The Stowmarket & Albert Gate Mystery. Louis Tracy
forgive my apparent flippancy, Miss Talbot," he said. "I am really in earnest. I believe that a flying visit to Paris just now must unquestionably advance us an important stage in this inquiry. Let me explain exactly what I mean. Here is a letter from your brother, in handwriting which you and others best qualified to judge declare to be undeniably his. It also bears postmarks which would demonstrate to a court of law that it was posted in Paris last night and received here to-day. But it does not follow that it was written in Paris; it might have been written anywhere. Now, according to the police, there is an entry in the visitors' book at the Grand Hotel which appears to prove that your brother wrote his name therein on Tuesday night. If the handwriting in the Grand Hotel register corresponds beyond all doubt with that in this letter and envelope, then your brother must be in Paris. If it does not, he is not there. I am convinced that the latter hypothesis is correct, but to make doubly sure I will go and see with my own eyes. There now—I owed you an explanation, and I have barely time to catch my train. Good-bye. I will wire you in the morning."
He placed the mysterious letter in his note-book, gave them a parting smile, and was gone.
He managed to catch the 8.15, which started punctually, the sole remnant of railway virtue possessed by the Chatham and South Eastern line. A restful porter, quickened into active life by a half-crown tip, found him a vacant seat in a first-class smoking carriage, and Brett's hasty glance round the compartment revealed that his travelling companions, as far as Dover, at any rate, were severely respectable Britons bound for the Riviera.
The harbour station at Dover wore its usual aspect of dejected misery. The hurrying passengers pushed and jostled each other in their frenzied efforts to board the steamer, for the average British tourist has a rooted belief that such pushing and jostling and banging of apoplectic portmanteaus against the legs of others are absolutely necessary if he would not be left behind.
With an experience born of many voyages, Brett quickly noted the direction of the wind and the vessel's bearings. A stiff breeze had brought up a moderate sea, and the barrister dumped down his bag and flung himself into a chair on what a novice would regard as the weather side of the charthouse. He bore the discomfort for a few minutes, and was rewarded for his foresight by possessing the most sequestered nook on deck when the vessel turned her head seawards and began one of the shortest, but perhaps the most disagreeable, voyages in the world.
Having retained his seat long enough to establish a proprietary right therein, Brett rose and made a short tour of the ship. To distinguish any one on deck was almost out of the question. The passengers were huddled up in indefinable shapes, and there was hardly light sufficient to effect a stumbling progress over the multitude of hand-baggage. So the barrister dived down the companion-way and cannoned against a burly individual who had propped himself against a bulkhead on the main deck saloon.
Something hard in the man's pockets gave Brett a sharp rap, and when they separated with mutual apologies, he laughed silently.
"Handcuffs!" he murmured. "Scotland Yard is always prepared for emergencies. I will wager a considerable sum that as soon as Winter reached headquarters his story about the letter caused a telegram to be despatched to Dover. Here's a detective bound for Paris and prepared to manacle Talbot the moment he sees him. What a fearful and wonderful thing is the English police system. A crime, obviously clever in its conception and treatment, can be handled by a sharp policeman wearing regulation boots and armed with handcuffs. Really, I must have a drink."
Clinging to the hand-rails and executing some crude but effective balancing feats, he reached the dining saloon, which was woefully denuded of occupants, for the English Channel that night had sternly set its face against the indiscriminate use of cold ham and pickles.
Near the bar, however, solemnly digesting a liqueur, stood a man to whom the choppy sea evidently gave no concern. He had the square shoulders, neat-fitting clothes and closely clipped appearance at the back of the neck which mark the British officer; but he also stood square on his feet and swayed with unconscious ease whether the vessel pitched or rolled or executed the combined movement.
"Now, I wonder," said Brett, "if that is Captain Gaultier. He must be. Gaultier, from his name, should be a Jersey man, hence his facility in foreign languages and his employment as a Foreign Office messenger. It's worth trying. I will make the experiment."
He reached the bar and ordered a whisky and soda. Turning affably to the stranger, he remarked—
"Nasty night, isn't it? I hope we shan't be much behind time."
The stranger glanced at him with sharp and inquisitive eyes, but the glance evidently reassured him, for he replied quite pleasantly—
"Oh, no. A matter of a few minutes, perhaps. They usually manage to make up any delay after we leave Calais."
"That's good," said Brett, "because I want to be in Paris at the earliest possible moment."
The other man smiled.
"We are due there at 5.38," he said. "Rather an early hour for business, isn't it?"
"Well, yes," assented the barrister, "under ordinary circumstances, but as my only business in Paris is to examine an hotel register and then get something to eat before I return, I do not wish to waste time unnecessarily on the road."
The other man nodded affably, but gave no sign of further interest.
"So," communed Brett, "if it be Gaultier, he has not heard the latest developments. I must try a frontal attack."
"Does your name happen to be Gaultier?" he went on.
The stranger arrested his liqueur glass in the final tilt.
"It does," he said; "but I do not think I have the pleasure of knowing you."
"No," said Brett, "you haven't."
"Well?" said the other man.
"The fact is," said Brett, "I heard you had been in London. I guessed from your appearance that you might be a King's messenger, and it was just possible that the Captain Gaultier in whom I was interested might start back to the Continent to-night, so I put two and two together, don't you see, with the result that they made four, a thing which doesn't always happen in deduction if in mathematics."
Now, Foreign Office messengers are not chosen for their simplicity or general want of intelligence. Captain Gaultier eyed his questioner with some degree of stern suspicion as he said from behind his cigar—
"May I ask who you are?"
"Certainly," replied Brett, producing his card.
After a quick glance at the pasteboard, Gaultier continued—
"I suppose, Mr. Brett, you have some motive in addressing me? What is it?"
"I am interested in the fate of a man named Talbot," was the straightforward reply, "and as you told the Under-Secretary that you had seen Talbot crossing to Paris in company with a lady last Tuesday, I hoped that perhaps you would not mind discussing the matter with me."
Captain Gaultier was evidently puzzled. Private conversations with Under-Secretaries of State are not, as a rule, public property, and his momentary intention to decline further conversation with this good-looking and fascinating stranger was checked by remembrance of the fact.
"Really, Mr. Brett," he said, "although I do not question the accuracy of your statement, you will readily understand that I can hardly discuss the matter with you under the circumstances."
"Naturally. You would not be holding a responsible position in His Majesty's service if you were at all likely to do any such thing. But I propose, in the first instance, to reassure you as to my bona fides, and I may point out, in the second place, that as I have met you by a fortunate chance, you can hardly deem it a breach of confidence to discuss with me the mere accidental appearance on a cross-Channel steamer of a man known not only to both of us, but to society at large."
Gaultier clearly hesitated, but did not refuse to accept the Under-Secretary's letter, which Brett handed to him, with the words—
"You