October 28th.
I rose late this morning. When I went down to breakfast I found that Carlotta had already gone for her music lesson.
I drove at once to the Temple to see my lawyers and to make arrangements for a marriage by special license.
I returned at one o’clock. Stenson met me in the hall.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Marcus, but Mademoiselle hasn’t come back yet.”
I waited an uneasy hour. Such a lengthy absence from home was unprecedented. At two o’clock I went round to Herr Stuer in the Avenue Road—a five minutes’ walk.
He entered the sitting-room into which I had been ushered, wiping his lips.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Herr Stuer,” said I, “but will you kindly tell me when Miss Carlotta left you, this morning?”
“Miss Carlotta came not at all this morning,” he replied.
“But it was her regular day?”
“At ten o’clock. She did not come. At eleven I have another pupil. She has not before missed one lesson.”
I flew back home, in an agony of hope that her laughing face would meet me there and dispel a dread that chilled me like an icy wind.
There was no Carlotta.
There has been no Carlotta all this awful day.
There will never be a Carlotta again.
I drove to the police station.
“What do you think has happened?” asked the Inspector.
It was only too horribly obvious. Any man but myself would have kept her under lock and key and established a guard round the house. Any man but myself would have never let her out of his sight until he had married her, until he had tracked Hamdi and his myrmidons back to Alexandretta.
“Abduction has happened,” I cried wildly. “Between Lingfield Terrace and Avenue Road she has been caught, thrust into a closed carriage, gagged and carried God knows where by the wiliest old thief in Asia. He is the Prefect of Police in Aleppo. His name is Hamdi Effendi and he is staying at the Hotel Metropole.”
The Inspector questioned me. Heaven knows how I answered. I saw the scene. The waiting carriage. The unfrequented bit of road. My heart’s darling, her face a radiant flower in the grey morning, tripping lightheartedly along. The sudden dash, the struggle, the swiftly closed door. It was a matter of a few seconds. My brain grew dizzy with the vision.
“You say that he threatened to abduct her?” asked the Inspector.
“Yes,” said I, “and a friend of mine promised to kill him. Heaven grant he keep his promise!”
“Be careful, Sir Marcus,” smiled the Inspector. “Or if there is a murder committed you will be an accessory before the fact.”
I intimated my disregard of the contingency. What did it matter? Nothing in the world mattered save the recovery of the light and meaning of my existence. My friend’s name? Sebastian Pasquale, He lived near by in the St. John’s Wood Road.
“The best thing you can do, Sir Marcus,” said the Inspector, “is to get hold of Mr. Pasquale and take him with you to Scotland Yard. Perhaps two heads will be better than one. In the meanwhile we shall communicate with headquarters and make the necessary inquiries in the neighbourhood.”
I drove to St. John’s Wood Road, and learned to my dismay that Pasquale had given up his rooms there a week ago. All his letters were addressed to his club in Piccadilly. I drove thither. How has mankind contented itself for these thousands of years with a horse as its chief means of locomotion? Oh, the exasperation I suffered behind that magnified snail! I dashed into the club. Mr. Pasquale had not been there all day. No, he was not staying there. It was against the rules to give members’ private addresses.
“But it’s a matter of life and death!” I cried.
“To tell you the truth, sir,” said the hall porter, “Mr. Pasquale’s only permanent address is his banker’s, and we really don’t know where he is staying at present.”
I wrote a hurried line:
“Hamdi has abducted Carlotta. I am half crazed. As you love me give me your help. Oh, God! man, why aren’t you here?”
I left it with the porter, and crawled to Scotland Yard. The cabman at my invectives against his sauntering beast waxed indignant; it was a three-quarter blood mare and one of the fastest trotters in London.
“She passes everything,” said he.
“It is because everything is standing still or going backward or turned upside down,” said I.
No doubt he thought me mad. Mad as a dingo dog. The thought of the words, the summer and the sun sent a spasm of hunger through my heart. Then I murmured to myself: “‘Save my soul from hell and my darling from the power of the dog.’ Which dog? Not the dingo dog.” I verily believe my brain worked wrong to-day.
