Kara lay back on his down pillows with a sneer on his face and his brain very busy. What started the train of thought he did not know, but at that moment his mind was very far away. It carried him back a dozen years to a dirty little peasant's cabin on the hillside outside Durazzo, to the livid face of a young Albanian chief, who had lost at Kara's whim all that life held for a man, to the hateful eyes of the girl's father, who stood with folded arms glaring down at the bound and manacled figure on the floor, to the smoke-stained rafters of this peasant cottage and the dancing shadows on the roof, to that terrible hour of waiting when he sat bound to a post with a candle flickering and spluttering lower and lower to the little heap of gunpowder that would start the trail toward the clumsy infernal machine under his chair. He remembered the day well because it was Candlemas day, and this was the anniversary. He remembered other things more pleasant. The beat of hoofs on the rocky roadway, the crash of the door falling in when the Turkish Gendarmes had battered a way to his rescue. He remembered with a savage joy the spectacle of his would-be assassins twitching and struggling on the gallows at Pezara and—he heard the faint tinkle of the front door bell.
Had T. X. returned! He slipped from the bed and went to the door, opened it slightly and listened. T. X. with a search warrant might be a source of panic especially if—he shrugged his shoulders. He had satisfied T. X. and allayed his suspicions. He would get Fisher out of the way that night and make sure.
The voice from the hall below was loud and gruff. Who could it be! Then he heard Fisher's foot on the stairs and the valet entered.
“Will you see Mr. Gathercole now!”
“Mr. Gathercole!”
Kara breathed a sigh of relief and his face was wreathed in smiles.
“Why, of course. Tell him to come up. Ask him if he minds seeing me in my room.”
“I told him you were in bed, sir, and he used shocking language,” said Fisher.
Kara laughed.
“Send him up,” he said, and then as Fisher was going out of the room he called him back.
“By the way, Fisher, after Mr. Gathercole has gone, you may go out for the night. You've got somewhere to go, I suppose, and you needn't come back until the morning.”
“Yes, sir,” said the servant.
Such an instruction was remarkably pleasing to him. There was much that he had to do and that night's freedom would assist him materially.
“Perhaps” Kara hesitated, “perhaps you had better wait until eleven o'clock. Bring me up some sandwiches and a large glass of milk. Or better still, place them on a plate in the hall.”
“Very good, sir,” said the man and withdrew.
Down below, that grotesque figure with his shiny hat and his ragged beard was walking up and down the tesselated hallway muttering to himself and staring at the various objects in the hall with a certain amused antagonism.
“Mr. Kara will see you, sir,” said Fisher.
“Oh!” said the other glaring at the unoffending Fisher, “that's very good of him. Very good of this person to see a scholar and a gentleman who has been about his dirty business for three years. Grown grey in his service! Do you understand that, my man!”
“Yes, sir,” said Fisher.
“Look here!”
The man thrust out his face.
“Do you see those grey hairs in my beard?”
The embarrassed Fisher grinned.
“Is it grey!” challenged the visitor, with a roar.
“Yes, sir,” said the valet hastily.
“Is it real grey?” insisted the visitor. “Pull one out and see!”
The startled Fisher drew back with an apologetic smile.
“I couldn't think of doing a thing like that, sir.”
“Oh, you couldn't,” sneered the visitor; “then lead on!”
Fisher showed the way up the stairs. This time the traveller carried no books. His left arm hung limply by his side and Fisher privately gathered that the hand had got loose from the detaining pocket without its owner being aware of the fact. He pushed open the door and announced, “Mr. Gathercole,” and Kara came forward with a smile to meet his agent, who, with top hat still on the top of his head, and his overcoat dangling about his heels, must have made a remarkable picture.
Fisher closed the door behind them and returned to his duties in the hall below. Ten minutes later he heard the door opened and the booming voice of the stranger came down to him. Fisher went up the stairs to meet him and found him addressing the occupant of the room in his own eccentric fashion.
“No more Patagonia!” he roared, “no more Tierra del Fuego!” he paused.
“Certainly!” He replied to some question, “but not Patagonia,” he paused again, and Fisher standing at the foot of the stairs wondered what had occurred to make the visitor so genial.
“I suppose your cheque will be honoured all right?” asked the visitor sardonically, and then burst into a little chuckle of laughter as he carefully closed the door.
