It was a dull day at the chancellery. His Excellency the American Ambassador was absent in Scotland, unveiling a bust to Bobby Burns, paid for by the numerous lovers of that poet in Pittsburg; the First Secretary was absent at Aldershot, observing a sham battle; the Military Attache was absent at the Crystal Palace, watching a foot-ball match; the Naval Attache was absent at the Duke of Deptford's, shooting pheasants; and at the Embassy, the Second Secretary, having lunched leisurely at the Artz, was now alone, but prepared with his life to protect American interests. Accordingly, on the condition that the story should not be traced back to him, he had just confided a State secret to his young friend, Austin Ford, the London correspondent of the New York REPUBLIC.
“I will cable it,” Ford reassured him, “as coming from a Hungarian diplomat, temporarily residing in Bloomsbury, while en route to his post in Patagonia. In that shape, not even your astute chief will suspect its real source. And further from the truth than that I refuse to go.”
“What I dropped in to ask,” he continued, “is whether the English are going to send over a polo team next summer to try to bring back the cup?”
“I've several other items of interest,” suggested the Secretary.
“The week-end parties to which you have been invited,” Ford objected, “can wait. Tell me first what chance there is for an international polo match.”
“Polo,” sententiously began the Second Secretary, who himself was a crackerjack at the game, “is a proposition of ponies! Men can be trained for polo. But polo ponies must be born. Without good ponies——”
James, the page who guarded the outer walls, of the chancellery, appeared in the doorway.
“Please, Sir, a person,” he announced, “with a note for the Ambassador, he says it's important.”
“Tell him to leave it,” said the Secretary. “Polo ponies——”
“Yes, Sir,” interrupted the page. “But 'e won't leave it, not unless he keeps the 'arf-crown.”
“For Heaven's sake!” protested the Second Secretary, “then let him keep the half-crown. When I say polo ponies, I don't mean——”
James, although alarmed at his own temerity, refused to accept the dismissal. “But, please, Sir,” he begged; “I think the 'arf-crown is for the Ambassador.”
The astonished diplomat gazed with open eyes.
“You think—WHAT!” he exclaimed.
James, upon the defensive, explained breathlessly.
“Because, Sir,” he stammered, “it was INSIDE the note when it was thrown out of the window.”
Ford had been sprawling in a soft leather chair in front of the open fire. With the privilege of an old school-fellow and college classmate, he had been jabbing the soft coal with his walking-stick, causing it to burst into tiny flames. His cigarette drooped from his lips, his hat was cocked over one eye; he was a picture of indifference, merging upon boredom. But at the words of the boy his attitude both of mind and body underwent an instant change. It was as though he were an actor, and the words “thrown from the window” were his cue. It was as though he were a dozing fox-terrier, and the voice of his master had whispered in his ear: “Sick'em!”
For a moment, with benign reproach, the Second Secretary regarded the unhappy page, and then addressed him with laborious sarcasm.
“James,” he said, “people do not communicate with ambassadors in notes wrapped around half-crowns and hurled from windows. That is the way one corresponds with an organ-grinder.” Ford sprang to his feet.
“And meanwhile,” he exclaimed angrily, “the man will get away.”
Without seeking permission, he ran past James, and through the empty outer offices. In two minutes he returned, herding before him an individual, seedy and soiled. In appearance the man suggested that in life his place was to support a sandwich-board. Ford reluctantly relinquished his hold upon a folded paper which he laid in front of the Secretary.
“This man,” he explained, “picked that out of the gutter in Sowell Street, It's not addressed to any one, so you read it!”
“I thought it was for the Ambassador!” said the Secretary.
The soiled person coughed deprecatingly, and pointed a dirty digit at the paper. “On the inside,” he suggested. The paper was wrapped around a half-crown and folded in at each end. The diplomat opened it hesitatingly, but having read what was written, laughed.
“There's nothing in THAT,” he exclaimed. He passed the note to Ford. The reporter fell upon it eagerly.
