Chapter 17. Missing!

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_ CHAPTER XVII. MISSING!

Miss Marty had just finished watering her sweet-peas and mignonette; had inspected each of the four standard roses beside the front gate in search of green-fly; had caught a snail sallying forth to dine late upon her larkspurs, and called to Cai Tamblyn to destroy it; had, in short, performed all her ritual for the cool of the day; and was removing her gardening gloves when a vehement knocking agitated the front door, and Scipio hurried to announce that a caller--a Mr. Basket--desired to see her on important business.

"Mr. Basket?" she echoed apprehensively, and made at once for the parlour, where she found her visitor mopping his brow. Despite the heat, he was pale. In his left hand he held a letter.

"You will pardon me," he began in a flutter. "Am I addressing Miss Martha Hymen?"

"You are, sir." Miss Marty clasped her hands in alarm at his demeanour. "Oh, tell me what has happened!"

"All the way from Plymouth on purpose," answered Mr. Basket. "Most mysterious occurrence . . . ate a good dinner and retired to his room apparently in the best of health and spirits. On our return from the theatre he was gone."

"Gone?"

"Disappeared, vanished! We searched the house. His watch and pocket-book lay on the bed, together with a certain amount of loose change. His wig, too . . . you were aware?"

"I have gone so far as to suspect it. But what dreadful news is this? Disappeared? Leaving no clue?"

"We are in hopes, my wife and I, that this may afford a clue. A letter, and addressed to you; it lay upon his writing-table. We did not feel ourselves at liberty to break the seal. I trust--I sincerely trust--it may put a period to our suspense."

Miss Marty took the letter, glanced at the address and tore the paper open with trembling hands. She perused the first few sentences with a puckered, puzzled brow; then of a sudden her eyes grew wide and round. Despite herself she uttered a little gasping cry.

"It contains a clue at least?" asked Mr. Basket, who had been watching her face anxiously. "Dear lady, what does he say?"

"Nun--nothing," Miss Marty caught at the back of a Chippendale chair for support.

"Nothing?" echoed Mr. Basket blankly.

"Nothing--That is to say I can't tell you. Oh, this is horrible!"

"But pardon me," Mr. Basket insisted. "After travelling all the way from Plymouth!"

"I can't possibly tell you," she repeated.

"But, madam, consider my responsibility! I must really ask you to consider my responsibility."

"If I could only realise it! Oh, give me time, sir!"

"Certainly, certainly; by all means take your time. Nevertheless, when you consider my distress of mind, I appeal to you, madam, to be merciful and relieve it. After travelling all this distance in the dark--"

"In the dark?" queried Miss Marty, with a glance at the window.

"Tormented by a thousand speculations. In my house, too! In good health, and apparently the best of spirits; and then without a word, like the snuff of a candle!"

"His brain must be affected," Miss Marty murmured, gazing at the letter again. The handwriting swam before her. "Excuse me, sir, I will not detain you a minute."

She ran from the room and upstairs to her room, her knees shaking beneath her. Heaven grant that the Doctor was at home! She agitated her window-blind violently and drew it down to the third pane. "You are wanted--urgent," was the message it conveyed.

Yes, he was at home. "I come, instantly," answered her lover's window; and in less than a minute, to her infinite relief, the Doctor emerged from his front doorway and came bustling up the street almost at a trot.

She ran down and admitted him. In her face he read instantly that something serious had happened; something serious if not catastrophical: but with finger on lip she enjoined silence and led the way to the parlour.

"This gentleman has just arrived from Plymouth, with serious news of the Major."

"Serious? He is not ill, I trust?"

"Worse," said Mr. Basket.

"But first," interposed Miss Marty, "you must read this letter. Yes, yes!"--blushing hotly, she thrust it into the Doctor's unresisting hands--"you have the right. Forgive me if I seem indecorous: but in such a situation you only can help me."

"Eh? Oh, certainly--h'm, h'm!--" The Doctor adjusted his glasses and began to read in a low mumbling voice. By and by he paused, then slowly looked up with pained, incredulous eyes.

