PART I. TOLD BY PHILIP BRAND, M.D., LONDON. (continued 2)

He was a glib-tongued man, who spoke in a confident, matter-of-fact way. When he saw us he rubbed his hands as one who had brought affairs to a successful issue, and now meant to reap praise and other rewards. His whole bearing told me he had made an important discovery; so I begged him to be seated, and give us his news.

Carriston gave him a careless glance, and stood at some little distance from us. He looked as if he thought the impending communication scarcely worth the trouble of listening to. He might, indeed, from his looks, have been the most disinterested person of the three. He even left me to do the questioning.

“Now, then, Mr. Sharpe,” I said, “let us hear if you have earned your money.”

“I think so, sir,” replied Sharpe, looking curiously at Carriston, who, strange to say, heard this answer with supreme indifference.

“I think I may say I have, sir,” continued the detective—“that is if the gentlemen can identify these articles as being the young lady’s property.”

Thereupon he produced from a thick letter-case a ribbon in which was stuck a silver pin, mounted with Scotch pebbles, an ornament that I remembered having seen Madeline wear. Mr. Sharpe handed them to Carriston. He examined them, and I saw his cheeks flush and his eyes grow bright.

“How did you come by this?” he cried, pointing to the silver ornament.

“I’ll tell you presently, sir. Do you recognize it?”

“I gave it to Miss Rowan myself.”

“Then we are on the right track,” I cried, joyfully. “Go on, Mr. Sharpe.”

“Yes, gentlemen, we are certainly on the right track; but after all, it isn’t my fault if the track don’t lead exactly where you wish. You see, when I heard of this mysterious disappearance of the lady, I began to concoct my own theory. I said to myself, when a young and beautiful—”

“Confound your theories!” cried Carriston fiercely. “Go on with your tale.”

The man gave his interrupter a spiteful glance. “Well, sir,” he said, “as you gave me strict instructions to watch a certain gentleman closely, I obeyed those instructions, of course, although I knew I was on a fool’s errand.”

“Will you go on?” cried Carriston. “If you know where Miss Rowan is, say so; your money will be paid you the moment I find her.”

“I don’t say I exactly know where to find the lady, but I can soon know if you wish me to.”

“Tell your tale your own way, but as shortly as possible,” I said, seeing that my excitable friend was preparing for another outburst.

“I found there was nothing to be gained by keeping watch on the gentleman you mentioned, sir, so I went to Scotland and tried back from there. As soon as I worked on my own lay I found out all about it. The lady went from Callendar to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to London, from London to Folkestone, and from Folkestone to Boulong.”

I glanced at Carriston. All his calmness seemed to have returned. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, and appeared quite unmoved by Mr. Sharpe’s clear statement as to the route Madeline had taken.

“Of course,” continued Mr. Sharpe, “I was not quite certain I was tracking the right person, although her description corresponded with the likeness you gave me. But as you are sure this article of jewelry belonged to the lady you want, the matter is beyond a doubt.”

“Of course,” I said, seeing that Carriston had no intention of speaking. “Where did you find it?”

“It was left behind, in a bedroom of one of the principal hotels in Folkestone. I did go over to Boulong, but after that I thought I had learned all you would care to know.”

There was something in the man’s manner which made me dread what was coming. Again I looked at Carriston. His lips were curved with contempt, but he still kept silence.

“Why not have pursued your inquiries past Boulong?” I asked.

“For this reason, sir. I had learned enough. The theory I had concocted was the right one after all. The lady went to Edinburgh alone, right enough: but she didn’t leave Edinburgh alone, nor she didn’t leave London alone, nor she didn’t stay at Folkestone—where I found the pin—alone, nor she didn’t go to Boulong alone. She was accompanied by a young gentleman who called himself Mr. Smith; and what’s more, she called herself Mrs. Smith. Perhaps she was; as they lived like man and wife.”

Whether the fellow was right or mistaken, this explanation of Madeline’s disappearance seemed to give me what I can only compare to a smack in the face. I stared at the speaker in speechless astonishment. If the tale he told so glibly and circumstantially was true, farewell, so far as I was concerned, to belief in the love or purity of women. Madeline Rowan, that creature of a poet’s dream, on the eve of her marriage with Charles Carriston to fly, whether wed or unwed mattered little, with another man! And yet, she was but a woman. Carriston—or Carr, as she only knew him—was in her eyes poor. The companion of her flight might have won her with gold. Such things have been. Still—

My rapid and wrongful meditations were cut short in an unexpected way. Suddenly I saw Mr. Sharpe dragged bodily out of his chair and thrown on the floor, while Carriston, standing over him, thrashed the man vigorously with his own ash stick—a convenient weapon, so convenient that I felt Mr. Sharpe could not have selected a stick more appropriate for his own chastisement. So Carriston seemed to think, for he laid on cheerfully some eight or ten good cutting strokes.

