February as a rule is not a month of fogs, but rather a month of tempestuous gales, of frosts and snowfalls, but the night of February 17th, 19—, was one of calm and mist. It was not the typical London fog so dreaded by the foreigner, but one of those little patchy mists which smoke through the streets, now enshrouding and making the nearest object invisible, now clearing away to the finest diaphanous filament of pale grey.
Sir William Bartholomew had a house in Portman Place, which is a wide thoroughfare, filled with solemn edifices of unlovely and forbidding exterior, but remarkably comfortable within. Shortly before eleven on the night of February 17th, a taxi drew up at the junction of Sussex Street and Portman Place, and a girl alighted. The fog at that moment was denser than usual and she hesitated a moment before she left the shelter which the cab afforded.
She gave the driver a few instructions and walked on with a firm step, turning abruptly and mounting the steps of Number 173. Very quickly she inserted her key in the lock, pushed the door open and closed it behind her. She switched on the hall light. The house sounded hollow and deserted, a fact which afforded her considerable satisfaction. She turned the light out and found her way up the broad stairs to the first floor, paused for a moment to switch on another light which she knew would not be observable from the street outside and mounted the second flight.
Miss Belinda Mary Bartholomew congratulated herself upon the success of her scheme, and the only doubt that was in her mind now was whether the boudoir had been locked, but her father was rather careless in such matters and Jacks the butler was one of those dear, silly, old men who never locked anything, and, in consequence, faced every audit with a long face and a longer tale of the peculations of occasional servants.
To her immense relief the handle turned and the door opened to her touch. Somebody had had the sense to pull down the blinds and the curtains were drawn. She switched on the light with a sigh of relief. Her mother's writing table was covered with unopened letters, but she brushed these aside in her search for the little parcel. It was not there and her heart sank. Perhaps she had put it in one of the drawers. She tried them all without result.
She stood by the desk a picture of perplexity, biting a finger thoughtfully.
“Thank goodness!” she said with a jump, for she saw the parcel on the mantel shelf, crossed the room and took it down.
With eager hands she tore off the covering and came to the familiar leather case. Not until she had opened the padded lid and had seen the snuffbox reposing in a bed of cotton wool did she relapse into a long sigh of relief.
“Thank heaven for that,” she said aloud.
“And me,” said a voice.
She sprang up and turned round with a look of terror.
“Mr.—Mr. Meredith,” she stammered.
T. X. stood by the window curtains from whence he had made his dramatic entry upon the scene.
“I say you have to thank me also, Miss Bartholomew,” he said presently.
“How do you know my name?” she asked with some curiosity.
“I know everything in the world,” he answered, and she smiled. Suddenly her face went serious and she demanded sharply,
“Who sent you after me—Mr. Kara?”
“Mr. Kara?” he repeated, in wonder.
“He threatened to send for the police,” she went on rapidly, “and I told him he might do so. I didn't mind the police—it was Kara I was afraid of. You know what I went for, my mother's property.”
She held the snuff-box in her outstretched hand.
“He accused me of stealing and was hateful, and then he put me downstairs in that awful cellar and—”
“And?” suggested T. X.
“That's all,” she replied with tightened lips; “what are you going to do now?”
“I am going to ask you a few questions if I may,” he said. “In the first place have you not heard anything about Mr. Kara since you went away?”
She shook her head.
“I have kept out of his way,” she said grimly.
“Have you seen the newspapers?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I have seen the advertisement column—I wired asking Papa to reply to my telegram.”
“I know—I saw it,” he smiled; “that is what brought me here.”
“I was afraid it would,” she said ruefully; “father is awfully loquacious in print—he makes speeches you know. All I wanted him to say was yes or no. What do you mean about the newspapers?” she went on. “Is anything wrong with mother?”
He shook his head.
“So far as I know Lady Bartholomew is in the best of health and is on her way home.”
“Then what do you mean by asking me about the newspapers!” she demanded; “why should I see the newspapers—what is there for me to see?”
“About Kara?” he suggested.
She shook her head in bewilderment.
“I know and want to know nothing about Kara. Why do you say this to me?”
