Part 20 (1/2)
”Hum-m-m! I see! So, then, you really do not know if there actually was a woman or a girl at all? Any idea where the persons were supposed to live?”
”Yes. They hired a room on the top floor of a house adjoining the Ocean Billow Hotel, sir. At least, Reggie--that's my youngest son, Mr. Cleek--saw Greta go in there and look down from one of the top floor windows one day when he was on his way home from school. He spoke to her about it at the dinner table that night, and she said that that was where her 'pensioners lived.'”
”Pretty good neighbourhood that, by Jove! for people who were 'pensioners' to be living in,” commented Cleek. ”The Ocean Billow Hotel is a modern establishment--lifts, electric lights, liveried attendants, and caters to people of substance and standing.”
”Yes,” admitted Beachman. ”When I was suspended, sir, during the examination and this house taken over by Sir Charles, I took Mrs.
Beachman and Reggie there, and we have remained at the place, nominally under guard, ever since. You see, being convenient and in a straight line, so to speak, it offered extra advantages in case of my being summoned here at a moment's notice.”
”H'm! Yes! I see!” said Cleek, stroking his chin. ”In a straight line from here, eh? House next door would, of course, offer the same advantages; and from a room on the top floor a wire-tapping device----Yes, just so! I think, Sophie, I think I smell a very large mouse, my dear, and I shan't be surprised if we've hit upon the place of reception for your messages the very first shot.”
”Messages, Mr. Cleek? Messages?” interposed Sir Charles. ”You surely do not mean to infer that the woman telegraphed messages from this house? Do you forget, then, that there is no instrument, no wire, attached to the place?”
Cleek puckered up his brows. For the moment he had forgotten that fact.
”Still, there are wires pa.s.sing over it, Sir Charles,” he said presently; ”and if a means of communication with those were established, the 'tapper' at the other end could receive messages easily. She is a devil of ingenuity is Sophie. I wouldn't put it beyond her and her confederates to have rigged up a transmitting instrument of some sort which the woman could carry on her person and attach to the wire when needed.”
Here Sir Charles threw in something which he felt to be in the nature of a facer.
”Quite so,” he admitted. ”But do not forget, Mr. Cleek, that the deflected message was sent last night, and that the woman was not then in this house.”
CHAPTER XVIII
The queer little one-sided smile c.o.c.ked up the corner of Cleek's mouth. ”Sure of that, Sir Charles?” he inquired placidly. ”Sure that she was not? I am told, it is true, that she left the note saying she was going to drown herself, and disappeared four nights ago; I am also told that since the date of Mr. Beachman's suspension this place has been under constant guard night and day, but I have _not_ been told, however, that any of the guards saw her leave the place.
No, no, no! Don't jump to conclusions so readily, gentlemen. She will be out of it now,--out and never likely to return; the news of that miscarried message would warn her that something was wrong, and she would be 'up and out of it' like a darting swallow. The question is, how and when did she get out? Let's have in the guard and see.”
The sentries were brought in one after the other and questioned. At no time since they were first put on guard, they declared--at _no time_, either by day or by night--had any living creature entered or left the house up to now, except the Admiral Superintendent, his secretary, the auditor, and the nurse who had been summoned to look after the stricken girl. To that they one and all were willing to take solemn oath.
There is an old French proverb which says: ”He that protests too much leads to the truth in spite of himself.” It was the last man to be called who did this.
”No, sir, n.o.body pa.s.sed, either in or out, I'll take my dying oath to that,” a.s.serted he, his feelings riled up by the thought that this constant questioning of his statement was a slur upon his devotion to his duty. ”There aren't n.o.body going to hint as I'm a slacker as don't know what he's a-doing of, or a blessed mug that don't obey orders; no, sir--no fear! Sir Charles's orders was, 'n.o.body in or out' and n.o.body in or out it was; my hat! yuss! Why, sir”--turning to the dock master--”you must 'a' known; he must 'a' told you. I wouldn't allow even young Master Reggie in last night when he came a-pleading to be let in to get the school books he'd left behind.”
”When he _what_?” almost roared the dock master, fairly jumping.
”Good lord, Marshall, have you gone off your head? Do you mean to claim that you saw my boy here--last night?”
”Certainly, sir. Just after that awful clap of thunder it was--say about eight or ten minutes after; and what with that and the darkness and the way the wind was howling, I never see nor heard nothing of him coming till I got to the door, and there he was--in them light-coloured knickers and the pulled-down wideawake hat I'd seen him wear dozens of times--with his coat collar turned up and a drippin' umbrella over his head, making like he was going up the steps to try and get in. 'Who's there?' as I sings to him, though I needn't, for the little light was streaking out through the windows showed me what he was wearing and who it was well enough. 'It's me--Master Reggie, Marshall,' he says. 'I've come to get my school books. I left 'em behind in the hurry, and father says he's sure you'll let me go in and get 'em.' 'Oh, does he?' says I. 'Well, I'm surprised at him and at you, too, Master Reggie, a-thinking I'd go against orders. Word is that n.o.body gets in; and n.o.body _does_, even the king hisself, till them orders is changed. So you just come away from that door, and trot right away back to your pa,' I says to him, 'and ask him from me what kind of a sentry he thinks Bill Marshall is.' Which sets him a-snivelling and a-pleading till I has to take him by the shoulder, and fair drag him away before I could get him to go as he'd been told.”
”Well done, Sophie!” exclaimed Cleek. ”Gad! what a creature of resource the woman is, and what an actress she would make, the vixen! No need to ask you if your son really did come over here last night, Mr. Beachman; your surprise and indignation have answered for you.”
”I should think it would, by George!” rapped out the dock master.
”What sort of an insane man must you have thought me, Marshall, to credit such a thing as that? As if I'd have been likely to let a delicate fifteen-year-old boy go out on an errand of any kind in a beast of a storm like last night's, much less tell him that he was to ask a sentry, _in my name_, to disobey his orders. Good G.o.d!
gentlemen, it's simply monstrous! Why, look here, Sir Charles; look here, Mr. Cleek! Even if I'd been guilty of such a thing, and the boy was willing to go out, he couldn't have done it to save his life. The poor little chap met with an accident last night and he's been in bed ever since. He was going down the stairs on his way to dinner when that terrific clap of thunder came, and the blessed thing startled him so much that, in the pitch darkness, he missed his footing, fell clear to the bottom of the staircase, and broke his collar bone.”
”Poor little lad! Too bad, too bad!” sympathized Sir Charles, feelingly, and, possibly, would have said more but that Cleek's voice broke in softly, but with a curiously sharp note underlying its sleekness.
”In the pitch darkness, Mr. Beachman?” it inquired. ”The pitch darkness of a public hotel _at dinner time_? Isn't that rather extraordinary?”
”It would be, under any other circ.u.mstances, sir, but that infernal clap of thunder interfered in some way with the electric current, and every blessed light in the hotel went smack out--whisk! like that!--and left the place as black as a pocket. Everybody thought for the moment that the wires must have fused, but it turned out that there was nothing the matter with them--only that the current had been interrupted for a bit--for the lights winked on again as suddenly as they had winked out.”