The Woman with the Wolves

Front matter

THE WOMAN WITH THE WOLVES

BY BERTRAM ATKEY

MISSING

II The Man At The Casement

OLD Gregg had been pale and his hard face drawn, but his eyes had been cool and steady. Torrance, too, was pale, but his eyes were restless and bright—haunted. He was good-looking as ever, in his thin, aquiline, dark style, but he was changed in some vague, intangible way. All the old humor was gone. Perhaps that is what I missed.

Almost the first thing he told me was that he had not worked for months. I must explain that he is a poet and essayist—he is rich enough to afford the luxury of writing verse for its own sake; that he spends a little of each year in London, moving among people of all kinds from leader-writers to stevedores, cabinet ministers to Punch-and-Judy proprietors, Rabbis to racing-tipsters; that from London he drifts lazily abroad, perhaps to some corner of the Continent, perhaps farther afield; but always the late Autumn brings him, not less surely than it brings the first few woodcock and snipe, to his bungalow on the western moors of the New Forest.

There, with old Gregg, who served his father before him (in one of the Dragoon regiments), Torrance sorted, classified and, I suppose, pondered upon his experiences of the year, wrote, read and dreamed.

Women had never seemed to attract him. Like many dreamers, he had, I think, set up a quite impossible ideal and was content to await her coming.

He lost nothing but the streets and the people by wintering in the forest, for Gregg was a wonderful cook, and thanks to a huge, humming and immensely business-like oil engine. carefully housed at the back of the bungalow, there were such aids to comfort as electric lights, hot water, perfect water supply and so forth.

Torrance was thirty, in perfect health, save for a trifling cigarette cough, tall as old Gregg—that is, a fraction over six feet—but shapelier, and until this New Year I had always considered him languidly happy. But now he sat at supper with me, eating nothing, smoking a great deal, and obviously nervous and uneasy to the point of irritability. Three times I looked up to find his eyes fixed in a sort of uncomfortable reverie upon a photograph on the mantel. The third time this happened I got up deliberately—I have known Torrance intimately for many years—crossed over and studied the picture. It was that of a woman. She looked to be about thirty years old, and was extraordinarily beautiful, a kind of keen, wild beauty that stung one into interest. The photograph had been taken in Petersburg, but there was nothing Russian in the woman’s beauty.

I sat down again, saying nothing. There was a queer little smile on Torrance’s lips, and he began to tell me of a strange custom he had discovered in the Spring of the Old Year among the French charcoal burners. (I believe it was the French charcoal burners, but I am not sure.) I was not listening. I was wondering whether the woman in the picture were the woman with the wolves and what she had to do with Torrance.

He saw that almost at once, for he drained his glass suddenly, drew in his breath, and spoke in quite a different voice.

“I’ll tell you the story—part of it—after supper,” he said, and his voice trembled. “I must tell some one.” I heard the note of desperate impatience and finished my sup per then and there.

“Come on, then,” I said, took a cigar, and lay back in a chair before the big fire.

I heard old Gregg come silently in behind me and begin to clear the table. Torrance looked into the fire for a long time, thinking. He seemed to be seeking, the proper beginning of the story he was going to tell. Presently he laughed a little bitterly.

“I can only tell you about the affair from my own point of view,” he said. “I am in it—in a sort of uninvited, superfluous way. But, really, I am little more than an onlooker.”

He waited again. Old Gregg put a couple of decanters, cigarettes and a cigar-box on the table, and spoke quietly. It occurred to me that a tremor lay under his voice.

“Excuse me, Mr. Charles,” he said.

Torrance turned.

“From what I heard in the village to-night, they are bringing out some of Colonel Shafto’s bloodhounds from Salisbury Plain to-morrow,” said old Gregg, watching his master’s face.

Torrance winced a little, and a slow flush crept up over his cheeks. He looked steadily at old Gregg and there was a queer silence for a few seconds. Then Torrance took a cigarette.

“Thank you, Gregg,” he said, and turned to me. “Have you ever seen bloodhounds at work? If not, you’ll be interested. There’s a2”

SUDDENLY some one tapped at the casement door behind the heavy curtains—rattled would be a better word to describe the panic-stricken scrabble on the glass—and a quavering voice called from the darkness outside.

