Chapter IX.A Strange AffairIt was not until shortly after eight o’clock on Monday morning that Inspector Whyland, who had arrived early at the police station, received the startling intelligence that there was a dead man lying in the cellar of Number 407, Praed Street. He immediately jumped into a taxi, and was met in the door-way of the empty house by a man who introduced himself as Mr. Houlder, the builder who was carrying out certain alterations for the new tenant, Mr. Lacey.“My men found him when they came in this morning,” he said. “They telephoned to me and I told them to fetch a policeman. He rang you up, I understand. I think I can explain how the man got in, and who he is.”“Thanks very much, Mr. Houlder,” replied Whyland. “I think we’ll have a look at him first, if you don’t mind. Will you lead the way?”They descended to the cellar together, Mr. Houlder leading the way with an electric torch. As they arrived at the passage leading to the small cellar, a constable appeared and saluted.“Ah, you’re in charge here, I suppose?” said the Inspector. “You haven’t touched anything, I hope?”“Not since I’ve been here, sir, but I understand that the body was moved accidentally before I came, I’ve got the man who found him here, sir.”A man, who had been hidden in the gloom behind the policeman, came forward at this. He explained that he was the electrician who had been wiring the cellars. He had very nearly finished the job on the previous Saturday, and had left about noon. The carpenters were still working on the ground floor when he left. He returned just before eight this very morning, found the carpenters already at work, and went down to the cellars to put the finishing touches to the job. The door of the small cellar appeared to be jammed, and he pushed against it to open it. When he had got it open far enough to squeeze through, he found the body of a man lying against it. He had immediately run upstairs and told the foreman, and had waited there till the constable came and asked him to show him the body.Inspector Whyland dismissed Mr. Houlder and the electricians, and went on into the cellar with the constable. “There’s something queer about this business, sir?” said the latter, as soon as they were alone. “I had a look round while I was waiting for you, and the first thing I saw was one of them white counters, same as the others had. There it lies, sir, I didn’t touch it.”They were in the cellar by now, and Whyland glanced at the counter, lying in the beam of light which the constable had thrown upon it. “With the figure IV on it, I’ll wager,” he muttered. “Yes, I thought so. We’ll try for finger marks, but I’ll bet it’s no good. Now, let’s have a look at this dead man.”The constable turned his lamp on the prostrate form, and Whyland knelt down and gazed at it intently. The body was lying doubled up as it had fallen, and was quite cold.“H’m,” said Whyland, rising to his feet. “We can’t do much more till the doctor comes. You don’t know who he is, I suppose?”“Mr. Houlder said he believed his name was Martin, sir,” replied the constable cautiously.“Well, you stay here till the doctor comes. I’ll go and have a chat with Houlder. Just throw your light over the floor for a minute. Hullo, what’s this?”He strode across the cellar and carefully picked up a small automatic. “Hasn’t been fired,” he muttered. “Now I wonder who that belongs to? Just see if you can spot anything else. Don’t touch it, if you do.”He went upstairs again, and drew Mr. Houlder aside into a quiet corner. Mr. Houlder’s story was a very simple one. His foreman had orders to leave the key to the house with Mr. Briggs, the confectioner, three doors off. Mr. Briggs was Houlder’s brother-in-law. The reason for this arrangement was that whoever came on the scene first could get the key and start work. On Saturday the key had been left as usual, about 12.30.On Saturday evening, about nine o’clock, Mr. Briggs had come to his place and told him that Mr. Lacey, who knew about the key arrangement, had rung him up to say that a Mr. Martin was coming to inspect the drains. Mr. Lacey was to have met him at two o’clock, but would be delayed. Would Mr. Briggs keep a lookout for him and give him the keys. Mr. Briggs had promised to do so, and his daughter Marjorie had seen Mr. Martin, who had promised to bring back the keys, but had not done so. Mr. Briggs had forgotten all about them until the evening, and then, finding that the door of Number 407 was securely locked, had supposed that Mr. Martin had gone away with the keys in his pocket. Mr. Houlder had agreed with this theory, and had given Mr. Briggs a duplicate key which he happened to have.The foreman had called on Mr. Briggs, and had been given the duplicate key. But when he came to try the door, it would not open. He made several attempts but, finding them unavailing, desisted and made his way through a window at the back. He then discovered that the door was bolted on the inside, a circumstance which puzzled him tremendously. Shortly afterwards the electrician arrived, and his thoughts were diverted into other channels.Inspector Whyland spent a few minutes talking to the foreman, who confirmed the latter part of Houlder’s story, and had barely finished his enquiries when the doctor arrived. The two went down to the cellar together, and the doctor, without wasting words, proceeded to examine the body, Whyland watching him intently.