"Better let Boyd see them when he comes down. The affair grows more
queer and complicated as we proceed."
"Don't you recollect," I said suddenly, "in the dead man's pocket was a
card exactly similar, but quite blank. You threw it into the
fireplace."
"Ah! of course," he answered quickly. "That fact shows that he had
something to do with these mysterious symbols. I wonder what is their
real meaning."
"I wonder," I said. "As you say, the mystery grows each moment more and
more inexplicable. Curious, too, that the snake in the garden path
should have directed your attention to it."
"No," he said quickly, his face in an instant pale and serious, "don't
mention that, there's a good fellow. I'm trying not to think of it; for
when I recollect all that it means to me I'm unnerved."
"Bah!" I laughed. "Surely there's nothing to fear. It only shows that
however careful the assassin is to cover his crime it must be unearthed
sooner or later. The finger of Fate always points to the crime of
murder, however well it may be concealed."
"True," he sighed, his brows knit in serious thought. "But the finger
of Fate has in this case shown me an omen of evil."
"You're a fool, Patterson," I said bluntly. "You have here every chance
to distinguish yourself as a shrewd officer, yet you calmly stand by
talking of omens and all that rot."
"Yes," he answered. "I know I'm an idiot, Mr. Urwin, but I can't help
it. That's the worst of it."
"Well," I suggested, "while Boyd is upstairs, why not make inquiries of
the next-door neighbours regarding those who occupied this place?"
He at once acted on my suggestion, and together we went out and rang the
bell of the house adjoining on the right. My friend's curious apathy in
this matter surprised me, for usually he was a quick, active fellow, who
prosecuted his inquiries methodically, and worked up evidence in a
manner that had more than once called forth the commendation of the
judge at the Old Bailey. That night, however, he was plainly upset--
nervous, trembling and agitated, in a manner quite unusual to him.
Boyd, the keen-eyed, quick-witted detective inspector, had noticed this
when at the police-station, but Patterson had only replied--
"I'm a bit unwell, that's all."
Our summons at the house next door was answered by the occupier's wife,
a rather stout, white-haired, gaily-capped old lady named Luff.
The appearance of Patterson in uniform surprised her, but when she had
asked us in, and we were seated, he said--
"There is no occasion to be alarmed, madam. I have merely called to
make an inquiry of you. It is in your power to render us assistance in
a rather confidential matter regarding the occupiers of the house next
door--your neighbours on the left. What do you know of them?"
"Nothing," she answered. "They came about six months ago, a young lady
and a very old gentleman, with a single maid-servant. They speak to no
one, and, as far as I have observed, have very few friends. I have
often remarked to my son, who is a civil engineer, and now away making
the railway in China, that they are a mysterious couple. What is wrong
with them?"
"Oh, it's simply a private matter," my companion answered carelessly,
not wishing to alarm the neighbourhood by news of our discovery.
"What is the old gentleman like? Can you describe him?" I inquired.
No doubt she took me for a detective, but at that moment this thought
did not occur to me.
"He is sixty, I should think, old and decrepit, with white hair, and
always walks with a stick."
"And the lady was his daughter?" suggested the inspector.
"I suppose her to be his daughter," she answered. "The old man's name
is Dawson, I believe--at least one day a messenger-boy brought a note
here by mistake, addressed to Professor Dawson. The daughter is a very
good pianist, and plays every morning regularly."
"They are well off, as far as you can judge?" Patterson inquired with
his assumed careless air.
"No, I don't think they are, because my maid heard at Boucher's--the
grocer's across the way--that they owed a large bill which they couldn't
settle. Again, people who have a house of that sort do not have coal by
the hundredweight taken down into the kitchen as they do."
Patterson nodded. No more sure sign of a light purse is there than the
purchase of coal by the half-sack. Yet the interior of that house, with
its well-laid dinner-table, certainly did not betray any sign of
poverty. Indeed, I had noticed in the cellar a dusty stock of choice
wines, hocks, ports, and champagnes of expensive brands.
"You don't know the young lady's name, then?" asked my friend, after a
slight pause.
"If she's really his daughter it would, I suppose, be Dawson," she
replied with a smile. "But I'm not certain, remember, as to either of
their names."
"Perhaps your servants may know something about them. Servants
generally gossip and pick up information about one's neighbours, you
know."
"You are right," answered the affable old lady, "they gossip far too
much. Unfortunately, however, both my servants are out at this moment."
We chatted on, but it was evident from her conversation that her
servants knew little beyond what she did. One statement she made was
somewhat curious. She alleged that a few nights before she was awakened
about two o'clock in the morning by hearing the loud shrill screams of a
woman who seemed to be in the room next hers in the adjoining house.
