Search of the upper portion of the premises revealed nothing--nothing,
at least, to arouse the undue suspicions of the searchers.
My eager glance was everywhere, but I discerned nothing further of an
unusual nature. The one great truth had become impressed upon me that
the man Kirk, madman or master criminal, had got rid of the evidences of
his crime.
He must have disposed of the poor girl's body in the same manner as that
of her father!
I recollected that when seated with him in Bath Road, Bedford Park, he
had admitted that he possessed another home. Was it in Foley Street,
that squalid house where I had heard a woman's frantic screams?
I knew my duty, yet I still hesitated to perform it. My duty as a good
citizen was to tell the police, openly and frankly, all that I knew.
Yet if I did so, would I be believed? Now, after I had allowed them to
search the place, I should, if I spoke, surely be suspected of trying to
shield myself.
No, having assumed an attitude of ignorance, I saw I was now compelled
to retain it. Kirk, clever, crafty, and far-seeing, had most
ingeniously sealed my lips.
Yet why, if he were the actual criminal, had he taken me, a perfect
stranger, into his confidence? And again, what connection could the
Eckhardt tyre have with the strange affair?
Who were those two mysterious callers who had followed his visit, and
whom Pelham had seen? What could have been their object?
I stood in the large drawing-room listening to the discussion between
the searchers, who had now returned there disappointed.
"I can only repeat, sir," remarked the inspector, addressing Langton,
"that you must have been mistaken regarding the light in the window of
the next room."
"I'm certain I was not," replied the young man doggedly. "Someone was
in this house--someone who, when I rang, extinguished the light and
escaped!"
"But how could he have escaped?" queried the officer.
"Ah! that's the mystery. By the roof, perhaps."
"The trap-door is bolted on the inside," declared the constable; "I
examined it, sir."
"Or by a window leading out on to some leads somewhere?" I suggested.
"There are no windows unfastened by which anyone could have escaped,"
the sergeant exclaimed; "I've looked at them all."
"Well," exclaimed the young man with a puzzled air, "nothing will ever
convince me that I've brought you all here upon a fool's errand. I
still maintain that something unusual has happened. Why has Antonio
fled to France?"
"We must ask the Professor," replied the inspector. "He may have been
sent by his master upon perfectly legitimate business. He was entirely
trusted, you say."
"But he saw me in the buffet at Calais, and, turning, hurried away,"
Langton said. "In other circumstances he would certainly have raised
his hat in greeting; he is a most polite, tactful man."
"Well, sir," laughed the officer, "I don't think we can assist you any
further. Just go out, 403," he added, turning to the constable, "and
tell the two men in the park that we've finished, and they can go back
to their beats."
"Very well, sir," responded the man, replacing his truncheon as he left
the room.
Both inspector and sergeant soon followed him, leaving Langton and
myself alone.
After the front door had closed, we returned to the big dining-room.
"Well," he exclaimed, "I don't know what your theory is, Mr. Holford,
but I'm absolutely certain that something has happened here. There is
some crooked circumstance," and I saw deep lines of thought upon his
shrewd, clever, clean-shaven countenance.
Why dare not Kirk meet him?
"The absence of everybody is certainly mysterious," I admitted.
"Doubly mysterious when one takes into consideration the fact that the
doors leading into the laboratory have been forced," he remarked
quickly. "Three persons dined here to-night. The Professor entertained
a man-friend. Who was he?"
"That we can only discover when the servants return," I said.
"Or from the Professor himself," he suggested.
I held my breath. What would he have said if I had told him the truth--
that the Professor was dead, and that a button from his overcoat had
been lying among the ashes of the furnace?
I glanced around the comfortable room where the fire glowed cheerfully
and the electric lights were so cunningly shaded. The Professor was,
among other things, a connoisseur of old silver, and upon the sideboard
were a number of fine Georgian pieces, tankards, salvers, candelabra,
salt-cellars, decanter stands, and other things, all of which I
recognised as perfect specimens.
My hand went to my jacket pocket, and I there felt the button. I
withdrew my fingers in horror.
We had decided to await the return of the Professor. Await his return!
Surely we would have a long time to wait for his arrival?
I was on my mettle. I alone knew the truth, and to conceal my secret
knowledge from this shrewd and active young man would, I saw, be
difficult.