“Because,” said T. X. slowly, “on the night you disappeared from Cadogan Square, Remington Kara was murdered.”
“Murdered,” she gasped.
He nodded.
“He was stabbed to the heart by some person or persons unknown.”
T. X. took his hand from his pocket and pulled something out which was wrapped in tissue paper. This he carefully removed and the girl watched with fascinated gaze, and with an awful sense of apprehension. Presently the object was revealed. It was a pair of scissors with the handle wrapped about with a small handkerchief dappled with brown stains. She took a step backward, raising her hands to her cheeks.
“My scissors,” she said huskily; “you won't think—”
She stared up at him, fear and indignation struggling for mastery.
“I don't think you committed the murder,” he smiled; “if that's what you mean to ask me, but if anybody else found those scissors and had identified this handkerchief you would have been in rather a fix, my young friend.”
She looked at the scissors and shuddered.
“I did kill something,” she said in a low voice, “an awful dog... I don't know how I did it, but the beastly thing jumped at me and I just stabbed him and killed him, and I am glad,” she nodded many times and repeated, “I am glad.”
“So I gather—I found the dog and now perhaps you'll explain why I didn't find you?”
Again she hesitated and he felt that she was hiding something from him.
“I don't know why you didn't find me,” she said; “I was there.”
“How did you get out?”
“How did you get out?” she challenged him boldly.
“I got out through the door,” he confessed; “it seems a ridiculously commonplace way of leaving but that's the only way I could see.”
“And that's how I got out,” she answered, with a little smile.
“But it was locked.”
She laughed.
“I see now,” she said; “I was in the cellar. I heard your key in the lock and bolted down the trap, leaving those awful scissors behind. I thought it was Kara with some of his friends and then the voices died away and I ventured to come up and found you had left the door open. So—so I—”
These queer little pauses puzzled T. X. There was something she was not telling him. Something she had yet to reveal.
“So I got away you see,” she went on. “I came out into the kitchen; there was nobody there, and I passed through the area door and up the steps and just round the corner I found a taxicab, and that is all.”
She spread out her hands in a dramatic little gesture.
“And that is all, is it?” said T. X.
“That is all,” she repeated; “now what are you going to do?”
T. X. looked up at the ceiling and stroked his chin.
“I suppose that I ought to arrest you. I feel that something is due from me. May I ask if you were sleeping in the bed downstairs?”
“In the lower cellar?” she demanded,—a little pause and then, “Yes, I was sleeping in the cellar downstairs.”
There was that interval of hesitation almost between each word.
“What are you going to do?” she asked again.
She was feeling more sure of herself and had suppressed the panic which his sudden appearance had produced in her. He rumpled his hair, a gross imitation, did she but know it, of one of his chief's mannerisms and she observed that his hair was very thick and inclined to curl. She saw also that he was passably good looking, had fine grey eyes, a straight nose and a most firm chin.
“I think,” she suggested gently, “you had better arrest me.”
“Don't be silly,” he begged.
She stared at him in amazement.
“What did you say?” she asked wrathfully.
“I said 'don't be silly,'” repeated the calm young man.
“Do you know that you're being very rude?” she asked.
He seemed interested and surprised at this novel view of his conduct.
“Of course,” she went on carefully smoothing her dress and avoiding his eye, “I know you think I am silly and that I've got a most comic name.”
“I have never said your name was comic,” he replied coldly; “I would not take so great a liberty.”
“You said it was 'weird' which was worse,” she claimed.
“I may have said it was 'weird,”' he admitted, “but that's rather different to saying it was 'comic.' There is dignity in weird things. For example, nightmares aren't comic but they're weird.”
“Thank you,” she said pointedly.
“Not that I mean your name is anything approaching a nightmare.” He made this concession with a most magnificent sweep of hand as though he were a king conceding her the right to remain covered in his presence. “I think that Belinda Ann—”
“Belinda Mary,” she corrected.
“Belinda Mary, I was going to say, or as a matter of fact,” he floundered, “I was going to say Belinda and Mary.”
“You were going to say nothing of the kind,” she corrected him.
“Anyway, I think Belinda Mary is a very pretty name.”
“You think nothing of the sort.”
