I had difficulty in moving my mouth, my fingers, and my shoulders, but my sense of smell seemed to have become extremely acute. Yet my muscles seemed rigid, although my brain remained perfectly clear and unimpaired.
It was that scent of verbena – now terrible and detestable – a million times more potent than any bath soap – which filled my nostrils so that it seemed to choke me. I longed for fresh air.
By dint of persistent effort I rose, dragged myself across the room, drew aside the heavy silken curtain, and opening the window leaned out into the cold air, gasping for breath.
Where was Mr. De Gex?
For about five minutes I remained there, yet even the night air gave me little relief. My throat had become contracted until I seemed to be choking.
By the exercise of greater effort I staggered back, aghast at the sudden and unaccountable attack, and pressed the electric bell beside the fireplace to summon my host or the estimable Horton. Then I sank back into the arm-chair, my limbs paralysed.
How long I remained there I cannot tell for that pungent odour had, at last, dulled my brain. I had heard of cocaine, of opium, and of other drugs, and it occurred to me that I might be under the influence of one or the other of them. Yet the idea was absurd. I was Mr. De Gex’s guest, and I could only suppose that my sudden seizure was due to natural causes – to some complication of a mental nature which I had never suspected. The human brain is a very complex composition, and its strange vagaries are only known to alienists.
I seemed stifled, and I sat clutching the arms of the big leather chair when my host at last entered, smiling serenely and full of apologies.
“I’m awfully sorry to have left you, Mr. Garfield, but my agent called to do some very urgent business. Pray excuse me, won’t you?”
“I – I’m awfully sorry!” I exclaimed. “But I – I don’t feel very well. I must apologize, Mr. De Gex, but would you ask your man to order me a taxi? I – well, I’ve come over strangely queer since you’ve been out.”
“Bah! my dear fellow,” he laughed cheerily. “You’ll surely be all right in a few minutes. Stay here and rest. I’m sorry you don’t feel well. You’ll be better soon. I’ll order my car to take you home in half an hour.”
Then he crossed to the telephone, rang up a number, and ordered his car to be at the house in half an hour.
Then he rang for Horton, who brought me a liqueur glass of old brandy, which at my host’s suggestion I swallowed.
Mr. De Gex, standing upon the thick Turkey hearthrug with his cigar between his lips, watched me closely. Apparently he was considerably perturbed at my sudden illness, for he expressed regret, hoping that the brandy would revive me.
It, however, had the opposite effect. The strong perfume like pot-pourri had confused my senses, but the brandy dulled them still further. I felt inert and unable to move a muscle, or even to exercise my will power. Yet my sense of sight was quite unimpaired.
I recollect distinctly how the dark keen-faced aristocrat-looking man stood before me alert and eager, as he gazed intently into my face as though watching the progress of my seizure which had so completely paralysed me.
Of a sudden a loud shriek sounded from the adjoining room – a woman’s wild shriek of terror.
My host’s thin lips tightened.
The scream was repeated, and continued.
“Excuse me,” he exclaimed as he left the room hastily.
I sat with ears alert. It was surely most strange that the well-known millionaire, whose name was on everyone’s lips, had confided in me as he had done. Why had he done so?
The screams of terror continued for about half a minute. Then they seemed stifled down to heavy sobbing. They seemed to be hysterical sobs, as of someone who had suffered from some great shock.
I was full of wonderment. It was unusual, I thought, that such noises should be heard in a sedate West End mansion.
There was a long-drawn-out sob, and then silence. A dead silence!
A few moments later Mr. De Gex came in looking very flushed and excited.
“My troubles are ever on the increase,” he exclaimed breathlessly. “Come, Mr. Garfield. Come with me.”
He assisted me to my feet and led me out into the corridor and into the adjoining room.
To my surprise it was a great handsomely furnished bedroom with heavy hangings of yellow silk before the windows, and a great dressing-table with a huge mirror with side wings. Along one side were wardrobes built into the wall, the doors being of satinwood beautifully inlaid.