“Poisoned!” pronounced the doctor, after a short interval. “Prussic acid, by all signs of it, but I can’t be sure till I’ve made a post-mortem. You’ll have him taken to the mortuary, of course? Queer place to choose for suicide. How did he get in here?”Inspector Whyland shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a case of suicide, doctor. Look here!”He pointed to the numbered counter. The doctor glanced at it and sniffed contemptuously. “You fellows have got counters on the brain since that business last month,” he said. “How do you know he didn’t put it there himself to throw you off the scent? It’s not uncommon for suicides to try and make their deaths look like murder. You’ll find there’s some question of insurance behind it. Well, I’ll be along at the mortuary and let you know the result of thep.m.”The doctor bustled away, and Whyland, having made arrangements for the removal of the body, made a very careful examination of the cellar. This done, he sent the constable for the electrician, and asked him to look round and see if he could find anything which had not been there when he left on Saturday.The man looked about him carefully, and suddenly pointed to the ceiling with an exclamation of astonishment. “Why, there’s the butt of a broken lamp in that holder, sir,” he said. “I didn’t put no lamps in before I left. That’s one of the things I came here to do to-day.”“Well, take it out and put in a fresh lamp,” replied Whyland. “I didn’t know the current was on. We’ll be able to see what we’re doing.”The electrician obeyed him, and no sooner had he put the new lamp in the holder than the cellar was flooded with light. “Hullo!” he exclaimed. “The switch is on. I’ll swear I left it off on Saturday. Why, that’s queer! This isn’t the butt of an ordinary lamp at all. Looks to me like one of them electric detonator things, made to go into a lamp-socket. And it’s gone off, too. You can see where it’s blackened, sir.”“Was the current on on Saturday?” asked Whyland, quickly.“Yes, sir, I connected up in the morning,” replied the electrician. “Somebody must have put that thing in the lamp-holder, then turned the switch on. Well, that’s a rum go, and no mistake.”Whyland, having cautioned the man to say nothing until the inquest, left the house and walked into the confectioner’s shop. Here he interviewed Mr. Briggs and his daughter Marjorie, and obtained from them the story of Mr. Martin’s arrival at Number 407, and of the telephone message from Mr. Lacey. By this time the body had been conveyed to the mortuary, and Whyland set to work to examine the contents of the dead man’s pockets. His most interesting discoveries were the letter which he had received on Saturday morning and the missing key of Number 407.The doctor arrived and performed his post-mortem, which confirmed the suspicions he had already formed. “Prussic acid, right enough, and a pretty powerful dose by the look of it. The queer thing about it is that he seems to have died from breathing the vapour rather than from swallowing the stuff. Looks as if he’d uncorked a bottle of the strong acid and sniffed at it. You didn’t see anything of the kind lying about the cellar, I suppose?”Whyland shook his head. “No, I didn’t,” he replied. “The only thing I found lying about was a loaded automatic which hadn’t been fired.”“What did I tell you?” said the doctor triumphantly. “Suicide, without a doubt. He took a pistol with him in case the stuff didn’t act. You’re suggesting that anybody murdered a powerful man like that by making him inhale prussic acid against his will, are you? Why, the idea’s absurd.”Inspector Whyland left the mortuary in a very thoughtful frame of mind, and returned to the police station. Here he set the telephone to work and invoked the aid of his colleagues. By the middle of the afternoon he had collected some interesting information respecting both Martin and Lacey, upon which he began to build up his own theory as to the former’s death.Mr. Martin had carried on a wine merchant’s business at 407, Praed Street, until fifteen years before. He had then moved to the Barbican, where he employed two clerks and a couple of packers. He had never married, and lived at a boarding house in Streatham. He had more than once gone away for the week-end without notice, and his absence had therefore caused no concern. He was not known to have any enemies, although more than once there had been some unsavoury rumours in circulation as to his dealings with girls whom he had engaged as his secretaries. His movements on Saturday morning were traced from the time he left his office to his reaching Aldersgate station. Finally, as a result of the hint contained in the letter signed John Lacey, the police had searched his office, and had found there certain papers which threw a flood of light upon a long sequence of jewel robberies extending back for the last twenty years.Mr. Lacey was the owner of a group of grocer’s shops scattered about West London. He had