The lady, whose visit to Gimblet dovetailed so neatly with the departure of his other client on that summer afternoon, was unknown to him.
He had scarcely re-entered the room and resumed his accustomed seat by the window when Higgs announced her.
"A lady to see you, sir."
The lady was already in the doorway. She must have followed Higgs from the hall, and now stood, hesitating, on the threshold.
"What name?" breathed Gimblet; but Higgs only shook his head.
The detective went forward and spoke to his visitor.
"Please come in," he said. "Won't you sit down?"
And he pushed a chair towards her.
"Thank you," said the lady, taking the seat he offered. "I hope I do not disturb you; but I have come on business," she added, as the door closed behind Higgs.
"Yes?" said Gimblet interrogatively. "You will forgive me, but I didn't catch your name when my man announced you."
"He didn't say it," she replied. "I had not told him. I am sure you would not remember my name, and it is of no consequence at present."
"As you wish," said the detective.
But he wondered who this unknown woman could be. When she said he would not remember her name, did she mean to imply that he had once been acquainted with it? If so, she was right in thinking that he did not recognize her now; but, if she did not choose to raise the thick crape veil that hid her face, she could hardly expect him to do so.
He wondered whether she kept her veil lowered with the intention of preventing his recognizing her, or whether in truth she were anxious not to expose grief-swollen features to an unsympathetic gaze.
Her voice, which was low and sorrowful, though at the same time curiously resonant, seemed to suggest that she was in great trouble. She spoke, he fancied, with a trace of foreign accent.
For the rest, all that he could tell for certain about her was that she was short and slender, with small feet, and hands, from which she was now engaged in deliberately withdrawing a pair of black suede gloves.
He watched her in silence. He always preferred to let people tell their stories at their own pace and in their own way, unless they were of those who plainly needed to be helped out with questions.
And about this woman there was no suspicion of embarrassment; her whole demeanour spoke of calmness and self-possession.
"I believe," she said at last, "that you are a private detective. I come to ask for your help in a matter of some difficulty. Some papers of the utmost importance, not only to me but to others, are in the possession of a person who intends to profit by the information contained in them to do myself and my friends an irreparable injury. You can imagine how anxious we are to obtain them from him."
"Do I understand that this person threatens you with blackmail?" asked Gimblet.
The lady hesitated.
"Something of the kind," she replied after a moment's pause.
"And you have so far given in to his demands?"
"Yes," admitted the visitor. "Up till now we have been obliged to submit."
"Has he proposed any terms on which he will be willing to return you the papers?" asked the detective.
"No," she replied. "I do not think any terms are possible."
"How did this person obtain possession of the papers?" Gimblet asked after a moment. "Did he steal them from you?"
"No."
"From your friends?"
She hesitated.
"No--not exactly."
"From whom, then?" asked Gimblet in surprise. "I suppose they were yours in the first place?"
"He has always had them," she said reluctantly; "but they must not remain his."
"Do you mean they are his own?" exclaimed Gimblet. "In that case it is you who propose to steal them!"
"No," replied the strange lady calmly. "I want you to do that."
"I'm sorry," said Gimblet; "that is not in my line of business. I'm afraid you made a mistake in coming to me. I cannot undertake your commission."
"Money is no object; we shall ask you to name your own price," urged his visitor.
But the detective shook his head.
"It is a matter of life and death," she said, and her voice betrayed an agitation which could not have been inferred from her motionless shrouded figure. "If you refuse to help me, not one life, but many, will be endangered."
"If you can offer me convincing proof of that," said Gimblet, "I might feel it my duty to help you. I don't say I should, but I might. In any case I can do nothing unless you are perfectly open and frank with me. Expect no assistance from me unless you tell me everything, and then only if I think it right to give it."
For the first time she showed some signs of confusion. The hand upon her lap moved restlessly and she turned her head slowly towards the window as if in search of suitable words. But she did not speak or rise, though she gradually fidgeted round in her chair till she faced the writing-table; and so sat, with her head leaning on her hand, in silent consideration.
It was clear she did not like Gimblet's terms; and after a few minutes had passed in a silence as awkward as it was suggestive he pushed back his chair and stood up. He hoped she would take the hint and bring an unprofitable and embarrassing interview to an end.
But she did not appear to notice him, and still sat lost in her own thoughts.
Suddenly the door opened and Higgs appeared.
Gimblet looked at him with questioning disapproval.
It was an inflexible rule of his that when engaged with a client he was not to be disturbed.
Higgs, well acquainted with this rule, hovered doubtfully in the doorway, displaying on the salver he carried the blue, unaddressed envelope Lord Ashiel had told him to deliver at once.
"It's a note, sir," he murmured hesitatingly. "The gentleman who was with you a little while ago came back with it. He asked me to be sure and bring it in at once."
