Louis Tracy

The streets were comparatively deserted as they drove quickly up Whitehall and crossed the south side of Trafalgar Square. It is a common belief, even among Londoners themselves, that the traffic is dense in the main thoroughfares at all hours of the night until twelve o’clock has long past.

But to the experienced eye there is a marked hiatus between half-past nine and eleven o’clock. At such a time Charing Cross is negotiable, Piccadilly Circus loses much of its terror, and a hansom may turn out of Regent Street into Oxford Street without the fare being impelled to clutch convulsively at the brass window-slide in a make-believe effort to save the vehicle from being crushed like a walnut shell between two heavy ’buses.

Such considerations did not appeal to the barrister and his companion on this occasion.

For some inexplicable cause they both felt that they were in a desperate hurry.

A momentary stoppage at the turn into Orchard Street caused each man to swear, quite unconsciously. Now that the supreme moment in this most painful investigation was at hand they resented the slightest delay. Though they were barely fifteen minutes in the cab, it seemed an hour before they alighted at Wensley House, Portman Square.

In response to an imperative ring a footman appeared. Instead of answering the barrister’s question as to whether Sir Charles was at home or not, he said: “You are Mr. Bruce, sir, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Sir Charles is at home, but he retired to his room before dinner. He is not well, and he may have gone to bed, but he said that if you came you were to be admitted. I will ask Mr. Thompson.”

“Better send Thompson to me,” said Bruce decisively; and in a minute the old butler stood before him.

“I hear that Sir Charles has retired for the night,” said Claude.

Thompson had caught sight of the detective standing on the steps. A few hours earlier he had himself told him that the baronet was out of town. It was an awkward dilemma, and he coughed doubtingly while he racked his brains for a judicious answer.

But Bruce grasped his difficulty. “It is all right, Thompson. Mr. White quite understands the position. Do you think Sir Charles is in bed?”

“I will go and see, sir. He was very anxious that you should be sent upstairs if you called. But that was when he was in the library.”

Bruce and the detective entered the hall, the butler closed the door behind them, and then solemnly ascended the stairs to Sir Charles Dyke’s bedroom, which was situated on the first floor along a corridor towards the back of the house.

They distinctly heard the polite knock at the door and Thompson’s query, “Are you asleep, Sir Charles?”

After a pause, there was another knock, and the same question in a slightly louder key.

Then the butler returned, saying as he came down the stairs:

“Sir Charles seems to be sound asleep, sir.”

Bruce and the detective exchanged glances. The barrister was disappointed, almost perturbed, but he said:

“In that case we will not disturb him. Sir Charles does not often retire so early.”

“No, sir. I have never known him to go to his room so early before. He told me not to serve dinner, as he wasn’t well. He would not let me get anything for him. He just took some wine, and I have not seen him since.”

“Since when?”

“About 7.30, sir.”

Bruce turned to depart, but Thompson, with the privilege of an old servant when talking to one whom he knew to be on familiar terms with his master, whispered:

“That there blessed maid turned up again this afternoon, sir.”

The barrister started violently.

“Not Jane Harding, surely?”

“Yes, sir. She came at four o’clock and asked for Sir Charles, as bold as brass.”

“Did he see her?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“Do you hear that, White?”

The detective nodded.

“She must have reached the house about half-an-hour before me,” he said, addressing the butler.

“That’s about right, sir.”

“But I understood,” went on Bruce, “that Sir Charles was not at home to ordinary callers?”

Thompson shuffled about somewhat uneasily. He wished now he had held his tongue.

“I had my orders, sir,” he murmured, in extenuation of his apparently diverse actions.

“Tell me what your orders were,” persisted Bruce.

The man hesitated, not wishful to offend his master’s friend, but too well trained to reveal the explicit instructions given him by Sir Charles Dyke.

“Do not be afraid. I will explain everything to Sir Charles personally. We cannot best judge what to do—whether to wake him or not—unless we know the position,” went on the barrister.

Thus absolved from blame, Thompson took from his waistcoat pocket a folded sheet of notepaper.

“I don’t pretend to understand the reason, sir,” he said, “but Sir Charles wrote this himself, and told me to be careful to obey him exactly.”

