A Mysterious Disappearance Part 23

"Did she--tell you his real name?" the barrister had almost said, but he deflected the question. "Did she give you any hint as to a possible cause for this apparently unnecessary crime?"

"Not a word."

"Then you did not mention Lady d.y.k.e to her?"

"No. Sir Charles has always implored me to keep his wife's name out of my inquiries until it became absolutely impossible to conceal it in view of a public prosecution. He wants to know definitely when that time comes."

"Why?"

The detective did not reply for a moment. When he spoke he leaned forward and subdued his voice. "I am as sure as I am sitting here, sir, that Sir Charles will not live if any disgrace should come to be attached to his wife's memory."

"Do you mean that he will kill himself?"

"I do. He has changed a great deal since this affair happened. He is not the same man. He appears to be always mooning about her. And people say that they were not so devoted to one another when she was alive."

Again did the barrister switch off their talk from an unpleasant topic.

"This description of Corbett is not much use," he said. "It applies to every athletic young Englishman of good physique and gentlemanly appearance."

"Quite true. I don't depend on that for his arrest, but it will be valuable for identification. 'Blue eyes, light brown hair, fresh, clear complexion, well-modelled nose and chin.' Some of these things can be changed by tricks, but not all. For instance, there would be no use in smoking a man with black eyes and irregular features."

"'Smoking' him?"

"Oh, that's our way of putting it. Following him, it means."

"Suppose the French police don't succeed in catching him?"

"We will get him at Raleigh Mansions. He is sure to think that Lady d.y.k.e's fate has never been determined, and he will return when the inquiry has blown over, to all appearance."

"You have quite made up your mind, then, that Sydney H. Corbett is the murderer?"

"It looks uncommonly like it. At any rate, he knows something about it.

If not, why did he bolt to France two days after the crime? Why has he concealed his ident.i.ty? Why does he take pains to receive his correspondence in the manner he has adopted? And, by Jove! suppose he isn't in Monte Carlo at all, but in London all the time!"

The inspector glowed with his sudden inspiration, but Bruce kept him to the lower level of realities.

"Corbett is, or was, in Monte Carlo. Of that you may be sure. He, and none other, got the letters sent to the Hotel du Cercle. I cannot for the life of me imagine why he did not take the last one. But let us look at what we know. Lady d.y.k.e, we will say, went to Corbett's chambers, secretly and of her own accord. That may be taken as fairly established.

Thence there is a blank in our intelligence until she appears as a hardly recognizable corpse, stuffed by hands beneath an old drain-pipe in the Thames at Putney. How do you fill up that gap, Mr. White?"

"Simply enough. Corbett, or some other person, persuaded her to voluntarily accompany him to Putney. She was killed there, and not in London. It would be almost a matter of impossibility for any man to have conveyed her lifeless body from Raleigh Mansions to Putney without attracting some notice. One man could _not_ do it. Several might, but it is madness to imagine that a number of people would join together for the purpose of killing this poor lady."

"The seemingly impossible is often accomplished."

"Do you really believe, then, that she met her death in London?"

"I have quite an open mind on the question."

"You forget that she had resolved early that day to visit her sister at Richmond, and Putney is on the direct road. What more reasonable than to a.s.sume--"

"Beware of a.s.sumptions! You are a.s.suming all the time that Corbett was a princ.i.p.al in her murder."

"Very well, Mr. Bruce. Then I ask you straight out if you don't agree with me?"

"I do not."

This declaration astounded the barrister himself. Often the mere utterance of one's thoughts is a surprise. Speech seems to stiffen the wavering outlines of reflection, and the new creation may differ essentially from its embryo. It was so with Bruce in this instance.

Ever since Mr. White's arrival had aroused him from the positive stupor caused by the stock-broker's unwitting revelation, Claude Bruce had been slowly but definitely deciding that Mensmore did not kill Lady d.y.k.e. He had seen him, unprepared, facing death as preferable to dishonor. At such moments a man's soul is laid bare. With the shadow of a crime upon his conscience Mensmore's actions could not have been so genuine and straightforward as they undoubtedly were.

Mensmore, of course, might in some way be bound up with the mystery surrounding Lady d.y.k.e's movements. His very utterance in Bruce's room at the Hotel du Cercle implied as much. That was another matter. It would receive his (Bruce's) most earnest attention. But the major hypothesis, so quickly jumped at by the police, needed much more substantiation than it had yet obtained.

That it was plausible was demonstrated by the barrister's readiness to adopt it at the outset. Even now that his impulse to fasten the crime on Mensmore had weakened he wondered at his eagerness to defend him.

The detective was even more surprised.

"I don't see how you can take that view," he cried. "Corbett's behavior is, to say the least, unaccountable. If he is an innocent man, then he must be a foolish one. Besides, why should he necessarily be innocent?

This is the first gleam of light we have had in a very dark business, and I mean to follow it up."

The vindictive emphasis of his tone showed that the detective was annoyed at the other's impa.s.sive att.i.tude. He even went so far as to dimly evolve a theory that the barrister wished to throw him off Corbett's trail on account of his sympathy for Mrs. Hillmer, but Claude rapidly dispelled this notion.

"You are here, I suppose, to ask my advice in pursuance of our understanding that we are working together in the matter, as it were?"

he said.

"Well, something of the kind, sir."

"Then I recommend that we see the inside of that closed flat in Raleigh Mansions at the earliest moment."

"Do you mean by a search warrant?"

"Certainly not. Do you want the whole neighborhood to know of it? You have probably heard of locks being picked before to-day. You and I, and none other, must have a quiet look around the place without anyone being the wiser."

Mr. White hesitated, but the prospect was attractive. "I think I can manage it," he said, smiling reflectively. "Will six this evening suit?"

"Admirably."

"Then I will call for you."

After a parting glance at Smith, who returned it, nose in air, the inspector ran down the stairs, murmuring, "Blest if I can understand Mr.

Bruce. But this is a good move. We may learn something."

CHAPTER XIV

NO 12 RALEIGH MANSIONS