In the centre stood a handsome bed, and upon it lay a young and beautiful girl wearing a dark blue serge walking dress of the latest mode. Her hat was off, and across her dark hair was a band of black velvet. The light, shining upon her white face – a countenance which has ever since been photographed upon my memory – left the remainder of the room in semi-darkness.
“My poor niece!” Mr. De Gex said breathlessly. “She – she has been subject to fits of hysteria. The doctor has warned her of her heart. You heard her cries. I – I believe she’s dead!”
We both moved to the bed, my host still supporting me. I bent cautiously and listened, but I could hear no sound of breathing. Her heart has ceased to beat!
He took a hand mirror from the dressing-table and held it over her mouth. When he withdrew it it remained unclouded.
“She’s dead —dead!” he exclaimed. “And – well, I am in despair. First, my wife defies me – and now poor Gabrielle is dead! How would you feel?”
“I really don’t know,” I whispered.
“Come back with me into the library,” he urged. “We can’t speak here. I – well – I want to be perfectly frank with you.”
And he conducted me back to the room where we had been seated together.
I had resumed my seat much puzzled and excited by the tragedy that had occurred – the sudden death of my host’s niece.
“Now, look here,” exclaimed Mr. De Gex, standing upon the hearthrug, his sallow face pale and drawn. “Your presence here is most opportune. You must render me assistance in this unfortunate affair, Mr. Garfield. I feel that I can trust you, and I – well, I hope you can trust me in return. Will you consent to help me?”
“In what way?” I asked.
“I’m in a hole – a desperate hole,” he said very anxiously. “Poor Gabrielle has died, but if it gets out that her death is sudden, then there must be a coroner’s inquiry with all its publicity – photographs in the picture-papers, and, perhaps, all sorts of mud cast at me. I want to avoid all this – and you alone can help me!”
“How?” I inquired, much perturbed by the tragic occurrence.
“By giving a death certificate.”
“But I’m not a doctor!”
“You can pass as one,” he said, looking very straight at me. “Besides, it is so easy for you to write out a certificate and sign it, with a change of your Christian name. There is a Gordon Garfield in the ’Medical List.’ Won’t you do it for me, and help me out of a very great difficulty? Do! I implore you,” he urged.
“But – I – I – ”
“Please do not hesitate. You have only to give the certificate. Here is pen and paper. And here is a blank form. My niece died of heart disease, for which you have attended her several times during the past six months.”
“I certainly have not!”
“No,” he replied, grinning. “I am aware of that. But surely five thousand pounds is easily earned by writing out a certificate. I’ll write it – you only just copy it,” and he bent and scribbled some words upon a slip of paper.
Five thousand pounds! It was a tempting offer in face of the fact that I had just lost practically a similar sum.
“But how do I know that Miss – ”
“Miss Engledue,” he said.
“Well, how do I know that Miss Engledue has not – well, has not met with foul play?” I asked.
“You don’t, my dear sir. That I admit. Yet you surely do not suspect me of murdering my niece – the girl I have brought up as my own daughter,” and he laughed grimly. “Five thousand pounds is a decent sum,” he added. “And in this case you can very easily earn it.”
“By posing as a medical man,” I remarked. “A very serious offence!”
Again my host smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Well,” he said, after a pause. “Here is the certificate for you to copy. Reject my offer if you like; but I think you must agree that it is a most generous one. To me, money is but little object. My only concern is the annoying publicity which a coroner’s inquiry must bring.”
I confess that I was wavering. The shrewd, clever man at once realized the position, and again he conducted me to the chamber where the young girl was lying cold and still.
I shall ever recollect that beautiful face, white and cold like chiselled marble it seemed, for rigor mortis was apparently already setting in.
Back again in the library Oswald De Gex took from his safe a bundle of hundred-pound Bank of England notes, and counted them out – fifty of them.
