The Crimson Blind

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David turned with a start. He saw before him a slight, graceful figure,
and a lovely, refined face in a frame of the most beautiful hair that he
had ever seen. The grey eyes were demure, with just a suggestion of mirth
in them; the lips were made for laughter. It was as if some dainty little
actress were masquerading in Salvation garb, only the dress was all
priceless lace that touched David's artistic perception. He could imagine
the girl as deeply in earnest as going through fire and water for her
convictions. Also he could imagine her as Puck or Ariel--there was
rippling laughter in every note of that voice of hers.

"I--I, eh, yes," Steel stammered. "You see, I--if I only knew whom I had
the pleasure of addressing?"

"I am Miss Ruth Gates, at your service. Still, you asked for me by name."

David made no reply for a moment. He was tripping over surprises again.
What a fool he had been not to look out the name of the occupant of 219
in the directory. It was pretty evident that Gilead Gates had a house in
Brighton as well as one in town. Not only had that telephone message
emanated from the millionaire's residence, but it had brought Steel to
the philanthropist's abode in Brighton. If Mr. Gates himself had strolled
into the room singing a comic song David would have expressed no emotion.

"Daughter of the famous Gilead Gates?" David asked, feebly.

"No, niece, and housekeeper. This is not my uncle's own house, he has
merely taken this for a time. But, Mr. Steel--"

"Mr. _David_, Steel--is my name familiar to you?"

David asked the question somewhat eagerly. As yet he was only feeling
his way and keenly on the lookout for anything in the way of a clue. He
saw the face of the girl grow white as the table-cover, he saw the
lurking laughter die in her eyes, and the purple black terror dilating
the pupils.

"I--I know you quite well by reputation," the girl gasped. Her little
hands were pressed to her left side as if to check some deadly pain
there. "Indeed, I may say I have read most of your stories. I--I hope
that there is nothing wrong."

Her self-possession and courage were coming back to her now. But the
spasm of fear that had shaken her to the soul was not lost upon Steel.

"I trust not," he said, gravely. "Did you know that I was here two
nights ago?"

"Here!" the girl cried. "Impossible! In the house! The night before last!
Why, we were all in bed long before midnight."

"I am not aware that I said anything about midnight," David
responded, coldly.

An angry flush came sweeping over the face of the girl, annoyance at her
own folly, David thought. She added quickly that she and her uncle had
only been down in Brighton for three days.

"Nevertheless, I was in this room two nights ago," David replied. "If you
know all about it, I pray you to give me certain information of vital
importance to me; if not, I shall be compelled to keep my extraordinary
story to myself, for otherwise you would never believe it. Do you or do
you not know of my visit here?"

The girl bent her head till Steel could see nothing but the glorious
amber of her hair. He could see, too, the fine old lace round her throat
was tossing like a cork on a stream.

"I can tell you nothing," she said. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

It was the voice of one who would have spoken had she dared. With
anybody else Steel would have been furiously angry. In the present case
he could only admire the deep, almost pathetic, loyalty to somebody who
stood behind.

"Are you sure you were in this house?" the girl asked, at length.

"Certain!" David exclaimed. "The walls, the pictures, the
furniture--all the same. I could swear to the place anywhere. Miss
Gates, if I cannot prove that I was here at the time I name, it is
likely to go very hard with me."

"You mean that a certain inconvenience--"

"Inconvenience! Do you call a charge of murder, or manslaughter at best,
inconvenient? Have you not seen the local papers? Don't you know that two
nights ago, during my absence from home, a strange man was practically
done to death in my conservatory? And during the time of the outrage, as
sure as Heaven is above us, I was in this room."

"I am sorry, but I am sure that you were not."

"Ah, you are going to disappoint me? And yet you know something. You
might have been the guiltiest of creatures yourself when I disclosed my
identity. No prisoner detected in some shameful crime ever looked more
guilty than you."

The girl stood there, saying nothing. Had she rang the bell and ordered
the footman to put him out of the house, Steel would have had no cause
for complaint. But she did nothing of the kind. She stood there torn by
conflicting emotions.

"I can give you no information," she said, presently. "But I am as
positive one way as you are another that you have never been in this
house before. I may surmise things, but as I hope to be judged fairly I
can give you no information. I am only a poor, unhappy girl, who is doing
what she deems to be the best for all parties concerned. And I can tell
you nothing, nothing. Oh, won't you believe that I would do anything to
serve you if I were only free?"

