She had deceived me!

CHAPTER XV.

AN EFFACED IDENt.i.tY.

The telegram was signed with the initial "D."--Digby!

The words I read were--"Have discovered T suspects. Exercise greatest care, and remember your promise. We shall meet again soon."

The message showed that it had been handed in at Brussels at one o'clock that afternoon.

Brussels! So he was hiding there. Yes, I would lose no time in crossing to the gay little Belgian capital and search him out.

Before giving him up to the police I would meet him face to face and demand the truth. I would compel him to speak.

Should I retain possession of the message? I reflected. But, on consideration, I saw that when I had left, Phrida might return to recover it. If I replaced it where I had found it she would remain in ignorance of the knowledge I had gained.

So I screwed it up again and put it back among the cinders in the grate, afterwards leaving the house.

Next morning I stepped out upon the platform of the great Gare du Nord in Brussels--a city I knew well, as I had often been there on business--and drove in a taxi along the busy, bustling Boulevard Aus.p.a.ch to the Grand Hotel.

In the courtyard, as I got out, the frock-coated and urbane manager welcomed me warmly, for I had frequently been his guest, and I was shown to a large room overlooking the Boulevard where I had a wash and changed.

Then descending, I called a taxi and immediately began a tour of the various hotels where I thought it most likely that the man I sought might be.

The morning was crisp and cold, with a perfect sky and brilliant sunshine, bright and cheerful indeed after the mist and gloom of January in London.

Somehow the aspect, even in winter, is always brighter across the channel than in our much maligned little island. They know not the "pea-souper"

on the other side of the Straits of Dover, and the light, invigorating atmosphere is markedly apparent directly one enters France or Belgium.

The business boulevards, the Boulevarde Aus.p.a.ch, and the Boulevard du Nord, with their smart shops, their big cafes, and their hustling crowds, were bright and gay as my taxi sped on, first to the Metropole, in the Place de Brouckere.

The name of Kemsley was unknown there. The old concierge glanced at his book, shook his head, and elevating his shoulders, replied:

"Non, m'sieur."

Thence I went to the Palace, in front of the station, the great new hotel and one of the finest in Europe, a huge, garish place of gilt and luxury.

But there I met with equal success.

Then I made the tour of the tree-lined outer boulevards, up past the Botanical Gardens and along the Rue Royale, first to the Hotel de France, then to the Europe, the Belle Vue, the Carlton in the Avenue Louise, the new Wiltscher's a few doors away, and a very noted English house from the Boulevard Waterloo, as well as a dozen other houses in various parts of the town--the Cecil in the Boulevard du Nord, the Astoria in the Rue Royale, and even one or two of the cheaper pensions--the Dufour, De Boek's, and Nettell's, but all to no purpose.

Though I spent the whole of that day making investigations I met with no success.

Though I administered judicious tips to concierge after concierge, I could not stir the memory of a single one that within the past ten days any English gentleman answering the description I gave had stayed at their establishment.

Until the day faded, and the street lamps were lit, I continued my search, my taxi-driver having entered into the spirit of my quest, and from time to time suggesting other and more obscure hotels of which I had never heard.

But the reply was the same--a regretful "Non, m'sieur."

It had, of course, occurred to me that if the fugitive was hiding from the Belgian police, who no doubt had received his description from Scotland Yard, he would most certainly a.s.sume a false name.

But I hoped by my minute description to be able to stir the memory of one or other of the dozens of uniformed hall-porters whom I interviewed. The majority of such men have a remarkably retentive memory for a face, due to long cultivation, just as that possessed by one's club hall-porter, who can at once address any of the thousand or so members by name.

I confess, however, when at five o'clock, I sat in the huge, noisy Cafe Metropole over a gla.s.s of coffee and a liqueur of cognac, I began to realise the utter hopelessness of my search.

Digby Kemsley was ever an evasive person--a past master in avoiding observation, as I well knew. It had always been a hobby of his, he had told me, of watching persons without himself being seen.