He came down the corridor talking to himself, and greeted Fisher.
“Damn all Greeks,” he said jovially, and Fisher could do no more than smile reproachfully, the smile being his very own, the reproach being on behalf of the master who paid him.
The traveller touched the other on the chest with his right hand.
“Never trust a Greek,” he said, “always get your money in advance. Is that clear to you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Fisher, “but I think you will always find that Mr. Kara is always most generous about money.”
“Don't you believe it, don't you believe it, my poor man,” said the other, “you—”
At that moment there came from Kara's room a faint “clang.”
“What's that?” asked the visitor a little startled.
“Mr. Kara's put down his steel latch,” said Fisher with a smile, “which means that he is not to be disturbed until—” he looked at his watch, “until eleven o'clock at any rate.”
“He's a funk!” snapped the other, “a beastly funk!”
He stamped down the stairs as though testing the weight of every tread, opened the front door without assistance, slammed it behind him and disappeared into the night.
Fisher, his hands in his pockets, looked after the departing stranger, nodding his head in reprobation.
“You're a queer old devil,” he said, and looked at his watch again.
It wanted five minutes to ten.
“IF you would care to come in, sir, I'm sure Lexman would be glad to see you,” said T. X.; “it's very kind of you to take an interest in the matter.”
The Chief Commissioner of Police growled something about being paid to take an interest in everybody and strolled with T. X. down one of the apparently endless corridors of Scotland Yard.
“You won't have any bother about the pardon,” he said. “I was dining to-night with old man Bartholomew and he will fix that up in the morning.”
“There will be no necessity to detain Lexman in custody?” asked T. X.
The Chief shook his head.
“None whatever,” he said.
There was a pause, then,
“By the way, did Bartholomew mention Belinda Mary!”
The white-haired chief looked round in astonishment.
“And who the devil is Belinda Mary?” he asked.
T. X. went red.
“Belinda Mary,” he said a little quickly, “is Bartholomew's daughter.”
“By Jove,” said the Commissioner, “now you mention it, he did—she is still in France.”
“Oh, is she?” said T. X. innocently, and in his heart of hearts he wished most fervently that she was. They came to the room which Mansus occupied and found that admirable man waiting.
Wherever policemen meet, their conversation naturally drifts to “shop” and in two minutes the three were discussing with some animation and much difference of opinion, as far as T. X. was concerned, a series of frauds which had been perpetrated in the Midlands, and which have nothing to do with this story.
“Your friend is late,” said the Chief Commissioner.
“There he is,” cried T. X., springing up. He heard a familiar footstep on the flagged corridor, and sprung out of the room to meet the newcomer.
For a moment he stood wringing the hand of this grave man, his heart too full for words.
“My dear chap!” he said at last, “you don't know how glad I am to see you.”
John Lexman said nothing, then,
“I am sorry to bring you into this business, T. X.,” he said quietly.
“Nonsense,” said the other, “come in and see the Chief.”
He took John by the arm and led him into the Superintendent's room.
There was a change in John Lexman. A subtle shifting of balance which was not readily discoverable. His face was older, the mobile mouth a little more grimly set, the eyes more deeply lined. He was in evening dress and looked, as T. X. thought, a typical, clean, English gentleman, such an one as any self-respecting valet would be proud to say he had “turned out.”
T. X. looking at him carefully could see no great change, save that down one side of his smooth shaven cheek ran the scar of an old wound; which could not have been much more than superficial.
“I must apologize for this kit,” said John, taking off his overcoat and laying it across the back of a chair, “but the fact is I was so bored this evening that I had to do something to pass the time away, so I dressed and went to the theatre—and was more bored than ever.”
T. X. noticed that he did not smile and that when he spoke it was slowly and carefully, as though he were weighing the value of every word.
“Now,” he went on, “I have come to deliver myself into your hands.”
“I suppose you have not seen Kara?” said T. X.
“I have no desire to see Kara,” was the short reply.
“Well, Mr. Lexman,” broke in the Chief, “I don't think you are going to have any difficulty about your escape. By the way, I suppose it was by aeroplane?”
Lexman nodded.
“And you had an assistant?”
Again Lexman nodded.
“Unless you press me I would rather not discuss the matter for some little time, Sir George,” he said, “there is much that will happen before the full story of my escape is made known.”
