The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
"The man I sent!" A light burst upon the duke's brain. He fell back a
pace. "It's the decoy!"
Her grace echoed the words:
"The decoy?"
"The scoundrel! To set a trap with such a bait! My poor innocent darling,
did you think it came from me? Tell me, Mabel, where did he cut off your
hair?"
"Cut off my hair?"
Her grace put her hand to her head as if to make sure that her hair was
there.
"Where did he take you to?"
"He took me to Draper's Buildings."
"Draper's Buildings?"
"I have never been in the City before, but he told me it was Draper's
Buildings. Isn't that near the Stock Exchange?"
"Near the Stock Exchange?"
It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnaped victim. The
man's audacity!
"He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a van
knocked you over. He said that he thought it was a Pickford's van--was it
a Pickford's van?"
"No, it was not a Pickford's van. Mabel, were you in Draper's Buildings
when you wrote that letter?"
"Wrote what letter?"
"Have you forgotten it already? I do not believe that there is a word in
it which will not be branded on my brain until I die."
"Hereward! What do you mean?"
"Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then have
forgotten it already?"
He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second communication.
She glanced at it, askance. Then she took it with a little gasp.
"Hereward, if you don't mind, I think I'll take a chair." She took a
chair. "Whatever--whatever's this?" As she read the letter the varying
expressions which passed across her face were, in themselves, a study in
psychology. "Is it possible that you can imagine that, under any
conceivable circumstances, I could have written such a letter as this?"
"Mabel!"
She rose to her feet with emphasis.
"Hereward, don't say that you thought this came from me!"
"Not from you?" He remembered Knowles's diplomatic reception of the
epistle on its first appearance. "I suppose that you will say next that
this is not a lock of your hair?"
"My dear child, what bee have you got in your bonnet? This a lock of my
hair! Why, it's not in the least bit like my hair!"
Which was certainly inaccurate. As far as color was concerned it was an
almost perfect match. The duke turned to Mr. Dacre.
"Ivor, I've had to go through a good deal this afternoon. If I have to go
through much more, something will crack!" He touched his forehead. "I
think it's my turn to take a chair." Not the one which the duchess had
vacated, but one which faced it. He stretched out his legs in front of
him; he thrust his hands into his trousers pockets; he said, in a tone
which was not gloomy but absolutely grewsome:
"Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnaped?"
"Kidnaped?"
"The word I used was 'kidnaped.' But I will spell it if you like. Or I
will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning."
The duchess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if she was
awake or sleeping. She turned to Ivor.
"Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward's brain?"
The duke took the words out of his cousin's mouth.
"On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind. I don't know if you are
under the impression that I should be the same shape after a Pickford's
van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case, I have not been run
over by a Pickford's van. So far as I am concerned there has been no
accident. Dismiss that delusion from your mind."
"Oh!"
"You appear surprised. One might even think that you were sorry. But may I
now ask what you did when you arrived at Draper's Buildings?"
"Did! I looked for you!"
"Indeed! And when you had looked in vain, what was the next item in your
programme?"
The lady shrank still farther from him.
"Hereward, have you been having a jest at my expense? Can you have been so
cruel?" Tears stood in her eyes.
Rising, the duke laid his hand upon her arm.
"Mabel, tell me--what did you do when you had looked for me in vain?"
"I looked for you upstairs and downstairs and everywhere. It was quite a
large place, it took me ever such a time. I thought that I should go
distracted. Nobody seemed to know anything about you, or even that there
had been an accident at all--it was all offices. I couldn't make it out in
the least, and the people didn't seem to be able to make me out either. So
when I couldn't find you anywhere I came straight home again."
The duke was silent for a moment. Then with funereal gravity he turned to
Mr. Dacre. He put to him this question:
"Ivor, what are you laughing at?"
Mr. Dacre drew his hand across his mouth with rather a suspicious gesture.
"My dear fellow, only a smile!"
The duchess looked from one to the other.
"What have you two been doing? What is the joke?"
With an air of preternatural solemnity the duke took two letters from the
breast pocket of his coat.
"Mabel, you have already seen your letter. You have already seen the lock
of your hair. Just look at this--and that."
He gave her the two very singular communications which had arrived in such
a mysterious manner, and so quickly one after the other. She read them
with wide-open eyes.
"Hereward! Wherever did these come from?"
The duke was standing with his legs apart, and his hands in his trousers
pockets. "I would give--I would give another five hundred pounds to know.
Shall I tell you, madam, what I have been doing? I have been presenting
five hundred golden sovereigns to a perfect stranger, with a top hat, and
a gardenia in his buttonhole."
"Whatever for?"
