The Doctor of Pimlico: Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime

"Well," he said, "if I recollect aright, the inquiries regarding him were not altogether satisfactory. Previous to his engagement by Harry he had, it seems, been valet to a man named Mitchell, a horse-trainer of rather shady repute."

"Where is he now?"

"I really don't know, but I can easily find out—I gave orders that he was not to be lost sight of." And, scribbling a hasty memorandum, he pressed the electric button upon the arm of his chair.

His secretary, a tall, thin, deep-eyed man, entered, and to him he gave the note.

"Well, let us proceed while they are looking up the information," the chief went on. "Harry Bellairs, as you know, was on the staff of Sir Hugh Elcombe, that dear, harmless old friend of yours who inspects troops and seems to do odd jobs for Whitehall. I knew Harry before he went to Sandhurst; his people, who lived up near Durham, were very civil to me once or twice and gave me some excellent pheasant-shooting. It seems that on that day in September he came up to town from Salisbury—but you know all the facts, of course?"

"I know all the facts as far as they were related in the papers," Walter said. He did not reveal the results of the close independent inquiries he had already made—results which had utterly astounded, and at the same time mystified, him.

"Well," said Trendall, "what the Press published was mostly fiction. Even the evidence given before the coroner was utterly unreliable. It was mainly given in order to mislead the jury and prevent public suspicion that there had been a sensational tragedy—I arranged it so."

"And there had been a tragedy, no doubt?"

"Of course," declared the other, leaning both elbows upon the table before him and looking straight into the novelist's pale face. "Harry came up from Salisbury, the bearer of some papers from Sir Hugh. He duly arrived at Waterloo, discharged his duty, and went to his rooms in Half Moon Street. Now, according to Barker's story, his master arrived home early in the afternoon, and sent him out on a message to Richmond. He returned a little after five, when he found his master absent."

"That was the account he gave at the inquest," remarked Fetherston.

"Yes; but it was not the truth. On testing the man's story I discovered that at three-eighteen he was in the Leicester Lounge, in Leicester Square, with an ill-dressed old man, who was described as being short and wearing a rusty, old silk hat. They sat at a table near the window drinking ginger-ale, so that the barmaid could not overhear, and held a long and confidential chat."

"He may afterwards have gone down to Richmond," his friend suggested.

"No; he remained there until past four, and then went round to the Café Royal, where he met another man, a foreigner, of about his own age, believed to have been a Swiss, with whom he took a cup of coffee. The man was a stranger at the café, probably a stranger in London. Barker was in the habit of doing a little betting, and I believe the men he met were some of his betting friends."

"Then you disbelieve the Richmond story?"

"Entirely. What seems more than probable is that Harry gave his man the afternoon off because he wished to entertain somebody clandestinely at his rooms—a woman, perhaps. Yet, as far as I've been able to discover, no one in Half Moon Street saw any stranger of either sex go to his chambers that afternoon."

"You said that you believed the motive of the crime—if crime it really was—was jealousy," remarked Fetherston, thoughtfully rubbing his shaven chin.

"And I certainly do. Harry was essentially a lady's man. He was tall, and an extremely handsome fellow, a thorough-going sportsman, an excellent polo player, a perfect dancer, and a splendid rider to hounds. Little wonder was it that he was about to make a very fine match, for only a month before his death he confided to me in secret the fact—a fact known to me alone—that he was engaged to pretty little Lady Blanche Herbert, eldest daughter of the Earl of Warsborough."

"Engaged to Lady Blanche!" echoed the novelist in surprise, for the girl in question was the prettiest of that year's débutantes as well as a great heiress in her own right.

"Yes. Harry was a lucky dog, poor fellow. The engagement, known only to the Warsboroughs and myself, was to have been kept secret for a year. Now, it is my firm opinion, Fetherston, that some other woman, one of Harry's many female friends, had got wind of it, and very cleverly had her revenge."

"Upon what grounds do you suspect that?" asked the other eagerly—for surely the problem was becoming more inscrutable than any of those in the remarkable romances which he penned.

"Well, my conclusions are drawn from several very startling facts—facts which, of course, have never leaked out to the public. But before I reveal them to you I'd like to hear what opinion you've formed yourself."