Sir George nodded.
“We will leave it at that,” he said cheerily, “and now I hope you have come back to delight us all with one of your wonderful plots.”
“For the time being I have done with wonderful plots,” said John Lexman in that even, deliberate tone of his. “I hope to leave London next week for New York and take up such of the threads of life as remain. The greater thread has gone.”
The Chief Commissioner understood.
The silence which followed was broken by the loud and insistent ringing of the telephone bell.
“Hullo,” said Mansus rising quickly; “that's Kara's bell.”
With two quick strides he was at the telephone and lifted down the receiver.
“Hullo,” he cried. “Hullo,” he cried again. There was no reply, only the continuous buzzing, and when he hung up the receiver again, the bell continued ringing.
The three policemen looked at one another.
“There's trouble there,” said Mansus.
“Take off the receiver,” said T. X., “and try again.”
Mansus obeyed, but there was no response.
“I am afraid this is not my affair,” said John Lexman gathering up his coat. “What do you wish me to do, Sir George?”
“Come along to-morrow morning and see us, Lexman,” said Sir George, offering his hand.
“Where are you staying!” asked T. X.
“At the Great Midland,” replied the other, “at least my bags have gone on there.”
“I'll come along and see you to-morrow morning. It's curious this should have happened the night you returned,” he said, gripping the other's shoulder affectionately.
John Lexman did not speak for the moment.
“If anything happened to Kara,” he said slowly, “if the worst that was possible happened to him, believe me I should not weep.”
T. X. looked down into the other's eyes sympathetically.
“I think he has hurt you pretty badly, old man,” he said gently.
John Lexman nodded.
“He has, damn him,” he said between his teeth.
The Chief Commissioner's motor car was waiting outside and in this T. X., Mansus, and a detective-sergeant were whirled off to Cadogan Square. Fisher was in the hall when they rung the bell and opened the door instantly.
He was frankly surprised to see his visitors. Mr. Kara was in his room he explained resentfully, as though T. X. should have been aware of the fact without being told. He had heard no bell ringing and indeed had not been summoned to the room.
“I have to see him at eleven o'clock,” he said, “and I have had standing instructions not to go to him unless I am sent for.”
T. X. led the way upstairs, and went straight to Kara's room. He knocked, but there was no reply. He knocked again and on this failing to evoke any response kicked heavily at the door.
“Have you a telephone downstairs!” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Fisher.
T. X. turned to the detective-sergeant.
“'Phone to the Yard,” he said, “and get a man up with a bag of tools. We shall have to pick this lock and I haven't got my case with me.”
“Picking the lock would be no good, sir,” said Fisher, an interested spectator, “Mr. Kara's got the latch down.”
“I forgot that,” said T. X. “Tell him to bring his saw, we'll have to cut through the panel here.”
While they were waiting for the arrival of the police officer T. X. strove to attract the attention of the inmates of the room, but without success.
“Does he take opium or anything!” asked Mansus.
Fisher shook his head.
“I've never known him to take any of that kind of stuff,” he said.
T. X. made a rapid survey of the other rooms on that floor. The room next to Kara's was the library, beyond that was a dressing room which, according to Fisher, Miss Holland had used, and at the farthermost end of the corridor was the dining room.
Facing the dining room was a small service lift and by its side a storeroom in which were a number of trunks, including a very large one smothered in injunctions in three different languages to “handle with care.” There was nothing else of interest on this floor and the upper and lower floors could wait. In a quarter of an hour the carpenter had arrived from Scotland Yard, and had bored a hole in the rosewood panel of Kara's room and was busily applying his slender saw.
Through the hole he cut T. X. could see no more than that the room was in darkness save for the glow of a blazing fire. He inserted his hand, groped for the knob of the steel latch, which he had remarked on his previous visit to the room, lifted it and the door swung open.
“Keep outside, everybody,” he ordered.
He felt for the switch of the electric, found it and instantly the room was flooded with light. The bed was hidden by the open door. T. X. took one stride into the room and saw enough. Kara was lying half on and half off the bed. He was quite dead and the blood-stained patch above his heart told its own story.
T. X. stood looking down at him, saw the frozen horror on the dead man's face, then drew his eyes away and slowly surveyed the room. There in the middle of the carpet he found his clue, a bent and twisted little candle such as you find on children's Christmas trees.
