It was already a little past the customary luncheon hour at the Carlton, and the restaurant was well filled. The orchestra had played their first selection, and the stream of incoming guests had begun to slacken. A young lady who had been sitting in the palm court for at least half an hour rose to her feet, and, glancing casually at her watch, made her way into the hotel. She entered the office and addressed the chief reception clerk.
“Can you tell me,” she asked, “if Mr. Hamilton Fynes is staying here? He should have arrived by the Lusitania last night or early this morning.”
It is not the business of a hotel reception clerk to appear surprised at anything. Nevertheless the man looked at her, for a moment, with a curious expression in his eyes.
“Mr. Hamilton Fynes!” he repeated. “Did you say that you were expecting him by the Lusitania, madam?”
“Yes!” the young lady answered. “He asked me to lunch with him here today. Can you tell me whether he has arrived yet? If he is in his room, I should be glad if you would send up to him.”
There were several people in the office who were in a position to overhear their conversation. With a word of apology, the man came round from his place behind the mahogany counter. He stood by the side of the young lady, and he seemed to be suffering from some embarrassment.
“Will you pardon my asking, madam, if you have seen the newspapers this morning?” he inquired.
Without a doubt, her first thought was that the question savored of impertinence. She looked at him with slightly upraised eyebrows. She was slim, of medium complexion, with dark brown hair parted in the middle and waving a little about her temples. She was irreproachably dressed, from the tips of her patent shoes to the black feathers in her Paris hat.
“The newspapers!” she repeated. “Why, no, I don’t think that I have seen them this morning. What have they to do with Mr. Hamilton Fynes?”
The clerk pointed to the open door of a small private office.
“If you will step this way for one moment, madam,” he begged.
She tapped the floor with her foot and looked at him curiously. Certainly the people around seemed to be taking some interest in their conversation.
“Why should I?” she asked. “Cannot you answer my question here?”
“If madam will be so good,” he persisted.
She shrugged her shoulders and followed him. Something in the man’s earnest tone and almost pleading look convinced her, at least, of his good intentions. Besides, the interest which her question had undoubtedly aroused amongst the bystanders was, to say the least of it, embarrassing. He pulled the door to after them.
“Madam,” he said, “there was a Mr. Hamilton Fynes who came over by the Lusitania, and who had certainly engaged rooms in this hotel, but he unfortunately, it seems, met with an accident on his way from Liverpool.”
Her manner changed at once. She began to understand what it all meant. Her lips parted, her eyes were wide open.
“An accident?” she faltered.
He gently rolled a chair up to her. She sank obediently into it.
“Madam,” he said, “it was a very bad accident indeed. I trust that Mr. Hamilton Fynes was not a very intimate friend or a relative of yours. It would perhaps be better for you to read the account for yourself.”
He placed a newspaper in her hands. She read the first few lines and suddenly turned upon him. She was white to the lips now, and there was real terror in her tone. Yet if he had been in a position to have analyzed the emotion she displayed, he might have remarked that there was none of the surprise, the blank, unbelieving amazement which might have been expected from one hearing for the first time of such a calamity.
“Murdered!” she exclaimed. “Is this true?”
“It appears to be perfectly true, madam, I regret to say,” the clerk answered. “Even the earlier editions were able to supply the man’s name, and I am afraid that there is no doubt about his identity. The captain of the Lusitania confirmed it, and many of the passengers who saw him leave the ship last night have been interviewed.”
“Murdered!” she repeated to herself with trembling lips. “It seems such a horrible death! Have they any idea who did it?” she asked. “Has any one been arrested?”
“At present, no, madam,” the clerk answered. “The affair, as you will see if you read further, is an exceedingly mysterious one.”
She rocked a little in her chair, but she showed no signs of fainting. She picked up the paper and found the place once more. There were two columns filled with particulars of the tragedy.
“Where can I be alone and read this?” she asked.
“Here, if you please, madam,” the clerk answered. “I must go back to my desk. There are many arrivals just now. Will you allow me to send you something—a little brandy, perhaps?”
“Nothing, thank you,” she answered. “I wish only to be alone while I read this.”
He left her with a little sympathetic murmur, and closed the door behind him. The girl raised her veil now and spread the newspaper out on the table before her. There was an account of the tragedy; there were interviews with some of the passengers, a message from the captain. In all, it seemed that wonderfully little was known of Mr. Hamilton Fynes. He had spoken to scarcely a soul on board, and had remained for the greater part of the time in his stateroom. The captain had not even been aware of his existence till the moment when Mr. Hamilton Fynes had sought him out and handed him an order, signed by the head of his company, instructing him to obey in any respect the wishes of this hitherto unknown passenger. The tug which had been hired to meet him had gone down the river, so it was not possible, for the moment, to say by whom it had been chartered. The station-master at Liverpool knew nothing except that the letter presented to him by the dead man was a personal one from a great railway magnate, whose wishes it was impossible to disregard. There had not been a soul, apparently, upon the steamer who had known anything worth mentioning of Mr. Hamilton Fynes or his business. No one in London had made inquiries for him or claimed his few effects. Half a dozen cables to America remained unanswered.
