Chapter NINE: An Odd Mission

On the following Monday afternoon I alighted at Calais Maritime from the dusty _wagon-lit_ of the Rome express, glad to stretch my legs after the long journey. On board the Dover boat the wind blew fresh and the crossing, to me, was pleasant; but to many others I fear, it was the reverse.

In due course, after tea in the Pullman, I arrived at Victoria, and in consequence of my official _laisser-passer_ I was soon in a taxi and away to Downing Street, to deliver my dispatches from Sir Richard Kingscliffe. Then, re-entering the cab, I drove to Sackville Street. To my knowledge I had not set foot in my rooms for two whole years.

A complete stranger, who I supposed was Edward Bruce, my new man, Bolland’s successor, threw open the door, bowing me a rather stiff welcome. And then, taking my bags from the taxi-man, he followed me into my small but rather cosy sitting-room. Bruce was quite unlike what I had pictured him, rather tall, young, and slim, with immaculate clothes that fitted him well--evidently a well-trained servant.

“Miss Gell has rung up three times to-day, sir, to inquire if you have returned. She wishes you to speak to her as soon as you possibly can,” he said, handing me about a dozen letters.

I paused for a second. What could I say to Joan?

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Your father called yesterday, sir. He thought you were back. I think he has written to you.”

“Any other callers?” I asked, as he helped me off with my coat.

“Only the blind young gentleman, sir.”

“Blind young gentleman!” I exclaimed, surprised. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know his name, sir. But he continually calls to know when you will be back. He says he knows you, sir.”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“Oh, he’s a young gentleman who wears black glasses. But, poor fellow, he’s stone blind. He finds his way up all right, but I always have to lead him down the stairs and out into the street, till he finds the curb, and taps along it with his stick.”

“I wonder who he is,” I remarked aloud to myself.

“I don’t know, sir. I thought you knew him. He gave me that impression,” Bruce replied. “Will you be at home to him the next time he calls?”

I pondered. The fact that the caller was sightless reminded me of my mysterious and inexplicable escape from the sentence of blindness passed on me by that girl criminal, Lisely Hatten, in Camberwell.

“I will see him if he comes again,” I replied. And then, seating myself at my old bureau which I well remembered--for, indeed, all my belongings now became as familiar to me as though I had never been absent or lost an hour of my life--I turned my attention to the accumulation of letters. Many of them were tradesmen’s bills.

One was a rather heavy account for wine supplied a year before, and as I seldom drink wine, it surprised me. Possibly my friends had drunk the three dozen of champagne. I certainly had not. With it was an account for expensive cigars, and, as I had never smoked anything but cigarettes in my life, I knew that I had not been the consumer of such luxuries.

“Bruce!” I called to my man. “How long have you been with me now?”

“Nine months next Thursday, sir. By the way, sir, I hear that Bolland hasn’t got anything to do since you discharged him for dishonesty.”

Dishonesty! So I had found out Bolland as a thief, and surely here was good testimony that he had ordered things on my account, and had probably disposed of them in secret.

“If a man is dishonest he must be punished,” I said abruptly. Bruce then asked whether I intended to dine at home. I answered negatively and he returned to his pantry.

The first private letter I opened was in a handwriting now familiar to me, and signed, “Your ever affectionate wife, Illona.”

Illona! My wife. The woman on whom I had never set eyes.

Dated from Lausanne a fortnight before, it had been addressed to “Lionel Hipwell, Esq., King’s Foreign Service Messenger, care of His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy, Madrid,” and then it had been sent back to Sackville Street.

“My Adored Husband,” wrote the mysterious Illona. “Do, I beg of you, take the greatest care of yourself. Every hour I fear for your safety. You know their secret, and there is a desperate plot against you, I know. Always go armed and never relax vigilance when you travel. Beware of a trap, and if you meet a blind man, be careful to avoid him. Come back to me at the earliest moment you can. I await you, darling. Do not delay. Every hour that passes increases my anxiety regarding your dear self.”

I re-read the strange warning. “Beware of a trap, and if you meet a blind man, be careful to avoid him.”

Was he the blind stranger who so persistently called? And the trap? Was my strange mission at the request of the Little Countess the trap of which my unknown wife warned me?

I pursed my lips and pondered deeply.

An instant later the telephone, upon my table, rang. Involuntarily, I took up the receiver and answered.