She saw the laughter in his eyes and felt an insane desire to laugh.
“You said it was a weird name and you think it is a weird name, but I really can't be bothered considering everybody's views. I think it's a weird name, too. I was named after an aunt,” she added in self-defence.
“There you have the advantage of me,” he inclined his head politely; “I was named after my father's favourite dog.”
“What does T. X. stand for?” she asked curiously.
“Thomas Xavier,” he said, and she leant back in the big chair on the edge of which a few minutes before she had perched herself in trepidation and dissolved into a fit of immoderate laughter.
“It is comic, isn't it?” he asked.
“Oh, I am sorry I'm so rude,” she gasped. “Fancy being called Tommy Xavier—I mean Thomas Xavier.”
“You may call me Tommy if you wish—most of my friends do.”
“Unfortunately I'm not your friend,” she said, still smiling and wiping the tears from her eyes, “so I shall go on calling you Mr. Meredith if you don't mind.”
She looked at her watch.
“If you are not going to arrest me I'm going,” she said.
“I have certainly no intention of arresting you,” said he, “but I am going to see you home!”
She jumped up smartly.
“You're not,” she commanded.
She was so definite in this that he was startled.
“My dear child,” he protested.
“Please don't 'dear child' me,” she said seriously; “you're going to be a good little Tommy and let me go home by myself.”
She held out her hand frankly and the laughing appeal in her eyes was irresistible.
“Well, I'll see you to a cab,” he insisted.
“And listen while I give the driver instructions where he is to take me?”
She shook her head reprovingly.
“It must be an awful thing to be a policeman.”
He stood back with folded arms, a stern frown on his face.
“Don't you trust me?” he asked.
“No,” she replied.
“Quite right,” he approved; “anyway I'll see you to the cab and you can tell the driver to go to Charing Cross station and on your way you can change your direction.”
“And you promise you won't follow me?” she asked.
“On my honour,” he swore; “on one condition though.”
“I will make no conditions,” she replied haughtily.
“Please come down from your great big horse,” he begged, “and listen to reason. The condition I make is that I can always bring you to an appointed rendezvous whenever I want you. Honestly, this is necessary, Belinda Mary.”
“Miss Bartholomew,” she corrected, coldly.
“It is necessary,” he went on, “as you will understand. Promise me that, if I put an advertisement in the agonies of either an evening paper which I will name or in the Morning Port, you will keep the appointment I fix, if it is humanly possible.”
She hesitated a moment, then held out her hand.
“I promise,” she said.
“Good for you, Belinda Mary,” said he, and tucking her arm in his he led her out of the room switching off the light and racing her down the stairs.
If there was a lot of the schoolgirl left in Belinda Mary Bartholomew, no less of the schoolboy was there in this Commissioner of Police. He would have danced her through the fog, contemptuous of the proprieties, but he wasn't so very anxious to get her to her cab and to lose sight of her.
“Good-night,” he said, holding her hand.
“That's the third time you've shaken hands with me to-night,” she interjected.
“Don't let us have any unpleasantness at the last,” he pleaded, “and remember.”
“I have promised,” she replied.
“And one day,” he went on, “you will tell me all that happened in that cellar.”
“I have told you,” she said in a low voice.
“You have not told me everything, child.”
He handed her into the cab. He shut the door behind her and leant through the open window.
“Victoria or Marble Arch?” he asked politely.
“Charing Cross,” she replied, with a little laugh.
He watched the cab drive away and then suddenly it stopped and a figure lent out from the window beckoning him frantically. He ran up to her.
“Suppose I want you,” she asked.
“Advertise,” he said promptly, “beginning your advertisement 'Dear Tommy.”'
“I shall put 'T. X.,'” she said indignantly.
“Then I shall take no notice of your advertisement,” he replied and stood in the middle of the street, his hat in his hand, to the intense annoyance of a taxi-cab driver who literally all but ran him down and in a figurative sense did so until T. X. was out of earshot.
Thomas Xavier Meredith was a shrewd young man. It was said of him by Signor Paulo Coselli, the eminent criminologist, that he had a gift of intuition which was abnormal. Probably the mystery of the twisted candle was solved by him long before any other person in the world had the dimmest idea that it was capable of solution.