Gregg was at the casement in an instant. He shot back the bolts, turned the catch, and a man, panting like a hunted thing, fell into the room.

“2! They nearly got me—hairy, rank things—great eyes and teeth!” he sobbed. “Look at my coat!”

He stood in the lamp-light, his face gray with fear and exhaustion, his eyes wide with terror. I remember that his mouth hung half-open like that of a frightened child. His face was veiled, as it were, with a network of tiny red scratches—as though he had fallen again and again into gorse. One shoulder of his coat was ripped to ribbons—the fragments hung down over his shaking arm.

Torrance gave him half a tumbler of cognac, and the stark fear slowly faded out of his eyes. Then, all suddenly, he straightened himself and looked round the room with a quick, curiously official glance. I guessed then what he was. Detective-Inspector was stamped all over him—the hard, capable but blunt, rough-cut face, the close-clipped mustache, the short hair, the square shoulders, the quiet blue Melton overcoat.

Quite recovered from his panic, he gave a hard-lipped smile as Torrance laughed.

“I warned you, Inspector,” said Torrance.

“And I wish I’d taken your warning, Mr. Torrance! That was the nearest squeak I’ve ever had.”

“The wolves, I suppose?” asked Torrance casually. “You were a fool to risk it. I told you they might be loose.”

The Inspector looked at Torrance rather queerly, I thought.

“I believe they were only loosed for my special benefit,” he said dryly.

“Oh, that’s impossible,” said Torrance. “Tell me about it. Take another drink and sit down.”

Before he sat down the Inspector went to the casement windows, pulling the curtains to behind him, and stared out for many minutes into the night. Then he came slowly back, shaking his head slightly.

“It’s a queer place to get lost in—this New Forest is,” he said.

Then he took something silver from his pocket and handed it to Torrance. It looked like a cigar-case. It had been flattened and was terribly dented—as though it had been stamped upon with heavy hobnailed boots.

“Why, what’s this, Waynill?” asked Torrance in a tone of surprise.

The detective smiled.

“Major Stark’s cigar-case,” he said. “I found it out in the forest to-day.”

Torrance laughed again, and, looking very steadily at the detective, shook his head in turn.

“I’m sorry to spoil your effect, Inspector,” he said. “But it happens to be mine. I lost it a week or more ago. Some one seems to have trodden on it.”

He noted the sudden doubt on the Inspector’s face, and turned to Gregg, who had been hovering about the sideboard.

“Gregg—what cigar-case is this?”

The old man took it, looked well at it and handed it back.

“Yours, sir—the one you lost ten days ago.” He looked at the Inspector, his old face grim and hard in the lamplight. “If there were any cigars in it when you found it, sir, they would be the same brand as these.” He pushed the open box on the table to the Inspector, who took one out and looked carefully at the narrow green, red and gold band. He shrugged his broad shoulders with an air of good-humored resignation and took from an inside pocket an envelope containing four cigars, crushed almost to shreds. There were four bands on them—three ragged and one intact. He handed them over to Torrance—who lazily compared the bands with those on the cigars in the box.

“Yes, the same cigars of course,”

“Try one—out of the box, Inspector. We’ll call it a reward, if you like.”

The Inspector grinned ruefully.

“I’ll take the reward,” he said, reaching for it, “but you’ve spoiled a very good clue—between you. Can’t you throw a wash in with the reward, Mr. Torrance?” he added.

“Why, of course. Gregg will show you the bathroom.”

The Inspector followed the old man out.

I HAD remained very silent—knowing what I knew. For instance, I was aware that Torrance had always resolutely refused to carry a cigar-case. He objected to take them on account of their size. He rarely smoked cigars at all. But evidently the Inspector did not share my knowledge.

I leaned over to him. "Is that your cigar-case?” I whispered.

He shook his head furtively.

“Whose, then?” I insisted, impatient with curiosity.

Torrance put his lips to my ear.

“Stark’s,” he breathed, his eyes glittering through half-closed lids.

“But the cigars—did he smoke the same brand as yours?”

