IN SOUND OF PICCADILLY

At the little writing-table set in the window at the Ritz Hotel, overlooking the Park, the stout, pimply-faced man with a choice cigar between his teeth sat scribbling letters with his fountain-pen.

The evening gloom was falling, but he had not troubled to rise to switch on the light.

He had dressed early, for he was going forth to dine with a friend, a Norwegian diplomat, at the Carlton Club, and a small glass of vodka, his favourite spirit, stood at his elbow.

The door opened, and, thinking it was his man, he snappishly gave several orders regarding his clothes without deigning to look up.

“Mr. Sundt,” exclaimed a firm, manly voice, “I make no apology for this intrusion on your privacy. I am here to demand by what right you have denounced me to Captain Berentsen and his daughter as a murderer!”

Peter started, his brows contracted, and he rose indignantly to his feet, recognising in his visitor Richard Jervoise.

“And pray, sir, by what right do you force your way into my room like this?”

“To demand an apology,” said the tall Englishman, “an apology to myself and to Miss Berentsen.”

“To Miss Berentsen!” he echoed. “Are you mad, my dear sir?”

“Mad! Perhaps I am; but, if I am, it is your blackguardly insinuations, your cruel and unjust allegations that have made me so.”

“Well, really, sir,” exclaimed the other pompously, “if your attitude is so insulting, I must ask you to leave my rooms at once. You appear to be labouring under some misunderstanding, that the suspicion upon you as the assassin of Mr. Grinevitch is due to me.”

“You have made that allegation! Can you deny it?”

“I cannot deny it any more than you can deny that you met the man’s wife in secret—that you, her lover, had an assignation with her on the afternoon of the tragedy,” was his answer as he stood near the fireplace, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his trousers.

“And you actually say this of the pure, good woman whom you have asked to become your wife!” cried Dick, his blood boiling.

“I merely repeat what is the truth. My dear sir, I always believe in facing the truth unflinchingly.”

Dick Jervoise laughed in the man’s face.

“Good!” he said. “Then let me recall an incident which may, perhaps, have passed from your mind. Do you recollect our first meeting that evening up at Vardo? On that night you came to Captain Berentsen’s house for a distinct purpose—to ask him for his daughter’s hand.”

“And instead he gave her in marriage to a man who was a thief, and for whom the police were searching,” observed the red-faced plutocrat.

“Granted,” Dick said; “but do you recollect your conversation with the harbour-master after we had all left? Do you remember how you threatened him with exposure, nay, with ruin, if he refused to compel his daughter to contract an odious marriage with you?”

“What are you saying, sir? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“No, I’m telling you the plain truth,” was Jervoise’s answer. “Shall I recall you something further? Well, I will. It was you who, by your influence, obtained for Jorgen Berentsen his appointment as harbour-master of Vardo. Why? Because you knew he would be a tool in your hands to falsify the harbour accounts, and to cheat the Government out of dues leviable on your fishing-fleet. For years you have compelled him to do this, but of a sudden, you, knowing your strong position, turned upon him and threatened him with exposure and prosecution if he would not compel Thyra to marry you. For that reason, in order to strengthen your hand, you contrived to compel him to sell to an agent of the Russian Government at Monte Carlo a plan of the defences of the harbour of Vardo.”

“You’re a liar!” exclaimed the other with growing uneasiness. How, he wondered, could this Englishman know that if Jorgen had not told him?

“Listen,” Dick went on; “Captain Berentsen, determined to allow his daughter to marry the man she loved, defied you, and you returned south in your yacht to Havre.”

“She married that scoundrel Grinevitch, and you were jealous of him! Come, why don’t you admit it?” asked Sundt, his anger rising. He was unused to be spoken to in so bold a manner.

“You repeat your allegations, then?” cried Dick. “You assert that I was her husband’s assassin?”

“The evidence I have collected certainly points most conclusively to that.”

“And you, at the same time, cast evil report upon the very woman who has given you her hand! Peter Sundt,” he cried, “you are as big a blackguard as—nay, bigger than—Paul Grinevitch himself!”