He held them in his hand with a sheet of blank notepaper bearing an address in Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, and a blank form. Thus he tempted me – and – and at last I fell!
When I had written and signed the certificate, he handed me the bundle of notes.
I now remember that, at that moment, he took some pastilles from his pocket and placed one in his mouth. I thought perhaps they were throat lozenges. Of a sudden, however, the atmosphere seemed to be overpoweringly oppressive with the odour of heliotrope. It seemed a house of subtle perfumes!
The effect upon me was that of delirious intoxication. I could hear nothing and I could think of nothing.
My senses were entirely confused, and I became utterly dazed.
What did it all mean?
I only know that I placed the wad of bank notes in the inner pocket of my waistcoat, and that I was talking to the millionaire when, of a sudden, my brain felt as though it had suddenly become frozen.
The scent of verbena became nauseating – even intoxicating. But upon Oswald De Gex, who was still munching his pastille, the odour apparently had no effect.
All I recollect further is that I sank suddenly into a big arm-chair, while my host’s face grinned demoniacally in complete satisfaction. I slowly lapsed into blank unconsciousness.
Little did I at the time dream with what amazing cleverness the trap into which I had fallen had been baited.
But what happened to me further I will endeavour to describe to you.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE SISTER’S STORY
A strange sensation crept over me, for I suddenly felt that my brain, dazed by that subtle odour of pot-pourri, was slowly unclouding – ever so slowly – until, to my amazement, I found myself seated upon a garden chair on a long veranda which overlooked a sloping garden, with the blue-green sunlit sea beyond.
Of the lapse of time I have no idea to this day; nor have I any knowledge of what happened to me.
All I am able to relate is the fact that I found myself in overcoat and hat seated upon a long terrace in the noon sunlight of winter.
I gazed around, utterly astonished. The clothes I wore seemed coarse and unfamiliar. My hand went to my chin, when I found that I had grown a beard! My surroundings were strange and mysterious. The houses on either side were white and inartistic, with sloping roofs and square windows. They were foreign – evidently French!
The shrill siren of a factory sounded somewhere, releasing the workers. Far away before me a steamer away on the horizon left a long trail of smoke behind, while here and there showed the brown sails of fishing boats.
I rose from my seat, filled with curiosity, and glanced at the house before which I stood. It was a big square building of red brick with many square windows. It seemed like a hospital or institution.
That it was the former was quickly revealed, for a few moments after I had risen, a nursing-sister in a tri-winged linen head-dress appeared and spoke kindly to me, asking in French how I felt on that glorious morning.
“I am quite all right,” was my reply in French. “But where am I?” I inquired, utterly dazed.
“Never mind, m’sieur, where you are,” replied the stout, middle-aged woman in blue uniform and broad collar. “You have only to get better.”
“But I am better,” I protested. “I lost consciousness in London – and now I awake here to find myself – where?”
“You are in good hands, so why trouble?” asked the Sister very kindly. “You are upset, I know. Do not worry. Take things quite easily. Do not try to recall the past.”
“The past!” I cried. “What has passed – eh? What has happened since I went through Stretton Street the other night?”
The Sister smiled at me. She seemed inclined to humour me – as she would a child.
“Do not perturb yourself, I beg of you,” she said in a sympathetic voice. “There is really no need for it. Only just remain calm – and all will be right.”
“But you do not explain, Sister,” I said. “Why am I here? And where am I?” I asked, gazing vacantly around me.
“You are with friends – friends who have looked after you,” was her reply. “We are all very sorry for your motor accident.”
“Motor accident!” I echoed. “I have had no motor accident.”
Again the dark-eyed woman smiled in disbelief, and it annoyed me. Indeed, it goaded me to anger.
“But you told us all about it. How you started out from the Quay at Boulogne late at night to drive to Abbeville, and how your hired chauffeur held you up, and left you at the roadside,” she said. “Yet the curious fact about your strange story is the money.”
