The Secret House by Edgar Wallace (sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt) 📖

swung to, obviously operated by somebody in the power house.

His present visit was less furtive and it was in broad daylight, with two detectives ostentatiously posted at the gates, that he made his call--for he took no unnecessary risks.

He walked up the four broad marble steps to the portico of the house, and wiped his feet upon a curious metal mat as he pressed the bell. The door itself was half hidden by a hanging curtain, such as one may see screening the halls of suburban houses, made up of brightly coloured beads or lengths of bamboo. In this case it was made by suspending thousands of steel beads upon fine wire strings from a rod above the door. It gave the impression that the entrance itself was of steel, but when in answer to his summons the door was opened, the _chick_ looped itself up on either side in the manner of a stage curtain, and it seemed to work automatically on the opening of the door.

There stood in the entrance a tall man, with a broad white face and expressionless eyes. He was dressed soberly in black, and had the restrained and deferential attitude of the superior man-servant.

"I am Mr. Smith, of Scotland Yard," said T. B. briefly, "and I wish to see Mr. Moole."

The man in black looked dubious.

"Will you come in?" he asked, and T. B. was shown into a large comfortably furnished sitting-room.

"I am afraid you can't see Mr. Moole," said the man, as he closed the door behind him; "he is, as you probably know, a partial invalid, but if there is anything I can do----"

"You can take me to Mr. Moole," said T. B. with a smile; "short of that--nothing."

The man hesitated.

"If you insist," he began.

The detective nodded.

"I am his secretary and his doctor--Doctor Fall," the other introduced himself, "and it may mean trouble for me--perhaps you will tell me your business?"

"My business is with Mr. Moole."

The doctor bowed.

"Come this way," he said, and he led the detective across the broad hall. He opened a plain door, and disclosed a small lift, standing aside for the other to enter.

"After you," said T. B. politely.

Dr. Fall smiled and entered, and T. B. Smith followed.

The lift shot swiftly upward and came to a rest at the third floor.

It was not unlike an hotel, thought T. B., in the general arrangement of the place.

Two carpeted corridors ran left and right, and the wall before him was punctured with doorways at regular intervals. His guide led him to the left, to the end of the passage, and opened the big rosewood door which faced him. Inside was another door. This he opened, and entered a big apartment and T. B. followed. The room contained scarcely any furniture. The panelling on the walls was of polished myrtle; a square of deep blue carpet of heavy pile was set exactly in the centre, and upon this stood a silver bedstead. But it was not the furnishing or the rich little gilt table by the bedside or the hanging electrolier which attracted T. B.'s attention; rather his eyes fell instantly upon the man on the bed.

A man with an odd yellow face, who, with his steady unwinking eyes might have been a figure of wax save for the regular rise and fall of his breast, and the spasmodic twitching of his lips. T. B. judged him to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of seventy, and, if anything, older. His face was without expression; his eyes, which turned upon the intruder, were bright and beady.

"This is Mr. Moole," said the suave secretary. "I am afraid if you talk to him you will get little in the way of information."

T. B. stepped to the side of the bed and looked down. He nodded his head in greeting, but the other made no response.

"How are you, Mr. Moole?" said T. B. gently. "I have come down from London to see you."

There was still no response from the shrunken figure under the bedclothes.

"What is your name?" asked T. B. after a while.

For an instant a gleam of intelligence came to the eyes of the wreck. His mouth opened tremulously and a husky voice answered him.

"Jim Moole," it croaked, "poor old Jim Moole; ain't done nobody harm."

Then his eyes turned fearfully to the man at T. B.'s side; the old lips came tightly together and no further encouragement from T. B. could make him speak again.

A little later T. B. was ushered out of the room.

"You agree with me," said the doctor smoothly, "Mr. Moole is not in a position to carry on a very long conversation."

T. B. nodded.

"I quite agree," he said, pleasantly. "An American millionaire--Mr. Moole--is he not?"

Dr. Fall inclined his head. His black eyes never left T. B.'s face.

"An American millionaire," he repeated.

"He does not talk like an American," said T. B.; "even making allowances that one must for his mental condition, there is no inducement to accept the phenomenon."

"Which phenomenon?" asked the other, quickly.

"That which causes an American millionaire, a man probably of some refinement and education, at any rate of some lingual characteristics, to talk like a Somerset farm labourer."

"What do you mean?" asked the other harshly.