"I'm convinced that Harry Bellairs met with foul play, and I'm equally certain that the man Barker lied in his depositions before the coroner. He knows the whole story, and has been paid to keep a still tongue."

"There I entirely agree with you," Trendall declared quickly; while at that moment the secretary returned with a slip of paper attached to the query which his chief had written. "Ah!" he exclaimed, glancing at the paper, "I see that the fellow Barker, who was a chauffeur before he entered Harry's service, has set up a motor-car business in Southampton."

"You believe him to have been an accessory, eh?"

"Yes, a dupe in the hands of a clever woman."

"Of what woman?" asked Walter, holding his breath.

"As you know, Harry was secretary to your friend Elcombe. Well, I happen to know that his pretty stepdaughter, Enid Orlebar, was over head and ears in love with him. My daughter Ethel and she are friends, and she confided this fact to Ethel only a month before the tragedy."

"Then you actually suggest that a—a certain woman murdered him?" gasped Fetherston.

"Well—there is no actual proof—only strong suspicion!"

Walter Fetherston held his breath. Did the suspicions of this man, from whom no secret was safe, run in the same direction as his own?

"There was in the evidence given before the coroner a suggestion that the captain had dined somewhere in secret," he said.

"I know. But we have since cleared up that point. He was not given poison while he sat at dinner, for we know that he dined at the Bachelors' with a man named Friend. They had a hurried meal, because Friend had to catch a train to the west of England."

"And afterwards?"

"He left the club in a taxi at eight. But what his movements exactly were we cannot ascertain. He returned to his chambers at a quarter past nine in order to change his clothes and go back to Salisbury, but he was almost immediately taken ill. Barker declares that his master sent him out on an errand instantly on his return, and that when he came in he found him dying."

"Did he not explain what the errand was?"

"No; he refused to say."

In that refusal Fetherston saw that the valet, whatever might be his fault, was loyal to his dead master and to Enid Orlebar. He had not told how Bellairs had sent to Hill Street that scribbled note, and how the distressed girl had torn along to Half Moon Street to arrive too late to speak for the last time with the man she loved. Was Barker an enemy, or was he a friend?

"That refusal arouses distinct suspicion, eh?"

"Barker has very cleverly concealed some important fact," replied the keen-faced man who controlled that section of Scotland Yard. "Bellairs, feeling deadly ill, and knowing that he had fallen a victim to some enemy, sent Barker out for somebody in whom to confide. The man claimed that the errand that his master sent him upon was one of confidence."

"And to whom do you think he was sent?"

"To a woman," was Trendall's slow and serious reply. "To the woman who murdered him!"

"But if she had poisoned him, surely he would not send for her?" exclaimed Fetherston.

"At the moment he was not aware of the woman's jealousy, or of the subtle means used to cause his untimely end. He was unsuspicious of that cruel, deadly hatred lying so deep in the woman's breast. Lady Blanche, on hearing of the death of her lover, was terribly grieved, and is still abroad. She, of course, made all sorts of wild allegations, but in none of them did we find any basis of fact. Yet, curiously enough, her views were exactly the same as my own—that one of poor Harry's lady friends had been responsible for his fatal seizure."

"Then, after all the inquiries you instituted, you were really unable to point to the actual assassin?" asked Fetherston rather more calmly.

"Not exactly unable—unwilling, rather."

"How do you mean unwilling? You were Bellairs' friend!"

"Yes, I was. He was one of the best and most noble fellows who ever wore the King's uniform, and he died by the treacherous hand of a jealous woman—a clever woman who had paid Barker to maintain silence."

"But, if the dying man wished to make a statement, he surely would not have sent for the very person by whose hand he had fallen," Fetherston protested. "Surely that is not a logical conclusion!"

"Bellairs was not certain that his sudden seizure was not due to something he had eaten at the club—remember he was not certain that her hand had administered the fatal drug," replied Trendall. A hard, serious expression rested upon his face. "He had, no doubt, seen her between the moment when he left the Bachelors' and his arrival, a little over an hour afterwards, at Half Moon Street—where, or how, we know not. Perhaps he drove to her house, and there, at her invitation, drank something. Yet, however it happened, the result was the same; she killed him, even though she was the first friend to whom he sent in his distress—killed him because she had somehow learnt of his secret engagement to Lady Blanche Herbert."

