William Le Queux - The Sign of the Stranger

Having again impressed upon the landlord the necessity of delivering the letter to Lolita in secret, as well as remaining utterly dumb regarding the stranger’s visit, I was allowed to view the body of the unknown victim. It lay stretched upon some boards in the outhouse at rear of the inn, covered by a sheet, which on being lifted revealed the cold white face.

We stood there together in silence. In the dim light of the previous night and the uncertain glimmer of the lantern, I had not obtained an adequate idea of the young man’s features, and it was in order to do this that I revisited the chamber of the dead.

For a long time I gazed upon that blanched countenance and sightless eyes, a face that seemed in those few hours to have altered greatly, having become shrunken, more refined, more transparent. The closely-cropped hair, the very even dark eyebrows, and the rather high cheek-bones were the most prominent features, and all of them, combined with the cut of his clothes and the shape of his boots, went to suggest that he was not an Englishman.

In those moments every feature of that calm dead face became photographed upon the tablets of my memory, and as it did so I somehow became convinced that he was not altogether a stranger. I had, I believed, met him previously somewhere – but where I could not determine. I recollected Warr’s evasion of my question. Was he also puzzled, like myself?

Outside the inn half Sibberton had assembled to discuss the terrible affair, many of the village women wearing their lilac sun-bonnets, those old-world head-dresses that are, alas! so fast disappearing from rural England. The other half of the village had entered the park to see the spot where the terrible tragedy had been enacted.

For a moment I halted talking with a couple of men who made inquiry of me, knowing that I had first raised the alarm. And then I heard a dozen different theories in as many minutes. The rural mind is always quick to suggest motive where tragedy is concerned.

At noon I walked up to the Hall again, wondering if my love would show herself. I longed to get up to London and make inquiries at that pawnbroker’s in the Westminster Bridge Road, as well as to call at the address she had given me in Chelsea. As she had said, only myself stood between her and death. The situation all-round was one of great peril, and I had, at all costs, to save her.

As I entered and crossed the hall, Slater, the old butler, approached, saying —

“His lordship would like to see you, sir. He’s in the library.”

So I turned and walked up the corridor of the east wing to that fine long old room with its thousands of rare volumes that had been the chief delight of the white-headed old peer who had spent the evening of his days in study.

“I say, Woodhouse!” cried the young Earl, springing from his chair as I entered, “what does this murder in the park last night mean?”

“It’s a profound mystery,” I replied. “The murdered man has not yet been identified.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “I went down to the inn with Pink this morning and saw him. And, do you know, he looks suspiciously like a fellow who followed me about in town several times last season.”

“That’s strange!” I exclaimed, much interested. “Yes, it is. I can’t make it out at all. There’s a mystery somewhere – a confounded mystery.” And the young Earl thrust his hands deeply into his trousers pockets as he seated himself on the arm of a chair.

Tall, dark, good-looking, and a good all-round athlete, he was about thirty, the very picture of the well-bred Englishman. A few years in the Army had set him up and given him a soldierly bearing, while his face and hands, tanned as they were, showed his fondness for out-door sports. He kept up the Stanchester hounds, of which he was master, to that high degree of efficiency which rendered them one of the most popular packs in the country; he was an excellent polo player, a splendid shot, and a thorough all-round sportsman. In his well-worn grey flannels, and with a straw hat stuck jauntily on his head, he presented the picture of healthy manhood, wealthy almost beyond the dreams of avarice, a careless, easy-going, good-humoured man-of-the-world, whose leniency to his tenants was proverbial, and whose good-nature gave him wide popularity in Society, both in London and out of it.

By the man-in-the-street he was believed to be supremely content in his great possessions, his magnificent mansions, his princely bank balance, his steam yacht and his pack of hounds, yet I, his confidential friend and secretary, knew well the weariness and chagrin that was now eating out his heart. Her ladyship, two years his junior, was one of the three celebrated beauties known in London drawing-rooms as “the giddy Gordons,” and who, notwithstanding her marriage, still remained the leader of that ultra-smart set, and always had one or two admirers in her train. She was still marvellously beautiful; her portraits, representing her yachting, motoring, shooting or riding to hounds, were familiar to every one, and after her marriage it had become the fashion to regard the Countess of Stanchester as one of the leaders of the London mode .

All this caused her husband deep regret and worry. He was unhappy, for with her flitting to and from the Continental spas, to Rome, to Florence, to Scotland, to Paris and elsewhere, he enjoyed little of her society, although he loved her dearly and had married her purely on that account.

Often in the silence of his room he sighed heavily when he spoke of her to me, and more than once, old friends that we were, he had unbosomed himself to me, so that, knowing what I did, I honestly pitied him. There was, in fact, affection just as strong in the heart of the millionaire landowner as in that of his very humble secretary.

“I had the misfortune to be born a rich man, Willoughby,” he had once declared to me. “If I had been poor and had had to work for my living, I should probably have been far happier.”

At the present moment, however, he seemed to have forgotten his own sorrows in the startling occurrence that had taken place within his own demesne, and his declaration that the man now dead had followed him in London was to me intensely interesting. It added more mystery to the affair.

“Are you quite certain that you recognise him?” I inquired a few moments later, wondering whether, if this were an actual fact, I had not also seen him when walking with the Earl in London.

“Well, not quite,” was my companion’s reply. “A dead man’s face looks rather different to that of a living person. Nevertheless, I feel almost positive that he’s the same. I recollect that the first occasion I saw him was at Ranelagh, when he came and sat close by me, and was apparently watching my every movement. I took no notice, because lots of people, when they ascertain who I am, stare at me as though I were some extraordinary species. A few nights later on, walking home from the Bachelors’, I passed him in Piccadilly, and again on the next day he followed me persistently through the Burlington. Don’t you remember, too, when Marigold held that bazaar in the drawing-room in aid of the Deep Sea Mission? Well, he came, and bought several rather expensive things. I confess that his constant presence grew very irritating, and although I said nothing to you at the time, for fear you would laugh at my apprehension, I grew quite timid, and didn’t care to walk home from the club at night alone.”

“Rather a pity you didn’t point him out to me,” I remarked, very much puzzled. “I, too, have a faint idea that I’ve seen him somewhere. It may have been that when I’ve walked with you he has followed us.”

“Most likely,” was the young Earl’s reply. “He evidently had some fixed purpose in watching my movements, but what it could be is an entire mystery. During the last fortnight I was in town I always carried my little revolver, fearing – well, to tell you the truth, fearing lest he should make an attack upon me,” he admitted with a smile. “The fact was, I had become thoroughly unnerved.”