The Place of Dragons: A Mystery. Le Queux William
remark to me, to which I politely responded, and we got into conversation. But, somehow, his speech jarred upon me, and, like his personal appearance, struck an unpleasant note, for his white shoes and pale blue socks, his light green Tyrolese hat, and his suit of check tweeds distinctly marked him as being more of a cad than a gentleman.
I remarked that I had walked to Overstrand, whereupon he asked —
"Did you chance to meet my uncle? He's gone out that way, somewhere."
I replied in the negative.
"Wonderful old boy, you know," he went on. "Walks me clean right out! But oh! such a dreadful old bore! Always talking about what he did in the seventies, and how much better life was then than now. I don't believe it. Do you?"
"I hardly know," was my reply. "I wasn't old enough then to appreciate life."
"Neither was I," he responded. "But really, these eccentric old people ought all to be put in an asylum. You don't know what I have to put up with. I tell you, it's a terrible self-sacrifice to be down in this confounded hole, instead of being on the Riviera in decent sunny weather, and in decent society."
"Your uncle is always extremely pleasant to me when I meet him," I said.
"Ah, yes, but you don't know him, my dear sir," said his nephew. "He's the very Old Nick himself sometimes, and his eccentricities border upon insanity. Why, only last night, before he went to bed, he put on his bed-gown, cut two wings out of brown paper, pinned them on his back, and fancied himself the Archangel Gabriel. Last week he didn't speak to me for two days because I bought a box of sardines. He declares they are luxuries and he can't afford them – he, with an income of forty thousand a year!"
"Rich men are often rather niggardly," I remarked.
"Oh, yes. But with Uncle Vernon it's become a craze. He shivers with cold at night but won't have a fire in his bedroom because, he says, coals are so dear."
I confess I did not like this young fellow. Why should he reveal all his private grievances to me, a perfect stranger?
"Why did your uncle come to Cromer?" I asked. "This place is hardly a winter resort, except for a few golfers."
"Oh, because when he was in Egypt last winter, some fool of a woman he met at the Savoy in Cairo, told him that Cromer was so horribly healthy in the winter, and that if he spent six months each year in this God-forgotten place, he'd live to be a hundred. Bad luck to her and her words! I've had to come here with the old boy, and am their victim." Then he added warmly: "My dear sir, just put yourself in my place. I've nobody to talk to except the provincial Norfolk tradespeople, who think they can play a good game at billiards. I've got the absolute hump, I tell you frankly!"
Well, afterwards I met the loud-socked young man more frequently, but somehow I had taken a violent and unaccountable dislike to him. Why, I cannot tell, except perhaps that he had disgusted me by the way he unbosomed himself to a stranger and aired his grievances against his eccentric uncle.
To descend that asphalted slope which led, on the face of the cliff, from the roadway in front of the Hôtel de Paris, away to the Promenade, old Gregory had to pass beneath my window. Hence I saw him several times daily, and noted how the brown-bloused fishermen who lounged there hour after hour, gazing idly seaward, leaning upon the railings and gossiping, respectfully touched their caps to the limping, eccentric old gentleman who in his slouch hat and cape looked more like a poet than a steel magnate, and who so regularly took the fresh, bracing air on that breezy promenade.
On that morning – the morning of the twelfth of June – a startling rumour had spread through the town. It at once reached me through Charles, the head-waiter of the hotel, who told me the whole place was agog. The strange story was that old Mr. Gregory had at three o'clock that morning been found by a coast-guard lying near a seat on the top of the east cliff at a point near the links, from which a delightful view could be obtained westward over the town towards Rimton and Sheringham.
The coast-guard had at once summoned a doctor by telephone, and on arrival the medical man had pronounced the mysterious old gentleman dead, and, moreover, that he had been dead several hours.
More than that, nobody knew, except that the dead man's nephew could not be found.
That fact in itself was certainly extraordinary, but it was not half so curious, or startling, as certain other features of the amazing affair, which were now being carefully withheld from the public by the police – facts, which when viewed as a whole, formed one of the most inexplicable criminal problems ever presented for solution.
CHAPTER II
IS MAINLY ASTONISHING
In virtue of the facts that I was well known in Cromer, on friendly terms with the local superintendent of police, and what was more to the purpose, known to be a close friend of the Chief Constable at Norwich – also that I was a recognized writer of some authority upon problems of crime – Inspector Treeton, of the Norfolk Constabulary, greeted me affably when, after a very hasty breakfast, I called at the police station.
Treeton was a thin, grey-haired man, usually very quiet and thoughtful in manner, but this staggering affair had quite upset his normal coolness.
"I expect the detectives over from Norwich in half an hour," he said, with a distinct trace of excitement in his tones, as we stood in his bare little office discussing the morning's discovery. "You being such a close friend of the Chief Constable, I don't suppose there'll be any objection whatever to your being present during our investigations."
All the same, his tone was somewhat dubious as he added cautiously, "You won't, of course, give anything to the Press?"
"Certainly not," I replied. "You can rely upon my discretion. This isn't the first mystery I have assisted the police to investigate. This sort of thing is, so to speak, part of my profession."
"Yes," said Treeton, still with some hesitation, "so I understand, Mr. Vidal. But our people are terribly particular, as you know, about admitting unofficial persons into police work. No offence. But we are bound to be very careful."
"If you like, I'll 'phone to the Chief Constable," I suggested.
"No, sir. No need for that," he said hastily. "When the plain-clothes men arrive, I don't think any difficulty will be made as to your accompanying them." Then he added, as if to give the conversation a turn, "It's a very queer business, very. But I mustn't talk about it at present. No doubt you'll soon see for yourself what a strange affair it is."
"What is the curious feature, then?" I inquired anxiously.
"No," said Treeton, with a deprecatory gesture. "No. Mr. Vidal. Don't ask me. You must wait till the officers come from Norwich. They'll have a surprise, I can assure you they will. That's all I can say. I've taken care to have everything kept as it was found so as not to interfere with any clues, finger-prints, or things of that sort."
"Ah," I said. "Then you suspect foul play, eh?"
Treeton flushed slightly, as if annoyed with himself at having let slip the words that prompted my query.
Then he said slowly: "Well, at present we can't tell. But there's certainly something very mysterious about the whole business."
"Where is the body?"
"They've put it in the life-boat house."
"And that young fellow, Craig? I hear he's missing."
The Inspector looked at me with a strange expression on his face.
"Ah," he said briefly, "that isn't the only remarkable feature of this affair by any manner of means." Then impatiently: "I wish they'd come. I 'phoned to Norwich at six o'clock this morning, and now it's nearly ten. They might have come over in a car, instead of waiting for the train."
"Yes," I responded. "That is how so many inquiries are bungled. Red tape and delay. In the meantime a criminal often gets away hours ahead of the sleuths of the law and eventually may escape altogether. I've known a dozen cases where, because of the delay in making expert investigation, the culprit has never been caught."
As I spoke the telephone bell tinkled and Treeton answered the call. The