The Sign of the Stranger

“Why? I have no fear in London in broad daylight,” I smiled.

“Ah! You don’t know,” she cried. “In dealing with her, you are dealing with a person who would hesitate at nothing in order to attain her own ends. Until now, although a word from her could give me my freedom from this imminent danger that threatens to overtake me, she has kept silence and watched for my downfall.”

“I will compel her to confess,” I cried fiercely. “If it is within human power to save you, Lolita, I will do so. Trust me, because I love you.”

She sighed, and again her eyes were dimmed by tears.

“And if you hear strange tales about me, certain allegations of – shameful stories, I mean – you will believe none of them till you have proof – will you?” she urged breathlessly, with a deep anxiety in her voice.

“No,” I promised. “I will not. To me, Lolita, you are innocent, pure and good, just as when we were boy and girl together.” And again I placed her finger-tips to my lips as seal of my allegiance to the one woman who was all the world to me.

At that instant there came a tap at the door, and I was compelled to drop her hand instantly.

Slater, the aged, white-whiskered butler, opened the door, saying in his squeaky voice —

“His lordship would like to see you, m’lady, in the library before sending a telegram – at once, if convenient.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” she answered, without turning towards the man to reveal her face. Then, when Slater had gone, she rushed to the small mirror and with her handkerchief quickly removed all traces of her tears.

“George is worrying about Marigold being alone at Aix-les-Bains,” she remarked. “I’m rather surprised he let her go. If I were a man with a young and pretty wife, I shouldn’t let her far out of my sight. But Marigold, I suppose, isn’t an ordinary woman.”

Her last sentence was indeed correct. All the world knew that the young Countess of Stanchester was the gayest and giddiest of the ultra-smart set in which she moved, and that after two years of marriage she had developed into one of the most popular and unconventional Society hostesses. The young Earl was not exactly happy – that I knew – and Lolita was usually his adviser regarding his purely domestic affairs.

Therefore, as she hurriedly put the finishing-touches to her countenance with that dexterity which a woman only possesses, she turned to me and again grasped my hand, saying —

“What I have said to-night, Willoughby, you will regard as strictly confidential. Act as I have suggested, and,” she added with a catch in her voice, “remember that you alone stand between myself – and death?”

“I promise,” I said. And opening the door, I bowed before her as she swept out, her silks swishing down the long corridor.

I closed the door again and flung myself back into my chair, utterly mystified by those fateful words. She had a secret, one that she was prepared to keep even at cost of her own life. To me, although she had not admitted that she reciprocated my love, she had entrusted her life.

Yes. I would force the mysterious Frenchwoman into confession, whoever she was. The thought of my love’s peril roused me to action, and I seated myself at my table and set to work clearing off those letters that lay heaped up unanswered.

The clock on the stables had chimed midnight before I threw down my pen, locked my drawers, and slipping on my overcoat strolled through the silent house along to the great hall, where a footman in the bright blue and gold Stanchester livery let me out into the still, balmy night.

After the warmth of my room, the air was refreshing, and as I walked on down the dark avenue towards the village, the silence was complete save for the cry of an owl and the distant barking of the hounds in the Earl’s celebrated kennels situated about a mile away. Where the trees met overhead the darkness was intense, but so often did I return home after nightfall that I knew every inch of the way.

Still pondering deeply upon my strange conversation with Lolita, I strode forward without any thought of time or place, and utterly oblivious to everything, until of a sudden I was aroused by hearing a woman’s loud, piercing shriek.

I halted on the instant and listened. I judged the sound to be about a hundred yards to the left, in the darkness. After a few seconds it was repeated.

The cry was Lolita’s! Of that I felt absolutely convinced.

Without a moment’s hesitation I rushed forward, but in the cavernous blackness could discern nothing. I halted and listened, but beyond the hooting of the owl could discern no sound of any movement among that treble row of giant beeches.

At first I tried to convince myself that those cries of distress were merely heard in my imagination, yet they were, alas! too tangible and distinct. For a full quarter of an hour I lingered there, straining eyes and ears, but all in vain.

