“He talks as if we were centipedes,” murmured Brampton.
Sir Gregory motioned him to silence, and they remained obediently in the doorway while the detective and Higgs ran over the house, opening all the doors and glancing into the rooms to see if there were anyone in them. Whatever secret might lurk beneath that roof, for the moment at least there was no visible human occupant to divulge it; and, if he was to arrive at any answer to the problem of what had taken place on Monday night after the arrival of the ladies, it was clear to Gimblet that he must do so with no help other than the dumb aid he might receive from the inanimate objects still within the walls, or even from the very walls themselves.
As soon as he had completed the first hurried general survey, the detective began a systematic examination of the house, starting with the hall and passage of the ground floor. The other men had to move away from the steps while he was here, as their figures crowding in the open doorway blocked the light, and he wanted all he could get. There was no electric light. In Scholefield Avenue, Brampton told Sir Gregory, all the houses were dependent on gas for their illumination. Gimblet knelt down and examined the carpet of the hall on his hands and knees. He took a small magnifying lens from his pocket, and applied it to certain spots, which he lingered over longer than the rest of the floor; at the foot of the stairs he picked up a small object from under the corner of the mat; he held it to the light for a moment between finger and thumb, and then put it carefully away in a little boxlike a pill-box, which he also produced from his pocket. Then he stood up, and examined the furniture with the same patient deliberation. Presently he spoke to the clerk, who was standing before the door, a little apart from the others.
“Have you got that inventory?” he asked. “Just read out the contents of the hall.”
Tremmels came up the steps and opened the book he carried.
“Two oak chairs, one oak table, one mirror, one mat,” he read. “One umbrella stand; two chairs on landing, eight engravings in frames.”
“Wait a bit,” interposed the detective, “we haven’t got there yet.”
He went to the door, and called to Sir Gregory and Brampton.
“I’ve finished the hall,” he said. “If you want to come in, you can, as long as you stay behind me and don’t bother me with talking.”
Then he turned back to his search, and began to subject each tread of the staircase to the same minute examination as the hall had received. From time to time he added another tiny object to the one he had already placed in the pill-box; four or five were deposited there before they reached the first floor.
In this way the party ascended, a step at a time, till Brampton’s curiosity began to succumb to the boredom of such ineffably slow, crawling, snail-like progress.
“I think I’ll not inflict my presence any longer, Mr. Gimblet,” said he, “it is time I dressed for dinner, or my wife will have to wait for me.”
Receiving no answer from Gimblet, who was now absolutely absorbed in his work, he whispered to Sir Gregory that he would come back after dinner, and retired from the scene, escorted to the door by Higgs,who let him out and shut it behind him before he returned to his post at the foot of the staircase.
At the top of the house Gimblet straightened himself and turned to Sir Gregory and the clerk, who were on the stairs a few steps below him.
Sir Gregory, who was nearly choking with pent-up questions, seized the opportunity.
“Have you found anything?” he cried, and Tremmels, though he said nothing, was a living echo of the words, as he strained forward behind Sir Gregory to catch the reply.
“Nothing definite as yet,” said Gimblet, “but I may say it appears to me probable that, if Mrs. Vanderstein did come here on Monday night, she did not stay in the house long. I should say she went no higher, at all events, than the drawing-room floor.” And he proceeded to the examination of the rooms working his way downwards.
The bedrooms yielded no harvest; they wore the dismal look of unoccupied rooms and had apparently not been entered since, having been swept and cleaned with great thoroughness, they had been left ready for the use of the tenant. None of the beds were made, there was no water in the jugs, there was absolutely no indication of so much as one of them having been used since the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Mill. Gimblet did not spend so long over them as he had over the staircase, but it was past eight o’clock when at length he came out of the last one and descended to the first floor.
“I can always try upstairs again if there is nothing conclusive here,” he said to Sir Gregory, as they went down.
With his hand on the knob of the drawing-room door he paused an instant, looking with more sympathy than he had lately shown at the anxious face of the oldsoldier. A feeling crept over him that it would not be good for Sir Gregory to enter this room; it was a vague impalpable feeling, which he could not explain; and in a moment it had passed. He opened the door and went into the drawing-room, leaving the baronet, in obedience to instructions received, faithfully standing on the landing, the white face of the clerk showing over his shoulder, framed in the square of the doorway against the dusky shadows beyond.
Inthe preliminary hasty search over the house, it had fallen to Higgs to reach the first floor earlier than his master. Gimblet had left it to him to examine, while he himself hurried to the upper stories; so that he now entered the drawing-room for the first time.
He stood for a moment turning his head to right and left, taking in the principal features of the apartment with quick, comprehensive glances. Then, of a sudden, the whole figure of the man stiffened; and it was hard to recognise Mr. Gimblet, the dilettante, the frequenter of curiosity shops, the lounger in picture galleries, in the tense, motionless form of Gimblet, the detective, at this moment. He stood, as a pointer stands when it catches the wind of game, erect and stiff, in an attitude of interrupted movement, one knee still bent for the step he had been in the very act of making; his whole form absolutely still, save for a series of short, successive intakings of the breath, as, with head thrown back and his eyes shining with the keen, well-balanced excitement of the hunter, he sniffed the air.
What was it he smelt? Something so faint, so indefinite, that after the first arresting instant he had lost it altogether; and with it the knowledge of what it was—which in that one second had seemed almost his—slipped away and was gone, nor could his moststrenuous effort recall it. Oh, for one more whiff of that evasive, troubling odour! But sniff as he might he could no longer detect anything, and slowly his attitude relaxed, and he brought other senses to bear upon the scene.
The room was divided, by its shape, into a front and back drawing-room, as is commonly the case in London houses; but the two had been thrown into one and the door led into the narrower back part, so that the light from the window overlooking the garden, which was obscured by trees, while it still illumined all that lay on Gimblet’s right, hardly penetrated into the front and larger portion of the place. There the closed shutters of the three windows leading to the balcony prevented the light from finding an entrance, and it was very dark. The detective lit the gas and looked around him.
It was a cheerful, pleasant room; not overcrowded with furniture, and showing taste and judgment in its arrangement and decoration, though there was nothing very original about it. On the walls, which were covered with some light coloured paper, were hung three or four good modern pictures; the mantelpiece was an eighteenth century one, and on either side of it was placed a Chippendale cabinet, with shelves for china, of which some good pieces could be seen through the small panes of the glass doors. At the opposite end of the room was a long, low bookcase and, except for a large writing bureau, the rest of the furniture consisted of sofas and chairs, with one or two small tables. It was a room at once dainty and desolate, gay and forlorn. The empty flower vases which stood on the tables, the absence of stray books, work, papers, or other signs of human occupancy, gave it a look of discomfort and dreariness; but it was plain, from the bright chintzes and curtains and the soft luxury of thecarpet, that it only needed the presence of its owners to assume a cheerful and lively aspect.