"This is some horrible dream!" he groaned and, feeling his way to the Major's armchair, sank into it heavily.

"He swoons!" exclaimed Miss Marty. "One moment--a glassful of the Fra Angelico!"

She ran to the cupboard, found decanter and glasses, poured out a dose and came hurrying back with it. He declined it, waving her off with a feeble motion of the hand.

She appealed to Mr. Basket. "Will _you_, sir?"

Mr. Basket confessed afterwards that for the moment, excusably perhaps, he lost his presence of mind. She had motioned to him to administer the dose. He misunderstood. Taking the glass distractedly, he drained it to the dregs, clapped a hand to his windpipe, and collapsed, sputtering, in a chair facing the Doctor.

"Oh, what have I done?" wailed Miss Marty.

"He deserved it!"

The Doctor pulled himself together, stood erect, and, lurching forward, gripped Mr. Basket by the shoulder.

"Sir, this lady is my affianced wife!"

"Would you--mind--tapping me in the back?" pleaded Mr. Basket, between the catches of his breath.

"Not at all, sir." The Doctor complied. "As I was saying, this lady is my affianced wife. Though Major Hymen were ten thousand times my friend--by placing both hands on your stomach and bending forward a little you will find yourself relieved--though Major Hymen were ten thousand times my friend, it should be over my prostrate body, sir; and so you may go back and tell him!"

"But I can't find him!" almost screamed Mr. Basket.

"He has disappeared!" quavered Miss Marty.

"It's the best thing he could do!" Dr. Hansombody folded his arms and looked at Mr. Basket with fierce decision. "Disappeared? Where?"

They answered him in agitated duetto. "Where indeed?" The Major had vanished, dissolved out of mortal ken, melted (one might say) into thin air. "If one may quote the Bard, sir, in this connection"--Mr. Basket wound up his recital--"like an insubstantial pageant faded he has left not a rack behind; that is to say, unless the letter in your hands may be considered as answering that description."

"There's only one explanation," the Doctor declared. "The man must be mad."

Mr. Basket considered this for a moment and shook his head. "We left him, sir, in the completest possession of his faculties. In all my long acquaintance with him I never detected the smallest symptom of mental aberration; and last night--good God! to think that this happened no longer ago than last night!"--Mr. Basket passed a hand over his brow--"Last night, sir, I recognised with delight the same shrewd judgment, the same masculine intellect, the same large outlook on men and affairs, the same self-confidence and self-respect--in short, sir, all the qualities for which I ever admired my old friend."

"Nevertheless," the Doctor insisted, "he must have been mad when he penned this letter."

"Of the contents of which, let me remind you, I am still ignorant."

The Doctor glanced at Miss Marty, then handed the letter to Mr. Basket with a bow. "You have a right to peruse it, sir. You will see, however, that its contents are of a strictly private nature, and will respect this lady's confidence."

"Certainly, certainly." Mr. Basket drew out his spectacles, and, receiving Miss Marty's permission, seated himself at the table, spread out the letter and slowly read it through. "Most extraordinary! _Most_ extraordinary! But you'll excuse my saying that while, unfortunately, it affords no clue, this seems to me as far as possible removed from the composition of a madman." He gazed almost gallantly over his spectacles at Miss Marty, who coloured. "In any case," he went on, folding up the letter and returning it, "the man must be found. I understand, madam, that you are a relative of his? Has he any others with whom we can communicate?"

"So far as I know, sir, none."

"I have a chaise awaiting me on the other side of the ferry. With all respect, dear madam, I suggest it; I am sorry indeed to put you to inconvenience--"

"You propose that Miss Marty, here, should accompany you back to Plymouth?"

"That was the suggestion in my mind. And you, too, sir--that is, if you can make it square with your engagements. Mrs. Basket will be happy to extend her hospitality. . . . Two heads are better than one, sir. We will prosecute our investigations together . . . with the help of the constabulary, of course. We should communicate with the constabulary, or our position may eventually prove an awkward one."