acquired the lease of Number 407, when the premises were given up by the late tenant, a clothier. He had never heard of Mr. Martin, and had certainly never written to him. He always signed himself John R. Lacey, and the signature on the letter found on Mr. Martin’s body bore no resemblance whatever to his handwriting. He had only once entered the cellars of Number 407, and had made no discoveries there of any kind. On Saturday he had left Liverpool Street at ten o’clock, to stay with his brother in Ipswich, and had not returned until the first train on Monday morning. He had sent no telephone message to Mr. Briggs, nor had he made any appointment with anybody to inspect the drains of Number 407. He had no key of the premises, having given the only two which so far as he knew existed to Houlder, the builder. He was utterly unable to throw any light whatever upon the incident, since more than a week had passed since he had visited Praed Street.Two other facts did Inspector Whyland discover. The first, which did not astonish him, was that the letter signed John Lacey had in all probability been typed upon the same machine as had been the envelope in which the numbered counter had been sent to Richard Pargent. The second, which was distinctly perplexing, was that the call to Mr. Briggs had been made from a call-box at Aldersgate station, apparently at the very time when Mr. Martin was known to have been there. Lastly, the automatic was identified as the property of Mr. Martin, and a fingermark on the counter corresponded to an imprint taken from the dead man’s hand.The significance of the curious butt found by the electrician in the lamp-holder was not so clear. It seemed reasonable to assume that nobody but the dead man had entered the premises after they had been locked by the foreman on Saturday morning. Whyland had examined all the doors and windows very carefully, and had satisfied himself that they bore no signs of violence. He could account for both keys, and although it was possible that a third key existed, it seemed unlikely that anyone had used it between 12.30 and two. Again, since the door had been found bolted on Monday morning, it was probable that the dead man had bolted it behind him, and that he was alone in the house when he died. The foreman had assured him that he had found the windows fastened inside, and that it was only by the use of a special tool that he had been enabled to open the one at the back. It looked very much as if Martin had himself fixed the butt in the lamp-holder. But why?Certainly it looked very like a case of suicide. But against this theory was the letter found in the dead man’s pocket and the numbered counter. Martin himself might have deposited the latter, as the doctor had suggested, but would he have gone so far as to write a letter which must certainly put the police on the alert when it was found? It seemed highly improbable. Inspector Whyland felt convinced that the death of Mr. Martin was merely another link in the mysterious chain of murders in Praed Street.The evening papers were, of course, full of it, though naturally somewhat guarded. “Another tragedy in Praed Street. City man found poisoned in Empty House”—such was the general trend of their headlines. And Praed Street, which had begun to breathe again during the respite of the past month, felt once more the cold touch of almost superstitious horror. The killer was abroad again, unknown, unrecognized, and no man could tell when he might feel the dread hand of death upon his shoulder.Inspector Whyland, walking through Praed Street that evening about ten o’clock, heard a cheerful voice bid him good evening, and turned to find Mr. Ludgrove by his side.“Hullo, Mr. Ludgrove!” he exclaimed. “I called at your place just now, and found it shut up. I thought you were away.”“I have been taking my usual evening stroll,” replied the herbalist. “Won’t you come in? I’m on my way home now.”With scarcely a moment’s hesitation, Whyland accepted the invitation. There was always the chance that the herbalist might make some suggestion which would throw light on this latest problem. He waited until they were seated in the familiar back room before he asked the inevitable question. “You’ve heard what happened here this morning, I suppose?”“I have, indeed,” replied Mr. Ludgrove gravely. “The papers contain little beyond the bare facts, but I gather that this unfortunate Mr. Martin was undoubtedly murdered?”“I’m afraid so,” replied the Inspector. “And I fancy by the same hand which committed the previous murders. We found a typed letter on him, suggesting that he should call at Number 407, which had been posted in this district, and there was a counter bearing the number IV lying by his side. You don’t happen to know anything about this Mr. Martin, I suppose?”Mr. Ludgrove shook his head. “I understand that he left Praed Street fifteen years ago,” he replied. “That was long before I came here. In those days I was leading a very quiet life in Devonshire.” He paused, and a curious look of sadness came into his eyes, as of some painful memory. Then he continued briskly, as if ashamed of his momentary lapse. “I daresay that Mr. Copperdock remembers him, he has a wonderful memory for everybody who has ever lived in the neighbourhood.”Inspector Whyland’s eyes contracted slightly as he replied. “Yes, he remembers him all right. They did a certain amount of business together, he tells me. In fact, Mr. Copperdock is the only person about here who will admit to knowing anything about this fellow Martin.”