May 16, 2025 • 21 mins
Dive into the mysterious world of the Domino Club, where a case of opium poisoning is anything but simple. Following the murder of Dr. Weathered, our protagonist is plunged into a twisted game with stakes running high - a stolen case book that threatens the entirety of London society. Guided by Zenobia Salome, the Leopardess, and a poison unknown even to renowned expert Sir Frank Tarleton, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of an unwilling participant in this deadly charade. Unravel the mystery as we delve into the darkest corners of the human heart, exposing the dreadful lengths one might go to protect their secrets. This gripping detective story, with its unique psychoanalytical perspective, will keep you on the edge of your seat, challenging even the most seasoned mystery enthusiasts.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fourteen of the Club of Masks. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Club of Masks by Allan Upward, the unknown Poison.
(00:22):
I sat fascinated. This was not the Violet bredwardine I
had known. The girl had sprung up into a woman,
and the woman was making a brave fight for me
more than herself. If my name came out, she would
be no worse off than she was already. As far
as her connection with the death in the Domino Club
was concerned. Her father would have to know that she
(00:43):
and I had been friends in the past, but he
need know nothing more. It was I who stood in danger.
It would be useless for me to deny that I
had drugged whether it and carried off his case book.
His death would lie at my door unless it could
be proved that something had been given to him that
night in addition to opium, And it would take very
(01:04):
strong evidence to convince a jury that there had been
any one else concerned in that night's business besides me.
Whether her refusal to betray me was due only to loyalty,
or to a faint survival or revival of the love
I had forfeited. I could not tell. I only knew
that my own heart was touched anew, and I longed
(01:26):
more than ever to redeem myself in her eyes and
wipe out the past. The Earl of Ledbury controlled his
wrath with an effort. He may have seen that it
would be useless to persist. Just then. He may have
feared to press his daughter too far in our presence,
lest she should make some admission that would bring her
(01:47):
within the reach of the law. Very well, if that
is your attitude, you have ceased to be my daughter.
You will pack up your things and go to London
by the afternoon train. I shall wire to Miss Pollock
to meet you, and you can stay in my house
till she has found you a home with some respectable family,
and I shall pay for your board as long as
(02:08):
you choose to remain with them beyond that I have
done with you. Now go, Violet got up, shivering all
over to obey. Her misery was too acute for me
to indulge in selfish thoughts of what her forced emancipation
might mean for me. The Earl turned to Sir Frank,
as if by an afterthought, have you, gentlemen, anything else
(02:31):
to ask Lady Violet before she goes? My chief passed
on the question to me by a nod. His own
expression was one of pity. I caught at the opportunity.
Nothing for the moment, but I presume your Lordship will
be willing to let us have Lady Violet's new address
if we should want it later on. It was the
(02:52):
first time I had spoken since Lord Ledbury came into
the room, and he glared at me as though resenting
my presumption. Lady Violet is of age, he said shortly,
I have just been reminded of that she is her
own mistress. You had better ask her. Violet turned slowly
and faced me. I threw all I dared, of longing
(03:15):
and pleading for forgiveness into the look I gave her.
The despair in her eyes found a dull echo in
her tone. I will send you my address as soon
as I know it, but it will make no difference,
I her voice choked. The next moment, the door had
closed on her, and now Tarleton proceeded to astonish me.
(03:37):
I think he astonished the Earl of Ledbury as well.
My lord, he said, in a tone of deep gravity,
it is clear to me that you have no idea
of the danger in which your daughter stands. Danger the
Earl fairly started. Danger, the consultant repeated firmly. The man
whose death has brought us down here was an unscrupulous scoundrel.
(04:02):
He laid traps for women under the pretense of soothing
their nerves. He induced them to tell him their secrets
and to write him letters containing their inmost thoughts. There
is every likelihood that he met his death at the
hands of some woman whom he had entrapped in that way,
and whom he was attempting to blackmail. But what has
(04:25):
that to do with my daughter, His lordship burst out.
