Beside myself with fear and anxiety regarding the woman I loved so well,
I again called that very same evening upon Kirk at Whitehall Court, but
on doing so was informed by the lift-man that he was out.
A suggestion then occurred to me that he might have gone over to his
other abode at Bedford Park, therefore I returned, and at last knocked
at his door.
His sister answered my summons, and saying that her brother was at home,
ushered me into his presence.
I found him in his old velvet jacket seated in his high-backed arm-chair
before a glowing fire, his pet parrot near him; and as I entered he
greeted me coldly, without deigning to shake my hand.
"Well, Holford," he exclaimed, stretching his slippered feet lazily
towards the fire, "so you have, after all, proved a traitor, eh?"
"A traitor? How?" I asked, standing near the fireplace and facing him.
"You have been telling some extraordinary stories about me at Scotland
Yard, I hear," he said with a grin.
"Ah!" I cried. "Then you are a detective, after all? My surmise was
right from the first!"
"No," he replied very quietly, "you were quite wrong, my dear sir; I'm
not a detective, neither professional nor amateur, nor have I anything
whatever to do with Scotland Yard. They may be sad blunderers there,
but they do not accept every cock-and-bull story that may be told them."
"I told them no cock-and-bull story!" I protested angrily. "I told
them the actual truth!"
"And that after all the warnings I have given you!" he said in a tone of
bitterest reproach. "Ah! you are unaware of the extreme gravity of that
act of yours. You have broken faith with me, Holford, and by doing so,
have, I fear, brought upon me, as upon others, a great calamity."
"But you are so mysterious. You have never been open and above-board
with me!" I declared. "You are full of mystery."
"Did I not tell you on the first evening you sat here with me that I was
a dealer in secrets?" he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his cigar.
"No, Holford," went on my mysterious neighbour, very seriously, "you are
like most other men--far too inquisitive. Had you been able to repress
your curiosity, and at the same time preserve your pledge of secrecy,
matters to-day would have been vastly different, and, acting in concert,
we might have been able to solve this extraordinary enigma of Professor
Greer's death. But now you've been and made all sorts of wild
statements to the Commissioner of Police. Well, it has stultified all
my efforts."
He spoke with such an air of injured innocence that I hesitated whether
I had not, after all, somewhat misjudged him. Yet as I looked into that
grey, crafty face I could not help doubting him. It was true that he
had taken me into his confidence, but was it not done only for his own
ingenious and devilish purpose?
"My wife is lost," I observed at last. "It is her loss that has,
perhaps, led me to say more than I would otherwise have done."
"And love for your wife makes you forget your word of honour given to
me, eh?" he asked. "Your code of honour is distinctly peculiar, Mr.
Holford," he added, with biting sarcasm. "I, of course, regret that
Mrs. Holford has fallen a victim to the machinations of our enemies, but
surely even that is no excuse for a man to act treacherously towards his
friend."
"That is not the point," I declared. "You have never satisfied me as to
your motive in taking me to Sussex Place and exhibiting to me the
evidence of the crime."
"Because--well, because, had I done so, you would not have understood.
Some day, perhaps, you will know; and when you learn the truth you will
be even more astounded than you are to-day. Meanwhile, I can assure you
that you suspect me entirely without cause."
"Then why were you in the house at the time the traces of the crime were
being effaced in the furnace?" I asked in a hard voice.
He hesitated for a moment, and I thought his bony hand trembled
slightly.
"For reason's of my own," he replied at last. "You allowed me to
wriggle out of a very tight corner, and I intended to show you my
gratitude, had you given me an opportunity."
"I desire no expression of gratitude, Mr. Kirk," I replied, with
dignified disgust. "All I require is a statement from you concerning
the whereabouts of my dear wife. Give me that, and I'm satisfied to
retire from the whole affair altogether."
"Because you have now realised that Scotland Yard refuse their
assistance, eh?" he asked, with an evil grin. "Are you not now agreed
with me that our much-praised Criminal Investigation Department, with
all its hide-bound rules and its tangle of red tape, is useless? It is
not the men who are at fault--for some of them are the finest and best
fellows in the whole metropolis--but the system which is radically
wrong."
I was bound, after my experience, to agree with him. But again I
referred to Mabel, and to the manner in which she had been decoyed from
home.
"You hear that, Joseph?" he exclaimed, turning to his feathered pet, who
had been chatting and screeching as we had been speaking. "This
gentleman suspects your master, Joseph. What do you say?"
"You're a fool for your pains! You're a fool for your pains!" declared
the bird. "Poor Jo-sef! Poor Jo-sef wants to go to bed!"
"Be quiet! You'll go to bed presently," answered the queer, grey
visaged, sphinx-like man, who, turning again towards me, and looking me
straight in the face, once more assured me that I was foolish in my
misapprehension of the truth.
"To me it really does not matter who killed Professor Greer, or who has
usurped his place in the world of science," I said. "My only aim now is
to recover my lost wife. Antonio, when I met him in Rome, was anxious
that, in exchange for information concerning her, I should consent to
keep a still tongue as to what had occurred in Sussex Place."
"Rubbish, my dear sir!"--and Kirk laughed heartily. "What can Antonio
possibly know? He's as ignorant and innocent of the whole affair as you
are yourself."
"How do you know that, pray?"
"Well, am I not endeavouring to elucidate the mystery?" he asked.
"And you know more than you will tell me?"