“Hulloa, Lionel!” cried Joan, whose merry voice I recognized instantly. “I got your excuse for not writing and I forgive you. So you’re back at last! You were due from Rome two days ago. Are you seeing me to-night, or are you too tired?”

“Tired! I am never too tired to see you, dearest,” I cried, in as gallant a manner as my poor, perturbed brain would allow. “Where shall we meet?”

“Mother and father are going to the Lord Chancellor’s reception at ten o’clock. Come here at half-past, eh?”

“Very well,” I replied. “I’ll dine at the club, and come on after ten o’clock.”

“Did you have a good journey?” she asked. “I hope you won’t be in one of your moods, you know. The last time you came to see me you were horrible. But I know, dear, you won’t be to-night, will you--for my sake?”

“I was really unconscious of being horrible,” I laughed, “so do forgive me. I’ll try and behave better to-night.”

“Righto! And don’t forget your promise--eh?” laughed the girl I so dearly loved. Then she rang off.

Another mystery! What quarrel had ensued between us? Of what bad behavior had I been unconsciously guilty--and when?

After two years I was to see Joan again! And yet, I was already married--married to a woman I had never consciously seen.

Imagine my feelings as I sat that evening eating my dinner alone in the St. James’s Club, torn by a thousand apprehensions of having betrayed my best friends by making undesirable acquaintances, and, furthermore, by contracting a hazardous and incomprehensible marriage.

What was I to say to Joan?

A little soup, and I could eat nothing more. It was half-past eight, and, in order to carry out my promise to the Contessina, I went into the hall and rang up Mr. Roddy Owen, at Harrington Court.

A man who spoke with a foreign accent and who was evidently a servant answered, and asked who I was. My reply was that I desired to speak with Mr. Owen himself.

In a few moments a man’s gruff voice said, “Owen speaking. What do you want?”

“I want to see you this evening,” I replied. “You do not know me, but I am bearer of a verbal message to you--from a friend of yours in Rome.”

“Rome?” he echoed. “Oh, yes, thanks. I’ll be delighted to meet you--what name?”

“Hipwell,” I replied. “May I call--say in half an hour?”

“Certainly,” he replied. “I’ll wait in for you, Mr. Hipwell. Thanks for taking the trouble to find me. About nine o’clock, eh? Good-bye.”

And I hung up the receiver.

With memory of my unknown wife’s warning, I had put my Browning into my pocket, and resolved always to keep it there. Yet surely there could be no plot in my rather quixotic promise to help a young girl in distress.

I felt in my waistcoat-pocket. My passport, the beautiful little pendant of carved and pierced aquamarine, was there. So I took my coffee and cigarette, and just after nine a taxi set me down before Harrington Court, that great block of flats in Park Lane.

The elevator took me to the fourth-floor. When the elevator-man pressed the bell at one of the doors, an elderly servant bowed me in.

Next moment, a tall, rather fair-haired man of about thirty, in dinner-jacket, advanced to meet me with a welcoming smile. He was a clean-limbed young man of athletic build, and somewhat hatchet-faced, without much color, but with an eye like a gimlet.

“Mr. Hipwell, I presume,” he said. “Come along in.” And he conducted me to a fine and beautifully furnished sitting-room, with soft lounge chairs and several precious works of art. “You have come from Rome,” he said, offering me a cigarette from a large silver box. “And you are good enough to call on me. At the outset I thank you very sincerely.” He spoke with great refinement, his speech being reminiscent of Oxford, where I myself had been.

“I am carrying out a promise which I made to a lady who is our mutual friend,” I explained.

I looked around the handsome apartment, but could see no evidence of the plot of which I had been so mysteriously forewarned.

“From Angela, I suppose,” he said, in a low, intense voice, his manner altering instantly. “You have seen her, eh?”

“I have,” I replied, and taking out the little pendant of clear, blue stone, I handed it to him. “She told me to give you this.”

He took it in his trembling fingers and gazed intently at it. So strange was the look in his eyes that it almost seemed as though sight of the innocent looking little pendant with its two figure noughts entwined, horrified, or even terrified him!

At that moment, something happened in my confused brain. What it was I know not. A great weight seemed lifted from it. In a flash an astounding truth dawned on me, and my lost consciousness became suddenly restored.

Angela’s face had been familiar to me from the first moment I had found myself seated at her side in Rome. Now, in a second, I realized that the girl I knew as Angela Ugostini, “the Little Countess,” was the same auburn-haired girl who had been so eager to put out my eyes with a pin on that fateful night in Camberwell!