"Just what I say," said T. B. Smith; "he has the burr of a man who has been brought up in Somerset. He is obviously one who has had very little education. My impression of him does not coincide with your description."

"I think, Mr. Smith," said the other, quietly, "that you have had very little acquaintance with people who are mentally deficient, otherwise you would know that those unfortunate fellow-creatures of ours who are so afflicted are very frequently as unrecognizable from their speech as from their actions."

He led the way to the lift door, but T. B. declined its service.

"I would rather walk down," he said.

He wanted to be better acquainted with this house, to have a larger knowledge of its topography than the ascent and descent by means of an electric lift would allow him. Dr. Fall offered no objection, and led the way down the red carpeted stairs.

"I am well acquainted with people of unsound mind," T. B. went on, "especially that section of the insane whose lunacy takes the form of dropping their aitches."

"You are being sarcastic at my expense," said the other, suddenly turning to him with a lowered brow. "I think it is only right to tell you that, in addition to being Mr. Moole's secretary, I am a doctor."

"That is also no news to me," smiled T. B. "You are an American doctor with a Pennsylvania degree. You came to England in eighteen hundred and ninety-six, on board the _Lucania_. You left New York hurriedly as the result of some scandal in which you were involved. It is, in fact, much easier to trace your movements since the date of your arrival than it is to secure exact information concerning Mr. Moole, who is apparently quite unknown to the American Embassy."

The large face of the secretary flushed to a deep purple.

"You are possibly exceeding your duty," he said, gratingly, "in recalling a happening of which I was but an innocent victim."

"Possibly I am," agreed T. B.

He bowed slightly to the man, and descended the broad steps to the unkempt lawn in front of the house. He was joined at the gate by the two men he had brought down. One of these was Ela.

"What did you find?" asked that worthy man.

"I found much that will probably be useful to us in the future," said T. B., as he stepped into the fly, followed by his subordinate.

He turned to the third detective.

"You had better wait here," he said, "and report on who arrives and who departs. I shall be back within a couple of hours."

The man saluted, and the fly drove off.

"I have one more call to make," said T. B. Smith, "and I had better make that alone, I think. Tell the flyman to drop me at Little Bradley Rectory."

Lady Constance Dex was not unprepared for the visit of the detective. She had seen him from the window of her room, driving past the rectory in the direction of the Secret House, and he found her expectantly waiting him in the drawing-room.

He came straight to the heart of the matter.

"I have just been to visit a man who I understand is a friend of yours," he said.

She inclined her head.

"You mean Mr. Moole?"

"That is the man," said the cheerful T. B.

She thought for a long time before she spoke again. She was evidently making up her mind as to how much she would tell this insistent officer of the law.

"I suppose you might as well know the whole facts of the case," she said; "if you will sit over there, I will supplement the information I gave you in Brakely Square a few days ago."

T. B. seated himself.

"I am certainly a visitor to the Secret House," she said, after a while. She did not look at the detective as she spoke, but kept her gaze fixed upon the window and the garden without.

"I told you that I have had one love affair in my life; that affair," she went on steadily, "was with George Doughton; you probably know his son."

T. B. nodded.

"It was a case of love at first sight. George Doughton was a widower, a good-natured, easy-going, lovable man. He was a brave and brilliant man too, famous as an explorer as you know. I met him first in London; he introduced me to the late Mr. Farrington, who was a friend of his, and when Mr. Farrington came to Great Bradley and took a house here for the summer, George Doughton came down as his guest, and I got to know him better than ever I had known any human being before in my life."

She hesitated again.

"We were lovers," she went on, defiantly,--"why should I not confess to an experience of which I am proud?--and our marriage was to have taken place on the very day he sailed for West Africa. George Doughton was the very soul of honour, a man to whom the breath of scandal was as a desert wind, withering and terrible. He was never in sympathy with the modern spirit of our type, was old-fashioned in some respects, had an immense and beautiful conception of women and their purity, and carried his prejudices against, what we call smart society, to such an extent that, if a man or woman of his set was divorced in circumstances discreditable to themselves, he would cut them out of his life."

Her voice faltered, and she seemed to find difficulty in continuing, but she braced herself to it.

"I had been divorced," she went on, in a low voice; "in my folly I had been guilty of an indiscretion which was sinless as it was foolish. I had married a cold, rigid and remorseless man when I was little more than a child, and I had run away from him with one who was never more to me than a brother. A chivalrous, kindly soul who paid for his