The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Sir Joseph is a brilliant surgeon from Australia who went mad after operating on vast numbers of soldiers during World War 1. His terrible hobby is cutting people’s heads open to steal bits of their brains. His wife is a former nurse who went mad alongside him. They are pursued across England and the continent by Mr. Daniel Rocke, codebreaker of the Foreign service: Miss Ann Lancaster, daughter of one of Londe’s victims, and Sir Francis Worton, known as Q20, head of the secret service. Londe adopts many disguises, and plots brilliant escapes. This short story collection also containing: „The Scarlet Patch”, „The Terror of Elton Lodge”, „The House on Salisbury Plain”, The Shaftesbury Avenue Murder” and others.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THE SCARLET PATCH

II. THE TERROR OF ELTON LODGE

III. THE HOUSE ON SALISBURY PLAIN

IV. THE SHAFTESBURY AVENUE MURDER

V. THE TENANT OF THE LIGHTHOUSE

VI. A YOUNG MAN’S KISS

VII. THE AVENUE OF DEATH

VIII. MADMEN’S LUCK

IX. THE BORGIA TOUCH

X. THE DEAD MAN’S TALE

1. THE SCARLET PATCH

At half-past twelve on a blustery morning in March, a middle-aged, neatly dressed man of powerful appearance, who had settled down in the neighbourhood under the name of Mr. Joseph Britton, turned into the main street of the small town of Dredley, in Surrey, pushed open the swing door of the offices of Messrs. Harrison & Co., land and house agents, and tapped on the mahogany counter with the crook of his stick. Mr. Harrison at once emerged from his private office. The two men exchanged greetings.

“I want to sell my house,” Mr. Britton announced.

The house agent looked at his visitor over the top of his spectacles with some surprise.

“Why, Mr. Britton, I thought you’d settled down for life amongst us,” he said, slowly drawing his ledger towards him. “You’re not leaving the neighbourhood, I hope?”

“I’m having some trouble with my wife,” the other explained; “she has worked herself up into a nervous state about these two extraordinary disappearances.”

Mr. Harrison’s expression was one of somewhat irritated concern.

“Come, that’s too bad,” he remonstrated. “If every one were to adopt that attitude, what would become of the price of property in the neighbourhood? Why, you’d ruin us all.”

“I can’t help the price of property,” Mr. Britton replied coldly. “We’ve no children, and my wife’s the only person I have to consider in the world. It’s seeing the policemen about the lane, I expect, that has upset her.”

“Take her away for a change, Mr. Britton,” the house agent advised. “Don’t you go throwing away a nice little property that you’ve just bought, because of a lady’s spell of nervousness. Give her a month at Brighton, and she’ll come back a different woman.”

“I am afraid the matter is too serious for that,” the other sighed. “I have no desire to part with the house, just having settled down; but I have given my word, and there we are. Take down the particulars.”

“I don’t need any,” was the reluctant reply. “It isn’t a couple of years since I sold you the place. What do you want for it?”

“I gave four thousand pounds for it,” Mr. Britton reflected, “and they say property has increased in value. I’ll consider any offer.”

“Why, you must have spent hundreds upon the garden alone,” Mr. Harrison remonstrated.

“A thousand pounds wouldn’t cover what I’ve spent on the place, one way and another. All the same, I’ve given my word of honour that down it goes into your books. If you don’t sell it, I can’t help it.”

“Well, I’m glad the other residents aren’t adopting your attitude,” Mr. Harrison grumbled. “After all, these two disappearances might be cleared up at any moment. They may be entirely voluntary.”

“That is precisely what I have pointed out to my wife,” Mr. Britton acquiesced. “In my opinion the police are only advertising their incompetence by hanging about the place and making senseless enquiries. People don’t disappear nowadays except of their own choice.”

“I quite agree with you,” the house agent concurred. “Lot of fuss about nothing, I call it…Will you take a glass of sherry with me, Mr. Britton, before you go?”

“With pleasure!” was the courteous response.

The two men left the place together and entered the adjoining hotel. Dredley was one of those half urban, half suburban town-villages which mock the wayfarer from London who thinks that thirty miles from the metropolis should bring him to the country. The shops were mostly branches of larger establishments, and the hotel retained its kinship to a public house. The house agent and his client established themselves in hard, horsehair easy-chairs in an inner smoking room. The floor was covered with oilcloth, the walls hung with chromo advertisements. The young lady who waited upon them was affable but towny. With the second order for refreshments, she brought out a local newspaper.