“You—you call me a blackguard?” cried the Norwegian in his rather broken English.

“I repeat my words. Your actions have already proved it.”

“Bah! you are jealous that Miss Berentsen should marry me!” he sneered. “Alas! it is the penalty of wealth for poor men to be jealous of one.”

“I am not jealous of you, sir. I should be very sorry indeed to be in your shoes—you who would, by such means, coerce a father into compelling his daughter to enter into a marriage with the man she hates.”

“You lie! She does not hate me!” he cried fiercely.

“I say she does, for to-day, Peter Sundt, she has learnt the truth.”

“What truth?”

“A truth which you will probably deny, of course. You were married before—to a Frenchwoman, Marguerite Meunier.”

“Well? Is it such an extraordinary thing that a man should be a widower?”

“You admit that the poor woman died, somewhere in the south of France, of a slow wasting disease, but that she left a daughter?”

“Why should I deny it?”

“If you do it would be useless,” he said with a smile, “for here”—and he produced the yellow paper which Alza had given him—“here I have the copy of her certificate of birth.”

The red-faced man bit his lip. The shadows had gathered in that blue and gold room, but its occupier still did not switch on the light. He had no desire to reveal his face to the young man who had so suddenly arisen as his deadly enemy.

The reason why Jorgen Berentsen had confessed the conspiracy to defraud the Norwegian Government puzzled him. In that fact alone he foresaw that the tables had already been turned upon him, notwithstanding his great wealth and influence.

“You having acknowledged the existence of your daughter, who must be a grown woman by now, will perhaps extend the courtesy of a meeting with an old friend—providing, of course, that I am not trespassing upon your time,” he added with mock courtesy.

“Friend!” he snapped. “What friend?”

For answer he walked to the door, and, throwing it open, admitted Oscar Nystrom.

The man’s red face fell. He stared at the stranger as though he saw an apparition, yet puzzled to recognise him.

The Dane’s face broadened into a wide grin as, advancing into the room, he exclaimed in Norwegian:

“I did not expect to have the pleasure of meeting you again so soon.”

“Again!” exclaimed Sundt. “Why? I do not recollect ever setting eyes upon you before! For what reason do you claim acquaintanceship with me?”

“In order to recall to you certain facts which you may have forgotten,” was the other’s hard, distinct answer.

“What facts?”

“Facts concerning the death of my friend, Paul Grinevitch. My name is Oscar Nystrom, the man to whom he wrote only half an hour before his death.”

“Nystrom!” cried Sundt, suddenly brightening. “Why, you are the man for whom the police are in search! I—I’ll ring for the hotel people, and give you into custody.” And he made a movement towards the electric bell, adding, “I wish for no conversation with gaol-birds.”

“Ring! Do!” laughed the Dane, urging him to raise the alarm.

“Well,” Sundt asked roughly after a pause, staying his hand, “what do you want? This is some blackmailing scheme or other, I suppose? It won’t be the first time I’ve been bled. Every rich man is, more or less,” he said, laughing harshly.

“I am not here to bleed you, Mr. Sundt,” answered the Dane, speaking in his indifferent English. “I am here to tell you something—something that has apparently slipped your memory. Paul Grinevitch, thief though he was, had one friend—and it was myself.”

“Well?”

“Turn up the light, and see if you recognise me!”

“It is unnecessary. I don’t know you in the least,” snapped the other.

“Then I’ll turn it up, and you shall have a better look,” replied the man quickly, as next instant the pretty room was flooded with a brilliant light.

Sundt’s coarse, red face was livid. Dick saw plainly the effect that Nystrom’s presence had had upon him.

“Now,” exclaimed the Dane determinedly, “listen to what I have to say.” He spoke again in Norwegian, but Dick could nevertheless follow, for had he not previously related, in his broken English, the same facts to that little assembly in Talbot Road? “You believed that your wealth would place you, Peter Sundt, above suspicion, and at the same time, by the possession of your private yacht, you were able to establish an alibi that you were not in Christiania on the day in question.”

“Alibi! What do you mean?” gasped the unhappy man, the colour fading instantly from his fat, flabby face.