She held out her hand with an imploring gesture, the red lips were
quivering, and her eyes were full of tears. David's warm heart went out
to her; he forgot all his own troubles and dangers in his sympathy for
the lovely creature in distress.

"Pray say no more about it," he cried. He caught the outstretched hand in
his and carried it to his lips. "I don't wish to hurry you; in fact,
haste is dangerous. And there is ample time. Nor am I going to press you.
Still, before long you may find some way to give me a clue without
sacrificing a jot of your fine loyalty to--well, others. I would not
distress you for the world, Miss Gates. Don't you think that this has
been the most extraordinary interview?"

The tears trembled like diamonds on the girl's long lashes and a smile
flashed over her face. The sudden transformation was wonderfully
fascinating.

"What you might call an impossible interview," she laughed. "And all the
more impossible because it was quite impossible that you could ever have
been here before."

"When I was in this room two nights ago," David protested, "I saw---"

"Did you see me, for instance? If not, you couldn't have been here."

A small, misshapen figure, with the face of a Byron--Apollo on the bust
of a Satyr--came in from behind the folding doors at the back of the
dining-room carrying some letters in his hand. The stranger's dark,
piercing eyes were fixed inquiringly upon Steel.

"Bell," the latter cried; "Hatherly Bell! you have been listening!"

The little man with the godlike head admitted the fact, coolly. He
had been writing letters in the back room and escape had been
impossible for him.

"Funny enough, I was going to look you up to-day," he said. "You did me
a great service once, and I am longing to repay you. I came down here to
give my friend Gates the benefit of my advice and assistance over a
large philanthropic scheme he has just evolved. And, writing letters
yonder on that subject, I heard your extraordinary conversation. Can I
help you, Steel?"

"My dear fellow," David cried, "if you offered me every intellect in
Europe I should not choose one of them so gladly as yours."

"Then let us shake hands on the bargain. And now I am going to stagger
you; I heard you state positively that two nights ago you were in this
very room."

"I am prepared to testify the fact on oath anywhere, my dear Bell."

"Very well; will you be good enough to state the hour?"

"Certainly. I was here from one o'clock--say between one and two."

"And I was here also. From eleven o'clock till two I was in this very
room working out some calculations at this very table by the aid of my
reading-lamp, no other light being in the room, or even in the house, as
far as I know. It is one of my fads--as fools call them--to work in a
large, dark room with one brilliant light only. Therefore you could not
possibly have been in the house, to say nothing of this room, on the
night in question."

David nodded feebly. There was no combating Bell's statement.

"I presume that this is No. 219?" he asked.

"Certainly it is," Miss Gates replied. "We are all agreed about _that_."

"Because I read the number over the fanlight," Steel went on. "And I came
here by arrangement. And there was everything as I see it now. Bell, you
must either cure me of this delusion, or you must prove logically to me
that I have made a mistake. So far as I am concerned, I am like a child
struggling with the alphabet."

"We'll start now," said Bell. "Come along."

Steel rose none too willingly. He would fain have lingered with Ruth. She
held out her hand; there was a warm, glad smile on her face.

"May you be successful," she whispered. "Come and see me again, because I
shall be very, very anxious to know. And I am not without guilt.... If
you only knew!"

"And I may come again?" David said, eagerly.

A further smile and a warm pressure of the hand were the only reply.
Presently Steel was standing outside in the road with Bell. The latter
was glancing at the house on either side of 219. The higher house was
let; the one nearest the sea--218--was empty. A bill in the window gave
the information that the property was in the hands of Messrs. Wallace and
Brown, Station Quadrant, where keys could be obtained.

"We'll make a start straightaway," said Bell. "Come along."

"Where are you going to at that pace?" Steel asked.

"Going to interview Messrs. Wallace and Brown. At the present moment I am
a gentleman who is in search of a house of residence, and I have a
weakness for Brunswick Square in particular, especially for No. 218.
Unless I am greatly mistaken I am going to show you something that will
startle even the most callous novelist."