“After all this fuss,” she exclaimed, “Bert En-dell’s people have heard from him at Newcastle, where he’s got a job, and Mr. Lancaster’s written to his family from somewhere in London.”

Mr. Harrison pounced upon the paper.

“That’s right!” he exclaimed. “Well, I never! What about it now, Mr. Britton?”

“I should think that might possibly modify my wife’s prejudice against the place,” was the somewhat doubtful reply. “Keep the house on the books and I’ll let you know.”

The two men separated soon afterwards, and Mr. Joseph Britton walked homewards. He was a man apparently of early middle age, of medium height, powerful build, and inconspicuous appearance. He was clean-shaven, with black hair unstreaked with grey, massive jaw, firm mouth, but curiously restless eyes. Of his antecedents nobody knew anything, but his banker’s reference had been unexceptionable, and his manners and speech were the attributes of a man of culture. The very pleasant residence which he had purchased some two years ago was situated on the side of the heath, about a mile and a half from the town. It was built of white stone, half-covered with creepers, and there was about an acre of garden, bounded on one side by a long and narrow footpath which crossed the heath and led into the town. Mr. Britton looked meditatively across at the rock garden, which was in the course of construction, as he rang his front doorbell. The idea was, without doubt, a good one. The proposed addition backed up against the thin hedge which separated the footpath from his garden. It would, in time, shield the house from passers-by.

The door was opened by a manservant, sombrely dressed, and of uncouth and aggressive appearance. He took his master’s hat and coat and glanced at the clock with an air of disapproval.

“Luncheon is on the table, sir,” he announced gruffly.

Mr. Britton nodded and opened the door of the dining room. A woman who was already seated at the small round table looked up at his coming.

“Have you sold the house?” she asked eagerly.

“I have placed it in the agent’s hands,” he replied.

She continued her luncheon in silence–a striking-looking woman, if not beautiful, with pale cheeks, strange haunting eyes, and masses of beautiful brown hair. She was gazing steadfastly out of the window which looked on to the heath.

“It appears,” he went on, “that both the disappearances which have been troubling the people of the neighbourhood are accounted for. The relatives of Mr. Lancaster have heard from him, and young Endell has written his mother from Newcastle.”

His wife looked at him–a long and steady gaze from her wonderful eyes. She said nothing at all.

“It was in the local paper,” he continued. “It will be in the London papers to-morrow.”

The meal, served by the gloomy and taciturn manservant, was finished in silence. At its conclusion they made their way into a small library and seated themselves in easy-chairs before a huge log fire. Mr. Britton at once took up a book and became engrossed in its contents. The woman neither read nor attempted any sort of needlework. There was no window open in the room, yet occasionally she shivered. She sat with her hands folded in front of her, her eyes sometimes fixed upon the fire, sometimes engaged in a steady contemplation of her husband’s face. The latter remained completely absorbed. There was no attempt at conversation.

The day was cloudy and twilight came early. At five o’clock, the butler served tea, which was partaken of by the woman only. She drank three cups greedily. Then she left the room again. When she reappeared, she was wearing a handsome fur coat and a small, becoming hat with a veil, behind which her eyes seemed stranger and more beautiful than ever. Her husband gripped the sides of his chair and looked at her.

“You are going out?” he enquired.

“I am going to take a walk across the heath,” she replied.

He rose slowly to his feet. For some reason or other, the statement seemed to affect him. He walked to the window and looked out. A belt of pine trees loomed like a black smudge at the end of the garden. The single trees and shrubs bordering the footpath had assumed chaotic shapes, more fanciful than ever by reason of the fantasies of a high wind. The footpath across the heath was dimly visible. A solitary tradesman’s boy on a bicycle was making his way towards one of the large houses on the other side.

“It’s a wild evening,” he muttered.

The woman laughed, strangely but not unpleasantly.

“I love wind,” she said, “wind and the falling darkness.”

She left the room. The man remained at the window. He watched her cross the lawn, step over the strands of wire at the further end of the garden and pass along the footpath. He watched her slim form as she came into sight on the other side of the trees, moving with swift and effortless grace into the bosom of the darkness and the booming wind. Then he turned away, left the room, and, walking all the time with a curious mechanical effect, almost as though in a state of coma, he unlocked with a key from his chain the door of a small room behind the stairs. For a moment he paused to listen. Then he entered the room, closing the door behind him.

Daniel Rocke looked up from the desk in his newly acquired office, and gazed with some curiosity at his unexpected visitor. Miss Ann Lancaster subsided into the chair to which he had instinctively pointed, and laid her muff on the floor by her side.

