Chapter TWELVE: Missing

Through two years my enemies had successfully fooled me. I had no doubt been as clay in their hands, even to the extent that some adventuress had actually married me!

Was the marriage legal? How could I escape from the hateful bondage?

Had I not been warned by the mysterious Illona? Mysterious truly, for not even her address was known to me; hence I could not communicate with her.

The mystery of it all was driving me out of my mind. That accursed drug that Lisely injected into my veins had changed me entirely, sweeping from me all recollection of the present, but allowing me all the horror of the past.

I had awakened to a new sense of life, but after all, when I quietly considered everything while I smoked interminable cigarettes alone, I realized that I was not entirely myself. Moreover, I was appalled at the great responsibility resting on me as the official courier of His Majesty’s Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Why I had accepted such a position was amazing. I was fond of travel, for I had been up and down Europe with my father in every vacation from the ’Varsity. During each recess, the governor always went abroad in search of information to use in the House, which he often did with much damning effect.

Illona! Who was she? Where was she? I was frantic to see her, and obtain from her further facts concerning the serious plot against me. But how?

Next day I took Joan out to lunch at Ciro’s and afterwards we went to a matinée. Tea at the Carlton followed. Therefore, it was not before half-past six that I arrived back at Sackville Street.

“The blind man called again this afternoon, sir,” my man Bruce informed me as I passed into the sitting-room.

“The blind man!” I echoed. “What did you tell him?”

“That you were still away, sir. But he seemed to know that you had returned.”

“He knows, eh?”

“Well, sir, he seemed to know. For he only grinned and said, ‘Your master will be in to meet me next time I call. Please tell him that from me.’ His manner was quite insulting, sir.”

“You showed him out, of course?”

“No, sir, I sent him down in the elevator and allowed him to tap himself out. I told him frankly that if he could find his way up here, he could just as easily find his way out again.”

“Excellent, Bruce,” I said approvingly. “But when he calls next time, say I’m out and let me know instantly. I’ll follow him, and see if he’s blind, or not.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s as blind as a bat,” my man declared.

“He may be only pretending,” I suggested. “But describe him to me as minutely as you can.”

“Well, sir, he’s a youngish man, dressed always in a shabby grey suit, a soft collar, and an old, frayed black tie. He has a rather sharp-pointed nose and thickish lips.”

The description was rather vague, but was it possible that the man who had posed to me as a romantic lover was the blind man against whom my unknown wife had so seriously warned me?

The thought gripped me, for I saw myself surrounded by secret enemies who--perhaps realizing that, as I had returned to my senses, I was a peril to them--were determined to close my lips.

I concealed my agitation from Bruce and went to my room to dress for the evening. I had promised to go out with Teddy Day, an old college chum who now held a dry-as-dust post in the Treasury--an inspector or something or other. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a room of his own--a sure sign of a do-nothing job. Our great Government offices are full of civil servants who are, alas! too often uncivil if you ask about their particular job. They are all the deep growths of officialdom which even inter-departmental committees cannot uproot. In one case, for example, an old friend of mine was an inspector of the purchase department of the Admiralty for naval wireless installations. He knew no more of radio than the merest schoolboy, cared less, and was passing accounts amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds yearly. Such are some of the drones which Whitehall still hives even in these days of the post-war “axe.”

Teddy Day was a cheery, round-faced man-about-town, essentially a ladies’ man, and a confirmed bachelor. With his hostesses he was a favorite, for he was an excellent dancer, and always fell into a vacancy, as some men appear born to do. We dined at the Piccadilly, and, after coffee at the Travellers’, went on to a dance-club, where we glided over the floor with partners hardly known to us.

Not until half past one in the morning did I get back home, and then I was so tired that I undressed hastily, and soon fell asleep.

Suddenly I heard my telephone bell ring, and I sprang up to find it was already morning.

“Hulloa?” I asked in response to the call.

“Is that you, Lionel?” asked a voice which I instantly recognized as that of Joan’s father. “Is Joan with you?”

“Joan! No. I haven’t seen her since last evening,” I replied.

“But she went out to meet you at eight o’clock for dinner,” said the deep-voiced King’s Counsel.

“She never met me. I had no appointment with her.”

