Kitabı oku: «The Red Room», sayfa 12
Chapter Twenty Three
The Unexpected Happens
The shrewd officer seated at the table with me, a pen in his hand, heard my narrative to the end, now and then making brief memoranda.
Presently he exclaimed:
“Would you kindly excuse me? I’d like another gentleman to hear this story.” And he rose and left.
A few minutes later he returned with a rather taller, clean-shaven man, slightly younger, who had on a dark overcoat and carried a silk hat in his hand.
“This is Mr Holford,” said the first officer, introducing me. “He’s just told me a very remarkable story, which I’d like you to hear for a moment.”
Then, turning to me, he asked me to repeat briefly what I had alleged.
The new-comer, seating himself, listened attentively to every word which fell from my lips. I noticed that he exchanged curious glances with his brother officer.
“Your main reason, then, for telling us this story is in order to compel those responsible for your wife’s absence to reveal her whereabouts, I take it?” asked the younger man.
“Exactly.”
“The false telegram was dispatched from Turin, eh?”
“Yes. Cannot you communicate with the Italian police concerning it?”
“And pray what good would result?” he queried. “After long delay we might perchance get the original of the telegram, but I don’t see that that would assist us very far. When people send bogus messages they generally disguise their handwriting.”
“Well, I leave it to you to take what steps you like to assist me,” I said. “My sole object is to find my lost wife.”
“Naturally, my dear sir,” observed the officer. “We’ll first take down your statement in writing.” And then the man I had first seen wrote at my dictation a brief summary of the mysterious death of Professor Greer and its attendant complications and my suspicion of Kershaw Kirk.
“Well, we’ll place this before the Commissioner to-day. Perhaps you’ll call to-morrow; say about this time. We will then let you know our opinion and our intentions.”
With that I was compelled to be satisfied, and I left the waiting-room full of hope that by that bold move of mine I might gain knowledge of the whereabouts of my well-beloved.
How I existed throughout that day I cannot tell. I tried to attend to my business, but in vain. I was wondering what action was being taken by my sinister-faced neighbour who lived in Whitehall Court under another name, and who seemed to possess a dual personality.
At last the hour came when again I turned the car into Scotland Yard, and once more was ushered upstairs into that bare waiting-room wherein so many stories of crime are related.
Presently, after a lengthy wait, the two officers entered together and greeted me.
“Well,” commenced the elder of the pair with some slight hesitation, “we’ve placed your statement before the Commissioner, Mr Holford, and he has very carefully considered it. He has, however, decided that it is not a matter for our department.”
“What?” I gasped. “A man can be foully done to death here in London, and yet the police refuse to believe the story of an honest man – a man who is a witness!”
“We do not doubt you in the least degree, Mr Holford,” the other assured me, speaking very quietly.
“But you do!” I exclaimed in quick anger. “I’ve told you that a crime has been perpetrated.”
“My dear sir,” said the officer, “we get many startling stories told here almost hourly, and if we inquired into the truth of them all, why, we’d require a department as big as the whole of Whitehall.”
“What I told you yesterday is so strange and extraordinary that you believe I’m a madman,” I said. “I see it in your faces.”
“Excuse me, but that is not the point,” he protested. “We are only officers, Mr Holford. We are not the commander. The chief has given his decision, and we are compelled to obey, however much we may regret our inaction.”
“So you refuse your aid in assisting me to find my wife?”
“No. If we can help you to discover Mrs Holford, we willingly will. Perhaps you’ll kindly give us her description, and we’ll at once circulate it through all our channels, both here and abroad. But,” added the man, “I must first tell you that we can hold out very little hope. The number of missing wives reported to us, both here at headquarters and at the various local stations in the metropolitan area, is sometimes dozens in a day. Most of the ladies have, we find on inquiry, gone away of their own accord.”
“But this case is different. My wife has not!” I asserted. “She has been enticed away by a telegram purporting to come from me.”
“And that’s really nothing unusual. We have heard of ladies arranging with other people to send urgent messages in the names of their husbands. It is an easy way of escape sometimes.” And he smiled rather grimly.
“Then, to put it plainly, I’ve nothing to hope for from you?” I snapped.
“Very little, I fear, sir.”
