But what was that? Familiar names? People, scenes, circumstances I
recalled as though they were my own! With a great gasp I held the pink
sheet close to the cab lamp, and as we were whirling madly along
Parliament Street, close to the actual scene of the crime itself, I read
this account of what had happened whilst I that morning had tried to
snatch but a few hours of broken slumber.
"About half-past six this morning a murder of a peculiarly atrocious
character was discovered in that block of flats known as Embankment
Mansions in Whitehall Court. It seems that Colonel Napier's valet, a
man named Richardson, who was early awake in consequence of an attack of
toothache, was startled by hearing what he believed was a shout for help
proceeding from his master's room. He went at once to the door and
knocked, and, on getting no reply, he turned the handle and entered,
when he was horrified to see Colonel Napier stretched on the bed, with a
great dagger-thrust in the region of his heart, and quite dead. An open
window showed at once the means chosen by the murderer to effect an
entrance, which was rendered all the more easy by the fact that an iron
pipe ran past it on its way from the roof to the earth. The valet
sprang at once to the window, but he could see no sign of any person,
and darting to an inner room he turned on a district messenger-call for
the police. Then he ran back to the bedroom. The colonel could not
then have been dead many seconds. Everything pointed to that. Nor was
it clear why the crime had been committed. Nothing had been removed
from the bedroom--nothing at all. Detective-Inspector Naylor and other
officers were quickly on the scene, but although they searched they
could not find any trace of the murderer or of the weapon with which the
terrible deed was accomplished. At the time of writing, indeed, the
crime is enveloped in mystery, for Colonel Napier, who was formerly
Member of Parliament for Hereford, and had won high recognition for
services on the Indian frontier, was considered by all a most popular
man. He was a widower, and leaves only one child, a daughter, who,
luckily, at the time of the tragedy was away on a visit."
For a few moments after reading this I confess I felt at a loss to
speak, to move, even to think--the thing was so hideous, so appalling,
so complete. The horror of it all seemed so acute that it crushed me
beneath its weight.
I could only sit with eyes that, look where they would, perceived
nothing but the dread scene in the death chamber--that man I had a keen
affection for stricken to the heart.
Maybe some of us who suffer such awful shocks get curiously clairvoyant
in the moments of our greatest trial. I cannot tell. I only know I
descended from that cab, paid the man his fare, and entered my office in
Stanton Street, like one in a trance. All the time my brain was beating
through a cloud of horror, doubt, and suspicion; but, finally, as I
flung myself into a chair in front of the fire, every point appeared to
clear for me as though by magic. Then one terrible question stared up
at me with awe-inspiring distinctness:
Was this crime the work of Jose Casteno?
Somehow the problem, when I had once stated it to myself and had taken
it for ever out of that dim region of intangible speculation, did not
surprise me very greatly. Instinctively I recalled how significant had
been the Spaniard's appeal to the colonel when he threatened to compel
Doris to hold no further communication with me. "I beg you withdraw
that, withdraw it this day, or you will regret your determination."
Then I saw again Don Jose as he had looked when he knelt, just where I
was sitting at that moment, with the sullen glare of the flames on his
upturned face and his dagger poised to catch the light on the edge that
he had just finished sharpening with so much intensity and precision.
After all, it was quite possible that the lust of murder had seized him
in those seconds, the desire to make good his own words both to the
colonel and to myself. It would appear so easy to commit a crime when
all London slept; and, alas! it had been easy, painfully, pitilessly
easy, to put an end to that gallant old soldier as he lay slumbering in
his bed. Certainly one great damning fact stood out against Casteno--
the killing of the colonel's dog Fate. Who else could have any interest
in the stabbing of that poor, faithful brute than the murderer of his
master? And who else could have made that ugly gash in his side save
Jose Casteno?
Nor, indeed, was that the only solid link in the chain of guilt I was
forging against the Spaniard. All at once I recalled how carefully he
had avoided the passage where the spaniel had been stricken down. Was
that accident--or conscience? Also the agility he had shown in
scrambling up that iron pipe outside the hunchback's shop when we went
to spy on Zouche from that upstairs room. He had told me, of course, he
had learned the trick at sea. He may have done that; but might he not
also have acquired some recent practice outside Embankment Mansions
which it seemed pretty clear the murderer entered by the same method?
Stung to desperation at my own foul success in linking my employer up
with this awful crime I resolved that I would lose no time in tracking
the man down, and his guilt. What did the Lake of Sacred Treasure in
far-off Mexico matter to me in an hour red with blood as that was--the
blood of one of my best and truest friends? Let the Earl of Fotheringay
and Lord Cyril Cuthbertson plot and plan. Let Mr Cooper-Nassington
ferret out Peter Zouche and drag from him the secret of the cipher
manuscripts. Ay, let the Jesuits send their most trusty spies, I at
least would take no hand in the struggle again until I had torn the mask
from this villain.
Rising impatiently, I began striding rapidly up and down the room.
Hitherto the minutes had gone by on the wings of the wind. I had not
been conscious of the flight of time, although the hands on the
travelling clock in front of me had travelled round the dial two, if not
three, times. Now the seconds seemed made of lead. They would not
pass. They hung about me, and fretted me. Again and again I asked
myself: "Why does not Jose Casteno telegraph me as he had promised and
tell me where he is and how he has fared since he slipped off on the
track of the hunchback?" It was no good. No answer came, and bit by
bit there formed in my mind a new suspicion, a new dread. What if the
Spaniard had taken fright at the publicity the crime had obtained and
had left his chase of Zouche to secure his own safety in some far-off
land, where he would never be suspected and where he could never be
found? I might wait, then, until the crack of doom: Colonel Napier
would remain unavenged.
Feverishly I tore out into the streets and bought up all the late
editions of the evening papers which I could lay my hands on. This
mysterious crime had impressed the stolid imagination of Londoners so
well accustomed to horrors that end in nothingness to a degree that was
quite unusual; and all the journals had launched out into lurid
descriptions of the dead man and the manner of his passing so that a
horrid sense of nausea seized on me, and I cursed journalism and all its
loathsome enterprise; albeit it I was most eager myself at the same
moment to take advantage of its discoveries.
One paper, however, had got a paragraph that threw a new light on the
occurrence--the _Star_--and I read it with throbbing eagerness: