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The Box with Broken Seals (Strange Case of Mr. Jocelyn Thew), a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII Crawshay took a taxicab from the Savoy to Claridge's Hotel, sent up his card and was conducted to Katharine Beverley's sitting room on the first floor. She kept him waiting for a few moments, and he felt a sudden instinct of curiosity as he noticed the great pile of red roses which a maid had only just finished arranging. When she came in, he looked towards her in surprise. She appeared to have grown thinner, and there were dark rims under her eyes. Her words of greeting were colourless. She seemed almost afraid to meet his steady gaze. "I ought to apologise for calling in the morning," he said, "but I ventured to do so, hoping that you would come out and have some lunch with me." "I really don't feel well enough," she replied. "London is not agreeing with me at all." "You are ill?" he exclaimed, with some concern. She looked at the closed door through which the maid had issued. "Not exactly ill. I have some anxieties," she answered. "It is kind of you to keep your promise and come. Please tell me exactly what happened? You know how interested I am." "I have unfortunately nothing to report but failure," he replied. "Everything seems to have happened exactly as the doctor on the ship suggested. The detectives at Liverpool were quite smart. We were able to trace the car without much difficulty, and the body of your patient Phillips was found at his home, the other side of Chester. We obtained permission to make an examination, and we found that, just as we expected, fresh bandages had been put on only a few hours previously." "And Doctor Gant?" "He is at an hotel in London. He is watched night and day, but he seems to divide his time between genuine sight-seeing and trying to arrange for his passage home. Naturally, the whole of his effects have been searched, but without the slightest result." "And--and Mr. Jocelyn Thew?" "His business in Liverpool seems to have detained him a very short time. He is staying now at the Savoy Hotel. Needless to say, his effects too have been thoroughly searched, without result." "You know that he sent me these?" she asked, glancing towards the roses. "I saw him buying them." Her fingers had strayed over one of the blossoms, and he noticed that while they talked she was convulsively crushing it into pulp. "Were these detectives from Liverpool," she asked, "able to keep any watch upon Doctor Gant and Mr. Jocelyn Thew after--Chester?" "To some extent. There is no doubt that Jocelyn Thew spent the first night in Liverpool. After that he travelled to London and took up his residence at the Savoy. Here Doctor Gant, who had travelled up from Chester, called upon him, late in the afternoon of the day of his arrival. They spent some time together, and subsequently the doctor took a room at the Regent Palace Hotel. The two men dined together at the Savoy grill, and took a box at the Alhambra music-hall, where they spent the evening. They appear to have returned to Jocelyn Thew's rooms, had a whisky and soda each and separated. There is no record of their having spoken to any other person or visited any other place." "And their rooms have been searched?" "By the most skilled men we have." She pulled another of the roses to pieces. "So it comes to this," she said. "All these documents, of whose existence both you and the American police knew, have been brought from America to England, and even now you cannot locate them." "At present we cannot," he confessed drily, "but I am not prepared to admit for a single moment that they are ever likely to reach their destination." "Jocelyn Thew is very clever," she reminded him calmly. "I am tired of being told so," he replied, with a touch of irritation in his tone. She smiled. "You probably need your luncheon! If you care to come downstairs with me," she invited, "we can finish our conversation." "I shall be only too pleased." Katharine Beverley's table was in a quiet corner, and she sat with her back to the window, but even under such circumstances the change in her during the last few days was noticeable. There was a frightened light in her eyes, her cheeks were entirely colourless, her hands seemed almost transparent. Such a change in so short a time seemed almost incredible. Crawshay found himself unable to ignore it. "I am very sorry to see you looking so unwell," he observed sympathetically. "I am afraid the shock of your voyage across the Atlantic has been too much for you." "I am terribly disturbed," she confessed. "I am disappointed, too, in Mr. Jocelyn Thew. One hates to be made use of so flagrantly." "You really knew nothing, then, until those things were discovered in your stateroom?" "That question," she replied, "I am not going to answer." "But the main part of the plot?" he persisted, "the bandages?" "Doctor Gant never allowed me to touch them. That is what I found so inexplicable,--what first set me wondering." "The whole scheme was very cleverly thought out," Crawshay pronounced, "but if you will forgive my repeating a previous speculation, Miss Beverley, the greatest mystery about it all, to me, is how you, Miss Katharine Beverley, whose name and reputation in New York stands so high, were induced to leave your work, your social engagements and your home, at a time like this, when your country really has claims upon you, to act as ordinary sick nurse to a New York clerk of humble means who turns out to have been nothing but the tool of Jocelyn Thew." "I am still unable to explain that," she told him. He realised the state of tension in which she was and suddenly abandoned the whole