“Money! What money?” I gasped, utterly astounded by the Sister’s remark.
“The money they found upon you, a packet of bank notes. The police have the five thousand pounds in English money, I believe.”
“The police! Why?” I asked.
“No,” she said, smiling, and still humouring me as though I were a child. “Don’t bother about it now. You are a little better to-day. To-morrow we will talk of it all.”
“But where am I?” I demanded, still bewildered.
“You are in St. Malo,” was her slow reply.
“St. Malo!” I echoed. “How did I get here? I have no remembrance of it.”
“Of course you have not,” replied the kindly woman in the cool-looking head-dress. “You are only just recovering.”
“From what?”
“From loss of memory, and – well, the doctors say you have suffered from a complete nervous breakdown.”
I was aghast, scarce believing myself to be in my senses, and at the same time wondering if it were not all a dream. But no! Gradually all the events of that night in Stretton Street arose before me. I saw them again in every detail – Oswald De Gex, his servant, Horton, and the dead girl, pale but very beautiful, as she lay with closed eyes upon her death-bed.
I recollected, too, the certificate I had given for payment – those notes which the police held in safe custody.
The whole adventure seemed a hideous nightmare. And yet it was all so real.
But how did I come to be in St. Malo? How did I travel from London?
“Sister,” I said presently. “What is the date of to-day?”
“The eleventh of December,” she replied.
The affair at Stretton Street had occurred on the night of November 7th, over a month before!
“And how long have I been here?”
“Nearly three weeks,” was her answer.
Was it really possible that I had been lost for the previous ten days or so?
I tried to obtain some further facts from my nurse, but she refused to satisfy my curiosity.
“I have been ordered by the doctors to keep you very quiet,” she said. “Please do not ask me to break my promise. You will be much better to-morrow – and they will tell you everything.”
“But mine is a strange case, is it not?” I asked.
“Very strange,” she admitted. “We have all been much puzzled concerning you.”
“Then why not tell me all the circumstances now? Why keep me in suspense?” I urged.
“Because you have not yet quite recovered. You are not entirely yourself. Come,” she added kindly, “let us take a little walk. It will do you good for the weather is so lovely to-day.”
At her suggestion I strolled by her side through the pleasant grounds of the hospital, down into St. Malo, the busy streets of which were, however, entirely unfamiliar to me. Yet, according to the Sister, I had walked in them a number of times before. Still, I had no recollection of doing so.
“I am taking you for your favourite stroll,” she said, as we went down one of the steep, tortuous streets to the little Place Châteaubriand in front of the ancient castle, which, she told me, was now a barracks.
Presently she mounted to the ramparts, and as we strolled round them, I admired the beautiful view of the sea, the many islets, and the curious appearance of the town. The tide was up, and the view on that sunny December morning was glorious.
At one point where we halted my nurse pointed out the little summer town of Dinard and St. Enogat, and told me the names of the various islets rising from the sea, Les Herbiers, the Grand Jardin, La Conchée, and all the rest.
But I walked those ramparts like a man in a dream. A new life had, in that past hour, opened up to me. What had occurred since I had accepted that bundle of bank notes from the millionaire’s hand I did not know. I had emerged from the darkness of unconsciousness into the knowledge of things about me, and found myself amid surroundings which I had never before known – in a French hospital where they evidently viewed me as an interesting “case.”
I stood against the wall and gazed about. My habit was to carry my cigarette-case in my upper waistcoat pocket. Instinctively I felt for it, and it was there. It was not my own silver case, but a big nickel one, yet in it there were some of my own brand.
I looked inquiringly at my nurse.
She smiled, saying:
“You haven’t many left. Why can’t you smoke some other brand? You always insist upon that one. I had so much difficulty in getting them for you yesterday!”
“They are my own particular fancy,” I said, tapping one of them upon the case before lighting it.
