The Wrong Number

by Louis Tracy

Mr. Charles Jordison Brooke leaned back in his chair, yawned long and loudly, there being no other person present, and rolled a cigarette.

“Rotten!” he growled, eyeing with active animosity a typewritten brief, whose big, thick pages sprawled across the table in front of him. “The fellow hasn’t a ghost of a chance, here’s a credible witness who saw him coming out of Lady Porthcawl’s room, and the theft was discovered five minutes later. And look at his record! Three times hard labour—once penal servitude! Verdict, ‘guilty’; sentence, ‘seven penal and three supervision’; for the defence, ‘Mr. Charles Jordison Brooke.’ Nice thing to go to Newcastle for in the dog days! The only thing that puzzles me is how any sane person could be induced to put up twenty guineas for my valuable services. Some poor fool of a woman, I suppose.”

That final thought softened his mood. He blew a jet of smoke from between tightly-compressed lips, rose and strolled to the window, where he stood a minute or more, looking out over the Temple Gardens and along the gracious vista of the Victoria Embankment, where the towers and spires of the Houses of Parliament shone in a blue haze beyond the splendidly strong lines of Waterloo Bridge.

“Some woman who loves him,” he mused, “Probably my fee and the solicitors’ costs may take her last penny, for Mowlem and Wrench would make sure that the money was available before they moved a clerk’s eyelid. A stupid case! Little in it for me, and extinction for him, poor devil!”

He returned to the table, sat down again, and read the concluding lines of the brief.

“It will be difficult, almost impossible, to shake individual testimony. We recommend a determined effort to convince the jury that the whole body of evidence is insufficient.”

“Do you?” snapped Brooke. “I can see old Mowlem adjusting his gold eyeglasses carefully before he wrote those words of wisdom with his best quill pen. Seven plus three is ten for the prisoner; multiplied by two, Mowlem and Wrench, the product is twenty for me.”

Charles Jordison Brooke was known to a limited section of the public as a rising young barrister, to a few solicitors as a smart youngster, and to Mr. Jecks, the eminent K.C., as a reliable junior. He was clever, ambitious, and keen in his profession, and the solitary brief that demanded his presence at the North-Eastern Assizes at Newcastle four days later provided just one of those negative cases which he disliked.

Nevertheless, youthful members of the Inns of Court cannot afford to pick and choose, when a notable firm of solicitors seeks their advocacy, and the gleam of sentiment aroused by the notion of a mother, or wife, or some woman even more to be pitied, pawning her belongings to defend a rascal, yielded to the agreeable reflection that Mowlem and Wrench had applied to Mr. Brooke, and not to one other of the legal luminaries twinkling in every set of chambers within the square of the Temple.

He wrote a brief note to his clerk, glanced at a clock on the mantelpiece, and was pondering no more important question than the choice of a restaurant for lunch, when the telephone bell rang.

“Jecks, for a pony! he muttered. “Wants me to devil all the afternoon—will explain points while we sandwich and beer at the Law Courts. Now, why wasn’t I out!” He lifted the receiver. “Hello!” he said.

“Is Mr. Brooke in?” came the query, clear and sweet, in tones as far removed from Mr. Jecks’s Olympian accents as the murmur of a rivulet from the rumbling thunder. “Yes,” he said.

“May I speak to him?”

“I am Mr. Brooke.”

“How silly of you, Charlie. Why didn’t you say so at once? Surely you knew my voice!”

“Charlie” was taken aback. Two ladies in London, his mother and his aunt, were entitled to address him in that style, and the speaker was neither of them. Five minutes earlier while immersed in the brief, he would have sought a direct explanation; now he temporised.

“I think I would know it among ten thousand,” he said.

“Is that really you, Charlie?” This a little doubtfully.

“Of course, it is. I shall be asking who you are next.”

“I’m Meg, of course! But—I don’t often use a telephone—no matter— can you get off this, afternoon?”

“Delighted! Where are we going?” Mr. Brooke winked solemnly at the clock because of the success of his ruse in extracting the lady’s name, in part, at any rate.

“You don’t mean to say you have forgotten?”

“My dear Meg, consider how busy I have been all the morning!”

“You surprise me! What microbe of industry has wrought such a change?”

The pleasant raillery of the question suggested many possibilities. Brooke caught at the likeliest one.