Gimblet began his examination in his usual methodical manner, working his way over the floor on hands and knees, gazing at the carpet through his lens at any place where there appeared a doubtful mark or change in the appearance of its surface from that of the surrounding parts. As he came to chairs or tables he moved them to one side, and continued his quest on the spot where they had stood. There were two small Chesterfield sofas, one of which jutted out at right angles to the fire-place before the right hand window of the front part of the room, the other facing the door with its back against the wall.
When the detective came to the sofa by the fireplace, he pushed it to one side as he had pushed each piece of furniture in its turn, and as his eyes fell on the floor beneath it a low whistle escaped him: there was a patch of reddish stain on the green Wilton carpet, about three inches in diameter, and a smaller spot or two near by of the same rusty colour.
With his head on one side, and his lips still pursed as if to emit a whistling sound, but with no audible noise issuing from them, Gimblet gazed at the stain on the carpet; and the longer he looked the sterner his face became; the whistling expression vanished, and he opened and shut his mouth with a grinding sound as the teeth met. He rubbed his finger over the marks, and the patch seemed to crumble away at his touch, till a hole appeared in the carpet and the white boards of the flooring were exposed to view. He applied his lens to the edges of the hole and plucked at the frayed wool with his fingers. A small piece that he pulled off he bestowed in one of the little specimen boxes with which he had provided himself.
Then he replaced the sofa in its original position, andcontinued his examination of the floor. Under the fender he discovered another of the little objects he had picked up on the stairs, but nothing else did he find of any interest till he began to turn his attention to the furniture. Almost the first thing he looked at was the sofa that concealed the hole in the carpet; he was drawn back to it with an irresistible attraction. A careful scrutiny, however, did not reveal much more than the fact that the chintz cover was rather tumbled. Gimblet dug his hand down at the back of the seat, and pulled out the part of it which was tucked down. As he did so he felt a little lump under his fingers, and holding it up saw that it was yet another tiny shining thing for his pill-box collection, and as he looked at the piece of chintz he had pulled out he perceived several more of the same kind.
They glittered in the gaslight like little diamonds, but had evidently come off the spangled tulle of a lady’s dress. Gimblet remembered that Mrs. Vanderstein’s dress had been described by her maid as “diamantée”; but then it was possible, indeed probable, that Mrs. Mill, or her friends, possessed gowns of similar material. Gimblet stooped again, and tugged up the rest of the sofa covering from the depths behind the cushions. This time he pulled it all up; the whole covering lay spread before him in an untidy, unwieldy mass, and from the end, as he plucked it out, there shot two small objects, which fell to the floor at his feet. In a moment he had lifted them from the ground and stood staring at them: they were a piece of crushed and folded paper and a minute powder puff.
The detective unfolded the paper, and held it to the light; it was a sheet of thick white notepaper, and on it was embossed a crown and device in heavy gold lettering. Below these was written in a fine, slanting foreign hand
“Most adored, I count the hours, the minutes, till I shall hear for the first time the sound of your voice. Heaven be praised that I have not long to wait, and you, whom heaven has sent to me, accept the thanks of my grateful heart. I send this by Madame Q.”
“Most adored, I count the hours, the minutes, till I shall hear for the first time the sound of your voice. Heaven be praised that I have not long to wait, and you, whom heaven has sent to me, accept the thanks of my grateful heart. I send this by Madame Q.”
The signature that followed made Gimblet open his eyes. “Felipe,” in conjunction with the crown at the head of the paper and the foreign character of the penmanship, could refer to one person only. Gimblet was well aware that the Prince of Targona was honouring London with his presence. He glanced carefully round the room to make sure no one was near, folded the paper carefully, and placed it in his notebook. Then he turned his attention to the powder puff.
It was an ordinary little powder puff of pink silk and white down—very small, very dainty, if very commonplace. Gimblet turned it over and over, but could see nothing about it which stamped it as different from other powder puffs. Not that it was a curio in the peculiarities of which he was very well versed; he could not help realising that in the matter of powder puffs his education had been neglected. A French detective, he told himself sadly, would have read a whole history in this soft toy. He brushed it across the back of his hand, but it left no mark; he shook it into the palm, but no powder fell from it. It was plain to him that, whatever uses it might have served in the white hands that had formerly clasped it, it was not of any use at all in his, and in his irritation he was inclined to hurl it from him. But his methodical habits prevailed and he felt in his coat for a box to contain it. And suddenly, with what seemed like an involuntary movement, he lifted the hand that held the powder puff, and held it to his nose.
“Ah,” he sighed, and it was a sigh of deep content.Then he stored away the precious fluffy thing, and put it in his pocket. He finished the tour of the furniture without further discovery; at the end of it he requested Tremmels to read out the contents of the room from the inventory, as he had done at the conclusion of his visits to each room or landing, checking off each object as the clerk read out its description.
“I am in hopes,” he said to Sir Gregory, “of finding something not mentioned in the inventory, which we might take to be the property of Mr. West. But so far there is nothing that can possibly be his, not so much as a toothbrush. He certainly seems to be a leader of the simple life.” Then he turned to Tremmels again. “Is there no mention of the chair covers?” he asked. But the young man only stared at him open-mouthed, and he seized the book from his hand.
“Let me see,” he murmured, running a finger down the page. “Here we are. ‘Two Chesterfield sofas and five arm-chairs with loose chintz covers.’ Might mean anything. Look here!” he turned to the clerk again, “you went over the inventory. What do you remember about that sofa?” He pointed to the one opposite the door, which, unlike the other sofas and chairs, had no chintz covering. Tremmels was flurried by the detective’s sharp tone.
“I—I don’t remember anything at all,” he stammered.
“What, don’t you remember that it had a cover?”
Gimblet’s second question was still more sharply spoken. The clerk shot a glance at him in which suspicion, timidity, and bewilderment were oddly mixed, and he answered stubbornly, repeating his former words as if he imagined a trap were being laid for him.
“I don’t remember anything about it.” His pale face wore an expression more wooden than ever.
The detective turned from him with an impatient movement, and stood looking down at the sofa with a frown on his face. It was exactly the same as the one in the front part of the room, but, instead of a cover of pink and white chintz, it displayed only the upholstery with which it had been originally covered by the makers: a kind of white tapestry with grey flowers and flecks of red, in general colouring not unlike the chintz on the other sofas and chairs, but tightly fitting and leaving exposed the bare legs of brown varnished wood, which were of a particularly ugly shape.
“Come,” said Gimblet at last, “I must go downstairs.”
“What did you find?” Sir Gregory asked him anxiously as they went down, followed at a distance by the clerk, “what did you find by the other sofa?”
The detective hesitated an instant.
