The Secret of Chimneys
He sprang out through the window, and the others followed him as he led
the way round the terrace, until they came to the library window. He
pushed the window, and it yielded to his touch.
Very softly he held aside the thick velvet curtain, so that they could
look into the room.
Standing by the bookcase was a dark figure, hurriedly pulling out and
replacing volumes, so absorbed in the task that no outside sound was
heeded.
And then, as they stood watching, trying to recognize the figure that
was vaguely silhouetted against the light of the electric torch it
carried, some one sprang past them with a sound like the roar of a wild
beast.
The torch fell to the ground, was extinguished, and the sounds of a
terrific struggle filled the room. Lord Caterham groped his way to the
lights and switched them on.
Two figures were swaying together. And as they looked the end came. The
short sharp crack of a pistol shot, and the smaller figure crumpled up
and fell. The other figure turned and faced them—it was Boris, his
eyes alight with rage.
“She killed my Master,” he growled. “Now she tries to shoot me. I would
have taken the pistol from her and shot her, but it went off in the
struggle. St. Michael directed it. The evil woman is dead.”
“A woman?” cried George Lomax.
They drew nearer. On the floor, the pistol still clasped in her hand,
and an expression of deadly malignity on her face, lay—Mademoiselle
Brun.
28
King Victor
“I suspected her from the first,” explained Anthony. “There was a
light in her room on the night of the murder. Afterwards, I wavered.
I made inquiries about her in Brittany, and came back satisfied that
she was what she represented herself to be. I was a fool. Because the
Comtesse de Breteuil had employed a Mademoiselle Brun and spoke highly
of her, it never occurred to me that the real Mademoiselle Brun might
have been kidnapped on her way to her new post, and that it might be
a substitute taking her place. Instead I shifted my suspicions to Mr.
Fish. It was not until he had followed me to Dover, and we had had a
mutual explanation that I began to see clearly. Once I knew that he was
a Pinkerton’s man, trailing King Victor, my suspicions swung back again
to their original object.
“The thing that worried me most was that Mrs. Revel had definitely
recognized the woman. Then I remembered that it was only _after_
I had mentioned her being Madame de Breteuil’s governess. And all
she had said was that that accounted for the fact that the woman’s
face was familiar to her. Superintendent Battle will tell you that a
deliberate plot was formed to keep Mrs. Revel from coming to Chimneys.
Nothing more nor less than a dead body, in fact. And though the murder
was the work of the Comrades of the Red Hand, punishing supposed
treachery on the part of the victim, the staging of it, and the absence
of the Comrades’ sign manual, pointed to some abler intelligence
directing operations. From the first, I suspected some connection
with Herzoslovakia. Mrs. Revel was the only member of the house party
who had been to the country. I suspected at first that some one was
impersonating Prince Michael, but that proved to be a totally erroneous
idea. When I realized the possibility of Mademoiselle Brun’s being an
impostor, and added to that the fact that her face was familiar to Mrs.
Revel, I began to see daylight. It was evidently very important that
she should not be recognized, and Mrs. Revel was the only person likely
to do so.”
“But who was she?” said Lord Caterham. “Some one Mrs. Revel had known
in Herzoslovakia?”
“I think the Baron might be able to tell us,” said Anthony.
“I?” The Baron stared at him, then down at the motionless figure.
“Look well,” said Anthony. “Don’t be put off by the make-up. She was an
actress once, remember.”
The Baron stared again. Suddenly he started.
“God in heaven,” he breathed, “it is not possible.”
“What is not possible?” asked George. “Who is the lady? You recognize
her, Baron?”
“No, no, it is not possible.” The Baron continued to mutter. “She was
killed. They were both killed. On the steps of the Palace. Her body was
recovered.”
“Mutilated and unrecognizable,” Anthony reminded him. “She managed to
put up a bluff. I think she escaped to America, and has spent a good
many years lying low in deadly terror of the Comrades of the Red Hand.
They promoted the Revolution, remember, and, to use an expressive
phrase, they always had it in for her. Then King Victor was released,
and they planned to recover the diamond together. She was searching
for it that night when she came suddenly upon Prince Michael, and
he recognized her. There was never much fear of her meeting him in
the ordinary way of things. Royal guests don’t come in contact with
governesses, and she could always retire with a convenient _migraine_,
as she did the day the Baron was here.
“However, she met Prince Michael face to face when she least expected
it. Exposure and disgrace stared her in the face. She shot him. It was
she who placed the revolver in Isaacstein’s suit-case, so as to confuse
the trail, and she who returned the letters.”
Lemoine moved forward.
“She was coming down to search for the jewel that night, you say,”
he said. “Might she not have been going to meet her accomplice, King
Victor, who was coming from outside? Eh? What do you say to that?”
Anthony sighed.
“Still at it, my dear Lemoine? How persistent you are! You won’t take
my hint that I’ve got a trump card up my sleeve?”
But George, whose mind worked slowly, now broke in.
“I am still completely at sea. Who was this lady, Baron? You recognize
her, it seems?”
But the Baron drew himself up and stood very straight and stiff.
“You are in error, Mr. Lomax. To my knowledge I have not this lady seen
before. A complete stranger she is to me.”
“But——”
George stared at him—bewildered.