That papers had been stolen from him—papers or money—was evident from the place of concealment in his coat, where the lining had been torn away, but there was not the slightest evidence as to the nature of these documents or the history of the murdered man. All that could be done was to await the news from the other side, which was momentarily expected.
The girl went through it all, line by line, almost word by word. Whatever there might have been of relationship or friendship between her and the dead man, the news of his terrible end left her shaken, indeed, but dry-eyed. She was apparently more terrified than grieved, and now that the first shock had passed away, her mind seemed occupied with thoughts which may indeed have had some connection with this tragedy, but were scarcely wholly concerned with it. She sat for a long while with her hands still resting upon the table but her eyes fixed out of the window. Then at last she rose and made her way outside. Her friend the reception clerk was engaged in conversation with one or two men, a conversation of which she was obviously the subject. As she opened the door, one of them broke off in the midst of what he was saying and would have accosted her. The clerk, however, interposed, and drew her a step or two back into the room.
“Madam,” he said, “one of these gentlemen is from Scotland Yard, and the others are reporters. They are all eager to know anything about Mr. Hamilton Fynes. I expect they will want to ask you some questions.”
The girl opened her lips and closed them again.
“I regret to say that I have nothing whatever to tell them,” she declared. “Will you kindly let them know that?”
The clerk shook his head.
“I am afraid you will find them quite persistent, madam,” he said.
“I cannot tell them things which I do not know myself,” she answered, frowning.
“Naturally,” the clerk admitted; “yet these gentlemen from Scotland Yard have special privileges, of course, and there remains the fact that you were engaged to lunch with Mr. Fynes here.”
“If it will help me to get rid of them,” she said, “I will speak to the representative of Scotland Yard. I will have nothing whatever to say to the reporters.”
The clerk turned round and beckoned to the foremost figure in the little group. Inspector Jacks, tall, lantern-jawed, dressed with the quiet precision of a well-to-do-man of affairs, and with no possible suggestion of his calling in his manner or attire, was by her side almost at once.
“Madam,” he said, “I understand that Mr. Hamilton Fynes was a friend of yours?”
“An acquaintance,” she corrected him.
“And your name?” he asked.
“I am Miss Morse,” she replied,—“Miss Penelope Morse.”
“You were to have lunched here with Mr. Hamilton Fynes,” the detective continued. “When, may I ask, did the invitation reach you?”
“Yesterday,” she told him, “by marconigram from Queenstown.”
“You can tell us a few things about the deceased, without doubt,” Mr. Jacks said,—“his profession, for instance, or his social standing? Perhaps you know the reason for his coming to Europe?”
The girl shook her head.
“Mr. Fynes and I were not intimately acquainted,” she answered. “We met in Paris some years ago, and when he was last in London, during the autumn, I lunched with him twice.”
“You had no letter from him, then, previous to the marconigram?” the inspector asked.
“I have scarcely ever received a letter from him in my life,” she answered. “He was as bad a correspondent as I am myself.”
“You know nothing, then, of the object of his present visit to England?”
“Nothing whatever,” she answered.
“When he was over here before,” the inspector asked, “do you know what his business was then?”
“Not in the least,” she replied.
“You can tell us his address in the States?” Inspector Jacks suggested.
She shook her head.
“I cannot,” she answered. “As I told you just now, I have never had a letter from him in my life. We exchanged a few notes, perhaps, when we were in Paris, about trivial matters, but nothing more than that.”
“He must at some time, in Paris, for instance, or when you lunched with him last year, have said something about his profession, or how he spent his time?”
“He never alluded to it in any way,” the girl answered. “I have not the slightest idea how he passed his time.”
The inspector was a little nonplussed. He did not for a moment believe that the girl was telling the truth.
“Perhaps,” he said tentatively, “you do not care to have your name come before the public in connection with a case so notorious as this?”
“Naturally,” the girl answered. “That, however, would not prevent my telling you anything that I knew. You seem to find it hard to believe, but I can assure you that I know nothing. Mr. Fynes was almost a stranger to me.”
The detective was thoughtful.
“So you really cannot help us at all, madam?” he said at length.
“I am afraid not,” she answered.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “after you have thought the matter over, something may occur to you. Can I trouble you for your address?”
“I am staying at Devenham House for the moment,” she answered.
He wrote it down in his notebook.
