The Secret Adversary
“They didn’t give you any sort of hint as to where Jane was?”
Tommy shook his head regretfully.
“Not a word. I’m a bit of an ass, as you know. I ought to have got more
out of them somehow.”
“I guess you’re lucky to be here at all. That bluff of yours was the
goods all right. How you ever came to think of it all so pat beats me to
a frazzle!”
“I was in such a funk I had to think of something,” said Tommy simply.
There was a moment’s pause, and then Tommy reverted to Mrs. Vandemeyer’s
death.
“There’s no doubt it was chloral?”
“I believe not. At least they call it heart failure induced by an
overdose, or some such claptrap. It’s all right. We don’t want to
be worried with an inquest. But I guess Tuppence and I and even the
highbrow Sir James have all got the same idea.”
“Mr. Brown?” hazarded Tommy.
“Sure thing.”
Tommy nodded.
“All the same,” he said thoughtfully, “Mr. Brown hasn’t got wings. I
don’t see how he got in and out.”
“How about some high-class thought transference stunt? Some magnetic
influence that irresistibly impelled Mrs. Vandemeyer to commit suicide?”
Tommy looked at him with respect.
“Good, Julius. Distinctly good. Especially the phraseology. But it
leaves me cold. I yearn for a real Mr. Brown of flesh and blood. I think
the gifted young detectives must get to work, study the entrances and
exits, and tap the bumps on their foreheads until the solution of the
mystery dawns on them. Let’s go round to the scene of the crime. I wish
we could get hold of Tuppence. The _Ritz_ would enjoy the spectacle of
the glad reunion.”
Inquiry at the office revealed the fact that Tuppence had not yet
returned.
“All the same, I guess I’ll have a look round upstairs,” said Julius.
“She might be in my sitting-room.” He disappeared.
Suddenly a diminutive boy spoke at Tommy’s elbow:
“The young lady--she’s gone away by train, I think, sir,” he murmured
shyly.
“What?” Tommy wheeled round upon him.
The small boy became pinker than before.
“The taxi, sir. I heard her tell the driver Charing Cross and to look
sharp.”
Tommy stared at him, his eyes opening wide in surprise. Emboldened, the
small boy proceeded. “So I thought, having asked for an A.B.C. and a
Bradshaw.”
Tommy interrupted him:
“When did she ask for an A.B.C. and a Bradshaw?”
“When I took her the telegram, sir.”
“A telegram?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When was that?”
“About half-past twelve, sir.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
The small boy drew a long breath.
“I took up a telegram to No. 891--the lady was there. She opened it
and gave a gasp, and then she said, very jolly like: ‘Bring me up a
Bradshaw, and an A.B.C., and look sharp, Henry.’ My name isn’t Henry,
but----”
“Never mind your name,” said Tommy impatiently. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir. I brought them, and she told me to wait, and looked up
something. And then she looks up at the clock, and ‘Hurry up,’ she says.
‘Tell them to get me a taxi,’ and she begins a-shoving on of her hat in
front of the glass, and she was down in two ticks, almost as quick as I
was, and I seed her going down the steps and into the taxi, and I heard
her call out what I told you.”
The small boy stopped and replenished his lungs. Tommy continued to
stare at him. At that moment Julius rejoined him. He held an open letter
in his hand.
“I say, Hersheimmer”--Tommy turned to him--“Tuppence has gone off
sleuthing on her own.”
“Shucks!”
“Yes, she has. She went off in a taxi to Charing Cross in the deuce of a
hurry after getting a telegram.” His eye fell on the letter in Julius’s
hand. “Oh; she left a note for you. That’s all right. Where’s she off
to?”
Almost unconsciously, he held out his hand for the letter, but
Julius folded it up and placed it in his pocket. He seemed a trifle
embarrassed.
“I guess this is nothing to do with it. It’s about something
else--something I asked her that she was to let me know about.”
“Oh!” Tommy looked puzzled, and seemed waiting for more.
“See here,” said Julius suddenly, “I’d better put you wise. I asked Miss
Tuppence to marry me this morning.”
“Oh!” said Tommy mechanically. He felt dazed. Julius’s words were
totally unexpected. For the moment they benumbed his brain.
“I’d like to tell you,” continued Julius, “that before I suggested
anything of the kind to Miss Tuppence, I made it clear that I didn’t
want to butt in in any way between her and you----”
Tommy roused himself.
“That’s all right,” he said quickly. “Tuppence and I have been pals for
years. Nothing more.” He lit a cigarette with a hand that shook ever
so little. “That’s quite all right. Tuppence always said that she was
looking out for----”
He stopped abruptly, his face crimsoning, but Julius was in no way
discomposed.
“Oh, I guess it’ll be the dollars that’ll do the trick. Miss Tuppence
put me wise to that right away. There’s no humbug about her. We ought to
gee along together very well.”
Tommy looked at him curiously for a minute, as though he were about
to speak, then changed his mind and said nothing. Tuppence and Julius!
Well, why not? Had she not lamented the fact that she knew no rich men?
Had she not openly avowed her intention of marrying for money if she
ever had the chance? Her meeting with the young American millionaire
had given her the chance--and it was unlikely she would be slow to avail
herself of it. She was out for money. She had always said so. Why blame
her because she had been true to her creed?
Nevertheless, Tommy did blame her. He was filled with a passionate and
utterly illogical resentment. It was all very well to _say_ things
like that--but a _real_ girl would never marry for money. Tuppence was
utterly cold-blooded and selfish, and he would be delighted if he never
saw her again! And it was a rotten world!