“Just this, that one of my companions, a girl named Alza Dresler, has, after long search and tedious inquiry, discovered certain facts, and these, in conjunction with what I myself saw with my own eyes, are sufficient to make plain the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Patience, and I will explain,” cried the man, looking him straight in the face. “I had received a telegram from Grinevitch, dated from Tromso, saying that he would be at the Hotel Victoria at Christiania with his bride on a certain date. I wished to see him privately, and therefore at once took train from Copenhagen and engaged a room at the Victoria, as well as a room in a private lodging. Remember, I knew the police were in search of me, and I took two lodgings, so that, if watched at one, I could take refuge in the other. We do that sometimes, when we know that watch may be set upon the railway stations. Well, on the morning in question, seated in my room above theirs, I witnessed the pair arrive with their trunks, but, not seeing Paul go out again, I hesitated to intrude upon their privacy. All the afternoon I waited. I saw Alza come, and I saw her leave. Then it struck me at last that my friend must be alone. I dared not inquire of the waiter if madame were out, as I did not wish my acquaintanceship with Paul to be known. At last I resolved to slip down upon the floor below, and see if he were alone. I tapped at the door of the sitting-room, but as I did so I heard a scuffle. So I pushed it open, and I saw you—you—Peter Sundt! You had a knife in your hand, and you were standing over Paul’s prostrate body! _You had killed him!_”

“It’s a lie!” cried the stout man, his face now blanched to the lips. “I—why, you never saw me! It’s a lie! An absolute lie!”

“In an instant I recognised the truth. Paul had been killed, yet what could I do? If I raised the alarm I should only be compelled to tell my story to the police, and so betray both the dead man and myself. His poor widow, too! I recollected what a double blow it would be to her if she learnt that the man whom she had married only the day previously was an expert thief! Therefore I slipped back upstairs. Nobody saw me—not even you, Peter Sundt; but I had met you face to face in the corridor only an hour previously.”

“And who, pray, will believe this absurd story of yours?” he asked with well-feigned arrogance.

“I need only tell you that a week ago Alza returned to the Hotel Victoria at Christiania and showed your photograph to the hotel servants. They have recognised you as the man who gave his name as Stenersen, who represented himself as a commercial traveller, and who occupied the room next to the little _salon_ where the tragedy was enacted. Peter Sundt, it is proved up to the hilt that you, too, went first to Havre in your yacht, and then travelled with all speed by Frederikshavn and Gothenburg back to Christiania to await your victim. The police of Christiania have already been informed. An agent of police was with me only at ten o’clock this morning, and I made the same statement to him as I have made to you.”

The man with the pimply face, the plutocrat of the North, stood with his hand resting unsteadily upon the back of the chair. His blanched countenance at last broadened into a forced smile.

“Utterly ridiculous, my dear sir!” he exclaimed in a hollow voice. “What motive do you allege I had in killing this gaol-bird who was your friend?”

“Motive!” echoed the man Nystrom. “You had the strongest motive a man could have—the motive of a fierce and bitter revenge.”

Sundt made a gesture of quick impatience.

“Then, if you deny it, hear my proof!” he went on. “You had, by accident, discovered that Helene Marquet, the beautiful cafe-concert singer who had been deserted by her lover and had in consequence committed suicide before your eyes in the Cafe de Paris at Monte Carlo, was your daughter. Your wife, because of your ill-treatment of her, had placed her child with her sister, a poor woman living in a back street in the Montmartre in Paris. Your daughter had become famous, and had died without knowing that you were her father. But you found out the name of the man who had been responsible for her death—you afterwards discovered him in hiding in Vardo—and, with craft and cunning, you followed him down to the capital and carried out your plan. You took the man’s life for two reasons—one because he had caused your daughter’s untimely end, and the other because he had married Thyra Berentsen, whom you had intended should become your wife. Now,” he added, looking the quivering man straight in the face, “do you deny it?”

The accused hung his head in silence. What could he say? He tried to utter some words—words of extenuation—but they froze upon his lips.