CHAPTER VIII

HATHERLY BELL

The queer, misshapen figure striding along by Steel's side would have
attracted attention anywhere; indeed, Hatherly Bell had been an
attractive personality from his schooldays. A strange mixture of vanity
and brilliant mental qualities, Bell had almost as many enemies as
friends. He was morbidly miserable over the score of his personal
appearance despite the extraordinary beauty of his face--to be pitied or
even sympathised with almost maddened him. Yet there were many women who
would gladly have shared the lot of Hatherly Bell.

For there was strength in the perfectly moulded face, as well as beauty.
It was the face of a man possessed of marvellous intellectual powers, and
none the less attractive because, while the skin was as fair as a woman's
and the eyes as clear as a child's, the wavy hair was absolutely white.
The face of a man who had suffered fiercely and long. A face hiding a
great sorrow.

Time was when Bell had promised to stand in the front rank of operative
physicians. In brain troubles and mental disorders he had distinguished
himself. He had a marvellous faculty for psychological research; indeed,
he had gone so far as to declare that insanity was merely a disease and
capable of cure the same as any ordinary malady. "If Bell goes on as he
has started," a great German specialist once declared, "he will
inevitably prove to be the greatest benefactor to mankind since the
beginning of the world." Bell was to be the man of his time.

And then suddenly he had faded out as a star drops from the zenith. There
had been dark rumours of a terrible scandal, a prosecution burked by
strong personal influence, mysterious paragraphs in the papers, and the
disappearance of the name of Hatherly Bell from the rank of great medical
jurists. Nobody seemed to know anything about it, but Bell was ignored by
all except a few old friends, and henceforth he devoted his attention to
criminology and the evolution of crime. It was Bell's boast that he could
take a dozen men at haphazard and give you their vices and virtures
point-blank. He had a marvellous gift that way.

A few people stuck to him, Gilead Gates amongst the number. The
millionaire philanthropist had need of someone to pick the sheep from the
goats, and Bell made no mistakes. David Steel had been able to do the
specialist some slight service a year or two before, and Bell had been
pleased to magnify this into a great favour.

"You are a fast walker," David said, presently.

"That's because I am thinking fast," Bell replied. "Steel, you are in
great trouble?"

"It needs no brilliant effort on your part to see that," David said,
bitterly. "Besides, you heard a great deal just now when you--you--"

"Listened," Bell said, coolly. "Of course I had no intention of playing
eavesdropper; and I had no idea who the Mr. Steel was who wanted to see
Miss Gates. They come day by day, my dear fellow, garbed in the garb of
Pall Mall or Petticoat Lane as the case may be, but they all come for
money. Sometimes it is a shilling, sometimes L100. But I did not gather
from your chat with Miss Gates what your trouble was."

"Perhaps not, but Miss Gates knew perfectly well."

Bell patted his companion, approvingly.

"It is a pleasure to help a lucid-minded man like yourself," he said.
"You go straight to the root of the sore and cut all the superfluous
matter away. I was deeply interested in the conversation which I
overheard just now. You are in great trouble, and that trouble is
connected with 219, Brunswick Square--a house where you have never
been before."

"My dear chap, I was in that dining-room two nights ago. Nothing will
convince me to the--"

"There you are wrong, because I am going to convince you to the
contrary. You may smile and shake your head, but before an hour has
passed I am going to convince you beyond all question that you were
never inside No. 219."

"Brave words," David muttered. "Still, an hour is not a long time to
wait."

"No. But you must enlighten me if I am to assist you. I am profoundly
interested. You come to the house of my friend on a desperate errand.
Miss Gates is a perfect stranger to you, and yet the mere discovery of
your identity fills her with the most painful agitation. Therefore,
though you have never been in 219 before, you are pretty certain, and I
am pretty certain, that Ruth Gates knows a deal about the thing that is
touching you. On the contrary, I know nothing on that head. Won't you let
me into the secret?"

"I'll tell you part," Steel replied. "And I'll put it pithily. For mere
argument we assume that I am selected to assist a damsel in distress who
lives at No. 219, Brunswick Square. We will assume that the conversation
leading up to the flattering selection took place over the telephone. As
a matter of fact, it did take place over the telephone. The thing was
involved with so much secrecy that I naturally hesitated. I was offered
L1,000 for my services; also I was reminded by my unseen messenger that I
was in dire need of that money."

"And were you?"

"My dear fellow, I don't fancy that I should have hesitated at burglary
to get it. And all I had to do was to meet a lady secretly in the dead of
night at No. 219, and tell her how to get out of a certain difficulty. It
all resolved itself round the synopsis of a proposed new story of mine.
But I had better go into details."