“I shall perhaps do myself the honor of waiting upon you a little later on,” he said. “You may be able, after reflection, to recall some small details, at any rate, which will be interesting to us. At present we are absurdly ignorant as to the man’s affairs.”
She turned away from him to the clerk, and pointed to another door.
“Can I go out without seeing those others?” she asked. “I really have nothing to say to them, and this has been quite a shock to me.”
“By all means, madam,” the clerk answered. “If you will allow me, I will escort you to the entrance.”
Two of the more enterprising of the journalists caught them up upon the pavement. Miss Penelope Morse, however, had little to say to them.
“You must not ask me any more questions about Mr. Hamilton Fynes,” she declared. “My acquaintance with him was of the slightest. It is true that I came here to lunch today without knowing what had happened. It has been a shock to me, and I do not wish to talk about it, and I will not talk about it, for the present.”
She was deaf to their further questions. The hotel clerk handed her into a taximeter cab, and gave the address to the driver. Then he went back to his office, where Inspector Jacks was still sitting.
“This Mr. Hamilton Fynes,” he remarked, “seems to have been what you might call a secretive sort of person. Nobody appears to know anything about him. I remember when he was staying here before that he had no callers, and seemed to spend most of his time sitting in the palm court.”
The inspector nodded.
“He was certainly a man who knew how to keep his own counsel,” he admitted. “Most Americans are ready enough to talk about themselves and their affairs, even to comparative strangers.”
The hotel clerk nodded.
“Makes it difficult for you,” he remarked.
“It makes the case very interesting,” the inspector declared, “especially when we find him engaged to lunch with a young lady of such remarkable discretion as Miss Penelope Morse.”
“You know her?” the clerk asked a little eagerly.
The inspector was engaged, apparently, in studying the pattern of the carpet.
“Not exactly,” he answered. “No, I have no absolute knowledge of Miss Penelope Morse. By the bye, that was rather an interesting address that she gave.”
“Devenham House,” the hotel clerk remarked. “Do you know who lives there?”
The inspector nodded.
“The Duke of Devenham,” he answered. “A very interesting young lady, I should think, that. I wonder what she and Mr. Hamilton Fynes would have talked about if they had lunched here today.”
The hotel clerk looked dubious. He did not grasp the significance of the question.
Miss Penelope Morse was perfectly well aware that the taxicab in which she left the Carlton Hotel was closely followed by two others. Through the tube which she found by her side, she altered her first instructions to the driver, and told him to proceed as fast as possible to Harrod’s Stores. Then, raising the flap at the rear of the cab, she watched the progress of the chase. Along Pall Mall the taxi in which she was seated gained considerably, but in the Park and along the Bird Cage Walk both the other taxies, risking the police regulations, drew almost alongside. Once past Hyde Park Corner, however, her cab again drew ahead, and when she was deposited in front of Harrod’s Stores, her pursuers were out of sight. She paid the driver quickly, a little over double his fare.
“If any one asks you questions,” she said, “say that you had instructions to wait here for me. Go on to the rank for a quarter of an hour. Then you can drive away.”
“You won’t be coming back, then, miss?” the man asked.
“I shall not,” she answered, “but I want those men who are following me to think that I am. They may as well lose a little time for their rudeness.”
The chauffeur touched his hat and obeyed his instructions. Miss Penelope Morse plunged into the mazes of the Stores with the air of one to whom the place is familiar. She did not pause, however, at any of the counters. In something less than two minutes she had left it again by a back entrance, stepped into another taxicab which was just setting down a passenger, and was well on her way back towards Pall Mall. Her ruse appeared to have been perfectly successful. At any rate, she saw nothing more of the occupants of the two taxicabs.
She stopped in front of one of the big clubs and, scribbling a line on her card, gave it to the door keeper.
“Will you find out if this gentleman is in?” she said. “If he is, will you kindly ask him to step out and speak to me?”
She returned to the cab and waited. In less than five minutes a tall, broad-shouldered young man, clean-shaven, and moving like an athlete, came briskly down the steps. He carried a soft hat in his hand, and directly he spoke his transatlantic origin was apparent.
“Penelope!” he exclaimed. “Why, what on earth—”
“My dear Dicky,” she interrupted, laughing at his expression, “you need not look so displeased with me. Of course, I know that I ought not to have come and sent a message into your club. I will admit at once that it was very forward of me. Perhaps when I have told you why I did so, you won’t look so shocked.”
“I’m glad to see you, anyway,” he declared. “There’s no bad news, I hope?”
“Nothing that concerns us particularly,” she answered. “I simply want to have a little talk with you. Come in here with me, please, at once. We can ride for a short distance anywhere.”
“But I am just in the middle of a rubber of bridge,” he objected.
“It can’t be helped,” she declared. “To tell you the truth, the matter I want to talk to you about is of more importance than any game of cards. Don’t be foolish, Dicky. You have your hat in your hand. Step in here by my side at once.”