“You remember me, Mr. Rocke?” she began.

“Quite well,” he answered. “You were one of our cipher typists at the Foreign Office.”

She nodded.

“I am still engaged there,” she said.

There was a brief pause. Miss Lancaster seemed in no hurry to declare her mission, and Daniel Rocke, without displaying undue curiosity, was interested in renewing his impressions of her. At the Foreign Office she had just been one in a dozen, a little distinguished from the others, perhaps, only on account of her superior intelligence. He had certainly never appreciated before the small, excellently shaped head, the glints of a richer colour in her deep brown hair, her clear hazel eyes and delicate eyebrows, her pale complexion, creamy rather than pallid. She was of medium height and slim figure, distinctly feminine, but with the subtle possession of poise. In the long, bare room at the Foreign Office, Rocke would never have glanced at her twice. Here, in his rather shabby little apartment at the top of a block of buildings in Shaftesbury Avenue, she was a different person.

She, too, from her point of view, found some interest in studying more closely this person whom she had come to visit. She remembered him merely as a man of about thirty-five years of age, of medium height, pallid-faced, with somewhat cynical mouth, and the fretful ways of a hypochondriac. He had the reputation of extreme cleverness, and he had more than once charmed the whole room by a rare but very delightful smile. His gracious moments, however, were very occasional, and the chief impression she had formed of him during their period of more or less close association, was of a man swift in intuition, capable, but short-tempered, a man with an indomitable capacity for mastering any obstacle which came in his way, but impatient of all delay or interruption.

“May I ask why you left the Foreign Office?” she enquired at last.

He raised his eyebrows very slightly. The question, coming in that form, surprised him.

“You may ask,” he replied.

She was unperturbed.

“Impertinent of me, of course,” she remarked, “but I am on serious business and my mind is filled with serious things. The report there was that, since the war, you had only been sent abroad four times, and that you were tired of doing nothing but decoding ciphers.”

“The report, for once, was absolutely accurate,” Rocke admitted.

“It was further reported,” the girl continued, “that you were thinking of seeking a post in the Foreign Intelligence Department of Scotland Yard.”

“That is where rumour failed,” he replied. “If I am to take you into my confidence at all, I will tell you that I am weary of of officialdom. And now, suppose you tell me what you have come to see me about?”

“Doesn’t my name suggest my mission,” she enquired. “Ann Lancaster?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“You have read of the Dredley disappearances?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged.

“My father was James Lancaster, the first one to go,” she confided. “He went out for half-an-hour’s walk on the heath whilst they were getting his supper ready, and never returned.”

“But I thought that was all explained,” he observed. “I thought that a letter had been received from your father, and also from the other young man who disappeared.”

“That is where these ‘mysterious disappearances,’ as the Press used to call them, really do begin to be mysterious,” the girl replied. “I have seen both letters. I know nothing about the young man who wrote from Newcastle, but I am perfectly convinced that the communication which came to us with the postmark ‘Bethnal Green’ was neither typed nor dictated by my father.”

“Have you the letter with you?” he asked.

She produced it–a half-sheet of common notepaper, on which the few sentences were roughly typed:

My dear wife and daughters, I am in trouble and obliged to lie low for a few months. Do as well as you can without me. I have found some work in a quiet spot. I shall return before long. Affectionately, James Lancaster.

“You do not believe that this came from your father?” Rocke enquired.

“I am sure that it did not.”

“Why?”

“My father was a quiet, home-loving man,” she declared, “unadventurous and contented. I have been to see his employers. They were perfectly satisfied with him, and they scoffed at the idea of his being in any sort of discreditable trouble.”

“Have you been to Scotland Yard?”

“Yes,” she replied. “They were very non-committal. They went so far as to tell me that half the mysterious disappearances we hear about are hoaxes. They took a copy of the letter and promised to make enquiries, but we are not able to offer a reward, and I am quite certain that they intend to do nothing further in the matter.”

“What about the letter from the young man?” he asked.

“I borrowed that from his mother to show to you,” she announced, producing another sheet of paper.

“Also typewritten,” he murmured.

She nodded.

“Also, I believe, a fraud.”

The letter was typed upon a sheet of expensive paper which might have been the stationery of a commercial firm of repute. The printed address at the top, and telephone number, had been cut out.

The letter itself consisted only of a single sentence:

To Mrs. Endell. Madam, Your son, Herbert Endell, has found employment with a firm in this town, and desires me to let you know that he is well and happy.