"Yours is certainly a remarkable theory," admitted Walter Fetherston. "May I ask the name of the woman to whom you refer?"

"Yes; she was the woman who loved him so passionately," replied Trendall—"Enid Orlebar."

"Then you really suspect her?" asked Fetherston breathlessly.

"Only as far as certain facts are concerned; and that since Harry's death she has been unceasingly interested in the career of the man Barker."

"Are you quite certain of this?" gasped Fetherston.

"Quite; it is proved beyond the shadow of a doubt."

"Then Enid Orlebar killed him?"

"That if she actually did not kill him with her own hand, she at least knew well who did," was the other's cold, hard reply. "She killed him for two reasons; first, because by poor Harry's death she prevented the exposure of some great secret!"

Walter Fetherston made no reply.

Those inquiries, instituted by Scotland Yard, had resulted in exactly the same theory as his own independent efforts—that Harry Bellairs had been secretly done to death by the woman, who, upon her own admission to him, had been summoned to the young officer's side.

CHAPTER XXIV

WHAT THE DEAD MAN LEFT

It was news to Fetherston that Bellairs had dined at his club on that fateful night.

He had believed that Enid had dined with him. He had proved beyond all doubt that she had been to his rooms that afternoon during Barker's absence. That feather from the boa, and the perfume, were sufficient evidence of her visit.

Yet why had Barker remained in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus if sent by his master with a message to Richmond? He could not doubt a single word that Trendall had told him, for the latter's information was beyond question. Well he knew with what care and cunning such an inquiry would have been made, and how every point would have been proved before being reported to that ever active man who was head of that Department of the Home Office that never sleeps.

"What secret do you suggest might have been divulged?" he asked at last after a long pause.

The big room—the Room of Secrets—was silent, for the double windows prevented the noise of the traffic and the "honk" of the taxi horns from penetrating there. Only the low ticking of the clock broke the quiet.

"I scarcely have any suggestion to offer in that direction," was Trendall's slow reply. "That feature of the affair still remains a mystery."

"But cannot this man Barker be induced to make some statement?" he queried.

"He will scarcely betray the woman to whom he owes his present prosperity, for he is prosperous and has a snug little balance at his bank. Besides, even though we took the matter in hand, what could we do? There is no evidence against him or against the woman. The farcical proceedings in the coroner's court had tied their hands."

"An open verdict was returned?"

"Yes, at our suggestion. But Professors Dale and Boyd failed to find any traces of poison or of foul play."

"And yet there was foul play—that is absolutely certain!" declared the novelist.

"Unfortunately, yes. Poor Bellairs was a brilliant and promising officer, a man destined to make a distinct mark in the world. It was a pity, perhaps, that he was such a lady-killer."

"A pity that he fell victim to what was evidently a clever plot, and yet—yet—I cannot bring myself to believe that your surmise can be actually correct. He surely would never have sent for the very person who was his enemy and who had plotted to kill him—it doesn't seem feasible, does it?"

"Quite as feasible as any of the strange and crooked circumstances which one finds every day in life's undercurrents," was the quiet rejoinder. "Remember, he was very fond of her—fascinated by her remarkable beauty."

"But he was engaged to Lady Blanche?"

"He intended to marry her, probably for wealth and position. The woman a man of Harry's stamp marries is seldom, if ever, the woman he loves," added the chief with a somewhat cynical smile, for he was essentially a man of the world.

"But what secret could Enid Orlebar desire to hide?" exclaimed Fetherston wonderingly. "If he loved her, he certainly would never have threatened exposure."

"My dear fellow, I've told you briefly my own theory—a theory formed upon all the evidence I could collect," replied the tall, dark-eyed man, as he thrust his hands deeply into his trousers pockets and looked straight into the eyes of his friend.

"If you are so certain that Enid Orlebar is implicated in the affair, if not the actual assassin, why don't you interrogate her?" asked Walter boldly.