He looked a little bewildered, but he obeyed her, as most people did when she was in earnest. She gave the driver an address somewhere in the city. As soon as they were off, she turned towards him.
“Dicky,” she said, “do you read the newspapers?”
“Well, I can’t say that I do regularly,” he answered. “I read the New York Herald, but these London journals are a bit difficult, aren’t they? One has to dig the news out,—sort of treasure-hunt all the time.”
“You have read this murder case, at any rate,” she asked, “about the man who was killed in a special train between Liverpool and London?”
“Of course,” he answered, with a sudden awakening of interest. “What about it?”
“A good deal,” she answered slowly. “In the first place, the man who was murdered—Mr. Hamilton Fynes—comes from the village where I was brought up in Massachusetts, and I know more about him, I dare say, than any one else in this country. What I know isn’t very much, perhaps, but it’s interesting. I was to have lunched with him at the Carlton today; in fact, I went there expecting to do so, for I am like you—I scarcely ever look inside these English newspapers. Well, I went to the Carlton and waited and he did not come. At last I went into the office and asked whether he had arrived. Directly I mentioned his name, it was as though I had thrown a bomb shell into the place. The clerk called me on one side, took me into a private office, and showed me a newspaper. As soon as I had read the account, I was interviewed by an inspector from Scotland Yard. Ever since then I have been followed about by reporters.”
The young man whistled softly.
“Say, Penelope!” he exclaimed. “Who was this fellow, anyhow, and what were you doing lunching with him?”
“That doesn’t matter,” she answered. “You don’t tell me all your secrets, Mr. Dicky Vanderpole, and it isn’t necessary for me to tell you all mine, even if we are both foreigners in a strange country. The poor fellow isn’t going to lunch with any one else in this world. I suppose you are thinking what an indiscreet person I am, as usual?”
The young man considered the matter for a moment.
“No,” he said; “I didn’t understand that he was the sort of person you would have been likely to have taken lunch with. But that isn’t my affair. Have you seen the second edition?”
The girl shook her head.
“Haven’t I told you that I never read the papers? I only saw what they showed me in at the Carlton.”
“The Press Association have cabled to America, but no one seems to be able to make out exactly who the fellow is. His letter to the captain of the steamer was from the chairman of the company, and his introduction to the manager of the London and North Western Railway Company was from the greatest railway man in the world. Mr. Hamilton Fynes must have been a person who had a pretty considerable pull over there. Curiously enough, though, only the name of the man was mentioned in them; nothing about his business, or what he was doing over on this side. He was simply alluded to as ‘Mr. Hamilton Fynes—the gentleman bearing this communication.’ I expect, after all, that you know more about him than any one.”
She shook her head.
“What I know,” she said, “or at least most of it, I am going to tell you. A few years ago he was a clerk in a Government office in Washington. He was steady in those days, and was supposed to have a head. He used to write me occasionally. One day he turned up in London quite unexpectedly. He said that he had come on business, and whatever his business was, it took him to St. Petersburg and Berlin, and then back to Berlin again. I saw quite a good deal of him that trip.”
“The dickens you did!” he muttered.
Miss Penelope Morse laughed softly.
“Come, Dicky,” she said, “don’t pretend to be jealous. You’re an outrageous flirt, I know, but you and I are never likely to get sentimental about one another.”
“Why not?” he grumbled. “We’ve always been pretty good pals, haven’t we?”
“Naturally,” she answered, “or I shouldn’t be here. Do you want to hear anything more about Mr. Hamilton Fynes?”
“Of course I do,” he declared.
“Well, be quiet, then, and don’t interrupt,” she said. “I knew London well and he didn’t. That is why, as I told you before, we saw quite a great deal of one another. He was always very reticent about his affairs, and especially about the business which had taken him on the Continent. Just before he left, however, he gave me—well, a hint.”
“What was it?” the young man asked eagerly.
She hesitated.
“He didn’t put it into so many words,” she said, “and I am not sure, even now, that I ought to tell you, Dicky. Still, you are a fellow countryman and a budding diplomatist. I suppose if I can give you a lift I ought to.”
The taxi was on the Embankment now, and they sped along for some time in silence. Mr. Richard Vanderpole was more than a little puzzled.
“Of course, Penelope,” he said, “I don’t expect you to tell me anything which you feel that you oughtn’t to. There is one thing, however, which I must ask you.”
She nodded.
“Well?”
“I should like to know what the mischief my being in the diplomatic service has to do with it?”
“If I explained that,” she answered, “I should be telling you everything I haven’t quite made up my mind to do that yet.”
“Tell me this?” he asked. “Would that hint which he dropped when he was here last help you to solve the mystery of his murder?”
“It might,” she admitted.