“Well, I suppose that we are all under suspicion once more,” said Mr. Ludgrove, with a kindly smile. “No, Inspector, it’s no use protesting; I know exactly how I should look at the matter if I were in your place. Until you have some definite clue to the perpetrator of the crimes, the whole neighbourhood is equally guilty in your eyes. I may say that I left here about one o’clock on Saturday, caught the 1.55 from Fenchurch, spent the day in Essex, and did not return until after dark. Not, I gather, that an alibi is much use in this case, since it appears that this Mr. Martin was alone in the house, in any event.”“I wish everybody in Praed Street would deal with me as frankly as you have, Mr. Ludgrove,” replied Whyland. “There seems to be a sort of dread in the minds of most of them that the police will in some way take advantage of everything they say. Take Copperdock, for example. I’ve been talking to him, and he tells me he was at the Cambridge Arms for half an hour or so some time between one and two. Yet neither he nor his son will tell me exactly what time he left his shop or returned to it. They didn’t notice, they say.”“Mr. Copperdock is not blessed with a very exact mind,” said Mr. Ludgrove soothingly. “You remember the curious incident of his meeting with the black sailor some time ago. By the way, I suppose that rather intangible person has not yet appeared in connection with the present case, has he? Although nearly everybody whom I have seen this evening has some theory to account for the facts, I have so far heard no reference to the black sailor.”Inspector Whyland smiled as he rose to take his departure. “I’m so certain that the black sailor will never be found that I would willingly double the reward out of my own pocket,” he said. “He’s a myth, originating in the fertile imagination of that young scoundrel Wal Snyder. Well, good night, Mr. Ludgrove. Let me know if you hear any useful hint, won’t you?”It was not until he was some yards down the street that he laughed shortly to himself. “That old chap suspects Copperdock as much as I do,” he muttered. “But if it is Copperdock, what the devil is his game, I wonder?”
It was not until shortly after eight o’clock on Monday morning that Inspector Whyland, who had arrived early at the police station, received the startling intelligence that there was a dead man lying in the cellar of Number 407, Praed Street. He immediately jumped into a taxi, and was met in the door-way of the empty house by a man who introduced himself as Mr. Houlder, the builder who was carrying out certain alterations for the new tenant, Mr. Lacey.
“My men found him when they came in this morning,” he said. “They telephoned to me and I told them to fetch a policeman. He rang you up, I understand. I think I can explain how the man got in, and who he is.”
“Thanks very much, Mr. Houlder,” replied Whyland. “I think we’ll have a look at him first, if you don’t mind. Will you lead the way?”
They descended to the cellar together, Mr. Houlder leading the way with an electric torch. As they arrived at the passage leading to the small cellar, a constable appeared and saluted.
“Ah, you’re in charge here, I suppose?” said the Inspector. “You haven’t touched anything, I hope?”
“Not since I’ve been here, sir, but I understand that the body was moved accidentally before I came, I’ve got the man who found him here, sir.”
A man, who had been hidden in the gloom behind the policeman, came forward at this. He explained that he was the electrician who had been wiring the cellars. He had very nearly finished the job on the previous Saturday, and had left about noon. The carpenters were still working on the ground floor when he left. He returned just before eight this very morning, found the carpenters already at work, and went down to the cellars to put the finishing touches to the job. The door of the small cellar appeared to be jammed, and he pushed against it to open it. When he had got it open far enough to squeeze through, he found the body of a man lying against it. He had immediately run upstairs and told the foreman, and had waited there till the constable came and asked him to show him the body.
Inspector Whyland dismissed Mr. Houlder and the electricians, and went on into the cellar with the constable. “There’s something queer about this business, sir?” said the latter, as soon as they were alone. “I had a look round while I was waiting for you, and the first thing I saw was one of them white counters, same as the others had. There it lies, sir, I didn’t touch it.”
They were in the cellar by now, and Whyland glanced at the counter, lying in the beam of light which the constable had thrown upon it. “With the figure IV on it, I’ll wager,” he muttered. “Yes, I thought so. We’ll try for finger marks, but I’ll bet it’s no good. Now, let’s have a look at this dead man.”
