Read Ebook: The club of masks by Upward Allen

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Ebook has 1679 lines and 193919 words, and 34 pages

"A man must expect to be judged to some extent by the company he keeps," he had hinted. "You can't expect the head of a Department like the Home Office to feel easy at the idea of entrusting important secrets to a young man who spends his nights, I won't say in disreputable company, but at all events in circles where a good many adventurers are found. These people"--the bitter note came back into his voice--"these people hate the shoulders on which they have climbed. They govern the empire which the Raleighs and the Clives have gained for them, but they don't want any more Clives and Raleighs. They threw Burton away; they wouldn't use Gordon till it was too late--Faugh!" He swallowed his disgust with an effort, and became almost stern. "Now, my boy, this is a great opportunity for you, and you must take it. You must forget that you are a genius, and put your neck into the collar for a few years. At the end of that time you will have a reputation, and you can do what you like within reasonable limits. I expect you to trust yourself to me."

And, of course, I had. He had taken me to the Home Office and formally presented me to the Under Secretary, and I found myself appointed an Assistant Medical Adviser, detailed for duty under the orders of Sir Frank Tarleton, with a salary that seemed riches in advance.

Perhaps I had found my work a little disappointing since. The night calls had not been numerous, and they had grown fewer after the first month or two, as though Tarleton's clients or patients, I hardly know which to call them, had found out that it was no use expecting him to turn out any longer, if the case was one that I could deal with. Most of my time was passed in the laboratory in Montague Street, carrying out analyses under his directions, and improving my knowledge of rare poisons, of which he had formed what was probably the finest collection in the world. But of really sensational cases, involving criminal suspicion and mystery, there had not been one before that fateful summons from the Domino Club.

But I dared not hesitate longer in delivering it. Every moment now would only make matters worse. I crossed the landing and knocked firmly on the closed door.

The answer was instantaneous--"Come in!"

I obeyed, to find myself in the full glare of the electric light over the bed, in which Tarleton was sitting upright, his beloved repeater in one hand, while he gazed at me questioningly from beneath his knitted brows.

"I first heard the telephone nine minutes ago. You have taken some time to answer it."

THE EVIDENCE OF MADAME BONNELL

Instead of excusing myself I thought it the best plan to plunge into the account of what had taken place at the Domino Club, in the hope that it would absorb his mind. The alert physician made only one comment as I finished.

"A case for Inspector Charles is pretty sure to be a case for me; but you didn't know that." He was out of bed the next moment.

"Please tell him I am coming at once, and order round my car. And be ready yourself as soon as you can."

I needed no injunction to make haste. I was in a fever to be back at the scene of that masked revel, and find out what had happened there. I congratulated myself on the care I had taken to cover my own tracks. I had left the doctor's house and returned to it in my ordinary clothes. Not a soul in the Domino Club, except the member from whom I had obtained a ticket of admission, could have the least idea of my identity. So far as I could see I was absolutely secure from discovery. But it had been a dangerous game to play, and Tarleton was a dangerous man to play against. With all his kindness for me I trembled at the thought of coming within the range of his uncanny powers of detection.

As soon as I had dispatched his messages, and put a pot of coffee on to boil over a little spirit stove, I sluiced my head in cold water, and got into my clothes again as quickly as I had got out of them. I was ready with a steaming cup of coffee for my chief as he came out of his room, and was rewarded by the heartiness with which he gulped it down. His square leather bag, fitted with everything likely to be needed for the treatment of a poisoning case, was always kept ready in his bedroom, and he had it in his hand. I relieved him of it not presuming to bring my own; and we found the car waiting for us when we opened the front door.

As we rolled through the streets, just beginning to show signs of life, Tarleton acquainted me with the personality of Inspector Charles.

"He's a retired Army man; he likes to be called Captain Charles. He's also the younger son of a peer but he doesn't like that noticed. His family are silly enough to object to his being in the police, and he drops the Honourable on their account. But of course it's known in the Yard, and he gets most of the society jobs in consequence. I suppose they think he's more likely to know his way about among the big people. But if you ask me, I think an experienced valet knows ten times more. You'll find Charles straight, and you'll find him thorough, but you needn't expect him to see an inch beyond his own nose."

This was comfortable for me. But the next words of my chief gave me an awkward jar.

I had to make up my mind in a hurry. To tell the truth was out of the question. It was not only my own honour and safety that were at stake; there was another for whose sake my presence at that fatal dance must be concealed. I was on the point of denying all knowledge of the club when it struck me that I might be betrayed into some unconscious movement in going through the premises, or some thoughtless remark, which would reveal to a keen intelligence like Tarleton's that I had been there before.

I made an effort to seem as if I had been searching my memory.

"Yes," I said slowly, "now you speak of it I remember having been there. But I am not sure that I am free to say anything about it. My impression is that there was an implied pledge of secrecy. Everyone wore a mask and a disguise of some sort. It was supposed to be a place where people in very high positions could let themselves go in security. I was told there were sometimes judges present, and I rather think Cabinet Ministers, as well as peeresses, and so forth."

The specialist nodded gravely. "I expect the authorities knew what they were doing when they told Charles to call for me. We shall see whether he has found out who the man is that has been poisoned."

"He didn't say it was a man," I ventured to suggest.

Sir Frank pursed his lips, but made no answer. He took out his gold repeater and began swinging it slowly, a sure sign that he was following out some train of thought.

In another quarter of an hour the car drew up in one of the old-fashioned streets of Chelsea between King Street and the Fulham Road, at the entrance to the curious building or group of buildings that bore the name of Vincent Studios.