“Then I think,” he said, “apart from any other reason, you ought to tell somebody. The police at present don’t seem to have the ghost of a clue.”
“They are not likely to find one,” she answered, “unless I help them.”
“Say, Penelope,” he exclaimed, “you are not in earnest?”
“I am,” she assured him. “It is exactly as I say. I believe I am one of the few people who could put the police upon the right track.”
“Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?” he asked.
“That’s just what I can’t make up my mind about,” she told him. “However, I have brought you out with me expecting to hear something, and I am going to tell you this. That last time he came to England—the time he went to St. Petersburg and twice to Berlin—he came on government business.”
The young man looked, for a moment, incredulous.
“Are you sure of that, Pen?” he asked. “It doesn’t sound like our people, you know, does it?”
“I am quite sure,” she declared confidently. “You are a very youthful diplomat, Dicky, but even you have probably heard of governments who employ private messengers to carry despatches which for various reasons they don’t care to put through their embassies.”
“Why, that’s so, of course, over on this side,” he agreed. “These European nations are up to all manner of tricks. But I tell you frankly, Pen, I never heard of anything of the sort being done from Washington.”
“Perhaps not,” she answered composedly. “You see, things have developed with us during the last twenty-five years. The old America had only one foreign policy, and that was to hold inviolate the Monroe doctrine. European or Asiatic complications scarcely even interested her. Those times have passed, Dicky. Cuba and the Philippines were the start of other things. We are being drawn into the maelstrom. In another ten years we shall be there, whether we want to be or not.”
The young man was deeply interested.
“Well,” he admitted, “there’s a good deal in what you say, Penelope. You talk about it all as though you were a diplomat yourself.”
“Perhaps I am,” she answered calmly. “A stray young woman like myself must have something to occupy her thoughts, you know.”
He laughed.
“That’s not bad,” he asserted, “for a girl whom the New York Herald declared, a few weeks ago, to be one of the most brilliant young women in English society.”
She shrugged her shoulders scornfully.
“That’s just the sort of thing the New York Herald would say,” she remarked. “You see, I have to get a reputation for being smart and saying bright things, or nobody would ask me anywhere. Penniless American young women are not too popular over here.”
“Marry me, then,” he suggested amiably. “I shall have plenty of money some day.”
“I’ll see about it when you’re grown up,” she answered. “Just at present, I think we’d better return to the subject of Hamilton Fynes.”
Mr. Richard Vanderpole sighed, but seemed not disinclined to follow her suggestion.
“Harvey is a silent man, as you know,” he said thoughtfully, “and he keeps everything of importance to himself. At the same time these little matters get about in the shop, of course, and I have never heard of any despatches being brought across from Washington except in the usual way. Presuming that you are right,” he added after a moment’s pause, “and that this fellow Hamilton Fynes really had something for us, that would account for his being able to get off the boat and securing his special train so easily. No one can imagine where he got the pull.”
“It accounts, also,” Penelope remarked, “for his murder!”
Her companion started.
“You haven’t any idea—” he began.
“Nothing so definite as an idea,” she interrupted. “I am not going so far as to say that. I simply know that when a man is practically the secret agent of his government, and is probably carrying despatches of an important nature, that an accident such as he has met with, in a country which is greatly interested in the contents of those despatches, is a somewhat serious thing.”
The young man nodded.
“Say,” he admitted “you’re dead right. The Pacific cruise, and our relations with Japan, seem to have rubbed our friends over here altogether the wrong way. We have irritations enough already to smooth over, without anything of this sort on the carpet.”
“I am going to tell you now,” she continued, leaning a little towards him, “the real reason why I fetched you out of the club this afternoon and have brought you for this little expedition. The last time I lunched with Mr. Hamilton Fynes was just after his return from Berlin. He intrusted me then with a very important mission. He gave me a letter to deliver to Mr. Blaine Harvey.”
“But I don’t understand!” he protested. “Why should he give you the letter when he was in London himself?”
“I asked him that question myself, naturally,” she answered. “He told me that it was an understood thing that when he was over here on business he was not even to cross the threshold of the Embassy, or hold any direct communication with any person connected with it. Everything had to be done through a third party, and generally in duplicate. There was another man, for instance, who had a copy of the same letter, but I never came across him or even knew his name.”
“Gee whiz!” the young man exclaimed. “You’re telling me things, and no mistake! Why this fellow Fynes made a secret service messenger of you!”
Penelope nodded.
“It was all very simple,” she said. “The first Mrs. Harvey, who was alive then, was my greatest friend, and I was in and out of the place all the time. Now, perhaps, you can understand the significance of that marconigram from Hamilton Fynes asking me to lunch with him at the Carlton today.”
Mr. Richard Vanderpole was sitting bolt upright, gazing steadily ahead.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “what has become of the letter which he was going to give you!”