It was Mansus who found the second candle, a stouter affair. It lay underneath the bed. The telephone, which stood on a fairly large-sized table by the side of the bed, was overturned and the receiver was on the floor. By its side were two books, one being the “Balkan Question,” by Villari, and the other “Travels and Politics in the Near East,” by Miller. With them was a long, ivory paper-knife.
There was nothing else on the bedside-table save a silver cigarette box. T. X. drew on a pair of gloves and examined the bright surface for finger-prints, but a superficial view revealed no such clue.
“Open the window,” said T. X., “the heat here is intolerable. Be very careful, Mansus. By the way, is the window fastened?”
“Very well fastened,” said the superintendent after a careful scrutiny.
He pushed back the fastenings, lifted the window and as he did, a harsh bell rang in the basement.
“That is the burglar alarm, I suppose,” said T. X.; “go down and stop that bell.”
He addressed Fisher, who stood with a troubled face at the door. When he had disappeared T. X. gave a significant glance to one of the waiting officers and the man sauntered after the valet.
Fisher stopped the bell and came back to the hall and stood before the hall fire, a very troubled man. Near the fire was a big, oaken writing table and on this there lay a small envelope which he did not remember having seen before, though it might have been there for some time, for he had spent a greater portion of the evening in the kitchen with the cook.
He picked up the envelope, and, with a start, recognised that it was addressed to himself. He opened it and took out a card. There were only a few words written upon it, but they were sufficient to banish all the colour from his face and set his hands shaking. He took the envelope and card and flung them into the fire.
It so happened that, at that moment, Mansus had called from upstairs, and the officer, who had been told off to keep the valet under observation, ran up in answer to the summons. For a moment Fisher hesitated, then hatless and coatless as he was, he crept to the door, opened it, leaving it ajar behind him and darting down the steps, ran like a hare from the house.
The doctor, who came a little later, was cautious as to the hour of death.
“If you got your telephone message at 10.25, as you say, that was probably the hour he was killed,” he said. “I could not tell within half an hour. Obviously the man who killed him gripped his throat with his left hand—there are the bruises on his neck—and stabbed him with the right.”
It was at this time that the disappearance of Fisher was noticed, but the cross-examination of the terrified Mrs. Beale removed any doubt that T. X. had as to the man's guilt.
“You had better send out an 'All Stations' message and pull him in,” said T. X. “He was with the cook from the moment the visitor left until a few minutes before we rang. Besides which it is obviously impossible for anybody to have got into this room or out again. Have you searched the dead man?”
Mansus produced a tray on which Kara's belongings had been disposed. The ordinary keys Mrs. Beale was able to identify. There were one or two which were beyond her. T. X. recognised one of these as the key of the safe, but two smaller keys baffled him not a little, and Mrs. Beale was at first unable to assist him.
“The only thing I can think of, sir,” she said, “is the wine cellar.”
“The wine cellar?” said T. X. slowly. “That must be—” he stopped.
The greater tragedy of the evening, with all its mystifying aspects had not banished from his mind the thought of the girl—that Belinda Mary, who had called upon him in her hour of danger as he divined. Perhaps—he descended into the kitchen and was brought face to face with the unpainted door.
“It looks more like a prison than a wine cellar,” he said.
“That's what I've always thought, sir,” said Mrs. Beale, “and sometimes I've had a horrible feeling of fear.”
He cut short her loquacity by inserting one of the keys in the lock—it did not turn, but he had more success with the second. The lock snapped back easily and he pulled the door back. He found the inner door bolted top and bottom. The bolts slipped back in their well-oiled sockets without any effort. Evidently Kara used this place pretty frequently, thought T. X.
He pushed the door open and stopped with an exclamation of surprise. The cellar apartment was brilliantly lit—but it was unoccupied.
“This beats the band,” said T. X.
He saw something on the table and lifted it up. It was a pair of long-bladed scissors and about the handle was wound a handkerchief. It was not this fact which startled him, but that the scissors' blades were dappled with blood and blood, too, was on the handkerchief. He unwound the flimsy piece of cambric and stared at the monogram “B. M. B.”
He looked around. Nobody had seen the weapon and he dropped it in his overcoat pocket, and walked from the cellar to the kitchen where Mrs. Beale and Mansus awaited him.
