THE VALROSE MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19235, 26 January 1926, Page 16

THE VALROSE MYSTERY.

BY WILLIAM LE QXJETJX.

SYNOPSIS. Arthur Valrose, a young ex-officer of independent. means, meets a friend of his, Kenneth Pearson, while on a flying visit to London, and -the two men adjourn _to a hotel for a drink. While there Valrose introduces Pear,son to an old friend of his named Thurston. The latter, who proves

to have a singularly engaging personality, invites the two young men to dine at his home, Whitehall Court. On his arrival on the appointed night Pearson overhears Mr. Thurston's daughter. C'ecile, telling her mother of the unaccountable aversion she has for Arthur Valrose. Pearson is much attracted by Cecily and the two find many tastes in common. Valrose, who is a great roamer, intends leaving for Paris in a fewdays' time. Ivlr. Thurston invites Pearson to lunch with him in town.

After leaving the Thurstons' home, the two young men go to Pearson's rooms, where Valrose expresses his admiration tor the comfort with which his friend ( is surrounded and seems half regretful of his own roving existence, fie also tells Pearson ot an Italian girl with whom he was in love two years previously. They used to meet i" secret and then one day she told him that she had been betrothed by her parents to a man whom she did not care for, but whom she afterwards married. The next day t earson lunches at the club with an old schoolfellow of his, Hugh Dain, who is in the secret service and is then about to leave on a mission to Germany and Russia., the " lowing morning Pearson reads in the papti 1 hat Valrose has been discovered dead m Arundel Street, the Strand. His body, in evening dress, was noticed about one o ciocm. in the morning, huddled in a doorw.iv. CHAPTER 111. Pearson, pulled himself together pieSently and went down as usual to his. place of business. Fortunately, there was very little to attend to, and he was glad ( .f it, for he felt like a man in a dream. Poor Arthur Valrose! so full of life, possessed of such an agreeable personality, to come to such a sudden end as this. It was a great shock to him. Before lunch he bought an early afternoon paper. Under the bold heading of "The Valrose Mystery," he read some astonishing details which had not been in the morning papers. The back of the left hand showed three tiny traces of some bright violet dye, a fact which prompted the news papers later on to the affair as "The Mystery of the Violet Stains." It had been expected that under these marks small"punctures, pointing to the injection of poison, might have been discovered, but nothing of the sort had been found.

Pearson wondered how the tragic news would affect, Cecile Thurston, who only two nights ago had so strongly expressed her dislike of the young man. If she were the sort of girl he thought her, he imagined she would feel very remorseful Ho felt so restless and disturbed that he hardly knew what to do with himself, how to pass the rest of the day. He longed to talk over the subject with somebody who knew the unfortunate young fellow, and there occurred to him the happy thought of ringing up Thurston at his office. The financier answered the call at cnce. _ , * "You, guess what I have rung up ior. This terrible news about poor Valrose; 1 •was to have lunched with him to-day. has given me a great shock. "Me, too," came back the answer. "He was such a dear, good fellow, so sunny and bright." Pearson spoke a little hesitatingly. , hone you won't think me strange and morbid, but I should awfully like to talk it over with somebody who knew the chap. Is there any chance of finding you disengaged if I ran down to the l! Thurston replied that he, too, 1 would like to talk it over, but unfortunately, lie was full of engagements up to the hour of closing the office. I hen, before ringing off, an idea occurred to him. I hey would be alone that evening, would I earson come round to dinner ? ■ This, of course, after their so recent hospitality, the young man would not hear of. Finally, a compromise was effected. He would go round after dinner and smoke a cigar with Mr. ihui--Bton. , They were all in the dining-room when Pearson got round to Whitehall Court Cecile looked very pretty, but, ho could see on her face traces of tears, and she admitted she had been crying, when they shook hands. "I should not have felt it so much, Mr. Pearson, under ordinary circumstances," she explained. " After all, he was dad's friend really, from the first mother and I never looked upon him as more than a very ordinary acquaintance. "But the fact was, I took a very great dislike to him almost at the be ginning of our acquaintance. Only, the other night when you dined here, I gave utterance to the wish that he should never be.invited again. And now this tragic death! I cannot tell you how wicked, how remorseful I feel about it. What right had I to indulge in such an antipathy to another being?" So she was a kind-hearted girl, as he had believed her to be, subject like all her sex to fits of caprice. He comforted | her with a few kind words. After this little episode, Mr. Thurston rose. " Come into my den and havo <a smoke, we will talk it over there. Cecile i* very sensitive, it would upset her too much if we discussed it here. Women feci these things very much." When they were seated in the snug little sanctum sacred to the master of the house, Pearson at once plunged into the subject that was so absorbing him. " You have seen the latest, about the violet stains ?" he asked. " Yes, I saw that in the afternoon paper." "What do you make out'of it?" was the next question. " Speaking without any evidence at all, and there is not likely to be any worth considering till the inquest, unless something fresh leaks out in the papers, I should say it is a «case of foul play, that he has been murdered by members of some secret society, and that these stains are an intimation to the whole organisation that he has been got rid of." " That is precisely my idea," Pearson agreed, " that it was an intimation to those whom it might concern. It is clearly stated that no punctures were found on' the hands. If there had been one would naturally assume that they were caused by the injection of some virulent