“One thing is certain,” she declared. “It is in the hands of those whose interests would have been affected by its delivery.”
“How much of this am I to tell the chief?” the young man asked.
“Every word,” Penelope answered. “You see, I am trying to give you a start in your career. What bothers me is an entirely different question.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She laid her hand upon his arm.
“How much of it I shall tell to a certain gentleman who calls himself Inspector Jacks!”
The Lusitania boat specials ran into Euston Station soon after three o’clock in the afternoon. A small company of reporters, and several other men whose profession was not disclosed from their appearance, were on the spot to interview certain of the passengers. A young fellow from the office of the Evening Comet was, perhaps, the most successful, as, from the lengthy description which had been telegraphed to him from Liverpool, he was fortunate enough to accost the only person who had been seen speaking to the murdered man upon the voyage.
“This is Mr. Coulson, I believe?” the young man said with conviction, addressing a somewhat stout, gray-headed American, with white moustache, a Homburg hat, and clothes of distinctly transatlantic cut.
That gentlemen regarded his interlocutor with some surprise but without unfriendliness.
“That happens to be my name, sir,” he replied. “You have the advantage of me, though. You are not from my old friends Spencer & Miles, are you?”
“Spencer & Miles,” the young man repeated thoughtfully.
“Woollen firm in London Wall,” Mr. Coulson added. “I know they wanted to see me directly I arrived, and they did say something about sending to the station.”
The young man shook his head, and assumed at the same time his most engaging manner.
“Why, no, sir!” he admitted. “I have no connection with that firm at all. The fact is I am on the staff of an evening paper. A friend of mine in Liverpool—a mutual friend, I believe I may say,” he explained—“wired me your description. I understand that you were acquainted with Mr. Hamilton Fynes?”
Mr. Coulson set down his suitcase for a moment, to light a cigar.
“Well, if I did know the poor fellow just to nod to,” he said, “I don’t see that’s any reason why I should talk about him to you newspaper fellows. You’d better get hold of his relations, if you can find them.”
“But, my dear Mr. Coulson,” the young man said, “we haven’t any idea where they are to be found, and in the meantime you can’t imagine what reports are in circulation.”
“Guess I can figure them out pretty well,” Mr. Coulson remarked with a smile. “We’ve got an evening press of our own in New York.”
The reporter nodded.
“Well,” he said, “They’d be able to stretch themselves out a bit on a case like this. You see,” he continued confidentially, “we are up against something almost unique. Here is an astounding and absolutely inexplicable murder, committed in a most dastardly fashion by a person who appears to have vanished from the face of the earth. Not a single thing is known about the victim except his name. We do not know whether he came to England on business or pleasure. He may, in short, have been any one from a millionaire to a newspaper man. Judging from his special train,” the reporter concluded with a smile, “and the money which was found upon him, I imagine that he was certainly not the latter.”
Mr. Coulson went on his way toward the exit from the station, puffing contentedly at his big cigar.
“Well,” he said to his companion, who showed not the slightest disposition to leave his side, “it don’t seem to me that there’s much worth repeating about poor Fynes,—much that I knew, at any rate. Still, if you like to get in a cab with me and ride as far as the Savoy, I’ll tell you what I can.”
“You are a brick, sir,” the young man declared. “Haven’t you any luggage, though?”
“I checked what I had through from Liverpool to the hotel,” Mr. Coulson answered. “I can’t stand being fussed around by all these porters, and having to go and take pot luck amongst a pile of other people’s baggage. We’ll just take one of these two-wheeled sardine tins that you people call hansoms, and get round to the hotel as quick as we can. There are a few pals of mine generally lunch in the cafe there, and they mayn’t all have cleared out if we look alive.”
They started a moment or two later. Mr. Coulson leaned forward and, folding his arms upon the apron of the cab, looked about him with interest.
“Say,” he remarked, removing his cigar to the corner of his mouth in order to facilitate conversation, “this old city of yours don’t change any.”
“Not up in this part, perhaps,” the reporter agreed. “We’ve some fine new buildings down toward the Strand.”
Mr. Coulson nodded.
“Well,” he said, “I guess you don’t want to be making conversation. You want to know about Hamilton Fynes. I was just acquainted with him, and that’s a fact, but I reckon you’ll have to find some one who knows a good deal more than I do before you’ll get the stuff you want for your paper.”
“The slightest particulars are of interest to us just now,” the reporter reminded him.
Mr. Coulson nodded.
“Hamilton Fynes,” he said, “so far as I knew him, was a quiet, inoffensive sort of creature, who has been drawing a regular salary from the State for the last fifteen years and saving half of it. He has been coming over to Europe now and then, and though he was a good, steady chap enough, he liked his fling when he was over here, and between you and me, he was the greatest crank I ever struck. I met him in London a matter of three years ago, and he wanted to go to Paris. There were two cars running at the regular time, meeting the boat at Dover. Do you think he would have anything to do with them? Not he! He hired a special train and went down like a prince.”
