The Broken Thread Part 15

The dinner was finished, and those supplementary accompaniments to the modern meal were in progress. Cigarettes--cigars--liqueurs, were in course of leisurely consumption by some people. Others were leaving, to continue their round of pleasure at theatre--revue--music-hall, or in one of the hundreds of haunts where the leisured ones congregate at night-time. Among those who were leaving were two men, both of whom carried a distinction with them. One, who was the personification of perfectly-dressed dandydom, with a drawl, nudged his companion's elbow and indicated Raife and Gilda at their table. He whispered to his companion "I will tell you something about them presently." The other replied: "Do, old chap! They're a deuced handsome couple, whoever they are." They pa.s.sed out.

Others were moving, and some, as they pa.s.sed, bowed to Gilda. Raife could not get over the depression which had come over him as they had leant over the bal.u.s.trade and gazed at the sad-looking river before dinner. He found an excuse quite early in the evening and accompanied Gilda to her hotel in Bloomsbury. There was a strained manner which had broken the chain of happiness that had lasted for two weeks. Having bade adieu to Gilda he told his chauffeur to drive him to his rooms in Duke Street. When he arrived, he hastily donned a dressing-gown, and, calling his man, ordered a fire to be lit. A disturbed mind frequently desires the solace of a fire, and Raife's mind was perturbed with a sense of foreboding. A box of cigars, with a decanter of brandy and some soda-water, completed his equipment for a moody contemplation of affairs. As he reclined in the deep-set leather arm-chair, he appeared a perfect paragon of manhood. He was clad in a thin j.a.panese silk dressing-gown of many and bright-hued colours. The sombre black of his evening clothes underneath, heightened by the dazzling brilliancy of a broad expanse of s.h.i.+rt-front, completed the colour scheme, revealed in the subdued light from a shaded lamp on the small oriental table at his side. Trouble sat heavily on his handsome countenance, as he gazed into the crackling flames of the fire that his man, Pulman, had recently lit.

"Anything more, sir?" asked that discreet person, a fine type of the unrivalled English manservant.

"Nothing more, Pulman." And as the door was being softly closed, he called out: "Oh, Pulman, I don't want to be disturbed."

"Very good, sir," and he retired. As he disappeared downstairs he said to himself: "Ten to one there's a woman in the case. That ain't at all like Sir Raife, leastways, not as I have known him all these years."

Pulman sighed a sigh of wisdom as he opened the door in the bas.e.m.e.nt on his way up the area-steps to a neighbouring hostelry.

Left to himself, and secure from intrusion, Raife rose from his chair and crossed the room to a small black cabinet of exquisite design.

Producing a tiny bunch of keys he opened the door of the cabinet, and from a small door within, which sprung open as he touched a spring, he took forth a richly-chased and jewelled miniature frame. The miniature portrait was of Gilda Tempest. He gazed at it, and, as is the wont of young men who gaze at the portraits of their lady love in the seclusion of their own room, he touched it lightly with his lips. Then a sudden twinge seemed to attack him, and a pained expression pervaded his face.

He looked at it lovingly, and muttering: "Ah! If I only knew. What is this unfathomable mystery?"--he replaced it in the drawer.

Raife sat long and moodily. He helped himself freely with the brandy and soda, but the stimulant did not soothe his troubled mind.

After a certain hour the streets of St James's are silent, and Duke Street, where Raife's rooms were situated, is not an exception.

To-night the very quietude, which is generally desirable, oppressed him further. Rising again from his chair, he removed his dressing-gown and donned a long overcoat and a golf-cap. Choosing a stout walking-stick, he went out into the night. The streets of St James's are well guarded by police, but the city nightbird is witty in his ways, at the same time, evasive and elusive. As Raife swung into Jermyn Street, he was conscious of a figure that slouched behind him. Stopping abruptly at the corner of St James's Street, he wheeled around to find that the figure was now walking in the other direction, or rather did he appear to crawl. Raife walked down St James's Street, and at the bottom he chartered a pa.s.sing taxi. Chance enters largely into the movements of the lovelorn mind, and chance impelled him to direct the driver to Hammersmith. At the wide junction of streets called the Broadway, he dismissed the taxi and wandered around for a while. He noticed another taxi pull up almost immediately after his own, and a familiar figure in a long coat and flowing tie, got out and crossed to a coffee-stall.

