Mystery at Geneva Part 8

Charles's rather high laugh sounded above the current of their talk.

They paused at the Hotel des Bergues. The eminent person mounted its steps; Charles accompanied him up the steps and inside. Probably the eminent person wished, by calling on some one there, to shake off Charles before going to his own hotel. But he had not shaken off Charles, who was of a tenacious habit.

"Calling on the Latin Americans," Henry commented. "Wants to have a drink and a chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor chap. Well, I shall sleuth around till they come out. I'm going to trail Charles home to his bed, if it takes all night."

He settled himself on the parapet of the Quai and watched the hotel entrance. He did not have to wait long. In some minutes Charles came out alone. He looked, thought Henry, observing him furtively from under his pulled down hat brim, a little less elated than he had appeared five minutes earlier. His self-esteem had suffered some blow, thought Henry, who knew Charles's mentality. Mentality: that was the word one used about Charles, as if he had been a German during the late war (Germans having, as all readers of newspapers will remember, mentalities).

Charles walked rapidly across the bridge, towards the road that led to his own chalet, a mile out of the town. Henry, keeping his distance, hurried after him, through the steep, silent, sleeping city, up on to the dusty, tram-lined, residential road above it, till Charles stopped at a villa gate and let himself in.

Then Henry turned back, and tramped drowsily down the dusty road beneath the moonless sky, and down through the steep, sleeping city, and across the Pont des Bergues, and so to the Quai du Seujet and the Allee Pet.i.t Chat, which lay dense and black and warm in shadow, and was full of miawling cats, strange sounds, and queer acrid smells. The drainage system of the St. Gervais quarter was crude.

In the stifling bedroom of his crazy tenement, Henry undressed and sleepily tumbled into bed as the city clock struck two.

In the dawn, below the miawling of lean cats and the yelping of dogs, he heard the lapping and shuffling of water, and thought of boats and beating oars.

19

To what cold seas of inchoate regret, of pa.s.sionate agnosticism as to the world's meanings, if any, does one too often wake, and know not why! Henry, on some mornings, would wake humming (as the queer phrase goes) with prosperity, and spring, warm and alive, to welcome the new day. On other mornings it would be as if he s.h.i.+vered perplexed on the brink of a fathomless abyss, and life engulfed him like chill waters, and he would strive, defensively, to divest himself of himself and be but as one of millions of the ant-like creatures that scurry over the earth's face, of no more significance to himself than were the myriad others. He could just achieve this state of impersonality while he lay in bed. But when he got up, stood on the floor, looked at the world no longer from beyond its rim but from within its coils, he became again enmeshed, a creature crying "I, I, I," a child wanting Pears' soap and never getting it, a pilgrim here on earth and stranger. Then the seas of desolation would swamp him and he would sink and sink, tumbled in their bitter waves.

In such a mood of causeless sorrow he woke late on the morning after he had dined with Dr. Franchi. To keep it at arms' length he lay and stared at his crazy, broken shutters, off which the old paint flaked, and thought of the infinite strangeness of all life, a pastime which very often engaged him. Then he thought of some one whom he very greatly loved, and was refreshed by that thought; and, indeed, to love and be loved very greatly is the one stake to cling to in these troubled seas, the one unfailing life-buoy. Then, turning his mind into practical channels, he thought of hate, and of Charles Wilbraham, and of how best to strive that day to compa.s.s him about with ruin.

So meditating, he splashed himself from head to foot with cold water, dressed, and sallied forth from his squalid abode to the nearest cafe.

Coffee and rolls and the Swiss morning papers and the clear jolly air of the September morning put heart into him, as he sat outside the cafe by the lake. Opening his paper, he read of "Femme coupee en morceaux" and "L'Affaire Svensen," and then a large heading, "Disparition de Lord Burnley." Henry started. Here was news indeed.

And he had failed to get hold of it for his paper. Lord Burnley, it seemed, had been strolling alone about the city in the late afternoon; many people had seen him in the Rue de la Cite and the neighbourhood.

He had even been observed to enter a bookshop. The rest was silence.

From that bookshop he had not been seen to emerge. The bookseller affirmed that he had left after spending a few minutes in the shop. No further information was to hand.

"_Cherchez la femme_," one comic paper had the audacity to remark, a propos l'affaire Svensen and Burnley. Even Svensen and Burnley, so pure-hearted, so public-spirited, so League-minded, were not immune from such ill-bred aspersions.

20

The elegant and scholarly Spaniard, Luiz Vaga, strolled by. He wore a canary-coloured waistcoat and walked like a fastidious and graceful bullfinch. He stopped beside Henry's breakfast-table, c.o.c.ked his head on one side, and said, "Hallo. Good-morning. Heard the latest news?"

Henry admitted that he had heard no news later than that in the morning press.

"Chang's gone now," said Vaga. "Gone to join Svensen and Burnley. I regret to say that he was last seen, late last night, paying a call on my fellow-countrymen from South America at Les Bergues hotel. Serious suspicion rests on these gentlemen, for poor Chang has not been heard of since."

"Somehow," Henry said thoughtfully, "I am not surprised. L'addition, s'il vous plait. No, I cannot say I am surprised. I rather thought that there would be more disappearances very shortly. Burnley and Chang. A good haul.... Who saw him going into the Bergues?"

