the greatest of friends at Cambridge. Summerbright placed the jewels in the drain, and then suggested that his wife should come to me, first posting me up in the local colour. After that the rest followed like a flock of sheep. They come to me with the most sacred of family secrets. I hold the honour of a hundred families in the hollow of my hand. Peter, there is absolutely no limit to human credulity and weakness. Did I but choose, I could become the greatest blackmailer of this or any other age. But there is no need. The money comes in like a flood; and my own flesh and blood reap the benefit."
"Still, I have heard people speak very highly of you."
"Because I am cleverer than they. I never advise unless I know. I put people off; and, in the meantime, I coach up for them. Some of my adventures are worthy of a place in the Arabian Nights, I could tell you—"
"Crimes! Are you the latest revision of Sherlock—"
"Pshaw! I am not a detective. One stumbles upon crime sometimes; but I make it a rule to avoid that class of thing if possible. Crime is so vulgar and conventional. And I am getting to love the solution of the social mystery for its own sake. For instance, this Yellow Girl problem promises to be most fascinating."
Mallory flushed slightly.
"I may as well confess the occasion of my visit here," he said. "Indeed, seeing how much you know already, it would be folly to do otherwise. But how do you get your information?"
"You need not go any further," said Beggarstaff, "because I am not going to tell you. In my business—the business of life—one thing is woven into another. My few facts came to me quite accidentally, and your face shows the state of your mind. Now tell me all about the Yellow Girl and where you met her."
"But still to betray the secrets—of the—of the—"
"New Bohemian Club. There, you see. I know the name. Also, I may remark that their place of meeting is somewhere near Battersea Park. You are a member!"
Mallory commenced to speak with greater freedom.
"I am a member," he said. "There are two hundred and fifty of us altogether. Our symposiums take place every Wednesday night, eight till two."
Beggarstaff nodded and passed the cigarettes.
"So I understand," he said. "You are a very exclusive coterie."
"In a way, very exclusive. Some of the very best people come there constantly. We dance and sing, and play cards and the like, the supper being prepared beforehand, so that there are no waiters, and our own members provide the orchestra. We are free, I must confess—very free indeed. Conventionality is left in the cloakroom. Each member has an ivory ticket; and when he or she cannot attend; this ticket may be passed on to a friend who can be trusted. So well is the secret kept that none of the society papers have got hold of it yet."
"I could go if I liked," said Beggarstaff. "Proceed."
"There is very little more to tell," said Mallory. "With some of the best and brightest society people, with a choice selection of artists, authors, and the like, I need hardly say that our functions are enjoyable in the extreme. There are no sets and cliques whatever; everybody speaks to everybody else; in fact, we are quite a happy family."
"In fact, the Yellow Girl is the only mystery you have."
"Precisely. She never misses a night. She comes at eight and goes at one, regularly."
"By goes I suppose you mean disappears," Beggarstaff suggested drily.
"I have certainly tried to trace her," Mallory admitted with a splash of red on his cheeks, "but the Yellow Girl, or Zilla, as she prefers to be called, simply melts away. The laws of our coterie preclude any personal questions, so that Zilla may be an empress for all we know. That she is wonderfully popular is certain."
"So I have heard," Beggarstaff said thoughtfully. "And she invariably dresses in yellow silk and black lace, with shoes to match. There is quite a flavour of Dumas about the thing. I presume the lady is beautiful."
Mallory caught his breath, his eyes dilated.
"The cant phrase is utterly inadequate," he remarked fervently. "Zilla is fascination itself. She is the essence of the ages, the crystallisation of centuries of prettiness. Sometimes she suggests Cleopatra, then in a flash she is Clytemnestra, then she is Ellen Terry. Dark as night, a kind of dream with lovely liquid eyes floating in it. Then the fascination of her manner and the brilliant airiness of her conversation baffle description. One minute she is tender and confidential, the next she eludes you in the strangest fashion. And yet she had never seen plovers' eggs till last Wednesday."
Mallory's last remark savoured of worldly philosophy. The incident of the plovers' eggs suggested the wildest possibilities. Beggarstaff smiled. Already he had formed the still gauzy threads of a still more gossamer theory of his own.
"Really," he said, "a much more classic point than would at first appear. Do you know that those plovers' eggs form the turning-point of the tragedy, Peter?"
"Is it necessarily a tragedy?" Mallory asked.
"I fear so, unless comedy crosses it. Now, as to your intentions?"
"My fixed resolution is to make Zilla my wife."
"Quite so. I see your mind is absolutely made up on the point. And Zilla?"
"Loves me! In one of her indiscreet moments she confessed as much."
Beggarstaff made no reply for a few minutes. He seemed to dream in the smoke of his cigarette.
"Women are only women," he said presently. "But you will never marry Zilla; that is, if my theory be the correct one. You might as well go to the King, and demand the hand of a princess. The great Chinese Wall is as a box of bricks compared to the obstacles lying before you."
"Any fool can get over a wall with a ladder," Mallory said impatiently. "And I don't want you to try the sage business on me."
The seal of earnestness wrinkled Beggarstaff's forehead. His eyes were grave.
