The Yellow Crayon
He stopped short. The footman was standing by the side of Lady Carey’s
victoria with a rug on his arm.
“Lucille,” he said thoughtfully, “is locked in the morning-room. She is
prostrate with fear. If the Duke sees her everything is over. Upon
my word, I have a good mind to throw this all up and cross to Paris
to-night. Let England breed her own revolutions. What do you say,
Muriel? Will you come with me?”
She laughed scornfully.
“I’d as soon go with my coachman,” she said.
His eyebrows narrowed. A dull, purple flush crept to his forehead.
“Your wit,” he said, “is a little coarse. Listen! You wish our first
plan to go through?”
“Of course!”
“Then you must get Lucille out of that house. If she is left there she
is absolutely lost to us. Apart from that, she is herself not safe.
Our plan worked out too well. She is really in danger from this Duson
affair.”
The laughter died away from Lady Carey’s face. She hesitated with her
foot upon the step of her carriage.
“You can go back easily enough,” the Prince said. “You are the Duke’s
cousin, and you were not included in his tirade. Lucille is in the
morning-room, and here is the key. I brought it away with me. You must
tell her that all our plans are broken, that we have certain knowledge
that the police are on the track of this Duson affair. Get her to your
house in Pont Street, and I will be round this afternoon. Or better
still, take her to mine.”
Lady Carey stepped back on to the pavement. She was still, however,
hesitating.
“Leave her with the Duke and Duchess,” the Prince said, “and she will
dine with her husband to-night.”
Lady Carey took the key from his hand.
“I will try,” she said. “How shall you know whether I succeed?”
“I will wait in the gardens,” he answered. “I shall be out of sight, but
I shall be able to see you come out. If you are alone I shall come
to you. If she is with you I shall be at your house in an hour, and I
promise you that she shall leave England to-night with me.”
“Poor Brott!” she murmured ironically.
The Prince smiled.
“He will follow her. Every one will believe that they left London
together. That is all that is required.”
Lady Carey re-entered the house. The Prince made his way into the
gardens. Ten minutes passed--a quarter of an hour. Then Lady Carey with
Lucille reappeared, and stepping quickly into the victoria were driven
away. The Prince drew a little sigh of relief. He looked at his watch,
called a hansom, and drove to his club for lunch.
Another man, who had also been watching Dorset House from the gardens
for several hours, also noted Lucille’s advent with relief. He followed
the Prince out and entered another hansom.
“Follow that victoria which has just driven off,” he ordered. “Don’t
lose sight of it. Double fare.”
The trap-door fell, and the man whipped up his horse.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Mr. Sabin received an early visitor whilst still lingering over a slight
but elegant breakfast. Passmore seated himself in an easy-chair and
accepted the cigar which his host himself selected for him.
“I am glad to see you,” Mr. Sabin said. “This affair of Duson’s remains
a complete mystery to me. I am looking to you to help me solve it.”
The little man with the imperturbable face removed his cigar from his
mouth and contemplated it steadfastly.
“It is mysterious,” he said. “There are circumstances in connection
with it which even now puzzle me very much, very much indeed. There are
circumstances in connection with it also which I fear may be a shock to
you, sir.”
“My life,” Mr. Sabin said, with a faint smile, “has been made up of
shocks. A few more or less may not hurt me.”
“Duson,” the detective said, “was at heart a faithful servant!”
“I believe it,” Mr. Sabin said.
“He was much attached to you!”
“I believe it.”
“It is possible that unwittingly he died for you.”
Mr. Sabin was silent. It was his way of avoiding a confession of
surprise. And he was surprised. “You believe then,” he said, after a
moment’s pause, “that the poison was intended for me?”
“Certainly I do,” the detective answered. “Duson was, after all, a
valet, a person of little importance. There is no one to whom his
removal could have been of sufficient importance to justify such extreme
measures. With you it is different.”
Mr. Sabin knocked the ash from his cigarette.
“Why not be frank with me, Mr. Passmore?” he said. “There is no need
to shelter yourself under professional reticence. Your connection with
Scotland Yard ended, I believe, some time ago. You are free to speak or
to keep silence. Do one or the other. Tell me what you think, and I will
tell you what I know. That surely will be a fair exchange. You shall
have my facts for your surmises.”
Passmore’s thin lips curled into a smile. “You know that I have left
Scotland Yard then, sir?”
“Quite well! You are employed by them often, I believe, but you are not
on the staff, not since the affair of Nerman and the code book.”
If Passmore had been capable of reverence, his eyes looked it at that
moment.
“You knew this last night, sir?”
“Certainly!”
“Five years ago, sir,” he said, “I told my chief that in you the
detective police of the world had lost one who must have been their
king. More and more you convince me of it. I cannot believe that you are
ignorant of the salient points concerning Duson’s death.”
“Treat me as being so, at any rate,” Mr. Sabin said.
“I am pardoned,” Passmore said, “for speaking plainly of family
matters--my concern in which is of course purely professional?”
Mr. Sabin looked up for a moment, but he signified his assent.
“You left America,” Passmore said, “in search of your wife, formerly
Countess of Radantz, who had left you unexpectedly.”
“It is true!” Mr. Sabin answered.
