Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (24 page)

This much of the background – though nothing whatever of the immediate urgency of the case which confronted us – we knew when the dignified butler returned with the announcement that Sir Harry Dacre would receive us at once. We followed the butler up a magnificent flight of stairs to the story above, and were shown into a kind of library-office, from behind whose enormous mahogany desk a handsome young fellow of about twenty-five rose to receive us. Sir Harry Dacre said nothing whatever, and I observed that his drawn face was lined and ghastly, plainly enough from the effects of lack of sleep. It was obvious to me that Lord Carruth’s name alone had secured us admittance. The man whose abilities had served to keep the Indian Empire intact could hardly be gainsaid by anyone of Sir Harry Dacre’s sort.

Rand went straight to the desk, and without any ceremony picked up and pocketed a .38 calibre American automatic pistol which lay directly in front of Sir Harry Dacre’s chair.

‘Perhaps you know I am accustomed to meeting emergencies halfway, sir,’ said Rand, bluntly but not unkindly. ‘I’ll not ask you to forgive an intrusion, Sir Harry. I am Carruth; this is Mr Canevin, an American gentleman visiting in London.’

‘Thanks,’ said young Dacre, dully. ‘I know you mean very well, Lord Carruth, and I appreciate your kindness in coming here. I have had the pleasure of reading Mr Canevin’s remarkable tales,’ he added, turning and bowing in my direction. We stood there, after that, in a momentarily tense, and indeed slightly strained silence.

‘Suppose we all sit down, now that we are all together,’ said our host. We followed the suggestion, making, as we sat, a triangle; Dacre behind his great desk; I facing him, with my back to the door through which we had entered the room; Rand at my right and facing a point between Dacre and me, and so commanding a view of him and also of the door.

‘We are here to serve you, Sir Henry Dacre,’ began Rand, without any preamble, ‘and, judging by this,’ – he indicated the automatic pistol – ‘it appears that you need assistance and countenance. In a case like this it is rather futile to waste time on preliminaries or in beating about the bush. Tell us, if you will, precisely what we can do, and I assure you you may count upon us.’

‘It is indeed very good of you,’ returned Dacre, nodding his head. Then, with a wry and rueful smile: ‘I do not see that there is anything that anybody can do! I suppose you know something of the situation. I am to marry the Lady Evelyn Haversham in a month’s time. I have, I suppose, made a complete fool of myself, at least for practical purposes. As a matter of plain fact, there has been, really, nothing – nothing, that is, seriously to trouble one’s conscience. But then, I’ll not trouble to excuse myself. I am merely stating the facts. To put the matter plainly, this Goddard has me where he wants me – a very clever bit of work on his part. Here are the freeholds of every bit of property I own, piled up in front of me on this desk. He’s coming for them this morning – eleven – should be here now.
That’s
the price of his silence about the apparent situation, you see. “The Princess Lillia” is his wife, it appears.’

‘But,’ Rand put in, briskly, ‘how about this?’ Once more he indicated the pistol. The young man’s face flushed a dull red.

‘That was for him,’ he said quietly, ‘and afterwards’ – he spread his hands in a hopeless gesture – ‘for me.’

‘But, why, why?’ urged Rand, leaning forward in his chair, his lean, ascetic face eager, his eyes burning with intensity. ‘Tell me – why resort to such a means?’

‘Because,’ returned Sir Harry Dacre, ‘there would be nothing left. On the one hand, if I were to refuse Goddard’s terms, he would bring out the whole ugly business. Oh, they’re clever: a case in court, one of those ruinous things, and an action for alienation of his wife’s affections; a divorce case, with me as the villain-person. On the other hand – don’t you see? – I’m flatly ruined. These papers convey everything I own to him in return for the release which lies here ready for him to sign. Even with the release signed and in my possession I could not go on with the marriage. I’d be, literally, a pauper. It is, well, one of those things that one does not, cannot do.’

‘Let me see the release,’ said Rand, and rose, his hand outstretched. He glanced through it, rapidly, nodding his head, and returned it to its place on the desk. ‘There is little time,’ he continued. ‘Will you do precisely as I say?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Harry Dacre laconically, but I could see no appearance of hope on his face.

