The Secret House Part 25

She avoided his glance, and sat twining the cord of her sunshade about her fingers.

"There is n.o.body else--definitely," she said.

"Or tentatively?" he insisted.

"There are always tentative people in life," she smiled, parrying his question. "I think, Frank, you stand as great a chance as anybody." She shrugged her shoulders. "I speak as though I were some wonderful prize to be bestowed; I a.s.sure you I do not feel at all like that. I have a very humble opinion of my own qualities. I do not think I have felt so meek or so modest about my own qualities as I do just now."

He walked with her to the end of the park, and saw her into a taxicab, standing on the pavement and watching as she was whirled into the enveloping traffic, out of sight.

As for Doris Gray, she herself was suffering from some uneasiness of mind. She needed a shock to make her realize one way or the other where her affections lay. Poltavo loomed very largely; his face, his voice, the very atmosphere which enveloped him, was constantly present with her.

She reached Brakely Square and would have pa.s.sed straight up to her room, but the butler, with an air of importance, stopped her.

"I have a letter here, miss. It is very urgent. The messenger asked that it should be placed in your hands at the earliest possible moment."

She took the letter from him. It was addressed to her in typewritten characters. She stripped the envelope and found yet another inside. On it was typewritten:

"Read this letter when you are absolutely alone. Lock the door and be sure that n.o.body is near when you read it."

She raised her pretty eyebrows. What mystery was this? she asked. Still, she was curious enough to carry out the request. She went straight to her own room, opened the envelope, and took out a letter containing half a dozen lines of writing.

She gasped, and went white, for she recognized the hand the moment her eyes fell upon it. The letter she held in her shaking hand ran:

"I command you to marry Frank Doughton within seven days. My whole fortune and my very life may depend upon this."

It was signed "Gregory Farrington," and heavily underlined beneath the signature were the words, "Burn this, as you value my safety."

T. B. Smith stepped briskly into the office of his chief and closed the door behind him.

"What is the news?" asked Sir George, looking up.

"I can tell you all the news that I know," said T. B., "and a great deal that I do not know, but only surmise."

"Let us hear the facts first and the romance afterwards," growled Sir George, leaning back in his chair.

"Fact one," said T. B. drawing up a chair to the table, and ticking off his fact on the first finger of his hand, "is that Gregory Farrington is alive. The man whose body was picked up in the Thames is undoubtedly the gentleman who was shot in the raid upon the Custom House. The inference is, that Gregory was the second party in the raid, and that the attempt to secure the trunk of the admirable Dr. Goldworthy was carefully conceived. The box apparently contained a diary which gave away Gregory to one who had it in her power to do him an immense amount of harm."

"You refer to Lady Constance Dex?" asked the chief, interestedly.

T. B. nodded.

"That is the lady," he said. "Evidently Farrington has played it pretty low down upon her; was responsible for the death of her lover, and, moreover, for a great deal of her unhappiness. Farrington was the man who told George Doughton about some scandal of her youth, and Doughton, that high-spirited man, went straight off to Africa without communicating with the lady or discovering how far she was guilty in the matter. The doc.u.ments in the box would, I surmise, prove this to Lady Dex's satisfaction, and Farrington, who was well informed through his agents on the Coast, would have every reason for preventing these letters getting into the hands of a woman who would be remorseless in her vengeance."

"Is that fact established?" asked the chief.

"Pretty well," said T. B.

He took some papers out of his pocket and laid them on the desk before him.

"I have now got a copy of the letter which the dead lover wrote to Lady Constance. I need not say," he said lightly, "how I obtained possession of this, but we in our department do not hesitate to adopt the most drastic methods----"

"I know all about that," said the chief, with a little smile; "there was burglary at the rectory two days ago, and I presume your interesting burglar was your own Private Sikes."

"Exactly," said T. B. cheerfully. "Fact number two," he went on, "is that Gregory Farrington and the international blackmailer named Montague Fallock are one and the same person."

The chief looked up.

"You do not mean that?"

"I do indeed," said T. B. "That interesting paragraph in the will of the late Mr. Farrington confirms this view. The will was especially prepared to put me off the scent. Letters which have been received by eminent personages signed 'Montague Fallock' and demanding, as usual, money with threats of exposure have recently been received and confirm this theory."

"Where is Montague Fallock now?"

"Montague Fallock is an inmate of the Secret House," said T. B.

"It seems pretty easy to take him, does it not?" asked Sir George, in surprise. "Have you moved in the matter?"

T. B. shook his head.

"It is not so easy as you imagine," he said. "The Secret House contains more secrets than we can at present unravel. It was built, evidently and obviously, by a man of extraordinary mechanical genius as Farrington was, and the primary object with which it was built was to enable him on some future occasion to make his escape. I am perfectly certain that any attempt to raid the house would result immediately in the bird flying.

We have got to wait patiently."

"What I cannot understand," said his chief, after awhile, "is why he should make a dramatic exit from the world."

"That is the easiest of all to explain," smiled T. B. "He was scared; he knew that I identified him with the missing Fallock; he knew, too, that I strongly suspected him of the murder of the two men in Brakely Square.

Don't you see the whole thing fits together? He imported from various places on the Continent, and at various periods, workmen of every kind to complete the house at Great Bradley. Although he began his work thirty years ago, the actual finis.h.i.+ng touches have not been made until within the last few years. Those finis.h.i.+ng touches were the most essential. I have discovered that the two men who were shot in Brakely Square, were separately and individually employed in making certain alterations to the house and installing certain machinery.

"One was a young architect, the other was a general utility man. They were unknown to each other; each did his separate piece of work and was sent back to his native land. By some mischance they succeeded in discovering who their employer was, and they both arrived, unfortunately for them, simultaneously at the door of Fallock or Farrington's house with the object of blackmailing him. Farrington overheard the conversation; he admitted as much.

"He stood at the door, saw them flouris.h.i.+ng their pistols and thought it was an excellent opportunity to rid himself of a very serious danger. He shot them from the doorway, closed the doorway behind him, and returned the revolver to its drawer in his study, and came down in time to meet the policeman with energetic protestations of his terror. I smelt the powder when I went into the house; there is no mistaking the smell of cordite fired in so confined a place as the hallway of a house. And Lady Dex was also there; she must have witnessed the shooting."

"Why did she come?" asked the chief.

"My conjecture is that she came either to confront Farrington with evidence of his complicity, which is unlikely, or else to secure confirmation of the story her lover told in his last letter."

"But why shouldn't Farrington disappear in an ordinary way--or why need he disappear at all?" asked Sir George. "He had plenty of credit in the city. He had the handling of his niece's fortune. He could have blocked out your suspicion; he is not the kind of man to be scared of a little thing like that."

"That is where I am at sea," said T. B. "I must confess his disappearance is not consistent with his known character. He certainly had the fortune of the girl, and I have no doubt in my mind that he has a very genuine affection for his niece. Her inheritance, by the way, falls due next month; I do not suppose that had anything to do with it.

If he had robbed her of it, or he had dissipated this money which was left in his care, one could have understood it, but the fact that he is dead will not restore the fortune if it is gone."

"What are you doing?" asked the chief.