"Yes, yes; the man having disappeared from your house."

"Quite so. Apart from that, I see no immediate necessity for making the matter public; but am willing to defer to your judgment."

"That is a question we had better leave until we have seen the Chief Constable at Plymouth. To publish the news here and now in Troy would cause an infinite alarm, possibly an idle one. By the time we reach Plymouth our friend may have reappeared, or at least disclosed his whereabouts."

Alas! at Plymouth, where they arrived late that night, no news of the missing one awaited them. Mrs. Basket, her face white as a sheet, her ample body swathed in a red flannel dressing-gown, herself opened the door to the travellers as soon as the chaise drew up. For hours she had been expecting it, listening for the sounds of wheels. Almost before the introductions were over she announced with tears that she had nothing to tell.

For a while she turned her thoughts perforce from the disaster to the business of making ready the bedrooms for her guests and preparing a light supper. But the meal had not been in progress five minutes, before, in the act of loading Miss Marty's plate, she sat back with a gasp.

"Oh, and I was forgetting! Misfortunes, they say, never come singly, and--would you believe it, my dear?--as I was walking in the garden this afternoon, thinking to calm my poor brain, I happened to look at the fish-pond and what do I see there but two of the gold-fish floating with their chests uppermost!"

"Chests, madam?" queried Dr. Hansombody.

But sharp as his query was came a cry from Mr. Basket. "The fish-pond?" He thrust back his chair, a terrible surmise dawning in his eyes. "And the fish, you say, floating--"

"Chest uppermost," repeated Mrs. Basket, "and dead as dead."

"She _means_, on their backs," her husband explained parenthetically; "a fashion de parlour, as the French would say. Did you examine the pond? Heavens, Maria! did you examine the pond?"

"Elihu, you make my flesh creep! Why should I examine the pond? You don't mean to tell me--"

"My shrimping-net! Don't sit shivering there, Maria, but bring me my shrimping-net! And a lantern!" Mr. Basket caught up a Sheffield-plated candle-sconce from the table, motioned the Doctor to fetch along its fellow, and led the way out to the front garden.

The night outside was windless, but dark as the inside of a hat.

Their candles drew a dewy glimmer from the congregated statuary: apparitions so ghostly that the Doctor scarcely repressed a cry of terror. Mr. Basket advanced to the pond and set down his light on the brink.

"A foot deep . . . only a foot deep," he murmured. "It could not possibly cover him."

The two goldfish floated as Mrs. Basket had described them. Mr. Basket, taking the shrimping-net from his wife, who shrank back at once into darkness, plunged it beneath the water, deep into the mud. Dr. Hansombody held a sconce aloft to guide him.

The two ladies cowered behind a pedestal supporting the Farnese Hercules.

For a while nothing was heard in the garden but the splash of water as Mr. Basket plunged his net again and again and drew it forth dripping. Each time as he drew it to shore, he emptied the mud on the brink and bent over it, the Doctor holding a candle close to assist the inspection.

As he emptied his net for maybe the twentieth time, something jingled on the pebbles. Mr. Basket stooped swiftly, plunged his hand in the slime, and held it up to the light.

"Eh?" said the Doctor, peering close. "What? A latchkey?"

"My duplicate latchkey!" In spite of the heat engendered by his efforts, Mr. Basket's teeth chattered. "My wife gave it to him the last thing."

He turned and drove his net beneath the dark water with redoubled energy. The very next haul brought to shore an even more convincing piece of evidence--a silver snuff-box.

It was the Major's. Mr. Basket had seen his friend use it a thousand times; and called Miss Marty forward to identify it. Yes, undeniably it was the Major's snuff-box, engraved with "S.H.," his initials, in entwined italics.

The two male searchers, regardless of their small-clothes, now plunged knee-deep into the pond. For an hour they searched it; searched it from end to end; searched it twice over.

