The Bravo of London by Ernest Bramah

Author:Ernest Bramah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008297442
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

A MINE IS COUNTERMINED

MR CARRADOS’S appearance at ‘Orchard Close’ had been in the nature of a weekend visit and on the Monday following Miss Tilehurst’s eventful Saturday afternoon tea-party he returned to his own house in Richmond.

So far as he was concerned the circumstances of what might be called the Geoffrey Tilehurst case had progressed little beyond the elementary coincidental. Geoffrey had gone out for a ride and returned suffering from complicated loss of memory. At the same time there had appeared on the scene the soi-disant Dr Olivant. Dr Olivant was either a medical man curiously in touch with Julian Joolby—that bizarre figure of exotic reputation—or else an impostor masquerading as a doctor. It would be easy to establish by the Medical Directory whether there was, so far as the current issue went, anyone of that name with an address in Harley Street but the evidence would not be quite finally conclusive. Dr Olivant had, in fact, been faced with the alternative of personating a specialist who could be referred to at any time or of inventing a fictitious one who might be less convincing but who would be more elusive. That he had returned to a sequestered house in an outer London suburb (as Nora had been able to establish) meant little or nothing yet. That house had still to be investigated.

So far it was difficult to suggest what had necessitated Olivant’s function in Tapsfield. The result of his framed-up appearance at Brookcroft had only been to put about what any genuine doctor could have established. The measure of disguise suggested that he had been there before or intended to go again or else that there was a chance of encountering someone while on that lay who might recognise him in his fictitious character. Certainly he had gained a first-hand knowledge of the house and grounds; was Mr Carrados rating the incidentals too high and this nothing but the prelude to a commonplace burglary?

A coincidence is the intersection of two lines, neither of which need possess in itself the least significance. When three lines meet at the self-same point of time or space the laws of chance suggest the probability of some conformable agency. ‘I suppose this is getting frightfully complicated?’ once remarked an interested outsider for whom Mr Carrados was investigating a case, when one baffling circumstance after another was brought to light as the quest proceeded. ‘Not at all,’ was his reply. ‘On the contrary it is becoming transparently simple.’ One or two lines might establish nothing but when a dozen or a score could be ‘extended’ it was inevitable that they must disclose a centre of origin.

The episode of Nipper’s despatch was just one of these detached pointers. In itself it went for little but its line of direction might lead to something and in any case it was the tertium quid suggesting that the other incidents were unlikely to be fortuitous.

Nipper had been handled by someone who just before had been associated with chloroform.

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