Part 25 (1/2)

From Budd I learned that my friend had gone out about two o'clock, and had not returned. He had, however, left me a message to say that I was not to be alarmed by his absence. He was still making inquiries, I supposed. What I had related regarding the strange affair at Sydenham Hill had puzzled him greatly. Perhaps he had gone down there.

I gave my man strict instructions to say to everyone that I too was absent from home.

”Tell everybody that I went out to dinner last night and have not yet returned,” I said. ”Express surprise and anxiety. I want to pretend to be missing--you understand, Budd?”

”Yes, sir,” was the man's prompt response. ”You expect somebody will call and inquire, and to everyone I am to know nothing.”

”I went out to the club last night and haven't been seen since.”

”I quite understand, sir. But what about the doctor?”

”He doesn't matter. The person whom I wish to believe in my absence does not know the doctor. I shall remain indoors for a day or two.

Mind n.o.body knows I'm here.”

”I shall take good care of that, sir,” was the man's reply; and I knew that I could trust him.

I scribbled a line to Inspector Pickering explaining my inability to make the statement on account of my injured head, but promising to call in a few days. I urged him not to send to me, as my chambers were probably watched. This note I sent by express messenger.

Then thoroughly exhausted I dropped off to sleep.

It was evening when I awoke, but Eric had not made his appearance. I was now thoroughly alarmed. Who were the men whom he had defied in that house of mystery?

He always carried a revolver, and was a dead shot; but what is a weapon against such black treachery as that to which I had been subjected? He was fearless, and would fight to the last; yet after my experience in that house I was apprehensive lest he should, like myself, have fallen a victim.

Many a man and woman disappears in this roaring metropolis of ours and is never again heard of; many an undiscovered crime takes place within a stone's-throw of the great London thoroughfares; and many a death-cry is unheard in the hum of traffic and unheeded in the bustle of our everyday life. The London sewers hold many a secret, and the London chimneys have smoked with the cremated remains of many an innocent victim.

I wrote to Tibbie an affectionate letter explaining that my absence was due to the fact that I had fallen and met with a slight accident to the head, and signed it ”Willie” in order that, if necessary, she might show it to her landlady. It was strange to write to her with so much affection when inwardly I was aware of her terrible secret. Yet had I not promised to save her? Had I not given her that foolish pledge which had been the cause of all my exciting adventures and my narrow escape from death?

Night came. I sat alone in the armchair before the fire listening for my old friend's footstep, but all in vain. Something had happened, but what the something was I feared to contemplate.

I unlocked a drawer in my old-fas.h.i.+oned bureau, a quaint old piece of Queen Anne furniture from Netherdene, and took out the paper with the cabalistic jumble of figures and letters which I had found on the body of the dead man in Charlton Wood.

For a long while I sat and studied the cipher and its key, finding it very ingeniously contrived--evidently a secret code established for some evil purpose, a code that had been given to the dead man to enable him to have secret communication with some persons who desired to remain unseen and unknown.

My curiosity aroused, my eye chanced to fall upon the morning's paper and I took it up and turned to the ”agony column,” where I saw several cipher advertis.e.m.e.nts. One of them I endeavoured to read by the aid of the dead man's key, but was unable. Therefore I tried the second, and afterwards the third. The latter only consisted of two lines of a meaningless jumble of letters and numerals, but taking a pencil I commenced to write down the equivalent of the cipher in plain English.

In a few moments my heart gave a bound.

I had deciphered the first word of the message, namely, ”White.”

Very carefully, and after considerable search and calculation, I presently transcribed the secret message thus:--

”White Feather reports W.H. gone home. Nothing to fear.”

That was all. But was it not very significant? The initials were my own, and did not the announcement that I had ”gone home” mean that I had gone to my death. There was nothing to fear, it was plainly stated.

They therefore had feared us, and that was the motive of their ingenious crime.

For whose eyes was that curious advertis.e.m.e.nt intended, I wondered. Who was ”White Feather?”