The constable turned his lamp on the prostrate form, and Whyland knelt down and gazed at it intently. The body was lying doubled up as it had fallen, and was quite cold.
“H’m,” said Whyland, rising to his feet. “We can’t do much more till the doctor comes. You don’t know who he is, I suppose?”
“Mr. Houlder said he believed his name was Martin, sir,” replied the constable cautiously.
“Well, you stay here till the doctor comes. I’ll go and have a chat with Houlder. Just throw your light over the floor for a minute. Hullo, what’s this?”
He strode across the cellar and carefully picked up a small automatic. “Hasn’t been fired,” he muttered. “Now I wonder who that belongs to? Just see if you can spot anything else. Don’t touch it, if you do.”
He went upstairs again, and drew Mr. Houlder aside into a quiet corner. Mr. Houlder’s story was a very simple one. His foreman had orders to leave the key to the house with Mr. Briggs, the confectioner, three doors off. Mr. Briggs was Houlder’s brother-in-law. The reason for this arrangement was that whoever came on the scene first could get the key and start work. On Saturday the key had been left as usual, about 12.30.
On Saturday evening, about nine o’clock, Mr. Briggs had come to his place and told him that Mr. Lacey, who knew about the key arrangement, had rung him up to say that a Mr. Martin was coming to inspect the drains. Mr. Lacey was to have met him at two o’clock, but would be delayed. Would Mr. Briggs keep a lookout for him and give him the keys. Mr. Briggs had promised to do so, and his daughter Marjorie had seen Mr. Martin, who had promised to bring back the keys, but had not done so. Mr. Briggs had forgotten all about them until the evening, and then, finding that the door of Number 407 was securely locked, had supposed that Mr. Martin had gone away with the keys in his pocket. Mr. Houlder had agreed with this theory, and had given Mr. Briggs a duplicate key which he happened to have.
The foreman had called on Mr. Briggs, and had been given the duplicate key. But when he came to try the door, it would not open. He made several attempts but, finding them unavailing, desisted and made his way through a window at the back. He then discovered that the door was bolted on the inside, a circumstance which puzzled him tremendously. Shortly afterwards the electrician arrived, and his thoughts were diverted into other channels.
Inspector Whyland spent a few minutes talking to the foreman, who confirmed the latter part of Houlder’s story, and had barely finished his enquiries when the doctor arrived. The two went down to the cellar together, and the doctor, without wasting words, proceeded to examine the body, Whyland watching him intently.
“Poisoned!” pronounced the doctor, after a short interval. “Prussic acid, by all signs of it, but I can’t be sure till I’ve made a post-mortem. You’ll have him taken to the mortuary, of course? Queer place to choose for suicide. How did he get in here?”
Inspector Whyland shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a case of suicide, doctor. Look here!”
He pointed to the numbered counter. The doctor glanced at it and sniffed contemptuously. “You fellows have got counters on the brain since that business last month,” he said. “How do you know he didn’t put it there himself to throw you off the scent? It’s not uncommon for suicides to try and make their deaths look like murder. You’ll find there’s some question of insurance behind it. Well, I’ll be along at the mortuary and let you know the result of thep.m.”
The doctor bustled away, and Whyland, having made arrangements for the removal of the body, made a very careful examination of the cellar. This done, he sent the constable for the electrician, and asked him to look round and see if he could find anything which had not been there when he left on Saturday.
The man looked about him carefully, and suddenly pointed to the ceiling with an exclamation of astonishment. “Why, there’s the butt of a broken lamp in that holder, sir,” he said. “I didn’t put no lamps in before I left. That’s one of the things I came here to do to-day.”
“Well, take it out and put in a fresh lamp,” replied Whyland. “I didn’t know the current was on. We’ll be able to see what we’re doing.”
The electrician obeyed him, and no sooner had he put the new lamp in the holder than the cellar was flooded with light. “Hullo!” he exclaimed. “The switch is on. I’ll swear I left it off on Saturday. Why, that’s queer! This isn’t the butt of an ordinary lamp at all. Looks to me like one of them electric detonator things, made to go into a lamp-socket. And it’s gone off, too. You can see where it’s blackened, sir.”
“Was the current on on Saturday?” asked Whyland, quickly.
“Yes, sir, I connected up in the morning,” replied the electrician. “Somebody must have put that thing in the lamp-holder, then turned the switch on. Well, that’s a rum go, and no mistake.”