“There is a lower cellar, is there not!” he asked in a strained voice.
“That was bricked up when Mr. Kara took the house,” explained the woman.
“There is nothing more to look for here,” he said.
He walked slowly up the stairs to the library, his mind in a whirl. That he, an accredited officer of police, sworn to the business of criminal detection, should attempt to screen one who was conceivably a criminal was inexplicable. But if the girl had committed this crime, how had she reached Kara's room and why had she returned to the locked cellar!
He sent for Mrs. Beale to interrogate her. She had heard nothing and she had been in the kitchen all the evening. One fact she did reveal, however, that Fisher had gone from the kitchen and had been absent a quarter of an hour and had returned a little agitated.
“Stay here,” said T. X., and went down again to the cellar to make a further search.
“Probably there is some way out of this subterranean jail,” he thought and a diligent search of the room soon revealed it.
He found the iron trap, pulled it open, and slipped down the stairs. He, too, was puzzled by the luxurious character of the vault. He passed from room to room and finally came to the inner chamber where a light was burning.
The light, as he discovered, proceeded from a small reading lamp which stood by the side of a small brass bedstead. The bed had recently been slept in, but there was no sign of any occupant. T. X. conducted a very careful search and had no difficulty in finding the bricked up door. Other exits there were none.
The floor was of wood block laid on concrete, the ventilation was excellent and in one of the recesses which had evidently held at so time or other, a large wine bin, there was a prefect electrical cooking plant. In a small larder were a number of baskets, bearing the name of a well-known caterer, one of them containing an excellent assortment of cold and potted meats, preserves, etc.
T. X. went back to the bedroom and took the little lamp from the table by the side of the bed and began a more careful examination. Presently he found traces of blood, and followed an irregular trail to the outer room. He lost it suddenly at the foot of stairs leading down from the upper cellar. Then he struck it again. He had reached the end of his electric cord and was now depending upon an electric torch he had taken from his pocket.
There were indications of something heavy having been dragged across the room and he saw that it led to a small bathroom. He had made a cursory examination of this well-appointed apartment, and now he proceeded to make a close investigation and was well rewarded.
The bathroom was the only apartment which possess anything resembling a door—a two-fold screen and—as he pressed this back, he felt some thing which prevented its wider extension. He slipped into the room and flashed his lamp in the space behind the screen. There stiff in death with glazed eyes and lolling tongue lay a great gaunt dog, his yellow fangs exposed in a last grimace.
About the neck was a collar and attached to that, a few links of broken chain. T. X. mounted the steps thoughtfully and passed out to the kitchen.
Did Belinda Mary stab Kara or kill the dog? That she killed one hound or the other was certain. That she killed both was possible.
After a busy and sleepless night he came down to report to the Chief Commissioner the next morning. The evening newspaper bills were filled with the “Chelsea Sensation” but the information given was of a meagre character.
Since Fisher had disappeared, many of the details which could have been secured by the enterprising pressmen were missing. There was no reference to the visit of Mr. Gathercole and in self-defence the press had fallen back upon a statement, which at an earlier period had crept into the newspapers in one of those chatty paragraphs which begin “I saw my friend Kara at Giros” and end with a brief but inaccurate summary of his hobbies. The paragraph had been to the effect that Mr. Kara had been in fear of his life for some time, as a result of a blood feud which existed between himself and another Albanian family. Small wonder, therefore, the murder was everywhere referred to as “the political crime of the century.”
“So far,” reported T. X. to his superior, “I have been unable to trace either Gathercole or the valet. The only thing we know about Gathercole is that he sent his article to The Times with his card. The servants of his Club are very vague as to his whereabouts. He is a very eccentric man, who only comes in occasionally, and the steward whom I interviewed says that it frequently happened that Gathercole arrived and departed without anybody being aware of the fact. We have been to his old lodgings in Lincoln's Inn, but apparently he sold up there before he went away to the wilds of Patagonia and relinquished his tenancy.
“The only clue I have is that a man answering to some extent to his description left by the eleven o'clock train for Paris last night.”
“You have seen the secretary of course,” said the Chief.
It was a question which T. X. had been dreading.
“Gone too,” he answered shortly; “in fact she has not been seen since 5:30 yesterday evening.”
Sir George leant back in his chair and rumpled his thick grey hair.