The denunciation by the actual eye-witness was complete, admitting of no defence, no argument, no forgiveness.

Dick Jervoise stood watching the unhappy wretch, whose wild terror next moment was, indeed, fearful to behold. He, however, remained silent.

Enough surely had been said by Oscar Nystrom.

The quiet was complete. The little clock ticked softly upon the mantelshelf, the cab-bells tinkled outside in Piccadilly, and the “honk!” of motorhorns mingled with the dull roar of the London traffic.

But the man by whose hand Paul Grinevitch had fallen stood motionless, staring as though he were already gazing into eternity.

CONCLUSION

On that fateful night, after Oscar Nystrom’s denunciation of the assassin, Alza Dresler, accompanied by the fair-moustached Dane, sat for a long time with Dick Jervoise and Owen Odd in the former’s flat at Barnes, explaining how, while watching Nicholas Bourtzeff with evil intent, it became apparent to her that Nystrom might possibly have met Grinevitch in Christiania. From the letter sent to him by the victim before his death, it was apparent that Paul knew of his friend’s presence in the Norwegian capital. She had therefore spared no effort to find the Dane, who had so successfully concealed himself from the police, and had at last run him to earth in the south of Spain. She knew long ago that poor Helene Marquet had committed suicide because of Paul, and recollection of that fact set her wondering whether in that could be any motive for revenge.

At risk of her own liberty she approached Bourtzeff, explained her theory, and sought his assistance. In consequence of the fact that his compatriot had been killed so mysteriously, and that Dick Jervoise, his friend, was suspected, he consented, and the pair thereupon made up their differences. Bourtzeff went to Paris, and, after diligent inquiry and search, was at Orleans rewarded by the discovery of Helene’s parentage, and consequently the motive for the crime.

Peter Sundt had acted throughout with the greatest foresight and that marvellous cunning that had characterised his whole successful career. Yet he had believed that the parentage of the beautiful singer who had taken her own life was a secret from all save himself, and that the terrible truth could never be discovered.

“When you recognised Paul at Vardo, why didn’t you denounce him to the Berentsens?” asked Odd of his friend.

“Well, because I was not altogether certain of what might be the result,” was Dick’s reply. “My motives might have been entirely misjudged, and, besides, Paul Grinevitch, heartless scoundrel that he was, had intercepted a letter which I wrote to poor Helene on the Riviera only a few days before she took her life—a letter which I feared that, if driven into a corner, he might attempt to make use of to implicate me in the tragedy of her death and besmirch a dead woman’s honour. And so I remained silent until—until at last I could no longer keep my secret from Thyra, his latest victim; but, alas! it was then too late!” Then, turning to Alza, he took her hand, saying in deep earnestness: “To you, dear friend, both Thyra and myself owe a great debt which we can never, never repay.”

“It is already repaid,” replied the young woman, flushing slightly and then hesitating. “And—and M’sieur Dick, I want to tell you both something—something you suggested to me a long time ago. Do you remember? Well, it is this. Oscar and myself have decided to have in future nothing further to do with Enderlein and his friends. Yesterday we agreed to marry, and try—if it is possible—to settle down to a respectable and honest life.”

“It is possible, I am sure it is!” declared Dick. “And I congratulate you both. If at any time in the future, Alza, you want a friend, you know there is at least one man who is ready and anxious to assist you.”

* * * * *

The others had gone, leaving Dick and his friend with the pince-nez alone.

“And so it’s all clear at last, and the sun seems likely to shine on some of us once more. It’s not a bad old-world after all, is it, Owen?” the former was saying.

“In my eyes it’s turning out an infernally good world,” replied the doctor, and there was a particularly merry and knowing smile gleaming through the glittering gold ovals.

“That’s right. You always were sympathetic, old boy, and could enter into another fellow’s happiness as though it were your own.”

“Think so! P’raps you’re right. When one is happy oneself one joins more readily in the happiness of others.”

“What do you mean, you old rascal? You’ve got something up your sleeve, I expect.”

“It hasn’t troubled you much lately if I have. You’re about as selfish as they make them, Dick.” But the laughter in his eyes died away with the sting of the last remark.