"If you have perused those documents which you have in your hand, you will
have some faint idea. Ivor, when it's your funeral, I'll smile. Mabel,
Duchess of Datchet, it is beginning to dawn upon the vacuum which
represents my brain that I've been the victim of one of the prettiest
things in practical jokes that ever yet was planned. When that fellow
brought you that card at Cane and Wilson's--which, I need scarcely tell
you, never came from me--some one walked out of the front entrance who was
so exactly like you that both Barnes and Moysey took her for you. Moysey
showed her into the carriage, and Barnes drove her home. But when the
carriage reached home it was empty. Your double had got out upon the
road."
The duchess uttered a sound which was half gasp, half sigh.
"Hereward!"
"Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when they
found that they had brought the thing home empty, came straightway and
told me that you had jumped out of the brougham while it had been driving
full pelt through the streets. While I was digesting that piece of
information there came the first epistle, with the lock of your hair.
Before I had time to digest that there came the second epistle, with yours
inside."
"It seems incredible!"
"It sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man, especially of
a man who loves his wife." The duke crossed to Mr. Dacre. "I don't want,
Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of bribery and corruption, but if you
could keep this matter to yourself, and not mention it to your friends,
our white-hatted and gardenia-buttonholed acquaintance is welcome to his
five hundred pounds, and--Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?"
The duchess appeared, all at once, to be seized with inextinguishable
laughter.
"Hereward," she cried, "just think how that man must be laughing at you!"
And the Duke of Datchet thought of it.
_The Minor Canon_
It was Monday, and in the afternoon, as I was walking along the High
Street of Marchbury, I was met by a distinguished-looking person whom I
had observed at the services in the cathedral on the previous day. Now it
chanced on that Sunday that I was singing the service. Properly speaking,
it was not my turn; but, as my brother minor canons were either away from
Marchbury or ill in bed, I was the only one left to perform the necessary
duty. The distinguished-looking person was a tall, big man with a round
fat face and small features. His eyes, his hair and mustache (his face was
bare but for a small mustache) were quite black, and he had a very
pleasant and genial expression. He wore a tall hat, set rather jauntily on
his head, and he was dressed in black with a long frock coat buttoned
across the chest and fitting him close to the body. As he came, with a
half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by
his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was
intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in
a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was far from being
disagreeable, and which, indeed, to my ear gave a certain additional
interest to his remarks, he saluted me with "Good day, sir!"
"Good day," I answered, with just a little reserve in my tone.
"I hope, sir," he began, "you will excuse my stopping you in the street,
but I wish to tell you how very much I enjoyed the music at your cathedral
yesterday. I am an Australian, sir, and we have no such music in my
country."
"I suppose not," I said.
"No, sir," he went on, "nothing nearly so fine. I am very fond of music,
and as my business brought me in this direction, I thought I would stop at
your city and take the opportunity of paying a visit to your grand
cathedral. And I am delighted I came; so pleased, indeed, that I should
like to leave some memorial of my visit behind me. I should like, sir, to
do something for your choir."
"I am sure it is very kind of you," I replied.
"Yes, I should certainly be glad if you could suggest to me something I
might do in this way. As regards money, I may say that I have plenty of
it. I am the owner of a most valuable property. My business relations
extend throughout the world, and if I am as fortunate in the projects of
the future as I have been in the past, I shall probably one day achieve
the proud position of being the richest man in the world."
I did not like to undertake myself the responsibility of advising or
suggesting, so I simply said:
"I cannot venture to say, offhand, what would be the most acceptable way
of showing your great kindness and generosity, but I should certainly
recommend you to put yourself in communication with the dean."
"Thank you, sir," said my Australian friend, "I will do so. And now, sir,"
he continued, "let me say how much I admire your voice. It is, without
exception, the very finest and clearest voice I have ever heard."
"Really," I answered, quite overcome with such unqualified praise, "really
it is very good of you to say so."
"Ah, but I feel it, my dear sir. I have been round the world, from Sydney
to Frisco, across the continent of America" (he called it Amerrker) "to
New York City, then on to England, and to-morrow I shall leave your city
to continue my travels. But in all my experience I have never heard so
grand a voice as your own."
This and a great deal more he said in the same strain, which modesty
forbids me to reproduce.
Now I am not without some knowledge of the world outside the close of
Marchbury Cathedral, and I could not listen to such a "flattering tale"
without having my suspicions aroused. Who and what is this man? thought I.
I looked at him narrowly. At first the thought flashed across me that he
might be a "swell mobsman." But no, his face was too good for that;
besides, no man with that huge frame, that personality so marked and so
easily recognizable, could be a swindler; he could not escape detection a
single hour. I dismissed the ungenerous thought. Perhaps he is rich, as he
says. We do hear of munificent donations by benevolent millionaires now
and then. What if this Australian, attracted by the glories of the old