A Queen's Error Part 2

CHAPTER II

THE MAN WITH THE GLa.s.s EYE

I took a note of the number of the house--it was 190 Monmouth Street--and gazed a little while at its neglected exterior before I walked away into the mist towards my hotel.

Over the whole of the front windows faded Venetian blinds were drawn down; it was one of those houses, sometimes met with, shut up for no apparent reason, and without any intention on the part of the owner, apparently, to dispose of it, for there was no board up. It was not until later that I learned that the house belonged to the old lady herself.

I returned to my hotel, that luxurious resort of the wealthy and rheumatic, its well furnished interior looking particularly comfortable in the ruddy glow of two immense fires in the hall. I had left it early in the afternoon, before the lamps were lit, tired of being indoors; the change was most agreeable from the damp, misty atmosphere without.

I betook myself to the smoking-room, and, being a lover of the beverage, ordered tea, with the addition of b.u.t.tered toast. Delighted with the big glowing fire in the room, and believing myself to be alone, I threw myself back luxuriously into a big, saddle-bag chair.

As it ran back with the impetus of my descent into it, it jammed into one behind, and from this immediately arose a very indignant face which looked into mine as I turned round. It was a dark, foreign-looking face, the red face of a man who wore a black moustache and a little imperial, and whose bloodshot brown eyes simply _glared_ through a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez. There was something very strange about these eyes.

"I really beg your pardon," I said. "I didn't know you were there!"

The fierce expression of the bloodshot eyes changed to one of somewhat forced amiability.

"Pray don't apologise," he answered, with just the merest touch of a foreign accent in his voice, that sort of undetectable accent which some men of cosmopolitan habits possess, though they are rarely met with.

"I think I must have been asleep," he added, "and the little shock awoke me from a disagreeable dream. There is really so little to do in this place besides bathing and sleeping."

"And water drinking," I suggested, with a smile.

"I do as little of that," he answered hastily, with a grimace, "as I possibly can. By the bye though," he continued, wheeling round his chair sociably beside mine, "do you know that the Bath water taken _hot_ with a good dash of whisky in it and two lumps of sugar is not half bad?"

I took a good look at his face as he sat leering at me through his gla.s.ses. From the congested look of it, I could quite believe that he had sampled this mixture, or others of a similar alcoholic nature, sufficiently to give an opinion on the point; his bloodshot eyes also testified to the fact.

But concerning these latter features, the reason of the curious look about them was solved by the firelight; one of them was of gla.s.s! I saw that it remained stationary whilst the other leered round the corner of the gold-rimmed pince-nez at me. It was a very good imitation, and was made _bloodshot_ to match the other.

My tea and b.u.t.tered toast arrived now, and I made a vigorous attack upon the latter.

"The idea of mixing whisky with Bath water," I replied, laughing, "never struck me. It appears novel."

"I can a.s.sure you," continued my new acquaintance, "that many of the old men who are ordered here to Bath do it, and I should not be surprised to hear that it is a practice among the old ladies too. Look at their faces as they come waddling down to table d'hote!"

This appeared to me rather a disrespectful remark with regard to the opposite s.e.x, and I answered him somewhat stiffly, "I hope you are deceived."

He was not a tactful person by any means: he made an observation then concerning my tea and b.u.t.tered toast.

"I really wonder," he said, "how you can drink that stuff," with a nod towards my cup. "It would make me sick; put it away and have a whisky and soda with me?"

I naturally considered this a very rude remark from a perfect stranger.

"I am much obliged," I snapped, "but I prefer tea."

At that moment I put my hand in my pocket for my cigarette case. I thought I would give this man one to stop his tiresome talking; as I pulled it out the key of the safe which the old lady had given me fell out with it. Before I could stoop and pick it up myself the man with the gla.s.s eye had got it. He put it up close to his good eye and examined it critically. "What an extraordinary key!" he observed.

"Where did you get it?"

Then he saw the letter C which was worked among the elaborate tracery of the handle, and he became greatly agitated.

"Where did you get this from?" he repeated abruptly.

I did not answer; I got up from my seat and took the key out of his hand; he was by no means willing to part with it.

"Excuse me," I said.

Then with the key safe in my pocket and my hand over it, I walked out of the smoking-room, leaving behind me two pieces of b.u.t.tered toast and perhaps a cup and a half of excellent tea all wasted.

I am a delicately const.i.tuted individual, and I preferred smoking my cigarette all alone in a corner of the big hall, to consuming my usual allowance of tea and b.u.t.tered toast in the society of the gla.s.s-eyed person in the smoking-room. I considered that I was doing a little intellectual fast all by myself.

I saw nothing more of my friend of the false brown optic that evening, except that I observed his bloodshot eye of the flesh fixed scathingly upon me from a remote corner of the great dining-room, where he appeared to be dining mostly off a large bottle of champagne.

I sauntered away my evening as I had done the others of my first week's "cure" in Bath, making a fair division of it between the dining-room, the smoking-room and the reading-room. I did not go near the drawing-room; its occupants consisted solely of a few obese ladies of the type referred to by the gentleman with the gla.s.s eye, wearing such palpable wigs that my artistic susceptibilities were sorely wounded at the mere sight of them, and my sense of decency outraged.

I went to bed in my great room over-looking the river and the weir, and I lay awake listening to its rus.h.i.+ng waters, for the night was warm and almost summer-like, as it happens sometimes in a fine November, and my windows were open.

I suppose I fell asleep, for when I was again conscious, the Abbey clock struck four; at the same moment I became aware that some one was in my room. I could discern the figure of a man in the shadow of the wardrobe near the chair on which I had placed my clothes when I took them off. I leant over the side of the bed and switched on the electric light; the figure turned. It was the dark man with the gla.s.s eye!

"What the devil are you doing in my room?" I asked in none too polite a tone.

He was not at all disconcerted, but stood looking at me, replacing his pince-nez.

"Well, really," he replied, "wonders will never cease. I thought I was in my own room!"

I knew he was lying.

"I fail to perceive," I said, sitting up in bed, "in what manner you could have mistaken this room for your own. In the first place the door is locked."

"Just so," remarked my visitor, "that's exactly where it is; I came in at the window."

"The window?" I repeated.

"Yes, the window. I couldn't sleep, so took a stroll up and down the balconies, and when I returned to my room, as I thought, I came in here by mistake."

The excuse was plausible, but I didn't believe a word of it. I was in a dilemma, and sat scratching my head. I could not prove that the man was lying, and therefore had to take his word.

"Very well, then," I said in a compromising tone, "having made the mistake, and it being now nearly five, perhaps you will be able to find your way back to your room and go to sleep."

I thought I was putting the request in as polite a manner as possible, and I expected him to move off at once.

He did nothing of the kind. With a quick movement of his hand to his hip, he produced a revolver and covered me with it.

"Where's that key?" he asked.

He took my breath away for a few moments and I couldn't answer him, then I regained my presence of mind.