"Well—well, to tell the truth, our inquiries are not yet complete. When they are, we may be in a better position—we probably shall be—to put to her certain pointed questions. But," he added quickly, "perhaps I ought not to say this, for I know she is a friend of yours."

"What you tell me is in confidence, as always, Trendall," he replied quickly. "I knew long ago that Enid was deeply attached to Bellairs. But much that you have just told me is entirely fresh to me. I must find Barker and question him."

"I don't think I'd do that. Wait until we have completed our inquiries," urged the other. "If Bellairs was killed in so secret and scientific a manner that no trace was left, he was killed with a cunning and craftiness which betrays a jealous woman rather than a man. Besides, there are other facts we have gathered which go further to prove that Enid Orlebar is the actual culprit."

"What are they? Tell me, Trendall."

"No, my dear chap; you are the lady's friend—it is really unfair to ask me," he protested. "Where the usual mysteries are concerned, I'm always open and above-board with you. But in private investigations like this you must allow me to retain certain knowledge to myself."

"But I beg of you to tell me everything," demanded the other. "I have taken an intense interest in the matter, as you have, even though my motive has been of an entirely different character."

"You have no suspicion that Bellairs was in possession of any great secret—a secret which it was to Miss Orlebar's advantage should be kept?"

"No," was the novelist's prompt response. "But I can't see the drift of your question," he added.

"Well," replied the keen, alert man, who, again seated in his writing-chair, bent slightly towards his visitor, "well, as you've asked me to reveal all I know, Fetherston, I will do so, even though I feel some reluctance, in face of the fact that Miss Orlebar is your friend."

"That makes no difference," declared the other firmly. "I am anxious to clear up the mystery of Bellairs' death."

"Then I think that you need seek no farther for the correct solution," replied Trendall quietly, looking into the other's pale countenance. "Your lady friend killed him—in order to preserve her own secret."

"But what was her secret?"

"We have that yet to establish. It must have been a serious one for her to close his lips in such a manner."

"But they were good friends," declared Fetherston. "He surely had not threatened to expose her?"

"I do not think he had. My own belief is that she became madly jealous of Lady Blanche, and at the same time, fearing the exposure of her secret to the woman to whom her lover had become engaged, she took the subtle means of silencing him. Besides–" And he paused without concluding his sentence.

"Besides what?"

"From the first you suspected Sir Hugh's stepdaughter, eh?"

Fetherston hesitated. Then afterwards he nodded slowly in the affirmative.

"Yes," went on Trendall, "I knew all along that you were suspicious. You made a certain remarkable discovery, eh, Fetherston?"

The novelist started. At what did his friend hint? Was it possible that the inquiries had led to a suspicion of Sir Hugh's criminal conduct? The very thought appalled him.

"I—well, in the course of the inquiries I made I found that the lady in question was greatly attached to the dead man," replied Fetherston rather lamely.

Trendall smiled. "It was to Enid Orlebar that Harry sent when he felt his fatal seizure. Instead of sending for a doctor, he sent Barker to her, and she at once flew to his side, but, alas! too late to remedy the harm she had already caused. When she arrived he was dead!"

Fetherston was silent. He saw that the inquiries made by the Criminal Investigation Department had led to exactly the same conclusion that he himself had formed.

"This is a most distressing thought—that Enid Orlebar is a murderess!" he declared after a moment's pause.

"It is—I admit. Yet we cannot close our eyes to such outstanding facts, my dear chap. Depend upon it that there is something behind the poor fellow's death of which we have no knowledge. In his death your friend Miss Orlebar sought safety. The letter he wrote to her a week before his assassination is sufficient evidence of that."

"A letter!" gasped Fetherston. "Is there one in existence?"

"Yes; it is in our possession; it reveals the existence of the secret."

"But what was its nature?" cried Fetherston in dismay. "What terrible secret could there possibly be that could only be preserved by Bellairs' silence?"

"That's just the puzzle we have to solve—just the very point which has mystified us all along."

And then he turned to his correspondence again, opening his letters one after the other—letters which, addressed to a box at the General Post Office in the City, contained secret information from various unsuspected quarters at home and abroad.