The Baron took him into a corner of the room, and murmured something
into his ear. Anthony watched, with a good deal of enjoyment, George’s
face turning slowly purple, his eyes bulging, and all the incipient
symptoms of apoplexy. A murmur of George’s throaty voice came to him.
“Certainly ... certainly ... by all means ... no need at all ...
complicate situation ... utmost discretion.”
“Ah!” Lemoine hit the table sharply with his hand. “I do not care about
all this! The murder of Prince Michael—that was not my affair. I want
King Victor.”
Anthony shook his head gently.
“I’m sorry for you, Lemoine. You’re really a very able fellow. But, all
the same, you’re going to lose the trick. I’m about to play my trump
card.”
He stepped across the room and rang the bell. Tredwell answered it.
“A gentleman arrived with me this evening, Tredwell.”
“Yes, sir, a foreign gentleman.”
“Quite so. Will you kindly ask him to join us here as soon as possible?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tredwell withdrew.
“Entry of the trump card, the mysterious Monsieur X,” remarked Anthony.
“_Who is he?_ Can anyone guess?”
“Putting two and two together,” said Herman Isaacstein, “what with your
mysterious hints this morning, and your attitude this afternoon, I
should say there was no doubt about it. Somehow or other you’ve managed
to get hold of Prince Nicholas of Herzoslovakia.”
“You think the same, Baron?”
“I do. Unless yet another impostor you have put forward. But that I
will not believe. With me, your dealings most honourable have been.”
“Thank you, Baron. I shan’t forget those words. So you are all agreed?”
His eyes swept round the circle of waiting faces. Only Lemoine did not
respond, but kept his eyes fixed sullenly on the table.
Anthony’s quick ears had caught the sound of footsteps outside in the
hall.
“And yet, you know,” he said with a queer smile, “you’re all wrong!”
He crossed swiftly to the door and flung it open.
A man stood on the threshold—a man with a neat black beard,
eyeglasses, and a foppish appearance slightly marred by a bandage round
the head.
“_Allow me to present you to the real Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté._”
There was a rush and a scuffle, and then the nasal tones of Mr. Hiram
Fish rose bland and reassuring from the window.
“No, you don’t, Sonny—not this way. I have been stationed here this
whole evening for the particular purpose of preventing your escape. You
will observe that I have you covered well and good with this gun of
mine. I came over to get you, and I’ve got you—but you sure are some
lad!”
29
Further Explanations
“You owe us an explanation, I think, Mr. Cade,” said Herman Isaacstein,
somewhat later in the evening.
“There’s nothing much to explain,” said Anthony modestly. “I went to
Dover and Fish followed me under the impression that I was King Victor.
We found a mysterious stranger imprisoned there, and as soon as we
heard his story we knew where we were. The same idea again, you see.
The real man kidnapped, and the false one—in this case King Victor
himself—takes his place. But it seems that Battle here always thought
there was something fishy about his French colleague, and wired to
Paris for his fingerprints and other means of identification.”
“Ah!” cried the Baron. “The fingerprints. The Bertillon measurements
that that scoundrel talked about?”
“It was a clever idea,” said Anthony. “I admired it so much that I
felt forced to play up. Besides, my doing so puzzled the false Lemoine
enormously. You see, as soon as I had given the tip about the ‘rows’
and where the jewel really was, he was keen to pass on the news to
his accomplice, and at the same time to keep us all in that room. The
note was really to Mademoiselle Brun. He told Tredwell to deliver it
at once, and Tredwell did so by taking it upstairs to the schoolroom.
Lemoine accused me of being King Victor, by that means creating a
diversion and preventing anyone from leaving the room. By the time all
that had been cleared up and we adjourned to the library to look for
the stone, he flattered himself that the stone would be no longer
there to find!”
George cleared his throat.
“I must say, Mr. Cade,” he said pompously, “that I consider your
action in that matter highly reprehensible. If the slightest hitch had
occurred in your plans, one of our national possessions might have
disappeared beyond the hope of recovery. It was foolhardy, Mr. Cade,
reprehensibly foolhardy.”
“I guess you haven’t tumbled to the little idea, Mr. Lomax,” said the
drawling voice of Mr. Fish. “That historic diamond was never behind the
books in the library.”
“Never?”
“Not on your life.”
“You see,” explained Anthony, “that little device of Count Stylptitch’s
stood for what it had originally stood for—a Rose. When that dawned
upon me on Monday afternoon, I went straight to the Rose Garden. Mr.
Fish had already tumbled to the same idea. If, standing with your back
to the sundial, you take seven paces straight forward, then eight to
the left and three to the right, you come to some bushes of a bright
red rose called Richmond. The house has been ransacked to find the
hiding-place, but nobody has thought of digging in the garden. I
suggest a little digging party to-morrow morning.”
“Then the story about the books in the library—”
“An invention of mine to trap the lady. Mr. Fish kept watch on the
terrace, and whistled when the psychological moment had arrived. I may
say that Mr. Fish and I established martial law at the Dover house, and
prevented the Comrades from communicating with the false Lemoine. He
sent them an order to clear out, and word was conveyed to him that this
had been done. So he went happily ahead with his plans for denouncing
me.”
“Well, well,” said Lord Caterham cheerfully, “everything seems to have
been cleared up most satisfactorily.”