Christopher Quarles Part 30

"What is the true story?" asked Zena.

"We may conjecture fairly confidently up to a certain point," said the professor. "As Wigan told us the other day, Mr. Dinneford objected to his daughter's engagement to Rupert Lester. Dinneford is a wealthy man, fond of his money; Lester was a spendthrift, and in debt. Lord Leconbridge came to the rescue and paid his debts, after a severe interview with his son, no doubt. I will hazard a guess that the son did not tell his father everything--sons, in these circ.u.mstances, seldom do. The creditor left unpaid, some hireling of Hartmann's it may be, began to press the young man--may have suggested, even, how easily he could raise money on the diamonds, which were so seldom worn."

"Do you mean that Lady Leconbridge helped him?" asked Zena.

"It may be," said Quarles. "Knowing how enraged her husband would be with his son, she may have lent Lester the diamonds to p.a.w.n. The fact that she appealed to him to support her in her choice of the pearls lends weight to this view, but the housemaid's story of hearing an angry woman's voice in the corridor leads me to think otherwise. I fancy Lester must have heard his father speak to Hartmann at the reception, and gathered that the diamonds were to be a proof of something to the banker. Knowing Hartmann's knowledge of stones, he went to Lady Leconbridge, took her into the corridor, where she learnt for the first time that he had taken the real jewels, and that she was wearing the imitation he had put in their place. She was angry, refused to have anything to do with the deception, and then, partly to help him, but chiefly to thwart her enemy, Hartmann, she consented to lose the diamonds. Lester took the necklace, and, to give the idea that a robbery had taken place, and the thief escaped, broke the window of the small room. When he saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt he returned the necklace, hoping the mystery would come to an end so far as the outer world was concerned; and at the present time, I imagine, he is either trying to raise money enough to redeem the jewels, or is getting up his courage to confess to his father. He has probably promised Lady Leconbridge that he will do one or the other before she returns from Gra.s.slands."

What Rupert Lester's confession meant to his father no one will ever know probably. Practically, in every detail, he confirmed the professor's theory, and possibly Quarles and I saw Lord Leconbridge nearer the breaking point than anyone else.

Leconbridge showed us Hartmann's letter of apology.

"The snake's fangs are drawn," said Quarles. "Now you can let it be known through the press that the necklace lost at the d.u.c.h.ess of Exmoor's has been returned. It is the exact truth. The real diamonds you may redeem as soon as you like, and I think this letter insures that no lies will be told about your wife in future."

"But my son is----"

"He is your son, Lord Leconbridge, and our word is pledged not to make the person who returned the necklace suffer."

Leconbridge held out his hand.

"May I give one other word of advice?" said Quarles. "This must have been a terrible ordeal to Lady Leconbridge. If I were you I should go to Gra.s.slands to-day."

And the professor and I went out of the room, closing the door gently behind us.

CHAPTER XI

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DR. SMITH

Zena had been away visiting friends and on the very day of her return I was obliged to leave London, much to my annoyance. The case came into my hands only because the detective who would have done the work in the ordinary way was ill. Had he been well, little might have been heard of the affair; but through me it came under the notice of Christopher Quarles, and it was he who suggested that there was a mystery. Anyone who cares to turn up the files of the newspapers of that date will find that the police methods, and some commercial methods, too, came in for rather drastic criticism.

Dr. Richmond Smith had a house on the outskirts of Riversmouth, where he looked after three or four weak-minded patients. One afternoon in late September he went out, saying he would not be long. His wife was able to fix the time at half-past four. By dinner time he had not returned and she became alarmed. He was a man of methodical, even eccentric, habits; he seldom went outside his own grounds--the fact had caused people in the neighborhood to consider him peculiar--and his wife had no reason to suppose he had gone outside the grounds on this occasion. Dr. Smith's a.s.sistant, Patrick Evans, who was a male attendant, not a medical man, said he searched the house and grounds, expecting to find that the doctor had been taken suddenly ill; but the doctor was nowhere to be found. Later in the evening Mrs. Smith communicated with the police.

This man Evans was an intelligent fellow, and when I took up the case I found him extremely useful. He wasn't too full of his own ideas, and answered my questions definitely. So far as he knew, Dr. Smith had nothing on his mind. He was not the kind of man to commit suicide.

"Having to deal constantly with weak-minded people might have an effect upon him," I suggested.

"It might, of course," Evans answered; "but it hasn't had any effect upon me, and, in a way, I should say the doctor was a more phlegmatic person than I am. Nothing moved him very much."

"Had he enemies?"

"I have no reason to think so."

"No money worries?"