She could hear a man's voice talking low and gruffly, and three or four
times were the screams repeated, as if the woman were in excruciating
pain.
"What visitors came to the house?" Patterson asked at length.
"Very few. A youngish gentleman came sometimes. He called the other
morning just as I was going out."
"Who admitted him?"
"The young lady herself."
Many more questions Patterson put to the old lady, but elicited no
noteworthy fact, except that two large, heavy trunks had been sent away
by Parcels Delivery a couple of days before. Therefore, thanking Mrs.
Luff, who, of course, was extremely curious to know why the police were
taking such an active interest in her neighbour, we left and made
inquiries of the people in the adjoining house on the opposite hand.
It was a lodging-house and the owner, a rather surly old widow, was not
at all communicative. What she told us amounted practically to what we
had already learnt. She, too, had long ago set the old man and his
daughter down as mysterious persons, and her two servants had never been
able to find out anything regarding them.
So after nearly half an hour's absence we returned to the house of
mystery, watched, of course, by the persons in the houses on either
side. None suspected a tragedy, but all remained at their windows
expecting to see somebody arrested.
In the dining-room we found Doctor Knowles, the police divisional
surgeon, who had been sent for by the police. He had already examined
the bodies and was on the point of returning home.
"Well, doctor, what's your opinion?" asked Patterson.
"I can form none until after the post-mortem," answered the prim,
youngish, dark-moustached man in silk hat and frock coat, a typical
Kensington practitioner, who was known to be a great favourite with his
lady patients.
"Are there no marks of violence?"
"None," he responded. "Although there seems no doubt that there has
been foul play, yet the means used to encompass their death remains an
entire mystery. That laboratory, too, is a very remarkable feature."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the occupant of that place has made a discovery for which
scientists have for years striven in vain," the doctor replied.
"What is it?"
"You noticed those strange globes with the coil of tubing," he said.
"Well, from what I've found, it seems that the experimenter has invented
a means for the liquefaction of hydrogen in large quantities."
"Is that anything very remarkable?" I asked, in my ignorance of recent
science.
"Remarkable!" he echoed. "I should rather say it was. The discovery
will create the greatest interest in the scientific world. Other gases
have all been handled as true liquids in measurable quantities, while
until now hydrogen has only been seen in clouds or droplets, and never
collected into a liquid mass. Upstairs, however, there is actually a
glass bowl of liquid hydrogen. The experimenter, whoever he is, has
determined at last the exact temperature at which it will liquefy, and
thus a field for quite new researches, as also for new generalisations,
has been thrown wide open."
"But why is the discovery so very important?" I asked, still puzzled at
the doctor's unusual enthusiasm.
"Briefly, because by it physicists and chemists can henceforward obtain
temperatures lying within thirty-five degrees from the so-called
absolute zero of temperature--minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. A
possibility is thus given to study physical bodies in the vicinity of
that point, which represents, so to say, the death of matter--that is,
absence of the molecular vibrations which we describe as heat."
This explanation, technical though it was, interested me. I knew Doctor
Lees Knowles to be a rising man, and when reporting lectures at the
Royal Institution had often noticed him among the audiences. There was
no doubt that he was highly excited over the discovery, for, like
myself, he had seen the liquid hydrogen boiling without any visible
heat. In the papers there had been lots about Professor Dewar's
experiments in the liquefaction of oxygen, fluorine and the
newly-discovered helium, and I remembered how all his efforts to bring
hydrogen to a liquid state had failed. Now, however, the mysterious
occupier of that house had succeeded, and every known gas could now be
liquefied.
"But the murder," observed Patterson, his thoughts reverting to the
crime, for to him the most wonderful scientific discovery was as naught.
"Can you form absolutely no opinion as to how it was accomplished?"
The doctor shook his head.
"There is nothing whatever to account for their sudden death, as far as
I can observe," he answered. "To the woman, however, death must have
come instantly, while the man must have fallen and expired a few seconds
later. There seem many mysterious features in the affair."
"The discoverer of this latest scientific fact is undoubtedly the old
man who is absent, the father of the dead girl. From him we may learn
something to lead us to form conclusions," I suggested.
"An old man!" echoed Dr. Knowles. "Tell me about him."
Briefly Patterson related all that had been told us by the neighbours,
and when he had finished the doctor exclaimed--
"Then I can tell you one thing which is proved undoubtedly. The old man
seen to go in and out was in reality a young one, for while looking over
the laboratory I came across a white wig and a make-up box, such as is
used by actors. Go upstairs and you'll find a complete disguise there--
broadcloth coat, pepper-and-salt trousers baggy at the knees,
old-fashioned white vest, and collars of antique pattern."
