A Mysterious Disappearance Part 58

"This gentleman is in the police," explained Bruce.

"Indeed!"

"Yes. We came here by mere accident. Mr. White and I were engaged in an important inquiry--the cause of Lady d.y.k.e's disappearance, in fact--and we hurried here at a late hour to consult with Sir Charles. Hence our presence and this discovery."

"How strange!"

"There is no reason now," broke in the detective, "why the body should not be moved?"

Claude shuddered at the phrase. It suggested the inevitable.

"Not in the least. I am quite satisfied as to the cause of death."

The despatch of telegrams and other necessary details kept Bruce busily employed until two o'clock. Not until he reached the privacy of his own library was he able to break the seal of the packet left for him as the final act and word of the late Sir Charles d.y.k.e.

CHAPTER XXIX

HOW LADY d.y.k.e DISAPPEARED

(_Being the Ma.n.u.script left by Sir Charles d.y.k.e, Bart., and addressed to Claude Bruce, Esq., Barrister-at-law_)

It is customary, I believe, for poor wretches who are sentenced to undergo the last punishment of the law to be allowed a three weeks'

respite between the date of their sentence and that on which they are executed. I am in the position of such a one. The difference between me and the convicted felon lies merely in environment; in most respects I am worse situated than he. My period of agony is longer drawn out, I am condemned to die by my own hand, I am mocked by the surroundings of luxury, taunted by the knowledge that though life and even a sort of happiness are within my reach I must not avail myself of them.

There may come a time in the affairs of any man when he is compelled to choose between a dishonored existence and voluntary death. These unpleasant alternatives are now before me. You, who know me, would never doubt which of them I should adopt, nor will you upbraid me because our judgments coincide. There is nothing for it, Bruce, but quiet death--death in the least obtrusive form, and so disposed that it may be possible for you, chief among my friends and the only person I can trust to fulfil my wishes, to arrange that my memory may be speedily forgotten. My virtues, I fear, will not secure me immortality; my faults, I hope, will not be spread broadcast to cram the maws of the gaping crowd.

I do not s.h.i.+rk this final issue, nor do I crave pity. In setting forth plainly the history of my wife's death and its results, I am actuated solely by a desire to protect others from needless suspicion. Having resolved to pay forfeit for my own errors, I claim to have expiated them. This doc.u.ment is an explanation, not a confession.

I have not much time left wherein fittingly to shape my story so as to be just to all, myself included. If I am not mistaken, the officers of the law are in hot chase of me, but my statement shall not be made to an earthly judge. The words of a man about to die may not be well chosen; they should at least be true. I will tell of events as nearly as possible in their sequence of time. If I leave gaps through haste or forgetfulness you will, from your own knowledge of the facts, readily fill them up once you are in possession of the salient features.

Mensmore and his sister were the friends of my early years. We played together as children. Gwendoline Mensmore was two years younger than I, and I well remember making love to her at the age of eleven. Her mother died when she was quite a baby, and her father married again, so her step-brother Albert is her junior by four years. I taught him how to ride and swim and play cricket. My father's place in Surrey--we did not acquire the Yorks.h.i.+re property until the death of my grandfather--adjoined the estate General Mensmore occupied after his retirement from the army.

We children always called Gwendoline "d.i.c.k," to avoid the difficulty of her long-sounding name, I suppose, and I honestly believe that our respective parents entertained the idea that a marriage between us was quite a natural thing. I went to school at Brighton, and Mensmore, being a somewhat precocious lad, joined the same school before I left.

The headmaster, the Rev. Septimus Childe, was an old friend of my father's, and when he wished to purchase a house at Putney--the terrible house which has figured in my dreams for the past three months as a Place of Skulls--my parents put pressure on my mother's trustees to make the transaction an easy one. Of course, I knew it well. We regarded it in those early days as a town house, and always lived there during the season.

My father's succession to the t.i.tle and estates changed all that. We quitted Surrey for Yorks.h.i.+re, and Wensley House, Portman Square, was a step upwards from the barrack-like building which so admirably suited Mr. Childe's requirements.

When I was at Sandhurst General Mensmore got into difficulties. He quitted Surrey, and we gradually lost sight of him and his children.