The house in Cadogan Square was still in the hands of the police. To this house and particularly to Kara's bedroom T. X. from time to time repaired, and reproduced as far as possible the conditions which obtained on the night of the murder. He had the same stifling fire, the same locked door. The latch was dropped in its socket, whilst T. X., with a stop watch in his hand, made elaborate calculations and acted certain parts which he did not reveal to a soul.
Three times, accompanied by Mansus, he went to the house, three times went to the death chamber and was alone on one occasion for an hour and a half whilst the patient Mansus waited outside. Three times he emerged looking graver on each occasion, and after the third visit he called into consultation John Lexman.
Lexman had been spending some time in the country, having deferred his trip to the United States.
“This case puzzles me more and more, John,” said T. X., troubled out of his usual boisterous self, “and thank heaven it worries other people besides me. De Mainau came over from France the other day and brought all his best sleuths, whilst O'Grady of the New York central office paid a flying visit just to get hold of the facts. Not one of them has given me the real solution, though they've all been rather ingenious. Gathercole has vanished and is probably on his way to some undiscoverable region, and our people have not yet traced the valet.”
“He should be the easiest for you,” said John Lexman, reflectively.
“Why Gathercole should go off I can't understand,” T. X. continued. “According to the story which was told me by Fisher, his last words to Kara were to the effect that he was expecting a cheque or that he had received a cheque. No cheque has been presented or drawn and apparently Gathercole has gone off without waiting for any payment. An examination of Kara's books show nothing against the Gathercole account save the sum of 600 pounds which was originally advanced, and now to upset all my calculations, look at this.”
He took from his pocketbook a newspaper cutting and pushed it across the table, for they were dining together at the Carlton. John Lexman picked up the slip and read. It was evidently from a New York paper:
“Further news has now come to hand by the Antarctic Trading Company's steamer, Cyprus, concerning the wreck of the City of the Argentine. It is believed that this ill-fated vessel, which called at South American ports, lost her propellor and drifted south out of the track of shipping. This theory is now confirmed. Apparently the ship struck an iceberg on December 23rd and foundered with all aboard save a few men who were able to launch a boat and who were picked up by the Cyprus. The following is the passenger list.”
John Lexman ran down the list until he came upon the name which was evidently underlined in ink by T. X. That name was George Gathercole and after it in brackets (Explorer).
“If that were true, then, Gathercole could not have come to London.”
“He may have taken another boat,” said T. X., “and I cabled to the Steamship Company without any great success. Apparently Gathercole was an eccentric sort of man and lived in terror of being overcrowded. It was a habit of his to make provisional bookings by every available steamer. The company can tell me no more than that he had booked, but whether he shipped on the City of the Argentine or not, they do not know.”
“I can tell you this about Gathercole,” said John slowly and thoughtfully, “that he was a man who would not hurt a fly. He was incapable of killing any man, being constitutionally averse to taking life in any shape. For this reason he never made collections of butterflies or of bees, and I believe has never shot an animal in his life. He carried his principles to such an extent that he was a vegetarian—poor old Gathercole!” he said, with the first smile which T. X. had seen on his face since he came back.
“If you want to sympathize with anybody,” said T. X. gloomily, “sympathize with me.”
On the following day T. X. was summoned to the Home Office and went steeled for a most unholy row. The Home Secretary, a large and worthy gentleman, given to the making of speeches on every excuse, received him, however, with unusual kindness.
“I've sent for you, Mr. Meredith,” he said, “about this unfortunate Greek. I've had all his private papers looked into and translated and in some cases decoded, because as you are probably aware his diaries and a great deal of his correspondence were in a code which called for the attention of experts.”
T. X. had not troubled himself greatly about Kara's private papers but had handed them over, in accordance with instructions, to the proper authorities.
“Of course, Mr. Meredith,” the Home Secretary went on, beaming across his big table, “we expect you to continue your search for the murderer, but I must confess that your prisoner when you secure him will have a very excellent case to put to a jury.”
“That I can well believe, sir,” said T. X.
“Seldom in my long career at the bar,” began the Home Secretary in his best oratorical manner, “have I examined a record so utterly discreditable as that of the deceased man.”