We seated ourselves beside the fire, and, having offered me a cigarette
from his case, he began to endeavour to learn more about me. But at
first I was very wary, and exercised caution in my replies.
He apologised for mistaking me for an accomplice of thieves, whereat I
laughed, saying:
"When we meet the Professor he will perhaps tell you of our long
friendship."
"Curiously enough," he said, looking straight across at me, "I never
recollect Ethelwynn speaking of you."
"I knew very little of the young lady," I hastened to explain; "the
Professor is my friend. He has, on several occasions, told me what a
great help she was to him in his experiments."
"She is his right hand," declared the young man. "Her knowledge of
certain branches of chemistry is, perhaps, unequalled in a woman."
"And yet she is delightful and charming, and nothing of a blue-stocking,
I understand," I remarked.
He smiled, for was he not the happy lover! Ah! what an awakening must
be his ere long!
But we gossiped on. His face, however, betrayed a great anxiety, and
time after time he expressed wonder why Ethelwynn had not remained at
home to keep the appointment, or left him some message.
Indeed, we searched both her boudoir and her bedroom to find his
telegram, but all in vain. Then again we returned to the dining-room.
"I suppose you've known the Professor for some years," I remarked,
hoping that he would tell me the story of their acquaintance.
"Oh, yes," answered the young man, twisting a fresh cigarette between
his fingers. "I first met him and Ethelwynn at the Gandolfi Palace, in
Rome, four years ago. I was staying with my aunt, the Marchesa
Gandolfi, and they were at the Grand Hotel. I saw quite a lot of them
all through the Roman season. The Professor gave some lectures before
one of the Italian learned societies, and I had frequent opportunities
to take Ethelwynn out to see the sights of the Eternal City. I happen
to know Rome very well, for I spent all my youth there with my aunt, an
Englishwoman, who married into the Roman nobility, and who, like every
other Englishwoman who takes such a step, repented it afterwards."
"You mean she was not very happy with her husband?" I said. "I've
heard before that mixed marriages in Italy are never very successful."
"No," he sighed; "my poor aunt, though she became a Marchesa and
possessed a dozen different titles and probably the finest palazzo in
Rome, was very soon disillusioned. The Marchese was an over-dressed
elegant, who lived mostly at his club, ogled women each afternoon in the
Corso, or played baccarat till dawn. And Roman society was not at all
kind to her because she was just a plain Englishwoman of a county
family. Gandolfi was thrown from his horse while riding over one of his
estates down in Calabria two years ago."
"The Professor was a friend of your aunt's, I suppose?"
"Yes, an old friend. At the time when we met, Ethelwynn had, I found,
an ardent admirer in a young Italian lieutenant of infantry, who had met
her once or twice at the Grand and in the English tea-rooms on the
Corso, and had fallen desperately in love with her.
"The Professor told me of this, and in confidence asked whether I knew
the grey-trousered popinjay. I did not. He had apparently told the
Professor of his family and high connections in Bologna, had declared
his love for Ethelwynn, and with her consent had asked the Professor for
her hand in marriage.
"I consulted my aunt, who was much against the matrimonial union of
English and Italians, and in secret I went to Bologna to investigate the
lieutenant's story. What I found was rather interesting. Instead of
being the son of a noble but decayed family, he was the only child of an
old man employed as a gardener at a big villa out on the Via Imola, and
so erratic had been his career and so many his amours, that his father
had disowned him.
"I returned to Rome with the father's written statement in black and
white."
"And what happened then?" I asked, interested.
"The amorous fortune-hunter spent a rather bad quarter of an hour in the
Professor's sitting-room, and was then quickly sent to the right-about.
He quietly got transferred to another regiment up in Cremona, while
Ethelwynn, of course, shed a good many tears."
"And, her disillusionment over, she repaid you for your exertions on her
behalf by becoming engaged to you, eh?"
"Exactly," was his answer as his mouth relaxed into a smile. "A very
strong attachment exists between the Professor and myself. I am happy
to believe, indeed, that I am one of his closest friends--at least, that
is what he declared when I asked his permission to marry Ethelwynn.
Perhaps as regards finance I am not all that he might desire," he said
frankly. "I'm not by any means rich, Mr. Holford. In fact, I'm simply
a hard-working business man, but I have a very generous and kind
employer in Sir Albert Oppenheim, and my position as his confidential
secretary is one of great trust."
