He wrote the most urgent letters to Alice, warning her against a man whom he firmly believed to be an impostor: finally he flatly refused to give his consent to the marriage.

“Thus a few months went by. The Count had been away in Italy all through the winter and spring, and returned to London for the season, apparently more enamoured with the Reading biscuit-baker’s daughter than ever. Alice Checkfield was then within nine months of her twenty-first birthday, and determined to marry the Count. She openly defied her guardian.

“‘Nothing,’ she wrote to him, ‘would ever induce me to marry Hubert.’

“I suppose it was this which finally induced Mr Turnour to give up all opposition to the marriage. Seeing that his brother’s chances were absolutely nil, and that Alice was within nine months of her majority he no doubt thought all further argument useless, and with great reluctance finally gave his consent.

“The marriage, owing to the difference of religion, was to be performed before a registrar, and was finally fixed to take place on 22nd October 1903, which was just a week after Alice’s twenty-first birthday.

“Of course the question of Alice’s fortune immediately cropped up: she desired her money in cash, as her husband was taking her over to live in Italy where she desired to make all further investments. She, therefore, asked Mr Turnour to dispose of her freehold property for her. There again Mr Turnour hesitated, and argued, but once he had given his consent to the marriage, all opposition was useless, more especially as Mrs Brackenbury’s solicitors had drawn up a very satisfactory marriage settlement, which the Count himself had suggested, by which Alice was to retain sole use and control of her own private fortune.

“The marriage was then duly performed before a registrar on that 22nd of October, and Alice Checkfield could henceforth style herself Countess Collini. The young couple were to start for Italy almost directly but meant to spend a day or two at Dover quietly together. There were, however, one or two tiresome legal formalities to go through. Mr Turnour had, by Alice’s desire, handed over the sum of £80,000 in notes to her solicitor, Mr R. W. Stanford. Mr Stanford had gone down to Reading two days before the marriage, had received the money from Mr Turnour, and then called upon the new Countess, and formally handed her over her fortune in Bank of England notes.

“Then it was necessary, in view of immediate and future arrangements, to change the English money into foreign, which the Count and his young wife did themselves that afternoon.

“At 5 o’clock p.m. they started for Dover, accompanied by Mrs Brackenbury, who desired to see the last of her young friend, prior to the latter’s departure for abroad. The Count had engaged a magnificent suite of rooms at the Lord Warden Hotel, and thither the party proceeded.

“So far, you see,” added the man in the corner, “the story is of the utmost simplicity. You might even call it commonplace. A foreign count, an ambitious matchmaker, and a credulous girl; these form the ingredients of many a domestic drama that culminates at the police courts. But at this point this particular drama becomes more complicated, and, if you remember, ends in one of the strangest mysteries that has ever baffled the detective forces on both sides of the Channel.”

3

The man in the corner paused in his narrative. I could see that he was coming to the palpitating part of the story, for his fingers fidgeted incessantly with that bit of string.

“Hubert Turnour, as you may imagine,” he continued after a while, “did not take his final discomfiture very quietly. He was a very violent-tempered young man, and it was certainly enough to make anyone cross. According to Mrs Brackenbury’s servants he used most threatening language in reference to Count Collini; and on one occasion was with difficulty prevented from personally assaulting the Count in the hall of Mrs Brackenbury’s pretty Kensington house.

“Count Collini finally had to threaten Hubert Turnour with the police court: this seemed to have calmed the young man’s nerves somewhat, for he kept quite quiet after that, ceased to call on Mrs Brackenbury, and subsequently sent the future Countess a wedding present.

“When the Count and Countess Collini, accompanied by Mrs Brackenbury, arrived at the Lord Warden, Alice found a letter awaiting her there. It was from Hubert Turnour. In it he begged her forgiveness for all the annoyance he had caused her, hoped that she would always look upon him as a friend, and finally expressed a strong desire to see her once more before her departure for abroad, saying that he would be in Dover either this same day or the next, and would give himself the pleasure of calling upon her and her husband.

“Effectively at about eight o’clock, when the wedding party was just sitting down to dinner, Hubert Turnour was announced. Everyone was most cordial to him, agreeing to let bygones be bygones: the Count, especially, was most genial and pleasant towards his former rival, and insisted upon his staying and dining with them.

“Later on in the evening, Hubert Turnour took an affectionate leave of the ladies, Count Collini offering to walk back with him to the Grand Hotel, where he was staying. The two men went out together, and – well! you know the rest! – for that was the last the young Countess Collini ever saw of her husband. He disappeared as effectively, as completely, as if the sea had swallowed him up.

“‘And so it had,’ say the public,” continued the man in the corner, after a slight pause, “that delicious, short-sighted, irresponsible public is wondering, to this day, why Hubert Turnour was not hung for the murder of that Count Collini.”

“Well! and why wasn’t he?” I retorted.

“For the very simple reason,” he replied, “that in this country you cannot hang a man for murder unless there is proof positive that a murder has been committed. Now, there was absolutely no proof that the Count was murdered at all. What happened was this: the Countess Collini and Mrs Brackenbury became anxious as time went on and the Count did not return. One o’clock, then two in the morning, and their anxiety became positive alarm.