"I'm not," he said. "I am terribly in earnest! Most men would let you go to the devil in your own way, but I prefer to accompany you part of the journey. I am going to carry the ladder in fact. In other words, I am going to solve the mystery of the Yellow Girl for you, and leave the rest to Providence."
"That's exactly what I want you to do."
"Then we are agreed. You will attend Wednesday's symposium, of course?"
"I have not missed one for the past six months."
"Good. I am going to accompany you upon this occasion. Mind, I am to have a free hand in this matter, and, not being under the glamour of the siren, I am to treat her as I please. My mission is to find out who she is and where she comes from. You will procure me a ticket?"
"With pleasure, Paul; and you shall be my best-man."
Beggarstaff smiled in a significant manner. He shuddered from the head downwards.
"In a shirt of mail, then," he muttered. "This is an adventure after my own heart, mysterious, full of danger, rococo, almost fantastic. Mind, I merely surmise. A princess of the gutter, a beggar-maid in Belgravia. Which?"
Mallory rose. He was too deadly in earnest to jest.
"It is arranged for Wednesday, then?" he asked.
"I shall not fail you," Beggarstaff responded. "À la bonne heure!"
CHAPTER II. — THE FIRST STAGE
DESPITE Beggarstaff's frankness, Mallory's belief in the occultism of his friend was as yet concrete. And Mallory was still by way of being a rhapsodist. Even close commercial contact with the professional type of politician had not killed all the poetry that lay within him.
This he touched upon on the way to the New Bohemian. Beggarstaff laughed.
"Your mind is harping upon my startling knowledge concerning the loss of your jewels," said the latter. "You cannot understand whence came my information. What could be easier? Your sister told me. She came and asked me to recover them. And upon my word I almost fancy I am going to do so."
More Beggarstaff would not say. Even to a friend he could not wipe all the colour out of his reputation. Presently the cab stopped.
"We have got to get out here," Mallory explained. "It is one of our rules that no cab shall approach within three hundred yards of the hall. The reason is obvious. If the night is wet, why, there is an end of it."
Mallory led the way down a narrow but none the less respectable street, and turned finally into a paved yard. A flight of stone steps terminated in what appeared to be a large stable-loft. Once inside a vestibule, this prosaic suggestion vanished. The grouping of the palms and the arrangement of the drapery might have been Liberty's own handiwork, plus a daring eccentricity and head-strongness suggestive of the best Parisian instinct.
On either side were closed doors, obviously leading to dressing-rooms. The draperies, half-hanging, disclosed the dancing saloon, and beyond this, in a corridor, a glimpse of supper was afforded. Some threescore people were already dancing to excellent music provided by a party of the guests themselves.
Most of the people there were celebrities in their way—society leaders, a literary lion or two, some artists of repute.
Mallory nodded carelessly to one or another, for the majority were known to him, as indeed they were by sight to Beggarstaff also.
Gaiety rippled along the room like the song of a summer brook.
"A sight perfectly unique," Beggarstaff murmured—; "nearly a hundred of the Celtic race together, and all actually enjoying themselves!"
A dazzling vision in diaphanous green, translucent as sea- foam, and fresh as Aphrodite smiling to the morn, came forward.
Beggarstaff knew the lady well. She was quite the latest success in the way of duchesses.
"Sage of Tyburn," she said imperiously, "you are going to waltz with me."
It came to Beggarstaff as it does to men past thirty sometimes, that life is fitfully worth the living. He allowed the flood- tide to carry him away. It was past eleven before he suddenly returned to a knowledge of himself—and the Yellow Girl.
There she was—close beside him. Dancing had ceased for the time, and would not be resumed till after supper. Beggarstaff gasped.
He could not mistake Mallory's description. It struck him now as being singularly apt. The afflatus of love had stood Peter in good stead over that prose poem. Those eyes were the closely guarded heritage of centuries. The face was Cleopatra's. Then— Well, Beggarstaff could not be quite sure. And yet the vision could have been moulded in no crucible forged later than the sere Victorian.
Three or four men stood round her. Her lips were gay with laughter, her conversation sparkled with happy felicities. Beggarstaff had never before met any woman with so perfect a mental equipment outside America. And yet the Yellow Girl was no American. Might as well mistake Kenilworth for a Fifth Avenue pork-palace.
At a sign from Mallory, Beggarstaff came forward. Evidently Peter had been speaking of him, for Zilla held out her hand with a smile and challenge in her eyes.
"They tell me you are a marvellous man," she cried.
"Then this meeting should go down to history," Beggarstaff suggested.
Some magnetic attraction about the pair seemed to bring others around them. And Zilla was in one of her brightest and most audacious moods. Here was a chance for the Sage to distinguish himself. Why should he not solve the enigma, explain who the Yellow Girl was, expound the raison d'être for the curious?
An impatient rustling of silks and laces followed this suggestion from the duchess. The cry was taken up by those standing around. Again Zilla flashed the challenge of those fathomless eyes full upon Beggarstaff.
"Come," she cried. "Come, sir, who am I?"
"That most mysterious of created things, a woman," said Beggarstaff.