“A fellow must make a show sometimes,” he said.

“I’ll tell your aunt,” laughed the unknown.

“Please don’t!” he gasped.

“But why not? She will be pleased.”

“I’d prefer you to discuss this afternoon’s arrangements,” he said.

“Well, I suppose it is too far for you to call here?”

“Such a waste of a lovely day. Let us bask in the sunshine!”

He was acutely aware of the unseen speaker’s momentary bewilderment; then she explained the pause.

“I cannot understand your complete forgetfulness,” she said. “Anyhow, we can leave that till we meet. Where do you suggest? I don’t know London very well.”

“What about Charing Cross—under the clock?” he gurgled.

“Is that near the Tate Gallery?”

“No, oh no! Shall we say the bookstall in Victoria Station, Brighton line?”

“Charlie, you puzzle me. Perhaps it is the telephone and my fingers are tired. Very well, the bookstall at Victoria, at two.”

“Make it 2.30.” He spoke without reflecting. For a blissful instant he fancied the appointment was a real one, and he must eat.

“All right.”

“Brighton line?”

“Yes, yes. Who would ever confuse it with the South-Eastern?”

“But I say, Meg.”

“What is it now?”

“How will you be dressed?”

“In my blue, with a sweet pea hat. Why ever do you ask?”

“Because I might get confused, and address the wrong girl— that is I mean some other girl.”

“Charlie, how can you be so ridiculous?”

Brooke sighed. He was sure she was pretty and slim, and a blue costume with a sweet pea hat must be quietly attractive; but the joke had gone far enough. Now he must laugh, and apologise. There was no harm done. The lady had plenty of time to secure the right number.

To help her, if necessary, he stretched out a hand for the telephone directory.

“The fact is, Meg, I have a confession to make—” he began.

“And I shall be late for luncheon,” she cried, and, to his real dismay, he heard the replacing of the receiver on its rests at the other end of the line.

He called up the exchange in a flurry.

“Get me that number which was connected here a moment ago. Don’t fail, for goodness sake!” he appealed.

After some delay, he was switched on to a West End call office, and a Cockney boy assured him that the lydy was a strange lydy—deponent know not ‘oo the lydy was, or where she kem from.

“Was she a young lady?”

“Yus, not more’n twenty.”

“Tall?”

“Middlin’.”

“Slightly built, and good-looking?”

“Ra-ther! But, look ‘ere, mister, we ain’t allowed to talk about customers.”

“You must answer, or I shall report you. Did—”

Silence. There is no wall more impenetrable than the dead negation of a sulky telephone. There followed a furious demand by Brooke for the clerk in charge of the local exchange, and, after more delay, a courteous official explanation was forthcoming that a young lady, unknown, had asked for and obtained a number which was registered in the book at the call office as his, Brooke’s—889, Temple.

He turned despairingly to the array of Brookes in the directory, and called them up, one by one. He was regarded telephonically with suspicion, amusement, annoyance, even contempt, but none would admit the least intent to escort a young lady named Meg to the Tate Gallery that day. By the time he had made an end it was nearly 2 o’clock.

By no means pleased with himself—for the idle conceit of a midsummer’s day promised to distress a charming girl and at least one other person named Charles Brooke—the barrister resolved to deal with an awkward incident in the only possible, way. If anyone suffered, it must be himself, no matter what the outcome; he must meet the young lady at Victoria, throw himself on her mercy, and take every step to mitigate the effect of the blunder he had failed to rectify at the proper moment.

At half past two, therefore, hungry but well dressed, he was an interested student of the novels and periodicals displayed on the chief bookstall in Victoria Station. To his consternation, he saw two ladies wearing blue dresses and sweet pea hats; yet neither seemed capable of arousing the enthusiasm of a callow youth in a telephone call-office. One, the younger, though not so young, was obviously waiting for someone, and Brooke was noting, with no little dismay, that she looked a rather strong-minded person, when his doubts were resolved by the sudden appearance of a young lady whose comeliness was all, and more than all, his imagination had painted “Meg,” and whose blue costume was crowned by a superb mass of sweetpeas.

She was walking rapidly, taking quick firm strides, with the ease and sureness of one of these maids of Capri who climb and descend rocky paths while balancing water-urns on their heads; she gave one swift glance around the interior of the station, at the bookstall in particular, and then consulted the clock.