He avoided Gimblet's reproachful eye and stammered uneasily:
"Put it down on that table and go," said the detective. He indicated a little table by the door, and Higgs hastily placed the letter on it and fled, with the uncomfortable sensation of having been sternly reproved.
As a matter of fact Gimblet would have shown more indignation if he had not at heart felt rather glad of the interruption. His visitor had decidedly outstayed her welcome; and, though she stirred his curiosity sufficiently to make him wish he could induce her to raise her veil and let him see what manner of woman it was who had the effrontery to come and make him such unblushing proposals, he far more urgently desired to see the last of her. She was wasting his time and annoying him into the bargain.
As the door shut behind the servant he made a step towards her.
"If, madam, there is nothing else you wish to consult me about," he began, taking out his watch with some ostentation--"I am a busy man--"
The lady gave a little laugh, low and musical.
"I will not detain you longer," she said, also rising from her chair. "I am afraid I have cut into your afternoon, but you will still have time for a game if you hurry."
She laughed again, and moved over to the writing-table, where, among a litter of papers and writing materials, a couple of golf balls were acting as letter weights. A putter lay on the chair in front of the desk, and she took it up and swung it to and fro.
"A nice club," she remarked. "Where do you play, as a rule? There are so many good links near London; so convenient. Well, I mustn't keep you." She laid down the putter and fingered the balls for a moment. "Where have I put my gloves?" she said then, looking around to collect her belongings.
Gimblet was slightly put out at her inference that his plea of business was merely an excuse to dismiss her in order that he might go off and play golf. Heaven knew it was no affair of hers whether he played golf that day or not! But as a matter of fact he had no intention of leaving the flat that afternoon, and had merely been practising a shot or two on the carpet after lunch before Lord Ashiel's arrival. Still it was true that he had made business a pretext for getting rid of her, and this made the injustice of the widow's further inference ruffle him more than it might have if she had been entirely in the wrong. He was the most courteous of men, and that anyone should suspect him of unnecessary rudeness distressed him.
He made no reply, however, in spite of the temptation to defend himself; but stooped to pick up a diminutive black suede glove which his visitor had dropped when she took up the putter.
She thanked him and put it on, depositing, while she did so, her other glove, her handkerchief, sunshade and a small brown-paper parcel upon the writing-table at her side.
Gimblet did not appreciate seeing these articles heaped upon his correspondence. Without any comment he removed them, and stood holding them silently till she should be ready.
She took them from him soon, with a little inclination of the head which he felt was accompanied by a smile of thanks, though through the thick crape it was impossible to do more than guess at any expression.
She drew on her other glove and held out her hand again.
"My purse?" she said. "Will you not give me that too? Where have you put it? And then I must really go."
"I haven't seen any purse," said Gimblet.
"Yes, yes!" she cried. "A black silk bag! It has my purse inside it. I had it, I am sure."
She turned quickly back to the chair she had been sitting in, and taking up the cushion, shook it and peered beneath it.
"What can I have done with it? All my money is in it."
Gimblet glanced round the room. He did not remember having noticed any bag, and he was an observant person. She had probably left it in a cab. Women were always doing these things. Witness the heaped shelves at Scotland Yard.
"Perhaps you put it down in the hall?" he suggested.
"I am sure I had it when I came in here," she repeated in an agitated voice. "But it might be worth while just to look in the hall," she added doubtfully, and moved towards the door.
Gimblet opened it for her gladly; but she came to a standstill in the doorway.
"There is nothing there, you see;" she said dolefully. "Oh, what shall I do!"
Gimblet looked over her shoulder. The hall was shadowy, with the perpetual twilight of the halls of London flats, but he fancied he could perceive a darker shadow lying beside his hat on the table near the entrance.
"Is that it? On the table?" he asked.
"Where? I don't see anything," murmured the lady; and indeed it was unlikely that she could distinguish anything in such a light from behind her veil.
"On the table by my hat," repeated Gimblet; and as she still did not move, he made a step forward into the hall.
Yes, it was her bag, beyond a doubt. A silken thing of black brocade, embroidered with scattered purple pansies.
Gimblet picked it up and turned back to his visitor. After a second's hesitation she had followed him into the hall and was coming towards him, groping her way rather blindly through the gloom.
"Oh, thanks, thanks!" she exclaimed. "How stupid of me to have left it there. Thank you again. My precious bag! I am so glad you have found it." She took the bag eagerly from him. "I am afraid I have been a nuisance, and disturbed you to no purpose. You must forgive my mistake. But now I will not keep you any longer. Good-bye."
She showed no further disposition to loiter; and Gimblet rang the bell for the lift and saw her depart with a good deal of satisfaction.
In spite of her extremely hazy ideas on the subject of other people's property, there was, he admitted, something attractive about her. Still he was very glad she had gone.