“Madame la Duchesse on reaching London became the guest of the Duchess
of Dorset, where she has been staying since. Whilst there she has
received many visits from Mr. Reginald Brott.”
Mr. Sabin’s face was as the face of a sphinx. He made no sign.
“You do not waste your time, sir, over the Society papers. Yet you have
probably heard that Madame la Duchesse and Mr. Reginald Brott have been
written about and spoken about as intimate friends. They have been seen
together everywhere. Gossip has been busy with their names. Mr. Brott
has followed the Countess into circles which before her coming he
zealously eschewed. The Countess is everywhere regarded as a widow, and
a marriage has been confidently spoken of.”
Mr. Sabin bowed his head slightly. But of expression there was in his
face no sign.
“These things,” Passmore continued, “are common knowledge. I have
spoken up to now of nothing which is not known to the world. I proceed
differently.”
“Good!” Mr. Sabin said.
“There is,” Passmore continued, “in the foreign district of London a
man named Emil Sachs, who keeps a curious sort of a wine-shop, and
supplements his earnings by disposing at a high figure of certain rare
and deadly poisons. A few days ago the Countess visited him and secured
a small packet of the most deadly drug the man possesses.”
Mr. Sabin sat quite still. He was unmoved.
“The Countess,” Passmore continued, “shortly afterwards visited these
rooms. An hour after her departure Duson was dead. He died from drinking
out of your liqueur glass, into which a few specks of that powder,
invisible almost to the naked eye, had been dropped. At Dorset House
Reginald Brott was waiting for her. He left shortly afterwards in a
state of agitation.”
“And from these things,” Mr. Sabin said, “you draw, I presume, the
natural inference that Madame la Duchesse, desiring to marry her old
admirer, Reginald Brott, first left me in America, and then, since I
followed her here, attempted to poison me.”
“There is,” Passmore said, “a good deal of evidence to that effect.”
“Here,” Mr. Sabin said, handing him Duson’s letter, “is some evidence to
the contrary.”
Passmore read the letter carefully.
“You believe this,” he asked, “to be genuine?”
Mr. Sabin smiled.
“I am sure of it!” he answered.
“You recognise the handwriting?”
“Certainly!”
“And this came into your possession--how?”
“I found it on the table by Duson’s side.”
“You intend to produce it at the inquest?”
“I think not,” Mr. Sabin answered.
There was a short silence. Passmore was revolving a certain matter in
his mind--thinking hard. Mr. Sabin was apparently trying to make rings
of the blue smoke from his cigarette.
“Has it occurred to you,” Passmore asked, “to wonder for what reason
your wife visited these rooms on the morning of Duson’s death?”
Mr. Sabin shook his head.
“I cannot say that it has.”
“She knew that you were not here,” Passmore continued. “She left no
message. She came closely veiled and departed unrecognised.” Mr. Sabin
nodded.
“There were reasons,” he said, “for that. But when you say that she left
no message you are mistaken.”
Passmore nodded.
“Go on,” he said.
Mr. Sabin nodded towards a great vase of La France roses upon a side
table.
“I found these here on my return,” he said, “and attached to them the
card which I believe is still there. Go and look at it.”
Passmore rose and bent over the fragrant blossoms. The card still
remained, and on the back of it, in a delicate feminine handwriting:
“For my husband,
“with love from
“Lucille.”
Mr. Passmore shrugged his shoulders. He had not the vice of obstinacy,
and he knew when to abandon a theory.
“I am corrected,” he said. “In any case, a mystery remains as well worth
solving. Who are these people at whose instigation Duson was to have
murdered you--these people whom Duson feared so much that suicide was
his only alternative to obeying their behests?”
Mr. Sabin smiled faintly.
“Ah, my dear Passmore,” he said, “you must not ask me that question.
I can only answer you in this way. If you wish to make the biggest
sensation which has ever been created in the criminal world, to render
yourself immortal, and your fame imperishable--find out! I may not help
you, I doubt whether you will find any to help you. But if you want
excitement, the excitement of a dangerous chase after a tremendous
quarry, take your life in your hands, go in and win.”
Passmore’s withered little face lit up with a gleam of rare excitement.
“These are your enemies, sir,” he said. “They have attempted your life
once, they may do it again. Assume the offensive yourself. Give me a
hint.”
Mr. Sabin shook his head.
“That I cannot do,” he said. “I have saved you from wasting your time on
a false scent. I have given you something definite to work upon. Further
than that I can do nothing.”
Passmore looked his disappointment, but he knew Mr. Sabin better than to
argue the matter.
“You will not even produce that letter at the inquest?” he asked.
“Not even that,” Mr. Sabin answered.
Passmore rose to his feet.
“You must remember,” he said, “that supposing any one else stumbles
upon the same trail as I have been pursuing, and suspicion is afterwards
directed towards madame, your not producing that letter at the inquest
will make it useless as evidence in her favour.”
“I have considered all these things,” Mr. Sabin said. “I shall deposit
the letter in a safe place. But its use will never be necessary. You are
the only man who might have forced me to produce it, and you know the
truth.”
Passmore rose reluctantly.
“I want you,” Mr. Sabin said, “to leave me not only your address, but
the means of finding you at any moment during the next four-and-twenty
hours. I may have some important work for you.”
The man smiled as he tore leaf from his pocketbook and a made a few
notes.