No further discovery rewarded them.

Here was evidence--tangible evidence. Yet of what? The Major had visited the pond during his hosts' absence at the theatre, and had dropped these two articles into it. How, if accidentally? If purposely, why? The mystery had become a deeper mystery.

A little after midnight the search was abandoned. Mrs. Basket administered hot brandy-and-water to the two gentlemen, and the household retired to rest--but not to sleep.

At breakfast next morning, before seeking the Chief Constable, Mr. Basket and the Doctor compared notes. Each owned himself more puzzled than ever.

As it turned out, their discoveries led them straight away from the true explanation. The Chief Constable, when they interviewed him, was disposed for a brief while to suspect the press-gang. There had, in fact, on the night before last, been a "hot press," as it was called. At least a score of bodies of the Royal Marines, in parties of twelve and fourteen, each accompanied by a marine and a naval officer, had boarded the colliers off the new quay, the ships in Cattewater and the Pool, and had swept the streets and gin-shops. A gang of seamen, too, had entered the theatre and cleared the whole gallery except the women; had even descended upon the stage and carried off practically the whole company of actors, including the famous Mr. Sturge. (This Mr. Basket could confirm.) The whole town was in a ferment. He had already received at least seventy visits from inquirers after missing relatives.

But the discoveries in the fish-pond led him clean off the scent. No press-gang would enter a private house or a private garden such as Mr. Basket's. Even supposing that their friend had fallen a victim to the press while walking the streets, they must admit it to be inconceivable that he should return and cast a latchkey and a snuff-box into Mr. Basket's fish-pond.

"_Cui bono?_" asked the Chief Constable.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Basket.

"Well, in other words, what do you suggest he did it for? It's an expression we use in these cases."

The Doctor granted the force of the Chief Constable's reasoning, but suggested that there could be no harm in rowing round the Fleet and making inquiries.

The Chief Constable answered again that the squadron--it was no more than a squadron--had taken precious good care to time the press for the eve of sailing; had in fact weighed anchor in the small hours of the morning, and by this time had probably joined Admiral Cornwallis's fleet off Brest.

What was to be done?

"In my belief," said the Chief Constable, "it's a case of foul play. Mind, I'm not accusing anyone," he went on; "but this person disappeared from your house, Mr. Basket, and in your place I'd put myself right with the public by getting out a handbill at once."

This dreadful possibility of coming under public suspicion had never occurred to Mr. Basket. He begged to be supplied at once with pen, ink and paper.

"'Lost, stolen or strayed'--is that how you begin?"

"If you ask me," said the Chief Constable, "I'd put him down as 'Missing.' It's more usual."

"'Missing,' then. 'On the night of May 2nd--'"

"From your house."

"Must that go in?" Mr. Basket pleaded.

"If you want to put yourself right with the public."

"Yes, yes--'from The Retreat, East Hoe, the residence of E. Basket, Esq., on the night of May 2nd, between the hours of 7 and 11 p.m., a Gentleman--'"

Mr. Basket paused.

"We must describe him," said the Doctor.

"I am coming to that. 'A Gentleman, answering to the name of Hymen--'"

"Why 'answering'?"

Mr. Basket ran his pen through the word. "The fact is," he explained, "I've only written out a thing of this sort once before in my life; and that was when Mrs. Basket missed a black-and-tan terrier. H'm, let me see. . . . Between the hours of 7 and 11 p.m., Solomon Hymen, Esquire, and Justice of the Peace, Major of the Troy Volunteer Artillery. The missing gentleman was of imposing exterior--"

"Height five feet, three inches," said the Doctor.

"Eh? Are you sure?"

"As medical officer of the Troy Artillery, I keep account of every man in the corps; height, chest measurement, waist measurement, any peculiarity of structure, any mole, cicatrix, birth-mark and so on. I began to take these notes at the Major's own instance, for purposes of identification on the field of battle. Little did I dream, as I passed the tape around my admired friend, that _his_ proportions would ever be the subject of this melancholy curiosity!"

