The club of masks

I had only just let myself into the hall of the quiet house in the respectable street beside the British Museum when my ear was startled by the subdued shrilling of the telephone bell overhead. Whether this was the first time it had sounded, or whether that alarming call was being repeated for the second or third time, I had no means of knowing, as I turned hurriedly to fasten the front door behind me. Cautiously, and yet as swiftly as I dared, I shot the bolts and began speeding on tiptoe up the two flights of stairs between me and safety from detection. The night telephone was placed beside my bed on the second floor, but Sir Frank Tarleton slept on the same landing; and unless I could reach my room and still that persistent ringing before it penetrated through his slumber I ran the risk of meeting him coming out to find why it was not answered. And not for much, not for very much, would I have had the great consultant see me returning to his house at an hour when daylight was already flooding the deserted streets of the still sleeping city.

There was something ominous in the continuous peal that sounded louder and louder in my ears with every step I made towards it. It seemed as though the unknown caller must know of my predicament and be bent on exposing me. I clutched the rail of the banisters to steady myself as I panted up those interminable stairs in the darkness, and my feet felt clogged like those of one in a nightmare as I lifted them from step to step; all the while racking my brains for some excuse to offer for the breach of duty I had been guilty of in spending the night elsewhere. For my real excuse, the only one that could have tempted me to betray my chief’s confidence, could never be disclosed.

The darkness all around me seemed to be vibrating with the merciless clamour overhead as I toiled through those tense moments. My knees trembled under me, and my heart well-nigh stopped beating, as my head reached the level of the last landing and I turned my eyes desperately to the physician’s door in search of any sign that he had been aroused.

No sign as yet, thank Heaven! Five more stairs, three lightning strides to my own door, and he would never know of the secret errand that had taken me away from my post that night.

At last my agony was ended. I stood breathless on the topmost stair, darted past Sir Frank’s room, not daring to pause and listen for any movement from within, and clutched the handle of my own door, summoning all my nerve to open and close it again so rapidly as to permit the least possible sound to escape. An instant later and I had reached the telephone and silenced its urgent voice, and was beginning to draw my breath freely for the first time since I had reached the house.

Then, after a few deep gasps, I hailed the caller.

“Inspector Charles of Scotland Yard speaking,” came grimly over the wire. “Who is there?”

There was nothing to startle me in the fact that the police were calling so imperatively. Tarleton was the greatest living authority on poisons; it was to pursue his researches in their mysterious history that he lived in the unfashionable neighbourhood of the Museum; and the Home Office treated him with a confidence which they placed in no other of their advisers. Neither was there any cause for uneasiness in the Inspector’s cautious question. Very many of the calls that came to that unpretending house in that quiet corner of London had a certain character of furtiveness, and the callers showed the same anxiety to make sure whom they were speaking with.

My usual response came to my lips mechanically. “This is Dr. Cassilis, Sir Frank Tarleton’s confidential assistant. The doctor is asleep.”

There was a pause before the caller spoke again. There was nothing alarming to me in that, either. I had grown accustomed to the pause during my first few weeks under the roof of the great consultant. Few of those who needed his services liked to disclose their business to a deputy.

“Please have him waked immediately. He is wanted as soon as possible--on His Majesty’s service.”

The request was peremptory, nevertheless I was not inclined to give way to it at once. The police formula made no difference to me. I was His Majesty’s servant as much as my chief, and it was for me, and not for the Inspector, to decide which of us was to take the case. At the same time I began casting off my clothes so as to be ready to go in and rouse Tarleton if it became necessary; and one hand was busy with my necktie and collar while the other held the telephone mouthpiece to my lips.

“My instructions are not to disturb Sir Frank unless I am satisfied that the case is urgent, and that I can’t deal with it myself,” I said firmly. “I must ask you to tell me something more.”

There was another pause before the caller spoke again, and I took advantage of it to wrench off my collar and throw my waistcoat after my coat onto the floor. When the wire buzzed again the first words that reached my ear nearly caused me to drop the tube from my fingers.

“I am speaking from the Domino Club, Vincent Studios, Tarifa Road, Chelsea. There was a masked dance here this night, and one of the dancers has been found dead, apparently poisoned.”

