A whole fortnight went past. Mabel's silence was inexplicable.
The house in Sussex Place was still in the hands of the caretaker, and,
though I watched both Doctor Flynn and Leonard Langton in secret, the
results of my vigilance were nil.
I was in despair. Refused assistance by Scotland Yard, and treated as
an enemy by Kershaw Kirk, I could only sit with Gwen at home and form a
thousand wild conjectures.
Advertisements for news of Mabel had brought no word of response.
Indeed, it seemed much as though the theory of those two detectives was
the correct one, namely, that she had left me of her own will, and did
not intend to return. Gwen, indeed, suggested this one day, but I made
pretence of scouting it. Mabel's mother, who now lived up in
Aberdeenshire, had written two letters, and I had been compelled to
reply, to tell a lie and say that she was away at Cheltenham.
My business I neglected sadly, for nowadays I seldom went to the garage.
Kirk was, I understood, living in Whitehall Court, but I did not call
upon him. What was the use? I had tried every means of learning where
Mabel was, but, alas! there seemed a conspiracy of silence against me.
I had left no effort unexerted. Yet all had been in vain.
Antonio had, according to Ethelwynn, joined "the Professor" in Hungary.
Was not that, in itself, sufficient evidence of collusion? As for
Pietro, inquiry I made in the Euston Road showed that he had not yet
returned to England.
Many times I felt impelled to go out to Buda-Pesth and endeavour to
trace the pair. But I hesitated, because, finding Ethelwynn's
statements unreliable in some particulars, I feared to accept what she
said as the truth. Would it not be to her interest to mislead me and
send me off upon a wild-goose chase?
No man in the whole of our great feverish London was so full of constant
anxiety, frantic fear, and breathless bewilderment as myself. Ah, how I
existed through those grey, gloomy March days I cannot explain. The
mystery of it all was inscrutable.
I should, I knew, be able to satisfy myself as to poor Mabel's fate if
only I could clear up the mystery of who killed Professor Greer.
This tension of nerves and constant longing for the return of the one
for whom I held such a great and all-absorbing love was now telling upon
my health. I ate little, and the mirror revealed how pale, careworn,
and haggard I had become. Since the dawn of the New Year I was, alas! a
changed man. In two months I had aged fully ten years.
From inquiries I made of men interested in science and in chemistry I
had discovered how great a man was the dead Professor, and how
beneficial to mankind had been certain of his discoveries. Fate--or is
it some world spirit of tragic-comedy?--plays strange pranks with human
lives now and then, and surely nothing more singular ever happened in
our London life of to-day than what I have already narrated in these
pages.
And to that thin, grey-faced neighbour of mine--the man who led a double
life--was due the blame for it all. Though I made every endeavour and
every inquiry, I could not learn what was his profession. That he was a
man of means, a constant traveller, and well known in clubland, was all
the information I could obtain.
You will wonder, perhaps, why I did not go again to Whitehall Court and
force the truth from the fellow's lips. Well, I hesitated, because in
every argument I had had with him he had always won and always turned
the tables upon myself. I had made a promise which, however justifiable
my action, I had, nevertheless, broken. I had denounced him to the
police, believing that I should see him arrested and charged. Yet, on
the contrary, the authorities refused to lift a finger against him.
What could I think? What, indeed, would you have thought in the
circumstances? How would you have acted?
One morning I had gone out early with Drake, trying the chassis of a new
"twenty-four," and finding ourselves in front of the grey old cathedral
at Chichester, we pulled up at the ancient "Dolphin" to have luncheon.
My mind had been full of Mabel all the way, and though I had driven I
had paid little or no attention to the car's defects. Dick Drake, motor
enthusiast as he was, probably regarded my preoccupied manner as
curious, but he made no comment, though he had no doubt noted all the
defects himself.
I had lunched in the big upstairs room--a noble apartment, as well known
to travellers in the old coaching days as to the modern motorist--and
had passed along into another room, where I lit a cigarette and
stretched myself lazily before the fire.
A newspaper lay at hand, and I took it up. In my profession I have but
little leisure to read anything save the motor-journals; therefore,
except a glance at the evening paper, I, like hundreds of other busy
men, seldom troubled myself with the news of the day.
I was smoking and scanning the columns of that morning's journal when my
eyes fell upon a heading which caused me to start in surprise. The
words read, "Steel Discovery: New High-Speed Metal with Seven Times
Cutting Power of Old."
The short article read as follows:
"Few prophecies have been more quickly justified than that of
Professor Greer at the Royal Institution on December 16th last. He
then said:
"`As to Mr. Carnegie's prophecy on the decadence of British steel
metallurgy, this exists only in the imagination of that gentleman. So
far as quality is concerned, Britain is still first in the race for
supremacy.
"`I am strongly of opinion that in a very short time the best
high-speed steel will be a back number. It is probable that a year
hence there will be on the market British steel with a quadruple
cutting power of any now known to metallurgy.'
"The prophecy has come true. Professor Greer, lecturing again at the
Birmingham Town Hall last night, stated that the firm of Edwards and
Sutton, of the Meersbrook Works, Sheffield, of which Sir Mark Edwards
is the head, have, after his lengthened experiments, placed on the
market a steel with from three to seven times the cutting power of
existing high-speed steel, and which, in contradistinction to present
material, can be hardened in water, oil, or blast.
