CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCES AMBLER JEVONS.
"Ah! You don't take the matter at all seriously!" I observed, a trifleannoyed.
"Why should I?" asked my friend, Ambler Jevons, with a deep pull athis well-coloured briar. "What you've told me shows quite plainly thatyou have in the first place viewed one little circumstance withsuspicion, then brooded over it until it has become magnified and nowoccupies your whole mind. Take my advice, old chap, and think nothingmore about it. Why should you make yourself miserable for no earthlyreason? You're a rising man--hard up like most of us--but under oldEyton's wing you've got a brilliant future before you. Unlike myself,a mere nobody, struggling against the tide of adversity, you'realready a long way up the medical ladder. If you climb straight you'llend with an appointment of Physician-in-Ordinary and a knighthoodthrown in as makeweight. Old Macalister used to prophesy it, youremember, when we were up at Edinburgh. Therefore, I can't, for thelife of me, discover any cause why you should allow yourself to havethese touches of the blues--unless it's liver, or some other internalorgan about which you know a lot more than I do. Why, man, you've gotthe whole world before you, and as for Ethelwynn----"
"Ethelwynn!" I ejaculated, starting up from my chair. "Leave her outof the question! We need not discuss her," and I walked to themantelshelf to light a fresh cigarette.
"As you wish, my dear fellow," said my merry, easy-going friend. "Imerely wish to point out the utter folly of all this suspicion."
"I don't suspect her," I snapped.
"I didn't suggest that." Then, after a pause during which he smoked onvigorously, he suddenly asked, "Well now, be frank, Ralph, whom do youreally suspect?"
I was silent. Truth to tell, his question entirely nonplussed me. Ihad suspicions--distinct suspicions--that certain persons surroundingme were acting in accord towards some sinister end, but which of thosepersons were culpable I certainly could not determine. It was thatvery circumstance which was puzzling me to the point of distraction.
"Ah!" I replied. "That's the worst of it. I know that the whole affairseems quite absurd, but I must admit that I can't fix suspicion uponanyone in particular."
Jevons laughed outright.
"In that case, my dear Boyd, you ought really to see the folly of thething."
"Perhaps I ought, but I don't," I answered, facing him with my back tothe fire. "To you, my most intimate friend, I've explained, instrictest confidence, the matter which is puzzling me. I live inhourly dread of some catastrophe the nature of which I'm utterly at aloss to determine. Can you define intuition?"
My question held him in pensive silence. His manner changed as helooked me straight in the face. Unlike his usual careless self--forhis was a curious character of the semi-Bohemian order and Savage Clubtype--he grew serious and thoughtful, regarding me with critical gazeafter removing his pipe from his lips.
"Well," he exclaimed at last. "I'll tell you what it is, Boyd. Thisintuition, or whatever you may call it, is an infernally bad thing foryou. I'm your friend--one of your best and most devoted friends, oldchap--and if there's anything in it, I'll render you whatever help Ican."
"Thank you, Ambler," I said gratefully, taking his hand. "I have toldyou all this to-night in order to enlist your sympathy, although Iscarcely liked to ask your aid. Your life is a busy one--busier eventhan my own, perhaps--and you have no desire to be bothered with mypersonal affairs."
"On the contrary, old fellow," he said. "Remember that in mystery I'min my element."
"I know," I replied. "But at present there is no mystery--onlysuspicion."
What Ambler Jevons had asserted was a fact. He was an investigator ofmysteries, making it his hobby just as other men take to collectingcurios or pictures. About his personal appearance there was nothingvery remarkable. When pre-occupied he had an abrupt, rather brusquemanner, but at all other times he was a very easy-going man of theworld, possessor of an ample income left him by his aunt, and this heaugmented by carrying on, in partnership with an elder man, aprofitable tea-blending business in Mark Lane.
He had entered the tea trade not because of necessity, but because heconsidered it a bad thing for a man to lead an idle life.Nevertheless, the chief object of his existence had always seemed tobe the unravelling of mysteries of police and crime. Surely few men,even those professional investigators at Scotland Yard, held such arecord of successes. He was a born detective, with a keen scent forclues, an ingenuity that was marvellous, and a patience and endurancethat were inexhaustible. At Scotland Yard the name of Ambler Jevonshad for several years been synonymous with all that is clever andastute in the art of detecting crime.
To be a good criminal investigator a man must be born such. He must bephysically strong; he must be untiring in his search after truth; hemust be able to scent a mystery as a hound does a fox, to follow upthe trail with energy unflagging, and seize opportunities withouthesitation; he must possess a cool presence of mind, and above all beable to calmly distinguish the facts which are of importance in thestrengthening of the clue from those that are merely superfluous. Allthese, besides other qualities, are necessary for the successfulpenetration of criminal mysteries; hence it is that the averageamateur, who takes up the hobby without any natural instinct, isinvariably a blunderer.
Ambler Jevons, blender of teas and investigator of mysteries, waslolling back in my armchair, his dreamy eyes half-closed, smoking onin silence.
Myself, I was thirty-three, and I fear not much of an ornament to themedical profession. True, at Edinburgh I had taken my M.B. and C.M.with highest honours, and three years later had graduated M.D., but myfriends thought a good deal more of my success than I did, for theyoverlooked my shortcomings and magnified my talents.
I suppose it was because my father had represented a countyconstituency in the House of Commons, and therefore I possessed thatvery useful advantage which is vaguely termed family influence, that Ihad been appointed assistant physician at Guy's. My own practice wasvery small, therefore I devilled, as the lawyers would term it, for mychief, Sir Bernard Eyton, knight, the consulting physician to myhospital.
Sir Bernard, whom all the smart world of London knew as the firstspecialist in nervous disorders, had his professional headquarters inHarley Street, but lived down at Hove, in order to avoid night work orthe calls which Society made upon him. I lived a stone's-throw awayfrom his house in Harley Street, just round the corner in HarleyPlace, and it was my duty to take charge of his extensive practiceduring his absence at night or while on holidays.
I must here declare that my own position was not at all disagreeable.True, I sometimes had night work, which is never very pleasant, butbeing one of the evils of the life of every medical man he accepts itas such. I had very comfortable bachelor quarters in an ancient andrather grimy house, with an old fashioned dark-panelled sitting-room,a dining-room, bedroom and dressing-room, and, save for the fact thatI was compelled to be on duty after four o'clock, when Sir Bernarddrove to Victoria Station, my time in the evening was very much myown.
Many a man would, I suppose, have envied me. It is not every day thata first-class physician requires an assistant, and certainly no mancould have been more generous and kindly disposed than Sir Bernardhimself, even though his character was something of the miser. Yet allof us find some petty shortcomings in the good things of this world,and I was no exception. Sometimes I grumbled, but generally, be itsaid, without much cause.
Truth to tell, a mysterious feeling of insecurity had been graduallycreeping upon me through several months; indeed ever since I hadreturned from a holiday in Scotland in the spring. I could not defineit, not really knowing what had excited the curious apprehensionswithin me. Nevertheless, I had that night told my secret to AmblerJevons, who was often my visitor of an evening, and over our whiskieshad asked his advice, with the unsatisfactory result which I havealready written down.