“Sir Gregory,” he said, “there is something here, some story to be read, if I can read it. The walls are trying to speak to me, I believe, if I could only listen rightly. There are things very plain that I can see, but not enough of them, and there is something that I don’t understand. But what I have seen points to sinister things, and I must warn you that I don’t like the look of them.”
“Mr. Gimblet!” cried Sir Gregory. “What do you mean?”
“Yes, Sir Gregory,” said the detective. “I am very much more—uneasy about your friend than I have yet been. I fear that, when I am in a position to give you news of her, it may be very bad. You may have to stand a shock. Don’t you think it would be best if you went home and waited till I came to you?”
But, though on Sir Gregory’s face there crept a look of terrified grief, he would not go.
The dining-room told nothing, Gimblet’s researchesthere were vain, and he soon adjourned to the room behind it, which seemed to be a library or smoking-room. The shutters, as they had seen from the garden, were fastened, but by this time the last of the long summer twilight was fading and the night promised to fall dark and windy. Gimblet’s first act was to light the gas.
It was a small room, this back room, where, no doubt, Mr. Mill, when he was at home, was accustomed to smoke his pipe and attend to his correspondence. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves; one side was taken up by the window; and on the fourth, opposite the door and above the fire-place, were hung a quantity of mezzotints framed in sombre black. They surrounded a small oil painting that filled the place of honour immediately over the chimney piece, and which caught Gimblet’s interested eye directly. It appeared to be an example of the early Dutch school, and he was seized with the desire to examine it more closely. The fire-place below it was lined with old blue and white tiles, and at these too he cast an envious glance, but the feelings of the collector were subservient just now to those of the detective, and he turned to the more everyday furniture of the room.
There was not very much in it: a couple of arm-chairs stood one on each side of the fire-place, and before the window was a large writing table with inkstand and blotting book disposed upon it, together with a few odds and ends. Even with these the table looked empty; one missed the papers that by rights should have been scattered there. As Gimblet stood beside it, he was conscious of the cold draught that whistled by his ear, and it was then that he first looked toward the window.
“It must be open,” he said to himself, and then, as he looked closer: “By Jingo!”
It was a sash window of the old-fashioned kind, with a dozen or so wood-framed panes to each half of it, and the usual metal catch holding the top and bottom in position together when the window was shut. It was shut now, and the cold air that pervaded the place entered through cracks in the shutters, and after that encountered no further obstacle, for the top middle pane of the lower sash was destitute of glass.
Gimblet pushed away the table and examined the empty framework carefully, touching the edges with an incautious finger, which, however, he withdrew rather hurriedly and transferred to his mouth. He looked at the floor; and then, following his usual custom, knelt down on it, lens in hand. The gaslight was obscured by the shadow of the writing table, and he had recourse to the aid of a pocket electric torch. He was satisfied with what he saw, apparently, for he soon rose and turned to the window again. He unfastened the catch, and placing one hand on the framework sought to raise the sash, but it stuck stiffly, and both hands and a good deal of strength had to be exerted before he was able to lift it.
Then he flashed the light of the little torch on the window sill, and took from it a splinter of broken glass. After this he pursued his inspection of the room and its contents. There was, as has been said, little enough in it except books, but everything there was came in for the usual close scrutiny; the waste paper basket was not forgotten, nor were the empty grate and coal scuttle. In the end, after comparing the things mentioned in the inventory with those in the room, Gimblet shut the door into the hall, and ran his lens hastily over its woodwork. Apparently he saw on it more than he expected, for he returned more slowly to the task and spent several minutes examining somesmall spots of dirt, which were visible to the naked eye on the white paint.
At last he had done, and there only remained the basement to be investigated. This took some time, and the results disappointed him, with the exception of a cupboard under the stairs where he discovered a housemaid’s dustpan full of pieces of broken glass. He seized on it with eager excitement, and examined the surface of the tin very carefully with his lens; only to put it down again with an irritated clicking of the tongue.
Sir Gregory watched these proceedings in a stricken silence; his hopes had turned to lead at the words Gimblet had addressed to him on leaving the drawing room; as each successive door was thrown open he felt a tightening of the heart and a sick fear of being confronted with some terrible sight. Now he would almost have preferred that the detective should find no clue, so much he dreaded the solution to which he instinctively felt that these small discoveries were irresistibly leading.
The face of the clerk, who equally shared the rôle of silent onlooker, wore an expression of excited interest, except when he was addressed, when it relaxed into its usual wooden apathy. At other times he peered over Sir Gregory’s shoulder with feverish, straining eyes, evidently possessed by all the passion for sensation in any form which is common to his class; though, that he was as much in the dark as Sir Gregory, with regard to the conclusions suggested to the detective by the various objects he examined, was clear from the look of something like elation with which he watched the minute attention bestowed upon the unprofitable dustpan.
Gimblet returned this article to its place, and drew out, one by one, the other things in the cupboard:a water-can, a bucket, a scrubbing brush, and other odds and ends. The last thing he brought to light was a crumpled ball of newspaper, stuffed away at the back of some brooms and pails. This did not look interesting; and, while Sir Gregory saw with relief the handling of anything which gave him breathing space, Tremmel’s face fell.
Gimblet, however, was too methodical to ignore anything, even so unpromising an object as an old newspaper. He opened it out on the floor of the passage, unrolling the crumpled pages and spreading them flat on the boards. In the middle of the ball was a small quantity of dust, or rather what looked more like earth. Gimblet scooped it up in one hand and let it fall through his fingers into the palm of the other; it was black and fine, but gritty to the touch. With a puzzled expression he stowed some of it away in one of his little boxes, and put the rest in his pocket, wrapped in a piece of the newspaper. Then he disappeared into the coal cellar, which was the only place left that he had not visited. He found nothing there.
By this time it was nearly ten o’clock.
They went back into the hall and Gimblet opened the door of the little library.
“Sit down in here, Sir Gregory,” he said, “you have been on your feet for hours”—and indeed the baronet was dropping with fatigue—. “I am just going out into the garden, and you may as well rest a little. As for you,” he added to Tremmels, “you can go home if you like. I’ve done with the inventory.”
“There’s the key,” the clerk reminded him, “and, if you don’t mind my sitting down here in the hall for a few minutes before I go ... I’m feeling a bit tired myself, sir.”
He certainly looked it, but then he had looked so illfrom the beginning that the effect of these hours of standing about and the lack of food, which told heavily upon Sir Gregory, hardly added to the miserable aspect of Tremmels, whatever he might be feeling.
Gimblet told him to sit down, and leaving them went out into the garden. He walked round to the back, and along the path which led to the toolshed. Going into it he hunted, by the light of his torch, among the implements that leant against the wall; but what he sought was not there, and he retreated, unsatisfied. As he returned slowly to the house, he moved his lamp from side to side, so that the light shone on the flower beds between which he walked and not on the path beneath his feet; it was as if he hoped to find what he wanted among the flowers.