poison." ".Quite .so," assented the elder man. There was a short pause which was broken liy Pearson. " This theory if it is true, causes one to think a good deal. I wonder, Mr. Thurston, if yon know much more about the dead man than I do? I first met him at the house _of the Dutchman, Van Steins, who is one of the foremost experimenters in wireless." Van Steins, eh? I know something about the follow, ho is reputed to be an advanced Communist, or Anarchist, anyway a man of most extreme views." " 1 was not aware of that," said Pearson. "Ho certainly did not intrude them upon me during my short stay with liini I should have said he was entirelv wrapt up in his own scientific studies. Well, v alrose was staying there at the same time, I asked Van Steins once what he knew about him. He answered father curtly, I thought, that he knew nothing, that ho had only met him in business. But the funny thing is that Valrose never spoke of anv business, never seemed to have anv. " It, alwavs struck me from the first that his reticence his previous history, his familv, bis affairs, was odd." " The same thing struck me, too," agreed Thursto i. " When you have talked to a man a few times, he lets out something, where he was born, what his father was. the name of his banker, his solicitor, some details that enable von to . nx him. Poor Valrose did none of these things You asked me if I knew more of >im than you did, well perhaps just a - mure, hut very little." I' ''arson looked his disappointment, but ih-,rs i—• «7 <•** to k..ow It 0 morc might be. m.

(COPYniGHT).

" We mot a few years ago in Rome, we were staving at, the same hotel. Being the only two Englishmen in the place, we naturally chummed up together. I am very fond of young people, being lather young in spirit myself, and he was a bright, cheery young fellow. We spent the best part of a week there and I look a great fancy to him. so much so that 1 asked him to call at Whitehall Ourt whenever he found himself in London. At first lie did not say very much about himself, but one night, it was after a few drinks, I remember, he g*ew a bit confidential. What lie told ire amounted to this that his father and mother werj dead, that he was the only son, had no near relatives, and had inherited enough to keep him in comfort, and enable him to follow his favourite hobby of travelling." "It is anyway more than he ever told me," commented I'eArson when Thurston had finished his narrative.

"As I had asked him to my house, I suppose lie thought it was incumbent on him to give some account of him-eif." At this moment, the grave-looking butler entered the room with an ey._n.ng paper. "The latest, sir. more particulars about poor Mr. Valrose," he said pointing to the page as he handed it to his master.

Thurston read aloud to the astouishniuiit of himself and his listener: "During the day. the police nave discovered that Aithui* Valrose had a father and brother liv.ng, Jus only near relatives. The tither is a medical practitioner in Liverpoo., and his son, Doctor James Valrose, is in partnership with him. They have also discovered the dead man's bankers. It is s*id that the amount standing to his credit is very small."

The two men looked at each other in amazement. Thurston was the first to speak. "The mystery thickens, -does it not? The story about the dead father and the comfortable income was an invention." "Clearly," assented Pearson. "One does not Fike to speak harshly of the dead, but Valrose was certainly not what he pretended to be. It seems my theory that he was a man of mystery was a true one."