Nevertheless, being a respectable doctor and a man of peace, I was compelled to interfere. I held Carriston’s arm while Mr. Sharpe struggled to his feet, and after collecting his hat and his pocket-book, stood glaring vengefully at his assailant, and rubbing the while such of the weals on his back as he could reach. Annoyed as I felt at the unprofessional fracas, I could scarcely help laughing at the man’s appearance. I doubt the possibility of any one looking heroic after such a thrashing.

“I’ll have the law for this,” he growled. “I ain’t paid to be beaten by a madman.”

“You’re paid to do my work, not another’s,” said Carriston. “Go to the man who has over-bribed you and sent you to tell me your lies. Go to him, tell him that once more he has failed. Out of my sight.”

As Carriston showed signs of recommencing hostile operations, the man flew as far as the door-way. There, being in comparative safety, he turned with a malignant look.

“You’ll smart for this,” he said; “when they lock you up as a raving lunatic I’ll try and get a post as keeper.”

I was glad to see that Carriston paid no attention to this parting shaft. He turned his back scornfully, and the fellow left the room and the house.

“Now are you convinced?” asked Carriston, turning to me.

“Convinced of what? That his tale is untrue, or that he has been misled, I am quite certain.”

“Tush! That is not worth consideration. Don’t you see that Ralph has done all this? I set that man to watch him; he found out the espionage; suborned my agent, or your agent, I should say; sent him here with a trumped-up tale. Oh, yes; I was to believe that Madeline had deserted me—that was to drive me out of my senses. My cousin is a fool after all!”

“Without further proof I cannot believe that your suspicions are correct,” I said; but I must own I spoke with some hesitation.

“Proof! A clever man like you ought to see ample proof in the fact of that wretch having twice called me a madman. I have seen him but once before—you know if I then gave him any grounds for making such an assertion. Tell me, from whom could he have learned the word except from Ralph Carriston?”

I was bound, if only to save my own reputation for sagacity, to confess that the point noted by Carriston had raised certain doubts in my mind. But if Ralph Carriston really was trying by some finely-wrought scheme to bring about what he desired, there was all the more reason for great caution to be exercised.

“I am sorry you beat him,” I said. “He will now swear right and left that you are not in your senses.”

“Of course he will. What do I care?”

“Only remember this. It is easier to get put into an asylum than to get out of it.”

“It is not so very easy for a sane man like myself to be put in, especially when he is on his guard. I have looked up the law. There must be a certificate signed by two doctors, surgeons—or, I believe, apothecaries will do—who have seen the supposed lunatic alone and together. I’ll take very good care I speak to no doctor save yourself, and keep out of the way of surgeons and apothecaries.”

It quite cheered me to hear him speaking so sensibly and collectedly about himself, but I again impressed upon him the need of great caution. Although I could not believe that his cousin had taken Madeline away, I was inclined to think, after the affair with the spy, that, as Carriston averred, he aimed at getting him, sane or insane, into a mad-house.

But after all these days we were not a step nearer to the discovery of Madeline’s whereabouts. Carriston made no sign of doing anything to facilitate that discovery. Again I urged him to intrust the whole affair to the police. Again he refused to do so, adding that he was not quite ready. Ready for what, I wondered!

X.

I must confess, in spite of my affection for Carriston, I felt inclined to rebel against the course which matters were taking. I was a prosaic matter-of-fact medical man; doing my work to the best of my ability and anxious when that work was done that my hours of leisure should be as free from worry and care as possible. With Carriston’s advent several disturbing elements entered into my quiet life.

Let Ralph Carriston be guilty or innocent of the extraordinary crime which his cousin laid at his door, I felt that he was anxious to obtain possession of the supposed lunatic’s person. It would suit his purposes for his cousin to be proved mad. I did not believe that even if the capture was legally effected Carriston’s liberation would be a matter of great difficulty so long as he remained in his present state of mind; so long as I, a doctor of some standing, could go into the witness-box and swear to his sanity. But my old dread was always with me—the dread that any further shock would overturn the balance of his sensitive mind.

So it was that every hour that Carriston was out of my sight was fraught with anxiety. If Ralph Carriston was really as unscrupulous as my friend supposed; if he had really, as seemed almost probable, suborned our agent; he might by some crafty trick obtain the needful certificate, and some day I should come home and find Carriston had been removed. In such a case I foresaw great trouble and distress.

Besides, after all that had occurred, it was as much as I could do to believe that Carriston was not mad. Any doctor who knew what I knew would have given the verdict against him.

After dismissing his visions and hallucinations with the contempt which they deserved, the fact of a man who was madly, passionately in love with a woman, and who believed that she had been entrapped and was still kept in restraint, sitting down quietly, and letting day after day pass without making an effort toward finding her, was in itself prima facie evidence of insanity. A sane man would at once have set all the engines of detection at work.

I felt that if once Ralph Carriston obtained possession of him he could make out a strong case in his own favor. First of all, the proposed marriage out of the defendant’s own sphere of life; the passing under a false name; the ridiculous, or apparently ridiculous, accusation made against his kinsman; the murderous threats; the chastisement of his own paid agent who brought him a report which might not seem at all untrue to any one who knew not Madeline Rowan. Leaving out the question what might be wrung from me in cross-examination, Ralph Carriston had a strong case, and I knew that, once in his power, my friend might possibly be doomed to pass years, if not his whole life, under restraint. So I was anxious—very anxious.

