The Mortover Grange Affair/Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE WAITER AND THE CABMAN
Nottidge came back from the telephone alert and eager, beckoning Wedgwood towards the door.
"Come on!" he exclaimed. "There's a man at my house who wants to see me about the advertisement! Let's get up there, sharp!"
"All right," assented Wedgwood. "But give me your telephone number in case anybody calls here for me while I'm out." He left the number and instructions with the station sergeant and followed Nottidge into the street. "Don't be too sanguine about news," he continued as they entered the first passing taxi-cab. "I've been at this game before, you know! You've no idea how an offer like yours rouses the cupidity of people—the sort of people who are always on the look-out for getting a good deal for very little. You'll probably have no end of applications—most of 'em no use whatever!"
"Why no use?" demanded Nottidge impatiently.
"There are thousands of tall, spare women going about London in fur coats!" answered Wedgwood, with a cynical laugh. "After your advertisement this morning they'll all be objects of suspicion, especially if accompanied by a younger woman! However, I hope you'll get some reliable news. Anything in the way of a first step's worth having."
Nottidge moved impatiently in his seat.
"Put me on the track," he said. "Just that—and you'll not get my nose off the scent! I'm going to find my girl whatever it costs, and whatever has to be gone through. And I don't care how many people are after that reward—the more the better! After all, people can't disappear like—like a drop of rain in the sea—impossible!"
"Can't they?" laughed Wedgwood. "When you've had as much experience as I have, you'll alter your opinion! I can assure you that people can utterly disappear—disappear as if they'd never existed—and in no place so easily as here in London. Disappearances—known dozens of 'em!"
"Well, this isn't going to be a total one, anyway!" declared Nottidge, doggedly. "I'm on at this! Let's get a start—that's all I want."
"In my experience," said Wedgwood, "a start isn't difficult. The critical time is when you've got half or a quarter or three-quarters along your track and you suddenly find yourself up against a blank wall which you can't climb or a yawning gulf which you can't bridge! What then?"
"Go round 'em!" retorted Nottidge. "Pick up the trail on the other side! Here's my little establishment."
Nottidge House at which Wedgwood glanced with interested curiosity, proved to be a somewhat pretentious modern residence of the villa type, set in a garden much ornamented by statuary and furnished with a miniature lake and a pagoda. The detective felt sure that at any other time Nottidge would have insisted on showing him over his domain before leading him on to the house, but on this occasion he was hurried to the imposing front door, where an elderly, buxom woman stood at the top of the steps, evidently eager to see her employer.
"There's two of 'em now, Mr. Nottidge!" she announced. "The second came just after I'd telephoned to you—not five minutes after. I've put them both in the little breakfast parlour—they're honest-looking men, though the first one seems to be some sort of a foreigner. But of course I've kept an eye on them."
Nottidge beckoning the detective to follow him strode through the hall, and flinging open a door at the end bustled into a small room wherein, on opposite sides of the centre table each holding his hat on his knees sat two men, whose outward appearance Wedgwood immediately set himself to examine. One he at once set down as a waiter and probably an Italian; the other he saw to be a taxi-cab driver. And he saw, too, that each man was anxious to speak first. But Nottidge was equally quick to see that and was equal to the occasion.
"Want to see me about my advertisement in this morning's paper, eh?" he said without ceremony. "Very well! Now which got here first?"
The man whom Wedgwood classed as a waiter spread his hands.
"Me—I am here first. I come—yes, ten minutes, fifteen, perhaps, before him. The lady outside—she tell you so."
"All right!" said Nottidge. "You're number one, then." He drew a chair to the table and motioned Wedgwood to a seat close by. "Go ahead!" he commanded. "What have you got to tell?"
The waiter produced Nottidge's advertisement, carefully cut from its context, and laying it on the table put a forefinger on it.
"These ladies—what is describe here—I see them!" he began. "What you call identify them as soon as I read this in the paper. Oh yes—no mistake!"
"Where did you see them, and when?" asked Nottidge.
"It is three nights ago from last night. At Cipriani's Restaurant, in Tottenham Court Road, where I work—I am waiter there—been there four years. Name of Marco. Mr. Cipriani, you go ask him, he give me first-class character. Honest!"
"All right, Marco! Now tell what you know about these ladies."
"Well, it is like this. Just before eight o'clock that evening, a gentleman comes into the restaurant and seats himself at my table, see? I go to him—he say he is expecting two ladies to join him in a few minutes and will take an aperitif till they come. I serve him—he lights a cigarette, sips his aperitif, and waits. Just about eight———"
"Stop a bit," interrupted Wedgwood. "What was this gentleman like? Describe him."
"Oh, I don't know! Just an ordinary gentleman—well-dressed. Middle-aged, I think. Dark moustache. Might be a Frenchman."
"You didn't observe him very particularly!"
"Well, not so very. See a great many like him, regular. There was nothing very remarkable to see."
"Would you know him again if you saw him?"
"If I saw him with the ladies I would know him for the same. Otherwise, you understand, there are many gentlemen like him—dress like him—well-to-do. What you call here in London, City men. Prosperous looking!"
"Well, go on!" said Wedgwood. "Just about eight———?"
"Just about eight o'clock two ladies come in. Just what is describe in this advertisement. One is a tall, thin lady, in a fur coat and with a lot of veil stuff about her face; the other is a young lady. They go to the gentleman where he sits at my table. I think the young lady is not known to him before then."