“But you sent a messenger with an appointment. I was here when it came!”

“I sent no messenger, Mr. Gell,” I declared. “I went out with a college friend, and got back about half past one.”

“What! Do you mean to say that you’ve not seen Joan?” he asked.

“I swear that I have not seen her, or sent her any message since I left her at six o’clock last night,” was my astonished reply.

“Then what the devil can have happened to her?” asked her father.

I dressed hastily, and took a taxi to Queen’s Gate, to find both Mrs. Gell and her husband in a state of frantic anxiety.

The statement of Hughes, the lady’s maid, was to the effect that, at about half past seven on the previous evening a telegraph-boy arrived with a note for Miss Joan.

On receiving it she dressed hurriedly, remarking to the maid that she had to meet me, and later went off in a taxi, saying:

“Tell mother I’m out with Lionel.”

From that moment she had not been seen. Her father came in from a dinner of the Fishmongers’ Company in the City, at a quarter to two in the morning. But she had not returned.

Thinking she was at a night club with me, he went to bed, leaving the door on the latch. But, finding at early morning she had not returned, he had made the inquiry over the ’phone, and surely not without reason. It was perplexing, mystifying. What could it mean?

The knowledge that some desperate plot had been formed against me by certain unknown enemies, made it quite apparent that the conspiracy extended to my well-beloved. I said but little to Mr. Gell, but I became all the more convinced that she had fallen innocently into hostile hands, as the message to her, of course, was a false one. The express messenger had delivered to Joan a written note. She knew my handwriting. Who, therefore, had forged my message?

The unknown Illona had warned me not without reason. What could she possibly know?

“We’ll wait till noon, and if we hear nothing, we’ll go down and see Cunningham Lee, the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard,” said the King’s Counsel, whose work at the Old Bailey brought him into intimate touch with the head of the police.

Three anxious hours passed, but the telephone did not ring, nor was there any explanatory message from the girl I so dearly loved. She was lost to me as to her friends. There had been some devil’s work somewhere! When I recalled my own experience in the hands of that desperate gang, I trembled for her. And yet, her only offense, apparently, had been her great love for me.

I longed to find Illona and demand the truth from her. What could she know? Could she tell me something to give a clue to Joan’s sudden disappearance? Or was it due to the fierce jealousy of the woman I had unconsciously wedded?

Very probably it was due to the latter! If so, then my efforts to learn the truth, and to rescue Joan, must be unavailing.

Joan’s mother, naturally, was in tears.

“My girl would never of her own will remain away all night!” she cried. “An accident may have happened, John,” she said to her husband. “Inquiry must be made at all the hospitals.”

The maid was called, and described the dress, coat, and hat which Joan had put on before going out.

“She had two one-pound Treasury notes in her bag as well as some silver, madam,” the girl said. “Miss Joan always carries them in her little purse in case of emergency.”

“Did she seem surprised when you gave her the letter?” asked Mr. Gell, assuming his habitual manner of cross-examination.

“Well, just a trifle, I think, sir.”

“What causes you to say a trifle? Explain it.”

“Well,” replied the neatly-dressed maid, rather confused at her master’s hard, legal glance, “when she opened and read the letter, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, how strange--how very interesting! I must go at once. Mr. Hipwell is waiting for me.’”

“She did not say where?”

“No, sir. She bustled me about to get out her dress and shoes, and while she put on her hat I went out to call a taxi.”

“You were at the door when she went out?”

“Yes, sir. I heard her tell the man to drive to Wardour Street, but I could not catch the number.”

“She might have gone to the Cosmo Club. That is in Wardour Street. We are both members,” I remarked.

“Then the rendezvous might have been at the club,” remarked Mr. Gell, who, turning to the maid, asked:

“What, as far as you can tell, was the exact time she left the house?”

“About eight o’clock, sir.”

“Why did she not come to me and tell me she was going out?” asked her mother. “Always when she goes out late she tells me. Girls to-day are, alas! not like they were when I was a girl, John. They run such risks, and yet they are so self-reliant that one can’t help liking the modern girl, after all.”

“But where is our girl?” asked Mr. Gell, bewildered.