“The only person who seems to have remained,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “was Kara himself. Would you like me to put somebody else on this case—it isn't exactly your job—or will you carry it on?”
“I prefer to carry it on, sir,” said T. X. firmly.
“Have you found out anything more about Kara?”
T. X. nodded.
“All that I have discovered about him is eminently discreditable,” he said. “He seems to have had an ambition to occupy a very important position in Albania. To this end he had bribed and subsidized the Turkish and Albanian officials and had a fairly large following in that country. Bartholomew tells me that Kara had already sounded him as to the possibility of the British Government recognising a fait accompli in Albania and had been inducing him to use his influence with the Cabinet to recognize the consequence of any revolution. There is no doubt whatever that Kara has engineered all the political assassinations which have been such a feature in the news from Albania during this past year. We also found in the house very large sums of money and documents which we have handed over to the Foreign Office for decoding.”
Sir George thought for a long time.
Then he said, “I have an idea that if you find your secretary you will be half way to solving the mystery.”
T. X. went out from the office in anything but a joyous mood. He was on his way to lunch when he remembered his promise to call upon John Lexman.
Could Lexman supply a key which would unravel this tragic tangle? He leant out of his taxi-cab and redirected the driver. It happened that the cab drove up to the door of the Great Midland Hotel as John Lexman was coming out.
“Come and lunch with me,” said T. X. “I suppose you've heard all the news.”
“I read about Kara being killed, if that's what you mean,” said the other. “It was rather a coincidence that I should have been discussing the matter last night at the very moment when his telephone bell rang—I wish to heaven you hadn't been in this,” he said fretfully.
“Why?” asked the astonished Assistant Commissioner, “and what do you mean by 'in it'?”
“In the concrete sense I wish you had not been present when I returned,” said the other moodily, “I wanted to be finished with the whole sordid business without in any way involving my friends.”
“I think you are too sensitive,” laughed the other, clapping him on the shoulder. “I want you to unburden yourself to me, my dear chap, and tell me anything you can that will help me to clear up this mystery.”
John Lexman looked straight ahead with a worried frown.
“I would do almost anything for you, T. X.,” he said quietly, “the more so since I know how good you were to Grace, but I can't help you in this matter. I hated Kara living, I hate him dead,” he cried, and there was a passion in his voice which was unmistakable; “he was the vilest thing that ever drew the breath of life. There was no villainy too despicable, no cruelty so horrid but that he gloried in it. If ever the devil were incarnate on earth he took the shape and the form of Remington Kara. He died too merciful a death by all accounts. But if there is a God, this man will suffer for his crimes in hell through all eternity.”
T. X. looked at him in astonishment. The hate in the man's face took his breath away. Never before had he experienced or witnessed such a vehemence of loathing.
“What did Kara do to you?” he demanded.
The other looked out of the window.
“I am sorry,” he said in a milder tone; “that is my weakness. Some day I will tell you the whole story but for the moment it were better that it were not told. I will tell you this,” he turned round and faced the detective squarely, “Kara tortured and killed my wife.”
T. X. said no more.
Half way through lunch he returned indirectly to the subject.
“Do you know Gathercole?” he asked.
T. X. nodded.
“I think you asked me that question once before, or perhaps it was somebody else. Yes, I know him, rather an eccentric man with an artificial arm.”
“That's the cove,” said T. X. with a little sigh; “he's one of the few men I want to meet just now.”
“Why?”
“Because he was apparently the last man to see Kara alive.”
John Lexman looked at the other with an impatient jerk of his shoulders.
“You don't suspect Gathercole, do you?” he asked.
“Hardly,” said the other drily; “in the first place the man that committed this murder had two hands and needed them both. No, I only want to ask that gentleman the subject of his conversation. I also want to know who was in the room with Kara when Gathercole went in.”
“H'm,” said John Lexman.
“Even if I found who the third person was, I am still puzzled as to how they got out and fastened the heavy latch behind them. Now in the old days, Lexman,” he said good humouredly, “you would have made a fine mystery story out of this. How would you have made your man escape?”
Lexman thought for a while.
“Have you examined the safe!” he asked.
“Yes,” said the other.
“Was there very much in it?”
T. X. looked at him in astonishment.
“Just the ordinary books and things. Why do you ask?”