Whyland, having cautioned the man to say nothing until the inquest, left the house and walked into the confectioner’s shop. Here he interviewed Mr. Briggs and his daughter Marjorie, and obtained from them the story of Mr. Martin’s arrival at Number 407, and of the telephone message from Mr. Lacey. By this time the body had been conveyed to the mortuary, and Whyland set to work to examine the contents of the dead man’s pockets. His most interesting discoveries were the letter which he had received on Saturday morning and the missing key of Number 407.
The doctor arrived and performed his post-mortem, which confirmed the suspicions he had already formed. “Prussic acid, right enough, and a pretty powerful dose by the look of it. The queer thing about it is that he seems to have died from breathing the vapour rather than from swallowing the stuff. Looks as if he’d uncorked a bottle of the strong acid and sniffed at it. You didn’t see anything of the kind lying about the cellar, I suppose?”
Whyland shook his head. “No, I didn’t,” he replied. “The only thing I found lying about was a loaded automatic which hadn’t been fired.”
“What did I tell you?” said the doctor triumphantly. “Suicide, without a doubt. He took a pistol with him in case the stuff didn’t act. You’re suggesting that anybody murdered a powerful man like that by making him inhale prussic acid against his will, are you? Why, the idea’s absurd.”
Inspector Whyland left the mortuary in a very thoughtful frame of mind, and returned to the police station. Here he set the telephone to work and invoked the aid of his colleagues. By the middle of the afternoon he had collected some interesting information respecting both Martin and Lacey, upon which he began to build up his own theory as to the former’s death.
Mr. Martin had carried on a wine merchant’s business at 407, Praed Street, until fifteen years before. He had then moved to the Barbican, where he employed two clerks and a couple of packers. He had never married, and lived at a boarding house in Streatham. He had more than once gone away for the week-end without notice, and his absence had therefore caused no concern. He was not known to have any enemies, although more than once there had been some unsavoury rumours in circulation as to his dealings with girls whom he had engaged as his secretaries. His movements on Saturday morning were traced from the time he left his office to his reaching Aldersgate station. Finally, as a result of the hint contained in the letter signed John Lacey, the police had searched his office, and had found there certain papers which threw a flood of light upon a long sequence of jewel robberies extending back for the last twenty years.
Mr. Lacey was the owner of a group of grocer’s shops scattered about West London. He had acquired the lease of Number 407, when the premises were given up by the late tenant, a clothier. He had never heard of Mr. Martin, and had certainly never written to him. He always signed himself John R. Lacey, and the signature on the letter found on Mr. Martin’s body bore no resemblance whatever to his handwriting. He had only once entered the cellars of Number 407, and had made no discoveries there of any kind. On Saturday he had left Liverpool Street at ten o’clock, to stay with his brother in Ipswich, and had not returned until the first train on Monday morning. He had sent no telephone message to Mr. Briggs, nor had he made any appointment with anybody to inspect the drains of Number 407. He had no key of the premises, having given the only two which so far as he knew existed to Houlder, the builder. He was utterly unable to throw any light whatever upon the incident, since more than a week had passed since he had visited Praed Street.
Two other facts did Inspector Whyland discover. The first, which did not astonish him, was that the letter signed John Lacey had in all probability been typed upon the same machine as had been the envelope in which the numbered counter had been sent to Richard Pargent. The second, which was distinctly perplexing, was that the call to Mr. Briggs had been made from a call-box at Aldersgate station, apparently at the very time when Mr. Martin was known to have been there. Lastly, the automatic was identified as the property of Mr. Martin, and a fingermark on the counter corresponded to an imprint taken from the dead man’s hand.
The significance of the curious butt found by the electrician in the lamp-holder was not so clear. It seemed reasonable to assume that nobody but the dead man had entered the premises after they had been locked by the foreman on Saturday morning. Whyland had examined all the doors and windows very carefully, and had satisfied himself that they bore no signs of violence. He could account for both keys, and although it was possible that a third key existed, it seemed unlikely that anyone had used it between 12.30 and two. Again, since the door had been found bolted on Monday morning, it was probable that the dead man had bolted it behind him, and that he was alone in the house when he died. The foreman had assured him that he had found the windows fastened inside, and that it was only by the use of a special tool that he had been enabled to open the one at the back. It looked very much as if Martin had himself fixed the butt in the lamp-holder. But why?