You don't suppose that she knew he was going to
be murdered. I haven't suggested it. The evidence is to
the contrary. I'm glad to see. But your daughter has
been beguiled into writing to this man, and in her innocence,
she has very likely written a good many things that
(04:46):
you would not care to see published. Those letters are
still in existence, probably, and we don't know in whose
hands until they are found and destroyed. Lady Violet will
be at the mercy of the holder, wretched girl. Even now,
this selfish father could find nothing better to do than
to blame his child who made her wretched. Tarleton's face
(05:10):
wore the stern look of a judge passing sentence, who
drove her to confide in a stranger, and a charlatan,
who handed her over to a hired companion whom she
seemed to have disliked and distrusted, who taught her to
look for sympathy anywhere except from her own parent and
in her own home. Never have I witnessed a rebuke
(05:32):
better administered or with better effect. Lord Ledbury was utterly subdued.
If the condemnation had come from a young man like
myself or from a professed preacher, he might have tried
to defend himself. But from a man of his own
age and a man in authority, the representative of law
and public opinion, it was an unanswerable charge. For the
(05:57):
best part of a minute, he sat silent, his face worked.
Memories of the past must have come back to him.
Perhaps he asked himself what account he could give to
Violet's mother of her only child. His voice was altered
and broken When he spoke again, you have been very
plain with me, Sir Frank, I recognize that you have
(06:18):
spoken as a friend, as my daughter's friend, at least,
if not mine. It may be that my treatment of
her has been mistaken. Although I meant it for the
best at all events, it has turned out unfortunately. But
her good name is the first consideration. Now these letters,
What do you advise me to do? The physician considered
(06:41):
for a time before he spoke. I didn't know of
the existence of these letters when I came down here,
and the problem is one that requires thinking out. It
may be that they will give us a clue to
the whole mystery. As far as I can see at present,
three things may have happened to them. He turned from
Lord Ledbury to me as he went on. Whether it
(07:03):
may have kept them in the same safe with his
case book. In that case, the person who opened the
safe and carried off the book ought to have found
the letters as well. But according to my present theory,
the person who took the book was the wearer of
this costume. He pointed to the dress in front of us.
In other words, he or she was Lady Violet's friend.
(07:27):
And if her friend had found any such documents, he
would have destroyed them and let her know at once.
In my opinion, therefore, either he overlooked them, or they
were kept in some more secret receptacle. As Tarleton seemed
to expect my opinion, I nodded in confirmation. I could
have sworn that the safe contained no such correspondence, but that,
(07:51):
of course I dared not tell him. The next person
who seems to have had access to the safe, said
the consultant, was whether it's stifle daughter, and if he
had some other hiding place in the house, she is
the most likely person to have known of it and
to have opened it since his death. Her mother, no doubt,
(08:11):
would have a better right to examine her husband's papers,
but she impressed me as a weak woman, very much
in her daughter's hands. We have to face the possibility
that Lady Violet's letters have been found by a young
woman of very determined character, who has actually denounced her
ladyship to doctor Cassillis and myself as guilty of this
(08:33):
man's death. The Earl showed himself greatly shaken. But this
is terrible, you, sir, and you, he appealed to each
of us, in turn, don't believe anything so hideous, not
for one moment. It was my chief who answered, our
presence here is the best proof of that. We found
(08:53):
ourselves accused by this young woman of hushing up the
case and screening the criminal, and we came down to
obtain proof of Lady Violet's absence from the scene of
the crime. You have nothing to fear on that score,
I hope and believe you can trust us both not
to let any one know of the admission Lady Violet
(09:13):
has just made to you that she lent her costume
to some one else to the actual murderer. Do you
mean the father gasped? Not necessarily? That point is still
in doubt. As I have said, the crime may have
been committed by a woman or a man who had
been driven to desperation. I should be glad to think so,
(09:35):
and to think that he or she had seized the
secret correspondence. Why it was Lord Ledbury who put the question,
But I waited for the answer with equal curiosity, because
in that case we might have every hope that it
would be promptly destroyed. Such a victim would have no
motive to injure her fellow victims, and we might credit
(09:57):
her with a sense of honor. Whereas the stepdaughter has
shown a strong animus against Lady Violet, and we know
that she is not too scrupulous when her feelings are aroused.
