Chapter XXVI: A Talk with Dr. Laffin

Bill had not seen Laffin since the night the doctor had lost his golden buckle. He had very wisely left the police to interview him concerning Betty Carew’s strange disappearance, with what was, to a reporter, the utterly unsatisfactory result of exonerating that gentleman from any complicity in her abduction.

When he arrived at Camden Road, the door was opened to him by a strange servant--strange also to the doctor, it would seem, for she hesitated when, as Bill suspected, she should have told him that Dr. Laffin was not to be seen.

“Come in, sir,” she said, closing the door behind him. “If you’ll sit down in the hall for a minute, I’ll find out whether the doctor will see you.”

There came from the study the sound of voices raised in altercation, and she had to knock twice before a sharp voice bade her come in. She heard the doctor’s smothered exclamation of annoyance, heard his snarl and the flow of cold-blooded vituperation at the mistake which the unfortunate servant had called forth. Then a man came out of the room, flushed and angry, but with a ready smile for Bill.

“You’re Holbrook, aren’t you? I’m Lord Lowbridge. I think we’ve met before. Are you seeing this old devil to find out his responsibility for the outrageous treatment of Miss Carew? You can save yourself a lot of trouble; I’ve been trying for the past hour. Nevertheless, he’s in it up to his neck,” he said, lowering his voice, and then, seeing the frightened servant in the doorway, he nodded and went out.

Whatever fury Bill’s arrival had evoked in the bosom of Dr. Laffin, all trace of emotion had vanished when the visitor stumbled into the dark room and groped his way towards a chair which he would never have known was there to receive him, but for a gleam of light upon its polished back.

“I understand that you wish to see me, Mr. Holbrook?” The doctor was his old, mincing self, soft-voiced, superior, imperturbable. “It is fair that you should know that I have little sympathy with the methods of the modern Pressman. Even the highest and the most intellectual newspapers in the land seem to have adopted the objectionable hustle of the cheaper Press. Fortunately, newspapers are not necessary to me, and publicity is my bête noir.”

“Thank you for those encouraging words,” said Bill cheerfully, “but I haven’t come to interview you about Miss Carew’s disappearance. I understand the police have already seen you, and that you knew nothing whatever of the matter until you were informed?”

“Miss Carew and I are not on terms of confidence.” The doctor put his long finger-tips together, and was leaning back in his chair, looking down at the table. “The opportunities which I have offered to her have been so often flouted, my authority so continuously despised, my charity--for I have been charitable--so ungraciously rewarded, that I have almost ceased to take an interest in her future.”

“By charity, I presume you mean your adoption of her when she was a baby? I’ve been wondering, Doctor,” said Bill quietly, “whether you knew, when you took that child from the poorhouse, that her father was Leiff Stone----”

The doctor’s hands were palm to palm beneath his chin. He was ridiculously like some mediæval saint in the act of devotion. But at Bill Holbrook’s words, both hands dropped with a thud upon the table, and the hard, black eyes met his.

“What do you mean?” he said harshly.

“You didn’t know, then, that the Carens were not the parents of the girl who calls herself Elizabeth Carew? That she was the daughter of Leiff Stone, who left his wife in the care of the Carens when he returned to America?”

“It seems almost like an extract from some popular work of fiction,” said Dr. Laffin at last. “When did you learn this?”

Holbrook told him, in a few words, without, however, revealing Toby Marsh as the source of the information.

“I confess that I did not trouble to search the register,” said Laffin, after a pause. “You say that Mr. Lambert Stone is perfectly satisfied that the girl is his niece, and that Mr. Leiff Stone was her father?”

“‘Was’?” repeated Bill sharply. “Is he dead?”

“How am I to know, if I do not number this gentleman amongst my acquaintances?” he said smoothly. “‘Was’ or ‘is’--does it matter? All things are, for the spirit essence is indestructible.”

“We will keep away from the occult, if you don’t mind, doctor,” begged Holbrook. “I am a little out of my depths when I lift my mind from the Camden Road, and the is-ness of things.”

The doctor rose.

“Thank you for coming, Mr.--er--Holbrook, I think your name is? I must write to my little Elizabeth and congratulate her. She will, I have no doubt, remember with gratitude the care that I lavished upon her.”

“I guess she won’t have much chance of forgetting,” said Bill coolly. “But that wasn’t all I came to see you about, Doctor. Your Twenty-Third Degree has got me guessing.”

Laffin raised his hand in protest, and in so doing made the almost imperceptible sign of the Ragousas.