Here he advanced a few instances which surprised even T. X.
“The man was a lunatic,” continued the Home Secretary, “a vicious, evil man who loved cruelty for cruelty's sake. We have in this diary alone sufficient evidence to convict him of three separate murders, one of which was committed in this country.”
T. X. looked his astonishment.
“You will remember, Mr. Meredith, as I saw in one of your reports, that he had a chauffeur, a Greek named Poropulos.”
T. X. nodded.
“He went to Greece on the day following the shooting of Vassalaro,” he said.
The Home Secretary shook his head.
“He was killed on the same night,” said the Minister, “and you will have no difficulty in finding what remains of his body in the disused house which Kara rented for his own purpose on the Portsmouth Road. That he has killed a number of people in Albania you may well suppose. Whole villages have been wiped out to provide him with a little excitement. The man was a Nero without any of Nero's amiable weaknesses. He was obsessed with the idea that he himself was in danger of assassination, and saw an enemy even in his trusty servant. Undoubtedly the chauffeur Poropulos was in touch with several Continental government circles. You understand,” said the Minister in conclusion, “that I am telling you this, not with the idea of expecting you, to relax your efforts to find the murderer and clear up the mystery, but in order that you may know something of the possible motive for this man's murder.”
T. X. spent an hour going over the decoded diary and documents and left the Home Office a little shakily. It was inconceivable, incredible. Kara was a lunatic, but the directing genius was a devil.
T. X. had a flat in Whitehall Gardens and thither he repaired to change for dinner. He was half dressed when the evening paper arrived and he glanced as was his wont first at the news' page and then at the advertisement column. He looked down the column marked “Personal” without expecting to find anything of particular interest to himself, but saw that which made him drop the paper and fly round the room in a frenzy to complete his toilet.
“Tommy X.,” ran the brief announcement, “most urgent, Marble Arch 8.”
He had five minutes to get there but it seemed like five hours. He was held up at almost every crossing and though he might have used his authority to obtain right of way, it was a step which his curious sense of honesty prevented him taking. He leapt out of the cab before it stopped, thrust the fare into the driver's hands and looked round for the girl. He saw her at last and walked quickly towards her. As he approached her, she turned about and with an almost imperceptible beckoning gesture walked away. He followed her along the Bayswater Road and gradually drew level.
“I am afraid I have been watched,” she said in a low voice. “Will you call a cab?”
He hailed a passing taxi, helped her in and gave at random the first place that suggested itself to him, which was Finsbury Park.
“I am very worried,” she said, “and I don't know anybody who can help me except you.”
“Is it money?” he asked.
“Money,” she said scornfully, “of course it isn't money. I want to show you a letter,” she said after a while.
She took it from her bag and gave it to him and he struck a match and read it with difficulty.
It was written in a studiously uneducated hand.
“Dear Miss,“I know who you are. You are wanted by the police but Iwill not give you away. Dear Miss. I am very hard up and20 pounds will be very useful to me and I shall not troubleyou again. Dear Miss. Put the money on the window sill ofyour room. I know you sleep on the ground floor and I willcome in and take it. And if not—well, I don't want to makeany trouble.“Yours truly,“A FRIEND.”
“When did you get this?” he asked.
“This morning,” she replied. “I sent the Agony to the paper by telegram, I knew you would come.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” he said.
Her assurance was very pleasing to him. The faith that her words implied gave him an odd little feeling of comfort and happiness.
“I can easily get you out of this,” he added; “give me your address and when the gentleman comes—”
“That is impossible,” she replied hurriedly. “Please don't think I'm ungrateful, and don't think I'm being silly—you do think I'm being silly, don't you!”
“I have never harboured such an unworthy thought,” he said virtuously.
“Yes, you have,” she persisted, “but really I can't tell you where I am living. I have a very special reason for not doing so. It's not myself that I'm thinking about, but there's a life involved.”
This was a somewhat dramatic statement to make and she felt she had gone too far.
“Perhaps I don't mean that,” she said, “but there is some one I care for—” she dropped her voice.
“Oh,” said T. X. blankly.