The man who prided himself on having no nerves now felt horribly nervous, but there was only one thing to be done, and he did it. He went straight up to the girl, raised his hat, and said—

“May I ask if you are expecting to meet a Mr. Charles Brooke?”

She looked at him in surprise, and he knew then he had never before seen violet eyes.

“Yes,” ‘she said.

“Will you allow me to explain why he is not here?”

“Certainly. Did he send you as his deputy? How did you recognise me?”

“You told me about your dress, and the sweet pea hat; you know.”

“What is that?’ I told you?”

In his relief at finding that the unknown Meg would probably accept his explanation without calling for a policeman, Brook had broken out into a violent perspiration, and he was more confused than ever. He clenched his hands in a fierce physical effort to regain self-control, and one of his gloves split across the knuckles with a loud noise. Even in the hubbub of the station, both of them heard the rip, and Brooke involuntarily raised his hand to find out what had happened. The girl tittered and the sound of her laugh added the last straw to the barrister’s discomfiture.

“Would you mind walking out into the fresh air with me?” he said, speaking with the coldness of despair. “I have a good deal to say, and you ought to listen, if only in justice to the other Mr. Brooke. That is—l mean—really, I have made such an ass of myself that if I remain here, trying idiotically to collect my senses, I shall scream, or assault a railway porter.”

The girl looked at him wonderingly, though her lips still curved in a smile.

“If you feel ill, why not sit down on that seat over there?” she said, pointing to an unoccupied bench.

“No, please. The station square—Buckingham Palace Road— anywhere outside— if you don’t object. There are hundreds of people about, and—

“You need not be so concerned. It is not so very dreadful to have to tell me why my cousin should fail to turn up. Let us leave the station at once, if you wish it.”

Her cool demeanour was a tonic. How he thanked her for it! They walked together through the outer hall, and he tore off the offending glove. He was aware that the girl stole a shy peep or two at him, but a drop of perspiration blinded his-eye on her side, and he dived for a pocket-handkerchief. Then, yielding frankly to necessity, he mopped his face.

At the exit she halted.

“You must talk some time,” she said gently. “Why not here?”

He pointed across the enclosure, with its omnibuses and cabs.

“If you are going to the Tate Gallery, that is your way. May I accompany you a few yards?” he asked.

“I prefer to remain here,” she said, stiffening perceptibly.

“Very well I think I can talk lucidly now. Please don’t condemn me, until you have heard the whole story.”

He began, and the girl listened. More than once she laughed, a reassuring sign. He grew more confident, and his eloquence was convincing when he depicted his frantic efforts to retrieve the original mistake.

“Of course, it is evident you were given the wrong number,” he concluded.

“But I spoke plainly. I told the boy to put me on to eight, ought, nine, Temple,” said the girl.

“Oh, you gave the figures in that way?”

“Yes. I should have said ‘naught,’ but I have the incurable trick of saying ‘ought.’ Does that matter?”

“Did the boy repeat the number?”

“Yes.”

“And he said, ‘Ite, Ite, nine.’”

She smiled.

“He certainly spoke with a Cockney accent.”

“That solves the riddle, though it does not absolve me. In future you must always style the cypher 0.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I meant another sort of ‘Oh!’. . . Well, thank you, Mr. Brooke, for the trouble you have taken.”

“But the thing cannot end in that way. There is a telephone in the station. Let us ring up 809, and get hold of the right Charles Brooke.”

“It is absolutely useless. He has forgotten our engagement, and he is seldom in his office after lunch. When I asked if he could get off to-day it was a polite way of suggesting that billiards or cards at his club might be deferred for once. And that is why you—er—surprised me, Mr. Brooke, not only by your voice but by your professed devotion to work.”

“Then I have spoiled your afternoon most effectually?”

“Hardly that. The pictures remain.”

“Now, Miss—Miss Meg— don’t be angry if I suggest something. You know who I am. Let me take you to the Tate Gallery. May I offer the additional atonement of tea at Rumpelmayor’s?”

To his intense gratification, the girl showed her common sense by considering the notion. She nodded towards a distant clock.

“Isn’t it rather late for the Gallery?” she enquired.

“Candidly, I fear it is. But we might stroll across the park, and be among the first arrivals at the tea-shop.”

