CHAPTER VII
The Men on the Stairs
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The rooms—two in number—occupied by Alec Forsyth in John Street, Adelphi, were in a house let off in bachelor chambers, with the exception of the ground floor, which was used as an office by a firm of wholesale wine-merchants. The young Scotsman’s limited income had precluded a more aristocratic locality; and, at any rate, John Street offered the advantage of being within a few minutes’ walk of his daily work in Downing Street.
In the daytime, when the tenants were out at their various avocations, the upper part of the dingy old building was deserted, save by the housekeeper in the attics; while the counting-house abutting on the street was all life and bustle. At night the conditions were reversed, the wine-merchant’s premises being locked up and silent, and the rooms above occupied.
On the evening of that Monday on which the Duke of Beaumanoir called on the Shermans at the residence of General Sadgrove, Alec was busy in his sitting-room, tearing up papers and preparing generally for his departure to Prior’s Tarrant on the morrow. It was past eight, and he had just lit the gas, when the door suddenly opened and Beaumanoir came in.
“Why, Charley—hang it! Duke, I mean—I thought you were in the country!” Alec exclaimed, more astonished by his friend’s actions than by his appearance there.
For, after slipping quietly in, Beaumanoir had turned sharp round and loosed the catch of the spring-lock. Not satisfied with that, he also shot home the two old-fashioned bolts with which the door was fitted, top and bottom, and then flung himself into an easy chair, mopping his brow with his handkerchief.
“I don’t think I was spotted, but it’s best to be on the safe side,” he muttered. Then aloud: “I came to ask you to give me a shakedown to-night, old chap, on a sofa or anything; only I don’t know if it’s fair to you; my proximity carries a pretty considerable risk. But I’ve been—rather worried, and I seem to want company.”
Forsyth rose, and laid an affectionate hand on the Duke’s shoulder.
“Now, look here,” he said, firmly. “I’m going to forget that you’re my employer at a generous salary, and remember only that I’m your friend. What does all this mean? You’ve been hurt somehow, too. Just make a clean breast of it, and let’s see what can be done.”
Beaumanoir shook his head sadly.
“I can’t make a clean breast of it,” he began; then pulled up short and went on. “At least, I can’t tell you causes, but I’ll tell you effects. My life has been attempted twice certainly, possibly three times, since noon yesterday.”
“How?” said Alec with Scotch brevity.
“A lame gardener was set upon at Prior’s Tarrant, and released on his assailants finding that they had mistaken him for me. And at night they got on the roof and tried to suffocate me by letting a brazier of charcoal down into the grate and plugging the chimney. Luckily I awoke, and managed to crawl out of the room in time.”
“But surely you raised an alarm and caught the fellows? They couldn’t get off the roof and escape so quickly as that,” exclaimed Alec, half incredulous.
Again the Duke shook his head.
“I raised no alarm, and they did get away, after pulling up the brazier and leaving no trace,” he replied. “There are reasons, Alec, why I could not have appeared against them had they been caught—the same reasons why I can’t confide more fully in you.”
“You must have done something very bad—murder at least,” said Forsyth, gravely.
“On the contrary, I have done nothing at all,” Beaumanoir retorted. “It is for not doing something that I am being persecuted.”
“Well, what about the third attempt?”
“It happened this afternoon, as I was on my way to your uncle’s. A carriage knocked me down and very nearly crumpled me. But that may have been an accident.”
“Did you take stock of the driver and the people in the carriage?”
Beaumanoir was obliged to admit that he had not. In his disheveled state he had been only anxious to be cleaned down and have his wrist attended to, and it was not till after the carriage had driven rapidly away that he had connected the incident with the other attempts.
Forsyth said nothing for the moment, but fetched some cigarettes from the mantelpiece; and it was not until they had smoked in silence for awhile that he blurted out suddenly:
“This can’t be allowed to go on. It makes everything impossible. Have you any reason to think that the people who are pursuing you will do so indefinitely—until they have settled you?”
Beaumanoir considered before replying, as though the point had not occurred to him before.
“No,” he said, with a nervous laugh. “Things have crowded so in the last few hours that I haven’t thought much about any sort of future. I cannot be sure, but I believe if I could pull through till the end of next week—say, for another fortnight—that the danger would pass.”
Forsyth sat and ruminated, blowing blue smoke-rings; and then, after two or three minutes of silence, a faint noise sounded in the room. The Duke, whose nerves were tuned to concert pitch, heard it first, and turned a pair of wide-open eyes on the door. Forsyth’s gaze folowed, and they both saw the handle of the door move. The door itself, being locked and double bolted, of course refused to yield to the gentle pressure from without.
Forsyth laid his finger to his lips for silence, and motioned Beaumanoir to retire into the bedroom, which communicated by means of folding doors with the sitting-room. When the Duke had noiselessly disappeared, Forsyth stole to the outer door, and having first quietly drawn the bolts he quickly unlocked it and flung it open, to be confronted by an undersized little man, who shrank back from his threatening attitude.
“Who the deuce are you—and what do you want, disturbing me at this time of night?” Forsyth demanded fiercely.
“These are Mr. Crofton’s chambers, ain’t they, sir?” bleated the intruder.
“No; they are not. There’s no one of that name in the house that I know of,” replied Forsyth, partially mollified by his mild manner, and wholly so when the little man proceeded to apologize for his mistake, explaining that he was from a chemist’s in the Strand with some medicine for the gentleman, but that he must have come to the wrong house.