Turning the corner of the wall, he saw a dark figure in the act of shutting the further gate; it came towards him and he recognised the artist, Brampton.
“You work late, Mr. Gimblet,” he said, as he met the detective. “Any discoveries?”
Gimblet did not reply; he was looking at his watch.
“Itislate,” he said after a pause; and then half to himself, “late! too late, and too dark,” he murmured; and again, “perhaps it is just as well. It will do Sir Gregory no harm to wait till to-morrow for bad news.”
“What,” said Brampton, “you have bad news for him?”
“I fear there will be bad news—to-morrow,” said Gimblet.
The night was very dark, for clouds had gathered afresh, and the wind was getting up again. The leaves of the trees in the street rustled loudly as if in protest; from a distance the tinkle of a barrel organ sounded fitfully in the intervals between gusts of wind.
“It’s as cold as winter,” grumbled Brampton.
Gimblet was staring up at the front of the house, and when he spoke Brampton was struck by the change in his voice.
“Of course!” he cried, “the crumpled newspaper! What have I been about? Now, ah, now I know! Mr. Brampton,” he said, moving, so that he faced the other in the darkness, “there is something very terrible here; something to be done that is quite unfit for Sir Gregory to take part in. I am only too well convinced that a crime has been committed in this house, a gruesome and dastardly crime, which but for the merest accident might not have been discovered for weeks. No ordinary criminals have been at work here; we have to deal with some scoundrel so cold-blooded and resourceful, so prudent, and so full of forethought and vile cunning, as I do not think I have ever encountered before. What is your nerve like, Mr. Brampton? I see you are muscularly a strong man, and I shall have need of help. What do you say? Can you give me the assistance I want, or shall I go and find the policeman on this beat?”
The solemn words of the detective, and still more acutely the grave and urgent note in his voice, thrilled the imagination of the artist, and awoke in him a horrified perception of the seriousness of the situation, which hitherto he had looked on with an eye, half amused, half derisive, as we may contemplate a game of Red Indians played by some earnest and dramatic children. The spirit of adventure cried aloud in him, and overcame the shrinking of a refined nature from contact with the horrible.
“You can rely on me,” was all he said, and thereupon Gimblet ran up to the door, calling to Higgs to open it.
The other men were sitting as he had left them, SirGregory in an arm-chair by the library fire-place, and the clerk in the hall; both drooped in attitudes of extreme weariness.
“Will you please stay where you are a little longer?” Gimblet said to Sir Gregory. “I am going upstairs with Mr. Brampton, to see if he can tell me one or two things I want to know about the ordinary disposal of the furniture; and after that we will go home, unless you will be guided by me and do so at once. No? Well, we shall not be long. We shall not want you,” he added to Tremmels, who was struggling stiffly to rise from his seat.
At Gimblet’s words he sank back again, and leant his head weakly against the wall.
With a sign to Higgs and Brampton to follow him, Gimblet went upstairs.
The gas was still burning in the drawing-room, and the door stood open as he had left it. Gimblet paused on the threshold and drew Brampton’s attention to the sofa opposite.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “whether that sofa had a cover like the other before Mr. Mill went away?”
Brampton looked at it doubtfully.
“I can’t say I do really,” he said. “I ought to know, of course, but I don’t feel quite sure. You see, the colouring is so much like that of the chintzes. One might never notice it. Still, the legs are very ugly; I think I should have observed them. And it is not like Mrs. Mill to leave an ugly thing so plainly displayed. But on the whole I’m not certain about it.”
“Don’t you feel,” said Gimblet, “that there is something terrible, something fearful, in those shining brown pieces of wood? Their ugliness should be decently covered. Unfortunately, I am afraid I know where to look for their covering.”
He led the way to one of the French windows of thefront room and threw it open. Unfastening the shutters, which still barred the way, he flung them back and went out on to the balcony, followed by the two men.
It was, as he had seen from the ground, an unusually broad one, and extended across the whole width of the house. A low wall about nine inches high ran round its edge, supporting a balustrade of stone. A large green painted wooden box, or trough, about ten feet long by a yard wide, and as tall as the balustrade, was planted with flowers, which did not appear to be in a very flourishing condition.
By the light of the street lamp they could see that the geraniums’ petals were turning black, and that the marguerites hung their heads on stalks from which all vigour seemed to have departed. Within the balustrade the black shadows lay like a pool of ink, and the floor of the balcony was quite invisible, except where the open window through which they had stepped let out a narrow stream of light.
“Open the shutters of the other windows,” Gimblet said to Higgs.
When this was done they could see better. To Brampton’s amazement Gimblet’s next act was to grasp one of the geraniums and pull it up by the roots; a daisy followed, and in a few minutes he had torn up every plant. Brampton, as he stood watching, noticed how easily they came up.
Then Gimblet called to him.
“Now, Mr. Brampton, if you and Higgs will take that end of the box, I can manage this one. I want to tilt it up a little.”
It needed all the efforts of the three men to move the box, full to the brim of soil as it was. Panting and heaving, they shifted it first away from the balustrade, and tilted it towards the wall of the house. The earthpoured out as the angle increased, and in a minute the floor was deep in it.
“Gently, gently,” said Gimblet. “Look, what is that?” and he pointed to something white, which was poking out through the earth in the box.
His electric torch flashed upon it, and the others, balancing the tilted flower box on its edge, peered in, and saw that it was a bit of pink and white chintz.
It seemed a long while before Gimblet spoke. He stood as if turned to stone, and Brampton felt an indefinable horror stealing over him, a dread of he knew not what, but which he seemed to be conscious was in some way a reflection or telepathic transference of the other’s unspoken thoughts.
At last with an obvious effort Gimblet straightened himself.
“We must tilt out a little more earth,” he said in a low tone, “very carefully now.”
Very cautiously they raised the side of the stand again, and a rush of soil poured over the edge; the little patch of white they had seen in a corner became a large piece, and almostly instantly it was plain to them all that the greater part of the box was full of it. Leaving the others to manage the box, which was now easily steadied, Gimblet ran round and knelt at its side, scooping out handfuls of garden mould and disclosing what looked like a very long, bulky bundle of flowered chintz.
Suddenly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, Brampton broke the silence.
“My God!” he said, pointing, and staring with horrified eyes.
From the corner of the wrapper a hand protruded, half covered with earth; it was a white and shapely hand, the hand of a woman.
“Do you see it?” whispered Brampton again, and leant shaking against the wall.
“It’s a hand,” said Higgs, troubled but stolid.
Gimblet was very pale, and he took a quick breath as he braced himself to lift the enveloping chintz. The lighted windows cast three streaks of light out into the darkness and threw grotesque distorted shadows of the men upon the coping of the balcony. A sudden gust of wind made the trees in the street moan and shiver as though they had been swept by the passing broom of some night-riding hag; all around them the darkness gathered close like a wicked thing that would if it dared swallow up the tiny protecting lights men burn in self-defence.