"Surely that can't be true!" Patterson exclaimed in amazement.
"It certainly is," the doctor asserted. "Depend upon it that the man
lying upstairs dead was the man who has been making these successful
experiments, and who for some unknown reason desired to conceal his
identity. Recollect that they had few friends, if any, and that their
man-servant was a most discreet foreigner, who never gossiped."
"Then you think that to the world they assumed the position of father
and daughter, while in reality they were husband and wife?" I said.
"Most likely," responded the doctor. "A man to make experiments on an
elaborate scale as he has must necessarily have been absorbed in them.
Indeed, that apparatus must have taken a year to prepare, and no doubt
he has been making constant trials for months. He probably intended to
give forth his discovery to the world as a great surprise, but has been
prevented from doing so by some extraordinary combination of
circumstances which has resulted in his death."
At that instant we heard a voice in the hall--a quick, sharp voice
extremely familiar to me, but nevertheless it caused me to start. Next
instant, however, there entered the room the well-known figure of Dick
Cleugh.
"Hulloa, old fellow!" he exclaimed, greeting me and taking me aside. "I
thought I'd run down and see what's in this. Funny affair it seems,
doesn't it?"
"Yes," I answered. "A most remarkable mystery. But why have you come
out here?"
"Soon after you left I went to find Lily, but she's gone into the
country. So having nothing else to do I came down to see what had
occurred. I knew, of course, from Patterson's telegram, that it was
something unusual."
"Have you been upstairs?"
"Yes, I've been worrying around this last half-hour, while you and
Patterson have been making inquiries next door. I've been having a look
about with the Doctor. It seems that there's some wonderful apparatus
in the laboratory--a discovery for liquefying hydrogen. Has he told you
about it?"
"Yes," I responded. "What's your theory?"
"By Jove! old fellow," he said smiling, "the whole affair is so devilish
uncanny, with those snakes upstairs, water boiling without any heat
beneath it, and one thing and another, that I'm utterly at a loss how to
account for it all."
"You think they've been murdered?"
"Of course," answered the astute Cleugh. "But the doctor can't discover
how. There is not a scratch upon them. The discovery of those flash
notes on the man looks as though he were a bit of a swell swindler,
doesn't it?"
"Yes," I said. Then taking him across to the dining-table I explained
how we had discovered the three cards concealed beneath the plates.
He took the cards in his hand, turning them over, and examining them
carefully.
"Strange," he ejaculated. "This adds still another phase to the affair.
It is really a most sensational discovery, and will work up well for
to-morrow."
"No, Mr. Cleugh," put in Patterson quickly, overhearing his remark, "I
beg of you to publish nothing whatever about it until I give you
permission. In this we are bound to preserve secrecy for the present in
order that our inquiries may not be thwarted. Even the neighbours will
remain in ignorance of the real nature of things, so carefully do I
intend to guard against any public sensation. Whatever information I
can give you I will do so willingly, in order that you can prepare your
account of it, but remember that not a word must be published until I
give you permission."
"Quite right," observed the doctor. "In such a matter as this any
sensation in the Press might frustrate all your efforts to arrive at the
truth."
"Very well," answered Dick, a trifle disappointedly. "Of course you'll
give nothing to anybody else. I want to be first in the field with it."
"Of that I give you my word. Not a soul will know of this discovery
outside the persons in this house at the present moment. Come, let's go
upstairs and speak to Boyd," and while the doctor wished us good evening
and left, my two friends accompanied me upstairs, where in the
drawing-room the detectives were continuing their searching
investigation.
"The woman is decidedly good-looking, isn't she?" observed Cleugh as we
entered.
Instinctively I turned towards the chair in which the body was still
reclining, but next instant, with a loud cry of dismay, which at the
same moment was echoed by Patterson, I stood aghast, rigid, immovable.
The sight which met our eyes was utterly bewildering.
The woman we had discovered there, so lovely in form and feature, had a
wealth of auburn hair, and eyes of a deep intense blue, while, amazing
though it was, this woman before us was quite ten years older,
dark-complexioned, with hair which in that light seemed blue-black, and
half-closed eyes as dark as jet.
"Good Heavens!" I gasped. "Look! Why, that is not the woman we found
when we first entered this place--but another. Where is the fair girl?"
"There's no fair girl," answered the detective Boyd, as all started back
in surprise at my astounding assertion. "This is the woman we found,
you must be mistaken."
"No," Patterson declared in the low, hoarse voice of one filled with
fear. "There is no mistake. When we first entered there was another
woman here, younger, prettier, with light hair and blue eyes. This is
the most unaccountable, most amazing and most inexplicable of all our
discoveries."