“No reasons for disappearance given, in either case,” Rocke pointed out.

“None at all,” she replied. “In my opinion, this letter is as fraudulent as the other one.”

He laid them side by side upon his desk, and studied them for a moment. Then he folded them up and returned them to the girl.

“If one is to accept your theory,” he remarked, “the fact of your father’s disappearance, and this young man’s, becomes more mysterious than ever.”

“Quite true,” she assented.

“What do you wish me to do about it?”

“Leave off decoding silly cipher messages and turn your attention to something worth while,” she told him bluntly. “I know a great deal about your work at the Foreign Office. It wasn’t always what it seemed to be. It was you who tracked down Nicholas Green at Bristol.”

“That will do,” he interrupted. “Tell me where I can communicate with you when I get there. I shall go down to Dredley by the next train.”

“A gentleman to see over the house, sir,” the uncouth-looking butler announced, ushering Daniel Rocke into the dining room of “Heathside” on the following afternoon.

Mr. Joseph Britton laid down the volume which he had been studying. His wife looked eagerly up from the depths of her easy-chair.

“I hope I have not called at an inconvenient time,” Rocke observed. “Mr. Harrison, the agent, told me that I could see over the place at any hour.”

“You are perfectly in order, sir,” the tenant of “Heathside” declared courteously, as he rose to his feet. “I will show you over myself, with pleasure. The house has many good points, but my wife desires a change.”

The woman looked across at their visitor. He was at once aware of the spell of her eyes.

“It is really my husband who wishes to travel,” she said softly. “Am I to show Mr.–”

“Mr. Rocke,” he put in.

“Mr. Rocke over the house, or will you, Joseph?”

“I will show him over myself,” was the brusque reply.

Rocke fancied that there was a shadow of disappointment in the woman’s face as she resumed her task. Her husband, however, bustled him out of the room. The business of inspecting the upper rooms was soon concluded. Looking downward from the front bedroom, Mr. Britton noticed a taxicab standing outside.

“Is that your cab?” he asked.

The prospective tenant of “Heathside” nodded.

“I told him to wait.”

Daniel Rocke’s close watch for anything in the least unusual connected with these two people–the only residents in the vicinity who seemed suddenly anxious to change their quarters–was at last rewarded. There was a look of almost venomous disappointment in his companion’s face as he gazed down at the harmless taxicab. It was an expression which lingered only for a moment, but it was unmistakable. Daniel Rocke, affecting to notice nothing, turned away.

“Rather lazy of me not to walk up,” he remarked, “but I had eighteen holes at golf this morning, and want to finish up with a little practice later on.–I shall be interested to see what accommodation you have on the ground floor.”

“My wife and I are quiet people,” Mr. Britton explained, as he led the way downstairs, “and we live nearly altogether in the dining room and my small study. This is the drawing-room, however–a fine room, but we’ve never properly furnished it. This is my study,” he added, showing a small apartment, the walls of which were lined with bookcases. “Cosy, as you see, but a little cramped.”

Daniel Rocke was examining the volumes.

“Are you a medical man, Mr. Britton?” he asked, pointing to one of the rows of books.

“Only an amateur,” was the curt reply. “Come along.”

“Interested in Australia too, I see,” his visitor continued, pausing before another shelf. “A Colonist, by any chance?”

“No!” was the short rejoinder. “The books were an inheritance.–Would you like to see the gardens now?”

“What is this room?” Daniel enquired, pausing before the door with the Yale lock.

“Little more than a cupboard. I keep some oddments there–golf clubs and things.”

Daniel measured with his eye the distance between the door of the next room and the window on the left.

“It must be a very large cupboard,” he remarked. “Can I have a look at it?”

“Next time you call, with pleasure,” the other replied. “As a matter of fact, I have mislaid the key.”

Daniel nodded. He seemed indifferent about the matter, but he added another fact to his little store.

“The gardens aren’t much; but perhaps you would like to see them,” his companion suggested, leading the way out of doors.

On the whole, they certainly justified their tenant’s criticism. In the corner near the footpath, however, a very elaborate rock garden was in course of erection.

“You’ve put in a lot of work there,” Daniel observed thoughtfully.

“I have indeed,” was the somewhat grudging reply. “Dug every foot of the ground with my own hands. Waste of time too, I’m inclined to think now. If I were buying the place, I’d pull it down and make a hard tennis court on the top.”

“A capital idea,” Daniel assented. “Your agent asked me four thousand pounds for the house. Is that your lowest?”