Great Scotland Yard at last. I went through passages. I found myself in a nondescript room where a courteous official seated at a desk held me on the rack for half an hour. I had to describe Carlotta: not in the imagery wherein only one could create an impression of her sweetness, but in the objective terms of the police report. What was she wearing? A hat, and jacket, a skirt, shoes; of course she wore gloves; possibly she carried a muff. Impatient of such commonplace details, I described her fully. But the glory of her bronze hair, her great dark brown eyes, the quivering sensitiveness of her lips; her intoxicating compound of Botticelli and the Venusberg; the dove-notes of her voice; all was a matter of boredom to Scotland Yard. They clamoured for the colour of her feathers and the material of which her dress was made; her height in vulgar figures and the sizes of her gloves and shoes.
“How on earth can I tell you?” I cried in desperation.
“Perhaps one of your servants can give the necessary information,” replied the urbane official. If I had lost an umbrella he could not have viewed my plight with more inhuman blandness!
A miracle happened. As I was writing a summons to Stenson to obtain these details from Antoinette and attend at once, a policeman entered and I learned that my confidential man was at the door. My heart leapt within me. He had tracked me hither and had come to tell me that Carlotta was safe. But the first glance at his face killed the wild hope. He had tracked me hither, it is true; but only apologetically to offer what information might be useful. “It is a very great liberty, Sir Marcus, and I will retire at once if I have overstepped my duties, but there are important details, sir, in catastrophes of this nature with which my experience has taught me only servants can be acquainted.”
There must be a book of ten thousand pages entitled “The Perfect Valet,” dealing with every contingency of domestic life which this admirable fellow has by heart. He uttered his Ciceronian sentence with the gravity of a pasteboard figure in the toy theatre of one’s childhood.
“Can you describe the young lady’s dress?” asked the official.
“I have made it my business,” said Stenson, “to obtain accurate information as to every detail of Mademoiselle Carlotta’s attire when she left the house this morning.”
I faded into insignificance. Stenson was a man after the Inspector’s heart. A few eager questions brought the desired result. A dark red toque with a grey bird’s wing; a wine-coloured zouave jacket and skirt, black braided; a dark blue bodice; a plain gold brooch (the first trinket I had given her—the occasion of her first clasp of arms around my neck) fastening her collar; a silver fox necklet and muff; patent leather shoes and brown suede gloves.
“Any special mark or characteristics?”
“A white scar above the left temple,” said Stenson.
Lord have mercy! The man has lived day by day for five months with Carlotta’s magical beauty, and all he has noticed as characteristic is the little white scar—she fell on marble steps as a child—the only flaw, if flaw can be in a thing so imperceptible, in her perfect loveliness.
“Mademoiselle has also a tiny mole behind her right ear,” said Stenson.
The Inspector’s conception of Stenson expanded into an apotheosis. He paid him deference. His pen wrote greedily every syllable the inspired creature uttered. When the fount of inspiration ran dry, Stenson turned to me with his imperturbable, profoundly respectful air.
“Shall I return home, Sir Marcus, or have you any further need of my service?”
I bade him go home. He withdrew. The Inspector smiled cheerfully. “Now we can get along,” said he. “It’s a pity Mr.—Mr. Pasquale” (he consulted his notes) “is out of touch with us for the moment. He might have given us great assistance.”
He rose from his chair. “I think we shall very soon trace the young lady. An accurate personal description like this, you see, is invaluable.”
He handed me the printed form which he had filled in. In spite of my misery I almost laughed at the fatuity of the man in thinking that those mere unimaginative statistics applicable to five hundred thousand young females in London, could in any way express Carlotta.
“This is all very well,” said I; “but the first thing to do is to lay that Turkish devil by the heels.”
“You can count on our making the most prompt and thorough investigation,” said he.
“And in the mean time what can I do?”
“Your best course, Sir Marcus,” he answered, “is to go home and leave things in our hands. As soon as ever we have the slightest clue, we shall communicate with you.”
He bowed me out politely. In a few moments I found myself in the greyness of the autumn afternoon wandering on the Thames Embankment like a lost soul on the banks of Phlegethon. It seemed as if I had never seen the sun, should never see the sun again. I was drifting sans purpose into eternity.
I passed by some railings. A colossal figure looming through the misty air struck me with a sense of familiarity. It was the statue of Sir Bartle Frere, and these were the gardens beneath the terrace of the National Liberal Club. It was here that I had first met her. The dripping trees seemed to hold the echo of the words spoken when their leaves were green: “Will you please to tell me what I shall do?” I strained my eyes to see the bench on which I had sat, and my eyes tricked me into translating a blurr at the end of the seat into the ghostly form of Carlotta. My misery overwhelmed me; and through my misery shot a swift pang of remorse at having treated her harshly on that sweet and memorable afternoon in May.