The discovery held me dumb. I had actually, in my ignorance, been attracted by my worst enemy, Lisely Hatten, the criminal who worked as a City typist. She had put me to the test in Rome. And finding that I had not recognized her, she had sent me on that strange mission with the piece of carved blue aquamarine.

I tried to remain calm, wondering whether the man I was visiting knew the truth concerning me.

“I have a message to you from the Contessina,” I said. “She tells you that she cannot write. The message is that it is all impossible, and that you must forget.”

What was the nature of the romance, I wondered?

The face of the man addressed, standing in the centre of the room with the little piece of blue shining stone in his hand, went pale as death.

“Impossible!” he echoed breathlessly. “What--what in heaven’s name does she mean? Why has she not written? Forget? How--how can I ever forget?”

“That is the message. Of its meaning I am in ignorance,” I declared. “The lady wishes to impress on you the serious peril in which she will be placed if you write to her again. You must not write.”

“Not write!” he gasped despairingly. “Then she has ended it all--_ended it_!”

“Not of her own free will,” I assured him. “She told me so. Of course, I know nothing whatever of the circumstances, but she impressed on me that it is necessary, in both your interests, to break off all communication with you.”

“And Lisely desires it so?” he asked, in a low strained voice, his lips trembling.

“Yes. She desires it so,” was my reply. “You call her Lisely. I know her as Angela!” I said.

A long silence fell between us. At last Owen spoke.

“Her real name does not matter,” he said slowly, in a voice full of emotion. “You will guess--and you will understand. A blow--a great blow, the greatest of all my life--has fallen upon me!” Then, after a a pause, he added: “I was a fool--all men are fools where women are concerned. But--but I ought to have known. My own common sense ought to have prevented me from--from----”

He swallowed, with an effort, a lump that had arisen in his throat, and put out his hand to me, saying:

“Thank you, for bringing this message to me. But--but it is a blow from which I can never recover--never! Instinctively I know that you are my friend. All cosmopolitans, like you and myself, are friends. You will know and will understand. I cannot explain the facts, because exposure would place our mutual lady friend in serious jeopardy. I can only thank you--yet--yet what you have told me has in a moment swept away all my future.”

“You, no doubt, know more than I can gather from the bald, rather cryptic message that I have brought you. I mean that it conveys to you much more,” I said, bewildered at the discovery that Angela, the Little Countess, and the girl criminal were one and the same. But I kept my own counsel and allowed him to know nothing.

“Yes, much. I know exactly what she means.” Then he eagerly inquired about her and the circumstances in which we had met. To all his questions I replied quite frankly. So dejected and despairing was the young fellow that I felt sorry for him. Surely he could not be acting!

I knew that I was Cupid’s messenger, yet the whole circumstances were so romantic and mysterious that I felt an intense interest in them all. The one thing that really puzzled me most was the reason Lady Kingscliffe had preserved the secret of the girl’s identity.

The young man Owen had sunk into a chair, and was sitting with his eyes fixed across the room, seeing nothing.

“I am absolutely forbidden to write to her, eh?” he asked, utterly crushed.

“That was the message I was to deliver to you. She dare not write--and she will be in peril if you send her a letter. She said that you would quite understand.”

“Understand?” he cried suddenly, his eyes gleaming. “Understand? Yes, I understand. I--I understand--only--too--well,” he added, with the bitterness of despair in his voice. “Forgive me, Mr. Hipwell,” he craved next second. “I--I’m much obliged to you for troubling to come here. If you knew--knew what all this means to both of us--if you knew the truth, you would understand.”

“But can’t you tell me? I’m so completely in the dark,” I said, absolutely mystified and full of eagerness to obtain a clue to the mystery.

“No,” he replied in a low voice. “I have to respect the wishes of Lisely.” Then after a pause, he muttered to himself:

“So she is in Italy! Why, in heaven’s name, did she venture there? It was foolish--very foolish and dangerous! But I suppose there is some motive for it. There is always a motive in a woman’s fancies.”

“Remember,” I said, “that in sending you that message she is acting against her will.”

“I know. I pity her. Poor Lisely! She is acting under compulsion. Some people are born to despair. We are of those. And she is in Rome! I wonder why? I was there with her a year ago when--when I thought--I believed--I dreamed----”

He clenched his fists fiercely and, springing from his chair, crossed to the window.

“Forgive me, Mr. Hipwell,” he said again.

And soon afterwards I left.