The house was found very dirty and neglected. It contained but little
furniture. Dust lay thickly upon everything. The windows, I was almost
tempted to think, had not been opened since Sir Charles had last lived
there three years ago. There was also a damp, earthy smell in the hall.
As I went slowly up the stairs, bare of carpet or any other covering,
they creaked and groaned in a way that was astonishing, for the houses
in Belgrave Street are not so very old. The noises the stairs made
echoed higher up.
I had decided to enter the rooms on the ground floor last of all. The
first floor looked strangely unfamiliar. When last I had been here the
house had been luxuriously furnished, and somehow the landing, in its
naked state, seemed larger than when I remembered it.
Ah! What fun we had had in that house long ago!
My friends the Thorolds had entertained largely, and their acquaintances
had all been bright, amusing people, so different, as I had sometimes
told my friends, from the colourless, stupid folk whose company one so
often has to endure when staying in the houses of acquaintances. I
often think, when mixing with such people, of the story of the two women
discussing a certain "impossible" young man, of a type one meets
frequently.
"How deadly dull Bertie Fairbairn is," one of them said. "He never
talks at all."
"Oh, he is better than his brother Reggie," the other answered.
"Whenever you speak to Bertie he says, `Right O!'"
The door of the apartment that had been the large drawing-room was
locked. On the bunch of keys, I soon found the key that fitted, and I
entered.
Phew, what a musty smell! Most oppressive. The blinds were drawn
half-way down the windows and, by the look of them, had been so for some
considerable time. The furniture that remained was all hidden under
holland sheets, and the pictures on the walls, draped in dust-proof
coverings, looked like the slabs of salted beef, and the sides of
smoke-cured pork one sees hung in some farmhouses. The carpets were
dusty, moth-eaten and rotten.
Gingerly, with thumb and forefinger, I picked up the corners of some of
the furniture coverings. There was nothing but the furniture
underneath, except in one instance, where I saw, upon an easy-chair, a
plate with some mouldy remnants of food upon it. No wonder the
atmosphere was foetid.
I was about to leave the room, glad to get out of it, when I noticed in
a corner of the ceiling a dark, yellow-brown stain, about a yard in
circumference. This struck me as curious, and I went over and stood
under it, and gazed up at it, endeavouring to discover its origin. Then
I saw that it was moist. I pulled up one of the blinds in order to see
better, but my scrutiny failed to give me any inkling as to the origin
of the stain.
I went out, shut and locked the door, and entered several other rooms,
the doors of all of which I found locked. One room was very like
another, the only difference being that the smell in some was closer and
nastier than the smell in others, though all the smells had, what I may
call the same "flavour"--a "taste" of dry rot. I wondered if Sir
Charles knew how his house was being neglected, how dirt and dust were
being allowed to accumulate.
This was Lady Thorold's boudoir, if I remembered aright. The inside of
the lock was so rusty that I had difficulty in turning the key.
Everything shrouded, as elsewhere, but, judging from the odd projections
in the coverings, I concluded that ornaments and bric-a-brac had been
left upon the tables.
Nor was I mistaken. As I lifted the cloths and dust sheets, objects
that I remembered seeing set about the room in the old days, became
revealed. There were several beautiful statues, priceless pieces of
antique furniture from Naples and Florence, curious carved wooden
figures that Sir Charles had collected during his travels in the
Southern Pacific, cloisonne vases from Tokio and Osaka, a barely decent
sculpture bought by Sir Charles from a Japanese witch-doctor who lived a
hermit's life on an island in the Inland Sea--how well I remembered Lady
Thorold's emphatic disapproval of this figure, and her objection to her
husband's displaying it in the way he did--treasures from different
parts of China, from New Guinea, Burmah, the West Indies and elsewhere.
Another cloth I lifted. Beneath it were a number of photographs in
frames, piled faces downward in heaps. I picked up some of them, and
took them out to look at. A picture of Vera in a short frock, with a
teddy-bear tucked under her arm, interested me; so did a portrait of
Lady Thorold dressed in a fashion long since past; and so did a portrait
of my old father in his Guards uniform. The rest were portraits of
people I didn't know. I looked at one or two more, and was about to
replace the frames where I had found them, when I turned up one that
startled me.
It was a cabinet, in a bog-oak frame, of the man whose likeness had
caused the commotion at Houghton, the man who had called himself
Smithson. But it was not a portrait similar to the one I had taken
away. The same man, undoubtedly, but in a different attitude, and
apparently many years younger.
Closely I scrutinised it.
The enigma presented was complete. I am not a pilferer, but I
considered that I should be justified in putting the portrait into my
pocket, and I did so without another thought. Then I replaced all the
frames where I had found them, and resumed my ramble over the house.
In the rest of the rooms on that floor, I found nothing further of
interest. On the floor above, however, a surprise was in store for me.
The first two rooms were bedrooms, neglected-looking and very dusty.
There were fewer coverings here. Dust was upon the floor, on the beds,
on the chairs and tables, on the window-sills, on the wash-stands, on
the chests of drawers, on the mantelpiece--everywhere. In the next
room, the door of which I was surprised to find unlocked, just the same.
A table of dark mahogany was thickly coated with dust.
Hullo! Why, what was this? I thought at once of a detective friend of
mine, and wondered what he would have said, what opinion he would have
formed and what conclusion he would have come to, had he been in my
place at that moment. For on the table, close to the edge of it, was
the clear outline of a hand. Someone had quite recently--apparently
within the last few hours, and certainly since the previous day--put his
hand upon that dusty table. I scanned the outline closely; then
suddenly I started.
There could be no doubt whatever--it was not the outline of Taylor's
hand. The fingers that had rested there were long and tapering. This
was not the impression of a man's hand, but of a woman's--of a woman's
left hand.
Evidently some one had been in this room recently. From point to point
I walked, looking for further traces, but there were none that I could
see. What woman could have been in here so lately? And did the old man
asleep downstairs know of her entry? He must have, for she could not
have entered the house, had he not admitted her. I felt I was becoming
quite a clever detective, with an exceptional gift for deduction from
the obvious. Another gleam of intelligence led me to conclude that this
woman's presence in the house probably accounted for Taylor's
determination not to let me go over the house.
I thought I heard a sound. I held my breath and stood still, listening
intently, but the only sound that came to me was the distant shrill
whistle of some one summoning a taxi. Outside in the passage, all was
still as death. I walked to the end of the passage, peeped into other
bedrooms, then returned to the room with the table bearing the imprint
of the hand.
The windows overlooked Belgrave Street--double windows, which made the
sound of the traffic down below inaudible. Carelessly I watched for
some moments the vehicles and passers-by, unconsciously striving to
puzzle out, meanwhile, the problem of the hand. Suddenly, two figures
approaching along the pavement from the direction of Wilton Street,
arrested my attention. They seemed familiar to me. As they came
nearer, a strange feeling of excitement possessed me, for I recognised
the burly form of Davies, or "Smithson," and as he had called himself,
and, walking beside him, Sir Charles Thorold. The two appeared to be
engaged in earnest conversation.
They disappeared where the street turned, and as I came away from the
window I noticed, for the first time, that the room had another door, a
door leading presumably into a dressing-room. I went over to it. It
was locked.
I tried a key on the bunch, but at once discovered that a key was in the
door. The door was locked on the inside!
I knocked. There was no answer. And just then I distinctly heard a
sound inside the room.
"Who's there?" I called out. "Let me in!"
A sound, resembling a sob, reached me faintly. I heard light footfalls.
The key turned slowly, and the lock clicked.