"The new steel, whose cutting power is almost incredible, said the
Professor, will not call for any alteration in present machinery."
The impostor had actually had the audacity to lecture before a
Birmingham audience! His bold duplicity was incredible.
I re-read that remarkable statement, and judged that this new process of
his must have been purchased by the great firm of Edwards and Sutton,
whose steel was of world repute. His was, I presumed, an improvement
upon the Bessemer process.
That a man could have the impudence to pass himself off as Greer was
beyond my comprehension. As Waynflete Professor at Oxford he would, I
saw, be well known, even if he did not go much into society. And yet he
had stood upon the platform in the Town Hall of Birmingham and boldly
announced a discovery made by the man whose identity he had so
audaciously assumed.
This action of the impostor, who had no doubt sold the Professor's
secret at a high figure to a well-known firm, absolutely staggered
belief.
I called Drake, mounted upon the ugly chassis again, and together we
sped post-haste back to London. At ten that night I was in the Grand
Hotel at Birmingham, and half an hour later I called at the house of a
certain Alderman named Pooley, who was a member of the society before
which the bogus Professor had lectured on the previous evening.
I had some little difficulty in inducing him to see me at that late
hour. He was a busy solicitor, and his servant referred me to his
office in Bull Street, where, she said, he would see me in the morning.
But, being pushful, Mr. Pooley at last consented to see me.
"Yes," he said, as I sat with him in his diningroom, "it is quite true
that Professor Greer lectured before us last night, and made a most
interesting announcement--one which seems to have caused a good deal of
stir in the world of metallurgy. The papers were full of it to-day."
"I understood the Professor was abroad," I remarked rather lamely.
"So he was. He came home specially to fulfil a long-standing
engagement. He promised us to lecture, and gave us the date as far back
as November last."
"Do you know where he arrived from?" I inquired.
"Yes. He dined with us here before the lecture, and stayed with us the
night. He told us at dinner that he had just returned from Roumania."
"Then he did not leave Birmingham until this morning!" I cried. "Ah,
how I wish I had known! Have you any idea where he has gone?"
"I went with him to the station this morning, and he took a ticket to
Sheffield--to visit Sir Mark Edwards, I believe. He met at the station
a friend who had been to the lecture and who had stayed at the Grand
that night. He was introduced to me as Mr. Kirk. Do you know him?"
"Kirk?" I gasped. "Yes; a tall, thin, grey-haired man--Mr. Kershaw
Kirk."
"Yes. They travelled together," said the Alderman. "It seemed as
though Kirk came from London to meet the Professor, who had returned by
the Hook of Holland to Harwich, and came on by the through carriage to
Birmingham."
"And you believe that Kirk has gone with the Professor to visit Sir Mark
Edwards?" I exclaimed eagerly.
"I think so. If you sent a letter to the Professor at Sir Mark's
address, it's quite probable that he would get it."
"Had you ever met the Professor before?" I inquired.
"No, never. Of course I knew him well by repute."
"Did he mention that Edwards and Sutton were old friends of his?"
"I gathered that they were not. He had simply concluded an arrangement
with them for working his process as a matter of business. Indeed, he
mentioned that Sir Mark Edwards had invited him for a few days."
"Then they are not friends of long standing?" I asked.
"Probably not. But--well, why do you ask such curious questions as
these, Mr.--Holford! What, indeed, is the motive of all this inquiry?
The Professor is a well-known man, and you could easily approach him
yourself," the keen solicitor remarked.
"Yes, probably so. But my inquiry is in the Professor's own interest,"
I said, because I had to make my story good. "As a matter of fact, I
have learnt of an attempt to steal the secret of his process, and I'm
acting for his protection. When my inquiries are complete, I shall go
to him and place the whole matter before him."
"Your profession is not that of a detective?" he suggested, with a
laugh.
"No; I'm a motor engineer," I explained bluntly. "I know nothing, and
care less, about detectives and their ways."
Then I apologised for disturbing him at that hour and made my way back
in the cab that had brought me to the centre of the city.
I left New Street Station at two o'clock in the morning--cold, wet, and
cheerless--and at half-past four was in the Midland Hotel at Sheffield,
sleepy and fagged.
The night-porter knew nothing of Sir Mark Edwards' address; therefore I
had to wait until eight o'clock, when some more intelligent member of
the hotel staff came on duty.
Everyone of whom I inquired, however, seemed ignorant; hence I took a
cab and drove to the great works of the firm--a huge, grimy place, with
smoky chimneys and heaps of slag, an establishment employing several
thousand hands, and one of the largest, if not the largest, in
Hallamshire. Here I was informed that Sir Mark resided thirty miles
distant, at Alverton Hall, close to the edge of Bulwell Common, famed
for its golf links.
Therefore at ten o'clock I took train there, and, finding a fly at the
station, drove direct to the Hall to face and denounce the man who was
an accomplice of assassins, if not the assassin himself, and a bold,
defiant impostor.
The fly, after traversing a country road for a mile or so, suddenly
entered the lodge-gates and proceeded up a splendid avenue of high bare
elms, until we drew up at the entrance to a fine old Elizabethan
mansion, the door of which was thrown open by a liveried man-servant.