“Oh, shut up, and tell me what you _do_ mean.”

“Well, do you fancy you’re the only fellow in the world worthy of Dame Fortune’s smiles? Aren’t there hundreds of others fifty times as good as you who are entitled to a bit of luck now and then?”

“Of course there are; but what the devil are you driving at? The cryptic _role_ does not fit you, Owen. If you’ve got any news, out with it, man. You’ll feel better afterwards,” and Dick laughed joyously.

“Well, I didn’t mention the matter before because you were so full of your own affairs that I doubted if you were capable of even taking it in, or at any rate appreciating the full significance as regards myself. The fact is, Dick, I’ve come in for a tidy bit of money.”

“You have? Bravo! bravo! old chap. I’m delighted to hear it,” and Dick sprang up and shook his friend’s hand till the latter winced. “You deserve it, every penny of it. And I hope there are a good many of them.”

“A tidy few. How many are there in £15,000?”

“Fifteen thousand! By Jove! that’s a piece of luck worth having. I congratulate you, old man, ’pon my soul, I do. But where has it all come from? Where is the patient blind enough to leave such a sum to the man who has done his best to kill him?”

“It was no patient, but my mother’s brother, my Uncle Roger, whom I haven’t seen since he went to the Transvaal ten years ago. I always liked him, and he seemed to take to me, and now he’s dead—poor old fellow—he’s left me a pretty substantial proof of the fact.”

“I should think he had, the old brick! He was something like an uncle. There aren’t many of that kind knocking about, worse luck! Well, Owen, the next thing you must do is to find a wife.”

“I’ve found one.”

“Great Scot! What next? Go gently; I can’t stand too much of this all at once. Do you mean to tell me in cold blood you’re engaged to be married?”

“Something very like it,” replied Owen, smiling.

“And you never gave me a hint, you mean beggar! I’m ashamed of you. But who is it? A real good one, I hope, and worthy of one of the best?” And again Dick made an onslaught on his friend’s hand.

“Yes, Dick, she _is_ a good one. You won’t find another like Miss Gordon in a long day’s march.”

“Miss Gordon! By Jove! I remember now. You mentioned her name some time ago. I’d forgotten all about her.”

“Naturally; she’s English, not Norwegian.”

“Now, then, drop it. No chaff. I want to hear your story. You know mine.”

And we will leave Owen to tell it. The two men were both deeply in love, and we can imagine the nature of the conversation, which they found a great deal more interesting than perhaps the reader would.

* * * * *

A brief telegram which appeared in the newspapers six days later conveyed but little to the millions of newspaper-readers throughout the United Kingdom, and yet, like so many other paragraphs in our daily journals, it contained the last scene of a hidden life-drama.

From Lloyd’s agent at Lisbon, the intelligence was to the effect that the captain of the Italian cruiser _Livorno_ had put in there to report that at night, while in a dense fog about eighteen miles south-south-west of Cape Finisterre, he had come into collision with a Norwegian steam yacht, belonging to Mr. Peter Sundt, of Christiania, the owner on board. The vessel, cut in two, had foundered immediately, and only four persons had been saved, the first officer and three able seamen. The concluding words of the telegram were: “Mr. Sundt controlled the cod-fishing industries of the Lofoden Islands and the Arctic coast of Finmark.”

Only at New Scotland Yard, at the Prefecture of Police in Paris, in the bureau of the Pubblica Sicurezza in Rome, and in the police headquarters of the other European capitals did the announcement convey a true meaning. The hue and cry was cancelled, and the little folding cards, with the photographs upon them, were placed among the “warrants withdrawn.”

* * * * *

The fetters of black winter again lay heavily upon the Arctic coast.

The fierce north-west wind swept dark clouds across the frozen land, and the snow was drizzling down in small flakes. The mountains had already thrown on their snow mantles, and the low ground of the immense tundra, stretching away a thousand miles to the south, had put on its garment of dazzling whiteness.

It was white and frozen everywhere, save for that grey, bleak, tempestuous sea which beat upon the ice-covered rocks where Thyra and Dick Jervoise, wrapped to their eyes in their Lapp coats of reindeer skin, stood together, hand in hand.