“And this is our police system which was only recently so highly commended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry!” I blurted forth. “It’s a scandal!”
“It is not for us to make any comment, my dear Mr Holford,” said the elder of the two officers. “The Commissioner himself decides what action we take upon information we may receive. I dare say,” he added, “our decision in this case does appear to you somewhat strange, but – well, I may as well point out that there is a special feature in it which does not appear to you – an outsider.”
“What special feature can there be, pray? A well-known man has been assassinated. Surely, therefore, it is the duty of the police to stir themselves and make every inquiry!”
“We have only your statement for that. As far as we or the public are aware, Professor Greer is travelling somewhere on the Continent.”
“But, if you disbelieve me, go to Kershaw Kirk, in Whitehall Court, or to the Professor’s daughter down at Broadstairs, or to Pietro Merli, who keeps a newsagent’s in the Euston Road. Each of these persons knows the truth, and would speak – if compelled.”
“The Commissioner has had all those names before him, but in face of that he has decided not to enter into this matter. His decision,” said the officer, “is irrevocable.”
“Then our police system is a perfect farce!” I cried. “No wonder, indeed, we have in London a host of undiscovered crimes! The man Kirk laughed at you here as blunderers!” I added.
But the pair only exchanged glances and grinned, causing me increased anger.
“In any other city but London the police would, upon my information, at once institute inquiry!” I declared. “I’m a tax-payer, and am entitled to assistance and protection.”
“We have already offered to assist you to discover the whereabouts of Mrs Holford,” the elder man pointed out politely.
“Then inquire of this man Kirk, or Seymour, as he calls himself, in Whitehall Court,” I said. “He can tell you where she is – if he chooses.”
“You suspect him of having a hand in her disappearance? Why?” inquired the other detective officer.
I related clearly and succinctly the facts upon which my belief was based and of the description given of my wife’s companion by the hotel-manager in Florence.
The officer slowly shook his head.
“That’s scarcely conclusive, is it? The description is but a vague one, after all.”
“Well,” I said bitterly as I rose, “if you refuse to assist me, I must, I suppose, seek redress elsewhere. May I see the Commissioner myself?”
“You can make formal application, if you like. But I don’t expect he will see you. He has already fully considered the matter.” And that was all the satisfaction accorded me.
“Then I’ll do something!” I cried. “I’ll get a question asked in the House. It’s a scandal that, with Professor Greer killed in his own home, you refuse to bestir yourselves. After all, it seems quite true, as has been recently alleged, that the police are nowadays so fully occupied in regulating the speed of motor-cars that they have no time for the investigation of crime.”
I noticed that at my threat to have a question asked in the House, one of the officers pulled a rather wry face. The Metropolitan Police were not fond, I knew, of questions being put about them. I chanced to know rather intimately a member for a country division, though to get the question put would necessitate my explaining the whole affair.
Yet was not Mabel’s liberty – nay, perhaps her very life – at stake?
“You’ve told us very little regarding this friend of yours, Mr Kershaw Kirk, whom you appear to suspect so strongly,” the younger of the two men remarked at last. “Who is he?”
“An adventurer,” I replied quickly. “I have no doubt whatever upon that point.”
The man pursed his lips dubiously.
“May it not be that you are somewhat prejudiced against him?” he ventured to suggest.
“No. He was in the house at the time when the Professor’s body was cremated in his own furnace. If you went to Sussex Place you would probably discover some remains among the ashes.”
“Do you allege, then, that you were an actual witness of the cremation?” asked the officer.
“No; I found him in the house.”
“And, later on, you discovered the furnace alight, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Then it is only a surmise on your part, after all, my dear sir,” remarked the detective, twisting a pen between his fingers as his dark eyes were fixed upon mine. “The actual evidence is really nil. That is just the view taken by the Commissioner.”
“But my wife is in the hands of the assassins,” I cried. “You can’t deny that!”
“Is there any actual, evidence of it? None, as far as we can see,” he declared. “Would it not be natural for your wife, on failing to find you in Florence, either to wire to her sister at home or to return home at once? She did neither, which only goes far to prove that she did not desire to return to London.”
“You suggest that she has purposely left me?” I cried, staring at the man in a frenzy of angry resentment.