Once he had remarked to me while we had been smoking together in that well-remembered room wherein the tragedy had taken place:

"I should make a really successful detective, Royle. I've had at certain periods of my life to efface myself and watch unseen. Now I've brought it to a fine art. If ever circ.u.mstances make it imperative for me to disappear--which I hope not," he laughed, "well--n.o.body will ever find me, I'm positive."

These words of his now came back to me as I sat there pensively smoking, and wondering if, after all, I had better not return again to London and remain patient for the additional police evidence which would no doubt be forthcoming at the adjourned inquest in a week's time.

I thought of the clever cunning exercised by the girl whom I so dearly loved and in whose innocence I had so confidently believed, of her blank refusal to satisfy me, and alas! of her avowed determination to shield the scoundrel who had posed as my friend, and whom the police had declared to be only a vulgar impostor.

My bitter reflection maddened me.

The jingle and chatter of that noisy cafe, full to overflowing at that hour, for rain had commenced to fall outside in the boulevard, irritated me. From where I sat in the window I could see the crowds of business people, hurrying through the rain to their trams and trains--the neat-waisted little modistes, the felt-hatted young clerks, the obese and over-dressed and whiskered men from their offices on the Bourse, the hawkers crying the "Soir," and the "Derniere Heure," with strident voices, the poor girls with rusty shawls and pinched faces, selling flowers, and the gaping, idling Cookites who seem to eternally pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s the Metropole at all hours of the day and the night.

Before my eyes was there presented the whole phantasmagoria of the life of the thrifty, hard-working Bruxellois, that active, energetic race which the French have so sarcastically designated "the brave Belgians."

After a lonely dinner in the big, glaring salle-a-manger, at the Grand, I went forth again upon my quest. That the fugitive had been in Brussels on the previous day was proved by his telegram, yet evasive as he was, he might have already left. Yet I hoped he still remained in the capital, and if so he would, I antic.i.p.ated, probably go to one of the music-halls or variety theatres. Therefore I set out upon another round.

I strolled eagerly through the crowded promenade of the chief music-hall of Brussels--the Pole Nord, the lounge wherein men and women were promenading, laughing, and drinking, but I saw nothing of the man of whom I was in search.

I knew that he had shaved off his beard and otherwise altered his appearance. Therefore my attention upon those about me was compelled to be most acute.

I surveyed both stalls and boxes, but amid that gay, well-dressed crowd I could discover n.o.body the least resembling him.

From the Pole Nord I went to the Scala, where I watched part of an amusing revue; but my search there was likewise in vain, as it was also at Olympia, the Capucines, and the Folies Bergeres, which I visited in turn. Then, at midnight, I turned my attention to the big cafes, wandering from the Bourse along the Boulevard Aus.p.a.ch, entering each cafe and glancing around, until at two o'clock in the morning I returned to the Grand, utterly f.a.gged out by my long vigil of over fifteen hours.

In my room I threw off my overcoat and flung myself upon the bed in utter despair.

Until I met that man face to face I could not, I saw, learn the truth concerning my love's friendship with him.

Mrs. Petre had made foul insinuations, and now that my suspicions had been aroused that Phrida might actually be guilty of that terrible crime at Harrington Gardens, the whole att.i.tude of my well-beloved seemed to prove that my suspicions were well grounded.

Indeed, her last unfinished sentence as she had rushed from the room seemed conclusive proof of the guilty secret by which her mind was now overburdened.

She had never dreamed that I held the slightest suspicion. It was only when she knew that the woman Petre had met me and had talked with me that she saw herself betrayed. Then, when I had spoken frankly, and told her what the woman had said, she saw that to further conceal her friendship with Digby was impossible.

Every word she had spoken, every evasive sentence, every protest that she was compelled to remain silent, recurred to me as I lay there staring blankly at the painted ceiling.

She had told me that she was unaware of the fugitive's whereabouts, and yet not half an hour before she had received a telegram from him.