Then, with a resolve to take the man Warr into my confidence and invoke his aid to make a search, I rushed forward to the village, awakened him, and we both returned with lanterns as quickly as we could, and began to make a methodical examination of the spot whence I had believed the sounds emanated.

I learned from Warr one very curious fact, namely, that he had been unable to go up to the Hall to deliver the letter, and it was still in his possession. It therefore seemed as though Lolita had caught sight of the stranger’s face as he peered forth from the tap-room window, and by that means knew of his unwelcome return.

For an hour we searched diligently both within the avenue and outside it, until of a sudden a cry from Warr caused my heart to leap.

“Good Heavens! Mr Woodhouse!” he gasped, bending to a clump of long grass in a deep hollow behind the huge gnarled trunk of one of the great oaks. “Come and look here!”

I dashed forward to the spot over which he held his hurricane lantern, saw what he had discovered, and stood appalled, dumbfounded, absolutely rooted to the spot.

The sight presented there rendered the mystery of that evening even more bewildering and inscrutable.

Chapter Four

Wherein a Strange Story is Told

For the moment we were both too aghast to speak.

The clump of rank high grass in the hollow had been beaten down, and in the centre, revealed by the uncertain light of our lanterns, lay a young man, whose white face and wide-open, sightless eyes told us both the terrible truth.

He had been murdered!

As I bent to examine him as he lay slightly on his side, I saw that from an ugly knife-wound in his back blood was still oozing, and had soaked into the ground around him. Both hands were tightly clenched, as though the unfortunate fellow had died in a spasm of agony, while upon one finger something shone, which I discovered to be a gold ring of curious, foreign workmanship, shaped like a large scarab, or sacred beetle, about half an inch long, and nearly as broad – an unusual ring which attracted my curiosity.

The grass around bore distinct marks of a desperate struggle, and from the position in which the young man was lying, it seemed as though, being struck suddenly, he had stumbled, fallen forward, and expired.

“He’s been murdered, sir, without a doubt,” exclaimed Warr, at last breaking the silence. “I thought you said you heard a woman’s voice?”

“So I did,” I replied, much puzzled at the discovery, for, to tell the truth, I had half-expected to find Lolita herself. Even at that moment I could have sworn that the cry was hers. “It seems, however, that I must have been mistaken.”

“But who can he be?” exclaimed the innkeeper. “He’s an utter stranger to me. I’ve certainly never seen him in Sibberton.”

“Neither have I,” was my response. “There’s some deep mystery here, depend upon it,” I added, recollecting all that Lolita had so strangely told me earlier in the evening.

“And my own opinion is that the fellow who called at my house this evening – Mr Richard Keene, as he said his name was – has had a hand in it,” Warr declared as he looked across at me, still kneeling by the young man’s body.

“Well, it certainly seems suspiciously like it. Both men are entire strangers, that’s evident.”

In order to ascertain whether there was not a spark of life still left, I undid the poor fellow’s vest and placed my hand upon his heart. There was, however, no movement. The blow had been struck with an unerring hand, while the weapon had been withdrawn and carried away by the assassin.

He was well-dressed, dark-haired, with an aquiline and somewhat refined countenance. He wore a slight, dark moustache, and I judged his age to be about twenty-three. His blue serge suit was of fine quality, but was evidently of foreign cut, and his boots were also of foreign shape and make. His hands, I felt, were soft, as though unused to work, yet where he lay, in that damp hollow, I was unable to search his clothes properly to discover a clue to his identity.

The spot where he had been attacked had certainly been chosen by some one well acquainted with the park. The hollow, once an old gravel-pit, but now overgrown with grass, was screened by the trees of the avenue, so that any one in it would be entirely hidden from view, even in broad daylight. Therefore it struck me that the unfortunate victim had been enticed there by the assassin, and foully done to death.

Yet after hearing those cries I had certainly detected no movement. The murderer must have crept silently out of the grassy hollow, and struck straight across the park to the woods half a mile away. Had any other direction been taken, I must certainly have heard his footsteps.

But the woman who had screamed. What of her?