“I suggest nothing, Mr Holford. Pray don’t misunderstand me. I merely put before you the facts in order to obtain a logical conclusion. Only one can be arrived at – she had some motive for not returning to her home. If she had, then how are we to find her? She would, no doubt, purposely cover her tracks.”
“But she was with that man, the man who – ”
“And that just bears out my argument,” interrupted the detective.
“But may she not have been prevented from sending any message home?” I suggested, though that very point he had made had, I confess, been the one which had continually obsessed me.
Both the detectives shook their heads.
“No,” replied the elder of the two. “We are both agreed, as the Commissioner also believes, that your wife would not be held a prisoner. Criminals do not hold women prisoners nowadays, except in works of fiction. No,” he added, “depend upon it, Mr Holford, when you discover the truth, you will find that your wife was acquainted with one or other of these friends of yours, and that her disappearance was part of a plan.”
The story of the message received by Mabel while I was in Scotland flashed across my mind. I recollected all that Gwen had so guardedly related to me.
But I stirred myself quickly. No, a thousand times no! I would never believe evil of Mabel before I had absolute proof in black and white. The mystery of her disappearance was as great and inexplicable as the problem of who killed Professor Greer?
Chapter Twenty Four
Two Men Consult
Beside myself with fear and anxiety regarding the woman I loved so well, I again called that very same evening upon Kirk at Whitehall Court, but on doing so was informed by the lift man that he was out.
A suggestion then occurred to me that he might have gone over to his other abode at Bedford Park, therefore I returned, and at last knocked at his door.
His sister answered my summons, and saying that her brother was at home, ushered me into his presence.
I found him in his old velvet jacket seated in his high-backed arm-chair before a glowing fire, his pet parrot near him; and as I entered he greeted me coldly, without deigning to shake my hand.
“Well, Holford,” he exclaimed, stretching his slippered feet lazily towards the fire, “so you have, after all, proved a traitor, eh?”
“A traitor? How?” I asked, standing near the fireplace and facing him.
“You have been telling some extraordinary stories about me at Scotland Yard, I hear,” he said with a grin.
“Ah!” I cried. “Then you are a detective, after all? My surmise was right from the first!”
“No,” he replied very quietly, “you were quite wrong, my dear sir; I’m not a detective, neither professional nor amateur, nor have I anything whatever to do with Scotland Yard. They may be sad blunderers there, but they do not accept every cock-and-bull story that may be told them.”
“I told them no cock-and-bull story!” I protested angrily. “I told them the actual truth!”
“And that after all the warnings I have given you!” he said in a tone of bitterest reproach. “Ah! you are unaware of the extreme gravity of that act of yours. You have broken faith with me, Holford, and by doing so, have, I fear, brought upon me, as upon others, a great calamity.”
“But you are so mysterious. You have never been open and above-board with me!” I declared. “You are full of mystery.”
“Did I not tell you on the first evening you sat here with me that I was a dealer in secrets?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his cigar.
“No, Holford,” went on my mysterious neighbour, very seriously, “you are like most other men – far too inquisitive. Had you been able to repress your curiosity, and at the same time preserve your pledge of secrecy, matters to-day would have been vastly different, and, acting in concert, we might have been able to solve this extraordinary enigma of Professor Greer’s death. But now you’ve been and made all sorts of wild statements to the Commissioner of Police. Well, it has stultified all my efforts.”
He spoke with such an air of injured innocence that I hesitated whether I had not, after all, somewhat misjudged him. Yet as I looked into that grey, crafty face I could not help doubting him. It was true that he had taken me into his confidence, but was it not done only for his own ingenious and devilish purpose?
“My wife is lost,” I observed at last. “It is her loss that has, perhaps, led me to say more than I would otherwise have done.”
“And love for your wife makes you forget your word of honour given to me, eh?” he asked. “Your code of honour is distinctly peculiar, Mr Holford,” he added, with biting sarcasm. “I, of course, regret that Mrs Holford has fallen a victim to the machinations of our enemies, but surely even that is no excuse for a man to act treacherously towards his friend.”
“That is not the point,” I declared. “You have never satisfied me as to your motive in taking me to Sussex Place and exhibiting to me the evidence of the crime.”