“I know. But here, in France, they are most difficult to get. The other day you said you had smoked them all through the war, and even when you were in Italy you had had them sent out to you from London.”
That was quite correct.
“Well, Sister,” I laughed. “I have no recollection of saying that, but it is perfectly true. It seems that only this morning I regained consciousness.”
“Professor Thillot said you would. Others gave you up, but he declared that after careful nursing your memory would regain its normal balance.”
“Who is Professor Thillot?”
“The great nerve specialist of Paris. The police engaged him to come to see you. He was here ten days ago, and he put you under my charge.”
I laughed.
“Then I am still an interesting case, Sister – eh?”
“Yes. You certainly are.”
“But do tell me more of what I am in ignorance,” I implored. “I want to know how I came here – in France – when I lost all consciousness in a house just off Park Lane, in London.”
“To-morrow,” she said, firmly, but kindly. She was a charming woman, whose name she gave me as Sœur Marie.
We strolled back to the hospital, but on the way along the Quai Duguay-Trouin – I noticed it written up – I became again confused. My vision was not as it should have been, and my memory seemed blurred, even of the happenings of the past hour.
My nurse chatted as we walked together through the streets, but I know that my answers were unintelligible. I felt I was not myself. All my senses were keen as far as I could gauge – all save that of my memory of the past.
As I ascended through the pretty grounds of the hospital, the Sister beside me, I felt a curious failing of my heart. I experienced a sensation which I cannot here describe, as of one who had lost all interest in life, and who longed for death.
There may be some among my readers who have experienced it, perhaps. I cannot describe it; I merely explain that I felt inert, inefficient, and bored with life.
No such feeling had ever fallen upon me before. Hitherto I had been quick, alert, and full of the enjoyment of living. At Rivermead Mansions Harry Hambledon and I had prided ourselves on our post-war alertness.
Where was Harry? What was he doing? Would he be wondering why I was absent from our riparian bachelor home?
I was reflecting upon all this when suddenly, without any apparent cause, I once more lost consciousness. We were at that moment entering the door of the hospital and the Sister had just exclaimed:
“Now, do remain quite quiet and not worry over the past. It will all be right to-morrow,” she urged.
I know not what words I uttered in reply. A curious sense of oppression had fallen upon me, a hot, burning feeling as though my skull was filled with molten metal, while at the back of my neck was a sharp excruciating pain which caused me to hold my breath.
The Sister apparently noticed my sudden relapse, for she expressed a hope that I was not feeling worse. I tried to reassure her that I was all right, but I know I failed to do so, for once again I lost all knowledge of things about me.
After that I recollect nothing more. Probably I walked on mechanically back to my bed.
When my lapse had passed, and I again regained consciousness, I found myself in bed gazing up at the ceiling. On either side of me were men, also in bed. They were talking in French.
I listened, and in a few seconds I recollected the events of the previous day. Then a sharp-featured nurse, whom I had not seen before, told us it was time to dress. I obeyed, but my clothes were entirely unfamiliar. They were coarse and did not fit me.
While I washed I burst out laughing. The humour of the situation struck me as distinctly amusing. At one hour I was myself; at the next I was another being!
Was my case that of Jekyll and Hyde?
I knew, and I felt keenly about it, that I had accepted a bribe to perform an illicit service. I had posed as a medical man and given a certificate of death. But my one and only object in life was to see Mr. De Gex and demand of him a full explanation of the amazing and suspicious circumstances.
My lapses were intermittent. At times I was fully conscious of the past. At others my brain was awhirl and aflame. I could think of nothing, see nothing – only distorted visions of things about me.
Apparently twenty-four hours had passed since I walked in the sunshine.
The men in the hospital ward were all Frenchmen, apparently of the lower class. At one end of the room a heated argument was in progress in which four or five men were gesticulating and wrangling, while one man was seated on his bed laughing idiotically, it seemed, at his own thoughts.
