"Then, Frank, old chap," he answered in the low, hoarse voice of one
utterly staggered, "this affair has assumed such a devilishly
complicated phase that I fear we shall never get at the truth. To
approach any of those three women would only be to place them on their
guard, and without their assistance we can't possibly act with success."
"Then what do you suggest?" I asked.
"Suggest? I can suggest nothing," he answered. "The complications on
every side are too great--far too great."
"Only Eva Glaslyn can assist us," I observed. "Yes. She alone can most
probably tell us the truth, but her friendship for the Blains is proof
positive that her secret is a guilty one, even though she was so near
being a victim."
"She was a victim," I declared. "When I saw her she was apparently
lifeless, lying cold and still in the chair, with every appearance of
one dead. But what causes you to think that her secret is a guilty
one?" I asked hastily.
"The Blains undoubtedly are implicated in the matter, and she, their
friend, is in possession of their secret," he argued. "As a victim, she
would be prompted to expose them if she did not fear exposure herself.
She's therefore held to enforced silence."
His argument was a very forcible one, and during the remainder of the
journey to London I sat back calmly reflecting upon it. It was a theory
which had not before occurred to me, but I hesitated to accept it,
because I could not believe that upon this woman who held me beneath the
spell of her marvellous beauty could there rest any such hideous shadow
of guilt. I remembered those clear blue eyes, that fair open
countenance, and that frank manner of speech, and refused to give
credence to my friend's allegation.
Slowly passed the days. Summer heat increased and in London the
silk-hatted world had already turned their thoughts towards the open
fields and the sea-beach. The summer holidays were drawing near at
hand. How much that brief vacation of a week or fortnight means to the
toiling Londoner! and how much more to his ailing wife and puny family,
doomed to live year after year in the smoke-halo of some black, grimy
street into which the sun never seems to shine, or in some cheap,
crowded suburb where the jerry-built houses stand in long, inartistic,
parallel rows and the cheap streets swarm with unwashed, shouting
offspring! I had arranged to take my holiday in winter and go down to
the Riviera, a treat I had long since promised myself, therefore both
Dick and I continued our work through those stifling days, obtaining
from Boyd every now and then the results of his latest inquiries. These
results, it must be said, were absolutely nil.
I had agreed with Dick to keep our suspicions entirely to ourselves,
therefore we gave no information to Boyd, preferring to carry out our
inquiries in our own method rather than seeking his aid. It was well,
perhaps, that we did this, for the police too often blunder by
displaying too great an energy. I was determined if possible to protect
Eva.
At Riverdene, Dick and I were welcome guests and were often invited to
Sunday river-parties, thus showing that any suspicions entertained of us
in that quarter had been removed. Time after time I had met Eva, and we
had on lots of occasions gone out on the river together, exploring over
and over again that winding shaded backwater, and picking lilies and
forget-me-nots at the spot where on that memorable evening we had first
exchanged confidences.
I had received no invitation to The Hollies, but she had apologised,
saying that the unusual heat had prostrated her mother, and that for the
present they had been compelled to abandon their picnics. Many were the
afternoons and evenings I idled away in a deck-chair on that well-kept
lawn, or, accompanied by Mary, Eva, Cleugh and Fred Langdale, who, by
the way, turned out to be an insufferable, over-dressed "bounder" who
was continually dangling at Eva's skirts, we would go forth and pay
visits to various house-boats up and down stream.
Langdale looked upon me with a certain amount of jealousy, I think, and,
truth to tell, was not, as I had imagined, of the milk-and-water genus.
Eva seemed to regard him as a necessary evil, and used him as a tame
cat, a kind of body servant to fetch and carry for her. From her
remarks to me, however, I had known full well from the first that there
was not a shadow of affection on her side. She had explained how she
simply tolerated him because companions were few at Hampton and he was a
fairly good tennis player, while he, on his part, was unconsciously
making an arrant ass of himself in the eyes of all by his efforts to
cultivate a drawl that he deemed aristocratic, and to carefully
caressing his moustache in an upward direction.