Gimblet felt himself struggling against some such malevolent influences; half conscious fears, some sensation of evil presences in the air, gibing, mocking, clustering round to gloat over the results of earthly villainy, seemed to paralyse him; and he had to call up his reserves of will power before, after a moment’s hesitation, he bent forward and unrolled the chintz covering.
Inside it was the body of a young woman. Long black hair lay in masses on her shoulders and streamed over the single white garment she wore. The face was so terribly disfigured as to be quite unrecognisable.
With a shudder Gimblet drew the wrapping over her again.
“Vitriol,” he muttered, and became aware, as he spoke, of some one behind him in the opening of the window.
Before he could turn, a heartstricken cry sounded in his ear, and he was not in time to catch Sir Gregory, who staggered back in the embrasure, and from there slid fainting to the ground. As Gimblet sprang to his help, he had a fleeting vision of a ghastly face and acrouching figure in the back of the drawing-room: it was the face of Tremmels, the clerk, but so wild and white with terror, so distorted by the shock of what he had seen as to be almost like that of another man.
Suspecting from the noise made by the opening shutters, followed by the sudden and prolonged silence, that something was happening on the floor above them, and unable any longer to bear the suspense and curiosity accentuated by waiting and inactivity, Sir Gregory, followed by the clerk, had crept upstairs into the drawing-room without attracting the attention of Gimblet or his assistants, and the horror of what they had seen was too much for both of them.
As with the help of Higgs Gimblet lifted the inanimate form of the baronet from where it had dropped, a sudden loud noise from the street below made them nearly let fall their burden; and it was a second before any of them realised that the sound was only the first jangling bar of a popular music hall tune. The barrel organ they had heard a quarter of an hour earlier had wandered into Scholefield Avenue, and, attracted without doubt by the lighted windows, had thought fit to draw up before No. 13 and there begin its headlong plunge into melody. Half the rollicking air it was playing had been thumped forth, with all the usual din of banging bass and clanking scales, before any one of those who stood above it in the grim presence of death sufficiently recovered his presence of mind to be able to stop it.
Telling the clerk curtly not to be an ass, but to pull himself together and follow them, Gimblet, with the help of Higgs and Brampton, carried Sir Gregory out of the fatal house and into No. 15, the home of the artist. Here they gave him over to the care of Mrs. Brampton, a capable, bustling woman with common-sense written all over her, to whom her husbandexplained in guarded terms as much of the situation as was inevitable.
“There has been a terrible tragedy next door, my dear,” he told her. “This poor gentleman has fainted on learning of the death of his friend,” and the kind-hearted, sensible creature took charge of Sir Gregory without wasting precious time in questions.
At his request, Brampton conducted the detective to the telephone, while Higgs was sent out to look for a policeman.
“Is that Scotland Yard?” Gimblet was asking, as the artist shut the door on him and returned to his wife.
By the time the detective had finished telephoning, Higgs was back with two policemen, the one he had found in the next street having whistled for a comrade. Gimblet went with them to No. 13, and together they entered the silent drawing-room, where the gas was still flaring and the windows stood open to the night like three black doors to a villainous and tragic world. With the help of the new-comers the body of the dead woman was lifted out of the flower box and carried into the house, where, still enveloped in the chintz cover, it was gently deposited on one of the sofas. For a moment they turned back the wrapping, while Gimblet searched hastily for some clue that should have inadvertently been enclosed in it, but there was nothing besides the body and the one garment in which it was clad.
“See,” he murmured in a low voice, pointing to an oblong incision at the edge of the chemise, “they have cut away the linen there. No doubt the name, or initial, was embroidered in that place. What fine linen it is; and this lace trimming is as delicate as a cobweb! If we had nothing else to go by, this would show that the murdered woman was rich and luxury-loving.Most women, if they had such lace, would keep it to adorn their dresses with.”
He drew the covering over her again; and, going back to the balcony, stood looking at the half-empty box and the mound of earth that was heaped upon the floor.
“They must have had a job to clear away the surplus soil,” he remarked to Higgs, who had followed him. “I suspect it was carried down to the garden, bucketful by bucketful, and the last handful or two were swept up into a newspaper. I found some trace of it in a cupboard downstairs.”
Leaving the police to guard the house, they went in search of Sir Gregory, and found him so far recovered as to be sent home in a taxi in the care of Higgs. The clerk also was seen safely started on the way to his lodgings, where, Gimblet thought to himself, he would probably take the brandy bottle to bed with him.
“You will have to attend the inquest, you know,” he said to him as he was departing. “It may be to-morrow or the next day. Good evening, and don’t stay awake all night.”
After renewed thanks and apologies to the Bramptons, Gimblet found another taxi, and, getting in, gave the driver the address of Joe Sidney’s rooms.
“I think,” he said to himself, “it’s just about time I paid that young gentleman a visit.”
Itwas close on eleven when the cab drew up before the door of Sidney’s lodging in York Street, St. James’s, and as luck would have it Sidney himself was standing on the doorstep, in the act of inserting his latch-key in the lock. Gimblet saw himself recognised as he sprang out of the taxi, and saw also a look of unmistakable pleasure in the recognition.
“This man is as innocent as I am,” he thought, as the young soldier greeted him.
“Come in, do,” Sidney said, “you’re the very man I wanted to see. I went to your flat this evening, but you’d just gone out, so the porter said. I am anxious to hear if you have any news of my aunt and Miss Turner.”
He led the way upstairs as he spoke, and ushered the detective into a sitting-room on the first floor, switching on the light as he did so.
Gimblet waited till the door was shut behind them, and then turned a grave face to his host.
“The news is very bad,” he said slowly, and waited a moment to give time for the significance of the words to sink in, and to prepare Sidney for what was to come.
“What has happened?” cried Sidney. “Are they hurt? Is Miss Turner——”
He stopped short, grasping the back of a chair.
“I don’t know what has happened to Miss Turner,” Gimblet said, “but I have terrible news of your pooraunt. Mrs. Vanderstein has been foully and cruelly murdered. I come now from the discovery of her dead body.”
“Murdered!” cried Sidney, “murdered! Who by? How? Where?” He sat down mechanically, and stared at Gimblet. “And Miss Turner? Have they killed her too?”
The detective repeated that at present he knew nothing of the younger lady.
“Good God!” said Sidney, “what a dreadful thing.”
Leaning his elbows on the table, he hid his face in his hands for a few minutes, and Gimblet sat silent opposite him, waiting till he should recover from the first shock of the news.
When Sidney raised his head again the face he disclosed was pale and drawn.