Afterwards I knew that he struggled on for a few years, placed his son in the army, and then came a complete collapse, ending in his death and the boy's resignation of his commission. Of Gwendoline Mensmore's whereabouts I knew nothing. Her memory never quitted me, but the new interests in my life dulled it. I imagined that I could laugh at a childish infatuation.

Then I married. I did so in obedience to my father's wishes, and Alice was, I suppose, an ideal wife--far too ideal for a youngster of my lower intellectual plane. I know now that I never had any real affection for her. I was always somewhat awed by her loftier aspirations. My interests lay in racing, hunting, sports generally, and having what I defined as "a good time." She, though an excellent horsewoman, and in every sense an admirable hostess, thought Newmarket vulgar, treated Ascot as a social necessity, and turned up her eyebrows at me when I failed to see any utility in schemes for the reclamation of the submerged tenth.

Thus, though we never quarrelled, we gradually drifted apart. She knew she bored me if she asked me to inspect a model dwelling; I knew she hated the people who were the companions of a coaching tour or a week at Goodwood. Unfortunately, we were not blessed with offspring. Had it been otherwise, we might have found a common object of interest in our children.

Insensibly, we agreed to a separate existence. We lived together as friends rather than as husband and wife. We parted without regret and met without cordiality. Do not think we were unhappy. If our marriage was not bliss, it was at least comfortable. I think my wife was proud of my successes on the turf in a quiet kind of way, and I certainly was proud of her and of the high reputation she enjoyed among all cla.s.ses of society. I even reverenced her for it, and I well knew that the enthusiastic receptions given us by our Yorks.h.i.+re tenantry were not due to my efforts in their behalf, but to hers.

So we lived for nearly six years, and so we might have continued for sixty had I not met Gwendoline Mensmore again, under vastly changed circ.u.mstances. She was a chorus-girl in a variety theatre, earning a poor living under wretched conditions. I discovered the fact by mere chance.

I met her, and she told me her story--how she had married a man named Hillmer, whom her father had trusted, and whom she believed to be able to save them from ruin. Then the crash came. Her father died; her husband also broke down financially, took to drink and ill-treated her; her brother was swallowed up somewhere in the Far West. She had no alternative but to live apart from her husband and try to support herself by the first career that suggests itself to a young, talented, and beautiful woman. But she was already weary of the stage and its distasteful surroundings. Her nature was too delicate for the rude friends.h.i.+ps of the dressing-room. She shuddered at the thought of a mild carousal in a bar when the labors of the night were ended.

In a word, were I differently const.i.tuted, were she cast in more common mould, there was apparently ready to hand all the material for a vulgar _liaison_.

My respect for my wife, however, no less than Mrs. Hillmer's fine disposition, saved both of us from folly. Yet I could not leave her exposed to the exigencies of a life in which she was rapidly becoming disillusioned. Away in the depths of my heart I knew that this sweet woman was my true mate, separated from me by adverse chance. There was nothing unfair to Alice in the thought. Were she questioned at any time, I suppose, she must have admitted that we were, in some respects, as ill-matched a couple as we were well-matched in others. You will say that I understood but little of feminine nature--nothing at all of my wife's.

How best to help Mrs. Hillmer--that was the question. It was at this stage I made the initial mistake to which I can, too late, trace a host of succeeding misfortunes. I did not consult my wife. Trying now to a.n.a.lyze my reasons for this lamentable error of judgment I imagined that it arose from some absurd disinclination on my part to admit that I went to the stage-door of a theatre to inquire about the ident.i.ty of a young woman whom I had recognized from the front of the house.

Don't you see, my dear Bruce, it is almost as bad to fear your wife as to suspect her.

As, at that time, my own life was free from the slightest cloud of sorrow, I took keen interest in the troubles of Mrs. Hillmer, and I amused myself by playing, in her behalf, the part of a modern magician.

I felt intuitively that she would resent any direct attempt on my part to place funds at her disposal, and I found a great deal of harmless fun in helping her with her consent, but without her actual knowledge.

I am, as you know, a rich man. At this hour I cannot sum up my available a.s.sets to within 100,000. Altogether I must be worth nearly a million sterling--yet my money cannot purchase me another day's existence such as I would tolerate. Strange, is it not?