"Our friend Wilbraham, who was out late with him last night. And the Bergues people don't deny it. But they say he left again, soon after midnight. The hall porter, who has, it is presumed, been corrupted, confirms this. But he never returned to his hotel. Poor Burnley and Chang! Two good talkers, scholars, and charming fellows. There are few such, in this vulgar age. It is taking the best, this unseen hand that strikes down our delegates in their prime. So many could be spared.... But G.o.d's will must be done. These South Americans are its very fitting tools, for they don't care what they do, reckless fellows. Mind you, I don't accuse them. Personally I should be more inclined to suspect the Zionists, or the Bolshevik refugees, or your Irishmen, or some of the Unprotected Minorities, or the Poles, or the Anti-Vivisection League, who are very fierce. But, for choice, the Poles; anyhow as regards Burnley. There were certain words once publicly spoken by Burnley to the Polish delegation about General Zeligowsky which have rankled ever since. Zeligowsky has many wild disbanded soldiers at his command.... However--Chang, anyhow, went to see the South Americans, and has not emerged. There we are."

"There we are," Henry thoughtfully agreed, as they strolled over the Pont du Mont Blanc. "And what, then, is Wilbraham's explanation of the affair Chang?"

Vaga shrugged his shoulders.

"Our friend Wilbraham is too discreet to make allegations. He merely states the fact--that he saw Chang into the Bergues between twelve and one and left him there.... I gather that he accompanied him into the hotel, but did not stay there long himself. I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well--if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word."

"Yes, indeed," Henry said. "It is precisely what Wilbraham has. I know it well."

"In that case, I believe if you had heard Wilbraham on this matter of his call at Les Bergues that you would agree with me that his importance suffered there some trifling eclipse."

"There may be other reasons," said Henry, "in this case, for the manner you speak of.... But I won't say any more now." He bit off the stream of libel that had risen to his lips and armed himself in a careful silence, while the Spaniard c.o.c.ked an inquiring dark eye at his brooding profile.

In the Jardin Anglais they overtook Dr. Franchi and his niece, making their way to the a.s.sembly Hall. The ex-cardinal was greatly moved.

"Poor Dr. Chang," he lamented, "and Burnley too, of all men! A wit, a scholar, a philosopher, a metaphysician, a theologian, a man of affairs. In fine, a man one could talk to. What a mind! I am greatly attached to Lord Burnley. They must be found, gentlemen. Alive or (unthinkable thought) dead, they must be found. The a.s.sembly must do nothing else until this sinister mystery is unravelled. We must employ detectives. We must follow every clue."

Miss Longfellow said, "My! Isn't it all quite too terribly sinister!

Don't you think so, Mr. Beechtree?"

Henry said he did.

21

They reached the a.s.sembly Hall. The lobby, buzzing with delegates, Secretariat, journalists, Genevan syndics, and excitement, was like a startled hive. The delegates from Cuba, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay, temporarily at one, were informing the eager throng who crowded round them that Dr. Chang had left the Bergues hotel, after a chat and a whisky with the delegate from Paraguay, at twelve-thirty precisely.

The delegate from Paraguay had gone out with him and had left him on the Pont des Bergues. He had said that he was going to cross this bridge and stroll round the old _cite_ before going to bed, as he greatly admired the picturesque night aspect of these ancient streets and houses that cl.u.s.tered round the cathedral. He had then, presumably, made his way to this old, tortuous and unsafe maze of streets, so full of dark archways, trap-doors, cellars, winding stairways, evil smells, and obscure alleys. ("These alleys," as a local guide-book coldly puts it, "are not well inhabited, but the visitor may safely go through those of houses 5 and 17." Had Dr.

Chang, perhaps, been through, part of the way through, numbers 4 or 16 instead?)

"That's right; put it on the _cite_," muttered Grattan, who was fond of this part of Geneva, for he often dined there, and who admired the representatives of the South American states as hopeful agents of crime and mystery.

No evidence, it seemed, was forthcoming that any one had seen Dr.

Chang in the _cite_, but then, as the delegate from Paraguay remarked, even the inhabitants of the _cite_ must sleep sometimes.

Police and detectives had early been put to work to search the cathedral quarter. Systematically they were making inquiries in it, street by street, house by house. Systematically, too, others were making inquiries in the old St. Gervais quarter.

"But police detective work is never any good," as Henry, a well-read person in some respects, remarked. "It is well known that one requires non-constabulary talent."

22

The bell rang, and a shaken and disorganised a.s.sembly a.s.sembled in the hall. The Deputy-President, in an impa.s.sioned speech, lamented the sinister disappearance of his three so eminent colleagues. As he remarked, this would not do. Some evil forces were at work, a.s.saulting the very life of the League, for it must now be apparent that these disappearances were not coincidences, but links in a connected chain of crime. What and whose was the unseen hand behind these dastardly deeds? What secret enemies of the League were so cunningly and a.s.siduously at work? Was murder their object, or merely abduction?

Whose turn would it be next? (At this last inquiry a shudder rippled over the already agitated a.s.sembly.) But MM. les Delegues might rest a.s.sured that what could be done was being done, both for the discovery of their eminent colleagues, the detection of the a.s.saulters, and the aversion of such disasters in future.

At this point the delegate for Greece leapt to his feet.