“Suppose there were two doors to that safe, one on the outside of the room and one on the inside, would it be possible to pass through the safe and go down the wall?”
“I have thought of that,” said T. X.
“Of course,” said Lexman, leaning back and toying with a salt-spoon, “in writing a story where one hasn't got to deal with the absolute possibilities, one could always have made Kara have a safe of that character in order to make his escape in the event of danger. He might keep a rope ladder stored inside, open the back door, throw out his ladder to a friend and by some trick arrangement could detach the ladder and allow the door to swing to again.”
“A very ingenious idea,” said T. X., “but unfortunately it doesn't work in this case. I have seen the makers of the safe and there is nothing very eccentric about it except the fact that it is mounted as it is. Can you offer another suggestion?”
John Lexman thought again.
“I will not suggest trap doors, or secret panels or anything so banal,” he said, “nor mysterious springs in the wall which, when touched, reveal secret staircases.”
He smiled slightly.
“In my early days, I must confess, I was rather keen upon that sort of thing, but age has brought experience and I have discovered the impossibility of bringing an architect to one's way of thinking even in so commonplace a matter as the position of a scullery. It would be much more difficult to induce him to construct a house with double walls and secret chambers.”
T. X. waited patiently.
“There is a possibility, of course,” said Lexman slowly, “that the steel latch may have been raised by somebody outside by some ingenious magnetic arrangement and lowered in a similar manner.”
“I have thought about it,” said T. X. triumphantly, “and I have made the most elaborate tests only this morning. It is quite impossible to raise the steel latch because once it is dropped it cannot be raised again except by means of the knob, the pulling of which releases the catch which holds the bar securely in its place. Try another one, John.”
John Lexman threw back his head in a noiseless laugh.
“Why I should be helping you to discover the murderer of Kara is beyond my understanding,” he said, “but I will give you another theory, at the same time warning you that I may be putting you off the track. For God knows I have more reason to murder Kara than any man in the world.”
He thought a while.
“The chimney was of course impossible?”
“There was a big fire burning in the grate,” explained T. X.; “so big indeed that the room was stifling.”
John Lexman nodded.
“That was Kara's way,” he said; “as a matter of fact I know the suggestion about magnetism in the steel bar was impossible, because I was friendly with Kara when he had that bar put in and pretty well know the mechanism, although I had forgotten it for the moment. What is your own theory, by the way?”
T. X. pursed his lips.
“My theory isn't very clearly formed,” he said cautiously, “but so far as it goes, it is that Kara was lying on the bed probably reading one of the books which were found by the bedside when his assailant suddenly came upon him. Kara seized the telephone to call for assistance and was promptly killed.”
Again there was silence.
“That is a theory,” said John Lexman, with his curious deliberation of speech, “but as I say I refuse to be definite—have you found the weapon?”
T. X. shook his head.
“Were there any peculiar features about the room which astonished you, and which you have not told me?”
T. X. hesitated.
“There were two candles,” he said, “one in the middle of the room and one under the bed. That in the middle of the room was a small Christmas candle, the one under the bed was the ordinary candle of commerce evidently roughly cut and probably cut in the room. We found traces of candle chips on the floor and it is evident to me that the portion which was cut off was thrown into the fire, for here again we have a trace of grease.”
Lexman nodded.
“Anything further?” he asked.
“The smaller candle was twisted into a sort of corkscrew shape.”
“The Clue of the Twisted Candle,” mused John Lexman “that's a very good title—Kara hated candles.”
“Why?”
Lexman leant back in his chair, selected a cigarette from a silver case.
“In my wanderings,” he said, “I have been to many strange places. I have been to the country which you probably do not know, and which the traveller who writes books about countries seldom visits. There are queer little villages perched on the spurs of the bleakest hills you ever saw. I have lived with communities which acknowledge no king and no government. These have their laws handed down to them from father to son—it is a nation without a written language. They administer their laws rigidly and drastically. The punishments they award are cruel—inhuman. I have seen, the woman taken in adultery stoned to death as in the best Biblical traditions, and I have seen the thief blinded.”
T. X. shivered.
“I have seen the false witness stand up in a barbaric market place whilst his tongue was torn from him. Sometimes the Turks or the piebald governments of the state sent down a few gendarmes and tried a sort of sporadic administration of the country. It usually ended in the representative of the law lapsing into barbarism, or else disappearing from the face of the earth, with a whole community of murderers eager to testify, with singular unanimity, to the fact that he had either committed suicide or had gone off with the wife of one of the townsmen.