I turned the corner at Whitehall Place and looked down the desolate gardens. The benches were empty, the trees were bare, “and no birds sang.” I crossed the road.
The Hotel Metropole. The great doors stood invitingly open, and from the pavement one could see the warmth and colour of the vestibule. Here was staying the Arch-Devil who had robbed me of my life. I stood for a moment under the portico shaking with rage. I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds for I do not remember entering or mounting the stairs. I found myself at the bureau asking for Hamdi Effendi. No, he had not left. They thought he was in the hotel. A page despatched in search of him departed with my card, bawling a number. I hate these big caravanserais where one is a mere number, as in a gaol. “Would to heaven it were a gaol,” I muttered to myself, “and this were the number of Hamdi Effendi!”
A lean man rose from a chair and, holding out his hand, effusively saluted me by name. I stared at him. He recalled our acquaintance at Etretat. I fished him up from the deeps of a previous incarnation and vaguely remembered him as a young American floral decorator who used to preach to me the eternal doctrine of hustle. I shook hands with him and hoped that he was well.
“Going very strong. Never stronger. Never so well as when I’m full up with work. But you don’t hurry around enough in this dear, sleepy old country. Men lunch. In New York all the lunch one has time for is to swallow a plasmon lozenge in a street-car.”
His high pitched voice shrieked bombastic platitude into my ears for an illimitable time. I answered occasionally with the fringe of my mind. Could my agonised state of being have remained unperceived by any human creature save this young, hustling, dollar-centred New York floral decorator?
“Since we met, guess how many times I’ve crossed the Atlantic. Four times!”
Long-suffering Atlantic!
“And about yourself. Still going piano, piano with books and things?”
“Yes, books and things,” I echud.
The page came up and announced Hamdi’s intention of immediate appearance.
“And how is that charming young lady, your ward, Miss Carlotta?” continued my tormentor.
“Yes,” I answered hurriedly. “A charming young lady. You used to give her sweets. Have you noticed that a fondness for sugar plums induces an equanimity of character? It also spoils the teeth. That is why the front teeth of all American women are so bad.”
I must be endowed with the low cunning of the fox, who, I am told, by a swift turn puts his pursuers off the scent. The learned term the rhetorical device an ignoratio elenchi. My young friend’s patriotism rose in furious defence of his countrywomen’s beauty. I looked round the luxuriously furnished vestibule, wondering from which of the many doors the object of my hatred would emerge, and my young friend’s talk continued to ruffle the fringe of my mind.
“I’m afraid you’re expecting some one rather badly,” he remarked with piercing perceptiveness.
“A dull acquaintance,” said I. “I shall be sorry when his arrival puts an end to our engaging conversation.”
Then the lift door opened and Hamdi stepped out like the Devil in an Alhambra ballet.
He looked at my card and looked at me. He bowed politely.
“I did not know whom I should have the pleasure of seeing,” said he in his execrable French. “In what way can I be of service to Sir Marcus Ordeyne?”
“What have you done with Carlotta?” I asked, glaring at him.
His ignoble small-pox pitted face assumed an expression of bland inquiry.
“Carlotta?”
“Yes,” said I. “Where have you taken her to?”
“Explain yourself, Monsieur,” said Hamdi. “Do I understand that Lady Ordeyne has disappeared?”
“Tell me what you have done with her.”
His crafty features grew satanic; his long fleshy nose squirmed like the proboscis of one of Orcagna’s fiends.
“Really, Monsieur,” said he, with a hideous leer—oh, words are impotent to express the ugliness of that face! “Really, Monsieur, supposing I had stolen Miladi, you would be the last person I should inform of her whereabouts. You are simple, Monsieur. I had always heard that England was a country of arcadian innocence, so unlike my own black, wicked country, and now—” he shrugged his shoulders blandly, “j’en suis convaincu.”
“You may jeer, Hamdi Effendi,” said I in a white passion of anger. “But the English police you will not find so arcadian.”
“Ah, so you have been to the police?” said the suave villain. “You have gone to Scotland—Scotland Place Scotland—n’importe. They are investigating the affair? I thank you for the friendly warning.”
“Warning!” I cried, choked with indignation. He held up a soft, fat palm.