Holding up a bottle as evidence of his bona fides, he retreated downstairs, excusing himself to the last; but before going he had managed to snatch a comprehensive glance round the room. Forsyth waited on the landing until his steps had died away, and then went back into his room, barring the door as before.
“It’s all right,” he said, going to the folding doors. “Only some chap who had mistaken’ the address.”
“Not much mistake there,” replied the Duke, outwardly calm, but gone very white. “I caught a peep of him. He’s a Johnny who shadowed me over from America, and never left me till just before I met you at the Cecil. He called himself Marker, and—and he’s in this business, Alec.”
“He didn’t look very formidable. Why, you could lick the thread-paper little skimp with one hand,” said Forsyth, beginning to wonder if his friend’s mind were unhinged. It was not like the once gay hussar Charley Hanbury—intrepid horseman, champion boxer, and good all-round athlete—to funk a miserable wisp such as that!
“He is only the spy, I expect—sent to find out if I was here,” replied Beaumanoir, passing a weary hand over his eyes.
Moved by a sudden impulse, Forsyth went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him so as to be in the dark. The window commanded a view of the street, and the blind had not been drawn. Looking down, he saw a man sauntering on the opposite pavement, who presently coming under the rays of a streetlamp was revealed as Marker. Forsyth waited until the spy turned and slowly retraced his steps, and then went back into the sitting-room.
“You have convinced me that there is something in all this,” he said. “That fellow is mouching about outside.”
“I’ll go. I can’t subject you to this sort of thing,” said Beaumanoir, reaching for the new hat which he had purchased after his “accident.”
But Forsyth pushed him back into his chair.
“A duke isn’t necessarily a fool,” he said, roughly. “What you want most is a good sleep, and you shall have it—here in these rooms. Mr. Marker can’t know that you are here, or he wouldn’t have come to the door with that bogus yarn. Also, he is evidently not satisfied that you are not here, or he would have gone away. It remains to throw dust in his eyes and fool him a bit. Lord! how I wish my uncle, General Sadgrove, was with us!”
“He seemed to me a trifle dull,” remarked the Duke, inconsequently.
Forsyth made allowances, and did not answer.
“See here,” he said, after a minute’s reflection. “This is the plan to throw the spy off the scent. It’s nine o’clock—just the hour when it would be quite natural for a bachelor to go to his club. I will stroll round to Northumberland Avenue, and drop into the Constitutional for an hour. In the meanwhile, do you stay here and lie low behind locked doors, and with gas turned down. That rascal will almost certainly retire to his employers baffled, for he would not think that I should go out and leave you alone.”
“That sounds promising,” Beaumanoir assented. “But don’t stay a moment longer than the hour, Alec. I don’t think I could stand it.”
Forsyth reassured him, and having slipped into evening clothes and donned a light overcoat, he issued his final instructions. It was beginning to be natural to him now to take the lead, after that glimpse of the lurking figure in the light of the street-lamp. Beaumanoir was to lock and bolt himself in, and only open on hearing the password “Rat.”
These matters arranged, Forsyth departed, and, after waiting until he heard the bolts shot, went down into the street, where the spy was still in evidence, prowling on the other side. He made no attempt to follow Forsyth, who, affecting not to notice him, walked rapidly the short distance to his club. There he remained in the smoking-room with what patience he could muster for the full hour, determined not to return till time enough had elapsed for Marker to come to the desired conclusion and act upon it.
It was half-past ten when Forsyth set out to retrace his steps to John Street, and almost as soon as he entered that deserted thoroughfare he saw that the watcher was no longer at his post. Eager to relieve Beaumanior from his solitary state of siege, he made all haste to the house, and was passing quickly through the entry when he heard footsteps on the landing above. A gas-jet was kept burning over the closed door of the wine-merchant’s office, for the benefit of the resident tenants on the upper floors, so that he had a clear view of the straight stone stairs. Before he reached the latter two men came into view, hurriedly descending, and talking together in muffled undertones—one a gaunt, hungry-looking individual in the garb of a clergyman; the other, burly and bull-necked, dressed in shabby tweeds and bowler hat.
Forsyth stood aside at the stair-foot for them to pass, and then, moved by the furtive glances they turned back at him, he ran upstairs two steps at a time. He knew all his fellow-lodgers by sight; but these men were strangers, and he did not like the looks of the curiously assorted pair. On coming to the door of his rooms, he rapped and spoke the agreed signal, but something prompted him not to wait, and simultaneously he turned the handle. The door swung open at once, without any unbarring from within.
“Where have you got to?” cried Forsyth, peering round the room, in which the gas burned low, just as he had left it.
There was no response; and with a sinking heart he turned on a full light and dashed into the bedroom, only to find that also vacant. The Duke of Beaumanoir had vanished from his refuge.
There was no doubt that he was in neither of the rooms. A hasty search put that beyond question. Instinctively Forsyth ran to the outer door and at once made the discovery—for which he was already prepared—that his chambers had been forcibly entered during his absence. The door had been wrenched open with a jemmy, and had simply been pulled to on the departure of the intruders. The shattered woodwork round the spring-lock told its own tale, though the mystery was increased by the fact that the old-fashioned bolts had been withdrawn.
But what of Beaumanoir?