Ten minutes later I was with the German hairdresser on a tram-car, going
up Regent Road, towards Abbey Hill. On turning into the London Road at
the station, we descended, and, crossing the main thoroughfare, entered
one of the narrow, ill-lit turnings on the left, the name of which I was
unable to see.
"I don't know whom to ask for," I remarked to my companion, as we
hurried along together.
"I can only point you out the house where your friend is in hiding,"
replied the man. "You, of course, know more of his habits than I do."
In a few moments we passed before a tall, drab, dingy-looking house,
which the German pointed out was the false Professor's secret abode.
I longed for the presence of Kershaw Kirk, for I knew not how to act. I
reflected, however, that the reason of my journey to Edinburgh was to
clear up the mystery, and this thought prompted me to action.
So while he waited in the semi-darkness at the next corner, I returned
to the house and rang the bell. To the door came a rather dishevelled
girl of about eighteen, evidently the daughter of the occupier.
"You have a gentleman living here," I said. "Would you kindly tell him
that Mr. Kirk desires to see him?"
"The gentleman's no longer here, sir," replied the girl, in broad
Scotch.
"Gone!" I ejaculated.
"Yes, sir. Mr. Martin's who you mean, I suppose, for he's the only
gentleman mother has had. He packed his things, and left for the
station an hour ago."
My heart fell. He had evidently realised that the German was following
him, and had escaped us!
"Can I see your mother?" I asked. Whereupon I was invited into the
small narrow hall of the musty-smelling house, and a thin-faced, angular
woman in rusty black came forward.
"Pray pardon my troubling you," I said apologetically, "but I have an
urgent message to give to Mr. Martin, who, I understand, has been
staying with you." It was an advantage that the girl had unwittingly
betrayed the name which the false Professor had adopted.
"Mr. Martin's gone, sir. He left this evening."
"So your daughter tells me. But haven't you any idea where he intended
going?"
The woman hesitated, and by that slight pause I felt convinced she knew
something which she intended keeping to herself.
"No, sir, he left quite suddenly," was her hurried reply. "He had been
out all day, and, returning about five, packed up his things, paid me
what he owed me, together with a week's rent in lieu of notice, and,
getting a cab, drove away."
"To the station--eh?"
"Yes, I heard him tell the man to drive to Princes Street."
"He hadn't been very long with you, had he?"
"About a week. He came on the Monday, telling me that he had been
recommended by a friend of his, an actor. I let rooms to
professionals," she added, in explanation.
"He is a very reticent man," I remarked. "I suppose he seldom went
out?"
"No; he used to read all day, and go for just half-an-hour's stroll at
night. He struck me as a rather eccentric man."
"So he is," I laughed. "I'm an old friend of his, so, of course, I
know. I hope he is not in your debt. If so, please tell me and I'll
liquidate it."
"Oh, not at all, sir. He's paid for everything," declared the woman,
upon whom my ready offer to pay her lodger's debts had evidently made an
impression. "His sudden departure mystified us."
"Did he receive many letters?"
"Only two--and a telegram you sent him--which I found dropped by the
side of his dressing-table."
"From me?" I echoed, yet next instant recollecting that I had given my
name as Kirk.
"Yes, you telegraphed to him several days ago to meet you at the
Caledonian Hotel in Glasgow. You are Mr. Kirk, are you not?"
"Ah, of course, I recollect," I laughed. "Do you think he's gone to
Glasgow?" I asked, as the sudden thought occurred to me.
"Well, sir," replied the woman, "as you are such an intimate friend of
Mr. Martin's, I think I ought to tell you that, before leaving to-night,
he asked me in confidence to repeat any telegram that might come for him
to the Caledonian in Glasgow, but asking me at the same time to give no
information to anyone who might call and make inquiries as to his
whereabouts."
"Then he's gone to Glasgow to-night!" I exclaimed, with sudden
enthusiasm. "If I follow at once, I may find him!"
"I certainly think so, sir," was the woman's response, whereupon I made
a hurried adieu, and, rejoining the German, into whose palm I slipped a
sovereign, was quickly back at the hotel.
I left Princes Street Station at ten minutes to ten that night by the
express due in Glasgow at eleven. That hour's journey was full of
excitement, for I was now upon the heels of the false Professor, whose
whereabouts and assumed name Kirk knew, and with whom he had made an
appointment.
Was this man, known as Martin, about to meet Kirk?
I laughed within myself when I reflected upon the awkward surprise which
my presence there would give them. What the lodging-house keeper had
told me proved conclusively that Kershaw Kirk had conspired to cause the
death of poor Greer, and that the story he had told me was untrue.
Yet, again, there arose in my mind the problem why, if he were the
assassin, or an accomplice of the assassin, should he introduce me into
that house of death--myself a comparative stranger! Alone I sat in the
corner of the railway carriage, thinking it all over, and trying, as I
had so continuously tried, to discern light in the darkness.
I had been a fool--a confounded fool, not to inform the police of my
suspicions at the outset. The girl Ethelwynn, whom I had seen lying
apparently dead, whose chill flesh I had touched, was alive and well at
Broadstairs! Was not that, in itself, a staggering mystery, exclusive
of that secret visit of Kirk's to Foley Street, and the woman's cry in
that foggy night?