David proceeded to do so. Bell, with his arm crooked through that of his
companion, followed the story with an intelligent and nattering interest.

"Very strange and very fascinating," he said, presently. "I'll think it
out presently. Nobody could possibly think of anything but their toes in
Western Road. Go on."

"Now I am coming to the point. I had the money, I had that lovely
cigar-case, and subsequently I had that battered and bleeding specimen of
humanity dumped down in the most amazing manner in my conservatory. The
cigar-case lay on the conservatory floor, remember--swept off the table
when I clutched for the telephone bell to call for the police. When
Marley came he asked if the cigar-case was mine. At first I said no,
because, you see--"

"I see quite plainly. Pray go on."

"Well, I lose that cigar-case; I leave it in the offices of Mossa, to
whom I pay nearly L1,000. Mossa, to spite me, takes or sends the case to
the police, who advertise it not knowing that it is mine. You will see
why they advertise it presently--"

"Because it belonged to the injured man, eh?"

David pulled up and regarded his companion with amazement.

"How on earth--" he gasped. "Do you mean to say that you know--"

"Nothing at present, I assure you," Bell said, coolly. "Call it
intuition, if you like. I prefer to call it the result of logical mental
process. I'm right, of course?"

"Of course you are. I'd claimed that case for my own. I had cut my
initials inside, as I showed Marley when I went to the police-station.
And then Marley tells me how I paid Mossa nearly L1,000; how the money
must have come into my hands in the nick of time. That was pretty bad
when I couldn't for the life of me give a lucid reason for the possession
of those notes; but there was worse to come. In the pocket of the injured
man was a receipt for a diamond-studded gun-metal cigar-case, purchased
the day of the outrage. And Walen, the jeweller, proved beyond a doubt
that the case I claimed was purchased at his shop."

Bell nodded gravely.

"Which places you in an exceedingly awkward position," he said.

"A mild way of putting it," David replied. "If that fellow dies the
police have enough evidence to hang me. And what is my defence? The story
of my visit to No. 219. And who would believe that cock-and-bull story?
Fancy a drama like that being played out in the house of such a pillar of
respectability as Gilead Gates."

"It isn't his house," said Bell. "He only takes it furnished."

"In anybody else your remark would be puerile," David said, irritably.

"It's a deeper remark than you are aware of at present," Bell replied. "I
quite see your position. Nobody would believe you, of course. But why not
go to the post-office and ask the number of the telephone that called you
up from London?"

The question seemed to amuse David slightly. Then his lips were drawn
humorously.

"When my logical formula came back I thought of that," he said. "On
inquiring as to who it was rang me up on that fateful occasion I learnt
that the number was 0017 Kensington and that--"

"Gates's own number at Prince's Gate," Bell exclaimed. "The plot
thickens."

"It does, indeed," David said, grimly. "It is Wilkie Collins gone mad,
Gaboriau _in extremis_, Du Boisgobey suffering from _delirium tremens_.
I go to Gates's house here, and am solemnly told in the midst of
surroundings that I can swear to that I have never been there before;
the whole mad expedition is launched by the turning of the handle of a
telephone in the house of a distinguished, trusted, if prosaic,
citizen. Somebody gets hold of the synopsis of a story of mine, Heaven
knows how--"

"That is fairly easy. The synopsis was short, I suppose?"

"Only a few lines, say 1,000 words, a sheet of paper. My writing is very
small. It was tucked into a half-penny open envelope--a mazagine office
envelope, marked 'Proof, urgent.' There were the proofs of a short story
in the buff envelope."

"Which reached its destination in due course?"

"So I hear this morning. But how on earth--"

"Easily enough. The whole thing gets slipped into a larger open envelope,
the kind of big-mouthed affair that enterprising firms send out circulars
and patterns with. This falls into the hands of the woman who is at the
bottom of this and every other case, and she reads the synopsis from
sheer curiosity. The case fits her case, and there you are. Mind you, I
don't say that this is how the thing actually happened, but how it might
have done so. When did you post the letter?"

"I can't give you the date. Say ten days ago."

