After a busy and sleepless night he came down to report to the Chief
Commissioner the next morning. The evening newspaper bills were filled
with the “Chelsea Sensation” but the information given was of a meagre
character.
Since Fisher had disappeared, many of the details which could have
been secured by the enterprising pressmen were missing. There was no
reference to the visit of Mr. Gathercole and in self-defence the press
had fallen back upon a statement, which at an earlier period had crept
into the newspapers in one of those chatty paragraphs which begin “I saw
my friend Kara at Giros” and end with a brief but inaccurate summary of
his hobbies. The paragraph had been to the effect that Mr. Kara had been
in fear of his life for some time, as a result of a blood feud which
existed between himself and another Albanian family. Small wonder,
therefore, the murder was everywhere referred to as “the political crime
of the century.”
“So far,” reported T. X. to his superior, “I have been unable to trace
either Gathercole or the valet. The only thing we know about Gathercole
is that he sent his article to The Times with his card. The servants of
his Club are very vague as to his whereabouts. He is a very eccentric
man, who only comes in occasionally, and the steward whom I interviewed
says that it frequently happened that Gathercole arrived and departed
without anybody being aware of the fact. We have been to his old
lodgings in Lincoln's Inn, but apparently he sold up there before he
went away to the wilds of Patagonia and relinquished his tenancy.
“The only clue I have is that a man answering to some extent to his
description left by the eleven o'clock train for Paris last night.”
“You have seen the secretary of course,” said the Chief.
It was a question which T. X. had been dreading.
“Gone too,” he answered shortly; “in fact she has not been seen since
5:30 yesterday evening.”
Sir George leant back in his chair and rumpled his thick grey hair.
“The only person who seems to have remained,” he said with heavy
sarcasm, “was Kara himself. Would you like me to put somebody else on
this case--it isn't exactly your job--or will you carry it on?”
“I prefer to carry it on, sir,” said T. X. firmly.
“Have you found out anything more about Kara?”
T. X. nodded.
“All that I have discovered about him is eminently discreditable,”
he said. “He seems to have had an ambition to occupy a very important
position in Albania. To this end he had bribed and subsidized the
Turkish and Albanian officials and had a fairly large following in that
country. Bartholomew tells me that Kara had already sounded him as to
the possibility of the British Government recognising a fait accompli in
Albania and had been inducing him to use his influence with the Cabinet
to recognize the consequence of any revolution. There is no doubt
whatever that Kara has engineered all the political assassinations which
have been such a feature in the news from Albania during this past year.
We also found in the house very large sums of money and documents which
we have handed over to the Foreign Office for decoding.”
Sir George thought for a long time.
Then he said, “I have an idea that if you find your secretary you will
be half way to solving the mystery.”
T. X. went out from the office in anything but a joyous mood. He was
on his way to lunch when he remembered his promise to call upon John
Lexman.
Could Lexman supply a key which would unravel this tragic tangle? He
leant out of his taxi-cab and redirected the driver. It happened that
the cab drove up to the door of the Great Midland Hotel as John Lexman
was coming out.
“Come and lunch with me,” said T. X. “I suppose you've heard all the
news.”
“I read about Kara being killed, if that's what you mean,” said the
other. “It was rather a coincidence that I should have been discussing
the matter last night at the very moment when his telephone bell rang--I
wish to heaven you hadn't been in this,” he said fretfully.
“Why?” asked the astonished Assistant Commissioner, “and what do you
mean by 'in it'?”
“In the concrete sense I wish you had not been present when I returned,”
said the other moodily, “I wanted to be finished with the whole sordid
business without in any way involving my friends.”
“I think you are too sensitive,” laughed the other, clapping him on the
shoulder. “I want you to unburden yourself to me, my dear chap, and tell
me anything you can that will help me to clear up this mystery.”
John Lexman looked straight ahead with a worried frown.
“I would do almost anything for you, T. X.,” he said quietly, “the more
so since I know how good you were to Grace, but I can't help you in this
matter. I hated Kara living, I hate him dead,” he cried, and there was
a passion in his voice which was unmistakable; “he was the vilest thing
that ever drew the breath of life. There was no villainy too despicable,
no cruelty so horrid but that he gloried in it. If ever the devil were
incarnate on earth he took the shape and the form of Remington Kara. He
died too merciful a death by all accounts. But if there is a God, this
man will suffer for his crimes in hell through all eternity.”
T. X. looked at him in astonishment. The hate in the man's face took
his breath away. Never before had he experienced or witnessed such a
vehemence of loathing.
“What did Kara do to you?” he demanded.
The other looked out of the window.
“I am sorry,” he said in a milder tone; “that is my weakness. Some day I
will tell you the whole story but for the moment it were better that
it were not told. I will tell you this,” he turned round and faced the
detective squarely, “Kara tortured and killed my wife.”
T. X. said no more.
Half way through lunch he returned indirectly to the subject.
“Do you know Gathercole?” he asked.
