She will come back to London, Austin;
depend upon it, she will come back, and we shall hear more about her
then. I don't think it will be very pleasant news.' VI

THE SUICIDES

Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London Society. At twenty he had
been a poor man, decked with the surname of an illustrious family, but
forced to earn a livelihood as best he could, and the most speculative
of money-lenders would not have entrusted him with fifty pounds on the
chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his poverty for a
great fortune. His father had been near enough to the fountain of good
things to secure one of the family livings, but the son, even if he had
taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover
felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the
world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a
younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to
make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernoun
saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but
out of the seven who stood between him and the high places of his family
three only remained. These three, however, were 'good lives,' but yet
not proof against the Zulu assegais and typhoid fever, and so one
morning Aubernoun woke up and found himself Lord Argentine, a man of
thirty who had faced the difficulties of existence, and had conquered. The situation amused him immensely, and he resolved that riches should
be as pleasant to him as poverty had always been. Argentine, after some
little consideration, came to the conclusion that dining, regarded as a
fine art, was perhaps the most amusing pursuit open to fallen humanity,
and thus his dinners became famous in London, and an invitation to his
table a thing covetously desired. After ten years of lordship and
dinners Argentine still declined to be jaded, still persisted in
enjoying life, and by a kind of infection had become recognized as the
cause of joy in others, in short, as the best of company. His sudden and
tragical death therefore caused a wide and deep sensation. People could
scarce believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and
the cry of 'Mysterious Death of a Nobleman' came ringing up from the
street. But there stood the brief paragraph: 'Lord Argentine was found
dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is
stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide,
though no motive can be assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was
widely known in society, and much liked for his genial manner and
sumptuous hospitality. He is succeeded by,' etc., etc. By slow degrees the details came to light, but the case still remained a
mystery. The chief witness at the inquest was the dead nobleman's valet,
who said that the night before his death Lord Argentine had dined with a
lady of good position, whose name was suppressed in the newspaper
reports. At about eleven o'clock Lord Argentine had returned, and
informed his man that he should not require his services till the next
morning. A little later the valet had occasion to cross the hall and was
somewhat astonished to see his master quietly letting himself out at the
front door. He had taken off his evening clothes, and was dressed in a
Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a low brown hat. The valet had
no reason to suppose that Lord Argentine had seen him, and though his
master rarely kept late hours, thought little of the occurrence till the
next morning, when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to nine
as usual. He received no answer, and, after knocking two or three
times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine's body leaning forward
at an angle from the bottom of the bed. He found that his master had
tied a cord securely to one of the short bed-posts, and, after making a
running noose and slipping it round his neck, the unfortunate man must
have resolutely fallen forward, to die by slow strangulation. He was
dressed in the light suit in which the valet had seen him go out, and
the doctor who was summoned pronounced that life had been extinct for
more than four hours. All papers, letters, and so forth seemed in
perfect order, and nothing was discovered which pointed in the most
remote way to any scandal either great or small. Here the evidence
ended; nothing more could be discovered. Several persons had been
present at the dinner-party at which Lord Argentine had assisted, and to
all these he seemed in his usual genial spirits. The valet, indeed, said
he thought his master appeared a little excited when he came home, but
he confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight, hardly
noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the
suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute
suicidal mania was generally accepted. It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more
gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good
position and ample means, perished miserably in almost precisely the
same manner. Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his dressing-room,
hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr.
Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine. There was no explanation
in either case; a few bald facts; a living man in the evening, and a
dead body with a black swollen face in the morning. The police had been
forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or to explain the
sordid murders of Whitechapel; but before the horrible suicides of
Piccadilly and Mayfair they were dumb-foundered, for not even the mere
ferocity which did duty as an explanation of the crimes of the East End,
could be of service in the West. Each of these men who had resolved to
die a tortured shameful death was rich, prosperous, and to all
appearances in love with the world, and not the acutest research could
ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in either case. There was a
horror in the air, and men looked at one another's faces when they met,
each wondering whether the other was to be the victim of the fifth
nameless tragedy. Journalists sought in vain in their scrap-books for
materials whereof to concoct reminiscent articles; and the morning paper
was unfolded in many a house with a feeling of awe; no man knew when or
where the blow would next light. A short while after the last of these terrible events, Austin came to
see Mr. Villiers. He was curious to know whether Villiers had succeeded
in discovering any fresh traces of Mrs. Herbert, either through Clarke
or by other sources, and he asked the question soon after he had sat
down. 'No,' said Villiers, 'I wrote to Clarke, but he remains obdurate, and I
have tried other channels, but without any result. I can't find out what
became of Helen Vaughan after she left Paul Street, but I think she must
have gone abroad.