“What did he do that for?” the reporter asked.
“Why, because he was a crank, sir,” Mr. Coulson answered confidentially. “There was no other reason at all. Take this last voyage on the Lusitania, now. He spoke to me the first day out because he couldn’t help it, but for pretty well the rest of the journey he either kept down in his stateroom or, when he came up on deck, he avoided me and everybody else. When he did talk, his talk was foolish. He was a good chap at his work, I believe, but he was a crank. Seemed to me sometimes as though that humdrum life of his had about turned his brain. The last day out he was fidgeting all the time; kept looking at his watch, studying the chart, and asking the sailors questions. Said he wanted to get up in time to take a girl to lunch on Thursday. It was just for that reason that he scuttled off the boat without a word to any of us, and rushed up to London.”
“But he had letters, Mr. Coulson,” the reporter reminded him, “from some one in Washington, to the captain of the steamer and to the station-master of the London and North Western Railway. It seems rather odd that he should have provided himself with these, doesn’t it?”
“They were easy enough to get,” Mr. Coulson answered. “He wasn’t a worrying sort of chap, Fynes wasn’t. He did his work, year in and year out, and asked no favors. The consequence was that when he asked a queer one he got it all right. It’s easier to get a pull over there than it is here, you know.”
“This is all very interesting,” the reporter said, “and I am sure I’m very much obliged to you, Mr. Coulson. Now can you tell me of anything in the man’s life or way of living likely to provoke enmity on the part of any one? This murder was such a cold-blooded affair.”
“There I’m stuck,” Mr. Coulson admitted. “There’s only one thing I can tell you, and that is that I believe he had a lot more money on him than the amount mentioned in your newspapers this morning. My own opinion is that he was murdered for what he’d got. A smart thief would say that a fellow who takes a special tug off the steamer and a special train to town was a man worth robbing. How the thing was done I don’t know—that’s for your police to find out—but I reckon that whoever killed him did it for his cash.”
The reporter sighed. He was, after all, a little disappointed. Mr. Coulson was obviously a man of common sense. His words were clearly pronounced, and his reasoning sound. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel now, and the reporter began to express his gratitude.
“My first drink on English soil,” Mr. Coulson said, as he handed his suitcase to the hall-porter, “is always—”
“It’s on me,” the young man declared quickly. “I owe you a good deal more than drinks, Mr. Coulson.”
“Well, come along, anyway,” the latter remarked. “I guess my room is all right, porter?”—turning to the man who stood by his side, bag in hand. “I am Mr. James B. Coulson of New York, and I wrote on ahead. I’ll come round to the office and register presently.”
They made their way to the American bar. The newspaper man and his new friend drank together and, skillfully prompted by the former, the conversation drifted back to the subject of Hamilton Fynes. There was nothing else to be learned, however, in the way of facts. Mr. Coulson admitted that he had been a little nettled by his friend’s odd manner during the voyage, and the strange way he had of keeping to himself.
“But, after all,” he wound up, “Fynes was a crank, when all’s said and done. We are all cranks, more or less,—all got our weak spot, I mean. It was secretiveness with our unfortunate friend. He liked to play at being a big personage in a mysterious sort of way, and the poor chap’s paid for it,” he added with a sigh.
The reporter left his new-made friend a short time afterwards, and took a hansom to his office. His newspaper at once issued a special edition, giving an interview between their representative and Mr. James B. Coulson, a personal friend of the murdered man. It was, after all, something of a scoop, for not one of the other passengers had been found who was in a position to say anything at all about him. The immediate effect of the interview, however, was to procure for Mr. Coulson a somewhat bewildering succession of callers. The first to arrive was a gentleman who introduced himself as Mr. Jacks, and whose card, sent back at first, was retendered in a sealed envelope with Scotland Yard scrawled across the back of it. Mr. Coulson, who was in the act of changing his clothes, interviewed Mr. Jacks in his chamber.
“Mr. Coulson,” the Inspector said, “I am visiting you on behalf of Scotland Yard. We understand that you had some acquaintance with Mr. Hamilton Fynes, and we hope that you will answer a few questions for us.”
Mr. Coulson sat down upon a trunk with his hairbrushes in his hand.
“Well,” he declared, “you detectives do get to know things, don’t you?”
“Nothing so remarkable in that, Mr. Coulson,” Inspector Jacks remarked pleasantly. “A newspaper man had been before me, I see.”
Mr. Coulson nodded.