He returned to his room, taking up and pocketing Lord Ashiel's envelope as he passed the little table by the door.
He did it mechanically, for his mind was occupied with a question which must be immediately decided.
Was it, or was it not, worth while to have the woman who had just left him followed and located, and her identity ascertained?
Gimblet disliked leaving small problems unsolved, however insignificant they appeared. On the whole, he thought he might as well find out who she was, and he turned back into the hall and called for Higgs.
If she were to be caught sight of again before leaving the house there was not a moment to lose. But Higgs did not reply, and on Gimblet's opening the pantry door he found it empty. Unknown to him, the moment the lady had departed Higgs had gone upstairs to the flat above to have a word with a friend.
The detective seized his hat and ran downstairs, but he was too late.
The widow lady, the porter told him, had gone away two or three minutes ago in the motor that had been waiting for her. No, he hadn't noticed the number of the car. Neither had he seen Higgs.
Gimblet shrugged his shoulders as he went upstairs again. After all, the matter was of no great consequence.
The widow was a cool hand, certainly, he thought, to come to him and propose he should steal for her what she wanted; but the fact of her having done so made it on the whole improbable that she was a thief, or she would not have had need of him. She was certainly a person of questionable principles, and it seemed likely that in one way or another a theft would be committed through her agency, if not by herself, as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She was, in fact, a woman on whom the police might do worse than keep an eye; but, reflected Gimblet, he was not the police, and the dishonesty of this scheming widow was really no concern of his. As he reached his door, a postman was leaving it, and two or three letters had been pushed through the flap. He let himself in and took them out of the box. They were not of great importance. A bill, an appeal for a subscription to some charity, a couple of advertisements and the catalogue of a sale of pictures in which he was interested. He turned over the leaves slowly, holding the pamphlet sideways from time to time to look at the photographs which illustrated some of the principal lots.
Presently he turned and went back into his room. He sat down in his favourite arm-chair near the window, where he habitually passed so much time gazing out on to the smooth surface of the river, and fell to ruminating on the problem presented by Lord Ashiel's story.
For a long while he sat on, huddled in the corner of an arm-chair, his elbows on the arm, his chin resting on his hand, and in his eyes the look of one who wrestles with obscure and complicated problems of mental arithmetic. From time to time, but without relaxing his expression of concentrated effort, he stretched out long artistic fingers to a box on the table, took from it a chocolate, and transferred it mechanically to his mouth. He always ate sweets when he had a problem on hand. He was trying to think of some means by which his client could be protected from the mysterious danger that threatened him; that it was a very real danger, Gimblet accepted without question; he had only seen Lord Ashiel twice in his life, but it was quite enough to make him certain that here was a man whom it would take a great deal to alarm. This was no boy crying "wolf" for the sake of making a stir.
But the more he thought, the more he saw that there was nothing to be done. A word to the police would suffice, no doubt, to precipitate matters; for, if the Nihilist Society which threatened Lord Ashiel contemplated his destruction, a hint that he might be already taking reciprocal measures would not be likely to make them feel more mercifully towards him. It was obvious that Ashiel would look with suspicion upon any Russian who might approach him, but Gimblet determined to write him a line of warning against foreigners of any description. Still, these societies sometimes had Englishmen amongst their members, and ways of enforcing obedience upon their subordinates which made any decision they might come to as good as carried out almost as soon as it was uttered.
The detective's cogitations were disturbed by Higgs, who had returned, and now brought him in some tea. He poured himself out half a cup, which he filled up with Devonshire cream. He had a peculiar taste in food, and was the despair of his excellent cook, but on this occasion he ate none of the cakes and bread and butter she had provided, the chocolates having rather taken the edge off his appetite.
From where he sat he could see, through the open window, the broad grey stretches of the river, with a barge going swiftly down on the tide; brown sails turned to gleaming copper by the slanting rays from the West. The hum and rattle of the streets came up to him murmuringly; now and then a train rumbled over Charing Cross Bridge, and the whistle of engines shrilled out above the constant low clamour of the town.
Gimblet leant out of the window and watched the barge negotiate the bridge. Then he returned to his chair, and taking Lord Ashiel's envelope out of his pocket looked it over thoughtfully before opening it. He had no doubts as to what it contained; he had been on the point of reminding the peer that he had forgotten to give him the key of the cipher he had spoken of when the widow's ring at the door had driven him to a hurried retreat, but he had not considered the omission of any particular significance. His client would certainly discover it and either return to give him the key, or send it to the flat.
It would probably be some time before it was required for use here. In the meantime, thought Gimblet, he would have a look at it before locking it away in the safe.
He turned over the envelope. To his surprise, the flap was open and the glue had obviously never been moistened.