Dick Cleugh, thorough-going Bohemian that he was, cared but little, I
believe, for those riparian gatherings. True, he played tennis, rowed,
punted and ate the strawberries and cream with as great a zest as any of
us; nevertheless, I knew that he accepted the invitation with but one
object, and that he would far rather have strolled in one of the parks
with Lily Lowry than row Mary Blain up and down the stream.
Lily often came to our chambers. She was about twenty-two, of a rather
Southern type of beauty, with a good figure, a graceful gait, and a
decidedly London _chic_. She spoke, however, with that nasal twang
which stamps the true South Londoner, and her expressions were not
absolutely devoid of the slang of the Newington Butts. Yet withal she
was a quiet, pleasant girl.
Thus half the month of July went by practically without incident, until
one blazing day at noon, when, I went forth into Fleet Street for lunch,
I unexpectedly encountered Dick, hot and hurrying, his hat tilted back.
He had left home very early that morning to work up some "startling
discovery" that had been made out at Plaistow, and already hoarse-voiced
men were crying the "Fourth _Comet_" with the "latest details" he had
unearthed.
In reply to his question as to where I was going, I told him that after
luncheon I had to go down to Walworth to make some trifling inquiry,
whereupon he said--
"Then I wish you'd do a favour for me, old fellow."
"Of course," I answered promptly. "What is it?"
"Call at the Lowrys and tell Lily to meet me at Loughborough Junction at
eight to-night, at the usual place. I want to take her to the Crystal
Palace to see the fireworks. I was going to wire, but you'll pass her
father's place. Will you give her the message?"
"Certainly," I answered. "But is she at home?"
"Yes. She's got her holidays. Tell her I'm very busy, or I'd have come
down myself. Sorry to trouble you."
I promised him to deliver the message, and after eating a chop at the
_Cock_, I walked along to the Gaiety and there took a blue motor-bus,
which deposited me outside a small, very dingy shop, a few doors up the
Walworth Road from the _Elephant and Castle_, which bore over the
little, old-fashioned window the sign, "Morris Lowry, Herbalist."
Displayed to the gaze of the passer-by were various assortments of
lozenges and bunches of dried herbs, boxes of pills guaranteed to cure
every ill, and a row of dirty glass bottles filled with yellow liquids,
containing filthy-looking specimens of various repulsive objects. The
glaring cards in the window advertised such desirable commodities as
"Lowry's Wind Pills," "Lowry's Cough Tablets," and "Lowry's Herbal
Ointment," while the window itself and the whole shop-front was
dirt-encrusted, one pane being cracked across.
As I entered the dark little shop, a mere box of a place smelling
strongly of camomile, sarsaparilla and such-like herbs, which hung in
dried and dusty confusion all over the ceiling, there arose from a chair
the queerest, oddest creature that one might ever meet, even in the
diverse crowds of lower London. Morris Lowry, the herbalist, was a
strange specimen of distorted humanity, hunch-backed, with an abnormally
large, semi-bald head, a scrubby grey beard, and wearing large,
old-fashioned, steel-rimmed spectacles, which imparted to him an
appearance of learning and distinction. His legs were short and stumpy,
his body rather stout, and his arms of inordinate length, while the
whole appearance of his sickly, yellow, wizened face was such as might
increase one's belief in the Darwinian theory. Indeed, it was
impossible to look upon him without one's mind reverting to monkeys, for
his high cheek bones and square jaws bore a striking resemblance to the
facial expression of the ancestral gorilla.
Dressed in black cloak and conical hat he would have made an ideal stage
wizard; but attired as he was in greasy black frock coat, and trousers
that had long ago passed the glossy stage, he was certainly as
curious-looking an individual as one could have found on the Surrey side
of the Thames. He was no stranger to me, for on several occasions I had
called there with Dick, and had chatted with him. Trade in herbs had
dwindled almost to nothing. Nowadays, with all sorts and varieties of
well-advertised medicines, the people of Newington, Walworth, and the
New Kent Road did not patronise the old-fashioned herbal remedies,
which, if truth be told, are perhaps more potent and wholesome than any
of the quack nostrums flaunted in the daily papers and on the hoardings.