Julius’s voice broke in on these meditations.
“Yes, we ought to gee along together very well. I’ve heard that a girl
always refuses you once--a sort of convention.”
Tommy caught his arm.
“Refuses? Did you say _refuses?_”
“Sure thing. Didn’t I tell you that? She just rapped out a ‘no’ without
any kind of reason to it. The eternal feminine, the Huns call it, I’ve
heard. But she’ll come round right enough. Likely enough, I hustled her
some----”
But Tommy interrupted regardless of decorum.
“What did she say in that note?” he demanded fiercely.
The obliging Julius handed it to him.
“There’s no earthly clue in it as to where she’s gone,” he assured
Tommy. “But you might as well see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
The note, in Tuppence’s well-known schoolboy writing, ran as follows:
“DEAR JULIUS,
“It’s always better to have things in black and white. I don’t feel I
can be bothered to think of marriage until Tommy is found. Let’s leave
it till then.
“Yours affectionately,
“TUPPENCE.”
Tommy handed it back, his eyes shining. His feelings had undergone a
sharp reaction. He now felt that Tuppence was all that was noble and
disinterested. Had she not refused Julius without hesitation? True, the
note betokened signs of weakening, but he could excuse that. It read
almost like a bribe to Julius to spur him on in his efforts to find
Tommy, but he supposed she had not really meant it that way. Darling
Tuppence, there was not a girl in the world to touch her! When he saw
her----His thoughts were brought up with a sudden jerk.
“As you say,” he remarked, pulling himself together, “there’s not a hint
here as to what she’s up to. Hi--Henry!”
The small boy came obediently. Tommy produced five shillings.
“One thing more. Do you remember what the young lady did with the
telegram?”
Henry gasped and spoke.
“She crumpled it up into a ball and threw it into the grate, and made a
sort of noise like ‘Whoop!’ sir.”
“Very graphic, Henry,” said Tommy. “Here’s your five shillings. Come on,
Julius. We must find that telegram.”
They hurried upstairs. Tuppence had left the key in her door. The room
was as she had left it. In the fireplace was a crumpled ball of orange
and white. Tommy disentangled it and smoothed out the telegram.
“Come at once, Moat House, Ebury, Yorkshire, great developments--TOMMY.”
They looked at each other in stupefaction. Julius spoke first:
“You didn’t send it?”
“Of course not. What does it mean?”
“I guess it means the worst,” said Julius quietly. “They’ve got her.”
_“What?”_
“Sure thing! They signed your name, and she fell into the trap like a
lamb.”
“My God! What shall we do?”
“Get busy, and go after her! Right now! There’s no time to waste. It’s
almighty luck that she didn’t take the wire with her. If she had we’d
probably never have traced her. But we’ve got to hustle. Where’s that
Bradshaw?”
The energy of Julius was infectious. Left to himself, Tommy would
probably have sat down to think things out for a good half-hour before
he decided on a plan of action. But with Julius Hersheimmer about,
hustling was inevitable.
After a few muttered imprecations he handed the Bradshaw to Tommy as
being more conversant with its mysteries. Tommy abandoned it in favour
of an A.B.C.
“Here we are. Ebury, Yorks. From King’s Cross. Or St. Pancras. (Boy must
have made a mistake. It was King’s Cross, not _Charing_ Cross.) 12.50,
that’s the train she went by. 2.10, that’s gone. 3.20 is the next--and a
damned slow train too.”
“What about the car?”
Tommy shook his head.
“Send it up if you like, but we’d better stick to the train. The great
thing is to keep calm.”
Julius groaned.
“That’s so. But it gets my goat to think of that innocent young girl in
danger!”
Tommy nodded abstractedly. He was thinking. In a moment or two, he said:
“I say, Julius, what do they want her for, anyway?”
“Eh? I don’t get you?”
“What I mean is that I don’t think it’s their game to do her any harm,”
explained Tommy, puckering his brow with the strain of his mental
processes. “She’s a hostage, that’s what she is. She’s in no immediate
danger, because if we tumble on to anything, she’d be damned useful to
them. As long as they’ve got her, they’ve got the whip hand of us. See?”
“Sure thing,” said Julius thoughtfully. “That’s so.”
“Besides,” added Tommy, as an afterthought, “I’ve great faith in
Tuppence.”
The journey was wearisome, with many stops, and crowded carriages. They
had to change twice, once at Doncaster, once at a small junction. Ebury
was a deserted station with a solitary porter, to whom Tommy addressed
himself:
“Can you tell me the way to the Moat House?”
“The Moat House? It’s a tidy step from here. The big house near the sea,
you mean?”
Tommy assented brazenly. After listening to the porter’s meticulous
but perplexing directions, they prepared to leave the station. It was
beginning to rain, and they turned up the collars of their coats as they
trudged through the slush of the road. Suddenly Tommy halted.
“Wait a moment.” He ran back to the station and tackled the porter anew.
“Look here, do you remember a young lady who arrived by an earlier
train, the 12.50 from London? She’d probably ask you the way to the Moat
House.”
He described Tuppence as well as he could, but the porter shook his
head. Several people had arrived by the train in question. He could not
call to mind one young lady in particular. But he was quite certain that
no one had asked him the way to the Moat House.
Tommy rejoined Julius, and explained. Depression was settling on him
like a leaden weight. He felt convinced that their quest was going to
be unsuccessful. The enemy had over three hours’ start. Three hours was
more than enough for Mr. Brown. He would not ignore the possibility of
the telegram having been found.
The way seemed endless. Once they took the wrong turning and went nearly