"What makes you think that?" asked Nottidge.
"I see the other lady, the older one, do the ceremonies—introduce them. He is a very polite man, that gentleman—make great fuss of the young lady, like he was delighted to meet her, eh?"
"Oh, he did, did he?" growled Nottidge. "Well—get on with it!"
"They all sit at my table—they have dinner together. Very nice dinner—the gentleman takes great pains, ordering it. They seem to enjoy it. Champagne, too—oh, yes: do themselves very well, as they say."
"Did the young lady seem at home?" enquired Wedgwood.
The waiter looked puzzled.
"At home—I don't understand," he said.
"I mean did she seem as if she knew the other two? Did she seem—friendly with them, as if they'd met before?"
"Oh, I don't know that! They pay great attention to her—very polite, you know. Talk and smile to her—much."
"Well—what about after they'd dined?" asked the detective. "Did they leave, then?"
"No—they sit talking over their coffee. The gentleman, he smokes a cigar; he and the other lady have liqueurs with their coffee; the young lady not. They talk a lot with their heads together, eh? Then the gentleman he ask me for telegram forms, and the young lady she writes on two of them and gives them to him, and he puts them in his pocket."
Wedgwood turned to Nottidge who was taking all this in with a frown on his face.
"Does Miss Mortover know your address?" he murmured. "She does—then you may be sure one of those telegrams was for you, and the other for the landlady at Mornington Crescent. And they haven't been delivered! Well?" he went on, turning to the waiter. "What after that?"
"The gentleman pays the bill and they go. See no more of them. But"—here he spread out his hands with an emphatic gesture—"those are the ladies described in the advertisement! I come here—quick—as soon as I see the paper this morning."
"Did you open the door for them when they left?" asked Wedgwood. "Just so—I thought you would. Very well—I know where Cipriani's is. Which way did they turn? Up or down!"
"Down! They walk away towards the corner of Oxford Street."
Wedgwood turned quietly to the other man who had listened to the waiter's story with evident interest.
"I expect this is where you come in, my lad, isn't it?" he said with a smile. "You picked up these three people at the corner, eh?"
"Well, just about it, guv'nor," answered the man promptly. "'Tween that and the Oxford Music Hall door. A gentleman and two ladies—same as what he describes."
"What time was that?"
"Nine-twenty, guv'nor—to the minute! I'd just looked at my watch."
"Well, where did you drive them?"
"Where the gent ordered—front of the Great Western Hotel, Paddington."
"Praed Street entrance to the hotel, you mean. Well, what happened when you got there?"
"Can't say as anything happened, guv'nor. They got out and the gent paid me. But I noticed they didn't go into the hotel."
"Didn't, eh? Where did they go?"
"Walked along the front towards where you turn down at the side of the hotel to the Departure Platform at Paddington Station."
"Did they turn down?"
"That's just what I can't say, guv'nor! I turned my cab there and went off. But that's the direction they was making in—where you turn down to the station."
"Seem on friendly terms while they were in your cab, and when they got out?" enquired the detective.
"As far as I know, guv'nor, yes. Walked away together very friendly, like—chatting. The young lady was in the middle of 'em. Took 'em for pa, ma and daughter, I did!"
Wedgwood turned to Nottidge. But before he could speak Nottidge's housekeeper opened the door and handed her master a telegram.
"Just come!" she said. "The boy's waiting."
Nottidge tore open the envelope, ran his eye over the message, crushed the flimsy paper in his hand with a gesture of annoyance, and turned to the housekeeper.
"No answer!" he growled. "Here, Wedgwood!" he went on. "Come out here a minute!"
He drew the detective into the hall and thrust the telegram into his hand.
"Look at that damned stuff!" he exclaimed. "What's it mean? And who the devil is it from?"
Wedgwood smoothed out the crumpled message, and first noting that it had been despatched from a City post-office and that the address was to James Nottidge, Esquire, Nottidge House, Belsize Park, with the word esquire spelled in full, read it carefully.
"No necessity whatever to worry about Miss Avice Mortover who is in perfect safety with good friends and will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."
"What's the proper time and place?" demanded Nottidge. "Who are the good friends? And why hasn't she written to me herself? What———"
Wedgwood interrupted him by nodding at the door of the room they had just left.
"If I were you," he said, "I should give these two fellows something—a judicious amount, you know—for their trouble, tell them they'll be remembered if their information produces anything, and get rid of them: I'll step into this room until you've done with them. Now," he continued when Nottidge had completed the suggested transaction, "about this telegram. I believe it's genuine!"
"How do you mean genuine?" asked Nottidge.
"I think it's got to do with Miss Mortover's claim to the Mortover property," replied Wedgwood. "How exactly I can't say—but that's my impression. There's this to remember—for anything I know, Miss Mortover's affairs, since I've seen her, may have been gone into by somebody."
"But why all this secrecy?" demanded Nottidge. "Why not do the thing above-board? Why carry her off———"
"There may be reasons—serious reasons. Anyhow," repeated Wedgwood, "I believe that's a genuine telegram—I mean, what it says is genuine. I should make my mind easy if I were you. It strikes me that the next act of this drama will be staged in the Law Courts!"
Before Nottidge could enquire what this cryptic suggestion meant, the telephone bell rang. Hunter Street police-station wanted Detective Sergeant Wedgwood, if he was at Nottidge House. A moment later Wedgwood heard what was wanted—Mr. and Mrs. Patello to see him and waiting his return.