“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” said the calm Bill, “and if you’re going to pull any of that stuff about the oath of the Proud Sons and the responsibilities of brotherhood, I shall say things to you which I may regret. What is this Twenty-Third Degree? How do you come to be the head of it? I’m asking you”--he spoke slowly, leaning over the table, his palms on its edge, his face within a few inches of the doctor’s--“because there’s something behind the Ragousas, something you know, something that is sinister and outside of the law. The Ragousas are decent men, with decent men’s childish delight in passwords and signs and grips, and the fool play that is part of the joy of secret societies. But the Twenty-Third Degree doesn’t belong to the plumbers and bakers and icemen who get thrilled every time they mask their faces and think they’re being conspirators. How came you there, right on top?”

“The Twenty-Third Degree,” began the doctor, “as you ought to know as a Ragousa--I dislike most intensely discussing the mysteries of that noble order--has ever been a degree of honour----”

“Forget it,” said Bill. “The Twenty-Third Degree was moribund until you went into it. It consisted of about fifty ancients who dabbled in occultism, acting as a buffer between the lower degrees and the swell fellows on top, the Priors. But those old guys are out of the Twenty-Third; they’ve been returned, one by one, to their various lodges, and other men have taken their places--men you’ve selected yourself. What’s the idea, Laffin?”

Dr. Laffin’s lips tightened.

“I refuse, utterly refuse, to discuss the secrets of the Ragousas,” he said. “If you were not entirely lost to shame, to all sense of decency, you would not press such an indelicate question upon one who has the honour----”

“Leiff Stone--where is he?”

Laffin’s eyes blinked at his questioner, but he did not answer.

“Where is Leiff Stone?” asked Bill Holbrook slowly and deliberately. “The man who called at the store in Duke Street, the man in the black cassock and the sandals, who came to Betty Carew and asked for ‘the message’? The man who expected to see her there, sitting in a green dress at a desk on which was a jade vase and one red rose? Where is Leiff Stone?”

“I don’t know, I don’t understand you. You’re mad to ask such questions,” he said, and for the first time since Bill had known him there was a tremor of anxiety in his voice. “And if I knew I would not tell you. How dare you come to me--to me, of all people in the world? You shallow-brained, material----”

“Rough talk doesn’t worry me,” said Bill. “I’m acquainted with a news editor who can give you a pretty long start in the matter of offensive invention. Now I’m going to tell you something.” He tapped with his knuckles on the desk to emphasize every word. “Leiff Stone is, or was, the Grand Prior of the Ragousas.”

Dr. Laffin walked across to the door and opened it slowly.

“Good-night,” he said, with extravagant politeness. “I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.”

Bill nodded. There was nothing more to be said, no profit in any further interview. He walked out into Camden Road with a sense of triumph.

He drove to the Press Club, for he had a column to write on the latest developments of the Brother John murder, and it was nearly eleven o’clock before he joined Lambert Stone. Mr. Stone had spent the greater part of the evening at the hospital, for, although Betty had recovered, the doctors had thought it wise to detain her for another day.

“You told her about your relationship?”

“Yes, she was dazed, but pathetically glad,” said Stone. “I don’t think she quite realized how her supposed parentage has clouded her life. She told me that Laffin never ceased to taunt her with the fact that she had a murderer’s blood in her veins.”

“What difference will it make to her position? Your brother is a rich man?”

“I don’t know,” smiled Stone. “He was very rich once; our father left us each two million dollars, and probably Leiff is still a wealthy man. But that doesn’t matter very much, does it? I’m a bachelor; Betty is my only relative.”

Bill scratched his chin.

“I see,” he said, without enthusiasm. “Miss Carew--I’ll still call her that, if you don’t mind--goes into the desirable heiress class?”

“With a lordly lover ready made,” laughed Stone. “The first person she asked for was Clive Lowbridge.”

“Indeed?” said Bill coldly. “Isn’t that grand?”

Stone was eyeing him keenly.

“You don’t like Lowbridge?”

“On the contrary, I like him very much.” Holbrook roused himself with an effort to cheerfulness. “Oh no, I’ve nothing on Lowbridge, only--somehow--I don’t like these international marriages.”

He was astonished at himself; his voice was husky, he had a queer sensation of pain, for which he could find no adequate cause.

“I’ll be getting along,” he said, after an awkward pause. “I’m glad you told her. She’s rather… sweet, that niece of yours.”

He walked down the stairs, passed the night porter with a nod, and stepped out into the cool night air, curiously shaken. As he stood, a little numb with the realisation of his folly, a car came slowly past. He looked at it dully, seeing yet not seeing. Then, from the place where the driver sat, leapt a red pencil of flame, and Bill Holbrook crumpled in a heap on the sidewalk.