It was the work of an instant to look inside, but almost quicker came the conviction that it was useless to do so.
He was not mistaken.
The envelope was empty.
Gimblet stared at it for one moment in blank dismay. Then he strode to the door and shouted for Higgs.
"Did you notice," he asked him, "whether the envelope Lord Ashiel gave you for me was fastened, or was it open as this one is?"
"Oh no, sir," replied Higgs, "it was sealed up. There was a large patch of red sealing-wax at the back, with a coronet and some sort of little picture stamped on it. I can't say I looked at it particularly, but there may have been a lion or a dog, or some kind of animal. His lordship's arms, no doubt"
"You are quite certain about the sealing-wax?" Gimblet repeated slowly.
"Yes, sir, I am quite certain about that," answered Higgs; and he could not refrain from adding, "I put down the note on this little table, sir, as you told me."
"Thank you. That is all."
Gimblet's tone was as undisturbed as ever, but inwardly he was seething with anger and disgust; directed, however, entirely against himself.
When Higgs had departed he allowed himself the unusual, though quite inadequate relief of giving the chair on which his last visitor had sat a violent kick. After that he felt rather more ashamed of himself than before, if possible, and he sat down and raged at the simple way in which he had been fooled.
The widow had taken the envelope, of course. She must have snatched it up during the few seconds he had turned his back on her in order to step across the hall and retrieve her bag, and have replaced it at the same instant with this empty one which she had no doubt taken from his own writing-table while he stooped beside her to pick up her glove.
Gimblet fetched one of his own blue envelopes and compared it with the substitute. Yes, they were alike in every particular. The watermarks were the same and showed that she had used what she found ready to her hand.
It seemed, then, that the coup was not premeditated. But why, why, had he let her escape so easily? If only he had been a little quicker about following her, and had not wasted time looking for Higgs! She had had time to get clear away; and he, bungler that he was, had thought it of little consequence, and had afterwards stood poring over a catalogue in the hall, having decided that her morals were no business of his. Ass that he had been!
Who was she? Probably some one known to Lord Ashiel, or why should she have wanted his letter? Well, Ashiel must have met her on his way out, and would in that case at least be able to provide the information as to who she was. Still, more people might know Ashiel than Ashiel knew, and it was possible that that hope might fail. No doubt she was a member of the society the peer had so rashly entangled himself with in the days of his youth; one of those enemies of whom he had spoken with such grave apprehension. Had she followed him into the house and forced her way in on a trumped-up pretext, on the chance of hearing or finding something that might be useful to her Nihilist friends, or had she known that Lord Ashiel intended to leave some document in Gimblet's keeping, and come with the idea, already formed, of stealing it? Such a plan seemed to partake too much of the nature of a forlorn hope to be likely, but whether or no she had expected to find that letter, Gimblet could hardly help admiring the rapidity with which she had possessed herself of it without wasting an unnecessary moment.
She must have been safe in the street and away with it, in less than five minutes from when she first saw it. Oh, she had been quick and dexterous! And he? He had been a gull, and false to his trust, and altogether contemptible. What should he say to Lord Ashiel? Why in the world hadn't he locked up the letter when Higgs brought it in? This was what came of making red-tape regulations about not being disturbed. After all, he comforted himself, she would be a good deal disappointed when she found what she had got. The key to a cipher; that was all. And a key with nothing to unlock was an unsatisfactory kind of loot to risk prison for. Evidently she expected something more important; perhaps the very documents she had invited Gimblet to steal for her, regardless of expense. This, he thought, was a reassuring sign for Lord Ashiel. For it was plain they meant to steal the papers, if they could; but not so plain that they looked to murder as the means by which to gain that end, since they applied for help from him.
Gimblet rang up the Carlton Club and asked for his client, but he was not in, nor did he succeed in communicating with him that afternoon; and when he rang up the Club for the fifth time after dinner he was told that Lord Ashiel had already left for Scotland.
With a groan, and fortifying himself with chocolates, the detective sat down to write a long and full account of his failure to keep what had been confided to his care, for the space of one hour.
In a couple of days he had an answer. Ashiel did not seem much perturbed at the loss of the cipher.
"It is a nuisance, of course," he said. "I must think out another, and will let you have it in a few days before sending you other things. No, I did not recognize the person I met as I was leaving your rooms. In spite of what you say as to your belief that theft and not murder is the object of these people, I am still convinced that my life is aimed at. However, I think that for the present I have hit on a way of frustrating their plans. With regard to the other problem you are helping me to solve, I am seeing a great deal of both the young people, and I believe there can be no doubt as to the identity of one of them, but I will write to you on this subject also in a few days' time."
He sent Gimblet a couple of brace of grouse, which the detective devoured with great satisfaction, and for the next week no more letters bearing a Scotch postmark were delivered at the Whitehall flat.