"Yes, perhaps, now.l can see that he was," said Thurston thoughtfully, "but I must confess up to the present moment I never formed that impression. My experience of life is longer than yours and I have known so many people who practised an apparently necessary reticence about themselves, a reticence which people who really knew all about them could never understand or explain." Pearson admitted that this might be so, he could not possibly put his experience against that of Thurston's, although, in this particular case, the intuition of the younger man had been superior to the experience of the older onej which Thurston frankly admitted. "Going back to the question of Valrose's death," said the young man after a long pause. "It is rather a strange coincidence that I lunched yesterday with an old schoolfellow of mine named Dain, who is now in the secret service. You would not know him, of course. No, Thurston had never come across Hugh Dain. He knew very few men outside business circles.

"Of course not, it was rather an absurd question to ask. Well, this chap knows a lot about the secret societies of the Continent. I should say, what he doesn t know about Bolsheviks and Anarchists and all that sort of thing, isn't worth knowing. I expect he might be able to throw a bit of light on those violet stains, perhaps confirm our theory. . I wish I could get hold of him." "Don't you know where to find him, if you were only lunching with him yesterday ?" was Thurston's rather natural query.

"That's just what I can't do. Like Valrose, he is a bird of passage, due to the exigencies of his calling. He wired to me yesterday from Richmond to lunch with him. Of course, there was no address on the telegram. And I did not ask him as he told me he was only awaiting instructions from his chief, and might leave England at any moment."

"Then your friend can be of no use to us, and even if you could get hold of him and he agreed with us, after all it is only .a theory," said, the practical Thurston. "If the mystery is to be cleared,- up at all it will be at the inquest. They will certainly call the father and brother and they may be able to throw some light." It seemed to Pearson that the slightlyimpatient tone in which his host spoke seemed to intimate that Thurston felt this mysterious affair had been discussed enough', and that it was profitless to indulge in further conjectures and speculations. And yet Thurston had admitted he .was very fond of Va\rose, had been the greater friend of the two. While quite sympathetic, he did not seem to be so upset over it as the,, younger, man. Well, he was older, more experienced, and less emotional. Besides, he was a man of an eminently business-like and practical mind, he lived in the present and the future, caring little for the past. The'world would go on just the same, in spite of poor Vairose's untimely end. In a few days, his preoccupation in his own absorbing business would drive the incident from his mind, as other incidents of importance at the time had been driven, and relegated to the list of faint and half-forgotten memories. But Pearson, who was of a more brooding and contemplative nature, could not dismiss this tragedy in the same practical way. He was most anxious to probe to the bottom of the mystery. When he went to his office the morning, he found himself as obsessed as ever, and as anxious to find somebody who would discuss it with him, with .something of the same interest that he felt himself. It was evident from his manner that Thurston had said all he wanted

to say on the subject. Suddenly he thought of his old friend Shaddock, once a local policeman in the small country town where Pearson had been born, now one of 'the biggest officials at Scotland Yard.

Pearson had known him well when he was local inspector, and when they met accidentally ,in London, some time after Shaddock's installation at Scotland Yard, they were both pleased to renew their acquaintance. Shaddock took a great interest in wireless, and loved to talk over the subject with another enthusiast like himself, so he paid him many visits at his place of business in the West End. On his side, Pearson had a great leaning to the study of criminology, and ho had spent several pleasant evenings at the detective's comfortable house at Brixton, listening with interest to the stirring stories Shaddock told him of crooks' and criminals, of the under-life of this great city. The man was a very good storyteller and was communicative about things that were past and done with. On matters of the moment involving problems still unsolved, professional etiquette kept him silent as a matter of course. Shaddock then was obviously the man; what a fool he had been not to think of him before! He rang him up and found him disengaged, it was just a little after ten o'clock. "Are you very busy- this morning?" he asked after they had exchanged greetings, "No. only moderately so," came the answer in the well-known detective's genial tones. "Why? Do vou want to see me?" "If yon can spare a few minutes. I want to have a chat with you gver this Yalrose case." ''Ah! Pearson was well acquainted with this little exclamation, utiered on a long drawn note that was expressive of hesitation and doubt.

p an acquaintance, of mine," explained the young man quickly. "TTe passed the last evening but one of his life in my company." The hesitation vanished at once from the detective's voice. "That, is .very interest intr. Yes, come bv all means' Say the usual place at twelve to twelve fifteen. 1 shall expect you." (To be continued daily.)