The note was written in pencil on an unruled piece of white paper. The handwriting was that of a woman. What Ford read was:
“I am a prisoner in the street on which this paper is found. The house faces east. I think I am on the top story. I was brought here three weeks ago. They are trying to kill me. My uncle, Charles Ralph Pearsall, is doing this to get my money. He is at Gerridge's Hotel in Craven Street, Strand. He will tell you I am insane. My name is Dosia Pearsall Dale. My home is at Dalesville, Kentucky, U. S. A. Everybody knows me there, and knows I am not insane. If you would save a life take this at once to the American Embassy, or to Scotland Yard. For God's sake, help me.”
When he had read the note, Ford continue to study it. Until he was quite sure his voice would not betray his interest, he did not raise his eyes.
“Why,” he asked, “did you say that there's nothing in this?”
“Because,” returned the diplomat conclusively, “we got a note like that, or nearly like it, a week ago, and——”
Ford could not restrain a groan. “And you never told me!”
“There wasn't anything to tell,” protested the diplomat. “We handed it over to the police, and they reported there was nothing in it. They couldn't find the man at that hotel, and, of course, they couldn't find the house with no more to go on than——”
“And so,” exclaimed Ford rudely, “they decided there was no man, and no house!”
“Their theory,” continued the Secretary patiently, “is that the girl is confined in one of the numerous private sanatoriums in Sowell Street, that she is insane, that because she's under restraint she IMAGINES the nurses are trying to kill her and that her relatives are after her money. Insane people are always thinking that. It's a very common delusion.”
Ford's eyes were shining with a wicked joy. “So,” he asked indifferently, “you don't intend to do anything further?”
“What do you want us to do?” cried his friend. “Ring every door-bell in Sowell Street and ask the parlor-maid if they're murdering a lady on the top story?”
“Can I keep the paper?” demanded Ford. “You can keep a copy of it,” consented the Secretary. “But if you think you're on the track of a big newspaper sensation, I can tell you now you're not. That's the work of a crazy woman, or it's a hoax. You amateur detectives——”
Ford was already seated at the table, scribbling a copy of the message, and making marginal notes.
“Who brought the FIRST paper?” he interrupted.
“A hansom-cab driver.”
“What became of HIM?” snapped the amateur detective.
The Secretary looked inquiringly at James. “He drove away,” said James.
“He drove away, did he?”' roared Ford. “And that was a week ago! Ye gods! What about Dalesville, Kentucky? Did you cable any one there?”
The dignity of the diplomat was becoming ruffled.
“We did not!” he answered. “If it wasn't true that her uncle was at that hotel, it was probably equally untrue that she had friends in America.”
“But,” retorted his friend, “you didn't forget to cable the State Department that you all went in your evening clothes to bow to the new King? You didn't neglect to cable that, did you?”
“The State Department,” returned the Secretary, with withering reproof, “does not expect us to crawl over the roofs of houses and spy down chimneys to see if by any chance an American citizen is being murdered.”
“Well,” exclaimed Ford, leaping to his feet and placing his notes in his pocket, “fortunately, my paper expects me to do just that, and if it didn't, I'd do it anyway. And that is exactly what I am going to do now! Don't tell the others in the Embassy, and, for Heaven's sake, don't tell the police. Jimmy, get me a taxi. And you,” he commanded, pointing at the one who had brought the note, “are coming with me to Sowell Street, to show me where you picked up that paper.”
On the way to Sowell Street Ford stopped at a newspaper agency, and paid for the insertion that afternoon of the same advertisement in three newspapers. It read: “If hansom-cab driver who last week carried note, found in street, to American Embassy will mail his address to X. X. X., care of GLOBE, he will be rewarded.”
From the nearest post-office he sent to his paper the following cable: “Query our local correspondent, Dalesville, Kentucky, concerning Dosia Pearsall Dale. Is she of sound mind, is she heiress. Who controls her money, what her business relations with her uncle Charles Ralph Pearsall, what her present address. If any questions, say inquiries come from solicitors of Englishman who wants to marry her. Rush answer.”
Sowell Street is a dark, dirty little thoroughfare, running for only one block, parallel to Harley Street. Like it, it is decorated with the brass plates of physicians and the red lamps of surgeons, but, just as the medical men in Harley Street, in keeping with that thoroughfare, are broad, open, and with nothing to conceal, so those of Sowell Street, like their hiding-place, shrink from observation, and their lives are as sombre, secret, and dark as the street itself.