The barrister eagerly grasped the note and read:

“If Mr. Bruce, Jane Harding, or Mrs. Hillmer should call, admit any of them immediately. To all others say that I have left town—some days ago, should they ask you.

“C. D.”

White, round-eyed and bullet-headed, gazed with goggle orbs over Bruce’s shoulder.

“That settles it, Mr. Bruce,” he said. “We must see him.”

“Thompson,” said Bruce, “does Sir Charles usually lock his door?”

“Never, sir.”

“Very well. Knock again, and then try the door. We will go with you.”

Something in the barrister’s manner rather than his words sent a cold shiver down the old butler’s spine.

“I do hope there’s nothing wrong, sir,” he commenced; but Bruce was already half-way up the stairs. Both he and White guessed what had happened. They knew that poor Thompson’s repeated summons at the bedroom door would remain forever unanswered—that the unfortunate baronet had quitted the dread certainties of this world for the uncertainties of the next.

They were not mistaken. A few minutes later they found him listlessly drooping over the side of the chair in which he was seated, partly undressed, and seemingly overcome at the moment when he was about to take off his boots.

On a table near him were two bottles, both half-emptied, and an empty wineglass. Each of the bottles bore the label of a well-known chemist. One was endorsed “Sleeping-draught,” the other “Poison,” and “Chloral.”

The three men were pale as the limp, inanimate form in the chair while they silently noted these details. Bruce raised the head of his friend in the hope that life might not yet be extinct. But Sir Charles Dyke had taken his measures effectually. Though the rigor mortis had not set in, he had evidently been dead some time.

Thompson, quite beside himself with grief, dropped to his knees by his master’s side.

“Sir Charles!” he wailed. “Sir Charles! For the love of Heaven, speak to us. You can’t be dead. Oh, you can’t. It ain’t fair. You’re too young to die. What curse has come upon the house that both should go?”

Bruce leaned over and shook the old butler firmly by the shoulder.

“Thompson,” he said impressively, for now that the crisis he feared had come and gone, he exercised full control over himself. “Thompson, if you ever wished to serve Sir Charles you must do so now by remaining calm. For his sake, help us, and do not create an unnecessary scene.”

Governed by the more powerful nature, the affrighted man struggled to his feet.

“What shall I do?” he whimpered. “Shall I send for a doctor?”

“Yes; say Sir Charles is very ill. Not a word to a soul about what has happened until we have carefully examined the room.”

At that instant Mr. White caught sight of a large and bulky envelope, which had fallen to the floor near the chair on which Sir Charles was seated.

Picking it up, he found it was addressed, “Claude Bruce, Esq. To be delivered to him at once.”

“This will explain matters, I expect,” said the detective.

“Whatever could have come to my master to do such a thing?” groaned Thompson, turning to reach the door.

“Come back,” cried Bruce sharply. “Now, look here, Thompson,” he went on, placing both his hands on the butler’s shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes, “it is imperative that you should pull yourself together. That sort of remark will never do. Sir Charles has simply taken an over-dose of chloral accidentally. He has slept badly ever since Lady Dyke’s death, you understand, and has been in the habit of taking sleeping-draughts. Now, before you leave the room tell me exactly what has happened, in your own language.”

“I can’t put it together now, sir, but I won’t say anything to anybody. You can trust me for that. Why, I loved him as my own son, I did.”

“Yes, I know that well. But remember. An over-dose. An accident. Nothing else. Do you follow me?”

“Quite, sir. Heaven help us all.”

“Very well. Now send for the doctor, without needlessly alarming the other servants.”

Bruce placed the envelope in the pocket of his overcoat, saying to the detective:

“We will examine this later, White. Just now we must do what we can to avoid a scandal. The case between Lady Dyke and her husband will be settled by a higher tribunal than we had counted upon.”

“It certainly looks like an accident, Mr. Bruce,” was the answer, “but it all depends upon the view the doctor takes. And you know, of course, that I shall have to report the actual facts to my superiors.”

