A Mysterious Disappearance

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

HOW LADY DYKE DISAPPEARED

(Being the Manuscript left by Sir Charles Dyke, Bart., and addressed to Claude Bruce, Esq., Barrister-at-law)

It is customary, I believe, for poor wretches who are sentenced to undergo the last punishment of the law to be allowed a three weeks’ respite between the date of their sentence and that on which they are executed. I am in the position of such a one. The difference between me and the convicted felon lies merely in environment; in most respects I am worse situated than he. My period of agony is longer drawn out, I am condemned to die by my own hand, I am mocked by the surroundings of luxury, taunted by the knowledge that though life and even a sort of happiness are within my reach I must not avail myself of them.

There may come a time in the affairs of any man when he is compelled to choose between a dishonored existence and voluntary death. These unpleasant alternatives are now before me. You, who know me, would never doubt which of them I should adopt, nor will you upbraid me because our judgments coincide. There is nothing for it, Bruce, but quiet death – death in the least obtrusive form, and so disposed that it may be possible for you, chief among my friends and the only person I can trust to fulfil my wishes, to arrange that my memory may be speedily forgotten. My virtues, I fear, will not secure me immortality; my faults, I hope, will not be spread broadcast to cram the maws of the gaping crowd.

I do not shirk this final issue, nor do I crave pity. In setting forth plainly the history of my wife’s death and its results, I am actuated solely by a desire to protect others from needless suspicion. Having resolved to pay forfeit for my own errors, I claim to have expiated them. This document is an explanation, not a confession.

I have not much time left wherein fittingly to shape my story so as to be just to all, myself included. If I am not mistaken, the officers of the law are in hot chase of me, but my statement shall not be made to an earthly judge. The words of a man about to die may not be well chosen; they should at least be true. I will tell of events as nearly as possible in their sequence of time. If I leave gaps through haste or forgetfulness you will, from your own knowledge of the facts, readily fill them up once you are in possession of the salient features.

Mensmore and his sister were the friends of my early years. We played together as children. Gwendoline Mensmore was two years younger than I, and I well remember making love to her at the age of eleven. Her mother died when she was quite a baby, and her father married again, so her step-brother Albert is her junior by four years. I taught him how to ride and swim and play cricket. My father’s place in Surrey – we did not acquire the Yorkshire property until the death of my grandfather – adjoined the estate General Mensmore occupied after his retirement from the army.

We children always called Gwendoline “Dick,” to avoid the difficulty of her long-sounding name, I suppose, and I honestly believe that our respective parents entertained the idea that a marriage between us was quite a natural thing. I went to school at Brighton, and Mensmore, being a somewhat precocious lad, joined the same school before I left. The headmaster, the Rev. Septimus Childe, was an old friend of my father’s, and when he wished to purchase a house at Putney – the terrible house which has figured in my dreams for the past three months as a Place of Skulls – my parents put pressure on my mother’s trustees to make the transaction an easy one. Of course, I knew it well. We regarded it in those early days as a town house, and always lived there during the season.

My father’s succession to the title and estates changed all that. We quitted Surrey for Yorkshire, and Wensley House, Portman Square, was a step upwards from the barrack-like building which so admirably suited Mr. Childe’s requirements.

When I was at Sandhurst General Mensmore got into difficulties. He quitted Surrey, and we gradually lost sight of him and his children. Afterwards I knew that he struggled on for a few years, placed his son in the army, and then came a complete collapse, ending in his death and the boy’s resignation of his commission. Of Gwendoline Mensmore’s whereabouts I knew nothing. Her memory never quitted me, but the new interests in my life dulled it. I imagined that I could laugh at a childish infatuation.

Then I married. I did so in obedience to my father’s wishes, and Alice was, I suppose, an ideal wife – far too ideal for a youngster of my lower intellectual plane. I know now that I never had any real affection for her. I was always somewhat awed by her loftier aspirations. My interests lay in racing, hunting, sports generally, and having what I defined as “a good time.” She, though an excellent horsewoman, and in every sense an admirable hostess, thought Newmarket vulgar, treated Ascot as a social necessity, and turned up her eyebrows at me when I failed to see any utility in schemes for the reclamation of the submerged tenth.

Thus, though we never quarrelled, we gradually drifted apart. She knew she bored me if she asked me to inspect a model dwelling; I knew she hated the people who were the companions of a coaching tour or a week at Goodwood. Unfortunately, we were not blessed with offspring. Had it been otherwise, we might have found a common object of interest in our children.

Insensibly, we agreed to a separate existence. We lived together as friends rather than as husband and wife. We parted without regret and met without cordiality. Do not think we were unhappy. If our marriage was not bliss, it was at least comfortable. I think my wife was proud of my successes on the turf in a quiet kind of way, and I certainly was proud of her and of the high reputation she enjoyed among all classes of society. I even reverenced her for it, and I well knew that the enthusiastic receptions given us by our Yorkshire tenantry were not due to my efforts in their behalf, but to hers.

So we lived for nearly six years, and so we might have continued for sixty had I not met Gwendoline Mensmore again, under vastly changed circumstances. She was a chorus-girl in a variety theatre, earning a poor living under wretched conditions. I discovered the fact by mere chance.

I met her, and she told me her story – how she had married a man named Hillmer, whom her father had trusted, and whom she believed to be able to save them from ruin. Then the crash came. Her father died; her husband also broke down financially, took to drink and ill-treated her; her brother was swallowed up somewhere in the Far West. She had no alternative but to live apart from her husband and try to support herself by the first career that suggests itself to a young, talented, and beautiful woman. But she was already weary of the stage and its distasteful surroundings. Her nature was too delicate for the rude friendships of the dressing-room. She shuddered at the thought of a mild carousal in a bar when the labors of the night were ended.

