Chapter XXXVII: A Trip to Devon

Betty Carew made a call on the residence of De Fell, the manager, and that young man was not too busy to see the girl to whom he had written on the previous night.

“You’ve come to accept that part, have you? Well, you can start rehearsals----”

She shook her head with a smile.

“I never dreamt I’d be in a position to do it, Mr. De Fell, but I’ve got to decline your engagement. I am going with my uncle to America.”

“The dickens you are!” said De Fell, swinging round and looking at the girl admiringly. “Does that mean you’re out of the theatrical business for good?”

“I don’t know. I hope so in many ways, in others I should be very sorry.”

“Who is your uncle, by the way?” and, when she told him, he whistled. “Suffering cats! Why, I introduced him to you! Well, now, isn’t that fine!”

He had something to say about an old acquaintance of hers.

“You weren’t at La Florette’s great jamboree last night? Well, you missed nothing except the exhibition of lavish expenditure, for no particular reason so far as I can discover, since Van Campe and I were the only theatrical people present. They say that she has been financed--by the way, what relation is Dr. Laffin to you--uncle?”

“He is not my uncle,” she said shortly.

“Then you ought to be thankful. I can’t understand that bird. Somebody told me that Laffin was behind this grand display of La Florette’s, but I can’t believe that. Is he a rich man?”

She shook her head. “He’s very poor.”

She was loth to discuss the doctor at all, and took the earliest opportunity of bringing the interview to an end. There was another she would gladly have avoided, but Bullott had insisted upon seeing her that afternoon, and though he had made the environment for the appointment as pleasant as possible--he had chosen Mr. Stone’s flat--she went in some apprehension.

Once again she told him of her dreams, of the chapel, the book upon her knees, the monk-like figures sitting beneath their banners, and the purple-robed man who had addressed her.

“That is what I wanted to know,” said Bullott at the finish. “You don’t remember what happened to the book?”

She shook her head.

“Would you know the place again if you saw it?”

She hesitated.

“Yes, I think I should. Why--do you know where it is? Wasn’t it a dream after all?”

“You bet it wasn’t!” said Bill Holbrook, an interested audience, energetically. “Miss Carew, the inspector wants you to go down with us to-night.”

“Where?” she said in surprise.

“Into Devonshire.”

“But I couldn’t. Why into Devonshire?”

“My dear, I think you’d better go,” said Lambert Stone. “I have heard enough from these gentlemen to be convinced that there is some danger to your father.”

“My father!” she gasped. “Whom do you mean?”

“I mean the man in purple.”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“You’re not jesting?”

“No, that was your father. Mr. Bullott has made inquiries and has discovered that the Grand Priors of Ragousa have their headquarters on Dartmoor.”

“Oh!” Suddenly she remembered the adventure that had overtaken her and the doctor nearly two years before. “Now I remember. It was on Dartmoor that we saw those dreadful masked faces, and the voice--the voice of the man who stopped us--it was Brother John!”

Incoherently she related the events of that wild night: the rain, the storm-swept moor, the red lantern in the road that had brought the car to a standstill, and the long absence of the doctor.

“Yes,” nodded Bullott, “you were near the Priory. Someone must have been taken ill there, and the doctor went to see him. It was after that that he got his idea for dressing you up in green and putting you in a shop window--I’ve got it!” His eyes were blazing with excitement. “Listen--this is what happened. It must have been Leiff Stone who was taken ill, and when the doctor saw him he must have gained his confidence. Your brother is something of a mystic, isn’t he, sir?”

Lambert nodded.

“Given to strange dreams?”

“Yes, he always had his visions,” said the other quietly.

“Old man Laffin must have heard from him about some dream in which he saw a Messenger from the Absolute--that is the word--in the form of a red-haired girl in a green dress. Perhaps Leiff Stone’s dream was that he would meet this girl sitting in a shop window, with a green jade vase and a red rose--can’t you imagine what fantastic things he may have dreamt in his delirium? And Laffin thought it over, saw the immense opportunity which this knowledge gave to him, and gradually worked up to the grand climax! Do you remember the advertisement, Holbrook, the advertisement I showed you--‘Punging the Green Dragon?’ That was Laffin’s signal to some confederate, probably in the Priory; somebody who informed him of all Mr. Leiff Stone’s movements--he may have got at one of the laymen. At any rate, he induced the Prior to come to London, and pass the store where Miss Carew was working. When Stone had called that part of your work was finished. Laffin had evidently a rôle assigned to you, something referred to in the message which you had given to your father. He intended taking you to the Priory and detaining you in the house for the purpose, and then, when he failed, carried you off from your lodging. Try hard to remember, Miss Carew,” he said earnestly, “what did Brother John say to you when he called at the theatre?”

“He asked me if I was the lady who had been in the shop window,” she said, “whether I was related to Dr. Laffin.”

“Then Brother John knew, or guessed, and he had come to London to protect his friend. And because he was seen speaking to you, they killed him--Laffin or his agent.”

He took a sheet of blue paper from his pocket, read it with some satisfaction and put it back.

“I’m taking Laffin to-night,” he said.

“On a charge of killing Brother John?” asked Bill.

“No, sir, I am taking him on a charge of wilfully murdering the late Lord Lowbridge by the administration of poison. We’ve had the body up, and found enough aconite to kill a regiment of soldiers!

“Don’t you see,” he said, when they had recovered a little from their surprise, “Laffin was the family doctor of the late Lord Lowbridge. Clive Lowbridge had been his pupil, and you might suppose that, with the property in the hands of his friend, it would be an easy matter to get the money he wanted and to hide the fact that, two years before Lord Lowbridge died, Laffin had got transferred, by means of a false deed, a considerable slice of Lord Lowbridge’s property. The present holder of the title does not know this, but it is nevertheless a fact that the impoverished condition of his estate is due very considerably to the systematic forgeries of Laffin. The son of Lowbridge died in exactly the same manner--it may be the subject of another charge. Laffin is an expert poisoner, and the sooner we get him the better.”

“He is not at his house?” asked Bill in a hushed voice, for this revelation of his friend’s prescience almost shocked him.

“No, I have been there. He left very early this morning. I think I know where he is to be found. Now, Miss Carew, will you come?”

“I think I ought to go--for Clive’s sake,” she said, and Bill Holbrook was instantly and unaccountably depressed.