“That is obvious. Yet no harm is done at this early stage in taking such steps as may finally render undue publicity needless. It may be impossible; but on the other hand, until we have heard Sir Charles’s version, contained, I suppose, in this letter to me, it is advisable to sustain the theory of an accidental death.”

“Anything I can do to help you will be done,” replied the detective. With that they dropped the subject, and more carefully scrutinized the room.

To all intents and purposes Sir Charles Dyke might, indeed, have brought about the catastrophe inadvertently. The sleeping-draught bore the ledger number of its prescription, and there is nothing unusual in a patient striving to help the cautious dose ordered by a physician by the addition of a more powerful nostrum.

His partly dressed state, too, argued that he had taken the fatal mixture at a time when he contemplated retiring to rest forthwith. A fire still burned in the grate. On the mantelpiece—in a position where the baronet must see it until the moment when all things faded from his vision—was a beautiful miniature of his wife.

The detective, with professional nonchalance, soon sat down. There was nothing to do but await the arrival of the doctor, and, having heard his report, go home.

In the quietude of the room, with the strain relaxed, Bruce was profoundly moved by the spectacle of his dead friend. Whatever his logical faculties might argue, he could not regard this man as a murderer. If Lady Dyke met her death at his hand then it must have been the result of some terrible mistake—of some momentary outburst of passion which never contemplated such a sequel.

Poisons which kill by stupefaction do not distort their victims as in cases where violent irritants are used. Sir Charles Dyke seemed to live in a deep sleep, exhausted by toil or pain—sleep the counterfeit of death—while the bright colors and speaking eyes of the miniature counterfeited life. Standing between these two—both the mere images of the man and the woman he had known so well—the barrister insensibly felt that at last they had peace.

It was his first experience of the tremendous change in the relationship established by death. It utterly overpowered him. No mere words could express his emotions. Between him and those that had been was imposed the impenetrable wall of eternity.

A bustle in the hall beneath aroused him from his grief-stricken stupor, and Mr. White’s commonplace tones sounded strange to his ears.

“Here’s the doctor.”

A well-known physician hastened to the room. Thompson had carefully followed instructions. The doctor was not prepared for the condition of affairs that a glance revealed to his practised eye.

“Surely he is not dead?” he cried, looking from the form in the chair to the two men.

Bruce answered him:

“Yes, for some hours, I fear, but we wanted to avoid spreading unnecessary rumors until—”

“I understand. My poor friend! How came this to happen?”

The skilled practitioner merely lifted one of the dead man’s eyelids, and then turned to examine the bottles on the table.

“My own prescription,” he said, after tasting the contents of one phial. “Ah, this was bad; why did he not consult me?” and he sadly shook his head as he tasted the remaining liquid in the second.

“What do you make of it?” said Bruce.

He looked the other steadily in the face and the doctor interpreted the cause of his anxiety.

“A clear case of accidental poisoning,” he replied. “Sir Charles has consulted me several times during the past week on account of his extreme insomnia. I specifically warned him against overdoing my treatment. Change of air, exercise, and diet are the true specifics for sleeplessness, especially when induced, as his was, by a morbid state of mind.”

“You mean—”

“That Sir Charles has never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death. I did not know of it myself until it was announced recently, and I gathered from him that the manner of her demise was partly unaccounted for. Altogether, it is a sad business that such a couple should be taken in such a manner.”

Mr. White was industriously taking notes the while, and the doctor regarded him with a questioning look.

“This gentleman is in the police,” explained Bruce.

“Indeed!”

“Yes. We came here by mere accident. Mr. White and I were engaged in an important inquiry—the cause of Lady Dyke’s disappearance, in fact—and we hurried here at a late hour to consult with Sir Charles. Hence our presence and this discovery.”

“How strange!”

“There is no reason now,” broke in the detective, “why the body should not be moved?”

Claude shuddered at the phrase. It suggested the inevitable.

“Not in the least. I am quite satisfied as to the cause of death.”

The despatch of telegrams and other necessary details kept Bruce busily employed until two o’clock. Not until he reached the privacy of his own library was he able to break the seal of the packet left for him as the final act and word of the late Sir Charles Dyke.

CHAPTER XXIX