Well, the close of the year before last was a period of unexampled activity on the Stock Exchange, and, by way of a joke, I made some purchases on Mrs. Hillmer's account, with the intention of pretending to pay myself out of the profits, while handing her such balances as might accrue. She is a shrewd woman, and quick at figures, so I might have experienced some difficulty in deceiving her. But the mad record of the past twelve months was in no wise belied by its inception. My purchases were those of a man inspired by the G.o.ddess of Fortune. Stocks which I bought commenced suddenly to inflate. I astounded my brokers by the manner in which I ferreted out neglected bonds, mines which struck the mother lode next week, railway companies whose directors were even then secretly conspiring to water the stock.

Mrs. Hillmer became infected with the craze like myself. Twice we plunged heavily in American Rails and came out triumphantly. To end this part of my story, after five months of excitement I had contrived not only to swell my own deposits to a large extent, but I had secured on Mrs. Hillmer's account a sufficient quant.i.ty of reliable stock to bring her in an average income of 1,500 per annum.

My greatest difficulty was to persuade Mrs. Hillmer to break off the habit of speculation once she had contracted it. I found that she perused the late editions of the evening papers with the same eagerness that a bookmaker looks for the starting prices of the day's races. By the exercise of firmness and tact I was able to stop her from further dealings.

At the close of this period I need hardly say that two things had happened. Mrs. Hillmer and I were fast friends, with common objects and interests in life; and, concurrently, the ties between Alice and myself had loosened still more.

I also carelessly made another blunder. Under the pretence that secrecy was requisite for Stock Exchange transactions, I persuaded Mrs. Hillmer to allow me to pa.s.s under the name of Colonel Montgomery.

Mrs. Hillmer, of course, was now able to live in comparative luxury. I came to regard her house as an abode of rest. I was more at home in her drawing-room than in my own house. She often spoke to me of my wife, and obviously wished to see her, but here I did a cowardly thing. I represented my married existence as far less comfortable than it really was, and gradually Mrs. Hillmer ceased all allusion to Alice. She misunderstood our relations. I knew it, and did not explain. Not a very worthy proceeding for a man whose sense of honor is so keen that he prefers death to disgrace. But one can deceive no other so easily as oneself.

Occasionally, when opportunities offered, we went out together. It was foolish, you will say, and I agree with you. If folly were not pleasant it would not be so fas.h.i.+onable. But, to this hour, the relations between us are those only of close friends.h.i.+p. Never in my life have I addressed her by other than her married name, never have I touched her arm save by way of casual politeness.

I really think I flattered myself upon my superior virtues. I could see all the excellence but none of the stupidity of my behavior.

About this time, Mrs. Hillmer's husband died. Thenceforth she became slightly reserved in manner. When life was a defiance she fought convention, but with safety came prudence. In fact, she told me that my frequent visits to her house would certainly be ill-construed if they became known. I was seeking for a pretext to introduce her to her own set in society, when a double catastrophe occurred.

My wife discovered, as she imagined, that I was clandestinely occupied with another woman, and Mrs. Hillmer's brother returned from America.

It will best serve my hurried narrative if I relate events exactly as they happened, and not as they look in the light of subsequent knowledge.

Mensmore was naturally astounded to find his sister so well provided for, and gratefully accepted the help she gave him towards resuscitating his own fortunes. But it did not occur to either of us that he would take the ordinary view of the bond existing between us, and I shall never forget his rage when he found out that I was not known to his sister's servants by my right name. It was an awkward position for all three. He was loth to allege that which we did not feel called upon to deny. But between him and me there was a marked coolness, arising from suspicion on his part and resentment on mine, coupled, I must add, with an unquiet consciousness that his att.i.tude was not wholly unreasonable.

Mrs. Hillmer and he discussed the matter several times. He urged that this compromising friends.h.i.+p should be discontinued. She--a determined woman when her mind was made up--fought the suggestion on the ground of unfairness, though, like myself, she would have been glad of any accident which would alter the position of affairs.

He interpreted her opposition to different motives. Finally, as his financial position was a dangerous one, as we afterwards learned, and he despaired of setting things straight in Raleigh Mansions--judging them from his own point of view--he resolved to leave England again.

And now I come to the night of November 6.

It was, as you will remember, a foggy and unpleasant day. I had some business in the city which detained me until darkness set in. I had not seen Mrs. Hillmer for two days, so I resolved to drive to Sloane Square--travelling by the Underground was intolerable in such weather--and have tea with her.