If miss Neobard has found these letters, it may take
some pressure to make her give them up. The Earl
wrung his hands. My means are not large, but if
(10:20):
any sum within my power, he began, Tarleton cut him
short with decision. That is one means which must not
be resorted to my lord. I must make that an
absolute condition. The one thing I have to ask of
you is that you will protect your daughter from any
attempt that may be made to blackmail her. Try if
(10:43):
you can to win her confidence. I strongly advise you
to come up to town with her yourself. Her chaperone
has shown herself to be incompetent, and I shouldn't let
her into your house again. Look out for some bright,
sympathetic woman of the world, and don't engage unless Lady
Violet takes her as a friend, and let it be
(11:05):
seen that your daughter is under your personal protection. A
blackmailer who would find a solitary girl an easy prey
will think twice before he threatens one who is guarded
by a father in your position, take her with you
to the theaters and picture galleries. Believe me as a doctor,
she is in need of distraction just now. I won't
(11:27):
answer for her sanity unless she can be cheered up
and taken out of herself. I will call on her
with your permission, and keep an eye on her for
a time. The change in the Earl of Ledbury was great. Indeed,
by now he thanked the consultant with emotion and undertook
to carry out all his recommendations. He pressed us both
(11:49):
to stay and lunch with him, but my chief decided
that we could not spare the time. We must get
back to town as soon as possible. He declared. The
sooner we get on the track of the missing letters,
the better chance there will be of our recovering them.
He shook hands with the Earl very cordially at parting,
and his lordship seemed to include me in his expressions
(12:11):
of gratitude and good will. When we were seated in
the car going back to Hereford, my Chief summed up
the situation for my benefit. There was a possibility that
Lady Violet had lent her old disguise to a friend
as a blind and come to the dance in a
new one. I thought it was on the cards that
she might prove to be the leopardess. Now I think
(12:34):
we may rule it out, and I am very glad
of it. She is a dear girl, and I confess
she has won my heart. I glanced at him a
little uneasily. In spite of his age, Tarleton was a
fascinating man. I had seen enough of him to know
that he was popular with women of all ages. Young
women seemed to regard him as an uncle, and became
(12:55):
familiar with him at very short notice, and I could
not be sure that he always regarded them strictly as nieces.
Glad as I was that my chief had acquitted Violet
in his mind, I was not altogether pleased by the
warmth with which he spoke. We may take it that
she lent her dress to a friend who meant to
(13:16):
impersonate her. We don't know whether the friend had a
grievance of her own against whether it, or whether she
was acting as Lady Violet's champion. And in the second case,
we can't say whether Lady Violet knew or guessed what
her champion intended to do. You see, there is still
a serious case against the poor girl. If the police
(13:37):
knew that she was in wether It's power, and that
she had lent her costume to his murderer, they might
come to a very ugly conclusion. I am certain she
had no idea that any crime was going to be committed.
I spoke earnestly quite so, you feel certain of that.
But Captain Charles might feel certain of the opposite. Now,
(14:00):
why I thought it better for us to come down
here instead of one of his men. I did indeed
see it, and inwardly I thanked Sir Frank with all
my heart. I think we will tell Charles that we
obtained satisfactory proof that Lady Violet was at Tyburton Castle
on Wednesday night, and that her maid found the Zenobia
costume for us in her wardrobe. That ought to make
(14:24):
him dismiss her from the case. I could have asked
for nothing better so far, And the letters I put
in anxiously, ah, I didn't care to tell Lord Ledbury
all I feared about them. I shouldn't be surprised if
weather It had stored them in the Domino Club. I
could not restrain a cry of alarm. Yes, Tarleton went on,
(14:46):
that would be the worst case of all, because by
this time they must be in the hands of Madame Bonnell.
The smooth, smiling face of the frenchwoman, with its shrewd
black eyes and thin lips, rose before me. As my
chief had said, this was the worst case of all.
If that woman has them, it may be some time
(15:07):
before we hear of them, the specialists pursued in a
meditative tone. She may wait till the inquiry into the
death is over and the case disposed of as far
as the police are concerned. Then the victims will each
receive a discreet letter, probably from an agent, informing them
that certain letters which appear to be in their handwriting
(15:27):
have been found, and asking if they wish to have
them returned. There won't be a word about money in
the first communication. You may be sure the victims will
simply be invited to call on the agents and inspect
the letters. That woman knows her business. I fancy it
was horrible to think of Violet being slowly drawn into
(15:49):
the serpent's coils. There would be less mercy to look
for in such a woman than in whether it himself
the physician moved his shoulders as if to shake off
in unpleasant burden. We will put that aside for the
moment and consider the question of the murder. Everything now
depends on the information I expect to find waiting for
(16:09):
me when we get back. If my diagnosis is correct,
whether it died from a poison described in the book
I have told you of Across Sumatra by Captain Armstrong.