"He never said anything to suggest such a thing. Had there been any lack of money, I should have expected to see a certain pinching process in the house."

There was no sign of this. The arrangements for the patients were on the side of luxury, and there was ample evidence of the kindest and most considerate treatment. I judged that Mrs. Smith was a capable manager. When I first saw her she had got over her excitement, and was able to talk of her husband quite calmly. She admitted that he was eccentric, and she believed an eccentric action had cost him his life.

She had some reason for this belief.

Dr. Smith had a small boat of five or six tons, old and shabby, but perfectly seaworthy. This he kept moored in one of the small coves to the east of Riversmouth. This boat had gone.

I examined these coves carefully. They were protected by a spur of rock which ran out to sea. Many of them were only caves eaten out of the cliffs, the depth of water in them varying considerably. At low tide some of them were almost dry, while others, even at the greatest ebb, still had deep water in them. They were great holes, in fact, which the sea constantly replenished. That a boat had been moored in one of them was evident, and there was some doubt at first whether it had not been beached for the winter, as had been done in previous years; but no one knew anything about it, and the boat was not to be found.

Until quite the end of September the weather had been perfect; there was no reason why the boat should not have been used with safety and pleasure, and on the night of Dr. Smith's disappearance the sea was perfectly calm. As a matter of fact, however, the doctor was never known to use the boat. The Riversmouth people declared that they only knew Smith by the occasional glimpse they had of him in his garden when they pa.s.sed; that they never met him either in the town or on the way to the coves; and, indeed, the only person who had any knowledge of him at all was Mr. Ferguson, a solicitor. On two occasions he had seen him at his house on small matters of business, and once he had met him in London to introduce him to an insurance company. Whether a policy had been taken out or not he did not know, as Dr. Smith had arranged to take the commission himself if he completed the policy.

Evans was not prepared to say that the doctor never used the boat. It was true that he seldom went beyond the garden, but this was not to say that he never did. People might have met him and not recognized who he was. Once or twice during the summer Evans had been out in the boat himself, at the doctor's suggestion. It was a good little boat, and quite easy for one person to manage.

Mrs. Smith did not believe that her husband ever used the boat, and had never understood why he kept it. He had bought it for practically nothing, and she could only suppose that the fact of making a bargain had appealed to him.

"Was he careless about money matters?" I asked.

"There was always plenty of money," she answered, "but I know very little about his financial affairs. I think he was a little fearful about the future, and some four years ago he talked about insuring his life. Whether he did so or not, I cannot say."

A description of the missing man was circulated in the press; but we could give no portrait; such a thing did not exist. The Riversmouth people considered this publication futile. They were convinced that the missing boat was proof enough that the doctor had disappeared, and, while I searched for additional facts, I was inclined to agree with them.

I was not long without a solid fact to deal with. I have said that it was a calm night when the doctor disappeared, but since then the weather had changed.

A southwesterly gale sent the great breakers foaming all along the sh.o.r.e, until even the waters of the sheltered coves were troubled.

Between the east and the west cliffs was a stretch of s.h.i.+ngle, and here, early in the morning of the fourth day, some wreckage was cast up by the swirling waters. There was no doubt that it was part of the doctor's boat. A fisherman and Patrick Evans were able to identify it even before a fragment bearing the name _Betty_ came ash.o.r.e.

No body, however, was washed up, nor anything to suggest that the doctor had been on his boat.

Certain inquiries necessitated my going to town next day, and I took the opportunity of going to Chelsea, not really to see Quarles, but to see Zena. I had no need of his help in the Riversmouth case, and, had he not been so anxious to know what I had been doing during the last few days, I should not have mentioned it.

As it was, I told him the story.

"It's a strange thing, Wigan, but I have had a presentiment for the last forty-eight hours that a particularly difficult mystery was coming to me. Have you any other case in hand or pending?"

"No."

"Then this may be the one."

"I don't think there is much mystery about it," I answered. "I expect the body to come ash.o.r.e presently."

"How about the insurance?" asked Quarles.

"The policy is in force with the Meteor Insurance Company for fifteen thousand pounds. He has paid the premiums regularly, less commission."

"The premiums have been paid by check, I suppose?"

"Yes. The doctor had an account at the Capital and Provincial here in London. It has never been a large account, but has been open for a long while. The doctor did all his business by letter, and does not appear to have been inside the bank for years."

"If he were in the boat, it is strange his body hasn't been washed up, isn't it?" asked Zena.

"I think a body might take longer to come ash.o.r.e than wreckage," I answered. "Or it may have been caught in another current, and will be thrown up farther along the coast."