"Sir Albert Oppenheim!" I echoed. "Why, he's supposed to be one of the
wealthiest men in England!"
"He probably is," laughed my friend. "Every rich man, however, has
enemies, and he is no exception. I've read and heard spoken many very
unkind libels about him; but take it, from one who knows, that no man in
all England performs more charitable work in secret than he."
The name recalled several rumours I had heard, ugly rumours of
dishonourable dealings in the City, where he was one of the greatest,
shrewdest, and most powerful of modern financiers.
I had grown to like Leonard Langton for his frankness. That he was
devoted to the unfortunate girl was very plain, and naturally he was
anxious and puzzled at her failure to be at home to receive him after an
absence of a month in Portugal, where he had, he told me, been engaged
upon the purchase of the tramways of Lisbon by an English syndicate
formed by Sir Albert.
He lived in chambers in Wimpole Street, with a great chum of his who was
a doctor, and he invited me to look him up, while I began to tell him a
little about myself, my motor business, and my friends.
He was a motor enthusiast, I quickly found; therefore I, on my part,
invited him to come down to Chiswick and go out for a day's run on the
"ninety."
Thus it occurred that, seated in that house of mystery, nay, in that
very room where I had seen his well-beloved lying cold and dead, we
became friends.
Ah! if I had but known one tithe of what that hastily-formed friendship
was to cost me! But if the future were not hidden, surely there would
be neither interest nor enjoyment in the present.
Suddenly, and without warning, I launched upon him the one question
which had been ever uppermost in my mind during all the time we had sat
together.
"I have met on several occasions," I said, "a great friend of the
Professor's, a man you probably know--Kirk--Kershaw Kirk."
I watched his face as I uttered the words. But, quite contrary to my
expectations, its expression was perfectly blank. The name brought no
sign of recognition of the man to his eyes, which met mine unwaveringly.
"Kirk?" he repeated thoughtfully. "No, I've never met him--at least,
not to my knowledge. Was he young--or old?"
"Elderly, and evidently he is a very intimate friend of Greer's."
The young man shook his head. If he was denying any knowledge he
possessed, then he was a most wonderful actor.
Perhaps Kirk himself had lied to me! Yet I remembered that towards him
Antonio had always been most humble and servile.
I tried to discern any motive Langton could have to disclaim knowledge
of the mysterious Kirk. But I failed to see any.
As far as I could gather, my companion was not acquainted with the man
whom I had so foolishly allowed to escape from the house.
Yet had not Kirk himself expressed a fear at meeting him? Had he not
told me plainly that by mere mention of his name to that young man, all
hope of solving the enigma would be at an end?
Perhaps, after all, I had acted very injudiciously in admitting my
knowledge of Kirk. For aught I knew my remarks might now have aroused
further suspicion in his mind concerning myself. Yet was not the
temptation to put the question too great to be resisted?
At my suggestion we again ascended the stairs, and re-entered the
forbidden chamber.
I gave as an excuse that I was curious to examine some of the delicate
apparatus which the Professor used in his experiments. My real reason,
however, was again to examine those ashes before the furnace.
Circumstances, fortunately, favoured me, for almost as soon as we were
inside the laboratory we heard the telephone bell ringing out upon the
landing.
"I wonder who's ringing up?" Langton exclaimed quickly. "I'll go and
see," and he hurried away to the study where I had noticed the
instrument stood upon a small side-table near the window.
The moment he had gone I bent swiftly and poked over the dust and ashes
with my hand.
Yes! Among them were several small pieces of cloth and linen only
half-consumed, some scraps of clothing, together with a silver
collar-stud, blackened by fire.
I feared lest my companion should observe the unusual interest I was
taking in the furnace-refuse, therefore I cleaned my hand quickly with
my handkerchief and followed him.
He had his ear to the telephone, still listening, when I entered the
study.
Then he placed the receiver upon its hook, for the person with whom he
had been conversing had evidently gone.
Turning, with his eyes fixed upon mine, he made in a few clear words an
announcement which fell upon my ears like a thunderbolt.
I believe I fell back as though I had been struck a blow. By that
plain, simple declaration of his, the dark vista of doubt and mystery
became instantly enlarged a thousand-fold.
I stood staring blankly at the young man, absolutely refusing to believe
my own ears.
What he told me was beyond all credence.