He came down from his rosy heights into the shadow and darkness of a sunless valley.
“Some one you care for,” he repeated after a while.
“Yes.”
There was another long silence, then,
“Oh, indeed,” said T. X.
Again the unbroken interval of quiet and after a while she said in a low voice, “Not that way.”
“Not what way!” asked T. X. huskily, his spirits doing a little mountaineering.
“The way you mean,” she said.
“Oh,” said T. X.
He was back again amidst the rosy snows of dawn, was in fact climbing a dizzy escalier on the topmost height of hope's Mont Blanc when she pulled the ladder from under him.
“I shall, of course, never marry,” she said with a certain prim decision.
T. X. fell with a dull sickening thud, discovering that his rosy snows were not unlike cold, hard ice in their lack of resilience.
“Who said you would?” he asked somewhat feebly, but in self defence.
“You did,” she said, and her audacity took his breath away.
“Well, how am I to help you!” he asked after a while.
“By giving me some advice,” she said; “do you think I ought to put the money there!”
“Indeed I do not,” said T. X., recovering some of his natural dominance; “apart from the fact that you would be compounding a felony, you would merely be laying out trouble for yourself in the future. If he can get 20 pounds so easily, he will come for 40 pounds. But why do you stay away, why don't you return home? There's no charge and no breath of suspicion against you.”
“Because I have something to do which I have set my mind to,” she said, with determination in her tones.
“Surely you can trust me with your address,” he urged her, “after all that has passed between us, Belinda Mary—after all the years we have known one another.”
“I shall get out and leave you,” she said steadily.
“But how the dickens am I going to help you?” he protested.
“Don't swear,” she could be very severe indeed; “the only way you can help me is by being kind and sympathetic.”
“Would you like me to burst into tears?” he asked sarcastically.
“I ask you to do nothing more painful or repugnant to your natural feelings than to be a gentleman,” she said.
“Thank you very kindly,” said T. X., and leant back in the cab with an air of supreme resignation.
“I believe you're making faces in the dark,” she accused him.
“God forbid that I should do anything so low,” said he hastily; “what made you think that?”
“Because I was putting my tongue out at you,” she admitted, and the taxi driver heard the shrieks of laughter in the cab behind him above the wheezing of his asthmatic engine.
At twelve that night in a certain suburb of London an overcoated man moved stealthily through a garden. He felt his way carefully along the wall of the house and groped with hope, but with no great certainty, along the window sill. He found an envelope which his fingers, somewhat sensitive from long employment in nefarious uses, told him contained nothing more substantial than a letter.
He went back through the garden and rejoined his companion, who was waiting under an adjacent lamp-post.
“Did she drop?” asked the other eagerly.
“I don't know yet,” growled the man from the garden.
He opened the envelope and read the few lines.
“She hasn't got the money,” he said, “but she's going to get it. I must meet her to-morrow afternoon at the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street.”
“What time!” asked the other.
“Six o'clock,” said the first man. “The chap who takes the money must carry a copy of the Westminster Gazette in his hand.”
“Oh, then it's a plant,” said the other with conviction.
The other laughed.
“She won't work any plants. I bet she's scared out of her life.”
The second man bit his nails and looked up and down the road, apprehensively.
“It's come to something,” he said bitterly; “we went out to make our thousands and we've come down to 'chanting' for 20 pounds.”
“It's the luck,” said the other philosophically, “and I haven't done with her by any means. Besides we've still got a chance of pulling of the big thing, Harry. I reckon she's good for a hundred or two, anyway.”
At six o'clock on the following afternoon, a man dressed in a dark overcoat, with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes stood nonchalantly by the curb near where the buses stop at Regent Street slapping his hand gently with a folded copy of the Westminster Gazette.
That none should mistake his Liberal reading, he stood as near as possible to a street lamp and so arranged himself and his attitude that the minimum of light should fall upon his face and the maximum upon that respectable organ of public opinion. Soon after six he saw the girl approaching, out of the tail of his eye, and strolled off to meet her. To his surprise she passed him by and he was turning to follow when an unfriendly hand gripped him by the arm.
“Mr. Fisher, I believe,” said a pleasant voice.