T. X. nodded.
“I think you asked me that question once before, or perhaps it was
somebody else. Yes, I know him, rather an eccentric man with an
artificial arm.”
“That's the cove,” said T. X. with a little sigh; “he's one of the few
men I want to meet just now.”
“Why?”
“Because he was apparently the last man to see Kara alive.”
John Lexman looked at the other with an impatient jerk of his shoulders.
“You don't suspect Gathercole, do you?” he asked.
“Hardly,” said the other drily; “in the first place the man that
committed this murder had two hands and needed them both. No, I only
want to ask that gentleman the subject of his conversation. I also want
to know who was in the room with Kara when Gathercole went in.”
“H'm,” said John Lexman.
“Even if I found who the third person was, I am still puzzled as to how
they got out and fastened the heavy latch behind them. Now in the old
days, Lexman,” he said good humouredly, “you would have made a fine
mystery story out of this. How would you have made your man escape?”
Lexman thought for a while.
“Have you examined the safe!” he asked.
“Yes,” said the other.
“Was there very much in it?”
T. X. looked at him in astonishment.
“Just the ordinary books and things. Why do you ask?”
“Suppose there were two doors to that safe, one on the outside of the
room and one on the inside, would it be possible to pass through the
safe and go down the wall?”
“I have thought of that,” said T. X.
“Of course,” said Lexman, leaning back and toying with a salt-spoon,
“in writing a story where one hasn't got to deal with the absolute
possibilities, one could always have made Kara have a safe of that
character in order to make his escape in the event of danger. He might
keep a rope ladder stored inside, open the back door, throw out his
ladder to a friend and by some trick arrangement could detach the ladder
and allow the door to swing to again.”
“A very ingenious idea,” said T. X., “but unfortunately it doesn't work
in this case. I have seen the makers of the safe and there is nothing
very eccentric about it except the fact that it is mounted as it is. Can
you offer another suggestion?”
John Lexman thought again.
“I will not suggest trap doors, or secret panels or anything so banal,”
he said, “nor mysterious springs in the wall which, when touched, reveal
secret staircases.”
He smiled slightly.
“In my early days, I must confess, I was rather keen upon that sort
of thing, but age has brought experience and I have discovered the
impossibility of bringing an architect to one's way of thinking even in
so commonplace a matter as the position of a scullery. It would be much
more difficult to induce him to construct a house with double walls and
secret chambers.”
T. X. waited patiently.
“There is a possibility, of course,” said Lexman slowly, “that the
steel latch may have been raised by somebody outside by some ingenious
magnetic arrangement and lowered in a similar manner.”
“I have thought about it,” said T. X. triumphantly, “and I have made the
most elaborate tests only this morning. It is quite impossible to raise
the steel latch because once it is dropped it cannot be raised again
except by means of the knob, the pulling of which releases the catch
which holds the bar securely in its place. Try another one, John.”
John Lexman threw back his head in a noiseless laugh.
“Why I should be helping you to discover the murderer of Kara is beyond
my understanding,” he said, “but I will give you another theory, at the
same time warning you that I may be putting you off the track. For God
knows I have more reason to murder Kara than any man in the world.”
He thought a while.
“The chimney was of course impossible?”
“There was a big fire burning in the grate,” explained T. X.; “so big
indeed that the room was stifling.”
John Lexman nodded.
“That was Kara's way,” he said; “as a matter of fact I know the
suggestion about magnetism in the steel bar was impossible, because I
was friendly with Kara when he had that bar put in and pretty well know
the mechanism, although I had forgotten it for the moment. What is your
own theory, by the way?”
T. X. pursed his lips.
“My theory isn't very clearly formed,” he said cautiously, “but so far
as it goes, it is that Kara was lying on the bed probably reading one
of the books which were found by the bedside when his assailant suddenly
came upon him. Kara seized the telephone to call for assistance and was
promptly killed.”
Again there was silence.
“That is a theory,” said John Lexman, with his curious deliberation
of speech, “but as I say I refuse to be definite--have you found the
weapon?”
T. X. shook his head.
“Were there any peculiar features about the room which astonished you,
and which you have not told me?”
T. X. hesitated.
“There were two candles,” he said, “one in the middle of the room and
one under the bed. That in the middle of the room was a small Christmas
candle, the one under the bed was the ordinary candle of commerce
evidently roughly cut and probably cut in the room. We found traces of
candle chips on the floor and it is evident to me that the portion which
was cut off was thrown into the fire, for here again we have a trace of
grease.”
Lexman nodded.
“Anything further?” he asked.
“The smaller candle was twisted into a sort of corkscrew shape.”
“The Clue of the Twisted Candle,” mused John Lexman “that's a very good
title--Kara hated candles.”
“Why?”
Lexman leant back in his chair, selected a cigarette from a silver case.
“In my wanderings,” he said, “I have been to many strange places. I
have been to the country which you probably do not know, and which the
traveller who writes books about countries seldom visits. There are
queer little villages perched on the spurs of the bleakest hills you
ever saw. I have lived with communities which acknowledge no king and
no government. These have their laws handed down to them from father to
son--it is a nation without a written language. They administer
their laws rigidly and drastically. The punishments they award are
cruel--inhuman. I have seen, the woman taken in adultery stoned to death
as in the best Biblical traditions, and I have seen the thief blinded.”