“Because – well, because, had I done so, you would not have understood. Some day, perhaps, you will know; and when you learn the truth you will be even more astounded than you are to-day. Meanwhile, I can assure you that you suspect me entirely without cause.”
“Then why were you in the house at the time the traces of the crime were being effaced in the furnace?” I asked in a hard voice.
He hesitated for a moment, and I thought his bony hand trembled slightly.
“For reason’s of my own,” he replied at last. “You allowed me to wriggle out of a very tight corner, and I intended to show you my gratitude, had you given me an opportunity.”
“I desire no expression of gratitude, Mr Kirk,” I replied, with dignified disgust. “All I require is a statement from you concerning the whereabouts of my dear wife. Give me that, and I’m satisfied to retire from the whole affair altogether.”
“Because you have now realised that Scotland Yard refuse their assistance, eh?” he asked, with an evil grin. “Are you not now agreed with me that our much-praised Criminal Investigation Department, with all its hide-bound rules and its tangle of red-tape, is useless? It is not the men who are at fault – for some of them are the finest and best fellows in the whole metropolis – but the system which is radically wrong.”
I was bound, after my experience, to agree with him. But again I referred to Mabel, and to the manner in which she had been decoyed from home.
“You hear that, Joseph?” he exclaimed, turning to his feathered pet, who had been chatting and screeching as we had been speaking. “This gentleman suspects your master, Joseph. What do you say?”
“You’re a fool for your pains! You’re a fool for your pains!” declared the bird. “Poor Jo-sef! Poor Jo-sef wants to go to bed!”
“Be quiet! You’ll go to bed presently,” answered the queer, grey visaged, sphinx-like man, who, turning again towards me, and looking me straight in the face, once more assured me that I was foolish in my misapprehension of the truth.
“To me it really does not matter who killed Professor Greer, or who has usurped his place in the world of science,” I said. “My only aim now is to recover my lost wife. Antonio, when I met him in Rome, was anxious that, in exchange for information concerning her, I should consent to keep a still tongue as to what had occurred in Sussex Place.”
“Rubbish, my dear sir!” – and Kirk laughed heartily. “What can Antonio possibly know? He’s as ignorant and innocent of the whole affair as you are yourself.”
“How do you know that, pray?”
“Well, am I not endeavouring to elucidate the mystery?” he asked.
“And you know more than you will tell me?”
I said.
“Perhaps – just a little.”
“Yet you desire that I should still trust you implicitly, that I should give myself into your hands blindly and unreservedly – you, who lead this dual existence! In Whitehall Court you are a wealthy man of leisure, while here you pose as shabby and needy.”
“I may be shabby, Mr Holford, for certain purposes – but needy never! I have, I’m thankful to say, quite sufficient for my wants,” he exclaimed, correcting me. “And as for my dual existence, as you term it, have I ever endeavoured to conceal it from you?”
“Tell me – once and for all – are you aware of my wife’s whereabouts?” I demanded in frantic anxiety. “Can’t you see that this suspense is turning my brain?”
“Yes, it is very unfortunate – and still more unfortunate that I can afford you no satisfaction. The fact of Mrs Holford’s prolonged absence is as great a mystery to me as to yourself.”
“Scotland Yard will render me no help,” I said in bitter chagrin.
“Probably not – after the amazing story you told them,” was his rather spiteful response.
“What am I to do?”
“Remain patient and watchful,” he said. “Believe in me, and try and persuade yourself that, after all, I’m not an assassin,” he smiled.
I held my breath for a few seconds. Here was the crux of the whole matter. He was still cleverly and ingeniously endeavouring to lead me into a false sense of security – to make me believe that he was innocent of all knowledge of that most astounding tragedy in Sussex Place.
Ah! his was indeed a clever ruse. But my eyes were now opened, so I only smiled within myself at the futility of his crafty and clever attempt further to mislead and cheat me.
A man was with my wife, passing himself off as myself – Henry Holford, motor engineer. And yet I could look to no one for counsel, advice, or aid!
Now that the police had refused to inquire into the death of poor Greer, the attitude of my weird, grey-faced neighbour had become more defiant. He was full of bitter reproaches, yet at the same time entirely heedless of my future actions.
Once or twice while speaking to me he turned, as was his habit, to Joseph the parrot, addressing asides to his pet, causing the bird to screech noisily, grow excited, and make idiotic responses.