Ten years ago the herbalists did a brisk trade in London, especially
among lower class housewives who, having come up from the country, were
glad enough to obtain the old-world decoctions; but nowadays the
herbalists' only source of profit seems to be in the sale of skin soaps
and worm tablets.
Old Morris, with his ugly, deformed figure and shining bald head,
welcomed me warmly as I entered, and at once invited me into the little
shop-parlour beyond, a mere dark cupboard which still retained the odour
of the midday meal--Irish stew it must have been--and seemed infested
with a myriad of flies. Possibly the fragrance of the herbs attracted
them, or else they revelled among the succulent tablets exposed in the
open boxes upon the narrow counter. These lozenges, together with his
various bottled brews, tinctures of this and of that, the old man
manufactured in a kind of dilapidated shed at the rear, which, be it
said, often offended the olfactory nerves of the whole neighbourhood
when certain herbs were in the process of stewing.
"Lily is out," croaked the weird old fellow, in response to my inquiry,
"but I'll, of course, give her the message. She don't get much chance
nowadays, poor child! When her mother was alive we used to manage to
run down to Margit for a week or fortnight in the hot weather. But
now--" and he shrugged his shoulders with quite a foreign air. "Well,
there's only me to look after the shop," he added. "And things are not
so brisk as they were a few years ago." He spoke with a slight accent,
due, Cleugh had told me, to the fact that his mother was French, and he
had lived in France a number of years. Few people, however, noticed it,
for by many he was believed to be a Jew.
I nodded. I could see that the trade done there was infinitesimal and
quite insufficient to pay the rent; besides, was not the fact that Lily
had been compelled to go out and earn her own living proof in itself
that the strange-looking old fellow was the reverse of prosperous? The
herbal trade in London is nearly as dead as the manufacture of that once
popular metal known as German silver.
"Lily has gone to see an aunt of hers over at Battersea," the old man
explained. "But she'll be home at five. She's got her holidays now,
and, poor girl, she's been sadly disappointed. She expected to go down
to her married sister at Huntingdon, but couldn't go because her
sister's laid up with rheumatic fever. So she has to stay at home this
year. And this place isn't much of a change for her."
I glanced around at the dark, close little den, and at the
strong-smelling shop beyond, and was fain to admit that he spoke the
truth.
"I suppose your friend, Mr. Cleugh, is busy as usual with his murders
and his horrors?" he remarked, smiling. "He's a wonderful acute fellow.
I always read the paper every day, and am generally interested in the
results of the inquiries by the _Comet_ man. Half London reads his
interviews and latest details."
"Yes," I answered. "He's kept hard at work always. There seems to be a
never-ceasing string of sensations nowadays. As soon as one mystery is
elucidated another springs up somewhere else."
"Ah," he answered, his dark eyes gazing at me through his heavy-rimmed
glasses, "it was always so. Never a day goes past without a mystery of
some sort or another."
"I suppose," I said, "if the truth were told, more people are poisoned
in London than ever the police or the public imagine." I knew that all
herbalists were versed in toxicology more or less, and had a vague idea
that I might learn something from him.
"Of course," he answered, "there are several poisons, the results of
which bear such strong resemblance to symptoms of disease, that doctors
are very frequently misled, and the verdict is `Death from natural
causes.' In dozens of cases every year the post-mortem proves disease,
and thus the poisoner escapes."
"What causes you to think this?" I inquired eagerly, recollections of
the tragedy in Kensington vividly in my mind.
"Well," he said, "I only make that allegation because every herbalist in
London sells poisons in smaller or greater quantity. If he's an unwise
man, he asks no questions.--If he's wise, he makes the usual inquiry."
"And then?"
"Well," the old man croaked with his small eyes twinkling in the
semi-darkness, "the customer generally jays pretty dearly for the
article."