And now I might well find myself trembling all over, and have to lean against the wall to recover myself. I only just succeeded in keeping back a cry of consternation. For it was to go to that underground club, with its dark reputation, and its strange character of mingled fashion and depravity, that I had been tempted to quit my post that night. I had been one of those masked dancers, jostling with I knew not whom under the shadowy lights and in the curtained recesses of the pretended studio in London’s nearest approach to a Quartier Latin. I could recall the scene in the after-midnight hours, the sea of black silk-covered faces thronging under the crimson lamp-shades, the bizarre confusion of costumes, monks and Crusaders, columbines and queens, the swish of silk and tinkling of swords and bracelets, and the incessant flood of whispers that had made me think of the scene in Milton’s pandemonium when the assembly of fallen angels are suddenly deprived of speech and changed into hissing serpents.

I had used the greatest precautions in coming and going. I had no reason to think that there was any real likelihood of my presence there being discovered. But a cold fear laid hold of me as I steadied my nerves to deal with the Police Inspector who had so unexpectedly conjured up a spectre on the scene of that past revelry. It was doubly imperative now that I should make no mistake, and above all that I should get rid of every sign that I had not passed the night in my own bed.

I was fast unbuttoning my shirt as I spoke again to the waiting police officer.

“I’m afraid I can’t awake Sir Frank for that. It seems to be a case that he will expect me to attend myself. Is there anything peculiar about the medical symptoms? What does your local surgeon say?”

Inspector Charles at last revealed the true reason for his persistence in demanding the attendance of my chief.

“I haven’t called in our local surgeon. There doesn’t seem anything mysterious about the cause of death. It looks to me like a simple case of opium-poisoning, very likely a suicide. But the case must be disposed of in camera if possible, for the sake of the people in high places connected with the club. My information is that there was a royalty present at this dance, the Crown Prince of----”

Whether purposely or not, the speaker let his voice drop so low that I failed to catch the final word. But I had heard enough. There could be no more doubt that Tarleton must be informed. It was a bare possibility that the victim might prove to be the foreign Royal Highness himself. Failing that, it might at least be someone who had been mistaken for him by the assassin. In any case I could thank my stars for the intimation that the case was likely to be hushed up on his account. Provided that I could efface every sign of my nocturnal expedition, I ought to have nothing now to dread.

I bade the officer wait, and tore off my remaining garments, slipped into my sleeping-suit and dressing-gown, and rumpled my hair to give myself the look of one just roused from sleep. Then and not before, I ventured out upon the landing to face my chief.

As I did so I was chilled by another shock. I saw a thin line of light under the door in front of me. Sir Frank Tarleton was awake.

I don’t think I can be accused of cowardice for feeling as I did during those desperate moments. It was not only my worldly fortune that was at stake; there were peculiar circumstances which made it doubly shameful on my part to be false to the trust put in me by the great specialist. They went back to the day when I began to attend his lectures on forensic medicine at the University College in Gower Street. I had already taken my medical degree in the University of London with a view to becoming a public analyst, and I had been anxious to profit by the Professor’s unique knowledge of poisons. From the first I had attracted his favourable notice; my papers had won his praise; and he had invited me to call on him, and admitted me to his friendship. Then, at the end of the year’s course, he had overwhelmed me by an offer so much beyond my hopes that I could scarcely yet believe in my good luck.

I can see him now, the whole scene is clear before me, the brisk figure with its face of intense thought, crowned by a shock of unkempt gray hair, standing over me on the hearth-rug of his dingy consulting-room on the ground floor in Montague Street. He was following his quaint habit of swinging his magnificent gold repeater in front of him by its shabby scrap of ribbon, while he gave me the amazing news.

“I’ve decided to take an assistant, Cassilis. I have passed my sixtieth birthday, and though my work interests me as much as ever, I mean to spare myself a little more in future. I don’t intend to turn out in the middle of the night because a bilious duchess fancies that someone has bribed her French maid to poison her. And I’ve told them at the Home Office--I suppose you know I’m their principal consultant--that I won’t be sent down to Cornwall one day and to Cumberland the next every time a coroner lets himself be puzzled by a simple case of strychnine or arsenic. It’s work for a younger man.”

He waved the watch towards me as he went on.

“Sir James Ponsonby--that’s the Permanent Under Secretary--has consented to my having a deputy, and I’m submitting your name.”

I recall my sensations as he stopped abruptly and bent his keen eyes on me from beneath their bushy roof of eyebrow to see how the proposal struck me. I had gasped for breath then as I was gasping now. At the age of twenty-five, only just qualified for my profession, I was to be lifted at one step out of the struggling crowd into a position which was already success, and which I should only have to make proper use of to attain in time the same eminence as my patron.