Certainly it looked very like a case of suicide. But against this theory was the letter found in the dead man’s pocket and the numbered counter. Martin himself might have deposited the latter, as the doctor had suggested, but would he have gone so far as to write a letter which must certainly put the police on the alert when it was found? It seemed highly improbable. Inspector Whyland felt convinced that the death of Mr. Martin was merely another link in the mysterious chain of murders in Praed Street.
The evening papers were, of course, full of it, though naturally somewhat guarded. “Another tragedy in Praed Street. City man found poisoned in Empty House”—such was the general trend of their headlines. And Praed Street, which had begun to breathe again during the respite of the past month, felt once more the cold touch of almost superstitious horror. The killer was abroad again, unknown, unrecognized, and no man could tell when he might feel the dread hand of death upon his shoulder.
Inspector Whyland, walking through Praed Street that evening about ten o’clock, heard a cheerful voice bid him good evening, and turned to find Mr. Ludgrove by his side.
“Hullo, Mr. Ludgrove!” he exclaimed. “I called at your place just now, and found it shut up. I thought you were away.”
“I have been taking my usual evening stroll,” replied the herbalist. “Won’t you come in? I’m on my way home now.”
With scarcely a moment’s hesitation, Whyland accepted the invitation. There was always the chance that the herbalist might make some suggestion which would throw light on this latest problem. He waited until they were seated in the familiar back room before he asked the inevitable question. “You’ve heard what happened here this morning, I suppose?”
“I have, indeed,” replied Mr. Ludgrove gravely. “The papers contain little beyond the bare facts, but I gather that this unfortunate Mr. Martin was undoubtedly murdered?”
“I’m afraid so,” replied the Inspector. “And I fancy by the same hand which committed the previous murders. We found a typed letter on him, suggesting that he should call at Number 407, which had been posted in this district, and there was a counter bearing the number IV lying by his side. You don’t happen to know anything about this Mr. Martin, I suppose?”
Mr. Ludgrove shook his head. “I understand that he left Praed Street fifteen years ago,” he replied. “That was long before I came here. In those days I was leading a very quiet life in Devonshire.” He paused, and a curious look of sadness came into his eyes, as of some painful memory. Then he continued briskly, as if ashamed of his momentary lapse. “I daresay that Mr. Copperdock remembers him, he has a wonderful memory for everybody who has ever lived in the neighbourhood.”
Inspector Whyland’s eyes contracted slightly as he replied. “Yes, he remembers him all right. They did a certain amount of business together, he tells me. In fact, Mr. Copperdock is the only person about here who will admit to knowing anything about this fellow Martin.”
“Well, I suppose that we are all under suspicion once more,” said Mr. Ludgrove, with a kindly smile. “No, Inspector, it’s no use protesting; I know exactly how I should look at the matter if I were in your place. Until you have some definite clue to the perpetrator of the crimes, the whole neighbourhood is equally guilty in your eyes. I may say that I left here about one o’clock on Saturday, caught the 1.55 from Fenchurch, spent the day in Essex, and did not return until after dark. Not, I gather, that an alibi is much use in this case, since it appears that this Mr. Martin was alone in the house, in any event.”
“I wish everybody in Praed Street would deal with me as frankly as you have, Mr. Ludgrove,” replied Whyland. “There seems to be a sort of dread in the minds of most of them that the police will in some way take advantage of everything they say. Take Copperdock, for example. I’ve been talking to him, and he tells me he was at the Cambridge Arms for half an hour or so some time between one and two. Yet neither he nor his son will tell me exactly what time he left his shop or returned to it. They didn’t notice, they say.”
“Mr. Copperdock is not blessed with a very exact mind,” said Mr. Ludgrove soothingly. “You remember the curious incident of his meeting with the black sailor some time ago. By the way, I suppose that rather intangible person has not yet appeared in connection with the present case, has he? Although nearly everybody whom I have seen this evening has some theory to account for the facts, I have so far heard no reference to the black sailor.”
Inspector Whyland smiled as he rose to take his departure. “I’m so certain that the black sailor will never be found that I would willingly double the reward out of my own pocket,” he said. “He’s a myth, originating in the fertile imagination of that young scoundrel Wal Snyder. Well, good night, Mr. Ludgrove. Let me know if you hear any useful hint, won’t you?”
It was not until he was some yards down the street that he laughed shortly to himself. “That old chap suspects Copperdock as much as I do,” he muttered. “But if it is Copperdock, what the devil is his game, I wonder?”