She blushed prettily, but the spirit of adventure danced in her eyes—such eyes— deep blue stars they were now in the strong light.

Thus it came about that several people in Rumpelmayor’s wondered who the girl could be to whom Mr. Charles Jordison Brooke, was so attentive, and that an angry-looking young man and a perturbed elderly lady, who arrived at Victoria in a taxi-cab not many minutes after “Meg” and her escort had entered Buckingham Palace-road, failed to find a young person in a blue coat and skirt, and wearing a sweet pea hat, though they searched the station like detectives, and literally ran through the long corridors of the Tate Gallery.

But “Meg” was deaf to hints, and quite as obdurate to pleading, when her cavalier wanted to discover her name and address. At the last moment, when her foot was on the step of a taxi-cab, and she was instructing the driver to take her to South Kensington station, she became emphatic.

“No, Mr. Brooke,” she said. “We part here and now. The only excuse for to-day’s unconventionality is that it should reach a decisive end.”

“But this ending is quite indecisive,” he urged.

“Not to me.”

“Then you remain a dream.”

“And you a voice. Good-bye.”

Brooke watched the cab speeding uphill to Piccadilly. He had lounged miserably as far as the Circus when he awoke to the fact that he had sustained a vigorous frame since breakfast on a cup of tea, a slice of thin bread and butter, and an eclair. So he sought a restaurant, and mourned while he ate.

Next morning he called up No. 809, Temple, and was answered, much to his surprise, by an old-established firm of solicitors whose offices were in Pump Court. Not wishing to explain his business to a clerk he made some excuse and rang off, promising himself an early visit; for if ever a man suffered from the assault of love at first sight it was he.

Then, Jecks, K.C., took a hand in the game, and commandeered him for long hours each day, and he only escaped in time to catch a night train from King’s Cross to the North.

• * * * *

On the criminal side of the Assize Court on that stuffy July day the professionals were bored, from the Judge down to the assistant gaoler. Even the criminals were languid. They showed some flicker of excitement as they heard verdict and sentence, but promptly grew dazed again, and disappeared from public view a period fixed by statute, but occasionally varied by aggravating circumstances or the Judge’s leniency.

There was, however, a slight stir when the usher announced “King versus Pewler— all witnesses out of Court”; Brooke, listening to an eloquent dissertation on the law as to manorial rights in another Court, was just able to hurry in and announce, with a bob, “I appear for the prisoner, m’ lud,” before counsel for the Crown began to show, briefly and lucidly, that Jonas Pewler, the gentleman, in the dock, had undoubtedly stolen Lady Porthcawl’s jewels from a room in the local hotel which her ladyship patronised while visiting Newcastle for the purpose of christening a ship built and launched by a company of which her husband was a director.

Lady Porthcawl, aristocratic and imposing, was pleased to be sarcastic when Judge and counsel eagerly stopped her from theorising. All she knew was that her jewel-case was in her room at 3.45 p.m. on a certain date; but was not there at 4 p.m. Of course, being ready to tell the jury much more, she bridled when informed that she must not repeat things she had heard from other people.

“Really,” she snapped, “if you want to hear no more from me I might as well have remained in town.”

“You have given us the vital information that certain trinkets which you owned were stolen,” said the Judge blandly.

“I might make the equally vital deduction that the prisoner has been far too smart for the local police, as I shall never see my trinkets again,” said Lady Porthcawl, dwelling severely on the word “trinkets,” and surveying the Judge and the pallid Pewler with calm disapproval.

His Lordship sighed. The Clerk of Arraigns heard him mutter: “Of course, she has had the last word,” and cheered him up by the whispered information that the favourite had won the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood.

“I have no questions to ask this witness, m’ lud,” said Brooke, and he, in turn, received a quelling glance from Lady Porthcawl.

“Miss Marguerite Spenser,” was called.

Brooke’s vision suddenly grew blurred when the “Meg” of many dreams and of one memorable afternoon appeared in the witness-box!

She was pale, but quite collected, in manner, and, though Brooke’s heart drummed alarmingly, and some mad tumult of emotion sang in his ears, he realised sub-consciously that she was the chief, and most convincing, though somewhat reluctant, witness against the prisoner.

She told her story simply and plainly, and it was quite evident that she had not recognised the pale-faced man in wig and gown who sat at the barrister’s table and was now glowering at her with eyes that almost flamed in their passionate amazement.

