The Bath Mysteries (16 page)

“Not so long that I don't remember it same as yesterday – and always shall,” answered Cripples.

Bobby said it was as queer a yarn as he had ever heard, but it was a good thing it had ended with Priestman getting a job, and he agreed with Cripples that this unknown Mr. Smith must be indeed a true philanthropist. Then he wished Cripples a good night and strolled back along the Embankment to Westminster, nor was there any figure of those who passed him by, half seen in the darkness, or whom he noticed huddled on the seats or watching by the parapet above the flowing river, but he asked himself if that might be this Mr. Smith in whose company it seemed friendless men left the Embankment to be so well provided for that they never returned there. He noticed presently a Salvation Army worker, and paused to talk to him. The Salvation Army man, too, had heard stories of a mysterious Mr. Smith who sometimes came looking for men suited to take work he had to offer, and who preferred them young, and, if possible, educated, and utterly without friends or resources.

“You can see his idea,” the Salvation Army man said to Bobby. “If they're young, he thinks there's still a chance they'll make good. If they're educated, it seems to him worse they've come down so low. And if they've no friends left, then they need help all the more.”

“I think perhaps he may have another reason for the choice he makes,” Bobby said.

The other asked what that was, and Bobby answered that he would rather not say, as he was not sure and might be wrong.

“Have you ever seen this Mr. Smith?” he asked.

But the Salvation Army man shook his head. He had seen a shadow, he said, passing quickly and silently by. He had seen an empty seat, and been told Mr. Smith had been seated there the moment before. He had heard quick, light footsteps retreating into the night, and known that they were his, but that was all, except that once he had been told by a youngster, an exultant youngster, that Mr. Smith had promised him a good job, and for earnest had left him a ten-shilling note to go on with.

“A good long time ago that was – a year at least, maybe two or more,” the Salvation Army man said. “I remember it well, though; young fellow was so pleased. Sands, his name was – Sammy Sands. Great luck for him, of course, and he's never been near the Embankment since. What's up?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“I thought you gave a sort of jump, that's all,” answered the Salvation Army man.

“I was only thinking luck's a funny thing,” Bobby explained.

“We don't call it luck; we call it Providence,” answered the other gravely, and Bobby said:

“Better call it neither, perhaps, but take it as it comes.”

The other shook his head disapprovingly, and added:

“I would give quite a lot to meet Mr. Smith. I feel we might be useful to each other.”

It was fairly evident that he saw Mr. Smith as a possible contributor of large sums to Salvation Army funds, though that was a hope Bobby thought had small chance of fulfilment.

“I should like to meet him myself,” he said. “A most interesting man, I'm sure.”

Then he said good night and walked on, and from Westminster took a bus home, where, when he entered, he was met by his landlady, who, as he noticed at once, was looking very cheerful. She told him his supper was waiting for him, and added beamingly, unable to keep such good news to herself, that she had at last, after all this time, secured a rental for the top back bedroom that had been empty so long, as it was small, dark, inconvenient, and had for sole outlook a blank wall not much more than three yards away.

“Such a nice, quiet, respectable young lady, too,” beamed the landlady; “so different from most of the girls nowadays.”

“Jolly good. A real bit of luck,” agreed Bobby, thinking privately it was better luck for the landlady than for the prospective tenant of so cheerless a room.

However, it would be cheap, and it had a roof, and those are two major considerations.

“Out all day working in the City,” the landlady continued. “As smart and neat as you could wish, and no make-up, and a wonder, that is, when even the girls at school dab their faces all over. But she's got not even so much as a pinch of powder on the end of her nose.”

It was this last phrase that struck Bobby's attention. He remembered having heard the same thing said of another girl concerning whom again he himself had noticed the same fact. The idea seemed incredible, but he said quickly: “Did you say what her name was?”

“Yates," the landlady answered. “Miss Alice Yates.”

It was in a very puzzled mood that Bobby ate his supper that night – from his young and healthy appetite all memory of the formidable ham sandwich dealt with on the Embankment had entirely faded. But what this new development could mean, or why Miss Yates had left her former lodgings in order to transfer herself to his, was a problem to which he entirely failed to imagine any answer.

It even broke from his mind the haunting picture that had formed itself there of a shadow going to and fro upon the Embankment seeking those of whom when found nothing more, it seemed, was ever heard.

The odd, dramatic tale Cripples had told at such length Bobby had already decided was not likely to have importance for the investigation he was engaged on. There was, of course, the coincidence of the name given being the same as that of one of the victims so strangely dead in their baths, but the affair on the Embankment had happened long after the death of the Priestman of the Yen Developments Syndicate, so that the outcast of the Embankment could not possibly be identified with the young man said to have lived extravagantly, and well supplied with ready cash, in a West End flat.

Probably a mere coincidence of name, Bobby thought, and so he noted it down in the diary or history of the case he was keeping, though he was careful to add a note to the effect that coincidences in this affair seemed altogether too frequent.

Then he dismissed it from his mind, and began instead to jot down on bits of paper every possible reason he could think of that might explain Miss Yates's abrupt appearance. Was it possible, for example, that she wished to keep a watch on his activities? But surely if that were her object she would hardly proclaim it so openly. All the same he took the precaution of placing every scrap of document he had concerning the case in an attaché case for removing to headquarters next morning. When he went up to bed he took the attaché case with him, and he also took certain other precautions that would insure his being aware of it, if any attempt were made to examine the contents of his desk.

Nothing happened, however, and in the morning he met the new lodger in the hall. She was standing there, drawing on her gloves, preparing to go out. Her umbrella and a small attaché case were on a chair near. She was dressed simply and neatly, like any other of the innumerable body of City workers, typists, cashiers, secretaries, who take their share each day in guiding and directing the great machine of modern business. Only lines of experience about her pale lips, a depth of knowledge in the reddened and watery eyes she generally kept hidden behind heavy, slightly swollen lids, seemed in any way to differentiate her from the rest.

