CHAPTER VIII
HATHERLY BELL
The queer, misshapen figure striding along by Steel's side would haveattracted attention anywhere; indeed, Hatherly Bell had been anattractive personality from his schooldays. A strange mixture of vanityand brilliant mental qualities, Bell had almost as many enemies asfriends. He was morbidly miserable over the score of his personalappearance despite the extraordinary beauty of his face--to be pitied oreven sympathised with almost maddened him. Yet there were many women whowould gladly have shared the lot of Hatherly Bell.
For there was strength in the perfectly moulded face, as well as beauty.It was the face of a man possessed of marvellous intellectual powers, andnone the less attractive because, while the skin was as fair as a woman'sand the eyes as clear as a child's, the wavy hair was absolutely white.The face of a man who had suffered fiercely and long. A face hiding agreat sorrow.
Time was when Bell had promised to stand in the front rank of operativephysicians. In brain troubles and mental disorders he had distinguishedhimself. He had a marvellous faculty for psychological research; indeed,he had gone so far as to declare that insanity was merely a disease andcapable of cure the same as any ordinary malady. "If Bell goes on as hehas started," a great German specialist once declared, "he willinevitably prove to be the greatest benefactor to mankind since thebeginning of the world." Bell was to be the man of his time.
And then suddenly he had faded out as a star drops from the zenith. Therehad been dark rumours of a terrible scandal, a prosecution burked bystrong personal influence, mysterious paragraphs in the papers, and thedisappearance of the name of Hatherly Bell from the rank of great medicaljurists. Nobody seemed to know anything about it, but Bell was ignored byall except a few old friends, and henceforth he devoted his attention tocriminology and the evolution of crime. It was Bell's boast that he couldtake a dozen men at haphazard and give you their vices and virturespoint-blank. He had a marvellous gift that way.
A few people stuck to him, Gilead Gates amongst the number. Themillionaire philanthropist had need of someone to pick the sheep from thegoats, and Bell made no mistakes. David Steel had been able to do thespecialist some slight service a year or two before, and Bell had beenpleased to magnify this into a great favour.
"You are a fast walker," David said, presently.
"That's because I am thinking fast," Bell replied. "Steel, you are ingreat trouble?"
"It needs no brilliant effort on your part to see that," David said,bitterly. "Besides, you heard a great deal just now when you--you--"
"Listened," Bell said, coolly. "Of course I had no intention of playingeavesdropper; and I had no idea who the Mr. Steel was who wanted to seeMiss Gates. They come day by day, my dear fellow, garbed in the garb ofPall Mall or Petticoat Lane as the case may be, but they all come formoney. Sometimes it is a shilling, sometimes L100. But I did not gatherfrom your chat with Miss Gates what your trouble was."
"Perhaps not, but Miss Gates knew perfectly well."
Bell patted his companion, approvingly.
"It is a pleasure to help a lucid-minded man like yourself," he said."You go straight to the root of the sore and cut all the superfluousmatter away. I was deeply interested in the conversation which Ioverheard just now. You are in great trouble, and that trouble isconnected with 219, Brunswick Square--a house where you have neverbeen before."
"My dear chap, I was in that dining-room two nights ago. Nothing willconvince me to the--"
"There you are wrong, because I am going to convince you to thecontrary. You may smile and shake your head, but before an hour haspassed I am going to convince you beyond all question that you werenever inside No. 219."
"Brave words," David muttered. "Still, an hour is not a long time towait."
"No. But you must enlighten me if I am to assist you. I am profoundlyinterested. You come to the house of my friend on a desperate errand.Miss Gates is a perfect stranger to you, and yet the mere discovery ofyour identity fills her with the most painful agitation. Therefore,though you have never been in 219 before, you are pretty certain, and Iam pretty certain, that Ruth Gates knows a deal about the thing that istouching you. On the contrary, I know nothing on that head. Won't you letme into the secret?"
"I'll tell you part," Steel replied. "And I'll put it pithily. For mereargument we assume that I am selected to assist a damsel in distress wholives at No. 219, Brunswick Square. We will assume that the conversationleading up to the flattering selection took place over the telephone. Asa matter of fact, it did take place over the telephone. The thing wasinvolved with so much secrecy that I naturally hesitated. I was offeredL1,000 for my services; also I was reminded by my unseen messenger that Iwas in dire need of that money."
"And were you?"
"My dear fellow, I don't fancy that I should have hesitated at burglaryto get it. And all I had to do was to meet a lady secretly in the dead ofnight at No. 219, and tell her how to get out of a certain difficulty. Itall resolved itself round the synopsis of a proposed new story of mine.But I had better go into details."
David proceeded to do so. Bell, with his arm crooked through that of hiscompanion, followed the story with an intelligent and flattering interest.