“Mark me, Mr Holford,” he said at length, “you did a most foolish thing to betray me to Scotland Yard. In you I’m most disappointed, I assure you. My confidence was misplaced.”
“I understand you’ve been to my garage and in my absence purchased an Eckhardt tyre,” I remarked.
“Well?” he said, opening his eyes slightly. “I only came down to see you, but when I found you absent I bought a tyre as an excuse.”
“And you expect me to believe that, eh?” I asked, with a dry laugh.
“You can believe it or not believe it, just as you think fit,” was his quick reply. “I have no use for motor-tyres, not possessing a car.”
I grinned in disbelief, recollecting the air of secrecy with which he had examined the tyre on the first occasion he had called upon me, and also the effect produced upon him later when I told him of the two other men who had called to inspect the tyre.
I think I remained with him for nearly an hour. Then, after he had told me that his intention was to stay in England, at least for the present, I left him and walked back to my desolate home, where, Gwen having retired, I sat for a further hour in my den, deeply thinking.
That Kirk was in some secret way in association with the bogus Professor was plain. Was it not, then, more than likely that they would ere long meet again? If I kept a wary eye upon him, I might, I saw, discover something of great interest.
Who could this man be who led a dual existence for no apparent cause; this man who was narrow-minded and penurious in Bedford Park, yet was wealthy and open-handed in Whitehall Court?
As I calmly reviewed the whole extraordinary situation I saw that, in turn, I mistrusted the whole of the actors in that bewildering drama. Ethelwynn, the calm, sweet, clear-eyed girl, so content in her great love for Leonard Langton, though she had actually witnessed her father lying dead and cold, yet now refused to presume his death! Why? Doctor Flynn I disliked instinctively; Langton was evidently playing a double game, having denied all knowledge of Kirk, whereas the latter was his friend; Antonio and Pietro were away; while Kirk himself, silent and cunning, was pretending a complete ignorance which was only ill-feigned.
And the most important point of all was that not a breath of suspicion of the Professor’s death had yet leaked out to the public.
Thus, utterly bewildered, I again retired to rest.
Early astir next morning, I set watch upon Kirk’s movements, assisted by Dick Drake, my clean-shaven, bullet-headed chauffeur. A few moments before eleven he came forth, thinly clad and shabby, as he generally appeared in Chiswick, and, walking to Ravenscourt Park Station, took a third-class ticket to Westminster, whence he walked to a rather grimy house situate in Page Street, a poor neighbourhood lying behind the Abbey. There he remained for some time, after which, fearing lest he should recognise me, I directed Drake to follow him, and returned to the garage.
At six that evening my man returned, tired and hungry, reporting that Kirk had gone to a house in Foley Street, Tottenham Court Road, the number of which he gave me, and after ten minutes there he had eaten his luncheon at a bar in Oxford Street. Then he had taken train from Holborn Viaduct to Shortlands, near Bromley, where he had made a call at a small villa residence not far from the station.
The door of the house had been opened by a tall, thin man in a dark blue jersey, who, he said, had the appearance of a foreigner, and Kirk had stayed inside for nearly two hours. When at last he came out, the tall man had walked with him to the station, and bade him adieu on the platform.
“But,” added Drake, “that gentleman’s a pretty ’cute one, sir. He spotted me.”
“H’m, that’s unfortunate,” I said. “You were a bit too bold, I fear.”
Of course I had told him nothing of the reason why I was watching the man who had evinced such interest in the Eckhardt tyre.
“I exercised all the caution possible,” Drake declared, “but he doubled back upon me down at Shortlands and thus tricked me. He didn’t say anything, but only laughed in my face.”
The story of the foreigner at the villa at Shortlands struck me as somewhat remarkable, and I resolved to go there on the morrow and investigate. I now held all Kershaw Kirk’s movements in suspicion.
Next day I rose with the fixed intention of going at once down to Shortlands, that district of suburban villadom, but hardly had I risen from the table where I had breakfasted in silence with Gwen, when something occurred to turn the tide of events into an entirely different channel.
Indeed, by that sudden and unexpected occurrence I knew that I had at last advanced one step towards the knowledge of who killed Professor Greer behind those locked doors in Sussex Place.