Torrance shook his head.

“No. The cigars Inspector Waynill found in the case were from my box. I gave them to him the morning he disappeared. Nobody seems to have seen him alive after he left here. At least nobody has come forward yet.”

“And he did leave here alive—you’ll never persuade me otherwise, Torrance,” I said uncomfortably. “Did he say where he was going?”

Torrance glanced at the photograph of the woman on the mantelpiece. If possible, he had become paler than ever.

“He was going to her—to No-Man’s Court,” he whispered dryly. There was horror in his eyes.

Then we heard the Inspector coming down the passage and Torrance began to describe the ingenuities of his willing domestic slave at the back—the oil-engine.

The Inspector was quite himself again now—stolid, heavily humorous, tenacious, but, I thought, not too intelligent. He lighted his postponed cigar, mixed himself a drink and told us the story of his day’s work.

III Mary

“THERE’S something queer about this disappearance,” said the Inspector. “It might be anything from an ordinary ‘flit’ from a crowd of creditors to”—he hesitated for the fraction of a second—“murder. I’m not sure that I ought to be talking about it even to you, Mr. Torrance.” He chuckled rather heavily. “If I hadn’t known you and your man in town for the last ten years, I’m not sure that I shouldn’t ask you a lot of questions that would sound a bit suggestive.”

Torrance laughed very naturally.

“My dear man, ask ’em now. I’ve always wanted to see how the police work,” he said.

The detective’s chuckle deepened.

“Well, to tell the truth, I’ve asked ’em already. What I haven’t asked, you’ve volunteered one way or another,” he answered.

“Oh!” Torrance looked a little blank.

And, privately, I withdrew a good deal of my opinion that this burly Scotland Yarder was not too intelligent. And I did so with some relief, for it was clear, in that case, that the detective did not associate Torrance with the disappearance of Major Stark. If he did, then I was very certain that he would not be sitting there telling us of his day’s work.

“I don’t know whether bloodhounds are much good at tracking a man on horse back,” began the Inspector again, “but if they are, we might see something interesting to-morrow. There are one or two very queer things out there.” He jerked his head, indicating the forest; then paused, staring with somber, thoughtful eyes into the fire as old Gregg entered, carefully bearing a wineglass filled with a brown, heavy-looking liquid.

“Your Owbridge’s, Mr. Charles,” he said gravely, handing the mixture to Torrance.

Gregg was a firm believer in the medicine and, I have no doubt, insisted on Torrance’s taking a dose every time he dared to cough. And I am not sure that Gregg was very far wrong.

“What I want to find out,” said Inspector Waynill, half to himself, “is the person who has been cutting turf out there at this time of the year and why he did it.”

To this day I marvel that the Inspector did not notice the sudden start of old Gregg at these words. He was too rapt in thought, I suppose. For a second the old man be came flaccid. The wineglass slid out of his hand and cracked softly on the thick car pet. He recovered himself instantly, muttered an apology to Torrance’s “Gregg! Gregg! You weren’t looking, you know!” and went quietly out. But I saw the keen old eyes flash doubtfully at the broad back of the Inspector as Gregg left the room.

“That’s it—whose been cutting turf and why? It’s rotten bad turf, anyhow,” repeated Waynill, looking up.

“The first thing I did this morning was to follow the tracks of Major Stark’s horse from your gate, Mr. Torrance. It was comparatively soft weather four days ago—the day he disappeared, but it’s been freezing ever since and in some places the horse tracks arc as clear as if they had been molded in plaster of Paris. It’s a pity the ground was too hard that day to take boot-marks. Well, the hoofs led me straight to a spot about midway between here and that big house—No-Man’s Court—over there. At this spot there’s been a lot of turf cut and removed. The Major seems to have ridden up to the edge of the cut turf and then altered his mind and instead of going on turned off to the left at right angles.

The Inspector took out a small note-book and showed us a rough plan.

“You’ll see what I mean if you can follow that,” he continued. “‘B’—the shaded part—is the place from which the turf was cut—it’s just a patch of peaty mold. ‘A’ is where the Major’s horse came to it, and ‘C’ is where the horse left it. Now that turf was removed after the Major rode away from the place, because there are no hoof-marks on the mold.”