"Very strange and very fascinating," he said, presently. "I'll think itout presently. Nobody could possibly think of anything but their toes inWestern Road. Go on."
"Now I am coming to the point. I had the money, I had that lovelycigar-case, and subsequently I had that battered and bleeding specimen ofhumanity dumped down in the most amazing manner in my conservatory. Thecigar-case lay on the conservatory floor, remember--swept off the tablewhen I clutched for the telephone bell to call for the police. WhenMarley came he asked if the cigar-case was mine. At first I said no,because, you see--"
"I see quite plainly. Pray go on."
"Well, I lose that cigar-case; I leave it in the offices of Mossa, towhom I pay nearly L1,000. Mossa, to spite me, takes or sends the case tothe police, who advertise it not knowing that it is mine. You will seewhy they advertise it presently--"
"Because it belonged to the injured man, eh?"
David pulled up and regarded his companion with amazement.
"How on earth--" he gasped. "Do you mean to say that you know--"
"Nothing at present, I assure you," Bell said, coolly. "Call itintuition, if you like. I prefer to call it the result of logical mentalprocess. I'm right, of course?"
"Of course you are. I'd claimed that case for my own. I had cut myinitials inside, as I showed Marley when I went to the police-station.And then Marley tells me how I paid Mossa nearly L1,000; how the moneymust have come into my hands in the nick of time. That was pretty badwhen I couldn't for the life of me give a lucid reason for the possessionof those notes; but there was worse to come. In the pocket of the injuredman was a receipt for a diamond-studded gun-metal cigar-case, purchasedthe day of the outrage. And Walen, the jeweller, proved beyond a doubtthat the case I claimed was purchased at his shop."
Bell nodded gravely.
"Which places you in an exceedingly awkward position," he said.
"A mild way of putting it," David replied. "If that fellow dies thepolice have enough evidence to hang me. And what is my defence? The storyof my visit to No. 219. And who would believe that cock-and-bull story?Fancy a drama like that being played out in the house of such a pillar ofrespectability as Gilead Gates."
"It isn't his house," said Bell. "He only takes it furnished."
"In anybody else your remark would be puerile," David said, irritably.
"It's a deeper remark than you are aware of at present," Bell replied. "Iquite see your position. Nobody would believe you, of course. But why notgo to the post-office and ask the number of the telephone that called youup from London?"
The question seemed to amuse David slightly. Then his lips were drawnhumorously.
"When my logical formula came back I thought of that," he said. "Oninquiring as to who it was rang me up on that fateful occasion
I learntthat the number was 0017 Kensington and that--"
"Gates's own number at Prince's Gate," Bell exclaimed. "The plotthickens."
"It does, indeed," David said, grimly. "It is Wilkie Collins gone mad,Gaboriau _in extremis_, Du Boisgobey suffering from _delirium tremens_.I go to Gates's house here, and am solemnly told in the midst ofsurroundings that I can swear to that I have never been there before;the whole mad expedition is launched by the turning of the handle of atelephone in the house of a distinguished, trusted, if prosaic,citizen. Somebody gets hold of the synopsis of a story of mine, Heavenknows how--"
"That is fairly easy. The synopsis was short, I suppose?"
"Only a few lines, say 1,000 words, a sheet of paper. My writing is verysmall. It was tucked into a half-penny open envelope--a magazine officeenvelope, marked 'Proof, urgent.' There were the proofs of a short storyin the buff envelope."
"Which reached its destination in due course?"
"So I hear this morning. But how on earth--"
"Easily enough. The whole thing gets slipped into a larger open envelope,the kind of big-mouthed affair that enterprising firms send out circularsand patterns with. This falls into the hands of the woman who is at thebottom of this and every other case, and she reads the synopsis fromsheer curiosity. The case fits her case, and there you are. Mind you, Idon't say that this is how the thing actually happened, but how it mighthave done so. When did you post the letter?"
"I can't give you the date. Say ten days ago."
"And there would be no hurry for a reply," Bell said, thoughtfully. "Andyou had no cause for worry on that head. Nor need the woman who found ithave kept the envelope beyond the delay of a single post, which is only amatter of an hour or so in London. If you go a little farther we findthat money is no object, hence the L1,000 offer and the careful, anddoubtless expensive, inquiry into your position. Steel, I am going toenjoy this case."
"You're welcome to all the fun you can get out of it," David said,grimly. "So far as I am concerned, I fail to see the humour. Isn't thisthe office you are after?"
Bell nodded and disappeared, presently to return with two exceedinglyrusty keys tied together with a drab piece of tape. He jingled them onhis long, slender forefinger with an air of positive enjoyment.
"Now come along," he said. "I feel like a boy who has marked downsomething rare in the way of a bird's nest. We will go back to BrunswickSquare exactly the same way as you approached it on the night of thegreat adventure."