“Poor Aunt Ruth,” he said. “Poor thing, poor thing. To think that she should be dead. I can hardly realise it, you know. She has been killed for her jewels, I suppose, after all. The devils! You haven’t caught them, have you?” and, as Gimblet only shook his head: “How can such a thing be possible here in civilised London? And to think of that beastly old raven, Chark, going about croaking as he has been, and hinting that I’d killed her! To think of his being right after all! I don’t mean about my killing her,” he added, “but there it is, she’s dead; and I come into her money just in time to save me from ruin. I hate the thought of it!” He was talking to himself more than to his listener, and Gimblet let him talk. “I almost wish she had altered her will,” he went on, “it’s a beastly notion: her death being my profit, you know. And I suppose they’ll say I’ve murdered her all the more now?” He looked up interrogatively; then, as he received no answer, his expression changed andhe started up, alert and wide awake once more. “I say,” said he, “do you think I did it, too?”
Gimblet hesitated a moment before answering.
“As a matter of fact,” he said at last, “I do not. I don’t think so for a moment. But that is merely my personal opinion and, to tell you the truth, I think it will be just as well if you can account for your movements since Monday to the satisfaction of more people than myself. I ought to suspect you—it’s my business to suspect every one—but, as I say, I don’t.”
“I daresay things do look rather black against me,” Sidney said; “it’s my fault for not having bothered to defend myself. You see, it seems so eccentric to me that anyone should think such a thing. It seems so impossible, and absurd, if you don’t mind my saying so. One forgets that other people don’t know what one is capable of as one does oneself, and it never struck me yesterday that you, or Sir Gregory either, might suspect me. I did go and see the editor of the worst of the newspapers, and explained things to him, and told him to let old Chark know he was wrong. You may have noticed he’s eaten his words in to-day’s paper. But I didn’t think it necessary to say anything to anyone else. You see, I’ve got what you call an alibi. I was in the country from Monday evening till yesterday morning. I met a pal almost on Aunt Ruth’s doorstep when she turned me out of the house, and he got me to go off with him down to his house near Ascot to play golf, and I was down there till Wednesday. I had only just come back, in fact, when I came to see you. I didn’t know about my aunt’s disappearance till I read it in the train coming up; my friend came up at the same time and stayed with me till I left him at your door. It’s waste of time suspecting me; I admit that it looks as if I ought to have murdered the poor dear, but in view of the facts that theory doesn’t hold water.”
“I’m very glad to hear what you say,” said Gimblet, “and I wish you’d told me before, though I never really thought you had any direct knowledge of the affair. Still, you must confess, Mr. Sidney, that you were not quite open with me: there was something which you knew, and which you kept to yourself when we talked about it.”
“I’m blessed if there was!” cried Sidney. “What was it?”
For answer Gimblet took Barbara’s telegraph form out of his notebook and handed it to the young man.
“You didn’t tell me you had received this telegram from Miss Turner,” he said, “not even though I quoted most of its contents to you by way of a hint.”
Sidney took the form, and stared at it for a moment.
“It is her writing,” he said at last. “I wonder what the deuce she meant.”
He, also, produced a folded paper from his pocket and pushed it across the table to the detective.
It was the message as he had received it.
“You will observe,” he said, “that there is no signature. How was I to know who it came from? As a matter of fact, I guessed, or at least thought it possible she had sent it, as no one else cares whether I go to blazes or not. But I’ve no idea whatever why she chose to think I should get some money or good news on Wednesday. I need hardly say that I didn’t. And I saw no reason to speak to you of what only concerns a young lady and myself. It can have no possible bearing on her disappearance, or that of my aunt.”
“You think not?” Gimblet looked at him oddly.
“How could it? I can’t imagine what connection there could be. But of course you’re the sort of fellow who can read the secret of dark mysteries in anything, from the Tower Bridge to a baked potato, aren’t you?So perhaps there’s some occult inference that I fail to draw. By the way, you’ve not told me much yet. How did you discover the murder, and where?”
“I found the poor lady’s body buried in a house in the north of London,” said Gimblet, “No. 13 Scholefield Avenue. As to how I discovered it, it was by the help of two or three facts from which I was able to draw certain inferences.”
“I wish you would tell me all about it.”
“Well,” said Gimblet, “as Sir Gregory told you over the telephone this morning, I heard, as a result of the advertisement I gave you yesterday to have inserted in the papers, that the two ladies were seen by an actress on Monday night, standing under a board ‘To Let,’ before a detached house in some street on the way to Carolina Road. I was unable to find that street yesterday, and it was not until I could get hold of the cabman who had driven the actress that I ascertained that Scholefield Avenue was the only street he had passed through on Monday night which contains detached houses. I went there at once and found out that No. 13 had recently been let, the board having been removed on Tuesday morning. I rang the bell, but no one came to the door, so after getting the name of the house agent from a neighbour I went to the office and interviewed the agent. From him I learnt that the house had only been let since Monday, and that the tenant was a man named West who had been ready to pay a high rent for immediate possession, and who gave out that he was a recluse, desiring nothing so much as solitude and privacy. The agent happened to have a spare key of No. 13 Scholefield Avenue and he sent his clerk down with me to open the door.
“As soon as I got in I ran over the house with my servant, who as well as Sir Gregory had accompaniedme, but there was no one to be seen in it, and so I proceeded to make a careful and searching examination. Not to weary you with details, I soon found a considerable number of small paste spangles, or imitation diamonds, such as are sewn on to the more elaborate and gorgeous kinds of ladies’ evening dresses. As I found several of these on the staircase between the hall and the drawing-room and a good many more in the drawing-room itself, but none in any other part of the house, I thought it was likely that, if they came off Mrs. Vanderstein’s gown, this was the only room she had visited. There was, of course, the possibility that they had fallen from the dress of some one who had been in the room before the place was let, but I set against this the improbability of the mistress of the house or her friends being rich people who would wear such expensively ornamented materials, and also the fact that your aunt’s maid in describing her toilette to me had spoken of it as ‘diamantée.’
“The next discovery was a most alarming one. On moving the sofa I saw beneath it a large stain in the carpet, which various indications assured me was the result of some acid that had been upset. From the nature of the damage I was pretty certain that it had been caused by sulphuric acid or vitriol. Now this is a strange thing to find traces of in a lady’s drawing-room, and when you find it in an empty house which a young and beautiful lady has been seen to enter, but which she has never been seen to leave, and when you further reflect that the disappearance of this lady appears to be complete, and on the fact that when last seen she was wearing a fortune in jewellery, one of two conclusions appears inevitable, unless you assume that all these facts are entirely unconnected and the result of pure coincidence. Assume them on the contrary to be related to each other, and you are led, as I say, toconsider two possibilities. So I asked myself at once whether Mrs. Vanderstein had been decoyed to the house by some demented creature bent on assuaging a mad jealousy by throwing vitriol at her, or whether she had been induced to visit it to satisfy the still more fatal greed of a robber. And the more I looked at it, the more likely it seemed that the poor lady had been murdered for her jewels and that the vitriol was used to make the recognition of her body, if it should be discovered, a negligible danger. A few minutes later I came across a powder puff perfumed with the peculiar scent your aunt was in the habit of using—I daresay you know it—and this dispelled any doubts I still had as to her having been in the room.