“In some of these communities the candle plays a big part. It is not the candle of commerce as you know it, but a dip made from mutton fat. Strap three between the fingers of your hands and keep the hand rigid with two flat pieces of wood; then let the candles burn down lower and lower—can you imagine? Or set a candle in a gunpowder trail and lead the trail to a well-oiled heap of shavings thoughtfully heaped about your naked feet. Or a candle fixed to the shaved head of a man—there are hundreds of variations and the candle plays a part in all of them. I don't know which Kara had cause to hate the worst, but I know one or two that he has employed.”
“Was he as bad as that?” asked T. X.
John Lexman laughed.
“You don't know how bad he was,” he said.
Towards the end of the luncheon the waiter brought a note in to T. X. which had been sent on from his office.
“Dear Mr. Meredith,
“In answer to your enquiry I believe my daughter is in London, but I did not know it until this morning. My banker informs me that my daughter called at the bank this morning and drew a considerable sum of money from her private account, but where she has gone and what she is doing with the money I do not know. I need hardly tell you that I am very worried about this matter and I should be glad if you could explain what it is all about.”
It was signed “William Bartholomew.”
T. X. groaned.
“If I had only had the sense to go to the bank this morning, I should have seen her,” he said. “I'm going to lose my job over this.”
The other looked troubled.
“You don't seriously mean that.”
“Not exactly,” smiled T. X., “but I don't think the Chief is very pleased with me just now. You see I have butted into this business without any authority—it isn't exactly in my department. But you have not given me your theory about the candles.”
“I have no theory to offer,” said the other, folding up his serviette; “the candles suggest a typical Albanian murder. I do not say that it was so, I merely say that by their presence they suggest a crime of this character.”
With this T. X. had to be content.
If it were not his business to interest himself in commonplace murder—though this hardly fitted such a description—it was part of the peculiar function which his department exercised to restore to Lady Bartholomew a certain very elaborate snuff-box which he discovered in the safe.
Letters had been found amongst his papers which made clear the part which Kara had played. Though he had not been a vulgar blackmailer he had retained his hold, not only upon this particular property of Lady Bartholomew, but upon certain other articles which were discovered, with no other object, apparently, than to compel influence from quarters likely to be of assistance to him in his schemes.
The inquest on the murdered man which the Assistant Commissioner attended produced nothing in the shape of evidence and the coroner's verdict of “murder against some person or persons unknown” was only to be expected.
T. X. spent a very busy and a very tiring week tracing elusive clues which led him nowhere. He had a letter from John Lexman announcing the fact that he intended leaving for the United States. He had received a very good offer from a firm of magazine publishers in New York and was going out to take up the appointment.
Meredith's plans were now in fair shape. He had decided upon the line of action he would take and in the pursuance of this he interviewed his Chief and the Minister of Justice.
“Yes, I have heard from my daughter,” said that great man uncomfortably, “and really she has placed me in a most embarrassing position. I cannot tell you, Mr. Meredith, exactly in what manner she has done this, but I can assure you she has.”
“Can I see her letter or telegram?” asked T. X.
“I am afraid that is impossible,” said the other solemnly; “she begged me to keep her communication very secret. I have written to my wife and asked her to come home. I feel the constant strain to which I am being subjected is more than human can endure.”
“I suppose,” said T. X. patiently, “it is impossible for you to tell me to what address you have replied?”
“To no address,” answered the other and corrected himself hurriedly; “that is to say I only received the telegram—the message this morning and there is no address—to reply to.”
“I see,” said T. X.
That afternoon he instructed his secretary.
“I want a copy of all the agony advertisements in to-morrow's papers and in the last editions of the evening papers—have them ready for me tomorrow morning when I come.”
They were waiting for him when he reached the office at nine o'clock the next day and he went through them carefully. Presently he found the message he was seeking.
B. M. You place me awkward position. Very thoughtless. Have received package addressed your mother which have placed in mother's sitting-room. Cannot understand why you want me to go away week-end and give servants holiday but have done so. Shall require very full explanation. Matter gone far enough. Father.
“This,” said T. X. exultantly, as he read the advertisement, “is where I get busy.”