T. X. shivered.
“I have seen the false witness stand up in a barbaric market place
whilst his tongue was torn from him. Sometimes the Turks or the piebald
governments of the state sent down a few gendarmes and tried a sort
of sporadic administration of the country. It usually ended in the
representative of the law lapsing into barbarism, or else disappearing
from the face of the earth, with a whole community of murderers eager
to testify, with singular unanimity, to the fact that he had either
committed suicide or had gone off with the wife of one of the townsmen.
“In some of these communities the candle plays a big part. It is not the
candle of commerce as you know it, but a dip made from mutton fat. Strap
three between the fingers of your hands and keep the hand rigid with two
flat pieces of wood; then let the candles burn down lower and lower--can
you imagine? Or set a candle in a gunpowder trail and lead the trail to
a well-oiled heap of shavings thoughtfully heaped about your naked feet.
Or a candle fixed to the shaved head of a man--there are hundreds of
variations and the candle plays a part in all of them. I don't know
which Kara had cause to hate the worst, but I know one or two that he
has employed.”
“Was he as bad as that?” asked T. X.
John Lexman laughed.
“You don't know how bad he was,” he said.
Towards the end of the luncheon the waiter brought a note in to T. X.
which had been sent on from his office.
“Dear Mr. Meredith,
“In answer to your enquiry I believe my daughter is in London, but I did
not know it until this morning. My banker informs me that my daughter
called at the bank this morning and drew a considerable sum of money
from her private account, but where she has gone and what she is doing
with the money I do not know. I need hardly tell you that I am very
worried about this matter and I should be glad if you could explain what
it is all about.”
It was signed “William Bartholomew.”
T. X. groaned.
“If I had only had the sense to go to the bank this morning, I should
have seen her,” he said. “I'm going to lose my job over this.”
The other looked troubled.
“You don't seriously mean that.”
“Not exactly,” smiled T. X., “but I don't think the Chief is very
pleased with me just now. You see I have butted into this business
without any authority--it isn't exactly in my department. But you have
not given me your theory about the candles.”
“I have no theory to offer,” said the other, folding up his serviette;
“the candles suggest a typical Albanian murder. I do not say that it
was so, I merely say that by their presence they suggest a crime of this
character.”
With this T. X. had to be content.
If it were not his business to interest himself in commonplace
murder--though this hardly fitted such a description--it was part of
the peculiar function which his department exercised to restore to Lady
Bartholomew a certain very elaborate snuff-box which he discovered in
the safe.
Letters had been found amongst his papers which made clear the part
which Kara had played. Though he had not been a vulgar blackmailer he
had retained his hold, not only upon this particular property of Lady
Bartholomew, but upon certain other articles which were discovered,
with no other object, apparently, than to compel influence from quarters
likely to be of assistance to him in his schemes.
The inquest on the murdered man which the Assistant Commissioner
attended produced nothing in the shape of evidence and the coroner's
verdict of “murder against some person or persons unknown” was only to
be expected.
T. X. spent a very busy and a very tiring week tracing elusive clues
which led him nowhere. He had a letter from John Lexman announcing the
fact that he intended leaving for the United States. He had received a
very good offer from a firm of magazine publishers in New York and was
going out to take up the appointment.
Meredith's plans were now in fair shape. He had decided upon the line
of action he would take and in the pursuance of this he interviewed his
Chief and the Minister of Justice.
“Yes, I have heard from my daughter,” said that great man uncomfortably,
“and really she has placed me in a most embarrassing position. I cannot
tell you, Mr. Meredith, exactly in what manner she has done this, but I
can assure you she has.”
“Can I see her letter or telegram?” asked T. X.
“I am afraid that is impossible,” said the other solemnly; “she begged
me to keep her communication very secret. I have written to my wife and
asked her to come home. I feel the constant strain to which I am being
subjected is more than human can endure.”
“I suppose,” said T. X. patiently, “it is impossible for you to tell me
to what address you have replied?”
“To no address,” answered the other and corrected himself hurriedly;
“that is to say I only received the telegram--the message this morning
and there is no address--to reply to.”
“I see,” said T. X.
That afternoon he instructed his secretary.
“I want a copy of all the agony advertisements in to-morrow's papers
and in the last editions of the evening papers--have them ready for me
tomorrow morning when I come.”
They were waiting for him when he reached the office at nine o'clock
the next day and he went through them carefully. Presently he found the
message he was seeking.
B. M. You place me awkward position. Very thoughtless. Have
received package addressed your mother which have placed in mother's
sitting-room. Cannot understand why you want me to go away week-end
and give servants holiday but have done so. Shall require very full
explanation. Matter gone far enough. Father.
“This,” said T. X. exultantly, as he read the advertisement, “is where I
get busy.”