“I still hoped against hope, however, that she might have left it alive, and I found some evidence downstairs which led me to think she had been locked in one of the lower rooms for a time; but if so it must have been before she was taken up to the drawing-room. In the library a pane of the window was broken, no doubt by some one trying to escape or attract attention, and obviously it had been done by a woman, as a man could have opened the window, which was so stiff as to require more than a woman’s strength. The broken glass had been carefully removed from the frame, so that, but for the draught, it might well have passed unnoticed.
“That it had been broken since the letting of the house was clear, since I found a dustpan full of broken glass, which would not have been left so by the landlord’s servants, or by the charwoman who cleaned up after their departure. The sight of that dustpan filled me with hopes that were doomed to disappointment. Nothing offers a better ground for the impression and retention of finger marks than a piece of shining metal, and I expected to find a whole collection on the tinsurface of the pan. But to my astonishment and disgust I could not find a single one; and this strengthened my opinion that I had to deal with deliberate crime, and that of no ordinary stamp, for it was plain that not only had some one cleaned and polished the dustpan after using it, but that the person who had done so had worn gloves. And it was the same all over the house. Not a finger-print to be seen, except in the room with the broken pane, on the white painted door of which I found several distinct marks of fingers. What more likely than that the poor lady, finding herself locked into a strange room, should have broken the window and beaten on the door with her hands in a sudden panic? In the same cupboard as the dustpan was an old newspaper crumpled into a ball, which I found to contain a handful or so of what appeared to be garden mould, and I could not at first imagine why it should be there, though I can account for it now. I had by this time been all over the house and made the most thorough and exhaustive search, but the only other clue I could discover was a negative one.
“I must tell you that I had made sure that there was no article in the house belonging to the tenant, Mr. West, as he called himself; everything was accounted for in the inventory and belonged to Mr. Mill, the owner. It became clear to me that West must have taken the place for a definite purpose other than the usual one of living in it, and since I knew that it had been occupied on Monday evening, his object doubtless fulfilled itself then in a terrible manner and he probably fled from the scene of his crime the moment he had, to the best of his ability, removed all traces of it. In his haste he had left the little spangles which had scattered themselves in the wake of his victim; and, though he cleaned up the dustpan as if he feared it should telltales in spite of the precautionary gloves, he seemed to have thought the broken glass could not betray him, or else, perhaps, he had no time to dispose of it. But, if he had left nothing behind him, it looked as if he had taken something away.
“The chairs and sofas in the drawing-room were provided with loose chintz covers, with one exception. There was a small sofa which stood opposite the door naked and unashamed, in all the hideousness of the original, ugly upholstery. Not only was the tapestry which covered it of a meretricious nineteenth-century design, quite out of keeping with the good taste displayed all over the house in the choice of pattern and decoration, but the legs and arms, which were very much in evidence, were made of brown varnished wood peculiarly objectionable in appearance. It seems to me in the last degree unlikely that in a room so full of beauty and quiet refinement this one thing should have been allowed to flaunt its vulgarity, and hold the eye of the visitor with an awful fascination. I felt convinced that West was responsible for its nakedness, and it was quite likely that he, a man doubtless devoid of any artistic sense, would imagine that the absence of that cover might pass unnoticed, as the tapestry resembled the chintzes in general colouring.”
“But why should he remove it? What could he want with a loose chintz sofa cover?” asked Sidney, as the detective paused.
“I asked myself these questions,” continued Gimblet, “and I saw that there were only two explanations which met all the facts. It might be that the chintz bore traces of his crime that at all costs must be destroyed; it might be, for instance, stained with blood. But in that case he would probably have tried to burn it; that would be a difficult job, and there was no sign of a fire having been lighted lately in anyof the grates. No coal in the cellar and no firewood. He would have needed brushes and blacking to make all ship-shape again, and his grate cleaning would probably have been amateurish. Or he might have had a use for the chintz. It would be a handy thing to wrap a dead body in before carrying it out to the grave he would dig for it in the garden. For it seemed to me certain that after killing his victim he would have buried her in the garden. There was a toolshed at the end of it, and I hunted there for a spade that should show signs of recent use; but to my surprise there was no spade at all.
“By this time it was dark and late, and I returned to the house with the intention of deferring till to-morrow a search for the grave, which I felt sure of finding if it was there. I had little hope that the poor lady had escaped, but it was still quite possible that my theories were mistaken, and that even the signs of vitriol having been used were capable of some other interpretation; and I gladly admitted to myself that I had no actual proof of foul play. And then, just as I was on the point of knocking off for the night, an elusive memory that had been troubling me ever since I entered the house suddenly flashed clearly into conscious recollection, and I knew that I had made no mistake.
“When I opened the drawing-room door for the first time I had been aware of a faint odour, which I seemed to catch a whiff of as it passed me, so to speak, and to lose again immediately. During the second in which I perceived it, its name was on my tongue, but before I could utter it the smell was gone and with it my knowledge of what it was. I racked my brains to remember it without the least result; but, though I gave up the attempt and concentrated every effort on investigating what was apparent to my other senses, the thing bothered me, and I did not entirely forget it.As I stood in front of the house after my vain search for a spade, it suddenly flashed into my mind what it was that I had smelt: it was the never to be mistaken smell of chloroform.
“I was staring absently up at the balcony of the drawing-room when the knowledge came to me, and in an instant another light dawned on me with equal suddenness. There was a great box or stand for plants on the balcony, and the neighbour who had given me some information as to the tenant had remarked that the mistress of the house would be sad to see her flowers so neglected. Indeed, they were all faded and withered, and he had implied that it was for want of water. Now, the thought that leapt into my brain as swift and as illuminating as lightning was this one: Why should the flowers die for want of water when we have had constant rain for the last two days? Clearly it was not drought that they were suffering from. But how if thesoidisantWest, having cruelly murdered your unfortunate aunt, proceeded to uproot the flowers and to bury her, wrapped in the sofa cover, in the flower stand? It was quite large enough for such a purpose, and if he had then replanted the flowers it was probable enough that they would feel the effects of his attempt at gardening.
“I went up at once and put this theory to the test. I am very sorry to say that it proved to be correct in every detail.”
Gimblet ceased speaking, and Sidney, who had listened in sad silence, lifted his head, and asked a question.
“The vitriol? They had used it—as you thought?” His voice was hoarse, and his face stern and grim.
“Alas, yes.”
“Hanging is too good for such brutes; but I will never rest till they hang for it. Have you any idea who are the fiends who did this?”
“An idea? Say rather that I have a suspicion,” returned Gimblet. “Surely you can see the direction in which the circumstances point?”