The natives have some name for it, which I forget,
but I have called it up a scene, up a scene,
I repeated the name in stupefaction. Yes, you have heard,
(16:31):
no doubt, every one has heard of the famous Upus tree.
According to the tales of the old explorers, it was
a tree that exhaled a deadly vapor, so that the
traveler who went to sleep beneath its shelter never woke again.
The bones of animals were found scattered round the trunk,
and they were supposed to have perished in the same
(16:53):
way by going to sleep within the deadly radius. But surely,
I said, in astonishment, surely no one believes that. Any
longer I thought it had been proved to be a fable.
The Great expert shook his head. There are not many
fables that haven't some truth in them, he pronounced. The
(17:13):
legendary glories of Timbucto were dismissed at one time as
traveler's tales. But it turned out that there was a
city called Timbuctoo on the southern edge of the desert
of Sahara, that it was the great market to which
the caravans from the Mediterranean coast made their way, and
even that at once possessed something like a university when
(17:34):
it became a refuge for the Moors who were driven
out of Spain. The accounts of the Uppis tree and
its fatal shadow were dismissed in the same shallow way,
without any inquiry as to how they originated. Armstrong happened
to be an intelligent man, and he told me that
one of the objects of his exploration of Sumatra had
(17:55):
been to find out the truth about the Uppus. My
incredulity began to give way before my chief's sober words.
He started out with the conviction that bones and corpses
had been found under some trees by some explorers who
had accepted the native theory that the tree cast a
deadly spell on all within its range. Other travelers had
(18:17):
tested the theory and found that it was possible to
sleep under the tree in perfect safety, and so they
had treated the whole thing as a pure fancy without
inquiring further. Armstrong did inquire further, and perhaps you can
guess what he found. For some moments I was hopelessly puzzled.
(18:37):
The leaves are poisonous, perhaps, and the sleepers die because
they have eaten them. Not a bad guess. No. Armstrong
discovered a minute fungus that grows in the soil round
the root of the Upas tree, and apparently nowhere else.
The animals that brows on this fungus are overcome by
sleep and die without waking. It contains a soporific poison
(19:02):
which acts rather like opium at first, but has a
peculiar effect on the skin, which it dries up like parchment.
You were the first to draw my attention to the
parchment like appearance of whether it's face you may remember,
I did remember. A burden was lifted from my heart
by the recollection. Whatever peril I might stand in from
(19:23):
the law, I could assure myself at last that I
was not a murderer. The drug I had administered to
Violet's persecutor had contained no grain of any poison other
than opium. And now I need not fear that I
had given him an overdose of that he had died.
He must have died from the poison discovered by the
(19:45):
explorer of Sumatra, and that meant that he had died
by some other hand than mine. The specialist continued his explanation.
You see now why I asked you to make no
more remarks on what you saw. Whoever used this poison
probably believes that he is the only person who possesses
(20:06):
any or even knows of its existence. Armstrong's book attracted
very little notice. It was badly written, for one thing,
and there were no illustrations of fatal omission in a
book of travels nowadays, I don't think there was a
word about this discovery in any of the reviews. Naturally,
the murderer thinks that he is safe from detection. How
(20:30):
did you come to hear of the poison? I ventured
to ask in the simplest way. Captain Armstrong himself brought
me a sample to analyze. Of course, I could have
kicked myself. Tarleton was the one man to whom any
such discoverer would be certain to come for an opinion.
He had picked up and dried a handful or two
(20:51):
of the toadstools, as he called them, but they had
crumbled on the voyage home, and what he brought me
was dust. I detected the presence of an agent not
yet known to science, and I gave it the name
of Upascene. It seemed to me so dangerous that an
unknown poison should be in the hands of any one
but a man like myself, that I asked Armstrong to
(21:13):
sell me all he had brought home, and he agreed
to do it. But in that case your bottle was untouched,
I objected. True, it is clear that he deceived me.