Curiosity prompted him to follow. Some heavy traffic impeded his progress for about half a minute, and when he reached the coffee-stall the figure had disappeared. He called for a cup of coffee which he did not drink.

The trouble entered his mind again and he soliloquised: "Was he being shadowed? If so, why? Who was this mysterious figure, and where had they met before?"

"Bah!" he exclaimed aloud. "What do I care?" The coffee-stall keeper looked at him, and, with a wide experience of such matters, a.s.sumed that he had been drinking.

Raife sauntered away, leaving his coffee untouched, which more than ever confirmed the coffee-man's view of the subject. Again a blind impulse steered Raife, and he found himself wandering among the queer little streets and alley-ways that fringe the riverside and lead to Hammersmith Mall. The tide was high and the dull swish of the water, as it swung past the moored barges, soothed his troubled mind for a while, and he became engrossed in the strangeness of his weird surroundings. A slight mist came off the river and added to the mystery. He had now reached that part of the Mall made famous by William Morris, and those brilliant men who founded the Kelmscott Press, and restored the merits of English typography and printing. The houses of Chiswick Mall and Hammersmith Mall are famous for their old-world charm, and many of them suggest, from without, the wealth and comfort within.

Time flies quickly to the engrossed and contemplative mind. Raife had seated himself on a sort of disused capstan, and was gazing at the river as he smoked his pipe. At rare intervals, he heard footsteps in the distance, and a.s.sumed they were bargees, or other workmen, going to their nightly occupations. The rumble and clink of machinery proclaimed the proximity of a brewery that does not distinguish between night and day in its operations.

Once, looking round, as he imagined footsteps that were too stealthy for those of a British workman, he fancied he saw the mysterious figure of Jermyn Street and the Broadway. He chased away the thought as merely fanciful and the result of his perturbed brain. The incident trended in his thoughts, however, towards that persistent person. Presently, it flashed through his mind and brought a crowd of recollections to him: the curious meeting with Gilda at Nice; the message conveyed by the little Italian girl among the orange groves by moonlight; the message delivered at the entrance of the cafe!

Yes! He was sure now. It was that Apache fellow, who looked as though he might be from the Latin quarter of Paris, and yet was not. But had not Gilda told him that he was killed in the motor smash outside Cuneo?

Again he said: "Bah! What does it matter? Or, what do I care?"

With a suddenness that took him quite off his guard he was seized from behind. His arms were pinioned in a firm grip, whilst another man, holding a revolver, went through his pockets. As becomes an outraged Englishman, whether he be plebeian or aristocrat, Raife swore violently, and struggled viciously. At length, the man who searched his pockets, said: "It's all right, sir, he's got no weapon or arms." Still holding the pistol in front, his arms were released from behind. Raife turned to face the man with the iron grip who had pinioned him so easily. Both men gave a start and an exclamation of surprise.

"Good heavens! Herrion--Inspector--what's the meaning of this?"

demanded Raife.

"Well," said Inspector Herrion, for it was he, the immaculate Scarlet Pimpernel of Scotland Yard, "we hardly expected, Sir Raife, to find you here, at this hour of the night."

Raife laughed, and said: "I couldn't sleep, so I took a stroll."

"Rather a long stroll, Sir Raife, from St James's to the Mall, Hammersmith, in the middle of the night," said Herrion with a curious smile. "May I call on you in the morning, sir?" he added.

"Why to be sure, I'll be delighted to see you. But leave that infernal grip of yours behind," and they both laughed.

At this moment there was a trampling of bushes in the garden behind, the swinging and slamming of a heavy iron gate, and then a shout: "Stop him!" A cloaked form, with flowing tie, dashed past a few yards from where the trio stood. They joined in hot pursuit, but the Apache, for it was he, was fleet of foot and had a good start. Further, he seemed to know every alley and byway in this maze of wharves and streets.