“What do you mean?” said the man, struggling backward.
“Are you going quietly!” asked the pleasant Superintendent Mansus, “or shall I take my stick to you'?”
Mr. Fisher thought awhile.
“It's a cop,” he confessed, and allowed himself to be hustled into the waiting cab.
He made his appearance in T. X.'s office and that urbane gentleman greeted him as a friend.
“And how's Mr. Fisher!” he asked; “I suppose you are Mr. Fisher still and not Mr. Harry Gilcott, or Mr. George Porten.”
Fisher smiled his old, deferential, deprecating smile.
“You will always have your joke, sir. I suppose the young lady gave me away.”
“You gave yourself away, my poor Fisher,” said T. X., and put a strip of paper before him; “you may disguise your hand, and in your extreme modesty pretend to an ignorance of the British language, which is not creditable to your many attainments, but what you must be awfully careful in doing in future when you write such epistles,” he said, “is to wash your hands.”
“Wash my hands!” repeated the puzzled Fisher.
T. X. nodded.
“You see you left a little thumb print, and we are rather whales on thumb prints at Scotland Yard, Fisher.”
“I see. What is the charge now, sir!”
“I shall make no charge against you except the conventional one of being a convict under license and failing to report.”
Fisher heaved a sigh.
“That'll only mean twelve months. Are you going to charge me with this business?” he nodded to the paper.
T. X. shook his head.
“I bear you no ill-will although you tried to frighten Miss Bartholomew. Oh yes, I know it is Miss Bartholomew, and have known all the time. The lady is there for a reason which is no business of yours or of mine. I shall not charge you with attempt to blackmail and in reward for my leniency I hope you are going to tell me all you know about the Kara murder. You wouldn't like me to charge you with that, would you by any chance!”
Fisher drew a long breath.
“No, sir, but if you did I could prove my innocence,” he said earnestly. “I spent the whole of the evening in the kitchen.”
“Except a quarter of an hour,” said T. X.
The man nodded.
“That's true, sir, I went out to see a pal of mine.”
“The man who is in this!” asked T. X.
Fisher hesitated.
“Yes, sir. He was with me in this but there was nothing wrong about the business—as far as we went. I don't mind admitting that I was planning a Big Thing. I'm not going to blow on it, if it's going to get me into trouble, but if you'll promise me that it won't, I'll tell you the whole story.”
“Against whom was this coup of yours planned?”
“Against Mr. Kara, sir,” said Fisher.
“Go on with your story,” nodded T. X.
The story was a short and commonplace one. Fisher had met a man who knew another man who was either a Turk or an Albanian. They had learnt that Kara was in the habit of keeping large sums of money in the house and they had planned to rob him. That was the story in a nutshell. Somewhere the plan miscarried. It was when he came to the incidents that occurred on the night of the murder that T. X. followed him with the greatest interest.
“The old gentleman came in,” said Fisher, “and I saw him up to the room. I heard him coming out and I went up and spoke to him while he was having a chat with Mr. Kara at the open door.”
“Did you hear Mr. Kara speak?”
“I fancy I did, sir,” said Fisher; “anyway the old gentleman was quite pleased with himself.”
“Why do you say 'old gentleman'!” asked T. X.; “he was not an old man.”
“Not exactly, sir,” said Fisher, “but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, he may have been fifty.”
“You have told me all this before. Was there anything peculiar about him!”
Fisher hesitated.
“Nothing, sir, except the fact that one of his arms was a game one.”
“Meaning that it was—”
“Meaning that it was an artificial one, sir, so far as I can make out.”
“Was it his right or his left arm that was game!” interrupted T. X.
“His left arm, sir.”
“You're sure?”
“I'd swear to it, sir.”
“Very well, go on.”
“He came downstairs and went out and I never saw him again. When you came and the murder was discovered and knowing as I did that I had my own scheme on and that one of your splits might pinch me, I got a bit rattled. I went downstairs to the hall and the first thing I saw lying on the table was a letter. It was addressed to me.”
He paused and T. X. nodded.
“Go on,” he said again.