Either he had parted with some of the poison before
coming to me and didn't like to admit it, or
else he kept some for himself as a curiosity. If
(21:35):
it isn't in his possession, I expect to hear of
it in the same quarter as the leopard skin and claws.
End of Chapter fourteen.
Chapter fourteen of the Club of Masks. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Club of Masks by Allan Upward, the unknown Poison.
(00:22):
I sat fascinated. This was not the Violet bredwardine I
had known. The girl had sprung up into a woman,
and the woman was making a brave fight for me
more than herself. If my name came out, she would
be no worse off than she was already. As far
as her connection with the death in the Domino Club
was concerned. Her father would have to know that she
(00:43):
and I had been friends in the past, but he
need know nothing more. It was I who stood in danger.
It would be useless for me to deny that I
had drugged whether it and carried off his case book.
His death would lie at my door unless it could
be proved that something had been given to him that
night in addition to opium, And it would take very
(01:04):
strong evidence to convince a jury that there had been
any one else concerned in that night's business besides me.
Whether her refusal to betray me was due only to loyalty,
or to a faint survival or revival of the love
I had forfeited. I could not tell. I only knew
that my own heart was touched anew, and I longed
(01:26):
more than ever to redeem myself in her eyes and
wipe out the past. The Earl of Ledbury controlled his
wrath with an effort. He may have seen that it
would be useless to persist. Just then. He may have
feared to press his daughter too far in our presence,
lest she should make some admission that would bring her
(01:47):
within the reach of the law. Very well, if that
is your attitude, you have ceased to be my daughter.
You will pack up your things and go to London
by the afternoon train. I shall wire to Miss Pollock
to meet you, and you can stay in my house
till she has found you a home with some respectable family,
and I shall pay for your board as long as
(02:08):
you choose to remain with them beyond that I have
done with you. Now go, Violet got up, shivering all
over to obey. Her misery was too acute for me
to indulge in selfish thoughts of what her forced emancipation
might mean for me. The Earl turned to Sir Frank,
as if by an afterthought, have you, gentlemen, anything else
(02:31):
to ask Lady Violet before she goes? My chief passed
on the question to me by a nod. His own
expression was one of pity. I caught at the opportunity.
Nothing for the moment, but I presume your Lordship will
be willing to let us have Lady Violet's new address
if we should want it later on. It was the
(02:52):
first time I had spoken since Lord Ledbury came into
the room, and he glared at me as though resenting
my presumption. Lady Violet is of age, he said shortly,
I have just been reminded of that she is her
own mistress. You had better ask her. Violet turned slowly
and faced me. I threw all I dared, of longing
(03:15):
and pleading for forgiveness into the look I gave her.
The despair in her eyes found a dull echo in
her tone. I will send you my address as soon
as I know it, but it will make no difference,
I her voice choked. The next moment, the door had
closed on her, and now Tarleton proceeded to astonish me.
(03:37):
I think he astonished the Earl of Ledbury as well.
My lord, he said, in a tone of deep gravity,
it is clear to me that you have no idea
of the danger in which your daughter stands. Danger the
Earl fairly started. Danger, the consultant repeated firmly. The man
whose death has brought us down here was an unscrupulous scoundrel.
(04:02):
He laid traps for women under the pretense of soothing
their nerves. He induced them to tell him their secrets
and to write him letters containing their inmost thoughts. There
is every likelihood that he met his death at the
hands of some woman whom he had entrapped in that way,
and whom he was attempting to blackmail. But what has
(04:25):
that to do with my daughter, His lordship burst out.
You don't suppose that she knew he was going to
be murdered. I haven't suggested it. The evidence is to
the contrary. I'm glad to see. But your daughter has
been beguiled into writing to this man, and in her innocence,
she has very likely written a good many things that
(04:46):
you would not care to see published. Those letters are
still in existence, probably, and we don't know in whose
hands until they are found and destroyed. Lady Violet will
be at the mercy of the holder, wretched girl. Even now,
this selfish father could find nothing better to do than
to blame his child who made her wretched. Tarleton's face
(05:10):
wore the stern look of a judge passing sentence, who
drove her to confide in a stranger, and a charlatan,
who handed her over to a hired companion whom she
seemed to have disliked and distrusted, who taught her to
look for sympathy anywhere except from her own parent and
in her own home. Never have I witnessed a rebuke
(05:32):
better administered or with better effect. Lord Ledbury was utterly subdued.