I had, at the moment, little time for reflection. Acting upon the innkeeper’s suggestion I went off to fetch Knight, the constable, and my friend Pink, the doctor, while he remained with his lantern beside the victim of the tragedy.

As soon as the doctor saw him he shook his head, declaring that the wound had proved fatal a few minutes after he had been struck, while the constable, alive to the importance of the occasion, commenced suggesting all sorts of wild theories regarding the dead stranger. Disregarding them all, however, we obtained a hurdle, and Warr and Knight carried the body down the dark avenue, a strange and weird procession, our way lit uncertainly by the swing lanterns, our voices awed and hushed in the presence of the unknown dead.

The men deposited their inanimate burden in an outhouse at the back of the village inn to await the inquest which Pink declared would be necessary, and then, with a better light and the door closed against any prying intruder, we examined the dead man’s pockets to see whether they contained anything that might throw light on the tragic affair or lead to his identification.

The constable, with the officiousness of his class, took out a ponderous note-book and with a stubby piece of pencil commenced to make an inventory of what we found – a pocket-knife, about three pounds ten in money, a gold French piece of twenty francs, a gun-metal watch and plated chain, a few loose cigarettes a box of matches, a pawn-ticket shewing that a lady’s necklet had been pledged in the name of Bond, with a pawnbroker in the Westminster Bridge Road, about a year ago. Beyond that there was no clue to the dead man’s name. We were all disappointed, for the mystery surrounding him was heightened by the absence of any letter in his pocket or name upon his underclothing. Men who go to a pawnshop do not usually give their real names, hence we knew that Bond was assumed. Indeed, in pawnbroking the name of the person offering the pledge is never even asked, the assistant filling up the voucher in any name that comes to him.

While the others were making careful examination of the maker’s name and number of the dead man’s watch, I chanced to hold his waistcoat in my hand, when between my fingers I felt something like a letter. In an instant I was prompted to take possession of it secretly, and this I managed to do, first crushing it into the palm of my hand, then transferring it to my pocket.

Was it possible that the crisp paper so cunningly concealed in the lining of the waistcoat contained a clue? My heart beat quickly, and I longed to escape from the place and examine it in secret. If Lolita had actually been present at the tragedy and had any connection with it, my duty was surely to conceal the fact. She had admitted that she was in deadly peril, and I had promised to assist her; therefore, by securing any clue and hiding it from the police, I was assuredly acting in her interest.

I had already managed to secure the ring surreptitiously from the dead man’s finger before the body had been removed from the spot where we had discovered it, and as neither Warr nor the others had noticed it, I held it as a probable clue which I intended should be my secret alone.

“He was evidently struck with a long thin knife,” remarked Pink, a muscular, clean-shaven man who was extremely popular in the district, a keen sportsman and something of an epicure. He had probed the wound and ascertained that its direction had been only too accurate. “Whoever did it,” he declared, “knew exactly where to strike. I daresay he fell without a cry. The knife was very sharp, too,” he went on, examining one of the black horn buttons of the young man’s jacket-cuff. “You see it grazed this as he raised his arm to ward off the blow and shaved off a tiny piece, just as a razor might. The coroner will want to see this. I’ll get Newman over, and we’ll make a proper post-mortem in the morning.”

Pink was a clever surgeon who masked his capabilities behind an easy-going good-humour. His poor patients were often convulsed by his amusing remarks, while at the houses of the county people he was always a welcome guest on account of his inexhaustible fund of droll stories, his shrewd wit, and his outspoken appreciation of a good dinner. His odd ways were the idiosyncrasies of genius, for without doubt he was as expert a surgeon as there was outside Harley Street, and I myself had heard praise of him from the mouths of certain London men with big “names.”

The manner in which he examined the unfortunate young man who had so suddenly fallen a victim of an assassin showed that he was intensely interested. He grunted once or twice and sniffed suspiciously, and with some gusto took a pinch of snuff from his heavy silver box. Then, having carefully examined the man’s right hand, he turned to me again, saying, as he pointed to it —

“That’s strange, Woodhouse, isn’t it?”

“What?” I inquired, detecting nothing.

“Can’t you see. His hand is clenched. He grasped something just at the moment when he was struck.”