“That’s so,” he admitted. “Seems to me I may have been a bit indiscreet in talking so much to that young reporter. I have just read his account of my interview, and he’s got it pat, word by word. Now, Mr. Jacks, if you’ll just invest a halfpenny in that newspaper, you don’t need to ask me any questions. That young man had a kind of pleasant way with him, and I told him all I knew.”
“Just so, Mr. Coulson,” the Inspector answered. “At the same time nothing that you told him throws any light at all upon the circumstances which led to the poor fellow’s death.”
“That,” Mr. Coulson declared, “is not my fault. What I don’t know I can’t tell you.”
“You were acquainted with Mr. Fynes some years ago?” the Inspector asked. “Can you tell me what business he was in then?”
“Same as now, for anything I know,” Mr. Coulson answered. “He was a clerk in one of the Government offices at Washington.”
“Government offices,” Inspector Jacks repeated. “Have you any idea what department?”
Mr. Coulson was not sure.
“It may have been the Excise Office,” he remarked thoughtfully. “I did hear, but I never took any particular notice.”
“Did you ever form any idea as to the nature of his work?” Inspector Jacks asked.
“Bless you, no!” Mr. Coulson replied, brushing his hair vigorously. “It never entered into my head to ask him, and I never heard him mention it. I only know that he was a quiet-living, decent sort of a chap, but, as I put it to our young friend the newspaper man, he was a crank.”
The Inspector was disappointed. He began to feel that he was wasting his time.
“Did you know anything of the object of his journey to Europe?” he asked.
“Nary a thing,” Mr. Coulson declared. “He only came on deck once or twice, and he had scarcely a civil word even for me. Why, I tell you, sir,” Mr. Coulson continued, “if he saw me coming along on the promenade, he’d turn round and go the other way, for fear I’d ask him to come and have a drink. A c-r-a-n-k, sir! You write it down at that, and you won’t be far out.”
“He certainly seems to have been a queer lot,” the Inspector declared. “By the bye,” he continued, “you said something, I believe, about his having had more money with him than was found upon his person.”
“That’s so,” Mr. Coulson admitted. “I know he deposited a pocketbook with the purser, and I happened to be standing by when he received it back. I noticed that he had three or four thousand-dollar bills, and there didn’t seem to be anything of the sort upon him when he was found.”
The Inspector made a note of this.
“You believe yourself, then, Mr. Coulson,” he said, closing his pocketbook, “that the murder was committed for the purpose of robbery?”
“Seems to me it’s common sense,” Mr. Coulson replied. “A man who goes and takes a special train to London from the docks of a city like Liverpool—a city filled with the scum of the world, mind you—kind of gives himself away as a man worth robbing, doesn’t he?”
The Inspector nodded.
“That’s sensible talk, Mr. Coulson,” he acknowledged. “You never heard, I suppose, of his having had a quarrel with any one?”
“Never in my life,” Mr. Coulson declared. “He wasn’t the sort to make enemies, any more than he was the sort to make friends.”
The Inspector took up his hat. His manner now was no longer inquisitorial. With the closing of his notebook a new geniality had taken the place of his official stiffness.
“You are making a long stay here, Mr. Coulson?” he asked.
“A week or so, maybe,” that gentleman answered. “I am in the machinery patent line—machinery for the manufacture of woollen goods mostly—and I have a few appointments in London. Afterwards I am going on to Paris. You can hear of me at any time either here or at the Grand Hotel, Paris, but there’s nothing further to be got out of me as regards Mr. Hamilton Fynes.”
The Inspector was of the same opinion and took his departure. Mr. Coulson waited for some little time, still sitting on his trunk and clasping his hairbrushes. Then he moved over to the table on which stood the telephone instrument and asked for a number. The reply came in a minute or two in the form of a question.
“It’s Mr. James B. Coulson from New York, landed this afternoon from the Lusitania,” Mr. Coulson said. “I am at the Savoy Hotel, speaking from my room—number 443.”
There was a brief silence—then a reply.
“You had better be in the bar smoking-room at seven o’clock. If nothing happens, don’t leave the hotel this evening.”
Mr. Coulson replaced the receiver and rang off. A page-boy knocked at the door.
“Young lady downstairs wishes to see you, sir,” he announced.
Mr. Coulson took up the card from the tray.
“Miss Penelope Morse,” he said softly to himself. “Seems to me I’m rather popular this evening. Say I’ll be down right away, my boy.”
“Very good, sir,” the page answered. “There’s a gentleman with her, sir. His card’s underneath the lady’s.”
Mr. Coulson examined the tray once more. A gentleman’s visiting card informed him that his other caller was Sir Charles Somerfield, Bart.
“Bart,” Mr. Coulson remarked thoughtfully. “I’m not quite catching on to that, but I suppose he goes in with the young lady.”
“They’re both together, sir,” the boy announced.
Mr. Coulson completed his toilet and hurried downstairs