If the condemnation had come from a young man like
myself or from a professed preacher, he might have tried
to defend himself. But from a man of his own
age and a man in authority, the representative of law
and public opinion, it was an unanswerable charge. For the
(05:57):
best part of a minute, he sat silent, his face worked.
Memories of the past must have come back to him.
Perhaps he asked himself what account he could give to
Violet's mother of her only child. His voice was altered
and broken When he spoke again, you have been very
plain with me, Sir Frank, I recognize that you have
(06:18):
spoken as a friend, as my daughter's friend, at least,
if not mine. It may be that my treatment of
her has been mistaken. Although I meant it for the
best at all events, it has turned out unfortunately. But
her good name is the first consideration. Now these letters,
What do you advise me to do? The physician considered
(06:41):
for a time before he spoke. I didn't know of
the existence of these letters when I came down here,
and the problem is one that requires thinking out. It
may be that they will give us a clue to
the whole mystery. As far as I can see at present,
three things may have happened to them. He turned from
Lord Ledbury to me as he went on. Whether it
(07:03):
may have kept them in the same safe with his
case book. In that case, the person who opened the
safe and carried off the book ought to have found
the letters as well. But according to my present theory,
the person who took the book was the wearer of
this costume. He pointed to the dress in front of us.
In other words, he or she was Lady Violet's friend.
(07:27):
And if her friend had found any such documents, he
would have destroyed them and let her know at once.
In my opinion, therefore, either he overlooked them, or they
were kept in some more secret receptacle. As Tarleton seemed
to expect my opinion, I nodded in confirmation. I could
have sworn that the safe contained no such correspondence, but that,
(07:51):
of course I dared not tell him. The next person
who seems to have had access to the safe, said
the consultant, was whether it's stifle daughter, and if he
had some other hiding place in the house, she is
the most likely person to have known of it and
to have opened it since his death. Her mother, no doubt,
(08:11):
would have a better right to examine her husband's papers,
but she impressed me as a weak woman, very much
in her daughter's hands. We have to face the possibility
that Lady Violet's letters have been found by a young
woman of very determined character, who has actually denounced her
ladyship to doctor Cassillis and myself as guilty of this
(08:33):
man's death. The Earl showed himself greatly shaken. But this
is terrible, you, sir, and you, he appealed to each
of us, in turn, don't believe anything so hideous, not
for one moment. It was my chief who answered, our
presence here is the best proof of that. We found
(08:53):
ourselves accused by this young woman of hushing up the
case and screening the criminal, and we came down to
obtain proof of Lady Violet's absence from the scene of
the crime. You have nothing to fear on that score,
I hope and believe you can trust us both not
to let any one know of the admission Lady Violet
(09:13):
has just made to you that she lent her costume
to some one else to the actual murderer. Do you
mean the father gasped? Not necessarily? That point is still
in doubt. As I have said, the crime may have
been committed by a woman or a man who had
been driven to desperation. I should be glad to think so,
(09:35):
and to think that he or she had seized the
secret correspondence. Why it was Lord Ledbury who put the question,
But I waited for the answer with equal curiosity, because
in that case we might have every hope that it
would be promptly destroyed. Such a victim would have no
motive to injure her fellow victims, and we might credit
(09:57):
her with a sense of honor. Whereas the stepdaughter has
shown a strong animus against Lady Violet, and we know
that she is not too scrupulous when her feelings are aroused.