Suddenly, in order to change the topic of conversation, which he knew was painful to Walter Fetherston, he mentioned the excellence of the opera at Covent Garden on the previous night. And afterwards he referred to an article in that day's paper which dealt with the idea of obtaining exclusive political intelligence through spirit-bureaux. Then, speaking of the labour unrest, Trendall pronounced his opinion as follows:

"The whole situation would be ludicrous were it not urged so persistently as to be a menace not so much in this country, where we know too well the temperaments of its sponsors, but abroad, where public opinion, imperfectly instructed, may imagine it represents a serious national feeling. The continuance of it is an intolerable negation of civilisation; it is supported by no public men of credit; it has been disproved again and again. Ridicule may be left to give the menace the coup de grâce! And this," he laughed, "in face of what you and I know, eh? Ah! how long will the British public be lulled to sleep by anonymous scribblers?"

"One day they'll have a rude awakening," declared Fetherston, still thinking, however, of that letter of the dead man to Enid. "I wonder," he added, "I wonder who inspires these denials? We know, of course, that each time anything against enemy interests appears in a certain section of the Press there arises a ready army of letter-writers who rush into print and append their names to assurances that the enemy is nowadays our best friend. Those 'patriotic Englishmen' are, many of them, in high positions.

"When responsible papers wilfully mislead the public, what can be expected?" Walter went on. "But," he added after a pause, "we did not arrive at any definite conclusion regarding the tragic death of Bellairs. What about that letter of his?"

Trendall was thoughtful for a few minutes.

"My conclusion—the only one that can be formed," he answered at last, disregarding his friend's question—"is that Enid Orlebar is the guilty person; and before long I hope to be in possession of that secret which she strove by her crime to suppress—a secret which I feel convinced we shall discover to be one of an amazing character."

Walter stood motionless as a statue.

Surely Bellairs had not died by Enid's hand!

CHAPTER XXV

AT THE CAFÉ DE PARIS

It was in the early days of January—damp and foggy in England.

Walter Fetherston sat idling on the terrasse of the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo sipping a "mazagran," basking in the afternoon sunshine, and listening to the music of the Rumanian Orchestra.

Around him everywhere was the gay cosmopolitan world of the tables—that giddy little after-the-war financier and profiteer world which amuses itself on the Côte d'Azur, and in which he was such a well-known figure.

So many successive seasons had he passed there before 1914 that across at the rooms the attendants and croupiers knew him as an habitué, and he was always granted the carte blanche—the white card of the professional gambler. With nearly half the people he met he had a nodding acquaintance, for friendships are easily formed over the tapis vert—and as easily dropped.

Preferring the fresher air of Nice, he made his headquarters at the Hôtel Royal on the world-famed promenade, and came over to "Monte" daily by the rapide.

Much had occurred since that autumn morning when he had stood with Herbert Trendall in the big room at New Scotland Yard, much that had puzzled him, much that had held him in fear lest the ghastly truth concerning Sir Hugh should be revealed.

His own activity had been, perhaps, unparalleled. The strain of such constant travel and continual excitement would have broken most men; but he possessed an iron constitution, and though he spent weeks on end in trains and steamboats, it never affected him in the least. He could snatch sleep at any time, and he could write anywhere.

Whether or not Enid had guessed the reason of his urgent appeal to her not to pass through France, she had nevertheless managed to excuse herself; but a week after Mrs. Caldwell's departure she had travelled alone by the Harwich-Antwerp route, evidently much to the annoyance of the alert doctor of Pimlico.

Walter had impressed upon her the desirability of not entering France—without, however, giving any plain reason. He left her to guess.

Through secret sources in Paris he had learnt how poor Paul Le Pontois was still awaiting trial. In order not to excite public opinion, the matter was being kept secret by the French authorities, and it had been decided that the inquiry should be held with closed doors.

A week after his arrest the French police received additional evidence against him in the form of a cryptic telegram addressed to the Château, an infamous and easily deciphered message which, no doubt, had been sent with the distinct purpose of strengthening the amazing charge against him. He protested entire ignorance of the sender and of the meaning of the message, but his accusers would not accept any disclaimer. So cleverly, indeed, had the message been worded that at the Sûreté it was believed to refer to the price he had received for certain bundles of spurious notes.