“Well?”

He held the lantern closer to the cold stiff hand, and pointing to the thumb that was closely clenched upon the fingers, said —

“Can’t you see anything there?”

I looked, and then for the first time detected that beneath the thumb was something white – a tiny piece of white fur!

“That’s out of a woman’s jacket, or boa, or something,” he declared, gradually disengaging it, and placing it in the hollow of his hand for closer inspection. “There are one or two black hairs with it, showing it, I believe, to be ermine fur – a woman who wore some garment of ermine.”

“Are you certain?” I gasped.

“Almost – but not quite until I put it beneath the microscope. Then I’ll be able to tell for certain. But surely it couldn’t have been a woman who killed him?”

“It looks very much like it, sir,” remarked Knight, who had been gazing eagerly over the doctor’s shoulder.

“Then what woman?” asked Warr, glancing across at me.

I held my breath. A silence fell between us. The mystery was of such a character that neither of us dare advance any further theory.

For my own part, however, the discovery of this tiny piece of fur was directly suspicious, and went much to confirm my belief that Lolita had been at the spot where the tragedy had been enacted, for I now recollected that sometimes when she went out after dinner she put on a wide ermine boa with long ends to cover her shoulders, a very handsome piece of fur that had been brought for her from Petersburg when the young Countess of Stanchester went to visit the Grand-Duchess Paul in the previous winter.

Was it possible that the poor young fellow had clutched at it in his dying grasp? Or had he seized the fur garment of some other woman?

Yet, I recollected, furs are not usually worn in mid-August save just to throw over a dinner-gown as protection from chills when the damp is rising after the heat of the day.

On the other hand, I tried to convince myself that the cry was not that of the sweet-eyed woman I loved; nevertheless, such thought was in vain. I knew that voice far too well to have been mistaken.

For quite an hour Pink continued his investigations as keenly and methodically as any practised detective, for he rather prided himself upon the manner in which he made discoveries about persons, and frequently astounded his patients by his knowledge of their actions and movements, which they believed only known to themselves. At last, however, he exhausted all the points possible to investigate without a post-mortem, and just as the church clock struck three we came forth, Warr locking the door of the outhouse, while Knight left us to ride on his bicycle into Northampton to report to the headquarters of the constabulary.

Pink’s way lay past my house, for he lived in a big, square, comfortable house about a quarter of a mile out of the village, on the London road, and as we walked together up the silent street, he suddenly said —

“Do you know, Woodhouse, I have a firm belief that the young fellow has been murdered by some woman! We must search the spot early in the morning and see if we can’t find some footprints, or other traces. Fortunately, it’s damp in that hollow, and a woman’s heel would leave a well-defined mark. Will you be ready at seven to go back there with me?”

The suggestion had never occurred to me, and my heart stood still when I reflected what tell-tale traces might there be left. But I strove to show no dismay, merely answering —

“Certainly. I’ll be ready. We may discover something to give the police a clue.”

“Police!” he cried. “They’re useless. We shall have a swarm of thick-headed bunglers over here to-morrow. If they sent one smart man down from Scotland Yard they might do some good. But the plain-clothes men of the local constabulary haven’t sufficient practice in serious crime to pursue any clever methods of investigation.”

“Well, then, at seven,” I exclaimed, for we had just reached my gate, and I was anxious to get to my own room and ascertain the nature of the paper I had managed to secure from the lining of the dead man’s waistcoat.

“That’s an appointment,” he said, and as I turned and entered my old-fashioned, ivy-covered house with my latch-key, he pursued his way up the short steep hill towards his home.

Within my own cosy sitting-room the green-shaded reading-lamp was still burning, and Mrs Dawson, my attentive housekeeper, had placed my slippers ready in their accustomed corner. But throwing off my light overcoat I cast myself instantly into my favourite grandfather chair, and drew from my pocket the clue I had surreptitiously stolen.

The piece of paper was pale blue, and as I opened it a cry of dismay involuntarily escaped me.

What was inscribed upon it was so strange!