In a word, were I differently constituted, were she cast in more common mould, there was apparently ready to hand all the material for a vulgar liaison.

My respect for my wife, however, no less than Mrs. Hillmer’s fine disposition, saved both of us from folly. Yet I could not leave her exposed to the exigencies of a life in which she was rapidly becoming disillusioned. Away in the depths of my heart I knew that this sweet woman was my true mate, separated from me by adverse chance. There was nothing unfair to Alice in the thought. Were she questioned at any time, I suppose, she must have admitted that we were, in some respects, as ill-matched a couple as we were well-matched in others. You will say that I understood but little of feminine nature – nothing at all of my wife’s.

How best to help Mrs. Hillmer – that was the question. It was at this stage I made the initial mistake to which I can, too late, trace a host of succeeding misfortunes. I did not consult my wife. Trying now to analyze my reasons for this lamentable error of judgment I imagined that it arose from some absurd disinclination on my part to admit that I went to the stage-door of a theatre to inquire about the identity of a young woman whom I had recognized from the front of the house.

Don’t you see, my dear Bruce, it is almost as bad to fear your wife as to suspect her.

As, at that time, my own life was free from the slightest cloud of sorrow, I took keen interest in the troubles of Mrs. Hillmer, and I amused myself by playing, in her behalf, the part of a modern magician. I felt intuitively that she would resent any direct attempt on my part to place funds at her disposal, and I found a great deal of harmless fun in helping her with her consent, but without her actual knowledge.

I am, as you know, a rich man. At this hour I cannot sum up my available assets to within £100,000. Altogether I must be worth nearly a million sterling – yet my money cannot purchase me another day’s existence such as I would tolerate. Strange, is it not?

Well, the close of the year before last was a period of unexampled activity on the Stock Exchange, and, by way of a joke, I made some purchases on Mrs. Hillmer’s account, with the intention of pretending to pay myself out of the profits, while handing her such balances as might accrue. She is a shrewd woman, and quick at figures, so I might have experienced some difficulty in deceiving her. But the mad record of the past twelve months was in no wise belied by its inception. My purchases were those of a man inspired by the Goddess of Fortune. Stocks which I bought commenced suddenly to inflate. I astounded my brokers by the manner in which I ferreted out neglected bonds, mines which struck the mother lode next week, railway companies whose directors were even then secretly conspiring to water the stock.

Mrs. Hillmer became infected with the craze like myself. Twice we plunged heavily in American Rails and came out triumphantly. To end this part of my story, after five months of excitement I had contrived not only to swell my own deposits to a large extent, but I had secured on Mrs. Hillmer’s account a sufficient quantity of reliable stock to bring her in an average income of £1,500 per annum.

My greatest difficulty was to persuade Mrs. Hillmer to break off the habit of speculation once she had contracted it. I found that she perused the late editions of the evening papers with the same eagerness that a bookmaker looks for the starting prices of the day’s races. By the exercise of firmness and tact I was able to stop her from further dealings.

At the close of this period I need hardly say that two things had happened. Mrs. Hillmer and I were fast friends, with common objects and interests in life; and, concurrently, the ties between Alice and myself had loosened still more.

I also carelessly made another blunder. Under the pretence that secrecy was requisite for Stock Exchange transactions, I persuaded Mrs. Hillmer to allow me to pass under the name of Colonel Montgomery.

Mrs. Hillmer, of course, was now able to live in comparative luxury. I came to regard her house as an abode of rest. I was more at home in her drawing-room than in my own house. She often spoke to me of my wife, and obviously wished to see her, but here I did a cowardly thing. I represented my married existence as far less comfortable than it really was, and gradually Mrs. Hillmer ceased all allusion to Alice. She misunderstood our relations. I knew it, and did not explain. Not a very worthy proceeding for a man whose sense of honor is so keen that he prefers death to disgrace. But one can deceive no other so easily as oneself.

Occasionally, when opportunities offered, we went out together. It was foolish, you will say, and I agree with you. If folly were not pleasant it would not be so fashionable. But, to this hour, the relations between us are those only of close friendship. Never in my life have I addressed her by other than her married name, never have I touched her arm save by way of casual politeness.

I really think I flattered myself upon my superior virtues. I could see all the excellence but none of the stupidity of my behavior.

About this time, Mrs. Hillmer’s husband died. Thenceforth she became slightly reserved in manner. When life was a defiance she fought convention, but with safety came prudence. In fact, she told me that my frequent visits to her house would certainly be ill-construed if they became known. I was seeking for a pretext to introduce her to her own set in society, when a double catastrophe occurred.

My wife discovered, as she imagined, that I was clandestinely occupied with another woman, and Mrs. Hillmer’s brother returned from America.

It will best serve my hurried narrative if I relate events exactly as they happened, and not as they look in the light of subsequent knowledge.

Mensmore was naturally astounded to find his sister so well provided for, and gratefully accepted the help she gave him towards resuscitating his own fortunes. But it did not occur to either of us that he would take the ordinary view of the bond existing between us, and I shall never forget his rage when he found out that I was not known to his sister’s servants by my right name. It was an awkward position for all three. He was loth to allege that which we did not feel called upon to deny. But between him and me there was a marked coolness, arising from suspicion on his part and resentment on mine, coupled, I must add, with an unquiet consciousness that his attitude was not wholly unreasonable.

Mrs. Hillmer and he discussed the matter several times. He urged that this compromising friendship should be discontinued. She – a determined woman when her mind was made up – fought the suggestion on the ground of unfairness, though, like myself, she would have been glad of any accident which would alter the position of affairs.

He interpreted her opposition to different motives. Finally, as his financial position was a dangerous one, as we afterwards learned, and he despaired of setting things straight in Raleigh Mansions – judging them from his own point of view – he resolved to leave England again.