The place resembled a rabbit warren. A short flight of steps led down from the street pavement into a dark, cavernous hall with doors opening out of it on three sides. Behind most of these doors were the studios of artists--one or two of them known to me--studios as cavernous if not as dark as the hall, and ending in glass doors that opened on mysterious gardens or garden yards overgrown with nasturtiums and other plants that seem to love the grime and cinders of suburban London. In the background one was aware of gray piles of timber, as of a mountain range closing a landscape. Some forgotten builder, perhaps, had died, leaving those stacks behind him, and his heirs had never discovered their existence, so that they had been left to the possession of the rats.

At the far end of the entrance cavern two doors side by side still bore the name of artists, one of whom had lately blossomed into an Academician and been transplanted to the sunnier region of Bedford Park, while the other had exchanged the brush for some more promising weapon in what, I fear, had been a losing fight with Fortune. Only the initiated knew that the door still bearing the name of J. Loftus, A.R.A., was now that of the Domino Club; while its companion, from which the name of Yelverton had been roughly effaced, served as a back door for the use of the tradesmen and servants of the club, and also for such members as had reasons of their own for not coming through the streets in fancy costume. For their benefit a row of small dressing-rooms had been fitted up, in which they could transform themselves from sober moths into bright artificial butterflies and back again.

In front of the club entrance an officer in plain clothes was stationed who recognized Sir Frank with a respectful salute.

"You will find Inspector Charles inside, sir," he said, opening the door for us.

We found ourselves in a dark narrow passage empty of everything but cloak- and hat-pegs. A door at the further end opened straight into the dancing-room.

The former studio had been decorated in a fashion evidently meant to recall the Arabian Nights Entertainment. Vistas of Moorish arches and fountains playing among palms and oleanders had been painted on the walls. At intervals wooden columns had been set up to support curtains of gauze embroidered so as to afford a half concealment to the nooks that they enclosed. The whole place was still suffused with the lurid glow of a series of red lanterns hanging from the roof. But a glass door at the further end had been thrown open to admit the daylight, and where it reached the crimson glow became haggard and spectral and the whole place had the air of an old woman's face from which the paint had peeled in streaks, revealing the wrinkles and sharp bones beneath.

Inspector Charles, tall, upright, and looking the personification of law and order, stood beside one of the curtained alcoves close to the garden door, and invited us with a solemn gesture to approach.

This was the moment I had been dreading. I endeavoured to keep my face passive, and give no sign of recognition, as I came behind my chief and took my first glance at the spectacle the Inspector had to show us.

Within the curtains, stretched at full length on a low divan, was a figure attired as an Inquisitor. The black robe was folded carefully round him, but the peaked hood with its two eye-slits had been thrust back over the head, so that the face was fully exposed. It was a striking face in every way, the face of a man of fifty or thereabout in the full possession of his powers. The forehead was intellectual; the eyes, wide open but glazed in the death stare, must have been full and penetrating in life; the nose and chin were strongly carved; only the lips showed a certain looseness, as of over-ripened fruit, that seemed to hint at something evil underlying the dignity and strength manifested in the rest of the face.

I scanned that prostrate figure with painful curiosity. The costume was only too familiar; I had had ample opportunity of observing it during the night that had just elapsed. But the face was as strange to me as it was to either of the other two who stood and gazed beside me. Even the eyes, unnaturally dilated by the drug, seemed to bear little likeness to those that had peered through the holes in the black hood when I last looked on the sombre shape in life.

The Inspector spoke briefly, addressing himself to my companion.

"This is how he was found when they came in to put out the lights after everyone was gone as they supposed. They thought at first that he was in a drunken sleep, and tried to rouse him by shaking. When they failed, they went to bring Madame Bonnell, the proprietress of the club. They dared not uncover the face without her authority; the rules of the club are so strict on that point. She laid back the hood herself, and saw at once that he was dead. After that she rang us up, and saw that the body was not touched till I got here. I thought it best not to touch it myself till you came."

Clear, succinct, containing the bare facts and nothing more, such was the report of Inspector Charles. It was evident that no better man could have been put in charge of an affair in dealing with which prudence was the most essential requisite.

The great physician received the statement with a nod of satisfaction.

"You suggested to Dr. Cassilis over the wire that it looked like a case of opium-poisoning," was his first remark.

Captain Charles favoured me with a cautious glance, in which I read some disapproval of my youthful appearance.

"I thought an opiate must have been the cause of death, Sir Frank, because there was no sign of a struggle nor of any suffering. He seemed to have died in his sleep."

Again the consultant gave an approving nod. All this time he had not once removed his eyes from the pallid face on which a leaden tinge had become visible. Now he turned to me.

"What do you say, Cassilis?"

I shook my head. There was something in the case that puzzled me.

Captain Charles consulted his watch. Tarleton's fingers were already pinching the shabby ribbon of his repeater, and it was going to and fro with the slow movement of a pendulum.

"It is now half-past six. I got here soon after five. It must have been about half-past four when the body was found."

I looked questioningly at the great specialist.

"Unless the opiate was given very early, in which case the effect would surely have been noticed by someone, it must have been a very powerful dose to produce death so soon. I should be inclined to suspect some weakness in the heart, or some other derangement, to account for such rapid action. I don't like the colour of the skin."

"Ah! You see that?" Tarleton bent over the dead face in grave scrutiny for some moments. Then he straightened himself up.

"And now, who is this man?" he asked the Inspector.

"His name is Wilson, so the proprietress says. But she seems to know very little about him."

"Wilson?" The doctor repeated the name with a sceptical intonation. "That is the sort of name that man would be likely to give himself in a place of this kind, I should think. Can I see the proprietress?"

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