Was it any wonder, then, that I was neglecting my business, leaving all
to Pelham, with whom I had communicated by telegram several times? Was
it any wonder that, the circumstances being of so uncanny and intricate
a nature, I hesitated to tell Mabel, my wife, lest I should draw her
into that web of doubt, uncertainty, and grim tragedy?
I had watched the columns of the _Times_ each day to discover the
advertised message promised by Kirk; but there had been none. I now saw
how I had been as wax in the hands of that clever, smooth-spoken
cosmopolitan. I believed in men's honesty, a most foolish confidence in
these degenerate days, when morality is sneered at, and honesty is
declared openly to be "the worst policy."
Alas! in this dear old England of ours truth and justice are to-day
rapidly disappearing. Now that Mammon rules, that divorce is a means of
notoriety, and that charity begins abroad with Mansion House funds for
undeserving foreigners, while our starving unemployed clamour in their
thousands for bread, the old order of things has, alas! changed.
The honest man--though, be it said, there are still honest, sterling men
in business and out of it--goes to the wall and is dubbed a fool; while
the master-thief, the smug swindler, the sweater, and the promoter of
bogus companies may pay his money and obtain his baronetcy, or his seat
in the House of Lords, and thus hall-mark himself with respectability.
While money talks, morality is an absent factor in life, and truth is
but a travesty. Glance only at the list of subscribers to a Mansion
House Fund, the very basis of which is the desire of the Lord Mayor who
may happen to be in office to get his baronetcy, while its supporters
are in the main part self-advertisers, or donations are given in order
to establish an unstable confidence and extend a false credit. Thus,
even in our charities, we have become humbugs, because the worship of
the Golden Calf has bred cant, hypocrisy, and blatant self-confidence,
which must ere long be the cause of our beloved country's downfall
beneath the iron-heel of far-seeing, business-like Germany.
Such reflections as these ran through my mind as that night I sat in the
train watching the lights as we neared the great industrial centre on
the Clyde. I was trying to peer into the future, but I only saw before
me a misty horizon of unutterable despair.
I longed to meet Ethelwynn Greer, and put to her certain questions. Was
it not a complete enigma, startling and inscrutable, that she, having
seen her beloved father lying lifeless, should utter no word--even to
young Langton, to whom she was evidently devoted? That fact was utterly
incomprehensible.
At last the train slowed and drew into the great echoing station. On
alighting I gave my bag to a porter and entered the big Caledonian Hotel
adjoining. I had stayed there on previous occasions, and knew its huge
dining-room, its long corridors, and its wide ramifications.
I registered in the name of Lamb, deeming it best to conceal my
presence, and while writing in the book, scanned the page for Martin's
name. It was not, however, there. I turned back to earlier arrivals
that day, but with no better result. So I ascended in the lift to my
room on the second floor.
Of course, it was quite within the bounds of possibility that the false
Professor might use yet another name if he wished to avoid being
followed from Edinburgh. Besides, I had noticed that just as at the
North British at Edinburgh, so here, telegrams were exhibited upon a
board, and could be taken. Therefore, if a wire came in the name of
Martin, he could quite easily claim it.
After a wash I wandered about the hotel, through the lounge,
smoking-room, and the other of the public apartments. Yet how could I
recognise a man who was disguised, and whom I had never seen?
I was placed at a disadvantage from the very first by never having met
this man who had posed as the dead Professor. Yet with the knowledge
that Kirk desired particularly to see him, I felt that there was a
probability of their meeting, and that, if only I remained wary and
watchful, I should come across, amid the hundreds of persons staying
there, the mysterious dweller in Bedford Park.
From my arrival at eleven till half-past one I remained on the alert,
but saw no one I knew. Therefore I retired to bed, thoroughly worn-out
by that constant vigil. Yet I was in no way disheartened. The false
Professor had started from Edinburgh for that destination, and was, I
felt confident, staying there under another name. It only lay with me
to unmask him, or to wait until the pair met clandestinely, and then to
demand to know the truth.
Surely in all the annals of crime there had never been one so surrounded
by complex circumstances as the tragedy of Sussex Place, and assuredly,
too, no innocent man had been more ingeniously misled than my
unfortunate self.
Next day, from eight o'clock in the morning till late at night, I idled
about the big hotel, ever anxious and ever watchful. I kept an eye upon
each arrival and each departure.
Then I became slowly and against my will, convinced that the false
Professor had not come to that hotel, but had put up somewhere else,
well knowing that he could obtain the telegraphic message from Kirk
whenever he cared to step in and take it from the board.
Again, even though at the heels of the conspirators, was I yet being
outwitted--a fact which became the more impressed upon me on the third
day of my futile expectancy.
Hourly I watched that telegraph-board, intending to annex quietly any
message addressed to Martin, and act upon any appointment it contained.
But, alas! my watchfulness remained unrewarded.
Twice there had arrived men slightly resembling the dead Professor,
clean-shaven and active, but by careful observation I discovered that
one was a commercial traveller whose samples had been left below in the
station, and the other was a well-known iron merchant of Walsall.
The false Professor, the man who was plainly in association with the
mysterious Kirk, was clearly in Glasgow, yet how was it possible for me
to do more than I was doing towards his unmasking?
Put to yourself that problem, you, my friend, for whom I have chronicled
this plain, unvarnished story of what actually occurred to me in the
year of grace 1907, and inquire of yourself its solution.
"Who killed Professor Greer?"