Chapter Five

Reveals Three Curious Facts

There was no writing on the carefully-concealed scrap of paper. Only five rows of numerals, written in a fine feminine hand and arranged in the following manner: —

63 26 59 69 65 56 65 33 59 35 65 44

49 55 22 59 57 46 78 63 23 98 59 39

46 67 82 45 58 35 54 45 46 26 78 75

68 75 49 64 22 86 48 73 78 45 62 45

76 47 64 66 85 44 78 48 73 78 58 62

I turned the paper over, utterly puzzled. It was certainly some cipher, but of a kind of which I knew nothing. Ciphers may of course be very easily constructed and yet defy solution. This appeared to be one of those. What hidden message it contained, I had no idea, save that it was certain to be something of importance and that some other person was in possession of the secret of the decipher, or its recipient would not have concealed it where he did.

If I could only read it, a clue to the dead man’s identity would no doubt be revealed. But as I glanced at those puzzling rows of numerals I felt that to endeavour to learn their secret was but a vain hope. I had expected to find upon that scrap of paper some intelligible letter, and was sorely disappointed at what I had discovered.

The further I pushed my inquiries, the more mysterious the affair seemed to become. A dozen times I tried by ordinary methods to turn the numbers into writing, but my calculations only resulted in an unmeaning array of letters of the alphabet, a chaos quite unintelligible, therefore I was at length compelled to abandon my efforts, and after examining the ring and deciding that it was a copy of one of those old Etruscan rings that I had seen in the British Museum, I reluctantly went upstairs to snatch an hour’s sleep before the dawn.

My brain was awhirl. Following so quickly the strange declarations of Lolita had come this startling tragedy with all its mysterious and suspicious features. As I lay awake, listening to the solemn striking of the hour from the old church tower which told me that daylight was not far off, I recollected that Lolita had probably recognised the shabby stranger in the tap-room of the Stanchester Arms as she drove past. I remembered how he had held back, as though fearing recognition, and also that, as the carriage went by, her head had been half-turned in our direction. If she had detected his presence she had certainly made no sign, yet it must have been that discovery that had caused her to speak so strangely and to seek my aid in the manner she had done.

Warr still had the sealed letter in his possession, therefore the only way she could have known of the return of the bluff fellow who called himself Richard Keene was by the discovery made by herself.

I remembered her fierce desperation and her trembling fear; how cold her hands had been, and how wild that look in her beautiful eyes – a hunted look such as I had never before seen in the eyes of either man or woman. Then suddenly I recollected what damning evidence might remain on that soft clay in the hollow where the body had been found. The detectives would certainly be able to establish her presence there! I felt that at all risks I must prevent that. I had promised to help her, and although there were dark suspicions within my heart I intended to act loyally as a man should towards the woman he honestly loves. I therefore set my alarm to awaken me in an hour, and just as the grey light was breaking through the clouds eastward over Monk’s Wood, I rose, dressed myself, and concealing a small garden trowel in my pocket set forth for the spot before any of the villagers were astir.

The morning air was keen and fresh as I hurried up the avenue and with some trepidation descended into the hollow, fearing lest the report had already been spread in the village and that any of the curious yokels might notice my presence there.

But I was alone, and therefore breathed more freely.

Over an area of fifteen yards or so the grass was beaten down here and there, and in the cold grey light became revealed the dark stain where the victim had fallen – the stain of his life blood.

I searched around among the grass and over the soft boggy places bare of herbage, but found no footmarks nor any trace except that of the downtrodden grass where the struggle had evidently taken place and where the unknown man had apparently fought desperately for his life. After twenty minutes or so, fearing lest some labourers early astir might come to the spot before going to work, I was about to leave when, of a sudden, in a place where no grass grew upon the clay, I saw something that held me rigid.

In the soft earth was the plain imprint of the small sole of a woman’s shoe, with a Louis XV heel!

Lolita wore high heels of exactly that character, and took three’s in shoes. Was it possible that the footprint was hers?

As I looked I saw others, both of a person advancing and receding. One was ill-defined, where she had apparently slipped upon the clay. But all of them I stamped out – all, indeed, that I could find. Yet was it possible, I wondered, to efface every one?