The Sign of Silence Part 5

Sir Digby Kemsley had disappeared. Where?

Half an hour after noon I had left Harrington Gardens utterly bewildered, and returned to Albemarle Street, and at half-past one met Phrida at the Berkeley, where, as I have already described, we lunched together.

I had revealed to her everything under seal of the secrecy placed upon me by the police--everything save that suspicion I had had in the darkness, and the suspicion the police also held--the suspicion of a woman.

Relation of the curious affair seemed to have unnerved her. She had become paler and was fidgeting with her serviette. Loving me so devotedly, she seemed to entertain vague and ridiculous fears regarding my own personal safety.

"It was very foolish and hazardous of you to have returned there at that hour, dear," she declared with sweet solicitation, as she drew on her white gloves preparatory to leaving the restaurant, for I had already paid the bill and drained my liqueur-gla.s.s.

"I don't see why," I said. "Whatever could have happened to me, when----"

My sentence remained unfinished.

I held my breath. The colour must have left my cheeks, I know.

My well-beloved had at that moment opened her handbag and taken out her wisp of lace handkerchief.

My nostrils were instantly filled with that same sweet, subtle perfume which I so vividly recollected, the identical perfume of the woman concealed in that dark pa.s.sage-way!

Her bangles, two thin gold ones, jingled as she moved--that same sound which had come up to me from the blackness. I sat like a statue, staring at her amazed, aghast, like a man in a dream.

CHAPTER III.

DESCRIBES THE TRYSTING-PLACE.

I drove Phrida back to Cromwell Road in a taxi.

As I sat beside her, that sweet irritating perfume filled my senses, almost intoxicating me. For some time I remained silent; then, unable to longer restrain my curiosity, I exclaimed with a calm, irresponsible air, though with great difficulty of self-restraint:

"What awfully nice perfume you have, dearest! Surely it's new, isn't it?

I never remember smelling it before!"

"Quite new, and rather delicious, don't you think? My cousin Arthur brought it from Paris a few days ago. I only opened the bottle last night. Mother declared it to be the sweetest she's ever smelt. It's so very strong that one single drop is sufficient."

"What do they call it?"

"Parfait d'Amour. Lauzan, in the Place Vendome, makes it. It's quite new, and not yet on the market, Arthur said. He got it--a sample bottle--from a friend of his in the perfume trade."

Not on the market! Those words of hers condemned her. Little did she dream that I had smelt that same sweet, subtle odour as I descended the stairs from Sir Digby's flat. She, no doubt, had recognised my silhouette in the half darkness, yet nevertheless she felt herself quite safe, knowing that I had not seen her.

Why had she been lurking there?

A black cloud of suspicion fell upon me. She kept up a desultory conversation as we went along Piccadilly in the dreary gloom of that dull January afternoon, but I only replied in monosyllables, until at length she remarked:

"Really, Teddy, you're not thinking of a word I'm saying. I suppose your mind is centred upon your friend--the man who has turned out to be an impostor."

The conclusion of that sentence and its tone showed a distinct antagonism.

It was true that the man whom I had known as Sir Digby Kemsley--the man who for years past had been so popular among a really good set in London--was according to the police an impostor.

The detective-inspector had told me so. From the flat in Harrington Gardens the men of the Criminal Investigation Department had rung up New Scotland Yard to make their report, and about noon, while I was resting at home in Albemarle Street, I was told over the telephone that my whilom friend was not the man I had believed him to be.

As I had listened to the inspector's voice, I heard him say:

"There's another complication of this affair, Mr. Royle. Your friend could not have been Sir Digby Kemsley, for that gentleman died suddenly a year ago, at Huacho, in Peru. There was some mystery about his death, it seems, for it was reported by the British Consul at Lima. Inspector Edwards, of the C.I. Department, will call upon you this afternoon. What time could you conveniently be at home?"

I named five o'clock, and that appointment I intended, at all hazards, to keep.

The big, heavily-furnished drawing-room in Cromwell Road was dark and sombre as I stood with Phrida, who, bright and happy, pulled off her gloves and declared to her mother--that charming, sedate, grey-haired, but wonderfully preserved, woman--that she had had such "a jolly lunch."

"I saw the Redmaynes there, mother," she was saying. "Mr. Redmayne has asked us to lunch with them at the Carlton next Tuesday. Can we go?"

"I think so, dear," was her mother's reply. "I'll look at my engagements."

"Oh, do let's go! Ida is coming home from her trip to the West Indies. I do want to see her so much."

Strange it was that my well-beloved, in face of that amazing mystery, preserved such an extraordinary, nay, an astounding, calm. I was thinking of the little side-comb of green horn, for I had seen her wearing a pair exactly similar!

Standing by I watched her pale sweet countenance, full of speechless wonder.

After the first moment of suspense she had found herself treading firm ground, and now, feeling herself perfectly secure, she had a.s.sumed a perfectly frank and confident att.i.tude.

Yet the perfume still arose to my nostrils--the sweet, subtle scent which had condemned her.

I briefly related to Mrs. Shand my amazing adventures of the previous night, my eyes furtively upon Phrida's countenance the while. Strangely enough, she betrayed no guilty knowledge, but fell to discussing the mystery with ease and common-sense calm.

"What I can't really make out is how your friend could have had the audacity to pose as Sir Digby Kemsley, well knowing that the real person was alive," she remarked.

"The police have discovered that Sir Digby died in Peru last January," I said.

"While your friend was in London?"

"Certainly. My friend--I shall still call him Sir Digby, for I have known him by no other name--has not been abroad since last July, when he went on business to Moscow."

"How very extraordinary," remarked Mrs. Shand. "Your friend must surely have had some object in posing as the dead man."

"But he posed as a man who was still alive!" I exclaimed.

"Until, perhaps, he was found out," observed Phrida shrewdly. "Then he bolted."

I glanced at her quickly. Did those words betray any knowledge of the truth, I wondered.

"Apparently there was some mystery surrounding the death of Sir Digby at Huacho," I remarked. "The British Consul in Lima made a report upon it to the Foreign Office, who, in turn, handed it to Scotland Yard. I wonder what it was."