“Unless it was the chauffeur,” said Sidney, “I can’t imagine who can have done it.”
“I don’t think there is anything in the theory that the chauffeur or any one of the servants had a hand in it. There are several things which make that idea hardly worth considering. But there is one person against whom things look very black. Do you mean to say you can’t see who it is?”
“No, I can’t,” repeated Sidney.
“Mr. Sidney,” said the detective slowly, “where do you suppose Miss Turner is?”
“I only wish I knew,” answered the young man; “it is horrible not to know. Where do you think she can possibly be? Tell me the truth, Mr. Gimblet: do you believe she is dead?” He spoke harshly, and with averted eyes.
“No,” said Gimblet, “I don’t think she is dead.”
Something in his tone made Sidney look up. Gimblet was looking at him with a strange expression, and as their eyes met he turned away uneasily. For a minute Sidney stared at him wonderingly, and then an incredulous enlightenment stole over him.
“You can’t mean,” he said slowly, “that you imagine she had any knowledge of the attack on my aunt?”
Gimblet was silent; and his silence was more eloquent than words.
“But it is impossible,” cried Sidney, “that anyone out of a lunatic asylum should think such a thing. You don’t know her, Mr. Gimblet, she is the sweetest, dearest girl. The most unselfish, the most devoted, the loyalest girl in the world! How can you hint at it? Oh, I know it is your business to suspect people,but you go too far! I cannot hear a word against her.”
Gimblet turned and faced him.
“Be reasonable, Mr. Sidney,” he said, “and accept it as a fact that the young lady will be suspected. If she is innocent it will be better to try and clear her than to refuse to hear what there is to be said as to her possible complicity. I understand your feelings, but you must see that there is nothing to gain by disguising the truth. It is because I thought it possible that you might feel a keen interest in Miss Turner that I have told you I suspect her. I hope you may be able to help me to convince myself of her innocence, and surely the best way to do that is to try and get at the truth.”
“I will try and be reasonable, as you call it,” said Sidney, after a pause, “and I suppose by that you mean listening to your abominable accusations. Well, let’s hear your evidence, and if I can prevent myself from throttling you I will! More than that no man could say,” he added, with an attempt at a smile. “And I feel a beast even to allow you to speak of the thing.”
“I am extremely sorry to have to do it,” said Gimblet, “but no good ever came of shutting one’s eyes to facts, and it’s facts that make me suspect Miss Turner. In the first place, there is the fact that she stands to profit by Mrs. Vanderstein’s death to the tune of £30,000.”
“That applies to me, too, only more so,” interrupted Sidney.
“Yes, and I don’t think it of much importance,” admitted the detective. “I mention it as one of the points which is outside the region of speculation, and therefore not negligible. The second fact is that you were at your wits’ end for money.”
“I daresay! But what that’s got to do with your suspecting Miss Turner beats me,” cried Sidney.
“It’s got this to do, though I’m afraid you will not like my alluding to your most private affairs—Miss Turner is in love with you. We may call that fact No. 3.”
“There is absolutely no foundation for that statement,” said Sidney, flushing hotly, while he could not but be conscious of a strange acceleration in the beating of his heart.
“Is there not?” asked Gimblet, looking at him thoughtfully. “Well, we will waive that point if you like. Let us say that Miss Turner has an unusually friendly feeling for you. So friendly that she would go to any length to provide you with the necessary funds. You yourself have as good as told me so much. You cannot deny that she was the person who urged you to try to get the money by false pretences.”
“I am sure she did not look at it in that light,” protested Sidney, while inwardly he cursed himself for the slip by which, on the previous day, he had allowed the sex of his friend to escape him.
“I saw you with her in the Park last Sunday, did I not?” said the detective; “I noticed her expression. I am rather an observant fellow in my way, you know. I have only seen that look on the faces of people very much in love. I find I must go back to that, after all, in spite of your objection to the suggestion.”
“I do object very much. Miss Turner has no such feelings for me, I am sure, and I can’t let you impute them to her.”
“I am afraid you must,” said Gimblet tranquilly. “People who are madly in love,” he continued, “as I believe her to be, are capable of any sacrifice, of any heroism, or of any villainy. In that state of exaltation they are apt to lose their sense of proportion, and to confound extremes; they may see in the basest depths of infamy only another aspect of noble heights of self-abnegation;if the object of their affections is in danger, they may consider no expedient too shameful if it can be made to provide a means of extricating him.
“There is nothing inherently impossible in imagining that Miss Turner, conscious of nothing but your need, blindly strove to supply it and was in no mood to boggle at any feasible method. I don’t know if you are aware of the character borne by her father. He was a man of the worst reputation: an utterly merciless and unscrupulous swindler. His daughter may not have escaped the taint of heredity; it is, at all events, conceivable that her principles suffered from her early association with him. He is said to have died in South America, where he was obliged to fly to escape his just deserts, but there is no proof at all that he really did die.
“I know that I am for the moment dealing in theory, if I say, suppose this man to be secretly in London and in secret communication with his daughter. Suppose she let him see how direly she needed money at this moment. Might not a scoundrel of his description seize the opportunity to persuade her to help him in some such nefarious business as the robbery of Mrs. Vanderstein, and secure her silence, if not her assistance, in even a more dastardly business? To return to the realm of fact; the order to the motor not to fetch the ladies from the opera was given by Miss Turner. She ran back alone to tell the chauffeur, after your aunt had gone into the theatre. She had previously sent you this wire, in which she was very positive that the money you required would be forthcoming.
“She was seen by Miss Finner standing at the door of the house in Scholefield Avenue in the company of your aunt, and it is not too much to presume that she subsequently entered it with her. There would be noimaginable motive to induce a thief or gang of thieves to decoy her to the house: she had no jewels to be deprived of. There would be, on the contrary, every reason why she should be prevented from going anywhere near the place. Since, then, she assuredly went there on her own initiative, it seems probable that Mrs. Vanderstein was persuaded to accompany her by the girl herself.
“To go back for the moment to speculation, one may imagine that it was old Turner who masqueraded as West, the tenant, who is described as a horsey-looking elderly man who had lived much in a hot climate. This accords with a description of Turner I took the trouble to obtain yesterday, with the exception of the beard or imperial worn by West, which he may easily have grown of late years. It may have been the girl’s father, therefore, who opened the door to the two women, and who, once he had her safe inside, first locked your aunt in the library while he finished his preparations upstairs, and then led her to the drawing-room, as in times more in harmony with his deeds he might have led her to the nearest tree.
“Finally, in support of this theory, or at least of Miss Turner’s complicity in the affair, we have the facts that the two ladies were last seen together, and that, while the one has been found robbed and murdered, the other has departed without a word or a sign. It is only too likely that she is half way to America. The ports are being watched, but by now it is probably too late.”