‘Go through with it precisely as arranged,’ said Rand.

A rap fell on the door, and it was opened slightly.

‘Mr Leighton Goddard,’ announced the butler, and I saw Rand stiffen in his chair. The look of hopeless despair deepened in the lined face of the young man behind the desk. He had, I surmised, as he had reasoned out this sordid affair, come to the last act. The curtain was about to fall . . .

The man who now entered radiated personality. He was tall, within half an inch or so of Rand’s height, and Rand is two inches over six feet. There was a suggestion of richness about him, sartorial richness, an aura of something oriental which came into that Anglo-Saxon room with him. One could not put a finger on anything wrong in his really impeccable appearance. Bond Street was written upon his perfect morning coat; but I would have guessed, I think, almost instinctively, that his name was not really Goddard, even if no one had suggested that to me. He glanced about the room, very much self-possessed, and with an air almost proprietary, out of shining, sloe-black eyes set in a face of vaguely Asiatic cast: a suggestion of olive under the pale skin of the night-club habitué; a certain undue height of the cheekbones.

‘Now, this isn’t according to agreement, Dacre!’ He addressed his host in a slightly bantering tone, almost genially, indeed; a tone underneath which I could feel depths of annoyance; of a poisonous, threatening malice. He had stopped between Rand and me.

‘We merely dropped in,’ said Rand, in a flat voice, and Goddard glanced around at him out of the corner of his eye. Dacre picked up the hint. ‘This is Mr Gerald Canevin, the writer,’ said he, and I rose and nodded to Goddard. As I did so, I caught Rand’s eye, with warning in it. I thought I grasped his meaning. If he had formulated any definite plan for dealing with this ugly situation there had been no time to warn me of it before Goddard’s rather abrupt arrival, several minutes late for his appointment. I did some very rapid thinking, came to a conclusion, and spoke quietly to Goddard in a tone of voice that was intentionally somewhat slow and deliberate.

‘This is Mr Rand,’ said I; and Rand flashed me a quick, commending look of relief. He did not want Goddard to know his true identity. That had been my conclusion from his warning look. Fortunately, I had struck the nail on the head that time. The two men nodded coolly to each other, and it seemed to me that suspicion loomed and smouldered in those oriental eyes.

Dacre came to the front.

‘We can get our business over very easily,’ said Dacre at this point. ‘Here are the things you want, and here is the place to sign.’ He stood up behind the desk, holding a sheaf of legal looking documents.

Goddard walked firmly over to the desk, took across it the papers out of Dacre’s hand, glanced through them rapidly, nodded as he checked each mentally, and at last relaxing his tensely held body thrust them, all together, into the inside pocket of his morning coat. He smiled quickly, as though satisfied, took a step nearer the desk, stooped over, and, still standing, reached for a pen and scrawled his name on the paper Dacre indicated.

This done, he straightened up, though still retaining his slightly stooping position, and turned away from the desk. I was watching him narrowly and so, too, I knew, was Rand. Triumphant satisfaction was writ large on his unpleasant face. But that look was quickly dissipated. He turned away from the desk at last, and met Rand facing him, Dacre’s pistol pointed straight at his heart. I, standing now behind Goddard, could look straight into Rand’s face, and I do not care ever to have to look into such an expression of rigid determination and complete, utter self-confidence behind any weapon pointed in my direction.

‘You will take those deeds out of your pocket, Wertheimer,’ said Rand, in a deadly, cold, quiet voice, ‘and drop them on the floor. Then you will go out of here without any further parley. Otherwise I shall take them from you; if necessary, kill you as you stand there; arrange the matter with Downing Street this afternoon, and so rid the world of a very annoying scoundrel. I am the Earl of Carruth. I came here without Dacre’s knowledge, to deal with this situation. What you have to decide, rather quickly, is whether you will go on living on what you have already stolen, without this of Dacre’s, or whether you will put me to the inconvenience of – removing you.’