"And there would be no hurry for a reply," Bell said, thoughtfully. "And
you had no cause for worry on that head. Nor need the woman who found it
have kept the envelope beyond the delay of a single post, which is only a
matter of an hour or so in London. If you go a little farther we find
that money is no object, hence the L1,000 offer and the careful, and
doubtless expensive, inquiry into your position. Steel, I am going to
enjoy this case."

"You're welcome to all the fun you can get out of it," David said,
grimly. "So far as I am concerned, I fail to see the humour. Isn't this
the office you are after?"

Bell nodded and disappeared, presently to return with two exceedingly
rusty keys tied together with a drab piece of tape. He jingled them on
his long, slender forefinger with an air of positive enjoyment.

"Now come along," he said. "I feel like a boy who has marked down
something rare in the way of a bird's nest. We will go back to Brunswick
Square exactly the same way as you approached it on the night of the
great adventure."

CHAPTER IX

THE BROKEN FIGURE

"Any particular object in that course?" David asked.

"There ought to be an object in everything that even an irrational man
says or does," Bell replied. "I have achieved some marvellous results by
following up a single sentence uttered by a patient. Besides, on the
evening in question you were particularly told to approach the house from
the sea front."

"Somebody might have been on the look-out near the Western Road
entrance," Steel suggested.

"Possibly. I have another theory.... Here we are. The figures over the
fanlights run from 187 upwards, gradually getting to 219 as you breast
the slope. At one o'clock in the morning every house would be in
darkness. Did you find that to be so?"

"I didn't notice a light anywhere till I reached 219."

"Good again. And you could only find 219 by the light over the door.
Naturally you were not interested in and would not have noticed any other
number. Well, here is 218, where I propose to enter, and for which
purpose I have the keys. Come along."

David followed wonderingly. The houses in Brunswick Square are somewhat
irregular in point of architecture, and Nos. 218 and 219 were the only
matched pair thereabouts. Signs were not wanting, as Bell pointed out,
that at one time the houses had been occupied as one residence. The two
entrance-halls were back to back, so to speak, and what had obviously
been a doorway leading from one to the other had been plastered up within
comparatively recent memory.

The grim and dusty desolation of an empty house seemed to be supplemented
here by a deeper desolation. Not that there was any dust on the ground
floor, which seemed a singular thing seeing that elsewhere the boards
were powdered with it, and festoons of brown cobwebs hung everywhere.
Bell smiled approvingly as David Steel pointed the fact out to him.

"Do you note another singular point?" the former asked.

"No," David said, thoughtfully; "I--stop! The two side-shutters in the
bay-windows are closed, and there is the same vivid crimson blind in the
centre window. And the self colour of the walls is exactly the same. The
faint discoloration by the fireplace is a perfect facsimile."

"In fact, _this_ is the room you were in the other night," Bell
said, quietly.

"Impossible!" Steel cried. "The blind may be an accident, so might the
fading of the distemper. But the furniture, the engravings, the fittings
generally--"

"Are all capable of an explanation, which we shall arrive at with
patience."

"Can we arrive at the number over the door with patience?"

"Exactly what I was coming to. I noticed an old pair of steps in the back
sitting-room. Would you mind placing them against the fanlight for me?"

David complied readily enough. He was growing credulous and interested in
spite of himself. At Bell's instigation he placed the steps before the
fanlight and mounted them. Over his head were the figures 218 in
elongated shape and formed in white porcelain.

"Now then," Bell said, slowly. "Take this pocket-knife, apply the blade
to the _right-hand_ lower half of the bottom of the 8--to half the small
O, in fact--and I shall be extremely surprised if the quarter section
doesn't come away from the glass of the fanlight, leaving the rest of the
figure intact. Very gently, please. I want you to convince yourself that
the piece comes away because it is broken, and not because the pressure
has cracked it. Now then."

The point of the knife was hardly under the edge of the porcelain before
the segment of the lower circle dropped into Steel's hand. He could feel
the edges of the cement sticking to his fingers. As yet the full force of
the discovery was not apparent to him.

"Go out into the road and look at the fanlight," Bell directed.

David complied eagerly. A sharp cry of surprise escaped him as he looked
up. The change was apparent. Instead of the figures 218 he could read now
the change to 219--a fairly indifferent 9, but one that would have passed
muster without criticism by ninety-nine people out of a hundred. With a
strong light behind the figures the clumsy 9 would never have been
noticed at all. The very simplicity and ingeniousness of the scheme was
its safeguard.

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