“Perhaps the Major jumped over the mold patch,” suggested Torrance.

The Inspector shook his head.

“No—I thought of that. If he had, the hoof-marks would have been deeper at ‘C’ where the horse would have landed, and for a few strides, at any rate, the direction of the hoof-marks would have been straight on—in the same line as at ‘A’. But they aren’t—they go off at ‘C’ from the edge of the cut turf at right angles. So, unless the horse turned in the air—which is unlikely—Major Stark did not jump the patch. And if he didn’t jump it, the patch wasn’t there. You follow that.”

We nodded.

“Now at ‘A’ the horse was cantering. At‘ C’ he was galloping like the 2!”

“What!” I think we spoke together.

The detective smiled and wagged his head.

“Any farmer’s boy could see that from the hoof-marks. And that’s another thing I want to know. Why did Major Stark canter up to Mark ‘A,’ turn suddenly at ‘B,’ and gallop off hell-for-leather at ‘C’? And did any time elapse between the change from cantering to galloping? That’s it, gentlemen—What happened at ‘B’? Was anything spilt on the turf that made it necessary to remove it—blood, for in stance? Or was anything buried at that spot and the turf cut to hide the traces of digging?”

Waynill paused again, brooding. Mentally, I unreservedly withdrew the whole of my opinion as to the Inspector’s intelligence.

“Well,” he roused himself once more, “whatever happened, the horse galloped away either with or without his rider. So I followed his tracks—they were the only fresh tracks about the place—I had a thorough look round for them. But I only found your cigar-case, Mr. Torrance.”

“Yes, it would be somewhere about there that I lost it,” said Torrance composedly.

“Oh, it was a good three hundred yards farther on,” corrected Waynill. “It was quite tarnished and discolored. Lying in the middle of a kind of rough cattle-track. Considering that we’ve had no rain for the last week you must have lost it at least ten days ago for it to have become so discolored.” There was a queer dryness in his tone and Torrance stared.

“I see,” he said. “If it had been less tarnished and nearer the patch of cut turf, you would have2”

“Asked you a question or two which are not necessary now.”

Torrance shrugged. “See how nearly I have approached a new experience, Herapath,” he said, smiling across at me.

THE detective slowly helped himself to another whisky and soda.

“The cigar-case was not the only thing I found before I followed up the tracks of the horse,” he said, and dipped two fingers into a waistcoat pocket and brought out a tiny gold locket. We craned forward.

“It was under a little clump of heather near the edge of the cut turf,” he said. “And it has not tarnished at all. That is another thing I want to know. Who is the owner of this locket?” He touched a spring and the little ornament opened. “And,” he continued, his heavy face suddenly grim, “and just who these two young people are. You don’t happen to know them, Mr. Torrance, I suppose?”

Torrance took the locket and looked attentively at the two people. Then he shook his head and passed it to me.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Waynill,” he said. “They look very young—but you have probably noticed that for yourself,” half satirically. “I haven’t the remotest idea as to who they may be.”

I looked at the two faces. They were those of a young man of about twenty-five—handsome enough but arrogant looking, and of a girl, thin, dark-eyed, with wild hair. She looked to be about eighteen years old. The photographs were somewhat faded and seemed to have been cut from a rough snap shot and fitted to the locket. Curiously enough, there was something vaguely familiar to me in the face of the girl. It was as though I had seen a picture of her, in one of the illustrated weeklies, for instance, a week or so before. But I could not reproduce that picture quite perfectly in my mind.

“It is rather a queer thing,” I said, “but I seem to know that girl’s face. I haven’t the least notion where or when or under what circumstances. It is more than likely that she remotely resembles some one I have interviewed, or whose picture I have seen in a periodical.”

Waynill turned to me with a quick interest.

“That is exactly how I feel about it,” he said.

I turned the locket over. There was no monogram, but round the upper rim was engraved, “To Mary from Jack.” I read it aloud and returned the locket to the detective. Torrance had risen and was playing with the things on the mantelpiece. I chanced to look at the mantel, when presently he sat down—and the photo of the woman that was taken in Petersburg was gone.