If miss Neobard has found these letters, it may take
some pressure to make her give them up. The Earl
wrung his hands. My means are not large, but if
(10:20):
any sum within my power, he began, Tarleton cut him
short with decision. That is one means which must not
be resorted to my lord. I must make that an
absolute condition. The one thing I have to ask of
you is that you will protect your daughter from any
attempt that may be made to blackmail her. Try if
(10:43):
you can to win her confidence. I strongly advise you
to come up to town with her yourself. Her chaperone
has shown herself to be incompetent, and I shouldn't let
her into your house again. Look out for some bright,
sympathetic woman of the world, and don't engage unless Lady
Violet takes her as a friend, and let it be
(11:05):
seen that your daughter is under your personal protection. A
blackmailer who would find a solitary girl an easy prey
will think twice before he threatens one who is guarded
by a father in your position, take her with you
to the theaters and picture galleries. Believe me as a doctor,
she is in need of distraction just now. I won't
(11:27):
answer for her sanity unless she can be cheered up
and taken out of herself. I will call on her
with your permission, and keep an eye on her for
a time. The change in the Earl of Ledbury was great. Indeed,
by now he thanked the consultant with emotion and undertook
to carry out all his recommendations. He pressed us both
(11:49):
to stay and lunch with him, but my chief decided
that we could not spare the time. We must get
back to town as soon as possible. He declared. The
sooner we get on the track of the missing letters,
the better chance there will be of our recovering them.
He shook hands with the Earl very cordially at parting,
and his lordship seemed to include me in his expressions
(12:11):
of gratitude and good will. When we were seated in
the car going back to Hereford, my Chief summed up
the situation for my benefit. There was a possibility that
Lady Violet had lent her old disguise to a friend
as a blind and come to the dance in a
new one. I thought it was on the cards that
she might prove to be the leopardess. Now I think
(12:34):
we may rule it out, and I am very glad
of it. She is a dear girl, and I confess
she has won my heart. I glanced at him a
little uneasily. In spite of his age, Tarleton was a
fascinating man. I had seen enough of him to know
that he was popular with women of all ages. Young
women seemed to regard him as an uncle, and became
(12:55):
familiar with him at very short notice, and I could
not be sure that he always regarded them strictly as nieces.
Glad as I was that my chief had acquitted Violet
in his mind, I was not altogether pleased by the
warmth with which he spoke. We may take it that
she lent her dress to a friend who meant to
(13:16):
impersonate her. We don't know whether the friend had a
grievance of her own against whether it, or whether she
was acting as Lady Violet's champion. And in the second case,
we can't say whether Lady Violet knew or guessed what
her champion intended to do. You see, there is still
a serious case against the poor girl. If the police
(13:37):
knew that she was in wether It's power, and that
she had lent her costume to his murderer, they might
come to a very ugly conclusion. I am certain she
had no idea that any crime was going to be committed.
I spoke earnestly quite so, you feel certain of that.
But Captain Charles might feel certain of the opposite. Now,
(14:00):
why I thought it better for us to come down
here instead of one of his men. I did indeed
see it, and inwardly I thanked Sir Frank with all
my heart. I think we will tell Charles that we
obtained satisfactory proof that Lady Violet was at Tyburton Castle
on Wednesday night, and that her maid found the Zenobia
costume for us in her wardrobe. That ought to make
(14:24):
him dismiss her from the case. I could have asked
for nothing better so far, And the letters I put
in anxiously, ah, I didn't care to tell Lord Ledbury
all I feared about them. I shouldn't be surprised if
weather It had stored them in the Domino Club. I
could not restrain a cry of alarm. Yes, Tarleton went on,
(14:46):
that would be the worst case of all, because by
this time they must be in the hands of Madame Bonnell.
The smooth, smiling face of the frenchwoman, with its shrewd
black eyes and thin lips, rose before me. As my
chief had said, this was the worst case of all.
If that woman has them, it may be some time
(15:07):
before we hear of them, the specialists pursued in a
meditative tone. She may wait till the inquiry into the
death is over and the case disposed of as far
as the police are concerned. Then the victims will each
receive a discreet letter, probably from an agent, informing them
that certain letters which appear to be in their handwriting
(15:27):
have been found, and asking if they wish to have
them returned. There won't be a word about money in
the first communication. You may be sure the victims will
simply be invited to call on the agents and inspect
the letters. That woman knows her business. I fancy it
was horrible to think of Violet being slowly drawn into
(15:49):
the serpent's coils. There would be less mercy to look
for in such a woman than in whether it himself
the physician moved his shoulders as if to shake off
in unpleasant burden. We will put that aside for the
moment and consider the question of the murder. Everything now
depends on the information I expect to find waiting for
(16:09):
me when we get back. If my diagnosis is correct,
whether it died from a poison described in the book
I have told you of Across Sumatra by Captain Armstrong.