At that self-same spot she had stood with Paul Grinevitch just over a year ago. She had just recalled that fact to the man to whom, only a month before, she had been wedded in London. They had accompanied the captain on his last journey up there in the old _Mercur_, prior to retiring to live in the south, and were again in those same bleak, dismal surroundings wherein they had first met.

That great grey sea, wreathed in its drifting white mists, was, however, no longer to them the sea of despair as it once had been. On the contrary, as they stood together, her fur-mittened hand gripped warmly in his, and their gaze fixed on one another’s eyes, their true hearts beat in unison with an all-absorbing affection.

Surely no pair in the whole universe were happier than they! Standing upon the very edge of the world, they faced the north, the great region of the unknown, with the knowledge that the future held for them only joy and brightness and perfect peace.

The snow whirled about them, the keen frost made their faces tingle, but they heeded not. A thin cloud swept over the white ground—formed by the whirling snow. Then the wind suddenly became a tempest; the cloud rose to heaven, bewildering even to those most weather-hardened, and dangerous in the extreme to all things living—the snow-hurricane was upon them.

Bent against the tearing storm, themselves covered with snow, they with difficulty made their way to a low stone hut—for they were fully half a mile from Vardo—and beneath its wall sought shelter from the Arctic blizzard.

The long night was rapidly approaching, for the sky was dark, though it was but midday.

“My love,” he said, placing his arm tenderly about her, “as the storm passes, so pass the dark, clouded days of our lives. Very near have we both been to disaster and shipwreck upon the quicksands of life, but by God’s grace we have both been spared to enjoy each other’s affection. To-morrow we shall leave here for the blue skies and sunshine of the distant south—for the little villa among the olives at Bordighera which I have rented for the winter.”

“Ah! Dick, my own dear Dick!” she cried, burying her face in his furs. “You can never realise all that I suffered in those dark days of distress and suspicion—those days when I loved you, and yet dared not to show it. But”—she sobbed for joy—“it has all ended, now we are at last man and wife. You fought a brave fight for me; you rescued me from the hands of an assassin. I am yours to-day, for always—my husband—my love—for ever!”

He pressed her to his breast in silence, a silence far more eloquent than mere words.

And as they stood there the storm cleared quite suddenly, as do the fierce blizzards of the Arctic, and they walked back through the snow to the harbour-master’s wooden house, hand in hand, childishly blissful in all the sweet ecstasy of each other’s perfect and abiding love.

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 22 Changed: That he was a gentlmen To: That he was a gentleman

pg 23 Changed: The soft sweetness of her feaures To: The soft sweetness of her features

pg 29 Changed: equipment for the Antartic To: equipment for the Antarctic

pg 43 Changed: seated in his armchair, bent, pale, and tried To: seated in his armchair, bent, pale, and tired

pg 50 Changed: encased in leather mocassins To: encased in leather moccasins

pg 61 Changed: driving in one ricketty old vehicle To: driving in one rickety old vehicle

pg 68 Changed: fought the leements every day To: fought the elements every day

pg 117 Changed: who had been rather suprised To: who had been rather surprised

pg 117 Changed: back in the captial, where she had spent To: back in the capital, where she had spent

pg 193 Changed: Miss—Miss——” stammmered Owen To: Miss—Miss——” stammered Owen

pg 196 Changed: use of the word “our”; it semed To: use of the word “our”; it seemed

pg 213 Changed: Is is not a fact To: Is it not a fact

pg 215 Changed: Her wherabouts in Paris To: Her whereabouts in Paris

pg 228 Changed: I undestood that the operations of the association To: I understood that the operations of the association

pg 297 Changed: She choose before—and a pretty mess To: She chose before—and a pretty mess

pg 326 Changed: my life, it he wishes To: my life, if he wishes

pg 334 Changed: quite a different cricle from yours To: quite a different circle from yours

pg 336 Changed: theft of the Countess de Magnan’s jewelery To: theft of the Countess de Magnan’s jewelry