"It reminds me," said Mr. Basket, "of a group in my garden entitled _Finding the body of Harold_. Five feet three, you say? I had better scratch out 'imposing exterior'; or, stay!--we'll alter it to 'carriage.'"

"Chest, thirty-six inches; waist, forty-three inches; complexion-- does that come next?" Doctor Hansombody appealed to the Chief Constable, who nodded.

"Complexion, features, colour of hair, of eyes . . . any order you please."

"We must leave out all allusion to his hair, I think," said Mr. Basket; "and, by the way, I suppose the--er--authorities will desire to take possession of any other little odds-and-ends our friend left behind him? Complexion, clear and sanguine; strongly marked features. His eye, sir, was like Mars, to threaten and command; but I forget the precise colour at this moment. We might, perhaps, content ourselves with 'piercing.' If I allow myself to be betrayed into a description of his moral qualities--"

"Unnecessary," put in the Chief Constable.

"And yet, sir, it was by his moral qualities that my friend ever impressed himself most distinctly on all who met him. Alas! that I should be speaking of him in the past tense! He was a man, sir, as Shakespeare puts it:

"Take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again."

"A most happy description, Mr. Basket," the Doctor agreed. "Would you mind saying it over again, that I may commit it to memory?"

Mr. Basket obligingly repeated it.

"Most happy! Shakespeare, you say? Thank you." The Doctor copied it into his pocket-book among the prescriptions.

"One might add, perhaps," Mr. Basket submitted respectfully, "that a mere physical description, however animated, cannot do justice to my friend's moral grandeur, which, indeed, would require the brush of a Michael Angelo."

The Chief Constable inquired what reward they proposed to offer.

"Ah, yes; to be sure!" Taken somewhat unexpectedly, Mr. Basket and the Doctor exchanged glances.

"On behalf of the relatives, now--" began Mr. Basket.

"So far as I know, Miss Martha was the one relative he had in the world," answered the Doctor.

"So much the better, my friend, seeing that you have (as I understand) her entire confidence."

"I was about to suggest that--circumstances having forced you into prominence--to take the lead, so to speak, in this unhappy affair--"

"But why do we talk of price?" interposed Mr. Basket briskly, "seeing that the loss, if loss it be, is nothing short of irreparable? To my mind there is something--er--"

"Desecrating," suggested the Doctor.

"Quite so--desecrating--in this reduction of our poor friend to pounds, shillings, and pence."

"Nevertheless it is usual to name a sum," the Chief Constable assured them. "Shall we say fifty pounds?" Mr. Basket took off his spectacles and wiped them with a trembling hand. Dr. Hansombody stood considering, pulling thoughtfully at his lower lip.

"I think I can undertake," he suggested, "that the Town Council will contribute a moiety of that sum. Something can be done by private subscription."

Mr. Basket brightened visibly. "Put it at fifty pounds, then," he commanded, with a wave of the hand. "Should Providence see fit to restore him to us, our friend, as a reasonable man, will doubtless discharge some part of the expenses."

Accordingly the bill was drafted, and the Chief Constable, after running his blue pencil through some of its more monumental periods, engaged to have it printed and distributed.

"Do you know," confessed Mr. Basket, as he and the Doctor walked homewards, "I felt all the while as if we were composing our friend's epitaph. I have a presentimen--"

"Do not utter it, my dear sir!" the Doctor entreated.

"He was a man--"

"Yes, yes; 'taking one thing with another, it is more than likely we shall never see him again.' The words, sir, struck upon my spirit like the tolling of a bell. But for Heaven's sake let us not despair!"

"Life is precarious, Dr. Hansombody; as your profession, if any, should teach. We are here to-day; we are gone--in the more sudden cases--to-morrow. What do you say, sir, to a glass of wine at the 'Benbow'? To my thinking, we should both be the better for it." _

Read next: Chapter 18. Apotheosis

Read previous: Chapter 16. Farewell To Albion!

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