And I felt an anxiety, scarcely second to that which prevailed on Carriston’s account, as to the fate of Madeline. Granting for sake of argument that Carriston’s absurd conviction that no bodily harm had as yet been done her, was true, I felt sure that she with her scarcely less sensitive nature must feel the separation from her lover as much as he himself felt the separation from her. Once or twice I tried to comfort myself with cynicism—tried to persuade myself that a young woman could not in our days be spirited away—that she had gone by her own free-will—that there was a man who had at the eleventh hour alienated her affections from Carriston. But I could not bring myself to believe this. So I was placed between the horns of a dilemma.

If Madeline had not fled of her own free-will, some one must have taken her away, and if so our agent’s report was a coined one, and, if a coined one, issued at Ralph’s instance; therefore Ralph must be the prime actor in the mystery.

But in sober moments such a deduction seemed an utter absurdity.

Although I have said that Carriston was doing nothing toward clearing up the mystery, I wronged him in so saying. After his own erratic way he was at work. At such work too! I really lost all patience with him.

He shut himself up in his room, out of which he scarcely stirred for three days. By that time he had completed a large and beautiful drawing of his imaginary man. This he took to a well-known photographer’s, and ordered several hundred small photographs of it, to be prepared as soon as possible. The minute description which he had given me of his fanciful creation was printed at the foot of each copy. As soon as the first batch of these precious photographs was sent home, to my great joy he did what he should have done days ago; yielded to my wishes, and put the matter into the hands of the police.

I was glad to find that in giving details of what had happened he said nothing about the advisability of keeping a watch on Ralph Carriston’s proceedings. He did, indeed, offer an absurdly large reward for the discovery of the missing girl; and, moreover, gave the officer in charge of the case a packet of photographs of his phantom man, telling him in the gravest manner that he knew the original of that likeness had something to do with the disappearance of Miss Rowan. The officer, who thought the portrait was that of a natural being, took his instructions in good faith, although he seemed greatly surprised when he heard that Carriston knew neither the name nor the occupation, in fact, knew nothing concerning the man who was to be sought for. However, as Carriston assured him that finding this man would insure the reward as much as if he found Madeline, the officer readily promised to combine the two tasks, little knowing what waste of time any attempt to perform the latter must be.

Two days after this Carriston came to me. “I shall leave you to-morrow,” he said.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “Why do you leave?”

“I am going to travel about. I have no intention of letting Ralph get hold of me. So I mean to go from place to place until I find Madeline.”

“Be careful,” I urged.

“I shall be careful enough. I’ll take care that no doctors, surgeons, or even apothecaries get on my track. I shall go just as the fit seizes me. If I can’t say one day where I shall be the next, it will be impossible for that villain to know.”

This was not a bad argument. In fact, if he carried out his resolve of passing quickly from place to place I did not see how he could plan anything more likely to defeat the intentions with which we credited his cousin. As to his finding Madeline by so doing, that was another matter.

His idea seemed to be that chance would sooner or later bring him in contact with the man of his dream. However, now that the search had been intrusted to the proper persons his own action in the matter was not worth troubling about. I gave him many cautions. He was to be quiet and guarded in words and manner. He was not to converse with strangers. If he found himself dogged or watched by any one he was to communicate at once with me. But, above all, I begged him not to yield again to his mental infirmity. The folly of a man who could avoid it, throwing himself into such a state ought to be apparent to him.

“Not oftener than I can help,” was all the promise I could get from him. “But see her I must sometimes, or I shall die.”

I had now given up as hopeless the combat with his peculiar idiosyncrasy. So, with many expressions of gratitude on his part, we bade each other farewell.

During his absence he wrote to me nearly every day, so that I might know his whereabouts in case I had any news to communicate. But I had none. The police failed to find the slightest clew. I had been called upon by them once or twice in order that they might have every grain of information I could give. I took the liberty of advising them not to waste their time in looking for the man, as his very existence was problematical. It was but a fancy of my friend’s, and not worth thinking seriously about. I am not sure but what after hearing this they did not think the whole affair was an imagined one, and so relaxed their efforts.

Once or twice, Carriston, happening to be in the neighborhood of London, came to see me, and slept the night at my house. He also had no news to report. Still, he seemed hopeful as ever.

The weeks went by until Christmas was over and the New Year begun; but no sign, word, or trace of Madeline Rowan. “I have seen her,” wrote Carriston, “several times. She is in the same place—unhappy, but not ill-treated.”

Evidently his hallucinations were still in full force.

. . . . . . .

At first I intended that the whole of this tale should be told by myself; but upon getting so far it struck me that the evidence of another actor who played an important part in the drama would give certain occurrences to the reader at first instead of at second hand, so I wrote to my friend Dick Fenton, of Frenchay, Gloucestershire, and begged him, if he found himself capable of so doing, to put in simple narrative form his impressions of certain events which happened in January, 1866: events in which we two were concerned. He has been good enough to comply with my request. His communication follows.