On the day of the robbery she was coming down the stairs, her room being on the floor above, when she saw the prisoner closing the door of Lady Porthcawl’s room. He was bare-headed, and looked like an under-manager or some minor official of the hotel; he behaved so nonchalantly that she did not think there was anything suspicious in his conduct. Still, when she found that Lady Porthcawl was not in the room, she hurried downstairs, saw the same man donning a hat and overcoat, and entering a cab containing a portmanteau, and learnt that her ladyship was writing letters in the drawing-room.

A hasty rush upstairs again revealed the robbery, and a smart hall-porter brought about the prisoner’s arrest at the Central Station, where Pawler was seated in a train bound for the south.

Brooke, of course, had read Miss Spenser’s evidence in his brief and it was borne in on him now, while that sweet, clear voice came to his ears just as it had reached him along the telephone wire, that if he might serve the unhappy wretch whose wife, as he had already ascertained, placed such trust in his, Brooke’s, prowess as an advocate, he must break down this girl’s direct testimony. He thought he saw a way. It was hard, but duty must come before love.

While the opposing counsel was taking the witness through her “proof,” Brooke rose, bent over the rail of the dock, and beckoned to the prisoner. His big, brilliant eyes pierced the very soul of the degenerate.

“Now, mark my words carefully, Pewler,” he whispered. “You stole those jewels, and passed them to a confederate, and if the experiment I am about to try fails you will be sentenced to a long term of penal servitude. Do you agree?”

“I suppose so,” came the whimper, for the man’s nerve was broken.

“Very well. I shall endeavour to save you, on one condition. Write down on a sheet of paper the means whereby the stolen articles can be recovered. If you are convicted, tear up the paper unread. If I succeed, I shall have you detained, on some pretext, until I am sure you have not deceived me. Yes or no—quick!”

“Yes.”

The man tried to write, but his hand shook too greatly. He touched Brooke’s shoulder, and their heads almost met again.

“I trust your word, sir,” he breathed. “My wife has them. . . Means to give them up anyhow. . . Reduction of sentence, yon know.”

When counsel for the defence stood up to cross-examine everyone in court noticed the extraordinary confusion that overwhelmed the pretty witness. She reddened, she blanched, her eyes dilated, her curved lips trembled.

And counsel’s questions followed a curious line.

“Are you a relation of Lady Porthcawl’s, Miss Spenser?” he asked, and his voice, which nearly cracked with excitement, seemed to betoken that the answer would be crushing for the Crown.

“Yes, her niece,” murmured the witness, and people breathed freely again. A niece! Not so very awful.

“Are you aware that the prisoner occupied the room next to Lady Porthcawl’s?”

“I—I have been told so.”

“The fact will be proved. Her ladyship’s room was number 201?”

“Y-yes.”

“And the prisoner’s number 200?”

“I sup-up-pose so.”

“Now, this- is a serious matter—is it possible that you were mistaken in the numbers of the rooms—that you saw the opened door in the wrong number, in fact?”

“Oh, I don’t know what to say—yes—it is possible.”

“Thank you. M’lud, I respectfully submit that there is no case against the prisoner.”

“The jury will decide,” came the dry rejoinder.

Counsel for the prosecution tried vainly to re-establish the confident certainty of the young lady whose alert wits had brought about the arrest of Pewler. He stormed, and raged, but all to no purpose; he nearly blurted out the prisoner’s record before a stern reminder came from the bench.

Apart from Miss Spenser’s identification of the man in the dock there was no evidence against him. The judge, with an occasional grim glance at the list of previous convictions lying on his desk, was scrupulously fair in his summing up and the jury, with no knowledge of Pewler’s record, found him “Not guilty.”

By the miraculous intervention of a lawyer’s clerk and the post office, Lady Porthcawl received her “trinkets” intact that evening.

The other Mr. Charles Brooke turned out to be a lively young spark who was articled to a solicitor as an indispensable preliminary to taking charge of his uncle’s business, and the end of the affair was evidently close at hand when one of Marguerite Spenser’s girl friends wrote to another :—

“Meg’s engagement ring is lovely, and her fiance also gave her a diamond brooch with the figures 889. I wonder why? I asked her what the number meant, but she wouldn’t tell.”