Pointedly, of deliberate purpose, Bobby stood watching her. He noticed that she still showed no sign of the use of any cosmetic – not even, to quote the expression twice used by approving landladies, “so much as a dab of powder on the end of her nose.” Yet surely, with that unfortunate complexion of hers, the use of such things would be for her entirely justifiable. It was almost as if she had deliberately, defiantly, of set purpose, put aside any and every aid to feminine attractiveness. Was it a disguise, he wondered? That could hardly be, he thought, and the fine moulding of the head, the harmony of the well-shaped features, the grace and distinction of her bearing remained to insure prompt recognition.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and then, when she opened them again, fixed a direct gaze upon him, as if now she saw him more clearly, more intently, and had wished to do so. He became conscious that there had crept back into her attitude that suggestion of hidden force, of a coiled intensity of purpose, that had impressed him when he had seen her before in the office of the Berry, Quick Syndicate. He felt somehow quite certain that she had in her mind some settled purpose, and that while she lived nothing would turn her aside from her effort to attain it.

Apparently her scrutiny of him satisfied her. She turned her eyes away; with that gesture he had noticed before, and that seemed characteristic of her, she put up her hand as if to brush aside something hanging there before her eyes, and was moving towards the door to depart, when Bobby said: “Oh, excuse me, I think we have met before.”

She gave him one quick glance, full at him, full again of a purpose and significance to which he had no clue. Then she veiled her eyes once more, and, in her low, husky voice, she said quietly:

“You are making a mistake.”

She let herself out by the front door and was gone, and Bobby went into his own room.

“Clean beats me,” he reflected, and, when he arrived at Scotland Yard and reported this new development, he was at first hardly believed.

“Are you sure it's the same girl?” Ferris asked.

Bobby answered patiently that the fact was as certain as any fact could be.

“Well, what's the big idea?” demanded Ferris.

Bobby replied with continued patience that he had devoted most of his time trying to find a reasonable answer to the question, but had not so far succeeded.

“Going to try to vamp you?” suggested Ferris.

Bobby thought that unlikely, but undertook to report any vamping, as, if, and when, it developed.

“I suppose she knew it was the same place where you lodged?” Ferris wondered.

Bobby thought it quite impossible her appearance could be a mere matter of chance.

“Beats me what she's up to,” Ferris declared. “Got a bathroom you use, I suppose?”

Bobby admitted that that was so.

“Then,” said Ferris decidedly, “all I can say is, if I were you, I should be jolly careful to keep the door locked.”

Bobby promised accordingly, and thought, privately, the case must be getting on the nerves of others besides himself when a man like Ferris could solemnly offer such a warning.

“You know,” Ferris admitted, “what gets me is this yarn of yours of some fellow prowling up and down the Embankment and no one ever seeing him, just a shadow like, and... and...”

Ferris did not finish his sentence, and Bobby agreed that it “got” him, too.

“Only, you know, sir,” he pointed out, “we have no proof of what really happens. Both Cripples and the Salvation Army man took it for granted that those who go off with Mr. Smith, as he calls himself, don't come back, simply because they've been given good jobs.”

“It may be that,” agreed Ferris, but neither he nor Bobby believed it for one moment.

From the Yard, Bobby went on alone to Islington, in the hope of being able to obtain more details of his cousin's life there and of the circumstances surrounding his death.

He did not seem at first likely to meet with much success. Memory of the actual tragedy was strong enough, but with the lapse of time details had become blurred or forgotten and others had been invented. Most of what he was told was hearsay, some of it wildly inaccurate. But it was clear that no suspicion of foul play had been entertained. It was only of a tragic and unusual accident that the memory remained in the neighbourhood. Many of those who had been living in the building at the time had moved away, and of only one or two of these could Bobby get the present address. He felt he had lost his time and wasted his efforts when finally he called at the office of the landlord's agents. Nor had they much more to tell him. It was no part of their business to keep track of tenants who moved away. They remembered the tragedy, of course – not a thing anyone was likely to forget; an accident, they were glad to say, unparalleled in their experience. Of course it could never have happened to anyone not far gone in drink. There had been some difficulty in renting the flat afterwards. People hadn't fancied it somehow, though what had happened made no real difference. It was that idea of the boiling water pouring on the dead body hour after hour, for so long a time, that turned people off. At last the agents had been obliged both to lower the rent and redecorate the whole flat, as well as put in a new bath, before tenants could be obtained.

“Perfectly good bath, too,” said one of the agents. “We used it somewhere else where they didn't know. Quite all right really.”

“Yes, of course,” agreed Bobby.

“Funny thing about that, though,” said the agent, growing confidential. “We put it in some new converted flats, quite near, and the very first tenant was a Mrs. Charles, who had had the flat under the poor chap you're asking about and been friendly with him – took in his milk and that sort of thing. Of course, she never knew about the bath being the same.”

“Well, there wouldn't have been any sense in telling her,” agreed Bobby amiably, and, on giving his word not to betray the secret of the bath, was given her address.

Fortunately she was at home, and Bobby explained that he was a cousin of Mr. Oliver's and had only recently heard of the terrible accident that had ended his life. He was anxious now to know exactly how it had happened. Mrs. Charles was quite willing to talk. She told again what a nice man Mr. Oliver had been – always the gentleman, no matter how much he had had to drink; and, even if he could hardly stand, would lift his hat when he saw you.

“Always a pleasant word,” said Mrs. Charles, “though keeping himself to himself; and such a surprise to know he was married, and him living in such a poor way, but making sure he provided for her – as is more than most men would have done.”