Presently a tall thin man in spectacles entered, and addressing me, asked me to follow him.
I obeyed, and he conducted me to a small kind of office in which two men were standing. Both were middle-aged, and of official aspect.
Having given me a chair they all seated themselves when the thin man – who I rightly judged to be the director of the hospital – commenced to interrogate me.
“How do you feel to-day?” was his first question, which he put in French in a quiet, kindly manner.
“I feel much better,” was my reply. “But yesterday my nurse revealed to me some very extraordinary facts concerning myself.”
“Yes. You have been seriously ill,” he said. “But now you are better these gentlemen wish to put a few questions to you.”
“They are police officers, I presume.”
The director nodded in the affirmative.
“We wish to ascertain exactly what happened to you, monsieur,” exclaimed the elder of the pair.
“I really don’t know,” I replied. “I must have lost all consciousness in London, and – ”
“In London!” exclaimed Monsieur Leullier, the Prefect of Police, in great surprise. “Then how came you here in St. Malo?”
“I have not the slightest idea,” was my reply. “I only presume that I was found here.”
“You were. A fish-porter passing along the Quay St. Vincent at about two o’clock in the morning found you seated on the ground with your back to the wall, moaning as though in pain. He called the police and you were removed on the ambulance to the hospital here. The doctors found that you were in no pain, but that you could give no intelligible account of yourself.”
“What did I tell them?”
“Oh! a number of silly stories. At one moment you said you had come from Italy. Then you said that you had hired a motor-car and the driver had attacked you in the night. Afterwards you believed yourself to be in some office, and talked about electrical engineering.”
“That is my profession,” I said. And I told them my name and my address in London, facts which the police carefully set down.
“You told us that your name was Henry Aitken, and that you lived mostly in Italy – at some place near Rome. We have made inquiries by telegraph of a number of people whom you have mentioned, but all their replies have been in the negative,” said the police official.
“Well, I am now entirely in possession of my full senses,” I declared. “But how I got to France I have not the slightest knowledge. I lost consciousness in a house in Stretton Street, in London. Since then I have known nothing – until yesterday.”
“In what circumstances did you lapse into unconsciousness?” asked the doctor, looking intently at me through his glasses, for mine was no doubt an extremely interesting case. “What do you remember? Did you receive any sudden shock?”
I explained that being on a visit to a friend – as I designated Oswald De Gex – his niece died very suddenly. And after that I became unconscious.
The Prefect of Police naturally became very inquisitive, but I preferred not to satisfy his curiosity. My intention was to return to London and demand from De Gex a full explanation of what had actually occurred on that fatal night. I was full of suspicion regarding the sudden death of his niece, Gabrielle Engledue.
The police official told me that from my clothes all the tabs bearing the tailor’s name had been removed, and also the laundry marks from my underclothes. There was nothing upon me that could possibly establish my identity, though in my pocket was found five thousand pounds in bank notes – which he handed to me. They were intact – the same notes which De Gex has given me in return for the false death certificate I had signed.
I sat utterly aghast at the story of my discovery, of the many attempts made to establish my identity, of the visit of the British Vice-Consul to the hospital, and of his kindness towards me. It seemed that he had questioned me closely, but I had told an utterly fantastic story.
Indeed, as I sat there, I felt that neither of my three interrogators believed a single word of the truth I related. Yet, after all, I was not revealing the whole truth.
Certain recollections which I would have forgotten came to me. I had, I knew, committed a very serious criminal offence in posing as a medical man and giving that death certificate. Possibly I had been an accessory to some great crime – the crime of murder!
That thought held me anxious and filled me with fear.
The Prefect of Police seemed entirely dissatisfied with my explanation, nevertheless he was compelled to accept it, and an hour later I was released from the hospital. Before leaving, however, I was shown the register in which I had signed my name as “Henry Aitken.” This I erased and substituted my own name.
Then I thanked the tall, thin director and walked out into the streets of St. Malo a changed man.