“I couldn't understand how it came to be there, but as I'd been in the kitchen most of the evening except when I was seeing my pal outside to tell him the job was off for that night, it might have been there before you came. I opened the letter. There were only a few words on it and I can tell you those few words made my heart jump up into my mouth, and made me go cold all over.”
“What were they!” asked T. X.
“I shall not forget them, sir. They're sort of permanently fixed in my brain,” said the man earnestly; “the note started with just the figures 'A. C. 274.'”
“What was that!” asked T. X.
“My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir.”
“What did the note say?”
“'Get out of here quick'—I don't know who had put it there, but I'd evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances. That's the whole story from beginning to end. I accidentally happened to meet the young lady, Miss Holland—Miss Bartholomew as she is—and followed her to her house in Portman Place. That was the night you were there.”
T. X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.
“And you know no more?” he asked.
“No more, sir—and if I may be struck dead—”
“Keep all that sabbath talk for the chaplain,” commended T. X., and they took away Mr. Fisher, not an especially dissatisfied man.
That night T. X. interviewed his prisoner at Cannon Row police station and made a few more enquiries.
“There is one thing I would like to ask you,” said the girl when he met her next morning in Green Park.
“If you were going to ask whether I made enquiries as to where your habitation was,” he warned her, “I beg of you to refrain.”
She was looking very beautiful that morning, he thought. The keen air had brought a colour to her face and lent a spring to her gait, and, as she strode along by his side with the free and careless swing of youth, she was an epitome of the life which even now was budding on every tree in the park.
“Your father is back in town, by the way,” he said, “and he is most anxious to see you.”
She made a little grimace.
“I hope you haven't been round talking to father about me.”
“Of course I have,” he said helplessly; “I have also had all the reporters up from Fleet Street and given them a full description of your escapades.”
She looked round at him with laughter in her eyes.
“You have all the manners of an early Christian martyr,” she said. “Poor soul! Would you like to be thrown to the lions?”
“I should prefer being thrown to the demnition ducks and drakes,” he said moodily.
“You're such a miserable man,” she chided him, “and yet you have everything to make life worth living.”
“Ha, ha!” said T. X.
“You have, of course you have! You have a splendid position. Everybody looks up to you and talks about you. You have got a wife and family who adore you—”
He stopped and looked at her as though she were some strange insect.
“I have a how much?” he asked credulously.
“Aren't you married?” she asked innocently.
He made a strange noise in his throat.
“Do you know I have always thought of you as married,” she went on; “I often picture you in your domestic circle reading to the children from the Daily Megaphone those awfully interesting stories about Little Willie Waterbug.”
He held on to the railings for support.
“May we sit down?” he asked faintly.
She sat by his side, half turned to him, demure and wholly adorable.
“Of course you are right in one respect,” he said at last, “but you're altogether wrong about the children.”
“Are you married!” she demanded with no evidence of amusement.
“Didn't you know?” he asked.
She swallowed something.
“Of course it's no business of mine and I'm sure I hope you are very happy.”
“Perfectly happy,” said T. X. complacently. “You must come out and see me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden.”
“Shall we go on?” she said.
He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.
“I haven't made you cross, have I?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she replied.
“I mean you don't believe all this rot about my being married and that sort of thing?”
“I'm not interested,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “not very much. You've been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn't grateful. Of course, I don't care whether you're married or not, it's nothing to do with me, is it?”
“Naturally it isn't,” he replied. “I suppose you aren't married by any chance?”
“Married,” she repeated bitterly; “why, you will make my fourth!”
She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.
“Belinda Mary,” said T. X. at parting, “you have got to give up your little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can't come back yet. That 'somebody' is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is.”
“Who?” she challenged.
“I rather fancy your mother has come back,” he suggested.
A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.
“Good lord, Tommy!” she said in disgust, “you don't think I should keep mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about it!”
“You're an undutiful little beggar,” he said.
They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying good-bye to her.
“If it comes to a matter of duty,” she answered, “perhaps you will do your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this road.”
“My dear girl,” he protested, “hold up the traffic?”
“Of course,” she said indignantly, “you're a policeman.”
“Only when I am in uniform,” he said hastily, and piloted her across the road.
It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall. A man with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride and joy of life's most precious possession.