The natives have some name for it, which I forget,
but I have called it up a scene, up a scene,
I repeated the name in stupefaction. Yes, you have heard,
(16:31):
no doubt, every one has heard of the famous Upus tree.
According to the tales of the old explorers, it was
a tree that exhaled a deadly vapor, so that the
traveler who went to sleep beneath its shelter never woke again.
The bones of animals were found scattered round the trunk,
and they were supposed to have perished in the same
(16:53):
way by going to sleep within the deadly radius. But surely,
I said, in astonishment, surely no one believes that. Any
longer I thought it had been proved to be a fable.
The Great expert shook his head. There are not many
fables that haven't some truth in them, he pronounced. The
(17:13):
legendary glories of Timbucto were dismissed at one time as
traveler's tales. But it turned out that there was a
city called Timbuctoo on the southern edge of the desert
of Sahara, that it was the great market to which
the caravans from the Mediterranean coast made their way, and
even that at once possessed something like a university when
(17:34):
it became a refuge for the Moors who were driven
out of Spain. The accounts of the Uppis tree and
its fatal shadow were dismissed in the same shallow way,
without any inquiry as to how they originated. Armstrong happened
to be an intelligent man, and he told me that
one of the objects of his exploration of Sumatra had
(17:55):
been to find out the truth about the Uppus. My
incredulity began to give way before my chief's sober words.
He started out with the conviction that bones and corpses
had been found under some trees by some explorers who
had accepted the native theory that the tree cast a
deadly spell on all within its range. Other travelers had
(18:17):
tested the theory and found that it was possible to
sleep under the tree in perfect safety, and so they
had treated the whole thing as a pure fancy without
inquiring further. Armstrong did inquire further, and perhaps you can
guess what he found. For some moments I was hopelessly puzzled.
(18:37):
The leaves are poisonous, perhaps, and the sleepers die because
they have eaten them. Not a bad guess. No. Armstrong
discovered a minute fungus that grows in the soil round
the root of the Upas tree, and apparently nowhere else.
The animals that brows on this fungus are overcome by
sleep and die without waking. It contains a soporific poison
(19:02):
which acts rather like opium at first, but has a
peculiar effect on the skin, which it dries up like parchment.
You were the first to draw my attention to the
parchment like appearance of whether it's face you may remember,
I did remember. A burden was lifted from my heart
by the recollection. Whatever peril I might stand in from
(19:23):
the law, I could assure myself at last that I
was not a murderer. The drug I had administered to
Violet's persecutor had contained no grain of any poison other
than opium. And now I need not fear that I
had given him an overdose of that he had died.
He must have died from the poison discovered by the
(19:45):
explorer of Sumatra, and that meant that he had died
by some other hand than mine. The specialist continued his explanation.
You see now why I asked you to make no
more remarks on what you saw. Whoever used this poison
probably believes that he is the only person who possesses
(20:06):
any or even knows of its existence. Armstrong's book attracted
very little notice. It was badly written, for one thing,
and there were no illustrations of fatal omission in a
book of travels nowadays, I don't think there was a
word about this discovery in any of the reviews. Naturally,
the murderer thinks that he is safe from detection. How
(20:30):
did you come to hear of the poison? I ventured
to ask in the simplest way. Captain Armstrong himself brought
me a sample to analyze. Of course, I could have
kicked myself. Tarleton was the one man to whom any
such discoverer would be certain to come for an opinion.
He had picked up and dried a handful or two
(20:51):
of the toadstools, as he called them, but they had
crumbled on the voyage home, and what he brought me
was dust. I detected the presence of an agent not
yet known to science, and I gave it the name
of Upascene. It seemed to me so dangerous that an
unknown poison should be in the hands of any one
but a man like myself, that I asked Armstrong to
(21:13):
sell me all he had brought home, and he agreed
to do it. But in that case your bottle was untouched,
I objected. True, it is clear that he deceived me.
Either he had parted with some of the poison before
coming to me and didn't like to admit it, or
else he kept some for himself as a curiosity. If
(21:35):
it isn't in his possession, I expect to hear of
it in the same quarter as the leopard skin and claws.
End of Chapter fourteen.
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