subject. He spoke of the theatres, asked of her friends in town, discussed the news of the day, and made no further allusion of any sort to the mystery which surrounded them. It was not until after they had been served with their coffee in the lounge that he reverted to more serious matters. "Miss Beverley," he said, "for your own sake I am exceedingly unwilling to leave you like this. I may seem to you to be an inquisitor, but believe me I am a friendly one. I cannot see that you have anything to lose in being frank with me. I wish to help you. I wish to relieve the anxiety from which I know that you are suffering. Give me your confidence." "You ask a very difficult thing," she sighed. "Difficult but not impossible," he insisted. "I can quite understand that your discovery of the fact that you had been made use of to assist in the bringing to England of treasonable documents is of itself likely to be a severe shock to you, but, if you will permit me to say so, it is not sufficient to account for your present state of nerves." "You don't know all that is happening," she replied, in some agitation. "There is a very astute lady detective who has a room near mine, and a man who shadows me every time I come in or go out. I am expecting every moment that the manager will ask me to leave the hotel." "That is all very annoying, of course," he acknowledged sympathetically, "and yet I believe that at the back of your head there is still something else troubling you." "You are very observant," she murmured. "In your case," he replied, "close observation is scarcely necessary. Why, it is only four days since we left the steamer, and you look simply the wreck of yourself." "A great deal has happened since then," she confessed. He seized upon the admission. "You see, I was right.--There is something else! Miss Beverley, I am your friend. You must confide in me." "It would be useless," she assured him sadly. "You cannot be sure of that," he insisted. "If this espionage gets on your nerves, I believe that I have influence enough to have it removed, provided that you will let me bring a friend of mine to see you here and ask you a few questions." She shook her head. "It is not the espionage alone," she declared. "I am confronted with something altogether different, something about which I cannot speak." "Is this man Jocelyn Thew connected with it in any way?" he demanded. She winced. "Why should you ask that question?" "Because it is perfectly clear," he continued, "that Jocelyn Thew exercises some sort of unholy influence over you, an influence, I may add, which it is my intention to destroy." She smiled bitterly. "If you can destroy anything that Jocelyn Thew means to keep alive," she began-- "Oh, please don't believe that Jocelyn Thew is infallible," he interrupted. "I have had a long experience of diplomatists and plotters and even criminals, and I can assure you that no man breathing is possessed of more than ordinary human powers. Jocelyn Thew has brought it off against us this time, but then, you see, one must lose a trick now and then. It is the next step which counts." "Oh, the next step will be all right!" she replied, with a hard little laugh. "He has brought his spoils to England, although there must have been twenty or thirty detectives on board, and you won't be able to stop his disposing of them exactly as he likes." "I don't agree with you," he assured her confidently. "That, however, is not what I want to talk about. You are in a false position. In the struggle which is going on now, your heart and soul should be with us and against Jocelyn Thew." Her eyes were lit with a momentary terror. "You don't suppose for a moment," she said, "that my sympathies are not with my own country and our joint cause?" "I don't," he replied. "On the other hand, your actions should follow upon your sympathies. There is something sinister in your present state. I want you to tell me just what the terror is that is sitting in your heart, that has changed you like this. Jocelyn Thew has some hold upon you. If so, you need a man to stand by your side. Can't you treat me as a friend?" She softened at his words. For a moment she sat quite silent. "I can only repeat to you what I told you once before," she said. "If you are picturing Jocelyn Thew to yourself as a blackmailer, or anything of that sort, you are wrong. I am under the very deepest obligations to him." "But surely," he protested, "you have paid your debt, whatever it was?" "He admits it." "And yet the terror remains?" "It remains," she repeated sadly. Crawshay meditated for a moment. "Look here, Miss Beverley," he said, "I have a friend who is chief in this country of a department which I will not name. Will you dine with me to-night and let me invite him to meet you?" She shook her head. "It is a very kind thought," she declared, "but I am engaged. Mr. Jocelyn Thew is dining here." Crawshay's face for a moment was very black indeed. He rose slowly to his feet. "I know that you mean to be kind," she continued, "and I fear that I must seem very ungrateful. Believe me, I am not. I am simply faced with one of those terrible problems which must be solved, and yet which admit of no help from any living person." Crawshay's attitude had grown perceptibly stiffer. "I am very sorry indeed, Miss Beverley," he said, "that you cannot give me your confidence. I am very sorry for my own sake, and I am sorry for yours." "Is that a threat?" she asked. "You know the old proverb," he answered, as he bowed over her fingers. "'Those who are not on my side are against me.'" "You are going to treat me as an enemy?" "Until you prove yourself to be a friend." _ |
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