“Of course, Major Stark’s name is John. That would be ‘Jack’ to his girl,” said the detective. “I thought of that this morning, out there. If this boy is Stark, it is Stark as he was ten years ago, judging from the latest photo of him. It struck me that I might do worse than hunt for ‘Mary’—grown ten years or so older. Now this locket belonged to ‘Mary’ anyhow—men don’t carry lockets much and it’s inscribed to her, and it’s not altogether crazy to assume that ‘Mary’ dropped the locket. At any rate there’s a chance of it. Now, this isn’t London where there’s a hundred Marys to the acre. This is the New Forest, where there’s about one to the square mile, and I fancy that one of these Marys could tell us a good bit about Major John Stark if we can find her.

“That’s the conclusion I had come to by the time I had finished tracking that horse’s hoofs from the patch of cut turf. It was easy enough to follow where he went, although it twisted and turned in the most aimless fashion. No horse with a rider on its back would have twisted about like it.

“I followed the track for about seven hours to-day and it brought me out to the highroad near the Stony Cross Hotel. It was the hostler of that hotel who found the horse without a rider. I went into the hotel and had something to eat and thought it over. Then I saw the hostler. Now, listen a moment, gentlemen!” The tone of the detective had taken on an edge, a keenness. He was speaking now quickly, tensely, as a man hot on the trail of another speaks. Torrance was watching him intently.

“Major Stark left here at eleven in the morning. He cantered straight toward the spot where the turf has been cut. He got there say at eleven-twenty. Then there’s a blank—so much time unaccounted for. Presently his horse gallops away from the spot—gallops say three miles, and then drifts about, feeding here and there, just wandering; and eventually strikes the hard road. He drifts up to the hotel at about four o’clock, just as it was getting dark, the groom said. Nothing much seems to have been done to find out what became of the Major until next morning. Then the groom, starting at nine, followed up the tracks of the horse from his end and arrived at the cut patch of turf at about two o’clock, and from there came to this house.

“He didn’t seem to learn much from the cut turf, but it helped me. For I had examined it, as you know, and, after my talk with the hostler to-day, I know that the turf was cut between eleven-thirty last Monday and two o’clock on Tuesday. Allowing four hours for cutting—it’s a fair-sized patch—we find that the Major vanished between eleven-thirty Monday and ten o’clock Tuesday. It’s not much to know, perhaps, but it’s something. Particularly if ‘Mary,’ whenever we find her or any of her men folk has such a thing as a recently used turf spade.”

THE detective shook his head ruefully.

“I wish I’d arrived at Stony Cross Hotel on Monday instead of Wednesday,” he said. “If only I’d decided to see Rufus’ Stone before Stonehenge, it would have made a difference.”

I gathered that Waynill had been taking a bleak holiday seeing the sights of Wiltshire and Hampshire, when, arriving at Stony Cross Hotel (the hostelry near Rufus’ Stone), he had chanced upon the mysterious disappearance of Major Stark.

“Well, the next thing was to see if I could find ‘Mary,’ or at any rate, the owner of the locket, and it seemed to me that I couldn’t go far wrong if I started among the maids at the only house with women in it near the spot—No-Man’s Court. As there’s been enough time wasted in this case as it is, although it was nearly dark when I started, I set off to have a look at the household at No-Man’s Court.”

IV The Man At The Wolf-dens

“I HAD been told about the wolves that the Princess keeps—queer pets, but I’ve heard of queerer,” he continued, “and I don’t mind admitting that if I’d brought a revolver I should have dropped it in my pocket before I started from the hotel. I’m not one of the brave ones where wild animals are concerned. I’m not ashamed to admit that bad-tempered big dogs worry me if I’m unarmed, and the fear of the wolf seems to me to be thoroughly implanted into every kiddie before he gets away from his mother’s apron-strings. Red Riding Hood and all that stuff—I suppose it’s something that’s come down generation by generation from the time when mothers really did have to warn their youngsters against real wolves. Anyhow, they make me nervous. Still, I understood from the people at the hotel that they were tame enough and that the Princess always had ’em kept well under control, so I started off.