The ’phone rang from his chambers in the Temple. He was due to appear at the London Sessions, to prosecute in a case of stolen motor-cars, but in a few brief sentences he told his clerk that he was indisposed, he regretted, and asked his junior associate to carry on the case in his absence.

“Mr. Fortescue knows the whole story,” he went on. “The case is quite simple, Matthews. Both prisoners have been previously convicted. Tell Mr. Fortescue to apologize for my enforced absence, and let me know the result over the ’phone. I expect they will get three years each, unless Bowden puts up an alibi. He may--who knows?”

And he rang off.

Till noon we remained at Queen’s Gate. I rang up Bruce, but he had heard nothing. Half a dozen of Joan’s friends were rung up by her mother, but nobody had seen or heard of her. From the moment the taxi had left the curb outside she had disappeared into space.

“We must advertise for the taxi-driver,” I suggested. “He may tell us where he left her.”

“Yes. But the notice cannot appear till to-morrow morning,” replied her father excitedly. Mr. Gell, usually such a calm, composed man, whom no circumstance, however untoward, could ruffle, was now beside himself at Joan’s disappearance.

“Who could possibly have imitated your handwriting?” he asked blankly.

We both went to her empty bedroom and searched her waste-paper basket for evidence of the plot. But, she had apparently taken the note with her. There had been no fire in the room, therefore she could not have burned it, as she might have done in winter.

At noon the car took us down to Scotland Yard, where, without delay, we were ushered into the bare, official room of the Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, Mr. Cunningham Lee.

The tall, thin-faced official rose to greet the famous K.C., and then, reseating himself, listened to the story which the bereaved father related.

“This is Mr. Lionel Hipwell of the Foreign Office,” he said, indicating me. “The letter my daughter received purported to come from him, but he never sent any message, either written or verbal.”

“Then your daughter was decoyed away last night, Mr. Gell, eh?”

“No doubt. Or--or perhaps an accident has occurred to her, and she may be in one of the hospitals.”

“The receipt of the note rather points to her being decoyed, does it not?” said the Assistant Commissioner very seriously, as he touched an electric button.

“Send Mr. Nicholas to me,” he said to the clerk who answered his summons. “And--and send Mr. Hayes also.”

In a few minutes the two officers of the Criminal Investigation Department entered. To them the eminent lawyer, who was so well known, gave a detailed description of Joan, together with the clothing she had worn, and described the curious circumstances under which she had left home in a taxi for Wardour Street, about eight o’clock.

Both detectives made some scribbled notes, when Hayes, a round-faced, middle-aged man, who had to his credit the arrest of the bungalow-murderer Collins, hanged only a couple of months before, asked:

“Excuse me, Mr. Gell, but do you think the motive might be vengeance, because you have successfully prosecuted one or other of the recent gangs? You remember the Pittard crowd--the ‘cat’ burglars whom you prosecuted for the Treasury. Don’t you recollect that after they were sentenced by the Recorder they vowed vengeance against you?”

John Gell laughed, his usual hearty laugh.

“My dear Mr. Hayes, every advocate who prosecutes for the Treasury has hundreds of threats and anonymous letters of abuse and warning! I’m not alone. I received two yesterday morning.”

“That is so, Mr. Gell,” admitted the Assistant Commissioner, “but Mr. Hayes is perfectly within his right to suggest a motive.”

“Of course! of course!” said the stout lawyer. “But I leave the matter entirely in your hands to do your best to restore my daughter to me.”

“Every effort shall be made, I assure you,” said Mr. Cunningham Lee. “We will send to all the hospitals and ambulance stations, and we will get hold of the taxi-man without delay.” Then after a pause the high official of Scotland Yard turned to me, and in a strange, half-suspicious manner, asked:

“You are quite certain that you sent no note to Miss Gell last night?”

“I certainly did not,” I replied. “But I have reason to believe that Miss Gell has fallen the victim to some deeply laid and desperate plot. Some clever forger has been at work who sent her a message of greatest urgency, for I had been with her only an hour and a half before she received the mysterious message which caused her to change hurriedly and rush out to Wardour Street.”

“Yes,” remarked the Assistant Commissioner, “I agree entirely. The young lady, I fear, has fallen victim to some plot, the motive of which is at present entirely obscure.”