Taking part in the chase, Raife was handicapped by his ignorance of the neighbourhood, and, at the outset, ran into a post in the dark and placed himself _hors de combat_ in the matter of speed. Raife was a runner, but to charge full tilt into a post was a sore handicap. After a while, Herrion, the dapper, little detective-inspector, was the only one left in the chase, and he ran as well as the Apache, but the Apache had the start, and, with the inherited cunning of his breed, understood the art of doubling. The inspector was unfamiliar with these alleys and slums, and it looked as though the Apache had got clean away. They came to a _cul de sac_ and there was no trace of him. With the consummate skill of his cla.s.s, he had vanished into s.p.a.ce and was gone. The two policemen and Raife retraced their steps and met other officers.

Herrion was not the type of man to abandon his quarry without taxing his extraordinary resources to the end. He deployed his men to the best of their knowledge of the locality.

A rat will hide from its pursuer with great cunning, but even a rat will lose its way in a clumsy manner, sometimes. That Apache had reckoned without the state of the tide. He had wormed his way out of the _cul de sac_, and had intended to hide among some launches in one of the creeks that find their way in sh.o.r.e, if it had not been high tide. He had lost time, and, in his efforts to redouble his tracks, was sighted by Herrion, who at once started in pursuit. The Apache turned and ran.

Something caused him to stumble, and over he plunged into the swinging tide, to be sucked under a barge and drowned--or to escape again. They searched in vain.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

RAIFE'S RESOLVE.

On the day succeeding Raife's night excursion, having refreshed himself by a little sleep, that had come readily after the night's adventure, and those aids that come to a rich man in rooms in St James's, he was planning a day's pleasure-hunting with Gilda. He was writing a note, making an appointment, when his man, Pulman, entered and announced a visitor. "Mr Herrion wishes to see you, sir."

"Ask him in, Pulman, I'll see him at once," said Raife.

Inspector Herrion entered, immaculately clad, as usual, but without the drawl in his speech which he used princ.i.p.ally at society functions, and when he felt it would serve him in his work.

"Good morning, Herrion," said Raife, cheerily, and with extended hand.

"What were we chasing that fellow last night for? I got so keen on the hunt, I forgot to ask what it was all about."

Herrion smiled a cryptic smile, and then said solemnly: "Sir Raife, I want to speak very seriously to you on a subject that concerns you deeply, and the rest of your family."

"Great Scott! Herrion, what's the meaning of this? What's it all about? You look like an undertaker. Come, my dear fellow, what's it all about?"

"Well, Sir Raife, I am speaking to you entirely outside my professional capacity. If you take offence, I can't help it. I shall be very sorry, but, I repeat, I can't help it. It is the high regard in which I hold you and your family that prompts me to speak."

Raife laughed heartily and said: "Come, come, Herrion, you're getting worse and worse. I shan't take offence. Sail ahead and tell me all about it. First of all, have a drink."

"Well, I take you at your word, but please listen to me to the end."

Raife dispensed the drinks and Herrion proceeded:

"The man we chased last night was one of a gang of burglars. I had word they were making an attempt on Gildersley House, which contains a lot of valuable property, and there is jewellery and plate, too. I was right.

Somehow, we did not succeed in catching them. When I seized you, I did not, of course, recognise you, and I thought you were one of the gang."

Raife intervened. "I think that's rather amusing, don't you?"

"No, Sir Raife, I fear not. That Apache-looking fellow is practically in the employ of a certain Doctor Malsano."

Raife started, and his expression became engrossed.

"The important part of what I want to say is," proceeded the detective, "that, although it is merely a coincidence that you should have been in the middle of the night on the scene of an attempted burglary, I saw you, earlier in the evening, dining at the Savoy with a Miss Gilda Tempest, who is supposed to be the niece of this Doctor Malsano."

Raife sprang from his seat and said: "Come, come, Herrion, I can't hear a word against Miss Tempest."

"I ask you to keep cool, Sir Raife, until I explain to you how serious is the situation. It is incredible to feel that your good name--Sir Raife Remington--should be a.s.sociated with a gang of continental swindlers, of whom this lady is the decoy."

Again Raife hotly intervened. "I must ask you, Herrion, not to drag Miss Tempest's name into the dust."

"It is true, I think you will agree, that my professional position ent.i.tles me to speak."