"Which means that an entry is made in the poison-register which is not
altogether the truth--eh?"
He smiled and nodded.
"When poisons are sold at a high price," the old herbalist answered,
"the vendor has no desire to know for what purpose the drug is to be
used. It is generally supposed that it is to kill vermin--you
understand."
"And human beings are more often the victims?" I hazarded.
He raised his grey, shaggy brows with an expression of affected
ignorance, answering--
"Who can tell? The herbs or drugs are sold unlabelled, and wrapped in
blank paper. As far as the herbalist is concerned, his liability is at
an end, just as a cutler sells razors, or a gun-maker revolvers."
"And do you really believe that there is much secret poisoning in London
at this moment?" I inquired, greatly interested.
"Believe it?" he echoed. "Why, there's no doubt of it. Why do people
buy certain herbs which can be used for no other purpose than the
destruction of human life?"
"Do they actually buy poisons openly?" I exclaimed in surprise.
"Well, no, not exactly openly," he responded. "They are most of them
very wary how they approach the subject, and all are prepared to pay
heavily."
I looked at the odd, ugly figure before me. For the first time I had
learned the secret of this trade. Perhaps even he retailed poisons to
those who wanted such undesirable commodities, charging exorbitant
prices for them, and entering fictitious sales in the poison-book which,
by law, he was compelled to keep.
"Have you actually ever had dealings with any poisoners?" I inquired.
"Remember," I added laughing, "that I'm not interviewing you, that we
are friends, and that I don't intend to publish this conversation in the
newspapers."
"That's rather a difficult question," he responded, with a look of
mystery upon his face. "Perhaps I'd best reply that I've before now
sold poisons to people who could want them for no other purpose than the
removal of superfluous friends."
"But do they actually ask openly for this herb or that?"
"Certainly--with excuses for its use, of course," and he went on to
remark how lucidly the science of poisoning was explained in a certain
book which might be purchased anywhere for seven-and-sixpence, a work
which had undoubtedly cost thousands of human lives. Then instantly I
recollected. It was a copy of this same book that Dick had noticed in
the morning-room at Riverdene.
"In this very room," the old fellow went on, "I've had some queer
inquiries made by all sorts and conditions of people. Only the other
day a young girl called to consult me, having heard, she said, that I
sold for a consideration a certain deadly herb. By her voice she was
evidently a lady."
His final observation increased my interest in this remarkable
conversation.
"What was she like?" I inquired with eagerness, for since the affair at
Phillimore Place I took the keenest interest in anything appertaining to
poisons.
"She was rather tall and slim, dressed in black. But my eyes are not so
good as they used to be, and, in the dark here, I couldn't see much of
her face through her veil. She was pretty, I think."
"And did you actually sell her what she wanted?"
He hesitated a moment.
"Certainly, and at my own price," he answered at last in his thin,
rasping voice. "The stuff, one of the most dangerous and little-known
compounds, not obtainable through any ordinary channel, is most
difficult to handle. But I saw that it was not the first time she'd had
azotics in her possession," and he smiled grimly, rendering his face the
more hideous. "From her attitude and conversation I should imagine her
to be a very ingenious, but not altogether desirable acquaintance," he
added.
"And didn't you note anything by which you might recognise her again?"
I inquired. "Surely young girls are not in the habit of buying poison
in that manner!"
"Well," croaked the distorted old fellow, with a grin, "I did notice one
thing, certainly. She wore a brooch of rather uncommon pattern. It was
a playing-card in gold and enamel--a tiny five of diamonds."
"A five of diamonds!" I gasped.
At that instant the truth became plain, although I hesitated to believe
it. The brooch was Eva Glaslyn's; one that she had worn only three days
before when I was last down at Riverdene, and while on the water with
her I had remarked its quaintness.
Could it be possible that she had actually purchased a deadly drug of
this hideous old man? Or were there other brooches of similar pattern
and design? Thus were increased the shadows which seemed to envelop
her. My soul seemed killed within me.