From my position I could not, of course, see Goddard’s – or Wertheimer’s – face. But I did observe the telltale hunching of a shoulder, and cried out in time to warn Rand. But Rand needed no warning, as it happened. He met the rush of the big man with his disengaged hand, now a fist, and Wertheimer, catching that iron fist on the precise point of the chin, slithered to the floor, entirely harmless for the time being.

Rand looked down at the sprawled body, then walked over to the desk and laid the automatic pistol down on the place from which he had picked it up. Then, returning to the prostrate Wertheimer, he knelt beside him and removed the packet of deeds from the man’s pocket. He rose, returned to the desk, and handed them to young Dacre, who, during the few seconds occupied by all these occurrences, had remained standing, silent and collected, behind his desk.

‘The transaction, of course, was illegal,’ remarked Rand, looking down at the crumpled torso of Wertheimer. ‘You need have no compunction whatever, Dacre, my dear fellow, in retaining the release which he signed. “Goddard” is not his name, of course. But I imagine that fact would have no bearing upon the efficacy of the release. He has gone under that name and is thoroughly identified with it here in London, Sir John Scott informs me, for the past four or five years. You heard me call him “Wertheimer”, but even that is not his real name. He is a Turk, and his right name is Abdulla Khan ben Majpat. However, he was a German spy during the War, and in Berlin he is very well known as “Wertheimer”. I think I may say that you are now quite free from the complication which was distressing you.’

It was a very subdued Goddard-Wertheimer-ben Majpat who left the house a quarter of an hour later, after a few crisply spoken words of warning from Rand. And it was a correspondingly jubilant young man who besieged Rand with his reiterated thanks. Sir Harry Dacre was, indeed, almost beside himself. In the stimulating grip of a tremendous reaction such as he had just experienced, a man’s every-day composure is apt to go to the winds. This unexpected release from his overpowering difficulties which Rand’s intervention had brought about had, for the time being, caused Sir Harry Dacre to seem like a different person. There had not been any statements in the newspapers of sufficiently definite nature to injure his cause with his future wife or with his future father-in-law, the austere Lord Roxton, and now, as Rand took care to assure him, there would be no further press comment. The situation seemed entirely cleared up.

Young Dacre, looking years younger, with the lines of harassment and care almost visibly fading out of his face under the stimulation of his new freedom and the natural resiliency of his youth, would be quite all right again after a proper night’s rest. He confessed to us that it was the best part of a week since he had so much as slept. His gratitude knew no bounds. It was almost effusive and really very touching. He pressed us to remain for luncheon. This we declined, but we could not very well refuse his request that we should have a Scotch and soda with him. While this refreshment was being brought by the butler, Rand stepped around to the other side of the desk and picked up a framed photograph which stood upon it.

‘And who, if I may venture to ask, is this?’ he inquired.

‘It was my mother’s sister, the Lady Mary Grosvenor,’ said young Dacre. ‘You may remember her, perhaps. It was she, you know, who organized the Red Cross at the beginning of the War. I was only a little chap of seven or eight then.’ He took the photograph from Rand and stood looking at it with an expression of the deepest affection.

‘A wonderful woman!’ he added, ‘and the best friend I ever had, Lord Carruth. She took me into her house here when I was a tiny little youngster. My own mother died when I was four. The house came to me in her will, eight years later. Dear Aunt Mary – her kindness and goodness never failed. She took me, a rather forlorn little creature, I dare say, into her care. She found time to do everything for me. She was a woman of manifold interests and activities, as you may remember, Lord Carruth, and even high in the counsels of the great, the affairs of the Empire. Cabinet members, even the Prime Minister himself, sought her advice, kept her occupied with all kinds of difficult tasks. In spite of all these engagements, she was, as I have said, and in all ways, a mother to me – yes, more than a mother. I naturally revered her.’

Young Sir Harry Dacre paused, sitting there in his office-library, with his guests to whom he was thus opening his heart with sudden, wistful seriousness. When he spoke again it was in a much quieter tone than that of the little panegyric he had just ended.

‘Do you know,’ said he, ‘I – I thank God that the dear soul was at least spared any knowledge of this – this dreadful affair which is – I can hardly realize, gentlemen, that it is over, done, a thing of the past.’