“It was pretty gloomy by the time I got there and an occasional howl—sort of sorrowful—that I heard as I approached the house along the private road didn’t cheer me up. I remember I hoped I should get on well with the Princess. I felt that I wanted friends—you know how these great black spaces make a townman feel, and the night, where there are no trees, is like a great black mouth and you’re walking into it.

“Then you come to a lot of stark naked firs and, if there’s any wind, they moan at you and the heather and bracken hisses and chuckles under your feet. It gives me the hump. I prefer a murder investigation in and about streets and houses to one in a forest round about a dark old haunted- looking mansion ten miles from anywhere and with a dozen wolves singing mournful lullabies to themselves round the back.

“I sent in my card, marked ‘urgent,’ and a string of reasonably humble verbal apologies. I don’t know whether the butler offered up the apologies or not but he came back regretting that the Princess was ‘indisposed and unable to see me.’ I could see Madame Dolgourki however. I gathered that Madame was a kind of lady secretary to the Princess and I saw her. She was very amiable. She had known Major Stark, she said, and was very upset about his dis appearance. I believe she was sincere. The Princess was very anxious that I should be given every assistance, she explained, and—what could she do for me?

“Well, I ran through a list of the maidservants, and Madame had them paraded before me one by one. I had the ‘Mary’ locket before me on the table. I saw them all, from a splendid old white-haired housekeeper (she was like an elderly clergyman’s wife) down to a strapping, big under housemaid. Not one of them could have been ‘Mary.’ You know there’s a touch of blood about the girl in the locket. At least she looks different from the ordinary run of girls.

“Well, that finished my business at No-Man’s Court. I wasn’t badly disappointed, for I had not expected to find my lady of the locket right away, and, anyway, I couldn’t quite see why I should connect Major Stark with one of the staff of a Russian princess who is visiting England for a year or so. It struck me as curious that with the exception of Madame Dolgourki and the Princess every woman in the house should be English. But, after all, that’s their affair. I had noticed a big colored photograph on a table, and when we had finished the servant’s parade I took a look at it, with Madame’s permission. It was a portrait of the Princess,in all her glory, crown or tiara, robes, ermine, jewels. She’s wonderful. In my business we come across some beautiful women, but the Princess Komorzekovna, if that photo spoke the truth, is the most beautiful woman I ever remember seeing.

“I ventured to say as much to Madame. But, after all, the Princess wasn’t ‘Mary.’ That child is unusual enough in her way, but she couldn’t have grown into such a woman. So I thanked Madame and prepared to get out. My back was to the window and Madame was facing me. Just as she rose her face changed, the way a woman’s face changes when she sees some one behind you she recognizes. I turned pretty quickly, just in time to see a whitish blue disappear from the window.

“‘The man Lovell!’ said Madame. ‘Oh, but I recognized him. He was peering in.’

“IT STRUCK me as funny and I asked a few questions. Who was Lovell and why was he so anxious to see me? I knew, of course, that the servant’s hall would be humming with gossip, but it did not strike me that any ordinary servant would be so keen to look at me as to climb a veranda and peer in through the window.

“Lovell, it seems, is the kennel-man and wolf-keeper at No-Man’s Court. Madame does not like him. Once or twice, it appears, she has noticed him staring too familiarly at the Princess. She told me he was always quiet, willing, deferential, and very capable in his line. But Madame dislikes him. She thinks he’s a Gipsy. Well, there wasn’t much in that—women are curious about men staring; sometimes it’s right, some times it’s wrong—but I thought I’d take a look at Mr. Lovell on my way home.

“I bowed myself out and asked the butler where I could find Lovell. He told me to go to the kennel-house, and pointed to a light at the back of the house (we had come out of a side door) and left me to find my own way. I think his dignity was hurt at the idea of a detective running his eye over the maids.

“I went along down the dark side of the house to where the wolves are kept, and, passing through a shrubbery, came out all at once to a biggish building that had a wire run stretching away from it like a very long fowl-run. The wire seemed to me to be very little thicker than a telegraph wire. Half a dozen big, dark shapes—with eyes—were trotting up and down this run. Every now and then one or other of them would stop and stare at me and let out a little howl.