“Ah—it is not a warning? Then, Monsieur, I am afraid you have committed an indiscretion which your friends in Scotland Place will not pardon you. You would not make a good police agent. I am of the profession, so I know.”
I advanced a step. He recoiled, casting a quick look backward at the lift just then standing idle with open doors.
“Hamdi Effendi,” I cried, “by the living God, if you do not restore me my wife—”
But then I stopped short. Hamdi had stepped quickly backward into the lift, and given a sign to the attendant. The door slammed and all I could do was to shake my fist at Hamdi’s boots as they disappeared upwards.
I remember once in Italy seeing a cat playing with a partially stunned bat which, flying low, she had brought to the ground. She crouched, patted it, made it move a little, patted it again and retired on her haunches preparing for a spring. Suddenly the bat shot vertically into the air.
I stared at the ascending lift with the cat’s expression of impotent dismay and stupefaction. It was inconceivably grotesque. It brought into my tragedy an element of infernal farce. I became conscious of peals of laughter, and looking round beheld the American doubled up in a saddlebag chair. I fled from the vestibule of the hotel clothed from head to foot in derision.
I am at home, sitting at my work-table, walking restlessly about the room, stepping out into the raw air on the balcony and looking for a sign down the dark and silent road. I curse myself for my folly in entering the Hotel Metropole. The damned Turk held me in the palm of his hand. He made mock of me to his heart’s content.... And Carlotta is in his power. I grow white with terror when I think of her terror. She is somewhere, locked up in a room, in this great city. My God! Where can she be?
The police must find her. London is not mediaeval Italy for women to be gagged and carried off to inaccessible strongholds in defiance of laws and government. I repeat to myself that she must come back, that the sober working of English institutions will restore her to my arms, that my agony is a matter of a day or two at most, that the special license obtained this morning and now lying before me is not the document of irony it seems, and that in a week’s time we shall look back on this nightmare of a day with a smile, and look forward to the future with laughter in our hearts.
But to-night I am very lonely. “Loneliness,” says Epictetus, “is a certain condition of the helpless man.” And I am helpless. All my aid lies in the learning in those books; and all the learning in all those books on all sides from floor to ceiling cannot render me one infinitesimal grain of practical assistance. If only Pasquale, man of action, swift intelligence, were here! I can only trust to the trained methods of the unimaginative machine who has set out to trace Carlotta by means of the scar on her forehead and the mole behind her ear. And meanwhile I am very lonely. My sole friend, to whom I could have turned, Mrs. McMurray, is still at Bude. She is to have a child, I understand, in the near future, and will stay in Cornwall till the confinement is over. Her husband, even were he not amid the midnight stress of his newspaper office, I should shrink from seeking. He is a Niagara of a man. Judith—I can go to her no more. And though Antoinette has wept her heart out all day long, poor soul, and Stenson has conveyed by his manner his respectful sympathy, I cannot take counsel of my own servants. I have gathered into my arms the one-eyed cat, and buried my face in his fur—where Carlotta’s face has been buried. “That’s the way I should like to be kissed!” Oh, my dear, my dear, were you here now, that is the way I should kiss you!
I have gone upstairs and wandered about her room. Antoinette has prepared it for her reception to-night, as usual. The corner of the bedclothes is turned down, and her night-dress, a gossamer thing with cherry ribbons, laid out across the bed. At the foot lie the familiar red slippers with the audacious heels; her dressing-gown is thrown in readiness over the back of a chair; even the brass hot water can stands in the basin—and it is still hot. And I know that the foolish woman is wide-awake overhead waiting for her darling. I kissed the pillow still fragrant of her where her head rested last night, and I went downstairs with a lump in my throat.
Again I sit at my work-table and, to save myself from going mad with suspense, jot down in my diary* the things that have happened. Put in bald words they scarcely seem credible.
* It will be borne in mind that I am writing these actual
pages, afterwards, at Verona, amplifying the rough notes in
my diary. M. O.
A sudden clattering, nerve-shaking, strident peal at the front-door bell.
I flew down the stairs. It was news of Carlotta. It was Carlotta herself brought back to me. My heart swelled with joy as if it would burst. I knew that as I opened the door Carlotta would fall laughing, weeping, sobbing into my arms.
I opened the door. It was only a police officer in plain clothes.
“Sir Marcus Ordeyne?”
“Yes.”
“We have traced the young lady all right. She left London by the two-twenty Continental express from Victoria with Mr. Sebastian Pasquale.”
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