“Not if price is a material object,” Mr. Britton answered, with ill-concealed eagerness. “The fact of it is, we want to get away. My wife is nervous. She wants a change, and at once. I’d like to make a clean job of it, if I could.”

“If I decide to buy the house, I will make you an offer, then, through Mr. Harrison,” Daniel promised.

“Why not clinch the business now?” the other suggested.

Daniel shook his head, smiling, as he stepped into his waiting taxicab.

“You shall have definite news in the morning,” he assured him.

Daniel Rocke caught a fast train to town, and arrived at a great public office at half-past three. He made his way to a department which had flourished hugely during the war, but which was now considerably reduced in numbers and was in fact in process of reconstruction. The Chief, Colonel Sir Francis Worton, K.C.B., D.S.O., received him as an old friend.

“What brings you here, Daniel?” he enquired, pushing across a box of cigarettes.

“I came to ask for your help,” was the prompt reply. “Give me a clean sheet of blotting-paper, will you?–That’s right. Now let me have sixty seconds to complete this work of art.”

With a few deft touches he produced a very reasonable likeness of Mr. Joseph Britton.

“Look here,” he continued, “I am in search of a man, probably a criminal, who served through the war in some capacity or other, who was probably an Australian, and from whose hands, and other evidence, I should gather was either a doctor or a surgeon. He is living with his wife in Surrey, and that is an impression of him.”

The Chief glanced at the sketch and nodded approvingly.

“Great gift, that, Daniel,” he declared. “Certainly, I can tell you the man’s name and all about him.”

“Get on with it, please, then. The matter is urgent.”

“If it’s a criminal affair, or anything of that sort, you are going to be disappointed,” Sir Francis warned his visitor. “That is a picture of Joseph Londe, the Australian surgeon, who was given a baronetcy by the King. He was one of the first of the really great surgeons of the world in–”

“Tell me about it?” Daniel begged.

“He rigged up a sort of travelling Field Hospital for operations, and they say that, during the Mons debacle he sometimes had as many as sixty or seventy bad cases on his hands at a time. Nothing seemed to tire him. He was three years out there–but then, of course, you’ve read about him. Very few people know the end of his story, however.”

“Tell it me at once, please.”

Sir Francis sighed.

“It was very sad,” he continued. “One night, after a simply terrible seven or eight hours’ work–it was in that Cambrai affair–Londe and his head nurse both went raving mad. They hushed it all up, but he killed two men before they could get hold of him. He and the nurse were both brought home to an asylum somewhere near London. It was only last year I heard that they were discharged as cured.”

“And what became of them?”

“I believe that they went quietly back to Australia.”

Daniel rose to his feet.

“I’m immensely obliged, Worton,” he acknowledged. “If you’ll lunch with me at the club, the day after to-morrow, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Done, my lad,” was the hearty response. “One o’clock sharp, mind. I’m on duty again at two.”

Daniel found time to call at his rooms, where he slipped a small revolver into his pocket. He then caught the next available train to Dredley, where, on the platform, he had a few very fortunate words with Miss Ann Lancaster. Afterwards, he took a taxicab direct to the Golf Club, drank a whisky and soda, and, with half a dozen balls in his pocket and a mashie in his hand, strolled out to a distant part of the course. In time he reached a green bordering the straight footpath which bisected the heath and stretched to Dredley. He spent some little time practising short approaches. Then he stood up and looked reflectively down the path. A woman was coming towards him, veiled and cloaked, yet unmistakable. He devoted himself assiduously to a series of wrist shots, and was just collecting the balls, which he had played on to the green, when the woman paused. He looked up. Once more the spell of her eyes was upon him. He raised his hat.

“Come and talk to me,” she invited. “It must be too dark for you to play. I want to know whether you are really thinking about the house?”

They strolled back together, side by side. The woman’s voice was pleasant, almost caressing.

“I am so anxious,” she told him, “to know whether there is any chance of your buying ‘Heathside.’ I want to get away. This place is beginning to stifle me. I can’t sleep. Do you know what it is not to be able to sleep, Mr. Rocke?”

“Often,” he answered, “during the war.”

She started. For a single moment there was some-thin approaching horror in her pale face.

“If I were to let myself think of those days,” she continued softly, “I should never sleep again. If I were to think of the shrieks of agony, the horrible sights they brought in from the firing line, I should go mad.”

“You were in France?” he asked.

“Yes!” she answered briefly, with the air of one wishing to abandon the subject. “Mr. Rocke, buy our house. He gave four thousand pounds for it. Offer him three–two–anything! I cannot stay here any longer.”